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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nLet $\\mathbb{F}$ be an arbitrary field. Cayley algebras (or algebras of octonions) over $\\mathbb{F}$ constitute a well-known class of nonassociative algebras (see, e.g. \\cite[Chapter VIII]{KMRT} and references therein). They are unital nonassociative algebras $\\mathcal{C}$ of dimension eight over $\\mathbb{F}$, endowed with a nonsingualr quadratic multiplicative form (the \\emph{norm}) $q:\\mathcal{C}\\rightarrow \\mathbb{F}$. Hence $q(xy)=q(x)q(y)$ for any $x,y\\in\\mathcal{C}$, and the polar form $b_q(x,y):= q(x+y)-q(x)-q(y)$ is a nondegenerate bilinear form.\n\nAny element in a Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$ satisfies the degree $2$ equation:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:CayleyHamilton}\nx^2-b_q(x,1)x+q(x)1=0.\n\\end{equation}\nBesides, the map $x\\mapsto \\bar x:= b_q(x,1)1-x$ is an involution (i.e., an antiautomorphism of order $2$) and the \\emph{trace} $t(x):= b_q(x,1)$ and norm $q(x)$ are given by $t(x)1=x+\\bar x$, $q(x)1=x\\bar x=\\bar x x$ for any $x \\in \\mathcal{C}$. Two Cayley algebras $\\mathcal{C}_1$ and $\\mathcal{C}_2$, with respective norms $q_1$ and $q_2$, are isomorphic if and only if the norms $q_1$ and $q_2$ are isometric.\n\nIf the characteristic of $\\mathbb{F}$ is not $2$, then $\\mathcal{C}=\\mathbb{F} 1\\oplus \\mathcal{C}^0$, where $\\mathcal{C}^0$ is the subspace of trace zero elements (i.e., the subspace orthogonal to $\\mathbb{F} 1$ relative to $b_q$). For $x,y\\in \\mathcal{C}^0$,  \\eqref{eq:CayleyHamilton} shows that $xy+yx=-b_q(x,y)1$, while $t([x,y])=[x,y]+\\overline{[x,y]}=[x,y]+[\\bar y,\\bar x]=0$, so $[x,y]:= xy-yx\\in\\mathcal{C}^0$. In particular,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:xyC0}\nxy=-\\frac{1}{2}b_q(x,y)1+ \\frac{1}{2}[x,y],\n\\end{equation}\nso the projection of $xy$ in $\\mathcal{C}^0$ is $\\frac{1}{2}[x,y]$. Moreover, the following relation holds (see, e.g. \\cite[Theorem 4.23]{EKmon}):\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:xyy}\n[[x,y],y]=2b_q(x,y)y-2b_q(y,y)x,\n\\end{equation}\nso the multiplication in $\\mathcal{C}$ and its norm are determined by the bracket in $\\mathcal{C}^0$.\n\nThe Lie algebra of derivations of a Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$ is defined by\n\\[ \\Der(\\mathcal{C}) := \\{ d\\in {\\mathfrak{gl}}(\\mathcal{C}): d(xy)=d(x)y+xd(y)\\ \\forall x,y\\in\\mathcal{C}\\}. \\]\nIn general, if $M$ is a module for a Lie algebra $\\mathcal{L}$, we say that a bilinear product $\\cdot : M \\times M \\rightarrow M$ is \\emph{$\\mathcal{L}$-invariant} if $\\mathcal{L}$ acts on $(M, \\cdot)$ by derivations: $x(u \\cdot v) = x(u)\\cdot v + u \\cdot x(u)$, for any $x \\in \\mathcal{L}$, $u,v \\in M$.\n\nIf the norm $q$ of a Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$ is isotropic (i.e., there exists $0\\ne x\\in \\mathcal{C}$ with $q(x)=0$), then $\\mathcal{C}$ is unique up to isomorphism. In this case, the Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$ is said to be \\emph{split}, and it has a \\emph{good basis} $\\{ p_1, p_2,u_1,u_2,u_3,v_1,v_2,v_3\\}$ with multiplication given in Table \\ref{ta:good_basis}. We denote by $\\mathcal{C}_s$ the split Cayley algebra.\n\n\\begin{table}[!h]\\label{ta:good_basis}\n\\[\n\\vcenter{\\offinterlineskip\n\\halign{\\hfil$#$\\enspace\\hfil&#\\vrule height 12pt width1pt depth 4pt\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil&#\\vrule width .5pt\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil&#\\vrule width .5pt\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil\n &\\hfil\\enspace$#$\\enspace\\hfil&#\\vrule height 12pt width1pt depth 4pt\\cr\n &\\omit\\hfil\\vrule width 1pt depth 4pt height 10pt\n   &p_1&p_2&\\omit&u_1&u_2&u_3&\\omit&v_1&v_2&v_3&\\cr\n \\noalign{\\hrule height1pt}\n p_1&& p_1&0&&u_1&u_2&u_3&&0&0&0&\\cr\n p_2&&0&p_2&&0&0&0&&v_1&v_2&v_3&\\cr\n &\\multispan{12}{\\leaders\\hregleta\\hfill}\\cr\n u_1&&0&u_1&&0&v_3&-v_2&&-p_1&0&0&\\cr\n u_2&&0&u_2&&-v_3&0&v_1&&0&-p_1&0&\\cr\n u_3&&0&u_3&&v_2&-v_1&0&&0&0&-p_1&\\cr\n &\\multispan{12}{\\leaders\\hregleta\\hfill}\\cr\n v_1&&v_1&0&&-p_2&0&0&&0&u_3&-u_2&\\cr\n v_2&&v_2&0&&0&-p_2&0&&-u_3&0&u_1&\\cr\n v_3&&v_3&0&&0&0&-p_2&&u_2&-u_1&0&\\cr\n \\noalign{\\hrule height1pt}}}\n\\]\n\\caption{{\\vrule width 0pt height 15pt}Multiplication table in a good basis of the split Cayley algebra.}\n\\end{table}\n\nGiven a finite-dimensional simple Lie algebra $\\frg$ of type $X_r$ over the complex numbers, and a Chevalley basis $\\mathcal{B}$, let $\\frg_\\mathbb{Z}$ be the $\\mathbb{Z}$-span of $\\mathcal{B}$ (a Lie algebra over $\\mathbb{Z}$). The Lie algebra $\\frg_\\mathbb{F}:=\\frg_\\mathbb{Z}\\otimes_\\mathbb{Z} \\mathbb{F}$ is the \\emph{Chevalley algebra} of type $X_r$. In particular, the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$ is isomorphic to $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ (see, e.g. \\cite[\\S 4.4]{EKmon}). For any Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$, the Lie algebra $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ is a twisted form of the Chevalley algebra $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$. (Recall that, if $\\cA$ and $\\mathcal{B}$ are algebras over $\\mathbb{F}$, then $\\cA$ is a \\emph{twisted form} of $\\mathcal{B}$ whenever $\\cA\\otimes_\\mathbb{F} \\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}\\cong \\mathcal{B}\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}$, for an algebraic closure $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$ of $\\mathbb{F}$.)\n\nIf the characteristic of $\\mathbb{F}$ is neither $2$ nor $3$, then the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$ is simple; this is the split simple Lie algebra of type $G_2$. Moreover, two Cayley algebras $\\mathcal{C}_1$ and $\\mathcal{C}_2$ are isomorphic if and only if their Lie algebras of derivations are isomorphic (see \\cite[Theorem IV.4.1]{Seligman} or \\cite[Theorem 4.35]{EKmon}).\n\nThe goal of this paper is to show some surprising features of Cayley algebras over fields of characteristic $7$, $3$ and $2$. \n\nSection \\ref{se:char7} studies the case of characteristic $7$ and is divided in three subsections. In Section \\ref{subsec1}, we review a construction of $\\mathcal{C}_s$ due to Dixmier \\cite{Dixmier} in terms of transvectants which was originally done in characteristic $0$, but it is valid in any characteristic $p \\geq 7$. In this construction, $\\mathcal{C}_s$ appears as the direct sum of the trivial one-dimensional module and the restricted irreducible seven-dimensional module $V_6$ for the simple Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$, which embeds into $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ as its principal ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2$ subalgebra. When the characteristic is $7$, this action of ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$ by derivations on $\\mathcal{C}_s$ may be naturally extended to an action by derivations of the Witt algebra $W_1:= \\Der\\left(\\mathbb{F}[X]\/(X^7)\\right)$, explaining the fact, first proved in \\cite[Lemma 13]{Premet} (see also \\cite{Herpel_Stewart}), that $W_1$ embeds into the split simple Lie algebra of type $G_2$. In Section \\ref{subsec2}, we show that, when $\\mathbb{F}$ is algebraically closed, $V_6$ is the unique non-trivial non-adjoint restricted irreducible module for $W_1$ with a nonzero invariant product. Then, in Section \\ref{subsec3} we prove that, in characteristic $7$ and even when the ground field is not algebraically closed, all the twisted forms of the Witt algebra embed into $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$, and any two embeddings of the same twisted form are conjugate by an automorphism.\n \nSection \\ref{se:char3} is devoted to the case of characteristic $3$. In this situation, it is known that the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$ is not simple, but it contains an ideal isomorphic to the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_3(\\mathbb{F})$. We review this situation and prove that it is still valid that two Cayley algebras are isomorphic if and only if their Lie algebras of derivations are isomorphic.\n\nFinally, in Section \\ref{se:char2}, we prove that the Lie algebra of derivations $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ of any Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}$ over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $2$ is always isomorphic to the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$. A proof of this fact when $\\mathcal{C} = \\mathcal{C}_s$ appears in \\cite[Corollary 4.32]{EKmon}. Hence, in this case, it is plainly false that two Cayley algebras are isomorphic if and only if their Lie algebras of derivations are isomorphic. We show that the isomorphism classes of twisted forms of ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$, which is here the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$, are in bijection with the isomorphism classes of central simple associative algebras of degree $6$ endowed with a symplectic involution.\n\n\\medskip\n\n\n\\section{Characteristic $7$}\\label{se:char7}\n\n\n\\subsection{Dixmier's construction} \\label{subsec1}\n\nLet $\\mathbb{F}[x,y]$ be the polynomial algebra in two variables over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $0$. The general linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{gl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$ acts by derivations on $\\mathbb{F}[x,y]$ preserving the degree of each polynomial. For any $n\\geq 0$, denote by $V_n$ the subspace of homogeneous polynomials of degree $n$ in $\\mathbb{F}[x,y]$. For any $i,j,q\\geq 0$ with $q\\leq i,j$, consider the $q$-\\emph{transvectant} $V_i\\times V_j\\rightarrow V_{i+j-2q}$ given by\n\\begin{multline*}\n(f,g)_q:= \\frac{(i-q)!}{i!}\\frac{(j-q)!}{j!}\n\\left(\\frac{\\partial^qf}{\\partial x^q}\\frac{\\partial^qg}{\\partial y^q}\n-\\binom{q}{1}\n\\frac{\\partial^qf}{\\partial x^{q-1}\\partial y}\\frac{\\partial^qg}{\\partial x\\partial y^{q-1}}\\right.\\\\\n\\left. +\\binom{q}{2}\n\\frac{\\partial^qf}{\\partial x^{q-2}\\partial y^2}\\frac{\\partial^qg}{\\partial x^2\\partial y^{q-2}}\n-+\\cdots\\right),\n\\end{multline*}\nfor $f\\in V_i$ and $g\\in V_j$.\n\nIt turns out that the split Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}_s$ is isomorphic to the algebra defined on $\\mathbb{F} 1\\oplus V_6$ with multiplication given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:CsDixmier}\n(\\alpha 1+f)(\\beta 1+g):= \\bigl(\\alpha\\beta-\\frac{1}{20}(f,g)_6\\bigr)1+\n\\bigl(\\alpha g+\\beta f+(f,g)_3\\bigr),\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $\\alpha,\\beta\\in\\mathbb{F}$ and $f,g\\in V_6$ (see \\cite[3.6 Proposition]{Dixmier}); equipped with this product, the subspace $V_6$ becomes the subspace of trace zero elements in $\\mathcal{C}_s$. The existence of this isomorphism is based on the following identity given in \\cite[3.5 Lemme]{Dixmier}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:fgg}\n((f,g)_3,g)_3=\\frac{1}{20}\\Bigl((f,g)_6g-(g,g)_6f\\Bigr),\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $f,g\\in V_6$.\n\nConsider the following endomorphisms of $V_6$:\n\\[ e_{-1}:=\\left.x\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial y}\\right|_{V_6},\\quad\ne_0:=-\\frac{1}{2}\\left.\\left(x\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial x}-y\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial y}\\right)\\right|_{V_6},\\quad e_1:=-\\left.y\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial x}\\right|_{V_6}.\\]\nA direct calculation gives $[e_i,e_j]=(j-i)e_{i+j}$, for $i,j\\in\\{-1,0,1\\}$, so these endomorphisms span a subalgebra of ${\\mathfrak{gl}}(V_6)$ isomorphic to ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$ that acts by derivations on $V_6$. This construction also works when the characteristic of $\\mathbb{F}$ is $p\\geq 7$, and, moreover, the map  $f\\otimes g\\mapsto (f,g)_3$ gives the only, up to scalars, linear map $V_6\\otimes V_6\\rightarrow V_6$ invariant under the action of ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$.\n\nNow assume that the characteristic of $\\mathbb{F}$ is $7$. First, we will find a simpler formula describing the $3$-transvectant $(\\; , \\;)_3 : V_6 \\times V_6 \\rightarrow V_6$. For $0\\leq i\\leq 6$, denote\n\\[ m_i:= x^{6-i}y^i \\in V_6.\\]\nTaking the indices modulo $7$, the action of ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$ on $V_6$ is given by the following formulas:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:e01-1mi}\n\\begin{split}\ne_{-1}(m_i)&=im_{i-1} \\text{ for } 1 \\leq i \\leq 6, \\text{ and } e_{-1}(m_0) = 0, \\\\\ne_0(m_i)&=(i+4)m_i \\text{ for any } 0 \\leq i \\leq 6, \\\\\ne_1(m_i)&=(i+1)m_{i+1} \\text{ for } 0 \\leq i \\leq 5, \\text{ and } e_1(m_6) = 0.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\nFor $i,j$ in the prime subfield $\\mathbb{F}_7$ of $\\mathbb{F}$, define the element $c(i,j)$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:cij}\nc(i,j)=2(j-i)(4i+j-1)(4j+i-1)\\ \\bigl(\\in\\mathbb{F}_7\\subseteq \\mathbb{F}\\bigr).\n\\end{equation}\nIt is clear that $c(i,j)=-c(j,i)$ for any $i,j \\in \\mathbb{F}_7$, and $c(0,6)=1$. A straightforward computation gives, for any $i,j,k\\in\\mathbb{F}_7$:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:cij_recurs}\n(i+j+4k+1)c(i,j)=(i+4k+4)c(i+k,j)+(j+4k+4)c(i,j+k).\n\\end{equation}\nTherefore, defining \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:mimj}\nm_i\\cdot m_j :=c(i,j)m_{i+j-3}\n\\end{equation}\n(with indices modulo $7$), we have\n\\[\ne_k(m_i\\cdot m_j)=e_k(m_i)\\cdot m_j+m_i\\cdot e_k(m_j),\n\\]\nfor any $k \\in \\{-1,0,1\\}$, $0\\leq i,j\\leq 6$. This means that the product in \\eqref{eq:mimj} is ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_2(\\mathbb{F})$-invariant; hence, by uniqueness and since $(m_0,m_6)_3=m_3=m_0\\cdot m_6$, we conclude that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:mimj_3}\nm_i\\cdot m_j=(m_i,m_j)_3\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $0 \\leq i,j \\leq 6$. The multiplication table of $V_6$ with this product is given in Table \\ref{ta:multiplication_mis}.\n\n\\begin{table}[!h]\n\\setlength{\\tabcolsep}{6pt}\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.3}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{c|ccccccc|}\n$\\cdot$ & $m_0$ & $m_1$ & $m_2$ & $m_3$ & $m_4$ & $m_5$ & $m_6$ \\\\ \\hline \n$m_0$ & $0$ & $0$ & $0$ & $-m_0$ & $3m_1$ & $-3m_2$ & $m_3$   \\\\\n$m_1$ & $0$ & $0$ & $3m_0$ & $m_1$ & $0$ & $-m_3$ & $-3m_4$ \\\\\n$m_2$ & $0$ & $-3m_0$ & $0$ & $m_2$ & $-m_3$ & $0$ & $3m_5$\\\\\n$m_3$ & $m_0$ & $-m_1$ & $-m_2$ & $0$ & $m_4$ & $m_5$ & $-m_6$ \\\\\n$m_4$ & $-3m_1$ & $0$ & $m_3$ & $-m_4$ & $0$ & $3m_6$ & $0$ \\\\\n$m_5$ & $3m_2$ & $m_3$ & $0$ & $-m_5$ & $-3m_6$ & $0$ & $0$\\\\\n$m_6$ & $-m_3$ & $3m_4$ & $-3m_5$ & $m_6$ & $0$ & $0$ & $0$ \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{{\\vrule width 0pt height 15pt}Multiplication table of $(V_6,\\cdot)$.}\n\\label{ta:multiplication_mis}\n\\end{table} \n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{re:explicit_iso}\nThe above arguments show that the split Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}_s$ is isomorphic to the algebra defined on $\\mathbb{F} 1\\oplus V_6$ with multiplication given by \\eqref{eq:CsDixmier}, or equivalently, by\n\\[\n(\\alpha 1+f)(\\beta 1+g):= \\bigl(\\alpha\\beta+(f,g)_6\\bigr)1+\n\\bigl(\\alpha g+\\beta f+f\\cdot g\\bigr).\n\\]\nAn explicit isomorphism between $\\mathbb{F} 1\\oplus V_6$ and $\\mathcal{C}_s$, in terms of a good basis of  $\\mathcal{C}_s$ as in Table \\ref{ta:good_basis}, is given by:\n\\[\n\\left( \\begin{matrix}\n\\ 1 \\ & \\ m_0\\ &\\ m_1\\ &\\ m_2\\ &\\ m_3\\ &\\ m_4\\ &\\ m_5\\ &\\ m_6\\ \\\\\n\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow&\\downarrow\\\\\np_1 + p_2 & -3v_3&3u_2&3u_1&-p_1+p_2&-3v_1&-3v_2&3u_3\n\\end{matrix} \\right).\n\\]\n\\end{remark}\n\nNow, for any $k \\in \\{ 2,\\ldots,5 \\}$, define the endomorphism $e_k$ of $V_6$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:eks}\ne_k(m_i)=\\begin{cases} (i+4k+4)m_{i+k}&\\text{if $i+k \\leq 6$,}\\\\\n   0&\\text{otherwise.}\n   \\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nWe will show that $e_k$ is a derivation of $(V_6,\\cdot)$ for any $k=\\{-1,0,\\ldots,5\\}$. Take $0\\leq i,j \\leq 6$. If $i+j+k-3\\leq 6$, $i+k\\leq 6$, and $j+k\\leq 6$, then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:ekmimj}\n\\begin{split}\ne_k (m_i \\cdot m_j) &= (i+j + 4k + 1) c(i,j)  m_{i+j+k-3} \\\\\n &= \\Bigl((i+4k+4)c(i+k,j) + (j+4k+4)c(i,j+k)\\Bigr) m_{i+j+k-3} \\\\\n &= e_k(m_i) \\cdot m_j + m_i \\cdot e_k(m_j).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nIf $i+j+k-3>6$, then $e_k(m_i\\cdot m_j)=0=e_k(m_i)\\cdot m_j=m_i\\cdot e_k(m_j)$. Finally, if $i+j+k-3\\leq 6$ and $i+k>6$ (the same happens if $j+k>6$), then $e_k(m_i)=0$ and $c(i+k,j)$ is one of $c(0,0)$, $c(0,1)$, $c(0,2)$ or $c(1,1)$, but all these are equal to $0$, so \\eqref{eq:ekmimj} applies.\n\nBecause of \\eqref{eq:CsDixmier} and \\eqref{eq:fgg}, we may extend the action of $e_k$ to $ \\mathbb{F} 1\\oplus V_6 \\cong \\mathcal{C}_s$ by means of $e_k(1)=0$, obtaining that $e_k$ is a derivation of the split Cayley algebra $\\mathcal{C}_s$. Furthermore, one checks at once that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Witt_basis}\n[e_i,e_j]=(j-i)e_{i+j}\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $i,j \\in \\{ -1,0,\\ldots,5 \\}$, with $e_i=0$ when $i$ is outside $\\{ -1,0,\\ldots,5 \\}$. Thus, the span of $\\{ e_i:-1\\leq i\\leq 5 \\}$ in $\\Der(V_6,\\cdot)$ is isomorphic to the Witt algebra $W_1:=\\Der\\left(\\mathbb{F}[X]\/(X^7)\\right)$; the map $e_i\\leftrightarrow x^{i+1}\\frac{\\partial }{\\partial x}$ gives an explicit isomorphism of these Lie algebras, where $x$ denotes the class of $X$ modulo $(X^7)$.\n\nSince $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ is the split simple Lie algebra of type $G_2$, the above arguments provide an elementary proof of the next result.\n\n\\begin{theorem}[\\cite{Premet}]\\label{th:W1_char7}\nIf the characteristic of the ground field $\\mathbb{F}$ is $7$, then the Witt algebra $W_1$ embeds as a subalgebra of the simple split Lie algebra of type $G_2$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nA specific embedding of $W_1$ into $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ may be given in terms of a good basis of $\\mathcal{C}_s$. Given $x,y\\in\\mathcal{C}_s$, the derivation of $\\mathcal{C}_s$ defined by $D_{x,y}:=\\mathrm{ad}_{[x,y]}+[\\mathrm{ad}_x,\\mathrm{ad}_y]$ (where $\\mathrm{ad}_x(y):=[x,y]$) is called the \\emph{inner derivation induced by $x$ and $y$}. Then, the assignment\n\\begin{align*}\ne_{-1} &\\mapsto D_{p_1 - p_2,u_1} + D_{u_2, v_1},& e_3 &\\mapsto -D_{v_1, v_2} = 4D_{p_1 - p_2,u_3}, \\\\\ne_0 &\\mapsto 2D_{u_3, v_3} + 3D_{u_2,v_2},  &\\quad e_4 &\\mapsto 3D_{v_1, u_3}, \\\\\ne_1 &\\mapsto D_{p_1 - p_2,v_1} + D_{u_1,v_2}, & e_5 &\\mapsto 5D_{v_2,u_3},  \\\\\ne_2 &\\mapsto 3D_{u_1, u_3} = 2D_{p_1 - p_2,v_2}, &&\n\\end{align*} \ngives an explicit embedding of $W_1$ into $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\smallskip\n\n\n\\subsection{Invariant bilinear products on modules for $W_1$} \\label{subsec2}\n\nIt turns out that $V_6$ is a very special module for the Witt algebra in characteristic $7$ (see Theorem \\ref{th:main} below).\n\nAssume for this section that $\\mathbb{F}$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p \\geq 5$. Let $\\mathcal{L}$ be a finite-dimensional restricted Lie algebra over $\\mathbb{F}$ with $p$-mapping denoted by $[p]$. Given any character $\\chi \\in \\mathcal{L}^*$, there is a finite-dimensional algebra $u(\\mathcal{L},\\chi)$, called the \\emph{reduced enveloping algebra of $\\mathcal{L}$ associated with $\\chi$}, that is a quotient of the universal enveloping algebra of $\\mathcal{L}$ and whose irreducible modules coincide precisely with the irreducible modules for $\\mathcal{L}$ with character $\\chi$. We say that $V$ is a \\emph{restricted module} for $\\mathcal{L}$ if there is a representation $\\rho : \\mathcal{L} \\rightarrow {\\mathfrak{gl}}(V)$ that is a morphism of restricted Lie algebras, i.e., $\\rho(x^{[p]}) = \\rho(x)^{p}$, for any $x \\in \\mathcal{L}$. When $\\chi=0$, it turns out that the irreducible modules for $u(\\mathcal{L}, \\chi)$ coincide precisely with the restricted irreducible modules for $\\mathcal{L}$.\n\nLet $W=W_1$ be the Witt algebra over $\\mathbb{F}$ with basis $\\{e_i:-1\\leq i\\leq p-2\\}$ and Lie bracket as in \\eqref{eq:Witt_basis}. It is well known that $W$ has a $p$-mapping given by $e_i^{[p]} := \\delta_{i,0}e_i$.\n\nFor each $i \\in \\{-1,0,...,p-2\\}$, define $W_{(i)} = \\langle e_i, ..., e_{p-2} \\rangle$. Consider the $p$-dimensional Verma modules $L(\\lambda) = u(W,0) \\otimes_{u(W_{(0)},0)} k_\\lambda$, where $\\lambda \\in \\{0,1,...,p-1\\}$, and $k_\\lambda$ is the one-dimensional module for $W_{(0)}$ on which $W_{(1)}$ acts trivially and $e_0$ acts by multiplication by $\\lambda$. By \\cite[Lemma 2.2.1]{N92}), $L(\\lambda)$ has a basis $\\left\\{ m_{0},m_{1},...,m_{p-1}\\right\\}$ on which the action of $W$ is given by\n\\[ e_{k}(m_{j}) = ( j + ( \\lambda +1 ) ( k+1 )) m_{k+j}, \\]\nwhere $m_{j}=0$ for $j$ outside $\\{ 0,...,p-1\\}$.\n\nIt was established in \\cite{C41} (see also \\cite{S77,FN98}) that any restricted irreducible module for $W$ is isomorphic to one of the following: \n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item The trivial one-dimensional module.\n\\item The ($p-1$)-dimensional quotient $L(p-1)\/\\langle m_0 \\rangle$.\n\\item The $p$-dimensional Verma module $L(\\lambda)$, with $\\lambda \\in \\{1,...,p-2 \\}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nIn the next result the invariant bilinear products $L\\times L \\rightarrow L$ (not to be confused with invariant bilinear forms!) on irreducible restricted modules for the Witt algebra are determined.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:main}\nLet $W=W_1$ be the Witt algebra over an algebraically closed field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $p \\geq 5$. Then:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item If $p \\neq 7$, there is no non-trivial non-adjoint restricted irreducible module for $W$ with a nonzero invariant bilinear product.\n\\item If $p = 7$, there is a unique non-trivial non-adjoint restricted irreducible module for $W$ with a nonzero invariant bilinear product. Up to isomorphism and scaling of the product, this unique module is $V_6$ with product given in \\eqref{eq:mimj}. ($V_6$ is a module for $W$ by means of \\eqref{eq:e01-1mi} and \\eqref{eq:eks}.)   \n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe will use the above classification of restricted irreducible modules for $W$ and follow several steps:\n\\begin{romanenumerate}\n\\item \nLet $\\lambda \\in \\{0,1,...,p-1\\}$ and suppose that $L(\\lambda)$ is equipped with $\\cdot$, a $W$-invariant bilinear product. We claim that $m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}= \\mu m_{\\lambda }$, for some scalar $\\mu \\in \\mathbb{F}$ that determines the invariant product. Indeed, first observe that \n\\[\\begin{split}\ne_{0}\\left( m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}\\right)  &=\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}+\\left( p-1+\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) \\right) m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1} \\\\\n&=\\left( 2\\lambda +1\\right) m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}.\n\\end{split}\\]\nTherefore, $m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}$ is an eigenvector of the action of $e_{0}$ with eigenvalue $2\\lambda +1$. As $m_{\\lambda }$ is also an eigenvector of the action of $e_{0}$ with eigenvalue $2 \\lambda +1$, and the action of $e_{0}$ is diagonal with $p$ distinct eigenvalues, we must have that $m_{0}\\cdot m_{p-1}$ is a scalar multiple of $m_{\\lambda}$. Furthermore, $m_0\\otimes m_{p-1}$ generates the $W$-module $L(\\lambda)\\otimes L(\\lambda)$, so this scalar determines the invariant product.\n\n\\item For any $p \\geq 5$, we will show that if $\\cdot$ is a $W$-invariant bilinear product on the irreducible module $L(p-1) \/ \\langle m_0 \\rangle$, then it must be the zero product. Denote by $\\bar x$ the class of an element $x\\in L(p-1)$ modulo $\\langle m_0\\rangle$; then, \n\\[ e_0 \\left( \\overline{m}_1 \\cdot \\overline{m}_{p-1} \\right) = \\overline{m}_1 \\cdot \\overline{m}_{p-1} + (p-1) \\overline{m}_1 \\cdot \\overline{m}_{p-1} =\\overline{0}. \\]\nAs all the eigenvalues of the action of $e_0$ on $L(p-1) \/ \\langle m_0 \\rangle$ are nonzero, this implies that $\\overline{m}_1 \\cdot \\overline{m}_{p-1}= \\overline{0}$. Now, using the $W$-invariance, it is easy to show that $\\cdot$ must be the zero product.\n\n\\item As $L(p-2)$ is the adjoint module for $W$, it obviously has a $W$-invariant bilinear product. Hence, we exclude this case from further observations.  \n\n\\item Let $p\\geq 5$ and $\\lambda \\in \\left\\{ 1,...,p-3\\right\\}$. We will show that if $L\\left( \\lambda \\right)$ has a nonzero $W$-invariant bilinear product $\\cdot$, then $p=7$ and $\\lambda =3$.\n\nBy step (i), we may assume that $m_0\\cdot m_{p-1}=m_\\lambda$. For $k \\in \\{1,...,p-2 \\}$,\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n(\\lambda +1)(k+1)m_k\\cdot m_{p-1} & = &e_k(m_0)\\cdot m_{p-1} \\\\\n & = & e_k(m_0\\cdot m_{p-1})= e_k(m_\\lambda) \\\\\n & = & (\\lambda+(\\lambda+1)(k+1))m_{\\lambda +k},\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nso\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:mkmp-1}\nm_{k}\\cdot m_{p-1}=\\frac{\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) \\left( k+1\\right) +\\lambda}{\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) \\left( k+1\\right) }m_{\\lambda+k },\n\\end{equation}\nfor $k\\in \\left\\{ 1,...,p-2\\right\\}$. On the other hand, $e_1(e_1(m_\\lambda))=e_1(e_1(m_0)\\cdot m_{p-1}$, and this gives\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:m2mp-1}\n3\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) \\left( \\lambda +1\\right) m_{\\lambda +2} =2\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) \\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) m_{2}\\cdot m_{p-1}. \n\\end{equation}\n\nIf $2\\lambda +3=0$, \\eqref{eq:m2mp-1} gives $3\\lambda+2=0$, and this implies $p=5$ and $\\lambda=1$. But then, using \\eqref{eq:mkmp-1} we get $e_1(m_2\\cdot m_4)=2e_1(m_3)=4m_4$, while at the same time  \n\\[ e_{1}\\left( m_{2}\\cdot m_{4}\\right) = (e_1m_3) \\cdot m_4 + m_3 \\cdot (e_1 m_4) = m_{3}\\cdot m_{4} = -2m_{4},\\]\nwhich is a contradiction. \n\nHence, we assume for the rest of the proof $2\\lambda +3\\ne 0$. By \\eqref{eq:m2mp-1}, we have\n\\[\n m_{2}\\cdot m_{6}=\\frac{3\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) }{2\\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) }m_{\\lambda +2}.\n  \\]\nComparing this with \\eqref{eq:mkmp-1} with $k=2$ we obtain\n\\[\n \\frac{3\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) }{2\\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) } = \\frac{4\\lambda +3}{3\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) }, \\text{ so } \\lambda \\left( 11\\lambda +9\\right) =0.\n\\]\nIf $p=11$, the above relation implies that $\\lambda =0$, which is a contradiction with our choice of $\\lambda $, so no invariant bilinear product exists for $p=11$.\n\nFor the rest of the proof, assume that $p\\neq 11$ and hence $\n\\lambda =-\\frac{9}{11}$.\nNow, from $e_{1}\\left( e_{1}\\left( e_{1}(m_{\\lambda} )\\right) \\right) =e_{1}\\left(e_{1}\\left( e_{1}(m_{0})\\cdot m_{p-1}\\right) \\right)$, we obtain\n\\[ \n\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) \\left( 3\\lambda +3\\right) \\left( 3\\lambda +4\\right) m_{\\lambda +3} = \\left( 2\\lambda +2\\right)\\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) \\left( 2\\lambda +4\\right) m_{3}\\cdot m_{p-1}.\n\\]\nThus,\n\\[ \nm_{3}\\cdot m_{p-1}=\\frac{3\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) \\left( 3\\lambda +4\\right) }{4\\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) \\left( \\lambda +2\\right) }m_{\\lambda +3}.\n\\]\nComparing this with \\eqref{eq:mkmp-1} for $k=3$ we obtain\n\\[ \n\\frac{3\\left( 3\\lambda +2\\right) \\left( 3\\lambda +4\\right) }{\\left( 2\\lambda +3\\right) \\left( \\lambda +2\\right) } = \\frac{5\\lambda +4}{\\left( \\lambda +1\\right) }. \n\\]\nHence,\n\\[ \n17\\lambda ^{2}+38\\lambda +20=0. \n\\]\nSubstituting $\\lambda =-\\frac{9}{11}$ in this relation we obtain that $p\\mid 35$, so either $p=7$ or $p=5$. If $p=5$, then $\\lambda =-\\frac{9}{11}=1$, and it was shown above that no nonzero invariant bilinear product exists in this case. If $p=7$, then $\\lambda =-\\frac{9}{11}=3$. This completes the proof. \\qedhere\n\\end{romanenumerate}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\smallskip\n\n\\begin{remark} \\label{re:abs irr}\nLet $V$ and $U$ be two irreducible modules for a Lie algebra $\\mathcal{L}$ over an arbitrary field $\\mathbb{F}$, and let $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$ be an algebraic closure of $\\mathbb{F}$. Suppose that $V\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}$ and $U\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}$ are isomorphic as modules for $\\mathcal{L}\\otimes_\\mathbb{F} \\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$; then, $V$ and $U$ are isomorphic as modules for $\\mathcal{L}$. Indeed, if $V\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}$ and $U\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}$ are isomorphic, then $\\Hom_{\\mathcal{L}}(V,U)\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}\\cong \\Hom_{\\mathcal{L}\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}}}(V\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}},U\\otimes_\\mathbb{F}\\FF_{\\text{alg}})\\ne 0$, so $\\Hom_\\mathcal{L}(V,U)\\ne 0$. The result follows since, by irreducibility, any nonzero $\\mathcal{L}$-module homomorphism from $V$ to $U$ is an $\\mathcal{L}$-module isomorphism. In particular, this implies that, even when the ground field is not algebraically closed, Theorem \\ref{th:main} applies to modules for the Witt algebra that are absolutely irreducible (i.e., they remain irreducible after extending scalars to an algebraic closure).\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\smallskip\n\n\n\\subsection{Embeddings of $W_1$ and its twisted forms into $G_2$} \\label{subsec3}\n\nIt is shown in \\cite{Premet,Herpel_Stewart} that, over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $7$, the simple Lie algebra of type $G_2$ contains a unique conjugacy class of subalgebras isomorphic to the Witt algebra. With our results above, a different proof may be given, valid for not necessarily algebraically closed fields.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:conjugation}\nLet $\\mathbb{F}$ be an arbitrary field of characteristic $7$. Then any two subalgebras $S_1$ and $S_2$ of $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ isomorphic to the Witt algebra are conjugate: there is an automorphism $\\varphi$ of $\\mathcal{C}_s$ such that $S_2=\\varphi S_1\\varphi^{-1}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $S:=\\espan{e_i:-1\\leq i\\leq 5}$ be the subalgebra of $\\frg:=\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ isomorphic to the Witt algebra given by equations \\eqref{eq:e01-1mi} and \\eqref{eq:eks}, and let $\\tilde S$ be an arbitrary subalgebra of $\\frg$ isomorphic to the Witt algebra. Take a basis $\\{\\tilde e_i:-1\\leq i\\leq 5\\}$ of $\\tilde S$ with $[\\tilde e_i,\\tilde e_j]=(j-i)\\tilde e_{i+j}$. We will follow several steps:\n\n\\begin{romanenumerate}\n\\item $\\tilde S$ is a maximal subalgebra of $\\frg$.\n\\begin{proof}\nSince the Witt algebra does not admit nonsingular invariant bilinear forms (see, e.g. \\cite[Theorem 4.2]{F86}), the restriction of the Killing form $\\kappa$ of $\\frg$ to $\\tilde S$ is trivial; hence, by dimension count, $\\frg\/\\tilde S$ is isomorphic, as a module for $\\tilde S$, to the dual of the adjoint module for $\\tilde S$. In particular, $\\frg\/\\tilde S$ is an irreducible module for $\\tilde S$, and this shows the maximality of $\\tilde S$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\item The representation of $\\tilde S$ on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$, the subspace of trace zero elements of $\\mathcal{C}_s$, is restricted and absolutely irreducible.\n\\begin{proof}\nAs $\\tilde S$ is an ideal in its $p$-closure in $\\frg$, step (i) implies that $\\tilde S$ is a restricted subalgebra of $\\frg$, and hence, the corresponding representation of $\\tilde S$ on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ is restricted. \n\nIn order to prove the second part, we may assume that $\\mathbb{F}$ is algebraically closed. Recall that the possible dimensions of restricted irreducible representations of the Witt algebra are $1$, $6$ and $7$. Suppose that $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ has a one-dimensional trivial $\\tilde S$-submodule $X$. The space $X$ may be either nondegenerate or totally isotropic with respect to the symmetric bilinear form $b_q$ of $\\mathcal{C}_s$. \n\nIf $X = \\mathbb{F} x$ is nondegenerate, then $q(x) \\neq 0$ and $b_q(x,1) = 0$. By \\eqref{eq:CayleyHamilton}, $\\mathbb{F} 1 \\oplus X$ is a two-dimensional composition subalgebra of $\\mathcal{C}_s$, so it is isomorphic to $\\mathbb{F} p_1\\oplus\\mathbb{F} p_2$ (with $p_i$ as in Table \\ref{ta:good_basis}). Now, by \\cite[Corollary 1.7.3]{SV00}, the isomorphism $\\mathbb{F} 1 \\oplus \\mathbb{F} x  \\cong \\mathbb{F} p_1 \\oplus \\mathbb{F} p_2$ may be extended to an automorphism of $\\mathcal{C}_s$. As $\\tilde S$ annihilates $\\mathbb{F} 1 \\oplus \\mathbb{F} x$, and the subalgebra of the derivations that annihilate $\\mathbb{F} p_1\\oplus\\mathbb{F} p_2$ is isomorphic to ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_3(\\mathbb{F})$ (\\cite[Proposition 4.29]{EKmon}), we obtain that the Witt algebra embeds into ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_3(\\mathbb{F})$, which is impossible. \n\nIf $X$ is totally isotropic, then $X \\subseteq X^{\\perp}$, and $X^{\\perp} \/ X$ is a $5$-dimensional module for $\\tilde S$. As this cannot be irreducible, we deduce that all the composition factors of $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ are one-dimensional. Hence, the representation $\\rho$ of $\\tilde S$ on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ is nilpotent. Since $\\mathrm{ad}_{(\\tilde e_0 + \\tilde e_i)}$ is diagonalizable for $i\\ne 0$, $-1 \\leq i \\leq 5$, then $\\mathrm{ad}_{(\\tilde e_0 + \\tilde e_i)}^p = \\mathrm{ad}_{(\\tilde e_0+ \\tilde e_i)}$. As the representation of $\\tilde S$ on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ is restricted, then $\\rho(\\tilde e_0 + \\tilde e_i)^p = \\rho(\\tilde e_0 + \\tilde e_i)$, and the nilpotency implies that $\\rho(\\tilde e_0+\\tilde e_i) =0$, for any $i\\ne 0$, $-1 \\leq i \\leq 5$. This is a contradiction.\n\nFinally, if $Y$ is a $6$-dimensional irreducible $\\tilde S$-submodule for $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$, then it must be nondegenerate with respect to $b_q$. This implies that $Y^{\\perp}$ is a one-dimensional nondegenerate submodule, and we may use the above argument with $X=Y^{\\perp}$. \n\\end{proof}\n\n\\item Note that $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ is not the adjoint module for $\\tilde S$ because of the existence of the invariant bilinear form $b_q$ on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$. \n\n\\item The previous steps together with Theorem \\ref{th:main} and Remark \\ref{re:abs irr} imply that, even when $\\mathbb{F}$ is not algebraically closed, there is a unique possibility, up to isomorphism, for $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ as a module for $\\tilde S$, and a unique, up to scalars, nonzero $\\tilde S$-invariant product on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$. Therefore, there is a basis $\\{\\tilde m_i: 0\\leq i\\leq 6\\}$ of $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ with \n\\[\n\\tilde e_k(\\tilde m_i)=\\begin{cases} (i+4k+4)\\tilde m_{i+k}&\\text{if $i+k\\geq 6$,}\\\\\n   0&\\text{otherwise,}\n   \\end{cases}\n\\]\nand \n\\[\n\\frac{1}{2}[\\tilde m_i\\tilde m_j]=c(i,j)\\tilde m_{i+j-3}\n\\]\nfor $-1\\leq k\\leq 5$ and $0\\leq i,j\\leq 6$. Since the multiplication on a Cayley algebra is determined by the bracket of trace zero elements, the linear map $\\varphi$ that takes $1$ to $1$ and $m_i$ to $\\tilde m_i$, for $i \\in \\{ 0,\\ldots,6 \\}$, is an automorphism of $\\mathcal{C}_s$ such that $\\tilde S=\\varphi S\\varphi^{-1}$.\n\n\\end{romanenumerate}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\smallskip\n\nTo finish this section, note that the Witt algebra $W$ over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $7$ is equal to the Lie algebra $\\mathbb{F}[X]\/(X^7)=\\mathbb{F}[Z]\/(Z^7-1)$, where $Z=X+1$. Denote by $z$ the class of $Z$ modulo $(Z^7-1)=((Z-1)^7)$. The elements $f_i=z^{i+1}\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial z}$, for $i \\in \\{-1,0,\\ldots 5\\}$, form a basis of $W$ with\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:secondWitt_basis}\n[f_i,f_j]=(j-i)f_{i+j},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, contrary to \\eqref{eq:Witt_basis}, the indices are taken modulo $7$. Now we may define an action of $W$ on $V_6$ by changing slightly the definition in \\eqref{eq:eks}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:fks}\nf_k(m_i)=(i+4k+4)m_{i+k},\n\\end{equation}\nfor $-1\\leq k\\leq 5$ and $0\\leq i\\leq 6$, with indices taken modulo $7$. This gives another representation of $W$ on $V_6$:\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\nf_r(f_s(m_i))&-f_s(f_r(m_i))\\\\\n &=\\Bigl((i+s+4r+4)(i+4s+4)-(i+r+4s+4)(i+4r+4)\\Bigr)m_{i+s+r}\\\\\n &=(s-r)(i+4(r+s)+4)m_{i+s+r}\\\\\n &=[f_r,f_s](m_i).\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nEquation \\eqref{eq:cij_recurs} proves that this is a representation by derivations, so $W$ embeds in $\\Der(V_6,\\cdot)$, and hence on $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ as well. This embedding is different from the one obtained through \\eqref{eq:eks}, but Theorem \\ref{th:conjugation} shows that they are conjugate.\n\nWe may even go a step further. For any $0\\ne \\alpha\\in\\mathbb{F}$, consider the Lie algebra $W^\\alpha=\\Der\\left(\\mathbb{F}[Y]\/(Y^7-\\alpha)\\right)$, and denote by $y$ the class of $Y$ modulo $(Y^7-\\alpha)$. For any natural number $i$, consider the element $\\tilde f_i=y^{i+1}\\frac{\\partial\\ }{\\partial y}$ in $W^\\alpha$, so $\\{\\tilde f_i:-1\\leq i\\leq 5\\}$ is a basis of $W^\\alpha$, and $f_{i+7}=\\alpha f_i$ for any $i$. Define $m_{i+7}:= \\alpha m_i$. For $0\\leq i,j\\leq 6$, $c(i,j)=0$ if $i+j-3>6$ or $i+j-3<0$, so if we modify \\eqref{eq:fks} as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:ftildeks}\n\\tilde f_k(m_i)=(i+4k+4)m_{i+j-3},\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $i,k$ (but now $\\tilde f_{k+7}=\\alpha\\tilde f_k$ and $m_{i+7}=\\alpha m_i$). The same computations as above show that $W^\\alpha$ embeds in $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$.\n\nThe twisted forms of the Witt algebra are precisely the algebras $W^\\alpha$; if $0\\ne\\alpha\\in\\mathbb{F}^7$, $W^\\alpha$ is isomorphic to the Witt algebra, while if $\\alpha\\in\\mathbb{F}\\setminus\\mathbb{F}^7$, $W^\\alpha$ is the Lie algebra of derivations of the purely inseparable field extension $\\mathbb{F}[Y]\/(Y^7-\\alpha)$. Two algebras $W^\\alpha$ and $W^\\beta$ are isomorphic if and only if so are the algebras $\\mathbb{F}[Y]\/(Y^7-\\alpha)$ and $\\mathbb{F}[Y]\/(Y^7-\\beta)$. (See \\cite{Allen_Sweedler69} or \\cite{Waterhouse71}.)\n\nTherefore, Theorems \\ref{th:W1_char7} and \\ref{th:conjugation} may be extended as follows:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:Walpha}\nOver a field of characteristic $7$, all the twisted forms of the Witt algebra embed in the Lie algebra of derivations of the split Cayley algebra. Moreover, any two embeddings of the same twisted form of the Witt algebra in $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ are conjugate.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe last part of this theorem follows by the same arguments as in the proof of Theorem \\ref{th:conjugation}.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nIf $\\mathcal{C}$ is a non split Cayley algebra (and hence it is a division algebra, since $q$ is anisotropic), then $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ contains no nonzero nilpotent derivation. Indeed, if $d\\in\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ is nilpotent, then $\\mathrm{ker}\\, d\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ is a subspace of $\\mathcal{C}^0$ and, since $q$ is anisotropic, $\\mathcal{C}^0=\\mathrm{ker}\\, d\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0}\\oplus \\left(\\mathrm{ker}\\, d\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0}\\right)^\\perp$. Besides, since $q$ is invariant under the action of $d$ (because of \\eqref{eq:CayleyHamilton}), $d$ leaves $\\left(\\mathrm{ker}\\, d\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0}\\right)^\\perp$ invariant; this is a contradiction because the nilpotency of $d$ implies that any nonzero invariant subspace has nontrivial intersection with the kernel.\n\nTherefore, $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ cannot contain subalgebras isomorphic to twisted forms of the Witt algebra, because these algebras contain nilpotent elements. (Recall that the action of the Witt algebra on $\\mathcal{C}_s^0$ is restricted, and hence so is the action on $\\mathcal{C}^0$ of any subalgebra of $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ isomorphic to a twisted form of the Witt algebra.)\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\medskip\n\n\n\\section{Characteristic $3$}\\label{se:char3}\n\nLet $\\mathcal{C}$ be a Cayley algebra over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $p \\neq 2$. Then, the subspace of trace zero elements $\\mathcal{C}^0$ is closed under the commutator $[\\,, \\,]$, and it satisfies \\eqref{eq:xyy}. The anticommutative algebra $\\left( \\mathcal{C}^0, [\\, , \\, ] \\right)$ is a central simple Malcev algebra. If $p \\ne 2,3$, any central simple non Lie Malcev algebra is isomorphic to one of these. However, if $p=3$, then $\\mathcal{C}^0$ is a simple Lie algebra; more precisely, it is a twisted form of the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_3(\\mathbb{F})$, and any such twisted form is obtained, up to isomorphism, in this way. (See \\cite{AEMN} or \\cite[Theorem 4.26]{EKmon}.)\n\nDenote by $\\AAut(\\cA)$ the affine group scheme of automorphisms of a finite-dimensional algebra $\\cA$. Equations \\eqref{eq:xyC0} and \\eqref{eq:xyy} show that the restriction map\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:AutCAutC0}\n\\begin{split}\n\\AAut(\\mathcal{C})&\\longrightarrow \\AAut(\\mathcal{C}^0)\\\\\nf\\ &\\mapsto\\quad f\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\ngives an isomorphism of group schemes. (The reader may consult \\cite[Chapter VI]{KMRT} for the basic facts of affine group schemes.)\n\nFor the rest of this section, assume that $\\mathcal{C}$ is a Cayley algebra over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $3$, and write $\\frg\\ :=\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$. Any derivation $d\\in\\frg$ satisfies $d(1)=0$ and $d(\\mathcal{C}^0)\\subseteq \\mathcal{C}^0$, and hence, because of \\eqref{eq:xyC0} and \\eqref{eq:xyy}, we may identify $\\frg$ with $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}^0)$. Since $\\mathcal{C}^0$ is a Lie algebra, $\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ is an ideal of $\\frg$: the ideal of inner derivations. In fact, $\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ is the only proper ideal of $\\frg$, and the quotient $\\frg\/\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ is again isomorphic to $\\mathcal{C}^0\\cong \\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ (see \\cite{AEMN}).\n\nIn the split case, $\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}_s^0}$ is the ideal of the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$ generated by the root spaces corresponding to the short roots (see \\cite[p.~156]{Steinberg}).\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{le:inner}\nAny derivation of $\\frg :=\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ is inner.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $d\\in \\Der(\\frg)$ and let ${\\mathfrak i}=\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$ be the unique proper ideal of $\\frg$. The ideal ${\\mathfrak i}$ is simple, so ${\\mathfrak i}=[{\\mathfrak i},{\\mathfrak i}]$, and hence $d({\\mathfrak i})\\subseteq [d({\\mathfrak i}),{\\mathfrak i}]\\subseteq {\\mathfrak i}$, so $d\\vert_{\\mathfrak i}$ is a derivation of ${\\mathfrak i}=\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}\\cong\\mathcal{C}^0$. Since any derivation $\\delta$ of $\\mathcal{C}^0$ extends to a derivation of $\\mathcal{C}$ by means of $\\delta(1)=0$, it follows that there exists a $\\delta\\in\\frg$ such that $d\\vert_{\\mathfrak i}=\\mathrm{ad}_\\delta\\vert_{\\mathfrak i}$. That is, $d(f)=[\\delta,f]$ for any $f\\in{\\mathfrak i}=\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0}$, so the derivation $\\tilde d=d-\\mathrm{ad}_\\delta$ satisfies $\\tilde d({\\mathfrak i})=0$.\n\nBut if $\\tilde d$ is a derivation of $\\frg$ such that $\\tilde d({\\mathfrak i})=0$, then $[\\tilde d(\\frg),{\\mathfrak i}]\\subseteq \\tilde d\\bigl([\\frg,{\\mathfrak i}]\\bigr)+[\\frg,\\tilde d({\\mathfrak i})]=0$, so $\\tilde d(\\frg)$ is contained in the centralizer of ${\\mathfrak i}$ in $\\frg$, which is trivial. In particular, the derivation $\\tilde d=d-\\mathrm{ad}_\\delta$ above is trivial, and hence $d=\\mathrm{ad}_\\delta$ is inner.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:char3}\nLet $\\mathcal{C}$ be a Cayley algebra over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $3$, and let $\\frg :=\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ be its Lie algebra of derivations. The the adjoint map\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathrm{Ad}: \\AAut(\\mathcal{C})&\\longrightarrow \\AAut(\\frg)\\\\\n       f\\ &\\mapsto\\ \\varphi(f):d\\mapsto fdf^{-1},\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nis an isomorphism of affine group schemes.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$ be an algebraic closure of $\\mathbb{F}$. The group homomorphism $\\mathrm{Ad}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}:\\Aut(\\mathcal{C}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})\\rightarrow \\Der(\\mathcal{C}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})$ is injective, where $\\mathcal{C}_R=\\mathcal{C}\\otimes_\\mathbb{F} R$, for any unital commutative and associative algebra $R$ over $\\mathbb{F}$. This is because $f\\mathrm{ad}_xf^{-1}=\\mathrm{ad}_{f(x)}$ for any $x\\in \\mathcal{C}^0_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}$ and $f\\in\\Aut(\\mathcal{C}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})$, so $\\mathrm{Ad}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}(f)=\\id$ implies $f\\vert_{\\mathcal{C}^0_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}}=\\id$; hence, $f=\\id$. \n\nAs any $\\varphi\\in\\Aut\\left(\\frg_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}\\right)$ preserves the only proper ideal ${\\mathfrak i}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}=\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathcal{C}^0_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}}$, the automorphism $\\varphi$ induces an automorphism $f$ of $\\mathcal{C}^0_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}$, which extends to an automorphism of $\\mathcal{C}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}$ also denoted by $f$. Then $\\varphi\\mathrm{Ad}(f)^{-1}\\vert_{{\\mathfrak i}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}}=\\id$, and, as in the proof above, a simple argument gives $\\varphi\\mathrm{Ad}(f)^{-1}=\\id$, so $\\varphi=\\mathrm{Ad}(f)$. This shows that $\\mathrm{Ad}_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}$ is a bijection.\n\nBut it also shows that $\\dim \\AAut(\\frg)=\\dim\\AAut(\\mathcal{C})$ and, since this latter group scheme is smooth (this follows from \\cite[Proposition 2.2.3]{SV00}, see also \\cite[Proof of Theorem 4.35]{EKmon}), \nwe obtain $\\dim\\AAut(\\frg)=\\dim\\Der(\\mathcal{C})=\\dim\\Der(\\frg)$ by Lemma \\ref{le:inner}. Therefore, $\\AAut(\\frg)$ is smooth.\n\nSince the differential map $\\textup{d}(\\mathrm{Ad}) : \\Der(\\mathcal{C})\\rightarrow\\Der(\\frg)$, $\\delta\\mapsto \\mathrm{ad}_\\delta$, is injective, \\cite[(22.5)]{KMRT} shows that $\\mathrm{Ad}$ is an isomorphism.\n\\end{proof}\n\nDenote by $\\textup{Isom}(\\textup{Cayley})$, $\\textup{Isom}(G_2)$, and $\\textup{Isom}(\\bar A_2)$, the sets of isomorphism classes of Cayley algebras, twisted forms of the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$, and twisted forms of ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_3(\\mathbb{F})$, respectively. Theorem \\ref{th:char3} and \\eqref{eq:AutCAutC0} immediately give the following consequence, where $[\\cA]$ denotes the isomorphism class of the algebra $\\cA$.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{co:char3}\nThe maps $[\\mathcal{C}]\\mapsto[\\Der(\\mathcal{C})]$ and $[\\mathcal{C}]\\mapsto [\\mathcal{C}^0]$ give bijections\\\\ $\\textup{Isom}(\\textup{Cayley})\\rightarrow \\textup{Isom}(G_2)$ and $\\textup{Isom}(\\textup{Cayley})\\rightarrow \\textup{Isom}(\\bar A_2)$, respectively.\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\n\\medskip\n\n\n\\section{Characteristic $2$}\\label{se:char2}\n\nIn this section, assume that the characteristic of the ground field $\\mathbb{F}$ is $2$. In \\cite[Corollary 4.32]{EKmon} it is proved that the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$ (i.e., the Lie algebra $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$), is isomorphic to the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$. Here we extend this result for the Lie algebra of derivations of any Cayley algebra over $\\mathbb{F}$.\n\nLet $V$ be a finite-dimensional vector space over $\\mathbb{F}$, and let $b$ be a nondegenerate alternating (i.e., $b(u,u)=0$ for any $u \\in V$) bilinear form of $V$. Denote by ${\\mathfrak{sp}}(V,b)$ the corresponding symplectic Lie algebra:\n\\[\n{\\mathfrak{sp}}(V,b)=\\{ f\\in{\\mathfrak{gl}}(V): b(f(u),v)+b(u,f(v))=0\\ \\forall u,v\\in V\\}.\n\\]\nIn particular, ${\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})$ denotes the symplectic Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{sp}}(\\mathbb{F}^{2n},b_s)$, where $b_s$ is the alternating bilinear form with coordinate matrix $\\begin{pmatrix} 0&I_n\\\\ I_n&0\\end{pmatrix}$ in the canonical basis. (Notice that, as $\\text{char}(\\mathbb{F}) = 2$, there is no need of minus signs.) We identify the elements of ${\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})$ with their coordinate matrices in the canonical basis.\n\nA matrix in $M_n(\\mathbb{F})$ is called \\emph{alternating} if it has the form $a+a^t$ for some $a\\in M_n(\\mathbb{F})$, where $a^t$ denotes the transpose of $a$. These are the coordinate matrices of the alternating bilinear forms.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{le:sp62psl4}\nThe second derived power of the symplectic Lie algebra on a vector space of dimension $6$ is isomorphic to the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$:\n\\[\n{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}\\cong{\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F}).\n\\]\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nFor any natural number $n$ we have\n\\[\n{\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})=\\left\\{\\begin{pmatrix} a&b\\\\ c&a^t\\end{pmatrix} :\na,b,c\\in M_n(\\mathbb{F}),\\ b^t=b,\\, c^t=c\\right\\}.\n\\]\nA direct computation gives\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n{\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})^{(1)}&=\\left\\{\\begin{pmatrix} a&b\\\\ c&a^t\\end{pmatrix} :\na,b,c\\in M_n(\\mathbb{F}),\\ \\text{$b$ and $c$ alternating}\\right\\},\\\\\n{\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}&=\\left\\{\\begin{pmatrix} a&b\\\\ c&a^t\\end{pmatrix} :\na,b,c\\in M_n(\\mathbb{F}),\\ a\\in{\\mathfrak{sl}}_n(\\mathbb{F}),\\ \\text{$b$ and $c$ alternating}\\right\\}.\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nThe dimension of ${\\mathfrak{sp}}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}$ is then $n^2-1+2\\binom{n}{2}=2n^2-n-1$.\n\nLet $V$ be a four-dimensional vector space, and consider the second exterior power $\\bigwedge^2V$ as a module for ${\\mathfrak{sl}}(V)$. Fix a nonzero linear isomorphism $\\det:\\bigwedge^4 V\\rightarrow \\mathbb{F}$ and define the nondegenerate alternating bilinear form\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\nb:\\textstyle{\\bigwedge^2V\\times\\bigwedge^2V}&\\longrightarrow \\mathbb{F}\\\\\n (u_1\\wedge u_2,v_1\\wedge v_2)&\\mapsto \\det(u_1\\wedge u_2\\wedge v_1\\wedge v_2).\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nThen, the action of ${\\mathfrak{sl}}(V)$ on $\\bigwedge^2V$ gives a Lie algebra homomorphism\n\\[\n\\Phi:{\\mathfrak{sl}}(V)\\rightarrow {\\mathfrak{sp}}(\\textstyle{\\bigwedge^2V},b)\\cong{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F}),\n\\]\nwith kernel $\\mathbb{F} I_V$ (where $I_V$ denotes the identity map on $V$), so $\\Phi$ induces an injection ${\\mathfrak{psl}}(V)\\hookrightarrow {\\mathfrak{sp}}_(\\bigwedge^2V,b)$. But ${\\mathfrak{psl}}(V)$ is simple of dimension $14$, so, in particular, ${\\mathfrak{psl}}(V)^{(2)}={\\mathfrak{psl}}(V)$, and the dimension of ${\\mathfrak{sp}}(\\bigwedge^2V,b)^{(2)}\\cong{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}$ is $2\\times 3^2-3-1=14$. Therefore, $\\Phi$ induces an isomorphism ${\\mathfrak{psl}}(V)\\cong {\\mathfrak{sp}}(\\bigwedge^2V,b)^{(2)}$, as required.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe will need some extra notation. As above, let $(V,b)$ be a finite-dimensional vector space endowed with a nondegenerate alternating bilinear form. Denote by $\\mathfrak{gsp}(V,b)$ the Lie algebra of the group of similarities (i.e., the general symplectic Lie algebra):\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\mathfrak{gsp}(V,b)=\\left\\{ f\\in{\\mathfrak{gl}}(V): \\exists\\lambda\\in\\mathbb{F}\\text{\\ such that\\ }\\right. \\\\\n\\left. b(f(u),v)+b(u,f(v))=\\lambda b(u,v)\\ \\forall u,v\\in V\\right\\},\n\\end{multline*}\nand by $\\mathfrak{pgsp}(V,b)$ the projective general symplectic Lie algebra (i.e., the quotient of $\\mathfrak{gsp}(V,b)$ by the one-dimensional ideal generated by $I_V$). In particular, after choosing a basis, we get the Lie algebras $\\mathfrak{gsp}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})$ and $\\mathfrak{pgsp}_{2n}(\\mathbb{F})$.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{co:sp6psl4}\nThe Lie algebra of derivations of ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ is isomorphic to the projective general symplectic Lie algebra $\\mathfrak{pgsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})$:\n\\[\n\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)\\cong \\mathfrak{pgsp}_6(\\mathbb{F}).\n\\]\n\\end{corollary}\\label{co:pgsp6_Derpsl4}\n\\begin{proof}\nNote that we have the decomposition\n\\[\n\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})={\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})\\oplus \\mathbb{F}\\begin{pmatrix} I_3&0\\\\ 0&0\\end{pmatrix},\n\\]\nand one may easily check that $\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(1)}={\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})$.\n\nFor any $A\\in\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})$, $\\mathrm{ad}_A:B\\mapsto [A,B]$ leaves invariant $\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(3)}={\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}$, which is isomorphic to ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ by Lemma \\ref{le:sp62psl4}, so we obtain a Lie algebra homomorphism\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\Phi:\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})&\\longrightarrow \\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}\\bigr)\\, \\Bigl(\\cong\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)\\,\\Bigr),\\\\\nA\\ &\\mapsto \\ \\mathrm{ad}_A\\vert_{{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}}.\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nThe kernel of $\\Phi$ is the centralizer in $\\mathfrak{gsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})$ of ${\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}$, which is $\\mathbb{F} I_6$, so $\\Phi$ induces an injection $\\mathfrak{pgsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})\\rightarrow \\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)$.  The dimension of $\\mathfrak{pgsp}_6(\\mathbb{F})$ is $21$, and (as it may be calculated in GAP as in \\cite{Candido_et_al}) this is also the dimension of $\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)$. The result follows.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn fact, in order to prove the previous result, the exact computation of the dimension of $\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)$ is not required; we just need the bound \n\\[\n\\dim\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)\\leq 21.\n\\] \nFor completeness, let us provide an elementary proof of this fact.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n$\\dim\\Der\\bigl({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})\\bigr)\\leq 21$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nFor $1\\leq i,j\\leq 4$, let $E_{ij}$ be the matrix in ${\\mathfrak{gl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ with $1$ in the $(i,j)$ entry and $0$'s elsewhere. Denote by $\\bar A$ the class of a matrix $A\\in{\\mathfrak{sl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ in ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$.\n\nThen, ${\\mathfrak{sl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ is graded by $\\mathbb{Z}^3$, with\n\\begin{gather*}\n\\degree(E_{12})=(1,0,0)=-\\degree(E_{21}),\\\\\n\\degree(E_{23})=(0,1,0)=-\\degree(E_{32}),\\\\\n\\degree(E_{34})=(0,0,1)=-\\degree(E_{43}).\n\\end{gather*}\nAs the identity matrix $I_4$ is homogeneous of degree $(0,0,0)$, this induces a grading by $\\mathbb{Z}^3$ on $\\frg={\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$:\n\\[\n\\Gamma:\\frg=\\bigoplus_{\\alpha\\in\\mathbb{Z}^3}\\frg_\\alpha,\n\\]\nwith support \n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\supp\\Gamma&:= \\{\\alpha\\in\\mathbb{Z}^3: \\frg_\\alpha\\ne 0\\}\\\\\n &=\\{(0,0,0),\\pm(1,0,0),\\pm(0,1,0),\\pm(0,0,1),\\pm(1,1,0),\\pm(0,1,1),\\pm(1,1,1)\\}.\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nLet ${\\mathfrak h}=\\espan{H_1:=\\overline{E_{11}+E_{22}},H_2:=\\overline{E_{22}+E_{33}}}=\\frg_{(0,0,0)}$ be the `diagonal' subalgebra of $\\frg$. Then, the decomposition in eigenspaces for the adjoint action of ${\\mathfrak h}$ is $\\frg={\\mathfrak h}\\oplus\\frg_1\\oplus\\frg_2\\oplus\\frg_3$, with\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\frg_1&=\\espan{\\bar E_{12},\\bar E_{21},\\bar E_{34},\\bar E_{43}}\n =\\frg_{(1,0,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(-1,0,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(0,0,1)}\\oplus\\frg_{(0,0,-1)},\\\\\n\\frg_2&=\\espan{\\bar E_{23},\\bar E_{32},\\bar E_{14},\\bar E_{41}}\n =\\frg_{(0,1,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(0,-1,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(1,1,1)}\\oplus\\frg_{(-1,-1,-1)},\\\\\n\\frg_3&=\\espan{\\bar E_{13},\\bar E_{31},\\bar E_{24},\\bar E_{42}}\n =\\frg_{(1,1,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(-1,-1,0)}\\oplus\\frg_{(0,1,1)}\\oplus\\frg_{(0,-1,-1)}.\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nAs $\\frg$ is $\\mathbb{Z}^3$-graded, so is $\\Der(\\frg)$. Several steps are required now:\n\n\\begin{romanenumerate}\n\\item $\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}\\leq 3$, and $d({\\mathfrak h})=0$ for any $d\\in \\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}$.\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAny $d\\in \\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}$ preserves the one-dimensional spaces $\\frg_\\alpha$, for $\\alpha\\in\\supp\\Gamma\\setminus\\{(0,0,0)\\}$. Then $d$ and $\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathfrak h}$ commute, so $d({\\mathfrak h})=0$. Also $d(\\bar E_{12})=\\lambda \\bar E_{12}$ and $d(\\bar E_{23})=\\mu \\bar E_{23}$ for some $\\lambda,\\mu\\in\\mathbb{F}$. From $d({\\mathfrak h})=0$, we obtain that $d(\\bar E_{21})=-\\lambda \\bar E_{21}$ and $d(\\bar E_{32})=-\\mu\\bar E_{32}$. Hence $\\tilde d:= d-\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mu H_2+\\lambda H_1}$ annihilates $\\bar E_{12}$ and $\\bar E_{23}$ (and $\\bar E_{21}$ and $\\bar E_{32}$). Since the elements $\\bar E_{12}$, $\\bar E_{21}$, $\\bar E_{23}$, $\\bar E_{32}$, $\\bar E_{34}$ and $\\bar E_{43}$ generate $\\frg$, it follows that $\\tilde d$ is determined by the value $\\tilde d(E_{34})$. We conclude that $\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}-\\dim\\mathrm{ad}_{\\mathfrak h}\\leq 1$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\item $\\Der(\\frg)=\\mathrm{ad}_\\frg +\\{d\\in\\Der(\\frg): d({\\mathfrak h})=0\\}$.\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWe already have $\\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}\\subseteq \\{d\\in\\Der(\\frg):d({\\mathfrak h})=0\\}$, and it is clear that $d\\in\\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha$, with $\\alpha \\in \\mathbb{Z}^3 \\setminus \\supp\\Gamma$, implies $d({\\mathfrak h})\\subseteq \\frg_\\alpha=0$. On the other hand, if $d\\in \\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha$, with $\\alpha \\in\\supp\\Gamma\\setminus \\{(0,0,0)\\}$, then the restriction of $d$ to ${\\mathfrak h}$ defines a linear map $\\beta :{\\mathfrak h}\\rightarrow \\mathbb{F}$ by $d(H)=\\beta(H)\\bar E_{rs}$, where $\\bar E_{rs}$ is the basic element in the one-dimensional space $\\frg_\\alpha$. But for any $H,H'\\in{\\mathfrak h}$ we get:\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n0=d([H,H'])&=[d(H),H']+[H,d(H')]\\\\\n &= \\beta(H)[\\bar E_{rs},H']+ \\beta(H')[H,\\bar E_{rs}]\\\\\n &=\\bigl(-\\beta(H)\\gamma(H')+\\beta(H')\\gamma(H)\\bigr)\\bar E_{rs},\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nwhere $\\gamma:{\\mathfrak h}\\rightarrow \\mathbb{F}$ is the nonzero linear form such that $[H,\\bar E_{rs}]=\\gamma(H)\\bar E_{rs}$ for any $H\\in{\\mathfrak h}$. Hence $\\beta$ is a scalar multiple of $\\gamma$, and if $\\beta=\\nu\\gamma$ with $\\nu\\in \\mathbb{F}$, then $(d-\\nu\\mathrm{ad}_{\\bar E_{rs}})({\\mathfrak h})=0$. (This argument is similar to the one in \\cite[Proposition 8.1]{EK12}.)\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\item Now note that $\\bar E_{12}$, $\\bar E_{23}$, $\\bar E_{34}$ and $\\bar E_{41}$ generate $\\frg$. Let $0\\ne d\\in \\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha$, with $\\alpha \\in \\mathbb{Z}_3 \\setminus \\{(0,0,0)\\}$, and $d({\\mathfrak h})=0$. Then $d(\\frg_i)\\subseteq \\frg_i$, for $i=1,2,3$, and\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n&d(\\bar E_{12})\\in\\frg_1\\ \n\\text{so either $d(\\bar E_{12})=0$ or $\\alpha\\in\\{(-2,0,0),(-1,0,1),(-1,0,-1)\\}$,}\\\\\n&d(\\bar E_{23})\\in\\frg_2\\ \n\\text{so either $d(\\bar E_{23})=0$ or $\\alpha \\in\\{(0,-2,0),(1,0,1),(-1,-2,-1)\\}$,}\\\\\n&d(\\bar E_{34})\\in\\frg_1\\ \n\\text{so either $d(\\bar E_{34})=0$ or $\\alpha\\in\\{(0,0,-2),(1,0,-1),(-1,0,1)\\}$,}\\\\\n&d(\\bar E_{41})\\in\\frg_2\\ \n\\text{so either $d(\\bar E_{41})=0$ or $\\alpha\\in\\{(2,2,2),(1,2,1),(1,0,-1)\\}$.}\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nBut $\\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha=0$ for $\\alpha\\in\\{(-2,0,0),(0,-2,0),(0,0,-2),(2,2,2)\\}$, because any $d$ in one of these homogeneous spaces annihilates the generators $\\bar E_{21}$, $\\bar E_{32}$, $\\bar E_{43}$ and $\\bar E_{14}$. Hence, our homogeneous $d$ belongs to $\\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha$ with $\\alpha \\in X:=\\{\\pm(1,0,1),\\pm(1,0,-1),\\pm(1,2,1)\\}$. Now if, for instance, $d\\in\\Der(\\frg)_{(-1,0,-1)}$, then $d$ annihilates $\\bar E_{23}\\in \\frg_{(0,1,0)}$ (because $(0,1,0)+(-1,0,-1)\\not\\in\\supp\\Gamma$),  $\\bar E_{41}\\in\\frg_{(-1,-1,-1)}$, and $\\bar E_{24}\\in\\frg_{(1,1,0)}$. Moreover, since $\\bar E_{34}=[[\\bar E_{31},\\bar E_{12}],\\bar E_{24}]$, it follows that $d$ is determined by the value $d(\\bar E_{12})$. Thus, we get $\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_{(-1,0,-1)}\\leq 1$. A similar argument applies to the other possibilities, so $\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha\\leq 1$ for any $\\alpha\\in X$.\n\n\\item Therefore, we conclude that\n\\[\n\\dim\\Der(\\frg)-\\dim\\frg=\\Bigl(\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_{(0,0,0)}-\\dim{\\mathfrak h}\\Bigr)+\\hspace{-5pt}\\sum_{\\alpha \\in X}\\hspace{-5pt}\\dim\\Der(\\frg)_\\alpha \\leq 7,\n\\]\nso that $\\dim\\Der(\\frg)\\leq \\dim\\frg+7=21$. \\qedhere\n\\end{romanenumerate}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\smallskip\n\nOur next result extends \\cite[Corollary 4.32]{EKmon}.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:DerC_psl4}\nLet $\\mathcal{C}$ be a Cayley algebra over a field $\\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic $2$. The Lie algebra of derivations $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ is isomorphic to the projective special linear Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$. (Independently of the isomorphism class of $\\mathcal{C}$!)\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nRecall that $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ is a $14$-dimensional simple Lie algebra, a twisted form of $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$, which is the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$.\n\nAny $d\\in\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ leaves the norm $q$ invariant, annihilates the unity $1$ and preserves $\\mathcal{C}^0$, the subspace of trace zero elements. Since the characteristic is $2$, the unity $1$ is in $\\mathcal{C}^0$, so $d$ induces an element $\\tilde d$ in the symplectic Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{sp}}\\bigl(\\mathcal{C}^0\/\\mathbb{F} 1,\\tilde b_q\\bigr)\\cong{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})$, where $\\tilde b_q$ is the nondegenerate alternating bilinear form on $\\mathcal{C}^0$ induced by $b_q$. (Note that $\\mathcal{C}^0=\\{x\\in\\mathcal{C}: b_q(x,1)=0\\}$, so $\\tilde b_q$ is nondegenerate.)\n\nTherefore, we have a homomorphism of Lie algebras\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\Phi:\\Der(\\mathcal{C})&\\longrightarrow {\\mathfrak{sp}}\\bigl(\\mathcal{C}^0\/\\mathbb{F} 1,\\tilde b_q\\bigr),\\\\\n d\\quad &\\mapsto\\quad \\tilde d.\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nThe simplicity of $\\Der(\\mathcal{C})$ implies that $\\Phi$ is injective, and hence \n\\[\n\\Phi\\bigl(\\Der(\\mathcal{C})\\bigr)=\\Phi\\bigl(\\Der(\\mathcal{C})^{(2)}\\bigr)\\subseteq \n {\\mathfrak{sp}}\\bigl(\\mathcal{C}^0\/\\mathbb{F} 1,\\tilde b_q\\bigr)^{(2)}\\cong{\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}.\n\\]\nBy dimension count, the image of $\\Phi$ is ${\\mathfrak{sp}}\\bigl(\\mathcal{C}^0\/\\mathbb{F} 1,\\tilde b_q\\bigr)^{(2)}$, which is isomorphic to ${\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F})^{(2)}$, and hence to ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ by Lemma \\ref{le:sp62psl4}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\smallskip\n\nThe previous theorem shows that, in characteristic $2$, it is no longer true that two Cayley algebras are isomorphic if and only if their Lie algebras of derivations are isomorphic.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nGiven an irreducible root system of type $X_r$ and its corresponding Chevalley algebra $\\frg$ over a field $\\mathbb{F}$, the quotient $\\frg\/Z(\\frg)$ (where $Z(\\frg)$ is the center of $\\frg$) is usually called the \\emph{classical Lie algebra of type $X_r$}. In particular, in characteristic $2$, Theorem \\ref{th:DerC_psl4} implies that the classical Lie algebras of type $A_3$ and $G_2$ coincide.\n\\end{remark}\n\nWrite $\\cA :=M_6(\\mathbb{F})$, and let $\\sigma$ be the symplectic involution (attached to the standard alternating form $b_s$), such that, for any $X\\in \\cA$, $\\sigma(X)$ is the adjoint relative to $b_s$.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{th:AAutDerC}\nThe affine group scheme of automorphisms of $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)$ is isomorphic to the affine group scheme of automorphisms of the algebra with involution $(\\cA,\\sigma)$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nOver an algebraic closure $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$, the group $\\Aut({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}})$ is the adjoint Chevalley group of type $C_3$ (see \\cite{HogewejII}), and hence it is isomorphic to projective general symplectic group $\\textrm{PGSp}_6(\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}})\\cong\\Aut\\bigl(\\cA,\\sigma\\bigr)$. However, Theorem \\ref{th:AAutDerC} considers arbitrary fields, and we shall give an explicit isomorphism of schemes in its proof. Note that this result over $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$ shows that $\\AAut({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F}))$ is connected, and Corollary \\ref{co:pgsp6_Derpsl4} shows that it is smooth.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \\ref{th:AAutDerC}]\nAs in the proof of Theorem \\ref{th:DerC_psl4}, we may identify $\\Der(\\mathcal{C}_s)\\cong{\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ with the Lie algebra $\\Skew(\\cA,\\sigma)^{(2)}$, where $\\Skew(\\cA,\\sigma):= \\{x\\in\\cA: \\sigma(x)=x\\}$ (as the characteristic is two!) Consider the morphism of affine group schemes\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\varphi:\\AAut(\\cA,\\sigma)&\\longrightarrow \\AAut\\Bigl(\\Skew(\\cA,\\sigma)^{(2)}\\Bigr),\\\\\nf:\\cA_R\\rightarrow\\cA_R&\\mapsto f\\vert_{\\Skew(\\cA_R,\\sigma_R)^{(2)}},\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nwhere $R$ is a unital, commutative and associative $\\mathbb{F}$-algebra, $\\cA_R=\\cA\\otimes_\\mathbb{F} R$, and $\\sigma_R=\\sigma\\otimes\\id$ is the induced involution in $\\cA_R$, so $\\Skew(\\cA_R,\\sigma_R)^{(2)}=\\Skew(\\cA,\\sigma)^{(2)}\\otimes_\\mathbb{F} R$.\n\nThe group homomorphism on points in an algebraic closure $\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}$\n\\[\n\\varphi_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}:\\Aut(\\cA_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})\\rightarrow \\Aut\\bigl(\\Skew(\\cA_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}},\\sigma_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})^{(2)}\\bigr)\n\\]\nis injective, because $\\Skew(\\cA_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}},\\sigma_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}})^{(2)}= {\\mathfrak{sp}}_6(\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}})^{(2)}$ generates $\\cA_{\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}}}=M_6(\\mathbb{F}_{\\text{alg}})$ as an algebra. Also, the differential $\\text{d}\\varphi$ is an isomorphism: it is the isomorphism $\\Phi$ in the proof of Corollary \\ref{co:pgsp6_Derpsl4}. Therefore, $\\varphi$ is a closed imbedding (\\cite[(22.2)]{KMRT}). But both schemes are smooth, connected, and of the same dimension, so $\\varphi$ is an isomorphism.\n\\end{proof}\n\nSince $\\AAut({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ is smooth, the set of isomorphism classes of twisted forms of ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ is in bijection with $H^1(\\mathbb{F},\\AAut({\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F}))$ (see \\cite[Chapters 17 and 18]{Waterhouse}), and also the set of isomorphism clases of central simple associative algebras of degree $6$ endowed with a symplectic involution is in bijection with $H^1(\\mathbb{F},\\AAut(M_6(\\mathbb{F}),\\sigma)=H^1(\\mathbb{F},\\textrm{PGSp}_6(\\mathbb{F}))$. Our last result is then a direct consequence of Theorem \\ref{th:AAutDerC}.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\nLet $\\mathbb{F}$ be a field of characteristic $2$. The map that sends any central simple associative algebra of degree $6$ over $\\mathbb{F}$ endowed with a symplectic involution $(\\mathcal{B},\\tau)$ to the Lie algebra $\\Skew(\\mathcal{B},\\tau)^{(2)}$ gives a bijection between the set of isomorphism classes of such pairs $(\\mathcal{B},\\tau)$ to the set of twisted forms over $\\mathbb{F}$ of the Lie algebra ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$.\n\\end{corollary}\n\nRecall that ${\\mathfrak{psl}}_4(\\mathbb{F})$ is (isomorphic to) the Chevalley algebra of type $G_2$, so this corollary gives the twisted forms of the classical simple Lie algebras of type $G_2$ in characteristic $2$.\n\n\\bigskip\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section*{}\n\n\\begin{center}\n{\\tiny Padova, Aula Magna DEI, October 28, 2004}\\\\\n\\vspace{2cm}\n{\\bf \\Large Computational Aspects of a Numerical Model for Combustion Flow}\\\\\n\\vspace{1cm}\n{\\bf {\\large Gianluca Argentini}}\\\\\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n\\normalsize gianluca.argentini@riellogroup.com \\\\\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\large Advanced Computing Laboratory}\\\\\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\it Riello Group}, Legnago (Verona), Italy\n\\end{center}\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Position of the problem}\n\nDesign, development and engineering of industrial power burners have \nstrong mathematical requests:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item numerical resolution of a PDEs system involving {\\it Navier-Stokes} \n\tequations for velocity and pressure fields, {\\it energy conservation} law\n\tfor temperature field, {\\it Fick}'s law for diffusion of all the chemical\n\tspecies in the combustion chamber;\n\t\\item geometrical design of the combustion head for a correct shape\n\tand optimal efficiency of {\\it flame};\n\t\\item geometrical design of {\\it ventilation fans} and computation of \n\ta correct air inflow for optimal combustion.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\\includegraphics[width=6cm]{combustionhead.eps}\n\t\\caption{Combustion head and chamber for burner.}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section*{Computational complexity analysis\\\\for~a~flow {\\small (1)}}\n\n{\\bf {\\it Simple example}} for a detailed knowledge of the velocity field\nof fluid particles in the combustion chamber:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item {\\bf M} is the number of flow streamlines to compute;\n\t\\item {\\bf S} is the number of geometrical points for every streamline.\n\\end{itemize}\nHigh values for {\\bf M} are important for a {\\it realistic simulation}\nof the flow, high values for {\\bf S} are important for a fine\n{\\it graphic resolution}: minimal values are of order {\\it O}($10^3-10^4$).\\\\\n\n\\noindent Suppose to use a 3D grid 10 x 10 x 1000 cm (hence {\\bf M} = 100, {\\bf S} = 1000),\na medium value {\\it $v_i$} = 50 cm\/sec for every cartesian component\nof velocity vector field, and a space resolution {\\it h} = 0.5 cm.\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Computational complexity analysis\\\\for~a~flow {\\small (2)}}\n\nFor numeric resolution of time-dependent advective PDEs, the {\\it Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy}\n({\\it CFL}) {\\it condition} gives an upper limit for the time step:\\\\\n\n$\\Delta t \\leq \\frac{ch}{v}$ \\\\\n\n\\noindent where {\\it c} is a costant, usually $\\leq 1$, depending on the\nused numeric method, and ${\\it v} = \\sup |{\\it v_j}|$.\nThe quantity $\\frac{v \\Delta t}{h}$ is called {\\it CFL number}. \nLet {\\it c} = 1; then\\\\\n\n$\\Delta t \\leq \\frac{0.5 cm}{50 \\frac{cm}{sec}} = 0.01 \\; sec$. \\\\\n\n\\noindent As consequence, for {\\bf 1} real minute of simulation the flops are\nof order {\\bf {\\it O}($10^{10}$)} and the occupation of RAM is {\\bf {\\it O}($10^0$) GB}:\\\\\n{\\it the computation is CPU expensive, RAM consuming and produces a lot of unuseful data}\n(100 snapshots of the flow every second).\n\n\\section*{A Finite Differences method and Interpolations}\nIn the effort of minimize the relevance of these problems, we have studied \na numeric model based on\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item a Finite Differences schema with a not too restrictive CFL condition;\n\t\\item an appropriate interpolation of the numeric FD velocity-field for a finer\n\tresolution without modifying the grid step.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\noindent This model gives a numeric solution comparable with the solutions based\non finer grids: we present an {\\it estimate} of its goodness and a mathematical \njustification.\\\\\nThe FD method is based on {\\it Lax-Friedrichs} schema:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item discretization in time: ${\\partial_t u_j^n} = \\frac{1}{\\Delta t}(u_j^{n+1} - u_j^n)$,\\\\\n\twhere $u_j^n \\leftarrow \\frac{1}{3}(u_{j+1}^n + u_j^n + u_{j-1}^n)$\\\\\n\t(for a better approximation we compute the mean on three values, \n\ttwo in LF original form);\n\t\\item discretization in space: ${\\partial_x u_j^n}  = \\frac{1}{2h}(u_{j+1}^n - u_{j-1}^n)$;\n\\end{itemize} \n\n\\noindent where {\\it u} is a velocity component, {\\it n} the time step, {\\it j} a value\non the cartesian coordinate {\\it x}.\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Computational aspects of Lax-Friedrichs schema}\nFor this schema the CFL condition has costant {\\it c} = 1; \n{\\it the Finite Elements method with the same schema for discretization in time\nhas a more restrictive costant c} $< 1$.\\\\\n\n\\noindent If {\\it K} $\\in \\mathbb{R^+}$, {\\it K} $\\leq \\frac{1}{2}$, we can\ndefine the norm ~$\\parallel${\\it u}$\\parallel$ = {\\it K} $sup_j |{\\it u_j}|$;\nthen the modified LF schema is {\\it strongly stable}:\n$\\parallel$${\\it u^n}$$\\parallel$ $\\leq$ $\\parallel$${\\it u^{n-1}}$$\\parallel$ $\\forall {\\it n} \\in \\mathbb{N}$;\nhence there is not the {\\it blowing up} of the numeric solution.\n\n\\noindent Suppose we want to compute at most 10 snapshots for every second;\nthen, in the hypothesis {\\it v} = 50 cm\/sec as the previous example, from\\\\\n\n$v \\Delta t \\leq h$\\\\\n\n\\noindent we must use as minimum a grid step {\\it h} = 5 cm.\\\\\n\\noindent This case gives {\\bf S} = 200, the total flops for 1 minute\nof simulation is now of order {\\it O}($10^8$) and the occupation of RAM\nis of order {\\it O}($10^{-2}$) GB.\\\\\nThe gain is of order {\\it O}($10^2$).\\\\\nThe grid step {\\it h} = 5 cm is too big for a good resolution of\nstreamlines for flows into the combustion head: for better final results,\nit can be useful a method based on {\\it interpolations} of the computed LF values.\n\n\\section*{Interpolation of trajectories {\\small (1)}}\nEvery streamline of LF solution is divided into {\\bf N} couples of points,\\\\\n\\{$(P_1,P_2),(P_2,P_3),...,(P_{{\\bf N}-1},P_{\\bf N})$\\}, so that {\\bf S} = {\\bf N}+1.\\\\\nWe use for every couple a cubic polynomial ({\\it spline}) imposing\nthe following four analytical conditions ({\\bf v} is the LF solution):\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item passage at ${\\it P_k}$ point, $1 \\leq {\\it k} \\leq {\\bf N}-1$;\n\t\\item passage at ${\\it P_{k+1}}$ point;\n\t\\item the first derivative at ${\\it P_k}$ is equal to ${\\bf v_{\\it k}}$;\n\t\\item the first derivative at ${\\it P_{k+1}}$ is equal to ${\\bf v_{\\it {k+1}}}$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\noindent In this way we can construct a set of class ${\\it C}^1$ \nnew trajectories; we want to estimate\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\\item the overload for finding and valuating all the cubics;\n\t\\item the difference compared to the real LF solution of the smaller grid step.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Interpolation of trajectories {\\small (2)}}\nFor simplicity, consider a single component of a cubic:\\\\\n$s(t) = at^3 + bt^2 + ct + d$, where $0 \\leq t \\leq 1$;\\\\\nif {\\bf T} is the $4\\times4$ matrix\\\\\n\n${\\bf T} = \\left( \\begin{array}{cccc}\n2  & -2 & 1  & 1 \\\\\n-3 & 3  & -2 & -1 \\\\\n0  & 0  & 1  & 0 \\\\\n1  & 0  & 0  & 0 \n\\end{array} \\right)$\\\\\n\n\\noindent and $(p_1, p_2, v_1, v_2)$ is the vector of cartesian coordinates and\nvelocities components of points $P_1$ and $P_2$, we have\\\\\n\n$(a, b, c, d) = {\\bf T} (p_1, p_2, v_1, v_2)$.\n\n\\section*{Interpolation of trajectories {\\small (3)}}\nWe define the $4{\\bf M}\\times4{\\bf M}$ {\\it global matrix}\\\\\n\n${\\bf G} = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccccc}\n{\\bf T}  & {\\bf 0} & . & . &  {\\bf 0} \\\\\n{\\bf 0}  & {\\bf T} & . & . &  {\\bf 0} \\\\\n. & . & . & . & . \\\\\n. & . & . & . & . \\\\\n{\\bf 0}  & {\\bf 0} & . & . &  {\\bf T}\n\\end{array} \\right)$\\\\\n\n\\noindent where {\\bf 0} is the $4\\times4$ zero-matrix. Then\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item {\\bf G} is a {\\it sparse} matrix with density number $\\leq \\frac{1}{\\bf M}$;\n\t\\item if ${\\bf p} = (p_{(1,1)}, p_{(1,2)}, . . ., v_{({\\bf M},1)}, v_{({\\bf M},2)})$,\n\twe can compute the cubics, between two points, for all the {\\bf M} trajectories \n\tby the product {\\bf G}{\\bf p}.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Interpolation of trajectories {\\small (4)}}\nThe theoric number of flops for computing the coefficients of all the splines is\nof order ${\\it O}(10 {\\bf M}^2{\\bf N})$. If {\\bf M} = $10^4$ and {\\bf N} = $10^3$,\nthe total number of flops is ${\\it O}(10^{12})$.\\\\\n\n\\noindent With a single processor having a clock frequency of {\\it O}(1) {\\bf GHz},\nthe total time can require some hundreds of seconds, a performance not very good\nfor practical purposes; using\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item some mathematical libraries as {\\it LAPACK} routines with {\\bf Fortran}\n\tcalls or {\\bf Matlab} environment,\n\t\\item distributed computation on a multinode cluster,\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\noindent we have reached a computation time of some tens of seconds.\\\\\n\n\\noindent {\\it Example}: {\\bf Matlab} has internal Lapack level 3 {\\bf BLAS} routines\nfor fast matrix-matrix multiplication and treatment of sparse matrices.\n\n\\section*{Interpolation of trajectories {\\small (5)}}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\\includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{matrix-vector-multiplyBW.eps}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\noindent Performances for a single {\\bf Gp} multiplication using an Intel\nXeon 3.2 GHz with 1 MB internal {\\it cache}: for {\\bf M}=$10^4$ the memory occupied\nby the sparse version of {\\bf G} is only {\\it O}($10^2$) KB instead of theoric\n{\\it O}($10^6$): {\\bf G} can be stored in processor cache.\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Computation of splines values {\\small (1)}}\nNow we need a fast method for computing the splines values in a set of\n{\\it parameter~ticks} with fine sampling.\\\\\nLet ${\\it r} \\in \\mathbb{N}^+$ the number of ticks for each cubic: then the values of the\nparameter {\\it t} in these ticks are $(0, \\frac{1}{r}, \\frac{2}{r}, . . ., \\frac{r-1}{r}, 1)$;\nthe value of a cubic at ${\\it t_0}$ is a {\\it scalar product}:\\\\\n\n${at_0^3 + bt_0^2 + ct + d = (a, b, c, d)\\cdot(t_0^3, t_0^2, t_0, 1)}$.\\\\\n\n\\noindent Consider the constant $4\\times{\\it (r+1)}$ {\\bf R} matrix\nand the (${\\bf M}\\times4$) {\\bf C} matrix:\\\\\n\n${\\bf R} = \\left( \\begin{array}{cccccc}\n0 & (\\frac{1}{r})^3 & . & . & (\\frac{r-1}{r})^3 & 1 \\\\\n0 & (\\frac{1}{r})^2 & . & . & (\\frac{r-1}{r})^2 & 1 \\\\\n0 & (\\frac{1}{r})^1 & . & . & (\\frac{r-1}{r})^1 & 1\\\\\n1 & 1 & . & . & 1 & 1\n\\end{array} \\right)$\\\\\n\n\n${\\bf C} = \\left( \\begin{array}{cccc}\na_1 & b_1 & c_1 & d_1 \\\\\na_2 & b_2 & c_2 & d_2 \\\\\n. & . & . & . \\\\\n. & . & . & . \\\\\na_{\\bf M} & b_{\\bf M} & c_{\\bf M} & d_{\\bf M}\n\\end{array} \\right)$\\\\\n\n\\section*{Computation of splines values {\\small (2)}}\nThen the ${\\bf M}\\times{\\it (r+1)}$ matrix {\\bf C}{\\bf R} contains for each row the\nvalues of a cubic between two points, for all the trajectories ({\\it eulerian}\nmethod: computation of all the position and velocity at a fixed instant). The\nflops for one multiplication are of order {\\it O}(10{\\bf M}{\\it r}).\\\\\n\n\\noindent Tests with Xeon 3.2 GHz processor, {\\bf M} = $10^4$, {\\it r} = 10 and\n{\\it GNU} {\\bf Fortran77} show a time of {\\it 0.01 seconds} for a multiplication.\\\\\nWith {\\bf N} = $10^2$, the time for computing the values of all the splines\nof a single time step is {\\it 4.5} seconds (theoric for 3D: $0.01\\times10^2\\times3 = {\\it 3}$ secs).\\\\\n\n\\noindent If {\\bf p} is the number of available processors and {\\it mod}({\\bf M}, {\\bf p}) = 0,\nthe computation can be parallelized distributing $\\frac{\\bf M}{\\bf p}$ rows\nof matrix {\\bf C} to each processor: there is no need of communication among\nprocesses.\\\\\nA version of {\\bf High Performance Fortran} on a SMP system with 4 ItaniumII\nprocessors shows a quasilinear speedup for {\\bf M}, {\\bf N} of order {\\it O}($10^3$).\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Time for computation}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\\includegraphics[width=7cm]{timeExecBW.eps}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\noindent These are the total time of computation for the two methods in the case of a cilinder of length\n{\\bf L} = 1m, a flow with a max. speed {\\it v} = 10cm\/sec, {\\bf M} = $10^4$, {\\it r} = 10 and 1 minute\nof real simulation. The space grid is {\\it h} = $\\frac{{\\bf L}}{10{\\bf N}}$.\n\n\\section*{Estimate of LF+interpolations vs normal LF {\\small (1)}}\n{\\it But what is the difference between the modified LF solution and\nnormal LF solution?}\\\\\nConsider the one-dimensional case.\nLet {\\bf u}=$(u_k)$ the solution of normal LF schema with grid step {\\it h} and\ninitial value {$\\bf u_0$}; {\\bf w}=$(w_m)$ the solution of normal LF schema \nwith grid step {\\it $s\\times h$}, $s \\in \\mathbb{N}^+$, and initial value {$\\bf w_0$} $\\subset$ {$\\bf u_0$};\n{\\bf v}=$(v_n)$ the solution of modified LF schema obtained by interpolation\nof {\\bf w} and valuation on {\\it s} points per cubic; for a cubic, let ${v_k}$,\n$k \\leq s$, the value of {\\bf v} at {\\it t}=$\\frac{k}{s}$ and ${u_k}$ the\nvalue of {\\it u} at the corresponding node of the finer grid; $\\frac{v \\Delta t}{h}$ the\nCFL number and {\\it N} the {\\it N}-th time step. Let\n$${\\it M_0} = \\max_{|m-n|=1}|u_{0,m}-u_{0,n}|$$\nThen it is possible to prove this result:\n\\newtheorem{teorema}{Theorem}\n\\begin{teorema}\nIf ${\\it M_0} >$ {\\normalsize 0}, there are two positive constants {\\it A} and {\\it B} such that\\\\\n$$|v_n - u_n| \\leq (A + Bs)M_0\\sum_{i=0}^{\\it N}(\\frac{v \\Delta t}{2h})^i\\qquad \\forall n\\in\\{grid\\;indexes\\}, \\forall N\\in\\mathbb{N}.$$\n\\end{teorema}\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Estimate of LF+interpolations vs normal LF {\\small (2)}}\nThe CFL number $\\frac{v \\Delta t}{h}$ is usually indicated by $\\lambda v$.\nFrom the previous theorem it follows:\n\\newtheorem{corollario}{Corollary}\n\\begin{corollario}\nIf $\\lambda v < 2$, then\\\\\n$$|v_n - u_n| < \\frac{2(A + Bs)M_0}{2 - \\lambda v}.$$\n\\end{corollario}\n\\noindent The CFL condition satisfies the hypothesis of the corollary.\\\\\nHence, for a realistic solution from the LF+interpolations model,\nthe conditions are:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item a small $(\\ll 2)$ CFL number,\n\t\\item a not too big number {\\it s} of valuations for the cubics; note that \n\t{\\it s} has the inverse logical meaning of the previous {\\it r} parameter.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\noindent Note that if ${\\it M_0}$ is very big, as in the case of very caotic\nflows, the LF+interpolations solution can be not very realistic.\n\n\\section*{Estimate of LF+interpolations vs normal LF {\\small (3)}}\nTesting the estimate: {\\it example} for one-dimensional non linear Navier-Stokes equation,\n$\\lambda v$ = 1, {\\it s} = 10, after {\\it N} = $10^5$ time steps; graphic of the error between\nLF+interpolations and normal LF solutions.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\\includegraphics[width=6.0cm]{errorBW.eps}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\noindent In this case it can be shown that {\\it A}~= 8, {\\it B} = 2 is a \nfirst, not optimized, approximation for the two constants.\nThe picture shows that the estimate is correct but large.\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Conclusions}\nThe numeric LF schema can be modified using the interpolations\nmethod so that:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item the time spent on computation is much lower than the time of the LF based\non the corresponding finer grid;\n\t\\item the computation can be parallelized on multiprocessors environment with\n\tvery reduced need of communication;\n\t\\item the error on normal LF solution can be estimated and depends on the \n\tinitial value ${\\bf u_0}$ of the problem;\n\t\\item the estimate is compatible with CFL condition.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n$\\;$ \\\\\n$\\;$ \\\\\n\\noindent {\\textbf{\\textit{Thanks}}\n\n\\end{document}","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section*{Introduction}\\label{s:intro}\n\nCombinatorial structures are often equipped with operations which allow to\ncombine two given structures of a given type into a third and vice versa. \nThis leads to the construction of algebraic structures, particularly that of graded\nHopf algebras. When the former are formalized through\nthe notion of species, which keeps track of the underlying ground set\nof the combinatorial structure,\nit is possible to construct finer algebraic structures than the latter.\nThis leads to Hopf monoids in the category of species.\nThe basic theory of these objects is laid out in~\\cite[Part~II]{AguMah:2010},\nalong with the discussion of several examples.\n Section~\\ref{s:hopf} reviews basic material concerning species and Hopf monoids.\n\nFree monoids are the subject of Section~\\ref{s:freemonoid}. Just as the tensor algebra\nof a vector space carries a canonical structure of Hopf algebra, the free monoid on\na positive species carries one of Hopf monoid. In fact, this structure admits a one\nparameter deformation, meaningful even when the parameter $q$ is set to zero. \nThe deformation only concerns the comonoid structure;\nthe monoid structure stays fixed throughout. \nA rigidity result (Theorem~\\ref{t:0free}) applies when $q=0$ and makes\nthis case of particular importance. It states that a connected $0$-Hopf monoid is\nnecessarily free as a monoid. This is a version of a result for Hopf algebras\nof Loday and Ronco~\\cite[Theorem~2.6]{LodRon:2006}.\n\nSection~\\ref{s:freeness} contains our two main results;\nthey concern freeness under Hadamard products.\nThe Hadamard product is a basic operation on species which reflects into the\nfamiliar Hadamard product of the dimension sequences. While there is also a\nversion of this operation for graded (co)algebras, the case of species is distinguished\nby the fact that the Hadamard product of two Hopf monoids is another Hopf monoid\n(Proposition~\\ref{p:hadamard}). In fact, the Hadamard product \nof a $p$-Hopf monoid $\\thh$ and a $q$-Hopf monoid $\\mathbf{k}$ is a $pq$-Hopf monoid $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$. \nCombining this result with rigidity for  connected $0$-Hopf monoids\nwe obtain our first main result (Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness}).\nIt states that if $\\thh$ is connected and $\\mathbf{k}$ is free as a monoid,\nthen $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$ is free as a monoid.\nA number of freeness results in the literature (for certain Hopf monoids as well as Hopf algebras)\nare consequences of this fact.\nThe second main result (Theorem~\\ref{t:had-free-monoid})\nprovides an explicit basis for the Hadamard\nproduct when both factors are free monoids.\nTo this end, we introduce an operation on species which intertwines\nwith the Hadamard product via the free monoid functor.\n\nThe previous results entail enumerative implications on the dimension sequence of a Hopf monoid.\nThese are explored in Section~\\ref{s:genfun}. They can be conveniently\nformulated in terms of the Boolean transform of a sequence (or power series),\nsince the type generating function of a positive species $\\tp$ is the Boolean transform of that of the free monoid on $\\tp$.\nWe deduce that the Boolean transform of the\ndimension sequence of a connected Hopf monoid\nis nonnegative (Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf}).\nThis turns out to be stronger than several previously known conditions on the\ndimension sequence of a connected Hopf monoid. \nWe provide examples of sequences with nonnegative Boolean transform which\ndo not arise as the dimension sequence of any connected Hopf monoid,\nshowing that the converse of Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf} does not hold (Proposition~\\ref{p:ordi-hopf}).\n\nAppendix~\\ref{s:boolean} contains additional information on Boolean transforms;\nin particular, Proposition~\\ref{p:bool-had} provides\nan explicit formula for the Boolean transform of the Hadamard product\nof two sequences (in terms of the transforms of the factors). This implies that\nthe set of real sequences with nonnegative Boolean transform is closed under Hadamard products.\n\n\\section{Species and Hopf monoids}\\label{s:hopf}\n\nWe briefly review Joyal's notion of species~\\cite{BerLabLer:1998,Joy:1981}\nand of Hopf monoid in the category of species. For more details on the latter,\nsee~\\cite{AguMah:2010}, particularly Chapters 1, 8 and 9.\n\n\\subsection{Species and the Cauchy product}\\label{ss:cauchy}\n\nLet $\\mathsf{set^{\\times}}$ denote the category whose objects are finite sets and \nwhose morphisms are bijections.\nLet $\\Bbbk$ be a field and let $\\Vect$ denote the category whose objects are vector spaces over $\\Bbbk$\nand whose morphisms are linear maps.\n\nA \\emph{(vector) species} is a functor\n\\[\n\\mathsf{set^{\\times}} \\longrightarrow \\Vect.\n\\]\nGiven a species $\\tp$, its value on a finite set $I$ is denoted by $\\tp[I]$.\nA morphism between species $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$\nis a natural transformation between the functors $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$.\nLet $\\mathsf{Sp}$ denote the category of species.\n\nGiven a set $I$ and subsets $S$ and $T$ of $I$, the notation $I=S\\sqcup T$\nindicates that\n\\[\nI=S\\cup T \\quad\\text{and}\\quad S\\cap T = \\emptyset.\n\\]\nWe say in this case that the ordered pair $(S,T)$ is a \\emph{decomposition} of $I$.\n\nGiven species $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$, their \\emph{Cauchy product} is the species \n$\\tp \\bm\\cdot \\mathbf{q}$ defined on a finite set $I$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:cau} \n(\\tp \\bm\\cdot \\mathbf{q})[I] \n := \\bigoplus_{I = S \\sqcup T}  \\tp[S] \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[T].\n \\end{equation}\n The direct sum is over all decompositions $(S,T)$ of $I$,\n or equivalently over all subsets $S$ of $I$.\n On a bijection $\\sigma: I\\to J$, \n $(\\tp \\bm\\cdot \\mathbf{q})[\\sigma]$ is defined to be the direct sum of the maps\n \\[\n\\tp[S] \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[T]\\map{\\tp[\\sigma|_S]\\otimes\\tp[\\sigma|_T]}\n\\tp[\\sigma(S)] \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[\\sigma(T)]\n\\]\nover all decompositions $(S,T)$ of $I$, where $\\sigma|_S$ denotes the restriction of $\\sigma$ to $S$.\n\nThe operation~\\eqref{e:cau} turns $\\mathsf{Sp}$ into a monoidal category.\nThe unit object is the species $\\mathbf{1}$ defined by\n\\[\n\\mathbf{1}[I]  := \\begin{cases}\n\\Bbbk & \\text{if $I$ is empty,} \\\\\n0 & \\text{otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n\nLet $q \\in \\Bbbk$ be a fixed scalar, possibly zero.\nConsider the natural transformation\n\\[\n\\beta_q \\colon  \\tp \\bm\\cdot \\mathbf{q} \\to \\mathbf{q} \\bm\\cdot \\tp\n\\]\nwhich on a finite set $I$ is the direct sum of the maps\n\\begin{equation*\n  \\tp[S] \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[T] \\to \\mathbf{q}[T] \\otimes \\tp[S],\n\\qquad\nx \\otimes y \\mapsto q^{\\abs{S}\\abs{T}}   y \\otimes x\n\\end{equation*}\nover all decompositions $(S,T)$ of $I$. The notation $\\abs{S}$ stands\nfor the cardinality of the set $S$.\n\nIf $q$ is nonzero, then $\\beta_q$ is a (strong) braiding\nfor the monoidal category $(\\mathsf{Sp},\\bm\\cdot)$.\nIn this case, the inverse braiding is $\\beta_{q^{-1}}$,\nand $\\beta_q$ is a symmetry if and only if $q=\\pm 1$.\nThe natural transformation $\\beta_0$ is a lax braiding\nfor $(\\mathsf{Sp},\\bm\\cdot)$.\n\n\\subsection{Hopf monoids in species}\\label{ss:hopf}\n\nWe consider monoids and comonoids in the monoidal category $(\\mathsf{Sp},\\bm\\cdot)$\nand bimonoids and Hopf monoids in the braided monoidal category $(\\mathsf{Sp},\\bm\\cdot,\\beta_q)$.\nWe refer to the latter as $q$-\\emph{bimonoids} and $q$-\\emph{Hopf monoids}.\nWhen $q=1$, we speak simply of \\emph{bimonoids} and \\emph{Hopf monoids}.\n\nThe structure of a monoid $\\tp$ consists of morphisms of species $\\mu:\\tp\\bm\\cdot\\tp\\to\\tp$\nand $\\iota:\\mathbf{1}\\to\\tp$ subject to the familiar associative and unital axioms.\nIn view of~\\eqref{e:cau}, the product $\\mu$ consists of a collection of linear maps\n\\[\n\\mu_{S,T} : \\tp[S]\\otimes\\tp[T] \\to \\tp[I],\n\\]\none for each finite set $I$ and each decomposition $(S,T)$ of $I$.\nThe unit $\\iota$ reduces to a linear map\n\\[\n\\iota_\\emptyset: \\Bbbk \\to \\tp[\\emptyset].\n\\]\nSimilarly, the structure of a comonoid $\\mathbf{q}$ consists of linear maps\n\\[\n\\Delta_{S,T}: \\mathbf{q}[I]\\to\\mathbf{q}[S]\\otimes\\mathbf{q}[T]\n\\quad\\text{and}\\quad\n\\epsilon_\\emptyset: \\mathbf{q}[\\emptyset] \\to \\Bbbk.\n\\]\n\nLet $I=S\\sqcup T=S'\\sqcup T'$ be two decompositions of a finite set.\nThe compatibility axiom for $q$-Hopf monoids\nstates that the diagram \n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:compr}\n\\begin{gathered}\n\\xymatrix@R+2pc@C-5pt{\n\\thh[A] \\otimes \\thh[B] \\otimes \\thh[C] \\otimes \\thh[D] \\ar[rr]^{\\mathrm{id}\n\\otimes \\beta_q \\otimes \\mathrm{id}} & &\n\\thh[A] \\otimes \\thh[C] \\otimes \\thh[B] \\otimes \\thh[D] \\ar[d]^{\\mu_{A,C}\n\\otimes \\mu_{B,D}}\\\\\n\\thh[S] \\otimes \\thh[T] \\ar[r]_-{\\mu_{S,T}}\\ar[u]^{\\Delta_{A,B} \\otimes\n\\Delta_{C,D}} & \\thh[I] \\ar[r]_-{\\Delta_{S',T'}} & \\thh[S'] \\otimes\n\\thh[T']\n}\n\\end{gathered}\n\\end{equation}\ncommutes, where $A=S\\cap S'$, $B=S\\cap T'$, $C=T\\cap S'$, $D=T\\cap T'$.\nFor more details, see~\\cite[Sections~8.2 and~8.3]{AguMah:2010}.\n\n\\subsection{Connected species and Hopf monoids}\\label{ss:con-hopf}\n\nA species $\\tp$ is \\emph{connected} if $\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\tp[\\emptyset]=1$.\nIn a connected monoid, the map $\\iota_\\emptyset$ is an isomorphism $\\Bbbk\\cong\\tp[\\emptyset]$, and the resulting maps\n\\[\n\\tp[I] \\cong \\tp[I]\\otimes\\tp[\\emptyset] \\map{\\mu_{I,\\emptyset}} \\tp[I]\n\\quad\\text{and}\\quad\n\\tp[I] \\cong \\tp[\\emptyset]\\otimes\\tp[I] \\map{\\mu_{\\emptyset,I}} \\tp[I]\n\\]\nare identities. Thus, to provide a monoid structure on a connected species\nit suffices to specify the maps $\\mu_{S,T}$ when $S$ and $T$ are nonempty.\nA similar remark applies to connected comonoids.\n\nChoosing $S=S'$ and $T=T'$ in~\\eqref{e:compr} one obtains that\nfor a connected $q$-bimonoid $\\thh$\nthe composite\n\\[\n\\thh[S]\\otimes\\thh[T] \\map{\\mu_{S,T}} \\thh[I] \\map{\\Delta_{S,T}} \\thh[S]\\otimes\\thh[T]\n\\]\nis the identity.\n\nA connected $q$-bimonoid is automatically a $q$-Hopf monoid; see~\\cite[Sections~8.4 and~9.1]{AguMah:2010}. The \\emph{antipode} of a Hopf monoid will not concern us in this paper.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{The Hopf monoid of linear orders}\\label{ss:linear}\n\nThe $q$-Hopf monoid $\\wL_q$ is defined as follows. The vector space  $\\wL_q[I]$\nhas for basis the set of linear orders on the finite set $I$. The product and coproduct\nare defined by \\emph{concatenation} and \\emph{restriction}, respectively:\n\\begin{align*}\n\\mu_{S,T} : \\wL_q[S] \\otimes \\wL_q[T] & \\to \\wL_q[I] & \\Delta_{S,T}: \\wL_q[I] & \\to \\wL_q[S] \\otimes \\wL_q[T] \\\\\nl_1 \\otimes l_2 & \\mapsto l_1 \\cdot l_2 & l & \\mapsto q^{\\area_{S,T}(l)}\\, l|_S \\otimes l|_T.\n\\end{align*}Here $l_1 \\cdot l_2$ is the linear order on $I$\nwhose restrictions to $S$ and $T$ are $l_1$ and $l_2$\nand in which the elements of $S$ precede the elements of $T$,\nand $l|_S$ is the restriction \nof the linear order $l$ on $I$\nto the subset $S$. \nThe \\emph{Schubert cocycle} is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:schubert-linear}\n\\area_{S,T}(l) := \\abs{\\{(i,j)\\in S\\times T \\mid \\text{$i>j$\naccording to $l$}\\}}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nWe write $\\wL$ instead of $\\wL_1$.\nNote that the monoid structure of $\\wL_q$ is independent of $q$. \nThus, $\\wL=\\wL_q$ as monoids. The comonoid $\\wL$ is cocommutative,\nbut, for $q\\neq 1$, $\\wL_q$ is not.\n\n\n\\section{The free monoid on a positive species}\\label{s:freemonoid}\n\nWe review the explicit construction of the free monoid on a positive species,\nfollowing~\\cite[Section~11.2]{AguMah:2010}. The free monoid carries\na canonical structure of $q$-Hopf monoid. The case $q=0$ is of particular\ninterest for our purposes, in view of the fact that any connected $0$-Hopf monoid is free\n(Theorem~\\ref{t:0free} below).\n\n\\subsection{Set compositions}\\label{ss:compositions}\n\nA \\emph{composition} of a finite set $I$ is an ordered sequence $F=(I_1,\\dots,I_k)$\nof disjoint nonempty subsets of $I$ such that\n\\[\nI  = \\bigcup_{i=1}^k I_i.\n\\]\nThe subsets $I_i$ are the \\emph{blocks}\nof $F$. \nWe write $F\\vDash I$ to indicate that $F$ is a composition of~$I$.\n\nThere is only one composition of the empty set\n(with no blocks).\n\nGiven $I=S\\sqcup T$ and compositions $F=(S_1,\\dots,S_j)$ of $S$\nand $G=(T_1,\\dots,T_k)$ of $T$, their \\emph{concatenation}\n\\[\nF\\cdot G := (S_1,\\dots,S_j,T_1,\\dots,T_k)\n\\]\nis a composition of $I$.\n\nGiven $S\\subseteq I$ and a composition $F=(I_1,\\dots,I_k)$ of $I$,\nwe say that $S$ is \\emph{$F$-admissible} if for each $i=1,\\ldots,k$, either\n\\[\nI_i\\subseteq S \\quad\\text{or}\\quad I_i\\cap S=\\emptyset.\n\\]\nIn this case, we let $i_1<\\cdots<i_j$ be the subsequence of $1<\\cdots<k$\nconsisting of those indices $i$ for which $I_i\\subseteq S$, and\ndefine the \\emph{restriction} of $F$ to $S$ by\n\\[\nF|_S = (I_{i_1},\\ldots,I_{i_j}).\n\\]\nIt is a composition of $S$.\n\n\nGiven $I=S\\sqcup T$ and a composition $F=(I_1,\\dots,I_k)$ of $I$,\nlet\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:schubert-comp}\n\\area_{S,T}(F)  := \\abs{\\{(i,j)\\in S\\times T \\mid \\text{$i$ appears in a strictly later block of $F$ than $j$}\\}}.\n\\end{equation}\nAlternatively,\n\\[\n\\area_{S,T}(F)  = \\sum_{1 \\leq i < j \\leq k} \\abs{I_i \\cap T}\\,\\abs{I_j \\cap S}.\n\\]\n\nStill in the preceding situation, note that $S$ is $F$-admissible if and only if $T$ is.\nThus $F|_S$ and $F|_T$ are defined simultaneously.\n\nIf the blocks of $F\\vDash I$ are singletons, then $F$ amounts to a linear order on $I$.\nConcatenation and restriction of set compositions reduce in this case to the\ncorresponding operations for linear orders (Section~\\ref{ss:linear}). In addition,\n\\eqref{e:schubert-comp} reduces to~\\eqref{e:schubert-linear}.\n\nThe set of compositions of $I$ is a partial order under \\emph{refinement}: we set\n$F\\leq G$ if each block of $F$ is obtained by merging a number of adjacent blocks of $G$. The composition $(I)$ is the unique minimum element, and linear orders are the maximal elements.\n\nSet compositions of $I$ are in bijection with flags of subsets of $I$ via\n\\[\n(I_1,\\ldots,I_k) \\mapsto (\\emptyset\\subset I_1\\subset I_1\\cup I_2\\subset \\cdots \\subset\nI_1\\cup \\cdots\\cup I_k = I).\n\\]\nRefinement of compositions corresponds to inclusion of flags. In this manner the poset of set compositions is\na lower set of the Boolean poset $2^{2^I}$, and hence a meet-semilattice.\nThe meet operation and concatenation interact as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:meet-conc-set}\n(F\\cdot F')\\wedge(G\\cdot G') = (F\\wedge G)\\cdot(F'\\wedge G'),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $F,G\\vDash S$ and $F',G'\\vDash T$, $I=S\\sqcup T$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nSet compositions of $I$ are in bijection with faces of the\n\\emph{braid arrangement} in $\\mathbb{R}^I$. Refinement of compositions corresponds to inclusion of faces, meet to\nintersection, linear orders to chambers, and $(I)$ to the central face. \nWhen $S$ and $T$ are nonempty, the statistic $\\area_{S,T}(F)$ counts the number of hyperplanes that separate the face $(S,T)$ from $F$. For more details, see~\\cite[Chapter~10]{AguMah:2010}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\subsection{The free monoid}\\label{ss:free}\n\nA species $\\mathbf{q}$ is \\emph{positive} if $\\mathbf{q}[\\emptyset]=0$.\n\nGiven a positive species $\\mathbf{q}$ and a composition $F=(I_1,\\ldots,I_k)$ of $I$, write\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:sp-comp}\n\\mathbf{q}(F)  := \\mathbf{q}[I_1] \\otimes \\dots \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[I_k].\n\\end{equation}\nWe define a new species $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ by\n\\[\n\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[I]  := \\bigoplus_{F\\vDash I} \\mathbf{q}(F).\n\\]\nA bijection $\\sigma:I\\to J$ transports a composition $F=(I_1,\\dots,I_k)$ of $I$\ninto a composition $\\sigma(F):=\\bigl(\\sigma(I_1),\\dots,\\sigma(I_k)\\bigr)$ of $J$.\nThe map $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[\\sigma]:\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[I]\\to\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[J]$ is the direct sum of the maps\n\\[\n\\mathbf{q}(F) = \\mathbf{q}[I_1] \\otimes \\dots \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[I_k] \\map{\\mathbf{q}[\\sigma|_{I_1}] \\otimes \\dots \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[\\sigma|_{I_k}]} \n\\mathbf{q}[\\sigma(I_1)] \\otimes \\dots \\otimes \\mathbf{q}[\\sigma(I_k)] = \\mathbf{q}\\bigl(\\sigma(F)\\bigr).\n\\]\n\nWhen $F$ is the unique composition of $\\emptyset$, we have $\\mathbf{q}(F)=\\Bbbk$.\nThus, the species $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ is connected.\n\nEvery nonempty $I$ admits a unique composition with one block; namely, $F=(I)$.\nIn this case, $\\mathbf{q}(F)=\\mathbf{q}[I]$. This yields an embedding\n$\n\\mathbf{q}[I] \\hookrightarrow \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[I]\n$\nand thus an embedding of species \n\\[\n\\eta_\\mathbf{q}: \\mathbf{q} \\hookrightarrow \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q}).\n\\]\nOn the empty set, $\\eta_\\mathbf{q}$ is (necessarily) zero.\n\nGiven $I=S\\sqcup T$ and compositions $F\\vDash S$ and\n$G\\vDash T$, we have a canonical isomorphism\n\\[\n \\mathbf{q}(F)\\otimes \\mathbf{q}(G)\\cong \\mathbf{q}(F\\cdot G)\n\\]\nobtained by concatenating the factors in~\\eqref{e:sp-comp}.\nThe sum of these over all $F\\vDash S$ and\n$G\\vDash T$ yields a map\n\\[\n\\mu_{S,T}: \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[S]\\otimes\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[T] \\to \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[I].\n\\]\nThis turns $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ into a monoid. In fact, $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ is the \\emph{free}\nmonoid on the positive species $\\mathbf{q}$, in view of the following result (a slight reformulation of~\\cite[Theorem 11.4]{AguMah:2010}).\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{t:dmunivp}\nLet $\\tp$ be a monoid, $\\mathbf{q}$ a positive species, and\n$\\zeta\\colon \\mathbf{q} \\to \\tp$ a morphism of species.\nThen there exists a unique morphism of monoids\n$\\hat{\\zeta}\\colon \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q}) \\to \\tp$ such that\n\\begin{equation*\n\\begin{gathered}\n\\xymatrix@C+20pt{\n\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q}) \\ar@{.>}[r]^-{\\hat{\\zeta}} &  \\tp\\\\\n \\mathbf{q} \\ar[ru]_{\\zeta}\\ar[u]^{\\eta_\\mathbf{q}}\n}\n\\end{gathered}\n\\end{equation*}\ncommutes.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe map $\\hat{\\zeta}$ is as follows. On the empty set, it is the unit map of $\\tp$:\n\\[\n\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[\\emptyset] = \\Bbbk \\map{\\iota_\\emptyset} \\tp[\\emptyset].\n\\]\nOn a nonempty set $I$, it is the sum of the maps\n\\[\n\\mathbf{q}(F) = \\mathbf{q}[I_1]\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes\\mathbf{q}[I_k] \\map{\\zeta_{I_1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes\\zeta_{I_k}}\n\\tp[I_1]\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes\\tp[I_k]\n\\map{\\mu_{I_1,\\ldots,I_k}} \\tp[I],\n\\]\nwhere $\\mu_{I_1,\\ldots,I_k}$ denotes an iteration of the product of $\\tp$\n(well-defined by associativity).\n\n\\smallskip \n\nWhen there is given an isomorphism of monoids $\\tp\\cong\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$, we say that\nthe positive species $\\mathbf{q}$ is a \\emph{basis} of the (free) monoid $\\tp$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe free monoid $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ on an arbitrary species $\\mathbf{q}$ exists~\\cite[Example~B.29]{AguMah:2010}. One has that $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[\\emptyset]$ is the free associative unital algebra\non the vector space $\\mathbf{q}[\\emptyset]$. Thus, $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ is connected if and only if\n$\\mathbf{q}$ is positive. We only consider this case in this paper.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\subsection{The free monoid as a Hopf monoid}\\label{ss:freeHopf}\n\nLet $q\\in\\Bbbk$ and $\\mathbf{q}$ a positive species. The species $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ admits a\ncanonical $q$-Hopf monoid structure, which we denote by $\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})$, as follows.\n\nAs monoids, $\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})=\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$. In particular, $\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})$ and $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ are the same\nspecies. The comonoid structure depends on $q$. Given $I=S\\sqcup T$,\nthe coproduct\n\\[\n\\Delta_{S,T}: \\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})[I]\\to\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})[S]\\otimes\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})[T]\n\\]\nis the sum of the maps\n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathbf{q}(F) & \\to \\mathbf{q}(F|_S)\\otimes \\mathbf{q}(F|_T) \\\\\nx_1\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_k & \\mapsto \n\\begin{cases} \nq^{\\area_{S,T}(F)} (x_{i_1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_{i_j})\\otimes (x_{i'_1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_{i'_k}) & \\text{ if $S$ is $F$-admissible,}\\\\\n0 & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{align*}\nHere $F=(I_1,\\ldots,I_k)$ and $x_i\\in \\mathbf{q}[I_i]$ for each $i$.\nIn the admissible case, we have written $F|_S=(I_{i_1},\\ldots,I_{i_j})$ and\n$F|_T=(I_{i'_1},\\ldots,I_{i'_k})$.\n\nThe preceding turns $\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{q})$ into a $q$-bimonoid. Since it is connected,\nit is a $q$-Hopf monoid. \n\n\\subsection{Freeness of the Hopf monoid of linear orders}\\label{ss:free-linear}\n\nLet $\\mathbf{X}$ be the species defined by\n\\[\n\\mathbf{X}[I]  := \\begin{cases}\n\\Bbbk & \\text{if $I$ is a singleton,} \\\\\n0 & \\text{otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nIt is positive. Note that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:XF}\n\\mathbf{X}(F) \\cong \n\\begin{cases}\n\\Bbbk & \\text{ if all blocks of $F$ are singletons,} \\\\\n 0       & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nSince a set composition of $I$ into singletons amounts to a linear order on $I$, we have \n$\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{X})[I]\\cong \\wL[I]$ for all finite sets $I$.\nThis gives rise to a canonical isomorphism of species \n\\[\n\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{X}) \\cong \\wL.\n\\]\nMoreover, the closing remarks in Section~\\ref{ss:compositions}\nimply that this is an isomorphism of $q$-Hopf monoids\n\\[\n\\Tc_q(\\mathbf{X}) \\cong \\wL_q.\n\\]\nIn particular, $\\wL$ is the free monoid on the species $\\mathbf{X}$.\n\n\n\\subsection{Loday-Ronco freeness for $0$-Hopf monoids}\\label{ss:0free}\n\nThe $0$-Hopf monoid \n$\\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q})$ has the same underlying species and the same product\nas the Hopf monoid $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$ (Section~\\ref{ss:free}).\nWe now discuss the coproduct, by setting $q=0$ in the description\nof Section~\\ref{ss:freeHopf}.\nFix a decomposition $I=S\\sqcup T$.\nThe compositions $F\\vDash I$ that contribute to $\\Delta_{S,T}$\nare those for which\n$S$ is $F$-admissible and in addition $\\area_{S,T}(F)=0$. This happens if and only if\n\\[\nF = F|_S \\cdot F|_T.\n\\]\nWhen $S,T\\neq\\emptyset$, the preceding is in turn equivalent to\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:0free}\n(S,T)\\leq F.\n\\end{equation}\nTherefore, the coproduct $\\Delta_{S,T}$ of $\\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q})$\nis the direct sum over all $F\\vDash I$ of the above form of the maps \n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathbf{q}(F) & \\to \\mathbf{q}(F|_S)\\otimes \\mathbf{q}(F|_T) \\\\\nx_1\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_k & \\mapsto  \n (x_{1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_{j})\\otimes (x_{j+1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes x_{k}).\n \\end{align*}\nHere $F=(I_1,\\ldots,I_k)$, $S=I_1\\cup\\cdots\\cup I_j$, and $T=I_{j+1}\\cup\\cdots\\cup I_k$.\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{t:0free}\nLet $\\thh$ be a connected $0$-Hopf monoid. Then there exist a positive species\n$\\mathbf{q}$ and an isomorphism of $0$-Hopf monoids\n\\[\n\\thh \\cong \\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q}).\n\\]  \n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe species $\\mathbf{q}$ can be obtained as the \\emph{primitive part} of $\\thh$.\n\nThere is a parallel result for connected graded $0$-Hopf algebras which is\ndue to Loday and Ronco~\\cite[Theorem~2.6]{LodRon:2006}.\nAn adaptation of their proof yields the result for connected $0$-Hopf monoids;\nthe complete details are given in~\\cite[Theorem~11.49]{AguMah:2010}.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nTheorem~\\ref{t:0free} states that any connected $0$-Hopf monoid is free as a\nmonoid. It is also true that it is \\emph{cofree} as a comonoid; in addition, if $\\mathbf{q}$ is finite-dimensional,\nthen the $0$-Hopf monoid $\\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q})$ is \\emph{self-dual}. See~\\cite[Section~11.10.3]{AguMah:2010} for more details.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Freeness under Hadamard products}\\label{s:freeness}\n\nThe Hadamard product of two Hopf monoids is another Hopf monoid. \nWe review this construction and\nwe prove in Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness} \nthat if one of the Hopf monoids is free as a monoid, then\nthe Hadamard product is also free as a monoid \n(provided the other Hopf monoid is connected).\nWe introduce an operation on positive species which\nallows us to describe a basis for the Hadamard\nproduct of two free monoids in terms of bases of the factors (Theorem~\\ref{t:had-free-monoid}).\n\n\\subsection{The Hadamard product of Hopf monoids}\\label{ss:hadamard}\n\nThe \\emph{Hadamard product} of two species $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$ is the species\n$\\tp\\times\\mathbf{q}$ defined on a finite set $I$ by\n\\[\n(\\tp\\times\\mathbf{q})[I] := \\tp[I]\\otimes\\mathbf{q}[I],\n\\]\nand on bijections similarly. \n\nIf $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$ are connected, then so is $\\tp\\times\\mathbf{q}$.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:hadamard}\nLet $p,q\\in\\Bbbk$ be arbitrary scalars.\nIf $\\thh$ is a $p$-bimonoid and $\\mathbf{k}$ is a $q$-bimonoid,\nthen $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$ is a $pq$-bimonoid.\n\\end{proposition}\nThe proof is given in~\\cite[Corollary~9.6]{AguMah:2010}.\nThe corresponding statement for Hopf monoids holds as well.\n\nThe product of $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$ is defined by\n\\[\n\\xymatrix@C+11pt{\n(\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k})[S]\\otimes(\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k})[T] \\ar@{.>}[rr]^-{\\mu_{S,T}} \\ar@{=}[d] & & \n(\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k})[I] \\ar@{=}[d]\\\\\n(\\thh[S]\\otimes\\mathbf{k}[S])\\otimes(\\thh[T]\\otimes\\mathbf{k}[T]) \\ar[r]_-{\\cong} & \n(\\thh[S]\\otimes\\thh[T])\\otimes(\\mathbf{k}[S]\\otimes\\mathbf{k}[T]) \\ar[r]_-{\\mu_{S,T}\\otimes\\mu_{S,T}} &\n\\thh[I] \\otimes\\mathbf{k}[I] \n}\n\\]\nwhere the first map on the bottom simply switches the middle tensor factors.\nThe coproduct is defined similarly.\n\nIn particular, if $\\thh$ and $\\mathbf{k}$ are bimonoids ($p=q=1$), then so is $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThere is a parallel between the notions of species on the one hand,\nand of graded vector spaces on the other. This extends to a parallel between\nHopf monoids in species and graded Hopf algebras. These topics are\nstudied in detail in~\\cite[Part III]{AguMah:2010}.\n\nThe Hadamard product of graded vector spaces can be defined, but does not enjoy\nthe same formal properties of that for species. In particular, the Hadamard product\nof two graded bialgebras carries natural algebra and coalgebra structures, but these\nare not compatible in general; see~\\cite[Remark~8.65]{AguMah:2010}.\nFor this reason, our main result (Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness} below) does not\npossess an analogue for graded bialgebras.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\subsection{Freeness under Hadamard products}\\label{ss:freeness}\n\nThe following is our main result. Let $p$ and $q\\in\\Bbbk$ be arbitrary scalars.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{t:freeness}\nLet $\\thh$ be a connected $p$-Hopf monoid. \nLet $\\mathbf{k}$ be a $q$-Hopf monoid that is free as a monoid.\nThen $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$ is a connected $pq$-Hopf monoid that is free as a monoid.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nSince $\\thh$ and $\\mathbf{k}$ are connected (the latter by freeness), so is $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$.\nWe then know from Proposition~\\ref{p:hadamard} that $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$ is a connected $pq$-Hopf monoid. Now, as monoids, we have\n\\[\n\\mathbf{k}\\cong \\mathcal{T}_q(\\mathbf{q}) = \\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q})\n\\]\nfor some positive species $\\mathbf{q}$. Hence, as monoids,\n\\[\n\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k} \\cong \\thh \\times \\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q}).\n\\]\nBut the latter is a $0$-Hopf monoid by Proposition~\\ref{p:hadamard}, and hence\nfree as a monoid by Theorem~\\ref{t:0free}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{c:freeness}\nLet $\\thh$ be a connected $p$-Hopf monoid. Then $\\thh\\times\\wL_q$ is free as a monoid.\n\\end{corollary}\n\\begin{proof}\nThis is a special case of Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness}, since as discussed in Section~\\ref{ss:free-linear}, $\\wL_q\\cong\\mathcal{T}_q(\\mathbf{X})$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:LL}\nThe Hopf monoid $\\tLL_q$ of \\emph{pairs of linear orders} is studied in~\\cite[Section~12.3]{AguMah:2010}. There is an isomorphism of $q$-Hopf monoids\n\\[\n \\tLL_q \\cong \\wL^{*} \\times \\wL_q.\n \\]\nCorollary~\\ref{c:freeness} implies that $\\tLL_q$ is free as a monoid.\nThis result was obtained by different means in~\\cite[Section~12.3]{AguMah:2010}.\nIt implies the fact that the Hopf algebra of permutations of Malvenuto\nand Reutenauer~\\cite{MalReu:1995} is free as an algebra, a result known from~\\cite{PoiReu:1995}. See Section~\\ref{ss:livernet} below for more comments regarding \nconnections between Hopf monoids and Hopf algebras.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:super}\nThe Hopf monoid $\\SC(\\mathrm{U})$ of \\emph{superclass functions} \non unitriangular matrices with entries in $\\mathbb{F}_2$ is studied in~\\cite{ABT:2011}.\nThere is an isomorphism of Hopf monoids\n\\[\n\\SC(\\mathrm{U}) \\cong \\tPi\\times\\wL,\n\\]\nwhere $\\tPi$ is the Hopf monoid of \\emph{set partitions} of~\\cite[Section~12.6]{AguMah:2010}. It follows that $\\SC(\\mathrm{U})$ is free as a monoid. This result was obtained\nby different means in~\\cite[Proposition~17]{ABT:2011}. It implies the fact that\nthe Hopf algebra of \\emph{symmetric functions in noncommuting variables}~\\cite{RosSag:2006} is free\nas an algebra, a result known from~\\cite{Wol:1936}.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\subsection{Livernet freeness for certain Hopf algebras}\\label{ss:livernet}\n\n\nIt is possible to associate a number of graded Hopf algebras to\na given Hopf monoid $\\thh$. This is the subject of~\\cite[Chapter~15]{AguMah:2010}.\nIn particular, there are two graded Hopf algebras $\\mathcal{K}(\\thh)$\nand $\\overline{\\Kc}(\\thh)$ related by a canonical surjective morphism\n\\[\n\\mathcal{K}(\\thh) \\twoheadrightarrow \\overline{\\Kc}(\\thh).\n\\]\nMoreover, for any Hopf monoid $\\thh$, there is a canonical isomorphism of graded Hopf algebras~\\cite[Theorem~15.13]{AguMah:2010}\n\\[\n\\overline{\\Kc}(\\wL\\times\\thh) \\cong \\mathcal{K}(\\thh).\n\\]\n\nThe functor $\\overline{\\Kc}$ preserves a number of properties, including freeness:\nif $\\thh$ is free as a monoid, then $\\overline{\\Kc}(\\thh)$ is free as an algebra~\\cite[Proposition~18.7]{AguMah:2010}.\n\nCombining these remarks with Corollary~\\ref{c:freeness} we deduce that for any\nconnected Hopf monoid $\\thh$, the algebra $\\mathcal{K}(\\thh)$ is free. This result is\ndue to Livernet~\\cite[Theorem~4.2.2]{Liv:2010}. A proof similar to the one above\nis given in~\\cite[Section~16.1.7]{AguMah:2010}.\n\nAs an example, for $\\thh=\\tLL$ we obtain that the Hopf algebra of pairs of permutations\nis free as an algebra, a result known from~\\cite[Theorem 7.5.4]{AguMah:2006}.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{The Hadamard product of free monoids}\\label{ss:had-free}\n\nGiven positive species $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$,\ndefine a new positive species $\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q}$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:star}\n(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})[I] :=\n\\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,G\\vDash I\\\\F\\wedge G=(I)}} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G).\n\\end{equation}\nThe sum is over all pairs $(F,G)$ of compositions of $I$\nsuch that $F\\wedge G=(I)$. We are employing notation~\\eqref{e:sp-comp}.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{l:star-prop}\nFor any composition $H\\vDash I$, there is a canonical isomorphism of vector spaces\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:star-prop}\n(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})(H) \\cong \\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,G\\vDash I\\\\F\\wedge G=H}}\\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\n\\end{equation}\ngiven by rearrangement of the tensor factors.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet us say that a function $f$ on set compositions with values on vector spaces is\n\\emph{multiplicative} if $f(H_1\\cdot H_2) \\cong f(H_1)\\otimes f(H_2)$ for all\n$H_1\\vDash I_1$, $H_2\\vDash I_2$, $I=I_1\\sqcup I_2$. Such functions are uniquely determined\nby their values on the compositions of the form $(I)$. The isomorphism~\\eqref{e:star-prop} holds when $H=(I)$ by definition~\\eqref{e:star}. It thus suffices to check that both\nsides are multiplicative.\n\nThe left hand side of~\\eqref{e:star-prop} is multiplicative in view of~\\eqref{e:sp-comp}. \n\nIf, for $i=1,2$, $F_i,G_i\\vDash I_i$ are such that $F_i\\wedge G_i=H_i$, then\n\\[\n(F_1\\cdot F_2)\\wedge(G_1\\cdot G_2) = H_1\\cdot H_2\n\\]\nby~\\eqref{e:meet-conc-set}. Moreover, if $F,G\\vDash I_1\\sqcup I_2$ are such that \n$F\\wedge G=H_1\\cdot H_2$, then $F=F_1\\cdot F_2$ and $G=G_1\\cdot G_2$ for\nunique $F_i,G_i$ as above.\nThis implies the multiplicativity of the right hand side.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe show that the operation~\\eqref{e:star} is associative.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:star-asso}\nFor any positive species $\\tp$, $\\mathbf{q}$ and $\\mathbf{r}$,\nthere is a canonical isomorphism\n\\begin{equation}\n(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q}) \\star \\mathbf{r} \\cong \\tp \\star (\\mathbf{q} \\star \\mathbf{r}).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof} Define\n\\[\n(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q} \\star \\mathbf{r})[I] := \\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,G,H\\vDash I,\\\\F\\wedge G\\wedge H=(I)}} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\\otimes\\mathbf{r}(H).\n\\]\nWe make use of the isomorphism~\\eqref{e:star-prop} to build the following.\n\\begin{align*}\n\\bigl(\\tp \\star (\\mathbf{q} \\star \\mathbf{r})\\bigr)[I] & =\n\\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,K\\vDash I\\\\ F\\wedge K=(I)}} \\tp(F)\\otimes (\\mathbf{q}\\star \\mathbf{r})(K)\\\\\n& \\cong \\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,K\\vDash I,\\\\F\\wedge K=(I)}}\\bigoplus_{\\substack{G,H\\vDash I,\\\\G\\wedge H=K}} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\\otimes\\mathbf{r}(H)\\\\\n& = \\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,G,H\\vDash I,\\\\F\\wedge G\\wedge H=(I)}} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\\otimes\\mathbf{r}(H) = (\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q} \\star \\mathbf{r})[I]\n\\end{align*}\nThe space $\\bigl((\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q}) \\star \\mathbf{r}\\bigr)[I]$ can be identified with\n$(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q} \\star \\mathbf{r})[I]$ in a similar manner.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThere is also an evident natural isomorphism\n\\begin{equation}\n\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q} \\cong \\mathbf{q} \\star \\tp.\n\\end{equation}\nThus, $\\star$ defines a (nonunital) symmetric monoidal structure on the category of positive species.\n\nOur present interest in the operation $\\star$ stems from the following result, which\nprovides an explicit description for the basis of a Hadamard product of two free monoids\nin terms of bases of the factors.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{t:had-free-monoid}\nFor any positive species $\\tp$ and $\\mathbf{q}$,\nthere is a natural isomorphism of monoids\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:had-free-monoid}\n\\mathcal{T}(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q}) \\cong \\mathcal{T}(\\tp)\\times\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q}).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe calculate using~\\eqref{e:star-prop}.\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\mathcal{T}(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})[I] =\n\\bigoplus_{H\\vDash I} (\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})(H)  \\cong\n\\bigoplus_{H\\vDash I} \\bigoplus_{\\substack{F,G\\vDash I\\\\F\\wedge G=H}} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\\\\\n= \\bigoplus_{F,G\\vDash I} \\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)\n= \\mathcal{T}(\\tp)[I]\\otimes\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[I] =\n\\bigl(\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)\\times\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})\\bigr)[I].\n\\end{multline*}\nThe fact that this isomorphism preserves products follows from~\\eqref{e:meet-conc-set}. \n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:basisLL}\nSince $\\mathbf{X}$ is a basis for $\\wL$,\n\\eqref{e:had-free-monoid} implies that $\\mathbf{X}\\star\\mathbf{X}$ is a basis for $\\wL\\times\\wL$.\nFrom~\\eqref{e:XF} we obtain that\n\\[\n\\{(C,D) \\mid C\\wedge D = (I)\\}.\n\\]\nis a linear basis for $(\\mathbf{X}\\star\\mathbf{X})[I]$. (The linear orders $C$ and $D$ are viewed as set compositions into singletons.)\nFor related results, see~\\cite[Section 12.3.6]{AguMah:2010}.\n\\end{example}\n\nRecall that, for each scalar $q\\in\\Bbbk$,\nany free monoid $\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)$ is endowed with a canonical\ncomonoid structure and the resulting $q$-Hopf monoid is denoted $\\Tc_q(\\tp)$ \n(Section~\\ref{ss:freeHopf}).\nIt turns out that, when $q=0$,~\\eqref{e:had-free-monoid} is in fact an isomorphism\nof $0$-Hopf monoids, as we now prove. The proof below also shows that~\\eqref{e:had-free-monoid} is not an isomorphism of comonoids for $q\\neq 0$.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:had-free-monoid}\nThe map~\\eqref{e:had-free-monoid}\nis an isomorphism of $0$-Hopf monoids\n\\[\n\\mathcal{T}_0(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q}) \\cong \\mathcal{T}_0(\\tp)\\times\\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q}).\n\\]\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nIn order to prove that coproducts are preserved it  suffices to check that they\nagree on the basis $\\tp\\star\\mathbf{q}$ of $\\mathcal{T}(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})$ and on its image in $\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)\\times\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})$. The image of $(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})[I]$ is the direct sum of the spaces $\\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)$ over those $F,G\\vDash I$ such that $F\\wedge G =(I)$.\nChoose $S,T\\neq\\emptyset$ such that $I=S\\sqcup T$. \nIn view of the definition of the coproduct on a free monoid (Section~\\ref{ss:freeHopf}),\nthe coproduct $\\Delta_{S,T}$\nof $\\mathcal{T}_q(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})$ is zero on $(\\tp \\star \\mathbf{q})[I]$. (This holds for any $q\\in\\Bbbk$.)\nOn the other hand, from~\\eqref{e:0free} we have that the coproduct of\n $\\mathcal{T}_0(\\tp)\\times\\mathcal{T}_0(\\mathbf{q})$ on $\\tp(F)\\otimes\\mathbf{q}(G)$ is also zero, unless both\n \\[\n (S,T)\\leq F \\quad\\text{and}\\quad (S,T)\\leq G.\n \\]\n Since this is forbidden by the assumption $F\\wedge G =(I)$, the coproducts agree.\n \\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\\section{The dimension sequence of a connected Hopf monoid}\n\\label{s:genfun}\n\nWe now derive a somewhat surprising application of Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness}. \nIt states that the reciprocal of the ordinary generating function of a connected Hopf monoid\nhas nonpositive (integer) coefficients (Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf} below).\nWe compare this result with other previously known conditions satisfied by\nthe dimension sequence of a connected Hopf monoid.\n\n\\subsection{Coinvariants}\\label{ss:coinvariants}\n\nLet $G$ be a group and $V$ a $\\Bbbk G$-module. The space of \\emph{coinvariants} $V_{G}$ is\nthe quotient of $V$ by the $\\Bbbk$-subspace spanned by the elements of the form\n\\[\nv-g\\cdot v\n\\]\nfor $v\\in V$, $g\\in G$. If $V$ is a free $\\Bbbk G$-module, then \n\\[\n\\dim_{\\Bbbk} V_G = \\rank_{\\Bbbk G} V.\n\\]\n\nLet $V$ and $W$ be $\\Bbbk G$-modules. Let $U_1$ be the space $V\\otimes W$\nwith \\emph{diagonal} $G$-action:\n\\[\ng\\cdot (v\\otimes w) := (g\\cdot v)\\otimes(g\\cdot w).\n\\]\nLet $U_2$ be the same space but with the following $G$-action:\n\\[\ng\\cdot (v\\otimes w) := v\\otimes (g\\cdot w).\n\\]\nThe following is a well-known basic fact.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{l:diagonal}\nIf $W$ is free as a $\\Bbbk G$-module, then $U_1\\cong U_2$. In particular, \n\\[\n\\dim_{\\Bbbk} (U_1)_G = (\\dim_{\\Bbbk} V)(\\dim_{\\Bbbk} W_G).\n\\]\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe may assume $W=\\Bbbk G$. In this case, the map\n\\[\nU_1\\to U_2, \\quad\nv\\otimes g \\mapsto (g^{-1}\\cdot v) \\otimes g\n\\]\nis an isomorphism of $\\Bbbk G$-modules. The second assertion follows because $U_2$\nis a free module of rank equal to $(\\dim_{\\Bbbk} V)(\\rank_{\\Bbbk G} W)$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\subsection{The type generating function}\\label{ss:type}\n\nLet $\\tp$ be a species. We write $\\tp[n]$ for the space $\\tp[\\{1,\\ldots,n\\}]$.\nThe symmetric group $\\Sr_n$ acts on $\\tp[n]$ by\n\\[\n\\sigma\\cdot x := \\tp[\\sigma](x)\n\\]\nfor $\\sigma\\in\\Sr_n$, $x\\in\\tp[n]$. For example,\n\\[\n\\wL[n] \\cong \\Bbbk\\Sr_n\n\\]\nas $\\Bbbk\\Sr_n$-modules.\n\nFrom now on, we assume that all species $\\tp$ are \\emph{finite-dimensional}.\nThis means that for each $n\\geq 0$ the space $\\tp[n]$ is finite-dimensional. \nThe \\emph{type generating function} of $\\tp$ is the power series\n\\[\n\\type{\\tp}{x} : = \\sum_{n\\geq 0} \\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\tp[n]_{S_n}\\, x^n.\n\\]\n\nFor example,\n\\[\n\\type{\\wL}{x} = \\sum_{n\\geq 0} x^n=\\frac{1}{1-x}.\n\\]\nMore generally, for any positive species $\\mathbf{q}$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:type-free}\n\\type{\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})}{x} = \\frac{1}{1-\\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}}.\n\\end{equation}\nThis follows by a direct calculation or from~\\cite[Theorem~1.4.2.b]{BerLabLer:1998}.\n\nLet $\\tp$ be a free monoid. It follows from~\\eqref{e:type-free} that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:type-free2}\n1-\\frac{1}{\\type{\\tp}{x}} \\in \\mathbb{N}{[\\![} x{]\\!]}.\n\\end{equation}\nIn other words, the reciprocal of the type generating function of a free\nmonoid has nonpositive integer coefficients (except for the first, which is $1$).\n\n\n\\subsection{Generating functions for Hadamard products}\\label{ss:gen-had}\n\nThe type generating function of a Hadamard product $\\tp\\times\\mathbf{q}$ is in general not\ndetermined by those of the factors. (It is however determined by their \\emph{cycle indices}; see~\\cite[Proposition~2.1.7.b]{BerLabLer:1998}.) \n\nThe \\emph{ordinary generating function} of a species $\\tp$ is\n\\[\n\\ordi{\\tp}{x} : = \\sum_{n\\geq 0} \\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\tp[n]\\, x^n.\n\\]\n\nThe Hadamard product of power series is defined by\n\\[\n\\bigl(\\sum_{n\\geq 0} a_n x^n\\bigr)\\times\\bigl(\\sum_{n\\geq 0} b_n x^n\\bigr) :=\n\\sum_{n\\geq 0} a_nb_n x^n.\n\\]\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:free-had}\nLet $\\tp$ be an arbitrary species and $\\mathbf{q}$ a species for which $\\mathbf{q}[n]$ is a free $\\Bbbk\\Sr_n$-module for every $n\\geq 0$. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:free-had}\n\\type{\\tp\\times \\mathbf{q}}{x} = \\ordi{\\tp}{x}\\times \\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}. \n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nIn view of Lemma~\\ref{l:diagonal}, we have\n\\[\n\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\bigl((\\tp\\times\\mathbf{q})[n]\\bigr)_{\\Sr_n} = (\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\tp[n])(\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\mathbf{q}[n]_{\\Sr_n})\n\\]\nfrom which the result follows.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nSince $\\type{\\wL}{x}$ is the unit for the Hadamard product of power series, we have from~\\eqref{e:free-had} that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:type-hadamard}\n\\type{\\tp\\times \\wL}{x} = \\ordi{\\tp}{x}.\n\\end{equation}\nMore generally, for any positive species $\\mathbf{q}$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:type-hadamard2}\n\\type{\\tp\\times \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})}{x} = \\ordi{\\tp}{x}\\times  \\frac{1}{1-\\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}}.\n\\end{equation}\nThis follows from~\\eqref{e:type-free} and~\\eqref{e:free-had};\nthe $\\Bbbk\\Sr_n$-module $\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})[n]$ is free by~\\cite[Lemma~B.18]{AguMah:2010}.\n\n\\subsection{The ordinary generating function of a connected Hopf monoid}\\label{ss:ordi-hopf}\n\n Let $\\thh$ be a connected $q$-Hopf monoid. \n By Corollary~\\ref{c:freeness}, $\\thh\\times\\wL$ is a free monoid. \n Let $\\mathbf{q}$ be a basis. Thus, $\\mathbf{q}$ is a positive species such that\n\\[\n\\thh\\times\\wL\\cong \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})\n\\]\nas monoids. \n\n \\begin{proposition}\\label{p:ordi-type}\n In the above situation,\n \\begin{equation}\\label{e:ordi-type}\n \\ordi{\\thh}{x} = \\frac{1}{1-\\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}}.\n \\end{equation}\n \\end{proposition}\n \\begin{proof}\n We have, by~\\eqref{e:type-free} and~\\eqref{e:type-hadamard},\n \\[\n \\ordi{\\thh}{x} =\n \\type{\\thh\\times\\wL}{x}=\\type{\\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{q})}{x}=\\frac{1}{1-\\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}}.  \\qedhere\n \\]\n \\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{t:ordi-hopf}\nLet $\\thh$ be a connected $q$-Hopf monoid. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:ordi-hopf}\n1-\\frac{1}{\\ordi{\\thh}{x}} \\in \\mathbb{N}{[\\![} x{]\\!]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nFrom~\\eqref{e:ordi-type} we deduce\n\\[\n1-\\frac{1}{\\ordi{\\thh}{x}} = \\type{\\mathbf{q}}{x}\n \\in \\mathbb{N}{[\\![} x{]\\!]}. \\qedhere\n \\]\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn the terminology of Section~\\ref{s:boolean} below, Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf} states that the Boolean transform of the\ndimension sequence of a connected $q$-Hopf monoid\nis nonnegative; see~\\eqref{e:bool-tran}. Proposition~\\ref{p:ordi-type} states more\nprecisely that the Boolean transform of the ordinary generating function of $\\thh$ is the\ntype generating function of $\\mathbf{q}$.\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:globaldes}\nWe have\n\\[\n1-\\frac{1}{\\sum_{n\\geq 0} n! x^n} =  x + x^2 + 3x^3 + 13x^4 + 71x^5+ 461 x^6 + \\cdots.\n\\]\nThe Boolean transform $b_n$ of the dimension sequence of $\\wL$\nadmits the following description. Say that a linear order on the set $[n]$ is\n\\emph{decomposable} if it is the concatenation of a linear order on $[i]$\nand a linear order on $[n]\\setminus [i]$ for some $i$ such that $1\\leq i<n$.\nEvery linear order is the concatenation of a unique sequence of indecomposable ones.\nIt then follows from~\\eqref{e:bool-tran3} that $b_n$ is the number of indecomposable linear orders on $[n]$.\nThe sequence $b_n$ is~\\cite[A003319]{Slo:oeis}. \n\\end{example}\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:atomic}\nA partition $X$ of the set $[n]$ is \\emph{atomic} if $[i]$\nis not a union of blocks of $X$ for any $i$ such that $1\\leq i<n$.\nThe dimension sequence of the Hopf monoid $\\tPi$ is the sequence of Bell numbers,\nand its Boolean transform counts the number of atomic partitions of $[n]$.\nThe latter is sequence~\\cite[A074664]{Slo:oeis}.\n\\end{example}\n\nLet $a_n:=\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\thh[n]$. The conditions imposed by~\\eqref{e:ordi-hopf} on the first terms of this sequence are as follows.\n\\begin{gather*}\na_1^2 \\leq a_2,\\\\\n2a_1a_2-a_1^3 \\leq a_3,\\\\\n2a_1a_3 - 3a_1^2a_2+a_2^2 + a_1^4 \\leq a_4.\n\\end{gather*}\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eg:elements}\nSuppose that the sequence starts with\n\\[\na_1=1,\\quad a_2=2,\\quad\\text{and}\\quad a_3=3.\n\\]\nThe third inequality above then implies $a_4\\geq 5$. It follows that the species $\\te$\n\\emph{of elements} (for which $\\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\te[n]=n$) does not carry a bimonoid structure.\nThis result was obtained by different means in~\\cite[Example~3.5]{AL:2012}. \n\\end{example}\n\n\nThe calculation of Example~\\ref{eg:globaldes} can be generalized to all free\nmonoids in place of $\\wL$. To this end, let us say that a composition $F$ of the set\n$[n]$ is \\emph{decomposable} if $F=F_1\\cdot F_2$ for some $F_1\\vDash [i]$,\n$F_2\\vDash [n]\\setminus[i]$, and some $i$ such that $1\\leq i<n$.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:globaldes}\nFor any positive species $\\tp$, the Boolean transform of the dimension sequence of \nthe Hopf monoid $\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)$ is given by\n\\[\nb_n =  \\sum_{\\substack{F\\vDash [n] \\\\ \\text{$F$ indecomposable}}} \\dim_\\Bbbk \\tp(F).\n\\]\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe have from~\\eqref{e:had-free-monoid} that\n\\[\n\\mathcal{T}(\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X}) \\cong \\mathcal{T}(\\tp)\\times \\mathcal{T}(\\mathbf{X}) \\cong \\mathcal{T}(\\tp)\\times\\wL.\n\\]\nHence, by~\\eqref{e:ordi-type},\n\\[\n\\ordi{\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)}{x} = \\frac{1}{1-\\type{\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X}}{x}}.\n\\]\nThus, $\\type{\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X}}{x}$ is the Boolean transform of $\\ordi{\\mathcal{T}(\\tp)}{x}$,\nand hence $b_n = \\dim_{\\Bbbk} \\bigl((\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X})[n]\\bigr)_{\\Sr_n}$.\n\nFrom~\\eqref{e:XF} and~\\eqref{e:star} we have that\n\\[\n(\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X})[I] = \\bigoplus_{(F,C):\\,F\\wedge C=(I)} \\tp(F)\n\\]\nwhere $F$ varies over set compositions and $C$ varies over linear orders on $I$.\nIt follows that $(\\tp\\star\\mathbf{X})[n]$ is a free $\\Bbbk\\Sr_n$-module with\n$\\Sr_n$-coinvariants equal to the space \n\\[\n\\bigoplus_{F\\vDash [n],\\, F\\wedge C_n=([n])} \\tp(F)\n\\]\nwhere $C_n$ denotes the canonical linear order on $[n]$. The result follows since\n$F\\wedge C_n=([n])$ if and only if $F$ is indecomposable.\n\n(Alternatively, we may prove this result by appealing to~\\eqref{e:bool-tran3} as in Example~\\ref{eg:globaldes}.)\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\nLet $\\thh$ and $\\mathbf{k}$ be connected Hopf monoids.\nThe Boolean transform of the dimension sequence of $\\thh\\times\\mathbf{k}$\ncan be explicitly described \nin terms of the Boolean transforms of the dimension sequences of $\\thh$ and $\\mathbf{k}$;\nsee Proposition~\\ref{p:bool-had} below.\n\nFor example, let $b_n$ be the Boolean transform\nof the dimension sequence of $\\tLL$ (Example~\\ref{eg:LL}).\nThis is sequence~\\cite[A113871]{Slo:oeis} and its\nfirst few terms are $1,3,29,499$.\nRecalling that $\\tLL\\cong \\wL^*\\times\\wL$ and\nemploying~\\eqref{e:bool-had} we readily obtain that $b_n$\ncounts the number of pairs $(l,m)$ of linear orders on $[n]$\nsuch that $\\alpha \\wedge \\beta = (n)$,\nwhere the sequence of indecomposables of $l$ has size $\\alpha$ and\nthat of $m$ has size $\\beta$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nTheorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf} states that if $\\thh$ is a connected $q$-Hopf monoid, then \nthe Boolean transform of $\\ordi{\\thh}{x}$ is nonnegative. This was deduced by considering the Hadamard product of $\\thh$ with $\\wL$.\nOne may also consider the Hadamard product of $\\thh$ with an arbitrary free Hopf monoid.\nThen, using Theorem~\\ref{t:freeness}\ntogether with~\\eqref{e:type-free2} and~\\eqref{e:type-hadamard2}, one obtains that\nfor any series $A(x)\\in \\mathbb{N}{[\\![} x{]\\!]}$ with nonnegative Boolean transform, the Hadamard product $\\ordi{\\thh}{x}\\times A(x)$ also has nonnegative Boolean transform.\nHowever, this does not impose any additional conditions on  $\\ordi{\\thh}{x}$,\nin view of Corollary~\\ref{c:submonoid}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\subsection{Non-attainable sequences}\\label{ss:non}\n\nThe question arises whether condition~\\eqref{e:ordi-hopf} characterizes\nthe dimension sequence of a connected Hopf monoid. In other words,\ngiven a sequence of nonnegative integers $b_n$, $n\\geq 1$, \nis there a connected $q$-Hopf monoid $\\thh$ such that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:ordi-hopf2}\n1-\\frac{1}{\\ordi{\\thh}{x}} = \\sum_{n\\geq 1} b_n x^n\n\\end{equation}\nholds? In other words, the question is\nwhether $b_n$ is the Boolean transform of the\ndimension sequence of a connected $q$-Hopf monoid. The answer is negative,\nas the following result shows.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{p:ordi-hopf}\nConsider the sequence defined by\n\\[\nb_n:= \\begin{cases}\n 1 & \\text{ if $n=2$,} \\\\\n 0        & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nThen there is no connected $q$-bimonoid $\\thh$ for which~\\eqref{e:ordi-hopf2} holds,\nregardless of $q$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose such $\\thh$ exists; let $a_n$ be its dimension sequence.\nThen $b_n$ is the Boolean transform of $a_n$, and~\\eqref{e:bool-tran3}\nimplies that\n\\[\na_n:= \\begin{cases}\n 1 & \\text{ if $n$ is even,} \\\\\n 0        & \\text{ if $n$ is odd.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n\nRecall from Section~\\ref{ss:con-hopf} that for any decomposition $I=S\\sqcup T$,\nthe composite $\\Delta_{S,T}\\mu_{S,T}$ is the identity. \nIt follows in the present situation that\n$\\mu_{S,T}$ and $\\Delta_{S,T}$ are inverse \nwhenever $S$ and $T$ are of even cardinality.\nNow let\n\\[\nI=\\{a,b,c,d\\},\\quad S=\\{a,b\\},\\quad T=\\{c,d\\},\\quad S'=\\{a,c\\},\\quad\\text{and}\\quad T'=\\{b,d\\}\n\\]\nand consider the commutative diagram~\\eqref{e:compr}.\nThe bottom horizontal composite in this diagram is an isomorphism between one-dimensional vector spaces,\nwhile the composite obtained by going up, across and down is the zero map.\nThis is a contradiction.\n\\end{proof}\n\nLet $k$ be a positive integer and define, for $n\\geq 1$,\n\\[\nb^{(k)}_n:= \\begin{cases}\n 1 & \\text{ if $n=k$,} \\\\\n 0        & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nThe inverse Boolean transform of $b^{(k)}_n$ is\n\\[\na^{(k)}_n:= \\begin{cases}\n 1 & \\text{ if $n\\equiv 0\\!\\!\\mod k$,} \\\\\n 0        & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nAn argument similar to that in Proposition~\\ref{p:ordi-hopf} shows that, if $k\\geq 2$,\nthere is no connected $q$-Hopf monoid with dimension sequence $a^{(k)}_n$.\n(The exponential Hopf monoid~\\cite[Example~8.15]{AguMah:2010} has dimension sequence $a^{(1)}_n$.)\n\n\\subsection{Comparison with previously known conditions}\\label{ss:comparison}\n\nThe paper~\\cite{AL:2012} provides various sets of conditions that the dimension sequence $a_n$\nof a connected Hopf monoid must satisfy. For instance,~\\cite[Proposition~4.1]{AL:2012}\nstates that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:submult}\na_ia_j \\leq a_n\n\\end{equation}\nfor $n=i+j$ and every $i,j\\geq 1$. In addition, the coefficients of the power series\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:exp}\n\\frac{1 + \\sum_{n\\geq 1} a_n x^n}{1 + \\sum_{n\\geq 1} \\frac{a_n}{n!} x^n}\n\\end{equation}\nare nonnegative~\\cite[Corollary 3.3]{AL:2012}, and~\\cite[Equation~(3.2)]{AL:2012} states that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:addcond}\na_3\\geq 3a_2a_1-2a_1^3.\n\\end{equation}\nWe proceed to compare these conditions with those imposed by Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf}.\n\nThe inequalities~\\eqref{e:submult} are implied by Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf}, \nin view of Lemma~\\ref{l:submul}. \nAn example of a sequence that satisfies~\\eqref{e:submult} but whose  Boolean transform fails to be nonnegative is the following:\n\\[\na_n := \\begin{cases}\nn & \\text{ if $n\\leq 4$,} \\\\\n2^n         & \\text{ if $n\\geq 5$.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n(The first terms of the Boolean transform are $b_1=1$, $b_2=1$, $b_3=0$, $b_4=-1$.)\nThus, the conditions imposed by Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf} are\nstrictly stronger than~\\eqref{e:submult}.\n\nCondition~\\eqref{e:exp} is also implied by Theorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf}, \nin view of Lemma~\\ref{l:increasing} (with $w_n=\\frac{1}{n!}$). \n\nOn the other hand, condition~\\eqref{e:addcond} is \\emph{not} implied by \nTheorem~\\ref{t:ordi-hopf}. To see this, let $a_n$ be the sequence of Fibonacci numbers,\ndefined by $a_0=a_1=1$ and\n\\[\na_n = a_{n-1}+a_{n-2}\n\\]\nfor $n\\geq 2$. The Boolean transform is nonnegative; indeed, it is simply given by\n\\[\nb_n = \\begin{cases}\n1 & \\text{ if $n\\leq 2$,} \\\\\n0 & \\text{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nHowever, condition~\\eqref{e:addcond} is not satisfied.\n\nThe previous example shows that there is no connected Hopf monoid with\ndimensions given by the Fibonacci sequence. It also provides another example\nfor which the answer to question~\\eqref{e:ordi-hopf2} is negative.\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nIn 1976 Michael Atiyah\n\\cite{Atiyah:1976:elliptic}\nintroduced $L^2$-cohomology and $L^2$-Betti numbers\nof manifolds with non-trivial fundamental group\nand asked whether these numbers can be irrational.\nFor background on these concepts we refer to\nthe book~\\cite{Lueck:2002:invariants}.\n\nIt was shown later that \nAtiyah's question is equivalent to a purely analytic problem\non group von Neumann algebras\nand we will exclusively work in this context.\nTherefore no knowledge of cohomology theory and geometry is required\nin the present paper, and in the remainder of this section\nwe recall a few basic facts from von Neumann algebra theory\nwhich are necessary to state Atiyah's question.\nLet $\\Gamma$ be a finitely presented discrete group and $\\IQ\\Gamma$ its rational group\nring.\nAn element of this ring can be represented as a bounded left convolution\noperator on the space $\\ell_2(\\Gamma)$ of square summable functions\non $\\Gamma$. Denote this representation by $\\lambda$.\nThe equivalent formulation of Atiyah's question in this\nsetting is:\n\n\\emph{\nLet $\\opT\\in M_n(\\IQ\\Gamma)$ be a symmetric element. Is it possible that \nthe von Neumann dimension $\\dim_{L(\\Gamma)} \\ker \\lambda(\\opT)$ is an irrational\nnumber?\n}\n\nHere the \\emph{von Neumann dimension} is to be understood in the setting\nof the group von Neumann algebra, denoted $L(\\Gamma)$,\nwhich is the completion of the rational convolution operator algebra in the\nweak operator topology. More precisely, one looks for matrices\nof convolution operators, but for simplicity, in the present paper we will\nwork in $L(\\Gamma)$ exclusively.\nA symmetric element $\\opT\\in\\IQ\\Gamma$ gives rise to a selfadjoint\nconvolution operator $\\lambda(\\opT)$, all of whose spectral projections\nlie in the von Neumann algebra $L(\\Gamma)$.\nOn $L(\\Gamma)$ there is a normal\nfaithful trace $\\tau(\\opT) = \\langle \\opT\\delta_e,\\delta_e\\rangle$\nand the value of $\\tau(p)$ at projections $p\\in L(\\Gamma)$\nis called the \\emph{von Neumann dimension function}.\nThe von Neumann dimension of a closed subspace of $\\ell_2(\\Gamma)$\nis the von Neumann dimension of the corresponding orthogonal\nprojection, if the latter happens to be an element of $L(\\Gamma)$.\n\nWhile rationality of kernel dimensions has been shown for many\nexamples, (see, e.g., \\cite {Linnell:1993:division,LinnellSchick:2007:finite}),\nrecently Atiyah's question was answered affirmatively\nby Tim Austin~\\cite{Austin:2009:rational}\nwho constructed an uncountable family of groups and rational\nconvolution operators with distinct kernel dimensions,\nwhich a fortiori must contain irrational numbers, even transcendental ones.\nSubsequently more constructive answers were given in\n\\cite{Grabowski:2010:turing,PichotSchickZuk:2010:closed}.\nA stronger variant of Atiyah's question had been solved earlier\n\\cite{GrigorchukLinnellSchickZuk:2000:Atiyah,\nGrigorchukZuk:2001:lamplighter,DicksSchick:2002:spectral}. \nIn  these examples, so-called lamplighter groups play a central role.\nAlthough these are not finitely presented,\nthey are recursively presentable (see, e.g., \\cite{Baumslag:2005:embedding})\nand therefore by a theorem of Higman \\cite{Higman:1961:subgroups}\ncan be embedded into finitely presented groups.\n\n\nIn the present paper, complementing the above results,\nwe pursue the ideas\nof~\\cite{DicksSchick:2002:spectral}\nand\ncompute explicitly the von Neumann dimension of the kernel of the\n``switch-walk-switch'' adjacency \noperators on the free lamplighter groups $\\CG_m\\wr\\IF_\\f$ \nwith respect to the canonical generators\nand show that\nthey are irrational for any $\\f\\geq 2$ and $m>2\\f-1$. \nThis provides another elementary explicit example of a rational convolution\noperator with irrational kernel dimension.\n\nThe basic ingredient is Theorem~\\ref{thm:lamplighterpercolation},\nwhich generalises the methods of Dicks and\nSchick~\\cite{DicksSchick:2002:spectral} from the infinite cyclic group\nto arbitrary discrete groups and makes a link to percolation theory,\nthus providing a quite explicit description of the spectrum of\nswitch-walk-switch\ntransition operators on lamplighter groups as the union of the spectra of\nall finite connected subgraphs of the Cayley graph.\nIn particular, the lamplighter kernel dimension equals the expected\nnormalised\nkernel dimension of the percolation cluster.\n\nThe paper is organised as follows.\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:lamplighter} we review\nthe necessary prerequisites about lamplighter groups and percolation\nand state the main result.\n\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:matchings} we recall the connection between\nspectra and matchings of finite trees and compute the generating\nfunction of the kernel dimensions of finite subtrees of\nthe Cayley graph of the free group. As a final step\nwe integrate this generating function\nin Section~\\ref{sec:parametrisation} and thus obtain the\ndimensions we are interested in. Another example of a free\nproduct of groups whose Cayley graph is not a tree is discussed in\nSection~\\ref{sec:freeproduct}.\n\n\n\n\\emph{Acknowledgements.}\nWe thank Slava Grigorchuk for explaining Atiyah's question,\nMartin Widmer and Christiaan van de Woestijne  for discussions about transcendental numbers,\nand Mark van Hoeij for a hint to compute a certain abelian integral,\nwhich ultimately led to the discovery of\nthe parametrisation \\eqref{eq:parametrisation}.\nLast but not least  we thank three anonymous referees\nfor numerous remarks which helped to improve the presentation.\n\n\\section{Lamplighter groups and percolation}\n\\label{sec:lamplighter}\nLet $G$ be a discrete group and fix a symmetic generating set $S$.\nWe denote by $\\CX=\\CX(G,S)$ the Cayley graph\nof $G$ with respect to $S$ and in the rest of the paper\nidentify the rational group algebra\nelement $\\opT=\\sum_{s\\in S}s$ with the corresponding convolution operator,\nwhich coincides with the adjacency operator on $\\CX$.\n\n\\subsection{Lamplighter groups}\nThe name \\emph{lamplighter group} has been coined in  recent years\nto denote   wreath products of the form $\\Gamma=\\CG_m\\wr G$.\nThis is the semidirect product\n$\\LL\\rtimes G$, where $\\CG_m$ is the cyclic group of order $m$\nand $\\LL=\\bigoplus_G \\CG_m$ is the group\nof \\emph{configurations} $\\eta:G\\to \\CG_m$ with finite support,\nwhere we define $\\supp \\eta = \\{x\\in G : \\eta(x) \\ne \\eCm\\}$.\nThe group operation on $\\LL$ is pointwise multiplication in $\\CG_m$\nand the natural\nleft action of $G$ on $\\LL$ given by $L_g\\eta(x) = \\eta(g^{-1}x)$\ninduces the twisted group law on $\\CG_m\\wr G$ \n$$\n(\\eta,g)(\\eta',g') = (\\eta\\cdot L_g\\eta',gg')\n$$\nCertain random walks on $\\CG_m\\wr G$ can be interpreted as\na lamplighter walking around on $G$ and turning\non and off lamps. A pair $(\\eta,g)$ encodes both\nthe position of the lamplighter as an element $g\\in G$ \nand the states of the lamps as a function $\\eta\\in\\LL$.\n\nWe will consider here the ``switch-walk-switch'' lamplighter adjacency operator\n$$\n\\tilde{\\opT} = \\sum_{s\\in S} EsE\n$$\non the lamplighter group $\\Gamma$ where $E=\\frac{1}{m}\\sum_{h\\in\\CG_m} h$\nis the idempotent corresponding to the uniform distribution on the lamp group\n$\\CG_m$. \nThe \\emph{underlying} convolution operator on $G$ is $\\opT=\\sum_{s\\in S} s$.\nHere we identify $\\CG_m$ and $G$ with subgroups of $\\Gamma$ via\nthe respective embeddings\n$$\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\CG_m&\\to \\Gamma & \\qquad\\qquad G &\\to\\Gamma \\\\\n h &\\mapsto (\\delta_e^h,e)   & g &\\mapsto (\\iota, g)\n\\end{aligned}\n$$\nwhere $\\iota$ is the neutral element of $\\LL$ and \n$$\n\\delta_g^h(x) =\n\\begin{cases}\n  h & x=g\\\\\n  \\eCm & x\\ne g\n\\end{cases}\n.\n$$\n\\subsection{Percolation clusters}\n\nLet $\\CX=(V,E)$ be a graph. We use the standard notation\n``$x\\in\\CX$'' for vertices and $x\\sim y$ for the neighbour relation.\nFix a parameter $0 < \\mathsf{p} < 1$. In \\emph{Bernoulli\nsite percolation} with parameter $\\mathsf{p}$ on $\\CX$, we have i.i.d.~Bernoulli random\nvariables $Y_x\\,$, $x \\in \\CX\\,$, sitting at the vertices of $\\CX$, with\n$$\n\\Prob_{\\mathsf{p}}[Y_x=1] = \\mathsf{p} ,\\qquad \\Prob_{\\mathsf{p}}[Y_x=0] = q := 1-\\mathsf{p}\\,.\n$$\nWe can realise those random variables on the probability space \n$\\Omega=\\{0,1\\}^\\CX$ with a suitable probability measure $\\Prob$.\nGiven $\\omega\\in\\Omega$, denote by $\\CX(\\omega)$  the full subgraph\nof $\\CX$ induced on $\\{x : Y_x(\\omega)=1\\}$ and for any vertex $x\\in \\CX$, denote by\n$C_x(\\omega)$ the connected component of $\\CX(\\omega)$ containing the vertex $x$,\nwhich is called the \\emph{percolation cluster} at $x$.\nIt is well known that for every connected graph\nthere is a critical parameter $\\mathsf{p}_c$\nsuch that for any vertex $x$ a phase transition occurs in the sense that\nfor $\\mathsf{p}<\\mathsf{p}_c$ the cluster $C_x$ is almost surely finite and for\n$\\mathsf{p}>\\mathsf{p}_c$ it is infinite with positive probability.\nIn order to make use of this fact we recall a combinatorial interpretation\nof criticality.\n\\begin{definition}\n  For a subset $\\clA\\subseteq \\CX$ we denote its \\emph{vertex boundary}\n  $$\n  d\\clA = \\{y\\in \\CX : y\\not\\in \\clA, y\\sim x \\text{ for some $x\\in \\clA$}\\}\n  .\n  $$\n  For $x\\in \\CX$, we denote\n  $$\n  \\mathcal{A}_x=\\{\\clA\\subseteq \\CX: x\\in \\clA, \\text{ $\\clA$ finite and connected}\\}\n  \\cup\\{\\emptyset\\}\n  $$\n  the set of finite, possibly empty, path-connected neighbourhoods of $x$.\n  These sets are sometimes called \\emph{lattice animals}.\n  The boundary of the empty animal \n  is defined to be \n  the set $\\{x\\}$. We denote by $\\mathcal{A}_x^*$ the set of animals at $x$ without\n  the empty animal.\n\\end{definition}\nThe probability of a fixed $\\clA\\in\\mathcal{A}_x$ to occur as  percolation\ncluster at $x$ is\n$$\n\\IP[C_x=\\clA] = \\mathsf{p}^{\\abs{\\clA}} q^{\\abs{d\\clA}}\n;\n$$\nthus for $\\mathsf{p}<\\mathsf{p}_c$ we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{equ:sump1-p=1}\n\\sum_{\\clA\\in \\mathcal{A}_x} \\mathsf{p}^{\\abs{\\clA}} q^{\\abs{d\\clA}} = 1\n\\end{equation}\nbecause some $\\clA\\in \\mathcal{A}_x$ occurs almost surely.\n\nNow for a fixed animal $\\clA$ consider the truncated operator \n$$\n\\opT_\\clA = P_\\clA\\opT P_\\clA\n$$\nwhere $P_\\clA$ is the orthogonal projection onto the finite dimensional\nsubspace $\\{f\\in \\ell_2(\\CX) : \\supp f\\subseteq \\clA\\}$.\nWe denote the random percolation  adjacency operator by\n$$\n\\opT_\\omega = \\opT_{C_e(\\omega)},\n$$\n\nand by $\\dim\\ker \\opT_\\clA$ the dimension of the kernel of $\\opT_F$\nas a finite matrix, while $\\frac{\\dim\\ker\\opT_\\clA}{\\abs{\\clA}}$ will\nbe  the\nvon Neumann dimension of the kernel of $\\opT_\\clA$ regarded as an element\nof the finite von Neumann algebra $M_{\\abs{\\clA}}(\\IC)$ with\nvon Neumann trace $\\frac{1}{\\abs{\\clA}}\\Tr$.\nSpecial care is needed for the  empty animal, for which we define both\n  the cardinality of the boundary \n  and the von Neumann kernel dimension to be $1$. \n\n\nThen we have the following relation between the spectrum of the lamplighter operator\n$\\tilde{\\opT}$ and the spectra of $\\opT_\\clA$.\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}[{\\cite{LehnerNeuhauserWoess:spectrum,Lehner:2009:eigenspaces}}]\n  \\label{thm:lamplighterpercolation}\n  The spectral measure of the lamplighter adjacency operator $\\tilde{\\opT}$ of\n  order $m$ on a Cayley graph\n  $\\CX$ is equal to the expected spectral measure of the random truncated\n  adjacency operator $\\opT_\\omega$ on the percolation clusters of $\\CX$ with\n  percolation parameter $p=1\/m$.\n  In addition, if $p<p_c$, then there is a one-to-one correspondence\n  between the eigenspaces of $\\tilde{\\opT}$ and the collection of eigenspaces\n  of $\\opT_\\omega$ and we have the formula\n  \\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:dimensionformula}\n  \\dim_{L(\\Gamma)} \\ker \\tilde{\\opT} = \\IE \\frac{\\dim \\ker \\opT_\\omega}{\\abs{C_x(\\omega)}}\n = \\sum_{\\clA\\in\\mathcal{A}_e} \\frac{\\dim \\ker \\opT_\\clA}{\\abs{\\clA}}\n p^{\\abs{\\clA}}q^{\\abs{d\\clA}}\n .\n  \\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\nIn general it is hard to evaluate formula~\\eqref{eq:dimensionformula}\nbecause one has to compute the kernels of the adjacency matrices of\nall finite\nclusters. Due to the recursive structure of the Cayley tree however\nit is possible to compute an algebraic equation for the generating function\n$$\n\\sum_{T\\in \\mathcal{A}_e^*} (\\dim\\ker \\opT_\\clA) x^{\\abs{\\clA}}\n$$\non free groups and\nto evaluate~\\eqref{eq:dimensionformula} by integrating this function,\nthus obtaining our main result, which concludes this section.\n\\begin{theorem}\n  Denote $g_1,g_2,\\dots,g_\\f$ the canonical generators\n  of the free group  $\\IF_\\f$ and\n  consider the adjacency operator $\\opT=\\sum g_i+g_i^{-1}$ \n  on its Cayley graph. Then the von Neumann dimension of the kernel of\n  the corresponding lamplighter operator\n  $\\tilde{\\opT}=E\\opT E$ on $\\CG_m\\wr\\IF_\\f$\n  is the number\n  $$\n  \\dim_{L(\\Gamma)}\\ker \\tilde{\\opT}\n  = 1-2p+\\frac{(\\tau(p)-1)(2-2\\f+2\\f{}\\tau(p))}{\\tau(p)^2}\n  $$\n  where $p=1\/m$ and $\\tau(p)$ is the unique positive solution of the equation\n  $t^{2\\f-1}-t^{2\\f-2}=p$. For $\\f>1$, this is an irrational algebraic number,\n  e.g., for $\\f=2$ and $m=4$, the dimension is\n  $$ -\\frac56 - \\frac{400}{3(766+258\\sqrt{129})^{1\/3}} +\n  \\frac{2(766+258\\sqrt{129})^{1\/3}}{3} \\approx 0.850971. \n  $$\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{remark}\n  Similar computations are possible in more general free product groups\n  $G_1*G_2*\\dots*G_n$, where each factor $G_i$ is a finite group\n  whose Cayley graph possesses only cycles of length $\\equiv 2\\mod 6$,\n  like the cyclic groups $\\IZ_2$,  $\\IZ_6$,  $\\IZ_{10}$, etc.\n  An example is briefly discussed in Section~\\ref{sec:freeproduct}.\n  It should be noted however that our technique does not work\n  for nonzero eigenvalues, because in this case \n  it is more complicated to obtain the multiplicity of the eigenvalue.\n  Moreover, \n  in contrast to other approaches\n  (\\cite{DicksSchick:2002:spectral,GrigorchukLinnellSchickZuk:2000:Atiyah}),\n  it is restricted to adjacency operators,\n  i.e., all group elements get the same weight.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Matchings, rooted trees, and generating functions}\n\\label{sec:matchings}\nIn this section we  prepare the evaluation of the series\n\\eqref{eq:dimensionformula} by computing a generating function.\nTo this end let us recall some notations.\n\nLet $G=(V,E)$ be a finite graph. \nBy \\emph{characteristic polynomial} $\\chi(G,x)$ \n(resp., \\emph{spectrum, kernel dimension}) \n\\emph{of a graph} we mean the characteristic polynomial (resp., spectrum,\nkernel dimension) of its adjacency matrix.\nA \\emph{matching} of a finite graph is a set of disjoint edges,\ni.e., every vertex occurs as an end point of at most one edge.\nA \\emph{perfect matching} is a matching which covers all the vertices\nof the graph.\nThe \\emph{matching polynomial} of a graph on $n$ vertices is the polynomial\n$$\n\\sum_{j \\geq 0} (-1)^j m(G,j)\\, x^{n-2j},\n$$\nwhere $m(G,j)$ is the number of matchings of cardinality $j$.\n\nIt is well known (see, e.g., \\cite{Godsil:1984:spectra,Cvetkovic:1988:recent})\nthat the characteristic polynomial of a finite tree\ncoincides with its matching polynomial.\nSince the kernel dimension equals the multiplicity of eigenvalue zero,\nwhich in turn is the degree of the polynomial $x^n\\chi(G,x^{-1})$,\nit follows immediately that the dimension of the kernel of a tree is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:kerdim}\n\\nu(T) = \\dim \\ker T = n - 2\\mu(T),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mu(T)$ denotes the size of a matching of maximal cardinality in $T$. \nIn particular, $\\dim \\ker T = 0$ if and only if $T$ has a perfect matching. \n\n\nAs a first step to evaluate \\eqref{eq:dimensionformula}\nwe have to determine the generating function\n$$G(x) = \\sum_{T\\in \\mathcal{A}_x^*} (\\dim \\ker T)\\, x^{|T|} \n   = \\sum_{T\\in \\mathcal{A}_x^*} (|T| - 2 \\mu(T))\\, x^{|T|},$$\nwhere the sum is taken over all nonempty animals $T$, i.e., \nconnected subgraphs of the\nCayley graph of the free group $\\IF_\\f{}$ that contain the unit element $e$. \nTo this end, we regard animals as rooted trees, with the root at $e$. \n\n\\begin{definition}\n  A \\emph{ $k$-ary tree} is a planar rooted tree such that every vertex\n  has at most $k$ children. Hence every vertex has degree at most $k+1$, and the root has degree at most $k$.\n  A \\emph{branch} of a $k$-ary tree is a rooted tree obtained\n  by splitting off a neighbor of the root together with its offspring.\n  Thus a $k$-ary tree can be defined recursively as\n  a rooted tree with an ordered collection of $k$ possibly empty \n branches.\n\\end{definition}\nThus our animals are $k$-ary trees with $k=2\\f-1$, with the single exception that the root vertex may have degree $k+1$ (but all branches are $k$-ary trees according to the above definition).\nFor reasons which will become apparent soon\nwe split the family of rooted trees into two groups, \nfollowing ideas similar to those employed in \\cite{Wagner:2007:number}: \n\\begin{definition}\n  We say that a rooted tree is of \\emph{type} $A$ if it has a maximum matching\n  that leaves the root uncovered. Otherwise $T$ is of type $B$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nSuppose that $T$ is of type $A$. Then it has a maximum matching that does not\ncover the root and is therefore a union of maximum matchings in the various\nbranches of $T$. Hence if $S_1,S_2,\\cdots,S_k$ are the branches of $T$, we have \n$$\\mu(T) = \\mu(S_1) + \\mu(S_2) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k).$$\nWe claim that in this case all $S_j$ are of type $B$.\nFor, suppose on the contrary that one of the branches, say $S_j$, is of type\n$A$. Then we can choose a maximum matching in $S_j$ that does not cover the\nroot. Choose maximum matchings in all the other branches as well, and add the\nedge between the roots of $T$ and $S_j$ to obtain a matching of cardinality\n$$\\mu(S_1) + \\mu(S_2) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k) + 1,$$\ncontradiction.\nConversely, if all branches of $T$ are of type $B$, \nthen $T$ is of type $A$: clearly, the\nmaximum cardinality of a matching that does not cover the root is $\\mu(S_1) +\n\\mu(S_2) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k)$, so it remains to show that there are no\nmatchings of greater cardinality that cover the root. Suppose that such a\nmatching contains the edge between the roots of $T$ and $S_j$. Then, since\n$S_j$ is of type $B$, the remaining matching, restricted to $S_j$, can only\ncontain at most $\\mu(S_j) - 1$ edges. Each of the other branches $S_i$ can only\ncontribute $\\mu(S_i)$ edges, so that we obtain a total of\n$$\\mu(S_1) + \\mu(S_2) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k)$$\nedges, as claimed. This proves the following fact:\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:rec}\n  \\begin{enumerate}\n   \\item Let $T$ be a rooted tree and $S_1,\\ldots,S_k$ its branches,\n    then we have\n$$\\mu(T) = \\sum_{i=1}^k \\mu(S_i) + \\begin{cases} 0 & \\text{ if $T$ is of type $A$,} \\\\ 1 & \\text{ otherwise.} \\end{cases}$$\n\\item \nA rooted tree $T$ is of type $A$ if and only if all its branches are of type $B$. \n  \\end{enumerate}\n\\end{lemma}\nThe only part that was not explicitly proven above is the formula for $\\mu(T)$\nin the case that $T$ is of type $B$. This, however, is easy as well: Clearly\nthe cardinality of a matching is at most $\\mu(S_1) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k) + 1$\n(the summand $1$ accounting for the edge that covers the root). On the other\nhand, $\\mu(T)$ must be strictly greater than $\\mu(S_1) + \\cdots + \\mu(S_k)$,\nsince there are matchings of this cardinality that do not cover the root.\n\n\\begin{remark}\n  Consistently with Lemma~\\ref{lem:rec}\n  we define the tree $T_1$ that only consists of a single vertex to be of\n  type $A$ with $\\mu(T_1) = 0$ and \n  the empty tree $T_0$  to be of type $B$ with $\\mu(T_0)= 0$.\n  This is important for the generating functions constructed below.\n\\end{remark}\n\nSince we are interested in the parameter $\\nu(T) = \\dim \\ker T = |T| - 2\\mu(T)$\nrather than $\\mu(T)$ itself, we first translate the above formula to a\nrecursion for $\\nu(T)$: since $|T| = |S_1| + \\cdots + |S_k| + 1$, we have\n$$\\nu(T) = \\sum_{i=1}^k \\nu(S_i) + \\begin{cases} 1 & \\text{ if $T$ is of type\n    $A$,} \\\\ -1 & \\text{ otherwise.} \\end{cases}$$\n\nNow let $\\trees_k$, $\\trees_{k,A}$, $\\trees_{k,B}$ denote the set of all $k$-ary trees, $k$-ary trees of type $A$ and $k$-ary trees of type $B$ respectively.\nWe define the bivariate generating functions\n$$\nA:=A(u,x) = \\sum_{T \\in \\trees_{k,A}} u^{\\nu(T)} x^{|T|}\n\\qquad \\text{and}\n\\qquad B:= B(u,x) = \\sum_{T \\in \\trees_{k,B}} u^{\\nu(T)} x^{|T|},\n$$ \nthe\nsummation being over $k$-ary trees in both cases (including the empty tree in\nthe case of $B$, and the one-vertex tree in the case of $A$).\nSince any tree $T$ of type $A$ is a grafting of $k$ (possibly empty) branches $S_1,\\ldots,S_k$ of type $B$ (which we write as $T = \\bigvee_{i=1}^k S_i$),\nwe obtain\n\\begin{align*}\n  A(u,x)\n  &= \\sum_{T\\in \\trees_{k,A}} u^{\\nu(T)}\\,x^{\\abs{T}}\\\\\n  &= \\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k,B}} u^{\\nu(\\bigvee_{i=1}^k\n    S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{\\bigvee_{i=1}^k S_i}}\\\\\n  &= \\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k,B}} u^{1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\nu(S_i)}\\,x^{1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\abs{S_i}}\\\\\n  &= ux \\prod_{i=1}^k \\sum_{S_i\\in \\trees_{k,B}} u^{\\nu(S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{S_i}}\\\\\n  &= ux  B(u,x)^k\n  .\n\\end{align*}\n\nSimilarly, in the case of type $B$, we get the following equation\n\\begin{align*}\n  B(u,x)\n  &= \\sum_{T\\in \\trees_{k,B}} u^{\\nu(T)}\\,x^{\\abs{T}}\\\\\n  &= 1 + \\sideset{}{^\\prime}\\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k}} u^{\\nu(\\bigvee_{i=1}^k\n    S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{\\bigvee_{i=1}^k S_i}}\\\\\n  &= 1 + \\sideset{}{^\\prime}\\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k}} u^{-1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\nu(S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{\\bigvee_{i=1}^k S_i}},\\\\\n\\intertext{where we took special care of the empty tree \n  and the remaining sum indicated by $\\sum'$ runs over all $k$-tuples of trees such that\n  at least one of them is not of type $B$; \n this means that we have to subtract the sum over $k$-tuples of type B trees\n from the sum over $k$-tuples of arbitrary trees:}\nB(u,x)  &= 1 + \\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k}} \n      u^{-1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\nu(S_i)}\n      \\,\n      x^{1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\abs{S_i}}\n    -\n    \\sum_{S_1,\\dots,S_k\\in \\trees_{k,B}} \n      u^{-1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\nu(S_i)}\n      \\,\n      x^{1+\\sum_{i=1}^k\\abs{S_i}}\n    \\\\\n  &= 1 + \\frac{x}{u}\n     \\biggl(\n       \\prod_{i=1}^k \\sum_{S_i\\in \\trees_{k}}  u^{\\nu(S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{S_i}} \n       -\n       \\prod_{i=1}^k \\sum_{S_i\\in \\trees_{k,B}}  u^{\\nu(S_i)}\\,x^{\\abs{S_i}} \n     \\biggr)\\\\\n  &= 1 + \\frac{x}{u}\n     \\biggl(\n       \\bigl(A(u,x)+B(u,x)\\bigr)^k - B(u,x)^k\n     \\biggr)\n     .\n\\end{align*}\n\nIn conclusion, we have translated the recursive description into\nthe following two functional equations for $A(u,x)$ and $B(u,x)$:\n\\begin{equation}\n  \\label{eq:ABequations}\n  \\begin{aligned}\nA(u,x) &= ux B(u,x)^k, \\\\\nB(u,x) &= 1 + \\frac{x}{u} ((A(u,x)+B(u,x))^k - B(u,x)^k). \\\\\n  \\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nFinally, we obtain the following generating function for animals (the only\ndifference lying in the possibility that the root is allowed to have degree\n$k+1 = 2\\f{}$ as well and the empty tree is excluded this time):\n$$F(u,x) = \\sum_{\\substack{ T \\in\\mathcal{A}_e^*}} u^{\\nu(T)} x^{|T|} = ux B(u,x)^{k+1} + \\frac{x}{u} ((A(u,x)+B(u,x))^{k+1} - (B(u,x))^{k+1}).$$\nWe are mainly interested in the derivative with respect to $u$, since\n$$G(x) = \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u} F(u,x) \\Big|_{u=1} = \\sum_{T \\in \\mathcal{A}_e^*} \\nu(T) x^{|T|}.$$\nTo save space, we will use the customary abbreviation $F_u$ etc.\\ to denote\npartial derivatives with respect to $u$. First note that\n$$\nA(u,x)+u^2B(u,x) = u^2+ux(A(u,x)+B(u,x))^k,\n$$\nand we can rewrite the identities~\\eqref{eq:ABequations} as\n\\begin{equation}\n  \\label{eq:BkABkequations}\n  \\begin{aligned}\n    B(u,x)^k &= \\frac{A(u,x)}{ux}, \\\\\n    (A(u,x)+B(u,x))^k &= \\frac{A(u,x)+u^2(B(u,x)-1)}{ux}.\n  \\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nTaking the derivative of the second identity at $u=1$ we obtain\n$$\nA_u(1,x) + B_u(1,x)  = \\frac{2(1-B(1,x))+x (A(1,x)+B(1,x))^k}{1-kx(A(1,x)+B(1,x))^{k-1}}.\n$$\nUsing the identities~\\eqref{eq:BkABkequations} we can express $F$ as\n$$\nF(u,x) = A(u,x)B(u,x)(1-\\frac{1}{u^2}) + (A(u,x)+B(u,x))(\\frac{A(u,x)}{u^2} + B(u,x)-1)\n$$\nand the derivative at $u=1$ is\n\\begin{align*}\nF_u(1,x)\n  &= 2A(1,x)B(1,x) + (A_u(1,x)+B_u(1,x))(A(1,x)+B(1,x)-1) \\\\\n  &\\phantom{=}+ (A(1,x)+B(1,x))(-2A(1,x)     +A_u(1,x)+B_u(1,x)) \\\\\n  &= -2A(1,x)^2+(A_u(1,x)+B_u(1,x))(2A(1,x)+2B(1,x)-1)\\\\\n  &= -2A(1,x)^2\n     + \\frac{2(1-B(1,x))+x(A(1,x)+B(1,x))^k}{1-kx(A(1,x)+B(1,x))^{k-1}}\n      (2(A(1,x)+B(1,x))-1)\\\\\n  &= -2A(1,x)^2\n     + \\frac{(2(1-B(1,x))+A(1,x)+B(1,x)-1)(2(A(1,x)+B(1,x))-1)}{1-k(A(1,x)+B(1,x)-1)\/(A(1,x)+B(1,x))},\n\\end{align*}\nmaking use of~\\eqref{eq:BkABkequations} in the last step once again. So we finally obtain\n\\begin{multline}\\label{eq:G_in_terms_of_B}\nG(x) = F_u(1,x) \\\\\n= -2A(1,x)^2 + \\frac{(A(1,x)+B(1,x))(A(1,x)-B(1,x)+1)(2A(1,x)+2B(1,x)-1)}{k-(k-1)(A(1,x)+B(1,x))}.$$\n\\end{multline}\n\n\\section{Parametrisation}\n\\label{sec:parametrisation}\n\nRecall that we are considering percolation on a $(k+1)$-regular tree, where $p = \\frac{1}{m} < \\frac{1}{k}$ is the percolation probability, and $q = 1-p$. For an animal $T$ (i.e., a potential percolation cluster), the size of the boundary is $|dT| = 2 + (k-1)|T|$, as can be seen immediately by induction on $|T|$. In view of the identity~\\eqref{eq:dimensionformula}, we are interested in the expression\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:our_constant}\n\\begin{split}\nC(p) &= q + \\sum_{T\\in\\mathcal{A}_e^*} \\frac{\\dim \\ker T}{|T|} p^{|T|}q^{2+(k-1)|T|} =\nq + q^2 \\sum_{T\\in\\mathcal{A}_e^*} \\frac{\\dim \\ker T}{|T|} (pq^{k-1})^{|T|} \\\\\n&= q + q^2 \\int_0^{pq^{k-1}} \\frac{G(x)}{x}\\,dx,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nsince it gives the von Neumann dimension of the kernel of the lamplighter operator $\\tilde{\\opT}$ on $\\CG_m\\wr\\IF_\\f$. The summand $q$ takes care of the ``empty'' animal, i.e., the possibility that the vertex $x$ is not actually in $\\CX(\\omega)$ (which happens with probability $q$).\n\nIn order to compute this integral, we determine a parametrisation of $G$; since\n$G$ is a rational function of $x$, $A$ and $B$, we first find such a parametrisation\nfor the functions $A$ and $B$. \nThis is possible because the implicit equation~\\eqref{eq:ABequations}\nfor $B$ defines an algebraic curve of genus zero.\nRecall that $A = A(1,x)$ and $B = B(1,x)$ satisfy the equations\n\\begin{align*}\nA &= xB^k, \\\\\nB &= 1+x((A+B)^k-B^k).\n\\end{align*}\nIt turns out that the following parametrisation satisfies these two equations:\n\\begin{equation}\n  \\label{eq:parametrisation}\n  \\begin{aligned}\nx &= (t-1)t^{k-1}(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)^{k-1}, \\\\\nA &= \\frac{t-1}{t(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)}, \\\\\nB &= \\frac{1}{t(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)}.\n  \\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nThis parametrisation was essentially obtained by ``guessing'', i.e., finding\nthe parametrisation in special cases, which was done with an algorithm\nby M.~van~Hoeij~\\cite {vanHoeij:1994:algorithm} in the\n\\verb|algcurves| package of the computer algebra system\n\\verb|Maple|${}^\\mathrm{TM}$~\\cite{Maple10},\nand extrapolating to the general case. Once the parametrisation has\nbeen found, however, it is easy to verify it directly.\n\nThe two equations determine the coefficients of the expansions of $A$ and $B$ at $x = 0$ uniquely, hence they define unique functions $A$ and $B$ that are analytic at $0$. The above parametrisation provides such an analytic solution in which $t = 1$ corresponds to $x = 0$. Furthermore, the interval $[1,t_0]$, where $t_0$ is the solution of $t^k-t^{k-1} = \\frac{1}{k}$, maps to the interval $[0,x_0]$ with \n$$x_0 = \\frac1k \\left(1 - \\frac1k \\right)^{k-1},$$\nand the parametrisation is monotone on this interval. At $t = t_0$, it has a singularity (of square root type), which corresponds to the fact that $p = \\frac1k$ is the critical percolation parameter and that $x_0$ is the radius of convergence and the smallest singularity of $A$ and $B$ (and thus in turn $G$). Therefore, the computation of~\\eqref{eq:our_constant} amounts to integrating a rational function between $0$ and the unique solution $\\tau(p)$ of\n$$(t-1)t^{k-1}(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)^{k-1} = pq^{k-1}$$\ninside the interval $[1,t_0]$. To show existence and uniqueness of $\\tau(p)$, note again that the function $x(1-x)^{k-1}$ is strictly increasing on $[0,\\frac{1}{k}]$ and thus maps this interval bijectively to $[0,x_0]$. Moreover, it follows that $\\tau(p)$ is the unique positive solution of\n$$\\tau(p)^k-\\tau(p)^{k-1} = p.$$\nPlugging the parametrisations of $A$ and $B$ into~\\eqref{eq:G_in_terms_of_B} yields\n$$G(x) =\\frac{(t-1)(t^{2k}(1-t)+t^{k-1}((2k+1)t^2-(4k+2)t+2k)+2)}{t^2(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)^2(1+kt^{k-1}-kt^k)}.$$\nTogether with\n$$\\frac{dx}{x} = \\frac{(kt-k+1)(1+kt^{k-1}-kt^k)}{t(t-1)(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)}\\,dt,$$\nwe finally end up with an integral which has a surprisingly simple antiderivative for arbitrary $k$. This antiderivative was also found by means of computer algebra, but can of course be checked directly to be an antiderivative:\n\\begin{align*}\nC(p) &= q + q^2 \\int_1^{\\tau(p)} \\frac{(kt-k+1)(t^{2k}(1-t)+t^{k-1}((2k+1)t^2-(4k+2)t+2k)+2)}{t^3(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)^3}\\,dt \\\\\n&= q + q^2 \\frac{(t-1)(1-k+(k+1)t-t^{k+1})}{t^2(1+t^{k-1}-t^k)^2} \\Big|_{t = \\tau(p)} \\\\\n&= q - p + \\frac{(\\tau(p)-1)(1-k+(k+1)\\tau(p))}{\\tau(p)^2},\n\\end{align*}\nwhich shows that the constant $C(p)$ is always algebraic, since $p = \\frac{1}{m}$ is rational in our context and $\\tau(p)$ is a solution to an algebraic equation. In particular, for $k = 1$, one has $\\tau(p) = 1 + p$, which yields\n$$C(p) = 3 - 2p - \\frac{2}{1+p}.$$\nIn general, however, $C(p)$ is not rational: take, for instance, $k = 3$ and $p = \\frac14$, to obtain\n$$C(p) = -\\frac56 - \\frac{400}{3(766+258\\sqrt{129})^{1\/3}} + \\frac{2(766+258\\sqrt{129})^{1\/3}}{3} \\approx 0.850971.$$\nOne can even easily prove the following:\n\\begin{proposition}\nIf $p = \\frac1m$ for $m > k \\geq 3$, then $C(p)$ is an irrational algebraic number.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose that $C(p)$ is rational. Then \n$$\\frac{(\\tau(p)-1)(1-k+(k+1)\\tau(p))}{\\tau(p)^2} = \\frac{a}{b}$$\nfor some coprime integers $a,b$ with $b > 0$. Hence $\\tau = \\tau(p)$ is a root of the polynomial\n$$P(t) = (b(k+1)-a)t^2-2bkt+b(k-1).$$\nDivide by $g = \\gcd(b(k+1)-a,-2bk,b(k-1))$ to obtain a primitive polynomial $\\tilde{P}(t)$ (in the ring-theoretic sense, i.e., a polynomial whose coefficients have greatest common divisor $1$). It is easy to see that $g \\leq 2$. Now note that $\\tau$ is also a zero of\n$$Q(t) = mt^k-mt^{k-1}-1.$$\nIf $\\tau$ was rational, it would have to be of the form $\\pm \\frac{1}{r}$ (since the denominator has to divide the leading coefficient, while the numerator has to divide the constant coefficient), contradicting the fact that $\\tau(p) > 1$. Hence $\\tilde{P}$ is the minimal polynomial of $\\tau$, and $Q(t)$ must be divisible by $\\tilde{P}(t)$ in $\\IZ[t]$ (by Gauss' lemma), which implies that the constant coefficient of $\\tilde{P}$ must be $\\pm 1$. But this is only possible if $b(k-1) = g = 2$, i.e., $k = 3$, $b = 1$, and $a$ must be even. But then\n$$C(p) = q-p + \\frac{a}{b} \\geq q-p+2 = 1+2q > 1,$$\nand we reach a contradiction.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{A free product}\\label{sec:freeproduct}\n\nThe method of the preceding sections is generally not applicable if the Cayley graph is not a tree; however, \\eqref{eq:kerdim} remains true if all cycles of $T$ have length $\\equiv 2 \\mod 4$ (see for instance \\cite[Theorem 2]{Borovicanin:2009:nullity}). Hence it is possible to apply the same techique if the free group $\\IF_\\f{}$ is replaced by special free products such as $\\IZ_6 \\ast \\IZ_6$; the Cayley graph of this group has hexagons as its only cycles and therefore satisfies the aforementioned condition. Once again, one can distinguish between (rooted) animals with the property that there exists a maximum matching that does not cover the root (type A) and (rooted) animals for which this is not the case (type B) and derive recursions. In addition, one needs to take the size of the boundary of an animal into account, which is no longer uniquely determined by the size of an animal. Hence we consider the trivariate generating functions\n$$A = A(u,x,y) = \\sum_{\\clA \\text{ of type $A$}} u^{\\nu(\\clA)}\nx^{|\\clA|}y^{|d\\clA|} \\quad \\text{and} \\quad B = B(u,x,y) = \\sum_{\\clA \\text{ of type $B$}} u^{\\nu(\\clA)} x^{|\\clA|}y^{|d\\clA|},$$\nfor which one obtains, after some lengthy calculations, functional equations in analogy to those in~\\eqref{eq:ABequations} as well as an integral representation analogous to~\\ref{eq:our_constant} for the von Neumann dimension of the kernel of the lamplighter operator $\\tilde{\\opT}$ on $\\CG_m\\wr(\\IZ_6 \\ast \\IZ_6)$. \n\nIn order to determine the resulting integral, one can use the Risch-Trager algorithm, as implemented for example \nin the computer algebra system\n\\texttt{FriCAS}, a fork of ~\\cite{axiom},\nOnce again, we found that there exists an algebraic antiderivative, so that we obtain an algebraic von Neumann dimension for any $m \\geq 3$ (the critical\npercolation parameter is $p = 0.339303$ in this case, which is a zero of the polynomial $3p^5-2p^4-2p^3-2p^2-2p+1$). It is likely that it is also irrational for all $m \\geq 3$, although we do not have a proof for this conjecture. Moreover, we conjecture that in fact the kernel dimension of the adjacency operator of an arbitrary free product of\ncyclic groups $\\IZ_{4k+2}$ is algebraic (and probably irrational), but the computations outlined above quickly become intractable by\nthe present method if more complicated examples are studied.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nGeneralized eigenvalue problems (GEVP) appear in various fields and are often attributed to\nstandard eigenvalue problems (EVP). If the matrix $B$ of the matrix pencil $(A,B)$ is regular,\nthen it is possible to consider its inverse and solve it as an EVP for the matrix $B^{-1}A$.\nHowever, even when both $A$ and $B$ are sparse matrices, the matrix $B^{-1}A$ will lose\nthe sparsity of $A$ and $B$. This will lead to computational complexity and numerical instability.\nHence it is useful to consider a transformation from GEVP to EVP preserving the sparsity of\nthe original matrix without using subtractions, which can cause numerical instability,\nif possible.\n\nThe simplest GEVP treated here is a matrix pencil consisting of a tridiagonal matrix\n$A$ and an almost diagonal matrix $B$, in which a nonzero component appears in the subdiagonal\nin one place:\n\\begin{gather*}\n  A=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    a_{0, 0} & a_{0, 1}\\\\\n    a_{1, 0} & \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    & \\ddots & a_{j, j} & a_{j, j+1}\\\\\n    && a_{j+1, j} & a_{j+1, j+1} & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & \\ddots & a_{N-2, N-1}\\\\\n    &&&& a_{N-1, N-2} & a_{N-1, N-1}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  B=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    \\alpha_0\\\\\n    & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\alpha_j\\\\\n    && \\beta & \\alpha_{j+1}\\\\\n    &&&& \\ddots \\\\\n    &&&&& \\alpha_{N-1}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\nwhere $\\beta\\ne 0$.\nIn this case, we first convert the GEVP $A\\bm\\phi = \\lambda B\\bm\\phi$ to the following GEVP\n\\begin{align*}\n \\left(A-\\frac{a_{j+1,j}}{\\beta}B\\right)\\bm\\phi = \\lambda' B\\bm\\phi,\n\\end{align*}\nwhere $\\lambda'=\\lambda-\\frac{a_{j+1,j}}{\\beta}$.\nWe note here that in the tridiagonal matrix $A-\\frac{a_{j+1,j}}{\\beta}B$,\none of the subdiagonal components is a zero component.\nWe will show that GEVP in the above form can be rewritten as an EVP without subtraction\nby using the theory of Laurent biorthogonal polynomials~\\cite{kharchev1997frt,zhedanov1998clb}.\nFurthermore, the same procedure can be introduced for the generalization of the above form.\nThe following is an outline of the concrete forms and procedures of the GEVP treated in this paper.\n\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:transf-betw-trid},\nfirst, we consider a simple GEVP\n\\begin{equation*}\n R \\bm p = x L \\bm p\n\\end{equation*}\nof the pencil $(R, L)$ defined by the upper bidiagonal matrix $R$\nand the lower bidiagonal matrix $L$ as\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    q_{0} & 1\\\\\n    & q_{1} & 1\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&&& q_{N-1}\n  \\end{pmatrix}, \\quad\n   L\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 \\\\\n    -e_0 & 1\\\\\n    & -e_1 & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -e_{N-2} & 1\n \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nWe can see that each element of the vector $\\bm p$ is a polynomial of\n$x$ defined by a three-term recurrence relation for\nthe Laurent biorthogonal polynomials.\nThe followings will be shown:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item LU factorization of the matrix $RL^{-1}$\n  yields new bidiagonal matrices $R^*$, $L^*$ and the associated vector (polynomials) $\\bm p^*$,\n  where the new GEVP $R^*\\bm p^*=x L^*\\bm p^*$ has the same eigenvalues as\n  the original GEVP.\n\\item Setting $(R^{(0)}, L^{(0)})\\coloneq (R, L)$, $\\bm p^{(0)}\\coloneq \\bm p$ and iterating the procedure above,\n  we obtain the matrix pencil sequence $(R^{(0)}, L^{(0)})$, $(R^{(1)}, L^{(1)})$,\n  $(R^{(2)}, L^{(2)})$, ...,\n  and the corresponding vector sequence $\\bm p^{(0)}$, $\\bm p^{(1)}$, $\\bm p^{(2)}$, ....\n  Then, we can construct a tridiagonal matrix $\\hat T$\n  from the matrix pencil sequence and another vector $\\hat{\\bm p}$ from the vector sequence,\n  where $\\hat{\\bm p}$ is the eigenvector of the EVP\n  $\\hat T\\hat{\\bm p}=x\\hat{\\bm p}$\n  which has the same eigenvalues as the original GEVP.\n  Elements of the vector $\\hat{\\bm p}$ are orthogonal polynomials~\\cite{chihara1978iop} defined by\n  the three-term recurrence relation whose coefficients are given by $\\hat T$.\n  Note that, since $L^{-1}R$ is not a tridiagonal matrix,\n  this is not a trivial isospectral transformation.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:transf-betw-trid-1},\nthe transformation in Section~\\ref{sec:transf-betw-trid} is generalized to\na matrix pencil $(T, L)$, where $T$ is the tridiagonal matrix\nand $L$ is the lower bidiagonal matrix of the form\n\\begin{gather*}\n  T=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    a_0 & 1\\\\\n    (1-\\epsilon_0) b_0 & a_1 & 1\\\\\n    & (1-\\epsilon_1) b_1 & \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&& (1-\\epsilon_{N-2}) b_{N-2} & a_{N-1}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  L=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1\\\\\n    -\\epsilon_0 e_0 & 1\\\\\n    & -\\epsilon_1 e_1 & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -\\epsilon_{N-2} e_{N-2} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\epsilon_0, \\dots, \\epsilon_{N-2} \\in \\{0, 1\\}.\n\\end{gather*}\nIt will be shown that\nthere is also a transformation to a tridiagonal matrix with the same eigenvalues.\n\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:transf-betw-hess}, further,\nthe transformation in Section~\\ref{sec:transf-betw-trid-1}\nis generalized to a matrix pencil $(H, L)$, where\n$H$ is the upper Hessenberg matrix and $L$ is the lower bidiagonal matrix\nof the form\n\\begin{gather*}\n  H=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    a_{0, 0} & a_{0, 1} & \\dots & a_{0, M-1} & 1\\\\\n    (1-\\epsilon_0) b_0 & a_{1, 0} & a_{1, 1} & \\dots & a_{1, M-1} & 1\\\\\n    & (1-\\epsilon_1) b_1 & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\dots & \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\dots & \\ddots \\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\dots\\\\\n    &&&& \\ddots & \\ddots & a_{N-2, 1}\\\\\n    &&&&& (1-\\epsilon_{N-2}) b_{N-2} & a_{N-1, 0}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  L=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1\\\\\n    -\\epsilon_0 e_0 & 1\\\\\n    & -\\epsilon_1 e_1 & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -\\epsilon_{N-2} e_{N-2} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\epsilon_0, \\dots, \\epsilon_{N-2} \\in \\{0, 1\\}.\n\\end{gather*}\nIt will be shown that\nthere is a transformation to an upper Hessenberg matrix with the same eigenvalues.\n\n\n\\section{Isospectral transformation between tridiagonal matrix and bidiagonal--bidiagonal matrix pencil}\n\\label{sec:transf-betw-trid}\n\n\\subsection{Sequence of bidiagonal--bidiagonal GEVPs and eigenvectors}\nLet $N$ be a positive integer and $\\{p_n(x)\\}_{n=0}^{N}$ be monic polynomials of degree $n$\ndefined by the three-term recurrence relation\n\\begin{gather}\n  p_{-1}(x)\\coloneq 0,\\quad p_0(x)\\coloneq 1,\\quad\n  p_{n+1}(x) \\coloneq (x-q_n)p_n(x)-x e_{n-1} p_{n-1}(x),\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\\label{eq:trr-LBP}\n\\end{gather}\nwhere $q_n, e_n\\in \\mathbb C$ and $e_n\\ne 0$.\nWe can rewrite the three-term recurrence relation~\\eqref{eq:trr-LBP} as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trr-LBP-vec}\n  R\\bm p(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=xL\\bm p(x),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $R$ and $L$ are bidiagonal matrices\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    q_0 & 1\\\\\n    & q_1 & 1\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&&& q_{N-1}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  L\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 \\\\\n    -e_0 & 1\\\\\n    & -e_1 & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -e_{N-2} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nand $\\bm p(x)$, $\\bm p_N(x)$ are vectors of polynomials\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:def-vec-p}\n  \\bm p(x)\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    p_0(x)\\\\\n    p_1(x)\\\\\n    \\vdots\\\\\n    p_{N-1}(x)\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\bm p_N(x)\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    0\\\\\n    \\vdots\\\\\n    0\\\\\n    p_N(x)\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\nLet $x_0, x_1, \\dots, x_{N-1}$ be the zeros of $p_N(x)$, then we have\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R\\bm p(x_i)=x_i L\\bm p(x_i),\\quad i=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\n\\end{equation*}\ni.e., $x_i$ and $\\bm p(x_i)$ are a generalized eigenvalue and eigenvector\nof the matrix pencil $(R, L)$.\n\nNext, let us introduce new monic polynomials $\\{p_n^*(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ of degree $n$ generated from\nthe monic polynomials $\\{p_n(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ as\n\\begin{gather}\n  p_0^*(x)\\coloneq 1,\\quad p_N^*(x)\\coloneq p_N(x),\\quad\n  p_n^*(x)\\coloneq p_n(x)-e_{n-1}p_{n-1}(x),\\quad n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1.\\label{eq:GT-LBP}\n\\end{gather}\nThen the three-term recurrence relation of $\\{p_n(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ \\eqref{eq:trr-LBP} is\nrewritten as\n\\begin{equation}\n  xp_n^*(x)=p_{n+1}(x)+q_n p_n(x),\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1.\\label{eq:CT-LBP}\n\\end{equation}\n\nUsing the bidiagonal matrices and vectors of polynomials,\nthe relations \\eqref{eq:GT-LBP} and \\eqref{eq:CT-LBP} are rewritten as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:GT-CT-LBP}\n  \\bm p^*(x)=L\\bm p(x),\\quad\n  x\\bm p^*(x)=R\\bm p(x)+\\bm p_N(x),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\bm p^*(x)=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    p_0^*(x)\\\\\n    p_1^*(x)\\\\\n    \\vdots\\\\\n    p_{N-1}^*(x)\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nSince $L$ is a regular matrix, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:next-LBP}\n  x\\bm p^*(x)=RL^{-1}\\bm p^*(x)+\\bm p_N(x).\n\\end{equation}\nThe LU factorization of $RL^{-1}$ generates bidiagonal matrices\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R^*\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    q_0^* & 1\\\\\n    & q_1^* & 1\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&&& q_{N-1}^*\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  L^*\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 \\\\\n    -e_0^* & 1\\\\\n    & -e_1^* & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -e_{N-2}^* & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nsatisfying\n\\begin{equation*}\n  RL^{-1}=(L^*)^{-1}R^*.\n\\end{equation*}\nThen, substituting this relation to \\eqref{eq:next-LBP},\nwe obtain\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R^*\\bm p^*(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x L^* \\bm p^*(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nThis means that the monic polynomials $\\{p_n^*(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ also satisfy\nthree-term recurrence relation of the same form as $\\{p_n(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$.\nTherefore $x_i$ and $\\bm p^*(x_i)$ are a generalized eigenvalue and eigenvector\nof the matrix pencil $(R^*, L^*)$.\nSuch $R^*$ and $L^*$ are computed by the relation\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L^*R=R^*L.\n\\end{equation*}\nEach element above gives\n\\begin{gather}\n  q_n-e_{n-1}^*=q_n^*-e_{n},\\quad\n  -q_ne_n^*=-q_{n+1}^*e_n\\label{eq:drToda}\n\\end{gather}\nfor $n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1$, where $e_{-1}=e_{-1}^*=e_{N-1}=e_{N-1}^*=0$.\nLet us introduce\n\\begin{equation*}\n  f_n\\coloneq q_n+e_n,\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad\n  f_{N-1}\\coloneq q_{N-1}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThen the relations \\eqref{eq:drToda} yield\n\\begin{align*}\n  f_n\n  =q_n^*+e_{n-1}^*\n  =q_n^*+e_{n-1}\\frac{q_n^*}{q_{n-1}}\n  =\\frac{q_n^*}{q_{n-1}}(q_{n-1}+e_{n-1})\n  =f_{n-1}\\frac{q_n^*}{q_{n-1}}.\n\\end{align*}\nHence, we obtain\n\\begin{gather*}\n  f_n=q_n+e_n,\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad f_{N-1}=q_{N-1},\\\\\n  q_0^*=f_0,\\quad q_n^*=q_{n-1}\\frac{f_n}{f_{n-1}},\\quad n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  e_n^*=e_n\\frac{f_{n+1}}{f_n},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2.\n\\end{gather*}\n\nLet us iterate the procedure above.\nSet $p^{(0)}_n(x)\\coloneq p_n(x)$, $q_n^{(0)}\\coloneq q_n$ and $e_n^{(0)}\\coloneq e_n$.\nGenerate new monic polynomials $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$, $k=1, 2, 3, \\dots$, by\n\\begin{gather}\n  p_0^{(k+1)}(x)\\coloneq 1,\\quad p^{(k+1)}_N(x)\\coloneq p_N(x),\\quad\n  p_n^{(k+1)}(x)\\coloneq p_n^{(k)}(x)-e_{n-1}^{(k)}p_{n-1}^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\\label{eq:GT-k-LBP}\n\\end{gather}\nwhere $\\{q_n^{(k)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{e_n^{(k)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ are computed by\n\\begin{gather}\n  f_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k)}+e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad f_{N-1}^{(k)}=q_{N-1}^{(k)},\\label{eq:drToda-d}\\\\\n  q_0^{(k+1)}=f_0^{(k)},\\quad q_n^{(k+1)}=q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}},\\quad n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  e_n^{(k+1)}=e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{f_n^{(k)}},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2.\\label{eq:drToda-e}\n\\end{gather}\nThe equations~\\eqref{eq:drToda-d}--\\eqref{eq:drToda-e} are called\nthe \\emph{discrete relativistic Toda lattice}.\nOne can see that this system is a variation of the differential qd (dqd) algorithm~\\cite{fernando1994asv,rutishauser1990lnm},\nwhich is the subtraction-free version of the quotient-difference algorithm used to\ncompute the eigenvalues of a tridiagonal matrix.\n\nThen $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfy the relation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:CT-k-LBP}\n  x p_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)+q_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\n\\end{equation}\nand the three-term recurrence relation\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p^{(k)}_{n+1}(x)=(x-q_n^{(k)})p_n^{(k)}(x)-x e_{n-1}^{(k)} p_{n-1}^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\subsection{Isospectral transformation to a tridiagonal matrix}\nSubtraction of \\eqref{eq:GT-k-LBP} with $n\\to n+1$ from \\eqref{eq:CT-k-LBP} and $k\\to k+n-1$ yield\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:CT-k-OPS}\n  x p_{n}^{(k+n)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+n)}(x)+f_n^{(k+n-1)} p_n^{(k+n-1)}(x),\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1.\n\\end{equation}\nLet us introduce variables\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat q_n^{(k)}\\coloneq f_n^{(k+n-1)},\\quad\n  \\hat e_n^{(k)}\\coloneq e_n^{(k+n)},\n\\end{equation*}\nbidiagonal matrices\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bidiagonal-OPS}\n  \\hat R^{(k)}\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    \\hat q_0^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    & \\hat q_1^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&&& \\hat q_{N-1}^{(k)}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\hat L^{(k)}\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1\\\\\n    \\hat e_0^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    & \\hat e_1^{(k)} & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots \\\\\n    &&& \\hat e_{N-2}^{(k)} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nand vectors of polynomials\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:vector-OPS}\n  \\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    \\hat p_0^{(k)}(x)\\\\\n    \\hat p_1^{(k)}(x)\\\\\n    \\vdots\\\\\n    \\hat p_{N-1}^{(k)}(x)\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq p_n^{(k+n-1)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nThen the relations~\\eqref{eq:GT-k-LBP} and \\eqref{eq:CT-k-OPS} yield\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:GT-CT-OPS}\n  \\hat{\\bm p}^{(k-1)}(x)=\\hat L^{(k-1)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  x\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k+1)}(x)=\\hat R^{(k)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x).\n\\end{equation}\nHence, $\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)$ satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trr-OPS-vec}\n  \\hat T^{(k)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\hat T^{(k)}$ is a tridiagonal matrix\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat T^{(k)}\\coloneq \\hat L^{(k)}\\hat R^{(k)}=\\hat R^{(k-1)}\\hat L^{(k-1)}.\n\\end{equation*}\nTherefore, Favard's theorem says that there exists a linear functional\n$\\mathcal L^{(k)}\\colon \\mathbb C[x]\\to \\mathbb C$ satisfying\nthe orthogonality condition\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[\\hat p_m^{(k)}(x)\\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)]=\\hat h_n^{(k)} \\delta_{m, n},\\quad\n  \\hat h_n^{(k)}\\ne 0,\\quad m, n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $\\delta_{m, n}$ is the Kronecker delta, and the terminating condition\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[p_N(x)\\pi(x)]=0 \\quad \\text{for all $\\pi(x)\\in\\mathbb C[x]$}.\n\\end{equation*}\nNote that the orthogonality relation is equivalent to\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:orthogonality-OPS}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^m \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)]=h_n^{(k)}\\delta_{m, n},\\quad\n  h_n^{(k)}\\ne 0,\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\\quad m=0, 1, \\dots, n.\n\\end{equation}\nThe linear functional $\\mathcal L^{(k)}$ is concretely given by~\\cite{akhiezer1965cmp}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:def-lf-tridiagonal-OPS}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[\\pi(x)]=\\bm e_0^{\\mathrm T}\\pi(\\hat T^{(k)})\\bm e_0\\quad\n  \\text{for all $\\pi(x)\\in\\mathbb C[x]$},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\bm e_0\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1\\\\\n    0\\\\\n    \\vdots\\\\\n    0\n  \\end{pmatrix}\\in \\mathbb C^N.\n\\end{equation*}\nHence, if the eigenvalues $x_0, x_1, \\dots, x_{N-1}$ of $\\hat T^{(k)}$,\nwhich are the zeros of $p_N(x)$,\nare all simple, then there exist some constants $w_0^{(k)}, w_1^{(k)}, \\dots, w_{N-1}^{(k)} \\in \\mathbb C$\nsuch that\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[\\pi(x)]=\\sum_{i=0}^{N-1} \\pi(x_i)w_i^{(k)}\\quad \\text{for all $\\pi(x)\\in\\mathbb C[x]$}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThis means that $\\{\\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is\nthe \\emph{monic discrete orthogonal polynomial sequence} with respect to $\\mathcal L^{(k)}$.\n\nIn the theory of orthogonal polynomials, the relations~\\eqref{eq:CT-k-OPS} and \\eqref{eq:GT-k-LBP}\nare called \\emph{Christoffel transformation} and \\emph{Geronimus transformation}, respectively~\\cite{spiridonov1995ddt},\nand the relation\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k+1)}[\\pi(x)]=\\mathcal L^{(k)}[x\\pi(x)]\\quad \\text{for all $\\pi(x)\\in\\mathbb C[x]$,}\n\\end{equation*}\nis shown. Let us introduce the moment of the linear functional $\\mathcal L^{(k)}$ as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:def-moment}\n  \\mu_{k+m}\\coloneq \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^m]=\\mathcal L^{(0)}[x^{k+m}].\n\\end{equation}\nThen, from the orthogonality relation~\\eqref{eq:orthogonality-OPS},\nthe determinant expression of the orthogonal polynomials $\\{\\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$\nis given by\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)=\\frac{1}{\\tau^{(k)}_n}\n  \\begin{vmatrix}\n    \\mu_{k} & \\mu_{k+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+n-1} & \\mu_{k+n}\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+1} & \\mu_{k+2} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+n} & \\mu_{k+n+1}\\\\\n    \\vdots & \\vdots & & \\vdots & \\vdots\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+n-1} & \\mu_{k+n} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+2n-2} & \\mu_{k+2n-1}\\\\\n    1 & x & \\dots & x^{n-1} & x^n\n  \\end{vmatrix}, \\quad n=1, 2, \\dots, N,\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $\\tau_n^{(k)}$ is the Hankel determinant of the moments\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\tau_0^{(k)}\\coloneq 1,\\quad\n  \\tau_n^{(k)}\\coloneq |\\mu_{k+i+j}|_{i, j=0}^{n-1},\\quad\n  n=1, 2, 3, \\dots.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nNext, we consider the determinant expression of $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(x)=\\hat p_n^{(k-n+1)}(x)=\\frac{1}{\\tau^{(k-n+1)}_n}\n  \\begin{vmatrix}\n    \\mu_{k-n+1} & \\mu_{k-n+2} & \\dots & \\mu_{k} & \\mu_{k+1}\\\\\n    \\mu_{k-n+2} & \\mu_{k-n+3} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+1} & \\mu_{k+2}\\\\\n    \\vdots & \\vdots & & \\vdots & \\vdots\\\\\n    \\mu_{k} & \\mu_{k+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+n-1} & \\mu_{k+n}\\\\\n    1 & x & \\dots & x^{n-1} & x^n\n  \\end{vmatrix}, \\quad n=1, 2, \\dots, N.\n\\end{equation*}\nSince we can extend the domain of the linear functional $\\mathcal L^{(k)}$ for\n$\\mathbb C[x, x^{-1}]$ by \\eqref{eq:def-lf-tridiagonal-OPS},\nthis determinant expression leads to the biorthogonality relation\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-m} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-n+1)}} \\delta_{m, n},\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\\quad m=0, 1, \\dots, n.\n\\end{equation*}\nThe monic polynomials $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ are known as\nthe \\emph{Laurent biorthogonal polynomials} with respect to $\\mathcal L^{(k)}$.\nThen, the relations \\eqref{eq:CT-k-LBP}, \\eqref{eq:GT-k-LBP}, \\eqref{eq:CT-k-OPS} and\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(0)=(-1)^n \\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-n+2)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-n+1)}}\n\\end{equation*}\ngive\n\\begin{gather*}\n  q_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_{n}^{(k-n+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-n+2)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n)}},\\\\\n  e_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{\\mathcal L^{(k+1)}[x^{-n-1}p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(x)]}{\\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-n}p_{n}^{(k)}(x)]}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-n+1)}\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-n)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n+1)}},\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(0)}{p_n^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_{n}^{(k-n+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n+2)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-n+2)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-n+1)}},\n\\end{gather*}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat q_n^{(k)}=f_n^{(k+n-1)}=\\frac{\\tau_{n}^{(k)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k)}},\\quad\n  \\hat e_n^{(k)}=e_n^{(k+n)}=\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k+1)}\\tau_{n+2}^{(k)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+1)}}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nSummarizing the above, we obtain Algorithm~\\ref{alg:bi-bi-to-tri} of the isospectral transformation.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[t]\n  \\caption{Isospectral transformation from bidiagonal--bidiagonal matrix pencil to tridiagonal matrix}\n  \\label{alg:bi-bi-to-tri}\n\\begin{algorithmic}\n  \\REQUIRE $\\{q_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{e_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ (or bidiagonal matrices $R^{(0)}$ and $L^{(0)}$)\n  \\FOR{$k=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n<N-1$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}+e_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n=0$}\n                   {$q_n^{(k+1)} \\leftarrow f_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {$q_n^{(k+1)} \\leftarrow q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}}$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$e_n^{(k+1)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{f_n^{(k)}}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE $\\hat q_n^{(1)} \\leftarrow f_n^{(n)}$\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$\\hat e_n^{(1)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(n+1)}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENSURE $\\{\\hat q_n^{(1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{\\hat e_n^{(1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ (or tridiagonal matrix $\\hat T^{(1)}=\\hat L^{(1)}\\hat R^{(1)}$)\n\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\subsection{Numerical example}\nLet us consider\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 2 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 3 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 4 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 5\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  L^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    -6 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & -7 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & -8 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & -9 & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThen, Algorithm~\\ref{alg:bi-bi-to-tri} yields\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\hat R^{(1)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    7& 1& 0& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& \\frac{620}{63}& 1& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& \\frac{41949}{5890}& 1& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{5722439}{7639379}& 1\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& 0& \\frac{98340}{301181}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\hat L^{(1)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1& 0& 0& 0& 0\\\\\n    \\frac{54}{7}& 1& 0& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& \\frac{931}{90}& 1& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& \\frac{4720320}{2745329}& 1& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{90306875}{493635659}& 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\nand\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\hat T^{(1)}\n  =\\hat L^{(1)}\\hat R^{(1)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    7& 1& 0& 0& 0\\\\[.5em]\n    54& \\frac{158}{9}& 1& 0& 0\\\\[.5em]\n    0& \\frac{8246}{81}& \\frac{92590}{5301}& 1& 0\\\\[.5em]\n    0& 0& \\frac{4248288}{346921}& \\frac{2382991}{965371} & 1\\\\[.5em]\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{368125}{2686321} & \\frac{835}{1639}\n  \\end{pmatrix}\n\\end{gather*}\nThe computation above was executed by SymPy (a symbolic computation library for Python).\nThe eigenvalues of both $(R^{(0)}, L^{(0)})$ and $\\hat T^{(1)}$ are\n29.10515103, 12.22484344, 2.82190399, 0.17848385 and 0.66961769,\nwhich are verified by \\texttt{numpy.linalg.eig()}.\n\n\\section{Isospectral transformation between tridiagonal matrix and tridiagonal--bidiagonal matrix pencil}\n\\label{sec:transf-betw-trid-1}\n\n\\subsection{Sequence of tridiagonal--bidiagonal GEVPs and eigenvectors}\nWe first fix a vector\n$\\bm{\\varepsilon} = (\\varepsilon_0,\\varepsilon_1,\\ldots,\\varepsilon_{N-2}) \\in \\{0,1\\}^{N-1}$.\nLet $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ be monic polynomials of degree $n$ defined by\nthe three-term recurrence relation\n\\begin{gather}\n  p_{-1}^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq 0,\\quad p_0^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq 1,\\nonumber\\\\\n  \\begin{multlined}[b]\n    p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq (x-q_n^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})e_{n-1}^{(k)})p_n^{(k)}(x)-(\\epsilon_{n-1}x+(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})q_{n-1}^{(k)})e_{n-1}^{(k)}p_{n-1}^{(k)}(x),\\\\\n    n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\n  \\end{multlined}\\label{eq:trr-e-BLP}\n\\end{gather}\nwhere $e_{-1}\\coloneq 0$.\nLet us consider lower bidiagonal matrices\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:def-L-epsilon}\n  L_{(\\xi_0,\\ldots,\\xi_{N-2})}^{(k)}\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1\\\\\n    -\\xi_0 e_0^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    & -\\xi_1 e_1^{(k)} & \\ddots\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& -\\xi_{N-2} e_{N-2}^{(k)} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nupper bidiagonal matrices\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R^{(k)}\\coloneq\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    q_0^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    & q_1^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n    && \\ddots & \\ddots\\\\\n    &&& \\ddots & 1\\\\\n    &&&& q_{N-1}^{(k)}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nand vectors of polynomials which are the same as \\eqref{eq:def-vec-p}.\nThen we can rewrite the three-term recurrence relation~\\eqref{eq:trr-e-BLP} as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trr-e-BLP-vec}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}R^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*\\coloneq\\bm{\\varepsilon}-(1,1,\\ldots,1)$.\n\n\\begin{example} When $N=5, \\bm\\varepsilon=(1,1,0,1)$,\n  we obtain\n  \\begin{equation*}\n    L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)} =\n    \\begin{pmatrix}\n      1 \\\\\n      0 & 1\\\\\n      & 0 & 1\\\\\\\n      && e_2^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n      &&& 0 & 1\n    \\end{pmatrix}, \\quad\n    L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)} =\n    \\begin{pmatrix}\n      1 \\\\\n      -e_0^{(k)} & 1\\\\\n      & -e_1^{(k)} & 1\\\\\\\n      && 0 & 1\\\\\n      &&& -e_3^{(k)} & 1\n    \\end{pmatrix}.\n  \\end{equation*}\n\\end{example}\n\nNote that\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item if $\\bm\\varepsilon=(0, 0, \\dots, 0)$, then \\eqref{eq:trr-e-BLP-vec} becomes\n  the three-term recurrence relation of monic orthogonal polynomials (see \\eqref{eq:trr-OPS-vec});\n\\item if $\\bm\\varepsilon=(1, 1, \\dots, 1)$, then \\eqref{eq:trr-e-BLP-vec} becomes\n  the three-term recurrence relation of monic Laurent biorthogonal polynomials (see \\eqref{eq:trr-LBP-vec}).\n\\end{itemize}\nHence the monic polynomial sequence $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is a generalization\nof both the orthogonal polynomials and the Laurent biorthogonal polynomials.\nWe therefore use the notation that is almost the same as that of the previous section.\n\nLet us introduce new monic polynomials $\\{p_n^{(k+1)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ of degree $n$\ngenerated from the monic polynomials $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ by\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\bm p^{(k+1)}(x)\\coloneq \\left(L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}\\right)^{-1}L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nSubstituting $\\bm p^{(k)}(x)=\\left(L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)}\\right)^{-1}L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x)$ into\n\\eqref{eq:trr-e-BLP-vec}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:GT-CT-BLP}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x)=L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  R^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x).\n\\end{equation}\nThis is a generalization of \\eqref{eq:GT-CT-LBP} and \\eqref{eq:GT-CT-OPS}.\nElimination of $\\bm p(x)$ yields\n\\begin{equation*}\n  R^{(k)}\\left(L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)}\\right)^{-1}L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nThe LU factorization generates bidiagonal matrices\n$L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k+1)}$, $L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k+1)}$, $\\tilde R^{(k)}$ and $R^{(k+1)}$ satisfying\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:de-Toda}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k+1)}R^{(k)}=\\tilde R^{(k)} L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)},\\quad\n  \\tilde R^{(k)} L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}=L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k+1)}R^{(k+1)}.\n\\end{equation}\nThen, we obtain\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k+1)}R^{(k+1)}\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k+1)}\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nEach element of \\eqref{eq:de-Toda} give the relations\n\\begin{gather*}\n  q_n^{(k)}-\\epsilon_{n-1}e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}=\\tilde q_n^{(k)}-\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)},\\quad\n  \\tilde q_n^{(k)}+(1-\\epsilon_n) e_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k+1)}+(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}\n\\end{gather*}\nfor $n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1$, and\n\\begin{gather*}\n  q_n^{(k)} e_n^{(k+1)}=\\tilde q_{n+1}^{(k)} e_n^{(k)} \\quad \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=1$},\\\\\n  \\tilde q_{n+1}^{(k)} e_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k+1)} e_n^{(k+1)} \\quad \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=0$}\n\\end{gather*}\nfor $n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2$.\nElimination of $\\tilde q_n^{(k)}$ yields\n\\begin{gather}\n  q_n^{(k)}+e_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k+1)}+e_{n-1}^{(k+1)},\\label{eq:de-Toda-p}\\\\\n  q_n^{(k)}e_n^{(k+1)}=(q_{n+1}^{(k+1)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n+1})e_{n+1}^{(k)})e_n^{(k)}\\quad \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=1$}\\label{eq:de-Toda-m1},\\\\\n  (q_{n+1}^{(k)}+\\epsilon_{n+1}e_{n+1}^{(k)})e_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k+1)}e_n^{(k+1)}\\quad \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=0$}.\\label{eq:de-Toda-m2}\n\\end{gather}\nFurther, substituting \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-p} to \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-m1} and \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-m2},\nwe can see that\n\\begin{gather}\n  (q_n^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_n)e_{n-1}^{(k+1)})e_n^{(k+1)}=(q_{n+1}^{(k+1)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n+1})e_{n+1}^{(k)})e_n^{(k)},\\label{eq:de-Toda-m3}\\\\\n  (q_n^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_{n}e_{n-1}^{(k+1)})e_n^{(k+1)}=(q_{n+1}^{(k)}+\\epsilon_{n+1}e_{n+1}^{(k)})e_n^{(k)}\\label{eq:de-Toda-m4}\n\\end{gather}\nhold in any case.\nLet us introduce\n\\begin{gather*}\n  d_0^{(k+1)}\\coloneq q_0^{(k)}+\\epsilon_0 e_0^{(k)},\\quad\n  d_n^{(k+1)}\\coloneq q_n^{(k+1)}-(1-\\epsilon_n) e_{n}^{(k)},\\quad n=1, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\\coloneq q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad\n  f_{N-1}^{(k)}\\coloneq q_{N-1}^{(k)}.\n\\end{gather*}\nThen, from \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-p}, \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-m3} and \\eqref{eq:de-Toda-m4}, we obtain\n\\begin{align*}\n  d_n^{(k+1)}\n  &=q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)}-e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}\\\\\n  &=\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_{n-1}e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}}(q_{n-1}^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_{n-1}e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}-e_{n-1}^{(k)})\\\\\n  &=\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_{n-1}e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}}(d_{n-1}^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_{n-1}(e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}-e_{n-1}^{(k)})),\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\n  &=q_n^{(k+1)}-(1-\\epsilon_n)e_n^{(k)}+e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}\\\\\n  &=\\frac{d_n^{(k+1)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}}(q_{n-1}^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}+e_{n-1}^{(k)})\\\\\n  &=\\frac{d_n^{(k+1)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}}(f_{n-1}^{(k)}-(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})(e_{n-2}^{(k+1)}-e_{n-1}^{(k)})).\n\\end{align*}\nHence, we can compute $\\{q_n^{(k+1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{e_n^{(k+1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$\nfrom $\\{q_n^{(k)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{e_n^{(k)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ by\n\\begin{gather*}\n  f_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad\n  f_{N-1}^{(k)}=q_{N-1}^{(k)},\\\\\n  d_0^{(k+1)}=f_0^{(k)},\\quad\n  d_n^{(k+1)}=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    d_{n-1}^{(k+1)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+1)}} & if $\\epsilon_{n-1}=0$,\\\\\n    q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}} & if $\\epsilon_{n-1}=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  q_n^{(k+1)}=d_n^{(k+1)}+(1-\\epsilon_n)e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  e_n^{(k+1)}=e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{q_n^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_n e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}},\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2.\n\\end{gather*}\nWe call this system the \\emph{discrete elementary Toda orbits}~\\cite{kobayashi2021nde}.\n\n\\subsection{Isospectral transformation to a tridiagonal matrix}\nEach element of \\eqref{eq:GT-CT-BLP} gives\n\\begin{alignat}{2}\n  xp_{n}^{(k+1)}(x)&=p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)+q_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\label{eq:e-BLP-st-q}\\\\\n  p_{n+1}^{(k-1)}(x)&=p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)+e_n^{(k-1)}p_n^{(k)}(x) &\\quad& \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=0$},\\label{eq:e-BLP-st-e0}\\\\\n  p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(x)&=p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)-e_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x) &\\quad& \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=1$}.\\label{eq:e-BLP-st-e1}\\\\\n\\intertext{Therefore, we obtain}\n  xp_{n}^{(k+1)}(x)&=p_{n+1}^{(k-1)}(x)+d_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x) &\\quad& \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=0$},\\label{eq:e-BLP-st-d0}\\\\\n  xp_{n}^{(k+1)}(x)&=p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(x)+f_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x) && \\text{if $\\epsilon_n=1$}.\\label{eq:e-BLP-st-f1}\n\\end{alignat}\nSince $d_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k)}$ if $\\epsilon_n=1$ and $f_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k)}$ if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\nwe can see that\n\\begin{gather*}\n  xp_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n-1)}(x)+d_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\\\\n  xp_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n)}(x)+f_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x)\n\\end{gather*}\nhold in any case.\nIt also holds in any case that\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(x)=p_n^{(k+1)}(x)+e_{n-1}^{(k)} p_{n-1}^{(k+1-\\epsilon_{n-1})}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nThese relations lead to the three-term recurrence relation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trr-e-BLP-to-OPS-pre}\n  xp_n^{(k)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n)}(x)+(f_n^{(k)}+e_{n-1}^{(k)})p_n^{(k)}(x)+f_{n-1}^{(k-\\epsilon_{n-1})}e_{n-1}^{(k)}p_{n-1}^{(k-\\epsilon_{n-1})}(x).\n\\end{equation}\n\nLet us introduce $\\bm{\\eta}=(\\eta_0,\\eta_1,\\ldots,\\eta_{N-1})$ by\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\eta_0\\coloneq 0,\\quad\n  \\eta_n\\coloneq \\sum_{j=0}^{n-1}\\epsilon_j,\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\n\\end{equation*}\nvariables\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat q_n^{(k)}\\coloneq f_n^{(k+\\eta_n)},\\quad\n  \\hat e_n^{(k)}\\coloneq e_n^{(k+\\eta_{n+1})},\n\\end{equation*}\nand polynomials\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq p_n^{(k+\\eta_n)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nThen the relation \\eqref{eq:trr-e-BLP-to-OPS-pre} yields\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat T^{(k)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N(x)=x\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x),\n\\end{equation*}\nthat is the same as \\eqref{eq:trr-OPS-vec};\nthe monic polynomial sequence $\\{\\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is\nthe orthogonal polynomial sequence with respect to the linear functional\n$\\mathcal L^{(k)}$ defined by \\eqref{eq:def-lf-tridiagonal-OPS}.\nThis fact gives the determinant expression of $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(x)=\\frac{1}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}}\n  \\begin{vmatrix}\n    \\mu_{k-\\eta_n} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n-1} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n}\\\\\n    \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+1} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+2} & \\dots & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n+1}\\\\\n    \\vdots & \\vdots & & \\vdots & \\vdots\\\\\n    \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n-1} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+n} & \\dots & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+2n-2} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n+2n-1}\\\\\n    1 & x & \\dots & x^{n-1} & x^n\n  \\end{vmatrix},\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N.\n\\end{equation*}\nHence, $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfies the $\\epsilon$-biorthogonality relation\nfor $n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^m p_n^{(k)}(x)]=0,\\quad  m=-\\eta_n, -\\eta_n+1, \\dots, -\\eta_n+n-1,\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=(1-2\\epsilon_n)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}},\n\\end{equation*}\nor\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_n+n} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n})}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}},\\quad\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_n-1} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}-1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}}.\n\\end{gather*}\nThe monic polynomial sequence $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is called\nthe \\emph{$\\epsilon$-biorthogonal Laurent polynomials}~\\cite{faybusovich2001imp}.\nThen, the relations \\eqref{eq:e-BLP-st-q}--\\eqref{eq:e-BLP-st-f1} and\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(0)=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}},\\quad\n  p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_{n})}(0)=(-1)^{n+1}\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+\\epsilon_n+1)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+\\epsilon_n)}}=(-1)^{n+1}\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}+1)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n})}}\n\\end{equation*}\ngive\n\\begin{gather*}\n  q_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}},\\\\\n  d_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n-1)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n})}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}-1)}},\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n})}}\n\\end{gather*}\nand, since $\\mathcal L^{(k+1)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}\\pi(x)]=\\mathcal L^{(k+1-\\epsilon_n)}[x^{-\\eta_{n}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}\\pi(x)]=\\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n+1-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}\\pi(x)]$\nfor all $\\pi(x) \\in \\mathbb C[x]$ and\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n+1-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    \\frac{\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}} & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    0 & if $\\epsilon_n=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\\\\n  \\mathcal L^{(k+1)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    0 & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    (-1)^{n+1}\\frac{\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\\\\n  \\mathcal L^{(k+1-\\epsilon_n)}[x^{-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_n^{(k+1-\\epsilon_n)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n+1)}}=\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    (-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_n-1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n)}}=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=1$\n  \\end{dcases*}\n\\end{gather*}\nhold,\n\\begin{equation*}\n  e_n^{(k)}\n  =\\frac{\\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n+1-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)]-\\mathcal L^{(k+1)}[x^{-\\eta_{n+1}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_{n+1}^{(k+1)}(x)]}{\\mathcal L^{(k+1-\\epsilon_n)}[x^{-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1)}p_n^{(k+1-\\epsilon_n)}(x)]}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1})}}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nSummarizing the above, we obtain Algorithm~\\ref{alg:tri-bi-to-tri} of\nthe isospectral transformation.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[t]\n  \\caption{Isospectral transformation from tridiagonal--bidiagonal matrix pencil to tridiagonal matrix}\n  \\label{alg:tri-bi-to-tri}\n\\begin{algorithmic}\n  \\REQUIRE $\\{q_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$, $\\{e_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ and $\\bm\\epsilon\\in\\{0, 1\\}^{N-1}$ (or bidiagonal matrices $R^{(0)}$, $L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}$ and $L_{\\bm\\epsilon}^{(0)}$)\n  \\STATE $\\eta_0 \\leftarrow 0$\n  \\FOR{$n=1$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE $\\eta_n \\leftarrow \\eta_{n-1}+\\epsilon_{n-1}$\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$k=0$ to $\\eta_{N-1}$}\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n<N-1$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n=0$}\n                   {$d_n^{(k+1)}\\leftarrow f_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {\\IfThenElse{$\\epsilon_{n-1}=0$}\n                               {$d_n^{(k+1)}\\leftarrow d_{n-1}^{(k+1)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+1)}}$}\n                               {$d_n^{(k+1)}\\leftarrow q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}}$}\n                   }\n  \\STATE $q^{(k+1)}_n \\leftarrow d_n^{(k+1)}+(1-\\epsilon_n)e_n^{(k)}$\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$e_n^{(k+1)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{q_n^{(k+1)}+\\epsilon_n e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE $\\hat q_n^{(0)} \\leftarrow f_n^{(\\eta_n)}$\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$\\hat e_n^{(0)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(\\eta_{n+1})}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENSURE $\\{\\hat q_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{\\hat e_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ (or tridiagonal matrix $\\hat T^{(0)}=\\hat L^{(0)}\\hat R^{(0)}$)\n\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\subsection{Numerical example}\nLet us consider\n\\begin{gather*}\n  L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 10 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 11 & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  R^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 2 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 3 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 4 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 5 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 6\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\ni.e.,\n\\begin{gather*}\n  L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}R^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 2 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 3 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 4 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 40 & 15 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 55 & 17\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\nand\n\\begin{gather*}\n  L_{\\bm\\epsilon}^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    -7 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & -8 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & -9 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{gather*}\nThen, Algorithm~\\ref{alg:tri-bi-to-tri} yields\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\hat R^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    8& 1& 0& 0& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& \\frac{217}{20}& 1& 0& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& \\frac{13150}{1953}& 1& 0& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{3924423}{614105}& 1& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& 0& \\frac{2596480772}{1515844721}& 1\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& 0& 0 & \\frac{156435}{1389979}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  \\hat L^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1& 0& 0& 0& 0 &0\\\\\n    \\frac{35}{4} & 1& 0& 0& 0 &0\\\\\n    0& \\frac{5184}{1085}& 1& 0& 0 &0\\\\\n    0& 0& \\frac{101339}{11835}& 1& 0 &0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{685706750}{67877983}& 1& 0\\\\\n    0& 0& 0& 0& \\frac{119912925}{14496090991} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\nand\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\hat T^{(0)}=\\hat L^{(0)}\\hat R^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    8& 1& 0& 0& 0 &0\\\\[0.5em]\n    70& \\frac{98}{5}& 1& 0& 0&0\\\\[0.5em]\n    0& \\frac{1296}{25}& \\frac{518}{45}& 1& 0&0\\\\[0.5em]\n    0& 0& \\frac{4670}{81}& \\frac{62848}{4203}& 1&0\\\\[0.5em]\n    0& 0& 0& \\frac{14079150}{218089}& \\frac{57542826}{4870343}&1\\\\[0.5em]\n    0 & 0& 0& 0& \\frac{1541100}{108764041}& \\frac{1260}{10429}\\\\[0.5em]\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{gather*}\nThe eigenvalues of both $(L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}R^{(0)}, L_{\\bm\\epsilon}^{(0)})$ and $\\hat T^{(0)}$ are 28.1051142, 22.50730913, 10.85981143,\n4.18583949, 0.23568694 and 0.10623881,\nwhich are verified by \\texttt{numpy.linalg.eig()}.\n\n\\section{Isospectral transformation between Hessenberg matrix and Hessenberg--bidiagonal matrix pencil}\n\\label{sec:transf-betw-hess}\n\n\\subsection{Sequence of Hessenberg--bidiagonal GEVPs and eigenvectors}\nAs a generalization, let us consider a Hessenberg--bidiagonal matrix pencil,\ni.e., the Hessenberg matrix of the form\n\\begin{equation*}\n  H^{(k)}\\coloneq L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}R^{(k+M-1)}R^{(k+M-2)}\\dots R^{(k)},\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $M$ is a positive integer,\nand the bidiagonal matrix $L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}$ defined by \\eqref{eq:def-L-epsilon}.\nTo obtain the polynomial sequence related to the matrix pencil,\nlet us consider polynomial sequences $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfying the relations\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k+M)}(x)=L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  R^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N^{(k)}(x)=x\\bm p^{(k+1)}(x),\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_N^{(k+M)}(x)=p_N^{(k)}(x)\n\\end{equation*}\nfor all integer $k$.\nNote that $p_N^{(k+1)}(x)=p_N^{(k)}(x)$ does not hold in general.\nThen the matrix equation~\\eqref{eq:de-Toda} is generalized as\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k+1)}R^{(k)}=\\tilde R^{(k)} L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}}^{(k)},\\quad\n  \\tilde R^{(k)} L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}=L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k+1)}R^{(k+M)},\n\\end{equation*}\nand it is shown that $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfies\nthe $(M+2)$-terms recurrence relation\n\\begin{equation*\n  H^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x)+\\sum_{j=0}^{M-1}L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}R^{(k+M-1)}R^{(k+M-2)}\\dots R^{(k+j+1)}x^j \\bm p_N^{(k+j)}(x)\n  =x^M L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x),\n\\end{equation*}\nSubstituting $x=x\\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi \\mathrm{i} \\nu\/M}$, $\\nu=0, 1, \\dots, M-1$,\nand taking a linear combination, we obtain\n\\begin{multline}\\label{eq:trr-eM-BLP-2}\n  H^{(k)}\\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_\\nu\\bm p^{(k)}(x\\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi \\mathrm{i} \\nu\/M})\n  +\\sum_{j=0}^{M-1}L_{\\bm{\\varepsilon}^*}^{(k)}R^{(k+M-1)}R^{(k+M-2)}\\dots R^{(k+j+1)}x^j\\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_\\nu \\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi \\mathrm{i} \\nu j\/M} \\bm p_N^{(k+j)}(x\\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi \\mathrm{i} \\nu\/M})\\\\\n  =x^ML_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\sum_{\\nu=0}^M w_\\nu \\bm p^{(k)}(x\\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi \\mathrm{i} \\nu\/M}),\n\\end{multline}\nwhere $w_0, w_1, \\dots, w_{M-1}$ are some constants.\nIf there exist some values $x_0, x_1, \\dots, x_{N-1}$ and\nconstants $w_{r, 0}^{(k)}, w_{r, 1}^{(k)}, \\dots, w_{r, M-1}^{(k)}$ for $r=0, 1, \\dots, N-1$\nsatisfying\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_{r, \\nu}^{(k)}\\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi\\mathrm{i} \\nu j\/M}p_N^{(k+j)}(x_r \\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi\\mathrm{i} \\nu\/M})=0,\\quad\n  j=0, 1, \\dots, M-1,\n\\end{equation*}\nthen \\eqref{eq:trr-eM-BLP-2} yields\n\\begin{equation*}\n  H^{(k)}\\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_{r, \\nu}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x_r \\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi\\mathrm{i}\\nu\/M})\n  =x_r^M L_{\\bm\\varepsilon}^{(k)}\\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_{r, \\nu}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x_r \\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi\\mathrm{i}\\nu\/M}),\n\\end{equation*}\ni.e., $x_r^M$ and $\\sum_{\\nu=0}^{M-1} w_{r, \\nu}^{(k)}\\bm p^{(k)}(x_r \\mathrm{e}^{-2\\pi\\mathrm{i}\\nu\/M})$\nare an eigenvalue and an eigenvector of $(H^{(k)}, L_{\\bm\\epsilon}^{(k)})$.\n\nLet us introduce the variables\n\\begin{gather*}\n  d_0^{(k+M)}\\coloneq q_0^{(k)}+\\epsilon_0 e_0^{(k)},\\quad\n  d_n^{(k+M)}\\coloneq q_n^{(k+M)}-(1-\\epsilon_n) e_{n}^{(k)},\\quad n=1, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\\coloneq q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad\n  f_{N-1}^{(k)}\\coloneq q_{N-1}^{(k)}.\n\\end{gather*}\nThen, in the same way as in the previous section,\nwe obtain\n\\begin{gather}\n  f_n^{(k)}=q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2,\\quad\n  f_{N-1}^{(k)}=q_{N-1}^{(k)},\\label{eq:d-heToda-f}\\\\\n  d_0^{(k+M)}=f_0^{(k)},\\quad\n  d_n^{(k+M)}=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    d_{n-1}^{(k+M)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+M)}} & if $\\epsilon_{n-1}=0$,\\\\\n    q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}} & if $\\epsilon_{n-1}=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  q_n^{(k+M)}=d_n^{(k+M)}+(1-\\epsilon_n)e_n^{(k)},\\quad n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1,\\\\\n  e_n^{(k+1)}=e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{q_n^{(k+M)}+\\epsilon_n e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}},\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-2.\\label{eq:d-heToda-e}\n\\end{gather}\nWe call this system the \\emph{discrete hungry elementary Toda orbits}~\\cite{kobayashi2022geb}.\n\n\\subsection{Isospectral transformation to an upper Hessenberg matrix}\nIn the same manner as in the previous section,\nwe can derive the relations\n\\begin{gather}\n  xp_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)+q_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\label{eq:CT-eM-biorth}\\\\\n  xp_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+(\\epsilon_n-1)M)}(x)+d_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\\\\n  xp_n^{(k+1)}(x)=p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n M)}(x)+f_n^{(k)}p_n^{(k)}(x),\\label{eq:CT-M1-biorth}\\\\\n  p_n^{(k)}(x)=p_n^{(k+M)}(x)+e_{n-1}^{(k)}p_{n-1}^{(k+(1-\\epsilon_{n-1})M)}(x).\\label{eq:GT-M1-biorth}\n\\end{gather}\nLet us introduce the variables\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat q_n^{(k)}\\coloneq f_n^{(k+\\eta_n M)},\\quad\n  \\hat e_n^{(k)}\\coloneq e_n^{(k+\\eta_{n+1} M)},\n\\end{equation*}\npolynomials\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\coloneq p_n^{(k+\\eta_n M)}(x),\n\\end{equation*}\nand the bidiagonal matrices and the vectors of polynomials\nsame as \\eqref{eq:bidiagonal-OPS} and \\eqref{eq:vector-OPS}.\nThen, the relations \\eqref{eq:CT-M1-biorth} and \\eqref{eq:GT-M1-biorth} are rewritten as\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat{\\bm p}^{(k-M)}(x)=\\hat L^{(k-M)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x),\\quad\n  x\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k+1)}(x)=\\hat R^{(k)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)+\\bm p_N^{(k)}(x).\n\\end{equation*}\nHence, $\\{\\hat{p}_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfies the $(M+2)$-terms recurrence relation\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat H^{(k)}\\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x)+\\sum_{j=0}^{M-1}\\hat L^{(k)}\\hat R^{(k+M-1)}\\hat R^{(k+M-2)}\\dots \\hat R^{(k+j+1)}x^j \\bm p_N^{(k+j)}(x)=x^M \\hat{\\bm p}^{(k)}(x),\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat H^{(k)}\\coloneq \\hat L^{(k)}\\hat R^{(k+M-1)}\\hat R^{(k+M-2)}\\dots \\hat R^{(k)}.\n\\end{equation*}\nIt is known that the polynomial sequence satisfying this relation\nbecomes the $(M, 1)$-biorthogonal polynomials~\\cite{maeda2017nuh};\nthere exists a linear functional $\\mathcal L^{(k)}\\colon \\mathbb C[x]\\to \\mathbb C$\nsatisfying the $(M, 1)$-biorthogonality condition\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{mM} \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)]=h_n^{(k)} \\delta_{m, n} ,\\quad\n  h_n^{(k)}\\ne 0,\\quad\n  n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1, \\quad\n  m=0, 1, \\dots, n.\n\\end{equation*}\nLet $\\mu_{k+m}$ be the moment of this linear functional which is the same definition\nas \\eqref{eq:def-moment}.\nThen, the determinant expression of $\\{\\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is given by\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat p_n^{(k)}(x)=\\frac{1}{\\tau_n^{(k)}}\n  \\begin{vmatrix}\n    \\mu_k & \\mu_{k+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+n-1} & \\mu_{k+n}\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+M} & \\mu_{k+M+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+M+n-1} & \\mu_{k+M+n}\\\\\n    \\vdots & \\vdots & & \\vdots & \\vdots\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+(n-1)M} & \\mu_{k+(n-1)M+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+(n-1)M+n-1} & \\mu_{k+(n-1)M+n}\\\\\n    1 & x & \\dots & x^{n-1} & x^n\n  \\end{vmatrix},\\quad\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N,\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $\\tau_n^{(k)}$ is the block Hankel determinant of the moments\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\tau_0^{(k)}\\coloneq 1,\\quad\n  \\tau_n^{(k)}\\coloneq |\\mu_{k+iM+j}|_{i, j=0}^{n-1},\\quad\n  n=1, 2, 3, \\dots.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nNext, we consider the determinant expression of $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$:\n\\begin{multline*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(x)=\\frac{1}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}}\n  \\begin{vmatrix}\n    \\mu_{k-\\eta_n M} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n M+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n M+n-1} & \\mu_{k-\\eta_n M+n}\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+1) M} & \\mu_{k-(-\\eta_n+1)M+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+1)M+n-1} & \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+1)M+n}\\\\\n    \\vdots & \\vdots & & \\vdots & \\vdots\\\\\n    \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+n-1)M} & \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+n-1)M+1} & \\dots & \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+n-1)M+n-1} & \\mu_{k+(-\\eta_n+n-1)M+n}\\\\\n    1 & x & \\dots & x^{n-1} & x^n\n  \\end{vmatrix},\\\\\n  n=1, 2, \\dots, N.\n\\end{multline*}\nHence, $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ satisfies the $(\\epsilon, M)$-biorthogonality relation\nfor $n=0, 1, \\dots, N-1$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{mM} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=0,\\quad\n  m=-\\eta_n , -\\eta_n+1, \\dots, -\\eta_n+n-1,\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{(-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=(1-2\\epsilon_n)^n \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1} M)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}},\n\\end{equation*}\nor\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{(-\\eta_n+n) M} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n} M)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}},\\quad\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{(-\\eta_n-1) M} p_n^{(k)}(x)]=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n}-1) M)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThe monic polynomial sequence $\\{p_n^{(k)}(x)\\}_{n=0}^N$ is called\nthe \\emph{$(\\epsilon, M)$-biorthogonal Laurent polynomials}.\nThen, the relations~\\eqref{eq:CT-eM-biorth}--\\eqref{eq:GT-M1-biorth} and\n\\begin{equation*}\n  p_n^{(k)}(0)=(-1)^n\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M+1)}}{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}},\\quad\n  p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n M)}=(-1)^{n+1} \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+\\epsilon_n)M+1)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+\\epsilon_n) M)}}=(-1)^{n+1} \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}M+1)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n} M)}}\n\\end{equation*}\ngive\n\\begin{gather*}\n  q_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n M+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}},\\\\\n  d_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k+(\\epsilon_n-1)M)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n}-1)M+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n M+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n}-1)M)}},\\\\\n  f_n^{(k)}\n  =-\\frac{p_{n+1}^{(k+\\epsilon_n M)}(0)}{p_{n}^{(k)}(0)}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k-\\eta_n M)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}M+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_nM+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n}M)}},\n\\end{gather*}\nand, since\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{(-\\eta_{n+1}+n+1-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    \\frac{\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    0 & if $\\epsilon_n=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\\\\n  \\mathcal L^{(k+M)}[x^{(-\\eta_{n+1}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_{n+1}^{(k+M)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    0 & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    (-1)^{n+1}\\frac{\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1)M)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=1$,\n  \\end{dcases*}\\\\\n  \\mathcal L^{(k+(1-\\epsilon_n)M)}[x^{(-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_n^{(k+(1-\\epsilon_n)M)}(x)]=\n  \\begin{dcases*}\n    \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_n+1) M)}}{\\tau_n^{(k+(-\\eta_n+1) M)}}=\\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1) M)}}{\\tau_n^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1) M)}} & if $\\epsilon_n=0$,\\\\\n    (-1)^n \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_n-1)M)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k-\\eta_n M)}}=(-1)^n \\frac{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1) M)}}& if $\\epsilon_n=1$\n  \\end{dcases*}\n\\end{gather*}\nhold,\n\\begin{equation*}\n  e_n^{(k)}\n  =\\frac{\\mathcal L^{(k)}[x^{(-\\eta_{n+1}+n+1-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_{n+1}^{(k)}(x)]-\\mathcal L^{(k+M)}[x^{(-\\eta_{n+1}+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_{n+1}^{(k+M)}(x)]}{\\mathcal L^{(k+(1-\\epsilon_n)M)}[x^{(-\\eta_n+n-\\epsilon_n(n+1))M}p_n^{(k+(1-\\epsilon_n)M)}(x)]}\n  =\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1) M)}\\tau_{n+2}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+(-\\eta_{n+1}+1)M)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k-\\eta_{n+1}M)}}.\n\\end{equation*}\nFurther, we have\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat q_n^{(k)}=f_n^{(k+\\eta_n M)}=\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+1)}}{\\tau_{n}^{(k+1)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k)}},\\quad\n  \\hat e_n^{(k)}=e_n^{(k+\\eta_{n+1} M)}=\\frac{\\tau_n^{(k+M)}\\tau_{n+2}^{(k)}}{\\tau_{n+1}^{(k+M)}\\tau_{n+1}^{(k)}}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nSummarizing the above, we obtain Algorithm~\\ref{alg:Hes-bi-to-Hes} of\nthe isospectral transformation.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[t]\n  \\caption{Isospectral transformation from Hessenberg--bidiagonal matrix pencil to Hessenberg matrix}\n  \\label{alg:Hes-bi-to-Hes}\n\\begin{algorithmic}\n  \\REQUIRE $\\{q_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$, $\\{q_n^{(1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$, $\\dots$, $\\{q_n^{(M-1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$,  $\\{e_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ and $\\bm\\epsilon\\in\\{0, 1\\}^{N-1}$ (or bidiagonal matrices $R^{(0)}$, $R^{(1)}$, $\\dots$, $R^{(M-1)}$, $L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}$ and $L_{\\bm\\epsilon}^{(0)}$)\n  \\STATE $\\eta_0 \\leftarrow 0$\n  \\FOR{$n=1$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE $\\eta_n \\leftarrow \\eta_{n-1}+\\epsilon_{n-1}$\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$k=0$ to $(\\eta_{N-1}+1)M-1$}\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n<N-1$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}+\\epsilon_n e_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {$f_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow q_n^{(k)}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\STATE\\IfThenElse{$n=0$}\n                   {$d_n^{(k+M)}\\leftarrow f_n^{(k)}$}\n                   {\\IfThenElse{$\\epsilon_{n-1}=0$}\n                               {$d_n^{(k+M)}\\leftarrow d_{n-1}^{(k+M)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{q_{n-1}^{(k+M)}}$}\n                               {$d_n^{(k+M)}\\leftarrow q_{n-1}^{(k)}\\frac{f_n^{(k)}}{f_{n-1}^{(k)}}$}\n                   }\n  \\STATE $q^{(k+M)}_n \\leftarrow d_n^{(k+M)}+(1-\\epsilon_n)e_n^{(k)}$\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$e_n^{(k+1)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(k)}\\frac{f_{n+1}^{(k)}}{q_n^{(k+M)}+\\epsilon_n e_{n-1}^{(k+1)}}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\FOR{$n=0$ to $N-1$}\n  \\FOR{$k=0$ to $M-1$}\n  \\STATE $\\hat q_n^{(k)} \\leftarrow f_n^{(k+\\eta_n M)}$\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\STATE\\IfThen{$n<N-1$}\n               {$\\hat e_n^{(0)} \\leftarrow e_n^{(\\eta_{n+1}M)}$}\n  \\ENDFOR\n  \\ENSURE $\\{\\hat q_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$, $\\{\\hat q_n^{(1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$, $\\dots$, $\\{\\hat q_n^{(M-1)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-1}$ and $\\{\\hat e_n^{(0)}\\}_{n=0}^{N-2}$ (or Hessenberg matrix $\\hat H^{(0)}=\\hat L^{(0)}\\hat R^{(M-1)}\\dots\\hat R^{(0)}$)\n\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\n\\subsection{Numerical example}\nLet us consider\n\\begin{gather*}\n  L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 10 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 11 & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  R^{(0)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 2 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 3 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 4 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 5 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 6\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  R^{(1)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    2 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 3 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 4 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 5 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 6 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 7\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\quad\n  R^{(2)}=\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    3 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 4 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 5 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 6 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 7 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 8\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{gather*}\ni.e.,\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}R^{(2)}R^{(1)}R^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    6 & 18 8 & 9 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 24 & 36 & 12 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 60 & 60 & 15 & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 120 & 90 & 18\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 1200 & 1110 & 306\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 2310 & 1722\n  \\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{\\bm \\epsilon}^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    -7 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & -8 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & -9 & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThen, Algorithm~\\ref{alg:Hes-bi-to-Hes} yields\n\\allowdisplaybreaks\n\\begin{gather*}\n  \\hat R^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    8 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & \\frac{1045}{196} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\frac{11783226}{1951015} & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{11202591839}{1537751072} & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{1793288934976}{673133562011} & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{3365490}{23369591}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  \\hat R^{(1)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    \\frac{43}{4} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & \\frac{249816}{44935} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\frac{4459329545}{417182311} & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{281563249429787}{25605158734417} & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{61342417293160530}{164176201497170723} & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{654348548}{340773203}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  \\hat R^{(2)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    \\frac{570}{43} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & \\frac{5738006}{988855} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\frac{2131337471900}{284718590021} & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{417593915190317388}{71923747531523615} & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{5065558609120017904}{2778977782301483047} & 1\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{340773203}{103007824}\n  \\end{pmatrix},\\\\\n  \\hat L^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    \\frac{686}{95} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & \\frac{17736500}{3269329} & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\frac{92158247808}{19114261985} & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{393943905477395}{312887922561632} & 1 & 0\\\\\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{448520531195}{11555726719792} & 1\n  \\end{pmatrix}\n\\end{gather*}\n\\allowdisplaybreaks[0]\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n  \\hat H^{(0)}\n  =\\hat L^{(0)}\\hat R^{(2)}\\hat R^{(1)}\\hat R^{(0)}\n  =\n  \\begin{pmatrix}\n    1140 & \\frac{11898}{49} & \\frac{46404}{1867} & 1 & 0 & 0\\\\[0.5em]\n    8232 & \\frac{94344}{49} & \\frac{581274}{1867} & \\frac{1189329}{38368} & 1 & 0\\\\[0.5em]\n    0 & \\frac{2240400}{2401} & \\frac{109654800}{91483} & \\frac{646077099}{1880032} & \\frac{146061709}{5496967} & 1\\\\[0.5em]\n    0 & 0 & \\frac{8121738240}{3485689} & \\frac{26863943637}{17908264} & \\frac{2245552524}{12320333} & \\frac{20808}{1867}\\\\[0.5em]\n    0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{215519585169}{368025856} & \\frac{110756457399}{1076059336} & \\frac{44037}{4796}\\\\[0.5em]\n    0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{886300800}{12585025489} & \\frac{107940}{112183}\n  \\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThe eigenvalues of both $(L_{\\bm\\epsilon^*}^{(0)}R^{(2)}R^{(1)}R^{(0)}, L_{\\bm \\epsilon}^{(0)})$\nand $\\hat H^{(0)}$ are 3188.27018, 2167.22313, 485.176601, 25.4359335,\n1.14466512 and 0.749495172,\nwhich are verified by \\texttt{numpy.linalg.eig()}.\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\nIn this paper, we have constructed an isospectral transformation from\na Hessenberg--bidiagonal matrix pencil to a Hessenberg matrix.\nSince the obtained algorithms do not contain any subtractions,\nif all the input values are positive, then all computations can be performed\nwithout loss of digits for floating point arithmetic.\n\nAs a future work, we are interested in an isospectral transformation from\na tridiagonal--tridiagonal matrix pencil to some type of sparse matrix.\nThe GEVP of tridiagonal--tridiagonal matrix pencils has attracted much attention~\\cite{li1994ags,vandebril2009qsa}.\nIt is known that this GEVP defines so-called $\\mathrm{R}_{\\mathrm{II}}$\\  polynomials~\\cite{ismail1995goc}\nand its associated discrete integrable systems are $\\mathrm{R}_{\\mathrm{II}}$\\  chain~\\cite{maeda2016gea,spiridonov2000stc} and FST chain~\\cite{spiridonov2007idt}.\nWe will be able to derive the isospectral transformation by using the relation between these\ntwo discrete integrable systems.\n\n\\section*{Declaration of competing interest}\nThere is no competing interest.\n\n\\section*{Data availability}\nNo data was used for research described in the article.\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgement}\nThis work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP19J23445, JP21K13837 and JP19H01792.\nThis work was partially supported by the joint project\n``Advanced Mathematical Science for Mobility Society''\nof Kyoto University and Toyota Motor Corporation.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nA variety of astronomical and cosmological observations have established that the Universe contains a substance of little, if any, interaction with ordinary matter made of atoms.  This substance, dark matter (DM), comprises about $25\\%$ of the cosmic energy budget, which translates to about $85\\%$ of all matter in the Universe \\cite{Aghanim:2018eyx}.  Not much is known about non-gravitational properties of DM, due to its elusive nature.  Given the diversity of particles and forces that constitute the ``visible\" sector encoded in the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, it is reasonable to consider whether DM resides within a ``dark sector\" that comprises a number of new states and forces that only feebly interact with the SM.\n\nThere has been a significant experimental effort over the last few decades to detect DM in the laboratory.\nThis effort has been matched by intense theoretical research directed at DM phenomenology.  The questions surrounding the physics underlying electroweak symmetry breaking in the SM and its extensions led to an early focus to look for DM around the weak scale $\\sim 100$~GeV.  The lack of evidence for new physics near that scale, from high energy and precision experiments, together with null signals for weak scale DM in a variety of searches, has provided motivation to expand the experimental and theoretical efforts to lower masses, where new challenges arise.  In the realm of direct detection, going to lower DM masses means smaller available energies in collisions of DM particles with detector target material, which requires lower detection energy thresholds and controlling backgrounds that could overwhelm the signal.\n\nSearches designed for weak scale DM are mostly focused on looking for nuclear recoil signals.  However, direct detection of light DM, below the GeV scale, motivates looking for electron recoil signals.  To see this, let us consider some rough estimates.  The typical virial velocity of DM near the solar system is $v\\sim 10^{-3}$.  For heavy DM masses, $m_{DM}\\sim 100$~GeV, this corresponds to a nucleus of mass $m_N\\sim 10$~GeV recoiling with momentum \nof order $q \\sim m_N \\,v \\sim 10^{-2}$~GeV and energy $E_R \\sim q^2\/(2 m_N)\\sim 10$~keV.  Now, \nif we consider sub-GeV DM masses, \nsay $m_{DM}\\sim 0.1$~GeV, we see that the momentum transfer is $q\\sim m_{DM}\\, v \\sim 100$~keV and the nucleus would recoil with energy $E_R\\sim$~eV, which is well below the $\\gtrsim$~keV threshold of such experiments.  \n\nThe above situation can be improved if one looks for electron recoil signals. To see this, note that electrons in atoms are delocalized over length scales of order Bohr radius $a_0 \\sim (\\alpha\\, m_e)^{-1}$, where $\\alpha\\approx 1\/137$ is the fine structure constant and $m_e \\approx 511$~keV is the electron mass.  Thus, the typical momentum of the electrons in the atom is $q_0\\sim 1\/a_0$ and the electron velocity is hence $v_e \\sim \\alpha$, which is much larger than the virial velocity of DM.  Nonetheless, the recoil energy of the electron will be $E_R\\sim q_0^2\/(2 m_e)\\sim 10$~eV.  Hence, detection of a signal in electron recoil in an experiment with $\\gtrsim$~keV energy threshold requires velocities near $v\\sim 0.1$, which is well above the escape velocity from the Milky Way, $v_{esc}\\sim \\text{few}\\times 10^{-3}$, severely suppressing the expected abundance of any such DM particles in the halo population.\n\nGiven the above situation, to look for typical DM in the sub-GeV regime, one needs to devise experimental techniques with detection thresholds $\\ll$~keV \\cite{Crisler:2018gci,Abramoff:2019dfb,Barreto:2011zu,Arnaud:2020svb,Agnese:2018col} (for novel ideas see \\cite{Schutz:2016tid,Hochberg:2015pha,Hochberg:2017wce,Bloch:2016sjj}).  \nAlternatively, one could investigate new DM models that could be detected in the current class of large scale experiments like XENON1T or the planned next generation searches such as XENONnT and LZ \\cite{Aprile:2015uzo,Aprile:2017aty,Mount:2017qzi}, with thresholds near the keV scale.  In fact, there have been some ideas put forth in recent years where a fraction of the DM can have velocities $\\gg 10^{-3}$, due to originating from decays of a more massive DM state \\cite{Huang:2013xfa,Agashe:2014yua,DEramo:2010keq} or else due to interactions with energetic particles, such as cosmic rays \\cite{Bringmann:2018cvk,Ema:2018bih}.  In these schemes,\ntypically only a small fraction of DM could be boosted to higher velocities.  \n\nIn what follows, we will propose a novel scenario, where {\\it all DM} reaches the Earth at velocities \n$v\\sim 0.1$ without leading to severe depletion of the Galactic halo or requiring interactions that are in conflict with\nlaboratory or astrophysical\nbounds.  The basic idea is that there could be a long range {\\it attractive} force that acts on DM and ordinary matter, but with unequal strengths \\cite{Davoudiasl:2017pwe}.  \nThis force need not have a range -  \nset by the inverse mass of the boson that mediates it - that far exceeds the size of the Earth.  The matter in the Earth, baryons or electrons, can then source a long distance potential that accelerates DM particles towards the Earth once they get close to it.   We will show that for appropriate choices of parameters, one could attain velocities $v\\sim 0.1$ for all DM particles that reach the surface of the Earth, which to a very good approximation characterizes the location of typical DM experiments.  We will also introduce a short range interaction that mediates DM-electron scattering; as an example we will choose a light vector boson that kinetically mixes with the photon, {\\it i.e.}~the dark photon \\cite{Holdom:1985ag}. \n\nAs will be discussed in the following, our scenario opens up a new possibility for detection of light DM at existing and planned experiments that use electron recoil with thresholds of $\\sim$~keV.  Interestingly, XENON1T has observed an excess in electron recoil events that is significant at $\\sim3.3$ $\\sigma$ \\cite{Aprile:2020tmw}.  After presenting  the central idea of our work, we will  discuss the possibility of explaining this potential signal of DM in our scenario, while maintaining agreement with stringent bounds from stellar cooling considerations. \n\nFor a recent work that takes advantage of a long range interaction to avoid stellar bounds in explaining the XENON1T excess, but in a different model and context, see Ref.~\\cite{DeRocco:2020xdt}.  The utility of a high velocity DM population for explaining the excess was emphasized in Ref.~\\cite{Kannike:2020agf} early on; see also Ref.~\\cite{Alhazmi:2020fju}.\nFor some recent works that have also \nconsidered a light vector boson as a mediator for the reported XENON1T excess, see for example Refs.~\\cite{Alonso-Alvarez:2020cdv,Boehm:2020ltd,Baryakhtar:2020rwy,An:2020bxd,Lindner:2020kko,Baek:2020owl,Okada:2020evk,Choi:2020kch,AristizabalSierra:2020edu,McKeen:2020vpf,Fornal:2020npv,Bally:2020yid}.\n\nNext, we will introduce the long range force described above.  We will then introduce an example of a short range interaction that will be necessary for detectable scatterings of DM on electrons.  \n\n\\section{Long Range Interactions}\n\\label{sec:long range}\n\nWe propose a long range interaction between ordinary matter (baryons or electrons) and DM, as was suggested in Ref.~\\cite{Davoudiasl:2017pwe}.\nDepending on its type, such an interaction can lead to an attractive force between DM and atoms.  For concreteness, let us assume that the force carrier is an ultralight \nboson $\\phi$ of mass $m_\\phi \\sim 3\\times 10^{-16}$ eV  which is compatible with superradiance limits of ultralight bosons \\cite{Baryakhtar:2017ngi}.  This gives $\\phi$ a range $\\sim 100 \\,R_\\oplus$, where $R_\\oplus \\approx 6.4\\times 10^3$~km is the radius of the Earth.  Assuming that, for example, nucleons and DM particles $\\chi$ couple to $\\phi$ with strengths $g_n$ and $g_\\chi$, respectively, the entire Earth sources a potential \nfor $\\phi$ of the form\n\\begin{equation}\nV(R)\\approx - g_n g_\\chi\\frac{N_\\oplus}{4\\pi R}\\,,\n\\label{V}\n\\end{equation}\nat a distance $R$ from the center of the Earth, where $N_\\oplus \\sim 10^{51}$ is the number of nucleons in the Earth.  Here, we have assumed that $R \\lesssim m_\\phi^{-1}$, so that the interaction is not Yukawa suppressed.  If $g_n g_\\chi > 0$, then the above potential leads to an attractive force.  \n\nSearches for new long range forces \nlead to a very stringent constraint $g_n\\lesssim 10^{-24}$ \\cite{Schlamminger:2007ht,Fayet:2017pdp}.  However, on length scales of order $100 R_\\oplus$, there are no severe \nconstraints on interactions of $\\phi$ with DM and one could have \\cite{Davoudiasl:2017pwe}  \n\\begin{equation}\ng_\\chi \\lesssim 4\\times10^{-6} \\left(\\frac{m_\\chi}{1~\\text{MeV}}\\right)^{3\/4}\\,.\n\\label{gchi}\n\\end{equation}\nWe then have\n\\begin{equation}\nV(R_\\oplus) \\sim -0.01\\text{ MeV}\\, \\left(\\frac{g_n}{10^{-26}}\\right) \\left(\\frac{g_\\chi}{10^{-7}}\\right)\\,.\n\\label{VRe}\n\\end{equation}\nThe above provides $E_{KE}=-V(R_\\oplus)$ of kinetic energy for every particle coming from infinity, with the usual $v\\sim 10^{-3}$ virial velocity, after falling down the potential well approaching the surface of the Earth.  The velocity at $R=R_\\oplus$ is then given by \n\\begin{equation}\nv(R_\\oplus) \\sim \\sqrt{\\frac{-2V(R_\\oplus)}{m_\\chi}}\\,.\n\\label{vRe}\n\\end{equation}\nSo, for $m_\\chi=1$ MeV and reference values in \\eq{VRe}, we find $v\\sim0.14$.\n\nThe long range force also leads to an enhancement of the number density of the DM particles at the Earth \nsimilar to the particle density enhancement around a black hole \\cite{Peirani:2008bu}.\nThe density is increased by \nthe ratio of the DM velocity at the Earth over the DM velocity in the solar system  \n\\begin{equation}\n r_v\\approx v_{\\text{final}}\/v_{\\text{initial}}\\,.\n \\label{eq:rv}\n\\end{equation} \nIn our model, we have $r_v\\sim 100$. This enhancement can be understood as an increased cross section of the Earth which requires  the range of the long range force to exceed the impact parameter of this interaction.\n\n\n\\section{Short Range Interactions}\n\\label{sec:short range}\nThe potential that accelerates DM, introduced in the previous section, does not mediate electron scattering processes that can be observed \nin DM direct detection  experiments.  Hence, we need to introduce another interaction, of much shorter range, to have detectable signals.    \nAs an example for such an interaction we will focus on the case of a light dark photon mediator $A_D$, with mass $m_D$, which mixes kinetically with the photon, described by the Lagrangian \n\\begin{equation}\n    \\mathcal{L}\\supset \\frac{\\epsilon}{2}F^{\\mu\\nu}F_{D \\mu \\nu} -\\frac{m_D^2}{2} A_{D\\mu}A_D^{\\mu} + i\\, e_D A_{D\\mu} \\overline{\\chi}\\gamma^\\mu \\chi\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $F_{(D) \\mu\\nu}$ is the field strength tensor for the (dark) photon and $e_D=\\sqrt{4\\pi \\alpha_D}$ is the dark photon coupling.\n\n\nIn our scenario, due to the high velocity of DM reaching the detector, we can use the ``free electron\" approximation.  In this case, for the energies and momentum transfers of interest we can ignore the atomic binding energies, as long as we only consider the outer shell electrons. For the case of xenon atoms, used as target material in the current and planned large scale DM detectors, this \ncorresponds to electrons in the $n = 4$ and 5 levels, for a total effective charge of $Z_{eff} = 26$.  In an approximation where the electrons are treated as free and \ninitially at rest, we find the differential cross section for DM electron scattering (for some relevant formalism, see for example Ref.~\\cite{Essig:2015cda}) \n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\text{d} (\\sigma_e \\,v)}{\\text{d} E_R} =\\frac{8 \\pi \\,m_e\\, \\alpha\\, \\alpha_D \\epsilon^2 \\, Z_{eff}}{v\\, (2 m_e E_R + m_D^2)^2}\\Theta(2\\mu_{\\chi e}^2v^2\/m_e-E_R)\\,,\n\\label{diff-sigmav}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the electron recoil energy is given by $E_R = |\\vec{q}|^2\/(2 m_e)$, with the magnitude of the three-momentum transfer denoted by $|\\vec{q}|$.\nThe step function provides the kinematic limit.\n\n\nWe can get the total cross section by integrating \\eq{diff-sigmav}. In order to regulate the infrared behavior of the cross section, we will introduce a threshold energy \n$E_{th}$, below which events are not registered by the experiment.  We then find,\n\\begin{equation}\n(\\sigma_e \\, v) = \\frac{16 \\pi\\, \\alpha\\, \\alpha_D \\epsilon^2 Z_{eff}  (\\mu_{\\chi e}^2 v^2 - m_e\\, E_{th}\/2)}{v\\, (2 m_e \\,E_{th} + m_D^2)(4 \\mu_{\\chi e}^2 v^2 + m_D^2)}\\,,\n\\label{sigmav}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mu_{e \\chi}$ is the reduced mass of the electron-DM system, $1\/\\mu_{\\chi e} \\equiv 1\/m_e + 1\/m_\\chi$.  In the above, the maximum recoil energy is given by $E^{max}_R = 2 (\\mu_{\\chi e}^2\/m_e) v^2$.  \n\nUsing \\eq{sigmav}, we can write down the expected rate per detector mass and year,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\text{d} R}{\\text{d} t \\,\\text{d} M} =  n_T\\,  n_\\chi (\\sigma_e v)\\,,\n\\label{dRdtDM}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $n_T = 6.02 \\times 10^{23}\\, \\text{g}^{-1}\/A$ is the number of target atoms per gram, with $A$ the target atomic mass, and $n_\\chi=r_v \\rho_\\chi\/m_\\chi$ is the number density of DM particles; the DM energy density is $\\rho_\\chi \\approx 0.3$~GeV cm$^{-3}$ \\cite{Tanabashi:2018oca} and the enhancement of the number density $r_v$ from \\eq{eq:rv}.\n\n\nIn the above, due to the nearly uniform boost of all DM to $v\\sim 0.1$ at the detector, we may approximate the DM velocity distribution by a delta function\n\\begin{equation}\nf(v) \\approx \\delta [v - v(R_\\oplus)]\\,, \n\\end{equation}\nnear the surface of the Earth.  \n\n For light dark photons with $m_D\\lesssim 10$ keV the cross section is independent of the dark photon mass whereas for large dark photon masses the signal rates depends on $m_D^{-4}$.\nThese results  need to be compared to constraints on the mass of a dark photon and its kinetic mixing taken from \\cite{Essig:2013lka}. We will restrict ourselves to the region between $100~\\text{eV}<m_D<1 $ MeV where the decay of the dark photon into SM fermions is not kinematically allowed.\nIn the region between $m_D>1$ eV up to 0.1 MeV strong constraints on the kinetic mixing come from stellar cooling of the Sun, of stars in the horizontal branch (HB), and for red giants (RG).\nWe note that there is a slight hint of new physics in HB cooling measurements  which could be explained by a dark photon for parameters shown in fig.~\\ref{fig:results} \\cite{Giannotti:2015kwo}.\n\nBetween $m_D\\sim $ 0.1 and 1 MeV constraints on the kinetic mixing  from the diffuse photon background  (DPB) apply. However, in our model these constraints can be evaded by assuming a light dark fermion that would allow prompt {\\it invisible} decays of the dark photon.  This may seem to lead to conflict with the number of relativistic degrees of freedom allowed during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN).  However, for values of $\\epsilon \\lesssim 10^{-11}$ of interest in our work, the dark sector and the SM sector would not be in equilibrium and the dark sector could be much ``cooler\" than the visible sector, making it unconstrained by these considerations.  To see this, note that the rate for $e^+ e^- \\to \\gamma A_D$, as an example, is roughly given by $\\alpha \\epsilon^2 T$, which at the BBN temperatures of $T\\sim \\ord{\\rm MeV}$, is $\\ll H(T)$, where the Hubble scale is set by $H(T) \\sim T^2\/M_P$, with $M_P\\approx 1.2 \\times 10^{19}$~GeV the Planck mass. At higher temperatures the decoupling of the two sectors is enhanced and for $T\\lesssim 1$~MeV electrons have annihilated away, suppressing thermalization processes.\n\nAround $m_D\\approx 0.1$ MeV where stellar cooling measurements lose sensitivity\nwe find a sweet spot which allows for kinetic mixings which can simultaneously explain the HB hint and XENON1T. \nThis benchmark point is also allowed by the general constraints on dark photons as well as by constraints from Supernovae and BBN on light DM interacting via a dark photon \\cite{DeRocco:2019jti,Chigusa:2020bgq}.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Plotresultsmevnocosmo.pdf}\n    \\caption{ Constraints on dark photon mass vs.~kinetic mixing.  The constraints are adapted from Ref.~\\cite{Essig:2013lka}. The light blue region represents the HB cooling hint from Ref.~\\cite{Giannotti:2015kwo}.    The black star represents the value of the benchmark point from tab.~\\ref{tab:fiducial} which can explain the XENON1T excess.  }\n    \\label{fig:results}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo summarize, the fiducial parameters of the model are shown in table \\ref{tab:fiducial}.\n\\begin{table}\n\\centering\n\\caption{The fiducial parameters of the model.\nThe first three parameters are related to the long range interaction while the last four are related to the short range $\\chi-e$ scattering interaction.}\n\\begin{tabular}{c|c|c}\n$m_\\phi$ & $g_n$ & $g_\\chi$ \\\\\\hline\n$3\\times 10^{-16}$ eV & $10^{-26}$ & $10^{-7}$ \n\\end{tabular}\\\\\\vspace{0.1in}\n\\begin{tabular}{c|c|c|c}\n$\\alpha_D$ & $m_D$ & $\\epsilon$ & $m_\\chi$ \\\\\\hline\n$2\\times10^{-6}$ & 0.08 MeV & $8\\times 10^{-13}$ & 1 MeV\n\\end{tabular}\n\\label{tab:fiducial}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\section{Discussion}\n\\label{sec:discussion}\nWe note that XENON1T has recently reported a slight excess of electron recoils in the few keV range \\cite{Aprile:2020tmw}.\nWhile backgrounds such as tritium could possibly explain the excess, these explanations appear to be disfavored, yet more investigation may be necessary for a firm conclusion.\n\nWe performed a fit of the parameters to the data as shown in fig.~\\ref{fig:data}.\nTo do so, we computed the differential cross section from \\eq{diff-sigmav}, multiplied it by $n_Tn_\\chi$, defined  following \\eq{dRdtDM} including the $r_v$ factor, and applied the efficiency $\\xi$ given in Ref.~\\cite{Aprile:2020tmw}.\nFor a test statistic we computed a simple $\\chi^2$ function considering only the error bars in the data points.\nWe then marginalized this function over the DM velocity $v$, the dark photon mass $m_D$, and the normalization parameters $\\alpha_D\\epsilon^2$ assuming $m_\\chi=1$  MeV and that we are in the non-relativistic limit while maintaining the full dark photon propagator.\nWe find that our model is preferred over the background only hypothesis with $\\Delta\\chi^2=9.8$.\n\nWe can see that a key feature of the model is not only a suppression of events at low energy due to the dark photon mass, but also at high energy due to the sharp velocity distribution.\nUnlike many other explanations of the XENON1T data, we anticipate that the spectrum would fall off fairly sharply at higher recoil energies.\nOur best fit parameters are $\\alpha_D\\epsilon^2=1.5\\e{-30}$, $m_D=0.082$ MeV, and $v=0.12$ which has a test statistic $\\chi^2=36.6$ compared with the background only hypothesis which is $\\chi^2=46.4$.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=\\columnwidth]{Data}\n\\caption{The XENON1T data in red and their best fit background model in blue.\nGreen is our best fit signal curve and the orange curve is the background plus the signal times the XENON1T efficiency.\nThe best fit point for $m_\\chi=1$ MeV is at $\\alpha_D\\epsilon^2=1.5\\e{-30}$, $m_D=0.082$ MeV, and $v=0.12$ at which point we find $\\Delta\\chi^2=9.8$ compared to the background only.}\n\\label{fig:data}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo further understand the dependence of the parameters on the data, we show two interesting $\\chi^2$ projections for the XENON1T data.\nIn fig.~\\ref{fig:velocity} we show the velocity projection where $m_\\chi=1$ MeV and the other parameters are marginalized over.\nWe see that $v\\sim0.1$ is preferred.\nFor smaller velocities the DM does not have enough kinetic energy to have an effect above XENON1T's threshold.\nAt high velocities an improved fit is found, but it slightly overestimates the signal at larger recoil energies.\nIn practice the velocity distribution is not truly a delta function as we have modeled it here and some of DM would have higher velocities which would make the suppression at higher recoil energies a bit softer.\nNonetheless we anticipate that this is a small effect.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=\\columnwidth]{Velocity}\n\\caption{The preferred region of velocity after marginalizing over the normalization style parameters such as  $\\alpha_D$, and $\\epsilon$ as well as $m_D$.\nThe sharp nature of the plot is due to the binning of the data.}\n\\label{fig:velocity}\n\\end{figure}\n\nNext we investigate the parameters of the short range interaction in fig.~\\ref{fig:region}.\nWe see that the best fit point is for $m_D\\sim0.1$ MeV and $\\alpha_D\\epsilon^2\\sim10^{-30}$  which is for example satisfied for  $\\alpha_D=2\\times 10^{-6}$, $\\epsilon=8\\times 10^{-13}$, and $m_\\chi=1$ MeV which is also consistent with other bounds shown in fig.~\\ref{fig:results}. We also note that for the preferred values of $\\alpha_D$, $m_\\chi$ and $m_D$ the DM self-interaction cross section $\\sigma\\approx  4 \\pi \\alpha_D^2m_\\chi^2\/m_D^4$ satisfies the approximate constraint $\\sigma\/m_{\\chi} \\lesssim 1~\\text{cm}^2\/\\text{g}$ \\cite{Tulin:2013teo}. \nThe innermost region of fig.~\\ref{fig:region} is maximally preferred at $\\Delta\\chi^2>9$, the region to the top left is significantly disfavored as it over-predicts the signal, while the region to the bottom right is generally consistent with the background only hypothesis as it predicts no additional events.\nThe best fit region continues up to larger normalizations, although these become ruled out from other constraints as one must  dial up the couplings ($\\alpha_D$ or $\\epsilon$).\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=\\columnwidth]{Region}\n\\caption{The parameters that are preferred by the XENON1T data; the center is preferred by the data, the bottom right returns to the SM, and the top left produces too big of a signature and is strongly ruled out.\nWe compute the $\\chi^2$ test statistic between the data and the background plus the signal rate times the efficiency function.\nThis is compared to the $\\chi^2$ between the data and the background alone.}\n\\label{fig:region}\n\\end{figure}\n\nBeyond the current large-exposure low-threshold experiments, this model can be, in principle, tested in other ways.  The attractive nature of the potential in our scenario would provide a nearly radial flux, both up-going and down-going, for DM close to the Earth's surface, a sort of ``dark matter rain,\" which would lead to significant anisotropy of the signal.  This hypothesis could be tested in experiments that have directional sensitivity \\cite{Sekiya:2003wf,Sciolla:2008vp,Daw:2011wq,Miuchi:2012rma,Santos:2013hpa,Battat:2013gma,Cappella:2013rua,DAmbrosio:2014arr,Couturier:2016isu,Hochberg:2016ntt,Kadribasic:2017obi,Rajendran:2017ynw,Budnik:2017sbu,Griffin:2018bjn,Coskuner:2019odd} as the anisotropy is different from both solar neutrinos and the conventional isotropic DM blizzard.\n\nThe long range interaction component of this model provides another unique, although difficult to test, prediction.\nConfirming a direct detection signal of DM would require multiple independent detections of the signal.\nDue to the velocity gain as DM falls into the Earth, this model predicts that the detection rate will be altitude dependent.\nThat is, we expect a very slightly higher rate at detectors in underground mines such as LZ at SURF which is 1.5 km below the surface than those at the surface such as XENON1T at Gran Sasso.\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\n\\label{sec:conclusions}\nWe have presented a unique model of dark matter (DM) wherein the Earth provides an attractive force on it due to an ultralight mediator.\nWhile this does not significantly modify the evolution of DM in the Galaxy, this potential does provide a large effect on the velocity distribution near the Earth, in particular by considerably adding to the velocity of 100\\% of the DM and yielding a nearly radial flux.\nThus, instead of $v\\sim10^{-3}$, all of the DM could have much higher velocities which considerably changes the phenomenology of low target mass recoil experiments such as electron recoils.\nIn addition, the resultant velocity distribution is highly peaked.\nWe have included a dark photon sector in our model to provide a testable interaction between DM and electrons.\nThis model is consistent with known astrophysical, cosmological, and laboratory experiments and possibly explains a tension in stellar cooling data.\n\nOur scenario is testable at low-threshold large-volume DM direct detection experiments such as XENON1T.\nIn light of the fact that XENON1T has recently seen a tantalizing excess of events at low recoils, we investigated the compatibility of this model with those  data.\nWe found a good fit to the data for model parameters that are consistent with other bounds.\nIn addition, this model makes several distinguishing predictions.\nAlthough some would be extremely difficult to test without some rather extreme experiments -- such as a XENON1T like experiment in space or on the moon -- others are much more down to Earth.  In particular, the scenario entails a nearly radial flux of high velocity DM at Earth surface, giving rise to ``dark matter rain,\" which could be tested in experiments with directional sensitivity.  Also, with future XENON1T data, one can test if the excess has a shape compatible with our prediction shown in fig.~\\ref{fig:data}, in particular a suppression at both lower and higher recoil energies, a feature that is not common in many other models.\n\n\\begin{acknowledgments}\nWe thank Garv Chauhan for pointing out a typo in\n\\eq{vRe}, in an earlier version of this manuscript.\nWe acknowledge the United States Department of Energy under Grant Contract No.~DE-SC0012704.\n\\end{acknowledgments}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{\\label{sec:introduction}introduction}\n\nCoupled one-dimensional systems of interacting fermions appear in\ndiverse contexts. They have been used as building blocks for studying\nhigher-dimensional systems, such as cuprate high-temperature superconductors,\\cite{article,PhysRevB.65.125106,PhysRevB.66.245109,PhysRevB.72.075126,PhysRevB.76.161101,PhysRevB.78.075124,PhysRevB.66.245106,PhysRevB.67.184517,PhysRevB.68.115104,PhysRevLett.83.2745}\ndue to the availability of controlled nonperturbative methods and\nnumerical techniques for analyzing them. They have also appeared in studies\nof low-dimensional organic conductors,\\cite{SUZUMURA200193} spin ladders,\\cite{PhysRevLett.87.087205,PhysRevLett.86.1865,PhysRevB.79.205112,PhysRevB.76.054427,PhysRevB.53.8521,PhysRevB.50.252,Cabra2000,Allen_2001},\nMott insulating magnets, \\cite{PhysRevB.96.205109} as well as artificially\nmanufactured structures (such as self-assembled transition metal nanowires\n\\cite{PhysRevB.85.115406}). Systems of three coupled Luttinger liquids\nhave, in general, received comparatively less attention than their two-coupled counterparts, but have been studied in the context of carbon nanotube systems,\\cite{PhysRevB.74.085409,PhysRevB.82.155411} three-leg spin-tube models,\\cite{Orignac1999, Sato2007,Charrier2010,Zhao2012,Fuji2014,Plat2015} coupled fermionic chains appearing in spin-ladder materials \\cite{Cabra2000,Arrigoni1996,Arrigoni199691,Kimura1996,Kimura1998} and quasi-1D superconductors such as K$_{2}$Cr$_{3}$As$_{3}$\\cite{PhysRevB.94.205129}.\nThe case of three spinless Luttinger liquids is especially interesting\nsince this is the simplest instance where orders such as chiral superconductivity\n\\cite{Kallin_2016} and chiral density wave can arise, which are not\npossible in the case of Luttinger liquid systems with two or fewer\nfermionic species. Experimentally, understanding the physics of three\ncoupled spinless Luttinger liquids may be useful in the context of multipocket\nsystems such as bismuth \\cite{Behnia1729,Fauqu__2009,Kuchler2014,Li547,PhysRevB.79.081102,PhysRevB.79.241101,PhysRevB.79.245124,PhysRevB.80.075313,PhysRevB.84.115137,PhysRevLett.103.136803,Yang2010,Zhu14813}, graphite intercalates \\cite{dresselhaus1981intercalation,Vogel1979} and  even the newly discovered heavy fermion superconductor UTe$_{2}$ \\cite{Fujimori2019,Knebel2019,Ran2019,Ran684,Aoki2019,\nMiyake2019,Tokunaga2019,Sundar2019,Metz2019,Ishizuka2019,\nBraithwaite2019,Miao2020,Niu2019,Hutanu2019,Jiao2019,\nRann2019,Bae2019,Yarzhemsky2020}\nin a strong magnetic field. In the quantum limit, these behave effectively as one-dimensional systems. \n\nBosonization,\\cite{rao2000bosonization,physik1998} together with a scaling treatment, has been a common method for studying the low-energy\nproperties of such systems. \\cite{PhysRevB.65.125106, PhysRevB.60.2299,PhysRevB.76.161101,PhysRevB.78.075124,PhysRevB.66.245106,PhysRevB.67.184517,PhysRevB.68.115104,PhysRevB.74.085409,SUZUMURA200193,Tsukamoto2000,Itoi1999,Azaria1999,\nLee2004,Azaria19991} For coupled Luttinger liquid systems with three or more fermionic species, the scaling procedure generically introduces\noff-diagonal corrections to the stiffness matrix $\\widehat{K}$ in the quadratic part of the bosonized Hamiltonian (a sine-Gordon model): these corrections have largely been neglected in the existing analyses, \\cite{PhysRevB.68.115104, PhysRevB.74.085409, PhysRevB.94.205129} and \nneed to be taken into account.  They\ncarry information about the competition between different interaction channels, which in turn governs the electronic\nphase competition and critical behavior in these systems. Although they have been introduced in a study involving two spinful coupled Luttinger liquids, \\cite{PhysRevB.76.161101}  in the context of competing \norders in cuprates, the specific nature of the interactions considered\nthere precludes the existence of chiral orders. On the other hand, the simplest situation\nwhere such nontrivial corrections arise, is the case of three\ncoupled spinless Luttinger liquids. In this paper, we perform a one-loop RG analysis for such a system, which takes into account the effects of the off-diagonal\ncorrections by introducing large rotations\nof the $\\widehat{K}-$matrix and small renormalizations of the eigenvalues\nof $\\widehat{K}$. Of these two, the latter affects the scaling\ndimensions of the interactions, while the former effectively rotates the bosonic fields, which affects the subsequent stages of the scaling.\nFrom the solutions of the scaling equations, we identify the most\nsingular susceptibilities, corresponding to different order parameters,\nwhich in turn determines the phase diagram. Also, from a numerical\nscaling analysis of the RG equations, we obtain the critical behavior near the\nphase transition points. \n\nOur main findings are as follows. We find that the fixed point behavior\nis dependent both on the relative initial values of the coupling constants\nand the Luttinger liquid parameter. This is a  situation qualitatively different from that of systems with two or less than two fermionic species (where such an interplay between different interaction channels does not appear) and is a direct consequence of the\nrotations of the stiffness matrices introduced in our approach. Depending\nupon the relative initial values of the couplings and the Luttinger\nparameters, we identify the different instabilities in the particle-particle\nand particle-hole channels and the nature of their transitions across\nphase boundaries. Further, we obtain the conditions under which valley\nsymmetry breaking and intervalley orders may appear in both these\nchannels. The possibility of chiral orders is also discussed in this\ncontext. \n\nOur calculations are expected to be relevant for understanding phase transitions\nand critical phenomena in systems with multiple small\nFermi pockets (like graphite intercalates \\cite{dresselhaus1981intercalation,Vogel1979},  bismuth \\cite{Zhu14813,Yang2010,PhysRevLett.103.136803,PhysRevB.84.115137,PhysRevB.80.075313,PhysRevB.79.245124,PhysRevB.79.241101,PhysRevB.79.081102,Li547,Kuchler2014,Fauqu__2009,Behnia1729} and UTe$_{2}$ \\cite{Fujimori2019,Knebel2019,Ran2019,Ran684,Aoki2019,\nMiyake2019,Tokunaga2019,Sundar2019,Metz2019,Ishizuka2019,\nBraithwaite2019,Miao2020,Niu2019,Hutanu2019,Jiao2019,\nRann2019,Bae2019,Yarzhemsky2020})\nsubject to quantizing magnetic fields, and cylindrical nanotubes at\nhigh fields. \\cite{PhysRevB.74.085409} In general, such an analysis is applicable for studies of competing\nphases in three coupled one-dimensional systems where the instability occurs at\nenergy scales much smaller than the chemical potential. However, in\nsituations where the instabilities appear at higher energy scales,\nother approaches such as the parquet renormalization group approach\n\\cite{furukawa1998truncation,honerkamp2001breakdown,nandkishore2012chiral}\nare more suitable.\n\nThe rest of the paper is organized as follows. Sec-II introduces the\nfermionic Hamiltonian with most generic interactions, describes the\nbosonization procedure and presents the bosonized Hamiltonian.\nSec-III describes the renormalization group procedure used in our\nanalysis, which takes into account both the renormalizations of the\neigenvalues of $\\widehat{K}$ as well as the large rotations of the\n$\\widehat{K}-$matrices. In Sec-IV, we introduce test vertices corresponding to different order parameter fields and study their evolution under the renormalization group, to determine the possible instabilities in different channels. Finally, Sec-V\npresents a discussion of our results, conclusions and future directions. \n\n\\section{\\label{sec:interacting-model-and}interacting model and bosonization}\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{centering}\n(a)\\hspace{2mm}\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{fig1a}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\vspace{0.5 in}\n\\begin{centering}\n(b)\\hspace{2mm}\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{fig1b}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:repr} The figure (a) above shows three small Fermi pockets, with Fermi momentum $k_{F}$, separated by a vector $Q$ in momentum space such that $Q>>k_{F}$, which is illustrative of the situation being considered in the present analysis. In contrast to this, in (b), each Fermi point comprises three flavors of fermions.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe fermionic Hamiltonian consists of two parts, \n\\[\nH=H_{0}+H_{int}\n\\]\nwhere the noninteracting part is the three-band tightbinding model\ndescribing electron hopping while the interacting part originates\nfrom electron-electron interactions. The non-interacting\nHamiltonian in momentum space is given by \n\\[\nH_{0}=\\sum_{km}\\epsilon_{km}c_{km}^{\\dagger}c_{km}\n\\]\nwhere the band index $m=0,\\pm1$, and $c_{km}(c_{km}^{\\dagger})$\nis the electron annihilation (creation) operator for the band $m$.\nNear the Fermi points, the energy dispersion can be linearized as\n$\\epsilon_{km}=v_{Fm}(k-k_{Fm})$ where $v_{Fm}$ is the Fermi velocity\nand $k_{Fm}$ is the Fermi momentum. We assume the Fermi momenta $k_{Fm}$ for the three\nbands to be identical. \nWe consider generic density-density type of interactions, and expand\nthe three spinless fermionic fields in the vicinity of the two Fermi\npoints. We are interested in situations that physically correspond\nto partially filled bands, so that Umklapp scattering between the\ntwo Fermi points for a given band is not relevant. However, since\nwe would like our model to be relevant for systems with multiple nested\nFermi pockets with a nesting vector equal to half a reciprocal lattice vector\n(such as in the case of bismuth), we do allow the possibility of two-particle\nUmklapp scattering between pockets, such that the total momentum transferred\ncorresponds to a reciprocal lattice vector. This situation is illustrated in figure 1(a) (In contrast, in figure 1(b), each Fermi point corresponds to three\nflavors of fermions).\n\nWith these assumptions,\nthe interaction part of the Hamiltonian has the following form,\n\\begin{align}\nH_{int} & =\\sum_{p,m}(g_{1}^{(1)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}+g_{1}^{(2)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{1}^{(3)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}+g_{1}^{(4)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{2}^{(1)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}+g_{2}^{(2)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}\\psi_{pm}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{2}^{(3)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}+g_{2}^{(4)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\psi_{pm}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{3}^{(1)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}+g_{3}^{(2)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{3}^{(3)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}\\psi_{\\overline{p}\\overline{m}}+g_{3}^{(4)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\psi_{p\\overline{m}}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{4}^{(1)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}+g_{4}^{(2)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{\\overline{p}m}\\psi_{pm}\\nonumber \\\\\n & +g_{4}^{(4)}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{pm}\\psi_{pm}),\\label{eq:2-1}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $p=1(-1)$ refers to right (left) moving fermions, and $m=0,1,-1$\ndenotes the bands and $\\overline{m}\\neq m$. The three bands are regarded\nas identical, for simplicity. The above model is $C_{3}$ symmetric\nunder the  permutation of the three bands. To study the low-energy behavior, we shall\nutilize the standard bosonization technique to analyze the continuum\nfermion model. We now bosonize the fermionic model using the abelian\nbosonization prescription,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\psi_{pm}=\\frac{\\eta_{pm}}{\\sqrt{2\\pi a}}\\exp[ipk_{Fm}x]\\exp[-ip\\sqrt{\\pi}\\varphi_{pm}],\\label{eq:2}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k_{Fm}$ is the Fermi momentum for band $m$, $a$ is a cutoff\nof the order of the lattice constant, and $p=1(-1)$ stands for the\n$R(L)$ branch. The Majorana Klein factors $\\eta_{R\/Lm}$ satisfy \n\\[\n\\{\\eta_{Rm},\\eta_{Rm^{\\prime}}\\}=2\\delta_{mm^{\\prime}}\n\\]\n\\[\n\\{\\eta_{Lm},\\eta_{Lm^{\\prime}}\\}=2\\delta_{mm^{\\prime}}\n\\]\n\\[\n\\{\\eta_{Rm},\\eta_{Lm^{\\prime}}\\}=0.\n\\]\nWe adopt the following convention for the Klein factors, following\nRef. \\onlinecite{PhysRevB.94.205129}, \n\\[\n\\eta_{mp}\\eta_{\\overline{m}p}=\\eta_{0p}\\eta_{mp}=imp,\n\\]\n\\[\n\\eta_{mp}\\eta_{m\\overline{p}}=\\eta_{0p}\\eta_{0\\overline{p}}=ip,\n\\]\n\\[\n\\eta_{mp}\\eta_{\\overline{m}\\overline{p}}=\\eta_{0p}\\eta_{m\\overline{p}}=im,\n\\]\nwhere $p,m=\\pm1$. The chiral fields $\\varphi_{pm}$ can be written\nin terms of nonchiral fields $\\phi_{m}$ and $\\theta_{m}$ as $\\varphi_{pm}=\\phi_{m}-p\\theta_{m}$,\nand their gradients are proportional to the fermionic density and\ncurrent operators, respectively, i.e., \n\\begin{align}\n\\nabla\\phi_{m} & \\propto\\psi_{Rm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Rm}+\\psi_{Lm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Lm}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\nabla\\theta_{m} & \\propto\\psi_{Rm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Rm}-\\psi_{Lm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Lm}.\\label{eq:3}\n\\end{align}\nWe collect all quadratic bosonic terms together, which we henceforth\ncall the ``noninteracting'' part. The rest consist of sine-Gordon\nterms (see below) that we denote as interactions. \n\nWe diagonalize the quadratic part of the bosonic Hamiltonian by transforming\nto new bosonic fields $\\widetilde{\\phi_{i}}$ given by \\cite{PhysRevB.94.205129}\n\\[\n\\left(\\begin{array}{c}\n\\phi_{1}\\\\\n\\phi_{-1}\\\\\n\\phi_{0}\n\\end{array}\\right)=\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}} & \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{6}} & \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\\\\n-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}} & \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{6}} & \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\\\\n0 & -\\frac{2}{\\sqrt{6}} & \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\n\\end{array}\\right)\\left(\\begin{array}{c}\n\\widetilde{\\phi}_{1}\\\\\n\\widetilde{\\phi}_{-1}\\\\\n\\widetilde{\\phi}_{0}\n\\end{array}\\right),\n\\]\nand likewise for the fields $\\theta_{i}$. The ``noninteracting''\npart of the Hamiltonian can then be written as \n\\begin{equation}\nH_{0}^{B}=\\frac{1}{2}\\int dx\\sum_{\\mu}v_{\\mu}(K_{\\mu}(\\nabla\\widetilde{\\phi}_{\\mu})^{2}+\\frac{1}{K_{\\mu}}(\\nabla\\widetilde{\\theta}_{\\mu})^{2}),\\label{eq:3-1}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mu=0,1,-1$. Note our convention for $K_{\\mu}$ differs from\nthe one commonly used in the literature, where $K_{\\mu}^{-1}$ takes\nthe place of $K_{\\mu}$. We have, for the bare couplings,\n\\begin{align*}\nv_{\\pm1}K_{\\pm1} & =v_{F}-\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{2}-G_{1})\\equiv v_{\\bot}K_{\\bot}\\\\\nv_{0}K_{0} & =v_{F}-\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{2}^{0}-G_{1}^{0})\\\\\nv_{\\bot}= & \\sqrt{(v_{F}-\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{2}-G_{1}))(v_{F}+\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{1}+G_{2}))}\\\\\nK_{\\bot}= & \\sqrt{\\frac{1-\\frac{1}{2\\pi v_{F}}(G_{2}-G_{1})}{1+\\frac{1}{2\\pi v_{F}}(G_{1}+G_{2})}}\\\\\nv_{0}= & \\sqrt{(v_{F}-\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{2}^{0}-G_{1}^{0}))(v_{F}+\\frac{1}{2\\pi}(G_{1}^{0}+G_{2}^{0}))}\\\\\nK_{0}= & \\sqrt{\\frac{1-\\frac{1}{2\\pi v_{F}}(G_{2}^{0}-G_{1}^{0})}{1+\\frac{1}{2\\pi v_{F}}(G_{1}^{0}+G_{2}^{0})}}\n\\end{align*}\nwhere $G_{1}=g_{1}^{(4)}-g_{2}^{(4)}+g_{4}^{(4)}$, $G_{2}=-g_{1}^{(1)}+g_{2}^{(2)}+g_{4}^{(1)}-g_{4}^{(2)}$,\n$G_{1}^{0}=-2g_{1}^{(4)}+2g_{2}^{(4)}+g_{4}^{(4)}$ and $G_{2}^{0}=2g_{1}^{(1)}-2g_{2}^{(2)}+g_{4}^{(1)}-g_{4}^{(2)}$.\nThe twofold degeneracy of the eigenvalues of the stiffness\nmatrix $\\widehat{K}$ is a consequence of the $C_{3}$ rotational\nsymmetry of the quadratic part of the Hamiltonian. Following the strategy\nof Ref. \\onlinecite{PhysRevB.78.075124}, we study the scaling of\nthe quantities $K_{0,\\bot}^{\\phi}=v_{0,\\bot}K_{0,\\bot}$and\n$K_{0,\\bot}^{\\theta}=\\frac{v_{0.\\bot}}{K_{0,\\bot}}$, assuming\nan initial condition $v_{0,\\pm1}=1$. We now define new rescaled\nfields $\\widetilde{\\psi}_{0,\\pm1}=\\sqrt{K_{0,\\bot}^{\\phi}}\\widetilde{\\phi}_{0,\\pm1}$\nand $\\widetilde{\\vartheta}_{0,\\pm1}=\\sqrt{K_{0,\\bot}^{\\theta}}\\widetilde{\\theta}_{0,\\pm1}$.\nSuch a rescaling makes the stiffness matrix $\\hat{K}$ proportional to the identity\nmatrix. During the RG process, we will find that small diagonal and off-diagonal corrections\nare introduced to the stiffness matrix, and it has a real symmetric\nform, that we denote by $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$. \n\nAfter bosonization, the ``interacting\"\npart of the bosonized Hamiltonian has the form of coupled sine-Gordon terms\n\\begin{equation}\nH_{int}^{B}=\\sum_{\\alpha}g_{\\alpha}\\cos(a_{i}^{(\\alpha)}\\widetilde{\\psi}_{i})+\\sum_{\\beta}g_{\\beta}\\cos(A_{i}^{(\\beta)}\\widetilde{\\vartheta}_{i}),\\label{eq:5-1}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\alpha=1-3$, $7-9$ and $\\beta=4-6$, and the coefficients,\n\\begin{align*}\na^{(1)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{2\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & 0, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\na^{(2)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & \\frac{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\na^{(3)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & -\\frac{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\na^{(7)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n0, & \\frac{4\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}} & \\frac{4\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{3}\\sqrt{K_{0}^{\\phi}}}\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\na^{(8)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & -\\frac{4\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{3}\\sqrt{K_{0}^{\\phi}}}\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\n\\end{align*}\n\\begin{align*}\na^{(9)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & -\\frac{2\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}}}, & \\frac{4\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{3}\\sqrt{K_{0}^{\\phi}}}\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\nA^{(4)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{2\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}}}, & 0, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\nA^{(5)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}}}, & \\frac{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}}}, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\\\\\nA^{(6)} =\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{\\sqrt{2}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}}}, & -\\frac{\\sqrt{6}\\sqrt{\\pi}}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}}}, & 0\\end{array}\\right),\n\\end{align*}\nwhere the effective couplings $g_{\\alpha}(\\alpha=1-9)$ are linear\ncombinations of the couplings $g_{i}^{(j)}$ (see Appendix \\ref{app:A}). \nThe validity of the perturbative RG analysis we shall perform below requires the coupling constants $g_\\alpha$ to be small, and we assume this to be the case for the rest of the paper. However this limitation does not extend to the stiffnesses $K^{\\phi,\\theta},$ which may depart significantly from the noninteracting value $K^{\\phi,\\theta}=1,$ remaining within the purview of perturbative RG.\nIndeed, given our motivation of understanding electronic phase competition in the quantum limit in low-carrier density (and consequently strongly correlated) semimetals such as bismuth, in the rest of the paper we will largely focus on regimes where the stiffnesses appreciably depart from unity.\nNote that we allow the\npossibility of the coupling constants in the sine-Gordon model to\nbreak the $C_{3}$ permutation symmetry in the following analysis.\nThe same can also be done in the quadratic part and the two are equivalent. During the RG\nprocedure, the vectors $\\widehat{a}$ and $\\widehat{A}$, in general,\nrotate and stretch.  The scaling dimensions for the interaction\nterms in Eq. \\ref{eq:5-1} depend on the values of the Luttinger parameters\n$K_{0}^{\\phi,\\theta}$ and $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi,\\theta}$, and in our\nanalysis, we only retain the most relevant interaction terms (with the smallest\nscaling dimensions). This further reduces the number of parameters\nwe need to consider in our model. \n\n\n\\section{\\label{sec:renormalization-group-analysis}renormalization-group\nanalysis}\n\nThe renormalization group follows the standard Wilsonian procedure\nof elimination of fast degrees of freedom, restoration of the cutoff,\nrescaling of the couplings and the renormalization of the fields.\nThis gives rise to off-diagonal\ncorrections in the stiffness matrices, which then take the form $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$. To keep the Gaussian\nfixed point unchanged, we rotate the $Z_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\theta,\\phi}$\nmatrices, to diagonalize them, and then rescale the fields $\\widetilde{\\phi}_{i}$ or $\\widetilde{\\theta}_{i}$ (using the eigenvalues of these matrices) such that\nthe matrices become proportional to identity. Note that the above\nrotation does not change the scaling dimensions of the sine-Gordon interaction\nterms. Now, in the new basis obtained after the rotation and the subsequent rescaling\nof the fields, we once again compute the one-loop corrections\nand the resulting changes in the diagonal and off-diagonal elements of the stiffness matrices,\nand repeat the aforementioned steps throughout the RG process. An\nequivalent procedure has been followed in Ref. \\onlinecite{PhysRevB.78.075124},\nwhere, instead of keeping the Gaussian fixed point unchanged, the\nfields are kept unchanged and the renormalization process leads to\nrotations and stretching of eigenvalues of the $Z_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\theta,\\phi}$\nmatrices. We simplify our analysis by considering the anisotropic\nlimits $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$ or $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$,\nwhich allows us to drop certain terms (which have higher scaling dimensions) in the interacting Hamiltonian\nin Eq. \\ref{eq:5-1} in each of these limits. However, the formulation may be readily extended to the most general case.\nWe note that the anisotropic limits $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$ or $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ necessarily mean we are far from the noninteracting limit where $K^{\\phi,\\theta}\\approx 1.$ Our remaining analysis thus corresponds to a strong coupling limit of the model. \nBelow we discuss the results obtained by incorporating one-loop corrections\nto the matrices $Z_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\phi}$ and $Z_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\theta}$ in\nthe two aforementioned anisotropic parameter regimes. At any given stage of the\nRG, the matrix $Z_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\phi}$, with the one-loop corrections\nincorporated, is given by\n\n\\begin{widetext}\n\n\\begin{equation}\nZ^{\\phi}=\\left(\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\frac{1}{2}+\\sum_{\\alpha}\\frac{g_{\\alpha}^{2}dy}{16\\pi}((a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2})(a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2} & \\sum_{\\alpha}\\frac{g_{\\alpha}^{2}dy}{16\\pi}((a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2})(a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)}) & 0\\\\\n\\sum_{\\alpha}\\frac{g_{\\alpha}^{2}dy}{16\\pi}((a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2})(a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)}) & \\frac{1}{2}+\\sum_{\\alpha}\\frac{g_{\\alpha}^{2}dy}{16\\pi}((a_{1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2})(a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)})^{2} & 0\\\\\n0 & 0 & \\frac{1}{2}\n\\end{array}\\right).\\label{eq:5-3}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\end{widetext}\n\nNote that the above matrix is block-diagonal - a consequence of the\nnature of the interaction terms and\/or approximations employed in\nthe parameter regimes considered in our analysis. While the corrections\naccumulated are infinitesimal, the rotations involved in restoring\nthe matrices with off-diagonal contributions are finite rotations\nwhich cannot be accounted for in the RG flow equations. In our approach,\nwe are always in the rotating frame, where these large rotations are\nabsent, and only small incremental changes to the components along\nthe field directions need to be tracked. These amount to slow changes\nin the orientation and length, in the rotating frame, upon scaling.\nIn the limit where $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$, we find that\nwe only need to retain the couplings $g_{\\alpha}(\\alpha=1-3)$, based\non their lower scaling dimensions. In this case, we calculate one-loop\ncorrections to the $Z^{\\phi}$ matrices due to the terms $g_{1}$,\n$g_{2}$ and $g_{3}$ in the interaction Hamiltonian, and likewise,\nto the $Z^{\\theta}$ matrices due to the terms $g_{4}$, $g_{5}$\nand $g_{6}$. The corresponding matrix turns out to be block-diagonal\ndue to the symmetry of the interaction terms in this regime. On the\nother hand, in the limit where $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{0}^{\\phi}$,\nonly the couplings $g_{\\alpha}(\\alpha=7-9)$ need to be retained for\nour analysis. Here we obtain one-loop corrections to the $Z^{\\phi}$ matrices\narising from the couplings $g_{7}$, $g_{8}$ and $g_{9}$, and, once\nagain, to the $Z^{\\theta}$ matrices due to the terms $g_{4}$, $g_{5}$\nand $g_{6}$. In this case, the matrix $Z^{\\phi}$ generally comprises nonzero corrections to every matrix element.\nHowever, in the limit $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{0}^{\\phi}$,\nwe can drop certain terms and it reduces to a block-diagonal form\nsimilar to Eq. \\ref{eq:5-3} above with $\\alpha=7-9$. \n\nIn our analysis, we track the scaling equations for the interaction couplings, as well as the coefficients of the fields in the sine-Gordon terms. The eigenvalues of the matrix $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$ in Eq. \\ref{eq:5-3}\nabove are denoted by $z_{1}$, $z_{-1}$ and $z_{0}$. We diagonalize the\nmatrix and then rescale the fields using these eigenvalues. At any given\nstage of the RG flow, the coefficients of the fields in the cosine terms evolve in the manner $a_{i}^{(\\alpha)}\\rightarrow\\frac{(Ra^{(\\alpha)})_{i}}{\\sqrt{z_{i}}}$,\nwhere $R$ is the rotation which diagonalizes the matrix $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$.\nWe continue to denote the interaction terms as $g_{\\alpha}\\cos[\\widehat{a}_{i}^{(\\alpha)}\\widetilde{\\psi}_{i}]$\nor $g_{\\alpha}\\cos[\\widehat{A}_{i}^{(\\alpha)}\\widetilde{\\vartheta}_{i}]$, and write down the RG equations for the coefficients ${a}_{i}^{(\\alpha)}$, $A_{i}^{(\\alpha)}$ and the couplings $g_{\\alpha}$.\nAs an example, proceeding in incremental steps, the RG equations for the coefficients $a_{1}^{(1)}$\nand $a_{-1}^{(1)}$ (corresponding to the coupling $g_{1}$) due to the rescaling process described above, are given by \n\\begin{align}\n\\frac{da_{1}^{(1)}}{dy} & =-a_{1}^{(1)}\\Lambda_{1}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\frac{da_{-1}^{(1)}}{dy} & =-a_{-1}^{(1)}\\Lambda_{-1}\\label{eq:14-2}\n\\end{align}\n where $z_{1}=1\/2+\\Lambda_{1}dy$ and $z_{-1}=1\/2+\\Lambda_{-1}dy$, with $\\Lambda_{1}$ and $\\Lambda_{-1}$ depending upon all\n the coupling constants and the coefficients of all the fields in the sine-Gordon terms (see Appendix \\ref{app:A}, for the explicit expressions of $\\Lambda_{1}$ and $\\Lambda_{-1}$). The leading corrections are quadratic in the coupling constants. This is not surprising since the RG equations of Eq. \\ref{eq:14-2} essentially describe the renormalization of the stiffness constants $K^{\\phi,\\theta}$, which do not have $O(g)$ tree-level corrections.\nThe RG flow equations for the rest of the components $a_{i}^{(\\alpha)}$\nalso behave in the same way. \n\nThe tree-level contributions to the RG flows\nfor the sine-Gordon couplings $g_{\\alpha}$ are obtained in terms of the scaling dimensions of the respective sine-Gordon terms, and the\none-loop contributions are obtained using the Operator Product Expansion (OPE).\nThe RG equations for the couplings $g_{\\alpha},\\alpha=1-3$ are\n\\begin{align}\n\\frac{dg_{1}}{dy} & =g_{1}(2-\\frac{1}{4\\pi}((a_{1}^{(1)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(1)})^{2}),\\nonumber \\\\\n & +\\frac{1}{8\\pi}(a_{1}^{(2)}a_{1}^{(3)}+a_{-1}^{(2)}a_{-1}^{(3)})g_{2}g_{3},\\nonumber \\\\\n\\frac{dg_{2}}{dy} & =g_{2}(2-\\frac{1}{4\\pi}((a_{1}^{(2)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(2)})^{2}),\\nonumber \\\\\n & -\\frac{1}{8\\pi}(a_{1}^{(1)}a_{1}^{(3)}+a_{-1}^{(1)}a_{-1}^{(3)})g_{1}g_{3},\\nonumber \\\\\n\\frac{dg_{3}}{dy} & =g_{3}(2-\\frac{1}{4\\pi}((a_{1}^{(3)})^{2}+(a_{-1}^{(3)})^{2}),\\nonumber \\\\\n & -\\frac{1}{8\\pi}(a_{1}^{(1)}a_{1}^{(2)}+a_{-1}^{(1)}a_{-1}^{(2)})g_{1}g_{2}\\label{eq:13-1}\n\\end{align}\nThe RG equations for the rest\nof the couplings $g_{\\alpha}(\\alpha=4-9)$ are also easily obtained and have a similar form as Eq. \\ref{eq:13-1}.\n\n\\subsection*{One-loop corrections to the RG equations}\n\nThe $O(g^2)$ one-loop (or OPE) contributions to the renormalization of the coupling constants $g_{\\alpha}$ in Eq. \\ref{eq:13-1} above are perturbatively smaller than the leading tree-level term. In contrast, the OPE contribution is the leading one in the RG equation for the coefficients of the fields in the cosine terms, given in Eq. \\ref{eq:14-2}, which determine the scaling dimensions of the interaction terms. In general, one-loop corrections can have a significant effect on the RG flows when the tree-level term is small \\textendash{} the usual motivation for considering higher order corrections in the perturbative RG. However, we found that if the initial values of the sine-Gordon couplings are small, and the initial stiffnesses are appreciably different from unity (reflecting the strongly correlated nature of our problem), the RG equations with or without the one-loop corrections generically give very similar solutions (see Fig. \\ref{fig:tlol}).  If the initial scaling dimensions of the interaction terms are close to two (i.e. the tree-level contribution is small), or the bare values of the couplings are not sufficiently small (so that the one-loop and tree-level terms are comparable), then the one-loop terms need to be taken into account. This requires a separate, more detailed study and is not attempted in the present work.\n\\iffalse\nNote that, while in general, the one-loop corrections would have the nontrivial effect of coupling different interaction channels with each other, and are thus expected to give\nqualitatively different results, in our case, such a coupling is already present at the tree-level order.\n\\fi\n\nWe solve the coupled\ndifferential equations 7 and 8 numerically and obtain the fixed-point values\nfor the various couplings $g_{\\alpha}$ and the coefficients $a_{i}^{(\\alpha)}.$\nWe consider weak repulsive interactions in every channel, and study\nthe nature of the RG flows as a function of the initial conditions\non the interactions and the value of the Luttinger liquid parameter\n$K_{\\bot}^{\\phi,\\theta}.$ In general, we find that the couplings\n$g_{\\alpha}$ either diverge or flow to zero in the course of the\nRG flow. From Eq. \\ref{eq:14-2} above, it is clear that the coefficients\n$a_{1}^{(\\alpha)}$ and $a_{-1}^{(\\alpha)}$ obey different RG equations,\nand show qualitatively different behavior as a function of the RG\nflow parameter. In other words, the coefficients of the different\nfields rescale differently in the course of the RG flow, following\nthe rotation of the stiffness matrix. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\columnwidth]{fig2}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:The-figure-shows}The figure shows a schematic illustration\nof our renormalization group procedure. The stiffness matrix, which\nis initially diagonal, develops off-diagonal corrections in the course\nof the RG flow and takes the general form $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$. This matrix\nis diagonalized, which leads to a rotation $R$ of the coefficients\n$a^{(\\alpha)}$ of the sine-Gordon interaction terms. The diagonal elements\nare then absorbed in the respective sine-Gordon fields, which brings\nthe stiffness matrix back to unity, and leads to a rescaling of the\nrotated coefficients $a^{(\\alpha)}$. }\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{fig3}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:tlol}The figure compares \nthe generic scaling behavior of the coupling $g_1$ with and without considering the effect of\nthe one-loop corrections in the scaling equations for the coupling constants. The parameters have been chosen such that the initial value of the tree-level term exceeds the one-loop contribution. The blue and red circles correspond to the cases with and without the one-loop contributions, respectively. The initial values of the couplings considered are $g_{1}=0.3$, $g_{2}=0.1$, $g_{3}=0.05$, and\nthe value of the Luttinger parameter $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}=0.1.$ Clearly, the two sets of equations, with or without the one-loop contributions, give very similar results in this regime.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{centering}\n(a)\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{fig4a}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\begin{centering}\n(b)\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{fig4b}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:rgflows} The figure shows the RG flows for the couplings $g_{1}$,\n$g_{2}$ and $g_{3}$ for the Luttinger parameter $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}=0.1$ and initial conditions $g_{1}^{0}=0.3$, $g_{2}^{0}=0.1$, $g_{3}^{0}=0.05$. While $g_{1}$ grows monotonously (see (a))\nunder these conditions, $g_{2}$ and $g_{3}$ show a decline (see (b)). In general, any one or more of the couplings $g_{\\alpha}$ may diverge, depending on the initial conditions chosen. The RG flows of the couplings $g_{i}$,$i=4-9$ behave in a manner qualitatively similar to that of $g_{1}$, $g_{2}$ and $g_{3}$.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{\\label{sec:order-parameters-and}phase diagram and critical behavior}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\columnwidth]{fig5}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:scalingcollapse}The figure shows a scaling collapse plot\nof the RG flow parameter $y\\sim\\mathrm{ln}[\\xi]$ (where $\\xi$ is\nthe correlation length) as a function of $\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}-K_{c}}}$.\n$K_{c}$ denotes the critical value of the Luttinger liquid parameter\n$K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, where the system undergoes a phase transition.\nThe plot shows results for five different sets of initial conditions\non the interactions, with one or more of the couplings $g_{\\alpha}$\ntaking non-zero values initially, and indicates that the phase transitions\noccuring in this system are continuous in nature and belong to the\nBKT universality class. }\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe order parameters considered in our analysis are fermionic bilinear\noperators characterized by chirality and band indices. There are two\nclasses of order parameters in our system. These are defined in the\nparticle-hole channel (density wave), \\cite{PhysRevB.94.205129}\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\rm Re}[O_{ph}^{i0}]\\propto\\sum_{mm^{\\prime}}\\lambda_{mm^{\\prime}}^{i}\\psi_{Rm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Lm^{\\prime}}+{\\rm h.c,}\\label{eq:6-1-1-1}\n\\end{equation}\nand in the\nparticle-particle channel (superconductivity), \n\\begin{equation}\n{\\rm Re}[O_{pp}^{i0}]\\propto\\sum_{mm^{\\prime}}\\lambda_{mm^{\\prime}}^{i}\\psi_{Rm}^{\\dagger}\\psi_{Lm^{\\prime}}^{\\dagger}+{\\rm h.c},\\label{eq:7}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\lambda^{i} (i=1...8)$ correspond to the Gell-Mann matrices\n(see Appendix \\ref{app:B} for details), $\\lambda^{0}$ denotes the 3x3 unit\nmatrix, and $\\psi_{pm}$($\\psi_{pm}^{\\dagger}$) is the electron annihilation\n(creation) operator with chirality $p$ and band $m$.\nWe follow the convention used by Ref.\n\\onlinecite{PhysRevB.94.205129} ; \nhowever, in both the Eqs. \\ref{eq:6-1-1-1} and \\ref{eq:7}, no spin\nindices are present, due to the spinless nature of the fermions, indicated by the second index being $0$ for the order parameters.\nNote that we consider ordered states arising from scattering or pairing\nin opposite chiralities in this analysis, and we have checked that\nequal-chirality interband pairing terms show a qualitatively similar\nbehavior. The order parameters in Eqs. \\ref{eq:6-1-1-1} and \\ref{eq:7}\nabove are expressed in terms of the bosonic fields. A total of\neighteen order parameters are obtained in the particle-hole and particle-particle\nchannels in the spinless case (see Appendix \\ref{app:B} for expressions of the order parameters in terms of the bosonic fields). \n\nWe now discuss the physical meaning of the electronic phases corresponding to the above order parameters. In the anisotropic strong coupling regime that we study (where the initial $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ value is often far from unity and the initial $g_i$ are generically unequal), the phases that are obtained are typically associated with the breaking of valley permutation or bond permutation symmetries. However, we also find phases with the $C_{3}$ symmetry restored, not slaved to the initial conditions where this is explicitly broken (see Appendix B). Interband pairing \nin the particle-hole channel corresponds to a bond-ordered (BO) phase, while in the particle-particle channel it\ngives rise to superconductivity at a finite wavevector (FFLO) equal to the separation between two small Fermi \npockets in momentum space, $Q$. The intraband order parameters correspond to linear combinations of the fermionic bilinears on\nthe three different pockets. One of them is a symmetric linear combination ($s-$wave, denoted by SW) while the other two are nematic,\ncorresponding to angular momentum $l=2$ ($d-$wave order). If we ascribe the angular positions of the three patches in momentum space as $\\delta=0$, $\\delta=2\\pi\/3$ and $\\delta=4\\pi\/3$,\nthe phases of the order parameters on the three valleys go either as $\\cos(2\\delta)$ or $\\sin(2\\delta)$, both of the $d-$wave type. \nIt is also possible to have chiral orders, with phases going as $\\exp(\\pm i \\delta)$, as a linear combination of nematic orders. These linear combinations are not\nunique, and depending on the initial conditions, the actual order parameter may be some combination of these. \nIntraband pairing in the particle-hole channel has an ordering wavevector $2k_{F}$, much less than $Q$, and is generally incommensurate. Depending on the initial conditions,\nthe CDW (charge density wave) order could involve a linear combination of the CDW orders on the three different patches. If $C_{3}$ symmetry is not broken, then the orders may have $s-$wave (uniform CDW, denoted by UCDW), or a \ndoubly degenerate $d-$wave symmetry ($d-$density wave). As was the case for superconductivity, the $d-$density wave order can be either nematic (denoted by NCDW) or chiral type (denoted by cCDW). The order parameters corresponding to different types of order are listed in Table \\ref{tab:phases}. \n\nTo study the dominant electronic orders, we introduce, in the disordered phase, test vertices corresponding to various order parameter fluctuations\nand determine how they grow or shrink upon scaling. The evolution of any particular order parameter is governed by a certain combination of couplings, and the one \nwith the smallest scaling dimension, such that the divergence is strongest upon scaling, is the dominant order. Those order parameters that initially have a large scaling dimension do not grow under scaling and correspond to short-range order. We also take into account the corrections to the scaling dimensions to leading order, $O(g)$ in the couplings, as these terms sometimes lead to shifts in the scaling dimensions of order parameters that have identical RG equations at the tree-level order, resulting in the lifting of degeneracies, with one of them becoming long-range ordered and the other short-range ordered (see Appendix \\ref{app:B}). \n\nIn order to determine the winning\norder parameters, we consider the behavior of the couplings $g_{\\alpha}$\nand the corresponding coefficients of the fields $a_{i}^{(\\alpha)}$ near\nthe fixed point of the RG for a given set of initial conditions and find\nthat both quantities play a crucial role in deciding the nature of\nthe dominant electronic orders. In some cases, we find that none of\nthe order parameters we studied grows under RG, implying the absence\nof any quasi-long range ordered state despite the presence of interactions. Such situations also come up in the context of floating phases in coupled sine-Gordon models. The advantage of our method is that it not only gives us the dominant\norder parameters, but also yields the scaling dimension at the fixed point which is essentially the exponent of power law correlations of the order parameter fields\nin the quasi-long range ordered state. Later, we will show that the transitions, where they occur, belong to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) universality\nclass, and that the correlation functions diverge upon \napproaching the critical point, in accordance with the BKT law. \n\n\\begin{table*}\n\\begin{centering}\n\\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}\n\\hline \n\\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{Type of order} & Order parameter & Name of order\\tabularnewline\n\\hline \n\\hline \n\\multirow{4}{*}{Interband} & \\multirow{2}{*}{p-p } & $O_{pp}^{10}$,$O_{pp}^{40}$,$O_{pp}^{60}$ & FFLO(wavevector $Q$)\\tabularnewline\n\\cline{3-4} \\cline{4-4} \n &  & $O_{pp}^{20}$,$O_{pp}^{50}$,$O_{pp}^{70}$ & FFLO(wavevector $Q$)\\tabularnewline\n\\cline{2-4} \\cline{3-4} \\cline{4-4} \n & \\multirow{2}{*}{p-h } & $O_{ph}^{10}$,$O_{ph}^{40}$,$O_{ph}^{60}$ & Bond order (BO)(wavevector $Q$)\\tabularnewline\n\\cline{3-4} \\cline{4-4} \n &  & $O_{ph}^{20}$,$O_{ph}^{50}$,$O_{ph}^{70}$ & Bond order (BO)(wavevector $Q$)\\tabularnewline\n\\hline \n\\multirow{4}{*}{Intraband} & \\multirow{2}{*}{p-p } & \\multirow{2}{*}{$O_{pp}^{00}$,$O_{pp}^{30}$,$O_{pp}^{80}$} & \\multirow{2}{*}{$s-$wave (SW), Nematic $d-$wave, Chiral $d-$wave}\\tabularnewline\n &  &  & \\tabularnewline\n\\cline{2-4} \\cline{3-4} \\cline{4-4} \n & \\multirow{2}{*}{p-h } & \\multirow{2}{*}{$O_{ph}^{00}$,$O_{ph}^{30}$,$O_{ph}^{80}$} & \\multirow{2}{*}{Uniform(U) CDW , nematic (N) $d-$CDW , chiral (c) $d-$CDW }\\tabularnewline\n &  &  & \\tabularnewline\n\\hline \n\\end{tabular}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{tab:phases} Table showing electronic phases corresponding to each of the order parameters considered in our analysis. Here particle-particle (p-p) refers to superconductivity, while particle-hole (p-h) refers to density wave orders. Interband pairing between different\npairs of bands in the particle-hole channel leads to bond order (denoted by BO) while\nthe corresponding pairing in the particle-particle channel leads to\na finite-momentum pairing (denoted by FFLO) state with the wavevector $Q$, equal to the separation between two small Fermi pockets in momentum space. Intraband pairing can correspond\nto a situation with different phases on different Fermi pockets and\nlead to uniform charge density wave (denoted by UCDW) or nematic $d-$density wave\norder (denoted by NCDW) in the particle-hole channel, and $s-$wave or nematic $d-$wave\nsuperconductivity in the particle-particle channel. In the case where\nthese different order parameters are degenerate, a combination of\nthem which is chiral in nature gives rise to the lowest\nenergy configuration. In such a situation, a\nchiral $d-$density wave (denoted by cCDW) or chiral $d-$wave superconductivity can\nbe realized. Despite choosing initial conditions that generically break $C_3$ permutation symmetry, one nevertheless finds that in some parameter regimes (see text, Fig. \\ref{fig:pd}), phases with the $C_{3}$ symmetry restored, such as the chiral orders, are dominant.}\n\n\\end{table*}\n\n\nWe classify the nature of the dominant orders in different parameter regimes depending upon the relative sizes of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and  $K_{0}^{\\phi}$, considering the two broad classes of parameters, $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$. Clearly, this implies some $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ values must necessarily take values far from the noninteracting point $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}=1,$ i.e., we are in a strong-correlation regime that is nevertheless accessible by perturbative RG. Within each of these classes, we further examine situations with either $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$ or $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$.\nThe case with $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\sim1$, involving a competition between different types of orders, depending upon the initial conditions, requires a more detailed study,\nand has not been addressed here. In the regime where $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$\nand $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, the dominant instabilities are found in the\nintraband particle-particle channel. Similarly, in the regime where\n$K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$, the dominant\ninstabilities are found in the intraband particle-hole channel. Note that in these two parameter regimes, $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ is automatically constrained to be numerically very small or very large. We\nnow consider the remaining two cases, which allow us to tune $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$\nover a wide range of values, giving rise to both intraband and interband orders. \n\nWe find that for $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$,\nthe particle-hole orders are more relevant than the particle-particle orders, due to smaller scaling\ndimensions of the corresponding order parameters, and for $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$\nand $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, the particle-particle orders are likewise found to\nbe more important. Within the regimes considered by us,\nthe phase diagram is affected primarily by two factors: the magnitude\nof the Luttinger liquid parameter $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and the set of\ninitial conditions considered for the interactions $g_{\\alpha}$. The nature of the phase transitions is studied using a numerical scaling analysis. The scaling of the correlation length $\\xi$ at the critical point\nis determined by identifying the characteristic scale $y$ where the\ncouplings $g_{\\alpha}(y)$ cross a designated value $\\apprge1$. We\nobtain continuous transitions as a function of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$,\nbelonging to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) universality\nclass, which is confirmed by demonstrating the universal BKT scaling\ncollapse for the behavior of the correlation length close to the critical\npoint (see Fig. \\ref{fig:scalingcollapse}). Note that the critical\nvalue $K_{c}$ of the Luttinger parameter $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ is different\nfor different initial conditions on the couplings $g_{\\alpha}$, as\nshown in Fig. \\ref{fig:scalingcollapse}, each of which give rise to the same\ncritical behavior. \n\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.6\\columnwidth]{fig6}\n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:pd} The figure shows the phase diagram for a system of\nthree coupled spinless Luttinger liquids as a function of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, considering the parameter regimes\n(a) $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, where\nonly particle-particle (p-p) orders are considered due to the smaller\nscaling dimensions of the corresponding order parameters, (b) $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$, where\nthe dominant instabilities belong to the intraband\nparticle-hole channel, (c) $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$\nand $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$ where the dominant instabilities occur in the intraband particle-particle channel, and\n (d) $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$\nand $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$, where only particle-hole (p-h) orders are\nconsidered in our analysis, due to smaller scaling dimensions of the corresponding terms. In cases (a) \nand (d), we can tune $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ over a large range of values,\nand for $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\sim1$, various interband and intraband\norders compete with one another, the winner being determined\nby the initial conditions on the interactions. Note that our results are not reliable for $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}=1$ in regime (a), where the one-loop corrections must be taken into account. The orders indicated in the figure have \nbeen denoted in the paper as SW for $s-$wave, FFLO for finite-momentum pairing, UCDW as a CDW order with s-wave symmetry, NCDW as nematic $d-$density wave, cCDW as chiral $d-$density wave and BO as bond order. The  shaded (gray) portions of the phase diagram demarcate the parameter regimes which can be understood from our analysis.The boundaries of different types of phases are flexible in nature, and can change depending on the initial conditions chosen for the couplings. }\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\nBelow we discuss the salient features of the phase diagram for the aforementioned two parameter regimes, $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$,\nor $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, each corresponding to a range of values of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$. Since\n$K_{\\bot}^{\\theta}$ is inversely related to $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ in\nour model, it does not constitute an independent parameter in the\nphase diagram. \n\n\\paragraph*{$K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\ll1$:}\n\nIn this regime, for $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$,\nthe intraband particle-particle orders (SW, Nematic, Chiral) are found to be more relevant, whereas\nfor $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$, \nno electronic orders are present when we consider extremely small values of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$,\nand for larger values of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, a particular pair of\ninterband particle-hole orders (BO) dominates, depending upon the initial\nconditions being considered for the interactions. \n\n\\paragraph*{$K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\sim1$: }\n\nFor $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\sim1$, various intraband and interband particle-particle (FFLO, SW, Nematic, Chiral) orders compete with each other in the regime $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, and likewise, various particle-hole (UCDW, NCDW, cCDW,BO) orders compete with each other in the regime  $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$, and it is in this part of the phase diagram that the winning phases\nare dependent most sensitively on the initial conditions chosen for\nthe interactions. However, at $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}=1$ for $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, or very close to this point, the one-loop corrections should be taken into account, and our analysis in this regime requires further work. \n\n\\paragraph*{$K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\gg1$: }\n\nIn this case, for $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$,\na particular pair of interband particle-particle orders (FFLO) is found to\ndominate, depending on the initial conditions\nchosen for the interactions, and no order is found to be present when we consider extremely\nlarge values of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, whereas for $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ and $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$,\nthe intraband particle-hole orders (UCDW, NCDW, cCDW) are found to be more relevant. \n\nThe types of electronic orders occurring in different parameter\nregimes, considered in our analysis, are schematically shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:pd}. \n\n\\section{\\label{sec:discussion-and-conclusions}discussion and conclusions}\n\nIn summary, we have studied competing electronic phases and phase\ntransitions in a system of three coupled spinless Luttinger liquids\nusing a renormalization group analysis of the bosonized interactions\nthat takes into account off-diagonal contributions arising from one-loop corrections to the stiffness matrices. This is done by introducing a series of rotations and rescalings of the fields (or equivalently, the\ncoefficients of different fields in the sine-Gordon interaction terms) in the course of the RG flow.\nThese rotations and rescalings are found to depend on all the\ncouplings as well as coefficients of all the fields present in the system. They couple the different interaction channels even at the tree-level order. To determine the most dominant electronic orders, we introduce,\nin the disordered phase, test vertices corresponding to\nvarious order parameter fluctuations and study their evolution under the renormalization group. We find that the overall nature\nof the winning orders in different parameter regimes is governed by\nthe RG flows of the couplings, as well as those of the coefficients\nof the fields in the sine-Gordon terms. Notably, for a range of values of the Luttinger liquid parameter $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$, which depart appreciably from the noninteracting limit $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}=1,$ interband\norders involving any one\npair of bands are found to be dominant, the specific pair being determined by the initial conditions\nfor the couplings. This is an example of valley symmetry breaking. At $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}=1$ for $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}\\gg K_{0}^{\\phi}$, one-loop corrections to the RG equations must be taken into account, and this aspect of our analysis requires further work. In the regions where intraband orders are the most relevant, they can be chiral in nature. Such orders restore the original $C_{3}$ symmetry of the system, broken explicitly through the initial conditions for the couplings. In the regimes where $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}\\sim1$,\nthe nature of the dominant orders is found to be sensitively determined by the initial conditions on the interaction couplings, with multiple orders competing closely. For simplicity of analysis, we have considered\nthe strong correlation regimes of $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\gg1$ or $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\ll1$, and the more involved\ncase of $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\sim1$ has not been discussed, where the particle-particle and particle-hole channels compete\nwith each other and the results are likely to be sensitive to the\ninitial conditions considered. This will be taken up in a future work.\nWe also determine the nature of the phase transitions as a function of\nthe Luttinger parameter $K_{\\perp}^{\\phi}$ as well as the initial\nconditions on the interactions $g_{\\alpha}$ using a numerical scaling\nanalysis.  The system hosts continuous transitions belonging to the BKT universality class, where the critical value of $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$ differs with the initial values of the couplings.\n\nFrom an experimental point of view, our analysis is expected to be relevant for studying electronic interaction effects in semimetals with three small Fermi pockets under conditions of high magnetic fields such that the bands are effectively in the quantum limit, and may be regarded as one-dimensional. Examples include bismuth, the graphite intercalation compounds and possibly the heavy fermion semimetal UTe$_{2}$ at high magnetic fields.  For bismuth, when the magnetic field is aligned along the highest symmetry axis (the trigonal axis), a field of 9 T allows one to attain the\nquantum limit putting carriers in their lowest Landau level.\\cite{Yang2010} In this situation,\nCoulomb interaction effects play an important role in determining the electronic phase.  The presence of anomalous features in the magnetization \\cite{Li2008} and the Nernst response \\cite{Behnia1729} of bismuth at high fields, beyond the quantum limit, points towards the importance of examining possible electronic instabilities due to interaction effects in this regime. \nFurthermore, there has been experimental evidence for valley symmetry breaking at high magnetic fields in bismuth, \\cite{Kuchler2014} and the importance of electron correlations for the same has been recognized.\nFrom recent magnetoresistance studies, one or two valleys have been observed to become completely empty above a threshold magnetic field. \\cite{Zhu2018}\nMoreover, in semi-metallic bismuth the flow of Dirac fermions along the trigonal axis \nis extremely sensitive to the orientation of in-plane magnetic field. \nIn the vicinity of the quantum limit, the orientation of magnetic field significantly affects the distribution of carriers in each valley, \nand the valley polarization is induced by the magnetic field. As the temperature is decreased or the magnetic field increased, the symmetry between the three valleys is spontaneously lost. We expect our technique to be useful for theoretically describing such a situation in bismuth, incorporating the features known from experiment, and predicting possible electronic instabilities. \n\nIn graphite intercalates, the Fermi level often naturally lies in the vicinity of the M-points in the Brillouin zone, which gives rise to another system with three small Fermi pockets. Superconductivity has been predicted and observed experimentally in multiple graphite intercalation compounds, such as CaC$_{6}$,YbC$_{6}$ and KC$_{8}$, \\cite{Weller2005} but the possibility of realizing superconductivity or a density wave order under a high magnetic field in such materials has not received much attention in the literature. The case of pure graphite is different; there is evidence for a high field-induced CDW transition \\cite{Yoshioka1981} resulting from the enhancement of interactions due to the confinement effect of the magnetic field. However valley-symmetry breaking in graphite occurs between the K and K$^{\\prime}$  points, which is not the subject of this paper.\nCorresponding field-induced phase transitions in graphite intercalates may, however, be accessible using our analysis. \n\nThe recently discovered heavy fermion triplet superconductor UTe$_{2}$,\\cite{Ran684, Aoki2019, Metz2019,Ishizuka2019,Jiao2019, Sundar2019}  with a transition temperature $T_{sc}$=1.6 K, exhibits two independent high-field superconducting phases,\\cite{Ran2019} one of which has an upper critical field exceeding 65 T, and lies within a field-polarized phase. Such re-entrant superconducting phases are observed for selective ranges of orientation of the field. \\cite{Ran2019, Knebel2019} High-resolution ARPES data for UTe$_{2}$ indicates that it has three small Fermi pockets.\\cite{Miao2020} A quasi-1D bandstructure has been indicated both by bandstructure calculations and the ARPES studies. Our analysis is expected to be applicable at the highest fields, with electrons fully spin-polarized and in the quantum limit. A field of 65 T corresponds to a magnetic length of about 3.2 nm, which would require a carrier density of about 7x10$^{18}$ cm$^{-3}$ to be in the quantum limit, typical for semimetallic systems\\cite{Akiba2015}. \n\nIn the present work, we have not studied the case where $K_{0}^{\\phi}\\sim K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}$,\nwith the rotations being in general O(3) matrices. The rotation matrices\nin that case are non-abelian and it would interesting to see if this\ngives qualitatively new insights into the problem. In this regime,\nwe also have the possibility of an additional Ising-type symmetry\nbreaking due to the symmetry between the $\\widetilde{\\theta}$ and\n$\\widetilde{\\phi}$ fields when $K_{\\bot}^{\\phi}=K_{0}^{\\phi}=1$,\nwhich has not been considered in this paper. We hope to study the implications of our approach for\nthe spinful three-band case, and compare our results with Ref. \\onlinecite{PhysRevB.94.205129},\nwhere the rotations of the matrices $Z_{\\mu\\nu}$ were not taken into\naccount in the RG analysis. We would also like to consider the case\nof special fillings where intraband Umklapp scattering terms are possible.\nAt first sight, these terms have higher scaling dimensions than the\ninteractions considered by us, and so, at the tree level, they are\nnot relevant. However, more work needs to be done to see the effect\nthey have on the conclusions of this paper. \n\\begin{acknowledgments}\nVT acknowledges DST for a Swarnajayanti grant (No. DST\/SJF\/PSA-0212012-13). \n\\end{acknowledgments}\n\n\\bibliographystyle{apsrev4-1}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Physical meaning of correlation functions}\n\n\\label{A}\n\nCorrelations for two particles are often seen as a measure of predictability of local results when knowing the other result.\nYet, this simple statement has to be used carefully.\nA non-vanishing $n$-partite correlation function indicates that we can make an educated guess of the $n$th result from the product of the other $n-1$ results.\nThe converse statement does not hold and we provide an example of a state with vanishing correlation functions where the inference is still possible.\n\nLet us denote by $r_j = \\pm 1$ the result of the $j$th observer.\nWe assume that $n-1$ parties cannot infer from the product of their outcomes, $r_1 \\dots r_{n-1}$, the result of the last observer, $r_n$, i.e., the following conditional probabilities hold:\n\\begin{equation}\nP(r_n | r_1 \\dots r_{n-1}) = \\frac{1}{2}.\n\\label{COND_PROB}\n\\end{equation}\nWe show that this implies that the corresponding correlation function, $T_{j_1 \\dots j_n}$, vanishes.\nThe correlation function is defined as expectation value of the product of all local outcomes\n\\begin{equation}\nT_{j_1 \\dots j_n} = \\langle r_1 \\dots r_n \\rangle = P(r_1 \\dots r_n = 1) - P(r_1 \\dots r_n = -1).\n\\end{equation}\nUsing Bayes' rule\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nP(r_1 \\dots r_n = \\pm 1) &=& \\sum_{r = \\pm 1} P(r_n = \\pm r | r_1 \\dots r_{n-1} = r) \\nonumber \\\\\n&\\times& P(r_1 \\dots r_{n-1} = r). \n\\end{eqnarray}\nAccording to assumption (\\ref{COND_PROB}) we have $P(r_n = \\pm r | r_1 \\dots r_{n-1} = r) = \\frac{1}{2}$, giving $P(r_1 \\dots r_n = \\pm 1) = \\frac{1}{2}$ and $T_{j_1 \\dots j_n} = 0$.\n\nAs an example of a state with vanishing correlation functions yet allowing to make an educated guess of the result, let us consider the two-qubit mixed state\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{1}{2} \\proj{00} + \\frac{1}{4} \\proj{01} + \\frac{1}{4} \\proj{10},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\ket{0}$ and $\\ket{1}$ are the eigenstates of the Pauli operator $\\sigma_z$ with eigenvalues $+1$ and $-1$, respectively.\nAll correlation functions $T_{kl}$, with $k,l=x,y,z$, of this state vanish. Yet, whenever Alice (Bob) observes outcome $-1$ in the $\\sigma_z$ measurement, she (he) is sure the distant outcome is $+1$, i.e., $P(r_2 = +1 | r_1 = -1) = 1$.\nSimilar examples exist for multiple qubits, but we note that the states $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ of the main text are an equal mixture of a state and its anti-state. In this case, the vanishing $n$-party correlations lead to the impossibility of inferring the $n$-th result.\n\n\\section{Criterion for genuine multipartite entanglement}\n\n\\label{B}\n\nTo evaluate entanglement we use the following criterion (see main text) where, $T^{{exp}} = T$, i.e., assuming the ideal experiment producing the required state described by the correlation tensor $T$:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\max_{T^{{bi-prod}}} (T,T^{{bi-prod}}) < (T,T).\n\\end{equation}\nThe maximization is performed over all bi-product states keeping in mind also all possible bipartitions.\nThe inner product between two correlation tensors of three qubit states is defined as\n\\begin{equation}\n(V,W) \\equiv \\sum_{\\mu,\\nu,\\eta = 0}^3 V_{\\mu \\nu \\eta} W_{\\mu \\nu \\eta}.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Tripartite entanglement}\n\nTo keep the statement as general as possible, we prove that all states $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi} = \\frac{1}{2} \\proj{\\phi} + \\frac{1}{2} \\proj{\\overline \\phi}$ with\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\ket{\\phi} \\!& = &\\! \\sin \\beta \\cos \\alpha \\ket{001} + \\sin \\beta \\sin \\alpha \\ket{010} + \\cos \\beta \\ket{100}, \\label{PSI-PSIBAR} \\\\\n\\ket{\\overline \\phi} \\!& = &\\! \\sin \\beta \\cos \\alpha \\ket{110} + \\sin \\beta \\sin \\alpha \\ket{101} + \\cos \\beta \\ket{011}, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nare genuinely tripartite entangled as soon as $\\ket{\\phi}$ is genuinely tripartite entangled. \\\\\nFirst, note that $\\ket{\\phi}$ is a bi-product state if at least one amplitude vanishes, i.e., if either\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\beta = 0$ (full product state),\n\\item $\\beta = \\frac{\\pi}{2}$ and $\\alpha = 0$ (full product state),\n\\item $\\beta = \\frac{\\pi}{2}$ and $\\alpha = \\frac{\\pi}{2}$ (full product state),\n\\item $\\beta = \\frac{\\pi}{2}$ and $\\alpha \\in (0,\\frac{\\pi}{2})$ (bi-product $A|BC$),\n\\item $\\alpha = 0$ and $\\beta \\in (0,\\frac{\\pi}{2})$ (bi-product $B|AC$),\n\\item $\\alpha = \\frac{\\pi}{2}$ and $\\beta \\in (0,\\frac{\\pi}{2})$ (bi-product $C|AB$).\n\\end{enumerate}\nThe correlation tensor of the state $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ contains only bipartite correlations:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nT_{xx0} & = & T_{yy0} = \\sin(2 \\beta) \\sin(\\alpha), \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{x0x} & = & T_{y0y} = \\sin(2 \\beta) \\cos(\\alpha), \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{0xx} & = & T_{0yy} = \\sin^2(\\beta) \\sin(2 \\alpha), \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{zz0} & = & \\cos(2 \\alpha) \\sin^2(\\beta) - \\cos^2(\\beta), \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{z0z} & = & - \\cos(2 \\alpha) \\sin^2(\\beta) - \\cos^2(\\beta), \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{0zz} & = & \\cos(2 \\beta),\n\\label{T_MIX}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand $T_{000}=1$. Using these expressions, the right-hand side of the entanglement criterion is\n\\begin{equation}\nR = (T,T) = 4.\n\\label{eq:R4}\n\\end{equation}\nTo find the maximum of the left-hand side, we shall follow a few estimations.\nConsider first the bi-product state in a fixed bipartition, say $AB|C$, i.e., of the form $\\ket{\\chi}_{AB} \\otimes \\ket{c}$,\nwhere $\\ket{\\chi}_{AB} = \\cos(\\theta) \\ket{00} + \\sin(\\theta) \\ket{11}$, when written in the Schmidt basis.\nLet us denote the correlation tensor of $\\ket{\\chi}_{AB}$ with $P$ and its local Bloch vectors by $\\vec a$ and $\\vec b$.\nWe therefore have:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nL  &=& 1 + T_{xx0} (P_{xx} + P_{yy}) + T_{zz0} P_{zz} + T_{x0x}(a_x c_x + a_y c_y)  \\nonumber \\\\\n&+& T_{z0z} a_z c_z + T_{0xx}(b_x c_x + b_y c_y) + T_{0zz} b_z c_z. \n\\label{L}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nBy optimizing over the states of $\\ket{c}$ we get the following upper bounds:\n\\begin{equation}\nT_{x0x}(a_x c_x + a_y c_y) + T_{z0z} a_z c_z \\le \\sqrt{T_{x0x}^2 (a_x^2 + a_y^2) + T_{z0z}^2 a_z^2},\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\nT_{0xx}(b_x c_x + b_y c_y) + T_{0zz} b_z c_z \\le \\sqrt{T_{0xx}^2 (b_x^2 + b_y^2) + T_{0zz}^2 b_z^2}.\n\\label{OVER_C}\n\\end{equation}\nThe Schmidt decomposition implies for local Bloch vectors:\n\\begin{equation}\na_x^2 + a_y^2 + a_z^2 = b_x^2 + b_y^2 + b_z^2 = \\cos^2(2 \\theta),\n\\end{equation}\nand therefore\n\\begin{equation}\n\\vec a = \\cos(2 \\theta) \\vec n, \\quad \\vec b = \\cos(2 \\theta) \\vec m,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\vec n$ and $\\vec m$ are normalized vectors with directions along the local Bloch vectors.\nThis gives the bound\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& \\sqrt{T_{x0x}^2 (a_x^2 + a_y^2) + T_{z0z}^2 a_z^2} + \\sqrt{T_{0xx}^2 (b_x^2 + b_y^2) + T_{0zz}^2 b_z^2} \\nonumber \\\\\n&& =  \\cos(2 \\theta) ( \\sqrt{T_{x0x}^2 (n_x^2 + n_y^2) + T_{z0z}^2 n_z^2} \\\\\n&& +\\sqrt{T_{0xx}^2 (m_x^2 + m_y^2) + T_{0zz}^2 m_z^2} ) \\nonumber \\\\\n&& \\le  \\cos(2 \\theta) ( \\max(|T_{x0x}|,|T_{z0z}|) + \\max(|T_{0xx}|,|T_{0zz}|) ),\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the maxima follow from convexity of squared components of a normalized vector.\n\nNow let us focus on the terms depending on the correlations of $\\ket{\\chi}_{AB}$.\nIn order to maximize \\eqref{L}, the Schmidt basis of $\\ket{\\chi}_{AB}$ has to be either $x$, $y$, or $z$ as otherwise off-diagonal elements of $P$ emerge leading to smaller values entering \\eqref{L}.\nFor the diagonal correlation tensor we have $|P_{xx}| = \\sin(2 \\theta)$, $|P_{yy}| = \\sin(2 \\theta)$, and $P_{zz} = 1$, and with indices permuted.\nTherefore, there are three cases to be considered in order to optimize $T_{xx0} (P_{xx} + P_{yy}) + T_{zz0} P_{zz}$:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(i)] $|P_{xx}| = 1$ and $|P_{yy}| = |P_{zz}| = \\sin(2 \\theta)$ with their signs matching those of $T_{xx0}$ and $T_{zz0}$ respectively,\n\\item[(ii)] $|P_{zz}| = 1$ and $P_{xx} = P_{yy} = \\sin(2 \\theta)$,\n\\item[(iii)] $|P_{zz}| = 1$ and $P_{xx} = - P_{yy} = \\sin(2 \\theta)$.\n\\end{itemize}\nEach of these cases leads to an upper bound on $L$.\nFor example, for the first case we find\n\\begin{widetext}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nL_{\\mathrm{(i)}}  &=&  1 + |T_{xx0}| + \\sin(2 \\theta) (|T_{xx0}| + |T_{zz0}|)\n+ \\cos(2 \\theta) (\\max(|T_{x0x}|,|T_{z0z}|) + \\max(|T_{0xx}|,|T_{0zz}|)) \\nonumber\\\\\n &\\le&  1 + |T_{xx0}|\n+ \\sqrt{(|T_{xx0}| + |T_{zz0}|)^2 + (\\max(|T_{x0x}|,|T_{z0z}|) + \\max(|T_{0xx}|,|T_{0zz}|))^2},\n\\label{eq:Li}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{widetext}\nwhere in the last step we optimized over $\\theta$. The same procedure applied to the other two cases gives:\n\\begin{widetext}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nL_{\\mathrm{(ii)}} & \\le & 1 + |T_{zz0}| + \\sqrt{4 T_{xx0}^2 + (\\max(|T_{x0x}|,|T_{z0z}|) + \\max(|T_{0xx}|,|T_{0zz}|))^2}, \\label{eq:Lii}\\\\\nL_{\\mathrm{(iii)}} & \\le & 1 + |T_{zz0}| + \\max(|T_{x0x}|,|T_{z0z}|) + \\max(|T_{0xx}|,|T_{0zz}|). \\label{eq:Liii}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{widetext}\nIf instead of the bipartition $AB|C$ another one was chosen, the bounds obtained are given by those above with the indices correspondingly permuted.\nSince there are three possible bipartitions, altogether we have nine bounds out of which we should finally choose the maximum as the actual upper bound on the left-hand side.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Numerical derivation of bounds}\n\nA first approach is to numerically evaluate Eqs.~(\\ref{eq:Li})-(\\ref{eq:Liii}).\nFig.~\\ref{FIG_CRIT} shows that only for states $\\ket{\\phi}$ that are bi-product the left-hand side reaches $L=4$.\n\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.46\\textwidth]{tarcza4b.pdf}\n\\caption{Contour plot showing the maximal value of the left-hand side of our entanglement criterion for the states $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ defined above (\\ref{PSI-PSIBAR}).\nWhenever the value is below $4$, i.e., the right-hand side value as given in \\eqref{eq:R4}, the criterion detects genuine tripartite entanglement.\nThis shows that all the states $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ are genuinely tripartite entangled except for those arising from bi-product states $\\ket{\\phi}$, i.e., for $\\alpha, \\beta = 0$ or $\\pi\/2$.\nNumerical optimizations over all bi-separable states yield the same plot.}\n\\label{FIG_CRIT}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\nFor the $W$ state we thus obtain $\\max L = 10\/3$ which is achieved by the bi-product state $(\\cos\\theta \\ket{++} - \\sin\\theta \\ket{--}) \\otimes \\ket{+}$,\nwhere $\\ket{\\pm} = \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}(\\ket{0} \\pm \\ket{1})$ and $\\tan(2 \\theta) = 3\/4$ in order to optimize case (i) which is the best for the $W$ state.\nThis bound is used in the main text.\n\n\n\n\\subsubsection*{Analytic argument}\n\nThe last step of the proof, showing that only bi-separable states can achieve the bound of $4$ in our criterion, involved numerical optimization (Fig.~\\ref{FIG_CRIT}).\nOne may complain that due to finite numerical precision there might be genuinely tripartite entangled states for values of $\\alpha$ or $\\beta$ close to $0$ and $\\pi\/2$ that already achieve the bound of $4$.\nHere, we give a simple analytical argument showing that $\\rho^{nc}_{{\\phi}}$ is genuinely tripartite entangled if and only if $\\ket{\\phi}$ is so.\n\n\n\nWe first follow the idea of Ref.~\\cite{PhysRevLett.101.070502} and note that a mixed state  $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ can only be bi-separable if there are bi-product pure states in its support.\nThe support of $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ is spanned by $\\ket{\\phi}$ and $| \\overline{\\phi} \\rangle$, i.e., $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ does not have any overlap with the orthogonal subspace $\\openone - \\proj{\\phi} - | \\overline{\\phi} \\rangle \\langle \\overline{\\phi} |$. \nAccordingly any decomposition of $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ into pure states can only use pure states of the form\n\\begin{equation}\n\\ket{\\Phi} = a \\ket{\\phi} + b | \\overline{\\phi} \\rangle.\n\\end{equation}\nWe now give a simple argument that $\\ket{\\Phi}$ is bi-product, and hence $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$ is bi-separable, if and only if $|\\phi\\rangle$ is bi-product.\nIn all other infinitely many cases, the no-correlation state is genuinely tripartite entangled.\nAssume that $|\\Phi\\rangle$ is bi-product in the partition $AB|C$. \nAccordingly, all its correlation tensor components factor across this partition.\nIn particular, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&T_{0xx} = W_{0x} V_x, \\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\, T_{0yy} = W_{0y} V_y, \\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\, \\\\\n&&T_{0xy} = W_{0x} V_y, \\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\,\\,  T_{0yx} = W_{0y} V_x \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $W$ is the correlation tensor of the state of $AB$ and $V$ is the correlation tensor corresponding to the state of $C$.\nOne directly verifies that for such a bi-product state we have \n\\begin{equation}\nT_{0xx} T_{0yy} = T_{0xy} T_{0yx}.\n\\label{T_BIPROD}\n\\end{equation}\nEvaluating condition (\\ref{T_BIPROD}) for the states $\\ket{\\Phi}$ gives the following condition on the amplitudes of $|\\phi\\rangle$:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\sin^2(2 \\alpha) \\sin^4(\\beta) = 0,\n\\end{equation}\nand indicates that at least one amplitude must be zero.\nSimilar reasoning applies to other partitions and we conclude that $\\ket{\\Phi}$ is bi-product if and only if $\\ket{\\phi}$ is bi-product.\n\n\n\\subsubsection*{Alternative entanglement criterion}\n\nAlternativly we can apply a witness of genuine tripartite entanglement based on angular momentum operators\n~\\cite{JOptSocAmB.24.275},\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{W}_3 = J_x^2 + J_y^2,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere e.g. $J_x = \\frac{1}{2}(\\sigma_x \\otimes \\openone \\otimes \\openone + \\openone \\otimes \\sigma_x \\otimes \\openone + \\openone \\otimes \\openone \\otimes \\sigma_x)$.\nMaximization of this quantity over bi-separable states gives~\\cite{JOptSocAmB.24.275}:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\max_{\\rho^{\\mathrm{bi-sep}}} \\langle \\mathcal{W}_3 \\rangle = 2+\\sqrt{5}\/2 \\approx 3.12.\n\\label{J_BISEP}\n\\end{equation} \nThis criterion detects entanglement of the states $\\ket{\\phi}$ and $\\ket{\\overline \\phi}$, and, consequently, \nsince it uses two-party correlations only, also of the state $\\rho_{\\phi}^{nc}$. However, entanglement\nis detected only for a range of roughly $\\alpha \\in [0.59,1.3]$ and $\\beta \\in [0.33,1.2]$.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Five-partite entanglement}\n\nIn order to obtain the five-partite bound given in the main text, i.e., $\\max_{T^{{bi-prod}}} (T,T^{{bi-prod}}) = 12.8$,\nwe have numerically optimized over all bi-product states keeping $T$ as the correlation tensor of an equal mixture of Dicke states $| D_5^{(2)} \\rangle$ and $|D_5^{(3)} \\rangle$, where\n\\begin{equation}\n| D_n^{(e)} \\rangle = \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{{n \\choose e}}} \\sum_i | \\mathcal{P}_i(1,\\dots,1,0\\dots,0) \\rangle,\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\mathcal{P}_i$ denoting all distinct permutations of $e$ ones and $n-e$ zeros.\n\nBelow, we generalize the analytical argument given above to prove genuine multipartite entanglement of arbitrary mixtures of Dicke and anti-Dicke states.\nThe anti-Dicke state has exchanged roles of zeros and ones as compared with the Dicke state, i.e., it has $n-e$ ones (excitations).\nOne easily verifies that the Dicke state of $n$ qubits with $e$ excitations has the following bipartite correlations:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nT_{0 \\dots 0 xx} & = & T_{0 \\dots 0 yy} = \\frac{2 {n-2 \\choose e-1}}{{n \\choose e}} = \\frac{2 e (n-e)}{n (n-1)}, \\nonumber \\\\\nT_{0 \\dots 0 xy} & = & T_{0 \\dots 0 yx} = 0.\\label{D-DBAR}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe correlations of an anti-Dicke state, with $n-e$ excitations, are the same due to the symmetry $e \\leftrightarrow n-e$ of these correlations.\nAssume that $n$ is odd so that (i) the Dicke and anti-Dicke states are orthogonal and (ii) the parity of the number of excitations, i.e., whether there is an even or odd number of them, is opposite in the Dicke and anti-Dicke states.\nFor arbitrary superposition $\\alpha | D_n^{(e)} \\rangle + \\beta | D_n^{(n-e)} \\rangle$ the correlations read:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nT_{0 \\dots 0 jk} &=& |\\alpha|^2 T_{0 \\dots 0 jk}^D + |\\beta|^2 T_{0 \\dots 0 jk}^{\\overline{D}} \\nonumber \\\\\n &+& \\alpha^* \\beta \\langle D_n^{(e)} | \\openone \\otimes \\dots \\openone \\otimes \\sigma_j \\otimes \\sigma_k | D_n^{(n-e)} \\rangle \\\\\n&+& \\alpha \\beta^* \\langle D_n^{(n-e)} | \\openone \\otimes \\dots \\openone \\otimes \\sigma_j \\otimes \\sigma_k | D_n^{(e)} \\rangle. \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSince applying $\\sigma_j \\otimes \\sigma_k$ with $j,k=x,y$ to the Dicke states does not change the parity of their excitations, the last two terms vanish, and for the first two terms we have $T_{0 \\dots 0 jk}^D = T_{0 \\dots 0 jk}^{\\overline{D}}$.\nTherefore, an arbitrary superposition of Dicke and anti-Dicke states has the same correlations as in (\\ref{D-DBAR}) and therefore none of such superposed states is bi-product.\nSince the Dicke states are invariant under exchange of parties (and so are their superpositions), the same holds for other partitions.\nFinally, the lack of bi-product states in a subspace spanned by Dicke and anti-Dicke states implies that their mixtures are also genuinely multipartite entangled.\n\n\\section{Genuine tripartite correlations}\n\n\\label{C}\n\n\nWhile the conventional full correlation function vanishes for $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi}$, this is not necessarily so for other types of correlation functions introduced recently.\nFor a comparison we analyze the correlation content of the states of our family also according to the three measures given in Ref. \\cite{PhysRevLett.107.190501},\nnamely: (a)  genuine tripartite correlations $T^{(3)}(\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi})$,\n(b) genuine tripartite classical correlations $J^{(3)}(\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi})$,\nand (c) genuine tripartite quantum correlations $D^{(3)}(\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi})$.\nThe results are presented and discussed in Fig. \\ref{ecor}.\n\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{GENUINE_CORRELATIONS_ABC_bitmaps.pdf\n\\caption{\\label{ecor}\nCorrelation content~\\cite{PhysRevLett.107.190501} of the states $\\rho^{nc}_{\\phi} = \\frac{1}{2} \\proj{\\phi} + \\frac{1}{2} \\proj{\\overline \\phi}$ with the pure states given in Eq.~(\\ref{PSI-PSIBAR}).\n(a) \\emph{Total genuine tripartite correlations}.\nThe genuine tripartite correlations vanish only for mixtures of bi-product states. The highest value ($1.2516$) is obtained for the state $(|W\\rangle \\langle W |+  |\\overline{W}\\rangle \\langle \\overline{W}|)\/2$.\n(b) {\\em Genuine tripartite classical correlations}. The genuine classical correlations also vanish only for mixtures of bi-product states. The highest value (1.0) is observed for fully separable states. The local maximum (0.8127) is achieved by the state $(|W\\rangle \\langle W |+  |\\overline{W}\\rangle \\langle \\overline{W}|)\/2$.\n(c) {\\em Genuine tripartite quantum correlations}. The genuine quantum correlations vanish for mixtures of bi-product states and for fully separable states.  The highest values (0.6631) correspond to the mixture of the state\n$\\sqrt{1\/6} |001\\rangle + \\sqrt{1\/6}|010\\rangle + \\sqrt{2\/3}|100\\rangle$ with its antistate (and permutations). The state $(|W\\rangle \\langle W |+  |\\overline{W}\\rangle \\langle \\overline{W}|)\/2$ achieves the local maximum (0.4389).\n}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\section{Experimental three and five qubit states}\n\n\\label{D}\n\nThe experimentally prepared states $\\ket{W}^{exp}$, $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$, $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$, and $\\rho^{nc,exp}_{D_{5}^{(2)}}$ were characterized by means of quantum state tomography. Their corresponding density matrices can be seen in Fig.~\\ref{3QUBITS} and Fig.~\\ref{5QUBITS}.\nThe fidelities of the observed three qubit states with respect to their target states are  $0.939\\pm0.011$ for $\\ket{W}^{exp}$, $0.919\\pm0.010$ for $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$, and $0.961\\pm0.003$ for $\\rho^{nc,exp}_W$. \nNote that the value of the fidelity for the state $\\rho^{nc,exp}_W$ was obtained from a maximum likelihood (ML) reconstruction together with non-parametric bootstrapping. This value thus might be slightly incorrect due to the bias of the maximum likelihood data evaluation~\\cite{arxiv}.\n\nFig.~\\ref{5QUBITS} shows the real part of the tomographically determined no-correlation state from which all further five qubit results are deduced.\nThe five-qubit fidelity of $\\rho^{nc,exp}_{D_{5}^{(2)}}$ is determined via a ML reconstruction from five-fold coincidences to be $0.911\\pm0.004$.\n\nTo obtain a correlation function value, e.g., $T_{zzz}=\\operatorname{Tr}(\\rho~ \\sigma_z \\otimes \\sigma_z \\otimes \\sigma_z)$, we analyze the three photons in the respective set of bases (here all $\\hat{z}$). Fig.~\\ref{FIG_CORRS} shows the relative frequencies for observing all the possible results for such a polarization analysis. Clearly one recognizes the complementary structure of the the detection frequencies for the states $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ which results in approximately the same magnitude of the correlations, yet with different sign. Mixing the two states, one thus obtains a vanishingly small correlation. Fig.~[2] of the main text then shows the full set of correlations.\n\nFor the analysis of the five qubit no correlation state, we see from an eigen decomposition that this state indeed comprises of a mixture of two states ($|\\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ and $|\\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle^{exp}$), which are in very good agreement with  $| D_{5}^{(2)} \\rangle$ and $| D_{5}^{(3)} \\rangle$.\nFig.~\\ref{FIG_5P} (a) and (b) show all symmetrized correlations for the five-qubit states $| \\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle$ and $| \\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle$ and $\\rho_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}$ with good agreement with the ideal states. \nAlso the respective fidelity of the eigenvectors of the experimentally determined state are quite high ($F_{| D_{5}^{(2)} \\rangle}(| \\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle)=0.978\\pm0.012$ and $F_{| D_{5}^{(3)} \\rangle}(| \\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle^{exp})=0.979\\pm0.012$). Equally mixing the states $|\\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ and $|\\Theta^{(3)}\\rangle^{exp}$ indeed would result in a state with vanishingly small correlations as seen in  Fig.~\\ref{FIG_5P} (c). However, due to asymmetry in the coupling of signal and idler states from the down conversion source~\\cite{SignalIdler} the correlations are still present, albeit smaller by a factor of 10 compared with $| D_{5}\n^{(2)} \\rangle$ and $| D_{5}^{(3)} \\rangle$.\nIn the main text we show that the very same state is genuinely five-party entangled.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure*}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.8\\textwidth]{3qubit_states.png}\n\\caption{\\label{3QUBITS}\nExperimental three qubit states as obtained from the state $|D_4^{(2)}\\rangle^{exp}$. (a) The state $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ is obtained by projection of the fourth qubit of $|D_4^{(2)}\\rangle^{exp}$ on $V$. (b)\nThe state $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ is prepared by projecting the fourth qubit of $|D_4^{(2)}\\rangle^{exp}$ on $H$. (c) When the fourth qubit of $|D_4^{(2)}\\rangle^{exp}$ is traced out, a mixture of\n$\\ket{W}^{exp}$ and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ is obtained, i.e., the state $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$.\nThe corresponding fidelities with respect to their target states are  $0.939\\pm0.011$ for $\\ket{W}^{exp}$, $0.919\\pm0.010$ for $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$, and $0.961\\pm0.003$ for $\\rho^{nc,exp}_W$.\n}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.48\\textwidth]{5qubit_state_Wiesiu.png}\n\\caption{\\label{5QUBITS}\nExperimental state $\\rho^{nc,exp}_{D_{5}^{(2)}}$ determined from five-fold coincidences together with permutational invariant tomography~\\cite{PhysRevLett.113.040503}.\nThe fidelity with respect to the target state is $0.911\\pm0.004$.\n}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.46\\textwidth]{probs_zzz_basis_redblue_3-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{(color online). Detection frequencies when observing the states $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ (red) and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ (blue) and $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$ (red and blue) in the $\\sigma_z^{\\otimes 3}$ basis. From these data $T_{zzz}$ values can be calculated showing how the correlations of $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ average to approximately 0. For comparison, the theoretically expected values are shown in gray. \nThe correlation value $T_{zzz}$ of the state $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$ was determined as the weighted sum of the correlation values $T_{zzz}$ of the states $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$. The state $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ was observed with a slightly lower probability ($0.485$) than the state $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ ($0.515$) leading to a value of $T_{zzz} = 0.022$ for the state $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$.\nIn contrast, in Fig.~2 of the main text the states $\\ket{W}^{exp}$ and $\\ket{\\overline{W}}^{exp}$ were obtained from the state $| D_{4}^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ by projection of the fourth qubit onto horizontal\/vertical polarization, i.e., from measuring $\\sigma_z$ on the fourth qubit. There, $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$ was obtained by tracing out the fourth qubit and hence measurements of $\\sigma_x, \\sigma_y, \\sigma_z$ on the fourth qubit of $| D_{4}^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ contribute, leading to approximately three times better statistics for the state $\\rho_W^{nc,exp}$.    \n}\n\\label{FIG_CORRS}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{fivepartite_corrs_errorbars_3-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\\label{FIG_5P}\nExperimental five-partite symmetric correlations for the two most prominent states (a) $|\\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ and (b) $|\\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle^{exp}$ in the eigen decomposition of the experimental density matrix $\\rho^{nc,exp}_{D_{5}^{(2)}}$ shown in Fig. \\ref{5QUBITS}. The correlations of these states are compared with the ones of the states (a) $| D_{5}^{(2)} \\rangle$ and (b) $| D_{5}^{(3)} \\rangle$, respectively, shown in gray. The agreement between the actual and expected correlations is evident and also the fidelities of $|\\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ and  $|\\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle^{exp}$ with the respective target states are high: $F_{| D_{5}^{(2)} \\rangle}(| \\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp})=0.978\\pm0.012$ and $F_{| D_{5}^{(3)} \\rangle}(| \\Theta^{(3)} \\rangle^{exp})=0.979\\pm0.012$. (c) When both states are evenly mixed, the resultant state has practically vanishing correlations. (d) Since the collection efficiencies for signal and idler photons generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion differ \nslightly \\cite{SignalIdler}, the \nstates  $|\\Theta^{(2)} \\rangle^{exp}$ and $|\\Theta^{(3)} \n\\rangle^{exp}$ are observed with relative weights of $0.54$ and $0.46$ leading to largely suppressed but not entirely vanishing full correlations. Hence, the experimentally prepared state $\\rho_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}$ is a very good approximation to a no-correlation state. Please note that the correlations shown in (c) and (d) are magnified by a factor of $10$ compared with the scale of (a) and (b).\nThe errors given in subfigures (a)-(c) were obtained by non-parametric bootstrapping~\\cite{bootstrapping} whereas for (d) Gaussian error propagation was used.\n}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\section{Statistical analysis}\n\\label{E}\n\n\\subsection{Error analysis}\n\nIn order to carry out $n$-qubit quantum state tomography, we measured in the eigenbases of all $3^n$ combinations of local Pauli settings $s_i$ with $s_1 = x...xx$,\n$s_2 = x...xy$, ..., $s_{3^n} = z...zz$.\nIn each setting $s_i$ we performed projection measurements on all the $2^n$ eigenvectors of the corresponding operators.\nThe single measurement results are enumerated by $r_j$ representing the binary numbers from $0$ to $2^n-1$ in increasing order, i.e., $r_1 = 0...00$, $r_2 = 0...01$, ..., $r_{2^n} = 1...11$.\nThe observed counts for the outcome $r_j$ when measuring $s_i$ are labeled as $c_{r_j}^{s_i}$ and the total number of counts $N_{s_i}$ for setting $s_i$ is given by $N_{s_i} = \\sum\\limits_{j=1}^{2^n} c_{r_j}^{s_i}$.\nFrom these data the density matrix can be obtained as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{3^n}\\sum\\limits_{j=1}^{2^n} \\frac{c_{r_j}^{s_i}}{N_{s_i}} M_{r_j}^{s_i}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the elements of the generating set of operators $M_{r_j}^{s_i}$ are defined as $M_{r_j}^{s_i} = \\frac{1}{2^n}\\bigotimes\\limits_{k=1}^n \\Big(\\frac{\\leavevmode\\hbox{\\small1\\kern-3.8pt\\normalsize1}}{3}+(-1)^{r_j(k)}\\sigma_{s_i(k)}\\Big)$~\\cite{James,PhDNikolai}, where $\\leavevmode\\hbox{\\small1\\kern-3.8pt\\normalsize1}$ denotes the $2\\times2$ identity matrix and $r_{j(k)}$ is the k-th entry in the string $r_j$.\nThen, the fidelity $F_{\\ket{\\psi}}$ with respect to a pure target state $\\ket{\\psi}$ can be calculated as\n\\begin{equation}\nF_{\\ket{\\psi}} = \\bra{\\psi}\\rho\\ket{\\psi} = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{3^n}\\sum\\limits_{j=1}^{2^n}  \\frac{c_{r_j}^{s_i}}{N_{s_i}} \\bra{\\psi} M_{r_j}^{s_i} \\ket{\\psi}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor Poissonian measurement statistics, i.e., $\\Delta c_{r_j}^{s_i} = \\sqrt{c_{r_j}^{s_i}}$, the error to the fidelity $\\Delta F_{\\ket{\\psi}} = \\sqrt{\\Delta^2 F_{\\ket{\\psi}}}$ can be deduced via Gaussian error propagation as $\\Delta^2 F_{\\ket{\\psi}} = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{3^n}\\sum\\limits_{j=1}^{2^n}  (\\frac{1}{N_{s_i}} - \\frac{1}{N_{s_i}^2})^2\\bra{\\psi} M_{r_j}^{s_i} \\ket{\\psi}^2 c_{r_j}^{s_i}$\nwhich is approximately\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Delta^2 F_{\\ket{\\psi}} = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{3^n}\\Delta^2 F_{\\ket{\\psi}}^{s_i} = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{3^n}\\sum\\limits_{j=1}^{2^n}  \\frac{c_{r_j}^{s_i}}{N_{s_i}^2}\\bra{\\psi} M_{r_j}^{s_i} \\ket{\\psi}^2\n\\label{eq:approxerr}\n\\end{equation}\nfor large number of counts per setting as in our experiment.\nAs an example, in table \\ref{tab:zzz} we give the corresponding values for $c_{r_j}^{s_i}$ and $|\\langle \\psi | M_{r_j}^{s_i}| \\psi \\rangle |$ for the $2^3=8$ possible results of the $zzz$ measurement of the three qubit $\\ket{W}$ state to get an impression of the size of the $3^3=27$ terms in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:approxerr}).\\\\\n\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.4}\n\n\\begin{table*}[!ht]\n\t  \\begin{tabular*}{129mm}{l|c|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r}\n    \\hline\\hline\n      & $r_j$ & $000$ & $001$ & $001$ & $011$ & $100$ & $101$ & $110$ & $111$ \\\\\\cline{1-10}\n      $zzz$& $ |\\langle \\psi | M_{r_j}^{zzz} | \\psi \\rangle |$ & 1.48e-01 & 1.48e-01 & 1.48e-01 & 1.11e-01 & 1.48e-01 & 1.11e-01 & 1.11e-01 & 7.41e-02 \\\\\\cline{2-10}\n      & counts $c_{r_j}^{zzz}$ & 14 & 309 & 250 & 8.71 & 283 & 8 & 7.07 & 0 \\\\\\cline{2-10}\n    \\hline\\hline\t\t\t\n  \\end{tabular*}\n\\caption{\\label{tab:zzz} The values of $c_{r_j}^{s_i}$ and $|\\langle \\psi | M_{r_j}^{s_i}| \\psi \\rangle |$ for the measurement of the setting $zzz$ of the experimentally observed state $\\ket{W}^{{exp}}$.\n  The first row shows all possible results $r_j$ associated with the eigenvectors on which projection measurements are performed, labeled in binary representation.\n  Please note that the observed counts $c_{r_j}^{s_i}$ are not integers since the slightly differing relative detection efficiencies of the single photon counters were included.\n\tFrom these data we obtain for $s_i=zzz$ a contribution for Eq.~(\\ref{eq:approxerr}) of $\\Delta^2 F_{\\ket{W}}^{zzz} = 2.46$e-05.}\n   \\end{table*}\n\n\n\n\nSimilarly, also the error of the $4^3=64$ correlations of the given state are evaluated. For example, we obtain for the correlation value $T_{zzz} = -0.914 \\pm 0.034$.\nThe error for the maximum likelihood estimate was determined by non-parametric bootstrapping, for details see~\\cite{bootstrapping}.\n\n\\subsection{Hypothesis testing}\n\\label{sec:hypotheses}\n\\subsubsection*{Vanishing correlations}\nAfter having calculated the experimental error of the $zzz$ correlation, we find that the measurements of the remaining 26 full correlations have similar errors.\nWe test our hypothesis of vanishing full correlations by comparing our measured correlation values with a normal distribution with mean $\\mu=0$ and standard deviation $\\sigma=0.0135$, which corresponds to the average experimental standard deviation.\nIf our data are in agreement with this distribution, we can retain the hypothesis of vanishing full correlations. \\\\\n\\begin{figure}[!ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{hypothesis_cdf_KS_test.pdf}\n\\caption{The cumulative distribution of the experimentally determined correlations is compared to the cumulative distribution of the expected correlations ($\\mu=0$, $\\sigma=0.0135$).\nThe shaded blue region contains points that would be sampled from the normal distribution with probability smaller than $5\\%$.\nSince the empirical function lies in between the shaded regions, our hypothesis of vanishing correlations can be retained with significance level of $0.05$.}\n\\label{HypothesisKS}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo test the hypothesis\n\\begin{quote}\n$H_0^{(nc,3)}:$ all full correlations of the state $\\rho_W^{{nc,exp}}$ vanish,\n\\end{quote}\naccording to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method, the cumulative distribution of the $27$ measured full correlations is compared with the cumulative probability distribution of the assumed normal distribution, see Fig.~\\ref{HypothesisKS}, quantifying the hypothesis of vanishing full correlations.\nWe can directly see that the data do not enter the region of rejection given by a significance level of $0.05$.\nThis clearly indicates that the hypothesis of normal distribution with mean $\\mu=0$ and $\\sigma=0.135$ cannot be rejected.\nWhile this test (Kolmogorov-Smirnov hypothesis test) is demonstrative, the Anderson-Darling test is considered to be more powerful, i.e., to decrease the probability of errors of second kind.\nSince the Anderson-Darling test gives a $p$-value of $0.44$ far above a $0.05$ significance level, we can retain the claim that our measured data indeed correspond to vanishing full correlations, while their scatter can be fully explained by the experimental error.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Testing for genuine multipartite entanglement}\nFurthermore, we also check our hypotheses of the main text that the tripartite and five-partite states are genuinely multipartite entangled.\nFor that purpose, we calculate the probability that a state without genuine multipartite entanglement achieves values comparable to the measured value based on the assumption that the measurement errors are normally distributed.\nLet us formulate for the tripartite state the null hypothesis\n\\begin{quote}\n$H_0^{(3)}:$ state $\\rho_W^{{nc,exp}}$ is not genuinely tripartite entangled.\n\\end{quote}\nTo show the genuine tripartite entanglement of that state, we want to reject the null hypothesis $H_0^{(3)}$.\nIn order to estimate the error of first kind, i.e., the probability that $H_0^{(3)}$ is \\textit{true}, we calculate the probability that a state without tripartite entanglement achieves the measured value of $\\left(T,T_W^{{nc,exp}}\\right)=3.858$.\nThe calculation is based on the assumption of a normal distributed result of the indicator with mean $\\mu=\\frac{10}{3}$, i.e., the bi-separable bound, and with standard deviation given by our experimental error of $\\sigma=0.079$.\nThe probability of the error of first kind is then at most\n\\begin{eqnarray}\np&=&\\operatorname{Pr}\\left[\\left(T,T_W^{{nc,exp}}\\right)\\geq3.858\\Big|H_0^{(3)}\\right] \\\\\n&<&\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2\\pi}\\sigma} \\int_{3.858}^{\\infty} {\\rm d}x \\exp\\left({-\\frac{\\left(x-\\mu\\right)^2}{2\\sigma^2}}\\right) \\nonumber \\\\\n&=& 1.55\\times10^{-11} \\ll 0.05. \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSince $p$ is far below the significance level of $0.05$, our experimentally implemented state $\\rho^{nc}_{W}$ is genuine tripartite entangled. \\\\\n\nAnalogously, we test if the state $\\rho_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}$ is indeed genuinely five-partite entangled.\nFor that purpose, we formulate the null hypothesis\n\\begin{quote}\n$H_0^{(5)}:$ state $\\rho_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}$ is not genuinely five-partite entangled.\n\\end{quote}\nIn order to test the probability that a bi-separable state can achieve $\\left(T,T_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}\\right)=13.663$, we now use a normal distribution centered around the bi-separable bound of $\\mu=12.8$.\nThe standard deviation is chosen according to the experimental error of $\\sigma=0.340$, such that the probability for a false rejection of the null hypothesis $H_0^{(5)}$ is estimated to be at most\n\\begin{eqnarray}\np&=&\\operatorname{Pr}\\left[\\left(T,T_{D_5^{(2)}}^{{nc,exp}}\\right)\\geq13.663\\Big|H_0^{(5)}\\right] \\\\\n&<&\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2\\pi}\\sigma} \\int_{13.663}^{\\infty} {\\rm d}x \\exp\\left({-\\frac{\\left(x-\\mu\\right)^2}{2\\sigma^2}}\\right) \\nonumber\\\\\n&=&5.6\\times10^{-3} \\ll 0.05, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nclearly indicating the five-partite entanglement of our state with high significance.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Bell inequality}\nFinally, we test whether we can retain our claim that the five-partite state is non-classical due to its violation of the Bell inequality.\nIn order to show the violation, we formulate the null hypothesis\n\\begin{quote}\n$H_0^{B}:$ violation of the Bell inequality can be explained by LHV model (finite statistics loophole).\n\\end{quote}\nFor the considered Bell inequality~\\cite{PhysRevA.86.032105}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\cal B}&=&E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(11110\\right)}+E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(22220\\right)}+E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(12220\\right)} \\\\\n&-&E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(21110\\right)}-E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(11000\\right)}-E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(22000\\right)}\\leq6 \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith $\\mathcal{P}$ denoting the summation over all permutations, e.g. $E_{\\mathcal{P}\\left(11110\\right)}=E_{11110}+E_{11101}+E_{11011}+E_{10111}+E_{01111}$, we calculate the probability that an LHV model can achieve the measured value of ${\\cal B}=6.358$, which was estimated with a standard deviation of $\\Delta {\\cal B}=0.149$.\nFollowing Ref.~\\cite{arxiv14070363} we assume that the LHV model gives the maximal allowed expectation value of our Bell parameter, equal to $\\mu = 6$, and that the standard deviation of a normal distribution about this mean value is equal to our experimental standard deviation $\\Delta {\\cal B}$.\nTherefore, the probability that the LHV model gives values at least as high as observed is found to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\np&=&\\operatorname{Pr}\\left[{\\cal B}\\geq6.358\\Big|H_0^{B}\\right] \\\\\n&<& \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2\\pi}\\sigma} \\int_{6.358}^{\\infty} {\\rm d}x \\exp\\left({-\\frac{\\left(x-\\mu\\right)^2}{2\\sigma^2}}\\right) = 0.0083 \\ll 0.05. \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThis small $p$-value clearly indicates that the null hypothesis $H_0^{B}$ is to be rejected and thus the non-classicality of the no-correlation state is confirmed.\n\n\n\\subsection{Vanishing full correlations with arbitrary measurement directions}\nThe measurements presented in the main text show not only vanishing full correlations for measurements in $x$, $y$, $z$ directions, but also for measurements of one qubit rotated in the $yz$-plane. \nHere, we show that full correlations have to vanish for arbitrary measurement directions.\nSince the $2$-norm of the correlation tensor is invariant under local rotations, its entries vanish in all local coordinate systems if they do in one.\nMoreover, $l$-fold correlations in one set of local coordinate system only depend on $l$-fold correlations of another set.\nAs an example, we explicitly show this for the case of three qubits.\n\\begin{equation}\nT_{(\\theta_1,\\phi_1)\\,(\\theta_2,\\phi_2)\\,(\\theta_3,\\phi_3)}={\\rm Tr}(\\rho ~\\sigma_{(\\theta_1,\\phi_1)} \\otimes \\sigma_{(\\theta_2,\\phi_2)} \\otimes  \\sigma_{(\\theta_3,\\phi_3)}) \n\\end{equation}\nwith\n\\begin{equation}\n\\sigma_{(\\theta_i,\\phi_i)} = \\sin(\\theta_i)\\cos(\\phi_i)\\sigma_x+\\sin(\\theta_i)\\sin(\\phi_i)\\sigma_y+\\cos(\\theta_i)\\sigma_z.\n\\end{equation}\nConsequently,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&T_{(\\theta_1,\\phi_1)\\,(\\theta_2,\\phi_2)\\,(\\theta_3,\\phi_3)}\\\\\n&&=\\sin(\\theta_1)\\cos(\\phi_1)\\sin(\\theta_2)\\cos(\\phi_2)\\sin(\\theta_3)\\cos(\\phi_3)T_{xxx}\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+\\sin(\\theta_1)\\cos(\\phi_1)\\sin(\\theta_2)\\cos(\\phi_2)\\sin(\\theta_3)\\sin(\\phi_3)T_{xxy}\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+\\dots\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+\\cos(\\theta_1)\\cos(\\theta_2)\\cos(\\theta_3)T_{zzz}, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich has to vanish since all full correlations along Pauli directions vanish.\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{apsrev4-1}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nCa$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ has attracted interest for its complex and puzzling phase diagram including\nmetallic as well as Mott-insulating magnetic phases \\cite{N00} which depend in a subtle way \non structural properties. \nRecent magnetostriction experiments \\cite{B05,B06} in connection with the metamagnetic transition (MMT) for $ x \\approx 0.2 $ underline the strong coupling of the electronic properties to the lattice. \nThis may be taken as a hint for the relevance of localized electronic orbital and spin degrees of freedom\nas  can be found in a number of transition metal oxides. \nIn particular, the mutual influence of spin and orbital\ndegrees of freedom plays an important role in the behavior of\nmanganites, ruthenates or titanates \\cite{Science-Nagaosa}.\n\nThe result of the apparent interplay between orbital and magnetic\ncorrelations in Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$ can be seen in the complex $T$-$x$ phase\ndiagram shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:PD}. Both Sr$^{2+}$ and Ca$^{2+}$ are isovalent ions so that the substitution\nof one by the other does not change the number of conductance electrons.\nSr$_2$RuO$_4$ is a good metal and the \\emph{a priori} expected change due to\nthe substitution of Sr by Ca should be increasing metallicity, because the\ndoping with a smaller ion (Ca)  would imply a widening of the\nband. This is not the case because the smaller Ca-ion induces lattice distortions which alter\nthe overlap integrals and the crystal fields of the relevant electronic orbitals. \nActually, Ca$_2$RuO$_4$ behaves as a Mott insulator, and  the\nevolution between these end-members builds a very rich phase diagram where\ndifferent structural and magnetic phases appear (Fig.\\ref{fig:PD}). For $x=2$, corresponding to Sr$_2$RuO$_4$, the system has\ntetragonal symmetry with the RuO$_6$-octahedra slightly elongated along the\n$c$-axis. Ca substitution initially induces the rotation of RuO$_6$ octahedra around the c-axis in order to accommodate the smaller ions. The system behaves still as a paramagnetic metal with tetragonal\nsymmetry. \nFurther doping with Ca reduces the conductivity and\nthe susceptibility increases when approaching $x\\rightarrow 0.5$,\nbecoming a Curie-like susceptibility \\cite{NM00}. At $x=0.5$ there is a structural phase transition, where the crystallographic structure of the Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ series changes from tetragonal to orthorhombic through a second-order phase transition. For $x<0.5$ there is, besides the c-axis rotation, a tilting of the\nRuO$_6$ octahedra leading to a reduction of the symmetry and a reduction of the c-axis lattice constant. Moreover, these distortions are responsible for a narrowing of the conduction bands which in turn enhances the correlation effects. In the region $0.2\\leq x \\leq 0.5$ the experiments suggest the appearance of a low-temperature antiferromagnetic (AFM) order. Furthermore, the application of a magnetic field leads to a metamagnetic transition which influences the tilting of the\nRuO$_6$-octahedra \\cite{B05,B06}. Within the region $x\\leq 0.2$ the system is\na Mott-insulator with true long-range AFM order and a total\nspin of $S=1$. \n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.8\\linewidth]{figs\/PD}} \\caption{Sketch of\nthe temperature-doping phase diagram of Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$.\nRegion I corresponds to a Mott insulator with long range\nantiferromagnetic order. Region II is characterized by a metallic\nbehavior with orthorhombic lattice symmetry and antiferromagnetic\ncorrelations at low temperatures. Region III corresponds to a\nparamagnetic metal with tetragonal symmetry in the lattice. For\n$x\\rightarrow 0.5$ there are strong ferromagnetic correlations at\nlow temperatures.} \\label{fig:PD}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn general, a MMT can occur for a material which, under the\napplication of an external field, undergoes a first order\ntransition or is close to the critical endpoint of such a transition \nto a phase with strong ferromagnetic correlations. This is\nexperimentally observed by a very rapid increase of the magnetization\nover a narrow range of applied magnetic field. The field dependence\nof the magnetization and magnetoresistance of Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ has been analyzed in\nRef.~\\cite{N03}. There, a MMT to a\nhighly polarized state with a local moment of $S=1\/2$ is found. These\nmeasurements are interestingly supplemented by the magnetostriction\nexperiments published in Ref.~\\cite{B05,B06} where the\nchange of the lattice constants as a function of the magnetic field\nfor different temperatures is shown.  \nNamely, these results demonstrate that\ncrossing the MMT leads to \nan elongation of the $c$ axis accompanied by a shrinking\nalong both in-plane directions. Apparently, the application of a high\nmagnetic field at low temperatures can reverse the structural distortion that\noccurs for $0.2\\leq x \\leq 0.5$ upon cooling in zero field. \nFurthermore, apart from different energy scales, the qualitative effects associated with the MMT are independent of the magnetic field direction.\n\n\nAll the members of the Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ family have 4 electrons in the $t_{2g}$ orbitals\nof the Ru 4$d$ shell. What is different is the occupation of these orbitals in\nthe two end-members of the phase diagram: while for $x=0$ there is an average\noccupation of two electrons in the $d_{xy}$ orbital and the other two in the\n$d_{yz}$ and $d_{zx}$ orbitals, for $x=2$ there is a fractional occupation of\n4\/3 in the $d_{xy}$ band and 8\/3 in the $d_{yz}$-$d_{zx}$-bands.   LDA calculations for this concentration give three Fermi surface\nsheets, one with essentially $xy$ and two with mixed $\\{ xz, yz\\}$ character\n\\cite{O95}. The first one is usually called $\\gamma$ band while the others are\nlabeled by $\\alpha$ and $\\beta$ bands. For intermediate values of $x$ the orbital occupation is still a matter of debate \\cite{ANKRS02,FANG04,OKA04,KO07,LIEB07}.\n\n\nIn this work we focus on the region II and the Ca-rich part of region III in the schematic $T-x$ phase diagram. For the microscopic description we follow the scenario of an orbital-selective Mott insulator. This scenario was put forward by Anisimov \\emph{et al.} \\cite{ANKRS02} in order to explain the unexpected effective magnetic moment close to a $S=1\/2$ spin for $0.2 \\lesssim x \\lesssim 1.5$ \\cite{N03}. \nAssuming that the orbital occupation in this region is $(n_{\\alpha,\\beta},n_{\\gamma})\\approx(3,1)$, they proposed that the electrons in the $\\{\\alpha,\\beta\\}$ bands undergo an orbital-selective Mott transition (OSMT) while the $\\gamma$ band remains metallic. In this scenario the experimental observation of the $1\/2$ effective spin is assigned to the localized hole in the $\\{\\alpha,\\beta\\}$ bands. Angular magnetoresistance oscillations measurements \\cite{BS05} indeed show a strong dependence of the Fermi surface on the Ca concentration which is consistent with the scenario of coexisting itinerant and localized $d$-electronic states. Furthermore, from the theoretical point of view, there is by now a consensus that an OSMT can in principle occur in multi-band Hubbard models under rather general conditions \\cite{Liebsch:03,Koga:04,Ruegg:05,Ferrero:05,Medici:05,Arita:05,Knecht:05,Costi:07,Inaba:06}. However, it is still unclear to which extend this concept is applicable in the Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ system \\cite{Lee:2006,Wang:2004}. Despite of these uncertainties, there is little doubt that the localized degrees of freedom play an important role for the understanding of the puzzling physics of this material, and in the following we will assume that the concept of the OSMT is valid as a lowest order picture for Ca concentrations corresponding to region II and at the boundary of region III of the $T-x$ phase diagram.\n\nUsing a mean-field description we focus on the interplay between structural distortion and magnetic and orbital ordering. We find a theoretical phase diagram which can be related to the experimental one. Furthermore, our calculations qualitatively reproduce the metamagnetic transition accompanied by a structural transition observed in the system. The paper is organized as follows: in Sec.~\\ref{sec:model} we introduce the microscopic model. A mean-field analysis is performed in Sec.~\\ref{sec:mf}. The results for zero and finite magnetic field are given in Sec.~\\ref{sec:res}. In Sec.~\\ref{sec:exp} we relate our results to the experimental measurements. We summarize the main conclusions of this work in Sec.~\\ref{sec:con}.\n\n\n\n\n\\section{The model}\n\\label{sec:model}\nFollowing the scenario of the OSMT we assume one hole in the \\{$\\alpha,\\beta$\\} bands and focus on the localized orbital and spin degrees of freedom \\cite{ANKRS02,ST04}. Neglecting for the our discussion the itinerant $\\gamma$ band it is natural to consider a two-dimensional extended Hubbard model of the form\n\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{ExtendedH}\n{\\cal H}_{\\alpha,\\beta}& = &-t \\sum_{i,{\\vec{\\bf a}},s}\n\\left(c_{i+a_y,yz, s}^{\\dag} c_{i,yz,s} + c_{i+a_x,zx,s}^{\\dag}\nc_{i,zx,s} + h.c.\\right)  \\nonumber\\\\\n&& - \\mu \\sum_{i,s,\\nu}\nc_{i,\\nu,s}^{\\dag} c_{i,\\nu,s} \\nonumber\\\\\n&&+ U\n\\sum_{i} \\sum_{\\nu} n_{i\\nu \\uparrow} n_{i \\nu \\downarrow} + U'\n\\sum_{i} n_{i,zx} n_{i,yz}\\nonumber \\\\\n & &+J_H\\sum_{i,s,s'} c_{i,yz,s}^{\\dag} c_{i,zx,s'}^{\\dag} c_{i,zx,s}\nc_{i,yz,s'}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $ c_{i,\\nu,s}^{\\dag} $ ($ c_{i,\\nu,s} $) creates (annihilates) an\nelectron on site $ i $ with orbital index $ \\nu $ ($ = yz,zx $) and\nspin $ s $ ($ n_{i,\\nu,s} = c_{i,\\nu,s}^{\\dag} c_{i,\\nu,s} $, $\nn_{i,\\nu} = n_{i, \\nu, \\uparrow} + n_{i, \\nu, \\downarrow} $; $ {\\vec{\\bf a}}\n= (a_x , a_y ) = (1,0) $ or $ (0,1) $ basis lattice vector). With\nthis Hamiltonian we restrict ourselves to nearest-neighbor hopping\nand on-site interaction for the intra- and inter-orbital Coulomb\nrepulsion, $U$ and $U'$, respectively, and the Hund's rule coupling\n$J_H$. The hopping terms considered in this model come from the\n$\\pi$-hybridization between the Ru-$d$ and O-$p$-orbitals and lead\nto the formation of two independent quasi-one-dimensional bands: the\nband associated to the $d_{yz}$-orbital disperses only in the\n$y$-direction while the band associated to the $d_{zx}$-orbital\ndisperses in the $x$-direction.\n\nIn the strongly interacting limit it was proposed that the $ \\alpha $-$\\beta$-bands absorb 3 of the four electrons available per site and form a Mott-insulating state with localized degrees of freedom, spin 1\/2 and orbital  \\cite{ANKRS02}.  The local orbital degree of freedom can be represented as an isospin\nconfiguration $ | + \\rangle $ and $ | - \\rangle $ corresponding to the\nsingly occupied $ d_{zx} $ and $ d_{yz} $ orbitals, respectively. The isospin operators therefore may be defined as:\n\\[\nI^z | \\pm \\rangle = \\pm \\frac{1}{2} | \\pm \\rangle, \\qquad I^+ |-\n\\rangle = | + \\rangle, \\qquad I^- | + \\rangle = | - \\rangle \\; .\n\\]\nTaking into account the additional spin 1\/2 degree of freedom  ($ |\\uparrow \\rangle $ and\n$|\\downarrow \\rangle$) leads to four possible\nconfigurations at each site, represented by the states \n\\[\n\\{ | \\uparrow + \\rangle, \\; | \\uparrow - \\rangle , \\; | \\downarrow +\n\\rangle , \\; |\\downarrow - \\rangle \\}.\n\\]\nWithin second order perturbation in $t\/U$ it is possible to derive from ${\\cal H}_{\\alpha,\\beta}$ an effective model describing the interaction between the localized degrees of freedom. One finds the following Kugel-Khomskii-type\nmodel \\cite{ANKRS02}:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{Heff}\n{\\cal H}_{eff}  =  J \\sum_{i,{\\vec{\\bf a}}} &&\\Big\\{ \\left[A\n(I^z_{i+{\\vec{\\bf a}}} +\n    \\eta_{{\\vec{\\bf a}}})(I^z_{i} +\n\\eta_{{\\vec{\\bf a}}}) +B \\right]\n{\\bf S}_{i+{\\vec{\\bf a}}} \\cdot {\\bf S}_{i} \\nonumber \\\\\n& & + [C (I^z_{i+{\\vec{\\bf a}}} + \\eta'_{{\\vec{\\bf a}}})(I^z_i +\n\\eta'_{{\\vec{\\bf a}}}) + D] \\Big\\}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $J=4t^2\/U$. We have imposed the approximatively valid\nrelation $U=U^{\\prime}+2J_H$ and have assumed that $\\alpha=U^{\\prime}\/U>1\/3$. The parameters $A,B,C,D,\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}$ and $\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^{\\prime}$ are functions of $\\alpha$ alone and have been given elsewhere \\cite{ANKRS02,ST04}. The energy scale $JC>0$ of the isospin\ncoupling is the largest in the present Hamiltonian. Therefore, in a mean-field approximation, one expects antiferro-orbital (AFO) order below a critical temperature $T_{AFO}\\sim JC$ ($C>0$). On the other hand, the value of the spin-spin\ninteraction depends on the orbital order and lies between $J_1=J[A(\\eta_{\\mathbf{a}}^2-1\/4)+B]<0$\nand $J_2=J[A\\eta_{\\mathbf{a}}^2+B]$. Thus, in the presence of AFO order the spin will align\nferromagnetically (FM) below a critical temperature\n$T_{FM}\\sim-J_1$. If, however, AFO order is suppressed, as in the\ncase of an orthorhombic distortion (see below) the spin-spin\ncoupling is given by $J_2$. We mention here that the sign of $J_2$\ndepends on the value of $\\alpha$. In particular, $J_2<0$ for $\\alpha<\\alpha_c=0.535$ and consequently we expect FM order at low temperatures whereas\nfor $\\alpha>\\alpha_c$ we have $J_2>0$ and antiferromagnetic (AFM)\norder sets in at sufficiently low temperatures. To be consistent with experiments we will choose throughout this article a value $\\alpha=0.75$.\n\n\nThe Sr substitution for Ca acts as an effective negative pressure. In order to account for the orthorhombic distortion due to the tilting of the\nRuO$_6$ octahedra, we introduce a new term in the Hamiltonian ${\\cal\n  H}_{dist}$, defined as\n\\begin{equation} {\\cal\n    H}_{dist}=\\frac{1}{2}GN(\\varepsilon-\\varepsilon_0)^2+K\\varepsilon\\sum_iI_i^x,\n\\label{eq:Hdis}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $G$ is the elastic constant, $N$ is the number of Ru atoms and $K$ is a coupling constant. $\\varepsilon$ is a strain-field which accounts for an orthorombic\ndistortion. Any orthorombic distortion\nyields a uniform bias for the local orbital configuration which suppresses AFO\nordering. This is modeled by the coupling of $\\varepsilon$ to the orbital degrees of freedom. In other words, the orthorombic distortion introduces a transverse\nfield which aims to align the isospins. \nThe first term in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:Hdis}) is a measure of the lattice elastic\nenergy. In addition to the strain $\\varepsilon$ driven by orbital correlations we assume a constant contribution $\\varepsilon_0$. We do not specify further the origin of this contribution but it might include effects of the $\\gamma$ band or other, non-electronic, mechanisms. For actual calculations we fix the value at $\\varepsilon_0=0.1$. We will discuss later to which extend we can relate the elasticity $G$ in the theoretical model to the Sr concentration $x$ in Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$.\n\n\n\nFinally, in order to study the metamagnetic transition, we introduce a\ncoupling of the system to a magnetic field, by the inclusion of\nthe term ${\\cal H}_{mag}$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{Hmag}\n{\\cal H}_{mag}=-g\\mu_BH\\sum_iS_i^x,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $g$ is the electron gyromagnetic factor, $\\mu_B$ is the Bohr\nmagneton, $\\mu_B=\\frac{e\\hbar}{2m_e}$ and $H$ is the magnetic field strength. With all these\ningredients, the full Hamiltonian can be written as\n\n\n\\begin{equation}\\label{FullHamil}\n{\\cal H}={\\cal H}_{eff}+{\\cal H}_{dist}+{\\cal H}_{mag}.\n\\end{equation}\nIn the next section we treat this model in a mean-field approximation.\n\n\n\\section{Mean-field analysis.}\n\\label{sec:mf}\nThe mean-field decoupling for ${\\cal H}_{eff}$\nreproduces well some of the experimentally observed features of\nCa$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ in the $x$ region where\nthe band filling corresponds to the $(n_{(\\alpha,\\beta)},n_{\\gamma})=(3,1)$ orbital occupation, as shown in Ref. \\cite{ANKRS02}. Here we extend this analysis to the full Hamiltonian\nEq.~(\\ref{FullHamil}) and obtain the zero and finite magnetic field\nphase diagrams where the different competing orders of the system\nare represented. In the presence of  a transverse magnetic field, there appears an uniform component of the magnetization in the\n$x$-direction, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle S_i^x \\rangle=m_0,\n\\end{equation}\nas well as a staggered component in the $z$-direction, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle S_i^z \\rangle=\\left\\{\n\\begin{array}{ccc}\n  m_s &\\,\\,\\,\\, \\mathrm{if} &\\,\\,\\,\\, i\\in A; \\\\\n  -m_s &\\,\\,\\,\\, \\mathrm{if} &\\,\\,\\,\\, i \\in B. \\\\\n\\end{array}\n \\right.\n\\end{equation}\nHere, we have made use of the bipartite structure of the Hamiltonian Eq.~(\\ref{FullHamil}): $A$ and $B$ label the two sublattices. In addition, we introduce the staggered isospin component in the $z$-direction\n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle I_i^z \\rangle=\\left\\{\n\\begin{array}{ccc}\n  t_s &\\,\\,\\,\\, \\mathrm{if} &\\,\\,\\,\\, i\\in A; \\\\\n  -t_s &\\,\\,\\,\\, \\mathrm{if} &\\,\\,\\,\\, i \\in B. \\\\\n\\end{array}\n \\right.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\n\nThe partition function of the system can be calculated by ${\\cal\nZ}(\\beta)=\\mathrm{Tr} e^{-\\beta {\\cal H}}$, where $\\beta=1\/k_BT$. On the mean-field level, the\nbipartite nature of the lattice splits the system into two subsystems, so we can express the partition function as\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal Z}(\\beta)=\\left(e^{-\\beta E_0}\\right)^N\\prod_{\\substack{i\\in A,B \\\\ \\alpha \\in t,s}}\n{\\cal Z}_i^{\\alpha}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $E_0$ denotes the energy density (per hole) corresponding to\nthe term in the mean-field Hamiltonian that does not couple to any\nspin or isospin operator,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nE_0&=&J\\Big[6A\\,t_s^2(m_0^2-m_s^2)-2(A\\,\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2+B)(m_0^2-m_s^2)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+2C\\,t_s^2+2C\\,{\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^{\\prime}}^2+2D\\Big]+\\frac{G}{2}(\\varepsilon-\\varepsilon_0)^2.\n\\end{eqnarray}\n$N=N_A+N_B$ is the total number of sites.\nNow we can define the orbital ${\\cal Z}_i^t$ and magnetic ${\\cal\nZ}_i^s$ one-particle partition functions as \\cite{BZ74}:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\cal\nZ}_{i\\in A,B}^t&=&\\mathrm{Tr}_ie^{-\\beta \\vec{H}_i^t\\cdot\\vec{I}_i}\\\\\n{\\cal Z}_{i \\in A,B}^s&=&\\mathrm{Tr}_ie^{-\\beta \\vec{H}_i^s\\cdot\\vec{S}_i}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\vec{H}_i^t$ and $\\vec{H}_i^s$ are the molecular\nfield vectors that couple to the isospin and spin degrees of\nfreedom. If we denote the total free energy of the system by $F$,\nthe free energy per site (per hole) ${\\cal F}=F\/N=-\\ln {\\cal Z}\/\\beta N$ is\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal F}=E_0-\\frac{1}{2\\beta}\\left(\\ln\n{\\cal Z}_A^t +\\ln {\\cal Z}_B^t+\\ln {\\cal Z}_A^s+\\ln {\\cal\nZ}_B^s\\right)\n\\end{equation}\nEventually, the free\nenergy of the system for the given mean fields is found to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{Fh}\n{\\cal\nF}&=&J\\Big[6A\\,t_s^2(m_0^2-m_s^2)-2(A\\,\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2+B)(m_0^2-m_s^2)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+2C\\,t_s^2+2C\\,{\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^{\\prime}}^2+2D\\Big]+\\frac{G}{2}(\\varepsilon-\\varepsilon_0)^2\\nonumber\\\\\n&&-\\frac{1}{\\beta}\\ln\\left[2\\cosh\\left(\\frac{\\beta}{2}\\sqrt{f_1}\\right)\\right]\\nonumber\\\\\n&&-\\frac{1}{\\beta}\\ln\\left[2\\cosh\\left(\\frac{\\beta}{2}\\sqrt{f_2}\\right)\\right],\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nf_1&=&K^2\\varepsilon^2+16J^2\\left[A\\,t_s(m_0^2-m_s^2)+C\\,t_s\\right]^2,\\nonumber\\\\\nf_2&=&\\left\\{-g\\mu_BH+4Jm_0\\left[A(\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2-t_s^2)+B\\right]m_0\\right\\}^2\\nonumber\\\\\n&&+16J^2m_s^2\\left[A(\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2-t_s^2)+B\\right]^2.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe values of the mean fields are determined by the solution of the self-consistency equations \n\\begin{equation}\n0=\\frac{\\partial\\cal{F}}{\\partial\\phi}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\phi=\\varepsilon, t_s, m_0, m_s$. These equations are solved numerically. Because\n\\begin{equation}\\label{I^x}\n\\langle I^x\\rangle=\\frac{G}{K}(\\varepsilon-\\varepsilon_0)\n\\end{equation}\nthe ferro-orbital order parameter is directly related to the difference $\\varepsilon-\\varepsilon_0$.\n\n\n\n\\section{Results}\\label{sec:res}\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.44\\linewidth]{figs\/AFMFO}\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.42\\linewidth]{figs\/FMAFO}\n\\caption{Sketch of the low-temperature competing orders of the\nsystem.  On the left hand side it is represented a lattice with\northorhombic symmetry and ferro-orbital order plus\nantiferromagnetism (FO \\& AFM). On the right hand side, a lattice with\ntetragonal symmetry with antiferro-orbital order plus\nferromagnetism (AFO \\& FM).}\n\\label{fig:CompetingOrders}\n\\end{figure}\nThe competing low temperature orders are schematically shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:CompetingOrders}. For small values of $G$, the free energy minimization gives a ground state\nwith a strong lattice distortion breaking the tetragonal symmetry, as shown on the left\nhand side of Fig.~\\ref{fig:CompetingOrders}. In this case, the symmetry of the lattice is orthorhombic and ferro-orbital order (FO) coexists with antiferromagnetic order (AFM).\nOn the other hand, for large values of the elastic constant  $G$, anti-ferro orbital (AFO) and ferromagnetic (FM) spin order are simultaneously realized. This is sketched on the right hand side of Fig.~\\ref{fig:CompetingOrders}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Absence of magnetic field.}\nThe $G$-$T$ phase diagram for $H=0$ is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0}. The elastic constant $G$ of the lattice controls the distortion. Apart from the high-temperature disordered phase (PO) we can distinguish two main regions in the phase diagram, as discussed below. \n\n\\subsubsection{Soft lattice}\nLowering the temperature from the disordered phase we find for a soft lattice (small $G$) a crossover to a ferro-orbital ordered (FO) state. This crossover takes place at a temperature in the range of $k_BT_{FO}=\\frac{K^2}{4G}$ indicated by the diffuse line in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0}. The FO order is accompanied by a substantial orthorhombic distortion $\\varepsilon\\gg\\varepsilon_0$ which is driven by the coupling of the strain field to the orbital degrees of freedom as described by Eq.~(\\ref{eq:Hdis}). In addition, below a critical temperature $k_BT_{AFM}=J\\left(B+A\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2\\right)$, antiferromagnetic (AFM) order sets in.\n\n\\subsubsection{Hard lattice}\nFor a harder lattice (large $G$), the gain in energy by polarizing the orbital degrees of freedom is not sufficient to drive a substantial orthorhombic distortion and $\\varepsilon\\approx\\varepsilon_0$. Instead, there is a staggered orbital order (AFO) which sets in at temperatures slightly below $k_BT_{AFO}=JC$. The AFO order drives a ferromagnetic (FM) ordered phase roughly below $k_BT_{FM}=-J\\left[B+A\\left(\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2-\\frac{1}{4}\\right)\\right]$. For smaller values of $G$, this transition is weakly first-order but changes its character at the tricritical point (TP) to second-order.   \n\n\\subsubsection{Structural transition}\nThere is a structural transition between the soft and the hard lattice. Below $T_{AFM}$ this transition is of first-order and is characterized by a simultaneous discontinuity in all the order parameters. The first-order line splits into two second-order lines at a bicritical point (BP). For temperatures above $T_{AFM}$ the transition is characterized by the onset of a staggered orbital and a gradual suppression of the ferro-orbital order with a concurrent reduction of the lattice distortion. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\linewidth]{figs\/phasee0H0}\n\\caption{$T-G$ phase diagram for $H=0$ involving antiferromagnetic (AFM), ferromagnetic (FM), ferroorbital (FO) and antiferroorbital (AFO) order. Dashed\nlines indicate second order phase transitions while full lines represent first order transitions. TP is a tricritical point and BP is a bicritical point. The diffuse line between FO and paraorbital (PO) region indicates a crossover.} \n\\label{fig:phaseH0}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Applied magnetic field}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\linewidth]{figs\/phasee0H025}\n\\caption{$T-G$ phase diagram for $g\\mu_BH=0.25J$. CE is a critical endpoint. The other abbreviations have the same meaning as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0}. } \n\\label{fig:phaseH025}\n\\end{figure}\n\nNow we introduce in our analysis the effect of an external\nmagnetic field applied in the $x$-direction, that enters in the\nHamiltonian by the term ${\\cal H}_{mag}$ given in Eq.~(\\ref{Hmag}). For $g\\mu_BH=0.25J$ we obtain the phase diagram shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH025}. Comparing Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0}  and \\ref{fig:phaseH025} we see that the main effect of the application of the magnetic field is the displacement of the first order structural transition towards smaller values of $G$ and, consequently, the reduction of the region of the phase diagram with AFM order, as expected. Therefore, the lattice effectively becomes harder in the presence of a finite magnetic field. The first order nature of the structural transition is now present for a larger range of temperatures, up to the tricritical point TP shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH025}. In addition, a critical end-point CE is now defined when the second order $k_BT_{AFM}$ line meets the first order structural transition line.  \n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Metamagnetic transition}\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n{\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figs\/meanfieldsitoiii}}\n\\caption{Evolution of the transverse magnetization $m_0$, the staggered magnetization $m_s$, the uniform orbital order $\\langle I^x\\rangle$ and the staggered orbital order parameter $t_s$\nas a function of the applied magnetic field for three different sets of parameters $(k_BT\/J,JG\/K^2)$ given by $(i)$ (0.15,0.55), $(ii)$ (0.15,0.45) and $(iii)$ (0.25,0.45). The points $(i)-(iii)$ are also shown in the phase diagrams Figs.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0} and \\ref{fig:phaseH025}.} \n\\label{fig:metamag}\n\\end{figure}\nThe results of our calculations include a first order metamagnetic transition (MMT). The characteristics of this transition are summarized in Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag}.\nHere we show, from panels a) to d), how the magnetic and orbital order parameters change as a function of the\nfield strength, for different values of temperature $T$ and elasticity $G$. The different $(T,G)$ points are labeled by $(i)-(iii)$ and are also indicated in the phase diagrams Figs.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0} and \\ref{fig:phaseH025}. The curves $(ii)$ and $(iii)$ of Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag}a) show the discontinuous evolution of the magnetization towards a strongly polarized magnetic state by the application of a magnetic field. This magnetic\ntransition is accompanied in our system by a structural\ntransition where at the same\nmetamagnetic critical field $H_c$ an orthorhombic FO phase changes discontinuously\ntowards an AFO phase with tetragonal symmetry, as shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag}c)-d). For the MMT to be observed it is not stringent that the zero-field phase has antiferromagnetic order, as long as it is close enough to such a phase. \nNotice however, that a MMT is only possible for a soft lattice (small $G$) at low temperatures, as it is the case for the $(T,G)$ points $(ii)$ and $(iii)$ of Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0}. For larger values of the elasticity, such as for $(i)$, we find a continuos evolution of the order parameters. \nIn summary, for the critical field $H_c(T,G)$, we find the general behavior that both rising $T$ or lowering $G$ increases the critical field.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{figs\/phasee0T0}}\n\\caption{$H-G$ phase diagram for $T=0$. The values $G_<$ and $G_>$\nbound the $G$-axis region where a metamagnetic transition is\nallowed. The first order line (full) meets the second order line\n(dashed) at a QCP.} \\label{fig:phasediagramT0}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFurther insights concerning the conditions for the MMT to occur can be obtained from the $H$-$G$-phase\ndiagram at zero temperature shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phasediagramT0}. It is worth noting that a first\norder MMT (accompanied by a structural\ntransition) can only occur at $T=0$ if we apply a magnetic field\nin the FO \\& AFM zone, and only for elasticity values belonging to\nthe region $G_<<G<G_>$. For $\\varepsilon_0\\ll K\/J$, $G_<$ and $G_>$ are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nG_<&=&\\frac{K^2}{J(A+4C)-4K\\varepsilon_0},\\nonumber\\\\\nG_>&=&\\frac{K^2}{4J\\left(A\\left[1\/4-2\\eta_{\\vec{\\bf a}}^2\\right]-2B+C-\\frac{K\\varepsilon_0}{J}\\right)}.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNotice that at $G_>$ there is a first order structural phase\ntransition for $T,H=0$. In Fig.~\\ref{fig:phasediagramT0} it can be\nseen that the metamagnetic critical field decreases as $G$ is\nstrengthened. This qualitative behavior remains valid at finite but low temperatures. \n\n\\subsection{Magnetostriction and thermal expansion}\nSince there is a close relation between structural and metamagnetic transition the temperature dependence of the lattice parameters show a qualitative different low-temperature behavior for magnetic fields below and above the metamagnetic transition. In our model, changes of the lattice parameters are considered by the orthorhombic distortion field $\\varepsilon$, related to the ferro-orbital order $\\langle I^x\\rangle$ by Eq.~(\\ref{I^x}). An increase of the c-axis is assumed to be proportional to $\\varepsilon_0-\\varepsilon$. Therefore, we show in Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT} the temperature dependence of $\\varepsilon_0-\\varepsilon$ for different magnetic fields at $G=0.45K^2\/J$. The $T=0$ critical field for this elasticity corresponds to $H_c\\approx 0.22J\/g\\mu_B$ as it can be deduced, for example, from the zero temperature $G-H$ phase diagram of Fig.~\\ref{fig:phasediagramT0}. For fields lower than $H_c$, a metamagnetic transition will never be reached and the heating of the system by increasing the temperature drives the lattice towards a disordered PO phase through the crossover region (diffuse line in Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0} and Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH025}). \n\nHowever, for fields $H>H_c$ the system is in the metamagnetic region. There is a low temperature AFO order and consequently, the distortion $\\varepsilon$ is small. By heating the system, metamagnetism is destroyed and at the same time the lattice undergoes a first order structural transition. This is seen in the $\\varepsilon$ vs. $T$ plot (Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT}) by a jump of the distortion to a large negative value of $\\varepsilon_0-\\varepsilon$. If we keep heating the system, we reach again the PO region by passing the crossover zone. Obviously, the temperature of the 1$^{st}$-order AFO\/FO transition is larger for higher magnetic fields. This is reflected in the evolution of the $\\varepsilon_0-\\varepsilon$ discontinuity in Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT} from $H=0.25J\/g\\mu_B$ to $0.5J\/g\\mu_B$.\n \\begin{figure}\n \\centering\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{figs\/epsilonT}}\n\\caption{The orthorhombic distortion order $\\varepsilon_0-\\varepsilon = - \\frac{K}{G}\\langle I^x \\rangle$ as function of the temperature for different values of the magnetic field between $H=0.2$ and $H=0.5$ (in units of $J\/g\\mu_B$).} \\label{fig:epsilonT}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\section{Comparison to experiments}\n\\label{sec:exp}\nEventually, we will motivate our microscopic model in view of the  experimental results. In particular, we will consider  the phase diagram at zero-field as well as at the magnetostriction and magnetization\nmeasurements that characterize the metamagnetic transition in Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$.\n\n\\subsection{Phase diagram}\n\nThe theoretical zero-field phase diagram\n(Fig.\\ref{fig:phaseH0}) can be compared to the\nexperimental $T$-$x$-phase diagram obtained in Ref.~\\cite{NM00} and schematized in Fig.~\\ref{fig:PD}. We relate the phases on the left-hand side of Fig.~\\ref{fig:phaseH0} (soft lattice) to the phases\nthat are observed in region II of the experimental phase diagram. In both cases the symmetry of the lattice is reduced. The tilting of the\nRuO$_6$-octahedra observed in the real material is modeled by a distortion of the\n2D lattice where the orbital and magnetic modes live. This reduction of symmetry is characterized by the strain field $\\varepsilon$ or the ferro-orbital order $\\langle I^x \\rangle$. For larger $G$ \n$\\langle I^x \\rangle$ is reduced and we find a transition to an AFO (predominantly) tetragonal phase where, in addition,\nFM order sets in at small temperatures. This is in fact the characteristics found in\nregion III of the experimental phase diagram near $x=0.5$. Therefore, it is not unfounded to relate the elasticity of the lattice (as modeled by $G$) to the Sr concentration $x$: both control the amount of distortion in their respective phase diagrams. Note that a Curie-like behavior of the orbital order $\\langle I^x \\rangle \\approx K\\varepsilon\/4k_BT$ is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT}, which accounts for the temperature dependence of experimentally measured anisotropy of the  spin susceptibility in the distorted (orthorhombic) region \\cite{NM00,ST04}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Metamagnetic transition}\n\nThe metamagnetic transition shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag} can be\nrelated to the experimental MMT \\cite{B05,B06}\nin the following way: in zero magnetic field, at a\ntemperature and doping ($G$ in our language) leading us  into\nthe low-temperature FO zone of the phase diagram (region II of\nFig.\\ref{fig:PD}), we find a large strain $\\varepsilon \\gg \\varepsilon_0$ and a zero-component of the magnetization along the $x$-direction. If we now\nturn on the transverse magnetic field, a finite component of\n$m_0$ appears, although for small enough fields the strain is\nstill present in the system. For some critical field $H_{c}(T,G)$\nwe find a first order transition in the magnetization $m_0$ which\njumps discontinuously to some larger value, while the strain drops\nsimultaneously to $\\varepsilon \\sim \\varepsilon_0$. The transcription of this to\nthe experiments is that the octahedra returns to the structure it had\nbefore tilting. Also the $c$-axes adapts to the initial\ndirection it had in region III of the phase diagram. The tetragonal symmetry needs, however,\nnot to be restored. This behavior explains now the reversal of the\nstructural distortion which occurs upon cooling at zero field, since applying a \nhigh magnetic field at low enough\ntemperatures leads back to the old structure, \nas shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT} and seen experimentally \\cite{B05}.\n\nThis first order transition in the magnetization corresponds to\nthe MMT observed in the experiments. Note that inhomogeneity \nis ignored in our description. What occurs as a discontinous first order transition here,\nwould be a smooth crossover (MMT) when disorder, e.g. in alloying Ca and Sr, is \nincluded  \\cite{ST04}. \n\n\nThe critical elastic constants $ G_{<} $ and $ G_{>} $ found in\nFig.~\\ref{fig:phasediagramT0}, bounding the segment on the $G$-axis\nwhere the first order magnetic and structural transitions are\npossible at $T=0$, can be mapped to the concentration\nvalues $x$ of the experimental phase diagram that define the region\nwhere the MMT can be observed. Therefore we may identify\n$G_<$ with $x=0.2$ and $G_>$ with $x=0.5$. This relation is\nconsistent with the experimental results that show a smaller\nenergy scale for the transition at $x=0.5$ compare to the one at\n$x=0.2$. The MMT is shifted towards lower\nfields when the Sr content grows from $x=0.2$ to $0.5$. On\nthe other hand, the first order structural transition driven at\nzero temperature for $G_>$ in the theoretical model can be related\nto the structure quantum phase transition of Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$~ at $x=0.5$. At $G_>$, the metamagnetic transition may be considered as occurring at zero-temperature and zero magnetic field, in agreement with the experimental measurements that shows that the MMT seems to be shifted towards a field close to zero for $x=0.5$.\n\n\n\\subsection{Magnetostriction and thermal expansion}\n\nThe dependence of the first order magnetic transition on the\ntemperature shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag} for points $(ii)$ and $(iii)$ of the phase diagram, and the temperature dependence of the distortion of Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT} can be compared to the\nexperimental measurements, too. This is actually the expected\nbehavior and reproduces some of the results shown in\nRef.~\\cite{B05,B06}. If we look for example at the magnetostriction measurements of\nRef.~\\cite{B05,B06}, where they show $\\Delta L(H)\/L_0$ along the $c$\naxis as a function of the applied magnetic field, these results\ncan be interpreted as the response of the lattice structure to the\nmetamagnetic transition.  The jump of the magnetization is coupled\nto an increase of the $c$-lattice constant $L_0$, since the structure of the lattice before the octahedra\ntilting is restored  (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:metamag}c)). \n\n\nIn addition, the thermal expansion coefficients and the integrated length changes measured below and above the critical field show that the pronounced shrinking of the octahedra  along the $c$-direction in zero field is successively suppressed by the field and turns into a low-temperature elongation at fields larger than $H_c$~\\cite{B05,B06}. The experimental temperature dependence of $\\Delta L\/L_0$ for various magnetic fields, as a measure of the lattice distortion, follows a temperature dependence of $\\varepsilon$ similar to the case of fields above and below $H_c$ and shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:epsilonT}. In fact, for fields below the MMT the lattice evolves from the low-temperature FO order to the high-temperature PO region. On the other hand, for fields above the MMT the system shows a tetragonal AFO symmetry within the MMT- region which is suppressed by increasing the temperature, switching to an orthorhombic FO order. For higher temperatures the system looses  orbital order and reaches the disordered PO region.\n\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{sec:con}\nIn summary, we have analyzed a microscopic model for the description of\nmagnetic and structural properties in Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$ which is based on the assumption that\ntwo of the three electron bands known in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ are Mott localized in \nregions II and Ca-rich zone of region III\n(near $x=0.5$) of the phase diagram  \\cite{ANKRS02}. The mean-field treatment of this model reproduces the basic magnetic and structural properties, as well as\nthe metamagnetic transition of this material. The elastic properties have been introduced assuming\nthat the elastic constant depends on the Ca-concentration. In this way we draw the connection\nbetween our phase diagrams based on model parameters and the physical phase diagram\nand find a good qualitative and in parts quantitative agreement. Our most important result is\nthe magnetostriction effect in connection with the metamagnetic transition which agrees well\non a qualitative level with recent experimental findings. \n\n\nR.R. thanks M.P. L\\'opez-Sancho for many useful discussions. R.R. acknowledges the hospitality of the ETH-Z\\\"urich, where part of this work has been done. This study was financially supported by the Swiss National fonds through the NCCR MaNEP and by the Center for Theoretical Studies of ETH Zurich. RR acknowledges financial support from MCyT (Spain) through grant FIS2005-05478-C02-01 and Agence Nationale de la Recherche Grant ANR-06-NANO-019-03.\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nIn document image analysis, a floor plan is a graphical document that aids architects in showing the interior of a building. Floor plan image analysis involves semantic segmentation, symbol spotting, and identifying a relationship between them. Describing a floor plan in natural language is a task that has applications in robotics, real-estate business, and automation. However, there are several challenges when it comes to narrating a graphical document in natural language. A graphical document is not similar to a natural photograph that has an essential feature in every pixel. Hence, traditional approaches using image features with textual description fails in this context. The graphical document requires specific information for their description to make it more meaningful. Hence, cues taken directly from an images are not very efficient in this context. There are several approaches available for language modeling and text generation in which the encoder-decoder framework is the most popular choice. In the image to text generation, CNN-RNN (CNN acting as an encoder, RNN as a decoder) is widely used in literature. The variants of RNN is varied in the decoder as LSTM, Bi-LSTM, and GRU.  \n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale=.37]{problem.png}\n\t\t\\caption{An illustration of the he proposed problem domain with the desired output.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:prob}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure*}[!b]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{proposed_idea.png}\n\t\t\\caption{An illustration of the proposed work of generating textual description from floor plans.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:work_idea}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:prob} depicts the proposed problem with the desired output. The generated captions in Fig. \\ref{fig:prob} (second row from the top) are very structured and contain limited information. The bottom row provides more realistic descriptions. We take advantage of both image cues and the word signals to generate specific and meaningful descriptions from the floor plan images. The proposed work is an extension of the paper BRIDGE \\cite{bridge2019}, where a large scale floor plan image dataset and annotations were proposed. This paper's proposed work leverages those annotations by offering multi-sentence paragraph generation solutions from floor plan images.\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:work_idea} depicts the overall flow of our proposed method. We extend the idea of extracting information from floor plan images in a multi-staged pipeline using classical machine learning methods and generating textual descriptions by using semi-structured sentence based models proposed in the literature. This direction's previous work is extended by offering models that learn textual features with visual features in an end to end framework.\nWe propose two models, Description Synthesis from Image Cue (DSIC) and Transformer Based Description Generation (TBDG), where TBDG is more robust than DSIC. These two proposed models differ in the way the decoder receives the input. In DSIC, region-wise visual features are learned with textual features, and a paragraph description is generated. In contrast, TBDG learns region-wise captions with region wise features, and those text features are given as input to the decoder model to create a paragraph. We further propose a deep learning based multi-staged pipeline for description generation in order to prove the superiority of end-to-end learning models on multi-staged pipelines. \n\n\n\\textbf{Uniqueness of the proposed work:} In the previous work, \\cite{goyal2018asysst,goyal2019sugaman,goyal2018plan2text}, only visual elements are learned and classified in a multi-staged manner using classical machine learning approaches. Tasks such as semantic segmentation, room classification, and decor classification are performed in a sequential pipeline using classical machine learning methods. In \\cite{bridge2019}, the similar visual elements are learned and classified in part by part manner using a deep neural network. In contrast with the existing approaches, in this paper all the visual information from floor plan images and textual features are learned together in an end to end deep learning framework, and a holistic description for the same is generated. \n\n\n\\textbf{Organization of the paper:} \nThe rest of the paper is organized in the following way. Section \\ref{sec:litsurv} highlights the related works. Section \\ref{sec:DSIC} and \\ref{sec:TBDG} describes the two proposed models. Section \\ref{sec:exp} describes the experimental setup and the evaluation metrics followed for performance analysis. Section \\ref{sec:baseline} discusses the results generated using proposed models. Section \\ref{sec:des_gen} describes the comparative analysis of various stages involved in description generation models and their qualitative and quantitative comparison, while the paper is concluded in Sec. \\ref{sec:conclusion}.  \n\n\n\\section{Related work}\n\\label{sec:litsurv}\n\\subsection{Publicly available Floor plan Datasets}\nIn the literature, the publicly available datasets are: ROBIN \\cite{sharma2017daniel}, CVC-FP \\cite{de2015cvc}, SESYD \\cite{delalandre2010generation}, BRIDGE \\cite{bridge2019}, and FPLAN-POLY \\cite{barducci2012object}. However, apart from the BRIDGE, the others contain very few sample images and do not contain annotations for objects and their textual descriptions. These datasets were proposed for segmentation, retrieval, and layout analysis, which are not suitable for caption generation and description synthesis tasks. With the advent of deep neural networks, tasks such as symbol spotting, caption generation, retrieval, semantic segmentation are getting more accurate and robust. To meet the requirement of a large number of samples and corresponding annotations, the  BRIDGE \\cite{bridge2019} dataset was proposed, having $13000$-floor plan images, along with annotations. There is high variability in the way decor symbols has been represented across these datasets. To overcome this limitation, samples from \\cite{delalandre2010generation,de2015cvc,sharma2017daniel} has been included in the BRIDGE dataset, and decor symbol annotations are done. Hence, a large portion of variable decor symbols has been covered in BRIDGE dataset.\n\nThere are many large scale datasets publicly available in the literature in the context of natural images \\cite{krishna2017visual,lin2014microsoft}, which has many realistic images along with their descriptions or captions annotations, region graphs, and other metadata. For example, \\cite{krishna2017visual} connects $108,077$ images with textual annotation, $5.4$ Million region descriptions, and other annotations for various tasks such as caption generations, visual question answering. MS-COCO and MS-COCO captions \\cite{chen2015microsoft} are examples of datasets that contain over $330000$ images and over one and a half million captions ($5$ captions per image).  \n\n\n\\subsection{Object detection and classification}\n\nResearchers have explored handcrafted features and conventional machine learning models \\cite{dutta2013symbol,dutta2011symbol,viola2001rapid,qureshi2007spotting,adam2000symbol} for the symbol spotting task in document images. As the deep neural network models are getting popular, methods like YOLO \\cite{redmon2016you}, Fast-RCNN \\cite{girshick2015fast}, Faster-RCNN \\cite{ren2015faster} in the context of natural images were proposed. All the YOLO family-based algorithms, \\cite{redmon2016you,redmon2017yolo9000,redmon2018yolov3} are region classification based methods, which is a single neural network trained end to end and predicts bounding boxes and class labels directly. However, all the R-CNN family-based models \\cite{girshick2015fast,ren2015faster,he2017mask,he2015spatial}, are region proposal based methods, which extracts several regions from the input image and extract features from those regions using CNN and classify them using a classifier. In one of the work \\cite{ziran2018object}, symbol spotting in floor plans using YOLO and Fast-RCNN has also been explored. In the same line \\cite{rezvanifar2020symbol} has performed symbol spotting in floor plans using the YOLO network. Apart from floor plans, symbol spotting or object detection in document images task has been explored by several researchers. Examples include detecting tables, equations, figures \\cite{yi2017cnn,saha2019graphical,schreiber2017deepdesrt}, signatures and logos \\cite{sharma2018signature,su2020scalable}. In \\cite{khan2020comparative}, a comparative study of recognition of symbol spotting on graphical documents were presented. \n\n\\subsection{Image description generation}\n\nImage description generation is a challenging task in AI. Template-based retrievals, n-grams, grammar rules, RNN, LSTM, GRU, are some example approaches to solve the problem. These methods work with image modality features by extracting information related to image using conventional architectures. Some of the initial work in this direction, \\cite{farhadi2010every,kulkarni2013babytalk,li2011composing,ordonez2011im2text} have used computer vision methods for extracting attributes from an image and generated sentences using retrieval and n-gram model. \n\nJohnson et al. \\cite{johnson2016densecap} proposed an algorithm to generate region-wise captions. The Hierarchical recurrent network \\cite{krause2017hierarchical} uses two RNNs to generate paragraphs from an image. In \\cite{wang2018cnn+}, two CNN networks are used, where one of them is used as an encoder for image features, and the other is used as a decoder for language generation. Similarly \\cite{chatterjee2018diverse} has used a sentence topic generator network from visual features of images, and RNN is used for sentence generation. In \\cite{wang2018look}, depth aware attention model is used for generating a detailed paragraph from an image. In \\cite{mao2018show}, Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is used to mine topics of interest from textual descriptions and developed multiple topic-oriented sentences for image description. In \\cite{yao2017boosting}, CNN, and the RNN framework is used to capture visual features and generate descriptions. The image description is also generated from a stream of images in \\cite{park2015expressing} by using CNN and RNN for a visual feature and sequence encoding and retrieving sentences from an existing database. A similar line \\cite{liu2017let} description has been generated as storytelling from images by using the Bi-directional attention-based RNN model.\n\n\n \n\\subsection{Language modelling}\n\nNow a days, since, deep neural networks are very successful in natural language processing, learning text for generating description using sequence to sequence models are natural choice. In the work \\cite{sutskever2014sequence} has proposed seq2seq learning model for learning and modelling language by LSTM models. Also, \\cite{bahdanau2014neural} and \\cite{luong2015effective} are the initial models which modelled language by aligning input sequence to a target sequence using attention based models. The neural machine translation models has also been used in text summarization tasks such as \\cite{rush2015neural} and \\cite{nallapati2016abstractive}. In the next section the proposed models for description generation from floor plan images are described in details. \n\n\\section{Description Synthesis from Image Cue (DSIC)}\n\\label{sec:DSIC}\nWe have described floor plan images in the proposed model by extracting region-wise visual features from image and learning paragraphs by providing them to a decoder network. The region proposal network (RPN) act as the encoder, and a hierarchical RNN structure act as the decoder. The system is trained in an end to end manner. We describe each step in detail next.\n\n\\subsection{Visual feature extraction}\n\\label{sec:hrnn}\n\nWe adopt a hierarchical RNN based approach as a decoder framework. Figure \\ref{fig:hrnn} depicts a typical architecture of the proposed model. The dataset contains image $(I)$ and its corresponding paragraph description $(K)$ in the proposed approach. The CNN is used along with a RPN to generate region proposals, $R_1, R_2,...,R_n$. We extracted the top $5$ region proposals for this approach and pooled them in a single pooling vector $P$ using a projection matrix. In DSIC, two RNNs are used in a hierarchy, where one is used for learning sentence topic vectors from pooled features, and the other is used for learning words for respective sentence topic vector. In DSIC, the top $5$ regions are extracted because there are average $5$ sentences per paragraph in \\cite{bridge2019}. \n\n\n\\subsection{Region Pooling:} All the extracted regions $R_i$ are pooled in a vector $P$ by taking the projection of each region vector $R_i$ with a projection matrix $M$ and taking an element wise maximum. Dimension of the pooled vector is same as the region vectors and defined as $P= \\max_{i=1}^n{(MR_i+bias)}$\nThe projection matrix is trained end to end with the sentence RNN and the word RNN. The pooled vector $P$, compactly represents all the regions $R_i$s. \n\n\\subsection{Hierarchical RNN structure:} This network, as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:hrnn}, contains two units of the RNN network. One is sentence level (S-RNN) and the other is word-level (W-RNN). The S-RNN is a single-layered, used for generating sentence topic vector for each sentence, and decides the number of sentences to be generated. W-RNN is a two-layered and takes the sentence topic vectors as input and generates words in each sentence. Instead of using one single RNN as a decoder, which would have to regress over a long sequence of words and make training the language model harder, two RNN networks are taken in a hierarchy. The choice of networks for both RNNs is kept as LSTM networks since they can learn long-term dependencies than a vanilla RNN. The S-RNN is followed by $2$ layered fully connected network, which generates a topic vector to be given as input to W-RNN after processing the hidden states from RNN. The W-RNN takes topic vector and word level embeddings for the respective sentence as input. A probability distribution is generated for each word in the vocabulary, where is threshold, $Th$ is taken as $0.5$, which generates further words for each sentence. \n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale=.35]{HRNN.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Hierarchical RNN to yield paragraph from floor plans.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:hrnn}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Training:} \nAt this stage, pooled vector $P_i$ generated from region proposals are taken as input to the sentence level RNN for each image $I$ and respective paragraph $K$. Each input maximum of $5$ sentences and $60$ words are generated (empirically identified based upon validation performance). Hence at each stage, $Sent_{max}=5$ copies of word RNN and topic vector is generated by the sentence RNN for each word RNN for, $Word_{max}$=$60$ timestamps. \n\n\\begin{multline} \\label{eq:hrnnloss}\n    loss(I,K)= \\beta_{sent}*\\sum_{i=1}^{Sent_{max}}loss_{sent}(Prob_i, K_i)+\\\\\n    \\beta_{word}*\\sum_{i=1}^{Sent_{max}} \\sum_{j=1}^{Word_{max}}loss_{word}(Prob_{ij}, K_{ij})\n\\end{multline}\n\nEquation \\ref{eq:hrnnloss} is the loss function which is the weighted sum of cross-entropy losses, $loss_{sent}$ and $loss_{word}$, where $loss_{sent}$ is the loss over probability over a sentence topic is generation $(Prob_{i})$ and $loss_{word}$ is the loss over probability over words generation $(Prob_{ij})$, with each respective sentence topic where $K$ is the paragraph description for each image $I$. The training parameters for DSIC model is such that: Sentence LSTM has $512$ units, word LSTM has $512$ units, Fully connected layer is size $1024$. Next we describe an alternative to DSIC model, TBDG model where the decoder unit takes text cues instead of image features\/cues as input. \n \n\\begin{figure*}[!b]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{model2.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Framework of the proposed TBDG of generating paragraph description from input floor plan image.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:framework}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\section{Transformer Based Description Generation (TBDG)}\n\\label{sec:TBDG}\nThe TBDG is a transformer based model for generating description from floor plan images. It takes input as text features by its decoder unit and generates a paragraph based description. In TBDG, RPN learns region wise captions available in BRIDGE dataset, instead of multi-sentenced paragraphs, which makes it different from DSIC model. Also, a Bi-LSTM unit acts as an encoder to the LSTM unit acting as decoder. \n\n\\subsection{Paragraph generation with extra knowledge}\nDescriptions generated directly from image cues in DSIC lack the floor plan-specific information. There are chances to miss out on salient features in the graphical document. Additional knowledge is required to generate more flexible and exciting descriptions and accurate data specific to the input image. Hence, the data available is the tuple of ($I$,$W_e$,$K$), where $I$ is the input floor plan image, $W_e$ is the word cues extracted from the image, and $K$ is the paragraph description about each floor plan. In language modeling and text generation networks, Seq2Seq models are widely used. However, with the advent of attention based seq2seq networks, popularly known as transformers, the performance of the text generation models have been increased to a great extent. In TBDG, the corpus $K$ is pre-processed for training by removing extra lines, white spaces, unknown symbols and punctuation, and tokenized using PTB tokenizer \\cite{marcus1993building}. The words which are most frequently occurring are selected, and vocabulary is generated for the words. \n\n\\subsection{Region wise captions}\nFloor plan images are distinctly different from the natural images, and conventional deep models are inefficient to create features depicting a unique floor plan. Hence, learning region-wise visual features are advantageous in this context. We have extracted the region using the region proposal model described in DSIC. The annotations for regions in floor plans, available in \\cite{bridge2019}, are used along with these region proposal to train an LSTM model. The model generates region-wise descriptions\/captions, $C_1, C_2,...,C_n$ as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:framework}. The generated captions are taken as input to the encoder-decoder unit, which is the next stage of the pipeline, where these caption serve as extra knowledge to the decoder network. \n\n \\subsection{Caption fusion and word embedding generation}\nAt this stage, we have $n$ captions generated for each floor plan image. We select the top $5$ captions with the highest probability and fuse them as a paragraph. $C_1 \\circ C_2 \\circ C_3 \\circ C_4 \\circ C_5 = W_i$, where $W_i$ is the fused one dimensional vector of the extracted captions and $i$ is number of training sample. $W_i$ is the concatenation of word embeddings created by word2vec and $|W_e|= \\min{(|W_1|, |W_2|, |W_3|,...,|W_i|)}$. Word2vec generates the embeddings for words which is a representation of each word as a vector. The dimension of concatenated vector was taken as minimum of all the vectors to avoid vanishing gradient problem during back propagation of the network. \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Paragraph encoding}\nIn \\cite{bridge2019}, for each floor plan, a detailed paragraph description is available. However, some of the paragraphs are too long for encoding and contains additional information. Training the model with too long sequences leads vanishing gradient problem. Considering the dataset's size, manually selecting useful information from each set of sentences is impossible. Hence, we heuristically selected a few keywords from the corpus. Examples of such keywords are common categories of regions like bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, porch, garage, and other keywords describing objects, like stairs, bathtubs, kitchen bars. From the available paragraphs, we extracted only those sentences which consist of these keywords to shorten the length of each paragraph. Each target sequence $(T_i)$ is a 1-D vector and concatenation of the word embeddings generated by word2vec, and, $|T_e|=\\min{(|T_1|, |T_2|, |T_3|,...,|T_i|)} $ as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:framework}. \n\n\\subsection{Encoder-Decoder architecture}\nIn TBDG model, we have proposed a transformer architecture that can handle dependencies between input and output sequence tokens by giving decoder the entire input sequence. It focuses on certain part of input sequence when it predicts the output sequence. As shown in the Fig. \\ref{fig:framework}, the encoded captions $W_e$ are given as input to the Bi-LSTM unit which act as encoder. The Bi-LSTM unit generates hidden states $(h_1, h_2, h_3,...,h_n)$ and given to an attention mechanism which first generates alignment scores $e_{ij}$ between the current target hidden state $h_t$ and source hidden state $h_s$. The alignment scores are further given to SoftMax layer, which generated normalized output probabilities for each word as $\\alpha_{ij}$, (See. Eq. \\ref{eq:align}).\nHere, $e_{ij}$ are the outputs generated by the alignment model, where $i$ is the number of time step. Attention weight $\\alpha_{ij}$ is the normalized attention score at each time stamp $i$ for $j^{th}$ hidden state, where $n$ is the number of encoded words in the sentence or hidden states. Further context vector $cv_i$ is generated at every time step $i$, which is a weighted sum of encoded feature vectors. Context vector is defined as $cv_{i}= \\sum_{j=1}^n(\\alpha_{ij}h_i)$. Attention scores learn how relevant is the input vector to the output vector. In the Fig. \\ref{fig:framework} the word embeddings, $W_e$ and $T_e$ are given as input and target output vector to the encoder unit. Equation \\ref{eq:align} describes the calculation of attention scores in the proposed model. \n\n\n\n\\begin{gather} \\label{eq:align}\n    e_{ij}= align(h_t, h_s)\\\\\n    \\alpha_{ij}= \\frac{exp(e_{ij})}{\\sum{exp(e_{in})}}  \\nonumber\n    \n\\end{gather}\n\n\nHence, this way decoder learns correspondence between input and output sequences in a global context and generate output sentences $S_e$. Here decoder is a LSTM network with $256$ units, connected with a Time-Distributed dense layer with SoftMax activation function. Time-Distributed dense layer applies a fully connected (dense) operation to every time step. The network parameters used for training TBDS model are such that: Optimizer used is Adam, Loss function is Categorical Cross Entropy, Input sequence length is $80$, output sequence length is kept $80$, embedding dimensions is $150$ (empirically determined).\n\n\\section{Experimental Setup}\n\\label{sec:exp}\nHere we discuss the details of how the experiments were conducted. All the experiments  were performed on the dataset BRIDGE on a system with NVIDIA GPU Quadro $P6000$, with $24$ GB GPU memory, $256$ GB RAM. All implementations has been done in Keras with Python.\n\n\\subsection{Dataset}\nIn this paper, we have conducted our experiments on BRIDGE \\cite{bridge2019}. This dataset has a large number of floor plan samples and their corresponding metadata. Figure. \\ref{fig:dataset} shows the components of \\cite{bridge2019} which has (a) floor plan image, (b) decor symbol annotations in an XML format, (c) region-wise caption annotations in JSON format, (d) paragraph based descriptions. Each paragraph's average length in word count is $116$, with the average length of each sentence being $5$. The count of diversity is $121$, a measure of the richness of words used in sentences. There are $134942$ nouns, $5027$ verbs, $46379$ adjectives, and $5476$ proper nouns available in the dataset. \n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale=.23]{dataset.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Image and annotations in the BRIDGE dataset \\cite{bridge2019}.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:dataset}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsection{Quantitative Evaluation Metrics} \n\\label{sec:metric}\nWe have quantitatively evaluated the symbol spotting accuracy and text synthesis quality. The performance metrics are defined next.\n\n1. ROUGE:  It is a set of metrics designed to evaluate the text summaries with a collection of reference summaries. We have compared the generated descriptions with available human-written descriptions using n-gram ROUGE based on the formula \n\\begin{equation}\n    \\frac{\\sum_{S\\in\\{RS\\}}{\\sum_{gram-n\\in S}{Count_{m}(gram-n)}}}{\\sum_{S\\in\\{RS\\}}{\\sum_{gram-n\\in S}{Count(gram-n)}}}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $RS$ stands for reference summaries, $n$ stands for length of the n-gram, $gram-n$, and $Count_{m}(gram-n)$ is the maximum number of n-grams co-occurring in the candidate summary and the set of reference summaries.\n\n\n2. BLEU:\nIt analyses the co-occurrences of n-grams between a machine translation and a human-written sentence. The more the matches, the better is the candidate translation is. The score ranges from $0$ to $1$, where $0$ is the worst score, and $1$ is the perfect match.  The n-gram modified precision score $(p_n)$ is computed as:\n\\begin{equation}\n p_n=\\frac{\\sum_{C\\in \\{Cand\\}}{\\sum_{gram-n\\in C}{Count_{clip}(gram-n)}}}{\\sum_{C'\\in\\{Cand\\}}{\\sum_{gram-n'\\in C'}{Count(gram-n')}}} \\nonumber\n\\end{equation}\n$Count_{clip}$ limits the number of times an n-gram to be considered in a candidate ($Cand$) string. Then they computer the geometric mean of the modified precision $(p_n)$ using n-gram up to length $N$ and weight $W_n$, which sums up to $1$. A brevity penalty (BP) is used for longer candidate summaries and for spurious words in it, which is defined by the following equation:\n \\begin{equation}\n    BP=\n    \\begin{cases}\n      1, & \\text{if}\\ c>r \\\\\n      e^{\\frac{1-r}{c}}, & c\\leq r\n    \\end{cases}\n  \\end{equation}\n$c$ is the length of the candidate summary, and $r$ is the length of the reference summary. Then BLEU score for corpus level given equal weights to all n-grams is evaluated by the following equation\n\\begin{equation}\n    BLEU=BP.exp^{\\sum_{i=1}^{N}{W_n}log(p_n) }\n\\end{equation}\nHere $W_n$ is the equally distributed weight in n-grams. E.g. in case of BLEU-$4$ the weights used are $\\{(0.25),\\\\(0.25),(0.25),(0.25)\\}$. \n\n\n3. METEOR: It is a metric used for evaluating machine-generated summaries with human-written summaries by checking the goodness of order of words in both. METEOR score is a combination of precision, recall, and fragmentation (alignment) in the sentences. It is a harmonic mean of the uni-gram precision and uni-gram recall given alignment and calculated as:\n\\begin{gather}\n    PN=\\frac{1}{2}\\left(\\frac{no \\;of\\; chunks}{matched\\; uni-grams}\\right)\\\\\n    METEOR=\\frac{10PR}{R+9P}(1-PN)\n\\end{gather}\n$PN$ is the penalty imposed based on a larger number of chunks, $P$ are the uni-gram precision, $R$ is the uni-gram recall. METEOR is the final score obtained by multiplying the harmonic mean of unigram precision and uni-gram recall with the penalty imposed.\n\n\n4. Average Precision (AP): The metric average precision used for evaluating the performance of decor symbol detection method is defined by the following equation:\n\\begin{equation}\n    AP= \\frac{1}{N_s}* \\sum P_r(rec)\n\\end{equation}\nWhere, $N_s$ is the total detection for each class of symbol, $P_r$ is the precision value as a function of recall$(rec)$. Mean average precision (mAP) is the average of all the $AP$ calculated over all the classes. \n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale=.30]{objects.png}\n \t\t\\caption{The object classes available in BRIDGE dataset \\cite{bridge2019}.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:obj}\n\\end{figure}\n\\section{Results of the proposed models}\n\\label{sec:baseline}\nIn the next sections, results generated with the proposed models are described in detail. To validate the superiority of the proposed models DSIC and TBDG, the description generation by a multi-staged pipeline with deep learning is also proposed and a comparative analysis is done to validate the choice of the networks used. In the next sections, steps involved in visual element detection are described in detail. It also discusses the resultant detection and classification of visual elements in the proposed pipeline. \n\\subsection{ Decor symbol detection and classification}\nSymbol spotting is a widespread problem in document image interpretation. In \\cite{bridge2019}, there are annotations for the decor symbols. In this work, we have adapted the YOLO model \\cite{redmon2017yolo9000} for detecting and classifying the decors by fine-tuning it using the decor symbol annotations present in the BRIDGE dataset. The symbol spotting network has $9$ convolutional layers with max pool layers in between and is fine-tuned for $16$ object categories (as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:obj}). The trained network has $105$ filters (for BRIDGE dataset) and a linear activation function.\nThe predicted class confidence score is calculated as $Prob(object) \\times IoU$ . Here, $IoU$ is the intersection of union between the predicted bounding box and the ground truth bounding box. It is calculated as $IoU= \\frac{Area\\ of\\ Intersection}{Area\\ of\\ Union}$. \n At the same time, $Prob(object)$ is the probability of detecting the object in that bounding box.  The decor symbol detected here $(o_i)$, are used in generating semi-structured description in later stage. The decor symbols in floor plans can vary widely because of the representation across different datasets. Also, in the real world floor plans made by architects, the model might differ. We introduced variability by including samples of floor plans from different datasets such as \\cite{delalandre2010generation,de2015cvc,sharma2017daniel} for decor symbol annotations. The training dataset covers a wide range of decor symbols, making the network detect and recognize the symbols' variability. The detected decor symbols in floor plan images are shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:Sym}. The two images are taken from BRIDGE datasets and shows variability in decor symbol for two different floor plan images. A wide variability in decor symbols in included in training dataset in order to make the detection model more general. The symbols which are not detected for example, ``billiard\" and ``cooking range\", are not included in symbol annotations.  \n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale=.3]{Symbol_spotting.png}\n\t\t\\caption{The spotted decor symbols in a given floor plan.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:Sym}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{image_classification.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Image classification network with top-6 activation maps from each layers.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:imclass}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{room_class.png}\n\t\t\\caption{{Room classification results for $5$ classes.}}\n\t\t\\label{fig:room_class}\n\\end{figure}\n\\subsection{Room characterization} \n\\label{sec:imclass}\nAs a step of multi-staged floor plan recognition, room characterization is a step to recognize and classify individual room in a floor plan to its respective class. In this regard, rooms in each floor plan are classified in $5$ classes, \\textit{Bedroom, Bathroom, Kitchen, Hall, Living room}. Annotations for each room class are taken from BRIDGE dataset, where region bounding boxes are available and class names are taken from the region wise captions for respective bounding box. \nA deep learning image classification model using VGG19 as a backbone network is used as a classification framework. Figure \\ref{fig:imclass} shows the framework diagram of the model used and image of each room class along with activations for a sample class image, Bedroom. In this network, only the last $5$ layers are kept trainable in VGG19 and appended with two dense and dropout $(0.5)$ layers. \nFigure \\ref{fig:imclass} depicts that activations for initial layers retain almost all the information from the image, focusing on specific parts such as edges and the image's background. However, in the deeper layers, activations are less visually interpretable. All the characterized rooms$(r)$ from an input floor plan image are stored as $(r_1,r_2,...,r_n)$. Figure. \\ref{fig:room_class} shows the resultant classification for floor plan images room classification framework into $5$ defined classes. The different colors for different classes are shown in the legend. The empty spaces in the floor plan are not marked as any room class in the BRIDGE dataset, hence they are not classified by the model.\nVGG19 pre-trained on ImageNet dataset is fine-tuned with a $1920$ training sample of $5$ room classes, and validation is done over $460$ samples. The training data contains a mixed sample of room images from \\cite{bridge2019,de2015cvc,sharma2017daniel}. The rooms $r_i$, generated here are used in generating multi-staged description in the later stage. The number of samples for each class in training and validation dataset are: \\textit{Bedroom:} $440$ and $86$, \\textit{Bathroom:} $887$ and $223$, \\textit{Kitchen:} $287$ and $72$, \\textit{Hall:} $75$ and $21$, \\textit{Living Room:} $231$ and $58$ in respective order. \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Description generation }\n\\label{sec:desgen}\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[scale= 0.4]{template.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Semi-structured description generation.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:template}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}[!b]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{result_des.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Descriptions generated with proposed models and various baseline models.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:result_1}\n\\end{figure}\nIn the previous sections, different visual elements from the floor plans are detected and classified using various deep learning models. In the multi-staged pipeline, these visual elements are used with a semi-structured sentence model proposed in \\cite{goyal2018asysst}, \\cite{goyal2019sugaman}, and a description for the given floor plan is generated. Figure \\ref{fig:template} depicts an example where the synthesized descriptions for a given floor plan image with the visual elements described in the previous steps. Figure \\ref{fig:result_1} shows the results generated with the proposed models TBDG, DSIC, semi-structured sentence based model, and other baseline models. \nIn this paper, a comparison of semi-structured sentences with the learned sentences is presented with depicts the superiority of end-to-end learning models with the multi-staged pipelines. Multi-staged pipeline for floor plan recognition and description generation is presented here as a comparison with the end to end models DSIC and TBDG. Multi-staged pipelines have been used in literature for floor plan recognition and description generation in \\cite{goyal2018asysst,goyal2019sugaman,goyal2018plan2text,madugalla2020creating}. In multi-stage pipelines, the accuracy of the generated descriptions depends upon the accuracy of the intermediate stages. Hence, miss-classification of one component will lead to error in the output sentence. This rationale is the driving factor to come up with an end-to end learning model with advanced deep neural networks. In the next sections, comparative analysis for various modules and sub-modules are discussed in details, along with qualitative and quantitative evaluation of generated descriptions. \n\n\n\n\\section{Comparative analysis with state of the art}\n\\label{sec:des_gen}\nIn this section, comparative analysis with various state of the art description generation schemes and sub-stages involved are presented with their qualitative and quantitative evaluation. It describes the performance evaluation of proposed models and several baselines with metrics discussed in Sec. \\ref{sec:metric}. \n\n\\subsection{Comparative analysis in multi-staged pipeline}\n\\label{sec:visuals}\nIn this sub-section, we present how the various stages of multi-staged pipeline performed as the performance evolution of various stages. We also performed a quantitative comparison of various steps involved in multi-staged pipeline in order to validate the choice of network used. \n\n\n\\subsubsection{Decor Identification:}\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{symbol_detect.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Decor identification with YOLO and Faster-RCNN.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:symb_detect}\n\\end{figure}\nFigure \\ref{fig:symb_detect} shows a comparative analysis of YOLO and F-RCNN trained on BRIDGE dataset. The mAP obtained for decor symbol spotting network using YOLO is $82.06\\%$  and for F-RCNN is $75.25 \\%$. For a few categories of symbols, F-RCNN is performing better, but overall mAP is $\\sim 7\\%$ higher for YOLO. Hence, YOLO, is used in model instead of Faster-RCNN given the better performance. Also in the work \\cite{rezvanifar2020symbol}, symbol spotting from architectural images is done for occluded and cluttered plans using YOLO, concluding the fact that YOLO as a single shot detector performs better than two stage classification networks such as Faster-RCNN for architectural drawings. \n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{plot1.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Performance evaluation of room classification.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:curves1}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Room Characterization:}\n\nFigure. \\ref{fig:curves1} (a),(b) depicts the performance of image cues\/ visual elements extraction from floor plan images for room classification. Figure. \\ref{fig:curves1}(a) is the training and validation accuracy and loss curves for room image classification using VGG19 backbone network. \nAfter training for $50$ epochs, an accuracy of $82.98\\%$ could be achieved in-room image classification. The fluctuation of validation loss is due to the uneven distribution of the number of images in all $5$ classes. A $5$-fold cross-validation over the data samples was performed on training data to validate the model.  \n\nThe room image classification model discussed in Sec. \\ref{sec:imclass}, was also implemented using much recent Capsule network \\cite{sabour2017dynamic} as a backbone network, which gave a classification accuracy of $56.01 \\%$, making VGG19 the obvious choice for the backbone network. Figure. \\ref{fig:curves1}(b) is the training and validation accuracy for room classification model using Capsule network.\nThe performance of the room characterization on BRIDGE dataset was also tested with classical machine learning methods proposed in \\cite{goyal2019sugaman,goyal2018asysst}. BoD classifier with multi-layered perceptron, proposed in \\cite{goyal2018asysst}, gave a validation accuracy of $61.30 \\%$ and LOFD proposed in \\cite{goyal2019sugaman} with multi-layered perceptron gave $63.75 \\%$ of accuracy, while the validation accuracy of proposed model is $82.98\\%$, making VGG19 a suitable choice for room classification model. In Fig. \\ref{fig:room_class}, the two images have variability in the representation of each room class, but features learnt using convolutional networks are much robust in case of variable representation of images of same class as compared to hand-crafted features, leading to higher validation accuracy. \n\n\n\n\n \n\\subsection{Quantitative evaluation of description generation}\nIn this sub-section we present the quantitative evaluation of our proposed model with other state-of-the-art. The baseline descriptions are generated using language modelling where models such as LSTM \\cite{hochreiter1997long}, Bi-LSTM \\cite{hochreiter1997long}  and GRU \\cite{cho2014properties} are experimented with. Language modeling is done by learning an entire corpus. These paragraph corpus are the textual descriptions for floor plans \\cite{bridge2019}. The generated descriptions from the proposed models and presented baselines are compared on various matrices defined in Sec. \\ref{sec:metric} and the quantitative results are presented in the Tab. \\ref{tab:score}. \n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{plot3.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Performance evaluation for TBDG \\& DSIC models.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:tbdg_eval}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{curves.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Loss curves of different language models.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:curves2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n Figure. \\ref{fig:tbdg_eval}(a) shows the loss curve for TBDG for the part of language learning (Sequence2Sequence training, LSTM as encoder, Bi-LSTM as decoder), Figure. \\ref{fig:tbdg_eval}(b) shows the loss curve for DSIC for language learning part (CNN as encoder, hierarchical RNN as decoder). In TBDG, since LSTM and Bi-LSTM layers are used for training with word features, in the network, the loss converged below $1$ and became stable in $51$ epochs. In DSIC, training LSTM based, hierarchical RNN with image features took longer epoch time to converge than TBDG because of larger number of trainable parameters. \nFigure  \\ref{fig:curves2}(a), (b), (c) shows loss curves for all the baseline language models for language modelling, i.e. LSTM, Bi-LSTM and GRU models respectively. As it can be seen that the loss value reached below $1$ but did not became $0$ while training for $20$ epochs. Also GRU has the similar benefits but they are more efficient than LSTMs when training with more data is required. In this case, LSTM and Bi-LSTM took $\\sim 550$ ms\/epoch, while GRU took $\\sim 300$ ms\/epoch. The loss value in GRU got stabilize earlier than LSTMs while trained for $50$ epochs.\n\n\n\n\\begin{table*}[t]\n\\centering\n\\caption{Evaluation of generated paragraphs with different metrices (METEOR, BLEU, ROUGE).}\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\n\\begin{tabular}{ ||c| c| c| c| c| c|c |c|c|| }\n\\hline\n \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{Method}} & \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{BLEU-1}} & \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{BLEU-2}} & \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{BLEU-3}} & \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{BLEU-4}} & \\multirow{2}{*}{\\textbf{METEOR}}& \\multicolumn{3}{c||}{$ROUGE_L$}\\\\\n \\cline{7-9}\n &&&&&&\\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\textit{precision}}&\\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\textit{recall}}&\\multicolumn{1}{c||}{\\textit{f-score}}\n \\\\  \\hline\n \\textbf{Densecap-concat} &$0.1353$ & $0.0586$ & $0.0955$ & $0.2373$ & $0.0530$ &$0.9416$ &$0.3322$ &$0.4910$\\\\  \\hline\n \\textbf{Semi-Structured} &  $0.1519$ & $0.1613$ & $0.1622$ & $0.432$ & $0.0677$& $0.9215$ & $0.3410$ & $0.4977$ \\\\ \\hline\n \\textbf{DSIC} &  $0.7013$ & $0.6794$ & $\\mathbf{0.6637}$ & $\\mathbf{0.6543}$ & ${{0.4460}}$ &$1.4797$ & $1.0593$ & ${1.2346}$ \\\\ \\hline\n \\textbf{LSTM} &  $0.4464$ & $0.3048$ & $0.2166$ & $0.1673$ & $0.2076$ &$0.7648$ & $0.6063$ & $0.6763$ \\\\ \\hline\n \\textbf{Bi-LSTM} &  $0.4629$ & $0.3058$ & $0.2275$ & $0.1699$ & $0.2281$& $0.6852$& $0.6880$ & $0.6865$   \\\\ \\hline\n \\textbf{GRU} &  $0.4487$ & $0.3019$ & $0.2194$ & $0.1691$ & $0.1825$& $0.6261$ & $0.6892$ & $0.6561$ \\\\ \\hline\n \\textbf{TBDG} &  {$\\mathbf{0.7277}$} & $\\mathbf{0.6866}$ & $0.6633$ & $0.6326$ & $\\mathbf{0.4927}$& $\\mathbf{1.5283}$ & $\\mathbf{1.1142}$ & ${\\mathbf{1.2867}}$ \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n}\n\\label{tab:score}\n\\end{table*}\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{result_des2.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Descriptions generated with proposed models and various baseline models.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:result_im1}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTable \\ref{tab:score} shows the quantitative comparison of description synthesis with the proposed models and the presented baseline models for various metrics with the ground truth paragraphs available in \\cite{bridge2019} where the values in bold, represents the highest value of a particular metric for a given model. The evaluation is done on BLEU-\\{$1$,$2$,$3$,$4$\\}, $ ROUGE_L $, and METEOR, where the BLEU score variant depends upon the n-gram. It can be seen that the performance of TBDG is better than all other description generation schemes on all the metrics except for BLEU-$3,4$. It is least in Semi-Structured template-based method, and Densecap-concatenated paragraphs (taking top $5$ sentences from Densecap model trained on floor plans) since the sentences have a fixed structure given different input images. However, performance increase for the language models, LSTM, Bi-LSTM, and GRU even if they do not generate image specific sentences. These language models generate phrases and context used in the training corpus while generating sentences when we use a seed sentence to create a paragraph, which increases the BLEU scores for different n-grams. $ROUGE_L$ also gives the highest precision-recall and f-score values for the TBDG model. Hence, it can be concluded that the knowledge-driven description generation (TBDG) performs better than generating descriptions directly from image cues (visual features). Other language models generate sentences using corpus phrases but not specific to the input image, which is not very useful in the current scenario. The qualitative evaluation and comparison of the the proposed models with the baseline models are discussed next.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{failure.png}\n\t\t\\caption{Failure case with the TBDG model.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:result_im2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width= \\linewidth]{failure1.png}\n\t\t\\caption{An illustration depicting the robustness of the TBDG model over DSIC for a general floor plan image.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:result_im3}\n\\end{figure}\n\\subsection{Qualitative evaluation of description generation}\nAll the paragraph descriptions generated by various techniques are shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:result_im1}, which are corresponding to the images shown with respective set of descriptions.\nResults show that paragraphs generated by \\cite{goyal2019sugaman} and \\cite{johnson2016densecap}  are simple and have a fixed structure and they do not have flexibility. They do not describe connection of a room with another in a global context.\nHowever, paragraphs generated from DSIC and TBDG are very descriptive and close to human written sentences. They also include specific details of the images, for example details about contents of a bedroom, such as closets and bathrooms, details about staircase in a hall. They also include details about other areas in a floor plan for example porch and garage, which multi-staged based methods fails to describe because they do not have these room classes included in their training data. These models themselves capture intricate details in the descriptions, in which multi-staged based methods fail, since they require explicit annotation for every component. \nAlso, paragraphs generated from other baseline, LSTM, Bi-LSTM, GRU language models, are generating phrases and words related to the language structure but possess very less relevance to the input image. Hence, these kinds of models are suitable for poetry, story, and abstract generation but not for an image to paragraph generation. \n\nFigure. \\ref{fig:result_im2} shows the failed prediction of paragraph for the proposed model TBDG. \nSometimes the model fails to generate longer sequences or the words which are less frequent in the vocabulary, and then it starts repeating the sentences. Figure. \\ref{fig:result_im3} shows the failure case specific to DSIC and requirement of the TBDG model for the input floor plan image shown. The input image is a general floor plan image taken from the BRIDGE dataset, which was not included in training any model. However, DSIC yielded descriptions with details related to a plan but not relevant to the current image. Hence, with TBDG, the generated sentences describe the details of bedrooms and bathrooms, taking cues from the words. Hence it validates the robustness of the TBDG model over DSIC for a general floor plan image. \n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{sec:conclusion}\nIn this work, we proposed models, DSIC and TBDG for generating textual description for floor plan images, which are graphical documents depicting blueprint of a building. However, being 2D line drawing images with binary pixel values, makes them different from natural images. Hence, due to lack of information at every pixel, various state of the art description generation methods for natural images do not perform well for floor plan images. Therefore, we proposed a transformer-based image to paragraph generation scheme (TBDG), which takes both image and word cues to create a paragraph. We also proposed a hierarchical recurrent neural network-based model (DSIC) to generate descriptions by directly learning features from the image, which lacks robustness in case of a general floor plan image. We evaluated the proposed model on different metrics by presenting several baselines language models for description generation and also proposing a deep learning based multi-staged pipeline to generate description from floor plan images. We trained and tested the proposed models and baselines on the BRIDGE dataset, which contains large scale floor plan images and annotations for various tasks. In future work, these models will be made more generalized to generate description for widely variable floor plan images by improving the network architecture and re-designing the method of taking word cues. \n\n\n\n \\bibliographystyle{spmpsci}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nThe phase diagram of  Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is investigated\nin large-scale lattice gauge theory simulations\n\\cite{Karsch:2006sm} and heavy-ion collision experiments at\nCERN-SPS and RHIC Brookhaven \\cite{Muller:2006ee}, where the\napproximately baryon-free region at finite temperatures is\naccessible and consensus about the critical temperature for the\noccurence of a strongly correlated quark-gluon plasma phase (sQGP)\nis developing. The region of low temperatures and high baryon\ndensities, however, which is interesting for the astrophysics of\ncompact stars, is not accessible to lattice QCD studies yet and\nheavy-ion collision experiments such as the CBM experiment at FAIR\nDarmstadt are still in preparation \\cite{Senger:2006}. The most\nstringent of the presently available constraints on the EoS of\nsuperdense hadronic matter from compact stars and heavy-ion\ncollisions have recently been discussed in\nRef.~\\cite{Klahn:2006ir} and may form the basis for future\nsystematic investigations of the compatibility of dense quark\nmatter models with those phenomenological constraints. Therefore,\nthe question arises for appropriate models describing the\nnonperturbative properties of strongly interacting matter such as\ndynamical chiral symmetry breaking and hadronic bound state\nformation in the vacuum and at finite temperatures and densities.\n\nThe Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model has proven very useful for\nproviding results to this question within a simple, but\nmicroscopic formulation, mostly on the mean-field level, see\n\\cite{Buballa:2003qv}. The state of the art phase diagrams of\nneutral quark matter for compact star applications have recently\nbeen obtained in\n\\cite{Ruster:2005jc,Blaschke:2005uj,Aguilera:2004ag,Abuki:2005ms}\nwhere also references to other approaches can be found. One of the\nshortcomings of the NJL model is the absence of confinement, the\nother is its nonrenormalizability. It is customary to speak of the\nNJL model in its form with a cut-off regularization, where\nphysical observables can be defined and calculated. The cutoff in\nmomentum space, however, defines a range of the interaction and\nmakes the NJL model nonlocal. It has been suggested that the\ncutoff-regularized NJL model can be considered as a limiting case\nof a more general formulation of nonlocal chiral quark models\nusing separable interactions \\cite{Schmidt:1994di}. In this form\none can even make contact with the Dyson-Schwinger equation\napproach to QCD by defining a separable representation of the\neffective gluon propagator \\cite{Blaschke:2000gd}, or to the\ninstanton liquid model, see \\cite{GomezDumm:2005hy}.\n\nWe have made extensive use of the parametrization given in\n\\cite{Schmidt:1994di} for studies of quark matter phases in\ncompact stars \\cite{Blaschke:2003yn,Grigorian:2003vi} where the\nrole of the smoothness of the momentum dependence for the\nquark-hadron phase transition and compact star structure has been\nexplored. These investigations have been also used in simulations\nof hybrid star cooling \\cite{Grigorian:2004jq,Popov:2005xa}, which\ncan be selective for the choice of the quation of state (EoS) of\nquark matter by comparing to observational data feor surface\ntemperature and age of compact stars. As a result of these\nstudies, color superconducting phases with small gaps of the order\nof 10 keV - 1 MeV appear to be favorable for the cooling\nphenomenology. A prominent candidate, the color-spin-locking (CSL)\nphase, has been investigated more in detail within the NJL model\nwith satisfactory results  \\cite{Aguilera:2005tg}. However, its\ngeneralization to formfactors with a smooth momentum dependence\nrevealed a severe sensitivity resulting in variations of the CSL\ngaps over four orders of magnitude \\cite{Aguilera:2005uf}.\n\nUnfortunately, with the NJL parametrization given in\n\\cite{Schmidt:1994di} it was not possible to reproduce results\nwith NJL parametrizations given in \\cite{Buballa:2003qv} and used,\ne.g., in  Refs.\n\\cite{Ruster:2005jc,Blaschke:2005uj,Aguilera:2005tg}. Therefore,\nin the present work a new parametrization of the model presented\nin Ref. \\cite{Schmidt:1994di} is performed with a special emphasis\non reproducing NJL parametrizations given in \\cite{Buballa:2003qv}\nin the limiting case of a sharp cutoff formfactor. We also take\ninto account the strangeness degree of freedom and consider\nLorentzian-type formfactor models where the form of the momentum\ndependence for the quark-quark interaction can be varied\nparametrically thus being most suitable for a quantitative\nanalysis the phase diagram and high-density EoS under the above\nmentioned constraints from compact star and heavy-ion collision\nphenomenology.\n\n\n\\section{Basic formulation}\n\nWe consider a nonlocal chiral quark model with separable\nquark-antiquark interaction in the color singlet\nscalar\/pseudoscalar isovector channel \\cite{Gocke:2001ri} where\nthe formfactors are given in the  instantaneous approximation, in\nthe same way as it was suggested in \\cite{Schmidt:1994di}.\n\nThe Lagrangian density of the quark model is given by\n($i,j=u,d,s$)\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal L}= \\bar{q}_{i}(i \\gamma_\\mu \\partial^\\mu - m_{i,0})q_{i } +\nG_{S}\\sum_{a=0}^{8}\\left[ (\\bar{q_i}\\tilde{g}(x)~\\lambda\n_{ij}^{a}q_j)^{2}+(\\bar{q_i}(i~\\tilde{g}(x)\\gamma _{5})\\lambda\n_{ij}^{a}q_j)^{2}\\right],\n\\end{equation}\nwhere indices occuring twice are to be summed over and the\nformfactor $\\tilde{g}(x)$ for the  nonlocal current-current\ncoupling has been introduced. Here $m_0=m_{u,0}=m_{d,0}$ and\n$m_{s,0}$ are the current quark masses of the light and strange\nflavors, respectively, $\\lambda _{ij}^a$ are the Gell-Mann\nmatrices of the $SU(3)$ flavor group and $\\gamma _{\\mu}$, $\\gamma\n_5$ are Dirac matrices.\n\nThe nonlocality of the current-current interaction in the\nquark-antiquark ($q \\bar{q}$) channel is implemented in the\nseparable approximation via the same formfactor functions for all\ncolors and flavors. In our calculations we use the Gaussian (G),\nLorentzian (L), Woods-Saxon (WS) and cutoff (NJL) formfactors in\nmomentum space defined as (see Ref. \\cite{Schmidt:1994di})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\ng_{{\\rm G}}(p) &=&\\exp (-p^{2}\/\\Lambda _{{\\rm G}}^{2})~,\n  \\nonumber \\\\\ng_{{\\rm L}}(p) &=&[1+(p\/\\Lambda _{{\\rm L}})^{2\\alpha }]^{-1},\n\\nonumber \\\\\ng_{{\\rm WS}}(p)&=& [1+\\exp(- \\alpha)]\/\\{1+\\exp[\\alpha~\n(p^2\/\\Lambda_{{\\rm WS}}^2-1]\\},\\nonumber \\\\\n g_{{\\rm NJL}}(p) &=&\\theta (1-p\/\\Lambda\n_{{\\rm NJL}})~.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe formfactors can be introduced in a manifestly covariant way\n(see \\cite{Gocke:2001ri}), but besides technical complications at\nfinite $T$ and $\\mu$, where Matsubara summations have to be\nperformed numerically, it is not a priori obvious that such a\nformulation shall be superior to an instantaneous approximation\n(3D) which could be justified as a separable representation of a\nCoulomb-gauge potential model \\cite{Blaschke:1994px}.\n\nTypically, three-flavor NJL type models use a 't Hooft determinant\ninteraction that induces a U$_{A}$(1) symmetry breaking in the\npseudoscalar isoscalar meson sector, which can be adjusted such\nthat the $\\eta $-$\\eta^{\\prime }$ mass difference is described. In\nthe present approach this term is neglected using the motivation\ngiven in \\cite{Blaschke:2005uj}, so that the flavor sectors\ndecouple in the mean-field approximation.\n\nThe dynamical quark mass functions are then given by\n$M_i(p)=m_{i,0}+\\phi _i~g(p)$, where the chiral gaps fulfill the\ngap equations\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\phi_{i} &=& 4G_{S}\\frac{N_{c}}{\\pi ^{2}}\\int dp\np^{2}g(p)\\frac{M_{i}(p)}{E_{i}(p)}~, \\label{disprel}\n\\end{eqnarray}\ncorresponding to minima of the thermodynamic potential with\nrespect to variations of the order parameters $\\phi_{i}$, the\nquark dispersion relations are $E_{i}(p)=\\sqrt{p^{2}+M_{i}^2(p)}$.\n\nThe basic set of equations should be chosen to fix the parameters\nincluded in the model, which are the current masses, coupling\nconstant and cutoff parameter ($m_{0},m_{s,0},G_{S}$ and\n$\\Lambda$).\n\nIn order to do that we use the properties of bound states of\nquarks in the vacuum given by the pion decay constant $f_{\\pi\n}=92.4$~MeV, the masses of the pion $M_{\\pi }=135$ MeV and the\nkaon $M_{K}=494$ MeV and either the constituent quark mass\n$M(p=0)=m_0+\\phi_u$ or the chiral condensate of light quarks,\ndefined as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle u \\bar{u}\\rangle _0 =-\\frac{N_{c}}{\\pi ^{2}}\\int dp\np^{2}\\frac{M_{u}(p)-m_{0}}{E_{u}(p)}~, \\label{condensate}\n\\end{equation}\nwith a phenomenological value from QCD sum rules \\cite{Dosch} of\n$190$ MeV $\\le -\\langle u \\bar{u}\\rangle^{1\/3}_0\\le 260$ MeV. The\nchiral condensate generally is not properly defined in the case of\nnonlocal interactions. The subtraction of the $m_{0}$ term has\nbeen included to make the integral convergent.\n\nThe pion ~decay ~constant can be expressed in the form\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{fpi} f_{\\pi }=\\frac{3~g_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}}{2\\pi ^{2}} \\int dp\np^{2}g(p)\\frac{M_{u}(p)}{E_{u}(p)(E_{u}(p)^{2}-M_{\\pi }^{2}\/4)},\n\\end{equation}%\nwhere the pion wave function renormalization factor $g_{\\pi\nq\\bar{q}}$  is\n\\[\ng_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}^{-2}= \\frac{3}{2\\pi ^{2}}\\int dp p^{2}g^{2}(p)\n\\frac{E_{u}(p)}{(E_{u}(p)^{2}-M_{\\pi }^{2}\/4)^{2}}.\n\\]\nThe masses of pion and kaon are obtained from a direct\ngeneralization of the well-known NJL model\n\\cite{Rehberg:1995kh,Costa:2005cz} by introducing formfactors with\nthe momentum space integration and replacing constituent quark\nmasses by the momentum dependent mass functions $M(p)$\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{Mpi} M_{\\pi } &=&\\left[ \\left(\n\\frac{1}{2G_{S}}-2I_{u}^{(1)}\\right) \/I_{uu}^{(2)}\n\\right] ^{1\/2}, \\\\\nM_{K} &=&\\left[ \\left(\n\\frac{1}{2G_{S}}-(I_{u}^{(1)}+I_{s}^{(1)})\\right)\n\/I_{us}^{(2)}\\right] ^{1\/2},\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn these mass formulae, the following abbreviations for integrals\nhave been used\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nI_{i}^{(1)} &=&\\frac{3}{\\pi ^{2}}\\int dp\np^{2}g^{2}(p)\\frac{1}{E_{i}(p)},\n\\nonumber \\\\\nI_{uu}^{(2)} &=&\\frac{3}{2\\pi ^{2}} \\int dp\np^{2}\\frac{g^{2}(p)}{E_{u}(p)(E_{u}(p)^{2}- M_{\\pi }^{2}\/4)},\n\\nonumber \\\\\nI_{us}^{(2)} &=&\\frac{3}{\\pi ^{2}}\\int dp p^{2} g^{2}(p)\n\\frac{E_{u}(p)+E_{s}(p)}{E_{u}(p)E_{s}(p)[(E_{u}(p)+E_{s}(p))^{2}-M_{K}^{2}]}.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nWe can use these notations to give an estimate of the validity of\nlow-energy theorems for this nonlocal generalization of the NJL\nmodel. To this end we rewrite Eq. (\\ref{fpi}) for $f_\\pi$ and\n$g_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}$ as\n\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{fpi-2} f_{\\pi }&=&g_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}\\left(\\phi_u~\nI_{uu}^{(2)}\n+ m_0 \\langle g^{-1}(p) \\rangle^{(2)}\\right)\\\\\ng_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}^{-2}&\\approx& I_{uu}^{(2)} + M_{\\pi }^{2}\/4 \\cdot\n\\langle E^{-2}_{u}(p) \\rangle^{(2)}~, \\label{gpi-2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the mean values of a distribution $F(p)$ are defined using\nthe integral $I^{(2)}_{uu}$ as an operator: $\\langle\nF(p)\\rangle^{(2)}=I^{(2)}_{uu}[F(p)]$. To leading order in an\nexpansion at the chiral limit ($m_0\\to 0$, $M_\\pi\\to 0$) one\nobtains the Goldberger-Treiman relation\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{GT} f_{\\pi }g_{\\pi q\\bar{q}}=\\phi_u~.\n\\end{equation}\nRewriting the gap equation (\\ref{disprel}) for the light flavor as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{gap} \\phi_u[1-4G_S~I_{u}^{(1)}]=- m_0 \\langle u\\bar{u}\n\\rangle_0 \\cdot 4 G_S\n\\end{equation}\nand the pion mass formula (\\ref{Mpi}) as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{Mpi2} M_{\\pi }^2 =\\frac{1}{2G_{S}}\\left(1 -4\nG_S~I_{u}^{(1)}\\right) \/I_{uu}^{(2)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwe obtain by combining (\\ref{Mpi2}) with (\\ref{gap}), (\\ref{GT})\nand (\\ref{fpi-2}) in leading order the Gell-Mann--Oakes--Renner\nrelation (GMOR)\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{GMOR} M_{\\pi }^{2}f_{\\pi }^{2}=- 2 m_{0}\\langle u\\bar{u}\n\\rangle_0~.\n\\end{equation}\nAs an indicator of the validity of this low-energy theorem we will\nshow the GMOR value for the light current quark mass\n\\begin{equation}\nm_{0}^{GMOR}=-\\frac{M_{\\pi }^{2}f_{\\pi }^{2}}{2\\langle u\n\\bar{u}\\rangle_0} \\label{m0}\n\\end{equation}\ntogether with the result of the parametrization of  $m_{0}$.\n\nSince we have no 't Hooft term, there is no mixing of flavor\nsectors, and one can consider the light quark sector independent\nof the strange one. The equation for the kaon mass fixes the\nstrange quark's current mass $m_{s,0}$, whereby a self-consistent\nsolution of the strange quark gap equation is implied.\n\n\n\\section{Results}\n\nIn the present parametrization scheme the gap equation plays a\nspecial role. Although the gap is not an observable quantity, we\nwill use it as an phenomenological input instead of the\ncondensate, which in some cases does not fulfill the\nphenomenological constraints. Moreover, for each formfactor model\nthere is some minimal value of $G_{S}\\Lambda ^{2}$ for which the\ncondensate has a minimum: for the Gaussian model it is 7.376, for\nthe Lorentzian model with $\\alpha =2$ it is 3.795, and for $\\alpha\n=10$ it is 2.825. For the NJL model this minimal value is 2.588.\nThe corresponding values of the condensate are given in Table\n\\ref{LorsysM}. These values for the finite current masses are\nshifted to the left as it is shown in Fig. \\ref{patalogy} and for\nthem the parameter sets are fixed (see Table \\ref{LorsysM}). When\nthe condensate is chosen there are two possible values of\n$G_{S}\\Lambda ^{2}$ (the lower and higher branches) for which one\ncan fix the parameters of the model.  We show that the constraint\non the condensate from QCD sum rules \\protect\\cite{Dosch} with an\nupper limit at $260$ MeV can be fulfilled only for values of\n$\\alpha$ exceeding 3-5 for both Lorentzian and Woods- Saxon\nformfactor models  . For the particular choice of $ - <u \\bar\nu>^{1\/3} = 280$ MeV and 260 MeV we fixed the parameters for both\nbranches of solutions (see Tables \\ref{LL260}\n-\\ref{NJL}).\n\nIn order to obtain the parameter sets we choose three values for\nthe non-observable value of the constituent quark mass\n$M(p=0)=330$ MeV, 335 MeV, 367.5 MeV, 380 MeV, and 400 MeV. The\nvalues are taken such that the mass $3M(p=0)$ is larger than the\nmass of the nucleon as a bound state of three quarks. The results\nof the parametrizations are given in the Tables\n\\ref{L330}-\\ref{L400}.\n\nIn Fig. \\ref{patalogy} the dependence of the chiral condensate is\nshown as a function of $G_S\\Lambda^2$ for different formfactors in\nthe chiral limit band for an appropriate choice of the current\nmass $\\sim 0.01~\\Lambda$. It is shown that the minimal possible\nvalue of the condensate varies from one formfactor model to\nanother and only in the NJL model the appropriate values of\ncondensate in the range of QCD sum rule values $230\\pm 10$ MeV can\nbe reached. The Figs. \\ref{ffcomp} and \\ref{ffpcomp} show the gap\nfunction and the diagonal elements of the separable interaction\nfor different formfactors in order to demonstrate the systematics\nof the changes related to the degree of the softening given by the\nparameter $\\alpha$ in Lorentzian functions.\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\n\nWe have presented parametrizations of nonlocal chiral quark models\nwith instantaneous, separable interactions defined by momentum\ndependent formfactors which interpolate between the soft Gaussian\ntype and the hard cut off (NJL) in tabulated form. The\nintroduction of a Lorentzian and\/or Woods-Saxon-type function with\nan additional parameter allowed a systematic investigation of the\nNJL model limit, where existing parametrizations could be\nrecovered.\n\nWe have shown that the instantaneous nonlocal models have an\nessential problem for the softest formfactors, where it is\nimpossible to obtain acceptable values for the chiral condensate.\nHowever, for the astrophysical applications this problem could be\nconsidered as of minor importance relative to the insights which a\nsystematic variation of the interaction model offers for the\nbetter understanding of mechanisms governing the quark matter EoS\non a microscopic level.\n\nWe show numerically that the Goldberger-Treiman relation and GMOR\nas low-energy theorems hold also for the nonlocal chiral quark\nmodel.\n\nThe present approach to nonlocal chiral quark models can be\napplied subsequently for systematic studies of constraints on the\nEoS of superdense matter coming from the phenomenology of heavy\nion collisions and compact stars.\n\n\\subsection*{Acknowledgement}\n\nI thank David Blaschke, Norberto Scoccola and Yuri Kalinovsky for\nthe initiation of this work and their constructive discussions. I\nam grateful to A. Dorokhov, O. Teryaev and V. Yudichev for their\ninterest in this work and support during my visit at the JINR\nDubna. The research was supported in part by\nDFG under grant No. 436 ARM 17\/4\/05 and by\nthe DAAD partnership program between the Universities of Rostock\nand\nYerevan.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nMekler's construction \\cite{mekler1981stability} provides a general method to interpret any structure in a finite relational language in a pure $2$-nilpotent group of finite exponent (the resulting group is typically not finitely generated). This is not a bi-interpretation, however it tends to preserve various model-theoretic tameness properties. First Mekler proved that for any cardinal $\\kappa$ the constructed group is $\\kappa$-stable if and only if the initial structure was \\cite{mekler1981stability}. Afterwards,  it was shown by Baudisch and Pentzel that simplicity of the theory is preserved, and by Baudisch that, assuming stability, CM-triviality is also preserved \\cite{baudisch2002mekler}. See \\cite[Section A.3]{hodges1993model} for a detailed exposition of Mekler's construction.\n\n\n\n\nThe aim of this paper is to investigate further preservation of various generalized stability-theoretic properties from Shelah's classification program \\cite{shelah1990classification}. We concentrate on the classes of $k$-dependent and $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ theories.\n\n \nThe classes of $k$-dependent theories (see Definition \\ref{def: k-dependence}), for each $k \\in \\mathbb{N}$,  were defined by Shelah in \\cite{shelah2014strongly}, and give a generalization of the class of NIP theories (which corresponds to the case $k=1$). See \\cite{shelah2007definable, hempel2016n, chernikov2014n} for some further results about $k$-dependent groups and fields and connections to combinatorics. In Theorem \\ref{thm: k-dependence is preserved} we show that Mekler's construction preserves $k$-dependence.\nOur initial motivation was to obtain algebraic examples that witness the strictness of the $k$-dependence hierarchy. For $k \\geq 2$, we will say that a theory is \\emph{strictly $k$-dependent} if it is $k$-dependent, but not $(k-1)$-dependent. The usual combinatorial example of a strictly $k$-dependent theory is given by the random $k$-hypergraph. The first example of a strictly $2$-dependent group was given in \\cite{hempel2016n} (it was also considered in \\cite[Example 4.1.14]{wagner2002simple}):\n\n\\begin{expl}\\label{ex: extraspecial}\nLet $G$ be $\\oplus_{\\omega}\\mathbb F_p$, where $\\mathbb F_p$ is the finite field with $p$ elements. Consider the structure\n$\\mathcal{G} = (G, \\mathbb F_p, 0, +,\\cdot)$, where $0$ is the neutral element, $+$ is addition in $G$, and $\\cdot$ is the bilinear form $(a_i)_i \\cdot (b_i)_i = \\sum_i a_i b_i$ from $G$ to $\\mathbb F_p$. This structure is not NIP, but is $2$-dependent. In the case $p=2$, $\\mathcal{G}$ is interpretable in an extra-special $p$-group $\\mathcal{H} = (H,\\cdot, 1)$, and conversely $\\mathcal{H}$ is interpretable in $\\mathcal{G}$ (see \\cite[Proposition 3.11]{macpherson2008one} and the discussion around it, or the appendix in \\cite{millietdefinable}). Hence $\\mathcal{H}$ provides an example of a strictly $2$-dependent pure group.\n\n \\end{expl} \n\nIn Corollary \\ref{cor: strictly k-dep groups} we use Mekler's construction to show that for every $k$, there is a strictly $k$-dependent pure group.\n\nThe class of $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ theories was defined in \\cite{shelah1980simple} (see Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}). It gives a common generalization of simple and NIP theories (along with containing many new important examples), and more recently it was studied in e.g. \\cite{chernikov2012forking, chernikov2014theories, yaacov2014independence, chernikov2015groups}. In Theorem \\ref{thm: NTP2 is preserved} we show that Mekler's construction preserves $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$.\n\nThe paper is organized as follows. In Section \\ref{sec: Mekler} we review Mekler's construction and record some auxiliary lemmas, including the key lemma about type-definability of partial transversals and related objects (Proposition \\ref{prop: type def}). In Section \\ref{sec: NIP} we prove that NIP is preserved. In Section \\ref{sec: kDep} we discuss indiscernible witnesses for $k$-dependence and give a proof that Mekler's construction preserves $k$-dependence. As an application, for each $k\\geq 2$ we construct a strictly $k$-dependent pure group\nand discuss some related open problems.\nFinally, in Section \\ref{sec: NTP2} we prove that Mekler's construction preserves $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$.\n\n\\subsection*{Acknowledgements}\nWe would like to thank the anonymous referee for a very detailed report and many useful suggestions on improving the paper. We also thank JinHoo Ahn for pointing out some typos in the preliminary version.\n\nBoth authors were partially supported by the NSF Research Grant DMS-1600796, by the NSF CAREER grant DMS-1651321 and by an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.\n\n\\section{Preliminaries on Mekler's construction}\\label{sec: Mekler}\n\nWe review Mekler's construction from \\cite{mekler1981stability}, following the exposition and notation in \\cite[Section \nA.3]{hodges1993model} (to which we refer the reader for further details).\n\n\\begin{defn}\nA graph (binary, symmetric relation without self-loops) is called \\emph{nice} if it satisfies the following two properties:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item there are at least two vertices, and for any two distinct vertices $a$ and $b$ there is some vertex $c$ different from $a$ and $b$ such that $c$ is joined to $a$ but not to $b$;\n\\item there are no triangles or squares in the graph.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{defn}\n\n\n\n\nFor any graph $C$ and an odd prime $p$, we define a $2$-nilpotent group of exponent $p$ denoted  by $G(C)$ which is generated freely in the variety of $2$-nilpotent groups of exponent $p$ by the vertices of $C$ by imposing that two generators commute if and only if they are connected by an edge in $C$.\n\nNow, let $C$ be a nice graph and consider the group $G(C)$. Let $G$ be any model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$.  We consider the following $\\emptyset$-definable equivalence relations on the elements of $G$. \n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $g$ and $h$ be elements of $G$, then\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $g \\sim h$, if $C_G(g) = C_G(h)$.\n\\item $g \\approx h$ if there is some  natural number $r$  and $c$ in $Z(G)$ such that $g = h^r \\cdot c$.\n\\item $g \\equiv_Z h$ if $g\\cdot Z(G)= h\\cdot  Z(G)$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\n\\end{defn}\n\nNote that  $g \\equiv_Z h$ implies $g \\approx h$, which implies $g \\sim h$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $g$ be an element of $G$ and let $q$ be a natural number. We say that $g$ is \\emph{of type $q$} if there are $q$ different $\\approx$-equivalence classes in the $\\sim$-class $[g]_{\\sim}$ of $g$. Moreover, we say that $g$ is \\emph{isolated} if all non central $h \\in G$ which commute with $g$ are $\\approx$-equivalent to $g$.\n\\end{defn}\n\n\nAll non-central elements of $G$ can be partitioned into four different $\\emptyset$-definable classes (see \\cite[Lemma A.3.6 - A.3.10]{hodges1993model} for the details): \n\\begin{enumerate}\n\n\\item elements of type $1$ which are not isolated, also referred to as \\emph{elements of type $1^{\\nu}$} (in $G(C)$ this class includes the elements given by the vertices of $C$), \n\\item elements of type $1$ which are isolated, also referred to as \\emph{elements of type  $1^{\\iota}$},\n\\item elements of type $p$, and\n\\item elements of type $p-1$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nThe elements of the latter two types are always non-isolated (it is easy to see from the definition that only an element of type $1$ can be isolated).\n\n\nBy \\cite[Lemma A.3.8, (a) $\\Leftrightarrow$ (b)]{hodges1993model}, for every element $g \\in G$ of type $p$, the non-central elements of $G$ which commute with $g$ are precisely the elements $\\sim$-equivalent to $g$, and an element $b$ of type $1^{\\nu}$ together with the elements $\\sim$-equivalent to $b$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\\label{def: handle}\nFor every element $g \\in G$ of type $p$, we call an element $b$ of type $1^{\\nu}$ which commutes with $g$ a \\emph{handle of $g$}. \n\\end{defn}\n\n\n\\begin{fact}\\label{fact: handle}\n\tBy the above, we obtain immediately that a handle is definable from $g$ up to $\\sim$-equivalence.\n\t\\end{fact}\n\nNote here, that the center of $G$ as well as the quotient $G\/Z(G)$ are elementary abelian $p$-groups. Hence they can be viewed as $\\mathbb F_p$-vector spaces. From now on, \\emph{independence} over some supergroup of $Z(G)$ will refer to linear independence in terms of the corresponding $\\mathbb F_p$-vector space.\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{defn}\\label{def: transversal}\nLet $G$ be a model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$. We define the following:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item A \\emph{$1^{\\nu}$-transversal} of $G$ is a set $X^{\\nu}$ consisting of one representative for each $\\sim$-class of elements of type $1^{\\nu}$ in $G$.\n\\item An element is \\emph{proper} if it is not a product of any elements of type $1^{\\nu}$ in $G$.\n\\item A \\emph{$p$-transversal} of $G$ is a set $X^p$ of pairwise $\\sim$-inequivalent proper elements of type $p$ in $G$ which is maximal with the property that if $Y$ is a finite subset of $X^p$ and all elements of $Y$ have the same handle, then $Y$ is independent modulo the subgroup generated by all elements of type $1^{\\nu}$ in $G$ and $Z(G)$.\n\\item A \\emph{$1^{\\iota}$-transversal} of $G$ is a set $X^{\\iota}$  of representatives of $\\sim$-classes of proper elements of type $1^{\\iota}$ in $G$ which is maximal independent modulo the subgroup generated by all elements of types $1^{\\nu}$ and $p$ in $G$, together with $Z(G)$.\n\\item A set $X \\subseteq G$ is a \\emph{transversal of $G$} if $X= X^{\\nu} \\sqcup X^p \\sqcup X^{\\iota}$, where $X^{\\nu}, X^p$ and $X^{\\iota}$ are some transversals of the corresponding types.\n\\item A subset $Y$ of a transversal is called a \\emph{partial transversal} if it is closed under handles (i.\\ e.\\ for any element $a$ of type $p$ in $Y$ there is an element of type $1^{\\nu}$ in $Y$ which is a handle of $a$).\n\\item For a given (partial) transversal $X$, we denote by $X^{\\nu}$, $ X^p$, and $X^{\\iota}$ the elements in $X$ of the corresponding types.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{defn} \n\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem: transversal type def}\n\tLet $G \\models \\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$. Given a small tuple of variables $\\bar{x} = \\bar x^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{x} ^{p \\frown} \\bar{x}^{\\iota}$, there is a partial type $\\Phi(\\bar{x})$ such that for any tuples $\\bar{a}^\\nu, \\bar{a}^p$ and $\\bar{a}^{\\iota}$ in $G$,  we have that $G \\models \\Phi(\\bar{a}^\\nu, \\bar{a}^p, \\bar{a}^{\\iota})$ if and only if every element in  $\\bar{a}^\\nu, \\bar{a}^p$ and $\\bar{a}^{\\iota}$ is of type $1^{\\nu}, p$ and $1^{\\iota}$, respectively, and $\\bar{a} = \\bar{a} ^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{a} ^{p \\frown} \\bar{a}^{\\iota}$ can be extended to a transversal of $G$.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nBy inspecting Definition \\ref{def: transversal}. For example, let's describe the partial type $\\Phi^p(\\bar{x}^p)$ expressing that $\\bar{x}^p = (x_i^p : i < \\kappa)$ can be extended to a $p$-transversal (the conditions on $\\bar{x}^\\nu$ and $\\bar{x}^\\iota$ are expressed similarly). For $q \\in \\mathbb{N}$, let $\\phi_q(x)$ be the formula defining the set of all elements of type $q$ in $G$, let $\\phi_\\iota(x)$ define the set of isolated elements, and let $\\phi_{\\textrm{h}}(x_1, \\ldots, x_q)$ express that $x_1, \\ldots, x_q$ have the same handle.\nThe set of proper elements is defined by \n$$\\Phi_{\\textrm{prop}}(x) := \\{ \\forall y_1 \\ldots \\forall y_{n-1} (\\bigwedge_{i<n} \\phi_1(y_i) \\land \\neg \\phi_\\iota(y_i)) \\rightarrow  (x \\neq \\prod_{i<n} y_i ) : n \\in \\mathbb{N} \\}.$$\nThe independence requirement in the definition of a $p$-transversal can be expressed as a partial type \n$\\Phi_{\\textrm{ind}}(\\bar{x}^p)$ containing the formula\n\n\n$$ \\phi_{\\textrm{h}}(x^p_{i_0}, \\ldots, x^p_{i_{n-1}}) \\rightarrow $$\n$$\\left( \\forall y_0 \\ldots \\forall y_{m-1} \\forall z \\bigwedge_{i<m}(\\phi_1(y_i) \\land \\neg \\phi_\\iota(y_i) \\land z \\in Z(G)) \\rightarrow z \\cdot \\prod_{i<m} y_i^{r_i} \\neq \\prod_{j<n} (x^p_{i_j})^{q_j}  \\right)$$ \n\nfor each $m, n \\in \\mathbb{N}$, $i_0 < \\ldots < i_{n-1} < \\kappa$ and $q_0, \\ldots, q_{n-1}, r_0, \\ldots, r_{m-1} \\in \\mathbb{N}, 0 < q_j <p$.\n\n Then we can take $\\Phi^p(\\bar{x}^p) :=  \\{ \\phi_p(x_i^p) : i < \\kappa\\} \\cup \\{ \\neg( x_i^p \\sim x_j^p) : i<j<\\kappa \\} \\cup \\bigcup_{i < \\kappa} \\Phi_{\\textrm{prop}}(x_i^p) \\cup \\Phi_{\\textrm{ind}}(\\bar{x}^p)$.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe following can be easily deduced from \\cite[Corollary A.3.11]{hodges1993model}.\n\n\\begin{fact}\nLet $C$ be a nice graph. \nThere is an interpretation $\\Gamma$ such that for any model $G$ of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$, we have that $\\Gamma (G)$ is a model of $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$. More specifically, the graph $\\Gamma(G) = (V,R)$ is given by the set of vertices $V=\\{ g \\in G : g \\textrm{ is of type }1^\\nu, g \\notin Z(G) \\} \/ \\approx$ and the (well-defined) edge relation $([g]_{\\approx}, [h]_{\\approx}) \\in R$ $\\iff$ $g,h$ commute.\n\\end{fact}\n\n\nThe full set of transversal gives another important graph, a so called cover of a nice graph, which we define below.\n\n\\begin{defn}\\label{def: cover} \\begin{enumerate}\n\\item\n\tLet $C$ be an infinite nice graph. A graph $C^+$ containing $C$ as a subgraph is called a \\emph{cover} of $C$ if for every vertex $b \\in C^+ \\setminus C$, one of the following two statements holds:\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item there is a unique vertex $a$ in $C^+$ that is joined to $b$, and  moreover $a$ is in $C$ and it has infinitely many adjacent vertices in $C$;\n\t\t \n\t\t \\item $b$ is joined to no vertex in $C^+$.\n\t\t\\end{itemize}\n\t\n\\item\tA cover $C^+$ of $C$ is a \\emph{$\\lambda$-cover} if \n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item for every vertex $a$ in $C$ the number of vertices in $C^+\\setminus C$ joined to $a$ is $\\lambda$ if $a$ is joined to infinitely many vertices in $C$, and zero otherwise;\n\t\t\\item the number of new vertices in $C^+ \\setminus C$ which are not joined to any other vertex in $C^+$ is $\\lambda$.\n\t\t\\end{itemize}\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{defn}\nObserve that a proper cover of a nice graph is never a nice graph.\n\n\\begin{fact}\\cite[Corollary A.3.14(a) + proof of (c)]{hodges1993model}. \\label{rem: X as a cover}\nGiven a $1^\\nu$-transversal $X^\\nu$ of $G$, we identify  the elements of $X^\\nu$ with the set of vertices of $\\Gamma(G)$ by mapping $x \\in X^\\nu$ to its class $[x]_{\\approx}$. Then a transversal $X$ can be viewed as a cover of the nice graph given by the elements of type $1^\\nu$ in $X$, with the edge relation given by commutation. (See  Remark \\ref{rem: cover explanation} for an explanation.)\n\\end{fact}\n\n\n\\begin{fact}\\cite[Theorem A.3.14, Corollary A.3.15]{hodges1993model}\\label{fac: decomposition}\nLet $G$ be a model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ and let $X$ be a transversal of $G$. \n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item There is a subgroup of $Z(G)$ which we denote by $K_X$ such that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times K_X$.\n\\item The group $K_X$ is an elementary abelian $p$-group, in particular $\\operatorname{Th}(K_X)$ is stable and eliminates quantifiers.\n\\item If $G$ is saturated and uncountable, then both the graph $\\Gamma(G)$ and the group $K_X$ are also saturated (as $|K_X| = |G|$ and $\\operatorname{Th}(K_X)$ is uncountably categorical).\n\\item If $G$ is a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$, then every automorphism of $\\Gamma(G)$ can be lifted to an automorphism of $G$.\n\\item $\\langle X \\rangle \\cong G(X)$ via an isomorphism which is the identity on the elements in $X$ (where $X$ is viewed as a graph as in Remark \\ref{rem: X as a cover}, note that it doesn't have to be nice).\n\\item If $G$ is saturated then $X$ (where $X$ is viewed as a graph as in Remark \\ref{rem: X as a cover}) is a $|G|$-cover of $\\Gamma(G)$.\n\n\\end{enumerate}\nAlternatively, one could work with a special model instead of a saturated one to avoid any set-theoretic issues. \n\\end{fact}\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{rem: unbounded commutator products}\nThe reason given for (3) in \\cite{hodges1993model} appears to assume that $K_X$ is definable, which is not the case, so we provide a proof.\n\n\nAssume that $C$ is an infinite nice graph. \nGiven $m,n \\in \\omega$, let $\\psi_{m,n}$ be the sentence\n$$ \\forall g_1, \\ldots, g_{n} \\in Z \\exists x \\in Z \\left( \\forall z_1, \\ldots, z_{2m} \\bigwedge \\left(g^{\\alpha_1}_1 \\cdot \\ldots \\cdot g_{n}^{\\alpha_{n}} \\cdot x^\\alpha \\neq \\prod_{j=1}^{m}[z_{2j-1}, z_{2j}]  \\right) \\right),$$\nwhere the conjunction is over all $(\\alpha_1, \\ldots, \\alpha_{n-1}, \\alpha) \\in \n\\{ 0, \\ldots, p-1 \\}^{n+1}$ with $\\alpha \\neq 0$.\n\nWe claim that $G(C) \\models \\psi_{m,n}$ for all $m,n \\in \\omega$. Indeed, by \\cite[Lemma A.3.2(b)+(d)]{hodges1993model}, a basis for $G(C)'=Z(G(C))$ is given by the set of all elements of the form $[a,b]$ with $a,b$ elements in $C$ not connected by an edge. Since $C$ is nice, given any vertices $v \\neq w$ there is at most one vertex to which both $v$ and $w$ are connected. As $C$ is infinite, we can find  pairwise distinct elements $a$ and $\\{ b_i : i < \\omega \\}$ in $C$ such that $a$ is not connected by an edge to any of the $b_i$'s. Indeed, take any pairwise distinct elements $a', a'', (c_i : i < \\omega)$ in $C$. For each $i$, at most one of $a', a''$ is connected to $c_i$, hence for one of $a,a'$ there are infinitely many $i<\\omega$ such that it is not connected to $c_i$.\nHence $\\{[a,b_i] : i < \\omega \\}$ is a linearly independent set and $Z(G(C))$ has infinite dimension. Now, given arbitrary $m,n$ and $g_i \\in Z(G(C))$, assume that each $g_i$ is a linear combination of at most $t$ vectors from the basis. If we take $x$ to be a product of more than $nt + m$ non-trivial commutators, the equality above cannot hold (as $\\alpha \\neq 0$, and for any $l \\in \\omega$ the sum of $l$ vectors in a basis cannot be written as a linear combination of less than $l$ vectors in the same basis).\n\nNow let $G$ be a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$, $\\lambda := |G|$. In view of Remark \\ref{rem: invariance of tranversal}, it is enough to find a sequence $(h_i : i <\\lambda)$ of elements in $Z(G)$ which are linearly independent in the elementary abelian $p$-group $Z(G)$ over $G'$. This can be done by transfinite induction using saturation of $G(C)$ and the fact that given any finitely many elements $g_1, \\ldots, g_n \\in Z(G)$, we can find an element $x \\in Z(G)$ independent from them over $G'$ since $G \\models \\psi_{m,n}$ for all $m \\in \\omega$ (see Definition \\ref{def: indep over derived subgp}).\n \n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{rem: cover explanation}\nWe provide some details concerning Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}(6).\nThe fact that this is a cover in any model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ doesn't seem to follow explicitly from the statement of Axiom 10, as stated in the proof of \\cite[Corollary A.3.14(c)]{hodges1993model}. However, it follows by an argument similar to the proof of Remark \\ref{rem: unbounded commutator products}. This time, working in the vector space $ G\/Z(G)$ and using \\cite[Lemma A.3.9]{hodges1993model}, the proof of Axiom 10, and \\cite[Lemma A.3.2(c)]{hodges1993model} in $G(C)$, all the relevant sets in Definition \\ref{def: cover} are infinite, so by saturation can be demonstrated to be of size $|G|$ in a saturated model $G$.  \n\\end{remark}\n\n\nThe following lemma is a refinement of Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}(4) and \\cite[Lemma 4.12]{baudisch2002mekler}. \n\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{Lem_GlueAut}\n\tLet $G$ be a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$, $X$ be a transversal, and $K_X \\leq Z(G)$ be such that  $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times K_X$. Let  $Y$ and $Z$ be two small subsets  of $X$ and let $\\bar h_1, \\bar h_2$ be two tuples in $K_X$. Suppose that \n\t%\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item there is a bijection $f$ between  $Y$ and $Z$ which respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$-, and $1^{\\iota}$-parts, the handles, and $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma} (Y^{\\nu}) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma} (f(Y^{\\nu}))$,\n\t\t\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{K_X}(\\bar h_1) = \\operatorname{tp}_{K_X}(\\bar h_2)$.\n\t\t\\end{itemize}\nThen there is an automorphism of $G$ coinciding with $f$ on $Y$ and sending  $\\bar h_1$ to  $\\bar h_2$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nBy Remark \\ref{rem: X as a cover}, we identify $\\Gamma(G)$ with $X^\\nu$. By saturation of $\\Gamma(G)$, $f \\restriction Y_\\nu$ extends to an automorphism $\\sigma$ of the graph $X^\\nu$. As $X$ is a $|G|$-cover of $X^\\nu$ by saturation of $G$, and $f$ respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$-, and $1^{\\iota}$-parts and the handles, $\\sigma$ extends to an automorphism $\\tau$ of the graph $X$ agreeing with $f$ using a straightforward back-and-forth argument. By Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}(5), we have that $\\langle X \\rangle \\cong G(X)$ and $\\tau$ lifts to an automorphism of the group $G(X)$, hence to an automorphism $\\tilde{\\tau}$ of $\\langle X \\rangle$ extending $f$ by construction. As $K_X$ is saturated by Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}(3), there is an automorphism $\\rho$ of $K_X$ which maps $\\bar h_1$ to $\\bar h_2$. We can now take the cartesian product of $\\tilde{\\tau} \\times \\rho$ to obtain an automorphism of $G$ which extends $f$ and maps $\\bar h_1$ to $\\bar h_2$.  \n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\nNext, we observe that in Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition} the choice of a transversal and an elementary abelian subgroup of the center in the decomposition of $G$ can be made entirely independently of each other.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem: invariance of tranversal}\nLet $G$ be any model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ and let $X$ be a transversal of $G$. Then we have $G' = \\langle X\\rangle '$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\\proof Let $K$ be a subgroup of $Z(G)$ as in Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}, such that $G = \\langle X\\rangle \\times K$. It is enough to show that for all $g, g' \\in G$, we have that $[g,g']$ is in $\\langle X\\rangle '$. We choose\n$x, y \\in \\langle X \\rangle $ and $h,k \\in K$ such that $g =  x \\cdot  h$ and $g' = y \\cdot  k$. Then, using that $G$ is $2$-nilpotent, we have $$[g,g'] = [  x \\cdot h, y \\cdot k] = [x, y],$$ which is in $\\langle X\\rangle '$.\n\\qed\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{rem: invariance of tranversal}\nLet $X$ and $Y$ be two transversals, and let $K_X$ be such that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times K_X$. Then the proof of \\cite[Theorem A.3.14(d)]{hodges1993model} and Lemma \\ref{lem: invariance of tranversal} imply that $G = \\langle Y \\rangle \\times K_X$. Furthermore, that proof also implies that for any set $B$ of elements in $Z(G)$ which are linearly independent in  the elementary abelian $p$-group $Z(G)$ over $G'$ (seen as an $\\mathbb F_p$-vector space), there is a subgroup $K$ of $G$ containing $B$ such that for any transversal $X$ of $G$, we have that $G=\\langle X\\rangle \\times K$.\n\t\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\begin{defn}\\label{def: indep over derived subgp}\n\n\nFor any small cardinal $\\kappa$, let $\\Psi((y_i)_{ i \\in \\kappa})$ be the partial type  consisting of the formulas ``$y_i \\in Z(G)$'' for all $i < \\kappa$, and the formulas   \n$$ \\forall z_0, \\dots, z_{2m-1}\n\\left(\n\\bigwedge_{(\\alpha_0, \\dots , \\alpha_{n-1}) \\in \\{0, \\ldots, p-1 \\}^{ n}\\setminus ( 0, \\dots, 0)} \n\\left(\\, y_{i_0}^{\\alpha_0} \\cdot \\ldots \\cdot y_{i_{n-1}}^{\\alpha_{n-1}}\n \\neq \n \\prod_{j=0}^{m-1} [z_{2j}, z_{2j+1}] \\ \n\n \\right)\\right)$$\n \nfor all $m,n \\in \\mathbb{N}$ and $i_0, \\ldots, i_n \\in \\kappa$. \n\nAn easy inspection yields that for any tuple $\\bar{b}$, $\\bar b \\models \\Psi(\\bar y)$ if and only if $\\bar{b}$ is a tuple of central elements linearly independent in  the elementary abelian $p$-group $Z(G)$ over $G'$ (seen as an $\\mathbb F_p$-vector space).\n\\end{defn}\n\nLet now $\\Phi(\\bar x)$, with $\\bar x = \\bar{x}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{x}^{p \\frown} \\bar{x}^{\\iota}$, be the partial type given by Lemma \\ref{lem: transversal type def}.\n Consider the partial type $$\\pi(\\bar x ,\\bar{y}) = \\Phi(\\bar x) \\cup  \\Psi(\\bar y).$$\n \n\n\n\\begin{prop} \\label{prop: type def}\nLet $G$ be a model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$. Then $G \\models \\pi(\\bar a ,\\bar{b})$ if and only if we can extend $\\bar a$ to a transversal $X$ of $G$ and find a subset $H \\subseteq Z(G)$ containing $\\bar{b}$ which is linearly independent over $G'$, so that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times \\langle H \\rangle$.\n\\end{prop}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\nCombining this with Remark \\ref{rem: invariance of tranversal}, there is a subgroup $K$ of $G$ containing $\\bar b$ such that for any transversal $X$ of $G$, we have that $G=\\langle X\\rangle \\times K$.\nCombining this with Lemma \\ref{lem: transversal type def}, we can conclude.\n\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\\if 0\n\n\\section{Indiscernible sequences in Mekler's construction}\\label{sec: Indiscernibles decomposition}\nWe will need the following classical result of Morley and Shelah on the existence of indiscernible subsequences in stable theories.\n\\begin{fact}\nLet $T$ be a stable theory, and \n\\end{fact}\n\nWe remark that no analog of this result holds for NIP theories without any set-theoretic assumptions (see ***).\n\n\n\n\\begin{prop}\nLet $C$ be an infinite nice graph. Then $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$    is  NIP if and only if $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is NIP.\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\proof\nAs the graph $C$ is interpretable in any model of  $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$, the implication from left to right is obviously true. \n\nTo proof the reverse implication assume that the contrary, namely that there is a nice graph $C$ such that  $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP but  $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ has IP. By Fact \\ref{factNIP}, we can find  an $\\emptyset$-indiscernible sequence  $(a_i)_{i \\in \\kappa}$ of elements  in a saturated model $G$ of  $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ that witnesses IP.\n\n\nNow, fix a transversal $X= X_{\\nu} \\cup X_p \\cup X_{\\iota}$.\nAs every element is a product of finitely many elements in the transversal multiplied by an element of $H$, we may assume, modulo passing to a subsequence of the same length,  that there is  is natural numbers $n$,\nelements in the transversal $ (x_{ji})_{i <\\kappa,\\, j\\leq n}$ and elements $(h_i)_{i < \\kappa}$ in $H$ such that $ a_i = \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} x_{ji}\\cdot  h_i$. \n\nThe first step is to pass to a subsequence and choose a priori different transversal in way that each $a_i$ can be written as a $n$-product of elements in the transversal (i.\\ e.\\ we can find a subsequence and a transversal for which all $h_i$'s are $1$).\n\nAs there are only three different types of elements, modulo passing to a subsequence of the same length, we may assume that for a fixed $0\\leq j\\leq n-1$, the elements $x_{ji}$ for $i<\\kappa$ is of the same type, i.\\ e.\\ all are of type $1^\\nu$, $p$, or $1^\\iota$. Furthermore, for each coordinate, we may assume that the elements are all equal or all distinct and if for some $t$ and $s$ the sequence $(x_{ji})_{i< \\kappa}$ constant and $(x_{ts})_{s< \\kappa}$ is non constant, we have that $x_{is} \\not= x_{j0}$.\n\nNow, without loss of generality suppose that $ x_{0i}$'s are all distinct. Let \n$$\\beta_\\alpha = \\min\\{\\beta : \\exists 0< k <n,\\ x_{\\beta, \\, k}= x_{\\alpha, \\, 0}\\}. $$\n Consider the function $f: \\kappa \\rightarrow \\kappa,$ given by\n$$ f(\\alpha)=\\begin{cases}  \\beta_\\alpha \\text{ if  } \\beta_\\alpha < \\alpha   \\\\\n\n0 \\text{ otherwise} \n\\end{cases}\n$$\nBy Fodor's Lemma and the easily verifiable  fact that for some $\\gamma$ different than $0$, the set $\\{\\alpha < \\kappa: f(\\alpha)= \\gamma\\}$ has size at most $n-1$, there is a stationary subset $S$ of $\\kappa$ such that $f: S \\rightarrow \\kappa$ is constantly zero. As $S$ still has order type $\\kappa$, we may assume that our sequence is the form $ (x_{0i}, \\dots, x_{n-1,i})_{i <\\kappa}$ such that for all $j<i<\\kappa$ and $0<k<n$ we have that $x_{0i} \\neq x_{kj}$. \nNow, we want to replace our set of transversal recursively on $i<\\kappa$ in a way such that each $(a_i =\\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} y_{ji} )$ for some $y_{ji} $ in the transversal. Suppose you have succeeded for all ordinals less than $\\alpha$. Now, let $m$ the size of the set $\\{k: x_{\\alpha, k} = x_{\\alpha, 0}\\}$ (i.\\ e.\\ the number of appearances of $x_{0\\alpha}$ in the product which gives $a_\\alpha$). Now replace $x_{\\alpha,0}$ by $x_{0 \\alpha}\\cdot h_i^q$ with $q<p$ such that $qn\\equiv 1\\ (\\text{mod } p)$. Then,\n$$ a_\\alpha = \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} x_{j \\alpha } .$$\nMoreover, it is easy to check that this set remains a transversal. By the choice of the sequence $x_{ji}$'s, the element $x_{0 \\alpha}$ does not appear in the product which gives $a_i$ for $i<\\alpha$. Thus, for this new transversal such an $a_i$ remains equal to the product $\\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} x_{ji}$. Now, for each $\\gamma>\\alpha$ in which $x_{0 \\alpha}$  makes an appearance in the product of $a_\\gamma$, we can replace this element by $x_{0 \\alpha}\\cdot h_i^q$  and change $h_{\\gamma}$ accordingly such that $ a_\\gamma = \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} x_{j \\gamma }\\cdot  h_{\\gamma}$. This finishes our construction.\n\n Next we replace the sequences of $n$-tuples $\\bar x_i$ by an indiscernible one. To do so, we first add the handles of each of the elements of type $p$ to the end of our sequence to insure that the tuples $\\bar x_i$ are closed under handles. Note that these tuples will still have the same length. Now we can find an indiscernible sequence $(\\bar y_i)_{i<\\kappa}$ such that\n$$ \\operatorname{EM}( a_i, \\bar x_i: i \\in \\kappa) \\subset \\operatorname{tp}(\\bar a_i,\\bar y_i: i \\in \\kappa). $$\nNote that $ a_i $ remains to be equal to $  \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} y_{ji}$ and that $\\bigcup_{i\\in \\kappa} \\bar y_i$ can be completed to a transversal $Y$ of $G$. \n\n\nAs the original sequence witnesses IP, we can find a $m$-tuple  $\\bar g= (g_0, \\dots, g_{m-1})$ of elements in $G$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}(a_i \/ \\bar g)$ alternates. Choose elements $(z_{ij})_{i<m, j<n_m}$ in the transversal and elements $(k_i)_{i<m}$ in $H$ such that $g_i = \\Pi_{j=1}^{n_i} z_{ij}\\cdot k_i$. Again, we may prolong the tuples $\\bar z_i = (z_{i0}, \\dots, z_{i,n_m-1})$ to include all handles of elements of type $p$. After possibly cutting an initial segment of our sequence, we may assume that if $(y_{ij})_{j< \\kappa}$ is non constant, then non of these elements coincide with one of the $z_{ij}$'s.\n \nNow let $Y_i= Y_{\\nu}^{(i)} \\cup Y_{p}^{(i)} \\cup Y_{\\iota}^{(i)}$ where $Y_{\\nu}^{(i)}$, $Y_{p}^{(i)}$, and $Y_{\\iota}^{(i)}$ are the elements of type $1\\nu$, $p$, and $1^\\iota$ respectively in the tuple $\\bar y_i$. Moreover, let $Z= Z_{\\nu} \\cup Z_p \\cup Z_{\\iota}$ be elements of type $1\\nu$, $p$, and $1^\\iota$ respectively in the set $\\{z_{ij}: i< m, j<n_m\\}$. We have that $Y_{\\nu}^{(i)}$ are an indiscernible sequence in $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$.  Thus, as $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP, we have that $\\operatorname{tp}(Y_\\nu^i)$ stabilizes over $Z_\\nu$, in particular, we may assume that $Y_\\nu^i$ is indiscernible over $Z_\\nu$.\n \n \nand a finite subset $Z =Z_{\\nu} \\cup Z_p \\cup Z_{\\iota}$ of $Y$ such that $g= s(Z_{\\nu} , Z_p, Z_{\\iota}, h)$. Assume again that $Z$ is closed under handles.  As $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP  and $Y^i$ are indiscernible, we have that $\\operatorname{tp}(Y_\\nu^i)$ stabilizes over $Z_\\nu$, in particular, we may assume that $Y_\\nu^{(i)}$ is indiscernible over $Z_\\nu$. Moreover, by indiscernibility  of $Y^{(i)}$ we have that for all $i, j$ in $\\kappa$,\n$$Y_p^{(i)} \\cap Z_p = Y_p^{(j)} \\cap Z_p \\ \\ \\ \\  \\mbox{ and } \\ \\ \\ \\ Y_\\iota^{(i)} \\cap Z_\\iota = Y_\\iota^{(j)} \\cap Z_\\iota.$$\nPutting all together, we obtain that for any two sequences $i_0 < i_1 < \\dots < i_l,$ and $j_0 < j_1 < \\dots < j_l$ in $\\kappa$ we can find a bijection $\\sigma$ between  $(Y^{i_0},  \\dots, Y^{i_l})$ and $(Y^{j_0},  \\dots, Y^{j_l})$ such that \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma (Y_\\nu^{i_0},  \\dots, Y^{i_l}, Z_\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma (\\sigma(Y^{i_0},  \\dots, \\sigma(Y^{i_l}), Z_\\nu) $.\n\\item the map $\\sigma$ fixes $Z$.\n\\item  the map $\\sigma$ respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$-, and $1^{\\iota}$-parts and the handles;\n\n\\end{itemize}\nThus by Fact \\ref{Fact_Bau} we have that $$\\operatorname{tp} (Y^{i_0},  \\dots, Y^{i_l}, Z_\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp} (\\sigma(Y^{i_0}),  \\dots, \\sigma(Y^{i_l}), Z)  = \\operatorname{tp} (Y^{j_0},  \\dots, Y^{j_l}, Z) .$$\nor in other words there is an automorphism $f$ fixing $Z$ mapping $(Y^{i_0},  \\dots, Y^{i_l})$ to  $(Y^{j_0},  \\dots, Y^{j_l})$. Furthermore, we may assume that this automorphism fixes $H$.\nThis implies that the sequence $a_i =   \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} y_{ji}$ is indiscernible over $\\bar g$ contradicting the initial assumption.\n\n\\qed\n\n\nLet $G$ be a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\n\tLet $g$ be an element of $G$. For a given transversal $X$ of $G$ and the corresponding subgroup $H$ of $G$ such that $G= \\langle X \\rangle \\times H$ and $(x_1, \\dots, x_n)$ in $X$ and $h$ in $H$ such that $g=\\Pi_{i=1}^n x_i \\cdot h$ we call $x_i$ the \\emph{$i$th coordinate} of $g$.\n\t\\end{defn}\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\\label{Lem_IndStep}\n\t\n\t\tLet \n\t\t%\n\t\t$$ (\\bar a_{\\alpha}= (a_{\\alpha}^0, \\dots, a_{\\alpha}^{d}), b_\\alpha, (x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^0)_{m_0},\t\\dots  (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_{m_d}): \\alpha <2^\\kappa) $$ \n\t\t%\n\t\tbe an indiscernible sequence in $G$  such that the collection \n\t\t%\n\t\t$$X_0 = \\{  (x_{\\alpha}^i)_j ; \\alpha< 2^\\kappa, i < d, j <m_i\\}$$\n\t\t%\n\t\t is a part of a transversal and  for $i\\leq d$ we have that\n\t\t%\n\t\t$$a_\\alpha^i = \\Pi_{j=0}^{n-1} (x_{\\alpha}^i)_j. $$\n\t\t%\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\tSuppose there is a transversal $Y$ extending $X_0$ and an a natural number $m$ such that\n\t\n\tfor the sequence\t$b_{\\alpha}  = \\Pi_{j=0}^{m} (y_{\\alpha})_j \\cdot h_{\\alpha}$\n\t\tat least one of the coordinates is pairwise different, say the $r$ one, and moreover for each $\\alpha$ this coordinate differs from all the coordinates of the elements $a_{\\alpha}^1, \\dots, a_{\\alpha}^{d}$, i.\\ e.\\  $(y_{\\alpha})_r$ is different from any $(x_{\\alpha}^{i})_r$ for $0\\leq i <d$ and $1\\leq j \\leq m_i$.\n\t\n\t\t\n\tThen there is a subsequence $( b_\\alpha)_{\\alpha \\in I}$ of $ ( b_{\\alpha})_{\\alpha <2^\\kappa}$ of length at least $\\kappa$, a transversal $X$ extending $X_0$ and $(x_{\\alpha})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha})_{m}$ in $X$ such that \n\n\t$$b_\\alpha = \\Pi_{j=0}^{m} (x_{\\alpha})_j,$$\n\t\n\tand \n\t\t$$ (\\bar a_{\\alpha},  b_\\alpha,[(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^0)_{m_0}],\\dots  \t [(x_{\\alpha}^{d})_0,  \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_{m_d}], [(x_{\\alpha})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha})_{m} )]: \\alpha \\in I) $$ \n\t\t%\n\t\tis still an indiscernible sequence in $G$.\n\n\t\t\\end{lemma}\n\\proof\nAs there are only 3 different types of elements in the transversal, up to passing to a subsequence and using the pigeonhole principle we may assume that for each $\\alpha \\in 2^\\kappa $ the $i$th coordinate of each $b_\\alpha$ is of the same type.\n\nSecondly using Erdos Rado, there is a subsequence  index by $I$ of length at least $\\kappa$ such that  for each pair of coordinates, we may assume that uniformly equal in the following sense: Given $i\\leq d$, $k\\leq m_i$, and $s\\neq t  \\leq m$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\mbox{either} & (x_{\\alpha}^{i})_k = (y_\\beta)_s \\mbox { for all  }  \\alpha \\neq \\beta \\mbox{ in } I\\\\\n\\mbox{or} & (x_{\\alpha}^{i})_k \\neq (y_\\beta)_s \\mbox { for all  }  \\alpha \\neq \\beta \\mbox{ in } I\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nand\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\mbox{either} & (x_{\\alpha})_t= (y_\\beta)_s \\mbox { for all  }  \\alpha \\neq \\beta \\mbox{ in } I\\\\\n\\mbox{or} & (x_{\\alpha})_t \\neq (y_\\beta)_s \\mbox { for all  }  \\alpha \\neq \\beta \\mbox{ in } I\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nand for all $\\alpha \\in I$\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\mbox{either} &  (y_{\\alpha})_t= (y_\\alpha)_s \\\\\n\\mbox{or} & (y_{\\alpha})_t \\neq (y_\\alpha)_s \n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThis implies moreover, that if for a given $\\alpha \\in I$ and $j\\leq m$, the coordinate $(y_\\alpha)_t$ belongs to \n$$X_0 \\setminus \\{ (x_{\\alpha}^{i})_k: 0\\leq i \\leq d, 0\\leq k \\leq m_i \\},$$\nthen this coordinate has to be constant.\nNow, consider the $r$ coordinate of $b_\\alpha$ which is by assumption pairwise different and does not coincide with any of the $(x_{\\alpha}^{i})_k$. By the above, we have that for all $\\alpha \\in I$, the element  $(y_\\alpha)_r$ does not belong to $X_0$. Moreover there is a natural number $\\ell$ such that $\\ell$ many of the coordinates of $b_\\alpha$ coincides with $(y_\\alpha)_r$. \n\nNext, replace $ (y_{\\alpha})_r$ by $ (y_{\\alpha})_r \\cdot (h_{\\alpha})^q$  with $q<p$ such that $q\\ell \\equiv 1\\ (\\text{mod } p)$ in the transversal $Y$. By Lemma \\ref{Lem_RemTrans} this remains a transversal. Then,\n$$ b_\\alpha = \\Pi_{j=0}^{m} (y_\\alpha)_j  $$\nin the transversal $X$. Furthermore, as we haven't replaced any of the elements in $X_0$, we have still that  each $a_{\\alpha}^{i}$ is equal to $\\Pi_{j=1}^{m_1} (x_{\\alpha}^{i})_j$. Now we can find elements $(\\bar x_\\alpha)_{\\alpha \\in I}$ such that\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t & \\operatorname{EM}( (\\bar a_{\\alpha},  b_\\alpha,[(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^0)_{m_0}],\\dots  \t [(x_{\\alpha}^{d})_0,  \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_{m_d}], [(y_{\\alpha})_0, \\dots, (y_{\\alpha})_{m} ]): \\alpha \\in I)  \\\\\n\t \\subset& \\operatorname{tp} (\\bar a_{\\alpha},  b_\\alpha,[(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^0)_{m_0}],\\dots  \t [(x_{\\alpha}^{d})_0,  \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_{m_d}], [(x_{\\alpha})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha})_{m} )]: \\alpha \\in I)  . \n\t \\end{eqnarray*}\nand \n$$(\\bar a_{\\alpha},  b_\\alpha,[(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^0)_{m_0}],\\dots  \t [(x_{\\alpha}^{d})_0,  \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{d})_{m_d}], [(x_{\\alpha})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha})_{m} )]$$\nis moreover indiscernible. Note that $ X_1 = X_0 \\cup \\{(x_{\\alpha})_j: \\alpha \\in \\kappa, 0\\leq j\\leq m\\}$ can be completed to a transversal $X$ of $G$ and that \n$$b_\\alpha = \\Pi_{j=0}^{m} (x_{\\alpha})_j.$$\nThis completes the proof.\n\\qed \n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{Lem_a->X}\nLet $(\\bar a_\\alpha: \\alpha \\in \\lambda)$ is an indiscernible sequence and let $\\ell$ be $|\\bar a_\\alpha|$. Suppose that  $\\lambda \\geq \\operatorname{exp}_\\ell(\\kappa)$. \nThen there is \n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item a subset $I$ of $\\lambda$ of size at least $\\kappa$;\n\t\\item a transversal $X =X^\\nu\\cup X^p\\cup X^\\iota $;\n\t\\item  a finite tuple of elements $\\bar c$ in $X$;\n\t\\item an indiscernible sequence $(X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha: \\alpha \\in I)$ where $ X^\\nu_\\alpha\\subset  X^\\nu$, $ X^p_\\alpha\\subset  X^p$, $ X^\\iota_\\alpha\\subset  X^\\iota$, $\\bar h_\\alpha$ is a tuple in $H_X$, and $X^\\nu_\\alpha$ contains all handles of elements in $X^p_\\alpha$;\n\t\n\n\\item terms $t_0(\\bar z), \\dots, t_{\\ell}(\\bar z)$;\n\\end{itemize}\n such that\n$$ a_\\alpha^i= t_i (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c)$$\n\\end{lemma}\n\\proof\nUp to passing to a subsequence and permuting the tuple, using inductively Lemma \\ref{Lem_IndStep} we may assume that there is a transversal $X$ and $t\\leq d$ such that for every $k\\leq t$, there is a natural number $m_k$ and elements $\\{(x_{\\alpha}^{k})_{j})\\}_{\\alpha\\in \\kappa, 1\\leq j\\leq m_k}$ in $X$ such that \n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $a_\\alpha^k = \\Pi_{j=0}^{m_k}(x_{\\alpha}^{k})_{j}$;\n\\item $(\\bar a_\\alpha, [(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{0})_{m_0}],\\dots,  [(x_{\\alpha}^{t})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{t})_{m_t}])$ is indiscernible;\n\\item for $k> t$, we have that for all $\\alpha$\n$a_{\\alpha}^{k}  = \\Pi_{j=1}^{m_k} (x_{\\alpha}^{k})_j \\cdot h_{\\alpha}^{k}$\n with $ (x_{\\alpha}^{k})_j \\in X$ and  $h_{\\alpha}^{k} \\in H_X$, and for each coordinate $j$ which is pairwise different, this coordinate is equal to one of the coordinates of $a_\\alpha^s$ for some $s \\leq t$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\nNow, for each coordinate sequence of the sequence $a_\\alpha^k$ with $k>t$  that is constant, we add this element to the tuple $\\bar c$. \n\nAs the theory of $H_X$ is stable, there is $I$ of size $\\kappa$ such that for every $t\\leq k\\leq d$, the sequence $(h_\\alpha^k)_{\\alpha \\in I}$ is indiscernible in the sense of $H_X$. Now, we may add the sequence  $(\\bar h_\\alpha = (h_\\alpha^{t+1}, \\dots, h_\\alpha^{d}))$ to the above sequence obtain \n$$(\\bar a_\\alpha, [(x_{\\alpha}^{0})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{0})_{m_0}],\\dots,  [(x_{\\alpha}^{t})_0, \\dots, (x_{\\alpha}^{t})_{m_t}], \\bar h_\\alpha)$$\n As we can clue any automorphism of $H_X$ with any automorphism on $\\langle X \\rangle$ to obtain an automorphism of $G$, this sequence remains indiscernible.\n \nNow, let $X^\\nu_\\alpha$ be the elements of type $1^\\nu$, let $X^p$ be the elements of type $p$, and let $ X^\\iota$ be the elements of type $1^\\iota$ in the set $\\{ x_{\\alpha}^{k})_i: 0\\leq i \\leq d, 0\\leq k \\leq m_i\\}$. \nAs the handle of an element $x$ of type $p$ is definable over $x$, we may add these to the set $X^\\nu_\\alpha$ and assume our set is closed under handles. Since for each $i\\leq d$, the element $a_\\alpha^i$ is a product of $m_i$ many elements and possibly $h_\\alpha^i$, we can fix a term $t_i$ such that \n$$a_\\alpha^i= t_i (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c)$$\n and we can conclude.\n\\qed \n\n\n\n\\proof[Proof with tuples 1. try]\nSuppose that $\\phi(x; \\bar y)$ has IP, let $\\ell$ be $|\\bar y|$ and $\\lambda \\geq \\operatorname{exp}_\\ell(\\kappa)$. Choose an indiscernible sequence $(\\bar a_\\alpha = a_{\\alpha}^1, \\dots, a_{\\alpha}^d)_{\\alpha \\in \\lambda}$ witnessing it. By Lemma \\ref{Lem_a->X} we can find \n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item a subset $I$ of $\\lambda$ of size at least $\\kappa$;\n\t\\item a transversal $X =X^\\nu\\cup X^p\\cup X^\\iota $;\n\t\\item  a finite tuple of elements $\\bar c$ in $X$;\n\t\\item an indiscernible sequence $(X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha: \\alpha \\in I)$ where $ X^\\nu_\\alpha\\subset  X^\\nu$, $ X^p_\\alpha\\subset  X^p$, $ X^\\iota_\\alpha\\subset  X^\\iota$, $\\bar h_\\alpha$ is a tuple in $H_X$, and $X^\\nu_\\alpha$ contains all handles of elements in $X^p_\\alpha$;\n\\item terms $t_0(\\bar z), \\dots, t_{\\ell}(\\bar z)$;\n\\end{itemize}\n such that\n$$ a_\\alpha^i= t_i (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c)$$\nNow let $\\psi(x, \\bar z, \\bar y)$ be the formula such that\n$$ \\psi(x, \\bar c, X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha) \\leftrightarrow \\phi(x; t_0 (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c), \\dots , t_\\ell (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c) ).$$\n\nAs the sequence witnesses IP of the formula $\\phi(x; \\bar y)$, we can choose $g$ in $G$ such that\n$$\\models \\phi(g; t_0 (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c), \\dots , t_\\ell (X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha, \\bar c) ) \\mbox{ if and only if $i$ is odd }$$\nThus \n$$\\models \\psi(g, \\bar c; X^\\nu_\\alpha, X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha, \\bar h_\\alpha ) \\mbox{ if and only if $i$ is odd }.$$\n\nChoose elements $(z_i)_{i<m}$ in the transversal $X$ and an element $k$ in $H$ such that $g = \\Pi_{j=1}^{m} z_i \\cdot k$. Again, we may prolong the tuples $\\bar z$ to include all handles of elements of type $p$. After possibly cutting an initial segment of our sequence, we may assume that if $((x_\\alpha^k)_j)_{\\alpha < \\kappa}$ is non constant, then non of these elements coincide with one of the $z_i$'s.\n \nNow, let $Z= Z^{\\nu} \\cup Z^p \\cup Z^{\\iota}$ be elements of type $1^\\nu$, $p$, and $1^\\iota$ respectively in the set $\\{z_i: i< m\\} \\cup \\bar c$. We have that $(X^{\\nu}_{\\alpha})_{\\alpha < \\kappa}$ is an indiscernible sequence in $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ (remark that this is true because $C$ is interpretable in $G$ using $X^\\nu$).  \nThus, as $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP, we have that $\\operatorname{tp}(X^{\\nu}_{\\alpha})$ stabilizes over $Z^\\nu$, in particular, we may assume that $X^{\\nu}_{\\alpha}$ is indiscernible over $Z^\\nu$. Moreover, by indiscernibility  of $ X^p_\\alpha, X^\\iota_\\alpha$ we have that for all $\\alpha, \\beta$ in $\\kappa$,\n$$X^p_\\alpha \\cap Z^p = X^p_\\beta \\cap Z^p \\ \\ \\ \\  \\mbox{ and } \\ \\ \\ \\ X^\\iota_\\alpha \\cap Z^\\iota = X^\\iota_\\beta \\cap Z^\\iota.$$\nPutting all together, we obtain that for any two sequences $\\alpha_0 < \\alpha_1 < \\dots < \\alpha_l,$ and $\\beta_0 < \\beta_1 < \\dots < \\beta_l$ in $\\kappa$ we can find a bijection $\\sigma$ between  $(X_{\\alpha_0},  \\dots, X_{\\alpha_l})$ and $(X_{\\beta_0},  \\dots, X_{\\beta_l})$ such that \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma (X_{\\alpha_0},  \\dots, X_{\\alpha_l}, Z_\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma (\\sigma(X_{\\beta_0}),  \\dots, \\sigma(X_{\\beta_l}), Z_\\nu) $.\n\\item the map $\\sigma$ fixes $Z$.\n\\item  the map $\\sigma$ respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$-, and $1^{\\iota}$-parts and the handles;\n\n\\end{itemize}\nThus by Fact \\ref{Fact_Bau} we have that $$\\operatorname{tp} (X_{\\alpha_0},  \\dots, X_{\\alpha_l}, Z^\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp} (\\sigma(X_{\\alpha_0}),  \\dots, \\sigma(X_{\\alpha_l}), Z \\cap X^\\nu)  = \\operatorname{tp} (X_{\\beta_0},  \\dots, X_{\\beta_l}, Z) .$$\nor in other words there is an automorphism $\\rho$ fixing $Z$ mapping $(X_{\\alpha_0},  \\dots, X_{\\alpha_l})$ to  $(X_{\\beta_0},  \\dots, X_{\\beta_l})$. \n\nFurthermore, by indiscernibility of $(h_\\alpha)$, there is also an automorphism $\\tau $ of $H$ mapping $(h_{\\alpha_0}, \\dots, h_{\\alpha_l})$ to $(h_{\\beta_0}, \\dots, h_{\\beta_l})$. Now the automorphism $\\rho \\times \\tau$ gives us the desired automorphism of $G$.\nThis \n\n\\qed\n\n\\fi\n\n\\section{Preservation of NIP}\\label{sec: NIP}\nWe begin with the simplest case demonstrating that NIP is preserved. Recall the following basic characterization of NIP.\n\n\\begin{fact} (see e.g. \\cite{adler2008introduction}) \\label{fac: char of NIP}\nLet $T$ be a complete first-order theory and let $\\mathbb{M} \\models T$ be a monster model. Let $\\kappa$ be the regular cardinal $ |T|^+$. Then the following are equivalent.\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $T$ is NIP.\n\\item For every indiscernible sequence $I = (\\bar a_i : i\\in \\kappa)$ of finite tuples and a finite tuple $\\bar b$ in $\\mathbb{M}$, there is some $\\alpha < \\kappa$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}(\\bar b \\bar a_i) = \\operatorname{tp}(\\bar b \\bar a_j)$ for all $i,j > \\alpha$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{fact}\n\nAs in Section \\ref{sec: Mekler},  let $C$ be a nice graph and let $G(C)$ be the $2$-nilpotent group of exponent $p$ which is freely generated (in the variety of 2-nilpotent groups) by the vertices of $C$ by imposing that two generators commute if and only if they are connected by an edge in $C$.\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm: NIP}\n$\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP if and only if $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is NIP.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nIf $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is NIP, then $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is also NIP as $C$ is interpretable in $G(C)$.\n\nNow, we want to prove the converse. Let $G \\models \\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ be a saturated model, and assume that $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ has IP but $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NIP. Fix $\\kappa$ to be $ (\\aleph_0)^+$. Then there is some formula $\\phi(\\bar{x},\\bar{y}) \\in L_G$, and a sequence $I = (\\bar{a}_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ in $G$ shattered by $\\phi(\\bar{x},\\bar{y})$, i.e. such that for every $S \\subseteq \\kappa$, there is some $\\bar{b}_S$ in $G$ satisfying $G \\models \\phi(\\bar{b}_S, \\bar{a}_i)$ if and only if $ i \\in S$.\n\nLet $X$ be a transversal for $G$ and $H \\subseteq Z(G)$ a set of elements linearly independent over $G'$ and such that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times \\langle H \\rangle$. Then for each $i \\in \\kappa$ we have, slightly abusing notation, $\\bar{a}_i = t_i (\\bar{x}_i , \\bar{h}_i)$ for some $L_G$-term $t_i$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{x}_i= \\bar{x}_i^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{x}_i^{p \\frown} \\bar{x}_i^{\\iota}$ from $X$  where $\\bar{x}_i^\\nu, \\bar{x}_i^p, \\bar{x}_i^\\iota$ list all of the elements  of type $1^\\nu, p, 1^\\iota$ in $\\bar{x}_i$, respectively, and $\\bar{h}_i$ from $H$. After adding some elements of type $1^\\nu$ to the beginning of the tuple and changing the term $t_i$ accordingly, we may assume that for each $i\\in \\kappa$ and $j< |\\bar x_i^p|$, the handle of the j-$th$ element of  $\\bar{x}_i^p$ is the $j$-th element of  $\\bar{x}_i^\\nu$ (there might be some repetitions of elements of type $1^\\nu$ as different elements of type $p$ might have the same handle). As $\\kappa > |L_G| + \\aleph_0$, passing to a cofinal subsequence and reordering the tuples if necessary, we may assume that:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $t_i = t \\in L_G$ and $|\\bar{x}_i|$ and $ |\\bar{h}_i|$ are constant for all $i \\in \\kappa$,\n\\item\n$|\\bar{x}_i^\\nu|, |\\bar{x}_i^p|, |\\bar{x}_i^\\iota|$ are constant for all $i \\in \\kappa$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nConsider the $L_G$-formula $\\phi'(\\bar{x},\\bar{y}') = \\phi(\\bar{x}; t(\\bar{y}_1 , \\bar{y}_2))$ with $\\bar{y}' := \\bar{y}_1^{\\frown} \\bar{y}_2$ and $|\\bar y_1|= |\\bar x_i|$ and $|\\bar y_2|= |\\bar h_i|$. Let $\\bar{a}'_i := \\bar{x}_i^{\\frown}\\bar{h}_i$. Then the sequence $I' := (\\bar{a}'_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ is  shattered by $\\phi'(\\bar{x},\\bar{y}')$. Note however that $I'$ is generally not indiscernible. \n\nTo fix this, let $J = ((\\bar{x}'_i)^\\frown \\bar{h}'_i  : i \\in \\kappa)$ be an $L_G$-indiscernible sequence of tuples in $G$ with the same EM-type as $I'$. Then we have:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $J$ is still shattered by $\\phi'(\\bar{x}, \\bar{y}')$,\n\\item for each $i\\in \\kappa$ and $j< |x_i^p|$, we have that the handle of the $j$-th element of  $(\\bar{x}'_i)^p$ is the $j$-th element of  $(\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu$ (since being a handle is a definable condition, see Definition \\ref{fact: handle}, and the corresponding property was true on all elements in $I'$).\n\\item The set of all elements of $G$ appearing in the sequence $(\\bar{x}'_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ still can be extended to some transversal $X'$ of $G$.\n\\item The set of all elements of $G$ appearing in the sequence $(\\bar{h}'_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ can be extended to some set $H' \\subseteq Z(G)$ linearly independent over $G'$ and such that $G = \\langle X' \\rangle \\times \\langle H' \\rangle $.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nThe last two conditions hold as the sets of all elements appearing in the sequences $(\\bar{x}_i : i\\in \\kappa)$ and $(\\bar{h}_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ satisfied the respective conditions, these conditions are type-definable by Proposition \\ref{prop: type def} and $J$ has the same EM-type as $I'$.\n\n\n\nNow let $\\bar{b} \\in G$ be such that both sets $\\{i \\in \\kappa: G \\models \\phi'(\\bar{b}, \\bar{a}'_i)\\}$ and $ \\{ i \\in \\kappa :  G \\models \\neg \\phi'(\\bar{b}, \\bar{a}'_i) \\}$ are cofinal in $\\kappa$. Then $\\bar{b} = s (\\bar{z}, \\bar{k})$ for some term $s \\in L_G$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{z}$ in $X'$ and $\\bar{k}$ in $H'$. Write $\\bar{z} = \\bar{z}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{z}^{p \\frown} \\bar{z}^{\\iota}$, with $\\bar{z}^{\\nu}, \\bar{z}^p, \\bar{z}^{\\iota}$ listing the elements of the corresponding types in $\\bar{z}$. In the same way as extending $\\bar x_i$, we may add elements to the tuple $\\bar{z}$ and assume that the handle of the $j$-th element of  $\\bar{z}^p$ is the $j$-th element of  $\\bar{z}^\\nu$. \n\nConsider all of the elements in $\\bar z^\\nu$ and $((\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu: i \\in \\kappa )$ as elements in $\\Gamma(G)$ --- a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$, and note that as $\\Gamma(G)$ is interpretable in $G$ we have that the sequence $((\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu : i \\in \\kappa)$ is also indiscernible in $\\Gamma(G)$. As $\\operatorname{Th}(\\Gamma(G))$ is NIP, by Fact  \\ref{fac: char of NIP} there is some $\\alpha < \\kappa$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{z}^\\nu, (\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{z}^\\nu, (\\bar{x}'_j)^\\nu)$ for all $i,j > \\alpha$.\nMoreover, using indiscernibility of the sequence $(\\bar{x}'_i)$ and possibly throwing away finitely many elements from the sequence, we have that \n$$(\\bar{x}'_i)^p \\cap \\bar{z}^p = (\\bar{x}'_j)^p \\cap \\bar{z}^p, (\\bar{x}'_i)^\\iota \\cap \\bar{z}^\\iota = (\\bar{x}'_j)^\\iota \\cap \\bar{z}^\\iota\\ \\mbox{(as tuples)}$$ \nand $\\bar{x}'_i \\cap \\bar{x}'_j$ is constant, for all $i,j \\in \\kappa$. Thus, for any $i,j > \\alpha$, the bijection $\\sigma_{i,j}$ sending $\\bar{x}'_i \\bar{z}$ to  $\\bar{x}'_j \\bar{z}$ and preserving the order of the elements satisfies:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}((\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu \\bar{z}^\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\sigma_{i,j}((\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu \\bar{z}^\\nu))$,\n\\item the map $\\sigma_{i,j}$ fixes $\\bar{z}$,\n\\item the map $\\sigma_{i,j}$ respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$- and $1^\\iota$-parts and the handles (since the handle of the $j$-th element of  $(\\bar{x}'_i)^p$ is the $j$-th element of  $(\\bar{x}'_i)^\\nu$).\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\nNow consider $\\bar{k}$ and $(\\bar{h}'_i: i \\in \\kappa)$ as tuples of elements in $\\langle H' \\rangle$, which is a model of the stable theory $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle H' \\rangle)$. Moreover, as $(\\bar{h}'_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ is $L_G$-indiscernible and $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle H' \\rangle)$ eliminates quantifiers, $(\\bar{h}'_i : i \\in \\kappa)$ is also indiscernible in the sense of $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle H' \\rangle)$. Hence, by stability, there is some $\\beta \\in \\kappa$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\langle H' \\rangle}(\\bar{k}\\bar{h}'_i) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\langle H' \\rangle}(\\bar{k} \\bar{h}'_j)$ for all $i,j > \\beta$.\n\nNow,  Lemma \\ref{Lem_GlueAut} gives us an automorphism of $G$ sending $\\bar{x}'_i \\bar{h}'_i \\bar{z} \\bar k$ to $\\bar{x}'_j \\bar{h}'_j \\bar{z} \\bar k$, so $\\operatorname{tp}_G(\\bar{x}'_i \\bar{h}'_i\/ \\bar{z} \\bar k) = \\operatorname{tp}_G(\\bar{x}'_j \\bar{h}'_j\/ \\bar{z} \\bar k)$ for all $i, j > \\operatorname{max}\\{\\alpha, \\beta\\}$. This contradicts the choice of $\\bar{b} = s (\\bar{z}, \\bar{k})$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection*{An alternative argument for NIP}\nAn alternative proof can be provided relying on the previous work of Mekler and set-theoretic absoluteness.\n\nRecall that the \\emph{stability spectrum} of a complete theory $T$ is defined as the function\n$$ f_T(\\kappa) := \\sup \\{ |S_1(M)| : M \\models T, |M| = \\kappa \\}$$\nfor all infinite cardinals $\\kappa$. Furthermore, for every infinite cardinal $\\kappa$, let $$\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa := \\sup \\{ \\lambda : \\textrm{exists a linear order of size }\\leq \\kappa \\textrm{ with } \\lambda \\textrm{-many cuts} \\}.$$\nSee \\cite{chernikov2016number} and \\cite[Section 6]{chernikov2016non} for a general discussion of the function $\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa$ and its connection to NIP. We will only need the following two facts.\n\\begin{fact}[Shelah \\cite{shelah1990classification}]\\label{fac: NIP by counting types} Let $T$ be a theory in a countable language.\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item It $T$ is NIP, then $f_T(\\kappa) \\leq (\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa)^{\\aleph_0}$ for all infinite cardinals $\\kappa$.\n\\item If $T$ has IP, then $f_T(\\kappa) = 2^\\kappa$ for all infinite cardinals $\\kappa$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{fact}\n\nIt is possible that in a model of ZFC, $\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa = 2^\\kappa$ for all infinite cardinals $\\kappa$ (e.g. in a model of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis). However, there are models of ZFC in which these two functions are different.\n\n\n\\begin{fact}[Mitchell \\cite{mitchell1972aronszajn}]\nFor every cardinal $\\kappa$ of uncountable cofinality, there is a cardinal preserving Cohen extension such that $(\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa)^{\\aleph_0} < 2^\\kappa$.\n\\end{fact}\n\nIn the original paper of Mekler \\cite{mekler1981stability} it is demonstrated that if $C$ is a nice graph and $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is stable, then $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is stable. More precisely, the following result is established (in ZFC).\n\\begin{fact} \\label{fac: stability is preserved}\nLet $C$ be a nice graph. Then $f_{\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))} (\\kappa) \\leq f_{\\operatorname{Th}(C)}(\\kappa) + \\kappa$ for all infinite cardinals $\\kappa$.\n\\end{fact}\n\nFinally, note that the property ``$T$ is NIP'' is a finitary formula-by-formula statement, hence set-theoretically absolute. Thus in order to prove Theorem \\ref{thm: NIP}, it is enough to prove it in \\emph{some} model of ZFC. Working in Mitchell's model for some $\\kappa$ of uncountable cofinality (hence $(\\operatorname{ded} \\kappa)^{\\aleph_0} + \\kappa < 2^\\kappa$), it follows immediately by combining Facts \\ref{fac: NIP by counting types} and \\ref{fac: stability is preserved}.\n\n\n\\section{Preservation of $k$-dependence}\\label{sec: kDep}\n\nWe are following the notation from \\cite{chernikov2014n}, and begin by recalling some of the facts there.\n\n\n\\begin{defn}\\rm \\label{def: k-dependence}\nA formula $\\varphi\\left(x;y_{0},\\ldots,y_{k-1}\\right)$ has the \\emph{$k$-independence property} (with respect to a theory $T$), if in some model there is a sequence $\\left(a_{0,i},\\ldots,a_{k-1,i}\\right)_{i\\in\\omega}$\nsuch that for every $s\\subseteq\\omega^{k}$ there is $b_{s}$ such\nthat \n\\[\n\\models\\phi\\left(b_{s};a_{0,i_{0}},\\ldots,a_{k-1,i_{k-1}}\\right)\\Leftrightarrow\\left(i_{0},\\ldots,i_{k-1}\\right)\\in s\\mbox{.}\n\\]\nHere $x,y_0, \\ldots, y_{k-1}$ are tuples of variables.\nOtherwise we say that $\\varphi\\left(x,y_{0},\\ldots,y_{k-1}\\right)$ is \\emph{$k$-dependent}.\nA theory is \\emph{$k$-dependent} if it implies that every formula is\n$k$-dependent.\n\n\\end{defn}\n\nTo characterize $k$-dependence in a formula-free way, we have to work with a more complicated form of indiscernibility.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nFix a language $L_{\\operatorname{opg}}^k=\\{R(x_0,\\ldots ,x_{k-1}),<, P_0(x),\\ldots , P_{k-1}(x)\\}$. \nAn \\emph{ordered $k$-partite hypergraph} is an $L^{k}_{\\operatorname{opg}}$-structure $ \\mathcal{A} = \\left(A; <, R, P_0, \\ldots , P_{k-1} \\right)$ such that:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item\n$A$ is the (pairwise disjoint) union $P^{\\mathcal{A}}_0 \\sqcup\\ldots \\sqcup P^{\\mathcal{A}}_{k-1}$,\n\\item $R^{\\mathcal{A}}$ is a symmetric relation so that if $(a_0,\\ldots ,a_{k-1})\\in R^{\\mathcal{A}}$ then $P_i\\cap \\{a_0, \\ldots, a_{k-1}\\}$ is a singleton for every $i<k$,\n\\item\n$<^{\\mathcal{A}}$ is a linear ordering on $A$ with $P_0(A)<\\ldots <P_{k-1}(A)$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{defn}\n\n\\begin{fact} \\label{fac: Gnp} \\cite[Fact 4.4 + Remark 4.5]{chernikov2014n}\nLet $\\mathcal{K}$ be the class of all finite ordered $k$-partite hypergraphs. Then $\\mathcal{K}$ is a Fra\\\"{i}ss\\'e class, and its limit is called the \\emph{ordered $k$-partite random hypergraph}, which we will denote by $G_{k,p}$.  An ordered $k$-partite hypergraph $\\mathcal{A}$ is a model of $\\operatorname{Th}(G_{k,p})$ if and only if:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item\n$(P_i(A), <)$ is a model of DLO for each $i<k$,\n\\item\nfor every $j<k$, any finite disjoint sets \n$A_0,A_1\\subset {\\prod_{i<k, i\\neq j}P_i(A)}$\n and\n$b_0<b_1\\in P_j(A)$, there is $b_0<b<b_1$ such that: $R(b,\\bar{a})$ holds for every $\\bar{a} \\in A_0$ and $\\neg R(b, \\bar{a})$ holds for every $\\bar{a} \\in A_1$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{fact}\n\\noindent We denote by $O_{k,p}$ the reduct of $G_{k,p}$ to the language $L^{k}_{\\operatorname{op}} = \\{<, P_0(x),\\ldots , P_{k-1}(x)\\}$.\n\n\n\\begin{defn}\\rm\nLet $T$ be a theory in the language $L$, and let $\\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}}$ be a monster\nmodel of $T$.\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item Let $I$ be a structure in the language $L_0$.\nWe say that $\\bar{a}=\\left(a_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}$, \nwith $a_{i}$ a tuple in $\\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}}$, is \\emph{$I$-indiscernible} over a set of parameters $C \\subseteq \\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}}$ if for\nall $n\\in\\omega$ and all $i_{0},\\ldots,i_{n}$ and $j_{0},\\ldots,j_{n}$\nfrom $I$ we have:\n$$\n\\operatorname{qftp}_{L_0}\\left(i_{0}, \\ldots, i_{n}\\right)=\\operatorname{qftp}_{L_0}\\left(j_{0},\\ldots,j_{n}\\right)\n\\Rightarrow $$\n$$\\operatorname{tp}_{L}\\left(a_{i_{0}}, \\ldots, a_{i_{n}} \/ C\\right)=\\operatorname{tp}_{L}\\left(a_{j_{0}}, \\ldots, a_{j_{n}} \/ C \\right)\n.$$\n\\item For $L_0$-structures $I$ and $J$, we say that $\\left(b_{i}\\right)_{i\\in J}$\nis \\emph{based on} $\\left(a_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}$ over a set of parameters $C \\subseteq \\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}}$ if for any finite\nset $\\Delta$ of $L(C)$-formulas,  and for any finite tuple $\\left(j_{0},\\ldots,j_{n}\\right)$\nfrom $J$ there is a tuple $\\left(i_{0},\\ldots,i_{n}\\right)$ from\n$I$ such that:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\operatorname{qftp}_{L_0}\\left(j_{0},\\ldots,j_{n}\\right)=\\operatorname{qftp}_{L_0}\\left(i_{0},\\ldots,i_{n}\\right)$ and\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Delta}\\left(b_{j_{0}},\\ldots,b_{j_{n}}\\right)=\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Delta}\\left(a_{i_{0}},\\ldots,a_{i_{n}}\\right)$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{defn}\n\nThe following fact gives a method for finding $G_{k,p}$-indiscernibles using structural Ramsey theory.\n\n\\begin{fact}\\cite[Corollary 4.8]{chernikov2014n}\\label{fac: random hypergraph indiscernibles exist}\nLet $C \\subseteq \\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}}$ be a small set of parameters.\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item For any $\\bar{a}=\\left(a_{g}\\right)_{g\\in O_{k,p}}$, there is some $\\left(b_{g}\\right)_{g\\in O_{k,p}}$ which is $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $C$ and is based on $\\bar{a}$ over $C$.\n\\item For any $\\bar{a}=\\left(a_{g}\\right)_{g\\in G_{k,p}}$, there is some $\\left(b_{g}\\right)_{g\\in G_{k,p}}$ which is $G_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $C$ and is based on $\\bar{a}$ over $C$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\n\\end{fact}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{fact} \\cite[Proposition 6.3]{chernikov2014n} \\label{fac: char of NIP_k by preserving indisc}\nLet $T$ be a complete theory and let $\\mathbb{M} \\models T$ be a monster model. For any $k \\in \\mathbb{N}$, the following are\nequivalent:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $T$ is $k$-dependent.\n\\item For any $\\left(a_{g}\\right)_{g\\in G_{k,p}}$ and $b$ with $a_g, b$ finite tuples in $\\mathbb{M}$,\nif $\\left(a_{g}\\right)_{g\\in G_{n,p}}$ is $G_{n,p}$-indiscernible over\n$b$ and $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible (over $\\emptyset$), then it is $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $b$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{fact}\n\nWe are ready to prove the main theorem of the section.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm: k-dependence is preserved}\nFor any $k \\in \\mathbb{N}$ and a nice graph $C$, $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is $k$-dependent if and only if $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is $k$-dependent.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $G \\models \\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ be a saturated model, let $X$ be a transversal, and  let $H$ be a set in $Z(G)$ which is linearly independent over $G'$  such that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times \\langle H \\rangle$. Moreover, fix $\\kappa$ to be $\\aleph_0^+$.\n\nAs in the NIP case, if $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is $k$-dependent, then $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is also $k$-dependent as $C$ is interpretable in $G(C)$.\n\n\nNow suppose that $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is $k$-dependent but $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ has the $k$-independence property witnessed by the formula  $\\varphi\\left(x;y_{0},\\ldots,y_{k-1}\\right) \\in L_G$.\nBy compactness we can find a sequence $\\left(a_{0,\\alpha},\\ldots,a_{k-1,\\alpha}\\right)_{\\alpha \\in \\kappa}$ such that for any $s\\subseteq \\kappa^{k}$ there is some $b_{s}$ such\nthat \n\\[\n\\models\\phi\\left(b_{s};a_{0,\\alpha_{0}},\\ldots,a_{k-1,\\alpha_{k-1}}\\right)\\Leftrightarrow\\left(\\alpha_{0},\\ldots,\\alpha_{k-1}\\right)\\in s\\mbox{.}\n\\]\nBy the choice of $X$ and $H$, for each $i < k$ and $\\alpha \\in \\kappa$, there is some term $t_{i, \\alpha} \\in L_G$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}$ from $X$ and $\\bar{h}_{i, \\alpha}$ from $H$ such that $a_{i, \\alpha} = t_{i,\\alpha}(\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}, \\bar{h}_{i,\\alpha})$. \nAs $\\kappa > |L_G| + \\aleph_0$, passing to a subsequence of length $\\kappa$ for each $i<k$ we may assume that $t_{i, \\alpha} = t_i$ and $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha} = \\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{p \\frown} \\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\iota}$ with $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\nu}, \\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{p}, \\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\iota}$ listing all elements of the corresponding type in $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}$ and $|\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\nu}|, |\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{p}|, |\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\iota}|$ constant for all $i<j$ and $\\alpha \\in \\kappa$. \nMoreover, in the same way as in the NIP case, we add the handles of the elements in the tuple $\\bar x_{i,\\alpha}^p$ to the beginning of $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\nu}$. Taking $\\psi(x; y'_0, \\ldots, y'_{k-1}) := \\phi(x; t_0(y'_0), \\ldots, t_{k-1}(y'_{k-1}))$, we see that the sequence $(\\bar{x}^{\\frown}_{0,\\alpha} \\bar{h}_{0,\\alpha}, \\ldots,  \\bar{x}^{\\frown}_{k-1,\\alpha} \\bar{h}_{k-1,\\alpha}: \\alpha \\in \\kappa)$ is shattered by $\\psi$, i.\\ e.\\ for each $A \\subset \\kappa^k $ there is some $\\bar b$ such that $G \\models \\psi(\\bar{b}; \\bar{x}_{0, i_0}^\\frown \\bar{h}_{0, i_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{x}_{k-1, i_{k-1}}^\\frown \\bar{h}_{k-1, i_{k-1}})$ if and only if $  (i_0, \\dots, i_{k-1}) \\in A$. \nWe define an $L_{\\operatorname{op}}$-structure on $\\kappa$ by interpreting each of the $P_i, i < k$ as some countable disjoint subsets of $\\kappa$, and choosing any ordering isomorphic to $(\\mathbb{Q}, <)$ on each of the $P_i$'s. \nWe pass to the corresponding subsequences of $(\\bar x_{i,\\alpha}^{\\frown} \\bar{h}_{i, \\alpha}: \\alpha \\in \\kappa)$, namely for each $i \\in k$, we consider the sequence given by $(\\bar x_{i,\\alpha}^{\\frown} \\bar{h}_{i, \\alpha}: \\alpha \\in P_i)$.\nTaking these $k$ different sequences together we obtain the sequence $(\\bar{x}_g^\\frown \\bar{h}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ indexed by $O_{k,p}$. This sequence is shattered in the following sense: for each $A \\subset P_0 \\times \\dots \\times P_{k-1} $ there is some $\\bar b \\in G$ such that $G \\models \\psi(\\bar{b}; \\bar{x}_{g_0}^\\frown \\bar{h}_{g_0}, \\ldots, {\\bar{x}_{g_{k-1}}}^{\\frown} \\bar{h}_{g_{k-1}})$ if and only if $  (g_0, \\dots, g_{k-1}) \\in A$. \n\n\n\nBy Fact \\ref{fac: random hypergraph indiscernibles exist}(1), let $(\\bar{y}_{g}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ be an $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible in $G$ based on $(\\bar{x}_g^\\frown \\bar{h}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$. Observe that, using Proposition \\ref{prop: type def} as in the proof of Theorem \\ref{thm: NIP}, we still have:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $(\\bar{y}_{g}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ is shattered by $\\psi$,\n\\item the handle for each $j$th element in the tuple $\\bar y_{g}^p$ is the $j$th element of the tuple $\\bar y_{g}^\\nu$,\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $(\\bar{y}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ is a partial transversal, hence can be extended to a transversal $Y$ of $G$,\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $(\\bar{m}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ is still a set of elements in $Z(G)$ linearly independent over $G'$, hence can be extended to a linearly independent set $M$ such that $G = \\langle Y \\rangle \\times \\langle M \\rangle$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nWe can expand $O_{k,p}$ to $G_{k,p}$ (see Fact \\ref{fac: Gnp}). As $(\\bar{y}_{g}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_g : g \\in O_{k,p})$ is shattered by $\\psi$, we can find an element $b \\in G$ such that $G \\models \\psi(b; \\bar{y}_{g_0}^{\\frown}  \\bar{m}_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{y}_{g_{k-1}}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_{g_{k-1}}) \\iff G_{k,p} \\models R(g_0, \\ldots, g_{k-1})$, for all $g_{i}\\in P_{i}$. We can write $b = s(\\bar{z}, \\bar{\\ell})$ for some term $s \\in L_G$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{z} = \\bar{z}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{z}^{p \\frown} \\bar{z}^\\iota$ in $Y$ and $\\bar{\\ell}$ in $M$. As usual, extending $\\bar{z}^\\nu$ if necessary, we may assume that $\\bar{z}$ is closed under handles. Taking $\\theta(x'; y'_0, \\ldots, y'_{k-1}) := \\psi(s(x'); y'_0, \\ldots, y'_{k-1})$, we still have that $$G \\models \\theta(\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}; \\bar{y}_{g_0}^{\\frown}  \\bar{m}_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{y}_{g_{k-1}}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_{g_{k-1}}) \\iff G_{k,p} \\models R(g_0, \\ldots, g_{k-1})$$ for all $g_{i}\\in P_{i}$.\n\nBy Fact \\ref{fac: random hypergraph indiscernibles exist}(2), we can find $(\\bar{z}_g^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ which is $G_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}$ and is based on $(\\bar{y}_{g}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ over $\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}$. Then   we have:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $G \\models \\theta(\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}; \\bar{z}_{g_0}^{\\frown}  \\bar{\\ell}_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}}^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_{g_{k-1}}) \\iff G_{k,p} \\models R(g_0, \\ldots, g_{k-1})$, for all $g_{i}\\in P_{i}$;\n\\item for $\\bar{z}_g = \\bar{z}_g^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{z}_g^{p \\frown} \\bar{z}_g^{\\iota}$ we have that:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item all of these tuples are of fixed length and list elements of the corresponding type,\n\t\\item  the handle of the $j$-th element of  $\\bar{z}_g^p$ is the $j$-th element of  $\\bar{z}_g^\\nu$;\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $\\bar{z}$ and $(\\bar{z}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is a partial transversal, hence can be extended to some transversal $Z$ of $G$;\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $\\bar{\\ell}$ and $(\\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is still a set of elements in $Z(G)$ linearly independent over $G'$, hence can be extended to a linearly independent set $L$ such that $G = \\langle Z \\rangle \\times \\langle L \\rangle$;\n\\item $(\\bar{z}_g^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\emptyset$ (follows since $(\\bar{z}_g^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is based on $(\\bar{y}_{g}^{\\frown} \\bar{m}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$, which was $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible, as in the proof of \\cite[Lemma 6.2]{chernikov2014n}).\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\nConsider now all of the elements in $\\bar{z}^\\nu$ and $(\\bar{z}_{g}^{\\nu} : g \\in G_{k,p})$ as elements in $\\Gamma(G)$, a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$, and note that as $\\Gamma(G)$ is interpretable in $G$, we have that the sequence $(\\bar{z}^{\\nu}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is also $G_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{z}^{\\nu}$ and is $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\emptyset$, both in $\\Gamma(G)$. As $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is $k$-dependent, it follows by Fact \\ref{fac: char of NIP_k by preserving indisc} that $(\\bar{z}_{g}^{\\nu} : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{z}^\\nu$ in $\\Gamma(G)$. \nHence for any finite tuples $g_0, \\ldots, g_n, q_0, \\ldots, q_n \\in G_{k,p}$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}_{L_{\\operatorname{op}}^k}(\\bar{g})  = \\operatorname{tp}_{L_{\\operatorname{op}}^k}(\\bar{q})$, we have that  $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{z}^\\nu_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}^\\nu_{g_n}\/ \\bar{z}^\\nu )$ is equal to $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{z}^\\nu_{q_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}^\\nu_{q_n}\/ \\bar{z}^\\nu)$. \nNow, using  $O_{k,p}$-indiscernibility and that $\\bar z$ is finite, for each $i < k$ there is some finite $\\lambda_i \\subseteq  P_i $ such that for all $g \\neq q \\in P_i$ with $g,q > \\lambda_i$ (i.e. $g > h$ for every element $h \\in \\lambda_i$, and the same for $q$) we have\n$$ \\bar{z}_{g}^p  \\cap \\bar{z}^p = \\bar{z}_{q}^p \\cap \\bar{z}^p, \\bar{z}_{g}^\\iota \\cap \\bar{z}^\\iota = \\bar{z}_{q}^\\iota\\cap \\bar{z}^\\iota\\ \\mbox{(as tuples)}\n$$\nand $\\bar{z}_{g} \\cap \\bar{z}_{q}$ is constant. Thus, for any $g_0, \\dots ,g_{k-1}, q_0, \\dots, q_{k-1}$  such that  $g_i, q_i > \\lambda_i$ and $g_i, q_i \\in P_i$, we get that mapping $\\bar{z}_{g_0}, \\dots,\\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}},  \\bar{z}$ to  $\\bar{z}_{q_0}, \\dots,\\bar{z}_{q_{k-1}},   \\bar{z}$ preserving the positions of the elements in the tuples defines a bijection $\\sigma_{\\bar g,\\bar q}$\nsuch that:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{z}_{g_0}^\\nu , \\dots,\\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}}^\\nu ,\\bar{z}^\\nu) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\sigma_{\\bar g,\\bar q}(\\bar{z}_{g_0}^\\nu , \\dots,\\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}}^\\nu, \\bar{z}^\\nu)),$\n\\item the map $\\sigma_{\\bar g,\\bar q}$ fixes $\\bar{z}$,\n\\item the map $\\sigma_{\\bar g,\\bar q}$ respects the $1^{\\nu}$-, $p$- and $1^\\iota$-parts and the handles.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\n\n\n\nNext we consider all the elements in $\\bar{\\ell}$ and $(\\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ as elements in $\\langle L \\rangle$, a saturated model of the stable theory $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle L \\rangle)$. By quantifier elimination, we still have that $(\\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is both $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible and $G_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{\\ell}$ in $\\langle L \\rangle$. As $\\langle L \\rangle$ is stable, so in particular $k$-dependent, by Fact \\ref{fac: char of NIP_k by preserving indisc}, $(\\bar{\\ell}_g : g \\in G_{k,p})$ is  $O_{k,p}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{\\ell}$.\n\nNow let $\\bar{g}, \\bar{q} \\in G_{k,p}$ be such that $g_i, q_i > \\lambda_i$ and $g_i,q_i \\in P_i$ for all $i < k$, and such that $G_{k,p} \\models R(g_0, \\ldots, g_{k-1}) \\land \\neg R(q_0, \\ldots, q_{k-1})$ holds. Then by the choice of $\\bar{z}^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}$ we have that $G \\models \\theta(\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}; \\bar{z}_{g_0}^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}}^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_{g_{k-1}}) \\land \\neg \\theta(\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}; \\bar{z}_{q_0}^{\\frown}  \\bar{\\ell}_{q_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}_{q_{k-1}}^{\\frown} \\bar{\\ell}_{q_{k-1}})$. On the other hand, combining the last two paragraphs and using Lemma \\ref{Lem_GlueAut}, \nwe find an automorphism of $G$ sending $(\\bar{z}_{g_0}^\\frown  \\bar{\\ell}_{g_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}_{g_{k-1}}^\\frown \\bar{\\ell}_{g_{k-1}})$ to $(\\bar{z}_{q_0}^\\frown  \\bar{\\ell}_{q_0}, \\ldots, \\bar{z}_{q_{k-1}}^\\frown  \\bar{\\ell}_{q_{k-1}})$ and fixing $\\bar{z}^{\\frown}\\bar{\\ell}$ --- a contradiction.\n\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{cor} \\label{cor: strictly k-dep groups}\n\nFor every $k \\geq 2$, there is a strictly $k$-dependent  pure group $G$. Moreover, we can find such a $G$ with a simple theory.\n\\end{cor}\n\\begin{proof}\nFor each $k \\geq 2$, let $A_k$ be the random $k$-hypergraph. It is well-known that $\\operatorname{Th}(A_k)$ is simple. Moreover, $A_{k}$ is clearly not $(k-1)$-dependent, as witnessed by the edge relation, and it is easy to verify that $A_{k}$ is $k$-dependent (as it eliminates quantifiers and all relation symbols are at most $k$-ary, see e.g. \\cite[Proposition 6.5]{chernikov2014n}).\n\nNow $A_k$, as well as any other structure in a finite relational language, is bi-interpretable with some nice graph $C_k$ by \\cite[Theorem 5.5.1 + Exercise 5.5.9]{hodges1993model}, so $C_k$ also has all of the aforementioned properties. Then Mekler's construction produces a group $G(C_k)$ with all of the desired properties, by Theorem \\ref{thm: k-dependence is preserved} and  preservation of simplicity from \\cite{baudisch2002mekler}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThis corollary gives first examples of strictly $k$-dependent groups, however many other questions about the existence of strictly $k$-dependent algebraic structures remain.\n\n\\begin{problem}\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item Are there pseudofinite strictly $k$-dependent groups, for $k>2$? \n\n\\item Are there $\\aleph_0$-categorical strictly $k$-dependent groups, for $k>2$? \n\n\\end{enumerate}\nWe note that the strictly $2$-dependent group in Example \\ref{ex: extraspecial} is  both pseudofinite and $\\aleph_0$-categorical (see \\cite[Proposition 3.11]{macpherson2008one} and the discussion around it). However, Mekler's construction does not preserve $\\aleph_0$-categoricity in general (this is mentioned in \\cite[Introduction]{baudisch2002mekler}), e.g. because the proof in Remark \\ref{rem: unbounded commutator products} shows that if $C$ is an infinite nice graph, then in $G(C)$ there are infinitely many pairwise inequivalent formulas $\\phi_n(x)$ expressing that $x$ is a product of at most $n$ commutators.\n\\end{problem}\n\n\n\\begin{problem}\nAre there strictly $k$-dependent fields, for any $k \\geq 2$? We conjecture that there aren't any with a simple theory. It is proved in \\cite{hempel2016n} that any $k$-dependent PAC field is separably closed, and there are no known examples of fields with a simple theory which are not PAC.\n\\end{problem}\n\n\n\\section{Preservation of $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$} \\label{sec: NTP2}\nWe recall the definition of $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ (and refer to \\cite{chernikov2014theories} for further details).\n\\begin{defn} \\label{def: NTP2}\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item A formula $\\phi(x,y)$, with $x,y$ tuples of variables, has $\\operatorname{TP}_2$ if there is an array $( a_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\omega)$ of tuples in $\\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}} \\models T$ and some $k \\in \\omega$ such that:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item for all $i \\in \\omega$, the set $\\{ \\phi(x, a_{i,j}) : j \\in \\omega \\}$ is $k$-inconsistent.\n\\item for all $f : \\omega \\to \\omega$, the set $\\{ \\phi(x, a_{i, f(i)}) : i \\in \\omega \\}$ is consistent.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\item A theory $T$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ if no formula has $\\operatorname{TP}_2$ relatively to it.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{defn}\n\n\\begin{remark} \\label{rem : 2-incons}\\cite[Lemma  3.2]{chernikov2014theories}\nIf $T$ is not $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$, one can find a formula as in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1) with $k = 2$.\n\\end{remark}\n\nWe will use the following formula-free characterization of $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ from \\cite[Section 1]{chernikov2014theories}.\n\n\\begin{fact} \\label{fac: char of NTP2} Let $T$ be a theory and $\\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}} \\models T$ a monster model. Let $\\kappa := |T|^+$. The following are equivalent:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $T$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$.\n\\item For any array $(a_{i,j} : i \\in \\kappa, j \\in \\omega)$ of finite tuples with \\emph{mutually indiscernible rows} (i.e. for each $i \\in \\kappa$, the sequence $\\bar{a}_i := (a_{i,j} : j \\in \\omega)$ is indiscernible over $\\{ a_{i',j} : i' \\in \\kappa \\setminus \\{i \\}, j \\in \\omega \\}$) and a finite tuple $b$, there is some $\\alpha \\in \\kappa $ satisfying the following:\nfor any $i > \\alpha$ there is some  $b'$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}(b\/ a_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}(b' \/ a_{i,0})$ and $\\bar{a}_i$ is indiscernible over $b'$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\n\\end{fact}\n\n\nThe following can be proved using finitary Ramsey theorem and compactness, see \\cite[Section 1]{chernikov2014theories} for the details.\n\n\\begin{fact}\\label{fac: extracting mut ind}\n\nLet $(a_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha,i \\in \\kappa)$ be an array of tuples from $\\operatorname{\\mathbb{M}} \\models T$.\nThen there is an array $(b_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha, i \\in \\kappa)$ with mutually indiscernible rows \\emph{based on $(a_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha,i \\in \\kappa)$}, i.e. such that for every finite set of formulas $\\Delta$, any $\\alpha_0, \\ldots, \\alpha_{n-1} \\in \\kappa$ and any strictly increasing finite tuples $\\bar{j}_0, \\ldots, \\bar{j}_{n-1}$ from $\\kappa$, there are some strictly increasing tuples $\\bar{i}_0, \\ldots, \\bar{i}_{n-1}$ from $\\kappa$ such that \n$$\\models \\Delta( (b_{\\alpha_0,i} : i \\in \\bar{j}_0), \\ldots, (b_{\\alpha_{n-1}, i} : i \\in \\bar{j}_{n-1}) ) \\iff$$\n$$\\models \\Delta( (a_{\\alpha_0,i} : i \\in \\bar{i}_0), \\ldots, (a_{\\alpha_{n-1}, i} : i \\in \\bar{i}_{n-1}) ).$$\n\\end{fact}\n\n\\begin{remark} \\label{rem: extraction preserves witness TP2}\nIf $\\phi(x,y)$ and $(a_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha,i \\in \\kappa)$ satisfy the condition in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1) and $(b_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha, i \\in \\kappa)$ is based on it, then $\\phi(x,y)$ and $(b_{\\alpha,i} : \\alpha, i \\in \\kappa)$ also satisfy the condition in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1).\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm: NTP2 is preserved}\nFor any nice graph $C$, we have that $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ if and only if $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\n\t\n\tAs before, let $G \\models \\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ be a monster model, let $X$ be a transversal, and  let $H$ be a set in $Z(G)$ which is linearly independent over $G'$ such that $G = \\langle X \\rangle \\times \\langle H \\rangle$. Moreover, fix $\\kappa$ to be $\\aleph_0^+$. If $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ then $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is also $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$ as $C$ is interpretable in $G(C)$.\n\n\n\tNow suppose that $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$, but $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ has $\\operatorname{TP}_2$. By compactness and Remark \\ref{rem : 2-incons} we can find some formula $\\phi(x,y)$ and an array $(\\bar a_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ of tuples in $G$ witnessing $\\operatorname{TP}_2$ as in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1) with $k=2$.\n\tThen for all $i,j \\in \\kappa$ we have $\\bar a_{i,j} = t_{i,j}(\\bar{x}_{i,j}, \\bar{h}_{i,j})$ for some terms $t_{i,j} \\in L_G$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{x}_{i,j}$ from $X$ and $\\bar{h}_{i,j}$ from $H$.\n\nAs $\\kappa > |L_G| + \\aleph_0$, passing to a subsequence of each row, and then to a subsequence of the rows, we may assume that $t_{i,j} = t \\in L_G$ and $\\bar{x}_{i,j} = \\bar{x}_{i,j}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{x}_{i,j}^{p \\frown} \\bar{x}_{i,j}^{\\iota}$ with $|\\bar{x}_{i,j}^\\nu|, |\\bar{x}_{i,j}^p|, |\\bar{x}_{i,j}^\\iota|, |\\bar{h}_{i,j}|$ constant for all $i,j \\in \\kappa$. Again as in the NIP case, we add the handles of the elements in the tuple $\\bar x_{i,\\alpha}^p$ to the beginning of $\\bar{x}_{i, \\alpha}^{\\nu}$ for all $i,j \\in \\kappa$. Taking $\\psi(x,y') := \\phi(x, t(y') )$ with $|y'| = |\\bar{x}_{i,j}^\\frown \\bar{h}_{i,j}|$ and $\\bar{b}_{i,j} :=  \\bar{x}_{i,j}^\\frown \\bar{h}_{i,j}$, we have that $\\psi(x,y') \\in L_G$ and the array $(\\bar{b}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ still satisfy the condition in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1) with $k=2$. \n\nBy Fact \\ref{fac: extracting mut ind}, let $(\\bar{c}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ with $\\bar{c}_{i,j} = \\bar{y}_{i,j}^\\frown \\bar{m}_{i,j}$ be an array with mutually indiscernible rows based on $(\\bar{b}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$. Then, arguing as in the proofs of Theorems \\ref{thm: NIP} and  \\ref{thm: k-dependence is preserved} using type-definability of the relevant properties from Proposition \\ref{prop: type def} and Remark \\ref{rem: extraction preserves witness TP2}, we have:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\psi(x,y')$ and the array $(\\bar{c}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ satisfy the condition in Definition \\ref{def: NTP2}(1) with $k=2$;\n\\item For $\\bar{y}_{i,j}= \\bar{y}_{i,j}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,j}^{p \\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,j}^{\\iota}$ we have that:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item all of these tuples are of fixed length and list elements of the corresponding type,\n\t\\item  the handle of the $n$-th element of  $\\bar{y}_{i,j}^p$ is the $n$-th element of  $\\bar{y}_{i,j}^\\nu$;\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $(\\bar{y}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ is a partial transversal of $G$ and can be extended to a transversal $Y$ of $G$;\n\\item the set of all elements of $G$ appearing in $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ is a set of elements in $Z(G)$ linearly independent over $G'$, hence can be extended to a set of generators $M$ such that $G = \\langle Y \\rangle \\times \\langle M \\rangle$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nLet now $\\bar{b}$ be a tuple in $G$ such that $G \\models \\{ \\psi(\\bar b, \\bar{c}_{i,0}) : i \\in \\kappa\\}$. We have that $\\bar b =\ns(\\bar{y}, \\bar{m})$ for some term $s \\in L_G$ and some finite tuples $\\bar{y}$ in $Y$ and $\\bar{m}$ in $M$. Let\n$\\bar{y} = \\bar{y}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{y}^{p\\frown} \\bar{y}^{\\iota}$, each listing the elements of the corresponding type. In\nthe same way as for each of the $\\bar y_{i,j}$'s, we add the handles of the elements in the tuple $\\bar y^p$ to the\nbeginning of $\\bar{y}^{\\nu}$ so that the handle of the $n$-th element of $\\bar{y}^p$ is the $n$-th element of\n$\\bar{y}^\\nu$.\nTaking $\\theta(x',y') := \\psi(s(x'), y')$, we still have that $\\bar{y}^\\frown \\bar{m} \\models \\{ \\theta(x', \\bar{c}_{i,0}) : i \\in \\kappa  \\}$ and the set of formulas $\\{ \\theta(x', \\bar{c}_{i,j}) : j \\in \\kappa \\}$ is $2$-inconsistent for each $i \\in \\kappa$. Moreover, after possibly throwing away finitely many rows, we may assume that \nthe rows are mutually indiscernible over $\\bar{y}^\\frown \\bar{m} \\cap \\bigcup \\{\\bar{c}_{i,0} : i \\in \\kappa \\} $ (if an element of $\\bar{y}^\\frown \\bar{m}$ appears in $\\bar{c}_{i,0}$, then the rows of the array $(\\bar{c}_{i',j} : i' \\in \\kappa, i'\\neq i, j \\in \\kappa)$ are mutually indiscernible over it). This implies that if $z \\in \\bar{y} \\cap \\bar{y}_{i,0}$ for some $i$ and $z$ is the $n$-th element in the tuple $\\bar{y}_{i,0} $, then it is the $n$-th element in any tuple $\\bar{y}_{j,0} $ with $j \\in \\kappa$.\n\n\nConsider all of the elements in $\\bar{y}^{\\nu}$ and $(\\bar{y}_{i,j}^{\\nu} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ as elements in $\\Gamma(G)$, a saturated model of $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$, and note that as $\\Gamma(G)$ is interpretable in $G$ we have that the array $(\\bar{y}_{i,j}^\\nu : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ has mutually indiscernible rows in $\\Gamma(G)$. As $\\operatorname{Th}(\\Gamma(G))$ is $\\operatorname{NTP}_2$, it follows by Fact \\ref{fac: char of NTP2}  that there is some $\\alpha \\in \\kappa$ such that for each $i> \\alpha$ there is some tuple $\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\nu}\/ \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu} \/ \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0})$ and the sequence $(\\bar{y}_{i,j}^{\\nu} : j \\in \\kappa)$ is $L_{\\Gamma}$-indiscernible over $\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}$, i.\\ e.\\  $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0})$.\nLet   $\\sigma_0$ be the bijection which maps   $ \\bar{y}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0}$ to $\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu \\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0}$.\nNow we want to extend this bijection $\\sigma_0$ to a bijection $\\sigma$ defined on each element of  $\\bar y^{\\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0}$ in a type and handle preserving way. To do so, we have to choose an image for each element in $\\bar y^{p^\\frown} \\bar y^\\iota$. Let $z$ be the $n$-th element of $ \\bar y^p$ and let $u$ be the $n$-th element of $\\bar y^\\nu$ (i.\\ e.\\ the handle of $z$).\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item If $z\\not \\in  \\bar y_{i,0}^p$, then choose $\\sigma(z)$ to be any element in $Y^p$ which has handle $\\sigma_0(u)$ and is not contained in $ \\bar y_{i,0}^p$ (as $Y$ is a $|G|$-cover and $\\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma(u) = \\operatorname{tp}_\\Gamma(\\sigma_0(u))$, using Fact \\ref{fac: decomposition}(4) there must be infinitely many elements in $Y^p$ for which $\\sigma_0(u)$ is a handle, so we can choose one of them which is not contained in the finite tuple $\\bar{y}^p_{i,0}$).\n\t\\item If $z \\in  \\bar y_{i,0}^p$, then we have that $\\sigma_0$ fixes $z$ as well as the handle $u$ of $z$. In this case let $\\sigma(z)$ be equal to $z$.\n\t\\end{itemize}\nFinally, we define $\\sigma$ on each element of $\\bar y^\\iota$ as the identity map. Let $\\bar y'= \\bar y^{\\prime \\nu \\frown} \\sigma(\\bar{y}^p)^{\\frown} \\bar{y}^\\iota $. Then we have that  for all $y \\in \\bar{y}^{\\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0}$:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\\item $\\sigma$ is well defined;\n\\item $\\sigma$ fixes all elements in $\\bar{y}_{i,0}$;\n\\item $\\sigma$ respects types and handles by construction;\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\sigma(\\bar{y}^{\\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}))$ as $\\sigma(y) = \\sigma_0(y)$ for all $y \\in \\bar{y}^{\\nu \\frown} \\bar{y}^\\nu_{i,0}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nNow consider $\\bar{m}$ and $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ as tuples of elements in $\\langle M \\rangle$, which is a model of the stable theory $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle M\\rangle)$. Moreover, as $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ has $L_G$-mutually indiscernible rows and $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle M \\rangle)$ eliminates quantifiers, $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : i,j \\in \\kappa)$ has mutually indiscernible rows in the sense of $\\operatorname{Th}(\\langle M \\rangle)$. Hence, by Fact \\ref{fac: char of NTP2} again, there is some $\\beta \\in \\kappa$ such that for each $i > \\beta$ there is some $\\tau \\in \\operatorname{Aut}(\\langle M \\rangle)$ fixing $\\bar{m}_{i,0}$ and such that $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : j \\in \\kappa)$ is indiscernible over $\\bar{m}' := \\tau( \\bar{m})$. \n\nFix some $i > \\max\\{\\alpha, \\beta\\}$ and let $\\bar y'$ and  $\\bar m'$ be chosen as above. Then by Lemma \\ref{Lem_GlueAut} we find an automorphism of $G$ which maps  $\\bar{y} \\bar{m}^{\\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}$ to $\\bar{y}' (\\bar{m}')^{\\frown} \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}$, hence \n$$\\operatorname{tp}_G(\\bar{y}' \\bar{m}' \/ \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}_G(\\bar{y} \\bar{m} \/ \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}).$$ \nIn particular, $G \\models \\theta(\\bar{y}' \\bar{m}' , \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0})$. We will show that\n$$\\operatorname{tp}_G( \\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}\/ \\bar{y}' \\bar{m}') = \\operatorname{tp}_G(\\bar{y}_{i,1} \\bar{m}_{i,1}\/ \\bar{y}' \\bar{m}'),$$\n which would then contradict the assumption that $\\{ \\theta(x', \\bar{y}_{i,j} \\bar{m}_{i,j}) : j \\in \\kappa \\}$ is $2$-inconsistent.\n\nWe show that sending    $ \\bar y' \\bar{y}_{i,0}$ to $ \\bar y'\\bar{y}_{i,1}$ is a well-defined bijection $f_0$. The only thing to check is that if the $n$-th element $z$ of $\\bar y_{i,0}$ is an element of $\\bar y'$, then the $n$-th element of $\\bar y_{i,1}$ is equal to $z$. This is true as by construction  we have that the sequence $(\\bar y_{i,j}: j\\in \\kappa)$ is indiscernible over $\\bar y'\\cap  \\bar y_{i,0}$ (as $\\bar y'\\cap  \\bar y_{i,0} = \\bar y \\cap  \\bar y_{i,0}$ by construction, and $(\\bar y_{i,j}: j\\in \\kappa)$ is indiscernible over $\\bar y \\cap  \\bar y_{i,0}$ by assumption). Moreover, we have the following properties for $f_0$:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $f_0$ fixes all elements in $\\bar{y}'$ (by construction);\n\\item $f_0$ respects types and handles (by construction);\n\\item $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}) = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\Gamma}(f_0(\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}, \\bar{y}^{\\nu}_{i,0}))$ (since by the choice of $\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}$ above, we have that $(\\bar{y}^\\nu_{i,j}: j\\in \\kappa)$ is indiscernible over $\\bar{y}^{\\prime \\nu}$ in $\\Gamma(G)$).\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\n\n\nSimilarly, by the choice of $\\bar{m}'$ above, the sequence $(\\bar{m}_{i,j} : j \\in \\kappa)$ is indiscernible over $\\bar{m}'$, so $\\operatorname{tp}_{\\langle M \\rangle}(\\bar{m}_{i,0}, \\bar {m}') = \\operatorname{tp}_{\\langle M \\rangle}(\\bar{m}_{i,1}, \\bar {m}') $\n\nAgain, Lemma \\ref{Lem_GlueAut} gives us an automorphism of $G$ sending $\\bar{y}_{i,0} \\bar{m}_{i,0}$ to $\\bar{y}_{i,1} \\bar{m}_{i,1}$ and fixing $\\bar{y}' \\bar{m}'$, as wanted.\n\n\n\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nA slight modification of the same proof shows that $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is \\emph{strong} if and only if $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is strong (see \\cite[Sections 2 and 3]{chernikov2014theories} for the relevant definitions).\n\\end{remark} \n\nHowever, since in the proof we have to throw away a finite, but unknown number of rows, this leaves the following problem. \n\\begin{problem}\nAssume that $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is of finite burden. Does $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ also have to be of finite burden?\n\\end{problem}\n\nFinally, it would be interesting to investigate what other properties from generalized stability are preserved by Mekler's construction. For example:\n\n\\begin{conj}\nIf $\\operatorname{Th}(C)$ is NSOP$_1$ then $\\operatorname{Th}(G(C))$ is also NSOP$_1$.\\end{conj}\n\nWe expect that this could be verified using the methods of this paper and the criterion from \\cite{chernikov2016model} and \\cite{kaplan2017kim}.\n\n\n\\if 0\n\n\\subsection{A criterion for $2$-dependence}\n\nWe want to provide a formula-free characterization of $n$-dependence\nwhich doesn't include any assumption of indiscernibility of the witnessing\nsequence over the additional parameters (as it is the case in my paper\nwith Kota and Daniel). We can do it for $2$-dependence under some\nset-theoretic assumption.\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem: basic no shattering}Let $\\phi\\left(x;y_{1},y_{2}\\right)$\nbe $2$-dependent. Then there is some $n\\in\\mathbb{N}$ such that\nfor any $c\\in\\mathbb{M}_{x}$ and $I\\subseteq\\mathbb{M}_{y_{1}},J\\subseteq\\mathbb{M}_{y_{2}}$\nendless mutually indiscernible sequences, for any $A\\subseteq I$\nof size $>n$ there is some $b_{A}\\in J$ such that $A$ cannot be\nshattered by the family $\\left\\{ \\phi\\left(c,y_{1},b\\right):b\\in J,b>b_{A}\\right\\} $.\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nAssume that $I,J$ are endless mutually indiscernible sequences and\n$c$ is such that the conclusion is not satisfied for any $n\\in\\omega$.\nLet $D\\subseteq I\\times J$ be any finite set. Let $a_{1}<\\ldots<a_{m}$\nand $b_{1}<\\ldots<b_{n}$ list the projections of $D$ on $I$ and\n$J$, respectively. By assumption, there is some $A\\subseteq I$ of\nsize $m$ such that for any $b'\\in B$, $A$ is shattered by the family\n$\\left\\{ \\phi\\left(c,y_{1},b\\right):b\\in J,b>b'\\right\\} $. List $A$\nas $a_{1}'<\\ldots<a_{m}'$. Then we can choose some $b_{1}'<\\ldots<b_{n}'\\in J$\nsuch that $\\models\\phi\\left(c,a'_{i},b_{j}'\\right)\\iff\\left(a_{i},b_{j}\\right)\\in D$.\nAs $I,J$ are mutually indiscernible, taking an automorphism of $\\mathbb{M}$\nsending $a_{i}'$ to $a_{i}$ and $b_{j}'$ to $b_{j}$, for all $1\\leq i\\leq m,1\\leq j\\leq n$,\n$c$ is sent to some $c_{D}$ such that $\\models\\phi\\left(c_{D},a_{i},b_{j}\\right)\\iff\\left(a_{i},b_{j}\\right)\\in D$.\nThis implies that $\\phi\\left(x;y_{1},y_{2}\\right)$ is not $2$-dependent,\na contradiction. Hence the conclusion holds for $c,I,J$ for some\n$n$.\n\nBy compactness it is not hard to conclude that $n$ can be chosen\ndepending only on $\\phi$ (and not on $I,J,c$).\n\\end{proof}\nWe will need the following lemma (originally from Shelah, with simplifications\nby Adler and Casanovas, see e.g. ***)\n\\begin{fact}\n\\label{fact: ded lemma}If $\\kappa$ is an infinite cardinal, $\\mathcal{F}\\subseteq2^{\\kappa}$\nand $\\left|\\mathcal{F}\\right|>\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa$, then for each $n\\in\\omega$\nthere is some $S\\subseteq\\kappa$ such that $\\left|S\\right|=n$ and\n$\\mathcal{F}\\restriction S=2^{S}$.\n\\end{fact}\nGiven sets $A\\subseteq\\mathbb{M}_{x}$, $B\\subseteq\\mathbb{M}_{y}$\nand a formula $\\phi\\left(x,y\\right)\\in\\mathcal{L}$, we denote by\n$S_{\\phi,B}\\left(A\\right)$ the set of all $\\phi$-types over $A$\nrealized in $B$, and by $S_{B}\\left(A\\right)$ the set of all complete\ntypes over $A$ realized in $B$.\n\\begin{prop}\n\\label{prop: few types on a tail}Let $T$ be $2$-dependent, let\n$\\kappa\\geq\\left|T\\right|$ be an infinite cardinal, and let $\\lambda>\\kappa$\nbe a regular cardinal. Then for any mutually indiscernible sequences\n$I=\\left(a_{i}:i\\in\\kappa\\right),J=\\left(b_{j}:j\\in\\lambda\\right)$\nof finite tuples and a finite tuple $c$, there is some $\\beta\\in\\lambda$\nsuch that $\\left|S_{J_{>\\beta}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right|\\leq\\left(\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa\\right)^{\\left|T\\right|}$.\\end{prop}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $I,J$ and $c$ be given. We will show that for each $\\phi\\left(x,y_{1},y_{2}\\right)\\in\\mathcal{L}$\nthere is some $\\beta_{\\phi}\\in\\lambda$ such that $\\left|S_{\\phi,J_{>\\beta_{\\phi}}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right|\\leq\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa$.\nThis is enough, as then we can take any $\\beta\\in\\lambda$ with $\\beta>\\beta_{\\phi}$\nfor all $\\phi\\in\\mathcal{L}$ (possible as $\\lambda=\\operatorname{cf}\\left(\\lambda\\right)>\\left|T\\right|$),\nand $\\left|S_{J_{>\\beta}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right|\\leq\\left|\\prod_{\\phi\\in\\mathcal{L}}S_{\\phi,J_{>\\beta_{\\phi}}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right|\\leq\\left(\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa\\right)^{\\left|T\\right|}$.\n\nSo let $\\phi\\in\\mathcal{L}$ be fixed, and assume that for any $\\beta\\in\\lambda$,\n$\\left|S_{\\phi,J_{>\\beta_{\\phi}}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right|>\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa$.\nThen by Fact \\ref{fact: ded lemma}, considering $\\mathcal{F}=\\left\\{ f_{p}:p\\in S_{\\phi,J_{>\\beta_{\\phi}}}\\left(Ic\\right)\\right\\} $\n(where $f_{p}\\in2^{\\kappa}$ is given by $f_{p}\\left(\\alpha\\right)=1\\iff\\phi\\left(c,a_{\\alpha},y_{2}\\right)\\in p$,\nfor all $\\alpha\\in\\kappa$), for any $n\\in\\omega$ there is \\emph{some}\n$S\\subseteq I$, $\\left|S\\right|=n$, such that $S$ is shattered\nby the family $\\left\\{ \\phi\\left(c,y_{1},b_{j}\\right):j\\in\\lambda,j>\\beta\\right\\} $.\nUsing regularity of $\\lambda$, we can choose by transfinite induction\na strictly increasing sequence $\\left(\\beta_{\\alpha}:\\alpha\\in\\lambda\\right)$\nwith $\\beta_{\\alpha}\\in\\lambda$ such that for each $\\alpha\\in\\lambda$\nthere is some $S_{\\alpha}\\subseteq I,\\left|S_{\\alpha}\\right|=n$ shattered\nby the family $\\left\\{ \\phi\\left(c,y_{1},b_{j}\\right):j\\in\\lambda,\\beta_{\\alpha}<j<\\beta_{\\alpha+1}\\right\\} $.\nAs $\\lambda>\\kappa=\\kappa^{n}$ is regular, passing to a subsequence\nwe may assume that there is some $S\\subseteq I,\\left|S\\right|=n$\nsuch that $S_{\\alpha}=S$ for all $\\alpha\\in\\lambda$, i.e. this set\n$S$ can be shattered arbitrarily far into the sequence. Now by Lemma\n\\ref{lem: basic no shattering}, this contradicts $2$-dependence\nof $\\phi$ if we take $n$ large enough.\\end{proof}\n\\begin{remark}\nWe can also give a finitary counterpart, with polynomial bound in\nplace of $\\operatorname{ded}$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem: extension exists}For any cardinal $\\kappa$ and any regular\ncardinal $\\lambda\\geq2^{\\kappa}$ there is a bipartite graph $\\mathcal{G}_{\\kappa,\\lambda}=\\left(\\kappa,\\lambda,E\\right)$\nsatisfying the following: for any sets $A,A'\\subseteq\\kappa$ with\n$A\\cap A'=\\emptyset$ and $b\\in\\lambda$ there is some $b^{*}\\in\\lambda$,\n$b^{*}>b$ satisfying $\\bigwedge_{a\\in A}E\\left(a,b^{*}\\right)\\land\\bigwedge_{a'\\in A'}E\\left(a',b^{*}\\right)$.\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\lambda\\geq2^{\\kappa}$ be any regular cardinal. Let \n\\[\nD:=\\left\\{ \\left(A,A',b\\right):A,A'\\subseteq\\kappa,\\,A\\cap A'=\\emptyset,\\,b\\in\\lambda\\right\\} \\mbox{.}\n\\]\nThen $\\left|D\\right|\\leq\\lambda$ by assumption, let's enumerate it\nas $\\left(\\left(A_{\\alpha},A'_{\\alpha},b_{\\alpha}\\right):\\alpha<\\lambda\\right)$.\nWe define $E_{\\alpha}\\subseteq\\kappa\\times\\lambda$ by transfinite\ninduction on $\\alpha<\\lambda$. On step $\\alpha$, we choose some\n$c_{\\alpha}\\in\\lambda$ such that $c_{\\alpha}>\\left\\{ b_{\\beta},c_{\\beta}:\\beta<\\alpha\\right\\} $\n--- possible by regularity of $\\lambda$, and we take $E_{\\alpha}:=\\left\\{ \\left(a,c_{\\alpha}\\right):a\\in A_{\\alpha}\\right\\} $.\nLet $E:=\\bigsqcup_{\\alpha<\\lambda}E_{\\alpha}$ --- it satisfies the\nrequirement by construction.\\end{proof}\n\\begin{defn}\nWe say that a theory $T$ is \\emph{globally $2$-dependent} if there\nare cardinals $\\kappa\\leq\\lambda$ as above such that the following\nholds. Given any mutually indiscernible sequences $I=\\left(a_{i}:i\\in\\kappa\\right),J=\\left(b_{j}:j\\in\\lambda\\right)$\nof finite tuples and a finite tuple $c$, if $\\mathcal{G}_{\\kappa,\\lambda}$\nis as above the there are some $i\\in\\kappa$ and $j,j'\\in\\lambda$\nsuch that $ca_{i}b_{j}\\equiv ca_{i}b_{j'}$ but $E\\left(i,j\\right)\\land\\neg E\\left(i,j'\\right)$\nholds.\n\\end{defn}\nSo the idea is that $T$ is globally $2$-dependent if on mutually\nindiscernible sequences, we cannot distinguish the edges from the\nnon-edges of a random graph not only by any single formula formula,\nbut also by complete types.\n\\begin{remark}\nIf $T$ is not $2$-dependent, then it is not globally $2$-dependent.\\end{remark}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\phi\\left(x,y_{1},y_{2}\\right)$ be a formula witnessing failure\nof $2$-dependence. Then for any $\\kappa,\\lambda$ we can find some\nmutually indiscernible sequences $I,J$ such that the family $\\left\\{ \\phi\\left(c,y_{1},y_{2}\\right):c\\in\\mathbb{M}\\right\\} $\nshatters $I\\times J$. In particular, we can find $c$ such that $\\mathbb{M}\\models\\phi\\left(c,a_{i},b_{j}\\right)\\iff\\mathcal{G}_{\\kappa,\\lambda}\\models E\\left(a_{i},b_{j}\\right)$,\ncontradicting global $2$-dependence.\\end{proof}\n\\begin{prop}\nLet $T$ be a countable $2$-dependent theory and assume that there\nis some cardinal $\\kappa$ such that $\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa<2^{\\kappa}$. Then\n$T$ is globally $2$-dependent.\\end{prop}\n\\begin{proof}\nFix such a $\\kappa$, and let $\\lambda$ be any regular cardinal $\\geq2^{\\kappa}$.\nLet $\\mathcal{G}_{\\kappa,\\lambda}$ be as given by Lemma \\ref{lem: extension exists}.\nLet $I,J$ and $c$as above be given. By Proposition \\ref{prop: few types on a tail},\nthere is some $\\beta\\in\\lambda$ such that $\\left|S_{J_{>\\beta}}\\left(I\\right)\\right|\\leq\\left(\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa\\right)^{\\aleph_{0}}$.\nOn the other hand, by definition of $\\mathcal{G}_{\\kappa,\\lambda}$,\nwe still have $\\left|S_{E,\\left\\{ \\alpha\\in\\lambda:\\alpha>\\beta\\right\\} }\\left(\\kappa\\right)\\right|=2^{\\kappa}>\\left(\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa\\right)^{\\aleph_{0}}$\nby assumption. Then we can find some $j,j'\\in\\lambda$ such that $\\operatorname{tp}_{E}\\left(j\/\\kappa\\right)\\neq\\operatorname{tp}_{E}\\left(j'\/\\kappa\\right)$\nbut $\\operatorname{tp}\\left(b_{j}\/Ic\\right)=\\operatorname{tp}\\left(b_{j'}\/Ic\\right)$. But then\nthere is some $i\\in\\kappa$ such that $E\\left(i,j\\right)\\leftrightarrow\\neg E\\left(i,j'\\right)$\nand still $b_{j}a_{i}c\\equiv b_{j'}a_{i}c$, as wanted.\n\\end{proof}\nBy a theorem of Mitchell, for any $\\kappa$ with $\\operatorname{cf}\\left(\\kappa\\right)>\\aleph_{0}$\nit is consistent that $\\operatorname{ded}\\kappa<2^{\\kappa}$. Hence this criterion\ncan always be used to determine $2$-dependence, in some model of\nZFC (and then sometimes set-theoretic absoluteness can be applied).\n\\begin{problem}\nIs it true that $n$-dependent implies globally $n$-dependent (defined\nanalogously), in ZFC, or at least consistently for $n>2$?\\end{problem}\n\\begin{remark}\nLet $T$ be $n$-dependent and $\\omega$-categorical. Then $T$ is\nglobally $n$-dependent (since every type in finitely many variables\nis equivalent to a formula, hence $n$-dependent and can't define\nthe random $n$-hypergraph on mutually indiscernible sequences).\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\fi\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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#1}}\n\\newcommand{\\dao}[1]{{\\color{docol} #1}}\n\\newcommand{\\commentxl}[1]{{\\color{ascol} \\footnotesize \\it [XL: #1]}}\n\\newcommand{\\discdo}[1]{{\\color{docol} DO: #1}}\n\\newcommand{\\discco}[1]{{\\color{cocol} CO: #1}}\n\\newcommand{\\discas}[1]{{\\color{ascol} AS: #1}}\n\\newcommand{\\todo}[1]{\\marginpar{\\bfseries !}{\\color{docol} \\small[TODO: #1]}}\n\n\n\\def\\Xint#1{\\mathchoice\n{\\XXint\\displaystyle\\textstyle{#1}}%\n{\\XXint\\textstyle\\scriptstyle{#1}}%\n{\\XXint\\scriptstyle\\scriptscriptstyle{#1}}%\n{\\XXint\\scriptscriptstyle\\scriptscriptstyle{#1}}%\n\\!\\int}\n\\def\\XXint#1#2#3{{\\setbox0=\\hbox{$#1{#2#3}{\\int}$ }\n\\vcenter{\\hbox{$#2#3$ }}\\kern-.6\\wd0}}\n\\def\\Xint-{\\Xint-}\n\\def\\Xint={\\Xint=}\n\\def\\Xint-{\\Xint-}\n\\title{Force-Based Atomistic\/Continuum Blending for Multilattices}\\thanks{DO was supported by the NSF PIRE Grant OISE-0967140 and NSF RTG program DMS-1344962.  XL was supported by the Simons Collaboration Grant with Award ID: 426935.  CO was supported by ERC Starting Grant 335120. }\n\\author{Derek Olson, Xingjie Li, Christoph Ortner, Brian Van Koten}\n\n\\begin{document}\n\n\\begin{abstract}\n   We formulate the blended force-based quasicontinuum (BQCF) method for\n   multilattices and develop rigorous error estimates in terms of the\n   approximation parameters: atomistic region, blending region and continuum\n   finite element mesh.  Balancing the approximation parameters yields a\n   convergent atomistic\/continuum multiscale method for multilattices with point\n   defects, including a rigorous convergence rate in terms of the computational\n   cost. The analysis is illustrated with numerical results for a Stone--Wales\n   defect in graphene.\n\\end{abstract}\n\n\\maketitle\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\nA full twenty years has passed since the original proposal of the quasicontinuum method~\\cite{ortiz1996quasicontinuum} captivated the materials science community with the potential to model material phenomena spanning vastly different length scales.  The quasicontinuum (QC) method was among the first of the so-called atomistic-to-continuum (AtC) coupling algorithms which sought to bridge the gap between length scales from the nano to macroscale.  A remarkable number of these AtC methods have been proposed since (see e.g.~\\cite{tadmor2011,miller2009,acta.atc} for a thorough discussion of many of these), and recently a mathematical framework has begun to emerge to analyze and compare several of these methods for defects in crystalline materials comprised of a Bravais lattice.  Indeed, all three of the blended force-based quasicontinuum method (BQCF), blended energy-based quasicontinuum (BQCE), and blended ghost force correction (BGFC) methods have recently been analyzed in the context of a single defect in a two or three dimensional Bravais lattice~\\cite{blended2014,OrtnerZhang2014bgfc} as has the optimization-based AtC approach of~\\cite{olson2015}.  Analyses in two and three dimensional Bravais lattices also exist for the AtC method of~\\cite{lu2013}, but this has not yet been extended to allow for defects.  Meanwhile, the methods~\\cite{MakridakisMitsoudisRosakis2012,shapeev_2011,shapeev2012} have been shown to be consistent (or free of ghost forces) for pair potential interactions only.\n\n\nIn the present work, we resolve the long-standing challenge to develop a rigorous numerical analysis for AtC methods in the context of \\textit{multilattices}, which allows for more than one atom to be present in the unit cell of the crystal. This description includes important materials such as hcp metals, diamond structures, and recently discovered 2D materials such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride.\n\nConcretely, we generalise the formulation and analysis of the blended force-based quasicontinuum (BQCF) method. Our main result is that, for a point defect in a homogeneous host crystal, the BQCF method for multilattices exhibits the same rate of convergence as in the Bravais lattice case. This is in sharp contrast with the blended energy-based quasicontinuum method for which a reduced convergence rate is expected in the multilattice setting \\cite{OrtnerZhang2014bgfc}.\n\nThe present work represents the first analysis that has been undertaken that remains valid for an AtC method which permits defects in a two or three dimensional multilattice. Even analyses of AtC methods for defect-free multilattices remain extremely sparse:  the homogenized QC method~\\cite{AbdulleLinShapeevII,AbdulleLinShapeev2012}, for example, only allows for dead load external forces while the cascading Cauchy--Born method was rigorously analyzed only in one-dimensional multilattices for phase transforming materials~\\cite{dobson2007multilattice}.\n\nAs its name entails, the BQCF method is a force-based AtC method where a hybrid force operator is constructed instead of a hybrid energy functional~\\cite{dobson_esaim,Shenoy:1999a,shilkrot2002coupled,lu2013,Bochev_08_MMS,Bochev_08_OUP}.  The primary advantage of force-based methods is that the forces can easily be defined in a way to avoid spurious interface effects (ghost forces); that is, the defect-free perfect crystal is a bona fide equilibrium configuration of the AtC force operator.  The cost of defining the BQCF method and other force-based methods to be free of ghost forces is that these force fields are no longer conservative, which creates significant challenges in their numerical analysis \\cite{dobson2010sharp, lu2014}.  The blended force-based methods, originally studied in~\\cite{li2012positive,Bochev_08_MMS,Bochev_08_OUP, lu2013}, seek to overcome this problem by a smooth blending between atomistic and continuum forces over a region called the blending, overlap, or handshake region.  Similar force-based blending methods have also been applied to coupling peridynamics with classical elasticity~\\cite{seleson2013}.\n\nAn alternative to the force-based paradigm is the energy-based paradigm where a global, hybrid energy is defined which is some combination of atomistic and continuum energies.  This encompasses the original quasicontinuum method and many other offshoots and ancestors~\\cite{ortiz1996quasicontinuum,xiao2004,abraham1998,E2006,shimokawa,datta2004,eidel2009,Bauman_08_CM}.  The peril of these methods is the aforementioned ghost forces, and it remains open to construct a general, ghost-force free, energy-based AtC method for Bravais lattices in two or three dimensions.  As such we do not concern ourselves with an energy-based AtC method for multilattices; however, see~\\cite{OrtnerZhang2014bgfc,shapeevMulti} for promising directions.\n\n\n\\subsection{Outline}\nWe begin in Section~\\ref{model} by formulating an atomistic model for a multilattice material describing a single point defect embedded in an infinite homogeneous crystal.  This is a canonical extension of the framework adopted for Bravais lattices in~\\cite{olson2015,blended2014,bqcf13,Ehrlacher2013,OrtnerZhang2014bgfc}.\n\nIn Section~\\ref{bqcf} we then formulate the BQCF method for this model and state our main results: (1) existence of a solution to the multilattice BQCF method and (2) a sharp error estimate. We also convert this error estimate to an estimate in terms of the computational complexity of the BQCF method in Section~\\ref{num} which in particular allows us to balance approximation parameters to obtain a formulation optimised for the error \/ cost ratio. We present a numerical verification of these rates by testing the method on a Stone--Wales defect in graphene.  The complexity estimates obtained for the BQCF method for point defects in multilattices match those estimates in~\\cite{blended2014} for Bravais lattices.\n\nFinally, Section~\\ref{analysis} covers the technical details needed to prove our main result, Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}.  These technical details can be seen as generalizations of the results of Bravais lattices, and the primary new component is having to account for shifts between atoms in the same unit cell.\n\n\\subsection{Notation}\nWe introduce new notation throughout the paper required to carry out the analysis.  For the convenience of the reader, we have listed many of these in Appendix~\\ref{sec:appnotation}.  Here, we briefly establish several basic conventions we make throughout.  We use $d$ and $n$ to denote the dimensions of the domain and range respectively, calligraphic fonts (e.g. $\\mathcal{L}, \\mathcal{M}$) to denote lattices, sans-serif fonts (e.g. ${\\sf F}, {\\sf G}$) for $n \\times d$ matrices, the lower case Greek letters $\\alpha, \\beta, \\gamma, \\delta, \\iota, \\chi$ are used as subscripts denoting atomic species, and the lower case Greek letters $\\rho, \\tau, \\sigma$ denote vectors (bond directions) between lattice sites.\n\nThe symbol $| \\cdot |$ is used to denote the $\\ell^2$ norm of a single vector in $\\mathbb{R}^m$, while $\\| \\cdot\\|$ is used to denote either an $\\ell^p$ or $L^p$ norm over a specified set.  We use $\\cdot$ for the dot product between two vectors, $\\otimes$ as the tensor product, and $:$ as the inner product on tensors.\n\nDerivatives of functions $f: \\mathbb{R}^d \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$ are denoted by $\\nabla f : \\mathbb{R}^d \\to \\mathbb{R}^{d \\times n}$ and higher order derivatives by $\\nabla^j f$.  Given $F:X \\to Y$ where $X$ and $Y$ are Banach spaces, we denote Fr\\'echet or Gateaux derivatives by $\\delta^j F$, $j$ indicating the order. We will most commonly interpret these derivatives as (multi-)linear forms and use them when $Y = \\mathbb{R}$, in which case we will then write the Gateaux derivatives as\n\\begin{align*}\n&\\<\\delta F(x), y\\> , \\quad x,y \\in X\\\\\n&\\<\\delta^2 F(x)z,y\\>, \\quad x,y,z \\in X \\quad \\mbox{and so on for higher order derivatives.}\n\\end{align*}\nWe reserve $D$ for specific finite difference operators (defined in \\eqref{finite_diff1} and \\eqref{finite_diff2}), and use $B_R$ to denote the ball of radius $R$ about the origin.\n\nWe use the modified Vinogradov notation $x \\lesssim y$ throughout the manuscript to mean there exists a positive constant $C$ such that $x \\leq Cy$. Where appropriate, we clarify what the constant $C$ is allowed to depend on; in particular if there is any dependence on approximation parameters then it will always be made explicit.\n\n\n\n\\section{Atomistic Model}\\label{model}\n\n\\subsection{Defect-free Multilattice}\nWe consider an infinite Bravais lattice, or simply a {\\em lattice}, {$\\mathcal{L}$, defined by\n\\[\n\\mathcal{L} := {\\sf F}\\mathbb{Z}^d, \\quad \\text{ for some } {\\sf F} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{d \\times d}, \\quad \\det({\\sf F}) = 1, \\quad \\mbox{and $d \\in \\{2,3\\},$}\n\\]\nwhere the requirement $\\det({\\sf F}) = 1$ is purely a notational convenience.  From a physical standpoint by taking symmetry into account, it can be shown that there are only 14 unique physical lattices in 3D and five in 2D (see e.g.~\\cite{tadmor2011}); however, we consider the lattice to merely be a mathematical framework. A multilattice is then obtained by associating a basis of $S$ atoms to each lattice site, and this is also referred to as a crystal when the Bravais lattice is interpreted as one of the unique physical lattices.}\n\nFor each site $\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}$, these\n$S$ atoms are located inside the unit cell of $\\xi$ at positions $\\xi +\np_\\alpha^{\\rm ref}$ for $p_\\alpha^{\\rm ref} \\in \\mathbb{R}^d$ and $\\alpha = 0, \\ldots, S-1$.  The\nmultilattice is then defined by\n\\[\n\\mathcal{M} := \\bigcup_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}\\mathcal{L} + p_\\alpha^{\\rm ref}.\n\\]\nWe call each $\\mathcal{L} + p_\\alpha^{\\rm ref}$ a sublattice; {{here the addition ``+'' means a translation of the lattice $\\mathcal{L}$ by the\nvector $p_{\\alpha}^{\\rm ref}$.}} Without loss of generality, we further assume $p_0^{\\rm ref} = 0$ (one atom is always located at a lattice site).  Furthermore, we make the distinction between a lattice site, which we use to refer to a site in the Bravais lattice, $\\mathcal{L}$, and an atom which is an element in the multilattice $\\mathcal{M}$.\n\nTwo simple examples of multilattices are shown in Figure~\\ref{fig:multilattice}\nincluding the 2D hexagonal lattice (e.g., graphene) for which\n\\begin{equation}\\label{graph_param}\n\\mathcal{L} = a_0\\begin{pmatrix} \\sqrt{3} &\\sqrt{3}\/2 \\\\ 0 &3\/2\\end{pmatrix}\\mathbb{Z}^2, \\quad S = 2, \\quad p_0 = \\begin{pmatrix} 0 \\\\ 0\\end{pmatrix}, \\quad p_1 = a_0\\begin{pmatrix} \\sqrt{3}\/2 \\\\ 1\/2\\end{pmatrix}, \\quad a_0 = \\frac{\\sqrt{2}}{3^{3\/4}}.\n\\end{equation}\n(The $a_0 = \\frac{\\sqrt{2}}{3^{3\/4}}$ prefactor is due to the normalisation $\\det({\\sf F}) = 1$.)\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\subfigure[2D graphene: the dashed circles indicate the interaction\n   neighbourhoods of the highlighted atoms.]{\n   \\includegraphics[width=0.42\\textwidth]{rep_graphene}}\n\\qquad\n\\subfigure[3D rock salt: the interior cube represents a possible\n      choice of unit cell.]{\n   \\includegraphics[width=0.42\\textwidth]{fcc_rock_salt1}}\n\\caption{Examples of multilattice structures.} \\label{fig:multilattice}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFor each species of atom, we define the deformation field $y_\\alpha(\\xi)$ as the deformation of the atom of species $\\alpha$ at site $\\xi$.  We note that $y_\\alpha:\\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$ where the range dimension $n \\in \\{2,3\\}$ may be different than the domain dimension $d$ to allow, e.g., for out of plane displacements in $2D$. {However, we remark that our later assumptions on stability of the multilattice (Assumption~\\ref{assumption2}) will place a restriction on the out of plane behavior; for example bending, or rippling, cannot currently be incorporated into the analysis.  We further discuss the issues involved in this in our concluding discussion, Section~\\ref{discussion}.}  In the case of these out of plane displacements, we will use $\\xi \\in \\mathbb{R}^2$ as both a vector in $\\mathbb{R}^2$ and as the vector $\\begin{pmatrix} \\xi \\\\ 0 \\end{pmatrix} \\in \\mathbb{R}^3$.  (We remark that though we will not consider dislocations, we could also consider $n = 1$ for an anti-plane screw dislocation model by fixing a second coordinate to be constant in this framework.)\n\nThe set of all sublattice deformations is denoted by $\\bm{y}:= (y_{\\alpha})_{\\alpha=0}^{S-1}$ and displacements by $\\bm{u}:= (u_{\\alpha})_{\\alpha=0}^{s-1}$. Equivalently we can describe the kinematics of a multilattice by a pair $(Y, \\bm{p})$ where $Y : \\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$ is a deformation field and $p_0, \\dots, p_{S-1} : \\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$ are shift fields. The two descriptions are related by\n\\begin{align*}\nY(\\xi) =~ y_0(\\xi), \\quad p_\\alpha(\\xi) = y_\\alpha(\\xi) - y_0(\\xi); \\qquad \\mbox{and} \\qquad y_\\alpha(\\xi) =~ Y(\\xi) + p_\\alpha(\\xi),\n\\end{align*}\nand analogous expressions hold for displacements as well.\n\nWe now turn to a description of the energy. We will make the fundamental modeling\nassumption that the total potential energy of the system can be written as a sum\nof \\textit{site potentials}---that is,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{atDefEnergy}\n   \\hat{\\mathcal{E}}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(\\bm{y}) := \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\hat{V}(D\\bm{y}(\\xi)),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the various new symbols introduced are specified in the following. \\dao{We also note that this assumption is not restrictive as almost any reasonable classical potential such as an $n$-body potential, pair functional, or bond-order potential may be written in this form.} \\dao{The main restriction is that long-range Coulomb interaction is excluded.}\n\nWe use $D\\bm{y}(\\xi)$ to denote the collection of finite differences (relative atom positions)\nneeded to compute the energy at site $\\xi$. More precisely, we specify a\n{\\em finite} set of triples\n\\begin{equation*}\n   \\mathcal{R} \\subset \\mathcal{L} \\times \\{0, 1, \\ldots, S-1\\} \\times \\{0, 1, \\ldots, S-1\\}\\setminus \\bigcup_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}\\{ (0\\alpha\\alpha)\\},\n\\end{equation*}\nand use\n\\begin{equation}\\label{finite_diff1}\n   D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\bm{y}(\\xi) := y_\\beta(\\xi + \\rho) - y_\\alpha(\\xi)\n\\end{equation}\nto denote the relative positions of species $\\beta$ at site $\\xi+\\rho$ and\nspecies $\\alpha$ at site $\\xi.$ The collection of finite differences, or\nfinite difference {\\dao{stencils}}, $D\\bm{y}$, is then defined by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{finite_diff2}\nD\\bm{y}(\\xi) := \\left(D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)\\right)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}.\n\\end{equation}\nIn terms of $(Y,\\bm{p})$, this this notation becomes\n\\[\nD_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(Y,\\bm{p}) := Y(\\xi + \\rho) - Y(\\xi) + p_\\beta(\\xi+\\rho) - p_\\alpha(\\xi)\n\\quad \\text{and} \\quad\n D(Y,\\bm{p}) := \\big( D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} (Y,\\bm{p}))_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}.\n\\]\nFor future reference we remark that we can write\n\\begin{equation*}\n   D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} \\bm{y} = D_\\rho y_\\beta(\\xi) + p_\\beta(\\xi)-p_\\alpha(\\xi),\n  \n  \n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $D_\\rho f(\\xi) := f(\\xi + \\rho) - f(\\xi)$.  Moreover, we define the set of lattice vectors in $\\mathcal{R}$ as\n\\[\n\\mathcal{R}_1 := \\{ \\rho \\in \\mathcal{L} : \\exists (\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}\\}.\n\\]\n\nThe site potential is then a function $\\hat{V} : (\\mathbb{R}^n)^\\mathcal{R} \\to \\mathbb{R} \\cup \\{+\\infty \\}$, where $+\\infty$ allows for singularities in the potential (though we will later assume certain smoothness of the potential for convenience of the analysis).\n\nSince the homogeneous reference configuration, $\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref}$, defined by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ref_config}\n\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref}_\\alpha(\\xi) := \\xi + p^{\\rm ref}_\\alpha,\n\\end{equation}\nfor constant $p_\\alpha^{\\rm ref} \\in \\mathbb{R}^n$\nyields infinite energy, {\\dao{(due to an infinite sum over constant values of the site potential in the reference configuration),}} we thus will consider an energy difference functional defined on displacements from the reference state instead of \\eqref{atDefEnergy}. For a displacement\n$\\bm{u} \\equiv (U, \\bm{p})$ from the reference state $\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref}$ let\n\\begin{equation*}\n   V(D\\bm{u}(\\xi)) = \\hat{V}(D(\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref} + \\bm{u})(\\xi)),\n\\end{equation*}\nand then the associated energy difference functional is defined by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{atDispEnergy}\n\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(\\bm{u}) := \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} V(D\\bm{u}(\\xi)) - V(0).\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $V(0)$ is a constant which will not affect minimization or force computations, so for simplicity, we \\dao{assume without loss of generality that $V(0)=0$}.  In Theorem~\\ref{well_defined} \\dao{below}, we recall a result \\dao{of~\\cite{olsonOrtner2016}} that characterizes for which displacements\\dao{,} $\\bm{u}$\\dao{,}\n$\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(\\bm{u})$ is well-defined.\n\nA convenient notation for derivatives of $V$ is the following: if  $(\\rho \\alpha\\beta), (\\tau\\gamma\\delta) \\in \\mathcal{R}$ and $\\bm{g} = (\\bm{g}_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)})_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} \\in (\\mathbb{R}^n)^{\\mathcal{R}}$, we set\n\\begin{align*}\n[V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\bm{g})]_{i} :=~& \\frac{\\partial V(\\bm{g})}{\\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}^i }, \\quad i = 1,\\ldots, n, \\\\\nV_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\bm{g}) :=~& \\frac{\\partial V(\\bm{g})}{\\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}}, \\\\\n[V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\bm{g})]_{ij} :=~& \\frac{\\partial^2 V(\\bm{g})}{\\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}^j \\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}^i},  \\quad i,j = 1,\\ldots, n, \\\\\nV_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\bm{g}) :=~& \\frac{\\partial^2 V(\\bm{g})}{\\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} \\partial \\bm{g}_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}},\n\\end{align*}\nand {\\dao{note that this}} can be extended to derivatives of arbitrary order.  Furthermore, we adopt the convention that if $(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\notin \\mathcal{R}$, then $V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} = 0$.\n\n\nThe following standing assumptions on the interaction range and site potentials are made.\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{assumption1}\n\\hspace{2em}\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item[(V.1)] The interaction range, $\\mathcal{R}$, satisfies\n\\begin{align*}\n    & \\mbox{\\dao{For each $\\alpha \\in \\{0,\\ldots,S-1\\}$, the set of vectors $\\rho$ such that $(\\rho\\alpha\\alpha) \\in \\mathcal{R}$ spans $\\mathbb{R}^d$,}} \\\\\n   & \\mbox{and } (0\\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R} \\quad \\text{for all $\\alpha \\neq \\beta \\in \\{0,\\ldots,S-1\\}$ }.\n\\end{align*}\n\\item[(V.2)] $V$ is four times continuously differentiable with uniformly bounded derivatives and satisfies $V(0) = 0$ (for simplicity of notation).  Since $V:(\\mathbb{R}^n)^{\\mathcal{R}} \\to \\mathbb{R}$, the statement that $V$ has uniformly bounded derivatives means there exists $M$ such that for any multi-index $\\gamma$ with $|\\gamma| \\leq 4$, $|\\partial_\\gamma V| \\leq M$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nWe remark that (V.1) may always be met by enlarging the interaction range, \\dao{$\\mathcal{R}$}. \\co{On the other hand, (V.2) is made for simplicity of the analysis; it can be weakened to admit interatomic potentials with typical singularities under collisions of atoms, but this would introduce several additional technicalities in our analysis.}\n\nNext, we specify the function space over which $\\mathcal{E}_{\\rm hom}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{u})$ is defined, which can be achieved in several equivalent ways. A convenient route is by first defining a continuous, piecewise linear interpolant of an atomistic displacement.  Let $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ be a simplicial decomposition of $\\mathcal{L}$ obtained as in~\\cite{blended2014}: first let $\\hat{T} := {\\rm conv} \\{0, e_1, e_2\\}$ \\dao{(where ${\\rm conv}$ represents the convex hull of a set)} be the unit triangle in $2D$ and $\\hat{T}_1, \\ldots, \\hat{T}_6$ six congruent tetrahedra in $3D$ that subdivide the unit cube \\dao{(see Figure 1 in~\\cite{blended2014} for an illustration in $3D$)} and then define\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{eq:Ta}\n\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a} =\n\\begin{cases}\n\\{\\xi + {\\sf F} \\hat{T}, \\xi -{\\sf F}\\hat{T}: \\xi \\in \\mathcal{L} \\}, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 2$,} \\\\\n\\{\\xi + \\dao{{\\sf F}}\\hat{T}_i: \\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}, i = 1, \\ldots, 6 \\}, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 3$}.\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation*}\nWe will often refer to this as the atomistic triangulation or \\textit{fully refined} triangulation.  As noted before, we may always enlarge the interaction range, $\\mathcal{R}$, so we may assume without loss of generality that\n \\begin{equation*} \\label{assumption:mesh}\n\\dao{     \\text{if } {\\rm conv}\\{ \\xi, \\xi+\\rho \\} \\text{ is an edge of $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$,\n     then there exist $\\alpha, \\beta$ such that } (\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}.}\n \\end{equation*}\n\nGiven a {\\helen{discrete set of displacement values}} $u: \\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$, we then denote the continuous, piecewise linear interpolant of $u$ with respect to $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ by $Iu \\equiv \\bar{u}$. We will use both notations, \\dao{$Iu$ and $\\bar{u}$}, depending on which is notationally more convenient. Subsequently, we define the function space\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{disSpace}\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathcal{U} :=~& \\left\\{ \\bm{u} = (u_\\alpha)_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1} : u_\\alpha:\\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n, \\|\\bm{u}\\|_{\\rm a} < \\infty \\right\\}, \\, \\mbox{where} \\\\\n\\|\\bm{u}\\|_{\\rm a}^2 :=~& \\sum_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}\\|\\nabla Iu_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 + \\sum_{\\alpha \\neq \\beta}\\| Iu_\\alpha - Iu_\\beta\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\nClearly, $\\|\\cdot\\|_{\\rm a}$ is not a norm on $\\mathcal{U}$ since $\\|\\bm{u}\\|_{\\rm a} = 0$ only implies that each $u_\\alpha(\\xi)$  is a constant independent of $\\alpha$.  However, $\\|\\cdot\\|_{\\rm a}$ is a semi-norm on $\\mathcal{U}$ and hence a true norm on the quotient space\n\\begin{equation*}\n   \\bm{\\mathcal{U}} := \\mathcal{U}\/\\mathbb{R}^n\n      := \\big\\{  \\{(u_\\alpha + C)_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1} : C \\in \\mathbb{R}^n \\}\n               \\,:\\, \\bm{u} \\in \\mathcal{U} \\big\\}.\n\\end{equation*}\nSince the atomistic energy is invariant with respect to addition by constants, it is exactly this quotient space which we utilize as our function space.  {\\helen{We also note that $\\bm{u}$ and $(U,\\bm{p})$ are two equivalent descriptions for the displacements}, and an equivalent norm on this space which will be convenient in terms of the $(U,\\bm{p})$ description is}\n\\begin{equation*\n\\|(U,\\bm{p})\\|_{\\rm a} := \\|\\nabla IU\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 + \\sum_{\\alpha = 1}^{S-1} \\| Ip_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nA dense subspace of $\\mathcal{U}$ that we will use as a test function space is $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0$ where\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{testSpace}\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathcal{U}_0 :=~& \\left\\{\\bm{u} {\\helen{\\in \\mathcal{U}}} : {\\rm supp}(\\nabla Iu_0), \\,  \\mbox{and} \\, {\\rm supp}(Iu_\\alpha - Iu_0) \\, \\mbox{are compact}\\right\\}, \\\\\n\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0 :=~& \\mathcal{U}_0\/\\mathbb{R}^n.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nAs proven in~\\cite{olsonOrtner2016}, this test space is dense in $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$.\n\\begin{lemma}\\cite[Lemma A.1]{olsonOrtner2016}\\label{lem:dense}\nThe quotient space $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0$ is dense in $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Point Defect}\nWe\nnow introduce a framework to embed a point defect in a homogeneous\nmultilattice. This problem has been heavily used in analyzing and comparing\ndifferent AtC methods for simple lattices\nin~\\cite{olson2015,blended2014,acta.atc,OrtnerZhang2014bgfc} as it allows for a\nrange of non-trivial benchmark problems and serves as a first step in analyzing\nmore complicated scenarios such as interacting defects~\\cite{hudson2015}.  {\\helen{Point\ndefects can be}} thought of as zero-dimensional defects representing a\nchange to a single site in the lattice. Common examples include vacancies,\ninterstitials, substitutions, and in graphene, the Stone--Wales defect which we\nuse for our numerical verification.\n\nOur first task is to define an analog of $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}$ for point\ndefects, which is well-defined on the function space $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$.\nWe accomplish this through a site-dependent site potential, $V_\\xi$, which must take\ninto account the defective structure of the lattice near the defect core, \\dao{which we assume to be at or near the\norigin}. We then write the atomistic potential energy as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{defEnergy}\n   \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{u}) := \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}}\n               V_\\xi(D\\bm{u}(\\xi)).\n\\end{equation}\n\nAs in Assumption~\\ref{assumption1}, we require certain smoothness of the site-dependent site potential in addition to homogeneity outside of a defect core.\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{assumptionSite}\n\\quad\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item[(V.3)] There exists $R_{\\rm def} > 0$ such that $V_\\xi \\equiv V$ for all \\dao{$|\\xi| \\geq R_{\\rm def}$}.\n\\item[(V.4)] Each $V_\\xi$ is four times continuously differentiable with uniformly bounded derivatives.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nWe now recall from \\cite[Theorem 2.2]{olsonOrtner2016} that $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}$\nand $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}$ are well-defined on $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$; \\dao{the main idea of the proof is that both are defined on displacements having compact support, and by density of $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0$ in $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$, they may be uniquely extended by continuity to all of $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$}.\n\\begin{theorem}\\cite[Lemma 3.3]{olsonOrtner2016}\\label{well_defined}\nAssume the reference configuration $\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref}$ with $y^{\\rm ref}_\\alpha(\\xi) = \\xi + p^{\\rm ref}_\\alpha$ is an equilibrium configuration of the defect free energy meaning that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ostrich1}\n\\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} \\hat{V}_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(D\\bm{y}^{\\rm ref}(\\xi)) \\cdot D\\bm{v}(\\xi) = 0, \\quad \\forall \\, \\bm{v} \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0.\n\\end{equation}\nThen $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(\\bm{u})$ and $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{u})$ may be uniquely extended to continuous functions on $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$ which are ${\\rm C}^3$ (three times continuously differentiable) on $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe condition~\\eqref{ostrich1} that the reference configuration be an equilibrium is equivalent to requiring the shifts are equilibrated within each cell.  See~\\cite[Lemma 9]{olsonOrtner2016} for details. Such reference configurations are thus straightforward to generate numerically.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\medskip\n\nSince we will eventually be working with a finite domain on which there is no difference between the original functionals and their extensions, we make no distinction between an energy and its continuous extension.\n\nWe are now able to pose the defect equilibration problem which we wish to\napproximate with the BQCF method, {\\helen{that is, to find $\\bm{u}^\\infty \\in\\bm{\\mathcal{U}} $ such that}}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{def_problem}\n\\bm{u}^\\infty \\in \\arg\\min_{\\bm{u} \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}} \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{u}),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere {\\helen{$\\arg\\min$}} represents the set of local minima of a functional.\n\nWhile Assumptions~\\ref{assumption1} and~\\ref{assumptionSite} can be readily\nweakened in various ways, the next assumption concerning existence and stability\nof a defect configuration minimizing $\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}$ is essential for our\nanalysis:\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{assumption2} (Strong Stability)\n   There exists a solution, $\\bm{u}^\\infty$, to~\\eqref{def_problem} and a constant $\\gamma_{\\rm a} > 0$\n   such that\n\\[\n\\<\\delta^2\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{u}^\\infty)\\bm{v},\\bm{v}\\> \\geq \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|\\bm{v}\\|_{\\rm a}^2\n\\qquad \\forall \\bm{v} \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_0.\n\\]\n\\end{assumption}\n\n\\medskip\n\nProving Assumption~\\ref{assumption2} turns out to be notoriously difficult;\nindeed the only result of this kind we are aware of is for a special case of\na screw dislocation in a simple lattice~\\cite[Remark 3.2]{hudson2015} under anti-plane\ndeformation. Nevertheless, we expect it to hold for {\\em virtually all}\nrealistic defects and realistic interatomic potentials. We also mention\nthat it can be numerically checked \\textit{a posteriori} once the defect\nconfiguration has been computed.\n\n\n\nA useful consequence of Assumption~\\ref{assumption2} is the following\nregularity result, which is proven in \\cite{olsonOrtner2016} and\nextends the analogous simple lattice result~\\cite{Ehrlacher2013}. \\co{These decay rates will be an essential component for converting the BQCF\nerror estimates in terms of solution regularity that are presented in Section~\\ref{bqcf}\ninto complexity estimates that are numerically verified in Section~\\ref{num}.}\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\cite[Theorem 2.5]{olsonOrtner2016}\\label{decay_thm}\nFor $\\bm{\\rho} = \\rho_1 \\dots \\rho_k$, the defect solution $(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$ satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{decay_est}\n\\begin{split}\n|D_{\\bm{\\rho}} U^\\infty(\\xi)| \\lesssim~& (1 + |\\xi|)^{1-d-k}, \\quad \\mbox{for $1 \\leq k \\leq 3$}, \\\\\n|D_{\\bm{\\rho}} p_\\alpha^\\infty(\\xi)| \\lesssim~& (1+|\\xi|)^{-d-k}, \\quad \\mbox{for $0 \\leq k \\leq 2$, and all $\\alpha = 0, \\ldots, S-1$.}\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nThe implied constant is allowed to depend on the interaction range through the maximum of $|\\rho|$ for $\\rho \\in \\mathcal{R}_1$, the site potential, and $\\gamma_{\\rm a}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\medskip\n\nThese decay rates will be an essential component for converting the BQCF\nerror estimates in terms of solution regularity that are presented in Section~\\ref{bqcf}\ninto complexity estimates that are numerically verified in Section~\\ref{num}.\n\nSince we will compare discrete atomistic configurations\n with continuous finite element functions, it will be useful to reformulate\nTheorem~\\ref{decay_thm} in terms of gradients of smooth interpolants, which\nwe define in the next lemma (see~\\cite{blended2014} for further details and the proof).\n\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{smoothInterpolant}\nLet $u:\\mathcal{L} \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$, then there exists a unique function $\\tilde{I}u:\\mathbb{R}^d \\to \\mathbb{R}^n$ with  $\\tilde{I}u \\in {\\rm C}^{2,1}(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ such that\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\tilde{I}u$ is multiquintic in $\\xi + {\\sf F}(0,1)^d$ for each $\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}$.\n\\item Given any multiindex $\\gamma$ with $|\\gamma| \\leq 2$, the interpolant\n   satisfies $\\partial_\\gamma \\tilde{I}u(\\xi) = D^{{\\rm nn}}_\\gamma u(\\xi)$\n   where $D^{{\\rm nn}}_\\gamma$ are nearest-neighbor finite difference operators,\n\\begin{align*}\nD^{{\\rm nn},0}_i u(\\xi) :=~& u(\\xi), \\\\\nD^{{\\rm nn},1}_i u(\\xi) :=~& \\frac{1}{2}(u(\\xi + {\\sf F} e_i) - u(\\xi - {\\sf F} e_i)) \\quad (e_i \\mbox{ is the $i$th standard basis vector}), \\\\\nD^{{\\rm nn},2}_i u(\\xi) :=~& u(\\xi + {\\sf F} e_i) -2u(\\xi) + u(\\xi - {\\sf F} e_i), \\\\\nD^{{\\rm nn}}_\\gamma u(\\xi) :=~& D^{{\\rm nn},|\\gamma_1|}_{1}\\cdots D^{{\\rm nn},|\\gamma_d|}_{d}u(\\xi).\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\medskip\n\nWe will apply $\\tilde{I}$ to both displacements and shifts using the notation\n\\[\n\\tilde{I}(U, \\bm{p}) = (\\tilde{I}U, \\tilde{I}\\bm{p}) = (\\tilde{U}, \\tilde{\\bm{p}}).\n\\]\nThen, combining Theorem~\\ref{decay_thm} and Lemma \\eqref{smoothInterpolant}\nyields the following result.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{decay_thm1}\nThe defect solution $(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$ satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{decay_est_cont}\n\\begin{split}\n|\\nabla^j \\tilde{I}U^\\infty(x)| \\lesssim~& (1+|x|)^{1-d-j}, \\quad \\mbox{for $j = 1,2$}, \\\\\n|\\nabla^j \\tilde{p}_\\alpha^\\infty(x)| \\lesssim~& (1+|x|)^{-d-j}, \\quad \\mbox{for $j = 0,1,2$, and all $\\alpha = 0, \\ldots, S-1$,}\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the implied constant is again allowed to depend on the interaction range, the site potential, and $\\gamma_{\\rm a}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\\section{BQCF Method Formulation and Main Results}\\label{bqcf}\n\nAny AtC approximation of the defect problem~\\eqref{def_problem}\nmust include the following ingredients: the atomistic and continuum\ndomains, a coarsened finite element mesh in the continuum region, a\nspecification of the continuum model, and finally and most importantly\na mechanism for coupling the atomistic and continuum components.\n\nWe define the atomistic and continuum domains for the multilattice BQCF method\nby making similar choices as in the BQCF method for Bravais\nlattices~\\cite{blended2014}. We first give an intuitive description of the\ndomains involved, but will (re-)define them again below after introducing the\n\\textit{blending function}. Choose a computational domain $\\Omega \\subset \\mathbb{R}^d$\nto be a (large) polygonal domain containing the origin (the defect). Fix a\n``defect core'' region $\\Omega_{\\rm core}$ such that, if $V_\\xi \\not\\equiv V$,\nthen $\\xi \\in \\Omega_{\\rm core}$.  Then take $\\Omega_{\\rm a}$, the atomistic domain,\nto be a polygonal domain with $\\Omega_{\\rm core} \\subset \\Omega_{\\rm a} \\subset\n\\Omega$, and set $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$, the continuum domain to be $\\Omega_{\\rm c} =\n\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{\\rm core}$. In blending methods, the atomistic and\ncontinuum domains overlap in a blending region $\\Omega_{\\rm b} = \\Omega_{\\rm c} \\cap\n\\Omega_{\\rm a}$ over which the atomistic and continuum forces will be blended.\n\nNext, we define a finite element mesh $\\mathcal{T}_h$ over $\\Omega$ with\nnodes $\\mathcal{N}_h$. For now we only require that the finite element mesh\nis fully refined over $\\Omega_{\\rm a}$, that is,\nif $T \\cap \\Omega_{\\rm a} \\neq \\emptyset$, then $T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h$ if and only if $T \\in \\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$, but we will state further assumptions in\nSection~\\ref{sec:approx_params}.\n\n\nThe continuum model we adopt is the Cauchy--Born model~\\cite{cauchy, born1954, ortiz1996quasicontinuum}, a nonlinear\nhyperelastic model, which is amenable to AtC couplings due to the definition of the\nstrain energy density function in terms of the atomistic potential $V$,\n\\[\nW_{\\rm CB}({\\sf G}, \\bm{p}) := V\\Big(({\\sf G} \\rho + p_\\beta - p_\\alpha)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}\\Big) \\quad \\mbox{for ${\\sf G} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{n \\times d}$ and $\\bm{p} \\in (\\mathbb{R}^n)^{S}$},\n\\]\nwithout resorting to any constitutive laws. {\\helen{We note that $G$ here is the deformation gradient of lattice sites in a unit cell while $\\bm{p}$\nare the displacements of shift vectors; in contrast with typical continuum treatments of multilattices, we maintain the shift vectors as degrees of freedom in the Cauchy--Born model and do not minimize them out.}}\n\nFor $W^{1,\\infty}$ displacement fields, $U$, and $L^\\infty$ shift fields, $\\bm{p}$,\nthis leads to a Cauchy--Born energy functional, formally (for now) defined by\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{cb_energy}\n\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(U, \\bm{p}) := \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} W_{\\rm CB}(\\nabla U(x), \\bm{p}(x))\\, dx = \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} V\\big(\\nabla(U,\\bm{p})\\big)\\, dx\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{cont_grad}\n\\nabla(U,\\bm{p}) := \\big(\\nabla_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(U,\\bm{p})\\big)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} := \\big(\\nabla_\\rho U + p_\\beta - p_\\alpha\\big)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}\n\\end{equation*}\nis a continuum variant of the atomistic \\dao{finite difference stencil\n\\begin{equation*}\nD(U,\\bm{p})(x) = \\big(D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(U,\\bm{p})(x)\\big)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} := \\big(D_\\rho U(x) + p_\\beta(x+\\rho) - p_\\alpha(x)\\big)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}.\n\\end{equation*}}\n\nThe admissible finite element space we consider will be $\\mathcal{P}_1$ finite elements for both the displacements and the shifts subject to homogeneous boundary conditions.  However, we will again consider equivalence classes of finite element functions by taking a quotient space.  Thus, we define\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{fin_spaces}\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathcal{U}_h :=~& \\left\\{u \\in {\\rm C}^0(\\Omega) : u|_{T} \\in \\mathcal{P}_1(T), \\quad \\forall \\, T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h\\right\\}, \\\\\n\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_h :=~& \\mathcal{U}_h \/ \\mathbb{R}^n, \\\\\n\\mathcal{U}_{h,0} :=~& \\left\\{u \\in {\\rm C}^0(\\mathbb{R}^d): u|_{T} \\in \\mathcal{P}_1(T), \\quad \\forall \\, T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h, u = 0 \\mbox{ on } \\mathbb{R}^d\\setminus\\Omega \\right\\}, \\\\\n\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} :=~& \\mathcal{U}_{h,0}\/ \\mathbb{R}^n, \\\\\n\\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}\n:=~& \\dao{\\left\\{\\bm{p}=(p_0,\\dots,p_{S-1}): p_0=0, \\text{ and }p_1,\\dots,p_{S-1} \\in \\big(\\mathcal{U}_{h,0}\\big)^{S-1}\\right\\}}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nThese spaces are endowed with the norm\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{eq:ml}\n\\|(U, \\bm{p})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 := \\|\\nabla U \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 + \\sum_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}\\|p_\\alpha\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = \\|\\nabla U \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 + \\|\\bm{p}\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)},\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $\\|\\bm{p}\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = \\sum_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}\\|p_\\alpha\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}$ is used for brevity.  Along with the finite element space, we also introduce the standard piecewise linear finite element interpolant, $I_h$, defined as usual through $I_h u(\\nu) = u(\\nu)$ for $\\nu \\in \\mathcal{N}_h$.\n\nThe BQCF method is defined by blending forces on each degree of freedom, \\dao{$(\\nu,\\alpha) \\in \\mathcal{N}_h \\times \\{0,\\ldots,S-1\\}$}, where the forces are defined by a weighted average of atomistic and continuum forces:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{f_bqcf}\n\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\nu,\\alpha}(U,\\bm{p}) :=  (1-\\varphi(\\nu))\\frac{ \\partial \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(U,\\bm{p})}{\\partial u_\\alpha(\\nu)} + \\varphi(\\nu)\\frac{ \\partial \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(U,\\bm{p})}{\\partial u_\\alpha(\\nu)},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere \\dao{the \\textit{blending function}, $\\varphi$, satisfies} $\\varphi \\in \\rm{C}^{2,1}(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ with $\\varphi = 0$ in $\\Omega_{\\rm core}$\nand $\\varphi = 1$ in $\\mathbb{R}^d \\setminus \\Omega_{\\rm a}$.  The BQCF method then seeks to solve $\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\nu,\\alpha}(U,\\bm{p}) = 0$ for all $\\nu \\notin \\partial \\Omega$. Equivalently, we can write the force balance equations in weak form using the variational operator\n{\\helen{\n\\begin{align}\n\\<&\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U,\\bm{p}), (W,\\bm{r})\\> \\nonumber\\\\\n&\\; := \\sum_{\\nu}\\sum_{\\alpha}\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\nu,\\alpha}(U,\\bm{p})\\cdot \\left(W+r_{\\alpha}\\right)(\\nu)\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\; = \\sum_{\\nu}\\sum_{\\alpha} (1-\\varphi(\\nu))\\frac{ \\partial \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(U,\\bm{p})}{\\partial u_\\alpha(\\nu)}\\cdot\\left(W+r_{\\alpha}\\right)(\\nu) + \\varphi(\\nu)\\frac{ \\partial \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(U,\\bm{p})}{\\partial u_\\alpha(\\nu)}\\cdot\\left(W+r_{\\alpha}\\right)(\\nu)\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\; = \\<\\delta\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(U,\\bm{p}),((1-\\varphi)W,(1-\\varphi)\\bm{r})\\>\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad+  \\<\\delta\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(U,\\bm{p}),(I_h(\\varphi W),I_h(\\varphi \\bm{r}))\\>,\\label{v_bqcf}\n\\end{align}\n}}\nwhere the last equal sign comes from direct calculation.\nThe BQCF approximation to the defect optimization problem~\\eqref{def_problem}\nis then to {\\it find $(U, \\bm{p}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}$\nsuch that }\n\\begin{equation}\\label{bqcf_approx}\n   \\<\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U,\\bm{p}), (W,\\bm{r})\\>  = 0,\n    \\quad \\forall (W,\\bm{r}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}.\n\\end{equation}\nThe variational formulation is preferred for the\nanalysis while the force-based formulation (from which the name BQCF is derived) is\npreferred for implementation.  The pointwise formulation~\\eqref{f_bqcf} was essentially how the original BQCF method was proposed for Bravais lattices~\\cite{badia2007force}, and this was analyzed in a finite-difference framework without defects for Bravais lattices in~\\cite{lu2013, li2012positive}.  The variational formulation~\\eqref{v_bqcf} was introduced in~\\cite{blended2014} for Bravais lattices, and its subsequent analysis led to one of the first complete analyses of an AtC method capable of modeling defects.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Assumptions on the Approximation Parameters}\n\\label{sec:approx_params}\nWe now summarise the precise technical requirements on the approximation\nparameters, $\\varphi, \\Omega, \\Omega_{\\rm a}, \\Omega_{\\rm b}, \\Omega_{\\rm c}, \\mathcal{T}_h$,\nwhich will be analogous to those in \\cite{blended2014}.\n\nWe begin by summarising basic assumptions on the blending function:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\varphi \\in \\rm{C}^{2,1}$ and $0 \\leq \\varphi \\leq 1$\n\n\\item If $V_\\xi \\not\\equiv V$, then $\\varphi(\\xi) = 0$.  This means that\n   $\\varphi$ vanishes near any defect, hence the pure atomistic force is\n   employed in those regions.\n\n\\item There exists $K > 0$ such that $\\varphi(x) = 1$ if $|x| \\geq K$.\n      That is, $\\varphi$ is identically one far away from the defect.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nAs the second step we specify the computational domain $\\Omega$ and its\ncorresponding partition $\\mathcal{T}_h$. {\\helen{First, we shall require that ${\\rm supp}(1-\\varphi)\\subset\\Omega $ always holds.}} To state the required properties\nfor $\\mathcal{T}_h$, we first precisely specify the sub-domains in terms of\n$\\varphi$ and $\\Omega$. Let\n\\begin{equation*}\n   r_{\\rm cut} := \\max \\{ |\\rho| :  (\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R} \\}\n\\end{equation*}\nbe an interaction cut-off radius, {let $r_{\\rm cell}$ be the radius of the smallest ball circumscribing the unit cell of $\\mathcal{L}$, and define $r_{\\rm buff} := \\max\\{ r_{\\rm cut}, r_{\\rm cell}\\}$}. Then we set\n\\begin{align*}\n\\Omega_{\\rm a} :=~& {\\rm supp}(1-\\varphi) + B_{4r_{\\rm buff}}, \\quad \\Omega_{\\rm b} :=~ {\\rm supp}(\\nabla \\varphi) + B_{4r_{\\rm buff}}, \\\\\n\\Omega_{\\rm c} :=~& {\\rm supp}(\\varphi) \\cap \\Omega + B_{4r_{\\rm buff}}, \\quad \\Omega_{\\rm core} :=~ \\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{\\rm c}.\n\\end{align*}\nThe size and shape regularity of the various subdomains are parameterized\nin terms of inner and outer radii: for ${\\rm t} \\in \\{ {\\rm a}, {\\rm c}, {\\rm b}, {\\rm core}\\}$,\nwe set\n\\[\n   r_{\\rm t} := \\sup_{r}\\{r > 0: {\\helen{ B_{r} }} \\subset\n                        \\Omega_{\\rm t} \\cup \\Omega_{\\rm core} \\},\n   \\quad R_{\\rm t} := \\inf_{R} \\{R > 0: \\Omega_{\\rm t} \\subset {\\helen{B_{R}}}\\},\n\\]\n{\\helen{where we recall the notation $B_R$ to denote the ball of radius $R$ about the origin. }}  The corresponding outer and inner radii for the complete domain $\\Omega$\nare, respectively, denoted by $R_{\\rm o}$ and $r_{\\rm i}$:\n\\dao{\n\\[\n   r_{\\rm i} := \\sup_{r}\\{r > 0: {\\helen{ B_{r} }} \\subset\n                        \\Omega \\},\n   \\quad R_{\\rm o} := \\inf_{R} \\{R > 0: \\Omega \\subset {\\helen{B_{R}}}\\}.\n\\]\n}\nFinally, we define an overlapping exterior domain,\n\\begin{align*}\n   \\Omega_{\\rm ext} := \\mathbb{R}^d \\setminus {\\helen{ B_{r_{\\rm i}\/2}}},\n\\end{align*}\nwhich will be used to quantify the far-field error made by truncating\nto a finite computational domain.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n   \\centering\n   {\\includegraphics[width=0.45\\textwidth]{radiiMod}}\n   \\caption{A diagram showing a selected number of domains and their inner and outer radii.}\\label{fig:domains}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFor the sake of completeness, we now restate a crucial condition on the finite\nelement mesh:\n\\begin{enumerate}[resume]\n\\item  The finite element mesh is fully refined over $\\Omega_{\\rm a}$, that is,\n  if $T \\cap \\Omega_{\\rm a} \\neq \\emptyset$, then $T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h$ if and only if $T \\in \\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nTo conclude this discussion we note that only the blending function $\\varphi$\nand the finite element mesh $\\mathcal{T}_h$ are free approximation parameters,\nwhile the subdomains and corresponding radii are derived (in particular,\n$\\Omega = \\bigcup \\mathcal{T}_h$). In our analysis we will require bounds\non the ``shape regularity'' of $\\varphi$, $\\mathcal{T}_h$, and the domains defined above:\n\n\\begin{assumption} \\label{assumption-shapereg}\n   In addition to (1)--(4) there exist constants $C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}, C_\\varphi > 0$, which shall be\n   fixed throughout, such that\n   \\begin{align*}\n      \\|\\nabla^j \\varphi\\|_{L^\\infty} \\leq C_\\varphi R_{\\rm a}^{-j} \\qquad\n      \\text{for $j = 1,2,3$, \\quad and} \\qquad\n      \\max_{T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h} \\frac{\\sigma_T}{\\rho_T} \\leq C_{\\mathcal{T}_h},\n   \\end{align*}\n   where $\\sigma_T$ denotes the radius of the smallest ball\ncircumscribing $T$ and $\\rho_T$ the radius of the largest ball contained in $T$.  Defining the mesh size function\n\\[\nh(x) := \\max_{\\substack{T \\in \\mathcal{T}_h: \\\\ x \\in T}} \\sigma_T,\n\\]\nthere exists $s \\geq 1$ such that the mesh satisfies the growth condition\n\\[\n|h(x)| \\leq C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}\\Big(\\frac{|x|}{R_{{\\rm a}}}\\Big)^s, \\quad   |x| \\geq R_{\\rm a}.\n\\]\n\nMoreover, there exists  $C_{\\rm o} > 0$ and a positive integer $\\lambda$ such that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{def_constant_Co}\n  R_{\\rm o} \\leq C_{\\rm o} R_{\\rm core}^{\\lambda} \\quad \\mbox{\\dao{and} } \\quad \\frac{1}{4} R_{{\\rm a}} \\leq R_{\\rm core} \\leq \\frac{3}{4} R_{\\rm a}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nWhile $C_\\varphi$ will feature heavily in our analysis, the parameter\n$C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}$ will only enter implicitly in the form of constants in\ninterpolation error estimates.  The condition $\\frac{1}{4} R_{{\\rm a}} \\leq R_{\\rm core} \\leq \\frac{3}{4} R_{\\rm a}$ greatly simplifies the analysis.  It is likely this could be weakened by an extremely refined analysis as can be done in one dimension~\\cite{li2012positive}, but the asymptotic estimates obtained would be unchanged with the exception of an improved prefactor so we do not pursue this.  \\dao{Moreover, though one can generate blending functions which satisfy these assumptions using splines, we point out that in practical implementations one can relax the regularity requirements on the blending functions, and this has provided no loss in performance in simulations carried out for  lattices in~\\cite{bqcf13}.}\n\n\n\\subsection{Main Result}\n\\label{sec:main-result-subsec}\nOur main result concerns the existence of a solution to~\\eqref{bqcf_approx} and an estimate on the error committed.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{main_thm}\n   Suppose that Assumptions~\\ref{assumption1},~\\ref{assumptionSite}, and~\\ref{assumption2} are valid.\n   Then there exists $R_{\\rm core}^*$ such that, for any approximation parameters\n   satisfying Assumption~\\ref{assumption-shapereg} as well as\n   $R_{\\rm core} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$,\n   %\n   there exists a solution $(U^{{\\rm bqcf}}, \\bm{p}^{{\\rm bqcf}}) \\in\n   \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}$ to the BQCF\n   equations~\\eqref{bqcf_approx} that satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{main_estimate}\n\\begin{split}\n\\|\\nabla IU^\\infty -& \\nabla U^{{\\rm bqcf}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} +\n \\| I \\bm{p}^\\infty - \\bm{p}^{{\\rm bqcf}}\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\n \\lesssim~ \\gamma_{\\rm tr} \\Big(\n   \\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{I}U^{\\infty}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n   &\\qquad + \\|h \\nabla \\tilde{I}\\bm{p}^\\infty \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +\n   \\|\\nabla\\tilde{I} {U}^{\\infty}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}\n   + \\|\\tilde{I} \\bm{p}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}\\Big),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\[\n\\gamma_{\\rm tr} := \\begin{cases} &\\sqrt{1 + \\log(R_{\\rm o}\/R_{{\\rm a}})}, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 2$,} \\\\\n                                 &1, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 3$.} \\end{cases}\n\\]\nThe implied constant, as well as $R_{\\rm core}^*$, may depend on $C_\\varphi$ and $C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}$,\nthe interatomic potentials $V, V_\\xi$, the maximum of $|\\rho|$ for $\\rho \\in \\mathcal{R}_1$, and the stability constant, $\\gamma_{\\rm a}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{remark}\n   The quantity $\\gamma_{\\rm tr}$ arises from a trace inequality that is needed when estimating interpolants on the\n   atomistic mesh in terms of interpolants on the continuum mesh, c.f.~[Lemma\n   4.6]\\cite{blended2014}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\medskip\n\n\nSection~\\ref{analysis} is devoted to proving Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}, but before\nwe embark on this, we first demonstrate how the error estimate can be combined\nwith the regularity estimates of Theorem~\\ref{decay_thm1} to yield an optimised\nBQCF scheme with balanced approximation parameters. This is followed by a\nnumerical test on a Stone--Wales defect in graphene, validating our theoretical\nconvergence rates.\n\n\\subsection{Optimal parameter choices}\nOnce we restrict ourselves to a Cauchy--Born energy with $\\mathcal{P}_1$ discretisation as the continuum model, the free parameters in the design of the BQCF method are the domain, $\\Omega$;\nblending function, $\\varphi$; and finite element mesh, $\\mathcal{T}_h$ in the\nsense that once these are set according to Section~\\ref{sec:approx_params},\nthen the BQCF method~\\eqref{bqcf_approx} is fully formulated.  Ideally, these\nparameters should be chosen in an optimal way so as to obtain the most efficient\nmethod.\n\n\nThe choice of blending function is, in the case of the BQCF method,\narbitrary as long as Assumption~\\ref{assumption-shapereg} is satisfied.\nThere are many choices to make for the blending\nfunction which meet these requirements, see e.g.~\\cite{bqce12}.\n\nThe finite element mesh and hence the choice of $\\Omega$ may, however, be optimized.\nThe key to choosing the finite element mesh and size of $\\Omega$ lies in applying the\ndecay results of Theorem~\\ref{decay_thm1} to our error estimate~\\eqref{main_estimate},~\\cite{acta.atc,bqcf13,bqce12}.  \\dao{In obtaining our optimized parameters, we do not provide rigorous proofs but instead use heuristic assumptions to arrive at approximate choices which can then be rigorously analyzed numerically.  To start, we}\n assume that the mesh size function $h(x)$ is radial, i.e.,\n$h(x) \\equiv h(|x|)$. Then, ignoring logarithmic factors in $\\gamma_{\\rm tr}$ \\dao{and employing the estimate $|1+r|^{-1} \\lesssim r^{-1}$ for $r \\geq 1$}, the error\nestimate~\\eqref{main_estimate} can be further estimated by\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\|\\nabla IU^\\infty - \\nabla U^{{\\rm bqcf}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 +\n\\| I\\bm{p}^\\infty - \\bm{p}^{{\\rm bqcf}}\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2\n\\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\lesssim \\int_{r_{\\rm core}}^{R_{{\\rm c}}}|h(r)|^2r^{-3-d} \\, dr  + \\int_{1\/2r_{\\rm i}}^{\\infty}r^{-1-d} \\, dr\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\\dao{Next, we note that from the definitions of $\\Omega_{\\rm c}, \\Omega$, and $r_{\\rm i}$, we have $r_{\\rm i} = R_{\\rm c} + 4r_{\\rm buff}$ so that we may make the replacement $r_{\\rm i} \\approx R_{\\rm c}$.} Denoting the number of degrees of freedom by ${\\rm DoF}$ (nodes in the continuum finite element mesh times the number of species in the multilattice), we can then carry out an optimization problem consisting of minimizing this error estimate subject to a fixed number of degrees of freedom, ${\\rm DoF}$.   This problem is exactly the same as for the Bravais lattice and is\n\\begin{align*}\n\\min_{h \\in L^2, R_{{\\rm c}} > 0}  \\int_{r_{\\rm core}}^{R_{{\\rm c}}}|h(r)|^2r^{-3-d} \\, dr  + \\int_{1\/2\\dao{R_{\\rm c}}}^{\\infty}r^{-1-d} \\, dr.\n\\end{align*}\n\\dao{This problem is solved in~\\cite{olsonThesis} where it is found that there are approximate minimisers of the form $h(r) =\n\\big(r \/ R_{\\rm a} \\big)^{\\frac{1+d}{1+d\/2}}$.  A simplified approximate solution can be obtained by first minimizing $\\int_{r_{\\rm core}}^{R_{{\\rm c}}}|h(r)|^2r^{-3-d} \\, dr$ with respect to $h$ where the same expression for $h$ will result, but instead of also minimizing with respect to $R_{\\rm c}$, one can simply note that the error then becomes\n\\begin{equation}\\label{error_dof}\n\\int_{r_{\\rm core}}^{R_{{\\rm c}}}|h(r)|^2r^{-3-d} \\, dr  + \\int_{1\/2R_{\\rm c}}^{\\infty}r^{-1-d} \\, dr \\lesssim r_{\\rm core}^{-d-2} + R_{{\\rm c}}^{-d} \\lesssim~ R_{\\rm a}^{-d-2} + R_{{\\rm c}}^{-d}.\n\\end{equation}\nIn order to balance the sources of error, one should take  $R_{{\\rm c}} = R_{\\rm a}^{\\dao{2\/d}+1}$.  Finally, by simply writing the number of degrees of freedom as the sum of those in the atomistic and continuum regions, it is possible to derive the result that $\\#{\\rm DoF} \\approx  R_{\\rm a}^d$; further details can be found in~\\cite{olsonThesis,Dev2013,acta.atc,blended2014}.}\n\nAfter making the estimation $\\gamma_{\\rm tr} \\leq (\\log {\\rm DoF})^{1\/2}$~\\cite{blended2014} for $d = 2$,  the main error estimate, ~\\eqref{main_estimate}, currently written in terms of solution regularity, may now be replaced \\dao{by an estimate of~\\eqref{error_dof} in terms of computational cost since $\\#{\\rm DoF} \\approx  R_{\\rm a}^d$:}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{main_esty2}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\|\\nabla IU^\\infty - \\nabla U^{{\\rm bqcf}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 +\n   \\| I \\bm{p}^\\infty - \\bm{p}^{{\\rm bqcf}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 \\\\\n\t&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\lesssim~ \\begin{cases} ({\\rm DoF})^{-1-2\/d} \\log{\\rm DoF}, &\\quad d = 2 , \\\\\n\t({\\rm DoF})^{-1-2\/d}, &\\quad d = 3,\n\t\\end{cases}\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich exactly matches the rate for the Bravais lattice case~\\cite{blended2014}.\nThis is due to the fact that the limiting factor in both error estimates is\nthe $\\mathcal{P}_1$ finite element approximation.\n\n\\begin{remark}\n   \\dao{In the Bravais lattice analysis~\\cite{blended2014}, the expression of $R_{{\\rm c}}$ in terms of $R_{{\\rm a}}$\n\t is incorrect which has led to an error in the expression for the error estimate in terms of the degrees of freedom. In that paper, a different mesh scaling is also used, but should the same mesh scaling be used, the error estimates in terms of the degrees of freedom would be identical up to a constant prefactor.}\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\subsection{Numerical tests} \\label{num}\nIn addition to providing a means to estimating the computational cost of the\nBQCF  method, the estimate~\\eqref{main_esty2} is also convenient to verify\n numerically. We have carried this out for\na Stone--Wales defect in graphene using both the BQCF method and a fully\natomistic method.\n\nFor the latter we simply minimize the full atomistic\nenergy over displacements that are non-zero only on the computational domain\n$\\Omega$ (clamped boundary conditions).  Using the methods\ndiscussed in Section~\\ref{analysis}, it is not difficult to show that the\nsolution, $(U^{\\rm Dir},\\bm{p}^{\\rm Dir})$, to this atomistic Galerkin method\nexists and satisfies the error estimate\n\\begin{equation}\\label{minor_esty1}\n   \\|\\nabla IU^\\infty - \\nabla U^{\\rm Dir} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\n      + \\| I\\bm{p}^\\infty - \\bm{p}^{\\rm Dir}\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\n      \\lesssim~ ({\\rm DoF})^{-1\/2}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nWe now set the model up for the Stone--Wales defect in graphene, recalling first\n the multilattice parameter values given\nin Section~\\ref{model}.  We choose a Stillinger-Weber~\\cite{stillinger1985}\ntype interatomic potential with a pair potential and bond angle potential component.\nThe interaction range we consider is\n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathcal{R} = \\big\\{&(\\rho_1 00), (\\rho_2 00), (-\\rho_1 00),(-\\rho_2 00),(\\rho_1-\\rho_2 00),(\\rho_2-\\rho_1 00),\\\\\n&(001),(010),(-\\rho_2 01),(\\rho_2 10),(-\\rho_1 01),(\\rho_1 10),\\\\\n& (\\rho_1 11), (\\rho_2 11), (-\\rho_1 11),(-\\rho_2 11),(\\rho_1-\\rho_2 11),(\\rho_2-\\rho_1 11)\\big\\},\n\\end{align*}\nwhich is  depicted in Figure~\\ref{fig:multilattice}.  In this notation, the site potential is given by\n\\begin{align*}\n&\\hat{V}(D\\bm{y}(\\xi)) = \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} \\frac{1}{2}\\phi(D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)) + \\vartheta(D_{(-\\rho_1 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(-\\rho_1-\\rho_2 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi))  \\\\\n&\\qquad+ \\vartheta(D_{(-\\rho_1 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(-\\rho_2 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)) + \\vartheta(D_{(-\\rho_1-\\rho_2 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(-\\rho_2 01)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)) \\\\\n&\\qquad+ \\vartheta(D_{(\\rho_1 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(\\rho_1+\\rho_2 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)) + \\vartheta(D_{(\\rho_1 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(\\rho_2 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)) \\\\\n&\\qquad+ \\vartheta(D_{(\\rho_1+\\rho_2 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi), D_{(\\rho_2 10)}\\bm{y}(\\xi)),\n\\end{align*}\nwhere $\\phi(r) = r^{-12} - 2r^{-6}$ is a pair potential term and\n\\[\n\\vartheta(r_1, r_2) = \\Big(\\frac{r_1\\cdot r_2}{|r_1| \\,  |r_2|}+1\/2\\Big)^2\n\\]\nis a three-body term that penalizes angles that differ from $\\frac{2\\pi}{3}$.\n\n\n\nThe Stone--Wales defect shown in Figure~\\ref{fig:stone} is obtained by rotating\nthe bond between the two carbon atoms at the origin site by ninety degrees about\nthe midpoint of this bond. One way of incorporating this defect into our\nframework is to define a reference configuration $(Y_0, p_1)$ where $Y_0(\\xi) =\n{\\sf F} \\xi$ for all $\\xi \\neq 0$ with ${\\sf F}$ and $p_1$ given by the graphene\nparameters in~\\eqref{graph_param}. At the origin, we set $Y_0(0) = \\mbox{Rot}(0) $\nand $p_1(0) = \\mbox{Rot}(p_1)$, where $\\mbox{Rot}$ represents the ninety degree\nrotation about the midpoint of the segment ${\\rm conv}\\{0, p_1\\}$.  Then we set\n$V_\\xi(D(U,p)(\\xi)) = \\hat{V}(D(Y_0 + U,p_1 + p)(\\xi))$.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n   \\centering\n\\subfigure[A perfect graphene sheet. ]\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.35\\textwidth]{swleft}}\n\\subfigure[An unrelaxed Stone--Wales defect. ]\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.35\\textwidth]{swright}}\n\\caption{Examples of a perfect graphene sheet and a Stone--Wales defect.\nThe dotted lines in the right display indicate bonds that are broken during the rotation of the highlighted atoms.}\\label{fig:stone}\n\\end{figure}\n\nWe choose hexagonal domains for $\\Omega_{\\rm core}, \\Omega_{\\rm a}, \\Omega$, etc.,\nand use a blending function which approximately minimizes the $L^2$ norm of\n$\\nabla^2 \\varphi$ on $\\Omega_{{\\rm b}}$~\\cite{bqce12}.  We select the inner width,\n$r_{\\rm core}$, of the hexagon $\\Omega_{\\rm core}$ to be from the range ${{R_{{\\rm a}}=}}\\left\\{8,\n12,16,20,24\\right\\}$ with $\\kappa = 1\/2$, and then the remaining domains are\nchosen as scaled hexagons satisfying the requirements of Section~\\ref{bqcf} and\nTheorem~\\ref{main_thm} \\dao{(see Figure 10 in~\\cite{bqcf13} for a representative illustration of this domain decomposition for a Bravais lattice)}.  Finally, our finite element mesh is graded\nradially with approximate mesh size $h(r) = \\big(\\frac{r}{R_{\\rm a}}\\big)^{3\/2}$ as described earlier in this\nsection with $d = 2$.  The BQCF equations were solved by a preconditioned nonlinear conjugate\ngradient algorithm with line-search based on force-orthogonality only\n{\\helen{(in BQCF there is no energy functional for which descent can be imposed).}}\n\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:error} we show the error in the displacement gradients and the single graphene\nshift vector for the computed BQCF solution versus the number of degrees of\nfreedom. Both match our theoretical predictions\nfrom~\\eqref{main_esty2} and indeed demonstrate that the error\nestimates are sharp (up to logarithms). We also show the error committed by the\natomistic Galerkin method (which is estimated in~\\eqref{minor_esty1}),\nto demonstrate the practical gain achieved by the BQCF method.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n   \\centering\n\\subfigure[Error in displacement field for Stone--Wales defect.]\n   {\\includegraphics[width=0.45\\textwidth]{NNNSW}}\n\\subfigure[Error in shift field for Stone--Wales defect. ]\n{\\includegraphics[width=0.45\\textwidth]{NNSWSHIFT}}\n\\caption{BQCF error plotted against degrees of freedom. {\\helen{We have also plotted the ``purely atomistic'' error, denoted by ATM, which is the solution obtained by truncating the infinite dimensional atomistic problem to a finite domain using homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.}}\n}\\label{fig:error}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\FloatBarrier\n\n\n\\section{Proofs} \\label{analysis}\n\nThe remainder of this paper is devoted to proving our main result, Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}.  As in \\cite{blended2014}, the abstract\nframework for the proof is provided by the\ninverse function theorem~\\cite{acta.atc,ortnerInverse,hubbard2009}, {\\helen{which we recall for reference and which is used to establish well-posedness of the nonlinear BQCF variational equation in Theorem ~\\ref{main_thm}.}}\n\n\\begin{theorem}[Inverse Function Theorem \\cite{ortnerInverse,hubbard2009}]\\label{inverseFunctionTheorem}\nLet $X$ and $Y$ be Banach spaces with $f:X \\to Y$, $f \\in {\\rm{C}}^1(U)$ with $U \\subset X$ an open set containing $x_0$.\nSuppose that $\\eta > 0, \\sigma > 0$, and $L > 0$ exist such that $\\|f(x_0)\\|_Y < \\eta$,  $\\delta f(x_0)$ is invertible with $\\|\\delta f(x_0)^{-1}\\|_{\\mathcal{L}(Y,X)} < \\sigma$, $B_{2\\eta\\sigma}(x_0) \\subset U$, $\\delta f$ is Lipschitz continuous on $B_{2\\eta\\sigma}(x_0)$ with Lipschitz constant $L$, and $2L\\eta\\sigma^2 < 1$. Then there exists a ${\\rm C}^1$ inverse function $g:B_{\\eta}(y_0) \\to B_{2\\eta\\sigma}(x_0)$ and thus an element $\\bar{x} \\in X$ such that $f(\\bar{x}) = 0$ and\n\\begin{align*}\n\\|x_0 - \\bar{x}\\|_{X} <~& 2\\eta\\sigma.\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\\medskip\n\nThe nonlinear operator we consider is the variational BQCF operator $\\mathcal{F}^{\\rm BQCF}(U, \\bm{p})$, and the point about which we linearize is $x_0 = (U_h, \\bm{p}_h) := \\Pi_h(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$ where $\\Pi_h$ is a projection operator defined in the following section.  In Section~\\ref{cons} we prove a consistency estimate on the residual $\\mathcal{F}^{\\rm BQCF}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h)$:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{cons_est}\n\\begin{split}\n\\sup_{\\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml} = 1} \\big|\\< \\mathcal{F}^{\\rm BQCF}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r}) \\>\\big| &\\lesssim \\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}  \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad + \\|\\nabla \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}\n  + \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nThe invertibility condition on the derivative of $\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}$ is proven as a coercivity condition in Section~\\ref{stab} where we show that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{stab_est}\n\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{\\rm BQCF}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h){\\helen{(W,\\bm{r})}},(W,\\bm{r}) \\> \\gtrsim \\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2, \\quad \\forall (W,\\bm{r}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0},\n\\end{equation}\nprovided that the atomistic region is sufficiently large.\n\nAfter we prove these two estimates, in Section \\ref{sec:proof_main_result} we\ncombine them with a Lipschitz estimate on $\\delta\\mathcal{F}^{\\rm bqcf}$ and\napply the inverse function theorem to prove Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}.\n\n\n\nThroughout this analysis, we continue to use the modified Vinogradov notation $x \\lesssim y$, where the implied constants are allowed to depend on the shape regularity constants $C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}, C_{\\rm o}$ ({\\helen{which are defined in Assumption~\\ref{assumption-shapereg} and \\eqref{def_constant_Co} }}), the interatomic potentials (and their interaction range), and the stability constant $\\gamma_{\\rm a}$.\n\n\n\\subsection{Cauchy--Born Modeling Error}\\label{tech}\nIn preparation for the consistency analysis in Section~\\ref{cons} we first establish several auxiliary results about the Cauchy--Born model.\n\nA central technical tool in the analysis of AtC coupling methods is the ability to compare discrete atomistic displacements which are the natural atomistic kinematic variables ({\\helen{recall that the atomistic displacements are equivalent to atomistic site displacements plus atomistic shift vectors}}), and continuous displacement and shift fields which capture the continuum kinematics.  We have already introduced several interpolants which serve this task: a micro-interpolant, $I$; a finite element interpolant, $I_h$; and a smooth interpolant, $\\tilde{I}$.  We will also introduce a quasi-interpolant in this section which will allow us to define an analytically convenient atomistic version of stress~\\cite{theil2012}.\n\nWe use $\\bar{\\zeta}(x)$ to denote the nodal basis function associated with the origin for the atomistic finite element mesh $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ and $\\bar{\\zeta}_\\xi(x) := \\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi)$ to denote the nodal basis function at site $\\xi$.   We may then write the micro-interpolant $Iu = \\bar{u}$ as\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{def_baru}\n\\bar{u}(x) = \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} u(\\xi) \\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi).\n\\end{equation*}\nThe quasi-interpolant of $u$ is then defined by a convolution with $\\bar{\\zeta}$\n\\begin{equation}\\label{def_quasi_interp}\nu^*(x) := (\\bar{\\zeta} * \\bar{u})(x).\n\\end{equation}\n\nIt will later be important that this convolution operation is invertible and stable. This is a consequence of~\\cite[Lemma 5]{atInterpolant}, which we state here for reference.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\cite[Lemma 5]{atInterpolant}\\label{iso_lemma}\nFor a given atomistic displacement, $u$, there exists a unique atomistic displacement $\\acute{u}$ with the property that $\\bar{\\zeta} * \\bar{\\acute{u}}(\\xi) = u(\\xi)$ for all $\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\medskip\n\nOne of the primary uses of the $u^*$ interpolant will be the development of an \\textit{atomistic stress function} which can be compared to the continuum stress in the Cauchy--Born model~\\cite{theil2012}.  The first variation of the continuum model may be written in terms of a stress tensor,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{cont_tensor_eq1}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}} (U, \\bm{q}), (W, \\bm{r})\\rangle\n=~ \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}((\\nabla_{\\tau} U+q_{\\delta}-q_{\\gamma})_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta) \\in \\mathbb{R}})\n\\cdot \\left(\\nabla_{\\rho} W+r_{\\beta}-r_{\\alpha}\\right) \\\\\n&~=~ \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\nabla(U, \\bm{q})) \\otimes \\rho : \\nabla W  + \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\nabla(U, \\bm{q}))_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta) \\in \\mathbb{R}})\n\\cdot \\left(r_{\\beta}-r_{\\alpha}\\right)\n\\\\\n&~=~ \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{\\beta}[{\\rm{S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_{\\beta} : \\nabla W\n      + \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta} [{\\rm{S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta}\n               (r_\\beta - r_\\alpha),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we defined\n\\begin{equation}\\label{cont_stress_tensor}\n\\begin{split}\n[{\\rm{S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_{\\beta} :=~& \\sum_{\\substack{\\alpha, \\rho: \\\\ (\\rho \\alpha\\beta)\\in\\mathcal{R}}} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\nabla(U, \\bm{q})(x))\\otimes \\rho, \\\\\n[{\\rm{S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta} :=~& \\sum_{\\rho \\in \\mathcal{R}_1} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\nabla(U, \\bm{q})(x)).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\nTo compare the atomistic and continuum models, we now construct an analogous atomistic stress tensor. Its definition will make it clear why we introduced the seemingly unnecessary sum over $\\beta$ in the first group in \\eqref{cont_tensor_eq1}. \\dao{The basic idea is to extend the construction of~\\cite{theil2012}: the argument $\\nabla(U, \\bm{q})(x)$ in~\\eqref{cont_stress_tensor} will be replaced by a local averaging of first order finite difference approximations $D(U, \\bm{q})(\\xi)$ for $\\xi$ near $x$.}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n   For $(U,\\bm{q}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$, define the atomistic stress tensors\n   \\begin{align}\n      \\label{eq:defn_Sa}\n    \\begin{split}\n   [\\,{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta :=~& \\sum_{\\substack{\\alpha, \\rho: \\\\ (\\rho \\alpha\\beta)\\in\\mathcal{R}}} \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\big( V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\big(D(U,\\bm{q})(\\xi)\\big) \\otimes \\rho \\big) \\omega_{\\rho}(\\xi-x),\\\\\n   [\\,{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(U,\\bm{q})(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta} :=~& \\sum_{\\rho \\in \\mathcal{R}_1} \\sum_{\\xi\\in\\mathcal{L}} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} \\big(D(U,\\bm{q})(\\xi)\\big) \\omega_{0}(\\xi-x).\n   \\end{split} \\\\\n   \\label{omega_rho}\n   \\text{where} \\qquad \\omega_{\\rho}(x) &:= \\int_{0}^1 \\bar{\\zeta}(x+t\\rho)dt.\n   \\end{align}\n   Then\n   \\begin{equation}\n      \\label{atom_tensor_eq1}\n      \\begin{split}\n         \\big\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}_{\\rm hom}(U,\\bm{q}), (W^{*}, \\bm{r}^{*}) \\big\\rangle\n   =& \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}  \\bigg\\{ \\sum_\\beta [\\,{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U,\\bm{q})]_\\beta : \\left(\\nabla \\bar{W}+\\nabla \\bar{r_\\beta} \\right) \\\\\n    &\\qquad\\qquad+ \\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta} [\\,{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(U,\\bm{q})]_{\\alpha\\beta}\\cdot (\\bar{r}_{\\beta}-\\bar{r}_\\alpha) \\bigg\\} dx.\n\t\t\n     \n     \n      \\end{split}\n   \\end{equation}\n   {\\helen{ where $W^{*}$ and  $\\bm{r}^{*}$ are defined through  \\eqref{def_quasi_interp}. }}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe start by computing {\\helen{the first variation of $\\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}_{\\rm hom}(U,\\bm{q})$ with the test pair $(W^{*}, \\bm{r}^{*})$:}}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{delEa_eq1}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}_{\\rm hom}(U,\\bm{q}), (W^{*}, \\bm{r}^{*})\\rangle\\\\\n&=\\sum_{\\xi\\in\\mathcal{L}}\\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)\\in\\mathcal{R}}V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\big(D(U,\\bm{q})(\\xi)\\big)\n\\cdot\\Big(D_{\\rho}W^*(\\xi)+D_{\\rho}r_{\\beta}^*(\\xi)+r_{\\beta}^*(\\xi)-r_{\\alpha}^*(\\xi)\\Big).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nArguing as in \\cite[Eq. (2.4)]{theil2012} we obtain\n\\begin{align}\n   \\label{convo_finite_diff}\n   D_{\\rho}W^*(\\xi)+D_{\\rho}r_{\\beta}^*(\\xi)\n   &= \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\omega_{\\rho}(\\xi-x)\\left( \\nabla_{\\rho}\\bar{W}+\\nabla_{\\rho}\\bar{r}_{\\beta}\\right)\\, dx\n   \\qquad \\text{and} \\\\\n   %\n   \\label{convo_beta_alpha}\n   r^*_{\\beta}(\\xi)-r^*_{\\alpha}(\\xi) &= \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\omega_0(\\xi-x) \\left(\\bar{r}_{\\beta}-\\bar{r}_{\\alpha}\\right)\\, dx.\n\\end{align}\n\n\n\nSubstituting \\eqref{convo_finite_diff} and \\eqref{convo_beta_alpha} into \\eqref{delEa_eq1} and recalling the definitions of the atomistic stress tensors from~\\eqref{eq:defn_Sa} yields the stated claim.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe refer to the error between the continuum and atomistic stress functions as the \\textit{Cauchy--Born modeling error} and quantify it in the next lemma; see \\cite{theil2012} for an analogous result for Bravais lattices.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{cb_error2}\n   Assume that $U \\in {\\rm C}^{2,1}(\\mathbb{R}^d; \\mathbb{R}^n)$ and $p_\\alpha \\in {\\rm C}^{1,1}(\\mathbb{R}^d, \\mathbb{R}^{n})$ for each $\\alpha$. Fix $x \\in \\mathbb{R}^d$ and set\n\t\\[\n\tr_{\\rm cut} = \\max_{\\rho \\in \\mathcal{R}_1} |\\rho|,  \\qquad \\nu_x := B_{2r_{\\rm cut}}(0).\n\t\\]\n   1. If $\\nabla U$ and $\\bm{p}$ are constant in $\\nu_x$, then\n   \\begin{equation}\\label{cb_identity1}\n   {[{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{p})(x)]_\\beta = [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta \\quad \\mbox{and} \\quad [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(U, \\bm{p})(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta} = [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta}.}\n   \\end{equation}\n\n   2. In general,\n   {\\begin{equation*}\n      \\label{eq:bound_Sa-Sc}\n\t\t\t\\begin{split}\n   \\big| [S^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U,p)(x)]_\\beta - [S_{\\rm d}^{\\rm c}(U,p)(x)]_\\beta\\big|\n   \\lesssim~&\n         \\| \\nabla^2 U \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)} + \\| \\nabla \\bm{q} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)},\\\\\n   \\big| [S^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(U,p)(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta} - [S_{\\rm s}^{\\rm c}(U,p)(x)]_{\\alpha\\beta}\\big|\n   \\lesssim~&\n         \\| \\nabla^2 U \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)} + \\| \\nabla \\bm{q} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)}.\n  \\end{split}\n\t\\end{equation*}}\n   with the implied constant depending only on the interatomic potential $V$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n   1. The identity \\eqref{cb_identity1} is an immediate consequence of the definitions \\eqref{cont_stress_tensor}, \\eqref{eq:defn_Sa} and of\n   \\begin{equation*}\\label{omega_properties_simplified}\n   \\sum_{\\xi}\\omega_\\rho(\\xi - x) = 1.\n   \\end{equation*}\n\n   2. We define an auxiliary homogeneous displacement $(U^{\\rm h}, \\bm{q}^{\\rm h})$ with $\\nabla U^{\\rm h} \\equiv \\nabla U(x)$ and $\\bm{q}^{\\rm h} \\equiv \\bm{q}(x)$. Then we have{\n   \\begin{align*}\n      [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta - [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta\n      = [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta - [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U^{\\rm h}, \\bm{q}^{\\rm h})(x)]_\\beta.\n   \\end{align*}}\n   Since we assumed that $V$ is twice continuously differentiable, with globally bounded second derivatives, we\n   obtain\n   \\begin{align*}\n      \\big| [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d} &(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta - [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})](x)_\\beta \\big|\n      = \\big|[{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U, \\bm{q})(x)]_\\beta - [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(U^{\\rm h}, \\bm{q}^{\\rm h})(x)]_\\beta\\big| \\\\\n      &\\dao{= \\Big|\\sum_{\\substack{\\alpha, \\rho: \\\\ (\\rho \\alpha\\beta)\\in\\mathcal{R}}} \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\big(\\big[ V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\big(D(U,\\bm{q})(\\xi)\\big) -  V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}\\big(D(U^{\\rm h}, \\bm{q}^{\\rm h})(\\xi)\\big)\\big]\\otimes \\rho \\big) \\omega_{\\rho}(\\xi-x)\\Big| }\\\\\n\t\t\t&\\dao{\\lesssim \\sum_{\\substack{\\alpha, \\rho: \\\\ (\\rho \\alpha\\beta)\\in\\mathcal{R}}} \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\big|D(U,\\bm{q})(\\xi) -  D(U^{\\rm h}, \\bm{q}^{\\rm h})(\\xi)\\big| \\omega_{\\rho}(\\xi-x)} \\\\\n      &\\lesssim \\big\\| \\nabla U - \\nabla U^{\\rm h} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)}\n         + \\big\\| \\bm{q} - \\bm{q}^{\\rm h} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)} + \\dao{\\| \\nabla^2 U \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)} + \\| \\nabla \\bm{q} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)}} \\\\\n      &\\lesssim \\| \\nabla^2 U \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)} + \\| \\nabla \\bm{q} \\|_{L^\\infty(\\nu_x)},\n   \\end{align*}\n\t\\dao{where in obtaining the last two inequalities we have used a Taylor expansion of the finite differences and the fact that $\\omega_{\\rho}(\\xi-x)$ as defined in~\\eqref{omega_rho} vanishes off of $\\nu_x$.} The proof for the comparison of the ``shift'' stress tensors is nearly identical so is omitted.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nWith this pointwise estimate, and using the fact that $\\tilde{U}$ is piecewise polynomial, it is straightforward to deduce the following Cauchy--Born modeling error estimate over $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$.\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{globel_stress}\n{For the atomistic and continuum stress tensors defined above,\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{global_est}\n\\begin{split}\n\\big\\|[{\\rm{S}}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty)]_\\beta -[{\\rm{S}}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty)]_\\beta \\big\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~&  \\|\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\\\\n\\big\\|[{\\rm{S}}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} -[{\\rm{S}}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\big\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~&  \\|\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{q}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}}\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe stress estimates for a multilattice are one order lower in terms of derivatives than the corresponding Bravais lattice estimates.  A refined analysis shows that this estimate cannot be improved without an underlying point symmetry for the multilattice.  When this symmetry is present in multilattices, it is possible to define a symmetrized Cauchy--Born energy with an improved estimate~\\cite{koten2013}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Consistency}\\label{cons}\nOur first task in completing the residual estimate~\\eqref{cons_est} is to define the projection from atomistic functions to finite element functions satisfying the Dirichlet boundary conditions so we first truncate the solution to a finite domain.  For that, let $\\eta$ be a smooth ``bump function'' with support in $B_{1}(0)$ and equal to one on $B_{3\/4}(0)$.   Let \\dao{$A_R$ be an ``annular region'' containing the support of $\\nabla (I \\eta(x\/R))$, i.e,} $A_R := B_{R+2r_{\\rm buff}}(0)\\setminus B_{3\/4R-2r_{\\rm buff}} \\supset {\\rm supp}(\\nabla (I \\eta(x\/R)))$ and define the truncation operator by\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{trunc}\nT_{R}u_\\alpha(x) = \\eta(x\/R)\\bigg(Iu_\\alpha - \\frac{1}{|A_R|}\\int\\limits_{A_R} Iu_0\\, dx\\bigg).\n\\end{equation*}\nFurther, let $S_h$ be the Scott--Zhang {\\helen{quasi-interpolation}} operator~\\cite{scott1990} onto the finite element mesh $\\mathcal{T}_h$.  We then define the projection operator by\n\\begin{align}\\label{proj_operator}\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\quad\\Pi_{h} u_\\alpha := S_h (T_{r_{\\rm i}}u_\\alpha), \\quad \\Pi_{h} \\bm{u} :=~ \\left\\{\\Pi_{h} u_\\alpha\\right\\}_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}, \\\\\n&\\Pi_{h} p_\\alpha := \\Pi_{h} (u_\\alpha - u_0), \\quad \\Pi_{h} \\bm{p} :=~ \\left\\{\\Pi_{h} p_\\alpha\\right\\}_{\\alpha = 0}^{S-1}, \\qquad \\Pi_{h}(U,\\bm{p}) := (\\Pi_{h}U, \\Pi_{h}\\bm{p}).\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\n(Recall that $r_{\\rm i}$ is the radius of the largest ball inscribed in $\\Omega$.) Note that $\\nabla \\Pi_{h} u_\\alpha$ as well as\n\\[\n\\Pi_{h} u_\\alpha - \\Pi_{h} u_\\beta = S_h\\big[\\eta(x\/r_{\\rm i})\\big( I u_\\alpha - Iu_\\beta \\big)\\big]\n\\]\nhave support contained in $\\Omega$.\nWe also have the following approximation results.\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{approx_lem}\nTake $(U,\\bm{p}) = \\bm{u} \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$.  Then\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{approx_est}\n\\begin{split}\n\\|\\nabla \\bar{U} - \\nabla \\Pi_{h,R} U\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} +  \\|\\bar{\\bm{p}}_\\alpha - \\Pi_{h,R} \\bm{p}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\lesssim~& \\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n&+ \\| \\nabla \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} + \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}, \\\\\n\\|\\nabla \\tilde{U} - \\nabla \\Pi_{h,R} U\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +  \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}_\\alpha - \\Pi_{h,R} \\bm{p}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n&+ \\| \\nabla \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext} \\cap \\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext} \\cap \\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\\end{lemma}\nThe proof is very similar to the proof of Lemma~\\ref{lem:dense} (with only additional estimates required for the finite element interpolants) and therefore omitted. See also~\\cite[Lemma 1.8]{olson2015} for similar estimates, the main difference being the usage of the Scott--Zhang interpolant which allows for $L^2$ interpolation bounds on $H^1$ functions, see~\\cite{brenner2008,scott1990}.\n\nWe can now prove the bound~\\eqref{cons_est}.\n\n\\begin{theorem}[BQCF Consistency]\\label{consistency_thm}\nDefine $(U_h, \\bm{p}_h):= \\Pi_h(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$ where $(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$ satisfies Assumption~\\ref{assumption2}. If Assumptions~\\ref{assumption1} and~\\ref{assumptionSite} are valid also and if the blending function, $\\varphi$, and finite element mesh, $\\mathcal{T}_h$, satisfy the requirements of Section~\\ref{bqcf}, then the BQCF consistency error is bounded by\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{cons_est1}\n\\begin{split}\n\\left|\\langle\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle\\right| \\lesssim~ \\gamma_{\\rm tr} \\, &\\Big(\\|h\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}  + \\|\\nabla \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}   \\\\\n&+  \\| \\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}\\Big)\\cdot \\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{{\\rm ml}}, \\quad \\forall (W,\\bm{r}) \\, \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nand $\\gamma_{\\rm tr}$ is a trace inequality constant (see Lemma 4.6 in \\cite{blended2014}) given by\n\\[\n\\gamma_{\\rm tr} = \\begin{cases} &\\sqrt{1 + \\log(R_{\\rm o}\/R_{{\\rm a}})}, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 2$,} \\\\\n                                 &1, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 3$.} \\end{cases}\n\\]\n\\end{theorem}\n\nBefore beginning the proof, we make some preliminary remarks. First, we observe that, since the Scott--Zhang interpolation operator is a projection it follows that\n\\[\n   D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}U_h(\\xi)=D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}U^\\infty(\\xi)\n   \\qquad \\text{for} \\quad\n   \\xi\\in\\mathcal{L}^{{\\rm a}},\n\\]\nwhere $\\mathcal{L}^{\\rm a} := \\mathcal{L} \\cap ({\\rm supp}(1-\\varphi) + \\mathcal{R}_1)$.\nFurthermore, since $\\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty) = 0$, the residual error in the BQCF variational operator is equivalent to\n\\begin{equation}\\label{test_going}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle & \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty), (U,\\bm{q})\\rangle\\\\\n&\\quad= \\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty,\\bm{p}^\\infty), (1-\\varphi)(W, \\bm{r})\\rangle\n+\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h), \\big(I_h(\\varphi W),I_h(\\varphi\\bm{r}) \\big)\\rangle \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad -\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty), (U,\\bm{q})\\rangle,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $(W, \\bm{r}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}$ is an arbitrary given pair of test functions in the finite element test function space, while $(U, \\bm{q})  \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}$ is a test pair that we are free to choose. The obvious candidate choice is $(U, \\bm{q}) = (W, \\bm{r})$ in which case we would have\n\\begin{align*}\n\\langle & \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty), (U,\\bm{q})\\rangle\\\\\n&\\quad= -\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty,\\bm{p}^\\infty), (\\varphi)(W, \\bm{r})\\rangle\n+\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h), \\big(I_h(\\varphi W),I_h(\\varphi\\bm{r}) \\big)\\rangle.\n\\end{align*}\nThe resulting residual error is concentrated only over $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$ due to $\\nabla \\varphi$ having support in $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$.  The issue in estimating this quantity is that when we convert the atomistic residual into the atomistic-stress format, the test function appears as a piecewise linear function with respect to the atomistic mesh $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$, whereas the test function is piecewise linear with respect to the graded mesh $\\mathcal{T}_h$ in the continuum portion.  For this reason, we \\dao{shall add correction terms to our previous candidate choice $(U,\\bm{q}) = (W,\\bm{r})$ via\n\\begin{equation}\\label{test_choice}\nU = W + (Z^* - \\varphi W), \\quad q_\\alpha = r_\\alpha + (z_\\alpha^* - \\varphi r_\\alpha), \\quad \\alpha = 1,\\ldots, S-1,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $(Z,\\bm{z}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}$ will be chosen to satisfy certain approximation estimates as stated in Lemma~\\ref{interpolation_lemma} below.  The reason we use $Z^*$ and $z_\\alpha^*$ instead of merely $Z$ and $z_\\alpha$ is that we shall eventually make use of the atomistic stress representation from~\\eqref{atom_tensor_eq1}.} The BQCF residual error from~\\eqref{test_going} then becomes\n\\begin{equation}\\label{residual_est_new}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle & \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty), (W + (Z^* - \\varphi W),\\bm{r} + (\\bm{z}^* - \\varphi \\bm{r}))\\rangle\\\\\n&\\quad= \\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}}(U_h, \\bm{p}_h), \\big(I_h(\\varphi W),I_h(\\varphi\\bm{r}) \\big)\\rangle - \\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty,\\bm{p}^\\infty), (Z^*, \\bm{z}^*)\\rangle\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nMoreover, since we are blending by site and using $\\mathcal{P}_1$ elements for the shifts, we may use the same form for $Z$ and $\\bm{z}$ as obtained in the simple lattice case~\\cite{blended2014} for both displacements \\textit{and} shifts.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{interpolation_lemma}\nSuppose $W \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0}$ and $\\bm{r} \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}$.  Then for $f \\in W^{1,2}_{\\rm loc}(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ and for $Z_h, Z,{z_h}_{\\alpha}, z_\\alpha$ as defined above,\n\\begin{align}\n\\int_{\\Omega_{\\rm c}} f (\\bar{Z} - Z_h) dx \\lesssim~& \\|\\nabla f\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\cdot \\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\label{weight_inter}\\\\\n\\int_{\\Omega_{\\rm c}} f\\cdot ({z_h}_{\\alpha} - \\bar{z}_\\alpha)\\, dx \\lesssim~& \\| \\nabla f\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\cdot \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}  \\label{za_result} \\\\\n\\| Z_h- \\bar{Z}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\label{inter_diff}\\\\\n\\| {z_h}_{\\alpha} - \\bar{z}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\label{inter_shift} \\\\\n\\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\gamma_{\\rm tr}\\|\\nabla W \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})},\\label{h1_int_norm_est} \\\\\n\\|{z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\|r_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\label{l2_int_norm_est}.\n\\end{align}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe begin by letting $\\omega_\\xi := {\\rm supp}(\\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi))$ and $\\mathcal{C} := \\{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L} : \\omega_\\xi  \\subset \\Omega_{\\rm c} \\}$.  Then we observe that $Z_h$ and $\\bar{Z}$ are constant on any patch $\\omega_\\xi$ with $\\xi \\notin \\mathcal{C}$, \\helen{and furthermore $Z_h = \\bar{Z}$.  Intuitively, this should hold because if $\\xi \\notin \\mathcal{C}$, then either $\\xi$ is near the defect core where $\\varphi = 0$ and hence $Z_h = 0$ and $\\bar{Z} = 0$; or $\\xi$ is near the exterior to the boundary of $\\Omega$ where $Z_h$ is constant. For this to rigorously hold, we need to recall the buffer, $B_{4\\rm buff}$, in the definition of $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$ which then makes proving the statement possible.  Moreover, $Z_h = \\bar{Z}$ on any patch $\\omega_\\xi$ with $\\xi \\notin \\mathcal{C}$ due to the normalization factor in the definition of $Z$.} For $f \\in W^{1,2}_{\\rm loc}(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ we then have\n   \\begin{equation}\\label{Z_result}\n\t\\begin{split}\n      &\\int_{\\Omega_{\\rm c}} f (\\bar{Z} - Z_h) dx = \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\int_{\\omega_\\xi \\cap \\Omega_{\\rm c}} f(x) \\big( Z(\\xi) - Z_h(x) \\big) \\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi) dx \\\\\n\t\t\t&= \\dao{\\sum_{\\substack{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}: \\\\ \\omega_\\xi \\subset \\Omega_{\\rm c}}} \\int_{\\omega_\\xi} f(x) \\big( Z(\\xi) - Z_h(x) \\big) \\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi) dx \\quad \\mbox{since $Z_h = Z$ is constant for $\\xi \\notin \\mathcal{C}$}}\\\\\n      &= \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{C}} \\int_{\\omega_\\xi} \\bigg(f(x) - \\Xint-_{\\omega_\\xi} f \\bigg) \\big( Z(\\xi) - Z_h(x) \\big) \\bar{\\zeta}(x-\\xi) dx \\\\\n      &\\leq \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{C}} \\bigg\\| f - \\Xint-_{\\omega_\\xi}\n                f  \\bigg\\|_{L^2(\\omega_\\xi)} \\| Z(\\xi) - Z_h \\|_{L^2(\\omega_\\xi)} \\\\\n      &\\lesssim \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{C}}\\| \\nabla f \\|_{L^2(\\omega_\\xi)} \\| \\nabla Z_h \\|_{L^2(\\omega_\\xi)} \\\\\n\t\t&\\lesssim \\| \\nabla f \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\| \\nabla Z_h \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n   \\end{split}\n\t\\end{equation}\nThis proves~\\eqref{weight_inter}.  Proving~\\eqref{za_result} is analogous:\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\int_{\\Omega_{\\rm c}} f\\cdot ({z_h}_{\\alpha} - \\bar{z}_\\alpha)\\, dx \\lesssim~ \\| \\nabla f\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\cdot {\\| \\nabla {z_h}_{\\alpha} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}} {\\lesssim \\| \\nabla f\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\cdot \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} },\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere in obtaining the final inequality we have used that for $T \\in \\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$,\n\\[\n\\| \\nabla z_h \\|_{L^2(T)} \\lesssim h_T \\| z_h \\|_{L^2(T)} \\lesssim \\| z_h \\|_{L^2(T)}.\n\\]\nFor these choices, we also have the following norm estimates~\\eqref{inter_diff} and~\\eqref{inter_shift}:\n\\begin{align*}\n\\| Z_h- \\bar{Z}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\\\\n\\| {z_h}_{\\alpha} - \\bar{z}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n\\end{align*}\nTo obtain the first of these, we simply take {\\helen{$ f= \\bar{Z}-Z_h$}} in~\\eqref{weight_inter} yielding\\helen{\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\| Z_h- \\bar{Z}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 \\lesssim~ \\| \\nabla Z_h- \\nabla \\bar{Z}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\\cdot \\| \\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~ \\| \\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 +\\|\\nabla \\bar{Z}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 \\\\\n&~\\lesssim~ \\| \\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 +\\|\\nabla Z\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 \\lesssim~ \\| \\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 +\\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere we have applied Young's inequality to deduce the estimate\n\\begin{align*}\n\\|\\nabla Z\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2 = \\|\\nabla Z\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2  = \\Big\\|\\frac{(\\bar{\\zeta}*\\nabla Z_h)}{\\int \\bar{\\zeta} dx}\\Big\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\leq \\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 \\|\\bar{\\zeta}\\|_{L^1(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 \\lesssim~ \\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}^2.\n\\end{align*}\n}\nFor the second of these, we simply have\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n\\| {z_h}_{\\alpha} - \\bar{z}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\leq~& \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +  \\|\\bar{z}_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~ \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +  \\|z_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n\\lesssim~& \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\| {z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere we have again used Young's inequality for convolutions.  Next, upon recalling the definition\n\\[\n\\gamma_{\\rm tr} = \\begin{cases} &\\sqrt{1 + \\log(R_{\\rm o}\/R_{{\\rm a}})}, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 2$,} \\\\\n                                 &1, \\quad \\mbox{if $d = 3$,} \\end{cases}\n\\]\nwe have~\\eqref{h1_int_norm_est} and~\\eqref{l2_int_norm_est}:\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n\\|\\nabla Z_h\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\gamma_{\\rm tr}\\|\\nabla W \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}, \\\\\n\\|{z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\lesssim~& \\|r_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nThe first of these is a consequence of~\\cite[Lemma 7]{blended2014}.  The second is a result of $0 \\leq \\varphi \\leq 1$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n   \\|{z_h}_{\\alpha}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} = \\|I_h(\\varphi r_\\alpha) \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\leq~ \\|I_h(r_\\alpha) \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} = \\|r_\\alpha\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe are now ready to prove Theorem~\\ref{consistency_thm}.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{consistency_thm}]\n\\dao{Since $\\tilde{I}u$ interpolates $u$ at $\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}$, we may replace discrete $U^{\\infty}$ with continuous $\\tilde{I}U=\\tilde{U}^{\\infty}$ in~\\eqref{residual_est_new} which leaves us with estimating\n\\begin{equation}\\label{residual_est}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle & \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle = \\langle \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h), (W,\\bm{r})\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty), (U,\\bm{q})\\rangle\\\\\n&\\quad= \\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}} (U_h,\\bm{p}_h), \\big(I_h(\\varphi W), I_h(\\varphi \\bm{r})\\big)\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta\\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty), (Z^*,\\bm{z}^*)\\rangle.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n}\nRecalling that $Z_h := I_h(\\varphi W)$, $\\bm{z}_h := I_h(\\varphi \\bm{r})$, and the atomistic and continuum stress representations of~\\eqref{eq:defn_Sa} and~\\eqref{cont_stress_tensor}, we split this into three terms {using simple algebraic manipulations as}\n\\begin{align}\n&\\langle \\delta \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}} (U_h,\\bm{p}_h), \\big(I_h(\\varphi W), I_h(\\varphi \\bm{r})\\big)\\rangle\n-\\langle \\delta\\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty), (Z^*,\\bm{z}^*)\\rangle\\ra\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\leq \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_\\beta {\\big[[{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h)]_\\beta : \\nabla Z_h - [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta : \\nabla \\bar{Z}\\big]} \\bigg|\n  + \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s} (U_h,\\bm{p}_h)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot( {z_h}_{\\alpha}- {z_h}_{\\beta}) \\nonumber \\\\\n\t&\\quad - {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot (\\bar{z}_\\alpha - \\bar{z}_\\beta)  \\bigg| +\\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_\\beta [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta : \\nabla \\bar{z}_\\beta }\\bigg| \\nonumber \\\\%\\label{BQCF_consist_eq2}\\\\\n&~=: T^1_{\\rm d} + T_{\\rm s}+ T^2_{\\rm d}.\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\nNext, we analyze these terms separately.\n\n{\\it Term $T^1_{\\rm d}$: } The $T^1_{\\rm d}$ term is identical to the simple lattice case after accounting for the additional approximation of the shifts. Following the ideas\nfrom the simple lattice case~\\cite{blended2014},\n\\helen{we break down $T_{\\rm d}^{1}$ into three additional terms as in Section 6.4.1 of~\\cite{blended2014} (the difference being we do not consider a quadrature error),\n and apply the\nestimates of stress differences from Corollary~\\ref{globel_stress} and the approximating estimates from Lemma~\\ref{approx_lem} and \\eqref{h1_int_norm_est}. This produces\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{T1d_est}\n\\begin{split}\nT^1_{\\rm d} &\\lesssim~ \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_\\beta \\big\\{[{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(U_h,\\bm{p}_h)]_\\beta -[{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta \\big\\} : \\nabla Z_h\\, dx\\bigg| \\\\\n&\\qquad +~ \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta \\big\\} : (\\nabla Z_h-\\nabla \\bar{Z})\\, dx\\bigg| \\\\\n& \\qquad +~ \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_\\beta \\big\\{[{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta -[{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta \\big\\} : \\nabla \\bar{Z}\\, dx\\bigg| \\\\\n&\\lesssim~ \\gamma_{\\rm tr}\\Big(\\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}  + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n& \\qquad  \\qquad+ \\|\\nabla \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} + \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} \\Big)\\cdot \\|\\nabla W\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n}\n{\\it Term $T_{\\rm s}$: } For the shift term $T_{\\rm s}$, we have\n\\begin{align*}\n   T_{\\rm s} &\\lesssim  \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s} (U_h,\\bm{p}_h)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot( {z_h}_{\\alpha}- {z_h}_{\\beta}) - {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot( {z_h}_{\\alpha}- {z_h}_{\\beta})  \\bigg| \\\\\n\t&\\quad + \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s} (\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot( {z_h}_{\\alpha} - {z_h}_{\\beta} -(\\bar{z}_\\alpha - \\bar{z}_\\beta)) \\bigg| \\\\\n&\\quad + \\bigg| \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s} (\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot(\\bar{z}_\\alpha - \\bar{z}_\\beta)  - {\\sum_{\\alpha,\\beta}} [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm s}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_{\\alpha\\beta} \\cdot (\\bar{z}_\\alpha - \\bar{z}_\\beta)  \\bigg| \\\\\n   &=: T_{\\rm s,1} + T_{\\rm s,2} + T_{\\rm s,3}.\n\\end{align*}\n\nUsing Lipschitz continuity of $\\delta V$ {(in the definition of ${\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm s}$)} and the fact that $\\bm{z}_h$ is supported in $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$ \\dao{followed by an application of the test function estimate~\\eqref{l2_int_norm_est}}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n   \\label{Ts1}\n   |T_{\\rm s,1}| \\lesssim~&\n   \\Big(\\| \\nabla \\Pi_h U - \\nabla \\tilde{U} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      + \\| \\Pi_h \\bm{p} - \\tilde{\\bm{p}} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      \\Big) \\| \\bm{z}_h \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n\t\t\t\\lesssim~& \\Big(\\| \\nabla \\Pi_h U - \\nabla \\tilde{U} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      + \\| \\Pi_h \\bm{p} - \\tilde{\\bm{p}} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      \\Big) \\| \\bm{r}\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nUsing the stress estimate, Corollary~\\ref{globel_stress}, \\helen{followed by the application of the test function norm estimates~\\eqref{inter_shift} and~\\eqref{l2_int_norm_est},} we get\n\\begin{align*}\n   \\label{Ts3}\n   |T_{\\rm s,3}| &\\lesssim\n      \\Big(\\| \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      + \\| \\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\Big)\n      \\| \\bar{\\bm{z}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\\\\n      &\\lesssim \\Big(\\| \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\n      + \\| \\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}} \\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\Big)\n      \\| \\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{align*}\nFinally, to treat $\\bm{z}_h - \\bar{\\bm{z}}$ inside $T_{\\rm s,2}$, we use~\\eqref{za_result} of Lemma~\\ref{interpolation_lemma} with\n$f= [S^{\\rm c}_s(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty )]_{\\alpha\\beta}$  {\\helen{followed by an application of \\eqref{l2_int_norm_est}, the chain rule, and \\eqref{cont_stress_tensor}:}}\n{\\helen{\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{Ts2}\n\\begin{split}\n|T_{\\rm s,2}| &\\lesssim~ \\big\\|\\nabla \\Big( {\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{ \\rm s }\\big(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\big)\\Big)\\big\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\|\\bm{z}_h \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\\\\n&\\lesssim~ \\|\\nabla {\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{ \\rm s }\\big(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\big)\n\\cdot \\nabla \\big(\\nabla\\tilde{U}^\\infty+\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\big)\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\|\\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} .\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n}}\nCombining our estimates for $T_{\\rm s,1}, T_{\\rm s,2}$, and $T_{\\rm s,3}$ and \\dao{appealing to Lemma~\\ref{approx_lem} to estimate $T_{\\rm s,1}$ along with the crude estimate $h \\gtrsim 1$} gives\n\\begin{align*}\\label{Ts_est}\n|T_{\\rm s}|\n\\lesssim~ \\Big(\\|h \\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} &+\\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\\\\n&+ \\|\\nabla \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} + \\|\\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} \\Big) \\|\\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\\nonumber\n\\end{align*}\n\n{\\it Term $T^2_{\\rm d}$: }\nFinally, to estimate $T^2_{\\rm d}$ we split it into\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{T2d_decomp}\n\\begin{split}\n|T^2_{\\rm d}|=~& \\bigg|\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}  {\\sum_\\beta[{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta : \\nabla \\bar{z}_\\beta} \\bigg| \\\\\n\\lesssim~&\n \\bigg|\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_\\beta \\big({\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta- [{\\rm S}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta \\big) : \\nabla \\bar{z}_\\beta} \\bigg| \\\\\n &\\quad +  \\bigg|\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} {\\sum_\\beta[{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty)]_\\beta : \\nabla \\bar{z}_\\beta} \\bigg| \\\\\n=:~& T^2_{\\rm d, 1} + T^2_{\\rm d,2}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nTo estimate $T^2_{\\rm d, 1}$, we note that it is similar to $T^1_{\\rm d}$ in that $\\nabla_{\\rho}\\overline{z_{\\beta}}$ is zero off $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$\n \\dao{(which is due to the support of the blending function and the definition of $\\Omega_{\\rm c}$; see the proof of Lemma~\\ref{interpolation_lemma} for further explanation)}\n so we utilize the stress estimate in Corollary~\\ref{globel_stress} along with the bound\n\\dao{\n\\[\n\\|\\nabla \\bar{z}_\\beta\\| \\lesssim~ \\|\\bar{z}_\\beta\\| \\lesssim~ \\|r_\\beta\\|\n\\]\nwhich follows from\n\\begin{align*}\n\\|\\bar{z}_\\beta\\| \\lesssim~& \\| {z_h}_{\\beta}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\qquad \\mbox{by~\\eqref{inter_shift}} \\\\\n\\lesssim~& \\|r_\\beta\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} \\qquad \\, \\mbox{  by~\\eqref{l2_int_norm_est}.}\n\\end{align*}\nThis produces\n\\begin{align*}\n T^2_{\\rm d, 1}\\lesssim~& \\left(\\|\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\| \\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\\right) \\| \\nabla \\bar{\\bm{z}} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n\\lesssim~& \\left(\\|\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\| \\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\\right) \\|  \\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{align*}}\nMeanwhile, we may integrate $T^2_{\\rm d,2}$ by parts and use the aforementioned fact that $\\|\\bar{z}_\\beta\\| \\lesssim~ \\|r_\\beta\\|$ to obtain\n\\begin{align*}\nT^2_{\\rm d,2} \\lesssim~\n{\\sum_\\beta \\left\\|{\\rm div} \\left(  [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty )]_\\beta  \\right)\\right\\|_{L^2(\\Omega^c)} \\|\\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}}.\n\\end{align*}\n{\\helen{Applying the chain rule to ${\\rm div} \\left(  [{\\rm S}^{\\rm c}_{\\rm d}(\\tilde{U}^\\infty,\\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty )]_\\beta  \\right)$\n(just like for $T_{\\rm s, 2}$), we get }}\n\\begin{align*}\n|T^2_{\\rm d}|\\lesssim T^2_{\\rm d,1} +T^2_{\\rm d,2}&\\lesssim \\left(\\|\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +\\| \\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\\right) \\| \\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\\\\n&\\lesssim \\left(\\|h\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} +\\| h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}^\\infty\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}\\right) \\| \\bm{r} \\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{align*}\n\n\nCombining our estimates for $T^1_{\\rm d},T_{\\rm s}$,\nand $T^2_{\\rm d}$ yields the stated result.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Stability}\\label{stab}\nThe second key ingredient in our proof of Theorem~\\ref{main_thm} is the stability estimate~\\eqref{stab_est}; \\dao{this in turn implies a bound on the inverse of {\\helen{the linearised BQCF operator}}, which we will use in a quantitative version of the inverse function theorem to establish existence of the solution to our BQCF equations.}  Conceptually, the proof of stability is similar to that of the simple lattice case presented in~\\cite{blended2014}.\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}[Stability of BQCF]\\label{stab_theorem_full}\n Suppose that Assumptions~\\ref{assumption1},~\\ref{assumptionSite}, and~\\ref{assumption2} hold. There exists a critical size, $R_{\\rm core}^*$, of the atomistic region such that, for all shape regular meshes and blending functions meeting the requirements of Section~\\ref{bqcf} and $R_{\\rm core} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$,\n\\[\n\\frac{\\gamma_{{\\rm a}}}{2}\\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 \\leq~ \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\Pi_h(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)) (W, \\bm{r}),(W, \\bm{r})\\>, \\quad \\forall \\, (W, \\bm{r}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}.\n\\]\n\\end{theorem}\nAs an intermediate step we also prove stability of the reference state.\n\n\\begin{theorem}[Stability of BQCF at Reference State]\\label{stab_theorem}\nSuppose that Assumptions~\\ref{assumption1},~\\ref{assumptionSite}, and~\\ref{assumption2} hold.  There exists a critical size $R_{\\rm core}^*$ of the atomistic region such that, for all meshes having shape regularity constant bounded below by $C_{\\mathcal{T}_h}$ and blending functions meeting the requirements of Section~\\ref{bqcf} and $R_{\\rm core} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$,\n\\[\n   \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a}\\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 \\leq~ \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\rm hom}(0) (W, \\bm{r}),(W, \\bm{r})\\>, \\quad \\forall \\, (W, \\bm{r}) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}.\n\\]\n\\end{theorem}\n\nBefore we present the proofs of these results in Sections~\\ref{stab_def_free} and~\\ref{stab_defect_present} we apply them to complete the proof of our main result, Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of the main result}\n\\label{sec:proof_main_result}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}]\nWe apply the inverse function theorem, Theorem~\\ref{inverseFunctionTheorem},  to the BQCF variational operator $\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}$ at the linearization point $\\Pi_h(U^\\infty, \\bm{p}^\\infty)$.  The parameters $\\eta$ and $\\sigma$ defined in Theorem~\\ref{inverseFunctionTheorem} are\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\eta :=~ \\gamma_{\\rm tr}\\big(\\|h\\nabla^2 \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})} + \\|h\\nabla \\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm c})}  + \\|\\nabla \\tilde{U}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})} \\big. \\\\\n&\\big. \\qquad\\qquad +  \\| \\tilde{\\bm{p}}\\|_{L^2(\\Omega_{\\rm ext})}\\big)\\cdot \\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}, \\quad \\forall (W,\\bm{r}) \\, \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nwhich is the consistency error from Theorem~\\eqref{consistency_thm}, and\n\\[\n\\sigma^{-1} := \\frac{\\gamma_{\\rm a}}{2},\n\\]\nwhich is the coercivity constant from Theorem~\\eqref{stab_theorem_full} that exists so long as $R_{\\rm core} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$, where $R_{\\rm core}^*$ is furnished by Theorem~\\eqref{stab_theorem_full}.  (The requirement $R_{\\rm core} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$ means the domain decomposition procedure meets the requirements stated in Theorem~\\ref{main_thm}.)  The Lipschitz estimate on $\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}$ is a direct result of the assumptions made on the site potential in Assumption~\\ref{assumption1}.  Applying the inverse function theorem with these parameters gives existence of $(U^{{\\rm bqcf}}, \\bm{p}^{{\\rm bqcf}})$ and the stated error estimate,~\\eqref{main_estimate}, follows from the inverse function theorem and the approximation lemma, Lemma~\\ref{approx_lem}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe remainder of the paper is devoted to proving Theorems~\\ref{stab_theorem_full} and~\\ref{stab_theorem}.\n\n\\subsection{Stability of BQCF at defect-free reference state}\\label{stab_def_free}\n\nWe first prove Theorem \\ref{stab_theorem}, that is, coercivity of the\nhomogeneous BQCF operator,\n\\begin{align*}\n\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\rm hom}(0)(W,\\bm{r}),(W,\\bm{r})\\> =~& \\<\\delta^2\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(0)((1-\\varphi)W,(1-\\varphi)\\bm{r}), (W, \\bm{r})\\> \\\\\n&\\qquad +  \\<\\delta^2\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0)(I_h(\\varphi W),I_h(\\varphi \\bm{r})), (W, \\bm{r})\\>.\n\\end{align*}\nThat is, we want to show that there exists $\\gamma_{{\\rm bqcf}}$ independent of the approximation parameters such that, for sufficiently large $R_{\\rm core}$,\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:gamma_bqcf}\n   0 < \\gamma_{\\rm bqcf}\\|(W,\\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 \\leq \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{\\rm hom}(0) (W, \\bm{r}),(W, \\bm{r})\\>.\n\\end{equation}\nThe proof via contradiction is involved; hence we first outline and motivate the procedure and then give a number of technical results required to prove the theorem at the end of this section. \\dao{The main idea is that the linearized BQCF operator consists of an atomistic second variation and a continuum second variation.  Each of these can be individually shown to be coercive so intuitively, we would expect this linearized operator to be coercive for any test pair $(W,\\bm{r})$ with support concentrated near the origin (in which case the blending function is zero) and for $(W,\\bm{r})$ with support concentrated far from the origin (in which case the blending function would be one).  Thus, we expect the only possible instabilities to occur with test pairs having some support over the blending region.  Since there is no defect in the homogeneous case, any such instability should also occur for any geometric setup, i.e., we can consider the BQCF method for a sequence of growing atomistic domain sizes and should still have an unstable mode.  Thus we shall consider such a sequence and then rescale this sequence so that the atomistic region in each case is contained in a ball of fixed radius about the origin and such that these unstable modes converge (in a sense to be made precise momentarily) to some continuum limit.  We then consider evaluating the suitably rescaled linearized BQCF operator on this sequence and show using the aforementioned stability of the atomistic and continuum components \\textit{and} convergence of the test pairs $(W,\\bm{r})$ that this leads to a contradiction.  One of the main technical difficulties encountered here is that due to blending by forces, the individual atomistic\/continuum components and hence the linearized BQCF operator is not a symmetric bilinear form.  Thus we must take some care in converting the force-based formulation to a form suitable to using the existing coercivity estimates on the atomistic and continuum Hessians.}\n\nThe negation of \\eqref{eq:gamma_bqcf} is: ``for all atomistic region sizes $R_{\\rm a}$, there exists a blending function $\\varphi$ and a mesh $\\mathcal{T}_h$ compatible with the assumptions of Section~\\ref{sec:approx_params} (and in particular Assumption~\\ref{assumption-shapereg}), {\\helen{as well as a test pair, $(W, \\bm{r})$ with norm scaled to one, such that}}\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:negation}\n\\frac{3}{4} \\gamma_{{\\rm a}}> \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}_{\\rm hom}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) (W, \\bm{r}),(W, \\bm{r})\\>.\\mbox{''}\n\\end{equation}\nThus, for contradiction, suppose that there exists a sequence $R_{{\\rm a},n} \\to \\infty$ with associated meshes $\\mathcal{T}_{h,n}$, blending functions $\\varphi_n$, finite element spaces $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0}^n \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}^n$, and test pairs $(W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0}^n \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}^n$ with norm one such that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{contra_seq}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a}  >\n\\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\sum_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}\\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}:D_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}((1-{\\varphi}_n) {W}_n,(1-{\\varphi}_n){\\bm{r}}_n):D_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}({W}_n,{\\bm{r}}_n) \\\\\n& \\qquad \\qquad + \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}\\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}:\\nabla_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}( {I_{h}}  ( {\\varphi}_n( {W}_n,  {\\bm{r}}_n))) :\\nabla_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}( {W}_n,  {\\bm{r}}_n) \\, dx,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have omitted the argument, $0$, in $V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)$ and where $I_{h}$ is now the piecewise linear interpolant on $\\mathcal{T}_{h,n}$.\n\nWe now rescale space in \\eqref{eq:negation} and derive a continuum scaling limit,\nfrom which we will be able to obtain a contradiction.  To that end, let $\\epsilon_n = 1\/R_{{\\rm a},n}$, and define the set of scaled parameters\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:stab:rescaling}\n\\begin{split}\n\\hat{\\xi}_n =~& \\epsilon_n \\xi \\\\\n\\hat{x}_n =~& \\epsilon_n x \\\\\n\\hat{r}_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}) =~& \\epsilon_n^{-d\/2} r_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}\/\\epsilon_n) \\\\\n\\hat{W}_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}) =~& \\epsilon_n^{1-d\/2} W_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}\/\\epsilon_n) \\\\\n\\hat{\\varphi}_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}) =~& \\varphi_n(\\dao{\\hat{x}_n}\/\\epsilon_n).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nIn terms of these rescaled quantities, {\\helen{we define $\\hat{\\nabla}:=\\epsilon_n^{-1}\\nabla_x=\\nabla_{\\hat{x}_n}$} (when the subscript $n$ is clear we use $\\hat{\\nabla}$)} and then have\n{\\helen{\n\\begin{align*}\n\\| \\nabla_{\\hat{x}_n} \\hat{W}_n \\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = \\| \\nabla_{x} W_n \\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)},& \\,\\, \\|\\epsilon_n\\nabla_{\\hat{x}_n} \\hat{r}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = \\|\\nabla_x r_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}, \\\\\n \\| \\hat{r}_n^\\alpha \\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} =~& \\| r_n^\\alpha \\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)},\n\\end{align*}\n}}\nand the rescaled BQCF operator is\n{\\helen{\n\\begin{equation}\\label{bqcfHessian}\n\\begin{split}\n&\n \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) (\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n),(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n)\\>  := \\\\\n&\\qquad \\epsilon^d_n \\sum_{\\hat{\\xi} \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}((1-\\hat{\\varphi}_n)(\\hat{W}_n,\\hat{\\bm{r}}_n)):D_n(\\hat{W}_n,\\hat{\\bm{r}}_n)(\\hat{\\xi}) \\\\\n&\\qquad + \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\mathbb{C}:\\hat{\\nabla}( I_{h,n}(\\hat{\\varphi}_n(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n))) :\\hat{\\nabla}(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n) \\, d\\hat{x}_n,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n}}\nwhere $I_{h,n}$ is the piecewise linear interpolant on $\\epsilon_n\\mathcal{T}_{h,n}$ and\n{\\helen{\n\\begin{align*}\nD_{n}( \\hat{W} , \\hat{\\bm{r}} ) :=~& \\big(D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta),n}( \\hat{W} , \\hat{\\bm{r}} )\\big)_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}}, \\\\\nD_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta),n}( \\hat{W} , \\hat{\\bm{r}} ) (\\hat{\\xi}):=~& \\frac{\\hat{W}(\\hat{\\xi} + \\epsilon_n \\rho) + \\epsilon_n \\hat{r}_{n}^{\\beta}(\\hat{\\xi} + \\epsilon_n \\rho) - \\hat{W}(\\hat{\\xi}) - \\epsilon_n \\hat{r}_{n}^{\\alpha}(\\hat{\\xi})}{\\epsilon_n}.\n\\end{align*}\n}}\nThe rescaling of the shifts $\\hat{r}_n^\\alpha$ is one order lower than the rescaling of displacements,  which is due to the fact that shifts are already discrete gradients.\n\nWe also define an interpolant onto the scaled lattice $\\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}$ by $I_n$, a projection operator from the scaled lattice to finite element spaces $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}^{n}_{h,0} \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}^n_{h,0}$ on $\\mathcal{T}_{h,n}$ by $\\Pi_{h,n} := S_{h,n} T_{r_{{\\rm i},n}}$, and the scaled finite element basis function\n\\[\n\\bar{\\zeta}_n(x) := \\epsilon_n^{-d}\\bar{\\zeta}(x\/\\epsilon_n).\n\\]\n\nSince $\\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{W}_n$ is bounded in $L^2$ and since each $\\hat{r}_n^\\alpha$ is also bounded (both having norm less than one), we may extract weakly convergent subsequences.  Furthermore, $\\epsilon_n \\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{r}_n^\\alpha$ is also bounded in $L^2$ so we may take it to be weakly convergent as well.  By replacing the original sequences with these weakly convergent subsequences (for notational convenience), we have $\\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{W}_n \\rightharpoonup \\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{W}_0$, $\\hat{r}_n^\\alpha \\rightharpoonup \\hat{r}_0^\\alpha$,\nand $\\epsilon_n \\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{r}_n^\\alpha \\rightharpoonup \\hat{R}^\\alpha_0$ in $L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ for some functions $\\hat{W}_0, \\hat{r}_0^\\alpha$, and $\\hat{R}^\\alpha_0$ for each $\\alpha$.  However, since $\\hat{r}_n^\\alpha$ is bounded in $L^2$ and $\\epsilon_n\\hat{r}_n^\\alpha \\to 0$ in $L^2$, $\\hat{R}_0^\\alpha = 0$.\n\nNext, we choose explicit equivalence representatives for $\\hat{W}_n$; namely, we choose $\\hat{W}_n$ such that $\\int_{B_1(0)} \\hat{W}_n = 0$.   For this choice, we have $\\|\\hat{W}_n\\|_{L^2(B_1(0))} \\lesssim \\|\\dao{\\hat{\\nabla}} \\hat{W}_n\\|_{L^2(B_1(0))}$, and as $H^1$ is compactly embedded in $L^2$, there exists a strongly convergent subsequence, which we again denote by $\\hat{W}_n$, such that $\\hat{W}_n \\to \\hat{W}_0$ strongly in $L^2(B_1(0))$.\n\nWe also note here that $\\hat{W}_n \\rightharpoonup \\hat{W}_0$ in the space\n\\[\n\\dot{\\bm{H}}^{1} {\\helen{(\\mathbb{R}^d,\\mathbb{R}^n)}} := \\left\\{f \\in H^1_{\\rm loc}(\\mathbb{R}^d,\\mathbb{R}^n)\/\\mathbb{R}^n : \\|\\nabla f\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} < \\infty \\right\\},\n\\]\nand so $\\hat{W}_0 \\in \\dot{\\bm{H}}^1(\\mathbb{R}^d, \\mathbb{R}^n)$ as well~\\cite{suli2012}.\n\nThe purpose of these subsequences is to use the pairs $(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n)$ to test with $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$. However, as these test pairs only consist of weakly convergent sequences and since the inner product of two weakly convergent sequences is not necessarily convergent, we further split $\\hat{W}_n$ and $\\hat{\\bm{r}}_n$ into the sum of a strongly convergent sequence and a sequence weakly convergent to zero.\n\nThis splitting is accomplished by setting\n\\begin{equation}\\label{splitting}\n\\hat{X}_n := \\Pi_{h,n}(\\eta_{j_n}  * \\hat{W}_0), \\qquad\n\\hat{s}_n^\\alpha := \\Pi_{h,n}(\\eta_{j_n}  * \\hat{r}_0^\\alpha),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\eta$ is a standard mollifier, $\\eta_j(x) = j^{-d} \\eta(x\/j)$, and $j_n \\to 0$ sufficiently slowly to ensure that  the sequences $\\hat{X}_n$ and $\\hat{s}_n^\\alpha$ are strongly convergent to, respectively, $\\hat{W}_0$ and $\\hat{r}_0^\\alpha$. We will impose several further properties on the sequence $j_n$ in Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma} below, \nbut for the remainder of the present section, we make the following conventions for notational convenience.\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{remark_drop_hats}\n{\\helen{\nTo simplify and lessen the notations hereafter, we drop the hat notation on the sequences $X_n, Z_n, \\bm{s}_n, \\bm{t}_n$ as well as on their derivatives, and so forth.\n}}\n\\end{remark}\n\nFurther, we define\n\\[\n   \\psi_n := 1-\\varphi_n, \\quad \\mbox{and}\n   \\quad V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} := V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\big(0\\big),\n\\]\nand use the notation\n\\begin{align*}\\label{stab_notation}\nV_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\big( \\cdot \\big):v:w :=~& w^{{\\hspace{-1pt}\\top}}\\big[V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\big( \\cdot \\big)\\big]v \\quad \\forall v,w \\in \\mathbb{R}^n, \\nonumber \\\\\n\\mathbb{C} : D(W,\\bm{q}): D(Z,\\bm{r}) :=~& \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} \\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}:D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(W,\\bm{q}):D_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(Z,\\bm{r}), \\\\\n\\mathbb{C} : \\nabla (W,\\bm{q}): \\nabla (Z,\\bm{r}) :=~& \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} \\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}:(\\nabla(W,\\bm{q})):(\\nabla(Z,\\bm{r})),\n\\end{align*}\nwhere the argument of $V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\cdot )$ is omitted if evaluated at the reference state.\n\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{seq_lemma}\nThere exists $\\psi_0 \\in {\\rm C}^1$ is such that $\\psi_n \\to \\psi_0$ in ${\\rm C}^1(B_1(0))$.  Furthermore, there exists a sequence $j_n \\to 0$ such that the sequences defined by $X_n, \\bm{s}_n$ in~\\eqref{splitting} and $Z_n := W_n - X_n$ and $t_n^\\alpha := r_n^\\alpha - s_n^\\alpha$ satisfy the following convergence properties, where $\\to$ and $\\rightharpoonup$ denote respectively strong and weak $L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)$ convergence.\n\\begin{equation}\\label{verge_result}\n\\begin{split}\n\\nabla  W_n \\rightharpoonup~& \\nabla  W_0, \\quad\nr^\\alpha_n \\rightharpoonup~ r^\\alpha_0, \\quad\n\\epsilon_n\\nabla r^\\alpha_n \\rightharpoonup 0, \\quad\n\\nabla  X_n \\to~ \\nabla  W_0, \\quad\ns_n^\\alpha \\to~  r^\\alpha_0,  \\\\\n\\epsilon_n \\nabla s^\\alpha_n \\to~& 0, \\quad\n\\nabla Z_n \\rightharpoonup~ 0, \\quad\nt_n^\\alpha \\rightharpoonup~ 0, \\quad\n\\epsilon_n \\nabla t_n^\\alpha \\rightharpoonup~ 0, \\\\\nW_n \\to~& W_0 \\, \\mbox{in $L^2(B_1(0))$,} \\quad X_n \\to~ W_0 \\, \\mbox{in $L^2(B_1(0))$}, \\quad Z_n \\to~ 0 \\, \\mbox{in $L^2(B_1(0))$}\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nMoreover, {\\helen{let $I$ denote the identity and upon defining the quantities}}\n\\begin{align*}\n &{\\rm R}^{\\rm def}_n(x) {\\helen{ :={\\rm R}^{\\rm def}_n\\left(\\psi_n\\right)(x)=~ }} \\\\\n &\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}}\\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)D_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta),n}(\\psi_n( X_n,s_n))\\otimes\\frac{\\rho}{\\epsilon_n}\\int_0^{\\epsilon_n} \\zeta_n(\\xi + t\\rho - x)\\, dt, \\\\\n&{\\rm R}^{\\rm shift}_n(x) {\\helen{ :={\\rm R}^{\\rm shift}_n\\left(\\psi_n\\right)(x)=~ }} \\\\\n&\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}}\\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}}  V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)D_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta),n}(\\psi_n{X}_n,\\psi_n{s}_n) \\bar{\\zeta}_n(\\xi- x), \\\\\n &{\\rm S}^{\\rm def}_n(x) {\\helen{ := {\\rm R}^{\\rm def}_n\\left(I\\right)(x),}} \\quad {\\rm S}^{\\rm shift}_n(x) {\\helen{ :={\\rm R}^{\\rm shift}_n\\left(I\\right)(x) }} \\\\\n \n&{\\rm S}_n^{\\rm inner}(x):=~\\\\\n&\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}:D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta),n}(\\psi_n X_n, \\psi_n \\bm{s}_n):  D_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta),n}(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),  \\\\\n\\end{align*}\nthe sequence $j_n$ may further be chosen so that\n\\begin{align}\\label{verge_res_2}\n{\\rm S}^{\\rm def}_n(x)  &\\to \\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}({W}_0,{\\bm{s}}_0),\\nonumber \\\\\n{\\rm S}^{\\rm shift}_n(x)  &\\to\\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}({W}_0,{\\bm{s}}_0),\\nonumber\\\\\n {\\helen{ {\\rm R}^{\\rm def}_n(x)}}  &\\helen{\\to  \\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\psi_0{W}_0,\\psi_0{\\bm{s}}_0), } \\\\\n{\\rm R}^{\\rm shift}_n(x) &\\to \\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\psi_0{W}_0,\\psi_0{\\bm{s}}_0), \\nonumber\\\\\n{\\rm S}_n^{\\rm inner}(x) &\\to \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{\\substack{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\\\ (\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}} V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} :\\big(\\nabla_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}(\\psi_0( W_0, \\bm{s}_0))\\big):\\big(\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}( W_0,\\bm{s}_0)\\big) dx,\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\nwith convergence being in $L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe key fact in proving this result is that $j_n$ may be chosen to tend to zero sufficiently slowly such that any one of these properties holds individually, and by appropriately selecting subsequences using a diagonalization argument, they may be chosen so that all hold simultaneously.  The full proof is given in the Appendix.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe now state a convergence result for ``cross-terms'' appearing in $\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{{\\rm hom},n}(0)$ involving products of strongly and weakly convergent (to zero) sequences. The proof is given in the appendix.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{more_lemma}\nWith $Z_n, X_n, \\bm{t}_n$, and $\\bm{s}_n$ as defined in Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma},\n\\begin{align}\n&\\epsilon^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\psi_n {Z}_n,\\psi_n \\bm{t}_n):D_{n}({X}_n,\\bm{s}_n) \\to 0,\n\\quad \\text{and} \\label{more_1} \\\\\n&\\epsilon^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\psi_n {X}_n,\\psi_n\\bm{s}_n):D_{n}( {Z}_n, \\bm{t}_n) \\to 0 \\label{more_2}.\n\\end{align}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\nThe next lemma manipulates the product of two weakly convergent sequences.  The idea is that we may shift the blending function \\dao{function $\\psi_n = 1-\\varphi_n$} in a way to use coercivity of the atomistic and continuum Hessians. The proof is again given in the appendix.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{weak_lemma}\nLet $Z_n, X_n, \\bm{t}_n$, $\\bm{s}_n$, $\\theta_n = \\sqrt{\\psi_n}$, and $\\theta_0 = \\sqrt{\\psi_0}$ be as defined above in Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma}.  Then\n\\begin{align*}\n&\\lim_{n\\to\\infty}\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\theta^2_nZ_n,\\theta^2_n\\bm{t}_n):D_{n}(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n) \\\\\n&=~ \\lim_{n\\to\\infty}\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\theta_nZ_n,\\theta_n\\bm{t}_n):D_{n}(\\theta_nZ_n,\\theta_n\\bm{t}_n).\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{lemma}\n\nWe are now positioned to prove Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem}.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem}, Stability of BQCF at Reference State]\nWe use the scaling~\\eqref{bqcfHessian} and substitute \\dao{(from Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma}) the quantities} $W_n = Z_n + X_n$, $r_n^\\alpha = t_n^\\alpha + s_n^\\alpha$, $\\psi_n = 1-\\varphi_n$, and $\\theta_n = \\sqrt{1- {\\varphi}_n}$.  We divide the proof into three steps: (1) we derive an expression for the atomistic portion of $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$ in the $\\liminf$ as $n \\to \\infty$, (2) we derive an expression for the continuum component of $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$, and (3) we combine the results and use stability of the individual atomistic and continuum components to derive a contradiction.\n\n\\medskip\n\\noindent \\textit{Step 1:}  The first variation, $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$, computed in~\\eqref{bqcfHessian} is a sum of an atomistic and continuum component. The discrete, atomistic contribution is\n\\begin{align}\n& \\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{{\\rm hom}, n } (0)(1-\\varphi_n)(W_n,\\bm{r}_n),(W_n,\\bm{r}_n)\\>  \\nonumber\\\\\n&= \\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {W}_n,\\theta^2_n {\\bm{r}}_n):D_{n}( {W}_n, {\\bm{r}}_n) \\nonumber\\\\\n&= \\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {Z}_n + \\theta^2_n {X}_n,\\theta^2_n {\\bm{t}}_n + \\theta^2_n{\\bm{s}}_n):D_{n}( {Z}_n +  {X}_n, {\\bm{t}}_n +  {\\bm{s}}_n) \\nonumber\\\\\n&=~ \\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:\\Big[D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {Z}_n,\\theta^2_n {\\bm{t}}_n):D_{n}( {Z}_n, {\\bm{t}}_n) +D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {Z}_n,\\theta^2_n {\\bm{t}}_n):D_{n}({X}_n,{\\bm{s}}_n)\\nonumber \\\\\n&\\quad+~ D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {X}_n,\\theta^2_n {\\bm{s}}_n):D_{n}({Z}_n,{\\bm{t}}_n) + D_{n}(\\theta^2_n {X}_n,\\theta^2_n{\\bm{s}}_n):D_{n}({X}_n,{\\bm{s}}_n)\\Big].\n\\label{eq:step1}\n\\end{align}\n\\helen{This final expression consists of four different pairings of the form $D_n(\\cdot,\\cdot): D_n(\\cdot,\\cdot)$; upon taking $\\liminf$ as $n \\to \\infty$, we use Lemma~\\ref{weak_lemma} on the first pairing, Lemma~\\ref{more_lemma} on the second and third pairings, and the final convergence property of $S_n^{\\rm inner}(x)$ from Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma} on the fourth pairing to arrive at the following expression for the atomistic contribution}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup_1}\n\\begin{split}\n    &\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{{\\rm hom}, n} (0)(1-\\varphi)(W_n,\\bm{r}_n),(W_n,\\bm{r}_n)\\>\\\\\n    &\\;=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\theta_nZ_n,\\theta_n\\bm{t}_n):D_{n}(\\theta_nZ_n,\\theta_n\\bm{t}_n)  \\\\\n\t\t&\\qquad +\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\mathbb{C}:\\nabla (\\theta_0^2 W_0, \\theta^2_0 \\bm{r}_0):\\nabla (W_0,\\bm{r}_0)\\, dx.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medskip\n\\noindent \\textit{Step 2:}  Meanwhile, the continuum component of $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$ from~\\eqref{bqcfHessian} is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{bqcfHessian_cont_part}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0)  I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n W_n,\\varphi_n \\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\big\\> =~ \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\mathbb{C}:\\nabla \\big( I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n W_n), I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n\\bm{r}_n)\\big): \\nabla (W_n,\\bm{r}_n)\\, dx.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\nUsing standard $\\mathcal{P}_1$-nodal interpolation error estimates \\dao{and the fact that each $\\nabla \\varphi_n$ has support on $B_1$}, it is straightforward to\nprove that (c.f. Lemma~\\ref{p1_lemma})\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:conv-(Ih-I)(phiW)}\n   \\begin{split}\n   & \\lim_{n\\to \\infty}\\|\\nabla I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n W_n) - \\nabla (\\varphi_n W_n)\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = 0, \\\\\n   &  \\lim_{n\\to \\infty}\\|I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n r^\\alpha_n) - (\\varphi_n r^\\alpha_n)\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} = 0.\n   \\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\nThus, taking the $\\liminf$ of~\\eqref{bqcfHessian_cont_part} and applying \\eqref{eq:conv-(Ih-I)(phiW)} we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{bqcfHessian_cont_part_no_interp}\n\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0) I_{h,n}(\\varphi W_n,\\varphi\\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\big\\>\n= \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\mathbb{C}:\\nabla(\\varphi_nW_n, \\varphi_n\\bm{r}_n): \\nabla(W_n,\\bm{r}_n)\\, dx.\n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting the decomposition $(W_n, \\bm{r}_n) := (Z_n + X_n, \\bm{t}_n + \\bm{s}_n)$ into~\\eqref{bqcfHessian_cont_part_no_interp} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{long_limit}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0)  I_{h,n}(\\varphi W_n,\\varphi\\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\big\\>  \\\\\n&=~\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\Big[ \\mathbb{C}: \\nabla (\\varphi_n Z_n, \\varphi_n\\bm{t}_n):\\nabla (Z_n, \\bm{t}_n) + \\mathbb{C}: \\nabla (\\varphi_n Z_n, \\varphi_n\\bm{t}_n):\\nabla (X_n, \\bm{s}_n) \\\\\n&\\qquad +  \\mathbb{C}: \\nabla (\\varphi_n X_n, \\varphi_n\\bm{s}_n):\\nabla (Z_n, \\bm{t}_n) + \\mathbb{C}: \\nabla (\\varphi_n X_n, \\varphi_n\\bm{s}_n):\\nabla (X_n, \\bm{s}_n)\\Big]\\, dx.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\\dao{This final expression again gives four pairings just as in step one but now of the form $\\nabla(\\cdot, \\cdot): \\nabla (\\cdot, \\cdot)$. The first pairing we momentarily leave alone, the second and third pairings both converge to zero by virtue of strong convergence of $\\nabla X_n, \\bm{s}_n$  and weak convergence of $\\nabla Z_n, \\bm{t}_n$ to $0$ from Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma}, and the final pairing converges to $\\nabla(\\varphi_0 W_0,\\varphi_0\\bm{r}_0):\\nabla(W_0,\\bm{r}_0)$ again as a result of the strong convergence properties of $\\nabla X_n, \\bm{s}_n$ from Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma}.  These facts simplify~\\eqref{long_limit} to}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup11}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0) I_{h,n}(\\varphi W_n,\\varphi\\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\big\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\big[\\mathbb{C}: \\nabla (\\varphi_n Z_n, \\varphi_n \\bm{t}_n): \\nabla(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n) \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad+ \\mathbb{C}:\\nabla(\\varphi_0 W_0,\\varphi_0\\bm{r}_0):\\nabla(W_0,\\bm{r}_0)\\big]\\, dx.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nAs in the atomistic case, our goal is again to think of $\\varphi_n$ as a square, $\\varphi_n := \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}^2$ and to shift one factor of $\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}$ to each component of the duality pairing.  Using an argument very similar to that in the proof of Lemma~\\ref{weak_lemma} (which we therefore omit) we obtain\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{limit_term1_soup11}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d}\\mathbb{C}: \\nabla(\\varphi_n Z_n,\\varphi_n \\bm{t}_n): \\nabla(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\\\\n&\\quad=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\mathbb{C}: \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n, \\sqrt{\\varphi_n} \\bm{t}_n) : \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n,  \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\nInserting the last result into \\eqref{soup11}, we obtain {\n\\begin{align}\\label{limit_bqcfH_cont_part_no_interp}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\big\\< \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0)  I_{h,n}(\\varphi W_n,\\varphi\\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\big\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\big[\\mathbb{C}: \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n, \\sqrt{\\varphi_n} \\bm{t}_n) : \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n,  \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n) +\\mathbb{C}:\\nabla (\\varphi_0 W_0,\\varphi_0 \\bm{r}_0): \\nabla (W_0,\\bm{r}_0)\\big]\\, dx.\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\n}\n\\medskip\n\\noindent \\textit{Step 3:}  Upon adding the atomistic components from~\\eqref{soup_1} to {{ the continuum contributions \\eqref{limit_bqcfH_cont_part_no_interp}}} and recalling that $\\theta_0^2 = 1-\\varphi_0$, we have the following expression for $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)$:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{short_limit}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\big[\\mathbb{C}: \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n, \\sqrt{\\varphi_n} \\bm{t}_n) : \\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n,  \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n) +\\mathbb{C}:\\nabla (W_0,\\bm{r}_0): \\nabla (W_0,\\bm{r}_0) \\big]\\, dx\\\\\n&\\qquad +~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\epsilon_n^d \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\epsilon_n\\mathcal{L}} \\mathbb{C}:D_{n}(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}Z_n,\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n):D_{n}(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}Z_n,\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n)\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\\dao{Next, using stability of the homogeneous atomistic model {\\helen{in this scaling}},\n\\[\n\\langle \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}_{{\\rm hom},n}(0)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle\n\\ge \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\|_{\\rm a}^2,\n\\]\n(which can easily be proven (c.f.~\\cite{olsonOrtner2016,Ehrlacher2013}) due to Assumption~\\ref{assumption2}) and the fact that atomistic stability implies Cauchy--Born Stability~\\cite[Theorem 3.6]{olsonOrtner2016}, that is,\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{CB_stability}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle \\delta^2& \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm c}}(0)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n), (W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle\n\\ge \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(W, \\bm{r})\\|_{\\rm ml}^2,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nwe hence have from~\\eqref{short_limit} that\n\\begin{align}\\label{red_pill}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\langle \\delta  \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) (W_n, \\bm{r}_n),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\\\\n&=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\big[\\langle\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c} (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n, \\sqrt{\\varphi_n} \\bm{t}_n), (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n, \\sqrt{\\varphi_n} \\bm{t}_n) \\rangle + \\langle\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c} (W_0,\\bm{r}_0), (W_0,\\bm{r}_0) \\rangle \\nonumber\\\\\n& \\qquad +~ \\langle \\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{{\\rm hom},n} (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}Z_n,\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n), (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}Z_n,\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n)\\rangle \\big]\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\geq \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla{W}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{r}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}  \\nonumber\\\\\n&\\qquad +  \\|\\nabla I_n(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|I_n(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\Big].\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\n}\nSimilar to \\eqref{eq:conv-(Ih-I)(phiW)} (c.f. Lemma~\\ref{p1_lemma}), standard nodal interpolation error estimates imply that\n\\begin{align*}\n \\lim_{n\\to \\infty}\\|\\nabla I_n(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n) - \\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} =& 0, \\quad \\text{and} \\\\\n   \\lim_{n\\to \\infty}\\| I_n(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n)-  (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n)\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}  =& 0.\n\\end{align*}\nThus,~\\eqref{red_pill} becomes\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup14}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\langle \\delta  \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) (W_n, \\bm{r}_n),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\\\\n&\\quad\\geq~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla{W}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{r}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n&\\qquad+~ \\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\Big] \\\\\n&\\quad=~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty}\\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad  + \\|\\nabla{W}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{r}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\Big].\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nNext observe\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup15}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n&=~ \\int \\Big[|\\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n + \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\nabla Z_n|^2 + |\\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n + \\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\nabla Z_n|^2\\Big] \\, dx\\\\\n&=~ \\int \\Big[2\\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n : \\sqrt{\\varphi_n}\\nabla Z_n + |\\nabla(\\sqrt{\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n|^2 + \\varphi_n|\\nabla Z_n|^2\\Big]\\, dx  \\\\\n& +\\int \\Big[2\\nabla(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n : \\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}\\nabla Z_n + |\\nabla(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n}) \\otimes Z_n|^2 + (1-\\varphi_n)|\\nabla Z_n|^2\\big]\\, dx.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nSince $Z_n$ converges strongly to zero in $L^2({\\rm supp}(\\nabla(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n})))$ by Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma} (${\\rm supp}(\\nabla(\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n})) \\subset B_1(0)$), it follows from~\\eqref{soup15} that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup16}\n\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla (\\sqrt{1-\\varphi_n} Z_n)\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} =~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\|\\nabla Z_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting~\\eqref{soup16} into~\\eqref{soup14} produces\n\\begin{equation}\\label{soup17}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\langle \\delta  \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) (W_n, \\bm{r}_n),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle \\\\\n&\\quad\\geq~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla Z_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla{W}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{r}_0\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\Big] \\\\\n&\\quad\\geq~ \\liminf_{n\\to\\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla Z_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{t}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\nabla{X}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{s}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\Big] \\\\\n&\\quad=~\\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\big[ \\|\\nabla {W}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\|\\bm{r}_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\big] = \\gamma_{\\rm a},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich contradicts our assumption in~\\eqref{contra_seq}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\subsection{Reference Stability Implies Defect Stability}\\label{stab_defect_present}\n\nHaving established stability of the homogeneous BQCF operator we obtain\nstability of $\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\Pi_{h,n}(U^\\infty,\\bm{p}^\\infty))$,\ni.e. Theorem \\ref{stab_theorem_full}, as a relatively straightforward\nconsequence. Before entering into the proof we remark that we now no longer employ the rescalings of Section~\\ref{stab_def_free}. \\dao{The basic idea of the proof is that the linearized homogeneous BQCF operator and linearized BQCF operator agree for any $(W,\\bm{r})$ which is zero in a large enough neighborhood about the origin.  Thus, to prove stability of the true linearized BQCF operator, we again consider the possibility of a sequence, $(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)$, of unstable modes whose support is contained in larger and larger balls about the origin. We will then split each $(W_n,\\bm{r}_n)$ into components concentrated near the origin (where we can use atomistic stability) and correction terms supported far from the origin where we use stability of the linearized homogeneous operator. As before, the main difficulty is converting the atomistic component of the BQCF operator to a form where we may utilize atomistic coercivity.}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem_full}]\nWe prove this result by contradiction as well. Therefore suppose, as in the proof of Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem}, that there exists $R_{{\\rm a},n} \\to \\infty$ with associated meshes $\\mathcal{T}_{h,n}$, blending functions $\\varphi_n$, {\\helen{and test pairs $(W_n, \\bm{r}_n) \\in \\bm{\\mathcal{U}}_{h,0}^n \\times \\bm{\\mathcal{P}}_{h,0}^n$ with norm scaled to one, such that}}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{contra_seq_def}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\frac{\\gamma_{\\rm a}}{2} >\n\\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} \\sum_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}\\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(D\\bm{U}_n):D_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}((1-\\hat{\\varphi}_n)\\hat{W}_n,(1-\\hat{\\varphi}_n)\\hat{\\bm{r}}_n):D_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}(\\hat{W}_n,\\hat{\\bm{r}}_n) \\\\\n& \\qquad \\qquad + \\int_{\\mathbb{R}^d} \\sum_{(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)}\\sum_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)} V_{,(\\rho\\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\nabla \\bm{U}_n):\\nabla_{\\rho\\alpha\\beta}( I_{h,n}(\\hat{\\varphi}_n(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n))) :\\nabla_{\\rho\\alpha\\beta}(\\hat{W}_n, \\hat{\\bm{r}}_n) \\, dx \\\\\n&\\quad=: \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_n(\\bm{U}_n)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\>,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, for notational simplicity we have defined $\\bm{U}_n := \\Pi_{h,n}(U^\\infty,\\bm{p}^\\infty)$ and redefined $\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_n$ from the previous section without a scaling by $\\epsilon$.\n\nUpon extracting a subsequence, we may assume without loss of generality that $\\nabla W_n \\rightharpoonup \\nabla W_0$ for $W_0 \\in \\dot{\\bm{H}}^1$ and $\\bm{r}_n \\rightharpoonup \\bm{r}_0 \\in L^2$. For each $R_{{\\rm a},n}$, $W_n$ and $\\bm{r}_n$ are piecewise linear with respect to the mesh $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ on $\\Omega_{{\\rm a}, n}$.  Hence the convergence is strong on any finite collection of elements on $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ since weak convergence implies strong convergence on finite dimensional spaces. It also follows from the full refinement of the mesh assumption on $\\Omega_{{\\rm a}, n}$ that $W_0$ and $\\bm{r}_0$ are also piecewise linear with respect to $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$.\n\nHaving established these basic facts, we will yet again split $(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)$ into the sum of a strongly convergent sequence and weakly convergent sequence as in~\\cite[Theorem 4.9]{blended2014}.  For each $n$, we take $\\eta_n(x)$ to be a smooth bump function satisfying $\\eta_n(x) = 1$ on $B_{1\/2r_{{\\rm core},n}}(0)$ and $\\eta_n(x)$ has support contained in $B_{r_{{\\rm core},n}}(0)$.  Similar to the definition of $\\Pi_h$, we then set \n\\[\n\\dao{A_{n} := B_{r_{{\\rm core},n}}\\setminus B_{(1\/2)r_{{\\rm core},n}} + B_{2r_{\\rm buff}}}\n\\]\n and\n\\begin{equation}\\label{DefectStab_test}\nX_n := I_n(\\eta_n W_0) - I_n(\\eta_n)\\Xint-_{A_n}  W_0\\, dx ,\\quad Z_n := W_n - X_n,\\quad \\bm{s}_n := I_n(\\eta_n \\bm{r}_0),\\quad \\bm{t}_n := \\bm{r}_n - \\bm{s}_n.\n\\end{equation}\nSimilar to Lemma~\\ref{approx_lem}, we have, with these definitions,\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{convo_props}\n\\nabla X_n \\to \\nabla W_0, \\quad \\mbox{and} \\quad \\nabla Z_n \\rightharpoonup 0\n   \\qquad \\text{in } L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{align*}\\label{convo_props1}\n\\bm{s}_n \\to \\bm{r}_0, \\quad &\\mbox{and} \\quad \\bm{t}_n \\rightharpoonup 0\n\\qquad \\text{in } L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d).\n\\end{align*}\nThen we note that the norm defined by\n\\[\n\\| (U,\\bm{p}) \\|_{{\\rm a}_1}^2 := \\sum_{\\xi \\in \\mathcal{L}} |D(U,\\bm{p})(\\xi)|^2, \\quad \\mbox{where} \\quad |D(U,\\bm{p})(\\xi)|^2 := \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta) \\in \\mathcal{R}} |D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)} (U,\\bm{p})(\\xi)|^2.\n\\]\nis equivalent to the $\\|\\cdot\\|_{{\\rm a}}$ norm on $\\bm{\\mathcal{U}}$ by~\\cite[Lemma 2.1]{olsonOrtner2016}. Thus, \\dao{since we are dealing with functions which are $\\mathcal{P}^1$ with respect to $\\mathcal{T}_{\\rm a}$ on a growing atomistic region, then the continuous convergence results for $\\nabla X_n, \\nabla Z_n, \\bm{s}_n$, and $\\bm{t}_n$ imply corresponding discrete convergence results:}\n\\begin{align}\\label{convo_props2}\nD(X_n, \\bm{s}_n) \\to D(W_0, \\bm{r}_0) \\quad  &\\mbox{and} \\quad D(Z_n, \\bm{t}_n) \\rightharpoonup 0 \\qquad \\mbox{in $\\ell^2(\\mathcal{L})$}.\n\\end{align}\nWith this decomposition, \\dao{we now substitute the test pair {\\helen{$(W_n, \\bm{r_n}) = (X_n + Z_n, \\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)$ from \\eqref{DefectStab_test} into}}}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{steamroll}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n}(\\bm{U}_n)(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n),(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\<\\delta  \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n} (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\> + \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n} (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&\\qquad +~  \\<\\delta  \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\> + \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n{\\helen{\nAlso recall the definition of $\\delta\\mathcal{F}_n^{\\rm bqcf}$, which is\n\\begin{align*}\n\\langle&\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{\\rm bqcf}_n(\\bm{U}_n)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle\\\\\n&= \\langle\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}(\\bm{U}_n)\\big((1-\\varphi_n)(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\big),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle \\\\\n& \\qquad +\\langle\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(\\bm{U}_n)\\big(\\varphi_n(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\big),(W_n, \\bm{r}_n)\\rangle.\n\\end{align*}\n}}\nSince $D(X_n, \\bm{s}_n)$ each have support where $\\varphi_n = 0$ and $\\Pi_{h,n}(\\bm{U}_n) = (\\bm{U}_n)$ there, we can rewrite the first three terms of~\\eqref{steamroll} without the blending function as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{stew1}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\<\\delta  \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n} (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n),(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\> + \\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}} (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&\\qquad +~  \\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\> + \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nMoreover, $D(Z_n, \\bm{t}_n)$ has support only where $V_\\xi \\equiv V$ and so from the convergence properties~\\eqref{convo_props2}, it follows that $\\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>$ and $\\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}(\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\>$ both go to zero as $n \\to \\infty$.\n\nFor the first term in \\eqref{stew1}, using the atomistic stability assumption, Assumption~\\ref{assumption2}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{stew2}\n\\<\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{{\\rm a}}  (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n,\\bm{s}_n),(X_n,\\bm{s}_n)\\> \\geq~ \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(X_n, \\bm{s}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nThus, taking the lim inf as $n \\to \\infty$ in~\\eqref{stew1} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{steam_peas}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n \\to \\infty}\\<\\delta  \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n} (\\bm{U}_n)(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n),(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&\\qquad \\geq \\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(X_n, \\bm{s}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 + \\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nThus, we are only left to treat $\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{ n} (\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>$, the\nfar-field contribution, as defined in \\eqref{DefectStab_test}. The strategy here is that far from the defect core we\nmay replace $\\delta\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_n(\\bm{U}_n)$ with $\\delta\\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{{\\rm hom},n}(0)$ and then apply Theorem \\ref{stab_theorem}. Thus, we first estimate,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{stew3}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n}(\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>  \\\\\n&=~ \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n }^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&=~ \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n} ^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\>\n   + \\big\\<\\big[ \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n }^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) \\big] (Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\big \\>\\\\\n&\\geq~ \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(Z_n, \\bm{t}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 +\n\\big\\<\\big[ \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n }^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) \\big] (Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\big \\>.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we applied Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem} in the final step. ({\\helen{Note that there is a slight}} notational discrepancy in that our $\\mathcal{F}^{\\rm bqcf}_{{\\rm hom},n}$ is indexed by $n$ here while there is no index in Theorem~\\ref{stab_theorem}.  However, we may still use this theorem since $R_{{\\rm core},n} \\to \\infty$ so we may assume $R_{{\\rm core},n} \\geq R_{\\rm core}^*$ in the statement of that theorem.)\n\nNext, we estimate the remaining group in \\eqref{stew3},\n\\begin{equation*}\\label{stew4}\n\\begin{split}\n   &\\hspace{-1cm}\\big\\<\\big[ \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n }^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) \\big] (Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\big \\> \\\\\n&\\leq~ \\big|\\big\\<\\big[\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta^2\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm a}_{\\rm hom}(0)\\big] (1-\\varphi_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\> \\big| \\\\\n& \\qquad\\qquad +~ \\big|\\big\\<\\big[\\delta^2 \\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta^2\\mathcal{E}^{\\rm c}(0)\\big]  I_{h,n}(\\varphi_n(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\big\\>\\big| \\\\\n&\\leq~  \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\|V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(D \\bm{U}_n) - V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0) \\|_{\\ell^\\infty({\\rm supp}(D(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))} \\\\\n&\\qquad \\qquad\\qquad \\cdot \\|D_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}((1-\\varphi_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))\\|_{\\ell^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\|D_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\|_{\\ell^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n&+~ \\sum_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\|V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}\\big(\\nabla\\bm{U}_n ) - V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\|_{L^\\infty({\\rm supp}(\\nabla(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))} \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad \\cdot \\|\\nabla_{(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)}((1-\\varphi_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\|\\nabla_{(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\nFrom Lemma~\\ref{approx_lem} and the decay rates from Theorem~\\ref{decay_thm1} we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{stew5}\n\\begin{split}\n\\|V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(D\\bm{U}_n  ) - V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\|_{\\ell^\\infty({\\rm supp}(D(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))} \\to~& 0,\n\\quad \\text{and} \\\\\n\\|V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(\\nabla \\bm{U}_n) - V_{,(\\rho \\alpha\\beta)(\\tau\\gamma\\delta)}(0)\\|_{L^\\infty({\\rm supp}(\\nabla(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n))} \\to~& 0.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nConsequently,\n\\[\n\\big\\<\\big[ \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom}, n }^{{\\rm bqcf}}(\\bm{U}_n) - \\delta \\mathcal{F}_{{\\rm hom},n}^{{\\rm bqcf}}(0) \\big] (Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\big \\> \\to 0,\n\\]\nand from~\\eqref{stew3},\n\\begin{equation}\\label{inf_mod}\n\\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n}(\\bm{U}_n)(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n),(Z_n,\\bm{t}_n)\\> \\geq \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(Z_n, \\bm{t}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2.\n\\end{equation}\n\nCombining~\\eqref{steam_peas} and~\\eqref{inf_mod}, we can therefore conclude that\n\\begin{align}\\label{stew100}\n&\\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n }(\\Pi_{h,n}(\\bm{U}_n))(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n),(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)\\> \\nonumber\\\\\n& \\geq \\liminf_{n \\to\\infty} \\big[ \\gamma_{\\rm a} \\|(X_n, \\bm{s}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2 + \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a}\\|(Z_n, \\bm{t}_n)\\|_{\\rm ml}^2  \\big]  \\\\\n& {\\helen{\\geq\\liminf_{n \\to\\infty} \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a}\\big[ \\|\\nabla X_n\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 +\\|\\bm{s}_n\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 + \\|\\nabla Z_n\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2+\\|\\bm{t}_n\\|_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}^2 \\big] }}.\\nonumber\n\\end{align}\n{\\helen{\nNotice that we have\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n\\|\\nabla W_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}&=\\langle \\nabla W_n, \\nabla W_n\\rangle= \\langle \\nabla (X_n+Z_n), \\nabla (X_n+Z_n)\\rangle\\\\\n&=\\|\\nabla X_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}+2\\langle \\nabla X_n, \\nabla Z_n\\rangle+ \\|\\nabla Z_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)},\n\\end{split}\n\\]\nso we get\n\\[\n\\|\\nabla X_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}+ \\|\\nabla Z_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\n= \\|\\nabla W_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}-2\\langle \\nabla X_n, \\nabla Z_n\\rangle.\n\\]\nApplying the same treatments to $\\|\\bm{r}_{n}\\|^2$, we have from \\eqref{stew100} that\n\\[\n\\begin{split}\n&\\liminf_{n \\to \\infty} \\<\\delta \\mathcal{F}^{{\\rm bqcf}}_{n }(\\Pi_{h,n}(\\bm{U}_n))(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n),(X_n + Z_n,\\bm{s}_n + \\bm{t}_n)\\> \\\\\n&\\geq \\liminf_{n \\to\\infty} \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a}\\Big[\\|\\nabla W_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} - 2(\\nabla Z_n, \\nabla X_n)_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\sum_\\alpha\\|r_n^\\alpha\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad- \\sum_\\alpha 2(s_n^\\alpha,t_n^\\alpha)_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} \\Big] \\\\\n& \\geq \\liminf_{n \\to\\infty} \\frac{3\\gamma_{\\rm a}}{4}\\Big[\\|\\nabla W_n\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)} + \\sum\\|r_n^\\alpha\\|^2_{L^2(\\mathbb{R}^d)}\\Big] = \\frac{3}{4}\\gamma_{\\rm a},\n\\end{split}\n\\]\n}}\nwhich is a contradiction to~\\eqref{contra_seq_def}.  In attaining the last equality, we have used $(\\cdot, \\cdot)_{L^2}$ to denote the $L^2$ inner product, and we have again used the fact that the inner product of {\\helen{the strongly convergent sequence $\\nabla X_n$ and weakly convergent sequence $\\nabla Z_n$ (c.f. Lemma~\\ref{seq_lemma}) converges to zero and similarly for the inner product of the strongly convergent $\\bm{s}_n$ and weakly convergent $\\bm{t}_n$.}}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Discussion}\\label{discussion}\n\nWe presented the first complete error analysis of an atomistic-to-continuum coupling method for multilattices capable of incorporating defects in the analysis.  Our results for the blended force-based quasicontinuum method extend the existing results for Bravais lattices~\\cite{blended2014}, with the striking conclusion that the convergence rates in the simple and multi-lattice cases coincide for the optimal mesh coarsening. Our computational results for a Stone-Wales defect in graphene confirm our theoretical predictions.\n\nWe have concerned ourselves here with the case of point defects, though we see no conceptually challenging obstacles to include dislocations in the analysis so long as there is an analogous decay result to Theorem~\\ref{decay_thm}.  However, as previously mentioned, we are still limited in our ability to model physical effects such as bending or rippling in two-dimensional materials such as graphene due to several factors.  First, our assumption concerning stability of the multilattice, Assumption~\\ref{assumption2} uses a norm, $\\| \\nabla I U\\|_{L^2} + \\|I\\bm{p}\\|_{L^2}$, which does not take any bending energy into account and so we do not guarantee our lattice is stable in this situation.  We could have of course formulated a different assumption using a discrete variant of $\\|\\nabla^2 U_3\\|$ (where $U_3$ represents the out of plane displacement), but it is a very challenging question to extend the BQCF method and its analysis to such a situation.  The next issue that must be answered is what continuum model to use since the Cauchy--Born model used herein is not adequate to model such effects.  Possible alternatives would be to use higher-order Cauchy--Born rules~\\cite{ericksen2008cauchy,yang2006generalized} which rely on higher-order strain gradients, or the so-called exponential Cauchy--Born rule~\\cite{expCauchy}. In either of these cases, to use a similar analysis to what we have presented, one would have to establish new stress estimates akin to Corollary~\\ref{globel_stress} as well ensuring that the continuum model chosen is stable provided the atomistic model is. We are also confronted with the problem of choosing a finite element space capable of approximating $H^2$ functions, which likewise challenges the analysis as well as the implementation. \n\nFinally, we remark that extensions to charged defects in ionic crystals, which represent a wide class of important multilattice crystals, represent yet another difficult challenge, largely due to the {\\helen{long-range}} nature of the interatomic forces.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n  \\label{sec:introduction}\n \n\n  Lepton flavor violation (LFV) is an important vehicle for low energy studies of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Within the Standard Model (SM) with massless neutrinos, individual lepton number is conserved. Even with the addition of non-zero neutrino masses, processes that violate charged lepton number are suppressed by powers of $m_\\nu^2 \/ m_W^2$~\\cite{Raidal:2008jk}. Thus, experiments should be extremely sensitive to BSM physics that facilitate charged lepton flavor-violating (CLFV) processes.\n\n  SM phenomena are also expected to closely obey lepton-flavor universality (LFU). However, recent observations from LHCb~\\cite{Aaij:2014ora,Aaij:2015yra,Aaij:2017vbb}, BaBar~\\cite{Lees:2013uzd}, and Belle~\\cite{Huschle:2015rga,Wehle:2016yoi} show hints of LFU violation in semi-leptonic decays of $B$ mesons at the level of a few standard deviations. In response to these findings there have been many proposals introducing new physics, for example studies of $b \\rightarrow s \\mu \\mu$~\\cite{Descotes-Genon:2013wba,Altmannshofer:2013foa,Gauld:2013qja,Datta:2013kja,Buras:2013dea} and lepton-flavor non-universal interactions~\\cite{Altmannshofer:2014cfa,Sakaki:2013bfa} (for a recent review, see Ref.~\\cite{Buttazzo:2017ixm} and references therein). Although not required~\\cite{Celis:2015ara,Alonso:2015sja}, new interactions that violate LFU may also induce LFV~\\cite{Glashow:2014iga}. With the prospects of studying LFV in $B$-meson decays at LHCb and the upcoming Belle II experiment, there has been renewed theoretical attention to this type of new physics~\\cite{Bhattacharya:2014wla,Bhattacharya:2016mcc,Alok:2017jgr,Alok:2017sui,Altmannshofer:2017yso,Crivellin:2017zlb,Iguro:2017ysu,Iguro:2018qzf}.\n\nIn addition to studies of LFV in $B$ decays, some authors have proposed refined methods for direct searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to look for new TeV-scale particles that can mediate LFV \\cite{Chivukula:2017qsi}. However, it is quite possible that the new mediators are at an energy scale that is beyond the reach of the LHC. A convenient method to study effects of high-scale physics in low-energy processes involves effective field theories (EFT) \\cite{Petrov:2016azi}. If LFV happens to be at a scale $\\Lambda$ that is beyond the reach of direct searches at the LHC, studies of LFV effects at the LHC can still be done using EFT methods. The low-energy effects of BSM physics generated at a UV scale $\\Lambda$ can be characterized in terms of an effective Lagrangian $\\mathcal{L}_\\textrm{eff}$ containing terms of dimension $d \\ge 5$ suppressed by appropriate powers of the NP scale $\\Lambda$. In particular, at dimension 6 the following $SU(3)_C \\times U(1)_\\textrm{EM}$ invariant CLFV interactions are generated,\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:4fermion_lagrangian}\n    \\mathcal{L}_\\textrm{eff}^{(6)} \\supset \\frac{1}{\\Lambda^2} \\sum_{i,j,k,l,m,n} C_{ijkl}^{mn} \\left ( \\overline{\\ell}_i \\Gamma^m \\ell_j \\right ) \\left ( \\overline{q}_k \\Gamma^n q_l \\right ) + \\textrm{h.c.} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $i,j = 1,2,3$ label lepton generation, $k,l = 1,2,3$ label quark generation, $\\Gamma^m$ denote the Dirac structure, and $C_{ijkl}^{mn}$ are Wilson coefficients. The operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_lagrangian} can be probed in a variety of ways, both at high~\\cite{Black:2002wh,Han:2010sa,Arganda:2015ija,Cai:2015poa} and low energies~\\cite{Hazard:2017udp,Hazard:2016fnc,Dreiner:2006gu,Daub:2012mu,Lindner:2016bgg,Davidson:2016edt,Crivellin:2013hpa,Crivellin:2017rmk,Celis:2014asa}.~\\footnote{For an alternative approach to studying CLFV at fixed target experiments, see e.g.~\\cite{Takeuchi:2017btl}.}\n\n The large parton luminosity for gluon-gluon interactions at high-energy $pp$ colliders, such as the LHC, implies that gluon-initiated processes might be prevalent there. However, the set of operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_lagrangian} does not contain gluon fields. The lowest order effective operator that is invariant under the SM gauge group $SU(3)_C \\times SU(2)_L \\times U(1)_Y$ that couples lepton and gluon fields appears at dimension eight,\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\mathcal{L}_\\textrm{eff}^{(8)} = \\frac{g_s^2}{\\Lambda^4} \\left [ Y_{ij} \\overline{L}_L^{\\, i} H \\ell_R^{\\, j} \\, G \\cdot G + \\widetilde{Y}_{ij} \\overline{L}_L^{\\, i} H \\ell_R^{\\, j} \\, G \\cdot \\widetilde{G} \\right ] + \\textrm{h.c.} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $L_L^{\\, i}$ represents the left-handed doublet lepton field with generation index $i$ in the gauge basis, $\\ell_R^{\\, i}$ is a right-handed lepton singlet field, and $H$ is a Higgs field. Gauge-invariant combinations of gluon fields are $G \\cdot G \\equiv G^a_{\\mu \\nu} G^{a \\, \\mu \\nu}$, and $G \\cdot \\widetilde{G} \\equiv G^a_{\\mu \\nu} \\widetilde{G}^{a \\, \\mu \\nu}$. Here $G^{a}_{\\mu \\nu}$ is a gluon field strength tensor and\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\widetilde{G}^a_{\\mu \\nu} = \\frac{1}{2} \\epsilon_{\\mu \\nu \\alpha \\beta}G^{a \\, \\alpha \\beta}\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  is its dual. The couplings $Y_{ij} (\\widetilde{Y}_{ij})$ are in general complex.  As spontaneous symmetry breaking leads to non-diagonal lepton mass matrices, their diagonalization will result in bi-unitary transformations of $Y_{ij} (\\widetilde{Y}_{ij}) \\to y_{ij} (\\widetilde{y}_{ij})$.  Switching to a mass basis for lepton fields will then lead to LFV interactions of charged leptons $\\ell^i$,\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:gg_lagrangian}\n    \\mathcal{L}_\\textrm{eff}^{(8)} = \\frac{v g_s^2}{\\sqrt{2} \\Lambda^4} \\left [ y_{ij} \\overline{\\ell}_L^{\\, i} \\ell_R^{\\, j} \\, G \\cdot G + \\widetilde{y}_{ij} \\overline{\\ell}_L^{\\, i} \\ell_R^{\\, j} \\, G \\cdot \\widetilde{G} \\right ] + \\textrm{h.c.} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $v \\sim 246$~GeV is the Higgs vacuum expectation value (VEV).\n\n  For definiteness, we concentrate on the particular leptonic final state $\\mu\\tau$. In certain models of NP this final state might have the largest coupling to the new degrees of freedom, for instance due to the Cheng-Sher ansatz~\\cite{Cheng:1987rs}. Additionally, final states with muons could be preferable from the point of view of experimental detection. For instance, searches for Higgs and $Z$-boson decays to $\\mu \\tau$ are common for studies of LFV at the LHC \\cite{Arhrib:2012ax} by ATLAS \\cite{Aad:2016blu} and CMS \\cite{Khachatryan:2015kon,Sirunyan:2017xzt} collaborations.\n\n  It is interesting to point out that the $v\/\\Lambda^4$ suppression of the operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_lagrangian} is not universal. Consider, for example, NP models where the effective coupling between gluons and leptons is generated after matching at one loop. This can be seen explicitly in two Higgs doublet models (2HDM) without natural flavor conservation with a heavy Higgs mediating CLFV as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:clfv_feynman}(a) or in the case of CLFV mediated by a heavy scalar or vector lepto-quark with appropriate quantum numbers as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:clfv_feynman}(b). Depending on the UV completion of the model, particles $Q$ and\/or $\\Phi^0\/Z$ could belong to the NP or SM spectra. If for both particles, $m_Q \\sim m_{\\Phi^0} \\sim \\Lambda$ in Fig.~\\ref{fig:clfv_feynman}(a) or $m_Q \\sim m_{X} \\sim \\Lambda$ in Fig.~\\ref{fig:clfv_feynman}(b), the overall scaling of the effective operators would be $\\propto (16 \\pi^2 \\Lambda^4 \/ v)^{-1}$. Yet, if $Q$ is a standard model top quark, then at low energies one should expect the scaling of the effective operators to be $\\propto (16 \\pi^2 m_t \\Lambda^2)^{-1}$. Such scaling of effective operators is standard in low-energy studies of lepton-flavor violation~\\cite{Raidal:2008jk,Celis:2014asa,Petrov:2013vka}.  Finally, the large gluon luminosity of the LHC can affect the detection probabilities, selecting effective operators with explicit gluonic degrees of freedom, even though they could be suppressed by additional powers of $1\/\\Lambda$.\n\n  It will therefore be appropriate, for the sake of a model-independent analysis, to introduce a set of dimension-full constants $\\mathcal{C}^{\\ell_1 \\ell_2}_i$ that encode all effects of relevant Wilson coefficients and scales. Once these coefficients are constrained from the LHC data, we can then use the available constraints to discuss different ultraviolet completions (and thus interpretations) of the effective theory. The Lagrangian of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_lagrangian} then leads to the following interactions facilitating $\\mu \\tau$ production,\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\mathcal{L}_\\textrm{eff} =  \\sum_{i = 1}^4 \\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau} \\mathcal{O}_i^{\\mu \\tau} + \\textrm{h.c.} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:gg_operators}\n    \\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.25}\n    \\begin{array}{r l}\n      \\mathcal{O}_1^{\\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_L \\tau_R \\right ) \\, G \\cdot G \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_2^{\\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_L \\tau_R \\right ) \\, G \\cdot \\widetilde{G} \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_3^{\\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_R \\tau_L \\right ) \\, G \\cdot G \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_4^{\\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_R \\tau_L \\right ) \\, G \\cdot \\widetilde{G} \\, .\n    \\end{array}\n  \\end{align}\n\n  \\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{tabular}{m{0.025\\textwidth} m{0.35\\textwidth}}\n      (a) & \\includegraphics[width=0.325\\textwidth]{clfv_feynman_1.eps} \\\\ \\\\\n      (b) & \\includegraphics[width=0.325\\textwidth]{clfv_feynman_2.eps}\n    \\end{tabular}\n    \\caption{Example Feynman diagrams which can generate the operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_operators}.}\n    \\label{fig:clfv_feynman}\n  \\end{figure}\n\n  The remainder of this letter proceeds as follows. In Sec.~\\ref{sec:gluonic_operators}, we place constraints on the coefficients $\\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau}$ of gluonic operators. In Sec.~\\ref{sec:ttbar_operators} we use those constraints to put limits on lepton-flavor violating couplings of top quarks that are difficult to constrain at low energy machines. We conclude in Sec.~\\ref{sec:conclusion}.\n\n\n \n  \\section{LHC constraints on Gluonic Operators}\n  \\label{sec:gluonic_operators}\n \n\n\n \n  \\subsection{Event Selection}\n  \\label{sec:event_selection}\n \n\n  At the 13 TeV LHC, the tau decays promptly into neutrinos and either an electron, a muon, or hadrons. The cleanest signal comes from leptonic $\\tau$ decays, and since $\\mu^+ \\mu^-$ has a large SM background we will study the $\\mu e$ final state. The leading backgrounds are then $W^+ W^-$ pair production, $Z^0 \/ \\gamma^* \\rightarrow \\tau \\tau$, and $t \\overline{t}$ pair production. For this study we apply the basic cuts of Ref.~\\cite{Han:2010sa}, which are reviewed below.\n\n  For detector coverage and triggering, we require the transverse momentum $p_\\textrm{T}$ and pseudorapidity $\\eta$ to satisfy\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:cut1}\n    p_\\textrm{T}^{\\mu,e} > 20~\\text{GeV} \\;\\;\\; \\text{ and } \\;\\;\\; | \\eta^{\\mu,e} | < 2.5 \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  while vetoing events with a final state jet of $p_\\textrm{T}^j > 50$~GeV and $| \\eta^j | < 2.5$. For the signal, we anticipate the $\\mu$ and $\\tau$ to be back to back in the transverse plane with $p_\\textrm{T}^\\mu = p_\\textrm{T}^\\tau$ and with the decay products of the $\\tau$ highly collimated. We therefore impose the additional requirements\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:cut2}\n    \\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.25}\n    \\begin{array}{c}\n      \\delta \\phi(p_\\textrm{T}^\\mu, p_\\textrm{T}^e) > 2.5 \\, , \\;\\;\\;\\;\\; \\delta \\phi(p_\\textrm{T}^\\textrm{miss}, p_\\textrm{T}^e) < 0.6 \\, , \\\\\n      \\Delta p_T = p_\\textrm{T}^\\mu - p_\\textrm{T}^e > 0 \\, ,\n    \\end{array}\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $p_\\textrm{T}^\\textrm{miss}$ is the event's missing transverse momentum.\n\n  The signal kinematics also allows us to approximately reconstruct the $\\tau$. All of the missing energy in signal events is due to $\\tau$ decay products, which gives\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\vec{p}_\\textrm{T}^{\\; \\tau} = \\vec{p}_\\textrm{T}^{\\; e} + \\vec{p}_\\textrm{T}^\\textrm{ miss} \\, .\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  From the expectation that the decay products of the $\\tau$ will be highly collimated such that $p_z^e \/ p_z^\\textrm{miss} \\approx p_\\textrm{T}^e \/ p_\\textrm{T}^\\textrm{miss}$. Thus, the longitudinal component of the $\\tau$ momentum should be\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    p_z^\\tau \\approx p_z^e \\left ( 1 + \\frac{p_\\textrm{T}^\\textrm{miss}}{p_\\textrm{T}^e} \\right ) \\, .\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  Once the $\\tau$'s 3-momentum is reconstructed the energy is $E_\\tau^2 = \\vec{p}_\\tau^{\\; 2} + m_\\tau^2$. With the momentum of the $\\tau$ fully reconstructed for signal events, we then require the invariant mass of the $\\mu \\tau$ system to satisfy\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:cut3}\n    M_{\\mu \\tau} > 250 \\text{ GeV} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  as the missing energy present in the backgrounds does not in general come from the decay of a single $\\tau$.\n\n\n \n  \\subsection{Constraints}\n  \\label{sec:gg_constraints}\n \n\n  To estimate constraints on the operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_operators} at the 13~TeV LHC, signal and background events were generated using {\\sc MadGraph5}~\\cite{Alwall:2014hca}. Showering and hadronization of these events, as well as decay of the $\\tau$, was then performed using {\\sc Pythia8}~\\cite{Sjostrand:2006za, Sjostrand:2007gs}, while detector effects were simulated with {\\sc Delphes}~\\cite{deFavereau:2013fsa}. The signal model file was generated using {\\sc FeynRules}~\\cite{Alloul:2013bka}. Background and signal cross sections after applying successive cuts are shown in Table~\\ref{tab:mutau_bgs}.\n  %\n  \\begin{table}[t]\n    \\begin{center}\n      \\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.15}\n      \\small\n      \\begin{tabular}{| c | c | c | c | c |}\n        \\hline \\hline\n        $\\sigma$ (pb) & No cuts & $+$ Eq.~\\eqref{eq:cut1} & $+$ Eq.~\\eqref{eq:cut2} & $+$ Eq.~\\eqref{eq:cut3} \\\\\n        \\hline\n        $W W (\\mu \\tau)$ & 1.6 & 0.024 & 0.0044 & 0.0015 \\\\\n        $W W (\\mu e)$ & 1.6 & 0.35 & 0.014 & 0.0044 \\\\\n        $Z\/\\gamma^* (\\tau \\tau)$ & 2400 & 1.7 & 0.26 & 0.00083 \\\\\n        $t t (\\mu \\tau)$ & 12 & 0.043 & 0.0045 & 0.0019 \\\\\n        $t t (\\mu e)$ & 12 & 0.53 & 0.015 & 0.0081 \\\\\n        \\hline\n        $\\mathcal{O}_i^{\\mu \\tau}$ & 0.89 & 0.030 & 0.028 & 0.028 \\\\\n        \\hline \\hline\n      \\end{tabular}\n      \\caption{Background and signal cross sections at the 13~TeV LHC. The signal cross section assumes the benchmark values of $C_i^{\\mu \\tau} = 4 \\pi v \\, g_s^2 \/ \\sqrt{2} \\Lambda^4$ with $\\Lambda = 2$~TeV. Cross sections before cuts are given prior to $\\tau$ decays.}\n      \\label{tab:mutau_bgs}\n    \\end{center}\n  \\end{table}\n  %\n  Signal cross sections are calculated using the benchmark values of $\\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau} = 4 \\pi v \\, g_s^2 \/ \\sqrt{2} \\Lambda^4$ with $\\Lambda = 2$~TeV. The running of the Wilson coefficients is assumed to be negligible. All operators are considered independently, and have the same cross section up to variations in their respective effective couplings.\n\n  At 100~fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, we estimate the $2 \\sigma$ confidence level (CL$_s$) exclusion limit and $5 \\sigma$ log-likelihood (LL) discovery significance for $C_i^{\\mu \\tau}$ to be\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\left ( \\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau} \\right )_{2 \\sigma} &\\approx \\left ( 3300~\\textrm{GeV} \\right )^{-3} \\, ,\\\\\n    \\left ( \\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau} \\right )_{5 \\sigma} &\\approx \\left ( 2900~\\textrm{GeV} \\right )^{-3} \\, .\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  These estimates can be translated to general constraints on the NP scale $\\Lambda$ of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_lagrangian} where $C_i^{\\mu \\tau} = 4 \\pi v \\, g_s^2 \/ \\sqrt{2} \\Lambda^4$. The values $y_{\\mu \\tau} = \\widetilde{y}_{\\mu \\tau} = 4 \\pi$ are chosen to push the perturbative limit of these operators in order to estimate the maximum sensitivity of the LHC to the various BSM scenarios discussed in Sec.~\\ref{sec:introduction}. With these assumptions we find lower bounds on $\\Lambda$ of\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\Lambda_{2 \\sigma} &\\approx 3000~\\textrm{GeV} \\, , \\\\\n    \\Lambda_{5 \\sigma} &\\approx 2800~\\textrm{GeV} \\, .\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  If we instead anticipate $y_{\\mu \\tau} = y_{\\mu \\tau} \\sim \\mathcal{O}(1)$, we find that the scale of these operators are constrained to be $\\Lambda_{2 \\sigma} \\sim 1.6$~TeV. While we anticipate probing heavier NP scales as more data accumulates, models which generate the operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_operators} at a single UV scale have cross sections suppressed by $\\Lambda^{-8}$ which limits the effectiveness of additional data on the ability to probe significantly higher scales at the LHC. A plot of the integrated luminosity at the 13~TeV LHC vs. $\\Lambda$ is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:luminosity_vs_cutoff} of Sec.~\\ref{sec:ttbar_constraints}.\n  \n  The operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_operators} are in general also constrained by low energy experiments. For example, in Ref.~\\cite{Petrov:2013vka} the authors present an analysis of constraints from limits on LFV tau decays to a muon and one or two hadrons. The results of their analysis, converted to the normalization used in this paper, are shown in Table~\\ref{tab:tau_constraints}. The most stringent constraints, coming from $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\pi^+ \\pi^-$ for $\\mathcal{O}_{1,3}^{\\mu \\tau}$ and $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\eta$ for $\\mathcal{O}_{2,4}^{\\mu \\tau}$, are $\\Lambda_{1,3} \\approx 1000$~GeV and $\\Lambda_{2,4} \\approx 830$~GeV.~\\footnote{Alternative studies of similar processes offer differing estimates of the bounds from LFV tau decays (see e.g. Ref.~\\cite{Celis:2014asa}), but these estimates generally fall well below the LHC's expected sensitivity.} These bounds are several times lower than the estimated sensitivity of the LHC with 100~fb$^{-1}$ of luminosity.\n  \n  \\begin{table}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.15}\n    \\begin{tabular}{| c | c | c |}\n      \\hline \\hline\n      Process & $C_{1,3}^{\\mu \\tau}$ (GeV$^{-3}$) & $\\Lambda_{1,3}$ (GeV) \\\\\n      \\hline\n      $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\, \\pi^+ \\pi^-$ & $780^{-3}$ & 1000 \\\\\n      $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\, K^+ K^-$ & $700^{-3}$ & 950 \\\\\n      \\hline \\hline\n      Process & $C_{2,4}^{\\mu \\tau}$ (GeV$^{-3}$) & $\\Lambda_{2,4}$ (GeV) \\\\\n      \\hline\n      $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\, \\eta$ & $590^{-3}$ & 830 \\\\\n      $\\tau \\rightarrow \\mu \\, \\eta^\\prime$ & $520^{-3}$ & 760 \\\\\n      \\hline\n      \\hline\n    \\end{tabular}\n    \\caption{Constraints on the coefficients of $\\mathcal{O}_i^{\\mu \\tau}$ from $\\tau$ decays, adapted from Ref.~\\cite{Petrov:2013vka}. The constraints on $\\Lambda$ are calculated using $C_i^{\\mu \\tau} = 4 \\pi v \\, g_s^2 \/ \\sqrt{2} \\Lambda^4_i$.}\n    \\label{tab:tau_constraints}\n  \\end{table}\n\n\n \n  \\section{LHC Constraints on $t \\overline{t} \\, \\mu \\tau$ Operators}\n  \\label{sec:ttbar_operators}\n \n\n  Studies of $\\mu \\tau$ production at hadron colliders mediated by four-fermion operators have been performed~\\cite{Han:2010sa}, with constraints on the NP scale obtained with the help of a single operator dominance hypothesis~\\cite{Hazard:2016fnc}. They, however, did not examine operators that include top-quark fields. As we show below, these operators can be constrained by studying $gg\\to\\mu\\tau$ processes.\n\n\n \n  \\subsection{Matching Conditions}\n  \\label{sec:matching_conditions}\n \n\n  The $SU(3)_C \\times U(1)_\\textrm{EM}$ invariant Lagrangian contributing to $\\mu \\tau$ production contains\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:4fermion_lagrangian2}\n    \\mathcal{L}_{\\mu \\tau}^{(6)} \\supset \\frac{1}{\\Lambda^2} \\sum_{i = 1}^4 C_i^{q \\mu \\tau} \\mathcal{O}_i^{q \\mu \\tau} + \\text{h.c.} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:4fermion_operators}\n    \\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{1.25}\n    \\begin{array}{r l}\n      \\mathcal{O}_1^{q \\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_L \\tau_R \\right ) \\left ( \\overline{q}_L q_R \\right ) \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_2^{q \\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_L \\tau_R \\right ) \\left ( \\overline{q}_R q_L \\right ) \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_3^{q \\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_R \\tau_L \\right ) \\left ( \\overline{q}_L q_R \\right ) \\, , \\\\\n      \\mathcal{O}_4^{q \\mu \\tau} \\hspace*{-0.25cm} &= \\left ( \\overline{\\mu}_R \\tau_L \\right ) \\left ( \\overline{q}_R q_L \\right ) \\, .\n    \\end{array}\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  As noted in Section~\\ref{sec:introduction}, these operators also generate the gluonic operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_operators} via SM quark loops in the diagrams represented in Fig.~\\ref{fig:clfv_feynman}. Thus we can take advantage of the enhanced gluon luminosity at the LHC to probe these operators indirectly through gluon fusion production. A brief discussion of $SU(2)_L$ invariant operators generating those of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} is given in \\ref{sec:effective_operators}.\n\n  The coefficients of the dimension 8 operators, $C_i^{\\mu \\tau}$, are related to the Wilson coefficients of the dimension 6 operators, $C_i^{q\\mu\\tau}$ by\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:matching1}\n    \\mathcal{C}_{1,3}^{\\mu \\tau} &= \\frac{g_s^2}{16 \\pi^2} \\frac{F_1(x)}{\\Lambda^2 m_q} \\left [ C_{1,3}^{q \\mu \\tau} + C_{2,4}^{q \\mu \\tau} \\right ]_{C_{1,3}^{q \\mu \\tau} = C_{2,4}^{q \\mu \\tau}} \\, , \\\\\n    \\label{eq:matching2}\n    \\mathcal{C}_{2,4}^{\\mu \\tau} &= \\frac{i g_s^2}{16 \\pi^2} \\frac{F_2(x)}{\\Lambda^2 m_q} \\left [ C_{1,3}^{q \\mu \\tau} - C_{2,4}^{q \\mu \\tau} \\right ]_{C_{1,3}^{q \\mu \\tau} = - C_{2,4}^{q \\mu \\tau}} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $m_q$ is the mass of the quark running in the loop. Here $F(x)$ are functions of the parton center-of-momentum (CM) energy $\\hat{s}$, and are given by\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:form_factor1}\n    F_1 (x) &= - \\frac{x}{2} \\left [ 4 + (4 x - 1) \\ln^2 \\left ( 1 - \\frac{1}{2x} + \\frac{\\sqrt{1 - 4 x}}{2x} \\right ) \\right ] \\, , \\\\\n    \\label{eq:form_factor2}\n    F_2 (x) &= \\frac{x}{2} \\ln^2 \\left ( 1 - \\frac{1}{2x} + \\frac{\\sqrt{1 - 4 x}}{2x} \\right ) \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  where $x \\equiv m_q^2 \/ \\hat{s}$. In the limit that $x \\ll 1$, the functions $F(x)$ approach $m_q^2 \/ \\hat{s}$, indicating that the contribution to $\\mu\\tau$ production from gluon fusion is dominated by the heaviest quark running in the loop. At LHC energies, provided only SM quarks contribute to this process, the top quark contribution is, therefore, expected to dominate.\n\n\n \n  \\subsection{Constraints}\n  \\label{sec:ttbar_constraints}\n \n\n  Converting the results from Section~\\ref{sec:gg_constraints}, we find, for 100~fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity with the benchmark values $\\left | C_i^{q \\mu \\tau} \\right | = 4 \\pi$, chosen again to be at the perturbative limit in order to estimate the maximum potential reach of the study, the $2 \\sigma$ CL$_s$ exclusion limit and $5 \\sigma$ LL discovery significance for the $G \\cdot G$ operators $\\mathcal{O}_{1,3}^{\\mu \\tau}$ to be\n  %\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:dim6_constraint1}\n    \\Lambda_{2 \\sigma} &\\approx 3400~\\textrm{GeV} \\, , \\\\\n    \\label{eq:dim6_constraint2}\n    \\Lambda_{5 \\sigma} &\\approx 2900~\\textrm{GeV} \\, ,\n  \\end{align}\n  %\n  while for the $G \\cdot \\widetilde{G}$ operators $\\mathcal{O}_{2,4}^{\\mu \\tau}$ they are\n  \\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:dim6_constraint3}\n    \\Lambda_{2 \\sigma} &\\approx 4100~\\textrm{GeV} \\, , \\\\\n    \\label{eq:dim6_constraint4}\n    \\Lambda_{5 \\sigma} &\\approx 3400~\\textrm{GeV} \\, .\n  \\end{align}\n  Note that the energy scale $\\Lambda$ here is the NP scale of the dimension 6 four-fermion operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_lagrangian2}.~\\footnote{The gluon interactions with $\\mu \\tau$ are clearly non-local at LHC energies. To account for this, we average the full form factors (squared) of Eqs.~\\eqref{eq:form_factor1} and \\eqref{eq:form_factor2} by reconstructing the $\\tau$ to obtain an approximate event-by-event $\\hat{s}$.} For $|C_i^{q \\mu \\tau} | \\sim \\mathcal{O}(1)$, the constraints of Eqs.~(\\ref{eq:dim6_constraint1}--\\ref{eq:dim6_constraint4}) are estimated to be only $\\Lambda_{2 \\sigma} \\sim 0.97$ (1.1)~TeV for the $G \\cdot G$ ($G \\cdot \\widetilde{G}$) operators, which may be near the scale of validity for the EFT at the LHC. However, unlike the operators discussed in Sec.~\\ref{sec:gluonic_operators}, the dimension 6 operator-induced cross-sections scale as $\\Lambda^{-4}$ and therefore stand to benefit more from the accumulation of additional data.\n\n  \\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.475\\textwidth]{LFV_Luminosity_vs_Lambda_3.eps}\n    \\caption{Luminosity goal at the 13 TeV LHC as a function of the NP scale $\\Lambda$, choosing a value of $4 \\pi$ for the dimensionless Wilson coefficients}. The solid (dashed) curves represent the $2\\sigma$ CL$_s$ exclusion limit ($5\\sigma$ LL discovery limit) on the luminosity required to rule out (discover) NP at the scale $\\Lambda$.\n    \\label{fig:luminosity_vs_cutoff}\n  \\end{figure}\n  \n  Fig.~\\ref{fig:luminosity_vs_cutoff} shows the luminosity required to set $2 \\sigma$ CL$_s$ exclusion constraints and $5 \\sigma$ LL discovery estimates as a function of the NP scale $\\Lambda$. With 100~fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, the constraints on the operators in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:gg_lagrangian} and those of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} appear to be quite similar due to the explicit inclusion of loop suppression factors via the matching conditions of Eqs.~\\eqref{eq:matching1} and \\eqref{eq:matching2}. However, the LHC becomes increasingly sensitive to interactions via SM top quark loops as integrated luminosity is increased. As data at the LHC continues to accrue, experiments will become increasingly sensitive to NP that generates the operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} and may be probed via gluonic processes. \n  \n  The dimension 6 operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} also induce at one loop couplings to the SM Higgs boson. LFV Higgs decays are stringently constrained by direct searches at the LHC, with the most recent result from the CMS collaboration at $\\sqrt{s} = 13$~TeV constraining the branching ratio to be Br$(h \\rightarrow \\mu \\tau) < 0.25\\%$~\\cite{Sirunyan:2017xzt}. In general, however, other operators may contribute to LFV Higgs couplings. Specifically, at dimension 6 the operators $(\\overline{f}_L^i f_R^j) H (H^\\dagger H)$ and $(\\overline{f}_{L,R}^i \\gamma^\\mu f_{L,R}^j) (H^\\dagger i \\overleftrightarrow{D}_\\mu H)$ induce direct LFV couplings to the Higgs boson, with potential interference between the various contributions. While a thorough study of the effects of these operators on Higgs decays is beyond the scope of this work, see e.g. Ref.~\\cite{Harnik:2012pb} for an analysis of EFT-induced LFV couplings to the SM Higgs boson.\n\n\n \n  \\section{Conclusion}\n  \\label{sec:conclusion}\n \n\n  In this letter we have examined CLFV processes initiated by gluon fusion at the $\\sqrt{s} = 13$~TeV LHC. We have demonstrated that the gluon's enhanced parton luminosity can compensate for the increased suppression from dimension 8 operators relative to the less suppressed dimension 6 quark-induced CLFV processes. This allows one to indirectly probe models of NP mediating CLFV processes that may otherwise be inaccessible at LHC energies. The LHC has already collected nearly 100~fb$^{-1}$ of data at 13~TeV. We have estimated that this data can constrain the dimensionful coefficients of gluonic CLFV-inducing operators to be $\\mathcal{C}_i^{\\mu \\tau} \\gtrsim \\left ( 3.3~\\textrm{TeV} \\right )^{-3}$.\n\n  In addition, we have presented a study of such processes occurring through SM quark loops. In models where single operator dominance is expected, we have demonstrated that it is possible to constrain the CLFV coupling of leptons to top quarks through loop-induced gluon fusion. With 100~fb$^{-1}$ of data, we have estimated that the NP scale $\\Lambda$ of $t \\overline{t} \\, \\mu \\tau$ couplings can be constrained to be $\\Lambda \\gtrsim 3.4 - 4.1$~TeV. This mechanism is especially important for models that predict an enhanced coupling to top quarks such as in certain 2HDMs with LFV. A future discovery of CLFV in the $\\mu \\tau$ final state at the LHC could be the first indication of preferential couplings to top quarks, and could be important in discriminating between the many models of CLFV.\n\n\n \n  \\section{Acknowledgements}\n  \\label{sec:acknowledgements}\n \n\n  This work has been supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-SC0007983 and by the National Science Foundation under grant PHY-1460853 under the auspices of WSU Research Experience for Undergraduates program.\n\n\n  \\begin{appendix}\n\n   \n    \\section{$SU(2)_L$ Invariant Operators}\n    \\label{sec:effective_operators}\n   \n\n    The $SU(3)_C \\times U(1)_\\textrm{EM}$ invariant operators of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} arise from $SU(2)_L$ invariant forms. Specifically, $\\mathcal{O}_1^{q \\mu \\tau}$ is contained in the dimension 6 operator\n    \\begin{align}\n      \\label{eq:su2_dim6}\n      \\mathcal{O}^{LeQu} = ( \\overline{L}_L^{\\, i} e_R^{\\, j} ) \\, \\epsilon \\, ( \\overline{Q}_L^{\\, k} u_R^{\\, l} ) \\, ,\n    \\end{align}\n    where the antisymmetric tensor $\\epsilon$ contracts the suppressed $SU(2)_L$ indices, and $\\mathcal{O}_4^{q \\mu \\tau}$ is included in its Hermitian conjugate. Conversely, operators $\\mathcal{O}_{2,3}^{q \\mu \\tau}$ are first generated at dimension 8,\n    \\begin{align}\n      \\label{eq:su2_dim8}\n      \\mathcal{O}^{LHeuHQ} = ( [ \\overline{L}_L^{\\, i} H ] e_R^{\\, j} ) ( \\overline{u}_R^{\\, k} [ H^T i \\sigma_2 Q_L^{\\, l}] )\n    \\end{align}\n    and its Hermitian conjugate. Operators $\\mathcal{O}_{1,4}^{q \\mu \\tau}$ can also be generated at dimension 8 without the associated charged current interactions of Eq.~\\eqref{eq:su2_dim6}.\n\n    Because only two of the operators listed in Eq.~\\eqref{eq:4fermion_operators} appear at dimension 6 in an $SU(2)_L$ invariant form, there is in general no reason to expect the coefficients of these operators to be similar in value, as required by the matching conditions given in Eqs.~\\eqref{eq:matching1} and \\eqref{eq:matching2}. We should then generally expect a mixing of the $G \\cdot G$ and $G \\cdot \\widetilde{G}$ production mechanisms. However, Ref.~\\cite{Potter:2012yv} has demonstrated that the contributions from these operators can not be distinguished by a study of lepton pair production alone, and thus one should consider the limits presented in Section~\\ref{sec:ttbar_constraints} as estimates of the upper bounds on such processes. We postpone a more complete discussion of the four-lepton operators for a future, more detailed, analysis, where one can expect the scale of $\\mathcal{O}_{2,3}^{t \\mu \\tau}$ to be more weakly constrained than $\\mathcal{O}_{1,4}^{t \\mu \\tau}$.\n\n  \\end{appendix}\n\n\n \n  \\section*{References}\n  \\label{sec:references}\n \n\n  \\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}\n  ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nSensor measurements are often incomplete, noisy, and replete with outliers arising due to malfunctions or intermittent errors. Imputation of the missing entries and removal\/segregation of the outliers is a critical first step that must be carried out prior to any data analytics. Examples of applications that benefit from such a pre-processing step include estimation\/prediction of city-wide road traffic, regional air quality, electricity consumption in power distribution networks and foreground-background separation in videos. For most of these applications, the measurements can be arranged in form of a matrix, some of whose entries may be missing or contaminated with outliers. Pertinent approaches model the measurements as arising from a low-dimensional subspace whose recovery allows us to reject the noise and outliers, and impute the missing entries \\cite{candes2009exact,balzano2010online,babacan-11,giampouras2017online,candes2011robust,ding2011bayesian}.\n\\par Many real-world applications, including the aforementioned ones, involve time-varying data that arrives in a sequential manner and must be processed as such. As a result, the data matrices arising in such applications comprise of low-dimensional subspaces that evolve over time. While the classical matrix completion or robust principal component analysis (RPCA) approaches are still applicable to each snapshot of the data, the performance can generally be improved by exploiting the temporal correlations present in the measurements \\cite{liu2013tensor,balzano2010online,electrictydata,grasta,roseta}. State-of-the-art approaches for processing time-varying subspaces can mostly be classified into approaches based on tensor completion \\cite{liu2013tensor} and regularized matrix completion \\cite{NIPS2016_6160}. A common feature of these techniques is their static perspective and the resulting focus on batch processing. In contrast however, the data streaming from the sensors may be inherently dynamic, arising from subspaces that evolve over time. Theoretical guarantees for the dynamic setting have been studied in \\cite{XuDevenportNIPS}.\nDifferent from these approaches and closer to the classical time-series modeling, an online forecasting matrix completion approach was proposed in \\cite{electrictydata} where the underlying subspace was assumed to follow a linear state-space model and must be learned in an online fashion. Approaches based on matrix completion often involve a number of tuning parameters that must be correctly set in order to avoid over-fitting. However determining these parameters via cross-validation is quite challenging with time-series data, especially in the online setting \\cite{electrictydata}. Alternatively, probabilistic learning algorithms have been proposed for the static matrix completion, and are generally free of tuning parameters. Such approaches entail constructing generative models that are not only capable of modeling the data but are also simple enough to allow low-complexity updates.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\par\nThis work considers the first low-rank robust subspace filtering approach for online matrix imputation and prediction. Different from the existing matrix and tensor completion formulations, we consider low-rank matrices whose underlying subspace evolves according to a state-space model. As incomplete columns of the data matrix arrive sequentially over time, the low rank components as well as the state-space model are learned in an online fashion using the variational Bayes formalism. In particular, component distributions are chosen to allow automatic relevance determination (ARD) and unlike the matrix or tensor completion works, the algorithm parameters such as rank, noise powers, and state noise powers need not be specified or tuned. A low-complexity forward-backward algorithm is also proposed that allows the updates to be carried out efficiently. Enhancements to the proposed algorithm, capable of learning time-varying state-transition matrices, operating with a fixed lag, and robust to outliers, are also detailed.  Our approach is general and we demonstrate its efficacy on various settings.  In particular, we discuss the traffic estimation problem in detail and show that the variational Bayesian approach can be used to impute road traffic densities in an online fashion and from only a few observations. As the proposed models are generative, the resulting traffic density predictions can also be used to obtain accurate expected time-of-arrival (ETA) estimates. Additionally, the applicability of the proposed algorithm on the electricity load estimation and prediction problem is also shown. The superior performance of our algorithm vis-a-vis other state of the art subspace tracking and online matrix factorisation algorithms may be attributed to the proposed state space model as well as the flexibility in the data modeling provided by the variational Bayesian approach. In summary, the contributions of the present work are as follows:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\\item We present the variational Bayesian subspace filtering (VBSF) algorithm and demonstrate its ability to perform data modeling, imputation and temporal prediction in an online setting wherein the key algorithmic parameters are automatically tuned.\n\t\\item Robust version of the VBSF algorithm is also proposed for outlier removal and data cleansing.\n\t\\item Finally, we report a comprehensive comparison of our algorithm with various relevant (offline) matrix completion as well as online subspace estimation and tracking techniques, e.g, GROUSE \\cite{balzano2010online}, Low Rank Tensor Completion (LRTC) \\cite{liu2013tensor},  GRASTA \\cite{grasta}, ROSETA \\cite{roseta}, OP-RPCA \\cite{oprca} and Online Forecasting Matrix Factorisation (OFMF) \\cite{paperarnew} over real-world traffic speed data as well as the electricity load data. \n\\end{enumerate}\n\\subsection {Related work}\nVariational Bayesian approaches for matrix completion and robust principal component analysis are well known \\cite{babacan-11,Parker-14, Parker-14-2,Wipf-16,yang2018fast,asif2016matrix,luttinen2013fast,giampouras2017online,ma2015variational}. One of the first works considered the measured matrix to be expressible as a product of low-rank matrices, associated with appropriate ARD priors \\cite{babacan-11} while faster algorithms for similar settings were proposed in \\cite{Parker-14, Parker-14-2}. More recently, other approaches towards modeling the measured matrices have also been proposed \\cite{Wipf-16}, \\cite {yang2018fast}. Moreover, variational Bayesian approaches have also been applied to road traffic estimation; see e.g. \\cite{asif2016matrix}. However, these approaches do not explicitly model the evolution of the underlying subspace. Likewise, none of the existing variational Bayesian approaches for low rank matrix completion model the evolution of the subspace \\cite{babacan-11,ma2015variational,yang2018fast}.  In contrast to these, the state-space modeling in our work is inspired from \\cite{luttinen2013fast}, where the low-complexity updates were first proposed in the context of linear dynamical models. The VBSF algorithm in the current work extends and generalizes that in \\cite{luttinen2013fast} to incorporate low-rank structure and outliers.\n\nOn a related note, temporal evolution of the additive noise is modeled in \\cite{giampouras2017online} using a forgetting factor. Different from \\cite{giampouras2017online} however, we use a state-space model to capture the evolution of the underlying subspace. An online Bayesian matrix factorization model is also proposed in \\cite{oprca} wherein the time-stamps are directly incorporated as features. In contrast, the present model is more specific and suited to a slowly time-varying system. \n\n\n\\par\nSeveral non-Bayesian algorithms have been proposed to address the online subspace estimation problem from incomplete observations\\cite{balzano2010online,grasta,oprca,roseta}. \nGROUSE \\cite{balzano2010online} is one of the early approaches that uses an update on the Grassmannian manifold to estimate the subspace. \nThe robust variant of GROUSE, namely GRASTA , handles outliers by by incorporating the $l_1$ norm cost function\\cite{grasta}. OP-RPCA\\cite{oprca} is a robust subspace estimation technique that uses alternating minimization to compute the outliers and the underlying subspace. A number of online subspace tracking algorithms, such as ROSETA \\cite{roseta}, have since been proposed. The proposed approach is compared with some of these algorithms in Sec. \\ref{results}. \n\\subsection{Applications:}\n\\subsubsection{Traffic Estimation and Prediction}\nTraffic estimation and prediction are the central components of any urban traffic congestion management system \\cite{survey_paper}.\nWith the advent of smartphones, public transportation services as well as private on-demand transportation companies are increasingly relying on the availability of real-time traffic maps for resource allocation and logistics \\cite{res_allocation}. \nSuch providers rely on probe vehicles --- GPS enabled and possibly crowd-sourced agents that upload speed measurements and corresponding location tags at sporadic times. Since traffic densities are inferred from speed measurements, they are often ridden with outliers, e.g., corresponding to random velocity changes unrelated to traffic. The traffic estimation problem entails estimating traffic densities at locations and times where no measurements are available. Finally, prediction of traffic in the near future is necessary to calculate ETA, fastest route, and other related quality of service metrics for road users. The future traffic prediction problem becomes particularly challenging in regions with diverse modes of transport, such as in India, where ETA calculations must account for the multimodal nature of traffic \\cite{mohan2013moving,goel2016access}. For instance the ETA calculations for buses should not only use traffic data meant for cars.A class of pertinent approaches have sought to visualize the traffic data as an incomplete matrix or tensor, and exploited this correlation to fill-in the missing entries \\cite{qu2009ppca,qu2008bpca,tan2016short,asif2016matrix}. Complementary to these approaches, time-series modeling focuses on learning the temporal dynamics of traffic and generate predictions in an online manner \\cite{guo2014adaptive}. While recent variants have incorporated spatial correlations as well, these techniques are generally unable to handle missing data or outliers. Finally, \\cite{paperarnew} presents the online forecasting matrix factorisation algorithm on the time series data that also handles the missing data scenario.\n\\subsubsection{Electricity Load Estimation and Prediction}\nSimilar to the traffic data, the electricity load data also exhibits the spatial and temporal structure that can be exploited to impute the missing data while simultaneously removing the noisy outliers. Due to the environmental disturbance, communication error or sensor fault, it is inevitable that load data may be lost during the collection process \\cite{zhang2018short}.\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis paper is organized as follows. Sec. \\ref{vbsf} presents the online variational Bayesian subspace filtering method for traffic estimation and prediction. Sec. III presents the  online robust variational Bayesian subspace filtering method for traffic estimation and prediction in case of outliers. Results and findings for traffic prediction and electricity load prediction are discussed in Sec. \\ref{results} followed by conclusion in Sec. \\ref{conclusion}.\n\n\\section{Results}\n\\label{results}\nWe now detail the simulation results that evaluate the performance of the proposed VBSF method on variety of datasets to solve the: \n\\begin{enumerate}\n    \\item Traffic Estimation and Prediction Problem\n    \\item Electricity Load Estimation and Prediction Problem\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\subsection{Datasets}\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.7\\linewidth]{map2.PNG}\n\t\\caption{Region where traffic data is collected}\n\t\\label{gmap}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.7\\linewidth]{map1.png}\n\t\\caption{Map with red as missing and blue as known traffic entries}\n\t\\label{gmap2}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item Traffic:  for traffic estimation and prediction, we use the partial road network of the city of New Delhi with an area of 200 square kms consisting of $m=519$ edges (shown in Fig. \\ref{gmap}). The road network can be modeled using a directed graph where each edge represents a road segment and nodes represent intersections. We collect the traffic data in the form of average speed of vehicles on a particular segment using the Google map APIs for nearly 3 months across 519 edges. Taking advantage of the slow varying nature of the speed in the network edges, we sample the traffic data at the rate of one sample every $t_s =15$ minutes. Note that our algorithm is agnostic of the sampling rate and would  work for higher sampling rates as well. Unlike the complete data available from the API, real-world data may have missing entries. For instance, over the smaller area shown in Fig. \\ref{gmap2}, speed measurements may be available on the blue edges but not on the red ones. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm for the twin tasks of real time traffic estimation as well as future traffic prediction. We further evaluate our algorithm for robust traffic estimation , i.e., when we the traffic data is corrupted by outliers.\n\t\\item Electricity: similar to the traffic estimation and prediction task, we evaluate the VBSF algorithm on the electricity dataset \\cite{electrictydata}, also used in \\cite{paperarnew} to evaluate the online matrix factorisation method. The data contains the hourly power consumption of 370 consumers, sampled every 15 min. The data is recorded from Jan. 1, 2012 to Jan. 1, 2015. Finally, we compare the VBSF method with various methods including the ones proposed and compared in \\cite{paperarnew}.\n\\end{itemize}\n In order to evaluate the VBSF algorithm, an incomplete data set is created by randomly sampling a fraction $p$ of the measurements. In our evaluations we consider three different cases with  75\\%, 50\\%, and 25\\% of missing data.  We select previous $h$ = 30 time intervals for traffic and, the previous $h$ = 40 time intervals for electricity dataset. We compare our algorithm with other methods that potentially solve the current traffic estimation problem in the missing data scenario. The algorithms are \n \\begin{itemize}\n\\item Low rank tensor completion (LRTC) \\cite{liu2013tensor}.\n\\item Grassmannian Rank-One Update Subspace Estimation (GROUSE) \\cite{balzano2010online}.\n\\item Historic mean, which  is simply the mean of edge speed values at a given time instance calculated using the historic data. \n\\end{itemize}\nFor the robust VBSF, we compare our algorithm with corresponding robust matrix completion frameworks. \n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item Robust PCA via Outlier Pursuit (OP-RPCA) \\cite{oprca}.\n    \\item Robust Online Subspace Estimation and Tracking Algorithm (ROSETA) \\cite{roseta}.\n    \\item  Grassmannian Robust Adaptive Subspace Tracking Algorithm (GRASTA) \\cite{grasta}.\n\\end{itemize}\n Further, for the electricity load prediction problem, we compare our algorithm with the results of \\cite{paperarnew} and the Collaborative Kalman Filter (CKF) \\cite{paperarnew}.\n\\subsection{Traffic Estimation and Prediction Problem}\n\\subsubsection{Performance Index}\nTo measure the effectiveness of our algorithm and for the comparison with other relevant algorithms, we use mean relative error (MRE) as the performance index for the traffic data. For any time instance $\\tau$, the MRE denoted by $\\text{MRE}_\\tau$ is defined as:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\text{MRE}_\\tau= \\frac{1}{z}\\sum_{k=1}^z \\frac {\\parallel \\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{\\tau,k}-\\mathbf{y}_{\\tau,k}\\parallel_{2}}{\\parallel \\mathbf{y}_{\\tau,k}\\parallel_2}.\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathbf{y}_{\\tau,k}$ and $\\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{\\tau,k}$ are the ground truth and estimated data for $k^{th}$ day and $\\tau^{th}$ time instance. Since the value for the known data (sampled entries) may be modified post estimation, we compute the MRE over the whole column for a given time instance. For calculating the overall accuracy of prediction for a day, we calculate MRE averged over $z$ days. The value of $z$ is taken as 50 for weekdays and 10 for the weekends.\n\\begin{figure*}[ht]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figure2.pdf}\n\t\\caption{Estimation of traffic data for different percentage of missing entries}{(a) Actual Traffic data , (b) Traffic data with 25\\% entries, (c) Estimated Traffic with 25\\% known data, (d) Residual error for estimation with 25\\% data , (e) Traffic data with 50\\% entries , (f) Estimated Traffic with 50\\% known data, (g) Residual error for estimation with 50\\% data, (h) Traffic data with 75\\% entries , (i) Estimated Traffic with 75\\% known data, \\\\(j) Residual error for estimation with 75\\% data }\n\t\\label{fig:fplot}\n\\end{figure*}\n\\subsubsection{Online Real Time Traffic Estimation}\nWe now discuss simulation results for the current traffic estimation based on the current and past missing data using the VBSF algorithm. For a typical day, Fig. \\ref{fig:fplot}a shows the heatmap of the actual traffic data. The $x$-axis of each  heatmap represents time instances while the $y$-axis represents the edges. Each pixel of a heatmap indicates the speed, where higher speed is represented by a lighter colour. Figures \\ref{fig:fplot}b,  \\ref{fig:fplot}e and \\ref{fig:fplot}h are heatmaps with missing entries of varying degrees. The corresponding completed matrices using VBSF algorithm are shown in Figs. \\ref{fig:fplot}c, \\ref{fig:fplot}f, and \\ref{fig:fplot}i.   Since the proposed VBSF is an online method that completes one column at a time given the incomplete data from previous columns, the corresponding heatmaps are also generated in an online fashion. In other words, in spirit of the online methodology, window of $h+1$ incomplete columns are used to complete the last column followed by moving the window by one column.  Finally, all the completed columns form a matrix represented in these heatmaps.  Unsurprisingly, the heatmaps show that the performance of VBSF improves as the size of missing data decreases.  \\par  \nThe MRE values for real time traffic estimation using VBSF for weekends is shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig4}a and for weekdays in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig4}b. It is observed that the prediction error is higher during the peak traffic time (in the evening) vis-a-vis non-peak time intervals. This may be due to a greater variance in traffic during the peak time intervals. However, the difference between the MRE values for 50\\% and 25\\% missing data case is only about 0.15 in the worst case. Equivalently, the average error of estimation of speed is only around 2 km\/hr during the peak-time when the average speed is 15 km\/hr even with 75\\% missing data.  Similarly, for non-peak hours, even though the observed speed are higher (around 30-40 km\/hr), the MRE values for $p=50\\%$ and $p=25\\%$  is around 0.1, which in other words indicate an average error of 3-4 km\/hr in the estimation of speed. \\par \nThe  performance  of  the  proposed  VBSF  algorithm  is compared   with   that   of  (LRTC) \\cite{liu2013tensor}, (GROUSE) \\cite{balzano2010online}, and  the historic mean. We used a grid search based approach for rank initialization in GROUSE and choose the rank that gives the least error.  Table \\ref{tab1:table1} presents the overall results.  Further, Figs. \\ref{fig:fig5}a and \\ref{fig:fig5}b show the comparison of our algorithm for different percentage of missing traffic data. It is observed that for low missing rate of traffic data (25\\%), the LRTC (low rank tensor completion) \\cite{liu2013tensor} and VBSF obtain similar performance. But as the missing data increases,  VBSF outperforms the LRTC method.  Also, for all the cases, VBSF performs better than GROUSE.  This difference in performance can be attributed to the fact that the VBSF framework captures the temporal dependencies as well as the latent factors in the traffic matrix better than other methods. In terms of running time, VBSF is faster than LRTC and is comparable to GROUSE as shown in Table \\ref{tab1:table12}. \n\n\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\t\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\begin{tabular}{llll}\n\t\t\t\\hline \n\t\t\t&$p=0.25$ & $p=0.50$  &$p=0.75$\\\\\n\t\t\t&MRE&MRE&MRE\\\\\n\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\tVBSF & 0.1439 &0.11277 &0.09336\\\\\n\t\t\tGROUSE & 0.372 & 0.3446& 0.3085\\\\\n\t\t\tLRTC & 0.1921 & 0.1418&0.09578\\\\\n\t\t\tMean &0.2083&0.2083&0.2083\\\\\n\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Performance comparison for real time traffic estimation}\n\t\\label{tab1:table1}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\t\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tabular}{llll}\n\t\t\t\\hline \n\t\t\t&$p=0.25$ &$p=0.50$ &$p=0.75$\\\\\n\t\t\t&time($sec$)&time($sec$)&time($sec$)\\\\\n\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\tVBSF &  0.7001&0.8685&0.9675\\\\\n\t\t\tGROUSE &0.7935&0.85324&0.923960\\\\\n\t\t\tLRTC &2.92&4.32&6.23\\\\\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Comparison of running time for different algorithms$^1$}\n\t\\label{tab1:table12}\n\\end{table}\n\\footnotetext[1]{Experiments are conducted to evaluate average running time per column on Matlab using PC: Intel i5-6200U CPU 2.4 GHz. }\n\\begin{figure*}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\begin{subfigure}[b]{1\\textwidth}\t\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figure5.pdf}\t\n\t\\end{subfigure}%\n\t\n\t\\begin{subfigure}[b]{1\\textwidth}\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figure62.png}\n\t\t\n\t\\end{subfigure}%\n\t\\caption{Real time Traffic Estimation  and Prediction for different missing entries}{(a) Real time traffic estimation for different missing entries (Weekend), (b) Weekday Prediction 50\\% missing entries (Weekday), (c) Weekday Prediction 50\\% missing entries, (d) Weekend Prediction 50\\% missing entries, (e) Weekday Prediction 75\\% missing entries, (f) Overall Prediction}\t\n\t\\label{fig:fig4}\t\n\\end{figure*}\n\\subsubsection{Future Traffic Prediction Problem}\nWe also test the  VBSF algorithm for speed prediction during the future time intervals assuming randomly sampled data from the current and previous time intervals. We predict traffic data up to 5 sampling intervals, that is, 15 to 75 minutes in future.  We test our algorithm for 50\\% and 75\\% of the missing entries in the traffic data. The MRE plots for traffic prediction are shown in Figs. \\ref{fig:fig4}c, \\ref{fig:fig4}d, and \\ref{fig:fig4}e.  The MRE error difference for 50\\% and 75\\% missing data is not significant. Similar to observations from the current traffic estimation simulations,  it is seen that the error increases from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. As one would expect, the prediction accuracy decreases as we predict further in future.  Interestingly, it is observed that the MRE for real-time traffic estimation with 75\\% missing entries case and for future prediction with 50\\% missing entries are comparable as can be seen in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig4}f. \\par \nThe performance of the proposed VBSF algorithm is compared with that of LRTC in Table \\ref{tab:table2}.  The VBSF performs better than the LRTC as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig5}c. While predicting the speed for outlier edges (the edges which significantly deviate from their usual speed) VBSF performs better than LRTC as seen in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig5}d. \n\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\begin{tabular}{lll}\n\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t&$p=0.50$ & $p=0.50$  \\\\\n\t\t\t&$15\\, mins $&$30\\,mins$\\\\\n\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\tVBSF & 0.15362 &0.17434 \\\\\n\t\t\tLRTC & 0.15843 & 0.1812\\\\\n\t\t\tMean & 0.2082 & 0.2073\\\\\n\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Performance comparison for traffic prediction }\n\t\\label{tab:table2}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{compare.pdf}\n\t\\caption{Comparison between VBSF and Low rank Tensor Completion (LRTC) and Matrix Completion Algorithm (GROUSE)}{(a) Real Time Traffic Estimation for 25\\% percentage of Missing Data, (b) Real time traffic estimation for 75\\% percentage of missing data, (c) Traffic prediction for 50\\%  of missing data, (d) Traffic prediction for outliers}\n\t\\label{fig:fig5}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\subsubsection{Robust Traffic Estimation}\nThe GPS data that is collected using probe vehicles may be corrupted by noise and may often contain outliers which need to be removed before further processing is performed.  To mitigate the performance degradation due to outliers, we employ the robust variational Bayesian subspace filtering (RVBSF) that models the presence of outliers in the data in the sparse outlier matrix ${\\bf E}$ . To test the RVBSF algorithm, on a given day, we randomly sample a certain $p_o$ percentage of the already sampled traffic data $\\mathbf{y}_{i,\\tau}$ and replace these values with $o_{i,\\tau}$ as follows: \n\\begin{equation} \\label{outlier}\n{\\bf o}_{i,\\tau} = \\max \\left( {\\mathbf{y}}_{i,\\tau-1},{\\mathbf{y}}_{i,\\tau+1} \\right) + c \\, \\mu_t.\n\\end{equation}\nIn other words, the outlier is created by adding a large value $c\\,\\mu_t$ to the maximum of $\\mathbf{y}_{i,\\tau-1}$ and $\\mathbf{y}_{i,\\tau+1}$. Here, $\\mu_t$ is the mean of observed entries at time $t$ and c is a scaling parameter. The RVBSF algorithm is then applied to solve the real time traffic estimation problem.  The detected artificial outliers are those points residing in the matrix ${\\bf E}$.  \\par\n\\begin{figure*}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{outlier.pdf}\n\t\\caption{Robust Bayesian subspace filtering for traffic data }{}{(a) Comparison for VBSF and RVBSF with 5\\% outliers and $c$ = 0.75, (b) Comparison for VBSF and RVBSF with 2\\% outliers and $c$ = 0.75 (c) Comparison of VBSF and RVBSF for $c$ = 1.25, (d) Number of outliers detected for different outlier values}\n\t\\label{fig:fig6}\n\\end{figure*}\nThe accuracy of outlier detection depends on the outlier value as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig6}d. The value of $c$ for simulations is chosen from the set $ [0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75]$.  We compare the robust VBSF (termed as RVBSF) with VBSF for two scenarios.  First,  when no outliers are added (VBSF), second,  when outliers are present in the data but only VBSF was used (VBSF\\_with\\_outliers). \nTable \\ref{tab:table3} summarises the overall performance of the RVBSF algorithm. Understandably, RVBSF improves over VBSF when outliers are present, but is still worse than the MRE of VBSF for the case when no outliers were present. For 25\\% missing entries, $p_o=5\\%$ and $c=0.75$, the plots in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig6}a illustrate the performance of the RVBSF algorithm.  Similarly for 75\\% of missing entries, $p_o=2\\%$ the results are shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig6}b.  When $p_o = 5\\%$ and $c= 0.75$, we observe that RVBSF detects outliers reasonably well vis-a-vis VBSF\\_with\\_outliers. Similar observation holds when outlier values increase as shown in Fig. \\ref{fig:fig6}c and Fig. \\ref{fig:fig6}d. \\par \n\n\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tabular}{llll}\n\t\t\t\\hline \n\t\t\t&$c=0.75$ & $c=0.75$ & $c=1.5$\\\\\n\t\t\t&$p_o=5$\\%& $p_o=2$\\% & $p_o=2$\\% \\\\\n\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\tVBSF & 0.09462 &0.09457 &0.09434\\\\\n\t\t\tVBSF\\_outlier & 0.13406 & 0.11643& 0.15318\\\\\n\t\t\tRVBSF & 0.11741 & 0.1127&0.10912\\\\\n\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{RVBSF: overall performance }\n\t\\label{tab:table3}\n\\end{table}\nThe performance of the proposed RVBSF algorithm is compared with that of OP-RPCA\\cite{oprca} GRASTA\\cite{grasta} and ROSETA\\cite{roseta} in Table \\ref{tab:table4}. The RVBSF algorithm performs better than the subspace estimation and tracking algorithms. The difference in performance may be due to a better modeling of the temporal structure available in the data.  \n\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\\begin{center}\n\t\\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \n\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\n\t\t&$c=0.75$ & $c=0.75$ & $c=1.5$\\\\\n\t&$p_o=5$\\%& $p_o=2$\\% & $p_o=2$\\% \\\\\n\t\t\\hline\n\t\tOP-RPCA& 0.2594 & 0.2298 & \t0.2165 \\\\ \n\t\t\\hline\n\t\tROSETA& 0.1859 & 0.1819 & \t0.1723 \\\\ \n\t\t\\hline\n\t\tGRASTA& 0.1493 & 0.1507 & \t0.1492 \\\\ \n\t\t\\hline\n\t\tRVBSF & 0.11741& 0.1127& 0.10912\\\\\n\t\t\\hline\n\t\\end{tabular}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{Performance Comparison for Robust Traffic Estimation }\n\\label{tab:table4}\n\\end{table}\nA possible limitation of the suggested robust traffic estimation framework is following. While there may be outliers present due to an erroneous speed estimation, there might be cases when the  so called outlier value may actually be a real value. The current method may not be able to distinguish between such cases. Hence, a sudden drop in speed along an edge may be treated as an outlier and its possible impact on the traffic of nearby edges be be ignored by the model. \n\\subsection{Electricity Load Prediction}\nWe now discuss the performance of the VBSF algorithm on the electricity load data set \\cite{electrictydata}. Note that the electricity load data is also a time series data with the possibility of missing entries as well as temporal correlation between successive columns.\n\\subsubsection{Performance Index}\nThe performance of the VBSF method is compared with that of \\cite{paperarnew}  using the metrics mean absolute error (MAE) and MRE, defined as: \n\\begin{equation}\n\\text{MAE}= \\frac{1}{z}\\sum_{k=1}^z \\frac {\\parallel \\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{k}-\\mathbf{y}_{k}\\parallel_{1}}{l(\\mathbf{y}_{k})}\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\text{MRE}= \\frac{1}{z}\\sum_{k=1}^z \\frac {\\parallel \\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{k}-\\mathbf{y}_{k}\\parallel_{2}}{\\parallel \\mathbf{y}_{k}\\parallel_{2}}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathbf{y}_{k}$ and $\\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{k}$ are the ground truth and estimated data for $k^{th}$ column. We run the algorithm online on dates Jan. 1, 2012 to Jan. 1, 2015 resulting into 26,304 columns. In other words, the value of $z$ is 26,304 for our simulations.\n\\subsubsection{Online Electricity Load Estimation and Prediction}\n\tWe run our algorithm for electricity data estimation and prediction. The results for real-time prediction are noted in table \\ref{tab:ele1}. It is noted as the percentage of observed data $p$ increases, the real-time prediction accuracy improves. \n\t\n\t\\begin{table}[ht!]\n\t\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tabular}{llll}\n\t\t\t\t\\hline \n\t\t\t\t&$p=0.25$\\%& $p=0.5$\\% & $p=0.75$\\% \\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tMRE & 0.1789 &0.101 &0.0987\\\\\n\t\t\t\tMAE(kW) & 96.95 & 66.67& 53.95\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\t\\end{center}\n\t\t\\caption{Electricity real time load prediction}\n\t\t\\label{tab:ele1}\n\t\\end{table}\n\t\n\tFurther, we predict the one-step ahead electricity load in Fig. \\ref{fig:elec}. To analyze the performance of our algorithm we compare our results with OFMF and CKF \\cite{paperarnew}. The one-step ahead prediction performance of OFMF and CKF are provided in \\cite{paperarnew}. OFMF proposes a autoregressive model based optimization to predict the one-step ahead electricity load. We compare our three cases of $p$ with the results shown in OFMF. It can be seen that our algorithm performs better than the OFMF for electricity load dataset. \n\t\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{elec_res2.pdf}\n\t\\caption{One-step ahead electricity prediction}\n\t\\label{fig:elec}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{conclusion}\nThis paper considers sequentially arriving multivariate data that resides in a time-varying low-dimensional subspace. The temporal evolution of the underlying low-rank subspace is characterized via a state-space model and low-complexity variational Bayesian subspace filtering algorithms are proposed for matrix completion and outlier removal tasks. Simulation experiments quantify that the suggested model can be deployed to estimate the missing traffic data with a reasonable accuracy even with a fraction of random traffic measurements in the network. A similar result is observed on applying the VBSF algorithm on the twin tasks of imputation and prediction on the electricity data-set.  Extensive simulations on both the data sets demonstrate that the suggested model and the accompanying algorithms seem to capture the temporal evolution of the data well as compared to the current state-of-the-art matrix completion and the online subspace estimation algorithms.\n\n\n\n\\section{Variational Bayesian Subspace Filtering}\n\\label{vbsf}\nWe consider a scenario where the data with the missing entries is arriving in a sequential manner. The data can be considered  in the form of the matrix $\\mathbf{Y} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m \\times t}$, where $t$ denotes the number of time instances over which measurements are made and $m$ denotes the number of rows of the matrix $\\mathbf{Y}$. More generally, $\\mathbf{Y}$ is an incomplete and growing matrix whose columns  arrive sequentially over time. Specifically, for each column $\\mathbf{y}_\\tau$ with $1\\leq \\tau \\leq t$, only entries from the index set $\\Omega_\\tau\\subset \\{1, \\ldots, m\\}$ are observed. The algorithms developed here will seek to achieve the following two goals:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item \\emph{imputation} which yields $\\{\\hat{y}_{i\\tau}\\}_{i\\notin\\Omega_\\tau}$ for $1\\leq \\tau \\leq t$, and\n\t\\item \\emph{prediction} which yields $\\{\\hat{\\mathbf{y}}_{t+\\tau}\\}_{\\tau = 1}^{T_p}$ where $T_p$ is the prediction horizon. \n\\end{itemize} \nThe next subsection develops a variational Bayesian algorithm for achieving the aforementioned goals. \t\n\n\\begin{figure}[ht!]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{YAB.jpg}\n\t\\caption{Online Variational Bayesian Filtering}\n\t\\label{fig:matfac}\n\\end{figure}\n\\subsection{Hierarchical Bayesian Model}\nWe begin with detailing a generative model for the matrix $\\mathbf{Y}$. The proposed model will not only capture the rank deficient nature of $\\mathbf{Y}$ \\cite{babacan2012sparse} but also the temporal correlation between successive columns of $\\mathbf{Y}$ \\cite{asif2013low}. Recall that the standard low-rank parametrization of the full  matrix $\\mathbf{Y}$ takes the form $\\mathbf{Y} = \\mathbf{A}\\mathbf{B}$ where $\\mathbf{A} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m \\times r}$ and  $\\mathbf{B} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r \\times t}$. Classical non-negative matrix completion approaches seek to obtain such a factorization. In such algorithms, the choice of $r$ is critical to avoiding underfitting or overfitting. \\par\nWithin the Bayesian setting however, the measurements are modeled as arising from a distribution with unknown hyper-parameters, while various components or parameters are assigned different prior distributions. The Bayesian framework allows the use of ARD, wherein associating appropriate priors to the model parameters leads to pruning of the redundant features \\cite{babacan2012sparse}. This work uses pdfs from the exponential family that allow for tractable forms of the posterior pdf but are also flexible enough to adequately model the data. \\par \nSpecifically, the entries of $\\mathbf{Y}$ are generated as\n\\begin{align}\np(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}, \\mathbf{b}_\\tau, \\beta) &= \\mathcal{N}(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{b}_\\tau^T\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}, \\beta^{-1}) \n&  i \\in \\Omega_{\\tau}\n\\end{align}\nfor all $\\tau \\geq 1$, where $\\mathbf{A} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m \\times r}$, $\\mathbf{B} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r \\times t}$, and $\\beta \\in \\mathbb{R}_{++}$ are the (hidden) problem parameters. Unlike the deterministic setting however, the rank hyper-parameter $r$ is not critical to the imputation or prediction accuracy, but is only required to chosen according to computational considerations. The temporal evolution of the entries of $\\mathbf{Y}$ is modeled by making the columns of $\\mathbf{B}$ adhere to the following first order autoregressive model: \n\\begin{align}\\label{ss}\np(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\mathbf{J}, \\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}) &= \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{J}\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}, \\mathbf{I}_r) & 2\\leq \\tau\\leq t\n\\end{align} \nfor $\\tau \\geq 2$, where $\\mathbf{J} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r \\times r}$ is again a problem parameter. \nHere, $\\mathbf{J}$ captures the temporal structure of the underlying subspace, and is learned from the data itself. The scaling ambiguity present in matrix factorization allows the transition matrix $\\mathbf{J}$ to capture both slow and fast variations in $\\mathbf{b}_\\tau$ without the need to explicitly model the state noise variance. \nIt follows from \\eqref{ss} that the conditional pdf of $\\mathbf{b}_\\tau$ given $\\mathbf{J}$ is given by \n\\begin{align}\np(\\mathbf{B} \\mid \\mathbf{J}) = \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_1; \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1, \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1 ) \\prod_{\\tau = 2}^t \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\mathbf{J}\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}, \\mathbf{I}_r).\n\\end{align} \nObserve that the model complexity depends on the rank $r$, which is also the number of columns in $\\mathbf{A}$ and $\\mathbf{J}$. In order to ensure the value of $r$ is learned in a data-driven fashion, the columns of $\\mathbf{A}$ and $\\mathbf{J}$ are assigned multivariate Gaussian priors with column-specific precisions, i.e., \n\\begin{align}\np(\\mathbf{A} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\gamma}) &= \\prod_{i=1}^r \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{a}_i \\mid 0, \\gamma_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}_m) \\label{paa}\\\\\np(\\mathbf{J} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}) &= \\prod_{i=1}^r \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{j}_i \\mid 0, \\upsilon_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}_r) \\label{pja}\n\\end{align}\nwhere the precisions $\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}$ are problem parameters. It can be seen that if any of $\\gamma_i$ or $\\upsilon_i$ are large, the corresponding columns will be close to zero and consequently irrelevant. Indeed, the priors in \\eqref{paa}-\\eqref{pja} aid in automatic relevance determination since the subsequent optimization process may drive some of the precisions to infinity, yielding a low-rank factorization. \n\nFinally, the three precision variables are selected to have have non-informative Jeffrey's priors\n\\begin{align}\np(\\beta) &= \\frac{1}{\\beta}, & p(\\gamma_i) &= \\frac{1}{\\gamma_i}, & p(\\upsilon_i) &= \\frac{1}{\\upsilon_i}\n\\end{align}\nfor $1\\leq i \\leq r$. Let $\\mathbf{y}_{\\Omega}$ denote the collection of measurements $\\{y_{i\\tau}\\}_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau, \\tau = 1}^t$. Collecting the hidden variables into $\\mathcal{H} := \\{\\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{B}, \\mathbf{J}, \\beta, \\boldsymbol{\\gamma}, \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}\\}$, the joint distribution of $\\{\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega, \\mathcal{H}\\}$ can be written as\n\\begin{align}\np(\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega,\\mathcal{H}) &= p(\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega | \\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{B}, \\beta)p(\\mathbf{A} | \\boldsymbol{\\gamma})p(\\mathbf{B} | \\mathbf{J}) p(\\mathbf{J} | \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})p(\\beta)p(\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})p(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}) \\nonumber \\\\\n&=\\prod_{\\tau=1}^t\\prod_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} \\mathcal{N}(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{b}_\\tau^T\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}, \\beta^{-1}) \\nonumber\\\\\n&\\times \\prod_{i=1}^r \\left[\\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{a}_i \\mid 0,\\gamma_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}_m) \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{j}_i \\mid 0, \\upsilon_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}_r)\\right]  \\nonumber \\\\\n&\\hspace{-1cm}\\times\\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_1; \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1, \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1 ) \\prod_{\\tau = 2}^t \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\mathbf{J}\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}, \\mathbf{I}_r) \\frac{1}{\\beta}\\prod_{i=1}^r \\frac{1}{\\gamma_i\\upsilon_i}\n\\end{align} \nThe full hierarchical Bayesian model adopted here is summarized in Fig. \\ref{fig:mc_algo}(a). \n\\begin{figure}[ht!]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{block.pdf}\n\t\n\t\\caption{(a) Hierarchical Bayesian Model for Matrix Completion (b) Robust Hierarchical Bayesian Model for Matrix Completion }\n\t\\label{fig:mc_algo}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsection{Variational Bayesian Inference}\nHaving specified the generative model for the data, the goal is to determine the posterior distribution $p(\\mathcal{H}|\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega)$, which would yield the corresponding point estimates and can be used for imputation and prediction tasks. However, exact full Bayesian inference is well-known to be intractable. Instead, we utilize the mean-field approximation, wherein the posterior distribution factorizes as:\n\n\\begin{align}\\label{mf}\np(\\mathcal{H} \\mid \\mathbf{y}_\\Omega) \\approx q(\\mathcal{H}) = q_{\\mathbf{A}}(\\mathbf{A})q_{\\mathbf{B}}(\\mathbf{B})q_{\\mathbf{J}}(\\mathbf{J})q_{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}}(\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})q_{\\beta}(\\boldsymbol{\\beta})q_{\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}}(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}).\n\\end{align}\n\nIn other words, the posterior is now restricted to a family of distributions that adhere to \\eqref{mf}. The factors $q_\\mathbf{A}$, $q_\\mathbf{B}$, $q_\\mathbf{J}$, $q_\\upsilon$, $q_\\beta$, and $q_\\gamma$ can be determined by minimizing the Kullback--Leibler divergence of $p(\\mathcal{H}|\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega)$ from $q(\\mathcal{H})$, usually via an alternating minimization approach \\cite{bishop2006pattern}.  \nIndeed, thanks to the choice of conjugate priors for the parameters, it can be shown that the individual factors in \\eqref{mf} take the following forms \\cite{luttinen2013fast}:\n\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{qs}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\tq_{\\mathbf{B}}(\\mathbf{B}) &= \\mathcal{N}(\\vec{\\mathbf{B}} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^{\\mathbf{B}}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}) \\\\\n\tq_{\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}} &= \\mathcal{N}({\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_i^{\\mathbf{A}}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}_i^{\\mathbf{A}}) \\\\\n\tq_{\\mathbf{j}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}} &= \\mathcal{N}({\\mathbf{j}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_i^{\\mathbf{J}}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}_i^{\\mathbf{J}}) \\\\\n\tq_{\\beta}(\\beta) &= \\text{Ga}(\\beta; a^\\beta, b^\\beta) \\\\\n\tq_{\\gamma_i}(\\gamma_i) &= \\text{Ga}(\\gamma_i; a_i^\\gamma, b_i^\\gamma) \\\\\n\tq_{\\upsilon_i}(\\upsilon_i) &= \\text{Ga}(\\upsilon_i; a_i^\\upsilon, b_i^\\upsilon) \n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere, $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{rt}$,  $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{rt \\times rt}$, $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i \\in \\mathbb{R}^r$, $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r\\times r}$, $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i \\in \\mathbb{R}^r$, $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r\\times r}$, and $a^\\beta$, $b^\\beta$, $a^{\\gamma}_i$, $b^{\\gamma}_i$, $a^\\upsilon_i$, $b^\\upsilon_i \\in \\mathbb{R}_{++}$. Consequently, each iteration of alternating optimization simply involves updating the variables $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}$, $a^\\beta, b^\\beta$, $\\{a^{\\gamma}_i\\}, \\{b^{\\gamma}_i\\}, \\{a^\\upsilon_i\\}, \\{b^\\upsilon_i\\}\\}$ in a cyclic manner. \n\nIn the present case, not all variables need to be updated explicitly and the updates may be written in a compact form. \nLet us denote $\\omega_\\tau:=\\abs{\\Omega_\\tau}$ and let $\\omega:=\\sum_\\tau \\omega_\\tau$ be the total number of observations made. Then, the updates for hyperparameters $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon},\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}\\}$ take the following form \n\\begin{subequations}\\label{upga}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\hat{\\upsilon}_i &= \\frac{m}{\\sum_{k=1}^m\\left([\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_k]^2_i + [\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_k]_{ii}\\right)} \\label{10a} \\\\\n\t\\hat{\\gamma}_i &= \\frac{m}{\\sum_{k=1}^m\\left([\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_k]^2_i + [\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_k]_{ii}\\right)}.\\label{10b} \n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nSubsequently, let $\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}}$ and $\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}}$ be the vectors that collect $\\{\\hat{\\upsilon}_i\\}$ and $\\{\\hat{\\gamma}_i\\}$, respectively. Since $\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau}$ denotes the $\\tau$-th column of $\\mathbf{B}^T$, its posterior distribution may be written as $q_{\\mathbf{b}_\\tau}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau) = \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau)$, where $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau$ comprise of the corresponding elements of $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}$, respectively. Also define the posterior covariance matrices\n\\begin{align} \\label{sigma_up1}\n\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\iota} &:= \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\iota)^T + \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\iota} \\\\\n\\label{sigma_up2}\n\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{J}_i &:= \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i)^T + \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i \\\\\n\\label{sigma_up3}\n\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_i &:= \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i)^T + \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i.\n\\end{align}\nTherefore, the update for $\\hat{\\beta}$ becomes\n\\begin{align}\\label{be}\n\\hat{\\beta} = \\frac{\\omega}{\\sum_{\\tau=1}^t\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} \\left[y_{i\\tau}^2 - 2y_{i\\tau}(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau + \\tr{\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_{i}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau}}\\right]}.\n\\end{align}  \n\nNext, the updates for the factors $\\mathbf{J}$ and $\\mathbf{A}$ take the following form\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{ja}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i &= [\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau-1}]_{\\boldsymbol{\\cdot} i} \\label{15a}\\\\\n\t\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i &= \\left(\\Diag{\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}}} + \\sum_{\\tau=1}^{t-1}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{B}_{\\tau,\\tau-1}\\right)^{-1}\\label{15b} \\\\\n\t\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i &= \\hat{\\beta}\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\sum_{\\tau \\in\\Omega'_i} \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau y_{i\\tau}\\label{15c} \\\\\n\t\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i &=  \\left(\\hat{\\gamma}_i\\mathbf{I}_{r} + \\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{\\tau \\in\\Omega'_i}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{B}_{\\tau,\\tau} \\right)^{-1}\\label{15d}\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $\\Omega'_i:=\\{\\tau \\mid i \\in \\Omega_\\tau\\}$. Observe from the updates that the rows of $\\mathbf{J}$ are independent identically distributed under the mean field approximation. The update for $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}$ can be written as\n\\begin{align}\n\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B} &= \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}\\begin{bmatrix} \\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_1}y_{i1}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i  + \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1^{-1}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1\\\\\n\\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_2}y_{i2}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i \\\\\n\\vdots\\\\\n\\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_t}y_{it}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i\n\\end{bmatrix}\\label{mub}.\n\\end{align}\nFinally, $[\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}]^{-1}$ a block-tridiagonal matrix. Defining $\\hat{\\mathbf{J}}:=\\Ex{\\mathbf{J} \\mid \\mathbf{y}_\\Omega}$ as the matrix whose $i$-row is given by $(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_{i})^T$, $\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_{(\\tau)} = \\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau'}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_i$, and $\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{J}:=\\sum_{i=1}^r \\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{J}_i$, the updates take the form:\n\\begin{align}\n\\left[\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}\\right]^{-1} &=  \\hat{\\beta}\\Diag{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_{(1)}, \\ldots, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_{(t)}}  + \\nonumber\\\\\n&+ \\begin{bmatrix} \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1^{-1} & -\\hat{\\mathbf{J}} & \\ldots &0\\\\\n-\\hat{\\mathbf{J}} & \\mathbf{I}_r + \\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{J} & -\\hat{\\mathbf{J}}  & \\ldots \\\\\n\\vdots & \\vdots &&\\vdots \\\\\n\\ldots & 0 & -\\hat{\\mathbf{J}} &  \\mathbf{I}_r \n\\end{bmatrix}. \\label{xib}\n\\end{align}\nIt is remarked that although the $rt \\times rt$ matrix $[\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}]^{-1}$ is block-tridiagonal, the matrix $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}$ is dense, and direct inversion would be prohibitively costly. Moreover, the classical Rauch-Tung-Striebel (RTS) smoother cannot be directly applied since evaluating the conditional expectations under $q(\\mathbf{B})$ is difficult and not amenable to the Matrix Inversion Lemma \\cite{beal2003variational}. Interestingly, observe that the updates in \\eqref{be} and \\eqref{ja} depend only on diagonal and super-diagonal blocks of $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}$, namely $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}_{\\tau,\\tau}$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}_{\\tau,\\tau-1}$, respectively. The next subsection details a low-complexity algorithm for carrying out the updates for these blocks as well as for $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}$.\n\\subsection{Low-complexity updates via LDL-decomposition}\nThanks to the block-tridiagonal structure of $[\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}]^{-1}$, it is possible to use the LDL decomposition to carry out the updates in an efficient manner. Decomposing $[\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}]^{-1} = \\mathbf{L}\\mathbf{D}\\mathbf{L}^T$, the key idea is that left multiplication with $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}$ is equivalent to left multiplication with $\\mathbf{L}^{-T}\\mathbf{D}^{-1}\\mathbf{L}^{-1}$. Towards this end, we utilize the algorithm from \\cite{luttinen2013fast}, that comprises of two phases: the forward pass that carries out the multiplication with $\\mathbf{D}^{-1}\\mathbf{L}^{-1}$ and the backward pass that implements the multiplication with $\\mathbf{L}^{-T}$. Let us define for $2\\leq \\tau \\leq t$, \n\\begin{align}\n\\boldsymbol{\\Psi}_\\tau &:= \\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_{(i)}+ \\mathbf{I}_r + \\ind_{\\tau\\neq t}\\sum_{i=1}^r \\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{J}_i\t\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_\\tau &:= \\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} y_{i\\tau}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i.\\label{vbt}\n\\end{align}\nThe forward pass outputs intermediate variables $\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau}$, $\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1}$, and $\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}}_\\tau$, that are subsequently used in the backward pass. The updates take the following form:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\\item Initialize $\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{1,1} = \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1$ and $\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_1 = \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1 + \\hat{\\beta}\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau}y_{i\\tau}\\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i$\n\t\\item For $\\tau = 1, \\ldots, t-1$\n\t\\begin{subequations} \\label{rts}\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\hspace{-1cm}\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1} & = -\\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau}\\hat{\\mathbf{J}} \\\\\n\t\t\\hspace{-1cm}\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau+1,\\tau+1} &= (\\boldsymbol{\\Psi}_{\\tau+1} - (\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1})^T\\boldsymbol{\\Psi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1})^{-1} \\\\\n\t\t\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau+1} &= \\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau+1,\\tau+1}(\\mathbf{v}_{\\tau+1} - (\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1})^T\\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau})\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\t\\item For $\\tau = t-1, \\ldots, 1$\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\hspace{-1cm}\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1} &= - \\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1}\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau+1,\\tau+1} \\\\\n\t\t\\hspace{-1cm}\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau} &= \\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau} - \\hat{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1}(\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1})^T \\\\\n\t\t\\hspace{-1cm}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau} &= \\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau} - \\breve{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau+1}\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\\end{subequations}\n\t\\item Output $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau+1}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau}, \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau}\\}_{\\tau = 2}^t$\n\\end{enumerate}\nNote that while $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{i,j} \\neq 0$ for $|i-j| > 1$, these blocks are neither calculated in the forward and backward passes nor required in any of the variational updates. \n\n\nFinally, the predictive distribution $p(y_{i\\tau}\\mid \\mathbf{y}_{\\Omega})$ for $\\tau \\notin \\Omega_i$ or $\\tau \\geq t+1$ is still not tractable in the present case. Instead, we simply use point estimates for estimating the missing entries. Specifically, for $\\tau \\notin \\Omega_i$, the missing entries are imputed as\n\\begin{align}\ny_{i\\tau} = (\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i. \\label{pred1}\n\\end{align}\nLikewise for $\\tau \\geq t+1$, the prediction becomes\n\\begin{align}\ny_{i\\tau} = (\\hat{\\mathbf{J}}^{\\tau-t}\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_t)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i.\\label{pred2}\n\\end{align}\n\nIt can be seen that as compared to the updates in \\eqref{mub}-\\eqref{xib} that incur a complexity of $\\mathcal{O}(t^3)$, the complexity incurred due to \\eqref{rts} is only $\\mathcal{O}(t)$. Overall, the different parameters are updated cyclically until convergence for each $t = 1, 2, \\ldots$.\n\n\\subsection{EM Baysian Subspace Filtering} \nDifferent from the variational Bayesian framework used here, the EM algorithm treats $\\mathcal{H}_h:=\\{\\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{B}, \\mathbf{J}\\}$ as hidden variables (with posterior pdf $q_h(\\mathcal{H}_h):=q_\\mathbf{B}(\\mathbf{B})q_\\mathbf{A}(\\mathbf{A})q_\\mathbf{J}(\\mathbf{J})$) and uses maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimates for the precision variables $\\mathcal{H}_p:=\\{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}, \\boldsymbol{\\gamma}, \\beta\\}$. Consequently, the EM algorithm for Bayesian subspace tracking starts with an initial estimate $\\mathcal{H}_p^{(0)}$ and uses the following updates at iteration $\\iota \\geq 1$,\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item \\textbf{E-step:} evaluate\n\t\\begin{align}\n\tQ(\\mathcal{H}_p,\\mathcal{H}_p^{(\\iota)}):= \\mathbb{E}_{q_h(\\mathcal{H}_h)}\\left[\\log p(\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega,\\mathcal{H}_h,\\mathcal{H}_p^{(\\iota)})\\right]\n\t\\end{align}\n\t\\item \\textbf{M-step:} maximize\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\mathcal{H}_p^{(\\iota+1)} = \\arg\\max_{\\mathcal{H}_p} Q(\\mathcal{H}_p,\\mathcal{H}_p^{(\\iota)})\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{itemize}\n\nInterestingly, the updates resulting from the E-step take the same form as those in \\eqref{ja} and \\eqref{rts}. On the other hand, the updates obtained from solving the M-step take the slightly different form:\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{mstep}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\hat{\\upsilon}_i &= \\frac{m-2}{\\sum_{k=1}^m\\left([\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_k]^2_i + [\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_k]_{ii}\\right)} \\\\\n\t\\hat{\\gamma}_i &= \\frac{m-2}{\\sum_{k=1}^m\\left([\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_k]^2_i + [\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_k]_{ii}\\right) }\\\\\n\t\\hat{\\beta} &= \\frac{\\omega-2}{\\sum_{\\tau=1}^t\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} \\left[y_{i\\tau}^2 - 2y_{i\\tau}(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau + \\tr{\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_{i}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^{\\mathbf{B}}_\\tau}\\right]}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nThe slight differences arise due to the difference between the mean and mode of the Gamma distribution. Specifically, for $p(x) =$ Ga$(x | a,b)$, it holds that $\\Ex{X} = a\/b$ while $\\max_x \\text{Ga}(x | a,b) = \\frac{a-1}{b}$.  \\par \n\n\\subsubsection{Remarks on the Convergence of VBSF}\nThe VB framework used in the present work is a special case of a more general mean field approximation approach. The convergence of the VB algorithm is well-known; see e.g. \\cite{tzikas2008variational}, \\cite{sato2001online}. Intuitively, the variational approximation renders the evidence lower bound convex in individual factors, and thus amenable to coordinate ascent iterations. Since the lower bound is also differentiable with respect to each factor, the coordinate ascent iterations converge to a stationary point; see \\cite{tseng2001convergence} for a more general result. However, convergence to the global optimum is not guaranteed. \n\n\\subsection{Fixed-lag tracking}\nAlgorithm \\ref{alg:ALGO} can be viewed as an offline algorithm that must be run for every $t$. In practical settings, it may be impractical to remember and process the entire history of measurements at each $t$. Moreover, given data at time $t$, estimates may only be required for entries at time  $t-\\Delta$ for some $\\Delta < h$. \nTowards this end, we consider a sliding window of measurements.\nSince $\\mathbf{A}_{t}$ and $\\mathbf{J}_{t}$ may be seen as transition matrices for the latent states and between latent state and observations, we initialize the next sliding-window with inferred approximate distributions on the transition matrices of the current window.\nFor instance, within the context of traffic density prediction, the inferred approximate distribution for a day may be used as a prior for the coming days. \n That is, the distributions for $\\mathbf{A}, \\, \\mathbf{B},$ and $\\mathbf{J}$  for a day and sliding window can be initialized with the approximate distributions obtained from the previous month's data. \n\\begin{algorithm}\n\tInitialize $  \\boldsymbol{\\gamma},\\boldsymbol{\\beta},\\mathbf{v}$, $sub=1,\\, \\Omega_\\tau, \\,\\Omega'_i,\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_{diag},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J} \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1,\\mu_1, $\n\t\n\t$\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}=\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^A(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B})^T$\n\t\n\t\\While{$Y_{conv}< 10^{-5}$}{\n\t\t$\\mathbf{Y_{old}}= \\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}$\n\t\t\n\t\t$\\boldsymbol{\\Gamma}=diag(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma})$\n\t\t\n\t\t\\uIf{$sub==1 $}\n\t\t{\t\n\t\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{rts}$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$sub=2$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$ \\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{10a}, \\,\\eqref{sigma_up1},\\,\\eqref{15a},\\,\\eqref{15b}\\,\\, \\forall \\,\\, 1\\leq i \\leq r$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t}\n\t\t\n\t\t\\ElseIf{$sub==2 $}  \n\t\t{\n\t\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{sigma_up3},\\eqref{15c}, \\eqref{15d}, \\eqref{10b} \\, \\, \\forall \\, 1\\leq i \\leq m$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$sub=1$\n\t\t}\t\t\n\t\t$\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}=\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^A(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B})^T$\n\t\t\n\t\t$\\text{Update using } \\eqref{be}$\n\t\t\n\t\t$Y_{conv}=\\frac{\\norm{\\mathbf{Y}-\\mathbf{Y_{old}}}_F}{\\norm{\\mathbf{Y_{old}}}_F}$\n\t}\n\t\\Return($\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_{diag},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J} $)\n\t\n\t\\caption{Variational Bayesian Subspace Filtering}\n\t\\label{alg:ALGO}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\section{Robust Variational Bayesian Subspace Filtering}\\label{rvbsf}\nIn this section we consider the robust version of the variational Bayesian subspace filtering problem in Sec. \\ref{vbsf}. Within this context, in addition to the missing entries in $\\mathbf{Y}$, some entries of $\\mathbf{Y}$ are also contaminated with outliers. Unlike the missing entries however, the location of these outliers is not known. These entries arise due to sensor malfunctions, communication errors, and impulse noise. The robust subspace filtering problem is more difficult as the removal of such outliers entails estimating their magnitudes as well as locations. \n\nWithin the deterministic robust PCA framework, the  matrix is modeled as taking the form $\\mathbf{Y} = \\mathbf{A}\\mathbf{B} + \\mathbf{E}$ where $\\mathbf{A} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m \\times r}$, $\\mathbf{B} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{r \\times t}$ are low-rank matrices as before. Additionally, we also need to estimate the sparse outlier matrix $\\mathbf{E} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m \\times t}$. As before, both $r$ and the level of sparsity in $\\mathbf{E}$ are tuning parameters that must generally be carefully selected. \n\nHere, we put forth the variational Bayesian subspace filtering algorithm that makes use of ARD priors to prune the redundant features. Consider the measurement matrix $\\mathbf{Y}$, whose entries are generated from the following pdf:\n\\begin{align}\np(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}, \\mathbf{b}_\\tau, e_{i\\tau}, \\beta) &= \\mathcal{N}(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{b}_\\tau^T\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}} + e_{i\\tau}, \\beta^{-1})  & i \\in \\Omega_\\tau\n\\end{align}\nfor all $\\tau \\geq 1$, and apart from the matrices $\\mathbf{A}$ and $\\mathbf{B}$ defined earlier, we also have $\\{e_{i\\tau}\\}_{\\tau =1, i\\in \\Omega_\\tau}^t$ as the additional (hidden) problem parameter that captures the outliers. The generative models for $\\mathbf{A}$ and $\\mathbf{B}$ are the same as before, i.e.,\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{pbaj}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\tp(\\mathbf{B} \\mid \\mathbf{J}) &= \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_1; \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1, \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1 ) \\prod_{\\tau = 2}^t \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\mathbf{J}\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}, \\mathbf{I}_r)\\label{pb}\\\\\n\tp(\\mathbf{A} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\gamma}) &= \\prod_{i=1}^r \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{a}_i \\mid 0, \\gamma_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}) \\label{pa}\\\\\n\tp(\\mathbf{J} \\mid \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}) &= \\prod_{i=1}^r \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{j}_i \\mid 0, \\upsilon_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}) \\label{pj}\n\t\\end{align} \n\\end{subequations}\nfor $\\tau \\geq 2$, and $\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}$ are problem parameters. Additionally, we also associate an ARD prior to the outliers, i.e.,\n\\begin{align}\np(e_{i\\tau}) &= \\mathcal{N}(e_{i\\tau} \\mid 0, \\alpha_{i\\tau}^{-1}) & i \\in \\Omega_\\tau\n\\end{align}\nfor $1\\leq \\tau\\leq t$, where the precision $\\alpha_{i\\tau}$ is a hidden variable, that would be driven to infinity whenever $e_{ij}$ is zero. It is remarked that the prior for $e_{i\\tau}$ is only specified for the measurements, i.e., for $i \\in \\Omega_\\tau$ and no predictions are made for the outliers. As before, we associate Jeffery's prior to the precisions $\\beta$, $\\{\\gamma_i\\}$, $\\{\\upsilon_i\\}$, and $\\{\\alpha_{i\\tau}\\}$. \n\\begin{align}\np(\\beta) &= \\frac{1}{\\beta}, & p(\\gamma_i) &= \\frac{1}{\\gamma_i}, & p(\\upsilon_i) &= \\frac{1}{\\upsilon_i}, & p(\\alpha_{i\\tau}) &= \\frac{1}{\\alpha_{i\\tau}}.\n\\end{align}\n\nLet the vectors $\\mathbf{e} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{\\omega}$ and $\\boldsymbol{\\alpha} \\in \\mathbb{R}^{\\omega}$ collect the variables $\\{e_{i\\tau}\\}$ and $\\{\\alpha_{i\\tau}\\}$, respectively. Likewise, defining all the hidden variables as $\\mathcal{H} := \\{\\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{B}, \\mathbf{J}, \\mathbf{e}, \\beta, \\boldsymbol{\\gamma}, \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}\\}$, the joint distribution of $\\{\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega, \\mathcal{H}\\}$ can be written as\n\\begin{align}\np(\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega,\\mathcal{H}) &\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\hspace{-1.5cm}= p(\\mathbf{y}_\\Omega | \\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{B}, \\beta)p(\\mathbf{A} | \\boldsymbol{\\gamma})p(\\mathbf{B} | \\mathbf{J}) p(\\mathbf{J} | \\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})p(\\mathbf{e} | \\boldsymbol{\\alpha})p(\\beta)p(\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})p(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}) \\nonumber \\\\\n&\\hspace{-1cm}=\\prod_{\\tau=1}^t\\prod_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} \\mathcal{N}(y_{i\\tau} \\mid \\mathbf{b}_\\tau^T\\mathbf{a}_{i\\boldsymbol{\\cdot}}, \\beta^{-1}) \\mathcal{N}(e_{i\\tau}\\mid 0,\\alpha_{i\\tau}^{-1})\\frac{1}{\\alpha_{i\\tau}}\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\times \\prod_{i=1}^r \\left[\\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{a}_i \\mid 0,\\gamma_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I}) \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{j}_i \\mid 0, \\upsilon_i^{-1}\\mathbf{I})\\right]  \\nonumber \\\\\n&\\hspace{-1cm}\\times\\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_1; \\boldsymbol{\\mu}_1, \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1 ) \\prod_{\\tau = 2}^t \\mathcal{N}(\\mathbf{b}_\\tau \\mid \\mathbf{J}\\mathbf{b}_{\\tau-1}, \\mathbf{I}) \\frac{1}{\\beta}\\prod_{i=1}^r \\frac{1}{\\gamma_i\\upsilon_i}.\n\\end{align} \nThe full hierarchical Bayesian model adopted here is summarized in figure \\ref{fig:mc_algo}(b). \n\n\n\\subsection{Variational Bayesian Inference}\\label{vbi2}\nUtilizing the mean field approximation, the posterior distribution $p(\\mathcal{H} \\mid \\mathbf{y}_\\Omega)$ factorizes as\n\\begin{align}\\label{mf2}\np(\\mathcal{H} \\mid \\mathbf{y}_\\Omega) \\approx q(\\mathcal{H}) &\\nonumber\\\\\n&\\hspace{-2cm}= q_{\\mathbf{A}}(\\mathbf{A})q_{\\mathbf{B}}(\\mathbf{B})q_{\\mathbf{J}}(\\mathbf{J})q_{\\mathbf{e}}(\\mathbf{e})q_{\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon}}(\\boldsymbol{\\upsilon})q_{\\beta}(\\boldsymbol{\\beta})q_{\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}}(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma}).\n\\end{align}\nwhere the individual factors take the same forms as in \\eqref{qs}, in addition to\n\\begin{align}\nq_{\\mathbf{e}}(\\mathbf{e}) & = \\prod_{\\tau = 1}^t \\prod_{i\\in \\Omega_\\tau} \\mathcal{N}(e_{i\\tau} | \\mu_e^{i\\tau}, \\Xi_e^{i\\tau}).\n\\end{align}\nAs before, the variational inference problem can be solved by updating the variables  $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}, \\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}$, $\\{\\mu_e^{i\\tau}\\}, \\{\\Xi_e^{i\\tau}\\}, a^\\beta, b^\\beta$, $\\{a^{\\gamma}_i\\}, \\{b^{\\gamma}_i\\}, \\{a^\\upsilon_i\\}, \\{b^\\upsilon_i\\}\\}$ in a cyclic manner. However, a more compact form for the updates may be derived as follows.\n\nSpecifically, the updates for $\\{\\hat{\\upsilon}_i, \\hat{\\gamma}_i\\}$ remain the same as in \\eqref{upga}. However, the update for $\\hat{\\beta}$ takes the form:\n\\begin{align}\\label{be2}\n\\hat{\\beta} &= \\frac{\\omega}{\\sum_{\\tau=1}^t\\sum_{i\\in\\Omega_\\tau} \\nu_{i\\tau}}\\\\\n\\shortintertext{where,}\n\\nu_{i\\tau} :=& y_{i\\tau}^2 - 2(y_{i\\tau}-\\mu_e^{i\\tau})(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau - 2y_{i\\tau}\\mu_e^{i\\tau} \\nonumber\\\\\n&+ (\\mu_e^{i\\tau})^2  + \\Xi_e^{i\\tau} + \\tr{\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^\\mathbf{A}_{i}\\boldsymbol{\\Sigma}^{\\mathbf{B}}_{\\tau,\\tau}}.\n\\end{align}  \nFurther, the parameters $\\mu_e^{i\\tau}$ and $\\Xi_e^{i\\tau}$ are updated as\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{eup}\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\Xi_e^{i\\tau} &= \\frac{1}{\\hat{\\beta} + (\\mu_e^{i\\tau})^2  + \\Xi_e^{i\\tau}} \\label{36a}\\\\\n\t\\mu_e^{i\\tau} &= \\hat{\\beta} \\Xi_e^{i\\tau} (y_{i\\tau} - (\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i)^T\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau). \\label{36b}\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\n\nProceeding similarly, the updates for $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}$, $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_i\\}$, and $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}$ remain the same as in \\eqref{ja}, while the updates for $\\{\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\}$ become:\n\\begin{align}\\label{a2}\n\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}_i &= \\hat{\\beta}\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A}_i\\sum_{\\tau \\in\\Omega'_i} \\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}_\\tau (y_{i\\tau}-\\mu_e^{i\\tau}) .\n\\end{align}\nFinally, the updates for $\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^{\\mathbf{B}}$ remain the same but the updates of $\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B}$ change. Specifically, the low complexity updates via LDL-decomposition remain mostly the same, except for the modified definition of $\\mathbf{v}_\\tau$ in \\eqref{vbt} which now looks like\n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_\\tau = \\hat{\\beta} \\sum_{i \\in \\Omega_\\tau} (y_{i\\tau} - \\mu_e^{i\\tau}).\n\\end{align}\nThe full robust subspace filtering algorithm is summarized in Algorithm \\ref{alg:ALG2}. The predictions for $y_{i\\tau}$ for $i\\notin \\Omega_\\tau$ and for $\\tau \\geq t+1$ are obtained as in \\eqref{pred1} and \\eqref{pred2}, respectively. \n\\begin{algorithm}\n\t\n\tInitialize $  \\boldsymbol{\\alpha},\\boldsymbol{\\gamma},\\boldsymbol{\\beta},\\mathbf{v}$, $sub=1,\\, \\Omega_\\tau, \\,\\Omega'_i,\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_{diag},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J} \\boldsymbol{\\Lambda}_1,\\mu_1, $\n\t\n\t$\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}=\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B})^T$\n\t\n\t\\While{$Y_{conv}< 10^{-5}$}{\n\t\t$\\mathbf{Y_{old}}= \\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}$\n\t\t\n\t\t$\\boldsymbol{\\Gamma}=diag(\\boldsymbol{\\gamma})$\n\t\t\n\t\t\\uIf{$sub==1 $}\n\t\t{\t\n\t\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{rts}$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$sub=2$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$ \\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{10a}, \\,\\eqref{sigma_up1},\\,\\eqref{15a},\\,\\eqref{15b}\\,\\forall \\,\\, 1\\leq i \\leq r$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t}\n\t\t\n\t\t\\ElseIf{$sub==2 $} \n\t\t{\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{sigma_up3},\\eqref{15c}, \\eqref{15d}, \\eqref{10b} \\, \\,\\forall \\, 1\\leq i \\leq m$\n\t\t\t$sub=3$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t}\n\t\t\n\t\t\\Else\n\t\t{\n\t\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{36a},\\, \\eqref{36b} \\,\\, \\forall \\,\\, 1\\leq i \\leq m, \\,\\, \\forall \\,\\, 1\\leq \\tau \\leq t$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t$sub=1$\n\t\t}\n\t\t$\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}}=\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}(\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B})^T$\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t$\\text{Update using} \\, \\eqref{be2}$\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t$Y_{conv}=\\frac{\\norm{\\mathbf{Y}-\\mathbf{Y_{old}}}_F}{\\norm{\\mathbf{Y_{old}}}_F}$\n\t}\n\t\\Return($\\hat{\\mathbf{Y}},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{A},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{A}, \\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{B},\\boldsymbol{\\Xi}^\\mathbf{J}_{diag},\\boldsymbol{\\mu}^\\mathbf{J} $)\n\t\\caption{Robust Variational Bayesian Subspace Filtering}\n\t\\label{alg:ALG2}\n\\end{algorithm}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\t\\red{A} torus action on a smooth quasiprojective complex variety induces many cohomological structures. The Bia\u0142ynicki-Birula decomposition and the localization theorems are the \\red{most} widely known examples. In this paper we aim to compare two \\red{families of} $K$-theoretic characteristic classes induced by the Bia\u0142ynicki-Birula decomposition: the equivariant motivic Chern classes of Bia\u0142ynicki-Birula cells and the stable envelopes of cotangent \\red{bundles}. For simplicity\\red{,} we \n\t\\old{use shortcuts} \\red{write} BB-decomposition and BB-cells for Bia\u0142ynicki-Birula decomposition and Bia\u0142ynicki-Birula cells\\red{,} respectively.\n\t\n\t Stable envelopes are characteristic classes defined for symplectic varieties equipped with torus \\red{actions}. They are important objects in \\old{the} modern geometric representation theory (cf. \\cite{Op} for a survey).\n\t Stable envelopes occur in three versions: cohomological \\cite{OM}, $K$-theoretic \\cite{OS,O2} and elliptic \\cite{OA}. In this paper we focus on the $K$-theoretic ones. They depend on a choice of \\red{a} linearisable line bundle called slope. Their axioms define \\red{a} unique class\n\t for general enough slope, yet \\red{the} existence of \\red{elements}\n\t satisfying \\red{the} axioms is still unknown in many cases.\n\t \n\t The motivic Chern class is an offshoot of the program of generalising characteristic classes of tangent \\red{bundles} \n\t to \\red{the} singular case.\n\t It began with the construction of the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class in \\cite{CSM} and was widely developed\n\t (\\red{see} e.g.\t\\cite{Oh,BSY,CMOSSY}\n\t and \\cite{SYp} for a survey). The common point of many of \\old{defined} characteristic classes \\red{that have been defined is} additivity properties with respect to \\red{the} decomposition of a variety \\red{as a union of} closed and open \\red{subvarieties}. For example the non-equivariant motivic Chern class $mC_\\red{y}$ (cf. \\cite{BSY}) assigns to every map of varieties $\\red{f:}X \\to M$ a polynomial over \\red{the} $K$-theory of coherent sheaves of $M$: an element \\hbox{$\\red{mC_y(X\\xto{f}M)}\\in G(M)[y]$.} Its additivity property states that:\n\t $$mC_\\red{y}(X\\xto{f} M)=mC_\\red{y}(Z\\xto{f_{|Z}} M)+mC_\\red{y}(X\\setminus Z\\xto{\\red{f_{|X\\setminus Z}}} M)\\,,$$\n\t for every closed subvariety $Z \\subset X$. Similar properties are satisfied by the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class and the Hirzebruch class.\n\t \n\t Lately\\red{,} equivariant versions of many such classes \\red{have been} defined (e.g. \\cite{Oh2, WeHir,FRW,AMSS}).\n\t For an algebraic torus $\\T \\simeq \\C^r$ the $\\T$-equivariant motivic Chern class (cf. \\cite{FRW,AMSS}) assigns to every $\\T$-equivariant map of varieties $f: X \\to M$ a polynomial over \\red{the} $K$-theory of $\\T$-equivariant coherent sheaves of $M$: an element $\\red{mC^\\T_y(X\\xto{f}M)}\\in G^\\T(M)[y]$. It is  uniquely defined by \\red{the following} three properties (after \\cite{FRW}, section~2.3):\n\t \\begin{description}\n\t \t\\item[1. Additivity] If \\red{a $\\T$-variety $X$ decomposes as a union of closed and open invariant subvarieties} $X=Y\\sqcup U$, then $$mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(X\\xto{\\red{f}} M)=mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(Y\\xto{\\red{f_{|Y}}} M)+mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(U\\xto{\\red{f_{|U}}} M)\\,.$$\n\t \t\n\t \t\\item[2. Functoriality] For \\red{an equivariant} proper map $f:M\\to M'$ we have $$mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(X\\stackrel{f\\circ g}\\to M')=f_*mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(X\\stackrel{g}\\to M)\\,.$$\n\t \t\n\t \t\\item[3. Normalization] For a smooth \\red{$\\T$-}variety $M$ we have $$mC_{\\red{y}}^\\T(id_M)=\\lambda_y(T^*M):=\\sum_{i=0}^{\\rank T^*M}[\\Lambda^iT^*M]y^i \\,.$$\n\t \t\n\t \\end{description}\n \tIn many cases\\red{,} one can directly compute this class using the Lefschetz-Riemann-Roch theorem (cf. \\cite{ChGi} theorem 5.11.7) and \\red{the} above properties. For examples of \\red{computations}\n \t see \\cite{Feh,FRW,Kon}. In the paper \\cite{FRW} (see also \\cite{FRWp}) it was found that for $G$-equivariant varieties with \\red{a} finite number\n \t of orbits\\red{,} the motivic Chern classes $mC_{\\red{y}}^G$ of $G$-orbits satisfy axioms similar to those of the stable envelopes.\n \t\n \tThere is one more family of characteristic classes, called the weight functions,\n \t\\red{closely} connected \\red{to the} characteristic classes mentioned above.\n \tTheir relations with other characteristic classes  were widely studied e.g. \\cite{RTV',FRW,RW,KRW,RTV}.\n \t\n \tIn this paper we consider a smooth projective variety $M$ equipped with an action of a torus $A$. Suppose that the fixed point set $M^A$ is finite. Our main result states that under some geometric assumptions on $M$\n \tthe stable envelopes for \\red{a} small enough anti-ample slope and the motivic Chern classes coincide up to normalization. Namely:\n \t\\begin{atw*}\n \t\tLet $M$ be as above. Consider the cotangent variety $X=T^*M$ with the action of the torus $\\T=\\C^*\\times A$ (where the \\red{first factor} $\\C^*$ acts on fibers by scalar multiplication). Choose any weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ of the torus $A$ and polarization $T^{1\/2}:=TM$. Suppose that the variety $M$ satisfies the local product condition\n \t\t(see definition \\ref{df:prd}). For any anti-ample $A$-linearisable line bundle $s$ and \\red{a} sufficiently big integer $n$\\red{,} the \\red{element}\n \t\t$$\n \t\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}} \\in K^A(M)[y,y^{-1}] \\simeq K^\\T(M) \\simeq K^\\T(T^*M)\n \t\t$$\n \t\t\\old{determine} \\red{is equal to} the $K$-theoretic stable envelope $y^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\dim M_F^+}Stab^{\\frac{s}{n}}_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}(\\red{1_F})$.\n \t\\end{atw*}\n \t \\red{A} similar comparison was done in \\cite{FR,RV,AMSS0} for the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class in the cohomological setting. The above theorem is a generalisation of the previous results of \\red{\\cite{AMSS,FRW}}\n \t where analogous equality\n \t is proved for the flag varieties $G\/B$. \\red{\\cite{AMSS}} approach is based on \\red{the} study of the Hecke algebra action on $K$-theory of flag variety, whereas our strategy is \\red{similar to \\cite{FRW}}. First\\red{,} we make \\red{a change} \\old{correction}\n \t in \\red{the} definition\n \t of the stable envelope such that it coincides with\\old{the} Okounkov's\\old{one} for general enough slope and is unique for all slopes (section \\ref{s:env} and appendix \\red{\\hyperref[s:Ok]{A}}). By direct check of axioms\\red{,} we prove that the equality from the theorem holds for the trivial slope (section \\ref{s:mC}). \\red{Then,} we check that the stable envelopes for \\red{the} trivial slope and \\red{a} small anti-ample slope coincide (section \\ref{s:slope}).\n \t \\red{Finally}, in \\old{the} appendix \\red{\\hyperref[s:G\/P]{B}} we check that \\red{the} homogenous varieties $G\/P$ satisfy \\red{the} local product condition\n \t mentioned in the theorem.\n \t \n \t Our main technical tool is \\red{the} study of\n \tlimits of Laurent polynomials (of one or many variables).\n \tThe limit technique was investigated \\old{both} for motivic Chern classes \\cite{WeBB,FRW,Kon} as well as for stable envelopes \\cite{SZZ,O2}.\n \tWe use it mainly to prove various containments of Newton polytopes.\n \t\n \tHomogenous varieties $G\/P$ are our main examples of varieties satisfying the local product condition. The study of characteristic classes and stable envelopes of such varieties is \\red{an} important theme\n \tpresent in recent research (e.g. \\cite{AM,SZZ2,RV,RSVZ}).\n \tA priori the stable envelope is defined for symplectic varieties which admit a proper map to an affine variety. This condition is satisfied by the cotangent bundles to  flag varieties of any reductive group and all homogenous varieties of $GL_n$.\n \tThere is \\red{a} weaker condition\n \t(see section \\ref{s:env} condition ($\\star$)) which is sufficient to define stable envelope and holds for  cotangent bundle to any variety which \\red{satisfies}\n \tthe local product condition.\n \t\n \t\\subsection{Acknowledgements}\n \tI would like to thank \\old{to} Andrzej Weber for his guidance and support.\n \tI am grateful to Agnieszka Bojanowska for her valuable remarks.\n \tI thank anonymous referees for their helpful comments. \n \tThe author was supported by  the research project of the Polish National Research Center 2016\/23\/G\/ST1\/04282 (Beethoven 2, German-Polish joint project).\n\n\t\n\n\\section{Tools}\n\tThis section gathers technical results, useful in the further parts of \\red{this} paper. All considered varieties are assumed to be complex and quasiprojective.\n\n\\subsection{Equivariant K-theory}\n\t\\red{Our main reference for the equivariant $K$-theory is \\cite{ChGi}.}\n\tLet $X$ be a complex quasiprojective variety equipped with an action of a torus $\\T$. We consider \\red{the} equivariant $K$-theory of coherent sheaves $G^\\T(X)$ and \\red{the} equivariant $K$-theory of vector bundles $K^\\T(X)$. For a smooth variety these two notions coincide. We use the lambda operations $\\lambda_y:K^\\T(X) \\to K^\\T(X)[y]$ defined by:\n\t$$ \\lambda_y(E):=\\sum_{i=0}^{\\rank E}[\\Lambda^iE]y^i \\,. $$\n\tThe operation $\\lambda_{-1}:K^\\T(X) \\to K^\\T(X)$ applied to the dual \\red{bundle} is the $K$-theoretic Euler class. Namely\n\t$$eu(E)=\\lambda_{-1}(E^*)\\,. $$\n\t\\old{For an immersion of a smooth subvariety $Y\\subset X$ We denote by $eu(Y\\subset X)$ the Euler class of normal bundle. Namely}\n\t\\red{Let $Y\\subset X$ be an immersion of a smooth \\hbox{$\\T$-invariant} locally closed subvariety. Its normal bundle is denoted by\n\t$$\\nu(Y\\subset X)=\\coker (TY \\to TX_{|Y}) \\in K^\\T(Y) \\,.$$\n\tWe denote by $eu(Y\\subset X)$ the Euler class of normal bundle. Namely}\n\t\t$$eu(Y\\subset X):=\\lambda_{-1}(\\nu^*(Y\\subset X)) \\in K^\\T(Y) \\,. $$\n\t\n\\begin{adf}\n\tConsider a \\red{$\\T$-variety} $X$.\n\tFor an element $a \\in G^\\T(X)$ and a closed \\red{invariant} subvariety $Y \\subset X$ we say that $\\supp(a) \\subset Y$  if and only if $a$ \\red{lies} in the image of \\red{a} pushforward map\n\t$$G^\\T(Y) \\xto{i_*} G^\\T(X).$$\n\tThe short exact sequence (cf. \\cite{ChGi} proposition 5.2.14)\n\t$$ G^\\T(Y) \\xto{i_*} G^\\T(X) \\to G^\\T(X \\setminus Y) \\to 0 $$\n\timplies that \\red{$\\supp(a) \\subset Y$} \\old{this} is equivalent to $a_{|X \\setminus Y}=0$.\n\\end{adf}\n\\begin{rem}\n\tNote that for an element $a \\in K^\\T(\\red{X})$\n\tthe support of $a$ \\red{is not a} well defined subset\n\tof $X$. We \\red{can} only define \\red{the} notion\n\t$\\supp(a) \\subset Y$ for a closed subvariety $Y\\subset X$. The fact that $\\supp(a) \\subset Y_1$ and $\\supp(a) \\subset Y_2$ \\red{does not} imply that $\\supp(a) \\subset Y_1 \\cap Y_2$.  \n\\end{rem}\n\n\\begin{pro}\\label{cor:K}\n\tConsider a reducible $\\T$-variety $X=X_1\\cup X_2$. Denote the inclusions of the closed subvarieties $X_1$ and $X_2$ by $i$ and $j$\\red{,} respectively. Then the pushforward map\n\t$$i_*+j_*: G^\\T(X_1)\\oplus G^\\T(X_2) \\to G^\\T(X)$$\n\tis an epimorphism.\n\\end{pro}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tDenote by $U_1$ and $U_2$  the complements of the closed sets $X_1$ and $X_2$. Note that due to the exact sequence\n\t$$ G^\\T(X_1) \\xto{i_{*}} G^\\T(X) \\to G^\\T(U_1) \\to 0$$\n\tit is enough to prove that the composition\n\t$$\\alpha: G^\\T(X_2) \\xto{j_{*}} G^\\T(X) \\to G^\\T(U_1)$$\n\tis an epimorphism. Note that $U_1 \\cap X_2=U_1$ and by pushforward pullback argument the map $\\alpha$ is equal to the restriction to open subset\n\t$$G^\\T(X_2)\\to G^\\T(U_1).$$\n\tSuch restriction\n\tis \\red{an} epimorphic map\n\tdue to the exact sequence of \\red{a} closed immersion.\n\\end{proof}\n\\red{Consider a $\\C^*$-variety $F$ for which the action is trivial. Every equivariant vector bundle  $E\\in Vect^{\\C^*}(F)$ decomposes as a sum of $\\C^*$-eigenspaces\n$$E=\\bigoplus\\limits_{n\\in \\Z} E_n \\,.$$\nThe sum $E^+=\\oplus_{n>0} E_n$ is called the attracting (or positive) part of $E$ while the the sum $E^-=\\oplus_{n<0} E_n$ is called the repelling (or negative) part.\nThe assignment of the positive (or negative) part induces a map of the equivariant K-theory. Namely}\n\\begin{pro}\n\t\\label{lem:attr}\n\tLet $\\sigma \\subset \\T$ be a one dimensional subtorus. Suppose that $F$ is a $\\T$-variety \\red{for which the action of $\\sigma$ is trivial}. Then taking \\red{the} attracting part with respect to the torus $\\sigma$ \\old{of a vector bundle} induces a well defined map\n\t$$K^\\T(F) \\to K^\\T(F)\\,.$$\n\t\\red{An} analogous result holds for \\red{the} repelling part. More generally taking direct summand corresponding to a chosen character of $\\sigma$ induces such a map.\n\\end{pro}\n\\begin{proof}\n\t$\\T$-equivariant maps of vector bundles preserve \\red{the} weight decomposition with respect to the torus $\\sigma$.\n\tThus\\red{, any} exact sequence of $\\T$-vector bundles splits into \\red{a} direct sum of sequences corresponding to characters of $\\sigma$.\n\tIt follows that taking the part corresponding to any subset of characters preserves exactness.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{rem}\n\t\\red{Denote by $R(\\sigma)$ the representation ring of the torus $\\sigma$.} Proposition \\ref{lem:attr} is a consequence of an isomorphism\n\t$$K^\\T(F) \\simeq K^{\\T\/\\sigma}(F)\\otimes R(\\sigma) .$$\n\\end{rem}\n\n\\subsection{BB-decomposition}\n The BB-decomposition was introduced in \\cite{B-B1} and further studied in \\cite{B-B3} (see also \\cite{CarBB} for a survey).\n We recall here its definition and fundamental properties. Consider a smooth $\\sigma=\\C^*$-variety $X$.\n\t\\begin{adf} \\label{def:BB}\n\t\tLet $F$ be a component of the fixed point set $X^\\sigma$. The positive BB-cell of $F$ is the subset\n\t\t$$X_F^+=\\{ x\\in X\\;|\\; \\lim_{t\\to 0} t\\cdot x\\in F\\} \\,.$$\n\t\tAnalogously the negative BB-cell of $F$ is the subset\n\t\t$$X_F^-=\\{ x\\in X\\;|\\; \\lim_{t\\to \\infty} t\\cdot x\\in F\\} \\,.$$\t\n\t\\end{adf}\nIt follows from \\cite{B-B1} that\n\t\\begin{atw} \\label{tw:BB}\n\t\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\t\\item The BB-cells are locally closed, smooth, algebraic subvarieties of~$X$. Moreover, we have the equality of vector bundles\n\t\t\t$$T(X_F^+)_{|F}=(TX_{|F})^+\\oplus TF $$\n\t\t\t\\item  There exists an algebraic morphism\n\t\t\t$$\\lim_{t\\to 0}: X_F^+\\to F \\,.$$\n\t\t\t\\item Suppose that the variety $X$ is projective. Then there is a set decomposition (called BB-decomposition)\n\t\t\t$$X=\\bigsqcup_{F\\subset X^\\sigma} X_F^+ \\,.$$\n\t\t\t\\item Suppose that the variety $X$ is projective. Then the morphism $\\lim_{t\\to 0}: X_F^+\\to F$ is an affine bundle.\n\t\t\t\\item Suppose that a bigger torus $\\sigma\\subset\\T$ acts on $X$. Then the BB-cells (defined by the action of $\\sigma$) are $\\T$-equivariant subvarieties.\n\t\t\t\\item The BB-decomposition induces a partial order on the fixed point set $X^\\sigma$, defined by the transitive closure of the relation\n\t\t\t$$F_2\\in\\overline{X^+_{F_1}} \\Rightarrow F_1>F_2 \\,.$$\n\t\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\end{atw}\n\\begin{adf}[cf. \\cite{OM} paragraph 3.2.1]\n\tSuppose that \\red{$X$ is a smooth $\\T$-variety.}\n\tConsider the space of cocharacters\n\t$$\\mathfrak{t}:=\\Hom(\\C^*,\\T)\\otimes_\\Z\\R \\,.$$\n\tFor a fixed points component $F \\subset X^\\T$, denote \\red{by $v_1^F,...,v_{\\codim F}^F$} the torus weights appearing in the normal bundle.\n\t\\red{A} weight chamber\n\t is a connected component of the set\n\t$$\\mathfrak{t} \\setminus\\bigcup_{F\\subset \\red{X^\\T}, i \\le \\text{codim}F}\\{v_i^F=0\\}.$$\n\\end{adf}\n\n\nSuppose that a torus $\\T$ acts on a smooth variety $X$. For \\red{a} one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma \\subset \\T$ and a weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ we \\red{write}\n $\\sigma \\in \\mathfrak{C}$ when the cocharacter of $\\sigma$ belongs to the chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$. \n\n\\begin{pro} \\label{lem:st}\n\t\\red{Let $X$ be a smooth $\\T$-variety.} Consider one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma \\subset \\T$ such that $\\sigma \\in \\mathfrak{C}$ for some weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$. Then the fixed \\red{point} sets\n\t$X^\\T$ and $X^\\sigma$ are equal.\n\\end{pro}\n\n\\begin{pro}\n\t\\label{lem:chamb}\n\t\t\\red{Let $X$ be a smooth $\\T$-variety.} Choose a weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$.\n\t\tConsider one dimensional subtori \\hbox{$\\sigma_1,\\sigma_2 \\subset \\T$} such that $\\sigma_1,\\sigma_2 \\in \\mathfrak{C}$. Then the tori $\\sigma_1$ and $\\sigma_2$ induce the same decomposition of \\red{the} normal bundle to the fixed \\red{point} set\n\t\t\\red{into} the attracting and \\red{the}\n\trepelling\n\tpart. Moreover\\red{,} the BB-decompositions with respect to these tori are equal.\n\\end{pro}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tThe only nontrivial part is \\red{the} equality of the BB-decompositions. It is \\red{a} consequence\n\tof theorem 3.5 of \\cite{HuBB}.\n\tAlternatively\\red{,} thanks to the Sumihiro theorem \\cite{Su} it is enough to prove the lemma for $X$ equal to the projective space. In this case\\red{,} the proof is straightforward.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Symplectic varieties}\n\n\n\\begin{adf}[\\cite{OS} section 2.1.2]\n\t\\label{df:pol}\n\tConsider a smooth symplectic variety $(X,\\omega)$ \\red{equipped} with an action of a torus $\\T$. Assume that the symplectic form $\\omega$ is an eigenvector of $\\T$, let $h$ be its character. \\red{A} polarization\n\tis \n\tan element $T^{1\/2} \\in  K^\\T(X)$\n\tsuch that\n\t$$T^{1\/2}\\oplus \\C_{-h}\\otimes(T^{1\/2})^*=TX \\in  K^\\T(X) \\,.$$ \n\\end{adf} \n\n\\begin{rem}\n\tNote that according to the above definition\\red{, a} polarization\n\t is an element \\red{of the} $K$-theory, thus it may be a virtual vector bundle.\n\\end{rem}\n\n\\subsection{Newton polytopes}\n\n\tLet $R$ be \\red{a commutative ring with unit} and $\\Lambda$ a lattice of finite rank. Consider a polynomial $f \\in R[\\Lambda]$. The Newton polytope $N(f) \\subset \\Lambda\\otimes_\\Z \\R$ is a convex hull of lattice points corresponding to the nonzero coefficients of the polynomial $f$. We \\red{recall} elementary properties of Newton polytopes:\n\t\n\\begin{pro} \\label{lem:New}\n\tLet $R$ be \\red{a commutative ring with unit}.\n\t For any Laurent polynomials $f,g\\in R[\\Lambda]$.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(a)]\n\t\t\\item $N(fg) \\subseteq N(f)+N(g)$.\n\t\t\\item $N(fg) = N(f)+N(g)$ when the ring $R$ is a domain.\n\t\t\\item $N(fg) =N(f)+N(g)$ when \\red{the} coefficients of the class $f$ corresponding to the vertices of \\red{the} polytope $N(f)$ \\red{are not} zero divisors.\n\t\t\\item $N(f+g) \\subseteq conv(N(f),N(g))$.\n\t\t\\item Let $\\theta: R \\to R'$ be a homomorphism of rings\n\t\tand $\\theta': R[\\Lambda] \\to R'[\\Lambda]$ its extension.\n\t\tThen $N(\\theta'(f))\\subseteq N(f)$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{pro}\n\nConsider a smooth variety $X$ equipped with an action of a torus $\\T$. Choose a subtorus $A \\subset \\T$. For \\red{a fixed point set}\ncomponent $F\\subset X^\\T$ and an element $a\\in K^\\T(X)$ we want to \\red{define}\nthe Newton polytope\n$$N^A(a_{|F})\\subset \\Hom(A,\\C^*)\\otimes_Z\\R :=\\mathfrak{a}^*. $$\nIt is possible due to the following proposition:\n\n\\begin{pro} \\label{lem:N(a)}\n\t\\red{Let $F$ be a smooth $\\T$-variety.}\n\t Let  $A\\subset \\T$ be a subtorus which acts trivially on $F$.\n\t Any \\red{splitting}\n\t of the inclusion $A\\subset \\T$ induces isomorphism\n\t$$\\alpha: K^\\T(F) \\simeq K^{\\T\/A}(F) \\otimes_{\\Z} R(A) \\simeq K^{\\T\/A}(F)[\\Hom(A,\\C^*)] \n\t\\,,$$\n\t\\red{where $R(A)$ denotes the representation ring of the torus $A$.}\n\tFor an element $a \\in K^\\T(F)$ we consider the Newton polytope $N^A(a) \\subset \\mathfrak{a}^*$\n\t\\red{defined by the polynomial $\\alpha(a)$}.\n\tThe isomorphism $\\alpha$ depends on the choice of \\red{splitting},\n\t yet the Newton polytope is independent \\red{of} it.\n\\end{pro}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tConsider two \\red{splittings}\n\t$s_1,s_2: \\T\/A \\to \\T$. Denote by $\\alpha_1,\\alpha_2$ the induced isomorphisms\n\t$$K^{\\T}(F) \\to K^{\\T\/A}(F)[\\Hom(A,\\C^*)]\\,. $$\n\tNote that the quotient $\\frac{s_2}{s_1}$ induces a group homomorphism \\hbox{$h:\\T\/A \\to A$.} Consider an arbitrary class $E \\in K^{\\T\/A}(F)$ and a character $\\chi \\in \\Hom(A,\\C^*)$. Direct calculation \\red{provides}\n\tus with the formula \n\t$$\\alpha_2\\circ\\alpha_1^{-1}(Ee^{\\chi})=\\left(E\\otimes\\C_{\\chi\\circ h}\\right)e^{\\chi} \\,.$$\n\tThus\\red{,} the Newton polytope is independent \\red{of} the choice of\n\t\\red{splitting}.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{rem} \\label{rem:N}\n\tConsider the situation as in proposition \\ref{lem:N(a)}. Let $E$ be a $\\T$-vector bundle over $F$. Then the Euler class $eu(E)$ satisfies \\red{the} assumption of proposition \\ref{lem:New} (c). To see this use \\red{the} weight decomposition of $E$ with respect to the torus $A$. Note that for a vector bundle $V$ with \\red{an} action of $A$ given by a single character the Newton polytope $N^A(eu(V))$ is an interval. Moreover\\red{,} the coefficients corresponding to the ends of this interval are invertible (they are equal to classes of the line bundles $1$ and $\\det V^*$).\n\\end{rem}\n\nAt the end of this section we want to \\red{mention the} behaviour of \\old{the} polytope $N^A$ after restriction to one dimensional subtorus of $A$. Namely let $\\sigma \\subset A$ be a one dimensional subtorus. Denote by\n$$|_\\sigma:K^A(pt) \\to K^{\\sigma}(pt)$$\n\\red{the} induced map on the $K$-theory and by\n$$\\pi_\\sigma:\\Hom(A,\\C^*) \\otimes_\\Z \\R \\to \\Hom(\\sigma,\\C^*) \\otimes_\\Z \\R$$\n\\red{the} induced map on the characters.\n\n\\begin{pro} \\label{lem:Npi}\n\tFor an element $a \\in K^\\T(F)$ there exists a finite union of hyperplanes $K$ in the vector space of cocharacters such that for all one dimensional subtori $\\sigma$ whose cocharacter \\red{does not} belong to $K$\n\t$$N^\\sigma(a|_\\sigma)=\\pi_\\sigma \\left(N^A(a)\\right) .$$\n\\end{pro}\n\n\\begin{pro} \\label{lem:ver}\n \\red{Let $M$ be a smooth $A$-variety.}\n Consider \\red{a} one dimensional subtorus\n $\\sigma \\subset A$ such that $\\sigma \\in \\mathfrak{C}$ for some weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$. Let $F$ be a component of \\red{the fixed point set $M^A$.}\n  Then the point $0$ is a vertex of the polytope $N^A(eu(\\nu_F^-))$. Moreover\\red{,} the point $\\pi_\\sigma(0)$ is the minimal term of \\red{the} line segment\n $\\pi_\\sigma\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu_F^-))\\right)$.\n\\end{pro}\n\n\n\\section{Stable envelopes for isolated fixed points} \\label{s:env}\nIn this section we recall the definition of the $K$-theoretic stable envelope introduced in \\cite{OS,O2} (see also \\cite{SZZ,AMSS,RTV} for\nspecial cases) in the case of isolated fixed points. \nIn \\old{the} appendix \\red{\\hyperref[s:Ok]{A}} we give \\red{a} rigorous proof that such classes are unique (proposition \\ref{pro:uniq}). Using \\old{the} Okounkov's definition it is true only for a general enough slope. We introduce \\red{a weaker version of the axioms} \\old{correction in the definition} to bypass this problem.\n\nWe use the following notations and \\red{assumptions}\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item $\\T \\simeq \\C^r$ is an algebraic torus.\n\t\\item $(X,\\omega)$ is a smooth symplectic $\\T$-variety.\n\t\\item $A \\subset \\T$ is a subtorus which preserves the symplectic form.\n\t\\item We assume that the fixed point set $X^A$ is finite (\\red{this} implies that $X^A=X^\\T$).\n\t\\item We assume that $\\omega$ is an eigenvector of $\\T$ \\red{and} denote its character by \\hbox{$h \\in \\Hom(\\T,\\C^*)$.} \n\n\t\\item $\\mathfrak{C} \\subset \\mathfrak{a}$ is a weight chamber.\n\t\\item For a fixed point $F \\in X^A$\\red{,} we denote by $X_F^+$ its positive BB-cell \\old{depending (only) on} \\red{according to} the chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ (cf. \\red{definition \\ref{def:BB} and} proposition \\ref{lem:chamb}).\n\t\\item We denote by $\\ge$ the partial order on the fixed \\red{point} set \\red{$X^A$}\n\t induced by the chamber~$\\mathfrak{C}$ (cf. theorem \\ref{tw:BB} (6)).\n\t\\item For a fixed point $F \\in X^A$\\red{, let $$\\nu_F:=\\nu(F\\subset X) \\simeq TX_{|F} \\,,$$\n\tbe the normal bundle to the inclusion $F\\subset X$.\n\tLet $\\nu_F=\\nu_F^+\\oplus\\nu_F^-$ be its decomposition}\n\tinduced by the chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$. (cf. proposition \\ref{lem:chamb}).\n\t\\item $T^{1\/2} \\in K^\\T(X)$ is a polarization  (cf. definition \\ref{df:pol}).\n\t\\item For a fixed \\red{point} \\old{set\n\tcomponent} $F\\in X^A$\\red{,} we denote by $T^{1\/2}_{F,>0} \\in K^\\T(F)$ the attracting part \n\tof\n\t$(T^{1\/2})_{|F} \\in K^\\T(F)$ (cf. proposition \\ref{lem:attr}). \n\t\\item $s \\in Pic(X) \\otimes \\Q$ is a rational $A$-linearisable line bundle which we call slope.\n\t\\red{\\item For a fixed point $F\\in X^A$, we denote by $1_F$ the multiplicative unit in the ring $K^\\T(F)$ given by the class of the equivariant structure sheaf.}\n\\end{itemize}\n\nMoreover\\red{,} we assume that the variety $X$\nsatisfies the following condition:\n\\begin{enumerate}[$(\\star)$]\n\t\\item\n\tThe set $\\bigsqcup_{F \\in X^A} X^+_{F}$ is closed.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\begin{rem} \n\tThe  $(\\star)$ condition \\red{implies} that for any fixed point $F_0\\in X^A$ the set $\\bigsqcup_{F\\in X^A, F\\le F_0} X^+_{F}$ is closed.\n\\end{rem}\nIn \\old{the} Okounkov's papers stronger condition\n\\red{on $X$ is assumed. Namely it is required that $X$ admits an}\n equivariant proper map to an affine variety cf. \\cite{OM} paragraph 3.1.1.\nExistence of such \\red{a} map implies the condition $(\\star)$ cf.  \\cite{OM} lemma 3.2.7.\nIt turns out that the condition~$(\\star)$ is sufficient to prove uniqueness of the stable envelope (cf. proposition~\\ref{pro:uniq}).\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{adf} [cf. chapter 2 of \\cite{OS}] \\label{df:env}\n\tThe stable envelope is a morphism of \\hbox{$K^\\T(pt)$-modules}\n\t$$Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s: K^\\T(X^A) \\to K^\\T(X)$$\n\tsatisfying three properties:\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[{\\bf a)}]\n\t\t\\item For any fixed point $F$\n\t\t$$\\supp\\left(Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s(1_F)\\right) \\subset \\bigsqcup_{F' \\le F} X^+_{F'} \\,.$$\n\t\t\\item For any fixed point $F$\n\t\t$$Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s(1_F)_{|F}=\n\t\teu(\\nu^-_F)\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}} h^{\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}} \\,.$$\n\t\t\\item Choose any $A$-linearisation of the slope $s$. For a pair of fixed points $F',F$ such that $F'<F$\n\t\twe demand \\red{containment of Newton polytopes}\n\t\t$$N^A\\left(Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s(1_F)_{|F'}\\right)+s_{|F}\n\t\t\\subseteq\n\t\t\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'})) \\setminus \\{0\\}\\right)-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} +s_{|F'},$$\n\t\twhere the Newton polytopes are defined as in \\old{the}\n\t\tproposition \\ref{lem:N(a)}.\n\t\tAn addition\n\t\tof \\red{the restriction of} a line bundle \\red{means} translation by its character.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{adf}\nFor a comparison of the above definition with the one given in \\cite{OS,O2} see appendix~\\red{\\hyperref[s:Ok]{A}}.\n\\begin{rem} \nTo define the element $h^{\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}$ in the axiom {\\bf b)} one may need to pass to the double cover of \\red{the} torus $\\T$ (cf. paragraph 2.1.4 in \\cite{OS}). To avoid this problem we consider \\red{normalized version of the stable envelope (see the expression (\\ref{wyr:stab}) below).} \\old{the morphisms $h^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s$.}\n\\end{rem}\n\\begin{rem} \\label{rm:uni}\n\t\\old{The} Okounkov's definition differs from the one given above in the axiom {\\bf c)}. In the paper \\cite{OS} weaker set containment is required \n\t\t$$N^A\\left(Stab_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}^s(\\red{1_F})_{|F'}\\right)+s_{|F}\n\t\\subseteq\n\tN^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'})) -\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} +s_{|F'}.$$\n\tIt defines the stable envelope uniquely only for \\red{a} general enough slope (cf. paragraph 2.1.8 in \\cite{OS}, proposition 9.2.2 in \\cite{O2} and example \\ref{ex:uni}). With our \\red{version of axioms} \\old{correction} the stable envelope is unique for any choice of slope and coincides with \\old{the} Okounkov's\\old{one} for general enough slope. \\old{(namely such that $s_{|F}-s_{|F'}$ is not an integral point)}\n\\end{rem}\n\n\tFor simplicity\\red{,} we omit the weight chamber and polarization in the notation. The stable envelope is determined by the set of elements\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{wyr:stab}\n\tStab^\\red{s}(F) :=h^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}Stab(1_F), \n\t\\end{align}\n\tindexed by \\red{the fixed point set $X^A$.}\n\tIt leads to the following equivalent definition.\n\t\\begin{adf} \\label{def:ele}\n\t\t The $K$-theoretic stable envelope is a set of elements $Stab^\\red{s}(F)\\in K^\\T(X)$ indexed by \\red{the fixed point set $X^A$}, such that\n\t\t\t\\begin{enumerate}[{\\bf a)}]\n\t\t\t\\item For any fixed point $F$ \n\t\t\t$$\\supp(Stab^\\red{s}(F)) \\subset \\bigsqcup_{F' \\le F} X^+_{F'} \\,.$$\n\t\t\t\\item For any fixed point $F$\n\t\t\t$$Stab^\\red{s}(F)_{|F}=\n\t\t\teu(\\nu^-_F)\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}} \\,.$$\n\t\t\t\\item Choose any $A$-linearisation of the slope $s$. For a pair of fixed points  $F',F$ such that $F'<F$ we demand  \\red{containment of Newton polytopes} \n\t\t\t$$N^A\\left(Stab^\\red{s}(F)_{|F'}\\right)+s_{|F}\n\t\t\t\\subseteq\n\t\t\t\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))\\setminus\\{0\\}\\right)-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} +s_{|F'}.$$ \n\t\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\end{adf}\n\n\\begin{pro} \\label{pro:uniq}\n\t\\old{With} \\red{Under the} assumptions given at the beginning of this section the stable envelope (definitions \\ref{df:env}, \\ref{def:ele}) is unique. \n\\end{pro}\n\t\nThe simplest example of a symplectic variety is \\red{the} cotangent \\red{bundle}\nto a smooth variety.\nIt is natural to ask whether such a variety satisfies the assumptions needed to define $K$-theoretic stable envelope.\nConsider a smooth \\red{$A$-variety $M$}\nwith \\red{a} finite number \nof fixed points. Consider the cotangent variety $X=T^*M$ with the action of the torus $\\T=A \\times \\C^*$ such that $\\C^*$ acts on the fibers by scalar multiplication.\n\tThe fixed \\red{point} set\n\t of this action is finite. In fact\\red{,} we have \\red{equalities}\n\t$$X^{\\T}=X^A=M^A.$$\n\tThe variety $X$ is equipped with the canonical symplectic nondegenerate form $\\omega$. This form is preserved by the torus $A$ and it is an eigenvector of the torus $\\T$ with character corresponding to \\red{the} projection on the second factor. Denote this character by $y$.\n\tThe subbundle $TM \\subset TX$ satisfies the polarization condition (see definition \\ref{df:pol}). Choose a weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ of the torus $A$ and a one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma \\subset A$ such that $\\sigma \\in \\mathfrak{C}$. The BB-cells of $\\sigma$ in $X$ are the conormal bundles to the BB-cells of $\\sigma$ in $M$.\n\tThe condition $(\\star)$ means that the set\n\t$$\\bigcup\\limits_{F \\in M^A} \\nu^*(M^+_F)$$\n\tis a closed subset of $T^*M$. This condition is not always satisfied.\n\t\\begin{rem}\n\t\tConsider a smooth manifold $M$ decomposed as \\red{a} disjoint union\n\t\tof smooth locally closed submanifolds\n\t\t$$M=\\bigsqcup_i S_i .$$\n\t\t\\red{The disjoint union}\n\t\tof the conormal bundles to strata is a closed subset of the cotangent bundle $T^*M$ if and only if the decomposition satisfies the Whitney condition (A) (cf.\n\t\t\\cite{Whcond} exercise 2.2.4).\n\t\t Thus\\red{,} the $(\\star)$ condition can be seen as \\red{an} algebraic counterpart of the Whitney condition~(A).\n\t\\end{rem}\n\t\\begin{ex}\n\t\tConsider the projective space $\\PP^2$ with the action of \\red{the} diagonal torus of $GL_3(\\C)$. Choose a general enough subtorus $\\sigma$. Let $x$ be the middle fixed point in the Bruhat order. Then the cotangent bundle to \\red{the} blow-up $T^*(Bl_x\\PP^2)$ \\red{does not} satisfy the $(\\star)$ condition.\n\t\\end{ex}\n\t\t\\begin{ex}\n\t\t\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\t\t\\item The cotangent bundle to any  flag variety $G\/B$ admits an equivariant projective morphism to an affine variety (cf. \\cite{ChGi} section 3.2) \n\t\t\t\tso it satisfies $(\\star)$ condition.\n\t\t\t\t\\item The cotangent bundle to any $GL_n$ homogenous variety is a Nakajima quiver variety (cf. \\cite{Nak} section 7) so it admits an equivariant projective morphism to an affine variety (\\cite{Nak2} section 3, \\cite{GiNak} section 5.2).\n\t\t\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\end{ex}\n\tWe introduce a stronger condition on the BB-cells of $M$ which \\red{implies}\n\tthe ($\\star$) condition for $X=T^*M$ and is satisfied by the homogenous varieties (cf. theorem \\ref{tw:prod}).\n\t\\begin{adf}\\label{df:prd}\n\t\tConsider a projective smooth variety $M$ \\red{equipped} with an action of a torus $A$ with \\red{a} chosen one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma$. Suppose that the fixed \\red{point} set\n\t\t$M^\\sigma$ is finite.\n\t\tWe say that $M$ satisfies the local product condition\n\t\tif for any fixed point $x \\in M^\\sigma$ there exist an $A$-equivariant Zariski open neighbourhood $U$ of $x$ and  $A$-variety $Z_x$ such that:\n\t\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\t\\item There \\red{exists}\n\t\t\t an $A$-equivariant isomorphism $$\\theta: U \\simeq (U\\cap M_x^+)\\times Z_x \\,. $$\n\t\t\t\\item For any fixed point $y \\in M^\\sigma$ there \\red{exists} a subvariety $\\red{Z'_{x,y}}\\subset Z_x$ such that $\\theta$ induces isomorphism:\n\t\t\t$$U\\cap M_y^+ \\simeq (U\\cap M_x^+)\\times \\red{Z'_{x,y}} \\,.$$\n\t\t\\end{enumerate}\t\n\t\\end{adf}\n\n\t\\begin{pro}\n\t\tSuppose that a projective smooth \\red{$\\C^*$}-variety $M$\n\t\t satisfies the local product condition. Then the cotangent variety $T^*M$ satisfies the $(\\star)$ condition.\n\t\\end{pro}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tIt is enough to prove that for every fixed point $F_0 \\in M^\\sigma$ there is an inclusion\n\t\t$$\\overline{\\nu^*(M_{F_0}^+\\subset M)}\\subset \\bigsqcup_{F\\in M^\\sigma}\\nu^*(M_{F}^+\\subset M) \\,. $$\n\t\tIt is equivalent to claim that for arbitrary fixed points $F_0,F$ \n\t\t$$\\overline{\\nu^*(M_{F_0}^+\\subset M)}\\cap T^*M_{|M_F^+}\\subset \\nu^*(M_{F}^+\\subset M) \\,. $$\n\t\tDenote by $U$ the neighbourhood of $F$ from \\red{the} definition of the local product condition. All of the subsets in the above formula are $\\sigma$ equivariant. Thus\\red{,} it is enough to prove that\n\t\t$$\\overline{\\nu^*(M_{F_0}^+\\cap U\\subset U)}\\cap T^*U_{|M_F^+}\\subset \\nu^*(M_{F}^+\\cap U\\subset U) \\,. $$\n\t\tThe \\red{local}\n\t\tproduct property implies existence of isomorphisms\n\t\t$$\n\t\tU\\simeq M_F^+\\times Z, \\ \\\n\t\tM_F^+ \\simeq M_F^+\\times \\{pt\\}, \\ \\\n\t\tM_{F_0}^+ \\simeq M_F^+\\times Z' \\,,\n\t\t$$\n\t\tfor some subvariety $Z'\\subset Z$ and point $pt\\in Z$. Denote by $E$ the subbundle $$M_F^+\\times T^*Z \\subset T^*U.$$\n\t\tNote that\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t&\\nu^*(M_{F}^+\\cap U\\subset U)=E_{|M_{F}^+} \\\\\n\t\t\t&\\nu^*(M_{F_0}^+\\cap U\\subset U)=M_F^+\\times \\nu^*(Z'\\subset Z) \\subset E_{|M^+_{F_0}}\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\tThus\n\t\t\\begin{multline*}\n\t\t\\overline{\\nu^*(M_{F_0}^+\\cap U\\subset U)}\\cap T^*U_{|M_F^+}\\subset \\overline{E_{|M^+_{F_0}}} \\cap T^*U_{|M_F^+} \\subset\n\t\t\\\\\n\t\t\\subset E \\cap T^*U_{|M_F^+}=E_{|M_F^+}= \\nu^*(M_{F}^+\\cap U\\subset U) \\,.\n\t\t\\end{multline*}\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t \n\t\\red{\\section{Motivic Chern class}\n\tThe motivic Chern class is defined in \\cite{BSY}. The equivariant version is due to \\cite[section 4]{AMSS} and \\cite[section 2]{FRW}. Here we recall the definition of the torus equivariant motivic Chern class. Consult \\cite{AMSS,FRW} for a detailed account.}\n\n\t\t\\red{\\begin{adf}[after {\\cite[section 2.3]{FRW}}]\n\t\t\tLet $A$ be an algebraic torus.\n\t\t\tThe motivic Chern class assigns to every $A$-equivariant map of quasi-projective $A$-varieties $f:X \\to M$ an element\n\t\t\t$$mC_y^A(f)=mC_y^A(X \\xto{f} M) \\in G^A(M)[y]$$\n\t\t\tsuch that the following properties are satisfied\n\t\t\t\\begin{description}\n\t\t\t\t\\item[1. Additivity] If a $A$-variety $X$ decomposes as a union of closed and open invariant subvarieties $X=Y\\sqcup U$, then $$mC_y^A(X\\xto{f} M)=mC_y^A(Y\\xto{f_{|Y}} M)+mC_y^A(U\\xto{f_{|U}} M)\\,.$$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\item[2. Functoriality] For an equivariant proper map $f:M\\to M'$ we have $$mC_y^A(X\\stackrel{f\\circ g}\\to M')=f_*mC_y^A(X\\stackrel{g}\\to M)\\,.$$\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\item[3. Normalization] For a smooth $A$-variety $M$ we have $$mC_y^A(id_M)=\\lambda_y(T^*M):=\\sum_{i=0}^{\\rank T^*M}[\\Lambda^iT^*M]y^i \\,.$$ \n\t\t\t\\end{description}\n\t\tThe motivic Chern class is the unique assignment satisfying the above properties. \n\\end{adf}}\n\n\t\\section{Comparison with the motivic Chern classes} \\label{s:mC}\n\tIn this section we aim to compare the stable envelopes for \\red{the} trivial slope with the motivic Chern classes of BB-cells. \n\tOur main results are\n\\begin{pro} \\label{pro:mC}\n\tLet $M$ be a projective, smooth variety\n\t\\red{equipped} with an action of an algebraic torus $A$. \\red{Suppose that the fixed point set $M^A$ is finite.} \\old{with a finite number\n\t of fixed points.} Consider the variety $X=T^*M$ \\red{equipped} with the action of the torus $\\T=\\C^*\\times A$. Choose any weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ of the torus $A$, polarization $T^{1\/2}=TM$ and the trivial line bundle $\\theta$ as a slope.\n\tThen\\red{,} the elements\n\t$$\n\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}} \\in K^A(X)[y,y^{-1}] \\simeq K^\\T(X) \\simeq K^\\T(T^*X)\n\t$$\n\tsatisfy the axioms {\\bf b)} and {\\bf c)} of the stable envelope \\red{$Stab^\\theta(F)$.}\n\\end{pro}\n\n\\begin{rem}\n\tIn this proposition we \\red{do not} assume that $M$ \\red{satisfies} the local product condition or even that $X$ satisfies the $(\\star)$ condition.\n\\end{rem}\n\n\\begin{atw} \\label{tw:mC}\n\tConsider the situation such as in proposition \\ref{pro:mC}.\n\tSuppose that the variety $M$ with the action of a one dimensional torus $\\sigma \\in \\mathfrak{C}$ satisfies the local product condition\n\t(definition \\ref{df:prd}). Then \\red{the element}\n\t$$\n\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}} \\in K^A(X)[y,y^{-1}] \\simeq K^\\T(X) \\simeq K^\\T(T^*X)\n\t$$\n\t\\old{determine}\\red{is equal to} the $K$-theoretic stable envelope \\red{$Stab^\\theta(F)$.} \\old{$y^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\dim M_F^+}Stab^\\theta_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}(F)$.}\n\\end{atw}\n\\red{\nOur main examples of varieties satisfying the local product property are homogenous spaces (see appendix \\red{\\hyperref[s:G\/P]{B}}). Let $G$ be a reductive, complex Lie group with a chosen maximal torus $A$. Let $B$ be a Borel subgroup and $P$ a parabolic subgroup. We consider the action of the torus $A$ on the variety $G\/P$.}\n\n\\red{\nA choice of weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C} \\subset\\mathfrak{a}$ induces a choice of Borel subgroup $B_\\mathfrak{C}\\subset G$. Let $F\\in (G\/P)^A$ be a fixed point.  It is a classical fact that the BB-cell $(G\/P)_F^+$ (with respect to the chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$)\ncoincides with the $B_\\mathfrak{C}$-orbit of $F$. These orbits are called Schubert cells.\n}\n\\begin{cor}\n\t\\red{In the situation presented above} the stable envelopes for \\red{the} trivial slope are equal to the motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells\n\t$$\\frac{mC_{-y}^A((G\/P)^+_F \\to G\/P)}{y^{\\dim (G\/P)^+_F}} \n\t=y^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\dim (G\/P)^+_F}Stab^\\theta_{\\mathfrak{C},T(G\/P)}(1_{F}).$$\n\\end{cor}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tTheorem \\ref{tw:prod} \\red{implies}\n\t that homogenous varieties satisfy the local product condition.\n\t Thus, the corollary follows from theorem \\ref{tw:mC}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{rem}\n\tIn the case of flag varieties $G\/B$\\red{,} our results for \\red{the} trivial slope agree with the previous results of \\cite{AMSS} (theorem 7.5) for a small anti-ample slope \n\tup to \\red{a} change of $y$ to $y^{-1}$. \\red{This} difference is a consequence of the fact that in \\cite{AMSS} the inverse action of $\\C^*$ on the fibers of cotangent bundle is considered.\n\\end{rem}\n\t\n\nBefore the proof of theorem \\ref{tw:mC} we make several simple observations.\n\tLet $\\tilde{\\nu}_F \\simeq TM_{|F}$  denote the normal space to the fixed point $F$ in $M$.\n\tDenote by $\\tilde{\\nu}^-_F$ and $\\tilde{\\nu}^+_F$ its decomposition into the positive and negative part induced by the weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$.\n\tLet\n\t$$\\nu_F\\red{\\simeq TX_{|F}} \\simeq TM_{|F}\\oplus (T^*M_{|F}\\red{\\otimes \\C_y})$$\n\t denote the  normal space to the fixed point $F$ in the variety $X=T^*M$. It is a straightforward observation that\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t&\t\\nu_F^-\\simeq\\tilde{\\nu}^-_F\\oplus y(\\tilde{\\nu}^+_F)^* \\red{\\,,} \\\\\n\t&\t\\nu_F^+\\simeq\\tilde{\\nu}^+_F\\oplus y(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_F)^* \\red{\\,,} \\\\\n\t&T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}= \\tilde{\\nu}^+_F.\n\t\\end{align*} \n\n\tIn the course of  proofs we use the following computation:\n\t\\begin{alemat} \\label{lem:comp}\n\t\tLet $V$ be a $\\T$-vector space. We have an equality\n\t\t$$\n\t\t\\frac{\\lambda_{-1}\\left(y^{-1}V\\right)}{\\det V} =\\frac{\\lambda_{-y}(V^*)}{(-y)^{\\dim V}}\n\t\t$$\n\t\tin the $\\T$-equivariant $K$-theory of a point.\n\t\\end{alemat}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tBoth sides of the formula are multiplicative with respect to the direct sums of $\\T$-vector spaces. Every $\\T$-vector space decomposes as a sum of one dimensional spaces, so it is enough to check the equality for $\\dim V=1$. Then it simplifies to trivial form:\n\t$$\\frac{1-\\frac{\\alpha}{y}}{\\alpha}=\\frac{1-\\frac{y}{\\alpha}}{-y} ,$$\n\twhere $\\alpha$ is \\red{the} character of the action of the torus $\\T$ on the linear space $V$.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of proposition \\ref{pro:mC}]\n\tWe start the proof by checking the axiom {\\bf b)}. We need to show that\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F}}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}}=\n\t\teu(\\nu^-_F)\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}\t\\,.\t\n\t\\end{align*}\n\twhich is equivalent to\n\t\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{wyr:b}\n\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F}}\n\t{(-y)^{\\dim \\tilde{\\nu}^+_F}}=\n\teu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_F)\n\t\\frac{\\lambda_{-1}(y^{-1}\\tilde{\\nu}^{+}_F)}{\\det  \\tilde{\\nu}^+_F} \\,.\n\t\\end{align}\n\t\nThe BB-cell $M_F^+$ is a locally closed subvariety. \nChoose an open neighbourhood $U$ of the fixed point $F$ in $M$ such that the morphism $M_F^+\\cap U \\subset U$ is a closed immersion. The functorial properties of the motivic Chern class (cf. paragraph 2.3 of \\cite{FRW}, or theorem 4.2 from \\cite{AMSS})\n imply that:\n\\begin{align*}\n&mC_{-y}^A\\left(M^+_F \\xto{i} M\\right)_{|F}=\nmC_{-y}^A\\left(M^+_F \\cap U \\xto{i} U\\right)_{|F}= \\\\\n&=i_*mC_{-y}^A\\left(id_{M^+_F \\cap U}\\right)_{|F}=\ni_*\\left(\\lambda_{-y}\\left(T^*(M^+_F \\cap U)\\right)\\right)_{|F}=\n\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_F\\right)eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_F) \\,.\n\\end{align*}\n \n So the left hand side of expression (\\ref{wyr:b}) is equal to\n $$eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_F) \\frac{\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_F\\right)}{(-y)^{\\dim \\tilde{\\nu}^{+}_F}}.$$\n Lemma \\ref{lem:comp} implies that the right hand \\red{side}\n is also of this form.\n \n We proceed to the axiom {\\bf c)}. Consider a pair of fixed points $F,F'$ such that $F'<F$. We need to prove the inclusion:\n \\begin{align} \\label{wyr:Ninc}\n \t N^A\\left(\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}}\\right)\n \t\\subseteq\n \tN^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}\n \\end{align}\n and take care of the distinguished point\n \\begin{align} \\label{wyr:Npt}\n \t-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} \\notin N^\\red{A}\\left(\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}}\\right).\n \\end{align}\nLet's concentrate on the inclusion  (\\ref{wyr:Ninc}).\n There is an equality of polytopes\n $$\n N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}=\n\n N^A\\left(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_{\\red{F'}})\n \\frac{\\lambda_{-1}(y^{-1}\\tilde{\\nu}^{+}_{\\red{F'}})}{\\det  \\tilde{\\nu}^+_{\\red{F'}}}\\right)=\n N^A\\left(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_{F'})\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_{F'}\\right)\\right),\n $$\n where the second equality follows from lemma \\ref{lem:comp}.\n After substitution of $y=1$ \\red{into} the class $eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_{F'})\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_{F'}\\right)$ we obtain the class $eu(\\tilde{\\nu}_{F'})$.\n Thus, proposition \\ref{lem:New} (e) implies that \\old{there is an inclusion}\n $$\n N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}_{F'})) \\subseteq N^A\\left(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_{F'})\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_{F'}\\right)\\right)\\,.\n $$\nMoreover\n$$N^A\\left(\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}}\\right)= N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)=\nN^A\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\,.$$\nTheorem 4.2 from \\cite{FRW} implies that there is an inclusion \n$$\nN^A\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\subseteq\nN^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}_{F'})) \\,.\n$$\nTo conclude\\red{,} we have proven inclusions\n\\begin{multline*}\nN^A\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\subseteq\nN^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}_{F'}))\\subseteq \\\\\n\\subseteq N^A\\left(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^{-}_{F'})\\lambda_{-y}\\left(\\tilde{\\nu}^{+*}_{F'}\\right)\\right)=\nN^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} \\,.\n\\end{multline*}\n\nThe next step is the proof of the formula (\\ref{wyr:Npt}). We proceed in a manner similar to the proof of corollary 4.5 in \\cite{FRW}. Consider a general enough one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma\\in \\mathfrak{C}$. Proposition \\ref{lem:Npi} implies that \n\\begin{align} \\label{wyr:gens}\nN^\\sigma\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}|_\\sigma\\right)=\\pi_\\sigma\\left(N^A\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)\\right).\n\\end{align}\n\nTheorem 4.2 from \\cite{FRW} (cf. also theorem 10 from \\cite{WeBB}), with the limit in $\\infty$ changed to the limit in $0$ to get positive BB-cell instead of negative one, implies that \n$$\n\\lim_{\\xi\\to 0}\\left(\\left.\\frac{mC_y^A(M_F^+\\subset M)_{|F'}}{eu(\\red{\\tilde{\\nu}}_{F'})}\\right|_\\sigma\\right)=\\;\\chi_y(M_F^+\\cap M^+_{F'})=\\chi_y(\\varnothing)=0\\,,\n$$\n\t\\red{where $\\xi$ is the chosen primitive character of the torus $\\sigma$} and the class $\\chi_y$  is the Hirzebruch genus (cf. \\cite{chiy, BSY}).\n\nThus\\red{,} the lowest term of line segment $N^\\sigma\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to X)_{|F'}|_\\sigma\\right)$ is greater than the lowest term of line segment $ N^\\sigma\\left(eu(\\red{\\tilde{\\nu}}_{F'})|_\\sigma\\right)$,\n which is equal to $\\pi_\\sigma(-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0})$ by proposition \\ref{lem:ver}.\nThus\n$$\\pi_\\sigma(-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}) \\notin \\pi_\\sigma\\left(N^A\\left(mC_{y}^A(M^+_F \\to X)_{|F'}\\right)\\right).$$\n\\red{This}\nimplies\n$$-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} \\notin N^A\\left(\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to X)_{|F'}}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}}\\right),$$\nas demanded in (\\ref{wyr:Npt}).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nTo prove theorem \\ref{tw:mC} we need the following technical lemma.\n\\begin{alemat}[cf. {\\cite[Remark after Theorem 3.1]{RTV'}} {\\cite[Lemma 5.2-4]{RTV}}] \\label{lem:supp}\n\tLet $M$ and $X$ be varieties such as in proposition \\ref{pro:mC}. Suppose that \\red{$X$}\n\tsatisfies the ($\\star$) condition.\n\tConsider a fixed point $F \\in M^A$.\n\tSuppose that an element $a \\in K^\\T(X)$ satisfies two conditions:\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item $\\supp(a) \\subset \\bigcup_{F'\\le F} T^*M_{|M^+_{F'}} \\red{\\,,}$\n\t\t\\item  $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*M^+_{F_i})_{|F_i}$ divides $a_{|F_i}$ for any fixed points $F_i \\in M^A$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\tThen $\\supp(a) \\subset \\bigcup_{F'\\le F} \\red{\\nu^*}(M^+_{F'}\\subset M)$.\n\\end{alemat}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tConsider the set of positive BB-cells of $M$ corresponding to fixed points $F'\\le F$. Arrange them in a sequence $B_1,...,B_k$ in such a way that for every $t\\le k$ the sum $\\bigcup_{i=1}^t B_i$ is a closed subset of $M$ (cf. \\cite{B-B3} theorem 3). Denote by $F_i$ the fixed point corresponding to the BB-cell $B_i$. Denote by\n\t$$E_t=\\bigcup_{i=1}^t T^*M_{|B_i} \\text{ and by }V=\\bigcup_{i=1}^{k} \\nu^*(B_i \\subset M).$$\n\tNote that the ($\\star$) condition implies that the sets $E_\\red{t}\\cup V$ are closed. Our goal is to prove by induction that\n\t$$\\supp(a) \\subset E_t \\cup V.$$\n\t The first condition implies this containment for $t=k$, which allows to start induction. To prove the proposition we need this containment for $t=0$. \n\n \tAssume that $\\supp(a) \\subset E_{t}\\cup V$ for some $t \\ge 1$. We want to prove that \\hbox{$\\supp(a) \\subset E_{t-1}\\cup V.$} \n \tDenote by $\\iota$ the inclusion\n \t$$\\iota:E_{t}\\cup V \\subset X.$$\n \tElement $a$ is equal to $\\iota_{*}\\alpha$ for some $\\alpha \\in G^\\T(E_t \\cup V)$. Denote by $U$ the variety $T^*M_{|B_t} \\setminus \\nu^*B_t$. Using the equality of the complements\n \t$$\\left(E_{t}\\cup V\\right) \\setminus \\left(E_{t-1}\\cup V\\right)=T^*M_{|B_t} \\setminus \\nu^*B_t=U\\,,$$\n \twe get an exact sequence\n \t$$ G^\\T(E_{t-1} \\cup V) \\to G^\\T(E_t \\cup V) \\to G^\\T(U) \\to 0\\,.$$\n \tSo it is enough to show that $\\alpha$ restricted to the open subset $U$ vanishes. The variety $E_t \\cup V$ is reducible. Denote by $i$ and $j$ the inclusions $E_t \\subset E_t \\cup V$ and $V \\subset E_t \\cup V$. Proposition \\ref{cor:K} implies that the map\n \t$$i_*+j_*: G^\\T(E_t) \\oplus G^\\T(V) \\onto G^\\T(E_t \\cup V)$$\n \tis epimorphic. Choose any decomposition\n \t$$\\alpha=i_*\\alpha_E +j_*\\alpha_V$$\n \tsuch that $\\alpha_E \\in G^\\T(E_t)$ and $\\alpha_V\\in G^\\T(V)$. The subsets $V$ and $U$ have empty intersection so $$(j_*\\alpha_V)_{|U}=0.$$\n \tThus, it is enough to show that $i_*\\alpha_E$ also vanishes after restriction to $U$.\n \t\n \tNote that lemma \\ref{lem:comp} implies the following equality in $K^\\T(F_t)$\n \t\t$$\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_t)=\\frac{(-y)^{\\dim B_t}}{\\det T^*B_t}\\lambda_{-1}(y^{-1}TB_t)=\\frac{(-y)^{\\dim B_t}}{\\det T^*B_t}eu(\\nu^*B_t \\subset T^*M_{|B_t}).$$\n \t\tMoreover\\red{,} the first map in the exact sequence of closed immersion\n \t\t$$K^\\T(\\nu^*B_t) \\xto{i_*} K^\\T(T^*M_{|B_t}) \\to K^\\T(U) \\to 0$$\n \t\tis multiplication by the  Euler class $eu(\\nu^*B_t \\subset T^*M_{|B_i})$. It follows that for an arbitrary element $b\\in K^\\T(T^*M_{|B_i})$ the restriction of $b$ to the set $U$ is trivial if and only if $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_t)_{\\red{|F_t}}$ divides $b_{|F_t}$.\n \t\n \t The second assumption and the fact that $(\\iota_*j_*\\alpha_V)_{|U}=0$ \\red{imply} that the element \n \t$$(\\iota_*i_*\\alpha_E)_{|F_t}=a_{|F_t}-(\\iota_{*}j_*(\\alpha_V))_{|F_t}$$\n is divisible by $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_t)_{\\red{|F_t}}$.\n The pushforward-pullback argument shows that\n \t$$\\left(eu(T^*M_{|B_t}\\subset X)\\alpha_E\\right)_{|F_t}=\\left(\\iota_*i_*\\alpha_E\\right)_{|F_t}.$$\n \tIt follows that $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_i)_{|F_t}$ divides $\\alpha_{E|F_t}$ multiplied by the Euler class \\hbox{$eu(T^*M_{|B_t}\\subset X)_{|F_t}$.} We need to prove that it divides $\\alpha_{E|F_t}$. We use the following simple  algebra exercise:\n \t\\begin{exer*}\n \t\tLet $R$ be a domain and $R[y,y^{-1}]$ the ring of Laurent polynomials. Assume that $A(y) \\in R[y,y^{-1}]$ is a monic Laurent polynomials and $r\\in R$ a nonzero element. Then for any polynomial $B(y) \\in R[y,y^{-1}]$\n \t\t $$A(y)|B(y) \\iff A(y)|rB(y) \\,. $$\n \t\\end{exer*}\n \tThe ring $K^\\T(F_t)$ is isomorphic to $K^A(F_t)[y,y^{-1}]$, the polynomial $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_t)_{|F_t}$ is monic (the smallest coefficient is equal to one) and the Euler class $eu(T^*M_{|B_t}\\subset X)_{|F_t}$ belongs to the subring $K^A(F_t)$. The exercise implies that $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*B_t)$ divides $\\alpha_{E|F_t}$. So \\red{the class} $\\alpha_E$ vanishes on $U$. Proof of the lemma follows by induction.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of theorem \\ref{tw:mC}]\n\tProposition \\ref{pro:mC} implies that the axioms {\\bf b)} and {\\bf c)} holds. It is enough to check the support axiom.\n\t\n\tChose a fixed point $F\\in M^A$.\t\n\tFunctorial properties of the motivic Chern class imply that the support of class\n\t$$mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M) \\in K^A(M)[y]\\subset K^\\T(M)$$\n\tis contained in the closure of $M^+_F$ which is contained in the closed set\n\t$\\bigcup_{F'\\le F}M^+_{F'}.$\n\tIt follows that the support of \\red{the} pullback element\n\t$$mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M) \\in  K^\\T(T^*M)$$ \n\tis contained in restriction of the cotangent bundle $T^*M$ to the subset $\\bigcup_{F'\\le F}M^+_{F'}.$\n\tTo prove the support axiom we need to check that it is contained in the smaller subset\n\t$$\\bigcup_{F'\\le F} \\nu^*(M^+_{F'}\\subset M).$$\n\t Thus, it is enough to check  the assumptions of lemma \\ref{lem:supp} for $a$ equal to the class $mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)$. We know that the first assumption holds. The local product condition (definition \\ref{df:prd}) implies that for any fixed point $F'$\n\t \\begin{align*} mC_{-y}^A(M^+_{F} \\to M)_{|F'}=&\n\t mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\cap U  \\to U)_{|F'} \\\\\n\t =&mC^A_{-y}(\\red{Z_{F',F}'} \\times M^+_{|F'} \\to Z_{F'} \\times M^+_{|F'})_{|F'} \\\\\n\t =&mC^A_{-y}(\\red{Z_{F',F}'} \\subset Z_{F'})_{|F'}  mC^A_{-y}(M^+_{|F'} \\to M^+_{|F'})_{|F'} \\\\\n\t =&mC^A_{-y}(\\red{Z_{F',F}'} \\subset Z_{F'})_{|F'} \\lambda_{-y}(T^*M_{F'}^+)_{|F'} \\,.\n\t \\end{align*}\n\t\\red{The second equality follows from the local product condition and the third from \\cite[theorem 4.2(3)]{AMSS}.}\n\tHence the class $mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)$ satisfies the assumptions of lemma \\ref{lem:supp}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{rem}\n\tIn the proof of theorem \\ref{tw:mC} we need the local product condition only to get divisibility demanded in lemma \\ref{lem:supp}. Namely for a pair of fixed points $F,F'$ such that $F>F'$ we need divisibility of $mC_{-y}^{\\red{A}}(M_F^+\\subset M)_{|F'}$ by $\\lambda_{-y}(T^*M^+_{F'})_{|F'}$.\n\tIf the closure of the BB-cell of $F$ is smooth at $F'$ and the BB-cells form a stratification of $M$ then the divisibility condition automatically holds. In general case one can assume \\red{the} existence of \\red{a} motivically transversal slice instead of the local product condition.\nNamely suppose there is a smooth locally closed subvariety $S \\subset M$ such that:\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $F'\\in S$ and $S$ is transversal to $M_{F'}^+$ at $F'$\\red{,}\n\t\t\\item $S$ is of dimension complementary to $M_{F'}^+$\\red{,}\n\t\t\\item $S$ is motivically transversal (cf. \\cite{FRWp}, section 8) to $M_F^+$\\red{.}\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\tThen theorem 8.5 from \\cite{FRWp}, or reasoning analogous to \\red{the} proof\n\tof lemma 5.1 from \\cite{FRW} proves the desired divisibility condition. In the case of homogenous varieties\\red{,} divisibility  can be also acquired using theorem 5.3 of \\cite{FRW} for the Borel group action.\n\\end{rem}\n\n\n\n\\section{Other slopes} \\label{s:slope}\nComputation of the stable envelopes for \\red{the} trivial slope allows one to easily get formulas for all integral slopes.\n\\begin{cor}\n\tConsider a situation described in theorem \\ref{tw:mC}. For a $A$-linearisable line bundle $s \\in Pic(X)$ \\red{the element}\n\t$$\n\t\\frac{s}{s_{|F}}\\cdot\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}} \\in K^A(M)[y,y^{-1}] \\simeq K^\\T(M) \\simeq K^\\T(T^*M)\n\t$$\n\t\\old{determine} \\red{is equal to} the $K$-theoretic stable envelope \\red{$Stab^s(F)$.}\n\t\\old{$y^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\dim M_F^+}Stab^s_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}(F)$.}\n\\end{cor}\nIn this section we aim to prove that the stable envelope for \\red{the} trivial slope coincides with the one for \\red{a} sufficiently small anti-ample slope. Namely:\n\\begin{atw} \\label{tw:slo}\n\tLet $M$ be a projective, smooth \\red{A-variety. Suppose that the fixed point set $M^A$ is finite.}\n\tConsider the variety $X=T^*M$ with the action of the torus $\\T=\\C^*\\times A$. \n\tChoose any weight chamber $\\mathfrak{C}$ of the torus $A$ and polarization $T^{1\/2}=TM$.\n\tSuppose that $M$ satisfies the local product condition.\n\tFor any anti-ample $A$-linearisable line bundle $s$ and a sufficiently big integer $n$\\red{, the element}\n\t$$\n\t\\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)}{y^{\\dim M_F^+}} \\in K^A(M)[y,y^{-1}] \\simeq K^\\T(M) \\simeq K^\\T(T^*M)\n\t$$\n\t\\old{determine} \\red{is equal to} the $K$-theoretic stable envelope \\red{$Stab^{\\frac{s}{n}}(F)$.}\n\t\\old{$y^{-\\frac{1}{2}\\dim M_F^+}Stab^s_{\\mathfrak{C},T^{1\/2}}(F)$.}\n\\end{atw}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tTheorem \\ref{tw:mC} implies that the considered \\red{element satisfies} the axioms {\\bf a)} and {\\bf b)} of stable envelope. It is enough to check the axiom {\\bf c)}. Namely for a fixed point $F'\\le F$ we need to show that\n\t$$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) +\\frac{s_{F}-s_{F'}}{n} \\subseteq N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}) -\\{0\\})-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}.$$\n\tNote that a part of theorem \\ref{tw:mC} is an analogous inclusion for the trivial slope. It implies that the point $-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}$ \\red{does not} belong to the Newton polytope of motivic Chern class. The Newton polytope is a closed set\\red{,} thus for \\red{a} small enough vector\n\t $\\vv \\in \\mathfrak{a}^*$ its translation by $\\vv$ also \\red{does not} contain the point $-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}$.\n\tSo it is enough to prove that there exists an integer $n$ such that\n\t$$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) +\\frac{s_{F}-s_{F'}}{n} \\subseteq N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}.$$\n\tMoreover\\red{,} in the course of proof of proposition \\ref{pro:mC} we showed containment of polytopes\n\t $$N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))\\subseteq N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F'}))-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}.$$\n\t Therefore, it is enough to show that for \\red{a} big enough integer $n$ there is an inclusion\n\t $$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) +\\frac{s_{F}-s_{F'}}{n} \\subseteq N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'})).$$\n\t \n\t Consider a lattice polytope $N \\subset \\mathfrak{a}^*$. Define a facet as a codimension one face.\n\t Let integral hyperplane denote an affine subspace of codimension one, spanned by lattice points. Suppose that the whole interior of the polytope $N$ lies on one side of an integral hyperplane $H$. Denote by $E_H$ \\red{half-space}\n\t which is the closure of the component of complement of $H$ which contains the interior of $N$. \n\t \n\t Suppose that the affine span of \\red{a lattice polytope} $N$ is the whole ambient space. For a facet $\\tau$ of $N$\\red{,} let $H_\\tau$ be an integral hyperplane which is the affine span of the face $\\tau$. Note that\n\t $$N=\\bigcap_{\\tau} E_{H_\\tau} $$\n\t where the intersection is indexed by \\red{the set of} codimension one faces. \n\t  \n\t \\red{A} similar argument\n\t can \\red{be}\n\t applied to any\\old{Newton} \\red{lattice} polytope, not necessarily spanning the whole ambient space. Denote by aff$(-)$ the affine span operator.\n\t For any facet $\\tau$ choose an integral hyperplane $H_\\tau$ such that \n\t $$H_\\tau \\cap \\text{aff}(N)=\\text{aff}(\\tau) \\,. $$\n\tThen\n\t$$N=\\text{aff}(N)\\cap \\bigcap_{\\tau} E_{H_\\tau} $$\n\tThus\\red{,} to check containment in the polytope $N$ it is enough to check containment in finitely many integral \\red{half-spaces}\n\t$E_{H_\\tau}$ and \\red{the} affine span of $N$.  We use this observation for $N$ equal to the Newton polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$.\n\t  \n\t  \\red{Let $H$ be an integral hyperplane.} We say that \\red{a} vector\n\t   $\\vv \\in \\mathfrak{a}^*$ points to $E_H$ when addition of $\\vv$ preserves $E_H$. Our strategy of the proof is to show that for an integral hyperplane $H_\\tau$ corresponding to \\red{a} facet\n\t   $\\tau$ of the polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$ at least one of the following conditions holds: \n\t  \\begin{itemize}\n\t  \t\\item The intersection $N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\cap H_\\tau$ is empty.\n\t  \t\\item The vector $s_F-s_{F'}$ points to $E_{H_\\tau}$.\n\t  \\end{itemize}\n  \tMoreover\\red{,} if an integral hyperplane $H$ contains the whole polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$ then the addition of the vector $s_F-s_{F'}$ preserves $H$. \n  \t\n  \tNote that the above facts are sufficient to prove the theorem. Namely proposition \\ref{pro:mC} shows that the polytope $N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)$ is contained \\red{in}\n  \t $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$.\n  \tIt follows that it lies inside $E_{H_\\tau}$ for every facet $\\tau$.\n  \tIf the vector $s_F-s_{F'}$ points to $E_{H_\\tau}$ then for every integer $n \\in \\N$\n  \t$$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)+\\frac{s_{F}-s_{F'}}{n} \\subset E_{H_\\tau} \\red{\\,.} $$\n  \tOn the other hand if the intersection $N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\cap \\red{H_\\tau}$\n  \tis empty then translation of the polytope $N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)$ by a sufficiently small vector still lies in~$E_{H_\\tau}$. There are only finitely many facets of \\red{ the polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$} so\n  \tthere exists \\red{an integer} $n$ such that\n  \t$$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right)+\\frac{s_{F}-s_{F'}}{n} \\subset \\bigcap_{\\tau}E_{H_\\tau}.$$\n  \tMoreover\\red{,} addition of the vector $s_{F}-s_{F'}$ preserves the affine span of $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$. It follows that for \\red{a sufficiently big integer} $n$ the desired inclusion holds.\n  \t\n  \tLet $H \\subset \\mathfrak{a}^*$ be any integral hyperplane. Denote by $\\tilde{H}$ the vector space parallel to $H$ (i.e a hyperplane passing through $0$).\n  \tConsider the one dimensional subspace $$\\mathfrak{h}=ker(\\mathfrak{a} \\onto \\tilde{H}^*).$$\n  \tThe hyperplane $H$ is integral so $\\mathfrak{h}$ corresponds to a one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma_H\\subset A$.\n  \tChoose an isomorphism $\\sigma_H \\simeq \\C^*$ such that the induced map\n  \t$$\\pi_H:\\mathfrak{a}^* \\onto \\mathfrak{a}^*\/\\tilde{H} \\simeq \\mathfrak{h}^* \\simeq \\R,$$\n  \tsends the vectors pointing to\n  \t$E_H$ to \\red{the} non-negative numbers. Thus, the vector $s_F-s_{F'}$ points to $E_H$\n  \tif and only if\n  \t $$\\pi_H(s_F-s_{F'})\\ge0.$$\n  \t\n  \t The \\red{choice of} isomorphism $\\sigma_H \\red{\\simeq} \\C^*$ corresponds to \\red{the} choice of primitive character $\\ttt$  of the torus $\\sigma_H$.\n  \t To study the intersection with hyperplane $H$ we use the limit technique with respect to the torus $\\sigma_H$. We use the definition of limit map from \\cite{Kon} definition 4.1. It is a map defined on a subring of \\red{the} localised K-theory:\n  \t $$\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}: S_A^{-1}K^A(pt)[y,y^{-1}] \\dashrightarrow S_{A\/\\sigma_H}^{-1}K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[y,y^{-1}]\\,.$$\n  \t The multiplicative system $S_A$ (respectively $S_{A\/\\sigma_H}$) \\old{is equal to} \\red{consists of} all nonzero elements of $K^A(pt)$ (respectively $K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)$). We present a sketch of construction of the above map. Choose an isomorphism of tori $A \\simeq \\sigma_H\\times A\/\\sigma_H$. It induces an isomorphism $K^A(pt) \\simeq K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[\\ttt,\\ttt^{-1}]$. Then the limit map is defined on the subring $K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[\\ttt][y,y^{-1}]$ by killing all positive powers of {\\bf t}. For technical details and extension to the localised $K$-theory\n  \t see \\cite{Kon} section~4. \n  \t \n  \t Let $H$ be a hyperplane corresponding to \\red{a} facet of \\red{the} polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'})) \\subset E_H$. Thus (for a more detailed discussion see remark \\ref{rem:lim})\n  \t$$N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\cap H = \\varnothing \\iff\n  \t\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}}{eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'})}=0\\,.$$\n  \tLet $\\tilde{F} \\subset X^{\\sigma_H}$ be a component of the fixed \\red{point} set\n  \t which contains $F'$. Proposition 4.3 and theorem 4.4 from \\cite{Kon} \\red{imply}\n  \t that\n  \t\\begin{multline*}\n  \t\t\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}}{eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'})}=\n  \t\n  \t\t\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}\\left( \\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|\\tilde{F}}}{eu(\\tilde{F}\\to M)\\lambda_{-1}(T^*\\tilde{F})}\\right)_{|F'}= \\\\=\n  \t\n  \t\t\\left(\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|\\tilde{F}}}{eu(\\tilde{F}\\to M)\\lambda_{-1}(T^*\\tilde{F})}\\right)_{|F'}= \n  \t\n  \t\t\\left(\\frac{1}{\\lambda_{-1}(T^*\\tilde{F})}\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|\\tilde{F}}}{eu(\\tilde{F}\\to M)}\\right)_{|F'}= \\\\=\n  \t\n  \t\t\\left(\\frac{mC_{-y}^{A\/\\sigma_{H}}(M^+_F \\cap M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}\n  \t\t\\to \\tilde{F})}{\\lambda_{-1}(T^*\\tilde{F})}\\right)_{|F'}\n  \t\\end{multline*} \n\twhere $M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$ is the positive BB-cell of $\\tilde{F}$ with respect to the torus $\\sigma_H$. It follows that if the intersection $ M^+_F \\cap M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$ is empty then the intersection $N^A\\left(mC_{-y}^A(M^+_F \\to M)_{|F'}\\right) \\cap H$ is also empty.\n\tThe closure of \\red{the} set $M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$ is $A$-equivariant, thus $M^+_F \\cap M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$ can be nonempty only if $F$ belongs to the closure of $M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$.\n\tTo conclude it is enough to prove that $\\pi_H(s_F-s_{F'})\\ge 0$ whenever $F$ belongs to the closure of $M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}$.\n\t\n\tFor $F \\in \\overline{M_{\\tilde{F}}^{\\sigma_H,+}}$ there exist a finite number of points $A_1,...,A_{m-1},B_1,...,B_m \\in M^{\\sigma_H}$ such that\n\t \\begin{itemize}\n\t \t\\item $F=B_1$ and $B_m \\in \\tilde{F}$,\n\t \t\\item for every $i$ points $A_i$ and $B_i$ lies in the same component of \\red{the fixed point set}~$M^{\\sigma_H}$,\n\t \t\\item there exists one dimensional $\\sigma_H$-orbit from point $B_i$ to $A_{i-1}$,\n\t \\end{itemize}\n (see lemma 9 from \\cite{B-B3} for a proof in the case of isolated fixed points). For a fixed point $B \\in M^{\\sigma_H}$ the fiber $s_{|B}$ is a $\\sigma_H$-representation, denote by $\\tilde{s}_B$ its  character.\n \\red{If $B \\in M^A$ then} there is an equality $\\tilde{s}_B=\\pi(s_B)$.\n The \\red{line} bundle $s$ is anti-ample, so its restriction to every one dimensional $\\sigma_H$ orbit is also anti-ample. For every anti-ample line bundle on $\\PP^1$\\red{,}  weight on the repelling fixed point is greater or equal than  weight on the attracting one\\red{.} Thus\n $$\\tilde{s}_{B_i} =\\tilde{s}_{A_{i}} \\ge \\tilde{s}_{B_{i+1}}\\,.$$\n It follows that\n $$\\pi(s_F)=\\tilde{s}_{B_1} \\ge \\tilde{s}_{B_m}=\\pi(s_{F'}).$$\n \n Assume now that an integral hyperplane $H$ contains the whole polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$. Then the torus $\\sigma_H$ acts trivially on the tangent space $\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}$.\n Consider the fixed \\red{point} set\n  component $F_H\\subset M^{\\sigma_H}$ which contains $F$. It is a smooth closed subvariety of $M$ whose tangent space at $F'$ is the whole tangent space $T_{F'}M$. Thus\\red{,} it contains the connected component of $F'$.\n It follows that $\\sigma_H$ weights of $s$ restricted to $F$ and $F'$ coincide, thus $\\pi(s_F-s_{F'})=0$.\n\\end{proof}\n\\red{\n\\begin{rem}\n\t Let $H$ be a hyperplane corresponding to a facet of the polytope $N^A(eu(\\tilde{\\nu}^-_{F'}))$ and let $\\sigma_H\\subset A$ be the corresponding one dimensional subtorus. The  fixed point set $M^{\\sigma_H}$ may be non-isolated.\n\\end{rem}\n}\n\\begin{rem}\n\tThe inequality about weights of \\red{an} anti-ample line bundle on $\\PP^1$ can be checked directly using the fact that all anti-ample line bundles on the projective line $\\PP^1$ are of the form $\\mathcal{O}(n)$ for $n < 0$. It can be also derived from the localization formula in equivariant cohomology and the fact that \\red{the} degree of an anti-ample line bundle on $\\PP^1$ is negative (cf. \\cite{OM} paragraph 3.2.4).\n\\end{rem}\n\n\\begin{rem}\\label{rem:lim}\n\t \\old{Intuitively one can think of the limit map of fraction as considering only this part of classes which corresponds to the last translation of hyperplane which intersects the Newton polytope of denominator. Namely} Consider the subtorus $\\sigma_H \\subset A$, corresponding to some integral hyperplane $H$, with chosen primitive character ${\\bf t}$. The choice of ${\\bf t}$ induces \\red{a} choice of a \\red{half-space}\n\t $E_H$. Consider classes $a,b \\in K^A(pt)$ such that \n\t $$N^A(a), N^A(b) \\subset E_H \\text{ and } N^A(b)\\cap H\\neq \\varnothing.$$\n\t \\red{Intuitively, the limit of fraction $\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}\\frac{a}{b}$ takes into account the parts of classes $a,b$ that correspond to the intersections $N^A(a)\\cap H$ and $N^A(b)\\cap H$. More formally, a} choice\n\t of splitting $A \\simeq \\sigma_H \\times A\/\\sigma_H$ corresponds to a choice of integral character $\\gamma \\in \\mathfrak{a}^*$ \\red{whose} restriction to the subtorus $\\sigma_H$ is equal to {\\bf t}.\n\t There \\red{exists an} integer $m$ such that \\red{$0\\in\\gamma^{m}H$ (thus $\\gamma^{m}H=\\tilde{H}$)}. It follows that under the isomorphism $K^A(pt)\\simeq K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[\\gamma,\\gamma^{-1}]$ we have\n\t $$\\gamma^{m}a,\\gamma^mb \\in K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[\\gamma].$$\n\t Moreover\\red{,} $\\gamma^mb$ has nontrivial coefficient corresponding to $\\gamma^{0}$. It is equal to the part of class $b$\n\t \\red{corresponding}\n\t to the intersection $H\\cap N^A(b)$. Denote by $q$ the projection\n\t $$\\red{q:}K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt)[\\gamma] \\to K^{A\/\\sigma_H}(pt) $$\n\t defined by \\red{$q(\\gamma)=0$.}\n\t It follows that the limit map is defined on the element $\\frac{a}{b}$ as\n\t $$\\lim_{\\ttt\\to 0}\\frac{a}{b}=\\lim_{\\ttt\\to 0}\\frac{\\gamma^ma}{\\gamma^mb}=\\frac{q(\\gamma^ma)}{q(\\gamma^mb)}.$$\n\\end{rem}\n\n\n\\begin{rem}\n\tUsing limit techniques one usually restricts to $K^\\sigma(pt) \\simeq \\Z[\\ttt,\\ttt^{-1}]$ for \\red{a} general enough subtorus $\\sigma$ and then consider limits (cf. \\cite{FRW,SZZ}).\n\tIn our case\\red{,} we consider a chosen subtorus $\\sigma_H$ so we cannot proceed in this manner. It may happen that after restriction to $K^{\\sigma_H}(pt)$ denominator vanishes.\n\\end{rem}\n\n\\red{\\begin{rem}\n\tFor a generalization of theorem \\ref{tw:slo} to the case of arbitrary slope see our next paper \\cite{KonW}.\n\\end{rem}}\n\n\\section{Example: The Projective plane}\nIn this section we aim to illustrate the proof of theorem \\ref{tw:slo} by presenting explicit computations in the case of projective plane. We consider (using notation from theorem~\\ref{tw:slo})\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item The torus $A=(\\C^*)^2$ acting on the projective plane $M=\\PP^2$ by:\n\t$$(t_1,t_2)[x:y:z]=[x:t_1y:t_2z].$$\n\t\\item The weight chamber corresponding to the one dimensional subgroup $\\sigma(t)=(t,t^2).$\n\t\\item The anti-ample line bundle $s=\\mathcal{O}(-1)$ as a slope.\n\t\\item The fixed points $F=[0:1:0]$ and $F'=[0:0:1].$\n\\end{itemize}\nDenote by $\\alpha$ and $\\beta$ characters of the torus $\\T$ given by projections to the first and the second coordinates of $A$, respectively. Local computation leads to formulas:\n\\begin{multicols}{2}\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t&eu(\\nu(F'\\to M))_{|F'}=\\left(1-\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}\\right)(1-\\beta) \\\\\n\t&mC_{-y}(M^+_F\\to M)_{|F'}=(1-y)\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}(1-\\beta) \\\\\n\t&\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}=0 \\\\\n\t&\\vv:=s_{|F}-s_{|F'}=\\frac{\\alpha}{\\beta}\n\t\\end{align*}\n\t\\columnbreak\n\t\\centering\n\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1.25]\n\t\\coordinate (Origin)   at (0,0);\n\t\\coordinate (XAxisMin) at (-2,0);\n\t\\coordinate (XAxisMax) at (1,0);\n\t\\coordinate (YAxisMin) at (0,-1);\n\t\\coordinate (YAxisMax) at (0,2);\n\t\n\t\\draw [thin, black,-latex] (XAxisMin) -- (XAxisMax);\n\t\\draw [thin, black,-latex] (YAxisMin) -- (YAxisMax);\n\t\n\t\\coordinate (B1) at (0,0);\n\t\\coordinate (B2) at (0,1);\n\t\\coordinate (B3) at (-1,2); \n\t\\coordinate (B4) at (-1,1);        \n\n\t\\filldraw[fill=yellow, fill opacity=0.5, draw=yellow, draw opacity = 0] (B1)--(B2)--(B3)--(B4);\n\t\n\t\\foreach \\x in {-2,...,0}{\n\t\t\\node[draw,circle,inner sep=1pt,fill] at (\\x, 0) {};\n\t}\n\t\t\\foreach \\y in {-1,...,1}{\n\t\t\\node[draw,circle,inner sep=1pt,fill] at (0, \\y) {};\n\t}\n\t\\foreach \\x in {-2,...,1}{\n\t\t\\foreach \\y in {-1,...,2}{\n\t\t\t\\node[draw,circle,inner sep=0.5pt,fill] at (\\x,\\y) {};\n\t\t}\n\t}\n\t\n\t\\draw [very thick,blue](B3) -- (B4);\n\t\\draw [very thick,green,-latex](0,0) -- (1,-1);\n\t\\draw[ fill=red]   (0,0) circle (.1);\n\t\\node at (1.25,0.25){$\\alpha$};\n\t\\node at (0.25,2.25){$\\beta$};\n\t\\node[green] at (1,-0.75) {$\\vv$};\t\n\t\\node at (0.25,0.5){$\\tau_1$};\n\t\\node at (-0.5,1.75){$\\tau_2$};\n\t\\node at (-1.25,1.5){$\\tau_3$};\n\t\\node at (-0.5,0.25){$\\tau_4$};\n\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\\end{multicols}\nDenote by $B:=N^A(mC_{-y}(M^+_F\\to M)_{|F'})$ (blue interval), $C=N^A(eu(\\nu(F'\\to M))_{F'})$ (yellow parallelogram) and $D=\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0}=0$ (red point). Denote the facets of polytope $C$ by $\\tau_1,\\tau_2,\\tau_3, \\tau_4$ according to the picture.\n\nTheorem \\ref{tw:mC} implies that the blue interval $B$ is contained in the yellow polytope $C$ and the red point $D$ \\red{does not} belong to the interval $B$.\nIt is enough to prove that for \\red{a} sufficiently big integer $n$\nand every facet $\\tau$\n$$B+\\frac{\\vv}{n}\\subset E_{H_{\\tau}}.$$\nLet's compute\nhalf-planes\nand subtori associated with the facets:\n$$\\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|} \\hline\n\t\\text{facet} & E_{H_\\tau} & \\tilde{H}_\\tau &\\sigma_H\\subset A & \\pi_{H_\\tau} & \\text{character {\\bf t}} \\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\\tau_1 & \\{x\\alpha+y\\beta|x\\le 0\\}&\\red{\\lin}(\\beta)&(t,0)&x\\alpha+y\\beta \\to -x&(t,0)\\to \\frac{1}{t}\\\\\n\t\\tau_2 & \\{x\\alpha+y\\beta|x+y\\le 1\\}&\\red{\\lin}(\\alpha-\\beta)&(t,t)&x\\alpha+y\\beta \\to -x-y&(t,t)\\to \\frac{1}{t}\\\\\n\t\\tau_3 & \\{x\\alpha+y\\beta|x\\ge -1\\}&\\red{\\lin}(\\beta)&(t,0)&x\\alpha+y\\beta \\to x&(t,0)\\to t\\\\\n\t\\tau_4 & \\{x\\alpha+y\\beta|x+y\\ge 0\\}&\\red{\\lin}(\\alpha-\\beta)&(t,t)&x\\alpha+y\\beta \\to x+y&(t,t)\\to t\\\\ \\hline\n\\end{array}$$\n\\red{Where $\\lin$ denotes the linear span.}\n\\red{A} choice\nof splitting $A \\simeq \\sigma_H \\times A\/\\sigma_H$ corresponds to a choice of integral character $\\gamma \\in \\mathfrak{a}^*$\n\\red{whose}\nrestriction to the subtorus $\\sigma_H$ is equal to {\\bf t}. For $\\tau_1$ and $\\tau_3$ let's choose  $\\gamma=\\left(\\frac{\\alpha}{\\beta^2}\\right)^{\\pm 1}.$ It induces a splitting of cohomology $K^A(pt)=\\Z[\\beta,\\beta^{-1}][\\frac{\\alpha}{\\beta^2},\\frac{\\beta^2}{\\alpha}].$ Using this splitting we can compute limits\n\\begin{align*}\n\t&\\tau_1: \\ \\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}(1-y) \\frac{\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}{1-\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}=\n\t(1-y)\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{\\frac{\\beta^2}{\\alpha}}{\\beta-\\frac{\\beta^2}{\\alpha}}=(1-y)\\frac{0}{\\beta}=0 \\red{\\,,} \\\\\n\t&\\tau_3: \\ \\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}(1-y) \\frac{\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}{1-\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}=\n\t(1-y)\\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0} \\frac{\\frac{1}{\\beta}}{\\frac{\\alpha}{\\beta^2}-\\frac{1}{\\beta}}=(1-y)\\frac{\\frac{1}{\\beta}}{-\\frac{1}{\\beta}}=y-1 \\red{\\,.}\n\\end{align*}\n\t For $\\tau_2$ and $\\tau_4$ let's choose $\\gamma=\\alpha^{\\pm 1}$. It induces a splitting $K^A(pt)=\\Z[\\frac{\\alpha}{\\beta},\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}][\\alpha,\\alpha^{-1}]$ (the character $\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}$ is a basis of $\\tilde{H}_\\tau$) and\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t &\\tau_2,\\tau_4: \\lim_{\\ttt \\to 0}(1-y) \\frac{\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}{1-\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}=\n\t (1-y)\\frac{\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}{1-\\frac{\\beta}{\\alpha}}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\t \\red{These}\n\t calculations imply\\old{the fact} that  \n\t $$B\\cap\\tau_i \\neq \\varnothing \\iff i\\in\\{2,3,4\\}.$$\n\t We want to show that \\red{the} addition of the vector $\\vv$ preserves\n\t half-plane\n\t $E_{H_{\\tau}}$ for these three facets by proving that\n\t$$\\pi_{H_{\\tau_i}}(\\vv) \\ge 0 \\text{ for } i \\in \\{2,3,4\\}. $$ \n\tFor $\\tau_2,\\tau_4$ the points $F',F$ \\red{belong} to the same fixed \\red{point} set\n\tcomponent of the torus~$\\sigma_{H}$. It implies that $\\pi_{H}(\\vv)=0$\\red{. This} agrees with direct computation\n\t$$\\pi_{H}(\\vv)=\\pi_H(\\alpha-\\beta)=\\pm(1+(-1))=0.$$\n\tMoreover\\red{,} for $\\tau_3$ there is one dimensional $\\sigma_H$-orbit $[0:x:y]$ from $F$ to $F'$. It implies that $\\pi_{H_{\\tau_3}}(\\vv)>0$\\red{. This} agrees with direct computation\n\t$$\\pi_{H_{\\tau_3}}(\\vv)=\\pi_{H_{\\tau_3}}(\\alpha-\\beta)=1.$$\n\tTo conclude, for every $n \\in \\N$ the interval $B+\\frac{\\vv}{n}$ is contained in the intersection of\n\thalf-planes\n\t $\\bigcap_{i=2}^4E_{H_{\\tau_i}}$. Moreover\\red{,} it is also contained in $E_{H_{\\tau_1}}$ for \\red{a} sufficiently big integer~$n$.\n\t\n\\section{Appendix \\red{A}: uniqueness of the stable envelopes} \\label{s:Ok}\nIn \\cite{OS,O2} the stable envelope was defined for \\red{an} action of a reductive group $G$. In this appendix we show that for the group $G$ equal to a torus and a general enough slope our definition \\ref{df:env} of the stable envelope coincides with\\old{the} Okounkov's\\old{one}. Moreover\\red{,} we prove the uniqueness of stable envelopes for an arbitrary slope.\n\n\t\\red{We use the notations and assumptions from the beginning of section \\ref{s:env}.} According to \\cite{OS,O2} the stable envelope is a map $$K^\\T(X^A) \\to K^\\T(X)$$ given by a correspondence\n\t$$Stab \\in K^\\T(X^A\\times X) \\,,$$\n\twhich \\red{satisfies} three properties (cf. \\cite{O2} paragraph 9.1.3).\n\tFor a $\\T$-variety $X$ and a finite set  $F$ \\red{(with the trivial $\\T$-action)} any map of $K^\\T(pt)$ modules\n\t$$f: K^\\T(F) \\to K^\\T(X)$$\n\tis determined by a correspondence $G \\in K^\\T(F\\times X)$ such that for any $x\\in F$\n\t$$G_{x\\times X}=f(1_{x}).$$\n\tBelow we denote  both morphism and correspondence by $Stab$. The main ingredient in\\old{the} Okounkov's definition are attracting sets. For a one parameter subgroup $\\sigma:\\C^*\\to A$ it is defined as (cf. \\cite{OS} paragraph 2.1.3, \\cite{O2} paragraph 9.1.2):\n\t$$Attr=\\{(y,x) \\in X^A \\times X|\\lim_{t\\to 0}\\sigma(t)x=y\\}  \\,. $$\n\tMoreover\\red{,} for \\red{a fixed point $F\\in X^A$} we define\n\t$$Attr(F)=\\{x|\\lim_{t\\to 0}x\\in F\\} \\subset X \\,.$$\n\tThe straightforward comparison of definitions shows that the attracting sets coincide with the BB-cells\n\t$$Attr(F)=X_F^+ \\,.$$\n\t\\old{Moreover in the case of isolated fixed points we have\n\t$Attr=\\bigsqcup_{F \\in X^\\T} F \\times X_F^+ \\,.$}\t\n\n{\\bf Support condition:} (paragraph 2.1.1 from \\cite{OS},\nparagraph 9.1.3 point 1 from \\cite{O2}\nand theorem 3.3.4 point (i) of \\cite{OM})\nIn\\old{the} Okounkov's papers it is required that\n$$\\supp (Stab) \\subset \\bigsqcup_{F \\in X^\\red{A}}\n\\left(F\\times \\bigsqcup_{F'<F}Attr(F') \\right) \\,,$$\nwhich means exactly that for any fixed point $F \\in X^A$\n$$\\supp(Stab(1_F)) \\subset \n\\bigsqcup_{F'<F}Attr(F')\\,.$$\nThe attracting sets coincide with the BB-cells, so this is \\red{an} equivalent formulation\n of the axiom {\\bf a)}.\n\n\n{\\bf Normalization condition:}  (paragraph 2.1.4 from \\cite{OS}, paragraph 9.1.5 from \\cite{O2})\n Consider any fixed point $F \\in X^\\red{A}$.\n In\\old{the} Okounkov's papers it is required that the correspondence $Stab \\in K^\\T(X^\\red{A}\\times X)$\n inducing the stable envelope morphism \\red{satisfies}\n$$Stab_{|F\\times F}=(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{>0}}\\left(\\frac{\\det \\nu^-_F}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,\\neq0}}\\right)^{1\/2} \\otimes \\mathcal{O}_{Attr}|_{F\\times F} \\red{\\,.}$$\nAfter substitutions\n\\begin{align*}\n&\\mathcal{O}_{Attr}|_{F\\times F}=\\mathcal{O}_{\\diag F} \\otimes eu(\\nu_F^-) \\red{\\,,} \\\\\n& \\frac{\\det \\nu^-_F}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,\\neq0}}= h^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{>0}}\\left(\\frac{1}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}\\right)^2\n\\end{align*}\n\\red{as} noted in  paragraph 2.1.4 of \\cite{OS} we obtain\n$$Stab_{|F\\times F}=\neu(\\nu^-_F)\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}} \\otimes h^{\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}\\otimes \\mathcal{O}_{\\diag F}.$$\nChanging correspondence to a morphism we get an equivalent condition\n$$Stab(1_F)_{|F}=\neu(\\nu^-_F)\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}} h^{\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{F,>0}}\\,,$$\nwhich is exactly our axiom {\\bf b)}.\n\n\n{\\bf Smallness condition:} (paragraph 2.1.6 from \\cite{OS}, paragraph 9.1.9 from \\cite{O2})\nIn the case of isolated fixed points\\red{,} the last axiom of stable envelope from\\old{the} Okounkov's papers states that for any pair of fixed points $F_1,F_2 \\in X^A$ \n $$N^A\\left(Stab_{|F_1\\times F_2}\\otimes s_{|F_1}\\right) \\subseteq\n N^A\\left(Stab_{|F_2\\times F_2}\\otimes s_{|F_2}\\right).$$\n The support condition implies that this requirement is nontrivial only when $F_1 > F_2.$ Changing correspondence to a morphism we get an equivalent form\n $$\n N^A\\left(Stab(1_{F_1})_{|F_2}\\right) +s_{|F_1} \\subseteq\n N^A\\left(Stab(1_{F_2})_{|F_2}\\right) + s_{|F_2}.\n $$\n \\old{Replace $Stab(1_{F_2})_{|F_2}$ by its value determined by the normalization condition.}\n \\red{The normalization axiom implies that\n $$N^A\\left(Stab(1_{F_2})_{|F_2}\\right)=N^A\\left(eu(\\nu^-_{F_2})\\frac{(-1)^{\\rank T^{1\/2}_{{F_2},>0}}}{\\det T^{1\/2}_{{F_2},>0}} h^{\\frac{1}{2}\\rank T^{1\/2}_{{F_2},>0}}\\right) \\,. $$}\n Note that the torus $A$ preserves the symplectic form $\\omega$, thus multiplication by $h$ \\red{does not} change Newton polytope $N^A$. Thus, we get an equivalent formulation\n $$N^A\\left(Stab(1_{F_1})_{|F_2}\\right)+s_{|F_1}\n \\subseteq\n N^A\\left(eu(\\nu^-_{F_2})\\right) -\\det T^{1\/2}_{F_2,>0} +s_{|F_2},$$\n which is very similar to the axiom {\\bf c)}. The only difference is that we additionally require\n $$-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F_2,>0} +s_{|F_2} \\notin N^A\\left(Stab(1_{F_1})_{|F_2}\\right)+s_{|F_1} .$$\n For a general enough slope this requirement automatically holds because \\red{the point}\n $$-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F_2,>0} +s_{|F_2}-s_{|F_1}$$\n is a vertex of polytope which \\red{is not} a lattice point.\n \\red{The} addition of this assumption is \\red{necessary} to acquire uniqueness of the stable envelopes for all slopes.\n \n\n\t\\begin{ex} \\label{ex:uni}\n\tConsider the variety $X=T^*\\PP^1$ \\red{equipped} with the action of the torus $\\T=\\C^*\\times A$ where $A$ is the one dimensional torus acting on $\\PP^1$ by\n\t$$\\alpha[a:b]=[\\alpha a:b]$$\n\tand $\\C^*$ acts on the fibers by scalar multiplication. Denote by $\\alpha$ and $y$ characters of $\\T$ corresponding to projections to the tori $A$ and $\\C^*$. The action of the torus $\\T$ has two fixed points $\\ee_1=[1:0]$ and $\\ee_2=[0:1]$. \n\tThe variety $X$ satisfies \\red{the} condition~$(\\star)$ in a trivial way.\n\t\n\tConsider the stable envelope for the positive weight chamber (such that $\\alpha$ is \\old{a} positive), the tangent bundle $T\\PP^1$ as polarization and the trivial line bundle \\red{$\\theta$} as a slope. \n\tIf we omit the point zero in the axiom {\\bf c)} then both\n\t$$Stab^\\red{\\theta}(\\ee_1)=1-O(-1), \\ Stab^\\red{\\theta}(\\ee_2)=\\frac{1}{y}- \\frac{O(-1)}{\\alpha}$$\n\tand $$Stab^\\red{\\theta}(\\ee_1)=1-O(-1), \\ Stab^\\red{\\theta}(\\ee_2)=\\frac{O(-1)}{y}- \\frac{O(-2)}{\\alpha}$$\n\t\\red{satisfy} the axioms of stable envelope.\n\\end{ex}\n\nThe rest of this appendix is devoted to the proof of uniqueness of the stable envelope (proposition \\ref{pro:uniq}).\nFor \\red{a} general enough slope it was proved in proposition 9.2.2 of \\cite{O2}. For the sake of completeness\\red{,} we present it with all necessary technical details omitted in the original.\nThe proof is a generalisation of the proof of uniqueness of cohomological envelopes (paragraph 3.3.4 in \\cite{OM}).\nWe need the following lemma.\n\\begin{alemat} \\label{lem:uniq}\n\tChoose a set of vectors $l_F \\in \\Hom(A,\\C^*)\\otimes \\Q$ indexed by \\red{the fixed point set $X^A$.}\n\tSuppose that an element $a \\in K^\\T(X)$ satisfies conditions\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item $\\supp(a) \\subset \\bigsqcup_{F\\in X^\\red{A}} X^+_F$\\red{,}\n\t\t\\item\t\t\\red{for any fixed point $F\\in X^A$ we have containment of the Newton polytopes}\n\t\t\t$$N^A(a_{|F}) \\subseteq \\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F}))\\setminus \\{0\\}\\right)+l_F \\,.$$\t\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\tThen $a=0$.\n\\end{alemat}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tWe proceed by induction on the partially ordered set $X^A$. \n\tSuppose that the element $a$ is supported on the closed set $Y=\\bigsqcup_{F\\in Z} X^+_F$ for some subset $Z\\subset X^\\red{A}$. Choose a BB-cell $X^+_{F_1}$, corresponding to fixed point $F_1 \\in X^A$, which is an open subvariety of $Y$. We aim to show that $a$ is supported on the closed subset $\\bigsqcup_{F\\in (Z-F_1)} X^+_F$. By induction it implies that $a=0$. \\\\\n\tChoose an open subset $U \\subset X$ such that $U \\cap Y =X^+_{F_1}$. Consider the diagram \n\t$$\n\t\\xymatrix{\n\t\t& U \\ar[r]^i & X \\\\\n\t\tF_1 \\ar[r]^{s_0} & X^+_{F_1} \\ar[u]^{\\tilde{j}} \\ar[r]^{\\tilde{i}} & Y \\ar[u]^{j}\n\t}\n\t$$\n\tThe square in the diagram is \\red{a} pullback. The BB-cells are smooth\\red{,} locally closed subvarieties, so the map $\\tilde{j}$ is an inclusion of \\red{a} smooth subvariety.\n\tThere exist an element $\\alpha \\in G^\\T(Y) $ such that $j_*(\\alpha)=a$. \n\tIt follows that:\n\t$$ a_{|F_1}=(j_*\\alpha)_{|F_1}=\n\t\\red{s_0^*}\\tilde{j}^*i^*j_*\\alpha=\n\t\\red{s_0^*}\\tilde{j}^*\\tilde{j}_*\\tilde{i}^* \\alpha = eu(\\nu_{F_1}^-) \\alpha_{|F_1},$$\n\twhich implies\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{wyr:i1}\n\tN^A(eu(\\nu_{F_1}^-) \\alpha_{|F_1}) =N^A(a_{|F_1}) \\subseteq\n\t\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F_1}))\\setminus \\{0\\}\\right) +l_{F_1}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\tAssume that $\\alpha_{|F_1}$ is a nonzero element. Then the Newton polytope $N^A(\\alpha_{|F_1})$ is nonempty. The ring $K^{\\T\/A}(F_1)$ is a domain so  proposition \\ref{lem:New} (b) implies that\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{wyr:i2}\n\tN^A\\left(eu(\\nu^-_{F_1})\\right) \\subseteq\n\tN^A\\left(eu(\\nu_{F_1}^-)\\right) +N^A(\\alpha_{|F_1})=\n\tN^A\\left(eu(\\nu_{F_1}^-) \\alpha_{|F_1}\\right).\n\t\\end{align}\n\t\\old{In the case of non isolated fixed points one need to use proposition \\ref{lem:New} (c) for the class $eu(\\nu^-_{F_1})$ (see remark \\ref{rem:N}).} The inclusions (\\ref{wyr:i1}) and (\\ref{wyr:i2}) imply that\n\t$$N^A\\left(eu(\\nu^-_{F_1})\\right)\\subseteq\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{F_1}))\\setminus \\{0\\}\\right) +l_{F_1} \\,. $$\n\tBut no polytope can be translated into a proper subset of itself. This contradiction proves that the element $\\alpha_{|F_1}$ is equal to zero. The map $s_0$ is a section of an affine bundle \n\tso it induces an isomorphism \\red{of} the algebraic $K$-theory. It follows that $\\alpha_{|X^+_{F_1}}=0$. Thus\\red{,}\n\tthe element $\\alpha$ is supported on the closed set $\\bigsqcup_{F\\in (Z-F_1)} X^+_F$. It follows that $a$ is also supported on this set.  \n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of proposition \\ref{pro:uniq}]\n\tLet $\\{Stab(F)\\}_{F\\in X^A} $ and $\\{\\widetilde{Stab}(F)\\}_ {F\\in X^A}$ be two sets of elements satisfying the axioms of stable envelope. It is enough to show that for any \\red{fixed point $F\\in X^A$} the element $Stab(F)-\\widetilde{Stab}(F)$\n\tsatisfies conditions of lemma  \\ref{lem:uniq} for  the set of vectors\n\t$$l_{F'}= s_{F'}-s_F-\\det T^{1\/2}_{F',>0} .$$\n\tThe support condition follows from the axiom {\\bf {a)}}.\n\tLet's focus on the second condition. The only nontrivial case  is $F'< F$. In the other cases the axioms {\\bf {a)}} and {\\bf {b)}} imply that\n\t$$Stab(F)_{\\red{|F'}} -\\widetilde{Stab}(F)_{\\red{|F'}}=0.$$\n\tWhen $F'< F$ the axiom {\\bf {c)}} implies that the Newton polytopes $N^\\red{A}(Stab(F)_{\\red{|F'}})$ and $N^\\red{A}(\\widetilde{Stab}(F)_{\\red{|F'}})$ are contained in the convex set (cf. proposition \\ref{lem:ver})\n\t$$\\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{\\red{F'}}))\\setminus \\{0\\}\\right)+l_\\red{F'}.$$\n\tThus\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\tN^\\red{A}\\left(Stab(F)_{\\red{|F'}}-\\widetilde{Stab}(F)_{\\red{|F'}}\\right) \\subseteq&\n\tconv\\left(N^\\red{A}(Stab(F)_{\\red{|F'}}),N^\\red{A}(\\widetilde{Stab}(F)_{\\red{|F'}})\\right) \\\\\n\t\\subseteq& \\left(N^A(eu(\\nu^-_{\\red{F'}}))\\setminus \\{0\\}\\right)+l_\\red{F'} \\,.\n\t\\end{align*}  \n\\end{proof}\n\\red{\n\\begin{rem}\n\tIn this paper we always assume that the fixed point set $X^A$ is finite. In the case of nonisolated fixed points, our definition \\ref{def:ele} is not equivalent to Okounkov's definition. For a component of the fixed point set $F\\subset X^A$, the morphism\n\t$$K^\\T(F)\\to K^\\T(X)$$\n\t is not determined by its value on the element $1_F$. However, even in this case,  there is at most one element satisfying the axioms of definition \\ref{def:ele}. The proofs of analogues of proposition \\ref{pro:uniq} and lemma \\ref{lem:uniq} are almost identical to those presented above. The only difference is that the ring $K^\\T(F)$ may not be a domain. Thus, in the proof of lemma \\ref{lem:uniq}, one needs to use proposition \\ref{lem:New} (c) (for the class $eu(\\nu^-_{F_1})$, see remark \\ref{rem:N}) instead  of \\ref{lem:New} (b).\n\\end{rem}\n}\n\\section{Appendix \\red{B}: The local product property of Schubert cells} \\label{s:G\/P}\nLet $G$ be \\red{a} reductive, complex Lie group\nwith chosen maximal torus $\\T$ and Borel subgroup $B^+$. Any one dimensional subtorus $\\sigma \\subset \\T$ induces a linear functional $$\\varphi_\\sigma:\\mathfrak{t}^* \\to \\C.$$ For a general enough subtorus $\\sigma$ \nwe can assume that no roots belong to the kernel of this functional. Consider the Borel subgroups $B_\\sigma^+$ such that the corresponding Lie algebra is \\red{the} union of these weight spaces whose characters are positive with respect to $\\varphi_\\sigma$. Denote its unipotent subgroup by $U_\\sigma^+$. Analogously one can define groups $B_\\sigma^-$ and $U_\\sigma^-$.\n\nFor a parabolic group $B^+ \\subset P \\subset G$ consider the BB-decomposition of the variety $G\/P$ with respect to the torus $\\sigma$.\nIt is a classical fact that\nthe positive (respectively negative) BB-cells\nare the orbits of  group $B_\\sigma^+$ (respectively $B_\\sigma^-$).\nWe prove that the stratification of $G\/P$ by BB-cells of the torus $\\sigma$ behaves like a product in a neighbourhood of a fixed point of the torus $\\T$ (see definition \\ref{df:prd}).\n\\begin{atw}\\label{tw:prod}\n\tConsider the situation described above.\nAny fixed point $x \\in(G\/P)^\\T$ has an open neighbourhood $U$ such that:\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item There exist a $\\T$-equivariant isomorphism $$\\theta: U \\simeq \\left(U\\cap (G\/P)_x^+\\right)\\times \\left(U\\cap (G\/P)_x^-\\right)  $$\n\t\t\\item For any fixed point $y \\in(G\/P)^\\T$ the isomorphism $\\theta$ induces isomorphism:\n\t\t$$U\\cap (G\/P)_y^+ \\simeq \\left(U\\cap (G\/P)_x^+\\right)\\times \\left(U\\cap (G\/P)_x^- \\cap (G\/P)_y^+\\right)$$\n\t\\end{enumerate}\t\n\\end{atw}\nIn the course of proof we use the following interpretation of classical notions of the theory of Lie groups in the language of BB-decomposition. Note that we consider BB-cells in smooth quasi-projective varieties.\n\\begin{alemat} \\label{lem:BorABB}\n\tConsider \\red{the} action\n\tof the torus $\\sigma$ on the group $G$ defined by conjugation. Denote by $F$ the component of the fixed \\red{point} set\n\twhich contains the identity. For a subset $Y\\subset F$ we use abbreviations\n\t$$G^+_Y=\\{x\\in G| \\lim_{t\\to 0}x\\in Y\\} \\text{ and } G^-_Y=\\{x\\in G| \\lim_{t\\to \\infty}x\\in Y\\}$$\n\tfor the fibers of projections $G^+_F\\to F$ and $G^-_F\\to F$ over $Y$.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item The Borel subgroup $B_\\sigma^+$ (respectively $B_\\sigma^-$) is the positive (respectively negative) BB-cell of the maximal torus $\\T$ i.e.\n\t\t$$B_\\sigma^+=G^+_\\T\\,.$$\n\t\t\\item The unipotent subgroup $U_\\sigma^+$ (respectively $U_\\sigma^-$) is the positive (respectively negative) BB-cell of the identity element i.e.\n\t\t$$U_\\sigma^+=G^+_{id}\\,.$$\n\t\\end{enumerate} \n\\end{alemat}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tWe prove only the first case for the positive Borel subgroup. \\red{The} other cases\n\tare analogous.\n\tIt is enough to show that $G^+_\\T$ is a connected subgroup of $G$ whose Lie algebra coincides with the Lie algebra of $B_\\sigma^+$.\n\t\n\tThe variety $G^+_\\T$ is a subgroup because the maximal torus $\\T$ is a group and \\red{the} limit \\red{map}  preserves multiplication. Namely for $g,h\\in G^+_\\T$ such that\n\t$\\lim_{t\\to 0} g=a \\in \\T$ and $\\lim_{t\\to 0} h=b \\in \\T$\n\tit is true that\n\t$$\\lim_{t\\to 0} g^{-1}h=a^{-1}b \\in \\T. $$\n\tThe variety $G^+_\\T$ is connected because the maximal torus $\\T$ is connected.\n\tSo it is enough to compute the tangent space to $G^+_\\T$ at identity. The exponent map is an isomorphism in some neighbourhood of zero so we can limit ourselves to computation in the Lie algebra $\\mathfrak{g}$.\n\tThe action of \\red{the} torus $\\sigma$ on $\\mathfrak{g}$ is given by differentiation of the action on $G$.\n\tThe tangent space $T_0G^+_\\T$ is equal to the BB-cell $\\mathfrak{g}^+_\\mathfrak{t}$.\n\tConsider \\red{the} weight decomposition $$\\mathfrak{g}=\\bigoplus_{h\\in \\mathfrak{t}^*} V_h.$$\n\tDifferentiation of the action of $\\sigma$ on $\\mathfrak{g}$ is equal to the Lie bracket so\n\t$$\\mathfrak{g}_\\mathfrak{t}^+=\\bigoplus_{h\\in \\mathfrak{t}^*, \\varphi_\\sigma(h) \\ge 0} V_h. $$\n\t\\red{This}\n\tis exactly the tangent space to the Borel subgroup $B_\\sigma^+$. \n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of the theorem \\ref{tw:prod}]\n\tNote that the Weyl group acts transitively on \\red{the fixed point set $(G\/P)^\\T$.}\n\tThus\\red{,} replacing the torus $\\sigma$ by its conjugate by a Weyl group element we may assume that a fixed point $x$ is equal to the class of identity.\n\t\n\tDenote the Lie algebra  of the parabolic subgroup $P$ by $\\mathfrak{p} \\subset \\mathfrak{g}$. Denote by $\\mathfrak{u}_P$ the Lie subalgebra consisting of the root spaces which \\red{do not} belong to $\\mathfrak{p}$. Let $U_P$ be \\red{the}\n\tcorresponding Lie group.\n\t The group $U_P$ is unipotent (as a subgroup of the unipotent group $U^-$). Consider the action of \\red{the} torus\n\t $\\T$ on $U_P$ by conjugation. Let's note two facts from the theory of Lie groups.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item $U_P$ is isomorphic to its complex Lie algebra as a complex $\\T$-variety (cf. paragraph 15.3b from \\cite{Bor}, or paragraph 8.0 from \\cite{Unip}). \\label{1}\n\t\t\\item The quotient map $G \\to G\/P$ induces $\\T$-equivariant isomorphism from $U_P$ to some open neighbourhood of identity.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\tChoose $U_P$ as a neighbourhood $U$ of identity.\n\tThe second observation and \\red{the} second point of lemma \\ref{lem:BorABB} \\red{imply} that:\n\t$$ X_+:=U_P \\cap (G\/P)_{id}^+ \\simeq U_P \\cap G_{id}^+ \\simeq U_P \\cap U_\\sigma^+ \\red{\\,,}$$\n\tanalogously\n\t$$ X_-:=U_P \\cap (G\/P)_{id}^- \\simeq U_P \\cap U_\\sigma^-.$$\n\tBoth \\red{isomorphisms} are given by the quotient morphism $G \\to G\/P$.  We define morphism \n\t$$\\theta: X_+ \\times X_- \\to U_P $$\n\tas multiplication in $U_P$. We aim to prove that this is an isomorphism. We start by showing injectivity on points. Both varieties $X_+$ and $X_-$ are subgroups of $U_P$. So to prove injectivity it is enough to show that $X_+ \\cap X_- =\\{id\\}$. But $X_+$ is contained in the positive unipotent group and $X_-$ in the negative unipotent group, so their intersection must be trivial. \n\t\n\tAs a variety $U_P$ is isomorphic to an affine space - its Lie algebra $\\mathfrak{u}_P$. The induced action of $\\T$ on the linear space $\\mathfrak{u}_P$ is linear - it is \\red{a} part of the adjoint representation of $G$.\n\tIt follows that both  $X_+$ and $X_-$ are BB-cells of \\red{a} linear action on a linear space and therefore linear subspaces. Thus\\red{,} the product $X_+\\times X_-$ is isomorphic to \\red{an} affine space of dimension equal to dimension of $U_P$.\n\tThus\\red{,} the map $\\theta$ is an algebraic endomorphism of an affine space which is injective on points. The Ax\u2013Grothendieck theorem (cf. \\cite[Theorem 10.4.11.]{Ax,Gro})\n\timplies that it is bijective on points.\n\tAffine space is smooth and connected so the Zariski main theorem (cf. \\cite[Theorem 4.4.3]{EGA3.1})\n\t implies that $\\theta$ is an algebraic isomorphism.\n\t \n\t To prove the second property it is enough to show the containment\n\t $$\\theta\\left(X_+ \\times (U_P\\cap (G\/P)_y^+)\\right) \\subset (G\/P)_y^+,$$\n\t for any fixed point $y$. Note that\n\t $$X_+ \\subset U_\\sigma^+\\subset B_\\sigma^+.$$\n\t Moreover\\red{,} the BB-cell $(G\/P)_y^+$  is an orbit of the group $B_\\sigma^+$ and the morphism $\\theta$ coincides with the action of $B_\\sigma^+$. So the desired inclusion holds.  \n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{rem}\n\tOne can show alternatively that $X_-$ and $X_+$ are isomorphic to affine spaces using theorem 1.5 of \\cite{JeSi}. It is also possible to omit the Ax-Grothendieck theorem by using classical results of the theory of Lie groups. Namely lemma 17 from \\cite{Stei} implies that the map $\\theta$ is bijective.\n\\end{rem}\n\n \t\t\n\\newcommand{\\etalchar}[1]{$^{#1}$}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\\label{sec1}\n\nMany illnesses show heterogeneous response to treatment. For\nexample, a study on schizophrenia \\cite{ishigooka2001} found that\npatients who take the same antipsychotic (olanzapine) may have very\ndifferent responses. Some may have to discontinue the treatment due\nto serious adverse events and\/or acutely worsened symptoms, while\nothers may experience few if any adverse events and have improved\nclinical outcomes. Results of this type have motivated\nresearchers to advocate the individualization of treatment to each\npatient \\cite{lesko2007,piquette2007,insel2009}. One step in this\ndirection is to estimate each patient's risk level and then match\ntreatment to risk category \\cite{cai2008,cai2010}. However, this\napproach is best used to decide whether to treat; otherwise it\nassumes the knowledge of the best treatment for each risk category.\nAlternately, there is an abundance of literature\nfocusing on predicting each patient's prognosis\nunder a particular treatment \\cite{feldstein1978,stoehlmacher2004}.\nThus, an obvious way to individualize treatment is to recommend the\ntreatment achieving the best predicted prognosis for that patient. In\ngeneral, the goal is to use data to construct individualized treatment rules\nthat, if implemented in future, will optimize\nthe mean response.\n\n\nConsider data from a single stage randomized trial involving\nseveral active treatments. A first natural procedure to construct the\noptimal individualized treatment rule is to maximize an empirical\nversion of the mean response over a class of treatment rules (assuming\nlarger responses are preferred). As will be seen, this maximization\nis computationally difficult because the mean response of a\ntreatment rule is the expectation of a weighted indicator that is\nnoncontinuous and nonconcave in the parameters. To address this\nchallenge, we make a substitution. That is, instead of directly maximizing\nthe empirical mean response to estimate the treatment rule, we\nuse a two-step procedure that first estimates a\nconditional mean and then from this estimated conditional mean derives the\nestimated treatment rule. As will be seen in Section \\ref\n{sec:relation}, even if the optimal treatment rule is contained in the\nspace of treatment rules considered by the substitute two-step\nprocedure, the estimator derived from the two-step procedure may not be\nconsistent.\nHowever, if the conditional mean is modeled correctly, then\nthe two-step procedure consistently estimates the optimal\nindividualized treatment rule.\nThis\nmotivates consideration of rich conditional mean models with many\nunknown parameters.\nFurthermore, there\nare frequently many pretreatment variables that may or may not be\nuseful in constructing an optimal individualized treatment rule, yet\ncost and interpretability considerations imply that\nfewer rather than more variables should be used by the treatment\nrule. This consideration motivates the use of $l_1$-penalized least\nsquares ($l_1$-PLS).\n\nWe propose to estimate an optimal individualized treatment rule using\na~two step procedure that first estimates the conditional mean response\nusing $l_1$-PLS with a rich linear model and second, derives the\nestimated treatment rule from estimated conditional mean.\nFor brevity, throughout, we call the two step procedure the $l_1$-PLS method.\nWe\nderive several finite sample upper bounds on the difference between\nthe mean response to the optimal treatment rule and the mean\nresponse to the estimated treatment rule. All of the\nupper bounds hold even if our linear model for the conditional mean\nresponse is incorrect and\nto our knowledge are, up to constants, the best available.\nWe use the upper bounds in Section~\\ref{sec:relation} to illuminate the\npotential\nmismatch between using least squares in the two-step procedure and the\ngoal of\nmaximizing the mean response.\nThe\nupper bounds in Section~\\ref{sec:finaloracle} involve a minimized sum\nof the approximation error and estimation\nerror; both errors result from the estimation of the conditional mean response.\nWe shall see that $l_1$-PLS estimates a linear model that minimizes\nthis approximation plus estimation error sum among a set of suitably\nsparse linear models.\n\nIf the part of the model for the conditional mean\ninvolving the treatment effect is correct, then the upper bounds imply\nthat, although a surrogate two-step procedure is used, the estimated\ntreatment rule is consistent. The upper bounds provide a convergence\nrate as well. Furthermore, in this\nsetting, the upper bounds can be used to inform how\nto choose the tuning parameter involved in the $l_1$ penalty to\nachieve the best rate of convergence. As a~by-product,\nthis paper also contributes to existing literature on $l_1$-PLS\nby providing a finite sample prediction error\nbound for the $l_1$-PLS estimator in the random design setting without\nassuming the model class contains or is close to the true model.\n\n\nThe paper is organized as follows. In Section \\ref{sec:prelim}, we\nformulate the decision making problem. In Section\n\\ref{sec:relation}, for any given decision, that is, individualized\ntreatment rule, we relate the reduction in mean response to the excess\nprediction error. In Section \\ref{sec:lasso}, we estimate an optimal\nindividualized treatment rule via\n$l_1$-PLS and provide a finite sample upper\nbound on the reduction in mean response achieved by the estimated rule.\nIn Section \\ref{sec:data}, we consider a data dependent tuning\nparameter selection criterion. This method is evaluated using\nsimulation studies and illustrated with data from the\nNefazodone-CBASP trial \\cite{keller2000}. Discussions and future\nwork are presented in Section \\ref{sec:discussion}.\n\n\\section{Individualized treatment rules} \\label{sec:prelim}\nWe use upper case letters to denote random variables and lower case\nletters to denote values of the random variables. Consider data from\na randomized trial. On each subject, we have the pretreatment\nvariables $X\\in\\mathcal{X}$, treatment $A$ taking values in a\nfinite, discrete treatment space~$\\mathcal{A}$, and a real-valued\nresponse $R$ (assuming large values are desirable). An\n\\textit{individualized treatment rule} (ITR) $d$ is a deterministic\ndecision rule from $\\mathcal{X}$ into the treatment space\n$\\mathcal{A}$.\n\nDenote the distribution of $(X,A,R)$ by $P$. This is the\ndistribution of the clinical trial data; in particular, denote the\nknown randomization distribution of $A$ given $X$ by $p(\\cdot|X)$.\nThe likelihood of\n$(X,A,R)$ under $P$ is then $f_0(x)p(a|x)f_1(r|x,a)$, where $f_0$ is\nthe unknown density of\n$X$ and $f_1$ is the unknown density of $R$ conditional on $(X,A)$.\nDenote the expectations with respect to the distribution $P$ by an\n$E$.\nFor any ITR $d\\dvtx\n\\mathcal{X}\\rightarrow\\mathcal{A}$, let $P^d$ denote the\ndistribution of $(X,A,R)$ in which $d$ is used to assign treatments.\nThen the likelihood of $(X,A,R)$ under $P^{d}$ is\n$f_0(x)1_{a=d(x)}f_1(r|x,a)$. Denote\nexpectations with respect to the distribution $P^d$ by an $E^d$. The\n\\textit{Value} of~$d$ is defined as $V(d)\\triangleq E^d(R)$. An \\textit{optimal\nITR}, $d_0$, is a rule that has the maximal Value,\nthat is,\n\\[\nd_0\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_d V(d),\n\\]\nwhere the $\\arg\\max$ is over all possible decision rules. The Value of\n$d_0$, $V(d_0)$, is the \\textit{optimal Value}.\n\nAssume $P[p(a|X)>0]=1$ for all $a\\in\\mathcal{A}$ (i.e., all\ntreatments in $\\mathcal{A}$ are possible for all values of $X$\na.s.). Then $P^d$ is absolutely continuous with respect to $P$ and a\nversion of the Radon--Nikodym derivative is\n$dP^d\/dP=1_{a=d(x)}\/p(a|x)$. Thus, the Value of $d$ satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:value}\nV(d)=E^d(R)=\\int R\\,dP^d=\\int\nR\\,\\frac{dP^d}{dP}\\,dP=E\\biggl[\\frac{1_{A=d(X)}}{p(A|X)}R\\biggr].\n\\end{equation}\nOur goal is to estimate $d_0$, that is, the ITR that\nmaximizes (\\ref{eqn:value}), using data from distribution $P$. When\n$X$ is low dimensional and the best rule within a~simple class of\nITRs is desired, empirical versions of the Value can be\nused to construct estimators \\cite{murphy2001,robins2008}. However,\nif the best rule within a larger class of ITRs is of\ninterest, these approaches are no longer feasible.\n\nDefine $Q_0(X,A)\\triangleq E(R|X,A)$ [$Q_0(x,a)$ is sometimes called\nthe ``Quality'' of treatment $a$ at observation $x$]. It follows from\n(\\ref{eqn:value}) that\nfor any ITR $d$,\n\\[\nV(d) =\nE\\biggl[\\frac{1_{A=d(X)}}{p(A|X)}Q_0(X,A)\\biggr]=E\\biggl[\\sum_{a\\in\\mathcal\n{A}}1_{d(X)=a}Q_0(X,a)\\biggr]\n=E[Q_0(X,d(X))].\n\\]\nThus, $V(d_0)=E[Q_0(X,d_0(X))]\\leq E[\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}} Q_0(X,a)]$.\nOn the other hand,\nby the definition of $d_0$,\n\\[\nV(d_0)\\geq\nV(d)|_{d(X)\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}\nQ_0(X,a)}=E\\Bigl[\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}} Q_0(X,a)\\Bigr].\n\\]\nHence, an optimal ITR\nsatisfies $d_0(X)\\in\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}$ $Q_0(X,a)$ a.s.\n\n\\section{Relating the reduction in Value to excess prediction error}\n\\label{sec:relation}\n\nThe above argument indicates that the estimated ITR will be of high quality\n(i.e., have high Value) if we can estimate $Q_0$\naccurately. In this section, we justify this by providing a\nquantitative relationship between the Value and\nthe prediction error.\n\nBecause $\\mathcal A$ is a finite, discrete treatment space, given any ITR,\n$d$, there \\mbox{exists} a square integrable function\n$Q\\dvtx\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal{A}\\rightarrow\\mathbb{R}$ for which\n$d(X)\\in\\break\\arg\\max_aQ(X,a)$ a.s. Let $L(Q)\\triangleq E[R-Q(X,A)]^2$\ndenote the prediction error of $Q$ (also called the mean quadratic loss).\nSuppose that $Q_0$ is square integrable and that the randomization\nprobability satisfies $p(a|x)\\geq\nS^{-1}$ for an $S>0$ and all $(x,a)$ pairs. Murphy \\cite{murphy2005}\nshowed that\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:bound1}\nV(d_0)-V(d)\\leq\n2S^{1\/2}[L(Q)-L(Q_0)]^{1\/2}.\n\\end{equation}\nIntuitively, this upper bound means that if the excess prediction error of\n$Q$ [i.e., $L(Q)-L(Q_0)$] is small, then the reduction in Value of the\nassociated ITR $d$ [i.e., $V(d_0)-V(d)$] is small.\nFurthermore, the upper bound provides a\nrate of convergence for the Value of an estimated ITR. For example, suppose\n$Q_0$ is linear, that is, $Q_0=\\Phi(X,A)\\bolds{\\theta}_0$ for a\ngiven vector-valued basis function $\\Phi$ on $\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal\n{A}$ and an unknown parameter ${\\theta}_0$.\nAnd suppose we use a correct linear model for $Q_0$ (here ``linear''\nmeans linear in parameters), say the model $\\mathcal{Q}=\\{\\Phi\n(X,A)\\bolds{\\theta}\\dvtx\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{\\mathrm{dim}(\\Phi)}\\}\n$ or a linear model containing $\\mathcal{Q}$ with dimension of\nparameters fixed in $n$. If we estimate $\\bolds{\\theta}$ by least\nsquares and denote the estimator by $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}$, then the\nprediction error of $\\hat Q =\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}$ converges to\n$L(Q_0)$ at rate $1\/n$ under mild regularity conditions.\nThis together with inequality (\\ref{eqn:bound1}) implies that\nthe Value obtained by the estimated ITR, $\\hat d(X)\\in\\arg\\max_a\\hat\nQ(X,a)$, will converge to\nthe optimal Value at rate at least $1\/\\sqrt n$.\n\nIn the following theorem, we improve this upper\nbound in two aspects. First, we show that an upper bound with\nexponent larger than $1\/2$ can be obtained under a margin condition,\nwhich implicitly implies a faster rate of convergence.\nSecond, it turns out that the upper bound need only depend on one term\nin the function $Q$; we call this the treatment effect term $T$. For\nany square integrable $Q$, the associated treatment effect\nterm is defined as $T(X,A)\\triangleq Q(X,A) - E[Q(X,A)|X]$. Note that\n$d(X)\\in\\arg\\max_a T(X,a)=\\arg\\max_a Q(X,a)$ a.s.\nSimilarly, the true treatment effect\nterm is given by\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:trteffect}\nT_0(X,A)\\triangleq Q_0(X,A) - E[Q_0(X,A)|X].\n\\end{equation}\n$T_0(x,a)$ is the centered effect of treatment\n$A=a$ at observation $X=x$; $d_0(X)\\in\\arg\\max_a T_0(X,a)$.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:bound2}\nSuppose $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for a positive constant $S$ for all\n$(x,a)$ pairs. Assume there exists some constants $C>0$ and\n$\\alpha\\geq0$ such that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:noise}\n\\mathbf{P}\\Bigl(\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)-\n\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}\\setminus\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)}T_0(X,a)\n\\leq\\epsilon\\Bigr)\\leq C\\epsilon^\\alpha\n\\end{equation}\nfor all positive $\\epsilon$.\nThen for any ITR\n$d\\dvtx\\mathcal{X}\\rightarrow\\mathcal{A}$ and square integrable function\n$Q\\dvtx\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal{A}\\rightarrow\\mathbb{R}$ such that\n$d(X)\\in\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}Q(X,a)$ a.s., we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eqn:bound2}\nV(d_0)-V(d)\\leq C' [L(Q)-L(Q_0)]^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)}\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eqn:bound3}\nV(d_0)-V(d)\\leq C'\n\\bigl[E\\bigl(T(X,A)-T_0(X,A)\\bigr)^2\\bigr]^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $C'=(2^{2+3\\alpha}S^{1+\\alpha}C)^{1\/(2+\\alpha)}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:bound2} is in Appendix\n\\ref{apd:margin}.\n\n\\begin{Remarks*}\n\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] We set the second maximum in (\\ref{eqn:noise}) to $-\\infty$ if\nfor an $x$,\n$T_0(x,a)$ is constant in $a$ and thus the set\n$\\mathcal{A}\\setminus\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(x,a)=\\varnothing$.\n\\item[(2)]\nCondition (\\ref{eqn:noise}) is similar to the margin condition in\nclassification\n\\cite{polonik1995,mammen1999,tsybakov2004}; in classification this\nassumption is often used to obtain\nsharp upper bounds on the excess $0$--$1$ risk in terms of other\nsurrogate risks \\cite{bartlett2006}. Here\n$\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(x, a)-\n\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}\\setminus\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(x,a)}T_0(x,a)$\ncan be viewed as the ``margin'' of $T_0$ at observation $X=x$. It\nmeasures the difference in mean responses between the optimal\ntreatment(s) and the best suboptimal treatment(s) at $x$. For example,\nsuppose $X\\sim U[-1,1]$, $P(A=1|X)=P(A=-1|X)=1\/2$ and $T_0(X,A)=XA$. Then\nthe margin condition holds with $C=1\/2$ and $\\alpha=1$.\nNote the margin condition does not exclude multiple optimal treatments\nfor any observation~$x$.\nHowever, when $\\alpha>0$, it does exclude suboptimal treatments that\nyield a conditional mean response\nvery close to the\nlargest conditional mean response for a set of $x$ with nonzero\nprobability.\n\n\n\\item[(3)] For $C=1, \\alpha=0$, condition (\\ref{eqn:noise}) always holds for all\n$\\epsilon>0$; in this case (\\ref{eqn:bound2}) reduces to (\\ref{eqn:bound1}).\n\n\\item[(4)] The larger the $\\alpha$, the larger the exponent $(1+\\alpha\n)\/(2+\\alpha)$\nand thus the stronger the upper bounds in (\\ref{eqn:bound2}) and (\\ref\n{eqn:bound3}).\nHowever, the\nmargin condition is unlikely to hold for all $\\epsilon$ if $\\alpha$ is\nvery large.\nAn alternate margin condition and upper bound are as follows.\n\n\\textit{Suppose $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for all $(x,a)$ pairs. Assume there\nis an $\\epsilon\\!>\\!0$, such~that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:noise2}\n\\mathbf{P}\\Bigl(\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)\n-\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}\\setminus\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)}T_0(X,a)\n<\\epsilon\\Bigr)=0.\n\\end{equation}\nThen $V(d_0)-V(d)\\leq4S[L(Q)-L(Q_0)]\/\\epsilon$ and $V(d_0)-V(d)\\leq\n4SE(T-T_0)^2\/\\epsilon$.}\n\nThe proof is essentially the same as that of Theorem\n\\ref{thm:bound2} and is omitted. Condition\n(\\ref{eqn:noise2}) means that $T_0$ evaluated at the optimal\ntreatment(s) minus $T_0$ evaluated at the best suboptimal treatment(s)\nis bounded below by a~positive constant for almost all $X$ observations.\nIf $X$ assumes only a finite number of values, then this condition always\nholds, because we can take $\\epsilon$ to be the smallest difference in $T_0$\nwhen evaluated at\nthe optimal treatment(s) and the suboptimal treatment(s)\n[note that if $T_0(x,a)$ is constant for all $a\\in\\mathcal{A}$ for\nsome observation $X=x$, then all treatments are optimal for that\nobservation].\n\n\\item[(5)] Inequality (\\ref{eqn:bound3}) cannot be improved in the sense\nthat choosing $T=T_0$ yields zero on both sides of the inequality.\nMoreover, an inequality in the opposite direction is not possible,\nsince each ITR is associated with many\nnontrivial $T$-functions. For example, suppose $X\\sim U[-1,1]$,\n$P(A=1|X)=P(A=-1|X)=1\/2$ and $T_0(X,A) = (X-1\/3)^2A$. The optimal ITR\nis $d_0(X)=1$ a.s. Consider $T(X,A)=\\theta A$. Then\nmaximizing $T(X,A)$ yields the optimal ITR as long as\n$\\theta>0$. This means that the left-hand side (LHS) of (\\ref\n{eqn:bound3}) is zero,\nwhile the right-hand side (RHS) is always positive no matter what value\n$\\theta$\ntakes.\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{Remarks*}\n\nTheorem \\ref{thm:bound2} supports the approach of minimizing\nthe estimated prediction error to estimate $Q_0$ or $T_0$ and\nthen maximizing this estimator over $a\\in\\mathcal{A}$ to obtain an ITR.\nIt is natural to expect that even when the approximation space\nused in estimating $Q_0$ or $T_0$ does not contain the truth, this\napproach will\nprovide the best (highest Value) of the considered ITRs. Unfortunately,\nthis does not occur due to the mismatch between the loss functions\n(weighted 0--1 loss and the quadratic loss). This mismatch is indicated\nby remark (5) above.\nMore precisely, note that the approximation space, say $\\mathcal{Q}$\nfor $Q_0$, places implicit restrictions on the\nclass of ITRs that will be considered. In\neffect, the class of ITRs is\n$\\mathcal{D}_{\\mathcal{Q}}=\\{d(X)\\in\\arg\\max_aQ(X,a)\\dvtx Q\\in\\mathcal{Q}\\}$.\nIt\nturns out that minimizing the prediction error may not result in the\nITR in $\\mathcal{D}_{\\mathcal{Q}}$ that maximizes the Value. This\noccurs when the approximation space $\\mathcal{Q}$ does not provide a\ntreatment effect term close to the treatment effect term in $Q_0$. In\nthe following toy example, the optimal ITR $d_0$ belongs to\n$\\mathcal{D}_\\mathcal{Q}$, yet the prediction error minimizer over\n$\\mathcal{Q}$ does not yield $d_0$.\n\\begin{exam*}\nSuppose $X$ is uniformly distributed in $[-1,1]$, $A$ is binary\n$\\{-1,1\\}$ with probability $1\/2$ each and is independent of $X$,\nand $R$ is normally distributed with mean $Q_0(X,A)=(X-1\/3)^2A$ and\nvariance $1$. It is easy to see that the optimal ITR satisfies\n$d_0(X)=1$ a.s. and\n$V(d_0)=4\/9$.\nConsider approximation space $\\mathcal{Q}=\\{Q(X,A;\\bolds{\\theta})=(1,\nX, A, XA)\\bolds{\\theta}\\dvtx\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^4\\}$\nfor $Q_0$. Thus the space of ITRs under consideration is\n$\\mathcal{D}_{\\mathcal{Q}}=\\{d(X)=\\operatorname{sign}(\\theta_3+\\theta_4X)\\dvtx\\theta\n_3,\\theta_4\\in\n\\mathbb{R}\\}$. Note that $d_0\\in\\mathcal{D}_{\\mathcal{Q}}$ since\n$d_0(X)$ can be written as $\\operatorname{sign}(\\theta_3+\\theta_4X)$ for any\n$\\theta_3>0$ and $\\theta_4=0$. $d_0$ is the best treatment rule in\n$\\mathcal{D}_{\\mathcal{Q}}$. However, minimizing the prediction\nerror $L(Q)$ over $\\mathcal{Q}$ yields $Q^*(X,A)=(4\/9-2\/3X)A$. The ITR\nassociated with $Q^*$ is\n$d^*(X)=\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\{-1,1\\}}Q^*(X,a)=\\operatorname{sign}(2\/3-X)$, which has lower\nValue than $d_0$\n($V(d^*)=E[\\frac{1_{A(2\/3-X)>0}R}{1\/2}]=29\/81<V(d_0)$).\n\\end{exam*}\n\n\\section{Estimation via $l_1$-penalized least squares}\n\\label{sec:lasso}\n\n\nTo deal with the mismatch between minimizing the\nprediction error and maximizing the Value discussed in the prior\nsection, we consider a large linear approximation space $\\mathcal{Q}$\nfor $Q_0$. Since overfitting is likely (due to the\npotentially large number of pretreatment variables and\/or large\napproximation space for $Q_0$), we use penalized least\nsquares (see Section S.1 of the supplemental article \\cite{supplement}\nfor further discussion of the overfitting problem).\nFurthermore, we use $l_1$-penalized least squares ($l_1$-PLS, \\cite\n{tibshirani1996}) as the $l_1$ penalty does some\nvariable selection and as a result will lead to\nITRs that are cheaper to implement (fewer\nvariables to collect per patient) and easier to interpret. See\nSection \\ref{sec:discussion} for the discussion of other potential\npenalization methods.\n\nLet $\\{(X_i,A_i,R_i)\\}_{i=1}^n$ represent i.i.d.\nobservations on $n$ subjects in a randomized trial. For convenience, we use\n$E_n$ to denote the associated empirical\nexpectation [i.e., $E_nf=\\sum_{i=1}^nf(X_i,A_i,R_i)\/n$ for any\nreal-valued function\n$f$ on $\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal{A}\\times\\mathbb{R}$].\nLet $\\mathcal{Q}\\triangleq\\{Q(X,A;\\bolds{\\theta})=\\Phi(X,A)\n\\bolds{\\theta},\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}\\}$ be the\napproximation space for $Q_0$, where\n$\\Phi(X,A)=(\\phi_1(X,A),\\ldots,\\phi_{{J}}(X,A))$ is a $1$ by $J$\nvector composed of basis functions on\n$\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal{A}$, $\\bolds{\\theta}$ is a $J$ by\n$1$ parameter vector, and ${J}$ is the number of basis functions\n(for clarity here $J$ will be fixed in $n$, see Appendix\n\\ref{apd:peoracle} for results with $J$ increasing as $n$\nincreases).\nThe $l_1$-PLS estimator of\n$\\bolds{\\theta}$ is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eqn:thetahat}\n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}}\n\\Biggl\\{E_n[R-\\Phi(X,A)\\bolds{\\theta}]^2+{\\lambda_n}\\sum\n_{j=1}^{J}\\hat\\sigma_j|\\theta_j|\\Biggr\\},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\hat\\sigma_j=[E_n\\phi_j(X,A)^2]^{1\/2}$, $\\theta_j$\nis the $j$th component of $\\bolds{\\theta}$ and ${\\lambda_n}$\nis a tuning parameter that controls the amount of penalization. The\nweights $\\hat\\sigma_j$'s are used to balance the scale of different\nbasis functions; these weights were used in Bunea, Tsybakov and Wegkamp\n\\cite{bunea2007} and van de Geer \\cite{vandegeer2008}. In some\nsituations, it is natural to penalize only a subset of coefficients\nand\/or use different weights in the penalty; see Section S.2 of the supplemental\nartic\\-le~\\cite{supplement} for required modifications. The resulting estimated\nITR satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eqn:pihat}\n\\hat d_n(X)\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}\\Phi(X,a)\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Performance guarantee for the $l_1$-PLS}\\label{sec:finaloracle}\n\nIn this section, we provide finite sample upper bounds on the\ndifference between the optimal Value and the Value obtained by the\n$l_1$-PLS estimator in terms of the prediction errors resulting from\nthe estimation of $Q_0$ and\n$T_0$. These upper bounds guarantee that if $Q_0$ (or $T_0$) is\nconsistently estimated, the Value of the estimated ITR will converge\nto the optimal Value. Perhaps more importantly,\nthe finite sample upper bounds provided below do \\textit{not}\nrequire the assumption that either $Q_0$ or $T_0$ is consistently\nestimated. Thus, each upper bound includes approximation error as well\nas estimation error. The estimation error\ndecreases with decreasing model sparsity and increasing sample size.\nAn ``oracle'' model for $Q_0$ (or $T_0$) minimizes the sum of these\ntwo errors among suitably sparse linear models [see remark (2) after\nTheorem \\ref{thm:peoraclefix} for a~precise definition of the oracle\nmodel]. In finite samples, the upper bounds imply that~$\\hat d_n$, the ITR\nproduced by the $l_1$-PLS method, will have Value roughly as if the\n$l_1$-PLS method\ndetects the sparsity of the oracle model and then estimates from the\noracle model using ordinary least squares [see remark (3) below].\n\nDefine the prediction error minimizer $\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\in\\mathbb\n{R}^{J}$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:thetastarfix}\n\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}}\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb\n{R}^{J}}E(R-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})^2.\n\\end{equation}\nFor expositional simplicity assume that $\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ is\nunique, and define the sparsity of $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb\n{R}^J$ by its $l_0$ norm, $\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0$\n(see Appendix \\ref{apd:peoracle} for a more general setting, where\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ is not unique and a laxer definition of\nsparsity is used).\nAs discussed above, for finite~$n$, instead of estimating $\\bolds\n{\\theta}^*$, the $l_1$-PLS\nestimator $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ estimates a parameter\n$\\bolds{\\theta}_n^{**}$,\npossessing small prediction error and with controlled sparsity.\nFor any bounded function $f$ on $\\mathcal{X}\\times\\mathcal{A}$, let\n$\\|f\\|_\\infty\n\\triangleq\\sup_{x\\in\\mathcal{X},a\\in\\mathcal{A}}|f(x,a)|$.\n$\\bolds{\\theta}_n^{**}$ lies in the set of parameters $\\Theta_n$\ndefined by\\looseness=1\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eqn:oracleset}\n&&\\Theta_{n} \\triangleq\n\\Biggl\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}\\dvtx\n\\|\\Phi(\\bolds{\\theta}-\\bolds{\\theta}^*)\\|_\\infty\\leq\\eta,\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace*{33.7pt}\n\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,J}\\biggl|\\frac{E[\\phi_j\\Phi(\\bolds{\\theta}-\n\\bolds{\\theta}^*)]}{\\sigma_j}\\biggr|\\leq\n11\\eta\\sqrt{\\frac{\\log(Jn)\n}{n}}\\\\\n&&\\hspace*{99pt}\\mbox{and }\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}\\Vert_0\\leq\\frac{\\beta}{489U}\\sqrt{\\frac\n{n}{\\log(Jn)}}\n\\Biggr\\},\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\sigma_j=(E\\phi_j^2)^{1\/2}$, and $\\eta$,\n$\\beta$ and $U$ are positive constants that will be defined in\nTheorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle}.\n\nThe first two conditions in\n(\\ref{eqn:oracleset}) restrict $\\Theta_{n}$ to $\\bolds{\\theta}$'s\nwith controlled distance in sup norm and with controlled distance in\nprediction error\nvia first\norder derivatives (note that\n$|E[\\phi_j\\Phi(\\bolds{\\theta}-\\bolds{\\theta}^*)]\/\\sigma\n_j|\n=|\\partial L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})\/\\partial\\theta_j-\\partial\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*)\/\\partial\\theta_{j}^*|\/\\break{2\\sigma_j}$).\nThe third condition restricts $\\Theta_{n}$ to sparse $\\bolds{\\theta\n}$'s. Note that\nas $n$ increases this sparsity requirement becomes laxer,\nensuring that $\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\in\\Theta_n$ for sufficiently\nlarge $n$.\n\nWhen $\\Theta_n$ is nonempty, $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ is given by\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:thetastarstar}\n\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta\n_n}[L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})\n+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda^2_n\/\\beta].\n\\end{equation}\nNote that $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ is at least\nas sparse as $\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ since by (\\ref{eqn:thetastarfix}),\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda^2_n\/\\beta>\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*)+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\|_0\\lambda\n^2_n\/\\beta$ for\nany $\\bolds{\\theta}$ such that\n$\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0>\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\|_0$.\n\nThe following theorem provides a finite sample performance guarantee\nfor the\nITR produced by the $l_1$-PLS method. Intuitively, this result implies\nthat if\n$Q_0$ can be well approximated by the sparse linear representation\n$\\bolds{\\theta}_n^{**}$ [so\nthat both $L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n)-L(Q_0)$ and\n$\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n\\Vert_0$ are small], then $\\hat d_n$ will\nhave Value\nclose to the optimal Value in finite samples.\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:finaloracle}\nSuppose $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for a positive constant $S$ for all\n$(x,a)$ pairs and the margin condition\n(\\ref{eqn:noise}) holds for some $C>0$, $\\alpha\\geq0$ and\nall positive~$\\epsilon$. Assume:\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] \\hypertarget{ap:errorterm}\nthe error terms $\\varepsilon_i=R_i-Q_0(X_i,A_i), i=1,\\ldots,n$,\nare independent of $(X_i,A_i), i=1,\\ldots, n$ and are\ni.i.d. with $E(\\varepsilon_i)=0$ and\n$E[|\\varepsilon_i|^l]\\leq l!c^{l-2}\\sigma^2\/2$ for some\n$c,\\sigma^2>0$ for all $l\\geq2$;\n\n\\item[(2)] \\hypertarget{ap:basis}\nthere exist finite, positive constants $U$ and $\\eta$ such that\n$\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,{J}}$ $\\|\\phi_j\\|_\\infty\/\\sigma_j\\leq U$ and\n$\\|Q_0-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*\\|_\\infty\\leq\\eta$; and\n\n\n\\item[(3)] \\hypertarget{ap:grammatrix1} $E[(\\phi_1\/\\sigma_1,\\ldots,\\phi_J\/\\sigma_J)^T(\\phi_1\/\\sigma\n_1,\\ldots,\\phi_J\/\\sigma_J)]$ is positive definite, and the smallest\neigenvalue is denoted by $\\beta$.\n\\end{longlist}\nConsider the estimated ITR $\\hat d_n$ defined by (\\ref{eqn:pihat}) with tuning\nparameter\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}\n\\lambda_n\\geq k \\sqrt{\\frac{\\log(Jn)}{n}},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k=82\\max\\{c,\\sigma,\\eta\\}$.\nLet $\\Theta_n$ be the set defined in (\\ref{eqn:oracleset}). Then for\nany $n\\geq24U^2\\log(Jn)$ and for which\n$\\Theta_n$ is nonempty, we have, with probability at least $1-1\/n$,\nthat\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:finaloracle}\\qquad\nV(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)\\leq C'\\Bigl[\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\bigl(L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0)\n+3\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}\\Vert_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta\\bigr)\n\\Bigr]^{({1+\\alpha})\/({2+\\alpha})},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $C'=(2^{2+3\\alpha}S^{1+\\alpha}C)^{1\/(2+\\alpha)}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe result follows from inequality (\\ref{eqn:bound2}) in Theorem \\ref\n{thm:bound2} and inequality (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix}) in Theorem\n\\ref{thm:peoraclefix}. Similar\nresults in a more general setting can be obtained by combining\n(\\ref{eqn:bound2}) with inequality (\\ref{eqn:peoracle}) in Appendix\n\\ref{apd:peoracle}.\n\n\\begin{Remarks*}\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] Note that $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ is the minimizer of the\nupper bound on the RHS of (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}) and that\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ is contained\\vadjust{\\goodbreak} in the set\n$\\{\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n\\dvtx m\\subset\\{1,\\ldots,J\\}\\}$. Each\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n$ satisfies\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n=\n\\arg\\min_{\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n\\dvtx\\theta_j=0\\ \\mathrm{for}\\ \\mathrm{all}\n\\ j\\notin m\\}}L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})$; that is, $\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n$\nminimizes the prediction error of the model indexed by the set $m$\n(i.e., model $\\{\\sum_{j\\in m}\\phi_j\\theta_j\\dvtx\\theta_j\\in\\mathbb{R}\\}$)\n(within $\\Theta_n$). For each $\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n$, the\nfirst term in the upper bound in (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}) [i.e.,\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n)-L(Q_0)$] is the approximation\nerror of the model indexed by $m$ within~$\\Theta_n$. As in\\vspace*{1pt}\nvan de Geer \\cite{vandegeer2008}, we call the second term\n$3\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}_n\\Vert_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta$ the estimation\nerror of the model indexed by $m$. To see why, first put $\\lambda_n= k\n\\sqrt{\\log(Jn)\/n}$. Then, ignoring the $\\log(n)$ factor, the second\nterm is a function of the sparsity of model $m$ relative to the sample\nsize, $n$. Up to constants, the second term is a ``tight'' upper bound\nfor the estimation error of the OLS estimator from model $m$, where\n``tight'' means that the convergence rate in the bound is the best\nknown rate. Note that $\\bolds{\\theta}_n^{**}$ is the parameter\nthat minimizes the sum of the two errors over all models. Such a model\n(the model corresponding to $\\bolds{\\theta}_n^{**}$) is called an\noracle model.\nThe $\\log(n)$ factor in the estimation error can be viewed as the price\npaid for not knowing the sparsity of the oracle model and thus having\nto conduct model selection.\nSee remark (2) after Theorem \\ref{thm:peoraclefix} for the precise\ndefinition of the oracle model and its relationship to $\\bolds\n{\\theta}_n^{**}$.\n\n\\item[(2)] Suppose $\\lambda_n = o(1)$. Then in large samples the estimation\nerror term\n$3\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}\\Vert_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta$ is negligible. In this\ncase, $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ is close to\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^*$.\nWhen the model\n$\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ approximates $Q_0$ sufficiently well, we\nsee that setting $\\lambda_n$ equal to its lower bound in (\\ref\n{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}) provides the fastest rate of convergence of\nthe upper bound to zero. More precisely, suppose $Q_0\n=\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ [i.e.,\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*)-L(Q_0)=0$]. Then inequality\n(\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}) implies that $V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)\\leq\nO_p( (\\log n\/n)^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)})$. A~convergence in mean result is\npresented in Corollary \\ref{cor:convergence}.\n\n\\item[(3)] In finite samples, the estimation error\n$3\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}\\Vert_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta$ is nonnegligible.\nThe argument of the minimum in the upper bound (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}),\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$, minimizes prediction error among\nparameters with controlled sparsity.\nIn remark (2) after Theorem \\ref{thm:peoraclefix}, we discuss how this\nupper bound can be viewed as a tight upper bound for the prediction error of the OLS\nestimator from an oracle model in the step-wise model selection setting.\nIn this sense,\ninequality (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}) implies that the treatment rule\nproduced by the $l_1$-PLS method will have a reduction in Value roughly\nas if it\nknew the sparsity of the oracle model and were estimated from the\noracle model using OLS.\n\n\\item[(4)] Assumptions \\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)}--\\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} in Theorem\n\\ref{thm:finaloracle} are employed to derive the finite sample\nprediction error bound for the $l_1$-PLS estimator\n$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ defined in (\\ref{eqn:thetahat}). Below\nwe briefly discuss these assumptions.\n\nAssumption \\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)} implicitly implies that the error\nterms do not have heavy tails. This condition is often assumed to\nshow that the sample mean of a~variable is concentrated around its\ntrue mean with a high probability. It is easy to verify that this\nassumption holds if each $\\varepsilon_i$ is bounded. Moreover, it\nalso holds for some commonly used error distributions that have\nunbounded support, such as the normal or double exponential.\n\nAssumption \\hyperlink{ap:basis}{(2)} is also used to show the concentration of\nthe sample mean around the true mean. It is possible to replace the\nboundedness condition by a moment condition similar to assumption\n\\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)}. This assumption requires that all basis\nfunctions and the difference between $Q_0$ and its best linear\napproximation are bounded. Note that we do not assume $\\mathcal{Q}$\nto be a good approximation space for $Q_0$. However, if\n$\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ approximates $Q_0$ well, $\\eta$ will\nbe small, which will result in a smaller upper bound in\n(\\ref{eqn:finaloracle}). In fact, in the generalized result (Theorem\n\\ref{thm:peoracle}) we allow $U$ and $\\eta$ to\nincrease in $n$.\n\nAssumption \\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} is employed to avoid collinearity.\nIn fact, we only need\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:grammatrix1}\nE[\\Phi(\\bolds{\\theta}^\\prime-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2\\Vert\\bolds\n{\\theta}\\Vert_0\\geq\\beta\n\\biggl(\\sum_{j\\in\nM_0(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\theta_j^\\prime-\\theta_j|\\biggr)^2\n\\end{equation}\nfor\n$\\bolds{\\theta}$, $\\bolds{\\theta}^\\prime$ belonging to a\nsubset of $\\mathbb{R}^J$ (see Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix}),\nwhere $M_0(\\bolds{\\theta})\\triangleq\\{j=1,\\ldots,J\\dvtx\\theta_j\\neq0\\}$.\nCondition (\\ref{eqn:grammatrix1}) has been used in van de Geer \\cite\n{vandegeer2008}.\nThis condition is also similar to the restricted\neigenvalue assumption in Bickel, Ritov and Tsybakov \\cite{bickel2008}\nin which\n$E$ is replaced by $E_n$, and a fixed design matrix is considered.\nClearly, assumption \\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} is a sufficient condition for\n(\\ref{eqn:grammatrix1}). In addition, condition\n(\\ref{eqn:grammatrix1}) is satisfied if the correlation\n$|E\\phi_j\\phi_k|\/(\\sigma_j\\sigma_k)$ is small for all $k\\in\nM_0(\\bolds{\\theta})$, $j\\neq k$ and a subset of $\\bolds{\\theta\n}$'s (similar results in a fixed design\nsetting have been proved in Bickel, Ritov and Tsybakov \\cite\n{bickel2008}. The\ncondition on correlation is also known as ``mutual coherence''\ncondition in Bunea, Tsybakov and Wegkamp \\cite{bunea2007}). See Bickel,\nRitov and Tsybakov\n\\cite{bickel2008} for other sufficient conditions for\n(\\ref{eqn:grammatrix1}).\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{Remarks*}\n\nThe above upper bound for $V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)$ involves\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0)$, which measures how well the\nconditional mean function $Q_0$ is approximated by~$\\mathcal{Q}$.\nAs we have seen in Section \\ref{sec:relation}, the\nquality of the estimated ITR only depends\non the estimator of the treatment effect term $T_0$. Below we\nprovide a~strengthened result in the sense that the upper bound\ndepends only on how well we approximate the treatment effect term.\n\nFirst, we identify terms in the linear model $\\mathcal{Q}$ that\napproximate $T_0$ (recall that $T_0(X,A)\\triangleq\nQ_0(X,A)-E[Q_0(X,A)|X]$). Without loss of generality, we rewrite the\nvector of basis functions as\n$\\Phi(X,A)=(\\Phi^{(1)}(X),\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A))$, where\n$\\Phi^{(1)}=(\\phi_1(X),\\ldots,\\phi_{J^{(1)}}(X))$ is composed of\nall components in $\\Phi$ that do not contain $A$ and\n$\\Phi^{(2)}=(\\phi_{J^{(1)}+1}(X,A),\\ldots,\\phi_{J}(X,A))$ is\ncomposed of all components in $\\Phi$ that contain $A$.\nNote that $A$ takes only finite values. When the randomization\ndistribution $p(a|x)$ does not depend on $x$,\nwe can code~$A$ so that\n$E[\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X]=\\mathbf{0}$ a.s. (see Section~\\ref{sec:realdata}\nand Appendix \\ref{sec:simdesign}, for examples). For any\n$\\bolds{\\theta}=(\\theta_1,\\ldots,\\theta_J)^T\\in\\mathbb{R}^J$,\ndenote\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{(1)}=(\\theta_1,\\ldots,\\theta_{J^{(1)}})^T$ and\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}=(\\theta_{J^{(1)}+1},\\ldots,\\theta_{J})^T$.\nThen $\\Phi^{(1)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(1)}$ approximates\n$E[Q_0(X,A)|X]$ and $\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}$\napproximates $T_0$\n\nThe following theorem implies that if the treatment effect term\n$T_0$ can be well approximated by a sparse representation, then\n$\\hat d_n$ will have Value close to the optimal Value.\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{cor:finaloracletopt}\nSuppose $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for a positive constant $S$ for all\n$(x,a)$ pairs and the margin condition\n(\\ref{eqn:noise}) holds for some $C>0$, $\\alpha\\geq0$ and\nall positive~$\\epsilon$. Assume\n$E[\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X]= \\mathbf{0}$ a.s. Suppose assumptions\n\\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)}--\\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} in Theorem \\ref\n{thm:finaloracle} hold.\nLet $\\hat d_n$ be the estimated ITR with $\\lambda_n$\nsatisfying condition (\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}). Let $\\Theta_n$\nbe the set defined in (\\ref{eqn:oracleset}). Then for any\n$n\\geq24U^2\\log(Jn)$ and for which $\\Theta_n$ is\nnonempty, we have, with probability at least $1-1\/n$, that\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eqn:finaloracle1}\n&&V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)\\nonumber\\\\[-8pt]\\\\[-8pt]\n&&\\qquad\\leq C'\\Bigl[\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\bigl(E\\bigl(\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta\n}^{(2)}-T_0\\bigr)^2\n+5\\bigl\\Vert\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}\\bigr\\Vert_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta\\bigr)\n\\Bigr]^{({1+\\alpha})\/({2+\\alpha})},\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $C'=(2^{2+3\\alpha}S^{1+\\alpha}C)^{1\/(2+\\alpha)}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe result follows from inequality (\\ref{eqn:bound3}) in Theorem \\ref\n{thm:bound2} and inequality (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix1}) in Theorem\n\\ref{thm:peoraclefix}.\n\n\\begin{Remarks*}\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] Inequality\\vspace*{1pt} (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle1}) improves inequality (\\ref\n{eqn:finaloracle}) in the\nsense that it guarantees a small reduction in Value of $\\hat d_n$\n[i.e., $V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)$] as long as\nthe treatment effect term $T_0$ is well approximated by a sparse\nlinear representation; it does not require a good approximation of the\nentire conditional mean function $Q_0$. In many situations $Q_0$\nmay be very complex, but $T_0$ could be very simple. This means that\n$T_0$ is much more likely to be well approximated as compared to\n$Q_0$ (indeed, if there is no difference between treatments, then\n$T_0\\equiv0$).\n\n\n\n\\item[(2)] Inequality (\\ref{eqn:finaloracle1})\ncannot be improved in the sense that if there is no treatment effect\n(i.e., $T_0\\equiv0$), then both sides of the inequality are zero.\nThis result implies that minimizing the penalized empirical\nprediction error indeed yields high Value (at least asymptotically) if\n$T_0$ can be well approximated.\n\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{Remarks*}\n\nThe following asymptotic result follows from Theorem\n\\ref{cor:finaloracletopt}. Note that when\n$E[\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A)^T |X] = \\mathbf{0}$ a.s.,\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0) = E[\\Phi^{(1)}\\bolds{\\theta\n}^{(1)}- E(Q_0|X)]^2 + E[\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}-T_0]^2 $.\nThus, the estimation of the treatment effect term $T_0$ is\nasymptotically separated from the estimation of the main effect term\n$E(Q_0|X)$.\\vspace*{1pt}\nIn this case, $\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2),*}$ is the best\nlinear approximation of\nthe treatment effect term~$T_0$, where $\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2),*}$ is\nthe vector of components in $\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ corresponding to\n$\\Phi^{(2)}$.\n\\begin{corollary} \\label{cor:convergence}\nSuppose $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for a positive constant $S$ for all\n$(x,a)$ pairs and the margin condition\\vspace*{1pt}\n(\\ref{eqn:noise}) holds for some $C>0$, $\\alpha\\geq0$ and\nall positive $\\epsilon$. Assume\n$E[\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A)^T |X] = \\mathbf{0}$ a.s. In addition,\\vspace*{2pt} suppose assumptions\n\\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)}--\\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} in Theorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle}\nhold. Let $\\hat d_n$ be the estimated\nITR with tuning parameter $\\lambda_n=k_1 \\sqrt{\\log(Jn)\/n}$ for a\nconstant $k_1\\geq82\\max\\{c,\\sigma,\\eta\\}$. If\n$T_0(X,A)=\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2),*}$, then\n\\[\nV(d_0)-\\mathbf{E}[V(\\hat d_n)]= O\\bigl((\\log\nn\/n)^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)}\\bigr).\n\\]\n\\end{corollary}\n\nThis result provides a guarantee on\nthe convergence rate of $V(\\hat d_n)$ to the optimal Value. More\nspecifically, it means that if $T_0$ is correctly approximated, then\nthe Value of $\\hat d_n$ will converge to the optimal Value in mean\nat rate at least as fast as $(\\log n\/n)^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)}$\nwith an appropriate choice of $\\lambda_n$.\n\n\\subsection{Prediction error bound for the $l_1$-PLS estimator}\\label{sec:lassooracle}\n\nIn this section, we provide a finite sample upper bound for the\nprediction error of the $l_1$-PLS estimator~$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$.\nThis result is needed to prove Theorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle}.\nFurthermore, this result strengthens existing literature on $l_1$-PLS\nmethod in prediction. Finite sample prediction error bounds for the\n$l_1$-PLS estimator in the random design setting have been provided in\nBunea, Tsybakov and Wegkamp \\cite {bunea2007} for quadratic loss, van\nde Geer \\cite{vandegeer2008} mainly for Lipschitz loss, and\nKoltchinskii~\\cite{kol2009} for a variety of loss functions. With\nregards quadratic loss, Koltchinskii~\\cite{kol2009} requires the\nresponse $Y$ is bounded, while both Bunea, Tsybakov and Wegkamp\n\\cite{bunea2007} and van de Geer \\cite {vandegeer2008} assumed the\nexistence of a sparse $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}$ such that\n$E(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}-Q_0)^2$ is upper bounded by a quantity that\ndecreases to $0$ at a certain rate as $n\\rightarrow\\infty$ (by\npermitting $J$ to increase with $n$ so $\\Phi$ depends on $n$ as well).\nWe improve the results in the sense that we do not make such\nassumptions (see Appendix \\ref{apd:peoracle} for results when $\\Phi$,\n$J$ are indexed by $n$ and $J$ increases with $n$).\n\nAs in the prior sections, the sparsity of\n$\\bolds{\\theta}$ is measured by its $l_0$ norm, $\\|\\bolds\n{\\theta}\\|_0$ (see the Appendix \\ref{apd:peoracle} for proofs with a laxer\ndefinition of sparsity). Recall that the parameter $\\bolds{\\theta\n}^{**}_n$ defined in (\\ref{eqn:thetastarstar}) has small prediction\nerror and controlled sparsity.\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:peoraclefix}\nSuppose assumptions \\hyperlink{ap:errorterm}{(1)}--\\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} in\nTheorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle} hold. For any $\\eta_1\\geq0$, let\n$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ be the $l_1$-PLS estimator defined by\n(\\ref{eqn:thetahat}) with tuning parameter $\\lambda_n$ satisfying\ncondition\\vspace*{1pt} (\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}). Let $\\Theta_n$ be the set\ndefined in (\\ref{eqn:oracleset}). Then for any $n\\geq\n24U^2\\log(Jn)$ and for which $\\Theta_n$ is\nnonempty, we have, with probability at least $1-1\/n$, that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:peoraclefix}\\qquad\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)\\leq\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\bigl(L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})\n+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta\\bigr)\n=L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n)\n+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n\\|_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta.\n\\end{equation}\n\nFurthermore, suppose $E[\\Phi^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X]= \\mathbf{0}$ a.s. Then\nwith probability at least\n$1-1\/n$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:peoraclefix1}\nE\\bigl(\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-T_0\\bigr)^2\\leq\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\bigl(E\\bigl(\\Phi^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta\n}^{(2)}-T_0\\bigr)^2\n+5\\bigl\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}\\bigr\\|_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta\\bigr).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThe results follow from Theorem \\ref{thm:peoracle} in\nAppendix \\ref{apd:peoracle} with $\\rho=0$, $\\gamma=1\/8$, $\\eta_1=\\eta\n_2=\\eta$, $t=\\log2n$ and some simple algebra [notice that\nassumption \\hyperlink{ap:grammatrix1}{(3)} in Theorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle} is a\nsufficient condition for Assumptions \\ref{apn:grammatrix} and \\ref\n{apn:grammatrix_Topt}].\n\n\\begin{Remarks*}\nInequality (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix1}) provides a finite sample upper\nbound on the mean square difference between $T_0$ and its estimator.\nThis result is used to prove Theorem \\ref{cor:finaloracletopt}. The\nremarks below discuss how\ninequality (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix}) contributes to the\n$l_1$-penalization literature in prediction.\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] The conclusion of Theorem \\ref{thm:peoraclefix} holds for all\nchoices of $\\lambda_n$ that satisfy~(\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}).\nSuppose $\\lambda_n=o(1)$. Then\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n)-L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*})\\rightarrow\n0$ as $n\\rightarrow\\infty$ (since $\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0$ is\nbounded). Inequality (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix}) implies that\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)-L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*})\\rightarrow\n0$ in probability. To achieve the best rate of convergence, equal\nsign should be taken in (\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}).\n\n\\item[(2)]\nNote that $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$\nminimizes\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0)+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda\n_n^2\/\\beta$. Below we de\\-monstrate that\nthe minimum of\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0)+3\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda\n_n^2\/\\beta$\ncan be viewed as the approximation error plus a ``tight'' upper\nbound of the estimation error of an ``oracle'' in the stepwise model\nselection framework [when ``$=$'' is taken in\n(\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix})]. Here ``tight'' means the\nconvergence rate in the bound is the best known rate, and ``oracle''\nis defined as follows.\n\nLet $m$ denote a nonempty subset of the index set $\\{1,\\ldots,J\\}$.\nThen each~$m$ represents a model which uses a nonempty subset of\n$\\{\\phi_1,\\ldots,\\phi_{J}\\}$ as basis functions (there are $2^J-1$ such\nsubsets). Define\n\\[\n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\n\\mathbb{R}^J\\dvtx\\theta_j=0\\\n\\mathrm{for}\\ \\mathrm{all} \\ j\\notin m\\}}E_n(R-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})^2\n\\]\nand\n\\[\n\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\n\\mathbb{R}^J\\dvtx\\theta_j=0\\\n\\mathrm{for}\\ \\mathrm{all}\\  j\\notin m\\}}L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}).\n\\]\nIn this setting, an ideal model selection criterion will pick model\n$m^*$ such that $L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m^*)}_n)=\\inf_m\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n)$. $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m^*)}_n$ is\nreferred as an ``oracle'' in Massart~\\cite{massart2005}. Note that the\nexcess prediction error of each $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n$ can be\nwritten as\n\\[\nL\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n\\bigr)-L(Q_0)=\\bigl[L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)-L(Q_0)\\bigr]\n+\\bigl[L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n\\bigr)-L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)\\bigr],\n\\]\nwhere the first term is called the approximation error of model $m$\nand the second term is the estimation error. It can be shown that\n\\cite{bartlett2008} for each model $m$ and $x_m>0$, with\nprobability at least $1-\\exp(-x_m)$,\n\\[\nL\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n\\bigr)-L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)\\leq\n\\mbox{constant}\\times\\biggl(\\frac{x_m+|m|\\log(n\/|m|)}{n}\\biggr)\n\\]\nunder\nappropriate technical conditions, where $|m|$ is the cardinality of\nthe index set $m$. To our knowledge, this is the best rate known so\nfar. Taking $x_m=\\log n+|m|\\log J$ and using the union bound\nargument, we have with probability at least $1-O(1\/n)$,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:esterror1}\n&&L\\bigl(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m^*)}_n\\bigr)-L(Q_0)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad=\n\\min_{m} \\bigl(\\bigl[L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)- L(Q_0)\\bigr]\n+\nL\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(m)}_n\\bigr)-L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)\\bigr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad\\leq\\min_{m} \\biggl(\\bigl[L\\bigl(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta}^{*,(m)}\\bigr)-\nL(Q_0)\\bigr] + \\mbox{constant}\\times\\frac{|m|\\log(Jn)}{n}\\biggr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad= \\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}} \\biggl([L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-\nL(Q_0)] + \\mbox{constant}\\times\\frac{\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\log\n(Jn)}{n}\\biggr).\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nOn the other hand, take $\\lambda_n$ so that condition\n(\\ref{eqn:lambdaconditionfix}) holds with ``$=$''.\nEquation (\\ref{eqn:peoraclefix}) implies that, with probability at least\n$1-1\/n$,\n\\[\nL(\\Phi\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)-L(Q_0) \\leq\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\n\\biggl([L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})-L(Q_0)]+\\mbox{constant}\\times\n\\frac{\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\log(Jn)}{n}\\biggr)\n\\]\nwhich is essentially (\\ref{eqn:esterror1}) with the constraint of\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$. (The ``\\textit{constant}'' in the\nabove inequalities may take different values.) Since $\\bolds{\\theta}=\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ minimizes the approximation error plus\na tight upper bound for the estimation error in the oracle model,\nwithin $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$, we\nrefer to $\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ as an oracle.\n\n\\item[(3)] The result can be used to emphasize that\n$l_1$ penalty behaves similarly as the $l_0$ penalty. Note that\n$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ minimizes the empirical prediction error\n$E_n(R-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})^2$ plus an $l_1$ penalty, whereas\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ minimizes the prediction error\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})$ plus an $l_0$ penalty. We provide an\nintuitive connection between these two quantities. First, note that\n$E_n(R-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})^2$ estimates\n$L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})$ and $\\hat\\sigma_j$ estimates\n$\\sigma_j$. We use ``$\\approx$'' to denote this relationship. Thus,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:thetahatint}\n&&\nE_n(R-\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})^2\n+\n\\lambda_n\\sum_{j=1}^J\\hat\\sigma_j|\\theta_j|\\\\\n&&\\qquad\\approx L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})+\n\\lambda_n\\sum_{j=1}^J\\sigma_j|\\theta_j|\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad\\leq L(\\Phi\\bolds{\\theta})+\n\\lambda_n\\sum_{j=1}^J\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\n+\\lambda_n\\sum_{j=1}^J\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}|,\\nonumbe\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\hat\\theta_{n,j}$ is the $j$th component of\n$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$. In Appendix \\ref{apd:peoracle}, we show\nthat for any\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_{n}$,\n$\\lambda_n\\sum_{j=1}^J\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|$ is upper\nbounded by $\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta$ up to a~constant\nwith a high probability. Thus, $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$\nminimizes (\\ref{eqn:thetahatint}) and\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{**}_n$ roughly minimizes an upper bound of\n(\\ref{eqn:thetahatint}).\n\n\\item[(4)] The constants involved in the theorem can be improved; we focused\non readability as opposed to\nproviding the best constants.\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{Remarks*}\n\n\\section{A practical implementation and an evaluation}\\label{sec:data}\nIn this section, we develop a practical implementation of the $l_1$-PLS\nmethod, compare this method to two commonly used alternatives and\nlastly illustrate the method using the motivating data from the\nNefazodone-CBASP trial \\cite{keller2000}.\n\nA realistic implementation of $l_1$-PLS method should use a\ndata-dependent method to select the tuning parameter, $\\lambda_n$.\nSince the primary goal is to maximize the Value, we select $\\lambda_n$\nto maximize a cross validated Value estimator. For any ITR~$d$, it is\neasy to verify that $E[(R-V(d))1_{A=d(X)}\/p(A|X)]=0$. Thus, an unbiased\nestimator of $V(d)$ is\n\\[\nE_n\n\\bigl[1_{A=d(X)}R\/p(A|X)\\bigr]\/E_n \\bigl[1_{A=d(X)}\/p(A|X)\\bigr]\n\\]\n\\cite{murphy2001} [recall that the randomization distribution $p(a|X)$\nis known]. We\nsplit the data into $10$ roughly equal-sized parts; then for each\n$\\lambda_n$ we apply\nthe $l_1$-PLS based method on each $9$ parts of the data to obtain an\nITR, and estimate the Value of this ITR using\nthe remaining part;\nthe $\\lambda_n$ that maximizes the average of the\n$10$ estimated Values is selected. Since the Value of an ITR is\nnoncontinuous in the parameters, this usually results in a set of candidate\n$\\lambda_n$'s achieving maximal Value. In the simulations below, the\nresulting $\\lambda_n$ is nonunique in around $97\\%$ of the data sets.\nIf necessary, as a second step we reduce the set of $\\lambda_n$'s by\nincluding only $\\lambda_n$'s leading to the ITR's using the least number\nof variables. In the simulations below, this second\ncriterion effectively reduced the number of candidate $\\lambda_n$'s\nin around $25\\%$ of the data sets, however multiple $\\lambda_n$'s still\nremained in\naround $90\\%$ of the data sets. This is not surprising since the Value of\nan ITR only depends on the relative magnitudes of\nparameters in the ITR. In the third step we select the $\\lambda_n$\nthat minimizes the 10-fold cross\nvalidated prediction error estimator from the remaining candidate\n$\\lambda_n$'s;\nthat is, minimization of the empirical\nprediction error is used as a final tie breaker.\n\n\n\\subsection{Simulations} \\label{sec:simulation}\n\nA first alternative to $l_1$-PLS is to use ordinary least squares\n(OLS). The\nestimated ITR is $\\hat\nd_{\\mathrm{OLS}}\\in\\arg\\max_a\\Phi(X,a)\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_{\\mathrm{OLS}}$ where\n$\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_{\\mathrm{OLS}}$ is the OLS\nestimator of $\\bolds{\\theta}$. A second alternative is called\n``prognosis prediction'' \\cite{kent2002}. Usually this method employs\nmultiple data\nsets, each of which involves one active treatment. Then\nthe treatment associated with the best predicted prognosis\nis selected. We implement this method by\nestimating $E(R|X,A=a)$ via least squares with $l_1$\npenalization for each treatment group (each $a\\in\\mathcal{A}$)\nseparately. The\ntuning parameter involved in each treatment group is selected by\nminimizing the $10$-fold cross-validated prediction error estimator.\nThe resulting ITR satisfies $\\hat\nd_{\\mathrm{PP}}(X)\\in\\arg\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}\\hat E(R|X,A=a)$ where the\nsubscript ``PP''\ndenotes prognosis prediction.\n\nFor simplicity, we consider binary $A$. All three methods use the same\nnumber of\ndata points and the same number of basis functions but use these data\npoints\/basis\nfunctions differently. $l_1$-PLS and OLS use all $J$ basis functions to conduct\nestimation with all $n$ data points whereas the prognosis prediction\nmethod splits the data into the two treatment groups and uses $J\/2$\nbasis functions to conduct estimation with the $n\/2$ data points in\neach of the two treatment groups. To ensure the comparison is fair\nacross the three methods, the approximation model for each treatment\ngroup is consistent with the approximation model used in both $l_1$-PLS\nand OLS [e.g., if $Q_0$ is approximated by $(1, X, A,\nXA)\\bolds{\\theta}$ in $l_1$-PLS and OLS, then in prognosis\nprediction we approximate\n$E(R|X,A=a)$ by $(1, X)\\bolds{\\theta}_{\\mathrm{PP}}$ for each treatment\ngroup].\nWe do not penalize the intercept coefficient in either prognosis\nprediction or $l_1$-PLS.\n\nThe three methods are compared using two criteria: (1)\nValue maximization; and (2) simplicity of the estimated ITRs (measured\nby the number of variables\/basis functions used in\nthe rule).\n\nWe illustrate the comparison of the three methods using $4$ examples\nselected to reflect three\nscenarios (see Section S.3 of the supplemental article \\cite\n{supplement} for $4$ further examples):\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)] There is no treatment effect [i.e., $Q_0$ is constructed so that\n$T_0=0$; example~(1)]. In this case, all ITRs yield the same Value. Thus, the\nsimplest rule is preferred.\n\n\\item[(2)] There is a treatment effect and the treatment effect term $T_0$\nis correctly modeled [example (4) for large $n$ and example (2)]. In this\ncase, minimizing the prediction error will yield the\nITR that maximizes the Value.\n\n\\item[(3)] There is a treatment effect and the treatment effect term\n$T_0$ is misspecified [example (4) for small $n$ and example (3)]. In this\ncase, there might be\na mismatch between prediction error minimization and Value\nmaximization.\n\\end{longlist}\n\nThe examples are generated as follows. The\ntreatment $A$ is generated uniformly from $\\{-1,1\\}$ independent of $X$\nand the response $R$. The response $R$ is\nnormally distributed with mean $Q_0(X,A)$. In examples (1)--(3),\n$X\\sim U[-1,1]^5$ and we consider three simple examples for $Q_0$. In\nexample (4),\n$X \\sim U[0,1]$ and we use a complex $Q_0$, where\n$Q_0(X,1)$ and $Q(X, -1)$ are similar to the blocks function used in\nDonoho and Johnstone\n\\cite{donoho1994}.\nFurther details of the simulation design are\nprovided in Appendix \\ref{sec:simdesign}.\n\nWe consider two types of approximation models for $Q_0$. In examples\n(1)--(3), we approximate $Q_0$ by\n$(1,X,A,XA)\\bolds{\\theta}$. In example\n(4), we approximate $Q_0$ by Haar wavelets. The number of basis\nfunctions may increase as $n$ increases (we index $J$, $\\Phi$ and\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^*$ by $n$ in this case). Plots for $Q_0(X,A)$\nand the associated best wavelet fits\n$\\Phi_n(X,A)\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n$ are provided in Figure\n\\ref{fig:qoptfit}.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\vspace{-2pt}\n\\includegraphics{864f01.eps}\n\\vspace{-5pt}\n\\caption{Plots for:\nthe conditional mean function $Q_0(X,A)$ (\\textup{left}), $Q_0(X,A)$ and the\nassociated best wavelet fit when $J_n=8$ (\\textup{middle}), and $Q_0(X,A)$\nand the associated best wavelet fit when $J_n=128$ (\\textup{right}) [example\n(4)].}\n\\label{fig:qoptfit}\n\\vspace{-8pt}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFor each example, we simulate data sets of sizes $n=2^k$ for $k=5,\\ldots,10$.\n$1\\mbox{,}000$ data sets are generated for each\nsample size.\nThe Value of each estimated ITR is evaluated via Monte Carlo using a\ntest set of size $10\\mbox{,}000$.\nThe Value of the optimal ITR is also evaluated using the\ntest set.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\vspace{-2pt}\n\\includegraphics{864f02.eps}\n\\vspace{-5pt}\n\\caption{Comparison of the $l_1$-PLS based method\nwith the OLS method and the PP method [examples (1)--(4)]: plots for\nmedians and median absolute deviations (MAD) of\nthe Value of the estimated decision rules (top panels) and the number\nof variables (terms) needed for treatment assignment (including the\nmain treatment\neffect term, bottom panels) over $1\\mbox{,}000$ samples versus sample size\non the log scale. The black dash-dotted line in each plot on the\nfirst row denotes the Value of the optimal treatment rule,\nfor each example. [$n=32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024$. The\ncorresponding numbers of basis functions in example (4) are\n$J_n=8, 16, 32, 64, 64, 128$.]}\\label{fig:simulation}\n\\vspace{-8pt}\n\\end{figure}\n\nSimulation results are presented in Figure \\ref{fig:simulation}.\nWhen the approximation model is of\nhigh quality, all methods produce ITRs with similar Value [see examples\n(1), (2) and example (4) for large $n$].\nHowever, when the approximation model is poor, the $l_1$-PLS method\nmay produce highest Value [see example (3)]. Note\nthat in example (3) settings in which the sample size is small, the Value\nof the ITR produced by\n$l_1$-PLS method has larger median absolute deviation (MAD)\nthan the other two methods. One\npossible reason is that due to the mismatch between maximizing the\nValue and minimizing the prediction error, the Value estimator\nplays a strong role in selecting $\\lambda_n$.\nThe nonsmoothness of the Value estimator combined with the mismatch results\nin very different $\\lambda_n$'s and thus the estimated decision rules\nvary greatly\nfrom data set to data set in this example. Nonetheless, the $l_1$-PLS\nmethod is still preferred after taking the variation into account; indeed\n$l_1$-PLS produces ITRs with higher Value than both OLS\nand PP in around $46\\%$, $55\\%$ and $67\\%$ in data sets of sizes $n=32, 64$\nand $128$, respectively. Furthermore, in general the $l_1$-PLS\nmethod uses much fewer variables for treatment assignment than the\nother two methods. This is expected because the OLS method\ndoes not have variable selection functionality and the PP method\nwill use all variables that are predictive of the response $R$ whereas\nthe use of the Value in selecting the tuning parameter in $l_1$-PLS\ndiscounts variables that are only useful in\npredicting the response (and less useful in selecting the best treatment).\n\n\n\\subsection{Nefazodone-CBASP trial example} \\label{sec:realdata}\n\nThe Nefazodone-CBASP trial was conducted to compare the efficacy of\nseveral alternate treatments for patients with chronic depression.\nThe study randomized $681$ patients with nonpsychotic chronic major\ndepressive disorder (MDD) to either Nefazodone, cognitive\nbehavioral-analysis system of psychotherapy (CBASP) or the\ncombination of the two treatments. Various assessments were taken\nthroughout the study, among which the score on the 24-item Hamilton\nRating Scale for Depression (HRSD) was the primary outcome. Low HRSD\nscores are desirable. See Keller et al. \\cite{keller2000} for more\ndetail of the\nstudy design and the primary analysis.\n\nIn the data analysis, we use a subset of the Nefazodone-CBASP data\nconsisting of $656$ patients for whom the response HRSD score was\nobserved. In this trial, pairwise comparisons show that the\ncombination treatment resulted in significantly lower HRSD scores\nthan either of the single treatments. There was no overall\ndifference between the single treatments.\n\nWe use $l_1$-PLS to develop an ITR. In\nthe analysis, the HRSD score is reverse coded so that higher is\nbetter. We consider $50$ pretreatment variables\n$X=(X_1,\\ldots,X_{50})$. Treatments are coded using contrast coding\nof dummy variables $A = (A_1,A_2)$, where $A_1 = 2$ if the\ncombination treatment is assigned and $-1$ otherwise and $A_2 = 1$\nif CBASP is assigned, $-1$ if nefazodone and $0$ otherwise. The\nvector of basis functions, $\\Phi(X,A)$, is of the form\n$(1,X,A_1,XA_1, A_2, XA_2)$. So the number of basis functions is\n$J=153$. As a contrast, we also consider the OLS method and the PP\nmethod (separate prognosis prediction for each treatment). The\nvector of basis functions used in PP is $(1, X)$ for each of the three treatment\ngroups. Neither the intercept term nor the main treatment effect\nterms in $l_1$-PLS or PP is penalized (see Section S.2 of the\nsupplemental article \\cite{supplement} for the modification of the\nweights $\\hat\\sigma_j$\nused in (\\ref{eqn:thetahat})).\n\nThe ITR given by the $l_1$-PLS method\nrecommends the combination treatment to all (so none of the\npretreatment variables enter the rule). On the other hand, the PP\nmethod produces an ITR that uses $29$ variables. If the\nrule produced by PP were used to assign\ntreatment for the $656$ patients in the trial, it would recommend\nthe combination treatment for $614$ patients and nefazodone for the\nother $42$ patients. In addition, the OLS method will use all the\n$50$ variables. If the ITR produced by OLS were used to\nassign treatment for the $656$ patients in the trial, it would\nrecommend the combination treatment for $429$ patients, nefazodone\nfor $145$ patients and CBASP for the other $82$ patients.\n\n\n\\section{Discussion}\\label{sec:discussion}\n\nOur goal is to construct a high quality ITR that will benefit future patients.\nWe considered an $l_1$-PLS\nbased method and provided a finite sample upper bound for\n$V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)$, the reduction in Value of the estimated ITR.\n\nThe use of an $l_1$ penalty allows us\nto consider a large model for the conditional mean function $Q_0$\nyet permits a sparse estimated ITR. In\nfact, many other penalization methods such as SCAD \\cite{fan2001}\nand $l_1$ penalty with adaptive weights (adaptive Lasso;\n\\cite{zou2006}) also have this property. We choose the nonadaptive\n$l_1$ penalty to represent these methods. Interested readers may\njustify other PLS methods using similar proof techniques.\n\nThe high\\vspace*{1pt} probability finite sample upper bounds [i.e., (\\ref\n{eqn:finaloracle}) and\n(\\ref{eqn:finaloracle1})] cannot be used to construct a prediction\/confidence\ninterval for $V(d_0)-V(\\hat d_n)$ due to the unknown quantities in\nthe bound. How to develop a tight computable upper bound to\nassess the quality of $\\hat d_n$ is an open question.\n\nWe used cross validation with Value maximization to select the\ntuning parameter involved in the $l_1$-PLS method. As compared to\nthe OLS method and the PP method, this method\nmay yield higher Value when $T_0$ is misspecified.\nHowever, since only the Value is used to select the tuning\nparameter, this method may produce a complex ITR for which the Value is\nonly slightly higher than that\nof a much simpler ITR. In this case, a simpler rule may\nbe preferred due to the interpretability and cost of collecting the\nvariables. Investigation of a tuning parameter selection criterion\nthat trades off the Value with the number of variables in an\nITR is needed.\n\nThis paper studied a one stage decision problem. However, it is\nevident that some diseases require time-varying treatment. For\nexample, individuals with a chronic disease often experience a\nwaxing and waning course of illness. In these settings, the goal is\nto construct a sequence of ITRs that\ntailor the type and dosage of treatment through time according to an\nindividual's changing status. There is an abundance of statistical\nliterature in this area\n\\cite\n{thall2000,thall2002,murphy2003,murphy2005,robins2004,lunceford2002,vanderlaan2005,wahedtsiatis2006}.\nExtension of the least squares\nbased method to the multi-stage decision problem has been presented\nin Murphy \\cite{murphy2005}. The performance of $l_1$ penalization\nin this setting is unclear and worth investigation.\n\n\\begin{appendix}\n\n\\section*{Appendix}\n\n\\subsection{\\texorpdfstring{Proof of Theorem \\lowercase{\\protect\\ref{thm:bound2}}}{Proof of Theorem 3.1}}\n\\label{apd:margin}\n\nFor any ITR $d\\dvtx\\mathcal{X}\\rightarrow\\mathcal{A}$, denote\n$\\triangle\nT_d(X)$ $\\triangleq\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)-T_0(X,d(X))$. Using\nsimilar arguments to that in Section~\\ref{sec:prelim}, we have\n$V(d_0)-V(d)=E(\\triangle T_d)$. If $V(d_0)-V(d)=0$, then\n(\\ref{eqn:bound2}) and (\\ref{eqn:bound3}) automatically hold.\nOtherwise, $E(\\triangle T_d)^2\\geq(E\\triangle T_d)^2>0$. In this\ncase, for any $\\epsilon>0$, define the event\\vspace{-2pt}\n\\[\n\\Omega_\\epsilon=\\Bigl\\{\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)-\n\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}\\setminus\\mathop{\\arg\\max}_{a\\in\\mathcal\n{A}}T_0(X,a)}T_0(X,a)\\leq\\epsilon\\Bigr\\}.\n\\]\nThen $\\triangle T_d\\leq(\\triangle T_d)^2\/\\epsilon$ on the event\n$\\Omega_\\epsilon^C$. This together with the fact that $\\triangle\nT_d\\leq(\\triangle T_d)^2\/\\epsilon+\\epsilon\/4$ implies\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nV(d_0)-V(d) &=& E(1_{\\Omega_\\epsilon^C}\\triangle T_d)+\nE(1_{\\Omega_\\epsilon}\\triangle T_d)\\\\[-2pt]\n&\\leq&\\frac{1}{\\epsilon}E[1_{\\Omega_\\epsilon^C} (\\triangle\nT_d)^2]+E\\biggl[1_{\\Omega_\\epsilon}\\biggl(\\frac{(\\triangle\nT_d)^2}{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\epsilon}{4}\\biggr)\\biggr]\\\\[-2pt]\n&=&\\frac{1}{\\epsilon}E[(\\triangle\nT_d)^2]+\\frac{\\epsilon}{4}P(\\Omega_\\epsilon)\\leq\n\\frac{1}{\\epsilon}E[(\\triangle\nT_d)^2]+\\frac{C}{4}\\epsilon^{1+\\alpha},\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nwhere the last inequality follows from the margin condition\n(\\ref{eqn:noise}). Choosing $\\epsilon= (4E(\\triangle\nT_d)^2\/C)^{1\/(2+\\alpha)}$ to minimize the above upper bound\nyields\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:thm1part1}\nV(d_0)-V(d)\\leq\n2^{\\alpha\/(2+\\alpha)}C^{1\/(2+\\alpha)}[E(\\triangle\nT_d)^2]^{(1+\\alpha)\/(2+\\alpha)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nNext, for any $d$ and $Q$ such that\n$d(X)\\in\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}Q(X,a)$, let $T(X,A)$ be the associated\ntreatment effect term. Then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE(\\triangle T_d)^2\n&=&E\\Bigl[\\Bigl(\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)-\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T(X,a)+\nT(X,d(X))-T_0(X,d(X))\\Bigr)^2\\Bigr]\\\\[-2pt]\n&\\leq&\n2E\\Bigl[\\Bigl(\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}T_0(X,a)-\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal\n{A}}T(X,a)\\Bigr)^2\\\\[-2pt]\n&&\\hspace*{17.8pt}{} +\n\\bigl(T(X,d(X))-T_0(X,d(X))\\bigr)^2\\Bigr]\\\\[-2pt]\n&\\leq&\n4E\\Bigl[\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}\\bigl(T(X,a)-T_0(X,a)\\bigr)^2\\Bigr],\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nwhere the last inequality follows from the fact that neither\n$|{\\max_aT_0(X,a)}-\\max_aT(X,a)|$ nor $|T(X,d(X))-T_0(X,d(X))|$ is\nlarger than ${\\max_a}|T(X,a)-T_0(X,a)|$. Since $p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for\nall $(x,a)$ pairs, we have\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eqn:thm1part2}\nE(\\triangle T_d)^2 &\\leq&4S\nE\\Bigl[\\sum_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}\\bigl(T(X,a)-T_0(X,a)\\bigr)^2p(a|X)\n\\Bigr]\\nonumber\\\\[-2pt]\n&=&4SE\\bigl(T(X,A)-T_0(X,A)\\bigr)^2.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nInequality (\\ref{eqn:bound3}) follows by substituting\n(\\ref{eqn:thm1part2}) into (\\ref{eqn:thm1part1}). Inequality\n(\\ref{eqn:bound2}) can be proved similarly by noticing that\n$\\triangle T_d(X)=\\max_{a\\in\\mathcal{A}}Q_0(X,a)-Q_0(X,d(X))$.\\vspace{-2pt}\n\n\n\\subsection{\\texorpdfstring{Generalization of Theorem \\lowercase{\\protect\\ref{thm:peoraclefix}}\n{Generalization of Theorem 4.3}}\n\\label{apd:peoracle}\n\nIn this section, we present a generalization of Theorem\n\\ref{thm:peoraclefix} where $J$ may depend on $n$ and the sparsity\nof any $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J}$ is measured by the\nnumber of ``large'' components in $\\bolds{\\theta}$ as described\nin Zhang and Huang \\cite{chzhang2008}. In this case, $J$, $\\Phi$ and\nthe prediction\nerror minimizer $\\bolds{\\theta}^*$\nare denoted as $J_n, \\Phi_n$ and $\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n$,\nrespectively. All relevant quantities and assumptions are restated below.\n\nLet $|M|$ denote the cardinality of any index set\n$M\\subseteq\\{1,\\ldots,J_n\\}$. For any $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\n\\mathbb{R}^{J_n}$ and constant $\\rho\\geq0$, define\n\\[\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\{M\\subseteq\\{\n1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\dvtx\n\\sum_{j\\in\\{1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\setminus M}\\sigma_j|\\theta_j|\\leq\\rho\n|M|\\lambda_n\\}}|M|.\n\\]\nThen $M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})$ is the smallest index\nset that contains only ``large'' components\nin~$\\bolds{\\theta}$. $|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|$\nmeasures the sparsity of $\\bolds{\\theta}$. It is easy to see that\nwhen $\\rho=0$,\n$M_0(\\bolds{\\theta})$ is the index set of nonzero components in\n$\\bolds{\\theta}$ and $|M_0(\\bolds{\\theta})|=\\|\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_0$. Moreover,\n$M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})$ is an empty set if and only\nif $\\bolds{\\theta}=\\mathbf{0}$.\n\nLet $[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]$ be the set of most sparse prediction error\nminimizers in the linear model, that is,\\vspace{-5pt}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:thetastar}\n[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]=\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\min}\n_{\\bolds{\\theta}}\nL(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})}|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|.\n\\end{equation}\nNote that $[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]$ depends on $\\rho\\lambda_n$.\n\nTo derive the finite sample upper bound for $L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\n\\theta}_n)$, we need the following assumptions.\\vspace{-5pt}\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{apn:errorterm} The error\\vspace*{1pt} terms $\\varepsilon_i,\ni=1,\\ldots,n$ are independent of $(X_i,A_i), i=1,\\ldots,n$ and are\ni.i.d. with $E(\\varepsilon_i)=0$ and\n$E[|\\varepsilon_i|^l]\\leq\\frac{l!}{2}c^{l-2}\\sigma^2$ for some\n$c,\\sigma^2>0$ for all $l\\geq2$.\n\\end{assumption}\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{apn:basis} For all $n\\geq1$:\n\n\\begin{longlist}[(a)]\n\\item[(a)]\nthere exists an $1\\leq U_n<\\infty$ such that\n$\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,{J_n}}\\|\\phi_j\\|_\\infty\/\\sigma_j\\leq U_n$, where\n$\\sigma_j\\triangleq(E\\phi_j^2)^{1\/2}$.\n\n\\item[(b)] there exists an $0<\\eta_{1,n}<\\infty$, such that\n$\\sup_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\n[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]}\\|Q_0-\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta}\\|_\\infty\\leq\n\\eta_{1,n}$.\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nFor any $0\\leq\\gamma<1\/2$, $\\eta_{2,n}\\geq0$ (which may\ndepend on $n$) and tuning parameter~$\\lambda_n$, define\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Theta_{n}^o &=&\n\\biggl\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J_n}\\dvtx\\exists\n\\bolds{\\theta}^o\\in[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]\n\\mbox{ s.t. }\n\\|\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\theta}-\\bolds{\\theta}^o)\\|_\\infty\\leq\\eta\n_{2,n}\\\\\n&&\\hspace*{31.13pt}\n\\mbox{ and }\n\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,J_n}\\biggl|E\\biggl[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\theta}-\\bolds{\\theta}^o)\\frac{\\phi_j}{\\sigma_j}\\biggr]\\biggr|\\leq\n\\gamma{\\lambda_n}\\biggr\\}.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{apn:grammatrix} For any $n\\geq1$,\nthere exists a $\\beta_n>0$ such that\n\\[\nE[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\tilde\\theta}-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2|M_{\\rho\n\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\geq\\beta_n\n\\biggl[\\biggl(\\sum_{j\\in\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\tilde\\theta_j-\\theta\n_j|\\biggr)^2-\\rho^2\n|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|^2\\lambda_n^2\\biggr]\n\\]\nfor all\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_{n}^o\\setminus\\{\\mathbf{0}\\}$,\n$\\bolds{\\tilde\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J_n}$ satisfying $\\sum_{j\\in\n\\{1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\setminus\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\tilde\\theta_j|\\leq\n\\frac{2\\gamma+5}{1-2\\gamma}\\times(\\sum_{j\\in\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\tilde\\theta_j-\\theta\n_j|+\\rho\n|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\lambda_n)$.\n\\end{assumption}\n\nWhen $E(\\Phi_n^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X)=\\mathbf{0}$ a.s. ($\\Phi_n^{(2)}$\nis defined in Section \\ref{sec:finaloracle}), we need an extra\nassumption to derive the finite sample upper bound for the mean square\nerror of the treatment effect estimator $E[\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds\n{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-T_0(X,A)]^2$ (recall that $T_0(X,A)\\triangleq\nQ_0(X,A)-E[Q_0(X,A)|X]$).\n\\begin{assumption}\n\\label{apn:grammatrix_Topt} For any $n\\geq1$, there exists a\n$\\beta_n>0$ such that\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n&&E\\bigl[\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bigl(\\bolds{\\tilde\\theta}{}^{(2)}-\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}\\bigr)\\bigr]^2\n\\bigl|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}(\\bolds{\\theta})\\bigr|\\\\\n&&\\hspace*{0pt}\\qquad\\geq\\beta_n\n\\biggl[\\biggl(\\sum_{j\\in\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\tilde\\theta\n_j-\\theta_j|\\biggr)^2-\\rho^2\n\\bigl|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}(\\bolds{\\theta})\\bigr|^2\\lambda_n^2\\biggr]\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nfor all\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_{n}^o\\setminus\\{\\mathbf{0}\\}$,\n$\\bolds{\\tilde\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{J_n}$ satisfying $\\sum_{j\\in\n\\{1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\setminus\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})}\\sigma_j|\\tilde\\theta_j|\\leq\n\\frac{2\\gamma+5}{1-2\\gamma}\\times(\\sum_{j\\in\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})}|\\tilde\\theta_j-\\theta_j|+\\rho\n|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\lambda_n)$, where\n\\[\nM_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}(\\bolds{\\theta})\\in\\mathop{\\arg\\min}_{\\{M\\subseteq\\{\nJ_n^{(1)}+1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\dvtx\n\\sum_{j\\in\\{J_n^{(1)}+1,\\ldots,J_n\\}\\setminus\nM}\\sigma_j|\\theta_j|\\leq\\rho|M|\\lambda_n\\}}|M|\n\\]\nis the smallest index set that contains only large components in\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}$.\n\\end{assumption}\n\nWithout loss of generality, we assume that Assumptions \\ref\n{apn:grammatrix} and \\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} hold with the same value\nof $\\beta_n$. And we can always choose a small enough $\\beta_n$ so that\n$\\rho\\beta_n\\leq1$ for a given $\\rho$.\n\nFor any given $t>0$, define\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:thetan2}\n\\Theta_{n}&=&\n\\Biggl\\{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_{n}^o\\dvtx|M_{\\rho\\lambda\n_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\nonumber\\\\[-8pt]\\\\[-8pt]\n&&\\hspace*{6.5pt}\\leq\n\\frac{(1-2\\gamma)^2\\beta_n}{120}\\Biggl[\\sqrt{\\frac{1}{9}\n+\\frac{n}{2U_n^2[\\log(3J_n(J_n+1))+t]}}-\\frac{1}{3}\\Biggr]\\Biggr\\}.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nNote that we allow $U_n, \\eta_{1,n}, \\eta_{2,n}$ and $\\beta_n^{-1}$\nto increase as $n$ increases. However, if those quantities are\nsmall, the upper bound in (\\ref{eqn:peoracle}) will be tighter.\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:peoracle}\nSuppose Assumptions \\ref{apn:errorterm} and \\ref{apn:basis} hold.\nFor any given $0\\leq\\gamma<1\/2$, $\\eta_{2,n}>0$, $\\rho\\geq0$ and\n$t>0$, let $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ be the $l_1$-PLS estimator\ndefined in (\\ref{eqn:thetahat}) with tuning parameter\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:lambdacondition}\n\\lambda_n&\\geq&\\frac{8\\max\\{3c,2(\\eta_{1,n}+\\eta_{2,n})\\}U_n(\\log\n6J_n+t)}\n{(1-2\\gamma)n}\\nonumber\\\\[-8pt]\\\\[-8pt]\n&&{}+\\frac{12\\max\\{\\sigma,(\\eta_{1,n}+\\eta_{2,n})\\}}{(1-2\\gamma)}\n\\sqrt{\\frac{2(\\log6J_n+t)}{n}}.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSuppose Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix} holds with $\\rho\\beta_n\\leq\n1$. Let $\\Theta_n$ be the set defined in (\\ref{eqn:thetan2}) and\nassume $\\Theta_n$ is nonempty.\nIf\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:jncondition}\n\\frac{\\log2J_n}{n}\\leq\n\\frac{2(1-2\\gamma)^2}{27U_n^2-10\\gamma-22},\n\\end{equation}\nthen with probability at least $1-\\exp(-k'_nn)-\\exp(-t)$, we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:peoracle}\nL(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)\\leq\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\biggl[L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})\n+K_n\n\\frac{|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|}{\\beta_n}\\lambda_n^2\\biggr],\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k_n'=13(1-2\\gamma)^2\/[6(27U_n^2-10\\gamma-22)]$ and\n$K_n=[40\\gamma(12\\beta_n\\rho+2\\gamma+5)]\/[(1-2\\gamma)(2\\gamma+19)]\n+130(12\\beta_n\\rho+2\\gamma+5)^2\/[9(2\\gamma+19)^2]$.\n\nFurthermore, suppose $E(\\Phi_n^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X)=\\mathbf{0}$ a.s. If\nAssumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} holds with\nthe same $\\beta_n$ as that in Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix}, then\nwith probability at least\n$1-\\exp(-k'_nn)-\\exp(-t)$, we have\n\\[\nE\\bigl(\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-T_0\\bigr)^2 \\leq\n\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n}\\biggl[E\\bigl(\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}-T_0\\bigr)^2\n+ K'_n\\frac{|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}\n(\\bolds{\\theta})|}{\\beta_n}\\lambda_n^2\\biggr],\n\\]\nwhere $K_n'=\n20(12\\beta_n\\rho+2\\gamma+5)\\{\\gamma\/[(1-2\\gamma)(7-6\\beta_n\\rho)]\n+[3(1-2\\gamma)\\beta_n\\rho+10(2\\gamma+5)]\/[9(2\\gamma+19)^2]\\}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{Remarks*}\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)]\nNote that $K_n$ is upper bounded by a constant under the assumption\n$\\beta_n\\rho\\leq1$. In the asymptotic setting when\n$n\\rightarrow\\infty$ and $J_n\\rightarrow\\infty$,\n(\\ref{eqn:peoracle}) implies that\n$L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)-\\min_{\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb\n{R}^{J_n}}L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})\\rightarrow^p\n0$ if (i)\n$|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta}^o)|\\lambda_n^2\/\\beta_n=o(1)$,\n(ii) $U_n^2\\log J_n\/n\\leq k_1$ and\n$|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta}^o)|\\leq\nk_2\\beta_n\\sqrt{n\/(U_n^2\\log J_n)}$ for some sufficiently small\npositive constants $k_1$ and $k_2$ and (iii)\n$\\lambda_n\\geq k_3\\max\\{1,\\eta_{1,n}+\\eta_{2,n}\\}\\sqrt{\\log J_n\/n}$ for\na sufficiently large\nconstant $k_3$, where $\\bolds{\\theta}^o\\in[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]$ (take $t=\\log J_n$).\n\n\\item[(2)] Below we briefly discuss Assumptions \\ref{apn:basis}--\\ref\n{apn:grammatrix_Topt}.\n\nAssumption \\ref{apn:basis} is very similar to assumption \\hyperlink{ap:basis}{(2)}\nin Theorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle} (which is used to prove the\nconcentration of the sample mean around the true mean), except that\n$U_n$ and $\\eta_{1,n}$ may increase as $n$ increases.\nThis relaxation allows the use of basis functions for which the sup\nnorm $\\max_j\\|\\phi_j\\|_\\infty$ is increasing in $n$ [e.g., the wavelet\nbasis used in example (4) of the simulation studies].\n\nAssumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix} is a generalization of condition (\\ref\n{eqn:grammatrix1}) [which has been discussed in remark (4) following\nTheorem \\ref{thm:finaloracle}]\nto the case where $J_n$ may increase in $n$ and the sparsity of a\nparameter is measured by the number of ``large'' components as\ndescribed at the beginning of this section. This condition is used to\navoid the collinearity problem. It is easy to see that when $\\rho=0$\nand $\\beta_n$ is fixed in $n$, this assumption simplifies to\ncondition~(\\ref{eqn:grammatrix1}).\n\nAssumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} puts a strengthened constraint on\nthe linear model of the treatment effect part, as compared to\nAssumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix}.\nThis assumption, together with Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix}, is\nneeded in deriving the upper bound for the mean square error of the\ntreatment effect estimator. It is easy to verify that if $E[\\Phi_n^T\\Phi\n_n]$ is positive definite, then both Assumptions \\ref{apn:grammatrix} and \\ref\n{apn:grammatrix_Topt} hold.\nAlthough the result is about the treatment effect part, which is\nasymptotically independent of the main effect of $X$ (when $E[\\Phi\n_n^{(2)}(X,A)|X]=\\mathbf{0}$ a.s.), we still need Assumption \\ref\n{apn:grammatrix} to show that the cross product term\n$E_n[(\\Phi_n^{(1)}\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(1)}_n-\\Phi\n^{(1)}_n\\bolds{\\theta}^{(1)})\n(\\Phi^{(2)}_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-\\Phi^{(2)}_n\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)})]$\nis upper bounded by a quantity converging to $0$ at the desired\nrate. We may use a really poor model for the main effect part\n$E(Q_0(X,A)|X)$ (e.g., $\\Phi^{(1)}_n\\equiv1$), and Assumption~\\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt}\nimplies Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix} when $\\rho\n=0$. This poor model only effects the constants involved in the result.\nWhen the sample size is large (so that $\\lambda_n$ is\nsmall), the estimated ITR will be of high quality as long\nas $T_0$ is well approximated.\n\\end{longlist}\n\\end{Remarks*}\n\\begin{pf*}{Proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:peoracle}}\nFor any $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$, define the events\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Omega_1&=&\\bigcap_{j=1}^{J_n}\\biggl\\{\\frac{2(1+\\gamma)}{3}\\sigma_j\\leq\n\\hat\\sigma_j\\leq\\frac{2(2-\\gamma)}{3}\\sigma_j\\biggr\\} \\qquad\\mbox{[where }\\hat\n\\sigma_j\\triangleq(E_n\\phi_j^2)^{1\/2}\\mbox{]},\\\\\n\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})&=&\n\\biggl\\{\\max_{j,k=1,\\ldots,{J_n}}\\biggl|(E-E_n)\\biggl(\\frac{\\phi_j\\phi\n_k}{\\sigma_j\\sigma_k}\\biggr)\\biggr|\n\\leq\\frac{(1-2\\gamma)^2\\beta_n}{120|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|}\\biggr\\},\\\\[-1pt]\n\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})&=&\n\\biggl\\{\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,{J_n}}\\biggl|E_n\\biggl[(R-\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})\\frac{\\phi_j}{\\sigma_j}\\biggr]\\biggr|\\leq\n\\frac{4\\gamma+1}{6}\\lambda_n\\biggr\\}.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThen there exists a\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^o\\in[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]$ such that\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nL(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)\n&=&L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})\n+2E[(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta}^o-\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})\\Phi\n_n(\\bolds{\\theta}-\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)]\n+E[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2\\\\[-1pt]\n&\\leq& L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})+2\\max_{j=1,\\ldots,J_n}\\biggl|\nE\\biggl[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\theta}^o-\\bolds{\\theta})\\frac{\\phi\n_j}{\\sigma_j}\\biggr]\\biggr|\n\\Biggl(\\sum_{j=1}^{J_n}\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\\Biggr)\\\\[-1pt]\n&&{}+\nE[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2\\\\[-2pt]\n&\\leq& L(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})+2\\gamma\\lambda_n\n\\Biggl(\\sum_{j=1}^{J_n}\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\\Biggr)+\nE[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2,\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nwhere the first equality follows from the fact that\n$E[(R-\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta}^o)\\phi_j]=0$ for any\n$\\bolds{\\theta}^o\\in[\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n]$ for $j=1,\\ldots,\nJ_n$ and the last inequality follows from the definition\nof~$\\Theta_n^o$.\n\nBased on Lemma \\ref{lemma:oracle} below, we have that on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$,\n\\[\nL(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n) \\leq\nL(\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\theta})+K_n\\frac{|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}\n(\\bolds{\\theta})|}{\\beta_n}\\lambda_n^2.\\vspace{-2pt}\n\\]\n\nSimilarly, when $E[\\Phi^{(2)}_2(X,A)^T|X]=\\mathbf{0}$, by Lemma \\ref\n{lemma:oracle1}, we have that on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$,\\vspace{-3pt}\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE\\bigl(\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-T_0\\bigr)^2\n&\\leq& E\\bigl(\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}-T_0\\bigr)^2\n+2\\gamma\\lambda_n\n\\Biggl(\\sum_{j=J_n^{(1)}+1}^{J_n}\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\\Biggr)\\\\[-1pt]\n&&{} +\nE\\bigl[\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bigl(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}\\bigr)\\bigr]^2\\\\[-1pt]\n&\\leq&\nE\\bigl(\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}-T_0\\bigr)^2+K'_n\\frac{|M_{\\rho\\lambda\n_n}^{(2)}\n(\\bolds{\\theta})|}{\\beta_n}\\lambda_n^2.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\nThe conclusion of the theorem follows from the union probability\nbounds of the events $\\Omega_1$, $\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})$ and\n$\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$ provided in Lemmas\n\\ref{lemma:omega1}, \\ref{lemma:omega2} and \\ref{lemma:omega3}.\\vspace{-5pt}\n\\end{pf*}\n\nBelow we state the lemmas used in the proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:peoracle}.\nThe proofs of the lemmas are given in Section S.4 of the supplemental\narticle \\cite{supplement}.\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:oracle}\nSuppose Assumption \\ref{apn:grammatrix} holds with $\\rho\\beta_n\\leq\n1$. Then for any $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$, on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$,\nwe have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:hatthetabound}\n\\sum_{j=1}^{J_n}\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\\leq\n\\frac{20(12\\rho\\beta_n+2\\gamma+5)}{(1-2\\gamma)(19+2\\gamma)\\beta_n}\n|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\lambda_n\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:thetariskbound}\nE[\\Phi_n(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n-\\bolds{\\theta})]^2\\leq\n\\frac{130(12\\rho\\beta_n+2\\gamma+5)^2\n}{9(19+2\\gamma)^2\\beta_n}|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}(\\bolds{\\theta})|\\lambda_n^2\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{Remark*}\nThis lemma implies that $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ is close to each\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$ on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$.\nThe intuition is as follows. Since $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$\nminimizes~(\\ref{eqn:thetahat}), the first order conditions imply\nthat\n$\\max_j|E_n(R-\\Phi_n\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n)\\phi_j\/\\hat\\sigma_j|\\leq\n\\lambda_n\/2$.\nSimilar property holds for $\\bolds{\\theta}$ on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$. Assumption\n\\ref{apn:grammatrix} together with event\n$\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})$ ensures that there is no\ncollinearity in the $n\\times J_n$ design matrix\n$(\\Phi_n(X_i,A_i))_{i=1}^n$. These two aspects guarantee the\ncloseness of $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ to~$\\bolds{\\theta}$.\n\\end{Remark*}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:oracle1}\nSuppose $E[\\Phi_n^{(2)}(X,A)^T|X]=\\mathbf{0}$ a.s. and\nAssumptions \\ref{apn:grammatrix} and \\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} hold\nwith $\\rho\\beta_n\\leq1$.\nThen for any $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$, on the event\n$\\Omega_1\\cap\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\cap\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})$,\nwe have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eqn:hatthetabound1}\n\\sum_{j=J_n^{(1)}+1}^{J_n}\\sigma_j|\\hat\\theta_{n,j}-\\theta_j|\\leq\n\\frac{10(12\\beta_n\\rho+2\\gamma+5)}{(1-2\\gamma)(7-6\\beta_n\\rho)\\beta\n_n}\\bigl|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}\n(\\bolds{\\theta})\\bigr|\\lambda_n\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:thetariskbound1}\n\\hspace*{28pt}&&E\\bigl[\\Phi_n^{(2)}\\bigl(\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}{}^{(2)}_n-\\bolds{\\theta}^{(2)}\\bigr)\\bigr]^2\n\\nonumber\\\\[-8pt]\\\\[-8pt]\n\\hspace*{28pt}&&\\qquad\\leq\n\\frac{20(12\\rho\\beta_n+2\\gamma+5)[3(1-2\\gamma)\\beta_n\\rho+10(2\\gamma+5)]\n}{9(2\\gamma+19)^2\\beta_n}\\bigl|M_{\\rho\\lambda_n}^{(2)}(\\bolds{\\theta})\\bigr|\\lambda_n^2.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:omega1}\nSuppose Assumption \\ref{apn:basis}\\textup{(a)} and inequality\n(\\ref{eqn:jncondition}) hold. Then $\\mathbf{P}(\\Omega_1^C)\\leq\\exp\n(-k'_nn)$, where $k'_n = 13(1-2\\gamma)^2\/[6(27U_n^2-10\\gamma-22)]$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:omega2}\nSuppose Assumption \\ref{apn:basis}\\textup{(a)} holds. Then for any\n$t>0$ and $\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$,\n$\\mathbf{P}(\\{\\Omega_2(\\bolds{\\theta})\\}^C)\\leq\\exp(-t)\/3$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:omega3}\nSuppose Assumptions \\ref{apn:errorterm} and \\ref{apn:basis} hold.\nFor any $t>0$, if $\\lambda_n$\nsatisfies condition (\\ref{eqn:lambdacondition}), then for any\n$\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\Theta_n$, we have\n$\\mathbf{P}(\\{\\Omega_3(\\bolds{\\theta})\\}^C)\\leq2\\exp(-t)\/3$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\\subsection{\\texorpdfstring{Design of simulations in Section \\lowercase{\\protect\\ref{sec:simulation}}\n{Design of simulations in Section 5.1}}\n\\label{sec:simdesign}\n\nIn this section, we present the detailed simulation design of the\nexamples used in Section \\ref{sec:simulation}. These examples\nsatisfy all assumptions listed in the theorems [it is easy to verify\nthat for examples (1)--(3). Validity of the assumptions for\nexample (4) is addressed in the remark after example (4)]. In addition,\n$\\Theta_n$ defined in (\\ref{eqn:oracleset}) is nonempty as long as\n$n$ is sufficiently large (note that the constants involved in\n$\\Theta_n$ can be improved and are not that meaningful. We focused\non a presentable result instead of finding the best constants).\n\nIn examples (1)--(3),\n$X=(X_1,\\ldots,X_5)$ is uniformly distributed on $[-1,1]^5$. The\ntreatment $A$ is then generated independently of $X$ uniformly from $\\{\n-1,1\\}$. Given $X$ and $A$, the response $R$ is\ngenerated from a normal distribution with mean\n$Q_0(X,A)=1+2X_1+X_2+0.5X_3 + T_0(X,A)$ and variance~$1$. We consider\nthe following three examples for\n$T_0$:\n\\begin{longlist}[(1)]\n\\item[(1)]$T_0(X,A) = 0$ (i.e., there is no treatment\neffect).\n\\item[(2)] $T_0(X,A) = 0.424(1-X_1-X_2)A$.\n\\item[(3)]$T_0(X,A) = 0.446 \\operatorname{sign}(X_1)(1-X_1)^2A$.\n\\end{longlist}\nNote that in each example $T_0(X,A)$ is equal to the treatment effect\nterm, $ Q_0(X,A)-E[Q_0(X,A)|X]$. We approximate $Q_0$ by $\\mathcal{Q}=\\{\n(1, X, A, XA)\\bolds{\\theta}\\dvtx\\break\\bolds{\\theta}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{12}\\}$.\nThus, in examples (1) and (2) the treatment effect term $T_0$ is correctly modeled,\nwhile in example (3) the treatment effect term $T_0$ is misspecified.\n\nThe parameters in examples (2) and (3) are chosen to reflect a medium\neffect size according to Cohen's d index. When there are two\ntreatments, the Cohen's d effect size index is defined as the\nstandardized\ndifference in mean responses between two treatment groups, that is,\n\\[\n\\mathrm{es}=\\frac{E(R|A=1)-E(R|A=-1)}{([\\operatorname{Var}(R|A=1)+\\operatorname{Var}(R|A=-1)]\/2)^{1\/2}}.\n\\]\nCohen \\cite{cohen1988} tentatively defined the effect size as ``small''\nif the Cohen's d index is $0.2$, ``medium'' if the index is $0.5$\nand ``large'' if the index is $0.8$.\n\nIn example (4), $X$ is uniformly distributed on $[0,1]$. Treatment $A$\nis generated independently of $X$ uniformly from $\\{-1,1\\}$. The\nresponse $R$ is generated from a normal distribution\nwith mean $Q_0(X,A)$ and variance $1$, where $Q_0(X,1)\n=\\sum_{j=1}^8\\vartheta_{(1),j}1_{X<u_{(1),j}}$, $Q_0(X,-1)\n=\\sum_{j=1}^8\\vartheta_{(-1),j}1_{X<u_{(-1),j}}$, and $\\vartheta$'s\nand $u$'s are parameters specified in (\\ref{eqn:parameter}). The\neffect size is small:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{eqn:parameter}\\qquad\n&&\\bigl(\\vartheta_{(1),1},\\ldots, \\vartheta_{(1),8}\\bigr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad= (-0.781, 0.730,\n0.635, 0.512, -2.278, 1.347, 1.155,\n-0.030); \\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\bigl(\\vartheta_{(-1),1},\\ldots, \\vartheta_{(-1),8}\\bigr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad= (-2.068, 1.520,\n-0.072,\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace*{37.7pt} -0.637, 1.003, -0.611, -0.305, 1.016); \\\\\n&&\\bigl(u_{(1),1},\\ldots, u_{(1),8}\\bigr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad= (0.028, 0.144, 0.171, 0.298,\n0.421, 0.443, 0.463, 0.758); \\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\bigl(u_{(-1),1},\\ldots, u_{(-1),8}\\bigr)\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\qquad= (0.061, 0.215, 0.492, 0.544,\n0.6302, 0.650, 0.785, 0.909).\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nWe approximate $Q_0$ by Haar wavelets,\n\\[\n\\theta_{(0),0}h_0(X)+\\sum_{lk}\\theta_{(0),lk}h_{lk}(X)+\n\\biggl(\\theta_{(0),1}h_0(X)+\\sum_{lk}\\theta_{(1),lk}h_{lk}(X)\\biggr)A,\n\\]\nwhere $h_0(x)=1_{x\\in[0,1]}$ and\n$h_{lk}(x)=2^{l\/2}(1_{2^lx\\in[k+1\/2,k+1)}-\n1_{2^lx\\in[k,k+1\/2)})$ for $l=0,\\ldots,\\bar l_n$, and $\\theta\n_{(\\cdot),\\cdot}\\in\\mathbb{R}$ are parameters. We choose\n$\\bar l_n =\\lfloor3\\log_2 n\/4\\rfloor-2$. For a given $l$ and sample\n$(X_i,A_i,R_i)_{i=1}^n$, $k$ takes integer values from $\\lfloor\n2^l\\min_iX_i\\rfloor$ to $\\lceil2^l\\max_iX_i\\rceil-1$. Then $J_n =\n2^{\\lfloor3\\log_2n\/4\\rfloor}\\leq n^{3\/4}$.\n\n\\begin{Remark*}\nIn example (4), we allow the number of basis functions $J_n$ to\nincrease with $n$. The corresponding theoretical result can be\nobtained by combining Theorems \\ref{thm:bound2} and\n\\ref{thm:peoracle}. Below we demonstrate the validation of the\nassumptions used in the theorems.\n\nTheorem \\ref{thm:bound2} requires that the randomization probability\n$p(a|x)\\geq S^{-1}$ for a positive constant for all $(x,a)$ pairs\nand the margin condition (\\ref{eqn:noise}) or (\\ref{eqn:noise2})\nholds. According the generative model, we have that $p(a|x)=1\/2$ and\ncondition (\\ref{eqn:noise2}) holds.\n\nTheorem \\ref{thm:peoracle} requires Assumptions \\ref\n{apn:errorterm}--\\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} hold and $\\Theta\n_n$ defined\nin (\\ref{eqn:thetan2}) is nonempty. Since we consider normal error\nterms, Assumption \\ref{apn:errorterm} holds. Note that the basis\nfunctions used in Haar wavelet are orthogonal. It is also easy to\nverify that Assumptions \\ref{apn:grammatrix} and\n\\ref{apn:grammatrix_Topt} hold with $\\beta_n=1$ and Assumption\n\\ref{apn:basis} holds with $U_n = n^{3\/8}\/2$ and $\\eta_{1,n}\\leq\n\\mbox{constant} + \\mbox{constant}\\times\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n\\|_0$ [since each\n$|\\phi_j\\bolds{\\theta}^*_{n,j}| =|\\phi_j E(\\phi_jR)|\\leq\n\\mbox{constant}\\times|\\phi_j| E|\\phi_j|\\leq O(1)$]. Since $Q_0$ is piece-wise\nconstant, we can also verify\nthat $\\|\\bolds{\\theta}^*_n\\|_0\\leq O(\\log n)$. Thus, for sufficiently\nlarge $n$, $\\Theta_n$\nis nonempty and (\\ref{eqn:jncondition}) holds. The RHS of\n(\\ref{eqn:lambdacondition}) converges to zero as\n$n\\rightarrow\\infty$.\n\\end{Remark*}\n\\end{appendix}\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments}\nThe authors thank Martin Keller and the investigators of the\nNefazodone-CBASP trial for use of their data. The authors also thank\nJohn Rush, MD, for the technical support and Bristol-Myers Squibb\nfor helping fund the trial. The authors acknowledge the help of\nthe reviewers and of Eric B. Laber and Peng Zhang in improving this paper.\n\n\\begin{supplement}\n\\stitle{Supplement to ``Performance guarantees for individualized\ntreatment rules''}\n\\slink[doi]{10.1214\/10-AOS864SUPP}\n\\sdatatype{.pdf}\n\\sfilename{aos864\\_suppl.pdf}\n\\sdescription{This supplement contains four sections. Section S.1\ndiscusses the problem with over-fitting due to the potentially\nlarge number of pretreatment variables (and\/or complex approximation\nspace for $Q_0$) mentioned in Section \\ref{sec:lasso}. Section S.2\nprovides modifications of\nthe $l_1$-PLS estimator $\\bolds{\\hat\\theta}_n$ when some\ncoefficients are not penalized and discusses how to obtain results\nsimilar to inequality (\\ref{eqn:peoracle}) in this case. Section S.3\nprovides extra four simulation examples\nbased on data from the Nefazodone-CBASP\ntrial \\cite{keller2000}. Section~S.4 provides proofs of\nLemmas~\\ref{lemma:oracle}--\\ref{lemma:omega3}.}\n\\end{supplement}\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction\\label{sec:introduction}}\nA stellar occultation campaign on July 22\\textsuperscript{nd}, 1984 yielded the first conclusive evidence of an incomplete ring-like structure around Neptune, inside the classical Roche limit (assuming a density of 1 for the ring material)  \\citep{Roques1984,Sicardy85a,Hubbard86,Covault86}. A summary of the discovery of the arcs is given in \\citep{Nicholson90}; the authors compiled the results of five occultations (between April~18\\textsuperscript{th}, 1984 and August~20\\textsuperscript{th}, 1985), as well as the 1989 {\\it Voyager} 2 data confirming three distinct features.  \n \n  Voyager 2 data revealed that the arcs are longitudinally confined over a 40$^\\circ$ azimuthal range; they are embedded in the much fainter continuous Adams ring around Neptune \\citep{Smith89} which is the outermost ring of the Neptunian system. \n  \n  These incomplete rings have shown to be stable since their discovery in 1984 \\citep{Hubbard86}, while they would be expected to scatter in a few months through differential Keplerian motion. The azimuthal confinement of the arc system \\citep{Goldreich86,Porco91} was thought to be a consequence of the arcs being within a 42:43 corotation inclination resonance (hereafter CIR) forced by Galatea. However, observations in 1998 \\citep{Dumas99,Sicardy99} showed a slight mismatch between the observed arc mean motion and its expected value in the framework of the 42:43 CIR model.\n  \n \n  Furthermore, adaptive-optics data obtained with the Keck telescope in 2002 and 2003 \\citep{Depater05} as well as VLT-UT3 NACO data of 2007 \\citep{Renner14} showed persisting two trailing arcs. They also showed that the brightness and longitudes of the arcs (Fraternit\\'e, Egalit\\'e, Libert\\'e, and Courage) have significantly changed since Voyager \\citep{Depater05,Renner14,DePater2018}.\n  \nSeveral theoretical models addressed the question of the arcs' stability and the aforementioned mean motion mismatch. For example, \\cite{Namouni02} have shown that the 42:43 corotation eccentricity resonance (CER) could match the current arcs' semi-major axis and stabilise the system, if the arcs contain a small fraction of Galatea's mass~($m_G$). Assuming a mass $m_G = 2.1\\times10^{21}$g for Galatea, the model which is very sensitive to the uncertainty in Galatea's eccentricity ($e_G$) gave a ring mass of $\\sim0.23\\,m_G$ ($0.002\\,m_G$, {\\it resp.}) for $e_G=10^{-4}$ ($e_G=10^{-6}$, {\\it resp.}). \n\nHereafter, we adopt the 42:43 nomenclature for simplicity reasons. While the CER is a first order resonance (a true 42:43), the CIR is a second order resonance (84:86). \\footnote{Their respective corotation critical arguments write as follows $\\Psi_{CER} = 43 \\lambda - 42 \\lambda_G - \\varpi_G$ and $\\Psi_{CIR}=~{2\\,[ 43 \\lambda - 42 \\lambda_G - \\Omega_G]}$. Where $\\lambda$ ($\\lambda_G$) is the particle's (Galatea's) longitude, and $\\varpi_G$ and $\\Omega_G$ are the longitudes of the periapse and the node of the Galatea's orbit, respectively.}\n\nAlternatively, multiple small co-orbital satellites in a stable stationary configuration that generalises the Lagrangian points \\citep{Renner04,Renner14} are able to efficiently confine the dusty arc material, provided the right azimuthal spacings and masses of those co-orbital objects are chosen. In the framework of that model, \\cite{Winter2020} investigated the arc orbital evolution under the effect of solar radiation.\n\n\\cite{Showalter2017} presented a possible three-body resonance mechanism capable of confining ring material within the observed corotation sites. This scenario constrains the orbital semi-major axis of the arcs to fall within $\\sim$10 meters of a three-body mean motion resonance, which involves the two nearby inner satellites, Galatea and Larissa.\n\nFinally, \\cite{Showalter19} recently discovered a seventh inner moon of Neptune, Hippocamp, proving that the Neptunian system has not fully revealed itself. Furthermore, in the context of the possible Trident mission (preselected in NASA's Discovery Programme) targeting the Neptune-Triton system as well as a possible future ESA-NASA mission towards the Uranian and Neptunian systems; the next couple of decades could revolutionise our understanding of these systems.\n   \n   In this paper, we report on astro-photometric measurements of the arcs are obtained at the VLT- UT3 with the SPHERE-IRDIS instrument fed by its extreme adaptive optics system (SAXO) obtained on August 23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016. The IRDIS classical imaging mode has also been used for several asteroid studies, leading to shape reconstruction \\citep{Viikinkoski2015,Marsset2017}. These studies largely benefit from the high resolution and high Strehl providing much more detailed images than previous AO corrected images from other instruments. \n\nThe paper is organised as follows. In section \\ref{sec:Obs}, we present our observational data and the methods used for the analysis. Section~\\ref{sec:Results} pertains to the photometric profiles of the arcs and the mean motion of the arcs and the satellite Galatea. Finally, we draw our final conclusions in Section \\ref{sec:Conclusions}. \n\n\\section{Observations\\label{sec:Obs}}\n We used the high-angular resolution adaptive-optics Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument installed on the Very Large Telescope VLT-UT3 at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), with the InfraRed Dual-band Imager and Spectrograph (IRDIS) \\citep{Dohlen08,Beuzit2019}, to image the Neptunian system (ring arcs and moons) on August 23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016. \n  \n  IRDIS Classical imaging mode \\citep{Langlois2010} provides simultaneous images recorded in the same broadband filter on two distinct detector areas. \n The data were acquired using this classical mode of SPHERE, in the Ks broad-band filter centred at 2.2\\,$\\mu$m, which corresponds to a strong absorption in the methane spectrum, hence reducing the otherwise overwhelming scattered light from Neptune's atmosphere.\n \n  In broad-band-Ks (BB-Ks), the instrument exhibits a fairly high thermal background from thermal emission reaching 60 to 200 photon s$^{-1}$ pixel$^{-1}$ \\citep{Beuzit2019}, which renders nearly impossible the classical reduction procedures to identify faint objects such as small Neptunian satellites as well as the rings and arcs features. \n  \n   IRDIS Dual-band Imager in classical imaging mode provides a FOV of $11\"\\times12.5\"$ with a pixel size of $(12.255~\\pm~0.009)$\\,mas\/pixel on the sky \\citep{Maire2016}; this corresponds to $\\sim 257$\\,km\/pixel at Neptune's geocentric distance of 28.959\\,AU (cf. Table~\\ref{tab:obsDataInfo}).\n   \n  \n We acquired field-stabilised data between 03:09:30.9281 and 07:58:36.2025 UT, on 2016-08-23. This acquisition mode uses a specific derotator rotation law to maintain the same field of view orientation during the observing sequence. \n \n  Figure \\ref{fig:ObsConditions} shows the details on the atmospheric conditions (seeing, airmass, and coherence time $\\tau_0$) during the entire observational run, together with the time window of frames selected for the photometric analysis (green shaded area). Although the seeing remains fairly stable throughout the observation, about 27.4\\% of our data (57 frames) were acquired at times associated with non-negligible atmospheric turbulence and thus not used for our photometric analysis. The threshold defined by ESO as associated with fast wind and\/or fast turbulence conditions (\\textit{i.e.} turbulence evolving on timescales smaller than 3.5 ms) is defined by low coherence times, \\textit{i.e.} $\\tau\\le3.5\\,$ms. These constraints combined with the instability of the AO tracking (see section \\ref{sec:Analysis} for details), the highest quality data that we have selected and retained for the photometric analysis are obtained at the smallest airmass ($<1.1$).\n      \n\\begin{table}[htbp]\n\\begin{center}\n  \\begin{tabular}{ l c } \n    \\hline\n       &  August 23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016    \\\\\n     \\hline \n     \\hline\nRef. frame UT time (hr:min:sec) & 05:33:51.9581 \\\\ \nMJD epoch of ref. frame  & 57623.23185137 \\\\ \nGeocentric distance (AU) & 28.959  \\\\\nHeliocentric distance (AU) & 29.954  \\\\\nPhase angle (deg) & 0.35138  \\\\\n$B$ (deg) &-26.133 \\\\ \n$P$ (deg) &  326.237 \\\\ \n$U$ (deg) & 318.808 \\\\ \n\\hline\nNumber of used images & 68  \\\\\nIndividual exposure time (sec) & 64  \\\\\n\\hline\nScale (mas\/pixel)  &  $12.255 \\pm 0.009$ \\\\\n\\hline                                              \n  \\end{tabular}\n \\caption{\\label{tab:obsDataInfo}Circumstances of observation: \nThe epoch given is the time of the reference frame used to produce the equivalent width profile (cf. section \\ref{subsec:Photometry}). \n The geocentric and heliocentric distances, as well as the phase angle are retrieved from the Rings Node of NASA's Planetary Data System (\\url{http:\/\/pds-rings.seti.org}). The angles $B$, $P$, and $U$ are the ring's opening angle to Earth, Neptune's pole orientation, and the longitude of Earth measured in the ring plane from the J2000.0 ascending node of Neptune's equatorial plane, respectively. The pixel scale value is that given by \\cite{Maire2016}.}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{table}    \n  \n   \\begin{figure}[htb]\n   \\centering\n \\includegraphics[width=9.5cm]{.\/figures\/obs-conditions1.pdf}\n       \\caption{\\label{fig:ObsConditions} The observing conditions (airmass, seeing, and coherence time) at Paranal during the observation run (between 03:09:30.9281 and 07:58:36.2025 UT on Aug. 23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016). The large fluctuations in coherence time $\\tau_0$ of atmospheric turbulence show that some images cannot be used, because of small $\\tau_0$ values that is associated with fast atmospheric turbulence (the shaded light red horizontal band for which $\\tau_0<3.5\\,$ms). The green shaded area represents the time window from which the final images used in our analysis were extracted (see text for explanation). These images correspond to the lowest airmass observing window. \n}        \n   \\end{figure}  \n \n\\subsection{Data reduction} %\n\n We used the SPHERE pipeline package to correct for flat field, bad pixels and thermal background due to instrument and sky. Because the thermal background varies with the instrument temperature and with the sky background, we selected background calibration images acquired using the same integration time and the same filter (BB-Ks, of 300\\,nm width) as the science frames, but acquired at a different time, so they match better the conditions of the observations. Some uncorrected background leaks persist in our final K images due to thermal background fluctuations. The astrometrisation (centring, correction for anamorphism, scale, and true north) of the final data cubes are corrected following the SPHERE Data Center procedures \\citep{Delorme2017}.\n \nWe have also corrected the true-north offset of the images, by rotating the images by the angle $P_{cor}=(-1.57\\,\\pm\\,0.08)$~deg \\citep{Maire2016},  where $P_{cor}$ is the position angle of the celestial north direction with respect to the frame columns and the position of Neptune's centre.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Astro-photometric analysis of the data\\label{sec:Analysis}}\n Using the IRDIS HAWAII-2-RG near-infrared detector, we initially acquired 208\\,exposures of 64\\,seconds exposure time each. However, because of the aforementioned thermal background, passing clouds, and varying winds, only the best 68 images of the right panel were deemed of high enough SNR and used for our analysis (cf. Table~\\ref{tab:obsDataInfo}).\n\nIn \\cite{Renner14}, we were able to refine the determination of the pixel scale and the orientation on sky by comparing the positions of Triton and Proteus to their  expected relative positions. In this paper, given the fact that Proteus is the only satellite with sufficiently accurate astrometry and ephemerides, we had to operate under the following assumptions: {\\it (i)} perfect ephemerides of the satellite Proteus which are used to retrieve Neptune's centre position, {\\it (ii)}~the scale and orientation provided by the SPHERE-IRDIS consortium are correct. \n The instability of the AO correction due to the observation of such extended object as Neptune (2.4\" in diameter) used as the guide star, results in image motion that required a re-alignment. Such re-alignment is obtained by using Proteus' ephemerides \\citep{Jacobson09} because the photo-centre of Neptune cannot be accurately determined (due to its non-uniformity and its extended nature). \nTo centre the images, we first determined an approximate position (photo-centre) of Proteus on each image. From the ephemerides and the measured position of the photo-centre, we were able to retrieve a 'first order' position for Neptune's centre. We then iterated the analysis on the first order centred images to which we subtracted the median of the first centred cube files in which Neptune only is stationary, thus refining our determination of Proteus' photo-centre along its orbit, and therefore the position of Neptune's centre. This last step was repeated on this new cube of centred images, as this process allows the removal of the diffuse scattered light around Neptune, thus improving the determination of the satellite's photo-centre. Two iterations of the procedures are indispensable to achieve a sub-pixel accuracy for the satellite's and Neptune's positions. Examples of an individual frame as well as a final stack of the centred clean images are presented in Figure ~\\ref{fig:neptune_in_K}.\n\n \n   \\begin{figure*}[htb]\n   \\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{.\/figures\/neptune-089-2}\n  \\hskip 2cm\n \\includegraphics[width=7.5cm]{.\/figures\/red-centred-80images}\n       \\caption{\\label{fig:neptune_in_K}(left) Single 64 seconds exposure of Neptune in the BB-Ks band (2.182\\,$\\mu$m), 2016-08-23T05:12:52.2635\\,UT August~23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016, revealing the satellites Proteus (P), Galatea~(G), and Larissa (L). The frame is $5.39\\times5.92$ arcsec$^2$ wide. \n The point source is due to a bad pixel cluster which is difficult to properly interpolate.\n (right)~Image of Neptune's system obtained by co-adding 68 individual frames of the August~23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016 data (72 minutes and 32 seconds total exposure time, between 04:24:50.5202 and 06:43:23.0627\\,UT). The frame is $6.99\\times6.99$ arcsec$^2$ wide. We can see Proteus (P) and Larissa (L) along their respective orbits during this time interval. We can also see the trail of Galatea (G) and the arcs, which evolve along the much fainter Adams ring. The bright arc on the left is due to thermal electronic noise.}        \n\\end{figure*}   \n  \nThe individual images were then projected onto Neptune's equatorial plane. The single projected frames were rotated taking into account the respective orbital motion and co-added to increase the signal from the ring arcs or a given satellite.\n\\section{Results\\label{sec:Results}}\n\\subsection{Photometry\\label{subsec:Photometry}}  \n \n In what follows, we use only the best 68 selected projected frames, taken between 04:24:50.5202 and 06:43:23.0627 on August 23\\textsuperscript{rd}, 2016 UT. These are co-added after correction for the arcs' mean motion, $820.11213$\\,deg\\,day$^{-1}$ \\citep{Renner14}, to produce the panel on figure~\\ref{subfig:projectedArcsSPHEREA} (total exposure time 72 minutes and 32 seconds). \n\n \nUnlike the SPHERE data for which the field is depleted of stars, the 2007 NACO data \\citep{Renner14} included a reference star which could be used for photometric calibration. We had to adapt to this additional constraint. \n\n Using the same subset of SPHERE images with a good enough SNR for both Proteus and Galatea, we derotated these images at the respective mean motion values (320.765625$\\pm$0.000001)\\,deg\\,day$^{-1}$ for Proteus and (839.661311$\\pm$0.000005)\\,deg\\,day$^{-1}$ for Galatea \\citep{Showalter19}. On these images, we measured the fluxes of the satellites using classical aperture photometry. We then compared the ratio of fluxes (Proteus\/Galatea) for the NACO data \\citep{Renner14} to that of the SPHERE data used in this paper, and found ratios of $0.12\\pm0.01$ and $0.13\\pm0.01$, respectively. The flux ratio of Proteus to Galatea is thus unchanged (at the $1\\sigma$-error level).  \n\n\nSimilarly to what was done in \\citep{Renner14}, the brightness longitudinal profiles are given in equivalent width, \\textit{i.e.} the width of a perfect Lambert diffuser that would reflect sunlight at the distance of Neptune. Following earlier studies of Neptune's rings (\\cite{Smith89}; \\cite{Porco95}),  the equivalent width is defined by \n $E(\\lambda)~=~\\mu \\int I(\\lambda) \/ F(\\lambda) dr,$ where $I(\\lambda)$ denotes the observed flux reflected from the arcs, $\\pi F(\\lambda)$ the incident solar flux, $\\lambda$~the wavelength at which observations were done, and $\\mu$~denotes the cosine of the emission angle with respect to the ring-plane normal.\n \nFor our photometric analysis of the arcs' profile, we proceed as follows:\n \\begin{enumerate}[\\it i.]\n\\item We obtained the profiles of the arcs in ADU (Analog to Digital Units) by subtracting the sky background and Neptune's scattered light from the arcs' signal. To perform this operation, we integrated the ring region in the radial direction over 13 pixels. We selected circular annuli on both sides of the ring arcs, summed the pixels in the radial direction, and fitted a two-degree polynomial as a function of the longitude. The radial width of these inner and outer circular rings are $\\sim$11 and 13 pixels, respectively. The average of the two polynomial fits was then subtracted from the arcs' flux. \n\\item Using the same 68 individual projected frames as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:neptune_in_K} which we rotate at Proteus' mean motion, we perform aperture photometry and extract the flux in ADU for the satellite.\n\\item We then normalise the rings' flux profile obtained in \\textit{(i.)} by Proteus' flux obtained in \\textit{(ii.)}.\n\\item Steps {\\it(i.)} to {\\it(iii.)} are then repeated on the NACO 2007 data taken at 2.2 $\\mu$m (Ks band) \\citep{Renner14}.\n\\item  We use the normalised (NACO 2007) ADU flux profile of the rings obtained in {\\it(iv.)} and the equivalent width profile for these same rings \\citep{Renner14} to derive the conversion factor between the normalised flux and the profile in equivalent width. We then apply this factor to the SPHERE 2016 data. This is permitted since both NACO and SPHERE data were acquired in Ks-BB at 2.2\\,$\\mu$m, and under the assumption of a fixed magnitude for Proteus (\\textit{cf.} above).\n This approach is justified by the absence of a reference (calibration) star in the SPHERE 2016 data.\n \\end{enumerate}\n\n\n    \\begin{figure*}[htb]\t   \n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.5\\textwidth}\n            \\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.6\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/red_projectedArcsSPHERE}\n      \\caption{\\label{subfig:projectedArcsSPHEREA}}\n    \\end{center}  \n   \\end{subfigure\n    ~ \n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.5\\textwidth}\n            \\begin{center}\n   \\includegraphics[width=1.0\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/width_plots}\n         \\caption{\\label{fig:projectedArcsSPHEREB}}\n       \\end{center}  \n    \\end{subfigure}\n      \\caption{\\label{fig:projectedArcsSPHERE} {\\it (a)} The 68 projected and co-added images of Neptune's equatorial plane revealing material along the arcs Fraternit\\'e and Egalit\\'e, as well as the satellites Proteus (P) and Galatea~(G).  The frame is $7.1 \\times 10.7\\,$arcsec$^2$ wide. \n {\\it (b)} The equivalent width of the arcs (Fraternit\\'e and Egalit\\'e) vs. longitude\nextracted from Figure~\\ref{fig:projectedArcsSPHEREB}, at an angular resolution of 2$^\\circ$. The X-axis origin is the longitude $L_{Fr}$ of the centre of the Fraternit\\'e arc measured from J2000.0 ascending node, where $L_{Fr}=217.43\\,$deg, at the reference epoch (cf.~Table \\ref{tab:obsDataInfo}).} \n \\end{figure*}   \n\nThe equivalent width profiles of the ring arcs are presented in Fig.~\\ref{fig:projectedArcsSPHEREB}. We detected the arcs Fraternit\\'e and Egalit\\'e, with flux densities and longitudinal extensions similar to those of the previous VLT-NACO observations \\citep{Renner14} and Keck observations \\citep{Depater05}. %\n\nThe trailing arcs Fraternit\\'e and Egalit\\'e are clearly separated in our data (see Figure \\ref{subfig:projectedArcsSPHEREA}), which was not the case in the NACO data \\citep{Renner14}. Despite the high thermal noise, we were able to draw  conclusions on the stability of the trailing arcs Fraternit\\'e and \\'Egalit\\'e, and extract equivalent width profiles. Finally, this new data confirms that the leading arcs Courage and Libert\\'e have faded away, as previous studies were leaning in that direction \\citep{Dumas99,Depater05}. Accounting for the geocentric distance given in Table~\\ref{tab:obsDataInfo}, we derived the equivalent width of the arcs Fraternit\\'e and \\'Egalit\\'e at the epoch of observation at the 1$\\sigma$ uncertainty level, and find that $E_{Fr}=(84\\pm18)\\,$m and $E_{Eg}=(76\\pm18)$\\,m, respectively. \n\n For comparison, \\cite{Renner14} and \\cite{Depater05} found $E_{Fr}=(71\\pm10)\\,$m and $\\sim$65\\,m, respectively. In \\citep{Renner14}, we reported that \\'Egalit\\'e was about $\\sim$20\\% fainter than Fraternit\\'e from our 2007 VLT-NACO data (keeping in mind the pollution by Galatea of the arcs). On the other hand, \\cite{Depater05} report that \\'Egalit\\'e was $\\sim$17\\% brighter than Fraternit\\'e ($\\sim3\\sigma$) in their 2002 Keck II data, while its intensity had decreased to $\\sim7\\%$ below that of Fraternit\\'e ($\\sim2\\sigma$) in 2003.    \n\nTo summarise, given the uncertainties on the equivalent width measurements, the arcs Fraternit\\'e and \\'Egalit\\'e appear to be stable when compared to previous studies \\citep{Dumas99,Depater05,Renner14}.\n\n\\subsection{Mean motions}\nWe improved the average mean motion of the satellite Galatea: \\textit{(i)} at epoch 2016-08-23T04:25:22.5202\\,UT, we derive the satellite's longitude $L=~ 259^\\circ.58~\\pm~0^\\circ.30$, measured in the ring plane from the J2000.0 ascending node of Neptune's equatorial plane, \\textit{(ii)}~using the reference longitudes measured by Voyager  \\citep{Owen91} at epoch JD~2447757.0 ({\\it i.e.} 1989 August~18\\textsuperscript{th}, 12\\,h) at Neptune, we derive the average mean motion of Galatea, $n_{G}~=~(839.66134\\,\\pm\\,0.00003)$~deg~day$^{-1}$. This value is in agreement with that given in \\citep{Showalter19}, $(839.661311~\\pm~0.000005)\\,$deg day$^{-1}$. \n\n  Furthermore, from the stacked image (Fig. \\ref{subfig:projectedArcsSPHEREA}) with respect to the reference frame (see Table \\ref{tab:obsDataInfo}), we derived a longitude $L_{Fr}~=~(217.43\\pm0.30)$ deg for the trailing arc Fraternit\\'e at this same reference epoch. We~used the position of the middle of this arc measured from Voyager data (251.88~deg at epoch JD 2447757.0, {\\it i.e.} 1989 August 18,~12\\textsuperscript{h}~UT) as given in \\citep{Porco95}, and derived the following average mean motion for the arcs (Fraternit\\'e and \\'Egalit\\'e):  $n_{arcs}~=(820.11178~\\pm~0.00003)$~deg~day$^{-1}$ which is consistent with, yet more accurate than previous measurements (\"solution 2\" of \\cite{Nicholson95,Depater05}), $820.1118~\\pm~0.0001\\,$deg day$^{-1}$. \n We used our new measurement to compare $n_{arcs}$ with the mean motion of the 42:43 CIR, initially thought to confine dust within the ring to form stable arcs \\citep{Goldreich86,Porco91}. \n\n\\begin{table*}[htb]\n\\begin{center}\n  \\begin{tabular}{ l c c c c} \n    \\hline\nResonance type &  drift in mean motion ($\\Delta n$)& mismatch ($\\Delta\\,a$)& $\\Delta L$ $^*$& \\\\\n & (deg\/day) & (meters) & (deg) & \\\\\n     \\hline \n     \\hline \n     42:43 CIR with Galatea & $n_{CIR}-n_{arcs}\\approx(5.95\\pm0.03)\\,.\\,10^{-3}$ & $a_{arcs}-a_{CIR} \\approx305 \\pm 2$ & $\\sim(58.8\\pm0.3)$ & \\\\\n     42:43 CER with Galatea & $n_{CER}-n_{arcs}\\approx(39.16\\pm0.03)\\,.\\,10^{-3}$ & $a_{arcs}-a_{CER}\\approx2004\\,\\pm\\,2$ & $\\sim(26.4\\pm0.3)$ & \\\\\n\\hline                                              \n  \\end{tabular}\n \\caption{\\label{tab:testing_resonances}Investigating the 42:43 CIR and the 42:43 CER corotation models with Galatea.}\n \\tablefoot{$^*$ $\\Delta\\,L$ represents the difference for the arcs' longitude (assuming a trapping in the CIR or the CER) over $\\sim$27.01364~years (between the 1989 Voyager and our VLT SPHERE-IRDIS 2016~data).\n}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{table*}    \n  \n  The 42:43 CIR with Galatea creates 86 equally spaced corotation sites around Neptune, with a mean motion given by $n_{CIR}~= (42 n_G + \\dot{\\Omega}_G)\/43$, where $\\dot{\\Omega}_G$ is Galatea's nodal precession rate. Using $\\dot{\\Omega}_G =-0.713675$ \\,deg\\,day$^{-1}$ \\citep{Showalter19}, we find $n_{CIR} = 820.11773 \\pm 0.00003$ deg\\,day$^{-1}$. \n  This value of $ n_{CIR}$ is similar to previous mean motion measurements \\citep{Nicholson95,Sicardy99,Dumas99,Dumas02,Depater05,Renner14}, showing that the arcs are not at the location of the 42:43 CIR with Galatea.  This mean motion drift translates into a mismatch in semi-major axis  $\\Delta a=(305\\pm2)\\,$m (cf. Table \\ref{tab:testing_resonances}). This mismatch is consistent with, yet more accurate than those reported in \\citep{Sicardy99, Renner14}; the half-width of the CIR being $(250\\pm100)\\,$m \\citep{Renner14}. \n   \nFurthermore, we investigate the 42:43 corotation eccentric resonance (CER) with Galatea. This  resonance is defined as follows $n_{CER}~=~(42 n_G + \\dot{\\omega}_G)\/43$, where $\\dot{\\omega}_G$ is Galatea's apsidal precession rate. With $\\dot{\\omega}_G =0.714282$ \\,deg\\,day$^{-1}$ \\citep{Showalter19}, we find $n_{CER} = 820.15094 \\pm 0.00003$ deg\\,day$^{-1}$. \n\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{llll}\n\\hline\t\n\\multicolumn{4}{c}{Neptune's properties} \\\\\n\\hline\n$GM$ \t& & 6\\,835\\,099.5 km$^3$\\,s$^{-2}$ &  \\\\\n$R$ \t& & 25225\\,km\t& \\\\\n$J_2$\t& & $3,408.43\\times10^{-6}$ &\\\\\n$J_4$ \t& & $-33.40 \\times 10^{-6}$ &\t\\\\\n\\hline\n\\hline\n\\multicolumn{4}{c}{Galatea's orbital elements and mass} \\\\\n\\hline\n$i$ ($^\\circ$)\t& & $0.0231\\pm 0.0091$ & \\\\\n$e$ \t& & $0.00022\\pm 0.00008 $ & \\\\\n$M_G$ & & $(2.12\\pm 0.08)\\,10^{18}\\,$kg & \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}  \n\\end{center} \n\\caption{\\label{tab:parameters} Parameters used to explore the validity of the 42:43 CER and CIR models: Neptune's physical properties from \\citep{Jacobson09} as well as derived orbital inclination and eccentricity of Galatea, derived by \\cite{Showalter19}. Galatea's mass is that derived in \\citep{Porco91}.}\n\\end{table}   \n\nFor both the 42:43 CIR and CER, we give in table~\\ref{tab:testing_resonances} the corresponding mismatch values in semi-major axis, as well as the associated difference for the arcs' longitude ($\\Delta L$) over $\\sim$27.01364 years (between the 1989 Voyager and VLT SPHERE-IRDIS 2016 data). Note that these values are large and far from what we observe.\n     \nFigure \\ref{fig:resonances} illustrates a graphic comparison of the semi-major axis of the arcs, as derived from the mean motion, as well the CER and CIR radii values derived in this work following the same approach as \\cite{Foryta1996}. We used the parameters of Galatea and Neptune given in table \\ref{tab:parameters}. In particular, this figure depicts clearly the widths ($\\Delta\\,a$) of each one of the CIR and CER resonances, {\\it i.e.} the interval in semi-major axis where particles would be trapped by each one of these resonances. \n\n        \n   \\begin{figure}[htb]\n   \\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=8.5cm]{.\/figures\/42_43_res}\n       \\caption{\\label{fig:resonances} Graphical illustration of the arcs'  semi-major axis, as well as the radii and widths of the CIR and CER motion resonances 42:43 with Galatea. The orange continuous line depicts the geometrical orbital radius of the arcs, with uncertainties (in black dotted lines) smaller than the thickness of the orange line.\n The~CIR and CER locations and widths are represented in blue and purple, respectively. They represent the interval in semi-major axis where particles would be trapped by these resonances. This figure clearly shows the mismatch between the 42:43 CIR and the CER with Galatea; and the arc's position. The associated differences in longitude ($\\Delta\\,L$) in Table \\ref{tab:testing_resonances} support this conclusion.\n }        \n   \\end{figure}   \n   \n From this analysis of the mismatch ($\\Delta a$) and the resulting drifts in longitude $\\Delta L$, we conclude that neither the CIR nor the CER 42:43 \\citep{Namouni02} corotation models can explain the confinement of the arcs at their current locations. The valid model, so far, to explain the azimuthal spacing of the arcs is the model based on small co-orbital satellites \\citep{Renner14}.   \n \n Finally, we test here the three-body mean motion resonance hypothesis  \\citep{Showalter2017} of argument $(35\\,n_G-~39\\,n_{arcs}+~4\\,n_L)$, which involves the satellites Galatea and Larissa. We use the mean motions for Galatea and the arcs derived in the work, and Larissa's mean motion $n_L=~(649.054085\\pm 0.000004)$ deg\\,day$^{-1}$ \\citep{Showalter19}; we obtain a value $0.00382\\,$deg\\,day$^{-1}$. Further work is needed to confirm wether or not this three-body resonance is able to confine dust particles into corotation sites, with spacings compatible with the observations. \n\n\\section{Conclusions\\label{sec:Conclusions}}\nWe have analysed high-angular resolution near-infrared images of Neptune's ring arcs obtained in 2016 at the ESO VLT-UT3, with the adaptive-optics camera SPHERE-IRDIS. \n\nWe detected the trailing arcs Fraternit\\'e and Egalit\\'e, as well as the satellite Galatea for which we derived more accurate mean motion values.\n From the accurate determination of the mean motions, we confirm the mismatch between the arcs' position and the location of the 42:43 CIR and the CER with Galatea; thus showing that no 42:43 corotation model can explain the persistance of Neptune's incomplete ring arcs. \n \nMoreover, our photometric analysis of the arcs confirms that the leading arcs Courage and Libert\\'e have faded away, while the trailing arcs Fraternit\\'e and \\'Egalit\\'e are persistent and stable since their discovery.   \n\nRegular imaging data, in particular with Galatea far from the arcs system, to avoid light contamination, are needed to follow the global time evolution of the system, and to propose a more global model for the arcs confinement that takes into account the disappearance of the two leading arcs Libert\\'e and Courage.\n\n\\section{Acknowledgment}\n This work has made use of the SPHERE Data Centre, jointly operated by OSUG\/IPAG (Grenoble), PYTHEAS\/LAM\/CeSAM (Marseille), OCA\/Lagrange (Nice), Observatoire de Paris\/LESIA (Paris), and Observatoire de Lyon (OSUL\/CRAL), and supported by a grant from Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d'avenir \u2013 ANR10 LABX56).\n\nThis work was funded by the European Research Council under the European Community's H2020 (2014-2021\/ERC Grant Agreement No. 669416). \n\nWe thank the reviewer for their thorough revision of our paper and  constructive comments that significantly improve the quality of this work.\n\n\\bibliographystyle{aa}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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\n\n\\def\\textsf{S}{\\textsf{S}}\n\n\n\\graphicspath{{figures\/}}\n\n\\def\\Ebox#1#2{%\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width= #1\\hsize]{#2}\n\\end{center}}\n\n\\def{\\cal S}{{\\cal S}}\n\n\\def\\check p{\\check p}\n\\def\\check \\mu{\\check \\mu}\n\n\n\n\\def\\tilde{\\bfmath{q}}{\\tilde{\\bfmath{q}}}\n\n\\def\\widetilde{\\bfmath{y}}{\\widetilde{\\bfmath{y}}}\n\n\\def\\widetilde{Y}{\\widetilde{Y}}\n\n\\def\\tilde \\kappa{\\tilde c}\n\\def\\tilde \\kappa{\\tilde \\kappa}\n\\def{\\cal V}{{\\cal V}}\n\n\n\\def\\GNoplus{g_{\\text{\\scriptsize p}}}\n\n\\def\\Fig#1{Fig.~\\ref{#1}}\n\n\n\\defP^{\\text{\\tiny tot}}{P^{\\text{\\tiny tot}}}\n\n\\def\\field{I}{\\field{I}}\n\n\\def\\field{R}_+{\\field{R}_+}\n\\def\\field{R}{\\field{R}}\n\n\\def\\Lambda^{\\Gamma}{\\Lambda^{\\Gamma}}\n\\def\\Gamma{\\Gamma}\n\\def\\bfmath{\\Gamma}{\\bfmath{\\Gamma}}\n\\def\\widetilde\\Gamma{\\widetilde\\Gamma}\n\\def{\\cal L}{{\\cal L}}\n\\def\\ell{\\ell}\n\\def\\text{S}{\\text{S}}\n\\def\\text{D}^\\bullet{\\text{D}^\\bullet}\n\n\n\n\n\\title{State Estimation for the Individual and the Population in Mean Field Control \n\\\\\nwith Application to Demand Dispatch  \n}\n\n\n\n\\author{Yue Chen, \nAna Bu\\v{s}i\\'c, and Sean Mey\n\\thanks{Research   supported by  NSF grants CPS-0931416 and CPS-1259040,\nand the French National Research Agency grant ANR-12-MONU-0019\n\\thanks{Y.C. and S.M. are with the Department of Electrical and Computer\nEngg.\\ at the University of Florida, Gainesville. A.B.\\ is with Inria and the Computer Science Dept. of \\'Ecole Normale Sup\\'erieure, Paris, France.}%\n}\n\n\\begin{document}\n\n\n\n\n\\maketitle\n \n \n\n\\begin{abstract} \n\n \nThis paper concerns state estimation problems in a mean field control setting. In a finite population model, the goal is to estimate the joint distribution of the population state and the state of a typical individual. The observation equations are a noisy measurement of the population. \n\nThe general results are applied to demand dispatch for regulation of the power grid, based on randomized local control algorithms. In prior work by the authors it is shown that local control can be designed so that the aggregate of loads behaves as a controllable resource, with accuracy matching or exceeding traditional sources of frequency regulation. The operational cost is nearly zero in many cases. \n\nThe information exchange between grid and load is minimal, but it is assumed in the overall control architecture that the aggregate power consumption of loads is available to the grid operator. It is shown that the Kalman filter can be constructed to reduce these communication requirements, and to provide the grid operator with accurate estimates of the mean and variance of quality of service (QoS) for an individual load. \n\n      \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\\end{abstract}\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\n\\notes{Given the new title, we need to say that the methods go beyond power or pools!}\n\\notes{Ana: Also, the paper may now go to reviewers that do not know anything on power. I added two sentences to explain what is it that we control.}\n\nMean field models are a valuable tool for design and performance approximation for certain classes of interacting systems \\cite{huacaimal07,matkoccal13,chebusmey14}.  The infinite-population mean-field equations provide tremendous insight, but ultimately we must translate this insight to address a finite-population reality.   In this paper we propose algorithms based on the Kalman filter to obtain estimates of first and second order statistics of the population and a typical individual, based on noisy observations of the population.    \n\nWhile the potential applications are far broader than power systems,   for ease of exposition it is convenient to restrict attention to one application.\n\n\n\nRenewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have a high degree of unpredictability and time variation, which complicates balancing supply and demand. One possible way to address this challenge is to harness the inherent flexibility in demand of many types of loads. \n \n\n\\textit{Demand Response} is traditionally meant as a reduction in load in response to some grid-level event.   It is in use today for peak-shaving (smoothing demand),  and for contingency reserves (load-shedding following generation loss).   \n\nIt is argued in \\cite{calhis11,barbusmey14,meybarbusyueehr15} that the value of demand-side flexibility is far greater than this.   \nLoads can supply a range of grid services, such as the balancing reserves required at BPA,  or the Reg-D\/A regulation reserves used at PJM \\cite{barbusmey14}.  These grid services can be obtained without impacting quality of service (QoS)  for consumers \\cite{chebusmey14,haolinkowbarmey14}.   \nThis is only possible through design. \nThe term \\textit{Demand Dispatch}, introduced in \\cite{brolureispiwei10}, is used\nto emphasize the difference between the goals of our own work and traditional demand response. \n\n  \n   \nThe application in this  paper concerns a large collection of loads whose power consumption is not continuously variable.  Examples include thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), as considered in  \\cite{matkoccal13,kizmal14a},  and irrigation or pool-pumps \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15,chebusmey14}.  In these   papers \nand\n\\cite{chrtomlebpao14,lumThesis15}\nit is argued that randomization at the load is valuable to avoid synchronization, and to simplify control at the grid level.   \n\nIn much of this prior work, a mean-field model is obtained for control design at the grid level -- this is a deterministic model of the aggregate of loads,  obtained as a law of large numbers limit as the population of loads tends to infinity.   The control solution adopted in \\cite{matkoccal13} is based on state-feedback for a linear state space model with partial observations.  Although the mean-field model is bi-linear,   it is represented as a linear model by treating the product of inputs and states as a new input; \nthis is why state estimation is needed for implementation of the algorithm.  In  \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15} a randomized policy is designed for each load so that the mean-field model is an input-output system that is easily controlled without the use of state estimates.   \n\n\\notes{Johanna told me she tried out \"my estimator\"   - what has JM done?  \\\\\nSee this paper Raginsky suggested,  cite{berwu98}.\n ...\n I doubt it is useful\n \\\\\n Also look at\nKalman filtering in triplet Markov chains  (IEEE Signal processing)\nGeneralized dynamic linear models for financial time series\n   ... and ...\n   Diffusion Approximation for Bayesian Markov Chains\n} \n\nFor simplicity, in this paper   attention is restricted to the setting of   \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}, in which each load evolves as a controlled Markov chain.   The transition probability is determined by its own state, and  a  scalar signal $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$ broadcast from a balancing authority (BA).   The extension to vector inputs, as in \\cite{matkoccal13}, requires only changes in notation.   \n    \nThe common dynamics are defined by a controlled transition matrix $\\{P_\\zeta : \\zeta\\in\\field{R}\\}$.  For the $i$th load, there is a state process $\\bfmath{X}^i$ whose transition probability is defined by,\n    \n\\begin{equation}\nP_{\\zeta}(x^-,x^+) \n=\n{\\sf P}\\{X^i_{t+1} = x^+ \\mid X^i_t = x^- ,\\,  \\zeta_t=\\zeta \\}  \n\\label{e:Pzeta}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $x^-$ and $x^+$ are possible  state-values.  In the case of a water heater, the state $x\\in{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}$ might represent temperature of the water, and whether the unit is operating or not.  \n\nIf there are $N$ loads operating independently, conditional on the common signal $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$, then\nthe empirical distribution (i.e., the histogram of state values) is defined as the average,\n\\[\t \n\\mu_t^N( x) \n=\\frac{1}{N}\\sum_{i=1}^N  \\field{I}\\{X^i_t =x \\} \n\\, , \\quad x\\in{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}\n\\]\nViewed as a row vector, the following recursion is central to the analysis in \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15,chebusmey14}:\n\\begin{equation}\n\t \\mu_{t+1}^N = \\mu_t^N  P_{\\zeta_t}+W_{t+1}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\\, .\n\t\\label{e:empir_dist}\n\\end{equation}\n An observation model  is also linear in the state,\n\\begin{equation}\n\tY_t = \\sum_x\\mu_t^N (x)\\util(x)  + V_t\n\t\\label{e:obs}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\util\\colon{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}\\to\\field{R}$.  \nIn applications to demand dispatch,   $\\util(x)$ represents power consumption of a load when its state is $x$, so that $\\sum_x\\mu_t^N (x)\\util(x)$ is the average power consumption at time $t$. \n\n\n It is established in \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15,chebusmey14} that  \n$\\bfmW\\mathbin{:=} \\{W_t : t\\ge 1\\}$ is a $d$-dimensional martingale-difference sequence (and hence uncorrelated).  The i.i.d.\\ sampling model assumed in the present paper implies that  $\\bfmV=\\{V_t : t\\ge 1\\}$ is a martingale-difference sequence  that is also uncorrelated with $\\bfmW$. \n \n\n \\Prop{t:PhiLin} contains full details of this system description.  \n \nThe Kalman filter is developed in two settings, each with the same observation process:\n The first is constructed to obtain    estimates of $\\mu_t^N$.  The second filter obtains estimates of the joint statistics of a larger state that includes  both $\\mu_t^N$ and  the state of a typical individual.  \n The main conclusions are summarized here:\n\\begin{romannum}\n\n\\item  A measurement architecture is proposed in which each load broadcasts its state only occasionally -- say, once per day.   The observation equations in the aggregate model then include white noise, whose conditional variance is computed.  The state equations for the population\/individual  dynamics evolve as a linear stochastic system with white noise disturbance, whose conditional covariance matrix is also computable. \n\n\n\\spm{At Illinois we always used Grammian -- I don't know why Wikipedia uses just one 'm'}\n\\item  In the examples considered,  the observability Grammian is not full rank, and an approximate time-invariant model is also  unobservable.  Moreover, \\Prop{t:symNot} demonstrates that a symmetry property (that holds in the example of \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}),\nimplies that the model cannot be observable.\n\nHowever, in numerical experiments it is found that the Kalman filter remains valuable for reducing the impact of measurement noise,  and for estimating the distribution of quality of service.    \n   In particular,   estimates of certain first and second order statistics of an individual load are remarkably accurate, even though the measurements are a noisy sequence of samples from the population.\n   \n\\item      In the face of un-modeled dynamics such as load heterogeneity, or additional ``opt-out'' control used to enforce QoS bounds,  the Kalman filter combined with PI control continues to perform nearly perfectly, even with 0.1\\%\\ sampling of loads.\n\\end{romannum}\n\n\n\nThere are in fact two general formulations of the Kalman filter.  In the first, most typical setting,  the sequence of Kalman gains is deterministic;  obtained through a Riccati equation (a recursive equation driven by the covariance matrices for the state and observation noise).   This is known to be $L_2$-optimal over all estimators that are \\textit{linear} functions of the observations.  \n\nA second formulation of the Kalman filter uses \\textit{conditional} covariance matrices to define the Kalman gain  --- see (\\ref{e:NoiseCondCov},\\ref{e:NoiseObsCondCov})\n and surrounding discussion.   If the state\/observation noise is conditionally Gaussian,  then this  Kalman filter coincides with the nonlinear filter, which is $L_2$-optimal over all causal estimators~\\cite{cai88}.   Because the Riccati equation is a nonlinear function of the covariance matrices,   this version of the Kalman filter may be a nonlinear function of the observations.\n \nThe second  is attractive because it is easy to compute formulae for the conditional covariance matrices,  while the unconditional covariance matrices only admit approximations.   Moreover, when considering the dynamics of the aggregate, a Gaussian approximation of the noise is justified by the Central Limit Theorem (CLT).   \n\n \n \n\\paragraph*{Related research}\nIn addition to the references cited above, there are many papers on demand dispatch based on centralized control, or relying on real-time prices to solve the control problem of interest. Much of the latter is closer to demand response,  and has little intersection with the research summarized here.\n\nAn application of this formulation of the Kalman filter was considered previously in \\cite{lipkrirub84} for a single Markov chain without control, with measurements subject to Gaussian error.  \n\n\\spm{Nov 2015:  I reread Montreal work, and it is just partially observed LQG}\n\nThere are several recent papers with similar goals in the literature on mean-field models.  Most closely related is \\cite{caikiz13a,sencai14} which concerns  partially observed LQG mean field games, with several classes of players.   The state estimation problem is from the point of view of the individual -- each ``minor agent'' obtains noisy and partial observations,  and wishes to estimate the ``major state'' as well as the aggregate. The solution is obtained through the construction of a Kalman filter.  This prior work is also motivated by application to power systems.\n\n\n\n \n \n\\smallbreak\n\nThe remainder of the paper consists of four sections organized as follows.  The following section describes the stochastic model on which the estimation algorithms are based.  \nFiltering equations are derived in \\Section{s:Kalman} for a collection of \ncontrolled Markov models with partial observations.  \nThe algorithms have been tested in various different settings -- results for demand dispatch using residential pools and also  TCLs\nare summarized in\n\\Section{s:num}.\nConclusions and directions for future research are contained in\n\\Section{s:con}.\n\nFurther results may be found in the dissertation \\cite{YueChenThesis16}.\n\n\\section{Mean Field Model}\n\\label{s:mfm}\n\n\nIt is assumed throughout the paper that a family of Markov transition matrices $\\{P_\\zeta : \\zeta\\in\\field{R}\\}$ is given that is continuous in the parameter $\\zeta$.   The finite state space is denoted ${\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX} = \\{x^1,\\dots,x^d\\}$, so that each $P_\\zeta$ is a $d\\times d$ matrix. \n\nThe mean-field model is defined as the approximation of \t\\eqref{e:empir_dist}\nobtained as $N\\to\\infty$.  This is the deterministic recursion,  \n\\begin{equation}\n\t \\mu_{t+1}= \\mu_t  P_{\\zeta_t} ,\n\t\\label{e:mfm}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\mu_0$ given, and where $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$ is obtained via causal feedback.   This paper is concerned with the stochastic system \\eqref{e:empir_dist},  but the steps used to justify the\nlimit\n\n will lead to the second-order statistics required to describe the Kalman filter.\n \n \n\\subsection{Aggregate dynamics}\n\nThe individual dynamics are described by the controlled Markov model \\eqref{e:Pzeta}.   We lift the state space from the $d$-element set\n${\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX} = \\{x^1,\\cdots,x^d\\}$,  to the $d$-dimensional simplex $\\textsf{S}$.  For the $i^{th}$ load at time $t$, the element $\\Gamma_t^i  \\in \\textsf{S}$ is the degenerate distribution whose mass is concentrated at $x$ if   $X^i_t= x$;\nthat is, $\\Gamma_t^i =\\delta_x$.  These distributions evolve according to a random linear system,\n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\Gamma_{t+1}^i=\\Gamma_t^iG_{t+1}^i \n\\label{e:piG}\n\\end{equation}\nin which $\\Gamma_t^i$ is interpreted as a $d$-dimensional row vector,   $G_t^i$ is a $d\\times d$ matrix with entries $0$ or $1$ only, and $\\sum_l G_t^i(x^j,x^l)=1$ for all $j$.   \n\nThe following assumptions are imposed throughout.\n\n\n\n\\begin{romannum}\n\\item[A1:] \\spm{new:}\nThe input is defined by causal output feedback:\nFor a continuous family of functions $\\phi_t\\colon \\field{R}^{t+1}\\to\\field{R}$,  \n \\[\n\\zeta_t = \\phi_t(Y_0,\\dots, Y_t)\\,,\\qquad t\\ge 0.\n\\]\n\n \\item[A2:] \nFor some function $\\Xi$ with domain $ \\field{R}\\times [0,1]$,\nand range equal to the set of $d\\times d$ matrices,   \n\\begin{equation}\n G_t^i=\\Xi(\\zeta_{t-1},\\xi_t^i),\n\\label{e:A1}\n\\end{equation}\n where $\\{ \\xi_t^i: t\\geq 1, \\ i\\ge 1\\}$ are i.i.d.\\ on $[0,1]^d$ with uniform distribution.\n\n\\item[A3:]  \nThe initial conditions $\\{\\Gamma_0^i : 1\\le i\\le N\\}$ are i.i.d., with\n\\[\n{\\sf P}\\{ \\Gamma_0^i (x)=1\\} = \\mu_0(x),\\quad x\\in{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX} \n\\] \n\\item[A4:]  The measurements are obtained through sampling:   \nThere is a bounded sequence $\\{ \\gamma_t: t\\geq 1 \\}$ of $N$-dimensional vectors with non-negative entries, \nand independent of the   $\\{ \\xi_t^i\\}$, such that\n${\\sf E} [  \\gamma_t(k) ] =N^{-1}$  for each $t$ and $k$, and\n\\[\nY_t =  \\sum_{i=1}^N \\gamma_t(i) \\util(X^i_t). \n\\]\nMoreover,  the distribution of $\\gamma$ is unchanged by permutations of its $N$ components.   \n\\end{romannum}\nThe first assumption is based on the control architecture assumed in all prior work.  \n\\spm{new:}\n Assumption~A2 is standard in this context \\cite{lipkrirub84},  and can be assumed since any probability mass function (pmf) is a function of a uniformly distributed random variable.\n \nAssumption A4 can be used to model random sampling with or without replacement. \n\\spm{new:}\n Examples are given in \\Section{s:num}.   This assumption leads to the measurement equation \\eqref{e:obs}; additional additive noise can be included in the observation equation, provided this measurement noise is independent of the sampling process.   \n   \n \nThe filtration of observations is denoted,\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal Y}_t = \\sigma\\{ Y_r,\\zeta_r : r\\le t\\},\\quad t\\ge 0.\n\\label{e:clY}\n\\end{equation}\nUnder A1--A3, $G_{t+1}^i $\n is conditionally independent of $\\{\\Gamma_0^i,\\cdots,\\Gamma_t^i\\}$, given ${\\cal Y}_t$, with\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{e:EG=P} \n \t{\\sf E}[G_{t+1}^i \\mid {\\cal Y}_t ]=P_{\\zeta_t}.\n\\end{equation} \n\n\nTwo filtering problems are considered in this paper.  In the first, the state is equal to the empirical distributions expressed as column vectors: \n\\begin{equation}\n\\Phi_t(k) = \\mu^N_t(x^k) ,\\qquad 1\\le k\\le d,   \\ t\\ge 0.\n\\label{e:Phi}\n\\end{equation} \nIn the second,  the goal is to estimate the state for an individual load.  For the $i$th load, this is denoted\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Phi_t^i(k) =  \\Gamma_t^i (x^k) ,\\qquad 1\\le k\\le d,   \\ t\\ge 0.\n\\label{e:Phi-i}\n\\end{equation}\nThe two state processes are evidently related,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Phi_t = \\frac{1}{N} \\sum_{i=1}^N \\Phi_t^i\n\\label{e:Phi-sum}\n\\end{equation} \n\n\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{t:PhiLin}\nThe two state processes each evolve as linear systems, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\Phi_{t+1} &=& A_t \\Phi_t + W_{t+1}\n\\label{e:StateForEst}\n\\\\\n\\Phi^i_{t+1} &=& A_t \\Phi_t^i + W_{t+1}^i\n\\label{e:StateForEst-i}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $A_t=P_{\\zeta_t}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}$,   \nand for each $i$, $t$, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n W_{t+1}  &=& \\frac{1}{N}\\sum_{k=1}^N W_{t+1}^k\n\\label{e:W}\n\\\\\nW^i_{t+1} &=&\n\\bigl[\n\\Gamma_t^i(G_{t+1}^i -P_{\\zeta_t}) \\bigr]^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\label{e:Wi}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe observation equation \\eqref{e:obs} can be written,\n\\begin{equation}\nY_t = C \\Phi_t + V_t\n\\label{e:obsPhi}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $C_j = \\util(x^j)$ for each $j$.    \n\nMoreover,  each of the sequences $\\bfmW^i$,  $\\bfmW$, $\\bfmV$ is a martingale difference sequence,  and the sequence $\\bfmV$ is also uncorrelated with each of the  $\\{\\bfmW^i\\}$ and also  $\\bfmW$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe martingale difference property for  each of the $\\{\\bfmW^i\\}$  (and hence also $\\bfmW$),\nfollows immediately from \\eqref{e:EG=P};  see also \\cite{chebusmey14}.\nThe  sequence $\\bfmV$ can be expressed,\n\\[\nV_t = - \\sum_k \\mu^N_t(x^k)  \\util(x^k)  + \\sum_{i=1}^N \\gamma_t(i) \\util(X^i_t)\n\\]\nThis has mean zero, from the exchangeability assumption in A4, and it is a martingale difference sequence because the sequence $\\bfmath{\\gamma}$ is i.i.d.\\    It is uncorrelated with $\\{\\bfmW^i\\}$ and   $\\bfmW$ under the assumption that $\\{\\gamma_t\\}$ is independent of $\\{\\xi_t^i\\}$.\n \\end{proof}\n \n\n  A  derivation of the conditional state covariances is\n given in \\Section{s:KFstate}.\n \nFor a linear-Gaussian model, the Kalman filter equations are intended to approximate the conditional mean and covariance of the state. In the first model \\eqref{e:StateForEst}\nthey are denoted,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\widehat \\Phi_t =  {\\sf E}[\\Phi_t  \\mid{\\cal Y}_t]\\,, \\quad\n\\Sigma_t = {\\sf E}[{\\widetilde \\Phi}_t {\\widetilde \\Phi}_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\\mid{\\cal Y}_t]\n\\label{e:meanW-e:SigPhi}\n\\end{equation}\nwith ${\\widetilde \\Phi}_t =\\Phi_t - \\widehat \\Phi_t $.  For large $N$ it can be argued via the CLT that $(\\bfmV,\\bfmW)$ is approximately conditionally Gaussian given the observations.  We might expect the Kalman filter to approximate the optimal nonlinear filter in this case.   \n\nIn  \\Section{s:EstInd}  the state space is extended to obtain estimates of QoS metrics for an individual load that may not be a function of the respective state $\\Phi^i_t$.\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Example:  Intelligent pools}\n\nHere we focus on a single example in which each load is a residential pool pump.  \n\\Section{s:num} contains\n  extensions to other loads.  \n\nIn the original model of \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}, the state space is taken to be the finite set,\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}=\\{  (m,k) :  m\\in  \\{  \\oplus,\\ominus\\}  ,\\  k \\in \\{1,\\dots,{\\cal I}\\} \\}  \n\\label{e:poolstate}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere ${\\cal I}>1$ is an integer.  If $X_t^i = (\\oplus, k)$,  this means that the pool pump is on at time $t$, and has remained on for the past $k$ time units.   In this paper we take the same state space,  but with a new interpretation of each state.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.75}{pppDynamicsRS.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{State transition diagram for pool  model.}\n\\label{f:ppp}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n \n \nThe controlled transition matrix is of the form,\n\\begin{equation}\nP_\\zeta = (1-\\delta)I + \\delta {\\check{P}}_\\zeta\n\\label{e:poolP}\n\\end{equation}\nin which ${\\check{P}}_\\zeta$ is the transition matrix used in \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15},  and $\\delta\\in (0,1)$. At each time $t$, a weighted coin is flipped with probability of heads equal to $\\delta$.  If the outcome is a tail,  then the   state does not change.  Otherwise,  a transition is made from the current state $x$ to a new state $x^+$ with probability $ {\\check{P}}_{\\zeta_t}(x,x^+)$.   \n\nA state transition diagram is shown in \\Fig{f:ppp}.  The state transition diagram for ${\\check{P}}_\\zeta$ is identical, except that the self-loops are absent.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{Tracking_20pools-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{The deviation in power consumption tracks well even with only  20 pools engaged.}\n\\label{f:20pools}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n\nThe motivation comes from conflicting needs of the grid and the load:   a single load turns on or off only a few times per day, yet the grid operator wishes to send a signal far more frequently -- In this example we assume every 5 minutes.   If the sampling increments for each load  were taken to be 5 minutes, then it would be necessary to take ${\\cal I}$ very large in the approach of \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}.\n\n\n\nIn this paper ${\\check{P}}_\\zeta$ is obtained using the optimal-control approach of  \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}; we take ${\\cal I}=48$, and hence $d=|{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}|=96$.   It is assumed that $\\delta=1\/6$,   so that  the pool state changes every 30 minutes on average.   In \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15} it is shown that the transition matrix has desirable properties for control:  the linearized dynamics are minimum phase,  with positive DC gain.   Hence, for example, \na persistent positive value of $\\zeta_t$ will lead to an increase in aggregate power consumption.\n\n\nFor sake of illustration,\n\\Fig{f:20pools} shows tracking performance of this scheme with only \\textit{twenty pools}.     Each pool is assumed to consume 1~kW when operating, and each has a 12 hour cleaning cycle.   The grid operator uses PI compensation to determine $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$ (see \\Section{s:hetero}\n for details).  With such a small number of loads it is not surprising to see some evidence of quantization.  For 100 loads or more, and the reference scaled proportionately, the tracking is nearly perfect.  \n\n\n\n\n\nTwo QoS metrics have been considered for this model.  First is `chattering' -- a large number of switches from on to off.  A large value means poor QoS, but this is already addressed through design of the controlled transition matrix \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}.   The design of $P_\\zeta$ also helps to enforce  upper and lower bounds on the duration of cleaning each day.\n\nA second metric is total cleaning over a time horizon of one week or more. This is the QoS metric considered in \\cite{chebusmey14}.  \nIn this paper we consider a discounted version:\nWe assume that $P_0$ has a unique invariant pmf $\\pi_0$.\nWith $\\ell\\colon{\\mathchoice{\\hbox{\\sf X}}\\sfX{\\hbox{\\scriptsize\\sf X}}\\smallsfX}\\to\\field{R}$ a given function with zero steady-state mean,  $\\sum_x \\pi_0(x) \\ell(x) =0$,  we define for each $i$ and $t$,\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal L}^i_t = \\sum_{k=0}^t \\beta^{t-k} \\ell(X^i_k)\n\\label{e:QoS15}\n\\end{equation} \nwith $\\beta\\in (0,1]$ a constant.\nThe function $\\ell(x) = \\field{I}(m=\\oplus) - \\field{I}(m=\\ominus)$ was used in \\cite{chebusmey14} in the case of a 12 hour cleaning cycle (recall the notation $x= (m,k) $).\n\n\nExperimental results surveyed in \\Section{s:num} demonstrate that it is possible to estimate functionals of the state process such as the QoS metric $\\{{\\cal L}^i_t\\}$, \neven if the observations are subject to   significant measurement noise.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\Ebox{.7}{ObsGramian_full-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{Eigenvalues for the observability Grammian for the pool  model in two cases:   The magnitude of eigenvalues decays rapidly for a typical sample-path of $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$,  and for the LTI model obtained with $\\bfmath{\\zeta}\\equiv 0$.}\n\\label{f:obsGramm}\n\\vspace{-1ex}\n\\end{figure} \n \n\n\nIn anticipation of the results to come we ask, \\textit{what would linear systems theory predict with respect to state estimation performance?}  The observability Grammian associated with \\eqref{e:StateForEst} was computed for typical sample paths $\\{A_t = P_{\\zeta_t}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} : 1\\le t \\le 2016\\}$, where the value $2016$ corresponds to one week,  and $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$ was scaled to lie between $\\pm \\half$.  Its rank was found to be approximately 40,  while the maximal rank is 96 (the dimension of the state).   With $\\zeta_t\\equiv 0$ the system is time-invariant.  In this case the rank of the observability Grammian coincides with the rank of the observability matrix, which was found to be  23. \n\n\n\\spm{new:}\nHowever, these values were obtained using the ``rank'' command in Matlab,  which relies on finite numerical precision.  A plot of the magnitude of the eigenvalues for the two observability Grammians shown in   \\Fig{f:obsGramm} suggests that both matrices are full rank.   \n\n\\spm{new:}\nFurther analysis establishes that the LTI model obtained with $\\bfmath{\\zeta}\\equiv 0$ \\textit{cannot be observable}, due to a particular symmetry found in this example.  A general result given in  \\Prop{t:symNot} implies that $\\lambda^0_i=0$ for $50\\le i\\le 96$.\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Kalman Filter Equations}\n\\label{s:Kalman}\n\nThe second order statistics for the disturbances appearing in the linear model (\\ref{e:StateForEst}, \\ref{e:StateForEst-i}, \\ref{e:obsPhi}) are derived here.   These expressions are used\nto construct a Kalman filter that generates approximations for the conditional mean and covariance\n\\eqref{e:meanW-e:SigPhi}.\nOther statistics of interest are,\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\widehat \\Phi_t^i &=   {\\sf E}[\\Phi^i_t | {\\cal Y}_t] \\,, \\quad\n \\Sigma^i_t    =  {\\sf E}[{\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_t({\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_t)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} | {\\cal Y}_t] \n\\\\[.1cm] \n\\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t}^i &=   {\\sf E}[\\Phi^i_{t+1} | {\\cal Y}_t] \\,, \\quad\n \\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t}    =  {\\sf E}[{\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_{t+1}({\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_{t+1})^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} | {\\cal Y}_t] \n\\\\[.1cm] \n\\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t} &=   {\\sf E}[\\Phi_{t+1} | {\\cal Y}_t]\\,, \\quad\n  \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}    =  {\\sf E}[{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1}({\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1})^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} | {\\cal Y}_t] \n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nwhere again tildes represent deviations,  such as ${\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_t = \\Phi^i_t -\\widehat \\Phi^i_t$.\n\n\n\n \n\n \\Prop{t:EstIndExchangeable} states that some statistics of the individual  can be expressed in terms of those of the population:\nIt is \\textit{not} the case that  $\\Sigma_t^i=N \\Sigma_t $,\nsince   $\\{\\Phi^i_t : 1\\le i\\le N\\}$ are correlated. \n\n \n \n \n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{t:EstIndExchangeable}\nFor each $s$, $t$, $i$,  and any set $S\\subset\\field{R}^d$, the   conditional probability is independent of $i$:\n \\begin{equation}\n{\\sf P}\\{ \\Phi^i_s\\in S \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\} = {\\sf P}\\{ \\Phi^1_s\\in S \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\} \n\\label{e:EstIndExchangeable}\n\\end{equation}\nand consequently,  $\n{\\sf E}[ \\Phi^i_s \\mid {\\cal Y}_t]  = {\\sf E}[ \\Phi_s \\mid {\\cal Y}_t] $. \nMoreover,   \n$\\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t}^i  = A_t \\widehat \\Phi_t$,  the state covariances for the individual are\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n \\Sigma_{t}^i & = \\diag(\\widehat \\Phi_t) - \\widehat \\Phi_t \\widehat \\Phi_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\\\\n \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}^i & = \\diag(\\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t}) - \\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t} \\widehat \\Phi_{t+1\\mid t}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}},\n\\end{aligned}\n \\]\n  and the cross covariances can be expressed, \n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n {\\sf E}\\bigl[     {\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_t   ( {\\widetilde \\Phi}_t ) ^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]  &= \\Sigma_t\n \\\\\n {\\sf E}\\bigl[     {\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_{t+1\\mid t}   ( {\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} ) ^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]  &= \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}   \\,, \\quad 1\\le i\\le N.\n\\end{aligned}\n \\]\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof of \\eqref{e:EstIndExchangeable}\n follows from the symmetry and independence conditions imposed in (A1--A4).   The remaining results follow from this,  and the fact that $\\Phi^i_t$ has binary entries [in particular,  $\\Phi^i_t(\\Phi^i_t)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} = \\diag(\\Phi^i_t)$].\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\nRecall from the introduction that two formulations of the Kalman filter \nhave been considered in this research. \nFor a conditionally Gaussian model,  the Kalman filter equations require the conditional covariances for the state noise,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\!\\!\\!\\!\n\\Sigma^{W^i}_t={\\sf E}[W^i_{t+1}(W_{t+1}^i)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid {\\cal Y}_t] \\,,\n\\ \\\n\\Sigma^W_t={\\sf E}[W_{t+1}W_{t+1}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid {\\cal Y}_t]\n\\label{e:NoiseCondCov}\n\\end{equation}\nand also the conditional covariance of the measurement noise,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Sigma^V_t={\\sf E}[V_t^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_{t-1}] \n\\label{e:NoiseObsCondCov}\n\\end{equation}\nFormulae for the state noise covariances can be obtained in full generality.  We require the distribution of the random vector $\\gamma_t$ introduced in A4 to obtain a formula for $\\Sigma^V_t$.  \n\nThe Kalman filter that generates $L_2$-optimal estimates over all \\textit{linear functions of the observations} uses instead the (unconditional) covariance matrices,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\overline{\\Sigma}^{W^i}_t={\\sf E}[W^i_{t+1}(W_{t+1}^i)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}],\n\\quad\n\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_t={\\sf E}[W_{t+1}W_{t+1}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} ],\n\\label{e:NoisCov}\n\\end{equation}\nand $\n\\overline{\\Sigma}^{V}_t={\\sf E}[V_t^2]$  (the  notation used in standard texts is $Q_t =\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_t $ and $R_t=\\overline{\\Sigma}^{V}_t$    \\cite{cai88}).   \nWe show in \\Prop{t:NoiseCondCov} that the two covariance matrices in \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCov} are   linear functions of the \\textit{true conditional mean} $\\widehat \\Phi_t$.   Expressions for the two covariance matrices in \\eqref{e:NoisCov} follow from \\Prop{t:NoiseCondCov} and the smoothing property of conditional expectation, provided we can compute ${\\sf E}[\\widehat \\Phi_t]={\\sf E}[\\Phi_t]$.\nThe formula we obtain for $\\Sigma^{V}_t$ in \\Prop{t:NoiseObsCondCov}  is a linear function of the conditional covariance matrices $ \\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t}   $ and $  \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}    $.   It is unlikely we can obtain formula for the means of these covariance matrices, and hence we do not expect to obtain an exact formula for $\\overline{\\Sigma}^{V}_t$.   \n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{State noise covariance}\n\\label{s:KFstate}\n\n \n The following result provides formulae for the conditional covariances for the state noise \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCov} as a function of the conditional mean $\\widehat \\Phi_t$. \n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{t:NoiseCondCov}\nUnder Assumptions~A1--A4,\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n\\Sigma^W_t &=&\n \\frac{1}{N}\\Bigl( \\diag(A_t \\widehat \\Phi_t) - A_t \\diag(\\widehat \\Phi_t) A_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\Bigr)\n \\label{e:NoiseCondCovForm}\n \\\\\n\\Sigma^{W^i}_t &=&\n \\diag(A_t \\widehat \\Phi_t^i) - A_t \\diag(\\widehat \\Phi_t^i) A_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}    \n\\label{e:NoiseCondCovForm-i}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe second covariance is independent of $i$,  with common value $\\Sigma^{W^i}_t = N\\Sigma^W_t$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\n\\medbreak\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSince\n$\\{ W_t^i  : 1\\le i\\le N\\}$ is uncorrelated, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\Sigma^W_t=\n \\frac{1}{N^2}\\sum_{i=1}^N \\Sigma^{W^i}_t \n \\label{e:SigmaWavg}\n\\end{equation}\nMoreover, \\Prop{t:EstIndExchangeable} gives  $\\widehat \\Phi_t^i=\\widehat \\Phi_t$, and from this or  \\eqref{e:Phi-sum} it is obvious that\n\\[\n\\widehat \\Phi_t = \\frac{1}{N} \\sum_{i=1}^N \\widehat \\Phi_t^i \n\\]\nConsequently,  \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCovForm} follows from  \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCovForm-i}.\n\nThe derivation of the formula  \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCovForm-i} for $\\Sigma^{W^i}_t $ is similar to the Kalman filter construction in \\cite{lipkrirub84}.\nGiven the larger sigma-field,  \n\\[\n{\\cal Y}_t^+ = \\sigma\\{\\Phi_r^i, Y_r, \\zeta_r,  A_r : r\\le t,\\ i\\le N\\}\n\\]\nthe smoothing property of conditional expectation implies,\n\\[\n\\Sigma^{W^i}_t = {\\sf E}\\bigl[ {\\sf E}[W_{t+1}^i (W_{t+1}^i)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+] \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n\\] \nThe inner conditional expectation is transformed using the definition  \\eqref{e:Wi}:\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n{\\sf E}[W^i_{t+1}(W_{t+1}^i)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} &\\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+] \n\\\\\n&=  \n{\\sf E}[  \\Phi_{t+1}^i (\\Phi_{t+1}^i)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}   \\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+]  \n\\\\\n&\\qquad -  {\\sf E}[  \\Phi_{t+1}^i     \\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+]   {\\sf E}[  \\Phi_{t+1}^i     \\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+]^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\\\\n&=  \\diag(A_t \\Phi_t^i)    \n\\\\\n&\\qquad -  A_t \\diag( \\Phi_t^i) A_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nwhere the final equation uses\n$ {\\sf E}[  \\Phi_{t+1}^i     \\mid {\\cal Y}_t^+] =A_t \\Phi_t^i $, and the fact that $\\Phi_r^i$ has binary entries for each $i$ and $r$.\n\nTaking the conditional expectation given ${\\cal Y}_t$ gives \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCovForm-i}. \n\\end{proof}\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Sampling and observation covariance}\n\\label{s:samplingCov}\n\nThe observation model used in the numerical experiments that follow is based on random sampling of loads:  An integer $n<N$ is held fixed, and at each time instant $t$ a distinct set of  $n$ indices $\\{k_1,\\dots, k_n\\}$ is chosen uniformly at random.   The observation is the average \n\\begin{equation}\nY_t= \\frac{1}{n} \\sum_{i=1}^n   \\util(X^{ k_i}_t).\n\\label{e:samplingCov}\n\\end{equation}\n   Recalling the definition $ \\util(X^{ k_i}_t) = C\\Phi^{k_i}_t $,  it follows from \\Prop{t:EstIndExchangeable}  that this is an unbiased estimate of   $C\\Phi_t $.  \nAn expression for the conditional variance $\\Sigma_t^V$ defined in \\eqref{e:NoiseObsCondCov} is obtained next.   \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{t:NoiseObsCondCov}  \nThe conditional covariance is given by,\n\\[\n\\Sigma_{t+1}^V = \\frac{1}{n}\\frac{N-n}{N-1}  C \\Bigl(  \\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t}    -  \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}    \n\\Bigr) C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \n\\]\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\n\\medbreak\n\n\\begin{proof}\nBy definition,\n\\[\n\\Sigma^V_{t+1} = {\\sf E}\\Bigl[  \\Bigl( \\frac{1}{n} \\sum_{i=1}^n   C\\Phi^{ k_i}_{t+1} -  C\\Phi_{t+1} \\Bigr)^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\Bigr]\n\\]\nwhere the permutation is random, uniform, and independent of ${\\cal Y}_t$.  It follows from symmetry of the model that we can consider just the first $n$ samples,\nreplacing $k_i$ by $i$.    We also center the random variables to obtain\n\\begin{equation} \n\\Sigma^V_{t+1} = {\\sf E}\\Bigl[  \\Bigl( \\frac{1}{n}   \\sum_{i=1}^n  C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{i}_{t+1\\mid t} -  C{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} \\Bigr)^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\Bigr]\n\\label{e:SigmaVdef} \n\\end{equation}\nThe quadratic is expanded as the sum of three terms, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\Sigma^V_{t+1} = S_1 - 2S_2 + S_3\\,\n\\label{e:SigmaV3}\n\\end{equation}\nin which the second two terms are transformed using the following consequence of \\Prop{t:EstIndExchangeable}:\n \\begin{equation} \n {\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^i_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr] \n  = C\\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t} C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}  \n\\label{e:crossPhi}\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe first term  is the conditional variance,\n\\begin{equation}\nS_1 \\mathbin{:=}\n{\\sf E}\\bigl[  \\bigl(   C{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} \\bigr)^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr] = C \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t} C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\label{e:SigmaVa}\n\\end{equation}\nThe second term is transformed using \\eqref{e:crossPhi}:\n\\begin{equation} \n\\begin{aligned}\nS_2 \\mathbin{:=}\n {\\sf E}\\Bigl[  \\Bigl( \\frac{1}{n}   &\\sum_{i=1}^n  C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{i}_{t+1\\mid t} \\Bigr)\\Bigl( C{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} \\Bigr) \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\Bigr]\n \\\\\n  &=   C \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t} C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\end{aligned}\n\\label{e:SigmaVb}\n\\end{equation}\nThe third term is another conditional variance,\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\nS_3 \\mathbin{:=}\n \\frac{1}{n^2}  \n{\\sf E}\\Bigl[  & \\Bigl( \\sum_{i=1}^n  C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{i}_{t+1\\mid t}   \\Bigr)^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\Bigr]\n\\\\\n  &=  \\frac{1}{n^2}   \\sum_{i,j=1}^n {\\sf E}\\bigl[      \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{i}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{j}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}    \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nApplying symmetry once more gives, \n\\[\n\\begin{aligned} \n  \\sum_{i,j=1}^n  {\\sf E}\\bigl[  &    \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{i}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{j}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}    \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n  \\\\\n  &= n  {\\sf E}\\bigl[      \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^1_{t+1\\mid t} \\}^2      \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr] \n  \\\\\n  &\\quad + (n^2-n)  {\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{1}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^2_{t+1\\mid t} \\}    \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nUsing familiar arguments, and applying \\eqref{e:crossPhi},\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n (N-1) &{\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{1}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^2_{t+1\\mid t} \\}    \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n \\\\\n &=\n \\sum_{k=2}^N \n {\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{1}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{k}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}    \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]\n \\\\\n  &= N  {\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{1}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}  \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}   \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr] \n  \\\\\n  &\\qquad   -   {\\sf E}\\bigl[     \\{ C{\\widetilde \\Phi}^{1}_{t+1\\mid t} \\}^2 \\mid {\\cal Y}_t\\bigr]   \n  \\\\\n  & =\n  N C\\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t} C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}  - C\\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t} C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nPutting these expressions together gives,\n\\[\nS_3 =\n \\frac{1}{n^2}  C  \\Bigl( n \\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t}   + \\frac{n^2-n }{N-1} \\Bigl[   N \\Sigma_{t+1\\mid t}   - \\Sigma^i_{t+1\\mid t} \n \\Bigr]\n \\Bigr)C^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\]\nThe desired expression is obtained by substitution of these terms in \\eqref{e:SigmaV3}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Estimation of the individual }\n \\label{s:EstInd}\n\nA filter is introduced here to estimate the mean and variance for an individual state $\\bfmath{\\Phi}^i$, and the mean and variance of the QoS metric ${\\cal L}^i_t$  for a typical load (recall   \\eqref{e:QoS15}).\nEstimates of the individual state and individual QoS can be used to estimate the flexibility of loads, which may vary with time.   For example, if the grid operator believes that every water heater contains water that is too cold,  then it is unlikely that there is much remaining flexibility to reduce power consumption from these loads.   \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nThe Kalman filter must be modified to obtain estimates of the QoS for individual loads.    One approach is to restrict to $\\beta=1$,  and use the Markovian model  $(X^i_t,{\\cal L}^i_t)$.   This comes with high complexity:  In the case of the pool model,  the first component can take on $d=96$ values,   and the range of values of ${\\cal L}^i_t$ may be over 100.  This means that the state space is at least $10^4$,  which is probably  too large to be practical for estimation. \n\n  \nHere we introduce a Kalman filter for the joint process $\\Psi^i_t=(\\Phi^i_t;\\Phi_t;{\\cal L}^i_t)$,  which is of dimension $2d+1$.    The construction of a linear model for $\\bfmath{\\Psi}^i$ is based on (\\ref{e:StateForEst},\n\\ref{e:StateForEst-i}),  and the one-dimensional dynamics for  QoS,\n\\[\n{\\cal L}^i_{t+1} = \\beta {\\cal L}^i_t  +  C_\\ell \\Phi^i_t   \n\\]\nwhere $ C_\\ell \\Phi^i_t   =\\ell(X^i_t)$.\nThe measurements remain of the form \\eqref{e:obs},  which is why it is necessary to include  $\\Phi_t$ in the definition of $\\Psi^i_t$.    \nThe new $A$, $C$, state-noise covariance matrices are,    \n{\\small\n\\[\n\\begin{bmatrix}\nA_t & 0 & 0\n\\\\\n0&A_t & 0\n\\\\\nC_\\ell & 0 & \\beta\n\\end{bmatrix}\n\\, ,\n\\quad \n[0,\\, C, \\, 0]\n\\, ,\n\\quad \n\\begin{bmatrix}\n\\Sigma_t^{W^i} &N^{-1} \\Sigma_t^{W^i} & 0\n\\\\\nN^{-1} \\Sigma_t^{W^i} &\\Sigma_t^{W} & 0\n\\\\\n0 & 0 & 0\n\\end{bmatrix}\n\\]}%\nWe thus have all of the system parameters needed to construct the Kalman filter.\n\n\n \n \n\\section{Estimating QoS and Closing the Loop}\n\\label{s:num}\n\n\nWe have conducted experiments in various settings, using both formulations of the Kalman filter, differentiated by the use of conditional or unconditional covariance matrices.   For estimating performance we obtained excellent results with the Kalman filter whose gain is based on the conditional covariance matrices.  The numerical results focus on the residential pool model, and closes with preliminary extension to TCL models.\n\nThe Kalman filter that is optimal over all linear estimators requires unconditional covariances. \nThe state covariance matrix can be expressed as the mean of \\eqref{e:NoiseCondCovForm}:\n\\[\n\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_t =\n \\frac{1}{N}  {\\sf E}\\Bigl[ \\diag(A_t \\widehat \\Phi_t) - A_t \\diag(\\widehat \\Phi_t) A_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\Bigr]\n\\]\nThe mean  ${\\sf E} [\\widehat \\Phi_t] = {\\sf E} [\\Phi_t] $ does not have a closed form expression, so we make two approximations.  First, we consider the mean with $\\bfmath{\\zeta}\\equiv 0$,  and second we let $t\\to\\infty$.  The covariance used in the filter is the resulting limit,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_\\infty =\n \\frac{1}{N}   \\Bigl[ \\diag(A_t \\pi_0) - A_t \\diag(\\pi_0) A_t^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\Bigr]\n\\label{e:ssVarW}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\pi_0$ is invariant for $P_0$.   A similar approximation is used for $\\overline{\\Sigma}^V_t $.    \n\n \nThe common features in all of the numerical experiments that follow are listed here:   \nThe reference signal $\\bfmath{r}$ was \ngenerated from the BPA balancing reserves deployed in the first month of 2015 \\cite{BPA}. This  signal was low pass filtered, and then scaled to an appropriate magnitude to match the capacity of the aggregate of loads, exactly as in \\cite{meybarbusyueehr15}.  \n\nThe observation model was based on the sampling assumptions introduced in   \n\\Section{s:samplingCov}, in which a fixed number of loads $n<N$ is sampled at each time.  \nRecall from \\eqref{e:samplingCov} that the average of these $n$ samples at time $t$ is denoted $Y_t$.   \nUnless stated otherwise, $n$ is taken to be $0.1\\%$ of the total population.  \nHence, for a population of $N=10,000$ pools, exactly 10 are sampled at each time step.   \n\nIt is assumed that each pool  pump consumes 1kW while in operation.   \nThe actual power consumption at time $t$ is $NC \\Phi_t$.  For this reason, plots of  $C \\Phi_t$  or $\\widehat Y_t = C \\widehat \\Phi_t$ are scaled by   $N$ to represent total power consumption or its estimate. \n\nFinally, the discount factor $\\beta$ in the QoS metric \\eqref{e:QoS15} was chosen as the value for which $\\beta^k\\approx 1\/2$ when $k$ corresponds to one week.  The value  $\\beta = 0.9997$  is obtained under the assumption of five-minute sampling.\n\n\n \n\n\n\\subsection{Estimation of QoS}\n\\label{s:QoS}\n\nThe Kalman filter described in \\Section{s:EstInd} was used to obtain estimates of the mean and variance of the QoS metric ${\\cal L}^i_t$,  with\n $\\ell(x) = C x - {\\overline {y}}$.   These experiments were performed with $\\bfmath{\\zeta}$ equal to the exogenous ``mean-field limit'' used in the linearized model of  \\cite{chebusmey14}: \n\\[\n\\zeta_t = \\frac{G_c}{1+G_cG_p} r_t\n\\]\nwhere $G_c$ is a PI compensator,  and $G_p$ is a transfer function for a linearized model\n(see \\cite{chebusmey14} for details).\n\n\n \n \\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{QoS_est_cc12_pool10000_sample10.pdf}  \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{Although the liner model is not observable, estimates of the mean and variance of QoS for an individual are nearly perfect.}\n\\label{f:obsQoS}\n\\vspace{-1ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n \n\n\\Fig{f:obsQoS} shows estimates of QoS based on a model with 10,000 pools, with $0.1\\%$ sampling rate.       The accuracy of estimation is remarkable, in spite of significant measurement noise.   \n\n\nNon-ideal settings were also considered. In one experiment   a population of 20,000 pools was divided into two classes of equal size: 10,000 pools operated as previously with a\n12hr\/day cleaning cycle, \nand the other \n10,000\n  operated with a 8hr\/day cleaning cycle.   It is possible to construct the exact Kalman filter by doubling the dimension of the state space.   Instead,   an approximate model was constructed in which the parameters in the two state space models (differentiated by cleaning cycle) were averaged;  similar approximate models are used in  \\cite{matkoccal13}.  \n \n \\spm{shortened:}\nEstimation results for the case of two pool classes are shown in \\Fig{f:obsQoS8+12}. \nThe QoS for the two classes of pools have different means and variances.   This difference cannot be captured using this filter which is designed to estimate the overall mean and variance.    The filter generates estimates of the mean QoS  that lie between the two empirical means,  and estimates of its variance follow more closely   the empirical variance of the pools with 12hr\/day cleaning cycle. \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{QoS_est_cc12n8_pool20000_sample20_cndCOV_1month_3plots-lr.pdf}  \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{Estimates of the mean and variance of QoS for an individual with a heterogenous population.   The un-modeled dynamics lead to some error.}\n\\label{f:obsQoS8+12}\n\\vspace{-1ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Control of the heterogeneous population}\n\\label{s:hetero}\n\nClosed-loop experiments were conducted\nin which un-modeled dynamics are present due to both\nload heterogeneity and additional local control.  With large un-modeled dynamics it is still possible to obtain estimates of the mean of QoS,  but the Kalman filter cannot be expected to provide estimates of the variance.  \n\nError feedback was used in all of the remaining experiments,  $\\zeta_t = G_c e_t$.\nA PI compensator was used to define $G_c$:  A proportional gain of 50, and integral gain of 1.5 worked well in all examples. \n\\spm{new:}\nThese values were based on a nominal LTI model --- this feedback design resulted in a phase margin of about 70 degrees, and gain margin of about 10dB.  \n\nIn the experimental results illustrated in\n \\Fig{f:YfbPureObs}, the error signal was defined with respect to the raw measurements, without use of the Kalman filter.  In all other experiments,   the following definition\n was used:   \n\\begin{equation}\ne_t= \\frac{1}{N} r_t - \\widetilde{Y}_t, \\quad \\widetilde{Y}_t = C \\widehat \\Phi_t - {\\overline {y}}\n\\label{e:error}\n\\end{equation}\nwith ${\\overline {y}}$ equal to the average nominal power consumption.\nThe scaling of the reference by $N^{-1}$ is required since $C \\widehat \\Phi_t $ is an estimate of average power consumption.  \n\nThe total number of pools was taken to be $N=300,000$.   Performance results using smaller values of $N$ are   discussed at the close of \\Section{s:hetero}, and also in \\Section{s:opt-out}.\n\n\n \n\nThe simulation model used in the remaining experiments consisted of nine different classes of pools, distinguished by cleaning cycle.  \n  The distribution of classes is shown in Table~I.   Suppose that the grid operator had full information regarding the number of pools in each class.  \nThe full state space description would have dimension $9\\times d$, which is far too complex.  Moreover, in practice the grid operator will not have complete system information.\n\nHere we make some coarse approximations to simplify the model.  In addition to reducing complexity of the filter, our goal is to investigate robustness of the estimation algorithms in a closed-loop setting.\n \n \n\n\n\\section*{{\\sc Table I: Distribution of pools}}\n\\vspace{.25em}\n\\begin{center} \n{\\small\n \\begin{tabular}{lccccccccc}\n    \\hline\\vspace{-.5em}\n    \\\\ \n\\hspace{-.5em}\n        \\textbf{Cycle} \\ (hr\/day)  & 20 & 18 & 16 & 14 & 12 & 10 & 8 & 6 & 4 \\\\[1ex] \n        \\hline\n        \\\\\n\\hspace{-.75em}\n         \\textbf{Number} \\ ($\\times 10^4$) & 1  & 1  & 1  & 3  & 5  & 10 & 5 & 3 & 1  \\\\[1ex]   \\hline \n    \\end{tabular}\n    }\n\\end{center}\n\n\\smallbreak\n\n\nAlthough the simulation uses these nine classes of pools,  for the purposes of filter design an  approximate model was constructed based on just two pool models, corresponding to 8 and 12-hour cleaning cycles.   \nFollowing  \\cite{matkoccal13}, a convex combination was chosen for the state matrix, \n\\[\nA_t = \\alpha A_t^8 + (1-\\alpha) A_t^{12}\n\\]\n in which  $0 \\le \\alpha \\le 1$ is independent of $t$, and\n the superscripts $^{8}$ and $^{12}$ refer to the respective pool classes.  \n\n\n\nThe parameter $\\alpha$  was chosen to be consistent with the hypothesis that the collection of pools consist of just two classes, with 8 or 12 hr\/day cycles.  It is assumed that the nominal average power consumption ${\\overline {y}}$ is known to the grid operator -- this can be estimated easily from weekly measurements.  The 2-class   assumption would imply \nthat ${\\overline {y}} = \\alpha {\\overline {y}}^8 +(1- \\alpha) {\\overline {y}}^{12} $, giving \n$\n\\alpha =  ({\\overline {y}}^{12}-{\\overline {y}})\/({\\overline {y}}^{12}-{\\overline {y}}^8)$,\nwith   ${\\overline {y}}^{12}=1\/2$ and ${\\overline {y}}^8=1\/3$.\n\n \n \\spm{Yue: note revision to simplify, and avoid unsubstantiated conjectures. }\n \nThe  covariance matrix $\\Sigma^{W}_t$ used in the Kalman filter was modified to take into account the large un-modeled dynamics.  It was chosen as the sum of two terms,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Sigma^{W}_t = \\Sigma^{W_*}_t + k_t \\overline{\\Sigma}^W_\\infty,  \n\\label{e:Cov_convex}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k_t\\ge 0$,\n$\\Sigma^{W_*}_t$ is a convex combination of the matrices computed in \\Proposition{t:NoiseCondCov}, and\n$\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_\\infty$ is a convex combination of the matrices  \\eqref{e:ssVarW}.  This structure ensures that $\\Sigma^{W}_t $ is positive semi-definite, and that $\\Sigma^{W}_t \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}} = 0$ (consistent with the fact that our state evolves in the simplex).     The performance of the filter was not very sensitive to the parameter $k_t$,  but the best value was found to grow linearly with population size.  The results that follow used $k_t = N\/300$   (note that $N$   cancels the factor $1\/N$ appearing in the definition  \\eqref{e:ssVarW} of    $\\overline{\\Sigma}^W_\\infty $).\n\n\n \n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{Convex_Track-PureObs-Nov2015-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{PI control with output-error feedback, with $e_t= {N^{-1}} r_t - Y_t$.}\n\\label{f:YfbPureObs}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \nWith the experimental setting fully described, we now survey results from several control experiments.\n\nWe first show what happens  if  we forgo use of the Kalman filter,\nand take $e_t = N^{-1} r_t - \\widetilde{Y}_t$,  with $\\widetilde{Y}_t = Y_t - {\\overline {y}}$,   and  $Y_t$ the noisy measurements obtained with 0.1\\%\\ sampling.  Results from one experiment are shown in \\Fig{f:YfbPureObs}. The volatility of the measurements resulted in similar volatility of input $\\zeta_t$. This drove the pools to switch frequently, and also resulted in degraded grid level tracking.   This motivates the use of a filter to smooth the measurements.\n\n\n\nResults using the filtered error \\eqref{e:error} are shown in \\Fig{f:YfbKF}. This Kalman filter estimator based control gives nearly perfect tracking performance, in spite of the significant modeling error.\n \n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{tracking_N=300000_samp=300-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\caption{PI control with smoothed error signal \\eqref{e:error}.}\n\\label{f:YfbKF}\n\\end{figure} \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\def{\\text{\\rm n}}{{\\text{\\rm n}}}\n\nTracking experiments were conducted in many other  scenarios, distinguished by sampling rate and load population, using the same distribution of load classes given in Table 1.   Normalized tracking error was chosen as the performance metric, \n\\[\ne_t^{\\text{\\rm n}} = \\frac{ y_t - r_t }{ \\| r \\|_2},    \\quad \\| r \\|_2 = \\left( \\frac{1}{T} \\sum_{t=1}^T r_t^2 \\right)^{\\frac{1}{2}}.\n\\]\n \n \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.85}{RMStrackingBarChart-lr.pdf}  \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{Tracking performance improves with increased sampling rate, or a larger population of loads $N$.}\n\\label{f:bar}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n \n\n\n \\begin{figure*}[t]\n\\Ebox{.85}{Heter_Convex_track-30K+300K-long-lr.pdf}\n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{PI control and local opt-out control for the heterogeneous model with 0.1\\%\\ sampling rate.\nTracking performance improves as $N$ is increased.}\n\\label{f:track30K+300K}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure*} \n\n\n\nThe full relationship between population size $N$, sampling rate, and closed loop performance is illustrated  in \\Fig{f:bar}.  The vertical axis is the root mean square (RMS) of the tracking error $\\{e_t^{\\text{\\rm n}}\\}$.\n For each of the 4 values of $N$ considered,   the tracking error is less than $3.5\\%$ with $100\\%$ measurements.  It is found that the tracking error is best predicted by the number of samples per time-step.  Consequently, a smaller population of loads requires a larger sampling rate to maintain good tracking performance.\n\n \n \n\n\n\\subsection{Opt-out local control}\n\\label{s:opt-out}\n\nIn \\cite{chebusmey14} an additional layer of control is introduced, based on the QoS metric ${\\cal L}^i_t $ introduced in \\eqref{e:QoS15}:  The $i$th load can opt-out of service to the grid (ignore the signal $\\zeta_t$) at  any time $t$ for which ${\\cal L}^i_t $ lies outside of pre-assigned bounds.  The impact of these additional  un-modeled dynamics is investigated here.\n\nAt each load the QoS metric ${\\cal L}^i_t$ is constrained to a common interval $[-50, +50]$: \nif ${\\cal L}_t^i \\ge 50$, then the pool is turned off at time $t$, regardless of the value of $\\zeta_t$. Similarly, if ${\\cal L}_t^i\\le -50$  then it will be turned on. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nIn the construction of the Kalman filter, the  state noise covariance was taken as \\eqref{e:Cov_convex},  but in this case the scaling factor was chosen as a function of the QoS estimates,\n$\nk_t = k + b |\\widehat{{\\cal L}}^i_t|\n$.\nThis is chosen to reflect the fact that un-modeled dynamics increase with the percentage of pools that opt-out.   \nThe values  $k=N\/100$ and $b=300$ worked well, and the sensitivity to these values was not high.\n\n\n\n\n \nClosed loop  performance remained nearly perfect,  and the percentage of opt out loads was observed to remain under $0.5\\%$ over the entire run.   \\Fig{f:track30K+300K} shows results from two experiments with $N=300,000$  and $N=30,000$,  each with sampling rate maintained at 0.1\\%. \n\n  It is seen again that  reducing the number of loads results in degradation of closed loop performance, since fewer loads are sampled at each time-step;  the two plots are nearly identical if the sampling rate is increased to 1\\% for the smaller population.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n \n\n\\subsection{Observability in Demand Dispatch systems}\n\\label{s:symNot}\n\nIt is shown here that the lack of observability observed in the pool model with 12 hr cleaning cycle can be attributed to symmetry of the model.\n\nA  review of linear systems terminology is required.\nConsider the general LTI state-space model,  \n\\[\n\\Phi_{t+1} = A \\Phi_t + B u_t,\\qquad y_t=C \\Phi_t\n\\]\nwhere $A$ is a $d\\times d$ matrix, $B$ is a $d$-dimensional column vector,\nand $C$ is a $d$-dimensional row vector.   The observability matrix is the $d\\times d$ matrix whose $k$th row is equal to $C A^{k-1}$,  and its null space  $\\Sigma_{\\bar o}$ is called the \\textit{unobservable subspace}.   Suppose that $\\{\\Phi_t\\}$ and $\\{\\Phi_t'\\}$   are two solutions to the state space equations with common input sequence $\\{u_t\\}$, but different initial conditions,  $\\Phi_0, \\Phi'_0\\in\\field{R}^d$.  If  $\\Phi'_0-\\Phi_0\\in\\Sigma_{\\bar o}$,   then for each $t\\ge 0$,\n\\[\ny_t - y_t' = C A^t (\\Phi_0 -\\Phi_0') = 0\n\\]\nThat is, based on measurements $\\{y_t : t\\ge 0\\}$,  it is impossible to know if the true state sequence is $\\{\\Phi_t\\}$ or $\\{\\Phi_t'\\}$.   \n\nFor the time-varying system \n\\[\n\\Phi_{t+1} = A_t\\Phi_t + B u_t,\\qquad y_t=C \\Phi_t\n\\]\nthe observability matrix is replaced by the observability Grammian, ${\\cal O}_G$.  The definition can be found in any introductory text on state space control (or, see the encyclopedic text \\cite{cai88}).   A critical interpretation is this:  If $\\Phi_0 $,  $\\Phi_0'$ are two initial conditions, then with identical inputs \n\\[\n(\\Phi_0 -\\Phi_0') ^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}  {\\cal O}_G(\\Phi_0 -\\Phi_0')   = \\sum_{t=0}^\\infty  (y_t - y_t')^2\n\\]\nThis is why the small eigenvalues observed in\n\\Fig{f:obsGramm} are a concern if we wish to reconstruct the entire state based on the observations $\\{y_t\\}$.  \n\n\nThe proposition that follows concerns a class of LTI models that have the following symmetry property: \\begin{equation}\nA =  \\begin{bmatrix}\nA_g &  A_o\n\\\\\nA_o & A_g\n\\end{bmatrix}  \\,, \\qquad \nC  = [ \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid 0^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}]  \n\\label{e:symLTI}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $A$ is a $d\\times d$ matrix, and   the decomposition is in terms of two square matrices $A_g $, $ A_o$.   This requires that the integer $d$ is even.\n\nAn example is the pool pump model with 12 hour cleaning cycle.  Under certain conditions, a TCL model may be symmetric following a state transformation -- an example is given below.\nRegardless of the details of the model, symmetry rules out observability.   \n\nAnalysis of the symmetric model is based on the  subspaces,\n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n{\\cal V} &= \\{ v\\in\\field{R}^d :  v_i= v_{d\/2+i},\\ 1\\le i\\le d\/2\\}\n\\\\ \n{\\cal V}_0 &=\\{ v\\in {\\cal V} :  \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} v= 0\\} \n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{t:symNot}\nConsider the symmetric LTI model \\eqref{e:symLTI}.  If \n$A^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} $ is a transition matrix, then the subspace $ {\\cal V}_0$ is contained in the unobservable subspace. Consequently, the symmetric model is never observable, and  the rank of the observability matrix is no greater than $d\/2+1$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nTo prove the proposition we establish that $A\\colon {\\cal V}_0\\to{\\cal V}_0$, so that $A^k v\\in{\\cal V}_0$ for any $k\\ge 1$ and any $v\\in{\\cal V}_0$.  By definition we also have $Cv=0$ for $v\\in{\\cal V}_0$.\nIt follows that  $CA^kv=0$ for each $k$ when $v\\in{\\cal V}_0$, so that ${\\cal V}_0\\subseteq \\Sigma_{\\bar o}$ as claimed.\n\n\n\nThe subspace ${\\cal V}$ is equal to vectors of the form $v^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}=(z^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid z^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}})$,\nwith $z\\in \\field{R}^{d\/2}$,  and ${\\cal V}_0$ is the subset satisfying $\\sum z_i=0$.    \nSymmetry implies the identity\n\\[\nAv = (w^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mid w^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}})^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}\n\\]\nwhere $w = (A_g +  A_o) z$.   This shows that $A\\colon {\\cal V}\\to{\\cal V}$.\n\n\nTo complete the proof, we next show that $\\sum w_i=0$ whenever $\\sum z_i=0$, so that\n$A\\colon {\\cal V}_0\\to{\\cal V}_0$.\n\nSince $A^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} $ is a transition matrix, it follows that\n\\[\n\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} =\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} A =  \\begin{bmatrix}\n\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} A_g+\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}  A_o \\mid  \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} A_o + \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} A_g\n\\end{bmatrix}\n\\]\nThat is,   $Q= ( A_g +  A_o)^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}}$ is a transition matrix:  $Q\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}} = \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}$.\nConsequently, if $z^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}} = \\sum_i z_i =0$, then\n\\[\n\\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} w = \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}}^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} (A_g +  A_o) z = z^{\\hbox{\\it\\tiny T}} Q \\mbox{\\rm{\\large{1}}} = 0\n\\]\n\\end{proof}\n \n\n\nConsider the following example in which the dimension of the symmetric state space model is $d=8$,  \n\\[\n\\begin{aligned}\n A_g &=\\begin{bmatrix}\n     1-\\delta  & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n    a_{21} & 1-\\delta  & 0 & 0 \\\\\n    0 & a_{32} & 1-\\delta  & 0 \\\\\n 0 & 0 & a_{43} & 1-\\delta  \n\\end{bmatrix}\n\\\\\n\\text{\\it and }\\quad \n A_0 &=\\begin{bmatrix}\n      a_{15} & a_{16} & a_{17} & \\delta \\\\\n      0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n   0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\\\\n   0 & 0 & 0 & 0\n\\end{bmatrix} \n\\end{aligned}\n\\]\nBased on the proposition,  the rank of the observability matrix is no greater than 5.\n\n\nThe following values are consistent with the  pool pump model with 12 hour cycle considered previously:   $\\delta=1\/6$,\n$a_{21}=0.1654$, $a_{32}=0.0840$, $ a_{43} =0.0026$, $a_{15}=0.0013$, $a_{16}=0.0827$, $a_{17}=0.1641$. \n  The $8\\times 8$ observability matrix ${\\cal O}$ was obtained using Matlab, and the {\\tt null} command results in equality $\\Sigma_{\\bar o}={\\cal V}_0$.  However, \nMatlab also returns these values for the log of the modulus of the eigenvalues:  $\\{\\log |\\lambda_i|\\} =$\n\\[\n\\{ 1.4 , 0.095, -1.8, -5.8, -19.7, -35.5, -36.5, -37.8\\}\n\\]\nBased on these values, it is not clear if the rank of ${\\cal O}$ is equal to 4, 5, or 8.  \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{0.8}{TCL_temperature-POOL.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{State transformation for the TCL model: the evolution of $\\bfmZ$ is similar to the pool model.}\n\\label{f:TCLtoPOOL}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n\n\nConsider next a TCL that provides cooling  (a refrigerator or air-conditioner),  with temperature $\\theta_t$ constrained to the dead-band $[\\Theta^{\\text{min}} , \\Theta^{\\text{max}}]$.   A new state process $(Z_t,m_t)$ is obtained in which $m_t$ is the power state as before, and\n\\[\nZ_t =\\begin{cases}   \n\t\t\t\\theta_t  & \\text{if $m_t=0$}\n\\\\\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\Theta^{\\text{min}} +\\Theta^{\\text{max}}-\\theta_t \\quad & \\text{if $m_t=1$}\n\t\\end{cases}   \n\\]   \nA typical trajectory for an air-conditioning unit shown in  \\Fig{f:TCLtoPOOL} reveals that the sample paths are very similar to the pool  model.  If the Markovian dynamics of $\\bfmZ$\nare symmetric, then the LTI model is not observable.  \n \n\n\n \n\\subsection{Eigenvectors and reduced order observer}\n\\label{s:redObs}\n\nThe structure of eigenvectors and reduced order observers are described for both the pool model and a  TCL model.\n\n\\paragraph*{Observability of the pool model}\n\n \n\nWe return to the homogeneous model with 12hr\/day cleaning cycle.   The   observability Grammian for the time-varying linear system was found to be highly ill-conditioned in all of our experiments -- one example is illustrated  in  \\Fig{f:obsGramm}.   The LTI model obtained with $\\bfmath{\\zeta}\\equiv 0$ is not observable, by an application of  \\Prop{t:symNot}.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{eig1-4-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{First four  eigenvectors of $A$ for the pool model.}\n\\label{f:eig1-4}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n \n \n\\Fig{f:eig1-4} shows four eigenvectors of $A$  (left eigenvectors of $P_0$),  ordered with respect to the magnitude of the corresponding eigenvalues.\nTo avoid redundancy we considered only eigenvalues with non-negative imaginary part. \nThe eigenvector $v^1$ has real eigenvalue $\\lambda_1=1$:  it is \nproportional to\nthe invariant pmf  $\\pi_0$, expressed as a column vector.   The remaining three eigenvalues are complex,  as are the corresponding eigenvectors $\\{v^2,v^3, v^4\\}$.  \n\nA reduced-order observer was constructed using a state transformation based on the LTI model.   The construction can be interpreted as a truncated representation of the state with respect to the eigenvectors of $A$.  In view of the sinusoidal form shown in  \\Fig{f:eig1-4},  this approximation is similar to a Fourier approximation.\n\n\n  \\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.9}{RealAndCondDistOrder7_N=10000_sample=10+100-lr.pdf}\n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{The  reduced-order observer yields good estimates of the state $\\Phi_t$ for typical state values.  }\n\\label{f:RealAndCondDistOrder7}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\n \n \nAfter several experiments it was found that a 7th order approximation fit the dynamics well:\nthe  Bode plots nearly agreed, and the reduced order observer  tracked the true output $\\util(X_t)$ nearly as well as the full order observer.  \n\nExperiments were conducted for the model described in \\Section{s:QoS},   with a 12hr\/day cleaning cycle, and a sampling rate of  $0.1\\%$.  \\Fig{f:RealAndCondDistOrder7} shows a comparison of the state and its estimate at a particular time in two simulations, distinguished by load population.    \n\nThe empirical distribution $\\Phi_t$ is approximately the same in each case,  $N=10^4$ and $N=10^5$;  it is slightly smoother for the larger population.   As seen in the figure, the state estimates are indistinguishable in the two cases.  The state $\\Phi_t$  is far from the steady-state (proportional to $v^1$ shown in \\Fig{f:eig1-4}),  yet the estimates are good in each experiment.  The explanation for success is most likely the similar continuity of the empirical distribution and the first seven eigenvectors.\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n \n\n\n\\paragraph*{Observability of a TCL model}\n\nThe pool example is similar to the TCL model considered in  \\cite{matkoccal13} and several other recent papers.   \nThe controlled Markov model for the $i$th load again consists of two parts:  a binary component indicating if the unit is on or off,  and a continuous component indicating its temperature.   \nThe state of the $i$th load at time $t$ is denoted $X^i_t = (m^i_t,\\theta^i_t)$.   \n\nThe complete system description follows \\cite{matkoccal13}:  For the nominal dynamics considered in prior work, this \nis defined by a dead-band $[\\Theta^{\\text{min}} , \\Theta^{\\text{max}}]$. \nFor cooling devices,\n\\[ \nm^i_{t+1} = \\left\\{ \n  \\begin{array}{l l l}\n    0, & \\quad  \\theta^i_{t+1} < \\Theta^{\\text{min}}\\\\\n    1, &  \\quad \\theta^i_{t+1} > \\Theta^{\\text{max}}\\\\\n    m^i_t, &  \\quad \\text{otherwise}\n  \\end{array} \\right.\n\\]  \nThe temperature is modeled as a linear system driven by white noise:\n \\[\n \\theta^i_{t+1} = a^i \\theta^i_t + (1-a^i)(\\theta^0_t - m^i_t R^i \\varrho^{\\text{etr}}) + \\eta^i_t,\n \\]\nin which $0<a^i<1$.\n\n\n\n\nThe parameters  summarized in Table~II are taken from  \\cite{matkoccal13}.  In this prior work a heterogeneous model was considered, in which the values $(a^i,R^i,C^i)$ were   sampled from a probability distribution.  A homogeneous model is considered in the experiments surveyed here, in which $R^i=C^i=2$ for each $i$.\n\n\n\n\\section*{{\\sc Table II: TCL Parameters}}\n\\vspace{-.5em}\n\\begin{center}  \n{\\small\n \\begin{tabular}{ll}\n    \\hline\n\\vspace{-.5em}\n    \\\\\n\\hspace{-.5em}\n        \\textbf{Parameter}  & \\textbf{Value} \\\\[1ex] \n        \\hline\n        \\\\[.1ex]\n $\\tau$:  time step (secs) & 2   \n \\\\\n$[\\Theta^{\\text{min}} , \\Theta^{\\text{max}}]$: temperature deadband  \\ ($^\\text{o}$C) & [20, 21]\n        \\\\\n      $\\theta^0$: ambient temperature  \\ ($^\\text{o}$C) & 32\n        \\\\\n      $R$: thermal resistance  \\ ($^\\text{o}$C\/kW) & 2\n        \\\\\n      $C$: thermal capacitance  \\ (kWh\/$^\\text{o}$C) & 2\n        \\\\\n      $\\eta$: modeling noise  \\ ($^\\text{o}$C)& $\\sim N(0, 2.5\\times 10^{-7}$)\n        \\\\\n      $\\varrho^{\\text{etr}}$: energy transfer rate  \\ (kW) & 14\n      \\\\[.5ex]\n$a^i = \\exp\\{-\\tau\/(CR) \\}$ & \n        \\\\[1ex]   \\hline \n    \\end{tabular}\n    } \n\\end{center}\n\n\\smallbreak\n\n\n \nThe state space for the TCL model is continuous.  A finite state-space approximation is obtained by binning the dead-band interval into 40 bins of equal size.  A Markov chain model is desired with a total of 80 states,  since the state captures temperature as well as whether the load is on or off.   \n\nAn empirical model was obtained via Monte-Carlo. Simulation experiments with 10,000 TCLs and 3,600 time steps  were run to obtain an approximation of the steady-state joint distribution,\n\\[\n\\Pi(x^j,x^k) = {\\sf P}\\{X_t=x^j,\\ X_{t+1}=x^k\\},\\quad 1\\le j,k \\le 80.  \n\\]\nThe approximate transition matrix is then obtained using Bayes' rule:\n\\[\nP_0(x^j,x^k)  = \\frac{\\Pi(x^j,x^k) }{\\pi(x^i)},\n\\ \\  \\text{\nwith $\\pi(x^i)=\\sum_k  \\Pi(x^j,x^k) $.  }\n \\]\n \\spm{Nov 20, 2015 (evening in Gainesville):  I just noticed a small notational issue. We should write $A_{kj} = P_0(x^j,x^k) $,\n just as we write $C_j = \\util(x^j)$.}\n\nThe approximate Markovian dynamics are used in  \\cite{matkoccal13} to define the heuristic mean-field model,  \n\\[\n\\Phi_{t+1} = A \\Phi_{t},\\qquad \\{A_{kj}\\} = \\{P_0(x^j,x^k) \\}.\n\\]\nThe observation matrix used in  \\cite{matkoccal13} is the same as in the pool example, except for a scaling: \n\\[\nC_k =  10^5 \\times \\varrho^{\\text{etr}} \\times \\field{I}\\{\\text{State $k$ is ON}\\}. \n\\] \nThe observability Grammian for this LTI system is highly  ill-conditioned:\n\\Fig{f:RealAndCondDistOrder7_TCL}\nshows that the rapid decay of the eigenvalues is similar to what was observed in \\Fig{f:obsGramm} for the pool model.\n\n\n \n \n\n\\spm{Let's leave out 'rank' here since this depends on tolerance (I explain this earlier)\n\\\\\nThe rank command in Matlab applied to the observability Grammian for this LTI system resulted in a value of 32, meaning that the system is not observable.   \n}\n\n\n\\spm{Yue:  Do we need to make any more changes to the TCL section?  Also,  I believe 'Grammian' is far more common than 'Grammian'!  Look it up on Google.  Only Wikipedia insists on one 'm' \\\\\nresponse: I think this section is good: we described how we obtained the A and C matrices of TCL model, and provided eigenvalues of its Observability Grammian.\n}\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{0.7}{eig_ObGram_TCL_full-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{Magnitude of eigenvalues of observability Grammian for TCL model}\n\\label{f:RealAndCondDistOrder7_TCL}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\nThe structure of eigenvectors is also similar. \n\\Fig{f:eig1-4_TCL} shows four eigenvectors of the  matrix $A$,\ncorresponding to the four  eigenvalues of maximum magnitude (ignoring duplication from\ncomplex conjugate pairs).    \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\Ebox{.95}{TCL-eig1-4-lr.pdf} \n\\vspace{-2.5ex}\n\\caption{First four  eigenvectors of $A$ for a TCL model.}\n\\label{f:eig1-4_TCL}\n\\vspace{-1.25ex}\n\\end{figure} \n\nA finer analysis of the continuous time \/ continuous state model for TCLs (as considered in  \n\\cite{lumThesis15,malcho88}) may give greater insight on the eigenstructure observed for these models.\n\n \n \n \n \n\n \n \\section{Conclusions}\n \\label{s:con}\n \n The construction of a Kalman filter for the joint population\/individual dynamics is possible, and performance is remarkable in the test cases considered.   In particular, it is very surprising to obtain accurate tracking of both the mean and variance of QoS for an individual, given extremely noisy estimates of the population.  \n \n \n\nAn open topic for future research is the state estimation techniques that take into account  opt-out, \nwhich is used to ensure good QoS to loads  \\cite{chebusmey14}.  It may be possible to obtain a reduced order observer\nfor the very complex model for joint state-QoS dynamics.   Alternatively, it may be possible to exploit the structure of the distribution of QoS observed in numerical experiments.   When subject to opt-out control, the histogram of QoS is similar to a conditional Gaussian that is constrained to the interval specified by opt-out parameters.  A nonlinear filter may be constructed that takes this structure into account.   \n\n\n \n\\smallbreak\n\n\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Basics}\nGenerally quantum averages result from weighting observables with complex amplitudes rather than with positive\nprobabilities. The technique colloquially referred to as Complex Langevin can in principle be used to replace this by a standard, statistical averaging over a suitably defined stochastic process. The method was proposed long time ago \\cite{P,Kl}, but recently has attracted a new wave of interest, especially in studies of quantum chromodynamics at finite chemical potential \\cite{S1,S2}. Still, contrary to the real Langevin approach, there is no general proof of the convergence \\cite{S3,S4} and the evidence for the success is somewhat limited \\cite{Ph,Bl}. \n\nIn this article  the positive probabilities, which replace complex weights, will be directly constructed  (i.e. without any reference to  stochastic processes and\/or Fokker-Planck equations). Thus above mentioned  difficulties are avoided albeit in a few simple test cases. \nBuilding on this the positive representation for Feynman path integrals could be derived. This is done in Ref.~\\cite{Ja} for some typical \nquantum mechanical applications.\n  \nThe essence of the complex Langevin approach is summarized by the following relation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\frac{\\int f(x) e^{-S(x)} dx}{\\int e^{-S(x)} dx } = \\frac{\\int \\int f(x+i y) P(x,y) dx dy }{\\int \\int P(x,y) dx dy}. \n\\label{B1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nFor complex action, $S(x)$, the left hand side (LHS) does not have statistical meaning, however the right hand side (RHS) does, since $P(x,y)$ is the\nwell defined distribution of the long stochastic process associated with $S(x)$.  Precise form of the Langevin equation is not relevant here. Suffices to say that for real action the Langevin process is real -- the density $P(x)$ is concentrated on the real axis. It satisfies the Fokker-Planck (FP) equation whose solution\nconverges to $e^{-S(x)}$ for large Langevin time. On the other hand,  for complex actions the stochastic trajectory is driven into the complex plane. The density $P(x,y)$ satisfies the  FP equation in two variables, however the asymptotic (in the Langevin time) behaviours of solutions are not known in general and their relations to the original complex actions are not clear \\cite{AY,AFP,HW}. \n\nNevertheless the complex Langevin approach  {\\em is known} to work  as has been proven in the gaussian case:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS_g(x)=\\frac{1}{2}\\sigma x^2,\\;\\;\\;\\;\\sigma=\\sigma_R+i \\sigma_I, \\;\\;\\;\\sigma_R > 0.\\label{S}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe large time asymptotics of the solution of the corresponding FP equation has been given in \\cite{AY} \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nP_g(x,y)=\\exp{\\left(-\\sigma_R (x^2+2 r x y + (1+2 r^2) y^2)\\right)},\\;\\;\\;\\; r=\\frac{\\sigma_R}{\\sigma_I}, \\label{P}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_{R^2} P_g(x,y)=\\frac{\\pi}{\\sigma_R\\sqrt{1+r^2}} , \\nonumber \n\\end{eqnarray}\nand thoroughly analysed in the literature \\cite{DH,HP}.\n\nTo see the validity of (\\ref{B1}), e.g. for polynomial observables, consider the generating function\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nG_{LHS}(t)= \\frac{\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty} e^{t x} e^{-S_g(x)} dx}{\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty} e^{-S_g(x)} dx } =\\exp{\\left(\\frac{t^2}{2\\sigma}\\right)}, \\label{B2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand the average from the RHS of (\\ref{B1}) \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nG_{RHS}(t)=\\frac{\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty}\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty}  dx dy e^{ t (x + i y) } P_g(x,y)}{\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty}\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty}  dx dy  P_g(x,y)}, \\nonumber  \\label{B5}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich indeed agrees with (\\ref{B2}).\n\nSummarising: the complex Langevin approach can in principle be used to perform simulations with ``complex distributions\". \nHowever, in practice, extending \nthe stochastic process into a complex plane encounters difficulties. Asymptotic solutions of the two dimensional Fokker-Planck equation\nare generally not known and cannot be simply constructed from the complex action. Moreover, the random walk wanders  often far  \ninto the imaginary direction and may run away or converge to the wrong answer. \n\n\n\\section{Generalization}\nOn the other hand we do not really need to generate the positive two dimensional distribution with the stochastic process in the complex plane.\nThe only and the real problem is to find a positive distribution which satisfies (\\ref{B1}). Given $P(x,y)$ one can generate it with other\nmethods. \n\nTherefore, we propose to avoid difficulties of the complex random walk and concentrate instead on constructing $P(x,y)$ directly, using\neq.(\\ref{B1}) as a guide. To this end rewrite the RHS of (\\ref{B1}) in terms of two, holomorphic and antiholomorphic, variables\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\;\\;\\;z=x+iy,\\;\\;\\;\\bar{z}=x-iy,     \\label{xy}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\frac{\\int_R \\int_R f(x+i y) P(x,y) dx dy }{\\int_R \\int_R P(x,y) dx dy}=\\frac{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} f(z) P(z,\\bar{z}) dz d\\bar{z} }{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} P(z,\\bar{z}) dz d\\bar{z}}. \\label{Pz}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNow, continue analytically the complex density on the LHS of  (\\ref{B1}) from the real axis into the complex plane\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\rho(x)=e^{-S(x)} \\longrightarrow \\rho(z), \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nrotate the contour of integration on the LHS of (\\ref{B1}), $R\\rightarrow \\Gamma_z$, and then seek to satisfy the relation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\frac{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} f(z) \\rho(z) dz}{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\rho(z) dz} = \\frac{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} f(z) P(z,\\bar{z}) dz d\\bar{z} }{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} P(z,\\bar{z}) dz d\\bar{z}}. \\label{B3}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThis will be the case provided\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\rho(z)=\\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} P(z,\\bar{z}) d \\bar{z}.  \\label{Pro}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThat is, we will look for the distribution $P(z,\\bar{z})$, which: (1) upon integration over $\\bar{z}$ reproduces the analytic continuation $\\rho(z)$, \nand (2) is positive and normalizable when expressed in terms of real and imaginary parts $x$ and $y$.   Given that, we will have found\nthe positive representation for the LHS of (\\ref{B3})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\frac{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} f(z) \\rho(z) dz}{\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\rho(z) dz} = \\frac{\\int_{R^2} f(x+iy) P(x,y) dx dy }{\\int_{R^2} P(x,y) dx dy}.\\nonumber \n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe integral on the RHS is over the whole $(x,y)$ plane (at least in the cases considered here), while the contours $\\Gamma_z$  and $\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}$  \nhave to be within domains determined by parameters of both distributions. For a range of parameters\na domain for $\\Gamma_z$ contains the real axis and then Eq.(\\ref{B1}) can be established. \n\nIt is shown below that this program can in fact be carried through quantitatively, at least in few physically interesting cases, already providing \nsome novel results.\n\n\\section{Generalized gaussian model}\nA more general than (\\ref{P}) positive distribution can be derived if we start from a generic quadratic action for (\\ref{Pz}) in two complex variables $z$ and $\\bar{z}$\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS(z,\\bar{z})&=& a^* z^2 + 2 b z \\bar{z} + a \\bar{z}^2, \\nonumber \n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith an arbitrary complex $a=\\alpha+i\\beta$ and real $b=b^*$.\nIn terms of real and imaginary parts (\\ref{xy})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS(x,y)= 2(b+\\alpha) x^2 + 4\\beta x y + 2(b-\\alpha) y^2\\label{Sb},\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand gives the positive and normalizable (for real $x$ and $y$) distribution \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nP(x,y)= \\exp{\\left(-S(x,y)\\right)}, \\label{Pb}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nprovided $b > |a|$, since the two eigenvalues of (\\ref{Sb}) \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\lambda_{\\pm}=2 (b\\pm |a|). \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nAt the same time the normalization reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_{R^2} dx dy P(x,y) = \\frac{\\pi}{2\\sqrt{b^2-|a|^2}}.\\label{Pc}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nOn the other hand, integrating \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nP(z,\\bar{z})=\\frac{i}{2}P(x,y)=\\frac{i}{2}\\exp{\\left(-S(z,\\bar{z})\\right)}, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n as in (\\ref{Pro}), gives\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\rho(z)=\\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} P(z,\\bar{z}) d \\bar{z} = \n  \\frac{1}{2}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\pi}{-a}}\\exp{\\left( - s z^2\\right)},\\;\\;\\;s=\\frac{|a|^2-b^2}{a}. \\label{ip2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich is properly normalized in view of (\\ref{Pc}).\nThe contour $\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}$ depends on a phase of a complex parameter $a$ and is chosen such that the integral converges. This choice also determines unambiguously the phase of $-a$.\n\nWith $a$ and $b$ parametrized by \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nb=\\frac{\\sigma_R}{2}(1+r^2) , \\;\\;\\;\\;  \\alpha=-\\frac{\\sigma_R}{2} r^2 , \\;\\;\\;\\; \\beta=\\frac{\\sigma_R}{2} r,  \\;\\;\\;\\;\\sigma_R>0, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nequations (\\ref{Sb}) and (\\ref{ip2}) reproduce the original gaussian model, i.e. (\\ref{P}) and (\\ref{S}) respectively. However (\\ref{Sb}) gives a more general, positive and normalizable  probability. In fact the generalized model (\\ref{Sb}) realizes the positive representation of the gaussian (\\ref{ip2}) for any complex value of the slope, $s$, or equivalently $a$, $b > |a|$.\n\nA complex gaussian, e.g. $e^{- s z^2}, s,z \\in C$, is integrable only along a family of contours contained in a wedge specified by a phase \nof $s$. However its moments can be analytically continued to any complex $s$. The point of (\\ref{Sb},\\ref{Pb}) is that it provides a positive and normalizable integral representation for this continuations at arbitrary complex $s$.\nIn another words: even though the complex density $\\rho$ was derived and is integrable only along particular family of contours for a given $a$, \nthe positive density $P(x,y)$ exists and is integrable for all $a\\in C$.   \n\nIt is a simple matter to check the equivalence of (\\ref{Pb},\\ref{Sb}) and (\\ref{ip2}), e.g. by calculating generating function (\\ref{B5}) with both representations.\nHere we illustrate this only for the second moment. In the matrix notation the action (\\ref{Sb}) reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS(x,y)=X^T M X,\\;\\;\\;X^T=(x,y). \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nTherefore\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\langle (x+i y)^2 \\rangle_P=\\frac{1}{2}\\left(M^{-1}_{11}-M^{-1}_{22} + 2 i M^{-1}_{12}\\right)=\n-\\frac{1}{2}\\frac{\\alpha+i\\beta}{b^2-|a|^2}, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich indeed is identical to the average over the complex density (\\ref{ip2})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\langle z^2 \\rangle_{\\rho} = \\frac{1}{2 s}. \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nTo conclude this Section we discuss two interesting special cases.\n\n For real and negative $s$, the complex density blows up along the real axis. On the other hand the distribution $P(x,y)$ is positive and normalizable at $\\alpha>0$ and  $\\beta=0$ producing the correct average over the \"divergent\" distribution $\\rho$. This explains a ``striking example\" observed in the literature \\cite{AS}, namely that, upon change of variables, the complex Langevin simulation based on (\\ref{P})  actually has the correct fixed point also for negative ${\\cal R}e\\;\\sigma$. The answer is that the positive distribution (\\ref{P}) used until now is part of a richer structure (\\ref{Sb}), which accommodates negative $\\sigma_R$ as well.\n \n Similarly, the complex density $\\rho(z)$ for purely imaginary $s$ is readily represented by the positive distribution $P(x,y)$, which is perfectly well defined at $\\alpha=0$ and arbitrary $\\beta$, as long as $|\\beta|<b$. This opens an exciting possibility of positive representations for Feynman path integrals directly in the Minkowski time. Such a construction is presented in detail in \\cite{Ja}.\n \n In both cases the original density (\\ref{P}) does not exist.\n\n\n\\section{A quartic model}\n\nAnother possible solution obtains if we start from the action\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS_4(z,\\bar{z})=(a^* z^2+2 b z \\bar{z} + a \\bar{z}^2)(c^* z^2+2 d z \\bar{z} + c \\bar{z}^2), \\nonumber \n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith complex $a$ and $c$ and real $b \\gtrless |a|$ and $d \\gtrless |c|$. The density $P(x,y)$ is again positive and normalizable on the $x,y$ plane.\nTo derive $\\rho(z)$ introduce an arbitrary shift parameter $e$ and change the variables. This gives\n \\begin{eqnarray}\nS_4(z,\\bar{z}=u-e z)=A_0 z^4 + A_1 z^3 u + A_2 z^2 u^2 + A_3 z u^3 + A_4 u^4,\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nA_4&=& a c,\\nonumber\\\\\nA_3&=&2(a d + b c)- 4 a c e,\\nonumber\\\\\nA_2&=&a^* c + c^* a + 4 b d - 6 e ( a d + b c) + 6 a c e ^2,\\nonumber\\\\\nA_1&=&2(b c^* + a^* d) - 2 e (a^* c+ a c^*-4 b d) + 6 e^2 (b c + a d)- 4 e^3 a c,\\nonumber\\\\\nA_0&=&(a^* - 2 b e + a e^2 )(c^* - 2 d e + c e^2).\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNow choose $e$ such that $A_3=0$. The coefficients become\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nA_4&=& a c,\\nonumber\\\\\nA_2&=&\\frac{1}{2 a c}\\left(2 a^2(|c|^2-d^2)+2 c^2(|a|^2 - b^2)-(a d - b c)^2\\right),\\nonumber\\\\\nA_1&=&\\frac{1}{a^2 c^2}\\left( a d - b c \\right)\\left(a^2(|c|^2-d^2)-c^2(|a|^2-b^2) \\right),\\nonumber \\\\\nA_0&=&\\frac{1}{16 a^3 c^3}\\left(4 c^2(|a|^2-b^2)+(a d - b c)^2\\right)\\left(4 a^2(|c|^2-d^2)+(a d - b c)^2\\right).\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThen $A_1$ can be also eliminated setting\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nc=\\frac{d}{b} a, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich essentially reduces $S_4(z,\\bar{z})$ to a square. Remaining coefficients simplify\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nA_4&=&\\frac{d}{b}a^2,\\nonumber \\\\\nA_2&=&2 \\frac{d}{b} \\left(|a|^2- b^2\\right),\\nonumber \\\\\nA_0&=&\\frac{d}{b} \\left(|a|^2- b^2\\right)^2 \\frac{1}{a^2}.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe complex density $\\rho_4(z)$ can be then obtained in a closed form as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\rho_4(z)&=&\\frac{i}{2}\\int_{\\Gamma_{\\bar{z}}} d \\bar{z}  e^{- S_4(z,\\bar{z})}\\nonumber\\\\&=&\\frac{i}{2}\\exp{\\left(- A_0 z^4\\right) } \\int_{\\Gamma_u} d u \\exp{\\left(- A_4 u^4 - A_2 z^2 u^2\\right)} \\label{prop}\\\\\n&=&\\frac{i}{2}\\left(\\frac{b}{2 d a^2}\\right)^\\frac{1}{4}  \\exp{\\left(-\\sigma z^4\\right) } \\left(\\sigma z^4 \\right)^\\frac{1}{4} \nK_{\\frac{1}{4}}\\left(\\sigma z^4\\right),\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith an arbitrary complex\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\sigma=\\frac{d (b^2-|a|^2)^2}{2 b a^2}.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nAll contours (here and below) are such that the integrals exists. Basically one can choose straight lines with slopes determined by \nthe phase of $a$. \n\nIt is a simple exercise to show that normalization of both densities is the same:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_{\\Gamma_z} \\rho_4(z) dz= \\frac{i}{2}\\left(\\frac{b}{2 d a^2}\\right)^\\frac{1}{4}\\int_{\\Gamma_z}   \\exp{\\left(-\\sigma z^4\\right) } \\left(\\sigma z^4 \\right)^\\frac{1}{4} K_{\\frac{1}{4}}\\left(\\sigma z^4\\right)=\\nonumber\\\\\n\\frac{\\pi^{\\frac{3}{2}}}{4}\\sqrt{\\frac{b}{d(b^2-|a|^2)}}=\\nonumber\\\\\n\\int_{R^2} dx dy e^{- 4 \\frac{d}{b} \\left( (b+\\alpha)x^2 +2 \\beta x y +(b - \\alpha)y^2 \\right)^2 }=\\int_{R^2} dx dy P_4(x,y).\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe difference however, being that while on the LHS the density $\\rho$ is in general complex and contour $\\Gamma_z$ has to be adjusted depending on a phase of $\\sigma$, the integral on the RHS is always over $R^2$ and the density $P_4(x,y)$ is positive and normalizable for all complex $\\sigma$. The same applies for higher moments:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_{\\Gamma_z} z^n \\rho_4(z) dz = \\int_{R^2} dx dy (x+i y)^n P_4(x,y).  \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn fact the construction works for a larger range of parameters that in the gaussian case since the condition\n$|a| < b$ can be released.\n\nThe density (\\ref{prop}) has the simple leading asymptotics \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n  \\rho_4(z)\\sim e^{\\left(- 2 \\sigma z^4 \\right)} ,\\;\\;\\; z \\longrightarrow \\infty, \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand therefore might be of some practical interest (e.g. in optimizing some reweighting algorithms). The main point of this example is however, that the original idea, namely constructing positive representations by introducing a second variable, seems to be general and points towards existence of some unexplored yet structures.\n\nObviously there is a lot of freedom in choosing an initial action. It remains to be seen to what extent this freedom allows to derive  complex densities of wider physical interest. \n\n\\section{Summary and outlook}\nSimulating complex distributions with the complex Langevin technique still rises some theoretical doubts and practical difficulties. \nThese problems can be avoided by direct construction of corresponding positive densities. It turns out that introducing \na second complex variable allows to carry this programme in practice at least in the two cases discussed in this article. \n\nOne is the gaussian distribution with a complex inverse dispersion parameter $\\sigma$. The corresponding positive density, in the case of positive $ {\\cal R}e\\; \\sigma$, is known for a long time. Within the present approach  this classical result is generalized to arbitrary $\\sigma \\in C$. In particular the equivalent positive\nand normalizable density exists for purely imaginary $\\sigma$. Thereby an intriguing possibility of positive representations for Feynman path integrals, directly in the Minkowski time, emerges \\cite{Ja}.  \n\nThe second example deals with\nthe specific quartic action. Again the equivalent, positive density is explicitly constructed and is valid even in the larger range of parameters, than for the gaussian case. \n\nOf course plenty of questions require further studies. First, we would like to invert the procedure followed here, namely instead of\nderiving the complex density $\\rho$ by integrating a positive ansatz for $P$, one really needs to derive the latter from the former. At first sight this may not have a unique answer. While this is not the main problem (any answer would do), the opposite question poses the real challenge. Namely whether, and under which conditions, $P$ exists at all. Also, it remains to be seen whether and how the positivity, normalizability and the integral sum rule (\\ref{Pro}) allow to determine $P$ in practice for more general cases.\n\nKeeping these reservations in mind, a host of further extensions and applications suggest itself. To name a few: generalization for other nonlinear actions, compact integrals, many degrees of freedom, path integrals, field theory etc. We are looking forward for further studies of these issues.\n\n\\vspace*{.5cm}\n\n\\noindent{\\em Acknowledgements} \\   Existence of positive representations for complex, gaussian and more general, densities has been discussed in \\cite{Sa,We}. The projection relation employed in \\cite{Sa} bears some similarity to the condition (\\ref{Pro}).\n\nThe author would like to thank Owe Philipsen for the discussion.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nQuantum information science has undergone remarkable advances in the recent years, progressing in all its sub-fields of computing~\\cite{Nielsen_Chuang,preskill2018quantum}, communication~\\cite{ReviewQKD2020} and sensing~\\cite{Cappellaro_2012,ReviewSensing}, both with discrete- and continuous-variable systems~\\cite{BraunsteinREV,SerafiniBook,Weedbrook_2012}. In this wide scenario, quantum sensing is arguably one of the most mature areas for near-term technological deployment. Its theoretical and experimental developments have been strongly based on quantum metrology~\\cite{MetrologySAM,Paris09} and quantum hypothesis testing~\\cite{Helstrom_1976,Barnett_09,Chefles_2000,Janos2010}. Especially, the latter approach has allowed to show a quantum advantage over classical strategies in tasks of target detection~\\cite{Lloyd2008,Tan2008} and data readout~\\cite{Qreading}, modelled as binary problems of quantum channel discrimination. \n\nThe discrimination of quantum channels is an incredibly rich area of investigation~\\cite{zhuang2019physical,zhuang2020entanglement}, with unexplored consequences but also non-trivial difficulties. It represents a double optimization problem where both input states and output measurements need to be varied. Furthermore, in the bosonic setting, it has to be formulated as an energy-constrained problem, where the mean number of input photons is limited to some finite, small, value. In such a scenario, the central question is that of showing quantum advantage: Can truly-quantum states, e.g., entangled, lead to an advantage over classical, i.e. coherent, states? Addressing this question in the multi-ary case is difficult, since the theory is missing powerful tools that are instead available for the binary case.\n\n\n\nIn this work, we take a step forward by developing the theory of quantum hypothesis testing for the multi-ary setting of barcode decoding and pattern classification. We start from a general model of digital image, where each pixel is described by an ensemble of quantum channels defined over a finite alphabet. We specialize to the case where the single-pixel alphabet is binary, so that there are $2^n$ possible hypotheses or configurations for an $n$-pixel barcode. We then show how the use of quantum sources of light, based on entangled states, can clearly outperform classical strategies based on coherent states for the readout of the barcode configuration, i.e., the retrieval of its data. In particular, we derive an analytical condition for the maximum number of pixels or the minimum number of probings such that quantum advantage is obtained. This result holds not only for a uniform distribution of the possible configurations, but also when data is stored by the positions of $k$ white pixels among a grid of otherwise black pixels.\n\nBesides data readout or barcode decoding, we consider the general problem of pattern recognition, \nwhere the task is to classify  an image, e.g.~a handwritten digit, without necessarily reconstructing it \npixel by pixel. Here the image distribution \nis not uniform and generally unknown, and optimal classification has to be approximated via a collection \nof correctly classified examples, following supervised learning strategies \\cite{murphy2012machine}. \nWe consider the ultimate limits of this procedure, where we may optimize over the optical circuit, measurements \nand subsequent classical post-processing algorithms. Introducing relevant bounds, we theoretically prove that this \nproblem is significantly simpler than that of barcode decoding, as long as the minimum Hamming distance between \nimages from different classes is large enough. Moreover, we show how clear quantum advantage can be \nobtained as a function of the number of training data. \nFinally, we consider a simplified scheme for recognizing black and white\npatterns, such as digital images of handwritten digits, by means local\nmeasurements followed by a classical nearest neighbor classifier. More\nspecifically, we apply this classifier to the measurement outcomes that are\nobtained by either using entangled states or coherent states at the input of\nthe grid of pixels. We are able to show a clear quantum advantage that holds\neven when we employ sub-optimal photon counting measurements for the quantum\ncase, which are particularly relevant for near-term experiments. \nThe advantage becomes particularly evident at relatively\nsmall energies where a total of a few hundred of photons are irradiated over\neach pixel.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe paper is organized as follows. In Section~\\ref{s:barcode} we discuss the problem of \nbarcode decoding and show the possible advantage in using quantum detectors with \nentangled input states. In Section~\\ref{s:pattern} we discuss the related problem \nof pattern recognition, showing a similar advantage. Discussions are drawn in Section~\\ref{s:conclusions}. \n\n\n\n\n\\section{Barcode Decoding}\\label{s:barcode}\n\n\\subsection{Quantum mechanical model of a digital image}\n\nA basic imaging system irradiates light over an array of pixels which can be read in transmission or in reflection. From the ratios between input and output intensities, the system generates a corresponding array of grey-levels that constitutes a monochromatic image. In a quantum mechanical setting, each pixel can therefore be modeled as a bosonic lossy channel $\\mathcal E_i$ whose transmissivity depends on the grey-level $i$. This lossy channel can be probed by an input state (with some limited energy) and a corresponding output measurement, generally described by positive-operator valued measure (POVM). Finally, the outcome is processed by a decision test that identifies the channel and, therefore, the grey-level $i$.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLet us formalize the problem in more mathematical detail, which can be seen as a multi-ary and multi-pixel generalization of the basic model of quantum reading~\\cite{Qreading}. Assume that each pixel is described by a channel ensemble $\\{\\mathcal{E}%\n_{i}\\}$ spanned by the label $0\\leq i\\leq C-1$, where $C$ is the discrete number of grey-levels that can \nbe assumed by the pixel. Let us define\nan {\\it image} over $n$\\ pixels as a sequence $\\bs{i}:=i_{0},\\cdots,i_{n-1}$, together with an associated probability distribution $\\pi_{\\bs{i}}$, which is simply $\\pi_{\\bs{i}}=C^{-n}$ in the uniform case. \nThe global channel describing the entire array of $n$ pixels is the tensor product \n$\\mathcal{E}_{\\bs{i}}^{n}:=\\mathcal{E}_{i_{0}}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes\n\\mathcal{E}_{i_{n-1}}$. Thus, an image can equivalently be represented by an ensemble\nof multi-channels $\\{\\pi_{\\bs{i}},\\mathcal{E}_{\\bs{i}}^{n}\\}$. \n\n\n\nIn order to read the image, let us assume that we have a generic $2n$-mode state $\\tilde\\rho$ at the input: $n$ signal modes are sent through the pixels, while $n$ idler modes are used to help the measurement. At the output, there is an ensemble of possible states $\\{\\pi_{\\bs{i}}%\n,\\rho_{\\bs{i}}\\}$ where $\\rho_{\\bs{i}}:=\\mathcal I^{n}\\otimes \\mathcal{E}_{\\bs{i}}%\n^{n}(\\tilde\\rho)$. In the case of a classical transmitter, the signal modes are prepared in coherent states while the idler modes are in vacuum states. In the case of a quantum transmitter, signal and idler modes are entangled pairwise. In particular, each signal-idler pair is described by a two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state.\n\n\n\n\n\nIn general, we probe the image $\\bs{i}$ with identical inputs for $M$ times, leading to the overall input state $\\tilde\\rho^{\\otimes M}$ and corresponding output \n$\\rho_{\\bs{i}}^{\\otimes M}:=\\left[\\mathcal I^n\\otimes  \\mathcal{E}_{\\bs{i}}^{n}%\n(\\tilde\\rho)\\right]  ^{\\otimes M}$. We measure this output with a collective POVM,\nwhere each measurement operator $\\Pi_{\\bs{i}'}$ represents the decision that the image is $\\bs{i}'$. Because input states are energy-constrained, there will be readout errors described by the conditional probabilities\n\\begin{equation}\n\tp_{\\rm read}({\\bs i}'|\\bs i) = \\Tr\\left(\\Pi_{{\\bs i}'}\\rho_{\\bs i}^{\\otimes M}\\right)~.\n\t\\label{measupattern}\n\\end{equation}\nBy including the priors $\\{\\pi_i\\}$, we may therefore define the success probability or, equivalently, the error probability\n\\begin{align}\n\tp_{\\text{succ}}&:=\\sum_{\\bs{i}}\\pi_{\\bs{i}}p_{\\rm read}(\\bs{i}%\n|\\bs{i}),~~~p_{\\text{err}}=1-p_{\\text{succ}}.\n\\label{success}\n\\end{align}\n\n\nUsing Refs.~\\cite{Barnum,Montanaro} and the multiplicativity of the fidelity over tensor products, one finds that the minimum error probability (optimized over POVMs) satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\bs{i}\\neq\\bs{j}}\\pi_{\\bs{i}%\n}\\pi_{\\bs{j}}F^{2M}_{{\\bs{i}}:{\\bs{j}}}\n\\leq\np_{\\text{err}}\\leq\\sum_{\\bs{i}\\neq\\bs{j}}\\sqrt{\\pi_{\\bs{i}}%\n\\pi_{\\bs{j}}}F^{M}_{{\\bs{i}}:{\\bs{j}}},\n \\label{BarnumMontanaro}%\n\\end{equation}\nwhere  \n\\begin{equation}\nF_{{\\bs{i}}:{\\bs{j}}} := \nF(\\rho_{\\bs{i}},\\rho_{\\bs{j}})=\n\\Vert\\sqrt{\\rho_{\\bs i}}\\sqrt{\\rho_{\\bs j}}\\Vert_{1}%\n=\\mathrm{Tr}\\sqrt{\\sqrt{\\rho_{\\bs i}}\\rho_{\\bs j}\\sqrt{\\rho_{\\bs i}}}%\n\\end{equation}\nis the fidelity between two generic single-probing multi-pixel output states, $\\rho_{\\bs{i}}$ and $\\rho_{\\bs{j}}$. \nThe inequalities in Eq.~\\eqref{BarnumMontanaro} bound the performances of a pretty good measurement~\\cite{PGM1,PGM2,PGM3} and have no explicit dependence on the dimension of the Hilbert space, so that they hold for bosonic states as long as these states are energy-constrained. \nBelow, we build on these inequalities to derive our bounds for decoding barcodes.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Barcode discrimination}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[th!]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.95\\linewidth]{fig-barcode.pdf}\n\t\\caption{ { Barcode decoding.} Examples of 1D (a) and 2D (b) barcodes.  (c) \n\t\tSchematic physical setup for decoding a 2D barcode with $n=5\\times5$ pixels. A source shines light on the grid of pixels, each modeled by a quantum channel, which is either $\\mathcal E_B$ or $\\mathcal E_W$ depending on the \n\t\tpixel grey-level, black (B) or white (W). The reflected\/scattered light is collected by a detector, which aims at recognizing {\\it all} pixel values depending on \n\t\tthe detected photons. In a quantum setup, the signal modes shined over the pixels are entangled with idler modes that are directly sent to the detector for a joint measurement.  \n\t\t(d) General theoretical setup scheme for optimal barcode discrimination using entangled TMSV states, \n\t\twhere the mixing optical circuit, the measurements and following classical post-processing must be optimized. \n\t\t(e,f) Special setup to claim quantum advantage: we compare independent entangled TMSV states on each pixel followed \n\t\tby independent {\\it local} measurements (e) with classical coherent sources\n\t\tfollowed by global measurements. Quantum advantage is claimed whenever (e) beats (f).\n\t}\n\t\\label{fig:barcode}\n\\end{figure}\n\nAn important case of the general problem discussed in the previous section is barcode decoding, whose \nschematic setup is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}. \nA {\\it barcode} is either a \none-dimensional (1D) or two-dimensional (2D) grid \nof pixels with two possible colors, black (B) or white (W). \nWith a slight abuse of jargon, we call {\\it pixels} the elements \nof the 1D or 2D grid that define a barcode. In the 1D case (Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}a),\na pixel is a black or white vertical bar, while in the 2D case (Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}b)\na pixel is an elementary square. It is worth noting that many of the conclusions drawn for barcode decoding can be extended to more general images. Indeed, \na higher number of grey-levels $C>2$ can always be formally mapped into a barcode. For instance, $C=256$ corresponds to an 8-bit grey scale and each bit can be \nrepresented as a binary variable with two possible configurations (B or W, by convention). As such, images with $C>2$ can be mapped into a ``barcode'' image with a higher number of pixels. \n\n\n\n\nThe general problem of barcode discrimination can be depicted as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}c and \\ref{fig:barcode}d. \nAccording to our notation, each pixel of a barcode has two possible grey-levels $i\\in\\{B,W\\}$ and therefore corresponds to two possible quantum channels $\\mathcal E_B$ and $\\mathcal E_W$. For barcode decoding, we assume that the pixels are independently probed, so that the input state takes the tensor-product form $\\tilde \\rho =\\rho_0^{\\otimes n}$. Note that this assumption does not reduce the generality of our treatment. In fact, for the quantum source this leads to one of the best possible choices (tensor product of TMSV states). For the classical source, we know that independent and identical coherent states are able to saturate the lower bounds for general mixtures of multi-mode coherent states~\\cite{zhuang2020entanglement}.\nAs for detection, the general scheme to correctly distinguish the various configurations consists in choosing a mixing\noptical circuit, followed by measurements and classical post-processing algorithms \nas in Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}d.\nFrom an operational point of view, a suboptimal solution can be found for this problem by restricting to a cascade of beam splitters and phase shifters with tunable parameters, followed by independent measurements \n(e.g. homodyne or photodetection), similar to that of Ref.~\\cite{zhuang2019physical}; while for the classical post-processing we may employ statistical classification \nalgorithms commonly employed in machine learning applications, e.g. based on neural networks \\cite{murphy2012machine}.\nThe suboptimal solution is then numerically investigated by minimizing the parameters of the optical and neural \nnetworks in order to minimize $p_{\\rm err}$. \nWhen photodetection measurements are employed, analytic gradients can be computed following Ref.~\\cite{banchiGBS} to \nspeed-up the optimization algorithm. \nIn this paper however we focus on the most general case and study the fundamental limits of barcode \ndecoding and patter recognition, \nintroducing different theoretical limits that any possible scheme must satisfy. \nIndeed, the physical optical circuit and measurements, and also  the classical post-processing algorithm \nin Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}d, can all be reabsorbed into an abstract POVM that must be optimized.  \n\n\nWe start by considering the case where a barcode with $n$ pixels is prepared in one of all possible $2^n$ patterns, each with equal prior. Then, we will consider the case where the patterns are restricted to specific configurations, where $k$ white pixels are randomly positioned within a grid of otherwise black pixels.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nStarting from the input state\n$\\tilde \\rho =\\rho_0^{\\otimes n}$, the possible states at the output of the barcode \n$\\rho_{\\bs i} = \\mathcal I^n \n\t\\otimes \\mathcal E_{i_1}\\otimes\\cdots\\otimes\\mathcal E_{i_n} (\\tilde \\rho)$,\ntake the product form \n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\rho_{\\bs i} = \\bigotimes_{k=1}^n \\rho_{i_k}.\n\t\\label{RhoIdlers}\n\\end{equation}\nCorrespondingly, the fidelities can be simplified as \n\\begin{equation}\n\tF(\\rho_{\\bs i},\\rho_{\\bs j}) = F(\\rho_W,\\rho_B)^{{\\rm hamming}(\\bs{i},\\bs{j})},\n\t\\label{FidIdlers}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\rho_i = \\mathcal I\\otimes\\mathcal E_i(\\rho_{0})$ for $i\\in\\{B,W\\}$ and \n${\\rm hamming}(\\bs{i},\\bs{j})$ is the Hamming distance between the two binary images \n${\\bs i}$ and ${\\bs j}$,\nnamely the number of pixels in which the two images differ.\nUsing the properties of the Hamming distance, in Appendix~\\ref{a:bound} we show that, for uniform \n{\\it a priori} probabilities, the $M$-probing bounds~\\eqref{BarnumMontanaro} become \n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\frac{(F^{2M}_{\\rm max}+1)^n-1}{2^{n+1}} \\leq \n\tp_{\\rm err} \\leq \n\t1-\\left(1-\\frac{F^M_{\\rm max}}2\\right)^n,\n\t\\label{perrcomb}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $F_{\\rm max}$ is the fidelity between any \ntwo (different) images with minimum Hamming distance [cf. Eq.~\\eqref{FidIdlers}].\n\n\nThe minimum Hamming distance\nis achieved when the two images differ by a single pixel. \nThus, we get $F_{\\rm max} = F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)$, namely the maximum fidelity between any two images is given by the fidelity between the \nstates describing the grey-levels of a single pixel. \nUsing the Bernoulli's inequality, we then simplify Eq.~\\eqref{perrcomb} as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{n}{2^{n+1}} F_{\\rm max}^{2M} \\leq\t\np_{\\rm err} \\leq \\frac n2 F_{\\rm max}^M~.\n\\label{perrsimple}\n\\end{equation}\nIn Appendix~\\ref{a:locmeas}, we show that the upper bound can be achieved using {\\it local} measurements, \nnamely where each pixel is measured independently from the others and \n$\\Pi_{\\bs i} = \\bigotimes_{j=0}^{n-1} \\Pi_{i_j}$ in Eq.~\\eqref{measupattern}, though each \npixel and its respective idler may be measured together (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}e). \nOnce we restrict to local operations, the optimum is achieved by independent\nHelstrom measurements \\cite{helstrom1969quantum} and the upper bound in Eq.~\\eqref{perrsimple}\nfollows from Fuchs\u2013van de Graaf inequalities \\cite{fuchs1999cryptographic}.\nA sub-optimal local measurement is obtained by combining the signal and idler via \na beam splitter followed by independent measurements \n\\cite{Qreading}.\nMoreover, in the supplementary material \\cite{suppmat} we also discuss different inequalities on\n$p_{\\rm err}$ based on the multiple quantum Chernoff bound~\\cite{QSDReview,MultiChernoff,GaussianQCB2008}. \n\n\n\nTwo interesting observations can be made from the bounds~\\eqref{perrsimple}.\nFirst, the upper bound for the error probability becomes small whenever\n$\tn F^M(\\rho_W,\\rho_B) \\ll 1$.\nThis implies that, although the set of images (namely barcode \nconfigurations) grows exponentially with the number of pixels as $2^n$, the required fidelities \nto accurately distinguish all configurations should decrease polynomially with $1\/n$. \nIn particular, $M=\\mathcal O(\\log n)$ copies are needed for correct discrimination. \nThe second observation is that, due the factor $2^{-n}$, \nthe lower bound in Eq.~\\eqref{perrsimple} decreases exponentially with $n$. \nAs we show in Appendix~\\ref{a:locmeas}, this factor disappears from the lower bound \nwhen local measurements are employed.  \nIt is known that, in general,\noptimum mixed state discrimination requires a joint\nmeasurement~\\cite{calsamiglia2010,bandyopadhyay2011}, yet\nin our setting  optimal global measurements may in principle \nexponentially reduce the probability of error. \nNonetheless, it is currently an open question to verify whether and exponentially decreasing \nerror is achievable with optimal quantum measurements. In the next section we will claim \nquantum advantage whenever the upper bound on $p_{\\rm err}$ obtained with entangled states and local \nmeasurements is smaller than the lower bound on $p_{\\rm err}$ obtained with classical states and possibly global \nmeasurements, as schematically shown in Figs.~\\ref{fig:barcode}d)~\\ref{fig:barcode}e). \nTherefore, \nif the lower bound in \\eqref{perrcomb} is loose, the regimes for quantum advantage are larger. \n\n\n\nIn the previous bounds we considered a uniform distribution of black an white pixels \nin the barcode. We may also consider a different encoding with a fixed \nnumber of white pixels, generalizing the results of Ref.~\\cite{zhuang2020entanglement}. \nThe task is then to find the position of $k$ white pixels in a barcode with $n$ bars. \nThe number of possible configurations is $\\binom nk\\approx 2^{n H(k\/n)}$ where \n$H$ is the binary entropy function and the approximation holds when both $n$ and $k$ are large. \nTherefore, in that regime, the configuration space grows exponentially with $n$, as in the \nuniform case discussed above. In the asymptotic regime we obtain the following bounds \n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\frac{k(n-k)}{2^{nH(k\/n)+1}} F_{\\rm max}^{4M} \\lesssim\n\tp^{k-{\\rm whites}}_{\\rm err} \\lesssim\n\tk(n-k) F_{\\rm max}^{2M},\n\t\\label{kCPF}\n\\end{equation}\nwhile the exact expressions for finite $M$, $n$ and $k$ are discussed in Appendix~\\ref{a:kcpf}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Quantum enhancement}\\label{s:enhancement}\nWe now focus on photonic setups and model each pixel as a bosonic channel with \ntransmissivity $\\eta_i$, where $i\\in\\{B,W\\}$ is the pixel color. \nWe discuss the regime where we get an advantage from using entangled photons as input. \nWe compare the case where each input $\\rho_0$ is a TMSV state $\\ket{\\Phi_{N_S}}$ \nwith $N_S$ average photons and the case where the input is a coherent state with the same \nnumber of signal photons $\\ket{\\sqrt{N_S}}\\otimes \\ket{0}$ (where the vacuum state means that no idler is used).\nNote that one can replace the vacuum idler with an arbitrary state, such as a strong local oscillator in a coherent state, however that will not give a better performance when the optimum measurement is considered.\nAssuming $M$ probings of the barcode, we have a total of $N_{\\rm tot} = MN_S$ mean photons irradiated over each pixel. According to the analysis from the previous section, provable quantum advantage can be achieved\nwhenever the upper bound from Ineqs.~\\eqref{perrsimple}, obtained with TMSV input states, is less than the lower bound obtained with coherent state inputs. Since the upper bound in~\\eqref{perrsimple} is obtained with local measurements, what we call ``provable advantage'' \nmeans that possibly non-optimal local measurement strategies with entangled inputs \nbeat any strategy with coherent states, even when the latter is enhanced by\ncomplex global measurements. \nProvable quantum advantage may be more difficult for larger $n$, given \nthe exponentially decreasing factor in the lower bound of Eq.~\\eqref{perrsimple}, \nbut here we show that it can be achieved for every number of pixels $n$ with suitably large number of probings $M$. \n\n\nUsing the formula for the \nfidelity between two generally-mixed Gaussian states \\cite{Fidelity,marian2012uhlmann}, for TMSV states at the input, we compute (see Appendix~\\ref{a:fid})\n\\begin{equation}\n\tF_q(\\rho_W,\\rho_B)^M = \n\t\\left(\\frac{1}{1+N_S\\Delta_q}\\right)^M \\geq e^{-M N_S \\Delta_{\\rm q}},\n\t\\label{fidelityQ}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the index $q$ stands for {\\it quantum} and \n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\Delta_{\\rm q} = \t1- \\sqrt{(1-\\eta_W) (1-\\eta_B)}-\\sqrt{\\eta_W \\eta_B}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor a coherent-state input, we instead have\n\\begin{align}\n\tF_{\\rm c}(\\rho_W,\\rho_B)^M &= \n\te^{-M N_S \\Delta_{\\rm c}},\n\n&\n\\Delta_{\\rm c} &= \\frac{(\\sqrt{\\eta_B}-\\sqrt{\\eta_W})^2}2.\n\\label{fidelityC}\n\\end{align}\nBy comparing Eqs.~\\eqref{fidelityQ} and \\eqref{fidelityC} we see that, for fixed $M$, the fidelity between coherent states \ndisplays an exponential decay as a function of $N_S$, while for \nquantum states we see a polynomial decay in $N_S$. \nNonetheless, \nfor large $M$ and small $N_S$, the inequality in Eq.~\\eqref{fidelityQ} becomes tight and, \nsince $\\Delta_{\\rm q} \\geq \\Delta_{\\rm c}$, in that limit\nwe find that quantum light always provides an advantage\nfor discrimination, irrespective of the values of $\\eta_W$ and $\\eta_B$. \nThe limits of small $N_S$ and large $M$ are widely employed to show quantum advantage \nand can be realized experimentally with little imperfections \\cite{zhang2013entanglement}.\nTherefore, from now on  we will focus on such limits, $M\\to\\infty$ and $N_S\\to0$, while keeping\nfixed the total mean number of photons $M N_S$ irradiated over each pixel.\n\n\n\nTo properly demonstrate the advantage, we need to \nshow that the upper bound on the probability of error using quantum light is smaller than the \nlower bound on the probability of error using coherent states. From Ineqs.~\\eqref{perrsimple}, we see that this happens when \n$\tF_{\\rm c}^{2M} \\geq 2^n F_{\\rm q}^M$.\nSetting $ n =\\nu M N_S$, the previous inequality implies that quantum advantage is obtained for\n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nu\\leq  \\nu_{\\rm th} =\\frac{\\Delta_{\\rm q}-2\\Delta_{\\rm c}}{\\log 2},\n\t\\label{nuthreshold}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is a barcode multi-pixel generalization of the ``threshold energy'' theorem proven in the context of single-cell quantum reading~\\cite{Qreading}. \n\nAccording to Eq.~(\\ref{nuthreshold}), whenever the number $n$ of pixels is smaller than a certain threshold, entangled light \nalways provides an advantage in the discrimination of barcode configurations (barcode decoding) with respect to the best classical strategy with the same signal energy, even when \nthe latter uses possibly complex global measurements. The behaviour of $\\nu_{\\rm th}$ as a function \nof $\\eta_W$ and $\\eta_B$ is numerically shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:nuth}. \n\nQuantum advantage can also be proven when we consider a prior distribution for the barcode configurations that is non-uniform, more precisely for the case where the number $k$ of white pixels is fixed. Using Ineqs.~\\eqref{kCPF}, we find that there is a provable quantum advantage when \n$\tF_{\\rm c}^{4M} \\geq 2^{n H(k\/n)+1} F_{\\rm q}^{2M}$, namely when \n$n H(k\/n)+1 \\leq 2\\nu_{\\rm th} M N_S$. Therefore, as in the previous case, quantum advantage \nmay be observed when the number of pixels is sufficiently small or the number of probes $M$ \nis sufficiently large, as long as $\\nu_{\\rm th}\\geq 0$.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\\centering\n\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.99\\linewidth]{nuthf-crop.pdf}\n\t\\caption{{ Regimes of provable quantum advantage}. a)\n\t\tThreshold value from Eq.~\\eqref{nuthreshold} as a function \n\t\tof $\\eta_W$ and $\\eta_B$. The threshold $\\nu_{\\rm th}$ is negative in \n\t\tthe filled gray area and positive for $\\eta_W>1-\\eta_B$. Contours \n\t\tare from 0.01 in steps of 0.02. b) Threshold $\\nu_{\\rm th}$ for \n\t\t$\\eta_W=1$. \n\t\tWhenever $n \\leq M N_S \\nu_{\\rm th}$, or similarly $M\\geq \\frac{n}{N_s\\nu_{\\rm th}}$, \n\t\tentangled light beats classical strategies based on coherent states.\n\t}%\n\t\\label{fig:nuth}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\n\nIt is currently an open question to prove whether or not the lower bound in~\\eqref{perrsimple} can be achieved when classical light is employed. Nonetheless, our \n\tanalysis shows that even assuming that such bound can be achieved with classical inputs, \n\ta strategy based on entangled light and the much simpler local measurements can beat \n\tany approach based on coherent states. \n\tOn the other hand, if only local measurements can be performed, then the factor $2^{-n}$ in \n\tthe lower bound ~\\eqref{perrsimple} disappears (see Appendix~\\ref{a:locmeas}). This corresponds \n\tto the case $\\nu=0$. Therefore, in that case, whenever $\\nu_{\\rm th} > 0$,\n\tnamely when $\\eta_W>1-\\eta_B$, \nquantum light provides an advantage for decoding uniformly-distributed barcodes, irrespective of $n$.\n\n\n\n\\section{Pattern recognition}\\label{s:pattern}\n\n\\subsection{Statistical pattern classification}\n\n\n\nWe now focus on the problem of pattern recognition. \nConsider the problem of recognizing handwritten digits as shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}a, whose images have been adapted from the MNIST dataset \\cite{lecun1998gradient}. Each image depicts a single handwritten digit and the task is to \nextract from the image the corresponding number 0-9. From an algorithmic perspective, this task is more complex than the mere decision of whether \na pixel is black or white but, from a physical point of view, this problem is actually simpler \nas errors are tolerated. Indeed, a human is able to instantly recognize all the numbers\nin Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}a even when some of the pixels are randomly flipped. Therefore, \nfor reliable pattern recognition, it is not necessary to perfectly reconstruct the entire image. Compared to the barcode configurations of Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}, where each pixel provides  important information, here the goal is to recognize a global property that is robust against individual pixel errors, which means that entirely different strategies are possible.\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[ht!]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{digits.pdf}\n\t\\caption{{ Pattern recognition.}\n\t\t(a) Images from the MNIST dataset without pixel recognition error ($p=0\\%$) \n\t\tand with pixel error probabilities $p=2\\%,4\\%,6\\%$, where each pixel is randomly flipped with probability $p$. \n\t\t(b) Probability $P_{cc'}(h)$ that one image from class $c$ has Hamming distance $h$, with  $0\\leq h \\leq 28{\\times} 28$,\n\t\tfrom another image from class $c'$. The empirical histogram is evaluated for images from the MNIST dataset that \n\t\tcorrespond to digits 0 and 1. The Gaussian fit has mean $\\mu_{01} \\simeq 157$ and standard deviation $\\sigma\\simeq 27$. \n\t\tDifferent digits show a similar behaviour with $110\\lesssim \\mu_{cc'}\\lesssim 167$, where the minimum is achieved \n\t\tbetween 1 and 7.\n\t}%\n\t\\label{fig:digits}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nIn statistical learning theory \\cite{hastie2009elements},\ndifferent learning tasks, such as image classification, can be modeled using probabilities. \nWe consider the abstract space of all possible images and define the probability $\\pi_{\\bs i}$ \nof getting the image $\\bs i$ -- this is unknown and generally not uniform. \nImage classification is a rule that attaches a certain label $c$, or class, to a given image \n$\\bs i$. If this rule is deterministic, then it can be modeled via a function $c=f(\\bs i)$ but, more generally, the strategy is stochastic: given a certain image, the rule\npredicts different possible classes $c$ with a probability distribution $P(c|\\bs i)$.\nLet us consider a pair $(c,\\bs i)$ and assume that, given our data, we have built \na classifier $\\tilde c(\\bs i)$ \nthat assigns a certain class $\\tilde c(\\bs i)$ to the image $\\bs i$. The error in our classification \ncan be described by a loss matrix with elements $L_{c\\tilde c}$ that models the error \nof misclassification. The common choice is the 0-1 loss \nwith $L_{cc}=0$ and $L_{c\\tilde c}=1$ for $\\tilde c\\neq c$. \nBy using the conditioning $P(c,\\bs i)=P(c|\\bs i)\\pi_{\\bs i} = P(\\bs i|c) P(c)$, the expected classification \nerror can be written as\n\\begin{equation}\n\tE = \\ave_{(c,\\bs i)\\sim P(c,\\bs i)}[L_{c,\\tilde c(\\bs i)}] = \n\n\t1-\\sum_{\\bs i}  P(\\tilde c(\\bs i)|\\bs i)\\,\\pi_{\\bs i}~.\n\t\\label{experr}\n\\end{equation}\nFor known $P(c,\\bs i)$ the optimal classifier is then the one minimizing the\nexpected classification error, \n$\t\\tilde c_{\\rm B}(\\bs i) = \\argmax_c P(c|\\bs i)$,\nwhich is called {\\it Bayes classifier}, while \nthe resulting error from \\eqref{experr},\nis called {\\it Bayes rate}. \nThe Bayes rate represents the theoretical minimum error that can be expected with \nthe optimal classifier.\n\n\nWe now study the error of pattern classification when images are noisy, for instance \ndue to an imperfect detection. The setup is the same of Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode},\nwhere light, either quantum or classical, is used to illuminate the pattern (e.g.~a \nhandwritten digit as in Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}a) and, from the detected output, the task \nis to find the correct class (e.g.~a number between 0-9). \nFor this purpose, we introduce the minimum error as a generalization of \nEqs.~\\eqref{experr} and \\eqref{measupattern}\n\\begin{equation}\n\tE^{\\rm Q} := \n\t\\min_{\\{\\Pi_c\\}}  \\sum_{c\\neq \\tilde c}\\sum_{\\bs i}   \\Tr[\t\\Pi_{\\tilde c}\\rho_{\\bs i}^{\\otimes M}] P(c,\\bs i)~,\n\t\\label{Equantum}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the operators $\\{\\Pi_c\\}$ define a POVM whose measurement outcome $c$\npredicts the  class of the image $\\bs i$ encoded into the quantum state $\\rho_{\\bs i}$. \nFor a two-class decision problem, the optimal POVM can be explicitly found by  Helstrom theorem \n\\cite{helstrom1969quantum}. When the number of classes is larger, a \n``pretty good'' approximation to the optimal POVM can be obtained with pretty good measurements. \nFor general measurements, \nwe may derive bounds similar to \\eqref{BarnumMontanaro}, generalizing \n\\cite{Barnum,Montanaro,montanaro2019pretty} (see Appendix~\\ref{s:pgm} for details). \n\\begin{align}\n\tB[F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)^{2M}] \\leq\tE^{\\rm Q} \\leq 2K B[F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)^M],\n\t\\label{PatternBounds}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $K$ \nis such that $K^{-1}$ is the minimum non-zero value of $\\sqrt{P(c,\\bs i)P(c',\\bs i')}$,\nwhich is independent of $M$, $\\rho_W$ and $\\rho_B$, and we have defined \n\\begin{equation}\n\tB[F] := \\frac12\\sum_{c\\neq c'} P(c)P(c') \\sum_{h=1}^n P_{cc'}(h) F^h, \n\t\\label{BF}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $P_{cc'}(h)$ is the probability that two images from different classes $c$ and $c'$ have \nHamming distance $h$. \nFor large $M$, the term with minimum Hamming distance dominates and we may write\n\\begin{equation}\n\tB[F^M] \\propto F^{M h_{\\rm min}}~,\n\t\\label{Bscaling}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $h_{\\rm min}$ is the minimum Hamming distance between two images from different classes.\nThe Ineqs.~\\eqref{PatternBounds} and the expansion \\eqref{Bscaling} represent the most \nimportant results of this section, generalizing Ineqs.~\\eqref{perrsimple} and \\eqref{kCPF} \nto the problem of pattern recognition. By comparing those bounds, we find that \nquantum-enhanced pattern recognition is significantly simpler than barcode discrimination \nwhen $h_{\\rm min}>1$, as the error decreases with the faster rate \\eqref{Bscaling}. \n\n\n\nThe error $E^{\\rm Q}$ is a quantum generalization of Bayes rate,\nand quantifies the theoretical optimal performance of the classification rule.\nHowever, alike the Bayes rate, it is difficult to compute since the distribution \n$P(c,\\bs i)$ is typically unknown, and no closed-form solutions to \\eqref{Equantum} \nexist beyond the two-class case. To solve these issues, \nin the next section we propose a supervised learning approach where \nan optimal classification measurement is estimated\nfrom a collection of correctly classified data. \n\n\n\\subsection{Supervised quantum pattern recognition}\\label{s:supervi}\n\nIn data driven approaches the task is to approximate the optimal classifier \nvia a collection of already classified examples $(c^{\\mathcal T}_k,\\bs i^{\\mathcal T}_k)$. \nThe set $\\mathcal T= \\{(c^{\\mathcal T}_k,\\bs i^{\\mathcal T}_k)~{\\rm for}~k=1,\\dots,T\\}$ is\ncalled  {\\it training set} and $T$ is its cardinality. \nIn the framework of statistical learning theory, we can treat \nthe elements of this set as \n{\\it samples} from the abstract and unknown joint probability distribution $P(c,\\bs i)$ introduced above.\nThen, in the limit of large $T$ we may approximate the averages with respect to $P(c,\\bs i)$ with \n{\\it empirical} averages over the training set. This allows us to explicitly compute the classification \nerror \\eqref{Equantum} and the theoretical bounds \\eqref{PatternBounds}.\nTherefore we define an empirical learning method, also called ``training'', as an \noptimization of the POVM $\\{\\Pi_c\\}$ to correctly classify, as much as possible, the \nknown samples from the training set $\\mathcal T$ \n\\begin{equation}\n\t{\\rm training:~} \n\t\\min_{\\{\\Pi_c\\}}  \\frac1T \\sum_{k=1}^T \\sum_{c\\neq c_k^\\mathcal T }\n\t\\Tr[\t\\Pi_{c}\\rho_{\\bs i_k^\\mathcal T}^{\\otimes M}] =: E^{\\rm Q}_{\\mathcal T}.\n\t\\label{training}\n\\end{equation}\nFrom an operational point of view, a suboptimal solution to optimal detection $\\{\\Pi_c\\}$ \ncan be found for instance \nas shown Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}d and discussed in section \\ref{s:barcode}, by optimizing over the \navailable optical circuit, measurement schemes and classical post-processing. Here on the \nother hand we study the ultimate theoretical limits that any classification task must satisfy, \nstudying the minimum training error $E^{\\rm Q}_{\\mathcal T}$ via bounds like \\eqref{PatternBounds},\nwhile the ability to classify unseen data will be discussed in the next section. \nIndeed,\nupper and lower bounds \non $E^{\\rm Q}_{\\mathcal T}$ can be obtained (see Appendix~\\ref{s:pgm})\nas an average fidelity between states $\\rho_{\\bs i_k^\\mathcal T}$ and $ \\rho_{\\bs i_{k'}^{\\mathcal T}}$ \nwhose images from the training set have different classes,  $c_k^{\\mathcal T}\\neq c_{k'}^{\\mathcal T}$.\nThanks to Eq.~\\eqref{FidIdlers} we finally get\n\\begin{align}\n\tB_{\\mathcal T}[F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)^{2M}] \\leq\tE^{\\rm Q}_{\\mathcal T} \\leq 2T B_{\\mathcal T}[F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)^M],\n\t\\label{PatternBounds1}\n\\end{align}\nwhere we have defined \n\\begin{equation}\n\tB_{\\mathcal T}[F] = \t\\sum_{k, k' : c_k^{\\mathcal T}\\neq c_{k'}^{\\mathcal T} } \n\t\\frac{F^{{\\rm hamming}({\\bs i_k^\\mathcal T},{\\bs i_{k'}^{\\mathcal T}})}}{2T^2}.\n\t\\label{Bfunc}\n\\end{equation}\nIt is simple to show that $B_{\\mathcal T}[F]$ is a particular case of $B[F]$\nfrom Eq.~\\eqref{BF} in which averages \nover the abstract distribution are substituted with averages over the empirical distribution. \nAs such, we may rewrite $B_{\\mathcal T}$ as in Eq.~\\eqref{BF} and obtain the large-$M$ scaling\n\\eqref{Bscaling}. \n\n\n\nAs a relevant example, we consider the problem of handwritten digit classification with the \nMNIST dataset \\cite{lecun1998gradient}. \nThe MNIST dataset is composed of a training set of $60000$ images and \ncorresponding classes, and a testing set of $10000$ images and \ncorresponding classes. Each original image is in grey scale and has $n=28{\\times}28$ pixels. For simplicity we first map each pixel to either black or white, depending on the closest grey-level. \nIn this way, every image can be seen as a 2D barcode. For the MNIST dataset \nwe see from Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}b) that the probability $P_{cc'}(h)$ that two images from different classes have \nHamming distance $h$ resembles a Gaussian distribution with mean $\\mu_{cc'}$ \nand standard deviation $\\sigma_{cc'}$, and minimum non-zero value $h^{\\rm min}_{cc'}$. \nUsing this approximation, we find in Appendix~\\ref{s:pgm} analytical approximations for $B_{\\mathcal T}[F]$, \nrecovering the scaling \\eqref{Bscaling}, where $h_{\\rm min} = \\min_{c\\neq c'} h^{\\rm min}_{cc'}$. \nFor the MNIST dataset, we find $h_{\\rm min}=25$. \nTherefore, from \\eqref{PatternBounds1} we may \nget an error that decays as   $E^{\\rm Q}_{\\mathcal T} \\approx F(\\rho_B,\\rho_W)^{\\alpha M h_{\\rm min}}$, \nindependently on the number of pixels $n$ and with \n$1\\leq \\alpha\\leq 2$. Moreover, thanks to Ineqs.~\\eqref{PatternBounds1} we may define a guaranteed quantum \nadvantage when the upper bound obtained with entangled states is smaller than the lower bound obtained with \nclassical data, namely when $2T F_q^{M h_{\\rm min}}\\leq F_c^{2 M h_{\\rm min}}$. Since the training set \nis normally very large, we may set $2T=2^{\\nu M h_{\\rm min} N_S}$ for some $\\nu$ and the above inequality \nbecomes equivalent to \\eqref{nuthreshold}, in the limit $M\\to \\infty$ and $N_S\\to0$. Therefore, \nwe may repeat the same analysis of Sec.~\\ref{s:enhancement}: \n whenever $\\nu_{\\rm th}>0$ (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:nuth}), quantum advantage can be proven \nfor training sets whose dimension is bounded as $2T\\leq 2^{\\nu_{\\rm th} M N_S h_{\\rm min} }$.\nIn other terms, setting $N_{\\rm tot}=MN_S$ we find a simple relation between the number of photons to show \nquantum advantage and the dimension of the training set as \n\\begin{equation}\n\tN_{\\rm tot}  \\geq \\frac{\\log_2(2T)}{\\nu_{\\rm th}h_{\\rm min}} \\simeq 0.65\\, \\nu_{\\rm th}^{-1} ~.\n\\end{equation}\nIn the above expression the first inequality holds in general, while the approximated numerical \nvalue is for the MNIST dataset, where $h_{\\rm min}=25$ and $T=6{\\times} 10^4$. \n\n\nTo conclude this section we note that \nunlike \\eqref{perrcomb}, the upper bound in \\eqref{PatternBounds1} is achieved with \nglobal measurements, so a strategy like the one in Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}f may be needed to achieve \nsuch classification accuracy.\nBounds with local measurement errors  are discussed in the \nnext section,  where each pixel is detected independently.\n\n\\subsection{Independent on-pixel measurements}\nIn the previous section we have studied the ultimate physical limits for pattern recognition \nby optimizing over all the elements of the optical apparatus, namely the optical circuit, the \nmeasurements and the classical post-processing routines (Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}c). Together these can all be \ndescribed as an abstract global POVM, as in Eq.~\\eqref{Equantum}. \nHere we consider a simplified setup, similar to that of Fig.~\\ref{fig:barcode}c but without the optical \ncircuit and with local measurements $\\Pi_{\\bs i}=\\prod_{j=1}^N \\Pi_{i_j}$. \nHere a noisy image is reconstructed first, and then a classical algorithm is used to classify it. \nAs before, we call $\\bs i$ the real physical configuration of the $n$ pixels, \neach either black or white $i_j=\\{B,W\\}$, and $\\tilde{\\bs i}$ the binary variables corresponding \nto the reconstructed image, read by the sensors. \nUsing $M$ copies to \nperform the detection, all possible reconstructed images can appear with\nprobability $\tp_{\\rm read}(\\tilde {\\bs i}|\\bs i) $ as in Eq.~\\eqref{measupattern}. \nConsidering also the classical classification routine, the local setup \nconsists in choosing a non-optimal POVM in Eqs.~\\eqref{Equantum} or \\eqref{training} as \n\\begin{equation}\n\t\\Pi_c = \\sum_{\\bs i} A(c|\\tilde{\\bs i}) \\prod_{j=1}^n \\Pi_{\\tilde{i}_j}~,\n\t\\label{localalgo}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $A(c|\\bs i)$ is any reliable (possibly non-linear) \nmachine learning algorithm that can classify the reconstructed \nimages. The above equation defines a POVM as long as $\\sum_c A(c|\\bs i)=1$ for all $\\bs i$, which \nis an obvious requirement since every image must be in at least one class. \n\nThe classical algorithm must be noise resilient, because some pixels \nmight not be properly reconstructed, see e.g. Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}a.\nNoise naturally occurs in\nreadouts that are made in reflection where the light is diffused back to the receiver.\nClassification in the presence of different forms of noise has a large literature \nin machine learning \\cite{angluin1988learning}. Here, we\nassume that our training set is composed of noiseless \nimages that are correctly classified,\nnamely that \n$c_k^{\\mathcal T}$ is \nthe true class of $i_k^{\\mathcal T}$. \nAlthough not explicitly discussed here, \nit is possible to extend our analysis to noisy training sets via the method of importance reweighting\n\\cite{liu2015classification,aslam1996sample,manwani2013noise}. \n\n\nAs for the classical algorithm in Eq.~\\eqref{localalgo}, \nthere are different strategies to define a classifier given the training set,\nall with different performances and ranges of applicability \\cite{hastie2009elements}. \nHere we focus on the nearest neighbor classifier \\cite{cover1967nearest}, defined as \n\\begin{align}\n\t\\tilde c^{\\mathcal T}_{\\rm NN}(\\bs i)&= c^{\\mathcal T}_{k_{\\rm min}}~,\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t&\n\tk_{\\rm min} &= \\argmin_k D(\\bs i,\\bs i_k^{\\mathcal T})~,\n\t\\label{nnrule}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $D(\\bs i,\\bs i')$ is a suitable distance between two images. In other terms, \nclassification of an unknown image $\\bs i$ is done by selecting the class \n$c_{k_{\\rm min}}^{\\mathcal T}$ of the image from the training set that \nis closest to $\\bs i$, according to distance $D$. \nThe corresponding algorithm in \\eqref{localalgo} is \n$A(c|\\bs i) = \\delta_{c,\\tilde c^{\\mathcal T}_{\\rm NN}(\\bs i)}$.\nMore advanced neural-network based algorithms will be considered \nin another paper \\cite{cillian}.\n\nIn spite of being very simple, the nearest neighbor classifier \nhas many desirable features. Indeed, under mild conditions, it has \nbeen proven \\cite{cover1967nearest} that, for $T\\to\\infty$, \nthe classification error using the nearest neighbor classifier \nis at most twice the Bayes rate, irrespective of the number \nof classes. More details are shown in the Supplemementary material~\\cite{suppmat}, where we study the\nperformance of this classifier for finite $T$, i.e., for finite training sets.\nAnother feature is the ability to choose the most appropriate distance $D$. \nHere we choose the Hamming distance, which allows us to exploit many results from\nprevious sections. \n\n\n\n\nIn this section we consider quantum sources and sensors, but classical algorithms for nearest neighbor \nclassification. Quantum computers can perform\nnearest neighbor classification quicker than any classical counterpart \\cite{wiebe2015quantum}, but \nhow to mix those quantum algorithms with optical detection schemes is still an open problem.\n\nInserting Eq.~\\eqref{localalgo} into \\eqref{Equantum} \nand employing the nearest neighbor classifier \nwe get \n\t\\begin{equation}\nE^{\\rm NN}_{\\mathcal T} := \n\\sum_{\\bs i,\\tilde{\\bs i}} \\sum_{c\\neq \\tilde{c}_{\\rm NN}^{\\mathcal T}(\\tilde{\\bs i})} P(c,\\bs i)\n\\prod_{j=1}^n \\Tr[\t\\Pi_{\\tilde{i}_j}\\rho_{i_j}^{\\otimes M} ],\n\\label{Ennt}\n\\end{equation}\nTo understand this error, suppose that the pixel error probability $p$ is independent on \nwhether the pixel is black or white. In this case, the probability that the reconstructed \nimage $\\tilde{\\bs i}$ differs from the true image $\\bs i$ in \n$k={\\rm hamming}(\\bs i,\\tilde{\\bs i})$ pixels is a binomial distribution $\\propto p^k(1-p)^{n-k}$,\nwith mean $np$. Thanks to the analysis shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}b we know that,\non average, as long as the number of wrongly detected pixels is smaller than the typical \nseparation in Hamming distance between different classes, the nearest neighbour classifier \nshould provide the correct result. For the transformed MNIST dataset, \n$n=28{\\times}28$ and the typical \nnumber of flips between different classes is $\\approx 160$ (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits}b), so \na pixel error probability up to $p\\simeq 160\/784\\simeq 20\\%$ should be tolerated by the algorithm. \n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{digits2.pdf}\n\t\\caption{{ Pattern recognition with independent on-pixel measurements.}\n\t\t(a) Classification error, namely empirical probability of recognizing the wrong digit \n\t\tusing the nearest neighbor classifier with Hamming distance, as a function of the pixel error probability. \n\t\t(b) Classification error when each pixel is probed using either coherent inputs or \n\t\tentangled TMSV states. \n\t\tThe plot is generated \n\t\tby combining the error coming from the single pixel error probability\n\t\t(see Appendix~\\ref{a:locmeas})  with\n\t\n\t\tthe classification error from (a). \n\t\n\t\tWe focus on the limit $M\\to\\infty$, $N_S\\to0$ while keeping fixed the total mean number of photons $M N_S$ irradiated over each pixel.\n\t\n\t\tThe colored areas represent the region between the upper and lower bounds assuming quantum (blue) or classical (red) sources combined with optimal local measurements. These bounds depend on the quantum and classical fidelities from Eqs.~\\eqref{fidelityQ} and~\\eqref{fidelityC}. \n\t\tThe cyan and orange lines represents the performance with \n\t\tquantum light (cyan) or classical coherent states (orange) using (non-optimal) photodetection measurements. \n\t\tWe set $\\eta_B=0.9$ and $\\eta_W=0.95$. \n\t}%\n\t\\label{fig:digits2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2} we study the robustness of the nearest neighbor classifier via a numerical \nanalysis with the transformed MNIST dataset, where each image \nis transformed into a 2D barcode as described in Sec.~\\ref{s:supervi}.\nWe use such transformed training set to build a nearest neighbor classifier, \nand then estimate the error \\eqref{Ennt} as an average over the testing set, namely \nas $N_{\\rm wrong}\/10000$ where \n$N_{\\rm wrong}$ is the number of times that \nin the 10000 entries of the testing set, the predicted digit is different from the true one. \nSince the images from the testing set are samples from the \nabstract and unknown probability $P(c,\\bs i)$ \nin the limit of infinitely large testing sets such estimate\nconverges to $E^{\\rm NN}_{\\mathcal T}$ from Eq.~\\eqref{Ennt}. \nMoreover, since the images \nfrom the testing set are different from the ones in the training set, this error contains \ntwo terms: an error due to imperfect detection and an generalization error, since we \nare classifying previously unseen data. \n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}a we study the classification error as a function of the \nprobability $p$ of wrong pixel detection. As we see,\neven for noiseless images, namely when $p=0$,\nthe classification error is still non-zero, as the nearest neighbor classifier may \nprovide wrong outcomes. Nonetheless, as predicted, \nFig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}a shows that the nearest neighbor classifier is remarkably robust against \nrelatively high pixel error probabilities $p$.\n\n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}b we combine the bound on the pixel error probability \n(see Eq.~\\eqref{perrlocal}, for a single pixel $n=1$)  with the theoretical curve that \npredicts the classification error from the pixel error probability in Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}a.\nThe bounds on the pixel error probabilities are obtained from the fidelities, \nEqs.~\\eqref{fidelityQ} and~\\eqref{fidelityC}, which consider either coherent \nstates or entangled TMSV states with the same average number of photons $MN_S$. \nThe results from Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}b show that the classification\nerror when we use quantum light is lower than the corresponding classical value. \nThese results are based on the assumption \nthat the detector performs the optimal Helstrom measurement, which \nmay be complex to implement experimentally. Therefore, \nin Fig.~\\ref{fig:digits2}b, we also \nconsider the simpler photodetection measurement, where the POVM in Eq.~\\eqref{measupattern} \nis a projection onto the Fock basis. The resulting pixel error probabilities \nwith both coherent states and TMSV inputs are studied in the Supplementary Material~\\cite{suppmat},\nadapting the analysis from Ref.~\\cite{ortolano2020experimental}. \nWe see that even for this non-optimal measurement, entangled inputs always provide an \nadvantage against purely classical coherent states for all possible values of $MN_S$. \nThis advantage can be experimentally observed via a setup like that of Ref.~\\cite{ortolano2020experimental}.\n\n\n\\section{Discussion}\\label{s:conclusions}\nIn this work, we have investigated multi-pixel problems of quantum channel\ndiscrimination, namely the identification of barcode configurations (equivalent\nto readout of the stored data) and the classification of black and white\npatterns, e.g.~given by noisy digital images of handwritten digits. In both\ncases, we have shown that the use of quantum light based on entangled states\nclearly outperforms classical strategies based on coherent states. \n\nFor both quantum-enhanced \nbarcode decoding and pattern recognition, we have\nanalytically studied, via bounds, the physical limits to the classification error that we may get by optimizing \nover all optical elements, measurements and classical post-processing. \nThis allows us to to derive  explicit analytical conditions for the quantum advantage to hold. \nMoreover, \nthe analysis of our bounds allows us to rigorously prove that quantum-enhanced \npattern recognition can vastly reduce the classification error with respect to the mere \nindependent measurement of each pixel. \n\nNonetheless, being easier from the experimental point of view, \nwe have also \nconsidered a simplified setup where all pixels are probed independently and,\nfor the problem of pattern recognition, we found that \nphoton counting measurements are sufficient to show quantum advantage,\npaving the way for an experimental demonstration with state of the art quantum\ntechnology.\n\n\\acknowledgements\n\nL.B.  acknowledges  support  by  the  program ``Rita  Levi  Montalcini''  for  young  researchers. \nQ.Z. acknowledges support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Young Faculty Award (YFA) Grant No. N660012014029 and Craig M. Berge Dean's Faculty Fellowship of University\nof Arizona.\nS.P. acknowledges funding from EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action under grant agreement No. 862644 (Quantum Readout Techniques and Technologies, QUARTET). \n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nOver the past decade, access to knowledge has fundamentally changed. This process began around 2011, when Stanford professors Andrew Ng, Sebastian Thrun and others made their AI courses available to everyone through online courses \\cite{ngorigins}. This type of course is often referred to as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Popular MOOC platforms include Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and others. Until 2011, AI could generally only be studied in a limited number of available university courses or from books or papers. Furthermore, those resources were mainly available in developed countries. As a consequence, potential learners in emerging markets could not easily access respective resources. Due to MOOCs, the so-called ``democratization of AI knowledge\" has begun to fundamentally change the way we learn and has given rise to new AI superpowers, such as China \\cite{lee2018ai}.\n\nWe argue in Section~\\ref{sec:moocs} that MOOCs have now given many universities and professors serious competitors. It can also be assumed that this competition will intensify even further in the coming years and decades. In order to justify the added value of three to five-year degree programs to prospective students, universities must differentiate themselves from MOOCs in some way or other.\n\nIn this paper, we show how we address this challenge at Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT) in our AI courses. DIT is located in rural Bavaria, Germany and has a diverse student body of different educational and cultural backgrounds. Concretely, we present two courses (that focus on ML and include slightly broader AI topics when needed):\n\\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n    \\item Computer Vision (Section~\\ref{sec:computervision})\n    \\item Innovation Management for AI (Section~\\ref{sec:innovation})\n\\end{itemize}\n\nIn addition to teaching theory, we put emphasis on real-world problems, hands-on projects and taking advantage of hardware. Particularly the latter is usually not directly possible in MOOCs. In this paper, we share our best practices. We also show how our courses contribute to DIT's ability to differentiate itself from MOOCs and other universities.\n\n\\section{MOOCs Have Become Game Changers}\n\\label{sec:moocs}\nIn addition to courses on AI, a variety of other courses on almost any topic have emerged on various MOOC platforms over the past decade. Those courses enable learners to study high-quality content from renowned professors, remotely, at their own speed and at little or no cost. Furthermore, collaborations with renowned universities and industry partners have emerged.\nSome MOOC platforms offer career coaching, too. Companies have also launched collaborative programs with MOOC platforms to train their employees.\n\nThere are plenty of examples of professionals who have found new, high-paying jobs in various industries within a short period of time after completing hands-on MOOCs, for example in the news \\cite{lohr2020remember} or on LinkedIn. This is particularly true for IT, a sector that has traditionally been open to lateral entrants and autodidacts. In recent years, MOOCs have therefore become steadily more established. This trend has also been further consolidated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as millions of people around the globe have been undergoing retraining \\cite{bylieva2020analysis}.\n\nIn summary, universities will be facing the following challenges in the coming years:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n\\item In just a few years many very good high school graduates could decide against the traditional completion of a university degree program. They would then rather acquire all necessary practical skills through MOOCs within a few months or perhaps a year. In parallel, they could also gain practical experience by working part-time or founding startups. As a consequence, they could quickly get excellent jobs and outperform traditional university graduates on the jobs market.\n\\item Due to the demographic change \\cite{magnus2012age} and the potential lack of qualified new students, many universities in developed countries may become unable to maintain their current size. In view of the return on investment, politicians or administrators may thus probably sooner or later start thinking about closing individual departments or even entire universities.\n\\item Many (non-computer science) degree programs have so far only taught traditional content, with little or no link to the digital transformation and automation through AI. If this important content continues to go unnoticed in education, those degree programs will almost certainly train their students for unemployment.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nUniversities must face up to these challenges, which also provide many opportunities, though. As a result, universities could emerge even stronger from that competition. Most importantly, universities must differentiate themselves from MOOCs. In the following sections, we show how we address these challenges by teaching cutting-edge real-world content and taking advantage of physical university infrastructure. We also actively promote our courses through social media, press releases and other channels in order to attract more prospective students. In addition, our courses are open to students of other departments, including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, healthcare or business. This allows us to support them in learning the tools of the 21st century that they need in order to actively contribute to the digital transformation of their disciplines.\n\n\n\\section{Computer Vision Course}\n\\label{sec:computervision}\nPopular MOOC platforms offer a number of excellent courses\\footnote{These include, but are not limited to, the following courses: \\url{http:\/\/www.udacity.com\/course\/computer-vision-nanodegree--nd891}, \\url{http:\/\/www.coursera.org\/learn\/computer-vision-basics}.} on computer vision (CV). In order to survive in international competition, the content of a today's university CV course must meaningfully differentiate itself from those by offering unique selling propositions.\nBased on these principles, we have started to teach this novel course in 2020 at DIT. Note that there is a separate deep learning course taught by a different professor in our department. Most students take both courses in parallel and have previously taken an introductory machine learning course.\n\n\\subsection{Content}\nWe provide students with a broad and deep background in CV. That is why we discuss both, traditional and modern neural network-based CV methods. In practice, successful CV applications tend to combine both approaches \\cite{o2019deep}, in particular when only a limited number of training examples are available \\cite{ahmed2020deep}. Concretely, we discuss the following topics in the first half of the term:\n\n\\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n\\item Introduction: applications, computational models for vision, perception and prior knowledge, levels of vision, how humans see\n\\item Pixels and filters: digital cameras, image representations, noise, filters, edge detection\n\\item Regions of images: segmentation, perceptual grouping, Gestalt theory, segmentation approaches, image compression by learning clusters\n\\item Feature detection: RANSAC, Hough transform, Harris corner detector\n\\item Object recognition: challenges, template matching, histograms, machine learning\n\\item Convolutional neural networks: neural networks, loss functions and optimization, backpropagation, convolutions and pooling, hyperparameters, AutoML, efficient training, selected architectures\n\\item Image sequence processing: motion, tracking image sequences, temporal models, Kalman filter, correspondence problem, optical flow, recurrent neural networks\n\\item Foundations of mobile robotics: robot motion, sensors, probabilistic robotics, particle filters, SLAM\n\\item Advanced topics: 3D vision, generative adversarial networks, self-supervised learning\n\\end{itemize}\n\nIn the second half of the term, students work in groups of 1 to 4 members on a CV project.\n\n\\subsection{Unique Selling Propositions}\nThis course differentiates itself from other CV courses, in particular MOOCs, as follows:\n\\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n\\item Most CV courses taught on MOOC platforms or at universities only include smaller, isolated problems that can be implemented on almost any commercially available computer or by using cloud services. This course includes a larger real-world project in the second half of the term instead. Students choose a CV project of their choice, in which they also apply agile project management and use respective tools. In order to provide students with a real added value of a physical university course, they are highly encouraged to use the NVIDIA Jetbot platform depicted in Figure~\\ref{fig:robot}. \n\n\\begin{figure}[ht]\n\\vskip 0.2in\n\\begin{center}\n\\centerline{\\includegraphics[width=0.85\\columnwidth]{img_robot.JPG}}\n\\caption{The NVIDIA Jetbot mobile robot platform used in the projects. Find more information at \\url{http:\/\/www.github.com\/NVIDIA-AI-IOT\/jetbot}.}\n\\label{fig:robot}\n\\end{center}\n\\vskip -0.2in\n\\end{figure}\n\nIt possesses a camera and efficiently executes CV algorithms on its NVIDIA Jetson GPU. By using this platform, students can not only better understand the course content. Rather it enables them to experience how these algorithms behave in the real world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they could take the robot kits home in order to work on their projects remotely.\n\n\\item We cover challenging content that is more complex than in most available MOOCs: We first reviewed CV courses at introductory and advanced levels of international top universities, including Stanford, MIT and Imperial College London. We then selected the topics that we find most relevant to solving real-world problems. Furthermore, we present these topics in a more understandable way and include additional revisions of the underlying concepts. Like this, we also make this course more accessible to students of other disciplines.\n\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\subsection{Outcomes and Students' Feedback}\n19 students of different degree programs signed up for the first iteration of this course. In total, they implemented 10 projects in groups of 1 to 3 members.\n\nAbout half of the projects used a NVIDIA Jetbot. Those projects included object following and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The other projects included a face mask detector and a clothes classifier. We find the coin counter depicted in Figure~\\ref{fig:coins} particularly worth mentioning though.\n\n\\begin{figure}[ht]\n\\vskip 0.2in\n\\begin{center}\n\\centerline{\\includegraphics[width=0.85\\columnwidth]{img_coins.png}}\n\\caption{Coin counter. Image courtesy: Patrick Gawron and Achot Terterian.}\n\\label{fig:coins}\n\\end{center}\n\\vskip -0.2in\n\\end{figure}\n\nIt first applies object segmentation and detection to a photo that contains an arbitrary number of coins. It then aggregates the amounts of the individual coins. The underlying ML model also handles multiple currencies in the same photo. In the project presentation, the group also discussed how they solved the challenge of collecting a data set of coins that includes a variety of angles, conditions, reflections and currencies.\n\nWe received quantitative and qualitative feedback from students through a formal course evaluation. The overall feedback was a 1.3 on a scale 1 to 5 where 1 is the best. However, a few students suggested a longer introduction to deep learning frameworks for the first half of this course. They would then have been able to start working on their projects quicker in the second half. In the second iteration, we have therefore added an extended introduction to deep learning frameworks.\n\n\n\\section{Innovation Management for AI Course}\n\\label{sec:innovation}\n\nIn recent years, many companies have started to invest in ML and AI to stay competitive. However, the sad truth is that some 80\\% of all AI projects fail or do not result in any financial value \\cite{insights2019artificial}. That is a serious concern because there is clearly an acute need in industry for experts who have a comprehensive knowledge of what needs to be done so that AI adds value to businesses. In our view, one of the underlying causes is the way AI is taught in universities, as most courses cover only purely methodological and engineering aspects of AI. We are convinced that professors need to address this problem by also enabling students to think in a broader and business-oriented sense of AI innovation management. At DIT, we therefore started to teach this novel and internationally unique course in 2020. \n\n\\subsection{Content}\nWe discuss a range of challenges, both technical and managerial, that companies typically face when using AI \\cite{glauner2020unlocking}. We first  look back at some of the historic promises, successes and failures of AI. We then contrast them to some of the advances of the deep learning era and contemporary challenges. Concretely, we discuss the following topics:\n\n\\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n\\item Introduction: how AI is changing our society, selected examples of successful and unsuccessful AI projects and transformations\n\\item History and promises of AI: Dartmouth conference, AI from 1955 to 2011, AI winters\n\\item Deep learning era: breakthroughs, DeepMind, promises and hypes, no free lunch theorem, AI innovation in China, technological singularity\n\\item Contemporary challenges: regulation, explainable AI, ethics\n\\item AI transformation of companies: opportunities, challenges, best practices, roles, data strategy, data governance\n\\end{itemize}\n\nWe offer this course as an intensive course. On day one, we teach the content above. On the following two days, students work on a case study on how to successfully implement AI in a company of their choice. They present the outcomes of their case study on day four.\n\n\\subsection{Unique Selling Propositions}\nThis course differentiates itself from other courses, in particular MOOCs, as follows:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]\n\\item During an intensive online search for related courses, we only found introductions to AI for managers\\footnote{These include, but are not limited to, the following courses: \\url{http:\/\/www.udacity.com\/course\/ai-for-business-leaders--nd054}, \\url{http:\/\/www.udemy.com\/course\/intro-ai-for-managers\/}.}. However, we did not find any business-related courses for AI experts. In this course, we bridge that gap.\n\\item Students learn respective best practices along the entire AI value chain and how these lead to productively deployed applications that add real value. They work  on a case study on how specific AI use cases are implemented in companies, what challenges may be encountered and how they may be solved.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\subsection{Outcomes and Students' Feedback}\n21 students of different degree programs signed up for the first iteration of this course. In total, they worked on 11 case studies in groups of 2 to 4 members.\n\nMost of the students who took this course are computer scientists studying in a part-time continuing education AI degree program. We received very positive feedback from them as they could include in their case studies some of the current challenges they face at work. A few business students also took this course as they were eager to learn more about AI. They contributed their in-depth business knowledge to the case study presentations. This turned out to be a valuable experience for the computer scientists.\n\nWe could, however, not quantitatively assess this course yet. Our university's course evaluation scheme does not include intensive courses. We are planning to address this issue in the future with an unofficial course evaluation.\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nUniversities are facing major challenges as a result of the rapidly advancing digital transformation of teaching. These include in particular competition from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This transformation is further being accelerated by the demographic change in developed countries and could result in a dwindling number of potential students in the near future. However, if universities address those challenges swiftly, ambitiously and sustainably, they can even emerge stronger from this situation by providing better and modern courses to their students. In this paper, we showed how we address those challenges in AI education at Deggendorf Institute of Technology. Concretely, we teach innovative and unique courses on computer vision and innovation management for AI. We shared our best practices and how our courses contribute to Deggendorf Institute of Technology's ability to differentiate itself from MOOCs and other universities.\n\nBoth courses are currently being offered again. The number of students that signed up has more than doubled. Our courses are thus positively perceived by students.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{The Campbell-Magaard theorem}\n\nConsider the Lorentzian metric of the five-dimensional space written in a\nGaussian form\n\\begin{equation}\nds^{2}=\\overline{g}_{ij}\\left(  x,\\psi\\right)  dx^{i}dx^{j}+d\\psi^{2},\n\\label{hds2}%\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $x=\\left(  x^{1},...,x^{4}\\right)  $, and Latin indices run from $1$ to\n$4$ while the Greek ones go from $1$ to $5.$\n\nBy splitting the vacuum Einstein equations in terms of the extrinsic and\nintrinsic curvatures of the slices $\\psi=const$, it can be shown that the\nequations have the following structure:%\n\n\\begin{align}\n\\frac{\\partial^{2}\\overline{g}_{ij}}{\\partial\\psi^{2}} &  =F_{ij}\\left(\n\\overline{g},\\frac{\\partial\\overline{g}}{\\partial\\psi},\\frac{\\partial\n\\overline{g}}{\\partial x},\\frac{\\partial^{2}\\overline{g}}{\\partial x^{2}%\n},\\frac{\\partial^{2}\\overline{g}}{\\partial x\\partial\\psi}\\right)\n\\label{dyn}\\\\\n\\nabla_{j}\\left(  \\Omega^{ij}-g^{ij}\\Omega\\right)   &  =0\\label{c1}\\\\\nR+\\Omega^{2}-\\Omega_{ij}\\Omega^{ij} &  =0,\\label{c2}%\n\\end{align}\nwhere $F_{ij}$ are analytic functions of their arguments, $\\nabla_{j}$ is the\ncovariant derivative with respect to the induced metric $g_{ij}=\\overline\n{g}_{ij}\\left(  x,\\psi=const\\right)  $; $R$ and\\ $\\Omega_{ij}$\\ denote,\nrespectively, the scalar curvature and the extrinsic curvature of the\nhypersurface $\\psi=const;$ and $\\Omega=g^{ij}\\Omega_{ij}$. Recall that in the\ncoordinates adopted the extrinsic curvature assumes the simple form:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Omega_{ij}=-\\frac{1}{2}\\frac{\\partial\\overline{g}_{ij}}{\\partial\\psi\n}.\\label{ext}%\n\\end{equation}\nIt is well known that, owing to the Bianchi identities, the second and third\nequations need to be imposed only on the hypersurface, since they are\npropagated by the first one. In this sense, it is said that the Einstein\nequations consist of the \\textit{dynamical }equation (\\ref{dyn}) plus\n\\textit{constraint equations }(\\ref{c1}) and (\\ref{c2}) for $\\Omega_{ij}$ and\n$g_{ij}$ .\n\nLet now consider the hypersurface $\\psi=0.$ According to the Cauchy-Kowalewski\ntheorem, for any point in this hypersurface, say the origin, there is an open\nset in five dimensions containing that point, where the equation (\\ref{dyn})\nalways has a unique analytic solution $\\overline{g}_{ik}\\left(  x,\\psi\\right)\n$ provided that the following analytic initial conditions are specified:\n\\begin{align}\n\\overline{g}_{ij}\\left(  x,0\\right)   &  =g_{ij}\\left(  x\\right)\n\\label{cig}\\\\\n\\left.  \\frac{\\partial\\overline{g}_{ij}}{\\partial\\psi}\\right\\vert _{\\psi=0} &\n=-2\\Omega_{ij}\\left(  x\\right)  .\\label{cih}%\n\\end{align}\n\n\nFrom the perspective of the embedding problem these initial conditions\nrepresent, respectively, the metric and the extrinsic curvature of the\nhypersurface $\\psi=0$, whereas the solution of equation (\\ref{dyn}) gives the\nmetric of the $\\left(  n+1\\right)  -$dimensional space. Thus, if there is a\nsolution for the constraint equations for any given metric $g_{ik}$, then the\ntheorem is proved, since the solution found $\\overline{g}_{ij}\\left(\nx,\\psi\\right)  $ substituted in (\\ref{hds2}) will give rise to a metric that\nsatisfies the vacuum Einstein equation $R_{\\mu\\nu}=0$. Clearly, the embedding\nmap is then given by the equation $\\left(  x,\\psi=0\\right)  $.\n\nIt turns out, as Magaard has proved \\cite{magaard,dahia1}, that the constraint\nequations always have a solution. Indeed, by simple counting operation we can\nsee that there are $n(n+1)\/2$ unknown functions (the independent elements of\nextrinsic curvature) and $n+1$ constraint equations. The metric $g_{ij}\\left(\nx\\right)  $\\ must be considered as a given datum. For $n\\geq2$, the number of\nvariables is equal or greater than the number of equations. Magaard has shown\nthat after the elimination of equation (\\ref{c2}), the first-order\ndifferential equation (\\ref{c1}) can be written in a canonical form (similar\nto (\\ref{dyn})) with respect to $n$ components of $\\Omega_{ij}$ conveniently\nchosen. Taking initial conditions for these components in such a way that the\nright-hand side of the mentioned equation is analytic at the origin, the\nCauchy-Kowalewski theorem can be applied once more to guarantee the existence\nof a solution for the constraint equations.\n\n\\section{Dynamically generated embedding}\n\nFrom the above we see that Magaard's proof of the CM theorem is formulated in\nterms of an initial value problem. Roughly speaking we can say that a\n$(3+1)$-spacetime is taken as part of the initial data and it is\n\\textquotedblleft propagated\\textquotedblright\\ along a spacelike extra\ndimension by the dynamical part of the Einstein vacuum equations to generate\nthe higher-dimensional space. Nevertheless, it is enough clear that, despite\nsome similarities, the CM theorem is not concerned with real dynamical\npropagation since the initial data \\textquotedblleft evolve\\textquotedblright%\n\\ along a spacelike direction. Therefore there is no reason why we should\nexpect a causality relation between different slices of the higher dimensional space.\n\nHowever, we can look at this picture from a different perspective. Indeed,\nsupported by the CM theorem, we know that given any point $p\\in$ $M$ there is\na five-dimensional vacuum space $(\\widetilde{M},\\widetilde{g})$ into which a\nneighborhood of $p$ in $M$ is embedded. Now we can determine an open subset of\n$\\widetilde{M}$, say, $\\widetilde{O}$, containing the point $p$ in which there\nexists a four-dimensional hypersurface $\\Sigma$, which is spacelike\neverywhere, acausal and that contains the point $p$ (see appendix I). The\nembedding of $\\Sigma$ into $\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $\ninduces a positive definite metric $h$ in the hypersurface. Let $K$ be the\nextrinsic curvature of $\\Sigma$ in $\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde\n{g}\\right)  .$ The metric and the extrinsic curvature are analytic fields in\nthe hypersurface $\\Sigma$, thus they belong to the local Sobolev\nspace\\footnote{By writing $h\\in W^{m}\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ we mean that the\nnorm of $h$ together with its covariant derivatives of order equal or less\nthan $m$ are square integrable in any open set $\\mathcal{U}$ of $\\Sigma$ with\ncompact closure. For the sake of simplicity, we shall assume that the norm and\nderivatives are calculated with respect to an Euclidean metric. Here we are\nadopting the notation of Sobolev spaces used in \\cite{HE}.}\\emph{ }%\n$W^{m}\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ for any $m$. The set $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\n\\right)  $ constitutes appropriate initial data for the Einstein vacuum\nequations, since $h$ and $K$ satisfy the vacuum constraint equations in the\nhypersurface $\\Sigma$ and fulfill the required condition of regularity (see\n\\cite{HE}, page 248-249, and \\cite{CB}, for instance).\n\nConsider now $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $, the domain of dependence of $\\Sigma$\nrelative to $\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $ \\cite{wald}. Since\n$\\Sigma$ is an acausal hypersurface of $\\widetilde{O}$, then $D\\left(\n\\Sigma\\right)  $ is open in $\\widetilde{O}$ (see \\cite{oneill}, page 425). Of\ncourse $D(\\Sigma)$ is a non-empty set, since $\\Sigma\\in D(\\Sigma).$ By\nconstruction, the five-dimensional manifold $(D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)\n,\\widetilde{g})$ is a solution of the Einstein vacuum equations, hence\n$(D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g})$ is a Cauchy development for the\nEinstein vacuum equations of the initial data $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  .$\n\nAs we have mentioned before $D(\\Sigma)$ is open, and thus the non-empty set\n$M\\cap D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ is a neighbourhood of $p$ in $M$ contained in\n$D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $. Therefore $M\\cap D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ is\nembedded in $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $, i.e., in a Cauchy development of\n$\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ (see figure 1). In other words the dynamical\nevolution of the initial data $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ generates a\nfive-dimensional \\ vacuum space into which the spacetime is locally embedded.\nIn this sense, we can say that this local embedding is dynamically generated\nby the physical propagation of those initial data.\n\nMore precisely this result can be stated as follows: \\textit{Consider an\nanalytic spacetime }$\\left(  M,g\\right)  .$\\textit{\\ For any }$p\\in\nM$\\textit{\\ there are initial data }$\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $%\n\\textit{\\ whose Cauchy development for the Einstein vacuum\\ equations is a\nfive-dimensional vacuum space into which a neighbourhood of }$p$\\textit{ in\n}$M$\\textit{\\ is analytically and isometrically embedded.}\n\n\\begin{figure}[ptb]\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.4]\n{figure.ps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{{\\small {Sketch of the local embedding of spacetime $M$ into the\nCauchy development $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ of initial data given in an\nacausal spacelike four dimensional hypersurface $\\Sigma.$}}}%\n\\end{figure}\n\nFurthermore, the Einstein vacuum\\ equations admit a well-posed initial value\nformulation with respect to the data $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ (see, for\nexample,\\cite{HE,CB,wald,Friedrich}). Therefore the general properties of\nsolutions of the vacuum Einstein equations, related to the hyperbolic\ncharacter of the differential equations, are applicable to our solution\n$\\left(  D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $. This ensures that\nthe dependence of the solution $\\left(  D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde\n{g}\\right)  $ on the initial data $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ is continuous\n(Cauchy stability). As a consequence the spacetime embedded into $\\left(\nD\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $ is stable in a similar sense\ntoo, as we describe in the next section.\n\nAnother important property is that any change of data outside $\\Sigma$ does\nnot affect the solution in the future domain of dependence (causality). Thus\nit follows that any perturbation outside $\\Sigma$ will not disturb the\nembedding of spacetime in $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $.\n\n\\section{Cauchy Stability}\n\nConsider an analytic spacetime $\\left(  M,g\\right)  $ and let $\\left(\nh,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ be a set of analytic initial data with a Cauchy\ndevelopment $\\left(  D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $ in which\nthe spacetime is locally embedded, around $p\\in M.$ Additionally let us admit\nthat this initial data set satisfies the following property: the image of $p$\nthrough the embedding lies in $\\Sigma$. In other words, corresponding to the\nset $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ there are some neighbourhood $O$ of $p$ in\n$M$ and a map $\\varphi:O\\subset M\\rightarrow$ $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ which\nis an embedding, with $\\varphi\\left(  p\\right)  \\in\\Sigma$ \\footnote{The\nexistence of the set $\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $ was shown in the previous\nsection. Possibly the initial data set is not unique. The results obtained in\nthis section are applicable separately to each one of all possible initial\ndata set.}.\n\nNow we denote by $\\left(  h^{\\prime},K^{\\prime}\\right)  $ a new set of initial\ndata which satisfies the vacuum Einstein constraint equation in $\\Sigma$. For\nthe sake of simplicity let us assume that the fields $h^{\\prime}$ and\n$K^{\\prime}$ are $C^{\\infty}$ in $\\Sigma$. In this case, the new generated\nmetric $g^{\\ast}$ is a $C^{\\infty}$ field.\n\nLet $V$ be an open set of $J^{+}\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $, the causal future of\n$\\Sigma$ in $\\left(  D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $, with\ncompact closure and $\\mathcal{U}$ $\\subset\\Sigma$ some neighbourhood of\n$J^{-}\\left(  \\overline{V}\\right)  \\cap\\Sigma$, the causal past of\n$\\overline{V}$ (the closure of $V$) in $\\Sigma$, with compact closure in\n$\\Sigma$. According to the Cauchy stability theorem (see \\cite{HE}, page 253,\nand \\cite{CB}), for any $\\varepsilon>0$ there is some $\\delta>0$ such that any\ninitial data $\\left(  h^{\\prime},K^{\\prime}\\right)  $ on $\\Sigma$ close to\n$\\left(  h,K\\right)  $ in $\\mathcal{U}$ with respect to the local Sobolev\nnorm, i.e., $\\left\\|  h^{\\prime}-h,\\mathcal{U}\\right\\|  _{m}^{\\sim}<\\delta$\nand $\\left\\|  K^{\\prime}-K,\\mathcal{U}\\right\\|  _{m-1}^{\\sim}<\\delta$ ( $m>4)$\n\\footnote{By the symbol \\symbol{126}we mean that derivatives are taken only in\ntangent directions of $\\Sigma$.}, give rise to a new metric $g^{\\ast}$ which\nis near to the old one $\\widetilde{g}$ in $V$, i.e., $\\left\\|  g^{\\ast\n}-\\widetilde{g},V\\right\\|  _{m}<\\varepsilon$.\n\nNow let $V$ be such that $V$ $\\cap\\left(  M\\cap D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)\n\\right)  =N$ is a non-empty set, where $M\\cap D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ means\n$\\varphi\\left(  O\\right)  ,$ the image of $O$ through the embedding. And let\n$g^{\\prime}$ be the induced metric on $N$ by the embedding of $N$ in $\\left(\nV,g^{\\ast}\\right)  $. We shall see that if $\\delta$ is sufficiently small then\n$g^{\\prime}$ will be a Lorentzian metric and it will be close to the spacetime\nmetric $g$ in $N$.\n\nFor the sake of simplicity, let us make some assumptions. First, we assume\nthat $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ is covered by Gaussian coordinates\n(\\ref{hds2}) adapted to the embedding, in which the embedding map is $\\left(\nx,\\psi=0\\right)  $. If this was not the case, we could find a neighbourhood\n$S$ of $p$ in $\\Sigma$ and a neighbourhood $\\widetilde{O}$ of $p$ in $D\\left(\n\\Sigma\\right)  $ such that the domain of dependence of $S$ relative to\n$\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $, $D\\left(  S,\\widetilde\n{O}\\right)  ,$ is covered by (\\ref{hds2}). We would proceed in the following\nmanner. Since the embedding exists, we know that $M\\cap D\\left(\n\\Sigma\\right)  $ is a timelike hypersurface of $\\left(  D\\left(\n\\Sigma\\right)  ,\\widetilde{g}\\right)  .$ By the usual procedure we construct,\nfrom the geodesics that cross $M\\cap D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ orthogonally,\nGaussian normal coordinates in a neighbourhood $\\widetilde{O}$ of $p$ in\n$D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  .$ Now make $S=\\Sigma\\cap\\widetilde{O}$. We then\nconcentrate our analysis in the region $D\\left(  S,\\widetilde{O}\\right)  $.\n\nSecond, let us assume that the Sobolev norm is evaluated with respect to an\nEuclidean metric defined on $D\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $ and that in coordinates\n(\\ref{hds2}) the Euclidean metric has the canonical form, i.e., $diag\\left(\n+1,+1,+1,+1,+1\\right)  $. Then, for example, $\\left\\|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde\n{g},V\\right\\|  _{m=0}=\\left[  \\int_{V}\\left|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g}\\right|\n^{2}d^{4}xd\\psi\\right]  ^{\\frac{1}{2}}$ where\n\\[\n\\left|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g}\\right|  =\\left[\n{\\textstyle\\sum\\limits_{i,j=1}^{4}}\n\\left(  g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right)  ^{2}+2%\n{\\textstyle\\sum\\limits_{i=1}^{4}}\n\\left(  g_{i5}^{\\ast}\\right)  ^{2}+\\left(  g_{55}^{\\ast}-1\\right)\n^{2}\\right]  ^{\\frac{1}{2}}%\n\\]\n\n\nAs we have mentioned, in the given coordinates, the embedding map is $\\left(\nx,\\psi=0\\right)  $. Thus the induced metric in $N$ by the new solution\n$g^{\\ast}$ is given by $g_{ij}^{\\prime}\\left(  x\\right)  =g_{ij}^{\\ast}\\left(\nx,\\psi=0\\right)  $. Let us show that if $\\varepsilon$ is sufficiently small\nthe induced metric $g^{\\prime}$ in $N$ is Lorentzian.\n\nMetrics which are $C^{\\infty}$ in the whole manifold belong to local Sobolev\nspaces $W^{m}$ for any $m$. Thus they obey some important inequalities which\nhold on Sobolev spaces. For example, according to lemma 7.4.1 in ref.\n\\cite{HE} (page 235), we have that for $m\\geq3$, $\\left|  g^{\\ast}%\n-\\widetilde{g}\\right|  \\leq P\\left\\|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},V\\right\\|  _{m}$\non $V$, where $P$ is a positive constant (depending on $V$). Thus if $\\left\\|\ng^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},V\\right\\|  _{m}<\\varepsilon$, it follows that all\ncomponents satisfy the inequality $\\left|  g_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\ast}-\\widetilde\n{g}_{\\mu\\nu}\\right|  <P\\varepsilon$ on $V$.\n\nThe gradient $\\nabla^{\\ast}\\psi$ ($\\nabla^{\\ast}$ is the covariant derivative\ncompatible with $g^{\\ast}$) determines normal direction of the hypersurface\n$\\psi=0$ in respect to the new solution $g^{\\ast}$. The induced metric will be\nLorentzian if $\\nabla^{\\ast}\\psi$ is spacelike with respect to the metric\n$g^{\\ast}$. In coordinates (\\ref{hds2}), we have\n\\[\ng^{\\ast}\\left(  \\nabla^{\\ast}\\psi,\\nabla^{\\ast}\\psi\\right)  =\\left(  g^{\\ast\n}\\right)  ^{55}%\n\\]\n\n\nNow, this metric component can be written as%\n\\[\n\\left(  g^{\\ast}\\right)  ^{55}=\\frac{\\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}}{\\det g_{\\mu\\nu}%\n^{\\ast}}.\n\\]\nSince $\\det g_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\ast}<0$ on $V$, $\\left(  g^{\\ast}\\right)  ^{55}$ will\nbe positive if $\\det\\left(  g_{ij}^{\\ast}\\right)  <0$. We know that the\ndeterminant is a continuous function with respect to the matrix components in\nthe usual norm. So there is some $\\xi>0$ which depends only on $\\widetilde{g}$\nand $V$ (an estimate of $\\xi$ is given in appendix II) such that for\n$\\varepsilon<\\xi$ we have\n\\[\n\\left|  \\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right|  <\\inf_{V}\\left|\n\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right|\n\\]\nThis means that $\\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}<0$ for all points in $V$, since\n$\\det\\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right)  $ is negative in $V$. This shows that\n$g^{\\prime}$ is Lorentzian for $\\varepsilon<\\xi$.\n\nNow let us compare the induced metric $g^{\\prime}$ with the original spacetime\nmetric $g$. It is known that for a field in a Sobolev space the norm of the\nrestriction of that field to a hypersurface is related to its norm in the\nmanifold (see \\cite{HE}, lemma 7.4.3, page 235). According to the mentioned\nlemma 7.4.3, there is a positive constant $Q$ (depending on $N$ and $V$ ) such\nthat $\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{m}\\leq Q\\left\\Vert\ng^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},V\\right\\Vert _{m+1}$, where $\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast\n}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{m}$ is defined on $N$ with the induced\nEuclidean metric. Thus, for example,%\n\\[\n\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{0}=\\left(  \\int_{N}\\left\\vert\ng^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g}\\right\\vert ^{2}d^{4}x\\right)  ^{\\frac{1}{2}}%\n\\]\nOn the other hand $\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{m}^{\\sim\n}\\leq\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{m}$ (by $\\sim$ we mean\nthat derivatives are taken only in directions tangent to $N$). Now consider\n$g^{\\prime},$ the induced metric on $\\ N$. In this special coordinates it is\neasy to see $\\left\\Vert g^{\\prime}-g,N\\right\\Vert _{m}^{\\sim}$ $\\leq\\left\\Vert\ng^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},N\\right\\Vert _{m}^{\\sim}$, since the induced metric has\nless components than the higher dimensional metric. Therefore $\\left\\Vert\ng^{\\prime}-g,N\\right\\Vert _{m}^{\\sim}\\leq Q\\left\\Vert g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde\n{g},V\\right\\Vert _{m+1}$.\n\nFrom the results obtained above we can now show that if the initial data are\nsufficiently close to $\\left(  h,K\\right)  $ on a neighbourhood of the causal\npast of $N$ in $\\Sigma$ then the induced metric by the new solution is\nLorentzian and close to $g$ in $N$.\n\nMore precisely, \\textit{let }$N$\\textit{ be an open set in }$D^{+}\\left(\n\\Sigma\\right)  \\cap M$\\textit{ with compact closure in }$M$\\textit{ and }%\n$\\eta>0$\\textit{, there exist some neighborhood }$\\mathcal{U}$\\textit{ of\n}$J^{-}\\left(  \\overline{N}\\right)  \\cap\\Sigma$\\textit{ of compact closure in\n}$\\Sigma$\\textit{ and some }$\\delta>0$\\textit{ such that }$C^{\\infty}$\\textit{\ninitial data }$\\left(  h^{\\prime},K^{\\prime}\\right)  $\\textit{ close to\n}$\\left(  h,K\\right)  $\\textit{ in }$\\mathcal{U}$\\textit{, i.e., }$\\left\\Vert\nh^{\\prime}-h,\\mathcal{U}\\right\\Vert _{m}^{\\sim}<\\delta$\\textit{ and\n}$\\left\\Vert K^{\\prime}-K,\\mathcal{U}\\right\\Vert _{m-1}^{\\sim}<\\delta\n$\\textit{, give rise to a metric }$g^{\\ast}$\\textit{ which induces a\nLorentzian metric in }$N$\\textit{ which is near to }$g$\\textit{, i.e.,\n}$\\left\\Vert g^{\\prime}-g,N\\right\\Vert _{m-1}^{\\sim}<\\eta$\\textit{.}\n\nIn order to see this it suffices to take $m>4$ (\\cite{CB}) and to make\nappropriate choices for $\\varepsilon$ and $V$ in the Cauchy stability theorem.\nIndeed, let $V$ be any neighbourhood of $N$ in $D^{+}\\left(  \\Sigma\\right)  $\nwith compact closure. Since $\\overline{N}\\subset\\overline{V}$ then\n$J^{-}\\left(  \\overline{N}\\right)  \\subset J^{-}\\left(  \\overline{V}\\right)\n$. Thus, taking $\\mathcal{U}$ to be some neighbourhood of $J^{-}\\left(\n\\overline{V}\\right)  \\cap\\Sigma$ of compact closure in $\\Sigma$, the Cauchy\nstability theorem ensures that there exists $\\delta$ such that the new metric\ngenerated $g^{\\ast}$ satisfies $\\left\\|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde{g},V\\right\\|\n_{m}<\\varepsilon$ for any $\\varepsilon>0$. Now if we take $\\varepsilon\n<\\min(\\xi$,$\\frac{\\eta}{Q})$, we guarantee that the induced metric $g^{\\prime\n}$ is Lorentzian in $N$ and that $\\left\\|  g^{\\prime}-g,N\\right\\|\n_{m-1}^{\\sim}<\\eta$.\n\n\\section{Final Remarks}\n\nFrom this analysis we can conclude that for each ambient space whose existence\nis guaranteed by CM theorem there corresponds an initial data set\\emph{\n}$\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $\\emph{ }in respect to which it possess, in a\ncertain domain, the desirable physical properties of causality and stability.\nThis cannot be ensured by CM theorem itself, but by an indirect reasoning as\ndiscussed above. As a direct consequence of this result we have found that for\nany analytic spacetime there exist initial data in whose Cauchy development\nfor the vacuum Einstein equations it can be locally embedded. The embedding is\nCauchy stable and obeys the domain of dependence property with respect to\n$\\left(  h,K,\\Sigma\\right)  $.\n\nThe extension of the above result to the case where a cosmological constant is\nincluded in the field equations can easily be done. On the other hand the same\nanalysis cannot be applied to the case of a brane in a straightforward way.\nThe problem is that in this case we cannot guarantee the existence of a smooth\nspacelike hypersurface in an open set of $\\widetilde{M},$ at least by the\nmethod employed here, because, as it is known, the brane must be embedded in a\nspace whose metric has a discontinuity in the derivative along the normal\ndirection with respect to the brane. Thus this metric is not analytic in any\nopen set containing the point $p$ and for this reason we cannot use the\nCauchy-Kowalewski theorem to guarantee the existence of a function whose\ngradient is everywhere timelike as we have done in the appendix I.\nNevertheless, this question deserves further investigation.\n\nThe analyticity of the initial data in $\\Sigma$ is a restriction imposed by CM\ntheorem. However, they are not to be considered an unphysical condition.\nIndeed, it must be realized that a great part of the physical solutions, even\nin the relativistic regime, are analytic in a certain domain. The crucial\npoint here is the domain of convergence. What seems to be an unrealistic is a\nfield which is analytic in the whole manifold. Thus we can say that if we\ncould handle the initial data in the spacelike four-dimensional hypersurface,\nit would be physically feasible to prepare initial data which are analytic in\nthe interior of a compact domain $S\\subset\\Sigma$ containing the point $p$ in\norder to generate the desired embedding in the interior of $D(S)$.\n\nMoreover we have seen that $C^{\\infty}$ initial data sufficiently close to an\nanalytic initial data set give rise to embeddings of $C^{\\infty}$spacetimes\nwhich are near to the original analytic spacetime.\\emph{ }This may suggest the\npossibility of extending the CM theorem to a less restrictive differential\nclass of embedddings. We are currently investigating this possibility.\n\n\\section{Appendix I}\n\nConsider the five-dimensional vacuum space$\\left(  \\widetilde{M},\\widetilde\n{g}\\right)  $ into which the spacetime $\\left(  M,g\\right)  $ is locally\nembedded around the point $p\\in M$. Let us take the following equation for the\nunknown function $\\phi:$%\n\\begin{equation}\n\\widetilde{g}^{\\alpha\\beta}\\partial_{\\alpha}\\phi\\partial_{\\beta}\\phi=-1\n\\end{equation}\nIn Gaussian coordinates this equation can be written in the following form\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial\\phi}{\\partial\\psi}=\\pm\\sqrt{-1+\\widetilde{g}^{ij}\\partial\n_{i}\\phi\\partial_{j}\\phi}%\n\\end{equation}\nLet us consider the equation with the positive sign. According to the\nCauchy-Kowalewski theorem, there is an open set $\\widetilde{O}$ in\n$\\widetilde{M}$ containing the point $p$ where the equation has a solution\nprovided the initial condition\n\\begin{equation}\n\\left.  \\phi\\right\\vert _{\\psi=0}=f\\left(  x\\right)\n\\end{equation}\nensures that the right-hand side of that equation be an analytic function of\nits arguments $\\left(  \\partial_{i}\\phi\\right)  $ at the point $p.$ This can\nbe achieved by choosing $f\\left(  x\\right)  $ in such a way that the following\ninequality be satisfied at the point $p:$%\n\\begin{equation}\n\\left.  \\left(  g^{ij}\\partial_{i}f\\partial_{j}f\\right)  \\right\\vert _{p}>1\n\\end{equation}\nThis can always be done. For example, take $f\\left(  x\\right)  =\\lambda\nV_{i}x^{i}$, where $\\lambda>1$ and $V_{i}$ is the component of a unit\nspacelike vector with respect to the spacetime metric at the point $p$.\n\nTherefore, the solution $\\phi$ is a function whose gradient is everywhere\ntimelike in $\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $, and this means\nthat stable causality condition holds on $\\left(  \\widetilde{O},\\widetilde\n{g}\\right)  $. Now let us assume without loss of generality that $\\phi\\left(\np\\right)  =0.$ Considering that the gradient of $\\phi$ does not vanish in\n$\\widetilde{O}$, we know that the inverse image $\\phi^{-1}\\left(  0\\right)  $\nis a hypersurface $\\Sigma$ of $\\widetilde{O}$. Since the gradient of $\\phi$\nwhich is orthogonal to $\\Sigma$ is everywhere timelike, then we can conclude\nthat $\\Sigma$ is a spacelike hypersurface. Moreover, $\\Sigma$ is achronal.\nIndeed, every future directed timelike curve which leaves $\\Sigma$ cannot\nreturn to $\\Sigma$ since $\\phi$ does not change sign along these curves. It\nhappens that an achronal spacelike hypersurface is acausal \\cite{oneill}.\nTherefore $\\Sigma$ is an acausal spacelike hypersurface in $\\left(\n\\widetilde{O},\\widetilde{g}\\right)  $.\n\n\\section{\\bigskip Appendix II}\n\nIn this section we want to determine an estimate of how much near to\n$\\widetilde{g}$ the new metric $g^{\\ast}$ must be in order to induce a\nLorentzian metric in $N$. As described above, this is achieved if the\ncondition%\n\\[\n\\left|  \\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right|  <\\inf_{V}\\left(\n\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right)\n\\]\nholds on $V$. As we have seen, for $m\\geq3$, $\\left\\|  g^{\\ast}-\\widetilde\n{g},V\\right\\|  _{m}<\\varepsilon$ implies that $\\left|  g_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\ast\n}-\\widetilde{g}_{\\mu\\nu}\\right|  <P\\varepsilon$ on $V$. Then, there exist a\ncontinuous field $\\gamma_{\\mu\\nu}$, with $\\left|  \\gamma_{\\mu\\nu}\\right|  <1$\non $V,$ such that $g_{\\mu\\nu}^{\\ast}=\\widetilde{g}_{\\mu\\nu}+\\theta\\gamma\n_{\\mu\\nu}$, where $\\theta=P\\varepsilon$. We want to evaluate $\\det\ng_{ij}^{\\ast}$. First let us define $\\omega^{ijkm}$ as a totally\nanti-symmetric four index `tensor' with $\\omega^{1234}=1$. Thus, we can write%\n\\[\n\\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}=\\omega^{ijkm}\\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{1i}+\\theta\\gamma\n_{1i}\\right)  \\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{2j}+\\theta\\gamma_{2j}\\right)  \\left(\n\\widetilde{g}_{3k}+\\theta\\gamma_{3k}\\right)  \\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{4m}%\n+\\theta\\gamma_{4m}\\right)\n\\]\nThis expression can be rewritten in the following form%\n\\[\n\\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}=\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}+\\theta I_{1}+\\theta^{2}I_{2}%\n+\\theta^{3}I_{3}+\\theta^{4}\\det\\gamma_{ij}%\n\\]\nwhere%\n\\begin{align*}\nI_{1}  &  =\\omega^{ijkm}\\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}%\n\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}+\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\gamma\n_{3k}\\widetilde{g}_{4m}+\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\widetilde{g}%\n_{3k}\\widetilde{g}_{4m}+\\gamma_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\widetilde{g}%\n_{3k}\\widetilde{g}_{4m}\\right) \\\\\nI_{2}  &  =\\omega^{ijkm}\\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}%\n\\gamma_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}+\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}%\n\\gamma_{4m}+\\gamma_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\gamma\n_{4m}+\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\gamma_{3k}\\widetilde{g}_{4m}\\right. \\\\\n&  \\hspace{0.75in}\\left.  +\\gamma_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\gamma_{3k}%\n\\widetilde{g}_{4m}+\\gamma_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\widetilde{g}%\n_{4m}\\right) \\\\\nI_{3}  &  =\\omega^{ijkm}\\left(  \\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\gamma_{3k}%\n\\gamma_{4m}+\\gamma_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\gamma_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}+\\gamma\n_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}+\\gamma_{1i}\\gamma_{2j}%\n\\gamma_{3k}\\widetilde{g}_{4m}\\right)\n\\end{align*}\n\n\n\\bigskip Therefore, we have%\n\n\\[\n\\left\\vert \\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right\\vert \\leq\n\\theta\\left\\vert I_{1}\\right\\vert +\\theta^{2}\\left\\vert I_{2}\\right\\vert\n+\\theta^{3}\\left\\vert I_{3}\\right\\vert +\\theta^{4}\\left\\vert \\det\\gamma\n_{ij}\\right\\vert\n\\]\n\n\nIn order to make estimates of $I_{1},I_{2},I_{3}$ it is necessary to eliminate\n$\\gamma_{ij}$. To this end, let us introduce $\\chi_{ij},$ a $4x4$ matrix with\nall elements equal to unity. Using this matrix, we get the following estimate%\n\\[\n\\left\\vert \\omega^{ijkm}\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\widetilde{g}%\n_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}\\right\\vert \\leq\\left\\vert \\omega^{ijkm}\\right\\vert \\left\\vert\n\\widetilde{g}_{1i}\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\gamma_{4m}\\right\\vert\n<\\left\\vert \\omega^{ijkm}\\right\\vert \\left\\vert \\widetilde{g}_{1i}%\n\\widetilde{g}_{2j}\\widetilde{g}_{3k}\\chi_{4m}\\right\\vert\n\\]\nSimilar inequalities hold for every term that appear in $I_{1},I_{2},I_{3}$.\nThen we have $\\left\\vert I_{s}\\right\\vert <\\left\\vert J_{s}\\right\\vert $, for\n$s=1,2,3$, where $\\left\\vert J_{s}\\right\\vert $ is obtained from $I_{s}$ by\nsubstituting each one of its term for the corresponding estimate as above. It\nhappens that $\\left\\vert J_{s}\\right\\vert $ depends only on $\\widetilde\n{g}_{ij}$. Indeed, it is a function constituted of sum and multiplication of\nthe components of $\\widetilde{g}_{ij}$. Now for the sake of simplicity let us\nconsider that $\\theta<1$, (i.e., $\\varepsilon<\\frac{1}{P}$), then we have%\n\\[\n\\left\\vert \\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right\\vert <P\\varepsilon\n\\left(  \\left\\vert J_{1}\\right\\vert +\\left\\vert J_{2}\\right\\vert +\\left\\vert\nJ_{3}\\right\\vert +4!\\right)  ,\n\\]\nrecalling that $\\left\\vert \\det\\gamma_{ij}\\right\\vert <4!$. Since\n$\\widetilde{g}_{ij}$ is continuous in $\\widetilde{M}$, then the right hand\nside is bounded in any compact set such as $\\overline{V}$. The same is valid\nfor $\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}$. Now define $\\xi_{1}$ as the positive quantity%\n\\[\n\\xi_{1}=\\frac{\\underset{V}{\\inf}\\left\\vert \\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right\\vert\n}{P\\left[  \\underset{V}{\\sup}\\left(  \\left\\vert J_{1}\\right\\vert +\\left\\vert\nJ_{2}\\right\\vert +\\left\\vert J_{3}\\right\\vert +4!\\right)  \\right]  }%\n\\]\nThe value of $\\xi_{1}$ depends only on $\\widetilde{g}$ and $V$ and the chart\n(possibly one can give a definition independent of coordinates, but this\ndefinition is sufficient for our purpose). Now define $\\xi=\\min\\left\\{\n\\frac{1}{P},\\xi_{1}\\right\\}  .$ Taking $\\varepsilon<\\xi,$ we get%\n\\[\n\\left\\vert \\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}-\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right\\vert <\\underset\n{V}{\\inf}\\left\\vert \\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}\\right\\vert\n\\]\nConsidering that $\\det\\widetilde{g}_{ij}<0$ on $\\overline{V},$ we conclude\nthat $\\det g_{ij}^{\\ast}<0$ on $V$ and hence the induced metric in $N$ is Lorentzian.\n\n\\section{Acknowledgements}\n\nThe authors thank CNPq for financial support. This work was partially financed\nby CNPq\/FAPESQ (PRONEX).\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nIn recent papers \\cite{JM,JMS} we have studied a scale invariant extension of the general\ntheory of relativity. The theory postulates a scalar field $\\Phi$ and a\nmodification of the gravitational action such that \\cite{Cheng,Cheng1},\n\\begin{equation}\n{1\\over 2\\pi G} R \\rightarrow \\beta \\Phi^*\\Phi R\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $G$ is the Newton's gravitational constant, $R$ is the Ricci scalar and\n $\\beta$ is a dimensionless constant.\nThe modified action involves no mass parameter and is invariant under the\nscale transformation. \nIt is also convenient to introduce the concept of pseudo-scale\ninvariance. In four dimensions\nthe pseudo-scale transformation can be written as \\cite{Cheng,Cheng1},\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\nx & \\rightarrow & x\\, , \\cr\n\\Phi &\\rightarrow & \\Phi\/\\Lambda\\, ,\\cr\ng^{\\mu\\nu} &\\rightarrow & g^{\\mu\\nu}\/\\Lambda^2\\, , \\cr\nA_\\mu &\\rightarrow & A_\\mu\\, ,\\cr\n\\Psi &\\rightarrow & \\Psi\/\\Lambda^{3\/2}\\, .\n\\label{eq:PSU}\n\\ea\nwhere $x$ is the space-time coordinate, $g^{\\mu\\nu}$ the metric, $A_\\mu$ a \nvector field and $\\Psi$ a spin half field. The scale transformation can\nbe expressed as a combination of the pseudo-scale and the\ngeneral coordinate transformations. Hence as long as\ngeneral coordinate invariance is respected, pseudo-scale invariance is\nequivalent to scale invariance.  \n\nWe also considered a theory with local scale or pseudo-scale invariance\n\\cite{Cheng,Cheng1,Padmanabhan85,Hochberg,Wood,Wheeler,Feoli,Pawlowski,Nishino,Demir}. \nThe transformations in this case are given by Eq. (\\ref{eq:PSU}) with \nthe parameter $\\Lambda\\rightarrow \\Lambda(x)$. \nIn this case we need to introduce the Weyl vector meson, $S_\\mu$,\nbesides the scalar field. \nUnder pseudo-scale transformation the vector field transforms as \n\\cite{Cheng,Cheng1}\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\nS_\\mu \\rightarrow S_\\mu - \\frac 1f\\partial_\\mu ln(\\Lambda(x))\\,.\n\\ea\nThe Lagrangian in this case, ignoring all other fields besides the $\\Phi$ and\n$S_\\mu$, may be written as\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\mc L = -{\\beta\\over 8} \\Phi^2 \\tilde R+ \\mc L_{matter}\n\\label{eq:Lagrangian}\n\\ea\nwhere\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\mc L_{matter} = \\frac12g^{\\mu\\nu}(\\mc D_\\mu\\Phi)(\\mc D_\\nu\\Phi) -\n{\\lambda\\over 4}\\Phi^4 -\n{1\\over 4}g^{\\mu\\rho}g^{\\nu\\sigma}E_{\\mu\\nu}E_{\\rho\\sigma}\\ ,\n\\ea\n$f$ is the gauge coupling constant, $E_{\\mu\\nu}=\\partial_\\mu S_\\nu-\n\\partial_\\nu S_\\mu$, $\\tilde R$ is the modified curvature scalar\n\\cite{Cheng,Cheng1},\n invariant under local pseudo-scale transformation, and\n \\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n \\mc D_\\mu &\\equiv& \\partial_\\mu - fS_\\mu\n \\ea\n is the gauge covariant derivative.\nThe scalar $\\tilde R$ is found to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\tilde R = R - 6f S^\\kappa_{\\ ;\\kappa} - 6f^2 S_\\mu S^\\mu\n\\ea\nwhere $R$ is the standard curvature scalar.\nThe mass of the vector boson $S_\\mu$ has been constrained by cosmological \nobservations to be very light, less than 400 eV, or very heavy, greater than\nPlanck Mass \\cite{Huang}.\n\nA theory with local scale invariance is aesthetically pleasing since it \ndoes not contain any mass parameter in the action. This also implies that\nwe cannot add the cosmological constant term in the action. Hence as long \nas scale invariance is unbroken, cosmological constant is identically zero.\nIn Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS} we argued that scale invariance is broken by the \ncosmological time evolution or equivalently by initial conditions. This\nphenomenon is called cosmological symmetry breaking in Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS}. \nThe authors argue that the universe is a time dependent solution of\nthe equations of motion. All phenomena are described by making a quantum\nexpansion around this time dependent solution. Hence if the symmetries \nof the action are not respected by this solution then these symmetries \nwill be hidden, in analogy to the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking. \nHowever as shown in Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS}, cosmological symmetry breaking\nis not the same as spontaneous symmetry breaking.\n\nOnce scale invariance is broken cosmologically, the theory generates\nthe dimensionful parameters such as the Newton's constant and the\nvacuum (or dark) energy \\cite{Wetterich,Ratra,Fujii,Chiba,Carroll1,Caldwell,Uzan,Amendola,Bean,Jain}. These essentially get related to the initial\nconditions imposed on the scalar field. The fact that this theory leads\nto dark energy has also been noticed in Ref. \\cite{Wei}. However the precise\nnature of identification is different from that in Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS}. \nIn Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS} the authors speculated that if scale invariance \nis broken cosmologically, then this symmetry may not be anomalous. This \nsymmetry may also tame the quantum corrections to the vacuum energy, hence\navoiding the fine-tuning problems in cosmological constant \\cite{Weinberg,Peebles,Padmanabhan,Copeland,Carroll,Sahni,Ellis}.\nAlternate proposals to solve the\ncosmological constant problem are discussed in Ref.\n\\cite{Weinberg,Aurilia,VanDer,Henneaux,Brown,Buchmuller,Henneaux89,Sorkin,Sundrum}.\n\n\nIn the case of global scale invariance, the authors in Ref. \\cite{JMS} found\na solution with $\\Phi$ equal to a constant. \nIn this case our theory reduces to a scalar-tensor model. The \ncosmological implications of such models\nhave been studied extensively in recent literature\n\\cite{Agarwal,Barrow,Barenboim}.\nThe value of the constant field $\\Phi$ can\nbe chosen to fit the experimental value of the gravitational constant.\nFor local scale invariance, $\\Phi$ is constant in the gauge $S_0=0$. \nIn Ref. \\cite{JMS}, the authors set $S_i=0$, where the index $i=1,2,3$. \nHowever in general $S_i$ is not zero. In the present paper we give a general\nsolution to the equations of motion of this model. We find that the solutions\nnaturally lead to both dark energy and dark matter. \n\nIn Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS}, the authors had suggested that the scalar field $\\Phi$ \nmay be the Higgs multiplet. They argued that cosmological symmetry breaking\nalso leads to a breakdown of the electroweak symmetry. In this theory\nthe Higgs particle is absent from the particle spectrum and acts as the\nlongitudinal mode of the vector field $S_\\mu$ \\cite{Cheng,Cheng1}. \nAlthough this is\n a consistent picture, the field $\\Phi$ may also be associated with a\n scalar field in a grand unified theory (GUT).\n In the present paper, we assume $\\Phi$ to be a real\n scalar field. The generalization to the case where $\\Phi$ may be a standard\n model or a GUT scalar field multiplet is straightforward.\n\n\\section{Equations of motion}\nThe Einstein's equations and the equations of motion for $\\Phi$ and $S_\\mu$\nfollowing from Eq. (\\ref{eq:Lagrangian}) are given in Ref. \\cite{JMS}. Here\nwe assume that, at leading order,\nall the fields are independent of space coordinate and \ndepend only on time. In this case the equations simplify considerably. \nWe display these equations below, correcting some typographical errors\nin Ref. \\cite{JMS}.\nThe time-time and space-space components of the Einstein's equation are\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\Phi^2\\left(R_{00} -{R\\over 2}\\right) + 3\\Phi^2f^2(S^iS_i - S_0S_0)\n+ 3f S_0 \\partial_0(\\Phi^2) - g^{ij}\\partial_0(\\Phi^2) \\Gamma^0_{ij} =\n{4\\over \\beta} T_{00}\\, ,\n\\ea\nand\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\Phi^2\\left(R_{ij} - {1\\over 2} g_{ij} R\\right)\n+ 3f^2\\Phi^2 g_{ij} S_\\mu S^\\mu &-& 6f^2\\Phi^2 S_iS_j\n- 3fg_{ij} S^0\\partial_0\\Phi^2\\nonumber\\\\\n&+& g_{ij} \\partial_0\\partial_0\\Phi^2\n-2a\\dot a \\delta_{ij}\\partial_0\\Phi^2\n= {4\\over\\beta} T_{ij}\n\\ea\nrespectively. Here dots represent derivatives with respect to time.\nThe equation of motion for the scalar field is\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\ddot \\Phi - f\\Phi \\dot S_0 + 3\\dot \\Phi{\\dot a\\over a} - f^2S_\\mu S^\\mu\\Phi\n+\\lambda\\Phi^3 - 3f\\Phi S_0{\\dot a\\over a} + {\\beta\\over 4} \\Phi\\tilde R = 0\n\\ea\nThe corresponding equations for $S_0$ and $S_i$ are\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\nf S_0 = {\\dot\\Phi\\over \\Phi}\\,,\n\\label{eq:S0}\n\\ea\n\\begin{eqnarray}} \t\\newcommand{\\ea}{\\end{eqnarray}\n\\ddot S_i + {\\dot a\\over a}\\dot S_i + f^2\\Phi^2 S_i + {3\\over 2}\\beta f^2\\Phi^2\nS_i = 0\n\\label{eq:Si}\n\\ea\nrespectively.\nSince the theory has local scale invariance, we need to fix the gauge in order\nto obtain a unique solution. We choose the gauge $S_0=0$. In this case \nEq. (\\ref{eq:S0}) implies that the scalar field $\\Phi$ is a constant, \nindependent of time. \n\nThus, we set $\\Phi(t) = \\eta={\\rm constant}$ with the above mentioned gauge choice. The \nnonzero constant value of $\\eta$ essentially acts as dark energy \nin the present model. The existence of dark energy is naturally implied\nby cosmologically broken scale invariance.\nThe resulting 0-0 and i-j components of the \nEinstein's equations can then be written as, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n3\\eta^2 {\\dot{a}^{2} \\over a^{2}}={4 \\over \\beta} \\left[{\\lambda \\over 4} \\eta^{4} + {\\dot{S}_i^{2} \\over 2a^{2}}+\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right) \n{f^{2}\\eta^{2}S_i^{2} \\over 2a^{2}}\\right]\n\\label{eqMEE1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\\\\nand\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n3\\eta^{2}\\left(2{\\ddot{a} \\over a}+{\\dot{a}^{2} \\over a^{2}}\\right) = \n{4 \\over \\beta} \\left[{3\\lambda \\over 4}\\eta^{\\,4}-{\\dot{S}_i^{\\,2} \\over 2a^{\\,2}}+\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right){f^{\\,2}\\eta^{\\,2}S_i^{\\,2} \\over 2a^{\\,2}}\\right]\n\\label{eqMEE2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\\\\\nrespectively.\nIn Eqs. \\ref{eqMEE1} and \\ref{eqMEE2}, sum over the subscript $i$ is implied\nin terms containing $S_i^2$ or $\\dot S_i^2$.\nThe equations for $\\eta$ and $S_i$ become,\n\\begin{equation}\n3\\eta^2\\left({\\ddot{a} \\over a}+{\\dot{a}^2 \\over a^2}\\right)={4 \\over \\beta}\\left[{\\lambda \\over 2}\\eta^2+\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right) \\frac{f^2S_i^2\\eta^2}{2a^2}\\right]\\,,\n\\label{eqEta}\n\\end{equation} \n\\begin{equation}\n\\ddot{S}_i+{\\dot{a} \\over a}\\dot{S}_i+\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right)f^{\\,2}\\eta^{\\,2}S_i =0\\,\n\\label{eqSi}\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively.\n\nThe background constant value of the field $\\Phi$ can be related to the \nPlanck mass, $M_p$, by the relation \\cite{Cheng,Cheng1,JM,JMS},\n\\begin{equation}\n\\beta\\eta^2 = {M_p^2\\over 2 \\pi}\n\\end{equation}\nThe mass of the vector field, $S_\\mu$, is found to be,\n\\begin{equation}\nM_S^2 = \\left(1+{3\\beta\\over 2}\\right)f^2\\eta^2\\,. \n\\end{equation}\nIf the vector field $S_\\mu=0$, then\nthe Hubble constant, $H_0$, \nis given by, \n\\begin{equation}\nH_0 = \\sqrt{{\\lambda\\over 3\\beta}}\\,\\eta = \\sqrt{\\lambda\\over 6 \\pi}\\, {M_p\\over \\beta}\\,, \n\\label{eq:hubble1}\n\\end{equation}\nFinally the vacuum energy density is given by,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_\\Lambda = {1\\over 4}\\lambda \\eta^4. \n\\label{eq:vac}\n\\end{equation}\nFrom the relationship between the Hubble constant and the Planck mass, it is clear that either $\\lambda$ is extremely small or $\\beta$ is extremely\nlarge. If we assume $\\beta \\sim O(1)$, then $\\lambda$ is found to be of\norder $10^{-60}$. In Ref. \\cite{JM,JMS} the authors argued that this small\nvalue by itself may not lead to fine tuning problems. These would arise if\nthe quantum corrections at each order require very delicate cancellations\nto maintain the small value of this parameter. The quantum corrections \nin this model have so far not been computed. It is of course also important\nto explain the origin of such a small parameter. This issue is beyond the scope\nof the present paper. However we speculate that such small values of scalar\ncoupling might arise due to the well known triviality of scalar field theories\n\\cite{Aizenman,Frohlich}.\nThe continuum scalar field self coupling is driven to zero by \nrenormalization group analysis. However at length scales smaller than the \nPlanck length, it may not be appropriate to treat space-time as a continuum. \nThe discrete nature of space time might generate a small value for the\nscalar self coupling. \n\n\\section{Cosmological  Solution}\nThe equation of motion for $S_i$, Eq. (\\ref{eqSi}), is similar to that of a damped harmonic oscillator,\nwith weakly time-dependent frequency and decay terms. \nWe seek a solution of the form\n\\begin{equation}\nS_i = n_i\\, {\\cal S}\n\\label{eq:ni}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $n_i$ is a constant unit vector.\nThe solution for ${\\cal S}$ can be expressed as, \n{\\large\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\cal S} &=& Re\\left\\{Ae^{-\\int\\!{\\dot{a} \\over 2a}dt\\,-\\,i\\int\\!\\omega_1dt}+\nBe^{-\\int\\!{\\dot{a} \\over 2a}dt\\,+\\,i\\int\\!\\omega_1dt}\\right\\}\\,,\n\\label{eqSisol}\n\\end{eqnarray}}\nwhere, \\(A\\) and \\(B\\) are assumed to be slowly varying functions of time and \\(\\omega_1^2=\\omega^2-{H^2 \\over 4}\\, ,\\, \\omega^2=\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right)\nf^{\\,2}\\eta^{\\,2}=M_S^2\\,\\, \\textrm{and} \\,\\, H = \\dot{a}\/a \\).\nBy substituting this solution in Eq. (\\ref{eqSi}) and neglecting second derivatives of \\(A\\) and \\(B\\), we get,\n{\\large\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\begin{array}{l l l}\n{\\dot{A} \\over A} + {\\dot{\\omega}_1 \\over 2\\,\\omega_1}=i{\\dot{H} \\over 4\\omega_1} \n& \\Rightarrow & A={k_1 \\over \\sqrt{\\omega_1}}e^{{i \\over 2}sin^{-1}{H \\over 2\\omega}}\\\\\n{\\dot{B} \\over B} + {\\dot{\\omega}_1 \\over 2\\,\\omega_1}=-i{\\dot{H} \\over 4\\omega_1} \n& \\Rightarrow & B={k_2 \\over \\sqrt{\\omega_1}}e^{-{i \\over 2}sin^{-1}{H \\over 2\\omega}}\n\\end{array}\n\\label{ABsol}\n\\end{eqnarray}}\nwhere, $k_1$ and $k_2$ are constants of integration and are, in general, complex.\nSince $\\omega>>H$ we see that $A$ and $B$ vary very slowly with time \ncompared to other terms in $S_i$. The most rapidly varying terms are those containing\n$\\int\\omega_1 dt$ in the exponent. Due to these terms, $S_i$ fluctuates rapidly\nwith time. \n\nDue to the presence of a vector field $S_i$ in our theory, our cosmological\nsolution naturally contains a constant three dimensional unit vector \n$n_i$ defined in Eq. \\ref{eq:ni}. This vector defines a direction in space\nand hence breaks rotational invariance. However the background metric is\nstill isotropic since the vector $n_i$ does not contribute to Einstein's\nequations. Furthermore it is unlikely to lead to very large observable \nconsequences of the breakdown of isotropy. This is because the field $S_\\mu$\ndoes not directly interact with visible matter \\cite{Cheng,Cheng1}. \nNevertheless, it is extremely interesting to determine the cosmological \npredictions of this breakdown of isotropy in view of several observations\nwhich indicate a preferred direction in the universe \n\\cite{Birch,JP99,huts1,huts2,Oliveira,Ralston,Schwarz,Eriksen}.\nModels in which vector fields acquire nonzero vacuum or background \nvalues have also\nbeen considered by many authors \\cite{Ford,Lidsey,Armendariz,Alves,Benini,Wei1,Ackerman,Dulaney1,Yokoyama,Golovnev,Kanno,Koivisto,Bamba,Chiba1,Dulaney,Dimopoulos}. \nIt has been argued that many of these models, which lead to prolonged\nanisotropic accelerated expansion, are unstable \\cite{Himmetoglu}.\nIn our model the vector field does not directly lead to anisotropic \nexpansion, even though it acquires a non-zero background value.\n\n\\subsection{Leading Order Solution}\nAt leading order we can assume that $A$ and $B$ are time independent. The\nleading order solution for ${\\cal S}$ can then be written as\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal S} = {1\\over \\sqrt{a}} (A' \\cos\\theta + B'\\sin\\theta)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\theta = \\int \\omega_1 dt$ and $A'$ \\& $B'$ are some real constants.\nWe also find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\dot {\\cal S} = {1\\over \\sqrt{a}} \\left(-{H\\over 2}p + \\omega_1 q\\right)\\, ,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, $p = A'\\cos\\theta + B'\\sin\\theta$, $q=-A'\\sin\\theta + B'\\cos\\theta$.\nWe next substitute these into the 0-0 component of the Einstein's equation. \nWe define,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {1\\over 2a^2}\\dot S_i^2 + {1\\over 2a^2}\\omega^2 S_i^2\n\\label{eq:rhoSi}\n\\end{equation}\nThis essentially acts as the contribution to the energy density provided\nby the field $S_i$. We find,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {1\\over 2a^3}\\left[\\omega^2(p^2+q^2) + {H^2\\over 4}\n(p^2-q^2) - \\omega_1 H pq\\right] \n\\end{equation}\nwhere, $p^2+q^2 = A'^2+B'^2$, which is a constant. Since $\\omega_1$ is very large,\n$S_i$ is a rapidly oscillating function of time. Hence it is reasonable to\nreplace the oscillatory functions with their time averages. After averaging\nover time, $(p^2-q^2)\\rightarrow 0$ and $pq\\rightarrow 0$. Hence,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {1\\over 2a^3}\\left(A'^2 + B'^2\\right)\\omega^2\n\\end{equation}\nWe next consider the i-j component of the Einstein's equation. \nWe define,\n\\begin{equation}\n-3P_{S_i} = -{1\\over 2a^2}\\dot S_i^2 + {1\\over 2a^2}\\omega^2 S_i^2\n\\label{eq:PSi}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich effectively acts as the contribution of the $S_i$ field to pressure.\nAfter substituting the time averaged values for the oscillatory functions, we get\n\\begin{equation}\nP_{S_i} = 0 \n\\end{equation}\nHence, we find that the field $S_i$ essentially acts as the cold dark matter. \nIts energy density $\\rho_{S_i}$ varies as $1\/a^3$ and its pressure \n$P_{S_i}$ is zero at leading order. A similar phenomenon is seen in the\ncase of coherent axion oscillations \n\\cite{Preskill,Abbott,Dine,Steinhardt,KT}.\n\n\nThe modified Einstein's equations, at leading order, can now be written as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nH^2 = {\\dot a^2\\over a^2} &=& {\\lambda\\over 3\\beta}\\eta^2 + {2\\over 3\\beta\\eta^2 a^3}\n(A'^2+B'^2)\\omega^2\n\\label{eq:H} \\\\\n2{\\ddot a\\over a} + {\\dot a^2\\over a^2} &=& {\\lambda\\over \\beta}\\eta^2\\,.\n\\label{eq:ddota}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nEq. (\\ref{eq:H}) generalizes the expression for the Hubble constant,\nEq. (\\ref{eq:hubble1}), for the case when the vector field is non-zero.\n\n\\subsection{Corrections to the leading order}\nWe next calculate the corrections to the leading order result by taking\ninto account the time dependence of the coefficients $A$ and $B$ in Eq. (\\ref{eqSisol}). Substituting for $A$ and $B$, from Eq. (\\ref{ABsol}), in Eq. (\\ref{eqSisol}), \nwe find,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\cal S} &=& {1 \\over \\sqrt{\\omega_1 a}}\\left[Q\\cos(\\theta-x) + P\\sin(\\theta-x)\n\\right]={1\\over \\sqrt{\\omega_1 a}} U\\\\\n\\dot {\\cal S} &=& {1 \\over \\sqrt{\\omega_1 a}}\\left[{H\\over 2}\\left({\\dot x\\over \n\\omega_1} -1\\right)U + (\\omega_1-\\dot x)V\\right]\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere, \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nU &=& N\\cos\\theta + M\\sin\\theta\\ , V = -N\\sin\\theta+M\\cos\\theta \\\\\n\\textnormal{and}\\,\\,\\,M &=& P\\cos x + Q\\sin x\\ , N = -P\\sin x+Q\\cos x\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nHere, $x = {1 \\over 2}\\sin^{-1}{H \\over 2\\omega} = {1 \\over 2}\\cos^{-1}{\\omega_1\\over\n\\omega}$, $\\dot x = \\dot H\/4\\omega_1 = -\\dot\\omega_1\/H$ and $P$ \\& $Q$ \nare some real constants.\n\nSubstituting these in Eq. (\\ref{eq:rhoSi}), we get,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {1\\over 2\\omega_1a^3}\\Bigg[(U^2+V^2)\\omega^2\n&+&{H^2\\over 4}(U^2-V^2) - \\omega_1H\\left(1-{\\dot x\\over \\omega_1}\\right)^2UV\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&+& (\\dot x^2-2\\omega_1\\dot x)\\left({H^2\\over 4\\omega_1^2}U^2 + V^2\\right)\n\\Bigg]\\, . \n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe third term on the right hand side reduces to $\\omega_1HUV$, since $\\dot x\/\n\\omega_1<<1$. The fourth term simplifies to $-\\dot H V^2\/2\\,$, if we\nneglect terms suppressed by factors of $H\/2\\omega_1$. Hence we find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {1\\over 2\\omega_1a^3}\\Bigg[(U^2+V^2)\\omega^2\n+{H^2\\over 4}(U^2-V^2) - \\omega_1HUV\n- {\\dot H\\over 2}V^2\n\\Bigg]\\, . \n\\end{equation}\nWe again substitute time averaged values for rapidly oscillating functions. \nThis sets $(U^2-V^2)\\rightarrow 0$, $UV\\rightarrow 0$ and $(U^2+V^2)\n=(M^2+N^2)= P^2+Q^2$, which is a constant. A leading order expression for\n$\\dot H$ can be computed using Eq. (\\ref{eq:H}). We find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\dot H = -{1\\over \\beta\\eta^2a^3}(A'^2+B'^2)\\omega^2\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nThus, we get,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho_{S_i} = {(P^2+Q^2)M_S\\over 2 a^3} + {(P^2+Q^2)\\lambda\\eta^2\n\\over 48\\beta a^3 M_S} \n+{(P^2+Q^2)(A'^2+B'^2)M_S \\over 6\\beta\\eta^2 a^6}\\,. \n\\end{equation}\nThe leading term varies as $a^{-3}$ as already found in the previous\nsection. Here, we also find two subleading terms. One of these falls as\n$1\/a^3$ and the second falls much faster, as\n$a^{-6}$, as the universe expands. \nWe similarly find the corrections to the pressure term $P_{S_i}$. We find that,\nusing Eq. (\\ref{eq:PSi}),\n\\begin{equation}\n-3P_{S_i} = {1\\over 2a^3\\omega_1}\\Bigg[(U^2-V^2)\\omega_1^2\n+\\omega_1HUV + {\\dot H\\over 2}V^2 \\Bigg]\\, . \n\\end{equation}\nAgain, substituting time averaged values for the rapidly oscillating functions,\nwe get\n\\begin{equation}\nP_{S_i} = -{1 \\over {6\\,\\omega_1 a^3}}{\\dot{H} \\over 4}(P^2+Q^2) \n= {(P^2+Q^2)(A'^2+B'^2)M_S \\over 24\\beta\\eta^2 a^6}\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nHence, we get a small correction term to $P_{S_i}$, which also decays rapidly\nas $a^{-6}$ as the universe expands.\n\nThe 0-0 and i-j component of the Einstein's equations can, now, be written as, \n\\begin{equation}\n{3\\beta \\over 4}\\eta^2H^2 = {\\lambda \\over 4}\\eta^4 + {(P^2+Q^2) \\over 2\\omega_1a^3} \\left(\\omega^2-{\\dot{H} \\over 4}\\right)\n\\label{eqMEE1sim}\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n{3\\beta \\over 4}\\eta^2\\left(2{\\ddot{a} \\over a} + {\\dot{a}^2 \\over a^2}\\right)= \n{3\\lambda \\over 4}\\eta^4 + {(P^2+Q^2) \\over 2\\omega_1 a^3}{\\dot{H} \\over 4}\n\\label{eqMEE2sim}\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively. The first of the above two equations can be cast in the form,\n\\begin{equation}\n1 = \\Omega_\\Lambda + \\Omega_{S_i}\n\\label{eqSumComp}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\[\n\\Omega_\\Lambda = {\\rho_\\Lambda \\over \\rho_{cr}}\\,,\\Omega_{S_i} = {\\rho_{S_i} \\over \\rho_{cr}} \\,,\n\\]\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\rho_\\Lambda = {\\lambda \\over 4}\\eta^4\\,\\,,  \n\\rho_{S_i} = {(P^2+Q^2) \\over 2\\omega_1a^3}\\left(\\omega^2-{\\dot{H} \\over 4}\\right)\\,\\, {\\rm and} \\,\\, \\rho_{cr} = {3\\beta \\over 4}\\eta^2H^2\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nEq. (\\ref{eqSumComp}) looks like the $\\Lambda$CDM model with $\\Omega_M = \\Omega_{S_i}$.\n\nThus, the energy density $\\rho_{S_i}$ and the corresponding pressure $P_{S_i}$ of the vector field $S_i$, including the correction terms, are obtained as\n\\[\n\\rho_{S_i} = {c_1 \\over 2\\omega_1a^3}\\left(\\omega^2 + {c_2 \\over a^3}\\right)\n\\]\nand\n\\[\nP_{S_i}= {c_1c_2 \\over 6\\,\\omega_1a^6}\n\\]\nwhere, \n$$ c_1 = P^2+Q^2\\ ,\\ c_2={A'^2+B'^2\\over 4\\beta}\\left(1+{3\\beta\\over 2}\\right)f^2\\ .$$\nIn the limit $x\\rightarrow 0$ and $\\omega_1\\rightarrow \\omega$, we find\n$A'=Q\/\\sqrt{\\omega}$ and $B'=P\/\\sqrt{\\omega}$. \n\nWe can make an estimate of the term $(P^2+Q^2)$. Since the recent cosmological observations support a flat $\\Lambda$CDM model, we can equate the second term on right hand side of Eq. (\\ref{eqMEE1sim}), evaluated at present time, to $\\rho_{M,0}$. The contribution due to $\\dot{H}$ is negligible. Thus, we get,\n\\[\nP^2+Q^2 \\approx {3M_P^2 H_0^2\\Omega_{M} \\over 4 \\pi M_S }\n\\]\nwhere $\\Omega_M$ is computed at the current time.\n\\section{Including the contribution due to radiation}\nIn this section, we obtain a set of dynamical equations to study the evolution of different components of the universe since the beginning of the \nradiation dominated era. For this purpose we introduce, by hand, the contribution due to radiation. We expect to reproduce the usual Big Bang evolution where radiation dominates at early times, followed by dark matter and dark energy dominated eras, respectively, at late times. We introduce a radiation term with energy density $\\rho_R $ and it's corresponding pressure term $P_R $ in the energy-momentum tensor $T_{\\mu \\nu}$. The resulting equations are solved numerically.\n\n\nIt is convenient to introduce the following variables,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& X^2 = \\frac{\\lambda}{3\\beta}{\\eta^2 \\over H^2} = \\Omega_\\Lambda\\,, \\\\ \\nonumber\n&& Y^2 = {2 \\over 3\\beta}{{\\cal S}^2 \\over a^2\\eta^2} = \\Omega_1\\,, \\\\ \\nonumber\n&& Z^2 = {2 \\over 3\\beta}\\left(1+{3\\beta \\over 2}\\right){{f^2 {\\cal S}^2} \\over {a^2 H^2}} = \\Omega_2\\,, \\\\\n&& R = \\frac{4}{3\\beta}{\\rho_{R,0} \\over a^4\\eta^2H^2}=\\Omega_R \\,. \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nHere, $\\Omega_{S_i} = \\Omega_1 + \\Omega_2$, $\\rho_{R,0}$ is the \nradiation energy density in the current era and \nthe prime denotes derivative with respect to $\\ln a$. \nHence for any function $f$,\n$$f' \\equiv {df\\over d\\ln a}={1\\over H}{df\\over dt}\\,.$$\nWith these variables, we can cast the equations (\\ref{eqMEE1}), (\\ref{eqEta}) and (\\ref{eqSi}), along with $\\rho_R$ and $P_R$, in a dimensionless form, to obtain the following set of equations :\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& X' = X(2-2X^2-Z^2) \\,, \\\\\\nonumber\n&& Y' = -Y(2X^2+Z^2)-{\\kappa \\over 2}XZ \\,, \\\\ \\nonumber\n&& Z' = Z(1-2X^2-Z^2)+{\\kappa \\over 2}XY \\,, \\\\ \\nonumber\n&& R' = -2R(2X^2+Z^2) \\,,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere, $\\kappa =\\sqrt{{12\\beta \\over \\lambda}}{\\omega \\over \\eta} = \n \\sqrt{3}M_PM_S\/\\sqrt{2\\pi\\rho_V}   $.\n\nWe studied the dynamical equations numerically from the beginning of \nradiation dominated era ($\\ln a = -29$) till today ($\\ln a = 0$).\nThe results are presented in Fig. (\\ref{omega-i}). In the graphs we only show\nresults for the range $\\ln a = [-14,0]$, as radiation is the only dominant \ncomponent in the omitted regions. The plots show the results for \nthree values of $\\kappa=50, 200, 500$. The initial conditions for these\nthree cases have been chosen so as to match the final observed values\nof $\\Omega_M$ and $\\Omega_\\Lambda$ \\cite{Dodelson,Essence,Kowalski,wmap}. \n\nAs is evident from the plots, varying $\\kappa$ varies the frequency of oscillations. Besides that the results are almost identical, as long as $\\kappa>>1$. \nThis can be understood from the expression of $\\kappa$. \nFor fixed values of $M_P$ and $\\rho_V$, \nincreasing $\\kappa$ increases $\\omega$ or\n$M_S$, which implies more rapid oscillations. Furthermore as seen\nfrom our analytic results, applicable when radiation energy density\nis negligible, we reproduce the standard $\\Lambda CDM$ model in the large\n$\\kappa$ limit.  \n\n\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[angle=-90,width = 0.94\\textwidth]{test3.eps}\n\\caption{The ratio of energy density to the critical energy density, \n$\\Omega_i$, for different components as\n a function of $\\ln(a)$ for $\\kappa=50,200, 500$.}\n\\label{omega-i}\n\\end{figure}\n\\end{center}\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nWe have analyzed a locally scale invariant generalization of Einstein's \ngravity. The theory requires introduction of a scalar and a vector \nfield. The scale invariance in the theory is broken by a recently introduced\nmechanism called the cosmological symmetry breaking. \nWe have shown that this theory naturally leads to both dark energy and \ndark matter. Due to scale invariance the cosmological constant term is\nabsent in the action. The solutions to the equations of motion admit a \nconstant, non-zero value of the scalar field, which leads to a small \ncosmological constant or dark energy. The cold dark matter arises in the\nform of vacuum oscillations of the vector field. \nWe have shown that the theory behaves very similar to the $\\Lambda CDM$ \nmodel with negligible corrections. The precise values of the energy densities\nof different components are fixed by the initial conditions. Some of the\nparameters in the model take very small values and it is necessary \nto find an explanation for such small values. Furthermore it is \nimportant to compute quantum corrections in this model since that\nwill determine whether the model suffers from fine tuning problems. \nThe model can be generalized to include the standard\nmodel fields. The \nscalar field may then be identified with the Higgs multiplet. In this\ncase the Higgs particle is absent from the particle spectrum and hence\nprovides a very interesting test of the model. Alternatively the scalar\nfield might be identified with a GUT scalar field multiplet. This possibility\nhas so far not been studied in the literature.\n\n\\bigskip\n\n{\\bf Acknowledgements :} Pavan Kumar Aluri and Naveen Kumar Singh thank \nthe Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR), India for providing \ntheir Ph.D. fellowships. Their fellowship numbers are  \nF.No.09\/092(0413)\/2005-EMR-I and F.No.09\/092(0437)\/2005-EMR-I, respectively.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nProbabilistic ``paradoxes'' can have unexpected applications in computational problems,\nbut mathematical tools often do not exist to prove the reliability of the resulting computations, so instead practitioners have to rely on heuristics, intuition and experience.\nA case in point is the Kruskal Count, a probabilistic concept discovered by Martin Kruskal and popularized in a card trick by Martin Gardner, which exploits the property that for many Markov chains on $\\ZZ$ independent walks will intersect fairly quickly when started at nearby states.\nIn a 1978 paper John Pollard applied the same trick to a mathematical problem related to code breaking, the Discrete Logarithm Problem: solve for the exponent $x$, given the generator $g$ of a cyclic group $G$\nand an element $h\\in G$ such that $g^x=h$.\n\nPollard's Kangaroo method is based on running two independent random walks on a cyclic group $G$, one starting at a known state (the ``tame kangaroo'') and the other starting at the unknown but nearby value of the discrete logarithm $x$ (the ``wild kangaroo''), and terminates after the first intersection of the walks.\nAs such, in order to analyze the algorithm it suffices to develop probabilistic tools for examining the expected time until independent random walks on a cyclic group intersect, in terms of some measure of the initial distance between the walks.\n\nPast work on problems related to the Kruskal Count seem to be of little help here.\nPollard's argument of \\cite{Pol00.1} gives rigorous results for specific values of $(b-a)$, but the recurrence relations he uses can only be solved on a case-by-case basis by numerical computation.\nLagarias et.al. \\cite{LRV09.1} used probabilistic methods to study the {\\em distance traveled} before two walks intersect, but only for walks in which the number of steps until an intersection was simple to bound.\nAlthough our approach here borrows a few concepts from the study of  the Rho algorithm in \\cite{KMPT07.1}, such as examining the expected number of intersections and some measure of its variance,\na significant complication in studying this algorithm is that when $b-a\\ll|G|$ the kangaroos will have proceeded only a small way around the cyclic group before the algorithm terminates.\nAs such, mixing time is no longer a useful notion, and instead a notion of convergence is required which occurs long before the mixing time.\nThe tools developed here to avoid this problem may prove of independent interest when examining other pre-mixing properties of Markov chains.\n\nThe key probabilistic results required are upper and lower bounds on expected time until intersection of independent walks on $\\ZZ$ started from nearby states.\nIn the specific case of the walk involved in the Kangaroo method these bounds are equal, and so the lead constants are sharp, which is quite rare among the analysis of algorithms based on Markov chains.\nMore specifically we have:\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:main}\nSuppose $g,h\\in G$ are such that $h=g^x$ for some $x\\in[a,b]$.\nIf $x$ is a uniform random integer in $[a,b]$ then the expected number of group operations required by the Distinguished Points implementation of Pollard's Kangaroo method is\n$$\n(2+o(1))\\sqrt{b-a}\\,.\n$$\nThe expected number of group operations is maximized when $x=a$ or $x=b$, at\n$$\n(3+o(1))\\sqrt{b-a}\n$$\n\\end{theorem}\n\nPollard \\cite{Pol00.1} previously gave a convincing but not completely rigorous argument for the first bound,\nwhile the second was known only by a rough heuristic.\nGiven the practical significance of Pollard's Kangaroo method for solving the discrete logarithm problem, we find it surprising that there has been no fully rigorous analysis of this algorithm, particularly since it has been 30 years since it was first proposed in \\cite{Pol78.1}.\n\nThe paper proceeds as follows.\nA general framework for analyzing intersection of independent walks on the integers is constructed in Section \\ref{sec:collision}.\nThis is followed in Section \\ref{sec:prelim} by a detailed description of the Kangaroo method,\nwith analysis in Section \\ref{sec:kangaroo}.\nThe paper finishes in Section \\ref{sec:generalize} with an extension of the results to more general step sizes, resolving a conjecture of Pollard's.\n\n\n\\section{Uniform Intersection Time and a Collision Bound} \\label{sec:collision}\n\nGiven two independent instances $X_i$ and $Y_j$ of a Markov Chain on $\\ZZ$, started at nearby states $X_0$ and $Y_0$ (as made precise below), we consider the expected number of steps required by the walks until they first intersect.\nObserve that if the walk is increasing, i.e. $\\P(u,v)>0$ only if $v>u$, then to examine the number of steps required by the $X_i$ walk it suffices to let $Y_j$ proceed an infinite number of steps and then evolve $X_i$ until $X_i=Y_j$ for some $i,j$.\nThus, rather than considering a specific probability $\\Pr{X_i=Y_j}$ it is better to look at $\\Pr{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j}$.\nBy symmetry, the same approach will also bound the expected number of steps required by $Y_j$ before it reaches a state visited by the $X_i$ walk.\n\nFirst, however, because the walk is not ergodic then\nalternate notions resembling mixing time and a stationary distribution will be required.\nHeuristic suggests that after some warm-up period the $X_i$ walk will be sufficiently randomized that at each subsequent step the probability of colliding with the $Y_j$ walk is roughly the inverse of the average step size.\nOur replacement for mixing time will measure the number of steps required for this to become a rigorous statement:\n\n\\begin{definition}\nA {\\em stopping time} for a random walk $\\{X_i\\}_{i=0}^{\\infty}$ is a random variable $T\\in{\\mathbb N}$ such that the event $\\{T=t\\}$ depends only on $X_0,\\,X_1,\\,\\ldots,\\,X_t$.\nThe average time until stopping is $\\overline{T}=\\EE T$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{definition} \\label{def:uniform-time}\nConsider a Markov chain $\\P$ on an infinite group $G$.\nA {\\em nearly uniform intersection time} $T(\\epsilon)$ is a stopping time such that for some $U>0$ and $\\epsilon\\geq 0$ the relation\n$$\n(1-\\epsilon)U \\leq \\Pr{\\exists j:\\,X_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}=Y_j} \\leq (1+\\epsilon)U\n$$\nholds for every $\\Delta\\geq 0$ and every $(X_0,Y_0)$ in a designated set of initial states $\\Omega\\subset G\\times G$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nIn general the probability that two walks will ever intersect may go to zero in the limit.\nHowever, if a walk is {\\em transitive} on $\\ZZ$ (i.e. $\\P(u,v)=\\P(0,v-u)$), {\\em increasing} (i.e. $\\P(u,v)>0$ only when $v>u$), and {\\em aperiodic} (i.e. $gcd\\{k:\\,\\P(0,k)>0\\}=1$),\nthen one out of every $\\bar{S} = \\sum_{k=1}^\\infty k\\P(0,k)$ states is visited and a stopping time will exist satisfying\n$$\n\\frac{1-\\epsilon}{\\bar{S}} \\leq \\Pr{\\exists j:\\,X_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}=Y_j} \\leq \\frac{1+\\epsilon}{\\bar{S}}\\,.\n$$\nAn obvious choice of starting states are all $Y_0\\leq X_0$, but for reasons that will be apparent later it better serves our purposes to expand to the case of $Y_0<X_0+S_{max}$, where $S_{max}=\\max_{s\\in S} s$ is the largest step size.\nBy transitivity and since no intersection can occur until the first time $Y_j\\geq X_0$ then it actually suffices to verify for the case $X_0=0 \\leq Y_0 < S_{max}$.\n\nA natural approach to studying collisions is to consider an appropriate random variable counting the number of intersections of the two walks.\nTowards this, let $S_N$ denote the number of times the $X_i$ walk intersects the $Y_j$ walk in the first $N$ steps, i.e.\n$$\nS_N = \\sum_{i=0}^N \\bone_{\\{\\exists j : \\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\\,.\n$$\n\nIf one intersection is unlikely to be followed soon by others then $\\Pr{S_N>0}\\approx \\EE(S_N)$.\nTo measure the gap between the two quantities, let $B_{\\epsilon}$ be the worst-case expected number of collisions between two independent walks before the nearly uniform intersection time $T(\\epsilon)$. To be precise:\n$$\nB_{\\epsilon} = \\max_{Y_0 < X_0+S_{max}} E \\sum_{i=1}^{T(\\epsilon)} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j : \\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\n$$\n\nThe main result of this section bounds the expected number of steps until a collision.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:birthday}\nGiven an increasing transitive Markov chain on $\\ZZ$, if two independent walks have starting states with $Y_0<X_0+S_{max}$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\EE \\min\\{i>0:\\,\\exists j,\\,X_i=Y_j\\}\n      &\\leq& 1+\\left(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\bar{S}(1+B_{\\epsilon})}+\\sqrt{\\overline{T(\\epsilon)}}}{1-\\epsilon}\\right)^2 \\\\\n\\EE \\min\\{i>0:\\,\\exists j,\\,X_i=Y_j\\}\n      &\\geq& 1+\\bar{S}\\,\\frac{\\left(\\max\\{0,\\,1-\\sqrt{B_{\\epsilon}}\\}\\right)^2}{1+\\epsilon}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{theorem}\n\nIn particular, when $\\epsilon$ and $B_\\epsilon$ are close to zero and $\\bar{S}\\gg \\overline{T(\\epsilon)}$ then\n$$\n\\EE \\min\\{i>0:\\,\\exists j,\\,X_i=Y_j\\} \\sim \\bar{S}\\,,\n$$\nwhich makes rigorous the heuristic that the expected number of steps needed until a collision is the average step size.\n\nThe steps before a nearly uniform intersection time act as a sort of burn-in period, so it will be easier if we discard them in the analysis. As such, let\n$$\n\\S_\\Delta =\\sum_{i=T(\\epsilon)+1}^{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\\,.\n$$\n\nThe first step in the proof is to examine the number of collisions after the burn-in:\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:expectations}\nUnder the conditions of Theorem \\ref{thm:birthday}, if $\\Delta\\geq 0$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n(1-\\epsilon)\\,\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}} \\leq& \\displaystyle E[\\S_\\Delta] &\\leq (1+\\epsilon)\\,\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}} \\\\\n& \\displaystyle E[\\S_\\Delta \\mid \\S_\\Delta>0] &\\leq 1 + B_{\\epsilon} + E[\\S_\\Delta\\mid X_0=Y_0=0]\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe expectation $E[\\S_\\Delta]$ satisfies\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE[\\S_\\Delta]\n &=&    E \\sum_{i=1}^{\\Delta} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_{T(\\epsilon)+i}=Y_j\\}} \\\\\n &=&    \\sum_{i=1}^{\\Delta} \\Pr{\\exists j:\\,X_{T(\\epsilon)+i}=Y_j}  \\\\\n &\\geq& \\Delta\\,\\frac{1-\\epsilon}{\\bar{S}}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThe upper bound on $E[\\S_\\Delta]$ follows by taking $(1+\\epsilon)$ in place of $(1-\\epsilon)$.\n\nNow for $E[\\S_\\Delta \\mid \\S_\\Delta>0]$.\nObserve that if $X_i=Y_j$ and $k>i$ then $X_k=Y_\\ell$ can occur only for $\\ell>j$, because the $X$ and $Y$ walks are increasing.\nHence, if $\\tau=\\min\\{i>0\\,:\\,\\exists j,\\,X_{T(\\epsilon)+i}=Y_j\\}$ is the time of the first intersection, the number of intersections after time $\\tau$ can be found by considering the case $X_0=Y_0$ and then computing the expected number of intersections until $X_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta-i}$.\nThe total number of intersections is then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\lefteqn{E[\\S_\\Delta \\mid \\S_\\Delta>0]} \\\\\n &=& \\sum_{i=1}^{\\Delta} \\Pr{\\tau=T(\\epsilon)+i}\\left(1+E_{X_0=Y_0} \\sum_{k=1}^{\\Delta-i} \\bone_{\\{\\exists \\ell:\\,X_k=Y_\\ell\\}}\\right) \\\\\n &\\leq& 1 + E_{X_0=Y_0} \\sum_{k=1}^{T(\\epsilon)} \\bone_{\\{\\exists \\ell:\\,X_k=Y_\\ell\\}} + E_{X_0=Y_0} \\sum_{k=T(\\epsilon)+1}^{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta} \\bone_{\\{\\exists \\ell:\\,X_k=Y_\\ell\\}} \\\\\n &\\leq& 1 + B_{\\epsilon} + E[\\S_\\Delta\\mid X_0=Y_0=0]\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{proof}\n\nThis shows that if $B_{\\epsilon}$ is small then one intersection is rarely followed by others, or more rigorously:\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:prob}\nUnder the conditions of Theorem \\ref{thm:birthday}, if $\\Delta\\geq 0$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Pr{S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}>0} &\\leq& \\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,(1+\\epsilon) + B_{\\epsilon} \\\\\n\\Pr{S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}>0} &\\geq& \\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,\\frac{(1-\\epsilon)^2}{1+B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}}\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nObserve that a random variable $Z\\geq 0$ satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:positive}\n\\Pr{Z>0} = \\frac{E[Z]}{E[Z\\mid Z>0]}\n\\end{equation}\nbecause $E[Z] = \\Pr{Z=0}\\,E[Z \\mid Z=0] + \\Pr{Z>0}\\,E[Z \\mid Z>0 ]$.\n\nFor the lower bound let $Z=\\S_\\Delta$ in \\eqref{eqn:positive}, so that\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Pr{S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}>0}&\\geq&\\Pr{\\S_\\Delta>0}\n  \\geq \\frac{E[\\S_\\Delta]}{1 + B_{\\epsilon} + \\max E[\\S_\\Delta]} \\\\\n  &\\geq& \\frac{(1-\\epsilon)\\Delta\/\\bar{S}}{1 + B_{\\epsilon} + (1+\\epsilon)\\Delta\/\\bar{S}}\n   \\geq \\frac{1-\\epsilon}{1+\\epsilon}\\,\\frac{\\Delta\/\\bar{S}}{\\frac{1+B_{\\epsilon}}{1+\\epsilon}+\\Delta\/\\bar{S}}\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\nFor the upper bound take $Z=S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}$ in \\eqref{eqn:positive}, so that\n$$\n\\Pr{S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}>0} = \\frac{E[S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}]}{E[S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}\\mid S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}>0]}\\leq E [S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}] \\,.\n$$\nSince $Y_0>X_0$ then the expectation $E[S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}]$ satisfies\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE[S_{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta}]\n  &=&    E \\sum_{i=0}^{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}} \\\\\n  &=& E \\sum_{i=1}^{T(\\epsilon)} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}} + \\sum_{i=T(\\epsilon)+1}^{T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}} \\\\\n &\\leq& B_{\\epsilon} + \\Delta\\,\\frac{1+\\epsilon}{\\bar{S}} \\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:birthday}]\nThe walk will be broken into blocks of length $T(\\epsilon)+\\Delta$ for some $\\Delta$ to be optimized later, overlapping only at the endpoints, and each block analyzed separately.\n\nMore formally, inductively define $N_0=0$, let $T_k(\\epsilon)$ be the nearly uniform intersection time started at state $X_{N_{k-1}}$, and set $N_k=N_{k-1}+T_k(\\epsilon)+\\Delta$.\nThe number of intersections from time $N_k$ to $N_{k+1}$ is\n$$\nS_{N_k}^{N_{k+1}} = \\sum_{i=N_k}^{N_{k+1}} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j : \\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\\,.\n$$\nBy taking $X_0 \\leftarrow X_{N_k}$ and $Y_0\\leftarrow \\min\\{Y_j:\\, Y_j\\geq X_{N_k}$\\} then Lemma \\ref{lem:prob} implies\n$$\n\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}(1+\\epsilon) + B_{\\epsilon}\n \\geq \\Pr{S_{N_k}^{N_{k+1}}>0\\,\\mid\\, S_{N_k}=0}\n \\geq \\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}} \\frac{(1-\\epsilon)^2}{1+B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}}\\,.\n$$\nSince\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Pr{S_{N_\\ell}=0}\n  &=& \\prod_{k=0}^{\\ell-1} \\Pr{S_{N_k}^{N_{k+1}}=0\\mid S_{N_k=0}}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nthen\n$$\n\\left(1-\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,\\frac{(1-\\epsilon)^2}{1+B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}}\\right)^\\ell\n  \\geq \\Pr{S_{N_\\ell}=0}\n  \\geq \\left(1-B_{\\epsilon}-\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,(1+\\epsilon) \\right)^\\ell\\,.\n$$\n\nThe blocks will now be combined to prove the theorem.\n\nFirst, the upper bound.\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE \\min\\{i:\\,S_i>0\\}-1\n    &=& E \\sum_{i=0}^\\infty \\bone_{\\{S_i=0\\}}-1\n     =  \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty E\\sum_{i=N_k+1}^{N_{k+1}} \\bone_{\\{S_i=0\\}} \\\\\n    &=& \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty \\Pr{S_{N_k}=0}\\,E\\left[\\sum_{i=N_k+1}^{N_{k+1}} \\bone_{\\{S_i=0\\}}\\,{\\Bigr |}\\,S_{N_k}=0\\right] \\\\\n    &\\leq&  \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty \\left(1-\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,\\frac{(1-\\epsilon)^2}{1+B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}}\\right)^k\\,\\left(\\overline{T(\\epsilon)}+\\Delta\\right) \\\\\n     &=&    \\frac{\\bar{S}}{\\Delta}\\,\\frac{1+B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}}{(1-\\epsilon)^2}\\,\\left(\\overline{T(\\epsilon)}+\\Delta\\right)\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThis is minimized when $\\Delta = \\sqrt{\\bar{S}(1+B_{\\epsilon})\\overline{T(\\epsilon)}}$.\n\nThe lower bound is similar.\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\lefteqn{ E \\min\\{i:\\,S_i>0\\}-1\n    =  \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty E\\sum_{i=N_k+1}^{N_{k+1}} \\bone_{\\{S_i=0\\}} } \\\\\n    &\\geq& \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty \\Pr{S_{N_{k+1}}=0}\\,E\\left[\\sum_{i=N_k+1}^{N_{k+1}} \\bone_{\\{S_i=0\\}}\\,{\\Bigr |}\\,S_{N_{k+1}}=0\\right] \\\\\n    &\\geq& \\sum_{k=0}^\\infty \\left(1-B_{\\epsilon}-\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,(1+\\epsilon)\\right)^{k+1}\\,\\Delta \\\\\n    &=&    \\left(\\frac{1}{B_{\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\Delta}{\\bar{S}}\\,(1+\\epsilon)}-1\\right)\\,\\Delta\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThis is maximized when $\\Delta=\\max\\left\\{0,\\frac{\\sqrt{B}(1-\\sqrt{B})\\bar{S}}{1+\\epsilon}\\right\\}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe following lemma makes it possible to bound $B_{\\epsilon}$ given bounds on multi-step transition probabilities.\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:B_epsilon}\nIf $T(\\epsilon)$ is a nearly uniform intersection time then\n$$\nB_{\\epsilon} \\leq \\sum_{i=1}^M (1+2i)\\max_{u,v}\\P^i(u,v) + M\\,\\left(\\frac{2(S_{max}\/\\bar{S})^2}{\\bar{S}}(1+\\epsilon) + e^{-M}\\right)\\,.\n$$\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{remark} \\label{rmk:bound}\nTo apply the lemma in the unbounded case observe that if $M$ is a constant then $T'(\\epsilon')=\\min\\{T(\\epsilon),M\\}$ is a bounded nearly uniform intersection time with $\\epsilon'=\\epsilon+\\frac{\\Pr{T(\\epsilon)>M}}{1\/\\bar{S}}$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nIf $Y_0<X_0$ then no intersections can occur until the first time $Y_j\\geq X_0$ so the maximum in the definition of $B_\\epsilon$ is achieved by some $Y_0\\geq X_0$, i.e.\n$$\nB_{\\epsilon} = \\max_{X_0\\leq Y_0<X_0+S_{max}} E\\sum_{i=1}^{T(\\epsilon)} \\bone_{\\{\\exists j:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\\,.\n$$\n\nThe $\\{Y_j\\}$ walk will be examined in three pieces: a burn-in, a mid-range, and an asymptotic portion.\nIn particular, since $T(\\epsilon)\\leq M$ then for any constant $N\\geq M$\n$$\nB_\\epsilon\n \\leq  \\max_{X_0\\leq Y_0 < X_0+S_{max}}\n\t\t\tE\\sum_{i=1}^M \\left(\\sum_{j=0}^M \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j\\}} + \\sum_{j=M+1}^N \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j\\}} + \\bone_{\\{\\exists j>N:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\\right)\n$$\n\nConsider the first summation.\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE \\sum_{i=1}^M \\sum_{j=0}^M \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j\\}}\n  &=& E \\sum_{i=1}^M \\sum_{j=0}^M \\sum_w \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j=w\\}} \\\\\n  &=& \\sum_{i=1}^M \\sum_{j=0}^M \\sum_w \\P^i(X_0,w)\\P^j(Y_0,w) \\\\\n  &\\leq& \\sum_{i=1}^M \\max_{u,v} \\P^i(u,v)\\,\\sum_{j=0}^i (1+\\bone_{\\{j<i\\}}) \\max_z \\sum_w \\P^j(z,w) \\\\\n  &=&    \\sum_{i=1}^M (1+2i)\\max_{u,v} \\P^i(u,v)\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThe inequality follows by letting $i$ denote the larger of the two indices and $j$ the smaller,\nwhile the final equality is because $\\sum_w\\P^j(z,w)=1$.\n\nNext, the case when $M<j\\leq N$.\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE \\sum_{i=1}^M \\sum_{j=M+1}^N \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j\\}}\n  &=& E \\sum_{j=M+1}^N \\sum_{i=1}^M \\bone_{\\{X_i=Y_j\\}} \\\\\n  &=& \\sum_{j=M+1}^N \\Pr{\\exists i\\in[1\\ldots M]:\\,X_i=Y_j} \\\\\n  &\\leq& E \\sum_{j=T_Y(\\epsilon)+1}^{T_Y(\\epsilon)+N} \\Pr{\\exists i:\\,X_i=Y_j} \\\\\n  &\\leq& N\\frac{1+\\epsilon}{\\bar{S}}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThe second equality is because the $X_i$ walk is increasing, so for fixed $j$ there can be at most one $i$ with $X_i=Y_j$. The first inequality is because $X_i$ and $Y_j$ are instances of the same Markov Chain, and so the stopping time $T(\\epsilon)$ induces a nearly uniform intersection time $T_Y(\\epsilon)\\leq M$ for the $Y_j$ walk as well.\nThis applies as long as $X_0<Y_0+S_{max}$ as is the case here.\n\nFinally the case that $j>N$. By Hoeffding's Inequality\n$$\n\\Pr{Y_N-Y_0\\leq \\frac 12\\,N\\bar{S}}\n  \\leq \\exp\\left(\\frac{-N^2\\bar{S}^2}{2N\\,S_{max}^2}\\right)\n    =  \\exp\\left(-\\frac 12\\,N\\left(\\bar{S}\/S_{max}\\right)^2\\right)\\,.\n$$\nSet $N=2M(S_{max}\/\\bar{S})^2$. Then with probability $1-e^{-M}$\n$$\nY_N > Y_0 + \\frac 12\\,N\\bar{S}\n   \\geq Y_0+M\\,S_{max}\n   \\geq X_0+M\\,S_{max}\n   \\geq X_M\\,.\n$$\nIn particular, $\\Pr{Y_N\\leq X_M} \\leq e^{-M}$ and so\n$$\nE \\sum_{i=1}^M \\bone_{\\{\\exists j>N:\\,X_i=Y_j\\}}\n  \\leq M\\,\\Pr{Y_N\\leq X_M} \\leq M\\,e^{-M}\\,.\n$$\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Catching Kangaroos}\n\nThe tools developed in the previous section will now be applied to a concrete problem, Pollard's Kangaroo Method for discrete logarithm.\n\n\n\\subsection{Pollard's Kangaroo Method} \\label{sec:prelim}\n\nWe describe here the Kangaroo method, originally known as the Lambda method for catching Kangaroos.\nThe Distinguished Points implementation of \\cite{VW99.1} is given because it is more efficient than the original implementation of \\cite{Pol78.1}.\n\n\\vspace{2ex}\\noindent{\\bf Problem:} {\\em Given $g,h\\in G$, solve for $x\\in[a,b]$ with $h=g^x$.}\n\n\\vspace{1ex}\\noindent{\\bf Method:} Pollard's Kangaroo method (distinguished points version).\n\n\\vspace{1ex}\\noindent{\\bf Preliminary Steps:}\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item Define a set $D\\subset G$ of ``distinguished points'', with $\\frac{|D|}{|G|}=\\frac{c}{\\sqrt{b-a}}$ for some constant $c$.\n\\item Define a set of jump sizes $S=\\{s_0,s_1,\\ldots,s_d\\}$.\nWe consider powers of two, $S=\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^d$, with\n$d\\approx\\log_2 \\sqrt{b-a} + \\log_2\\log_2 \\sqrt{b-a}-2$, chosen so that elements of $S$ average to a jump size of $\\bar{S}\\approx\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$.\nThis can be made an equality by taking $p:\\,S\\to[0,1]$ to be a probability distribution such that $\\bar{S}=\\sum_{s\\in S} s\\,p(s)=\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$.\n\\item Finally, a hash function $F:G\\to S$\nwhich ``randomly'' assigns jump sizes such that $\\Pr{F(\\g)=s}\\approx p(s)$ for every $\\g\\in G$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\vspace{1ex}\\noindent{\\bf The Algorithm:}\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item Let $Y_0=\\frac{a+b}{2}$, $X_0=x$, and $d_0=0$. Observe that $g^{X_0}=hg^{d_0}$.\n\\item Recursively define $Y_{j+1}=Y_j+F(g^{Y_j})$ and likewise $d_{i+1}=d_i+F(hg^{d_i})$. This implicitly defines $X_{i+1}=X_i+F(g^{X_i})=x+d_{i+1}$.\n\\item If $g^{Y_j}\\in D$ then store the pair $(g^{Y_j},Y_j-Y_0)$ with an identifier $T$ (for tame). Likewise if $g^{X_i}=hg^{d_i}\\in D$ then store $(g^{X_i},d_i)$ with an identifier $W$ (for wild).\n\\item Once some distinguished point has been stored with both identifiers $T$ and $W$, say $g^{X_i}=g^{Y_j}$ where $(g^{X_i},d_j)$ and $(g^{Y_j},Y_j-Y_0)$ were stored, then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nY_j\\equiv X_i\\equiv x+d_i \\mod |G| && \\\\\n\\Longrightarrow\\ x\\equiv Y_j-d_i \\mod|G| &&\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThe $Y_j$ walk is called the ``tame kangaroo'' because its position is known, whereas the position $X_i$ of the ``wild kangaroo'' is to be determined by the algorithm.\nThis was originally known as the Lambda method because the two walks are initially different, but once $g^{Y_j}=g^{X_i}$ then they proceed along the same route, forming a $\\lambda$ shape.\n\nTheorem~\\ref{thm:main} makes rigorous the following commonly used heuristic:\nSuppose $X_0\\in[a,b]$ is a uniform random value and $Y_0\\geq X_0$.\nRun the tame kangaroo infinitely far.\nThe wild kangaroo requires $\\EE(Y_0-X_0)\/\\bar{S}=(b-a)\/(4\\bar{S})$ steps to reach $Y_0$.\nSubsequently, at each step the probability that the wild kangaroo lands on a spot visited by the tame kangaroo is roughly $\\wp=\\bar{S}^{-1}$,\nso the expected number of additional steps by the wild kangaroo until a collision is then around $\\wp^{-1}=\\bar{S}$.\nBy symmetry the tame kangaroo also averaged $\\wp^{-1}$ steps until a collision.\nAbout $\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{c}$ additional steps are required until a distinguished point is reached.\nSince $X_i$ and $Y_j$ are incremented simultaneously the total number of steps taken is then\n$$\n2\\left(\\frac{b-a}{4\\bar{S}} + \\bar{S} + \\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{c}\\right)\\,.\n$$\nThis is minimized when $\\bar{S}=\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$, with $(2+2c^{-1})\\sqrt{b-a}$ steps sufficing.\n\nIf, instead, the distribution of $X_0$ is unknown then in the worst case $|Y_0-X_0|\/\\bar{S} = (b-a)\/(2\\bar{S})$ and the bound is $(3+2c^{-1})\\sqrt{b-a}$ when $\\bar{S}=\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$.\n\nOur analysis assumes that the Kangaroo method involves a truly random hash function:\nif $\\g\\in G$ then $F(\\g)$ is equally likely to be any of the jump sizes, independent of all other $F(\\g')$.\nIn practice different hash functions will be used on different groups -- whether over a\nsubgroup of integers mod p, elliptic curve groups, etc -- but in general the hash is chosen to ``look random.''\nSince the Kangaroo method applies on all cyclic groups then a constructive proof would involve the impossible task of explicitly constructing a hash\non every cyclic group, and so the assumption of a truly random hash is made in all attempts at analyzing it of which we are aware \\cite{Tes01.1,VW99.1,Pol00.1}.\nA second assumption is that the distinguished points are well distributed with $c\\xrightarrow{(b-a)\\to\\infty}\\infty$; either they are chosen uniformly at random, or if $c=\\Omega(d^2\\log d)$ then roughly constant spacing between points will suffice.\nThe assumption on distinguished points can be dropped if one instead analyzes Pollard's (slower) original algorithm, to which our methods also apply.\n\n\n\\subsection{Analysis of the Kangaroo Method}  \\label{sec:kangaroo}\n\nIn order to understand our approach to bounding time until the kangaroos have visited a common location, which we call a {\\em collision}, it will be helpful to consider a simplified version of the Kangaroo method.\nFirst, observe that because hash values $F(\\g)$ are independent then $X_i$ and $Y_j$ are independent random walks at least until they intersect, and so to bound time until this occurs it suffices to assume they are independent random walks even after they have collided.\nSecond, these are random walks on $\\ZZ\/|G|\\ZZ$, so if we drop the modular arithmetic and work on $\\ZZ$ then the time until a collision can only be made worse.\nThird, since the walks proceed strictly in the positive direction on $\\ZZ$ then in order to determine the number of hops the ``wild kangaroo'' (described by $X_i$) takes until it is caught by the ``tame kangaroo'' (i.e. $X_i=Y_j$ on $\\ZZ$),\nit suffices to run the tame kangaroo infinitely long and only after this have the wild kangaroo start hopping.\n\nThe intersection results of the previous section will now be applied to the Kangaroo method.\nRecall that $d$ is chosen so that the average step size in $S=\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^d$ is roughly $\\bar{S}\\approx\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$,\nand that this can be made an equality by choosing step sizes from a probability distribution $p$ on $S$.\nIn this section we analyze the natural setting where $\\frac{\\gamma}{d+1}\\geq p(s)\\geq\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}$ for some constant $\\gamma\\geq 1$; indeed $\\gamma=2$ is sufficient for some $p,\\,d$ to exist with $\\bar{S}=\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$ exactly.\n\nThe first step in bounding collision time will be to construct a nearly uniform intersection time.\nOur approach involves constructing a tentative stopping time $\\T_{tent}$ where $Y_{\\T_{tent}}$ is uniformly distributed over some interval of length $L$,\nand then accepting or rejecting this in such a way that $Y_j$ will be equally likely to visit any state beyond the left endpoint of the interval in which it is first accepted.\nIt follows that once $X_i\\geq Y_\\T$ then the probability that $X_i=Y_j$ for some $j$ will be a constant.\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:intersection_time}\nConsider a Kangaroo walk with step sizes $S=\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^d$ and transition probabilities $\\frac{\\gamma}{d+1}\\geq p(s)\\geq\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}$ for some constant $\\gamma\\geq 1$.\nThen there is a bounded nearly uniform intersection time with $\\Omega=\\{(X_0,Y_0):\\,|X_0-Y_0|<S_{max}=2^d\\}$ and\n$$\nT\\left(\\frac{2}{d+1}\\right)\\leq 64\\gamma^5(d+1)^5\\,.\n$$\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nConsider a lazy walk $\\tilde{Y}_t$ with $\\tilde{Y}_0=Y_0$ in which a step consists of choosing an item $s\\in S$ according to $p$, and then half the time make the transition $u\\to u+s$ and half the time do nothing.\nThe probability that this walk eventually visits a given state $y\\in\\ZZ$ is exactly the same as for the $Y_j$ walk, so it suffices to replace $Y_j$ by $\\tilde{Y}_t$ when showing a nearly uniform intersection time.\n\nFor each $s\\in S$ let $\\delta_s$ denote the step size taken the first time $s$ is chosen, so that $\\Pr{\\delta_s=0}=\\Pr{\\delta_s=s}=1\/2$.\nDefine a tentative stopping time $\\T_{tent}$ by stopping the first time every $s\\in S-\\{2^d\\}=\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^{d-1}$ has been chosen at least once.\nObserve that $\\delta:=\\sum_{s\\in S-\\{2^d\\}} \\delta_s\\in\\{0,1,\\ldots, 2^d-1\\}$ uniformly at random.\nAccept the stopping time with probability $\\sum_{s\\in S:\\,s>\\delta} p(s)$ and set $\\T=\\T_{tent}$.\nIf it is rejected then re-initialize all $\\delta_s$ values (and $\\delta$) and continue the $\\tilde{Y}_t$ walk until a new stopping time is determined, which can again be either accepted or rejected.\n\nObserve that $\\delta\\in\\{0,1,\\ldots,2^d-1\\}$ has distribution $\\Pr{\\delta=\\ell}\\propto \\sum_{s>\\ell} p(s)$.\nThe normalization factor is $\\sum_{\\ell=0}^{2^d-1}\\sum_{s>\\ell}p(s) = \\sum_{s\\in S} p(s)s = \\bar{S}$\nand so the distribution is\n$$\n\\Pr{\\delta=\\ell} = \\frac{\\sum_{s>\\ell}p(s)}{\\bar{S}}\n$$\n\nThis stopping rule was constructed so that if $y\\geq\\tilde{Y}_\\T-\\delta$ then, as will now be shown,\n$\\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=y}=\\bar{S}^{-1}$,\nmaking $T=\\min\\{i:\\,X_i\\geq \\tilde{Y}_\\T-\\delta\\}$ a uniform intersection time for $X_i$.\n\nSuppose $y=\\I_\\T$.\nThe quantity $\\I_\\T:=\\tilde{Y}_\\T-\\delta$ is independent of $\\delta$ because it depends only on those steps not included in a $\\delta_s$.\nIt follows that $\\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=y\\,\\mid\\,\\I_\\T}=\\Pr{\\delta=0}=\\bar{S}^{-1}$.\n\nIf $y>\\I_\\T$ then inductively assume that $\\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=v}=\\bar{S}^{-1}$ for all $v\\in[\\I_\\T,y)$.\nThen\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\lefteqn{\\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=y\\,\\mid\\,\\I_\\T} } \\\\\n  &=& \\Pr{\\delta=y-\\I_\\T\\,\\mid\\,\\I_\\T} + \\sum_{\\I_\\T\\leq v<y} \\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=v\\,\\mid\\,\\I_\\T}\\,p(y-v) \\\\\n  &=& \\frac{\\sum_{v<\\I_\\T} p(y-v)}{\\bar{S}} + \\frac{\\sum_{\\I_\\T\\leq v<y} p(y-v)}{\\bar{S}} = \\frac{1}{\\bar{S}}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\nIt remains only to compute $T=\\min\\{i:\\,X_i\\geq \\tilde{Y}_\\T-\\delta\\}$, which in turn requires a value for $\\T$.\n\nTo determine time until a tentative stopping time $\\T_{tent}$ it suffices to find the probability that in $j$ steps some generator in $\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^d$ has not been chosen.\nThe probability a specified generator is chosen in step $j$ is at least $\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}$, and so\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Pr{\\T_{tent}>j}\n  &\\leq& \\sum_{k=0}^d \\Pr{s=2^k \\textrm{ has not been chosen in $j$ steps}} \\\\\n  &\\leq& (d+1)\\left(1-\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}\\right)^j \\\\\n  &\\leq& (d+1)e^{-j\/\\gamma(d+1)}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nAs a result\n$$\n\\Pr{\\T_{tent} \\geq \\gamma(d+1)\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)} \\leq \\frac{1}{2\\gamma(d+1)}\n$$\nEach tentative stopping time is accepted with probability\n$$\n\\sum_{\\delta=0}^{2^d-1} \\frac{1}{2^d}\\times\\sum_{s>\\delta} p(s)\n   = \\frac{\\sum_s p(s)s}{2^d}\n   = \\frac{\\bar{S}}{2^d}\n   \\geq \\frac{1}{2^d}\\,\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}S_{max}}{d+1} = \\frac{1}{\\gamma(d+1)}\n$$\nIt follows that in $2\\gamma(d+1)\\ln(1\/\\epsilon)$ rounds of $\\gamma(d+1)\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)$ steps each the probability that a stopping time has not yet been determined is then at most\n$$\n\\left(\\frac{1}{2\\gamma(d+1)} + 1- \\frac{1}{\\gamma(d+1)}\\right)^{2\\gamma(d+1)\\ln(1\/\\epsilon)}\n \\leq \\epsilon\n$$\nand so if $\\T(\\epsilon)=2\\gamma^2(d+1)^2\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)\\ln(1\/\\epsilon)$ then\n$\\Pr{\\T > \\T(\\epsilon)} \\leq \\epsilon$.\n\nFinally, it remains to determine $T(\\epsilon)$.\nIf $X_i\\geq \\tilde{Y}_{\\T(1\/(d+1)\\bar{S})}$ then\n$$\n\\big| \\Pr{\\exists t:\\,X_i=\\tilde{Y}_t}-\\bar{S}^{-1} \\big| \\leq \\frac{1}{(d+1)\\bar{S}}\n$$\nBy Lemma \\ref{lem:Hoeffding} below, if\n$M = 4\\gamma^3(d+1)^3\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)\\ln((d+1)\\bar{S})$\nthen\n$$\n\\Pr{X_M < \\tilde{Y}_{\\T(1\/(d+1)\\bar{S})}} \\leq 1\/[(d+1)\\bar{S}]\n$$\nand so overall $\\big| \\Pr{\\exists t:\\,X_i=\\tilde{Y}_\\T}-\\bar{S}^{-1} \\big| \\leq 2\/[(d+1)\\bar{S}]$.\nIt follows that\n$$\nT\\left(\\frac{2}{d+1}\\right) \\leq M = 4\\gamma^3(d+1)^3\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)\\ln((d+1)\\bar{S})\n$$\nThis simplifies via the relations $\\ln(x)\\leq x$ and\n$$\n\\bar{S} = \\sum_{k=0}^d 2^k\\,p(2^k) \\leq \\frac{\\gamma}{d+1}\\,\\sum_{k=0}^d 2^k<\\frac{2\\gamma}{d+1}\\,2^d\n$$\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe following simple application of Hoeffding's Inequality was used above.\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:Hoeffding}\nSuppose a non-negative random variable has average $\\bar{S}$ and maximum $S_{max}$.\nIf $N$ is a constant and $\\delta_1,\\,\\delta_2,\\,\\ldots,\\,\\delta_M$ are some $M$ independent samples then the sum $X=\\sum_{i=1}^M \\delta_i$ satisfies\n$$\n\\Pr{X < (1+N)S_{max}} \\leq \\epsilon\n$$\nwhen\n$$\nM = 2\\frac{S_{max}}{\\bar{S}}\\,\n\\max\\left\\{ \\frac{S_{max}}{\\bar{S}}\\ln(1\/\\epsilon),\\,1+N\\right\\}\n$$\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nRecall Hoeffding's Inequality, that if $Y$ is the sum of $n$ independent random variables with values in $[a,b]$ then for any $t\\geq 0$\n$$\n\\Pr{Y -\\EE Y \\geq t} \\leq \\exp\\left(\\frac{-2t^2}{n(b-a)^2}\\right)\\,.\n$$\nTaking $Y=-X$ as the sum of $-\\delta_i\\in[-S_{max},0]$ it follows that\n$$\n\\Pr{X-\\EE X \\leq -\\frac{M}{2}\\,\\bar{S}} \\leq \\exp\\left(\\frac{-M^2\\bar{S}^2}{2M\\,S_{max}^2}\\right)\n$$\nPlugging in $\\EE X = M\\bar{S}$ with $M$ from the Lemma finishes the proof.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIt remains only to upper bound $B_{\\epsilon}$.\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:B_epsilon-kangaroo}\nThe nearly uniform intersection time of Lemma \\ref{lem:intersection_time}\nhas\n$$\nB_{\\epsilon}=\\Theta\\left(\\frac{1}{d+1}\\right)=o_d(1)\n$$\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThis will be shown by applying Lemmas \\ref{lem:B_epsilon} and \\ref{lem:intersection_time}.\n\nFirst consider the walk $\\hat{\\P}$ where $\\gamma=1$, i.e. step sizes are chosen uniformly at random.\nObserve that $\\hat{\\P}^i(u,v)=\\frac{c_i(u,v)}{(d+1)^i}$ where $c_i(u,v)$ is the number of ways to write $v-u$ as the sum of $i$ (non-distinct, ordered) elements of $\\{2^k\\}_{k=0}^d$.\nIn the binary expansion of $v-u$ a non-zero bit $2^\\ell$ can only arise as the sum of at most $i$ steps chosen from $\\{2^k\\}_{k=\\ell-i+1}^\\ell$, and so any string of more than $i-1$ consecutive zeros can be contracted to $i-1$ zeros without effecting the number of ways to write $v-u$.\nThis shows that $c_i=\\max_{u,v} c_i(u,v)$ can be determined by considering only the bit strings $v-u$ of length $i^2$,\nand in particular it is upper bounded by a constant independent of $d$, i.e. $\\hat{\\P}^i(u,v)=O((d+1)^{-i})$.\n\nIn the non-uniform case $\\P^i(u,v)\\leq \\gamma^i\\,\\hat{\\P}^i(u,v) \\leq \\frac{c_i\\gamma^i}{(d+1)^i}$.\n\nIf $i\\geq 12$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\max_{u,v}\\P^i(u,v)\n  &=& \\max_{u,v} \\sum_w \\P^{i-12}(u,w)\\P^{12}(w,v) \\\\\n  &\\leq& \\max_{u,v} \\sum_w \\P^{i-12}(u,w)\\max_{w}\\P^{12}(w,v) \\\\\n  &=& \\max_{w,v} \\P^{12}(w,v) \\leq \\frac{c_{12}\\gamma^{12}}{(d+1)^{12}}\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\nHence, with $M=64\\gamma^5(d+1)^5$ then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\lefteqn{ \\sum_{i=1}^M (1+2i)\\max_{u,v}\\P^i(u,v) } \\\\\n &\\leq& \\frac{3*\\gamma^1}{d+1}\n      +\\sum_{i=2}^{11} \\frac{(1+2i)*c_i\\gamma^i}{(d+1)^i}\n      +\\frac{(1+2M)(M-11)c_{12}\\gamma^{12}}{(d+1)^{12}} \\\\\n &=& \\frac{3\\gamma+O(1\/(d+1))}{d+1}\\,.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\nA bound of $B_\\epsilon = \\frac{3\\gamma+o_d(1)}{d+1}$ follows by applying Lemma \\ref{lem:B_epsilon} with $S_{max}=2^d$ and\n$$\n\\bar{S}=\\sum_{k=0}^d 2^k\\,p(2^k) \\geq \\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}\\,\\sum_{k=0}^d 2^k>\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}\\,2^d\\,.\n$$\n\nFor a corresponding lower bound let $X_0=Y_0$ so that $B_\\epsilon \\geq \\Pr{X_1=Y_1}=\\sum_{s\\in S}p(s)^2$.\nBy Cauchy-Schwarz\n$$\n1=\\sum_{s\\in S} p(s)\\times 1 \\leq \\sqrt{\\sum_{s\\in S} p(s)^2}\\sqrt{\\sum_{s\\in S} 1^2}\n$$\nand so $\\sum_{s\\in S} p(s)^2\\geq \\frac{1}{|S|}=\\frac{1}{d+1}$ and $B_\\epsilon \\geq \\frac{1}{d+1}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nAll the tools are now in place to prove the main result of the paper.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:main}]\nNote that the group elements $g^{(2^k)}$ can be pre-computed, so that each step of a kangaroo requires only a single group multiplication.\n\nAs discussed in the heuristic argument of Section~\\ref{sec:prelim}, an average of $\\frac{|Y_0-X_0|}{\\bar{S}}$ steps are needed to put the smaller of the starting states (e.g. $Y_0<X_0$) within $S_{max}=2^d$ of the one that started ahead.\nIf the Distinguished Points are uniformly randomly distributed then the heuristic for these points is again correct.\nIf instead they are roughly constantly spaced and $c=\\Omega(d^2\\log d)$ then observe that, in the proof of Lemma~\\ref{lem:intersection_time} it was established that after some $\\T_{tent}$\nsteps the kangaroos will be uniformly random over some interval of length $2^d\\sim \\frac 14\\sqrt{b-a}\\log_2\\sqrt{b-a}$.\nIt is easily seen that $\\EE\\T_{tent}\\leq\\gamma(d+1)^2$,\nso if the Distinguished Points cover a $\\frac{c}{\\sqrt{b-a}}$ fraction of vertices then an average of $\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{c}$ such samples are needed, independent of $\\T_{tent}$.\nIt follows that an average of $\\EE(\\T_{tent})\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{c}=o_d(1)*\\sqrt{b-a}$ extra steps suffice.\n\nIt remains to make rigorous the claim regarding $\\wp^{-1}$.\nIn the remainder we may thus assume that $|Y_0-X_0|< 2^d=S_{max}$.\nBy Lemma~\\ref{lem:intersection_time} a bounded nearly uniform intersection time has\n$T\\left(\\frac{2}{d+1}\\right)\\leq 64\\gamma^5(d+1)^5$,\nwhile Lemma \\ref{lem:B_epsilon-kangaroo} shows that $B_{\\epsilon}=o_d(1)$.\nThe upper bound of Theorem \\ref{thm:birthday} is then $\\left(\\frac 12+o_d(1)\\right)\\sqrt{b-a}$\nwhile the lower bound is $\\left(\\frac 12-o_d(1)\\right)\\sqrt{b-a}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\section{Resolution of a Conjecture of Pollard} \\label{sec:generalize}\n\nIn the previous section the Kangaroo method was analyzed for the most common situation, when the generating set is given by powers of $2$.\nPollard conjectured in \\cite{Pol00.1} that the same result holds for powers of any integer $n\\geq 2$, again under the assumption that $\\bar{S}\\approx \\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$.\nIn this section we show his conjecture to be correct.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\nWhen step sizes are chosen from $S=\\{n^k\\}_{k=0}^d$ with transition probabilities $\\frac{\\gamma}{d+1}\\geq p(s)\\geq\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}$ such that $\\bar{S}=\\frac{\\sqrt{b-a}}{2}$,\nthen Theorem \\ref{thm:main} still holds.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWe detail only the differences from the case when $n=2$.\n\nTo construct a nearly uniform intersection time, once again consider the walk $\\tilde{Y}_t$ which half the time does nothing.\nPartition the steps into blocks of $(n-1)$ consecutive steps each.\nIf the same generator $s\\in\\{n^k\\}_{k=0}^{d-1}$ is chosen at every step in a block then let $m$ be the number of times a step of size $s$ was taken (recall it's lazy), so $\\Pr{m=\\ell}=\\frac{\\binom{n-1}{\\ell}}{2^{n-1}}$, and with probability $\\binom{n-1}{m}^{-1}$ set $\\delta_s=m\\,s$ if $\\delta_s$ is undefined.\nIn all other cases do not change any $\\delta_s$ after the $(n-1)$ steps have been made.\nStop when every $\\delta_s$ has been defined.\n\nObserve that $\\delta_s$ is uniformly chosen from the possible values $\\{m\\,s\\}_{m=0}^{n-1}$, so the sum $\\delta=\\sum_s \\delta_s$ is a uniformly random $d$ digit number in base $n$.\nOnce again, accept this candidate stopping time with probability $\\sum_{s\\in S:\\,s>\\delta}p(s)$,\nand otherwise reset the $\\delta_s$ values and find another candidate stopping time.\nThe same proof as before verifies that if $\\I_t:=\\tilde{Y}_\\T-\\delta$ then\n$\\Pr{\\exists t:\\,\\tilde{Y}_t=y\\,\\mid\\,y\\geq\\I_\\T}=1\/\\bar{S}$.\n\nNext, determine the number of steps required for the $\\tilde{Y}_t$ walk to reach this stopping time.\nFirst consider the time required until a tentative stopping time $\\T_{tent}$.\nFor a specified block and generator $s=n^k$, the probability $s$ was chosen at every step in the block is at least $\\left(\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}\\right)^{n-1}$, and when this happens the probability the resulting value is accepted is\n$$\n\\sum_{m=0}^{n-1} \\frac{\\binom{n-1}{m}}{2^{n-1}}\\times \\frac{1}{\\binom{n-1}{m}} = \\frac{n}{2^{n-1}}\\,.\n$$\nCombining these quantities, if $\\delta_s$ was previously undefined then the probability it is assigned a value in this block is\n$$\n\\wp\\geq\\left(\\frac{\\gamma^{-1}}{d+1}\\right)^{n-1}\\frac{n}{2^{n-1}}\\,.\n$$\n\nThe probability of not stopping within $N(n-1)$ steps is then\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Pr{\\T_{tent}>N(n-1)}\n  &\\leq& (d+1)(1-\\wp)^N \\\\\n  &\\leq& (d+1)\\exp\\left(-\\frac{Nn}{(2\\gamma(d+1))^{n-1}}\\right)\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nand so when $N=(2\\gamma(d+1))^{n-1}n^{-1}\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)$ then this shows\n$$\n\\Pr{\\T_{tent}\\geq (2\\gamma(d+1))^{n-1}\\ln(2\\gamma(d+1)^2)}\\leq \\frac{1}{2\\gamma(d+1)}\n$$\n\nThe remaining calculations are not specific to the base $2$ case and so they carry through smoothly,\nleading to a nearly uniform intersection time of\n$$\nT\\left(\\frac{2}{d+1}\\right) = 2(2\\gamma(d+1))^{n+3}\\ln n\n$$\n\nTo extend Lemma \\ref{lem:B_epsilon-kangaroo} replace $2^k$ by $n^k$ throughout,\nuse $M=O\\left((d+1)^{n+3}\\right)$, and bound large powers of $\\P$ in terms of $\\P^{2n+8}$ instead of $\\P^{12}$.\nThis results in $B_\\epsilon=\\Theta(1\/(d+1))$ again.\n\nThe proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:main} carries through with only obvious adjustments.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\n\nThe authors thank Dan Boneh for encouraging them to study the Kangaroo method,\nand John Pollard for several helpful comments.\n\n\nA preliminary version appeared in the Proceedings of $41^{\\textrm{st}}$ ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2009).\nThis journal version extends the notion of nearly uniform intersection time to the setting of stopping times,\ncontains simplifications which led to sharper results,\nand on the application side the solution to Pollard's conjecture given in Section \\ref{sec:generalize} is entirely new.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nQuantum mechanical resonance effects   play an important role in physics and technology. A well known   example is resonant tunneling through potential barriers. Tunneling through two barriers, which becomes \nresonant at a specific external bias voltage, underlies the functioning of resonant tunneling diodes.  Their applications range from high-speed microwave systems to novel digital logic circuits. \nResonant tunneling through potential barriers is interesting from the theoretical point of view as well. To investigate this effect, one usually  considers double  \nor multi-well structures made of semiconductor\\cite{ch.es.74, datta.ch2-4-5, gu.li.96, er.po.11} or hybrid superconductor-semiconductor\\cite{gi.pi.01} materials, \ngraphene\\cite{ro.dr.16, yo.ki.09, la.wa.15, fe.je.12} and graphene-boron\\cite{gu.to.16, fa.le.15, br.lo.15, ba.fe.15, mi.tu.14, brey.14, ba.ga.14} heterostructures. Different approaches are used \nto theoretically investigate their properties. One can mention, for example,  modified optical Bloch equations\\cite{gu.li.96}, self-consistent non-equilibrium Green's functions,\\cite{er.po.11, go.sh.16u}\nthe  envelope wave-function formalism,\\cite{go.sh.16u}  adiabatic approximations\\cite{pr.sj.96}, combinations of   quantum transport random matrix theory  with  Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations\\cite{gi.pi.01}, \nfirst-principle density functional theory\\cite{br.lo.15}, Bardeen transfer Hamiltonian approach\\cite{fe.je.12}, Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin\\cite{ro.dr.16}, and Lorentzian approximation for the quasi-particle \nspectral function\\cite{gu.to.16}. However, to our knowledge, effects of electron correlations on resonant tunneling have so far been either neglected or included in a perturbative or mean-field way only.\nHere, we  present a first study which examines the effect of correlations on resonant tunneling in an accurate and non-perturbative manner. \n\n\nRecent experimental progress makes it possible to fabricate correlated \nheterostructures\\cite{an.ga.99, is.og.01,ga.ah.02, oh.mu.02, oh.hw.04, zh.wa.12} with atomic resolution and in particular, growing atomically  abrupt layers with different electronic structures\\cite{is.og.01, \noh.mu.02, ga.ah.02}. Here, we study a system which is composed of alternating strongly correlated and non-correlated metallic layers, as well as band insulator layers (see Fig.~\\ref{schematicp}). \nThe geometry of the system is such that electrons are confined in three  wells connected by tunneling. The non-equilibrium situation is driven by applying a bias-voltage to the leads, which introduces \na homogeneous electric field in the central region.  \nResonant tunneling is mainly induced by the particular geometry, rather than the specific values of the system parameters. Since our goal is to investigate the qualitative behavior of this effect,  \nwe mainly perform calculations for one representative set of model parameters. In addition, in order to address the effect of correlations on resonance tunneling, we also investigate the behavior of the \nresonance current as a function of the interaction $U$.\n\n\nIn contrast to the previous works mentioned above, we use dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT)\\cite{ge.ko.96, voll.10, me.vo.89}, which can treat electron-electron correlations accurately and is one \nof the most powerful methods to investigate high-dimensional correlated systems. Originally, DMFT  was developed to treat equilibrium situations, and later  extended\\cite{ao.ts.14, sc.mo.02u, fr.tu.06, free.08, \njo.fr.08, ec.ko.09, okam.07, okam.08, ar.kn.13, ti.do.15, do.ti.16} to the  nonequilibrium case. This is formulated within the nonequilibrium Green's function approach originating from the works of \nKubo\\cite{kubo.57}, Schwinger\\cite{schw.61}, Kadanoff, Baym\\cite{ba.ka.61, kad.baym} and Keldysh\\cite{keld.65}.\n\nDMFT is a comprehensive, thermodynamically consistent and non-perturbative scheme which becomes exact in infinite dimensions, but usually quite well describes two and three dimensional systems. The only \napproximation in DMFT is locality of the self-energy. The latter can be calculated by mapping the original problem onto a single impurity Anderson model (SIAM)\\cite{ande.61}, whose  parameters are determined \nself-consistently. For  homogeneous systems  the self-energies are the same for each lattice site due to  translational symmetry,  and, therefore, one needs to solve only one SIAM problem. For systems with broken \ntranslational invariance,  as in the present case, the self-energies depend on the layer index $z$. Therefore, it is necessary to generalize the  formalism and take into account the spatial \ninhomogeneity of the system\\cite{po.no.99.sm, po.no.99.ms, po.no.99.ldmft, po.no.99.emfl, free.06, no.ma.10, is.li.09, no.ma.11, okam11, mi.fr.01, free.04, ok.mi.04.ldmft, do.ko.97, do.ko.98, so.yu.08, we.ha.11u, he.co.08, \nko.hi.08, ko.hi.09,  no.ka.09,  ko.ba.11, bl.go.11, ki.ki.11, au.as.15, sn.ti.08, sn.ti.11, ti.sc.12, go.ti.10, sc.ti.13, au.ti.15, ze.fr.09, okam.07, okam.08, ec.we.13, ec.we.14, ha.fr.11}, and, \naccordingly to solve several SIAM problems.\n\nIn the present work  the nonequilibrium SIAM problem  is treated by using a recently developed auxiliary master equation approach\\cite{ar.kn.13,do.nu.14,ti.do.15}, which treats the impurity problem within an \nauxiliary system consisting of a correlated impurity, a small number of uncorrelated bath sites and two Markovian environments described by a generalized master equation.\n\nThe paper is organized as follows: Sec.~\\ref{Model} we introduce the Hamiltonian of the system. In Sec.~\\ref{Method} we illustrate the application of  real-space dynamical mean-field theory within the \nnon-equilibrium steady-state  Green's function  formalism for a system consisting of many layers. Afterwards, in Sec.~\\ref{Results}, we present our results. Our conclusions are presented in  \nSec. \\ref{Conclusions}.\n\n\n\n\\section{Model}\\label{Model}\n\nThe model, consisting of a central region ($c$) with $L=12$ infinite and translationally invariant layers sandwiched between two semi-infinite metallic leads ($\\alpha=l,r$), is described by the Hamiltonian \n(see Fig.~\\ref{schematicp}):\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{Hamiltonian}\n{\\cal H}&=&\n\\hspace{-0.15cm}\n-\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\sum_{z, \\langle {\\bf r}^{\\phantom\\dagger}_\\perp,{\\bf r}'_\\perp\\rangle_z, \\sigma}\\hspace{-0.5cm}t_{z} c_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma}^\\dagger c_{z,{\\bf r}'_\\perp,\\sigma}^{\\phantom\\dagger} \n-\\hspace{-0.45cm}\\sum_{\\langle z, z'\\rangle, {\\bf r}_\\perp, \\sigma}\\hspace{-0.45cm} t_{zz'} c_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma}^\\dagger c_{z',{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma}^{\\phantom\\dagger} \\nonumber \\\\\n&+&\\hspace{-0.1cm}\\sum_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp}\\hspace{-0.1cm} U_z n_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\uparrow}n_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\downarrow} \n+\\hspace{-0.1cm}\\sum_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma}\\hspace{-0.1cm}\\varepsilon_z n_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma} \\, ,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith nearest-neighbor  inter-layer (intra-layer) hopping $t_{zz'}$ ($t_{z}$), local onsite Hubbard interaction $U_z$ and local energy $\\varepsilon_z$. $\\langle z, z'\\rangle$ stands for neighboring $z$ and $z'$ \nlayers and $\\langle {\\bf r}^{\\phantom\\dagger}_\\perp,{\\bf r}'_\\perp\\rangle_z$ stands for neighboring ${\\bf r}_\\perp$ and ${\\bf r}'_\\perp$ sites of the $z$-th layer. $c_{z,{\\bf r}_\\perp,\\sigma}^\\dagger$ \ncreates an electron at site ${\\bf r}_\\perp$  of  layer $z$ with spin ${\\sigma}$ and \n$n_{z, {\\bf r}_\\perp, \\sigma}=c_{z, {\\bf r}_\\perp, \\sigma}^\\dagger c_{z, {\\bf r}_\\perp, \\sigma}^{\\phantom\\dagger}$ denotes the corresponding occupation-number operator. $z=1, \\ldots, 12$ describes \nthe central layers, while $z<1$ and $z>12$ corresponds to the left and the right lead layers, respectively. \n\nWe assume isotropic nearest-neighbor hopping parameters  within the central region ($t_{zz'}=t_{z}=t_c$) and within  the  leads ($t_{zz'}=t_{z}=t_{\\alpha=l,r}$). The hybridization between the leads and central \nregion is the same on both sides $t_{0,1}=v_{l}=t_{12,13}=v_{r}$.\n\n\nFinally, the local energy and the chemical potential in the leads is determined by an applied voltage $\\Phi$, i.e. \\hbox{$\\varepsilon_{z<1}=\\mu_{l} =  \\Phi\/2$} and \\hbox{$\\varepsilon_{z>12}= \\mu_{r} = -\\Phi\/2$}.\n\n\n\nThe leads are initially prepared in equilibrium and $T=0$ at the\ndistant past (time $ \\to -\\infty$) when the hoppings between leads and layer are switched off. Then the hoppings are switched on and the system \nis allowed to evolve in time until steady state is reached. \nNotice that despite of the appearance of equilibrium Green's functions\n\\eqref{galphaK} in the expressions, \n there is no approximation of fixing the leads in equilibrium.\n In our approach, \nit is not necessary to solve explicitly for the transient time evolution, and we can directly address the steady state. Since the leads are infinite, they \nhave equilibrium properties far away from the device, but near the\ndevice (within the healing length) there will be charge depletion or\nenhancement, i.e. charge reconstruction near the interfaces.\nIn combination with the long-range part of the Coulomb interaction (LRCI)\nthis could induce modifications in  the singls-particle potential.\nLRCI could be included by a simultaneous solution of the Poisson and DMFT\nequation (see, e.g. \\cite{free.06}), but this is beyond the scope of the present paper.\nNotice that \nthis approximation is common in the framework of real-space DMFT calculations  (see e.g. Refs.~\\cite{okam.07,okam.08,kn.li.11, \nne.ar.15, ma.am.15, ma.am.16, am.we.12, ri.an.16, ze.fr.09, ec.we.13, ec.we.14, ha.fr.11, po.no.99.sm, po.no.99.ms, po.no.99.ldmft, po.no.99.emfl}).\nHere,  we approximate the effects of the LRCI, by introducing a linear behavior of the onsite energies (homogeneous electric field) in the central region as \n\\hbox{${\\varepsilon_z =  \\varepsilon_z^{(0)} + \\mu_{l} - z \\Phi \/(L+1)}$}.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Real-space Dynamical Mean-Field theory }\\label{Method}\n\nIn order to investigate steady-state properties we use real-space Dynamical mean-field theory (R-DMFT), which is also known as inhomogeneous DMFT. Due to the finite number of layers translational \ninvariance along the $z$ axes (perpendicular to the layers) is broken, but the system  is still translationally invariant in the $xy$ plane. \nTherefore we can  introduce a corresponding momentum ${{\\bf k} }=(k_x,k_y)$.~\\cite{okam}\n\n\nThe Green's function for the  central region, can be expressed via Dyson's equation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{GR}\n&&[{\\bf G^{-1}}]^{\\gamma}(\\omega, {{\\bf k} }) =[{\\bf g}_0^{-1}(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })]^\\gamma - {\\boldsymbol \\Sigma}^\\gamma(\\omega)-{\\boldsymbol \\Delta}^\\gamma(\\omega, {{\\bf k} }) \\hspace{0.5cm} \\;.\n\\end{eqnarray} \n\nHere, we use boldface symbols to indicate matrices in the indices $z=1, \\ldots, 12$. Moreover, $\\gamma\\in\\{R,A,K\\}$ stands for retarded, advanced and Keldysh components, respectively, \nand ${\\bf G}^{A}(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })=[{\\bf G}^{R}(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })]^{\\dagger}$. \n\nThe inverse of the non-interacting Green's function  for the isolated central region reads \n\\begin{align} \n[{\\bf g^{-1}_0}]^R_{zz'} (\\omega, {{\\bf k} }) &=\\left(\\omega + i 0^{+}-E_z( {{\\bf k} }) \\right)\\delta_{zz'} + t_{zz'} \\, ,\n\\label{g0R}\\\\\n[{\\bf g^{-1}_0}]^K_{zz'} (\\omega, {{\\bf k} })&\\simeq 0\\;.\n\\end{align} \nwith $E_z( {{\\bf k} })=\\varepsilon_z -2t_z (\\cos k_x  + \\cos k_y)$.  ${\\boldsymbol \\Delta}^\\gamma(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })$ describes the hybridization with the leads and can be expressed as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{Delta}\n{\\boldsymbol \\Delta}^\\gamma_{zz'}(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })=\\delta_{z,z'}\\left(\\delta_{z,1}v_l^2 g_l^\\gamma (\\omega, {{\\bf k} })+ \\delta_{z,L}v_r^2 g_r^\\gamma (\\omega, {{\\bf k} })\\right) \\, ,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $g_l^\\gamma (\\omega, {{\\bf k} })$ and $g_r^\\gamma (\\omega, {{\\bf k} })$ describe \nthe  Green's functions for the edge layers of the leads disconnected from the central region. Their retarded \ncomponent can be  expressed as\\cite{po.no.99.sm, po.no.99.ms, hayd.80}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&g_\\alpha^R(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })= \\frac{\\omega -E_\\alpha({{\\bf k} })}{2t_\\alpha^2}  \n- i\\frac{\\sqrt{4t_\\alpha^2-(\\omega-E_\\alpha({{\\bf k} }))^2}}{2t_\\alpha^2} \\, ,\n\\label{galphaR}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith $E_\\alpha( {{\\bf k} })=\\varepsilon_\\alpha-2t_\\alpha (\\cos k_x  + \\cos k_y)$. The sign of the square-root for negative argument must be chosen such that the Green's function has the correct $1\/\\omega$ \nbehavior for $|\\omega|\\to \\infty$. Since the disconnected leads are separately in equilibrium, we can obtain their Keldysh components from the retarded ones via the fluctuation dissipation theorem\\cite{ha.ja}\n\\begin{equation}\ng_\\alpha^K(\\omega, {{\\bf k} })= 2i(1-2f_\\alpha(\\omega))\\;{\\rm Im\\:} g_{\\alpha}^R(\\omega,{{\\bf k} }) \\, .\n\\label{galphaK}\n\\end{equation}\nHere, $f_\\alpha(\\omega)$ is the Fermi distribution for chemical potential $\\mu_\\alpha$ and temperature $T_\\alpha$.\n\nFinally the self-energy ${\\boldsymbol\\Sigma}^\\gamma_{zz'}(\\omega)=\\delta_{zz'} \\Sigma^\\gamma_z(\\omega)$ is a diagonal and ${{\\bf k} }$-independent matrix due to the DMFT approximation.\nTo determine the self-energy for each correlated layer $z$ we solve a (non-equilibrium) quantum impurity model with Hubbard interaction $U_z$ and onsite energy $\\varepsilon_z$, coupled to a \nself-consistently determined bath. The latter is specified by its hybridization function obtained as (see e.g. Ref.~\\cite{voll.10})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Delta_{{\\rm bath},z}^R(\\omega)=\\omega + i 0^{+}-\\varepsilon_z -\\Sigma^R_z(\\omega) -\\frac{1}{G_{{\\rm loc},z}^R(\\omega)} \\, , \\\\\n\\label{DeltaR} \n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Delta_{{\\rm bath},z}^K(\\omega)=- \\Sigma^K_z(\\omega)+\\frac{G_{{\\rm loc},z}^K(\\omega)}{|G_{{\\rm loc},z}^R(\\omega)|^2} \\\n\\label{DeltaK} \n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the local Green's function is defined as\n\\begin{equation}\nG_{{\\rm loc},z}^\\gamma(\\omega)=\\int\\limits_{\\rm BZ} \\frac{d^2{{{\\bf k} }}}{(2\\pi)^2} {\\bf G}_{zz}^\\gamma(\\omega,{{\\bf k} }) \\;.\n\\label{G_loc}\n\\end{equation}\nTo calculate the  diagonal elements of the matrices ${\\bf G}^\\gamma(\\omega,{{\\bf k} })$ one could invert the matrices in Eqs. \\eqref{GR}. However, it is numerically more efficient to use the recursive Green's function \nmethod\\cite{th.ki.81, le.ca.13, ec.we.13}, which we here  generalize to  Keldysh Green's functions. \nFor a given $z$ we decompose the system into three decoupled clusters by setting $t_{z-1,z}=t_{z,z+1}=0$ (for the first and the last layer into two decoupled cluster). The result is  an isolated layer of the central \nregion at position  $z$  and the two remaining parts of the central region to the left and to the right of layer $z$. By $L_{z-1}^\\gamma(\\omega,{{\\bf k} } )$ ($R_{z+1}^\\gamma(\\omega,{{\\bf k} } )$) we denote the  local Green's \nfunction at layer $z-1$ ($z+1$) of the isolated cluster to the left (right) of layer $z$. In addition, we define $\\locGF{z}(\\omega,{{\\bf k} } )$ as the full cluster Green's function of layer $z$.\\cite{inv_Keldish} \nFor $z=2,\\ldots,L-1$ it describes isolated layers, while for $z=1$ ($z=L$) it also contains the hybridization effects of the left (right) lead, which are covered by $\\Delta^\\gamma(\\omega ,{{\\bf k} })$. For the sake \nof better readability, we will suppress the argument $(\\omega ,{{\\bf k} })$ in the following equations. From \\eqref{GR} and the  ensuing definitions we readily see that the inverse cluster Green's function \n$[g^{-1}_{z}]^{\\gamma}$ is equal to diagonal elements of the inverse  $[{\\bf G^{-1}}]^\\gamma_{zz}$ of the full Green's function of the central region. The omitted hopping processes $t_{z-1,z}$ and $t_{z,z+1}$ \ncan now be reintroduced by the Dyson equation, which is applicable due to the DMFT approximation of local self energies. We obtain\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{GRzz}\n&&{\\bf G}_{zz}^R=\\frac{1}{\\locGFRinv{z} - t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^R -t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^R} \\, ,\\\\\n\\label{GKzz}\n&&{\\bf G}_{zz}^K=-\\frac{\\locGFKinv{z}  - t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^K -t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^K}{\\bigl|\\locGFRinv{z} - t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^R -t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^R \\bigl|^2} \\, .\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe Green's functions $L_{z}^\\gamma$ and $R_{z}^\\gamma$ in turn are evaluated recursively as follows:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{LR}\n&&L_{z}^R=\\frac{1}{\\locGFRinv{z}- t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^R} \\, ,\\\\\n\\label{LK}\n&&L_{z}^K=-\\frac{\\locGFKinv{z}- t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^K}{\\bigl|\\locGFRinv{z} - t_{z-1,z}^2 L_{z-1}^R \\bigl|^2}\\, ,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nfor $z=2,3,\\ldots L$ with initial values\n \\begin{align}\n\\label{L_{1}}\nL_{1}^R&=\\frac{1}{\\locGFRinv{1}} \\, ,\\qquad \nL_{1}^K=-\\frac{\\locGFKinv{1}}{\\bigl|\\locGFRinv{1}\\bigl|^2} \\, , \n\\end{align}\nand \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{RR}\n&&R_{z}^R=\\frac{1}{\\locGFRinv{z}- t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^R} \\, ,\\\\\n\\label{RK}\n&&R_{z}^K=-\\frac{\\locGFKinv{z}- t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^K}{\\bigl|\\locGFRinv{z} - t_{z,z+1}^2 R_{z+1}^R \\bigl|^2} \\, ,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nfor $z=L-1,L-2,\\ldots 1$  \nwith initial values\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{R_L}\nR_{L}^R&=\\frac{1}{\\locGFRinv{L}} \\, ,\\qquad\nR_{L}^K=-\\frac{\\locGFKinv{L}}{\\bigl|\\locGFRinv{L}\\bigl|^2} \\, .\n\\end{align}\n\nIn addition, the self-consistent DMFT loop works as follows: we start with an initial guess for the self-energies $\\Sigma^\\gamma_z(\\omega)$, which typically was taken equal to zero, and based \non Eqs. \\eqref{GR}-\\eqref{G_loc} we calculate the bath hybridization functions $\\Delta_{{\\rm bath},z}^R(\\omega)$ and $\\Delta_{{\\rm bath},z}^K(\\omega)$ for each correlated site. From  them we solve the \n(non-equilibrium) quantum impurity models and calculate new self-energies as described below. We repeat this procedure until convergence is reached.\\cite{convergance} \n\n\nTo address the impurity problem and evaluate self-energies, we adopt a recently developed auxiliary master equation approach (AMEA)\\cite{ar.kn.13, do.nu.14, ti.do.15}. This method can be seen as  a generalization \nof the equilibrium exact-diagonalization impurity solver to treat  nonequilibrium steady-state situations. In AMEA dissipation, which is crucial in order to achieve a steady state, is included by additionally \ncoupling the cluster to  Markovian environments, which can be seen as  particle sinks and reservoirs (for details see Refs. \\onlinecite{ar.kn.13, do.nu.14, ti.do.15, do.ga.15}). The accuracy of the impurity \nsolver increases with increase of $N_b$ and becomes exponentially exact in the limit $N_b \\rightarrow \\infty$.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.75\\columnwidth]{Current_XOOOZOOZOOOX.pdf}\n\\caption{(Color online) Current $J$ vs bias voltage $\\Phi$. Solid, dashed and dotted lines  are obtained by solving the impurity problem with \n $N_b=6$, $N_b=4$ and $N_b=2$, respectively (see text). \nParameters are the same as in Fig.~\\ref{schematicp} .\n}\n\\label{Current_vs_Phi}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{figure*}[t!]\n\\subfigure[]{\n\\label{Phi1}\n\\begin{minipage}[b]{0.45\\textwidth}\n\\centering \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{G_omega_epsilon_Phi1_Nb6.pdf}\n\\end{minipage}}\n\\hspace{0.025\\textwidth}\n\\subfigure[]{\n\\label{Phi2.5}\n\\begin{minipage}[b]{0.45\\textwidth}\n\\centering \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{G_omega_epsilon_Phi2p5_Nb6.pdf}\n\\end{minipage}\n}\n\\subfigure[]{\n\\label{Phi4}\n\\begin{minipage}[b]{0.45\\textwidth}\n\\centering \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{G_omega_epsilon_Phi4_Nb6.pdf}\n\\end{minipage}}\n\\hspace{0.025\\textwidth}\n\\subfigure[]{\n\\label{Phi5.25}\n\\begin{minipage}[b]{0.45\\textwidth}\n\\centering \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{G_omega_epsilon_Phi5p25_Nb6.pdf}\n\\end{minipage}\n}\n\\\\\n\\caption{(Color online) Steady state spectral function $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ for different values of bias voltage $\\Phi$ and $\\varepsilon({{\\bf k} })$. In order to illustrate the resonance \neffect, we present results for bias voltages for which the current displays a maximum ($\\Phi \\simeq 2.5$ and $\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$),  a minimum ($\\Phi \\simeq 4$), and for a value in between ($\\Phi=1$). The shaded \narea emphasizes the fact that for $\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$ the peak maxima of layers $z=3$ and $z=10$ overlap. \nResults are obtained with $N_b=6$. Here, $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}=-2$ (Green), $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}=0$ (red) and $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}=2$ (blue). Other parameters are the same as in Fig.~\\ref{schematicp} .}\n\\label{G_omega_epsilon}\n\\end{figure*}\n\\end{center}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\includegraphics[width=0.75\\columnwidth]{J_vs_U.pdf}\n\\caption{Current $J$ as a function of the Hubbard interaction $U$ at the resonance. On-site energies in the first and the last layers are fixed to $\\varepsilon_1^{(0)}=\\varepsilon_{12}^{(0)}=-4$. \nResults are obtained with $N_b=4$. Other parameters are the same as in Fig.~\\ref{schematicp} .}\n\\label{fig:J_vs_U}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Results}\\label{Results}\n\nHere, we presents results for the steady state properties of the system, displayed in Fig.~\\ref{schematicp}, consisting of twelve layers (central region) sandwiched between two semi-infinite metallic leads.\nAmong these twelve  central region layers only the first and the last layers are correlated, with Hubbard interactions $U_1=U_{12}=U=8$ and onsite energies $\\varepsilon_1^{(0)}=\\varepsilon_{12}^{(0)}=-U\/2=-4$. \nThe onsite energies of the fifth and the eight layers are $\\varepsilon_8^{(0)}=-\\varepsilon_5^{(0)}=4$ and $\\varepsilon_z^{(0)}=0$ for all $z \\neq 1, 5, 8, 12$. The hopping between nearest-neighbor  central \nregion sites $t_c=1$ is taken as unit of energy,\\cite{initial_Sigma} while hopping between nearest-neighbor sites of the leads are $t_l=t_r=2$. Finally, the  \nhybridizations between leads and  central region are $v_l=v_r=1$. All calculations are performed for zero temperature in the leads ($T_l=T_r=0$).  \n\nThe system is particle-hole symmetric. More specifically it is invariant under a simultaneous particle-hole transformation, a change of sign in the phase of one sublattice (as in the Hubbard model) together with \na reflection of the $z$ axis. Therefore, properties of $z$-th and ${(L+1-z)}$-th layers are connected by  particle-hole transformation. Consequently, we need to evaluate the self-energy  for the $z=1$ layer only, \nand determine its value for $z=L$ layer based on the symmetry ($\\Sigma_{12}^R(\\omega)=-[\\Sigma_{1}^R(-\\omega)]^*+U$ and $\\Sigma_{12}^K(\\omega)=[\\Sigma_{1}^K(-\\omega)]^*$). All other layers are non interacting.\n\n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{Current_vs_Phi} we plot the current-voltage characteristics of the system. Results are obtained with $N_b=2,4,6$ bath sites of the DMFT auxiliary impurity problem. We find that the difference between results \nobtained with $N_b=4$ and $N_b=6$ is small for all bias voltages. It indicates fast convergence of the current with respect to the bath sites $N_b$. \n\n\nThe current increases with increasing  bias voltage and reaches a first maximum at $\\Phi \\simeq 2.5$. Further increasing $\\Phi$ reduces the current  until a minimum at $\\Phi \\simeq 4$ is reached.\nA second maximum occurs at  $\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$. For larger bias voltages, the current again decreases due to the decreased  overlap of the density of states.\n\n\n\nFor low bias, where there is a large overlap of the density of states\nof the left and the right leads, the conductivity is large and the\nsystem is  in a high-conductivity regime.  That is why results in this\nregion are \nsimilar to the one of a single layer (see e.g. Refs. \\onlinecite{ar.kn.13, ti.do.15}). In contrast, for larger bias $\\Phi \\gtrsim 3$  we are in the tunneling regime and the behavior of the current-voltage \ncharacteristics is significantly different.  As we discuss below, the\nresults we are showing are due to the occurrence of resonant tunneling.  To clarify this effect, we investigate the \nnon-equilibrium spectral functions, which can be calculated from the corresponding Green's functions via $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})=-\\frac{1}{\\pi}{\\rm Im}G_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$.  \nDue to the  geometry of the system (see fig.~\\ref{schematicp}) three wells are formed in the intervals $2\\le  z \\le 4$, $6\\le  z \\le 7$, and $9\\le  z \\le 11$, to which electrons are partially confined and \nform quasi-bound levels. This can be seen by the fact that all spectral functions $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ within a given well display peaks  for the same $(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$, \ncorresponding to quantized quasi-stationary levels in this well. Electrons can leak from the one to the next well only by quantum tunneling.\n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{G_omega_epsilon} we plot the steady state spectral functions $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ as a function of $\\omega-\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$ for different $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$ and bias voltages $\\Phi$. \nIn particular, we show results for bias voltages that correspond  to maxima ($\\Phi \\simeq 2.5$ and $\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$), to a minimum and for a value ($\\Phi=1$) at half maximum of the first peak in \nFig.~\\ref{G_omega_epsilon}.\n\nThe results have the correct property $A_{L+1-z}(\\omega,\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})=A_{z}(-\\omega,-\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$, which is a consequence of the particle-hole symmetry of the Hamiltonian.\nOur calculations show that for each non-correlated layer ($1<z<12$) the position of the peaks of the spectral function  \n$A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ depends only on the value of $\\omega-\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$ and not on $\\omega$ and $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$ separately. This indicates that for the \nnon-correlated layers one-dimensional physics dominates and $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$ only shifts the energy levels.\nFurthermore, peaks of the spectral functions $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ for the non-correlated layers in the first ($z=2,3,4$) and the last ($z=9,10,11$) wells generate dips in the spectral \nfunctions $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ of the first ($z=1$) and the last ($z=12$) correlated layers correspondingly. This can be qualitatively understood from  Eq.~\\eqref{GRzz}, if one assumes that \n$[{\\bf G^{-1}}]_{zz}^R$ is a smooth, function, while $-L_{z-1}^R$ or $-R_{z+1}^R$ (neighboring layer Green's functions) have narrow peaks.\n\n\nAs central region (layers $1<z<12$) are non-interacting\nresonant tunneling occurs when quasistationary states, i.e. the peaks in the spectral function, of the first and the last well coincide for any $\\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }}$.\\cite{er.po.11, gu.to.16} This is the case for \n$\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$, as can be seen by the gray regions in Fig.~\\ref{Phi5.25}. If these peaks are within the energetic transport window the current gets enhanced at the corresponding bias voltage. For all other \nbias voltages shown (see Figs.~\\ref{Phi1}-\\ref{Phi4}), peaks of $A_z(\\omega, \\varepsilon_{{{\\bf k} }})$ for  different wells do not coincide, so no resonant tunneling takes place. The second maximum in the \ncurrent-voltage characteristics (see Fig.~\\ref{Current_vs_Phi}) can, therefore, be understood in terms of such a resonant tunneling effect. On the other hand, the first maximum is due to the finite bandwidth of \nthe leads, similar to the one for a single layer case (see e.g. Refs. \\onlinecite{ar.kn.13, ti.do.15}). In contrast to the single layer case, in the current situation electrons tunnel through four layers \n($z=1,5,8,12$) and therefore the current drops faster after the maximum.\n\nIn order to address the effect of electron correlation on the resonance, we investigate the behavior of the resonance current $J$ as a  function of the interaction $U$.~\\cite{barrier} In Fig.~\\ref{fig:J_vs_U} \nwe plot the current $J$ as a function of the interaction $U$ at the corresponding resonance bias voltage. The figure clearly shows that correlation effects substantially enhance the resonance effect. However \nthe current maximum is obtained at not too large values of $U\\sim 5$. This enhancement  behavior can be understood in terms of  two competing effects occurring as a function of $U$: since the  resonance takes \nplace at relatively high bias, the {\\it one-dimensional} density of states (DOS) of the two leads have a reduced overlap. This suppresses tunneling at small $U$ for which scattering (approximately) conserves \nthe momentum parallel to the layers. Upon increasing $U$, scattering channels to different values of the in-plane  {\\bf k}  open, so that the {\\it three-dimensional} DOS is available for scattering, thus \nenhancing the current. On the other hand, by increasing $U$ also backscattering is increased, which, in turns suppresses the current. \n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\\label{Conclusions}\n\nUsing non-equilibrium DMFT calculations we investigate steady state properties of a multilayer heterostructure consisting of correlated and non-correlated layers. Due to the fact that the system is inhomogeneous, \nno matter how many impurity problems have to be solved, ``standard'' DMFT is not applicable and one has to use the real-space generalization of it. As an impurity solver we used the recently introduced auxiliary \nmaster equation approach, which addresses the impurity problem within an auxiliary system consisting of a correlated impurity, a small number of uncorrelated bath sites and two Markovian environments described \nby a generalized master equation\\cite{ar.kn.13, do.nu.14, ti.do.15}. \n\nIn particular, our main goal was to investigate resonance effects in this system. For this purpose we chose an arrangement of layers such that electrons were confined in three different wells and transport \nthrough the central region was only possible by quantum tunneling. For a particular bias voltage ($\\Phi \\simeq 5.25$) we observed that quasi-stationary energy levels  in the first and the last wells \ncoincided and resonance tunneling between them takes place. At that bias voltage the current displays a maximum. According to our calculations the current has  another maximum at $\\Phi \\simeq 2.5$. The latter \nis due to the finite bandwidth of the leads.  We checked that these qualitative findings are robust up to some extent as a function of the model parameters. \n\n\nFurthermore, we also investigate effect of the interaction strength on the current at the resonance.  We obtain that correlation effects for weak up to strong interaction substantially enhance the resonance\ncurrent.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{acknowledgments}\nWe thank Andreas Weichselbaum, Jim Freericks, Elias Assmann, Max Sorantin for valuable discussions. \nThis work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF):  P26508, as well as SfB-ViCoM project F04103, and NaWi Graz. The calculations were partly performed on the D-Cluster Graz \nand on the VSC-3 cluster Vienna. \n\\end{acknowledgments}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{aipnum4-1}\n\n\\input{paper.bbl}\n\n \n\\end{document}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nWe discuss the\nconcept of the \\emph{topological entropy}\\cite{Adler-Konheim-1695-114-309-TrAmMathSoc}\nas a measure of mixing of fluid particles in a two-dimensional flow, or field line tangling\nin a three-dimensional vector field.\nThe notion of topological entropy was developed in the context of dynamical systems,\nand has been used in the field of fluid dynamics to understand\nfluid mixing\\cite{boyland2000, Budisic-Thiffeault-2015-25-8-Chaos,\nSattari-Chen-2016-26-3-Chaos}.\nSuch fluid mixing can be the stirring of a substance (solid or liquid)\nwith applications in engineering and production.\nHowever, the need to quantify the mixing or tangling of trajectories\nappears also in other fields.\nFor example, in plasma physics, particularly for magnetic fields in tokamaks\nand spheromaks\\cite{Petrisor-Misguich-2003-18-1085-ChaosSolFrac}, the tangling of magnetic field lines\nis crucial for transport processes in the plasma, however, the\nconcept of topological entropy has rarely been used in this context (notable exceptions are\ne.g.~\\cite{Klapper}\\cite{Childress}).\nIn this case the magnetic field lines in a tokamak can be interpreted as world lines of a\ntwo-dimensional dynamical system.\nTo make that interpretation complete we need to assume that the field is static\nand periodic in the direction of the field.\n\nIn the following section we will describe three different methods for\nmeasuring the topological entropy of a two-dimensional flow (or three-dimensional periodic magnetic field).\nEach of these is based on the interpretation of the entropy as the\nexponential stretching rate of a material line in the flow.\nIn order to apply the first two methods, one requires knowledge of the\nmapping at every point in the domain, while the final method deals with\nthe case in which only a finite number of trajectories of the flow or\nfield is known (i.e.~the mapping is known only as discrete points).\n\nAfter discussing the methods for estimating the topological entropy, we use our new\nmethod to explore the properties of two mappings that appear in the study of magnetic\nfield dynamics in plasmas.\nMany laboratory and astrophysical plasmas are characterized by high magnetic\nand fluid Reynolds numbers, and as a result exhibit turbulent dynamics.\nThis dynamics typically leads to a situation in\nwhich the magnetic field is highly disordered, with field lines being\ntangled or braided in a non-trivial manner.\nWe are motivated to study the topological entropy in the context of these fields because it is now\napparent that the nature of the field line tangling - i.e.\\ the detailed\nmagnetic field topology - is crucial in determining the field and plasma\ndynamics, in particular their relaxed state (e.g. \\citep{Parker-1972-174-499-ApJ,\nBerger-2001-55-3-LMathPhys,\npontin2011a,\nHansteen-Guerreiro-2015-811-106-ApJ,\nSmiet-Candelaresi-2015-115-5-PRL}).\nThis is due to the conservation of various topological quantities.\nIf magnetic reconnection is allowed, such fields relax into a state of potentially different\nfield line topology (this topology being preserved in the absence of reconnection).\nReconnection changes the field line mapping, which therefore changes the stretching\nbehavior of the above mentioned material line.\nTypically the field undergoes some simplification which leads to a reduction of the stretching rate.\nIn laboratory plasmas experimentalists are interested in the length of magnetic field lines\nuntil they hit the device's divertor plates which helps in estimating the safety factor\n\\cite{Kroetz-Roberto-2012-54-4-PlasFus}.\nAlthough the methods described here do not measure such lengths, they can be used to distinguish\nchaotic regions generated by the magnetic field.\n\nAt the end {of this paper we\npropose a new measure that allows quantification of the local (in time)\ntangling of trajectories, important in many applications -- the {\\it finite-time topological entropy}.\nFinally, we consider the distribution of a passive scalar to demonstrate the efficiency\nof the mixing which will decrease length scales exponentially, provided the topological\nentropy is positive.\n\n\n\\section{Topological Entropy: Methods of Estimation} \\label{sec: Methods}\n\\subsection{Interpretation in terms of material line stretching}\nAn exact value for the topological entropy of a field or flow can be\nobtained only in special cases, for instance for some analytically\nprescribed shearing motions \\citep{boyland2000}, due to its complicated definition\nwhich involves taking the limits of refinements of coverings of a topological space\n\\cite{Adler-Konheim-1695-114-309-TrAmMathSoc}.\nThus, for most practical purposes the entropy must be\nestimated, and there exist different methods by which this estimation may be performed.\nOne such method makes use of symbolic dynamics \\cite{Day-Frongillo-2008-7-4-SIAMAppDyn}\nwhich computes a lower bound for the topological entropy.\nIn this paper we focus on methods that determine the topological entropy $h(f)$ of a mapping (homeomorphism)\n\\begin{equation}\nf: M \\rightarrow M,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $M$ is a compact subset of $\\mathbb{R}^2$.\nThis mapping $f$ can be induced, for example, either by a two-dimensional time-periodic flow or by\nthe mapping of points between two planes connected by a static periodic magnetic field.\n\nThe topological entropy $h(f)$ is approximated by the exponent $h(f,\\gamma)$ of the rate of\nstretching of a material line $\\gamma \\subset M$ under the flow\\citep{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys},\n\\begin{equation}\nh(f)\\ge h(f, \\gamma).\n\\end{equation}\nEstimations of this stretching rate must be carried out by some computational method.\nIn particular, for chaotic flows this is a numerically demanding task.\nIn general the quality of the approximation of $h(f)$ by $h(f, \\gamma)$ depends on the\nchoice of $\\gamma$, and only a supremum over the set of all possible curves $\\gamma$\nwould yield the exact value of $h(f)$ \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}.\nHowever, for the examples of chaotic flows considered below, the approximation, $h(f)\\approx h(f,\\gamma)$,\nis very accurate since under a few iterations of the mapping $\\gamma$ comes close to\nevery point of the chaotic domain.\n\nIn our approximation of the topological entropy we measure the length\nof the line $\\gamma$ after each application of the mapping $f$.\nFor a continuous, but time-periodic  map $f(t)$, $f(t+T)=f(t)$, we identify the number\n$n$ with the number of periods $T$.\nThe quantity we wish to measure is\n\\begin{equation}\nh(f,\\gamma) =  \\lim_{n \\rightarrow \\infty} \\frac{1}{n} \\ln^{+} \\left| f^n(\\gamma)\\right|,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\left| f^n(\\gamma)\\right|$ denotes the length of the curve $\\gamma$ under $n$ iterations\nof the mapping and $\\ln^{+}(x) = \\max(\\ln x,0)$.\nFor a numerical evaluation of this expression we discretize the initial curve $\\gamma$\nusing a high number of points $\\bm{x}_i$, $i \\in [1, N]$, along the curve and measure the distances\n$\\delta^i_0$, $i \\in [1, N-1]$ between those.\nThe corresponding distances under $n$ iterations are called $\\delta^i_n$.\nFor the limit of $\\delta^i_0 \\rightarrow 0$ the numerical approximation becomes exact:\n\\begin{equation}\nh(f,\\gamma) = \\lim_{n\\rightarrow \\infty} \\left( \\frac{1}{n}\\lim_{\\delta_0^i \\rightarrow 0}\n\\ln^+ \\left(\\frac{\\sum_i\\delta_n^i}{\\sum_i\\delta_0^i}\\right) \\right).\n\\end{equation}\nHere the total length of the line after $n$ iterations is $\\sum_i\\delta_n^i$\nand its initial length is $\\sum_i\\delta_0^i$. Note that the denominator in the\nlogarithm is bounded and hence does not contribute to the value of the expression in the\nlimit $n \\rightarrow \\infty$.\n\nBefore going on below to describe algorithms for estimating the\nstretching rate, we first note connections with the calculation\nof the Lyapunov exponent.\nWhile in our calculations we compute a lower limit for the topological\nentropy by measuring the lengthening of a mapped line,\nthe Lyapunov exponent measures the exponential separation of two neighbouring\npoints $\\bm{x}_0$ and $\\bm{x}_1 = \\bm{x}_0 + \\mu\\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {}$ under the mapping $f$,\nwith the real positive parameter $\\mu$ and normalized directional vector $\\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {}$.\nThe point separation after the application of the mapping $n$ times is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_n(\\bm{x}_0, \\mu, \\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {}) = ||f^n(\\bm{x}_0 + \\mu\\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {}) - f^n(\\bm{x}_0)||.\n\\end{equation}\nThe maximum Lyapunov exponent can then be written as\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: lyapunov}\n\\lambda(\\bm{x}_0) = \\max_{\\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {}} \\lim_{n\\rightarrow \\infty} \\left( \\lim_{\\mu \\rightarrow 0} \\frac{1}{n}\n\\ln \\left(\\frac{\\delta_n(\\bm{x}_0, \\mu, \\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {})}{\\delta_0(\\bm{x}_0, \\mu, \\mbox{\\boldmath $m$} {})}\\right) \\right).\n\\end{equation}\nNote that in the standard definition a continuous time $t$ is used instead of\na discrete $n$.\n\nA relation between the so called {\\em metric entropy} and the Lyapunov exponent was derived by\nPesin \\cite{Pesin-1977-32-55-RusMatSurv, Young-2003-313-entropy}.\nUsing arguments from measure theory, it was shown that the metric entropy\nis, in general, smaller or equal than the sum of the positive Lyapunov exponents\n(Ruelle's inequality \\citep{Ruelle-1978-9-83-BolSocBrasMat}).\nFor Riemannian measure on the manifold $M$ the equality between the two\nquantities could be shown \\citep{Pesin-1977-32-55-RusMatSurv}.\nFor a detailed discussion of the relations between the topological entropy, metric entropy,\nand Lyapunov exponents, the reader is referred to the discussion of Young\\cite{Young-2003-313-entropy}.\n\nIn practice we can only take the limit $\\lim_{n\\rightarrow \\infty}$ for special cases.\nIn all other cases we therefore compute $h(f, \\gamma)$ for a finite number of iterations $n$, finite\nline length and finite initial point separations $\\delta_0^i$.\nSince the mappings that we consider herein are dense within the attractor,\nthe particular choice of initial\nline $\\gamma$ is not critical\nbecause for chaotic mappings the mapped\ncurve $\\gamma$ gets arbitrarily close to every point in the domain for sufficiently large\niteration $n$,\nas long as the initial line intersects the attractor.\nSince we can identify the iterations $n$ of our mapping with a discrete time of a two-dimensional\nfluid flow, we call this quantity the finite time topological entropy (FTTE) and write it as\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: entropy length}\nh(f, \\gamma, n_{\\rm iter}) =\n\\frac{1}{n_{\\rm iter}} \\ln\\left(\\frac{\\sum_i\\delta^i_{n_{\\rm iter}}}{\\sum_i\\delta_0^i}\\right),\n\\end{equation}\nwith the integer $n_{\\rm iter}$.\n\n\\subsection{Direct Method: Adaptive Algorithm}\\label{sec:adaptive}\nHere we introduce an efficient algorithm for estimating the\nstretching rate of a material line under a given mapping.\nFor positive values of the topological entropy the\nlength of the material line $\\gamma$ scales exponentially with\nthe number of iterations \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}.\nHence, the challenge is to compute the exponential growth rate $h$ of the length $l$ of $\\gamma$\nunder iterations of $f$,\nwhich is a lower limit for the exact topological entropy\n\\citep{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}.\nIt is worth noting that\n$h$ will in general depend on the choice of curve $\\gamma$ -- to find the tightest\nlower bound on the topological entropy of the flow we must find the maximal\nstretching rate for all possible curves $\\gamma$.\n\nDuring our computational implementation of the above procedure, an equal\nresolution everywhere along the curve at all iterations requires an\nexponentially increasing number of points.\nMoreover, one requires to analyze\nthe mapping for a significant number of iterations (typically $10$-$20$ for the\nmappings considered herein, as described below) in order to obtain an\naccurate estimate of the stretching exponent.\n\nTo combat this difficulty we introduce here an adaptive method that directly measures the exponential\nline stretching rate using a reduced number of points for each iteration of the mapping\nsimilar to \\cite{Dritschel-1989-10-77-CompPhysRep, Mills-2009-35-2020-CompGeo}.\nTo understand how this optimization of the resolution of the line works,\nnote first that each iteration typically stretches and folds the material\nline -- see e.g.\\ \\Fig{fig: Henon} and \\Fig{fig: final line horizontal}.\nAt any iteration the curve will be composed primarily of long sections with relatively\nlow curvature, between which are line sections\n with very high curvature which need to be resolved in order\nto determine the total length of the curve accurately.\nFor a fixed and initially equidistant distribution of points one\nrequires a very large number of points (trajectories) to resolve the thin folds.\n\nIn order to reduce the total computational cost we apply an adaptive\nmethod which adds points where the curvature causes the angle between\ntwo consecutive line segments to be less than $\\cos(\\alpha) = 0.99$,\nwhere $\\alpha$ is the angle.\nThose two line segments are spanned by three points.\nIf the condition is fulfilled we add one point between the first and second points\nand another between the second and the third points on the {\\em initial} line and\napply the mapping on those new points.\nThis refinement is repeated as long as there are two consecutive line segments\nfor which $\\cos(\\alpha) < 0.99$ or until the refinement results only in\na relative change of $10^{-3}$ of the line length, which we call the relative length tolerance\n$l_{\\rm tol}$ parameter in our method.\nWe do not add points if the length of the {\\rm mapped} line\nsegment is less than $10^{-5}$ in order to avoid issues related to the\nmachine precision.\nThat cut off number for the is the absolute tolerance $l_{\\rm min}$.\nWhile refinement in high curvature segments was already used by \\cite{Dritschel-1989-10-77-CompPhysRep},\nthe cut off criteria for not adding points do not seem to appear in the literature.\nWithout them, the number of points can quickly rise well beyond what can be stored in\na computer.\nThis is somewhat mitigated by the ``contour surgery'' in \\cite{Dritschel-1989-10-77-CompPhysRep}\nwhich effectively creates short cuts in folds that are sufficiently close together.\nHowever, such folds are an essential part of the advected material line and cannot\nbe discarded for the computation of the topological entropy.\nIn \\cite{Dritschel-1989-10-77-CompPhysRep} the authors used a cubic spline interpolation\nthat is able to counter such potential inaccuracies.\n\n\n\\subsection{Stretching Rate Methods}\nAn alternative to the direct method discussed above for estimating the\nline stretching rate is the set of algorithms proposed by Newhouse \\& Pignataro\n\\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}.\nThese methods estimate the stretching rate without explicitly fully\nresolving the mapped line.\nConceptually, the idea is to estimate the growth of the line by\nmeasuring the stretching of tangent vectors to the curve under the mapping.\nAfter each iteration these tangent vectors are re-scaled before being mapped\nforward again, and the overall expansion factor is given by the products of\nthe expansions during each iteration.\nIn this process any mapped vectors that contract (as could occur for example\nacross regions of high curvature) are neglected.\nThe algorithm follows the same conceptual procedure as a common method\nof calculating Lyapunov exponents \\cite{benettin1980}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Braid Entropy Estimations}\nA further method of estimating the topological entropy is described by\nThiffeault \\cite{Thiffeault-2010-20-1-Chaos}.\nThis method differs from the two previously presented in that it is\nbased on the assumption that one knows only a fixed number of trajectories\n(field lines) originating at discrete starting points rather than having\naccess to the full flow information\n(as is required if one wishes, for example, to add additional points in regions of high curvature).\nThe approach involves constructing a (mathematical) braid from these\ntrajectories, and then finding the minimum length of a material loop\nthat is constrained to wrap around the trajectories.\nUsing the method of Moussafir\\cite{moussafir2006} one can encode such a\nloop as a set of coordinates, which can then be used to evaluate the\nminimum possible length of the material loop.\nAs such, the addition of more trajectories in the calculation will in\ngeneral lead to a longer loop and so the topological entropy of the\nbraid calculated in this way provides a lower bound to the topological\nentropy of the full flow (corresponding to the limit of infinitely\nmany known trajectories, supposing that the optimal choice of $\\gamma$ has been made).\nFor details of the algorithm and underlying theory the reader is\nreferred to Thiffeault \\cite{Thiffeault-2010-20-1-Chaos}.\nIt is worth noting that in order to obtain an accurate estimation of\nthe entropy with a small number of trajectories using this method one\nrequires either to integrate the trajectories for a very long time or\nto average over ensembles of trajectories\n\\cite{Thiffeault-2010-20-1-Chaos,Budisic-Thiffeault-2015-25-8-Chaos},\nboth of which are computationally expensive.\nThe method is implemented in the freely-available \\verb+braidlab+ package \\cite{braidlab}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Passive Scalar\/Density}\\label{sec: scalar}\nIf we consider mappings, like the ones discussed here, to be world lines in a 2+1 dimensional space\n(two spatial and one temporal dimension) then we can consider the braiding\nas mixing of fluid particles.\nThe degree of mixing is then reflected in the power spectrum of a passive scalar $c(\\bm{x})$.\nThis scalar is constructed such that it initially has a constant gradient profile in $\\mathbb{R}^2$.\nIts Fourier transform is then simply\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: passive scalar fourier}\n\\mathcal{F}\\{c(\\bm{x})\\}(\\bm{k}) = \\int_{V} c(\\bm{x}) e^{i\\bm{k}\\cdot\\bm{x}}\\ {\\rm d} {}^2 x,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the volume $V$ spans the two-dimensional plane.\nFrom that we can compute the power spectrum by integrating over $k$-shells\nof width $\\delta k$\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: passive scalar shells}\n\\hat{c}(k) = \\int\\limits_{k-\\delta k\/2}^{k+\\delta k\/2} \\mathcal{F}\\{c(\\bm{x})\\}(\\bm{k})\\ {\\rm d} {}^2 k.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe power spectrum is easily calculated for every application of the braiding\nonce we know the transformed passive scalar distribution $c(\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x}))$, where\n$\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x})$ is the mapping.\nSince we know $\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x})$ analytically we can also compute $c(\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x}))$ analytically.\n\nTo test the mixing of this passive scalar under the mapping $\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x})$ we\nimpose an initial profile $c(\\bm{x}) = x + y$.\nThis corresponds to a simple gradient in both the $x$- and $y$-direction.\n\n\n\\section{Test cases}\n\\subsection{H\\'enon Map}\nWe describe in this section some maps that we use to verify our new algorithm for estimating\nthe topological entropy. We then go on to implement our algorithm to explore the properties of these maps.\nWe first consider\nthe well studied H\\'enon map \\cite{Henon-1976-69-50-CommMathPhys}, given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nx_{i+1} & = & y_{i} + 1 - ax_{i}^2 \\nonumber \\\\\ny_{i+1} & = & bx_{i},\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith the parameters $a$ and $b$ and the iteration $i$.\nHere we will use $a = 1.4$ and $b = 0.3$ for which this map exhibits\nchaotic behavior.\n(Note that the mapping is not area-preserving and therefore could not be\ngenerated by an incompressible flow, except for $b=\\pm 1$.)\nNewhouse \\& Pignataro \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys} used this mapping to study their\nestimates for the topological entropy for different parameters $a$ and $b$.\nFor $a = 1.4$, $b = 0.3$ they estimated the topological entropy to have a value of $0.4640$.\n\n\\subsection{Blinking Vortex}\nBuilding on previous work \\citep{pontin2011a,pontin2016a}\non topology of magnetic braids\nwe use two very similar maps, which are generated by blinking vortices.\nThe first we call $E1$, which is defined by:\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eq: e3}\n & & \\phi_1 = 2\\sqrt{2\\pi} \\kappa \\exp(-((x_i-1)^2+y_i^2)\/2) \\nonumber \\\\\n & & \\tilde{x} = -y_i\\sin(\\phi_1) + (x_i-1)\\cos(\\phi_1) + 1 \\nonumber \\\\\n & & \\tilde{y} = (x_i-1)\\sin(\\phi_1) + y_i\\cos(\\phi_1) \\nonumber \\\\\n & & \\phi_2 = -2\\sqrt{2\\pi} \\kappa \\exp(-((\\tilde{x}+1)^2+\\tilde{y}^2)\/2) \\nonumber \\\\\n & & x_{i+1} = -\\tilde{y}\\sin(\\phi_2) + (\\tilde{x}+1)\\cos(\\phi_2) - 1 \\nonumber \\\\\n & & y_{i+1} = (\\tilde{x}+1)\\sin(\\phi_2) + \\tilde{y}\\cos(\\phi_2),\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $x_i$ and $y_i$ are the coordinates, $\\kappa$ is the twist parameter,\n$\\phi_1$ and $\\phi_2$ the twisting angles from the left and right\ntwist, respectively, $\\tilde{x}$ and $\\tilde{y}$ the mapped coordinates after the\nleft twist only and $x_{i+1}$ and $y_{i+1}$ the mapped coordinates\nafter the second twist.\nThis formalism is chosen such that there is a twist around the\npoint $(-1, 0)$ with angle $\\phi_1$ and then around $(1, 0)$\nwith angle $\\phi_2$.\n\nThe second such blinking vortex mapping we call $S1$ and differs\nonly by the sign of the second angle, i.e.\\\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: s3}\n\\phi_2 = 2\\sqrt{2\\pi} \\kappa \\exp(-((\\tilde{x}+1)^2+\\tilde{y}^2)\/2).\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Standard Map}\nThe standard\nmap\\cite{Greene-1979-20-6-JMathPhys, Morrison-2000-7-6-PhysPlasm}\n(also called the Chirikov-\u2013Taylor map)\nis a mapping that can be derived from a magnetic field on a toroidal surface.\nIt is defined as\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eq: standard map}\n\\theta_{i+1} & = & (\\theta_i - \\kappa\\sin{(2\\pi \\phi_i)}\/(2\\pi)) \\mod 1 \\nonumber \\\\\n\\phi_{i+1} & = & (\\phi_i + \\theta_{i+1}) \\mod 1,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith $\\theta_i, \\phi_i \\in [0, 1]$.\nBy taking ${\\rm mod}\\ 1$ we make sure that the mapping is periodic.\nA Poincar\\'e map for the standard map is shown in \\Fig{fig: poincare standard},\nwhere we can clearly see locations of periodic orbits.\nThere are also regions of the map (particularly around $\\theta=0.5, \\phi=0$)\nwhere the Poincar\\'e map appears highly disordered, and indeed\nGreene\\cite{Greene-1979-20-6-JMathPhys} demonstrated that for the parameter value\nchosen these regions are stochastic.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{poincare_symplectic_k097_np20_niter1000}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nA Poincar\\'e plot of the standard map \\eqref{eq: standard map} for $\\kappa =0.97$,\n$500$ initial points and $1000$ iterations.\n}\n\\label{fig: poincare standard}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Results}\n\\subsection{Benchmark of the Direct Method: H\\'enon Map}\nSince the H\\'enon map was studied using previous\nalgorithms for estimating the topological entropy, we use it as a starting point to benchmark the new adaptive algorithm (of Section \\ref{sec:adaptive}).\nWe start with the initial line close to the fixed point\nat $(0.883, 0.883)$ extending from $(0.882, 0.883)$ to $(0.884, 0.883)$ (this choice being directed by the considerations\ndiscussed in Newhouse \\& Pignataro \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}).\nApplying our direct method  we obtain\nan exponential increase in line length (see \\Fig{fig: Henon}).\nThis is connected to the chaotic nature of the map, which leads to an exponential increase\nof distance between neighboring points.\nWith increasing iteration step the number of points necessary to resolve\nthe entire mapped interval increases exponentially, and so does the computational\ncost.\nHere we are able to reach 25 iterations with limited computation time.\nSimilar to Newhouse \\& Pignataro \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys} we fit the logarithm\nof the mapped line length using linear fit and find a slope of ca.\\ $0.46275$\n(see figure \\Fig{fig: Henon}, lower panel) which is close to the slope of\n$0.4640$ found by Newhouse \\& Pignataro \\cite{Newhouse-Pignataro-1993-72-5-JStatPhys}.\nThis provides a confirmation of the accuracy of the new adaptive algorithm.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{henon_adapt_a_1_4_b_0_3_np_1e+01_nit_25_xl_0_882_xr_0_884_dt_float64.eps} \\\\\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{ln_l_vs_n_iter_horizontal_henon.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nH\\'enon map for $a = 1.4$ and $b = 0.3$ after 25 iterations (upper panel)\nusing the direct adaptive method.\nLength of the line after $n$ iteration steps for the H\\'enon map (lower panel)\nwith a linear fit for $\\ln(l)$ with slope $0.46275$.\n}\n\\label{fig: Henon}\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Direct Method: Blinking Vortex}\nMoving now to consider the blinking vortex mapping in Eq.~\\eqref{eq: e3},\nwe apply the direct method to an initial straight line $\\gamma$ of length $4$, starting\nat point $(-2, 0)$ and ending at $(2, 0)$.\nIn order to gain insights on the stability of our calculations we also perform\nsimulations with not just one initially horizontal line, but with $10$ different\nstraight lines of length 2 rotated about the origin.\nThe final length has a minor dependence on the initial line's orientation.\nFor each iteration we compute the mean line length of these $10$ initial conditions and the\ncorresponding standard deviation.\n\nDepending on the parameter $\\kappa$, the line gets highly tangled and shows\nthin folds (\\Fig{fig: final line horizontal}, upper panel).\nThose folds are very frequent and need to be properly resolved in order\nto measure the length of the line accurately.\nWith the adaptive method we achieve exactly this goal by increasing the\nnumber of points at those segments (\\Fig{fig: final line horizontal},\nlower panel).\nIn order to achieve the same degree of accuracy with a fixed point\ndistribution, the number of points would need to be prohibitively\nlarge.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_horizontal_k_0_5_np_1_0e+01_nit_10_xl_-2_xr_2_dt_float64} \\\\\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_horizontal_k_0_5_np_1_0e+01_nit_10_xl_-2_xr_2_dt_float64_zoomed.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nBlinking vortex $E1$ mapping of the initially horizontal line (thick red)\nafter $10$ iterations and $\\kappa = 0.5$ (thin cyan).\nThe square denotes the zoom region for the lower panel where we also show\nthe distribution of points from the adaptive method.\nIt can be clearly seen that in segments where the curvature is high\nthe density of points is increased.\n}\n\\label{fig: final line horizontal}\\end{figure}\n\nWe plot the logarithm of the line length for different parameters $\\kappa$\nagainst the number of iterations $n_{\\rm iter}$\n(\\Fig{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3}).\nThe length clearly follows an exponential law of type\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq: entropy fit}\nl = a e^{h\\,n_{\\rm iter}},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the values of $a$ and $h$ depend on $\\kappa$.\nWhile the length of the stretched line is weakly sensitive on the orientation of the initial line\n(by a few percent), this has little impact on the estimate of the entropy.\nFor the fits in \\Fig{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3} we use the standard deviation together with\nthe mean values and obtain fits with tight confidence intervals between\n$7.2903\\times 10^{-4}$ for $h = 1.8585$ ($\\kappa = 2.0$) and $4.4729\\times 10^{-3}$ for $h = 2.3255$\n($\\kappa = 2.5$).\nTo compare with an equivalent non-adaptive implementation we compute $l$ for $\\kappa = 2.5$\nwith the number of initially equally distributed points\ncorresponding to the final value of the adaptive method at each iteration.\nWhile the adaptive method gives a clean exponential increase of $l$ with\n$n_{\\rm iter}$ the non-adaptive method starts flattening off at larger values of\n$n_{\\rm iter}$ (\\Fig{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3}, triangles) which\nis due to the presence of under-resolved line segments.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nMean logarithm of the mapped line length\nversus the number of iterations for the $E1$ blinking vortex map for straight starting lines\ncrossing the origin and different values of $\\kappa$ with the standard deviation.\nWe compare the results from the adaptive method with the fixed case (triangles).\nThe lines are least square fits for $l = a e^{h\\,n_{\\rm iter}}$, with fit\nparameters $a$ and $h$.\n}\n\\label{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3}\\end{figure}\n\nFrom the gradients in $\\ln(l)$ (\\Fig{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3}) we can\ndetermine the lower limit, $h$, for the entropy for each value of $\\kappa$, where $h$ is\nthe slope.\nFor the $E1$ mapping we obtain an almost linear increase of $h$ with $\\kappa$\n(\\Fig{fig: slope_vs_k_e3_s3})\nwith absolute fitting standard deviations between $3.908\\times 10^{-3}$ and $3.157\\times 10^{-2}$.\nFor $\\kappa = 1$ our results are consistently above the predicted lower bound of $0.9624$\nby Boyland et al.\\ \\citep{boyland2000}.\nFor the $S1$ braid (see Eqs.~\\ref{eq: e3},\\ref{eq: s3}) we see a similar increase with a similar slope,\nhowever we observe that the values are consistently below $E1$, consistent with\nthe theoretical considerations of Boyland\\cite{boyland2000}.\n\nTo compare with the results of our algorithm we also perform calculations of\nthe finite-time braiding exponent (FTBE) for the same test cases using the \\texttt{braidlab} package.\nThe results are very similar, as shown in Figure \\ref{fig: slope_vs_k_e3_s3}\n(with a standard deviation of $2\\times 10^{-3}$ at $h = 1.0419$ for $\\kappa = 1$).\nFor these calculations, we stack $60$ copies of the unit braid ($E1$ or $S1$), and use $10$ samples\nof $N$ trajectories (from a set of $1200$) from this braid.\n$N$ is increased from $500$ to $1000$ in steps of $50$, and the entropy estimated by an exponential\nfit to the plot of mean FTBE versus $N$.\nEven the step for the $S^1$ case at $\\kappa = 1$ matches with the results from the\ndirect method.\nAlthough the results are very similar, the computation times are very different.\nTo compare the computational efficiency of the two methods we measure the computation\ntime it takes to converge to a value for $h$ for the $E1$ braid with $\\kappa = 1$.\nFor the direct method we use the computed lengths in \\Fig{fig: ln_l_vs_n_iter_star_e3}\nstarting from $n_{\\rm iter} = 3$ to compute $h$ and the linear fit.\nBy varying the total number of points used we obtain values of $h$ that approach\nan asymptotic limit.\nWe then use the computation time for each $n_{\\rm iter}$ and perform a fit of the form\n$h(t) = h(1-\\exp(-t\/t_0))$, with the computation time $t$ and convergence time $t_0$.\nSimilarly, we vary the number of trajectories used in the \\texttt{braidlab} calculations\nfrom $200$ to $1000$, compute the value for the FTBE and measure the computation time.\nWe then use the same fitting function as for the direct method.\nWe run both methods for the $E1$ case with $\\kappa = 1$ on 4 cores and observe\na convergence time of $380$s of computing for the \\verb+braidlab+ package and\n$0.83$s for the adaptive direct method.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{slope_vs_k_e3_s3.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nEstimate of the topological entropy for the $E1$ (solid blue line and asterisks) and $S1$ mapping\n(dashed green line and circles) in dependence of the parameter $\\kappa$\ncompared to the \\texttt{bradilab} results for $E1$ (dash dotted red line and crosses)\nand $S1$ (dotted cyan line and diamonds).\nAs a yellow hexagon we also plot the exact result for the lower bound for the $E3$ case\nfor $\\kappa = 1$.\n}\n\\label{fig: slope_vs_k_e3_s3}\\end{figure}\n\nIn addition to the computation time, a further important consideration for measuring\nan exponentially growing curve is the memory efficiency.\nWith increasing line length the number of points is expected to increase as well.\nTo test if that is the case for our adaptive method, we plot the\nnumber of final points, after applying the mapping $n$\nmany times, with the line length for values of $\\kappa$\nbetween $0.1$ and $2.5$ and $n_{\\rm iter}$ between $6$ (for higher $\\kappa$)\nand $150$ (for lower $\\kappa$) (see \\Fig{fig: npf_vs_l_fixed}, blue circles).\nFor comparison we also perform calculations with a fixed number of points that are equidistant.\nWe vary that number between $10^2$ and $10^8$ and measure the length of the stretched line for\nthis range of points.\nAs expected, as the number of points is increased, the length of the line increases\n(as we obtain a higher resolution and avoid ``short cuts'').\nWe fit the logarithm of the line length in dependence of the number of (fixed and equidistant) points using\na function of the form $l(1-\\exp(-\\lambda n^{\\rm p}_{\\rm fixed}))$, where $n^{\\rm p}_{\\rm fixed}$\nis the number of points.\nFrom this we compute the number of necessary points (\\Fig{fig: npf_vs_l_fixed}, red crosses) to\nreach a value of $l$ $3\\%$ away from its asymptotic value.\nWe clearly see that we obtain a different power law than linear which speaks against the efficiency of\nsuch a fixed line approach.\nNote that the value of $3\\%$ can be easily changed.\nHowever, the behaviour is the same (the power law becoming steeper for increasing desired accuracy).\nThe fact that with a fixed grid the number of points required grows faster than linearly with\nthe length of the line can be understood from the fact that, as the line length grows exponentially,\nso the number of folds grows exponentially, and these folds  become (on average) tighter.\nFor the adaptive method,\nthe number of final points is clearly proportional to the line length\nwhich means that the adaptive algorithm is efficient.\nA further improvement would be to remove points where they are not\nneeded, i.e.\\ along very straight line segments.\nHowever, that would add computational complexity and we have\nnot implemented it here.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{npf_vs_l_fixed.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nNumber of final points for the adaptive method against the total\nlength of the line for a horizontal starting line and different\nparameters $\\kappa$ from $0.1$ to $2.5$ and iterations $n_{\\rm iter}$\nfrom $6$ to $150$ (blue circles)\ntogether with similar calculations using a fixed number of points (red crosses)\nand a linear fit (green dashed line).\n}\n\\label{fig: npf_vs_l_fixed}\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Local measures of mixing efficiency}\\label{sec: mixing}\nSo far we dealt solely with estimating the topological entropy, the notion\nof which implicitly assumes a set of infinite trajectories (possibly within a periodic domain).\nHowever, in many applications of interest this condition does not hold - that is\nin practice we can only follow trajectories for a finite period of time.\nIndeed, even when trajectories can be followed indefinitely, the finite-time\nbehavior may be more physically relevant.\nIn any fluid mixing process, one would like to determine the effectiveness of\nthe mixing over finite time.\nIf one considers the case of a magnetic field threading a plasma, that magnetic\nfield might not be embedded in a periodic domain.\nEven if it exists in a periodic domain (for example a tokamak or spheromak)\nthe cases of interest are not stationary.\nTherefore, any given magnetic field structure exists only for a finite period of\ntime, say $t\\sim\\tau$, and within this time period plasma particles can travel\nsome given finite number of times around the device.\nAs such, for a particle located at time $t=t_0$ on a given trajectory, one might\nlike to know how entangled that trajectory is with neighboring trajectories\nfor $t_0\\leq t \\leq t_0+\\tau$.\n\nThe analysis of trajectories over finite time periods to determine their complexity\nis typically done by calculating, for example, Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponents (FTLEs)\n\\citep{brunton2010}, a technique that has been used extensively in characterizing\nunsteady fluid flows (e.g.\\citep{Pierrehumbert1991}).\nSuch FTLEs measure only local deformation about a single trajectory.\nOther examples of measures of local stretching or deformation in the mapping include\nthe finite time rotation number (FTRN)\n\\cite{Szezech-Caldas-2012-86-8-PRE, Szezech-Schelin-2013-377-452-PhysLetA},\nthe Mean Exponential Growth factor of Nearby Orbits (MEGNO) \\cite{Cincotta-Simo-2000-147-205-AA}\nand the Generalized Alignment Index (GALI) \\cite{Skokos-Bountis-2007-231-30-PhysD}.\n\nOne approach that takes into account global (in space and time) changes is the\ncomputation of the boundaries of Lagrangian coherent structures \\cite{Haller-Yuan-2000-147-352-PhysD},\nan approach that can be extended to arbitrary dimensions \\cite{Lekien-Shadden-2007-48-6-JMatPhys}.\nHowever, it involves the calculation of spatial derivatives of the flow which makes it\ncomputationally less practical.\n\nIn additional to the local measures of stretching mentioned above,\na topological equivalent (measuring complexity on finite scales),\nthe so-called Finite-Time Braiding Exponent (FTBE),\nwas recently introduced by Budi\\v{s}i{\\' c} \\& Thiffeault \\cite{Budisic-Thiffeault-2015-25-8-Chaos}\n(see also \\cite{Thiffeault-2010-20-1-Chaos}).\nA similar notion of finite-time entropy was introduced\n\\cite{Froyland2012} in the context of the {\\it differential entropy},\nto measure finite-time stretching.\nUnlike the FTLE this measures (finite-time) non-linear stretching over a finite\n$\\epsilon$-neighbourhood of phase space -- though it reduces to the FTLE in the\nlimit $\\epsilon\\to 0$.\nWhile this is similar in spirit to the FTTE that we discuss here, there are fundamental\nmathematical differences between the two quantities; the finite-time entropy of\nFroyland et al.\\cite{Froyland2012}, being based on the differential entropy,\nis more directly analogous to the metric entropy rather than the topological entropy.\nFor discussion on how the differential entropy relates to the metric entropy and\ntopological entropy see the review by Lesne\\citep{lesne2014}.\n\n\n\\subsection{FTTE Distribution}\nThe topological entropy characterizes the tangling of chaotic trajectories by a single number.\nIf we wish to understand finite-time behavior of trajectories (or indeed if we only have\nfinite-time trajectory information), then we would naturally like to characterize the\ntrajectories locally in space as well as time (since we no longer have infinite trajectories\nthat fill (a portion of) the phase plane).\nIn this case, we propose that one may obtain useful information about behavior of the\nsystem at hand  by analyzing the distribution of tangling within the domain.\nOne would like, for example, to take a grid of initial trajectories and evaluate\nthe local (in space and time) tangling per trajectory.\nWithin the framework presented in Section \\ref{sec: Methods}, this can be achieved\nby evaluating the FTTE over different curves $\\gamma$ that cover $M$.\nIn particular, this distribution can tell us whether the domain is covered by multiple chaotic regions,\nand whether these are separated or mixed with regions of non-chaotic trajectories.\nThis information is not given by the quantity $h$ which measures the maximum value of the topological\nentropy on a given curve $\\gamma \\subset M$.\nIn order to gain additional information about the structure of the mapping we need to measure $h$ for curves\n$\\gamma$ which are embedded in distinct chaotic regions.\n\nWe first consider the blinking vortex mapping, in which the central portion of the $xy$-plane is\nchaotic (for sufficiently large $\\kappa$), but we know that at large distances from\nthe origin trajectories are not chaotic.\nFrom \\Fig{fig: final line horizontal} we see that the initial straight line is stretched out\nover a significant portion of the central part of the plane, although there are also clearly\ndefined ``empty'' regions that the mapping does not reach.\nIf those areas are invariant for each iteration we should be able to measure\na different value of the FTTE in them from the surrounding regions where\nthe stretched and folded line densely fills the space.\nIn fact, we might measure vanishing entropy for some parts of the domain.\nIn order to measure the dependence of the FTTE on the coordinates\n$x$ and $y$ we select an array of initial curves $\\gamma$ given by small circles located on a rectangular grid.\nThese are then mapped forward as usual, and we monitor the\ngrowth of the length of the corresponding curves with the methods described above.\n\nFor our experiment we seed $111\\times 111$ circles within $x = [-4, 4]$ and $y = [-4, 4]$.\nTheir radius is chosen such that neighboring circles are sufficiently far apart\nwith radius $r = 0.8\\times 8\/(2\\times 110)$, where $8$ is the size of the domain.\nIn order to increase the resolution we also perform computations with circles\nat $x = [-4, 4]$ and $y = 0$ with $1001$ circles with radius\n$r =  0.8\\times 8\/(2\\times 1000)$.\nWe perform $20$ iterations of the blinking vortex map \\eqref{eq: e3}\nwith $\\kappa = 0.5$ and estimate the\nFTTE using the fitting function for the line length as given in Eq.~\\eqref{eq: entropy fit}.\nSince the data is rather fluctuating below $n = 6$, we discard\npoints below this value when we perform the fit.\n\nWe find a clear distribution for $h$ with areas of $h \\approx 0.6$\nand areas with $h \\approx 0$ (\\Fig{fig: circles}).\nIt appears that the domain for which $h = 0.6$ has a fractal like structure and\nresembles something similar to a Cantor set (compare the middle and lower frames in \\Fig{fig: circles}).\nThe same is true for the domain for which $h = 0$.\nIncreasing the number of iterations improves the fit, and hence the calculation\nof the entropy.\nThis also leads to a sharper divide with the range at $0 < h < 0.6$ decreasingly\npopulated.\nSimilarly with fractals, or the Cantor set, we also observe self-similarity when we\nshrink the domain boundaries.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_circ_k_05_np_1e+01_nit_20_xl_-4_xr_4_n_circ_111_dt_float64.eps} \\\\\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_circ_k_05_np_1e+01_nit_20_xl_-4_xr_4_y_off_0_n_circ_1001_dt_float64.eps}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_circ_k_05_np_1e+01_nit_20_xl_-4_xr_4_y_off_0_n_circ_1001_dt_float64_zoomed.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nFTTE distribution for the blinking vortex mapping $E1$ with\n$\\kappa = 0.5$ and with initial\ndistribution of $111\\times 111$ circles (upper panel), $1001$ circles at\n$y = 0$ (central panel) and a zoom in of the region $-3.2 \\le x \\le -2.2$ (lower panel).\n}\n\\label{fig: circles}\\end{figure}\n\nWe also estimate the entropy distribution for the standard map\n\\eqref{eq: standard map} using the method of the initial circle distribution.\nIntuitively we expect vanishing entropy at the periodic orbits, and non-zero\nat chaotic regions.\nIt is not immediately clear, however, if there is any characteristic value for\nthe entropy.\nFrom the FTTE distribution we can confirm our intuition, and find vanishing\nentropy at periodic orbits (\\Fig{fig: circles standard}).\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_circ_symplectic_k_097_n_iter_20_n_circ_101_dt_float64} \\\\\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{adapt_circ_symplectic_k_097_x_052_062_y_025_035_n_iter_20_n_circ_101_dt_float64}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nFTTE distribution for the standard map \\eqref{eq: standard map}\nand $\\kappa = 0.97$ of $101\\times 101$ circles (upper panel).\nOn the lower panel we show a zoom of the region $0.25 \\le \\theta \\le 0.35$ and\n$0.52 \\le \\phi \\le 0.62$.\n}\n\\label{fig: circles standard}\\end{figure}\n\nFrom the Lemma by Adler et al.\\ \\cite{Adler-Konheim-1695-114-309-TrAmMathSoc} we know that\nfor $\\lim_{n_{\\rm iter} \\rightarrow \\infty}$ the topological entropy of the mapping\nis given as the maximum in the distribution.\nThis is exactly what we see when we compare \\Fig{fig: slope_vs_k_e3_s3}\n(for $\\kappa = 0.5$) with \\Fig{fig: circles}.\nIntuitively, this is easily understood as the dominance of the largest growth rate.\n\nFor a magnetic field in a toroidal plasma the existence of distinct chaotic regions has far reaching implications.\nTheir boundaries determine regions which are not crossed by charged particles.\nIt also implies that, given the connection of $h$ and the finite time Lyapunov exponent,\nmagnetic field line separation behaves differently for different regions.\nSuch distinct regions were already computed in the past using the finite time rotation number\n\\cite{Szezech-Caldas-2012-86-8-PRE, Szezech-Schelin-2013-377-452-PhysLetA}.\nThey showed that it can be used to clearly distinguish disconnected regions that, in general,\nhave different values of the FTTE.\n\n\n\\subsection{Passive Scalar\/Density}\nTo further probe the structure of the blinking vortex map we consider the\nevolution of a passive scalar under successive iterations of the mapping as\ndiscussed in Section \\ref{sec: scalar}.\nWe first show that for the blinking vortex motion, the passive scalar\nevolves identical to the fluid density.\nIf we replaced the passive scalar $c(\\bm{x})$ by a density $\\rho(\\bm{x})$ the result\nin equation \\eqref{eq: passive scalar fourier} would be the same,\nbecause our mapping $\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x})$ is volume preserving.\nThis can be easily shown by using the pull-back on the volume 2-form\n${\\rm d} {} x \\wedge {\\rm d} {} y$:\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{eq: cc two-form}\n\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}^{*} ({\\rm d} {} x \\wedge {\\rm d} {} y) & = &\n\\left( \\frac{\\partial F^1}{\\partial x}\\frac{\\partial F^2}{\\partial y}-\n \\frac{\\partial F^1}{\\partial y}\\frac{\\partial F^2}{\\partial x} \\right)\n {\\rm d} {} x \\wedge {\\rm d} {} y\n \\nonumber \\\\\n & = & {\\rm d} {} x \\wedge {\\rm d} {} y,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $x$ and $y$ are the coordinates of the initial points.\nHence, the mapping $\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}(\\bm{x})$ for the blinking vortex motion describes an incompressible flow.\n\nSuccessive iterations strongly mix the initial distribution for the passive\nscalar $c(\\bm{x})$ (\\Fig{fig: passive scalar}, upper panel).\nThe mixing is, however, not homogeneous.\nWe can identify regions with weak mixing and regions with strong mixing.\nThis is reflected in the power spectrum\n(\\Fig{fig: passive scalar}, bottom panel) where we clearly see\na noisy, but flat spectrum arising, which implies the non-existence of a characteristic\nlength scale.\nThe presence of a characteristic length scale would have shown up in\nthe power spectra.\nSuch a scale should have then decreased with successive applications\nof the mapping.\nIts absence shows that the stirring happens on all scales.\nThis is consistent with the identification of a fractal-like structure\nto the FTTE distribution in the previous section.\n\nIt is remarkable that the shortest length scale with some measurable power changes\nrapidly with the number of iterations.\nIn fact, we can see an exponential decrease in the smallest length scale,\nas illustrated by the exponential function (\\Fig{fig: passive scalar}, lower panel).\nFor a mapping with positive topological entropy, as in this case, we expected\nsuch a behavior, since any initial line is being stretched exponentially\nwith the consequence that points on the line move exponentially close\nto other points on the same line leading to thin structures.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{cc4000_t7.eps} \\\\\n\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\columnwidth]{ff4000.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption[]{\nPassive scalar distribution after applying 7 iterations for the blinking\nvortex mapping \\eqref{eq: e3} with $\\kappa = 0.5$ (upper panel).\nPower spectrum for the passive scalar in dependence of the number\nof iterations (bottom panel) together with an exponential curve (black line).\n}\n\\label{fig: passive scalar}\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nHere we introduced a direct method to reliably and efficiently calculate\nthe lower limit of the topological entropy for a mapping $\\mbox{\\boldmath $F$} {}: \\mathbb{R}^2 \\rightarrow\n\\mathbb{R}^2$.\nSuch mappings can arise from either two-dimensional\ntime-periodic fluid flows or three-dimensional magnetic fields, which are periodic in one direction.\nThe new method simply measures the stretching of a material curve\nand the topological entropy is estimated as the exponential growth rate of the\nline length.\nBy employing an adaptive approach we are able to study larger numbers of iterations\nwithout loss of precision.\nHowever, the direct methods should not be applied without restrictions.\nFor highly tangled fields (highly mixed flows) and for very long iterations the\ncomputation time increases exponentially.\nThis is not the case for the \\verb+braidlab+ package.\nHowever, the \\verb+braidlab+ performs significantly worse for the examples tested here\nfor which our method is faster.\nIn case of the $E1$ configuration with $\\kappa = 1$ we find a speed up of a factor of ca.\\ $450$\nin favor of the direct adaptive method\non a 2.4 GHz quad-code Intel Xeon with 32 GB RAM.\n\nThe stretching of the initial curve, and hence the topological entropy,\nis not homogeneous in the domain.\nBy measuring the lengthening of a distribution of circles, we show that the\nfinite time topological entropy can exhibit a complex spatial distribution.\nFor one of the maps used here, it shows a Cantor set like distribution, with\nalternating zero and finite entropy.\n\nThis is confirmed by the mapping of a passive scalar for which we compute\nits spatial distribution using a Fourier transform.\nThere we observe an exponential decrease in length scale for the passive scalar.\nThis was expected, since the mapping used exponentially increases any line length.\n\n\n\\acknowledgements\nAll the authors acknowledge financial support from the UK's\nSTFC (grant number ST\/K000993).\n\n\\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\\setcounter{equation}{0}\n\nThe Strominger system is a system of equations for a metric on a $3$-dimensional complex manifold $X$ equipped with a nowhere vanishing holomorphic $3$-form, and a Hermitian metric on a holomorphic vector bundle over $X$. It is of considerable interest both in physics, where it is the equation for supersymmetric compactifications of the heterotic string to a four-dimensional space-time, and in mathematics, where it is a non-Kaehler generalization of a Calabi-Yau metric \\cite{Y} coupled to a Hermitian-Einstein connection \\cite{D, UY}. Special solutions to the Strominger system have been found by Li-Yau \\cite{LY} and Fu-Yau \\cite{FY}, but the general solution appears out of reach at the present time.\n\n\\smallskip\nThe main goal of this paper is to propose a geometric flow of $(2,2)$-forms, whose stationary points provide solutions of the Strominger system. We call it the Anomaly flow, as its curvature terms are the local characteristic classes arising in gravitational and Yang-Mills anomalies in string theory.\nIn this paper, we present some evidence that the Anomaly flow may provide a viable approach to Strominger systems. In particular, we show that it preserves the balanced property of metrics, that it also admits a more conventional description as a flow of Hermitian metrics by their curvatures, and that short-time solutions always exist for small values of the string tension parameter. \nEstimates for solutions and criteria for long-time existence and convergence are relegated to later work.\n\n\n\\section{The Anomaly flow}\n\nLet $X$ be a compact $3$-dimensional complex manifold, which admits a nowhere vanishing holomorphic $(3,0)$-form $\\Omega$. Let $E\\to X$ be a holomorphic vector bundle over $X$. Let $\\omega_0$ be a Hermitian metric on $X$, and $H_0$ a Hermitian metric on $E$. We define the Anomaly flow for the pair $(X,E)$\nto be the flow $\\omega(t), H(t)$ of metrics on $X$ and on $E$ given by,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{anomalyXE}\n\\partial_t (\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2 )\n&=&\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega+\\alpha'\\left({\\rm Tr}(R\\wedge R)-{\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F)\\right)\n\\nonumber\\\\\nH^{-1}\\partial_tH\n&=&\n-\\Lambda F\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwith initial condition $\\omega(0)=\\omega_0$, $H(0)=H_0$. Here $\\alpha'$ is a fixed positive parameter, called the string tension in the physics literature. The expressions $R$ and $F$ denote respectively the curvature of the Chern connections defined by $\\omega(t)$ and $H(t)$ on $X$ and on $E$. They are $(1,1)$-forms, valued respectively in the bundles $End(T^{1,0})$ and $End(E)$ of endomorphisms of $T^{1,0}$ and $E$. Our conventions are\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n[D_j,D_{\\bar k}]V^p=R_{\\bar kj}{}^p{}_q V^q,\n\\qquad\n[D_j,D_{\\bar k}]\\varphi^\\alpha=F_{\\bar kj}{}^\\alpha{}_\\beta \\varphi^\\beta,\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $V^p$ and $\\varphi^\\alpha$ are respectively sections of $T^{1,0}$ and $E$ in a local trivialization. The Hermitian form $\\omega$ is defined by $\\omega= i \\, \\omega_{\\bar k j} dz^j\\wedge d\\bar z^k$. The $(1,1)$-forms $R$ and $F$ are then given by \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nR= i \\, R_{\\bar kj}{}^p{}_q\\,dz^j\\wedge d\\bar z^k, \\ \\  \\ F= i \\, F_{\\bar kj}{}^\\alpha{}_\\beta\\,dz^j\\wedge d\\bar z^k.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n The Hodge operator $\\Lambda$ is defined as usual by\n$(\\Lambda F)^\\alpha{}_\\beta=\\omega^{j\\bar k}F_{\\bar kj}{}^\\alpha{}_\\beta$. Here $(\\omega^{j\\bar k})$ denotes the inverse $(\\omega_{\\bar j k})^{-1}$ of $(\\omega_{\\bar j k})$.\n\n\\smallskip\n\nWe shall also be interested in a version of the Anomaly flow for just a metric $\\omega(t)$ on $X$. Thus let $\\Phi_0$ be a given closed smooth $(2,2)$-form on $X$. The Anomaly flow for $X$ is defined by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{anomalyX}\n\\partial_t(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2)\n=\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega+\\alpha'({\\rm Tr}\\,R\\wedge R-\\Phi_0)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwith initial condition $\\omega(0)=\\omega_0$. \n\n\\smallskip\nThe following simple theorem provides the motivation for the Anomaly flows:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{Th1}\nLet $X,E,\\Omega$ be as above, and consider the equations\n(\\ref{anomalyXE}) or (\\ref{anomalyX}) on either $(X,E)$ or $X$, \nwith initial metrics $\\omega_0$ and $H_0$.\n\n\\smallskip\n{\\rm (a)} The equation (\\ref{anomalyX}) is well-defined as a flow, i.e., it defines a vector field on the space of metrics, or equivalently, a vector field on the space of positive Hermitian $(2,2)$-forms. The flows are local, in the sense that the vector fields are given by local expressions in the underlying Hermitian metrics (or the underlying $(2,2)$-form). \n\nSimilarly for the equation (\\ref{anomalyXE}), which defines now a vector field on the direct sum of the space of Hermitian metrics on $X$ (or positive $(2,2)$-forms) with the space of Hermitian metrics on $E$.\n\n\n\\smallskip\n{\\rm (b)} Assume that the Anomaly flows admit a smooth solution on some time interval $[0,T)$. If the initial metric $\\omega_0$ satisfies the balanced condition\n\\footnote{The usual balanced condition for a Hermitian metric $\\omega$ in dimension $n$ is $d\\omega^{n-1}=0$. For simplicity, we use the same terminology for the slight modification used in (\\ref{balanced}).}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{balanced}\nd(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_0}\\omega_0^2)=0\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nthen the metric $\\omega(t)$ will satisfy the same balanced condition, namely $d(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_t}\\omega_t^2)=0$, for any $t$ in its time interval $[0,T)$ of existence. \n\n\\smallskip\n{\\rm (c)} Assume that the Anomaly flow for $(X,E)$ exists for all time $[0,\\infty)$, and that the initial metric satisfies the balanced-like condition (\\ref{balanced}). If the flow $(\\omega(t),H(t))$ converges to a pair $(\\omega_\\infty,H_\\infty)$ of Hermitian metrics on $X$ and $E$, then this pair satisfies the Strominger system of equations\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{S}\n&&\nF_\\infty\\wedge \\omega_\\infty^2=0\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\nF_\\infty^{2,0}=F_\\infty^{0,2}=0\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega_\\infty=\\alpha'\n\\left({\\rm Tr} F_\\infty\\wedge F_\\infty - {\\rm Tr} R_\\infty\\wedge R_\\infty \\right)\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\nd\\left(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_\\infty}\\omega_\\infty^2\\right)=0.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nSimilarly,\nif the Anomaly flow on $X$ converges, then the limiting metric $\\omega_\\infty$ satisfies\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\n\\label{SX}\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega_\\infty= - \\alpha'\n({\\rm Tr}(R_\\infty\\wedge R_\\infty)-\\Phi_0)\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\nd\\left(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_{\\infty}}\\omega_{\\infty}^2\\right)=0.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\medskip\n\nWe note that the condition $d(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_\\infty}\\omega_\\infty^2)=0$ has been shown by Li and Yau \\cite{LY} to be equivalent to the condition $d^\\dagger\\omega_\\infty=i(\\bar\\partial-\\partial)\\ln \\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_\\infty}$, so that the system (\\ref{S}) is indeed equivalent to the system originally written down by Strominger \\cite{S}.\n\nWe also note that the equations for $H$ in the Strominger system are just the Hermitian-Einstein equation for a Chern unitary connection, and the flow of $H$ in (\\ref{anomalyXE}) is of course the well-known Donaldson heat flow, which is gauge equivalent to the Yang-Mills flow.\n\n\\bigskip\nNext, we consider the issue of short-time solutions for the flows, and when they would be parabolic. For a fixed metric $\\omega$, we define a modified operator $\\tilde\\star$ of the Hodge $\\star_{\\omega}$ operator as the operator from the space of $(2,2)$-forms $\\delta\\Psi$ to the space of $(1,1)$-forms,\ngiven by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{tildestar}\n\\tilde\\star \\,\\delta\\Psi\n=\n{1\\over 2\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}(\\<\\star \\delta\\Psi,\\omega\\>\\omega-\\star \\delta\\Psi).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nNext, we view the curvature tensor $R_{\\bar kj}{}^p{}_q$ of $\\omega$ as the operator $Rm$ from the space of $(1,1)$-forms $\\delta\\omega$ into itself\ngiven by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nRm(\\delta\\omega)_{\\bar kj}=R_{\\bar kj}{}^{p\\bar q}\\delta\\omega_{\\bar q p}.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nWe can then define the following linear differential operator $\\tilde \\Delta$ of order $2$ on the space of Hermitian tensors $\\delta\\Psi$ of type $(2,2)$,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{Delta}\n\\tilde\\Delta\\,(\\delta\\Psi)\n=\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial} (\\tilde\\star \\delta\\Psi -2\\alpha'\\,Rm(\\tilde\\star\\delta\\Psi)).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nWe note that the range of $\\tilde\\Delta$ is contained in the space of closed $(2,2)$-forms. We shall say that the operator $\\tilde\\Delta$ is {\\it elliptic on the space of closed $(2,2)$-forms} if its symbol, restricted to the null space of the symbol of the exterior derivative $d$, admits only eigenvalues with strictly positive real parts.\nWe have then the following theorem:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{Th2}\nLet $(X,\\Omega,E)$ be as before, and consider the flows (\\ref{anomalyXE}) and (\\ref{anomalyX}), with initial Hermitian metrics $\\omega_0$ and $H_0$ on $X$ and $E$ respectively. If the operator $\\tilde\\Delta$ with respect to the initial metric $\\omega_0$ is elliptic on the space of closed $(2,2)$-forms, in the above sense, then both flows (\\ref{anomalyXE}) and (\\ref{anomalyX}) admit a smooth solution on some non-trivial finite time interval.\n\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\\medskip\n\n\\section{Proof of Theorem \\ref{Th1}}\n\\setcounter{equation}{0}\n\n\\par\nLet $\\Psi=\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2$. The essence of Theorem \\ref{Th1} is that $\\omega$ can be recaptured from $\\Psi$ (and of course vice versa), by purely local expressions. For this we need to discuss the issue of $(n-1)$-th root of a positive $(n-1,-n-1)$-form in some detail.\n\n\\subsection{The $(n-1)$-th root of an $(n-1,n-1)$-form}\n\nIn general, in dimension $n$, let $\\Psi$ be a $(n-1,n-1)$-form which is positive definite, in the sense that \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Psi\\wedge i \\, \\eta\\wedge \\bar\\eta\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n is a positive $(n,n)$-form for any non-zero $(1,0)$-form $\\eta$ and which equals $0$ if and only if $\\eta=0$. Michelsohn \\cite{M} has shown that there exists a unique positive $(1,1)$-form $\\omega$ with \n \\begin{eqnarray}\n \\omega^{n-1}=\\Psi.\n \\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\n  We need a viable formula for $\\omega$, which can be obtained as follows. Let $\\Psi$ be expressed as in\n \\cite{M, TW1} by\n\\begin{eqnarray} \\label{n-1_convention}\n \\Psi &=&   i^{n-1} (n-1)!\\sum_{k, j} \\, (sgn(k, j))\\,\\Psi^{k\\bar j}dz^1\\wedge d\\bar z^1\\wedge \\cdots \\wedge \\widehat{dz^k}\\wedge d\\bar z^k\\wedge \\cdots \\\\\\nonumber\n &&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\wedge\\, dz^j \\wedge \\widehat{d\\bar z^j} \\wedge \\cdots\\wedge dz^n \\wedge d\\bar z^n\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $sgn(k, j) = -1$ if $k>j$ and $sgn(k, j) = 1$ otherwise. Note that $\\Psi^{k\\bar j}$ is a Hermitian matrix. Then the $(n-1)$-th root $\\omega= i \\, \\omega_{\\bar j k} dz^k\\wedge d\\bar z^j$ of $\\Psi$ is given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{oPsi}\n\\omega_{\\bar jk}=({\\rm det}\\,\\omega)\\,(\\Psi^{-1})_{\\bar jk},\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $(\\Psi^{-1})_{\\bar jk}$ is the inverse matrix of $\\Psi^{k\\bar j}$, i.e., \n$\\Psi^{k\\bar j}(\\Psi^{-1})_{\\bar j\\ell}=\\delta^k{}_\\ell$. To see this, we note that the entry $(\\omega^{n-1})^{j\\bar k}$ in the product $\\omega^{n-1}$ is obtained by taking the product of the entries, with corresponding permutation signs and $(n-1)!$ factor, of the matrix obtained from $\\omega_{\\bar pq}$ by removing the $j$-th row and the $k$-th column. In other words, it is the $j\\bar k$ cofactor of the matrix $\\omega_{\\bar pq}$. The equation (\\ref{oPsi}) is just a reformulation of this statement.\n\n\\medskip\nThe notion of $(n-1)$-th root is independent of any metric. Nevertheless, it can be useful to express it in terms of the Hodge star operator.\nIf $\\tilde\\omega$ is any metric, recall that the Hodge star operator $\\star_{\\tilde\\omega}$ with respect to $\\tilde\\omega$ is defined by the equation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\phi\\wedge \\overline\\Psi={\\<\\phi, (\\star_{\\tilde\\omega}\\Psi)\\>_{\\tilde\\omega}\\over n!}\\tilde\\omega^n\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nfor any $(1,1)$-form $\\phi$. But the left-hand side can be easily recognized to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{star0}\n(n-1)! \\, \\phi_{\\bar kj}\\Psi^{j\\bar k}\n\\prod_{\\ell=1}^nidz^\\ell\\wedge d\\bar z^{\\ell}\n=\n{\\phi_{\\bar kj}\\Psi^{j\\bar k}\\over {\\rm det}\\,\\tilde\\omega}\n\\,\n{\\tilde\\omega^n \\over n}.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nHere we use the fact that $(\\Psi^{j\\bar k})$ is Hermitian. This implies that \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{star}\n(\\star_{\\tilde\\omega}\\Psi)_{\\bar pq}\n=\n{(n-1)!\\over {\\rm det}\\,\\tilde\\omega}\\Psi^{k\\bar j}\\tilde\\omega_{\\bar q k}\\tilde\\omega_{\\bar jp}.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nAs a check, we note that, since the expression in (\\ref{star0}) is an $(n,n)$-form, the factor $\\phi_{\\bar kj}\\Psi^{j\\bar k}\/{\\rm det}\\,\\tilde\\omega$ must be a scalar, and hence $\\Psi^{k\\bar j}$ should be interpreted as a section of $(\\Lambda^{1,1})^*\\otimes K_X\\otimes \\overline{K_X}$. This is consistent with the fact that the expression given in (\\ref{star}) is a $(1,1)$-form.\nTaking $\\tilde\\omega$ in (\\ref{star}) to be $\\omega$ itself, we obtain\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\star_\\omega\\Psi=(n-1)! \\, \\omega,\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n a formula that can also be easily seen using an orthonormal basis for $\\omega$. Henceforth, we shall suppress the subindex $\\omega$ in the star operator, when the metric $\\omega$ is implicit.\n \n\n\n\n\\subsection{The relation $\\Psi=\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2$}\n\nWe return to the setting of a $3$-fold $X$, equipped with a fixed nowhere vanishing $(3,0)$-form $\\Omega$. If $\\Psi$ is any positive $(2,2)$-form, we claim that there is a unique positive $(1,1)$-form $\\omega$ so that $\\Psi=\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2$.\n\nIndeed, this equation determines the norm $\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega$, since taking determinants gives\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\rm det}\\,\\Psi\n=\n\\left(|\\Omega|^2({\\rm det}\\,\\omega)^{-1}\\right)^{3\/2}\\,({\\rm det}\\,\\omega)^2\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nand hence\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n({\\rm det}\\,\\omega)^{1\\over 2}={{\\rm det}\\,\\Psi\\over |\\Omega|^3}.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nThis determines ${\\rm det}\\,\\omega$ in terms of $\\Psi$, and hence $\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega$ in terms of $\\Psi$.  We can then obtain $\\omega$ as the square root of the positive $(2,2)$-form $\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega^{-1}\\Psi$. The relations (\\ref{oPsi}) and (\\ref{star}) become\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{root1}\n\\omega_{\\bar jk}=\n{{\\rm det}\\,\\Psi\\over |\\Omega|^2}\n\\Psi_{\\bar jk}^{-1},\n\\qquad\n\\star_\\omega\n\\Psi\n=\n2 \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Theorem \\ref{Th1}, Part (a)}\n\nIt is now straightforward to relate the variations of $\\omega$ to the variations of $\\Psi$. \nDifferentiating the first equation on the left side of (\\ref{root1}) gives\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{variations}\n\\delta\\omega_{\\bar jk}\n=\n{1\\over \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega{\\rm det}\\omega}\n\\left(\\omega_{\\bar qp}\\delta\\Psi^{p\\bar q}\\omega_{\\bar jk}\n-\n\\omega_{\\bar jp}\\delta\\Psi^{p\\bar q}\\omega_{\\bar qk}\\right).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nIn intrinsic notation, using (\\ref{star}), this can be rewritten as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{variations1}\n\\delta\\omega\n=\n{1\\over 2 \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}\\left(\\ \\<\\star\\delta\\Psi,\\omega\\>\\ \\omega-\\star \\delta\\Psi\\right)\n=\n\\tilde\\star\\,\\delta\\Psi,\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nin view of the definition of the operator $\\tilde\\star$.\n\n\\smallskip\nIn particular, along the Anomaly flow, we can replace $\\delta\\omega$ by $\\partial_t\\omega$ and $\\delta\\Psi$ by $\\partial_t\\Psi=\\partial_t(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2)$. We obtain in this way an equation giving $\\partial_t\\omega$ in terms of $\\omega$ and its curvature, which is the more conventional description of a geometric flow of Hermitian metrics. Equivalently, the flows can be written as flows of $(2,2)$-forms $\\Psi$, given by a local vector field on the space of positive Hermitian $(2,2)$-forms.\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Theorem \\ref{Th1}, Parts (b) and (c)}\n\nThe only non-trivial part of Theorem \\ref{Th1} is the conceptual part due to the issue of taking square roots. Once this issue has been clarified, the proof is straightforward.\n\nPart (b) follows immediately from the fact that the right hand sides of (\\ref{anomalyXE}) and (\\ref{anomalyX}) are always closed forms. This follows itself from the fact that $d{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega=d^2\\bar\\partial\\omega=0$, and that both ${\\rm Tr}(R\\wedge R)$ and ${\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F)$ are well-known closed representatives of the Chern classes $c_2(T^{1,0})$ and $c_2(E)$ of the bundles $T^{1,0}(X)$ and $E$. Thus\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\partial_t(d(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2))\n=\nd\\partial_t(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2)=0,\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nand $d(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2)=0$ for all time $t$, if $d(\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega\\o^2)=0$ at $t=0$.\n\n\\smallskip\nPart (c) follows immediately from Part (b), which guarantees that the balanced-like equation in the Strominger systems is satisfied for all time. The equation $F_\\infty^{2,0}=F_\\infty^{0,2}=0$ is automatic for all Chern connections. The other equations are obvious consequences of the fact that the limiting metric $\\omega_\\infty$ must be stationary.\n\n\n\\section{Short-time existence and parabolicity}\n\\setcounter{equation}{0}\n\nTo obtain short time existence, we consider the Anomaly flows as an evolution equation. Let $V$ be a smooth vector bundle over a compact manifold $X$, and consider the equation,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{evolution}\n\\partial_t \\psi={\\cal E}(\\psi)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere ${\\cal E}(\\psi)$ is a non-linear differential operator of order $2$, acting on the sections $\\psi$ of $V$. If the eigenvalues of the symbol $\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal E}(\\psi))(x,\\xi)$ of the linearization $\\delta{\\cal E}$ of ${\\cal E}$\nhave strictly positive real parts for $\\xi\\not=0$, $(x,\\xi)\\in T_*(X)$, then the equation is parabolic, and the evolution equation with initial data $\\psi$ admits a solution for short-time. \nMore generally, we have the following version of the Nash-Moser theorem,\nas formulated by Hamilton \\cite{H}, and applied by him to show the existence of short-time solution for the Ricci flow:\n\n\\begin{lemma}\nLet $L: C^\\infty(V)\\to C^\\infty(W)$  be a linear differential operator of order $1$ with values in another vector bundle $W$. Assume that\n\n\\smallskip\n{\\rm (a)} The composition $Q(\\Psi)=L(\\Psi) {\\cal E}(\\Psi)$ is a differential operator of order at most $1$;\n\n{\\rm (b)} The symbol $\\sigma(\\delta {\\cal E}(\\Psi)(x,\\xi)$ has eigenvalues with strictly positive real parts when restricted to the kernel of the symbol $\\sigma(\\delta L(\\Psi))(x,\\xi)$.\n\n\\smallskip\nThen the initial value problem (\\ref{evolution}) admits a unique solution for short time.\n\n\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Theorem \\ref{Th2}}\n\nWe consider first the notationally simpler case of the Anomaly flow (\\ref{anomalyX}) on $X$. In this case, the bundle $V$ is the bundle $\\Lambda^{2,2}(X)$ of $(2,2)$-forms, the sections $\\psi$ are the $(2,2)$-forms $\\Psi$, and ${\\cal E}(\\psi)$\nis given by the right hand side of (\\ref{anomalyX}). The linearization of $i{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega$ follows readily from the equation (\\ref{variations1}),\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{linearizationo}\n\\left(i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\delta\\omega\\right)\n=\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\left({1\\over 2 \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}\n\\left(\\<\\star\\delta\\Psi,\\omega\\>\\omega\n-\\star\\delta\\Psi\\right)\\right)\n=\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial} (\\tilde\\star\\delta\\Psi),\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nin the notation of (\\ref{tildestar}). Next, we determine the linearization of the curvature terms in the Anomaly flow. The variation of the curvature $F$ of a unitary Chern connection \nunder a variation $\\delta H$ of the Hermitian metric is given by (see e.g. \\cite{Siu}),\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta F= i \\bar\\partial \\partial^H(H^{-1}\\delta H),\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\partial^H$ denotes the covariant exterior derivative in the unbarred directions. In particular,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta {\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F)=2\\,{\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge i \\bar\\partial\\p^H(H^{-1}\\delta H)).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nIn view of the Bianchi identity, $d^HF=0$, this can be rewritten as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta {\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F)\n=\n-2\\,i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\,{\\rm Tr}(F H^{-1}\\delta H).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\n\nSpecializing to the case where the vector bundle is $T^{1,0}(X)$, we obtain\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{linearizationRR}\n\\delta\n{\\rm Tr}(R\\wedge R)\n&=&\n-2i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\left(iR_{\\bar kj}{}^{\\bar\\beta\\alpha}\\delta \\omega_{\\alpha\\bar\\beta} dz^j\\wedge d\\bar z^k\\right)\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&=&\n-2i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\left(\\,Rm(\\tilde\\star\\delta\\Psi)\\right)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere we view the Riemannian curvature tensor as an operator on $(1,1)$-forms, as explained in \\S 2.\nCombining the formulas (\\ref{linearizationo}) and (\\ref{linearizationRR}) gives the linearization of ${\\cal E}(\\Psi)$ in the case of the Anomaly flow on $X$,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta{\\cal E}(\\delta\\Psi)\n=\n\\tilde\\Delta (\\delta\\Psi).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation} \n\nWe apply Hamilton's version of the Nash-Moser implicit function theorem with the choice $L=d$ on $(2,2)$-forms. Because the right hand side ${\\cal E}$ of the Anomaly flow is a closed $(2,2)$-form, we do have $L{\\cal E}=0$. The condition of ellipticity of the operator $\\tilde\\Delta$ restricted to the space of closed $(2,2)$-forms, as formulated in \\S 2, is precisely the condition which allows Hamilton's version of the Nash-Moser implicit function theorem to apply. Thus the existence of solutions to the equation (\\ref{anomalyX}) for short-time follows.\n\n\\bigskip\nThe case of the Anomaly flow on $(X,E)$ can be treated in the same manner. We view the flow as of the form\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\partial_t\\Psi={\\cal E}(\\Psi,H),\n\\qquad\n\\partial_t H={\\cal F}(\\Psi,H)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwith the pair $(\\Psi,H)$ given by sections of the direct sum of the bundle of $(2,2)$-forms with the bundle of Hermitian quadratic forms on $E$. Clearly ${\\cal E}$ and ${\\cal F}$ are non-linear differential operators of order $2$.\nApplying the formulas for variations of curvature to the bundles $T^{1,0}$ and $E$, we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta {\\cal E}\n&=&\ni {\\partial\\bar\\partial} \\bigg  (\\delta \\omega+ 2\\alpha'\\left(-{\\rm Tr}(R \\omega^{-1}\\delta\\omega)+{\\rm Tr}(F H^{-1}\\delta H)\\right)\\bigg)\n\\nonumber\\\\\n\\delta{\\cal F}\n&=&\nH\\Lambda \\bar\\partial\\p^H(H^{-1}\\delta H)\n+\n\\delta\\omega^{j\\bar k}F_{\\bar kj}+H^{-1}\\delta H\\, H^{-1}\\Lambda F,\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $F_{\\bar kj}$ is viewed as a $(1,1)$-form with valued in the bundle of endomorphisms of $E$. It follows that the symbols of the linearization of ${\\cal E}$ and ${\\cal F}$ are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\n\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal E}):\n\\\n(\\delta\\Psi,\\delta H)\n\\to\n\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal E}_X)(\\delta\\Psi)\n+\n2\\alpha' i\\partial\\bar\\partial({\\rm Tr}(FH^{-1}\\delta H))\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\n\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal F}):\n\\\n(\\delta\\Psi,\\delta H)\n\\to\n|\\xi|^2 \\delta H\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere we have temporarily denoted by ${\\cal E}_X$ the expression on the right hand side of the Anomaly flow on $X$. \n\nWe choose the operator $L$ of the Nash-Moser implicit function theorem as \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nL(\\Psi,H)=(d\\Psi,0).\n\\end{eqnarray*} \nThe right hand side ${\\cal E}(\\Psi,H)$ is again always a closed form, so we do have $L({\\cal E},{\\cal F})=0$. Furthermore,\nthe above formulas show that the symbol of the combined system $({\\cal E},{\\cal F})$ is a triangular block matrix, with the blocks on the diagonal given by $\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal E}_X)$ acting on $\\delta\\Psi$ and $\\sigma(\\delta{\\cal F})$ acting on $\\delta H$. The first block has already been shown to have eigenvalues with positive real parts when restricted to the kernel of $d$, while the second is manifestly strictly positive. So the short-time existence of solutions to the Anomaly flow on $(X,E)$ follows, and the proof of Theorem \\ref{Th2} is complete.\n\n\n\\subsection{Discussion of the parabolicity condition}\n\nThe linearization operator $\\tilde\\Delta$ and its ellipticity restricted to the space of $(2,2)$ closed forms is of considerable importance, since $\\tilde\\Delta$ controls the evolution of derivative quantities of $\\Psi$ and $\\omega$ such as the curvature.\n\n\\smallskip\nFirst we observe that the ellipticity condition can also be reformulated in terms of operators on $(1,1)$-forms. It suffices to set $\\delta\\Psi=\\star\\delta T$, for $(1,1)$-forms $T$. Then the ellipticity of $\\tilde\\Delta$ on the space of closed $(2,2)$-forms is equivalent to the ellipticity of the operator\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\star\\delta T\\to \\tilde \\Delta(\\star \\delta T)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nrestricted to $(1,1)$-forms $\\delta T$ satisfying $d^\\dagger \\delta T=0$, defined similarly in terms of the eigenvalues of its symbol, restricted to the kernel of the symbol of $d^\\dagger$. This follows at once from the well-known formula $d^\\dagger=-\\star d\\,\\star$.\n\n\\smallskip\nNext, it is instructive to work out the ellipticity condition of the operator $\\tilde\\Delta$ restricted to the space of $(2,2)$-forms more explicitly. The symbol $\\sigma_{\\tilde\\Delta}$ of $\\tilde\\Delta$ is given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\sigma_{\\tilde\\Delta}(\\xi):\n\\ \\delta\\Psi\\ \\rightarrow\n\\\ni\\xi\\wedge\\bar\\xi\\wedge (\\tilde\\star\\delta\\Psi\n-2\\alpha'Rm(\\tilde\\star\\delta\\Psi))\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\xi\\in T^*(X)$. The following lemma is useful:\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma}\nFor all $\\delta\\Psi$ in the kernel of the symbol of the exterior derivative $d$ on $(2,2)$-forms, we have\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{Id}\ni\\xi\\wedge\\bar \\xi \\wedge \\tilde\\star \\delta\\Psi\n=\n{1\\over 2\\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}|\\xi|^2\\,\\delta\\Psi.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\medskip\n{\\it Proof.} Without loss of generality, we can choose coordinates so that $\\omega_{\\bar jk}=\\delta_{jk}$, and by an additional orthogonal rotation if necessary, that $\\xi=(\\xi_1,0,\\cdots,0)$. Let $\\Phi$ denote the left-hand side of (\\ref{Id}). Using the coordinate expression (\\ref{variations}) and the convention (\\ref{n-1_convention}) for components of a $(2,2)$-form, we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{Phi}\n&&\n\\Phi^{k\\bar 1}=0, \\qquad k=1,2,3\n\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\n\\Phi^{k\\bar k}\n=\n{1\\over 2 \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}\n|\\xi|^2(\\delta\\Psi^{1\\bar 1}+\\delta\\Psi^{k\\bar k}),\n\\qquad k=2,3\n\\nonumber\n\\\\\n&&\n\\Phi^{2\\bar 3}={1\\over 2 \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega}|\\xi|^2 \\delta\\Psi^{2\\bar 3}.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nNow the kernel of the exterior derivative $d$ on $(2,2)$-forms is given by forms $\\delta\\Psi$ satisfying\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\xi_j\\delta\\Psi^{j\\bar k}=0\\qquad k=1,2,3.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nIn the given coordinate system, this reduces to $\\delta\\Psi^{1\\bar k}=0$ for $k=1,2,3$. Using these relations, we can rewrite the above identities as $\\Phi= {1 \\over 2} \\|\\Omega\\|_\\omega^{-1}|\\xi|^2\\delta\\Psi$. The lemma is proved.\n\n\\bigskip\n\nThis allows us to identify immediately an important and quite general situation where the ellipticity condition, and hence the existence of short-time solutions, holds:\n\n\\begin{proposition}\nConsider the operator \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta\\Psi\n\\to - i\\xi\\wedge\\bar\\xi \\wedge 2\\alpha' Rm(\\<\\star\\delta\\Psi,\\omega\\>\\omega-\\star\\delta\\Psi)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nrestricted to the kernel of the symbol of the exterior derivative $d$ on $(2,2)$-forms. If it has operator norm $<|\\xi|^2$ for any $\\xi\\not=0$,\nthen the Anomaly flows with $\\omega$ as initial metric admit smooth solutions for at least a short time.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Remarks}\n\\setcounter{equation}{0}\n\nWe conclude with a few remarks.\n\n\\medskip\n\n(1) {\\bf The balanced condition}\n\nOne of the major challenges in Strominger systems is that, even with the metric $H$ on the vector bundle $E$ fixed, it is a system in the metric $\\omega$, in the sense that both the anomaly equation and the balanced-like condition have to be satisfied. \nOne natural approach is to try and solve the anomaly equation with a particular ansatz which guarantees that the metric is balanced. One possible ansatz is the very general one proposed by Tosatti and Weinkove \\cite{TW1},\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{TW}\n\\omega^2=\\omega_0^2+i{\\partial\\bar\\partial}(u\\tilde\\omega)\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nHere $\\omega_0$ is a balanced metric, and $\\tilde\\omega$ is an arbitrary $(1,1)$-form, and the form $\\omega^2$ is required to be positive. Tosatti and Weinkove have also shown in \\cite{TW1} how to find a single balanced metric $\\omega_0$. Another ansatz is the one by Fu and Yau \\cite{FY}, in the special case of Goldstein-Prokushkin manifolds discussed below (see eq. (\\ref{FY}) below). But unlike in the Kaehler case, where metrics can be represented by a potential, there does not appear to be a uniquely compelling ansatz for balanced metrics at the present time. Thus, a \nvery attractive feature of the Anomaly flows is that they guarantee that the metrics be balanced, without appealing to any particular ansatz.\n\n\n\n\\medskip\n(2) {\\bf Toric fibrations over $K3$ surfaces}\n\nThe first non-perturbative solution of a Strominger system was found by Fu-Yau \\cite{FY}, as a toric fibration over a $K3$ surface. More specifically, Goldstein and Prokushkin \\cite{GP} had shown how to construct a toric fibration $\\pi:X\\to S$, given a Calabi-Yau surface $(S,\\omega_S)$ and two anti-self-dual $(1,1)$-forms $\\kappa_1,\\kappa_2\\in 2\\pi H^2(S,{\\bf Z})$. Furthermore, there is a $(1,0)$-form $\\theta$ on $X$ so that, if $\\Omega_S$ is a non-vanishing holomorphic $(2,0)$-form on $S$, then the non-vanishing holomorphic $(3,0)$-form on $X$ is given by $\\Omega=\\theta\\wedge\\pi^*(\\Omega_S)$. The $(1,1)$-form $\\omega_0=\\pi^*(\\omega_S)+i\\theta\\wedge\\bar\\theta$ is a balanced metric, $d\\omega_0^2=0$ and also satisfies $||\\Omega||_{\\omega_0} =1$. This implies that $d\\left(||\\Omega||_{\\omega_0} \\omega_0^2 \\right)=0$.\n\nUnder suitable cohomological conditions on the class $\\kappa_1$ and $\\kappa_2$, Fu and Yau found a solution of the Strominger system under the following ansatz,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{FY}\n\\omega_u=\\pi^*(e^u\\omega_S)+i\\theta\\wedge \\bar\\theta\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhere $u$ is a scalar function on $S$. Metrics of the form $\\omega_u$ are automatically balanced. Here we observe that another hint that the Anomaly flow is a natural flow, is that it preserves the Fu-Yau ansatz (\\ref{FY}). Indeed, under the cohomological conditions mentioned previously, Fu and Yau have shown that\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{FuYauequ}\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega_u\n+\n\\alpha'({\\rm Tr}(R_u\\wedge R_u)-{\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F))\n=\ni{\\partial\\bar\\partial}(e^u-\\alpha' fe^{-u})\\wedge\\omega_S\n+\n2\\alpha' \\,i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} u\\wedge\\,i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} u+\n\\mu\\omega_S^2\n\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nfor some smooth functions $f\\geq 0$ and $\\mu$. Thus $\\partial_t(\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_u}\\omega_u^2)$ is the pull-back of a $(2,2)$-form on $S$. Since\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_u}\\omega_u^2\n=\n\\omega_0^2+(e^u-1)\\omega_S^2\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwe see that an evolution of $\\|\\Omega\\|_{\\omega_u}\\omega_u^2$ by a term proportional to $\\omega_S^2$ is just an evolution of the conformal factor $u$, and $\\omega_u$ still satisfies the same ansatz. In fact, the Anomaly flow is immediately seen to be equivalent to the equation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{FYanomaly}\n\\partial_tu\n=\ne^{-u}(\\Delta(e^u-fe^{-u})+4\\alpha' \\sigma_2(D\\bar Du)+\\mu),\n\\qquad\nu(\\cdot,0)=0.\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nThis equation may be of interest in its own right. Its parabolicity is\nequivalent to the ellipticity of the right hand side, which is the ellipticity condition imposed by Fu and Yau (\\cite{FY}, eqs. (7.3) and (8.1)). Explicitly, \ndenote\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nE(u) &=&i{\\partial\\bar\\partial}\\omega_u\n+\n\\alpha' \\left({\\rm Tr}(R_u\\wedge R_u)-{\\rm Tr}(F\\wedge F)\\right)\\\\\n&=& i{\\partial\\bar\\partial}(e^u-\\alpha' fe^{-u})\\wedge\\omega_S\n+\n2\\alpha' \\,i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} u\\wedge\\,i{\\partial\\bar\\partial} u+\n\\mu\\omega_S^2\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nIts symbol is given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\sigma(\\delta E)\\ : \\ \\delta u \\rightarrow i\\xi\\wedge \\xi \\wedge (\\delta u )\\left(\\left( e^u + \\alpha' f e^{-u} \\right) \\omega_S + 4\\alpha' i\\partial\\bar\\partial u\\right).\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nThe ellipticity condition reduces to the following condition on $u$\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\left( e^u + \\alpha' f e^{-u} \\right) \\omega_S + 4\\alpha' i\\partial\\bar\\partial u >0,\n\\end{eqnarray}} \\newcommand{\\ee}{\\end{equation}\nwhich can thus be viewed as a special case of the parabolicity condition for the Anomaly flow.\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nThe isotope $^{28}$Si can be considered as a key nucleus to understand the coexistence between mean field effects and cluster structures. Indeed different structures coexist in its excited states even at low excitation energies. Recent antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (AMD) calculations for $^{28}$Si \\cite{tani} have shown that cluster structures such as $^{12}$C-$^{16}$O or $^{24}$Mg-$\\alpha$ may have large contributions for normal-deformed and superdeformed states, respectively. By using the heavy-ion radiative capture (HIRC) mechanism in which the compound nucleus decays solely by $\\gamma$-ray emission we have investigated the $^{12}$C-$^{16}$O cluster structure in $^{28}$Si. Moreover this mechanism will directly populate $^{28}$Si at energies where the calculated nuclear matter densities have similar asymmetries as the $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O reaction \\cite{ichi}.\n\nThe excitation function of $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O exhibits narrow resonances \\cite{sand} around the Coulomb Barrier ($V_B\\sim 7.8$ MeV). These resonances are correlated in all reaction channels including the HIRC. Baye and Descouvemont \\cite{baye} have shown, using GCM calculations, that for the similar system $^{12}$C+ $^{12}$C, several observed resonances can be interpreted in terms of molecular resonances. Although HIRC is a rare process compared to the dominant fusion-evaporation channels (n, p, $\\alpha$), $\\gamma$-decay will favourably populate states with large structural overlaps with the entrance-channel thus allowing us to try to identify the possible cluster states. \n\n\\section{Experiment}\n\nOur experimental program is focused on the study of HIRC in the $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C and $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O \\cite{doro,jenk} systems. The present $^{12}$C($^{16}$O,$\\gamma$) reaction has been performed at the TRIUMF facility (Vancouver, Canada). A $^{16}$O ISAC beam has been used at two resonant energies down to 15\\% below $V_B$ ($E_{lab}$ = 1.07 and 0.96 AMeV) on high purity (99.9\\%) $^{12}$C thin ($50\\ \\mu g.cm^{-2}$) targets. The DRAGON recoil separator has been used at 0$^\\circ$ to select the $^{28}$Si recoils. We have used the BGO array to record the $\\gamma$-rays in coincidence with the heavy recoils identified in a DSSSD placed at the DRAGON focal plane. \n\n\n\\section{Results and discussion}\n\\subsection{$\\gamma$-ray decay}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{gamma_0_spectra.eps} }\n\\caption{Highest energy $\\gamma$-ray  spectra in coincidence with $^{28}$Si for the $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O reaction at $E_{c.m.}$= 6.6 MeV (dashed line) and $E_{c.m.}$= 7.2 MeV (full line). Spectra are normalized to the same integral.}\n\\label{spectra_e0}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nFig.~\\ref{spectra_e0} displays the highest energy $\\gamma$-ray in each $\\gamma$-event recorded in the BGO array in coincidence with the $^{28}$Si for the two studied energies. Both spectra show the same global structure. Concerning the region above 17 MeV, the direct transition to the ground state (g.s.) contributes to the bump above 20 MeV but due to the response function of the spectrometer and the deviation out of 0$^{\\circ}$ of the recoils induced by high energy $\\gamma$-ray emission very few recoils enter DRA\\-GON. The feeding of the $2^+_1$ (1.778 MeV) from the resonances is also observed ($E_{\\gamma_{0}} \\sim 21$ MeV) at both energies. For the lowest energy we also have a $\\gamma$-line around 18 MeV corresponding to the feeding of the $4^+_1$ (4.617 MeV).\n\n Concerning the low energy part of the spectra, the decay of the two first excited states of the $^{28}$Si can be identified ($E_{\\gamma_{0}}$ = 1.78 and 2.84 MeV). The decay of the prolate head band $0^+_3$ (6.690 MeV) to the $2^+_1$ contributes to the line around 5 MeV but this line does not correspond to a single state decay. We observe also the decay of the $3^-_1$ to the g.s. which contributes to the $\\gamma$-line at 6.8 MeV, a direct decay from the resonance is also observed for the two energies. It has been shown at higher energies \\cite{doro} that this first state of negative parity in $^{28}$Si is crucial to understand the $\\gamma$-spectra.\n \nDue to the low resolution of the BGO $\\gamma$-array and the large number of states in $^{28}$Si around 10 MeV, the large bump between 10 and 15 MeV with correspond to the feeding of intermediate states around 8-13 MeV cannot be discussed in terms of the feeding of particular states. Moreover in this region the transitions from the resonances and the subsequent decays to the g.s. are quite close in energy. This previously unobserved $\\gamma$-flux at these reaction energies has to be linked to what has been observed at higher energies ($E_{c.m}$ = 8.5, 8.8 and 9.0 MeV) \\cite{doro}, where the bump was around 14 MeV. Taking into account that in our previous experimental campaign the $^{28}$Si was populated at higher excitation energies ($E^* \\sim 25.3$, 25.6 and 25.8 MeV), than in the present experiment ($E^* \\sim 23.3$ and 23.9 MeV), the observed differences on the bump centroids are only resulting from the differences in entrance-channel energies.  \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{spin_distribution.eps} }\n\\caption{Spin distributions normalized to fusion cross-sections obtained by CCFULL \\cite{ccfull} calculations for the two studied energies: red triangles correspond to $E_{c.m.}$ = 6.6 MeV and blue squares to $E_{c.m.}$ = 7.2 MeV. }\n\\label{spin_distri}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{simu_distri_spin.eps} }\n\\caption{Highest energy $\\gamma$-ray spectra in coincidence with $^{28}$Si for $E_{c.m.}$= 6.6 MeV (full line) $E_{c.m.}$= 7.2 MeV (full line) compared to fully statistical decay (red dashed line) using the spin distributions given in Fig.~\\ref{spin_distri}. Simulation spectra are normalized to the data integrals.}\n\\label{simu_spin_distri}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn order to fully understand the decay pattern of the resonances and see if we have a structural effect which will favourably feed particular states, we compared our $\\gamma$-spectra to GEANT simulations with different conditions in the entrance-channel. All simulations include 68 known bound or quasi bound states of $^{28}$Si between 0 and 13 MeV and their $\\gamma$-decays. Above the particle threshold ($\\sim$10 MeV for the lowest one, in this case $\\alpha$+$^{24}$Mg) we have selected states with a large $\\Gamma_\\gamma$ compared to particle emission. To estimate the branching ratios of the entrance-channel to each of these states we have used Weisskopf estimates and the reported average strengths of electric and magnetic transitions in $^{28}$Si \\cite{endt}. In this self-conjugate nucleus ($T_z = 0$), some particular selection rules on isospin apply for L=1, $\\Delta T$=0 transitions: E1 are forbidden and M1 strengths are reduced by a factor of 100. As we use  an entrance-channel with $T=0$ in all simulations, these rules will strongly influence the obtained $\\gamma$-spectra.\n\n\n\nWe have first simulated a fully statistical scenario, which consists of a spin distribution in the entrance-channel. Spin distributions for the two studied energies are given in Fig.~\\ref{spin_distri}. These distributions are the results of coupled-channel calculations, performed with the CCFULL code \\cite{ccfull}, and are obtained by adjusting the diffuseness parameter ($a=$0.57 and 0.55 for $E_{c.m.}$=6.6 and 7.2 MeV) in order to reproduce the fusion cross-sections from \\cite{cujec} and given in Fig.~\\ref{plot_xsection}. The two curves are normalized to the calculated fusion cross-sections. Below $V_B$, phase space is reduced and spin distributions are quite narrow and centered at low spin ($2^+$) compared to what was obtained at higher energies for the $^{12}$C+$^{16}$O reaction \\cite{doro}. \n\n\nSimulated spectra (dashed lines) are given in Fig.~\\ref{simu_spin_distri} along with experimental data (full lines). For the two energies we globally reproduce the $\\gamma$-spectrum shape. Indeed a large bump between 11 and 15 MeV dominates the spectrum. However looking into the details we see that this statistical scenario is unable to reproduce the intensities of the different transitions between the low-lying states. Another discrepancy concerns the high energy part of the simulations where the direct feeding of the two first excited states is overestimated. Concerning the intermediate region of the spectra the bump is better reproduced for the highest energy. For the lowest energy, the fully statistical model has too large branching ratios to states lying below 10 MeV. \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{simu_spin_unique_e66.eps} }\n\\caption{Highest energy $\\gamma$-ray spectrum for $E_{c.m.}$= 6.6 MeV (full line) compared to decay scenarii with two different spins in the entrance-channel: $1^-$ (red dashed line) and $2^+$ (red dotted line). Simulations spectra are normalized to the data integral.}\n\\label{spin_unique_e66}\n\\end{figure}\n\nAs the studied energies correspond to resonant energies, we used another scenario which consists of a unique spin in the entrance-channel. As the spin distributions given in Fig.~\\ref{spin_distri} show that entrance-channel spins greater than $5\\hbar$ have very small contributions to the fusion cross-sections, we limit the discussion here to entrance spins less or equal to $4\\hbar$. Fig.~\\ref{spin_unique_e66} displays the simulation results for resonances $J^{\\pi} = 1^-$ and $2^+$ and their comparison with the lowest energy data. As for the first scenario, we see that we overall reproduce the shape of the spectrum with the negative parity entrance spins, even if the bump seems to be shifted. Again this is due to too large branching ratios to states lying below the fed states in the experiment and has to be interpreted in terms of structural effects. In the case of a positive parity resonance the large $\\gamma$-flux going directly to the g.s. and the $2^+_1$ depletes the region around $E_{\\gamma_{0}}=12$ MeV and gives rise to a completely different $\\gamma$-spectrum. \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{var_chi2_spin_unique.eps} }\n\\caption{$\\chi^{2}$ variation as a function of the spin of the entrance-channel, red triangles correspond to $E_{c.m.}$ = 6.6 MeV and blue squares to $E_{c.m.}$ = 7.2 MeV.  }\n\\label{chi2_var}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn order to have a objective criterion to compare simulated and experimental spectra we used  the so-called $\\chi^2$ test of homogeneity. Evolution of the $\\chi^2$ versus the resonance spin for the two studied energies is given in Fig.~\\ref{chi2_var}. Looking at the two curves on Fig.~\\ref{chi2_var}, we observe a kind of oscillation between even and odd spins. This can be understood by the fact that for the even spins, corresponding to positive parity in the entrance-channel, decays to the low-lying states of positive parity are mainly achieved by E2 transitions which are not slowed down by any selection rules in this nucleus.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{simu_spin_unique_e72.eps} }\n\\caption{Highest energy $\\gamma$-ray spectrum for $E_{c.m.}$= 7.2 MeV (full line) compared to decay scenarii with two different spins in the entrance-channel: $3^-$ (red dashed line) and $2^+$ (red dotted line). Simulations spectra are normalized to the data integral.}\n\\label{spin_unique_e72}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nFor the highest energy for which results are given in Fig.~\\ref{spin_unique_e72} the same discussion can be held. The difference is that a $J^{\\pi} = 3^-$ resonance in the entrance-channel reproduces the data better than a $J^{\\pi} = 1^-$. But as for the lowest energy, data are better reproduced with entrance-channel odd spins. Branching ratios to negative parity states from an negative entrance spin are expected to be favored against branching ratios to positive parity states in resonance $\\gamma$-decay. This is partially reproduced by the semi-statistical scenario. We already stressed the importance of particular negative states such as the $3^-_1$ which is the first negative parity state, at higher energies. As the phase space is reduced due to the reduction of the bombarding energy, this particular decay may be more important in the two explored energies than in our previous experimental campaign.\n\n\n\\subsection{Radiative capture cross-section}\nThe previously unobserved large feeding of intermediate states around 11 MeV allows us to reevaluate the radiative capture (RC) cross-section measured in Ref.~\\cite{coll}.\n\\begin{equation}\n\\sigma_{RC}=\\frac{N_{r}}{N_{t} \\cdot N_{i} \\cdot T_{a}} \\cdot \\frac{1}{\\epsilon_{det}}\\cdot 10^{24} \\quad , \n\\label{cross_section}\n\\end{equation}\nin which the cross-section, $\\sigma_{RC}$, is given in barn. $N_{r}$, $N_{t}$ and $N_{i}$ correspond, respectively, to the number of $^{28}$Si recoils observed at DRAGON focal plane ($\\pm 10\\%$), the number of $^{12}$C atoms\/cm$^2$ ($\\pm 10\\%$) in the target and the number of incident $^{16}$O per second ($\\pm 10\\%$). $T_{a}$ denotes the time with beam on target reduced by the data acquisitions dead time (8 and 17 \\% for the lowest and highest explored energies, respectively) and is known with an error of $\\pm 5\\%$. $\\epsilon_{det}$ stands for the detection efficiency which takes into account the DSSSD detection efficiency (96.2 $\\pm$ 0.1\\%) \\cite{dragon_com}, the $^{28}$Si$^{8+}$ charge state fraction which corresponds at both energies to 35\\% and finally the acceptance and the transport efficiency of DRAGON. This third parameter can be extracted using the GEANT simulations with the best agreement with data and corresponds to 32\\% (resp. 36\\%) for $E_{c.m.}$ = 6.6 MeV (resp. 7.2 MeV). The error on the acceptance and the transport through DRAGON is of the order of 15\\%. \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\resizebox{\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{cross_section.eps} }\n\\caption{RC cross-sections (blue filled circles) along with fusion cross-sections (red crosses) \\cite{cujec}. Error bars for the fusion cross section correspond to the size of the red crosses. RC cross-sections above $V_{B}$ are from a previous study \\cite{doro}.}\n\\label{plot_xsection}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe obtained cross-sections are  given in Fig.~\\ref{plot_xsection} along with data from our previous study \\cite{doro} above $V_B$ ($E_{c.m}$ = 8.5, 8.8 and 9.0 MeV) and fusion cross-section at these energies extracted from \\cite{cujec}. For the two recently explored energies RC cross-sections are lower than 1 $\\mu b$. Furthermore excitation function slopes show that RC cross-section tends to decrease faster than the fusion cross-section below $V_B$. Indeed at $E_{c.m.}$= 9.0 MeV RC cross-section represents $\\sim 10 \\times 10^{-5}$ of the fusion cross-section, this ratio falls to $\\sim 2 \\times 10^{-5}$ for the two energies discussed in this paper.\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\nWe have performed a heavy ion radiative capture reaction between two light heavy ions, $^{12}$C and $^{16}$O, leading to $^{28}$Si at two resonant energies below $V_B$. Obtained $\\gamma$-spectra display a previously unobserved strong feeding of intermediate states around 11 MeV at these energies. This new decay branch has to be compared to the feeding of the same region observed at higher energies, in order to obtain the evolution of the direct feeding of the different $^{28}$Si known states from the entrance-channel. As the new decay branch can not be fully reproduced by statistical nor semi-statistical decay scenarii this may be the signature of structural effects. With the upcoming new scintillator generation, such as the PARIS project \\cite{paris}, a sufficient resolution will be achieved in order to disentangle the feeding of intermediate states around 11 MeV contained in the large bump. New Monte-Carlo simulations with other conditions such as calculated branching ratios with a cluster model for the entrance-channel have to be tested to see if a better agreement with the data can be achieved.\n\n GEANT simulations have been used to extract the DRA\\-GON spectrometer acceptance which is crucial to obtain a value for the radiative capture cross-sections. If new decay scenarii can reach better agreement with data, error bars on capture cross-section will be reduced. This will lead to a better understanding of the fusion reaction below $V_B$ and, more particularly, for astrophysical energies where new resonances have been observed mainly in the neighbouring $^{12}$C+$^{12}$C system in the vicinity of the Gamow window \\cite{spil}. \n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\\label{intro}\n\nAs we look ahead to the end of the coming decade, we will be entering\nthe era of the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs).  Plans are well\nadvanced for three ELT projects with filled apertures well in excess\nof current optical-IR facilities: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT,\nwith an equivalent diameter of 21.4m), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)\nand the 42m European ELT (E-ELT).  When coupled with sophisticated\nadaptive optics (AO) systems to correct for atmospheric turbulence,\nthe ELTs will provide us with unique views of stellar populations in\nthe Local Volume.  Although planning a decade ahead may seem far\nremoved, the lead-in times on these ambitious projects is more akin to\nthose commonly associated with space missions, i.e. construction\nplanning, detailed science simulations, conceptual instrument designs\nand the financial planning are all well advanced on all three ELT\nprojects.  Here we introduce the EAGLE Phase A instrument study for the E-ELT, \nhighlighting its performance for observations of resolved stellar populations.\n\n\\vspace{-0.15in}\n\\section{Resolved Stellar Populations: Today \\& in the ELT Era}\n\nPhotometric methods are immensely powerful when applied to\nextragalactic stellar populations, but only via precise chemical\nabundances and stellar kinematics can we break the age-metallicity\ndegeneracy, while also disentangling the populations associated with\ndifferent structures, i.e. follow-up spectroscopy is required.  Over\nthe past decade the Calcium Triplet (CaT, spanning 0.85-0.87 $\\mu$m)\nhas become an increasingly used diagnostic of stellar metallicities\nand radial velocities in nearby galaxies, providing new views of their\nstar-formation histories and sub-structure, e.g. the VLT-FLAMES DART\nlarge programme \\cite{t04}.  However, 8-10m class telescopes are\nalready at their limits in pursuit of CaT spectra of the evolved\npopulations in galaxies at distances greater than $\\sim$300~kpc,\ne.g. Keck-DEIMOS observations in M31 struggled to yield useful\nsignal-to-noise below the tip of the red giant branch at $I$~$>$~21.5 \\cite{c06}.\n\nWith its vast primary aperture and excellent angular resolution, the\nE-ELT will be {\\em the} facility to unlock spectroscopy of evolved\nstellar populations in the broad range of galaxies in the Local\nVolume, from the edge of the Local Group, out towards the Virgo\nCluster. This will bring a wealth of new and exciting target galaxies\nwithin our grasp, spanning a broader range of galaxy morphologies,\nstar-formation histories and metallicities than those available to us\nat present in the Local Group.  These observations can then be used to\nconfront theoretical models to provide a unique view of galaxy\nassembly and evolution.  There are many compelling and ground-breaking\ntargets for stellar spectroscopy with the E-ELT including, in order of distance:\n\\smallskip\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item{NGC 3109 and Sextans A with sub-SMC metallicities ($Z$$<$0.2$Z_\\odot$), both at 1.3 Mpc.}\n\\item{The spiral dominated Sculptor `Group' at 2-4 Mpc.}\n\\item{The M83\/NGC5128 (Centaurus A) grouping at $\\sim$4-5 Mpc.}\n\\item{NGC 3379, the nearest normal elliptical at 10.8 Mpc.}\n\\item{The Virgo Cluster of galaxies at 16-17 Mpc, the nearest massive cluster.}\n\\end{itemize}\n\\smallskip\nIn contrast to proposed E-ELT observations of high-redshift\ngalaxies, targets for CaT spectroscopy are readily available.  For\nexample, deep ground-based and {\\it HST} imaging in galaxies in the\nLocal Volume has begun to investigate their stellar populations\n\\cite{r05,ghosts,angst}, yet the stellar magnitudes are well beyond\nspectroscopy with existing facilities.  Note that although we have\nfocussed mostly on southern-hemisphere targets here, there are equally compelling\nnorthern hemisphere targets, including the M81 group, and deeper\nstudies in M31 and M33.\n\n\\vspace{-0.15in}\n\\section{EAGLE: A Multi-IFU, Near-IR Spectrograph for the E-ELT}\n\nThe EAGLE Phase A study is a French-UK partnership to provide an\nadvanced conceptual design of an AO-corrected, near-infrared\nspectrograph with multiple integral-field units (IFUs). The baseline design\nis summarised in Table~1, and has been shaped by five top-level\nscience topics:\n\\smallskip\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item{Physics and evolution of high-redshift galaxies}\n\\item{Detection and characterisation of `first light' galaxies}\n\\item{Galaxy assembly and evolution from stellar archaeology}\n\\item{Star-formation, stellar clusters and the initial mass function}\n\\item{Co-ordinated growth of black holes and galaxies}\n\\end{itemize}\n\\smallskip\nEAGLE will employ multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO, \\cite{falcon} to\nprovide significantly improved image quality for selected target\nfields within the focal plane.  This entails an array of six laser\nguide stars and five natural guide stars (NGS) to map the atmospheric\nturbulence.  The deformable mirror in the telescope (M4) will be used\nto correct for the low-order wavefront error terms, with the\nhigh-order terms corrected by deformable mirrors in each science\nchannel. An integral part of the EAGLE project is the CANARY on-sky\ndemonstrator on the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma\n\\cite{canary}.\n\nThe consortium has calculated MOAO point-spread functions (PSFs) which\ntake into account real NGS configurations, illustrative of relatively\ngood and poor performance given the spatial distribution and magnitude\nof the available guide stars.  In the following section we summarise EAGLE\nobservations of resolved stellar populations beyond the Local Group,\nwhich would be used to probe the assembly history and chemical evolution \nof the host galaxies.\n\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\begin{center}\n\\caption{EAGLE Baseline Design. The patrol field is the instrument field-of-view\nwithin which IFUs can be configured to observe individual targets.}\\label{specs}       \n\\begin{tabular}{ll}\n\\noalign{\\smallskip}\\hline\nParameter & Specification \\\\\n\\hline\nPatrol Field & Eqv. 7$^\\prime$ diameter \\\\\nIFU field-of-view & 1{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}65 $\\times$ 1{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}65 \\\\\nMultiplex (\\# of IFUs) & 20 \\\\\nSpatial resolution & 30\\%EE in 75 mas ($H$ band)\\\\\nSpectral resolving power ($R$) & 4,000 \\& 10,000\\\\\nWavelength range & 0.8-2.5$\\mu$m\\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\section{EAGLE Performance: CaT Spectroscopy}\n\nSimulated EAGLE observations of the CaT region were computed using a\nmodified version of the IFU tool developed to characterise the MOAO\nrequirements for ELT observations of high-redshift galaxies\n\\cite{p08}.  A synthetic CaT spectrum (T$_{\\rm eff}$\\,=\\,4,000\\,K, log{\\it g} = 2.0) is adopted as a template from the Kurucz\nmodel atmosphere calculations for the {\\it GAIA} mission \\cite{mc00}.\nThe synthetic spectra were calculated for $R=$20,000,\ni.e. sufficiently over-sampled so as to be degraded to either of the\ntwo spectral resolving powers provided by EAGLE.  To this template we\nappended an additional continuum region to provide a line-free region\nwith which to investigate to the signal-to-noise (S\/N) of the spectra\nin the resulting datacubes.  The principal assumptions in the\nsimulations were:\n\\smallskip\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item{Telescope: 42-m primary, with central obscuration of 9\\%}\n\\item{Exposure time: 10 hrs (20x1800s)}\n\\item{$\\lambda$-range: 8400-8750 \\AA, at $R$ = 10,000}\n\\item{Spatial sampling: 37.5 mas spatial pixels}\n\\item{Total throughput: 0.19 [telescope (0.8); atmos. (0.95); EAGLE (0.25 @ 0.85$\\mu$m)]}\n\\item{Detector: read-out noise: 5e$^-$\/pixel \\& dark current: 0.01e$^-$\/pixel\/s}\n\\end{itemize}\n\\smallskip\nAssuming a Paranal-like site, we have investigated two sets\nof seeing conditions in the simulations:\n0{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}65 at $\\lambda$\\,=\\,0.5$\\mu$m at zenith\n(the mean VLT seeing at Paranal; \\cite{sm08}) and\n0{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}90 at a zenith distance\n(ZD) of 35$^\\circ$, providing a good investigation of the performance\nfrom execution of a `Large Programme'-like survey.  \n\nThe signal-to-noise (S\/N) recovered, as a function of $I$-band\nmagnitude, for the two NGS configurations is given in\nTable~\\ref{sims1}.  These results are for spectra extracted from the\ncentral spatial pixel of a point source at the centre of the cube\n(optimal PSF-fitting extractions should be able to improve on these\nresults).  The key result is that {\\it S\/N\\,$\\ge$\\,10 is recovered\nfrom a stacked 10\\,hr exposure at I\\,=\\,24.5, in mean seeing, in both\nNGS configurations}.  This corresponds to spectroscopy of stars at the\ntip of the red giant branch (RGB), with M$_I$\\,=\\,$-$4, out to\n$\\sim$5\\,Mpc in just 10\\,hrs.  This is four magnitudes deeper than\nFLAMES using the LR08 grating ($R$\\,$=$\\,6,500) with the same\nexposure time. Similar calculations at $R$~=~4,000 for $I$\\,=\\,24.5 and 26.0 (with the latter\napprox. the tip of the RGB in NGC\\,3379) yield S\/N\\,$\\ge$\\,10 in 5 and 80\\,hrs, respectively.\n\n\\vspace{-0.1in}\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\begin{center}\n\\caption{EAGLE CaT results: Continuum S\/N obtained for $R$ = 10,000, $t_{\\rm exp}$ = 10 hrs. }\\label{sims1}       \n\\begin{tabular}{ccccc}\n\\hline\n& \\multicolumn{2}{c}{Seeing = 0{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}9 @ ZD=35$^\\circ$} &\n\\multicolumn{2}{c}{Mean VLT Seeing (0{\\mbox{\\ensuremath{.\\!\\!^{\\prime\\prime}}}}65 @ ZD=0$^\\circ$)} \\\\\n$I_{\\rm VEGA}$ & NGS `good' & NGS `poor' & NGS `good' & NGS `poor' \\\\\n\\hline\n22.5 &  40 &  27 & 56 & 48 \\\\\n23.5 &  16 &  11 &  28 & 24 \\\\\n24.5 &  $\\phantom{1}$8 & $\\phantom{1}$4 & 13 & 10 \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\smallskip\n\nAn example EAGLE Large Programme is to undertake spectroscopy of\nevolved stars in the five spiral galaxies in the Sculptor Group, by observing\nmultiple EAGLE fields across the major and minor axes of each galaxy.\nThese galaxies represent the most immediate opportunity to study the\nstar-formation history and mass assembly of spirals beyond the limited\nsample available at present, i.e. the Milky Way, M31 and M33.\nThe left-hand panel of Figure~\\ref{data} shows the central\n1$^{\\prime\\prime}\\,\\times\\,$1$^{\\prime\\prime}$ of an IFU observation\nin the core region of NGC\\,55 (at 1.9\\,Mpc), with the right-hand panel\nshowing a simulated CaT spectrum.  \nThe magnitudes and relative positions of the stars are\nfrom {\\it HST} imaging in the core region of NGC\\,55, taken as part of\nthe GHOSTS survey (\\cite{ghosts}).  This example illustrates perfectly\nthe gain in effective multiplex from the IFUs (i.e. nine stars in this\n1$^{\\prime\\prime}\\,\\times\\,$1$^{\\prime\\prime}$ region), with minimal\nimpact from crowding.  \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{cc}\n\\resizebox{0.4\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{ngc55.ps}} & \\resizebox{0.6\\columnwidth}{!}{\\includegraphics{run324.ps}}\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{{\\it Left:} Front slice of simulated IFU datacube for EAGLE observations in the central region of NGC\\,55; \n{\\it Right:} Simulated CaT spectrum for a star with $I$ = 23.5, yielding S\/N $\\sim$ 25 in the continuum.}\\label{data}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\vspace{-0.125in}\n\\section{Summary}\nEAGLE provides a unique combination of abilities to harness the power\nof the E-ELT for spectroscopy of resolved stellar populations.  The\nimage quality from MOAO will be significantly better than that\nobtained from seeing-limited or ground-layer AO modes, enabling us to\nexplore spatially-resolved, extragalactic stars across a wide\nfield of more than five arcminutes.  A range of large programmes can\nbe envisaged, each of which will help provide a fundamentally new view\nof stellar populations in the local Universe; from mapping of the\nSculptor galaxies, to deeper observations of the most luminous \nevolved stars in selected fields in galaxies at 10\\,Mpc and beyond.\n\n\\vspace{-0.125in}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction} \\label{sec:intro}\n\nLet $X$ be an algebraic curve with an action of a finite group $G$ over an algebraically closed field $k$.\nStudying the $k[G]$-module structure of cohomologies of $X$ is a natural and fundamental topic in algebraic geometry.\nIn  the  classical  case,  that  is, over the field of complex numbers, the equivariant structure\nof the module of holomorphic differentials was completely determined  by  Chevalley and Weil, cf. \\cite{Chevalley_Weil_Uber_verhalten}. Their result remains valid when $\\cha k \\nmid \\# G$. \\\\\n\nWhen $\\cha k = p > 0$ and $p| \\# G$, the structure of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ becomes much more complicated. Most of previous results on this subject concern either the tame ramification case (cf. e.g. \\cite{Kani_Galois_module}, \\cite{Nakajima_Galois_module}, \\cite{Kock_galois_structure}, \\cite{chinburg_epsilon_constants}) or focus on some special\ngroups (see e.g. \\cite{Valentini_Madan_Automorphisms} for the case of cyclic groups, \\cite{WardMarques_HoloDiffs} for abelian groups or~\\cite{Bleher_Chinburg_Kontogeorgis_Galois_structure} for groups with a cyclic Sylow subgroup).\nOther results compute the structure of the space of global sections of\nan invertible sheaf of sufficiently large degree (cf. \\cite{Borne_Cohomology_of_G_sheaves}).\nEven less is known about the equivariant structure of the de Rham cohomology.\nIn the tame ramification case the de Rham--Euler characteristic class has been computed in the $K$-theory category (cf.~\\cite{Chinburg1994} and~\\cite{chinburg_epsilon_constants}).\nThere are also results concerning the de Rham cohomology of Deligne--Lusztig curves (cf. \\cite{Lusztig_Coxeter_orbits}), of Hermitian curves (cf. \\cite{Dummigan_95}, \\cite{Dummigan_99} and \\cite{Haastert_Jantzen_Filtrations})\nand of Suzuki curves (cf. \\cite{Liu_decomposition_suz}, \\cite[p. 2535]{Gross_Rigid_local_systems_Gm} and \\cite{Malmskog_Pries_Weir_dR_Suzuki}). In general, it is known that the Hodge--de Rham exact sequence does not split (see \\cite{Hortsch_canonical_representation}, \\cite{KockTait2018} for explicit examples and the next section for my result that yields a more precise criterion).\nOne should also mention, that there are several results\nconcerning the structure of $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ as a Dieudonn\\'{e} module for a curve~$X$ with a $\\ZZ\/p$-action, cf. \\cite{PriesZhu_p_rank_AS} and~\\cite{Booher_Cais_a_numbers}.\n\nIn this paper we are interested in the case when $\\cha k = p > 0$ and $G$ is a finite $p$-group.\nLet $\\pi : X \\to Y := X\/G$ be the canonical morphism.\nFor any ${P \\in X(k)}$ denote by $G_{P, i}$ the $i$-th ramification group\nat $P$ and let:\n\\[\nd_{P}:= \\sum_{i \\ge 0} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1), \\quad \nd_{P}' := \\sum_{i \\ge 1} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1), \\quad\nd_{P}'' := \\sum_{i \\ge 2} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1)\n\\]\n(note that $d_P$ is the different exponent at $P$). We assume that the cover $\\pi$ satisfies the following assumptions:\n\\begin{enumerate}[(A)]\n\t\\item \\label{enum:A} $G_P$ (the stabilizer of $P$ in $G$) is a normal subgroup of $G$ for every $P \\in X(k)$,\n\t\n\t\\item \\label{enum:B} there exists a function $z \\in k(X)$ (a ``magical element'') satisfying $\\ord_P(z) \\ge -d_P'$\n\tfor every $P \\in X(k)$ and $\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\neq 0$.\n\n\\end{enumerate}\nBy the assumption~\\ref{enum:A}, for $Q \\in Y(k)$ we may denote $G_Q := G_P$ and $d_Q := d_P$\nfor any $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$. Let $I_G := \\{ \\sum_{g \\in G} a_g g \\in k[G] : \\sum_{g \\in G} a_g = 0 \\}$ be the augmentation ideal of the group~$G$\nand let $J_G := I_G^{\\vee}$ be the dual of $I_G$. For any subgroup $H \\le G$\nwe consider also the relative augmentation ideal $I_{G, H} := \\Ind^G_H \\, I_H$\nand its dual $J_{G, H} := \\Ind^G_H \\, J_H$. Finally, the $k[G]$-modules\n$I_{X\/Y}$ and $J_{X\/Y}$ are defined by:\n\\begin{align*}\n\tI_{X\/Y} &:= \\ker \\left( \\sum : \\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} I_{G, G_Q} \\to I_G \\right),\\\\\n\tJ_{X\/Y} &:= \\coker \\left( \\diag : J_G \\to  \\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} J_{G, G_Q} \\right).\n\\end{align*}\n\\begin{Theorem} \\label{thm:main_thm}\n\tSuppose that $G$ is a finite $p$-group and $k$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$.\n\tLet $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be a $G$-cover of smooth projective curves over~$k$, satisfying conditions~\\ref{enum:A} and \\ref{enum:B}. Denote by $g_Y$ the genus of $Y$ and by $B \\subset Y(k)$ -- the branch locus of $\\pi$.\n\tThen we have the following isomorphisms of $k[G]$-modules:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) &\\cong k[G]^{\\oplus g_Y} \\oplus I_{X\/Y} \\oplus \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^0_Q,\\\\\n\t\tH^1(X, \\mc O_X) &\\cong k[G]^{\\oplus g_Y} \\oplus J_{X\/Y} \\oplus \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^1_Q,\\\\\n\t\tH^1_{dR}(X\/k) &\\cong k[G]^{\\oplus 2 \\cdot g_Y} \\oplus I_{X\/Y} \\oplus J_{X\/Y} \n\t\t\\oplus \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^1_{dR, Q},\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhere $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$, $H^1_{dR, Q}$ are certain $k[G]$-modules that depend only on the rings $\\mc O_{X, Q}$ and on the element $z$ (see~\\eqref{eqn:H0Q}, \\eqref{eqn:H1Q} and~\\eqref{eqn:H1dRQ}\n\tfor precise definitions).\n\n\\end{Theorem}\nWe now give some motivation for Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. Since the Hodge--de Rham spectral sequence of~$X$\ndegenerates at the first page, one obtains the Hodge--de Rham exact sequence:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:intro_hodge_de_rham_se}\n\t0 \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\to H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\to 0.\n\\end{equation}\nAs shown in \\cite[Proposition 3.1]{Garnek_equivariant}, under some mild assumptions the 'defect':\n\\begin{equation*}\n\t\\dim_k H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})^G + \\dim_k H^1(X, \\mc O_X)^G - \\dim_k H^1_{dR}(X\/k)^G\n\\end{equation*}\nis a sum of local terms indexed by points of $X$. In particular, if the exact sequence~\\eqref{eqn:intro_hodge_de_rham_se} splits equivariantly,\nthe action of $G$ on $X$ is weakly ramified, i.e. $G_{P, 2} = 0$ for every $P \\in X(k)$, cf. \\cite[Main Theorem]{Garnek_equivariant}.\nThis result is somehow surprising, since it shows that a global condition (i.e. splitting of the Hodge--de Rham exact sequence) is affected by a local condition (i.e. vanishing of ramification groups).\\\\\n\nOne can hope that this observation is a part of a bigger picture, namely that\n$H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$, $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ and $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ decompose into\ncertain global and local parts. The global part should depend on the ``topology'' of the cover (i.e.\non the branch locus and inertia groups) and not on the higher ramification groups. Moreover, the global part of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ should be isomorphic to the global part of $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$. \nFinally, one can expect that the local parts depend only on the local rings of the\nfixed points of the action of $G$. Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} proves a slightly weaker statement.\nConjecturally, the local terms  $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$, $H^1_{dR, Q}$ do not depend on the element $z$ from the condition~\\ref{enum:B}. We expect also that $\\dim_k H^0_Q = \\frac{1}{2} \\# \\pi^{-1}(Q) \\cdot d_Q''$.\\\\\n\nA result of Elkin and Pries yields a similar decomposition of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ and $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ into global and local parts in the case when $Y = \\PP^1$ and $p = 2$ (cf.~\\cite[Theorem 1.2]{elkin_pries_ekedahl_oort}). However, the context is different -- they study the $k[F, V]$-module structure of the mentioned groups (where $F$ and $V$ denote the Frobenius and Verschiebung morphisms).\nExplicit examples show that such a decomposition is impossible in the category of $k[F, V]$-modules in general, cf. \\cite[Example~7.2]{Booher_Cais_a_numbers}.\\\\\n\nAs an application of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}, we give a description of cohomologies of $\\ZZ\/p$-covers (cf. Section~\\ref{sec:Zp}). \nLet $J_i$ denote the unique indecomposable $k[\\ZZ\/p]$-module of dimension~$i$ for $i = 1, \\ldots, p$.\n\\begin{Corollary} \\label{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}\n\tSuppose that $k$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic~$p$.\n\tLet $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover of smooth projective curves over $k$.\n\tSuppose that $\\pi$ has a global standard form (cf. Subsection~\\ref{subsec:gsf}). Then, as $k[\\ZZ\/p]$-modules:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) &\\cong H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\cong J_{p}^{\\oplus g_Y} \\oplus J_{p-1}^{\\oplus (\\# B - 1)} \\oplus\n\t\t\\bigoplus_{i = 1}^{p-1} J_i^{\\oplus \\alpha(i)}, \\\\\n\t\tH^1_{dR}(X\/k) &\\cong J_{p}^{\\oplus 2 \\cdot g_Y} \\oplus J_{p-1}^{\\oplus \\alpha},\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhere $g_Y$ is the genus of $Y$, $B \\subset Y(k)$ denotes the branch locus of $\\pi$, $m_Q := d_Q'\/(p-1)$ and:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\n\t\t\\alpha(i) &:= \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\left( \\left \\lceil \\frac{m_Q \\cdot (i+1)}{p} \\right \\rceil\n\t\t- \\left \\lceil \\frac{m_Q \\cdot i}{p} \\right \\rceil \\right),\\\\\n\t\t\\alpha &:= 2 \\cdot (\\# B - 1) + \\sum_{Q \\in B} (m_Q - 1).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\\end{Corollary}\nFor $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ this result was already known (cf.~\\cite[Theorem~1]{Valentini_Madan_Automorphisms}), however we don't know of any previous results regarding the de Rham cohomology.\\\\\n\nTheorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} allows us to give a converse of~\\cite[Main Theorem]{Garnek_equivariant}\nfor covers satisfying~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B}.\n\\begin{Corollary} \\label{cor:hdr_exact_sequence}\n\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. Then the action of $G$ on $X$ is weakly ramified\n\tif and only if there is an isomorphism of $k[G]$-modules:\n\n\t\\[ H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\cong H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus H^1(X, \\mc O_X). \\]\n\n\n\\end{Corollary}\nIt is reasonable to ask how often are the conditions~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B} satisfied.\nUnfortunately, not every $p$-group cover has a magical element, cf. Subsection~\\ref{subsec:no_magical_element} for a counterexample.\nHowever, it turns out that a generic $G$-cover satisfies~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B}. To be precise,\nlet $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$. Fix a finite $p$-group~$G$ and an affine open subset $U$ of a smooth projective curve $Y$ over $k$. Let $M_{U, G}$ denote the moduli space\nof pointed $G$-covers of $Y$ unramified over $U$, as defined in~\\cite{Harbater_moduli_of_p_covers}.\n\n\\begin{Theorem} \\label{thm:generic_intro}\n\tThe set of covers satisfying~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B} forms a dense subset of~$M_{U, G}$.\n\\end{Theorem}\n\\noindent The proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro} gives a way to construct inductively\ncovers satisfying~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B}.\n\\begin{Example} \\label{ex:intro}\n\n\tLet $Y$ be the elliptic curve:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\tY : w^2 = (x - \\alpha_1) \\cdot (x - \\alpha_2) \\cdot (x - \\alpha_3)\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tover $k$.  Define $X$ to be a smooth projective curve with the function field given by $k(X) = k(Y)(y_1, y_2, y_3)$, where:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\ty_1^p - y_1 &= (x - \\alpha_1)^{-a_1},\\\\\n\t\ty_2^p - y_2 &= (x - \\alpha_1)^{-a_2} \\cdot (x - \\alpha_2)^{-b_2},\\\\\n\t\ty_3^p - y_3 &= (x - \\alpha_1)^{-a_3} \\cdot (x - \\alpha_2)^{-b_3} \\cdot (x - \\alpha_3)^{-c_3}\\\\\n\t\t&+ (y_1 + y_2) \\cdot (x - \\alpha_1)^{-a_2} \\cdot (x - \\alpha_2)^{-b_2},\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tthe natural numbers $a_1, a_2, b_2, a_3, b_3, c_3$ are non-divisible by $p$ and satisfy:\n\n\t\\[\n\ta_1 > p, \\quad a_2 > 4a_1 \\cdot p, \\quad a_3 > 4 \\cdot p \\cdot (a_1 + a_2 + b_2), \\quad b_3 > 4 b_2.\n\t\\]\n\n\tThen $X \\to Y$ is an $E(p^3)$-cover satisfying~\\ref{enum:A} and~\\ref{enum:B},\n\twhere $E(p^3)$ denotes the Heisenberg group $\\textrm{mod } p$ (see Corollary~\\ref{cor:example_from_intro} for the details).\n\n\\end{Example}\nOur results leave some questions open. In which generality does Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} hold? How to describe\nthe modules $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$, $H^1_{dR, Q}$ without using the magical element? \nIs it possible to generalize the above considerations to higher dimensional varieties or to crystalline\ncohomology? We plan to investigate those questions in the near future.\n\\subsection*{Strategy of the proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}}\nWe explain now the idea behind the proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} for the module of holomorphic differentials. The proof for $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ and\n$H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ follows the same strategy. Our approach is divided into two main steps.\nIn both steps we use the fact that the function $z$ is a normal\nelement of $k(X)\/k(Y)$.\\\\\n\nIn the first step we compare the module $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ with $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R))$, the module of differentials with logarithmic poles in the ramification locus of the cover (cf. Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}). To this end we write any form $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ as $\\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\omega_g$ for $\\omega_g \\in \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ and\nconsider the following question.\n\\begin{Question}\n\tSuppose that $\\omega \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$. What are the possible values of the residues $\\res_Q(\\omega_g)$ for $Q \\in B$ and $g \\in G$? In other words, what is the image of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ under the map:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\res_G : \\Omega_{k(X)\/k} \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G], \\qquad \\omega \\mapsto \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g_Q,\n\t\\]\n\n\twhere $g_Q \\in \\bigoplus_{B} k[G]$ is the element with $g$ on the $Q$-th component and $0$ on other components?\n\\end{Question}\n\\noindent There are two conditions imposed on the residues of $\\omega_g$:\n\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\\item The first one follows from the residue theorem: $\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) = 0$.\n\t\n\t\\item The second one is imposed by the condition $\\res_P(\\omega) = 0$ for $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nThe conditions (1) and (2) define the module $I_{X\/Y}$. In this way we obtain an equivariant homomorphism\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:map_to_IXY}\n\t\\res_G : H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\to I_{X\/Y}.\n\\end{equation}\nIt turns out that this homomorphism is split. One constructs\nits section by choosing appropriate forms in $\\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ with known residues.\nWe can apply a similar reasoning for logarithmic differential forms, neglecting the condition (2).\nIn this way one obtains a split homomorphism:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:map_to_kGB}\n\t\\res_G : H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\to k[G]_B,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k[G]_B$ is the submodule of $\\bigoplus_B k[G]$ defined by the condition (1). It turns out that the maps~\\eqref{eqn:map_to_IXY} and~\\eqref{eqn:map_to_kGB}\nhave the same kernel (cf. Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}).\\\\\n\nIn the second step we observe that we have an inclusion of sheaves of the same rank:\n\\[\n\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\subset \\Omega_{X\/k}(R).\n\\]\nHence, their quotient $\\mc T$\nis a torsion sheaf and its global sections decompose as a sum of local parts. By\napplying the long exact sequence to the sequence of sheaves:\n\\[\n0 \\to \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\to \\Omega_{X\/k}(R) \\to \\mc T \\to 0\n\\]\nand observing that $k[G]$ is an injective $k[G]$-module we find the $k[G]$-structure on $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R))$.\n\\subsection*{Constructing magical elements}\nWe discuss now main ideas behind the proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro}.\nSuppose that $X \\to Y$ factors through a Galois cover $X' \\to Y$.\nIt turns out that if both $X \\to X'$ and $X' \\to Y$ have magical elements, then\n$X \\to Y$ also has a magical element (cf. Lemma~\\ref{lem:new_magical_elts}). Hence everything comes down to\nconstructing magical elements for $\\ZZ\/p$-covers.\nWe prove that a global standard form of a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover (cf. Subsection~\\ref{subsec:gsf} for a definition)\nyields a magical element. Moreover, every sufficiently ramified $\\ZZ\/p$-cover\nhas a global standard form (cf. Lemma~\\ref{lem:criterion_for_gsf}).\nTheorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro} follows by noting that a generic $G$-cover can be factored\ninto sufficiently ramified $\\ZZ\/p$-covers.\n\\subsection*{Outline of the paper}\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:notation} we give necessary notation. Section~\\ref{sec:magical_elements}\nproves some properties of the magical element $z$ from the condition~\\ref{enum:B}.\nThis allows us to prove the part of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} concerning the module of holomorphic differentials\nand the cohomology of the structure sheaf in Section~\\ref{sec:OmegaX}. We prove\nthe decomposition of the de Rham cohomology from the Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} in Section~\\ref{sec:dR}.\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:AS_covers} we introduce the notion of a global standard form\nof a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover. This allows us to construct a magical element for a large class\nof Artin--Schreier covers. Also, we prove Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}.\nFinally, in Section~\\ref{sec:constructing_magical_elements} we prove that a \ngeneric $p$-group cover has a magical element and discuss Example~\\ref{ex:intro}.\n\n\\subsection*{Acknowledgements}\nThe author wishes to express his gratitude to Bartosz Naskr\u0119cki and Wojciech Gajda,\nwhose comments helped to considerably improve the exposition of the paper.\nThe ``global--local'' point of view on this problem was inspired by a conversation with\nPiotr Achinger in November 2018.\n\n\\section{Notation} \\label{sec:notation}\nIn this subsection we introduce some notation concerning algebraic curves.\nFor an arbitrary smooth projective curve $Y$ over a field $k$ we denote by $k(Y)$ the function field of $Y$.\nAlso, we write $\\ord_Q(f)$ for the order of vanishing of a function $f \\in k(Y)$ at a point $Q \\in Y(k)$.\nLet $\\mf m_{Y, Q}^n := \\{ f \\in k(Y) : \\ord_Q(f) \\ge n \\}$ for any $n \\in \\ZZ$.\nWe will often identify a finite set $S \\subset Y(k)$ with a reduced divisor in $\\Divv(Y)$.\nThus e.g. $\\Omega_{Y\/k}(S)$ will denote the sheaf of logarithmic differential\nforms with poles in $S$.\\\\\n\nLet $G$ be a finite group and $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be a finite separable $G$-cover of smooth projective curves over a field $k$.\nIn the sequel we identify $\\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ with a submodule of $\\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ and\n$k(Y)$ with a subfield of $k(X)$. We denote the ramification index of $\\pi$ at $P \\in X(k)$ by $e_{X\/Y, P}$ and\nby $G_{P, i}$ -- the $i$-th ramification group of $\\pi$ at $P$, i.e.\n\\[\nG_{P, i} := \\{ \\sigma \\in G : \\sigma(f) \\equiv f \\pmod{\\mf m_P^{i+1}} \\quad \\forall_{f \\in \\mc O_{X, P}} \\}.\n\\]\nAlso, we use the following notation:\n\\begin{align*}\n\td_{X\/Y, P}:= \\sum_{i \\ge 0} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1), \\quad\n\td_{X\/Y, P}' := \\sum_{i \\ge 1} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1), \\quad\n\td_{X\/Y, P}'' := \\sum_{i \\ge 2} (\\# G_{P, i} - 1)\n\\end{align*}\n($d_{X\/Y, P}$ is the different exponent at $P$).\nRecall that for any $P \\in X(k)$ and $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:valuation_of_diff_form}\n\t\\ord_P(\\omega) = e_{X\/Y, P} \\cdot \\ord_{\\pi(P)}(\\omega) + d_{X\/Y, P}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor any sheaf $\\mc F$ on $X$ and $Q \\in Y(k)$ we abbreviate $(\\pi_* \\mc F)_Q$ to $\\mc F_Q$.\nWe write briefly $\\tr_{X\/Y}$ for the trace\n\\[\n\t\\tr_{k(X)\/k(Y)} : k(X) \\to k(Y).\n\\]\nNote that it induces a map $\\Omega_{k(X)\/k} \\to \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$, which we also denote by $\\tr_{X\/Y}$.\nFor a future use we note the following properties of trace:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item For $f \\in k(X)$ and $Q \\in Y(k)$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:valuation_of_trace}\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(f) \\in \\mf m_{Y, Q}^{\\alpha},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\twhere $\\alpha := \\min \\{ [(\\ord_P(f)+d_{X\/Y, P})\/e_{X\/Y, P}] : P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q) \\}$.\n\t\n\t\\item[] For the proof recall that by \\cite[Lemma 5.4 (4)]{Mollin_ANT} for any ideal\n\t$J$ of $\\mc O_{Y, Q}$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(f \\mc O_{X, Q}) \\subset J &\\Leftrightarrow f \\mc O_{X, Q} \\subset J \\mc D_{X\/Y}^{-1}\\\\\n\t\t&\\Leftrightarrow e_{X\/Y, P} \\cdot \\ord_Q(J) - d_{X\/Y, P} \\le \\ord_P(f) \\quad \\forall_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)}\\\\\n\t\t&\\Leftrightarrow \\ord_P(J) \\le \\left[\\frac{\\ord_P(f) + d_{X\/Y, P}}{e_{X\/Y, P}} \\right]  \\quad \\forall_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)}\\\\\n\t\t&\\Leftrightarrow \\mf m_{Y, Q}^{\\alpha} \\subset J,\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhere $\\mc D_{X\/Y}$ is the different ideal of the extension $\\mc O_{X, Q}\/\\mc O_{Y, Q}$. \n\n\t\\item Let $S := \\pi^{-1}(Q)$. Then:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:trace_and_diff_forms}\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(\\Omega_{X\/k, Q}) \\subset \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q} \\quad \\textrm{ and }\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(\\Omega_{X\/k}(S)_{Q}) \\subset \\Omega_{Y\/k}(\\{ Q \\})_Q.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\t\\item[] Indeed, the first part of~\\eqref{eqn:trace_and_diff_forms} follows by the main result of~\\cite{Zannier_traces_diff_forms}.\n\tThe second part is immediate by using the first part and noting that for any $f \\in k(X)$, $f \\neq 0$:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(df\/f) = \\frac{d(N_{X\/Y} f)}{N_{X\/Y} f},\n\t\\]\n\n\twhere $N_{X\/Y} : k(X) \\to k(Y)$ is the norm of the extension of fields $k(X)\/k(Y)$.\n\n\t\\item For any $\\eta \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ and $Q \\in Y(k)$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:residue_and_trace}\n\t\t\\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(\\eta) = \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(\\eta))\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\t\\item[] (see \\cite[Proposition 1.6]{Hubl_residual_representation} or \\cite[p.~154, $(R_6)$]{Tate_residues_differentials_curves}).\n\\end{itemize}\nIn the most part of the article we will assume that $k$, $X$, $Y$ and $G$ are as in Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}.\nIn this situation we adapt the following notation:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item $B \\subset Y(k)$ -- the set of branch points of $\\pi$,\n\t\n\t\\item $R \\subset X(k)$ -- the set of ramification points of $\\pi$,\n\t\n\t\\item $U := Y \\setminus B$, $V := \\pi^{-1}(U)$,\n\t\n\t\\item $e_P := e_{X\/Y, P}$, $d_P := d_{X\/Y, P}$, $d_P' := d_{X\/Y, P}'$, $d_P'' := d_{X\/Y, P}''$ for $P \\in X(k)$,\n\n\t\\item $X_P := X\/G_{P, 0}$ is the quotient curve. We denote the image of $P$ on $X_P$ by $\\ol P$.\n\tSimilarly, for set $S \\subset X(k)$, we write $\\ol S$ for its image on $X_P$.\n\\end{itemize}\nAlso, by abuse of notation, for $Q \\in Y(k)$ we write $G_{Q, i} := G_{P, i}$, $e_Q := e_P$, $d_Q := d_P$, $X_Q := X_P$ etc. for any $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$. Note that these quantities don't depend on the choice\nof $P$. \\\\\n\nRecall that the map:\n\\[\nk(X) \\times G \\to k(X), \\qquad f \\cdot g := g^*(f)\n\\]\ninduces a natural right action on $k(X)$, since $g_1^* \\circ g_2^* = (g_2 \\cdot g_1)^*$ for any $g_1, g_2 \\in G$.\nSimilarly, we have the structure of a right $k[G]$-module on $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$, $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$, $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$, etc. Note also that $G_P = G_{P, 0} = G_{P, 1}$, since $k$ is algebraically closed of characteristic $p$ and $G$ is a $p$-group (cf.~\\cite[Corollary 4.2.3., p. 67]{Serre1979}).\n\n\\section{Magical elements} \\label{sec:magical_elements}\nKeep the assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. In this section we study the properties of the magical element $z \\in k(X)$\nsatisfying the condition~\\ref{enum:B}.\\\\\nIt turns out that the condition $\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\neq 0$ guarantees that $z$ is a normal element,\nsee e.g.~\\cite[Theorem 1]{Childs_Orzech_On_modular}. We give a proof for completeness.\n\\begin{Proposition} \\label{prop:g(z)_is_a_basis}\n\tThe set $\\{ g^*(z) : g \\in G \\}$ is a $k(Y)$-basis of $k(X)$.\n\\end{Proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tThe proof is based on the following identity in the ring $\\FF_p[x_g : g \\in G]$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:G-determinant}\n\t\t\\det [x_{gh}]_{g, h \\in G} = \\left(\\sum_{g \\in G} x_g \\right)^{\\# G}.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tThis formula is just a version of the Group Determinant Formula\n\t(cf.~\\cite[p. 71]{Washington_Intro_to_cyclotomic}) in the case of positive characteristic (see~\\cite[Lemma 2.2 and Corollary 2.4]{Huynh_Artin_Schreier_extensions}).\n\tWe show that the set $\\{ g^*(z) : g \\in G \\}$ is linearly independent over $k(Y)$.\n\tSuppose that for some $f_g \\in k(Y)$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t0 = \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\cdot f_g.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tThen for any $h \\in G$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t0 = \\sum_{g \\in G} h^*(g^*(z)) \\cdot f_g = \\sum_{g \\in G} (gh)^*(z) \\cdot f_g.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tHowever, by~\\eqref{eqn:G-determinant}:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\det[(gh)^*(z)] = \\tr_{X\/Y}(z)^{\\# G} \\neq 0\n\t\\]\n\n\tand hence $f_g = 0$ for all $g \\in G$. This ends the proof.\n\\end{proof}\nNote that $\\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ is a rank one $k(X)$-module and similarly $\\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ is a rank one $k(Y)$-module.\nHence, in the light of Proposition~\\ref{prop:g(z)_is_a_basis}, for any $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ there exists\na unique system of differential forms $(\\omega_g)_{g \\in G}$ in $\\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ for which\n\\[\n\\omega = \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\omega_g.\n\\]\nNote that for any $g, h \\in G$:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:g_component_of_h}\n\th(\\omega)_g = \\omega_{g h^{-1}}.\n\\end{equation}\nIndeed:\n\\begin{align*}\n\th^*(\\omega) = \\sum_{g \\in G} h^*(g^*(z)) \\omega_g = \\sum_{g \\in G} (g \\cdot h)^*(z) \\omega_g\n\t= \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\omega_{gh^{-1}}.\n\\end{align*}\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:inclusions_of_modules}\n\tWe have the following inclusions of sheaves on $Y$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k} \\subset \\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k},\\\\\n\t\t\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\subset \\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tNote that by~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_diff_form} for any $Q \\in Y(k)$, $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}$, $g \\in G$ and $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\\ord_P(g^*(z) \\omega) \\ge -d_P' + e_P \\cdot \\ord_Q(\\omega) + d_P \\ge -d_P' + d_P = e_P - 1 \\ge 0.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tThe first inclusion follows. The second inclusion may be proven analogously.\n\\end{proof}\nObserve that $\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)$ and $\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)$ are coherent sheaves\nof rank $\\# G$. Therefore, their quotient is torsion and thus is isomorphic to:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:quotient_differentials}\n\t\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)\/\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\cong\n\t\\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} i_{Q, *}(H^0_Q) \n\\end{equation}\nwhere $i_Q : \\Spec \\mc O_{Y, Q} \\to Y$ and:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:H0Q}\n\tH^0_Q := \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q\/\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q.\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:zQ_regular}\n\n\t$z_Q := \\tr_{X\/X_Q}(z)  \\in \\mc O_{X_Q, Q}$.\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tFix a point $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$. Observe that $X_Q \\to Y$ is unramified over~$Q$. Hence by~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_trace}:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(z) \\in \\mf m_{X_Q, \\ol P}^{[(-d_P' + d_P)\/e_P]} = \\mc O_{X_Q, \\ol P}.\n\t\\]\n\n\tThis finishes the proof.\n\\end{proof}\nRecall that the dual basis of $\\{ g^*(z) : g \\in G \\}$ with respect to the trace map is of\nthe form $\\{ g^*(z^{\\vee}) : g \\in G \\}$ for some $z^{\\vee} \\in k(X)$ (cf.~\\cite[Theorem~3.13.19]{Hachenberger_Jungnickel_Topics}). By definition, $z^{\\vee}$ satisfies\nfor any $g_1, g_2 \\in G$:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:def_of_dual_elt}\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(g_1(z) \\cdot g_2(z^{\\vee})) = \n\t\\begin{cases}\n\t\t1, & g_1 = g_2,\\\\\n\t\t0, & g_1 \\neq g_2.\n\t\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nFor a future use note also that\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:trace_of_dual_z}\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(z), \\, \\tr_{X\/Y}(z^{\\vee}) \\in k^{\\times}.\n\\end{equation}\nIndeed, by~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_trace} for every $Q \\in Y(k)$ one has $\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\in \\mc O_{Y, Q}$.\nThis yields $\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\in \\bigcap_{Q \\in Y(k)} \\mc O_{Y, Q} = H^0(Y, \\mc O_Y) = k$ and \n$\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\in k^{\\times}$. Moreover by~\\eqref{eqn:def_of_dual_elt}:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(z^{\\vee}) \n\t&= \\frac{\\tr_{X\/Y} \\left(z^{\\vee} \\cdot \\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\right)}{\\tr_{X\/Y}(z)}\n\t= \\frac{\\tr_{X\/Y} \\left(z^{\\vee} \\cdot \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\right)}{\\tr_{X\/Y}(z)}\\\\\n\t&= \\frac{\\sum_{g \\in G} \\tr_{X\/Y}(z^{\\vee} \\cdot g^*(z))}{\\tr_{X\/Y}(z)} = \\frac{1}{\\tr_{X\/Y}(z)} \\in k^{\\times}.\n\\end{align*}\t\nFor any $f \\in k(X)$, we will denote by $(f_g)_{g \\in G}$ the unique system of functions $f_g \\in k(Y)$ such that:\n\\[\nf = \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) f_g.\n\\]\nNote that by~\\eqref{eqn:def_of_dual_elt} for any $g \\in G$, $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ and $f \\in k(X)$:\n\\begin{align}\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\omega) = \\omega_g \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad\n\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(g^*(z) \\cdot f) = f_g. \\label{eqn:gth_component_trace_f}\n\\end{align}\n\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:inclusions_of_modules2}\n\tWe have the following inclusions:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\pi_* \\mc O_X &\\subset \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y,\\\\\n\t\t\\pi_* \\mc O_X(-R) &\\subset \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tSuppose that $Q \\in Y(k)$ and $f \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$. Then, for any $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}$, using~\\eqref{eqn:gth_component_trace_f} and~\\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\res_Q(f_g \\cdot \\omega) &= \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(g^*(z) f) \\cdot \\omega)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(f  \\cdot  g^*(z) \\cdot \\omega)\n\t\t= 0,\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhere the last equality follows, since $f \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$ and $g^*(z) \\cdot \\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules}. Hence $f_g \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$.\n\tThe second inclusion follows analogously.\n\\end{proof}\nLemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2} implies that:\n\\begin{equation*} \\label{eqn:quotient_functions}\n\t\\frac{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B)}{\\pi_* \\mc O_X(-R)} \\cong \\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} i_{Q, *}(H^1_Q),\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:H1Q}\n\tH^1_Q := \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q\/\\mc O_X(-R)_Q. \n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:properties_H0Q_H1Q}\n\tLet $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$ be defined by~\\eqref{eqn:H0Q} and~\\eqref{eqn:H1Q}.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item $H^1_Q$ is dual to $H^0_Q$ as a $k[G]$-module.\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item If $d_Q'' = 0$ then $H^0_Q = H^1_Q = 0$.\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item $\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\dim_k H^0_Q = \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\dim_k H^1_Q = \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\frac{1}{2} d_Q'' \\cdot \\#\\pi^{-1}(Q)$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\t(1) One checks that the duality pairing is induced by:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q \\times \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q &\\to k,\\\\\n\t\t\t(\\omega, f) &\\mapsto \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g \\cdot f_g).\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tWe omit the details.\n\t\t\n\t(2) Suppose that $d_Q'' = 0$. Then $d_Q = 2 \\cdot (e_Q - 1)$ and $d_Q' = (e_Q - 1)$.\n\t\tWrite:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\tz^{\\vee} = \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\cdot f_g \\qquad \\textrm{ for } f_g \\in k(Y).\n\t\t\\end{equation*}\n\t\n\t\tThen~\\eqref{eqn:def_of_dual_elt} yields $f_g = \\det[a_{h_1 h_2}]_{h_1, h_2 \\in G}\/\\det[\\tr_{X\/Y}(h_1(z) \\cdot h_2(z))]_{h_1, h_2 \\in G}$, where:\n\t\t\\[\n\t\ta_{h_1 h_2} :=\n\t\t\\begin{cases}\n\t\t\ttr_{X\/Y}(h_1(z) \\cdot h_2(z)), & h_1 \\neq g,\\\\\n\t\t\t\\delta_{h_2 g}, & h_1 = g.\t\n\t\t\\end{cases}\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tBut~the Group Determinant Formula~\\eqref{eqn:G-determinant} easily implies that\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\det[\\tr_{X\/Y}(h_1(z) \\cdot h_2(z))]_{h_1, h_2 \\in G} &= \n\t\t\t\\det[\\tr_{X\/Y}((h_1 \\cdot h_2')(z) \\cdot z)]_{h_1, h_2' \\in G}\\\\\n\t\t\t&= \\tr_{X\/Y}(z)^{2 \\cdot \\# G} \\in k^{\\times}.\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tMoreover, \\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_trace} yields that \n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\ttr_{X\/Y}(h_1(z) \\cdot h_2(z)) \\in \\mf m_{Y, Q}^{\\left[\\frac{-2d'_Q + d_Q}{e_Q} \\right]} = \\mc O_{X, Q}.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tHence $f_g \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$ and $\\ord_Q(z^{\\vee}) \\ge \\ord_Q(z) = - d_Q'$.\n\t\tThus\n\t\tif $f \\in \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q$, then for any $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\ord_P(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot f) \\ge -d_Q' + e_Q = 1\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tand $g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot f \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q$.\n\t\tIt follows that $H^1_Q = 0$ and thus also $H^0_Q = 0$ by~(1).\n\t\t\n\t(3) This follows from~\\eqref{eqn:quotient_differentials} by taking global sections and applying the Riemann--Hurwitz formula and Riemann--Roch theorem.\n\\end{proof}\nWe end this section by giving some necessary conditions for $\\pi$ to have a magical element.\nOne of the conditions will play a role in the proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} in Section~\\ref{sec:dR}.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:GME_implies_no_etale_cover}\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. Then:\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item $\\pi$ does not factor through an \\'{e}tale morphism $X' \\to Y$\n\t\tof degree $> 1$,\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item $\\langle G_Q : Q \\in B \\rangle = G$. \n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item Suppose to the contrary that $\\pi$ factors through a non-trivial \\'{e}tale morphism $X' \\to Y$.\n\t\tThen $z$ is also a magical element for the cover $X \\to X'$. Hence $\\tr_{X\/X'}(z) \\in k^{\\times}$.\n\t\tBut then:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) = \\tr_{X'\/Y}(\\tr_{X\/X'}(z)) = [k(X') : k(Y)] \\cdot \\tr_{X\/X'}(z) = 0.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tContradiction ends the proof.\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item Note that $X' := X\/\\langle G_Q : Q \\in B \\rangle \\to Y$ is an \\'{e}tale subcover\n\t\tof $\\pi$. Thus by~(1) it must be of degree $1$ and $G = \\langle G_Q : Q \\in B \\rangle$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Holomorphic differentials} \\label{sec:OmegaX}\nThe goal of this section is to prove the part of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} concerning $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ and $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$. The first step in this direction is to compare holomorphic and logarithmic differentials. This is achieved by the following Proposition.\n\\begin{Proposition} \\label{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}\n\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. \n\tWe have the following isomorphism of right $k[G]$-modules:\n\t\\[\n\tH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus k[G]^{\\# B - 1} \\cong H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\oplus I_{X\/Y}.\n\t\\]\n\n\\end{Proposition}\nWe first show how Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs} implies the part of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}\nconcerning $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ and $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}, part 1]\n\tRecall that by~\\eqref{eqn:quotient_differentials} we have an exact sequence of $\\mc O_Y$-modules:\n\n\t\\[\n\t0 \\to \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\to \\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} i_{Q, *}(H^0_Q) \\to 0.\n\t\\]\n\n\tMoreover, by Serre's duality and Riemann--Roch theorem (cf.~\\cite[Corollary III.7.7, Theorem IV.1.3]{Hartshorne1977}):\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\th^0(Y, \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)) &= g_Y + \\# B - 1,\\\\\n\t\th^1(Y, \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)) &= 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence, after taking sections:\n\n\t\\[\n\t0 \\to k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1} \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^0_Q \\to 0.\n\t\\]\n\n\tNote that $k[G]$ is injective as a $k[G]$-module (see~\\cite[Corollary 8.5.3]{Webb_finite_group_representations}). Hence:\n\n\t\\[\n\tH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\cong k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1} \\oplus \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^0_Q.\n\t\\]\n\n\tWe combine this with Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs} to obtain:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:proof_of_MT1_before_dividing}\n\t\tH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus k[G]^{\\# B - 1} \\cong k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1} \\oplus I_{X\/Y} \\oplus \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^0_Q.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tSince every $k[G]$-module has a unique decomposition into indecomposable $k[G]$-modules (cf. \\cite[Corollary~11.1.7.]{Webb_finite_group_representations}), we may divide both sides\n\tof~\\eqref{eqn:proof_of_MT1_before_dividing} by $k[G]^{\\# B - 1}$. In this way we obtain the\n\tpart of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} concerning $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$. Finally, by Serre's duality,\n\t$H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ is the dual of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$. This immediately implies the part\n\tof Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} concerning the cohomology of the structure sheaf.\n\\end{proof}\nThe proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs} will occupy the rest of this section.\nIn the sequel we will need the relative augmentation ideal $I_{G, H}$ (as defined in Section~1),\nwhere $H$ is a normal subgroup of $G$. We identify it with:\n\\[\nI_{G, H} = \\left\\{ \\sum_{g \\in G} a_g g \\in k[G] : \\sum_{g \\in g_0 H} a_g = 0 \\quad \\forall_{g_0 \\in G} \\right\\}.\n\\]\nDefine also $k[G]_B := \\ker \\left( \\sum : \\bigoplus_B k[G] \\to k[G] \\right)$ (note that $k[G]_B \\cong k[G]^{\\# B - 1}$ as a $k[G]$-module). For any $Q \\in B$ and $g \\in G$, let $g_Q \\in \\bigoplus_{B} k[G]$ be the element with $g$ on the $Q$-th component and $0$ on other components.\\\\\n\nRecall that in order to prove Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs} we study the image\nof $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ under the map $\\res_G$. Let $\\omega \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$. Suppose for simplicity that $\\pi^{-1}(Q) = \\{ P \\}$ and\n$\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) = 1$. Then by~\\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace} $\\res_P(g^*(z) \\omega_g) = \\res_Q(\\omega_g)$. Hence:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t0 = \\res_P(\\omega) = \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g)\n\\end{align*}\nand $\\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\cdot g \\in I_G$. In general, if $G_Q \\neq G$, $\\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\cdot g \\in I_{G, G_Q}$, which is a consequence of the following lemma.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} and let $Q \\in B$.\n\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1), labelindent=0pt, itemindent=0pt, labelwidth=!]\n\t\t\\item For every $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ and $g_0 \\in G$, the form\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} \\omega_g\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tcan be expressed as a combination of forms $g^*(\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega))$ for $g \\in G$ with coefficients\n\t\tin $\\mc O_{X_Q, Q}$.\n\n\t\t\\item For every $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q$ one has:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\t\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q} \\quad \\Leftrightarrow \\quad \\forall_{g_0 \\in G} \\, \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) = 0.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tFix a point $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$. Let $G\/G_Q = \\{ g_1 G_Q, \\ldots, g_r G_Q \\}$ and $P_i := g_i(P)$.\n\tDefine $\\omega_i := \\sum_{g \\in g_i G_Q} \\omega_g$ for $i = 1, \\ldots, r$.\n\t\n\t(1) Observe that:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega) = \\sum_{i = 1}^r g_i^*(z_Q) \\cdot \\omega_i.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tThis implies that:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:system_eqns_tr_eta}\n\t\t\tg_j^*(\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega)) = \\sum_{i = 1}^r (g_i \\cdot g_j)^*(z_Q) \\cdot \\omega_i\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\n\t\tfor every $j = 1, \\ldots, r$. By the Group Determinant Formula~\\eqref{eqn:G-determinant} for the group $G\/G_Q$:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\det[(g_i \\cdot g_j)^*(z_Q)] = \\left(\\sum_{i=1}^r g_i^*(z_Q) \\right)^{\\# G\/G_Q} = \\tr_{X\/Y}(z)^{\\# G\/G_Q} \\in k^{\\times}.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tTherefore the system of linear equations~\\eqref{eqn:system_eqns_tr_eta} and Lemma~\\ref{lem:zQ_regular} imply that $\\omega_i$ can\n\t\tbe expressed as a combination of forms $g_j^*(\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega))$ with coefficients in $\\mc O_{X_Q, Q}$.\\\\\n\t\t\n\t(2) If $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ then $\\res_Q(\\omega_i) = 0$ for $i = 1, \\ldots, r$ by part~(1) and~\\eqref{eqn:trace_and_diff_forms}.\n\tSuppose now that $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q$ and $\\res_Q(\\omega_i) = 0$ for $i = 1, \\ldots, r$.\n\t\tNote that $\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega) \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(\\ol{R})_{Q}$ by~\\eqref{eqn:trace_and_diff_forms}. Therefore, by (1) we have\n\t\t$\\omega_i \\in \\Omega_{X_Q\/k}(\\ol R)_Q \\cap \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k} = \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q$ and\n\t\t$\\res_Q(\\omega_i) = 0$. Hence $\\omega_i$ is holomorphic at $Q$ (it is a logarithmic form\n\t\twith vanishing residues). \n\t\tIt follows that:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega) = \\sum_{i = 1}^r g_i^*(z_Q) \\cdot \\omega_i \\in \\Omega_{X_Q\/k, Q}.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tHence, using~\\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace}, $\\res_{P_j}(\\omega) = \\res_{\\ol{P}_j}(\\tr_{X\/X_Q}(\\omega)) = 0$\n\t\tfor every $j$. Therefore $\\omega$ must be holomorphic.\t\n\n\\end{proof}\nThe following exact sequence enables to construct various differential forms on $Y$ from ``local data''\n(cf. \\cite[III.7]{Hartshorne1977}):\n\\begin{align} \\label{eqn:constructing_diff_forms}\n\t0 \\to \\Omega_{Y\/k}(Y) \\to \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k} \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in Y(k)} \\frac{\\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}}{\\Omega_{Y, Q}}\n\t&\\to \\, \\, k \\to 0,\\\\\n\t(\\omega_Q)_Q &\\mapsto \\sum_{Q \\in Y(k)} \\res_Q(\\omega_Q). \\nonumber\n\\end{align}\nFix a point $Q_0 \\in B$. Let for any $Q \\in B$, $Q \\neq Q_0$, $\\eta_Q \\in H^0(Y, \\Omega_{Y\/k}(Q_0+Q))$ be a fixed\ndifferential form satisfying:\n\\[\n\\res_Q(\\eta_Q) = 1, \\quad \\res_{Q_0}(\\eta_Q) = -1\n\\]\n(note that such a form exists by~\\eqref{eqn:constructing_diff_forms}). Denote also $\\eta_{Q_0} = 0$.\\\\\n\\subsection*{Proof of {Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}}}\nThe proof is divided into four steps.\nIn the Steps I--III we define auxiliary maps that will be used to construct the isomorphism in Step IV.\nWe abbreviate $\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\sum_{g \\in G}$ to $\\sum_{Q, g}$.\n\\subsection*{Step I} The map $\\res_G$ defines $k[G]$-linear homomorphisms:\n\\[\nH^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\to I_{X\/Y} \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\to k[G]_B.\n\\]\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step I]\n\tWe check now that $\\res_G$ defines a map $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\to I_{X\/Y}$.\n\tIndeed, for any $Q \\in B$, $\\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g \\in I_{G, G_Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2). \n\tMoreover:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g = \\sum_{g \\in G} g \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) = 0\n\t\\]\n\n\tby the residue theorem. It follows that the image of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$ is contained in $I_{X\/Y}$. The $k$-linearity is easy to check. The map in question\n\tis $G$-equivariant, since for any $h \\in G$, the form $\\omega \\cdot h = h^*(\\omega)$ maps to:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q((h^*\\omega)_g) \\cdot g_Q\n\t\t&= \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_{gh^{-1}}) \\cdot g_Q\\\\\n\t\t&=\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\cdot (g \\cdot h)_Q\\\\\n\t\t&= \\left( \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_{g}) \\cdot g_Q \\right) \\cdot h.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\t(here we used~\\eqref{eqn:g_component_of_h}).\n\tOne proves that $\\res_G$ defines a map $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\to k[G]_B$ by applying residue theorem in a similar manner.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection*{Step II}\nThe map:\n\\[\n\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G] \\to \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}, \\quad\n\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\mapsto \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q\n\\]\ninduces $k[G]$-linear homomorphisms:\n\\[\nI_{X\/Y} \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad k[G]_B \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)).\n\\]\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step II]\n\tLet $\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\in I_{X\/Y}$ and $\\omega := \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q$. For $Q \\neq Q_0$, $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y} (2). Moreover, for any $g_0 \\in G$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q_0}} \\res_{Q_0}(\\omega_g)\n\t\t= \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q_0}} \\sum_{Q \\neq Q_0} -a_{Q, g}\n\t\t= \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q_0}} a_{Q_0, g} = 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence, by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2), $\\omega$\n\tis regular also over $Q_0$ and thus is an element of $H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$.\n\tThe $k[G]$-linearity is easy to check. One checks that the map $k[G]_B \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R))$\n\tis well-defined in a similar manner.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection*{Step III}\nLet $\\omega \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R))$. Then:\n\\[\t\\omega^{\\circ} := \\omega - \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g^*(z) \\eta_Q \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}). \\]\nMoreover, the map $\\omega \\mapsto \\omega^{\\circ}$ is $k[G]$-linear.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step III]\n\tBy Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2) $\\omega^{\\circ}$ is holomorphic at every $Q \\neq Q_0$, since $\\res_Q(\\omega^{\\circ}_g) = \\res_Q(\\omega_g - \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\cdot \\eta_Q) = 0$ for every $g \\in G$.\n\tMoreover, by the residue theorem:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\\res_{Q_0}(\\omega^{\\circ}_g) = -\\sum_{Q \\neq Q_0} \\res_Q(\\omega^{\\circ}_g) = 0.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tHence $\\omega^{\\circ}$ holomorphic at $Q_0$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2).\n\tThe $k[G]$-linearity is easy to check.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection*{Step IV}\nConsider the maps:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\Phi_0 : H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus k[G]_B &\\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\oplus I_{X\/Y}\\\\\n\t\\Phi_0(\\omega) &:= \\omega + \\res_G(\\omega) \\\\\n\t\\Phi_0 \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\right) &:= \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} \\cdot g^*(z) \\cdot \\eta_Q\n\\end{align*}\nand:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\Psi_0 : H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\oplus I_{X\/Y} &\\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus k[G]_B\\\\\n\t\\Psi_0(\\omega) &:= \\omega^{\\circ} + \\res_G(\\omega)\\\\\n\t\\Psi_0\\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\right) &:=\n\t\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q - \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q.\n\\end{align*}\nNote that $\\Phi_0$ and $\\Psi_0$ are well-defined $k[G]$-linear homomorphisms by Steps I--III.\nWe show now that $\\Phi_0$ and $\\Psi_0$ are mutually inverse.\nWe start by showing that $\\Phi_0 \\circ \\Psi_0 = \\id$.\nLet $\\omega \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k})$. Then:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\Psi_0(\\Phi_0(\\omega)) &= \\Psi_0(\\omega + \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g_Q)\\\\\n &= \\left(\\omega^{\\circ} + \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g_Q \\right)\\\\\n &+ \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g^*(z) \\eta_Q - \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g_Q \\right)\\\\\n &= \\omega.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tAnalogously, for $\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\in k[G]_B$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\Psi_0\\left(\\Phi_0\\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q\\right)\\right)\n\t\t&= \\Psi_0\\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q - \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q\\\\\n\t\t&+ \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\t\n\tWe prove now that $\\Phi_0 \\circ \\Psi_0 = \\id$. If $\\omega \\in H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R))$ then:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\Phi_0(\\Psi_0(\\omega)) &= \\Phi_0 \\left(\\omega^{\\circ} +\n\t\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g_Q \\right).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tRecall from Step III that $\\res_G(\\omega^{\\circ}) = 0$. Hence:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\\Phi_0(\\Psi_0(\\omega)) = \\omega^{\\circ} + \\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g^*(z) \\eta_Q\n\t\t= \\omega.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tFinally, for $\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\in I_{X\/Y}$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\Phi_0\\left(\\Psi_0\\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q\\right)\\right)\n\t\t&= \\Phi_0\\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q - \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q + \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&- \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tThis ends the proof.\n\n\\section{Cohomology of the structure sheaf} \\label{sec:OX}\nThis section is dedicated to a proof of the following proposition. \n\\begin{Proposition} \\label{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. \n\tThere exists the following isomorphism of $k[G]$-modules:\n\n\t\\[\n\tH^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\oplus k[G]^{\\# B - 1} \\cong H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\oplus J_{X\/Y}.\n\t\\]\n\\end{Proposition}\nNote that this result might be also obtained by applying Serre duality to Proposition~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}. However, we prefer to give a direct proof, as we will need a description of the isomorphisms in the second part of the proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}.\\\\\n\nIn the sequel we will use an alternative description of sheaf cohomology of sheaves on a curve.\nBasically, it is a variation of \\v{C}ech cohomology for a cover consisting of\nan open set $U$ and ``infinitesimal neighbourhoods'' of points $Q \\not \\in U(k)$.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:description_of_sheaf_cohomology}\n\tLet $Y$ be a smooth projective curve with the generic point~$\\eta$ over an algebraically closed field $k$. Let $S \\subset Y(k)$ be a finite non-empty set. Denote $U := Y \\setminus S$. Then for any locally free sheaf $\\mc F$ of finite rank on $Y$ we have a natural isomorphism:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^1(Y, \\mc F) &\\cong \\coker(\\mc F(U) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} \\mc F_{\\eta}\/\\mc F_{Q}).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tLet $j : U \\hookrightarrow Y$ be the open immersion.\n\tIt is elementary to check that for any $Q \\in Y(k)$:\n\n\t\\[\n\tj_*(\\mc F|_U)_Q =\n\t\\begin{cases}\n\t\t\\mc F_Q, & \\textrm{ if } Q \\in U,\\\\\n\t\t\\mc F_{\\eta}, & \\textrm{ otherwise. }\n\t\\end{cases}\n\t\\]\n\n\tThis yields the exact sequence:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:F_to_FU_exact_sequence}\n\t\t0 \\to \\mc F \\to j_*(\\mc F|_U) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} i_{Q, *}(\\mc F_{\\eta}\/\\mc F_Q) \\to 0,\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\twhere $i_Q : \\Spec(\\mc O_{Y, Q}) \\to Y$ is the natural morphism.\n\tThe proof follows by taking the associated long exact sequence and noting that\n\t$H^1(Y, j_*(\\mc F|_U)) = H^1(U, \\mc F|_U) = 0$ by Serre's criterion on affineness (cf.~\\cite[Theorem~III.3.7]{Hartshorne1977}).\n\\end{proof}\nIn particular, the first cohomology group of any invertible sheaf on $Y$ may be identified with a quotient of $\\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} k(Y)$. In this context, the duality pairing\n\\[\n\\langle \\cdot, \\cdot \\rangle : H^0(Y, \\Omega_{Y\/k}(D)) \\times H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(-D)) \\to k\n\\]\nis given by the formula:\n\\[\n\\langle \\omega, \\nu \\rangle := \\sum_{Q \\in S} \\res_Q(\\nu_Q \\cdot \\omega),\n\\]\nwhere the element $\\nu \\in H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(D))$ is represented by\n$(\\nu_Q)_{Q \\in S} \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} k(Y)$.\nThe following lemma can be seen as a dual version of Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:main_lemma_OX}\n\n\tKeep assumptions of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}. Let $Q \\in B$.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item $z_Q^{\\vee} := \\tr_{X\/X_Q}(z^{\\vee}) \\in \\mc O_{X_Q, Q}$.\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item Let $f \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$. Then for every $g_1, g_2 \\in G$ satisfying\n\t\t$g_1 G_Q = g_2 G_Q$:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\tf_{g_1}(Q) = f_{g_2}(Q).\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item Let $Q \\in B$ and $f \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$. Then:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\tf \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q \\quad \\Leftrightarrow \\quad \\forall_{g \\in G} \\quad f_g(Q) = 0.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nBefore the proof note that the map:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:local_duality_X}\n\t(f, \\omega) \\mapsto \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(f \\cdot \\omega)\n\t= \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(f \\cdot \\omega))\n\\end{equation}\ninduces a duality between $k(X)\/\\mc O_{X, Q}(-D)$ and $\\Omega_{X, Q}(D)$ for any $D \\in \\Divv(X)$.\\\\\n\n(1) It suffices to show that $z_Q^{\\vee} \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$. To this end note that for any $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t0 = \\sum_{g \\in G_Q} \\res_Q(\\omega_g)\n\t\t= \\sum_{g \\in G_Q} \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\omega))\n\t\t= \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(z^{\\vee}_Q \\cdot \\omega))\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tby Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2) and by~\\eqref{eqn:gth_component_trace_f}.\n\tThus $z_Q^{\\vee} \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$ by the duality~\\eqref{eqn:local_duality_X} for $D = 0$.\\\\\n\t\n (2) Note that $f_{g_1}, f_{g_2} \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2}. Let $\\omega_Q \\in \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ be any differential form with $\\ord_Q(\\omega_Q) = -1$, $\\res_Q(\\omega_Q) = 1$. By~\\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace} and~\\eqref{eqn:gth_component_trace_f}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tf_{g_1}(Q) &= \\res_Q(f_{g_1} \\cdot \\omega_Q)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(g_1^*(z) \\cdot f \\cdot \\omega_Q))\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(f \\cdot g_1^*(z) \\cdot \\omega_Q)\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tand analogously $f_{g_2}(Q) = \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(f \\cdot g_2^*(z) \\cdot \\omega_Q)$.\n\tNote that $g_1^*(z) \\omega_Q - g_2^*(z) \\omega_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2).\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t(f_{g_1} - f_{g_2})(Q) = \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(f \\cdot (g_1^*(z) \\omega_Q - g_2^*(z) \\omega_Q)) = 0.\n\t\\]\n\t\n (3) One implication is clear by Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2}. For the second implication, \n suppose that $f_g(Q) = 0$ for every $g \\in G$. Let $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q$. Then\n\n \\[ \\omega' := \\omega - \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) g^*(z) \\omega_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q} \\]\n\n by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2). Hence $f \\cdot \\omega'$ is regular at $Q$ and:\n\n \\begin{align*}\n \t\\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(f \\cdot \\omega)) &= \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(f \\cdot \\omega')) + \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(f \\cdot g^*(z) \\omega_Q))\\\\\n \t&= 0 + \\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) f_g(Q) = 0.\n \\end{align*}\nTherefore $f \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q$ by the duality~\\eqref{eqn:local_duality_X} for $D = R$.\n\\end{proof}\nWe discuss now the notation used in the proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}.\nBy Lemma~\\ref{lem:description_of_sheaf_cohomology} one can identify $H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y)$ and $H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(-B))$ with certain quotients of\n$\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(Y)$. Analogously, $H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\cong H^1(Y, \\pi_*\\mc O_X)$ and $H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R))$ are quotients of $\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X)$. By abuse of notation,\nwe often denote the element of the cohomology\ndetermined by an element of $\\bigoplus_B k(X)$ by the same letter.\nWe treat $\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X)$ as a $k(X)$-module.\nFor any $Q \\in B$ denote by $\\delta(Q)$ the element of $\\bigoplus_{B} k(X)$ with $1$ on the $Q$-th component and zero\non other components.\\\\\n\nFor any $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X)$, $Q \\in B$ and $g \\in G$\nwe adapt the following notation:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item $\\nu_Q \\in k(X)$ denotes the $Q$-th coordinate of $\\nu$,\n\t\n\t\\item $\\nu_{Q, g} \\in k(Y)$ are defined by the equality $\\nu_Q = \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\nu_{Q, g}$,\n\t\n\t\\item $\\nu_g \\in \\bigoplus_{B} k(Y)$ is the element with $\\nu_{Q, g}$ on the $Q$-th coordinate.\n\\end{itemize}\nConsider the following map for a fixed element $g \\in G$:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:projection_onto_gth_component}\n\tH^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\to H^1 \\left(Y, \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B) \\right)\n\t\\to H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(-B)),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item the first map is induced by the inclusion from Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2},\n\t\n\t\\item the second map is the projection onto the component corresponding to~$g$.\n\\end{itemize}\t\nNote that the image of an element of $H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R))$ represented by $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_B k(X)$ via the map~\\eqref{eqn:projection_onto_gth_component} is represented by $\\nu_g \\in \\bigoplus_B k(Y)$.\\\\\n\nWe identify $J_{G, H}$ with:\n\\[\nJ_{G, H} = k[G]\\bigg\/\\left(\\sum_{g \\in G} a_g \\cdot g : a_{g_1} = a_{g_2} \\textrm{ if } g_1 H = g_2 H \\right).\n\\]\nLet $k[G]_B^{\\vee}$ be the dual of the module $k[G]_B$. Note that $k[G]_B^{\\vee}$ may be identified with the module:\n\\[\n\\coker \\left(\\textrm{diag} : k[G] \\to \\bigoplus_B k[G] \\right).\n\\]\nand that $k[G]_B^{\\vee} \\cong k[G]^{\\# B - 1}$. For any $g \\in G$ and $Q \\in B$, denote the image of $g_Q$ in $J_{X\/Y}$ and in $k[G]_B^{\\vee}$ by $\\ol{g}_Q$.\n\n\\subsection*{Proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}}\n\n\tLet $\\eta_Q$ be the forms defined in Section~\\ref{sec:OmegaX} for a fixed $Q_0 \\in B$.\n\tAgain, we abbreviate $\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\sum_{g \\in G}$ to $\\sum_{Q, g}$.\n\tThe proof is divided into four steps.\n\n\t\\subsection*{Step I}\n\n\tThe map:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X), \\quad \\nu \\mapsto \\nu^{\\circ} := \\nu - \\sum_{Q, g} \\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q)\n\t\\]\n\n\tinduces a $k[G]$-linear map $H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R))$.\n\n\t\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step I]\n\t\tOne easily checks that this map is $k[G]$-linear.\n\t\tSuppose that $\\nu = (h)_Q$ for $h \\in \\mc O_X(V)$. Then $\\nu_g = (h_g)_Q$ and\n\t\t$h_g \\in \\mc O_Y(U)$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2}.\n\t\tIt follows that $\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle = 0$ by residue theorem.\n\t\tTherefore $\\nu^{\\circ}$ is trivial in $H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R))$.\n\t\t\n\t\tConsider now an element $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_B k(X)$ satisfying $\\nu_Q \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$\n\t\tfor every $Q \\in B$. Note that then $\\nu_{Q, g} \\in \\mc O_{Y, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2} and:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle = \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) - \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0).\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tLemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(3) implies that for any $Q \\in B$:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\nu_Q - \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\nu_{Q, g}(Q)\n\t\t= \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot (\\nu_{Q, g} - \\nu_{Q, g}(Q))  \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q,\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tsince $\\nu_{Q, g} - \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) \\in \\mf m_{Y, Q}$.\n\t\tThus in $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\nu^{\\circ} &= \\nu - \\left(\\sum_{g \\in G} (\\nu_{Q, g}(Q) - \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0)) \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\right)_Q\\\\\n\t\t\t&= \\left(\\sum_{g \\in G} \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0) \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\right)_{Q} = 0,\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tsince $\\sum_{g \\in G} \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0) \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\in \\mc O_X(V)$. The statement follows.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\n\t\\subsection*{Step II}\n\n\tThe map:\n\n\t\\[\n\te_G : \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G], \\qquad \n\t\\nu \\mapsto \\sum_{Q, g} \\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle \\cdot g_Q\n\t\\]\n\n\tinduces well-defined $k[G]$-linear maps\n\n\t\\[\n\tH^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\to J_{X\/Y} \\textrm{ and } H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\to k[G]_B^{\\vee}.\n\t\\]\n\n\t\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step II]\n\t\tSuppose that $\\nu = (h)_Q$ for $h \\in \\mc O_X(V)$. Then $\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle = 0$ as proven in Step I.\n\t\tHence $\\nu$ maps to $0$ in $J_{X\/Y}$. Assume now that an element $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_B k(X)$ satisfies $\\nu_Q \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$\n\t\tfor every $Q \\in B$. Note that then:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle = \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) - \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0).\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tBut $\\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_g(Q) \\ol g_Q = 0$ in $J_{X\/Y}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(2) and\n\t\tthe definition of $J_{X\/Y}$. Moreover, $\\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_g(Q_0) \\ol g_Q = 0$ in\n\t\t$J_{X\/Y}$ (since this is the image of the element $\\sum_{g \\in G} \\nu_g(Q_0) \\cdot g \\in k[G]$).\n\t\tHence $\\nu$ also maps to $0$ in $J_{X\/Y}$. This shows that the map $H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\to J_{X\/Y}$\n\t\tis well-defined. One checks that the map $H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\to k[G]_B^{\\vee}$ is well-defined in a similar\n\t\tmanner.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\n\t\\subsection*{Step III}\n\n\tThe map:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:map_kG_kX}\n\t\t\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G] \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k(X), \\quad\n\t\tg_Q \\to g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q)\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tinduces well-defined $k[G]$-linear maps\n\n\t\\[\n\t\tJ_{X\/Y} \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad k[G]_B^{\\vee} \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)).\n\t\\]\n\n\t\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step III]\n\t\tWe show that the homomorphism $J_{X\/Y} \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ is well-defined; the proof of the\n\t\tsecond statement is analogous. Consider an element of $\\bigoplus_B k[G]$ of the form\n\t\t$\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g_Q$ for some $g_0 \\in G$, $Q \\in B$.\n\t\tIts image through the map~\\eqref{eqn:map_kG_kX} is\n\t\t$g_0^*(z_Q^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q)$.\n\t\tHowever, $z_Q^{\\vee} \\in \\mc O_{X, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(1) and thus\n\t\t$g_0^*(z_Q^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q) = 0$ in $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$.\n\n\t\tFinally, observe that the image of an element $\\sum_{Q, g} a_g g_Q \\in \\bigoplus_B k[G]$ through the map~\\eqref{eqn:map_kG_kX} is $\\sum_{Q, g} a_g \\cdot (g^*(z^{\\vee}))_Q$.\n\t\tThis is trivial in $H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$, since $g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\in \\mc O_X(-R)(V)$.\n\t\t\\end{proof}\n\n\t\\subsection*{Step IV}\n\tConsider the following two maps:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\\Phi_1 : H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\oplus k[G]_B^{\\vee} &\\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\oplus J_{X\/Y},\\\\\n\t\\Phi_1(\\nu) &:= \\nu^{\\circ} + e_G(\\nu), \\\\\n\t\\Phi_1 (\\ol g_Q) &:= g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q) - \\ol g_Q,\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\\Psi_1 : H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) \\oplus J_{X\/Y} &\\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\oplus k[G]_B^{\\vee},\\\\\n\t\\Psi_1(\\nu) &:= \\nu + e_G(\\nu), \\\\\n\t\\Psi_1(\\ol g_Q) &:= g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q).\n\t\\end{align*}\t\n\n\tSteps I--III imply that $\\Phi_1$ and $\\Psi_1$ are well-defined $k[G]$-linear homomorphisms.\n\tOne easily checks that they are mutually inverse.\n\n\\section{The de Rham cohomology} \\label{sec:dR}\nIn this section we prove the part of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} concerning the de Rham cohomology.\nTo this end we need to compare $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ with the following variant of the logarithmic de Rham cohomology.\nLet for any finite set $S \\subset Y(k)$, $H^1_{dR, S}(Y\/k)$ denote the hypercohomology of the complex:\n\\[\n\\Omega_{Y\/k}^{\\bullet}(\\pm S) : (\\mc O_{Y\/k}(-S) \\stackrel{d}{\\longrightarrow} \\Omega_{Y\/k}(S)).\n\\]\nNote that there is a ``Hodge--de Rham exact sequence'' for $H^1_{dR, S}(Y\/k)$:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:hdr_exact_sequence_for_log_de_rham}\n\t0 \\to H^0(Y, \\Omega_{Y\/k}(S)) \\to H^1_{dR, S}(Y\/k) \\to H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(-S)) \\to 0.\n\\end{equation}\nThe following result is an analogue of Propositions~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs} and~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}.\n\\begin{Proposition} \\label{prop:normal_and_log_de_rham}\n\tThere exists an isomorphism between the $k[G]$-modules:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\tM_1 := H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\oplus k[G]_B \\oplus k[G]_B^{\\vee}\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\tand\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\tM_2 := H^1_{dR, R}(X\/k) \\oplus I_{X\/Y} \\oplus J_{X\/Y}.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\n\\end{Proposition}\nWe give now a description of sheaf hypercohomology, that generalizes Lemma~\\ref{lem:description_of_sheaf_cohomology}.\n\\begin{Lemma}\n\tKeep the setup of Lemma~\\ref{lem:description_of_sheaf_cohomology}. Let $\\mc F^{\\bullet} = (\\mc F^0 \\stackrel{d}{\\rightarrow} \\mc F^1)$\n\tbe a cochain complex of locally free $\\mc O_Y$-modules of finite rank with a $k$-linear differential.\n\tThen we have a natural isomorphism:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\HH^1(Y, \\mc F^{\\bullet}) &\\cong Z^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet})\/B^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet}),\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhere:\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tZ^1_{S}(\\mc F^{\\bullet}) &:= \\{ (\\omega, (h_Q)_{Q \\in S} ) : \\omega \\in \\mc F^0(U), \n\t\th_Q \\in \\mc F^1_{\\eta}, \\, \\omega - d h_Q \\in \\mc F^0_Q \\},\\\\\n\t\tB^1_{S}(\\mc F^{\\bullet}) &:= \\{ (dh, (h + h_Q)_{Q \\in S} ) : h \\in \\mc F^1(U), \\,\n\t\th_Q \\in \\mc F^1_Q \\}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tMoreover, the maps\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^0(Y, \\mc F^0) \\to \\HH^1(Y, \\mc F^{\\bullet}) \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad \n\t\t\\HH^1(Y, \\mc F^{\\bullet}) \\to H^1(Y, \\mc F^1)\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tare induced by the maps:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\t\t\tH^0(Y, \\mc F^0) &\\to& Z^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet})\\\\\n\t\t\t\\omega &\\mapsto& (\\omega, (0)_{Q \\in S})\n\t\t\\end{array}\n\t\t\\qquad \\textrm{ and } \\qquad\n\t\t\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\t\t\tZ^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet}) &\\to& \\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} \\mc F^1_{\\eta}\\\\\n\t\t\t(\\omega, (h_Q)_{Q \\in S} ) &\\mapsto& (h_Q)_{Q \\in S}\n\t\t\\end{array}\n\t\\]\n\n\trespectively.\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tThe exact sequence~\\eqref{eqn:F_to_FU_exact_sequence} easily implies that $\\mc F^{\\bullet}$ is the kernel of the map of complexes:\n\n\t\\[\n\tj_*(\\mc F^{\\bullet}|_U) \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} i_{Q, *}(\\mc F^{\\bullet}_{\\eta}\/\\mc F^{\\bullet}_Q).\n\t\\]\n\n\tLet $C^{\\bullet}$ be the mapping cone of this map, i.e. the total complex of the double complex:\n\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{tikzcd}\n\t\t\tj_*(\\mc F^0|_U) \\arrow[r] \\arrow[d] & {\\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} i_{Q, *}(\\mc F^0_{\\eta}\/\\mc F^0_Q)} \\arrow[d] \\\\\n\t\t\tj_*(\\mc F^1|_U) \\arrow[r]           & {\\bigoplus_{Q \\in S} i_{Q, *}(\\mc F^1_{\\eta}\/\\mc F^1_Q).}\n\t\t\\end{tikzcd}\n\t\\end{center}\n\n\tThen $\\mc F^{\\bullet}$ is isomorphic to $C^{\\bullet}[-1]$ in the derived category. In particular, $\\HH^1(Y, \\mc F^{\\bullet}) \\cong \\HH^0(Y, C^{\\bullet})$. It is immediate from the definition that\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\HH^0(Y, C^{\\bullet}) \\cong Z^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet})\/B^1_S(\\mc F^{\\bullet}).\n\t\\]\n\n\tThe second statement follows from the functoriality for the maps $\\mc F^0[0] \\to \\mc F^{\\bullet}$\n\tand $\\mc F^{\\bullet} \\to \\mc F^1[1]$.\n\\end{proof}\nIn order to prove Proposition~\\ref{prop:normal_and_log_de_rham} we lift the map\n$J_{X\/Y} \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$\nfrom Step III of the proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}\nto a map $J_{X\/Y} \\to H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$. To this end we need to decompose the differential form $dz^{\\vee}$ into certain ``local components''. This is achieved by the following lemma.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:xiQ_existence}\n\tThere exists a system of differential forms $(\\xi_Q)_{Q \\in B}$, $\\xi_Q \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$\n\tsuch that the following conditions are satisfied:\n\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item $\\xi_Q \\equiv dz^{\\vee} \\pmod{\\Omega_{X, Q}}$,\n\t\t\\item $\\xi_Q \\in \\Omega_{X, Q'}$ for every $Q' \\in Y(k)$, $Q' \\neq Q$,\n\t\t\\item $\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g^*(\\xi_Q) = 0$ for every $g_0 \\in G$,\n\t\t\\item $\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\xi_Q = dz^{\\vee}$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tDenote $J' := \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} J_{G, G_Q}$ and $d_g := \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\ol g_Q \\in J'$ for any $g \\in G$.\n\tThen $\\sum_{g \\in G} d_g = 0$. \n\tNote that the elements $(d_g)_{g \\neq e}$ are linearly independent over $k$.\n\tIndeed, suppose to the contrary that $\\sum_{g \\in G} a_g \\cdot d_g = 0$ in $J'$ for some\n\t$a_g \\in k$, where $a_e := 0$. Then by the definition of $J'$ we have $a_{g_1} = a_{g_2}$ for any $g_1, g_2 \\in G$ satisfying $g_1 G_Q = g_2 G_Q$ for some $Q \\in B$. But by Lemma~\\ref{lem:GME_implies_no_etale_cover}~(2)\n\t$G = \\langle G_Q : Q \\in B \\rangle$. Hence any $g \\in G$ can be written in the\n\tform $g_1 \\cdot \\ldots \\cdot g_m$ for $g_i \\in G_{Q_i}$,\n\t$Q_i \\in B$. Therefore:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t0 = a_e = a_{g_1} = a_{g_1 g_2} = \\ldots = a_g.\n\t\\]\n\tHence $(d_g)_{g \\neq e}$ are linearly independent. Observe now that\n\n\t\\[\n\tJ' = \\Span_k(\\{ \\ol g_Q : g \\in G, Q \\in B \\} \\cup \\{ d_g : g \\neq e \\}).\n\t\\]\n\n\tHence there exists a $k$-basis of $J'$ of the form $\\mc B = \\mc B' \\cup \\{ d_g : g \\neq e \\}$, where\n\t$\\mc B' \\subset \\{ \\ol g_Q : g \\in G, Q \\in B \\}$.\n\tWe define now two $k$-linear homomorphisms, using the basis $\\mc B$.\\\\\n\t\n\tLet $V := \\ker \\left( \\sum : \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k \\to k \\right)$.\n\tConsider the $k$-linear homomorphism $r = (r_Q)_Q : J' \\to V$ defined by its values on $\\mc B$:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $r(d_g) = (\\res_Q((dz^{\\vee})_g))_Q$ for any $g \\neq e$,\n\t\t\\item $r(\\ol{g}_Q) = (0)_Q$ for $\\ol g_Q \\in \\mc B'$.\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tWe define also the $k$-linear homomorphism\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\varphi : J' \\to \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k},\n\t\\]\n\n\tby its values on $\\mc B$:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $\\varphi(d_g) = (dz^{\\vee})_g$ for $g \\in G$, $g \\neq e$,\n\t\t\\item for any $\\ol g_Q \\in \\mc B'$, $\\varphi(\\ol g_Q) \\in \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ is any differential form\n\t\tthat is regular on $Y \\setminus B$ and satisfies:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\varphi(\\ol g_Q) &\\equiv (dz^{\\vee})_g \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q},\\\\\n\t\t\t\\varphi(\\ol g_Q) &\\equiv 0 \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_{Q'}} \\quad \\textrm{ for } Q' \\in B, Q' \\neq Q,\\\\\n\t\t\t\\res_{Q'}(\\varphi(\\ol g_Q)) &= r_{Q'}(\\ol g_Q) \\quad \\textrm{ for } Q' \\in B\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\t(observe that such a form exists by~\\eqref{eqn:constructing_diff_forms}, since $\\sum_{Q'} r_{Q'}(\\ol g_Q) = 0$).\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tNote that then:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $\\res_Q(\\varphi(\\alpha)) = r_Q(\\alpha)$ for any $\\alpha \\in J'$ (since this equality holds for $\\alpha \\in \\mc B$),\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item $\\varphi(d_e) = (dz^{\\vee})_e$, since $d_e = - \\sum_{g \\neq e} d_g$ and\n\t\tby~\\eqref{eqn:trace_of_dual_z}:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in G} (dz^{\\vee})_g = \\tr_{X\/Y}(dz^{\\vee}) = d \\tr_{X\/Y}(z^{\\vee}) = 0.\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tDefine for any $Q \\in B$:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\xi_Q := \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\cdot \\varphi(\\ol g_Q).\n\t\\]\n\n\tWe check now that the forms~$\\xi_Q$ satisfy the listed conditions. \n\tNote that for any $g \\in G$:\n\n\t\\[\n\t(dz^{\\vee})_g = \\varphi(d_g) = \\varphi \\left(\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\ol g_Q \\right) = \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\xi_{Q, g}.\n\t\\]\n\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\xi_Q &= \\sum_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\xi_{Q, g}\n\t\t= \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\xi_{Q, g}\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{g \\in G} g^*(z) (dz^{\\vee})_g = dz^{\\vee},\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhich proves~(4). Moreover for any $g_0 \\in G$, $Q \\in B$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t0 &= \\varphi \\left(\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} \\ol g_Q \\right) = \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} \\xi_{Q, g}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence, if $G\/G_Q = \\{ g_1 G_Q, \\ldots, g_r G_Q \\}$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g^*(\\xi_Q) = \\sum_{i = 1}^r (g_i \\cdot g_0)^*(z_Q) \\sum_{g \\in g_i G_Q} \\xi_{Q, g} = 0\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tand~(3) is also true.\\\\\n\tWe prove now the properties (1) and~(2). Let $\\varphi_1$ denote the composition\n\n\t\\[\n\tJ' \\stackrel{\\varphi}{\\longrightarrow} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k} \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}\/\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q.\n\t\\]\n\n\tConsider the $k$-linear homomorphism:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\wt{\\varphi}_2 : \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G]  &\\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}\/\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q,\\\\\n\t\tg_Q &\\mapsto (dz^{\\vee})_g \\cdot \\delta(Q).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tNote that $\\wt{\\varphi}_2$ induces a map:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\varphi_2 : J' \\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}\/\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q.\n\t\\]\n\n\tIndeed, for any $g_0 \\in G$, $Q \\in B$:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:chi_is_regular}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} (dz^{\\vee})_g \\in \\Omega_{X_Q\/k, Q} \\cap \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k} = \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tsince $\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} (dz^{\\vee})_g$ may be written as a combination of forms $h^*(dz_Q^{\\vee})$ for $h \\in H$ with coefficients in $\\mc O_{X_Q, Q}$ (cf. Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(1) and Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(1)). Therefore:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\wt{\\varphi}_2 \\left(\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g_Q \\right) &= \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} (dz^{\\vee})_g \\cdot \\delta(Q)\\\\\n\t\t&= 0 \\qquad \\textrm{ in } \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}\/\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tand $\\varphi_2$ is well-defined. Observe now that for any $g \\in G$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\varphi_2(d_g) &= \\varphi_2 \\left(\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\ol g_Q \\right)\n\t\t= \\sum_{Q \\in B} (dz^{\\vee})_g \\cdot \\delta(Q)\\\\\n\t\t&= \\left((dz^{\\vee})_g \\right)_{Q \\in B} \\qquad \\textrm{ in } \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}\/\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tTherefore $\\varphi_1$ and $\\varphi_2$ agree on $\\mc B$. Hence $\\varphi_1 = \\varphi_2$\n\tand for every $Q \\in B$, $g \\in G$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\varphi(\\ol g_Q) &\\equiv (dz^{\\vee})_g \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q}\\\\\n\t\t\\varphi(\\ol g_Q) &\\equiv 0 \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_{Q'}} \\qquad \\textrm{ for } Q' \\in B, Q' \\neq Q.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tUsing Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules} one easily deduces that $\\xi_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_{Q'}$\n\tfor $Q' \\in B$, $Q' \\neq Q$ and $\\xi_Q - dz^{\\vee} \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q$. Finally, for any\n\t$g_0 \\in G$ and $Q' \\in B$, $Q' \\neq Q$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q'}} \\res_{Q'}(\\xi_{Q, g}) &= \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q'}} r_{Q'}(\\ol g_Q)\n\t\t= r_{Q'} \\left(\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q'}} \\ol g_Q \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&= r_{Q'}(0) = 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tTherefore (2) holds by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2). Analogously,\n\tfor any $Q \\in B$, $g_0 \\in G$, using~\\eqref{eqn:chi_is_regular}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q}} \\res_Q(\\xi_{Q, g} - (dz^{\\vee})_g)\n\t\t&= r_Q \\left(\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_{Q}} \\ol g_Q \\right) - \\res_Q \\left(\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} (dz^{\\vee})_g \\right)\\\\\n\t\t&= r_Q(0) - 0 = 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tThus $\\xi_Q - dz^{\\vee} \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}~(2), which proves~(1).\n\\end{proof}\nIn the proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:normal_and_log_de_rham} we will consider two modules\nisomorphic to $\\bigoplus_B k[G]$:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item the first one contains $I_{X\/Y}$ and $k[G]_B$,\n\t\n\t\\item the second one surjects onto $J_{X\/Y}$ and $k[G]_B^{\\vee}$.\n\\end{itemize}\nIn order to distinguish the elements of those two modules, we overline the elements of the latter module, e.g.\n$\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q g} \\ol{g}_Q$. \n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:normal_and_log_de_rham}]\nFix a point $Q_0 \\in B$ and let $\\eta_Q$ be as defined in Section~\\ref{sec:OmegaX}.\n\\subsection*{Step I}\nFor any $Q \\in B$ the element\n\\[\n\\Xi_Q := (\\xi_Q, z^{\\vee} \\cdot \\delta(Q)) \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(V) \\times \\bigoplus_B k(X)\n\\]\nbelongs to $Z^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet})$. \nMoreover, the map:\n\\[\n\\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G] \\to Z^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}), \\qquad g_Q \\mapsto g^*(\\Xi_Q)\n\\]\ninduces a $k[G]$-linear map $J_{X\/Y} \\to H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step I]\n\tThe first statement follows immediately by Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(1) and~(2). For the second claim, note that by Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}(3) and Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(1) for any $g_0 \\in G$, $Q \\in B$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g^*((\\xi_Q, z^{\\vee} \\cdot \\delta(Q))) \n\t\t&= (0, g_0^*(z_Q^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q)) \\in B^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tFinally, by Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(4):\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\sum_{Q \\in B} g^*(\\Xi_Q) &= (d g^*(z^{\\vee}), \\sum_{Q \\in B} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\delta(Q))\\\\\n\t\t&= (d g^*(z^{\\vee}), (g^*(z^{\\vee}))_{Q \\in B}) \\in B^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence in $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\forall_{g_0 \\in G, Q \\in B} \\, \\sum_{g \\in g_0 G_Q} g^*(\\Xi_Q) = 0 \\quad \\textrm{ and } \\quad \\forall_{g \n\t\t\\in G}\n\t\t\\sum_{Q \\in B} g^*(\\Xi_Q) = 0,\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\twhich proves the claim.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection*{Step II}\nThe map:\n\\[\n(\\omega, \\nu) \\mapsto (\\omega, \\nu)^{\\circ} := (\\omega, \\nu) - \\sum_{Q, g} \\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle \\cdot g^*(\\Xi_Q)\n\\]\ndefines a $k[G]$-linear homomorphism $H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\to H^1_{dR, R}(X\/k)$. This map lifts the map $H^1(X, \\mc O_X) \\to H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R))$ from Step I of the proof\nof Proposition~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step II]\nIf $(\\omega, \\nu) \\in Z^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet})$, then\nclearly $(\\omega, \\nu)^{\\circ} \\in Z^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}(\\pm R))$.\nSuppose now that $(\\omega, \\nu) = (dh, (h)_Q)$ for $h \\in \\mc O_X(V)$. Then\n\\[ (\\omega, \\nu)^{\\circ} = (\\omega, \\nu) \\in B^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}(\\pm R)),\\]\nsince by the residue theorem $\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g\\rangle = 0$ for every $Q, g$.\nAssume now that $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\mc O_{X, Q}$. Then $\\langle \\eta_Q, \\nu_g \\rangle = \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) - \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0)$.\nNote that $\\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) \\cdot g^*(\\xi_Q) = 0$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(2) and Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(3).\nMoreover, $\\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0) \\cdot g^*(\\xi_Q) = \\sum_{g} \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0) dg^*(z^{\\vee})$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(4). \nTherefore:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t(0, \\nu)^{\\circ} &= \\bigg(0, \\nu - \\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q) \\bigg) + \\sum_{g} \\nu_{Q_0, g}(Q_0) \\cdot \\bigg(dg^*(z^{\\vee}), (g^*(z^{\\vee}))_Q \\bigg).\n\\end{align*}\nBut $\\nu - \\sum_{Q, g} \\nu_{Q, g}(Q) \\cdot g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot \\delta(Q) \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_{Q'}$ for every $Q' \\in B$\nby Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_OX}~(3). Hence $(0, \\nu)^{\\circ} \\in B^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}(\\pm R))$.\nThis proves that the map $H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\to H^1_{dR, R}(X\/k)$ is well-defined. The second statement\nis immediate.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection*{Step III}\nThe map:\n\\begin{align*}\n\tZ^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet}) &\\to \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} k[G],\\\\\n\t(\\omega, \\nu) &\\mapsto \\sum_{Q, g} (\\res_Q((\\omega - d \\nu_Q)_g) - \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle) \\cdot g_Q\n\\end{align*}\ninduces a map $H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\to I_{X\/Y}$.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Step III]\nWe start by checking that image of this map lies in $I_{X\/Y}$.\nIndeed, $\\omega - d \\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k, Q}$ implies that\n\\[\n\\sum_{g \\in G} \\res_Q((\\omega - d \\nu_Q)_g) \\cdot g \\in I_{G, G_Q}\n\\]\nby Lemma~\\ref{lem:main_lemma_Omega_Y}.\nMoreover, by~Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(3):\n\\[\n\t\\sum_{g \\in G} \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle \\cdot g \\in I_{G, G_Q}.\n\\]\nNote that, using Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence}~(4), \\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace} and the equality $\\res_P(f \\cdot dg) = - \\res_P(g \\cdot df)$:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\sum_{Q \\in B} \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle &=\n\t\\langle dg^*(z^{\\vee}), \\nu \\rangle\n\t= \\sum_{P \\in R} \\res_P(\\nu_{\\pi(P)} \\cdot dg^*(z^{\\vee}))\\\\\n\t&= - \\sum_{P \\in R} \\res_P(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot d\\nu_{\\pi(P)})\n\t= - \\sum_{Q \\in B} \\res_Q((d\\nu_Q)_g).\n\\end{align*}\nHence by the residue theorem:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\sum_{Q, g} (\\res_Q((\\omega - d \\nu_Q)_g) - \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle) \\cdot g &= \n\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\res_Q(\\omega_g) \\cdot g = 0.\t\n\\end{align*}\nWe check now that this map vanishes on $B^1_U(\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}^{\\bullet})$. Suppose that $h \\in \\mc O_X(V)$. Then $(dh, (h)_Q)$\nmaps to:\n\\[\n\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\left(\\res_Q((dh - dh)_g) + \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), (h)_Q \\rangle \\right) \\cdot g_Q = 0.\n\\]\nMoreover, if $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\mc O_{X, Q}$ then by \\eqref{eqn:residue_and_trace}, \\eqref{eqn:gth_component_trace_f}\nand by Lemma~\\ref{lem:xiQ_existence} (1), (2):\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle &= \\sum_{Q' \\in B} \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q')} \\res_P(\\nu_{Q'} \\cdot g^*(\\xi_Q))\\\\\n\t&= \\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(\\nu_Q \\cdot dg^*(z^{\\vee}))\\\\\n\t&= -\\sum_{P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)} \\res_P(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot d\\nu_Q)\\\\\n\t&= -\\res_Q(\\tr_{X\/Y}(g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\cdot d\\nu_Q))\\\\\n\t&= -\\res_Q((d\\nu_Q)_g).\n\\end{align*}\nHence $(0, \\nu)$ maps to:\n\\begin{equation*}\n\t\\sum_{Q, g} \\left(\\res_Q((0 - d \\nu_Q)_g) - \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle \\right) \\cdot g_Q\n\t= 0. \\qedhere\n\\end{equation*}\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection*{Step IV}\n\n\tConsider the map:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\Phi_2 : M_1 &\\to M_2,\\\\\n\t\t\\Phi_2((\\omega, \\nu)) &:= \n\t\t(\\omega, \\nu)^{\\circ} + \\sum_{Q, g} \\left(\\res_Q((\\omega - d \\nu_Q)_g) - \\langle g^*(\\xi_Q), \\nu \\rangle \\right) \\cdot g_Q \\\\\n\t\t&+ e_G(\\nu), \\\\\n\t\t\\Phi_2 \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g_Q \\right) &:= \\left(\\sum_{Q, g} a_{Q, g} g^*(z) \\eta_Q, 0 \\right),\\\\\n\t\t\\Phi_2 (\\ol{g}_Q ) &:= g^*(\\Xi_Q) - \\ol g_Q.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tBy Steps I--III and Step II of the proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}, $\\Phi_2 : M_1 \\to M_2$ is a well-defined $k[G]$-linear map. Moreover, the Hodge--de Rham exact sequences~\\eqref{eqn:intro_hodge_de_rham_se} and~\\eqref{eqn:hdr_exact_sequence_for_log_de_rham} yield the following diagram:\n\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{tikzcd}\n\t\t\t0 \\arrow[r] & {H^0(\\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus k[G]_B} \\arrow[r] \\arrow[d, \"\\Phi_0\"] & M_1 \\arrow[r] \\arrow[d, \"\\Phi_2\"] & {H^1(\\mc O_X) \\oplus k[G]_B^{\\vee}} \\arrow[r] \\arrow[d, \"\\Phi_1\"] & 0 \\\\\n\t\t\t0 \\arrow[r] & {H^0(\\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\oplus I_{X\/Y}} \\arrow[r]                 & M_2 \\arrow[r]                     & {H^1(\\mc O_X(-R)) \\oplus J_{X\/Y}} \\arrow[r]                       & 0\n\t\t\\end{tikzcd}\n\t\\end{center}\n\n\tThe proof follows by noting that $\\Phi_0$ and $\\Phi_1$ are isomorphisms by Propositions~\\ref{prop:log_diffs_and_diffs}\n\tand~\\ref{prop:regular_and_vanishing_functions}.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}, part 2]\n\n\tLet $K_1$ be the kernel of the epimorphism:\n\n\t\\begin{alignat*}{3}\n\t\tH^1_{dR, R}(X\/k) &\\to \\quad H^1(X, \\mc O_X(-R)) &&\\to H^1 \\left(Y, \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z^{\\vee}) \\mc O_Y(-B) \\right)&\\\\\n\t\t&\\cong \\Ind^G H^1(Y, \\mc O_Y(-B)) &&\\cong k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1},&\n\t\\end{alignat*}\n\n\twhere the first map comes from the Hodge--de Rham exact sequence~\\eqref{eqn:hdr_exact_sequence_for_log_de_rham}\n\tand the second map comes from the inclusion from the Lemma~\\ref{lem:inclusions_of_modules2}\n\t(note that the second map is surjective, since the first cohomology of a finitely supported sheaf on a curve\n\tvanishes).\n\tThen, since $k[G]$ is an injective $k[G]$-module (cf.~\\cite[Corollary 8.5.3]{Webb_finite_group_representations}):\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:H1_dR=K1+k[G]}\n\t\tH^1_{dR, R}(X\/k) \\cong K_1 \\oplus k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1}.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tMoreover, one can explicitly describe $K_1$ as:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\tK_1 = \\frac{\\{ (\\omega, \\nu) : \\omega - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(Q)_Q \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}}{\\{ (df, (f + f_Q))_Q \\}},\n\t\\]\n\n\twhere:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(V)$,\n\t\t\\item $\\nu \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q$,\n\t\t\\item $f \\in \\mc O_X(V) \\cap \\bigcap_{Q \\in B} \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q$,\n\t\t\\item $f_Q \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q$.\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tHowever,\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\mc O_X(V) \\cap \\bigcap_{Q \\in B} \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q &= \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(U) \\cap \n\t\t\\bigcap_{Q \\in B} \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(-B)_Q\\\\\n\t\t&= \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\mc O_Y(-B)(Y) = 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tK_1 &= \\frac{\\{ (\\omega, \\nu) : \\omega - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(Q)_Q \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}}{\\{ (0, (f_Q)_Q) : f_Q \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q\n\t\t\t\\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}}\\\\\n\t\t&= \\{ (\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(V), \\nu \\in \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^1_Q) : \\omega - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(Q)_Q \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}.\n\t\\end{align*}\t\n\n\tThe Hodge--de Rham exact sequence~\\eqref{eqn:hdr_exact_sequence_for_log_de_rham} implies that the composition\n\n\t\\[\n\t\tH^0 \\left(Y, \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\right) \\to H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)) \\to H^1_{dR, R}(X\/k)\n\t\\]\n\n\tfactors through the monomorphism:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:monomorphism_K1}\n\t\tH^0 \\left(Y, \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\right) \\to K_1.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tLet $K_2$ be the cokernel of the monomorphism~\\eqref{eqn:monomorphism_K1}. Then, analogously as before:\n\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\tK_1 &\\cong H^0 \\left(Y, \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B) \\right) \\oplus K_2 \\label{eqn:K1=K2+k[G]}\\\\\n\t\t&\\cong k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1} \\oplus K_2. \\nonumber\n\t\\end{align}\n\n\tOn the other hand:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tK_2 &= \\frac{\\{ (\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(V), \\nu) : \\omega - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(Q)_Q, \\quad \\nu_Q \\in H^1_Q\n\t\t\t\\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}}{\\{ (\\omega, 0) : \\omega \\in \\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)(Y) \\}}\\\\\n\t\t&\\cong \\{ (\\omega, \\nu) : \\omega \\in \n\t\t\t\\frac{\\Omega_{X\/k}(V)}{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)(Y)}, \\quad\n\t\t\t\\omega - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(Q)_Q, \\quad \\nu_Q \\in H^1_Q \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tLet $j : V \\to X$ be the open immersion.\n\tNote that both sheaves:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t\\frac{\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)}{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)} \\textrm{ and } \n\t\t\\frac{(\\pi \\circ j)_* \\, \\Omega_{V\/k}}{\\pi_* \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)}\n\t\\]\n\n\thave support contained in $B$. Hence $(\\pi \\circ j)_* \\Omega_{V\/k}\/\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)$ is also supported on $B$.\n\tThis implies that:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t\\frac{\\Omega_{X\/k}(V)}{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)(Y)} \\cong \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B}\n\t\t\\frac{\\Omega_{k(X)\/k}}{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q}.\n\t\\]\n\n\tTherefore:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\tK_2 \\cong \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^1_{dR, Q},\n\t\\]\n\n\twhere:\n\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\tH^1_{dR, Q} &:= \\{ (\\omega_Q \\in \\frac{\\Omega_{k(X)\/k}}{\\bigoplus_{g \\in G} g^*(z) \\Omega_{Y\/k}(B)_Q}, \\nu_Q \\in H^1_Q) :\n\t\t\\quad \\omega_Q - d\\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q \\}. \\label{eqn:H1dRQ}\n\t\\end{align}\n\n\tThus by~\\eqref{eqn:H1_dR=K1+k[G]} and~\\eqref{eqn:K1=K2+k[G]}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^1_{dR, R}(X\/k) &\\cong K_1 \\oplus k[G]^{g_Y + \\# B - 1}\\\\\n\t\t&\\cong K_2 \\oplus k[G]^{2 \\cdot (g_Y + \\# B - 1)}\\\\\n\t\t&\\cong \\bigoplus_{Q \\in B} H^1_{dR, Q} \\oplus k[G]^{2 \\cdot (g_Y + \\# B - 1)}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tOne finishes the proof using Proposition~\\ref{prop:normal_and_log_de_rham}, similarly as in Section~\\ref{sec:OmegaX}.\n\n\\end{proof}\nIn the sequel we will need to know the relation between $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$, $H^1_{dR, Q}$. This is provided\nby the following local analogue of the Hodge--de Rham exact sequence.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:properties_IXY_H1dRQ}\n\n\tFor every $Q \\in B$ there exists an exact sequence:\n\n\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t0 \\to H^0_Q \\to H^1_{dR, Q} \\to H^1_Q \\to 0.\n\t\\end{equation*}\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tIt is straightforward that the map $H^0_Q \\to H^1_{dR, Q}$ induced\n\tby $\\omega_Q \\mapsto (\\omega_Q, 0)$ is injective. The map $H^1_{dR, Q} \\to H^1_Q$, $(\\omega_Q, \\nu_Q) \\mapsto \\nu_Q$ is surjective, since $\\nu_Q$ is the image of $(d \\nu_Q, \\nu_Q)$. Finally, $(\\omega_Q, \\nu_Q)$ is\n\tin the kernel of the map $H^1_{dR, Q} \\to H^1_Q$ if and only if\n\t$\\nu_Q \\in \\mc O_X(-R)_Q$, which is equivalent to $\\omega_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)$ (since $\\omega_Q - d \\nu_Q \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q$).\n\n\\end{proof}\nWe prove now the corollary concerning the structure of $H^1_{dR}(X\/k)$ in the weak ramification case.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Corollary~\\ref{cor:hdr_exact_sequence}]\n\tThe proof of~\\cite[Main Theorem]{Garnek_equivariant} shows that if $H^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\cong H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus H^1(X, \\mc O_X)$ as $k[G]$-modules, then $d_P'' = 0$ for every $P \\in X(k)$.\n\tSuppose now that $d_P'' = 0$ for every $P \\in X(k)$. Then\n\t$H^0_Q = H^1_Q = H^1_{dR, Q} = 0$ for every $Q \\in Y(k)$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:properties_H0Q_H1Q} and Lemma~\\ref{lem:properties_IXY_H1dRQ}.\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\tH^1_{dR}(X\/k) \\cong k[G]^{\\oplus 2 \\cdot g_Y} \\oplus I_{X\/Y} \\oplus J_{X\/Y}\n\t\t\\cong H^0(X, \\Omega_{X\/k}) \\oplus H^1(X, \\mc O_X). \\qedhere\n\t\\]\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Artin--Schreier covers} \\label{sec:AS_covers}\nIn this subsection we construct a magical element for a large class of Artin--Schreier covers\nand compute their cohomology. Also, we give an example of a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover without a magical element.\\\\\n\nLet $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$ and $Y\/k$ be a smooth projective curve.\nRecall that the $\\ZZ\/p$-covers\nof $Y$ are in a bijection with the group $k(Y)\/\\wp(k(Y))$, where $\\wp(f) := f^p - f$. An element of\n$k(Y)\/\\wp(k(Y))$ represented by a function $f \\in k(Y)$ corresponds to a curve\nwith the function field given by the equation:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:artin_schreier}\n\ty^p - y = f.\n\\end{equation}\nThe action of $G = \\langle \\sigma \\rangle \\cong \\ZZ\/p$ on $X$ is \nthen given by $\\sigma(y) := y+1$. We say that $y$ is an \\bb{Artin--Schreier generator} of $\\pi$.\nFrom now on we assume that $\\pi : X \\to Y$ is a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover given by an equation\nof the form~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier}.\n\\subsection{Local standard form}\nKeep the above setup. An Artin--Schreier generator $y$ is in \\bb{local standard form at $Q \\in Y(k)$},\nif it satisfies an equation of the form~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier}, in which either $f$ is regular at $Q$ or $f$ has a pole of order not divisible by $p$ at $Q$.\\\\\n\nNote that for every $Q \\in Y(k)$, there exists an Artin--Schreier generator of $X$ in local standard form at~$Q$. Indeed, given an arbitrary equation of the form~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier} one can\nrepeatedly replace $y$ by $y - g$ and $f$ by $f - \\wp(g)$, where $g$ is a power\nof a uniformizer at~$Q$.\nSuppose now that $y$ is in local standard form at $Q$. In this situation we denote:\n\\[\nm_Q = m_{X\/Y, Q} := \n\\begin{cases}\n\t|\\ord_Q(f)|, & \\textrm{ if } \\ord_Q(f) < 0,\\\\\n\t0, & \\textrm{ otherwise.}\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n(one checks that $m_Q$ does not depend\non the choice of $y$). It turns out that:\n\\[\nm_Q = \\max \\{ i : G_{Q, i} \\neq 0 \\}\n\\]\nand hence $d_Q = (m_Q + 1) \\cdot (p-1)$ (cf.~\\cite[Lemma 4.2]{Garnek_equivariant}).\nThe following result allows us to compute $m_Q$ without finding local standard form in most cases.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:computing_mQ}\n\n\tLet $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover given by~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier}.\n\tSuppose that $Q \\in Y(k)$ is a pole of $f$ satisfying:\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:assumption_to_compute_mQ}\n\t\t\\ord_Q(df) < \\frac{1}{p} \\ord_Q(f) - 1.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tThen $m_Q = -\\ord_Q(df) - 1$.\n\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tNote that $f = \\wp(g) + h$, where $\\ord_Q(g) = \\ord_Q(f)\/p$ and:\n\n\t\\[ \\ord_Q(h) = \n\t\\begin{cases}\n\t\t-m_Q, & \\textrm{ if } m_Q \\ge 1,\\\\\n\t\t\\ge 0, & \\textrm{ if } m_Q = 0.\n\t\\end{cases}\n\t\\]\n\n\tThen $df + dg = dh$. Observe that $\\ord_Q(dg) \\ge \\ord_Q(g) - 1 = \\frac{1}{p} \\ord_Q(f) - 1 > \\ord_Q(df)$\n\tand hence:\n\n\t\\[\n\t-m_Q - 1 = \\ord_Q(dh) = \\min(\\ord_Q(df), \\ord_Q(dg)) =  \\ord_Q(df). \\qedhere\n\t\\]\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Global standard form} \\label{subsec:gsf}\nAn Artin--Schreier generator $y$ is said to be in \\bb{global standard form}, if it\nis in local standard form at every $Q \\in Y(k)$ and $y \\not \\in k$. In this situation we say also that $\\pi$ has a global standard form. The following result explains our interest in this notion.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:gsf_gives_me_for_Zp}\n\tSuppose that $y$ is an Artin--Schreier generator in global standard form for~$\\pi$.\n\tThen $z := y^{p-1}$ is a magical element for\n\t$\\pi$ and the dual of $z$ with respect to the trace pairing is $z^{\\vee} := 2 - z$.\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tNote that $\\ord_P(z) = (p-1) \\cdot \\ord_{P}(y) = - (p-1) \\cdot m_P = -d_P$\n\tfor every $P \\in R$. Moreover, one checks that\n\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:AS_trace_of_yi}\n\t\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(y^i) =\n\t\t\\begin{cases}\n\t\t\t0, & \\textrm{ for } 0 \\le i < p-1 \\textrm{ and } p-1 < i < 2 \\cdot (p-1),\\\\\n\t\t\t-1, & \\textrm{ for } i = p - 1 \\textrm{ and } i = 2 \\cdot (p-1).\n\t\t\\end{cases}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tThis allows us to conclude that $\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) \\neq 0$ and $z^{\\vee}$ is the dual element to~$z$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nNot every $\\ZZ\/p$-cover has a global standard form. For example,\nconnected \\'{e}tale $\\ZZ\/p$-covers do not have a global standard form (cf.~\\cite[Subsection~3.1]{WardMarques_HoloDiffs}). We present another example in Subsection~\\ref{subsec:no_magical_element}.\nIt turns out that every sufficiently ramified $\\ZZ\/p$-cover has a global standard form.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:criterion_for_gsf}\n\n\tSuppose that there exists a point $Q_0 \\in Y(k)$ with $m_{Q_0} > 2g_Y \\cdot p$. Then the cover $\\pi$\n\thas a global standard form.\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tLet $y$ be an Artin--Schreier generator for $\\pi$ in local standard form at $Q_0$ and let $y^p - y = f$.\n\tSuppose that $\\ord_Q(f) = -j < 0$, $p|j$ for some $Q \\in Y(k)$. Using the Riemann--Roch theorem, we may choose a function\n\t$g \\in k(Y)$ such that:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $\\ord_{Q_0}(g) = -2g_Y$,\n\t\t\\item $\\ord_Q(g) = -j\/p$,\n\t\t\\item $\\ord_{Q'}(g) \\ge 0$ for $Q' \\neq Q, Q_0$.\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tNote that there exists $c \\in k$ such that $\\ord_Q(f - \\wp(c \\cdot g)) > -j$. Let $y_1 := y - c \\cdot g$, $f_1 := f - \\wp(c \\cdot g)$. Then $y_1$ is an Artin--Schreier generator\n\tof $\\pi$. Moreover:\n\n\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\\item $y_1$ is in local standard form at $Q_0$ -- indeed, $\\ord_{Q_0}(f_1) = \\ord_{Q_0}(f)$, since $\\ord_{Q_0}(\\wp(g)) = -2g_Y \\cdot p > - m_{Q_0}$,\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item if $y$ is in local standard form at $Q' \\neq Q, Q_0$,\n\t\tthen $y_1$ is also in local standard form at $Q'$,\n\t\t\n\t\t\\item $\\ord_Q(f_1) > \\ord_Q(f)$.\n\t\\end{itemize}\n\n\tThus, by repeatedly replacing $(y, f)$ by $(y_1, f_1)$, we eventually obtain an Artin--Schreier generator of $\\pi$ in global standard form.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection{Proof of Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}} \\label{sec:Zp}\nIn this subsection we apply Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm} to prove Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}.\nKeep the notation of Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}. Additionally, we assume that\n$X$ satisfies an equation of the form~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier}, where $y$ is in global standard form.\nBy Lemma~\\ref{lem:gsf_gives_me_for_Zp} $z := y^{p-1}$ is a magical element for $\\pi$ and we may take $z^{\\vee} = 2 - z$.\nTherefore:\n\\[\n\\Span_k(g^*(z) : g \\in G) = \\Span_k(g^*(z^{\\vee}) : g \\in G) = \\Span_k(1, y, \\ldots, y^{p-1}).\n\\]\nRecall that every finitely dimensional indecomposable $k[G]$-module is of the form\n$J_i = k[x]\/(x - 1)^i$ for some $i = 1, \\ldots, p$, where $G$ acts by multiplication by $x$ (cf. \\cite[Theorem 12.1.5]{DummitFoote2004}). Note that as a $k[G]$-module\n$\\Span_k(1, y, \\ldots, y^{i-1}) \\cong J_i$ for any $1 \\le i \\le p$.\\\\\n\n\nFix $Q \\in B$ and denote $m := m_Q$, $\\pi^{-1}(Q) = \\{ P \\}$.\nIn order to prove Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}, it suffices to compute bases of the modules $H^0_Q$, $H^1_Q$, $H^1_{dR, Q}$, defined by~\\eqref{eqn:H0Q}, \\eqref{eqn:H1Q} and~\\eqref{eqn:H1dRQ} respectively.\nTo this end, we need to pick an appropriate uniformizer at $Q$. By approximating\nthe element $1\/\\sqrt[m]{f} \\in \\wh{\\mc O}_{Y, Q}$, we can choose $t \\in k(Y)$ such that:\n\\[\n\\frac{1}{t^m} \\equiv y^p - y \\pmod{\\mf m_{Y, Q}^{2pm}}.\n\\]\n\\begin{Proposition} \\label{prop:H0Q_for_Zp}\n\tKeep the above setup.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[(1)]\n\t\t\\item The images of the elements:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\ty^i \\frac{dt}{t^j} \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k},\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\twhere $0 \\le i \\le p-1$, $2 \\le j$, $mi + pj \\le (m+1) \\cdot (p-1) + 1$, form a basis of $H^0_Q$.\n\t\n\t\t\\item The images of the elements:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\ty^{i} \\cdot t^{j} \\in k(X), \n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\twhere $0 \\le i \\le p-1$, $1 \\le j$, $-mi + pj < 1$ form a basis of $H^1_Q$.\n\t\n\t\t\\item The images of the elements:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\t\\left(\\frac{y^i \\, dt}{t^j}, \\frac{1}{(i+1) \\cdot m} y^{i+1} t^{m+1 - j} \\right) \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k} \\times k(X),\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\twhere $0 \\le i \\le p-2$, $2 \\le j \\le m$, form a basis of $H^1_{dR, Q}$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{Proposition}\nBefore the proof, note that for any $\\omega \\in \\Omega_{k(X)\/k}$ there exists a\nunique system of forms $\\omega_0, \\ldots, \\omega_{p-1} \\in \\Omega_{k(Y)\/k}$ such that\n$\\omega = \\omega_0 + y \\cdot \\omega_1 + \\ldots + y^{p-1} \\cdot \\omega_{p-1}$.\nMoreover, one has:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:valuation_of_omega_Zp}\n\t\\ord_P(\\omega) = \\min \\{ \\ord_P(y^i \\omega_i) : i = 0, \\ldots, p-1 \\}.\n\\end{equation}\nIndeed, for any $0 \\le i < j \\le p-1$:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\ord_P(y^i \\cdot \\omega_i) - \\ord_P(y^j \\cdot \\omega_j) &= (-i m + p \\cdot \\ord_Q(\\omega_i) + d_Q)\\\\\n\t&- (-j m + p \\cdot \\ord_Q(\\omega_j) + d_Q)\\\\\n\t&= m \\cdot(j - i) + p \\cdot (\\ord_Q(\\omega_i) - \\ord_Q(\\omega_j)) \\neq 0,\n\\end{align*}\nsince $p \\nmid m \\cdot (i - j)$. Analogously, any $f \\in k(X)$ is of the form\n$f = f_0 + y \\cdot f_1 + \\ldots + y^{p-1} \\cdot f_{p-1}$\nfor some $f_0, \\ldots, f_{p-1} \\in k(Y)$ and\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:valuation_of_f_Zp}\n\t\\ord_P(f) = \\min \\{ \\ord_P(y^i f_i) : i = 0, \\ldots, p-1 \\}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition~\\ref{prop:H0Q_for_Zp}]\n\t(1) Let for any $i$, $j_{max}(i)$ denote the largest integer satisfying\n\t\t$mi + pj \\le (m+1) \\cdot (p-1) + 1$. By~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_omega_Zp} and~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_diff_form}:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\omega \\in \\Omega_{X\/k}(R)_Q &\\Leftrightarrow\n\t\t\t\\ord_P(y^i \\cdot \\omega_i) \\ge -1 \\textrm{ for every } i = 0, \\ldots, p-1\\\\\n\t\t\t&\\Leftrightarrow \\ord_Q(\\omega_i) \\ge -j_{max}(i).\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tHence:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\tH^0_Q \\cong \\bigoplus_{i = 0}^{p-1} \n\t\t\ty^i \\cdot \\frac{t^{-j_{max}(i)} \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}}{\\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}}.\n\t\t\\end{equation*}\n\t\n\t\tThe statement follows easily by noting that the images of the forms $dt\/t^j$\n\t\tfor $j = 2, \\ldots, j_{max}(i)$ form a basis of $\\frac{t^{-j_{max}(i)} \\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}}{\\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}}$.\n\t\t\n\t(2) Let $j_{min}(i)$ denote the least integer satisfying the inequality $pj - mi \\ge 1$. Analogously, using \\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_f_Zp} one obtains:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{equation*}\n\t\t\tH^1_Q \\cong \\bigoplus_{i = 0}^{p-1} y^i \\frac{\\mc O_Y(-R)_Q}{t^{j_{min}(i)} \\mc O_Y(-R)_Q}.\n\t\t\\end{equation*}\n\t\n\t\tTo finish the proof of (2), it suffices to notice that the images of the elements\n\t\t$t^j$ for $j = 1, \\ldots, j_{min}(i)-1$ form a basis of $\\frac{\\mc O_Y(-R)_Q}{t^{j_{min}(i)} \\mc O_Y(-R)_Q}$.\n\t\t\n\t(3) By the choice of $t$ we have $dy \\equiv m \\cdot dt\/t^{m+1} \\pmod{\\mf m_{Y, Q}^{2pm - 1} \\Omega_{Y, Q}}$,\n\t\twhich easily implies that:\n\t\n\t\t\\[\n\t\ty^i \\cdot t^{m+1 - j} \\, dy \\equiv m \\cdot y^i dt\/t^j \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}(R)}\t\n\t\t\\]\n\t\n\t\tThus:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\frac{y^i \\, dt}{t^j} - d \\left( \\frac{1}{(i+1) \\cdot m} y^{i+1} t^{m+1 - j} \\right)\n\t\t\t&\\equiv - \\frac{(m+1 - j)}{(i+1) \\cdot m} y^{i+1} t^{m - j} \\, dt\\\\\n\t\t\t&\\equiv 0 \\pmod{\\Omega_{Y\/k, Q}(R)},\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tsince:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\t\\ord_P(y^{i+1} t^{m - j} \\, dt) &= -(i+1) \\cdot m + (m-j) \\cdot p\n\t\t\t+ (p-1) \\cdot (m+1)\\\\\n\t\t\t&\\ge -(p-1) \\cdot m + 0 \\cdot p\n\t\t\t+ (p-1) \\cdot (m+1)\\\\\n\t\t\t&= p-1 \\ge 0.\n\t\t\\end{align*}\n\t\n\t\tHence the listed elements define valid elements of $H^1_{dR, Q}$. Moreover:\n\t\n\t\t\\begin{itemize}\n\t\t\t\\item part (1) implies that the elements\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\[\n\t\t\t\\left(\\frac{y^i \\, dt}{t^j}, \\frac{1}{(i+1) \\cdot m} y^{i+1} t^{m+1 - j} \\right) =\n\t\t\t\\left(\\frac{y^i \\, dt}{t^j}, 0 \\right) \\qquad \\textrm{ in } H^1_{dR, Q}\n\t\t\t\\]\n\t\t\n\t\t\tfor $i = 0, \\ldots, p-1$ and $j = 2, \\ldots, j_{max}(i)$,\n\t\t\tare images of a basis of $H^0_Q$ through the map $H^0_Q \\to H^1_{dR, Q}$ from Lemma~\\ref{lem:properties_IXY_H1dRQ},\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\\item part (2) implies that the images of the elements:\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\[\n\t\t\t\\left(\\frac{y^i \\, dt}{t^j}, \\frac{1}{(i+1) \\cdot m} y^{i+1} t^{m+1 - j} \\right)\n\t\t\t\\]\n\t\t\n\t\t\tfor $i = 0, \\ldots, p-1$ and $j = j_{max}(i) + 1, \\ldots, m$ through the map $H^1_{dR, Q} \\to H^1_Q$ form a basis\n\t\t\tof $H^1_Q$ (one easily checks that $j_{min}(i+1) = m+1 - j_{max}(i)$).\n\t\t\\end{itemize}\n\t\n\t\tTherefore the listed elements form a basis of $H^1_{dR, Q}$ by Lemma~\\ref{lem:properties_IXY_H1dRQ}~(2).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Corollary~\\ref{cor:cohomology_of_Zp}]\n\n\tLet for any $j$, $i_{max}(j)$ denote the largest integer satisfying\n\t$mi + pj \\le (m+1) \\cdot (p-1) + 1$. By Proposition~\\ref{prop:H0Q_for_Zp}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tH^0_Q = \\bigoplus_{j \\ge 2} \\frac{dt}{t^j} \\cdot \\Span_k(1, y, y^2, \\ldots, y^{i_{max}(j)})\n\t\t\\cong \\bigoplus_{j \\ge 2} J_{i_{max}(j) + 1}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tIt is an elementary calculation to check that for $0 \\le i \\le p-1$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\# \\{j \\ge 2 : i_{max}(j) + 1 = i \\} =\\alpha(i).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tA similar computation allows us to find $H^1_{dR, Q}$. The proof follows by Theorem~\\ref{thm:main_thm}.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection{$\\ZZ\/p$-cover without a magical element} \\label{subsec:no_magical_element}\nThe goal of this subsection is to construct a $\\ZZ\/p$-cover without a magical element\n(and thus without a global standard form).\nLet $p \\ge 5$ be a prime and $k = \\overline{\\FF}_p$. Pick a general smooth projective curve $Y\/k$ of genus $g_Y \\ge p\/2$.\nThen its gonality equals $\\gamma = \\lfloor \\frac{g_Y + 3}{2} \\rfloor$ by Brill--Noether theory, see e.g.~\\cite[Proposition 1.1. (v)]{Poonen_Gonality_Modular}. \nLet $m$ and $M$ be integers satisfying $p \\nmid m$ and:\n\\[\n\t\\frac{2 g_Y}{p} < \\frac{m}{p} < M < \\gamma.\n\\]\nFix a point $Q \\in Y(k)$ and let $t \\in k(Y)$ be a uniformizer at $Q$. Using Riemann--Roch theorem,\nwe may choose a function $f \\in k(Y)$ that is regular outside of $Q$ and satisfies:\n\\[\n\tf \\equiv \\frac{1}{t^{Mp}} - \\frac{1}{t^M} + \\frac{1}{t^m} \\pmod{\\mf m_{Y, Q}^{-2g_Y}}.\n\\]\nLet $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be the $\\ZZ\/p$-cover defined by the equation~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier}. \nSuppose to the contrary that $z = \\sum_{i = 0}^{p-1} z_i \\cdot y^i \\in k(X)$\nis a magical element. By~\\eqref{eqn:trace_of_dual_z} we may assume that $z_{p-1} = -\\tr_{X\/Y}(z) = 1$. Let $\\pi^{-1}(Q) = \\{ P \\}$. Note that for $Q' \\in Y(k)$, $Q' \\neq Q$, we have $\\ord_{Q'}(y) \\ge 0$.\nTherefore, by~\\eqref{eqn:AS_trace_of_yi} and~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_f_Zp}:\n\\[\n\tz_{p-2} = - \\tr_{X\/Y}(y \\cdot z) + \\tr_{X\/Y}(y^p) \\in \\mc O_{Y, Q'}.\n\\]\nObserve also that $y_1 := y - \\frac{1}{t^M}$ is in local standard form at $Q$ and $m_Q = m$. Since $z = y_1^{p-1} + y_1^{p-2} \\cdot (z_{p-2} - \\frac{1}{t^M}) + \\ldots$, we deduce\nusing~\\eqref{eqn:valuation_of_f_Zp}:\n\\begin{align*}\n\t\\ord_P(z) \\ge -d_P' &\\Rightarrow \\ord_P \\left(y_1^{p-2} \\cdot (z_{p-2} - \\frac{1}{t^M}) \\right) \\ge -(p-1) \\cdot m\\\\\n\t&\\Rightarrow \\ord_Q \\left(z_{p-2} - \\frac{1}{t^M} \\right) \\ge -m\/p.\n\\end{align*}\nThus $z_{p-2} \\in H^0(Y, \\mc O_Y(M \\cdot Q))$, $z_{p-2} \\not \\in k$, which yields\na contradiction with $M < \\gamma$.\n\n\\section{Constructing magical elements} \\label{sec:constructing_magical_elements}\nIn this section we show that a generic $p$-group cover has a magical element.\nWe prove this using the global standard form. The following observation shows that everything comes down to\nconstructing magical elements for $\\ZZ\/p$-covers.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:new_magical_elts}\n\tSuppose that $G$ is a finite $p$-group and $k$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$.\n\tLet $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be a $G$-cover of smooth projective curves over~$k$. Suppose that $\\pi$ factors\n\tthrough a Galois cover $X' \\to Y$. If $z_1 \\in k(X)$ is a magical element for the cover $X \\to X'$ and $z_2 \\in k(X')$ \n\tis a magical element for $X' \\to Y$ then $z_1 \\cdot z_2$ is a magical element\n\tfor $X \\to Y$.\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\n\tLet $P \\in \\pi^{-1}(Q)$ and let $P'$ be the image of $P$ on $X'$. Then:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\ord_P(z_1 \\cdot z_2) &= \\ord_P(z_1) + e_{X\/X', P} \\cdot \\ord_{P'}(z_2)\\\\\n\t\t&\\ge -d_{X\/X', P}' - e_{X\/X', P} \\cdot d_{X'\/Y, P'}' = -d_P'.\n\t\\end{align*}\t\n\n\tMoreover, since $\\tr_{X\/X'}(z_1), \\tr_{X'\/Y}(z_2) \\in k^{\\times}$ by~\\eqref{eqn:trace_of_dual_z}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\tr_{X\/Y}(z_1 \\cdot z_2) = \\tr_{X'\/Y}( \\tr_{X\/X'}(z_1 \\cdot z_2))\n\t\t= \\tr_{X\/X'}(z_1) \\cdot \\tr_{X'\/Y}(z_2) \\neq 0.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tThis ends the proof.\n\\end{proof}\nLet $k$, $G$, $\\pi : X \\to Y$ be as in Lemma~\\ref{lem:new_magical_elts}. We say that $\\pi$ has a \\bb{global standard form}, if there exist $y_1, \\ldots, y_n \\in k(X)$ and a composition series\n\\begin{equation*} \\label{eqn:composition_series}\n0 = G_0 \\unlhd G_1 \\unlhd \\ldots \\unlhd G_n = G\n\\end{equation*}\nsuch that $y_i$ is the Artin Schreier generator in global standard form of the $\\ZZ\/p$-cover $X\/G_{i - 1} \\to X\/G_i$\nfor $i = 1, \\ldots, n$. Lemmas~\\ref{lem:gsf_gives_me_for_Zp} and~\\ref{lem:new_magical_elts} imply that in this case $z := y_1^{p-1} \\cdot \\ldots \\cdot y_n^{p-1} \\in k(X)$ is a magical element for $\\pi$. The notion of a global standard form of a $p$-group cover appeared already in~\\cite{WardMarques_HoloDiffs}, where it was used to construct a basis of holomorphic differentials of $X$ in some cases.\n\n\\subsection{Generic $p$-group covers}\nThe goal of this subsection is to prove Theorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro}. Before the proof we review briefly the theory of moduli of $p$-group covers from~\\cite{Harbater_moduli_of_p_covers}.\\\\\n\nLet $U$ be a non-empty affine open of a smooth\nprojective curve $Y$ over $k$ and fix $u \\in U(k)$. Denote $B := Y(k) \\setminus U(k)$. Let $M_{U, G}$ be the moduli space of\npointed \\'{e}tale $G$-covers of $(U, u)$, as defined by Harbater in~\\cite{Harbater_moduli_of_p_covers}. Note that such covers correspond bijectively to pointed covers of $(Y, u)$ unramified over $U$.\\\\\n\nIn order to describe the structure of $M_{U, G}$, one proceeds inductively.\nLet $H \\cong \\ZZ\/p$ be a central normal subgroup of $G$ and let $G' := G\/H$. Consider the map:\n\\[\n\t\\pr : M_{U, G} \\to M_{U, G'}, \\quad (X \\to Y) \\mapsto (X\/H \\to Y).\n\\]\nOne can show that for every $X' \\in M_{U, G'}$ the set $\\pr^{-1}(X')$ has a structure of a principal $M_{U, H}$-homogenous space (see e.g. proof of \\cite[Theorem 1.2]{Harbater_moduli_of_p_covers}). This structure is given by the map:\n\\[\n(X \\in M_{U, G}, \\quad Z \\in M_{U, H}) \\, \\, \\mapsto \\, \\, X_Z,\n\\]\nwhere $X : y_1^p - y_1 = f \\in k(X')$, $Z : y_2^p - y_2 = g \\in k(Y)$, $X_Z : y_3^p - y_3 = f + g$. Moreover, one proves that the map $\\pr$ has\na (non-canonical) section and thus $M_{U, G} \\cong M_{U, G'} \\times M_{U, H}$. \nThis allows one to show that $M_{U, G}$ is a direct limit of affine spaces.\\\\\n\nThe following lemma shows that (under some mild assumptions) the cover\n$X_Z \\to X'$ is at least as ramified as the cover $Z \\to Y$.\n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:mQ_of_XZ}\n\tLet $X'$, $X$, $Z$ and $X_Z$ be as above.  Let also $P \\in X'(k)$ and denote by $Q$ its image on $Y$.\n\tIf $m_{Z\/Y, Q} > m_{X\/X', P} + d_{X'\/Y, P}'$ then\n\t$m_{X_Z\/X', P} > m_{Z\/Y, Q}$. \n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tAssume that $y_1$ and $y_2$ are in local standard form at $P$ and $Q$ respectively.\n\tNote that (since $p \\nmid \\ord_Q(g)$):\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t\\ord_P(dg\/g) &= e_{X'\/Y, P} \\cdot \\ord_Q(dg\/g) + d_{X'\/Y, P}\\\\\n\t\t&= - e_{X'\/Y, P} + d_{X'\/Y, P}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n   \n    Therefore:\n\t\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:ord_dg}\n\t\t\\ord_P(dg) = e_{X'\/Y, P} \\cdot \\ord_Q(g) + d_{X'\/Y, P}' - 1.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\n\tThis yields:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\t\\ord_{P}(dg) = - e_{X'\/Y, P} \\cdot m_{Z\/Y, Q} + d_{X'\/Y, P}' - 1 < -m_{X\/X', P} - 1 = \\ord_{P}(df)\n\t\\]\n\n\tand $\\ord_{P}(df + dg) = \\ord_{P}(dg)$. One easily checks that~\\eqref{eqn:assumption_to_compute_mQ} holds for\n\t$g$ at $P$. Hence the result follows by Lemma~\\ref{lem:computing_mQ}.\n\\end{proof}\nIn order to prove Theorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro} we need the following topological lemma. \n\\begin{Lemma} \\label{lem:topological}\n\tLet $\\mc X$ and $\\mc Y$ be topological spaces. Suppose that $\\mc U \\subset \\mc X \\times \\mc Y$.\n\tIf there exists a dense subset $\\mc V \\subset \\mc Y$ such that for every $y \\in \\mc V$,\n\t$\\textrm{pr}_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y) \\cap \\mc U$ is dense in $pr_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y)$, then $\\mc U$ is dense in $\\mc X \\times \\mc Y$.\n\\end{Lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tLet $\\mc Z$ be a non-empty open subset of $\\mc X \\times \\mc Y$, we will show that $\\mc Z \\cap \\mc U \\neq \\varnothing$.\n\tNote that $\\pr_{\\mc Y}(\\mc Z)$ is a non-empty open subset of $\\mc Y$ and hence $\\pr_{\\mc Y}(\\mc Z) \\cap \\mc V \\neq \\varnothing$.\n\tLet $y \\in \\pr_{\\mc Y}(\\mc Z) \\cap \\mc V$. Then $\\mc Z \\cap \\pr_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y)$ is a non-empty open subset\n\tof $\\pr_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y)$. By assumption, $\\textrm{pr}_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y) \\cap \\mc U$ is dense in $pr_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y)$.\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\[\n\t(\\textrm{pr}_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y) \\cap \\mc Z) \\cap (\\textrm{pr}_{\\mc Y}^{-1}(y) \\cap \\mc U) \\neq \\varnothing,\n\t\\]\n\n\twhich proves the lemma.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:generic_intro}]\n\n\tDenote by $S_{U, G}$ the set of $G$-covers of $Y$ unramified over $U$ with global standard form that satisfy~\\ref{enum:A}.\n\tWe prove by induction on $\\# G$ that $S_{U, G}$ is dense in $M_{U, G}$.\n\tFor $\\# G = 1$ this is trivial. Let $G'$ and $H$ be as above.\n\tBy induction hypothesis, the set $S_{U, G'}$ is dense in $M_{U, G'}$.\n\tBy Lemma~\\ref{lem:criterion_for_gsf}\n\tfor every $X' \\in S_{U, G'}$ the covers from the set\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\mc A := \\{ X \\in \\pr^{-1}(X') : m_{X\/X', P'} > 2g_{X'} \\cdot p \\qquad \\forall_{P' \\in B' := \\textrm{ preimage of } B \\textrm{ in } X'(k)} \\} \n\t\\]\n\n\thave global standard form. Moreover, for every $X \\in \\mc A$\n\tand $P \\in X(k)$, we have $H_P = H$. Hence for every $P \\in X'(k)$, $G_P$ is the preimage of $G_{P'}'$ by the map $G \\to G'$ (where $P' \\in X'(k)$ is the image of $P$). This implies that $G_P$ is a normal subgroup of $G$ for every $P \\in X(k)$. Thus $\\mc A \\subset \\pr^{-1}(X') \\cap S_{U, G}$.\\\\\n\tOn the other hand, by Lemma~\\ref{lem:mQ_of_XZ} the set $\\mc A$ contains the set:\n\n\t\\[\n\t\\mc B := \\{ X_Z : Z \\in M_{U, H}, \\, \\, m_{Z\/Y, Q} > N_0 \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}\n\t\\]\n\n\tfor any fixed $X \\in \\pr^{-1}(X')$ and sufficiently large $N_0$. But the set $\\{ Z \\in M_{U, H} : m_{Z\/Y, Q} > N_0 \\quad \\forall_{Q \\in B} \\}$ is dense in\n\t$M_{U, H}$. Indeed, the considered subset is contained in a complement of a finite dimensional subspace in $M_{U, H}$. Thus the proof follows by Lemma~\\ref{lem:topological}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Example: Heisenberg group covers}\nConsider the Heisenberg group $\\textrm{mod } p$:\n\\[\nE(p^3) = \\langle a, b, c : a^p = b^p = c^p = e, c = [a, b], c \\in Z(E(p^3)) \\rangle.\n\\]\nLet $Y$ be a smooth projective curve over $k$ and let $f_1, f_2, f_3 \\in k(Y)$.\nDefine $X$ to be a smooth projective curve with the function field $k(Y)(y_1, y_2, y_3)$, where:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:Ep3cover}\n\\begin{aligned} \n\ty_1^p - y_1 &= f_1,\\\\\n\ty_2^p - y_2 &= f_2,\\\\\n\ty_3^p - y_3 &= f_3 + f_2 \\cdot (y_1 + y_2).\n\\end{aligned}\t\n\\end{equation}\nThen $E(p^3)$ acts on $X$ via the formulas:\n\\begin{align*}\n\ta^*(y_1, y_2, y_3) &= (y_1 + 1, y_2, y_3 + y_2)\\\\\n\tb^*(y_1, y_2, y_3) &= (y_1 + 1, y_2 + 1, y_3)\\\\\n\tc^*(y_1, y_2, y_3) &= (y_1, y_2, y_3 - 1).\n\\end{align*}\nIt turns out that every $E(p^3)$-cover of $Y$ is of this form (this follows from results of Saltman, cf.~\\cite{Saltman_Noncrossed_product}).\nIn order to construct examples of covers with magical elements, it is useful to\nestimate genus of a curve in a tower of covers. If $Z \\to Y$ is\nan Artin--Schreier cover with the equation~\\eqref{eqn:artin_schreier} then Riemann--Hurwitz formula yields:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eqn:genus_AS}\n\tg_Z < p \\cdot (g_Y + \\deg_Y f),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\deg_Y f$ is the degree of $f$ treated as a morphism $Y \\to \\PP^1$.\n\\begin{Corollary} \\label{cor:example_from_intro}\n\tLet $Y$ and $X$ be as in Example~\\ref{ex:intro}. Then $X \\to Y$ is an $E(p^3)$-cover satisfying the conditions~\\ref{enum:A} and \\ref{enum:B}. Moreover:\n\n\t\\[\n\tG_{Q_1} \\cong E(p^3), \\quad G_{Q_2} \\cong \\ZZ\/p \\times \\ZZ\/p, \\quad G_{Q_3} \\cong \\ZZ\/p,\n\t\\]\n\n\twhere $Q_i := (\\alpha_i, 0) \\in Y(k)$.\n\\end{Corollary}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tNote that $X$ is defined by the equations~\\eqref{eqn:Ep3cover},\n\twhere: \n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tf_1 &= (x-\\alpha_1)^{-a_1},\\\\ \n\t\tf_2 &= (x-\\alpha_1)^{-a_2} \\cdot (x-\\alpha_1)^{-b_2},\\\\\n\t\tf_3 &= (x-\\alpha_1)^{-a_3} \\cdot (x-\\alpha_1)^{-b_3} \\cdot (x-\\alpha_1)^{-c_3}.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence $X \\to Y$ is an $E(p^3)$-cover. Let $X_1$ be the $\\ZZ\/p$-cover of $Y$, given by $y_1^p - y_1 = f_1$\n\tand let $X_2$ be the $\\ZZ\/p \\times \\ZZ\/p$-cover of $Y$, given by:\n\n\t\\[\n\ty_1^p - y_1 = f_1, \\quad y_2^p - y_2 = f_2.\n\t\\]\n\n\tNote that\n\n\t\\[\n\tm_{X_1\/Y, Q_1} = 2a_1 > 2g_Y \\cdot p\n\t\\]\n\n\tand hence $X_1 \\to Y$ has a global standard form by Lemma~\\ref{lem:criterion_for_gsf}.\n\tBy~\\eqref{eqn:genus_AS}, $g_{X_1} < p \\cdot (1 + 2a_1) < 3a_1 \\cdot p$.\n\tOne checks that $f_2$ satisfies the condition~\\eqref{eqn:assumption_to_compute_mQ}.\n\tHence, using Lemma~\\ref{lem:computing_mQ} and~\\eqref{eqn:ord_dg},\n\tfor $P \\in X_1(k)$ in the preimage of $Q_1$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tm_{X_2\/X_1, P} &= -\\ord_P(df_2) - 1\\\\\n\t\t&= p \\cdot 2a_2 - d_{X_1\/Y, P}' - 1\\\\\n\t\t&= p \\cdot 2a_2 - (p-1) \\cdot 2 a_1 - 1\\\\\n\t\t&> 2g_{X_1} \\cdot p. \n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tHence, by Lemma~\\ref{lem:criterion_for_gsf}, $X_2 \\to X_1$ also has a global standard form.\n\tNote now that by~\\eqref{eqn:genus_AS}:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tg_{X_2} &< p \\cdot (g_{X_1} + \\deg_{X_1} f_2) < 3p^2 \\cdot (a_1 + a_2 + b_2),\\\\\n\t\td'_{X_2\/Y, Q_1} &< 2p^2 \\cdot (a_1 + a_2).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tTherefore for any $P \\in X_2(k)$ in the preimage of $Q_1$:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\t-\\ord_P(df_3) &> p^2 \\cdot 2a_3 - 2p^2 \\cdot (a_1 + a_2).\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tOne easily checks that~\\eqref{eqn:assumption_to_compute_mQ} is satisfied for\n\t$f_3 + (y_1 + y_2) \\cdot f_2$ and that $\\ord_P(d(f_3 + (y_1 + y_2) \\cdot f_2)) = \\ord_P(df_3)$.\n\tHence:\n\n\t\\begin{align*}\n\t\tm_{X\/X_2, P} = -\\ord_P(d(f_3 + (y_1 + y_2) \\cdot f_2)) - 1\n\t\t> 2g_{X_2} \\cdot p.\n\t\\end{align*}\n\n\tTherefore $X \\to Y$ has a global standard form. Moreover, one checks that $m_{X\/X_2, P} > 0$ for $P \\in X(k)$ in the preimage of $Q_2$. Hence $G_{P} = \\ZZ\/p \\times \\ZZ\/p$ (since $X \\to X_1$ is totally ramified over $P$ and $X_1 \\to Y$ is unramified\n\tover $Q_2$). Analogously, $G_{Q_3} = \\ZZ\/p$. This finishes the proof. \n\\end{proof}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction to the model}\n\\label{sec:introduction}\n\nThe Standard Model has some well-known observational shortcomings: it\n\\begin{inparaenum}[\\it (a)]\n    \\item does not contain neutrino masses at the renormalizable level\n    \\item cannot explain the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe (BAU)\n    \\item cannot explain dark matter.\n\\end{inparaenum}\nOne of the many possible solutions to these problems consists in adding to the Standard Model two or more right-handed neutrinos $N_I$ --- or \\emph{Heavy Neutral Leptons} (see e.g.\\ ref.~\\cite{FIPs}).\nAs Standard Model singlets (i.e.\\ completely neutral particles), they admit a Majorana mass term which, combined with the Yukawa interaction, produces a non-diagonal mass term after electroweak symmetry breaking. This leads to mixing between the neutrino flavor states $\\nu_{\\alpha}$ and the new heavy mass eigenstates $N_I$, which thus behave as heavy Majorana neutrinos with interactions suppressed by a small mixing angle $\\Theta_{\\alpha I}$:\n\\begin{equation*}\n    \\nu_\\alpha \\approx V_{\\alpha i}^{\\mathrm{PMNS}} \\nu_i + \\Theta_{\\alpha I} N_I^c.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\section{ATLAS constraints on HNLs}\n\\label{sec:constraints}\n\nHNLs have elicited a strong interest from the experimental community. Here we focus on a specific search~\\cite{Aad:2019kiz} by the ATLAS collaboration, for HNLs in the mass range $M_N \\in [5,50]\\,\\si{GeV}$, produced in $W$ decays and decaying promptly to the trilepton final states $e^{\\pm} e^{\\pm} \\mu^{\\mp}$ (electron channel) and $\\mu^{\\pm} \\mu^{\\pm} e^{\\mp}$ (muon channel) plus missing transverse energy. Both channels have contributions from both lepton number conserving (LNC) and lepton number violating (LNV) processes.\nLike most experiments, ATLAS has reported their limits for simplified models only, where a single Majorana HNL mixes with either the electron or muon neutrino, but not both. The LNC processes depend on both mixing angles, therefore their contribution was not included in this original interpretation.\n\n\\section{Parameter space of the model}\n\\label{sec:parameter_space}\n\nThe seesaw mechanism, being responsible for the generation of neutrino masses, relates the HNL masses and mixing angles to the measured neutrino oscillation parameters~\\cite{NuFIT5.0}.\nIn addition, if HNLs have roughly the same interaction strengths and are within experimental reach, then it can be shown that their masses must be nearly degenerate \\cite{Kersten:2007vk,Drewes:2019byd}.\nIn what follows, we will focus on a minimal seesaw model with only two nearly degenerate HNLs.\n\n\\paragraph{Constraints on the mixing angles}\n\nFrom the point of view of collider experiments, a pair of nearly degenerate HNLs will behave as a single particle. Combining this degeneracy with the seesaw formula and neutrino oscillation data~\\cite{NuFIT5.0}, we obtain a constraint on the allowed ratios of squared mixing angles with the electron, muon and tau flavors, as shown in \\cref{fig:ternary_plot} \\cite{Drewes:2016jae,Caputo:2017pit}.\nThe original interpretation set constraints on only two points in this plane: the right (electron channel) and top (muon channel) vertices of this triangle, which can be seen to be incompatible with neutrino oscillation data within the model under consideration.\\footnote{These constraints would be significantly relaxed by the addition of extra nearly-degenerate HNLs.}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.76\\textwidth]{plots\/ternary_plot_SKoff_with_benchmarks.pdf}\n    \\caption{Allowed ratios of the three squared mixing angles $|\\Theta_{eI}|^2$, $|\\Theta_{\\mu I}|^2$ and $|\\Theta_{\\tau I}|^2$.}\n    \\label{fig:ternary_plot}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\paragraph{HNL oscillations}\n\nIn addition, nearly degenerate HNLs can undergo coherent oscillations~\\cite{Tastet:2019nqj}, i.e.\\ a periodic modulation of their decay rate (with opposite phases for LNC and LNV processes) as a function of the proper time $\\tau = \\sqrt{(\\smash[b]{x_{\\mathrm{decay}}-x_{\\mathrm{prod}}})^2}$ between the HNL production and decay, with the oscillation (angular) frequency given by the mass splitting $\\delta M$ between the two mass eigenstates (as represented in \\cref{fig:oscillations}).\nWe will focus on the two extreme cases:\n\\begin{inparaenum}[\\it (a)]\n    \\item Dirac-like HNLs (observed before the onset of oscillations, see \\cref{fig:osc_Dirac-like}) for which the rate of LNV processes is suppressed compared to LNC, and\n    \\item Majorana-like HNLs (observed after many oscillations, see \\cref{fig:osc_Majorana-like}) for which the integrated rates\\footnote{The differential distribution of the decay products will differ between LNC and LNV due to spin correlations \\cite{Tastet:2019nqj}.} of LNC and LNV processes are the same.\n\\end{inparaenum}\nSince the rates of LNC processes vanish under the single-flavor assumption, the original analysis was only sensitive to Majorana-like HNLs.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.33\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        {\\hspace*{2em}\\small($\\delta M\/\\Gamma = \\pi\/10$)}\\\\\n        \\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{plots\/oscillations_Dirac.pdf}\n        \\caption{Dirac-like}\n        \\label{fig:osc_Dirac-like}\n    \\end{subfigure}\\hfill%\n        \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.33\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        {\\hspace*{2em}\\small($\\delta M\/\\Gamma = \\pi$)}\\\\\n        \\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{plots\/oscillations_resolvable.pdf}\n        \\caption{Visible oscillations}\n    \\end{subfigure}\\hfill%\n        \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.33\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        {\\hspace*{2em}\\small($\\delta M\/\\Gamma = 10\\pi$)}\\\\\n        \\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{plots\/oscillations_Majorana.pdf}\n        \\caption{Majorana-like}\n        \\label{fig:osc_Majorana-like}\n    \\end{subfigure}\n    \\caption{HNL oscillations in three different regimes ($\\Gamma$ is the total HNL width).}\n    \\label{fig:oscillations}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Findings from the reinterpretation}\n\\label{sec:reinterpretation}\n\nOur reinterpretation method is described in details in ref.~\\cite{Tastet:2021vwp}. \\Cref{fig:sketch} attempts to briefly summarize its main features. We vary the HNL mass and mixing angles, and solve for $\\mathrm{CL}_s = 0.05$ (using a simplified background model) in order to obtain the recast exclusion limit. We perform a scan for each neutrino mass hierarchy and for both Dirac- and Majorana-like HNLs. To more easily visualize the scan over the mixing angles, we define a number of \\emph{benchmark points} (visible in \\cref{fig:ternary_plot}) which represent both typical and extreme ratios of the squared mixing angles. In order to consistently compare different benchmarks, we express the recast limits in terms of the total mixing angle $U_{\\mathrm{tot}}^2$ (summed over all three flavors and the two mass eigenstates). We finally compute a conservative bound by marginalizing over all the allowed ratios of squared mixing angles.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{plots\/reinterpretation_workflow_rasterized.pdf}\n    \\caption{Sketch of the reinterpretation workflow (input and output parameters are in red).}\n    \\label{fig:sketch}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\paragraph{Majorana-like HNLs}\n\nWe obtain the recast limits shown in \\cref{fig:results_Majorana}, expressed as a function of the HNL mass $M_N$ and its total mixing angle $U_{\\mathrm{tot}}^2$. The black lines correspond to the simplified models originally used by ATLAS (recomputed for consistency), while the numbered colored lines denote the recast limits for the various benchmarks. We see that the recast limits can be more than an order of magnitude weaker than the original ones, with the worst case corresponding to tau flavor dominance (where the branching ratios into channels involving $\\tau$ leptons are increased at the expense of the two search channels, as already observed in ref.~\\cite{Abada:2018sfh} in the context of displaced searches). The blue area shows the lower and upper bounds for the recast limits when scanning over all the allowed mixing angles, and by extension the gray area is conservatively excluded within this two-HNL model.\n\n\\paragraph{Dirac-like HNLs}\n\nThe recast limits are shown in \\cref{fig:results_Dirac}. Unlike in the single-flavor case where all LNC cross-sections vanish, we can now set a conservative limit thanks to the constraints from neutrino oscillations, which forbid trivial ratios of the mixing angles within this model. However, for all benchmarks, the recast limits are weaker than those obtained for a single Majorana HNL mixing with a single flavor (gray lines), by up to three orders of magnitude. The weakest limits are obtained when the electron or muon mixing angle is much smaller than the two others.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.5\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        \\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{plots\/recast_limits_total_U2_Majorana_NH.pdf}\n        \\caption{Majorana-like}\n        \\label{fig:results_Majorana}\n    \\end{subfigure}\\hfill%\n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.5\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        \\includegraphics[width=0.95\\linewidth]{plots\/recast_limits_total_U2_Dirac_NH.pdf}\n        \\caption{Dirac-like}\n        \\label{fig:results_Dirac}\n    \\end{subfigure}\n    \\caption{Recast limits (taking the NH as an example, the IH is similar; mind the different $y$-axes).}\n\\end{figure}%\n\n\\section{Lessons learned \\& recommendations for experiments}\n\\label{sec:conclusion}\n\nThese results show why the limits reported for simplified benchmarks \\emph{should not be used directly} (e.g. by equating the $U_{\\mathrm{tot}}^2$) to experimentally test more realistic models. Instead, they must be \\emph{reinterpreted} within those models. Otherwise, we incur the risk of \\emph{wrongly excluding} valid models or regions in parameter space.\n\nPerforming an accurate reinterpretation is a non-trivial task. In particular, computing the signal efficiencies and modeling the background can be difficult, even with a good knowledge of the experiment. To help with the former, we propose in ref.~\\cite{Tastet:2021vwp} a reweighting method that allows one to exactly extrapolate the expected signal to any combination of mixing angles, using only a handful of constants that can be easily computed (and published) by experiments.\nA similar method could easily be devised for other models of feebly interacting particles.\n\nFinally, since accurately modeling the background is extremely difficult --- if not impossible --- for people working outside the experimental collaboration, a pragmatic solution that would allow theorists to reinterpret the results within their favorite model or set of parameters would be to release either\n\\begin{inparaenum}[\\it (a)]\n    \\item the full likelihood, as working code, or\n    \\item a simplified likelihood or\n    \\item the covariance matrix between all background bin counts in all channels.\n\\end{inparaenum}\nThis is in line with the recommendations from the LHC Reinterpretation Forum~\\cite{Abdallah:2020pec}.\n\n\\paragraph{Acknowledgments}\n\nThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (GA 336581, 694896) and under the Marie Skolodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860881-HIDDeN; from the Carlsberg foundation; from the Swiss National Science Foundation Excellence under grant 200020B\\underline{ }182864; from the Spanish MINECO through the Centro de excelencia Severo Ochoa Program under grant SEV-2016-0597; and from the Spanish \"Agencia Estatal de Investigac\u00edon\"(AEI) and the EU \"Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional\" (FEDER) through the project PID2019-108892RB-I00\/AEI\/10.13039\/501100011033.\n\n\\bibliographystyle{JHEP}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\part{\\partial_t}\n\\def\\partial_s}\\def\\parz{\\partial_z{\\partial_s}\\def\\parz{\\partial_z}\n\\def{d\\over{dt}}{{d\\over{dt}}}\n\\def{d\\over{ds}}{{d\\over{ds}}}\n\\def\\i#1#2{\\int_{#1}^{#2}}\n\\def\\int_{S^n}}\\def\\wtilde{\\widetilde{\\int_{S^n}}\\def\\wtilde{\\widetilde}\n\\def\\widehat{\\widehat}\n\\def\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}}\n\\def\\int_M{\\int_M}\n\\def\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n{\\int_{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char82}}}\\def\\mR{{\\hbox{\\mmathbold\\char82}}^n}}\\def\\bSn{{{\\hbox{\\tenbi\\char83}}}^n}\n\\def\\ref#1{{\\bf{[#1]}}}\n\\font\\twelverm=cmr12 scaled \\magstep2\n \\def\\,{\\hbox{\\it CON}}(\\Rn)}\\def\\consn{\\,{\\hbox{\\it CON}}(S^n){\\,{\\hbox{\\it CON}}(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})}\\def\\consn{\\,{\\hbox{\\it CON}}(S^n)}\n\\def\\grn{{g_{\\hskip-1.5pt {{\\hbox{\\sixbi\\char82}}^{\\smallfivrm\\char110}}}^{}}}\\def\\gsn{{g_{\\hskip-1.5pt \n{\\scriptscriptstyle{S^n}}}^{}}}\n\\defw^{{1\\over2}}\\lapdi w^{{1\\over2}}{w^{{1\\over2}}\\lap^{\\!-{d\/2}} w^{{1\\over2}}}\n\\defW^{{1\\over2}}A_d^{-1} W^{{1\\over2}}{W^{{1\\over2}}A_d^{-1} W^{{1\\over2}}}\n\\def{\\rm {ess\\hskip.2em sup}}{{\\rm {ess\\hskip.2em sup}}}\n\\def\\partial{\\partial}\n\\def\\omega_{2n+1}{\\omega_{2n+1}}\n\\def{\\rm {ess\\hskip2pt inf }}\\;{{\\rm {ess\\hskip2pt inf }}\\;}\n\n\\def\\int_\\Sigma{\\int_\\Sigma}\n\\def{\\rho_H^{}}{{\\rho_H^{}}}\n\n\\def{\\ts{n\\over2}}}\\def\\Qhalf{{\\tsyle{Q\\over2}}}\\def\\half{{\\ts{1\\over2}}{{\\ts{n\\over2}}}\\def\\Qhalf{{\\tsyle{Q\\over2}}}\\def\\half{{\\ts{1\\over2}}}\n\\def{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}{{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}}\n\\def{\\cal W}{{\\cal W}}\n\n\\def{\\cal I}} \\def{\\cal F}{{\\cal F}}\\def\\cR{{\\cal R}{{\\cal I}} \\def{\\cal F}{{\\cal F}}\\def\\cR{{\\cal R}}\n\\def\\wtilde k_m{\\wtilde k_m}\n\n\\def\\dot\\times}\\def\\op{{\\hbox { Op}}}\\def\\J{{\\cal J}{\\dot\\times}\\def\\op{{\\hbox { Op}}}\\def\\J{{\\cal J}}\n\\def{\\cal T}{{\\cal T}}\n\\def \\L{{\\bf L}} \n\n\n\\def\\rmi{{\\rm {(i) }}}\\def\\ii{{\\rm {(ii) }}}\\def\\iii{{\\rm (iii) }}\\def\\iv{{\\rm \n{(iv) }}}\n\n\\def\\ker{{\\rm Ker}} \n\\def{\\rm {(v) }}}\\def\\vi{{\\rm {(vi) }}{{\\rm {(v) }}}\\def\\vi{{\\rm {(vi) }}}\n\n\n\n\\def\\Gamma\\big({Q\\over2}\\big){\\Gamma\\big({Q\\over2}\\big)}\n\\def{\\wtilde\\Theta}{{\\wtilde\\Theta}}\n\\def{\\cal H}{{\\cal H}}\n\n \n\n\\centerline{\\bf{  Adams inequalities on measure spaces}}\n\\bigskip\\centerline{Luigi Fontana, Carlo Morpurgo}\n\\vskip1em\n\\midinsert\n{\\smalsmalbf Abstract. }{\\smallfonts In 1988 Adams obtained sharp Moser-Trudinger inequalities on bounded domains of $\\mR^n$. The main step was a sharp exponential integral inequality for convolutions with the Riesz potential. In this paper we extend and improve  Adams' results to  functions defined on arbitrary measure spaces with finite measure. The Riesz fractional integral is replaced by  general integral operators, whose kernels satisfy suitable and explicit growth conditions, given in terms of their distribution functions; natural conditions for sharpness are also given. Most of the known results about Moser-Trudinger inequalities can be easily adapted to our unified scheme. We give some new applications of our theorems, including:   sharp higher order Moser-Trudinger trace inequalities, sharp Adams\/Moser-Trudinger inequalities for general elliptic differential operators (scalar and vector-valued), for  sums of weighted potentials, and for operators  in the CR setting. \n}\n\n\\endinsert\\bigskip\n\\centerline{\\bf INTRODUCTION}\\bigskip\\bigskip\n\n\n\nExponential integrability can often compensate for  lack of boundedness, as a natural (although  weaker) condition. There are \nnumerous  important instances of this idea in the literature, the first is perhaps due to Zygmund. It is well known that the conjugate function of a bounded function on the torus $T$ need not  be bounded, but in 1929 Zygmund proved that for all $\\lambda < {{\\pi}\\over{2}}$ the conjugate function $\\tilde f$  satisfies\n$$\n\\int_{{\\bf T}} \\exp\\Big({ \\lambda |\\tilde f(\\theta)|}\\Big) d\\theta \\leq C_{\\lambda}\n$$\nwhenever $f$ is real-valued and  belongs to the closed unit ball of $L^{\\infty}({\\bf T})$ ([Z], Ch. VII). Cancellation, through Cauchy's integral formula, plays the central role in the proof of this result.\n\nOn the other hand, size has the major role in  the chain of results that followed a 1967 paper by Trudinger, in which he showed that exponential integrability fills the gap in Sobolev's immersion\ntheorem:\n\n\n\n\\proclaim {Theorem [Tr]}. Let $\\Omega $ be a bounded region in ${{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}}^n$, $n>1$.  \nThere exist constants $\\lambda $ and $C$ such that, if $u$ satisfies the Dirichlet condition on\n$\\partial \\Omega $ and \n$(\\int_{\\Omega}|\\nabla u|^{n})^{{1\\over n}} \\leq 1$, then \n$$\n\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\Big({\\lambda |u|^{{{n}\\over{n-1}}}}\\Big) dx \\leq C.\\eqno(1)\n$$\n\\par\nIn 1971 Moser sharpened the result by showing that\n$\n\\lambda = n \\omega _{n-1}^{{{1}\\over{n-1}}}\n$\nis  best possible in (1), where  $\\omega_{n-1}$\nis the surface measure of the unit sphere in ${{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}}^{n}$.\n\\eject\nDue to the wide range of applications in PDE's, Differential Geometry  and String Theory, Moser's result triggered an enormous amount of work in the years that followed, and  up to present time. Several aspects and extensions of Moser's inequality were studied, and   still are part of an active field of research: existence of extremals, Neumann conditions rather than Dirichlet,     \nsettings other than $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$, higher order derivatives, and more. All but a handful of the references listed in the back of this article \ndeal with Moser-Trudinger inequalities, in some form or another, and the list is only partial.\n\n\nAdams' paper in 1988, however, represents a true turning point. Not only did he extend\nMoser's sharp result to higher order derivatives, but he also set the strategy that opened the way to most of the later work in the field. We recall here the basic developments. Adams' generalization of\nMoser's theorem is\n\n\\bigskip\n\n\\proclaim Theorem [Ad1].\nLet $\\Omega $ be a domain  in ${{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}}^{n}$ and  $m$ be a positive integer \nstrictly smaller than $n$. There are constants $\\beta(m,n)$ and $C$ with the following\nproperty: If $u \\in C^{m}({{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}}^{n})$\nhas support contained in $\\Omega$ and\n$\\parallel \\nabla^{m}u \\parallel_{n\/m}  \\leq 1$, then\n$$\n\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\Big[{\\beta(m,n) |u(x)|^{{{n}\\over{n-m}}}}\\Big] dx \\leq C.\\eqno(2)\n$$\n\\par\nThe constant $\\beta(m,n)$ is given explicitly in [Ad1] and it  is  sharp (see also Theorem 6 in section 5). Also, $\\nabla^{m}$ means $\\Delta^{{m \\over 2}}$\nwhen $m$ is even and $\\nabla \\Delta^{{{m-1}\\over {2}}}$ when $m$ is odd, where $\\Delta$ denotes the positive Laplacian on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$.\n              \\smallskip                                                   \nAdams' approach consists of five main steps. \\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Step 1.} Represent  $u$ in terms of $\\nabla^m u$,  via  convolutions with the Riesz potential. \n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf Step 2.} Formulate the following sharp theorem on exponential integrability for Riesz potentials (a dual, but more general, version of the above theorem that has its own relevance).\nThe first theorem follows immediately from the second, apart for some\nextra work necessary to ensure that the inequality is indeed sharp.\n\n\\bigskip\n\n\\proclaim  Theorem [Ad1].\nFor $1 < p < \\infty$ , there is a constant $C$ such that for all \n$f \\in L^{p} ({{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}}^{n})$ with support contained in $\\Omega $ and $\\parallel f \\parallel_{p} \\leq 1 $, \n$$\n\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\Big[{{{n}\\over {\\omega_{n-1}}}|I_{\\alpha} \\ast f(x)|^{p'} } \n \\Big]dx \\leq C\\eqno(3)\n$$\nwhere $\\alpha = n\/p $, $1\/p + 1\/p' = 1$, and \n$I_{\\alpha} \\ast f(x) = \\int | x-y |^{\\alpha-n} f(x) dy$.\nThe constant $n\/\\omega_{n-1}$ cannot be replaced by any larger number without  \nforcing  $c_{0}$  to depend on $f$ as well as on $p$ and $n$.\n\\par \n\\eject \n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf Step 3.}  The third  step of Adam's strategy  is to reduce the proof of the above theorem to a one dimensional exponential inequality by using  a lemma due to O'Neil: if $T$ is a convolution operator on a measure space, then \n$$T(f,g)^{**}(t)\\le t f^{**}(t)g^{**}(t)+\\int_t^\\infty f^*(u)g^*(u)du,\\qquad t>0 \\eqno(4)$$\nwhere $f^*$ denotes nonincreasing rearrangement on the half-line, and $f^{**}(t)=t^{-1}\\displaystyle\\int_0^t f^*(u) du$.\n\n\\bigskip\n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf Step 4.} The next step is to prove the one dimensional exponential inequality derived in  step 3 by means of a technical lemma,  now known as the ``Adams-Garsia's Lemma\". \n\\medskip\\noindent{\\bf Step 5.} The final step is to show that the exponential constant is sharp, by showing that for any larger constant one can find a suitable sequence of functions that makes the exponential integral arbitrarily large.\n  \\medskip\nIn his PhD thesis (1991) Fontana adapted Adams' strategy, and extended his results  in the setting of compact Riemannian manifolds [F]. In that situation the Green function  replaces the Riesz potential in Step 1; the corresponding integral representation is no longer a global convolution,  but locally the Green kernel is a  perturbed Riesz potential. These facts eventually lead to  suitable versions of  O'Neil's lemma  and Adams-Garsia's lemma; these  modified lemmas  could not be deduced from the original ones, even though the original proofs were successfully adapted to the perturbed setting [F].\n\n Several other authors also  used Adams strategy, sometimes partially,  in order to prove sharp Moser-Trudinger estimates in various  settings. In most cases, like in [F], some    individual steps had to be adapted, and sometimes their proofs were only sketched, or even omitted. \n \n\nRecently ([BFM]), the authors of this paper, in joint project with Tom Branson, needed a sharp form of various Moser-Trudinger inequalities in the CR setting in order to obtain the sharp version of Beckner-Onofri's inequality on the complex  sphere. Independently Cohn and Lu [CoLu 1,2] had  worked out Adams and Moser-Trudinger sharp estimates\nin some very special cases, which were not suitable to our needs. While working out yet another version of Adams strategy, we realized that steps 2,3,4,5 could be formulated in an arbitrary measure space, for integral operators  more general than convolutions, and with kernels  satisfying suitable growth  and integral conditions.\n \n\n It was then that we seriously looked into the possibility of a general result that would encompass and unify the various  Adams-type  procedures,  with the hope that it would prove to be useful to authors in need of such sharp estimates in a variety of situations. Stripped down to its essence, the present paper could be summarized as follows. \n\n\\eject\n\nSuppose that $T$ is an integral operator of type\n$$Tf(x)=\\int_M k(x,y)f(y)d\\mu(y)\\,,\\qquad x\\in N$$\nwhere $(M,\\mu)$,$\\,(N,\\nu)$ are  measure spaces with finite measure, and suppose that the kernel $k(x,y) $ satisfies\n$$\\sup_{x\\in N}\\mu\\Big(\\{y\\in M: \\,|k(x,y)|>s\\}\\Big)\\le A s^{-\\beta}\\Big(1+O(\\log^{-\\gamma} s)\\Big)\\eqno(5)$$\n$$\\sup_{y\\in M}\\nu\\Big(\\{x\\in N:\\, |k(x,y)|>s\\}\\Big)\\le B s^{-\\beta_0}\\eqno(6)$$\nas $s\\to+\\infty$, where $\\beta>1$, $\\beta'$ is the conjugate exponent, $0<\\beta_0\\le \\beta$, and $\\gamma>1$.\n Then we have an exponential inequality\nof type \n$$\\int_N \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta} \\bigg({|Tf(x)|\\over\\|f\\|_{\\beta'}}\\bigg)^{\\beta}\\bigg]\\,d\\nu(x)\\le C\\eqno(7)$$\nfor any $f\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)$.\nAs for the sharpness statement, if equality holds in (5) then the constant $\\beta_0\/(A\\beta)$ in (7) is sharp, provided that \ncertain reasonable ``regularity\" conditions are satisfied by the kernel $k$.\n\n The main feature of this result, which is Theorem 1 in the next section, is   that it reduces Moser-Trudinger inequalities \nfor integral operators, or in ``dual form\", to a couple of  estimates for the distribution functions of their kernels, and the sharpness result (under suitable but reasonable geometric conditions) to a single integral estimate (see d) in Theorem 4). \nIn some cases estimates (5) and (6) are rather trivial to check, like for the Riesz potential $k(x,y)=|x-y|^{d-n}$, on a domain $\\Omega$, for which\n$$\\sup_{x\\in\\Omega}| \\{y\\in\\Omega :\\,|x-y|^{d-n}>s\\}|={\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\,s^{-{n\\over n-d}}.\\eqno(8)$$\nIn other situations the  asymptotics of the distribution function of $k$ could be a bit more involved, but they are usually  a consequence of an  asymptotic expansion of the kernel $k$ around its singularity. For example, kernels that satisfy (5) and (6) are those of type\n$$k(x,y)=c(d,n)|x-y|^{d-n}+O(|x-y|^{d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t})\\eqno(9)$$\nsome $\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t>0$, or more generally of type  \n$$k(x,y)=k_{d-n}(x,x-y)+O(|x-y|^{d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t})\\eqno(10)$$\nsome suitable $k_{d-n}(x,z)$ homogeneous of order $d-n$ in $z$ (see Lemma 9).\nThese are in fact more than just examples. It was already shown  by Fontana in [F]  that  one can still set up the Adams machinery for powers of Laplace-Beltrami operators on compact manifolds without boundary,  even though such operators have  fundamental solutions  that  do not satisfy the precise identity  (8), but instead satisfy a perturbed version like (9), in local coordinates. \n \nThe fact that error terms are allowed in the asymptotics of the kernels or their distribution functions is an important point of our theory.   Indeed,   (10) is precisely the type of expansion satisfied by \nthe classical parametrix   of elliptic pseudodifferential operators of order $d$  on bounded domains of $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$ (or on compact manifolds, in local coordinates). Whenever an elliptic operator $P$, say on a domain $\\Omega$, has a fundamental solution $T$ with such kernel, we can  write any compactly supported smooth function as $u=T(Pu)$ and almost  immediately obtain a sharp Moser-Trudinger inequality of type \n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[A^{-1} \\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|Pu\\|_{p}}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\le C$$\nwhere the sharp constant $A^{-1}$ depends on the principal symbol of $P$. This is in fact one of the applications we give of our main Theorem, extending Adams original result (2) to  a wide class of  scalar and vector-valued elliptic differential operators (see Theorems 10, and 12). In the special case of second-order elliptic operators, the sharp constant is even more explicitly described in terms of the  matrix  formed by the second order coefficients (see Corollary 11).\n\n\nAnother feature of our main theorem  is that it offers ample flexibility in the choice of the base measure spaces $(M,\\mu)$ and $(N,\\nu)$. To illustrate this point we offer an  extension of a very recent result  of Cianchi [Ci1] who proved that if $\\nu$ is a Borel measure on $\\Omega\\subseteq {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$ satisfying $\\nu\\big(B(x,r)\\cap \\Omega\\big)\\le C r^\\lambda$, for suitable $\\lambda\\in (0,n]$, and for small $r$, then \n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[\\lambda \\omega_{n-1}^{1\\over n-1} \\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|\\nabla u\\|_{n}}\\bigg)^{n'}\\bigg]\\,d\\nu(x)\\le C\\eqno(11)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{1,n}(\\Omega)$. As Cianchi observed, this result immediately leads to inequality for traces of functions, either   on boundaries of smooth $\\lambda$-dimensional submanifolds of $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$ or on sets of fractal type.  Cianchi's proof of the above inequality did not follow the representation formula as in Adams' original paper, step 1. By  use of a  trace Sobolev inequality also due to Adams (see (59)) and clever rearrangement results, Cianchi is however able to  make some contact with Adams' original steps 2,3,4,5.\n\nIn Theorems 6 and 7, we extend (11) to higher order operators and potentials. We especially hope to show how (11) and its higher order versions  are  part of the same large family of Adams\/Moser-Trudinger inequalities, and are  in fact simple applications of our main theorems. The role of the constant is clearly explained in terms of the interactions between the base measures $d\\nu(x), \\,d\\mu(y)=dy, $ and the Riesz potentials, as given in (5) and (6).\n\nWe would like to point out that our original formulation of (5)-(7) had $\\beta=\\beta_0$, and was based (among many other things)  on an improved version of O'Neil's lemma given as in (20). It was only after being aware of Cianchi's result that we started looking for a further improvement of O'Neil's lemma and (5)-(7). In particular it was Cianchi's  idea to exploit Adams' trace inequality (59) that eventually lead us to exploit instead Adams' weak-type estimates (21), in order to obtain a further substantial extension of O'Neil's lemma.\n\n\\medskip\nIn a third application, we consider Adams inequalities for sums of weighted Riesz potentials, i.e. for integral operators with kernel\n$$K(x,y)=\\sum_{j=1}^N g_j(x,y)|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}$$\nwhere the functions $g_j$ are H\\\"older continuous, and where $x$ and $y$ are allowed to move in different domains. The sharp constant is explicitly described even in this case, see Theorem~15.\n\\smallskip\nFinally, and this was the original motivation for our work, we turn to the CR setting, by proving a sharpness result for some \nAdams' inequalities on the complex sphere, which were only partially proved  [BFM], using the methods of this work.\n\n\n\\medskip\n\nThe paper is organized in two main parts. In Part I we give the main results, in a measure-theoretical setting. Some portions of some  proofs are of course based on Adams' and O'Neil's original arguments,  but we decided to include them, in part because the  modifications are many, and often  not trivial,   and in part to achieve a rather self-contained and cleaner presentation. \n\n In Part II we give several new applications of the general results of Part I:  higher order Adams and Moser-Trudinger trace inequalities, Moser-Trudinger and  Adams inequalities for general and then specific  elliptic operators and parametrix-like potentials respectively, followed by those for sums of weighted Riesz potentials, and finally for certain types of potentials arising in CR geometry. \nSome  of these applications  could  be combined together, but we decided to keep them separate in order to highlight the relevant aspects of a given setting, rather than presenting more comprehensive theorems with too many parameters. \n\nWe certainly do not claim to have covered every possible Moser-Trudinger inequality, in fact we hope that many more could be  obtained using our setup, in a relatively painless way, and in a variety of settings. Moreover, in Theorems 10 and 12, a general form of the sharp exponential constant is given, but in specific cases it could be more helpful  to know this constant more explicitly. In this work we limit ourselves to give more explicit values in the case of  second order operators and certain other vector-valued inequalities, but more such computations are   possibile. \n\\eject\nAnother interesting situation arises regarding  Moser-Trudinger inequalities  in the space $W^{d,p}(\\Omega)$, i.e. without boundary conditions. In [Ci2] Cianchi obtained a sharp inequality for the case $W^{1,n}(\\Omega)$, but using different tools than ours, such as the isoperimetric inequality. It is possible that our methods are suitable to handle at least some special cases, such as low order operators, or particular domains.\n\n\n\\bigskip\\centerline{\\bf PART I: ABSTRACT THEOREMS}\\bigskip\n\n\n\n\n\\noindent {\\bf 1.  Adams inequalities on measure spaces}\\bigskip\n Let $(M,\\mu)$ be a measure space, and $\\mu$ a finite measure. \nGiven a  measurable $f:M\\to [-\\infty,\\infty]$ its distribution function will be denoted by \n$$m(f,s)=\\mu\\big(\\{x\\in M: |f(x)|>s\\}\\big),\\qquad s\\ge0$$\nits  nonincreasing rearrangement by\n$$f^*(t)=\\inf\\big\\{s\\ge0:\\,m(f,s)\\le t\\big\\},\\qquad t>0$$\nand \n$$f^{**}(t)={1\\over t}\\int_0^t f^*(s)ds,\\qquad t>0$$\nGiven another finite measure space $(N,\\nu)$ and  a $\\nu\\times\\mu-$measurable function $k:N\\times M\\to[-\\infty,\\infty]$ we let, for $t>0$, \n$$ k_1^*(t)=\\sup_{x\\in N} k^*(x,\\cdot)(t)$$\n$$k_2^*(t)=\\sup_{y\\in M} k^*(\\cdot,y)(t)$$\nwhere $k^*(x,\\cdot)(t)$ is the nonincreasing rearrangement of $k(x,y)$ with respect to the variable $y$ for fixed $x$, and $k^*(\\cdot,y)(t)$ is its analogue for fixed $y$. With a slight abuse of notation we set\n$$k_j^{**}(t)={1\\over t}\\int_0^t k_j^*(s)ds,\\qquad t>0,\\;j=1,2$$\nIf $k_2^*\\in L^1\\big([0,\\infty)\\big)$, or equivalently $m(k_2^*,\\cdot)\\in L^1\\big([0,\\infty)\\big)$, then the integral operator\n$$ Tf(x)=\\int_M k(x,y)f(y)d\\mu(y)\\eqno(12)$$\nis well defined and continuous from $L^1(M,\\mu)$ to $L^1(N,\\nu)$. In fact, as we shall see later, $Tf$ is also well defined on some $L^p$ under weaker integrability conditions on $k_2^*$, but with additional restrictions on $k_1^*$.\n\n\\medskip\nHere is our main theorem:\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 1. Let $k:N\\times M\\to[-\\infty,\\infty]$ be measurable on the finite measure space $(N\\times M,\\nu\\times\\mu)$ \nand  such that\n$$ m(k_1^*,s)\\le A s^{-\\beta}\\Big(1+O(\\log^{-\\gamma} s)\\Big)\\eqno(13)$$\n$$ m(k_2^*,s)\\le B s^{-\\beta_0}\\eqno(14)$$\nas $s\\to+\\infty$,  for some $\\beta,\\gamma>1$, $\\,0<\\beta_0\\le \\beta$ and $B>0$. Then, $T$ is  defined by (12) on $L^{\\beta'}(M)$ and \nthere exists a constant $C$ such that \n$$\\int_N \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over  A\\beta}\\bigg({|Tf|\\over \\|f\\|_{\\beta'}}\\bigg)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu\\le C\\eqno(15)$$\nfor each $f\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)$, with $\\displaystyle{1\\over \\beta}+{1\\over\\beta'}=1.$\n\\par\n\n\\noindent{\\bf Remarks.}\n\n\\noindent{\\bf 1.} \n It is possibile to modify slightly the arguments in order to include in Theorem 1 the case of Lorentz spaces. For simplicity we just treat $L^p$ spaces.\n\n\\medskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 2.} Theorem 1. holds verbatim in case $k$ is complex-valued and $T$ acts on complex-valued functions, provided that $|k(x,y)|$ satisfies conditions (13), (14).\\smallskip\n\nTheorem 1, as an immediate corollary of itself, \n  can be extended to vector-valued functions as follows. For a measurable $F:M\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$, $F=(F_1,...,F_n)$, define $|F|=(F_1^2+...+F_n^2)^{1\/2}$ and say $F\\in L^p(M)$ if $\\int_M|F|^p<\\infty$, likewise for vector-valued functions defined on $N$, valued on ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$, or  on $\\overline {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n=[-\\infty,\\infty]^n$. \n\n\n\\smallskip\n\\proclaim Theorem 1'.  Let  $K:N\\times M\\to\\overline{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$, where $K=(K_1,...,K_n)$ be measurable and such that   $k(x,y)=|K(x,y)|$ satisfies conditions (13) and (14) of Theorem 1. If  \n$$TF(x)=\\int_M K(x,y)\\cdot F(y) \\,d\\mu(y)=\\int_M \\sum_{j=1}^n K_j(x,y)F_j(y)\\,d\\mu(y)$$\nthen, $T$ is defined on $L^{\\beta'}(M)$ and \nthere exists a constant $C$ such that \n$$\\int_N \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over  A\\beta}\\bigg({|TF|\\over \\|F\\|_{\\beta'}}\\bigg)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu\\le C\\eqno(16)$$\nfor each $F\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)$, with $\\displaystyle{1\\over \\beta}+{1\\over\\beta'}=1.$\n\\par\n\\eject\nThe formulation in terms of vector-valued function is useful since in many cases one has a  representation formula\nof a function which involves the  gradient operator, as in the classical Adams setting. Needless to say a similar version of the inequality holds for ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char67}}}\\def \\sC{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char67}}^n$-valued kernels and functions. It is important to point out that while the inequality of Theorem~1' is an immediate consequence of the scalar case, via Cauchy-Schwarz,  ths is not the case for the  sharpness statement  (see Theorem 4).\n \\medskip\n\nThe following elementary facts about rearragements will be useful ($f,g$ denote two measurable functions on $M$):\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Fact 1.}  $\\;m(f,s)=m(f^*,s)$ and $\\;m(f^*,s)\\le m(g^*,s)$ for all $s>s_0$ (some $s_0>0$) if and only if $f^*(t)\\le g^*(t)$ for all $t<t_0$ (some $t_0>0$).\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Fact 2.} If $\\psi(s)$ is continuous and strictly decreasing on $[s_0,\\infty)$ then \n$\\inf\\{s:\\,\\psi(s)\\le t\\}=\\psi^{-1}(t)$ for $t<\\psi(s_0)$, (and hence $\\psi$ is the distribution function of $\\psi^{-1}$ on that interval). \n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Fact 3.} Given a measurable $k(x,y)$ on $N\\times M$, if $\\wtilde m(k,s)=\\sup_x m\\big(k^*(x,\\cdot),s\\big)=\\sup_x m\\big(k(x,\\cdot),s\\big)$ and $\\wtilde k(t)=\\inf\\big\\{s:\\, \\wtilde m(k,s)\\le t\\big\\}$, then $m(\\wtilde k,s)=\\wtilde m(k,s)$ and $\\wtilde k(t)=\\sup_x k^*(x,\\cdot)(t)$.\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Fact 4.} The following are equivalent ($A,\\beta,\\gamma>0$): \\smallskip\n\\item{a)} $\\;m(f^*,s)\\le As^{-\\beta}(1+C\\log^{-\\gamma}s),$ for all  $s>s_0>1$\n\\smallskip\\item{b)} $\\; f^*(t)\\le A^{1\/\\beta} t^{-1\/\\beta}(1+C'|\\log t|^{-\\gamma}),$ for all $t<t_0<1$. \n\\smallskip Likewise, the following are equivalent\\smallskip\n\\item{a')} $\\;m(f^*,s)\\ge As^{-\\beta}(1-C\\log^{-\\gamma}s)>0,$ for all $s>s_0>1$\n\\smallskip\\item{b')} $\\; f^*(t)\\ge A^{1\/\\beta} t^{-1\/\\beta}(1-C'|\\log t|^{-\\gamma})>0,$ for all $t<t_0<1$. \n\n\\def{\\rm supp}{{\\rm supp}}\n\n\\medskip\\medskip\nThe first, and crucial, step in the proof of Theorem 1 is the following $L^p$  version of O'Neil's lemma:\n\n\\medskip\n\\proclaim Lemma 2 (Improved O'Neil's Lemma). Let $k: N\\times M\\to [-\\infty,\\infty]$ be measurable and\n$$k_1^*(t)\\le M t^{-1\/\\beta},\\qquad k_2^*(t)\\le B t^{-1\/\\beta_0},\\qquad t>0\\eqno(17)$$\nwith $\\beta>1$ and $0<\\beta_0\\le \\beta$.\nIf  \n$$\\max\\Big\\{1,{\\beta-\\beta_0\\over\\beta-1}\\Big\\}< p<{\\beta\\over\\beta-1}=\\beta',\\qquad\\quad q={p\\beta_0\\over \\beta-(\\beta-1)p}>p\\eqno(18)$$ then $T$ is defined on $L^{\\beta'}(M)$, in fact $T:L^p(M)\\to L^{q,\\infty}(N)$ and bounded, and  there is a constant $C=C(M,B,\\beta,\\beta_0,p)$ such that for any $f\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)$\n$$ (Tf)^{**}(t)\\le C\\,\\max\\big\\{\\tau^{-{\\beta_0\\over  q \\beta}}, t^{-{1\\over q}}\\big\\}\\int_0^\\tau f^*(u) u^{-1+{1\\over p}}du+\\int_\\tau^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du,\\quad \\forall t,\\tau>0.\\eqno(19)$$\nIf instead of (17) we assume $\\,k_1^*, k_2^*\\in L^1\\big([0,\\infty)\\big)$ then for every $f\\in L^1(M)$\n$$(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le \\tau\\, \\max\\big\\{k_1^{**}(\\tau),k_2^{**}(t)\\big\\}\\, f^{**}(\\tau)+\\int_\\tau^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du,\\quad \\forall t,\\tau>0.\\eqno(20)$$\n\\par \\smallskip\n We observe that  inequality (20) implies (19) in case $\\beta_0>1$, that is when both    \n $k_1^*$ and $k_2^*$ are integrable, and it is also perfectly suitable to prove Theorem 1 in that case, but it is useless when $\\beta_0\\le 1$.\n\\medskip\n\\pf Proof.  We begin right away with the following weak-type estimate due to Adams [Ad3]. If $k$ and $f$ are nonnegative,  with \n$$\\sup_{x\\in N} \\,m\\big(k(x,\\cdot),s)\\le M s^{-\\beta},\\qquad \\sup_{y\\in M} \\,m\\big(k(\\cdot,y),s\\big)\\le Bs^{-\\beta_0}$$\n which are equivalent to (17), and under the hypothesis  (18), then for $s>0$\n$$ s\\, m(Tf,s)^{1\\over q}=s\\,\\nu\\big(\\{x: Tf(x)>s\\}\\big)^{1\\over q}\\le {q^2\\over \\beta_0(q-p)}M^{1-{1\\over p}}B^{1\\over q} \\|f\\|_p\\eqno(21)$$\nor\n$$ (Tf)^*(t)\\le C t^{-{1\\over q}} \\|f\\|_p,\\qquad \\forall t>0.\\eqno(22)$$\nThis means that $T:L^p(M)\\to L^{q,\\infty}(N)$ is bounded, in particular  $T$ is well defined on $L^{\\beta'}(M)\\subseteq L^p(M)$. \n\nWithout loss of generality we can assume throughout this proof that both $k$ and $f$ are nonnegative. With a slight abuse of language we let ${\\rm supp}(f)=\\{x\\in M:\\,f(x)\\neq0\\}$. The main step of the proof relies on the following:\n\\medskip\n\\proclaim Claim (See also Lemma 1.4 in [ON]). If $\\mu({\\rm supp} f)=z$ and $0\\le f(z)\\le \\alpha$, and if $k_1^*,k_2^*$ satisfy conditions (17), then $\\forall t>0$\n$$(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le\\alpha \\,z\\,k_1^{**}(z).\\eqno(23)$$\n$$(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le C\\, \\alpha\\, z^{{1\\over p}} t^{-{1\\over q}}.\\eqno(24)$$\nIf instead of $(17)$ we assume that $k_1^*$ and $k_2^*$ are integrable, then (23) holds and (24) can be replaced by \n$$(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le\\alpha \\,z\\,k_2^{**}(t)\\eqno(25).$$\\par\\medskip\nAssuming the Claim, the proof of the Lemma proceeds as follows.\nFor fixed $t,\\tau>0$, pick  $\\{y_n\\}_{-\\infty}^\\infty$ such that $y_0=f^*(\\tau),\\,y_n\\le y_{n+1}, \\,y_n\\to+\\infty$\nas $n\\to+\\infty$, and $y_n\\to0$ as $n\\to-\\infty$.  Then \n$$f(y)=\\sum_{-\\infty}^\\infty f_n(y)\\quad{\\hbox{where}}\\quad f_n(y)=\\cases{0 &if $\\;f(y)\\le y_{n-1}$\\cr f(y)-y_{n-1} \n&if $\\;y_{n-1}<f(y)\\le y_n$ \\cr y_n-y_{n-1} & if $\\;y_n<f(y).$\\cr}$$\n\nObserve that supp$f_n\\subseteq E_n:=\\big\\{y: f(y)>y_{n-1}\\big\\}$,  $\\;\\mu(E_n)=m(f,y_{n-1})$, and also  $\\;0\\le f_n(y)\\le y_n-y_{n-1}$. Write \n$$f=\\sum_{-\\infty}^0f_n+\\sum_1^{\\infty}f_n=g_1+g_2$$\nso that  $(Tf)^{**}\\le (Tg_1)^{**}+(Tg_2)^{**}$ (this is the subadditivity of $(\\cdot)^{**}$). Using the Claim (24) we obtain\n$$(Tg_2)^{**}(t)\\le \\sum_1^\\infty (Tf_n)^{**}(t)\\le Ct^{-{1\\over q}}\\,\\sum_1^{\\infty}(y_n-y_{n-1})\\big(m(f,y_{n-1})\\big)^{{1\\over p}}$$\nso that taking the inf over all such $\\{y_n\\}$ we get\n$$\\eqalign{&(Tg_2)^{**}(t)\\le Ct^{-{1\\over q}}\\int_{f^*(\\tau)}^\\infty \\big(m(f,y)\\big)^{{1\\over p}} dy=-\\int_0^\\tau\\big(m(f,f^*(u))\\big)^{{1\\over p}}d\\,f^*(u)\\cr&\\le- \\int_0^\\tau u^{{1\\over p}} d\\,f^*(u)=-u^{{1\\over p}}f^*(u)\\Big|_0^\\tau+{1\\over p}\\int_0^\\tau u^{-1+{1\\over p}}f^*(u)du\\le{1\\over p}\\int_0^\\tau u^{-1+{1\\over p}}f^*(u)du. \\cr}  $$\n(the last inequality follows since $f\\in L^{\\beta'}\\Longrightarrow t^{{1\\over \\beta'}}f^*(t)\\to0$, as $t\\to0$.)\n\nLikewise, using the Claim (23)\n$$(Tg_1)^{**}(t)\\le \\sum_{-\\infty}^0 (Tf_n)^{**}(t)\\le \\sum_{-\\infty}^0 (y_n-y_{n-1})m(f,y_{n-1})k_1^{**}(m(f(y_{n-1}))$$\nand so\n$$\\eqalign{&(Tg_1)^{**}(t)\\le\\int_0^{f^*(\\tau)} m(f,y)k_1^{**}\\big(m(f,y)\\big)dy=\n-\\int_\\tau^\\infty m\\big(f,f^*(u)\\big)k_1^{**}\\Big(m\\big(f,f^*(u)\\big)\\Big) df^*(u)\\cr&=-\\int_\\tau^\\infty u \\,k_1^{**}(u)df^*(u)=\n-u\\, k_1^{**}(u)f^*(u)\\bigg|_\\tau^\\infty+\\int_\\tau^\\infty k_1^*(u)f^*(u)du\\cr&\\le \\tau\\,k_1^{**}(\\tau)f^*(\\tau)+\\int_\\tau^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du\\le \\tau^{1-{1\\over p}}\\,k_1^{**}(\\tau)\\int_0^\\tau f^*(u)u^{-1+{1\\over p}}du+\\int_\\tau^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du\\cr&\n\\le C\\,\\tau^{1-{1\\over p}-{1\\over \\beta}}\\int_0^\\tau f^*(u)u^{-1+{1\\over p}}du+\\int_\\tau^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du\n}$$\nand (19) follows since $\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over \\beta}-1={\\beta_0\\over q\\beta}}$.\n\n To prove (20), assume that $k_1^*,\\,k_2^*$ and $f$ are integrable and estimate $(Tg_1)^{**}$ as before. The estimate for $(Tg_2)^{**}$ is now performed as above, but using (25) instead of (24). This yields\n\n$$\\eqalign{(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le  \\max\\big\\{k_1^{**}(\\tau),k_2^{**}(t)\\big\\}\\,\\bigg[\\tau f^*(\\tau )&+\\int_{f^*(\\tau )}^\\infty m(f,y)dy\\bigg]+\\int_\\tau ^\\infty f^*(u)k_1^*(u)du\\cr}$$\nand (20) follows from the identity\n$$ \\int_{f^*(\\tau )}^\\infty m(f,y)dy=\\int_{f^*(\\tau )}^\\infty m(f^*,y)dy=\\int_0^\\tau  f^*(u)du-\\tau  f^*(\\tau ).$$\n\n\n\\medskip\n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf Proof of Claim.}  Let $r>0$ and   set \n$$k_r(x,y)=\\cases{k(x,y) & if $\\;k(x,y)\\le r$\\cr\\cr r & otherwise,\\cr}\\qquad k(x,y)=k_r(x,y)+k^r(x,y).$$\nso that \n$$Tf(x)=\\int_M k_r(x,y)f(y)d\\mu(y)+\\int_M k^r(x,y )f(y)d\\mu(y)=h_1(x)+h_2(x).$$\nAssume that $k_1^*$ is integrable. Then,\nfor every given $x$\n$$ h_2(x)\\le \\|f\\|_\\infty^{}\\int_M k^r(x,y)d\\mu(y)\\le \\alpha \\int_r^\\infty m(k_1^*,s)ds,\\eqno(26)$$\n$$ h_1(x)\\le \\|f\\|_1^{}\\sup_y k_r(x,y)\\le \\alpha z r,\\eqno(27)$$\nso that letting $r=k_1^*(z)$ in (26) and (27) leads to\n$$\\eqalign{(Tf)^{**}(t)&={1\\over t}\\int_0^t (Tf)^*\\le \\|Tf\\|_\\infty^{}\\le \\|h_1\\|_\\infty^{}+ \\|h_2\\|_\\infty^{}\\cr&\\le\n\\alpha z \\,k_1^*(z)+\\alpha\\int_{k_1^*(z)}^\\infty m(k_1^*,s)ds=\\alpha\\int_0^z k_1^*(s)ds=\\alpha z \\,k_1^{**}(z),\\cr}$$\nwhich is (23). \nIf in addition $k_2^*$ is integrable, then \n$$\\eqalign{&\\int_N h_2(x)d\\nu(x)=\\int_N d\\nu(x)\\int_M k^r(x,y)f(y)d\\mu(y)\\cr&=\\int_M f(y)\\bigg(\\int_N k^r(x,y)d\\nu(x)\\bigg)d\\mu(y)\n\\le \\|f\\|_1^{}\\int_r^\\infty m(k_2^*,s)ds\\le \\alpha z \\int_r^\\infty m(k_2^*,s)ds,\\cr}\\eqno(28)$$\ntherefore,   letting $r=k_2^*(t)$ and using (27) and (28)\n$$\\eqalign{t\\,(Tf)^{**}(t)&\\le \\int_0^t h_1^*+\\int_0^t h_2^* \\le t\\,\\|h_1\\|_\\infty^{} +\\int_0^\\infty h_2^*\\cr& \\le t\\,\\alpha z\\, k_2^*(t)+\\alpha z\\int_{k_2^*(t)}^\\infty m(k_2^*,s)ds=\\alpha z\\,t\\, k_2^{**}(t)\\cr}$$\nand this concludes the proof of  (23) and (25), in case both $k_1^*$ and $k_2^*$ are integrable.\nIf conditions (17) are assumed instead, then (23) still holds (since only integrability of $k_1^*$ was needed), and  \nestimate (24) is an immediate consequence of the weak-type estimate (22).\n $$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\n\\bigskip\\noindent{\\bf Remark.} We emphasize here the new elements appearing in the Lemma, as compared to O'Neil's original version. First, the  role of the two measures, as reflected in the explicit dependence on $k_1^*$ and $k_2^*$, and their bounds. Secondly,  the fact that O'Neil's lemma is really a two-variable statement; this is hinted in the Claim, even in O'Neil's original version,  but it does not seem to have been noticed before. Our original version of the Lemma was just (20) with  $\\tau=t$ which was suitable to prove Theorem 1 when $\\beta_0=\\beta$ (our first version) but not for $\\beta_0<\\beta$. The further improvements of O'Neil's lemma came about in our attempts to incorporate some of Cianchi's main results [Ci1] in our general framework (see Theorem 6).\n\n\n\n\\vskip1em\n\n\n\\pf Proof of Theorem 1. It is enough to assume that $k$ is  nonnegative, and show that for each nonnegative $f\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)$    with $\\,\\|f\\|_{\\beta'}^{}\\le 1$ we have \n$$\\int_N \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}(Tf)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu\\le C\\eqno(29)$$\nfor some $C$ independent of $f$.\n\n\nPick any $p$ as in (18). By (19) of the improved   O'Neil's Lemma 2, with $\\tau=t^{\\beta\/\\beta_0}$ \n$$\\eqalign{&(Tf)^*(t)\\le(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le C t^{-{1\\over q}}\\int_0^{t^{\\beta\/\\beta_0}}f^*(u) u^{-1+{1\\over p}}du+\\int_{t^{\\beta\/\\beta_0}}^\\infty k_1^*(u) f^*(u)du\\cr &=\nC t^{-{1\\over q}}\\int_0^{t}f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big) u^{-1+{\\beta\\over p\\beta_0}}du+{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\int_t^\\infty k_1^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big) f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big)u^{{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}-1}du.\\cr}\\eqno(30)$$\nBy Fact 4, combined with the fact that $k_j^*(t)=0$ for $t\\ge\\max\\{\\nu(N),\\mu(M)\\}$,\n$$k_1^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big) \\le A^{1\\over\\beta}u^{-{1\\over\\beta_0}}\\big(1+C(1+|\\log u|)^{-\\gamma}\\big)\\,,\\quad u>0\\eqno(31)$$\n(C denotes a positive constant that may change from place to place).\n\nCombining (30) and (31) yields\n$$ \\eqalign{(Tf)^{**}(t)\\le C & t^{-{1\\over q}}\\int_0^{t}f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big) u^{-1+{\\beta\\over p\\beta_0}}du\n+\\cr&+{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\int_t^{\\mu(M)^{\\beta_0\/\\beta}}\\!\\!A^{1\/\\beta}\\big(1+C(1+|\\log u|)^{-\\gamma}\\big)f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big)u^{{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}-1}du\\cr}\n$$\nand therefore, with $t_1=\\max\\{\\nu(N),\\mu(M)^{\\beta_0\/\\beta}\\}$,\n$$\\eqalign{&\\int_N \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}(Tf)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu(x)=\\int_0^{\\nu(N)} \\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}\\big((Tf)^*(t)\\big)^\\beta\\bigg]dt\n\\le\\int_0^{\\nu(N)}\\exp\\bigg[{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}\\Big((Tf)^{**}(t)\\Big)^\\beta\\Big]dt\\cr&\\le\\int_0^{t_1} \\exp\\bigg[\\bigg( C t^{-{1\\over q}}\\int_0^{t}f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big) u^{-1+{\\beta\\over p\\beta_0}}du+\\cr&\\hskip3em      \n+ \\bigg({\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta'}\\int_t^{t_1}\\big(1+C(1+|\\log u|)^{-\\gamma}\\big)f^*\\big(u^{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\big)u^{{\\beta\\over\\beta_0}-1}du\\bigg)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]dt.\\cr}$$\n\nNow we make the changes of variables $u=e^{-x},\\, t=e^{-y}$, and we let $y_1=-\\log t_1$ and \n$$\\phi(x)=\\bigg({\\beta\\over\\beta_0}\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta'}f^*\\big(e^{-{\\beta x\\over\\beta_0}}\\big)\\,e^{-{\\beta-1\\over\\beta_0}x}.$$ Notice  that $\\phi$ is defined  on $[y_1,\\infty)$ and $\\|\\phi\\|_{\\beta'}^{}=\\|f^*\\|_{\\beta'}^{}=\\|f\\|_{\\beta'}^{}\\le1$.\n\nWith these changes, estimate (29) reduces to\n$$\\int_{y_1}^\\infty \\exp\\bigg[\\bigg( H\\int_{y}^\\infty \\phi(x) e^{y-x\\over q}dx+\\int_{y_1}^y\\Big(1+H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)\\phi(x)dx\\bigg)^\\beta-y\\bigg]\\,dy\\le C\\eqno(32)$$\nwhere $H$ is a suitable, fixed, positive constant. \n\nDefine \n$$g(x,y)=\\cases{1+H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma} & if $y_1\\le x\\le y$ \\cr \\cr\n H e^{{y-x\\over q}} & if $y_1\\le y<x<\\infty$ \\cr}\\eqno(33)$$\nand  \n$$F(y)=y-\\bigg(\\int_{y_1}^\\infty g(x,y)\\phi(x) dx\\bigg)^\\beta\\eqno(34)$$\nwhich is defined for $y\\in[y_1,\\infty)$. Estimate (32) is a direct consequence of the following modified Adams-Garsia's lemma:\n\n\\bigskip\n\\proclaim Lemma 3. Suppose that $\\phi:[y_1,\\infty)\\to [0,\\infty)$ satisfies $\\displaystyle{\\int_{y_1}^\\infty \\phi^{\\beta'}\\le 1},$ and  $g$ and $F$ be defined as in (33), (34), with $H>0$, $\\beta>1$, $q>0$ \n and $\\displaystyle{{1\\over\\beta}+{1\\over\\beta'}=1}$. Then there exists \na constant $C$ independent   of $\\phi$ such that \n$$\\int_{y_1}^\\infty e^{-F(y)}dy\\le C.\\eqno(35)$$\n\\par\n\nThis lemma  differs from the original Adams-Garsia\n lemma (Lemma 1 in [A]) by the perturbation term $H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}$ for $x\\le y$ (which  was not present in  Adams-Garsia's lemma). In his original work Moser had 1 for $x\\le y$ and 0 for $x>y$ which makes the argument much simpler. The proof below is a modification of the proof or Lemma 3.2 in [F], which was itself a modification of the proof of Lemma 1 in [A]. We note that in [FFV] there is an even more general version of Lemma 3, which appeared after that in [F], but we decided to include its  proof in order to make our results  self contained.\n\n\\bigskip\n\\pf Proof of Lemma 3. Let $E_\\lambda=\\{y\\ge y_1:\\, F(y)\\le \\lambda\\}$ and let $|E_\\lambda|$ be its Lebesgue measure.  Then\n$$\\int_{y_1}^\\infty e^{-F(y)}dy=\\int_{-\\infty}^\\infty |E_\\lambda| e^{-\\lambda}d\\lambda.$$\n\n\n\\proclaim Claim 1. There exists $c\\ge0$ independent of $\\phi$ such that if $E_\\lambda\\neq \\emptyset$, then $\\lambda\\ge -c$, i.e.\n$\\inf_{y\\ge y_1} F(y)\\ge -c>-\\infty$.\\par \\medskip\n\\proclaim Claim 2. There exist $C$ independent of $\\phi$ and $\\lambda$ such that for every $\\lambda\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$\n\n$$|E_\\lambda|\\le C(1+|\\lambda|).\\eqno(36)$$\n\\par\n\nClaims 1 and 2 imply (35) since \n$$\\int_{y_1}^\\infty e^{-F(y)}dy=\\int_{-c}^\\infty |E_\\lambda| e^{-\\lambda}d\\lambda\\le C\\int_{-c}^\\infty (1+|\\lambda|)e^{-\\lambda}d\\lambda,$$\nwhich is a constant independent of $\\phi$.\n\n\\medskip\n\\pf Proof of Claim 1.  It is enough to assume that $\\lambda<0$ and $y_1-\\lambda>0$. If $y\\in E_\\lambda$ then  \n$$\\eqalign{&(y-\\lambda)^{1\\over\\beta}\\le\\int_{y_1}^y\\Big(1+H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)\\phi(x)dx+H\\int_y^\\infty e^{y-x\\over q}\\phi(x)dx\\cr\n& \\le \\bigg(\\int_{y_1}^y \\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta'}\\bigg(\\int_{y_1}^y \\Big(1+H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)^\\beta dx\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+H\n\\bigg(\\int_y^\\infty\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta'}\\bigg(\\int_y^\\infty e^{(y-x){\\beta\\over q}}dx\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta}.\\cr}$$\nNote that for $a,b\\ge0$ and $\\beta\\ge1$ \n$$(a+b)^\\beta\\le a^{\\beta}+\\beta 2^{\\beta-1}(a^{\\beta-1}b+b^{\\beta})\\eqno(37)$$\n(identity at $b=0$, and $b-$derivative of LHS smaller than $b-$derivative of RHS). Hence\n$$\\int_{y_1}^y \\Big(1+H(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)^\\beta dx\\le\\int_{y_1}^y \\Big(1+H_1(1+|x|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big) dx\\le y-y_1+d_1= y+d$$\nsome $d\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$, independent of $y$ (here is where we use $\\gamma>1$).\n\nAs a result, if we let \n$$L(y)=\\bigg(\\int_y^\\infty \\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta'}\\in [0,1].$$\n we have (using (37) again)\n$$\\eqalign{y-\\lambda&\\le \\Big[\\big(1-L(y)^{\\beta'}\\big)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}(y+d)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+CL(y)\\Big]^\\beta\\cr&\\le\n\\big(1-L(y)^{\\beta'}\\big)^{{\\beta\\over\\beta'}}(y+d)+\\beta 2^{\\beta-1}\\Big[\\big(1-L(y)^{\\beta'}\\big)^{\\beta-1\\over\\beta'}(y+d)^{\\beta-1\\over\\beta} CL(y)+C^\\beta L(y)^\\beta\\Big]\\cr}$$\n\nSince $\\beta,\\beta'>1, \\,L(y)\\in[0,1]$ and   $\\big(1-L(y)^{\\beta'}\\big)^{\\beta\\over\\beta'}\\le 1-{\\displaystyle{1\\over\\beta'}}L(y)^{\\beta'}$,\n if we let   $z=(y+d)^{1\/\\beta'}L(y)\\ge0$ we obtain\n$$z^{\\beta'}\\le D z+\\beta' \\lambda+D$$\nfor some constant $D$ (independent of $y$ and $\\phi$.\nSince $z^{\\beta'}-Dz-D$ has a finite negative minimum on $[0,\\infty)$, we deduce that if $E_\\lambda\\neq\\emptyset$ then \n$\\lambda\\ge -c$, for some $c\\ge0$ (independent of $y$ and $\\phi$). \n\n Note also that for large $z$ we have $Dz\\le {1\\over2} z^{\\beta'}$ so that  $z^{\\beta'}\\le C(|\\lambda|+1)$\nor\n$$ (y+d)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}L(y)\\le C(|\\lambda|^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+1)\\eqno(38)$$\nfor some $C$ independent of $y$, $\\phi$, and $\\lambda$.\n\\bigskip\n\\pf Proof of Claim 2. \nIt is enough to  prove that there exist $H>0$ (independent of $\\phi$) such that for any $\\lambda\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$\n$$t_1,t_2\\in E_\\lambda\\, {\\hbox { and }}\\, t_2>t_1>H|\\lambda|+H\\,\\Longrightarrow \\, t_2-t_1\\le H|\\lambda|+H.\\eqno(39)$$\nIndeed, if this is the case, then (recall that $E_\\lambda\\subseteq[y_1,\\infty)$)\n$$\\eqalign{|E_\\lambda|&=\\big|E_\\lambda\\cap\\{t: t\\le H|\\lambda|+H\\}\\big|+\\big|E_\\lambda\\cap\\{t:t>H|\\lambda|+H\\}\\big|\\cr& \\le H|\\lambda|+H-y_1+\\sup_{t_2>t_1>H|\\lambda|+H\\atop t_1,t_2\\in E_\\lambda} (t_2-t_1)\\le C|\\lambda|+C.\\cr} $$\n\nTo show (39), pick $t_1,t_2\\in E_\\lambda$, $\\;t_2>t_1$, so that, arguing  as in the proof of Claim 1\n$$\\eqalign{(t_2-\\lambda)^{{1\\over\\beta}}&\\le \\int_{y_1}^\\infty g(x,t_2)\\phi(x)dx\\le \\bigg(\\int_{y_1}^{t_1}g(x,t_2)^\\beta\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta}}\\bigg(\\int_{y_1}^{t_1}\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}\\cr& \\hskip2em + \\bigg(\\int_{t_1}^{t_2}g(x,t_2)^\\beta\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta}}\\bigg(\\int_{t_1}^{t_2}\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+\\bigg(\\int_{t_2}^{\\infty}g(x,t_2)^\\beta\\bigg)^{1\\over\\beta}\\bigg(\\int_{t_2}^{\\infty}\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}\\cr&\n\\le (t_1+d)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+(t_2-t_1+d_1)^{{1\\over\\beta}}\\bigg(\\int_{t_1}^\\infty\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+C\\bigg(\\int_{t_1}^\\infty\\phi^{\\beta'}\\bigg)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}\\cr &=(t_1+d)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+\\big((t_2-t_1+d)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+C\\big) L(t_1)\\cr}$$\nwhich , using (37) and (38), implies\n$$\\eqalign{t_2-\\lambda&\\le t_1+d+\\beta 2^{\\beta-1}\\bigg[(t_1+d)^{\\beta-1\\over\\beta}\\big((t_2-t_1)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+C\\big)L(t_1)+\\big((t_2-t_1)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+C\\big)^\\beta L(t_1)^\\beta\\bigg]\\cr &\\le\n t_1+d+\\beta 2^{\\beta-1}\\bigg[\\big((t_2-t_1)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+C\\big)(t_1+d)^{{1\\over\\beta'}}L(t_1)+2^\\beta(t_2-t_1)L(t_1)^\\beta+2^\\beta C^\\beta\\bigg]\\cr&\\le\n t_1+\\big((t_2-t_1)^{{1\\over\\beta}}+C\\big)(C|\\lambda|^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+C)+C(t_2-t_1)L(t_1)^\\beta+C\\cr&\n\\le t_1+{t_2-t_1\\over\\beta}+ {(C|\\lambda|^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+C)^{\\beta'}\\over\\beta'}+C(t_2-t_1)L(t_1)^\\beta+C|\\lambda|^{{1\\over\\beta'}}+C.\\cr}$$\n\nHence, \n$$ {t_2-t_1\\over\\beta'}\\le C|\\lambda|+C+C(t_2-t_1)L(t_1)^\\beta\\le C|\\lambda|+C+(t_2-t_1){C|\\lambda|+C\\over t_1+d}$$\nso it follows that there is $C$ so that \n$$t_1+d>2\\beta' C|\\lambda|+2\\beta' C\\,\\Longrightarrow \\, t_2-t_1\\le 2\\beta'C|\\lambda|+2\\beta' C,$$ which is (39). \nClaim 2, Lemma 3 and Theorem 1 are thus completely proven.$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\\bigskip\\medskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 2. Conditions for sharpness}\n\\bigskip\nIn the following theorem we prove that,   under suitable ``geometric\" conditions, equality in (13),  implies that $\\displaystyle{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}$\nin (15) or (16) is sharp, i.e. it cannot be replaced by a larger constant. We state and prove the general vector-valued case, since it does not follow directly from the scalar case, as opposed to the proof of Theorem 1'. It will be apparent from the proof that the same result will also hold for complex-valued operators (see Remark 1 after the proof of Theorem 4).\n\\smallskip\nFor measurable $F:M\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$ and  $K:N\\times M\\to\\overline{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$ let  \n$$TF(y)=\\int_M K(x,y)\\cdot F(y)\\,d\\mu(y)$$\nif the integral is well defined.\n\n\\bigskip\\eject\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 4. Suppose that $k(x,y)=|K(x,y)|$ satisfies\n$$ m(k_1^*,s)=A s^{-\\beta}\\big(1+O(\\log^{-\\gamma} s)\\big),\\qquad {\\hbox { as }} s\\to+\\infty,\\eqno(40)$$\nor equivalently \n$$ k_1^*(t)=A^{1\/\\beta} t^{-1\/\\beta} \\Big(1+O\\big(|\\log t|^{-\\gamma}\\big)\\Big),\\qquad {\\hbox { as }} t\\to0,\\eqno(41)$$\n and \n$$ m(k_2^*,s)\\le B s^{-\\beta_0}$$\nas $s\\to+\\infty$,  for some $\\beta,\\gamma>1$, $\\,0<\\beta_0\\le \\beta$ and $B>0$.\nSuppose that there exist $x_m\\in N$, measurable sets $B_m\\subseteq N,\\, E_m\\subseteq M$, $\\,m\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $, with the following properties:\\medskip\n\\noindent {a)} $E_m\\supseteq\\{y:\\,|K(x_m,y)|>m\\},$  $\\;\\mu(E_m)=O(m^{-\\beta})$, as $m\\to \\infty$\\smallskip\n\\noindent{b)} there exist constants $c_1,c_2>0$ such that $c_1m^{-\\beta_0}\\le \\nu(B_m)\\le  c_2m^{-\\beta_0},\\, m=1,2....$\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{c)} \n$$k^*(x_m,\\cdot)(t)\\ge A^{1\/\\beta}t^{-1\/\\beta}\\Big(1-c_3|\\log t|^{-\\gamma}\\Big),\\quad 0<t<t_0<1\\eqno(42)$$\n\\noindent{d)}\n$$ \\int_{M\\setminus E_m} \\big|\\big(K(x,y)- K(x_m,y)\\big)\\cdot K(x_m,y)\\big|\\, |K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta-2} d\\mu(y)\\le c_4\\,,\\qquad \\forall x\\in B_m\n\\eqno(43)$$\nwith $c_3,c_4$ independent of $x$ and $m$. Then, the Adams inequality (16) holds and it is sharp, in the sense that \n$$\\sup_{F\\in L^{\\beta'}(M)} \\int_N \\exp \\bigg[\\alpha\\,\\bigg({|TF|\\over\\|F\\|_{\\beta'}^{}}\\bigg)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu=+\\infty,\\qquad \\forall \\alpha>{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}.$$\nMore specifically, if a), b) , c) hold and \n$$\\Phi_m(y)=K(x_m,y)|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta-2}\\chi_{M\\setminus E_m}^{}(y)\\eqno(44)$$ then $\\Phi_m\\in\n L^{\\beta'}$ with \n$$\\|\\Phi_m\\|_{\\beta'}^{\\beta'}=A\\,\\log{1\\over\\mu(E_m)}+O(1),\\eqno(45)$$\nand if d) also holds then\n$$\\lim_{m\\to\\infty}\\int_N \\exp \\bigg[\\alpha\\,\\bigg({|T\\Phi_m|\\over\\|\\Phi_m\\|_{\\beta'}^{}}\\bigg)^\\beta\\,\\bigg]d\\nu=+\\infty,\n\\qquad \\forall \\alpha>{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}.\\eqno(46) $$\n\\par\n\\def{\\rm sgn}{{\\rm sgn}}\n\\bigskip\\eject\n\\noindent{\\bf Remarks.} \\smallskip\n\n\\noindent{\\bf 1.} If there is a point $x_0$ such that $k_1^*(t)=k^*(x_0,\\cdot)(t)$ for small $t$, then typically one can choose $x_m=x_0$, so that (42) is automatically true. In the context of metric spaces one can typically choose $E_m$ to be the $m-$th level set of $|K(x_0,y)|$, or a possibly slightly larger set, and $B_m$  a suitable small ball around $x_0$.  In all the applications we know, the only minor technical check  is about  the integral estimate in (43), which  is usually a consequence of H\\\"older continuity  estimates on $K(x,y)$. This point is illustrated clearly in all the applications presented in  section 5.\n\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 2.} In the scalar case  $K(x,y)=k(x,y)$ condition d) obviously becomes\n$$\\int_{M\\setminus E_m} |k(x,y)- k(x_m,y)|\\, |k(x_m,y)|^{\\beta-1} d\\mu(y)\\le c_4\\,,\\qquad \\forall x\\in B_m.\\eqno(47)$$\nIn the vector-valued case condition d) is implied by \n$$\\int_{M\\setminus E_m}|K(x,y)- K(x_m,y)|\\, |K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta-1} d\\mu(y)\\le c_4\\,,\\qquad \\forall x\\in B_m.$$\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 3.} The classical form of a  Moser-Trudinger inequality for a differential (or pseudodifferential) operator of order $d$ takes the form\n$$\\int_N \\exp \\bigg[\\alpha\\,\\bigg({|u|\\over\\|Pu\\|_{p}^{}}\\bigg)^{p'}\\,\\bigg]d\\nu\\le C\\eqno(48)$$\nwhere $P$  acts on a suitable subspace of $L^p(N)$ (usually a Sobolev space). A  lower bound for $\\alpha$ can be achieved via a \n representation formula $u=T(Pu)$, where $T$ is an integral operator with kernel $K$, satisfying the hypothesis of Theorem 1 or 1'. If  the conditions in Theorem 4 are satisfied, then the sharpness of the constant follows immediately if one is able to produce a sequence $u_m$ in the given space such that $Pu_m=\\Phi_m$, the extremizing sequence of Theorem 4. When dealing with scalar functions this is usually possible (see theorems 6 and 10). Another similar  way to obtain an upper bound for $\\alpha$ is  by choosing a suitable sequence of functions $u_m$ and sets $B_m\\subseteq N$ such that $u_m\\ge \\delta_m$ on $B_m$, via the inequality \n$$\\alpha\\le \\liminf_n \\bigg({\\|Pu_m\\|_p\\over\\delta_m}\\bigg)^{p'}\\log{1\\over \\nu(B_m)}\\eqno(49)$$\nwhich follows easily from (48). This approach is slightly more flexible in that the  $u_m$ may not be the exact inverse images of the $\\Phi_m$,  even though they usually differ from those by  negligible terms. \n\n\n\n\n\\bigskip\nThe following Lemma will play an important  role in the proof of Theorem 4:\n\\smallskip\n\\proclaim Lemma 5. Let $f:M\\to {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ be measurable, and $E\\subseteq M$ measurable with $0<\\mu(E)<\\mu(M)$. Let \n$$\\wtilde f(y)=\\cases{\\displaystyle\\mathop{\\rm {ess\\hskip.2em sup}}\\limits_{z\\in M\\setminus E} |f(z)|& if $\\,y\\in E$\\cr\n f(y) & if $\\,y\\in M\\setminus E$.\\cr}$$\nThen\n$$\\wtilde f^*(t)\\ge f^*(t),\\qquad \\mu(E)\\le t\\le \\mu(M).$$\nMoreover,\n$$\\int_{M\\setminus E} |\\wtilde f|^\\beta=\\int_{\\mu(E)}^{\\mu(M)} [\\wtilde f^*(t)]^\\beta dt.$$\n\\par\\medskip\n\\pf Proof of Lemma 5. Suppose first that $f$ is essentially bounded on $M\\setminus E$ (actually this is all we need for the proof of Theorem 4). If $s_0=\\displaystyle\\mathop{\\rm {ess\\hskip.2em sup}}\\limits_{z\\in M\\setminus E} |f(z)|$, then \n$|f|\\le s_0$ a.e. on $M\\setminus E$, so that  $m(f,s_0)\\le \\mu(E)$. This implies\nthat for $ \\mu(E)\\le t\\le  \\mu(M)$ $$f^*(t)\\le f^*\\big(\\mu(E)\\big)=\\inf\\{s:m(f,s)\\le \\mu(E)\\}\\le s_0$$\nwhich proves the claim if $\\wtilde f^*(t)=s_0$ (it cannot be $>s_0)$. On the other hand\n$$\\{y:\\,|\\wtilde f(y)|>s\\}=\\{y:\\,|f(y)|>s\\}\\cup E,\\,\\qquad 0<s<s_0$$\n hence $m(\\wtilde f,s)\\ge m(f,s)$ if $0<s<s_0$, so that if $\\wtilde f^*(t)=\\inf\\{s: m(\\wtilde f,s)\\le t\\}<s_0$, then \n$$\\wtilde f^*(t)=\\inf\\{s<s_0: m(\\wtilde f,s)\\le t\\}<s_0\\}\\ge\\inf\\{s<s_0: m(f,s)\\le t\\}\\ge f^*(t).$$\n\nFor the last statement, note that $\\wtilde f^*(t)=s_0$ for $0<t<\\mu(E)$ (indeed $m(\\wtilde f,s)=0$ for $s\\ge s_0$, and for any $s<s_0$ we have $|\\wtilde f(y)|>s$ on $E$  and on a set of positive measure inside $M\\setminus E$, i.e. $m(\\wtilde f,s)>\\mu(E)$, for $s<s_0$). Hence\n$$\\int_M  |\\wtilde f|^\\beta=\\int_{\\mu(E)}^{\\mu(M)} [\\wtilde f^*(t)]^\\beta dt+s_0^\\beta\\mu(E)$$\nbut also \n$$\\int_M |\\wtilde f|^\\beta =\\int_{M\\setminus E}|\\wtilde f(y)|^\\beta d\\mu(y)+s_0^\\beta \\mu(E).$$\nA standard approximation argument (truncation and the monotone convergence theorem) completes the proof for general $f$.\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\\pf Proof of Theorem 4.  Define for $m\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $ \n$$\\Phi_m(y)=K(x_m,y)|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta\/\\beta'-1}\\chi_{M\\setminus E_m}^{}(y)$$\n$$F_m=\\{y: \\,|K(x_m,y)|>m\\}\\subseteq E_m$$\nso that, by (41) and a), and since $F_m$ is a level set for $|K(x_m,y)|$, \n$$\\eqalign{\\|\\Phi_m\\|_{\\beta'}^{\\beta'}&=\\int_{M\\setminus E_m}|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta}d\\mu(y)\\le \\int_{M\\setminus F_m}|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta}d\\mu(y)=\n\\int_{\\mu(F_m)}^{\\mu(M)} [k^*(x_m,\\cdot)(t)]^\\beta dt\\cr&\\le \\int_{\\mu(F_m)}^{\\mu(M)} A \\Big(1+C(1+|\\log t|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)\\,{dt\\over t}=A\\,\\log{1\\over\\mu(F_m)}+C\\le A\\,\\log{1\\over\\mu(E_m)}+C'\\cr}$$\n(the last inequality follows from the assumptions a) and  c)).\nOn the other hand, if we define \n $$\\wtilde k_m(y)=\\cases{{\\displaystyle{\\rm ess} \\!\\!{\\sup_{\\!\\!\\!\\!\\!\\!z\\in M\\setminus E_m} }}|K(x_m,z)| & if $\\,y\\in E_m$\\cr\\cr |K(x_m,y)| &if $\\,y\\in M\\setminus E_m$\\cr}$$\nthen by Lemma 5 we have $\\wtilde k_m^*(t)\\ge k^*(x_m,\\cdot)(t)$, for $\\mu(E_m)\\le t\\le \\mu(M)$, so that (by (42))\n$$\\eqalignno{\\|\\Phi_m\\|_{\\beta'}^{\\beta'}&=\\int_{M\\setminus E_m}\\!\\!|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta}d\\mu(y)= \\int_{M\\setminus E_m}\\!\\!|\\wtilde k_m(y)|^{\\beta}d\\mu(y)\n=\\int_{\\mu(E_m)}^{\\mu(M)} [\\wtilde k_m^*(x_m,\\cdot)(t)]^\\beta dt\\cr&\\ge \\int_{\\mu(E_m)}^{\\mu(M)} A \\Big(1-C(1+|\\log t|)^{-\\gamma}\\Big)\\,{dt\\over t}= A\\,\\log{1\\over\\mu(E_m)}-C.&(50)\\cr} $$\nwhich gives (45).\nNow, for $x\\in B_m$, using (50) and (43)\n$$\\eqalign{&T\\Phi_m(x)=\\int_M K(x,y)\\cdot\\Phi_m(y)\\,d\\mu(y)=\\int_{M\\setminus E_m} K(x,y)\\cdot K(x_m,y)\\,|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta\/\\beta'-1}\nd\\mu(y)\\cr&=\\int_{M\\setminus E_m} |K(x_m,y)|^{1+\\beta\/\\beta'}d\\mu(y)+\\int_{M\\setminus E_m}\\Big(K(x,y)- K(x_m,y)\\Big)\\cdot K(x_m,y)|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta\/\\beta'-1}\\,d\\mu(y)\\cr& \\ge A\\log{1\\over \\mu(E_m)}- C\n\\cr}$$\nwith $C$ independent of $m$. Hence, if $\\,\\wtilde \\Phi_m=\\Phi_m  \\|\\Phi_m\\|_{\\beta'}^{-1}$\nand  $x\\in B_m$\n$$ T\\wtilde \\Phi_m(x)\\ge {A\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over \\mu(E_m)}- C\\over \\Big(A\\,\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over\\mu(E_m)}\\Big)^{1\/\\beta'}+O(1)}=\\Big(A\\log{1\\over \\mu(E_m)}\\Big)^{1\/\\beta}+O(1).$$\nFinally, if $\\alpha> \\displaystyle{\\beta_0\\over A\\beta}$\n$$\\eqalign{\\int_N \\exp\\Big[\\alpha |T\\wtilde \\Phi_m(x)|^\\beta\\Big]d\\nu(x)&\\ge \\int_{B_m}e^c \\exp\\Big[\\alpha A\\log{1\\over \\mu(E_m)}\\Big] \\,d\\nu(x)\\cr& =e^c\\nu(B_m)\\big(\\mu(E_m)\\big)^{-\\alpha A}\\ge C m^{-\\beta_0+\\alpha A \\beta}\\to+\\infty.\\cr}$$\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\\bigskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Remark 1.}  It is clear from the proof just shown that Theorem 4 holds almost verbatim when $K$ is complex-valued and $T$  acts on complex-valued functions. The functions $\\Phi_m$  need only to be replaced by\n$$\\Phi_m(y)=\\overline {K(x_m,y)}\\,|K(x_m,y)|^{\\beta -2}\\chi_{M\\setminus E_m}^{}(y)$$\n\\vskip1em\n\\noindent{\\bf 3. Sharpness in $\\gamma$}\n\\bigskip\nIn this section we show that if $\\gamma\\le 1$ in (13) then  the conclusion of Theorem 1 is in general false. We do this by considering the simplest setting,  namely $N=M=B(0,1)=\\{x\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}:\\,|x|\\le1\\}$, $0<d<n,\\,\\beta'={\\displaystyle {n\\over d}},\\, \\beta=\\beta_0={\\displaystyle{n\\over n- d}}$\n$$T_ d f(x)=\\int_{B(0,1)} |x-y|^{ d-n}\\bigg(1+{1\\over 1+\\big|\\log|x-y|\\big|}\\bigg) f(y)dy\\,\\qquad f\\in L^{\\beta'}\\big(B(0,1)\\big).$$\nAs we mentioned previously, in this case $A=\\displaystyle{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}.$ For $0<r<1$ consider $f_r(x)=|x|^{- d}\\chi_{\\{r\\le|x|\\le1\\}}^{}(x)$, so that $\\|f_r\\|_{\\beta'}^{}=\\big(\\omega_{n-1}\\log\\displaystyle{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\big)^{1\/\\beta'}$. Letting $\\wtilde f_r(x)=f_r(x)\\|f_r\\|_{\\beta'}^{-1}$ we obtain\n$$\\eqalign{\\big(\\omega_{n-1}&\\log\\displaystyle{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\big)^{1\/\\beta'}T_ d\\wtilde f_r(x)=\\int_r^1s^{n-1- d} ds\\int_{S^{n-1}} \n\\big||x|e_1-s\\sigma\\big|^{ d-n}\\bigg(1+{1\\over1+\\Big|\\log\\big||x|e_1-s\\sigma\\big|\\Big|}\\bigg)d\\sigma \\cr\n&=\\int_{|x|}^{|x|\/r} {dt\\over t}\\int_{S^{n-1}} \n|te_1-\\sigma|^{ d-n}\\bigg(1+{1\\over1+\\big|\\log|te_1-\\sigma|+\\log|x|-\\log t\\big|}\\bigg)d\\sigma\n\\cr\n& =\\int_{|x|}^{|x|\/r} {dt\\over t}\\int_{S^{n-1}} \n\\bigg(1+{1\\over1+\\big|\\log|te_1-\\sigma|+\\log|x|-\\log t\\big|}\\bigg)d\\sigma+\\cr&\\hskip2em+ \\int_{|x|}^{|x|\/r} {dt\\over t}\\int_{S^{n-1}} \n\\big(|te_1-\\sigma|^{ d-n}-1\\big)\\bigg(1+{1\\over1+\\big|\\log|te_1-\\sigma|+\\log|x|-\\log t\\big|}\\bigg)d\\sigma.\\cr\n}$$\n\n\\noindent If $|x|\\le r\/2$ and  $|x|\\le t\\le |x|\/r$, then $\\log{1\\over2}\\le \\log|te_1-\\sigma|\\le\\log{3\\over2}$ and $\\big||te_1-\\sigma|^{ d-n}-1\\big|\\le Ct,$ \nso that the second  term above is bounded, for $|x|\\le r\/2$, and \n$$\\eqalign{T_ d \\wtilde f_r(x)&\\ge{\\omega_{n-1}^{1\/\\beta}\\over \\big(\\log{\\ts {\\ts {1\\over r}}}\\big)^{1\/\\beta'}}\\bigg[\\int_{|x|}^{|x|\/r}\\bigg(1+{1\\over 1+\\log2+\\log t-\\log|x|}\\bigg){dt\\over t}-C\\bigg]\\cr&\\hskip-3em\\ge {\\omega_{n-1}^{1\/\\beta}\\over \\big(\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\big)^{1\/\\beta'}}\\bigg[\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}+\\log\\bigg(1+{\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\over1+\\log 2}\\bigg)-C\\bigg]\\ge \\big(\\omega_{n-1}\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\big)^{1\/\\beta}\\bigg[1+{\\log \\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\over2\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}}\\bigg]\n\\cr}$$\nfor $0<r\\le r_0<1$, with $r_0$ small enough. Finally, for $r\\le r_0$ \n$$\\eqalign{\\int_{B(0,1)} \\exp\\bigg[{n\\over \\omega_{n-1}}&\\big(T_ d \\wtilde f_r\\big)^\\beta\\bigg] dx\\ge\\int_{B(0,r\/2)}\n\\exp\\bigg[n\\log{1\\over r}\\bigg(1+{\\log \\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}\\over2\\log{\\ts {1\\over r}}}\\bigg)^\\beta\\bigg]dx\\cr\n&\\ge {\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\Big({r\\over2}\\Big)^n r^{-n} \\exp\\Big[{\\ts{1\\over2}}n\\beta\\log\\log{1\\over r}\\Big]={\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\, 2^{-n} \\big(\\log\\ts{1\\over r}\\big)^{n\\beta\/2}\\to+\\infty,\\cr\n}$$\nas $r\\to0$.\n\n\n\n\\bigskip\n\\bigskip\n\\centerline{\\bf PART II: APPLICATIONS}\n\\bigskip\\bigskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 4. Adams and Moser-Trudinger trace inequalities}\n\\bigskip\n\nAs a first illustration of our theorems we give a simultaneous extension of Adams' original results in [Ad], and Cianchi's recent sharp Moser-Trudinger trace inequality in [Ci1]\n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[\\lambda\\omega_{n-1}^{1\\over n-1}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over \\|\\nabla u \\|_{L^n(\\Omega)}}\\bigg)^{n\\over n-1}\\bigg]\\,d\\nu(x)\\le C\\eqno(51)$$\nvalid for all $u\\in W_0^n(\\Omega)$, where $L^n(\\Omega)$ and $W_0^n(\\Omega)$ are w.r. to the Lebesgue measure, and where $\\nu$ denotes a positive Borel measure on $\\Omega$ such that \n$$\\exists \\lambda\\in(0,n]\\,\\, {\\rm and }\\,\\, r_0>0\\,\\,:\\,\\,\\nu\\Big(B(x,r)\\cap \\Omega\\Big)\\le C r^\\lambda,\\qquad \\forall x\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n,\\,\\, \\forall r\\in(0,r_0].\\eqno(52)$$\nHere and throughout the rest of this work \n$$B(x,r)=\\{ y\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n: |y-x|<r\\}.$$\nNote that (51) is itself an extension of Adams' original result when $\\lambda=n$, in the special case of the gradient. Cianchi's results are given in the slightly more general framework of Lorentz-Sobolev spaces.\n\n\nAs an immediate consequence of our general theorem we will now derive  Cianchi's result, for arbitrary powers of the Laplacian and their gradients.   In other words, we will   extend Adams' result (2), in the case of measures satisfying (52). \n\n\nIn the following,  by  $L^p(\\Omega)$ we mean the space of Lebesgue measurable functions $f$  on $\\Omega$ such that $\\|f\\|_p:=\\Big(\\int_\\Omega |f|^pdx\\Big)^{1\/p}<\\infty$.\nAlso,  $\\Delta$ will always denote the positive\nLaplacian on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$. The fractional powers of $\\Delta$ are defined on the Schwarz \nclass $\\S$ as\n$$(\\Delta^{ d\/2} \\phi)\\;{\\widehat{\\vphantom{S}}}\\;(\\xi)=(\\;2\\pi|\\xi|\\;)^ d\\;\\widehat\\phi(\\xi)\\,,\n\\qquad\\phi\\in \\S.$$\nHere $ d\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ and the Fourier transform is defined as  $\\;\\widehat\\phi(\\xi)=\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n \ne^{-2\\pi i x\\cdot\\xi} \\phi(x)dx$. By duality we can extend $\\Delta^{ d\/2} $ to an operator\nacting on $\\S'$, the space of tempered distributions.\n\nWhen $0< d<n$ and $f\\in L^p(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$, $p\\ge1$, the equation $\\Delta^{ d\/2} \\phi=f$ has a unique \nsolution in $L^q$, with $q^{-1}=p^{-1}- d\/n$. This solution is given\nexplicitly in terms of  the Riesz potential \n$$\\Delta^{- d\/2}f(x)=c_ d\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n |x-y|^{ d-n}f(y)dy\\eqno(53)$$\nwith\n$$c_ d={\\Gamma\\big({n- d\\over2}\\big)\\over 2^ d\\pi^{n\/2}\\Gamma\\big({ d\\over2}\\big)}.\\eqno(54)$$ \n\nIn other words, the distributional Fourier transform of the RHS\nof (53) coincides with $(2\\pi|\\xi|)^{- d}\\widehat f(\\xi)$. \n\nThe usual Sobolev space on ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$ is denoted by $W^{ d,p}(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$ and the space $W_0^{ d,p}(\\Omega)$ is the closure of $C_0^\\infty(\\Omega)$ in $W^{ d,p}(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$.\n\\medskip\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 6. Let $\\Omega$ be open and bounded on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$, $n\\ge3$, and let $\\nu$ be a positive Borel  measure  on $\\Omega$ satisfying (52). For $0< d<n$, $ d\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $, let $p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d}$ and  $\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}=1}$. Then, there exists $C$ such that\n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[{\\lambda\\,c_ d^{-p'}\\over \\omega_{n-1}}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|\\Delta^{d\/2}u\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\nu(x)\\le C,\\qquad  d {\\hbox{ even}}\\eqno(55)$$\nand\n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[{\\lambda\\over\\omega_{n-1}}\\big(c_{ d+1}(n- d-1)\\big)^{-p'}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|\\nabla\\Delta^{{ d-1}\\over2}u\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\nu(x)\\le C,\\qquad  d {\\hbox{ odd}}\\eqno(56)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{ d,p}(\\Omega)$. The constants appearing inside the exponents in (55) and (56) are sharp, provided there exists $x_0\\in\\Omega$ such that $\\nu\\big(B(x_0,r)\\cap \\Omega\\big)\\ge C_1 r^\\lambda$ for $0< r\\le r_1$, some $r_1,C_1>0$.\n  \\par\n\n\\bigskip\n\nWhen $\\lambda=n$ and $ d=m$ one recovers the constants $\\beta(m,n)$ appearing in [Ad1]. When $ d=1$  the constant in \n(56) coincides with that of Cianchi, for $0<\\lambda\\le n$. \n\\medskip\nIt is clear that it is enough to  prove the theorem if $u$ is smooth  with compact support inside $\\Omega$. Secondly, for $ d$ even\n$$u(x)=c_ d\\int_{\\Omega} |x-y|^{ d-n} \\Delta^{ d\/2}u(y)dy$$ \nand for $ d$ odd\n$$u(x)=c_{ d+1}(n- d-1)\\int_\\Omega |x-y|^{ d-n-1}(x-y)\\cdot\\nabla \\Delta^{{ d-1\\over2}}u(y)dy,\\eqno(57)$$ \nand therefore the inequalities of Theorem 6 are instant consequences of the following:\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 7. Let $\\Omega$ be open and bounded on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$, $n\\ge1$, and let $\\nu$ be a positive Borel  measure  on $\\Omega$ satisfying (52). For $0< d<n$, let $p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d}$ and  $\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}=1}$. Define for $f:\\Omega\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$, $f\\in L^p(\\Omega)$\n$$Tf(x)=\\int_\\Omega |x-y|^{ d-n} f(y)dy$$\nand for $F:\\Omega\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$, $F\\in L^p(\\Omega)$\n$$T_1F(x)=\\int_\\Omega |x-y|^{ d-n-1}(x-y)\\cdot F(y)dy.$$\nThen, there exists $C$ such that\n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[{\\lambda\\over \\omega_{n-1}}\\bigg({|Tf(x)|\\over\\|f\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\nu(x)\\le C\\eqno(58)$$\nfor every $f\\in L^p(\\Omega)$, and\n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[{\\lambda\\over\\omega_{n-1}}\\bigg({|T_1F(x)|\\over\\|F\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\nu(x)\\le C\\eqno(59)$$\nfor every $F\\in L^p(\\Omega)$. The constant $\\displaystyle{\\lambda\\over \\omega_{n-1}}$ in (58) and (59) is sharp, provided there exists $x_0\\in\\Omega$ such that $\\nu\\big(B(x_0,r)\\cap \\Omega\\big)\\ge C_1 r^\\lambda$, for $0< r\\le r_1$, some $r_1,C_1>0$.\n \\par\n\n\\pf  Proof.\nIt is easy to check that if $k(x,y)=|x-y|^{ d-n}$ then for large $s$\n\n$$m(k_1^*,s)={\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}s^{-{n\\over n- d}}$$\nand, using (52),\n$$m(k_2^*,s)\\le C s^{-{\\lambda\\over n- d}},$$\nso that  Theorems 1-1' immediately imply (58), (59). To verify sharpness, according to Theorem 4, (and Remark 1 following it) first assume WLOG that $x_0=0\\in \\Omega$,  then take  $x_m=0\\in\\Omega,$ and   $m,R$ large enough so that \n\n$$ \\{y\\in\\Omega:\\,|K(0,y)|>m\\,\\}= B(0, m^{-p'\/n})\\subseteq\\Omega\\subseteq B(0,R),\\eqno(60)$$\nand let $$r_m=m^{-p'\/n},\\;\\; E_m=B(0,r_m)\\;\\;B_m=B(0,\\ts{1\\over2}r_m)\\eqno(61)$$\nwith either $K(x,y)= |x-y|^{ d-n} $ or $K(x,y)= |x-y|^{ d-n-1}(x-y)$. Conditions a), b), c) of Theorem 4 are met, with $\\beta=n\/(n- d)$ and $\\beta_0=\\lambda\/(n- d)$, so all we need to check is d), i.e.\n\n$$\\int_{\\Omega\\setminus E_m} \\big|\\big(K(x,y)- K(0,y)\\big)\\cdot K(0,y)\\big|\\, |K(0,y)|^{p'-2} dy\\le C\\,,\\qquad  |x|\\le {r_m\\over2}$$\nfor either kernel. If $K(x,y)= |x-y|^{ d-n} $ we need to check\n\n$$\\sup_{|x|\\le r_m\/2}\\;\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} |y|^{- d}\\Big||x-y|^{ d-n}-|y|^{ d-n}\\Big|dy\\le C\\eqno(62)$$\nfor some $C$ independent of $m$, but this  estimate is an   immediate consequence of \n$$|x-y|^{ d-n}\\le |y|^{d-n}\\Big|{x\\over|y|}-{y\\over|y|}\\Big|^{ d-n}\\le 2^{n- d} |y|^{ d-n}\\eqno(63)$$\nand\n$$ |y|^{- d}\\Big||x-y|^{ d-n}-|y|^{ d-n}\\Big|\\le C|y|^{-n}\\bigg|1-\\Big|{x\\over|y|}-{y\\over|y|}\\Big|^{n- d}\\bigg|\\le C|x||y|^{-n-1},\\eqno(64)$$\nboth valid for any $ d<n$ (even negative) and $|x|\\le{r_m\\over2},\\;|y|\\ge r_m$. \n\\medskip\nIf instead $K(x,y)= |x-y|^{ d-n-1}(x-y)$ then we are reduced to\n$$\\sup_{|x|\\le r_m\/2}\\;\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} \\Big||x-y|^{ d-n-1}(x\\cdot y-|y|^2)+|y|^{d-n+1}\\Big|\\,|y|^{- d-1}dy\\le C$$\nwhich is implied by\n$$\\sup_{|x|\\le r_m\/2}\\;\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} |x|\\,|y|^{- d}\\,|x-y|^{d-n-1}dy\\le C$$\n$$\\sup_{|x|\\le r_m\/2}\\;\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} \\Big||x-y|^{ d-1-n}-|y|^{d-1-n}\\Big|\\,|y|^{-( d-1)}dy\\le C,$$\nand both of these are also easy consequences of (63) and (64). \n\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\n\\noindent{\\bf Proof of Theorem 6}. The inequalities of Theorem 6 follows from the formulas\n$$u(x)=Tf(x)=\\int_{\\Omega} |x-y|^{d-n} f(y) dy,\\qquad f=c_d\\Delta^{d\/2}u$$\nfor $d$ even, and \n$$u(x)=T_1F(x)=\\int_\\Omega |x-y|^{d-n-1}(x-y)\\cdot F(y)dy,\\qquad F(y)=c_{d+1}(n-d-1)\\nabla\\Delta^{d-1\\over2}u$$\n for $d$ odd.\n\nAs far as the sharpness statement, the proof we give below is a slight modification of  Adams' original method. We include some details here since similar formulas  will be used later in the proof  of  Theorem 12. It is possible however to give a proof based on our Theorem 4 by using representation formulas via the Green function of $\\Delta^{d\/2}$ on the unit ball, with zero boundary conditions. Later in theorem 10 we will give a  sharp inequality for more general (scalar) operators, and the proof of sharpness given there is a more direct application of Theorem 4, and applies also to the case $d$ even of the present theorem (see remark 2 after the proof of theorem 10). \n\n\nLet $r_m\\to0^+$ and $B_m=B(0,r_m)\\subseteq \\Omega$, for $m$ large enough.\n\n\n Next, pick any $\\delta\\ge0  $ and  $\\varphi\\in C^\\infty([\\delta,1+\\delta])$ such that  $\\varphi^{(k)}(\\delta)=0$ for $0\\le k\\le \\ell$, some $\\ell\\ge d$, and $\\varphi(1+\\delta)=1+\\delta, \\varphi'(1+\\delta)=1$, $\\varphi^{(k)}(1+\\delta)=0$ for $2\\le k\\le \\ell$.\n\nDefine for $m$ large enough \n$$u_m(y)=\\cases{0 &  for $\\;|y|\\ge e^{-\\delta}$\\cr \\varphi\\Big(\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over |y|}\\Big) & for $\\;e^{-1-\\delta}\\le |y|<e^{-\\delta}$\\cr  \\log\\displaystyle{1\\over|y|} & for $\\;e^{1+\\delta} r_m\\le |y|< e^{-1-\\delta}$\\cr   \\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-\\varphi\\Big({\\log\\displaystyle{|y|\\over r_m}\\Big)} & for $\\;e^\\delta r_m\\le|y|<e^{1+\\delta} r_m$\\cr \n\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}& for $\\;|y|<e^\\delta r_m.$\\cr}\\eqno(65)$$ \n\n Then, if we pick $\\delta$ large enough we have $u_m\\in W_0^{d,p}(\\Omega)$ and it is easy to check that for $d$ even\n$$\\Delta^{d\/2}u_m(y)=\\cases{ \\displaystyle{|y|^{-d}\\over \\omega_{n-1}c_d}& if \n$e^{1+\\delta} r_m<|y|< e^{-1-\\delta}$\\cr\\cr O(1)|y|^{-d} & if $e^\\delta r_m<|y|<e^{1+\\delta} r_m$\\cr\\cr O(1) & otherwise\\cr}$$\nand\n$$\\|\\Delta^{d\/2}u_m\\|_p^{p'}={1\\over\\omega_{n-1} c_d^{p'}}\\Big(\\log{1\\over r_m}\\Big)^{p'\/p}+O(1).$$\nThis means that if  $$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[\\alpha \\,\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|\\Delta^{d\/2}u\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\nu(x)\\le C$$\nholds for all $u\\in W^{d,p}(\\Omega)$, then according to (49)\n$$\\alpha\\le \\liminf_n\\Bigg({\\|\\Delta^{d\/2} u_m\\|_p\\over\\log(1\/r_m)}\\bigg)^{p'}\\log{1\\over\\nu(B_m)}={\\lambda\\over \\omega_{n-1} c_d^{p'}}.$$\nThe proof in the case $d$ odd is completely similar, and based on the identity \n$$\\nabla\\Delta^{d-1\\over2}\\log{1\\over|y|}={(d-1)y|y|^{-d-1}\\over \\omega_{n-1}c_{d-1}}=-{y|y|^{-d-1}\\over \\omega_{n-1}(n-d-1)c_{d+1}}.$$\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\nWe remark here that the above theorem can be formulated and proved  in the setting of compact Riemannian manifolds, in the same spirit as in [F]. The point is that such theorem holds for any pseudodifferential operator of order $d$, whose leading symbol is $\\Delta^{ d\/2}$ (see next section for even a more a general result). For such operators the fundamental solution $k(P,Q)$ satisfies locally\n$$k(P,Q)=c_ d d(P,Q)^{ d-n}\\Big(1+O\\big(d(P,Q)^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)\\Big)$$\nfor some $\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t>0$, where $P,Q$ are points on the manifold, and $d(P,Q)$ is their Riemannian distance. Under these conditions it is easy to check that\n$$k_1^*(t)={\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}(c_ d)^{-p'}t^{-1\/p'}\\Big(1+O\\big(t^{-1\/p'+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)\\Big)$$\nfor small $t$, and it is clear that the estimate $k_2^*(t)\\le C t^{-n\/(\\lambda p')}$ would follow if the underlying  Borel measure $\\nu$ satisfies $\\nu\\big(B(P,r)\\big)\\le Cr^\\lambda$, for small geodesic balls $B(P,r)$. These facts, and similar ones for vector-valued operators, imply  inequalities  such as  those of Theorems 6 and 7, and the sharpness statements are proven in essentially the same manner.\n\n\nIt would also be possible to extend this theorem to general Lorentz-Sobolev space, in the same spirit as in [Ci1], with  suitable and  slightly more general versions of our theorems 1,1' and 4, which for simplicity we only treated in the  $L^p$ setting.\n\n\nFinally, we wish to remark that our proof of Theorem 6 is of a somewhat different nature than the  one given by Cianchi in [Ci1]. In the special case $ d=1$ Cianchi started by applying the Sobolev inequality\n$$\\|\\Psi\\|_{L^{\\lambda p\\over n-p}(\\Omega,d\\nu)}^{}\\le C\\|\\nabla \\Psi\\|_{L^p(\\Omega)}^{}\\eqno(66)$$\nfor some suitable $p<n$, with $\\Psi(x)=\\exp\\Big[\\displaystyle{n-p\\over p}\\,\\omega_{n-1}^{1\\over n-1}\\, |u|^{n'}(x)\\Big]-1$. Note that (66) holds on $W_0^{1,p}$ and it is a special case of a general Sobolev inequality derived by Adams [Ad2], [Ad3]. Next, the fact that $\\nabla e^u=e^u \\nabla u$ combined with clever use of rearrangement inequalities and O'Neil's\/Adams-Garsia's lemmas allowed Cianchi to obtain the result. However, it is unclear to us how to efficiently apply this stategy to arbitrary order derivatives.\n\n \n\\vskip1em\\eject\n\\noindent{\\bf 5.  Sharp Moser-Trudinger inequalities for general elliptic differential operators}\n\\bigskip\n\nIn this section we extend Adams' original inequality to general elliptic differential operators on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$. We then specialize to particular cases. Some of these results can perhaps be further extended to suitable elliptic pseudodifferential operators, operators on manifolds, or even non-elliptic operators, but we will not treat such cases here.  \n\nThe structure of the fundamental solution of general elliptic operators is best explained by use of the pseudodifferential calculus, which we now very briefly recall.\n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf Note.} \nThroughout this section all  functions will be {\\it complex-valued}, unless otherwise specified.\n\\smallskip\n\\def{$\\Psi$DO} {{$\\Psi$DO} }\nA pseudodifferential ({$\\Psi$DO} ) operator of order $d\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$\non an open set $U\\subset\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$ \nis an operator $P:C_c^\\infty(U)\\rightarrow C^\\infty(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$ of type \n$$Pf(x)=\\op(p)f(x):=\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n\\!\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n e^{2\\pi i(x-y)\\cdot\\xi}p(x,\\xi)f(y)dyd\\xi$$\nwhere $p\\in C^\\infty(U\\times\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$, the symbol of $P$, satisfies\n $$|\\partial_x^\\beta \\partial_\\xi^\\alpha p(x,\\xi)|\\le C_{ d,\\beta,K} (1+|\\xi|)^{d-|\\alpha|},\\qquad x\\in K,\\, \\xi\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$$\n for any $K\\subset U$ compact, and any multiindices $\\alpha,\\beta$ (where $C$ is independent of $x,\\,\\xi$), and where $\\partial^{\\alpha}_x=\\partial_{x_1}^{i_1},...\\partial_{x_n}^{i_n}$, if $\\alpha=(i_1,...,i_n)$.\n\nA classical, or polyhomogeneous, $\\Psi$DO of order $d$ is given by a symbol $p(x,\\xi)$ such that\n\n\\smallskip\n\\noindent i) there is a sequence of functions $p_{d-j}(x,\\xi)\\in C^\\infty(U,\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B})$ which are homogeneous of order $d-j$ in $\\xi$, for $|\\xi|\\ge1$:\n $$p_{d-j}(x,t\\xi)=t^{d-j}p_{d-\nj}(x,\\xi), \\qquad t\\ge1,\\;\\;|\\xi|\\ge1,\\;\\;j=0,1,2... $$\n\n\n\n\\smallskip\\noindent ii) $p$ has the asymptotic expansion\n$p\\sim \\sum_{j=0}^\\infty p_{d-j},$ that is\n$$\\Big|\\partial_x^\\beta \\partial_\\xi^\\alpha \\Big[p(x,\\xi)-\\sum_{j=0}^{N-1} p_{d-\nj}(x,\\xi)\\Big]\\Big|\\le C_{\\alpha,\\beta,K,N} (1+|\\xi|)^{d-|\\alpha|-N},\\qquad x\\in K,\\,\\xi\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$$\nfor any $M\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $, any multiindices $\\alpha,\\beta$, and any compact set $K\\subset U$.\n\nThe principal symbol of such $P$ is the function $p_d(x,\\xi)$ and the strictly homogeneous symbol\nis defined by \n$$p_d^0(x,\\xi)=|\\xi|^d p_d(x,{\\xi\/|\\xi|}),\\qquad \\xi\\neq0,$$\nthat is the unique function on ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n\\setminus \\{0\\}$ which coincides with $p_d$ for $|\\xi|\\ge1$, and which is homogeneous\nor order $d$ in $\\xi\\in \\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}\\setminus\\{0\\}$.\n\nFrom now on we will consider only classical  {$\\Psi$DO} $\\!\\!$.\nEvery {$\\Psi$DO}  can be written as an integral operator with kernel\n$$K_P(x,y)=\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n e^{2\\pi i(x-y)\\cdot\\xi}p(x,\\xi)d\\xi$$\ndefined in the sense of oscillatory integrals, and $C^\\infty$ off the diagonal. If $K_P$ is $C^\\infty(U\\times U)$ then $K_P$ is called  smoothing (or negligible) operator.\n\n\nFor a classical {$\\Psi$DO}  $T$ of order $d$, with $-n\\le d< 0$  the  Schwarz kernel of $T$ has an expansion \n$$K(x,y)=\\mathop{\\sum}\\limits_{0\\le j<n-d}  k_{d-n+j}(x,x-y)+c(x)\\log|x-y|+O(1)\\eqno(67)$$\nwith $k_{d-n-j}(x,z)$ homogeneous of order $d-n-j$ in $z\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}\\setminus\\{0\\}$, $c(x)$ continuous on $U$, and $O(1)$ continuous and bounded on $K\\times K$ for any $K\\subset U$ compact. This fact is standard, (see e.g. [Ca], Theorem 28) and follows  from taking the inverse   Fourier transform of the expansion of the symbol of $T$.\nTo be more specific,  let  $T$ have symbol $q$ with\n$$q\\sim \\sum_{j=0}^\\infty q_{-d-j}\\quad x\\in U,\\, |\\xi|\\ge1,\\eqno(68)$$\nwhere $q_{-d-j}$ are homogeneous of order $-d-j$ for $|\\xi|\\ge 1$, and let  \n${\\cal F} u=\\hat u$ denote  the Fourier transform  on tempered distributions. Then for  $j<n-d$ the $q_{-d-j}^0$ are integrable around the origin, so that  modulo a smooth function ${\\cal F}^{-1}\\big[q_{-d-j}^0(x,\\cdot)\\big](z)$ coincides with\n$$k_{d-n-j}(x,z):={\\cal F}^{-1} \\big[q_{-d-j}^0(x,\\cdot)\\big](z)\\eqno(69)$$\nwhich  is a homogeneous function of order $d-n-j$ in $z$, smooth in $x$ and in $z\\neq 0$. When $j=n-d$ (which can only happen for integer $d$), then one can show (see [Ca], Theorem 27) that \n$${\\cal F}^{-1} \\big[q_{-n}(x,\\xi)](z)=c(x)\\log{1\\over|z|}+O(1)\\eqno(70)$$\nas $z\\to0$, with $c$ continuous, and in fact $c(x)=\\displaystyle{\\int_{S^{n-1}}} q_{-n}^0(x,\\omega)d\\omega$ (the term $O(1)$ is in fact the sum of a  $C^\\infty(\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}\\setminus0)$ homogeneous function of degree $0$ and a polynomial). Finally, the inverse Fourier transform of the error term $q-\\sum_{j\\le n-d}q_{-d-j}$ is easily estimated to be $O(1)$. \n\n\nA {$\\Psi$DO}   operator $P$ is elliptic, if\n$$p_d(x,\\xi)\\neq0,\\qquad x\\in U,\\,|\\xi|\\ge 1$$\ni.e. $p_d^0(x,\\xi)\\neq 0$ for $\\xi\\neq0$.  For elliptic operators one can construct a parametrix $G$, i.e. a {$\\Psi$DO}  of order $-d$ such that $GP-I=PG-I$ is smoothing. The  symbol $q(x,\\xi)$ of $G$ has an expansion like (68), where the $q_{-d-j}$  are determined from the symbol of $P$. In particular\n$$ q_{-d}(x,\\xi)={1\\over p_d(x,\\xi)}, \\quad x\\in U,\\, |\\xi|\\ge1$$\nso that the  parametrix admits a kernel expansion (67), with leading term given by \n$$k_{d-n}(x,x-y)={\\cal F}^{-1} \\big[p_{-d}(x,\\cdot)^{-1}\\big](x-y)=|x-y|^{d-n} g\\big(x,{y-x\\over|y-x|}\\big)\\eqno(71)$$\nwith $$g(x,\\omega)=\\bigg({1\\over p_d^0(x,\\cdot)}\\bigg)^\\wedge (\\omega),\\qquad\\omega\\in S^{n-1}\\eqno(72)$$\nthe restriction of $k_{d-n}(x,\\cdot)$ (which is $C^\\infty({\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}-\\setminus\\{0\\})$) to the sphere.\n\n\\medskip\\smallskip\\bigskip\n\\noindent{\\it  Sharp inequalities  for the potential case}\\medskip\n\\medskip\nThe precise asymptotic expansion of the parametrix operator $G$ suggests the following general theorem:\n\\bigskip\n\\proclaim Theorem 8. Let $\\Omega$ be open and bounded on $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$,  and let $K:\\Omega\\times \\Omega\\to\\overline {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ be  measurable and such that\n$$K(x,y)=g\\Big(x,{y-x\\over|y-x|}\\Big)\\,|x-y|^{ d-n}+O\\big(|x-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)\\eqno(73)$$ \nwhere $g:\\Omega\\times S^{n-1}\\to {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ is measurable and bounded, and $\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t>0$.  For $0< d<n$, $\\,p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d}$, $\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}}=1$, let, for $x\\in \\Omega$ \n$$Tf(x)=\\int_\\Omega K(x,y)f(y)dy,\\quad f\\in L^p(\\Omega).$$ Then there exists $C>0$ such that \n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[A^{-1}\\bigg({|Tf(x)|\\over \\|f\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\le C\\eqno(74)$$\nfor all $f\\in L^p(\\Omega)$, with \n$$A={1\\over n}\\,\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{S^{n-1}}|g(x,\\omega)|^{p'}d\\omega.\\eqno(75)$$ \n\\eject\nIf the supremum in (75) is attained at some $x_0\\in\\Omega$, and if $g(\\cdot,\\omega)$ is H\\\"older continuous of order $\\sigma\\in (0,1]$ at $x_0$ uniformly w.r. to $\\omega$, i.e. if \n$$|g(x,\\omega)-g(x_0,\\omega)|\\le C|x-x_0|^\\sigma \\qquad |x-x_0|\\le \\delta,\\;\\omega\\in S^{n-1}$$ and  $g(x_0,\\cdot)$ is  H\\\"older continuous of order $\\sigma$ on $S^{n-1}$\nthen the constant $A^{-1}$ in (74) is sharp. In particular, there is  a suitable sequence  $r_m\\to 0$ such that if   $\\,E_m=B(x_0, r_m)\\subseteq \\Omega$ and  $\\Phi_m(y)=K(x_0,y)|K(x_0,y)|^{p'-2}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus E_m}^{}(y)$, then $\\Phi_m\\in\n L^{p}$ and\n$$\\lim_{m\\to\\infty}\\int_\\Omega \\exp \\bigg[\\alpha\\,\\bigg({|T\\Phi_m|\\over\\|\\Phi_m\\|_{p}^{}}\\bigg)^{p'}\\,\\bigg]dx=+\\infty,\n\\qquad \\forall \\alpha>{1\\over A}.$$\n\n\n\n\\par\n\\medskip\n\\noindent {\\bf Remarks.}\\smallskip\\noindent {\\bf 1.} Cohn and Lu were the first to consider Adams inequalities for potentials of simpler type $g(y\/|y|)|y|^{d-n}$, and the analogous version on the Heisenberg group ([CoLu1]).\\smallskip \\noindent {\\bf 2.} The H\\\"older continuity  condition on $g$ can be relaxed to an integral condition similar to that used in [CoLu1].\n\\medskip\n\n In view of Theorems 1 and 4 it is clear that to prove Theorem 8 it would essentially suffice to estimate the distribution function of the kernel $K$. This is done in the following lemma:\n\\proclaim Lemma 9. Suppose that $K$  is as in Theorem 8, satisfying (73) with $g$ bounded and measurable. Then for $s>0$ \n$$\\sup_{x\\in\\Omega} \\,|\\{y\\in\\Omega: \\,|K(x,y)|>s\\}|\\le   A s^{-p'}+O(s^{-p'-\\sigma})\\eqno(76)$$\n for suitable $\\sigma>0$, with $A$ as in (75), with equality if  the sup in (75) is attained in $\\Omega$. Moreover,   \n$$\\sup_{y\\in\\Omega}\\,|\\{x\\in\\Omega: \\,|K(x,y)|>s\\}|\\le C  s^{-p'}.\\eqno(77)$$\n\\par\\smallskip\n\\noindent {\\bf Note.} A similar lemma was proved in [BFM], Lemma 2.3, for kernels in the CR sphere. \n\\smallskip\n\n\n\\bigskip\n\\pf Proof of Lemma 9. From now on we will use the notation \n$$y^*={y\\over|y|}.$$\n The hypothesis implies \n$$|K(x,y)|\\le|g(x,(y-x)^*)|\\,|x-y|^{ d-n}+C|x-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}$$\nso that for any $x\\in \\Omega$\n$$m_x(s):=|\\{y\\in\\Omega: \\,|K(x,y)|>s\\}|\\le |\\{y\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}: \\,|g(x,y^*)|\\,|y|^{ d-n}+C|y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}>s\\}|$$\nand since\n$$|g(x,y^*)|\\,|y|^{ d-n}+C|y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}>s\\;\\;\\Longrightarrow \\;\\; |y|\\le s^{-p'\/n}\\big(|g(x,y^*)|+C|y|^\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\big)^{p'\/n}\\le C s^{-p'\/n}$$\nthen\n$$m_x(s)\\le{s^{-p'}\\over n}\\int_{S^{n-1}}\\big(|g(x,y^*)|+Cs^{-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}\\big)^{p'}dy^*$$\nwhich implies (76). \nSuppose that for some $x_0\\in \\Omega$\n$$A={1\\over n}\\int_{S^{n-1}} |g(x_0,\\omega)|^{p'}d\\omega$$\nand WLOG we can assume that $x_0=0$.\nSince \n$$|K(0,y)|\\ge|g(0,y^*)|\\,|y|^{ d-n}-D|y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}$$\nfor some $D>0$, then\n$$\\eqalign{m_0(s)&\\ge |\\{y\\in\\Omega: \\,|g(0,y^*)|\\,|y|^{ d-n}-D|y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}>s\\}|\\cr&=|\\{y\\in\\Omega: \\,|y|<s^{-p'\/n}\\big(|g(0,y^*)|-D|y|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)^{p'\/n}\\}|.\\cr}$$\nBut\n$$|y|<s^{-p'\/n}\\big(|g(0,y^*)|-D|g(0,y^*)|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}s^{-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}\\big)^{p'\/n}\\Longrightarrow |y|<s^{-p'\/n}\\big(|g(0,y^*)|-D|y|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)^{p'\/n}\\le C s^{-p'\/n}$$\nand if  $B(0,\\delta)\\subseteq \\Omega$ then pick $s$ so large that $C s^{-p'\/n}<\\delta$. Let $\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t<n\/p'$ and  \n$$E_s=\\{y^*\\in S^{n-1}:\\,|g(0,y^*)|>D|g(0,y^*)|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}s^{-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}\\}=\\{y^*\\in S^{n-1}:\\,|g(0,y^*)|>D^{n\\over n-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'}s^{-{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\\over n-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'}}\\}.$$\nThen,\n$$\\eqalign{m_0(s)&\\ge {s^{-p'}\\over n}\\int_{E_s}\\big(|g(0,y^*)|-D|g(0,y^*)|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}s^{-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t p'\/n}\\big)^{p'}dy^*\\ge {s^{-p'}\\over n}\\int_{E_s}\\big(|g(0,y^*)|^{p'} -Cs^{-\\sigma}\\big)dy^*\\cr&\n\\ge {s^{-p'}\\over n}\\int_{S^{n-1}}|g(0,y^*)|^{p'}dy^* -Cs^{-p'-\\sigma}\\cr} $$\nwhich means that we have equality in (76).\nFinally, (77) is a simple consequence of (73) and the boundedness of $g$.$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\\vskip-1em\\eject\n\\pf Proof of Theorem 8. The previous Lemma implies that \n$$K_1^*(t)\\le At^{-1\/p'}\\big(1+O(t^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t})\\big),\\qquad K_2^*(t)\\le Ct^{-1\/p'}\\eqno(78)$$\nso that the exponential inequality (74) follows form Theorem 1.\n\nTo prove sharpness, we appeal to Theorem 4. If the sup in  (75) is attained in $\\Omega$, say WLOG at $x=0$,  then we have equality in the first estimate of (78). Choose $x_m=0$, and let $C_0,\\, m,\\, R$ large enough so that \n$$ \\{y\\in\\Omega: \\,|K(0,y)|>m\\}\\subseteq B(0,C_0m^{-p'\/n})\\subseteq \\Omega\\subseteq B(0,R).$$\nChoosing \n$$r_m=C_0m^{-p'\/n},\\;\\; E_m=B(0,r_m),\\;\\; B_m=B\\big(0,\\ts{1\\over2} r_m\\big)$$\nwe have that conditions a), b), c) of Theorem 4 are satisfies, so all we need to check is \n$$\\int_{\\Omega\\setminus E_m} |K(x,y)-K(0,y)|\\, |K(0,y)|^{p'-1} dy\\le C\\,,\\qquad \\forall x\\in B_m.\\eqno(79)$$\nIt is enough to verify this for $K(x,y)=g(x,(y-x)^*)|x-y|^{ d-n}$. By adding and subtracting $g\\big(x,(y-x)^*\\big)|y|^{ d-n}$ we see that  it suffices to verify\n$$\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} \\big||x-y|^{ d-n}-|y|^{ d-n}\\big|\\,|y|^{- d}dy\\le C,\\qquad |x|\\le {r_m\\over2}\\eqno(80)$$\nwhich is the same as (62), and\n$$\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} |g\\big(x,(y-x)^*\\big)-g(0,y^*)|\\,|y|^{-n}dy\\le C,\\qquad |x|\\le {r_m\\over2}.\\eqno(81)$$\nThe H\\\"older continuity hypothesis on $g$ imply \n$$|g\\big(x,(y-x)^*\\big)-g(0,y^*)|\\le C|x|^{\\sigma}+C\\bigg|{y-x\\over|y-x|}-{y\\over|y|}\\bigg|^{\\sigma}\\le C|x|^{\\sigma\/2}|x-y|^{-\\sigma\/2}$$\nbut if $|x|\\le r_m\/2 $ and $|y|\\ge r_m$, then $|x-y|\\ge |y|\/2$\nand we are reduced to \n$$\\int_{r_m\\le |y|\\le R} |x|^{\\sigma\/2}|y|^{-n-\\sigma\/2}dy\\le C,\\qquad |x|\\le {r_m\\over2}$$\nwhich is clearly true.$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\\bigskip\\eject\n\\noindent{\\it Sharp inequalities for  general elliptic operators}\\medskip\nWith Theorem 8 at our disposal we are now in a position to extend Adams inequality (2) to rather general elliptic differential operators  of order \n$d<n$. In order for this machinery  to work, we need to make sure that we can write $u=T(Pu)$, for $u$ in a suitable class of smooth functions with compact support where $Pu\\neq0$, and where $T$ is an integral operator with a kernel essentially equal to the  kernel of the parametrix $G$ of $P$. Note that we cannot simply take $T=G$, since $G$ is not, in general, an exact left inverse of P.\n\nSo let $P$ be a general  elliptic differential operator of  order $d$, written as \n$$P=\\sum_{|\\alpha|\\le d} a_\\alpha\\partial^\\alpha$$\non the space of distributions $\\D'(U)$, some open set $U$. The coefficients $a_\\alpha$ are assumed to be $C^\\infty$, complex-valued, and \nthe principal symbol of $P$ then satisfies $p_d(x,\\xi)=p_d^0(x,\\xi)=(2\\pi i)^d\\sum_{|\\alpha|=d} a_\\alpha(x)\\xi^\\alpha\\neq0$, for $\\xi\\neq0$. The adjoint of $P$ is the operator\n$P^*=\\sum_{|\\alpha|\\le d} (-1)^{|\\alpha|}\\partial^\\alpha\\overline{a}_\\alpha.$\n\\smallskip\\medskip\n \n\\proclaim Theorem 10. Let $P$ be an elliptic,  differential operator of order $d<n$ on an open set $U$, with principal symbol $p_d(x,\\xi)$. Let $\\Omega$ be open and bounded with $\\overline\\Omega\\subseteq U$, and let $p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d}$, $\\displaystyle{1\\over p}+\\displaystyle{1\\over p'}=1$. If $P$ is injective  on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline\\Omega)$, then there exists a constant $C$ such that \n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[A^{-1}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over \\|Pu\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\le C\\eqno(82)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{d,p}(\\Omega)$, with \n$$A={1\\over n}\\,\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{S^{n-1}}|g(x,\\omega)|^{p'}d\\omega\\eqno(83)$$ \n$$g(x,\\omega)=\\bigg({1\\over p_d^0(x,\\cdot)}\\bigg)^\\wedge (\\omega),\\qquad\\omega\\in S^{n-1}.\\eqno(84)$$\nIn the special case  $p=p'=2$, i.e. $d=\\displaystyle{n\\over2}$,  we have \n$$A={1\\over n}\\sup_{x\\in\\Omega} \\int_{S^{n-1}}{1\\over \\big|p_{n\/2}^0(x,\\omega)\\big|^2}d\\omega=\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n e^{-|p_{n\/2}^0(x,\\xi)|^2}d\\xi.\\eqno(85)$$\n If the supremum in (83) is attained in $\\Omega$, and if the adjoint $P^*$ is injective on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline\\Omega)$ (in particular if $P$ is self-adjoint) then the constant $A^{-1}$ in (82) is sharp.\n\\par \n\\def{\\cal F}{{\\cal F}}\n\\pf Proof. It is enough to assume $u\\in C_c^\\infty(\\Omega)$.  The given hypothesis assure the existence a (properly supported) {$\\Psi$DO}  $T$ of order $-d$ such that $TP u=u$ for any $u\\in C_c^\\infty(\\Omega)$ (in fact for any distribution $u$  with support in $\\overline\\Omega$) (see for example [Ca], Thm 24 and Thm 29). If $G$ denotes the parametrix of $P$ (in $U$) then $T=G+R$, some smoothing operator $R$, and therefore\n$$u(x)=\\int_\\Omega K(x,y)P u(y)dy$$\nwith $K(x,y)$ having an expansion as in (67); in particular\n$$K(x,y)=g\\Big(x,{y-x\\over|y-x|}\\Big)\\,|x-y|^{ d-n}+O\\big(|x-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)\\qquad x,y\\in \\Omega$$ \nwith \n$g(x,\\omega)$ as in (84). Clearly this is precisely what one needs in order to apply Theorem 8, and hence prove   \n inequality (82). For the sharpness statement, if $P^*$ is injective on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline\\Omega)$ then $P(Tf)=f$ in $\\Omega$, for any $f\\in \\D'(U)$ (see [Ca], Thm 24),  $P:W_0^{d,p}(\\Omega)\\to L^p(\\Omega)$ has  left inverse $T$, and $T:L^p\\to W^{d,p}(\\Omega)$. Suppose WLOG that the supremum in (83) is attained at $x_0=0\\in\\Omega$ and $B(0,1)\\subset\\subset\\Omega$. If $\\Phi_m$ is the sequence in the sharpness statement of Theorem 8, let $u_m=\\psi T\\Phi_m$, \nwith $\\psi\\in C_c^\\infty(\\Omega)$ and $\\psi=1$ in $B(0,1)$. Then $u_m\\in W^{d,p}_0(\\Omega)$ and it's easy to check using the Leibniz rule that $P u_m=\\psi \\Phi_m+ S \\Phi_m$, where $S$ is a pseudodifferential operator of order  at most $-1$. Hence, since $|\\Phi_m(y)|\\le C |y|^{-d}$ on $\\Omega$, we have $|S\\Phi_m(y)|\\le C|y|^{-d+1}$ and a straightforward estimate shows\n$$\\|Pu_m\\|_p=\\|\\Phi_m\\|_p+O(1),$$\n so that  \n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[\\alpha\\bigg({|u_m(x)|\\over \\|Pu_m\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\ge \\int_{B(0,1)} \\exp\\bigg[\\alpha\\bigg({|T \\Phi_m(x)|\\over \\|\\Phi_m\\|_p+C}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\to\\infty$$\nfor any $\\alpha>A^{-1}$.\nFinally, when $p=2$ the first formula for $A$ given in (85) is a consequence of  the following  spherical Parseval's formula:     if $f,g\\in C^\\infty(S^{n-1})$ and $E_{-d} (f),\\, E_{d-n} (g)$ are their homogeneous  extensions to ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n\\setminus 0$ of order $-d$ and $d-n$ respectively $(0<d<n)$, then \n$$\\int_{S^{n-1}}E_{-d}^\\wedge(f)\\overline{E_{d-n}^\\wedge(g)}=\\int_{S^{n-1}} f\\overline g.\\eqno(86)$$\nThe formula was originally found by Koldobsky  in case $f$ and $g$ are powers of Minkowsky functionals of smooth star bodies (see [K] for a proof). In [Mil] the above version is proven for $f,g$ real-valued and even, but a small modification of the proof yields the more general result. The second identity in (85) is obtained by a polar coordinate change. $$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\\def{\\cal U}{{\\cal U}}\n\\vskip-2.5em\n\\noindent{\\bf Remarks.}\\smallskip\n \\noindent{\\bf 1.} It is possible to extend slightly Theorem 10 to the case when $P$ does not have a trivial nullspace. Indeed, in the setup of Theorem 10, if $\\ker P$ denotes the nullspace of $P$ among distributions which are supported in $\\overline\\Omega$, then , then $\\ker(P)$ consists of $C^\\infty$ functions, and it is finite-dimensional. \n\\smallskip\\noindent{\\bf 2.} The argument for the sharpness statement above can clearly be used to settle the sharpness statement of Adams  original result, or that of  our Theorem 6, in the case of $\\Delta^{d\/2}$ for $d$ even.\\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 3.} The purpose of the second identity in (85) is that in many situations the exponential integral can actually be evaluated explicitly. See a related calculation in Corollary 14 below.\\smallskip\n\\smallskip \\noindent{\\bf 4.} Both Theorems 8 and 10 can be formulated under a Borel measure satisfying  condition (52), in the same spirit as in Theorems 6 and 7 - the changes are minimal. We kept the usual Euclidean measures to better emphasize the relations between the sharp constants and the operators.\n\n\\smallskip\n\nWe now specialize Theorem 10 to the second order case. Let us start with an elliptic operator \n$$P=\\sum_{j,k=1}^n a_{jk} \\partial_{jk}^2+\\sum_{j=1}^n b_j \\partial_j+ c\\eqno(87)$$\nwith $a_{jk},b_j,c\\in C^\\infty(U)$, {\\it real-valued}, $a_{jk}=a_{kj}$, and let $\\A_x=\\big(a_{jk}(x)\\big)$, an $n\\times n$ symmetric matrix, which we assume to be positive definite. As before we assume that $\\Omega$ is bounded, open and\n $\\overline\\Omega\\subseteq U$. \\medskip\n \n\n\\proclaim Corollary 11. Suppose that $P$ is an elliptic operator as in (87), and injective  on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline \\Omega)$. Then for $n>2$ there exists $C>0$ such that \n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[n(n-2)^{n\\over n-2}\\omega_{n-1}^{2\\over n-2}\\,\\inf_{x\\in \\Omega}(\\det\\A_x)^{{1\\over n-2}}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over \\|Pu\\|_{n\/2}}\\bigg)^{n\\over n-2}\\bigg]dx\\le C\\eqno(88)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{2,n\/2}(\\Omega)$.\nIf $\\,\\displaystyle{\\inf_{x\\in \\Omega}}\\det\\A_x$ is attained in $\\Omega$ then the exponential constant in  (88) is sharp.\\par\n\\medskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Note.} If $P$ is strongly  elliptic in $U$, the classical theory (e.g. [GT], Thm 8.9) guarantees that $P$ is certainly injective on $C_c^\\infty(U)$ if $c\\le 0$. \\medskip\n\\pf Proof. All we need to do is apply Theorem 10 to the operator $P$, with \n$$g(x,\\omega)=-{1\\over (2\\pi)^2} \\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n {e^{-2\\pi i \\omega\\cdot\\xi}\\over \\xi^T\\A_x\\xi} \\,d\\xi$$\nwhere $\\xi^T$ denotes the transpose of the vector $\\xi$ seen as a column vector. If $\\lambda_1(x),...,\\lambda_n(x)$ denote the positive eigenvalues of $\\A_x$ and if ${\\xi\\over\\sqrt\\lambda}=\\Big({\\xi_1\\over\\sqrt\\lambda_1},...,{\\xi_n\\over\\sqrt\\lambda_n}\\Big)$,  then for some orthogonal matrix $R$\n$$g(x,\\omega)=-{1\\over\\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}}\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n {e^{-2\\pi i R\\omega\\cdot{\\xi\\over\\sqrt\\lambda}}\\over(2\\pi)^2|\\xi|^2} \\,d\\xi=-{c_2\\over \\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}}\\,\\bigg|{R\\omega\\over\\sqrt \\lambda}\\bigg|^{2-n}$$\nwhere $c_2=\\displaystyle{1\\over (n-2)\\omega_{n-1}}$ is the constant in the Newtonian potential, as in (54).\n\\smallskip\nNext, we compute \n$$\\int_{S^{n-1}} |g(x,\\omega)|^{n\\over n-2}d\\omega=\\bigg({c_2\\over\\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}}\\bigg)^{n\\over n-2} \\int_{S^{n-1}}\\bigg|{\\omega\\over\\sqrt \\lambda}\\bigg|^{-n}d\\omega.$$\nBut the computations of the volume (with $x=x^*|x|$)\n$$\\eqalign{{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\,\\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}&=\\Big|\\Big\\{x:\\,\\Big|{x\\over\\sqrt\\lambda}\\Big|<1\\Big\\}\\Big|=\\Big|\\Big\\{x:\\,|x|<\\Big|{x^*\\over\\sqrt\\lambda}\\Big|^{-1}\\Big\\}\\Big|={1\\over n}\\,\\int_{S^{n-1}}\\bigg|{\\omega\\over\\sqrt \\lambda}\\bigg|^{-n}d\\omega\\cr}$$\ngive that \n$\\int_{S^{n-1}}\\big|{\\omega\/\\sqrt \\lambda}\\big|^{-n}d\\omega=\\omega_{n-1}\\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}$, and this concludes the proof.\\hskip4em \/\/\/\\smallskip\\smallskip\n\n\n\\noindent{\\bf Remarks.}\\smallskip\\noindent \n \\noindent{\\bf 1.} In case $b_1=...b_n=c=0$ the result of Corollary 11 can be derived directly from the known asymptotic expansion of the fundamental solution of $P$, and under even less restrictive smoothness conditions on the coefficients. In the case of $\\lambda$-H\\\"older continuous coefficients, ($0<\\lambda<1$) a classical result (See [Mi], Thm 19, VIII) guarantees that the equation $Pu=0$ has a fundamental solution $K(x,y)$ with an expansion\n$$K(x,y)={c_2\\over \\sqrt {\\det \\A_x}}\\Big((x-y)^T\\A_x^{-1}(x-y)\\Big)^{2-n\\over2}\\big(1+O(|x-y|^{\\lambda})\\big).$$\nThis expansion can also be extended to Dini-continuous coefficients or even under  weaker conditions [MMcO]. \nWith the aid of such expansion the calculation of the distribution function of $K$ is straightforward, and produces the same constant as that of the above corollary. For the sharpness result, one just needs to make sure that estimate d) of Theorem 4 is verified, under milder smoothness conditions on the coefficients (and ultimately of the function $g(x,\\omega)$).\n \\smallskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 2.} In [FFV], Thm. 3.5,  an estimate such as (88) is derived  using a different method,  and for elliptic operators with much more general coefficients; the constant produced there is  $n(n-2)^{n\\over n-2}\\omega_{n-1}^{2\\over n-2}$, under the ellipticity hypothesis $\\xi^T\\A_x\\xi\\ge |\\xi|^2$. In such hypothesis and with smoother coefficients,  it is clear that our constant is in general greater (i.e. better), since $\\det\\A_x\\ge1$. \n\n\\medskip\\noindent {\\it Sharp inequalities for vector-valued operators.}\\medskip\nWe now offer a version  of Theorem 10 for vector-valued differential operators of type\n$${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}=(P_j),\\qquad P_j=\\sum_{|\\alpha|\\le d} a_{j\\alpha} \\partial^\\alpha,\\qquad j=1,2,...,\\ell,\\quad \\ell\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} \\eqno(89)$$\nwith $a_{j\\alpha}\\in C^\\infty$ and complex-valued, with  sharp statements  in the special case $p=2$, i.e.  $d=n\/2$.\n \nThe goal is clearly to extend Adams' inequality for  the operators $\\nabla\\Delta^{d-1\\over2}$ with $d$ odd, by mimicking the integration by parts that leads to the representation formula (57). For the scalar case one can represent $u$ in terms of $Pu$ essentially in a unique way, if $P$ is elliptic and injective;  in the vector-valued situation, on the other hand,   a question of ``optimal representation\" of $u$ in terms  of ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u$ arises, in order to obtain sharpness. The basic idea is to start with a vector-valued differential operator ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}$ as above,  and assume that for a given operator  ${\\bf Q}=(Q_j)$ of order $d'$,  the operator $L={\\bf Q}^*\\cdot {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}$ with order $d+d'\\le n$ is elliptic and injective in $C^\\infty_c$, so that it has an inverse $T$ of order $-d-d'$, and a Schwarz kernel $k(x,y)$. One can therefore write $u=(T{\\bf Q}^*)\\cdot {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u$ and apply Theorem 1' to obtain an Adams inequality, with exponential constant given explicitly in terms of the symbols of ${\\bf Q}$ and ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}$. Clearly one cannot expect such constant to be sharp, given the dependence on $\\bf Q$. We will not state in full generality such result, and for simplicity we will only deal with the case $\\bf Q={\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}$, since in the special situation  \n$p=2$ i.e. $d=n\/2$ a sharpness result can be easily obtained.\n\n\\def{\\bf Y}{{\\bf Y}}\n\nFor   vectors $\\X=(X_j),\\,{\\bf Y}=(Y_j)$ we let $\\X\\cdot {\\bf Y}=\\sum_{j=1}^\\ell X_j Y_j$, $\\,|\\X|=\\big(\\X\\cdot\\overline \\X\\big)^{1\/2}=\\Big(\\sum_1^\\ell|X_j|^2\\Big)^{1\/2}$.\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 12. Let ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}=(P_j)$ be an operator as in (89), with $d\\le \\displaystyle {n\\over2}$, defined on $\\D'(U)$, some open set $U$. If $\\Omega$ is open and bounded with $\\overline\\Omega\\subseteq U$ and if  $L=\\sum_1^\\ell P_j^* P_j$\nis elliptic on  $U$  and   injective  on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline\\Omega)$, then there exists a constant $C$ such that, with $p=n\/d$, \n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[A^{-1}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over \\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dx\\le C\\eqno(90)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{d,p}(\\Omega)$, with\n $$A={1\\over n}\\,\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{S^{n-1}}|{\\bf g}(x,\\omega)|^{p'}d\\omega$$ \n$${\\bf g}(x,z)=\\big(g_j(x,z)\\big),\\qquad g_j^{}(x,z)=\\Bigg({\\overline p_j^0(x,\\cdot)\\over \\displaystyle{\\sum_{k=1}^\\ell |p_k^0(x,\\cdot)|^2}}\\Bigg)^\\wedge(z),$$ \nwhere $p_j^0(x,\\xi)=(2\\pi i)^{d}\\sum_{|\\alpha|=d}a_{j\\alpha}(x)\\xi^\\alpha$ is the principal symbol of $P_j$.\\smallskip\nIn the case $p=2$ i.e. $d=\\displaystyle{n\\over2}$ we have \n$$A={1\\over n}\\,\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{S^{n-1}}\\bigg(\\sum_{j=1}^\\ell |p_j^0(x,\\omega)|^2\\bigg)^{-1}d\\omega=\\sup_{x\\in \\Omega}\\int_{\\sR^n}}\\def\\bSn{{\\bS}^n \\exp\\bigg(-\\!\\!\\sum_{j=1}^\\ell |p_j^0(x,\\xi)|^2\\bigg)d\\xi\\eqno(91)$$ \n and if the supremum in (91) is attained in $\\Omega$, then the constant $A^{-1}$ in (90) is sharp.\n\\par\n\\medskip\n\\pf Proof. The given hypothesis on $L$ imply, just  as before, that  we can write any $u\\in C_c^\\infty(\\Omega)$ as\n$u=T(Lu)=\\sum_{j} TP_j^*(P_j u)$, for a certain {$\\Psi$DO}  $T$ of order $-2d\\ge -n$, with Schwarz kernel $k(x,y)$ and principal symbol $p(x,\\xi)=\\Big(\\sum_{k=1}^\\ell |p_k^0(x,\\xi)|^2\\Big)^{-1}$. Since now $TP_j^*$ is a {$\\Psi$DO} \nof order $-d$, and with principal symbol $\\overline{p}_j^0(x,\\xi)p(x,\\xi)$, then it has a Schwarz kernel $K_j(x,y)$\nso that $$K_j(x,y)=g_j^{}\\big(x,(y-x)^*\\big)|x-y|^{d-n}+O(|x-y|^{d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}).$$\nThe inequality in (90)  follows now from Theorem 1', since \\def{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}{{\\bf K}} if ${\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}=(K_j)$ then \n$$u=\\int_\\Omega {\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}(x,y)\\cdot {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u(y)dy$$\nwith $|{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}(x,y)|=\\big|{\\bf g}\\big(x,(y-x)^*\\big)\\big|\\,|x-y|^{d-n}+O(|x-y|^{d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t})$\nand the estimates on its distribution functions follow from  Lemma 9. The formula for $A$ given in (91) is a consequence  of the spherical Parseval formula (86).\n\n To prove sharpness of the constant in (90) in the special case $p=2$,  we proceed as in the  proof of Theorem 6. Let the supremum in (91) be achieved at some $x_0\\in \\Omega$ and WLOG assume $x_0=0$. Note that $K_j(x,\\cdot)=P_j k(x,\\cdot)$, where $k$ is the kernel of $T$, and that $k(0,y)=c\\log{1\\over|y|}+O(1)$, some $c>0$, as per (70); let's say that \n$$c\\log{c_0\\over|y|}\\le k(0,y)\\le c\\log{c_1\\over|y|},\\qquad y\\in \\overline\\Omega$$\nfor some $c_0,c_1>0$. Now, using the same $\\varphi$ as in (65), with $r_m\\to0^+$ to be selected later, define\n$$u_m(y)=\\cases{0 &  for $\\;k(0,y)\\le \\delta$\\cr \\cr\\varphi\\big(k(0,y)\\big) & for $\\;\\delta< k(0,y)\\le 1+\\delta$\\cr  k(0,y) & for $\\;1+\\delta< k(0,y)\\le c \\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-1-\\delta$\\cr   c\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-\\varphi\\Big({c\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-k(0,y)\\Big)} & for $c\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-1-\\delta<k(0,y)\\le c\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-\\delta$\\cr \nc\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}& for $\\;k(0,y)>c\\log\\displaystyle{1\\over r_m}-\\delta$.\\cr}$$\n Then $u_m=0$ if $|y|>c_1 e^{-\\delta\/c}$, hence  we can choose $\\delta$ so  large that the support of $u_m$ is inside $\\Omega$, which implies that   $u_m\\in W^{n\/2,2}_0(\\Omega)$. Additionally,  $u_m=c\\log{1\\over r_m}$ for $|y|<c_0 r_m e^{-\\delta\/c}$, and $u_m(y)=k(0,y)$ for $c_1r_m e^{1+\\delta\\over c}<|y|< c_0 e^{-{1+\\delta\\over c}}$, for $m$ large enough. So \n$$P_j u_m(y)=\\cases{ K_j(0,y) & for $c_1r_m e^{1+\\delta\\over c}< |y|< c_0 e^{-{1+\\delta\\over c}}$\\cr O(1) |y|^{-n\/2}  \n & for $c_0 r_m e^{-\\delta\/c}< |y|<c_1r_m e^{1+\\delta\\over c}$\\cr O(1) & otherwise\\cr}$$\n(here we used the chain and product rules, combined with $|\\partial_y^\\alpha k(0,y)|\\le C |y|^{-|\\alpha|}$, for $|\\alpha|>0$, since $\\partial^\\alpha k$ is the kernel of the operator $\\partial^\\alpha T$, which has order $|\\alpha|-n$).\n\\eject\nNow  choose $r_m$ so that $\\{y\\in \\Omega : |{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}(0,y)|>m\\}\\subseteq B(0,C m^{-2\/n})\\subseteq B(0, c_1 r_m e^{1+\\delta\\over c})$, and therefore, we can apply (45) of Theorem 4 with $E_m=B(0, c_1 r_me^{1+\\delta\\over c})$ to conclude\n$$\\int_{\\Omega\\setminus B(0, c_1 r_me^{(1+\\delta)\/ c})} |{\\cal K}}\\def\\A{{\\bf A}}\\def\\D{{\\cal D}}\\def\\G{{\\cal G}}\\def\\RR{{\\cal R}(0,y)|^2dy=A\\log{1\\over r_m}+O(1)$$\nwhich allows us to conclude $\\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u_m\\|_2^2=A\\log{1\\over r_m}+O(1)$ \nand the sharpness of the exponential constant follows immediately from (49), just as in the proof of Theorem 6. $$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\n\n\n\nWe will give one first application of the above theorem to first order operators. Consider a family of  operators \n$${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}=\\big(P_j\\big)_{j=1}^n,\\quad P_j=\\sum_{k=1}^n a_{jk} \\partial_k+b_j\\eqno(92)$$\nwith  $a_{jk},\\, b_j$  real-valued and $C^\\infty$  on some open set $U\\supseteq \\overline\\Omega$, with $\\Omega$ bounded.\n\n\\proclaim Corollary 13. Suppose that $\\A_x=\\big(a_{jk}(x)\\big)$ is invertible on $U$ and that  $L=\\sum_{j=1}^n P_j^*P_j$ is injective  on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline \\Omega)$. Then, for $n>1$ there exists $C>0$ such that \n$$\\int_\\Omega \\exp\\bigg[n\\omega_{n-1}^{1\\over n-1}\\,\\inf_{x\\in \\Omega}|\\det\\A_x|^{{1\\over n-1}}\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over \\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u\\|_{n}}\\bigg)^{n\\over n-1}\\bigg]dx\\le C\\eqno(93)$$\nfor all $u\\in W_0^{1,n}(\\Omega)$.\nIf  $\\,\\displaystyle{\\inf_{x\\in \\Omega}}|\\det\\A_x|$ is attained in $\\Omega$ then the exponential constant in  (93) is sharp.\\par\n\\bigskip\n\\noindent{\\bf Note.} In [FFV], Theorem 3.3, a similar estimate is given for less regular  coefficients,  under the condition $\\xi^T\\A_x\\xi\\ge |\\xi|^2$, and with exponential  constant $n\\omega_{n-1}^{1\\over n-1}$, which is smaller than the one given in the above Corollary.\\smallskip\n\n\n\n\\medskip\\pf Proof. The proof of (93) is just an application of Theorem 12. One just has to first compute ${\\bf g}$, proceeding like in the proof of Corollary 12: if ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_0=\\Big(\\sum_j a_{ij}\\partial_j\\Big)=\\A_x\\cdot\\nabla$\n$$\\eqalign{-{\\bf g}(x,z)&=\\bigg({(2\\pi i)\\A_x\\xi\\over(2\\pi)^2 |\\A_x\\xi|^2}\\bigg)^\\wedge(z)= {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_0\\bigg({1\\over(2\\pi)^2 |\\A_x\\xi|^2}\\bigg)^\\wedge(z)={1\\over |\\det \\A_x|}{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_0\\bigg({1\\over (2\\pi)^2|\\xi|^{2}}\\bigg)^\\wedge\\big((\\A_x^{-1})^Tz\\big)\\cr&={c_2\\over |\\det \\A_x|}{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_0 \\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^T z\\big|^{2-n}={(2-n)c_2\\over |\\det \\A_x|} \\big((\\A_x^{-1})^Tz\\big)\\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^T z\\big|^{-n}\\cr}$$\nsince if $\\A_x^{-1}=(a_{jk}')$ then  \n$\\sum_j a_{ij}\\partial_j\\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^Tz\\big|^{2-n}=(2-n)\\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^Tz\\big|^{-n}\\sum_{j,k} a_{ij}a_{jk}'\\big((\\A_x^{-1})^T z\\big)_k. $ Estimate (93) follows since\n$$A={1\\over n}\\sup_x\\int_{S^{n-1}}|{\\bf g}(x,\\omega)|^{n\\over n-1}d\\omega={1\\over n}\\sup_x{1\\over (\\omega_{n-1}|\\det \\A_x|)^{n\\over n-1}} \\int_{S^{n-1}}\\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^T\\omega\\big|^{-n}d\\omega$$\nand $\\displaystyle\\int_{S^{n-1}}\\big|(\\A_x^{-1})^T\\omega\\big|^{-n}d\\omega=\\omega_{n-1}|\\det \\A_x|$. For the sharpness statement, suppose  WLOG that $\\,\\displaystyle{\\inf_{x\\in \\Omega}}|\\det\\A_x|$ is attained $x_0=0\\in\\Omega$ and that the ellipsoid $\\{y:|\\A_0^{-1}y|<1\\}\\subseteq \\Omega$. Take any $r_m\\downarrow 0$, $r_m<1$, and let\n$$u_m=\\cases{\\log|\\A_0^{-1}y|^{-1} & if $r_m<|\\A_0^{-1}y|<1$\\cr\n\\log r_m^{-1} & if $|\\A_0^{-1}y|\\le r_m$\\cr\n0 & if $|\\A_0^{-1}y|\\ge1.$\\cr}$$\n Then $u_m\\in W^{1,n}(\\Omega)$, ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u_m(y)=-(\\A_0^{-1}y)|\\A_0^{-1}y|^{-2}+O\\big(\\log|\\A_0^{-1}y|^{-1}\\big)$ if $r_m<|\\A_0^{-1}y|<1$, and it's easy to check that \n$\\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X} u_m\\|_n^n=\\omega_{n-1} |\\det\\A_0|\\log{1\\over r_m}+O(1)$. The result follows from (49), with $B_m=\\{y: |\\A_0^{-1}y|<r_m\\}$.\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\nAs a second and final quick application of Theorem 12 we consider in ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^4$ the  second order operators \n$${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_1=\\big(\\partial_{11}^2,\\,\\partial_{22}^2,\\,\\partial_{33}^2,\\,\\partial_{44}^2\\big)\\,\n\\quad{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_2=\\big(\\partial_{11}^2+\\partial_{22}^2,\\,\\partial_{33}^2+\\partial_{44}^2\\big)\\,\\quad \n{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_3=\\big(\\partial_{11}^2+\\partial_{22}^2+\\partial_{33}^2,\\,\\partial_{44}^2\\big)$$ \n\\proclaim Corollary 14. Let $\\Omega\\subseteq {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^4$ be open and bounded. Then there exists $C>0$ such that for $j=1,2,3$\n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[\\,B_j\\,\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_j u\\|_2}\\bigg)^2\\bigg] dx\\le C\\eqno(94)$$\nwith\n$$B_1={\\pi^4\\over \\Gamma\\big({5\\over4}\\big)^4},\\qquad B_2=64 \\pi,\\qquad B_3={16\\pi^{5\/2}\\over\\Gamma\\big({3\\over4}\\big)}$$\nfor any $u\\in W_0^{2,2}(\\Omega)$, and the constants $B_j$  are sharp.\\par\n\nNote that the constant $32\\pi^2$ in the sharp inequality \n$$\\int_{\\Omega} \\exp\\bigg[32\\pi^2\\bigg({|u(x)|\\over\\|\\Delta u\\|_2}\\bigg)^2\\bigg] dx\\le C$$\nis bigger than  all of the constants  in (94), in fact $32\\pi^2>B_3>B_2>B_1$; this is   consistent with $\\|\\Delta u\\|_2\\ge \\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_3 u\\|_2\\ge \\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_2u\\|_2\\ge\\|{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_1u\\|_2$,  which is  easily seen via Fourier transform.\n\\medskip\n\\pf Proof. We can apply Theorem 12, since the operator $L={\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_1^*\\cdot{\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_1=\\sum_1^4 {\\partial^4\\over\\partial x_j^4}$ is elliptic and injective on $C_c^\\infty(\\overline\\Omega)$, and the same is true for ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_2^*\\cdot {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_2$ and ${\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_3^*\\cdot {\\bf P}}\\def\\G{{\\bf G}}\\def{\\bf g}{{\\bf g}}\\def\\X{{\\bf X}_3$. The computation of the constants follows easily from (91) and the identity\n$$\\int_{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char82}}}\\def\\mR{{\\hbox{\\mmathbold\\char82}}^m} \\exp\\bigg[-\\bigg(\\sum_{j=1}^m x_j^2\\bigg)^{p\/2}\\bigg] dx={2\\pi^{m\/2}\\Gamma\\big(1+{m\\over p}\\big)\\over m\\Gamma\\big({m\\over2}\\big)}$$\nvalid for $m\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $ and $p>0$. Note that $B_1^{-1}$ is in fact the volume of the convex body $\\Big\\{x\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^4:\\,\\sum_1^4 x_j^4<1\\Big\\}$  (see for example [K]).\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\\eject\n\\bigskip\n\\noindent {\\bf 6.  Sharp Adams inequalities for  sums of weighted potentials.}\n\\medskip\n\\smallskip\n As another   illustration of how   Theorems 1 and 4 can be used, we offer an  extension of Adams' inequality (3) in a different direction:\n\n\n\n\\bigskip\\proclaim Theorem 15.  Let $\\Omega,\\,\\Omega'$ be  bounded domains of $\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$,  $a_1,...,a_N\\in\\R^n}\\def\\B{{\\cal B}$,$\\,a_j\\neq a_k,\\, j\\neq k$. Let ${\\cal U}$ be a bounded domain of ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n\\times{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^n$, with  $\\Omega'\\times\\Omega\\subset\\subset {\\cal U}$, and  let  $g_j:\\overline{\\cal U}\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$,  be H\\\"older continuous of order $\\sigma_j\\in(0,1],\\, j=1,2,...N$. For $0< d<n$, $\\,p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d}$, $\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}}=1$, let, for $x\\in \\Omega'$ and $y\\in\\Omega$,\n$$K(x,y)=\\sum_{j=1}^N g_j(x,y)|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n},\\qquad Tf(x)=\\int_\\Omega K(x,y)f(y)dy,\\quad f\\in L^p(\\Omega),$$\nIf ${\\bf g}=(g_1,...g_N)$ and \n$$M({\\bf g}):=\\sup\\bigg\\{\\sum_{j=1}^N |g_j(x,x+a_j)|^{p'},\\;x\\in\\Omega',\\,(x,x+a_j)\\in\\overline{\\cal U},\\,j=1,...N\\bigg\\}>0,\\eqno(95)$$\nthen there exists $C$ such that\nfor any $f\\in L^p(\\Omega)$\n$$\\int_{\\Omega'} \\exp\\bigg[ {n\\over\\omega_{n-1} M({\\bf g})}\\bigg({|Tf|\\over \\|f\\|_{p}}\\bigg)^{p'}\\,\\bigg]dx\\le C\\eqno(96)$$\nwith   $C$ independent of $f$. \nIf \n$$\\Omega^*:=\\Omega'\\cap\\bigcap_{j=1}^N(\\Omega-a_j)\\neq\\emptyset\\eqno(97)$$\nand $M({\\bf g})$ is attained on $\\Omega^*$, then the constant $\\displaystyle{n\\over\\omega_{n-1} M({\\bf g})}$ is sharp in (96), i.e. it cannot be replaced by a larger constant.\n\\par\n\\medskip\n\n\\pf Proof.  Fix $x\\in \\Omega'$. If $\\delta>0$ is such that $\\delta<{\\rm dist} \\big(\\overline{\\Omega'}\\times\\overline\\Omega\\,,\\,\\overline {\\cal U}^c\\big)$, and   $B(a_j,\\delta)\\cap B(a_k,\\delta)=\\emptyset$,for $j\\neq k$, $j,k=1,...N$,  then for $s>s_1:=N\\delta^{ d-n}\\max_j \\|g_j\\|_\\infty^{}$ we have\n\n$$\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega:\\,|K(x,y)|>s\\,\\}\\big|=\\sum_{j=1}^N\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta):\\, \n|K(x,y)|>s\\}\\big|$$\n\nWith our choice of $\\delta$ it's clear that if $(x,x+a_j)\\notin \\overline{\\cal U}$ then $\\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta)=\\emptyset$ so \n$$\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta):\\, |K(x,y)|>s\\}\\big|=0$$\nfor any $s>s_1$ (in fact for  any $s>0$).\n\n\nAssume that  $(x,x+a_j)\\in\\overline{\\cal U}$ and $y\\in \\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta)$. Then \n\n$$|K(x,y)|\\le |g_j(x,y)|\\,|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}+C\\delta^{ d-n}\\le |g_j(x,x+a_j)|\\,|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}+C|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}$$\nsome $\\epsilon>0$, $\\epsilon<n- d$ and $C$ independent on $x,y$. As a consequence, if $|K(x,y)|>s$ then\n$$|x+a_j-y|<s^{-1\/(n- d)}\\big(|g_j(x,x+a_j)|+C|x+a_j-y|^\\epsilon\\big)^{1\/(n- d)}\\le Cs^{-1\/(n- d)}$$\n\nand \n\n$$\\eqalignno{\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta):\\, \n|K(x,y)|>s\\}\\big|&\\le {\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\, s^{-n\/(n- d)}\\big(|g_j(x,x+a_j)|+Cs^{-\\epsilon\/(n- d)}\\big)^{n\/(n- d)}\\cr&\\le{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\, s^{-p'}|g_j(x,x+a_j)|^{p'}+Cs^{-p'-\\sigma}&(98)\\cr} $$\n\nsome $\\sigma>0$ (we used here, for example, that $|(a+b)^\\nu-b^\\nu|\\le Ca^{\\min\\{1,\\nu\\}}$ if $\\nu>0$ and $a,b\\in[0,K]$, some fixed $K>0$, C independent of $a,b$).\n\nNow we see that if $x\\in \\Omega'$  and $(x,x+a_j)\\in\\overline{\\cal U}$ for all $j$, then\n$$\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega:\\,|K(x,y)|>s\\,\\}\\big|\\le s^{-p'}{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\,\\sum_{j=1}^N |g_j(x,x+a_j)|^{p'}+O\\big(s^{-p'-\\sigma}\\big),\\quad \\forall s> s_1\\eqno(99)$$\n(with $|O\\big(s^{-p'-\\sigma}\\big)|\\le Cs^{-p'-\\sigma}$, $C$ independent of $x,s$), from which it follows that \n\n$$\\sup_{x\\in\\Omega'} m\\big(K(x,\\cdot),s\\big)\\le s^{-p'}M({\\bf g})+O\\big(s^{-p'-\\sigma}\\big).\\eqno(100)\n$$\n\nOn the other hand, the same argument used to derive (99) can be used to show\n\n$$\\big|\\{x\\in\\Omega':\\,|K(x,y)|>s\\,\\}\\big|\\le B s^{-p'}\\eqno(101)$$\nfor all $s>s_1$, and $y\\in\\Omega$, for some $B>0$ independent of $y$.  \n\nEstimate (96) now follows from Theorem 1, using (100), (101) together with Fact 3.\n\n\n\nNow assume that $\\Omega^*\\neq\\emptyset$ and that the sup in (95) is attained inside $\\Omega^*$, say at $x^*$. WLOG we can assume that $x^*=0$ (indeed it's enough to perform a translation by $x^*$ in both the $x$ and the $y$ variables). If $y\\in \\Omega\\cap B(x+a_j,\\delta)$\n$$|K(0,y)|\\ge |g_j(0,a_j)|\\,|a_j-y|^{ d-n}-C|a_j-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}$$\nand $|g_j(0,a_j)|\\,|a_j-y|^{ d-n}-C|a_j-y|^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}>s$ if and only if\n$$|a_j-y|<s^{-1\/(n- d)}\\big(|g_j(0,a_j)|-C|a_j-y|^\\epsilon\\big)^{1\/(n- d)}.\n$$\n\nThen letting \n\n$$\\phi(s):=s^{-1\/(n- d)}\\big(|g_j(0,a_j)|-Cs^{-\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\/(n- d)}|g_j(0,a_j)|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\/(n- d)}\\big)^{1\/(n- d)}\\eqno(102)$$ we have \n$$\\eqalign{&\\big\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\,|a_j-y|<\\phi(s)\\big\\}\\cr&\\subseteq \\big\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\,|a_j-y|<s^{-1\/(n- d)}\\big(|g_j(0,a_j)|-C|a_j-y|^\\epsilon\\big)^{1\/(n- d)}\\big\\}\\cr\n&\\subseteq\\big\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\,|K(0,y)|>s\\big\\}.\\cr}\\eqno(103)$$\n\nSince $a_j\\in\\Omega$ let $\\delta_0>0$ be such that $B(a_j,\\delta_0)\\subseteq\\Omega$. There exists $s_0>s_1$ such that $0\\le \\phi(s)<\\delta_0$ for all $s\\ge s_0$, so that \n\n$$\\big|\\big\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\,|K(0,y)|>s\\big\\}\\big|\\ge {\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\,\\big(\\phi(s)\\big)^n\\ge{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\, s^{-p'}|g_j(0,a_j)|^{p'}-Cs^{-p'-\\sigma}$$\nfor all $s\\ge s_0$.\n\nThis means that for all $s>s_0$\n$$\\big|\\{y\\in\\Omega:\\,|K(0,y)|>s\\,\\}\\big|=s^{-p'}{\\omega_{n-1}\\over n}\\,\\sum_{j=1}^N |g_j(0,a_j)|^{p'}+O\\big(s^{-p'-\\sigma}\\big)=s^{-p'}M({\\bf g})+O\\big(s^{-p'-\\sigma}\\big).$$\n\n\\smallskip\\noindent\n\nNow let us choose $x_m=0$ for $m\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char78}}}\\def\\S{{\\cal S} $, \n\n$$E_m=\\{y\\in\\Omega:\\,|K(0,y)|>m\\,\\}=\\bigcup_{j=1}^N\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\, \n|K(0,y)|>m\\}$$\nthe union being disjoint for $m>s_1$. From  ii) we have $|E_m|=m^{-p'}M({\\bf g})+O(m^{-p'\n-\\sigma})\\to0$ as $m\\to\\infty$. Moreover, from (102) and (103), if $g(0,a_j)\\neq0$ then $\\{y\\in\\Omega\\cap B(a_j,\\delta):\\, \n|K(0,y)|>m\\}$ contains a ball of center $a_j$ and radius $C_j m^{-p'\/n}$ some $C_j>0$, for all $m>m_j>s_1$; let $C_0$ be the smallest of such $C_j$ and let $$r_m=C_0 m^{-p'\/n},\\quad B_m=B\\big(0,\\ts{1\\over2}r_m\\big).\\eqno(104)$$ \n\n\nWith these choices conditions a), b), c)  of Theorem 4 are satisfied, so all we need is to check (43), i.e.\n$$\\int_{\\Omega\\setminus E_m} |K(x,y)-K(0,y)|\\, |K(0,y)|^{p'-1} dy\\le C\\,,\\qquad \\forall x\\in B_m\\eqno(105)$$\nsome $C$ independent of $x$ and $m$.\n\nNow observe the following elementary inequalities, valid for any $x\\in \\Omega'$ and $y\\in \\Omega$\n$$\\eqalign{|K(0,y)|^{p'-1}&\\le C\\sum_{j=1}^N |g_j(0,y)|^{ d\/(n- d)}|y-a_j|^{- d}\\cr&\\le C\\sum_{j=1}^N\\big(|y-a_j|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t d\/(n- d)}+|g(0,a_j)|^{ d\/(n- d)}\\big)|y-a_j|^{- d}\\cr}\\eqno(106)$$\n$$\\eqalign{\\big|g_j(x,y)|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}-g_j&(0,y)|a_j-y|^{ d-n}\\big|\\le C\\big(|y-a_j|^\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t+|x|^\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\big)|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}\\cr&\\qquad +|g_j(0,a_j)|\\big||x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}-|a_j-y|^{ d-n}\\big|\\cr}\\eqno(107)\n$$\n\n$$\\eqalign{|K(x,&y)-K(0,y)|\\, |K(0,y)|^{p'-1}\\le C\\sum_{j=1}^N\\bigg\\{|x|^\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t|y-a_j|^{- d}|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}+\\cr& +|g(0,a_j)|^{n\/(n- d)}|y-a_j|^{- d}\\big||x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}-|a_j-y|^{ d-n}\\big|\\bigg\\}+\\Phi(x,y)\\cr}\\eqno(108)$$\nwhere $\\Phi(x,y)\\ge0 $ is integrable in $y\\in B(0,R)$ some $R$ large enough so that $\\int_{B(0,R)}\\Phi(x,y)dy\\le C$, independent of   $x\\in \\Omega'$. \n\n\nBy virtue of (108) it is enough to consider those $j$ for which $g(0,a_j)\\neq0$, and for such $j$ we can write $M\\setminus\\subseteq M\\setminus B(a_j,r_m)$ (recall the definition of $r_m$ in (104)). Thus, it all boils down to (62), which we already checked, and the estimate\n$$\\sup_{|x|\\le r_m\/2}\\;\\int_{r_m\\le|y|\\le R} |x|^\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t|y|^{- d}|x-y|^{ d-n}dy\\le C,\\eqno(109)$$\nwhich is an easy consequence of (63).\n\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\\bigskip\n\n\\noindent{\\bf Remarks.} \\smallskip\\item{\\bf 1.} From the proof above it should be  apparent that Theorem 15 holds verbatim for kernels of type\n$$K(x,y)=\\sum_{j=1}^N g_j(x,y)|x+a_j-y|^{ d-n}\\bigg[1+O\\bigg(\\sum_{j=1}^N |x+a_j-y|^{\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t_j}\\bigg)\\bigg]\\eqno(110)$$\nwhere $\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t_1,...\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t_N>0$.\n\\smallskip\n\\item{\\bf 2.} The regularity hypothesis on the $g_j$ can be somewhat relaxed to an integral\ncondition of type (43).\\smallskip  \n\\item{\\bf 3.} If the sup defining $M({\\bf g})$ is not attained in $\\Omega^*$, or if $\\Omega^*$ is empty, then\nthe sharp constant in (96) will in general be larger, and the geometries of  the domains could play a definite role. For example, if $K(x,y)=|x-y|^{ d-n}$, and  $\\Omega',\\, \\Omega$ are two open balls with empty intersection but tangent to one another (or two $C^1$ domains with the same property), then\n$M({\\bf g})=1$, but it's easy to see that the sharp constant in (96) is $2n\/\\omega_{n-1}$. This can bee seen by explicit asymptotics of the distribution function of the kernel with the given domains, together with Theorems 1 and 4. Similar considerations could be made if $\\partial \\Omega$ has corners, or even positive measure.\nOn the other hand, if $K(x,y)=|x+e_1-y|^{ d-n}+|x-e_1-y|^{ d-n}$, with $e_1=(1,0,..,0)$, and $\\Omega'=B(0,10),\\, \\Omega=B\\big(0,{1\\over2}\\big)$, then $\\Omega^*=\\emptyset$, $M({\\bf g})=2$, but the sharp constant in (96) is $n\/\\omega_{n-1}$. This can be seen for example by splitting $\\Omega'$ into two halves  each containing  $e_1$ or $-e_1$, and  noticing that in each half ony one of the two potentials is really effective (i.e. theorems 1 and 4 apply in each half separately).\n\\bigskip\nOn the $n-$dimensional Euclidean sphere $S^n$  Theorem 15 takes a somewhat  simpler form. Let $\\eta,\\xi$ denote points on $S^n$, and let $d\\eta$ denote the standard volume element of $S^n$. \n\n\\proclaim Theorem 16. On $S^n$ consider an operator \n$$Tf(\\xi)=\\int_{S^n}}\\def\\wtilde{\\widetilde K(\\xi,\\eta)f(\\eta)d\\eta,\\qquad f\\in L^1(S^n)$$\nwith $$K(\\xi,\\eta)=\\sum_{j=1}^N g_j(\\xi,\\eta)|R_j\\xi-\\eta|^{ d-n}+O\\Big(\\sum_{j=1}^N |R_j\\xi-\\eta|^{ d-n+\\epsilon_j}\\Big),\\quad 0< d<n,\\;\\sigma_j>0$$\nfor some $R_1,...,R_N\\in SO(n)$, and $g_j:S^n\\times S^n\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ H\\\"older continuous of orders $\\sigma_1,...,\\sigma_N\\in(0,1]$. If $p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d},\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}=1}$, $\\,{\\bf g}=(g_1,...,g_N^{})$ and if\n$$M({\\bf g})=\\max_{\\xi\\in S^n}\\sum_{j=1}^N |g_j(\\xi,R_j\\xi)|^{p'}>0,$$\n then there exists $C$ so that\n$$\\int_{S^n}}\\def\\wtilde{\\widetilde \\exp\\bigg[{n\\over \\omega_n M({\\bf g})}\\bigg({|Tf|\\over\\|f\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,d\\xi\\le C\\eqno(111)$$\nfor any $f\\in L^p(S^n)$. The constant $\\displaystyle{n\\over \\omega_n M({\\bf g})}$ in (111) is sharp.\n\\par\nThe proof of this theorem is identical to the one of Theorem 15, with the obvious modifications, and with the additional simplifications due the the compactness of $S^n$.\\bigskip\n\nOn a compact Riemannian manifold $M$, with volume element $dV(P)$  and geodesic distance $d(P,Q)$, we have the following slight extension of Fontana's result ([F], Thm. 1.9):\n\n\\proclaim Theorem 17. On the compact Riemannian manifold $M$ consider an integral operator \n$$Tf(P)=\\int_M K(P,Q)f(Q)dV(Q),\\qquad f\\in L^1(M)$$\nwith\n$$K(P,Q)=g(P,Q)\\,d(P,Q)^{ d-n}+O\\big(d(P,Q)^{ d-n+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big),\\qquad 0< d<n,\\;\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t>0$$\nwith $g:M\\times M\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ H\\\"older continuous of order $\\sigma\\in(0,1].$ \nIf $p=\\displaystyle{n\\over d},\\,\\displaystyle{{1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}=1}$ and if\n$$M(g)=\\max_{P\\in M}|g(P,P)|^{p'}>0,$$\n then there exists $C$ so that\n$$\\int_M \\exp\\bigg[{n\\over \\omega_n M(g)}\\bigg({|Tf|\\over\\|f\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]\\,dV(P)\\le C\\eqno(112)$$\nfor any $f\\in L^p(M)$. The constant $\\displaystyle{n\\over \\omega_n M(g)}$ in (112) is sharp.\n\\par\nThe proof of Theorem 17 is a consequence of Theorems 1 and 4, and a sharp asymptotic estimate\nof the distribution function of $K$, which is the same one as in the Euclidean case (Thm 15)\ngiven the fact that that the volume of a small geodesic ball is asymptotically the same as that of a Euclidean ball.\n\\bigskip\n\\noindent{\\bf 7. Sharp Adams inequalities on the CR sphere}\\bigskip\nAs we mentioned in the introduction, Moser-Trudinger inequalities have recently been introduced in the context of CR-manifolds, first by Cohn and Lu [CL1,2] and more recently by Branson, Fontana, Morpurgo [BFM].  In [BFM], a special case of Theorem 1 of the present paper was quoted and used to derive sharp Adams inequalities for a class of convolution operators on the CR sphere ([BFM], Thm. 2.2.). The proof that such inequalities are sharp was only hinted in [BFM]; in this section we will provide a more detailed argument as an application of Theorem 4. \n\nWe will now briefly recall \nthe main setup.\nLet $\\Sn$ be the $(2n+1)-$dimensional sphere with its standard CR structure, i.e. that induced naturally from the ambient space ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char67}}}\\def \\sC{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char67}}^{n+1}$, endowed with Hermitian product $\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}$, where $\\zeta=(\\zeta_1,...,\\zn)$, $\\eta=(\\eta_1,...,\\eta_{n+1})$. The homogeneous dimension of $\\Sn$ is denoted by $Q=2n+2$. Let $d\\zeta$ be the standard volume element of the sphere, and $\\omega_{2n+1}=2\\pi^{n+1}\/n!$ its volume; the average of a function $F$ on $\\Sn$ is denoted by $\\displaystyle-\\hskip-1.1em\\int F$. \n\nThe Heisenberg group $\\Hn$, with elements $(z,t)\\in {\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char67}}}\\def \\sC{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char67}}^n\\times{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$ and group law\n$(z,t)(z',t')=(z+z',t+t'+2\\Im z\\cdot \\overline z')$\nis biholomophically equivalent to $\\Sn$ via the Cayley transform ${\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}:\\Hn\\to S^{2n+1}\\setminus(0,0,...,0,-1)$  given by \n$${\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(z,t)=\\Big({2z\\over 1+|z|^2+i t},{1-|z|^2-i t\\over 1+|z|^2+i t}\\Big)$$\nand with inverse\n$${\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}^{-1}(\\zeta)=\\Big({\\zeta_1\\over1+\\zeta_{n+1}},...,{\\zeta_n\\over1+\\zeta_{n+1}},Im {1-\\zeta_{n+1}\\over\n  1+\\zeta_{n+1}}\\Big).$$ \n\n\nThe homogeneous norm on $\\Hn$ is defined by \n$$|(z,t)|=(|z|^4+t^2)^{1\/4}$$\nand the distance from   $u=(z,t)$ and  $v=(z',t')$ is given as\n$$d((z,t),(z',t')):=|v^{-1}u|=\\big(|z-z'|^4+(t-t'-2\\Im(z\\overline\nz'))^2\\big)^{1\/4}$$\n\nOn the sphere the distance function is defined as \n$$d(\\zeta,\\eta)^2:=2|1-\\zeta\\cdot \\overline\\eta|=\\big|\\,|\\zeta-\\eta|^2-2i\n\\,\\Im(\\zeta\\cdot\\overline\\eta)\\big|=\n\\big(|\\zeta-\\eta|^4+4\\cdot{\\rm \\Im}^2(\\zeta\\cdot\\overline\\eta)\\big)^{1\/2}$$\nand a simple calculation shows that if $u=(z,t),v=(z',t')$, and $\\zeta={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(u),\\,\\eta={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(v)$.\nthen\n$${|1-\\zeta\\cdot \\overline\\eta|\\over\n  2}=|v^{-1}u|^2\\big((1+|z|^2)^2+t^2\\big)^{-1\/2}\\big((1+|z'|^2)^2+(t')^2\\big)^{-1\/2}\\eqno(113)$$\nFurther, we let \n\n$$u=(z,t)\\in\\Hn,\\quad \\Sigma=\\{u\\in\\Hn:\\,|u|=1\\},\\quad u^*={u\\over|u|}=(z^*,t^*)\\in\\Sigma$$\n$$\\zeta={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(u),\\quad {1-\\zn\\over 1+\\zn}=|z|^2+it=(|z|^4+t^2)^{1\/2} e^{i\\theta},\\quad {\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(0,0)=(0,0,...,1),$$\nand for $w\\in{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char67}}}\\def \\sC{{\\hbox{\\smathbold\\char67}},\\,|w|<1$ we let\n$$\\theta(w)=\\arg{1-w\\over 1+w}\\in \\Big[-{\\pi\\over2},{\\pi\\over2}\\Big].$$\n\n A function depending only on $\\theta=\\sin^{-1}t^*$ can be regarded as a function on the Heisenberg sphere $\\Sigma$.\n\\medskip\\eject\n\\proclaim {Theorem 18 ([BFM], Thm. 2.2)}. Let $0<d<Q$ and $p=\\displaystyle{Q\\over d}$.  Define\n$$TF(\\zeta)=\\int_{S^n}}\\def\\wtilde{\\widetilde G(\\zeta,\\eta)F(\\eta)d\\eta,\\qquad F\\in L^p(\\Sn)$$\nwhere \n$$\\eqalign{G(\\zeta,\\eta)&=g_0\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)\\,d(\\zeta,\\eta)^{d-Q}+O\\big(d(\\zeta,\\eta)^{d-Q+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)=\\cr&=\n2^{{d-Q\\over2}} g_0\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)\\,|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{d-Q\\over2}+O\\big(|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{{d-Q+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\over2}}\\big),\\quad\\zeta\\neq\\eta\\cr}$$\nfor bounded and measurable $g_0:\\big[\\!-{\\pi\\over2},{\\pi\\over2}\\big]\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$, with  \n$\\big|O\\big(|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{{d-Q+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\over2}}\\big)\\big|\\le C|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{{d-Q+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\over2}}$, some $\\epsilon>0$, and with $C$ independent of $\\zeta,\\eta$.\n\\smallskip Then, there exists $C_0>0$ such that for all $F\\in L^p(\\Sn)$\n$$\\int_{\\Sn}\\exp\\bigg[A_d\\bigg({|TF|\\over\\|F\\|_p}\\bigg)^{p'}\\bigg]d\\zeta\\le C_0\\eqno(114)$$\nwith\n$$A_d={2Q\\over\\displaystyle{\\int_\\Sigma}|g_0|^{p'} du^*}\\eqno(115)$$\nfor every $F\\in L^p(S^n)$, with ${1\\over p}+{1\\over p'}=1$. Moreover, if the function $g_0(\\theta)$  is H\\\"older continuous of order $\\sigma\\in(0,1]$ then the constant in (115) is sharp, in the sense that if it is replaced by a larger constant then there exists a sequence $F_m\\in L^p(\\Sn)$ such that the exponential integral in (114) diverges to $+\\infty$ as $m\\to\\infty$. \\par\\smallskip\n\n In [CoLu1] Cohn and Lu give a similar result in the context of the Heisenberg group, and for kernels of type $G(u)=g(u^*)|u|^{d-Q}$, i.e. without any perturbations. An $\\Hn$ version of Theorem 18 holds with virtually the same proof (in fact somewhat easier), but the two versions do not seem to be a consequence of each other.\n\\smallskip\nIn view of Theorem 1, to prove (114) it is enough to find an asymptotic estimate for  the distribution function of $G$. This is provided by the following result (which was proved in [BFM]):\\smallskip \n\\proclaim Proposition 19 {([BFM] Lemma 2.3)}. Let $G:\\Sn\\times\\Sn\\setminus\\{(\\zeta,\\zeta),\\zeta\\in\\Sn\\}\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}} $,  be measurable and such that \n$$G(\\zeta,\\eta)=g\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)\\,|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{-\\alpha}+O\\big(|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{-\\alpha+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big),\\quad\\zeta\\neq\\eta$$\n some bounded and measurable $g:\\big[-{\\pi\\over2},{\\pi\\over2}\\big]\\to{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}$, with  \n$\\big|O\\big(|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{-\\alpha+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}\\big)\\big|\\le C|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{-\\alpha+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t}$, some $\\epsilon>0$, and with $C$ independent of $\\zeta,\\eta$.\nThen, for each $\\eta\\in \\Sn$ and as $s\\to+\\infty$\n$$\\big|\\{\\zeta:\\,|G(\\zeta,\\eta)|>s\\}\\big| = s^{-Q\/2\\alpha}\\,{2^{Q\/2-1}\\over Q}\\int_\\Sigma|g|^{Q\/2\\alpha}du^*+O\\big(s^{-Q\/2\\alpha-\\sigma}\\big)$$\n for a suitable $\\sigma>0$.\n\\par\nObserve that $G$ above  may not be symmetric, but has upper and lower bounds with enough symmetries, so that in effect \n$G(\\zeta,\\cdot)^*(t)$ and $G(\\cdot,\\eta)^*(t)$, have the same asymptotic expansion in $t$ (independent of $\\zeta,\\eta$).\nProposition 19  combined with Theorem 1 gives (114). We now apply Theorem 4 in order to show the sharpness statement (this part was not done in [BFM]).\n\\smallskip\n\\pf Proof  of sharpness statement of Thm 18. The proof is similar to that of Theorem~8. Let $\\zeta_m={\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}$ , $r_m=C_0m^{-1\/(Q-d)}<1$, so that \n$$\\big\\{\\eta:\\,|G({\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}},\\eta)|>m\\big\\}\\subseteq E_m:=\\big\\{\\eta:|1-\\eta_{n+1}|<2r_m^2\\big\\}$$\nand let $B_m=\\big\\{\\zeta:|1-\\zn|<\\ts{1\\over4}r_m^2\\big\\}.$\n\\smallskip\n Conditions a), b), c) of Theorem 4 are met, from Proposition 19 and Remark 1 after Theorem 4, so all we need to do is show that \n$$\\int_{\\Sn\\setminus E_m} |G(\\zeta,\\eta)-G({\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}},\\eta)|\\, |G({\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}},\\eta)|^{p'-1}d\\eta\\le C\\,,\\qquad \\forall \\eta\\in B_m.\n$$\n\nWLOG we can assume that $G(\\zeta,\\eta)=g\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)\\,|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{d-Q\\over2}$, with $g=2^{d-Q\\over2}g_0$; as it will be apparent from the proof below,  an\nerror term of type $|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{{d-Q+\\epsilon}\\def\\part{\\partial_t\\over2}}$ will produce an integrable function on $\\Sn$, with uniformly bounded integral. So let us show that\n$$\\mathop\\int\\limits_{|1-\\eta_{n+1}|\\ge 2r_m^2} |G(\\zeta,\\eta)-G({\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}},\\eta)|\\, |G({\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}},\\eta)|^{d\\over Q-d} d\\eta\\le C\\,,\\qquad  |1-\\zn|< \\ts{1\\over4}r_m^2\n\\eqno(116)$$\n\nBy adding and subtracting the quantity \\def\\n\\cdot\\bar\\eta{{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}\\cdot\\overline\\eta}\n$g\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)|1-\\eta_{n+1}|^{d-Q\\over2}$ we are reduced to proving the following estimates\n$$\\mathop\\int\\limits_{|1-\\eta_{n+1}|\\ge 2r_m^2} \\big|g\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)-g\\big(\\theta(\\n\\cdot\\bar\\eta)\\big)\\big||g(\\n\\cdot\\bar\\eta)|^{d\\over Q-d}|1-\\eta_{n+1}|^{-Q\/2}d\\eta\\le C\\eqno(117)$$\n$$\\mathop\\int\\limits_{|1-\\eta_{n+1}|\\ge2 r_m^2}\\big|g\\big(\\theta(\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}})\\big)\\big|\\big|g\\big(\\theta(\\n\\cdot\\bar\\eta)\\big)\\big|^{d\\over Q-d}\\big||1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{d-Q\\over2}-|1-\\eta_{n+1}|^{d-Q\\over2}\\big| \\,|1-\\eta_{n+1}|^{-d\/2}d\\eta\\le C\\eqno(118)$$\nvalid for all $\\zeta\\in B_m$.\n\nThe first step is to transfer these integrals to $\\Hn$ via the Cayley transform. Recall that the volume density of the Cayley transform is \n$$|J_{\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(z,t)|={2^{2n+1}\\over \\big((1+|z|^2)^2+t^2\\big)^{n+1}}\\le {2^{2n+1}\\over (1+|u|^4)^{Q\/2}}$$\n\nIf $u=(z,t),\\,v=(z',t')$, and $\\zeta={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(u),\\,\\eta={\\cal C}}\\font\\mathbold=msbm9 at 10pt\\def\\Hn{{\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char72}}^n}\\def\\Sn{{S^{2n+1}}(v)$ then for $m$ large enough (using (113))\n $$2r_m^2\\le|1-\\eta_{n+1}|={2|v|^2\\over(1+2|z'|^2+|v|^4)^{1\/2}}\\le2|v|^2\\;\\;\\Longrightarrow\\;\\; |v|\\ge r_m$$\n$${r_m^2\\over4}>|1-\\zn|= {2|u|^2\\over(1+2|z|^2+|u|^4)^{1\/2}}\\ge {2|u|^2\\over1+|u|^2}\\;\\;\\Longrightarrow\\;\\; |u|<{r_m\\over2}$$\nand so if $\\eta\\notin E_m,\\,\\zeta\\in B_m$ then (using that $|v^{-1}u|$ is a distance)\n$${|1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}|^{1\/2}\\over|1-\\eta_{n+1}|^{1\/2}}={|v^{-1}u|\\over|v|}\\,{1\\over(1+2|z|^2+|u|^4)^{1\/4}}\\ge{{1-\\displaystyle{|u|\\over|v|}\\over(1+|u|^2)^{1\/2}}}\\ge{1\\over 2\\sqrt 2}.$$\nSince $|v^{-1}u|\/|v|=1+O(|u|\/|v|)$, for our range of $u$ and $v$, we obtain that the integrand in (118) in $\\Hn$ coordinates is bounded above by\n$$J_m=C\\int_{|v|\\ge r_m}\\bigg({|v|^2\\over1+|v|^2}\\bigg)^{-Q\/2} \\bigg({|u|\\over|v|}+|u|^2\\bigg){1\\over(1+|v|^4)^{Q\/2}}dv,\\,\\qquad |u|<{r_m\\over2}.\\eqno(119)$$\nThe integrand in (119) is bounded above by an integrable function on $\\{|v|\\ge 1\\}$, hence\n$$J_m\\le C+\\int_{r_m\\le|v|\\le 1}\\Big(|v|^{-Q-1}|u|+|v|^{-Q}|u|^2\\Big)dv=C\\int_{r_m}^1 \\Big(r^{-2}|u|+r^{-1}|u|^2\\Big)dr\\le C$$\nwhich proves (118).\n\nTo prove (117), if $|z|^2+it=|u|^2 e^{i\\theta}$\nand $|z'|^2+it'=|v|^2e^{i\\varphi}$, then\\defz\\cdot\\bar {z'}{z\\cdot\\overline {z'}}\n$${1-\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}\\over1+\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar\\eta}\\def\\zbn{\\z\\!\\cdot\\bar{\\hbox{\\gothic\\char78}}}={|u|^2e^{i\\theta}+|v|^2e^{-i\\varphi}-2z\\cdot\\bar {z'}\\over 1+|u|^2|v|^2e^{i(\\theta-\\varphi)}+2z\\cdot\\bar {z'}}$$\nso, since $g$ is H\\\"older continuous, (117) is implied by \n$$\\int_{r_m\\le |v|\\le 1} \\big|\\arg(1+|u|^2|v|^2e^{i(\\theta-\\varphi)}+2z\\cdot\\bar {z'})\\big|^{\\sigma}\\,|u|^{-Q}du\\le C$$\nand\n$$\\int_{r_m\\le |v|\\le 1} \\big|\\arg(|u|^2e^{i\\theta}+|v|^2e^{-i\\varphi}-2z\\cdot\\bar {z'})+\\varphi\\big|^{\\sigma}\\,|u|^{-Q}du\\le C$$\nwhenever  $|u|<{1\\over2} r_m$. Both  these estimates follow easily as above, from the simple observation that $\\arg(e^{-i\\varphi}+t \\omega)=-\\varphi+O(t)$, as $t\\to0$, if $|\\omega|\\le C$, uniformly in $\\varphi$ (recall that $-\\pi\/2\\le\\varphi\\le \\pi\/2$). This concludes the proof of (116) and the sharpness statement of Theorem  18.\n$$\\eqno\/\\!\/\\!\/$$\n\n\\vskip1.5em \n\n\n\\centerline{\\bf References}\\bigskip\n\\item{[Ad1]} Adams D.R. {\\sl\nA sharp inequality of J. Moser for higher order derivatives},\nAnn. of Math. {\\bf128} (1988), no. 2, 385--398. \n\\smallskip\n\\item{[Ad2]} Adams D.R.\n{\\sl Traces of potentials arising from translation invariant operators}, \nAnn. Scuola Norm. Sup. Pisa (3) {\\bf 25} (1971) 203-217. \n\\smallskip\n\\item{[Ad3]} Adams D.R., {\\sl A trace inequality for generalized potentials},\nStudia Math. {\\bf 48} (1973), 99--105. \n\\smallskip\n\\item{[Au1]} Aubin T., {\\sl Probl\\`emes isop\\'erim\\'etriques at espaces de Sobolev}, J. 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Z. {\\bf 250} (2005), 363-386.\\smallskip \n\\item{[MMcO]} Maz'ya V., McOwen R.C., {\\sl On the fundamental solution of an elliptic equation in nondivergence form}, arXiv:0806.4108v1.\\smallskip\n\\item{[Mi]} Miranda C., {\\sl Partial Differential Equations of Elliptic Type}, Springer-Verlag, New York (1970).\\smallskip\n\\item{[Mil]} Milman E., {\\sl Generalized Intersection Bodies}, J. Funct. Anal. {\\bf 240} 2006, 530-567.\\smallskip\n\\item{[Mos1]} Moser J. {\\sl A sharp form of an inequality by N. Trudinger}, Indiana Univ. Math. J. {\\bf20} (1970\/71), 1077-1092.\\smallskip\n\\item{[Mos2]}  Moser J., {\\sl On a nonlinear problem in differential geometry}, Dynamical systems (Proc. Sympos., Univ. Bahia, Salvador, 1971), 273-280. Academic Press, New York, 1973. \n\\smallskip\n\\item{[ON]}O'Neil R., {\\sl Convolution operators in $L(p,q)$ spaces}, Duke Math. J. {\\bf 30} (1963), 129-142. \\smallskip\n\\item{[R]} Ruf B., {\\sl A sharp Trudinger--Moser type inequality for unbounded domains in ${\\hbox{\\mathbold\\char82}}^2$}, J. Funct. Anal. {\\bf 219} (2005), 340-367.\\smallskip\n\\item{[Tr]} Trudinger N.S., {\\sl \nOn imbeddings into Orlicz spaces and some applications}, \nJ. Math. Mech. {\\bf17} (1967) 473-483. \n\\smallskip\n\\item{[Z]} Zygmund A., {\\sl Trigonometric Series}, Vol. 1, Cambridge Univ. Press (1959).\n\n\n\\bigskip\n\n\\noindent Luigi Fontana \\hskip19em Carlo Morpurgo\n\n\\noindent Dipartimento di Matematica ed Applicazioni \\hskip5.5em Department of Mathematics \n \n\\noindent Universit\\'a di Milano-Bicocca\\hskip 13em University of Missouri, Columbia\n\n\\noindent Via Cozzi, 53 \\hskip 19.3em Columbia, Missouri 65211\n\n\\noindent 20125 Milano - Italy\\hskip 16.6em USA \n\\smallskip\\noindent luigi.fontana@unimib.it\\hskip 15.3em morpurgoc@missouri.edu\n\n\\end\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nA semigroup $O$ or an associative algebra $O$ is called {\\em nilpotent} if \nthere exists an integer $c$ so that every product of $c+1$ elements equals \nzero. The least integer $c$ with this property is the {\\em class} $cl(O)$ \nof $O$; equivalently, the class of $O$ is the length of series of powers\n\\[ O > O^2 > \\ldots > O^c > O^{c+1} = \\{0\\}. \\]\nThe {\\em coclass} of a finite nilpotent semigroup $O$ with $n$ non-zero \nelements or a finite dimensional nilpotent algebra $O$ of dimension $n$ \nis defined via $cc(O) = n-cl(O)$.\n\nFor a semigroup $S$ and a field $K$ we denote with $K[S]$ the semigroup \nalgebra defined by $K$ and $S$. This is an associative algebra of dimension\n$|S|$. If $S$ has a zero element $z$, then the subspace $U$ of $K[S]$ \ngenerated by $z$ is an ideal in $K[S]$. We call $K[S]\/U$ the {\\em \ncontracted semigroup algebra} defined by $K$ and $S$ and denote it by \n$KS$. If $S$ is a finite nilpotent semigroup, then $KS$ is a nilpotent \nalgebra of the same class and coclass as $S$.\n\nOur first aim in this note is to suggest a general approach towards a\nclassification up to isomorphism of nilpotent semigroups of a fixed \ncoclass. For this purpose we choose an arbitrary field $K$ and we define\na directed labelled graph $\\mathcal G_{r, K}$ as follows: the vertices of $\\mathcal G_{r, K}$ \ncorrespond one-to-one to the isomorphism types of algebras $KS$ for the \nnilpotent semigroups $S$ of coclass $r$; two vertices $A$ and $B$ are \nadjoined by a directed edge $A \\rightarrow B$ if $B\/B^c \\cong A$, where $c$ is \nthe class of $B$; each vertex $A$ in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ is labelled by the \nnumber of isomorphism types of semigroups $S$ of coclass $r$ \nwith $A \\cong KS$. Illustrations of parts of such graphs can be found \nas Figure~\\ref{figcc1} on page~\\pageref{cc1} and as Figure~\\ref{figcc2d2}\non~\\pageref{cc2}.\n\nWe have investigated various of the graphs $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ and we observed that\nall these graphs share the same general features. We formulate a sequence of \nconjectures and theorems describing these features. If our conjectures become \ntheorems, then this would provide the ground for a new approach towards the \nclassification and investigation of nilpotent semigroups by coclass. In \nparticular, it would show how the classification of the infinitely many \nnilpotent semigroups of a fixed coclass reduces to a finite calculation.\n\nAs a second aim in this note we exhibit some graphs $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ explicitly \nto illustrate our conjectures. We have determined the graphs $\\mathcal G_{0,K}$ and \n$\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ for all fields $K$ using the classification of the nilpotent \nsemigroups of small coclass in \\cite{Dis10, Dis11}; see Sections \n\\ref{cc0} and \\ref{cc1}. Further, we investigated the graphs $\\mathcal G_{2,K}$ and \n$\\mathcal G_{3,K}$ for some finite fields $K$ using computational methods based on \n\\cite{Eic07} to solve the isomorphism problem for nilpotent associative \nalgebras over finite fields; see Section \\ref{cc2}.\n\nSimilar to the graphs $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ one can also define a directed graph $\\mathcal G_r$ \nwhose vertices correspond one-to-one to the isomorphism types of semigroups of \ncoclass $r$. While the graphs $\\mathcal G_r$ are also of interest, they do not\nexhibit the same general features as $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$. We compare $\\mathcal G_r$ and\n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ briefly in Section \\ref{final}.\n\nThe idea of using the coclass for the classification of nilpotent algebraic\nobjects has first been introduced by Leedham-Green \\& Newman \\cite{LNe80}\nfor nilpotent groups. We also refer to the book by Leedham-Green \\& McKay\n\\cite{LGM02} for background and many details on the results in the group \ncase. Various details of the approach taken here are similar to the \nconcepts in group theory. In particular, the idea of searching for periodic \npatterns in coclass graphs as used below also arises in group theory; we \nrefer to \\cite{DuS01, ELG08} for details. Note though that a nilpotent\nsemigroup is not a group and hence the coclass theories for groups and\nsemigroups are independent.\n\n\\section{Coclass conjectures for semigroups} \n\\label{conj}\n\nIn this section we investigate general features of the graph $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$\nfor $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and arbitrary field $K$.\n\nBy construction, every connected component of $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ is a rooted tree.\nUsing basic results on nilpotent semigroups (see~\\cite[Lemma 2.1]{Dis11})\none readily shows that $2r$ is an upper bound for the dimension of a root\n(that is, the dimension of the corresponding algebra) in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$. Thus\n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ consists of finitely many rooted trees. We call an infinite path\nin a rooted tree {\\em maximal} if it starts at the root of the tree.\n\n\\begin{conjecture}\n\\label{conjA}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field. \nThen the graph $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ has only finitely many maximal infinite paths. \nThe number of such paths depends on $r$ but not on $K$.\n\\end{conjecture}\n\nFor an algebra $A$ in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ we denote by $\\mathcal T(A)$ the subgraph of\n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ consisting of all paths that start at $A$. This is a rooted\ntree with root $A$. We say that $\\mathcal T(A)$ is a {\\em coclass tree} \nif it contains a unique maximal infinite path. A coclass tree\n$\\mathcal T(A)$ is {\\em maximal} if either $A$ is a root in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ or\nthe parent of $A$ lies on more than one maximal infinite paths.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nConjecture \\ref{conjA} is equivalent to saying that $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ consists \nof finitely many maximal coclass trees and finitely many other vertices.\n\\end{remark}\n\nWe consider the maximal coclass trees in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ in more detail. For a\nlabelled tree $\\mathcal T$ we denote with $\\overline{\\mathcal T}$ the tree without labels.\n\n\\begin{conjecture}\n\\label{conjB}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field. \nLet $\\mathcal T$ be a maximal coclass tree in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ with maximal infinite path\n$A_1 \\rightarrow A_2 \\rightarrow \\ldots$ Then $\\mathcal T$ is {\\em weakly virtually periodic}; that \nis, there exist positive integers $l$ and $k$ so that $\\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_l) \\cong \n\\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_{l+k})$ holds.\n\\end{conjecture}\n\nThe integers $l$ and $k$ with the property of Conjecture \\ref{conjB} are\ncalled {\\em weak defect} and {\\em weak period} of $\\overline{\\mathcal T}$. Note \nthat they are not unique. Every integer larger than $l$ and every multiple \nof $k$ are weak defects and weak periods as well, respectively.\n\nConsider a maximal coclass tree $\\mathcal T$ of $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ with maximal\ninfinite path $A_1 \\rightarrow A_2 \\rightarrow \\ldots$ Suppose that for some $l$ and\n$k$ there exists a graph isomorphism $\\mu : \\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_l) \\rightarrow\n\\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_{l+k})$. Then $\\mu$ defines a partition of the vertices of\n$\\mathcal T(A_l)$ into finitely many infinite families: for each vertex $B$\ncontained in $\\mathcal T(A_l) \\setminus \\mathcal T(A_{l+k})$ define the infinite\nfamily $(B, \\mu(B), \\mu^2(B), \\ldots)$. Hence Conjecture \\ref{conjB}\nasserts that the unlabelled tree $\\overline{\\mathcal T}$ can be constructed from a\nfinite subgraph, provided that a weak defect and a weak period are\nknown. This implies that $\\mathcal T$ has finite width. Conjecture \\ref{conjA} \nadds that these features of maximal coclass trees extend to all of \n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$.\nWe next exhibit an extension of Conjecture \\ref{conjB} incorporating\nlabels.\n\n\\begin{conjecture}\n\\label{conjC}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field. \nLet $\\mathcal T$ be a maximal coclass tree in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ with maximal infinite path\n$A_1 \\rightarrow A_2 \\rightarrow \\ldots$ Then $\\mathcal T$ is {\\em strongly virtually periodic}; \nthat is, there exist positive integers $l$ and $k$, a graph isomorphism \n$\\mu : \\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_l) \\rightarrow \\overline{\\mathcal T}(A_{l+k})$ and for every vertex $B$ \nin $\\mathcal T(A_l) \\setminus \\mathcal T(A_{l+k})$ a rational polynomial $f_B$ so that \nthe label of $\\mu^i(B)$ equals $f_B(i)$.\n\\end{conjecture}\n\nThe integers $l$ and $k$ with the property of Conjecture \\ref{conjC} are\ncalled {\\em strong defect} and {\\em strong period} of $\\mathcal T$. As in the\nweak case, they are not unique. Further, every strong defect and strong\nperiod are also a weak defect and weak period, but the converse does not\nhold in general; compare Section \\ref{cc1} for an example.\n\nConjectures \\ref{conjA} and \\ref{conjC} suggest the following new approach \ntowards a classification up to isomorphism of all nilpotent semigroups of \nfixed coclass $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$. \n\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[(1)]\nChoose an arbitrary field $K$ and classify the maximal infinite paths in \n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$.\n\\item[(2)]\nFor each maximal infinite path consider its corresponding coclass tree\n$\\mathcal T$ and find a strong defect $l$, a strong period $k$ and an upper bound \n$d$ to the degree of the polynomials of the associated families. \n\\item[(3)]\nFor each maximal coclass tree $\\mathcal T$ with strong defect $l$, strong period $k$ \nand bound $d$:\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[(a)]\nDetermine the unlabelled tree $\\overline{\\mathcal T}$ up to depth $l+(d+1)k$. \n\\item[(b)]\nFor each vertex $B$ in the determined part of $\\overline{\\mathcal T}$ compute its\nlabel.\n\\end{items}\n\\item[(4)]\nDetermine the finite parts of $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ outside the maximal coclass trees.\n\\end{items}\n\nStep (1) is discussed further in Section \\ref{infdim} below. For Step (2)\nit would be the hope that a constructive proof of the conjectures posed\nhere might also yield values for strong defect, strong period and bounds \nfor the degrees of the arising polynomials.\n\nSteps (3a) and (3b) may be facilitated by two algorithms. The first \ndetermines up to isomorphism all contracted semigroup algebras $B$ of \nclass $c+1$ with $B\/B^{c+1} \\cong A$ for any given contracted semigroup \nalgebra $A$ of class $c$. The second algorithm takes a nilpotent \nassociative algebra $A$ of finite dimension and computes up to isomorphism \nall semigroups $S$ with $K S \\cong A$. Both algorithms reduce to a finite\ncomputation if the underlying field $K$ is finite. A practical realisation\nfor the first algorithm in the finite field case may be obtained as \nvariation of the method in \\cite{Eic07}.\n\nOnce the Steps (1) - (4) have been performed, this would allow to construct \nthe full graph $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ using the graph isomorphism of Conjecture\n\\ref{conjC}. The polynomials $f_B$ can be interpolated from the given \ninformation, as there are $d+1$ values $f_B(i)$ available.\n\n\\section{The infinite paths in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$}\n\\label{infdim}\n\nIn this section we investigate in more detail the infinite paths in \n$\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ for arbitrary $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and arbitrary field $K$. We first \nprovide some background for our constructions.\n\n\\subsection{Coclass for infinite objects}\n\nLet $O$ be a finitely generated infinite semigroup or a finitely generated \ninfinite dimensional associative algebra. Then every quotient $O\/O^i$ is \nfinitely generated of class at most $i$ and hence is finite (in the semigroup\ncase) or finite dimensional (in the algebra case). Thus $O\/O^i$ has finite\ncoclass $cc(O\/O^i)$. We say that $O$ is {\\em residually nilpotent} if \n$\\cap_{i \\in \\mathbb N} O^i = 0$ holds. If $O$ is finitely generated and \nresidually nilpotent, then we define its {\\em coclass} $cc(O)$ as\n\\[ cc(O) = \\lim_{i \\rightarrow \\infty} cc(O\/O^i).\\]\n\nThe coclass of $O$ can be finite or infinite. It is finite if and only if\nthere exists $i \\in \\mathbb N$ so that $|O^{j+1} \\setminus O^j| = 1$ (in the\nsemigroup case) or $\\dim(O^j\/O^{j+1}) = 1$ (in the algebra case) for all \n$j \\geq i$. If we say that $O$ has `finite coclass', then this implies\nthat $O$ is finitely generated and residually nilpotent.\n\n\\subsection{Inverse limits of algebras and semigroups}\n\nConsider a maximal infinite path $A_1 \\rightarrow A_2 \\rightarrow \\ldots$ in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ and\nlet $\\hat{A} = \\prod_{i \\in \\mathbb N} A_i$ be the Cartesian product of the algebras\non the path. If $A_1$ has class $c$, then $A_j$ has class $j+c-1$ and thus\n$A_{j+1}\/A_{j+1}^{j+c} \\cong A_j$ for every $j \\in \\mathbb N$. For every $j \\in \\mathbb N$ \nwe choose an epimorphism $\\nu_j : A_{j+1} \\rightarrow A_j$ with kernel \n$A_{j+1}^{j+c}$. We define the {\\em inverse limit} of the algebras on the path as\n\\[ A = \\left\\{ (a_1, a_2, \\ldots) \\in \\hat{A} \\mid \\nu_j(a_{j+1}) = a_j \n     \\mbox{ for every } j \\in \\mathbb N \\right\\}.\\]\n\nThe inverse limit $A$ is an infinite dimensional associative $K$-algebra\nwhich satisfies $A \/ A^{j+c} \\cong A_j$ for every $j \\in \\mathbb N$. Thus $A\/A^2$\nis finite dimensional and hence $A$ is finitely generated. It is also \nresidually finite and has coclass $r$. Further, each algebra on the maximal \ninfinite path can be obtained as quotient of $A$ and thus $A$ fully \ndescribes the considered maximal infinite path. We summarize this as follows.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{infpath}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field.\nFor every maximal infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ there exists an infinite\ndimensional associative $K$-algebra of coclass $r$ which describes \nthe path. \n\\end{theorem}\n\nIsomorphic algebras of the type considered in Theorem \\ref{infpath} \ndescribe the same infinite path. Hence an approach to the classification \nof the maximal infinite paths in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ is the determination up to \nisomorphism of the infinite dimensional associative $K$-algebras $A$ of \ncoclass $r$ whose quotients $A\/A^j$ are contracted semigroup algebras\nfor every $j \\in \\mathbb N$. Conjecture \\ref{conjA} is equivalent to saying that\nthere are only finitely many of these objects up to isomorphism. The\nfollowing theorem describes these algebras in more detail.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field.\nEach infinite dimensional associative $K$-algebra of coclass $r$ which\ndescribes an infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ is isomorphic to a contracted \nsemigroup algebra $KS$ for an infinite semigroup $S$ of coclass $r$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $A$ be an infinite dimensional associative $K$-algebra of coclass $r$\nwhich describes an infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$. Then there exists an $i \\in \n\\mathbb N$ so that $A\/A^j$ is a contracted semigroup algebra of coclass $r$ for \nevery $j \\geq i$. Each of the quotients $A\/A^j$ may be the contracted \nsemigroup algebra for several non-isomorphic semigroups. Our aim is to show \nthat for every $j \\geq i$ there exists a semigroup $S_j$ so that $A\/A^j \n\\cong K S_j$ and $S_j \\cong S\/S^j$ for an infinite semigroup $S$ of \ncoclass $r$.\n\nWe define a graph $\\L$ whose vertices correspond one-to-one to the isomorphism\ntypes of semigroups whose contracted semigroup algebra is isomorphic to a\nquotient $A\/A^j$ for some $j \\geq i$. We connect two semigroups in $\\L$\nby a directed edge $U \\rightarrow T$ if $T\/T^c \\cong U$, where $c$ is the class of\n$T$. If a semigroup $T$ satisfies $KT \\cong A\/A^j$ for some $j > i$, then \n$T$ has class $j-1$ and $U \\cong T\/T^{j-1}$ satisfies $KU \\cong A\/A^{j-1}$.\nHence each connected component of $\\L$ is a tree with a root of class $i-1$\nand coclass $r$. There is at least one infinite connected component $\\mathcal M$ of\n$\\L$. By K\\\"onig's Lemma, the tree $\\mathcal M$ contains an infinite path, say\n$M_i \\rightarrow M_{i+1} \\rightarrow \\ldots$ Let $S$ be the inverse limit of the semigroups\non this infinite path. Then $S$ is an infinite semigroup with $S\/S^j\n\\cong M_j$ and $KM_j \\cong A\/A^j$ for every $j \\geq i$. In particular, the\nsemigroup $S$ has finite coclass $r$. \n\nIt remains to show that $S$ satisfies $KS \\cong A$. This follows from the\nconstruction of $S$, as the following diagram is commutative, where upwards\narrows denote embeddings of semigroups in their contracted semigroup \nalgebras:\n\\[ \\begin{array}{ccccccc}\n   A\/A^i & \\rightarrow & A\/A^{i+1} & \\rightarrow & A\/A^{i+2} & \\rightarrow & \\ldots \\\\\n   \\uparrow & & \\uparrow & & \\uparrow && \\\\\n   S\/S^i & \\rightarrow & S\/S^{i+1} & \\rightarrow & S\/S^{i+2} & \\rightarrow & \\ldots \\\\\n   \\end{array}. \\]\nThis completes the proof.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Examples}\n\nConsider the polynomial algebra in one indeterminate and let $I_K$ denote\nits ideal consisting of all polynomials with zero constant term. Then $I_K$\nis an explicit construction for the free non-unital associative algebra\non one generator over the field $K$. It is isomorphic to the contracted\nsemigroup algebra $KS$ with $S \\cong (\\mathbb N_0, +)$ and it has coclass $0$. \nHence it describes an infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{0,K}$. In Section \\ref{cc0} \nwe observe that it describes the unique maximal infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{0,K}$.\n\nExamples of infinite dimensional contracted semigroup algebras of higher \ncoclass can be obtained inductively using the following process. Let $S$\nbe an infinite semigroup of coclass $r-1$. An {\\em annihilator extension} \nof $S$ is an infinite semigroup $T$ so that $T$ contains a non-zero \nelement $t \\in \\operatorname{Ann}(T)$ with $S \\cong T \/ \\langle t \\rangle$. \n\n\\begin{lemma}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N$ and let $S$ be an infinite semigroup of coclass $r-1$. \nEach annihilator extension $T$ of $S$ is an infinite semigroup of coclass \n$r$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nConsider the sequence $T \\geq T^2 \\geq T^3 \\geq \\ldots$ and define $c \\in \\mathbb N$\nvia $t \\in T^c \\setminus T^{c+1}$. Let $\\nu : T \\rightarrow S$ be an epimorphism with \nkernel $\\langle t \\rangle$. As $\\nu(T^i) = S^i$, we obtain that $T\/T^i \\cong \nS\/S^i$ for $1 \\leq i \\leq c$ and for $i \\geq c+1$ we obtain that $|T\/T^i| = \n|S\/S^i|+1$. Thus $T$ is finitely generated and residually nilpotent and it \nsatisfies $cc(T\/T^i) = cc(S\/S^i)+1$ for $i \\geq c+1$. Thus $T$ is an infinite\nsemigroup of coclass $cc(T) = cc(S)+1$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIf $A$ is an infinite dimensional contracted semigroup algebra of coclass \n$r-1$, then $A = KS$ for an infinite semigroup $S$ of coclass $r-1$. Thus \nevery annihilator extension $T$ of $S$ gives rise to an infinite dimensional\ncontracted semigroup algebra of coclass $r$. \n\nWe exhibit an explicit example for this process. For this purpose let $L_K$ \ndenote the 1-dimensional nilpotent algebra of class $1$. Then $L_K$ is \nisomorphic to the contracted semigroup algebra $KZ_2$, where $Z_n$ is the\nzero semigroup with $n$ elements. For every $r\\in\\mathbb N$ the algebra \n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq_MKr}\nM_{K,r} = I_K \\oplus \\bigoplus_{i=1}^r L_K\n\\end{equation}\nis an infinite dimensional contracted semigroup algebra of coclass\n$r$. As underlying semigroup one can choose the zero union of $(\\mathbb N,+)$\nand $Z_{r+1}$, that is the semigroup on $\\mathbb N \\cup Z_{r+1}$ in which\nmixed products equal $0\\in Z_{r+1}$. For $r>0$ this is an annihilator\nextension of the zero union of  $(\\mathbb N,+)$ and $Z_{r}$ corresponding to\n$M_{K,r-1}$.\n\nWe close this section by posing the following question.\n\n\\begin{question}\n\\label{conjE}\nDoes every infinite dimensional algebra which describes an infinite\npath in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ arise as contracted semigroup algebra for a semigroup\nwhich is an annihilator extension?\n\\end{question}\n\n\n\\section{The minimal generator number}\n\\label{sec_mingen}\n\nA nilpotent semigroup $S$ has a unique minimal generating set $S \\setminus\nS^2$. Its cardinality corresponds to the dimension of the quotient $KS \/ \n(KS)^2$ and thus to the minimal generator number of the algebra $KS$. Hence\n$KS \\cong KT$ implies that the nilpotent semigroups $S$ and $T$ have the\nsame minimal generator number. Further, if two algebras in $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ are \nconnected, then they have the same minimal generator number. This allows \nto define the subgraph $\\mathcal G_{r,K,d}$ of $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ corresponding to the \nnilpotent semigroups of coclass $r$ with minimal generator number $d$.\n\nA nilpotent semigroup of coclass $r$ has at most $r+1$ generators. \nThus $\\mathcal G_{r,K,d}$ is empty for $d \\geq r+2$ (and also for $d=1$ if $r > 0$). \nThe extremal case $\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$ can be described in more detail as the \nfollowing theorem shows. Recall that $Z_n$ is the zero semigroup with $n$ \nelements and $M_{K,r}$ is defined in~\\eqref{eq_MKr}.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{mingen}\nLet $r \\in \\mathbb N_0$ and $K$ an arbitrary field. Then \n$\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$ consists of a unique maximal coclass tree with corresponding \ninfinite dimensional algebra $M_{K,r}$. The root of the maximal coclass tree\nis $K Z_{r+2}$ if $r > 0$ and $K Z_{1}$ if $r = 0$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe semigroup $Z_{r+2}$ has $r+2$ elements, minimal generator number $r+1$, \nclass $1$ and thus coclass $r$. If $r > 0$, then $Z_{r+2}$ is the unique \nsemigroup of coclass $r$ and order at most $r+2$ and hence $KZ_{r+2}$ is a \nroot in $\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$. If $r = 0$, then $Z_1$ is a root of $\\mathcal G_{0,K,1}$.\n\nIn the following we assume that $r > 0$. The case $r=0$ is similar and we\nleave it to the reader. Let $S$ be an arbitrary semigroup of class $c$ such \nthat $KS$ is in $\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$. We show by induction on $|S|$ that there \nexists a path from $KZ_{r+2}$ to $KS$. As $Z_{r+2}$ is the only semigroup \nof coclass $r$, order at most $r+2$ and minimal generator number $r+1$, we \nmay assume that $|S| > r+2$. From $|S \\setminus S^2|=r+1$ follows $|S^2|=c$ \nand hence $|S^c|=2$. Thus $S\/S^c$ is a semigroup of coclass $r$ with minimal \ngenerator number $r+1$ and with $|S| - 1$ elements. This yields that there \nis an edge from $KS\/(KS)^c \\cong K (S\/S^c)$ to $KS$. By induction, there \nexists a path from $KZ_{r+2}$ to $K (S\/S^c)$ and hence to $KS$. This proves \nthat  $\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$ is connected.\n\nThe infinite dimensional algebra $M_{K,r}$ has coclass $r$ and minimal\ngenerator number $r+1$ and it is a contracted semigroup algebra. It defines \na maximal infinite path in $\\mathcal G_{r,K,r+1}$. It remains to show that this \nmaximal infinite path is unique. Let $A$ be an arbitrary infinite dimensional \nassocative algebra of coclass $r$ with $r+1$ generators. Then $\\dim(A\/A^2) \n= r+1$ and $\\dim(A^i\/A^{i+1}) = 1$ for every $i \\geq 2$. Let $v,w,x\\in A$ \nsuch that $vwxA^4$ generates $A^3\/A^4$. Then both $vwA^3$ and $wxA^3$ \ngenerate $A^2\/A^3$ and hence $vw = kwx$ for some $k\\in K$. This yields \n$vwx=kwxx$ and hence $x^2A^3$ is a generator of $A^2\/A^3$. By induction, \nit follows that $x^iA^{i+1}$ is a generator of $A^i\/A^{i+1}$ for every \n$i\\geq 2$. Now choose elements $x_1, \\ldots, x_r \\in A$ that together with \n$x$ correspond to a basis of $A\/A^2$. Then these elements generate $A$. \nA basis of $A^2$ has the form $\\{ x^j \\mid j \\geq 2\\}$. Thus for $i \\in \n\\{1, \\ldots, r\\}$ we find that \n\\[ x x_i = \\sum_{j=2}^\\infty k_{ij} x^j \\in A^2. \\]\nWe replace $x_i$ by \n\\[ y_i = x_i - \\sum_{j=2}^\\infty k_{ij} x^{j-1}\\]\nand thus obtain a new minimal generating set $x, y_1, \\ldots, y_r$ of $A$ which\nsatisfies $x y_i = 0$ by construction. For $i,j \\in \\{1,\\ldots, r\\}$\nand consider the product $y_i y_j$. Then $y_i y_j = \\sum_{h=2}^\\infty k_h x^h \n\\in A^2$. As $x y_i = 0$, it follows that $x y_i y_j = 0$ and thus \n$\\sum_{h=2}^\\infty k_h x^{h+1} = 0$. This implies that all coefficients \n$k_h$ equal $0$ and hence $y_i y_j = 0$ for every $i, j \\in \\{1, \\ldots, r\\}$. \nThis yields that $A \\cong M_{K,r}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{The graph $\\mathcal G_{0,K}$}\n\\label{cc0}\n\nThe semigroups of coclass $0$ are well-known; for every order $n\\in\\mathbb N$ there\nexists exactly one such semigroup with presentation $\\langle u\\mid \nu^n=u^{n+1}\\rangle$. Together with the result from\nTheorem~\\ref{mingen} this leads to the following theorem.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\nLet $K$ be an arbitrary field. The graph $\\mathcal G_{0,K}$ consists of a\nunique maximal coclass tree with root $K \\!Z_1$. This tree is strongly\nvirtually periodic with strong defect $1$, strong period $1$, and the\nsingle associated polynomial $f_{K\\!Z_1}(x) = 1$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\section{The graph $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$}\n\\label{cc1}\n\nWe determine the graph $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ for arbitrary fields $K$ using the \nclassification \\cite{Dis10, Dis11} of nilpotent semigroups of coclass $1$.\nAs preliminary step, note that a nilpotent semigroup of coclass $1$ has \nat least $3$ elements. Up to isomorphism there exist exactly one\nsemigroup of coclass  $1$ with $3$ elements, namely $Z_3$, and nine\nsemigroups with $4$ elements.\n\\begin{theorem}\nLet $K$ be an arbitrary field. \n\\begin{items}\n\\item[\\rm (1)]\nThe graph $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ consists of a unique maximal coclass tree $\\mathcal T$\nwith root $K \\!Z_{3}$ and corresponding infinite dimensional algebra\n$M_{K,1}$ (defined in \\eqref{eq_MKr}).\n\\item[\\rm (2)]\nThe tree $\\mathcal T$ is strongly virtually periodic with strong defect $2$ and \nstrong period $2$. Let $A_1 \\rightarrow A_2 \\rightarrow \\ldots$ denote the maximal infinite \npath of $\\mathcal T$. For each algebra $B\\in \\mathcal T(A_2)\\setminus\\mathcal T(A_4)$\nthe polynomial corresponding to $B$ has degree at most $1$.\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[\\rm (a)]\nIf $\\sqrt{-1} \\in K$, then $\\mathcal T(A_2)\\setminus\\mathcal T(A_4)$ consist of $A_2$,\n$4$ algebras with $A_2$ as parent, and $3$ algebras with $A_3$ as\nparent; see the right box of Figure~\\ref{figcc1}. \n\\item[\\rm (b)]\nIf $\\sqrt{-1} \\in K$, then $\\mathcal T(A_2)\\setminus\\mathcal T(A_4)$ consist of $A_2$,\n$4$ algebras with $A_2$ as parent, and $4$ algebras with $A_3$ as\nparent; see the left box of Figure~\\ref{figcc1}. \n\\end{items}\n\\end{items}\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{figure}[thb]\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{cc1.png}\n\\end{center}\n\\vspace{-1cm}\n\\caption{Description of $\\mathcal T(A_2)$ in $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ with root of \ndimension $3$. Vertices with box correspond to non-commutative algebras.\nThe polynomials of degree $1$ are $2x+2$ and $2x+3$ for the two families \non the infinite path and $x+2$ for the other two families.}\n\\label{figcc1}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe first part of the statement is true by Theorem \\ref{mingen}. To prove \nthe second part we use the classification from \\cite{Dis11}: there are the \nfollowing $n+2+ \\lfloor n\/2 \\rfloor$  isomorphism types of semigroups of \norder $n$ and coclass $1$ for $n \\geq 5$:\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[$\\bullet$] \n$H_k = \\langle u,v \\mid \nu^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^k, vu=u^k,v^2=u^{2k-2} \\rangle, 2\\leq k\\leq n-1$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$J_k=\\langle u,v \\mid \nu^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^k, vu=u^k,v^2=u^{n-2} \\rangle, n\/2 < k\\leq n-1$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$X = \\langle u,v \\mid u^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^{n\/2}, vu=u^{n\/2},v^2=u^{n-1}\n  \\rangle, \\mbox{ if }n \\equiv 0 \\mod 2$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$N_1=\\langle u,v \\mid u^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^{n-1}, vu=u^{n-2},v^2=u^{n-2} \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$N_2=\\langle u,v \\mid u^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^{n-2}, vu=u^{n-1},v^2=u^{n-2} \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$N_3=\\langle u,v \\mid u^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^{n-1}, vu=u^{n-2},v^2=u^{n-1} \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$N_4=\\langle u,v \\mid u^{n-1}=u^n, uv=u^{n-2}, vu=u^{n-1},v^2=u^{n-1} \\rangle$.\n\\end{items}\n\nWe now show which of these semigroups give rise to isomorphic algebras.\n\\medskip \n\nShow that $K H_2 \\cong K H_k$ for $3 \\leq k \\leq n-1$ holds.\\\\\nDefine $\\mu : K H_2 \\rightarrow K H_k$ via $\\mu(u) = u+u^{k-1}$ and $\\mu(v) = u+v$.\nAs $(u+u^{k-1})^m = \\sum_{i=0}^m {m \\choose i} u^{m-i} (u^{k-1})^i = \n\\sum_{i=0}^m {m \\choose i} u^{m+(k-2)i}$ for $1\\leq m\\leq n-1$, it follows\nthat the elements $u+u^{k-1}$ and $u+v$ generate $K H_k$. The images of \n$u$ and $v$ under $\\mu$ satisfy the relations of $H_2$ and hence $\\mu$ \ninduces an epimorphism. As $K H_k$ and $K H_2$ have the same dimension, \nit follows that $\\mu$ is an isomorphism.\n\\medskip\n\nShow that $K J_{n-1} \\cong K J_k$ for $n\/2 < k < n-1$ and \n$K X \\cong K J_{n-1}$ if $n$ is even and $\\sqrt{-1} \\in K$ hold.\\\\\nFor the first part, define $\\mu : K J_{n-1} \\rightarrow K J_k$ via $\\mu(u) = u$ \nand $\\mu(v) = v-u^{k-1}$. For the second part, define $\\mu : K X \\rightarrow \nK J_{n-1}$ via $\\mu(u) = u$ and $\\mu(v) = u^{n\/2-1} - \\sqrt{-1} v$. Then \nas above, it follows that $\\mu$ extends to an isomorphism. \n\\medskip\n\nShow that $K N_1 \\cong K N_2$ and $K N_3 \\cong K N_4$ hold.\\\\\nNote that $(N_1,N_2)$ and $(N_3,N_4)$ are pairs of \nanti-isomorphic semigroups. For each $i \\in \\{1, \\ldots, 4\\}$, the \nsubsemigroup $\\langle u, u^{n-3}-v\\rangle$ yields a basis of $K N_i$ \nand is isomorphic to the dual semigroup of $N_i$. Hence $K N_1 \\cong \nK N_2$ and $K N_3 \\cong K N_4$ follow.\n\\medskip\n\nIt remains to show that we have determined all isomorphisms. First, \nwe consider $K H_{n-1}$ and $K J_{n-1}$. These are both \ncommutative algebras; the first has an annihilator of dimension 2\ngenerated by $v$ and $u^{n-2}$ and the second has an annihilator of\ndimension 1 generated by $u^{n-2}$. Hence the algebras are non-isomorphic.\nSecondly, we consider  $K N_1$ and $K N_3$. These are both\nnon-commutative algebras and they both have an annihilator of dimension 1; \nthe first has a right annihilator of dimension 2 generated by $v$ \nand $u^{n-2}$ and the second has a right annihilator of dimension 1\ngenerated by $u^{n-2}$. Hence the algebras are non-isomorphic. This\nproves our claim in the case $\\sqrt{-1} \\in K$ or $n$ odd. In the case \n$\\sqrt{-1} \\not \\in K$ and $n$ even, there is the additional algebra \n$K X$. This is a commutative algebra whose annihilator has dimension 1;\nhence we have to distinguish $K X$ from $K J_{n-1}$. Assume that $\\mu : \nK X \\rightarrow K J_{n-1}$ is an isomorphism and denote $\\mu(v) = av + \n\\sum_{i=1}^{n-2} b_i u^i \\in K J_{n-1}$. Then $\\mu(v)^2 = a^2 v^2+\n(\\sum_{i=1}^{n-2} b_i u^i)^2$ in $K J_{n-1}$, as $uv = vu = 0$ holds. \nNote that $v^2 = u^{n-2}$ in $K J_{n-1}$ and $\\mu(v)^2 = \\mu(v^2) = \n0\\in K J_{n-1}$ as $v^2=0$ in $KX$. \nAn inspection of the coefficients now shows that $b_i = 0$ for $1 \\leq i \n\\leq n\/2-2$. The coefficient of $u^{n-2}$ in $\\mu(v)^2$ thus is \n$a^2+b_{n\/2-1}^2$. Since $\\sqrt{-1} \\not \\in K$, it follows that \n$a = b_{n\/2-1} = 0$. This yields that $\\mu(v) \\in \\langle u^{n\/2}, \nu^{n\/2+1}, \\ldots, u_{n-2} \\rangle \\leq (K J_{n-1})^2$. Hence $\\mu$ \nis not surjective, a contradiction.\n\\medskip\n\nWe determine the edges of $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$. Consider a semigroup $S$ of order\n$n$ from the above classification. In the quotient $S\/S^{n-2}$ the two\nelements $u^{n-2}$ and $u^{n-1}$ are identified, and hence the quotient \nis isomorphic to a semigroup of type $H_k$ of order $n-1$. Note that the \nlater is valid for $n=5$ also, as the semigroups $H_k$ can be defined for \norder $4$ as well.\n\\medskip\n\nThe labels of the vertices in $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ follow immediately from the\nclassification. This implies that $\\mathcal G_{1,K}$ has strong defect 2 and\nstrong period 2. (In fact, both values are minimal.)\n\\end{proof}\n\nImages of the parts of $\\mathcal G_{1,K,2}$ corresponding to semigroups\nof order at most $12$ for $K = GF(p)$ with $p \\leq 23$ can be found\nat~\\cite{homepage}.\n \n\\section{Computational experiments for $\\mathcal G_{2,K}$}\n\\label{cc2}\n\nA classification of semigroups of coclass $2$ is available in\n\\cite{Dis10,Dis11}. We\nused it to investigate $\\mathcal G_{2,K}$ computationally, applying the\nisomorphism test for associative nilpotent algebras over finite fields\nin~\\cite{Eic07}. Semigroups of coclass $2$ have a minimal\ngenerating set of size $2$ or $3$. We know from Section~\\ref{sec_mingen}\nthat these two cases lead to independent subgraphs $\\mathcal G_{2,K,2}$ and\n$\\mathcal G_{2,K,3}$ of $\\mathcal G_{2,K}$ which shall be considered separately.\n\nWe have determined the part of $\\mathcal G_{2,K,2}$ corresponding to semigroups\nof order at most $12$ for $K = GF(p)$ with $p \\leq 23$. Images of the\ngraphs are available at~\\cite{homepage}. We conjecture\nthat for every field $K$ the graph $\\mathcal G_{2,K,2}$ has five maximal infinite\npaths which are described by the following infinite dimensional\nalgebras:\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$\\langle a, b \\mid b^2 = ba = a^2b = 0 \\rangle$\nwith annihilator $\\langle ab \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$\\langle a, b \\mid b^2 = ab = ba^2 = 0 \\rangle$\nwith annihilator $\\langle ba \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$\\langle a, b \\mid b^3 = ab = ba = 0 \\rangle$\nwith annihilator $\\langle b^2 \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$\\langle a, b \\mid b^2 = aba = 0, ab = ba \\rangle$\nwith annihilator $\\langle ba \\rangle$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\n$\\langle a, b \\mid b^2 = ba, ab = b^2a = 0 \\rangle$\nwith annihilator $\\langle ba \\rangle$.\n\\end{items}\nUsing these presentations to define semigroups with zero we obtain\ninfinite semigroups that are annihilator extensions of the semigroup\nunderlying $M_{K,1}$ and whose contracted semigroup algebras are the\nalgebras defined by the presentations. \nIf the conjecture on the number of infinite paths holds, then\n$\\mathcal G_{2,K,2}$ contains five maximal coclass\ntrees. Figure~\\ref{figcc2d2} exhibits the respective trees of the\ncomputed graph for $K=GF(5)$.\nFurthermore our computational evidence suggests the following:\n\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe graph $\\mathcal G_{2,GF(p),2}$ depends on $p \\bmod 4$ only;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe vertices in $\\mathcal G_{2,GF(p),2}$ outside a maximal coclass tree have \ndimension $4$ or $5$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe roots of the maximal coclass trees of $\\mathcal G_{2,GF(p),2}$ have dimension $4$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\neach maximal coclass tree in $\\mathcal G_{2,GF(p),2}$ is strongly virtually\nperiodic; one tree has strong defect $1$ and strong period $1$, the\nother four trees have strong defect $2$ and strong period $2$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe arising strong defects and strong periods are independent of the field.\n\\end{items}\n\nAdditionally the polynomials describing the labels in the\nperiodic parts of the maximal coclass trees have degree at most $1$, a\nfact that follows from the classification in~\\cite{Dis10,Dis11}.\n\n\\begin{figure}[thb]\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{cc2.png}\n\\end{center}\n\\vspace{-1cm}\n\\caption{Maximal coclass trees in $\\mathcal G_{2,GF(5),2}$ up to depth 12.}\n\\label{figcc2d2}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe graph $\\mathcal G_{2,K,3}$ is known to consist of a single maximal coclass\ntree with root $KZ_4$ and infinite paths corresponding to $M_{K,2}$ by\nTheorem~\\ref{mingen}. We have determined the part of $\\mathcal G_{2,K,3}$\ncorresponding to semigroups of order at most $12$ for $K = GF(p)$ with\n$p \\leq 5$. Images of the graphs are available at~\\cite{homepage}.\nIn all three cases we found the graph to appear strongly\nvirtually periodic with strong defect $2$, and strong period $2$. In\naccordance with the results from~\\cite{Dis10,Dis11} the labels can be\ndescribed by quadratic polynomials.\n\n\\section{Computational experiments for $\\mathcal G_{3,K}$}\n\\label{cc3}\n\nFor the semigroups of coclass $3$ there is no general classification known. \nWe computed the semigroups of coclass $3$ and order at most $17$ up to \nisomorphism using the code provided in~\\cite[Appendix C]{Dis10}. Then we\ndetermined the part of $\\mathcal G_{3,K,2}$ correspondig to these semigroups for \n$K = GF(p)$ with $p \\leq 23$. Images of the graphs are available \nat~\\cite{homepage}. We summarise our observations:\n\\begin{items}\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe graph $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ depends on $p \\bmod 4$ only;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe graph $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ has $15$ maximal infinite paths of which\n$4$ correspond to commutative algebras; \n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe vertices in $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ outside a maximal coclass tree have \ndimension $6$, $7$ or $8$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe roots of the maximal coclass trees of $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ have\ndimension $5$, $6$ or $7$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe maximal coclass trees in $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ are strongly virtually\nperiodic with strong defect at most $3$ and strong period at most $6$;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe arising strong periods are independent of the field;\n\\item[$\\bullet$]\nthe polynomials describing the labels have degree at most $1$.\n\\end{items}\n\nThese observations for $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ are of particular\ninterest as this is the first case in which some of the semigroups\ncontain products of three elements that lie in different monogenic\nsubsemigroups. In fact, $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(p),2}$ has in many aspects more \ncomplex features than all other considered graphs.\n\nWe have investigated the part of $\\mathcal G_{3,K,3}$ correspondig to semigroups of\norder at most $12$ for $K = GF(2)$ only. There appear to be $21$\nmaximal infinite paths in $\\mathcal G_{3,GF(2),3}$ with $5$ paths\ncorresponding to commutative algebras. \n\nThe graph $\\mathcal G_{3,K,4}$ has $1$ maximal infinite paths corresponding\nto the commutative algebra $M_{K,3}$ by Theorem~\\ref{mingen}.\n\n\\section{Concluding comments}\n\\label{final}\n\nSimilar to the graphs $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ one can define a graph $\\mathcal G_r$ whose \nvertices correspond one-to-one to the isomorphism types of semigroups \nof coclass $r$. Two vertices are adjoined by a directed edge $T \\rightarrow S$\nif $S\/S^c \\cong T$ where $c$ is the class of $S$.\nIt follows directly from \\cite[Lemma 3.1]{Dis11} that the graph $\\mathcal G_r$\ndoes not have finite width (unless $r=0$).\n\nThe additional use of the contracted semigroup algebras in the definition\nof $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ induces a dependence on the underlying field $K$, but it has \nthe significant advantage that the graphs $\\mathcal G_{r,K}$ seem to have finite \nwidth and exhibit periodic patterns which can be described in a compact way. \nFurther, the considered field $K$ seems to have no influence on the important\naspects of the periodicity. \n\n\\def$'${$'$}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\\label{introduction}\n\nThe monitoring of storage, movement, and quality of water at regional and global scales is of vital importance to practical applications such as agricultural production, water resources management, and predictions of flood, drought and climate change \\citep{Seneviratne2010, Wood2011, Zink2016}. To study land surface processes, soil moisture information have to be included, averaged at a scale relevant and representative for the physical, chemical, and biological processes \\citep{Entekhabi1999, Corwin2006, Schulz2006, Gentine2012, Vereecken2015}. The provision of parameters describing the critical processes at the landscape scale and capturing the natural heterogeneity of the soil-hydrological system at scales of 1 to 1000 m is one of the grand challenges in soil moisture monitoring \\citep{Robinson2008, PetersLidard2017}.\n\nOver the last 10--15 years, satellite-based Earth observation technologies made enormous progress. The potential of satellite-based remote sensing to map soil moisture dynamics at the catchment scale (\\(\\sim1000\\,\\mathrm{km^2}\\)) has been demonstrated by numerous studies \\citep{Kerr2007, Famiglietti2008, Wagner2009, WangQu2009, Liu2011, Ochsner2013}. While such data are widely used today to calibrate large-scale hydrological models up to the global scale, satellite-based remotely sensed soil moisture information are often not appropriate to reveal processes at the intermediate scale (up to 1000 m) \\citep{Western2002}. The reasons for this are, e.g., the shallow measurement depth, disturbing influences of vegetation or surface roughness on the signal and resulting lacks in the data quality, and a too coarse spatial resolution \\citep{Robinson2008}. The accuracy and precision of remotely sensed products is also not constant around the globe, which is less an issue for ground-based methods. Comparing the spatiotemporal coverage of remotely sensed soil moisture against spatiotemporal scales covered by local instruments (e.g.~TDR, gravimetry, EMI\/ERT, gamma-rays, NMR), it becomes obvious that ``there is currently a gap in our ability to routinely measure at intermediate scales'' \\citep{Robinson2008}.\n\nThe method of Cosmic-Ray Neutron Sensing (CRNS) for soil moisture estimation, introduced to the environmental science community by \\citet{Zreda2008}, provides a much larger measurement footprint than any other ground-based local method. With a support volume in the order of \\(10^4\\) m\\(^3\\) (\\(>100\\,\\)m radius, \\(<0.8\\,\\)m depth, \\citet{Koehli2015}), CRNS has a large potential to close the scale gap between point measurements of root-zone soil moisture and remotely sensed surface soil moisture \\citep{Ochsner2013, Montzka2017}. The CRNS technology makes use of the extraordinary high sensitivity of cosmic-ray neutrons to hydrogen nuclei and measures the concentration of epithermal neutrons above the soil surface. Since its introduction, the CRNS technology has quickly established itself and is now used for soil moisture monitoring by many research groups operating worldwide \\citep[e.g.,][]{Bogena2013, Franz2013, Peterson2016, Zhu2016, Schroen2017w}.\n\nPilot studies have shown the concept and potential of \\emph{mobile} CRNS \\citep{Desilets2010} using neutron detectors mounted on a ground-based vehicle (``rover''). The method is comparable to exploration missions with rovers on the Martian surface \\citep{Jun2013}. With advances on understanding the CRNS method also for stationary probes, recent studies have more and more elaborated on direct applications of the so-called \\emph{CRNS rover} \\citep{Chrisman2013, McJannet2014, Dong2014, Franz2015, Avery2016}. While the ``classical'', stationary CRNS application enables to capture the hourly variability of soil moisture within a static footprint, the mobile application is intended to capture the spatial variability of soil moisture across larger areas or along larger transects. The CRNS rover uses the same detection principle as the stationary CRNS probes but deploys multiple and larger neutron detectors in order to achieve higher count rates at much shorter recording periods.\n\nAgricultural fields and private land are often not accessible by vehicles. Hence, the CRNS rover is usually moved along a network of existing roads, streets, and pathways in a study region. This strategy is also practical when the rover is used to cover large areas at the regional scale in a short period of time. However, recent findings by \\citet{Koehli2015} have shown that the CRNS detector is particularly sensitive to the first few meters around the sensor, which was later confirmed by calibration and validation campaigns of stationary CRNS probes \\citep{Schroen2017w, Heidbuechel2016, Schattan2017}. This aspect is of even higher importance for the mobile application of CRNS. Following this argumentation, we hypothesize that the CRNS measurement is biased significantly when the moisture conditions present in the road differ substantially from the actual field of interest.\n\nThe effect of dry structures in the footprint was introduced for the first time by \\citet{Franz2013} and was observed by \\citet{Chrisman2013} on rover surveys through urban areas. \\citet{Franz2015} sensed soil moisture of agricultural fields by roving on paved and gravel roads, and speculated that the road material could have introduced a dry bias to their measurements. The quantification of this effect is critical, not only for the advancement of the method, but also for its application to support agricultural irrigation management \\citep{Franz2015} or to allow for large-scale soil moisture retrieval to support hydrological modeling \\citep{Zink2016, Schroen2017diss} and evaluation of remote-sensing products \\citep{Montzka2017}.\n\nIn the present study, we aim to evaluate and quantify the ``road effect'' by combining physical neutron transport modeling and dedicated field experiments. Based on theoretical investigations, we propose a universal correction function which is then tested and discussed in the light of ten rover campaigns in Central Germany and South England.\n\n\\section{Methods}\\label{methods}\n\n\\subsection{The Cosmic-Ray Neutron Rover}\\label{the-cosmic-ray-neutron-rover}\n\nThe method of cosmic-ray neutron sensing makes use of thermal neutron detectors filled with helium-3 or borontrifluorid \\citep{Persons2011, Schroen2017u}. A surrounding shield of polyethylene prevents most thermal neutrons in the natural radiation environment from entering the detector, while it slows down incoming, epithermal neutrons to detectable, thermal energies \\citep{Zreda2012, Andreasen2016}. The epithermal neutron density in air is mainly controlled by (1) the interaction of direct cosmic radiation with the ground, and (2) the number of hydrogen atoms in the environment \\citep{Zreda2008, Koehli2015}. As hydrogen is an elemental part of the water molecule, the correlation between the epithermal neutron signal and surrounding water storages can be beneficial for the monitoring of the hydrological cycle. Figure \\ref{fig:maps} shows a combination of the helium-3 detector system (white case, left), a small helium-3 unit (black case, middle), and four borontrifluorid tubes (right) which have been disassembled from stationary probes.\n\nThe mobile CRNS detectors can be mounted in the trunk of a car. As neutrons are almost exclusively sensitive to hydrogen, the metallic material of the car appears almost transparent. Additional plastic components and human presence can have the effect of a constant shielding factor, which is irrelevant for CRNS applications as only relative changes of neutrons are evaluated. Air temperature and humidity are recorded with sensors mounted externally to the car, because air conditions inside and outside can differ significantly. The neutron detector was set to integrate neutron counts over 1 minute. When in motion, this implicitly stretches the otherwise circular footprint to a patch elongated in the driving direction. In contrast, the GPS coordinates are read from a \\texttt{Globalsat\\ BR-355} sensor at the time of recording, so after the neutrons were integrated. To account for this artificial shift in post-processing mode, the UTM coordinates of each signal were back-projected to half of the distance covered within that minute. Driving speed was adapted on local structures and ranged from 15 to \\(80\\) meters per minute.\nThe neutron count rate \\(N\\) depends on environmental moisture conditions and on the detector volume used. The helium-3 detector system observed \\(90\\) to \\(170\\) counts per minute (cpm) and showed a similar count rate as the sum of four borontrifluorid tubes. Three consecutive measurements (i.e., 3 minutes) underwent a moving-average filter to account for the moving footprint and to reduce the relative statistical uncertainty, \\(\\sqrt{N}\/N\\), by a factor of \\(\\sqrt{3}\\approx1.73\\).\n\nBesides near-surface water content, neutron radiation in the environment mainly depends on the incoming variation of cosmic rays, on the air mass above the sensor (and thus on altitude), and on water vapor in the air \\citep{Schroen2015}. In this work, we have applied standard procedures to correct for these effects \\citep{Zreda2012, Rosolem2013, Hawdon2014} in order to obtain a processed neutron count rate \\(N\\).\n\nTo convert the neutron count rate to gravimetric soil water equivalent, \\(\\theta_\\text{grv}\\), several approaches have been proposed in literature. \\citet{Desilets2010} suggested a theoretical relation that has been applied successfully by the majority of CRNS studies in the past. \\citet{McJannet2014} found that this approach performs also better for rover campaigns than the universal calibration function proposed by \\citet{Franz2013u}, as the exact determination of soil and land-use data is the major obstacle to apply the latter. The standard approach from \\citet{Desilets2010} is as follows:\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation} \\theta_\\text{grv}(N,N_0) = \\frac{a_0}{N\/N_0-a_1}-a_2\\,, \\label{eq:desilets}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nwhere parameters \\(a_i=\\{0.0808, 0.372, 0.115\\}\\) were determined using neutron physics simulations, and \\(N_0\\) is a (site-specific) calibration parameter. The latter is determined once for each dataset by comparing the CRNS soil moisture product with the actual soil moisture condition in the field. However, neutrons are sensitive to all occurances of hydrogen in the footprint, such as ponds, organic material, lattice water, plant water, and other dynamic contributors. Hence, the variable \\(\\theta_\\text{grv}(N,N_0)=\\theta_\\text{sm}+\\theta_\\text{offset}\\) denotes the sum of the soil water equivalent and an offset introduced by additional hydrogen pools. Furthermore, to compare CRNS products with other point sensors, the gravimetric water content is converted to volumetric water content, \\(\\theta_\\text{vol}=\\theta_\\text{grv}\\cdot\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\), using soil bulk density information \\(\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\). In this work, we define\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation} \\theta(N)=\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\,(\\theta_\\text{grv}(N,N_0)-\\theta_\\text{offset}) \\label{eq:roversm}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nas the CRNS soil moisture product, given in units of volumetric percent (\\%) throughout this manuscript.\n\nTo account for spatially variable parameters of soil bulk density and land use throughout the study area, additional sources of data have been incorporated by recent studies \\citep{Avery2016, Schroen2017diss, McJannet2017}. However, spatial information at the field scale (1--100 m) is often not available or come with significant uncertainty. This can be considered as a general handicap of the mobile CRNS method. In this work, we decided to apply the standard approach using spatially constant parameters, because (1) the selected study sites show sufficiently homogeneous soil and land-use conditions, and (2) the focus of the present study is to quantify the local effect of roads to the relative neutron signal, rather than the exact estimation of absolute soil moisture.\n\n\\subsection{Validation with point-scale measurements}\\label{sec:weight}\n\nSince the footprint of the CRNS signal covers an area of several hectares, comparison with point data is a challenge. To bridge this scale gap, \\citet{Schroen2017w} developed a procedure to calculate a weighted average of point samples, based on their distance and depth to the neutron detector. The method uses an advanced spatial sensitivity function based on neutron transport simulations by \\citet{Koehli2015}, and was successfully applied to calibration and validation datasets for stationary CRNS probes.\n\nIn our work presented here, we employed independent validation measurements of field soil moisture in the first 10 centimeters using occasional soil samples, and high frequency electromagnetic measurements with \\texttt{Campbell\\ TDR\\ 100} and \\texttt{Theta\\ Probes}. The latter both instruments are standard approaches to determine near-surface soil water \\citep{Roth1990}. The \\texttt{Theta\\ Probe} measures soil system impedance at \\(100\\,\\)MHz, while the \\texttt{TDR\\ 100} evaluates pulse travel time in the GHz-range \\citep[see also][]{Blonquist2005, Robinson2003, Vaz2013}.\n\nIn order to compare the point measurements with the CRNS soil moisture product, a weighted average of the point data is applied based on their individual distance \\(r\\) to the neutron detector (see illustration circle in Fig.~\\ref{fig:maps}). Using eqs. \\ref{eq:desilets}--\\ref{eq:roversm}, the calibration parameter \\(N_0\\) can be determined from the neutron count rate \\(N\\) and the independently measured value for average field soil moisture, \\(\\langle\\theta\\rangle\\).\nThe soil moisture products have been interpolated using an \\emph{Ordinary Kriging} approach, as the chosen measurement density adequately represents typical spatial correlation lengths of soil moisture at our study sites. Furthermore, the Kriging approach supports the non-local nature of the epithermal neutron distribution in the air \\citep{Franz2015, DesiletsZreda2013, Koehli2015}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Experimental setup}\\label{sec:sites}\n\n\\subsubsection{Road types}\\label{road-types}\n\nRoad moisture content is typically an uncertain quantity, only accessible by destructive sampling and lab analysis, or expensive geophysical exploration \\citep{Saarenketo2000, Benedetto2012}. In the scope of the uncertainties involved in neutron sensing, e.g.~due to spatial heterogeneity of roads and surrounding land use, visual determination of the road material, guided by literature information, can allow for an adequate estimate of its elemental composition and thus, its soil water equivalent. \\citet{Chrisman2013} analyzed several samples of stone\/concrete and asphalt in Arizona and found their \\emph{gravimetric} water equivalent to be \\(1.52\\,\\%\\) and \\(5.10\\,\\%\\), respectively. Following literature values for typical material densities from \\(1.8\\,\\mathrm{g\/cm^3}\\) (sandy concrete) to \\(2.4\\,\\mathrm{g\/cm^3}\\) (hot asphalt) \\citep{Houben1994, Stroup2000}, the \\emph{volumetric} water equivalent then is \\(\\approx3\\,\\%\\) and \\(\\approx12\\,\\%\\), respectively. As stone and asphalt are known as one of the most ``dry'' and ``wet'' road materials, respectively, we have estimated the moisture content of the various road types in our study sites within this range of extremes.\n\n\\subsubsection{Sch{\\\"a}fertal (Germany, experiment A)}\\label{schuxe4fertal-germany-experiment-a}\n\nThe \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} site is a headwater catchment in the \\emph{Lower Harz Mountains} and one of the intensive monitoring sites in the \\emph{TERENO Harz\/Central German Lowland Observatory} (\\(51^\\circ\\,39'\\,\\)N, \\(11^\\circ\\,3'\\,\\)E) \\citep{Zacharias2011, Wollschlaeger2016}. The catchment covers an area of 1.66 km\\(^2\\) and is predominantly under agricultural management. At the valley bottom, grassland surrounds the course of the creek \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}ferbach}. Grassland is also present at the outlet of the catchment and a forest occupies a small area at the north-eastern end of the catchment outlet. Average climatology shows mean annual minimum and maximum temperatures of \\(-1.8^\\circ\\)C and \\(15.5^\\circ\\)C, respectively; and mean annual precipitation of 630 mm.\nAverage bulk density of the soil is \\(\\langle\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\rangle=1.55\\,\\mathrm{g\/cm^3}\\) and water equivalent of additional hydrogen and organic pools have been approximated to be \\(\\langle\\theta_\\text{offset}\\rangle=2.3\\,\\%\\) in bare soil. For more information about the local hydrology, see \\citet{Martini2015} and \\citet{Schroeter2015}.\n\nWithin the Sch{\\\"a}fertal, \\citet{Schroeter2015, Schroeter2017} performed regular TDR campaigns by foot using 94 locations in the whole catchment area. During several campaigns from 2014--2016, the CRNS rover accompanied their team. Shortly after harvest the fields were accessible with the car, such that the same locations could be sampled with the rover and the TDR team on the same campaign day.\nOn some days, however, the vehicle was only allowed to access the fields due to agricultural activities and seeded vegetation, such that CRNS measurements were taken on the sandy roads that were crossing the agricultural fields and the creek.\n\nThe road network consists mainly of three types: a paved major road between the hilltops and the urban area, sandy roads within the catchment, and pathways along the creek. The paved road has an average width of \\(w\\approx3.5\\,\\)m and consists of a very dry stone\/concrete mixture that was estimated to contain \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx4\\,\\%\\) volumetric water content. The secondary roads are a mixture of stone, sand, and gravel, with \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx6\\,\\%\\) and width \\(w\\approx3\\,\\)m. The pathways of width \\(w\\approx3\\,\\)m contain mixed material from gravel, soil, and grass with an estimated average moisture content of \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx10\\,\\%\\).\n\nRover measurements have been performed using the helium-3 detector system at count rates of approximately \\(90\\) to \\(170\\,\\)cpm depending on wetness conditions. The corresponding neutron count uncertainties of \\(6\\) to \\(4\\,\\%\\) propagated through eq.~\\ref{eq:desilets} to absolute uncertainties in water equivalent, \\(\\Delta\\theta_\\text{grv}\\), of \\(10.0\\) to \\(0.9\\) gravimetric percent, for wet to dry conditions, respectively.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{maps.pdf}\n\\caption{The study sites \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} (top right) and \\emph{Sheepdrove Organic Farm} (bottom right). White borders indicate the areas of three different field experiments A, B, and C. Black lines indicate the type of road. The central circle with TDR points (red) and rover points (blue) illustrates the spatial calibration of the CRNS rover by comparing the large-scale neutron counts with point-scale soil moisture, using a weighted average of point samples based on their distance \\(r\\) to the rover. Pictures at certain spots: Sch{\\\"a}fertal gravel\/sand road (P1), Sheepdrove valley (P2), Sheepdrove gravel\/stone road, asphalt\/stone road close-up (P4), and neutron detector tubes in the trunk of a car which is used as a CRNS rover.}\\label{fig:maps}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Sheepdrove Organic Farm (England, experiments B and C)}\\label{sheepdrove-organic-farm-england-experiments-b-and-c}\n\nThe \\emph{Sheepdrove Organic Farm} is located on the \\emph{West Berkshire Downs} in the Lambourn catchment in South England (\\(51^\\circ\\,32'\\,\\)N, \\(1^\\circ\\,29'\\,\\)W). The farm is located in a dry valley with elevations ranging from \\(140\\,\\)m to \\(200\\,\\)m above Ordnance Datum. The hydrogeology is characterized by a highly permeable white chalk aquifer with the groundwater table located tens of meters below the surface \\citep{Evans2016}. Average climatology obtained from the Marlborough meteorological station (located 22 km to the south-west from the farm) shows mean annual minimum and maximum temperatures of \\(5.4^\\circ\\)C and \\(14.0^\\circ\\)C, respectively; and mean annual precipitation of 815 mm.\nSoil information at the farm was collected at three sites with slightly different soil\/vegetation characteristics between 2015 and 2017 \\citep{Iwema2017}. The soil is generally loamy clay with many flints and pieces of chalk. Weathered chalk starts below the soil at about 25 to 40 centimeters depth. The average bulk density is \\(\\langle\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\rangle=1.25\\,\\mathrm{g\/cm^3}\\) and water equivalent of additional hydrogen and organic pools have been determined to be \\(\\langle\\theta_\\text{offset}\\rangle=4.3\\,\\%\\) using soil sample analysis.\n\nThe road network consists of a paved major road (width \\(w\\approx3\\,\\)m) made of an asphalt\/stone mixture with an estimated moisture content of \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx11\\,\\%\\). The main side roads are made of a gravel\/stone mixture (\\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx7\\,\\%\\)), most of which are \\(w\\approx2.3\\,\\)m wide while the southern road is \\(w\\approx4.5\\,\\)m wide. Many non-sealed tracks (\\(w\\approx3\\,\\)m) follow the borders between fields which partly consist of sand, grass, and organic material, such that their average moisture content was estimated to \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\approx12\\,\\%\\).\n\nRover measurements have been performed using the combination of the helium-3 detector system and the four borontrifluorid tubes at total count rates of approximately \\(180\\) to \\(330\\,\\)cpm depending on wetness conditions. The corresponding neutron count uncertainties of \\(4\\) to \\(3\\,\\%\\) propagated through eq.~\\ref{eq:desilets} to absolute uncertainties in water equivalent, \\(\\Delta\\theta_\\text{grv}\\), of \\(7.5\\) to \\(0.6\\) gravimetric percent, for wet to dry conditions, respectively.\n\n\\subsection{Simulation of neutron interactions with road structures}\\label{sec:theory}\n\nTheoretical calculations of the CRNS footprint by \\citet{Koehli2015} have shown that the radial sensitivity of a CRNS detector is strongly pronounced in the first few meters around the sensor \\citep[see also][]{Schroen2017w}. Therefore, this work hypothesizes that there is an influence from the nearby road material to the neutron signal \\(N\\), which differs from the signal \\(N_\\text{field}\\) measured above the soil if no roads were present. In this regard, we define the bias \\(N\/N_\\text{field}\\neq 1\\) describing the relative deviation of measured neutrons \\(N\\) on the road from measurements on the field, \\(N_\\text{field}\\), if the moisture contents of road and soil differ.\n\nMany mobile surveys rely on road-only measurements of cosmic-ray neutrons, but we can expect that a potential road effect is larger for larger differences between road moisture and surrounding field water content. It is highly impractical to measure the corresponding bias rigorously, as it might depend also on the road material (see above), on field soil moisture, and on the distance to the road. We therefore employed the Monte Carlo technique using the neutron transport code \\texttt{URANOS} (\\citet{Koehli2015}, www.ufz.de\/uranos) to simulate neutron response in a domain of 25 hectares which is crossed by a straight road geometry (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:uranos}).\n\nThe road is modeled as a \\(20\\,\\)cm deep layer of either stone or asphalt, while the soil below was set to \\(5\\,\\%\\) volumetric water content.\nFollowing the compendium of material composition data \\citep{McConn2011}, asphalt pavement is modeled as a mixture of O, H, C, and Si, at an effective density of \\(\\mathrm{2.58\\,g\/cm^3}\\), which corresponds to a soil water equivalent of \\(\\approx12\\,\\%\\). Stone\/gravel is a mixture of Si, O, and Al, plus \\(3\\,\\%\\) volumetric water content at a total density of \\(\\mathrm{1.4\\,g\/cm^3}\\) \\citep{Koehli2015}.\nThe wetness of the surrounding soil has been set homogeneously to 10, 20, 30, and 40\\(\\,\\%\\) of volumetric water content. The neutron response to roads has been simulated for road widths of 3, 5, and 7\\(\\,\\)m.\n\n\\clearpage\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{uranos-schematic.pdf}\n\\caption{(a) Schematic of the model setup used by the Monte-Carlo code \\texttt{URANOS} to simulate the response of cosmic-ray neutrons to ground materials. (b) Exemplary \\texttt{URANOS} model output showing a birds-eye view of the neutron density in the horizontal detector layer.}\\label{fig:uranos}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Results \\& Discussions}\\label{results-discussions}\n\n\\subsection{Theoretical investigations}\\label{theoretical-investigations}\n\nThe spatial Monte-Carlo simulations have been performed to study the interactions of cosmic-ray neutrons with roads of various widths, materials, and homogeneous field soil moisture conditions. The term ``relative road bias'' denotes the ratio of neutron intensity \\(N\\) detected in a road scenario (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:uranos}) over neutron intensity \\(N_\\text{field}\\) detected in a scenario of homogeneous soil moisture.\n\nSymbols in Fig.~\\ref{fig:croadsm} show the simulated road bias for a detector placed at the center of the road. The bias increases for increasing field soil moisture, increasing road width, and decreasing road moisture. The quantity is particularly sensitive to the water equivalent of the pavement (\\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\)) and the soil (\\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\)).\nFigure \\ref{fig:croadr} plots the simulated road bias over distance from the road center, showing that the bias is a short-range effect that decreases a few meters away from the road, where almost no measurable effect can be expected beyond \\(\\approx10\\,\\)m distance. It is evident from these simulations that the road bias is higher the larger the difference between road moisture and surrounding soil moisture is and the wider the road.\n\nWe suggest to correct the observed neutron intensity with a correction factor \\(C_\\text{road}\\), similar to the approaches used to correct for meteorological \\citep{Hawdon2014, Schroen2015} and biomass effects \\citep{Baatz2014}:\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation}\nN_\\text{corr} = N \/ C_\\text{road}\\,,\n\\label{eq:croadapproach}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nwhere the correction factor should be 1 for no-road conditions, plus a product of terms that depend on the characteristics of the road and field conditions. The shape of each term of the proposed correction function is based on physical reasoning as follows:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\def\\arabic{enumi}.{\\arabic{enumi}.}\n\n\\item\n  The dependence on road width \\(w\\) is assumed to be a simple exponential, since the short-range dependency of neutron intensity on distance is exponential as shown by \\citet{Koehli2015}.\n\\item\n  The dependence on water content (\\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\) and \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\)) is assumed to be hyperbolic, since the natural response of neutrons to soil water exhibits hyperbolic shape, as was derived from basic principles by \\citet{Desilets2010} and \\citet{Schroen2017diss}. This form (e.g., eq.~\\ref{eq:desilets}) has been proven to be robust among all studies related to CRNS so far.\n\\item\n  The dependence on distance \\(r\\) from the road center is assumed to be a sum of exponentials, since the combination of short- and long-range neutrons indicate this picture \\citep[see][]{Koehli2015}. An additional polynom (\\(w^a\\, r^b\\)) might be necessary to account for the plateau introduced by the road of a certain width \\(w\\).\n\\item\n  Additionally, we demand that the total correction factor is 1 for road widths \\(w=0\\) and for similar moisture conditions, \\(\\theta_\\text{road}=\\theta_\\text{field}\\). The dependency on distance should be further normalized to 1 at the road center (\\(r=0\\)).\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nThe semi-analytical approach has been fitted to the \\texttt{URANOS} simulation results. A minimum of 11 numerical parameters were required in order to adequately capture the most prominent features and dependencies of the simulated neutron response:\n\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation}\nC_\\text{road}(\\theta_\\text{field}, \\theta_\\text{road}, w, r)\n    = 1+F_1(w)\\cdot F_2(\\theta_\\text{field},\n    \\theta_\\text{road})\\cdot F_3(r, w)\\,,\n\\label{eq:croad}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nwhere\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{aligned}\nF_1(w)\n    &= p_0\\,\\big(1-e^{-p_1\\,w}\\big)\\,,\\\\\nF_2(\\theta_\\text{field}, \\theta_\\text{road})\n    &= \\big(\\theta_\\text{field}-\\theta_\\text{road}\\big)\\frac{p_2-p_3\\,\\theta_\\text{road}}{\\theta_\\text{field}-p_4\\,\\theta_\\text{road}+p_5}\\,,\\\\\nF_3(r, w)\n    &= p_6\\,e^{-p_7\\,w^{-p_8}\\,r^4}+p_9\\,e^{-p_{10}\\,r}\\,.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\label{eq:croadp}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nParameters \\(p_i\\) of the geometry term \\(F_1\\), the moisture term \\(F_2\\), and the distance term \\(F_3\\) are given in Table~\\ref{tbl:params}. Variables \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\) and \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\) are given in units of \\(\\mathrm{m^3\/m^3}\\), road width \\(w\\) and distance \\(r\\) are in units of m. The function is defined for road moisture values in the range of \\(1\\leq\\theta_\\text{road}\\leq16\\,\\%\\).\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{croad-sm.pdf}\n\\caption{\\texttt{URANOS} simulations (symbols) and correction functions \\(C_\\text{road}(\\theta_\\text{field}, \\theta_\\text{road}, w, r)\\) (lines) representing the neutron bias on roads of various widths through fields of different soil moisture. Shown for stone roads (grey) and asphalt roads (black).}\\label{fig:croadsm}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\clearpage\n\nThe function fits well to the simulation results for different distances \\(r\\) from the road center (Fig.~\\ref{fig:croadr}), and for different \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\), \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\), and widths \\(w\\) (Fig.~\\ref{fig:croadsm}). However, the analytical approach shows poorer performance for road widths of \\(7\\,\\)m and beyond (not shown). The approach also overestimates the absolute bias when the field soil moisture becomes lower than the road moisture. These (rather unusual cases) should be avoided when the function is applied to roving datasets in the future. Since simulation results have indicated that the influence of slightly wetter road material is insignificant, a redefinition of the form \\(F_2(\\theta_\\text{road}>\\theta_\\text{field})=1\\) could be a sufficient approximation to these rare cases.\n\nIt is important to note that the moisture term \\(F_2\\) depends on prior knowledge of the field soil moisture \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\).\nThe analysis of the field experiments in this work shows whether the moisture term can be replaced by a first-order approximation without prior knowledge.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{croad-distance.pdf}\n\\caption{\\texttt{URANOS} simulations (circles) and correction functions \\(C_\\text{road}(\\theta_\\text{field}, \\theta_\\text{road}, w, r)\\) (lines) representing the neutron bias at different distances \\(r\\) from the road center (\\(r=0\\)) for various road widths \\(w\\) (geometry shaded), field soil moisture (color), and (a) stone road material and (b) asphalt road material. Field conditions that are dryer than the road moisture (red in panel b) appear to be unresolved by the analytical approach.}\\label{fig:croadr}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\clearpage\n\n\\begin{table}\n\\caption{Parameters \\(p_i\\) of the parameter functions \\(F_j\\) describing the road correction factor \\(C_\\text{road}\\) (eq.~\\ref{eq:croadp}), namely the geometry term \\(F_1\\), the moisture term \\(F_2\\), the distance term \\(F_3\\), and the alternative moisture term \\(F_{2'}\\) that does not require prior information about field soil moisture (eq.~\\ref{eq:croad2}).}\n\\label{tbl:params}\n\\begin{tabular}{lccccccccccc}\n\\hline\n & \\(p_0\\) & \\(p_1\\) & \\(p_2\\) & \\(p_3\\) & \\(p_4\\) & \\(p_5\\) & \\(p_6\\) & \\(p_7\\) & \\(p_8\\) & \\(p_9\\) & \\(p_{10}\\) \\\\\\hline\n\\(F_1\\) & 0.42 & 0.50 & & & & & & & & &\\\\\n\\(F_2\\) & & & 1.11 & 4.11 & 1.78 & 0.30 & & & & &\\\\\n\\(F_{2'}\\) & & & 1.06 & 4.00 & 0.16 & 0.39 & & & & &\\\\\n\\(F_3\\) & & & & & & & 0.94 & 1.10 & 2.70 & 0.06 & 0.01\\\\\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\subsection{Experiment A: Estimating field soil moisture with TDR and the rover}\\label{experiment-a-estimating-field-soil-moisture-with-tdr-and-the-rover}\n\nOur first field experiment was designed in order to test the capabilities of the cosmic-ray neutron rover to capture small-scale patterns of soil moisture. During campaigns in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal}, the rover was moved across the fields over the course of four to six hours. At the rate of one data point per minute, the technology allowed to collect more than 200--400 points in the catchment, which is an adequate number to justify ordinary kriging within the \\(1.66\\,\\mathrm{km^2}\\) area.\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:schaefertal1} shows the highly resolved CRNS soil moisture product which is able to reveal hydrological features in the catchment, such as dry hilltops, or contact springs in the valley near the creek due to shallow groundwater. Since the data were not corrected for biomass water, a probable influence of vegetation can be seen near the grove in the north-eastern part of the catchment, and possibly also near the hedgerow (south-western part). While the experiment focused on the agricultural areas of the harvested field and thus surveyed across the field and along its borders, a few roads were touched briefly at the southern and north-western hilltops, where the soil moisture appears to be slightly drier.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{schaefertal1.pdf}\n\\caption{Soil moisture estimation by the CRNS rover in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} agricultural field. Data was interpolated from points (black cross) which represent the central location of the path travelled by the rover within the one minute acquisition time. Actual hydrological features like contact springs in the valley and dry hilltops are evident, but other influences of the grove, the hedgerow, and roads (see also Fig.~\\ref{fig:maps}) may distort the derived soil moisture values, indicating challenges of the method.}\\label{fig:schaefertal1}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:schaefertal} summarizes results from this and other field surveys in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} that were conducted together with a team using handheld TDR devices. Using 94 TDR samples and more than 300 rover points, it was possible to find the calibration factor \\(N_0=10447\\,\\)cph (eq.~\\ref{eq:desilets}) that explained all six sub-experiments in the catchment area.\nIn August 2015 (Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}a,b), all the fields of the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} site were accessible with the car, however, TDR campaigns were incomplete due to technical issues. In the summer of 2014 (Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}c,d), only the northern fields could be surveyed due to agricultural activities in the southern area.\n\nFor all of the first four campaign days, Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}a--d, a good agreement between the rover and the TDR products in representing patterns and mean soil moisture in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} was achieved. Besides the visual impression in columns 1 and 2, the probability density functions (third column) confirm emphatically that soil moisture patterns were well captured by both methods. The two approaches appear to show remarkable agreement, despite the fact that (i) the penetration depths of both methods were different (\\(10\\,\\)cm for TDR versus 20--50\\(\\,\\)cm for CRNS), (ii) TDR data was too sparse to achieve a comparable interpolation quality, and (iii) spatially constant parameters have been used for the calibration (\\(N_0\\), \\(\\varrho_\\text{bd}\\), \\(\\theta_\\text{offset}\\)).\nIn strong contrast, rover measurements at the last two survey days, Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}e--f, show a poor agreement to field soil moisture measured by TDR. At those days, the CRNS rover had no access to the field and only crossed nearby roads and pathways. The corresponding impact on data interpretation is discussed in section~\\ref{sec:A2}.\n\nThe field campaigns highlight characteristic hydrological features, e.g.~the mentioned contact springs near the creek, that are especially prominent during dry periods and which were identified also by other researchers using conventional measurement techniques \\citep{Graeff2009, Schroeter2015}. The experiment shows that the rover can efficiently contribute to hydrological process understanding in small catchments, while the assumption of spatially constant parameters has shown to be acceptable for the almost homogeneous \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} site.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{schaefertal-campaigns.pdf}\n\\caption{Comparison of CRNS Rover and TDR campaigns in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} using interpolated data, and the probability density functions (PDF) of their overlapping area.}\\label{fig:schaefertal}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Experiment A: Taking the road effect into account}\\label{sec:A2}\n\nIn May 2014 and December 2015, the fields were cultivated and the CRNS rover surveys were restricted to the roads. Those campaigns are shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}e,f, where the effect of the dry road is clearly visible in all panels.\nThis result indicates, that measurements only from the road are biased and therefore not representative for the field soil moisture. Under wet conditions, the probability density function (PDF) of soil moisture patterns becomes completely uncorrelated to the field conditions (Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}e), while under dry conditions there seems to be a simple bias of the histogram towards the dry end (Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}f).\n\nThe presented road-effect correction approach promises to account for this behavior, as it scales with the difference between road and field moisture, using information of the different types of roads crossing the catchment (Fig.~\\ref{fig:maps}). The correction function \\(C_\\text{road}\\) was applied using prior knowledge about the mean field soil moisture (eq.~\\ref{eq:croadp}). Using \\(\\theta_\\text{field}=\\langle\\theta_\\text{TDR}\\rangle\\) led to better agreement between the rover and the TDR data for both days as shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:STcorrected} (black histograms).\n\nHowever, in most cases independent measurements of field soil moisture \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\) are not available.\nAs an alternative, the first-order approximation of soil moisture, \\(\\theta(N)\\), using the uncorrected neutron count rate \\(N\\), could be used as a proxy to estimate the bias due to the difference of soil moisture between road and field. An alternative analytical approach for the moisture term \\(F_2\\) (eq.~\\ref{eq:croadp}) is proposed here that essentially accounts for the mismatch between \\(\\theta(N)\\) and \\(\\theta_\\text{field}\\):\n\\begin{linenomath*}\n\\begin{equation}\nF_{2'}(\\theta(N), \\theta_\\text{road})\n    \\approx p_2-p_3\\,\\theta_\\text{road}-\\frac{p_4+\\theta_\\text{road}}{p_5+\\theta(N)}\\,,\n\\label{eq:croad2}\\end{equation}\n\\end{linenomath*}\nThe updated empirical parameters \\(p_\\text{2--5}\\) (Table~\\ref{tbl:params}) have been determined based on the datasets of the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} and another, independent experiment in the context of an interdisciplinary research project which included rover measurements across different land-use types (Scale~X, see also \\citet{Wolf2016}, data not shown here). Although the approach is empirical, the numerous tests through different sites and conditions indicate a robust potential. The corresponding probability distribution is indicated by a blue line in Fig.~\\ref{fig:STcorrected}, showing that the two approaches led to almost identical results.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{ST-road-corrected.pdf}\n\\caption{Application of the road correction approach on the road-only surveys in the \\emph{Sch{\\\"a}fertal} (compare Fig.~\\ref{fig:schaefertal}e--f). Patterns of the rover (left) agree well with those from TDR (middle) in terms of the probability density function (right) in the overlap area of both interpolated grids, their mean, and standard deviation. The correction is tested with two approaches of the moisture term: (1) \\(F_{2}(\\theta_\\text{field}=\\langle\\theta_\\text{TDR}\\rangle)\\) (eq.~\\ref{eq:croadp}) using the average of the TDR data (black line), and (2) \\(F_{2'}(\\theta(N))\\) (eq.~\\ref{eq:croad2}) using uncorrected neutron counts as a proxy (blue line). Kriging results using the former approach were almost identical to those using the latter approach, so that only the latter is shown in the left panel.}\\label{fig:STcorrected}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Experiment B: Road influence at a distance}\\label{experiment-b-road-influence-at-a-distance}\n\nThe experiments at the \\emph{Sheepdrove Farm} aimed to compare the soil moisture patterns of the road and the field, by surveying both compartments with the rover and excluding the one or the other during the analysis. The general objective of these experiments was to clarify whether the road correction function is able to transfer the apparent soil moisture patterns seen from the road to values that were taken in the actual field.\n\nThe road network across the farm is an ideal location to test the road effect correction, due to its wide range of road materials (gravel to asphalt) and road widths (\\(2.3\\) to \\(4.5\\,\\)m). To improve the accuracy of the rover measurements, the count rate was increased by combining multiple neutron detectors. Each of the rover datasets (experiments B and C) were compared to a stationary, well-calibrated CRNS probe and to occasional \\texttt{Theta\\ Probe} samples (not shown), in order to find a universal calibration parameter \\(N_0=11300\\,\\)cph (see also eq.~\\ref{eq:desilets}) for all datasets.\n\nIn order to rigorously test the theoretically predicted dependency of the road bias on the road moisture \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\) and on the distance \\(r\\) to the road center, a dedicated experiment was performed at the north-west corner of the \\emph{Sheepdrove Farm} (Fig.~\\ref{fig:SFparallel}a). A gravel\/stone road (north) and an asphalt\/stone road (south) are aligned almost linearly and meet centrally at a junction. The road moisture reflects the mixture of present road materials and was estimated to be \\(\\approx11\\,\\%\\) for the asphalt\/stone mix, and \\(\\approx7\\,\\%\\) for gravel\/stone mix.\n\nThe rover measured neutrons along parallel lines in various distances from the road. For each track, the corresponding mean and standard deviation were calculated, which represent mainly the heterogeneity of soil and vegetation along each of the \\(400\\,\\)m tracks. Fig.~\\ref{fig:SFparallel}b shows how the influence of the road decreases the apparent field soil moisture as seen by the rover (left panel). Upon application of the road correction function, measurements converge to similar values for all distances (right panel) and reveal different soil moisture conditions for the nothern and southern fields. The apparent increase at \\(r=12\\,\\)m is likely caused by hydrogen present in the hedgerow and the nearby grove. The overall result provides evidence that the analytical correction function properly represents the road bias at different distances and for different materials.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{SF1-transect.pdf}\n\\caption{Experiment B at the \\emph{Sheepdrove Farm}. (a) Parallel tracks (dashed) at different distances from two roads of different materials that meet at the junction (\\(x=0\\), \\(y=0\\)). (b) The influence of the road decreases the apparent field soil moisture seen by the rover (left panel). Upon application of the road correction function, measurements converge to similar values for all distances (right panel) and reveal different soil moisture conditions for the nothern and southern fields. Error bars indicate the heterogeneity of water content along the whole track length of 400 m.}\\label{fig:SFparallel}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Experiment C: Patterns across roads and fields}\\label{experiment-c-patterns-across-roads-and-fields}\n\nOn three different campaign days, the roads and the surrounding fields in the central valley of the \\emph{Sheepdrove Farm} were surveyed with the CRNS rover. Road points have been corrected using eqs. \\ref{eq:croad} and \\ref{eq:croad2} based on the road types shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:maps}. The corresponding soil moisture maps and histograms (PDFs) are shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:sfresults}a and \\ref{fig:sfresults}b, respectively, where the three campaign days are denoted as C1, C2, and C3.\n\nIn experiment C1, it was only possible to access the borders of the field (\\(r=10\\pm5\\,\\)m) due to farming activities. Nevertheless, the correction of the road dataset led to adequate improvement of the average soil moisture distribution (Fig.~\\ref{fig:sfresults}b). However, some patterns were not adequately resolved by the road survey. According to the field measurements, the central northern field is wetter than the central southern field. From measurements on the road, only an average water content is seen with no distinction of the two fields. There are also discrepancies in the eastern part of the farm, where road and field patterns seem to be inverse. It can be speculated that one reason for this behavior is the influence of the south-eastern field, which has not been surveyed on that day. The dry spot at the north-west corner is due to buildings and a large concrete area, which were not accounted for in the correction procedure.\n\nIn experiment C2 it was possible to fully cross the fields to generate an adequate interpolation of field soil moisture. The correction of all road types appeared to agree very well with the overall pattern of the field measurements. The probability density functions show good agreement in the overlapping area of both datasets (i.e., near the road).\nThe road correction in Experiment C3 is also able to capture the patterns seen by the field survey, with the exception of the wet region in the northern part. It is speculative whether local ponds on the road, soaked soil, or local vegetation is influencing the data seen by the rover. This pathway is lowered by 1--2 meters compared to the field, and it is yet unknown whether small-scale heterogeneity of terrain features close to the sensor influences the CRNS performance. Additional vegetation correction could probably reduce the apparent soil moisture in this part, which is surrounded by unmanaged grass and hedges. In any case, low precipitation (drizzle) might have added interception water during this day, which is almost impossible to quantify.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{sheepdrove-results.pdf}\n\\caption{(a) Interpolated soil moisture inferred from rover measurements for experiments C1, C2, C3, showing uncorrected road data (left), corrected road data (middle), and field data (right). (b) Probability density functions of data in the overlapping areas show that the corrected road data (blue) can represent the field data (grey) better than the uncorrected road data (red). Mean and standard deviation of each distribution are provided in the top right corner.}\\label{fig:sfresults}\n\\end{figure}\n\nAll in all, the mean and standard deviation of soil moisture patterns could be restored by the application of the correction function on road points. Some of the field patterns were invisible from the road, especially when the fields on the left and on the right exhibit different water content, or when local hedges next to the roads contain or intercept water that shields the signal from the field.\n\n\\subsection{Tradeoff between measurements from the road and the field}\\label{tradeoff-between-measurements-from-the-road-and-the-field}\n\nAlthough it is evident that neutron measurements on the road can be biased substantially, it remains a challenge for experimentalists to access non-road areas, while either the access of fields is restricted or campaigns are required to cover large areas in a reasonable amount of time. Hence, roving on roads is much more practical and a necessary condition to travel from site to site. The campaigns in the \\emph{Sheepdrove Farm} combine both, road and field data, from which it could be inferred which number of measurements in the field is needed, in addition to the road data, to obtain an acceptable estimate of the field soil moisture.\n\nIn Fig.~\\ref{fig:rafaelsplot} all data points obtained during each campaign were bootstrapped, leading to more than 2000 combinations of road and field measurements.\nThe figure shows that the inclusion of uncorrected road points (red) can lead to an unreliable average value. Depending on wetness conditions, at least 80--\\(95\\,\\%\\) of the data points should be taken in the field to obtain an average that is within a two percent accuracy range around the mean field water content. In contrast to uncorrected data, corrected road data (blue) is already a good predictor for field soil moisture when any number of survey points on the road and in the field were averaged.\n\n\nThe analysis shows that any combination of field data and corrected road data can lead to a sufficient estimation of average water content in the survey area. However, the correction procedure is highly sensitive to supporting information like road moisture, field moisture, and road width (see Fig.~\\ref{fig:croadsm}). If these parameters are uncertain, their impact on the CRNS product could be substantial. The impact could be reduced by calibrating the road-correction parameters with road and field data at selected anchor locations, or by including a substantial number of field data points to the dataset measured only on roads.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics{rafael-plot3.pdf}\n\\caption{Apparent average soil moisture of 2000 combinations of road- and non-road (i.e., field) points in experiments C1--3 plotted over the fraction of selected road points in the ensemble to selected total points (i.e., sum of road and field). Data is shown for uncorrected (red) and corrected (blue) road effect. If data is not corrected, a maximum fraction of road points between 0.20 and 0.05 is acceptable (under dry or wet conditions, respectively) to provide a realistic estimate of field soil moisture within \\(2\\,\\%\\) accuracy.}\\label{fig:rafaelsplot}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\\label{conclusions}\n\nThe mobile cosmic-ray neutron sensor (CRNS rover) was successfully applied to estimate soil moisture at scales from a few meters to a few square kilometers. One of the most prominent insights from the detailed and extensive investigations is the confirmation that the CRNS rover is capable to capture small-scale patterns at resolutions of 10--100 m, depending on driving speed. This result opens the path for non-invasive tomography of root-zone soil moisture patterns in small catchments and agricultural fields, where traditional methods would require exhaustive and time-consuming efforts.\n\nOn the other hand, the study revealed the critical need to apply correction approaches to account for local effects of dry roads. The different experiments carried out in the course of this study showed a critical loss in the capability to estimate average field soil moisture when the field was not accessible and the measurements were taken on roads only. This effect has been quantified in this study for the first time using neutron transport simulations, and has been confirmed by dedicated experiments.\n\nWe propose an analytical correction function which accounts for various road types and soil moisture conditions. As the analytical form of the corresponding relations has been based on physical reasoning, and the parameters were determined with the help of neutron simulations, the approach could be assumed to be not site-specific and universally applicable. However, the analytical fit showed a few limitations for roads that are wetter than the field, and for road widths beyond \\(7\\,\\)m. The approach is further sensitive to the road parameters like width \\(w\\) and moisture \\(\\theta_\\text{road}\\). While the measurement of road moisture content can be impractical, this quantity could be treated as a calibration parameter by comparing data on the road and in the field at certain anchor locations.\n\nThe presented correction approach further depends on prior knowledge of field soil moisture (eqns.~\\ref{eq:croad}, \\ref{eq:croadp}). To circumvent this requirement, an adaption of the equation has been proposed that takes the uncorrected first-order approximation, \\(\\theta(N)\\), as a proxy instead (eq.~\\ref{eq:croad2}). Although we have shown its performance for the two, climatologically similar sites on ten different days throughout the years, the empirical character of this alternative approach requires more test cases under more various sites and conditions.\n\nThe corrected road data has been compared with field soil moisture inferred from independent TDR (experiment A) and rover measurements (experiments B and C). In all cases the corrected soil moisture product sensed from the road showed remarkable agreement with the patterns, the mean, and the standard deviation of soil moisture in the field. However, a few limitations have been identified. If strong differences in soil moisture are present between neighboring fields passed by the rover, it may be not possible for the sensor to capture the corresponding patterns due to the isotropic nature of neutron detection. Moreover, local ponds on pathways or nearby unmanaged vegetation could further influence the neutron signal in a way that is not representative for the field behind.\n\nNevertheless, a considerable amount of uncertainty is introduced to measurements from roads due to the high contribution of non-field neutrons and the uncertain properties of the road and its surroundings. Therefore, it is advisable to drive directly on the field wherever possible, or to take additional measurements on the field every now and then. This is advisable not only to make sure that the parameters of the road correction lead to a proper representation of field soil moisture, but also to support spatial interpolation.\n\nBased on the conclusions above, we generally recommend to correct for the road effect before spatial CRNS data is used to support hydrological models or agricultural decisions. With regards to evaluation of remote-sensing products \\citep[e.g.,][]{Chrisman2013} dry roads are also part of the remotely sensed average soil moisture, so that different correction approaches might be needed to compare both area-averaged products. There might also be ways to reduce the contribution of the roads in future developments of the neutron detector. For example, by mounting the detector on top of the car where it is more exposed to far-field neutrons.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\acknowledgments\nData is available from the authors on request. MS, RR, and JI thank Dan Bull for providing access to the Sheepdrove Organic Farm. MS, IS, and UW thank Thomas Grau, Mandy Kasner, and Andreas Schmidt for their support during field campaigns in the Sch{\\\"a}fertal. MS acknowledges kind support by the Helmholtz Impulse and Networking Fund through Helmholtz Interdisciplinary School for Environmental Research (HIGRADE). JI is funded by the Queen's School of Engineering, University of Bristol, EPSRC, grant code: EP\/L504919\/1. RR, JI and Sheepdrove Organic Farm activities are funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (A MUlti-scale Soil moistureEvapotranspiration Dynamics study (AMUSED); grant number NE\/M003086\/1). The research was funded and supported by the Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO), which is a joint collaboration program involving several Helmholtz Research Centers in Germany.\n\n\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nIn nature, diversity refers to the fact that many species coexist (among many other definitions). In society, it sometimes refers to the idea of gathering people coming from different cultures and background.\nIn all these domains, diversity (a fact) is considered essential for the emergence of resilience, stability or novelty (a property) \\cite{mccann00}. \nIn software, we take the problem upside-down. We want properties, e.g. resilience, for which diversity may be the key. The main research question is thus formulated as: how to create, maintain, exploit -- i.e. engineer -- diversity in software? \n\nFor instance, early experiments with software diversity in the mid 1970's (e.g. recovery blocks \\cite{randell75}) advocate design and implementation diversity as a means for tolerating faults. Indeed, similarly to natural systems, software systems including diverse functions and elements are able to cope with many kinds of unanticipatable problems and failures.\nCurrently, the concept of software diversity appears as a rich and polymorphic notion, with multiple applications. Yet, the exploration of this concept is very fragmented over different communities, who do not necessarily know each other. \n\nWe aim at putting together the many pieces of the puzzle of software diversity. \nPrevious surveys on classical work about diversity for fault-tolerance \\cite{deswarte98} or for security \\cite{just04} provide important milestones in this direction. Yet, their scope is very focused on a single type of software diversity and they do not include the most recent works in the area.\nOur paper contributes to the field of software diversity, as the first paper that adopts an inclusive vision of the area, with an emphasis on the most recent advances in the field. \n\n\\paragraph{Scope}\nThis survey includes classical work about design and data diversity for fault tolerance, as well as the cybersecurity literature that investigates randomization at different system levels. \nBeyond that, we broaden this standard scope of diversity, to include work about the study and exploitation of natural diversity and about the management of diverse software products in software architecture. \nSince the main barriers between communities are words, we had to cross terminological chasms several times: diversity, randomization, poly- and meta-morphism, to only cite a few that are intrinsically related.\nThis inclusive definition allows us to draw a more complete landscape of software diversity than previous surveys \\cite{Knight2011,Schaefer2012,just04,deswarte98}, which we discuss in section \\ref{sec:other-surveys}.\nFor the first time, this survey  gathers under the same umbrella works that are often considered very different, while they share a similar underlying concept: software diversity. \n\n\\paragraph{Novelty}\nThe field of software diversity has been very active in the 70's and 80's for fault-tolerance purposes. There has been a revival in the late 90's, early 2000's, this time with automatic diversity for security. Both periods have been covered by previous surveys \\cite{deswarte98,just04}. \nThe last decade's research on software diversity has also been extremely rich and dynamic. Yet, this activity is only partially covered in recent surveys by Schaeffer et al. \\cite{Schaefer2012}, Knight \\cite{Knight2011} and Larsen et al. \\cite{Larsen14}, which have specific focuses. \nOur survey includes the most recent works in all areas of software diversity, with an emphasis from 2000 to present. \n \n\\paragraph{Audience}\nThe targeted audience of this paper is researchers and practitioners in one of the surveyed fields, who miss the big picture of software diversity. \nOur intention is to let them know and understand the related approaches, so far unknown to them because of the community boundaries. \nWe believe that this shared awareness and understanding, with different technical backgrounds, will be the key enabling factor for the development of integrated and multi-tier software diversification techniques \\cite{allier14}. This will contribute to the construction of future resilient and secure software systems.\n\n\n\\paragraph{Structure}\nGiven the breadth of this work's scope, there is no single decomposition criterion to structure our paper. Software diversity has multiple facets: the goal of diversity, the diversification techniques, the scale of diversity, the application domain, when it is applied~\\ldots \nThis diversity of software diversity is reflected in table \\ref{tab:diversities}. \nAs shown in Figure \\ref{fig:global-map}, we decide to organize this survey mainly along two oppositions. \nFirst, we differentiate engineering work that aims at exploiting diversity (Sections \\ref{sec:managed} and \\ref{sec:automated-diversity}) from papers that are more observational in nature, where software diversity is a study subject (Section \\ref{sec:natural-study}).\nThen, we split the engineering papers on \n\\emph{managed diversity} approaches, that aim at manually controlling software diversity\n(section \\ref{sec:managed}); \nand the papers describing  \\emph{automated diversity} techniques (section \\ref{sec:automated-diversity}).\nThis structuring supports our main goal of bridging different research communities and enables us to discuss, in the same section, papers coming from very different fields. \nThe paper can be read linearly. However, each section is meant to be self-contained and there is a diversity of reading pathways.\nWe invite the reader to use Figure \\ref{fig:global-map} for choosing her own one.\n\n\\begin{table}\n\\tbl{The diversity of software diversity (not exhaustive overview). Over time and over research communities, many kinds of software diversity have been proposed or studied.}{\n\\begin{tabularx}{\\textwidth}{p{4cm}|X}\nSoftware diversity for \\ldots & Fault tolerance \\cite{randell75,avizienis84}, security \\cite{Forrest:1997,cox06}, reusability \\cite{pohl2005software}, software testing \\cite{chen2010adaptive}, performance \\cite{Sidiroglou-Douskos2011}, bypassing antivirus\nsoftware \\cite{BorelloFM10} \\ldots\\\\\n\\hline\nSoftware diversity at the scale of \\ldots & Networks  \\cite{donnell04}, operating systems \\cite{koopman99}, components \\cite{gashi04}, data structures \\cite{ammann88}, statements \\cite{Schulte2013mutrob}, \\ldots\\\\\n\\hline\nSoftware diversity as \\ldots & a natural phenomenon \\cite{mendez13}, a goal \\cite{cohen93}, a means \\cite{collberg12}, a research object \\cite{knight86} \\ldots\\\\\n\\hline\n\nSoftware diversity in \\ldots & market products \\cite{han09}, operating systems \\cite{koopman99}, developer expertise \\cite{posnett13}, \\ldots\\\\\n\\hline\n\nSoftware diversity when \\ldots & the specifications are written \\cite{Yoo2002111}, the code is developed \\cite{avizienis84}, the application is deployed \\cite{franz10}, executed \\cite{ammann88} \\ldots\\\\\n\n\n\\end{tabularx}}\n\\label{tab:diversities}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=\\columnwidth]{diversity-of-diversity-3.pdf}\n\t\t\\caption{The diverse dimensions of software diversity}\n        \\label{fig:global-map}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Survey Process} \n\nTo prepare this survey, we first analyzed the existing surveys on the topic (see Section \\ref{sec:other-surveys}). None of them covers the material we cover. Second, we set up and conducted a systematic process described in \\ref{sec:process} \n\n\\subsection{Other Surveys on Software Diversity} \n\\label{sec:other-surveys}\n\nThe oldest survey we found is by Deswarte et al. in 1998 \\cite{deswarte98}.\nIt clearly shows that software diversity has different scales:\nfrom the level of human users or operators to the level of hardware and execution.\nOur survey exactly goes along this line of exploring the diversity of diversities.\nIn addition to classical and 90ies' software diversity, our survey discusses the rich work that has been done around software diversity during the last fifteen years: instruction-set randomization, adaptive random testing, and many others.\n\nIn 2001, Littlewood et al. \\cite{littlewood01} focus on design diversity (N-version programming). They review in particular their own work on the probabilistic reasoning that can be made on N-version systems. To this extent, as the abstract puts it, the survey is more a tutorial on design diversity than a broad perspective on software diversity.\n\nThe goal of Just et al.'s review paper  \\cite{just04} is to list the techniques of synthetic diversity that can improve software survivability.\n``Synthetic diversity'' is equivalent, in our views, to ``artificial automated diversity''.\nIn our paper, we consider other goals than only security (such as quality of service, see section \\ref{sec:unsound}), and consider other diversity engineering techniques (e.g., managed software diversity, see \\ref{sec:managed}).\n\nJohn Knight  published a survey in 2011 \\cite{Knight2011}.\nHe discusses four kinds of diversity:\nclassical design diversity (N-version and recovery block),\ndata diversity (a research direction he has both invented and lead),\nartificial diversity (in the sense of instruction-set randomization for security and the like),\nand N-variant systems (compared to N-version, N-variant diversity uses artificial and automated diversity).\nIn addition, he introduces the concept of ``temporal diversity'' as a diversity over time, for instance by regularly changing the key for instruction-set randomization.\nWe agree on all points that Knight considers as software diversity. However, we have a broader definition of software diversity: we discuss more kinds of managed software diversity (such as software product lines, see \\ref{sec:spl}), \nmore kinds of artificial diversity (such as runtime diversity, see section \\ref{sec:dyn-randomization}), \nand papers for which diversity is the main study subject (see Section \\ref{sec:study-subject}).\n\nSchaefer and colleagues co-authored in 2012 ``Software diversity: state of the art and perspectives'' \\cite{Schaefer2012}.\nDespite what the title suggests, this paper surveys only one kind of software diversity: software product lines.\nAs we will discuss later, the techniques of software product lines  enable one to manage a set of related features to build diverse products in a specific domain. We refer to this kind of diversity as ``managed software diversity''. \nIn our paper, not only do we describe other kinds of managed software diversity such as design diversity, but we also discuss artificial diversity and natural diversity as well.\n\nLarsen et al. \\cite{Larsen14} recently authored a survey about automated software diversity for security and privacy. They discuss  the different threat models that can be addressed via diversification. Then, they classify the surveyed approaches according to the nature of the object to be diversified and the temporal dimension of the diversification process. They conclude with an insightful discussion about compiler-based vs. binary rewriting diversity synthesis.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Systematic Process} \n\\label{sec:process}\nWe followed a systematic process to select the papers discussed in this paper. We started with 30 papers that we knew and are written by the most remarkable authors: Avizienis, Randell, Forrest, Cohen, Knight and Levenson, Schaeffer, etc.. They appear in top publications of these fields (ACM TISSEC, IEEE TSE, IEEE S\\&P, CCS, ICSE, PLDI, DSN, etc.) and are generally considered as seminal work in each area. Then, we increased this set through a systematic keyword-based search using Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore and ACM DL. This set went through a second expansion phase when we followed the citation graph of the selected papers. This provided us with a set of more than 300 papers. Then, we filtered out papers. First, we discarded the redundant papers that discuss a similar problem or solution (e.g., we selected only a few papers about product lines or about multi-version execution). Second, we filtered out the papers that had no impact on the literature (that appear in unknown conferences or that had less than 5 citations after 20 years). Since our survey focuses on recent developments in the field of software diversity, we took a special care to keep the most significant recent works (up to papers that appeared in 2014).\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Managed Software Diversity}\n\\label{sec:managed}\n\n``Managed  software diversity'' relates to technical approaches aiming at encouraging or controlling software diversity.\nThis kind of diversity is principally embodied in the work on multi-version software (early structuring of diversity), open software architecture (encouraging diversity) and software product lines (controlling diversity).\n\n\n\\subsection{Design Diversity (N-Version)}\n\\label{sec:design}\n\nSince the late 1970's many different authors have devised engineering methods for software diversification to cope with accidental and deliberate faults. Here, an accidental fault is any form of bug, \\textit{i.e.}, an internal problem unintentionally introduced by a developer of the execution environment. N-version programming  \\cite{avizienis85} and recovery blocks \\cite{randell75} were the two initial proposals to introduce diversity in computation to limit the impact of bugs. Those techniques are traditionally called ``design diversity'' techniques. \n \nN-version design is defined as ``the independent generation of $N\\geq2$ functionally\nequivalent programs from the same initial specification''  \\cite{avizienis84,avizienis85}. This consists in providing N development teams with the same requirements.\nThose teams then develop N independent versions, using different technologies, processes, verification techniques, etc. The N versions are then run in parallel and a voting mechanism is executed on the N results.\nThe increased diversity in design, programming languages and humans is meant to reduce the number of faults by emergence of the best behavior, the emergence resulting from the vote on the output value. \n\nSince the initial definition of the N-version paradigm, it has been refined along different dimensions: the process, the product and the environment necessary for N-version development \\cite{avizienis95}. For example Kelly \\cite{kelly91} distinguishes between random diversity (let independent teams develop their version) from enforced diversity in which there is an explicit effort to design diverse algorithms or data structures. More recently, Avizienis proposed to adapt the concept to software survivability \\cite{avizienis00}.\n\nRecovery blocks were developed at the same time as N-version design, and proposed a way of structuring the code, using diverse alternative software solutions, for fault tolerance \\cite{randell75}. The idea is to have recovery blocks in the program, \\textit{i.e.}, blocks equipped with error detection mechanisms and one or more spares that are executed in case of errors. These spares are diverse variant implementations of the function. \n\nIn the latest work about N-version development, both N-version design and recovery blocks were included in the same global framework \\cite{avizienis95}. This framework has then been used in multiple domains, including the design of multiple versions of firewalls \\cite{liu2008}. \nWhile the essential conceptual elements of design diversity have remained stable over time, most subsequent works have focused on experimenting and quantifying the effects of this approach on fault tolerance. The work related to the analysis of N-version programming is synthesized in section \\ref{sec:study-n-version}.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Managed Natural Software Diversity}\n\\label{sec:managed-natural}\nWe call ``natural diversity'', the existence of different software solutions that provide similar functionalities and which spontaneously emerge from software development processes.\nThere exists several forms of natural software diversity. For example, the programs that can be customized through several parameters, embed a natural mechanism for diversification (two instances of the same program, tuned with different parameters can have different behaviors in terms of performance). Software market and competition are also strong vectors that drive the natural emergence for software diversity. For example, the gigantic business opportunities offered by the world wide web has driven the emergence of many competing web browsers. Web browsers are diverse in their implementation, in their performance, in some of their plugins, yet they are functionally very similar and can be used for one another in most cases. Other examples of such market software diversity include operating systems, firewalls, database management systems, virtual machines, routers, middleware, application servers, etc. In this section we present a set of works which exploit this natural diversity for different purposes. We will come back to natural diversity later in Section \\ref{sec:natural-study}, for discussing authors who study natural diversity with no engineering goals at all.\n\nHiltunen et al. \\cite{Hiltunen00} propose the Cactus mechanism for survivability, i.e., a mechanism that monitors and controls a running application in order to tolerate unpredictable events such as bugs or attacks. The Cactus approach relies on fine grain customization of the different components in the application, as well as runtime adaptation, to achieve survivability. They discuss how they can switch between different security and fault-tolerance solutions through customization and they also discuss how this natural way of changing a system supports the emergence of natural diversity and thus increases resilience.\n\nCaballero et al.  \\cite{caballero08} exploit the existing diversity in router technology to design a network topology that has a diverse routing infrastructure. Their work introduces a novel metric to quantify the robustness of a network. Then, they use it to compare the robustness of different, more or less diverse, routing infrastructure. They explore the impact of different levels of diversity, by converting the problem into a graph coloring problem. They show that a small amount of router technology and well designed topology actually increases the global robustness of the infrastructure.\n\nTotel et al. \\cite{totel06} propose to design an intrusion detection mechanism by design diversity, leveraging the natural diversity of components-off-the-shelf (COTS). They exploit the fact that COTS for database management  and web servers have very few common mode failures \\cite{wang03,gashi04} and are thus very good candidates for N-version design based on natural diversity. The authors deploy an architecture with three diverse servers running on three different operating systems and feed it with the requests sent on their campus web page in the last month (800000 requests, out of which around 1\\% can be harmful). The results show that the COTS-based IDS only raises a small number of false positives.  Along the same line, Garcia et al. \\cite{garcia2014analysis} conducted a study on the impact of operating system diversity w.r.t. to security bugs of the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Their results show that diversity indeed contribute to building intrusion-tolerant systems.\n\nOberheide et al. \\cite{oberheide08} exploit the diversity of antivirus and malware systems to propose what is called ``N-version protection''. It is based on multiple and diverse detection engines running in parallel. Their prototype system intercepts suspicious files on a host machine and send them in the cloud to check for viruses and malware against diverse antivirus systems. They evaluate their system over 7220 malware and show that it is able to detect 98\\% of the malware. It provides better results than a single antivirus in 35\\% of the cases. The idea has been further explored by Bishop et al. \\cite{bishop2011diversity}, who explored the deep characteristics of the dataset of known malware to reduce global vulnerability.\n\nO'Donnell and Sethu \\cite{donnell04} leverage the diversity of software packages in operating systems and investigates several algorithms to increase the global diversity in a network of machines. They model the diversification of distributed machines as a graph coloring problem and compare different algorithms according to their ability of setting a network that is tolerant to attacks. The experiments are based on a simulation, which uses the topology from email traffic at the authors' institution. They show that the introduction of diversity at multiple levels provides the best defense.\n\nCarzaniga et al. \\cite{carzaniga10}  find multiple different sequences of method calls in Javascript code, which happen to have the same behavior. They harness this redundancy to setup a runtime recovery mechanism for web applications.  \n\nGorbenko et al.  \\cite{gorbenko11} propose an intrusion avoidance architecture based on multi-level software diversity and dynamic software reconfiguration in IaaS cloud layers. The approach leverages the natural diversity of off-the-shelf components that are found in the cloud (operating system, web server, database management system and application server), in combination with dynamic reconfiguration strategies. The authors illustrate the approach with an experiment over several weeks, during which they switch between 4 diverse operating systems that have different open vulnerabilities. They discuss how this mechanism reduces exposure to vulnerabilities. \n\n\n\\subsection{Managed Functional Diversity}\nIn software, it is known that many functions are the same yet different. \nFor instance, passing a message to a distant machine or writing to a local file is conceptually the same: writing data to a location. However, the different implementations (say for network or for file input\/output)  of this abstract function are radically different.\nOne responsibility of software abstractions is to capture this conceptual identity and to abstract over the diversity of implementation details.\nFor instance, Unix is well known because of Unix' concept of file captures all input\/output operations, whether on the network, on a physical file on disk or on the memory of a kernel module.\nWe refer to this facet of abstraction as managing the functional diversity.\n\nMany software abstractions have the clear goal of managing functional diversity.\nIn the following, we will review classical object-oriented software, software product lines and plugin-based architecture.\n\n\\subsubsection{Class Diversity}\nThe object-oriented software paradigm is a rich paradigm with implications on understandability, reuse, etc. \nThere is one point in this paradigm really related to managing the diversity: polymorphism.\n\nPolymorphism is the mechanism enabling us to have code that calls other pieces of code in a non predefined manner. The late binding between functions enables an object to call a diverse set of functions and even to call code that will be written in the future. To this extent, polymorphism is the key mechanism enabling to manage  the function diversity (as embodied in classes). \nIn other words, polymorphism (with abstract methods, interfaces or other fancy object-oriented constructs) supports the construction of a program architecture that is ready for handling diversity. \n\nAs Bertrand Meyer~\\cite{meyer1988object} puts it:\n\\begin{quote}\n\\emph{``We are at the heart of the object-oriented method's contribution to reusability: offering not just frozen components (such as found in subroutine libraries), but flexible solutions that provide the basic schemes and can be adapted to suit the needs of many diverse applications.''}\n\\end{quote}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Software product lines}\n\\label{sec:spl}\n\nThe techniques around software product lines can be considered as means of controlling a diversity of software solutions capable of handling a diversity of requirements (user requirements or environmental constraints) \\cite{pohl2005software,clements02}.\nSoftware product line engineering  is about the development of ``\\emph{a diversity of software products and software-intensive systems at lower costs, in shorter time, and with higher quality}'' \\cite{pohl2005software}. This consists in building an explicit variability model, which captures all commonalities and variation points in requirements and software solutions. In other words, the variability model is an explicit definition of the space of diverse solutions that can be engineered in a particular domain. This model is usually expressed as a form of feature model \\cite{kang90}. \n\nIn the context of software product lines, the main challenge for software diversity management consists in providing systematic ways to reuse existing parts of software systems in order to derive diverse solutions. \n\nWe synthesize the main works in software product lines, for an exhaustive survey, we refer the reader to Schaefer et al.'s survey ``Software diversity: state of the art and perspectives'' \\cite{Schaefer2012}. We start by looking at solutions that  handle diversity in design, then we summarize solutions for diversity in implementation. \n\nSoftware product lines mainly offer support for design diversity through architectural solutions \\cite{clements02}. An essential challenge is to handle both the logical variability (the set of features that architects manipulate) and the variability of concrete assets (diversity of software pieces that can actually be composed to implement a particular product). Initial solutions are based on annotations to relate both views \\cite{atkinson02}. Hendrikson et al. \\cite{hendrickson07} propose a product line architecture modeling approach that unites the two, using change sets to cluster related architectural differences. Several approaches are founded on a compositional approach to derive products from architectural models. Ziadi et al. \\cite{ziadi04} propose sound composition operations for UML 2.0 scenarii in order to automatically synthesize diverse statecharts inside a given product line, while Morin et al. \\cite{morin08} compose software components to derive software configurations at runtime. Other approaches rely on an orthogonal variability model associated to  model transformations for product derivation, as is the case for the Common Variability Language \\cite{haugen08} or the Orthogonal Variability Model \\cite{pohl2005software}.\nAt the boundary between models and implementation, it is possible to capture the variants of a program with explicit design patterns, as suggested by J\\'ez\\'equel \\cite{jezequel1998}.\nAt the source code level, there exist several mechanisms to manage a set of variants for a given program: delta-oriented programming \\cite{schaefer2010} instantiates the concept of delta-modeling \\cite{clarke2011} to specify a specific set of deltas for a program, as well as transformations that can systematically inject a set of selected deltas in a program to derive a variant; Figueiredo and colleagues have reported on  the usage of aspect-oriented programming to hanlde variants in a product line and discuss the postive and negative effects on design stability \\cite{figueiredo2008}; preprocessing was one of the first language technology used to handle program variants and has been extensively analyzed, for example in the recent work by Liebig et al. \\cite{liebig2010}.\n\n\\subsubsection{Diversity through Plugin- and Component- based Software Architecture}\n\nPlugin-based software architectures offer means to design open software systems. Plugins are software units that encapsulate a given functionality as well as some information about its dependencies. As far as we know, Wijnstra \\cite{wijnstra00} was one of the first authors to assess the suitability of plugins to handle the diversity of configurations and usages of a complex software system \\cite{wijnstra00}. He proposed to use plugins, together with a component framework to design an extensible system for medical imaging. In this context, he needed to have a core set of functionalities to deploy a diversity of products that fit different requirements or different environments. \n\nMore recently, very successful software projects such as Wordpress, Firefox or Eclipse have adopted plugin-based architectures. This allows them to be open, thus leveraging the efforts of large open source communities, while keeping a core set of functionalities across all versions. But most importantly, this architecture supports a true explosion of functional software diversity. For example, there are 25000 plugins available for Wordpress, which can be combined by users in billions of functionally diverse configurations, each of them fitting a specific purpose or need. This was somehow predicted by Ommering \\cite{ommering02}, who used a plugin-based architecture in which connections between plugins handle design-time or run-time diversity.\n\n\\subsubsection{Discussion}\nThe main benefit of those software construction paradigms with respect to diversity is reusability: a large range of diverse products can be made with a smaller number of software \"bricks\".  This is our motivation for considering software construction and design paradigms in our survey.\n\nHowever, the overall effect of those paradigms is to reduce software design diversity for a given set of product functions. Indeed, those reuse-oriented paradigms create a tension between reusability and monoculture \\cite{allier14}. Both relate to diversity (the second one in a dual manner). In practice, there is an engineering tradeoff between the increase of diversity due to the infinite number of possible combinations and the decrease of diversity due to massive reuse.\n\n\n\\subsection{Summary}\nThis section has focused on three areas of software engineering, which \\textit{manage} software diversity. The first was about multi-version design, an approach to fault-tolerance that  aims at managing the manual development of diverse program versions. The second part was about managing and exploiting software diversity that naturally emerges in software markets or open source communities, in order to build fault or attack tolerant systems. The last part opened on a series of works dedicated to the management of functional diversity, in order to fulfill the various usages of a given system. These three parts refer to different research communities, yet, they all share a common approach: software diversity can be managed and harnessed in order to achieve specific software engineering objectives.\n\n\n\\section{Automated Software Diversity}\n\\label{sec:automated-diversity}\n\n\n``Automated software diversity''  consists of techniques for artificially and automatically synthesizing diversity in software.\nInstead of using the adjective automated, some authors call it ``synthetic diversity'' \\cite{just04} or ``artificial'' diversity (e.g. \\cite{SidiroglouLK06}). However, artificial literaly means \\emph{``created or caused by people''}\\footnote{Merriam-Webster, \\url{http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/artificial}}. To this extent, N-version programming also produces artificial diversity but, the diverse program variants are produced manually.\nWe prefer ``automated diversity'' which emphasizes the absence of human in the loop and is in clear opposition to managed software diversity.\nBeyond those details, we actually equate those three terms: artificial, synthetic and automated diversity.\n\nAutomated software diversity is valuable in different contexts, for instance software security or fault tolerance. However, these different \\emph{goals} are not the only dimension in which we can characterize the various approaches to automated software diversity.\nFirst, the \\emph{scale} dimension characterizes the fact that software systems are engineered at several scales:\nfrom a set of interacting machines in a distributed system down to the optimization of a particular loop.\nResearch has produced techniques for automated software diversity along all those different scales.\nSecond, the \\emph{genericity} dimension explores whether the diversification technique is domain-specific or not. Third, the \\emph{integrated} dimension is about the assembly of multiple diversification techniques in a global approach. \n\n\\subsection{Randomization}\n\nThe mainstream software paradigms are built on determinism. \nAll layers of the software stack tend to be deterministic, from programming language constructs, to compilers, to middleware, up to application-level code.\n\nHowever, it is known that randomization can  be useful, for instance to improve security \\cite{bhatkar03}. \nA classical example of randomization is compiler based-randomization: a compiler may compile the same code with different memory layouts to decrease the risk of code injection.\n\nWhat is the relation between randomization and diversity? A randomization technique creates, directly or indirectly, set of unique executions for the very same program. As mentioned by \\cite{bhatkar03}, \\emph{``the use of randomized program transformations [is] a way to introduce diversity into applications''}. The notion of ``diversity of execution'' is broad: it may mean diverse performances, diverse outputs, diverse memory locations, etc. \nWe present an overview of diversifying randomization techniques in this survey.\nFor a more detailed survey about randomization, we refer the reader to surveys dedicated to that topic, in particular the one of Keromytis and Prevelakis \\cite{keromytis2005survey}.\n\nThere are different kinds of diversifying randomization. \n First, one can create different versions of the same program.\nFor instance, one can randomize the data structures  at the source  or at the binary level. \nWe call this kind of randomization ``static''. \nStatic randomization is discussed in Section \\ref{sec:static-randomization}. \n\nSecond, one can automatically integrate randomization points in the executable program. \nFor instance, a malloc primitive (memory allocation) with random padding is a randomization point: each execution of malloc yields a different result. \nContrary to static randomization, there is still one single version of the executable program but their executions are diverse. We call this kind of randomization ``dynamic randomization'' (also called runtime randomization \\cite{xu2003transparent}) and discuss it in \\ref{sec:dyn-randomization}. \n\nThird, some randomization techniques do not aim at providing a strict behavioral equivalence between the the original program and the randomized executions. They are are discussed in Section \\ref{sec:unsound}.\n\nFinally, as we will see later in Section \\ref{integrated-diversity}, diversification techniques can be stacked. This also holds for randomization: one can stack static and dynamic randomization. In this case, there are diverse versions of the same program which embed randomization points that themselves produce different executions. \n\n\n\\subsubsection{Static Randomization}\n\\label{sec:static-randomization}\n\nOne of seminal papers on static randomization is by Forrest and colleagues \\cite{Forrest:1997}, who highlight two families of randomization: \nrandomly adding or deleting non-functional code and\nreordering code.\nThose transformations are also described by Cohen \\cite{cohen93} in the context of operating system protection. \nLin et al. \\cite{Lin2009} randomize the data structure of C code. Following the line of thought of Forrest et al. \\cite{Forrest:1997} they re-order fields of data structures (\\texttt{struct} and \\texttt{class} in C\/C++ code) and insert garbage ones. \n\nThe concept of instruction-set randomization has been invented in 2003 in two independent teams \\cite{Kc03,barrantes:03}\nIt consists of creating a unique mapping between artificial CPU instructions and real ones. This mapping is encoded in a key which must be known at runtime to actually execute the program. Eventually, the instruction set of a machine can be considered as unique, and it is very hard for an attacker ignoring the key to inject executable code.\nInstruction-set randomization can be done statically (a variant of the program using a generated instruction set is written somewhere) or dynamically (the artificial instruction set is synthesized at load time).\nIn both cases, instruction-set randomization indeed creates a diversity of execution which is the essence of the counter-measure against code injection.\n\nIn some execution environments (e.g. x86 CPUs), there exists a ``NOP'' instruction. It means ``no operation'' and it has been invented for the sake of optimization, in order to align instructions with respect to some alignment criteria (e.g. memory or cache). \nMerckx \\cite{merckxsoftware}  and later Jackson \\cite{jackson} have explored how to use NOP to statically diversify programs. The intuition is simple: by construction ``NOP'' does nothing and the insertion of any amount of it results in a semantically equivalent program. However, it breaks the predictability of program execution and to this extent mitigates certain exploits.  \n\nObfuscation is a classical application domain of static randomization.\nCode obfuscation consists of modifying software for the sake of hindering reverse engineering and code tampering. Its main goal is to protect intellectual property and business secrets.\nA basic obfuscation technique simply transforms a program $P$ in a program $P'$ which is distributed. \nHowever, since obfuscation is automated, it is often possible to generate several different obfuscated versions of the same program (as proposed by Collberg et al. \\cite{collberg12} for example). To this extent, code obfuscation is one kind of software diversification, with one specific criterion in mind.\nFor an overview on code obfuscation, we refer to the now classical taxonomy by Collberg and colleagues \\cite{collberg1997taxonomy}.  For an example of a concrete obfuscation engine for Java programs, we refer to \\cite{collberg1998manufacturing} and its Figure 1. \nWhen obfuscation happens at runtime, it is a kind of execution diversity and we discuss it in \\ref{sec:dyn-randomization}.\n\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Dynamic Randomization}\n\\label{sec:dyn-randomization}\n\nChew and Song \\cite{Chew02mitigatingbuffer} target ``operating system randomization''. More specifically, they randomize the interface between the operating system and the user-land applications:\nthe system call numbers, the library entry points (memory addresses) and the stack placement. All those techniques are dynamic, done at runtime using load-time preprocessing and rewriting. \n\nDynamic randomization can address different kinds of problems. In particular, it  mitigates a large range of memory error exploits. Bathkar et al. \\cite{bhatkar03,bhatkar2005efficient} have proposed some of the seminal research  in this direction. Their approach is based on three kinds of randomization transformations: randomizing the base addresses of applications and libraries  memory regions, random permutation of the order of variables and routines, and the random introduction of random gaps between objects. \n\nStatic randomization creates diverse version of the same program at compilation time, dynamic randomization creates diverse executions of the same program under the same input at runtime. What about just-in-time compilation randomization? This point has been studied by Homescu and colleagues at the University of California Irvine \\cite{homescu2013profile}. Their approach neither creates diverse versions of the same program nor introduces randomization points: the randomization happens in the just-in-time compiler directly. \nTheir randomization is based on two diversification techniques: insertion of NOP instructions and constant blinding.\n\nIn the techniques we have just discussed, the support for dynamic randomization is implemented within the execution environment. On the contrary, self-modifying programs embed their own randomization techniques \\cite{mavrogiannopoulos2011taxonomy}. This is done for sake of security and is considered one of the strongest obfuscation mechanism \\cite{mavrogiannopoulos2011taxonomy}. \n\nAmmann and Knight's ``data diversity'' \\cite{ammann88} represents another family of randomization. The goal of data diversity is not security but fault tolerance. The technique aims at enabling the computation of a program in the presence of failures. The idea of data diversity is that, when a failure occurs, the input data is changed so that the new input does not result in a failure. The output based on this artificial input, through a inverse transformation, remains acceptable in the domain under consideration. \nTo this extent, this technique dynamically diversifies the input data. \n\nThe notion of ``environment diversity''  \\cite{vaidyanathan2005comprehensive} refers to techniques that change the environment to overcome failures. For instance, changing the scheduler or its parameter is indeed a change in the environment. This is larger in scope than just changing some process data, such as standard randomization.  \n\n\n\\subsubsection{Unsound Randomization}\n\\label{sec:unsound}\nTraditional randomization techniques are meant to produce programs or executions that are semantically equivalent to the original program or execution. \nHowever, have explored the domain of ``unsound'' randomization techniques, either statically or dynamically.\n\nFoster and Somayaji \\cite{Foster2010} recombine binary object files of commodity applications. If an application is made of two binary files A and B, they show that is possible to run the application by artificially linking a version of A with a different yet close version of B. The technique enables them to tolerate bugs and even let new functions emerging but has no guarantee on the behavior of the recombination.\n\nSchulte et al. \\cite{schultesoftware} describe a property of software that has never been reported before. Software can be mutated and at the same time, it can preserve a certain level of correctness. Using an analogy from genomics, they call this property ``software mutational robustness''.  This property has a direct relation to diversification: one can mutate the code in order to get functionally equivalent variants of a program. Doing this in advance is called ``proactive diversity''. The authors present a set of experiments that show that this proactive diversity is able to fix certain bugs.\n\nIn our previous work \\cite{baudry14}, we experiment with different transformation strategies, on Java statements, to synthesize ``sosie'' programs. The sosies of a program P are variants of P, i.e., different source code, which pass the same test suite and that exhibit a form of computation diversity. In other words, our technique synthesizes large quantities of variants, which provide the same functionality as the original through a different control or data flow, reducing the predictability of the program's computation.\n\nAnother kind of runtime diversity emerges from the technique of loop perforation \\cite{Sidiroglou-Douskos2011}.\nIn this paper, Sidiroglou et al. have shown that in some domains it is possible to skip the execution of loop iterations. For instance, in a video decoding algorithm (codec), skipping some loop iterations has an effect on some pixels or contours but does not further degrade or crash the software application. On the other hand, skipping loop iterations is key with respect to performance. In other words, there is a trade-off between the performance and accuracy. This trade-off can be set offline (e.g. by arbitrarily skipping one every two loops) or dynamically based on the current load of the machine.\nIn both cases, this kind of technique results in a semantic diversity of execution profiles, and consequently is deeply related to automated diversity. \n\n\\subsubsection{Summary}\n\\label{sec:summary-randomization}\n\nIn this subsection, we have focused on techniques that automatically randomize some aspect of a program, thus producing a diversity of program versions. Diversity occurs in memory, in the operating system, in the bytecode or in the source code, but in all cases it happens with no human intervention, through random processes. \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Domain-specific Diversity}\n\nThe techniques we have presented so far are independent of any application domain. \nYet, domain knowledge can be essential to devise efficient diversification techniques. This section illustrates such situations.\n\nFor instance, a common vulnerability of web applications is the possibility of injecting SQL code in order to access unauthorized data or corrupt existing one. Boyd et al. \\cite{Boyd04} proposed a technique to diversify the SQL query themselves. By simply prefixing all SQL keywords with an execution specific token, they create an unpredictable language that is hardly attackable from the outside and diverse for each database. \n\nFeldt \\cite{Feldt1998} exploited the structure of the genetic programming problem domain for the sake of diversification. He uses a genetic programming system to create a pool of diverse airplane arrestment controllers. He then shows that the failure modes of the synthesized programs are diverse, i.e. that the approach is effective for the generation of a kind of failure diversity.  \n\nOh et al. \\cite{oh2002} presented a program transformation aiming at detecting a particular hardware fault (stuck-at faults in data paths of functional units). \nThe transformation consists of multiplying all numerical computations by a constant $k$ in a semantics-preserving way. \nThe authors show that this technique is effective with respect to their fault model. Obviously, it enables one to automatically obtain diverse implementations of the same program (for different values of $k$).\n\nComputer viruses are programs whose main opponents are anti-virus systems. \nInventors of computer viruses of course care about being reverse-engineered.\nHowever, more importantly for them, the computer viruses must remain undetectable as long as possible. \nDiversification is one solution in this very specific domain: if the virus exists under many different forms, it is harder for anti-virus systems to detect them all. From the perspective of the virus itself, it is even better to constantly change itself. This kind of diversification is performed through so-called ``metamorphic engines'', where metamorphism refers to the concept of having different forms for the same identity. For a recent account on this kind of diversification we refer the reader to Borello and M\u00e9 \\cite{BorelloFM10}.\n\nIn the domain of sensor networks, Alarifi and Du \\cite{alarifi2006} propose an approach to diversifying sensor software in order to mitigate reverse engineering effort. Their approach diversifies both the data (e.g. the keys used to communicate between nodes) and the code. As a result, each node in a sensor network is very likely to be unique.\n\n\n\n\nSo far, we have discussed the diversification of software applications. \nTest cases are executable programs, but very specific ones. \nAlthough they are often written in general purpose programming languages,\ntheir unique goal is to verify the correctness of an application. \nThey do not provide services to users. \nInterestingly, this fundamental difference does not prevent diversity and diversification to be valuable in test cases as well. \nAdaptive random testing \\cite{chen2010adaptive} is a random testing technique whose goal is generate input test data. \nIt is adaptive in the sense that the generated test cases depend on the previously generated ones. The final goal is to evenly spread test cases throughout the input domain. \nTo this extent, adaptive random testing aims at generating diverse test cases, and this is clear for the authors themselves, who subtitled their flagship paper: ``\\emph{The art of test case diversity}''.\nFeldt et al.'s VAT model is an example of adaptive random testing \\cite{Feldt2008TestDiversity}.\nThey use an information distance for information theory to maximize the diversity of generated test cases.\n\n\n\\subsection{Integrated Diversity}\n\\label{integrated-diversity}\n\nIntegrated software diversity is about works that aim at automatically injecting different forms of diversity at the same time in the same program. \nIn this line of thought, previous researchers have either emphasized the fact that the diversity is stacked (Section~\\ref{sec:stacked-diversity}) or whether these different forms of diversity are managed with a specific diversity controller (Section~\\ref{sec:controller-diversity}).\n\n\\subsubsection{Stacked Diversity}\n\\label{sec:stacked-diversity}\n\nThe different contributions discussed in this section all share the same intuition that each kind of artificial diversity has value in one perspective (a specific kind of attack or bug), and thus, integrating several forms of diversity should increase the global ability of the software system with respect to security or fault tolerance.\n\nWang et al. \\cite{wang01} propose a multi-level program transformation that aims at introducing diversity at multiple levels in the control flow so as to provide in-depth obfuscation. This work on program transformation takes place in the context of a software architecture for survivable systems as proposed by Knight et al. \\cite{knight00}. Wang et al's architecture relies on probing mechanisms that integrate two forms of diversity: in time (the probe algorithms are replaced regularly) and in space (there are different probing algorithms running on the different nodes of the distributed system). \n\nBhatkar et al. \\cite{bhatkar03} aim at developing a technique for address obfuscation in order to thwart code injection attacks. This obfuscation approach relies on the combination of several randomization transformations: randomize base addresses of memory regions to make the address of objects unpredictable; permute the order of variables in the stack; and introduce random gaps in the memory layout. Since all these transformations have a random component, they synthesize different outputs on different machines, thus increasing the diversity of attack surfaces that are visible to attackers.\n\nKnight et al., in a report of the DARPA project Self-Regenerative System (SRS) \\cite{knight07}, summarize the main features of the Genesis Diversity Toolkit. This tool is one of the most recent approaches that integrates multiple forms of artificial diversity. The goal of the project was to generate 100 diverse versions of a program that were functionally equivalent but for which a maximum of 33 versions had the same deficiency. The tool supports the injection of 5 forms of diversity: Address Space Randomization (ASR), Stack Space Randomization (SSR), Simple Execution Randomization (SER), Strong Instruction Set Randomization (SISR), Calling Sequence Diversity (CSD).\n\nThe GENESIS project, also coordinated by Knight's group, explored a complete program compilation chain that applies diversity transformations at different steps to break the monoculture \\cite{Williams09}. Diversity transformations are applied compile time, link time, load time,\nand runtime. The latter step is the main innovation of GENESIS and relies on the Strata virtual machine technology, which supports the injection of runtime software diversity. This application-level virtual machine realizes two forms of diversification: calling sequence diversity and instruction set diversity.\n\nJacob et al. \\cite{jacob08} propose superdiversification as a technique that integrates several forms of diversification to synthesize individualized versions of programs. The approach, inspired by compilation superoptimization, consists in selecting sequences of bytecode and in synthesizing new sequences that are functionally equivalent. Given the very large number of potential candidate sequences, the authors discuss several strategies to reduce the search space, including learning occurrence frequencies of certain sequences.\n\nFranz \\cite{franz10} advocates for massive-scale diversity as a new paradigm for software security. The idea is that today some programs are distributed several million times and all these software clones run on millions of machines in the world. The essential issue is that, even if takes a long time to an attacker to discover a way to exploit a vulnerability, this time is worth spending since the exploit can be reused to attack millions of machines. Franz envisions a new context in which, each time a binary program is shipped, it is automatically diversified and individualized, to prevent large-scale reuse of exploits. The approach relies on four paradigm shifts as enablers for his vision: online software distribution, ultra reliable compilers, cloud computing and good enough performance.\n\nIn 2010, Moving Target Defense (MTD) was announced as one of the three ``game-changing'' themes to cyber security the President's Cyber Policy Review announced. The software component of MTD integrates spatial and temporal software diversity, in order to ``limit the exposure of vulnerabilities and opportunities for attack'' \\cite{jajodia11}. With such a statement, future solutions for MTD will heavily rely on the integration of various software diversity mechanisms to achieve their objectives.\n\nInspired by the work of Cohen, who suggested multiple kinds of program transformations to diversify software \\cite{cohen93}, Collberg et al. \\cite{collberg12} compose multiple forms of diversity and code replacement in a distributed system in order to protect it from remote man-at-the-end attacks. The diversification transformations used in this work are adapted from obfuscation techniques: flatten the control flow, merge or split functions, non-functional code addition, parameter reordering and variable encoding. These transformations for spatial diversity are combined with temporal diversity (when and how frequently diversity is injected), which rely on a diversity scheduler that regularly produces new variants.\n\nAllier et al. recently  proposed to use software diversification in multiple components of web applications \\cite{allier14}. They combine different software diversification strategies, from the deployment of different vendor solutions, to fine-grained code transformations, in order to provide different forms of protection. Their form of multi-tier software diversity is a kind of integrated diversity in application-level code.\n\n\\subsubsection{Controllers of Automated Diversity}\n\\label{sec:controller-diversity}\n\nIf mixed together and put at a certain scale of automation and size, all kinds of automated diversity need to be controlled. Popov et al \\cite{popov2012empirical} provide an in-depth analysis of diversity controllers, showing that diversity controlled with specific diversity management decisions is better than naive diversity maximization.  On the engineering side, several researchers have discussed how to manage the diverse variants of the same program. \n\nCox et al. \\cite{cox06} introduce the idea of N-variant systems, which consists in automatically generating variants of a given program and then running them in parallel in order to detect security issues. This is different from N-version programming because the variants are generated automatically and not written manually.\nThe approach is integrated because it synthesizes variants using two different techniques: address space partitioning and instruction set tagging. Both techniques are complementary, since address space partitioning protects against attacks that rely on absolute memory addresses, while instruction set tagging is effective against the injection of malicious instructions. In subsequent work, the same group proposed another transformation that aims at thwarting user ID corruption attacks \\cite{nguyen08}.\n\nSalamat and colleagues find a nice name for this concept: ``multi-variant execution environment''~\\cite{salamat2008reverse,jackson2011compiler}.\nA multi-variant execution environment provides support for running multiple diverse versions of the same program in parallel. The diverse versions are automatically synthesized at compile-time, with reverse stack execution \\cite{salamat09,salamat11}.\nThe execution differences allow some kind of analysis and reasoning on the program behavior. For instance, in \\cite{salamat2008reverse}, multi-variant execution enables the authors to detect malicious code trying to manipulate the stack. \n\nLocasto and colleagues \\cite{SidiroglouLK06} introduced the idea of collaborative application communities. \nThe same application (e.g. a web server) is run on different nodes. In presence of bugs (invalid memory accesses), each node tries a different runtime fix alternative. If the fix proves to be successful, a controller shared it among other nodes. This healing process contains both a diversification phase (at the level of nodes) and a convergence phase (at the level of the community).\n\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Summary}\n\\label{sec:summary-integrated}\n\nEach form of software diversification targets a specific goal (e.g., against a specific attack vector). Many recent work have thus experimented with the integration of multiple forms of diversity in a system, ot benefit from several forms of protection. We have discussed these works here, as well as the specific kinds of controllers that are required to integrate various diversification techniques.\n\n\n\\subsection{Summary}\nThis section has presented a broad range of contributions on automated software diversity.\nThey come from different research communities, some of them do not even  use the word diversity. \nHowever, they all share the same idea that programs and program executions need not be identical. With respect to the rest of this paper, they are fully automated, which is different from the natural diversity discussed in section \\ref{sec:managed-natural} and \\ref{sec:natural-study} and the managed, yet mostly manual diversity presented in section \\ref{sec:managed}.\n\n\n\n\\section{Diversity as Study Subject}\n\\label{sec:study-subject}\n\nIn this section, we present different works that focus on analyzing and quantifying software diversity and its effects on different aspects of reliability (e.g., fault-tolerance or intrusion-avoidance). \nContrary to the previous sections, the work presented here is not primarily an engineering contribution, it is not a new technique to support, encourage, or create a new kind of software diversity. \nThese approaches all have in common that they consider software diversity as their research subject per se. They simply aim at understanding the deep nature of software diversity from the causes to the implications.\n  \nFirst, section \\ref{sec:study-n-version} discusses the theoretical models of design diversity and its effects on fault-tolerance. Then, section \\ref{sec:natural-study} presents the literature on the analysis of the natural diversity that is found in off-the-shelf components and source code. \n\n\\subsection{Theoretical Modeling Of Design Diversity}\n\\label{sec:study-n-version}\n\nFailure independence is a critical assumption of the design diversity principle for fault-tolerant critical systems. After the introduction of N-version programming and recovery blocks in the late 70's, a large number of studies have investigated their theoretical foundations and the validity of their assumptions. We discuss the most important studies here.\n\nDesign diversity (N-version programming, recovery blocks) was one  of the earliest proposal to leverage diversity and redundancy in software for sake of fault-tolerance. Fault-tolerance is ensured under one essential assumption: the independence of failures among the diverse solutions. Because of the critical impact of this assumption, a large number of papers have investigated the validity of this assumption. While section \\ref{sec:design} focused on the principles of design diversity, here we focus on the studies that have evaluated the impact of this approach through empirical studies and  statistical modeling.\n\nKnight and Levenson \\cite{knight86} provided the first large-scale experiment that aimed at validating the independence assumption in N-version programming. They asked students to write a program from a single requirements document (for a simple antimissile system) and obtained 27 programs. Each program was tested against 1 million random test cases. The quality of the programs was very high (very few faults), but still there were errors that were found in more than one version (the same error in independently developed programs). A statistical analysis of the results revealed a significant lack of independence between certain errors in the multiple versions of this program. Consequently, the paper was the first major criticism of the effectiveness of design diversity.\n\nBishop et al.  \\cite{bishop86} summarized the results of the PODS project, which aimed at evaluating N-version design on the reliability of software. Their experimental setup is based on the development of three versions of a controller for over-power protection. The requirements document is the same for the three teams, but then they use different methods and languages for the implementation. They concluded that running the three versions, with a voting mechanism, produces a system that is more reliable than the most reliable version and also that back-to-back testing on all three versions is an effective solution to find residual bugs. \n\nSeveral pieces of work proposed theoretical frameworks to analyze and quantify the effects of N-version design on reliability.\nEckhardt and Lee \\cite{eckhardt85} have developed a theoretical statistical model for evaluating the impact of diversity on fault-tolerance. This model quantifies the effect of joint occurrences of errors on the reliability of the global system. Then, they use this model to explore the conditions under which N-version design can improve fault-tolerance and what are the limits of coincidental errors on the effect of N-version design. Littlewood and colleagues have refined the work of Eckhardt, first by considering the diversity of development methods  \\cite{littlewood89}, and more recently by adding further hypotheses and studying two-channel systems \\cite{littlewood2012reasoning}. They show that methodological diversity, analyzed as the diversity of development decisions, is very likely to produce behavioral diversity. Popov and Strigini \\cite{popov01} proposed another model to analyze the effects of design diversity, in which they rely on data that are more related to physical attributes than previous proposals, making the model more actionable for reliability analysis and prediction. Mitra et al. \\cite{mitra99} defined metrics to quantify diversity in N-version designs and highlighted new results about the effectiveness of N versions on software reliability: diversity increases fault tolerance in the presence of common mode failures, as well as self-testing capacities, but the effects of diversity decrease over time. Nicola and Goyal \\cite{nicola90} proposed a statistical model that captures the distribution of correlated failures in multiple versions, as well as a combinatorial formula  to predict the reliability of a system running N versions. They analyze the effectiveness of N-version design and demonstrate the need for loose correlations between failures in the N versions.\nHatton \\cite{hatton97} evaluates N-version design slightly differently: he proposes a theoretical model to compare the development of a single highly reliable version of a software component, vs. the development of N versions of the component. He concludes that N-version design is good, especially considering our inability to make a really good version.\n\nKanoun focuses \\cite{kanoun99} on a cost analysis of developing 2 diverse versions of the same program. She aims at providing feedback about the overhead of developing the second version, considering one version as the reference. She focuses on working hours records for cost estimates. She observes between 25\\% and 134\\% overhead depending on the development phase (the highest overhead is for the coding and unit tests, while the lowest if for functional specification). These results confirm other observations from controlled experiments, with actual data from industrial software development.\n\nPartridge and Krzanowski \\cite{partridge97} start from the framework of Littlewood and Miller and extend it: they look at the impact of multiple versions beyond failure diversity, including other targets for diversity, such as specializing the performance of some versions for specific tasks.\nThey evaluate the possibility of an optimal diversity level for reliable software. Partridge and Krzanowski provide an initial attempt to understand the role of software diversity at multiple levels and to systematically quantify diversity in complex systems.\n\nMore recently, van der Meulen and Revilla  \\cite{Meulen08} analyze the impact of design diversity with thousands of programs that all implement the same set of requirements. \nThose programs come from the UVa Online Judge Website, which proposes a set of programming challenges that can be automatically corrected. Hence, the programs were written by thousands of anonymous programmers attracted by the website concept.\nvan der Meulen and Revilla use the frameworks of Eckhardt and Lee \\cite{eckhardt85} and Littlewood and Miller \\cite{littlewood89}. The authors classify different categories of faults that occur in different versions, and then, through random selections of pairs of versions, evaluate the reliability of the system (assuming that the system does not fail if one of the versions does not fail). They confirm that N-version design is more effective when different versions fail independently and that the diversity of programming language has a positive effect (programmers make different faults and different kinds of faults, with different languages). \nGiven the size of their dataset, the authors really stress the statistical validity of their findings.\n\nSalako et al. \\cite{salako13} question the independent sampling assumption posed by the models of Eckhardt and Lee \\cite{eckhardt85} and Littlewood and Miller \\cite{littlewood89}. They analyze the consequences of violating this assumption and evaluate the opportunity of using different versions of a program (not developed independently) to build fault-tolerant systems. Their results confirm the important influence of independence on diversity. Yet, they also open the discussion about different forms of independence and different processes that can be applied to mitigate the influences between different versions.\n\nA large number of theoretical and empirical studies have dissected the foundations of design diversity. We have summarized these works here and discussed how they have contributed to a finer grain understanding of the conditions for effective design diversity. \n\n\\subsection{Study of Natural Software Diversity}\n\\label{sec:natural-study}\n\n``Natural software diversity''  is any form of software diversity that spontaneously emerges from software development. The emergence comes from many factors such as the market competition, the diversity of developers, of languages or of execution environments.  \nIn Section \\ref{sec:managed},\n we have discussed how natural diversity can be used to establish reliable software systems (Section \\ref{sec:managed-natural}).\nIn this section, we resume on natural diversity and discuss the literature that studies and describes this existing natural diversity.\nThe different studies presented in this section explore different kinds of software diversity: in software components, in source code, as well as in the social behaviors in open source communities.\n\nGashi et al. \\cite{gashi04} have studied bug reports for 4 off-the-shelf SQL servers (Oracle 8.0.5, Microsoft SQL, PostgreSQL 7.0.0 and Interbase 6.0), to understand whether these solutions could be good candidates for fault-tolerance, i.e., exhibit failure diversity. The study consisted in selecting bugs for each of the servers, collect the test cases that trigger the bug on a server and run them on the other servers to check whether the other solutions present the same bug. Following this protocol, for a total of 181 bugs, they observed that only 4 were bugs in two versions simultaneously, and no bug was found in more than 2 versions. They emphasize that the diversity of solutions is major asset for forward error recovery, since it is possible to copy the state of a correct database in a failed one. They have proposed to use this natural diversity to design an architecture for a fault-tolerant database management system \\cite{gashi07}. \n\n\nBarman et al. \\cite{barman09} focus on host intrusion detection systems (HIDS) deployed on all machines of entreprise networks. The ability of an IDS to detect intrusions depends on different thresholds that should depend on each user, yet these thresholds are usually set to the same value on each machine, because of a lack of guidelines about how to configure them. The authors analyze the impact of this monoculture of HIDS, showing that it provides very poor results in terms of intrusion detection. These poor results are mainly because the behavior of users are so diverse that they HIDS should also have diverse configurations to be effective. Then, the authors experiment with increasing configuration diversity and observe a clear benefit to reduce the number of missed detections.\n\nKoopman and De Vale \\cite{koopman99} evaluate the diversity of POSIX operating systems, using a robustness metric based on failure rates. The authors compare 13 implementations of POSIX. They use the Ballista testing tool to generate large quantities of robustness test cases that they run on each version. This reveals between 6\\% and 19\\% of failure rate. Then, the authors perform a multi-version comparison to analyze the diversity of failures and thus the usability of these POSIX versions for N-version fault-tolerance. The results demonstrate that multi-versions can be used to increase robustness, yet, with the 2 most diverse solutions, there is still a 9.7\\% common mode failure exposure for system calls.\n\nHan et al. \\cite{han09} analyze the diversity of off-the-shelf components with respect to their diversity of vulnerabilities. They provide a systematic analysis of the ability of multi version systems to prevent exploits. The study is based on 6000 vulnerabilities published in 2007. The main result is that components available for web servers are diverse with respect to their vulnerabilities and cannot be compromised by the same exploit.\nConsequently, all these components can run on multiple operating systems in order to increase diversity. They conclude that the natural diversity of off-the-shelf software applications is beneficial to build attack tolerant systems.\n\n\nSome recent work study the natural diversity or redundancy that emerges in large-scale source code. Gabel and Su \\cite{gabel10} analyze uniqueness in source code through the analysis of 6000 programs covering 420 million lines of code. The authors focus on the level of granularity at which diversity emerges in source code. Their main finding is that, for sequences up to 40 tokens, there is a lot of redundancy. Beyond this (of course fuzzy) threshold, the diversity and uniqueness of source code appears. \nJiang and Su \\cite{jiang09} propose an approach for the identification of functionally equivalent source code snippets in large software projects. This approach consists in extracting code snippets of a given length, randomly generating input data for these snippets and identify the snippets that produce the same output values (which are considered functionally equivalent, w.r.t the set of random test inputs). They run their analysis on the Linux kernel 2.6.24 during several days and find a large number of functionally equivalent code fragments, most of which are syntactically different. Both studies explore the tension between redundancy and diversity that exists in software. \n\nMendez et al. \\cite{mendez13} analyze the diversity in source code at the level of usages of Java classes. They analyze hundreds of thousands of Java classes, looking for type usages, i.e. sets of methods called on an object of a given type. They find 748 classes with more than 100 different usages of the API, the most extreme case being the \\texttt{String} of the Java library, for which they found 2460 different usages. This reveals a very high degree of usage diversity in object-oriented software.\n\nDiversity also emerges in social behaviors in open source software development. In this area, Posnett et al.  \\cite{posnett13}  analyze the focus of developers (whether they contribute to few or many artifacts) and the ownership (to what extent an artifact is ``owned'' by one or several developers). Through an analogy with predator-prey relations, they set up entropy measures to quantify the diversity in focus and ownership. They observe high levels of diversity in open source projects, and also demonstrate that these entropy metrics have good predictive properties: focused developers introduce less defects, while artifacts that receive contributions from several developers tend to have more defects. \nVasilescu et al. \\cite{vasilescu13} studied the development of the GNOME community and observed diversity both from the point of view of contributors (how diverse are the activities of different project contributors) as well as from the point of view of project (how diverse are the activities going on in different GNOME projects).\n\nSoftware diversity spontaneously emerges through multiple phenomena. In this section we have discussed the methods to study  these different phenomena, as well as the experimental procedures that have been implemented to analyze the impact of this specific form of software diversity. These recent studies illustrate how the analysis of complex diversification processes must leverage techniuqes from multiple domains ranging  from software analysis, data mining, statistics to threat models and exploit replication.\n\n\n\\subsection{Summary}\nThis section has presented two main areas in the analysis and the theoretical modeling of software diversity and its impact. The first part provided an overview of 3 decades of works that analyzed N-version programming and proposed several statistical methods and foundational assumptions that underly the effectiveness of this technique for fault-tolerant software systems.\nThe second part discusses novel work that analyze the implication and the effectiveness of natural software diversity (as presented in section \\ref{sec:managed-natural}) for building resilient systems.\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\nIn this paper, we provided a global picture of the software diversity landscape. We decided to  broaden the standard scope of diversity, in order to give a very inclusive vision of the field and, hopefully, a better understanding of the nature of software diversity. The survey gathered work from various scientific communities (security, software engineering, programming languages), which we organized around one dimension: the diversity engineering technique (managed, automated, natural).\n\nLooking at all these works from a temporal perspective, we realize that the interest for diversity has always existed in the last 40 years. The latest studies even discover phenomena of natural diversity emergence, i.e. diversity is observed but the processes that led to its presence are unknown. We believe that harnessing this natural diversity will be an essential step in the future of software diversification. This could be the intermediate step towards the amplification of natural diversity. Indeed, diversity in natural complex systems is never explicitly developed, but emerges as a side effect of other phenomena. For example, biodiversity at different scales of ecosystems, emerges as the result of sexual reproduction, mutation, dispersal and frequency-dependent selection \\cite{de2009,melian2010}. To this extent, the main area of future work is to identify the software engineering principles and evolution rules that drive the emergence and the constant renewal of diversity in software systems. In other words, can we engineer open-ended software diversification?\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\nWe would like to thank Paul Amman, Benoit Gauzens and Sebastian Banescu for their valuable feedback on this paper. This work is partially supported by the EU FP7-ICT-2011-9 600654 DIVERSIFY project.\n\n\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format-Journals} \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction} \\label{sec:intro}\nSolutions to partial differential equations that exhibit singularity (e.g. cracks) or high variations in the computational domain are usually approximated by adaptive numerical methods. There is nowadays a large body of literature concerned with the development of reliable a posteriori error estimators aiming for mesh refinement in regions of large errors (see e.g. \\cite{BaR78a, BaR78b, BaW85, Ver96a}). However, classical adaptive methods are usually based on iterative processes which rely on recomputing the solution on the whole computational domain for each new mesh obtained after a refinement procedure. \n\nIn this paper we present a scheme which solves local problems defined on refined regions only. Local schemes have been proposed in the past, we mention the Local Defect Correction (LDC) method \\cite{Hac84}, the Fast Adaptive Composite (FAC) grid algorithm \\cite{McT86} and the Multi-Level Adaptive (MLA) technique \\cite{Bra77}. At each iteration, these algorithms solve a problem on a coarse mesh on the whole domain and a local problem on a finer mesh. The coarse solution is used for artificial boundary conditions while the local solution is used to correct the residual in the coarse grid. In \\cite{BRL15} the LDC scheme has been coupled with error estimators, which are used to select the local domain. \n\nIn \\cite{AbR19} we proposed a Local Discontinuous Galerkin Gradient Discretization (LDGGD) method which decomposes the computational domain in local subdomains encompassing the large gradient regions. This scheme iteratively improves a coarse solution on the full domain by solving local elliptic problems on finer meshes. \nHence, the full problem is solved only in the first iteration on a coarse mesh while a sequence of solutions on smaller subdomains are subsequently computed. In turn iterations between subdomains are not needed as in the LDC, FAC or MLA schemes and the condition number of the small systems are considerably smaller than the one of large systems (which describe data and mesh variations on the whole domain). The LDGGD method has been shown to converge under minimal regularity assumptions, i.e. when the solution is in $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ and the forcing term in $H^{-1}(\\Omega)$ \\cite{AbR19}. \nHowever, the marking of the subdomains this scheme did so far rely on the a priori knowledge of the location of high gradient regions. \n\nThe main contribution of this paper is to propose an adaptive local LDGGD method. This adaptive method is based on a posteriori error estimators that automatically identify the subdomains to be refined. \nThis is crucial for practical applications of the method. The LDGGD relies on the symmetric weighted interior penalty Galerkin (SWIPG) method \\cite{PiE12,ESZ09} and we consider linear advection-diffusion-reaction equations\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:elliptic}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t-\\nabla\\cdot(A\\nabla u)+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u+\\mu u &=f\\qquad   && \\text{in } \\Omega, \\\\\n\tu&=0 &&  \\text{in } \\partial \\Omega, \n\t\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\Omega$ is an open bounded polytopal connected subset of $\\mathbb{R}^{d}$ for $d\\geq 2$, $A$ is the diffusion tensor, $\\bm{\\beta}$ the velocity field, $\\mu$ the reaction coefficient and $f$ a forcing term. \nIn \\cite{ESV10} the authors introduce a posteriori error estimators for the SWIPG scheme based on cutoff functions and conforming flux and potential reconstructions, these estimators are shown to be efficient and robust in singularly perturbed regimes. Following the same strategy, we derive estimators for the local scheme by weakening the regularity requirements on the reconstructed fluxes. The new estimators are as well free of unknown constants and their robustness is verified numerically. Furthermore, they are employed to define the local subdomains and provide error bounds on the numerical solution of the LDGGD method.\nWe prove that the error estimators are reliable. Because of the local nature of our scheme, we introduce two new estimators that measure the jumps at the boundaries of the local domains. However, these two new terms have lower convergence rate than the other terms and we cannot establish the efficiency of our a posteriori estimators with our current approach.\nNevertheless, the two new terms are useful in our algorithm: whenever the errors are localized these new terms become negligible; in contrast, when these estimators dominate it is an indication that the error is not localized and one can switch to a nonlocal method. Other boundary conditions than those of \\cref{eq:elliptic} can be considered, at the cost of modifying the error estimators introduced in \\cite{ESV10}. The new estimators introduced here need no changes.\n\n\nThe outline of the paper is as follows. In \\cref{sec:ladg} we describe the local scheme, in \\cref{sec:err_flux} we introduce the error estimators and state the main a posteriori error analysis results. \\Cref{sec:errbound} is dedicated to the definition of the reconstructed fluxes and proofs of the main results. Finally, various numerical examples illustrating the efficiency, versatility and limits of the proposed method are presented in \\cref{sec:num}.\n\n\n\\section{Local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method}\\label{sec:ladg}\nIn this section we introduce the local algorithm based on the discontinuous Galerkin method. \nWe start by some assumptions on the data and the domain, before introducing the weak form corresponding to \\eqref{eq:elliptic}.\nWe assume that $\\Omega\\subset\\mathbb{R}^{d}$ is a polytopal domain with $d\\geq 2$, $\\bm{\\beta}\\in W^{1,\\infty}(\\Omega)^d$, $\\mu\\in L^\\infty(\\Omega)$ and $A\\in L^\\infty(\\Omega)^{d\\times d}$, with $A(\\bm{x})$ a symmetric piecewise constant matrix with eigenvalues in $[\\underline\\lambda,\\overline \\lambda]$, where $\\overline\\lambda\\geq\\underline\\lambda>0$. Moreover, we assume that $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ a.e. in $\\Omega$. This term $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}$ appears in the symmetric part of the operator $\\mathcal{B}(\\cdot,\\cdot)$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} and hence the assumption $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ is needed for coercivity. Finally, we set $f\\in L^2(\\Omega)$.\nUnder these assumptions, the unique weak solution $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ of \\eqref{eq:elliptic} satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:weak}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v)=\\int_\\Omega fv\\dif \\bm{x}\\qquad \\text{for all }v\\in H^1_0(\\Omega),\n\\end{equation} \nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bform}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v)= \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u\\cdot\\nabla v+(\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u) v+\\mu u v)\\dif\\bm{x}.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\n\\subsection{Preliminary definitions}\\label{sec:prel}\nWe start by collecting some notations related to the geometry and the mesh of the subdomains, before recalling the definition of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Subdomains and meshes}\nLet $M\\in\\mathbb{N}$ and $\\{\\Omega_k\\}_{k=1}^M$ be a sequence of open subdomains of $\\Omega$ with $\\Omega_1=\\Omega$. The domains $\\Omega_k$ for $k\\geq 2$ can be any polytopal subset of $\\Omega$, in practice they will be chosen by the error estimators (see \\cref{sec:localg}). We consider $\\{\\mathcal{M}_k\\}_{k=1}^M$ a sequence of simplicial meshes on $\\Omega$ and $\\mathcal{F}_k=\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}\\cup\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$ is the set of boundary and internal faces of $\\mathcal{M}_k$. The assumption below ensures that $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ is a refinement of $\\mathcal{M}_k$ inside the subdomain $\\Omega_{k+1}$.\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{ass:mesh}\n\t$\\phantom{=}$\n\t\\begin{enumerate\n\t\t\\item For each $k=1,\\ldots,M$, $\\overline{\\Omega}_{k}=\\cup_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k,\\,K\\subset\\Omega_k} \\overline{K}$.\n\t\t\\item For $k=1,\\ldots,M-1$,\n\t\t\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\alph*)]\n\t\t\t\\item $\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}\\}=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}\\}$,\n\t\t\t\\item if $K,T\\in \\mathcal{M}_k$ with $K\\subset \\Omega_{k+1}$, $T\\subset\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}$ and $\\partial K\\cap\\partial T\\neq\\emptyset$ then $K\\in \\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$,\n\t\t\t\\item if $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $K\\subset \\Omega_{k+1}$, either $K\\in \\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ or $K$ is a union of elements in $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$.\n\t\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nLet $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega_k\\}$ and $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k=\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,b}\\cup \\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ the set of faces of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, with $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,b}$ and $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ the boundary and internal faces, respectively. Condition 1 in \\cref{ass:mesh} ensures that $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ is a simplicial mesh on $\\Omega_k$. Condition 2 guarantees that in $\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}$ and in the neighborhood of $\\partial\\Omega_{k+1}\\setminus\\partial\\Omega$ the meshes $\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ are equal and that $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ is a refinement of $\\mathcal{M}_k$ in $\\Omega_{k+1}$. An example of domains and meshes satisfying \\cref{ass:mesh} is illustrated in \\cref{fig:illustrationmesh}.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[xscale=1]\n\t\n\t\t\\draw[step=1.0,black, thin] (0,0) grid (12,4);\n\t\t\\foreach \\x in {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}\n\t\t\t\\draw[thin] (\\x,0)--(\\x+4,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,3)--(1,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,2)--(2,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,1)--(3,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (9,0)--(12,3);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (10,0)--(12,2);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (11,0)--(12,1);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (0,0)--(12,0)--(12,4)--(0,4)--(0,0);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (2,1)--(10,1)--(10,4)--(2,4)--(2,1);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (4,2)--(8,2)--(8,4)--(4,4)--(4,2);\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\draw[step=0.5,black, thin] (3,2) grid (9,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3,3.5)--(3.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3,2.5)--(4.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,2.5)--(6,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,2.0)--(6.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (5.5,2.5)--(7,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (5.5,2.0)--(7.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (6.5,2.5)--(7.5,3.5);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3.5,2.0)--(5.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,3.5)--(5.0,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (6.5,2.0)--(8.5,4.0);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (7.5,2.0)--(9,3.5);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (8.5,2.0)--(9,2.5);\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\foreach \\x in {4.5,5,...,7}\n\t\t\\foreach \\y in {3,3.5,4}\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (\\x,\\y)--(\\x+0.5,\\y-0.5);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (12.5,1.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_1$}};\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (10.5,2.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_2$}};\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (7.5,1.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_3$}};\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Example of possible meshes for three embedded domains $\\Omega_1$, $\\Omega_2$, $\\Omega_3$.}\n\t\\label{fig:illustrationmesh}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsubsection*{Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method}\nThe local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method will solve local elliptic problems in $\\Omega_k$ by using a discontinuous Galerkin scheme introduced in \\cite{ESZ09}, which we recall here. \nIn what follows, $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$ denotes a tuple defined by a domain $D$, a simplicial mesh $\\mathcal{M}$ on $D$ and its set of faces $\\mathcal{F}=\\mathcal{F}_b\\cup\\mathcal{F}_i$. In practice we will consider $\\mathfrak{T}_k=(\\Omega,\\mathcal{M}_k,\\mathcal{F}_k)$ or $\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k=(\\Omega_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k)$. For $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$ we define \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defVT}\nV(\\mathfrak{T}) = \\{v\\in L^2(D)\\,:\\, v|_K\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\ell(K),\\,\\forall K\\in\\mathcal{M}\\},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathbb{P}_\\ell(K)$ is the set of polynomials in $K$ of total degree $\\ell$. As usual for such discontinuous Galerkin methods we need to define appropriate averages, jumps, weights and penalization parameters. For $K\\in\\mathcal{M}$ we denote $\\bm{n}_K$ the unit normal outward to $K$ and $\\mathcal{F}_K=\\{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}\\,:\\,\\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$. Let $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{i}$ and $K,T\\in\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial T$, then $\\bm{n}_\\sigma=\\bm{n}_K$ and\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_{K,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_K\\bm{n}_\\sigma, \\qquad\\qquad \\delta_{T,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_T\\bm{n}_\\sigma.\n\\end{equation}\nThe weights are defined by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\omega_{K,\\sigma}=\\frac{\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}, \\qquad\\qquad \\omega_{T,\\sigma}=\\frac{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}\n\\end{equation}\nand the penalization parameters by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\gamma_\\sigma=2\\frac{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}, \\qquad\\qquad \\nu_\\sigma=\\frac{1}{2}|\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma|.\n\\end{equation}\nIf $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{b}$ and $K\\in\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap \\partial D$ then $\\bm{n}_\\sigma$ is $\\bm{n}_D$ the unit outward normal to $\\partial D$ and\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_{K,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_K\\bm{n}_\\sigma, \\qquad \\omega_{K,\\sigma}=1, \\qquad \\gamma_\\sigma=\\delta_{K,\\sigma}, \\qquad \\nu_\\sigma=\\frac{1}{2}|\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma|.\n\\end{equation}\nLet $g\\in L^2(\\partial D)$, we define the averages and jumps of $v\\inV(\\mathfrak{T})$ as follows.\nFor $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{b}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial D$ we set\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mean{v}_{\\omega,\\sigma}=v|_K, \\qquad\\qquad \\mean{v}_{g,\\sigma}=\\frac{1}{2}(v|_K+g), \\qquad\\qquad \\jump{v}_{g,\\sigma}=v|_K-g\n\\end{equation}\nand for $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{i}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial T$\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mean{v}_{\\omega,\\sigma}=\\omega_{K,\\sigma}v|_K+\\omega_{T,\\sigma}v|_T, \\qquad\\qquad\n\\mean{v}_{g,\\sigma}=\\frac{1}{2}(v|_K+v|_T ), \\qquad\\qquad\n\\jump{v}_{g,\\sigma} = v|_K-v|_T.\n\\end{equation}\nWe define $\\jump{\\cdot}_{\\sigma}= \\jump{\\cdot}_{0,\\sigma}$ and $\\mean{\\cdot}_{\\sigma}= \\mean{\\cdot}_{0,\\sigma}$. A similar notation holds for vector valued functions and whenever no confusion can arise the subscript $\\sigma$ is omitted. Let $h_\\sigma$ be the diameter of $\\sigma$ and $\\eta_\\sigma>0$ a user parameter, for $u,v\\inV(\\mathfrak{T})$ we define the bilinear form\n\\begin{align}\\label{eq:opB}\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v,\\mathfrak{T},g)&=\n\\int_{D} (A\\nabla u\\cdot \\nabla v +(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot \\bm{\\beta})u v-u\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\nabla v)\\dif\\bm{x}\\\\\n&\\quad-\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}}\\int_\\sigma(\\jump{v}\\mean{A\\nabla u}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{u}_{g}\\mean{A\\nabla v}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma)\\dif\\bm{y}\\\\\n&\\quad+\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}}\\int_\\sigma ((\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}+\\nu_\\sigma)\\jump{u}_{g}\\jump{v}+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{u}_{g}\\jump{v})\\dif\\bm{y},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{align}\nwhere the gradients are taken element wise. The bilinear form $\\mathcal{B}(\\cdot,\\cdot,\\mathfrak{T},g)$ will be used to approximate elliptic problems in $D$ with Dirichlet boundary condition $g$. This scheme is known as the Symmetric Weighted Interior Penalty (SWIP) scheme \\cite{ESZ09}. The SWIP method is an improvement of the Interior Penalty scheme (IP) \\cite{Arn82}, where the weights are defined as $\\omega_{K,\\sigma}=\\omega_{T,\\sigma}=1\/2$. The use of diffusivity-dependent averages increases the robustness of the method for problems with strong diffusion discontinuities. The bilinear form defined in \\cref{eq:opB} is mathematically equivalent to other formulations where $v\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u$ or $\\nabla\\cdot(\\bm{\\beta} u)v$ appear instead of $u\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla v$ (see \\cite{ESZ09} and \\cite[Section 4.6.2]{PiE12}). Our choice of formulation is convenient to express local conservation laws (see \\cite[Section 2.2.3]{PiE12}).\n\n\\subsection{Local method algorithm}\\label{sec:localg}\nIn this section we present the local scheme. In order to facilitate the comprehension of the method, we start with an informal description and then provide a pseudo-code for the algorithm. We denote $u_k$ the global solutions on $\\Omega$ and $\\hat{u}_k$ the local solutions on $\\Omega_k$, which are used to correct the global solutions.\n\nGiven a discretization $\\mathfrak{T}_1=(\\Omega,\\mathcal{M}_1,\\mathcal{F}_1)$ on $\\Omega$ the local scheme computes a first approximate solution $u_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ to \\eqref{eq:weak}. The algorithm then performs the following steps for $k=2,\\ldots,M$.\n\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\roman*)]\n\t\\item Given the current solution $u_{k-1}$, identify the region $\\Omega_k$ where the error is large and define a new refined mesh $\\mathcal{M}_k$ satisfying \\cref{ass:mesh} by iterating the following steps.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\alph*)]\n\t\t\\item For each element $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k-1}$ compute an error indicator $\\eta_{M,K}$ (defined in \\eqref{eq:marketa}) and mark the local domain $\\Omega_{k}$ using the fixed energy fraction marking strategy \\cite[Section 4.2]{Dor96}. Hence, $\\Omega_{k}$ is defined as the union of the elements with largest error indicator $\\eta_{M,K}$ and it is such that the error committed inside of $\\Omega_{k}$ is at least a prescribed fraction of the total error.\n\t\t\\item Define the new mesh ${\\mathcal{M}}_{k}$ by refining the elements $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k-1}$ with $K\\subset\\Omega_{k}$.\n\t\t\\item Enlarge the local domain $\\Omega_{k}$ defined at step a) by adding a one element wide boundary layer (i.e. in order to satisfy item 2b of \\cref{ass:mesh}).\n\t\t\\item Define the local mesh $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_{k}$ by the elements of $\\mathcal{M}_{k}$ inside of $\\Omega_{k}$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\item Solve a local elliptic problem in $\\Omega_k$ on the refined mesh $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ using $u_{k-1}$ as artificial Dirichlet boundary condition on $\\partial\\Omega_k\\setminus\\partial\\Omega$. The solution is denoted $\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$, where $\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k=(\\Omega_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k)$.\n\t\\item The local solution $\\hat{u}_k$ is used to correct the previous solution $u_{k-1}$ inside of $\\Omega_k$ and obtain the new global solution $u_k$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nThe pseudo-code of the local scheme is given in \\cref{alg:local}, where $\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}$ is the indicator function of $\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k$ and $(\\cdot,\\cdot)_k$ is the inner product in $L^2(\\Omega_k)$. The function $\\text{LocalDomain}(u_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ used in \\cref{alg:local} performs steps a)-d) of i). For purely diffusive problems, it is shown in \\cite[Theorem 8.2]{Ros20} that \\cref{alg:local} is equivalent to the LDGGD introduced in \\cite{AbR19}, hence the scheme convergences for exact solutions $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}\n\t\\caption{LocalScheme($\\mathfrak{T}_1$)}\n\t\\label{alg:local}\n\t\\begin{algorithmic}\n\t\t\\State Find $u_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(u_1,v_1,\\mathfrak{T}_1,0)=(f,v_1)_1$ for all $v_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$.\n\t\t\\For{$k=2,\\ldots,M$}\n\t\t\\State $(\\mathfrak{T}_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_{k}) = \\text{LocalDomain}(u_{k-1},\\mathfrak{T}_{k-1})$.\n\t\t\\State $g_k=u_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\State Find $\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\hat{u}_k,v_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k,g_k)=(f,v_k)_k$ for all $v_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$.\n\t\t\\State $u_k=g_k+\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\EndFor\n\t\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\section{Error estimators via flux and potential reconstructions}\\label{sec:err_flux}\nThe error estimators used to mark the local domains $\\Omega_k$ and to provide error bounds on the numerical solution $u_k$ are introduced here.\n\nIn the framework of selfadjoint elliptic problems, the equilibrated fluxes method \\cite{AiO93,BaW85} is a technique largely used to derive a posteriori error estimators free of undetermined constants and is based on the definition of local fluxes which satisfy a local conservation property. Since local fluxes and conservation properties are intrinsic to the discontinuous Galerkin formulation, this discretization is well suited for the equilibrated fluxes method \\cite{Ain05,CoN08}. In \\cite{ENV07,Kim07} the Raviart-Thomas-N\u00e9d\u00e9lec space is used to build an $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ conforming reconstruction $\\bm{t}_h$ of the discrete diffusive flux $-A\\nabla u_h$. A diffusive flux $\\bm{t}_h$ with optimal divergence, in the sense that it coincides with the orthogonal projection of the right-hand side $f$ onto the discontinuous Galerkin space, is obtained. In \\cite{ESV10} the authors extend this approach to convection-diffusion-reaction equations by defining an $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ conforming convective flux $\\bm{q}_h$ approximating $\\bm{\\beta} u_h$ and satisfying a conservation property.\n\nWe follow a similar strategy and define in the next section error estimators in function of diffusive and convective fluxes reconstructions $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ for the local scheme, as well as an $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ conforming potential reconstruction $s_k$ of the solution $u_k$.\n\n\\subsection{Definition of the error estimators}\\label{sec:errest}\nThe error estimators in function of the potential reconstruction $s_k$ approximating the solution $u_k$, the diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k$ and $\\bq_k$ approximating $-A\\nabla u_k$ and $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$, respectively, are defined in this section.\n\nFollowing the iterative and local nature of our scheme, we define the diffusive and convective fluxes reconstructions as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defflux}\n\\bt_k=\\bm{t}_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\qquad \\bq_k=\\bm{q}_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat{\\bq}_k,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\bm{t}_0=\\bm{q}_0=0$ and $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ are $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)$ conforming fluxes reconstructions of $-A\\nabla \\hat{u}_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} \\hat{u}_k$, respectively, and where $\\hat{u}_k$ is the local solution. To avoid any abuse of notation in \\cref{eq:defflux}, we extended $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ to zero outside of $\\Omega_k$.\nThe fluxes reconstructions $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ satisfy a local conservation property and are defined in \\cref{sec:potflux}. We readily see that \\cref{eq:defflux} allows for flux jumps at the subdomains boundaries, while giving enough freedom to define $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k$ in a way that a conservation property is satisfied. The fluxes reconstructions are used to measure the non conformity of the numerical fluxes. In the same spirit we define a potential reconstruction $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ used to measure the non conformity of the numerical solution. It is defined recursively as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defpot}\ns_k = s_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat s_k,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $s_0=0$ and $\\hat s_k\\in H^1(\\Omega_k)$ is such that $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$; similarly, we extend $\\hat s_k$ to zero outside of $\\Omega_k$. More details about the definitions of $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ and $\\hat s_k$ will be given in \\cref{sec:potflux}, for the time being we will define the error estimators.\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, $v\\in H^1(K)$, \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defnBK}\n\\nB{v}_K^2=\\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}^2+\\nLdK{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}^2,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\nLdK{{\\cdot}}$ is the $L^2$-norm for scalar-valued functions in $K$ and $\\nLddK{{\\cdot}}$ the $L^2$-norm for vector-valued functions in $K$. The non conformity of the numerical solution $u_k$ is measured by the estimator\n\\begin{subequations\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaNC}\n\t\\eta_{NC,K}= \\nB{u_k-s_k}_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tIn the following, $m_K$, $\\tilde m_K$, $m_\\sigma$, $D_{t,K,\\sigma}$, $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ are some known constants which will be defined in \\cref{sec:ctedef}.\n\tThe residual estimator is\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaR}\n\t\\eta_{R,K}= m_K \\nLdK{f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twhich can be seen as the residual of \\eqref{eq:weak} where we first replace $u$ by $u_k$, then $-A\\nabla u_k$ by $\\bt_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$ by $\\bq_k$ and finally use the Green theorem. The error estimators defined in \\cref{eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} measure the error introduced by these substitutions and the error introduced when applying the Green theorem to $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$, which are not in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$.\n\t\n\tThe diffusive flux estimator measures the difference between  $-A\\nabla u_k$ and $\\bt_k$. It is given by $\\eta_{DF,K}=\\min\\lbrace \\eta_{DF,K}^1,\\eta_{DF,K}^2\\rbrace$, where\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaDF}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\eta_{DF,K}^1 &= \\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla u_k+A^{-1\/2}\\bt_k},\\\\\n\t\\eta_{DF,K}^2 &= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot(A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k))}\\\\\n\t&\\quad +\\tilde{m}_K^{1\/2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K}C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{(A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma},\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\t$\\pi_0$ is the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_0(K)$ and $\\mathcal{I}$ is the identity operator. Let $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k$ and $\\pi_{0,\\sigma}$ be the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_0(\\sigma)$. The convection and upwinding estimators, that measure the difference between $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} s_k$ and $\\bq_k$, are defined by\n\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:etaC1}\n\t\\eta_{C,1,K}&= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaC2}\n\t\\eta_{C,2,K}&= \\frac{1}{2}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etatC1}\n\t\\tilde \\eta_{C,1,K}&= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaU}\n\t\\eta_{U,K} &= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma},\\\\ \\label{eq:etatU}\n\t\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}&= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma},\n\t\\end{align}\n\twhere $\\chi_\\sigma=2$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}$ and $\\chi_\\sigma=1$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$.\n\tFinally, we introduce the jump estimators coming from the application of the Green theorem to $\\bt_k$ and $\\bq_k$ (see \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}). Those are defined by \n\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:etaG1}\n\t\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K} &= \\frac{1}{2}(|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLus{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\jump{\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaG2}\n\t\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K} &= \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} D_{t,K,\\sigma}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nWe end the section defining the marking error estimator $\\eta_{M,K}$ used to mark $\\Omega_k$ in the LocalDomain routine of \\cref{alg:local}, let\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:marketa}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\eta_{M,K}&= \\eta_{NC,K}+\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}\\\\\n&\\quad +\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Main results}\\label{sec:thms}\nWe state here our main results related to the a posteriori analysis of the local scheme, in particular we will provide reliable error bounds on the numerical solution $u_k$ which are free of undetermined constants. We will also comment as to why we cannot prove the efficiency of the new estimator.\n\n\nWe start defining the norms for which we provide the error bounds, the same norms are used in \\cite{ESV10}. The operator $\\mathcal{B}$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} can be written $\\mathcal{B}=\\mathcal{B}_S+\\mathcal{B}_A$, where $\\mathcal{B}_S$ and $\\mathcal{B}_A$ are symmetric and skew-symmetric operators defined by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bsba}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\mathcal{B}_S(u,v)&= \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u\\cdot\\nabla v+(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u v)\\dif\\bm{x},\\\\\n\\mathcal{B}_A(u,v)&=\\int_{\\Omega}(\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u+\\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u)v\\dif\\bm{x},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nfor $u,v\\in  H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$. The energy norm is defined by the symmetric operator as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\nB{v}^2 = \\mathcal{B}_S(v,v) = \\nLdd{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}^2+\\nLd{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}^2,\n\\end{equation}\nobserve that $\\nB{v}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\nB{v}_K^2$, with $\\nB{{\\cdot}}_K$ as in \\eqref{eq:defnBK}. Since the norm $\\nB{{\\cdot}}$ is defined by the symmetric operator, it is well suited to study problems with dominant diffusion or reaction. On the other hand, it is inappropriate for convection dominated problems since it lacks a term measuring the error along the velocity direction. For this kind of problems we use the augmented norm\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:augnorm}\n\\nBp{v}=\\nB{v}+\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}_A(v,w)+\\mathcal{B}_J(v,w)),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{B}_J(v,w)=-\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\bm{\\beta} v}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 w}\\dif\\bm{y}\n\\end{equation}\nis a term needed to sharpen the error bounds. The next two theorems give a bound on the error of the local scheme, measured in the energy or the augmented norm.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:energynormbound}\n\tLet $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ be the solution to \\eqref{eq:weak}, $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)\\cap H^1_0(\\Omega)$ from \\cref{eq:defpot,eq:defhsk} and $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ be defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux}. Then, the error measured in the energy norm is bounded as\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nB{u-u_k}\\leq \\eta =  \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{NC,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}+\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{1,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twhere $\\eta_{1,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:augmentednormbound}\n\tUnder the same assumptions of \\cref{thm:energynormbound}, the error measured in the augmented norm is bounded as\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nBp{u-u_k}\\leq \\tilde\\eta =  2\\eta +\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{2,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $\\eta$ from \\cref{thm:energynormbound} and $\\eta_{2,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{theorem}\nThe error estimators of \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} are free of undetermined constants, indeed they depend on the numerical solution, the smallest eigenvalues of the diffusion tensor, on the essential minimum of $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}$, the mesh size and known geometric constants. In contrast, the error estimators are not efficient. The reason is that, compared to the true errors $\\nB{u-u_k}$ and $\\nBp{u-u_k}$, the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ have a lower order of convergence. We illustrate this numerically in \\cref{exp:conv}.\nHowever, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ are useful in practice: whenever they are small, then the error estimators are efficient. When they become large then they indicate that the error is not localized and one should switch to a nonlocal method. This is also illustrated numerically in \\cref{exp:conv}.\n\n\n\\section{Potential and fluxes reconstructions, proofs of the main results}\\label{sec:errbound}\nIn this section, we will define the potential, diffusion and advection reconstructions, define the geometric constants appearing in the error estimators defined in \\cref{eq:etaNC,eq:etaR,eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} and finally prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}.\n\n\\subsection{Potential and fluxes reconstruction via the equilibrated flux method}\\label{sec:potflux}\nWe define here the fluxes reconstructions $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ of \\eqref{eq:defflux} and the potential reconstruction $\\hat s_k$ of \\eqref{eq:defpot}. In what follows we assume that $\\mathcal{M}_k$ does not have hanging nodes, i.e. we consider matching meshes, since it simplifies the analysis; however, in practice nonmatching meshes possessing hanging nodes can be employed (as in \\cref{sec:num}). Roughly speaking, the next results are extended to nonmatching meshes by building matching submeshes and computing the error estimators on those submeshes, we refer to \\cite[Appendix]{ESV10} for the details.\n\nWe start defining some broken Sobolev spaces and then the potential and fluxes reconstructions. For $k=1,\\ldots,M$ let $\\mathcal{G}_k=\\{G_j\\,|\\, j=1,\\ldots,k\\}$, where $G_k=\\Omega_k$ and \n\\begin{equation}\nG_j =\\Omega_j\\setminus\\cup_{i=j+1}^{k}\\overline{\\Omega}_{i} \\qquad \\text{for }j=1,\\ldots,k-1.\n\\end{equation}\nIn \\cref{fig:Omegak,fig:Dk} we give an example of a sequence of domains $\\Omega_k$ and the corresponding set $\\mathcal{G}_k$.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw (2,2) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.2)--(4,2.2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.4)--(4,2.4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.6)--(4,2.6);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.8)--(4,2.8);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3)--(4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.2)--(4,3.2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.4)--(4,3.4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.6)--(4,3.6);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.8)--(4,3.8);\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw (3,1) rectangle (4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.2,1)--(3.2,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.4,1)--(3.4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.6,1)--(3.6,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.8,1)--(3.8,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\caption{Sequence of domains\\\\$\\Omega_1$= \\tikz \\draw (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $\\Omega_2$= \\tikz{\\draw(0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (0,6.6pt)--(10pt,6.6pt);\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (0,3.3pt)--(10pt,3.3pt);}, $\\Omega_3$= \\tikz{\\draw(0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (6.6pt,0pt)--(6.6pt,10pt);\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.3pt,0pt)--(3.3pt,10pt);} .}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Omegak}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw[pattern=dots] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw[fill=Goldenrod] (2,2) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw[fill=BrickRed] (3,1) rectangle (4,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Set $\\mathcal{G}_3=\\{G_1,G_2,G_3\\}$ with\\\\ $G_1$= \\tikz \\draw[pattern=dots] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $G_2$= \\tikz \\draw[fill=Goldenrod] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[fill = BrickRed] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt); .}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Dk}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw[draw=none] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=YellowOrange, line width=1pt, solid] (2,4)--(2,2)--(3,2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=PineGreen, line width=1pt, densely dotted] (3,2)--(3,1)--(4,1);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=Purple, line width=1pt, loosely dashed] (3,2)--(3,3)--(4,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Skeleton $\\Gamma_3$ with \\\\$\\partial G_1\\cap\\partial G_2$= \\tikz\\draw[color=YellowOrange, line width=1pt, solid] (0,0)--(10pt,0pt);, $\\partial G_1\\cap\\partial G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[color=PineGreen, line width=1pt, densely dotted] (0,0) -- (10pt,0pt);,\\\\$\\partial G_2\\cap\\partial G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[color=Purple, line width=1pt, loosely dashed] (0,0) -- (15pt,0pt);.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Gk}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Example of sequence of domains $\\Omega_1,\\Omega_2,\\Omega_3$, set $\\mathcal{G}_3$ and skeleton $\\Gamma_3$.}\n\t\\label{fig:illustrationDk}\n\\end{figure}\nWe define the broken spaces\n\\begin{align}\nH_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k) &= \\{\\bm{v}\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d\\,:\\, \\bm{v}|_G\\in H_{\\divop}(G)\\text{ for all }G\\in \\mathcal{G}_k\\},\\\\\nH^1({\\mathcal{M}}_k)&=\\{v\\in L^2(\\Omega)\\,:\\,v|_K\\in H^1(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\},\n\\end{align}\nthe divergence and gradient operators in $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ and $H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ are taken element wise.\nWe extend the jump operator $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\sigma$ to the broken space $H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$. We call $\\Gamma_k$ the internal skeleton of $\\mathcal{G}_k$, that is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Gamma_k=\\{\\partial G_i\\cap\\partial G_j\\,|\\, G_i,G_j\\in\\mathcal{G}_k,\\, i\\neq j\\},\n\\end{equation}\nan example of $\\Gamma_k$ is given in \\cref{fig:Gk}.\nFor each $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$ we define $\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma = \\{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}\\,|\\,\\sigma\\subset \\gamma\\}$ and set $\\bm{n}_\\gamma$, the normal to $\\gamma$, as $\\bm{n}_\\gamma|_\\sigma=\\bm{n}_\\sigma$. The jump $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\gamma$ on $\\gamma$ is defined by $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\gamma|_\\sigma=\\jump{\\cdot}_\\sigma$. \n\n\nIn \\cite{ESV10} the reconstructed fluxes live in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$. For the local algorithm we need to build such fluxes using the recursive relation \\eqref{eq:defflux}. This leads to fluxes having jumps across the boundaries of the subdomains, i.e. $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$, hence they lie in the broken space $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$. In the rest of this section we explain how to build fluxes which are in an approximation space of $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ and satisfy a local conservation property. \nWe start by introducing a broken version of the usual Raviart-Thomas-N\u00e9d\u00e9lec spaces \\cite{Ned80,RaT77}, which we define as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:RTN}\n\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k):=\\{\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)\\,:\\, \\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathcalligra{r}\\in\\{\\ell-1,\\ell\\}$ and $\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)=\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)^d+\\bm{x} \\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}}(K)$. In order to build functions in $\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ we need a characterization of this space. \nLet $\\bm{v}_k\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d$ such that $\\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$ for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, it is known that $\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ if and only if $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\sigma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for all $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$ (see \\cite[Lemma 1.24]{PiE12}). Since we search for fluxes $\\bm{v}_k$ in $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$, we relax this condition and allow $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\gamma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma\\neq 0$ for $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\tLet $\\bm{v}_k\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d$ be such that $\\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$ for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, then $\\bm{v}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ if and only if $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\sigma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for all $\\sigma\\notin \\cup_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma$.\n\\end{lemma} \n\\begin{proof}\n\tFollowing the lines of \\cite[Lemma 1.24]{PiE12}.\n\\end{proof}\nThe diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ are defined recursively as in \\eqref{eq:defflux}, where $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k)$, with\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k):=\\{\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)\\,:\\, \\bm{v}_k\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k\\},\n\\end{equation}\nare given by the relations\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:deflocflux}\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:deflocflux1}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_\\sigma \\hat{\\bt}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma p_k\\dif\\bm{y}&= \\int_\\sigma (-\\mean{A\\nabla \\hat{u}_k}_\\omega\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k})p_k\\dif\\bm{y},\\\\\n\t\\int_\\sigma \\hat{\\bq}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma p_k\\dif\\bm{y} &= \\int_\\sigma (\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k}+\\nu_\\sigma\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k})p_k\\dif\\bm{y}\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tfor all $\\sigma\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k$ and $p_k\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\sigma)$ and\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:deflocflux2}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_K \\hat{\\bt}_k \\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x} &= -\\int_K A\\nabla\\hat{u}_k\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x}+\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma\\omega_{K,\\sigma}\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k} A|_K\\hat{\\br}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif\\bm{y},\\\\\n\t\\int_K\\hat{\\bq}_k\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x} &= \\int_K \\hat{u}_k\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x}\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{subequations}\nfor all $K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ and $\\hat{\\br}_k\\in\\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}-1}(K)^d$. Since $\\hat{\\bt}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\in\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\sigma)$ (see \\cite[Proposition 3.2]{BrF91}) then \\eqref{eq:deflocflux1} defines $\\hat{\\bt}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$ on $\\sigma$. The remaining degrees of freedom are fixed by \\eqref{eq:deflocflux2} \\cite[Proposition 3.3]{BrF91}.\nThanks to \\eqref{eq:deflocflux1} we have $\\jump{\\hat{\\bt}_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ and $\\jump{\\hat{\\bq}_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for $\\sigma\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ and hence $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k)$. By construction it follows $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$.\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\pi_\\mathcalligra{r}$ be the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$, the following lemma states a local conservation property of the reconstructed fluxes. The proof follows the lines of \\cite[Lemma 2.1]{ESV10}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:cons}\n\tLet $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ be given by \\cref{alg:local} and $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux}. For all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:cons}\n\t(\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k+\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k+\\pi_\\mathcalligra{r}((\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k))|_K = \\pi_\\mathcalligra{r} f|_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $j=\\max\\{i=1,\\ldots,k\\,:\\, K\\subset\\Omega_j\\}$, then $K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_j$, $\\bt_k|_K=\\hat{\\bt}_j|_K$, $\\bq_k|_K=\\hat{\\bq}_j|_K$ and $u_k|_K=\\hat u_j|_K$. Let $v_j\\in \\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}}(K)$, with $v_j=0$ outside of $K$, by the Green theorem we have\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:greentq}\n\t\\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\hat{\\bt}_j+\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j)v_j\\dif \\bm{x} = -\\int_K (\\hat{\\bt}_j+\\hat{\\bq}_j)\\cdot\\nabla v_j\\dif \\bm{x} +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma v_j(\\hat{\\bt}_j+\\hat{\\bq}_j)\\cdot\\bm{n}_K\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand using $\\mathcal{B}(\\hat u_j,v_j,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_j,g_j)=(f,v_j)_j$ it follows\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_K f v_j \\dif \\bm{x} &= \\int_K (A\\nabla \\hat u_j\\cdot \\nabla v_j+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot \\bm{\\beta})\\hat u_j v_j-\\hat{u}_j\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\nabla v_j)\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma(\\jump{v_j}\\mean{A\\nabla \\hat{u}_j}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\mean{A\\nabla v_j}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma)\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t&\\quad +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma ((\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}+\\nu_\\sigma)\\jump{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\jump{v_j}+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\jump{v_j})\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tSince $\\mean{A\\nabla v_j}_\\omega =\\omega_{K,\\sigma}A|_K\\nabla v_j$ and $\\jump{v_j}\\bm{n}_\\sigma=v_j|_K\\bm{n}_K$, using \\cref{eq:deflocflux,eq:greentq}, we obtain\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:precons}\n\t\\int_K f v_j \\dif \\bm{x} = \\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\hat{\\bt}_j+\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})\\hat u_j)v_j\\dif \\bm{x}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand the result follows from $\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bt}_j,\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j\\in\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$, $\\bt_k|_K=\\hat{\\bm{t}}_j|_K$, $\\bq_k|_K=\\hat{\\bm{q}}_j|_K$ and $u_k|_K=\\hat{u}_j|_K$. \n\\end{proof}\n\nIn order to define the $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ conforming approximation $s_k$ of $u_k$ we will need the so-called Oswald operator already considered in \\cite{KaP03} for a posteriori estimates. Let $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$, $g\\in C^0(\\partial D)$ and consider $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}:V(\\mathfrak{T})\\rightarrow V(\\mathfrak{T})\\cap H^1(D)$, for a function $v\\in V(\\mathfrak{T})$ the value of $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g} v$ is prescribed at the Lagrange interpolation nodes $p$ of the conforming finite element space $V(\\mathfrak{T})\\cap H^1(D)$. Let $p\\in \\overline{D}$ be a Lagrange node, if $p\\notin \\partial D$ we set\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}v(p)=\\frac{1}{\\# \\mathcal M_p}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}p}v|_K(p),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathcal M_{p}=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}\\,:\\,p\\in\\overline{K}\\}$. If instead $p\\in\\partial D$ then $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}v(p)=g(p)$, where $g$ is the Dirichlet condition on $\\partial D$. The reconstructed potential $s_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)\\cap H^1_0(\\Omega)$ is built as in \\eqref{eq:defpot}, where\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defhsk}\n\\hat s_k = \\mathcal{O}_{\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k,s_{k-1}} \\hat{u}_k.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Constants definition and preliminary results}\\label{sec:ctedef}\nHere we define the constants appearing in \\cref{eq:etaNC,eq:etaR,eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} and derive preliminary results needed to prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}.\n\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K$, we recall that $|K|$ is the measure of $K$ and $|\\sigma|$ the $d-1$ dimensional measure of $\\sigma$. We denote by $c_{A,K}$ the minimal eigenvalue of $A|_K$. Next, we denote by $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}$ the essential minimum of $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ on $K$. \nIn what follows we will assume that $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}>0$ a.e. in $\\Omega$, hence $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ for all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, and provide error estimators under this assumption. We explain in \\cref{sec:altbounds} how to overcome this limitation slightly modifying the proofs and error estimators.\n\nThe cutoff functions $m_K,\\tilde m_K$ and $m_\\sigma$ are defined by \n\\begin{subequations} \\label{eq:cutoff}\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{eq:mK}\n\tm_K =& \\min\\{ C_p^{1\/2}h_K c_{A,K}^{-1\/2},c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\},\\\\ \\label{eq:tmK}\n\t\\tilde m_K=& \\min\\{ (C_p+C_p^{1\/2})h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1}, h_K^{-1}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1}+c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}c_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\/2\\},\\\\ \\label{eq:ms}\n\tm_\\sigma^2=& \\min\\lbrace \\max_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\{3d|\\sigma|h_K^2|K|^{-1}c_{A,K}^{-1}\\},\\max_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\{|\\sigma||K|^{-1}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1}\\}\\rbrace,\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $C_p=1\/\\pi^2$ is an optimal Poincar\u00e9 constant for convex domains \\cite{PaW60}. Let $v\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$, it holds\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:bounds}\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{eq:bounds1}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}&\\leq m_K \\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k,\\\\ \\label{eq:bounds2}\n\t\\nLds{v-\\pi_0 v|_K}&\\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\tilde{m}_K^{1\/2}\\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& \\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_k \\text{ and } K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma,\\\\ \\label{eq:bounds3}\n\t\\nLds{\\jump{\\pi_0 v}}&\\leq m_\\sigma\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& \\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k,\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma = \\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, \\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$ and $C_{t,K,\\sigma}$ is the constant of the trace inequality\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trace}\n\\nLds{v|_K}^2\\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}\\nLdK{v}^2+\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v}).\n\\end{equation}\nIt has been proved in \\cite[Lemma 3.12]{Ste07} that for a simplex it holds $C_{t,K,\\sigma}=|\\sigma|h_K\/|K|$. \n\nLet us briefly explain the role of constants \\eqref{eq:cutoff} and how the bounds \\eqref{eq:bounds} are obtained. We observe that for each bound in \\eqref{eq:bounds} the cut off functions take the minimum between two possible values, allowing for robust error estimation in singularly perturbed regimes. For \\eqref{eq:bounds1}, using the Poincar\u00e9 inequality \\cite[equation 3.2]{PaW60} we have\n\\begin{subequations}\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bounds1a}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}&\\leq C_p^{1\/2} h_K \\nLddK{\\nabla v}\\\\\n\t& \\leq C_p^{1\/2}h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}\\leq C_p^{1\/2}h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tDenoting $(\\cdot,\\cdot)_K$ the $L^2(K)$ inner product, it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}^2=(v-\\pi_0 v,v-\\pi_0 v)_K=(v-\\pi_0 v,v)_K\\leq \\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}\\nLdK{v},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\thence\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bounds1b}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}\\leq \\nLdK{v} \\leq c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}\\leq c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{subequations}\nand \\eqref{eq:bounds1} follows. The choice between bounds \\cref{eq:bounds1a,eq:bounds1b} depends on whether the problem is singularly perturbed or not. Bounds \\eqref{eq:bounds2} and \\eqref{eq:bounds3} are obtained similarly, see \\cite[Lemma 4.2]{CFP09} and \\cite[Lemma 4.5]{Voh08}. Finally, for $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K$ we define\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Dk}\nD_{t,K,\\sigma}=\\left(\\frac{C_{t,K,\\sigma}}{2 h_K c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}}\\left(1+\\sqrt{1+h_K^2\\frac{c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}}{c_{A,K}}}\\right)\\right)^{1\/2},\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is used to bound $\\nLds{v|_K}$ in terms of $\\nB{v}_K$ in the next lemma.\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:boundsigma}\n\tLet $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$, for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLds{v_k|_K}\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma} \\nB{v_k}_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tLet $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ and $\\epsilon>0$. Applying H\u00f6lder inequality to the trace inequality \\cref{eq:trace} we get\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLds{v_k|_K}^2 \\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}((h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\nLdK{v_k}^2+\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2).\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tHence, if there exists $D_{t,K,\\sigma}>0$ independent of $v_k$ such that\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Dkeps}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\tC_{t,K,\\sigma}((h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\nLdK{v_k}^2+&\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2)\\\\\n\t& \\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2 (c_{A,K}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2+c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}\\nLdK{v_k}^2) \n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tthen $\\nLds{v_k|_K}^2\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2 \\nB{v_k}^2_K$ and the result holds. Relation \\eqref{eq:Dkeps} holds if\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\tC_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}, \\qquad\\qquad C_{t,K,\\sigma}\\frac{\\epsilon}{2} \\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2c_{A,K}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand hence $D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2=\\max\\{C_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1},C_{t,K,\\sigma}\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}c_{A,K}^{-1}\\}$.\n\tTaking $\\epsilon$ such that the maximum is minimized we get $D_{t,K,\\sigma}$ as in \\cref{eq:Dk}.\n\\end{proof}\nThe proof of the following Lemma is inspired from \\cite[Theorem 3.1]{ESV10}, the main difference is that we take into account the weaker regularity of the reconstructed fluxes. \n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:boundBBA}\n\tLet $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ be the solution to \\eqref{eq:weak}, $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ from \\cref{eq:defpot,eq:defhsk}, $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux} and $v\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$. Then\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t|\\mathcal{B}(u -u_k ,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s_k,v)| \\leq  \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{1,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}\\nB{v},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $\\eta_{1,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tSince $u$ satisfies \\eqref{eq:weak}, using the definition of $\\mathcal{B}$ and $\\mathcal{B}_A$\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s_k,v) \n\t&= \\int_\\Omega (f-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} -\\int_\\Omega A\\nabla u_k\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} -\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\tUsing $v \\bt_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$, from the divergence theorem we have\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\int_\\Omega (v\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k +\\nabla v\\cdot\\bt_k)\\dif \\bm{x} &= \\sum_{G\\in\\mathcal{G}_k}\\int_{G}\\nabla\\cdot(v\\bt_k)\\dif \\bm{x} =\\sum_{G\\in\\mathcal{G}_k}\\int_{\\partial G} v\\bt_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_{\\partial G}\\dif \\bm{y} \\\\\n\t&=\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{v \\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\gamma\\dif \\bm{y} = \\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\\end{align}\n\tand hence\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:integrBBA}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k- s_k ,v)&=\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} \\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} +\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x} +\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k }\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tFrom \\cref{lemma:cons} we deduce\n\t\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms}\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterm0}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t&\\left|\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right| \\\\\n\t\t&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad = \\left|\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x}\\right| \\\\\n\t\t&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\eta_{R,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tSimilarly, we get\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms1}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t\\left| \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right|&\\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{DF,K}\\nB{v}_K,\\\\\n\t\t\\left| \\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right|&\\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\eta_{C,2,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tSince $\\jump{\\bt_k}_\\sigma=0$ for $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_{k,i}\\setminus\\cup_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma$, it holds\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} = \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma v\\dif \\bm{y} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma v\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tUsing \\cref{lemma:boundsigma} we obtain\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms2}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq  \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nLds{v} \\\\\n\t\t&\\leq   \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tIt remains to estimate $\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}$. For that, we use\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} \n\t\n\t\n\t\t=& \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\int_K (\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x} \\\\\n\t\t&+\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_K \\pi_0 v\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tand from \\cref{eq:bounds1} we get\n\t\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms3}\n\t\t\\left|\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\int_K (\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x} \\right|\\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{C,1,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tFor the second term we write\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t&\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_K \\pi_0 v\\dif \\bm{y}= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\pi_0 v}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t\t&=\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 v}\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{\\pi_0 v}\\mean{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t\t&\\quad +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_{k,b}}\\int_\\sigma\\pi_0 v\\, \\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma \\dif \\bm{y} = \\operatorname{I}+\\operatorname{II}+\\operatorname{III}\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tand we easily obtain, since $\\jump{\\bm{\\beta} s_k}=0$,\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\operatorname{I} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\pi_0 v|_K \\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tUsing $|\\pi_0 v|_K| = |K|^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{\\pi_0 v}\\leq |K|^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{v}\\leq (|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K$ we get\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms4}\n\t\t\\operatorname{I} \\leq \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}(|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\nLus{\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tLet $\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, \\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$, using \\eqref{eq:bounds3} for the second term we have\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\operatorname{II} & \\leq \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\sum_{K\\in \\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_{K}\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tFor the last term we similarly obtain\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\operatorname{III} \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tand hence\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms5}\n\t\t\\operatorname{II}+\\operatorname{III} \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma} \\nB{v}_K= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{U,K}\\nB{v}_K,\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\\end{subequations}\n\twhere $\\chi_\\sigma=2$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}$ and $\\chi_\\sigma=1$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$. Plugging relations \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterm0,eq:boundsBBAterms1,eq:boundsBBAterms2,eq:boundsBBAterms3,eq:boundsBBAterms4,eq:boundsBBAterms5} into \\eqref{eq:integrBBA} we get the result.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn \\cref{lemma:boundBBA} we use \\cref{lemma:cons} to deduce that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:weakcons}\n\\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k+\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k) \\dif \\bm{x} = \\int_K f \\dif \\bm{x}\n\\end{equation}\nand hence \\eqref{eq:boundsBBAterm0}. However, when the mesh has hanging nodes inside of the local domains \\cref{lemma:cons} is not valid. Indeed, if $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ has hanging nodes, the fluxes $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k$ must be constructed on a matching (free of hanging nodes) submesh $\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, otherwise they may fail to be in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)$. The constructed fluxes will satisfy relation \\cref{eq:precons}, but since $\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K')$ for $K'\\in\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ and $\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ is finer than $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, then we cannot conclude as we did in \\cref{lemma:cons}. Nonetheless, \\cref{eq:precons} still implies \\cref{eq:weakcons}, which is enough to prove \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of the theorems}\\label{sec:proofs}\nHere we prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}. We will consider $\\mathcal{B}:H^1_0(\\Omega)\\times H^1_0(\\Omega)\\rightarrow\\mathbb{R}$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} for functions in $ H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of \\cref{thm:energynormbound}]\n\tIt has been proved in \\cite[Lemma 3.1]{Ern08} that for any $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ and $u,s\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nB{u-u_k}\\leq \\nB{u_k-s}+|\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s,v)|,\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $v=(u-s)\/\\nB{u-s}$. Choosing $u$ as the exact solution to \\cref{eq:weak}, $u_k$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s=s_k$ from \\cref{eq:defpot} and using \\cref{lemma:boundBBA} gives the result.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of \\cref{thm:augmentednormbound}]\n\tSince $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ it holds $\\mathcal{B}_J(u,w)=0$ for all $w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$, using $\\mathcal{B}_A\\leq\\mathcal{B}+|\\mathcal{B}_S|$ we get\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nBp{u-u_k}\\leq 2\\nB{u-u_k}+\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w)).\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tTo conclude the proof we show that\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:supBBD}\n\t\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w))\\leq \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{2,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tFollowing \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}, we easily get\n\t\\begin{multline}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w) \\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}(\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K})\\nB{w}_K\\\\\n\t+\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma\\pi_0 w (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_K\\dif \\bm{y}-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w).\n\t\\end{multline}\n\tThe two last terms satisfy\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t&\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\int_\\sigma\\jump{\\pi_0 w(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w) \\\\\n\t&= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\chi_\\sigma\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\pi_0 w}\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y} +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 w}\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y} \\\\\n\t&\\leq\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}(\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K})\\nB{w}_K,\n\t\\end{align}\n\twhere in the last step we followed again \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Alternative error bounds}\\label{sec:altbounds}\nOur aim here is to explain how to avoid the assumption $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ for all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ made in \\cref{sec:errest,sec:ctedef}. This assumption is needed to define $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ but can be avoided if \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms2,eq:boundsBBAterms4} are estimated differently. For \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms2}, using the trace inequality \\cref{eq:trace} we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq  \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nLds{v|_K} \\\\\n&\\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\tilde\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}(\\nLdK{v}^2+h_K\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v})^{1\/2},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}h_K^{-1\/2}C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}.\n\\end{equation}\nSetting $\\tilde\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}^2$, it yields\n\\begin{align}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2}\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\nLdK{v}^2+h_K\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v}\\right)^{1\/2}\\\\\n&\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} \\left(\\nLd{v}^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}\\nLd{v}\\nLdd{\\nabla v}\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\\end{align}\nUsing the Poincar\u00e9 inequality $\\nLd{v}\\leq d_\\Omega\\nLdd{\\nabla v}$, where $d_\\Omega$ is the diameter of $\\Omega$, we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| \\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} \\left(d_\\Omega^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}d_\\Omega\\right)^{1\/2}\\nLdd{\\nabla v}\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} c_A^{-1\/2} \\left(d_\\Omega^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}d_\\Omega\\right)^{1\/2}\\nB{v},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $c_A$ is the minimal eigenvalue of $A(\\bm{x})$ over $\\Omega$. The same procedure can be used to replace \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms4} by a relation avoiding the term $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}$. The new bounds can be used to modify the results of \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} and obtain error estimators when $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}>0$ is not satisfied.\n\n\n\n\\section{Numerical Experiments}\\label{sec:num}\nIn order to study the properties and illustrate the performance of the local scheme we consider here several numerical examples.\nFirst, in \\cref{exp:conv}, we look at the convergence rates of the error estimators, focusing on the errors introduced by solving only local problems. Considering a local and a nonlocal problem, we also compare the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ against the classical terms. We emphasize that we do not use the automatic subdomains' identification algorithm for this example, as the subdomains are fixed beforehand.\nWe also perform in \\cref{exp:corner} an experiment for a smooth problem, where the errors are not localized, illustrating the role of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$. To do so, we also compare the local scheme against a classical adaptive method, where after each mesh refinement the problem is solved again on the whole domain. The classical method we refer to is given by \\cref{alg:classical}.\nSecond, we investigate the efficiency of the new local algorithm for non smooth problems in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym,exp:bndlayer_notsym}. For such examples, that are the target of our method, the local scheme performs better than the classical one. We conclude in \\cref{exp:nonlin} with a nonlinear problem, where \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} do not apply but \\cref{alg:local} can nevertheless be employed in conjunction with a Newton scheme.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[!tbhp]\n\t\\caption{ClassicalScheme($\\mathfrak{T}_1$)}\n\t\\label{alg:classical}\n\t\\begin{algorithmic}\n\t\t\\State Find $\\overline{u}_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\overline{u}_1,v_1,\\mathfrak{T}_1,0)=(f,v_1)_1$ for all $v_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$.\n\t\t\\For{$k=2,\\ldots,M$}\n\t\t\\State $(\\mathfrak{T}_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_{k}) = \\text{LocalDomain}(\\overline{u}_{k-1},\\mathfrak{T}_{k-1})$.\n\t\t\\State Find $\\overline{u}_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\overline{u}_k,v_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k,0)=(f,v_k)_1$ for all $v_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\EndFor\n\t\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\nIn all the experiments we use $\\mathbb P_1$ elements ($\\ell=1$ in \\eqref{eq:defVT}) on a simplicial mesh with penalization parameter $\\eta_\\sigma=10$, the diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ are computed with $\\mathcalligra{r}=0$ (see \\eqref{eq:RTN}). Furthermore, $\\bm{\\beta}$ is always such that $\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}=0$. These choices give $\\eta_{C,1,K}=\\eta_{C,2,K}=\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}=0$. For an estimator $\\eta_{*,K}$ we define $\\eta_{*}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{*,K}^2$.\nSimilarly to \\cite{ESV10}, if $A=\\varepsilon I_2$ and $\\bm{\\beta}$ is constant then for $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ the augmented norm is well estimated by \n\\begin{align}\n\\nBp{v_k}\\leq \\nB{v_k}_{\\oplus'}&= \\nB{v_k}+\\varepsilon^{-1\/2}\\Vert\\bm{\\beta}\\Vert_2\\nLd{v_k}\\\\\n&\\quad +\\frac{1}{2}\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\left(\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\tilde m_K^{1\/2} C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{\\jump{v_k}\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\right)^2\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\\end{align}\nHence, in the numerical experiments we consider the computable norm $\\nB{\\cdot}_{\\oplus'}$. The effectivity indexes of the error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde \\eta$ from \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} are defined as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:effind}\n\\frac{\\eta}{\\nB{u-u_k}} \\qquad\\text{and}\\qquad  \\frac{\\tilde\\eta}{\\nB{u-u_k}_{\\oplus'}},\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively. For the solution $\\overline u_k$ of the classical algorithm we use the error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde \\eta$ from \\cite{ESV10}. They are equivalent to the estimators presented in this paper except that for $\\overline u_k$ we have $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}=\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}=0$, as in this case the reconstructed fluxes are in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$. The effectivity indexes for $\\overline u_k$ are as in \\eqref{eq:effind} but with $u_k$ replaced by $\\overline u_k$. The numerical experiments have been performed with the help of the C++ library \\texttt{libMesh} \\cite{KPS06}.\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Problem shifting from localized to nonlocalized errors}\\label{exp:conv}\nWe investigate an example in two different locality regimes. First, the errors are confined in a small region and then they are distributed in the whole domain. We will study the effects of this transition on the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$.\n\nWe solve \\eqref{eq:elliptic} in $\\Omega=[0,1]\\times [0,1]$ with $A=I_2$, $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$ and $\\mu=1$. The force term $f$ is chosen so that the exact solution reads\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:solsmooth}\n\tu(\\bm{x})=e^{-\\kappa ||\\bm{x}||_2}\\left( x_1-\\frac{1-e^{-\\kappa x_1}}{1-e^{-\\kappa}}\\right)\\left(x_2-\\frac{1-e^{-\\kappa x_2}}{1-e^{-\\kappa}} \\right),\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\kappa=100$ or $\\kappa=10$. When $\\kappa=100$ the solution has a narrow peak and the errors are localized around that region, when $\\kappa=10$ the solution is smoother and the errors are distributed in the whole domain. See \\cref{fig:sol_conv_100,fig:sol_conv_10}.\n\nFirst, we investigate the convergence rate of the error estimators and then we comment on the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ when the errors are localized or not, i.e. when $\\kappa=100$ or $\\kappa=10$.\nWe define two domains $\\Omega_1,\\Omega_2$ as follows: $\\Omega_1=\\Omega$ and $\\bm{x}\\in\\Omega_2$ if $\\Vert\\bm{x}\\Vert_\\infty\\leq 1\/2$, see \\cref{fig:domains_priori}. \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/sol_sing_1e-2.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{$u(\\bm{x})$ for $\\kappa=100$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:sol_conv_100}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/sol_sing_1e-1.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{$u(\\bm{x})$ for $\\kappa=10$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:sol_conv_10}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_1_k_1-2.png}};\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Domains $\\Omega_2\\subset\\Omega_1$.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:domains_priori}\n\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ in \\cref{eq:solsmooth} for two values of $\\kappa$ and local domains $\\Omega_1$, $\\Omega_2$.}\n\t\\label{fig:sol_dom_conv}\n\\end{figure}\nLet $h$ be the grid size of $\\widehat{\\mathcal M}_1$, then the grid size of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_2$ is $h\/2$. \nFor different choices of $h$ we run \\cref{alg:local} without calling LocalDomain, since the local domains and meshes are chosen beforehand. After the second iteration we compute the exact energy error and the error estimators. The results are reported in \\cref{tab:conv_a,tab:conv_b} for $\\kappa=100$ and $\\kappa=10$, respectively. We recall that $\\eta_{NC}$ measures the non conformity of $u_k$, $\\eta_{R}$ measures the error in the energy conservation, $\\eta_{DF}$ the difference between $-A\\nabla u_k$ and the reconstructed diffusive flux $\\bt_k$, $\\eta_U,\\tilde\\eta_{U}$ are upwind errors and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measure the jumps of $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ across subdomains boundaries.\n\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},head to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $h$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} &$\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\tlate after last line=\\\\\\toprule Order & $1$ & $1$ & $2$ & $1$ & $2$ & $2$ & \\text{$0.5$} & \\text{$0.5$} \\\\\\midrule]\n\t{data\/corner\/local_sing_1e-2_diff_1e0_a_posteriori_data.csv}{}\n\t{$2^{-{\\the\\numexpr\\thecsvrow+5\\relax}}$ & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{Convergence rate of error estimators for $\\kappa=100$.}\n\t\\label{tab:conv_a}\n\\end{table}\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},\n\thead to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $h$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} & $\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\tlate after last line=\\\\\\toprule Order & $1$ & $1$ & $2$ & $1$ & $1.5$ & $1.5$ & \\text{$0.5$} & \\text{$0.5$} \\\\\\midrule]\n\t{data\/corner\/local_sing_1e-1_diff_1e0_a_posteriori_data.csv}{}\n\t{$2^{-{\\the\\numexpr\\thecsvrow+5\\relax}}$ & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{Convergence rate of error estimators for $\\kappa=10$.}\n\t\\label{tab:conv_b}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nWe see that the energy error converges with order one, as predicted by the a priori error analysis of \\cite{AbR19}. We also observe that the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measuring the reconstructed fluxes' jumps across subdomains' boundaries have a lower rate of convergence. Therefore, the error estimators are not efficient, in the sense that they cannot be bounded from above by the energy error multiplied by a mesh-size independent constant.\nHowever, the relative size of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ compared to the other estimators gives an information on the suitability of the local scheme:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item if $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ are comparable to the other estimators one should use the local scheme. The typical situation is when the errors are localized, with local regions covering the large error regions (see \\cref{fig:sol_conv_100,fig:domains_priori} and \\cref{tab:conv_a});\n\t\\item if the relative size of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ is larger than the other estimators, this is an indication that one should switch from local to classical method. The typical situation is when the errors are not (or less) localized (see \\cref{fig:sol_conv_10,fig:domains_priori} and \\cref{tab:conv_b}). On purpose we did choose a local domain that is too small to cover the error region.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nIn the next experiments we let the scheme select the local subdomains on the fly, using the fixed energy fraction marking strategy \\cite[Section 4.2]{Dor96} implemented in the $\\text{LocalDomain}(u_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ routine of \\cref{alg:local}. First, we revisit the example of \\cref{exp:conv}. Second, we consider two examples where the errors are localized, illustrating the efficiency of the algorithm.\n\n\n\\subsection{A nonlocal smooth problem}\\label{exp:corner}\nConsidering the same problem as in \\cref{exp:conv} with $\\kappa=10$, we run the local and classical schemes for $k=1,\\ldots,15$ starting with a uniform mesh of 128 elements. Here, we employ the automatic subdomains' identification algorithm and the goal is to show when one should switch from local to nonlocal methods.\nAs the error is distributed in the whole domain, it is not possible to chose the subdomains $\\Omega_{k}$ so that the errors at their boundaries are negligible. Consequently, the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ will dominate.\nIndeed, we see in \\cref{tab:dom} that the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measuring the reconstructed fluxes' jumps dominate the other estimators.\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},\n\thead to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $k$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} & $\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\t]\n\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data_first_5_levels.csv}{}\n\t{\\level & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:corner}, nonlocal smooth problem. Dominance of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ over the other error estimators. Only the results of the first five iterations are shown, i.e. $k\\leq 5$.}\n\t\\label{tab:dom}\n\\end{table}\nThis phenomenon brings two issues into the algorithm. First, the effectivity index of the local scheme is significantly larger than the index for the classical scheme, as we illustrate in \\cref{fig:corner_effind_eta}. Second, the marking error estimator $\\eta_{M,K}$ \\cref{eq:marketa} will be larger at the boundaries of the local domains than in the large error regions; indeed, we see in \\cref{fig:corner_doms} that the local domain $\\Omega_4$ chosen by the algorithm do not correspond to a large error region but is in a neighborhood of the boundary of $\\Omega_3$, where $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ are large. For this reason the algorithm in unable to detect the high error regions and we see in \\cref{fig:corner_effenerr}, where we show the computational cost in function of the energy errors, that the error of the local method stagnates.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{semilogyaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},xlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}, log basis y=10,ymin=1,ymax=400]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA1_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{semilogyaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:corner_effind_eta}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={0}{14}] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={0}{14}] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA1_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:corner_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:corner}, nonlocal smooth problem. Effectivity indexes in function of the iteration number.}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_2_k_3.png}};\n\t\t\t\\node[opacity=0.7] at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_2_k_4.png}};\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Local domains $\\Omega_3$ (darker) and $\\Omega_4$ (brighter).}\n\t\t\\label{fig:corner_doms}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThis example shows that if the errors are not localized then the estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ dominate, the local scheme becomes inefficient and a classical \\emph{global} method should be preferred over a local method. However, our algorithm allows to monitor the size of the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ and when these error estimators start to dominate the other error indicators (as seen in \\cref{tab:dom}) it provides a switching criteria.\n\n\\subsection{Reaction dominated problem}\\label{exp:bndlayer_sym}\nIn our next example we consider a symmetric problem and want to compare the local and classical schemes (\\cref{alg:local,alg:classical}) in a singularly perturbed regime. We investigate the efficiency measured as the computational cost and analyze their effectivity indexes. The setting is as follows: we solve \\eqref{eq:elliptic} in $\\Omega=[0,1]\\times [0,1]$ with $\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$, $A=\\varepsilon I_2$, $\\bm{\\beta}=(0,0)^\\top$, $\\mu=1$ and we choose $f$ such that the exact solution is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bndlayer}\nu(\\bm{x})=e^{x_1+x_2}\\left( x_1-\\frac{1-e^{-\\zeta x_1}}{1-e^{-\\zeta}}\\right)\\left(x_2-\\frac{1-e^{-\\zeta x_2}}{1-e^{-\\zeta}} \\right),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\zeta=10^{4}$. The solution is illustrated in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sol}. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/sol_vlq.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sol}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[spy using outlines= {circle, connect spies,every spy on node\/.append style={thick}}]\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (spypoint) at (-0.1,0.15);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (magnifyglass) at (1.5,0.5);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (spypoint_bis) at (-0.03,-0.55);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (magnifyglass_bis) at (1.5,-1.2);\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_1.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_2.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_3.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_4.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\spy [WildStrawberry, size=1.3cm, magnification=4] on (spypoint) in node[fill=white] at (magnifyglass);\n\t\t\t\t\\spy [WildStrawberry, size=1.3cm, magnification=4] on (spypoint_bis) in node[fill=white] at (magnifyglass_bis);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{First local domains $\\Omega_k$, $k=1,\\ldots,4$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_doms}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ in \\eqref{eq:bndlayer} of the reaction dominated problem and first local domains chosen by the error estimators.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nSince the problem is symmetric we have $\\nB{{\\cdot}}=\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$, but their related error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde\\eta$, respectively, satisfy $\\tilde\\eta>\\eta$ and hence the effectivity index of $\\eta$ will be lower (see  \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}). \n\nStarting from a coarse mesh (128 elements), we let the two algorithms run for $k=1,\\ldots,20$. In \\cref{fig:bndlayer_doms} we show the first four subdomains $\\Omega_k$ chosen by the local scheme. Note that the local domain $\\Omega_4$ chosen by the algorithm is disconnected, while subdomain $\\Omega_3$ has an hole; as is allowed by the theory. Several of the subsequent subdomains (not displayed) are also disconnected or contain holes. The first iterations are needed to capture the boundary layer and reach the convergence regime, hence we will plot the results for $k\\geq 7$. The most expensive part of the code is the solution of linear systems by means of the conjugate gradient (CG) method preconditioned with the incomplete Cholesky factorization, followed by the computation of the potential and fluxes reconstruction and then by the evaluation of the error estimators. In the local scheme, the time spent doing these tasks is proportional to the number of elements inside each subdomain $\\Omega_k$. For the classical scheme, the cost of these tasks depends on the total number of elements in the mesh. Since the CG routine is the most expensive part, we take the time spent in it as an indicator for the computational cost.\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost}, we plot the simulation cost against the error estimator $\\eta$, for both the local and classical algorithms. Each circle or star in the figure represents an iteration $k$. We observe that the local scheme provides similar error bounds but at a smaller cost. The effectivity index of $\\eta$ at each iteration $k$ is shown in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etaeffind}, we can observe that the local scheme has an effectivity index similar to the classical scheme.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Error estimator $\\eta$}, ylabel={CG cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=etafull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=etafull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{CG cost versus $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=5,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etaeffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Computational cost vs. $\\eta$ and effectivity index in function of the iteration number.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost_etaeffind}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr} we exhibit the cost against the exact energy error and we notice that for some values of $k$ the mesh is refined but the error stays almost constant. This phenomenon significantly increases the simulation cost of the classical scheme without improving the solution. In contrast, the cost of the local scheme increases only marginally. Dividing the two curves in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr} we obtain the relative speed-up, which is plotted in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_speedup}. We note that as the error decreases the local scheme becomes faster than the classical scheme.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={CG cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{CG cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={Speed-up}, x dir=reverse,log basis x={2},log basis y={2},ymax=8, ytick={2,4,8,16},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=black,line width=1.0 pt,mark=none] table[x=erren,y=speeden,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/speedup_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21.csv};\\addlegendentry{Speed-up}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_speedup}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Computational cost vs. energy norm error and speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr_speedup}\n\\end{figure}\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etateffind} we plot the effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$. As expected, for this symmetric problem, it is worse than the effectivity of $\\eta$. Finally, we run the same experiment but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon=10^{-4},10^{-6},10^{-8}$ and display in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_eta_diff_eps} the effectivity index of $\\eta$. We note that it always remains below 4.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=15,,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etateffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend columns=2, ,legend style={at={(0,0)},anchor=south west,draw=none,fill=none},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=4.0,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_4_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-4}$}\n\t\t\t\\addlegendimage{empty legend}\\addlegendentry{}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=NavyBlue,mark=triangle,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_8_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-8}$}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$ for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_eta_diff_eps}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ and of $\\eta$ but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effetat_effeta}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Convection dominated problem}\\label{exp:bndlayer_notsym}\nIn this section we perform the same experiment as in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym} but instead of choosing $\\bm{\\beta}=(0,0)^\\top$ we set $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$, hence we solve a nonsymmetric singularly perturbed problem. The linear systems are solved with the GMRES method preconditioned with the incomplete LU factorization. As in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, we investigate the effectivity indexes and efficiency of the local and classical schemes.\n\nFor convection dominated problems, the norm $\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$ is more appropriate than $\\nB{{\\cdot}}$ since it measures also the error in the advective direction. In \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost}, we plot the simulation cost versus the error estimator $\\tilde\\eta$, we remark that again the local scheme provides similar error bounds at smaller cost. The effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ is displayed in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etateffind}, we note that the local and classical schemes have again similar effectivity indexes.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Error estimator $\\tilde\\eta$}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=etatfull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=etatfull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=15,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etateffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Computational cost vs. $\\tilde\\eta$ and effectivity index in function of the iteration number.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost_etateffind}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr_speedup} we plot the simulation cost versus the error in the augmented norm $\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$ and the relative speed-up. We again observe that the local scheme is faster. \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Aumented norm error.}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erraug,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erraug,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus augmented norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\txlabel={Augmented norm error.}, ylabel={Speed-up}, x dir=reverse,log basis x={2},log basis y={2},ymax=8,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=black,line width=1.0 pt,mark=none] table[x=erraug,y=speeden,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/speedup_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21.csv};\\addlegendentry{Speed-up}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_speedup}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Computational cost vs. augmented norm error and speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr_speedup}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFor completeness, we plot in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind} the effectivity index of $\\eta$. We see that it is completely off. This illustrates that this estimator does not capture the convective error and is hence not appropriate for convection dominated problems. Then, we run again the same experiment but considering different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon=10^{-4}, 10^{-6}, 10^{-8}$ and display the effectivity indexes of $\\tilde\\eta$ in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_diff_eps}.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=800,,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend columns=2, ,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east,draw=none,fill=none},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=20,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_4_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-4}$}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$}\n\t\t\t\\addlegendimage{empty legend}\\addlegendentry{}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=NavyBlue,mark=triangle,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}]  \t\n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_8_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-8}$}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_diff_eps}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Effectivity index of $\\eta$ and of $\\tilde\\eta$ but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind_diff_eps}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{A nonlinear nonsmooth problem with multiple local structures}\\label{exp:nonlin}\nWe conclude with an experiment on a nonlinear nonsmooth problem, where the diffusion tensor is solution dependent and has multiple discontinuities, hence the solution presents several local structures. More precisely, we solve \\cref{eq:elliptic} with $\\Omega=[-3\/2,3\/2]\\times [-3\/2,3\/2]$, $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$, $\\mu=1$ and $f(\\bm{x})=\\nld{\\bm{x}}^2$. The diffusion tensor is $A(u,\\bm{x})=A_1(u)A_2(\\bm{x})$, with $A_1(u)=1\/\\sqrt{1+u^2}$. We divide $\\Omega$ in nine squares of size $1\/2\\times 1\/2$ and $A_2(\\bm{x})$ alternates between $1$ and $0.01$, in a checkerboard-like manner. A reference solution is displayed in \\cref{fig:nonlinsol}.\n\n\\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} do not apply straightforwardly as the problem is nonlinear. Nevertheless, \\cref{alg:local} can be used in combination with a Newton scheme as it is shown in \\cite{AbR19}. In this experiment we investigate the efficiency of the error estimators in identifying the local subdomains for a nonlinear nonsmooth problem with multiple local structures. Starting with a $32\\times 32$ elements mesh, we run the code and let it automatically select the subdomains for twenty iterations. We do the same with the classical \\cref{alg:classical} and compare the results in \\cref{fig:nonlin_eff}, where we display the cost of the Newton method versus the error, computed in energy norm, against a reference solution. We remark as the local method is faster.\n \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.7\\textwidth]{images\/nonlin\/sol.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ of the nonlinear nonsmooth problem.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:nonlinsol}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east,fill=none,draw=none},\n\t\t\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={Newton cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsystemtot,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/nonlin\/spa_2_nref_5_nlev_20_nlay1_2_nlay2_2_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsystemtot,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/nonlin\/spa_1_nref_5_nlev_20_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Newton cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:nonlin_eff}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ and efficiency experiment on the nonlinear nonsmooth problem of \\cref{exp:nonlin}.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\nIn this paper we have derived a local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method for the scheme introduced in \\cite{AbR19}. The scheme, defined in \\cref{sec:localg}, relies on a coarse solution which is successively improved by solving a sequence of localized elliptic problems in confined subdomains, where the mesh is refined. Starting from error estimators for the symmetric weighted interior penalty Galerkin scheme based on conforming potential and fluxes reconstructions, allowing for flux jumps across the subdomains boundaries we have derived new estimators for the local method and proved their reliability in \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}. An important property of the original estimators (for nonlocal schemes) is conserved: the absence of unknown constants.\nNumerical experiments confirm the error estimators' effectivity for singularly perturbed convection-reaction dominated problems and illustrate the efficiency of the local scheme when compared to a classical adaptive algorithm, where at each iteration the solution on the whole computational domain must be recomputed. We also showed that the growth of boundary error indicators (the reason why efficiency cannot be proved in general) can be monitored in order to switch from local to a nonlocal method. Switching automatically from local to classical scheme, based on the indicators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$, could be easily integrated in a finite element code. Testing such an integrated code could be of interest to investigate in the future.\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments} The authors are partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, under grant No. $200020\\_172710$.\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Introduction} \\label{sec:intro}\nSolutions to partial differential equations that exhibit singularity (e.g. cracks) or high variations in the computational domain are usually approximated by adaptive numerical methods. There is nowadays a large body of literature concerned with the development of reliable a posteriori error estimators aiming for mesh refinement in regions of large errors (see e.g. \\cite{BaR78a, BaR78b, BaW85, Ver96a}). However, classical adaptive methods are usually based on iterative processes which rely on recomputing the solution on the whole computational domain for each new mesh obtained after a refinement procedure. \n\nIn this paper we present a scheme which solves local problems defined on refined regions only. Local schemes have been proposed in the past, we mention the Local Defect Correction (LDC) method \\cite{Hac84}, the Fast Adaptive Composite (FAC) grid algorithm \\cite{McT86} and the Multi-Level Adaptive (MLA) technique \\cite{Bra77}. At each iteration, these algorithms solve a problem on a coarse mesh on the whole domain and a local problem on a finer mesh. The coarse solution is used for artificial boundary conditions while the local solution is used to correct the residual in the coarse grid. In \\cite{BRL15} the LDC scheme has been coupled with error estimators, which are used to select the local domain. \n\nIn \\cite{AbR19} we proposed a Local Discontinuous Galerkin Gradient Discretization (LDGGD) method which decomposes the computational domain in local subdomains encompassing the large gradient regions. This scheme iteratively improves a coarse solution on the full domain by solving local elliptic problems on finer meshes. \nHence, the full problem is solved only in the first iteration on a coarse mesh while a sequence of solutions on smaller subdomains are subsequently computed. In turn iterations between subdomains are not needed as in the LDC, FAC or MLA schemes and the condition number of the small systems are considerably smaller than the one of large systems (which describe data and mesh variations on the whole domain). The LDGGD method has been shown to converge under minimal regularity assumptions, i.e. when the solution is in $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ and the forcing term in $H^{-1}(\\Omega)$ \\cite{AbR19}. \nHowever, the marking of the subdomains this scheme did so far rely on the a priori knowledge of the location of high gradient regions. \n\nThe main contribution of this paper is to propose an adaptive local LDGGD method. This adaptive method is based on a posteriori error estimators that automatically identify the subdomains to be refined. \nThis is crucial for practical applications of the method. The LDGGD relies on the symmetric weighted interior penalty Galerkin (SWIPG) method \\cite{PiE12,ESZ09} and we consider linear advection-diffusion-reaction equations\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:elliptic}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t-\\nabla\\cdot(A\\nabla u)+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u+\\mu u &=f\\qquad   && \\text{in } \\Omega, \\\\\n\tu&=0 &&  \\text{in } \\partial \\Omega, \n\t\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\Omega$ is an open bounded polytopal connected subset of $\\mathbb{R}^{d}$ for $d\\geq 2$, $A$ is the diffusion tensor, $\\bm{\\beta}$ the velocity field, $\\mu$ the reaction coefficient and $f$ a forcing term. \nIn \\cite{ESV10} the authors introduce a posteriori error estimators for the SWIPG scheme based on cutoff functions and conforming flux and potential reconstructions, these estimators are shown to be efficient and robust in singularly perturbed regimes. Following the same strategy, we derive estimators for the local scheme by weakening the regularity requirements on the reconstructed fluxes. The new estimators are as well free of unknown constants and their robustness is verified numerically. Furthermore, they are employed to define the local subdomains and provide error bounds on the numerical solution of the LDGGD method.\nWe prove that the error estimators are reliable. Because of the local nature of our scheme, we introduce two new estimators that measure the jumps at the boundaries of the local domains. However, these two new terms have lower convergence rate than the other terms and we cannot establish the efficiency of our a posteriori estimators with our current approach.\nNevertheless, the two new terms are useful in our algorithm: whenever the errors are localized these new terms become negligible; in contrast, when these estimators dominate it is an indication that the error is not localized and one can switch to a nonlocal method. Other boundary conditions than those of \\cref{eq:elliptic} can be considered, at the cost of modifying the error estimators introduced in \\cite{ESV10}. The new estimators introduced here need no changes.\n\n\nThe outline of the paper is as follows. In \\cref{sec:ladg} we describe the local scheme, in \\cref{sec:err_flux} we introduce the error estimators and state the main a posteriori error analysis results. \\Cref{sec:errbound} is dedicated to the definition of the reconstructed fluxes and proofs of the main results. Finally, various numerical examples illustrating the efficiency, versatility and limits of the proposed method are presented in \\cref{sec:num}.\n\n\n\\section{Local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method}\\label{sec:ladg}\nIn this section we introduce the local algorithm based on the discontinuous Galerkin method. \nWe start by some assumptions on the data and the domain, before introducing the weak form corresponding to \\eqref{eq:elliptic}.\nWe assume that $\\Omega\\subset\\mathbb{R}^{d}$ is a polytopal domain with $d\\geq 2$, $\\bm{\\beta}\\in W^{1,\\infty}(\\Omega)^d$, $\\mu\\in L^\\infty(\\Omega)$ and $A\\in L^\\infty(\\Omega)^{d\\times d}$, with $A(\\bm{x})$ a symmetric piecewise constant matrix with eigenvalues in $[\\underline\\lambda,\\overline \\lambda]$, where $\\overline\\lambda\\geq\\underline\\lambda>0$. Moreover, we assume that $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ a.e. in $\\Omega$. This term $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}$ appears in the symmetric part of the operator $\\mathcal{B}(\\cdot,\\cdot)$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} and hence the assumption $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ is needed for coercivity. Finally, we set $f\\in L^2(\\Omega)$.\nUnder these assumptions, the unique weak solution $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ of \\eqref{eq:elliptic} satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:weak}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v)=\\int_\\Omega fv\\dif \\bm{x}\\qquad \\text{for all }v\\in H^1_0(\\Omega),\n\\end{equation} \nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bform}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v)= \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u\\cdot\\nabla v+(\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u) v+\\mu u v)\\dif\\bm{x}.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\n\\subsection{Preliminary definitions}\\label{sec:prel}\nWe start by collecting some notations related to the geometry and the mesh of the subdomains, before recalling the definition of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Subdomains and meshes}\nLet $M\\in\\mathbb{N}$ and $\\{\\Omega_k\\}_{k=1}^M$ be a sequence of open subdomains of $\\Omega$ with $\\Omega_1=\\Omega$. The domains $\\Omega_k$ for $k\\geq 2$ can be any polytopal subset of $\\Omega$, in practice they will be chosen by the error estimators (see \\cref{sec:localg}). We consider $\\{\\mathcal{M}_k\\}_{k=1}^M$ a sequence of simplicial meshes on $\\Omega$ and $\\mathcal{F}_k=\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}\\cup\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$ is the set of boundary and internal faces of $\\mathcal{M}_k$. The assumption below ensures that $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ is a refinement of $\\mathcal{M}_k$ inside the subdomain $\\Omega_{k+1}$.\n\\begin{assumption}\\label{ass:mesh}\n\t$\\phantom{=}$\n\t\\begin{enumerate\n\t\t\\item For each $k=1,\\ldots,M$, $\\overline{\\Omega}_{k}=\\cup_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k,\\,K\\subset\\Omega_k} \\overline{K}$.\n\t\t\\item For $k=1,\\ldots,M-1$,\n\t\t\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\alph*)]\n\t\t\t\\item $\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}\\}=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}\\}$,\n\t\t\t\\item if $K,T\\in \\mathcal{M}_k$ with $K\\subset \\Omega_{k+1}$, $T\\subset\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}$ and $\\partial K\\cap\\partial T\\neq\\emptyset$ then $K\\in \\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$,\n\t\t\t\\item if $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $K\\subset \\Omega_{k+1}$, either $K\\in \\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ or $K$ is a union of elements in $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$.\n\t\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{assumption}\n\nLet $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, K\\subset \\Omega_k\\}$ and $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k=\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,b}\\cup \\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ the set of faces of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, with $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,b}$ and $\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ the boundary and internal faces, respectively. Condition 1 in \\cref{ass:mesh} ensures that $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ is a simplicial mesh on $\\Omega_k$. Condition 2 guarantees that in $\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_{k+1}$ and in the neighborhood of $\\partial\\Omega_{k+1}\\setminus\\partial\\Omega$ the meshes $\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ are equal and that $\\mathcal{M}_{k+1}$ is a refinement of $\\mathcal{M}_k$ in $\\Omega_{k+1}$. An example of domains and meshes satisfying \\cref{ass:mesh} is illustrated in \\cref{fig:illustrationmesh}.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[xscale=1]\n\t\n\t\t\\draw[step=1.0,black, thin] (0,0) grid (12,4);\n\t\t\\foreach \\x in {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}\n\t\t\t\\draw[thin] (\\x,0)--(\\x+4,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,3)--(1,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,2)--(2,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (0,1)--(3,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (9,0)--(12,3);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (10,0)--(12,2);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (11,0)--(12,1);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (0,0)--(12,0)--(12,4)--(0,4)--(0,0);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (2,1)--(10,1)--(10,4)--(2,4)--(2,1);\n\t\t\\draw[ultra thick] (4,2)--(8,2)--(8,4)--(4,4)--(4,2);\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\draw[step=0.5,black, thin] (3,2) grid (9,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3,3.5)--(3.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3,2.5)--(4.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,2.5)--(6,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,2.0)--(6.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (5.5,2.5)--(7,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (5.5,2.0)--(7.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (6.5,2.5)--(7.5,3.5);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (3.5,2.0)--(5.5,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (4.5,3.5)--(5.0,4);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (6.5,2.0)--(8.5,4.0);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (7.5,2.0)--(9,3.5);\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (8.5,2.0)--(9,2.5);\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\foreach \\x in {4.5,5,...,7}\n\t\t\\foreach \\y in {3,3.5,4}\n\t\t\\draw[thin] (\\x,\\y)--(\\x+0.5,\\y-0.5);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (12.5,1.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_1$}};\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (10.5,2.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_2$}};\n\t\t\\node[align=right,fill=white] at (7.5,1.5) {\\Large{$\\Omega_3$}};\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Example of possible meshes for three embedded domains $\\Omega_1$, $\\Omega_2$, $\\Omega_3$.}\n\t\\label{fig:illustrationmesh}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsubsection*{Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method}\nThe local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method will solve local elliptic problems in $\\Omega_k$ by using a discontinuous Galerkin scheme introduced in \\cite{ESZ09}, which we recall here. \nIn what follows, $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$ denotes a tuple defined by a domain $D$, a simplicial mesh $\\mathcal{M}$ on $D$ and its set of faces $\\mathcal{F}=\\mathcal{F}_b\\cup\\mathcal{F}_i$. In practice we will consider $\\mathfrak{T}_k=(\\Omega,\\mathcal{M}_k,\\mathcal{F}_k)$ or $\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k=(\\Omega_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k)$. For $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$ we define \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defVT}\nV(\\mathfrak{T}) = \\{v\\in L^2(D)\\,:\\, v|_K\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\ell(K),\\,\\forall K\\in\\mathcal{M}\\},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathbb{P}_\\ell(K)$ is the set of polynomials in $K$ of total degree $\\ell$. As usual for such discontinuous Galerkin methods we need to define appropriate averages, jumps, weights and penalization parameters. For $K\\in\\mathcal{M}$ we denote $\\bm{n}_K$ the unit normal outward to $K$ and $\\mathcal{F}_K=\\{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}\\,:\\,\\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$. Let $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{i}$ and $K,T\\in\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial T$, then $\\bm{n}_\\sigma=\\bm{n}_K$ and\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_{K,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_K\\bm{n}_\\sigma, \\qquad\\qquad \\delta_{T,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_T\\bm{n}_\\sigma.\n\\end{equation}\nThe weights are defined by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\omega_{K,\\sigma}=\\frac{\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}, \\qquad\\qquad \\omega_{T,\\sigma}=\\frac{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}\n\\end{equation}\nand the penalization parameters by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\gamma_\\sigma=2\\frac{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}{\\delta_{K,\\sigma}+\\delta_{T,\\sigma}}, \\qquad\\qquad \\nu_\\sigma=\\frac{1}{2}|\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma|.\n\\end{equation}\nIf $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{b}$ and $K\\in\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap \\partial D$ then $\\bm{n}_\\sigma$ is $\\bm{n}_D$ the unit outward normal to $\\partial D$ and\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_{K,\\sigma}=\\bm{n}_\\sigma^\\top A|_K\\bm{n}_\\sigma, \\qquad \\omega_{K,\\sigma}=1, \\qquad \\gamma_\\sigma=\\delta_{K,\\sigma}, \\qquad \\nu_\\sigma=\\frac{1}{2}|\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma|.\n\\end{equation}\nLet $g\\in L^2(\\partial D)$, we define the averages and jumps of $v\\inV(\\mathfrak{T})$ as follows.\nFor $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{b}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial D$ we set\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mean{v}_{\\omega,\\sigma}=v|_K, \\qquad\\qquad \\mean{v}_{g,\\sigma}=\\frac{1}{2}(v|_K+g), \\qquad\\qquad \\jump{v}_{g,\\sigma}=v|_K-g\n\\end{equation}\nand for $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{i}$ with $\\sigma=\\partial K\\cap\\partial T$\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mean{v}_{\\omega,\\sigma}=\\omega_{K,\\sigma}v|_K+\\omega_{T,\\sigma}v|_T, \\qquad\\qquad\n\\mean{v}_{g,\\sigma}=\\frac{1}{2}(v|_K+v|_T ), \\qquad\\qquad\n\\jump{v}_{g,\\sigma} = v|_K-v|_T.\n\\end{equation}\nWe define $\\jump{\\cdot}_{\\sigma}= \\jump{\\cdot}_{0,\\sigma}$ and $\\mean{\\cdot}_{\\sigma}= \\mean{\\cdot}_{0,\\sigma}$. A similar notation holds for vector valued functions and whenever no confusion can arise the subscript $\\sigma$ is omitted. Let $h_\\sigma$ be the diameter of $\\sigma$ and $\\eta_\\sigma>0$ a user parameter, for $u,v\\inV(\\mathfrak{T})$ we define the bilinear form\n\\begin{align}\\label{eq:opB}\n\\begin{split}\n\\mathcal{B}(u,v,\\mathfrak{T},g)&=\n\\int_{D} (A\\nabla u\\cdot \\nabla v +(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot \\bm{\\beta})u v-u\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\nabla v)\\dif\\bm{x}\\\\\n&\\quad-\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}}\\int_\\sigma(\\jump{v}\\mean{A\\nabla u}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{u}_{g}\\mean{A\\nabla v}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma)\\dif\\bm{y}\\\\\n&\\quad+\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}}\\int_\\sigma ((\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}+\\nu_\\sigma)\\jump{u}_{g}\\jump{v}+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{u}_{g}\\jump{v})\\dif\\bm{y},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{align}\nwhere the gradients are taken element wise. The bilinear form $\\mathcal{B}(\\cdot,\\cdot,\\mathfrak{T},g)$ will be used to approximate elliptic problems in $D$ with Dirichlet boundary condition $g$. This scheme is known as the Symmetric Weighted Interior Penalty (SWIP) scheme \\cite{ESZ09}. The SWIP method is an improvement of the Interior Penalty scheme (IP) \\cite{Arn82}, where the weights are defined as $\\omega_{K,\\sigma}=\\omega_{T,\\sigma}=1\/2$. The use of diffusivity-dependent averages increases the robustness of the method for problems with strong diffusion discontinuities. The bilinear form defined in \\cref{eq:opB} is mathematically equivalent to other formulations where $v\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u$ or $\\nabla\\cdot(\\bm{\\beta} u)v$ appear instead of $u\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla v$ (see \\cite{ESZ09} and \\cite[Section 4.6.2]{PiE12}). Our choice of formulation is convenient to express local conservation laws (see \\cite[Section 2.2.3]{PiE12}).\n\n\\subsection{Local method algorithm}\\label{sec:localg}\nIn this section we present the local scheme. In order to facilitate the comprehension of the method, we start with an informal description and then provide a pseudo-code for the algorithm. We denote $u_k$ the global solutions on $\\Omega$ and $\\hat{u}_k$ the local solutions on $\\Omega_k$, which are used to correct the global solutions.\n\nGiven a discretization $\\mathfrak{T}_1=(\\Omega,\\mathcal{M}_1,\\mathcal{F}_1)$ on $\\Omega$ the local scheme computes a first approximate solution $u_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ to \\eqref{eq:weak}. The algorithm then performs the following steps for $k=2,\\ldots,M$.\n\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\roman*)]\n\t\\item Given the current solution $u_{k-1}$, identify the region $\\Omega_k$ where the error is large and define a new refined mesh $\\mathcal{M}_k$ satisfying \\cref{ass:mesh} by iterating the following steps.\n\t\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\alph*)]\n\t\t\\item For each element $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k-1}$ compute an error indicator $\\eta_{M,K}$ (defined in \\eqref{eq:marketa}) and mark the local domain $\\Omega_{k}$ using the fixed energy fraction marking strategy \\cite[Section 4.2]{Dor96}. Hence, $\\Omega_{k}$ is defined as the union of the elements with largest error indicator $\\eta_{M,K}$ and it is such that the error committed inside of $\\Omega_{k}$ is at least a prescribed fraction of the total error.\n\t\t\\item Define the new mesh ${\\mathcal{M}}_{k}$ by refining the elements $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_{k-1}$ with $K\\subset\\Omega_{k}$.\n\t\t\\item Enlarge the local domain $\\Omega_{k}$ defined at step a) by adding a one element wide boundary layer (i.e. in order to satisfy item 2b of \\cref{ass:mesh}).\n\t\t\\item Define the local mesh $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_{k}$ by the elements of $\\mathcal{M}_{k}$ inside of $\\Omega_{k}$.\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\t\\item Solve a local elliptic problem in $\\Omega_k$ on the refined mesh $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ using $u_{k-1}$ as artificial Dirichlet boundary condition on $\\partial\\Omega_k\\setminus\\partial\\Omega$. The solution is denoted $\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$, where $\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k=(\\Omega_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k,\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k)$.\n\t\\item The local solution $\\hat{u}_k$ is used to correct the previous solution $u_{k-1}$ inside of $\\Omega_k$ and obtain the new global solution $u_k$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nThe pseudo-code of the local scheme is given in \\cref{alg:local}, where $\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}$ is the indicator function of $\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k$ and $(\\cdot,\\cdot)_k$ is the inner product in $L^2(\\Omega_k)$. The function $\\text{LocalDomain}(u_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ used in \\cref{alg:local} performs steps a)-d) of i). For purely diffusive problems, it is shown in \\cite[Theorem 8.2]{Ros20} that \\cref{alg:local} is equivalent to the LDGGD introduced in \\cite{AbR19}, hence the scheme convergences for exact solutions $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}\n\t\\caption{LocalScheme($\\mathfrak{T}_1$)}\n\t\\label{alg:local}\n\t\\begin{algorithmic}\n\t\t\\State Find $u_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(u_1,v_1,\\mathfrak{T}_1,0)=(f,v_1)_1$ for all $v_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$.\n\t\t\\For{$k=2,\\ldots,M$}\n\t\t\\State $(\\mathfrak{T}_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_{k}) = \\text{LocalDomain}(u_{k-1},\\mathfrak{T}_{k-1})$.\n\t\t\\State $g_k=u_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\State Find $\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\hat{u}_k,v_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k,g_k)=(f,v_k)_k$ for all $v_k\\in V(\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k)$.\n\t\t\\State $u_k=g_k+\\hat{u}_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\EndFor\n\t\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\section{Error estimators via flux and potential reconstructions}\\label{sec:err_flux}\nThe error estimators used to mark the local domains $\\Omega_k$ and to provide error bounds on the numerical solution $u_k$ are introduced here.\n\nIn the framework of selfadjoint elliptic problems, the equilibrated fluxes method \\cite{AiO93,BaW85} is a technique largely used to derive a posteriori error estimators free of undetermined constants and is based on the definition of local fluxes which satisfy a local conservation property. Since local fluxes and conservation properties are intrinsic to the discontinuous Galerkin formulation, this discretization is well suited for the equilibrated fluxes method \\cite{Ain05,CoN08}. In \\cite{ENV07,Kim07} the Raviart-Thomas-N\u00e9d\u00e9lec space is used to build an $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ conforming reconstruction $\\bm{t}_h$ of the discrete diffusive flux $-A\\nabla u_h$. A diffusive flux $\\bm{t}_h$ with optimal divergence, in the sense that it coincides with the orthogonal projection of the right-hand side $f$ onto the discontinuous Galerkin space, is obtained. In \\cite{ESV10} the authors extend this approach to convection-diffusion-reaction equations by defining an $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ conforming convective flux $\\bm{q}_h$ approximating $\\bm{\\beta} u_h$ and satisfying a conservation property.\n\nWe follow a similar strategy and define in the next section error estimators in function of diffusive and convective fluxes reconstructions $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ for the local scheme, as well as an $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ conforming potential reconstruction $s_k$ of the solution $u_k$.\n\n\\subsection{Definition of the error estimators}\\label{sec:errest}\nThe error estimators in function of the potential reconstruction $s_k$ approximating the solution $u_k$, the diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k$ and $\\bq_k$ approximating $-A\\nabla u_k$ and $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$, respectively, are defined in this section.\n\nFollowing the iterative and local nature of our scheme, we define the diffusive and convective fluxes reconstructions as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defflux}\n\\bt_k=\\bm{t}_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\qquad \\bq_k=\\bm{q}_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat{\\bq}_k,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\bm{t}_0=\\bm{q}_0=0$ and $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ are $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)$ conforming fluxes reconstructions of $-A\\nabla \\hat{u}_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} \\hat{u}_k$, respectively, and where $\\hat{u}_k$ is the local solution. To avoid any abuse of notation in \\cref{eq:defflux}, we extended $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ to zero outside of $\\Omega_k$.\nThe fluxes reconstructions $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ satisfy a local conservation property and are defined in \\cref{sec:potflux}. We readily see that \\cref{eq:defflux} allows for flux jumps at the subdomains boundaries, while giving enough freedom to define $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k$ in a way that a conservation property is satisfied. The fluxes reconstructions are used to measure the non conformity of the numerical fluxes. In the same spirit we define a potential reconstruction $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ used to measure the non conformity of the numerical solution. It is defined recursively as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defpot}\ns_k = s_{k-1}\\chi_{\\Omega\\setminus\\Omega_k}+\\hat s_k,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $s_0=0$ and $\\hat s_k\\in H^1(\\Omega_k)$ is such that $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$; similarly, we extend $\\hat s_k$ to zero outside of $\\Omega_k$. More details about the definitions of $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ and $\\hat s_k$ will be given in \\cref{sec:potflux}, for the time being we will define the error estimators.\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, $v\\in H^1(K)$, \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defnBK}\n\\nB{v}_K^2=\\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}^2+\\nLdK{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}^2,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\nLdK{{\\cdot}}$ is the $L^2$-norm for scalar-valued functions in $K$ and $\\nLddK{{\\cdot}}$ the $L^2$-norm for vector-valued functions in $K$. The non conformity of the numerical solution $u_k$ is measured by the estimator\n\\begin{subequations\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaNC}\n\t\\eta_{NC,K}= \\nB{u_k-s_k}_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tIn the following, $m_K$, $\\tilde m_K$, $m_\\sigma$, $D_{t,K,\\sigma}$, $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ are some known constants which will be defined in \\cref{sec:ctedef}.\n\tThe residual estimator is\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaR}\n\t\\eta_{R,K}= m_K \\nLdK{f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twhich can be seen as the residual of \\eqref{eq:weak} where we first replace $u$ by $u_k$, then $-A\\nabla u_k$ by $\\bt_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$ by $\\bq_k$ and finally use the Green theorem. The error estimators defined in \\cref{eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} measure the error introduced by these substitutions and the error introduced when applying the Green theorem to $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$, which are not in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$.\n\t\n\tThe diffusive flux estimator measures the difference between  $-A\\nabla u_k$ and $\\bt_k$. It is given by $\\eta_{DF,K}=\\min\\lbrace \\eta_{DF,K}^1,\\eta_{DF,K}^2\\rbrace$, where\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:etaDF}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\eta_{DF,K}^1 &= \\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla u_k+A^{-1\/2}\\bt_k},\\\\\n\t\\eta_{DF,K}^2 &= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot(A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k))}\\\\\n\t&\\quad +\\tilde{m}_K^{1\/2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K}C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{(A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma},\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\t$\\pi_0$ is the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_0(K)$ and $\\mathcal{I}$ is the identity operator. Let $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k$ and $\\pi_{0,\\sigma}$ be the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_0(\\sigma)$. The convection and upwinding estimators, that measure the difference between $\\bm{\\beta} u_k$, $\\bm{\\beta} s_k$ and $\\bq_k$, are defined by\n\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:etaC1}\n\t\\eta_{C,1,K}&= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaC2}\n\t\\eta_{C,2,K}&= \\frac{1}{2}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etatC1}\n\t\\tilde \\eta_{C,1,K}&= m_K\\nLdK{(\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)(\\nabla\\cdot (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k))},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaU}\n\t\\eta_{U,K} &= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma},\\\\ \\label{eq:etatU}\n\t\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}&= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma},\n\t\\end{align}\n\twhere $\\chi_\\sigma=2$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}$ and $\\chi_\\sigma=1$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$.\n\tFinally, we introduce the jump estimators coming from the application of the Green theorem to $\\bt_k$ and $\\bq_k$ (see \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}). Those are defined by \n\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:etaG1}\n\t\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K} &= \\frac{1}{2}(|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLus{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\jump{\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma},\\\\ \\label{eq:etaG2}\n\t\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K} &= \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} D_{t,K,\\sigma}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nWe end the section defining the marking error estimator $\\eta_{M,K}$ used to mark $\\Omega_k$ in the LocalDomain routine of \\cref{alg:local}, let\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:marketa}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\eta_{M,K}&= \\eta_{NC,K}+\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}\\\\\n&\\quad +\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Main results}\\label{sec:thms}\nWe state here our main results related to the a posteriori analysis of the local scheme, in particular we will provide reliable error bounds on the numerical solution $u_k$ which are free of undetermined constants. We will also comment as to why we cannot prove the efficiency of the new estimator.\n\n\nWe start defining the norms for which we provide the error bounds, the same norms are used in \\cite{ESV10}. The operator $\\mathcal{B}$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} can be written $\\mathcal{B}=\\mathcal{B}_S+\\mathcal{B}_A$, where $\\mathcal{B}_S$ and $\\mathcal{B}_A$ are symmetric and skew-symmetric operators defined by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bsba}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\mathcal{B}_S(u,v)&= \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u\\cdot\\nabla v+(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u v)\\dif\\bm{x},\\\\\n\\mathcal{B}_A(u,v)&=\\int_{\\Omega}(\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\nabla u+\\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u)v\\dif\\bm{x},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nfor $u,v\\in  H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$. The energy norm is defined by the symmetric operator as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\nB{v}^2 = \\mathcal{B}_S(v,v) = \\nLdd{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}^2+\\nLd{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}^2,\n\\end{equation}\nobserve that $\\nB{v}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\nB{v}_K^2$, with $\\nB{{\\cdot}}_K$ as in \\eqref{eq:defnBK}. Since the norm $\\nB{{\\cdot}}$ is defined by the symmetric operator, it is well suited to study problems with dominant diffusion or reaction. On the other hand, it is inappropriate for convection dominated problems since it lacks a term measuring the error along the velocity direction. For this kind of problems we use the augmented norm\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:augnorm}\n\\nBp{v}=\\nB{v}+\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}_A(v,w)+\\mathcal{B}_J(v,w)),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{B}_J(v,w)=-\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\bm{\\beta} v}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 w}\\dif\\bm{y}\n\\end{equation}\nis a term needed to sharpen the error bounds. The next two theorems give a bound on the error of the local scheme, measured in the energy or the augmented norm.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:energynormbound}\n\tLet $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ be the solution to \\eqref{eq:weak}, $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)\\cap H^1_0(\\Omega)$ from \\cref{eq:defpot,eq:defhsk} and $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ be defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux}. Then, the error measured in the energy norm is bounded as\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nB{u-u_k}\\leq \\eta =  \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{NC,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}+\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{1,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twhere $\\eta_{1,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:augmentednormbound}\n\tUnder the same assumptions of \\cref{thm:energynormbound}, the error measured in the augmented norm is bounded as\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nBp{u-u_k}\\leq \\tilde\\eta =  2\\eta +\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{2,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $\\eta$ from \\cref{thm:energynormbound} and $\\eta_{2,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{theorem}\nThe error estimators of \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} are free of undetermined constants, indeed they depend on the numerical solution, the smallest eigenvalues of the diffusion tensor, on the essential minimum of $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}$, the mesh size and known geometric constants. In contrast, the error estimators are not efficient. The reason is that, compared to the true errors $\\nB{u-u_k}$ and $\\nBp{u-u_k}$, the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ have a lower order of convergence. We illustrate this numerically in \\cref{exp:conv}.\nHowever, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ are useful in practice: whenever they are small, then the error estimators are efficient. When they become large then they indicate that the error is not localized and one should switch to a nonlocal method. This is also illustrated numerically in \\cref{exp:conv}.\n\n\n\\section{Potential and fluxes reconstructions, proofs of the main results}\\label{sec:errbound}\nIn this section, we will define the potential, diffusion and advection reconstructions, define the geometric constants appearing in the error estimators defined in \\cref{eq:etaNC,eq:etaR,eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} and finally prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}.\n\n\\subsection{Potential and fluxes reconstruction via the equilibrated flux method}\\label{sec:potflux}\nWe define here the fluxes reconstructions $\\hat{\\bt}_k$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k$ of \\eqref{eq:defflux} and the potential reconstruction $\\hat s_k$ of \\eqref{eq:defpot}. In what follows we assume that $\\mathcal{M}_k$ does not have hanging nodes, i.e. we consider matching meshes, since it simplifies the analysis; however, in practice nonmatching meshes possessing hanging nodes can be employed (as in \\cref{sec:num}). Roughly speaking, the next results are extended to nonmatching meshes by building matching submeshes and computing the error estimators on those submeshes, we refer to \\cite[Appendix]{ESV10} for the details.\n\nWe start defining some broken Sobolev spaces and then the potential and fluxes reconstructions. For $k=1,\\ldots,M$ let $\\mathcal{G}_k=\\{G_j\\,|\\, j=1,\\ldots,k\\}$, where $G_k=\\Omega_k$ and \n\\begin{equation}\nG_j =\\Omega_j\\setminus\\cup_{i=j+1}^{k}\\overline{\\Omega}_{i} \\qquad \\text{for }j=1,\\ldots,k-1.\n\\end{equation}\nIn \\cref{fig:Omegak,fig:Dk} we give an example of a sequence of domains $\\Omega_k$ and the corresponding set $\\mathcal{G}_k$.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw (2,2) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.2)--(4,2.2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.4)--(4,2.4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.6)--(4,2.6);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,2.8)--(4,2.8);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3)--(4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.2)--(4,3.2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.4)--(4,3.4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.6)--(4,3.6);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (2,3.8)--(4,3.8);\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw (3,1) rectangle (4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.2,1)--(3.2,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.4,1)--(3.4,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.6,1)--(3.6,3);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.8,1)--(3.8,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\caption{Sequence of domains\\\\$\\Omega_1$= \\tikz \\draw (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $\\Omega_2$= \\tikz{\\draw(0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (0,6.6pt)--(10pt,6.6pt);\\draw[color=NavyBlue,line width=1pt] (0,3.3pt)--(10pt,3.3pt);}, $\\Omega_3$= \\tikz{\\draw(0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (6.6pt,0pt)--(6.6pt,10pt);\\draw[color=OliveGreen,line width=1pt] (3.3pt,0pt)--(3.3pt,10pt);} .}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Omegak}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw[pattern=dots] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw[fill=Goldenrod] (2,2) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\\draw[fill=BrickRed] (3,1) rectangle (4,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Set $\\mathcal{G}_3=\\{G_1,G_2,G_3\\}$ with\\\\ $G_1$= \\tikz \\draw[pattern=dots] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $G_2$= \\tikz \\draw[fill=Goldenrod] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt);, $G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[fill = BrickRed] (0,0) rectangle (10pt,10pt); .}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Dk}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\captionsetup{justification=centering}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1]\n\t\t\t\\draw[draw=none] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=YellowOrange, line width=1pt, solid] (2,4)--(2,2)--(3,2);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=PineGreen, line width=1pt, densely dotted] (3,2)--(3,1)--(4,1);\n\t\t\t\\draw[color=Purple, line width=1pt, loosely dashed] (3,2)--(3,3)--(4,3);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Skeleton $\\Gamma_3$ with \\\\$\\partial G_1\\cap\\partial G_2$= \\tikz\\draw[color=YellowOrange, line width=1pt, solid] (0,0)--(10pt,0pt);, $\\partial G_1\\cap\\partial G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[color=PineGreen, line width=1pt, densely dotted] (0,0) -- (10pt,0pt);,\\\\$\\partial G_2\\cap\\partial G_3$= \\tikz \\draw[color=Purple, line width=1pt, loosely dashed] (0,0) -- (15pt,0pt);.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:Gk}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Example of sequence of domains $\\Omega_1,\\Omega_2,\\Omega_3$, set $\\mathcal{G}_3$ and skeleton $\\Gamma_3$.}\n\t\\label{fig:illustrationDk}\n\\end{figure}\nWe define the broken spaces\n\\begin{align}\nH_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k) &= \\{\\bm{v}\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d\\,:\\, \\bm{v}|_G\\in H_{\\divop}(G)\\text{ for all }G\\in \\mathcal{G}_k\\},\\\\\nH^1({\\mathcal{M}}_k)&=\\{v\\in L^2(\\Omega)\\,:\\,v|_K\\in H^1(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\},\n\\end{align}\nthe divergence and gradient operators in $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ and $H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ are taken element wise.\nWe extend the jump operator $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\sigma$ to the broken space $H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$. We call $\\Gamma_k$ the internal skeleton of $\\mathcal{G}_k$, that is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Gamma_k=\\{\\partial G_i\\cap\\partial G_j\\,|\\, G_i,G_j\\in\\mathcal{G}_k,\\, i\\neq j\\},\n\\end{equation}\nan example of $\\Gamma_k$ is given in \\cref{fig:Gk}.\nFor each $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$ we define $\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma = \\{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}\\,|\\,\\sigma\\subset \\gamma\\}$ and set $\\bm{n}_\\gamma$, the normal to $\\gamma$, as $\\bm{n}_\\gamma|_\\sigma=\\bm{n}_\\sigma$. The jump $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\gamma$ on $\\gamma$ is defined by $\\jump{\\cdot}_\\gamma|_\\sigma=\\jump{\\cdot}_\\sigma$. \n\n\nIn \\cite{ESV10} the reconstructed fluxes live in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$. For the local algorithm we need to build such fluxes using the recursive relation \\eqref{eq:defflux}. This leads to fluxes having jumps across the boundaries of the subdomains, i.e. $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$, hence they lie in the broken space $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$. In the rest of this section we explain how to build fluxes which are in an approximation space of $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ and satisfy a local conservation property. \nWe start by introducing a broken version of the usual Raviart-Thomas-N\u00e9d\u00e9lec spaces \\cite{Ned80,RaT77}, which we define as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:RTN}\n\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k):=\\{\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)\\,:\\, \\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathcalligra{r}\\in\\{\\ell-1,\\ell\\}$ and $\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)=\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)^d+\\bm{x} \\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}}(K)$. In order to build functions in $\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ we need a characterization of this space. \nLet $\\bm{v}_k\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d$ such that $\\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$ for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, it is known that $\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$ if and only if $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\sigma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for all $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$ (see \\cite[Lemma 1.24]{PiE12}). Since we search for fluxes $\\bm{v}_k$ in $H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$, we relax this condition and allow $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\gamma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma\\neq 0$ for $\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k$.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\tLet $\\bm{v}_k\\in L^2(\\Omega)^d$ be such that $\\bm{v}_k|_K\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$ for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, then $\\bm{v}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ if and only if $\\jump{\\bm{v}_k}_\\sigma\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for all $\\sigma\\notin \\cup_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma$.\n\\end{lemma} \n\\begin{proof}\n\tFollowing the lines of \\cite[Lemma 1.24]{PiE12}.\n\\end{proof}\nThe diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ are defined recursively as in \\eqref{eq:defflux}, where $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k)$, with\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k):=\\{\\bm{v}_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)\\,:\\, \\bm{v}_k\\in\\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)\\text{ for all }K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k\\},\n\\end{equation}\nare given by the relations\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:deflocflux}\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:deflocflux1}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_\\sigma \\hat{\\bt}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma p_k\\dif\\bm{y}&= \\int_\\sigma (-\\mean{A\\nabla \\hat{u}_k}_\\omega\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k})p_k\\dif\\bm{y},\\\\\n\t\\int_\\sigma \\hat{\\bq}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma p_k\\dif\\bm{y} &= \\int_\\sigma (\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k}+\\nu_\\sigma\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k})p_k\\dif\\bm{y}\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tfor all $\\sigma\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_k$ and $p_k\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\sigma)$ and\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:deflocflux2}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_K \\hat{\\bt}_k \\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x} &= -\\int_K A\\nabla\\hat{u}_k\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x}+\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma\\omega_{K,\\sigma}\\jump{\\hat{u}_k}_{g_k} A|_K\\hat{\\br}_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif\\bm{y},\\\\\n\t\\int_K\\hat{\\bq}_k\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x} &= \\int_K \\hat{u}_k\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\hat{\\br}_k\\dif\\bm{x}\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{subequations}\nfor all $K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ and $\\hat{\\br}_k\\in\\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}-1}(K)^d$. Since $\\hat{\\bt}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\in\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\sigma)$ (see \\cite[Proposition 3.2]{BrF91}) then \\eqref{eq:deflocflux1} defines $\\hat{\\bt}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$, $\\hat{\\bq}_k|_K\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma$ on $\\sigma$. The remaining degrees of freedom are fixed by \\eqref{eq:deflocflux2} \\cite[Proposition 3.3]{BrF91}.\nThanks to \\eqref{eq:deflocflux1} we have $\\jump{\\hat{\\bt}_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ and $\\jump{\\hat{\\bq}_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma=0$ for $\\sigma\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{F}}_{k,i}$ and hence $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k)$. By construction it follows $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in \\mathbf{RTN}_\\mathcalligra{r}(\\mathcal{M}_k)$.\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\pi_\\mathcalligra{r}$ be the $L^2$-orthogonal projector onto $\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$, the following lemma states a local conservation property of the reconstructed fluxes. The proof follows the lines of \\cite[Lemma 2.1]{ESV10}\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:cons}\n\tLet $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ be given by \\cref{alg:local} and $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux}. For all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:cons}\n\t(\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k+\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k+\\pi_\\mathcalligra{r}((\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k))|_K = \\pi_\\mathcalligra{r} f|_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $j=\\max\\{i=1,\\ldots,k\\,:\\, K\\subset\\Omega_j\\}$, then $K\\in\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_j$, $\\bt_k|_K=\\hat{\\bt}_j|_K$, $\\bq_k|_K=\\hat{\\bq}_j|_K$ and $u_k|_K=\\hat u_j|_K$. Let $v_j\\in \\mathbb{P}_{\\mathcalligra{r}}(K)$, with $v_j=0$ outside of $K$, by the Green theorem we have\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:greentq}\n\t\\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\hat{\\bt}_j+\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j)v_j\\dif \\bm{x} = -\\int_K (\\hat{\\bt}_j+\\hat{\\bq}_j)\\cdot\\nabla v_j\\dif \\bm{x} +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma v_j(\\hat{\\bt}_j+\\hat{\\bq}_j)\\cdot\\bm{n}_K\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand using $\\mathcal{B}(\\hat u_j,v_j,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_j,g_j)=(f,v_j)_j$ it follows\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\int_K f v_j \\dif \\bm{x} &= \\int_K (A\\nabla \\hat u_j\\cdot \\nabla v_j+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot \\bm{\\beta})\\hat u_j v_j-\\hat{u}_j\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot \\nabla v_j)\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma(\\jump{v_j}\\mean{A\\nabla \\hat{u}_j}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\mean{A\\nabla v_j}_{\\omega}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma)\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t&\\quad +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma ((\\eta_\\sigma\\frac{\\gamma_\\sigma}{h_\\sigma}+\\nu_\\sigma)\\jump{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\jump{v_j}+\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\mean{\\hat{u}_j}_{g_j}\\jump{v_j})\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tSince $\\mean{A\\nabla v_j}_\\omega =\\omega_{K,\\sigma}A|_K\\nabla v_j$ and $\\jump{v_j}\\bm{n}_\\sigma=v_j|_K\\bm{n}_K$, using \\cref{eq:deflocflux,eq:greentq}, we obtain\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:precons}\n\t\\int_K f v_j \\dif \\bm{x} = \\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\hat{\\bt}_j+\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})\\hat u_j)v_j\\dif \\bm{x}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand the result follows from $\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bt}_j,\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_j\\in\\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K)$, $\\bt_k|_K=\\hat{\\bm{t}}_j|_K$, $\\bq_k|_K=\\hat{\\bm{q}}_j|_K$ and $u_k|_K=\\hat{u}_j|_K$. \n\\end{proof}\n\nIn order to define the $H^1_0(\\Omega)$ conforming approximation $s_k$ of $u_k$ we will need the so-called Oswald operator already considered in \\cite{KaP03} for a posteriori estimates. Let $\\mathfrak{T}=(D,\\mathcal{M},\\mathcal{F})$, $g\\in C^0(\\partial D)$ and consider $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}:V(\\mathfrak{T})\\rightarrow V(\\mathfrak{T})\\cap H^1(D)$, for a function $v\\in V(\\mathfrak{T})$ the value of $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g} v$ is prescribed at the Lagrange interpolation nodes $p$ of the conforming finite element space $V(\\mathfrak{T})\\cap H^1(D)$. Let $p\\in \\overline{D}$ be a Lagrange node, if $p\\notin \\partial D$ we set\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}v(p)=\\frac{1}{\\# \\mathcal M_p}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}p}v|_K(p),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathcal M_{p}=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}\\,:\\,p\\in\\overline{K}\\}$. If instead $p\\in\\partial D$ then $\\mathcal{O}_{\\mathfrak{T},g}v(p)=g(p)$, where $g$ is the Dirichlet condition on $\\partial D$. The reconstructed potential $s_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)\\cap H^1_0(\\Omega)$ is built as in \\eqref{eq:defpot}, where\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:defhsk}\n\\hat s_k = \\mathcal{O}_{\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_k,s_{k-1}} \\hat{u}_k.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\subsection{Constants definition and preliminary results}\\label{sec:ctedef}\nHere we define the constants appearing in \\cref{eq:etaNC,eq:etaR,eq:etaDF,eq:etaC1,eq:etaC2,eq:etaU,eq:etaG1,eq:etaG2,eq:etatC1,eq:etatU} and derive preliminary results needed to prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}.\n\n\nLet $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K$, we recall that $|K|$ is the measure of $K$ and $|\\sigma|$ the $d-1$ dimensional measure of $\\sigma$. We denote by $c_{A,K}$ the minimal eigenvalue of $A|_K$. Next, we denote by $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}$ the essential minimum of $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}\\geq 0$ on $K$. \nIn what follows we will assume that $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}>0$ a.e. in $\\Omega$, hence $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ for all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$, and provide error estimators under this assumption. We explain in \\cref{sec:altbounds} how to overcome this limitation slightly modifying the proofs and error estimators.\n\nThe cutoff functions $m_K,\\tilde m_K$ and $m_\\sigma$ are defined by \n\\begin{subequations} \\label{eq:cutoff}\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{eq:mK}\n\tm_K =& \\min\\{ C_p^{1\/2}h_K c_{A,K}^{-1\/2},c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\},\\\\ \\label{eq:tmK}\n\t\\tilde m_K=& \\min\\{ (C_p+C_p^{1\/2})h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1}, h_K^{-1}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1}+c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}c_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\/2\\},\\\\ \\label{eq:ms}\n\tm_\\sigma^2=& \\min\\lbrace \\max_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\{3d|\\sigma|h_K^2|K|^{-1}c_{A,K}^{-1}\\},\\max_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\{|\\sigma||K|^{-1}c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1}\\}\\rbrace,\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $C_p=1\/\\pi^2$ is an optimal Poincar\u00e9 constant for convex domains \\cite{PaW60}. Let $v\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$, it holds\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:bounds}\n\t\\begin{align} \\label{eq:bounds1}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}&\\leq m_K \\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k,\\\\ \\label{eq:bounds2}\n\t\\nLds{v-\\pi_0 v|_K}&\\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\tilde{m}_K^{1\/2}\\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& \\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_k \\text{ and } K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma,\\\\ \\label{eq:bounds3}\n\t\\nLds{\\jump{\\pi_0 v}}&\\leq m_\\sigma\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K & \\text{for all }& \\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k,\n\t\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma = \\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, \\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$ and $C_{t,K,\\sigma}$ is the constant of the trace inequality\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:trace}\n\\nLds{v|_K}^2\\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}\\nLdK{v}^2+\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v}).\n\\end{equation}\nIt has been proved in \\cite[Lemma 3.12]{Ste07} that for a simplex it holds $C_{t,K,\\sigma}=|\\sigma|h_K\/|K|$. \n\nLet us briefly explain the role of constants \\eqref{eq:cutoff} and how the bounds \\eqref{eq:bounds} are obtained. We observe that for each bound in \\eqref{eq:bounds} the cut off functions take the minimum between two possible values, allowing for robust error estimation in singularly perturbed regimes. For \\eqref{eq:bounds1}, using the Poincar\u00e9 inequality \\cite[equation 3.2]{PaW60} we have\n\\begin{subequations}\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bounds1a}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}&\\leq C_p^{1\/2} h_K \\nLddK{\\nabla v}\\\\\n\t& \\leq C_p^{1\/2}h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLddK{A^{1\/2}\\nabla v}\\leq C_p^{1\/2}h_Kc_{A,K}^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tDenoting $(\\cdot,\\cdot)_K$ the $L^2(K)$ inner product, it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}^2=(v-\\pi_0 v,v-\\pi_0 v)_K=(v-\\pi_0 v,v)_K\\leq \\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}\\nLdK{v},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\thence\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bounds1b}\n\t\\nLdK{v-\\pi_0 v}\\leq \\nLdK{v} \\leq c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{(\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})^{1\/2}v}\\leq c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{subequations}\nand \\eqref{eq:bounds1} follows. The choice between bounds \\cref{eq:bounds1a,eq:bounds1b} depends on whether the problem is singularly perturbed or not. Bounds \\eqref{eq:bounds2} and \\eqref{eq:bounds3} are obtained similarly, see \\cite[Lemma 4.2]{CFP09} and \\cite[Lemma 4.5]{Voh08}. Finally, for $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K$ we define\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Dk}\nD_{t,K,\\sigma}=\\left(\\frac{C_{t,K,\\sigma}}{2 h_K c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}}\\left(1+\\sqrt{1+h_K^2\\frac{c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}}{c_{A,K}}}\\right)\\right)^{1\/2},\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is used to bound $\\nLds{v|_K}$ in terms of $\\nB{v}_K$ in the next lemma.\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:boundsigma}\n\tLet $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$, for each $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ and $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_K$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLds{v_k|_K}\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma} \\nB{v_k}_K.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tLet $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ and $\\epsilon>0$. Applying H\u00f6lder inequality to the trace inequality \\cref{eq:trace} we get\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nLds{v_k|_K}^2 \\leq C_{t,K,\\sigma}((h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\nLdK{v_k}^2+\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2).\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tHence, if there exists $D_{t,K,\\sigma}>0$ independent of $v_k$ such that\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Dkeps}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\tC_{t,K,\\sigma}((h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\nLdK{v_k}^2+&\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2)\\\\\n\t& \\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2 (c_{A,K}\\nLddK{\\nabla v_k}^2+c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}\\nLdK{v_k}^2) \n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tthen $\\nLds{v_k|_K}^2\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2 \\nB{v_k}^2_K$ and the result holds. Relation \\eqref{eq:Dkeps} holds if\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\tC_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})\\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}, \\qquad\\qquad C_{t,K,\\sigma}\\frac{\\epsilon}{2} \\leq D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2c_{A,K}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tand hence $D_{t,K,\\sigma}^2=\\max\\{C_{t,K,\\sigma}(h_K^{-1}+\\frac{1}{2\\epsilon})c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1},C_{t,K,\\sigma}\\frac{\\epsilon}{2}c_{A,K}^{-1}\\}$.\n\tTaking $\\epsilon$ such that the maximum is minimized we get $D_{t,K,\\sigma}$ as in \\cref{eq:Dk}.\n\\end{proof}\nThe proof of the following Lemma is inspired from \\cite[Theorem 3.1]{ESV10}, the main difference is that we take into account the weaker regularity of the reconstructed fluxes. \n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:boundBBA}\n\tLet $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ be the solution to \\eqref{eq:weak}, $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s_k\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ from \\cref{eq:defpot,eq:defhsk}, $\\bt_k,\\bq_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$ defined by \\cref{eq:defflux,eq:deflocflux} and $v\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$. Then\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t|\\mathcal{B}(u -u_k ,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s_k,v)| \\leq  \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{1,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}\\nB{v},\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $\\eta_{1,K}=\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{C,2,K}+\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\tSince $u$ satisfies \\eqref{eq:weak}, using the definition of $\\mathcal{B}$ and $\\mathcal{B}_A$\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s_k,v) \n\t&= \\int_\\Omega (f-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} -\\int_\\Omega A\\nabla u_k\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} -\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}.\n\t\\end{align}\n\tUsing $v \\bt_k\\in H_{\\divop}(\\mathcal{G}_k)$, from the divergence theorem we have\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t\\int_\\Omega (v\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k +\\nabla v\\cdot\\bt_k)\\dif \\bm{x} &= \\sum_{G\\in\\mathcal{G}_k}\\int_{G}\\nabla\\cdot(v\\bt_k)\\dif \\bm{x} =\\sum_{G\\in\\mathcal{G}_k}\\int_{\\partial G} v\\bt_k\\cdot\\bm{n}_{\\partial G}\\dif \\bm{y} \\\\\n\t&=\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{v \\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\gamma\\dif \\bm{y} = \\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\\end{align}\n\tand hence\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:integrBBA}\n\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k- s_k ,v)&=\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} \\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} +\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\\\\n\t&\\quad -\\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x} +\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k }\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tFrom \\cref{lemma:cons} we deduce\n\t\\begin{subequations}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms}\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterm0}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t&\\left|\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right| \\\\\n\t\t&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad = \\left|\\int_\\Omega (f-\\nabla\\cdot\\bt_k-\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k-(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x}\\right| \\\\\n\t\t&\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\eta_{R,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tSimilarly, we get\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms1}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t\\left| \\int_\\Omega (A\\nabla u_k+\\bt_k)\\cdot \\nabla v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right|&\\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{DF,K}\\nB{v}_K,\\\\\n\t\t\\left| \\int_\\Omega \\frac{1}{2}(\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})(u_k-s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}\\right|&\\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\eta_{C,2,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tSince $\\jump{\\bt_k}_\\sigma=0$ for $\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_{k,i}\\setminus\\cup_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\mathcal{F}_\\gamma$, it holds\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} = \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma v\\dif \\bm{y} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma v\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tUsing \\cref{lemma:boundsigma} we obtain\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms2}\n\t\t\\begin{aligned}\n\t\t\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq  \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nLds{v} \\\\\n\t\t&\\leq   \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{aligned}\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tIt remains to estimate $\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x}$. For that, we use\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\int_\\Omega \\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)v\\dif \\bm{x} \n\t\n\t\n\t\t=& \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\int_K (\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x} \\\\\n\t\t&+\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_K \\pi_0 v\\dif \\bm{y}\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tand from \\cref{eq:bounds1} we get\n\t\t\\begin{align}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms3}\n\t\t\\left|\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\int_K (\\mathcal{I}-\\pi_0)\\nabla\\cdot(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)(v-\\pi_0 v)\\dif \\bm{x} \\right|\\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{C,1,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tFor the second term we write\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t&\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_K \\pi_0 v\\dif \\bm{y}= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\pi_0 v}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t\t&=\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 v}\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma+\\jump{\\pi_0 v}\\mean{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}\\\\\n\t\t&\\quad +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in \\mathcal{F}_{k,b}}\\int_\\sigma\\pi_0 v\\, \\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma \\dif \\bm{y} = \\operatorname{I}+\\operatorname{II}+\\operatorname{III}\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tand we easily obtain, since $\\jump{\\bm{\\beta} s_k}=0$,\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\operatorname{I} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\pi_0 v|_K \\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tUsing $|\\pi_0 v|_K| = |K|^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{\\pi_0 v}\\leq |K|^{-1\/2}\\nLdK{v}\\leq (|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\nB{v}_K$ we get\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms4}\n\t\t\\operatorname{I} \\leq \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}(|K|c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K})^{-1\/2}\\nLus{\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tLet $\\mathcal{M}_\\sigma=\\{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k\\,:\\, \\sigma\\subset\\partial K\\}$, using \\eqref{eq:bounds3} for the second term we have\n\t\t\\begin{align}\n\t\t\\operatorname{II} & \\leq \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\sum_{K\\in \\mathcal{M}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_{K}\\\\\n\t\t&= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K.\n\t\t\\end{align}\n\t\tFor the last term we similarly obtain\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\t\\operatorname{III} \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}} m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k)\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nB{v}_K\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\tand hence\n\t\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:boundsBBAterms5}\n\t\t\\operatorname{II}+\\operatorname{III} \\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\chi_\\sigma m_\\sigma\\nLds{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} s_k}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma} \\nB{v}_K= \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{U,K}\\nB{v}_K,\n\t\t\\end{equation}\n\t\\end{subequations}\n\twhere $\\chi_\\sigma=2$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,b}$ and $\\chi_\\sigma=1$ if $\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}$. Plugging relations \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterm0,eq:boundsBBAterms1,eq:boundsBBAterms2,eq:boundsBBAterms3,eq:boundsBBAterms4,eq:boundsBBAterms5} into \\eqref{eq:integrBBA} we get the result.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn \\cref{lemma:boundBBA} we use \\cref{lemma:cons} to deduce that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:weakcons}\n\\int_K (\\nabla\\cdot \\bt_k+\\nabla\\cdot\\bq_k+(\\mu-\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta})u_k) \\dif \\bm{x} = \\int_K f \\dif \\bm{x}\n\\end{equation}\nand hence \\eqref{eq:boundsBBAterm0}. However, when the mesh has hanging nodes inside of the local domains \\cref{lemma:cons} is not valid. Indeed, if $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ has hanging nodes, the fluxes $\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\hat{\\bq}_k$ must be constructed on a matching (free of hanging nodes) submesh $\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, otherwise they may fail to be in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega_k)$. The constructed fluxes will satisfy relation \\cref{eq:precons}, but since $\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bt}_k,\\nabla\\cdot\\hat{\\bq}_k\\in \\mathbb{P}_\\mathcalligra{r}(K')$ for $K'\\in\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ and $\\overline{\\mathcal{M}}_k$ is finer than $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_k$, then we cannot conclude as we did in \\cref{lemma:cons}. Nonetheless, \\cref{eq:precons} still implies \\cref{eq:weakcons}, which is enough to prove \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of the theorems}\\label{sec:proofs}\nHere we prove \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}. We will consider $\\mathcal{B}:H^1_0(\\Omega)\\times H^1_0(\\Omega)\\rightarrow\\mathbb{R}$ defined in \\eqref{eq:bform} for functions in $ H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$.\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of \\cref{thm:energynormbound}]\n\tIt has been proved in \\cite[Lemma 3.1]{Ern08} that for any $u_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ and $u,s\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ it holds\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nB{u-u_k}\\leq \\nB{u_k-s}+|\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,v)+\\mathcal{B}_A(u_k-s,v)|,\n\t\\end{equation}\n\twith $v=(u-s)\/\\nB{u-s}$. Choosing $u$ as the exact solution to \\cref{eq:weak}, $u_k$ given by \\cref{alg:local}, $s=s_k$ from \\cref{eq:defpot} and using \\cref{lemma:boundBBA} gives the result.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of \\cref{thm:augmentednormbound}]\n\tSince $u\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$ it holds $\\mathcal{B}_J(u,w)=0$ for all $w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)$, using $\\mathcal{B}_A\\leq\\mathcal{B}+|\\mathcal{B}_S|$ we get\n\t\\begin{equation}\n\t\\nBp{u-u_k}\\leq 2\\nB{u-u_k}+\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w)).\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tTo conclude the proof we show that\n\t\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:supBBD}\n\t\\sup_{\\substack{w\\in H^1_0(\\Omega)\\\\ \\nB{w}=1}}(\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w))\\leq \\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{2,K}^2\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\t\\end{equation}\n\tFollowing \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}, we easily get\n\t\\begin{multline}\n\t\\mathcal{B}(u-u_k,w)-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w) \\leq  \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}(\\eta_{R,K}+\\eta_{DF,K}+\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K})\\nB{w}_K\\\\\n\t+\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K}\\int_\\sigma\\pi_0 w (\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k)\\cdot\\bm{n}_K\\dif \\bm{y}-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w).\n\t\\end{multline}\n\tThe two last terms satisfy\n\t\\begin{align}\n\t&\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\int_\\sigma\\jump{\\pi_0 w(\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k)}\\cdot \\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y}-\\mathcal{B}_J(u_k,w) \\\\\n\t&= \\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_k}\\chi_\\sigma\\int_\\sigma \\jump{\\pi_0 w}\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\mean{\\bq_k-\\bm{\\beta} u_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y} +\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\int_\\sigma \\mean{\\pi_0 w}\\jump{\\pi_{0,\\sigma}\\bq_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma\\dif \\bm{y} \\\\\n\t&\\leq\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}(\\tilde\\eta_{U,K}+\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K})\\nB{w}_K,\n\t\\end{align}\n\twhere in the last step we followed again \\cref{lemma:boundBBA}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Alternative error bounds}\\label{sec:altbounds}\nOur aim here is to explain how to avoid the assumption $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}>0$ for all $K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k$ made in \\cref{sec:errest,sec:ctedef}. This assumption is needed to define $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}$ but can be avoided if \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms2,eq:boundsBBAterms4} are estimated differently. For \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms2}, using the trace inequality \\cref{eq:trace} we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq  \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\nLds{v|_K} \\\\\n&\\leq \\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\tilde\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}(\\nLdK{v}^2+h_K\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v})^{1\/2},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}h_K^{-1\/2}C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{\\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}.\n\\end{equation}\nSetting $\\tilde\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}^2$, it yields\n\\begin{align}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| &\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2}\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k} \\nLdK{v}^2+h_K\\nLdK{v}\\nLddK{\\nabla v}\\right)^{1\/2}\\\\\n&\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} \\left(\\nLd{v}^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}\\nLd{v}\\nLdd{\\nabla v}\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\\end{align}\nUsing the Poincar\u00e9 inequality $\\nLd{v}\\leq d_\\Omega\\nLdd{\\nabla v}$, where $d_\\Omega$ is the diameter of $\\Omega$, we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\left|\\sum_{\\gamma\\in\\Gamma_k}\\int_\\gamma \\jump{\\bt_k}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\gamma v\\dif \\bm{y} \\right| \\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} \\left(d_\\Omega^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}d_\\Omega\\right)^{1\/2}\\nLdd{\\nabla v}\\leq \\tilde \\eta_{\\Gamma,2} c_A^{-1\/2} \\left(d_\\Omega^2+h_{\\mathcal{M}_k}d_\\Omega\\right)^{1\/2}\\nB{v},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $c_A$ is the minimal eigenvalue of $A(\\bm{x})$ over $\\Omega$. The same procedure can be used to replace \\cref{eq:boundsBBAterms4} by a relation avoiding the term $c_{\\bm{\\beta},\\mu,K}^{-1\/2}$. The new bounds can be used to modify the results of \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} and obtain error estimators when $\\mu-\\frac{1}{2}\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}>0$ is not satisfied.\n\n\n\n\\section{Numerical Experiments}\\label{sec:num}\nIn order to study the properties and illustrate the performance of the local scheme we consider here several numerical examples.\nFirst, in \\cref{exp:conv}, we look at the convergence rates of the error estimators, focusing on the errors introduced by solving only local problems. Considering a local and a nonlocal problem, we also compare the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ against the classical terms. We emphasize that we do not use the automatic subdomains' identification algorithm for this example, as the subdomains are fixed beforehand.\nWe also perform in \\cref{exp:corner} an experiment for a smooth problem, where the errors are not localized, illustrating the role of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$. To do so, we also compare the local scheme against a classical adaptive method, where after each mesh refinement the problem is solved again on the whole domain. The classical method we refer to is given by \\cref{alg:classical}.\nSecond, we investigate the efficiency of the new local algorithm for non smooth problems in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym,exp:bndlayer_notsym}. For such examples, that are the target of our method, the local scheme performs better than the classical one. We conclude in \\cref{exp:nonlin} with a nonlinear problem, where \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} do not apply but \\cref{alg:local} can nevertheless be employed in conjunction with a Newton scheme.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[!tbhp]\n\t\\caption{ClassicalScheme($\\mathfrak{T}_1$)}\n\t\\label{alg:classical}\n\t\\begin{algorithmic}\n\t\t\\State Find $\\overline{u}_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\overline{u}_1,v_1,\\mathfrak{T}_1,0)=(f,v_1)_1$ for all $v_1\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_1)$.\n\t\t\\For{$k=2,\\ldots,M$}\n\t\t\\State $(\\mathfrak{T}_k,\\widehat{\\mathfrak{T}}_{k}) = \\text{LocalDomain}(\\overline{u}_{k-1},\\mathfrak{T}_{k-1})$.\n\t\t\\State Find $\\overline{u}_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ solution to $\\mathcal{B}(\\overline{u}_k,v_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k,0)=(f,v_k)_1$ for all $v_k\\in V(\\mathfrak{T}_k)$.\n\t\t\\EndFor\n\t\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\nIn all the experiments we use $\\mathbb P_1$ elements ($\\ell=1$ in \\eqref{eq:defVT}) on a simplicial mesh with penalization parameter $\\eta_\\sigma=10$, the diffusive and convective fluxes $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ are computed with $\\mathcalligra{r}=0$ (see \\eqref{eq:RTN}). Furthermore, $\\bm{\\beta}$ is always such that $\\nabla\\cdot\\bm{\\beta}=0$. These choices give $\\eta_{C,1,K}=\\eta_{C,2,K}=\\tilde\\eta_{C,1,K}=0$. For an estimator $\\eta_{*,K}$ we define $\\eta_{*}^2=\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\eta_{*,K}^2$.\nSimilarly to \\cite{ESV10}, if $A=\\varepsilon I_2$ and $\\bm{\\beta}$ is constant then for $v_k\\in H^1(\\mathcal{M}_k)$ the augmented norm is well estimated by \n\\begin{align}\n\\nBp{v_k}\\leq \\nB{v_k}_{\\oplus'}&= \\nB{v_k}+\\varepsilon^{-1\/2}\\Vert\\bm{\\beta}\\Vert_2\\nLd{v_k}\\\\\n&\\quad +\\frac{1}{2}\\left(\\sum_{K\\in\\mathcal{M}_k}\\left(\\sum_{\\sigma\\in\\mathcal{F}_K\\cap\\mathcal{F}_{k,i}}\\tilde m_K^{1\/2} C_{t,K,\\sigma}^{1\/2}\\nLds{\\jump{v_k}\\bm{\\beta}\\cdot\\bm{n}_\\sigma}\\right)^2\\right)^{1\/2}.\n\\end{align}\nHence, in the numerical experiments we consider the computable norm $\\nB{\\cdot}_{\\oplus'}$. The effectivity indexes of the error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde \\eta$ from \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} are defined as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:effind}\n\\frac{\\eta}{\\nB{u-u_k}} \\qquad\\text{and}\\qquad  \\frac{\\tilde\\eta}{\\nB{u-u_k}_{\\oplus'}},\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively. For the solution $\\overline u_k$ of the classical algorithm we use the error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde \\eta$ from \\cite{ESV10}. They are equivalent to the estimators presented in this paper except that for $\\overline u_k$ we have $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1,K}=\\eta_{\\Gamma,2,K}=0$, as in this case the reconstructed fluxes are in $H_{\\divop}(\\Omega)$. The effectivity indexes for $\\overline u_k$ are as in \\eqref{eq:effind} but with $u_k$ replaced by $\\overline u_k$. The numerical experiments have been performed with the help of the C++ library \\texttt{libMesh} \\cite{KPS06}.\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Problem shifting from localized to nonlocalized errors}\\label{exp:conv}\nWe investigate an example in two different locality regimes. First, the errors are confined in a small region and then they are distributed in the whole domain. We will study the effects of this transition on the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$.\n\nWe solve \\eqref{eq:elliptic} in $\\Omega=[0,1]\\times [0,1]$ with $A=I_2$, $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$ and $\\mu=1$. The force term $f$ is chosen so that the exact solution reads\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:solsmooth}\n\tu(\\bm{x})=e^{-\\kappa ||\\bm{x}||_2}\\left( x_1-\\frac{1-e^{-\\kappa x_1}}{1-e^{-\\kappa}}\\right)\\left(x_2-\\frac{1-e^{-\\kappa x_2}}{1-e^{-\\kappa}} \\right),\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\kappa=100$ or $\\kappa=10$. When $\\kappa=100$ the solution has a narrow peak and the errors are localized around that region, when $\\kappa=10$ the solution is smoother and the errors are distributed in the whole domain. See \\cref{fig:sol_conv_100,fig:sol_conv_10}.\n\nFirst, we investigate the convergence rate of the error estimators and then we comment on the size of the new error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ when the errors are localized or not, i.e. when $\\kappa=100$ or $\\kappa=10$.\nWe define two domains $\\Omega_1,\\Omega_2$ as follows: $\\Omega_1=\\Omega$ and $\\bm{x}\\in\\Omega_2$ if $\\Vert\\bm{x}\\Vert_\\infty\\leq 1\/2$, see \\cref{fig:domains_priori}. \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/sol_sing_1e-2.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{$u(\\bm{x})$ for $\\kappa=100$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:sol_conv_100}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/sol_sing_1e-1.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{$u(\\bm{x})$ for $\\kappa=10$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:sol_conv_10}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=\\textwidth]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_1_k_1-2.png}};\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Domains $\\Omega_2\\subset\\Omega_1$.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:domains_priori}\n\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ in \\cref{eq:solsmooth} for two values of $\\kappa$ and local domains $\\Omega_1$, $\\Omega_2$.}\n\t\\label{fig:sol_dom_conv}\n\\end{figure}\nLet $h$ be the grid size of $\\widehat{\\mathcal M}_1$, then the grid size of $\\widehat{\\mathcal{M}}_2$ is $h\/2$. \nFor different choices of $h$ we run \\cref{alg:local} without calling LocalDomain, since the local domains and meshes are chosen beforehand. After the second iteration we compute the exact energy error and the error estimators. The results are reported in \\cref{tab:conv_a,tab:conv_b} for $\\kappa=100$ and $\\kappa=10$, respectively. We recall that $\\eta_{NC}$ measures the non conformity of $u_k$, $\\eta_{R}$ measures the error in the energy conservation, $\\eta_{DF}$ the difference between $-A\\nabla u_k$ and the reconstructed diffusive flux $\\bt_k$, $\\eta_U,\\tilde\\eta_{U}$ are upwind errors and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1},\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measure the jumps of $\\bt_k,\\bq_k$ across subdomains boundaries.\n\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},head to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $h$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} &$\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\tlate after last line=\\\\\\toprule Order & $1$ & $1$ & $2$ & $1$ & $2$ & $2$ & \\text{$0.5$} & \\text{$0.5$} \\\\\\midrule]\n\t{data\/corner\/local_sing_1e-2_diff_1e0_a_posteriori_data.csv}{}\n\t{$2^{-{\\the\\numexpr\\thecsvrow+5\\relax}}$ & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{Convergence rate of error estimators for $\\kappa=100$.}\n\t\\label{tab:conv_a}\n\\end{table}\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},\n\thead to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $h$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} & $\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\tlate after last line=\\\\\\toprule Order & $1$ & $1$ & $2$ & $1$ & $1.5$ & $1.5$ & \\text{$0.5$} & \\text{$0.5$} \\\\\\midrule]\n\t{data\/corner\/local_sing_1e-1_diff_1e0_a_posteriori_data.csv}{}\n\t{$2^{-{\\the\\numexpr\\thecsvrow+5\\relax}}$ & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{Convergence rate of error estimators for $\\kappa=10$.}\n\t\\label{tab:conv_b}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nWe see that the energy error converges with order one, as predicted by the a priori error analysis of \\cite{AbR19}. We also observe that the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measuring the reconstructed fluxes' jumps across subdomains' boundaries have a lower rate of convergence. Therefore, the error estimators are not efficient, in the sense that they cannot be bounded from above by the energy error multiplied by a mesh-size independent constant.\nHowever, the relative size of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ compared to the other estimators gives an information on the suitability of the local scheme:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item if $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ are comparable to the other estimators one should use the local scheme. The typical situation is when the errors are localized, with local regions covering the large error regions (see \\cref{fig:sol_conv_100,fig:domains_priori} and \\cref{tab:conv_a});\n\t\\item if the relative size of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ is larger than the other estimators, this is an indication that one should switch from local to classical method. The typical situation is when the errors are not (or less) localized (see \\cref{fig:sol_conv_10,fig:domains_priori} and \\cref{tab:conv_b}). On purpose we did choose a local domain that is too small to cover the error region.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nIn the next experiments we let the scheme select the local subdomains on the fly, using the fixed energy fraction marking strategy \\cite[Section 4.2]{Dor96} implemented in the $\\text{LocalDomain}(u_k,\\mathfrak{T}_k)$ routine of \\cref{alg:local}. First, we revisit the example of \\cref{exp:conv}. Second, we consider two examples where the errors are localized, illustrating the efficiency of the algorithm.\n\n\n\\subsection{A nonlocal smooth problem}\\label{exp:corner}\nConsidering the same problem as in \\cref{exp:conv} with $\\kappa=10$, we run the local and classical schemes for $k=1,\\ldots,15$ starting with a uniform mesh of 128 elements. Here, we employ the automatic subdomains' identification algorithm and the goal is to show when one should switch from local to nonlocal methods.\nAs the error is distributed in the whole domain, it is not possible to chose the subdomains $\\Omega_{k}$ so that the errors at their boundaries are negligible. Consequently, the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ will dominate.\nIndeed, we see in \\cref{tab:dom} that the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ measuring the reconstructed fluxes' jumps dominate the other estimators.\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\csvreader[\n\tbefore reading=\\small\\centering\\sisetup{table-number-alignment=left,table-parse-only,zero-decimal-to-integer,round-mode=figures,round-precision=2,output-exponent-marker = \\text{e},fixed-exponent=0},\n\ttabular={lSSSSSSSS},\n\thead to column names,\n\ttable head=\\toprule $k$ & \\text{$\\nB{u-u_k}$} & $\\eta_{NC}$ & $\\eta_{R}$ & $\\eta_{DF}$ & $\\eta_{U}$ & \\text{$\\tilde{\\eta}_{U}$} & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ & $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ \\\\\\midrule,\n\t]\n\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data_first_5_levels.csv}{}\n\t{\\level & \\erren & \\etaNC & \\etaR & \\etaDF & \\etaU & \\etatU & \\etaGu & \\etaGd}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:corner}, nonlocal smooth problem. Dominance of $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ over the other error estimators. Only the results of the first five iterations are shown, i.e. $k\\leq 5$.}\n\t\\label{tab:dom}\n\\end{table}\nThis phenomenon brings two issues into the algorithm. First, the effectivity index of the local scheme is significantly larger than the index for the classical scheme, as we illustrate in \\cref{fig:corner_effind_eta}. Second, the marking error estimator $\\eta_{M,K}$ \\cref{eq:marketa} will be larger at the boundaries of the local domains than in the large error regions; indeed, we see in \\cref{fig:corner_doms} that the local domain $\\Omega_4$ chosen by the algorithm do not correspond to a large error region but is in a neighborhood of the boundary of $\\Omega_3$, where $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ are large. For this reason the algorithm in unable to detect the high error regions and we see in \\cref{fig:corner_effenerr}, where we show the computational cost in function of the energy errors, that the error of the local method stagnates.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{semilogyaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},xlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}, log basis y=10,ymin=1,ymax=400]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA1_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{semilogyaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:corner_effind_eta}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={0}{14}] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA2FFM_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={0}{14}] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/corner\/SPA1_sing_1_diff_0_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:corner_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:corner}, nonlocal smooth problem. Effectivity indexes in function of the iteration number.}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_2_k_3.png}};\n\t\t\t\\node[opacity=0.7] at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=4cm 3cm 2.3cm 6.2cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/corner\/domains_dld_2_k_4.png}};\n\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Local domains $\\Omega_3$ (darker) and $\\Omega_4$ (brighter).}\n\t\t\\label{fig:corner_doms}\n\t\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThis example shows that if the errors are not localized then the estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ dominate, the local scheme becomes inefficient and a classical \\emph{global} method should be preferred over a local method. However, our algorithm allows to monitor the size of the error estimators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$ and $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$ and when these error estimators start to dominate the other error indicators (as seen in \\cref{tab:dom}) it provides a switching criteria.\n\n\\subsection{Reaction dominated problem}\\label{exp:bndlayer_sym}\nIn our next example we consider a symmetric problem and want to compare the local and classical schemes (\\cref{alg:local,alg:classical}) in a singularly perturbed regime. We investigate the efficiency measured as the computational cost and analyze their effectivity indexes. The setting is as follows: we solve \\eqref{eq:elliptic} in $\\Omega=[0,1]\\times [0,1]$ with $\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$, $A=\\varepsilon I_2$, $\\bm{\\beta}=(0,0)^\\top$, $\\mu=1$ and we choose $f$ such that the exact solution is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:bndlayer}\nu(\\bm{x})=e^{x_1+x_2}\\left( x_1-\\frac{1-e^{-\\zeta x_1}}{1-e^{-\\zeta}}\\right)\\left(x_2-\\frac{1-e^{-\\zeta x_2}}{1-e^{-\\zeta}} \\right),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\zeta=10^{4}$. The solution is illustrated in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sol}. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/sol_vlq.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sol}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[spy using outlines= {circle, connect spies,every spy on node\/.append style={thick}}]\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (spypoint) at (-0.1,0.15);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (magnifyglass) at (1.5,0.5);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (spypoint_bis) at (-0.03,-0.55);\n\t\t\t\t\\coordinate (magnifyglass_bis) at (1.5,-1.2);\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_1.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_2.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_3.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\node at (0,0) {\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.22\\textheight]{images\/bndlayer\/dom_4.png}};\n\t\t\t\t\\spy [WildStrawberry, size=1.3cm, magnification=4] on (spypoint) in node[fill=white] at (magnifyglass);\n\t\t\t\t\\spy [WildStrawberry, size=1.3cm, magnification=4] on (spypoint_bis) in node[fill=white] at (magnifyglass_bis);\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{First local domains $\\Omega_k$, $k=1,\\ldots,4$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_doms}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ in \\eqref{eq:bndlayer} of the reaction dominated problem and first local domains chosen by the error estimators.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nSince the problem is symmetric we have $\\nB{{\\cdot}}=\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$, but their related error estimators $\\eta$ and $\\tilde\\eta$, respectively, satisfy $\\tilde\\eta>\\eta$ and hence the effectivity index of $\\eta$ will be lower (see  \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}). \n\nStarting from a coarse mesh (128 elements), we let the two algorithms run for $k=1,\\ldots,20$. In \\cref{fig:bndlayer_doms} we show the first four subdomains $\\Omega_k$ chosen by the local scheme. Note that the local domain $\\Omega_4$ chosen by the algorithm is disconnected, while subdomain $\\Omega_3$ has an hole; as is allowed by the theory. Several of the subsequent subdomains (not displayed) are also disconnected or contain holes. The first iterations are needed to capture the boundary layer and reach the convergence regime, hence we will plot the results for $k\\geq 7$. The most expensive part of the code is the solution of linear systems by means of the conjugate gradient (CG) method preconditioned with the incomplete Cholesky factorization, followed by the computation of the potential and fluxes reconstruction and then by the evaluation of the error estimators. In the local scheme, the time spent doing these tasks is proportional to the number of elements inside each subdomain $\\Omega_k$. For the classical scheme, the cost of these tasks depends on the total number of elements in the mesh. Since the CG routine is the most expensive part, we take the time spent in it as an indicator for the computational cost.\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost}, we plot the simulation cost against the error estimator $\\eta$, for both the local and classical algorithms. Each circle or star in the figure represents an iteration $k$. We observe that the local scheme provides similar error bounds but at a smaller cost. The effectivity index of $\\eta$ at each iteration $k$ is shown in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etaeffind}, we can observe that the local scheme has an effectivity index similar to the classical scheme.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Error estimator $\\eta$}, ylabel={CG cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=etafull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=etafull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{CG cost versus $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=5,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etaeffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Computational cost vs. $\\eta$ and effectivity index in function of the iteration number.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etacost_etaeffind}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr} we exhibit the cost against the exact energy error and we notice that for some values of $k$ the mesh is refined but the error stays almost constant. This phenomenon significantly increases the simulation cost of the classical scheme without improving the solution. In contrast, the cost of the local scheme increases only marginally. Dividing the two curves in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr} we obtain the relative speed-up, which is plotted in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_speedup}. We note that as the error decreases the local scheme becomes faster than the classical scheme.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={CG cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{CG cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={Speed-up}, x dir=reverse,log basis x={2},log basis y={2},ymax=8, ytick={2,4,8,16},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=black,line width=1.0 pt,mark=none] table[x=erren,y=speeden,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/speedup_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21.csv};\\addlegendentry{Speed-up}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_speedup}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Computational cost vs. energy norm error and speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effenerr_speedup}\n\\end{figure}\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_etateffind} we plot the effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$. As expected, for this symmetric problem, it is worse than the effectivity of $\\eta$. Finally, we run the same experiment but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon=10^{-4},10^{-6},10^{-8}$ and display in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_sym_eta_diff_eps} the effectivity index of $\\eta$. We note that it always remains below 4.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=15,,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_etateffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend columns=2, ,legend style={at={(0,0)},anchor=south west,draw=none,fill=none},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=4.0,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_4_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-4}$}\n\t\t\t\\addlegendimage{empty legend}\\addlegendentry{}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=NavyBlue,mark=triangle,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_8_b_0_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-8}$}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$ for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_eta_diff_eps}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, reaction dominated problem. Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ and of $\\eta$ but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_sym_effetat_effeta}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Convection dominated problem}\\label{exp:bndlayer_notsym}\nIn this section we perform the same experiment as in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym} but instead of choosing $\\bm{\\beta}=(0,0)^\\top$ we set $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$, hence we solve a nonsymmetric singularly perturbed problem. The linear systems are solved with the GMRES method preconditioned with the incomplete LU factorization. As in \\cref{exp:bndlayer_sym}, we investigate the effectivity indexes and efficiency of the local and classical schemes.\n\nFor convection dominated problems, the norm $\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$ is more appropriate than $\\nB{{\\cdot}}$ since it measures also the error in the advective direction. In \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost}, we plot the simulation cost versus the error estimator $\\tilde\\eta$, we remark that again the local scheme provides similar error bounds at smaller cost. The effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ is displayed in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etateffind}, we note that the local and classical schemes have again similar effectivity indexes.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Error estimator $\\tilde\\eta$}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=etatfull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=etatfull,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=15,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etateffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Computational cost vs. $\\tilde\\eta$ and effectivity index in function of the iteration number.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etatcost_etateffind}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr_speedup} we plot the simulation cost versus the error in the augmented norm $\\nBp{{\\cdot}}$ and the relative speed-up. We again observe that the local scheme is faster. \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Aumented norm error.}, ylabel={GMRES cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erraug,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erraug,y=linsolvertot,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{GMRES cost versus augmented norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(0,1)},anchor=north west},\n\t\t\txlabel={Augmented norm error.}, ylabel={Speed-up}, x dir=reverse,log basis x={2},log basis y={2},ymax=8,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot+[color=black,line width=1.0 pt,mark=none] table[x=erraug,y=speeden,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/speedup_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21.csv};\\addlegendentry{Speed-up}\n\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_speedup}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Computational cost vs. augmented norm error and speed-up in function of the error.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_effenerr_speedup}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFor completeness, we plot in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind} the effectivity index of $\\eta$. We see that it is completely off. This illustrates that this estimator does not capture the convective error and is hence not appropriate for convection dominated problems. Then, we run again the same experiment but considering different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon=10^{-4}, 10^{-6}, 10^{-8}$ and display the effectivity indexes of $\\tilde\\eta$ in \\cref{fig:bndlayer_notsym_diff_eps}.\n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=800,,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=eff,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA1_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\eta$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\\begin{axis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth,legend columns=2, ,legend style={at={(1,1)},anchor=north east,draw=none,fill=none},\n\t\t\txlabel={Iteration $k$}, ylabel={Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$},ymin=0,ymax=20,label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_4_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-4}$}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}] \n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_6_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-6}$}\n\t\t\t\\addlegendimage{empty legend}\\addlegendentry{}\n\t\t\t\\addplot[color=NavyBlue,mark=triangle,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=level,y=efft,col sep=comma,select coords between index={6}{19}]  \t\n\t\t\t{data\/bndlayer\/SPA2FFM_sing_4_diff_8_b_1_nref_3_lay_21_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{$\\varepsilon=10^{-8}$}\n\t\t\t\\end{axis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Effectivity index of $\\tilde\\eta$ for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_diff_eps}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{\\Cref{exp:bndlayer_notsym}, convection dominated problem. Effectivity index of $\\eta$ and of $\\tilde\\eta$ but for different diffusion coefficients $\\varepsilon$.}\n\t\\label{fig:bndlayer_notsym_etaeffind_diff_eps}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{A nonlinear nonsmooth problem with multiple local structures}\\label{exp:nonlin}\nWe conclude with an experiment on a nonlinear nonsmooth problem, where the diffusion tensor is solution dependent and has multiple discontinuities, hence the solution presents several local structures. More precisely, we solve \\cref{eq:elliptic} with $\\Omega=[-3\/2,3\/2]\\times [-3\/2,3\/2]$, $\\bm{\\beta}=-(1,1)^\\top$, $\\mu=1$ and $f(\\bm{x})=\\nld{\\bm{x}}^2$. The diffusion tensor is $A(u,\\bm{x})=A_1(u)A_2(\\bm{x})$, with $A_1(u)=1\/\\sqrt{1+u^2}$. We divide $\\Omega$ in nine squares of size $1\/2\\times 1\/2$ and $A_2(\\bm{x})$ alternates between $1$ and $0.01$, in a checkerboard-like manner. A reference solution is displayed in \\cref{fig:nonlinsol}.\n\n\\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound} do not apply straightforwardly as the problem is nonlinear. Nevertheless, \\cref{alg:local} can be used in combination with a Newton scheme as it is shown in \\cite{AbR19}. In this experiment we investigate the efficiency of the error estimators in identifying the local subdomains for a nonlinear nonsmooth problem with multiple local structures. Starting with a $32\\times 32$ elements mesh, we run the code and let it automatically select the subdomains for twenty iterations. We do the same with the classical \\cref{alg:classical} and compare the results in \\cref{fig:nonlin_eff}, where we display the cost of the Newton method versus the error, computed in energy norm, against a reference solution. We remark as the local method is faster.\n \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm, clip, width=0.7\\textwidth]{images\/nonlin\/sol.png}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ of the nonlinear nonsmooth problem.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:nonlinsol}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\t\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.98]\n\t\t\t\t\\begin{loglogaxis}[height=0.66*0.9\\textwidth,width=0.9\\textwidth, x dir=reverse,legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east,fill=none,draw=none},\n\t\t\t\t\txlabel={Energy norm error.}, ylabel={Newton cost [sec.]},log basis x={2},label style={font=\\normalsize},tick label style={font=\\normalsize},legend image post style={scale=1},legend style={nodes={scale=1, transform shape},draw=none}]\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot[color=OrangeRed,mark=o,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table [x=erren,y=linsystemtot,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/nonlin\/spa_2_nref_5_nlev_20_nlay1_2_nlay2_2_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Local}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\addplot[color=ForestGreen,mark=star,line width=1.0 pt,mark size=2.5 pt] table[x=erren,y=linsystemtot,col sep=comma] \n\t\t\t\t\t{data\/nonlin\/spa_1_nref_5_nlev_20_a_posteriori_data.csv};\\addlegendentry{Classical}\n\t\t\t\t\\end{loglogaxis}\n\t\t\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\t\\caption{Newton cost versus energy norm error.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:nonlin_eff}\n\t\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\end{center}\n\t\\caption{Solution $u(\\bm{x})$ and efficiency experiment on the nonlinear nonsmooth problem of \\cref{exp:nonlin}.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\nIn this paper we have derived a local adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method for the scheme introduced in \\cite{AbR19}. The scheme, defined in \\cref{sec:localg}, relies on a coarse solution which is successively improved by solving a sequence of localized elliptic problems in confined subdomains, where the mesh is refined. Starting from error estimators for the symmetric weighted interior penalty Galerkin scheme based on conforming potential and fluxes reconstructions, allowing for flux jumps across the subdomains boundaries we have derived new estimators for the local method and proved their reliability in \\cref{thm:energynormbound,thm:augmentednormbound}. An important property of the original estimators (for nonlocal schemes) is conserved: the absence of unknown constants.\nNumerical experiments confirm the error estimators' effectivity for singularly perturbed convection-reaction dominated problems and illustrate the efficiency of the local scheme when compared to a classical adaptive algorithm, where at each iteration the solution on the whole computational domain must be recomputed. We also showed that the growth of boundary error indicators (the reason why efficiency cannot be proved in general) can be monitored in order to switch from local to a nonlocal method. Switching automatically from local to classical scheme, based on the indicators $\\eta_{\\Gamma,1}$, $\\eta_{\\Gamma,2}$, could be easily integrated in a finite element code. Testing such an integrated code could be of interest to investigate in the future.\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments} The authors are partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, under grant No. $200020\\_172710$.\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nTopological complexity ($\\operatorname{TC}$) is an invariant introduced by Michael Farber in \\cite{farberTC} connecting a motion planning problem in robotics with algebraic topology.  Intuitively, we think of topological complexity as the smallest number of ``rules'' needed to form a continuous motion planning algorithm on a topological space $X$.  For robotics, we think of $X$ as the configuration space of some robot, and our motion planning algorithm outputs paths between the configurations in $X$. Continuity then requires that the paths remain ``close'' when the configurations are ``close'' in some sense.  It turns out that $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ only depends on the topology of $X$, and so topologists study the invariant applied to various topological spaces in the abstract sense rather than as configuration spaces of specific robots.\n\nIn the years since its introduction, several different variations of topological complexity have been studied pertaining to different motion planning problems.  Of interest to us is relative topological complexity.  Here, we restrict which configurations are allowed to be starting and ending configurations, but we permit the path to move within a larger configuration space.  This variant is mentioned in Farber's book on the subject \\cite{farber}, and it is used there to prove that $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ is a homotopy invariant.  In this paper, we restrict our attention further to a certain method for choosing starting and ending configurations.\n\nOur invariant is motivated by the following motion planning problem.  Suppose there was a robot with configuration space $X$, and the robot is given to us in an arbitrary configuration within $X$.  Our goal is to plan the robot's motion to a configuration within some specified subset $Y \\subseteq X$.  Then the relative topological complexity of the pair $(X,Y)$ is the smallest number of ``rules'' needed to form a continuous motion planning algorithm on $X$ where the paths must end in $Y$.  This restriction provides two major advantages.  First, we are able to develop some standard tools for estimating this value, which we do in Section 2.  Then, there are natural relationships between this value and both $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ and the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of $X$ which we explore in Section 3.\n\nIn Section 4, we apply this new variant of relative topological complexity to pairs of real projective spaces.  In so doing, we draw a deep connection to the existence of certain axial maps.  We draw this connection explicitly in Theorem \\ref{axial}.  This connection follows a similar logic to \\cite{farberRP}, where Farber, Tabachnikov, and Yuzvinsky connect the immersion dimension of real projective spaces to their topological complexity using axial maps.\n\nFinally, in Section 5, we apply this new variant to pairs of spatial polygon spaces.  These have been studied by Hausmann and Knutson in \\cite{hausknut} as well as by Davis in \\cite{davis}.  In our study, we introduce new notation for interesting submanifolds of the spatial polygon spaces for consideration using our variant.  We also compute the relative topological complexity for pairs of spatial polygon spaces, relying upon the symplectic structure of these spaces.\n\nThis work is a piece of the author's PhD thesis under the supervision of Don Davis.  We are grateful for his guidance and support throughout this process, and for giving productive comments on early drafts.  We would also like to thank Jean-Claude Hausmann, Jesus Gonzalez, Steve Scheirer, Alan Hylton, and Brian Klatt for various productive and interesting conversations over the course of this project.\n\n\\section{Basic Estimates}\nWe begin by reframing the intuitions established in the introduction in terms of the Schwarz genus of a fibration.  This was introduced by Schwarz in \\cite{schwarz}.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $f:E\\to B$ be a fibration.  The \\textit{Schwarz genus of $f$}, denoted $\\operatorname{genus}(f)$, is the smallest $k$ such that there exists $\\{U_i \\}_{i=1}^k$ an open cover of $B$ along with sections $s_i:U_i \\to E$ of $f$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nTo apply this to topological complexity, note that there is a natural fibration $p:PX\\to X\\times X$ where $PX$ is the space of paths in $X$.  This fibration assigns to each path in $X$ the endpoints, i.e. $p(\\sigma)=(\\sigma(0),\\sigma(1))$.  A section of this fibration is a way to assign a path to a pair of points in $X$, aligning this with a motion planning rule in the intuitive notion.  Formally, we are left with the following definition for $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $p:PX\\to X\\times X$ be the fibration defined above.  Then, the \\textit{topological complexity of $X$} is the Schwarz genus of $p$, or in other words $\\operatorname{TC}(X)=\\operatorname{genus}(p)$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nIt is worth noting that the definition we are using is the unreduced version of topological complexity used by Farber in \\cite{farber}.  Many researchers in this field use a reduced version of topological complexity where $\\overline{\\operatorname{TC}}(X) = \\operatorname{TC}(X)-1$.  We will use the unreduced version throughout this paper.\n\nIn addition to $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$, Farber also introduced a relative topological complexity for general subsets of $X\\times X$.  Again, this is defined in terms of Schwarz genus, but here the motion planning rule is to only move between select pairs of points within $X \\times X$.\n\n\\begin{defn}{\\cite{farber}}\nIf $A \\subseteq X \\times X$, the \\textit{relative topological complexity}, denoted $\\operatorname{TC}_X(A)$, is the Schwarz genus of the pullback fibration over $A$ induced by the inclusion map.\n\\end{defn}\n\nIf we consider $A$ as the set of pairs of allowed configurations in the intuitive notion of relative topological complexity, then this tracks the smallest number of rules needed to move through $X$ where the pairs of starting and ending points must lie in $A$.\n\n\\subsection{Relative Topological Complexity of a Pair}\n\nAs a variant of relative topological complexity, we consider the following problem.  Suppose we had a specified set of target configurations $Y \\subseteq X$.  We wish to determine the smallest number of rules needed to create a continuous motion planner from any configuration in $X$ to a configuration in $Y$.  This natural question is answered by our new variant.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $Y \\subseteq X$.  Let $P_{X\\times Y} = \\{\\gamma\\in PX|\\gamma(0)\\in X \\text{ and }\\gamma(1)\\in Y\\}$.  There is a natural fibration $P_{X\\times Y} \\overset{\\pi}{\\longrightarrow} X \\times Y$ where $\\pi(\\gamma)=(\\gamma(0),\\gamma(1))$.  Then, the \\textit{relative topological complexity of the pair $(X,Y)$} is the Schwarz genus of $\\pi$.  In other words, $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)=\\operatorname{genus}(\\pi)$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nOne can also think of the fibration $\\pi$ as the pullback of the usual topological complexity fibration induced by the inclusion map $X\\times Y \\hookrightarrow X\\times X$.  Doing so, we can immediately get a convenient upper bound on $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$ thanks to a theorem from Schwarz.\n\n\\begin{prop}{\\cite[Prop 7]{schwarz}}\nLet $p:E\\to B$ be a fibration and suppose $i:A\\to B$ is a continuous map.  Let $i^*p:i^*E\\to A$ be the pullback fibration over $A$ induced by $i$.  Then, $\\operatorname{genus}(i^*p) \\leq \\operatorname{genus}(p)$.\n\\end{prop}\n\nWe can easily get the following corollary to this proposition.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{RelTC<TC}\nFor $Y \\subseteq X$, $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X)$.\n\\end{cor}\n\nThis provides our first upper bound on relative topological complexity of a pair.  Both Farber and Schwarz give other methods for finding upper bounds of these values (in \\cite{farber}, and \\cite{schwarz} respectively).  We will refer to Schwarz here as we are framing our results primarily in terms of Schwarz genus.\n\n\\begin{thm}{\\cite[Thm 5]{schwarz}}\\label{schwarzub}\nLet $F\\to E \\xrightarrow{p} B$ be a fibration where $\\pi_j(F)=0$ for $j<s$.  Then, $$\\operatorname{genus}(p)<\\tfrac{\\dim(B)+1}{s+1}+1$$\n\\end{thm}\n\nSome easy corollaries of this are listed below:\n\\begin{cor}\\label{schwarzubcor}\n\tLet $\\pi:P_{X\\times Y} \\to X \\times Y$ be the fibration defining $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$.  Suppose $\\pi_j(X)=0$ for $j\\leq s$.  Then:\n\t\\begin{enumerate}\n\t\t\\item $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) <\\tfrac{\\dim(X)+\\dim(Y)+1}{s+1}+1$\n\t\t\\item $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\dim(X)+\\dim(Y)+1$\n\t\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{cor}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFor (1), note that in the fibration defining $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$, the fiber is $\\Omega X$, the loopspace of $X$.  Since $\\pi:P_{X\\times Y} \\to X\\times Y$ is the pullback of that fibration, it has the same fiber.  Thus, the condition that we need from Theorem \\ref{schwarzub} is that $\\pi_j(\\Omega X) =0$ for $j<s$.  This is the same as $\\pi_j(X)=0$ for $j\\leq s$, which is as we assumed.\n\nFor (2), we need only notice that $\\frac{\\dim(X) + \\dim(Y) +1}{s+1} +1 \\leq \\dim(X) + \\dim(Y) +2$.  Thus, $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) < \\dim(X) + \\dim(Y) +2$, so $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\dim(X) + \\dim(Y) +1$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn addition to upper bounds, we can use cohomology to determine lower bounds on these values.  Schwarz provides a cohomological lower bound on Schwarz genus in \\cite{schwarz}, but Farber improves upon this when he provides a lower bound for $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ in \\cite{farber}.  We follow Farber's example and prove a similar result here for $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$, and the proof adds some details that can be useful in computing lower bounds using cohomology.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nThe zero-divisors of the diagonal inclusion map are defined as $$Z(X\\times Y) = \\ker (H^*(X\\times Y) \\overset{\\Delta_Y^*}{\\longrightarrow} H^*(Y)).$$ \n\\end{defn}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nNotice that $P_{X\\times Y} \\simeq Y$ and this homotopy equivalence is induced by the map $c$ sending points in $Y$ to their constant maps in $P_{X\\times Y}$.  Moreover, we can use the commutative diagram below to give an equivalent definition for $Z(X\\times Y)$.\n\n{\\centering\n\\begin{tikzcd}\n  & & P_{X\\times Y} \\arrow[d,\"\\pi\"]\\\\\n Y \\arrow[urr,\"c\",bend left=10] \\arrow[r,\"\\Delta\"] \\arrow[rr,\"\\Delta_Y\"',bend right] & Y\\times Y \\arrow[r, \"\\iota \\times \\text{id}\"] & X \\times Y \n\\end{tikzcd}\n\\par}\n\nUsing the above diagram, we get that $Z(X\\times Y) = \\ker(H^*(X\\times Y) \\overset{\\pi^*}{\\longrightarrow} H^*(P_{X\\times Y}))$.\n\nAlso, if we take cohomology with coefficients in a field, we can use the Kunneth theorem for cohomology to get that $Z(X \\times Y) = \\ker(H^*(X)\\otimes H^*(Y) \\overset{\\iota^* \\otimes id^*}{\\longrightarrow} H^*(Y))$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{thm}\\label{cohomlb}\nIf there is a non-zero, $k$-fold product of elements in $Z(X \\times Y)$, then we have that $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) >k$.\n\\end{thm}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAssume $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq k$.  Then, take $\\{U_j\\}_{j=1}^k$ to be an open cover of $X\\times Y$ such that for each $j$, there exists $s_j:U_j \\to P_{X\\times Y}$ with $s_j$ a section of $\\pi$.  Then, for each $j$, we get the following commutative diagram:\n\n{\\centering\n\\begin{tikzcd}\n\\pi^{-1}(U_j) \\ar[r,\"a\"] \\ar[d,\"\\pi_j\"] & P_{X\\times Y} \\ar[d,\"\\pi\"] \\\\\nU_j \\ar[u,bend left,dashed, \"s_j\"] \\ar[r,\"b\"] & X\\times Y\n\\end{tikzcd}\n\\par}\n\nThis induces the following diagram in cohomology:\n\n{\\centering\n\\begin{tikzcd}\nH^*(\\pi^{-1}(U_j)) & \\ar[l,\"a^*\"']  H^*(P_{X\\times Y})  \\\\\nH^*(U_j) \\ar[u,\"\\pi_j^*\"']& H^*(X\\times Y) \\ar[l,\"b^*\"'] \\ar[u,\"\\pi^*\"']\n\\end{tikzcd}\n\\par}\n\nSince $\\pi_j$ has a section, $\\pi_j^*$ is injective.  So, if we take $\\alpha \\in Z(X\\times Y)$, we have that $\\pi^*(\\alpha)=0 \\implies a^*(\\pi^*(\\alpha))=0$.  By the diagram above, this implies that $\\pi_j^*(b^*(\\alpha))=0$, but $\\pi_j^*$ in injective, so we see that $b^*(\\alpha)=0$.  Thus, by exactness, $\\alpha \\in \\operatorname{Im}(H^*(X\\times Y, U_j) \\to H^*(X\\times Y))$.  We can then use this in the following diagram:\n\n{\\centering\n\\begin{tikzcd}\nH^*(X\\times Y\\, , U_1) \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes H^*(X\\times Y\\, , U_k) \\ar[r] \\ar[d] & H^*(X\\times Y, \\bigcup\\limits_{j=1}^k U_j) = 0 \\ar[d]\\\\\nH^*(X\\times Y) \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes H^*(X\\times Y) \\ar[r,\"\\Delta^*\"] & H^*(X\\times Y)\n\\end{tikzcd}\n\\par}\n\nFollowing the diagram, if $\\alpha_1 \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes \\alpha_k \\in H^*(X\\times Y) \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes H^*(X\\times Y)$ is such that $\\alpha_j \\in Z(X\\times Y)$, then $\\alpha_1 \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes \\alpha_k$ pulls back to $\\widetilde{\\alpha}_1 \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes \\widetilde{\\alpha}_k \\in H^*(X\\times Y\\, , U_1) \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes H^*(X\\times Y\\, , U_k)$.  By commutativity, we get that $\\Delta^*(\\alpha_1 \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes \\alpha_k) = 0$.\n\nThus, by contrapositive, if we have elements $\\alpha_1, \\cdots, \\alpha_k \\in Z(X\\times Y)$ such that $\\Delta^*(\\alpha_1 \\otimes \\cdots \\otimes \\alpha_k) \\neq 0$, we must have that $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) >k$.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe primary takeaway of the above result is that we can compute cohomological lower bounds using knowledge of the cup product in $Y$ and knowledge of the inclusion-induced map $\\iota^*:H^*(X) \\to H^*(Y)$.  Symplectic structures often exhibit useful knowledge of the inclusion-induced map in a powerful way.  Inspired by \\cite[Thm 1]{farberRP}, we get the following theorem.\n\n\\begin{thm}\\label{sympTC}\nLet $(X,\\omega_X)$ be a simply-connected, closed, symplectic manifold of dimension $2n$ with submanifold $Y$ of dimension $2m$ carrying a symplectic form $\\omega_Y$ such that $\\iota^*([\\omega_X])=[\\omega_Y]$.  Then $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) = n+m+ 1$.\n\\end{thm}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFirst, note that $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq n+m+1$ via Corollary \\ref{schwarzubcor}, since $X$ is simply-connected.\n\nFor the lower bound, consider the cohomology classes $[\\omega_X]$ and $[\\omega_Y]$.  Since $\\iota^*[\\omega_X] = [\\omega_Y]$, $[\\omega_X]\\otimes 1 - 1 \\otimes [\\omega_Y]$ is a zero-divisor in $Z(X \\times Y)$.  Expanding via the binomial theorem, $([\\omega_X] \\otimes 1 - 1 \\otimes [\\omega_Y])^{n+m} = (-1)^m\\binom{n+m}{m}[\\omega_X]^n \\otimes [\\omega_Y]^m \\neq 0$.  Thus, $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) > n+m$ by Theorem \\ref{cohomlb}.  The result follows.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nAs an example, notice that $\\mathbb{C}P^n$ is a closed, simply-connected, symplectic manifold and also that $\\mathbb{C}P^m \\subset \\mathbb{C}P^n$ is a symplectic submanifold where the natural inclusion map satisfies that $\\iota^*([\\omega_{\\mathbb{C}P^n}]) = [\\omega_{\\mathbb{C}P^m}]$.  Thus, we get an easy corollary.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{CPn}\n$\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{C}P^n,\\mathbb{C}P^m) = n+m+1$.\n\\end{cor}\n\nThis corollary generalizes the result from \\cite[Cor 2]{farberRP} that $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{C}P^n) = 2n+1$.  In general, projective spaces provide examples where the inclusion-induced map is well-behaved in cohomology.  We will return to the case of real projective spaces in Section 4.\n\n\\section{Relationship with Other Invariants}\n\nThe other two invariants we consider here are $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ and the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category (L-S cat) of $X$, denoted $\\operatorname{cat}(X)$.  We defined $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ earlier, but we can use the Schwarz genus to give a definition for $\\operatorname{cat}(X)$ that works well for our purposes.\n\nFor a pointed space $(X,x_0)$, there is a natural fibration $p_0:P_0X \\to X\\times \\{x_0\\}$ where $P_0X$ is the space $\\{\\sigma \\in PX \\, | \\, \\sigma(1)=x_0\\}$.  Then $p_0(\\sigma)=(\\sigma(0),x_0)$ defines the fibration.  Notice that this is again the pullback of the fibration we used to define $\\operatorname{TC}(X)$ over the inclusion map $X \\times \\{x_0\\} \\hookrightarrow X\\times X$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $p_0:P_0X\\to X\\times \\{x_0\\}$ be the fibration defined above.  Then, the \\textit{Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of $X$} is the Schwarz genus of $p_0$, denoted by $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X)$ or $\\operatorname{cat}(X)$ if the basepoint is implied.\n\\end{defn}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe usual definition of $\\operatorname{cat}(X)$ is the smallest number of sets $U_i \\subseteq X$ needed to cover $X$ where $U_i$ is contractible in $X$.  In \\cite[Thm 18]{schwarz}, Schwarz proves that when $p:E\\to B$ is a fibration with $E$ contractible, then $\\operatorname{genus}(p)=\\operatorname{cat}(B)$.  In the above fibration, $P_0X$ is contractible, so this definition corresponds to the usual definition of L-S cat.  We will need a quick lemma to show that our definition is also independent of the choice of basepoint under reasonable conditions.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{lem}\\label{catequiv}\nIf $X$ is path-connected, then for any $x_0, y_0 \\in X$, $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X)=\\operatorname{cat}_{y_0}(X)$.\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nIt suffices to show that $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X)\\leq \\operatorname{cat}_{y_0}(X)$ by symmetry.\n\nSuppose $\\operatorname{cat}_{y_0}(X)=k$.  Then there is an open cover of $X\\times \\{y_0\\}$, say $\\{U_i\\}_{i=1}^k$ with sections $s_i:U_i \\to P_0$.  To construct an open cover of $X\\times \\{x_0\\}$, let $V_i=\\{(u,x_0)\\, | \\, (u,y_0) \\in U_i\\}$.  Then, since $X$ is path-connected, there exists some path $\\sigma$ such that $\\sigma(0)=y_0$, and $\\sigma(1)=x_0$.  The map $s_i':V_i \\to P_0$ given by $s_i'(u,x_0)=s_i(u,y_0)\\cdot \\sigma$, where $\\cdot$ denotes concatenation, is a continuous section of the fibration for $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X)$.  Thus, $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X)\\leq k$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nFor a pointed space $(X,x_0)$, there is a natural inclusion $f:X\\times \\{x_0\\} \\hookrightarrow X\\times Y$ when $x_0\\in Y$.  Moreover, we have the following relationship:\n\n\\begin{prop}\\label{cat<TC}\nAssume $Y$ is a non-empty subset of a path-connected pointed space $(X,x_0)$.  Then we have $$\\operatorname{cat}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{cat}(X\\times X).$$\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n\nWe saw in Corollary \\ref{RelTC<TC} that $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X)$, and in \\cite[Prop 4.19]{farber}, Farber proves that $\\operatorname{TC}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{cat}(X\\times X)$, so all that is left for us is to show that $\\operatorname{cat}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$.\n\nBy Lemma \\ref{catequiv}, $\\operatorname{cat}_{x_0}(X) = \\operatorname{cat}_y(X)$ for some $y\\in Y$ since $X$ is path-connected.  Suppose $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)=k$, and that the sets $\\{U_i\\}_{i=1}^k$ exhibit this fact.  Then, define $V_i = U_i \\cap (X \\times \\{y\\})$.  Note that $\\{V_i\\}_{i=1}^k$ forms an open cover of $X \\times \\{y\\}$ with sections $s_i|_{V_i}:V_i \\to P_{X \\times \\{y\\}}=P_0$.  Thus, $\\operatorname{cat}(X)\\leq k$.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nOne comment on this result is that this yields an interpretation of the relative topological complexity of the pair $(X,Y)$ as a means of interpolating between TC and L-S cat.  In fact, if $Y \\subset Z$, it is easy to see that $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Z)$.\n\nHowever, notice that it is not necessarily true that $\\operatorname{TC}(Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$.  This is because the pullback of the inclusion map $Y\\times Y \\hookrightarrow X\\times Y$ has a total space of paths \\emph{in X} between points in $Y$.  We can exhibit this fact computationally in the following example.\n\n\\begin{example}\nRecall that $\\mathbb{R}P^2$ embeds in $\\mathbb{R}^4$, so we have an embedding of $\\mathbb{R}P^2$ into $S^4$ by taking the one-point compactification of $\\mathbb{R}^4$.  We know that $\\operatorname{TC}(S^4,\\mathbb{R}P^2) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(S^4)=3$, but $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^2) = 4$.  Thus, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^2) > \\operatorname{TC}(S^4,\\mathbb{R}P^2)$.\n\\end{example}\n\nOne nice application of this relationship occurs in the presence of a topological group.  Let $G$ be a path connected topological group.  As a simple exercise succeeding \\cite[Prop 4.19]{farber}, Farber indicates that $\\operatorname{TC}(G)=\\operatorname{cat}(G)$.  Using this, we have the following corollary:\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{toplgrp}\nLet $H$ be a non-empty subset of a path-connected topological group $G$.  Then $\\operatorname{TC}(G,H) = \\operatorname{cat}(G)$.\n\\end{cor}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n$\\operatorname{cat}(G) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(G,H) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(G) = \\operatorname{cat}(G)$\n\\end{proof}\n\nSince any torus $T^n=(S^1)^n$ has a topological group structure, and $\\operatorname{TC}(T^n) = n+1$ is a well-known result, we can compute their relative topological complexity as a corollary to this:\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{torus}\nLet $H\\subseteq T^n$.  Then $\\operatorname{TC}(T^n,H) = n+1$.  In particular, $\\operatorname{TC}(T^n, T^m)=n+1$ when $n\\geq m$.\n\\end{cor}\n\nA standard result for both L-S cat and TC says that $\\operatorname{TC}(X)=1$ if and only if $X$ is contractible (similarly $\\operatorname{cat}(X)=1$ if and only if $X$ is contractible).  We now establish a similar result for relative topological complexity of the pair $(X,Y)$.\n\n\\begin{prop}\\label{Xcontract}\n$\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) = 1$ if and only if $X$ is contractible.\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWe will prove both implications separately although the proofs are similar.\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item [$\\implies$:] Suppose $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) = 1$.  Then $1 \\leq \\operatorname{cat}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) =1$, so $\\operatorname{cat}(X)=1$.  But $\\operatorname{cat}(X)=1$ if and only if $X$ is contractible.\n\n\\item [$\\impliedby$:] Suppose  $X$ is contractible.  Then $\\operatorname{TC}(X)=1$.  Then $1\\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X)=1$, so $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) =1$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{proof}\n\nIt is also useful to think of what the contractibility of $Y$ can yield in terms of $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$ results.  This yields the following definition and theorem.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nWe say that a space $Y$ is \\textit{contractible in $X$} if the inclusion map $\\iota:Y\\to X$ is homotopic to a constant map.\n\\end{defn}\n\n\\begin{thm}\\label{Ycontract}\nIf $Y$ is contractible in $X$, then $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y) = \\operatorname{cat}(X)$.\n\\end{thm}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWe know $\\operatorname{cat}(X) \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$, so all that remains is to see that $\\operatorname{cat}(X) \\geq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$ when $Y$ is contractible in $X$.\n\nSuppose $\\operatorname{cat}(X) = k$ and this is exhibited by an open cover $U_1, \\dots, U_k$ of $X\\times \\{x_0\\}$ with sections $s_i$ over each $U_i$.  Let $p_X(U_i)$ be the projection of $U_i$ onto its $X$ component.  Define $V_i = p_X(U_i)\\times Y$.  Then, since $p_X(U_i)$ covers $X$, the collection of $V_i$ sets covers $X\\times Y$.  Let $H:Y\\times I  \\to X$ be the homotopy where $H(Y,0)=x_0$ and $H(Y,1) = \\iota(Y)$, and let $h(y)=H|_{\\{y\\}\\times I}$ be the path from $x_0$ to $\\iota(y)$ for $y\\in Y$.  Define $s'_i(x,y) = s_i(x,x_0) \\cdot h(y) $.  The pairs $(V_i,s'_i)$ form an open cover with sections for $\\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$ with $k$ elements.  Thus, $\\operatorname{cat}(X) \\geq \\operatorname{TC}(X,Y)$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Examples Involving Spheres}\nSince $\\pi_m(S^n)=0$ for $m<n$, the relative topological complexity of pairs of spheres is a simple corollary to Theorem \\ref{Ycontract}.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{sphere}\nTake $n>m>0$, then $\\operatorname{TC}(S^n,S^m) =\\operatorname{cat}(S^n)=2$.\n\\end{cor}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nIt is beneficial to see an explicit motion planning algorithm exhibiting the fact that $\\operatorname{TC}(S^n,S^m)=2$.  We provide this here as an example of the construction used in Theorem \\ref{Ycontract}.\n\nFirst we construct the open sets needed to see that $\\operatorname{cat}(S^n)=2$.  Take the distinguished point of $S^n$ to be $e_1 = (1,0,\\dots , 0)$, let its antipode be $e_2 = (-1,0, \\dots, 0)$, and let $0<\\varepsilon <1$.  Take $\\pi_1:S^n \\to \\mathbb{R}$ to be projection onto the first component.  We define the open cover of $S^n \\times \\{e_1\\}$ by $U_1 = \\pi_1^{-1}((-\\varepsilon,1]) \\times \\{e_1\\} $ and $U_2 = \\pi_1^{-1}([-1,\\varepsilon)) \\times \\{e_1\\}$.\n\nFor $i=1,2$, let $f_i:U_i \\hookrightarrow S^n$ be the natural inclusion map.  We can easily define homotopies $F_i:U_i \\times I \\to S^n$ such that $F_i((x,e_1),0)=f_i(x,e_1)$ and $F_i((x,e_1),1) = e_i$.  Fix a path $\\sigma:I \\to S^n$ with $\\sigma(0) = e_2$ and $\\sigma(1)=e_1$.  Then, we can define sections over each $U_i$ by $s_1(x,e_1) = F_1((x,e_1),-)$ and $s_2(x,e_1)=F_2((x,e_1),-) \\cdot \\sigma$.\n\nTo incorporate $S^m$, we proceed exactly as we did in the proof of Theorem \\ref{Ycontract}.  Let $\\iota:S^m \\to S^n$ be the inclusion map, and WLOG choose $h:S^m \\times I \\to S^n$ to be a homotopy where $h(S^m,0) = e_1$ and $h(S^m,1) = \\iota(S^m)$.  Then for each $p \\in S^m$, take $h(p) = h|_{\\{p\\}\\times I}$ to be the path from $e_1$ to $\\iota(p)$.  Take $V_1 = \\pi_1^{-1}((-\\varepsilon,1]) \\times S^m$ and $V_2 = \\pi_1^{-1}([-1,\\varepsilon)) \\times S^m$ mimicking $U_1$ and $U_2$ above so that $U_i \\subseteq V_i$.  Then, define $s'_i(x,p) = s_i(x,e_1) \\cdot h(p)$ for each $i$.  This exhibits the rules for $\\operatorname{TC}(S^n,S^m)$ explicitly.\n\\end{remark}\n\nNote that this differs significantly from the $\\operatorname{TC}(S^n)$ case where the parity of the sphere's dimension determines the value.\n\nWe finish this section by putting all of the tools we developed to use on tackling pairs of bouquets of spheres.\n\n\\begin{prop}\\label{wedge}\nSuppose $(a_i)_{i=1}^n$ is a sequence of positive integers.  Then,\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $\\operatorname{TC}\\bigg( \\bigvee\\limits_{i=1}^n S^{a_i}, * \\bigg) = 2$; and\n\\item For $1 < m < n$, $\\operatorname{TC}\\bigg( \\bigvee\\limits_{i=1}^n S^{a_i}, \\bigvee\\limits_{j=1}^m S^{a_j} \\bigg) = 3$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFor (1), without loss of generality, suppose $\\iota(*) = x_0$  where $x_0$ is the wedge point of $\\bigvee^n_{i=1} S^{a_i}$.  Thus, by Theorem \\ref{Ycontract}, $\\operatorname{TC}\\big( \\bigvee^n_{i=1} S^{a_i},*\\big) = \\operatorname{TC}\\big( \\bigvee^n_{i=1} S^{a_i}, x_0 \\big) = \\operatorname{cat}\\big( \\bigvee^n_{i=1} S^{a_i} \\big) = 2$.\n\nFor (2), let $x_i$ denote the point in $S^{a_i}$ antipodal to $x_0$.  Let $C_a = \\bigvee^n_{i=1} S^{a_i} - \\{ x_i \\}_{i=1}^n$ and let $C_b=\\bigvee^m_{j=1} S^{a_j}-\\{x_j\\}_{j=1}^m$.  Notice that $C_a$ is contractible and $C_b \\subseteq C_a$, so there exists a homotopy $h:C_a\\times I \\to C_a$ such that $h(x,-):I \\to C_a$ is a path from $x$ to $x_0$ for each $x \\in C_a$.  This homotopy also assigns paths from points in $C_b$ to $x_0$.  Also, for each $1 \\leq i \\leq n$, take $D_i$ to denote a contractible neighborhood of $x_i$ such that $x_0 \\notin D_i$ and with contraction $k_i:D_i \\times I \\to D_i$ such that $k_i(x,0)=x$ and $k_i(x,1) = x_i$.  Finally, fix paths $\\sigma_i:I \\to \\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i}$ where $\\sigma_i(0) = x_i$ and $\\sigma_i(1)=x_0$ for each $1 \\leq i \\leq n$.\n\nWe can now construct a motion planning algorithm on $\\bigvee^n_{i=1}S^{a_i} \\times \\bigvee^m_{j=1}S^{a_j}$.  Let $\\overline{\\sigma}$ denote the path $\\sigma$ traversed backwards.  Define $U_1 = C_a \\times C_b$, $U_2 = \\bigcup_{i=1}^n D_i \\times C_b \\, \\cup \\, \\bigcup_{j=1}^m C_a \\times D_j$, and $U_3=\\bigcup_{(i,j) \\in [n]\\times [m]} D_i \\times D_j$.  Let $X = \\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i} \\times \\bigvee_{j=1}^m S^{a_j}$ and let $P_X \\to X$ denote the relative topological complexity fibration.  Define $s_1:U_1 \\to P_X$ by $s_1(x,y)=h(x,-)\\cdot \\overline{h}(y,-)$.  Each of $U_2$ and $U_3$ is a topologically disjoint union of open sets in $X$.  Then, we need only define sections over each set in the union and appropriately combine them for sections over $U_2$ and $U_3$.  We break these into the following three cases:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item For $D_i \\times C_b$, use $s(x,y) = k_i(x,-)\\cdot \\sigma_i \\cdot \\overline{h}(y,-)$.\n\\item For $C_a \\times D_j$, use $s'(x,y) = h(x,-)\\cdot \\overline{\\sigma}_j \\cdot \\overline{k}_j(y,-)$.\n\\item For $D_i \\times D_j$, use $s''(x,y) = k_i(x,-) \\cdot \\sigma_i \\cdot \\overline{\\sigma}_j \\cdot \\overline{k}_j(y,-)$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nFor the lower bound in the case where $\\{b_j\\} \\neq \\emptyset$, we must locate two non-zero cohomology elements in $H^*\\big(\\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i} \\big)$.  Let $\\pi_k:\\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i} \\to S^{a_k}$ denote the map sending the index $k$ sphere to $S^{a_k}$ and all other spheres to $x_0$.  For $0<k<n$, $\\pi_k^*:H^*(S^{a_k}) \\to H^*\\big( \\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i} \\big)$ maps the generator ($gen$) of $H^*(S^{a_k})$ to a unique non-zero element in $H^*\\big( \\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i} \\big)$.  Let $g_1 = \\pi_1^*(gen)$ and $g_{m+1} =\\pi_{m+1}^*(gen)$.\n\nLet $\\iota: \\bigvee_{j=1}^m S^{a_j}\\to \\bigvee_{i=1}^n S^{a_i}$ be the inclusion map.  Then $(\\iota \\otimes id)^*(g_{m+1}\\otimes 1)=0$ in $H^* (\\bigvee_{j=1}^m S^{a_j} \\times \\bigvee_{j=1}^m S^{a_j})$.  Also, using the notation from before, we get that $\\Delta^*(g_1 \\otimes 1 - 1 \\otimes g_1) = 0$.  Multiplying these two zero divisors together yields:\n$$ (g_{m+1} \\otimes 1)(g_1 \\otimes 1 - 1 \\otimes g_1) = g_{m+1}g_1\\otimes 1 -g_{m+1}\\otimes g_1 =-g_{m+1} \\otimes g_1 \\neq 0$$\n\nAlong with the motion planning algorithm above, this yields the result.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Real Projective Spaces}\n\nUnlike complex projective spaces, real projective spaces do not have as simple or straightforward of a relationship with topological complexity.  Farber, Tabachnikov, and Yuzvinsky demonstrate this in \\cite{farberRP}.  One of the main results from that paper connects the topological complexity of $\\mathbb{R}P^n$ to the immersion dimension of $\\mathbb{R}P^n$.  In particular, they show that:\n\n\\begin{thm}[\\cite{farberRP}]\\label{farberimm}\nIf $n \\neq 1,3,7$, then $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n)=Imm(\\mathbb{R}P^n)+1$\n\\end{thm}\n\nThis connection is drawn in part using axial maps, a classical object of study in algebraic topology.  Determining the existence or nonexistence of axial maps using algebraic methods stretches back deep into the history of algebraic topology, see \\cite{hopf}, \\cite{ademgitlerjames}, and \\cite{davisaxial}.  Moreover, James uses the connection between axial maps and immersions of real projective spaces in \\cite{jamesimm} to get nonimmersion results.  In line with the connection $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n)$ and its immersion dimension via axial maps in \\cite{farberRP}, we can connect the relative topological complexity of pairs of real projective spaces to certain types of axial maps.  We give the relevant definition below.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $n$, $m$, and $k$ be integers such that $0 < m < n < k$.  A continuous map $g:\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\to \\mathbb{R}P^k$ is called \\textit{axial of type $(n,m,k)$} if the restrictions to $* \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ and $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times *$ are homotopic to the respective inclusion maps in $\\mathbb{R}P^k$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nNote that this homotopy condition is equivalent to $g^*(x) = x \\otimes 1 + 1 \\otimes x \\in H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^m; \\mathbb{Z}_2) \\otimes H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^n; \\mathbb{Z}_2)$.  Following this definition, we will prove the following theorem.\n\n\\begin{thm}\n\\label{axial}\nFor $1 < m < n$, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n, \\mathbb{R}P^m) = \\min\\{k \\, | \\, \\text{there exists an axial map of type }(n,m,k-1)\\}$.\n\\end{thm}\n\nThe proof of this theorem is complicated enough that it deserves its own subsection.  We include that here.\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Theorem \\ref{axial}}\n\nLet $\\xi_n$ denote the canonical line bundle over $\\mathbb{R}P^n$.  Recall that the external tensor product bundle $\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m$ over $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ is defined by:\n\n$$\\frac{S^n \\times S^m \\times \\mathbb{R}}{(x,y,t) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y,-t) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y,-t)} \\xrightarrow{\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m} \\frac{S^n \\times S^m}{(x,y)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y)} \\approx \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$$\n\nWe can also define the $k$-fold Whitney sum $k(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ by replacing the $\\mathbb{R}$ with $\\mathbb{R}^k$ in the above definition.  By restricting to only the unit-length vectors in $k(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$, we can define the $(k-1)$-sphere bundle over $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ written as:\n\n$$\\frac{S^n \\times S^m \\times S^{k-1}}{(x,y,t)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y,-t) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y,-t)} \\xrightarrow{S(k(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m))} \\frac{S^n \\times S^m}{(x,y) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y)} \\approx \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$$\n\nWe can relate relative topological complexity to the genus of $S(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ in the following way:\n\\begin{lem}\\label{TC>genus}\nIf $m<n$, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m)\\geq \\operatorname{genus}(S(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m))$\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m)=k$, so there exists an open cover of $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$, denoted $U_1, \\dots ,U_k$ with sections $s_i:U_i \\to P_{\\mathbb{R}P^n\\times \\mathbb{R}P^m}$ of the relative TC fibration.  For $(x,y)\\in U_i$, the path $s_i(x,y)$ on $\\mathbb{R}P^n$ can be lifted to a path $\\sigma_{xy}$ on $S^n$ such that following by the quotient map $q:S^n \\to \\mathbb{R}P^n$ yields $s_i(x,y)$.  Then, we can define $s_i':U_i \\to \\frac{S^n \\times S^m \\times \\{-1,1\\}}{(x,y,t)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y,-t) \\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y,-t)}$ by $s_i'(x,y) = [\\sigma_{xy}(0),\\sigma_{xy}(1),1]$.  This is well-defined since $s'_i(x,y) = [\\sigma_{xy}(0),\\sigma_{xy}(1),1]$.  So we have a continuous section of $S(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m)$.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nOnce we notice that $S(k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m))$ is the $k$-fold fiberwise join of $S(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$, we have the following easy corollary.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{TC>genuscor}\nIf $m<n$, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m)\\geq \\min \\{k\\, | \\, k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes\\xi_m) \\text{ has a nowhere-zero section}\\}.$\n\\end{cor}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFirst, note that $k(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ has a nowhere-zero section iff $S(k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m))$ has a section.  By Theorem 3 in \\cite{schwarz}, the genus of $S(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m))$ is the smallest $k$ such that the $k$-fold fiberwise join of $S(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ has a section.  But the $k$-fold fiberwise join of $S(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ is $S(k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes\\xi_m))$.  Along with Lemma \\ref{TC>genus}, this yields the result.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nNext we need to connect nowhere-zero sections of $k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m)$ to non-singular maps as defined in \\cite{farberRP}.  We reproduce the definition here.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nA map $f:\\mathbb{R}^n \\times \\mathbb{R}^m \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$ is \\textit{non-singular} if for any $\\lambda,\\mu \\in \\mathbb{R}$, and any $(x,y) \\in \\mathbb{R}^n \\times \\mathbb{R}^m$, we have that:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $f(\\lambda x, \\mu y) = \\lambda \\mu f(x,y)$, and\n\\item $f(x,y)=0 \\implies x=0 \\text{ or } y=0$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{defn}\n\nWe connect the two ideas using the lemma below.\n\n\\begin{lem}\\label{sect-nonsing}\nIf $n>m>1$ and there exists a nowhere-zero section of $k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes\\xi_m)$, then there exists a non-singular map $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$.\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose $s$ is a nowhere-zero section of $k(\\xi_n \\boxtimes \\xi_m)$.  Then, consider the following commutative diagram:\n\n{\\centering\n\t\\begin{tikzcd}\n\t\tS^n \\times S^m \\times \\mathbb{R}^k  \\arrow[r,\"q_1\"] \\arrow[d,\"p_1\"]& \\frac{S^n\\times S^m\\times \\mathbb{R}^k}{(x,y,t)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (-x,y,-t)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$} (x,-y,-t)} \\arrow[d,\"k(\\xi_n\\boxtimes \\xi_m)\"] \\\\\n\t\tS^n\\times S^m \\arrow[u,\"s_2\",bend left,dashed] \\arrow[r,\"q_2\"] \\arrow[ur,\"s_1\",dashed] & \\frac{S^n \\times S^m}{(x,y)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$}(-x,y)\\raise.17ex\\hbox{$\\scriptstyle\\sim$}(x,-y)}\\arrow[u,\"s\",bend left,dashed]  \n\\end{tikzcd}\n\\par}\n\nLet each $q_i$ be the natural quotient map, and let $p_1$ be the projection $(x,y,t)\\mapsto (x,y)$.\n\nDefine $s_1=s\\circ q_2$.  Notice that $s_1(x,y)=s_1(-x,y)=s_1(x,-y)$.\n\nNow, $q_1$ defines a covering space, and since $S^n\\times S^m$ is simply-connected, we can lift $s_1$ to some map $S^n\\times S^m \\to S^n\\times S^m \\times \\mathbb{R}^k$.  This lift is not unique, but we can define $s_2$ as the unique lift of $s_1$ which is also a section of $p_1$.\n\nLet $f$ be the $\\mathbb{R}^k$ component of $s_2$, so that $s_2(x,y)=(x,y,f(x,y))$.  Notice that, in order for $s_2$ to be a lift of $s_1$, it must be that $q_1(s_2(x,y))=q_1(x,y,f(x,y))=s_1(x,y)=[x,y,f(x,y)]=[-x,y,-f(x,y)]=q_1(s_2(-x,y))$.  Thus, $f(-x,y)=-f(x,y)=f(x,-y)$ for any $(x,y)\\in S^n\\times S^m$.\n\nWe can then use $f$ to define a non-singular map $g:\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\\to \\mathbb{R}^k$ by $$g(x,y)=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{cl}\n\t|x||y|f(\\tfrac{x}{|x|},\\tfrac{y}{|y|}) &\\text{if }x,y \\neq 0\\\\\n\t0 &\\text{if }x=0 \\text{ or } y=0\n\t\\end{array}\n\t\\right.$$\n\\end{proof}\n\nAn easy corollary of Lemma \\ref{sect-nonsing} and Corollary \\ref{TC>genuscor} is the following.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{sect-nonsingcor}\nIf $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m)=k$ and $n>m>1$, then there exists a non-singular map $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\\to\\mathbb{R}^k$.\n\\end{cor}\n\nThe last piece of this direction of the proof is to connect this result to axial maps.\n\n\\begin{lem}\\label{nonsing-axial}\nAssume $1 < m < n \\leq k-1$.  There exists a bijection between non-singular maps $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^{k}$ (identified under multiplication by a non-zero scalar) and axial maps of type $(n,m,k-1)$.\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose $f: \\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$ is non-singular.  Then, we can descend to a map $g: \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\to \\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}$ by following the quotient maps.  This map is defined by sending an element $(u,v) \\in S^n \\times S^m$ to the line containing $f(u,v)$ in $\\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}$.  To see that this is axial, consider $g|_{\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times *}$.  For a fixed $v \\in S^m$, $g|_{\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times *}$ lifts to a function $\\tilde{g}:S^n \\to S^{k-1}$ such that $u \\mapsto f(u,v)$.  Since $f(-u,v) = -f(u,v)$ by the non-singularity of $f$, we get that $g|_{\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times *}$ is not null-homotopic.  A similar argument shows that $g|_{*\\times \\mathbb{R}P^m}$ is also not null-homotopic.\n\nFor the other direction, suppose $g: \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\to \\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}$ is an axial map of type $(n,m,k-1)$.  Passing to the universal covers, we have a continuous map $\\tilde{g}:S^n \\times S^m \\to S^{k-1}$.  As above, $g$ being an axial map gives us that $\\tilde{g}(-u,v) = -\\tilde{g}(u,v) = \\tilde{g}(u,-v)$ for any $(u,v) \\in S^n \\times S^m$.  Thus, we can extend $\\tilde{g}$ to a non-singular map $f:\\mathbb{R}^{n+1} \\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$ defined by $$f(u,v) = |u| |v| \\tilde{g}\\bigg( \\frac{u}{|u|} , \\frac{v}{|v|}\\bigg)$$\n\nThis yields the bijection.\n\\end{proof}\n\nOne benefit that this gives us is a method for choosing a non-singular map with some specific benefits.  We see this in the following corollary.\n\n\\begin{cor}\\label{firstcoord}\nLet $1 < m < n < k-1$ be integers such that there exists a non-singular map $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1} \\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$.  Then, there exists a non-singular map $f:\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$ such that for any $0 \\neq u \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}$, the first coordinate of $f((u,\\overline{0}),u) \\in \\mathbb{R}^k$ is positive.\n\\end{cor}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFor the given non-singular map that is assumed to exist, let $g: \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\to \\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}$ be the corresponding axial map from Lemma \\ref{nonsing-axial}.  By the axial map property, restricting to the diagonal $\\mathbb{R}P^m \\subseteq \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ yields a null-homotopic function.  To see this quickly, note that $H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}) \\overset{g^*}{\\to} H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^n) \\otimes H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^m) \\overset{\\iota^*\\otimes 1}{\\to} H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^m) \\otimes H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^m) \\overset{\\Delta^*}{\\to} H^*(\\mathbb{R}P^m)$ sends the generator $x \\in H^1(\\mathbb{R}P^{k-1})$ to 0.  Thus, there is some $g' \\simeq g$ such that $g':  \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\to \\mathbb{R}P^{k-1}$ is constant along the diagonal.\n\nBy Lemma \\ref{nonsing-axial}, $g'$ corresponds to some non-singular function $f: \\mathbb{R}^{n+1} \\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k$.  By construction, $f(u,u)$ lies on a single line through the origin.  Via some rotation, we may assume that the first coordinate of $f(u,u)$ is positive, as desired.\n\\end{proof}\n\nFinally, we require a way to point from non-singular maps to bounds on the relative topological complexity of the pair of real projective spaces.  For this, we again follow \\cite{farberRP} with some modifications, using Corollary \\ref{firstcoord} in a critical way.\n\n\\begin{lem}\\label{nonsing>TC}\nIf there exists a non-singular map $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\\to \\mathbb{R}^k$, then $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m)\\leq k$.\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nGiven a non-singular map $\\rho:\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\\to \\mathbb{R}^k$, we can decompose $\\rho$ into maps $\\rho = (\\rho_1, \\dots , \\rho_k)$ with $\\rho_i:\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}\\to \\mathbb{R}$ for each $i$.  We can also choose these so that $\\rho_1(u,u)>0$ for any $u \\in \\mathbb{R}^{m+1}$ by Corollary \\ref{firstcoord}.\n\nOur goal is to create an open cover of $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ using the $k$ maps in the decomposition of $\\rho$.  We will consider $\\mathbb{R}P^n$ as the space of lines through the origin in $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ where $\\mathbb{R}P^m$ is a natural subspace of $\\mathbb{R}P^n$.\n\nWe construct the sets as follows.  For $2 \\leq i \\leq k$, define\n$$U_i = \\{(L,L')\\in \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\, | \\, L \\neq L' \\text{ and } \\rho_i(u,u') \\neq 0 \\text{ for some } u\\in L, u'\\in L'\\}.$$\n\nFor $i=1$, we have to do something a little different to guarantee we have pairs of lines $(L,L)$ covered.  Let\n\n$$U_1 = \\{(L,L') \\in \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m \\, | \\, \\rho_1(u,u')\\neq 0 \\text{ for some }u\\in L , u' \\in L' \\}.$$\n\nNote that since $\\rho$ is non-singular, each pair $(L,L') \\in \\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$ must fall into at least one of the $U_i$ sets.  Thus, $\\{U_i\\}_{i=1}^k$ forms an open cover of $\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m$.\n\nNext, we need sections of the relative topological complexity fibration over each $U_i$.  If $L\\neq L'$, then, there exists a plane in $\\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ spanned by the two lines.  Once we orient this plane, we can move one line to the other by rotating in the plane along the direction of positive orientation.\n\nIf $(L,L') \\in U_i$, then we can use $\\rho_i$ to orient the plane.  Suppose $u \\in L$ and $u\\in L'$ are two unit vectors such that $\\rho_i(u,u')>0$.  Then, define the positive orientation of the plane spanned by $L$ and $L'$ to be the direction given by moving $u$ to $u'$ through the angle smaller than $\\pi$.  Then, we can define $s_i(L,L')$ to be the path moving $L$ in the positive orientation of this plane given by $\\rho_i$.\n\nWhen $L=L'$, which only occurs when $L \\in \\mathbb{R}P^m$, we can use the constant path.  Since this only occurs when $i=1$, we only need to make this distinction for $s_1$.  Using this, it is clear that each $s_i:U_i \\to P_{\\mathbb{R}P^n \\times \\mathbb{R}P^m}$ is a continuous section of the relative topological complexity fibration.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nFinally, we have the tools needed to prove our main result.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \\ref{axial}]\nBy Corollary \\ref{TC>genuscor} and Lemma \\ref{nonsing>TC}, we have that when $1 < m < n$, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n, \\mathbb{R}P^m) = \\min \\{k \\, | \\, \\text{there exists a non-singular map } f: \\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\\times \\mathbb{R}^{m+1} \\to \\mathbb{R}^k\\}$.  Then, by Lemma \\ref{nonsing-axial}, we can replace the non-singular map with an axial map of type $(n,m,k-1)$.\n\nTo complete this, we need only verify that $n+1 \\leq \\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n, \\mathbb{R}P^m)$ to satisfy the conditions of Lemma \\ref{nonsing-axial}.  But, it is well-known that $\\operatorname{cat}(\\mathbb{R}P^n) = n+1$, and $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathbb{R}P^n,\\mathbb{R}P^m) \\geq \\operatorname{cat}(\\mathbb{R}P^n)$, so the condition holds.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Spatial Polygon Spaces}\n\nConfiguration spaces of polygons in $\\mathbb{R}^3$ have been an interesting example in algebraic geometry for some time.  The configuration spaces of polygons in $\\mathbb{R}^3$, called the spatial polygon spaces, come endowed with a symplectic structure which will prove useful to us later.  This structure has been studied by Klyachko in \\cite{klyachko} as well as Kapovich and Millson in \\cite{kapomill}.  We first encountered the spatial polygon spaces in the work of Jean-Claude Hausmann and Allen Knutson in \\cite{hausknut}, but the topological complexity of spatial polygon spaces was not studied explicitly until the work of Don Davis in \\cite{davis}.\n\nThese spatial polygon spaces are determined by the lengths of the sides of the polygons involved.  This motivates the following definition.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $\\ell = (\\ell_1, \\dots , \\ell_n) \\in \\mathbb{R}_+^n$ be a length vector of size $n$.  The \\textit{spatial polygon space of $\\ell$} is defined as:\n$$\\mathcal{N}(\\ell) = \\{ (z_1, \\dots , z_n) \\in (S^2)^n \\, | \\, \\Sigma \\ell_i z_i = \\vec{0} \\} \/ SO(3)$$\n\\end{defn}\n\nWe can think of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ as a set of ways to draw a polygon in $\\mathbb{R}^3$ allowing for possible self-intersections.  A natural question to ask is which sides of the polygon we are capable of making collinear, or parallel.  We can refer to edges based on the index corresponding to its length in $\\ell$, and doing this leads to a natural, and quite topologically valuable, definition for this case.  Take $[n] = \\{1, \\dots, n\\}$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nA subset $S \\subseteq [n]$ is \\textit{short} (with respect to $\\ell$) if $\\sum\\limits_{i \\in S} \\ell_i < \\sum\\limits_{j \\notin S} \\ell_j$.  Correspondingly, we say a subset $L \\subseteq [n]$ is \\textit{long} (with respect to $\\ell$) if $\\sum\\limits_{i \\in L} \\ell_i > \\sum\\limits_{j \\notin L} \\ell_j$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nNote that not every subset has to be short or long.  As an example, consider $\\ell = (1,1,2,2)$.  Here, the subset $\\{1,3\\}$ is neither short nor long as $\\ell_1 + \\ell_3 = 3 = \\ell_2 + \\ell_4$.  However, when we have subsets like this, we can arrange the polygon into a configuration where all edges are collinear.  These collinear configurations create singularities in $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$, which can cause $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ to fail to be a manifold.  To make sure we get a manifold, we will need to impose a few reasonable conditions on our length vectors.\n\n\\begin{defn}\nLet $\\ell$ be a length vector of size $n$.\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item We say $\\ell$ is \\textit{generic} if for any $S \\subseteq [n]=\\{ 1, \\dots, n\\}$ we have $\\sum\\limits_{i\\in S} \\ell_i \\neq \\sum\\limits_{j \\notin S} \\ell_j .$\n\n\\item We say $\\ell$ is \\textit{non-degenerate} if for any $i\\in [n]$ we have $\\ell_i < \\sum\\limits_{j\\neq i} \\ell_j$.\n\n\\item We say $\\ell$ is \\textit{ordered} if $\\ell_1 \\leq \\ell_2 \\leq \\dots \\leq \\ell_{n}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\end{defn}\n\nSo long as $\\ell$ is generic and non-degenerate, we can guarantee that $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ is a manifold.  The topology of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ also respects permuting the order of the edges.  As stated precisely in \\cite[1.4]{hausgeom}, for any $\\sigma \\in \\Sigma_{n}$, let $\\ell_{\\sigma} = (\\ell_{\\sigma(1)}, \\dots, \\ell_{\\sigma(n)})$; then $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ is diffeomorphic to $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell_{\\sigma})$.  That is, any length vector can be associated to an ordered length vector which generates the same topology.  As such, we can safely assume that our length vectors are ordered.  Finally, for a generic and non-degenerate length vector, every subset of $[n]$ is either short or long.\n\nIt will become necessary to have a way of sorting and categorizing the different short and long subsets of a length vector.  We use the following notation for this purpose.\n\n\\begin{defn}\n$$\\mathcal{S}_i(\\ell) = \\{ S \\subseteq [n] \\, | \\, i \\in S, \\, S\\text{ is short}\\} \\qquad \\qquad \\mathcal{S}(\\ell) = \\bigcup_{i=1}^n\\mathcal{S}_i(\\ell)$$\n$$\\mathcal{L}_i(\\ell) = \\{ L \\subseteq [n] \\, | \\, i \\in L, \\, L\\text{ is long} \\} \\qquad \\qquad \\mathcal{L}(\\ell) = \\bigcup_{i=1}^n\\mathcal{L}_i(\\ell)$$\n\\end{defn}\n\nIn \\cite{hausknut}, Hausmann and Knutson give the following description for the cohomology ring of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ which uses short and long subsets in an essential way.\n\n\\begin{thm}\\cite[Thm 6.4(2)]{hausknut}\\label{hauscohom}\nThe cohomology ring of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ is given as\n$$H^*(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))=\\mathbb{Z}[R,V_1, \\dots , V_{n-1}]\/\\mathcal{I}$$\nwhere $R,V_i \\in H^2(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$, and $\\mathcal{I}$ is the ideal generated by three families of relations:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $V_i^2 + RV_i$ for $i \\in [n-1]$,\n\\item $\\prod\\limits_{i\\in L}V_i$ for $L \\in \\mathcal{L}_n(\\ell)$, and\n\\item $\\sum\\limits_{\\overset{S \\subset L}{S \\text{ short}}}(\\prod\\limits_{i\\in S}V_i)R^{|L-S|-1}$ for $L \\in \\mathcal{L}(\\ell)-\\mathcal{L}_n(\\ell)$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{thm}\n\nHausmann and Knutson derive this description for the cohomology ring by studying and utilizing the symplectic structure of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$.  They also describe a collection of natural $\\operatorname{SO}(2)$-bundles over $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ whose Chern classes prove particularly useful to us.\n\n\\begin{defn}\\cite[\\S 7]{hausknut}\\label{bdledefn}\nLet $\\ell$ be a generic, non-degenerate length vector of size $n$.  Define $$A_j(\\ell) = \\{ (z_1, \\dots , z_n) \\in (S^2)^n \\, | \\, \\Sigma \\ell_i z_i = \\vec{0} \\text{ and } z_j = (0,0,1) \\in S^2 \\}.$$\n\nLet $c_j(\\ell) = c_1(A_j(\\ell)) \\in H^2(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$ denote the Chern class of the bundle $A_j(\\ell) \\to \\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$.\n\\end{defn}\n\nHausmann and Knutson then provide a method for describing each $c_j(\\ell)$ using their description for $H^*(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$.\n\n\\begin{prop}\\cite[Prop 7.3]{hausknut} \\label{cherndesc}\nIn $H^2(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$, one has\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $c_j(\\ell) = R + 2V_j$ if $i < n$; and\n\\item $c_n(\\ell) = -R$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{prop}\n\nHausmann and Knutson use these Chern classes to determine a very nice expression for the cohomology class for the symplectic form of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$.\n\n\\begin{prop}[\\cite{hausknut}, Remark 7.5]\\label{haussymp}\nIf $\\ell \\in \\mathbb{Z}^n$, then the symplectic form $[\\omega] \\in H^2(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$ is given by $$[\\omega] = \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^n \\ell_i c_i(\\ell)$$\n\\end{prop}\n\nFinally, it is well-known that $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ is a simply-connected manifold of dimension $2(n-3)$ when $\\ell$ is of size $n$ (see \\cite[\\S 1]{hausknut}, \\cite[Lemma 10.3.33]{hausbook}).  Since it is a closed, symplectic, simply-connected manifold, we can compute $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell))$ as a corollary of \\ref{sympTC} with $m=n$.  This is computed directly using Theorem \\ref{hauscohom} in \\cite{davis}.\n\n\\begin{prop}\nFor $\\ell$ generic and non-degenerate of size $n$, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)) = 2n-5$.\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\subsection{Edge-Identifying Submanifolds}\nThere is a natural way to form submanifolds within $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ by restricting our attention to configurations where selected edges are aligned together.  This space of configurations where selected edges are aligned forms a submanifold of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$ which is homeomorphic, in some cases, to $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P)$ for a different, but related length vector $\\ell^\\P$.\n\n\\begin{defn}\\label{eilvdefn}\nLet $\\ell = (\\ell_1, \\dots , \\ell_n)$ be a length vector and let $\\P = (\\P_1, \\dots, \\P_m)$ be an ordered set partition of $[n]$ into $m$ parts.  We say that a \\textit{edge-identified length vector} from $\\ell$ is a vector $\\ell^\\P = (\\ell^\\P_1, \\dots , \\ell^\\P_m)$ such that $$\\ell^\\P_k = \\sum\\limits_{i\\in \\P_k}\\ell_i.$$\n\\end{defn}\n\nAs this is a novel method of describing these spaces, we present some examples of edge-identified length vectors.\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{eilvexs}\nLet $\\ell = (1,1,2,3,5,7)$.  Note that $\\ell$ is a generic, non-degenerate, ordered length vector.  We give four examples of edge-identified length vectors of $\\ell$.\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\ell^{\\P'} = (1,2,3,6,7)$:  Here, we have combined $\\ell_2$ and $\\ell_5$ into a single edge.  Explicitly, the ordered set partition is $\\P' = (\\{1\\}, \\{3\\}, \\{4\\}, \\{2,5\\}, \\{6\\})$ giving us that $\\ell^{\\P'}_4 = \\ell_2 + \\ell_5$.\n\n\\item $\\ell^{\\P''}=(1,1,3,5,9)$:  Here, we have combined $\\ell_3$ and $\\ell_6$ into a single edge.  Explicitly, the ordered set partition is $\\P'' = (\\{1\\}, \\{2\\}, \\{4\\}, \\{5\\}, \\{3,6\\})$ giving us that $\\ell^{\\P''}_5 = \\ell_3 + \\ell_6$.  Notice that we can identify other edges with the last edge $\\ell_6$ as we do in this example.\n\n\\item $\\ell^{\\P'''}=(4,7,8)$:  Here, we have combined several of the edges together.  Explicitly, the ordered set partition is $\\P'''=(\\{1,4\\}, \\{6\\}, \\{2,3,5\\})$ giving us that $\\ell^{\\P'''}_1 = \\ell_1 + \\ell_4$, and $\\ell^{\\P'''}_3 = \\ell_2 + \\ell_3 + \\ell_5$.  Notice that it is possible, as in this example, to supplant the largest length by identifying other edges.  We can always permute the ordered set partition in order to end up with an ordered edge-identified length vector if we desire this.\n\n\\item $\\ell^{\\P''''}=(1,1,7,10)$:  Here, we have combined $\\ell_3$, $\\ell_4$, and $\\ell_5$ into a single large edge.  In fact, $\\ell^{\\P''''}_4 = \\ell_3 + \\ell_4 + \\ell_5 > \\ell^{\\P''''}_1 + \\ell^{\\P''''}_2 + \\ell^{\\P''''}_3$, giving us a degenerate length vector.  Thus, edge-identified length vectors need not preserve non-degeneracy in general.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{example}\n\nNotice that all edge-identified length vectors preserve genericity, but they could fail to preserve non-degeneracy.  If we assume $\\ell$ is non-degenerate, then we can preserve non-degeneracy by only identifying edges whose indices form short subsets.\n\nThe core concern in the above examples is which length in $\\ell$ is assigned to a particular length in $\\ell^\\P$.  We can encode this in the function $\\phi:[n] \\to [m]$ given by $\\phi(i)=j \\iff i \\in \\P_j$ where $\\P_j$ is the $j$th set of $\\P$.  This function controls the topology of $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P)$, but it also controls the inclusion map $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P) \\hookrightarrow \\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$.  We see this in the following proposition.\n\n\\begin{prop}\\label{inducedcohom}\nLet $\\ell$ be a generic, non-degenerate length vector with $\\ell^\\P$ a non-degenerate edge-identified length vector of $\\ell$.  Then the inclusion induced map $\\iota^*:H^*(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell)) \\to H^*(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P))$ acts on the Chern classes by $\\iota^*(c_j(\\ell)) = c_{\\phi(j)}(\\ell^\\P)$.\n\\end{prop}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nConsidering $\\iota: \\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P) \\to \\mathcal{N}(\\ell)$, we know that $\\iota^*(c_j(\\ell)) = \\iota^*(c_1(A_j(\\ell))) = c_1(\\iota^*(A_j(\\ell)))$.  Thus, what we need to show is that the pullback bundle $\\iota^*(A_j(\\ell)) = A_{\\phi(j)}(\\ell^\\P)$.\n\nWe can think of $A_j(\\ell)$ as the space of polygons in $\\mathbb{R}^3$ with the $j$th edge parallel to the $z$-axis.  Since $\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^e)$ identifies $\\ell_j$ as part of $\\ell_{\\phi(j)}^\\P$, $\\iota^*(A_j(\\ell))$ has all the edges in $\\ell_{\\phi(j)}^\\P$ parallel to the $z$-axis.  Thus, $\\iota^*(A_j(\\ell)) = A_{\\phi(j)}(\\ell^\\P)$.  And so, $\\iota^*(c_j(\\ell)) = c_1(A_{\\phi(j)}(\\ell^\\P)) = c_{\\phi(j)}(\\ell^\\P)$.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nWith this information, we can determine the relative topological complexity for pairs of spatial polygon spaces.\n\n\\begin{thm}\\label{NlTC}\nLet $\\ell$ be a generic, non-degenerate length vector with $\\ell^\\P$ a non-degenerate edge-identified length vector of $\\ell$ as in Definition \\ref{eilvdefn}.  Then, $\\operatorname{TC}(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell),\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P))=n+m-5$.\n\\end{thm}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFirst, notice that $(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell),\\omega)$ is a simply-connected symplectic manifold of dimension $2(n-3)$ and $(\\mathcal{N}(\\ell^\\P), \\omega_\\P)$ is a submanifold of dimension $2(m-3)$ with its own symplectic structure.  We need only verify that $\\iota^*([\\omega]) = [\\omega_\\P]$, and then Theorem \\ref{sympTC} yields the result.  We show this in the following computation.\n\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\iota^*([\\omega]) =& \\iota^*\\bigg( \\sum\\limits_{i=1}^n \\ell_i c_i(\\ell) \\bigg) & \\text{  (by Proposition \\ref{haussymp})}\\\\\n=&\\sum\\limits_{i=1}^n \\ell_i \\iota^*c_i(\\ell) & \\\\\n=&\\sum\\limits_{i=1}^n \\ell_i c_{\\phi(i)}(\\ell^\\P) &\\text{  (by Proposition \\ref{inducedcohom})} \\\\\n=&\\sum\\limits_{j=1}^m \\ell_j^\\P c_{j}(\\ell^\\P) & \\\\\n=&[\\omega_\\P] & \\text{  (by Proposition \\ref{haussymp})}\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{proof}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nGalaxy clusters are powerful cosmological probes:  observations of their internal structure provide information\non dark matter and can be used to estimate distances, while studies of their evolution gauge the \ninfluence of dark energy on structure formation \n-- as rare objects at the top of the mass hierarchy, \ntheir number density and its evolution are extremely sensitive to the underlying cosmology. \nFor these reasons, the Dark Energy Task Force included cluster surveys among the four primary methods for constraining \ndark energy.  In this context, massive clusters are the most pertinent \nbecause their properties are little affected  by non--gravitational processes.\n\nToday, we do not yet have the large samples of clusters, most notably massive clusters, out to high redshifts (e.g, unity and \nbeyond) needed to fully realize the potential of cluster studies.  This is changing, thanks in large part to Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) \ncluster suveys.  The SZ effect\\,\\cite{sz1,sz2,sz3} is a distortion of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) black body \nspectrum due to inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons off electrons in the intra--cluster \nmedium (ICM).  It is one of the most promising ways of finding new galaxy clusters, since its amplitude (in terms of surface\nbrightness) and spectrum are independent of redshift (in the non-relativistic case). \n\\commentaire{The change in the intensity of the CMB induced by the SZ effect follows:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\Delta I_{\\nu}}{I_0} = y f(\\nu) = \\int_{los}\\frac{kT_e}{m_ec^2}n_e\\sigma_Tdl \\times \\frac{x^4e^x}{(e^x-1)^2}\\left[\\frac{x(e^x+1)}{e^x-1}-4\\right]\\, ,\n\\label{eq:delta_i_sz}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $I_{\\nu} = I_0\\frac{x^3}{e^x-1}$ is Planck's law with $I_0 = \\frac{2(kT_{\\mbox{\\tiny{CMB}}})^3}{(hc)^2}$, $T_e$ and $n_e$ are the temperature and density of the electrons in the ICM and  \n$x = \\frac{h\\nu}{kT_{\\mbox{\\tiny{CMB}}}}$ in the dimensionless frequency ($\\nu$ is the frequency of observation). The amplitude of the effect is characterized by the so-called \\textit{Compton-y parameter}, which corresponds \nto the integral of the pressure along the line of sight (los). The spectrum of the distorsion, characterised by $f(\\nu)$ in Eq. \\ref{eq:delta_i_sz} is completely independent of the cluster's properties (at least, \nin the non relativistic case) and is thus universal; the distorsion corresponds to a deficit of photons relative to the mean sky ($\\Delta I_{\\nu}<0$) for $\\nu \\lesssim 217$~GHz, an excess \n($\\Delta I_{\\nu}>0$) for $\\nu \\gtrsim 217$~GHz and is null for $\\nu\\simeq 217$~GHz. \nExcept for the changes of angular size on the sky, two identical clusters at, for instance, redshifts $0.5$ and $5$ will be responsible for the same distorsion.}\nAs SZ surveys begin to open this new window on cluster science, relating them to surveys in other wavebands becomes a \ncritical issue, both to understand what we are finding and to fully exploit their scientific potential.\n\n\n\\section{An SZ\/X--ray Cluster Model}\n\nObservations of the SZ effect give only two--dimensional information projected onto the sky, and follow--up in other \nwavebands is essential for most studies.  Obviously, optical\/NIR follow--up is needed to obtain redshifts.  \nMuch  can also be gained by combining X--ray and SZ data sets, for instance to better understand various \nsurvey selection functions.  Follow--up with \\textit{XMM-Newton}\\ and \\textit{Chandra} will enable us to probe the ICM with \nunprecedented precision, e.g, its thermal structure and the gas mass fraction.  Moreover, with X--ray data we can\nestimate cluster masses through application of hydrostatic equilibrium.  \n\nIn order to inform such SZ\/X--ray comparisons and follow--up of SZ surveys, we have constructed an empirical and \neasily adaptable model\\,\\cite{wam} relating the SZ and X--ray properties of clusters. \nThis section briefly summarizes its most relevant aspects.\n\n\\subsection{Description of the model}\n\nOur model is based on several ingredients, derived from observations, numerical simulations and theory. \nWe employ scaling laws in order to relate observed properties with the fundamental cluster parameters, mass \nand redshift: the $M_{500}-T$\\,\\cite{m500_1,m500_2}, $L_X-T$\\,\\cite{l-t} and  \n$f_{gas}-T$\\,\\cite{fgas} relations. The evolution of all these scaling relations is still poorly constrained. \nHowever, recent observations\\,\\cite{evol_mt,evol_lt} \nindicate that self--similar evolution tends to reproduce well the data.  Given this, we adopted self--similar \nevolution in all cases, and we subsequently validated this choice (see next section).\n\nWe approximate the spatial structure of the gas with an isothermal $\\beta$-model\\,\\footnote{This will be \nimproved in a future version of the model, to account for recent observations showing that this profile is inadequate, \nespecially in the core and outer parts of clusters.} with $\\beta=2\/3$.  Fitting the $L_X-T$ relation then \nrequires a deviation from self--similarity in the $f_{gas}-T$ relation, i.e., the gas mass fraction varies\nwith cluster total mass; this variation is allowed by present observations.  \nFor the dark matter, we adopt a NFW profile and use the Jenkins mass function\\,\\cite{mf}.  Local cluster counts in terms \nof the X-ray Temperature Function\\,\\cite{xtf} (XTF) then fix the normalization of the fluctuation power spectrum\n(using the measured $M_{500}-T$).   \n\nBy combining these different ingredients we constrain all free parameters of the model, namely \nthose describing cluster physics -- like the core radius $r_c$ and the central electronic density $n_e$  --\nand those describing population statistics, such as $\\sigma_8$ (see below). \nWe took particular care with the various mass definitions available in the literature, \nrelated to theoretical studies (e.g. $M_{vir}$), observations (e.g. $M_{500}$) or numerical simulations\n(e.g. masses estimated by the friends--of--friends method), transforming among them with the \nNFW dark matter profile.  This was indispensable for coherently combining the variety of constraints. \n\n\\subsection{Model validation}\n\nTo validate the model, we checked it against additional observational constraints, not used to \nfix its parameters.  We discuss below the most relevant of these\\commentaire{, redshift distributions of X--ray\nsurveys}, but cite another notable one in passing: \nfitting \nthe local XTF\\,\\cite{xtf} we find  $\\sigma_8=0.78\\pm 0.027$, in complete agreement with WMAP-5 \nresults\\,\\cite{wmap}.\nMore specifically, we tested the model by comparing the observed redshift distributions from the REFLEX\\,\\cite{reflex} and 400 square--degree\\,\\cite{400} surveys to the predictions of the model. \nFigure \\ref{fig:xray_counts} shows the \npredicted and observed counts in both cases. In the former case, the observed total number of clusters is 447 \nwith a completeness estimated to be at least 90\\%; the predicted number is 508 clusters, which corresponds \nto 457 clusters for a completeness of 90\\%. Moreover, the shapes of the two distributions are in very good agreement. \n\nIn the case of the \n400deg$^2$ survey, the model reproduces extremely well the high redshift distribution ($z>0.4$), although its seems to \npredict too many low redshift clusters. Noting that this is a serendipitous survey, in which known local clusters are by\nconstruction missing, we conclude once again that the model is in reasonable agreement with the data. \nThis last result is particularly satisfying since the high redshift clusters contained in this deep survey are of the kind \nexpected to be found in SZ surveys like \\textit{Planck}\\, (as discussed below).\n\n\\begin{figure}[t!]\n\\begin{center}\n\\subfigure{\\epsfig{figure=Plots\/N_z_REFLEX_0.0_thick.eps,width=7.0cm}}\n\\subfigure{\\epsfig{figure=Plots\/N_z_400square_0.0_thick.eps,width=7.0cm}}\n\\end{center}\n\\vspace{-0.5cm}\n\\caption[The Planck catalog]{Two examples of the redshift distribution of clusters from ROSAT surveys (red) compared to model predictions (blue). \n{\\em Left}: The REFLEX survey. {\\em Right}: The 400 square--degree survey.}\n\\label{fig:xray_counts}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{An application of the model}\n\nThe model is completely general and can be used to predict the results of any set of SZ and X--ray observations.  \nAs an example of its application, we discuss potential follow--up of  \\textit{Planck}\\ SZ  clusters with \\textit{XMM-Newton}. \n\n\\subsection{The \\textit{Planck}\\ cluster catalog}\n\nTo accurately model the  \\textit{Planck}\\ cluster catalog, we employed the selection function derived using the detection \nalgorithms developed by Melin et al.\\,\\cite{jb} and applied to detailed simulations of \\textit{Planck}\\ observations (the \\textit{Planck}\\\nSky Model\\,\\cite{psm}).  We find that a non--negligible fraction of otherwise bright SZ clusters remain undetected: these are resolved, \nlow to intermediate redshift clusters whose SZ flux is diluted over several pixels. \nThis selection effect is shown in the left--hand panel of Figure \n\\ref{fig:catalog}, where we plot the cumulative redshift distribution of \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters.  \n\nThe result is that the \\textit{Planck}\\ catalog is expected to contain $\\sim$2350 clusters\\commentaire{ (blue curve)}, of which $\\sim$180 \nare at $z>0.6$ and $\\sim$15 at $z>1$; there is, of course,  a certain amount of model uncertainty associated with these \npredictions, in particular from the normalization of the SZ--mass relation.  \n\n\\subsection{Follow--up with \\textit{XMM-Newton}}\n\nWe wish to identify the X--ray nature of these new \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters and evaluate the ability of \\textit{XMM-Newton}\\ to observe a \nsignificant number of them.  We therefore examine those clusters with X--ray fluxes below the ROSAT All Sky Survey \n(RASS) limit, which we take to be  \n$f_{X}[0.1-2.4]\\mbox{keV}= 10^{-12}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$ (i.e., the lowest limit of the MACS survey\\,\\cite{macs}). \nThe distribution of this sub--catalog of new \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters is given as a function of redshift \nand predicted temperature in the central panel of Figure \\ref{fig:catalog}. Most of the ($\\sim$520) clusters are relatively\ncool and local; however, $\\sim$168 clusters lie at $z>0.6$ and have temperatures $T>6$keV.  Note that only six such\nclusters are presently known.  \n\nIn the right--hand panel of  Figure \\ref{fig:catalog}, we show the expected X--ray flux of these objects \nin the \\textit{XMM-Newton}\\  [0.5-2]--keV band as contours projected onto the redshift--temperature plane.\nThis allows us to evaluate their detectability, and we see that all of these \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters have fluxes larger than \n$10^{-13}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$.  They are bright, falling in the flux decade just below the ROSAT limit.\nThis has important consequences for follow--up programs. \n\nUsing observations of MS1054-0321\\,\\cite{ms} and \nClJ1226.9+3332\\,\\cite{clj} -- two clusters of the same kind as the newly--discovered high redshift \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters -- as a guide, we \nestimate that \\textit{XMM-Newton}\\ could measure the temperature of \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters at $z>0.6$ to 10\\% with a relatively short\nexposure of 25-50 ks (per cluster).  It should also be possible to  obtain masses and mass profiles for the reasonably relaxed\n clusters by applying hydrodynamic equilibrium equation.  \n \n\\begin{figure}[t!]\n\\begin{center}\n\\hspace{-0.8cm}\n \\subfigure{\\epsfig{figure=Plots\/cumulative_dist_Planck.eps,width=5.9cm}}\\\n \\subfigure{\\epsfig{figure=Plots\/catalog_fullsf_planck3sig-norosat_zT_moriond.eps,width=4.8cm, height=4.8cm}}\\hspace{-0.5cm\n \\subfigure{\\epsfig{figure=Plots\/zT_fx_band_contour_Planck_moriond.eps,width=6.3cm}}\n\\end{center}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption[The Planck catalog]{{\\em Left}: Predicted cumulative redshift distribution of the {\\it Planck} cluster catalog. The dashed red line corresponds to the case where all clusters are (falsely) imagined to be unresolved (point--source approximation); \nthe blue line is the realistic case, accounting for the fact that some clusters are resolved. \n{\\em Middle}: The {\\it Planck} newly--discovered cluster catalog (in which clusters are \nobserved by {\\it Planck} but not by ROSAT) distributed in bins over temperature and redshift. {\\em Right}: The same \ndistribution projected over the ($z$, $T$)--plane with contours of iso--flux in the \n{\\it XMM-Newton} [0.5-2]--keV band.}\n\\label{fig:catalog}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Summary}\n\nWe presented a model for the SZ and X--ray signals of galaxy clusters based on current X--ray data. \nUsing a realistic mock  \\textit{Planck}\\ cluster catalog, we employed the model to \npredict, firstly,  that $\\sim$168 newly--discovered clusters lie at $z>0.6$ with \\commentaire{temperatures }$T>6$keV, and secondly,\nthat these clusters can be observed in some detail in only 25--50 ks with \\textit{XMM-Newton}.   \nThus\nwe could follow--up the majority of these new \\textit{Planck}\\ clusters with a dedicated program of several Msec on \\textit{XMM-Newton}; \nthis falls in the category of {\\em Very Large Programme} now possible with the satellite.  Follow--up\nobservations with \\textit{XMM-Newton}\\ would therefore dramatically increase the sample of well--studied, \nmassive, high redshift ($0.6<z<1$) clusters, key objects for precise cosmology with clusters\nand for testing gravitational processes in cluster formation.\n\\commentaire{and thereby move the kind of studies performed in the local universe well out in redshift.}\n\n\\section*{References}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\\label{sect:intro}\n\nThe effective low-energy hamiltonian inducing the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}-transition\nreads:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nH^{\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}} &=&\n\t\\lambda_c^2 H^c + \\lambda_t^2 H^t + 2\\lambda_c\\lambda_t H^{ct}\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&=&\n\t\\frac{\\, G_F^2}{16\\pi^2} M_W^2 \\biggl[\n\t\\lambda_c^2 \\eta_1^\\star\n\t\tS\\!\\left(x_c^\\star\\right)\n\t+\n\t\\lambda_t^2 \\eta_2^\\star\n\t\tS\\!\\left(x_t^\\star\\right)\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\\hspace{1em}\n\t+2\\lambda_c \\lambda_t \\eta_3^\\star\n\t\tS\\!\\left(x_c^\\star,x_t^\\star\\right)\n\t\\biggr]\n\tb\\!\\left(\\mu\\right) \\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}\\!\\left(\\mu\\right)\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\n\t+ \\mathrm{h.c.}\n\\label{hamiltonian}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nHere $\\,G_F$ denotes Fermi's constant, $M_W$ is the W boson mass,\n$\\lambda_j = V_{jd} V_{js}^{*}, j=c,t$ comprises the CKM-factors, and\n$\\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}$ is the local dimension-six \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ four-quark operator\n\\begin{equation}\n\\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}} =\n\t\\left[\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu \\left(1-\\gamma_5\\right) d\\right]\n\t\\cdot\n\t\\left[\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu \\left(1-\\gamma_5\\right) d\\right]\n\\label{oll}\n\\end{equation}\nThe $x_q^\\star = {m_q^\\star}^2\/M_W^2$, $q=c,t$ encode the running quark\nmasses $m_q^\\star=m_q(m_q)$ in the \\ensuremath{\\ov{\\textrm{MS}}}\\ scheme.  In writing\n{\\eq{hamiltonian}} the GIM mechanism $\\lambda_u+\\lambda_c+\\lambda_t=0$\nhas been used to eliminate $\\lambda_u$.  Further we have set $m_u=0$.\nThe Inami-Lim functions $S(x)$, $S(x,y)$ describe the\n{\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}}-transition amplitude in the absence of QCD.  They read:\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{sfkts}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS(x_t) &=& x_t \\left[ \\frac{1}{4} + \\frac{9}{4}\n\\frac{1}{1-x_t} - \\frac{3}{2} \\frac{1}{(1-x_t)^2} \\right]\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&& - \\frac{3}{2} \\left[ \\frac{x_t}{1-x_t} \\right]^3 \\ln x_t,\n\\label{sxt} \\\\\nS(x_c) &=& x_c + O(x_c^2),\n\\label{ilgim} \\\\\nS(x_c,x_t) &=& - x_c \\ln x_c + x_c F(x_t)\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&& + O(x_c^2 \\ln x_c),\n\\label{sxcxt}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\nwith\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nF(x_t)&=&  \\frac{x_t^2-8 x_t+4 }{4 (1-x_t)^2} \\ln x_t\n            + \\frac{3}{4} \\frac{x_t}{x_t-1}.\n\\label{deff}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn \\eq{ilgim} and \\eq{sxcxt} we have only kept terms which are larger\nthan those of order $(m_s m_c)\/M_W^2$ neglected by setting the external\nmomenta to zero.\n\nIn \\eq{hamiltonian} the short-distance QCD corrections are comprised\nin the coefficients $\\eta_1^\\star$, $\\eta_2^\\star$ and $\\eta_3^\\star$\nwith their explicit dependence on the renormalization scale $\\mu$\nfactored out in the function $b(\\mu)$.  In absence of QCD corrections\n$\\eta_i^\\star b(\\mu) = 1$.\n\n{\\tab{tab:rglogs}} summarizes the logarithms summed by the forthcoming\nrenormalization group (RG) evolution from $M_W$ down to $m_c$ in the\ndifferent orders.\n\\begin{ntable}\n\\ncaption{Logarithms summed by the RG evolution from $M_W$ down to\n$m_c$ for the three terms in \\eq{hamiltonian}, $n=0,1,2,\\ldots$ The\nlast line shows the order in which the dependence on $m_t$ enters.}\n\\label{tab:rglogs}\n\\begin{tabular}{@{}l@{}*{3}{@{\\hspace{0.5em}}r@{}c@{}l@{}}}\nOrder &\n& $H^c$ &&& $H^t$ &&& $H^{ct}$ & \\\\\n\\hline\nLO&\n &$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&&\n &$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&&\n &$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&$\\ln\\!x_c$\n\\\\\nNLO&\n$\\alpha_s$&$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&&\n$\\alpha_s$&$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&&\n&$(\\alpha_s\\ln\\!x_c)^n$&\n\\\\ \\hline\n$m_t$ &\n & none &&\n & in LO &&\n & in NLO &\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{ntable}\n\nThe first complete determination of the coefficients $\\eta_i$,\n$i=1,2,3$ in the leading order (LO) is due to Gilman and Wise\n{\\cite{gw}}.  However, the LO expressions have several conceptual\ndrawbacks:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item The fundamental QCD scale parameter \\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\overline{\\mathrm{MS}}}}\\ is not\nwell-defined in the LO.\n\\item The quark mass dependence of the $\\eta_i$'s is not\ncorrectly reproduced by the LO expressions.  Especially the\n$m_t^\\star$-dependent terms in $\\eta_3^\\star \\cdot\nS(x_c^\\star,x_t^\\star)$ already belong to the NLO.\n\\item Similarly the question of the \\emph{definition} of the quark\nmasses (i.e.\\ the renormalization scheme and scale) to be used in\n{\\eq{hamiltonian}} is a next-to-leading order issue.\n\\item The LO results for $\\eta_1$ and $\\eta_3$ show a large dependence\non the factorization scales, at which one integrates out heavy\nparticles.  In the NLO these uncertainties are reduced considerably.\n\\item One must go to the NLO to judge whether perturbation theory \nworks, i.e.\\ whether the radiative corrections are small.  After all\nthe corrections can be sizeable.\n\\end{enumerate}\nTo overcome the limitations listed above one has to go to the\nnext-to-leading order (NLO).  This programme has been started with the\ncalculation of $\\eta_2^\\star$ by Buras, Jamin and Weisz \\cite{bjw}.\nThen Nierste and I have derived the NLO expressions for $\\eta_1^\\star$\n{\\cite{hn1}} and $\\eta_3^\\star$ \\cite{hn}.  This article will\nessentially deal with the term $H^{ct}$ of \\eq{hamiltonian} and is\nbased on \\cite{hn}.\n\n\n\\section{The NLO calculation of $\\eta_3$ above the charm threshold}\n\\label{sect:above}\n\nHere we will shortly describe how the large logarithm $\\ln x_c$\npresent in \\eq{sxcxt} is summed to all orders in perturbation theory.\nThis is done in two steps: First one sets up an effective lagrangian\n$\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ in which the W boson and the top quark are removed as dynamic\ndegrees of freedom.  In $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ and \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ transitions\nare described by local four-quark operators, which are multiplied by\nWilson coefficients.  The general structure of $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ reads:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}} &=&\n-\\frac{\\,G_F}{\\sqrt{2}} V_{\\mathrm{CKM}} \\sum_{k} C_{k} Q_k\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\n-\\frac{\\,G_F^2}{2} V_{\\mathrm{CKM}} \\sum_{l} \\wt{C}_{l} \\wt{Q}_{l}.\n\\label{lgeneric}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nHere the $V_{\\mathrm{CKM}}$ denote products of CKM elements.  The\n$Q_k$, $\\wt{Q}_l$ represent local \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ and \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ operators and\nthe $C_k$, $\\wt{C}_l$ are the corresponding Wilson coefficient\nfunctions.  The \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ part of \\eq{lgeneric} contributes to \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\\ntransitions via diagrams of the type displayed in \\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo}.\n\\begin{nfigure}\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\minicolumn]{eff-lo.eps}\n\\hfill\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\minicolumn]{peng-lo.eps}\n\\ncaption{\nThe diagrams $\\mathsf{D_0}$ and $\\mathsf{P_0}$ in the effective\nfive- and four-quark theory.  The light crosses denote insertions of\nlocal {\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}}\\ current-current operators, the grey ones insertion of\nlocal {\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}}\\ four-quark penguin operators.}\n\\label{fig:cc-cc-lo}\n\\end{nfigure}\nThe Wilson coefficients are fixed at a factorization scale\n$\\mu_{tW}=O(M_W,m_t)$ by the requirement that the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ and \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\\nGreen's functions derived from \\eq{lgeneric} are equal to the same\nquantities calculated with the full SM lagrangian.  The effect of this\nprocedure is that the $\\ln x_c$ present in \\eq{sxcxt} is split as\n$\\ln(\\mu_{tW}\/M_W)+\\ln(m_c\/\\mu_{tW})$.  Here the former term resides in the\nWilson coefficients while the latter is contained in the matrix\nelements of the local operators.  The choice $\\mu_{tW}=O(M_W,m_t)$ ensures\nthat the Wilson coefficients do not contain large logarithms and\ntherefore can be reliably calculated in ordinary perturbation theory.\n\nThe second step is the RG evolution of the Wilson coefficients from\nthe scale $\\mu_{tW}$ down to $\\mu_c=O(m_c)$ which sums\n$\\ln(\\mu_c\/\\mu_{tW})$.\\footnote{For simplicity we ignore the intermediate\nscale $\\mu_b=O(m_b)$ at which the bottom quark gets integrated out.}\n\n\n\\subsection{The Operator Basis}\\label{sect:ops}\n\nLet us now construct $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ in \\eq{lgeneric} as far it is needed for\nthe calculation of $\\eta_3$.  Since the presence of \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ terms in\n\\eq{lgeneric} does not affect the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ part of $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$, we can\nsimply take the latter from \\cite{bw,bjlw,bjlw2}.  They consist of the\nfollowing set of operators:\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{SOneOps}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nQ_1^{kl} &=&\n\\left(\\bar{s} \\gamma_{\\mu} L k\\right) \\cdot\n\\left(\\bar{l} \\gamma^{\\mu} L d\\right) \\cdot\n\\widetilde{\\openone}\n\\label{defQ1} ,\n\\\\\nQ_2^{kl} &=&\n\\left(\\bar{s} \\gamma_{\\mu} L k\\right) \\cdot\n\\left(\\bar{l} \\gamma^{\\mu} L d\\right) \\cdot\n\\openone\n\\label{defQ2} ,\n\\\\\nQ_3 &=& \\left(\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d\\right) \\cdot \\sum_{q=d,u,s,\\ldots}\n\\left(\\overline{q}\\gamma^\\mu L q\\right) \\cdot \\1\n\\label{defQ3} ,\n\\\\\nQ_4 &=& \\left(\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d\\right) \\cdot \\sum_{q=d,u,s,\\ldots}\n\\left(\\overline{q}\\gamma^\\mu L q\\right) \\cdot \\tw\n\\label{defQ4} ,\n\\\\\nQ_5 &=& \\left(\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d\\right) \\cdot \\sum_{q=d,u,s,\\ldots}\n\\left(\\overline{q}\\gamma^\\mu R q\\right) \\cdot \\1\n\\label{defQ5} ,\n\\\\\nQ_6 &=& \\left(\\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d\\right) \\cdot \\sum_{q=d,u,s,\\ldots}\n\\left(\\overline{q}\\gamma^\\mu R q\\right) \\cdot \\tw\n\\label{defQ6} .\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\nHere the $Q_i^{kl}$, $i\\!=\\!1,2$, $k,l\\!=\\!u,c$ represent the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\\ncurrent-current operators, the $Q_i$, $i\\!=\\!3,\\ldots,6$ the\nQCD-penguin operators.  The sum in \\eq{defQ3}--\\eq{defQ6} runs over\nall active flavours.  Further $L,R = (1\\mp\\gamma_5)$ and $\\openone$,\n$\\widetilde{\\openone}$ denote color singlet and anti-singlet, i.e.\\\n$Q_1^{kl}=\\left(\\overline{s}_i \\gamma_\\mu L k_j\\right) \\cdot \\left(\\overline{l}_j\n{\\gamma^\\mu} L d_i\\right)$ with $i,j$ being color indices.\n\nFurther we need the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ operators present in \\eq{lgeneric}.\nConsider first the diagram $\\mathsf{D_0}$ of \\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo} with\ntwo internal charm quarks and zero external momenta.  The only\nphysical dimension-eight \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ operator required to absorb its\ndivergence reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\wt{Q}_7 &=& \\frac{m_c^2}{g^2 \\mu^{2 \\varepsilon}} \\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}\n= \\frac{m_c^2}{g^2 \\mu^{2 \\varepsilon}} \\cdot\n     \\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d \\cdot \\overline{s} \\gamma^\\mu L d ,\n\\label{defQ7}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich follows from power counting and the absence of any non-zero mass\nparameter apart from $m_c$.  The inverse powers of $g$ are introduced\nfor later convenience as in {\\cite{gw}}. One may arbitrarily shift\nsuch factors from the Wilson coefficient into the definition of the\noperator. The factor $\\mu^{- 2\\varepsilon}$ stems from $g_{\\mr{bare}}= Z_g g\n\\mu^{\\varepsilon}$ and the fact that\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\wt{Q}_7^\\bare &=& \\frac{ m_{c,\\,\\bare }^{2} }{g_{\\bare }^{ 2}} \\left[\n     \\overline{s} \\gamma_\\mu L d \\cdot \\overline{s} \\gamma^\\mu L d \\right]^{\\bare} .\n\\label{q7bare}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nmust be independent of $\\mu$.\\footnote{Here and in the following the\nsuperscript ``bare'' denotes unrenormalized operators, while\nrenormalized ones do not carry an additional superscript.}  Any other\ndimension-eight \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ operator contains one or two powers of $m_c$\nless than $\\wt{Q}_7$ and derivatives and\/or gluon fields instead.  Their\non-shell matrix elements are suppressed by powers of $m_s\/m_c$ with\nrespect to those of $\\wt{Q}_7$, so that they do not contribute to the\ncoefficient of the leading dimension-six operator \\emph{below} the\ncharm threshold (cf.\\ (\\ref{hamiltonian})).  Likewise they cannot mix\nwith $\\wt{Q}_7$ under renormalization.\n\nTherefore our operator basis consists of $Q_{1,2}^{kl}$,\n$Q_{3,\\ldots,6}$ and $\\wt{Q}_7$\\footnote{In addition to these physical\noperators we have to take into account several evanescent operators.\nThis class of operators appears quite naturally when one has to deal\nwith the renormalization of operators containing more than one fermion\nline in dimensional regularization {\\cite{bw,dg,hn2}}.  To illustrate\nsome of the findings of \\cite{hn2} we have defined the evanescent\noperators with some arbitrary coefficients $a_1$, $a_2$, $\\wt{a}_1$,\n$\\wt{b}_1$:\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{StdEvas}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nE_1[Q_j]\\hspace{-0.7em} &\\! = \\! & \\bigl[\n\\gamma_\\mu \\gamma_\\nu \\gamma_\\eta L \\otimes \\gamma^\\eta \\gamma^\\nu \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\nonumber \\\\ &&\n- \\left(4+a_1\\varepsilon\\right) \\gamma_\\mu L \\otimes \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\bigr] K_{1j} , \\; j=1,\\ldots 4,\n\\label{StdEvas1-12}\\\\\nE_1[Q_j]\\hspace{-0.7em} &\\! = \\! & \\bigl[\n\\gamma_\\mu \\gamma_\\nu \\gamma_\\eta R \\otimes \\gamma^\\eta \\gamma^\\nu \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\nonumber \\\\ &&\n- \\left(16+a_2\\varepsilon\\right) \\gamma_\\mu R \\otimes \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\bigr] K_{1j} , \\; j=5,6 ,\n\\label{StdEvas1-56}\\\\\nE_1[\\wt{Q}_7]\\hspace{-0.7em} &\\! = \\! & \\frac{m_c^2}{g^2} \\bigl[\n\\gamma_\\mu \\gamma_\\nu \\gamma_\\eta L \\otimes \\gamma^\\eta \\gamma^\\nu \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\nonumber \\\\ &&\n- \\left(4+\\tilde{a}_1\\varepsilon\\right) \\gamma_\\mu L \\otimes \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\bigr] K_{12} ,\n\\label{StdEvas1-loc}\\\\\nE_2[\\wt{Q}_7]\\hspace{-0.7em} &\\! = \\! & \\frac{m_c^2}{g^2} \\bigl[\n\\gamma_\\mu \\gamma_\\nu \\gamma_\\eta \\gamma_\\sigma \\gamma_\\tau L \\otimes\n\\gamma^\\tau \\gamma^\\sigma \\gamma^\\eta \\gamma^\\nu \\gamma^\\mu L\n\\nonumber \\\\ &&\n- \\left[\\left(4+\\tilde{a}_1\\varepsilon\\right)^2+\\tilde{b}_1 \\varepsilon \\right]\n\\gamma_\\mu L \\otimes \\gamma^\\mu L \\bigr] K_{22}.\n\\label{StdEvas2-loc}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\nwith the color factors\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{array}{@{}l*{3}{@{\\;=\\;}l}}\nK_{12}&K_{13}&K_{15}&\\frac{1}{2} \\widetilde{\\openone} - \\frac{1}{2 N} \\openone,\\\\\nK_{11}&K_{14}&K_{16}&\\frac{1}{4} \\openone + \\frac{N^2-2}{4 N}\\widetilde{\\openone}.\n\\end{array}\n\\label{DefColourEva}\n\\end{equation}\nApart from places where it is indicated we will always state the\nresults corresponding to\n\\begin{eqnarray}\na_1 = -8, \\hspace{3em}\na_2 = -16, \\hspace{3em}\n\\tilde{a}_1 = -8,\n\\label{StdEvasNum}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nin order to comply with the standard choice used in\n\\cite{bjw,hn1,bw,bjlw,bjlw2}.  Since NLO anomalous dimensions\nand matching corrections of physical operators do not depend\non $\\tilde{b}_1$, we do not give a numerical value.  Likewise\nwe do not need the value of the colour factor $K_{22}$.\n\nand $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ is found as:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\hspace{-1em}&\\!\\!\\!\\!=\\!\\!\\!\\!&\n- \\frac{\\,G_F}{\\sqrt{2}} \\sum_{i=1}^6  C_i\n\\biggl[  \\sum_{j=1}^2\\hspace{-0.3em} Z^{-1}_{ij}\\hspace{-0.5em}\n\\sum_{k,l =u,c}\\hspace{-0.5em} V_{ks}^\\ast  V_{ld}   Q_j^{kl,\\mathrm{bare}}\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&& \\hspace{6em}\n- \\lambda_t \\sum_{j=3}^6 Z^{-1}_{ij} Q_j^{\\mathrm{bare}}  \\biggr] \\nonumber \\\\\n&& - \\frac{\\, G_F^2}{2} \\lambda_c \\lambda_t\n    \\biggl[ \\sum_{k=1}^{2} \\sum_{l=1}^{6}\n   C_k C_l \\zbi{kl}^{-1}\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&& \\hspace{6em}\n+ \\wt{C}_7 \\wt{Z}_{77}^{-1} \\biggr]\n   \\wt{Q}_7^{\\mathrm{bare}}\n   \\nonumber \\\\\n&& + \\parbox[t]{14em}{counterterms proportional to unphysical operators.}\n\\label{lags2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\n\n\\subsection{The Effective Lagrangian $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ at the Scale $\\mu_{tW}$}\n\\label{sect:mutW}\n\nBesides the operators we need to know their corresponding Wilson\ncoefficient functions at the initial scale $\\mu_{tW}$.  The ones for the\n\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ case, $C_i$, $i\\!=\\!1,\\ldots,6$ can be taken from\n\\cite{bw,bjlw,bjlw2}.  It is important to note that only $C_2$ starts\nat $O(\\alpha_s^0)$, the others at $O(\\alpha_s^1)$.  This means that the NLO\nmatching can be done solely with the diagram $\\mathsf{D_0}$ of\n{\\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo}} with two insertions of $Q_2$.  One easily finds\n\\begin{equation}\n\\wt{C}_7(\\mu_{tW}) = \\left\\{\n\\begin{array}{@{}ll}\n0 & \\mbox{in LO} \\\\\n\\displaystyle \\frac{\\alpha_s(\\mu_{tW})}{4\\pi} \\bigl(\n-8\\ln\\frac{\\mu_{tW}}{M_W} & \\\\\n\\hspace{0.5em}+4F\\left(x_t\\left(\\mu_{tW}\\right)\\bigr)\n+ 2\n\\right) & \\mbox{in NLO}\n\\end{array}\n\\right.\\hspace{-1.5em},\n\\label{clocInit}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $F(x_t)$ is the top dependent part of $S(x_c,x_t)$ defined in\n{\\eq{deff}}.  The factor $\\alpha_s$ originates from the special definition\nof $\\wt{Q}_7$ in \\eq{defQ7}.  Note how the large logarithm $\\ln x_c$ in\n\\eq{sxcxt} is split between the Wilson coefficient $\\wt{C}_7$ and the\nmatrix element.  The NLO result in {\\eq{clocInit}} is specific to the\nNDR scheme with {\\eq{StdEvasNum}}.\\footnote{\nThe Wilson coefficient $\\wt{C}_7$ depends on $\\wt{a}_1$:\n\\begin{displaymath}\n\\wt{C}_7(\\mu_{tW}) =\n\\frac{\\alpha_s(\\mu_{tW})}{4\\pi} \\left[\n-8\\ln\\frac{\\mu_{tW}}{M_W}+4F\\left(x_t\\left(\\mu_{tW}\\right)\\right)\n-\\left(6+\\tilde{a}_1\\right)\n\\right]\n\\end{displaymath}\n}\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Evolving down $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ from $\\mu_{tW}$ to $\\mu_c$}\\label{sect:evol}\n\nNext we have to evolve down the Wilson coefficients present in $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$\n{\\eq{lags2}} from $\\mu_{tW}$ to $\\mu_c$.  For the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ functions $C_i$,\n$i\\!=\\!1,\\ldots,6$ this is achieved by standard methods \\cite{bjlw}.\nTo calculate the running of the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ coefficient $\\wt{C}_7$ we need to\nderive and solve the corresponding RG equation.  From $\\dmu\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}=0$ in\n{\\eq{lags2}} one finds\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\dmu \\wt{C}_7\\left(\\mu\\right) \\hspace{-1em} &=& \\hspace{-1em}\n\\wt{C}_7\\left(\\mu\\right) \\wt{\\gamma}_{77}\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\\hspace{-1em}+ \\sum_{k=1}^2 \\sum_{k^\\prime =1}^6 \n   C_{k}\\left(\\mu\\right) C_{k'}\\left(\\mu\\right) \\gbi{kk'}\n\\label{RGdouble}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith the \\emph{anomalous dimension tensor}\\footnote{``Anomalous\ndimension tensor'' is clearly a misnomer and only used to distinguish\n$\\gbi{kn}$ from ordinary anomalous dimension (square) matrices.}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\gbi{kn}\\hspace{-1em} &=& \\hspace{-0.8em}\n\\frac{\\alpha_s}{4\\pi} \\gbi{kn}^{\\left(0\\right)}\n+ \\left(\\frac{\\alpha_s}{4\\pi}\\right)^2 \\gbi{kn}^{\\left(1\\right)}\n+ \\ldots\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&=&\\hspace{-0.8em}\n- \\sum_{k^\\prime=1}^2 \\sum_{n^\\prime =1}^6 \n\\left[\\gamma_{kk'} \\delta_{nn'} + \\delta_{kk'} \\gamma_{nn'}\\right]\n\\zbi{k'n'}^{-1} \\wt{Z}_{77}\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&-\\left[\\dmu \\zbi{kn}^{-1}\\right] \\wt{Z}_{77} .\n\\label{AnomDimTens}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIt is possible to solve the inhomogeneous equation \\eq{RGdouble}\ndirectly but this turns out to be inconvenient for practical purposes.\nInstead we may combine the evolution equations of the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ and\n{\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}}\\ Wilson coefficients into a single matrix equation.  This is\nmade possible because the GIM mechanism ensures that at least one of\nthe two \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ operator insertions in diagrams like the ones\ndisplayed in \\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo} is of the current-current type.  The\ncurrent-current part of the {\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}}\\ mixing matrix, i.e.\\ the entries\nrelated to $Q_1$, $Q_2$, can be diagonalized exactly using the basis\n\\begin{equation}\nQ_\\pm^{kl} = \\frac{1}{2} \\left(Q_2^{kl} \\pm Q_1^{kl}\\right).\n\\label{DefQpm}\n\\end{equation}\nThen \\eq{RGdouble} together with the RG equation of the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ Wilson\ncoefficients splits into two independent inhomogeneous RG equations\n\\begin{equation}\n\\dmu \\wt{C}_7^{\\pm}\\left(\\mu\\right) =\n\t\\wt{\\gamma}_{77} \\wt{C}_7^{\\pm}\\left(\\mu\\right)\n\t+ \\gbi{\\pm k}  C_\\pm\\left(\\mu\\right) C_k\\left(\\mu\\right).\n\\label{RGdoubleSep}\n\\end{equation}\nHere the decomposition of $\\wt{C}_7(\\mu_{tW})$ into $\\wt{C}_7^{\\pm}(\\mu_{tW})$\nis completely arbitrary provided one satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\wt{C}_7\\left(\\mu_{tW}\\right) =\n\\wt{C}_7^{+}\\left(\\mu_{tW}\\right) + \\wt{C}_7^{-}\\left(\\mu_{tW}\\right).\n\\label{clocdec}\n\\end{equation}\nThis decomposition is then automatically  preserved at any\nrenormalization scale.\n\nEach of the two equations in \\eq{RGdoubleSep} may be written as a\n7$\\times$7 matrix equation, which may be solved by standard methods.\nWe can even do better and collapse the two resulting 7$\\times$7 \nmatrix equations into one 8$\\times$8 matrix equation:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\dmu \\vec{D} =\n\\widehat{\\gamma}^T \\cdot \\vec{D}\n\\label{RGdouble1matrix8}\n\\end{equation}\nwith\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{RGdouble8}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\widehat{\\gamma}^T \\hspace{-0.8em}&=&\\hspace{-1.0em}\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\gamma^T & 0 & 0 \\\\\n\\gbi{+}^{T} & \\wt{\\gamma}_{77} - \\gamma_{+} & 0 \\\\\n\\gbi{-}^{T} & 0 & \\wt{\\gamma}_{77} - \\gamma_{-}\n\\end{array}\n\\right)\n\\label{RGdouble8Anom}\n\\\\\n\\gbi{\\pm}^{T} \\hspace{-0.8em}&=&\\hspace{-1.0em}\n\\left(\n\\gbi{\\pm1\\!}, \\gbi{\\pm2\\!}, \\gbi{\\pm3\\!},\n\\gbi{\\pm4\\!}, \\gbi{\\pm5\\!}, \\gbi{\\pm6\\!}\n\\right)\n\\label{RGdouble8Tens}\n\\\\\n\\vec{D}\\left(\\mu\\right) \\hspace{-0.8em}&=&\\hspace{-1.0em}\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{c}\n\\vec{C}\\left(\\mu\\right) \\\\\n\\wt{C}_7^{+}\\left(\\mu\\right) \/ C_{+}\\left(\\mu\\right) \\\\\n\\wt{C}_7^{-}\\left(\\mu\\right) \/ C_{-}\\left(\\mu\\right)\n\\end{array}\n\\right).\n\\label{RGdouble8WC}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\n\nWe now need to know the elements of the anomalous dimension tensor\n$\\gbi{\\pm i}$, $i=1,\\ldots,6$.  They are obtained from the\nrenormalization constants using the definition in \\eq{AnomDimTens} and\nexpanding the quantities in there in powers of $\\alpha_s$ and $1\/\\varepsilon$.\nHere it is important to include the finite renormalization terms\nneeded for the correct treatment of the evanescent operators\n{\\eq{StdEvas}}.  To calculate the LO term $\\gbi{\\pm i}^{(0)}$ one\nneeds to know the $1\/\\varepsilon$ parts of the one-loop diagrams displayed in\n{\\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo}}, the NLO part $\\gbi{\\pm i}^{(1)}$ requires the\nevaluation of a set of two-loop graphs.  We find:\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{ResAnomTens}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\gbi{+}^{(0)} =\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{r}\n-16 \\\\ -8 \\\\ -32 \\\\ -16 \\\\ 32 \\\\ 16\n\\end{array}\n\\right),\n&&\\hspace{-1em}\n\\gbi{-}^{(0)} =\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{r}\n8 \\\\ 0 \\\\ 16 \\\\ 0 \\\\ -16 \\\\ 0\n\\end{array}\n\\right),\n\\label{ResAnomTens0}\n\\\\\n\\gbi{+}^{(1)} =\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{r}\n-212 \\\\ -28 \\\\ -456 \\\\ -88 \\\\ \\frac{1064}{3} \\\\ \\frac{832}{3}\n\\end{array}\n\\right),\n&&\\hspace{-1em}\n\\gbi{-}^{(1)} =\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{r}\n276 \\\\ -92 \\\\ 520 \\\\ -216 \\\\ -\\frac{1288}{3} \\\\ 0\n\\end{array}\n\\right).\n\\label{ResAnomTens1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\nAs usual the NLO anomalous dimension tensor depends on the\nrenormalization scheme.  The result {\\eq{ResAnomTens1}} corresponds to\nthe NDR scheme with the definition of the evanescent operators\ncorresponding to {\\eq{StdEvasNum}}.\\footnote{In our two-loop\ncalculation we have kept $a_1,a_2, \\wt{a}_1$ and $\\wt{b}_1$ in\n\\eq{StdEvas} arbitrary yielding\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\gbi{+}^{(1)} &=&\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{@{}*{4}{r@{}}}\n-\\frac{188}{3} & -\\frac{74}{3} a_1 & & + \\frac{130}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-\\frac{100}{3} & -\\frac{34}{3} a_1 & & + \\frac{32}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-\\frac{1816}{3} & - \\frac{88}{3} a_1 & & + \\frac{32}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-\\frac{680}{3} & - \\frac{80}{3} a_1 & & + \\frac{28}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n\\frac{1576}{3} & + \\frac{80}{3} a_1 & + \\frac{8}{3} a_2 &\n\t- \\frac{32}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n\\frac{1664}{3} & + \\frac{28}{3} a_1 & + \\frac{52}{3} a_2 &\n\t- \\frac{28}{3} \\tilde{a}_1\n\\end{array}\n\\right),\n\\\\\n\\gbi{-}^{(1)} &=&\n\\left(\n\\begin{array}{@{}*{4}{r@{}}}\n\\frac{124}{3} &+\\frac{22}{3} a_1 & & - \\frac{110}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-12 &+6 a_1 & & + 4 \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n\\frac{1496}{3} & + \\frac{8}{3} a_1 & & - \\frac{16}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-120 & + 8 a_1 & & + 4 \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n\\frac{1160}{3} & - \\frac{16}{3} a_1 & + \\frac{8}{3} a_2 &\n\t+ \\frac{16}{3} \\tilde{a}_1 \\\\\n-128 & - 4 a_1 & - 4 a_2 & - 4 \\tilde{a}_1\n\\end{array}\n\\right)\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations}\n}\n\n\n\n\\section{The NLO calculation of $\\eta_3$ below the charm threshold}\n\\label{sect:below}\n\n\\subsection{The Effective Lagrangian $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ at the Scale\n\t$\\mu_c=O(m_c)$}\n\\label{sect:muc}\n\nAfter integrating out the charm quark all dependence on $m_c$\nbelongs to the Wilson coefficients.  This implies that the\nterm involving $\\wt{Q}_7$ in \\eq{lags2} has to disappear from the\neffective lagrangian, because $\\wt{Q}_7$ contains $m_c$ in its definition\n{\\eq{defQ7}}.  Further the \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}\\ operators are neglected in the\nnew effective lagrangian, because the matrix elements of double\ninsertions of these operators are at most proportional to $m_s^2$\nrather than $m_c^2$.  We have already neglected such terms in all\npreceding steps.\n\nTherefore the new effective lagrangian to describe the physics below\n$\\mu_c$ reads:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\lag_\\mr{eff}^\\mr{|\\Delta S| =  2} &=&\n-\\frac{\\, G_F^2}{16\\pi^2} \\biggl[\n\\lambda_c^2 \\cll{c}\\left(\\mu\\right)\n+\\lambda_t^2 \\cll{t}\\left(\\mu\\right)\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\n+\\lambda_c \\lambda_t \\cll{ct}\\left(\\mu\\right)\n\\biggr] \\wt{Z}_{\\stwo}^{-1}\\left(\\mu\\right) \\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}^\\mathrm{bare}.\n\\label{lags2c}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThis lagrangian already resembles $-H^{\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}}$ introduced in\n{\\eq{hamiltonian}}.  For the matching we have to set the Green's\nfunction derived from \\eq{lags2} and the one derived from \\eq{lags2c}\nequal at the scale $\\mu=\\mu_c$.\n\nLet us start with the matching of $\\wt{C}_7$ in the LO: since the\ndefinition of $\\wt{Q}_7$ \\eq{defQ7} contains the factor $\\alpha_s$ with\nrespect to $\\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}$ we develop an explicit inverse power of $\\alpha_s$ for\nthe Wilson coefficient:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\cll{ct}\\left(\\mu_c\\right) &=&\n\\frac{m_c^2\\left(\\mu_c\\right)}{2} \\frac{4\\pi}{\\alpha_s\\left(\\mu_c\\right)}\n\\wt{C}_7\\left(\\mu_c\\right)\n\\mbox{in LO}.\n\\label{matchCct7}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nDiagrams containing double insertions are of order $\\alpha_s^0$ and\ntherefore start contributing to $\\cll{ct}$ in the NLO.  The NLO\nversion of $\\cll{ct}$ can be written\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\cll{ct}\\left(\\mu_c\\right) &=&\nm_c^2\\left(\\mu_c\\right) \\biggl[\\frac{1}{2}\n\\frac{4\\pi}{\\alpha_s\\left(\\mu_c\\right)} \\wt{C}_7\\left(\\mu_c\\right)\n\\nonumber \\\\\n&&\\hspace{-3.5em}\n+\\sum_{i=+,-} \\sum_{j=1}^{6} r_{ij,S2}\\left(\\mu_c\\right)\nC_i\\left(\\mu_c\\right) C_j\\left(\\mu_c\\right) \\biggr].\n\\label{cllNLOct}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nThe coefficients $r_{ij,S2}\\left(\\mu_c\\right)$ in \\eq{cllNLOct} are\ngiven by the finite parts of the diagrams in {\\fig{fig:cc-cc-lo}}.  We\nfind:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nr_{ij,S2}\\left(\\mu_c\\right)\n\\hspace{-1em}&=&\\hspace{-1.2em}\n\\left\\{\\hspace{-0.7em}\n\\begin{array}{l@{\\hspace{0.3em}\\mbox{for }j=\\hspace{-0.2em}}l}\n\\displaystyle\n\\left[-4\\ln\\frac{m_c(\\mu_c)}{\\mu_c} -1\\right]\n\\hspace{-0.2em}\\tau_{ij} & 1,2, \\\\[2.8ex]\n\\displaystyle\n\\left[-8\\ln\\frac{m_c(\\mu_c)}{\\mu_c} -4\\right]\n\\hspace{-0.2em}\\tau_{ij} & 3,4, \\\\[2.8ex]\n\\displaystyle\n\\left[8\\ln\\frac{m_c(\\mu_c)}{\\mu_c} +4\\right]\n\\hspace{-0.2em}\\tau_{ij} & 5,6,\n\\end{array}\n\\right.\n\\label{Rmatch}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the $\\tau_{ij}$'s denote the colour factors\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\begin{array}{l}\n\\displaystyle\n\\tau_{\\pm1} = \\tau_{\\pm3} = \\tau_{\\pm5} = \\frac{1 \\pm N}{2}, \\\\\n\\displaystyle\n\\tau_{+2} = \\tau_{+4} = \\tau_{+6} = 1, \\\\\n\\displaystyle\n\\tau_{-2} = \\tau_{-4} = \\tau_{-6} = 0.\n\\end{array}\n\\label{DefTau}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNote that $r_{ij,S2}$ for $j=1,2$ depends on the definition of the\nevanescent operator $E_1[\\wt{Q}_7]$. As usual {\\eq{Rmatch}} only holds in\nthe NDR scheme.\n\n\n\\subsection{Evolving $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ below $\\mu_c$}\\label{sect:evol3}\n\nThe RG running in the effective three quark theory is particularly\nsimple because there is only one operator left: $\\ensuremath{\\tilde{Q}_{\\stwo}}$.  The running\nof the corresponding Wilson coefficient function $\\cll{ct}$ can be\ntaken from \\cite{bw,bjw}.\n\n$\\eta_3$ can then be determined from the identification\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}} = - H^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\n\\label{identification}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\Lagr_\\eff^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ from \\eq{lags2c} and $H^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$ from \\eq{hamiltonian}.\nThe result of this can be found in \\cite[section~5]{hn}.\n\n\n\n\\section{Numerical Results}\\label{sect:num}\n\nLet us now discuss the numerical implications of the calculation\npresented in the preceding sections.  We will present the dependence\nof $\\eta_3^\\star$ on its various physical parameters and on the\nrenormalization scales at which particles are integrated out.\n\n$\\eta_3^\\star$ depends on the scales $\\mu_{tW}$, $\\mu_b$ and $\\mu_c$.\nFurther it is a function of the masses $m_t$, $m_c$ and of the QCD\nscale parameter $\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}$.  To establish a starting point let us pick a\nbasic set of input parameters\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\begin{array}{*{2}{l}}\n\\begin{array}{@{}l}\nm_c(m_c) = \\mu_c\n\\\\\n\\hspace{1em}= 1.3\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n\\end{array}\n&\n\\begin{array}{@{}l}\n\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\overline{\\mathrm{MS}}}} = 0.31\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n\\\\\n\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}^\\mathrm{LO} = 0.15\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n\\end{array}\n\\\\\n\\mu_b = 4.8\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n& M_W = 80\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n\\\\\n\\mu_{tW} = 130\\,\\mathrm{GeV},\n& m_t(m_t) = 167\\,\\mathrm{GeV}.\n\\end{array}\n\\label{InputParam}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn the following $\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}$ is always understood to be defined with\nrespect to four active flavours, the corresponding quantities in\neffective three- and five flavour-theories are obtained by imposing\ncontinuity on the coupling $\\alpha_s$ at $\\mu_c$ and\n$\\mu_b$.\\footnote{Threshold corrections appearing for $\\mu_q\\neq m_q$\nare numerically negligible.}\n\nThe value for $\\eta_3^\\star$ corresponding to the set \\eq{InputParam}\nreads:\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\eta_3^\\star}^\\mathrm{LO} = 0.365,\n\\hspace{2em}\n{\\eta_3^\\star}^\\mathrm{NLO} = 0.467.\n\\label{Num3s}\n\\end{equation}\nHence the NLO calculation has enhanced $\\eta_3^\\star$ by 27\\%.  From\nthe difference of 0.102 between the two values in \\eq{Num3s} 0.022\noriginates from the change from the LO to the NLO running $\\alpha_s$.  The\nsmallness of this contribution is caused by the adjustment of\n$\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}^\\mathrm{LO}$ to fit the NLO running coupling.  The explicit\n$O(\\alpha_s)$ corrections from the NLO mixing and matching contribute\n0.080.\n\nLet us further quantify the influence of the penguin operators\n$Q_{3,\\ldots,6}$: If one neglects them completely, one obtains\n${\\eta_3^\\star}^\\mathrm{NLO,np}=0.472$ with the set in\n{\\eq{InputParam}}, i.e.\\ their contribution is of the order of 1\\%.\n\n\n\\subsection{Scale Dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$}\\label{sect:num-scale}\n\nIdeally $\\eta_3^\\star$ should not depend on the factorization scales\n$\\mu_{tW}$, $\\mu_b$, $\\mu_{tW}$.  Yet due to the truncation of the perturbation\nseries such a dependence shows up.  It may serve as an estimate of the\ntheoretical error of the calculation.\n\nIt turns out that the dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on $\\mu_b$ is\nextremely mild.  This is due to the fact that no diagrams containing\ninternal bottom quarks contribute to the {\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}}\\ process in order\n$\\alpha_s$.  The only places where $\\mu_b$ enters are a) the running of\n$\\alpha_s$, b) the NLO matching matrices and anomalous dimensions of the\n{\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!1}}}\\ penguin operators.  Numerically one finds that\n$\\eta_3^\\star$ is shifted by 0.1--0.2\\% if one choses the extreme\nvalues of $\\mu_b \\equiv \\mu_c = O(m_c)$ or $\\mu_b \\equiv \\mu_{tW} =\nO(m_W,m_t)$.\n\nNow let us turn to the more important cases, $\\mu_{tW}$ and $\\mu_c$.  First\nconsider the variation of $\\eta_3^\\star$ with respect to $\\mu_{tW}$, which\nis displayed in \\fig{fig:e3-mutW}.\n\\begin{nfigure}\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\miniwidth]{p1x.eps}\n\\ncaption{The variation of $\\eta_3^\\star$ in LO and NLO with respect\nto the scale $\\mu_{tW}$, at which the initial condition is defined.  The\nother input parameters are given in \\eq{InputParam}.}\n\\label{fig:e3-mutW}\n\\end{nfigure}\nSince at $\\mu_{tW}$ the top quark and the W-boson are integrated out\nsimultaneously, it is natural to choose the interval\n$M_W\\leq\\mu_{tW}\\leq m_t$ for the analysis.  In the LO result for\n$\\eta_3^\\star$ we find a sizeable scale dependence of 12\\%.  It is\nalmost totally removed in the NLO, where we obtain a variation of less\nthan 3\\% in this interval.  This shows that it is very accurate to\nintegrate out the two heavy particles simultaneously. The strong\nimprovement in the NLO is due to the smallness of $\\ln x_t$.\n\nThe situation is not so nice in the case of the variation of $\\mu_c$,\nwhich is displayed in \\fig{fig:e3-muc}.\n\\begin{nfigure}\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\miniwidth]{p2x.eps}\n\\ncaption{The variation of $\\eta_3^\\star$ in LO and NLO with respect\nto the scale $\\mu_c$.  The range for the latter is taken unphysically\nlarge to visualize the breakdown of perturbation theory.  The other\ninput parameters are given in \\eq{InputParam}.}\n\\label{fig:e3-muc}\n\\end{nfigure}\nWe have intentionally extended\nthe range for $\\mu_c$ to the unphysical low value of $0.7\\,\\mathrm{GeV}$ to\nvisualize the breakdown of perturbation theory.  Varying $\\mu_c$\nwithin the interval $1.1\\,\\mathrm{GeV}\\leq\\mu_c\\leq1.6\\,\\mathrm{GeV}$ yields\n\\begin{equation}\n0.33 \\leq {\\eta_3^\\star}^\\mathrm{LO} \\leq 0.40,\n\\hspace{1em}\n0.43 \\leq {\\eta_3^\\star}^\\mathrm{NLO} \\leq 0.50 .\n\\label{num-muc}\n\\end{equation}\nThis corresponds to a reduction of the scale dependence from 20\\% to\n14\\%.  One reason for the poor improvement is the fact that the NLO\nrunning of the mass is stronger than the LO one.\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on Physical Quantities}\n\\label{sect:num-phys}\n\nLet us now investigate the dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on the\nphysical parameters.  From the smallness of the coefficient $\\wt{C}_7$ at\nthe initial scale one expects $\\eta_3^\\star$ to be almost independent\nof $m_t^\\star=m_t(m_t)$.  This statement is confirmed numerically,\nallowing to treat $\\eta_3^\\star$ as $m_t$-independent in\nphenomenological analyses.\n\nThe LO result for $\\eta_3^\\star$ depends on $m_c^\\star=m_c(m_c)$\nsizeably.  Yet this dependence is washed out nearly completely if one\nlooks at the NLO $\\eta_3^\\star$, see \\fig{fig:e3-mc}.\n\\begin{nfigure}\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\miniwidth]{p7x.eps}\n\\ncaption{The dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on $m_c(m_c)$ in LO and\nNLO.  The other input parameters are given in \\eq{InputParam}.}\n\\label{fig:e3-mc}\n\\end{nfigure}\n\nWe close this section by a look at the dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on\n$\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}$, which is plotted in \\fig{fig:e3-laQCD}.  It also turns out\nto be very moderate.\n\\begin{nfigure}\n\\includegraphics[clip,width=\\miniwidth]{p8x.eps}\n\\ncaption{The dependence of $\\eta_3^\\star$ on $\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}$ in LO and NLO.\nActual values for $\\alpha_s (M_Z)$ correspond to $\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\mathrm{QCD}}}^\\mathrm{LO}\n\\approx 0.15\\,\\mathrm{GeV}$ and $\\ensuremath{\\Lambda_{\\overline{\\mathrm{MS}}}} \\approx 0.31\\,\\mathrm{GeV}$.  The other input\nparameters are listed in \\eq{InputParam}.}\n\\label{fig:e3-laQCD}\n\\end{nfigure}\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\\label{sect:concl}\n\nWe have calculated the QCD short distance coefficient $\\eta_3^\\star$\nof the low energy \\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}\\ hamiltonian in the next-to-leading order\n(NLO) of renormalization group improved perturbation theory.  It\nreads\n\\begin{equation}\n\\eta_3^{\\star} = 0.47\\errorpm{0.03}{0.04}\\, ,\n\\quad\n\\eta_3^{\\star \\,\\mathrm{LO} } \\approx 0.37\\, .\n\\label{coneta}\n\\end{equation}\nThe coefficient is scheme independent except that it depends on the\ndefinition of the quark masses in $H^\\ensuremath{\\mathrm{|\\Delta S| \\!=\\!2}}$. The result in\n{\\eq{coneta}} corresponds to $\\overline{\\rm MS}$-masses $m_c(m_c)$ and\n$m_t(m_t)$ as indicated by the superscript ``$\\star$''.\n\nThe result has passed several checks:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item\nThe NLO anomalous dimension tensor $\\gbi{\\pm j}$ {\\eq{ResAnomTens1}}\nhas been found independent of the infrared structure of the two-loop\ndiagrams.\n\\item\nWe have kept the gluon gauge parameter $\\xi$ arbitrary. It has\nvanished from $\\gbi{\\pm j}$ after adding the contributions of the\ndiagrams with their correct combinatorial weight.\n\\item \n$\\ln (m_c\/\\mu)\/\\varepsilon$-terms have disappeared from the sum of two-loop\ndiagrams and counterterm diagrams.\n\\item \nThe dependences of the final result for $\\eta_3^\\star$ on the matching\nscales $\\mu_{tW}$, $\\mu_b$ and $\\mu_c$ cancel to order $\\alpha_s$.\nNumerically the dependence has decreased.\n\\item \nIf one expands the final result in powers of $\\alpha_s$, one recovers the\nterms proportional to $\\alpha_s^0 \\ln^1 x_c$, $\\alpha_s^0 \\ln^0 x_c$, $\\alpha_s^1\n\\ln^2 x_c$, $\\alpha_s^1 \\ln^1 x_c$ of the result without RG improvement.\n\\item \nThe initial condition for $\\wt{C}_7$ in \\eq{clocInit} as well as the\nanomalous dimension tensor $\\gbi{\\pm j}$ in \\eq{ResAnomTens1} depend\non the definition of the evanescent operators \\eq{StdEvas}. We have\nchecked that this dependence is in accordance with the theorems of\n\\cite{hn2}, so that the final result is independent of the choice of\nthe evanescent operators.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\tGiven a simple undirected graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, \n\ta \\emph{drawing} of $G$ in the plane maps \n\teach vertex of $G$ to a distinct point and\n\teach edge to a curve connecting the two corresponding points.\n\tIn the literature, it is usually required that the edges are drawn as Jordan arcs. \n\tHowever, in order to understand the influence of self-intersections in our study, \n\twe also consider drawings in which the edges \n\tare allowed to self-intersect. \n\tIn all our drawings we forbid edges to pass through vertices,\ntangencies, and \n\tthree edges to properly cross in the same point. \n\n\n\tA drawing is \\emph{$k$-plane} if no edge is properly crossed more than $k$ times. These drawings have received a lot of attention in the graph drawing community~\\cite{didimoSurveyGraph2019,kobourovAnnotatedBibliography2017}.  \nIn this paper we study \\emph{saturated} $k$-plane drawings, i.e.,\n\t$k$-plane drawings to which no edge can be added without violating the $k$-planarity of the drawing.\n\t\n\t\n\tA drawing is \\emph{$\\ell$-simple} if no edge crosses itself and two edges share at most $\\ell$ points including their endpoints.\n\tKyn\\v{c}l et al.~\\cite{kynclSaturatedSimple2015} initiated the study of saturated  $\\ell$-simple drawings, i.e.\n\t$\\ell$-simple drawings to which no edge can be added without violating the $\\ell$-simplicity of the drawing.\nThey presented bounds on the minimum number of edges in saturated $\\ell$-simple drawings. \nRecently the bounds for simple and 2-simple drawings were improved by Hajnal et al.~\\cite{hajnalSaturatedSimple2018}.\nSaturated drawings with few edges have also been studied by Aichholzer et al.~\\cite{aichholzerEdgeVertexRatio2019} in the context of \\emph{thrackles}, \n\tthat are drawings in which every pair of edges intersects exactly once, \n\teither at a proper crossing or at a common endpoint. \n\t\nIn this paper we study the minimum number of edges in saturated $k$-plane drawings \n\tand put it in relation with different drawing restrictions, including $\\ell$-sim\\-plic\\-i\\-ty. \n\tPreviously, saturated simple $k$-plane drawings have been studied for $k=1$ and $2$.\n\tBrandenburg et al.~\\cite{brandenburgDensityMaximal2013} showed \n\tthat every saturated simple $1$-plane drawing has at least $2.1n$ edges and \n\tthat there are arbitrarily large saturated simple $1$-plane drawings with $\\frac{7n}{3}$ edges.\n\tFor this problem, Bar{\\'a}t and T{\\'o}th~\\cite{baratImprovementsDensity2018} recently improved the lower bound to $\\frac{20n}{9}$.\n\tAuer et al.~\\cite{auerSparseMaximal2013} gave a saturated simple $2$-plane drawing\n\twith at most $\\frac{4n}{3}$ edges.\n\tExtending this research to larger values of $k$ was suggested by T{\\'o}th as an interesting question~\\cite[Section~$3.2$~Problem~$15$]{hongBeyondPlanarGraphs2017}.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{table}[t]\n\t\t\t\\caption{New and known bounds for the infimum ratio of edges to vertices for arbitrarily large saturated $k$-plane drawings (disregarding lower order terms). \n \t\t\tNumbers in the table are upper bounds while the colors represent the lower bounds. For straight-line drawings no lower bounds are claimed. Arrows indicate where the best known bound for higher simplicity coincides with the one for lower simplicity.\n \t\t\tCitations and references to theorems point to where the result is proven.\n\t}\n\t\\newcommand{\\tabequal}{\\multirow{-2}{*}{$\\rightarrow$}}\t\t\n\t\\begin{tabularx}{\\textwidth}{ X|R|*{5}{L}|L }\t\t\t\n\t\\hline\n\t\\rowcolor{white}\n\t\\makecell[l]{Upper\\\\ bounds} & \n\t\\makecell{with self-\\\\crossings} & \n\t\\makecell{$k+1$-\\\\simple} & \n\t\\makecell{$4$-simple} & \n\t\\makecell{$3$-simple} & \n\t\\makecell{$2$-simple} & \n\t\\makecell{simple} & \n\t\\makecell{straight-\\\\line} \\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\n\t\\multirow{2}{*}{$1$-plane} & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{1}{2}}{=}{0.5}$ & \n\t&\n\t&\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{3}{2}}{=}{1.5}$} & \n\t\\cellcolor{Goldenrod1}\\makecell{$\\tablevalue[N]{\\frac{7}{3}}{\\approx}{2.33}$} & \n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{11}{5}}{=}{2.2}$} \\\\\n\t\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}}&\n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:lowsimplicity}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{Goldenrod1}\\makecell{\\cite{brandenburgDensityMaximal2013};Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsimple}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsl}}\n\t\\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\n\t\\multirow{2}{*}{$2$-plane} & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{1}{3}}{\\approx}{0.33}$ & \n\t&\n\t&\n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{2}{3}}{\\approx}{0.66}$ & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{4}{5}}{=}{0.8}$ & \n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{4}{3}}{\\approx}{1.33}$} & \n\t\\cellcolor{white}$\\tablevalue{\\frac{3}{2}}{=}{1.5}$ \\\\\n\t\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}}&\n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:noselfcrossings}} &\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:lowsimplicity}} &\n\t\\makecell{\\cite{auerSparseMaximal2013};Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsimple}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsl}}\n\t\\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\n\t\\multirow{2}{*}{$3$-plane} & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{1}{4}}{=}{0.25}$ & \n\t&\n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{2}{3}}{\\approx}{0.66}$ & \n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{3}{4}}{=}{0.75}$} & \n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{4}{5}}{=}{0.8}$} & \n\t$1$ & \n\t\\cellcolor{white}$\\tablevalue{\\frac{7}{6}}{=}{1.2}$ \\\\\n\t\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}}&\n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:noselfcrossings}}&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:smaller}}&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:lowsimplicity}} &\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsimple}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsl}}\n\t\\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\n\t\\multirow{2}{*}{$4$-plane} & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{1}{5}}{=}{0.2}$ & \n\t&\n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue{\\frac{2}{5}}{=}{0.4}$} & \n\t\\makecell{$\\tablevalue[N]{\\frac{3}{7}}{\\approx}{0.43}$} & \n\t$\\tablevalue[N]{\\frac{6}{13}}{\\approx}{0.46}$ & \n\t$\\tablevalue{\\frac{2}{3}}{\\approx}{0.66}$ & \n\t\\cellcolor{white}$ 1 $ \\\\\n\t\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}}&\n\t\\tabequal & \n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:smaller}}&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:smaller}}&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:lowsimplicity}} &\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsimple}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsl}}\n\t\\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\n\t\\multirow{2}{*}{$k$-plane} & \n\t\\makecell{$\\frac{1}{k+1}$} & \n\t\\makecell{$\\frac{1}{\\left\\lfloor\\frac{k}{2}\\right\\rfloor + \\frac{1}{2}}$} & \n\t& \n\t& \n\t\\makecell{$\\frac{2}{k + \\frac{2}{k+2}}$} & \n\t\\makecell{$\\frac{2}{k-1}$} & \n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{$\\frac{4k + 2}{k^2+2}$} \\\\\n\t\n\t&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}}&\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:noselfcrossings}} &\n\t\\tabequal &\n\t\\tabequal &\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:lowsimplicity}} &\n\t\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsimple}} &\n\t\\cellcolor{white}\\makecell{Thm.\\ref{thm:kpsl}}\n\t\\\\\n\t\\hline\n\t\\end{tabularx}\n\t\\begin{tikzpicture}\n\\coordinate (T) at (0,1);\n\t\t\\coordinate (A) at (1.5,1);\n\t\t\\coordinate (B) at ($(A) + (2.5,0)$);\n\t\t\\coordinate (C) at ($(B) + (2.5,0)$);\n\t\t\\node at (T) {\\normalsize Lower bounds:};\n\t\t\\node (rect) at (A) [fill,LightBlue1,minimum width=.5cm,minimum height=.3cm] {};\n\t\t\\node (rect) at (B) [fill,LightGoldenrod1,minimum width=.5cm,minimum height=.3cm] {};\n\t\t\\node (rect) at (C) [fill,Goldenrod1,minimum width=.5cm,minimum height=.3cm] {};\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\\node at ($(A) + (1.05,0)$) {$\\frac{1}{k+1}$~Thm.\\ref{thm:selfcrossings}};\n\t\t\\node at ($(B) + (1.05,0)$) {$\\frac{2}{k+2}$~Thm.\\ref{thm:noselfcrossings}};\n\t\t\\node at ($(C) + (1.15,0)$) {$\\frac{20}{9} \\approx 2.22$~\\cite{baratImprovementsDensity2018}};\t\n\t\\end{tikzpicture}\n\t\t\\label{tbl:overview}\n\t\\end{table}\n\n\t\\paragraph{Relation to independent similar work.}\n\tAfter submission of the first version of our work, we learned that, independently,\n\tChaplick et al.~\\cite{chaplickEdgeMinimumSaturated20} had investigated saturated drawings of sparse $k$-planar (multi-)graphs.\nThe main difference is that their setting allows for multiple parallel edges and\n\ttherefore no two vertices can lie in the same cell regardless of whether they are connected in the graph.\n\tThis leads to different results, even though the constructions and proof techniques are similar.\n\n\tOne of the closest results is for saturated $k$-plane drawings without further restrictions. \n\tUsing a similar construction to ours in Section~\\ref{sec:norestrictions},\n\tthey also obtain a tight bound in their non-restricted setting.\n\tIn their conclusion they describe and illustrate a construction obtaining an $\\frac{1}{k+1}(n-1)$ upper bound for $k$-plane drawings of simple graphs without restricting the simplicity. \n\tTheir construction only applies for even values of $k$ and matches the bound \n\tthat we obtain in Section~\\ref{sec:noselfcrossings}.\n\n\n\tAfter reading their paper, we included a new section, Section~\\ref{sec:matchings},\n\tresolving an open question asked by Chaplick et al. on\n\tthe existance of saturated simple $k$-plane drawings of matchings for $k = 4$,~$5$, and~$6$\n\twhen inserting parallel edges is allowed.\n\tWe show that in this setting no saturated simple $4$- and $5$-plane drawings of matchings exist. \n\tIn contrast, we provide a construction for saturated simple $6$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings\n\tin which no (parallel) edge can be inserted.\n\n\\paragraph{Our results.}\nWe study the infimum ratio of edges to vertices for arbitrarily large saturated $k$-plane drawings. \n\tFor different restrictions on the drawing, we present both lower bounds and constructions with few edges that give upper bounds. \n\t\\Cref{tbl:overview} summarizes our results. \nIn \\Cref{sec:norestrictions} we show that if we allow self-intersecting edges \nthere are saturated $k$-plane drawings with $n$ vertices and $\\frac{n-1}{k+1}$ edges. \n\tMoreover, we prove that the edge-vertex ratio in this construction is the smallest possible.\n\tWe begin our paper by encapsulating a helpful operation for our constructions, called \\emph{stashing},\n\tin Section~\\ref{sec:stashing} \n\tIn \\Cref{sec:noselfcrossings} we show that if we disallow self-intersections we need at least two times the amount of edges: \n\tA saturated $k$-plane drawing with $n$ vertices has at least $\\frac{2(n-1)}{k+1}$ edges. \n\tIn this setting, we present a construction with $n$ vertices and $\\frac{2(n-1)}{k+2}$ edges. \n\tHowever, this construction requires a $k+1$-simple drawing.\n\tIn \\Cref{sec:restricting} we focus on drawings with low simplicity. \n\tFor 2-simple drawings we give a construction with $n$ vertices and less than $\\frac{2(n-1)}{k}$ edges. \n\tThen, adapting a construction by Auer et al.~\\cite{auerSparseMaximal2013}, \n\twe obtain simple drawings with $n$ vertices and $\\frac{2n}{k-1} + O(k)$ edges.  \n\tIn \\Cref{sec:straightline} we consider straight-line drawings \n\tand present a construction with $n$ vertices and $\\frac{4k + 2}{k^2+2}(n-1)$ edges.\n\tFinally, in \\Cref{sec:matchings} we study saturated simple $k$-plane drawings of matchings\n\tin the setting in which inserting parallel edges must also be prevented.\n\tOur constructions close the gap left open by Chaplick et al.~\\cite{chaplickEdgeMinimumSaturated20}.\n\n\\section{Stashing} \\label{sec:stashing}\n\tSeveral proofs throughout the paper use stashing into free cells to construct upper bounds \n\tto the minimum edge-vertex ratio in a saturated $k$-plane drawing. \n\tThe next lemma provides a tool to more easily compute this bound when we stash isolated \n\tvertices into free cells; compare \\Cref{thm:selfcrossings}.\n\t\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{lemstashing}\n\t\t\\label{lem:stashing}\n\t\tFor $k>1$, let $D_0$ be a saturated $k$-plane drawing with $n_0$ vertices, $m_0$ edges, and\n\t\t$f_0 > 0$ free, non-intersecting cells, then there exist arbitrarily large saturated $k$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with\n\t\t$m = \\frac{m_0}{n_0+f_0- 1}(n-1)$ edges.\n\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $D_0$ be the initial saturated $k$-plane drawing.\n\t\tThe drawing $D_1$ is defined by stashing $k-1$ isolated vertices into $k-1$ free cells of $D_0$. \n\t\tNote that $D_1$ has one free cell. \n\t\tLet $t > 1$ be an integer and $D_t$ the drawing obtained \n\t\tby stashing $D_1$ into the only free cell of $D_{t-1}$. \n\t\tFor all $t\\ge 1$ we define $D'_t$ to be the drawing resulting from stashing one vertex into the only free cell of $D_t$.\n\t\tLet $n$ be the number of vertices in $D'_t$ with $t\\ge 1$ \n\t\tand $m$ the number of edges.\n\t\tWe obtain that $m = tm_0$ and $n = n_0t + (f_0-1)t + 1 = (n_0 + f_0 - 1)t + 1$. \n\t\tRearranging gives us that $t = \\frac{n - 1}{n_0 + f_0 - 1}$ and consequently\n\t\t$m = \\frac{m_0(n-1)}{n_0 + f_0 - 1}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\t\n\tIt can also be helpful to not stash isolated vertices,\n\tbut instead replace them with two new vertices and a new edge completely drawn inside a free cell.\n\tThe following lemma establishes the resulting upper bound and shows that using new edges instead of isolated vertices\n\tleads to a lower edge-vertex ratio if and only if $m_0 > n_0 + f_0 - 1$.\n\tIn other words if and only if the edge-vertex ratio resulting from stashing isolated vertices exceeds one.\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:stashingedge}\n\t\tFor $k>1$, let $D_0$ be a saturated $k$-plane drawing with $n_0$ vertices, $m_0$ edges, and $f_0 > 0$ free cells,\n\t\tthere are arbitrarily large saturated $k$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with $m = \\frac{m_0 + f_0 - 1}{n_0 + 2f_0 - 2}(n-1)$ edges\n\t\tand if $m_0 > n_0 + f_0 - 1$ this drawing has less edges than a saturated $k$-plane drawing obtained from $D_0$\n\t\twith Lemma~\\ref{lem:stashing}.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $D_0$ be the initial saturated $k$-plane drawing.\n\t\tThe drawing $D_1$ is defined by stashing $k-1$ new edges connecting two new vertices into $k-1$ free cells of $D_0$. \n\t\tNote that $D_1$ has one free cell. \n\t\tLet $t > 1$ be an integer and $D_t$ the drawing obtained \n\t\tby stashing $D_1$ into the only free cell of $D_{t-1}$. \n\t\tFor all $t\\ge 1$ we define $D'_t$ to be the drawing resulting from stashing one vertex into the only free cell of $D_t$.\n\t\tLet $n$ be the number of vertices in $D'_t$ with $t\\ge 1$ \n\t\tand $m$ the number of edges.\n\t\tWe obtain that $m = t(m_0 + f_0 - 1)$ and $n = n_0t + 2(f_0-1)t + 1 = (n_0 + 2f_0 - 2)t + 1$. \n\t\tRearranging gives us that $t = \\frac{n - 1}{n_0 + 2f_0 - 2}$ and consequently\n\t\t$m = \\frac{m_0 + f_0 - 1(n-1)}{n_0 + 2f_0 - 2}$.\n\t\t\n\t\tFor the second part of the lemma let $D_S$ be a saturated $k$-plane drawing on $n$ vertices with $m_S$ edges\n\t\tobtained from $D_0$ with Lemma~\\ref{lem:stashing} and\n\t\t$D_I$ a saturated $k$-plane drawing obtained as above with $n$ vertices and $m_I$ edges.\n\t\tWe are interested when $m_I > m_S$:\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\\frac{m_0}{n_0 + f_0 - 1}(n-1) &>& \\frac{m_0 + f_0 - 1}{n_0 + 2f_0 - 2}(n-1) \\\\\n\t\t\tm_0(n_0 + 2f_0 - 2) &>& (n_0+f_0-1)(m_0 + f_0 -1) \\\\\t\t\t \n\t\t\tm_0f_0 - m_0 &>&  f_0n_0 - n_0 + f_0^2- 2f_0  + 1 \\\\\n\t\t\tm_0 &>&  n_0 + f_0 - 1.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\\section{Allowing Self-Intersections}\n\t\\label{sec:norestrictions}\n\tIn this section we consider $k$-plane drawings without any additional restrictions.\n\tIn particular, we allow edges to self-intersect.\n\tAs a consequence, the boundary of one cell may consist of only one crossing and one edge segment. \n\tIf the edge to which this edge segment belongs has $k$ crossings, \n\twe can use such a cell to place a vertex in it. \n\tIn general, in a $k$-plane drawing we say that an edge is \\emph{saturated} if it is crossed $k$ times. \n\tA cell without vertices on its boundary and \n\tbounded only by segments of saturated edges is called \\emph{free}.\n\tIn a saturated $k$-plane drawing a vertex in a free cell will be isolated. \n\tIn this way we can produce a $k$-plane drawing with low edge-vertex ratio: \n\tmaking an edge self-intersect $k$ times and placing an isolated vertex in every free cell\n\twe obtain a saturated $k$-plane drawing with one single edge and $k+2$ vertices. \n\t\n\tTo be able to produce arbitrarily large drawings, \n\twe can use one free cell \n\tand, instead of placing a vertex, recursively place the construction. \n\tIn general, given a saturated $k$-plane drawing $D$ with a free cell $c$, \n\t\\emph{stashing} a drawing $D'$ into $c$ refers to producing a new drawing \n\tthat consists of the union of the two drawings, with $D'$ drawn inside $c$. \n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{self_crossings}\n\t\t\\caption{One edge with self-intersections. Gray squares represent isolated vertices that we stash and the green cell is used for recursively stashing the construction.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:selfcrossing}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\t\n \t\\begin{theorem}\n\t\t\\label{thm:selfcrossings}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{n-1}{k+1}$ edges,\n\t\twhich are saturated $k$-plane. Moreover, this bound is tight.\n\t\t\n\\end{theorem}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $D_0$ be the initial drawing consisting of one edge with $k$ self-in\\-ter\\-sec\\-tions defining $k$ non-intersecting free cells. \n\t\tThe drawing $D_1$ is defined by stashing $k-1$ isolated vertices into $k-1$ free cells of $D_0$; see \\Cref{fig:selfcrossing}. \n\t\tNote that $D_1$ has one free cell. \n\t\tLet $t > 1$ be an integer and $D_t$ the drawing obtained \n\t\tby stashing $D_1$ into the only free cell of $D_{t-1}$. \n\t\tFor all $t\\ge 1$ we define $D'_t$ to be the drawing resulting from stashing one vertex into the only free cell of $D_t$.\n\t\tLet $n$ be the number of vertices in $D'_t$ with $t\\ge 1$ \n\t\tand $m$ the number of edges.\n\t\tWe obtain that $m = t$ and $n = 2t + (k-1)t + 1 = (k+1)t + 1$.  \nRearranging the equation we get that $t = \\frac{n - 1}{k+1}$ and consequently $m = \\frac{n - 1}{k+1}$.\n\n\n\t\tLet $D=D(G)$ be a saturated $k$-plane drawing of a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices \n\t\tand let $x$ be the number of crossings in $D$.\n\t\tSince $G$ might not be connected, we denote with $\\gamma$ the number of connected components of $G$.\n\t\tConsider the planarization $\\mathcal D = (P,C)$ obtained from $D$ \n\t\tby replacing every crossing in $D$ with a vertex and \n\t\tevery edge segment with an edge.\n\t\tObserve that $\\mathcal D$ has\n\t\tat most one self-loop per vertex and \n\t\tat most one pair of parallel edges between each two vertices.\n\t\tIn the following let $\\gamma' \\leq \\gamma$.\n\t\t\n\t\tTo prove the desired lower bound we make use of Euler's formula, accounting also for the connected components: $|P| - |C| + f = \\gamma' + 1,$\n\t\twhere $f$ includes the number of faces defined by self-loops and multiple edges in $\\mathcal D$.\n\t\tSince the formula is usually stated for connected, simple planar graphs we \n\t\tinclude the easy details on how this version can be derived in \\Cref{apx:euler}.\n\n\t\tNext, we count the number of vertices in $P$ and edges in $C$.\n\t\tSince we added one vertex to $P$ for every vertex and crossing in $D$\n\t\twe get that $|P| = n + x$.\n\t\tTo count the edges in $C$, traverse every edge in $D$ from one of its endpoints to the other one.\n\t\tFor each crossing we see along this traversal\n\t\tthere is one edge in~$C$ plus one additional edge for the last edge segment.  \nSince every crossing, also a self-intersection,\n\t\twas seen twice during this traversal we obtain that $|C| = m + 2x$. \n\t\tAs a result we get from Euler's formula that $n - m - x + f = \\gamma' + 1$. \n\n\n\t\tUsing that there are at most $k\\cdot m$ many crossings we get that $f + n \\leq \\gamma' + 1 + (k+1) m$.\nObserve, that two non-adjacent vertices cannot share a cell in~$D$ without\n        contradicting the assumption that $D$ is saturated.\nHence, we find $f \\geq \\gamma'$:\n\t\tEach connected component of $\\mathcal D$ has at least one vertex and \n\t\tno two vertices of different components can lie on the same face.\n\t\tConsequently, $\\gamma' + n \\leq f + n \\leq \\gamma' + 1 + (k+1) m$,  \nwhich yields $m \\geq \\frac{n-1}{k+1}$ as desired.\t\t\n \t\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\t\\section{Disallowing Self-Intersections}\n\t\\label{sec:noselfcrossings}\nIn \\Cref{sec:norestrictions} we saw that allowing self-intersections leads to very few edges being\n\tnecessary to create saturated $k$-plane drawings.\n\tIn this and all following sections we consider only $k$-plane drawings without self-intersections. \nThe price we pay is that the number of edges we need is roughly doubled. \n\n\n\tFor the best construction that we have without self-intersections, \n\tthe drawing that we use for stashing has two edges forming a spiral; see \\Cref{fig:noself}. \n\tWe then can use one free cell to recursively stash the drawing \n\tand the rest to stash vertices. \n\tIntuitively, in our drawing we form almost one free cell for every crossing and\n\tevery edge is crossed $k$ times.\n\tHowever, an essential difference with the previous section is that here \neach crossing counts for two edges.\n\n\n\t\\begin{figure}[b]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.45\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{no_self_crossings}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k$ even}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:noselfeven}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\\begin{minipage}[t]{.45\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{no_self_crossings}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k$ odd}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:noselfodd}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\caption{Construction used in \\Cref{thm:noselfcrossings}. \n\t\t\tGray squares represent isolated vertices that we stash and green cells are used for recursively stashing the construction.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:noself}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\n\tWe split the proof into three lemmas.\n\t\\Cref{lem:upkpnoselfcreven,lem:upkpnoselfcrodd} establish the upper bound on the edge-vertex ratio\n\tfor the cases of $k$ even and odd, respectively.\n\tIn \\Cref{lem:lowkpnoselfcro} we prove the lower bound.\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:upkpnoselfcreven}\n\t\tFor even $k > 1$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices\n\t\twith $m = \\frac{2(n-1)}{k+1}$ edges, which are\n\t\tsaturated, $k$-plane, and in which no edge self-intersect.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tWe construct a drawing $D_0$ as follows. \n\t\tTake a path on three vertices and let $e = uv, f = vw$ be the two edges and $u,v,w$ the three vertices.\n\t\tDraw $e$ as a straight line in the plane.\n\t\tThen we draw $f$ as a spiral, intersecting $e$ exactly $k$ times as shown in \\Cref{fig:noselfeven}.\n\t\tCrucially, since $k$ is even we can cross such that  \n\t\t$u$ and $v$ are incident to the outer cell, \n\t\twhile $w$ is placed in the other cell which is incident to $v$.\n\t\tAs $e$ and $f$ share $k$ crossings we cannot add the edge between $u$ and $w$ \n\t\twithout crossing $e$ or $f$ the $k+1$-st time.\n\t\tHence, the drawing is saturated, $k$-plane, and has no edge self-intersect.\n\t\tFurthermore, there are $k-1$ free cells.\n\t\tUsing \\Cref{lem:stashing} we get that for any number of vertices $n \\geq 3$\n\t\tthe number of edges $m$ is $\\frac{2(n-1)}{3 + k - 1 - 1} = \\frac{2(n-1)}{k + 1}$.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{lemupkpnoselfcrodd}\n\t\t\\label{lem:upkpnoselfcrodd}\n\t\tFor odd $k > 1$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices\n\t\twith $m = \\frac{2(n-1)}{k}$ edges, which are\n\t\tsaturated, $k$-plane, and in which no edge self-intersect.\n\t\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tWe construct a drawing $D_0$ nearly as in the proof of \\Cref{lem:upkpnoselfcreven}.\n\t\tAn illustration is shown in \\Cref{fig:noselfodd}.\n\t\tThe only difference is that, since $k$ is odd, the $k-1$-th crossing of $e$ and $f$\n\t\tis such that $f$ is on the lower side of the supporting line through $e$,\n\t\twhile the last crossing of $f$ with $e$ is from the upper side.\n\t\tConsequently, $f$ has to be drawn such that it creates a cell in which we either enclose $u$ or $w$.\n\t\tAs a result there are only $k-2$ free cells and \n\t\tfor $n$ vertices we obtain $\\frac{2(n-1)}{3 + k - 2 - 1}(n - 1) = \\frac{2(n-1)}{k}$ as the number of edges.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{lemlowkpnoselfcro}\n\t\t\\label{lem:lowkpnoselfcro}\n\t\tAny saturated $k$-plane drawing on $n$ vertices in which no edge self-intersects \n\t\thas at least $\\left\\lfloor\\frac{2n-1}{k+2}\\right\\rfloor$ edges.\t\n\t\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tGiven some saturated $k$-plane drawing $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, $m$ edges, and $x$ crossings\n\t\tin which no edge self-intersects,\n\t\tlet $\\mathcal D = (P,C)$ be the planarization of $D$.\n\t\tFurthermore, let $\\gamma$ be the number of connected components in $G$ and \n\t\t$\\gamma'$ the number of connected components in $\\mathcal D$.\n\t\tObserve that $\\gamma' \\leq \\gamma$.\n\t\t\n\t\tIn the following we proceed as in the the proof of the lower bound in \\Cref{thm:selfcrossings}. \n\t\tNote that since in $D$ no edge self-intersects, \n\t\twe find that $\\mathcal D$ has not self-loops. \n\t\tNonetheless, arguing as before we again obtain that\n\t\t$|P| = n +x$ and $|C| = m + 2x$.\n\t\tUsing Euler's formula as derived in \\Cref{apx:euler}\n\t\twe obtain that \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tn - m - x + f &=& \\gamma' + 1\\\\\n\t\t\tf + n &=& \\gamma' + 1 + m + x.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*} \n\t\tSince no edge has self-intersections in $D$ the number of crossings is upper bounded by $\\frac{km}{2}$.\n\t\tConsequently we get that \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tf + n &\\leq& \\gamma' + 1 + \\frac{k + 2}{2}m.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*} \n\t\tAgain we can argue that no two non-adjacent vertices share a cell and hence $f \\geq \\gamma'$ holds.\n\t\tFinally, we obtain \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\\gamma' + n \\leq f + n &\\leq& \\gamma' + 1 + \\frac{k + 2}{2}m\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\twhich yields $m \\geq \\frac{2n-1}{k + 2}$.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\Cref{lem:upkpnoselfcreven,lem:upkpnoselfcrodd,lem:lowkpnoselfcro} proof \\Cref{thm:noselfcrossings}.\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{thmnoselfcrossingsub}\n\t\t\\label{thm:noselfcrossings}\n\t\tFor every $k > 1$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with \n\t\t$\\frac{n-1}{\\left\\lfloor\\frac{k}{2}\\right\\rfloor + \\frac{1}{2}}$ edges,\n\t\twhich are saturated $k$-plane and in which no edge self-intersects.\n\t\tMoreover, any saturated $k$-plane drawing in which no edge self-in\\-ter\\-sec\\-ts\n\t\thas at least $\\left\\lfloor\\frac{2n-1}{k+2}\\right\\rfloor$ edges.\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\n\n\t\\ifthenelse{\\boolean{arranging}}{\\clearpage}{}\n\t\n\t\\section{Restricting the Simplicity}\n\t\\label{sec:restricting}\n\t\n\tThe construction in \\Cref{sec:noselfcrossings}  \n\tof families of saturated $k$-plane drawings \n\trequires two adjacent edges to cross $k$ times. \n\tThus, the resulting drawings are $k+1$-simple but not $k$-simple. \n\tIn fact, any $k$-plane drawing is $k+1$-simple. \n\tHowever, the best studied $k$-plane drawings are the simple ones. \n\tBy slightly increasing the edge-vertex ratio, \n\tin this section \n\twe present families of saturated $k$-plane drawings \n\twith few edges\n\tthat are $2$-simple and simple. \n\n\n\n\n\t\\subsection{$2$-Simple Drawings}\n\t\\label{sec:2simple}\n\t\n\t\nOur construction of families of saturated $2$-simple $1$-plane drawings \nis illustrated in \\Cref{fig:1pnoself}. \nAs in the previous sections, it is based on recursive stashing. \nHowever, in this case it is done by repeatedly making a copy of the drawing in \\Cref{fig:1pnoself} and identifying the bottommost edge with the green edge of the previous copy. \n\nFor $2$- and $3$-planarity our $2$-simple construction is illustrated in \\Cref{fig:circlelowsimple}. \nFor the $2$-plane construction we use the orange solid sub-arcs \nwhile for $3$-plane construction we use the orange dotted sub-arcs. \nThe final drawings are obtained by stashing as in the previous sections. \nTo construct arbitrarily large saturated $2$-simple $k$-plane drawings \nwe start from the drawing in \\Cref{fig:circlelowsimple} \nwith the orange solid sub-arcs.\nWe then insert two sets of $\\frac{k-2}{2}$ independent edges \ncrossing the two free cells of the drawing as in \\Cref{fig:gadgetlowsimple}. \n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\tWe first prove the case of saturated $2$-simple $1$-plane drawings in \\Cref{lem:2s1p} and\n\tthen for saturated $2$-simple $2$- and $3$-plane drawings in \\Cref{lem:2s2p3p}.\n\tThen we describe our construction for saturated $2$-simple $k$-plane drawings with $k >3$ \n\tand prove in \\Cref{lem:rz} that the drawing has these properties as well as determine the number\n\tof vertices, edges, and free cells.\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{lemtwosonep}\n\t\t\\label{lem:2s1p}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{3(n-2)}{2}$ edges, \n\t\twhich are saturated, $2$-simple, and $1$-plane\n\t\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tConsider the drawing in \\Cref{fig:1pnoself}.\n\t\tThe depicted graph consists of two triangles that share a vertex.\n\t\tLet $u,v,w,x,y$ be the five vertices and $u,v,w$ and $w,x,y$ the two triangles.\n\t\tThe depicted drawing is obtained by introducing a crossing between \n\t\t$uv$ and $vw$ and $wx$ and $wy$.\n\t\tThe edges $uv$ and $xy$ are drawn plane and\n\t\tno further crossings are allowed in this drawing.\n\t\tLet $p$ be the crossing point between $uw$ and $vw$ and \n\t\t$q$ the crossing point between $wx$ and $wy$.\n\t\tWe draw the edge $xy$ into the cell completely bounded by the two edge segments between $q$ and $w$.\n\t\tThe edge $uv$ is drawn into the outer cell.\n\t\tLet $D_0$ be this drawing.\t\t\n\t\tClearly, $D_0$ is $2$-simple and $1$-plane as there are only two independent crossings.\n\t\tFurthermore, every pair of non-adjacent vertices is separated from each other by the \n\t\tedge segments between $q$ and $w$.\n\t\tHence, $D_0$ is also saturated.\n\t\t\n\t\tNext, observe that there is one cell completely bounded by the edge segments between $p$ and $w$\n\t\tthat is empty and has only one vertex, namely $w$, incident to its boundary.\n\t\tWe draw a vertex into that cell and connect it with an edge to $w$ that is drawn inside of the cell;\n\t\tsee the gray vertex in \\Cref{fig:1pnoself}.\n\t\tLet the resulting drawing be $D_1$.\n\t\t\n\t\tSimilarly to when we stash an isolated vertex into a free cell,\n\t\twe now recursively add copies of $D_1$.\n\t\tTo obtain $D_2$ consider two copies of $D_1$, $D_1$ and $D'_1$.\n\t\tWe identify the edge $xy$ in $D_1$ with the edge $uv$ in $D'_1$ and\n\t\tdraw the remainder of $D'_1$ completely inside the cell bounded by the edge segments\n\t\tbetween $u$, $v$, and $w$.\n\t\tFinally, rename the vertices such that the vertices $u$, $v$, $w$, $x$, and $y$ in $D_2$ \n\t\tcorrespond to the ones of $D'_1$ with the same name.\n\t\tLet $t > 1$ be an integer and $D_t$ the drawing obtained by \n\t\tidentifying the edge $uv$ in a copy of $D_1$ with the edge $xy$ in $D_{t-1}$ and\n\t\tdrawing the remainder of $D_1$ completely inside the cell bounded by the edge segments\n\t\tbetween $x$, $y$, and $w$ in $D_{t-1}$.\n\t\t\n\t\tIt remains to compute the number of edges in $D_t$.\n\t\tFor each added copy of $D_1$ we find four vertices in $D_t$.\n\t\tAdding the two additional vertices of the last edge $xy$ in $D_t$\n\t\twhich we do not identify with a copy of $D_1$ we get \n\t\tthat $D_t$ has $n = 4t + 2$ vertices in total.\n\t\tSimilarly, $D_t$ has six edges for every added copy of $D_1$, \n\t\thence $m = 6t$ edges in total. \n\t\tHence, with $t = \\frac{n - 2}{4}$ we get that \n\t\t$m = 6\\frac{(n - 2)}{4} = \\frac{3(n - 2)}{2}$.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{figure}[tb]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.31\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{2_simple}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=1$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:1pnoself}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\t\t\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.3\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{2_simple}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=2$ and $k = 3$ (dotted)}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:circlelowsimple}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.34\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{low_simplicity}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Edges added to the free cells of (b) for $k > 3$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:gadgetlowsimple}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\caption{The drawings used in \\Cref{thm:lowsimplicity}.\n\t\t\tGray squares represent vertices that we stash and green cells are used for recursively stashing the construction.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:lowsimple}\n\t\\end{figure}\t\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:2s2p3p}\n\t\tFor $k = 2,3$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{4(n-1)}{5}$ edges, which are\n\t\tsaturated, $2$-simple, and $k$-plane .\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tFirst we show the lemma for $k = 2$\n\t\tConsider the drawing shown in \\Cref{fig:circlelowsimple} ignoring the dotted variation.\n\t\tIt consists of a cycle on four vertices.\n\t\tLet $u,v,w,x$ be those vertices and $uv$, $vw$, $wx$, and $ux$ the edges.\n\t\tWe draw the edges such that \n\t\t$uv$ and $wx$ and $vw$ and $ux$ each cross twice.\n\t\tLet $D_0$ be the resulting drawing \n\t\tClearly $D_0$ is $2$-plane and $2$-simple.\n\t\tConsequently non of the four edges can be crossed.\n\t\tObserve that the non-adjacent pairs of vertices, namely $u$ and $w$ and $v$ and $x$, \n\t\tare incident to different cells.\n\t\tHence, the drawing is saturated.\n\t\tFinally, we observe that there are two free cells\n\t\tformed by the crossings between $uv$ and $wx$ and $vw$ and $ux$.\n\t\tConsequently, the number of vertices in $D_0$ is $n_0 = 4$, the number of edges $m_0 = 4$, \n\t\tand the number of free cells $f_0 = 2$\n\t\tUsing \\Cref{lem:stashing} we obtain that there are arbitrarily large\n\t\tsaturated $2$-simple $2$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with \n\t\t$m = \\frac{4n}{4 + 2 - 1} = \\frac{4n}{5}$ edges.\n\t\t\n\t\tFor the case of $k=3$ we modify the previous drawing $D_0$.\n\t\tThe modification is illustrated in \\Cref{fig:circlelowsimple} with the dotted variation.\n\t\tIt consists of adding a crossing between the edges $uv$ and $vw$ and $wx$ and $ux$\n\t\tclose to $v$ and $x$, respectively.\n\t\tLet $D'_0$ be the resulting drawing.\n\t\tClearly the drawing is $3$-plane.\n\t\tIt is also $2$-simple as no edge shares more than $2$ points with any other edge.\n\t\tFurthermore, the non-adjacent vertices $u$ and $w$ and $v$ and $x$ are still incident to different cells.\n\t\tHence, $D'_0$ is a saturated $2$-simple $3$-plane drawing.\n\t\tAgain, observe that therer are two free cells formed by $uv$ and $wx$ and $vw$ and $ux$ which yields that \n\t\t$D'_0$ has the same number of vertices, edges, and free cells as $D_0$.\n\t\tConsequently, we obtain the same bound on the number of edges in arbitrarily large \n\t\tsaturated $2$-simple $3$-plane drawings\n\t\tas for the case of saturated $2$-simple $2$-plane drawings.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\tTo proof our bounds for $2$-simple $k$-plane drawings we require an additional construction.\nIt is a drawing consisting of $z$ independent edges that we draw in a certain way,\n\tsuch that it can be inserted into the drawing used in \\Cref{lem:2s2p3p}.\n\tThe construction will result in a drawing with $2z + 2$ crossings,\n\thence the final drawing always has even planarity.\n\t\n\tLet $G_z$ be a graph consisting of $z>0$ independent edges.\n\tIn the following we describe how to construct the drawing $M_z$ from $G_z$;\n\t\\Cref{fig:gadgetlowsimple} depicts $M_4$.\t\n\tLet $\\gamma$ and $\\kappa$ be two curves crossing each other in points $s_1$ and $s_2$,\n\tforming an empty cell as shown in \\Cref{fig:gadgetlowsimple}.\n\tWe denote that cell with $c$.\n\tFurthermore, we extend $\\gamma$ and $\\kappa$ to infinity,\n\tsuch that each splits the plane into two areas.\n\tWe denote the area above $\\kappa$ with $c_\\kappa$ and \n\tthe area below $\\gamma$ with $c_\\gamma$.\n\t\n\tTo construct the drawing $M_z$ of $G_z$ we begin by drawing $z$ pseudocircles $\\omega_i$, $1 \\leq i \\leq z$.\n\tEach $\\omega_i$ is drawn such that it intersects $\\gamma$ and $\\kappa$ \n\ttwice in between $s_1$ and $s_2$.\n\tFurthermore, we require the crossings of the $\\omega_i$s to appear on $\\gamma$ and $\\kappa$\n\tas we traverse them from $s_1$ to $s_2$ as follows:\n\tthe first crossing is with $\\omega_1$, the second with $\\omega_2$ and so on until $\\omega_z$,\n\tthen the $z +1$-st crossing is again with $\\omega_1$, the $z + 2$-nd one with $\\omega_2$, and\n\tthe $2z$-th crossing is with $\\omega_z$.\nSince this order is the same along $\\gamma$ and $\\kappa$\n\twe get that all crossings between the $\\omega_i$s lie outside $c$.\n\tFurthermore, all pseudocircles pairwise intersect, once in $c_\\gamma$ and once in $c_\\kappa$.\n\tAlso, by the imposed ordering there exists a point on each $\\omega_i$ that lies \n\tinside the cell $c$ and not in the interior of or on any $\\omega_j$ with $j > i$.\n\tStarting from such a point in $c$ on $\\omega_i$ and \n\ttraversing $\\omega_i$ such that $\\kappa$ is crossed first we require the \n\tcrossings with the other $\\omega_i$ to appear in the same order of the indices.\n\tConsequently, for every $\\omega_i$ with $2 < i < z$ there exists a cell lying inside $c_\\gamma$ that is bounded by\n\t$\\omega_{i-2}$, $\\omega_{i-1}$, and $\\omega_{i+1}$ let $c_i$ be that cell for $\\omega_i$.\n\tFor $\\omega_1$, $\\omega_2$, and $\\omega_3$ we choose the cells bounded by \n\t$\\gamma$, $\\kappa$, and $\\omega_{i+1}$; $\\kappa$, $\\omega_{i-1}$, and $\\omega_{i+1}$; and\n\t$\\omega_{i-2}$, $\\omega_{i-1}$, and $\\kappa$, respectively.\n\tFor each $\\omega_i$ cut the pseudocircle inside $c_i$ and replace the endpoints with the vertices $u_i$ and $v_i$ in $G_z$.\n\tDraw the edge $u_iv_i$ by following the non-plane segment of $\\omega_i$ \n\twith endpoints at the positions of $u_i$ and $v_i$.\n\tLet $M_z$ be the such obtained drawing of edges $u_iv_i$ from $G_z$.\n\t\n\tTo construct the drawing used in \\Cref{thm:lowsimplicity}\n\twe combine the drawings from \\Cref{lem:2s2p3p} with two copies $M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$ \n\tof the drawing $M_z$ for $z > 0$ as follows.\n\tLet $u$, $v$, $w$, and $x$ be the four vertices of the four cycle and $uv$, $vw$, $wx$, and $ux$ the edges.\n\tThen, $uv$ crosses with $wx$ and $vw$ crosses with $ux$.\n\tIdentify $uv$ with $\\gamma$ and $wx$ with $\\kappa$ in $M^1_z$ and\n\t$vw$ with $\\gamma$ and $ux$ with $\\kappa$ in $M^2_z$.\n\tFurthermore, we can draw the curves in each of $M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$ such that \n\tno edge in $M^1_z$ intersects $vw$ or $ux$ and\n\tno edge  in $M^2_z$ intersects $uv$ or $wx$.\n\tLet $R_z$ be the resulting drawing.\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:rz}\n\t\tFor $z > 0$ the drawing $R_z$ is saturated, $2$-simple, and $2z + 2$-plane and $R_z$ has\n\t\t$4z+4$ vertices, $2z + 4$ edges, and $2(z^2+z+1)$ free cells.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $R_z$ for $z > 0$ be a drawing obtained as described above.\n\t\tWe begin by showing that $R_z$ is a saturated $2$-simple $2z + 2$-plane drawing.\n\t\tIt is easy to see that $R_z$ is in fact $2$-simple and $2z + 2$-plane since\n\t\tthe drawing of the four cycle is $2$-simple and $2$-plane and \n\t\tfurther the edges added by $M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$ \n\t\teach have $2z$ crossings with other edges in $M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$ respectively.\n\t\tAdditionally, each edge in $M^1_z$ crosses the edges $uv$ and $wx$ twice and\n\t\teach edge in $M^2_z$ crosses the edges $vw$ and $ux$ twice,\n\t\tmeaning that each of these four edges is crossed a total of $2z + 2$ times.\n\t\tNow since the drawing is $2z + 2$-plane and each edge is also crossed precisely this number of times, \n\t\tno edge can be crossed again.\n\t\tFurthermore, no two non-adjacent vertices lie inside the same cell.\n\t\tConsequently, no edge can be added to $R_z$ and the drawing is also saturated.\n\t\t\n\t\tIt remains to count the number of vertices, edges, and free cells.\n\t\tThe former two are straight-froward as the four cycle contributes exactly four vertices and four edges,\n\t\tand the two copies of $M_z$ each contribute $2z$ vertices and $z$ edges. \n\t\tHence, $R_z$ has $n_0 = 4z + 4$ vertices and $m_0 = 2z + 4$ edges.\n\t\tTo count the free cells $f_0$ we to count the free cells introduced by $M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$.\n\t\t\n\t\tSince they are symmetric we consider here the free cells added by $M^1_z$.\n\t\tThe free cells incident to edge segments added to $R_z$ by $M^2_z$ can be counted in the same manner.\n\t\tWe use that the edges were constructed from pseudocircles, where each two pseudocircles intersect twice,\n\t\twe find that there are a total of $z^2$ intersection points between the pseudocircles hence $z^2 + z$ cells.\n\t\tThe edges $uv$ and $wx$ subdivide $2z - 1$ cells into three cells and add two more cells\n\t\twhich are incident to the crossings between $uv$ and $wx$. \n\t\tIn total we obtain $z^2 + z + 2z - 1 + 2 = z^2 + 3z + 1$ many free cells.\n\t\tFinally, we have to subtract the $2z$ cells  in which we placed vertices and get that \n\t\tedge segments added by $M^1_z$ are incident to $z^2 + z + 1$ free cells in $R_z$.\n\t\tConsequently, there are $2(z^2 + z + 1)$ free cells incident to edge segments added by\n\t\t$M^1_z$ and $M^2_z$.\n\t\tSince the two free cells of the four cycle were already counted and\n\t\tno other free cells exist this is also the total number of free cells in $R_z$.\t\t\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\tWith \\Cref{lem:2s1p,lem:2s2p3p,lem:rz} we are ready to prove the main theorem of this section.\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{thmtwosimple}\n\t\t\\label{thm:lowsimplicity}\n\t\tFor $k > 0$ there are arbitrarily large saturated drawings on $n$ vertices with\n\t\t$\\frac{3(n-2)}{2}$ edges if $k =1$, $\\frac{4(n-1)}{5}$ edges if $k=2$ or $k = 3$, and\n\t\twith $\\frac{2(n - 1)}{k + \\frac{2}{k+2}}$ edges if $k > 3$, which \n\t\tare saturated, $2$-simple, and $k$-plane.\n\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\t\\Cref{lem:2s1p,lem:2s2p3p} proof the cases of $k=1$, $2$, and $3$.\n\t\t\n\t\tFor the case of $k > 3$ we consider the drawing $R_z$ with $z > 0$.\n\t\tFrom \\Cref{lem:rz} we know that $R_z$ is a saturated $2$-simple $2z + 2$-plane drawing.\n\t\tConsequently, if we choose $z = \\frac{k-2}{2}$ the resulting drawing is in particular $k$-plane.\n\t\tFurthermore, by the same lemma, we know that $R_z$ has $n_0 = 4z+4$ vertices, \n\t\t$m_0 = 2z + 4$ edges, and $f_0 = 2(z^2+z+1)$ free cells.\n\t\tUsing \\Cref{lem:stashing} we obtain a bound on the edge-vertex ratio in terms of $z$\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\\frac{m_0}{n_0 + f_0 - 1}= \\frac{2z + 4}{4z + 4 + 2z^2 + 2z + 2 - 1}= \\frac{2z + 4}{2z^2 + 6z + 5}= \\frac{z + 2}{z^2 + 3z + \\frac{5}{2}}.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tSubstituting $\\frac{k-2}{2}$ for $z$ in the above equation yields\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\\frac{z + 2}{z^2 + 3z + \\frac{5}{2}}&=& \\frac{\\frac{k-2}{2} + 2}{(\\frac{k-2}{2})^2 + 3\\frac{k-2}{2} + \\frac{5}{2}}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{\\frac{k-2 + 4}{2}}{\\frac{k^2-4k+4}{4} + \\frac{6k-12}{4} + \\frac{10}{4}}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{\\frac{k+2}{2}}{\\frac{k^2+2k+2}{4}}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{2k+4}{k^2+2k+2}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{2(k+2)}{k(k+2)+2}\\end{eqnarray*}\t\t\n\t\tas desired.\t\t\n\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t{\\itshape Remark.} The construction for $k > 3$ in \\Cref{thm:lowsimplicity} works for every even value of $k$.\n\tFor odd values we can begin with a saturated $2$-simple $k$-plane drawing $D$ for $k > 3$ and even.\n\tWe add one new edge $ab$ between new vertices $a$ and $b$ which we place inside the two free cells and\n\tinside all edges of two $M_z$ copies.\n\tWe draw $ab$ such that it crosses the edges $ux$ and $wx$ \n\tas well as all edges in the two copies of $M_z$ in $D$.\n\tThen, by adding the dotted variation for $uv$ (see \\Cref{fig:circlelowsimple}) we obtain a drawing $D'$ \n\tin which all edges but $ab$ are crossed $k+1$ times.\n\tIn fact, $ab$ itself has only $k$ crossings.\n\tThis is not a problem though, as the vertices $a$ and $b$ are placed in free cells.\n\tConsequently, by adding one edge and two vertices as well as subtracting two free cells we obtain that $D'$\n\tis saturated $2$-simple $k$-plane drawing with $k > 3$ and $k$ odd and if $D'$ has $n$ vertices it has\n\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\\frac{2}{k + \\frac{15}{k+3}-1}\n\t\\end{eqnarray*} edges.\n\t\n\n\n\t\\subsection{Simple drawings}\n\t\\label{sec:simple}\n\t\n\tAuer et al.~\\cite{auerSparseMaximal2013} \n\tpresented an elegant construction \n\tfor saturated simple $2$-plane drawings. \n\tIn this section we generalize their construction to all values $k > 0$. \n\tThe resulting drawings are also reminiscent of the ones in~\\cite{kynclSaturatedSimple2015}.\n\tThe construction for $k=1$ achieves the same edge-vertex ratio \nas the construction by Brandenburg et al.~\\cite{brandenburgDensityMaximal2013}\n\tfor saturated simple $1$-plane drawings. \n\t\n\tThe constructions proving \\Cref{thm:kpsimple} \n\tare illustrated in \\Cref{fig:simple}. \n\tIn the figure, all the vertices on the left and on the right are identified. \n\tThus, it is more easily visualized on a vertical cylinder. \n\t\n\tWe first describe the general construction and\n\tproof that for all $k > 0$ it yields a saturated simple $k$-plane drawing.\n\tLet $k > 1$ and $t \\geq 0$.\n\tConsider $z = t + k + 3$ vertices $u_i$ which we draw sorted from $i=1$ to $z$ \n\talong a vertical line on the surface of the cylinder from top to bottom.\n\tWe then add all edges $u_iu_{i+1}$ and $u_iu_j$ with $j = i + k + 2$ for all $1 \\leq i \\leq z$,\n\tignoring non-existent entries.\n\tWe also add all missing edges $u_1u_i$ for $i = 1,\\ldots,k+2$ and $u_{z}u_j$ for $j = t + 1,\\ldots,z$.\n\t\n\tFor $k = 1$ we modify the above construction slightly.\n\tWe consider $z = t + 6$ vertices $u_i$ and add the same edges as above.\n\tAdditionally, we also add all possible edges $u_iu_{i+2}$ for $1 \\leq i \\leq z$.\n\tLet $S_{k,t}$ be the resulting construction.\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{lemkpsaturated}\n\t\t\\label{lem:kpsaturated}\n\t\tFor every $k > 0$ and $t \\geq 0$, $S_{k,t}$ is a saturated simple $k$-plane drawing.\n\t\\end{restatable}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tClearly, the construction is simple and $k$-plane for any value of $k$ and $t$.\n\t\tLet $z$ be the number of vertices in $S_{k,t}$.\n\t\tRegardless of the values of $k$ and $t$ we find the path $u_1, u_2, \\ldots, u_z$ in $S_{k,t}$.\n\t\tFurthermore, every edge in the path $u_iu_{i+1}$ for $1 < i < z - 1$ is crossed $k$ times,\n\t\thence these edges are saturated.\n\t\tAdditionally, each edge $u_iu_j$ for $j = i + k + 2$ crosses $k$ edges $u_au_b$ with \n\t\t$i + 1 \\leq a \\leq i + k$ and $i + 2 \\leq b \\leq i + k + 1$,\n\t\tconsequently these edges are saturated.\n\t\tFinally, we added all the edges incident to $u_1$ and $u_z$ to vertices with indices lower than $k+3$.\n\t\tFor $k > 1$ This means, that any edge that is could potentially be added has to either cross\n\t\tan edge $u_iu_{i+1}$ or $u_iu_j$ with $j = i + k + 2$.\n\t\tMoreover, for $k = 1$ the same holds after adding the edges $u_iu_{i+2}$.\n\t\tConsequently, no edge can be added without violating $k$-planarity of the drawing and\n\t\tthe $S_{k,t}$ is saturated.\n\t\\end{proof}\t\n\t\n\t\\begin{figure}[bt]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{simple_upperbound_cylinder}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=1$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:1psimple}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{simple_upperbound_cylinder}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=2$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:2psimple}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=3]{simple_upperbound_cylinder}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k>2$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:3psimple}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\caption{Construction for saturated simple $k$-plane drawings. \n\t\t\tThe dashed left and right sides of the drawings are identified.\n}\n\t\t\\label{fig:simple}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\t\n\tWe divide the proof of \\Cref{thm:kpsimple} into several lemmas.\n\t\\Cref{lem:simple1p} proves the result for saturated simple $1$-plane drawings,\n\tin \\Cref{lem:simple2p} we show the bound for saturated simple $2$-plane drawings, \n\tand in \\Cref{lem:simplekp} we give the proof for saturated simple $3$-plane drawings.\n\tThe latter two lemmas also make use of the intermediate lemma \\Cref{lem:sktsize},\n\twhich shows how many vertices and edges our construction has for $k > 1$.\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:simple1p}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{7n-9}{3}$ edges,\n\t\twhich are saturated, simple, and $1$-plane.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $S_{1,t}$ be a drawing constructed as above for $t \\geq 0$.\n\t\tBy \\Cref{lem:kpsaturated} we know that $S_{1,t}$ is saturated, simple, and $1$-plane.\n\t\tFinally, consider $k=1$ and $t \\geq 0$ and let $S_{1,t}$ be the resulting construction.\n\t\tFor the number of vertices we get $z = t + 6$.\n\t\tAgain counting the sum of degrees $d$ we get that \n\t\t$u_1$ and $u_t$ have degree $3$, $u_2$ and $u_{z-1}$ have degree $4$,\n\t\t$u_3$ and $u_{z-2}$ have degree $5$, and every other vertex has degree $6$.\n\t\tHence, $d = 2(3 + 4 + 5) + 6t = 6t + 24$ and consequently there are $m_z = 3t + 12$ edges.\n\t\t\n\t\tAs $S_{1,t}$ is simple and $1$-plane there are no cells with zero or only one vertex on its boundary.\n\t\tHence, we consider cells with two vertices on their boundary.\n\t\tStashing vertices incident to these two vertices into the cells then improves the edge-vertex ratio.\n\t\tThis was also used in~\\cite{brandenburgDensityMaximal2013} and~\\cite{baratImprovementsDensity2018}.\n\t\tWe find that every vertex $u_i$ for $i = 4,\\ldots, z-3$ is on the boundary of four such cells.\n\t\tHence, accounting for the cells that are also incident to $u_3$ and $u_{z-2}$, \n\t\tthere are $2(z - 5) + 1 = 2t + 3$ cells with only two vertices on their boundaries.\nStashing all these degree two vertices into $S_{1,t}$ we obtain the drawing $H_{1,t}$ with\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tn = t + 6 + 2t + 3 =3t + 9\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tvertices and \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tm = m_z + 2(2t + 3) = 3t + 12 + 4t + 6 = 7t + 18\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tedges.\n\t\tRearranging for $t$ we get that \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tt = \\frac{n - 9}{3}\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tand hence there are\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tm = 7t + 18 = 7\\frac{(n-9)}{3} + 18 = \\frac{7n - 63 + 54}{3} = \\frac{7n - 9}{3}\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tedges.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\tFor $k > 1$ we compute the number of vertices and edges in the following lemma.\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:sktsize}\n\t\tFor $k > 1$ and $t \\geq 0$ $S_{k,t}$ has $z = k + t + 3$ vertices and $m_z = 3k + 2t + 3$ edges.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $S_{k,t}$ be as above for some $k>1$ and $t \\geq 0$ \n\t\twe get that there are $z = t + k + 3$ vertices.\n\t\tTo compute the number of edges we look at the degrees of all vertices $u_i$ in $S_{k,t}$.\n\t\tFor $u_1$ and $u_z$ we find that both vertices have degree $k+2$,\n\t\tfor $u_2$ and $u_{z - 1}$ we get degree $3$, and\n\t\tall remaining vertices have degree four.\n\t\tIn total the sum $d$ of degrees in dependence on $t$ and $k$ is\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\td = 2\\cdot(k+2) + 2 \\cdot 3 + 4\\cdot (t + k - 1).\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tHence, there are \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tm_z = (k+2) + 3 + 2\\cdot(t + k - 1) = 3k + 2t + 3\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tedges in $S_{k,t}$ if $k > 1$.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:simple2p}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{4n+7}{3}$ edges,\n\t\twhich are saturated, simple, and $2$-plane.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $S_{2,t}$ be a drawing constructed as above with $t \\geq 0$.\n\t\tBy \\Cref{lem:kpsaturated} we know that $S_{2,t}$ is saturated, simple, and $2$-plane.\n\t\tWe also know by \\Cref{lem:sktsize}that it has $z =t + 5$ vertices and\n\t\t$m_z = 2t + 9$ edges.\n\t\tWe see that the number of free cells per edge is clearly zero.\n\t\tFurthermore, the number of edges in $S_{2,t}$ is approximately $2n$.\n\t\tIt turns out that in this situation the edge-vertex ratio can be lowered by stashing a pendant vertex\n\t\tinto each cell that is bounded by edges with $k$ crossings and has only one vertex on its boundary.\n\t\t\n\t\tLet $S_{2,t}$ be a construction as above for $t \\geq 0$.\n\t\tThen there are two cells with only one vertex on their boundary \n\t\tper vertex $u_i$ with $5 \\leq i \\leq z - 4$,\n\t\tone such cell per vertex $u_i$ with $i \\in \\{2,3,4,z-3,z-2,z-1\\}$, and\n\t\t$u_1$ and $u_z$ are not incident to any such cell.\n\t\tHence, we can stash $2(z - 8) + 6 = 2(t + 5 - 8) + 6 = 2t$ pendant vertices.\n\t\tLet $H_{2,t}$ be the drawing obtained by stashing these $2t$ pendant vertices into $S_{2,t}$ and\n\t\tlet $n$ be the number of vertices and $m$ the number of edges in $S_{2,t}$.\n\t\tThen, we have $n = z + 2t = 3t + 5$ and $m = m_z + 2t$.\n\t\tRearranging for $t$ we get that \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tt = \\frac{n - 5}{3}\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tand hence we obtain that there are\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tm &=& 2t + 9 + 2t = 4t + 9 \n\t\t\t= 4\\frac{n - 5}{3} + 9\n\t\t\t= \\frac{4n + 7}{3}\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tedges.\t\t\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t{\\itshape Remark.} Before proving the case for $k > 2$ we note that adding pendant vertices \n\twould not decrease the edge-vertex ratio in the following proof.\n\tThis can be shown similarly to the argument in \\Cref{lem:stashingedge}.\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:simplekp}\n\t\tFor $k > 2$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with \n\t\t$\\frac{2n}{k-1} + \\frac{3k - 2 -\\frac{9}{k}}{1 - \\frac{1}{k}}$ edges,\n\t\twhich are saturated, simple, and $k$-plane.\t\t\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tLet $S_{k,t}$ be a drawing constructed as above for $k > 2$ and $t \\geq 0$.\n\t\tBy \\Cref{lem:kpsaturated} we know that $S_{k,t}$ is saturated, simple, and $k$-plane.\n\t\tWe also know by \\Cref{lem:sktsize} that it has $z = k + t +3$ vertices and\n\t\t$m_z = 3k + 2t + 3$ edges.\n\t\tConsider the edges $u_iu_{i+1}$ for $i = k,\\ldots,z-k-1$,\n\t\teach of these edges forms the upper boundary of $k-2$ free cells.\n\t\tFurthermore, for $k > 3$ the edges $u_iu_{i+1}$ for $i = 3,\\ldots,k-1$ and $z-4,\\ldots,z-k$\n\t\tbound each $1,\\ldots,k-3$ free cells.\n\t\tHence, there are\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t(k-2)(z - 2k) + 2\\cdot\\sum_{i=1}^{k-3}i &=& (k-2)(z-2k) + (k-3)(k-2) \\\\ &=& (k-2)z - k^2 - k + 6\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tfree cells.\nBy placing one isolated vertex into each free cell of $S_{k,t}$ we obtain the construction $H_{k,t}$ \n\t\twith \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tn &=& z + (k-2)z - k^2 - k + 6 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& (k-1)z - k^2 - k + 6 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& (k-1)(t + k + 3) -k^2 - k + 6 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& kt + k^2 + 3k - t - k - 3 - k^2 - k + 6 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& (k-1)t + k + 3\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*} \n\t\tvertices and $m = m_z$ edges.\n\t\tRearranging the number of vertices for $t$ gives\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tt = \\frac{n-k-3}{k-1}\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tand hence we obtain that there are\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tm &=& 3k + 2t + 3 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& 3k + 2 \\frac{n-k-3}{k-1} + 3 \\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{3k(k-1) + 2(n-k-3) + 3(k-1)}{k-1}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{3k^2-3k + 2n-2k-6 + 3k-3}{k-1}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=&\\frac{2n}{k-1} + \\frac{3k^2 - 2k -9}{k-1}\\\\\n\t\t\t&=& \\frac{2n}{k-1} + \\frac{3k - 2-\\frac{9}{k}}{1-\\frac{1}{k}}.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tedges.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\n\tCombining \\Cref{lem:simple1p,lem:simple2p,lem:simplekp} we obtain the desired theorem.\n\n\t\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{thmkpsimple}\n\t\t\\label{thm:kpsimple}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large saturated simple $k$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with: \n\t\t$\\frac{7n - 9}{3}$ edges if $k = 1$, \n\t\t$\\frac{4n + 7}{3}$ edges if $k = 2$, and \n$\\frac{2n}{k-1} + \\frac{3k - 2-\\frac{9}{k}}{1-\\frac{1}{k}}$\nedges\n\t\tif $k > 2$. \n\\end{restatable}\n\n\t\\ifthenelse{\\boolean{arranging}}{\\clearpage}{}\n\n\n\\subsection{Other drawings with few edges}\n\t\\label{sec:lsimple}\n\t\n\tThe following result completes the picture for saturated 3- and 4-simple 3- and 4-plane drawings. \n\tThe proof is based on the constructions depicted in \\Cref{fig:34s34p}. \n\t\n\t\tIn this section we give the formal proofs for the constructions shown in \\Cref{sec:lsimple}.\n\tAll three are applications of \\Cref{lem:stashing}.\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:3s3p}\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large saturated $3$-simple $3$-plane drawings with $m = \\frac{3(n - 1)}{4}$ edges.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tConsider the drawing shown in \\Cref{fig:3s3p}.\n\t\tIt is a $K_4$ drawn with an idea similar to the one used in \\Cref{lem:2s2p3p}.\n\t\tEach edge is crossed three times.\n\t\tTwo crossings are with adjacent edges and one with the independent edge relative to that edge.\n\t\tThis creates five free cells.\n\t\tApplying \\Cref{lem:stashing} with $n_0 = 4$, $f_0 = 5$, and $m_0 = 6$ gives the result.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{figure}[b]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\savebox{\\smallereximagebox}{\\includegraphics[page=1]{3_simple}}\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.325\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\\usebox{\\smallereximagebox}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{$3$-simple $3$-plane: $\\frac{3(n-1)}{4}$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:3s3p}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.325\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\raisebox{\\dimexpr.5\\ht\\smallereximagebox-.5\\height}{\n\t\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{3_simple}\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{$3$-simple $4$-plane: $\\frac{3(n-1)}{7}$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:3s4p}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.325\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\raisebox{\\dimexpr.5\\ht\\smallereximagebox-.5\\height}{\n\t\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{4_simple}\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\\subcaption{$4$-simple $4$-plane: $\\frac{2(n-1)}{5}$}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:4s4p}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\t\n\t\t\\caption{Constructions for \\Cref{thm:smaller}.\n\t\t\tGray squares represent isolated vertices that we stash and green cells are used for recursively stashing the construction.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:34s34p}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:3s4p}\t\t\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large saturated $3$-simple $4$-plane drawings with $m = \\frac{3(n-1)}{7}$ edges.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tConsider the drawing shown in \\Cref{fig:3s4p}.\n\t\tIt is a path on three vertices $u$, $v$, $w$, and $x$ drawn such that\n\t\t$uv$ and $wx$ each cross the edge $vw$ and each other twice as shown in \\Cref{fig:3s4p}.\n\t\tThis creates four free cells.\n\t\tApplying \\Cref{lem:stashing} with $n_0 = 4$, $f_0 = 4$, and $m_0 = 3$ gives the result.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:4s4p}\t\t\n\t\tThere are arbitrarily large saturated $4$-simple $4$-plane drawings with $m = \\frac{2(n-1)}{5}$ edges.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tConsider the drawing shown in \\Cref{fig:4s4p}.\n\t\tIt consists of two independent edges $uv$ and $wx$ with vertices $u$, $v$, $w$, and $x$.\n\t\tThe drawing is such that the two edges cross each other four times and the vertices $w$ and $x$\n\t\tare placed in one cell bounded by the two edges.\n\t\tThis leaves two free cells.\n\t\tApplying \\Cref{lem:stashing} with $n_0 = 4$, $f_0 = 2$, and $m_0 = 2$ gives the result.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\t\n\t\\Cref{lem:3s3p,lem:3s4p,lem:4s4p} proof \\Cref{thm:smaller}.\n\t\n\t\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{thmsmaller}\n\t\t\\label{thm:smaller}\n\tThere are arbitrarily large saturated $3$-simple $3$- and $4$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{3(n-1)}{4}$ \n\tand $\\frac{3(n-1)}{7}$ edges, respectively,  \nand also arbitrarily large \n\t saturated $4$-simple $4$-plane \n\t drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{2(n-1)}{5}$ edges.\n\t\\end{restatable}\n\n\t\\section{Straight-Line Drawings}\n\t\\label{sec:straightline}\n\t\tFinally, we consider $k$-plane drawings in which edges are drawn as straight-lines. \nWe construct a family of saturated straight-line $1$-plane drawings with $n$ vertices and $\\frac{11n - 12}{5}$ edges by \n\t\tgluing $K_4$s together \n\t\tand placing three vertices of degree two for each $K_4$, \n\t\tas shown in \\Cref{fig:1psl}.\nNote that this edge-vertex ratio of $\\frac{11}{5} = 2.2$ is lower than \n\t\tthe lower bound on the edge-vertex ratio for \n\t\tsaturated simple $1$-plane drawings, \n\t\tthat is $\\frac{20}{9}\\approx 2.22$~\\cite{baratImprovementsDensity2018}.\nFor $k = 2$, $3$, and $4$ we take a \n\t\tconvex $4k$-gon and \n\t\tby adding $2k$ chords as shown in \\Cref{fig:3psl} for $k=3$\n\t\twe obtain a grid of free cells.\nFor $k > 4$ we contract two neighboring groups into one vertex each as shown in \\Cref{fig:kpsl}.\n\t\tThis creates two fans of $k$ edges that form a grid of free cells.\nStashing into the free cells yields a family of drawings on $n$ vertices obtaining the desired bounds.\n\t\tFor $k=3$ the above construction \ngives an edge-vertex ratio of $\\frac{6}{5}$, \n\t\tbut if instead of stashing isolated vertices we stash isolated edges \n\t\twe can improve the ratio to $\\frac{7}{6}$; see \\Cref{fig:3psl}. \n\t\t\nFor $k=1$, $2$, and $3$ and up to eight vertices \n\t\twe tested all possible saturated straight-line $k$-plane drawings \n\t\tusing the order type database~\\cite{aak-eotsp-01a}, \n\t\tconfirming for these small values that our constructions are the best possible. \n\n\n\t\t\\begin{figure}[b]\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\savebox{\\straightlineimagebox}{\\includegraphics[page=2]{straight_line}}\n\t\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\t\\raisebox{\\dimexpr.5\\ht\\straightlineimagebox-.5\\height}{\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=3]{straight_line}\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=1$}\n\t\t\t\t\\label{fig:1psl}\n\t\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\t\\centering\n\\usebox{\\straightlineimagebox}\n\t\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k>1$}\n\t\t\t\t\\label{fig:kpsl}\n\t\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.32\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\t\\raisebox{\\dimexpr.5\\ht\\straightlineimagebox-.5\\height}{\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{straight_line}\t\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t\\subcaption{Construction for $k=3$}\n\t\t\t\t\\label{fig:3psl}\n\t\t\t\\end{minipage}\t\t\n\t\t\t\\caption{Constructions used in \\Cref{thm:kpsl}. Gray squares represent vertices that we stash\n\t\t\t\tand green cells are used for recursively stashing the construction.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:straightline}\n\t\t\\end{figure}\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\tWe begin by considering the case of $k=1$ in the following lemma and\n\t\tthen give the proof of \\Cref{thm:kpsl}.\n\t\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\t\\label{lem:1psl}\n\t\t\tThere are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{11n - 12}{5}$ edges,\n\t\t\twhich are saturated, straight-line, and $1$-plane\n\t\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\t\tConsider the construction shown in \\Cref{fig:1psl}.\n\t\t\tLet $t > 1$ be an integer and place $2t + 2$ vertices on an ellipse \n\t\t\tas shown in \\Cref{fig:1psl}.\n\t\t\tWe add the following edges.\n\t\t\tSplit the vertices into an upper and lower set and let $u_i$ \n\t\t\tbet the vertices in the upper and $v_i$ be the vertices in the lower set.\n\t\t\tWe assume the vertices in either set to be labeled from zero to one as we traverse\n\t\t\tthe upper or lower arc of the ellipse.\n\t\t\tThen we add the edges $u_iu_{i+1}$, $v_iv_{i+1}$,$u_iv_i$, $u_iv_{i+1}$, and $v_iu_{i+1}$ for all $0 \\leq i \\leq t$.\n\t\t\tThe resulting drawing $D_t$ is clearly straight-line and $1$-plane.\n\t\t\tNote that for all $i$ the four vertices $u_i$,$u_{i+1}$,$v_{i+1}$, and $v_i$ form a $K_4$\n\t\t\twith one crossing between the edges $u_iv_{i+1}$ and $v_iu_{i+1}$.\n\t\t\tThen, $D_t$ is saturated as adding any edge $u_iv_{i+j}$ with $j > 1$\n\t\t\thas to cross the edge $u_{i+1}v_{i}$ which is already crossed by the edge $u_iv_{i+1}$.\n\t\t\tMoreover, we cannot add any edge $u_iu_{i+j}$ for $j>1$ as it would again cross the edge $u_{i+1}v_i$.\n\t\t\tThe same holds for $j < 1$ using edge $u_{i-1}v_i$ and for $v_iu_{i+j}$ and $v_iv_{i+j}$.\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tTo obtain the bound we add vertices of degree two to $D_t$.\t\t\n\t\t\tMore precisely, we add for each $K_4$ three vertices of degree two,\n\t\t\tnamely, if $c$ is the crossing point of the considered $K_4$ \n\t\t\tin the cells bounded by $u_i$, $u_{i+1}$, and $c$,\n\t\t\t$u_{i+1}$,$v_{i+1}$, and $c$, and $v_i$,$v_{i+1}$, and $c$.\n\t\t\tThen $D_t$ has $n = 2t + 2 + 3t = 5t + 2$ vertices and $m = 5t + 1 + 6t = 11t + 2$ edges.\n\t\t\tWith $t = \\frac{n-2}{5}$ this yields $m = 11\\frac{n-2}{5} + 2 = \\frac{11n - 12}{5}$ for the number of edges.\n\t\t\\end{proof}\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{thmkpsl}\n\t\t\t\\label{thm:kpsl}\n\t\t\tFor every $k>0$ there are arbitrarily large drawings on $n$ vertices with $\\frac{11n - 12}{5}$ if $k = 1$,\n\t\t\t$\\frac{3(n-1)}{2}$ if $k=2$,\n\t\t\t$\\frac{7(n-1)}{6}$ if $k=3$,\n\t\t\t$n-1$ if $k=4$, and \n\t\t\t$\\frac{4k+2}{k^2 + 2}(n-1)$ if $k > 4$ edges,\n\t\t\twhich are saturated, straight-line, and $k$-plane. \n\t\t\\end{restatable}\n\t\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\t\tThe case of $k=1$ is proven in \\Cref{lem:1psl}.\n\t\t\tNext, we show how to derive a bound for $k > 1$.\n\t\t\tLet $s = 4k$.\n\t\t\tTake a cycle $C_s$ on $s$ vertices and divide the vertices into four equally large sets $A_1$,$A_2$ and $B_1$,$B_2$,\n\t\t\tsuch that their vertices are consecutive in $C_t$.\n\t\t\tFurthermore, we choose the sets such that as we traverse the cycle starting from the first vertex of $A_1$ \n\t\t\twe encounter first all vertices of $A_1$, then of $B_1$, followed by vertices in $A_2$ and finally the ones in $B_2$.\n\t\t\tWe label the vertices such that we encounter them in each group from index $1$ to $t$.\n\t\t\tThen, we draw $C_s$ into the plane such that the drawing is plane and \n\t\t\tthe vertices lie all on a unit circle.\n\t\t\tFinally, add all edges, we call them \\emph{chords} below,\n\t\t\t$a_i^1a_i^2$ with $a^1_i \\in A_1$ and $a_i^2 \\in A_2$ and all edges\n\t\t\t$b_i^1b_i^2$ with $b^1_i \\in B_1$ and $b_i^2 \\in B_2$; see \\Cref{fig:kpsl}.\n\t\t\tLet $D_0$ be the resulting drawing.\n\t\t\tClearly, $D_0$ is $k$-plane.\n\t\t\tIt is also saturated: No edge between vertices in the same group can be added as \n\t\t\tit would require that there exists another vertex in the same group between them,\n\t\t\tbut this vertex has a neighbor in the group opposite of the considered one.\n\t\t\tIn the same way, no edge can be added between vertices in different groups without crossing a chord.\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tThe crossings of the chords in $D_0$ create a grid-like set of free cells in the center of the circle; compare also \\Cref{fig:kpsl}.\n\t\t\tThis grid has $(k-1)^2$ many cells and all of them are free as they are only bounded by edge segments of the chords.\n\t\t\tUsing one free cell to stash the whole construction we obtain with \\Cref{lem:stashing} and\n\t\t\t$n_0 = 4k$, $f_0 = (k-1)^2$, and $m_0 = 4k + 2k = 6k$ that\n\t\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\tm = \\frac{6k(n-1)}{4k + (k-1)^2 - 1} = \\frac{6k(n-1)}{4k + k^2 - 2k} = \\frac{6k(n-1)}{k^2 + 2k} = \\frac{6(n-1)}{k + 2}.\n\t\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tFor $k = 2$ and $k = 4$ this yields the claimed bounds.\n\t\t\tHowever, for $k = 3$ we find that the resultant bound would be $\\frac{6(n-1)}{3 + 2}= \\frac{6(n-1)}{5}$.\n\t\t\tHence, by \\Cref{lem:stashingedge} we can obtain a better edge-vertex ratio by stashing new edges\n\t\t\tinstead of isolated vertices; see \\Cref{fig:3psl} for an illustration.\n\t\t\tDoing so, we obtain by \\Cref{lem:stashingedge} and with \n\t\t\t$n_0 = 4\\cdot 3 = 12$, $f_0 = (3-1)^2 = 4$, and $m_0 = 6 \\cdot 3  = 18$\n\t\t\tthat for $k=3$ there are saturated straigth-line $3$-plane drawings on $n$ vertices with\n\t\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\t\\frac{(18 + 4 - 1)(n-1)}{12 + 2\\cdot 4 - 2} = \\frac{21(n-1)}{18} = \\frac{7(n-1)}{6}\n\t\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tedges as desired.\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tTo obtain the bound for $k > 4$ we modify the construction by contracting the vertices in $A_1$ and $B_1$ \n\t\t\tinto one vertex each.\n\t\t\tLet $a_1$ and $b_1$ be the resulting vertices and $D'_0$ the modified drawing.\n\t\t\tThe vertices $a_1$ and $b_1$ are incident to $k$ edges each that were previously inserted between\n\t\t\tvertices in $A_1$ and $A_2$ and $B_1$ and $B_2$.\n\t\t\tSince we did not change the groups $A_2$ and $B_2$ these edges still cross and \n\t\t\thence there are also $(k-1)^2$ free cells in $D'_0$.\n\t\t\tWith the number of vertices as $n'_0 = 2k + 2$ and \n\t\t\tthe number of edges in $D'_0$ as $m'_0 = 2k + 2 + 2k = 4k + 2$ we obtain\n\t\t\tthat there are arbitrary large saturated straight-line $k$-plane drawings with \n\t\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\t\t\\frac{(4k+2)(n-1)}{2k + 2 + (k-1)^2 - 1} = \\frac{(4k+2)(n-1)}{2k + 2+ k^2 - 2k} \n\t\t\t\t= \\frac{4k+2}{k^2 + 2}(n-1)\n\t\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tedges as desired.\n\t\t\\end{proof}\t\n\n\\section{Saturated $k$-Plane Drawings of Matchings}\n\t\\label{sec:matchings}\n\tThroughout this section we consider multi-graphs, i.e.,\n\ttwo vertices can be connected with more than one edge and\n\twe disallow self-intersecting edges.\n\tTo clearly distinguish this setting from the previous sections,\n\twe call saturated drawings in which inserting parallel edges is allowed\n\t\\emph{multi-saturated}.\n\n\tChaplick et al.~\\cite{chaplickEdgeMinimumSaturated20} presented multi-saturated simple $k$-plane drawings\n\tof arbitrarily large matchings for $k \\geq 7$.\n\tThey also rule out the existance of such drawings for any $k\\leq 3$.\n\tIn this section we resolve the remaining open cases of $k=4$, $5$, and $6$.\n\tWe prove that for $k=4$ there are no multi-saturated $k$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings,\n\tregardless of the simplicity, i.e., only self-intersecting edges are not allowed.\n\tFor the case of $k=5$ we show that multi-saturated $k+1$-simple $k$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings exist,\n\tbut no multi-saturated simple $k$-plane drawings.\n\tFinally, we present a construction for multi-saturated simple $6$-plane drawings.\n\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:matching4}\n\t\tThere are no multi-saturated $4$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings without self-intersecting edges.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\nLet $G = (V,E)$ be a matching on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges,\n\t\t$D(G)$ a multi-saturated $4$-plane drawing of $G$ without self-intersecting edges, \n\t\t$f$ the number of cells in $D(G)$ and\n\t\t$x_i$ the number of edges that have $i \\in \\mathbb{N}_0$ crossings in $D(G)$.\n\t\tConsider the planarization $\\mathcal D = (P,C)$ of $D(G)$.\nTo simplify the following argumentation we remove each vertex in $V$ and its unique incident edge from $\\mathcal D$.\n\t\tNote that this does not change the number of cells $f$.\n\t\tWe know that $|P| = (4x_4 + 3x_3 + 2x_2 + x_1)\/2$ and $|C| = 3x_4 + 2x_3 + x_2$.\n\t\tWith Euler's formula it now follows that \n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\t\t\tf &=& 3x_4 + 2x_3 + x_2 - (4x_4 + 3x_3 + 2x_2 + x_1)\/2 + 2\\\\\n\t\t\t  &=& x_4 + \\frac{1}{2}(x_3 - x_1) + 2.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tMoreover, we know that $f \\geq 2 \\sum_{i = 0}^4 x_i$ since every vertex in $V$ has to be part of a distinct cell in $D(G)$.\n\t\tConsquently, we obtain that\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray}\n\t\t\t\\label{eq:match4euler}\n\t\t\t2(x_4 + x_3 + x_2 + x_1 + x_0) &\\leq& x_4 + \\frac{1}{2}(x_3 - x_1) + 2\\nonumber\\\\\n\t\t\t4x_4 + 4x_3 + 4x_2 + 4x_1 + 4x_0 &\\leq& 2x_4 + x_3 - x_1 + 4\\\\\n\t\t\t2x_4 + 3x_3 + 4x_2 + 5x_1 + 4x_0 &\\leq& 4.\\nonumber\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray}\n\t\tThe only solution to this equation that do not result in an empty graph or a graph containing only one edge is\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray*}\nx_4 &=& 2 \\text{ and } x_i = 0 \\text{ for } i = 0,1,2,3.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\nThis solution leads to an equality between the left-hand and right-hand side in Equation~\\ref{eq:match4euler},\n\t\twhich implies that the only possible connected multi-saturated $4$-plane drawings of a matching have two edges and\n\t\tas many cells as there are endpoints of edges, see Figure~\\ref{fig:matching4} for an example.\n\t\tStashing into such a drawing is not possible and hence the lemma follows.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\n\t\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{figures\/matching_4.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated $4$-plane drawing of a matching with two edges.\n\t\t\tSince no cell is free the drawing cannot be stashed.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching4}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\t\t\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{figures\/matching_5.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated $5$-plane drawing of a matching with two edges.\n\t\t\tStashing is possible in the outer cell.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching5twoedges}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\n\t\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{figures\/matching_5.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated $5$-plane drawing of a matching with three edges.\n\t\t\tSince no cell is free the drawing cannot be stashed.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching5threeedges}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=3]{figures\/matching_5.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated $5$-plane drawing of a matching with four edges.\n\t\t\tSince no cell is free the drawing cannot be stashed.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching5fouredges}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\\end{figure}\n\n\n\t\\begin{lemma}\n\t\t\\label{lem:matching5}\n\t\tThere are no multi-saturated $\\ell$-simple $5$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings for $\\ell < 6$.\n\t\\end{lemma}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tThe proof follows the same idea as the one for Lemma~\\ref{lem:matching4}.\n\t\tLet $G = (V,E)$ be a matching, $D(G)$ a multi-saturated $5$-plane drawing of it,\n\t\t$f$ the number of cells in $D(G)$, and\n\t\t$x_i$ the number of edges that have $i \\in \\mathbb{N}_0$ crossings in $D(G)$.\n\t\tAgain, we consider the planarization $\\mathcal D = (P,C)$ of $D(G)$ with the vertices from $V$ and their incident edge removed.\n\t\tWe know that $|P| = (5x_5 + 4x_4 + 3x_3 + 2x_2 + x_1)\/2$ and $|C| = 4x_5 + 3x_4 + 2x_3 + x_2$.\n\t\tUsing Euler's formula in the same manner as above we obtain that\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nx_5 + 2x_4 + 3x_3 + 4x_2 + 5x_1 + 4x_0 &\\leq& 4.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray*}\n\t\tThe only solutions to this equation not resulting in an empty graph, a graph with only one edge, or\n\t\ta non-integer number of crossings are\n\t\t\\setcounter{equation}{0}\n\t\t\\begin{eqnarray}\nx_i &=& 1 \\text{ for } i = 3,5 \\text{ and } x_j = 0 \\text{ for } j = 0,1,2,4\\\\\nx_4 &=& 1 \\text{ and } x_5 = 2 \\text{ and } x_i = 0 \\text{ for } i = 0,1,2,3\\\\\n\t\t\tx_4 &=& 2 \\text{ and } x_i = 0 \\text{ for } i = 0,1,2,3,5\\\\\n\t\t\tx_5 &=& 2 \\text{ and } x_i = 0 \\text{ for } i = 0,1,2,3,4\\\\\nx_5 &=& 4 \\text{ and } x_i = 0 \\text{ for } i = 0,1,2,3,4.\n\t\t\\end{eqnarray}\nSolution~(1) implies that at least one edge has to self-intersect, which is not allowed in our present setting.\nAny drawing realizing Solution~(3), i.e., two edges with four crossings each, is not multi-saturated as\n\t\teither edge can be crossed another time while every cell of the drawing must contain a vertex.\n\t\tSolutions~(2) and~(5) imply\nconnected drawings with as many cells as there are endpoints of edges.\n\t\tHence, stashing in them is not possible.\nDrawings realizing Solutions~(2) and~(5) can be seen in Figure~\\ref{fig:matching5threeedges} and~\\ref{fig:matching5fouredges} respectively.\n\t\tFinally, Solution~(4) leads to a drawing with five crossings and two edges per connected component.\n\t\tIn Figure~\\ref{fig:matching5twoedges} we give an example of a multi-saturated $6$-simple $5$-plane drawing realizing this solution.\n\t\tAs two edges with five crossings each can never result in a $5$-simple drawing the lemma follows.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\n\t\\begin{figure}[t]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=2]{figures\/matching_6.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated simple $6$-plane drawing of a matching with only seven edges.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching6}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\t\t\\hfill\n\t\t\\begin{minipage}[t]{.48\\textwidth}\n\t\t\t\\includegraphics[page=1]{figures\/matching_6.pdf}\n\t\t\t\\caption{A multi-saturated simple $6$-plane drawing of a matching with nine edges. \n\t\t\tThe edge colors indicate edges that behave symmetrically.}\n\t\t\t\\label{fig:matching6nine}\n\t\t\\end{minipage}\n\n\t\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\t\\begin{theorem}\n\t\t\\label{thm:matchings}\n\t\tThere are no multi-saturated simple $k$-plane drawings of matchings for $k \\in \\{4,5\\}$ on $n$ vertices,\n\t\twhile such drawings exist for $k = 6$. \n\t\tMoreover, for $k=6$ we can construct such drawings of arbitrarily large matchings.\n\t\\end{theorem}\n\t\\begin{proof}\n\t\tThe claims for $k=4$ and~$5$ follow directly from Lemmas~\\ref{lem:matching4} and~\\ref{lem:matching5}.\n\n\t\tFigure~\\ref{fig:matching6} shows an example of a matching of seven edges drawn with exactly six crossings per edge.\n\t\tClearly, the drawing is also simple as no two edges cross each other more than once.\n\t\tMoreover, every vertex lies in a distinct cell and no two lie in the same cell.\n\t\tLet $u$ be an arbitrary vertex of the drawing, \n\t\tthen we cannot add an edge between $u$ and any other vertex in the drawing \n\t\twithout crossing the cell boundaries of the cell containing $u$.\n\t\tYet, each edge on that boundary is already crossed six times.\n\t\\end{proof}\n\n\tThe matching in Figure~\\ref{fig:matching6} is also as sparse as possible, \n\tmatching the lower bound by Chaplick et al.~\\cite{chaplickEdgeMinimumSaturated20}.\n\tIn Figure~\\ref{fig:matching6nine} we show a fully symmetric saturated simple $6$-plane drawing of a matching with nine edges.\n\tExploiting its symmetry one can generate saturated simple $6$-plane drawings of arbitrarily large matchings without\n\trelying on stashing (i.e. the planarization is a connected graph).\n\n\t\\section{Conclusion}\n\t\\label{sec:conclusion}\n\tWith this paper we initiated the study of saturated drawings in the context of $k$-planarity.\n\tWe presented constructions depending on the simplicity of the drawing and \n\ttranslated results from the study of maximal $1$- and $2$-planar graphs.\n\tThe, in our opinion, the most interesting open problems are \n\ttightening the bounds for saturated $k+1$-simple and simple $k$-plane drawings.\n\tIn particular, achieving a tight bound for saturated simple $1$-plane drawings.\n\tOur results show that as we reduce the simplicity the number of edges we require to construct\n\tsaturated $k$-plane drawings seems to increase.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\\label{sec:intro}\n\nThis paper presents some partial results for a wide parameter\nspace search for periodic gravitational waves using data from the\nLIGO detectors.  The most promising sources for such waves are\nisolated pulsars. Previous searches for gravitational waves from\npulsars have been of two kinds.  The first is a search targeting\npulsars whose parameters are known through radio observations.\nThese searches typically use matched filtering techniques and are\nnot very computationally expensive.  An example of such a search\nis \\cite{S1-CW} which targets PSR J1939+2134 using data from the\nfirst science runs of the LIGO and GEO detectors.  The end result\nis an upper limit on the strength of the gravitational wave\nemitted by this pulsar and therefore on its ellipticity.  See also\n\\cite{cw-prl} which applies some of the techniques presented in\n\\cite{S1-CW} to a large number of known pulsars using data from\nthe second science run of the LIGO detectors.  The second kind of\nsearches look for pulsars which have not yet been observed by\nradio telescopes. This involves searching over large\nparameter space volumes and turns out to be computationally limited.\nThis is \nbecause looking for weak continuous wave signals requires large\nobservation times to build up signal to noise ratio and to claim a\ndetection with some degree of confidence; on the other hand, the\nnumber of templates that must be searched over, and therefore the\ncomputational requirements, increase rapidly with the observation\ntime.  An example of such a search is \\cite{astone} where a 2-day\nlong data stretch from the Explorer bar detector is used to\nperform an all sky search in a narrow frequency band around the\nresonant frequency of the detector.\n\nAll the searches mentioned above rely on a coherent integration\nover the full observation time; it is well known that this is the\noptimal method. However, a full coherent integration is\ncomputationally expensive and it is therefore also useful to\nconsider methods which are less sensitive but computationally\ninexpensive. Such methods typically involve semi-coherent\ncombinations of the signal power in short stretches of data.\nThe Hough transform is an example of such a method \\cite{hough04}.\nUsing this method, we perform an {\\it all-sky} search over a large\nfrequency range using two months of data from the LIGO detectors.  As\nin all the searches mentioned above, we assume that the pulsar does\nnot glitch during the full observation time considered.  \n\nSection \\ref{sec:waveform} briefly describes the waveforms that we\nare looking for.  Section \\ref{sec:houghbasics} describes our\nsearch method, the Hough transform. The search pipeline and the\nparameter space we search over is given in section\n\\ref{sec:parameters}.  The search results are given in section\n\\ref{sec:searchresults}.  Section \\ref{sec:hardwareinj} presents a\nvalidation of our search method using hardware injected signals\nand finally section \\ref{sec:conc} concludes with a summary of our\nresults and plans for further work.\n\n\n\n\\section{The expected waveform}\n\\label{sec:waveform}\n\nThe form of the gravitational wave emitted by an isolated pulsar, as seen by a\ngravitational wave detector is \\cite{jks}:\n\\begin{equation}\nh(t) = F_+(t,\\psi)h_+(t) + F_\\times(t,\\psi)h_\\times(t)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $t$ is time in the detector frame, $\\psi$ is the polarization\nangle of the wave, $F_{+,\\times}$ are the detector antenna pattern\nfunctions for the two polarizations.  If\nwe assume the emission mechanism is due to deviations of the pulsar's\nshape from perfect axial symmetry, then the gravitational waves are\nemitted at a frequency which is twice the rotational rate $f_r$ of the\npulsar.  Under this assumption, the waveforms for the two\npolarizations $h_{+,\\times}$ are given by:\n\\begin{equation}\nh_+ = h_0 \\frac{1+ \\cos^2\\iota}{2}\\cos\\Phi(t)\\,, \\qquad\nh_\\times = h_0 \\cos\\iota\\sin\\Phi(t)\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\iota$ is the angle between the pulsar's spin axis and the\ndirection of propagation of the waves, and $h_0$ is the amplitude:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:h0} h_0 = \\frac{16\\pi^2G}{c^4}\\frac{I_{zz}\\epsilon\nf_r^2}{d}\\,. \\end{equation}\nHere $d$ is the distance of the star from Earth, $I_{zz}$ is the\n$z$-$z$ component of the star's moment of inertia with the $z$-axis being\nits spin axis, and $\\epsilon$ is the equatorial ellipticity of the\nstar. The phase $\\Phi(t)$ takes its simplest form in the Solar System Barycenter\n(SSB) frame where it can be expanded in a Taylor series.  Up to second order:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:phasemodel}\n\\Phi(t) = \\Phi_0 + 2\\pi\\left( f_0(T - T_0) +\n\\frac{1}{2}\\dot{f}(T-T_0)^2 \\right)\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nHere $T$ is time in the SSB frame and $T_0$ is a fiducial start time.\nThe frequency $f_0$ and the spin-down parameter $\\dot{f}$ are defined\nat this fiducial start time. In this paper, we\ninclude only one spin-down parameter in our search, i.e. we ignore the\nhigher order terms in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:phasemodel}).  This is reasonable\nbecause, as we shall see below in section \\ref{sec:parameters}, our\nfrequency resolution is too coarse for the higher spindowns to have\nany effect for reasonable values of the pulsar spindown age.   \n\nNeglecting relativistic effects which do not affect us significantly\nin this case (again because of the coarseness of our frequency\nresolution), the instantaneous frequency $f(t)$ of the wave as\nobserved by the detector is given, to a very good approximation, by\nthe familiar non-relativistic Doppler formula:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:master}\nf(t) - \\hat{f}(t) = \\hat{f}(t)\\frac{ {\\bf v} (t)\\cdot\\bf{n}}{c}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $t$ is time in the detector frame, ${\\bf v}(t)$ is the\nvelocity of the detector at time $t$, $\\bf{n}$ is the direction to\nthe pulsar, $\\hat{f}(t)$ is the instantaneous signal frequency at\ntime $t$ and is given by\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:fhat}\n\\hat{f}(t) = f_0 + \\dot{f}\\left(t -t_0 \\right)\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nEquations (\\ref{eq:master}) and (\\ref{eq:fhat}) describe the\ntime-frequency pattern produced by a signal, and this is the pattern\nthat the Hough transform is used to look for.\n\n\n\\section{The Hough transform}\n\\label{sec:houghbasics}\n\nThe Hough\ntransform was invented by Paul Hough in 1959 as a method for finding\npatterns in bubble chamber pictures from CERN \\cite{hough1} and it was\nlater patented by IBM \\cite{hough2}.  The Hough\ntransform is also well known in the literature on pattern recognition to be\na robust method for detecting straight lines, circles etc. in digital\nimages; see e.g. \\cite{ik} for a review in this field.  A detailed discussion\nof the Hough transform as applied to the search for continuous\ngravitational waves can be found in \\cite{hough04}.  A closely related\nsemi-coherent method is the stack-slide algorithm described in\n\\cite{bc}.\n\nThe idea of the Hough transform can be illustrated by the following\nsimple example.  Consider the problem of trying to detect straight\nlines in a noisy two-dimensional digital image.  The digital image is\nassumed to be made up of pixels which can be in one of only two\npossible states, namely ``on'' or ``off''.  Let $(x,y)$ be the coordinates\nof the center of a typical pixel.  We are looking for a pattern which\nis parameterized by two numbers $(m,c)$ such that\n\\begin{equation}\ny = mx + c\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nThe parameter space $(m,c)$ is assumed to be suitably digitized so\nthat it is also made up of pixels.\nTo find the most likely value of $(m,c)$, we proceed as follows.  For\neach pixel $(\\hat{x},\\hat{y})$ which is ``on'', we mark all the\npossible values of $(m,c)$ which are consistent with it, i.e. we mark\nall pixels in the $(m,c)$ plane lying on the straight line $\\hat{y} =\nm\\hat{x} + c$ with a ``+1''.  This is repeated for every pixel which is\n``on''.   The end result is an integer, the number count, for every\npixel in the $(m,c)$ plane.  In the case when the digital image is too\nnoisy and no straight lines can be detected, the number counts would be\nuniformly distributed in the $(m,c)$ place.  The presence of a\nsufficiently strong signal would lead to a large number count in at\nleast one of the $(m,c)$ pixels, and the largest number count would\nindicate the most likely parameter space values.\n\nThis method enables us to mark all the possible templates consistent\nwith a given observation without stepping through the parameter space\npoint-by-point. This leads to a significant gain in computational\nspeed. Furthermore, each observation, no matter how noisy, only adds\nat the most $+1$ to the final number count.  These two features are\nthe chief virtues of the Hough transform method: computational speed\nand robustness.  On the other hand, the Hough search is likely to be\nless sensitive than the stack-slide search considered in \\cite{bc}.\nThe tradeoffs between sensitivity versus efficiency and robustness\nare yet to be studied in detail and will be important in the context\nof a hierarchical search \\cite{bc, cgk}.  \n\nIn our case, the Hough transform is used to find a\nsignal whose frequency evolution fits the pattern produced by the\nDoppler shift (\\ref{eq:master}) and the spin-down (\\ref{eq:fhat}) in\nthe time-frequency plane.  The parameters which determine this pattern\nare $(f_0,\\dot{f},\\mathbf{n})$; a point in this four dimensional\nparameter space will be denoted by $\\vec{\\xi}$.  This parameter space is\ncovered by a discrete cubic grid whose resolution is described in\nsection \\ref{sec:parameters}.  The result of the Hough transform is a\nhistogram, i.e. an integer (the\nnumber count) for each point of this grid.  The starting point for the\nHough transform are $N$ short stretches of Fourier transformed data; each\nshort stretch will be called an SFT (Short Fourier Transform).  Each\nof these SFTs is ``digitized'' by setting a threshold $\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}$ on\nthe normalized power $\\rho_k$ in the $k^{th}$ frequency bin:.\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:normpower}\n\\rho_k = \\frac{2|\\tilde{x}_k|^2}{T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}} S_n(f_k)} \\,.\n\\end{equation}\nHere $\\tilde{x}_k$ is the value of the Fourier transform in the\n$k^{th}$ frequency bin corresponding to a frequency $f_k$, $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}$ is\nthe time baseline of the SFT, and $S_n(f_k)$ is the single-sided power\nspectral density of the detector noise at the frequency $f_k$.  We\nrequire that $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}$ is small enough so that the signal does not shift\nby more than, say, half a frequency bin within this time duration.\nFor frequencies of $\\sim 300$Hz, this restricts $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}$ to be lesser\nthan $\\sim 60$min \\cite{hough04}.  In this paper, we work with SFTs\nfor which $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}} = 1800$s.  In principle, we could choose $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}$ to\nbe greater, but we are restricted by the duty cycle of the\ninterferometers in that we should be able to find suitably long\ntime periods during which the detector is in lock.  Furthermore, the\ndata should be stationary over the chosen time period.  The choice of\n$1800$s is a suitable compromise for all the three interferometers\nduring the S2 run.    \n\nThis thresholding produces a set of zeros and ones (called a\n``peakgram'') from each SFT.  This set of peakgrams is the analog of\nthe digitized two-dimensional image described earlier.  The Hough\ntransform is used to calculate the number count $n$ at each parameter\nspace point starting from this collection of peakgrams.  Let $p(n)$ be the\nprobability distribution of $n$ in the absence of a signal, and\n$p(n|h)$ the distribution in the presence of a signal $h(t)$.  It is\nclear that $0\\leq n \\leq N$, where $N$ is the number of SFTs, and it\ncan be shown that for stationary\nGaussian noise, $p(n)$ is a binomial distribution with mean\n$Nq$ where $q = e^{-\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}}$ is the probability that any frequency\nbin is selected:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:binomialnosig}\np(n) = \\left( \\begin{array}{c} N \\\\ n \\end{array}  \\right)\nq^n(1-q)^{N-n}\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nIn the presence of a signal, the distribution is\nideally also a binomial but with a slightly larger mean $N\\eta$\nwhere, for weak signals, $\\eta$ is given by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\eta = q\\left\\{1+\\frac{\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}}{2}\\lambda +\n\\mathcal{O}(\\lambda^2)  \\right\\}\\,.\n\\end{equation}\n$\\lambda$ is the signal to noise ratio within a single SFT, and\nfor the case when there is no mismatch between the signal and the\ntemplate:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\lambda = \\frac{4|\\tilde{h}(f_k)|^2}{T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}} S_n(f_k)}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\tilde{h}(f)$ being the Fourier transform of the signal $h(t)$\n(see \\cite{hough04} for details). The approximation that the\ndistribution in the \npresence of a signal is binomial breaks down for reasonably strong\nsignals.  This happens mainly due to two reasons: i) the random\nmismatch between the signal and the template used to calculate the\nnumber count and ii) the amplitude modulation of the signal which\ncauses $\\eta$ to vary from one SFT to another and for different sky\nlocations. The result of these two effects is to ``smear'' out the\nbinomial distribution in the presence of a signal.\n\nCandidates in parameter space are selected by setting a threshold\n$n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}$ on the number count.  The false alarm and\nfalse dismissal rates for this threshold are defined respectively in\nthe usual way:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\alpha = \\sum_{n=n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}}^{N} p(n) \\,,\\qquad\n\\beta = \\sum_{n=0}^{n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}-1}p(n| h)\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nWe choose the thresholds $(n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}},\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}})$ based on the\nNeyman-Pearson criterion of minimizing $\\beta$ for a given value of\n$\\alpha$.  It can be shown \\cite{hough04} that this criterion leads,\nin the case of weak signals (i.e. $\\lambda << 1$), large $N$, and\nGaussian stationary noise, to \n$\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}} \\approx 1.6$.  This corresponds $q = e^{-\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}} \\approx\n0.20$, i.e. we select about $20\\%$ of the frequency bins from each\nSFT; for weak signals, this turns out to be independent of the choice\nof $\\alpha$ and signal strength. Furthermore, $n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}$ is also\nindependent of the signal strength and is given by: \n\\begin{equation}\nn_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}= Nq +\n\\sqrt{2N q(1-q)}\\,\\textrm{erfc}^{-1}(2\\alpha)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, as before, $q=e^{-\\rho_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}}$ and $\\textrm{erfc}^{-1}$ is the\ninverse of the complementary error\nfunction.  These values of the thresholds lead to a certain value of\nthe false dismissal rate $\\beta$ which is given in \\cite{hough04}.\nThe value of $\\beta$ of course depends on the signal strength, and\nit turns out that the weakest signal which will cross the above\nthresholds at a false alarm rate of $1\\%$ and a false dismissal\nrate of $10\\%$ is given by\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:sensitivity}\nh_0 = \\frac{8.54}{N^{1\/4}}\\sqrt\\frac{S_n(f_0)}{T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}}\n\\end{equation}\nEquation (\\ref{eq:sensitivity}) gives the smallest signal which can be\ndetected by the search, and is therefore a measure of the sensitivity\nof the search.\n\nThe data analyzed in this paper correspond to LIGO's second\nScience Run (S2) that was held for 59 days, from February 14 to\nApril 14, 2003. The GEO detector was not running at that time, but\nall three LIGO detectors were operating  with a significantly\nbetter sensitivity than during the first science run. The  LIGO\ndetectors comprise one 4 km facility in Livingston, Louisiana,\n(L1) and two, 4 km and 2 km respectively in Hanford, Washington\n(H1 and H2); see eg. \\cite{ligo-geo}. For our purposes, we note\nthat the duty cycles of the detectors during the S2 run were $37\\%$\nfor L1, $74\\%$ for H1 and $58\\%$ for H2.  The number $N$ of $30$min\nSFTs available for L1 data were 687, 1761 for H1 and 1384 for H2. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\begin{center}\n  \\includegraphics[height=7cm]{sensitivity}\n  \\caption{Typical sensitivities of the three LIGO detectors during\n  the S2 run with a 1\\% false alarm rate and 10\\% false dismissal rate.}\n  \\label{fig:S2sensitivity}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\nFigure \\ref{fig:S2sensitivity} shows the expected sensitivity for\nthe Hough search by the three LIGO interferometers during the S2\nrun. Those $h_0$ values correspond to the amplitudes detectable\nfrom a generic source with a 1\\% false alarm rate and 10\\% false\ndismissal rate, as given by Eq.~(\\ref{eq:sensitivity}).  It should be kept\nin mind that Eq.~(\\ref{eq:sensitivity}) significantly over-estimates the\nsensitivity of the search for unknown pulsars because it does not\ninclude the mismatch between the signal and the template.\nFurthermore, due to the large number of templates involved in the\nsearch, a false alarm rate of $1\\%$ is too large in practice, and\nit would result in too many potential candidates.  A false alarm rate\nof $\\sim 10^{-13}$ would be more realistic since this would lead, in\nthe ideal case, to less than one candidate over the parameter space\npoints considered in this search.  \n\nAssuming that the gravitational wave emission mechanism is due to\ndeviations of the pulsar's shape from perfect axial symmetry, from\nEq.~(\\ref{eq:h0}). (Eq.~(2.9) in \\cite{hough04}) and\nEq.~(\\ref{eq:sensitivity}), we can estimate the nominal\nastrophysical reach of the search for the three detectors:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:range}\nd = \\frac{16\\pi^2GN^{1\/4}I_{zz}\\epsilon\nf_r^2}{8.54c^4}\\sqrt{\\frac{T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}}{S_n(2f_r)}} \\,.\n\\end{equation}\nFor a value of $I_{zz} = 10^{45}\\,\\textrm{g-cm}^2$, $\\epsilon =\n10^{-5}$, and for typical parameters of the S2 run, this\ncorresponds to a distance of about $20$-$30$ parsecs.  It should be\nkept in mind that this is not a realistic figure for the\nastrophysical reach of the search; it does not consider the\nmismatch between the template and signal, and it does not use the \nmore realistic false alarm rate mentioned above.  Due to these\neffects, it turns out that Eq.~(\\ref{eq:range}) overestimates the\nastrophysical reach by a factor of about $2$-$3$.  \n\n\n\\section{The search pipeline}\n\\label{sec:parameters}\n\nData from each of the three LIGO interferometers are used to analyze\nthe same parameter space region.  This section describes the portion\nof the parameter space $(f_0,\\dot{f},\\mathbf{n})$ that we search over,\nand the resolution of our grid in this portion of the parameter space.\n\nThe total observation time is approximately $T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{obs}}}} \\approx\n5.2\\times 10^6$sec corresponding to the S2 science run. We search\nfor pulsar signals in the frequency range $200$-$400$Hz with a\nfrequency resolution: $\\delta f = {T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{coh}}}}}^{-1} = 5.556\\times\n10^{-4}\\textrm{Hz}$. The resolution $\\delta\\dot{f}$ in the space\nof first spindown parameters is given by the smallest value  of\n$\\dot{f}$ for which the intrinsic signal frequency does not drift\nby more than a single frequency bin during the total observation\ntime: $\\delta \\dot f = {\\delta f}\\cdot T_{\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{obs}}}}^{-1}\\sim 1.1\\times\n10^{-10}\\textrm{Hz\/s}$. We choose the range of values $-\\dot\nf_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{max}}} < \\dot f\\le 0$, where $\\dot f_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{max}}} = 1.1\\times\n10^{-9}\\textrm{Hz\/s}$. This yields eleven spin-down values.   All\nknown pulsars (except for a few supernova remnants) have spindown\nparameters less than this value. \nThis value of $\\dot{f}_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{max}}}$ is equivalent to looking for pulsars\nwhose spindown age $\\tau = \\hat{f}\/\\dot{f}$ is at least\n$1.15\\times 10^{4}$ yr.  This also shows that the\napproximation to drop higher spindown terms in\nEq.~(\\ref{eq:phasemodel}) is reasonable; with a spindown age of\n$1.15\\times 10^4$ yr as above, we would need a total observation time\nof $\\sim 10$ yr for the second spindown to cause a frequency drift of\nhalf a frequency bin. \n\nThe resolution $\\delta\\theta$ in sky positions is frequency dependent,\nwith the number of templates increasing with frequency and is given by\n$\\delta\\theta = \\frac{1}{2}(\\delta \\theta)_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{min}}}$, where\n$(\\delta\\theta)_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{min}}}$ is given in Eq.~(4.14) of \\cite{hough04}.  This\nyields a resolution of about $9.3 \\times 10^{-3}$rad at $300$Hz.  This\nresolution corresponds to  $ \\sim 1.5\\times 10^{5}$ sky locations for\nthe whole sky.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\begin{center}\n  \\includegraphics[height=10cm]{GWpipe}\n  \\caption{Pipeline for the semi-coherent Hough search for a single interferometer.}\n  \\label{fig:pipe}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\nThe pipeline used to search over this parameter space is described in\nfigure \\ref{fig:pipe}.  The figure is divided into four distinct\nblocks.  The top-left block is the preparation of the SFTs: the data\nstream is broken up into segments, calibrated, and a discrete Fourier\ntransform is applied to each segment.  The calibration connects the\nerror-signal from the interferometer to the actual value of the\nstrain, and this is calculated in the frequency domain. These SFTs are\npassed onto an optional conditioning step.  This is meant to remove\nany known spectral disturbances from the SFTs.  In the present paper,\nwe only present results for which no data conditioning is\napplied to the SFTs.  Finally, data from the three interferometers are\nanalysed separately.  \n\nThe rest of the pipeline consists of two conceptually distinct\nparts: the actual Hough search and the process of setting upper\nlimits.  The Hough search has been described earlier; a threshold\nis set on the normalized power of each SFT, replacing thereby the\nSFTs by a set of peakgrams.  In this paper, we only present partial\nresults from this Hough search and not the process of setting upper\nlimits in any detail, except to say that this is the conventional\nfrequentist upper limit based using Monte-Carlo simulations.  We\nset upper limits in each 1Hz frequency band, based on the loudest\nevent observed in that band. This will be presented elsewhere.\n\n\\section{Partial results from the search code}\n\\label{sec:searchresults}\n\n\nAs described earlier, the first step in this semi-coherent Hough\nsearch is to select frequency bins from the SFTs by setting a\nthreshold on the normalized power defined in\nEq.~(\\ref{eq:normpower}). This requires a reliable estimate of the\npower spectral density $S_n$ for each SFT, for which we\nemploy a running median applied to the periodogram\nof each individual SFT. The running median is a robust method\nto estimate the noise floor \\cite{mohanty02b} which\nhas the virtue of discarding outliers which appear in a small number\nof bins, thereby providing an accurate estimate of the noise floor in\nthe presence of spectral disturbances and possible signals.\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\begin{center}\n  \\includegraphics[height=8cm]{statL1_9_206}\n  \\caption{Top: maximum, mean, minimum and standard deviation of the number\n  count of all the Hough maps in the frequency band 206-207 Hz. The data\n  corresponds to L1 for the entire S2 run using 687 SFTs with a time baseline of\n  30 minutes.\n  Bottom: the solid line corresponds to the L1 number-count distribution\n  obtained in that band, and in red circles the theoretical expected binomial\n  distribution for 687 SFTs and a peak selection probability of $20\\%$.}\n  \\label{fig:stats}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\begin{center}\n  \\includegraphics[height=7cm]{L1max}\n  \\caption{Graph of the L1 maximum  number count per frequency analyzed,\n  maximized over all spin-down values and sky locations. The dash-dotted line\n  is the corresponding threshold $n_\\textrm{\\mbox{\\tiny{th}}}$ for a false alarm $\\alpha$ of\n  $10^{-10}$.  }\n  \\label{fig:L1max}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\nAs an illustrative example, some results of the Hough search in a\n1 Hz frequency band are shown in figure\n\\ref{fig:stats}.  The first panel of this figure shows, for every\nfrequency bin, the maximum, minimum, mean and standard deviation of\nthe number counts for all sky-locations and all spindown values.  As\nexpected, the mean is approximately $Nq = 0.2 \\times 687 \\approx\n137$.  Similarly, as expected, the standard deviation is\n$\\sqrt{q(1-q)N} \\approx 10$.   The second panel of figure\n\\ref{fig:stats} shows the distribution of number counts in this band\nand compares it with the expected binomial distribution in the absence\nof any signal.  We find excellent agreement with the expected binomial\ndistribution, and this is true in all frequency bands which are\nrelatively free of spectral disturbances.\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:L1max} shows the largest number count obtained for\nevery frequency bin (i.e. the maximum number count over all\nsky-locations and spindown values for a given frequency value). \nAs this figure shows, several environmental and instrumental noise\nsources are present.  The sources of these disturbances are mostly\nunderstood.  They consist of broad $60$Hz power lines, multiples of\n$16$Hz due to the data acquisition system, and the violin modes of the\nmirror suspensions in a neighborhood of $345$Hz.\nThe 60Hz lines are rather broad, with a width of about $\\pm 0.5$Hz,\nwhile the 16Hz data acquisition lines are confined to a single\nfrequency bin.  In addition to the above disturbances, we also observe\na large number of multiples of $0.25$Hz.  While these lines are known\nto be instrumental, their exact physical origin is yet to be\ndetermined.\n\n\n\n\\section{Pipeline validation with hardware signal injections}\n\\label{sec:hardwareinj}\n\n\nTwo artificial pulsar signals were injected for a duration of 12 hours\nat the end of the S2 run into all three LIGO interferometers.\nThese injections were designed to give an end-to-end\nvalidation of the search pipeline starting from as far up the\nobserving chain as possible.\n\nThe two artificial signals were injected at frequencies of\n1279.123\\,Hz (P1) and 1288.901\\,Hz (P2) with\nspindown rates of zero and $-10^{-8}$\\,Hz\\,s$^{-1}$ respectively, and\namplitudes $h_0$ of $2\\times 10^{-21}$. The signals were modulated and\nDoppler shifted to simulate sources at fixed positions on the sky\nwith $\\psi=0$, $\\cos\\iota=0$ and $\\phi=0$.  P1 was injected at a right\nacsension of 5.147 rad and a declination of 0.3767 rad, while P2 had a\nright ascension of 2.3457 rad and a declination of 1.2346 rad.  \n\nThe resolution in the space of sky positions and frequencies are\nthe same as in section \\ref{sec:parameters}, but the spin-down\nresolution depends on the total observation time, and this now\nturns out to be $-2.28624\\times 10^{-8}$ Hz\\,s$^{-1}$ for L1,\n$-1.77024\\times 10^{-8}$ Hz\\,s$^{-1}$ for H1, and $-1.93533\\times\n10^{-8}$ Hz\\,s$^{-1}$ for H2. As before, for each intrinsic\nfrequency we analyze 10 different spin-down values. The portion of\nthe sky analyzed has a width of $0.5$ radians $\\times$ $0.5$\nradians centered around the location of the injected signals.\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\begin{center}\n  \\includegraphics[height=9cm]{GWmapsP1L1inject}\n  \\caption{Hough maps for the hardware injected signal P1 in L1. Map\n  2442 (top-left) corresponds to 1279.123333 Hz, and contains the\n  template which is closest to the signal.  The top-right panel is a\n  zoom of this map, showing the signal more clearly.  Maps 2222 and\n  2662 (bottom-left and bottom-right) have a larger mismatch in\n  frequency; they correspond to 1279.112222 Hz and 1279.134444 Hz\n  respectively.  The signal is detected in these maps also, but with a\n  mismatched sky-location. P1 was injected at a right\n  acsension and declination of 5.147 rad 0.3767 rad respectively.\n  This sky-location corresponds roughly to the center of the\n  skypatches shown in these figures. \n}\\label{fig:injections}\n  \\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:injections} shows some results for pulsar P1 using\nL1 data. There were 14 SFTs available in the duration when the\npulsar was injected. The top left and top right panels of figure\n\\ref{fig:injections} shows Hough maps corresponding to the\nfrequency and spin-down values nearest to the injected signal.\nAlthough the presence of the signal is clearly visible, 12 hours\nof observation time is not enough to identify the location of the\nsource in the sky. In particular, while the signal is identified\nwith a high number count in these hough maps, one can still\nidentify the signal in Hough maps corresponding to different\nfrequencies and spindowns with high number-counts, but with a\nmismatch in the sky location.  This is shown in the bottom left\nand bottom right panels of \\ref{fig:injections}. Similar results\nwere found for pulsar P2 and the other detectors, thus providing\nan important validation of this search pipeline.\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\n\\label{sec:conc}\n\nIn this paper, we have described the idea of the Hough search and the\nsearch pipeline used to analyze data from the second science run of\nthe LIGO interferometers. We have shown some outputs of the Hough\nsearch pipeline in the frequency range $200$-$400$Hz, over the whole\nsky, and the first spindown parameter.  We\nhave also validated the search pipeline by showing that the search can\ndetect hardware injected pulsar signals.\nWork is in progress to compute astrophysical upper limits using the\nsearch pipeline presented in this paper.\n\nThe eventual role of the Hough transform is in a hierarchical scheme\n\\cite{bc,cgk}.  The Hough transform could be used as a computationally\ninexpensive and robust method for quickly scanning large parameter\nspace volumes and producing significant candidates for a follow-up\nsearch using a more sensitive method.\n\n\n\\section{Acknowledgments}\n\n\nThe authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science\nFoundation for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and the\nParticle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society\nand the State of Niedersachsen\/Germany for support of the construction and\noperation of the GEO600 detector. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support\nof the research by these agencies and by the Australian Research Council, the\nNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Council of Scientific\nand Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology of India,\nthe Spanish Ministerio de Educaci\\'on y Ciencia, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,\nthe David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.\n\n\n\n\\section*{Bibliography}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nMolecular gas in galaxies is mostly concentrated in cold clouds with masses $\\simeq 10^{4-5}$M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, which are usually \ncalled giant molecular clouds (GMCs). Their evolution is important for understanding transition of gaseous \ncomponent into the stellar one. Indeed, galactic star formation generally occurs in the dense medium of GMCs. \\cite{1981MNRAS.194..809L}\ninitially introduced three empirical scaling relations for the nearby molecular clouds in the Milky Way (MW). These relations reflects the general view on the GMCs properties and have the following sense:\n\n$\\bullet$ cloud size - line-of-sight velocity dispersion relation, $\\sigma_{\\rm v} \\propto R^{\\rm \\beta_1}$, is \nthe first { one}, it argues that the cloud structure is supported by the internal turbulence;\n\n$\\bullet$ cloud virial mass - luminosity { in CO lines} relation, $M_{\\rm vir} \\propto  L^{\\rm \\beta_2}_{\\rm CO}$, is \nthe second { one}, it shows that GMCs are structures in the virial equilibrium;\n\n$\\bullet$ { luminosity in CO lines (sometimes cloud mass used)} -- size, $L_{\\rm CO} \\propto  R^{\\rm \\beta_3}$, is the third { one}, it { claims}\nthat the mean cloud surface density $\\Sigma_0$ is likely to be constant { if} $\\beta_3 \\approx 2$.\n\nDespite a long way of the scaling relations investigation, a complete theoretical explanation for the origin of the relations has not\nbeen offered yet. Based on the CO observations of molecular clouds in the Galactic disc it has been found that GMCs have approximately\nconstant surface density $\\sim 170$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$ and the state of the clouds is really close to the virial equilibrium \n\\citep{1987ApJ...319..730S}. \\citet{0004-637X-723-1-492} have found tight power-law correlation with index $2.36\\pm 0.04$ between radii and \nmasses of the Galactic molecular clouds. The virial parameter of the derived clouds is mostly below $1$ with the mean value $0.46$, so\nthat clouds are strongly self-gravitating. Using $^{12}$CO data \\citet{2009ApJ...699.1092H} re-examined the scaling relations for \nthe Galactic clouds under assumption of\nconstant CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor within a cloud. This leads to lower median mass surface value, which is 42~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$.\nNote that the clouds found in this study are mostly unbound, that is in contradiction to the previous studies. Thus, the observational data demonstrates significant scatter in the physical state of GMCs even in the Milky Way.\n\nFor { molecular clouds in} both dwarf and giant disc galaxies \\citet{2008ApJ...686..948B} have found scaling relations similar to that for the Milky Way clouds.\nThey have concluded that GMCs identified on its CO emission are the unique class of objects that exhibits a remarkably uniform set of properties from galaxy to galaxy. Meanwhile more recent comparison of GMCs in nearby galaxies by~\\citet{2013ApJ...779...46H} let to figure out that { the} GMCs properties { (mass, radius, velocity dispersion)} are not robust towards to the external conditions: { clouds are}  smaller and fainter in less dense regions, { i.e. inside} low-mass galaxies and the outer regions of the Galaxy, compared to molecular structures in denser environment, e.g. in the inner part of the Galaxy and other spirals like M~51~\\citep{2014ApJ...784....3C} and M~33~\\citep{2003ApJS..149..343E,2010ApJ...725.1159B}.\n\nCertainly, the scaling relations can reflect some universality in both physical conditions inside clouds and interaction of clouds with the ambient medium. Giant molecular clouds properties and evolution are governed by the interplay between self-gravity, magnetic field and feedback processes from stars born inside clouds. In many theoretical studies there has been attempted to understand how various feedback processes influence on the properties of GMCs~\\citep{2008ApJ...684..978S,2011ApJ...730...11T,2012MNRAS.421.3488H,2014MNRAS.442.3407B}. For instance, \\citet{2011MNRAS.413.2935D} have traced the evolution of individual clouds in detail and found that cloud-cloud collisions and stellar feedback can regulate the internal velocity dispersion and lead to formation of unbound GMCs. Contrary to the previous study \\citet{2009ApJ...700..358T} suggested that molecular clouds are gravitationally bound because of the low collisional rate of clouds relatively to its orbital time scale. Thus, the internal turbulent energy can keep molecular clouds in the virial equilibrium. Several simulations of turbulence in GMCs \\citep{2013MNRAS.436.1836R,2013MNRAS.436.3247K} have justified that self-gravity plays an important role in the cloud structure, but doesn't strongly affect on the 'velocity dispersion - size' relation. \n\nUsing high resolution simulations \\citet{2013ApJ...776...23B} analyzed the physical properties of clouds{ whose} number density { is above} $100$~cm$^{-3}$. They found that the slopes of the 'velocity dispersion - size' and 'mass-size' relations { appear to be} much steeper than the observational ones. On the other hand, \\citet{2009ApJ...700..358T} got a good agreement between the mass, radius, velocity dispersion of GMCs with those observed in the Galaxy. Such contrary conclusions are explained by not only differences in simulations, e.g. taking into account star formation and other processes, but also variety in samples of clouds { caused by using different} methods of cloud extraction. Moreover, \\citet{2014MNRAS.439..936F} found a significant effect of galactic environment on { the} cloud properties in the dynamical model of M~83. At first they established that the 'mass-size' relation has bimodal distribution, and at second, GMCs tend to be less gravitationally bound in denser environment, { i.e.}  spiral { arms} or bar, than in rarefied ones, e.g. { inside} disc. \n\nIn { numerical} simulations a cloud is usually defined as an object whose gas density (column or { volume}) is higher than a given threshold.  Such { an object} can consist of { several} dense molecular cloud lets surrounded by diffuse { intercloud molecular and\/or} atomic gas. { In addition} there are several other methods for cloud definition based on dust extinction, molecular or\/and atomic column density or CO intensity. For each method it is interesting to find the scaling relations and compare it with the empirical ones established by Larson. That probably allows us to understand better what ISM structures are responsible for appearance of these relations.\n\nThe matching of the observed and simulated GMCs properties is not obvious because of different approaches used for cloud definition. In general, this problem has no unique solution both in observations, { because} in observations the border of a cloud can depend on a chosen signal-to-noise limit. { In numerical simulations} there are two commonly used methods { for} cloud extraction. The first { one} is based on total column density position-position (henceforth PP) data sets and the second { one} is indicated by the CO { line emission used position-position-velocity (PPV) data}. The latter is utilized in CLUMPFIND~\\citep{1994ApJ...428..693W}, CPROPS~\\citep{2006PASP..118..590R} packages. \n\nIn this paper we consider { the} physical properties ({ namely,} mass, radius, surface density, velocity dispersion, luminosity etc.) of clouds for two methods of cloud extraction based on PP and PPV datasets. In our simulations we study the scaling relations or so-called Larson's laws for three MW-size galaxies with different morphology. The paper is organized as follows. Section~\\ref{seq::models} contains the description of our numerical model. Section~\\ref{seq::CD} describes methods of cloud definition. In Section~\\ref{sec::phys_param} we present the statistical analysis of { the} physical properties of molecular clouds. Section~\\ref{seq::scaling_relations} describes the scaling relations, the dependence of power-law indices of the relations on threshold value and mass spectra of GMCs for the simulated galaxies. In Section~\\ref{sec:summary} we summarize our key results.\n\n\\section{Model}\\label{seq::models}\n\nTo simulate{ the} galaxy evolution we use { our} code based on the unsplit TVD MUSCL (Total Variation Diminishing Multi Upstream Scheme for Conservation Laws) scheme for gas dynamics and{ the} $N$-body method for stellar component dynamics. In { gas} dynamical approach we reach the second order { in time}  and the third order{ in space} using the minmod limiter. For the Riemann problem solution we adopt the HLLC (Harten-Lax-van Leer-Contact) method. More details about gas dynamic part of our code can be found in the paper \\citet{2014JPhCS.510a2011K}. Stellar dynamics is calculated using the second order flip-flop integrator. For the total stellar-gaseous gravitational field calculation we use the TreeCode approach.\n\nFor all models presented { here} we use a uniform grid with $4096\\times4096\\times512$ cells for { gas} dynamics and set a computational domain\n$40 \\times 40 \\times 3$~kpc with spatial resolution 6~pc.{ The} initial number of{ stellar} particles is equal to $0.5 \\times 10^6$, { during the simulation} it reaches  $2\\times10^6$ depending on star formation activity.\n\n\n\n\\begin{table*}\n\\caption[]{\nInitial parameters adopted in the simulations. Here the following notations are assumed:\n$M_{\\rm h}$ is the mass of dark matter halo within 12~kpc sphere,\n$a_{\\rm h}$ is the halo scale length,\n$\\sigma_r(0)$ is the central radial velocity dispersion,\n$\\sigma_{\\rm z}\/\\sigma_{\\rm r}$ is the ratio of the vertical velocity dispersion to the radial one,\n$\\Sigma_{\\rm g0}$ is the central surface density of gaseous disc,\n$h_g$ is the radial scale length of the gaseous disc,\n$N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$ is the number of clouds extracted with the $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm CDN}$~threshold (CDN is a cloud definition when the total column density within the cloud exceeds the $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$ threshold and the cloud is delineated by corresponding level of the total column density),\n$N_{\\rm CF}$ is the number of clouds extracted using CLUMPFIND~(henceforth we use CF abbreviation for shortness). \nThe following parameters are the same for considered models:\n$\\Sigma_{*0} = 835$ M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$ is the central stellar surface density,\n$h_* = 3$~kpc is the radial scale length of stellar disc, and\n$h_{\\sigma}* = 2h_*$ is the radial velocity scale length, $\\Sigma_{\\rm g0} = 10$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$ is the central gas surface density.}\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccccc|ccccccccc}\n\\hline\nModel (Morphology) & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{Halo} & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{Bulge} & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{Stellar disc} &  \\multicolumn{4}{c}{Cloud definition}  \\\\\n          & $M_{\\rm h}$ & $a_{\\rm h}$ & $M_{\\rm b}$ & $b_{\\rm h}$ & $\\sigma_{\\rm r(0)}$ &$\\sigma_{\\rm z}\/\\sigma_{\\rm r}$ &    $N_{\\rm CDN} $ & $N_{\\rm CF}$ \\\\\n          & $10^{10}$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, & kpc & $10^{10}$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, & kpc & km s$^{-1}$ &   & &   & \\\\\n\\hline\nB (No structure) & 8.8   & 3.857 & -      & -          & 75 \t&  0.5     & 1095 &  1150 \\\\\nF (Milky Way like) & 8.8   & 1.1      & 0.7  & 0.153 & 100&  0.7    & 1065 &  1203 \\\\\nH (Flocculent)& 8.25 & 1.1     & -      & - \t\t  & 50  \t& 0.45    & 1012 &  1111 \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\\label{tab::tabular1}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table*}\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Chemical kinetics and gas thermodynamics}\n\nUsually the emission in CO lines is the major source of the information about the GMCs\n\\citep{2001ApJ...547..792D,2008ApJ...686..948B,2009AJ....137.4670L}, and the intensity in CO lines is used to restore the mass of molecular hydrogen through $X_{\\rm CO}$ factor \\citep{1975ApJ...202...50D,2013ARA&A..51..207B}. Then, we are interested in a reasonable CO chemical network that on one hand gives fine CO molecule evolution and on the other requires adequate computational resources. Rather detailed networks include more than $20$ chemical species involved in several hundreds of reactions~\\cite[e.g.][]{2000ApJ...534..809O, 2010MNRAS.404....2G}, which is computationally unacceptable for our purposes. Fortunately, \\cite{2012MNRAS.421..116G}\nfound that the reduced network proposed by \\cite{1999ApJ...524..923N} gives adequate results in comparison to the detailed chemical model, which consists of $218$ reactions amongst $32$ species \\citep{2010MNRAS.404....2G}. So that here we exploit the model based on the network proposed by \\cite{1999ApJ...524..923N}.\n\nBased on our simple model for H$_2$ chemical kinetics~\\citep{2013MNRAS.428.2311K} we expand the \\citet{1999ApJ...524..923N} network by\nseveral reactions needed for hydrogen ionization and recombination. For H$_2$ and CO photodissociation we use the approach described\nby~\\citet{1996ApJ...468..269D}. The CO photodissociation cross section is taken from \\citet{2009A&A...503..323V}. In our radiation\ntransfer calculation described in Section~2.3 below we get ionizing flux at the surface of a computational cell. To calculate self-shielding\nfactors for CO and H$_2$ photodissociation rates and dust absorption factor for a given cell we use local number densities of gas and molecules, e.g. $f_{sh}^{\\rm H_2} = n_{\\rm H_2} L$, where $n_{\\rm H_2}$ is H$_2$ number density in a given cell and $L$ is its physical size. The chemical network equations is solved by the CVODE package~\\citep{Hindmarsh2005}.\n\nWe assume that a gas has solar metallicity with the abundances given in \\citet{2005ASPC..336...25A}: $[{\\rm C\/H}] = 2.45 \\times 10^{-4}, [{\\rm O\/H}] = 4.57\\times 10^{-4}, [{\\rm Si\/H}] = 3.24\\times 10^{-5}$. Dust depletion factors are equal to 0.72, 046 and 0.2 for C, O and Si, correspondingly. We suppose that silicon is singly ionized and oxygen stays neutral.\n\nFor cooling and heating processes we extend our previous model~\\citep{2013MNRAS.428.2311K} by CO and OH cooling rates\n\\citep{1979ApJS...41..555H} and CI fine structure cooling rate~\\citep{1989ApJ...342..306H}. The other cooling and heating rates\nare presented in detail in Table~2~\\cite[Appendix B in][]{2013MNRAS.428.2311K}. Here we simply provide a list of it: cooling due to recombination and collisional excitation and free-free emission of hydrogen~\\citep{1992ApJS...78..341C}, molecular hydrogen\ncooling \\citep{1998A&A...335..403G}, cooling in the fine structure and metastable transitions of carbon, oxygen and silicon\n\\citep{1989ApJ...342..306H}, energy transfer in collisions with the dust particles \\citep{2003ApJ...587..278W} and recombination cooling on the dust \\citep{1994ApJ...427..822B}, photoelectric heating on the dust particles\n\\citep{1994ApJ...427..822B,2003ApJ...587..278W}, heating due to H$_2$ formation on the dust{ particles}, and the H$_2$ photodissociation\n\\citep{1979ApJS...41..555H} and the ionization heating by cosmic rays \\citep{1978ApJ...222..881G}. In our simulations we achieve\ngas temperature value as low as 10~K and number density as high as $5\\times 10^3$~cm$^{-3}$.\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/v0000a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/q0000a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{Initial conditions for simulated stellar-gaseous discs. Circular velocity is shown in the left panel. Stability parameter $Q_T$ adopted for finite thickness two component disc and using the approximation by~\\citet{2011MNRAS.416.1191R}is shown in the right panel. Physical parameters of galaxy models are presented in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}.}\\label{fig::initial_curves}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\subsection{Star formation and feedback}\n\nIn the star formation recipe adopted in our model mass, energy and momentum from the gaseous cells, where a star formation criterion is satisfied, are transited directly to newborn stellar particles. A star particle is formed in a grid cell, if the following criteria are fulfilled: (i) the gas density in the  cell should be higher than $100$~cm$^{-3}$ (such a high value prevents the formation of huge number of stellar particles), (ii) the total mass of gas in  surrounding cells exceeds the Jeans mass $M_{\\rm cell}>M_{\\rm J}$ (this help us to avoid the star formation in hot and warm medium, where some feedback processes occur), and we adopt the local star formation efficiency $0.01$. In star-forming cells the number density and temperature reach $n>200-500$~cm~$^{-3}$ and T$\\; \\buildrel < \\over \\sim \\;$ 50~K.\n\nFeedback model includes several sources of thermal energy, namely stellar radiation, stellar winds from massive stars and SN explosions. The amount of injected energy connected to these processes is calculated for each stellar particle using the stellar evolution code~{\\sc STARBURST99}~\\citep{sb99}. We model supernova feedback only as thermal energy injection into a gas. We take into account mass loss by stellar particles due to SN explosions and stellar winds from both massive and low-mass stars.\n\n\\subsection{Radiation transfer}\n\nTo account molecule photodestruction we should know spatial structure of UV background in the galactic disc. Recent observations provide some evidences for significant radial and azimuthal variations of UV flux in the nearby galaxies~(Gil de Paz et al. 2007). No doubt that such variations are stipulated by local star formation. So that we need to include radiation feedback from stellar particles in our calculations.\n\nThrough our simulations the UV emission of each stellar particle is computed with the stellar evolution code {\\sc STARBURST99}~\\citep{sb99} assuming solar metallicity of stellar population. So that for each particle we know its luminosity evolution. After that we separate particles in two groups: young stellar particles (the age is smaller than $20$~Myr) and the other ones.\nFor definiteness we assume a uniform background field ten times lower than that in the Solar neighbourhood, $F_{b}=0.1$~Habing.Thus the UV background $F^{\\rm UV}$ in a hydrodynamical cell with coordinates $\\displaystyle {\\bf {\\rm r}_0}$ can be written as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq::UVequation}\n F^{\\rm UV}({\\bf {\\rm r}_0}) = F_{\\rm b} +  \\sum_{i} F^{\\rm old}_{i}({\\rm r}_0) + \\sum_{j} F^{\\rm young}_{j}({\\rm r}_0,{\\rm r}_j)\\,,\n\\end{equation}\n$\\sum_{i} F^{\\rm\nold}_{i}({\\rm r}_0)$ is deposit from old stellar population (age $>20$~Myr), which plays a role only in a cell where the stellar\nparticle locates~($\\displaystyle {\\bf {\\rm r}_0}$). The last term is UV flux from young stellar population -- the brightest stars. Their deposit is the most important in photodestruction of molecules in surrounding medium.\n\nDue to  number of young stars is small at each time step, we can use the ray-tracing approach for each stellar particle. For $j$-th \"young particle\" we estimate the{ radius of} spherical shell (similar to the Stroemgren sphere), where the UV field value decreases down to 0.1~Habing:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\displaystyle R^{\\rm d}_j = 0.1 \\delta \\sqrt{L^*_j\/ (4\\pi)}\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $L^*_j$ is luminosity of $j$-th stellar particle in Habing units and $\\displaystyle \\delta = \\sqrt{(\\delta x)^2+(\\delta y)^2+(\\delta z)^2}$ is effective cell size. For each shell we calculate the UV flux assuming the optical depth $\\tau = 2  N \/ (10^{21} \\rm{cm^{-2}})$,\nwhere $N$ is the total column density of gas in cm$^{-2}$. So that we can get the distribution of the UV intensity in the entire galactic disc according to Eq.~\\ref{eq::UVequation}.\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/stellardensity0071a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/uvflux0071a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/density0071a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/vlos0071a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/intensity0071a-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe projected maps (inclination $30^\\circ$) of stellar surface density (top left group of panels), stellar UV radiation field (top right group of panels), total gas column density\n(left group of panels in the middle row), radial (line-of-sight) velocity component (right group of panels in the middle row) and CO integrated intensity (bottom group of panels) at $t=500$~Myr for the following models of galaxies: no spiral structure or\nmodel B (left map in all groups of panels), Milky Way-like or model F (central map in all groups of panels) and flocculent galaxy or model H (right map in all groups of panels). Initial parameters of the galactic models can be found in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}.\n}\\label{fig::galaxies}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\subsection{Model of galaxies}\n\nWe start our simulations from the self-consistent radial and vertical equilibrium state of stellar-gaseous discs in the fixed\ngravitational potential of dark matter halo. We assume both stellar and gaseous discs have exponential form, but with different\nspatial scale lengths. Circular velocity of the gaseous disc embedded into the gravitational potential can be found as:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\displaystyle \\frac{V^2_{\\rm c}}{r} = - \\left(\\frac{\\partial \\Psi_{\\rm halo}}{\\partial r} + \\frac{\\partial \\Psi_{\\rm bulge}}{\\partial r} + \\frac{\\partial \\Psi_{\\rm disc}}{\\partial r} + \\frac{\\partial \\Psi_{\\rm gas}}{\\partial r}\\right)\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\Psi_{\\rm halo}$ is gravitational potential of dark matter halo, the halo is assumed to be steady isothermal\nsphere,  $\\Psi_{\\rm bulge}$ is potential of bulge, $\\Psi_{\\rm disc}$ is potential of stellar disc and $\\Psi_{\\rm gas}$ is potential of gas. The parameters of{ the} gravitational potential can be found in  Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}.{ Fig.~\\ref{fig::initial_curves} presents t}he radial dependence\nof circular velocity for the galactic models considered here.\n\nFor stellar particle kinematics the asymmetric drift is taken in the form of Jeans approximation:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq::jeans_eq}\n\\displaystyle V^2 = V^2_{\\rm c} - \\sigma^2_{\\rm r} \\left( 1 - \\frac{\\sigma^2_{\\varphi}}{\\sigma^2_{\\rm r}} + \\frac{r}{\\Sigma_*} \\frac{1}{\\sigma^2_r}\\frac{\\partial (\\Sigma_* \\sigma^2_{\\rm r})}{\\partial r}\\right)\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\sigma_{\\rm r}$, $\\sigma_{\\varphi}$ are radial and azimuthal velocity dispersions,{ respectively,}\n$\\Sigma_*$ is stellar surface density distribution.\nThe parameters of the potential and matter distributions can be found in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}.\nTo compute an initial distribution of stars we solve Eq.~\\ref{eq::jeans_eq} using the iterative procedure described in \\cite{2003ARep...47..357K}.\n\nDespite the parameters { of} the models{ of galaxies presented in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}} are { close} to each other, the various stability conditions { allow} us to follow galaxies with the different morphology.\nInitial stability criteria for two-component models (stellar-gaseous) are shown in the right panel of Fig.~\\ref{fig::initial_curves}.\nWe compute three models of the stellar disc equilibria: gravitationally over-stable disc~(Model F, without prominent structure), highly unstable~(Model H, flocculent spirals morphology) and intermediate state disc~(Model B, MW-like morphology).{ The} initial stability parameter for two-component disc model accounting the finite disc thickness { effect}  is adopted in the form by~\\cite{2011MNRAS.416.1191R}~(Fig.~\\ref{fig::initial_curves}).\n\nFigure~\\ref{fig::galaxies} shows the maps of the stellar surface density, stellar UV radiation field, total gas column density and CO integrated intensity at $t=500$~Myr for the following models of galaxies inclined by $i=30^\\circ$:\n{ a galaxy without}spiral structure { (}model B),{ a} Milky Way type{ galaxy} (model F) and{ a} flocculent galaxy  (model H).{ The i}nitial parameters of the models are given in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}. Note that the { spatially} averaged UV radiation field{ in all three models of galaxies} is significantly greater than a value of 0.1 Habing (see upper middle row in the Fig.~\\ref{fig::galaxies}), so that our choice of the uniform background is reasonable. We have adopted inclination angle $i=30^\\circ$  as a value which is enough to get significant line-of-sight velocity { scatter} while the structures in the { gaseous} disk are still rather well spatially distinguishable.\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Clouds definition}\\label{seq::CD}\n\nPrior to the calculation of physical parameters of clouds, we should define what the cloud is. In the most obvious approach for cloud definition\n(CD) a cloud is an isolated gaseous clump with gas density~(column or { volume}) higher than a given level. This is the simplest criterion, but it doesn't reflect the chemical composition of a clump and we cannot say anything about  molecular content of such cloud. Moreover{ the} methods{ based on total gaseous column density} are not relevant to observable values, because using such methods some material, which is not associated with cloud itself and laid along the line of sight, can be regarded as a part of a cloud. This reveals in physical parameters of a cloud. So that we need a criterion based on the distribution of molecules in the ISM. Such criterion connects both chemical and extinction properties of a cloud and allows us to separate two phases of the cold interstellar medium: atomic and molecular gas.\n\nUsually molecular clouds are studied by its emission in molecular lines~(e.g., for $^{12}$CO~\\citep[see e.g.][]{1987ApJ...319..730S}, $^{13}$CO~\\citep[see, e.g.][]{2009ApJ...699.1092H} and more recently in OH by~\\citet{2015AJ....149..123A}). Since our model includes the H$_2$ and\nCO molecule kinetics, we can use CD criteria based on both total gas column density and intensity in CO lines. This allows us to check the range of applicability for each CD criterion. So that the properties of a particular cloud { are expected to depend significantly} on the extraction criterion. It is also not clear how a choice of criterion influences on the statistical properties of the whole ensemble of molecular clouds.\n\nBelow we consider two approaches related to{ the} properties of a cloud measured in  observations. We define a cloud as a region inside that the total (molecular and atomic) hydrogen column density is higher than a given threshold $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$~ (henceforth we use the abbreviation CDN for the method and corresponding indices). According to the CDN criterion we firstly find all local maxima (peaks) of  the gas column density in the plane of the galactic disc. After that around each local maximum we find cells with value higher  than a given threshold. In some cases these regions merge into larger ones and form a cloud with several local maxima. Usually  such coalescences take place in dense galactic structures, e.g. in spiral arms, bar or regions nearby the galactic center.{ Thus, o}ur approach  for finding clouds is a combination of the {\\it 'contour method'} \\citep{2014MNRAS.439..936F} and {\\it 'peaks method'}~\\citep{2009ApJ...700..358T}.\n\n\nOne of the widely used method for extracting structures from PPV data cubes is CLUMPFIND \\citep{1994ApJ...428..693W}. This method is based on contouring data array at many different levels starting from the peak value and moving down to specific threshold. In the present work the CUPID implementation of{ the} CLUMPFIND{ algorithm} is used for { CO intensity} method of the clouds extraction~\\citep{2007ASPC..376..425B}. Henceforth we use the abbreviation CF for { this} method and corresponding indices of variables.\n\nWe calculate CO brightness temperature in the form of the PPV data cubes using the method described in \\cite{2012ApJ...758..127F}. In the calculations the spectral velocity resolution equals to $0.5$~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\,, which is potentially enough { to resolve} structure of massive clouds.This spectral resolution is comparable to { that} one { reached} in the recent{ interferometric} observations~\\citep[see e.g.,][]{2009ApJ...699.1153R}. Note that we discuss the dependence of power-law indices of the relations on velocity resolution{ value in the Section 5.4}.\n\n\nCertainly, using two above-mentioned criteria we get two different population of clouds. Number and total mass of clouds are also different and depend on the value of column density { and} brightness temperature thresholds. In our analysis we take $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot} = 1.9\\times 10^{21}$~cm$^{-2}$ and  $T^{\\rm th}_{\\rm b} = 3$~K as fiducial threshold values, which provide us comparable numbers of clouds (around 1000) and similar total gaseous masses locked in clouds ($ M_{\\rm t} \\approx 2-4\\times 10^{9}~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,$). Note that these values of $M_{\\rm t}$ are close to the total mass of molecular clouds in the Milky Way~\\citep{1997ApJ...476..166W}. The  numbers{ of clouds} and total gaseous masses { for the galactic models considered here} are given in Table~\\ref{tab::tabular1}.\n\nFor instance, a small region with the spatial distribution of extracted clouds in the {MW type galaxy} (model F) is shown in the Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}. We mark the extracted clouds as coloured areas in contrast to the grey scale background of{ gaseous} column density { map}. It is clearly seen that spatial distributions and numbers of clouds are { remarkably distinct} for{ the} considered criteria. Prior to any quantitative analysis of the physical parameters we should notice two{ issues}. On one hand,  non-interacting clouds{ are appeared to} have similar shape for both extraction methods. { However}, in more dense environment clouds extracted by different methods look very unalikely.{ We suppose that t}his can be a result of dynamical effects related to cloud collisions and\/or stellar feedback effects. On the other hand, it seems that very large clouds (or agglomerations) extracted by{ using the CDN method} have internal structure, which we can hardly resolve because of our spatial resolution{ is still not enough high}. Thus, { for the} CDN criterion large clouds and cloud chains (at least in the dense environment) { can be} extracted, while { using} the CF method such large structures are { splitted} into individual lumps with internal motions and other specific inhomogeneities.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[width=1\\hsize]{figs\/CompareClouds0000p-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nA region with the spatial distribution of extracted clouds in the model F. The extracted clouds are marked by color: top panel shows the distribution for CF (or CLUMPFIND) method, bottom panel demonstrates that for CDN approach. The background greyscale map is the gas surface density.}\n\\label{fig::clouds_clouds}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\section{GMCs physical parameters}\\label{sec::phys_param}\n\n\n{ Cloud formation were studied numerically in detail by \\cite{2006MNRAS.371.1663D,2008MNRAS.389.1097D,2008MNRAS.391..844D}. We mention that in our simulations  clouds {are result of }  self-gravity, thermal instability, cloud collisions and other processes occurred in the galactic disc. } {Here we briefly describe physical parameters of the cloud samples obtained in our analysis.}\n\nOn the one side, spiral arms stimulate GMCs formation due to gas falling into{ the gravitational} potential well of the arms. { Gravitational potential} of spiral structure induces collisions of clouds that in turn stimulates star formation. From the opposite side, supernovae explosions in star forming spiral arms can destroy clouds. { So one can conclude} that molecular clouds mostly form in spiral arms and are { probably} short-lived structures with lifetime $\\; \\buildrel < \\over \\sim \\;$$ 10^7$~ yr~\\citep{2009ApJ...699.1153R,2015arXiv150404528M}. However,  the existence of clouds in the inter-arm regions requires  longer  lifetime \\citep{1979IAUS...84..277S,2009ApJ...700L.132K}. So that a question about lifetime of molecular clouds is still under debates \\cite[see e.g.][]{2013MNRAS.432..653D,2014Ap&SS.353..595Z}.\n\nNumber of clouds extracted by using both criteria for the cloud definition described above depends on a choice of threshould. For the fiducial values of threshold $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot} = 1.9\\times 10^{21}$~cm$^{-2}$ and  $T^{\\rm th}_{\\rm b} = 3$~K we extract $\\sim 1000$ isolated clouds in our simulated galaxies. These clouds have the following physical parameters: masses are $\\approx 10^4 - 10^7$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,, sizes vary within the range $3 - 100$~pc, one dimensional velocity dispersion is ranged $0.1-10$~km~s$^{-1}$, mean surface densities are $\\sim 60-300$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$, and luminosities in CO lines are $10^3-10^7$~K~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1} } pc\\ensuremath{^{2 }}\\,. These parameters depend slightly on the galactic morphology. Figure~\\ref{fig::clouds_par} shows the distributions of these physical parameters for the cloud population in the Milky Way type galaxy~(Model F) for both techniques of the cloud definition.  \n\nFor{ the} CF method { the} physical paramters of clouds, i.e. masses, 1D line-of-sight velocity dispersion (LOSVD), total luminosity and cloud sizes, are calculated using the prescriptions from \\citet{1994ApJ...428..693W}.\n\nFor the CDN approach one dimensional velocity dispersion of { a} cloud is calculated according to \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq::veldisp}\n\\displaystyle  \\sigma_v = \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}} \\sqrt{ \\sum({\\bf u} - {\\bf u}_{\\rm c})^2 }\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\bf u_{\\rm c}$ is cloud center mass velocity vector, $\\bf u$ is cloud velocity vector. Such approach is widely used to extract clouds in numerical simulations~\\citep[see e.g.][{ and references therein}]{2013ApJ...776...23B,2014MNRAS.439..936F}. A cloud size is calculated according to \\mbox{$\\displaystyle R = \\sqrt{\\frac{A} {\\pi}}$}, where $A$ is  cloud surface in pc$^2$.\n\nThe ratio between the kinetic energy and gravitational energy is commonly used to specify deviation from the virial state  of a cloud under assumption of the constant density distribution~\\citep{1992ApJ...395..140B}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq::vir_par}\n \\displaystyle \\alpha = \\frac{5\\sigma^2_{\\rm v} R_{\\rm cl}}{G M_{\\rm lum}} \\approx \\frac{1161 \\sigma^2_{\\rm v} R_{\\rm cl}}{M_{\\rm lum}}\\,,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\alpha$ is cloud virial parameter, $R_{\\rm cl}$ is cloud size in parsecs, $M_{\\rm lum}$ is mass of cloud in Solar units adopted from its CO luminosity using $X_{\\rm CO}$ conversion factor\n\\citep{1978ApJS...37..407D}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq::mcl_lum}\n\\displaystyle M_{\\rm lum} = \\frac{4.4L_{\\rm CO}X_{\\rm CO}}{2\\times10^{20}}\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nIt is easy to see that the luminosity mass $M_{\\rm lum}$ and the virial mass $M_{\\rm vir}$ of a cloud are generally not equal to each other:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq::mvir_mlum}\nM_{\\rm vir} \\approx \\alpha M_{\\rm lum}\\,.\n\\end{equation}\nMiddle panels in Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par} present the parameter $\\alpha$ for cloud population in the  Milky Way type galaxy. It is clearly seen that the majority of molecular clouds tend to be in the virial equilibrium. Note that  the distribution of such quasi-virialized objects is close to{ the} uniform distribution as a function of  cloud mass. The physical parameters obtained for our models of galaxies are in agreement with other recent numerical simulations \\citep{2009ApJ...700..358T,2011ApJ...730...11T,2013MNRAS.428.2311K}. Such result is likely to be a reflection of the turbulent energy distribution in the entire galactic disk \\citep[detailed study see in][]{2014ApJ...784..112K}.\n\n{ The} distributions of cloud masses { obtained by using the CF and CDN methods are} slightly different: { in the former} we extract smaller and less massive clouds than the ones extracted in the { latter}~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}a,b). Moreover, the mass range for the CF sample of clouds is rather wide. The reason of this  is clearly seen in the Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}: large structure extracted by{ the} CDN method are divided into several smaller clouds { when} the CF technique{ is used}~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}). We discuss several dynamical and methodological effects related to this issue in the further paragraphs. \n\n\nThe 1D velocity dispersion of clouds defined by Eq.~\\ref{eq::veldisp} is unlikely to provide a good description for observed line-of-sight velocity dispersion, making it higher at least for extragalactic GMCs. Moreover, the regular quasi-circular motion of giant clouds around galactic center leads to overestimation of velocity field within a cloud about 1-2~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\,. But this effect is significantly smaller than the 1D LOSVD value. Spectral resolution 0.5~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\, allows us to distinguish  internal structure of large clouds and measure the 1D LOSVD { within} 1-2~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\, accuracy~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}e). Using{ the} CF method we extract more homogeneous cloud sample which { has} smoother (without many local peaks) distribution. In any case both methods provide more or less similar shape of the velocity dispersion distribution functions, which are close to the observable ones~\\citep[see e.g.][]{2010ApJ...723..492R}. It seems that the CF method splits large clouds into smaller ones due to the { complex} velocity { structure}, which mainly takes place in colliding and tangent gaseous flows or, in general, turbulent regions. Note a remarkable difference between clouds extracted by the CF and CDN methods: large clouds found by the CF method are isolate lumps located in calm environment, whereas large clouds extracted by using the CDN criterion mostly represent dynamically interacting structures. \n\n\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/SizeDistribution0000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/MassDistribution0000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/Alpha10000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/Alpha20000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/DispersionDistribution0000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\hsize]{figs\/LuminosityDistribution0000c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe physical parameters of GMCs obtained using CDN criterion (blue) and CLUMPFIND algorithm (green) for the model F\ngalaxy (middle panel of Fig.~\\ref{fig::galaxies}): size ~(a), mass~(b), virial parameter~(d), velocity dispersion~(e)\nand luminosity~(f). The dependence of virial parameter on mass of a cloud is shown in panel~(c). The red dotted and black \nsolid lines depicted in panels (c) and (d) correspond to $\\alpha=1$  and $\\alpha=2$, respectively.\n}\\label{fig::clouds_par}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\section{Scaling relations analysis}\\label{seq::scaling_relations}\n\nIn this section we discuss the scaling relations for GMCs extracted according to two criteria of the cloud definition for the galaxy models{ described above}. { In the Table~\\ref{tab::tabular3} we collect all indices and normalizations for{ the} scaling relations{ obtained in the analysis of} { the models of} galaxies { considered here}. It seems that there is no strong variation of the GMCs scaling relations { obtained by using the CDN method for} galaxies with different morphology. { This} is considered in Sects.~\\ref{sec::ll1}, \\ref{sec::ll2}, \\ref{sec::ll3} { in detail. A role} of the  environment { in the galactic disk} on the GMCs parameters is discussed in the Sect.~\\ref{sec::mass_spectra}.}\n\nThe statistical relations for the three models of galaxies considered { here} are presented in Figs.~\\ref{fig::ll1}, \\ref{fig::ll2}, \\ref{fig::ll3} and described in the corresponding subsection. The top row of the panels in each figure shows{ the} relations obtained{ by} using the CF method, and the bottom one shows{ the} relations based on the CDN criterion.\n\n\\begin{table*}\n\\caption[]{\nThe parameters of the scaling relations for GMCs in the simulated galaxies.}\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccccc|ccccccccc}\n\\hline\nModel (Morphology) - CD & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{$\\sigma_{\\rm v} = A_1 R_{\\rm cl}^{\\beta_1}$} & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{$M_{\\rm vir} = A_2 L_{\\rm cl}^{\\beta_2}$} & \\multicolumn{2}{c}{$L_{\\rm cl} = A_3 R_{\\rm cl}^{\\beta_3}$} \\\\\n          & $A_1$   & $\\beta_1$  & $A_2$ & $\\beta_2$  & $A_3$ & $\\beta_3$ \\\\\n          & km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\, pc$^{-\\beta_1}$   &    & M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, (K~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1} } pc\\ensuremath{^{2 }}\\,)$^{-\\beta_2}$ &   & K~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1} } pc\\ensuremath{^{2 }}\\, pc$^{-\\beta_3}$ &  \\\\\n\\hline\nB (No structure) - CDN &  $0.94\\pm0.25$  &  $0.66\\pm 0.17$ &  $795 \\pm 151$  & $0.64 \\pm 0.31$  & $200 \\pm 45$ \t&  $1.72 \\pm 0.13$  \\\\\nB (No structure) - CF &  $0.97\\pm0.12$  &  $0.49\\pm 0.1$ &  $15.8 \\pm 2.2$   & $1.56\\pm 0.11$   & $1000 \\pm 38$ \t&  $1.02 \\pm 0.2$  \\\\\nF (Milky Way like) - CDN &  $0.35\\pm0.21$  &  $1.11\\pm 0.18$ &  $16 \\pm 8.1 $   & $1.04 \\pm 0.28$   & $202 \\pm 29$ \t&  $1.73 \\pm 0.11$  \\\\\nF (Milky Way like) - CF &  $0.57\\pm 0.18$  &  $0.69\\pm 0.12$ &  $13.1 \\pm 3.6$   & $1.47 \\pm 0.21$   & $630 \\pm 44$ \t&  $1.28 \\pm 0.19$  \\\\\nH (Flocculent) - CDN &  $0.87\\pm0.24$  &  $0.76\\pm 0.16$ &  $1584 \\pm 212$   & $0.62 \\pm 0.29$   & $156 \\pm 51$ \t&  $1.68 \\pm 0.3$  \\\\\nH (Flocculent) - CF &  $0.84\\pm 0.9$  &  $0.54\\pm 0.09$ &  $16.2 \\pm 3.1$   & $1.56 \\pm 0.1$   & $1000 \\pm 35$\t&  $1 \\pm 0.21$  \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\\label{tab::tabular3}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table*}\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Velocity dispersion - size relation}\\label{sec::ll1}\n\nFig.~\\ref{fig::ll1} { shows} that the clouds extracted according to the CDN criterion have higher velocity dispersion with the mean value $\\sim 8-20$~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\,{ compared to that} { obtained} for the CF { one, in this case} the mean { value of velocity dispersion} decreases to $\\sim 1-5$~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\,. { One can note that} the observational fits{ for the Milky Way galaxy and others}~\\citep{1987ApJ...319..730S,2008ApJ...686..948B} { are in} better agreement { with the} relations obtained for the CF sample of clouds. The relations for the clouds extracted by the CDN method show { significant} deviation from the observational fits.\n\nClouds have extremely complicated shape { and consist of crossed and}  elongated structures (see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}). So that high total hydrogen column density at the periphery of clouds can be a geometrical effect when the line-of-sight goes along the { largest} dimension of the cloud. So the use of the CDN criterion can result in incorrect estimation of cloud sizes and overestimation of their column density and velocity dispersion (Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}).\n\n{ From the bottom panels} in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll1}{ one can conclude} that for the adopted{ here} column density threshold { the clouds extracted by using the CDN criterion} { hold} gas with higher velocity located at their periphery. Such intercloud (diffuse) gas can contain significant molecular fraction.{ Note that i}n some recent observations extended structures with significant molecular fraction are found around molecular clouds \\citep{2015AJ....149...76C}. The velocity dispersion of these structures is higher than that in the clouds. This can be considered as an evidence that molecular gas can exist in two phases: clumpy phase, which is organized in molecular clouds, and diffuse one, which is located in extended structures around clouds.\n\n\nCO molecules are efficiently formed only in the dense shielded environment and are destroyed due to heating { and photodissociation} by the stellar feedback. Using the CDN criterion total hydrogen column density { has a} deposit from not only central dense molecular regions, but also peripheral  parts of a cloud{ that can mainly contain atomic hydrogen} and{ even} some intercloud starforming regions, where young stars have already existed. If we extract clumps brightly emitting in CO lines, then the low density HI gas at the periphery is excluded from the consideration. \n\nOne can see that the indices in the power-law relation $\\sigma_{\\rm v} - R_{\\rm cl}$ for the models of galaxies with more pronounced structures significantly differ from that for the observational fits ~\\citep{1981MNRAS.194..809L,1987ApJ...319..730S,2008ApJ...686..948B}. This deviation takes place for both threshold criteria, but it is smaller for{ the} CF method. This can be explained by the fact that { using the} CDN criterion we can consider gaseous structures which are not really associated with  clouds. So that{ gaseous} flows at the outskirts of cloud are added to the internal turbulence motions { of this} cloud, hence, the numerical ratio between velocity dispersion and size of cloud becomes higher. We mentioned above that the CF approach is a sharper 'filter' for molecular clouds than the CDN one, and our cloud samples based on the CO datacubes data demonstrate{ the} statistical relations closer to the observed ones. Thus, in our simulations the first Larson's scaling relation is better reproduced for PPV data.\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\hsize]{figs\/Size_dispersion_0000-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe 'velocity dispersion - cloud size' relation obtained for the CF algorithm (top row of panels) and the CDN criterion (bottom row \nof panels). Left column of panels corresponds to the model of galaxy without spiral structure (model B), middle column presents the\nrelation for the MW-like galaxy model (model F) and the right column shows the relation for galaxy with flocculent structure (model \nH, see Fig.~\\ref{fig::galaxies}). The solid red line is a power-law fit for the simulated data (the corresponding formula is shown in \nthe right bottom corner). The dashed blue line corresponds to the fit for the data taken from~\\citet{2008ApJ...686..948B}.\nThe dotted black line shows the fit to the data on the Milky Way clouds got by~\\citet{1987ApJ...319..730S}.\n}\\label{fig::ll1}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\hsize]{figs\/Luminosity_vmass_0000-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe 'cloud virial mass - luminosity' relation. The other notations are the same as in the Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll1}.\n}\\label{fig::ll2}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\hsize]{figs\/Luminosity_size_0000-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe 'luminosity - cloud size' relation. The dotted lines correspond to the cloud surface density according to Eq.~\\ref{eq::mcl_lum} \nfor the constant conversion factor $X_{\\rm CO} = 2\\times10^{20}$~cm\\ensuremath{^{-2} } (K km s\\ensuremath{^{-1} })\\ensuremath{^{-1} }\\,. The other notations are the same as in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll1}. \n}\\label{fig::ll3}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\subsection{Virial mass - luminosity relation}\\label{sec::ll2}\n\nThe 'virial mass - luminosity relation' reflects a suggestion that GMCs state is close to the virial equilibrium. Figure~\\ref{fig::ll2} shows the correlation between virial mass $ M_{\\rm vir}$~(see Eq~\\ref{eq::mvir_mlum} ) and total luminosity of{ the} extracted molecular clouds for three models of galaxies. One can see { significant} scatter of{ the} physical parameters for the simulated clouds around the observational fits. { Similar to} the 'velocity dispersion - size' relation{ one can see here also that} the scatter for the CDN criterion is larger than that for the CF one, especially this is remarkable for low surface luminosity clouds ($L_{\\rm CO}\\lower.5ex\\hbox{\\ltsima} 10^4$~K~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1} } pc\\ensuremath{^{2 }}\\,). In general, for the same luminosity value the virial mass of clouds obtained for the CDN criterion is systematically greater than that for the CF one. That can be explained by that high virial masses have large clouds formed in collisions of smaller ones, such massive clouds are mainly associated with spiral arms and\/or bar. During collision of clouds, molecules can be destroyed, but the shock waves cannot ionize gas (or such gas recombines rapidly). So that significant part (on mass) of such clouds is locked in the warm atomic hydrogen phase. Then, using{ the} CDN criterion we obtain clouds with high total hydrogen column density, where the deposit of atomic hydrogen to the column density is dominant or very significant.\n\nThe CO brightest clouds are really molecular ones and they are probably to belong to older cloud population: a gas inside them has to become molecular~\\citep{2010MNRAS.404....2G}. Whereas the darkest (massive) clouds in CO line are believed to be either young population of massive clouds, in which atomic hydrogen hasn't yet transformed into molecular, or maybe pseudo-virialized structures, which consist of a group of small molecular clouds 'bounded' by atomic intercloud and\/or more diffuse molecular medium~ (see~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}). Such structures can appear in dense environment, e.g. spiral arms, bar, central parts of a galaxy, where a chosen threshold is low enough to extract separate clouds and leads to merger small clouds into larger structure. The use of{ the} CF criterion provides more reasonable cloud sample and doesn't lead to extracting such large gaseous structures. So that the scatter for the sample of clouds obtained for the CF criterion is much smaller that for{ the} CDN one.\n\nFor the CDN criterion the slope of the fit for the simulated sample of clouds is flatter than that for the observational data (see Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll2}). Obviously, it comes from the excess of massive clouds with low surface luminosity. Using the CF approach the picture for all three models of galaxies shows opposite behaviour. The slope becomes steeper than that obtained in the observations. Above one can see that the CF method usually leads to splitting large structures into smaller ones due to systematic LOS velocity variations for a given structure~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds}), that reveals in both size and mass distributions~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}). Thus, we have a relatively large subsample of small clouds, which cannot be resolved (in space and\/or in the LOS velocity coordinate) in observational data.\n\nOne can suppose that if{ a} large gaseous agglomeration in the vicinity of spiral arms or galactic centre { is} splitted into several isolated clouds, then{ the} number of massive and bright clouds becomes lower, whereas smaller clouds are more numerous. Thus, the slope of the fit can become flatter. So that the increase of threshold value is likely to result in better match with observations.\n\n\n\\subsection{Luminosity - size relation}\\label{sec::ll3}\n\nOriginally Larson (1981) found the 'mass-size' relation for the Galactic molecular clouds: $M_{\\rm cl} \\propto R^2_{\\rm cl}$. This relation can be interpreted as  molecular clouds have the same (constant) surface density. Here we use another form of this relation, namely 'luminosity - size', because it includes at least one observable value. Note that mass of a cloud can be easily found from luminosity using conversion factor $X_{\\rm CO}$ according to Eq. (\\ref{eq::mcl_lum}), such re-calculation doesn't affect on the slope of the scaling relation in case of the constant conversion factor.\n\nFigure~\\ref{fig::ll3} shows the relation for three models of galaxies. It is clearly seen that for all models the surface density of clouds is locked within interval $\\sim 10-1000$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,~pc$^{-2}$. This surface density { range} is rather universal within $M=10^3-10^7$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, for all galaxy models. For the CDN criterion one can note { substantial} scatter of the cloud parameters below the critical value of the surface density $\\approx 10^2$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\, pc$^{-2}$~(see bottom row in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll3}). This is just a reflection of existence of the dimmer parts of the clouds. It seems that the strong limit on the maximum value of the surface density can be { interpreted as a result of} ongoing star formation, which prevents the formation of more dense clouds. Molecules in such clouds are destroyed immediately due to photodissociation by UV radiation from  newborn stars. However, such picture cannot be supported by the analysis of the clouds extracted by CF method (see top row in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll3}). It is possible that the brightness of large clouds becomes lower than { that} expected { due to} the shielding effects. Note that the optical depth effects become important when the value of the column density exceeds $\\sim 2\\times 10^{21}(T\/10^3)^{-1}$~cm$^{-2}$ \\citep[e.g.,][]{1979ApJS...41..555H} and dense parts of clouds become dimmer in the CO lines.\n\nNote that in our simulations gas number density can be high as 2000-3000~cm$^{-3}$. However, even in such dense medium a star does not form with necessity, because a gas can be in the equilibrium with the surrounding medium. Such picture is usually taken place in small clouds. So that sometimes one can find rather small clouds (see Figs.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}a,b) with large amount of molecular gas, and these clouds appear to be brighter than it is expected from third Larson's relation. Thus, in our calculations the clouds surface density is expected to be not always constant that reflects that in our model there is no gas density threshold for the star formation process. \n\n\n\n\\begin{table}\n\\caption[]{The power-law indices of the scaling relations found in the Model F for several values of CO spectral line resolution $\\delta v$. The observational fits are given in the top frame of Table.}\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccccc|ccccccccc}\n\\hline\nModel \/ Observations &$\\delta v$ & $\\beta_1$  & $\\beta_2$ & $\\beta_3$ & \\\\\n\\hline\n & km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\, &    &   &   & \\\\\n\\hline\n\\citet{1981MNRAS.194..809L} &  - & 0.38 & - & -\\\\\n\\citet{2008ApJ...686..948B} &  & 0.5 & 0.81 & 2.55\\\\\n\\citet{1987ApJ...319..730S} &  & 0.6 & 1 & 2.54\\\\\n\\citet{2010ApJ...723..492R}  & 1 & - & - & 2.36\\\\\n\\hline\nModel F & 0.5 & 0.69 & 1.47 & 1.28 \\\\\nModel F & 1    & 0.65 & 1.34 & 1.74\\\\\nModel F & 5    & 0.6   & 1.19 & 2.41\\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\\label{tab::tabular2}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\subsection{Variation of the spectra resolution}\n\nSpatial resolution in numerical simulation plays a significant role in understanding of the internal properties and basic physical parameters of GMCs. \\citet{2014MNRAS.439..936F} reported that the variation of spatial resolution  strongly affects on the properties of cloud populations. At the same time, results of the PPV data cube { analysis} can depend on spectral resolution. In our previous simulations of synthetic spectra { the} velocity resolution { equals} $\\delta v =0.5$~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\,, which is quite high for extragalactic observations. Although this value is comparable to that used in several studies \\citep[e.g.,][]{2013MNRAS.436..921T}, most of the recent extragalactic surveys in molecular lines have been done with much lower spectral resolution \\citep{2003ApJS..149..343E,2013ApJ...772..107D,2013ApJ...779...42S,2014A&A...565A..97C}.\n\nTo check whether spectral resolution affects on the scaling relations, we calculate and analyze the PPV data with lower spectral resolution $\\delta v = 1$ and $5$~km~s\\ensuremath{^{-1}}\\, for the model F. In Tab~\\ref{tab::tabular2} we show the power-law indices for the scaling { relations} with different resolution values, we also combine the indices obtained in several observations with brightness temperature threshold{ equal to} 1~K. We argue that the noticeable variations of the indices with $\\delta v$ are due to that for lower spectral resolution small clouds are combined into larger ones on the line of sight when their relative motion and velocity dispersion is lower or comparable with the spectral resolution. Here we only report that there is a dependence of the cloud population characteristics on spectral resolution. An accurate quantitative consideration of this effect requires further detailed study.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[width=1\\hsize]{figs\/LLS1conc0100c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=1\\hsize]{figs\/LLS2conc0100c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=1\\hsize]{figs\/LLS3conc0100c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{The power-law indices for the scaling relations, $\\beta_i$, $i=1,2,3$, as function of the total column density threshold $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$ for clouds extracted using CDN approach~(left panels). In the right panels the indices $\\beta_i$ are shown as a function of the brightness temperature $T^{\\rm th}_{\\rm b}$ for the cloud samples found in analysis of CO line spectra using the CF method for various spectral resolution $\\delta v$. }\\label{fig::ll4}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Variation of the threshold value}\n\nIn the previous subsections we{ have} established that the scaling relations for the cloud ensembles obtained in our simulations are quite similar to these found in the observations. It is interesting to study a dependence of the power-law indices of the relations on  value of threshold. \n\nWe consider the relations obtained by both methods described in Section 3. Here we constrain ourselves to analyse the model of galaxy with the prominent structure -- model F. To do this we vary threshold values in the following ranges: $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot} = (0.5-4)\\times 10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$ for CDN and $T^{\\rm th}_{\\rm b} = (1-15)$~K for CF. Using the lower limits{ we extract} clouds with mass less than $10^8$~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,, while for the upper values at least 100 molecular clouds remain in the catalogue.\n\nFigure~\\ref{fig::ll4} presents the dependence of the power-law indices for three scaling relations on  total column density threshold $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$~(left panels) and brightness temperature $T^{\\rm th}_{\\rm b}$ threshold~(right panels). The error bars correspond to the data dispersion obtained in { the} $\\chi^2$-fitting procedure of the power-law indices for a given threshold. Note that the number of clouds definitely depends on threshold value, but{ it} remains above 100  clouds in order to provide enough objects for statistics.\n\nFor low $N^{\\rm th}_{\\rm tot}$ we extract both extremely large and small clouds. Large clouds consist of a group of small clouds enclosed by the extended diffuse structure, which can be called as the intercloud medium. Such a structure includes both molecular and atomic gas. The increase of the threshold excludes the intercloud medium. So that { for higher} threshold values we extract bright cores of the virialized clouds.  One can see in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll4}~(left panels) that the indices $\\beta_i$ for the simulated clouds change dramatically in the case of using{ the} CDN method. Better agreement with{ the} observational data can be found only with relatively low threshold values $\\approx 0.5-1\\times10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$. \n\nWhereas the use of the CF method does not provide any significant variations of the scaling relation indices with threshold (see right panels in Fig.~\\ref{fig::ll4}). In this case the cloud populations are vanished from capture of the intercloud medium, because { this} extraction method directly relates to regions with high molecular fraction. This explains { that the} result { remains rather robust} { relative} to variation of  brightness temperature threshold value. The indices obtained by using the CF criterion are close to the observed ones in wide range of threshold{ values}. \nMoreover, one cannot see significant dependence on velocity resolution for the first scaling relation. For the other relations the decrease of resolution leads to{ the} systematic shift of the index values, so that the dependence on threshold value remains more or less flat.\n\n\\subsection{Clouds mass spectra}\\label{sec::mass_spectra}\n\nThe { indices} of the GMCs scaling relations slightly vary for galaxies with different morphology, although both methods of the cloud definition are suffered from so-called environmental effects~(see Figs.~\\ref{fig::ll1},~\\ref{fig::ll2},~\\ref{fig::ll3}). In our case such effects come from remarkable large scale structures like spiral arms and galactic bar.\n\nTo check the impact of the galactic environment on the clouds properties we calculate the cumulative mass functions for three types of galaxies, i.e. number of clouds $N$ with masses $M_{\\rm cl}$ greater than a reference mass $M'_{\\rm cl}$:\n\\begin{equation}\nN(M'_{\\rm cl}) = N(M_{\\rm cl}<M'_{\\rm cl})\\,.\\label{eq::cnum1}\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe mass spectrum of molecular clouds is usually expressed as a power law{ function}~\\citep[see e.g.][]{2007ApJ...654..240R,2012A&A...542A.108G}, however more accurate approach is based on the truncated power law{ shape}~\\citep{1997ApJ...476..166W,2014ApJ...784....3C}{ which can be written} in the form:\n\\begin{equation}\nN(M_{\\rm cl}<M'_{\\rm cl}) = N_0 \\left[ \\left(\\frac{M_{\\rm cl}}{M'_{\\rm cl}}\\right)^{\\gamma+1} - 1 \\right]\\,\\label{eq::cnum2}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the index $\\gamma$ shows how the mass is distributed among the cloud population. \n\nWe compute the fits of the cumulative mass distribution in the form (\\ref{eq::cnum2}) (Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec}). For all considered models the slope of the mass distribution function $\\gamma$~{ (Eq.~\\ref{eq::cnum2})} is greater { than} $-2$ that means that large massive clouds dominate in the total GMCs mass budget. One can see that the clouds in the CDN samples have rather steeper mass distribution than that for the CF sample. This demonstrates that most molecular mass tends to be concentrated in less massive clouds in the CF sample than that in the CDN one. { In other words,} small clouds { are} more numerous in the CF sample. That is clearly seen from Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par} and even from Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec} if one mention that the total masses of extracted clouds obtained using both methods are very close to each other. Such conclusion is general for all three galaxy models~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec}). \n\n{ A remarkable  truncation of the mass distribution is seen for{ the CDN cloud samples} in all models. This can be explained by the engaging of numerous structures above the column density threshold in the dense environment. This suggestion is confirmed by Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec} where{ one can see that this} effect is { more clear in}{ the} { galaxy} with the prominent spiral pattern and bar (model F) and { weaker} { in the galaxy} without structure (model B).{ Such s}ignificant truncation does not reflects the physical state of isolated molecular{ clouds}, because{ the} truncation is not detected for{ the CF sample of} GMCs.}\n\n\n{As { it} was mentioned above~(see Sections~\\ref{sec::ll1},~\\ref{sec::ll2},~\\ref{sec::ll3}), there are not strong variations of { the} scaling relation{ indices on galactic} morphology for { the same} CD criterion. However, the impact of the galactic environment on the GMCs properties{ reveals distinctly}. It is seen in the mass distribution profiles in Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec}.} The shapes of the distributions for the CF samples are quite similar to each other: the $\\gamma$ { values are in the range $[-1.70;  -1.13]$}, that { once again shows} a homogeneity of these cloud samples. Especially this is remarkable for the galaxies without large-scale pattern: models B and H. Note that for the CDN samples the distributions coincide for $M\\lower.5ex\\hbox{\\ltsima} 10^6~M\\ensuremath{_\\odot}\\,$. The mass spectrum in { the} model F systematically differs from the others. { We suggest that { stronger} stellar feedback and compression of GMCs in spiral arms { taken place} in the model F{ substantially} affects  on the GMCs mass distribution. However, { the conformity of the} scaling relations~(see Table~\\ref{tab::tabular3}) denotes that GMCs save their internal structure or{ the} CD methods { work in resemling way and as a result} extracted structures~(clouds) { have} rather { close} physical parameters.} Similar influence of large scale structures can be noticed both in numerical simulations of M83 \\citep{2014MNRAS.439..936F} and in observations of M51 \\citep{2014ApJ...784....3C}. More detailed discussion{ of} such influence on statistical properties of clouds from{ the} observational point of view can be found in \\citep{2013ApJ...779...46H}.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\includegraphics[width=1\\hsize]{figs\/Cumulative_mass0100c-eps-converted-to.pdf}\n\\caption{\nThe mass spectrum of GMCs extracted by using{ the} CDN (three top lines) and{ the} CF (three bottom lines) methods in the models of galaxies (Tab.~\\ref{tab::tabular1}). The index $\\gamma$ for the mass spectrum in the form (\\ref{eq::cnum2}) is shown{ in the legend} .\n}\n\\label{fig::mass_spec}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\\label{sec:summary}\n\nIn this paper we have presented a set of the galactic scale simulations of the Milky Way size galaxies of different morphological type: a galaxy without prominent structure, a spiral barred galaxy and a galaxy with flocculent structure. In our models we have taken into account star formation, stellar feedback, UV radiation transfer and non-equilibrium chemical kinetics for CO and H$_2$ molecules. Here we have focused on the statistical properties of molecular clouds obtained by two different extraction methods of { gaseous structures}. The first uses the total hydrogen column density threshold as a marker of the cloud border. The other cloud definition method is based on extraction from { position-position-velocity (PPV)} data cubes for $^{12}$CO~(1-0) line. Using both methods we have studied the empirical scaling relations known as Larson's laws: 'velocity dispersion - cloud size', 'luminosity - cloud size' and 'virial mass - luminosity' relations. Using our simulations we have created the position-position-velocity data cubes for several values of velocity resolution and have investigated how the physical parameters of clouds and the indices of the scaling relations depend on spectral resolution. Our results can be summarized as follows:\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n \\item the number of spatially resolved molecular clouds in the simulations slightly depends on galactic type and equals \n  $\\sim 10^3$;  size, mass, luminosity and other physical properties of giant molecular clouds obtained in { the} simulations are \n  close to { the} observed ones in our and nearby disk galaxies; { note that }the physical parameters of clouds depend on the cloud definition \n  method~(see Figs.~\\ref{fig::clouds_clouds},\\ref{fig::ll1},\\ref{fig::ll2},\\ref{fig::ll3}).\n\n \\item the diffuse (intercloud) gas can be catched using total column density as threshold in the extraction of clouds, especially this \n  can be significant in dense large scale structures, e.g. within spiral arms or bar; such diffuse gas has higher velocity dispersion and\n  lower{ CO line} brightness in comparison with  other cloud material, so that { using} this method of extraction we can not exclude overestimation \n  of the 1D velocity dispersion{ due to} the projection effects even at high total column density threshold $N^{\\rm  th}_{\\rm tot}$\n  values; \n  \n \\item giant molecular clouds found by { using the} CLUMPFIND (CF for shortness) algorithm have smaller sizes, masses and velocity dispersion than { those} extracted by \n  using total column density as threshold. However, the distributions of virial parameter for both extraction methods show similar\n  behaviour~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par});\n \n \\item numerical models of galaxies with different morphology produce a { substantial number} of rather small GMCs ($R_{\\rm\n  cl}<20$~pc) which are detectable by various methods considered in the paper~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::clouds_par}a). { This} is more \n  clear for position-position-velocity analysis, where large clouds are splited into smaller ones due to complex kinematics of{ gaseous flows}.\n  However the analysis{ of the mass distribution functions} shows that{ the} mass of the{ cloudy phase in galaxies simulated here} is mostly concentrated in large massive clouds~(see\n  Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec}); \n  \n  \\item { physical parameters of GMCs depend{ weakly} on  galactic structure, namely, mass, size, luminosity and velocity dispersion are{ locked} in the same ranges for models{ of galaxies} without structure, with prominent spiral pattern and with flocculent patten~(see Figs.~\\ref{fig::ll1},\\ref{fig::ll2},\\ref{fig::ll3}); indeed, we do not see statistically sensible variations of { the} scaling relations in{ the models of} galaxies with different morphology for a given CD criterion~(see Table~\\ref{tab::tabular3}); however so-called environmental effects can be clearly seen in the distributions of cloud masses: the mass spectra are steeper in galaxy with the prominent structure~(see Fig.~\\ref{fig::mass_spec}).}\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThus, we conclude that it is impossible to extract equivalent clouds populations by using two different clouds extraction methods{ considered here}: the first is based on total column density as threshold and the second is utilized the PPV data analysis. Obviously, the comparison between observational and simulated properties of GMCs should be based on the same cloud extraction technique. A significant role of the cloud definition method and selection criteria (e.g. spectral resolution, threshold value etc.) can correspond to a fact that the observable scaling relations for external galaxies might not completely reflect real physical parameters of the ISM cold phase.\n\n\n\\section{Acknowledgments}\nWe kindly thank our referee, Erik Rosolwski, for thoughtful suggestions that highly improved the quality of the paper. We also thank Marco Lombardi for several stimulating discussions and reading of the early versions of the manuscript. The numerical simulations have been performed at the Research Computing Center~(Moscow State University) under the Russian Science Foundation grant~(14-22-00041) and Joint Supercomputer Center~(Russian Academy of Sciences). This work was supported by the RFBR grants (14-02-00604, 15-02-06204, 15-32-21062) and by the President of the RF grant (MK-4536.2015.2). SAK has been supported by a postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the Italian MIUR. AMS has been supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation within the framework of the research activities (project no. 3.1781.2014\/K) and Ural Federal University competitiveness increase program. EOV is thankful to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (project 213.01-11\/2014-5) and RFBR (project 15-02-08293). The thermo-chemical part was developed under support by the Russian Scientific Foundation (grant 14-50-00043).\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section*{Outline}\n\\begin{abstract}\nVirtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology of great societal potential. Some of its most exciting and promising use cases include remote scene content and untethered lifelike navigation. This article first highlights the relevance of such future societal applications and the challenges ahead towards enabling them.\nIt then provides a broad and contextual high-level perspective of several emerging technologies and unconventional techniques and argues that only by their synergistic integration can the fundamental performance bottlenecks of hyper-intensive computation, ultra-high data rate, and ultra-low latency be overcome to enable untethered and lifelike VR-based remote scene immersion. A novel future system concept is introduced that embodies this holistic integration, unified with a rigorous analysis, to capture the fundamental synergies and interplay between communications, computation, and signal scalability that arise in this context, and advance its performance at the same time. Several representative results highlighting these trade-offs and the benefits of the envisioned system are presented at the end.\n\\end{abstract}\n\\setcounter{footnote}{1}\n\n\\section{Introduction and Motivation}\n\\label{sec:intro}\nVirtual reality (VR) holds tremendous potential to advance our society. It enables visual immersion in virtual worlds created by means of computer graphics on a head-mounted display worn by a user and has found applications so far in training, education, entertainment, and gaming. An even broader set of use cases is anticipated ahead.\n\n\n\nLooking forward, VR is expected to make impact on quality of life, energy conservation, and the economy \\cite{DigiCapital:16a,ApostolopoulosCCKTW:12}, and reach a \\$62B market by 2027 \\cite{GrandViewResearch:20}. As the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is becoming a reality, modern technologists envision transferring remote contextual and environmental immersion experiences as part of an online VR session. In particular, together with another emerging technology, known as 360$^\\circ$ video, VR can suspend our disbelief of being at a remote location, akin to {\\em virtual human teleportation} -- a truly momentous advance for our society \\cite{Chakareski:18a}. The present state of the world (online classes, work from home, telemedicine, and so on) due to the COVID-19 pandemic aptly illustrates the importance of remote 360$^\\circ$ video VR immersion and communication, enabled in a seamless, untethered, and lifelike manner across the spectrum of our society, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:VR_360_Applications}.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=1.5\\figwidth]{Figures\/VR_360_Applications_v2.eps}\n   \\caption{Seamless untethered virtual reality and lifelike remote scene \\tsd video for virtual traveling\/teleportation, to advance first responders, environmental monitoring, remote robot navigation and teleoperation, education and training, collaborative work, healthcare and rehabilitation, urban planning, and large-scale infrastructure inspection.}\n   \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n   \\label{fig:VR_360_Applications}\n\\end{figure}\n\nHowever, two main highly-intertwined communication system challenges stand in the way of realizing this vision: VR requires {\\bf (1) hyper-intensive computation and (2) ultra-low latency gigabit-per-second wireless networking}. Neither of these challenges can be met by current and upcoming conventional network systems \\cite{Forbes_VR_2016,EdwardKnightlyKeynoteINFOCOM2017}, as the content to be delivered is too voluminous and the VR headsets' computing and storage capabilities are insufficient within an acceptable and wearable form factor. For instance, MPEG recommends a minimum of 12K high-pixel-quality spatial resolution and 100 frames per second temporal display rate, for a 360$^\\circ$ video panorama experienced by a VR user \\cite{ChampelSFTK:16}. These requirements would map to a data rate of several Gbps, even after applying state-of-the-art High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) compression \\cite{SullivanOHW:12}. Similarly, mobile GPUs lag their desktop counterparts in computing power by a factor of ten and will not have the required TFlops to provide the necessary VR decoding and rendering computation, at the minimum resolutions and frame rates indicated above, in the foreseeable future, given the current semiconductor technology trends \\cite{CuervoCK:18}.\n\nEmerging 360$^\\circ$ video practices compound these challenges, as they are highly inefficient and reuse traditional video\/networking technologies in virtual reality contexts without integrating their specifics \\cite{Petrangeli2017}. This considerably degrades the quality of experience and application utility. The under performing of these practices is even more dramatic in mobile settings, due to the much lower wireless bandwidth and computing capability of such devices. Regrettably, this is the context where such applications are expected to have the highest societal impact, {\\em advancing disaster relief, the environmental sciences, public safety, transportation, search and rescue, and urban planning}, among others.\n\nTherefore, these considerable challenges and shortcomings limit present VR applications to off-line operation, low-fidelity graphics content, tethered high-end computing equipment, and predominantly gaming and entertainment settings.\n\n\\section{Objectives of the Feature Article}\nThis article has multiple objectives of educating the broader Signal Processing Magazine readership. Its first aim is to educate about the importance of enabling next generation virtual reality applications comprising high-fidelity remote scene immersion and seamless untethered lifelike navigation of the reconstructed remote environment. Its second aim is to emphasize that traditional technology upgrade cycles alone would not suffice to bridge the performance gap to make such applications possible and that a holistic integration of unconventional techniques and emerging technologies would be required instead. Its third aim is to provide a tutorial of these methods and their synergistic interplay towards enabling the envisioned next generation applications. Finally, its fourth aim is to illustrate a case study of rigorous high-level integration of these strategies and systematic end-to-end modeling and analysis into an embodiment of a future mobile multi-user virtual reality system for six degrees of freedom (6DOF) immersion. Besides its educational objectives, a fifth aim of the feature article is to identify a research framework and stimulate novel research and community building, given the emerging nature of virtual reality and 360$^\\circ$ video and their prospective broad societal impact.\n\nAnother benefit of the fifth aim is that the technical advances it can lead to can facilitate fundamental research in other application areas of high-volume high-speed\/low-latency data transfer in emerging cyber-physical systems and IoT settings, where for the first time the spatiotemporal aspects of the data need to be closely explored and tightly integrated with the user navigation actions, to maintain the desired quality of experience for the end user, given the limited available system resources.\n\n\\section{Existing Tutorials and Distinctions}\nThere have been tutorials appearing before at conferences such as IEEE VR and 3D User Interfaces, and ACM SIGGRAPH. However, they focused on unrelated aspects such as eye tracking in 360-degree video, human perception in virtual environments, and virtual reality content creation \\cite{LeMeurJ:19,GabbardSE:12,Isdale:03}, which are traditionally associated with the fields of computer vision and human perception. Similarly, another recent brief article from the IEEE Communications Magazine \\cite{BastugBMD:17} narrowly focuses on 5G (a technology upgrade cycle) and an abstract wireless VR application as one prospective use case, using assumptions that do not relate well to practice and thus do not lead to insightful observations. These include, for instance, traditional models of user arrival processes from communications\/information theory, immersive experience measures expressed in percentages, and unrealistic compression rate characteristics of 4K \\tsd video content.\nThe scope of this feature article is very different and broader, as it aims to highlight and educate about the present challenges of enabling future virtual reality applications, deployed in an untethered manner and with high-fidelity remote scene content, focusing on fundamental problems and trade-offs between signal processing, communications, and computation that arise in this context. Another objective of the article is to provide a tutorial like coverage of a non-conventional framework of research that can help bridge the present performance gap to enable such future applications and harness their expected societal benefit.\n\n\n\n\\section{Progress to date, synergistic advances, and broader implications}\n\nWe outline related work in \\tsd video VR streaming using traditional approaches and systems, and synergistic advances in other technological domains that can help overcome the fundamental bottlenecks of the former.\nRelative to traditional video streaming  \\cite{ChakareskiF:06,ChakareskiAWTG:04a,ReisCKS:10,ChouM:02}, 360$^\\circ$ video streaming to VR headsets introduces the additional challenging requirements of ultra-high data rate, hyper-intensive computation, and ultra-low latency, as introduced earlier. Though some advances have been made in \\tsd video streaming using traditional network systems, by investigating intelligent resource allocation and content representation \\cite{Petrangeli2017,ChakareskiACSS:17,CorbillonDSC:17,HosseiniS:16}, the delivered immersion is still limited to low to moderate quality and 4K spatial panorama resolution, encoded at a temporal rate of 30 frames per second. This outcome stems from the fundamental limits in data rate and latency of such systems and their use of traditional server-client architectures. Moreover, a shared key shortcoming of the majority of emerging studies that is important to note is the pursuit of heuristic design choices and the lack of analysis of the fundamental performance trade-offs among the delivered immersion quality, user navigation patterns, signal representation, and system resources.\n\n\n\nFree-space optics (FSO) and millimeter wave (mmWave) are emerging wireless technologies that are presently investigated and developed to help overcome the bottlenecks of traditional wireless systems. Both have the potential to enable multi-Gbps data transmission rates. FSO exploits the light intensity of a light emitting diode (LED) or a laser diode (LD) to modulate a message signal. FSO technologies using the former approach are known as visible light communication or VLC, as they provide illumination at the same time. After propagating through the optical wireless channel, the (infrared or visible) light message is detected by a photo-diode (PD) \\cite{dimitrov2015principles}.\nUnlike the radio frequency spectrum, plentiful unlicensed spectrum is available for light communications (300GHz\u2013800THz), which has put FSO on the road-map towards sixth generation (6G) networks \\cite{8792135}. While being a novel technology, a few studies of design concepts and experimental testbeds have already appeared \\cite{rahman2018fso,8998135}. In the radio frequency spectrum, mmWave wireless communication is considered the enabling technology of next-generation wireless systems, as in the range of 10-100 GHz, more than 20 GHz of spectrum is available for use by cellular or wireless LAN applications. mmWave has seen its first commercial products operating in the 60~GHz band appear in the early 2010s. More complex transmission schemes to increase even further the achievable data rate are currently being investigated \\cite{blandino2018multi}.\n\nA few disparate preliminary studies emerged so far examining the potential of FSO and mmWave to advance mobile VR. A mmWave-based VR system was proposed in \\cite{LiuZZLZZG:18} that uses WiGig modules for wireless connectivity between two laptop computers, one acting as a server and the other as a client, with the VR headset attached to it. Similarly, a mmWave reflector was developed in \\cite{AbariBDK:17} to aid in connectivity maintenance with a mobile VR headset in the event of blocking of the direct (line of sight) wireless link. In each case, only synthetic computer graphics content was considered for transmission to and rendering on a VR headset. The company HTC released recently a wireless adapter operating at 60 GHz to enable untethered delivery of computer graphics content to VR headsets. However, the quality of experience is limited, due to the low quality and low resolution of the delivered content, and the highly ineffective real-time compression applied at the transmitting server. A design concept for using narrow beam FSO transceivers was proposed in \\cite{rahman2018fso}, highlighting the challenge of link maintenance in such settings. The study in \\cite{khan2019visible} explored the design of an FSO-enabled VR headset featuring hemispherically organized layers of highly directional PDs to facilitate connectivity maintenance under challenging head navigation movements of a VR user. Finally, Microsoft patented last year a design concept for a free space optics enabled VR headset and transmitting system \\cite{CuervoGCK:19}, indicating vision and interest in the tech sector for actual products in the future.\n\nIn earlier related developments highlighting the prospective benefits of raw video data transmission, delivery of traditional uncompressed HD video over a short range 60 GHz wireless link was studied for home settings targeting stationary consumer electronics that do not integrate video compression, e.g., gaming consoles \\cite{SinghQSNKK:08}. More recently, due to its ability to reduce network latency and help mobile devices offload part of their computation, edge computing and caching have started to be investigated for delivering \\tsd content in wireless cellular systems \\cite{Chakareski:18}.\n\nThe studies and endeavors highlighted heretofore either address specific technology aspects or lack a systematic end-to-end analysis. The envisioned next generation VR system\ncan help broadly advance the above efforts and the state-of-the-art, and make simultaneous impact on other emerging application areas of similar characteristics, as noted earlier.\nOur preliminary advances highlight the substantial benefits and potential of the envisioned system \\cite{ChakareskiK:21,ChakareskiG:20}.\n\nAs complementary to the above discussion, we examine if technologies employed in online multi-player VR gaming could be leveraged to enable further benefits. Foveated rendering exploits the very narrow field of view (the central $1.5-2^\\circ$ of the entire field of view of the human eye) of the fovea, responsible for sharp central vision, to reduce the rendering workload of generating an image to be displayed on a VR headset, by greatly reducing its quality in the peripheral vision (outsize the zone gazed by the fovea) \\cite{FoveatedRenderingWikipedia:21}. Essentially, much fewer pixels and at lower fidelity are rendered outside the fovea area. This considerably accelerates the frame rate of display of successive image frames displayed on a headset, which is helpful in dynamic gaming environments. Foveated rendering can be integrated into the envisioned VR system towards the same goal. Still, two aspects need to be considered carefully. Gaming content can be degraded considerably without noticing artifacts up close, as the computer graphics content is not overly complex and is evolving rapidly. On the other hand, high fidelity remote immersion via \\tsd video may be susceptible to visibly noticeable degradation in quality under the same setting, as actual scene content is much more complex (to render) and thus sensitive to pixel resolution or fidelity reductions across the entire field of view. Even more importantly, the most challenging computing task faced by a headset in \\tsd video VR applications is decoding the massive content at the target frame rate, not rendering the user's viewpoint, as explained later.\n\nOnline gaming applications also facilitate server-client architectures featuring multiple distributed servers to handle the massive client load \\cite{BharambePS:06}. Each server maintains and updates a copy of the shared gaming environment, in response to the players' actions controlling their respective avatars in the game. An updated state of the environment is then sent back to all players every 100ms for first person shooter games (most dynamic) or at a lower rate for other types of games. Each player updates its own view of the environment using its gaming device based on the received updated state. Though such traditional computer network systems are suitable for this type of applications, the latencies, data rates, and weak state inconsistencies they exhibit would not be conducive to enable lifelike remote scene immersion on untethered VR headsets.\n\n\n\n\n\\section{A Virtual Reality and \\tsd Video Primer}\n\nA high level system illustration of a VR application is included in Figure~\\ref{fig:VR_Primer}, left and middle. A user wearing a VR headset is linked to a powerful (typically gaming) computer, equipped with a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), computer graphics software, and a 3D scene model. The link comprises a thick long integrated cable featuring as its main component a high data rate multimedia cable such as HDMI that transports in the direction of the user her present 3D viewpoint in the VR simulation rendered by the server computer based on the direction of viewing of the user communicated over the cable in the opposite direction. The navigation actions of the user comprise three head rotation angles denoted as yaw, pitch, and roll, and are illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:VR_Primer} right. They are measured with respect to three coordinate axes centered on the user's head, using gyroscopes built into the VR headset, and determine the direction of viewing of the user in the synthesized 3D scene.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=\\columnwidth]{Figures\/VR_Primer.eps}\n   \\caption{VR 101: {\\bf (Left\/Middle)} A user is linked to a powerful (gaming) desktop computer, equipped with a GPU and computer graphics software, to experience a VR simulation on her headset. The rendered 3D viewpoint of the user in the simulation and the direction of viewing of the user are exchanged over a long high data rate multimedia cable. {\\bf (Right)} The navigation actions of the user comprise rotation angles yaw, pitch, and roll around three coordinate axes centered on the user's head and determine the direction of viewing.}\n   \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n   \\label{fig:VR_Primer}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe virtual scene may be static or dynamically evolving. The simulation may also include spatial audio content that is reproduced in parallel on stereo headphones worn by the user. More recent VR application systems include the possibility for limited spatial movement of the user in the virtual scene. The spatial coordinates of the user headset are then tracked externally using infrared base stations mounted in the room where the system resides. The present 3D viewpoint of the user is rendered based on her spatial coordinates and direction of viewing in this case.\n\nThe major computing load of the application is reconstructing the 3D viewpoint of the user dynamically in response to her navigation actions and can be quite intensive. It is handled by the server computer and its GPU that execute demanding computer vision algorithms on the voluminous geometric representation of the 3D virtual scene. The collocated server computer and VR headset, and the cabled high data rate connection between them help to minimize the interactive latency of the application and to deliver high volume 3D computer graphics at the display frame rate required to avoid motion sickness \\cite{Moss2011}.\n\nStill, having a tethered VR headset can represent a tripping hazard and reduces the quality of experience of the user and the utility\/scope of the application. Thus, most recent VR application systems feature wireless headsets, with stand alone display and computing capabilities or a slot in which a mobile phone is inserted to provide them. However, the capabilities of such systems in terms of delivered content quality, frame rate, and interactive latency are not on par with their tethered counterparts, as described earlier.\n\n\n\n\n\nA \\tsd video VR application system replaces the computer graphics 3D scene model from Figure~\\ref{fig:VR_Primer}, left and middle, with actual remote scene 3D content. In particular, 360$^\\circ$ video is a recent video format that is recorded by an omnidirectional camera that captures incident light waves from every direction (see Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackground}, top left). Such cameras comprise two or more wide-field lenses and rely on computer vision image stitching to produce a full 360$^\\circ$ horizontal plane field of view and 180$^\\circ$ vertical plane field of view \\cite{Omni360CameraWikipedia:20}. Thereby, the constructed scene content would appear captured on the interior surface of a sphere centered on the camera location, akin to how we perceive the world around us.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=\\figwidth]{Figures\/360VideoVRStreamingBackground_v2.eps}\n   \\caption{360$^\\circ$ video capture and streaming, and user viewport $V_c$.}\n   \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n   \\label{fig:360VideoBackground}\n\\end{figure}\n\nConcretely, \\tsd video enables a 3D 360-degree look-around of the surrounding scene for a remote user, virtually placed at the camera location, on his VR headset, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackground} right. After capture, the raw spherical or 360$^\\circ$ video frames are first mapped to a wide equirectangular panorama (illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackground}, bottom left) and then compressed using state-of-the-art (planar) video compression such as HEVC. The former intermediate step is introduced, as compression techniques operating directly on spherical data are much less mature and performing relative to traditional video compression operating on 2D video frames. Beyond the equirectangular mapping, which is most widely adopted, cube, pyramid, and dodecahedron planar projections have also been studied \\cite{CorbillonDSC:17}.\n\n\nThe computing workload of a \\tsd video VR application system is even more intensive and comprises decoding the compressed \\tsd content and rendering the current 3D viewpoint of the user dynamically in response to his navigation actions. The latter is informally known as viewport and corresponds to only a small portion of the 360$^\\circ$ view sphere denoted as $V_c$ in Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackground} right. The task of reconstructing the viewport on the VR headset requires remapping the decoded 360$^\\circ$ panorama to the original spherical format and then projecting pixels from $V_c$ to their planar equivalents on the display of the headset.\n\nFor remote service, when the user and the stored 360$^\\circ$ data are not collocated, the entire monolithic 360$^\\circ$ panorama is commonly streamed to the user using traditional state-of-the-art video streaming (MPEG-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) \\cite{Sodagar:11}). This considerably penalizes the quality of experience, due to the overwhelming volume of 360$^\\circ$ data that needs to be delivered and that exceeds by orders of magnitude the available network bandwidth $C$ and the computing capabilities of the receiving device. These shortcomings are compounded by the reliance on ineffective network protocols such as HTTP and TCP to deliver latency-sensitive multimedia data of this nature, which have been adopted to lower the cost of an intelligent streaming system at the penalty of not having good control of the data delivery process. Thus, only lower quality, frame rate, and resolution 360$^\\circ$ videos can presently be delivered online over the Internet. Yet, the streaming also lacks the ultra-low latency interactivity needed for truly immersive experiences, as traditional server-client Internet architectures are used in this case. The quality of experience and application utility are even lower in traditional wireless settings, due to the even lower data rates and computing\/storage capabilities available therein, as noted earlier.\n\nIt should be noted that the recent advances in spatially adaptive streaming of broad or omnidirectional video panoramas \\cite{CorbillonDSC:17,Petrangeli2017,ChakareskiACSS:17,HosseiniS:16} have contributed to further activities within MPEG and the follow-up DASH-SRD and OMAF standards that integrate them \\cite{MPEG-DASH-SRD:15,MPEG-DASH-OMAF:18}. However, most of the bottlenecks highlighted above of such standards-based traditional approaches and their fundamental limitations in terms of enabled data rate, delay, and computing capabilities still remain.\n\n\n\n\\section{Bridging the Present Performance Gap}\nIn the following, we provide a high-level tutorial-style description of several unconventional techniques and emerging technologies and their synergistic interplay towards enabling next generation virtual reality applications comprising high-fidelity remote scene immersion and seamless untethered lifelike navigation of the reconstructed remote environment. To set the discussion, we illustrate in Figure~\\ref{fig:NextGenerationVRSystem} a novel 6DOF VR system concept that embodies their holistic integration to help bridge the present performance gap.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n   \\includegraphics[width=1.2\\figwidth]{Figures\/NextGenerationVRSystem_v2.eps}\n   \\caption{Future 6DOF virtual reality system to bridge the present performance gap. It integrates synergistic edge computing, viewport-adaptive scalable \\tsd video representation, and dual-connectivity transmission via traditional\/emerging wireless technologies.}\n   \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n   \\label{fig:NextGenerationVRSystem}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIts key components are an {\\em edge server equipped with storage and computing capabilities} that will help bring the content and required computing closest to the user without overwhelming her device, to minimize the interactive latency; a {\\em viewport-adaptive scalable \\tsd video representation} that will facilitate dynamic spatiotemporal adaptation of the 6DOF content in response to the user's actions, to maximize the transmission efficiency; and {\\em dual connectivity transmission via traditional and emerging wireless technologies} that will simultaneously provide reliability and robustness, and high-fidelity immersion. The dual-connectivity transmission will stream in parallel two synergistic content layers (baseline and enhancement) over the two respective wireless technologies. The enhancement layer will comprise raw and compressed content data to enable further performance synergies.\n\nTo enable its effective use, the transmission over the emerging wireless technology will integrate transmitter steering or switching that will facilitate user tracking feedback capturing the navigation actions of the user and her spatial position. The user will be equipped with a dual-connectivity VR device that will integrate the two content layers.\n\nGiven the nature of the application, it will be an effective system design to employ dual-connectivity transmission only for the down-link communication from the edge server to the mobile VR users. The up-link communication in the opposite direction, i.e., from the users to the edge server, can be effectively carried out by employing solely single-connectivity transmission via reliable lower data rate traditional wireless technology links, as it will only carry miscellaneous low-rate control information.\n\n\n\nWe implicitly have an indoor setting in mind for the envisioned system, due to the nature of the target application. Moreover, some of the emerging technologies and unconventional techniques the system integrates have advanced further and would be easier to deploy in such a setting. Still, all its key components can either directly apply to an outdoor scenario or have outdoor counterparts that have been developed in parallel. Thus, an outdoor deployment of the envisioned system can potentially be pursued as well.\n\n\n\\subsection{Raw data transmission of ultra-high resolution and frame rate content}\nVideo compression has made the present Internet possible and has fueled its growth for many years \\cite{CiscoVNI_BarnettJAK:18}. It enables a reduction of the required network transmission data rate by a few orders of magnitude. However, it induces a decoding delay at the receiving client, at the same time, proportional to the compressed data volume. This can be penalizing for ultra-low latency applications such as online remote immersion via virtual reality, especially in mobile settings where client devices have limited computing capabilities and the delivered compressed data is massive. Intelligent transmission of the required 360$^\\circ$ video content as raw data in this setting can help overcome this challenge, as explained next.\n\n\\subsection{High-frequency directional wireless transmission}\nIt may seem contradictory at first to send raw video data as that would scale back up the transmission delay, by a few orders of magnitude. However, the emerging wireless technologies of free-space optics and millimeter wave transmit data at much higher spectrum frequencies (relative to traditional sub-6 GHz wireless technologies), to enable several orders of magnitude higher data rates. Using such transmission can make sending raw video data appealing, as it would cancel out the increase in transmission delay and still provide the benefit of lower computing delay at the client device.\n\n\nHowever, these emerging technologies exhibit different transmission characteristics relative to their traditional counterparts that need to be addressed to enable their efficient utilization. Concretely, their transmission beams are very narrow and directed, as reflected waves from obstacles and the environment feature very poor signal quality, due to the high career frequency that is used for transmission \\cite{Popovski:20}. Therefore, the transmitter and receiver need to be positioned in a direct line-of-sight of each other and be actively aligned to maintain that property, in case of a mobile receiver. This challenge can be addressed in the envisioned system by benefiting from the available user tracking information and the limited spatial mobility of the users in an indoor setting.\n\nIn particular, high-frequency free-space optical transmitters can be mounted on steerable platforms and actively directed towards the users using servo motors, based on the tracking information. Two servo motors can control the horizontal and vertical rotations, or azimuth and elevation angles, of a transmitter tracking its user over the spatial area of the system. Such motors can operate at 50 Hz control signal frequency and can cover a \\tsd rotation angle per second \\cite{TowerProMG995ServoMotor:21}, which is much faster than a typical mobile user maximum speed of one meter per second indoor \\cite{TavakkolniaSAGASH:19}. Similarly, high-frequency millimeter wave transmitters adequate for mobile communication can be realized with multi-element phased-antenna arrays (PAAs) to enable dynamic beam forming in both azimuth and elevation in response to the navigation\/mobility actions of the respective receiving users \\cite{blandino2018multi}.\n\n\nVR headsets can be equipped with respective receivers for such high-frequency transmission.\nIn the case of free-space optics, the upper portion of a headset can be covered with an array of photo-diode detectors, which can receive and decode in parallel the optical beam signal incident on their surface. The decoded incident signals at every photo-detector can be combined using diversity combining techniques for more effective performance. The dimensions and arrangement of the photo-detector array can be configured to match the accuracy of the steering motors of the respective transmitters, the width of the optical beam, and the head movement navigation actions of a user. Similarly, a small form factor millimeter wave multi-element PAA receiver\\footnote{A prototype of size $5 \\times 20$ millimeters, featuring a 16-element PAA, was recently demonstrated in \\cite{blandino2018multi}.}\ncan be placed on the top portion of a VR headset.\nAs the respective transmitters for each technology would be typically placed high above the users, blockage by human movement would not be a challenge and the placement of the receivers on top of the VR headsets would be a natural choice.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{Figures\/LD_beam.eps}\n\\end{subfigure\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{Figures\/headset-magazine.eps}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption{RGB-LD transmitter (left) and VR headset equipped with photo-detectors (right).}\n\\label{fig:RGB_LD_VLC_Transmitter_VR_HeadsetPhotoDiodes}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nWe discuss in slightly more detail now an embodiment of the FSO transmitters and receivers in the envisioned system. LDs can enable higher transmission rates relative to LEDs, and thus may be the preferred choice. As their transmission beam is very narrow (typically $< 1^\\circ$), a combination of red, green, and blue LDs, together with a diffuser, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:RGB_LD_VLC_Transmitter_VR_HeadsetPhotoDiodes} (left), can be used to produce a slightly broader transmission beam that will increase the transmission coverage and reliability, while limiting the reduction in data rate. Simultaneously, this will lead to coherent white light emitted by the transmitter that can prospectively serve as lighting. Early prototypes of such transmitters have demonstrated data rates of up to 10 Gbps \\cite{zafar2017laser}. Beam splitters and detectors can be used to monitor and control the different laser powers, for safety\/performance considerations.\n\n\n\nTo mitigate the effect of narrow transmission beams and maintain high receive data rate, an angle-diversity-receiver can be implemented, featuring multiple small-area PDs installed on a platform at different inclination angles\\footnote{The receive data rate of a PD rapidly drops with its surface area. However, a large surface area receiver increases the reliability of the optical link. The envisioned receiver design integrates the best of both approaches.}. Such a multi-PD design can be particularly helpful in maintaining the highly directional optical link during dynamic 360$^{\\circ}$ navigation head movements of a VR user. We recently investigated this approach towards the design of a helmet-shaped VR headset, comprising multiple PDs placed along different upper-hemispherical layers on the headset, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:RGB_LD_VLC_Transmitter_VR_HeadsetPhotoDiodes} (right). One PD is placed on top, and the rest are distributed along different layers on the hemispherical headset surface. The design optimization aims to minimize the number of PDs used, while ensuring uninterrupted connectivity with an FSO transmitter. It selects the number of layers, their placement along the headset hemisphere, and the number of PDs per layer, in pursuit of this objective, and integrates VR head movement navigation data for robust connectivity \\cite{khan2019visible}. Power dissipation of the PDs is important in this setting and can be integrated into the design optimization, to impact the number of PDs placed on the headset.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Low-high-frequency dual connectivity wireless streaming}\nHigh-frequency wireless transmission induces brittle pencil-beam like directed communication links. Streaming 360$^\\circ$ video over them alone would lower the reliability, as such links can be fragile and sensitive to line-of-sight misalignment between the transmitter and the receiver. Integrating low-frequency (traditional sub-6 GHz) wireless transmission as a synergistic supplement can help maintain the robustness of the system, as such radio waves do not need a sender-receiver alignment and provide multi-path and reflected signal benefits. Concretely, the traditional wireless connectivity can be employed to stream a baseline layer or representation of the 360$^\\circ$ content that alone will ensure an uninterrupted service and reliable application quality, if a transient high-frequency link loss occurs prospectively. The high-frequency wireless connectivity can then be used to stream an enhancement content layer or representation that will build upon the baseline layer to enable high fidelity immersion and augment the quality of experience of the user. Due to the plentiful network transmission bandwidth enabled by the high-frequency connectivity, the enhancement content layer can be streamed at least in part as raw data, to enable further system performance advances. An effective operation of such dual-connectivity 360$^\\circ$ video streaming towards reliable high-fidelity immersion can be advanced via a synergistic and efficient design of the data representation that will enable the construction of the two content layers, as explained next.\n\n\\subsection{Scalable 360$^\\circ$ video tiling and viewport-driven adaptation}\n\\label{sec:Scal360TilingViewportAdaptation}\nRather than streaming the entire 360$^\\circ$ panorama, as conventionally done, one can construct a scalable tiling-based representation of the 360$^\\circ$ panorama to enable effective spatiotemporal adaptation of the transmitted data stream to the dynamic viewport of the user and the available network bandwidth. This will lead to efficient use of resources and higher quality of experience for the user. Moreover, the scalable 360$^\\circ$ tiling can facilitate rigorous mathematical analysis of performance aspects of streaming systems, as we show later. Tiling of traditional wide-panorama video has been introduced as an option in HEVC, to facilitate parallel compression of the content in multi-core processor systems. More recently, its benefits have started to be recognized for 360$^\\circ$ video streaming \\cite{ChakareskiACSS:17,HosseiniS:16}.\n\nA sample scalable tiling-based 360$^\\circ$ video representation is illustrated in the right portion of Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackgroundTilingStreaming}. Concretely, each 360$^\\circ$ video frame comprising a Group of Pictures or GOP\\footnote{This is a block of consecutive frames that are compressed together with no reference to other frames.} is spatially partitioned into a set of tile sectors or simply tiles $(i,j)$ along its longitude and latitude dimensions. The collection of tiles across the video frames of a GOP at the same spatial location is then compressed into multiple embedded layers of progressively increasing signal fidelity. The first (bottom) layer of a compressed 360$^{\\circ}$ GOP-tile is commonly known as a base layer, and the remaining layers are identified as enhancement layers. The reconstruction fidelity of a GOP-tile improves incrementally as more layers are being decoded progressively starting from the first layer.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/ScalableMulti-Layer360Tiling_BaselineEnhancementContentLayers_v2.eps}\n  \\caption{GOP-level scalable signal tiling of an equirectangular 360$^{\\circ}$ panorama.}\n  \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n  \\label{fig:360VideoBackgroundTilingStreaming}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe baseline content layer can be constructed from the scalable tiling-based 360$^\\circ$ representation such that it comprises the first $L_b$ layers for a broader set of tiles encompassing the user viewport, to account for (i) a prospective mismatch between viewport knowledge at the server\/sender, used to construct a complementary enhancement content layer, and the actual user viewport at the receiving client, induced by rapid user head movements, or (ii) a prospective transient high-frequency link loss. Accounting for these two possibilities thereby will ensure that the viewport can be reconstructed continuously and will augment the application reliability considerably. The enhancement content layer can then be constructed such that it comprises the subsequent $L_e$ layers for a narrower set of tiles focusing closely on the viewport, to maximize its expected quality, as illustrated in the right portion of Figure~\\ref{fig:360VideoBackgroundTilingStreaming}. The choice of number of layers and tile selection from the scalable 360$^\\circ$ tiling to construct the baseline and enhancement content layers can be made rigorous, inclusive of the integrated selection of a subset of enhancement content layer tile to be transmitted as raw data, as introduced earlier.\nWe illustrate this as part of an end-to-end example analysis of the envisioned VR system concept that we present later.\n\n\n\n\n\n               \n\nWe note that cheap storage and easier implementation have made non-scalable video compression preferred in practice. With minor adjustments, our system design can directly apply to the case of constructing both content layers independently using non-scalable compression. Moreover, scalable video coding has been successfully deployed in cutting-edge technologies for diverse low-latency multi-party telepresence settings \\cite{Vidyo:22}, providing therein considerable benefits in terms of lower server complexity and higher client quality of experience over state-of-the-art non-scalable video compression based solutions. These benefits and related system context arise in the setting investigated here as well. Finally, scalable video coding is consistently enhanced through research and every subsequent generation of video codecs \\cite{BoyceYCR:17}. The next generation VR system we explore in this feature article can provide avenues for advancing further such efforts.\n\n\\subsection{6DOF Virtual Reality and \\tsd Video}\nA single \\tsd video (of actual or synthetic content) enables three degrees of navigation freedom (3DOF) to a VR user, in the form of rotational head movements around three orthogonal axes (as noted earlier, see Figure~\\ref{fig:VR_Primer} right), in experiencing a remote scene immersively from a single location. The streaming strategy described in Section~\\ref{sec:Scal360TilingViewportAdaptation} can be extended naturally to the case when the application will also allow for spatial movement of the user in the remote scene, to enable a 6DOF immersion experience over the spatial area of the VR arena, where the content is navigated.\nHere, the user will have the ability to select not only her direction of viewing but also the spatial location of the \\tsd viewpoint in the scene to be explored, which will augment the quality of experience. The content for each such spatial \\tsd video viewpoint available to be navigated can be represented using the scalable \\tsd tiling approach highlighted above and the edge server can apply in this case dynamic viewpoint adaptation and viewport-driven content adaptation jointly, in response to the 6DOF navigation actions of the user, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:6DOF_360VideoStreaming}.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.85\\linewidth]{Figures\/6DOF_360VideoStreaming_v2.eps}\n  \\caption{6DOF remote scene immersion, and dynamic spatial \\tsd viewpoint and viewport adaptation for a mobile VR user navigating the scene.}\n  \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n  \\label{fig:6DOF_360VideoStreaming}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nComplementary signal processing explorations can be pursued in such a 6DOF system, for further enhancements. For instance, additional {\\em virtual} \\tsd video location viewpoints can be dynamically synthesized by the edge server for a navigating VR user using geometric signal processing techniques from multi-view imaging such as depth-based view interpolation \\cite{ChakareskiVS:12}. Similarly, analysis can be carried out to establish the smallest number of captured \\tsd video viewpoints and their spatial distribution over the scene to enable a required quality level for such intermediate interpolated viewpoints.\n\n\n\\subsection{Edge-based operation and mobile edge computing}\nStreaming the content from an edge server (bringing the content closest to the user) will minimize the delivery latency compared to traditional server-client network architectures. Moreover, the edge server's computing capabilities can be leveraged to relieve the computing requirements induced upon a mobile VR headset. The former's much more powerful multiple GPUs can be effectively used to this end. In addition to the content decoding computation noted earlier, another computational requirement induced upon a client device running a virtual reality application represents the dynamic rendering of the present field of view of the user (aka viewport). This introduces an additional delay component into the entire end-to-end operational latency chain. Sharing the conventional headset decoding and rendering computation with a nearby edge server can be explored to optimize the delivered immersion fidelity, while meeting the strict system latency of the application. Raw video transmission and scalable 360$^\\circ$ tiling can synergistically integrate with this objective, as well.\n\n\\subsection{System Design and Integration Embodiment}\n\\label{sec:SystemDesignArenaIntegrationEmbodiment}\nWe highlight here in greater detail how a system level integration of the techniques and technologies outlined heretofore can be pursued towards realizing the envisioned VR system concept in practice. To facilitate the discussion, we have included a high level illustration of an arena embodiment of this future application system in Figure~\\ref{fig:SystemIntegrationDesign}. There can be multiple traditional sub-6 GHz wireless access points mounted on the walls of the arena and a higher number of emerging high-frequency wireless transmitters mounted on the ceiling of the arena. Both types of transmitters can be linked via fiber optical links to the edge server installed on site. The server can control the dynamic transmission scheduling of the traditional access points and next generation (xGen) transmitters. The user headsets will be equipped with respective sub-6-GHz\/xGen dual connectivity receivers. Moreover, the edge server will be equipped with high-end storage and computing capabilities to execute the envisioned dual-connectivity 360$^\\circ$ video streaming. In the case of on-demand remote immersion, the compressed 6DOF VR or \\tsd video content can already reside at the edge server and be deployed there ahead of time. In the case of live remote immersion, the content can be deployed in real time over a high-speed fiber optic Internet link to the edge server, from the remote location where it would be captured and compressed using scalable \\tsd tiling.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.65\\linewidth]{Figures\/SystemIntegrationDesign_v2.eps}\n  \\caption{An indoor arena integration of the envisioned virtual reality system. AP: access point; Tx: transmitter}\n  \\vspace{-0.2cm}\n  \\label{fig:SystemIntegrationDesign}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo track the spatial location and head orientation of the users, IR tracking base stations can be mounted on the walls or ceiling of the arena. Present commercially available products of this nature provide accurate positional tracking of less than 1-mm error at temporal resolutions of 250 samples per second or higher. The tracking information is relayed to the edge server in real-time over high-speed links to enable its operation. The spatial area of the arena can be conceptually split into multiple small sectors or cells, and one xGen transmitter can be mounted above each such sector, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:SystemIntegrationDesign}. At the onset of a streaming session for remote immersion, a user can be assigned to a given sector and its xGen transmitter.\nDuring the session, the user will dynamically navigate the 6DOF VR or \\tsd video content and may move across the arena. If this movement is limited within the original sector, the same xGen transmitter can be dynamically steered towards the user, as explained earlier.\n\n\nOn the other hand, as such high-frequency links experience strong signal degradation over short distances,\ndynamically (re)assigning another xGen transmitter to the user can be carried out, every time she will exit her present sector as the session evolves. This can help maximize the received signal quality and thus data rate on the high frequency link of the user, and minimize the interference to other high frequency links in the arena serving other users, at the same time. Thereby, the quality of experience of all simultaneous users in the arena can be augmented. Finally, if more than one user happen to transiently pass through or reside in the same sector at the same time, during the course of the session, the resources of the high-frequency xGen transmitter of that sector can be split across these users during that time, uniformly or preferentially, for some alternative transmitter assignment and steering settings\/methods for the system\\footnote{We recall that the system design to exclusively serve each user by one xGen transmitter via its narrow transmission beam that is dynamically directed towards the user, as outlined in the Section \"High-Frequency Directional Wireless Transmission\" earlier, is the default choice that we focus on as the most adequate and performing for the next generation VR system we investigate.}\n\n\nIn particular, we highlight briefly here the prospective options for xGen transmitter steering and (re)assignment in our system, to provide further clarity and instruction to the reader. In the case of FSO wireless technology, electronic, mechanical, or hybrid electro-mechanical transmitter steering can be carried out. (i) The first approach is also known as electronic transmitter switching or assignment, as it effectively activates an FSO transmitter associated with a spatial cell into which a user enters, and deactivates the FSO transmitter associated with the cell that the user exited. This approach comprises the same number of FSO transmitters as spatial cells and their beam width is selected to ensure coverage of the entire spatial area of their respective cells, while minimizing the overlap with transmitter beams of adjacent cell, to minimize the inter-cell interference. Here, the FSO transmitters are fixed (static) in orientation and point directly downwards to the spatial area of the cells. Lastly, when multiple users are present in the same cell, the transmission resources of the respective FSO transmitter can be shared across them using multi-access techniques, e.g., time-division multiple access (TDMA). (ii) Employing mechanical steering requires having at least the same number of transmitters as users in the arena, if there are more users than spatial sectors\/cells in the arena\\footnote{In the experimental evaluation, we address this choice simply by setting the number of xGen transmitters per cell to be equal to $\\lceil N_u\/N_c \\rceil$, where $N_u$ and $N_c$ denote respectively the number of spatial cells and users in the arena system, and $\\lceil \\cdot \\rceil$ denotes the ceiling operator.}. In this case, there can be multiple transmitters mounted above the spatial area of a single cell and their orientation is dynamically steered towards their respective users to whom they have been assigned using servo motors, as introduced earlier. Periodic reassignment of users to transmitters over the course of a session can be carried out here as well, as the users move across the spatial area of the arena during the course of a media session, to enhance the system performance, as noted a little earlier. (iii) Finally, the hybrid electro-mechanical steering aims to integrate both prior approaches, where a user can be tracked by his or her (re)assigned transmitter using mechanical steering until the user enters a cell where another user is already present. In that case, both users will start to be served using a single static transmitter mounted above the center of that cell using a multi-access technique. Once a user becomes alone again in his or her present cell, the system will switch back to mechanical steering of the respective transmitter assigned to the user, towards the user.\n\nIn the case of mm-wave wireless technology, electronic beam formation and steering can be employed to ensure transmitter-receiver alignment as the users move across the arena, as noted earlier in the Section \"High-Frequency Directional Wireless Transmission\". Here, one option can be to have at least as many transmitters as users in the arena, if there are more users than spatial cells in the arena. Thus, potentially there can be multiple transmitters mounted above each cell in the arena system. Alternatively, the system can comprise the same number of transmitters as cells in the arena, mounted above the center of each respective cell. In this latter case, multiple users present in the same cell can be served by the same transmitter of that cell using multi-beam formation and steering, to share its transmission resources. Multi-beam mm-wave transmitters or access points are prevalently encountered in practice. Finally, in each case, dynamic reassignment of users to transmitters can be carried out during the course of the session as the users move across the spatial area of the arena, to enhance the system performance.\n\n\nThe benefits and shortcomings of the transmitter steering and (re)assignment methods available for each xGen wireless technology and outlined here, in the context of our system, have been explored recently in \\cite{ChakareskiKRB:20,ChakareskiKRB:21}.\n\n\n\n\\section{Example End-to-end Analysis}\nWe guide the reader here through several high-level analysis examples that build upon each other to highlight the prospective benefits of the envisioned VR system and motivate new studies that can help advance it further. In particular, we first illustrate how the \\tsd video tiling and the ability to collect user navigation data can facilitate the development of statistical models of user navigation. In conjunction, we illustrate how effective rate-distortion modeling of the spatiotemporal encoding characteristics of the \\tsd panorama across its tiles can be pursued. We then highlight how these modeling advances can be integrated to pursue further analysis that captures the fundamental trade-offs between computing, communication, and signal representation in the context of the end-to-end application performance enabled by the system. Finally, we illustrate how rigorous system level optimization can be built upon these integrated modeling and analysis advances to select key resource allocation decisions.\n\n{\\bf Navigation modeling.} The head movement navigation actions of a user can be collected over time at the edge server and can be used to characterize the probability that a \\tsd tile will appear in the user viewport during a time period. This will inform the understanding of how important each tile and its content are for the quality of experience of the user. One way to capture this information is to integrate the number of instances a tile will appear in the viewport during navigation of the content over the time interval of interest. This approach can be made rigorous by identifying the spatial portion $S^{nm,V_c}_j$ of each \\tsd tile $(n,m)$ present in the user viewport $V_c$ at the temporal display instance $t_j$ of the $j$-th panoramic video frame comprising the \\tsd content. Care must be taken here to account for the widely varying viewport size depending on its latitude on the \\tsd panorama, to integrate this information properly then over time. This phenomenon is induced by the equirectangular mapping of the native spherical data that is employed at compression, as explained earlier. It is illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:ViewportSizeLatitudeImpact} that highlights the shape and size of a viewport on the \\tsd panorama for two different yaw and pitch rotation angles, denoted therein as azimuth and polar angles $(\\varphi,\\theta)$ in spherical coordinates.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\begin{subfigure}{0.45\\columnwidth}\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{Figures\/viewport0-0.eps}\n        $(\\varphi,\\theta) = (0^{\\circ},0^{\\circ})$\n\t\\end{subfigure}\n\t\\begin{subfigure}{0.45\\columnwidth}\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=\\linewidth]{Figures\/viewport120-60.eps}\n        $(\\varphi,\\theta) = (120^{\\circ},-60^{\\circ})$.\n\t\\end{subfigure}\n    \\caption{The viewport's latitude coordinate on the \\tsd view sphere (polar angle $\\theta$ = head rotation angle pitch) impacts its shape and size on the \\tsd panorama.}\n    \\label{fig:ViewportSizeLatitudeImpact}\n\\end{figure}\n\nFormally, the quantity $S^{nm,V_c}_j$ represents the overlap or intersection between the spatial areas of the tile and the viewport in the \\tsd panorama at that time instance and can be captured as $S^{nm,V_c}_j = S^{V_c}_j \\cap S^{nm}_j$, where $S^{nm}_j$ and $S^{V_c}_j$ denote the sets of pixels representing the two denoted spatial areas. To account for the unequal viewport size on the equirectangular plane across time, in developing a statistical model of user navigation, one can normalize the fractions of the spatial areas of every tile present in the user viewport $V_c$ at $t_j$, using $s^{nm}_j = \\frac{|S^{nm,V_c}_j|}{\\sum_{n,m}|S^{nm,V_c}_j|}$,\n\\noindent where $|S|$ denotes the size of a set $S$, in this case in number of pixels. Thus, $\\{s^{nm}_j\\}$ represents the normalized distribution of the spatial area of the user viewport across every tile in the $360^\\circ$ panorama, at time instance $t_j$.\n\nFinally, given $\\{s^{nm}_j\\}$, one can formulate the probability (likelihood) of the user navigating tile $(n,m)$ over a time interval spanned by the time instances $[t_i,t_j]$, as $P_{nm}^{(t_i,t_j)} = \\frac{\\sum_{k=i}^{j}s^{nm}_k}{j-i+1}$.\nIn other words, $P_{nm}^{(t_i,t_j)}$ indicates how likely tile $(n,m)$ will appear (at least in part) in the user viewport during navigation of the $360^\\circ$ video from its temporal instance $t_i$ to its temporal instance $t_j$, or the popularity of the $360^\\circ$ scene content captured by the tile for these user and time interval. For instance, if $t_i$ and $t_j$ correspond to the first and last video frame of the $360^\\circ$ video, then, $P_{nm}^{(t_i,t_j)}$ captures the navigation probability or popularity of tile $(n,m)$ across the entire video.\n\nTo highlight the nature of these quantities, we illustrate in Figure~\\ref{fig:RollerCoasterWingsuitNavigationProbabilities} their expected values (averages across a large user set) for two popular \\tsd videos used in our analysis, where we considered a popular $6 \\times 4$ tiling\\footnote{Denser tiling layouts increase the processing complexity and reduce the compression efficiency, but enable more precise delineation of the user viewport and thus more accurate analysis and resource allocation.}. Concretely, one can observe that in the case of Roller Coaster, video tiles on the fringes of the $360^\\circ$ panorama are rarely navigated by a user, i.e., they scarcely appear in the user's viewport, during a $360^\\circ$ video navigation session. Conversely, video tiles indexed as $(n,m) =$ (3,2), (4,2), (3,3), and (4,3) are quite often navigated by the user, as noted by their much higher navigation likelihoods shown in the histogram.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/NavigationProbabilityRollerCoaster_v2.eps}\n\\end{subfigure\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/NavigationProbabilityWingsuit_v2.eps}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption{Expected $\\{P_{nm}\\}$ for $360^\\circ$ tiles for Roller Coaster (left) and Wingsuit (right).}\n\\label{fig:RollerCoasterWingsuitNavigationProbabilities}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe navigation probabilities of $360^\\circ$ video tiles for the video Wingsuit, induced by users experiencing the content, look fairly different. This is due to the nature of this content and the induced specific interests of the users, expressed when navigating it. In particular, one can see here that the typical user is predominantly interested in navigating the southern hemisphere of the $360^\\circ$ panorama, as seen from the respective tile navigation probabilities indicated in the histogram. The more dynamic and interesting content of Wingsuit resides spatially in the southern hemisphere of its $360^\\circ$ view sphere.\n\nTo address the prospect of imperfect or lack of knowledge of near future navigation actions and introduce further robustness into the system, e.g., in contexts such as live remote immersion, predicting the upcoming head movement (or jointly head and body movement) navigation actions or 360-degree tile navigation likelihoods for a user can be integrated. This can be carried out accurately via regression or machine learning techniques, based on the user's navigation history and prospectively including features extracted from the already navigated content \\cite{QianHJG:16,HouDZB:21}. It has been shown that the navigation actions of a user exhibit a strong low-frequency component and short-term correlation over time that can benefit such prediction methods. Moreover, it has been observed that the dynamics of the navigation actions of a user generally correlate well with the temporal characteristics of the content that is navigated \\cite{BlandinoRCCKG:21}.\n\n\n{\\bf Rate-distortion modeling.} One can also accurately model the rate-distortion dependency of compressed GOP tiles to facilitate analysis and optimization of the edge server's operation. Here, we examine two models, exponential ($D = c_1 e^{-d_1 R}$) and power law ($D = c_2 R^{d_2}$), to capture this dependency. Concretely, we vary the encoding rate $R$ of a tile and record its respective Mean Squared Error (MSE) reconstruction distortion $D$. We graph the obtained pairs $(R,D)$ in Figure~\\ref{fig:TileRateDistortionDependency} with markers, for three representative tiles of the popular 360$^\\circ$ video Roller Coaster. The two analytical models are also graphed in Figure~\\ref{fig:TileRateDistortionDependency}. We can see that Tiles 3 and 16 have steeper rate-distortion dependency, due to their relatively static content. Tile 11 requires higher encoding rate to achieve the same reconstruction error, due to its more dynamic content. Figure~\\ref{fig:TileRateDistortionDependency} shows that the power law model provides a more accurate characterization across all three tiles. This motivates its use in our later analysis.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/r-d-pow_v2.eps}\n\\end{subfigure\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/r-d-exp_v2.eps}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption{Rate-distortion dependency $D(R)$: (Left) Power law model and (Right) Exponential model. Actual data points shown as markers.}\n\\label{fig:TileRateDistortionDependency}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\end{figure}\n\nWe note that in video compression the raw pixel data is stored in the three-dimensional luminance-chrominance color space denoted as YUV, to enable data volume reduction. The Y (luminance) component captures exclusively the signal strength of each pixel, i.e., its monochromatic intensity or brightness. The two U and V chrominance components capture exclusively the color information associated with each pixel. Video signal distortion or quality is commonly measured only on the Y component due to its nature.\n\n{\\bf Motivating resource allocation example.}\nBuilding upon the two modeling advances and scalable \\tsd tiling, we illustrate here how data rate resources can be effectively allocated over the \\tsd panorama and time. When we examine and formulate the end-to-end performance of the envisioned VR system concept later, we will integrate this motivating example analysis therein.\n\nWhen the \\tsd content is compressed using scalable tiling, the data rate and reconstruction error of a GOP tile $(n,m)$ can be directly related to the number of embedded layers $l_{nm}$ selected to represent the tile. These relationships can be made precise using the rate-distortion modeling described earlier. Similarly, given the statical navigation profile $\\{P_{nm}\\}$ of a user for this GOP, one can formulate the expected viewport distortion experienced by the user during the GOP as $\\sum_{nm}P_{nm}D_{nm}(l_{nm})$. Finally, given a maximum streaming data rate of $C$, one can then aim to optimally select the number of layers $l_{nm}$ sent for every tile $(n,m)$ during the GOP time interval, such that the expected user viewport distortion over that interval is minimized. This can be formally captured via the optimization:\n\\beq\n\\min_{\\{l_{nm}\\}}\\sum_{nm}P_{nm}D_{nm}(l_{nm}), \\, \\text{subject to:} \\sum_{nm}R_{nm}(l_{nm})\\le C. \\nonumber\n\\eeq\n\n\n\nTo highlight its benefits and potential, we implemented the optimization above, varied $C$, and computed the optimal solution and the respective minimum expected viewport distortion in each case (the value of the objective function at the optimal solution). Simultaneously, we recorded in the same context the corresponding performance of the state-of-the-art MPEG-DASH streaming standard, implemented with spatial viewport-adaptation \\cite{Petrangeli2017}. We examined two popular 4K $360^\\circ$ videos Wingsuit and Angel Falls to carry out this motivational assessment. We show these outcomes in Figure~\\ref{fig:TransmissionEfficiencyVsMPEG-DASH} where the y-axis indicates the delivered viewport quality or immersion fidelity via a base-10 logarithmic inverse of the expected distortion, formally known as the {\\em peak-signal-to-noise ratio} (PSNR). We note that throughout this paper, the reported PSNR results are measured with respect to the luminance (Y) component of the user viewport video signal, as explained earlier. On rare occasions, these results are denoted as Y-PSNR to indicate this aspect.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=1.1\\figwidth]{Figures\/GraphPSNRvsDataRateTwoSequences_v3.eps}\n\\vspace{-0.4cm}\n\\caption{$360^\\circ$ video transmission efficiency of the motivating resource allocation example vs. MPEG-DASH.}\n\\label{fig:TransmissionEfficiencyVsMPEG-DASH}\n\\end{figure}\n\nWe can see that the approach highlighted above enables considerable benefits over MPEG-DASH by integrating the user navigation actions and the rate-distortion trade-offs across the $360^\\circ$ panorama, in deciding how transmission resources should be allocated. Approximately 6-7 dB of immersion fidelity improvement have been enabled across both $360^\\circ$ videos and all network bandwidth values considered in Figure~\\ref{fig:TransmissionEfficiencyVsMPEG-DASH}. These advances can in turn enable much higher operational efficiency for a streaming system for $360^\\circ$ video delivery that integrates this methodology, as our subsequent analysis will highlight.\n\nThe problem formulation can be easily extended to integrate tile-level weights $w_{nm}$ that will capture the amount of deformation (stretching) that the content of each tile $(n,m)$ undergoes on the \\tsd sphere when mapped back for viewing on the VR headset. This deformation is solely dependent on the tile's latitude and emphasizes equatorial tiles as more sensitive to content distortion because of this. By this integration, the formulation will capture as its objective the expected tile-level weighted to spherically-uniform viewport distortion, whose pixel-level deterministic counterpart denoted as WS-MSE has recently been introduced as a more adequate quality metric for omnidirectional content \\cite{SunLY:17}.\n\n\n\n\n\n{\\bf Per-user end-to-end performance analysis.} The edge server in the envisioned VR system can benefit from a navigation profile $\\{P_{nm}\\}$ for a GOP to preferentially treat the tiles comprising it when streaming the content to the respective user, as motivated by previous resource allocation example. Concretely, the server can first identify as $M$ the set of GOP tiles with non-zero navigation likelihoods. To construct the baseline content layer, the server can assign streaming data rates $R_{nm,w}$ to lower indexed embedded layers from the scalable \\tsd tiling exclusively for tiles $(n,m)$ from $M$, to maximize the resource utilization.\nIf $\\Delta T$ is the temporal duration of a GOP, then the latency of streaming the baseline content layer to a user over her traditional wireless connectivity link can be formulated as $\\tau^w = \\frac{\\sum_{(n,m)\\in M}R_{nm,w}\\Delta T}{C^w}$, where $C^w$ indicates the transmission capacity of the link.\n\nSimilarly, by facilitating $\\{P_{nm}\\}$, the server can identify a subset $M^{\\text{r}}$ of tiles in $M$ that are most relevant for the quality of experience of the user. The construction of $M^{\\text{r}}$ can be made rigorous as explained a little later. These tiles can be streamed as raw data as part of the enhancement content layer, to maximize their impact. They can be reconstructed first as such at the edge server at the highest quality, from the compressed scalable \\tsd tiling that will reside there, by decoding each compressed tile from $M^{\\text{r}}$ from all its embedded layers. If the encoding data rate of the entire set of layers for tile $(n,m)$ is $R_{nm,\\max}$, then the decoding latency of reconstructing tiles from $M^{\\text{r}}$ as raw data at the server can be formulated as $\\tau^Z = \\frac{\\sum_{(n,m)\\in M^{\\text{r}}}R_{nm,\\max}\\Delta T}{Z}$, where $Z$ is the decoding speed of the server.\n\nThe construction of the enhancement content layer by the server can be completed by selecting an adequate set of higher indexed embedded layers from the scalable \\tsd tiling for the remaining (compressed) tiles in $M$ (the set $M^{\\text{e}} = M \\setminus M^{\\text{r}}$). Let $R_{nm,x}$ be the selected streaming data rate for each such tile in the enhancement content layer.\nThis content layer will be streamed to the user over her xGen wireless connectivity link characterized with transmission capacity $C^x$. The associated transmission delay can be characterized as $\\tau^x = \\frac{|M^{\\text{r}}|E_r + \\sum_{(n,m)\\in M^{\\text{e}}}R_{nm,x}\\Delta T}{C^x}$, where $E_r$ denotes the data size of a raw GOP tile.\n\n\nFinally, the latency on the client device involves decoding compressed tiles and rendering the viewport. These tasks will be carried out twice for the baseline and enhancement content layers streamed to the user, to enable respectively application reliability and high quality immersion, as introduced earlier. The decoding capability (speed) $z$ of the headset will need to be partitioned between decoding the baseline content layer and decoding the subset of compressed tiles from the enhancement content layer $M^{\\text{e}}$. Let these two decoding speed allocations be denoted as $z^w$ and $z^x$, respectively. Thus, the required time to carry out each of these two decoding tasks can be formulated as $\\tau^{z,w} = \\frac{\\sum_{(n,m)\\in M}R_{nm,w}\\Delta T}{z^w}$ and $\\tau^{z,x} = \\frac{\\sum_{(n,m)\\in M^{\\text{e}}}R_{nm,x}\\Delta T}{z^x}$. Similarly, the processing capability (power) $r$ of the headset will need to be partitioned between rendering the viewport solely from the baseline content layer and rendering the viewport at enhanced quality jointly from the baseline and enhancement content layers. Let these two processing power allocations be denoted as $r^w$ and $r^x$, respectively. The time delay of carrying out each of these two rendering tasks can be formulated as $\\tau^{r,w}  = \\frac{E_v}{r^w b_h}$ and $\\tau^{r,x}  = \\frac{E_v}{r^x b_h}$, where $E_v$ is the data size of the viewport after decoding and $b_h$ is the computed data volume per CPU cycle on the headset.\n\nBenefiting from the earlier modeling, the quality of immersion delivered to a VR user by the envisioned dual-connectivity system can be accurately captured by formulating the expected viewport distortion experienced by the user as:\n$$D\\left(\\{R_{nm,w},R_{nm,x}\\}\\right) = \\sum_{(n,m)\\in M^{\\text{r}}} P_{nm} a_{nm} R_{nm,\\max}^{b_{nm}} + \\sum_{(n,m)\\in M^{\\text{e}}} P_{nm} a_{nm} \\left(R_{nm,x} + R_{nm,w}\\right)^{b_{nm}},$$\nwhere $a_{nm}$ and $b_{nm}$ are the rate-distortion power law model parameters for tile $(n,m)$. Additionally, each summation term above can be weighted by a tile-level WS-MSE coefficient $w_{nm}$ that captures the unequal impact of each tile $(n,m)$ when the panoramic content is re-projected back on the \\tsd sphere for viewing, as introduced earlier.\n\nThe analysis of latency and quality of immersion can enable pursuing end-to-end optimization of the system. One way of formally capturing this is via the problem formulation highlighted below that aims to maximize the quality of immersion delivered to a user given various system latency and resource constraints. To make the notation more compact, we henceforth replace the symbols $(n,m)$ with $(i,j)$.\n\\begin{align}\n& \\mathop{\\min_{\\{R_{ij,w}\\},\\{R_{ij,x}\\},}}_{M^{\\text{r}},\\{z^w,z^x\\},\\{r^w,r^x\\}} D\\left(\\{R_{ij,w},R_{ij,x}\\}\\right), \\label{eq:pf1}\\\\\n\\hspace{-0.3cm} \\text{subject to:} \\quad & \\tau^w + \\tau^{z,w} + \\tau^{r,w} \\le \\Delta T, \\label{eq:c1}\\\\\n& \\tau^Z  + \\tau^x + \\tau^{z,x} + \\tau^{r,x} \\le \\Delta T, \\label{eq:c2}\\\\\n& R_{ij,w} \\in [R_{ij,\\min},R_{ij,\\max}], \\; R_{ij,x} \\le R_{ij,\\max} - R_{ij,w}, \\label{eq:c3}\\\\\n& r^w + r^x \\le r, \\quad z^w + z^x \\le z. \\label{eq:c5}\n\\end{align}\n\nThe inequalities \\eqref{eq:c1} and \\eqref{eq:c2} capture the application latency requirements associated with the transmissions on the two wireless connectivities. The inequalities in \\eqref{eq:c3} capture the data rate limits enabled by the scalable \\tsd tiling, where $R_{ij,\\min}$ is the smallest possible data rate for tile $(i,j)$ (the data rate of its first embedded layer). We note that the transmission latency constraints \\eqref{eq:c2} and \\eqref{eq:c3} are stricter than and imply the respective transmission capacity constraints on the two wireless connectivity links. Thus, the latter two constraints do not need to be included in the optimization (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5}. Finally, the inequalities in \\eqref{eq:c5} capture the limited computational resources of the VR headset of the user.\n\nThe problem (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} is mixed-integer programming, which is hard to solve optimally in practice. Still, with a clever selection of $M^{\\text{r}}$, one can pursue the optimal solution at lower complexity. In particular, for a given set of tiles to be sent as raw data, the problem above can be transformed to geometric programming and solved exactly via iterative approaches that converge rapidly \\cite{xu2014global}. Moreover, though the number of tiles in $M$ is not excessive, instead of pursuing a combinatorial approach to identify the optimal $M^{\\text{r}}$ as part of the overall solution to (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5}, one can accomplish that more effectively by sorting the tiles in $M$ according to an adequate criterion, related to the objective function, and constructing $M^{\\text{r}}$ to comprise the first $k$ tiles from the sorted $M$. By sweeping $k$ across a range of values, solving (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} for each such thereby constructed $M^{\\text{r}}$ using geometric programming, and identifying the optimal value of the objective function in each case, one can then identify the overall solution.\n\nMoreover, though $k$ can technically range up to $|M|$, the maximum number of tiles that can be sent as raw data will typically be smaller, as otherwise the system latency constraints will be violated. This is a result of the large data size of a raw GOP tile and the present transmission capacities of xGen technologies. Yet, when the latter are selected rather too conservatively in (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5}, even sending one raw tile can become unfeasible, and the choice of $k = 0$ lends itself as optimal. Finally, we observed that selecting the navigation likelihood weighted derivative of the rate-distortion dependency for a GOP tile as the criterion for sorting the tiles in $M$ in decreasing order leads to the same overall solution produced when instead a combinatorial search is used to identify $M^{\\text{r}}$.\n\nThe optimization described in this section would be applied at the edge server to every subsequent GOP of the content transmitted to a given user. In a subsequent section, we will build upon the analysis and optimization developed here, to formulate an overall multi-user optimization strategy for the envisioned system.\n\n{\\bf Dynamic xGEn transmitter assignment.} Earlier, as part of the arena embodiment of the envisioned system outlined in Section~\\ref{sec:SystemDesignArenaIntegrationEmbodiment}, we highlighted a prospective dynamic reassignment of xGen transmitters to mobile VR users during the course of a session for further performance enhancement, to complement the multi-user system level resource allocation optimization described next. In particular, during a session, as the mobile VR users navigate the content across the spatial area of the arena, such reassignment can be carried periodically such that, for instance, the smallest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) across all transmitter and user pairs in the arena, is maximized. As SNR is inversely proportional to the distance from a user and an xGen transmitter, an equivalent approach can be pursued aiming to minimize the longest distance between a user and a transmitter, in an assignment. Either of these approaches will lead to a combinatorial optimization problem that may be complex to solve, depending on the number of users and transmitters in the system.\n\nAn alternative lower-complexity strategy would be to formalize the assignment as a graph-bottleneck matching on a bipartite graph comprising the users and xGen transmitters, as the two vertex set partitions, and where the graph edge weights would correspond to the distances between the users and transmitters. Concretely, in this case one will seek to find the maximum size vertex matching on the graph, whose biggest edge weight is smallest across all the matchings of that size. An efficient algorithmic solution can then be formulated that will integrate and benefit from the Dulmage\u2013Mendelsohn decomposition of such a graph, to construct the optimal assignment $\\pi$ incrementally. Our recent advances demonstrate the benefits of this strategy \\cite{ChakareskiK:21}. Moreover, we have empirically observed that for the diverse settings considered in \\cite{ChakareskiK:21} using the {\\em max min SNR} as an objective metric for the transmitter assignment enables virtually the same performance, at much lower computational cost for the optimization, over the case of using the {\\em max min SINR} (Signal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio). The performance evaluation that we carry out subsequently integrates the impact of interference via the SINR.\n\n{\\bf Multi-user system performance analysis and optimization.} The overall objective of the system is to maximize the delivered immersion quality across all users in the arena. Once users are assigned to xGen transmitters, as described above, this objective can be pursued by formulating and solving a respective optimization problem of interest. Building upon the notation and formalism introduced earlier in Section \"Per-user end-to-end performance analysis\", this multi-user problem can be formally described as:\n\n\\begin{align}\n\\text{(MU-OPT):} \\quad & \\min_{\\left\\{ \\substack{\\{R_{ij,w}^u\\},\\{R_{ij,x}^u\\}, C_u^w, C_u^x, \\\\ M^{\\text{r}}_u, \\{z_u^w,z_u^x\\},\\{r_u^w,r_u^x\\}, Z_u } \\right\\}_{\\forall u}} \\sum_u D_u\\left(\\{R_{ij,w}^u,R_{ij,x}^u\\}\\right), \\label{eq:multi-user-optim}\\\\\n\\hspace{-0.3cm} \\text{subject to:} \\quad & \\eqref{eq:c1} - \\eqref{eq:c5}, \\nonumber\\\\\n& \\sum_u Z_u \\le Z, \\label{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity}\\\\\n& \\sum_u C_u^w \\le C^w, \\label{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityLowFrequency}\\\\\n& \\sum_{u \\in U_t} C_u^x \\le C^{x,t}, \\forall t,\n\\label{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter}\n\\end{align}\n\n\\noindent where we have introduced a subscript or superscript $u$ to all symbols used in (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} earlier, to indicate a specific user $u$ here. Moreover, $Z$ denotes the aggregate decoding capacity of the edge server in \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity}, $C^w$ denotes the aggregate (down-link) transmission capacity of the traditional wireless technology in \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityLowFrequency}, and $C^{x,t}$ denotes the aggregate (down-link) transmission capacity of the xGen transmitter $t$ in \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter}. Finally, alike in \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter}, $U_t$ denotes the set of users assigned to xGen transmitter $t$.\n\nSolving the optimization problem above (MU-OPT) in its full generality can be pursued via iterative techniques and the Lagrange multiplier method that would build upon the respective solution of the per-user optimization (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} as a key inner step of such approaches. Moreover, solving for the respective Lagrange multipliers associated with the constraints \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity}-\\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} as part of the overall optimization can be carried out using for instance integrated fast sub-gradient techniques. Next, we outline the impact of parameter selection, user-transmitter assignment setting, and the indoor nature of our system on (MU-OPT).\n\nWith judicious analysis and choice of key system resource parameters captured by the constraints \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity}-\\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter}, the general optimization outlined above can be simplified. Concretely, it is expected that in our system setting the edge server will be equipped with computing capabilities that exceed those of the mobile clients by orders of magnitude and that it will be well provisioned to assist abundantly the expected number of users in the arena system with such capabilities. Thus, one simple approach of dispensing with \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity} without preventing the integrated per-user optimization (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} from exploring the full range of performance trade-offs and benefits is to set $Z_u = Z\/N_u, \\forall u$, where $N_u$ is the number of users in the arena. We have empirically verified this assessment in our extensive evaluations. It is rational to follow the same approach to dispense with \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity} by selecting $C_u^w = C^w\/N_u$, with virtually no impact on the optimal performance delivered to each user for the following reasons. First, it is similarly expected that in our system setting the traditional wireless connectivity will be well provisioned to provide plentiful down-link transmission capacity to the expected number of mobile VR users to be served. Second, the envisioned arena system concept has an indoor nature and a relatively small spatial footprint. Third, the traditional wireless connectivity is integrated solely to augment the system\/application reliability. Optimizing the choice of $C_u^w$ will not make an impact on this objective.\n\nFinally, dispensing with \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} and addressing the choice of $C_u^x, \\forall u,$ is more subtle. On the one hand, in an embodiment setting of the envisioned system that integrates prospective multi-user assignment of its xGen transmitters, as discussed earlier in the last segment of Section \"System design and integration embodiment\", it is alike expected that each xGen transmitter $t$ will be equipped with ample additional transmission capacity to support the prospective serving of multiple users in parallel and provisioned adequately for the expected number of users to be assigned to a single xGen transmitter during a session. Then, dispensing with the constraint \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} by splitting the transmission capacity of each transmitter $t$ uniformly across its assigned users, i.e., $C_u^x = C^{x,t}\/|U_t|$, can be a sensible choice in this context as well, which may not impair notably the truly optimal high-quality immersion that can be enabled for every user in the arena via the assigned xGen transmitter. On the other hand, the rate-distortion dependency $D_u\\left(\\{\\cdot,R_{ij,x}^u\\}\\right)$ that captures the delivered viewport quality may exhibit different performance trade-offs across different users $u$ over time, depending on the navigation characteristics of the users and the 6DOF content that is explored. This factor may lead to some performance loss depending on the magnitude of the difference between the uniformly assigned capacity $C_u^x$ and its rigorously selected value as an integral part of the optimization with the constraint \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} kept in place. Still, it should be noted that for the present values of the transmission capacity $C_u^x$ that can be assigned to a user and rate-distortion dependencies of existing 3DOF\/6DOF \\tsd video\/VR content, the operational points of a streaming system typically lie in the (far right) saturation portion of the rate-distortion performance dependency. This means that marginal differences in the value of $C_u^x$ assigned to user $u$ will only make a negligible difference in the overall system streaming performance and quality of experience delivered to the user. All the above considerations outlined here related to the choice of $C_u^x, \\forall u,$ with the aim to prospectively omit \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} from the optimization need to be carefully considered.\n\nYet, we have empirically observed in our extensive evaluations that the system setting comprising dynamic steering of the xGen transmitters and an exclusive assignment of one user per transmitter, i.e., the number of users and xGen transmitters in the arena is the same, provides the best performance over other prospective settings of user-transmitter assignment and transmitter steering, outlined earlier in the last segment of Section \"System design and integration embodiment\". For this characteristic setting of our system, the constraint \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} will be met by default, by simply setting $C_u^x = C^{x,t}$ for the unique user $u$ assigned to that xGen transmitter $t$. This will dispense with the need for \\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityHighFrequencyPerTransmitter} and will simultaneously enable delivering the highest possible immersion quality to user $u$. In turn, the latter will also signify that the best overall performance of the system is achieved, since the multi-user optimization (MU-OPT) formulated herein will decouple into multiple independent instances of the per-user optimization (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5} applied to every user-transmitter pair $(u,t)$, given the additive nature of the objective function in \\eqref{eq:multi-user-optim} and the rationale for dispensing with the other constraints \\eqref{eq:AggregateComputingCapacity}-\\eqref{eq:AggregateTransmissionCapacityLowFrequency} described earlier. Lastly, beyond the argument carried out regarding the system-level constraints of (MU-OPT), as it applies to our specific context, we note that computational complexity reduction for an optimization method and user fairness are two commonly invoked reasons to justify uniform resource sharing across multiple entities in resource allocation problems, which that can be applicable here too.\n\nLet $\\{\\text{GOP}_{u,k}\\}_{\\forall u}$ denote the collection of GOP content that needs to be transmitted to every user $u$ in the system at the onset of the GOP temporal interval $k$ of the 6-DOF remote immersion session. The optimization strategy described here would be applied at the edge server to every subsequent $\\{\\text{GOP}_{u,k}\\}_{\\forall u}$, i.e., for $k=1,2,\\dots$\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n{\\bf Performance analysis examples.} We highlight some of the key performance trade-offs arising in the arena embodiment setting of the envisioned system by implementing in simulation its most critical components and the optimization (\\ref{eq:pf1})-\\eqref{eq:c5}, together with the graph matching based strategy for dynamic user to xGen transmitter assignment outlined above. We considered that the spatial area of the arena is 6m $\\times$ 4m and is split into six sectors. We further considered that there are six users in the arena and six xGen transmitters mounted on the ceiling above the center point of each cell, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:SystemIntegrationDesign}. The beams of the transmitters are steered towards their assigned mobile users either electronically, in the case of mm-wave wireless technology, or mechanically, in the case of FSO wireless technology, as introduced earlier in the Section \"High-frequency directional wireless transmission\". We integrated tile-level spherical distortion coefficients $w_{nm}$ into the objective function in (\\ref{eq:pf1}), when solving the optimization, and computed the PSNR of the optimal value of the objective function, to examine in our analysis. Henceforth, we denote this performance metric as WS-PSNR to distinguish it from the traditional PSNR, computed from the optimal value of the objective function without the integration of $\\{w_{nm}\\}$ into the optimization.\nTo carry out the evaluation, we used the popular 3-DOF 8K 60-fps \\tsd video Runner and 6DOF VR content Museum, as well as actual 3-\/6-DOF user navigation traces that we collected in our wireless VR arena lab \\cite{ChakareskiK:21,ChakareskiASZ:21}.\nKey system performance parameters were selected in the evaluation to correspond to the computational and transmission capabilities, respectively, of present state-of-the-art GPUs, VR headsets, and traditional\/emerging wireless technologies\n\\cite{CuervoCK:18}. The considered values for these parameters are captured by the ranges of values representing the axes associated with the independent variables in the performance graphs included here.\n\nThe first two sets of performance analysis examples consider the \\tsd video content. The third analysis example set considers the 6DOF VR content represented as a collection of spatial \\tsd video viewpoints that users can dynamically select to navigate as they move across the arena (see Figure~\\ref{fig:6DOF_360VideoStreaming}). Each such omnidirectional viewpoint is compressed into scalable \\tsd tiling, at 120fps frame rate and 12K spatial resolution panorama.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/xGenTransCapacVsServerDecodingSpeed.eps}\n\\end{subfigure\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/HeadsetDecodingSpeedVsHeadsetRenderingSpeed.eps}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption{Performance trade-offs: xGen transmission capability vs. edge server computing capability (left) and headset rendering vs. computing capabilities (right).}\n\\label{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase1Case2}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n{\\em (i) 3-DOF \\tsd video.} The performance results presented here are obtained by running the multi-user system optimization as described in the respective section, for many different placement configurations of the (static) users across the spatial area of the arena, and then computing the expected per-user performance. We recall that the users are not moving spatially across the arena during the session given the 3-DOF nature of the content. In Figure~\\ref{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase1Case2} (left), we examine the trade-offs between the transmission capacity of the xGen link to a user and the edge server's computing capability, and the resulting viewport quality experienced by the user. We can see that for lower xGen link capacities, increasing the server's decoding speed does not improve the delivered quality of immersion. That is because in such cases, almost all GOP tiles comprising the enhancement content layer are streamed as compressed data. Thus, the server's computing capability does not have much impact in such settings. On the other hand, for higher xGen link capacity values, the number of GOP tiles selected to be decoded at the server and streamed as raw data increases. Simultaneously, with the increasing link capacity, there is more room now for the remaining compressed tiles of the enhancement content layer to be transmitted at higher data rates. Both of these aspects contribute to higher quality of immersion for the VR user under such settings.\n\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase1Case2} (right), we examine the trade-offs between the rendering capability and decoding capability of the user's VR headset, and their interrelated impact on the delivered viewport quality. One can observe that the viewport quality moderately improves for around 0.2 dB as the rendering speed increases from 1.88 Gpixels\/s to 9.4 Gpixels\/s. Further increasing the rendering speed does not impact the delivered immersion fidelity. On the other hand, one can observe that increasing the headset decoding speed impacts the WS-PSNR more significantly. Concretely, for any given rendering speed examined in the figure, an improvement of around 2.5 dB is achieved as the device's decoding speed is increased from 100 Mbps to 500 Mbps. That is because, as the decoding speed increases, the device can decode GOP tiles compressed and transmitted at higher data rates, without violating the end-to-end latency constraints. Thereby, an improvement in the delivered viewport quality is achieved.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{Figures\/xGenTransCapacVsHeadsetDecodingSpeed.eps}\n\\end{subfigure\n\\begin{subfigure}{.5\\columnwidth}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth,trim={3cm 0 3cm 1cm},clip=true]{Figures\/PerformanceComparisonDASH.eps}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\caption{Performance trade-offs: xGen transmission capability vs. client computing capability (left), and performance advances over a traditional state-of-the-art method (right).}\n\\label{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase3Case4}\n\\vspace{-0.3cm}\n\\end{figure}\n\nNext, in Figure~\\ref{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase3Case4} (left), we examine the trade-offs between the transmission capacity of the xGen link and the decoding speed of the headset, and their interrelated impact on the delivered quality of immersion. One can observe that the experienced WS-PSNR improves significantly as either the link capacity or the decoding speed increases. Concretely, the WS-PSNR increases for more than 1.5 dB when the link capacity increases from 700 Mbps to 1.2 Gbps. Similarly, when the link capacity is 700 Mbps, the WS-PSNR increases from 74.8 dB to 77.2 dB as the headset's decoding speed increases from 100 Mbps to 500 Mbps. Moreover, a WS-PSNR gain of around 4 dB is achieved when the link capacity is increased from 700 Mbps to 1.2 Gbps and the headset's decoding speed is increased from 100 Mbps to 500 Mbps. Increasing the value of either of these key capabilities enables GOP tiles compressed at higher data rates to be streamed from the server over the xGen link and decoded in time on the client device, thus improving the WS-PSNR significantly.\n\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:PerformanceAnalysisTradeOffsCase3Case4} (right), we examine the performance benefits enabled by the envisioned system over the traditional state-of-the-art. We implemented the current streaming standard MPEG-DASH following \\cite{Petrangeli2017}, to stream the \\tsd content, compressed using HEVC, over the traditional wireless connectivity link of a user. One can observe that significant performance gains in expected viewport quality and its variation are enabled. Concretely, MPEG-DASH can only achieve low average viewport quality of 63.68 dB, with a standard deviation of around 1.5 dB. These outcomes are in line with performance capabilities of emerging \\tsd practices that can only stream lower resolution and lower frame rate \\tsd videos at low to moderate quality at best, as outlined in the introduction of this article. On the other hand, the envisioned system enables high-quality viewport with expected WS-PSNR of 74 - 78 dB and standard deviation of 1.23 dB, for high frame rate and high resolution \\tsd content, thus providing gains of 10-14 dB in immersion fidelity. These advances are motivating and are enabled by the dual connectivity streaming, scalable \\tsd tiling, and edge computing that are synergistically integrated by the envisioned system together with rigorous end-to-end analysis, for maximum system performance efficiency.\n\n\nA note on interpreting WS-PSNR results and their parallel with the more familiar PSNR metric may be appropriate here. The tile-level spherical distortion coefficients $w_{nm}$ are less than one and render the computed expected viewport distortion to be notably smaller. In our empirical evaluation, this has led to a consistent difference of around 11dB between the corresponding average PSNR and average WS-PSNR values. Moreover, a relative difference of a few dB in WS-PSNR may correspond to a difference of several dB in PSNR. Thus, the performance trade-offs of one method and its performance advances over another are highlighted more when interpreted through PSNR. Given the limited number of figures one can have, we opted to include the present collection of results under the WS-PNSR metric as most representative of the key performance aspects and advances introduced by the envisioned VR system concept.\n\n\\begin{figure}[htb]\n\t\t\\centering\n\t\t\\includegraphics[width=0.9\\linewidth]{Figures\/psnr_temporal_icc.eps}\n\t\t\\caption{Sample temporal viewport quality in our system. (The user load is 6.) Y-PSNR: User viewport luminance (Y) video signal PSNR.}\n\t\t\\label{fig:psnrtemporal}\n\t\t\\vspace{-15 pt}\t\n\t\\end{figure}\n\t\n\\underline{\\em (ii) 6DOF VR:} Finally, we highlight the simultaneous immersion quality and application reliability benefits of the envisioned VR system, when streaming challenging 6DOF VR content to mobile users in the arena. The performance results presented here are obtained by running the multi-user system optimization as described in the respective section. We focus on the use of VLC as a representative xGen technology in this performance analysis example. Concretely, we examine the delivered viewport quality over time for a user, in comparison to that for state-of-the-art reference methods. {\\em LiFi} is a cellular VLC system that dynamically assigns a moving user to the cell and its stationary transmitter that maximize her SNR \\cite{zeng2019angle}. We also examined a variant of our system that uses only (single-link) high-frequency wireless transmission (VLC) to stream the content. We refer to this variant later as PropNoWiFi, to indicate that no traditional (sub-6 GHz) wireless connectivity link is used in parallel in that case, in the proposed system. There are six simultaneous users in the arena. To contrast the earlier performance analysis examples, here we measured the traditional PSNR of the delivered viewport for a user, to asses its quality.\n\nWe can observe from Figure~\\ref{fig:psnrtemporal} that the viewport quality varies over time for all three compared methods, due to one of the following two events, both induced from time to time by rapid head and body navigation movements. Either the VLC link is transiently dropped or a brief mismatch takes place between the viewport knowledge used to construct the enhancement content layer at the server and the actual user viewport at the receiving client (see Section~\\ref{sec:Scal360TilingViewportAdaptation}: \"Scalable \\tsd Video Tiling and Viewport-Driven Adaptation\"). Still, the observed viewport quality variation is much lower for our system, which considerably increases its quality of experience and reliability, relative to {\\em PropNoWiFi} and {\\em LiFi} that experience an application downtime during such instances. Concretely, viewport quality gains of 5dB and 7dB and three times smaller standard deviation of viewport quality are enabled over the latter two methods, as seen from the two smaller inset graphs to the left. We can also observe that the user experienced 22$\\%$ application downtime for {\\em PropNoWiFi} and {\\em LiFi}, compared to 0$\\%$ downtime for our method, as shown in the smaller inset graph to the right. These benefits merit the technical advances of the envisioned VR system.\n\n\t\\begin{table}[htb]\n\t\t\\caption{Average user performance (six users in the system).}\n        \\vspace{-15 pt}\t\n\t\t\\begin{center}\n\t\t\t\\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\textbf{Method} & \\textbf{Data rate (T)} & $\\boldsymbol{\\sigma}_T$ & \\textbf{Y-PSNR} &  $\\boldsymbol{\\sigma}_{\\textbf{PSNR}}$ \\\\\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\tProp. & 1020 Mbps & 164.83 Mbps & 50.37 dB & 5.79 dB \\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t{\\em LiFi} & 550 Mbps & 210.89 Mbps & 43.83 dB & 14.96 dB \\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\\end{tabular}\n\t\t\t\\label{tab:tab3}\n\t\t\\end{center}\n\t\t\\vspace{-15 pt}\t\n\t\\end{table}\n\nIn Table~\\ref{tab:tab3}, we summarize the average user performance in regard to viewport quality and delivered data rate. We can see that our system consistently outperforms {\\em LiFi} across all performance metrics considered, enabled by its synergistic technical advances. We highlight that MPEG-DASH could only deliver inadequate viewport quality of 39 dB in this setting, as expected. Finally, we note that the proposed system enables another performance benefit over LiFi, which is higher robustness to the user load, where a more graceful degradation in performance is provided, as the number of users in the arena is increased \\cite{ChakareskiK:21}. These results cannot be included here due to the limited space.\n\n\t\n\\section{Conclusions and the road ahead}\nThe two pedagogical aspects of the article, to educate and inspire the reader, have been necessarily intertwined in its presentation, given the nature of its topic and its objectives. We started by providing an overview of virtual reality and its key present challenges towards further advancement, highlighting its prospectively most exciting use cases for our society in the future, comprising high-fidelity remote scene immersion and untethered lifelike navigation. Then, a broad survey of related studies using traditional approaches and synergistic advances in other technologies, and a system-level primer on virtual reality and \\tsd video technologies were integrated, to put these challenges in perspective, highlight the shortcomings of present implementations, and inspire new approaches.\nNext, the article provided a contextual high-level review of several emerging technologies and unconventional techniques, highlighting that only by their synergistic integration we can aim to overcome the bottlenecks of hyper-intensive computation, ultra-high data rate, and ultra-low latency toward the envisioned future societal applications.\n\nA novel 6DOF VR system concept that embodies this integration in an indoor setting and a rigorous analysis that captures the fundamental interplay among communication, computation, and scalable signal representation that arises herein, and that optimizes the system's end-to-end performance were presented subsequently. Finally, several representative performance analysis examples were provided to highlight these trade-offs and the benefits of the envisioned system. These outcomes motivate the system as a broad research platform for further investigations spanning actual implementation and deployment, new analyses and optimizations, and integration of further technologies and techniques. Moreover, many of the advances introduced by this feature article and such follow-up work could benefit related technologies, such as augmented reality and holograms.\n\n\\section{Authors}\n\n{\\bf Jacob Chakareski} (\\href{mailto:jacobcha@njit.edu}{jacobcha@njit.edu}) completed his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and Stanford University. He is an Associate Professor in the College of Computing at the New Jersey Institute for Technology (NJIT), Newark, New Jersey, 07103, USA, where he holds the Panasonic Chair of Sustainability and directs the AI-Enabled Laboratory for Virtual and Augmented Reality Immersive Communications and Network Systems. Dr. Chakareski organized the first National Science Foundation (NSF) visioning workshop on future virtual and augmented reality communications and network systems in 2018 \\cite{Chakareski:19b}. He has held research appointments with Microsoft, HP Labs, and Ecole Polytechnique F\\'{e}d\\'{e}rale de Lausanne (EPFL), and served on the advisory board of Frame, Inc (acquired in 2019 by Nutanix, Inc.). His research interests span next generation virtual and augmented reality systems, UAV-IoT sensing and networking, fast reinforcement learning, 5G wireless edge computing and caching, ubiquitous immersive communication, and societal applications. He received the Adobe Data Science Faculty Research Award in 2017 and 2018, the Swiss NSF Career Award Ambizione (2009), the AFOSR Faculty Fellowship in 2016 and 2017, and Best Paper Awards at ICC 2017 and MMSys 2021. His research has been supported by the NSF, NIH, AFOSR, Adobe, Tencent Research, NVIDIA, and Microsoft. For further information, please visit \\url{www.jakov.org}.\n\n{\\bf Mahmudur Khan} received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, in 2011, the M.S. degree in CSE from the University of Nevada Reno, in 2015, and the Ph.D. degree in CE from the University of Central Florida, in 2018, respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow at NJIT and is presently an Assistant Professor at York College. His research interests include free-space-optical communications, wireless ad hoc networks, and UAV communications.\n\n{\\bf Murat Yuksel} received the BS degree in CE from Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 1996, and the MS and PhD degrees in CS from RPI, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He is an Associate Professor with the ECE Department, University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando. Prior to UCF, he was with the CSE Department, University of Nevada, Reno as a faculty member until 2016. He worked as a software engineer with Pepperdata, Sunnyvale, California, and a visiting researcher with AT\\&T Labs and the Los Alamos National Lab. His research interests include networked, wireless, and computer systems with a recent focus on big-data networking, UAV networks, optical wireless, and network management.\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\nTo Ilija Chakareski and Stojan Angjelov for their love. The work of Jacob Chakareski and Mahmudur Khan has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under awards CCF-2031881, ECCS-2032387, CNS-2040088, CNS-2032033, and CNS-2106150; by the NIH under award R01EY030470; and by the Panasonic Chair of Sustainability at NJIT. The work of Murat Yuksel has been supported in part by the NSF under awards CNS-2115215, CNS-2120421, and CNS-1836741. The authors are grateful to the editors Dr. Matthew McKay, Dr. Robert Heath, and Dr. Laure Blanc-F\u00e9raud, as well as to the numerous anonymous reviewers for their constructive guidance and comments that have considerably helped improve the quality of this feature article.\n\n\\bibliographystyle{F:\/\/ThinkPad\/Jakov\/Publications\/_StyleFiles\/IEEEtran}\n\\def\\baselinestretch{0.8}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nThe principle of Lorentz invariance undergirds our two most fundamental theories of physics: the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. While these theories have been extraordinarily successful at describing nature, we expect new physics to emerge at high energies. Since we have limited ability to directly probe the regimes where both quantum mechanics and relativity dominate, we can instead search for small deviations in our low-energy theories such as a departure from Lorentz symmetry.\n\nOne promising way to search for Lorentz violations is to study linearly polarized light as it propagates through space. From rotational symmetry, it is expected that the polarization plane of a linearly polarized photon should not change as it propagates through empty space, so any rotation of the polarization would indicate some physical interaction that violates Lorentz invariance.\n\nAlthough there are a number of potential theories that could cause such a rotation, one popular mechanism for achieving this effect is the introduction of an additional scalar field to the standard model. The pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (PNGB) has a number of attractive qualities, including the ability to conserve an otherwise broken global symmetry and to naturally explain the connection between symmetry-breaking effects over many orders of magnitude in energy. It is also a potential candidate to account for the observed dark energy or dark matter densities.  Since PNGBs generically introduce a Lorentz-violating polarization angle rotation via Chern-Simons coupling to electromagnetism, we also have a promising avenue to search for their existence.\\cite{sikivie2008axion}$^,$\\cite{ratra1988scalar}$^,$\\cite{rosenberg2014axion}$^,$\\cite{ng2001pngb}$^,$\\cite{ferreira2014axion}\n\nOf course this is only one possible mechanism so we should also consider ways to classify more general Lorentz violations, which is the aim of the Standard-Model Extension (SME) framework. In particular the CMB is an excellent probe of Lorentz violations because small effects can accumulate over cosmological distances. Using observations from the \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ experiment\\cite{PB1Bmodes} we propose a method to constrain a subset of the SME parameters using the three CMB patches observed by \\textsc{Polarbear}.\n\nThe paper is organized as follows. Sections \\ref{sec:scales} through \\ref{sec:birefringence} are a brief review of a general PNGB and its evolution through the universe, including specific examples like the QCD axion and quintessence; a candidate for dark energy. Sections \\ref{sec:sme} through \\ref{sec:polarbear} deal with the SME and show how cosmic polarization rotation angle measurements can be used to constrain SME parameters.\n\n\n\n\\section{Energy Scales in Field Theory}\n\\label{sec:scales}\n\nThere is a general heuristic in field theory that can be expressed in imprecise terms as: ``mass terms in the action correspond to energy scales of the relevant physics.''\n\nThis statement is tantamount to dimensional analysis. When using natural units that set $c=1$ and $\\hbar=1$ any quantity can be written in terms of powers of a single unit, usually in terms of eV, sometimes in terms of mass. In the path integral approach to quantum mechanics, the action appears in an exponential $e^{iS}$ so dimensional analysis tells us that the action must be dimensionless. We can then examine the definiton of the action\n\\begin{equation} S=\\int d^4x \\mathcal{L}(\\phi) . \\end{equation}\nFrom this one can conclude that, in 4D space, the Lagrangian has units of [distance]$^{-4}$, or equivalently [mass]$^4$, in order to make the action unitless. Quantum fields also have mass dimensions. For example, in order for the kinetic term of the scalar field, $\\frac{1}{2}\\partial_\\mu \\phi \\partial^\\mu \\phi$, to have dimension 4, and noting that a derivative has mass dimension 1, then it is necessary for the field $\\phi$ to have dimension 1. A consequence of this is that a term like $\\phi^2$ has dimension 2 and therefore needs a dimensionful coupling in order to be in the Lagrangian, for example: $m^2\\phi^2$, where $m$ is a constant with mass dimension 1.\n\nA more complicated example is the Chern-Simons term between a scalar field and a field strength tensor: $\\phi F^{\\mu\\nu} \\widetilde{F}_{\\mu\\nu}$. In electromagnetism the field strength tensor $F_{\\mu\\nu}$ is constructed from derivatives and the vector potential (mass dimension 1)\n\\begin{equation} F_{\\mu\\nu} = \\partial_\\mu A_\\nu - \\partial_\\nu A_\\mu . \\end{equation}\nTherefore $F_{\\mu\\nu}$ has dimension 2, and the overall Chern-Simons term has dimension 5, so it must be accompanied by a coupling of dimension -1. Therefore something like a constant $1\/M$ for a Lagrangian term of the form\n\\begin{equation} \\frac{1}{M} \\phi F^{\\mu\\nu} \\widetilde{F}_{\\mu\\nu} \\end{equation}\nwould be a candidate ansatz. Considering a theory that contains terms with dimensionful constants, a reasonable question to ask is whether the value of that constant is an arbitrary parameter of the theory or whether it traces new physics at roughly that scale, which is not yet understood. Take for example the masses of the $W$ and $Z$ bosons. They are not arbitrary parameters but they come from electroweak-symmetry breaking. Furthermore both of these particles and the Higgs boson all have masses of around 100 GeV, which is on the order of the electroweak scale $\\sim 200$ GeV.\n\nSimilarly the pion of mass $\\sim 130$ MeV and the proton\/neutron masses $\\sim 1000$ MeV are all around the same order of magnitude as the QCD scale $\\sim 200$ MeV.\n\nThis reasoning also leads us to believe there is some, as yet unknown, physics at the Planck scale since general relativity has a dimensionful parameter of its own: $G = \\frac{1}{M_P^2}$.\n\nThis energy-scale approach is especially relevant to cosmology because it deals with the evolution of the universe, which spans some 30 orders of magnitude in temperature, with the temperature going down as the universe ages. Even an order of magnitude approach to cosmological fields should lend us considerable insight. So with this heuristic in mind, we now take a look at the PNGB.\n\n\n\n\\section{Mass of the Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone Boson}\n\nIf a scalar field theory with multiple degrees of freedom is invariant under some symmetry, that symmetry can be spontaneously broken via the Higgs mechanism. To understand how this happens, first consider an example with a single scalar field.\n\n\\subsection{Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking}\n\nA single (real) scalar field, which has only one degree of freedom, has a Lagrangian of the form\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L} = \\frac{1}{2}\\partial_\\mu \\phi \\partial^\\mu \\phi - V(\\phi) . \\end{equation}\nThe lowest-energy state is simply a constant value $\\phi = \\phi_0$. The derivative terms are zero for a constant, so its value is determined by the minimum of the potential, $V(\\phi_0)$. Including a mass term or even a higher-order quartic term results in a potential\n\\begin{equation} V(\\phi) = \\frac{1}{2}\\mu^2 \\phi^2 + \\frac{1}{4}\\lambda \\phi^4 . \\end{equation}\nThis potential, as well as the full Lagrangian, has a discrete sign symmetry. Replacing $\\phi$ with $-\\phi$, the Lagrangian is unchanged because only even powers of $\\phi$ appear. As long as the parameters $\\mu^2$ and $\\lambda$ are positive, then the minimum of this potential is $\\phi_0 = 0$. However, in field theory it is usually the case that ``constants'' in the Lagrangian are not truly constant. Due to the process of renormalization, the coupling ``constants'' can actually depend on energy scale. For example, asymptotic freedom in QCD is related to the statement that the strong fine-structure parameter $\\alpha_s$ is large at low energies, but becomes asymptotically smaller at larger energies.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{prepotential.png}\n  \\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{postpotential.png}\n  \\caption{Scalar potential for positive and negative mass parameters.\\label{fig:higgs}}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIf, at some point in the evolution of the universe, the temperature-dependent parameter $\\mu^2 = \\mu^2(T)$ changes from a positive value to a negative value, then the minimum of the potential will no longer be $\\phi_0 = 0$. Figure~\\ref{fig:higgs} shows plots of the potential $V(\\phi)$ for two cases $\\mu^2>0$ and $\\mu^2<0$. In the second case there are two minima at\n\\begin{equation} \\phi = \\pm v = \\pm \\sqrt{\\frac{-\\mu^2}{\\lambda}} . \\end{equation}\n\nAfter transitioning to $\\mu^2<0$ the Lagrangian is still symmetric but expansion of the Lagrangian about the ground state, in terms of $\\phi - \\phi_0$, is no longer symmetric. This phenomemon is called ``spontaneous symmetry breaking'' because, while the symmetry of the underlying Lagrangian is not broken, symmetry of the ground state \\textit{is} broken. In this example the symmetry was discrete but in a model with more degrees of freedom, spontaneous symmetry breaking of a continuous symmetry will occur.\n\n\\subsection{Complex Scalar Field}\n\nNext consider a complex scalar field $\\psi = \\psi_1 + i\\psi_2$ with Lagrangian\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L} = \\partial_\\mu \\psi^\\dagger \\partial^\\mu \\psi - V(\\psi) . \\end{equation}\nThis field will have a similar potential\n\\begin{equation} V(\\psi) = \\mu^2\\psi^\\dagger \\psi + \\lambda (\\psi^\\dagger \\psi)^2 . \\end{equation}\nUnder a spontaneous-symmetry-breaking event as described above, $\\mu^2$ will become negative and the potential will take on the new form\n\\begin{equation} V(\\psi) = \\lambda(\\psi^\\dagger\\psi - v^2)^2 . \\end{equation}\nIn terms of the component fields $\\psi_1$ and $\\psi_2$ this is\n\\begin{equation} V(\\psi_1,\\psi_2) = \\lambda(\\psi_1^2 + \\psi_2^2 - v^2)^2 . \\end{equation}\nThis can be parameterized in terms of two different real scalar fields $H$ and $\\phi$\n\\begin{equation} \\psi = He^{i\\phi\/f} , \\end{equation}\nso that\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:psi1} \\psi_1 = H\\cos(\\phi\/f) , \\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation} \\psi_2 = H\\sin(\\phi\/f) . \\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\begin{overpic}[width=\\textwidth]{chrome_flat.png}\n    \\put (28,4) {$\\psi_1$}\n    \\put (85,9) {$\\psi_2$}\n    \\put (47,45) {$V(\\psi)$}\n  \\end{overpic}\n  \\caption{Potential of a Nambu-Goldstone boson.\\label{fig:GoldstonePotential} }\n\\end{figure}\n\nThis yields a potential only dependent on the longitudinal degree of freedom $H$, as seen in Figure~\\ref{fig:GoldstonePotential}\n\\begin{equation} V(H,\\phi) = V(H) = \\lambda(H^2 - v^2)^2 . \\end{equation}\nThis result, where the potential depends on some degrees of freedom but not others, is a general feature of spontaneous-symmetry-breaking events. The degrees of freedom that do not appear in the potential after symmetry breaking are called ``Nambu-Goldstone bosons,'' and the lack of a potential means they are massless by definition. In this example $\\phi$ is the Nambu-Goldstone boson. Additionally they possess shift symmetry in which a change in the value of $\\phi$ by $2\\pi f$ corresponds to the same physical system\n\\begin{equation} He^{i\\phi\/f} \\to He^{i(\\phi+2\\pi f)\/f} = He^{i\\phi\/f} . \\end{equation}\nThis new parameter $f$ is included because if $\\phi$ is interpreted as a scalar field, dimensional analysis tells us that in order to have it inside the argument of an exponential it must be divided by a coupling with dimension 1. In the spirit of the previous section, it is reasonable to expect that the value of the coupling $f$ will be on the same order of magnitude as the other scales in this scenario like the vacuum expectation value $f\\sim v$.\n\nThis is the situation with only a scalar field and a spontaneous-symmetry-breaking event. But PNGBs have a second relevant temperature scale when the shift symmetry of $\\phi$ is broken. Next consider a case where the scalar is coupled to either some other field, or collection of fields, or constant term generated by other fields, so that the potential is\n\\begin{equation} V(\\psi,\\Psi) = \\lambda(\\psi^\\dagger\\psi - v^2) - \\beta\\frac{\\psi_1}{f} \\Psi . \\end{equation}\nWhere $\\beta$ is a dimensionless coupling of order unity. In this case, not only will the field undergo spontaneous symmetry breaking, but it will experience explicit symmetry breaking because the $\\psi_1 \\Psi$ term does not respect the U(1) symmetry of $\\psi$: the Lagrangian is not invariant under the global transformation $\\psi \\rightarrow \\psi' = e^{i\\theta} \\psi$.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\begin{overpic}[width=\\textwidth]{chrome_tilted.png}\n    \\put (16,7) {$\\psi_1$}\n    \\put (85,18) {$\\psi_2$}\n    \\put (47,53) {$V(\\psi)$}\n  \\end{overpic}\n  \\caption{Potential of a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson.\\label{fig:PNGBpotential} }\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn this example $\\Psi$ represents whatever physics is explicitly breaking the symmetry. This is model dependent, but by dimensional analysis it must have mass dimension 4 regardless of the model. The potential can be seen in Figure~\\ref{fig:PNGBpotential}\n\nNow when reparameterizing the $\\psi$ field, the potential becomes\n\\begin{equation} V(\\psi,\\Psi) = \\lambda(H^2 - v^2) - \\frac{\\beta}{f}H\\cos(\\phi\/f) \\Psi . \\end{equation}\nIn the low-energy limit, $\\phi \\ll f$, the quadratic term from the cosine in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:psi1}) will dominate and the potential for the PNGB is\n\\begin{equation} V(\\phi) \\approx \\frac{\\beta}{2f^3}H\\phi^2\\Psi . \\end{equation}\nAdditionally, in the low-energy limit, the $H$ field will be near its equilibrium value $v$, which should be around the same size as $f$. The potential is therefore\n\\begin{equation} V(\\phi) \\approx \\frac{1}{2f^2}\\phi^2\\Psi . \\end{equation}\n$\\Psi$ depends on the model, but the fact that $\\Phi$ is a dimensionful term means it should correspond to the temperature scale of the explicit-symmetry-breaking mechanism. Therefore the potential should generally be on the order of\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:potentialLambda} V(\\phi) \\approx \\frac{\\Lambda^4}{2f^2}\\phi^2 , \\end{equation}\nwhere $\\Lambda$ now represents the temperature scale of the explicit symmetry breaking. From this scalar mass term, the mass of the PNGB is\n\\begin{equation} m \\approx \\frac{\\Lambda^2}{f} . \\end{equation}\nThus the mass is dependent on the two relevant temperature scales of the PNGB: the spontaneous-symmetry-breaking scale, parameterized by $f$, and the explicit-symmetry-breaking scale, parameterized by $\\Lambda$.\n\n\n\n\\section{Energy Density of the PNGB}\n\n\\subsection{Pre-Oscillations}\n\nNow consider the PNGB field in the context of general relativity. The Lagrangian is\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L} = \\frac{1}{2}\\sqrt{-g} (g^{\\mu\\nu}\\partial_\\mu \\phi \\partial_\\nu \\phi - m^2 \\phi^2 ) . \\end{equation}\nFocusing only on a spatially uniform field over cosmological scales in the Friedmann-Lema\\^{i}tre-Robertson-Walker metric, the Euler-Lagrange equation of motion is\n\\begin{equation} \\frac{d^2\\phi}{dt^2} + 3H \\frac{d\\phi}{dt} + m^2 \\phi = 0 . \\end{equation}\nAt this point, the PNGB has first gone through spontaneous symmetry breaking and then explicit symmetry breaking. The equation of motion is of the form of a damped simple harmonic oscillator with a damping term $3H$ and angular frequency $m$. Since $H$ is time dependent the decay envelope will actually be a power law rather than an exponential, but qualitatively the situation is similar. However when the mass first ``turns on'' at the explicit-symmetry-breaking scale $\\Lambda$, defined in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:potentialLambda}), it is much smaller than $H$. The mass and Hubble parameters are roughly $H \\sim \\Lambda$, and $m \\sim \\frac{\\Lambda^2}{f}$, therefore their ratio is small $\\frac{m}{H} \\sim \\frac{\\Lambda}{f} \\ll 1$. This means the mass can be neglected until $H$ drops to a small enough value. Until then the evolution is governed by\n\\begin{equation} \\frac{d^2\\phi}{dt^2} + 3H \\frac{d\\phi}{dt} = 0 . \\end{equation}\nThe solution is simply a constant value $\\phi = \\left<\\phi\\right>$. The PNGB sits at the same vacuum expectation value it was given all the way back at spontaneous symmetry breaking. Only once $H$ reaches a small enough value, so that $H\\sim m$, do oscillations begin. At this point, the potential energy of the PNGB is about\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:potentialPhi} V(\\phi) = \\frac{1}{2}m^2 \\phi^2 \\sim m^2 \\alpha^2 f^2 . \\end{equation}\nHere the vacuum expectation value is $\\left<\\phi\\right> = \\alpha f$, where $\\alpha$ is a constant of order 1. This is assumed since the initial value of the field should be the same magnitude as the spontaneous-symmetry-breaking scale $\\left<\\phi\\right> \\sim f$. At symmetry breaking, $\\phi$ takes a value at the bottom of the Higgs potential in the range $-\\pi f < \\phi < \\pi f$. It has no preference for any particular value, so a random value of $\\alpha$ in the range from $-\\pi$ to $\\pi$ will give an expectation value on the order of $f$.\n\n\\subsection{Post-Oscillations}\n\nStarting from the initial value of $\\phi \\sim m^2 \\alpha^2 f^2$ from Eq.~(\\ref{eq:potentialPhi}), the field then evolves according to the equation of motion stated above, now including mass. The general form of the solution is a sinusoidal oscillation with a decaying power law in time. For example, the solution to the field evolution in a radiation dominated universe is a Bessel function\n\\begin{equation} \\phi(t) \\propto t^{-1\/4}J_{1\/4}(mt) \\approx C t^{-3\/4}\\sin(mt) = C a(t)^{-3\/2} \\sin(mt) . \\end{equation}\nRegardless of the time dependence of $H$, the result is that the amplitude of the field oscillations is proportional to the scale factor in this regime\n\\begin{equation} A_\\phi \\propto a^{-3\/2} . \\end{equation}\nThe energy density of the oscillating field as a function of time is\n\\begin{equation} \\rho = \\frac{1}{2}m^2 A_\\phi(t)^2 = \\frac{1}{2}m^2 A_\\phi(t_1)^2\\frac{a(t_1)^3}{a(t)^3} , \\end{equation}\nwhere $t_1$ is the time at which the oscillations began, at the temperature scale $\\Lambda_1 = m$. Finally this allows us to find the energy density today. The initial amplitude of the PNGB oscillations is\n\\begin{equation} A_\\phi(t_1) = \\alpha f . \\end{equation}\nThe ratio of scale factors can be expressed as a ratio of temperatures\n\\begin{equation} \\frac{a(t_1)}{a(t_0)} = \\frac{T_0}{T_1} , \\end{equation}\nwhere the subscript 0 denotes values at the present day, yielding\n\\begin{equation} \\rho_0 = \\frac{1}{2}m^2 \\alpha^2 f^2 \\frac{T_0^3}{T_1^3} . \\end{equation}\nUsing the energy at initial oscillation $T_1 = m$ and the definition of the mass from the previous section, this is simply\n\\begin{equation} \\rho_0 = \\frac{1}{2}\\alpha^2 \\frac{f^3 T_0^3}{\\Lambda^2} \\sim \\frac{f^3 T_0^3}{\\Lambda^2} . \\end{equation}\nSo the present PNGB energy density depends on the three relevant temperatures: the temperatures at spontaneous symmetry breaking, at explicit symmetry breaking, and the current CMB temperature of 2.7 K.\n\n\n\n\\section{Timeline of the PNGB}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{field_value.png}\n  \\caption{PNGB field value vs. temperature. Temperature is plotted on a log scale.\\label{fig:field} }\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{energy_density.png}\n  \\caption{Energy density of the PNGB vs. temperature, plotted on a log-log scale.\\label{fig:energy} }\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo summarize the results from the previous sections, we can examine the evolution of the field value in Figure~\\ref{fig:field} and energy density in Figure~\\ref{fig:energy}. \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item First the PNGB starts as a Nambu-Goldstone boson when its parent complex scalar field undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking at the scale $f$. It acquires a vaccum expectation value of $\\alpha f$.\n\\item It retains its vacuum expectation value until it reaches the explicit-symmetry-breaking scale $\\Lambda$ and acquires a mass $m=\\frac{\\Lambda^2}{f}$.\n\\item Now the PNGB is massive, but its mass is much too small to induce any significant changes. The field ``slowly rolls'' toward its minimum potential energy during this time period since it has a mass, but the change is very small and the majority of its energy density is potential energy, so it acts as vacuum energy with equation of state $w \\approx -1$.\n\n\\item Finally it reaches the third temperature scale $T_1$, which is set when the mass is the same size as the Hubble parameter $m\\sim H$. At this point it begins oscillating. The energy density begins at $\\sim m^2f^2 = \\Lambda^4$ and evolves with time proportional to $a^{-3}$ until reaching the present temperature $T_0$. Its equation of state is $w \\approx 0$, therefore contributing to the matter energy density.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\n\n\\section{The Axion}\n\nThe discussion until this point has only referred to a generic PNGB. The above results should roughly hold for a wide range of PNGBs regardless of the physics that generates them, as well as the two specific examples: the axion and quintessence. While they are both PNGBs, they are at different points in their evolution and we will arrive at a few interesting values like the axion-mass lower bound and the quintessence mass.\n\nThe axion was originally postulated to solve the strong CP problem.\\cite{peccei1996axion} It makes its transition from Nambu-Goldstone boson to PNGB at the QCD scale so the explicit-symmetry-breaking scale for the axion can be identified as\n\\begin{equation} \\Lambda = \\Lambda_{QCD} \\approx 200 \\mbox{ GeV} . \\end{equation}\nNow the axion's density parameter can be calculated\n\\begin{equation} \\Omega_{axion} = \\frac{\\rho_0}{\\rho_c} , \\end{equation}\nwhere $\\rho_c$ is the critical density. Finally the requirement that it be less than the dark matter density parameter $\\Omega_{axion} < 0.2$, results in an upper limit on $f$ on the order of $10^{12}$ GeV.\\cite{sikivie2008axion}\n\nAssuming the axion is the dark matter particle, an approximate bound can be placed on the axion mass using the formula\n\\begin{equation} m > \\frac{\\Lambda^2}{f_{max}} = \\frac{(200\\mbox{ GeV})^2}{10^{21} \\mbox{ eV}} = 4 \\mu\\mbox{eV} , \\end{equation}\nwhich sets a lower limit on the axion mass.\n\n\n\n\\section{Quintessence}\n\nThe quintessence field is one possible candidate for dark energy. The dark-energy density is the same order of magnitude as the critical density of the universe at present day, and if the dark energy is of the form of a cosmological constant then its value is unnaturally small at early times. To resolve this ``naturalness problem,'' consider the existence of a PNGB whose explicit-symmetry-breaking scale is very close to the temperature of the universe at present.\\cite{ratra1988scalar}$^,$\\cite{hill2002pngb}\n\nIn the timeline of a PNGB, quintessence is just now entering the slow-roll phase. It has acquired a mass at a scale of the vacuum energy $\\Lambda \\sim 10^{-3}$ eV, and almost all of its energy is in the form of potential energy, which results in dark energy having a significant contribution to the density today. Furthermore its symmetry-breaking scale is expected to be at the scale of some new unknown physics. A natural scale to postulate for spontaneous symmetry breaking is the Planck scale: $f\\sim M_P = 10^{28}$ eV. With these two scales, a naive estimate of the expected mass of the quintessence particle can be obtained\\cite{gluscevic2013cmb}\n\\begin{equation} m = \\frac{\\Lambda^2}{f} = 10^{-34} \\mbox{ eV} . \\end{equation}\n\n\n\n\\section{Birefringence}\n\\label{sec:birefringence}\n\nFinally, we consider how this relates to birefringence. The Chern-Simons term is of the form\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L}_{CS} = -\\frac{\\beta \\phi}{2M} F^{\\mu\\nu} \\tilde F_{\\mu\\nu} . \\end{equation}\nWhere $\\beta$ is a dimensionless coupling, $\\phi$ is the PNGB field, and $M$ is a coupling of mass dimension 1. To see how this could cause a rotation of a linearly polarized photon, consider the modified electromagnetic Lagrangian\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L} = -\\frac{1}{4}F^{\\mu\\nu}F_{\\mu\\nu} - \\frac{\\beta \\phi}{2M} F^{\\mu\\nu} \\tilde F_{\\mu\\nu} . \\end{equation}\nThe Euler-Lagrange equations for the field $A_\\mu$ are\n\\begin{equation} \\partial^\\nu F_{\\mu\\nu} + \\partial_{\\nu} \\left(\\frac{\\beta \\phi}{M} \\varepsilon^{\\nu\\mu\\rho\\sigma}F_{\\rho\\sigma}\\right) = 0 . \\end{equation}\nSince the quantity $\\varepsilon^{\\nu\\mu\\rho\\sigma}\\partial_{\\nu}F_{\\rho\\sigma}$ is identically zero, this equation becomes\n\\begin{equation} \\partial^\\nu F_{\\mu\\nu} + \\frac{\\beta}{M} \\varepsilon^{\\mu\\rho\\sigma\\nu}F_{\\rho\\sigma}\\partial_\\nu\\phi = 0 . \\end{equation}\nIdentifying the components of the field strength tensor with the electric and magnetic fields as\n\\begin{equation} E^i = -F^{0i} , \\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation} B^i = -\\varepsilon^{ijk}F_{jk} , \\end{equation}\nthe two equations take the forms\n\\begin{equation} \\vec{\\nabla}\\cdot\\vec{E} - \\frac{\\beta}{M}\\vec{B}\\cdot\\vec{\\nabla}\\phi = 0 , \\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:rotation} \\vec{\\nabla}\\times\\vec{B} - \\frac{\\partial \\vec{E}}{\\partial t} + \\frac{\\beta}{M}\\left(\\vec{E}\\times\\vec{\\nabla}\\phi - \\vec{B}\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}\\right) = 0 . \\end{equation}\nFor a spatially uniform scalar field, $\\phi$ only appears in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:rotation}), which is now of the form:\n\\begin{equation} \\vec{\\nabla}\\times\\vec{B} - \\frac{\\partial \\vec{E}}{\\partial t} = \\frac{\\beta}{M}\\vec{B}\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t} . \\end{equation}\nTherefore if the scalar PNGB field changes over time as a linearly polarized photon travels through the universe, the electric-field vector will change in the direction of the magnetic field. This corresponds to a rotation of the electric field direction. The total rotation angle $\\alpha$ can be written in terms of the total change in the PNGB field value\\cite{gluscevic2013cmb}\n\\begin{equation} \\alpha = \\frac{\\beta}{M}\\Delta \\phi . \\end{equation}\nFollowing in the theme of this discussion the magnitude of $M$ should be considered. Since this term deals with $\\phi$, it should be at least as big as the spontaneous-symmetry-breaking scale $f$. But recall that the PNGB descended from a theory of a complex scalar field $\\psi$, so this coupling likely has a scale associated with some higher energy physics. Again, a plausible scale for this would be the Planck scale $M\\sim M_P$.\n\nIn order to detect any appreciable rotation angle, the change in the field value of the PNGB must not be more than a few orders of magnitude smaller than $M_P$. The axion's spontaneous-symmetry-breaking scale has an upper bound at around $10^{21}$ eV, so any rotation of photon polarization due to the axion field will could be at largest on the order of $10^{-7}$ rad.\n\nOn the other hand, quintessence undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking closer to the Planck scale. If quintessence exists, we would expect to naturally observe rotation angles on the order of the ratio $\\frac{f}{M}$, which could conceivably be as large as order unity.\n\nPut in this context, the axion and quintessence fields should both cause cosmological birefringence, but the magnitudes of these effects may be very different, roughly corresponding to the ratio of their spontaneous-symmetry-breaking scales.\n\n\n\n\\section{The Standard-Model Extension}\n\\label{sec:sme}\n\nUntil now, the focus has been on one possible mechanism for generating cosmic birefringence, but the SME is a framework to characterize all realistic violations of Lorentz symmetry based on effective field theory, while maintaining other desireable features such as gauge invariance, renormalizability, etc.\\cite{colladay1997sme}$^,$\\cite{colladay1998sme}$^,$\\cite{kostelecky2004sme} .\n\nWithin this framework, we can classify potential Lorentz violations in the photon sector with two sets of differential operators $\\bm{\\hat k}_{AF}$ and $\\bm{\\hat k}_F$, which characterize CPT-odd and CPT-even violations, respectively.\\cite{mewes2002smephotons}$^,$\\cite{mewes2009smephotons} They appear in the extended electromagnetic Lagrangian\\cite{mewes2007smecmb}\n\\begin{equation} \\mathcal{L}_{SME} = -\\frac{1}{4}F_{\\mu\\nu}F^{\\mu\\nu} + \\frac{1}{2}\\epsilon^{\\kappa\\lambda\\mu\\nu}A_\\lambda\\left(\\bm{\\hat k}_{AF}\\right)_\\kappa F_{\\mu\\nu} - \\frac{1}{4}F_{\\kappa\\lambda}\\left(\\bm{\\hat k}_F\\right)^{\\kappa\\lambda\\mu\\nu}F_{\\mu\\nu}, \\end{equation}\nwhere $A_\\mu$ is the vector potential, $F_{\\mu\\nu}$ is the field strength tensor, and the SME operators are defined as\n\\begin{equation} \\left(\\bm{\\hat k}_{AF}\\right)_\\kappa = \\sum_{d=\\mathrm{odd}} \\left(k_{AF}^{(d)}\\right)_\\kappa^{\\alpha_1...\\alpha_{(d-3)}}\\partial_{\\alpha_1}...\\partial_{\\alpha_{(d-3)}}, \\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation} \\left(\\bm{\\hat k}_F\\right)^{\\kappa\\lambda\\mu\\nu} = \\sum_{d=\\mathrm{even}} \\left(k_F^{(d)}\\right)^{\\kappa\\lambda\\mu\\nu\\alpha_1...\\alpha_{(d-4)}}\\partial_{\\alpha_1}...\\partial_{\\alpha_{(d-4)}}. \\end{equation}\n\nThe effect of including the higher-dimension $d$ terms introduces an energy dependence. Expressing the operators in a spherical-harmonic basis, we can write these possible Lorentz violations as first-order modifications to the photon dispersion relation\n\\begin{equation} \\omega = \\left[1-\\varsigma^0 \\pm \\sqrt{\\left(\\varsigma^1\\right)^2 + \\left(\\varsigma^2\\right)^2 + \\left(\\varsigma^3\\right)^2}\\right]k, \\end{equation}\nwhere the ``$\\pm$'' corresponds to the two polarizations and the four $\\varsigma^i$ are given as sums over SME parameters\\cite{mewes2008smecmb}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\varsigma^0 &=& \\sum_{djm} \\omega^{d-4} \\ {}_0Y_{jm}(\\bm{\\hat n})k^{(d)}_{(I)jm}, \\label{eq:sigma0} \\\\\n\\varsigma^1\\pm i\\varsigma^2 &=& \\sum_{djm} \\omega^{d-4} \\ {}_{\\pm2}Y_{jm}(\\bm{\\hat n})\\left(k^{(d)}_{(E)jm}\\mp ik^{(d)}_{(B)jm}\\right), \\label{eq:sigma12} \\\\\n\\varsigma^3 &=& \\sum_{djm} \\omega^{d-4} \\ {}_0Y_{jm}(\\bm{\\hat n})k^{(d)}_{(V)jm}, \\label{eq:sigma3}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $j\\leq d-2$ and $\\bm{\\hat n} = -\\bm{\\hat p}$ is the line-of-sight direction toward the photon's point of origin. The terms in Eqs.~(\\ref{eq:sigma0})~and~(\\ref{eq:sigma12}) exist only for even values $d\\geq 4$ while those in Eq.~(\\ref{eq:sigma3}) exist for odd values $d\\geq 3$. It is in terms of the four sets of parameters $k^{(d)}_{(I)jm}, k^{(d)}_{(E)jm}, k^{(d)}_{(B)jm}, k^{(d)}_{(V)jm}$ that we can classify Lorentz violations.\\cite{mewes2008smecmb}\n\n\n\n\\section{Using the CMB for Birefringence Tests}\n\nNow in order to determine which of these infinitely many parameters we can constrain using CMB measurements, we should understand to what each of these four $\\varsigma^i$ terms correspond. From the dispersion relation we can see that $\\varsigma^0$ is the only one that changes the photon speed by the same amount for both polarizations. This term will not generate birefringence, but, because it contains energy dependence from parameters of dimension $d>4$, its effects can be detected, for example, by measuring arrival times of photons with different frequencies from the same source. However, CMB experiments are not ideal for searching for such an effect, since they may operate only over a single frequency band or a few relatively closely spaced bands. Still, we leave such estimates to a future paper.\n\nThe terms $\\varsigma^1$ and $\\varsigma^2$ characterize CPT-even birefringent effects which mix linear polarization and circular polarization. However the polarization of the CMB, generated primarily by Thomson scattering, is not expected to contain circular polarization and as such CMB experiments typically are not designed to search for circular polarization.\n\nFinally, $\\varsigma^3$ characterizes CPT-odd birefringent effects, which result in a rotation of linearly polarized photons without conversion to circular polarization. Measurements of CMB polarization are particularly sensitive to this effect. Unlike other polarized astrophysical sources, like gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) or quasars, the CMB is a well-understood source governed by simple linear physics that allows us to predict the initial polarization state of emitted photons to high accuracy. Combined with the fact that the CMB surface of last scattering has redshift $z\\sim1100$, the extraordinarily long propagation distance of CMB photons allows any birefringent effects to accumulate. This is why the CMB is the most sensitive probe of Lorentz violations of this type.\\cite{mewes2008smecmb}\n\nEach of these potential Lorentz-violating terms carries energy dependence that increases with the dimension $d$ of the SME parameters. While the CMB is a relatively low-energy source, higher-energy sources like GRBs, pulsars, and blazars will give us much tighter constraints on these higher-dimension parameters. However, for the lowest-dimension terms, CMB measurements are not hampered by this energy dependence, and it is for this reason that we restrict our analysis only to the dimension ($d=3$) coefficients of the SME.\n\nIn this case, the change in polarization angle of a linearly polarized photon is\\cite{mewes2008smecmb}\n\\begin{equation} \\delta\\psi_z = \\int_0^z \\frac{dz}{(1+z)H_z} \\sum_{jm} Y_{jm}(\\bm{\\hat n})k^{(3)}_{(V)jm}, \\end{equation}\nwhere the sum is over $j=0,1$. For a CMB photon, this is approximately\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:DeltaPsi} \\delta\\psi_{\\mathrm{CMB}} \\approx \\left(\\frac{3.8^\\circ}{10^{-43}\\mbox{ GeV}}\\right) \\sum_{jm}Y_{jm}(\\bm{\\hat n})k^{(3)}_{(V)jm}. \\end{equation}\n\n\n\n\\section{POLARBEAR Observations}\n\\label{sec:polarbear}\n\nWe can use observations from the \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ experiment\\cite{PB1Bmodes} to constrain these dimension $d=3$ SME parameters using its three observational patches. These patches are approximately $3^\\circ\\times3^\\circ$, which is relatively small in the context of the dimension 3 parameters we wish to constrain. Eq.~(\\ref{eq:DeltaPsi}) contains simple spherical harmonics up to $j=1$, meaning we are dealing with a monopole term and dipole terms. If we take measurements of a constant rotation angle across one of these sky patches as a measurement of $\\delta\\psi$ at that particular right ascension and declination, then we can constrain direction-dependent combinations of the four $d=3$ coefficients.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n  \\centering\n  \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{PBpatches.png}\n  \\begin{tabular}{lccc}\n    \\hline\\hline\n    Patch & RA             & Dec            & Effective Area \\\\ \\hline\n    RA4.5 & $04^\\mathrm{h}40^\\mathrm{m}12^\\mathrm{s}$ & $-45^\\circ$    & 7.0 deg$^2$ \\\\\n    RA12  & $11^\\mathrm{h}53^\\mathrm{m}00^\\mathrm{s}$ & $ -0^\\circ20'$ & 8.7 deg$^2$ \\\\\n    RA23  & $23^\\mathrm{h}01^\\mathrm{m}48^\\mathrm{s}$ & $-32^\\circ48'$ & 8.8 deg$^2$\n  \\end{tabular}\n  \\caption{The three \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ Patches overlaid on a Planck Collaboration full-sky 857 GHz intensity map. \\label{fig:PBpatches}\\protect\\cite{PB1Bmodes}}\n\\end{figure}\n\nWe can see the three patches in Figure~\\ref{fig:PBpatches}, along with the values of their RA and Dec. The constraint equations would then be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\delta\\psi_{\\mathrm{ra4.5}} &=& 3.8^\\circ\\sum_{jm}Y_{jm}(-45^\\circ,70^\\circ)  \\left(\\frac{k^{(3)}_{(V)jm}}{10^{-43}\\mbox{ GeV}}\\right), \\\\\n\\delta\\psi_{\\mathrm{ra12}}  &=& 3.8^\\circ\\sum_{jm}Y_{jm}(-0.5^\\circ,178^\\circ)\\left(\\frac{k^{(3)}_{(V)jm}}{10^{-43}\\mbox{ GeV}}\\right), \\\\\n\\delta\\psi_{\\mathrm{ra23}}  &=& 3.8^\\circ\\sum_{jm}Y_{jm}(-33^\\circ,345^\\circ) \\left(\\frac{k^{(3)}_{(V)jm}}{10^{-43}\\mbox{ GeV}}\\right).\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nThere is one additional complication. During the first season of observations, the \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ experiment's absolute angle calibration was obtained by minimizing the $EB$ power spectrum under the assumption of zero overall birefringence.\\cite{keating2013calibration} Such an instrumental offset $\\alpha'$ will mix the parity-even $E$-mode polarization patterns with the parity-odd $B$-mode polarization patterns to generate spurious $TB$ and $EB$ correlations that are proportional to $\\alpha'$. $E$- and $B$-mode maps are rotated by an overall rotation angle to minimize the $EB$ power spectrum in order to remove instrumental miscalibration. This instrumental offset is unfortunately degenerate with a global birefringence angle $\\alpha$ meaning that the \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ patches cannot constrain the monopole term $k^{(3)}_{(V)00}$ but can still constrain the other coefficients even after this self-calibration procedure by performing the same $EB$ minimization procedure on each of the three patches individually and using the monopole-subtracted rotation angles to constrain the $j=1$ SME coefficients. We leave the calculation of these $j=1$ SME coefficients using data from the \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ experiment to a future work.\n\n\n\n\\section{Conclusion and Outlook}\n\nWe have seen now both a theoretical motivation to search for cosmic birefringence and a framework set up by the Standard-Model Extension to use experimental results to place limits on Lorentz-violating effects. Using measurements of the CMB's polarization rotation we can place extremely sensitive constraints on a set of low-dimension SME parameters on the order of $10^{-43}$ GeV.\n\nHowever, there is still room for improvement. Experiments like \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ are in direct need of more accurate calibration measurements. An absolute polarization-angle calibration source would allow \\textsc{Polarbear}\\ and other similar CMB experiments to forego self-calibration methods and allow measurements of a global rotation angle offset to constraint isotropic cosmic birefringence as well.\\cite{kaufman2016calibration}\n\nThe CMB's potential as a probe of parity and Lorentz violation is promising. Through more accurate polarization calibration, or multifrequency analysis, or even a probe of spurious circular polarization we may yet extract even more information from the oldest light in the universe in our search for Lorentz violations in the laws of physics.\n\n\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\n\nThe authors would like to thank Grant Teply for useful discussions and feedback on this paper, and Kevin Crowley for help with the preparation of this paper.\n\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{ws-mpla}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{INTRODUCTION}\nLiquid helium ($^4$He) has a reputation for being the first substance in which\none is able to observe many macroscopic quantum phenomena. In particular, it\nwas the first system that could sustain superfluid flow, \\cite{bulk} and as a\nconsequence display a number of amazing properties such as second sound,\nquantized vortices and the fountain effect. Furthermore, thin superfluid helium\nfilms were the first two-dimensional systems experimentally proven to undergo a\nKosterlitz-Thouless\ntransition to the normal state. \\cite{film} More recently it may\nhave been observed \\cite{Mochel} that on weakly-binding substrates these films\nare the first-known spatially ordered superfluids. \\cite{VAV}\n\nMore precisely, measurements of the third-sound resonance\nfrequency (which is proportional to the square root of the superfluid density)\nof submonolayer helium films on hydrogen and deuterium substrates apparently\nindicate two independent Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions: the usual superfluid\nto normal transition at a temperature $T_{KT}$ that obeys the expected\nuniversal jump relation, \\cite{NK} and a second new transition at a temperature\n$T_c$ which is roughly $0.5\\,\\,T_{KT}$ for all coverages. The second transition\nappears as a sharp (but not discontinuous) rise or dip in the superfluid\ndensity depending on the substrate.\n\nIn an attempt to explain these experimental results we have\nrecently proposed that below the second critical temperature the superfluid\nhelium film is in a spatially ordered phase exhibiting both off-diagonal\n(superfluid) and diagonal (hexatic) long-range order in the one-particle\ndensity matrix. \\cite{PRL} The main idea behind this proposal is that the\nhexatic to fluid transition is known to be a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition\ndriven by disclination unbinding. \\cite{NH}  (Disclinations are defects in the\norientational order of a crystal created by the insertion or removal of a wedge\nof atoms, as shown in Fig.\\ 1.) Therefore, our physical picture of the\nexperiments is that at sufficiently low temperatures the film is in a\nsuperhexatic phase with only a dilute gas of bound vortices and bound\ndisclinations present due to thermal fluctuations. For entropic reasons the\ndisclinations then unbind at $T_c$, leading to a transition from a superhexatic\nto a superfluid phase since the vortices remain bound at this transition and\nthe presence of free disclinations destroys the hexatic long-range order. At\n$T_{KT}$ the vortices then also unbind and the film is finally forced into the\nnormal liquid phase.\n\nOf course, to make sure that the above picture is qualitatively correct we must\nalso consider the interaction between vortices and disclinations. This is even\nmore pressing if one realizes that in a supersolid phase (where all\ndisclination pairs are themselves bound into pairs or triples) this interaction\nis of long range and depends logarithmically on the distance between the two\nkinds of defects. Fortunately, it turns out that this is no longer true in the\nsuperhexatic phase due to the screening of the interaction by the surrounding\ngas of disclination pairs. A renormalization-group analysis actually shows that\nthe vortex-disclination interaction is irrelevant and that the two separate\nKosterlitz-Thouless transitions indeed survive. Nevertheless, the superfluid\ndensity is influenced in a non-universal way by the unbinding of the\ndisclinations and Monte-Carlo simulations even show that on the basis of our\nhypothesis a rough qualitative agreement with the experiments of Chen and\nMochel can be obtained. \\cite{PRL}\n\nHowever, to definitely identify the phase below $T_c$ more detailed information\nis needed. As a first step towards this goal we here present the\ntwo-dimensional hydrodynamic equations of a superhexatic by describing the\nsuperhexatic as a supersolid with free dislocations (i.e.\\ disclination pairs\n\\cite{NH}). As a result of this approach we will also be able to consider the\nhydrodynamics of the supersolid phase, for which there is at present a renewed\ninterest both in the context of Josephson-junction arrays \\cite{Anne} and solid\n$^4$He. \\cite{LG} Moreover, spatially ordered superfluid states have recently\nbeen proposed to be also relevant for the fractional quantum Hall effect,\n\\cite{B} since this effect can be understood as a condensation of composite\nbosons. \\cite{Z} We therefore believe that the methods developed below might,\nif extended to bosons interacting with a Chern-Simons gauge field, also be used\nto obtain a description of the dynamics of such exotic quantum Hall states.\n\nWe have organized the paper in the following manner. In Sec.\\ \\ref{PD} we first\nconsider the normal solid and hexatic phases by formulating a gauge theory that\ndescribes the phonons, the dislocations and the interaction between them. From\nthis theory we then deduce in Sec.\\ \\ref{SOP} for both phases the dynamics of\nthe appropriate hydrodynamic degrees of freedom. In Sec.\\ \\ref{SP} we\nincorporate the effects of the additional superfluid order parameter\n\\cite{fluid} into the hydrodynamic equations derived in Sec.\\ \\ref{SOP} and\ndiscuss the various long-wavelength modes in the supersolid and superhexatic\nphases obtained in this manner. We conclude in Sec.\\ \\ref{DC} with a discussion\non the possible relevance of our work to future experiments on submonolayer\nhelium films and with a physical interpretation of our results.\n\n\\section{GAUGE THEORY OF PHONONS AND DISLOCATIONS}\n\\label{PD}\nIn this section we will derive the long-wavelength (quantum) dynamics of the\nsolid and hexatic phases. The discussion closely follows work by Kleinert,\n\\cite{K1} save that we will not include higher gradient elasticity. This leads\nto a considerable simplification of the theory but implies that we cannot\nproperly treat the dynamics of the disclinations. Fortunately, for our purposes\nonly the dynamics of the dislocations is of importance and this simplification\nis justified.\n\n\\subsection{Solid}\n\\label{S}\nIn the case of an isotropic crystal, the action for the\ndisplacement field $u_i(\\vec{x},\\tau)$ in the presence of a pair of\ndislocations is given by \\cite{K1}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{action}\nS[u_i] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n\\left\\{ \\frac{\\rho}{2} (\\partial_{\\tau}u_i - \\beta_i)^2\n           + \\mu \\left(u_{ij} - \\frac{\\beta_{ij} + \\beta_{ji}}{2}\n                 \\right)^2\n           + \\frac{\\lambda}{2} (u_{ii} - \\beta_{ii})^2 \\right\\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $u_{ij} = (\\partial_i u_j + \\partial_j u_i)\/2$ is the strain tensor,\n$\\mu$ and $\\lambda$ are the usual Lam\\'e coefficients \\cite{La} and $\\rho$ is\nthe average mass density. The unphysical (and singular) contributions arising\nfrom the multivaluedness of $u_i(\\vec{x},\\tau)$ are compensated by the\nquantities $\\beta_j$ and $\\beta_{ij}$ (also known as the `plastic distortion').\nTheir relationship to the defects is best explained by the Volterra\nconstruction. \\cite{K2} Let $\\cal C$ be a small loop bounding a section of two\ndimensional crystal that is excised from the whole (cf. Fig.\\ 2). The edges of\nthe loop are drawn together and form a line $\\cal L$. This line may be time\ndependent, and its definition is not unique. However, the topological defects\n(i.e.\\ two dislocations with opposite Burgers' vectors) associated with the\ndistortion of the surface are always located at the endpoints of $\\cal L$. If\n$\\pm \\vec{B}$ are the Burgers' vectors of the dislocations constituting the\npair and if $\\vec{v}$ is their velocity then\n$\\beta_{ij} = \\delta_i({\\cal L})B_j$ and\n$\\beta_j = - v_i \\delta_i({\\cal L})B_j$. The delta function $\\delta_i({\\cal\nL})$ is singular on the time-dependent Volterra cutting line ${\\cal L}$ of the\ndislocations and is directed along the normal vector. If the cutting line\n${\\cal L}$ is parameterized by $\\vec{x}(s,\\tau)$ with $0 \\leq s \\leq 1$, this\nmeans mathematically that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta_i({\\cal L}) = - \\epsilon_{ij} \\int_0^1 ds~\n    \\frac{\\partial x_j(s,\\tau)}{\\partial s}~\n       \\delta(\\vec{x} - \\vec{x}(s,\\tau))~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\epsilon_{ij}$ is the two-dimensional antisymmetric tensor. Note that\nthe dislocations are assumed to be able to move freely, without any friction,\nthrough the crystal because the equations of motion for the displacement field\nallow for time-dependent solutions that precisely correspond to such evolutions\nof the crystal. \\cite{Na} We will come back to the issue of friction in Sec.\\\n\\ref{SOP} when we consider the effects of dissipation.\n\nWe now first perform a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation by introducing the\nauxillary variable $\\vec p$ (representing the momentum density) and adding the\nquadratic term\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n  \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (p_i - i\\rho(\\partial_{\\tau}u_i - \\beta_i))^2\n                                                 \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nto the action, which may now be rewritten as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS[p_i,u_i] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n\\left\\{ \\frac{p_i^2}{2\\rho} \\right.\n          &+& \\mu \\left(u_{ij} - \\frac{\\beta_{ij} +\n                                       \\beta_{ji}}{2} \\right)^2\n                                                 \\nonumber \\\\\n          &+& \\left. \\frac{\\lambda}{2} (u_{ii} - \\beta_{ii})^2\n           - ip_i(\\partial_{\\tau}u_i - \\beta_i) \\right\\}~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIntegrating out $\\vec{p}$ would return the original action up to an unimportant\nconstant. In a similar manner we then also introduce the symmetric stress\ntensor $\\sigma_{ij}$, to decouple the terms quadratic in the strain. This\nresults in\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS[p_i,\\sigma_{ij},u_i] =\n              \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n\\left\\{ \\frac{p_i^2}{2\\rho} \\right.\n          &+& \\frac{1}{4\\mu} \\left(\\sigma_{ij}^2 -\n                \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu} \\sigma_{ii}^2 \\right)\n                                                \\nonumber \\\\\n&-& \\left. ip_i(\\partial_{\\tau}u_i - \\beta_i)\n         + i\\sigma_{ij} \\left( u_{ij} -\n                        \\frac{\\beta_{ij} + \\beta_{ji}}{2}\n                                            \\right) \\right\\}~,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith $\\nu = \\lambda\/(2\\mu + \\lambda)$. The partition function is now given by\nthe functional integral\n\\begin{equation}\nZ = \\int d[p_i] \\int d[\\sigma_{ij}] \\int d[u_i]~\n  \\exp \\left\\{-\\frac{1}{\\hbar} S[p_i,\\sigma_{ij},u_i] \\right\\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the integration over $\\sigma_{ij}$ is only over the symmetrical part\nsince we have not included higher gradient elasticity.\n\nWe can now perform the integration over the displacement field. Because the\naction is linear in $u_i$ this simply leads to the constraint\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{con}\n\\partial_{\\tau}p_j = \\partial_i \\sigma_{ij}~.\n\\end{equation}\nThis constraint can be automatically satisfied if we introduce the vector field\n$A_j$ and the tensor field $A_{ij}$ by setting\n$\\sigma_{ij} = \\epsilon_{ik} \\partial_k A_j\n             + \\epsilon_{ki} \\partial_\\tau A_{kj}$\nand $p_j = \\epsilon_{ki} \\partial_i A_{kj}$. Substituting these relations into\nthe action we find that the interaction between the gauge fields (i.e.\\ the\nphonons) and the dislocations is\ngiven by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{Sint}\nS_{int}[A_{ij},A_j] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n   \\{ -iA_i \\alpha_i + iA_{ij} J_{ij} \\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere after several partial integrations the unphysical singularities of\n$\\beta_i$ and $\\beta_{ij}$ have disappeared and only the dislocation density\nand the dislocation current density\nremain. Introducing also the function\n$\\delta({\\cal P}) = \\delta(\\vec{x}(1,\\tau)) -\n                                 \\delta(\\vec{x}(0,\\tau))$,\nwhich denotes the difference between a delta function at one end of the cutting\nline ${\\cal L}$ and a delta function at the other end, these densities and\ncurrents can conveniently be written as\n$\\alpha_j = \\delta({\\cal P})B_j$ and\n$J_{ij} = - v_i \\delta({\\cal P})B_j$, respectively. As a direct consequence of\nthe above definitions they obey the conservation law\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{Claw}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\alpha_j = \\partial_i J_{ij}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIn addition, the dynamics of the phonons is determined by the  remaining\nquadratic terms in the action which expressed in terms of the gauge fields\n$A_j$ and $A_{ij}$ yield\n\\begin{equation}\nS_0[A_{ij},A_j] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n  \\left\\{ \\frac{(\\epsilon_{ik} \\partial_k A_{ij})^2}{2\\rho}\n          + \\frac{1}{4\\mu} \\left(\\sigma_{ij}^2 -\n               \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu} \\sigma_{ii}^2 \\right) \\right\\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\sigma_{ij}$ equal to\n$\\epsilon_{ik}(\\partial_k A_j - \\partial_\\tau  A_{kj})$.\nComparing this result with Eq.\\ (\\ref{action}) we observe that the stress and\nthe physical part of the strain\n$u^{Phys}_{ij} \\equiv u_{ij} - (\\beta_{ij} + \\beta_{ji})\/2$\nare related by\n$\\sigma_{ij} = 2\\mu u^{Phys}_{ij} + \\lambda \\delta_{ij}\n                                                u^{Phys}_{kk}$\nand therefore by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{uphys}\nu^{Phys}_{ij} = \\frac{1}{2\\mu} \\left( \\sigma_{ij}\n            - \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu} \\delta_{ij} \\sigma_{kk} \\right)~.\n\\end{equation}\nWe will have need of the latter relation in Sec.\\ \\ref{SOP}, when we discuss\nhydrodynamics. A more formal way to justify it is to add to the action\n$S[u_i]$ a source term\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n  K_{ij} \\left(u_{ij} - \\frac{\\beta_{ij} + \\beta_{ji}}{2} \\right)\n    = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n                              K_{ij} u^{Phys}_{ij}   \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand perform the same manipulations as before. We then find that the source\n$K_{ij}$ indeed couples linearly to the right-hand side of Eq.\\ (\\ref{uphys}).\n\nFollowing Kleinert, we now notice that the above theory has\na gauge symmetry as a result of the fact that the gauge fields\n$A_i$ and $A_{ij}$ are not uniquely determined if the stresses $\\sigma_{ij}$\nand momenta $p_i$ are known. Indeed,\n$\\sigma_{ij}$ and $p_i$ are invariant under the gauge transformation $A_i\n\\rightarrow A_i + \\partial_{\\tau} \\Lambda_i$ and $A_{ij} \\rightarrow A_{ij} +\n\\partial_i \\Lambda_j$. Hence $S_0[A_{ij},A_j]$ is also invariant. Moreover, due\nto the conservation law in Eq.\\ (\\ref{Claw}), the interaction\n$S_{int}[A_{ij},A_j]$ is invariant too.\n\nTo calculate the partition function we therefore need some gauge-fixing\nprocedure. The symmetry of $\\sigma_{ij}$ requires that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\epsilon_{ij} \\sigma_{ij} = \\partial_j A_j\n                               - \\partial_{\\tau}(A_{jj}) = 0~.\n\\end{equation}\nWe would now like to write the gauge fields as the appropriate derivatives of\nunconstrained fields. Using the above gauge symmetry we can always take\n$A_i = \\epsilon_{ij} \\partial_j \\chi$ and $A_{ii}=0$.\nThis, however, does not completely fix the gauge because these conditions are\nstill invariant under the smaller group of transformations\n$\\chi \\rightarrow \\chi + \\partial_{\\tau} \\Lambda$ and\n$A_{ij} \\rightarrow A_{ij} + \\partial_i (\\epsilon_{jk}\n                             \\partial_k \\Lambda)$.\nTo see more clearly the consequences of this residual symmetry we\nexpand $A_{ij}$ into its longitudinal and transverse components (with respect\nto both indices), i.e.\n\\begin{equation}\nA_{ij} = \\partial_i (\\partial_j A^{LL})\n         + \\partial_i (\\epsilon_{jk} \\partial_k A^{LT})\n         + \\epsilon_{ik} \\partial_k (\\partial_j A^{TL})\n         + \\epsilon_{ik} \\partial_k\n                             (\\epsilon_{jl} \\partial_l A^{TT})~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced four new fields. The tracelessness of $A_{ij}$ can\nthen be fulfilled by taking $A^{LL} = -A^{TT}$. In addition, the residual gauge\nsymmetry can now be written as\n$\\chi \\rightarrow \\chi + \\partial_{\\tau} \\Lambda$ and\n$A^{LT} \\rightarrow A^{LT} + \\Lambda$. This shows that instead of the fields\n$\\chi$ and $A^{LT}$ we must use the gauge-invariant field $\\chi' \\equiv \\chi\n- \\partial_{\\tau} A^{LT}$ together with $\\Lambda$ as integration variables. The\nassociated change of\nmeasure can be incorporated in the normalization and the same is true for the\n`volume' $\\int d[\\Lambda]$ of the residual gauge group because the action is\ngauge invariant and therefore cannot depend on $\\Lambda$. After this\ngauge-fixing procedure the partition function thus becomes\n\\begin{equation}\nZ = \\int d[A^{TT}] \\int d[A^{TL}] \\int d[\\chi']~\n  \\exp \\left\\{-\\frac{1}{\\hbar} \\left(S_0[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] +\n                 S_{int}[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] \\right) \\right\\}~.\n\\end{equation}\nNote that we are left with three physical degrees of freedom, which is the\ncorrect number in two dimensions since $\\sigma_{ij}$ and $p_i$ contain in\nprinciple a total of five degrees of freedom but we have two constraints in\nEq.\\ (\\ref{con}). Note also that the transformation from $\\sigma_{ij}$ and\n$p_i$ to $A^{TT}$, $A^{TL}$ and $\\chi'$ is a linear one so that the Jacobian\ninvolved in the calculation of the partition function is simply an unimportant\nconstant. In particular, the stress is given by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{stress}\n\\sigma_{ij}= \\epsilon_{ik}\\epsilon_{j\\ell}\\partial_k \\partial_\\ell \\chi'\n  + \\partial_\\tau\\left(\n    \\partial_i \\partial_j A^{TL}\n  + \\epsilon_{ik} \\partial_k \\partial_j A^{TT}\n  + \\epsilon_{jk} \\partial_k \\partial_i A^{TT}\n        \\right)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is manifestly symmetric in $i$ and $j$.\n\nA straightforward calculation now shows that the free part of the action is\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{s0}\nS_0[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] &=&\n   \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n     \\left\\{ \\frac{1}{2\\mu} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n     \\right. \\nonumber \\\\\n &+& \\left.\n     \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial^2 \\chi')^2\n     \\right. \\nonumber \\\\\n &-& \\left.\n     \\frac{1}{2\\mu} \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu}\n        (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL})(\\partial^2 \\chi')\n     \\right\\}~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIt contains four modes: The part involving $A^{TT}$ has a pair of modes\n(corresponding to $\\pm \\vec{k}$) with\n$\\omega^2 = \\mu \\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$. These modes therefore represent the transverse\nphonons with a speed of sound $\\sqrt{\\mu\/\\rho}$. The part involving $A^{TL}$\nand $\\chi'$ has another pair of modes with a dispersion obeying\n$\\omega^2 = (2\\mu + \\lambda) \\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$.\nThese represent the longitudinal phonons with a speed of sound $\\sqrt{(2\\mu +\n\\lambda)\/\\rho}$. Interestingly, these results can be understood much more\neasily if we introduce the field\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{chidp}\n\\chi'' \\equiv \\chi' - \\nu \\partial_{\\tau} A^{TL}~,\n\\end{equation}\nsince then the above action becomes\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{uncoupled}\nS_0[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi''] &=&\n   \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n     \\left\\{ \\frac{1}{2\\mu} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n     \\right. \\nonumber \\\\\n &+& \\left.\n     \\frac{1-\\nu}{4\\mu} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n           + \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial^2 \\chi'')^2\n     \\right\\}~,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nso that the fields are completely uncoupled. Notice that the $\\chi''$ field has\nno kinetic term, which explains why we obtained above only four modes instead\nof six, as might have been expected in first instance.\n\nFurthermore, if we introduce the usual Burgers' field $\\vec{b}(\\vec{x},\\tau)$\nfor the total dislocation density, which is nothing more than the sum of the\ndensity $\\alpha_i$ over all dislocation pairs, then the interaction with the\ndislocations acquires the form\n\\begin{equation}\nS_{int}[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] =\n  \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    i \\left\\{ \\chi' \\epsilon_{ij} \\partial_j b_i\n              - A^{TT} \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial_i b_i\n      \\right\\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have made use of Eq.\\ (\\ref{Claw}) to express the longitudinal part\nof the current density $J_{ij}$ in terms of the time derivative of $b_i$.\nDecomposing $\\vec{b}$ into its transverse and longitudinal parts, i.e.\\\n$b_i = \\partial_i b^L + \\epsilon_{ij} \\partial_j b^T$, the interaction finally\nbecomes\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{int}\nS_{int}[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] =\n  \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    i \\left\\{ \\chi' \\partial^2 b^T\n              - A^{TT} \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 b^L\n      \\right\\}~.\n\\end{equation}\nThe total action $S = S_0 + S_{int}$ reduces for time-independent\nconfigurations to the one we previously used for a discussion of the critical\nproperties of the superhexatic. \\cite{PRL} Integrating out the fields $A^{TT}$\nand $\\chi'$ we can now find the time-dependent interaction among the\ndislocations. Physically, these interactions are thus associated with phonon\nexchange and the time dependence arises due to the finite speeds of sound. This\npicture also explains why the effective action for $\\chi'$ contains just\none pair of modes: The self-interaction of the\ntransverse dislocation density can only be mediated by\nlongitudinal phonons.\n\n\\subsection{Hexatic}\n\\label{Hex}\nUp to this point the dislocation density has not been an independent\ndynamical variable, since we have specified the positions of the dislocations\nat all times and thus neglected the influence of the phonon dynamics on\ntheir motion. However, to describe the hexatic phase we want to\nintegrate out the dislocations in the\nplasma (or continuous) approximation. \\cite{NH} For that we need the free\naction of the field $\\vec{b}$. Here we can again make use of the results\nobtained by Kleinert, who showed that the energy associated with the nonlinear\nstresses at the heart of the defect can be lumped into a `core contribution' to\nthe action. \\cite{K1,K3} In our notation this contribution becomes\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{dislo}\nS_0[b_i] &=& \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{E_c}{2} b_i\n     \\left( \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\n            \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2} + 1 \\right) b_i\n                                                     \\nonumber \\\\\n &=& \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{E_c}{2} \\left\\{\n       b^T \\left( \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu} \\partial_{\\tau}^2\n                                 + \\partial^2 \\right) b^T\n     + b^L \\left( \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu} \\partial_{\\tau}^2\n                                 + \\partial^2 \\right) b^L\n                   \\right\\} ~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThis action represents free propagation of the dislocation density fluctuations\nwhich, as mentioned previously, are permitted by the classical equations of\nmotion \\cite{Na} and neglects dissipative coupling of the dislocation cores to\nthe phonons.\n\nIntegrating out the Burgers' field using Eqs.\\ (\\ref{int}) and (\\ref{dislo}),\nwe obtain the following results. The effective action for $A^{TT}$ becomes\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS^{eff}[A^{TT}] =\n  \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\left\\{ \\frac{1}{2\\mu} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n    \\right. + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TT})^2\n                                 \\hspace*{1.0in} \\nonumber \\\\\n   + \\left.\n     \\frac{1}{2E_c} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial_i A^{TT})\n       \\left(\n         \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2} + 1\n       \\right)^{-1}\n                    (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial_i A^{TT})\n    \\right\\}~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nAs shown in Fig.\\ 3a, it contains two pairs of modes which for\n$\\vec{k}^2 \\gg \\mu\/2E_c$ all have a dispersion obeying\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq \\mu \\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$. However, for\n$\\vec{k}^2 \\ll \\mu\/2E_c$, one pair of modes has a dispersion\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq \\mu^2\/E_c\\rho + 2\\mu\\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$ with a gap whereas\nthe other pair of modes is gapless with\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq 2E_c \\vec{k}^4\/\\rho$. This is consistent with our expectation\nthat in the hexatic phase there should only be one pair of transverse\ngapless modes with a softer dispersion than that of the transverse phonon\nmodes in a true solid.\n\nThe effective action for $\\chi'$ and $A^{TL}$ in the hexatic phase is\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS^{eff}[A^{TL},\\chi'] &=&\n   \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n     \\left\\{\n     \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n     \\right.\n          + \\frac{1}{2\\rho} (\\partial_i \\partial^2 A^{TL})^2\n                                                   \\nonumber \\\\\n         &+& \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial^2 \\chi')^2\n          - \\frac{1}{2\\mu} \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu}\n            (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL})(\\partial^2 \\chi')\n                                                   \\nonumber \\\\\n  &+& \\left.\n      \\frac{1}{2E_c} (\\partial_i \\chi')\n       \\left(\n         \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2} + 1\n       \\right)^{-1} (\\partial_i \\chi')\n       \\right\\}~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIntegrating out also $A^{TL}$ we finally arrive at the effective action for\n$\\chi'$. It reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nS^{eff}[\\chi'] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n     \\left\\{ \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial^2 \\chi')^2\n       + \\frac{1}{2E_c} (\\partial_i \\chi')\n           \\left(\n             \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2}\n                                                              + 1\n           \\right)^{-1} (\\partial_i \\chi')\n     \\right.       \\hspace*{0.5in}        \\nonumber \\\\\n     \\left.\n       + \\frac{1}{2} \\left(\\frac{1}{2\\mu}\n                              \\frac{\\nu}{1+\\nu} \\right)^2\n          (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 \\chi')\n            \\left( \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{2\\mu(1+\\nu)}\n                      + \\frac{\\partial^2}{\\rho} \\right)^{-1}\n             (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 \\chi')\n     \\right\\}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand also contains two pairs of modes (cf. Fig.\\ 3b).\nFor $\\vec{k}^2 \\gg \\mu\/2E_c$ we\nrecover of course the ordinary sound dispersions\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq 2\\mu\\vec{k^2}\/(\\rho(1-\\nu))\n                            = (2\\mu +\\lambda)\\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$\nand $\\omega^2 \\simeq \\mu\\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$. However, in the limit\n$\\vec{k}^2 \\ll \\mu\/2E_c$ these evolve into a pair of gapped modes with\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq 2\\mu^2\/(E_c\\rho(1-\\nu))$ and a pair of propagating modes\nwith $\\omega^2 \\simeq 2\\mu(1+\\nu)\\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$, respectively.\nClearly, the same mode structure is\nalso present in the effective action for $A^{TL}$ (obtained by integrating out\n$\\chi'$ instead of $A^{TL}$) which indicates that in the\nhexatic phase the longitudinal velocity is renormalized downwards to\n$\\sqrt{2\\mu(1+\\nu)\/\\rho}$.\n\n\\section{HYDRODYNAMICS OF SPATIALLY ORDERED PHASES}\n\\label{SOP}\nWe now turn to the linear hydrodynamics of the solid and hexatic phases that\nfollows from the theory presented above. For the sake of clarity, and because\nit will turn out to be less important for our purposes, we will not discuss\ntemperature fluctuations in the following. However, having derived the\nrelevant energy\ndensities in Secs. \\ref{S} and \\ref{Hex} it is in principle straightforward to\ninclude temperature fluctuations in our theory and, in particular, to arrive at\nthe extension of the hydrodynamic equations presented below that is required if\none wants to consider also the hydrodynamic mode due to energy conservation.\nAfter the equations of motion for the hydrodynamic variables are determined,\nwe can find the propagating and diffusive modes. This is done as before,\nby Fourier transforming the equations of motion and determining the dispersion\n$\\omega(k)$.\nPropagating modes appear as complex roots of a characteristic equation and\nwill always occur in pairs. Each physically distinct propagating excitation\nsuch as longitudinal or transverse sound corresponds therefore to two\nroots or modes.\n\nWe start by considering the mass-density fluctuation $\\delta\\rho$ above the\naverage mass density $\\rho$ and initially neglect the possible presence of\nvacancies and interstitials. To lowest order in the strain, the density\nfluctuation equals $-\\rho u^{Phys}_{ii}$ so up to that order we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\delta\\rho = - \\rho \\partial_{\\tau} u^{Phys}_{ii}\n  = - \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)} \\partial_{\\tau}\n                                                  \\sigma_{ii}~,\n\\end{equation}\nif we make use of Eq.\\ (\\ref{uphys}) to relate the stress and the strain. Using\nalso the decomposition\n$\\sigma_{ii} = \\partial^2 \\chi' + \\partial_{\\tau}\n                                             \\partial^2 A^{TL}$ from\nEq.\\ (\\ref{stress})\nwe may write this as a pair of continuity equations\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\label{hydro}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\delta\\rho = \\partial_i g_i^L~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} g_j^L = \\partial_i \\pi_{ij}^D~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nwhere the longitudinal momentum density is given by\n\\begin{equation}\ng_i^L = - \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)} \\partial_{\\tau}\n           \\partial_i (\\chi' + \\partial_{\\tau} A^{TL})\n\\end{equation}\nand the diagonal part of the stress tensor by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\pi_{ij}^D = - \\frac{\\rho \\delta_{ij}}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)}\n             \\partial_{\\tau}^2 (\\chi' + \\partial_{\\tau} A^{TL})~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIn the absence of defects, the hydrodynamic quantities $g_i^L$ and\n$\\pi_{ij}^D$ are precisely equal to the longitudinal part of $p_i$ and the\ndiagonal part of $\\sigma_{ij}$, respectively. This can be seen in the\nfollowing manner. In an ideal solid we have no defects, and variation\nof the action in Eq.\\ (\\ref{uncoupled}) gives $\\chi''=0$ or\n$\\chi'=\\nu \\partial_\\tau A^{TL}$, which we may use to eliminate $\\chi'$.\nThe equation of motion for $A^{TL}$ generated in this way is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{ATLmotion}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TL} = - \\frac{2\\mu + \\lambda}{\\rho}\n                                          \\partial^2 A^{TL}.\n\\end{equation}\nIf we substitute this back into the definitions of $g_i^L$ and $\\pi_{ij}^D$\nwe obtain the longitudinal part of $p_i$ and the\ndiagonal part of $\\sigma_{ij}$ as given in section \\ref{PD}.\nIn the presence of defects with their own dynamics this is no longer true,\nsince the dislocation density couples to the gauge fields and alters\nthe equations of motion. To avoid confusion about this point we have,\ntherefore, introduced a new notation for the hydrodynamic\nmomentum density and stress tensor which we will use for the rest of\nthe paper.\n\nWe also note that the above equations\nare not Galilean invariant and are therefore only valid in a specific reference\nframe. This is a result of the fact that the gauge theory of Sec.\\ \\ref{PD} has\nimplicitly used the existence of an ideal lattice with respect to which the\ndisplacements $\\vec{u}(\\vec{x},\\tau)$ are defined. \\cite{K2} Hence, the\nprefered reference frame corresponds to that frame in which this ideal lattice\nis at rest. This is the case for all the hydrodynamic equations presented\nbelow.\n\nIn this ideal solid without interstitials or vacancies the pressure\nfluctuation (following from\n$\\pi_{ij}^D = - \\delta_{ij} \\delta p$) equals\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{press}\n\\delta p = \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)}\n              (1 + \\nu) \\partial_{\\tau}^3 A^{TL}\n         = \\frac{\\rho}{2\\mu + \\lambda} \\partial_{\\tau}^3\n                                                         A^{TL}\n\\end{equation}\nand the mass-density fluctuation becomes\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta\\rho = - \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)}\n              (1 + \\nu) \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL}\n            = - \\frac{\\rho}{2\\mu + \\lambda}\n                        \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL}~.\n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting the equation of motion Eq.\\ (\\ref{ATLmotion})\nfor $A^{TL}$ into Eq.\\ (\\ref{press}), we obtain the desired constitutive\nequation\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta p = \\frac{2\\mu + \\lambda}{\\rho} \\delta\\rho~.\n\\end{equation}\nTogether with the hydrodynamic equations (\\ref{hydro}) this correctly leads to\nthe sound equation\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{sound}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\delta\\rho\n    = - \\frac{2\\mu + \\lambda}{\\rho} \\partial^2 \\delta\\rho\n    = - c_{||}^2 \\partial^2 \\delta\\rho~,\n\\end{equation}\nwith $c_{||}$ the longitudinal sound velocity.\n\nHowever, as stressed first by Martin, Parodi, and Pershan \\cite{M} and again by\nZippelius, Halperin, and Nelson \\cite{ZHN} we are not in general allowed to\nassume that the crystal is ideal, without vacancies or interstitials. We must\ninclude the effects of (long-wavelength) fluctuations in the net defect density\n$n_{\\Delta}$, which is defined as the density\nof vacancies minus the density of interstitials. To do so we can make use of\nthe fact that in a hexagonal system these defects can be regarded as a `bound\nstate' of three dislocations with radial Burgers' vectors pointing\nsymmetrically outward (interstitial) or inward (vacancy). \\cite{N} This is\nillustrated for an interstitial in Fig.\\ 4. As a result the interaction of the\nnet defect density with the gauge fields is given by\n\\begin{equation}\nS_{int}[A^{TT},A^{TL},\\chi'] =\n          \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n      i \\frac{\\gamma_{\\Delta}}{\\mu} n_{\\Delta} \\partial^2\n                                                          \\chi'~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $V_0$ denotes the area deficit induced by a defect in an otherwise\nperfect crystal and $\\gamma_\\Delta =\\mu {c_{||}^2} {V_0}\/{2}{c_{\\perp}^2}$.\nWe can verify this result by noting that in the static case (and $n_{\\Delta}\n\\rightarrow in_{\\Delta}$ because of our conventions in the imaginary time\nformalism of Sec.\\ \\ref{PD}) the Euler-Lagrange equation for the Airy stress\nfunction, following from the action in Eq.\\ (\\ref{s0}) together with the above\ninteraction, becomes\n$\\partial^2 \\chi = 2(\\mu + \\lambda) V_0 n_{\\Delta}$\nwhich correctly leads to\n$\\int d\\vec{x}~u^{Phys}_{ii} = V_0 \\int d\\vec{x}~n_{\\Delta}$.\nFurthermore, the free action of the defects becomes\n(cf. Eq.\\ (\\ref{dislo}))\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{free}\nS_0[n_{\\Delta}] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{E_{\\Delta}}{2} n_{\\Delta}\n     \\left( \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu} \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2}\n             + 1 \\right) n_{\\Delta}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwith $E_{\\Delta}$ of order $E_c V_0$.\n\nRedoing our calculations with $n_{\\Delta}$ non-zero, we find that\n$n_{\\Delta}$ displaces the $\\chi'$ field. Therefore $\\chi''$ in Eq.\\\n(\\ref{chidp}) is also non-zero. Moreover, we now obtain instead of Eq.\\\n(\\ref{sound}) the coupled set of equations\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\label{sounds}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\delta\\rho =\n   - c_{||}^2 \\left(\n                1 + \\frac{\\nu \\gamma_{\\Delta}^2}\n                                         {E_{\\Delta} \\mu}\n              \\right) \\partial^2 \\delta\\rho\n   + i \\gamma_{\\Delta}\n              \\left(\n                1 - \\frac{2 \\gamma_{\\Delta}^2}\n                                         {E_{\\Delta} \\mu}\n              \\right) \\partial^2 n_{\\Delta}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 n_{\\Delta} =\n   - c_{\\perp}^2 \\left(\n                   1 + \\frac{2 \\gamma_{\\Delta}^2}\n                                         {E_{\\Delta} \\mu}\n                 \\right) \\partial^2 n_{\\Delta}\n   + i \\frac{\\gamma_{\\Delta}\\lambda}\n                   {E_{\\Delta}\\rho^2} \\partial^2 \\delta\\rho~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nfor the longitudinal degrees of freedom. Note that the density fluctuation\n$\\delta\\rho$ receives a contribution from both the lattice vibrations as well\nas\nfrom the net defect density, since\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta\\rho =\n   - \\frac{1}{c_{||}^2} \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL}\n   + \\frac{2i \\gamma_{\\Delta}}{c_{||}^2} n_{\\Delta}~.\n\\end{equation}\nAs a result the longitudinal momentum density has also two contributions\n\\begin{equation}\ng^L_i =\n   - \\frac{1}{c_{||}^2} \\partial_i \\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TL}\n   - \\frac{2i \\gamma_{\\Delta}}{c_{||}^2} J^L_i~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\vec{J}^L$ is the longitudinal part of the net defect current density\nobeying the continuity equation\n$\\partial_{\\tau} n_{\\Delta} = - \\partial_i J^L_i$.\n\nThis almost completes our discussion of the hydrodynamical description (without\ndissipation) of the solid phase. However, we have not yet obtained the\ntransverse modes. From our expressions for the strain tensor $u_{ij}$ one can\neasily show that in the solid phase the transverse part of the displacement\nfield is given by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{disp}\nu^T_i = \\frac{1}{\\mu} \\epsilon_{ij}\n                           \\partial_j (\\partial_{\\tau} A^{TT})\n      = \\frac{1}{\\rho c_{\\perp}^2} \\epsilon_{ij}\n                           \\partial_j (\\partial_{\\tau} A^{TT})~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $c_{\\perp}$ is the transverse speed of sound. Hence, the transverse\ndynamics of the lattice is solely determined by the transverse phonons and we\nhave the additional hydrodynamic equation\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TT} =\n                    - c_{\\perp}^2 \\partial^2 A^{TT}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is completely uncoupled from the previous ones and in particular does not\ndepend on the net defect density $n_{\\Delta}$. Moreover, if we introduce the\nstandard hexatic order parameter $\\vartheta_6$, which is equal to the local\nbond angle and may therefore be written as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\vartheta_6 \\equiv \\frac{1}{2} \\epsilon_{ij} \\partial_i u_j\n            = - \\frac{1}{2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2}\n                     (\\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TT})~,\n\\end{equation}\nthe equation for $A^{TT}$ is equivalent to\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\vartheta_6 =\n                    - c_{\\perp}^2 \\partial^2 \\vartheta_6~,\n\\end{equation}\nso that $\\vartheta_6$ can also be used to describe the transverse phonons.\n\n{}From Eq.\\ (\\ref{disp}) we also find that the transverse part of the momentum\ndensity is given by\n\\begin{equation}\ng_i^T = \\frac{1}{c_{\\perp}^2} \\epsilon_{ij}\n                   \\partial_j (\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TT})~.\n\\end{equation}\nTherefore the stress tensor has the nondiagonal contribution\n\\begin{equation}\n\\pi_{ij}^{ND} = - \\frac{1}{c_{\\perp}^2} \\epsilon_{ij}\n                                  (\\partial_{\\tau}^3 A^{TT})\n              = 2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\epsilon_{ij} \\vartheta_6~,\n\\end{equation}\nand both the longitudinal as well as the transverse hydrodynamic equations in\nthe solid phase can be summarized by\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t} = -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{momS}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - c^2 \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\gamma_{\\Delta} \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + 2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla \\times \\vartheta_6~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{transS}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                   \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial n_{\\Delta}}{\\partial t} =\n      -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{longS}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{J}}{\\partial t} =\n      - c_{\\Delta}^2 \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + \\gamma \\nabla \\delta\\rho~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nafter a transformation to real time, which in this case not only means that\n$\\tau \\rightarrow it$ but also\n$\\vec{g} \\rightarrow i\\vec{g}$ and\n$n_{\\Delta} \\rightarrow in_{\\Delta}$. Moreover, note that the constants\n$c$, $\\gamma_{\\Delta}$, $c_{\\Delta}$, and $\\gamma$ should here be\ninterpreted as renormalized quantities which are determined in terms of the\nmicroscopic parameters of our gauge theory by a comparison with\nEq.\\ (\\ref{sounds}).\n\nNow we are ready to discuss dissipation. In principle dissipation has already\nbeen included because there is a coupling between the net defect density\n$n_{\\Delta}$ and the phonons. Hence if for example an interstitial were, in a\ndiscrete picture, to tunnel from one location to another there would be a\n`shake up' of the phonon field. However, if we treat $n_{\\Delta}$ as a smooth\ncontinuously varying field, the action in Eq.\\ (\\ref{free}) is quadratic and\nthe bilinear coupling\n$n_{\\Delta} \\partial^2 \\chi'$ produces only mixing of the collective modes\nbut no real dissipation. Therefore, we choose to include effective dissipation\nin the same manner as explained in detail by Zippelius, Halperin and Nelson.\n\\cite{ZHN} Using their notation we first of all add to the right-hand side of\nEq.\\ (\\ref{momS}) the terms\n$(\\eta \\nabla^2 \\vec{g}\n   + \\zeta \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}) )\/\\rho$\nassociated with the dissipative part of the stress tensor $\\pi_{ij}$ and\nrepresenting viscous diffusion of the momentum density.\n\nNext the question arises how we need to modify\nEq.\\ (\\ref{longS}). This equation is a result of the fact that we have allowed\nthe dislocations, and hence the interstitials and vacancies, to move freely\nthrough the lattice and used Eq.\\ (\\ref{free}) for the free action of the\ndefects. If the defects effectively experience friction (for example due to\ntheir interaction with the phonons), then it is more appropriate to add a\nLeggett friction term \\cite{TL} and use\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{diss}\nS_0[n_{\\Delta}] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{E_{\\Delta}}{2} n_{\\Delta}\n     \\left( \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\n       \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2}\n         + i \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu} \\xi \\partial_{\\tau} + 1\n     \\right) n_{\\Delta}\n\\end{equation}\ninstead. The dispersions then indeed obey\n$\\omega^{\\pm} \\simeq \\pm c_{\\perp} k - i \\xi k^2\/2$ at long wavelengths, and we\nmust add the term\n$\\xi \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J})$ to the right-hand side of Eq.\\\n(\\ref{longS}). If we further assume that the transverse part of the defect\ncurrent density behaves as in a gas and simply diffuses to zero with a\ndiffusion constant $\\kappa$, we obtain in total\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\label{HS}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t} = -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - \\frac{B}{\\rho} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\gamma_{\\Delta} \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + 2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla \\times \\vartheta_6\n      + \\frac{\\eta}{\\rho} \\nabla^2 \\vec{g}\n      + \\frac{\\zeta}{\\rho} \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g})~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                  \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial n_{\\Delta}}{\\partial t} =\n      -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{diff}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{J}}{\\partial t} =\n      - c_{\\Delta}^2 \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + \\gamma \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      + \\kappa \\nabla^2 \\vec{J}\n      + \\xi \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J})~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nwith $B = \\rho \\partial p\/\\partial\\rho|_{n_{\\Delta},T} =\n                                          \\rho c^2$\nthe appropriate isothermal bulk modulus in view of the fact that the pressure\nis a function of both the particle density as well as the net defect density.\n{}From thermodynamics we therefore also conclude that\n$\\gamma_{\\Delta} = \\partial p\/\\partial n_{\\Delta}|_{\\rho,T}$.\n\nIt is interesting to point out that these hydrodynamic equations differ from\nthe results obtained by Zippelius, Halperin, and Nelson. In particular, their\nEq.\\ (3.32) differs from our\nEq.\\ (\\ref{diff}) and reads\n\\begin{equation}\n\\vec{J} =\n   - \\Gamma_{\\Delta} \\nabla\n       \\left( \\frac{n_{\\Delta}}{\\chi_{\\Delta}} -\n                                  \\gamma_{\\Delta} \\delta\\rho\n       \\right)~.\n\\end{equation}\nThe difference can easily be traced back to the fact that Zippelius, Halperin,\nand Nelson assume on phenomenological grounds that the dynamics of the net\ndefect density is purely diffusive. Indeed, we exactly reproduce their results\nif we use in our calculation a free action of the form\n\\begin{equation}\nS_0[n_{\\Delta}] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{E_{\\Delta}}{2} n_{\\Delta}\n          \\left(\n            \\frac{i\\partial_{\\tau}}{D_{\\Delta} \\partial^2} + 1\n          \\right) n_{\\Delta}\n\\end{equation}\ninstead of Eq.\\ (\\ref{free}). We can therefore consider the hydrodynamic\nequations of Zippelius, Halperin and Nelson as the overdamped (or classical)\nlimit of our Eq.\\ (\\ref{HS}). Clearly, Kleinert's more microscopic approach\ndoes not lead to purely diffusive but in first instance to propagating behavior\nof\nthe defects, which is appropriate for the quantum crystals of interest in Sec.\\\n\\ref{SP}. We now turn to the modification of the above results in the hexatic\nphase.\n\nIn the hexatic phase there are free dislocations present and $\\chi''$ replaces\n$n_{\\Delta}$ as the appropriate dynamical degree of freedom. To see most\nclearly how this comes about we will work perturbatively in $1\/E_c$. Up to\nfirst order in $1\/E_c$\nthe effective action for $\\chi''$ is\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n     \\left\\{ \\frac{1}{4\\mu(1+\\nu)} (\\partial^2 \\chi'')^2\n       + \\frac{1}{2E_c} (\\partial_i \\chi'')\n           \\left(\n             \\frac{\\rho}{\\mu}\n             \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2} + 1\n           \\right)^{-1} (\\partial_i \\chi'')\n          \\right\\}~,                             \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich upon Fourier transformation displays two modes with\n$\\omega^2 = c_{\\perp}^2 \\vec{k}^2 + 2\\mu^2(1+\\nu)\/(E_c\\rho)$. So in the\nlimit $E_c \\rightarrow \\infty$ (which physically means that we are looking at\nthe nonhydrodynamic regime\n$\\vec{k}^2 \\gg \\mu\/2E_c$) we approximately have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\chi'' = - c_{\\perp}^2 \\partial^2 \\chi''~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhereas the equations of motion for $A^{TL}$ and $A^{TT}$ are\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TL} =\n                    - c_{||}^2 \\nabla^2 A^{TL}\n                    + \\frac{\\nu}{1-\\nu^2} \\partial_{\\tau} \\chi''\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TT} =\n                    - c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla^2 A^{TT}~,\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively. For the mass-density fluctuation we now find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\delta\\rho = - \\frac{1}{c_{||}^2}\n            \\partial_{\\tau} \\partial^2 A^{TL}\n          - \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)} \\partial^2 \\chi''\n\\end{equation}\nand for the stress tensor\n\\begin{equation}\n\\pi_{ij}^D = - \\delta_{ij}\n   \\left\\{\n      \\frac{1}{c_{||}^2} \\partial_{\\tau}^3 A^{TL}\n    + \\frac{\\rho}{2(\\mu + \\lambda)} \\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\chi''\n   \\right\\}\n         = - \\delta_{ij}\n   \\left\\{ c_{||}^2 \\delta\\rho\n           + \\frac{1}{2(1+\\nu)} \\partial^2 \\chi''\n   \\right\\}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nPutting all this together we obtain in first instance the following set of\nhydrodynamic equations for the hexatic phase\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\delta\\rho = \\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}^L~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\vec{g}^L = - \\nabla \\delta p\n    = - c_{||}^2 \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\frac{1}{2(1+\\nu)} \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\chi'')~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\chi'' = - c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla^2 \\chi''~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TT} =\n                    - c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla^2 A^{TT}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nCombining the longitudinal and transverse parts as before, this equals\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\delta\\rho = \\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{mom}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\vec{g} =\n      - c_{||}^2 \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\frac{1}{2(1+\\nu)} \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\chi'')\n      + 2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla \\times \\vartheta_6~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 \\chi'' = - c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla^2 \\chi''~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\vartheta_6 =\n                   - \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nand clearly reduces to the hydrodynamic equations for the ideal crystal if we\nput $\\chi''=0$.\n\nWe now have to consider how the above picture changes for a finite value of\n$E_c$. Here we can use the results of\nSec.\\ \\ref{Hex}. In the hydrodynamic regime\n$\\vec{k}^2 \\ll \\mu\/2E_c$ we saw that the transverse speed of sound was\nrenormalized to zero, because we found the quadratic (particle-like) dispersion\n$\\omega^2 = 2E_c \\vec{k}^4\/\\rho$. As a result we have for the transverse\npart of the hydrodynamic equations\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau}^2 A^{TT} =\n                    \\frac{2E_c}{\\rho} \\partial^4 A^{TT}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich implies that in the right-hand side of Eq.\\ (\\ref{mom}) we must replace\n$2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla \\times \\vartheta_6$ by\n$- 4 E_c \\vec{e}_z \\times \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6)$. This gives\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\vec{g}^T =\n      - 4 E_c \\vec{e}_z \\times \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\partial_{\\tau} \\vartheta_6 =\n                   - \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}^T~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nwhich is in complete agreement with Zippelius, Halperin, and Nelson if we\nidentify the Frank constant $K_A$ with $8E_c$.\n\nFor the longitudinal part we need to analyze the dynamics of $\\chi''$ and\n$A^{TL}$. A straightforward calculation shows that the effective action for\nthese fields contains precisely the four modes already found in Sec.\\\n\\ref{Hex}. The propagating modes with $\\omega^2 = 2\\mu(1+\\nu)\n\\vec{k}^2\/\\rho$ obey\n$\\chi' = \\chi'' + \\nu \\partial_{\\tau} A^{TL} =0$ and are therefore indeed\nassociated with density fluctuations proportional to $\\partial^2 \\chi''$. We\nthus need to use a renormalized longitudinal speed of sound equal to\n\\begin{equation}\nc = \\sqrt{\\frac{2\\mu (1+\\nu)}{\\rho}}\n       = \\sqrt{\\frac{2\\mu}{\\rho}\n                  \\frac{2\\mu + 2\\lambda}{2\\mu + \\lambda}}\n\\end{equation}\nthat is always smaller than the longitudinal speed of sound in the solid phase.\nIn fact, this actually exhausts the longitudinal hydrodynamic modes since the\nother modes in the effective action for $\\chi''$ and $A^{TL}$ are gapped. As a\nresult we now obtain in real time the following set of hydrodynamic equations\nfor the hexatic phase\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t}\n                                = - \\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{momH}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - c^2 \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\frac{K_A}{2}\n           \\,\\,\\vec{e}_z \\times \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{transH}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                    \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nnot including dissipation.\n\nTo include dissipation we again follow Zippelius, Halperin and Nelson and add\nto the right-hand side of Eq.\\ (\\ref{momH}) the terms $(\\eta \\nabla^2 \\vec{g}\n        + \\zeta \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}) )\/\\rho$.\nHowever, we do not add the term $\\kappa \\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6$ to the right-hand\nside of Eq.\\ (\\ref{transH}) because, just as in the solid phase, the\ndissipation of the transverse modes is already accounted for in the term $\\eta\n\\nabla^2 \\vec{g}$ that is added to the momentum equation. Put differently, a\nterm of the form $\\kappa \\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6$ can be absorbed by an\nappropriate redefinition of $K_A$ and $\\eta$. Again introducing the isothermal\nbulk modulus\n$B = \\rho dp\/d\\rho|_T = \\rho c^2$ we then find\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\label{HH}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t}\n                                = - \\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - \\frac{B}{\\rho} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      - \\frac{K_A}{2}\n           \\vec{e}_z \\times \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6)\n      + \\frac{\\eta}{\\rho} \\nabla^2 \\vec{g}\n      + \\frac{\\zeta}{\\rho} \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}) ~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{theta}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                    \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nas our final result for the hexatic phase. Apart from the absence of a\ndissipative term in Eq.\\ (\\ref{theta}) it agrees with the findings of\nZippelius, Halperin and Nelson and therefore contains the same mode structure\nas derived in that paper. For completeness sake, we mention however that the\nequations of motion for the hexatic order parameter $\\vartheta_6$ can be\nderived from an effective action\n\\begin{equation}\nS^{eff}[\\vartheta_6] = \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    \\frac{1}{2} \\vartheta_6\n     \\left( 4\\rho \\frac{\\partial_{\\tau}^2}{\\partial^2}\n       + 4i \\eta \\partial_{\\tau} - K_A \\partial^2\n     \\right) \\vartheta_6~,\n\\end{equation}\nthat can easily be understood physically: The first term on the right-hand side\ncorresponds to the kinetic energy\n$\\int d\\vec{x} \\rho (\\partial_{\\tau} \\vec{u})^2\/2$\nof the displacement field. The second term is a Leggett friction term and the\nlast term corresponds to the usual Frank energy, which is responsible for the\nfact that the hexatic to liquid transition is of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type.\n\n\\section{HYDRODYNAMICS OF SUPERFLUID PHASES}\n\\label{SP}\nHaving arrived at the hydrodynamic equations for the solid and hexatic phases,\nour next objective is to incorporate the effects of the additional hydrodynamic\ndegree of freedom associated with the phase of the superfluid order parameter.\nFortunately, from the microscopic theories developed for superfluid liquids\n\\cite{HM} and gases \\cite{KD} it is well known how we should proceed to obtain\nthe hydrodynamic (two-fluid) equations for the superfluid phases starting from\nthe equations for the normal phase. The procedure consists in principle of four\nsteps. First, the total (average) density $\\rho$ of the system is split up into\na normal density $\\rho_n$ and a superfluid density $\\rho_s$. In general these\ndensities are tensors of second rank, but for systems with hexagonal symmetry\nwhich are of interest here they are proportional to the identity $\\delta_{ij}$\nand can be considered as scalars. Second, the total momentum density $\\vec{g}$\nis similarly split up into a normal component\n$\\rho_n \\vec{v}_n$ and a superfluid component $\\rho_s \\vec{v}_s$ with a\nsuperfluid velocity that is purely longitudinal\n($\\nabla \\times \\vec{v}_s = 0$). Third, for an effectively isotropic system the\ndissipative terms in the momentum equation must be generalized to\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\eta \\nabla^2 \\vec{v}_n\n      + \\zeta_1 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n                \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n      + \\zeta_2 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~.    \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nFinally, we must add the dynamics of the superfluid velocity, which is\nbasically determined from the Josephson relation and reads\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{v}_s}{\\partial t} =\n    - \\frac{B}{\\rho^2} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n    + \\zeta_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n              \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n    + \\zeta_4 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $B=\\rho^2 d\\mu\/d\\rho|_T$ is again the isothermal bulk modulus and\n$\\mu$ is the chemical potential per unit mass. We again leave out temperature\nfluctuations since we are primarily interested in third-sound modes, for which\nthese fluctuations are (at least qualitatively) unimportant.\n\n\\subsection{Supersolid}\n\\label{HSS}\nTo apply the above procedure to Eq.\\ (\\ref{HS}) we must realize that we are\nhere in fact already dealing with a two-fluid hydrodynamics. We must therefore\nnot only split up the total momentum density $\\vec{g}$ into a normal and a\nsuperfluid component but also the net defect current, i.e.\\\n$\\vec{J} = \\vec{J}_n + \\vec{J}_s$. Moreover, we have to account for the fact\nthat the chemical potential, just like the pressure, is a function of the\nparticle density and the net defect density. In this manner we arrive at the\nfollowing hydrodynamic equations\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t} = -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\label{momrho}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - \\frac{B}{\\rho} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n     &-& \\gamma_{\\Delta} \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + 2\\rho c_{\\perp}^2 \\nabla \\times \\vartheta_6\n                                                   \\nonumber \\\\\n     &+& \\eta \\nabla^2 \\vec{v}_n\n      + \\zeta_1 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n                \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n      + \\zeta_2 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~,\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                  \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{v}_s}{\\partial t} =\n    - \\frac{B}{\\rho^2} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n    + \\beta_{\\Delta} \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n    + \\zeta_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n              \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n    + \\zeta_4 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial n_{\\Delta}}{\\partial t} =\n                  -\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{momdel}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{J}}{\\partial t} =\n      - c_{\\Delta}^2 \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n      + \\gamma \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n      + \\kappa \\nabla^2 \\vec{J}_n\n      + \\xi_1 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}_s)\n      + \\xi_2 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}_n)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{J}_s}{\\partial t} =\n    - \\frac{B_{\\Delta} \\rho_s}{\\rho^2} \\nabla n_{\\Delta}\n    + \\beta \\rho_s \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n    + \\xi_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n            \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}_s)\n    + \\xi_4 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{J}_n)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nwith\n$\\beta_{\\Delta} = - \\partial \\mu\/\\partial\n                           n_{\\Delta}|_{\\rho,T}$.\nThese represent nine equations for the nine unknown functions $\\delta\\rho$,\n$\\vec{v}_n$, $\\vec{v}_s$, $\\vartheta_6$, $n_{\\Delta}$, $\\vec{J}_n$ and\n$\\vec{J}_s$.\n\nAlthough a complete analysis of the various hydrodynamic modes is now possible,\nwe will consider here only the situation which is most relevant to experiments,\nnamely that the normal part of the two-dimensional system is\nclamped to an underlying substrate. As a result we have\n$\\vec{v}_n = \\vec{J}_n = \\vec{0}$ and\nEqs.\\ (\\ref{momrho}) and (\\ref{momdel}) determining the normal properties of\nthe supersolid are no longer valid. The hydrodynamic equations therefore reduce\nto\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\label{clamped}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial^2 \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t^2} =\n    \\frac{B \\rho_s}{\\rho^2} \\nabla^2 \\delta\\rho\n    - \\beta_{\\Delta} \\rho_s \\nabla^2 n_{\\Delta}\n    + \\zeta_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n        \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}(\\nabla^2 \\delta\\rho)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial^2 n_{\\Delta}}{\\partial t^2} =\n    \\frac{B_{\\Delta} \\rho_s}{\\rho^2} \\nabla^2 n_{\\Delta}\n    - \\beta \\rho_s \\nabla^2 \\delta\\rho\n    + \\xi_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n        \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t} (\\nabla^2 n_{\\Delta})~.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nThey contain two pairs of\npropagating modes, which in the limit of a small coupling\nconstant\n$\\beta \\ll BB_{\\Delta}\/\\beta_{\\Delta} \\rho^4$ essentially correspond to\na pair of\nthird-sound modes with $\\delta\\rho$ unequal to zero but a constant net defect\ndensity and a pair of modes with an oscillating net defect density.\n\nOne might have expected that the coupling of a superfluid\ndensity to a propagating defect density  would have resulted\nin one pair of gapped excitations and one pair of gapless excitations\ninstead.  Consider, for example, two identical superfluid layers.\nIf the layers are uncoupled the dynamics of the\nphases $\\vartheta_1$ and $\\vartheta_2$ of the layers is determined by the\naction\n\\begin{equation}\nS_{layers}[\\vartheta_1,\\vartheta_2] =\n \\int_0^{\\hbar \\beta} d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n   \\left\\{ \\frac{\\rho^2}{2B} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\vartheta_1)^2 +\n           \\frac{\\rho_s}{2} (\\nabla \\vartheta_1)^2\n         + \\frac{\\rho^2}{2B} (\\partial_{\\tau} \\vartheta_2)^2 +\n           \\frac{\\rho_s}{2} (\\nabla \\vartheta_2)^2\n   \\right\\}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich clearly has two pairs of\ngapless (third-sound) modes, one pair for each superfluid.\nIf we couple the order parameters by allowing the particles\nto tunnel with an amplitude $-J\/\\rho$\nfrom one layer to the other we must add\na Josephson coupling\n\\begin{equation}\nS_{tunnel}[\\vartheta_1,\\vartheta_2] = - \\int d\\tau \\int d\\vec{x}~\n    J \\cos(\\vartheta_1 - \\vartheta_2)\n\\end{equation}\nto this action.  The hydrodynamics modes couple to form two in-phase and\ntwo out-of-phase excitations.  The\nmodes with $\\vartheta_1$ and $\\vartheta_2$ oscillating out of phase get\ngapped (i.e.\\\n$\\omega^2 \\simeq BJ\/\\rho^2$ for $\\vec{k}^2 \\ll J\/\\rho_s$) and only the\nmodes with $\\vartheta_1$ and $\\vartheta_2$ oscillating in phase remain gapless.\nYet in Eq.\\ (\\ref{clamped}) we find only gapless modes.\n\nThis paradox can be resolved by noting that\nwe have made the standard assumption\\cite{ZHN} that both the\ntotal number of particles and the net number of defects is conserved. Hence,\nafter an atom has tunneled from a lattice site to the position of a vacancy, a\nnew vacancy is created near the original site of the atom.\nThe analogous process for the\ntwo coupled superfluid layers in not simply tunneling of\nindividual atoms from one layer to another, but rather the\nexchange of a pair of atoms in different layers, returning the\nsystem to its original state. Such a process is not a\nJosephson coupling and therefore the modes remain gapless.\nThe existence of separate conservation laws for the particle and defect\ndensity  thus allows in principle two separate broken symmetries.\n\nWe also note in passing\nthat the third-sound modes in Eq.\\ (\\ref{clamped}) are not present\nin the hydrodynamic equations proposed by Andreev and Lifshitz \\cite{A} and\nconsidered in more detail by Liu. \\cite{L} This is a result of the fact that\nthese authors use a somewhat different physical picture for the supersolid\nphase: They assume that the superfluid current density is carried by (Bose\ncondensed) defects and that the normal current density is solely due to lattice\nvibrations. Hence if we take\n$\\vec{v}_n = \\vec{0}$, which in their context means that $\\partial\n\\vec{u}\/\\partial t = \\vec{0}$, only transport of defects is possible and only\nthe latter two modes survive. However, as a consequence of their picture the\nhydrodynamic equations in the (normal) solid phase describe only longitudinal\nand transverse sound modes in an ideal lattice and do not include the effect of\nvacancies or interstitials. As explained above this is incorrect in principle\nand one should at least also allow for a normal current density due to the\nmotion of defects. In addition, we have seen in Sec.\\ \\ref{SOP} that even in\nthe presence of defects the density fluctuations are equal to $-\\rho\nu^{Phys}_{ii}$. It is therefore perfectly reasonable that if there is\nsuperfluid mass transport possible in the solid, it can be caused both by the\nmotion of defects and by lattice vibrations. Indeed, as an existence proof of\nthis latter possibility we can for instance consider superfluid $^4$He in a\nweak periodic and commensurate potential, which is clearly a supersolid without\ndefects.\n\nWhile it is generically possible to have both density and\ndefect superfluid modes, we might expect however, for realistic films on\nrealistic substrates, that in a supersolid it may be harder for particles to\nperform ring exchanges\\cite{K2,ring} than for vacancies\nto exchange positions. Thus, {\\it a priori}, we might expect the effective\nsuperfluid stiffness for the density fluctuations to be smaller than that\nof the vacancies, perhaps to the point where the former is entirely absent.\n\n\\subsection{Superhexatic}\nWe next turn to the superhexatic phase. In a similar manner as in Sec.\\\n\\ref{HSS} we obtain from Eq.\\ (\\ref{HH}) the full set of hydrodynamic equations\n\\begin{mathletters}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t}\n                                = - \\nabla \\cdot \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{g}}{\\partial t} =\n      - \\frac{B}{\\rho} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n     &-& \\frac{K_A}{2}\n           \\vec{e}_z \\times \\nabla (\\nabla^2 \\vartheta_6)\n                                                  \\nonumber \\\\\n     &+& \\eta \\nabla^2 \\vec{v}_n\n      + \\zeta_1 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n                \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n      + \\zeta_2 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~,\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{theta6}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vartheta_6}{\\partial t} =\n                    \\frac{1}{2\\rho} \\nabla \\times \\vec{g}~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\vec{v}_s}{\\partial t} =\n    - \\frac{B}{\\rho^2} \\nabla \\delta\\rho\n    + \\zeta_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n              \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot (\\vec{v}_s - \\vec{v}_n))\n    + \\zeta_4 \\nabla (\\nabla \\cdot \\vec{v}_n)~,\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{mathletters}\n\n\\noindent\nthat leads to the usual two-fluid hydrodynamics of a superfluid if we omit Eq.\\\n(\\ref{theta6}) and put $\\vartheta_6 = 0$. Therefore these equations allow for\nfirst and second sound, \\cite{second} and for a pair of transverse modes\ninvolving $\\vec{v}_n^T$ and $\\vartheta_6$ which are either dispersive or\npropagating depending on the sign of\n$\\Delta = K_A\/4\\rho - (\\eta\/\\rho_n)^2$: If $\\Delta \\leq 0$ we have two\npurely dispersive modes with\n$\\omega^{\\pm} = -i(\\eta\/\\rho_n \\pm \\sqrt{-\\Delta}) \\vec{k}^2\/2$,\nwheras if $\\Delta > 0$ we have two propagating modes and the particle-like\ndispersion\n$\\omega^{\\pm} = \\pm \\sqrt{\\Delta}~ \\vec{k}^2\/2\n                            - i (\\eta\/\\rho_n) \\vec{k}^2\/2$.\nHowever, considering again the case $\\vec{v}_n = \\vec{0}$ the hydrodynamic\nequations now simply reduce to\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial^2 \\delta\\rho}{\\partial t^2} =\n    \\frac{B \\rho_s}{\\rho^2} \\nabla^2 \\delta\\rho\n    + \\zeta_3 \\frac{\\rho_s}{\\rho}\n        \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}(\\nabla^2 \\delta\\rho)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich contains only a pair of third-sound modes with the velocity\n$c_3 = \\sqrt{B\\rho_s\/\\rho^2}$ and the diffusion constant\n$D_3 = \\zeta_3 \\rho_s\/\\rho$.\n\n\\section{CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION}\n\\label{DC}\nIn this paper we have derived the hydrodynamic equations for the  supersolid\nand superhexatic phases of a neutral two-dimensional Bose fluid. For the\nsupersolid these equations are rather complex, since they incorporate the\neffects of defect motion and lattice vibrations on both the normal and\nsuperfluid parts of the momentum density. Our physical picture for the\ninfluence on the superfluid part is roughly speaking that in a mean-field\ntheory the condensate wavefunction $\\Psi(\\vec{x},t)$ obeys the Schr\\\"odinger\nequation\n\\begin{equation}\ni\\hbar \\frac{\\partial \\Psi(\\vec{x},t)}{\\partial t} =\n   \\left\\{\n     - \\frac{\\hbar^2 \\nabla^2}{2m}\n     + \\int d\\vec{x}'~ V(\\vec{x}-\\vec{x}') n(\\vec{x}',t)\n   \\right\\} \\Psi(\\vec{x},t)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $m$ is the mass of the Bose particles and $V(\\vec{x}-\\vec{x}')$ is their\ninteraction. In addition, $n(\\vec{x},t)$ is the particle density which will be\ndetermined by an additional mean-field theory that, for a supersolid, shows the\ninstability associated with the formation of a density wave. Hence the\n(thermal) average\n$\\langle n(\\vec{x},t) \\rangle$ is periodic in space and independent of time. As\na result the condensate wavefunction is, if we neglect density fluctuations,\nalso periodic and we have indeed both diagonal as well as off-diagonal\nlong-range order. Fluctuations in the density, however, induce variations in\nthe phase of the wavefunction and therefore in the superfluid velocity. Because\nthese density fluctuations can be caused by both lattice vibrations and\noscillations in the net defect density we conclude that both mechanisms can\nlead to superfluid motion. Together with the existence of a conservation law\nfor the net number of defects, this explains from a more microscopic view\nwhy we found two third-sound modes and two modes with an oscillatory net defect\ndensity in the case of a supersolid adsorbed onto a substrate.\n\nFor the superhexatic phase we have shown that the hexatic long-range order\nleads to an additional (as compared to the superfluid) hydrodynamic degree of\nfreedom that affects only the transverse modes and is therefore at long\nwavelengths decoupled from the superfluid momentum density. This can also be\nunderstood from the above picture, since variations in the orientational order\nparameter $\\vartheta_6$ do not lead to density fluctuations in first instance.\nAs a result we find on a substrate only two third-sound modes and thus at the\nhydrodynamic level of description nothing to distinguish the superhexatic from\nthe superfluid. Although this is in agreement with the experiments of Chen and\nMochel, who indeed only observe one third-sound branch below the second\ncritical temperature $T_c$, it is unfortunate for the purpose of suggesting a\npossible identification of the superhexatic phase. On the basis of our results\nwe can, however, conclude that a more microscopic probe is needed if one wants\nto detect the orientational order present in a superhexatic helium film. In our\nopinion this appears to be an important, but also difficult experimental\nchallenge.\n\nFinally, we would also like to point out the possible relevance of our results\nto the recent experiments with bulk solid $^4$He. \\cite{LG} In these\nexperiments Lengua and Goodkind observe at sufficiently high frequencies an\nadditional (resonant) attenuation and velocity change of sound. Moreover, they\nnotice that their data can be explained by a simple model of two coupled wave\nequations which turns out to be identical to the longitudonal part of our\nsolid hydrodynamics derived in\nSec.\\ \\ref{SOP}. Because our two-dimensional hydrodynamics should be able to\ndescribe the propagation of sound perpendicular to the c-axis of hcp $^4$He,\nthis confirms the conjecture of Lengua and Goodkind that the collective mode\nobserved is associated with the motion of defects. For a more detailed\ndiscussion of the coupling between sound and the defects one should of course\nconsider the fully three-dimensional situation and include the anisotropy of\nthe hcp crystal. Work in this direction is in progress.\n\n\\section*{ACKNOWLEDGMENTS}\nThis research was supported by Grant No.\\ DMR-9502555 and DMR-9416906\nfrom the National\nScience Foundation, the ESF Network on Quantum Fluids and Solids,\nthe Swedish Natural Science Research Council and the\nStichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM) which is\nfinancially supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor\nWetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).\nWe thank Huug van Beelen, Henk van Beijeren, Michel Bijlsma,\nReyer Jochemsen, and Anne van Otterlo for stimulating and helpful discussions.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nThe (Borel-Moore) homology of a smooth manifold possesses a canonical ring structure in which the product is represented by intersection of cycle classes.\nThe Chow groups of a smooth algebraic variety over the complex numbers also admit a ring structure, and the intersection products are compatible via the cycle class map \\cite[Cor.~19.2]{Ful}.  In both contexts, a well-behaved intersection theory for cycles fails to extend to spaces with singularities.\n\nIn topology, this motivated the definition of cohomology and its cup product operation, which in some sense isolates a subset of the space of cycles (with a different equivalence relation) which can be intersected even if the ambient space has singularities.  There are several analogues in algebraic geometry.\nThe Friedlander-Lawson theory of algebraic cocycles \\cite{FLcocycle} is a geometric approach built from finite correspondences to projective spaces, and similar constructions underlie the motivic cohomology of Friedlander-Voevodsky \\cite {FV}.  \nThe operational Chow cohomology of Fulton \\cite{Ful}, on the other hand, adopts a more formal approach. \n\n\nThe intersection homology groups of Goresky and MacPherson \\cite{GM1} provide an\ninterpolation between cohomology and homology: at least for a normal space $X$ there is a sequence of groups:\n$$H^{\\dim X -*}(X) = IH^{\\overline 0}_* (X) \\to \\cdots \\to IH^{\\overline p}_*(X) \\to \\cdots \\to IH^{\\overline t}_*(X) = H_*(X)$$\nfactoring the cap product map.  The decoration $\\overline p$, called the perversity, is a sequence of integers which prescribes how cycles may meet the strata in a suitable stratification of the (possibly singular) space $X$; in the display above it increases from left to right.  Each intersection homology group $IH^{\\overline p}_r(X)$ arises as the homology of a complex of chains (either simplicial chains with respect to a triangulation \\cite{GM1}, or singular chains \\cite{King}) of perversity $\\overline p$.\n\nOne of the most interesting features of this theory is the existence of intersection pairings\n$$IH^{\\overline p}_r(X) \\otimes IH^{\\overline q}_s(X) \\to IH^{\\overline p + \\overline q}_{r+s - \\dim(X)}(X)$$\n(provided $\\overline p + \\overline q \\leq \\overline t$) generalizing the cap product pairing between cohomology and homology, and providing a generalization of Poincar\\'e duality to singular spaces.\n\nThe author and Eric Friedlander \\cite{intsing} have defined an algebraic cycle counterpart to the geometric approach of Goresky-MacPherson.  In particular we have defined perverse Borel-Moore motivic homology groups $H^{\\overline p}_{m}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(r))$ (for a stratified variety $X$ and a perversity $\\overline p$) with a cycle class map to the Goresky-MacPherson theory in Chow degree: $H^{\\overline p}_{2r}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(r)) \\to IH^{\\overline p}_{2r}(X, \\mathbb{Z})$ \\cite[Defn.~2.3, Prop.~2.5]{intsing}.  We have constructed also a perverse variation of motivic cohomology $H^{i,s, \\overline p}(X)$ and pairings \\cite[Defn.~5.3, Prop.~6.13]{intsing}:\n$$\\cap : H^{i,s, \\overline p}(X) \\otimes H^{\\overline q}_m (X, \\mathbb{Z}(r) ) \\to H^{\\overline p + \\overline q}_{m-i}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(r-s)) .$$\nThere is a canonical morphism $H^{i, s, \\overline p}(X) \\to H^{\\overline p}_{2 d -i}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(d -s))$ \\cite[Cor.~6.14]{intsing} with $d = \\dim (X)$.  To define an intersection product\n$$H^{\\overline p}_{m}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(r)) \\otimes H^{\\overline q}_{n}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(s)) \\to H^{\\overline p + \\overline q}_{m+n - 2 d}(X, \\mathbb{Z}(r+s - d))$$\n(i.e., extend $\\cap$), one needs to involve the stratification in a more substantial way.\n\nIn this paper we approach the problem of defining such a product in Chow degree ($m=2r, n = 2s$) by considering the following (somewhat vague) question: if a singular variety $X$ can be resolved by a smooth variety $\\widetilde X$, to what extent does the intersection product on the Chow groups of $\\widetilde X$ provide a sensible intersection theory for algebraic cycles on $X$?  As one can already see from the case of a proper birational morphism $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ between smooth varieties, the push-forward of the intersection formed on $\\widetilde X$ is in general different from the intersection formed on $X$.\nOn the other hand, one also sees that for a blowup $\\widetilde X \\to X$ of a smooth variety $X$ along a smooth subvariety, the push-forward of the intersection formed on $\\widetilde X$ agrees with the intersection formed on $X$ if the cycles have controlled incidence with $Y$; see Proposition \\ref{smooth case} for a precise statement.\n\nOur main results establish cases in which intersections formed on a resolution provide well-defined products on modifications of Chow groups: instead of considering cycles modulo rational equivalence, certain strata are singled out by the resolution, and both the cycles and the equivalences among them are required to have controlled incidence with the strata.  If $k$ is a field of characteristic zero, then any $k$-variety $X$ may be resolved by a sequence of blowups along smooth centers $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$.  From such a resolution we define a stratification of $X$ and construct an intersection pairing on perverse Chow groups (i.e., a map $A_{r, \\overline p} (X) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X)$, possibly with $\\mathbb{Q}$ coefficients) in the following settings:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $s=\\dim(X)-1$, i.e., one of the cycles is a divisor (Theorem \\ref{divisor pairing});\n\\item $r=s=2$ and $\\dim(X)=4$, i.e., there is an intersection pairing on 2-cycles on a fourfold (Theorem \\ref{4fold}); and\n\\item $\\dim(X_{sing})=1$ and $r,s$ arbitrary (Theorem \\ref{one dim sing}).\n\\end{itemize}\nThe pairing is obtained by pushing forward the intersection product of the proper transforms, i.e., is given by $\\alpha, \\beta \\mapsto \\pi_* (\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta)$.  The stratification is expressed in terms of the geometry of the resolution, and our arguments are accordingly geometric in nature.  In all three cases, the basic idea is to understand how (certain) rational equivalences behave under proper transform.  For concreteness we explain the idea for 2-cycles $\\alpha, \\beta$ of complementary perversities $\\overline{p}, \\overline{q}$ on a fourfold $X$.  If one has $\\alpha \\sim_{\\overline p} \\alpha'$ on $X$, then $e_\\alpha := \\widetilde \\alpha - \\widetilde {\\alpha'}$ is a cycle on $\\widetilde X$ supported over the singular locus of $X$, with the support controlled by the perversity function $\\overline p$.\nThe perversity $\\overline{p}$ provides enough control over the error term $e_\\alpha$ that we can find a cycle which is both rationally equivalent to some multiple of $e_\\alpha$ and, using the complementarity of the perversity condition $\\overline q$, disjoint from $\\widetilde{\\beta}$ (or $e_\\beta$).\nThen, at least with rational coefficients, we have the vanishings  $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta = \\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta = e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta = 0$ in $A_0(\\widetilde X)$, so that $\\pi_* (\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta )$ and $\\pi_*(\\widetilde \\alpha' \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta')$ coincide as classes in $A_0(X)_\\mathbb{Q}$.\nFor divisors the arguments are more conceptual and less technical, but the main point is to move error terms arising from (certain) rational equivalences away from cycles of complementary perversity.  When the singular locus of $X$ is one-dimensional, we also employ intersection theory on the exceptional components and subvarieties therein.\n\n\nFor certain pairs of cycles, our product agrees with the one defined by Goresky-MacPherson via the cycle class map, but we do not know if this holds in general.  Another basic question is the dependence on the resolution.  See \\S \\ref{sec:further} for further discussion of these questions.\n\nIn \\S \\ref{sec:cycles} we establish background and notation.  In particular, we discuss various procedures for constructing stratifications from resolutions; later we point out which constructions are necessary in the different contexts.  The next three sections are devoted to the three situations mentioned above: in \\S \\ref{sec:divisors} we show the resolution provides a sensible intersection theory for divisors, in \\S \\ref{sec:onedimsing} we handle the case $\\dim(X_{sing}) =1$, and in \\S \\ref{sec:4fold} we study 2-cycles on a fourfold.  In \\S \\ref{need integral fibers} we show, through an explicit example, that an ``obvious\" coarsening of our stratification, namely by the fiber dimension of the resolution, is insufficiently fine for the resolution to provide a decent intersection product.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Conventions.} Throughout we work with schemes separated and of finite type over a field $k$.  A variety is an integral $k$-scheme.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Acknowledgments.} \nThe idea that resolutions might provide pairings on perverse cycle groups emerged in conversations with Eric Friedlander.\nThe author wishes to thank him for his encouragement and interest in this project.  The author was partially supported by National Science Foundation Award DMS-0966589.\n\n\n\\section{Cycles, equivalence relations, and stratifications from resolutions} \\label{sec:cycles}\n\nIn this section we adapt some of the basic features of Goresky-MacPherson intersection homology to our algebraic context.  This reproduces some material from \\cite[\\S 2]{intsing}.  Then we discuss stratifications obtained from resolutions.  Finally we demonstrate that our proposal for intersections on a singular variety recovers the usual intersection theory for the blowup of a smooth variety along a smooth subvariety.\n\nA \\textit{stratified variety} is a variety $X$ (say of dimension $d$) equipped with a filtration by closed subsets $X^d \\hookrightarrow X^{d-1} \\hookrightarrow \\cdots \\hookrightarrow X^2 \\hookrightarrow X^1 \\hookrightarrow X$ such that $X^i$ has codimension at least $i$ in $X$.  This is usually called a filtered space, which determines a stratified space; since we do not deal with more general stratifications, we ignore the difference.\nA \\textit{perversity} is a non-decreasing sequence of integers $p_1, p_2, \\ldots, p_d$ such that $p_1=0$ and, for all $i$, $p_{i+1}$ equals either $p_i$ or $p_i+1$.  Perversities are denoted $\\overline{p}, \\overline{q}$, etc.  The perversities we consider range from the zero perversity $\\overline{0}$ with $p_i=0$ for all $i$, to the top perversity $\\overline{t}$, with $p_i=i-1$ for all $i$.\n\nLet $Z_r(X)$ denote the group of $r$-dimensional algebraic cycles on $X$.  If $X$ is stratified and $\\overline p$ is a perversity, we say an $r$-cycle $\\alpha$ is \\textit{of perversity $\\overline{p}$} (or satisfies the perversity condition $\\overline{p}$) if for all $i$, the dimension of the intersection $|\\alpha| \\cap X^i$ is no larger than $r-i +p_i$.  If the codimension of $X^i$ in $X$ is exactly $i$, then the perversity of a cycle measures its failure to meet properly the closed sets occurring in the stratification of $X$.  Let $Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X) \\subset Z_r(X)$ denote the group of $r$-dimensional cycles of perversity $\\overline{p}$ on the stratified variety $X$.  Typically $X^1$ is the singular locus of $X$, and then the condition $p_1=0$ means that no component of the cycle is contained in the singular locus.\n\nIn \\cite[Prop.~2.4]{intsing} we defined and characterized a notion of $\\overline p$-rational equivalence of algebraic $r$-cycles: we identify two elements of $Z_{r, \\overline p}(X)$ if they can be connected by an $\\mathbb{A}^1$-family of $r$-cycles of perversity $\\overline p$.  Here we introduce a modification.\nWe say the cycles $\\alpha, \\alpha' \\in Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$ are \\textit{weakly rationally equivalent as perversity $\\overline{p}$ cycles} (or are weakly $\\overline{p}$-rationally equivalent), written $\\alpha \\sim_{w, \\overline{p}} \\alpha'$, if there is an equation of rational equivalence all of whose terms satisfy the perversity condition $\\overline{p}$.  Explicitly this means there exist subvarieties $W_1, \\ldots, W_a$ of dimension $r+1$ in $X$, and rational functions $g_i : W_i \\dashrightarrow \\bb{P}^1$, such that $\\alpha - \\alpha' = \\sum_i [g_i(0)] - [g_i(\\infty)]$ in $Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$ (i.e., for all $i$, both $[g_i(0)]$ and $[g_i(\\infty)]$ are in $Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$).  \n\nIn contrast to the definition of $A_{r, \\overline p}(X)$, here we do \\textit{not} require that for every $t \\in \\mathbb{A}^1 \\subset \\bb{P}^1$, the cycle associated to the fiber $[g_i(t)]$ satisfies the perversity condition.  We allow the $g_i$'s to have ``bad\" fibers, but we require that $\\alpha$ and $\\alpha'$ are related by ``good\" fibers.  We could equivalently require that the condition of \\cite[Prop.~2.4(3)]{intsing} is satisfied with $\\mathbb{A}^1$ replaced by an open subset (containing at least two $k$-points) therein.\nWe let $A^w_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$ denote the group of $r$-cycles of perversity $\\overline{p}$ modulo weak $\\overline{p}$-rational equivalence.  \nThe main reason for introducing another equivalence relation is that our arguments ``naturally\" construct pairings on the groups $A^w_{r, \\overline p}(X)$.\nSince there is a canonical morphism $A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X) \\to A^w_{r, \\overline p}(X)$, we immediately obtain pairings on the groups $A_{r, \\overline p}(X)$.  Note also the map $A_{r, \\overline p}(X) \\to IH^{\\overline p}_{2r}(X, \\mathbb{Z})$ factors through $A^w_{r, \\overline p}(X)$: the proof of \\cite[Prop.~2.5]{intsing} only requires $\\mathcal W \\hookrightarrow X \\times \\bb{P}^1$ to have good fibers over $0, \\infty \\in \\bb{P}^1$, not all $t \\in \\bb{P}^1$.\n\n\n\\medskip\n\n\\textbf{Resolutions.} Let $X$ be a variety over a field $k$ of characteristic zero.  The celebrated result of Hironaka asserts the singularities of $X$ can be resolved by a sequence of blowups along smooth centers which are normally flat in their ambient spaces, i.e., the resolution can be expressed as a composition $\\pi: \\widetilde{X} = X_f \\to \\cdots \\to X_{n+1} \\to X_n \\to \\cdots \\to X = X_0$ where (for all $n = 0, \\ldots, f-1$) $X_{n+1} = \\Bl_{C_n} X_n$, $C_n \\hookrightarrow X_n$ is smooth, and $X_n$ is normally flat along $C_n$ \\cite{Hironaka}.  We will call a resolution admitting such an expression a \\textit{strong resolution.}\n\n\\begin{definition} The exceptional locus $\\widetilde{E} \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X}$ of the resolution is simply the preimage of the singular locus of $X$.  We say a subvariety $V \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X}$ is \\textit{exceptional} if it is contained in the exceptional locus of the resolution.  We say an exceptional subvariety $V \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X}$ \\textit{first appears} on $X_{n+1} = \\Bl_{C_n}X_n$ if there is a subvariety $\\overline{V} \\hookrightarrow X_{n+1}$ such that the morphism $V \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X} \\to X_{n+1}$ factors through a birational morphism $V \\to \\overline{V}$, and there is no such subvariety of $X_n$.  The concept of first appearance depends on the sequence of centers used to construct the resolution. \\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{notation} If $C_n \\hookrightarrow X_n$ is a center occurring in the resolution, let $\\widetilde{E}_{C_n} \\subseteq \\widetilde{E}$ denote the union of those exceptional divisors $E$ for which the canonical morphism $E \\to X$ factors through $C_n$, and let $\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }C_n} \\subseteq \\widetilde{E}_{C_n}$ denote the union of those divisors for which the canonical morphism $E \\to C_n$ is dominant.   \\end{notation}\n\n\\begin{definition}[stratification via resolution] \\label{strat res defn} \nWe describe several ways a center $C_n$ may contribute to a stratification of the variety being resolved.\nFirst we consider what happens ``below\" a center $C_n$.  \n\\begin{BC}\n\\item If $C_n \\to X$ has generic dimension $g$ over its $m$-dimensional image $W \\hookrightarrow X$, then $W \\hookrightarrow X^{d-m}$; and for each $e \\geq 1$ the locus $W' \\hookrightarrow W$ over which $C_n \\to W$ has fiber dimension $\\geq g+e$ is placed in $X^{d-m+e+1}$.  \n\\item If $g \\geq 1$, the generic fiber of $C_n \\to W$ is integral; the locus over which $C_n \\to W$ fails to have an integral fiber of dimension $g$ is placed in $X^{d-m+1}$.\n\\item The singularities of $W$ are placed in $X^{d-m+1}$.\n\\end{BC}\nNext we consider what happens ``above\" a center.\n\\begin{AC}\n\\item For a general point $c \\in C_n$, the number of irreducible components of ${(\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }C_n})}_c$ is equal to the number of components of $\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }C_n}$; where the former exceeds the latter is a closed set denoted $R_n \\hookrightarrow C_n$.  \nIf the image $V$ of $R_n$ in $W$ is not dense, we place this image in $X^{d-m+e}$, where $e$ is the codimension of $V$ in $W$ (hence $d-m+e$ is the codimension of $V$ in $X$). \n\\end{AC}\nLet $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ be a resolution expressed as a sequence of blowups along $C_n \\hookrightarrow X_n$.  For any of the four constructions listed above, we say a stratification of $X$ \\textit{satisfies condition (C) with respect to $\\pi$} if it refines the stratification obtained by applying construction (C) to all of the centers $C_n$ occurring in the resolution.  \\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{remark} Let $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ be a resolution.  If a stratification satisfies (BC-1) with respect to $\\pi$, then it refines the ``fiber dimension\" stratification given by specifying $X^i$ is the closed subset along which the fibers of $\\pi$ have dimension at least $i-1$.\n\nA stratification satisfying (BC-1), (BC-2), (BC-3), and (AC) may not have the property that $X^i \\setminus X^{i+1}$ is smooth since we do not, for example, necessarily place the incidences of the components of $X_{sing}$ in a smaller stratum.  For an explicit example in which the incidences of the components of the singular locus are not detected by the conditions above, see the projective example of Section \\ref{need integral fibers}.\n\nIt would be very interesting to characterize intrinsically the strata which arise from the conditions described above.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Error terms.} Suppose $\\alpha \\sim_{w, \\overline{p}} \\alpha'$ and \\begin{equation} \\label{alpha equiv} \\alpha - \\alpha' = \\sum_{f_i \\in k(S_i)} [f_i(0)] - [f_i(\\infty)] \\end{equation}\nis an equation of rational equivalence in $Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$.  Viewing the $f_i$'s as rational functions on the proper transforms of the $S_i$'s, we obtain an equation of rational equivalence $\\widetilde{\\alpha} + e_\\alpha - \\widetilde{\\alpha'} - e_{\\alpha'} = \\sum_{f_i \\in k(\\widetilde{S_i})} [f_i(0)] - [f_i(\\infty)]$ in $Z_r(\\widetilde{X})$, where $e_\\alpha$ is exceptional for some $\\widetilde{S_i} \\to S_i$ and is supported over the image of the exceptional locus of $\\widetilde{z} \\to z$ for $z$ some term in the equation $\\ref{alpha equiv}$ (and similarly for $e_{\\alpha'}$).  In this situation we refer to $e_\\alpha$ and $e_{\\alpha'}$ as the ``error terms.\"\nWe write $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$ for the union of the supports of the error terms, and typically $e_\\alpha$ will denote a component of the support of $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Normality.} There is no loss of generality in assuming $X$ is normal.  For if $X$ is not necessarily normal and $\\nu : X^\\nu \\to X$ is the normalization, and $\\pi : \\widetilde{X^\\nu} \\to X^\\nu$ is the result of applying a resolution algorithm to $X^\\nu$, we simply declare the stratification of $X$ to be the image via $\\nu$ of the stratification of $X^\\nu$ (induced by $\\pi$), augmented by declaring $X^1$ is the singular locus of $X$.  Note that $\\nu \\circ \\pi$ is probably not the result of applying a resolution algorithm to $X$ itself.\n\nFor $\\alpha \\in Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$, let $\\alpha^\\nu \\in Z_r(X^\\nu)$ denote its proper transform.  By definition, $\\alpha \\in Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$ implies $\\alpha^\\nu \\in Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X^\\nu)$.  If $\\alpha \\in Z_{r, \\overline{p}}(X)$, then $\\dim ( \\nu^{-1}(\\alpha \\cap X^1)) = \\dim (\\alpha \\cap X^1) = r-1$ since $\\nu$ is finite and $\\alpha$ is not contained in $X^1$ (since $p_1=0$).  Therefore $\\overline{p}$-rational equivalence on $X$ implies $\\overline{p}$-rational equivalence on $X^\\nu$.  Let $\\nu^* : A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X) \\to A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X^\\nu)$ denote the morphism induced by proper transform.\n\nNow suppose we can define a pairing $A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X^\\nu) \\times A_{s, \\overline{q}}(X^\\nu) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X^\\nu)$ when $\\overline{p} + \\overline{q} = \\overline{t}$.  Then the composition\n$$A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X) \\times A_{s, \\overline{q}}(X) \\xrightarrow{\\nu^* \\times \\nu^*} A_{r, \\overline{p}}(X^\\nu) \\times A_{s, \\overline{q}}(X^\\nu) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X^\\nu) \\xrightarrow{\\nu_*} A_{r+s-d}(X)$$\ndefines the pairing for $X$.\n\nMoreover, the condition $p_1=0$ implies the generic point of any error term factors through $X^2$: we have $\\dim (\\alpha \\cap X^1) \\leq r-1$, and $\\pi$ is finite over $X \\setminus X^2$, hence $\\dim (\\pi^{-1} (\\alpha \\cap X^1 \\setminus X^2)) \\leq r-1$ and $\\pi^{-1}(\\alpha \\cap X^1 \\setminus X^2)$ cannot support any error terms.\n\n\nIf $X$ is not normal, the stratification ``prescribed by the resolution\" is the one prescribed by $\\widetilde{X^\\nu} \\to X^\\nu \\to X$.  We assume $X$ is normal and hence $X^2$ consists of the singular locus of $X$.\n\n\\medskip\nThe following proposition demonstrates our proposal is sensible when the ``resolution\" is the blowup of a smooth variety along a smooth subvariety.  The method of proof also shows the condition $\\overline p + \\overline q \\leq \\overline t$ cannot in general be weakened.\n\n\\begin{proposition} \\label{smooth case}\nLet $Y \\hookrightarrow X$ be a closed immersion of smooth varieties of codimension $c$.  Let $\\alpha, \\beta \\hookrightarrow X$ be cycles of dimensions $r,s$ satisfying\n$$\\dim(\\alpha \\cap Y) \\leq r-c+p \\ , \\ \\dim(\\beta \\cap Y) \\leq s-c+q,$$\nwith $p+q \\leq c-1$.  Let $\\pi: \\widetilde X \\to X$ be the blowup of $X$ along $Y$.  Then $\\alpha \\cdot \\beta = \\pi_*( \\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta)$ as cycle classes on\n$|\\alpha| \\cap |\\beta|$ and hence on $X$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof} We have a cartesian diagram:\n\n$$\\xymatrix{ E \\ar[r]^-j \\ar[d]_-g & \\widetilde X\\ar[d]^-\\pi \\\\ Y \\ar[r] & X .\\\\}$$\nLet $z \\in A_*(E)$ denote the class of the canonical $g$-ample line bundle.  Then $A_*(E)$ is $A_*(Y) [z]$ modulo a relation involving the Chern classes of the normal bundle $N_YX$; we will need that $g^*$ is a ring homomorphism, and that $g_* (z^n) = 0$ for $n \\leq c-2$.\n\n We set $\\pi^* \\alpha = \\widetilde \\alpha + e_\\alpha$ and $\\pi^* \\beta = \\widetilde \\beta + e_\\beta$ in $A_*(\\widetilde X)$; precise formulas for $e_\\alpha, e_\\beta$ are available \\cite[Thm.~6.7]{Ful}, but we will just need that $\\pi_* e_\\alpha = \\pi_*e_\\beta=0$.  Since $\\alpha \\cdot \\beta = (\\pi_* \\pi^* \\alpha) \\cdot \\beta = \\pi_* (\\pi^* \\alpha \\cdot \\pi^* \\beta)$, it suffices to show the terms $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta, e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta,$ and $e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta$ vanish after $\\pi_*$ is applied.\n\nNow we analyze the term $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta$; the treatment of the term $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta$ merely involves interchanging the roles of $\\alpha$ and $\\beta$.  We utilize the Chow rings of $Y$ and $E$ and show the vanishing of $g_* ( j^* (\\widetilde \\alpha) \\cdot e_\\beta )$, which implies $\\pi_* (\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta) = 0$.  Since $j^* (\\widetilde \\alpha)$ is an $(r-1)$-dimensional cycle supported over the ($\\leq (r-c+p)$-dimensional) set $\\alpha \\cap Y$, it can be expressed as\n$$j^* (\\widetilde \\alpha) = z^p g^*( a_{r-c+p} ) + z^{p-1}  g^* (a_{r-c+p-1} ) + \\cdots +  g^*( a_{r-c} )$$\nwhere $a_i$ is a class in $A_i(Y)$.  Similarly, since $e_\\beta$ is an $s$-dimensional cycle supported over $\\beta \\cap Y$, we have an expression\n$$e_\\beta = z^{q-1} g^* (b_{s-c+q}) + z^{q-2} g^* (b_{s-c+q-1}) + \\cdots + g^* ( b_{s-c+1})$$\nwith $b_i \\in A_i(Y)$.  Therefore $ j^* (\\widetilde \\alpha) \\cdot e_\\beta$ is a sum of terms of the shape $z^n g^* ( c_n )$ (with $c_n \\in A_{r+s-d+1+n-c}(Y)$) with $n \\leq p+q -1$.  Now the projection formula for $g$, the formula $g_* (z^n) = 0$ for $n \\leq c-2$, and the hypothesis $p+q \\leq c-1$ together imply that $g_* ( j^* (\\widetilde \\alpha) \\cdot e_\\beta) =0 $, as desired.\n\nTo show the vanishing of the term $e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta$, we note that\n$$e_\\alpha \\cdot_{\\widetilde X} e_\\beta =  j_* ( c_1(N_{E} \\widetilde X) \\cap (e_\\alpha \\cdot_E e_\\beta) ),$$\nwhere we have used a subscript to indicate on which variety we calculate the product.  The largest $z$-degree in $e_\\alpha \\cdot_E  e_\\beta$ is $p+q-2$, and $ c_1(N_{E} \\widetilde X) = -z$, so the same argument as in the previous paragraph shows the vanishing of $g_* ( c_1(N_{E} \\widetilde X) \\cap (e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta) )$, hence $\\pi_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot_{\\widetilde X} e_\\beta) = 0$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThere does not seem to be a simple inductive argument which allows one to conclude Proposition \\ref{smooth case} holds for a composition of blowups along smooth centers $\\pi: X_2 = \\text{Bl}_{Y_1}(X_1) \\xrightarrow{\\pi_2} X_1 = \\text{Bl}_{Y_0}(X_0) \\xrightarrow{\\pi_1} X_0 =X$ for the following reason: if cycles on $X_0$ have controlled incidence with $Y_0$, it is not necessarily the case that their proper transforms via $\\pi_1$ will have suitably controlled incidence with $Y_1 \\hookrightarrow X_1$.\nFor example, suppose $Y_0$ is a linearly embedded $\\bb{P}^2$ in $X_0 = \\bb{P}^4$, and $Y_1$ is the preimage ${(\\pi_1)}^{-1}(L)$ of a line $L \\hookrightarrow Y_0$ via the blowup.\nThen $Y_1 \\to L$ is a smooth morphism between smooth varieties, and has geometrically integral fibers.  The only sensible stratification is\n$$\\emptyset = X^4 \\hookrightarrow L = X^3 \\hookrightarrow Y_0 = X^2 = X^1 \\hookrightarrow X ;$$\nsince no lines are distinguished and no line has a distinguished point, there is no canonical way to define a non-empty finite set $X^4$.  Now if $S \\hookrightarrow X$ satisfies $\\dim (S \\cap X^2) = \\dim (S \\cap X^3) = 0$, then $S$ satisfies the perversity condition $ \\overline p = (0, 1, 1)$ (and hence also the condition $\\overline q = (1,1,2)$).  Therefore the pair $(S,S)$ satisfies a pair of complementary perversity conditions.   However, the proper transform $S_1 \\hookrightarrow X_1$ satisfies $\\dim (S_1 \\cap Y_1) = 1$, so that $(S_1, S_1)$ violates the condition $p + q \\leq 1$ for the morphism $\\pi_2$ required by Proposition \\ref{smooth case}.\n\nThe self-intersection $S \\cdot S$ agrees with $\\pi_* (S_2 \\cdot S_2)$,\nbut the ``reason\" involves a feature of the morphism $X_2 \\to X_0$ which cannot be seen from its constituent factors: the ``error term\" $\\pi^* (S) - S_2$ is represented by surfaces supported over the finite set $S \\cap X^3$, and these can be moved away from each other (and from $S_2 \\cap \\pi^{-1}(S \\cap X^3)$) via rational functions on $L$.\nIn fact the same procedure works in the singular case, with possible modifications due to the more complicated geometry; see the penultimate paragraph of the proof of Proposition \\ref{intro smooth ex} for details.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\section{Intersection with divisors} \\label{sec:divisors} In this section we construct a pairing between divisors and $r$-cycles (for $r \\geq 1$) by using a stratification obtained from a resolution of singularities.  We make use of the ring structure on $A_* (X)$ for nonsingular $X$, and we use that products respect supports in the following sense: if $A, B \\hookrightarrow  X$ are cycles of dimensions $r,s$, then $A \\cdot B \\in A_{r+s-d}( |A | \\cap | B|)$ is a well-defined cycle class \\cite[Ch.~8]{Ful}.  Often we use that $|A| \\cap |B|$ (or its image via a resolution) cannot support a cycle of the relevant dimension.\n\nWe use $(-)^i$ to indicate the intersection $|(-)| \\cap |X^i|$ in the remainder of the paper.\n\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{divisor pairing}\nLet $X$ be a $d$-dimensional variety over $k$, and let $\\pi : \\widetilde{X} \\to X$ be a strong resolution of singularities.  \nSuppose a stratification of $X$ satisfies (BC-1) and (AC) with respect to $\\pi$.\nLet $\\overline{p}, \\overline{q}$ be perversities such that $\\overline{p} + \\overline{q} = \\overline{t}$.\nThen the assignment\n$$(D, \\alpha) \\mapsto \\pi_* (\\widetilde{D} \\cdot \\widetilde{\\alpha})$$\ndetermines a well-defined pairing\n$$A^w_{d-1, \\overline{p}}(X)_\\mathbb{Q} \\otimes A^w_{r, \\overline{q}}(X)_\\mathbb{Q} \\to A_{r-1}(X)_\\mathbb{Q}$$\nfor any $r \\geq 1$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof} First we show the assignment is compatible with $\\overline{p}$-rational equivalences of divisors.  If $D$ and $D'$ are divisors with $D \\sim_{w, \\overline{p}} D'$, then in particular $D - D' = \\divfcn (f)$ for some $f \\in k(X)$.  Viewing instead $f \\in k (\\widetilde{X})$, we find $\\widetilde{D} - \\widetilde{D'} = e_D + \\divfcn(f)$, where the error term $e_D$ is an exceptional divisor for $\\pi$, and is supported over $(D \\cup D') \\cap X^2$.  Since $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$ is not contained in the exceptional locus, the intersection $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cap e_D$ is proper.\n\nSince a stratification satisfying (BC-1) refines the fiber dimension stratification, the preimage $\\pi^{-1}(T)$ of a divisor $T \\hookrightarrow X^i \\setminus X^{i+1}$ has dimension no larger than $(d-i-1)+(i-1) = d-2$.  Therefore $e_D$ is supported over the strata for which $p_i \\geq 1$.   For these strata, $q_i \\leq i-2$, so $\\dim (\\alpha^i) \\leq r -2$.  But now $\\pi_* ( e_D \\cdot \\widetilde{\\alpha})$ is an $(r-1)$-cycle supported in a subscheme of dimension $r-2$, hence $\\pi_* ( e_D \\cdot \\widetilde{\\alpha}) = 0$.\n\nThe vanishing of $\\pi_* (e_D \\cdot e_\\alpha)$ is proved by a similar argument: if $e_\\alpha \\not \\subseteq e_D$, then an identical argument applies.  If $e_\\alpha \\subseteq e_D$, then $e_\\alpha$ is supported over a subscheme of dimension at most $r-2$ (since it is supported over those strata for which $q_i \\leq i-2$), so that $e_D \\cdot e_\\alpha$ is represented by a cycle having positive generic dimension over its image.\n\nNow we show the assignment is compatible with $\\overline{q}$-rational equivalences of $r$-cycles, i.e., the vanishing $\\pi_* (\\widetilde D \\cdot e_\\alpha)= 0$.  If $\\alpha \\sim_{w, \\overline{q}} \\alpha'$, then $\\widetilde{\\alpha} - \\widetilde{\\alpha'} \\in A_r(\\widetilde{X})$ is represented by a cycle which is supported over $A \\cap X^2$, where $A$ is an $r$-cycle of perversity $\\overline{q}$.  (Namely $A$ consists of the union of the supports of the terms appearing in the equation of rational equivalence, i.e., the image via $\\pi$ of $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$.)\n\nFirst assume $q_2 = 0$, so $\\alpha$ and $\\alpha'$ meet the singular locus $X^2$ properly.  Then any component $e_\\alpha$ of $e(\\alpha, \\alpha)$ is an $r$-cycle having generic dimension at least $2$ over its image, and this image is contained in the (at most) $(r-2)$-dimensional set $A \\cap X^2$.  Therefore $ \\widetilde D \\cdot e_\\alpha$ is represented by an $(r-1)$-cycle having generic dimension at least $1$ over its image, and so $\\pi_* ( \\widetilde D \\cdot e_\\alpha) =0$.\n\nFinally assume $p_2 = 0$; this is the most interesting case.  We may assume $e := e_\\alpha$ is integral and first appears on $X_{n+1} = \\Bl_{C_n} X_n$.  Let $\\overline{e} \\hookrightarrow X_{n+1}$ denote the ($r$-dimensional) image of $e$, and let $e_n \\hookrightarrow C_n \\hookrightarrow X_n$ denote the image of $e$.  Since $e$ first appears on $X_{n+1}$, there is an exceptional divisor $E'$ for the morphism $X_{n+1} \\to X_n$ which contains $\\overline e$ and dominates $C_n$.  Since $e \\to e_n$ is birational, there exists a component $E \\subseteq \\widetilde E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$ which contains $e$ and maps birationally onto $E'$.  (Since  the exceptional locus of $X_{n+1} \\to X_n$ is flat over $C_n$, every exceptional component of $X_{n+1} \\to X_n$ must dominate $C_n$.)\nLet $R_n \\hookrightarrow C_n$ denote the locus determined by the reducible fibers over $C_n$ as described in condition (AC) in Definition $\\ref{strat res defn}$; we will use that $R_n$ contains the reducible fiber locus of $E \\to C_n$.  Let $V \\hookrightarrow W$ denote the image of $R_n$ in $X$.  \n\nNote that $\\dim (e_n) \\leq r-1$, hence if $e_n$ has positive generic dimension over its image in $X^2$, then we may proceed as in the case $q_2=0$.  So we may assume $e_n$ is generically finite over its image $\\overline{e_n} \\hookrightarrow W \\hookrightarrow X$.  Here $W$ denotes the image of $C_n$; say $\\dim W = d-c$, so that $W$ is a component of $X^c \\hookrightarrow X^2$.  We have $\\dim ( \\overline{e_n}) = r-1 = (r-c) + (c-1)$, hence $q_c = c-1$ and $p_c = 0$, so $D$ meets $W$ properly.\n\nLet $D_n \\hookrightarrow X_n$ denote the proper transform of $D$ via $X_n \\to X$, and $\\widetilde{D} \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X}$ its proper transform via $\\widetilde{X} \\to X$.  Since $D$ does not contain $W$, $D_n$ does not contain $C_n$ and $\\widetilde{D}$ does not contain $E$.\nThe situation is summarized by the following commutative diagram:\n\n\n$$\\xymatrix{ & e \\ar[r] \\ar[d] & E \\ar[r]^-i \\ar[d]_{\\pi _E } & \\widetilde{X} \\ar[d]^-\\pi  & \\widetilde{D} \\ar[l] \\ar[d] \\\\\nR_n \\ar@\/_1pc\/[rr]|\\hole  \\ar[d] & e_n \\ar[r] \\ar[d] & C_n \\ar[d] \\ar[r]^-{i_n}  & X_n \\ar[d] & D_n \\ar[l] \\ar[d] \\\\\nV \\ar@\/_1pc\/[rr] & \\overline{e_n} \\ar[r] &  W \\ar[r] & X & D \\ar[l]  }$$\n\n\\medskip\n\nWe assume that $R_n$ is not contained in $D_n$, and later we handle the case $D_n \\supseteq R_n$ by a separate argument.  \nA priori we have  $\\pi_E^{-1} |D_n \\cap C_n| \\supseteq | \\widetilde{D}  \\cap E |$, but $D_n \\not \\supset R_n$, together with the condition on fiber integrality, implies the generic points of $\\pi_E^{-1} |D_n \\cap C_n|$ coincide with those of $|\\widetilde{D} \\cap E|$. \nSince $C_n$ is smooth, $D_n \\cap C_n$ is the support of a Cartier divisor in $C_n$.  Set $M := \\mathcal{O}_{C_n} (|D_n \\cap C_n|) \\in \\pic(C_n)$, and $L := \\mathcal{O}_{\\widetilde{X}} (\\widetilde{D})  \\in \\pic(\\widetilde{X})$.  The coincidence of the generic points implies $i^*L$ and ${\\pi_E}^* M$ are rational multiples of one another in $\\pic (E)_\\mathbb{Q}$; say $m \\cdot {\\pi_E}^* M = i^* L$ for some $m \\in \\mathbb{Q}$.\n\nSince ${\\pi_E}_* (e) = 0$, the projection formula for $\\pi_E$ implies\n\\begin{equation} \\label{push 0} {\\pi_E}_* (c_1 ( {\\pi_E}^*(M)) \\cdot e) = c_1(M) \\cdot {\\pi_E}_*(e) = 0. \\end{equation}\nThe projection formula for $i$ implies the equality of cycle classes\n\\begin{equation} \\label{proj i} i_* ( c_1 ( i^* L ) \\cdot e) = c_1(L ) \\cdot e \\in A_{r-1}(\\widetilde{X}). \\end{equation}\nThe functoriality of proper push-forward and the relation in $\\pic (E)_\\mathbb{Q}$ imply\n\\begin{equation} \\label{last one} \\pi_* i_* ( c_1 ( i^* L ) \\cdot e)  = {i_n}_* {\\pi_E}_*  ( c_1 ( i^* L ) \\cdot e) =  m \\cdot {i_n}_* {\\pi_E}_*  ( c_1({ \\pi_E}^* ( M )) \\cdot e). \\end{equation}\nThese equations together imply the vanishing $\\pi_* ( c_1(L) \\cdot e) = 0$ in $A_{r-1}(X)_\\mathbb{Q}$.\n\nWe return to the case in which $D_n \\supseteq R_n$.  Then $D$ contains the image $V$ of $R_n$ in $X$, and $V$ is a component of $X^{d-c+m}$ (for some $m \\geq 1$, since $p_c=0$).  Then $p_{d-c+m} \\geq 1$, hence $q_{d-c+m} \\leq d-c+m -2$ and therefore $\\dim (A \\cap V) \\leq r-2$.\nWe have a commutative diagram relating push-forward and pull-back\n$$\\xymatrix{A_{r-1} (\\widetilde{X}) \\ar[d] \\ar[r]^-{\\pi_*} & A_{r-1}(X) \\ar[d]^-\\cong \\\\\nA_{r-1} (\\widetilde{X} \\setminus \\pi^{-1} | A \\cap V| ) \\ar[r] & A_{r-1} (X \\setminus | A \\cap V|) }$$\nso it suffices to show $\\pi_* ( \\widetilde{D} \\cdot e) $ vanishes upon restriction to $X \\setminus | A \\cap V|$.  \nAway from $V$, the generic points of $\\pi_E^{-1} |D_n \\cap C_n|$ coincide with those of $|\\widetilde{D} \\cap E|$ (as in the case $R_n \\not \\subset D_n$), and the vanishing of $\\pi_* (\\widetilde D \\cdot e)$ in $A_{r-1}(X)$ follows.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{remark} Outside of the case $p_2=0$, one can work with the coarser fiber dimension stratification, and with integral coefficients.  \\end{remark}\n\n\\section{Intersections on a variety with one-dimensional singular locus} \\label{sec:onedimsing}\n\nIn this section we show a resolution may be used to defined intersection pairings on a variety with one-dimensional singular locus.  At one place we need the generic smoothness of a morphism between smooth integral $k$-schemes, so our results in this section are aimed at the case $\\charct k = 0$, though they apply to special situations in positive characteristic.  We do not require a strong resolution, but we require the smoothness of the components of the exceptional locus $\\widetilde E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$.  Resolutions as in Theorem $\\ref{one dim sing}$ exist by \\cite[Thm.~1.6(2)]{BierMil}, or, since we do not use the smoothness of the centers, \\cite{Kollar:res}.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{The stratification.} Let $X$ be a variety over $k$.  Suppose $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ is a resolution of the singularities of $X$ such that all exceptional components are smooth over $k$, and generically smooth over their images in $X$.  We set $X^{d-1}$ equal to the singular locus of $X$, and we define $X^d \\hookrightarrow X^{d-1}$ to be the smallest set with the following properties:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $X^d$ contains the singularities of $X^{d-1}$, i.e., contains the singularities of each component of $X^{d-1}$, and contains the points at which the components intersect;\n\\item $X^d$ contains the image of every exceptional divisor $E \\subseteq \\widetilde E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$ that is contracted to a point by the resolution $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$; and\n\\item for every exceptional divisor $E$ with 1-dimensional image $E_1$, suppose the morphism $E \\to E_1$ has smooth generic fiber (e.g., $\\charct k =0$); then $X^d$ contains the image of the singular fibers of $E \\to E_1$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\begin{remark} \nCondition (1) is a mild strengthening of condition (BC-3) of Definition \\ref{strat res defn}, since we additionally take into account the incidences of the components of $X^{d-1}$.  Condition (BC-1) implies condition (2) must be satisfied.  Condition (3) above is a strengthening of condition (AC).\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{one dim sing} Suppose $X$ is a variety over a field $k$ such that $\\dim(X_{sing}) =1$, and suppose $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ is a resolution of singularities such that the exceptional components are \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item$k$-smooth, and \n\\item generically smooth over their images in $X$.\n\\end{itemize}\nLet $\\overline p, \\overline q$ be perversities such that $\\overline p + \\overline q = \\overline t$.\nWith respect to the stratification defined above, the assignment $\\alpha, \\beta \\mapsto \\pi_* ( \\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta)$ determines a well-defined pairing $A^w_{r, \\overline p}(X) \\otimes A^w_{s, \\overline q}(X) \\to A_{r+s-d} (X)$.  \\end{theorem}\n\nAs a matter of notation, we mostly let $\\alpha$ denote the factor in which error terms are considered, so that $e_\\alpha \\in Z_*(\\widetilde X)$ is a cycle which arises by taking the proper transform of an equivalence (respecting some perversity condition) relating (say) $\\alpha$ to $\\alpha'$ on $X$.\n\n\\begin{proof} The claim is obvious if $r+s-d \\geq 2$, for then $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta, \\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta,$ and $e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta$ are all represented by cycles of dimension $\\geq 2$ supported over $X^{d-1}$, hence have generic dimension $\\geq 1$ over their images, so that all vanish after $\\pi_*$ is applied.  This case requires no perversity condition at all.\n\nConsider the case $r+s-d=1$.  If the error term $e_\\alpha$ is supported over a finite set, then $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta$ is represented by a 1-cycle which is contracted to a finite set by $\\pi$ (since $e_\\alpha$ is so contracted), hence $\\pi_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta) = 0$.  The same argument works with $e_\\beta$ in the place of $\\widetilde \\beta$.  Therefore we may assume $\\dim (\\alpha^{d-1}) =1$, so that $p_{d-1} = d - r$ and $q_{d-1} \\leq r-2$, and hence $\\dim (\\beta^{d-1})  \\leq 0$.  Working one component at a time, we may assume $e_\\alpha$ is contained in a single (smooth) exceptional component $i :E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$.  Now $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta = i_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot i^* (\\widetilde \\beta))$, and $i^* (\\widetilde \\beta)$ is represented by an $(s-1)$-dimensional cycle supported over the finite set $\\beta^{d-1}$.  Therefore $e_\\alpha \\cdot i^* (\\widetilde \\beta)$ is represented by a 1-cycle which is contracted to a finite set, so $ ( \\pi \\circ i)_* ( e_\\alpha \\cdot i^* (\\widetilde \\beta) ) = 0$.  Therefore $\\pi_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta) = 0$, as desired.  Since one of $e_\\alpha, e_\\beta$ must be supported over a finite set in $X^{d-1}$, the term $\\pi_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta)$ vanishes for the same reason.\n\nNow we consider the case $r+s-d=0$.  Now $\\dim (\\alpha^{d-1}) =1$ implies $\\dim (\\beta^{d-1}) < 0$, so the interesting situation is when both $\\alpha^{d-1}$ and $\\beta^{d-1}$ are finite; only one of $\\alpha, \\beta$ is allowed to meet $X^d$.  As in the previous paragraph, we choose a (smooth) exceptional component $i : E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$ containing $e_\\alpha$.  Both $e_\\alpha$ and $i^* (\\widetilde \\beta)$ are supported over finite sets in $X^{d-1}$, and their incidence must occur over points in $X^{d-1} \\setminus X^d$.  \nAgain working one component at a time, the cycles $e_\\alpha$ and $i^* (\\widetilde \\beta)$ are disjoint unless they are supported over the same point $x \\in X^{d-1} \\setminus X^d$.  Let $j : E_x \\hookrightarrow E$ denote the inclusion of the exceptional fiber over $x$.  By construction of the stratification, $E_x$ is smooth.  \n\nSet $\\beta' := i^* (\\widetilde \\beta)$, and let $N$ denote the normal bundle of the embedding $j$.  Using the projection formula and the self-intersection formula (\\cite[Cor.~6.3]{Ful}), we find:\n$${j}_* (e_\\alpha) \\cdot_E  {j}_* ( \\beta' ) = j_* (e _\\alpha \\cdot_{E_x} j^* j_* \\beta' ) = j_* (e_\\alpha \\cdot_{E_x} ( c_1 (N) \\cap \\beta')).$$\nBut $E_x$ is principal, hence $c_1 (N) = 0$, and therefore\n$${j}_* (e_\\alpha) \\cdot_E  {j}_* (\\beta') = e_\\alpha \\cdot_ E i^* (\\widetilde \\beta) =0.$$\nThe projection formula for $i$ implies $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde \\beta = 0 \\in A_0( \\widetilde X)$.\n\nThe vanishing of $e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta$ holds for a similar reason: the nontrivial case is when both $e_\\alpha$ and $e_\\beta$ are supported over the same point $x \\in X^{d-1} \\setminus X^d$.  But then\n$j_* (e _\\alpha) \\cdot_E j_* (e_\\beta) = j_* ( e_\\alpha \\cdot_{E_x}  ( c_1(N) \\cap e_\\beta ) )$, and the vanishing of $c_1(N)$ allows us to conclude.   \\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe basic obstacle to extending the above analysis to the case $\\dim(X_{sing})=2$ is that the singular fibers of $E \\to E_2$ (here $E$ is a component of the singular locus with 2-dimensional image $E_2 \\hookrightarrow X$) may be supported over a divisor in $E_2$, and, in the case $\\alpha^{d-1}$ and $\\beta^{d-1}$ are both finite, the perversity conditions do not rule out the incidence being supported in a singular fiber.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\section{2-cycles on a fourfold} \\label{sec:4fold} In this section we work on a normal quasi-projective $4$-dimensional variety $X$; more precisely we assume the singularities of $X$ occur in codimension at least $2$.  As in the previous cases, the resolutions we require exist in characteristic zero.\nWe describe more explicitly the construction of the stratification satisfying (BC-1), (BC-2), (BC-3), and (AC) with respect to a strong resolution.  We start by declaring $X^2$ is the singular locus of $X$.\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\n\\item (BC-1) For every (smooth, integral) two-dimensional center $S$ such that the composition $S \\to X^2$ is dominant over a component of $X^2$, the image of the positive-dimensional (i.e., one-dimensional) fibers of $S \\to X^2$ is a finite set in $X^2$.  Place this set in $X^4$.\n\n\\item For every two-dimensional center $S$ such that the composition $S \\to X^2$ has one-dimensional image $W \\hookrightarrow X^2$,\n\n\\subitem (BC-1) place $W$ in $X^3$, and\n\n\\subitem (BC-3) place the singularities of $W$ in $X^4$.\n\n\\subitem (BC-2)  The morphism $p : S \\to W$ has integral generic fiber.  Place the zero-dimensional set $ \\{ w \\in W | p^{-1}(w) \\text{ is reducible} \\}$ in $X^4$.\n \n\\item (BC-1) If the two-dimensional center $S$ of a blowup has zero-dimensional image in $X^2$ (so it lies over a single point $x \\in X^2$), then $x$ is placed in $X^4$.\n\n\\item (AC) Let $p : \\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }S} \\to S$ denote the canonical morphism.  Suppose $\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }S}$ has $t$ components.  Then the image in $X^2$ of the closed set $\\{ s \\in S | p^{-1}(s) \\text{ has more than $t$ components} \\}$\nis placed in $X^3$.\n\\item For every one-dimensional center $C$ which is generically finite onto its image in $X^2$,\n\n\\subitem (BC-1) place the image curve in $X^3$, and\n\n\\subitem (BC-3) place its singularities in $X^4$.\n\n\\subitem (BC-1) If a one-dimensional center $C$ has zero-dimensional image in $X^2$ (so it lies over a single point $x \\in X^2$), then $x$ is placed in $X^4$.\n\n\\subitem (AC) Place in $X^4$ the closed set in $C$ over which $\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }C} \\to C$ has more components than does $\\widetilde{E}_{\\text{dom }C}$ itself.\n\n\\item (BC-1) The image in $X^2$ of every zero-dimensional center $Z$ is placed in $X^4$.\n\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nThe instances of condition (BC-1) are necessary to guarantee the stratification refines the stratification by fiber dimension.  In the course of the proof we point out where the other conditions are used; the condition (BC-3) in (5) does not seem to be necessary, but (BC-3) in (2) is used.\n\nWe will use notation from the following diagram.\n\n$$\\xymatrix{ \\widetilde{X} \\ar[r] & \\Bl_{Z_n}X_n \\ar[r]  & X_n \\ar[r] & \\ldots \\ar[r] & X \\\\\n\\widetilde{E} \\ar[u] & E_n \\ar[u] \\ar[r]^-{p_n} & Z_n \\ar[u] & \\ldots & X^2 \\ar[u] \\\\ }$$\nThe center $Z_n$ will be written as $S_n$ when it is two-dimensional and as $C_n$ when it is one-dimensional.  Note that each $Z_n$ is smooth, and each $p_n : E_n \\to Z_n$ is a flat morphism.  Zero-dimensional centers play no essential role since incidences in $X^4$ are forbidden by the perversity condition.\nBlowups along three-dimensional centers are finite morphisms (by normal flatness) and do not influence the stratification.\n\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{4fold} Let $X$ be a quasi-projective fourfold over $k$, and let $\\pi : \\widetilde X \\to X$ be a strong resolution of singularities.\nSuppose a stratification of $X$ satisfies (BC-1), (BC-2), (BC-3), and (AC) with respect to $\\pi$.\nLet $\\overline{p}, \\overline{q}$ be perversities such that $\\overline{p} + \\overline{q} = \\overline{t}$.  The assignment $(\\alpha, \\beta) \\mapsto \\pi_* (\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot \\widetilde{\\beta})$ determines a well-defined pairing $A^w_{2, \\overline{p}} (X)_\\mathbb{Q} \\otimes A^w_{2, \\overline{q}} (X)_\\mathbb{Q} \\to A_0(X)_\\mathbb{Q}.$\n\\end{theorem}\n \n\nThere are essentially three complementary pairs of perversities to analyze, and these are handled in the next three propositions.  For each pair the strategy is to consider possible locations of the generic points of error terms, and for each location we move the error term away from the other 2-cycle.  If the error term first appears on the blowup of $X_n$ along $Z_n$, then the move is achieved by finding a suitable rational function on $Z_n$.  \n\n\\begin{proposition} Theorem \\ref{4fold} is true for $\\overline{p}=\\overline{0}, \\overline{q} = \\overline{t}$; and for $\\overline{p}=(0,0,1), \\overline{q}=(1,2,2)$. \\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof} If $\\alpha \\sim_{w, \\overline{p}} \\alpha'$ and $z$ is a cycle appearing in the equation relating $\\alpha$ to $\\alpha'$, the dimension of $\\pi^{-1}(z^i)$ is at most $2-i + (i-1) =1$.  Since the preimage of the exceptional part is $1$-dimensional, it cannot support a $2$-cycle and the error terms vanish.  Therefore $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\sim \\widetilde{\\alpha'}$ and clearly then $\\pi_* (\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot \\widetilde{\\beta}) \\sim \\pi_* (\\widetilde{\\alpha'} \\cdot \\widetilde{\\beta})$.\n\nIt remains to check the compatibility with $\\overline{q}$-rational equivalence in $\\beta$, i.e., the vanishing $\\pi_* (\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot e_\\beta) =0$, where $e_\\beta$ is a component of the error term $e(\\beta, \\beta')$.  Now $\\alpha^2$ is a finite set contained in the smooth part $X^2 \\setminus X^3$ of $X^2$, and $\\alpha^3$ is empty.  If the generic point of $e_\\beta$ lies over $X^3$, then $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cap e_\\beta = \\emptyset$ and we are done.\n\nTherefore we suppose the generic point of $e_\\beta$ lies over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$, and let $E \\subseteq \\widetilde{E} \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{X}$ be a component of the exceptional locus which contains $e_\\beta$.  If the image of $E$ has dimension less than or equal to $1$, then $E$ has generic dimension at least $2$ over its image, contradicting the assumption that the generic point of $e_\\beta$ lies over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$.  Therefore $e_\\beta$ first appears on some blowup $\\Bl_{S_n}X_n$ where $S_n$ is a smooth surface on some intermediate variety $X_n$.  Now let $E$ denote an exceptional divisor which contains $e_\\beta$ (as above), and maps birationally onto a divisor which is exceptional for the morphism $\\Bl_{S_n}X_n \\to X_n$ (i.e., $E$ also first appears on $\\Bl_{S_n}X_n$).\n\n Let $a : S_n \\to X^2$ denote the canonical morphism.  Note that ${a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2)$ is finite by our construction of the stratification.\nLet $e_n$ denote the (one-dimensional) image of $e_\\beta$ in $S_n$.  There exists a $1$-cycle $C$ on $S_n$ which is rationally equivalent to $e_n$, and with the property that $C \\cap {a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2) = \\emptyset$.  In other words, there is a rational function $g_n: S_n \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$ such that $[g_n(0)] = e_n + Z$, and such that both $Z$ and $[g_n(\\infty)]$ are disjoint from ${a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2)$.\n\nNow consider the composition $g: E \\to S_n \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$.  By the fiber integrality hypothesis (i.e., since (AC) in (4) places the image of the reducible fibers of $E \\to S_n$ into $X^3$), the support of $e_\\beta$ coincides (set-theoretically) with the preimage of $e_n$ by the morphism $E \\to S_n$.  \nTherefore $g$ provides a rational equivalence between $m \\cdot e_\\beta + Z'$ and $Z''$, where $Z'$ is supported over $Z$, and $Z''$ is supported over $[g_n(\\infty)]$.  Hence both $Z'$ and $Z''$ are disjoint from $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$.  Therefore $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot (m \\cdot e_\\beta) \\sim \\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot (Z'' - Z') = 0$ and so $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot e_\\beta$ is zero in $A_0(\\widetilde{X})_\\mathbb{Q}$, as desired.\n\nAn identical argument handles the pair $\\overline{p}=(0,0,1), \\overline{q}=(1,2,2)$ since it imposes the same conditions on $\\alpha$ and $\\beta$. \\end{proof}\n \n\\begin{proposition}  \\label{intro smooth ex} Theorem \\ref{4fold} is true for $\\overline{p}=(0,1,1), \\overline{q} = (1,1,2)$. \\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}  In this case $\\alpha^2$ is finite and $\\alpha^4$ is empty, hence if $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$ is nonempty it consists of several surfaces lying over some zero-cycle $Z \\hookrightarrow X^3 \\setminus X^4$.  Thus a component $e_\\alpha$ of $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$ is an irreducible surface which first appears on $\\Bl_{C_n}X_n$, the blowup of some intermediate variety $X_n$ along a smooth one-dimensional center $C_n$.  Let $E$ denote an exceptional divisor that contains $e_\\alpha$ and first appears when $e_\\alpha$ does (so that $E \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde{E}_{C_n}$).\nThe image of $e_\\alpha$ is a point $c \\in C_n$; since $C_n$ is finite over its image in $X^2$, the proper transform of $\\beta$ via $X_n \\to X$ meets $C_n$ in a finite set.\n\nThere exists a rational function $g_n: C_n \\to \\mathbb{P}^1$ such that $[g_n(0)] = c + Z$, and such that both $Z$ and $[g_n(\\infty)]$ are disjoint from the proper transform of $\\beta$.  Consider the rational function $g: E \\to C_n \\to \\mathbb{P}^1$.  Since the image of $c \\in C_n$ lies in $X^3 \\setminus X^4$, the fiber of $E \\to C_n$ over $c$ is irreducible (by (AC) in (5)), and therefore $e_\\alpha$ coincides set-theoretically with $E \\cap \\pi^{-1}(c)$.\nTherefore $g$ provides a rational equivalence between $m \\cdot e_\\alpha + Z'$ and $Z''$, where $Z'$ is supported over $Z \\hookrightarrow X^3 \\setminus X^4$, and $Z''$ is supported over $[g_n(\\infty)]$.  Consequently $e_\\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde{\\beta} = 0$ in $A_0(\\widetilde{X})_\\mathbb{Q}$.   Note $e_\\beta$ must be supported over a finite set in $C_n$, so the same construction moves $e_\\alpha$ away from $e_\\beta$.\n\nNow we show the vanishing of $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot e(\\beta, \\beta')$.  First we consider components $e_\\beta$ of $e(\\beta, \\beta')$ whose generic points lie over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$.  Then $e_\\beta$ first appears on the blowup of a two-dimensional center $S_n$ which is dominant over a component of $X^2$.  The image of $e_\\beta$ in $S_n$ is a subvariety of dimension $1$, and $e_n := p_n (e_\\beta)$ is not contracted by $a: S_n \\to X^2$.  (If $e_\\beta$ were supported over a subvariety contracted by $a$, then it would have generic dimension $2$ over its image.)  We choose an exceptional divisor $E \\supset e_\\beta$ as usual.\n\n\nSince $\\alpha^4$ is empty, ${a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2)$ is finite.  Therefore $e_n$ is rationally equivalent to a $1$-cycle on $S_n$ which is disjoint from ${a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2)$, i.e., there exists a rational function $g_n: S_n \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$ such that $[g_n(0)] = e_n + Z'$, and such that both $Z'$ and $[g_n(\\infty)]$ are disjoint from ${a}^{-1}(\\alpha^2)$.  Now we consider the composition $g := g_n \\circ p_n : E \\to S_n \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$.  By the integrality condition on the fibers (condition (AC) in (4)), $[g(0)]$ is a multiple of $e_\\beta$ plus a 2-cycle supported over $Z'$, and $[g(\\infty)]$ is a 2-cycle supported over $[g_n(\\infty)]$.  In particular, some multiple of $e_\\beta$ is rationally equivalent to a cycle disjoint from $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$.\n\n\nNext we consider error terms $e_\\beta$ whose generic points are supported over $X^3 \\setminus X^4$.  There are two possibilities for first appearance.\nSuch a term may first appear on the blowup along a (smooth) one-dimensional center $C_n$ (with one-dimensional image in $X^2$); \nthis is handled by finding a rational function on $C_n$ which, upon precomposing with a canonical morphism from an exceptional divisor to $C_n$, gives a rational equivalence between some multiple of $e_\\beta$ and a $2$-cycle which is disjoint from the preimage of $\\alpha^3$ (as $\\alpha^3$ necessarily meets $C_n$ in a finite set) and hence from $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$.\n\nThe other possibility is that the error term $e_\\beta$ (with generic points supported over $X^3 \\setminus X^4$) first appears on the blowup along a (smooth) two-dimensional center $S_n$, in which case the one-dimensional image of $e_\\beta$ inside $S_n$ is contracted to a point by the morphism $S_n \\to X^2$: either the center $S_n$ has one-dimensional image in $X^2$, or $e_\\beta$ is supported over some exceptional part of the generically finite morphism $S_n \\to X^2$.  But $e_\\beta$ is exceptional for $S_n \\to X^2$ implies the generic point of $e_\\beta$ is supported over $X^4$, so we may assume the two-dimensional center $S_n$ has one-dimensional image $W \\hookrightarrow X^2$.  By our definition of $X^4$, (the finite sets) $\\alpha^3 \\cap W$ and $\\beta^3 \\cap W$ are supported in the smooth locus of $W$, and in the locus over which $S_n \\to W$ has integral fibers (by (BC-2) and (BC-3) as in (2)).  Let $q$ denote the canonical morphism $E \\to S_n \\to W$, and let $w \\in W$ be the image of $e_\\beta$ via $q$.  Note that $e_\\beta$ coincides set-theoretically with $q^{-1}(w)$.  There exists a rational function $g: W \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$ such that $[g(0)] = w + Z$, and such that both $Z$ and $[g(\\infty)]$ are disjoint from $\\alpha^3$.  Then the rational function $E \\to S_n \\to W \\xrightarrow{g} \\mathbb{P}^1$ provides a rational equivalence between some multiple of $e_\\beta$ and a cycle which is disjoint from the preimage of $\\alpha^3$, so that $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot e_\\beta \\sim 0$ as desired.\n\nFinally, components $e_\\beta$ of $e(\\beta, \\beta')$ supported over $X^4$ are automatically disjoint from $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$.  In particular this applies if $e_\\beta$ is supported over some exceptional part of the generically finite morphism $S_n \\to X^2$. \\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proposition} Theorem \\ref{4fold} is true for $\\overline{p}=(0,1,2), \\overline{q} = (1,1,1)$. \\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof} In this case $\\alpha^2$ is finite (but may have support in $X^4$), $\\beta^2$ is $1$-dimensional, $\\beta^3$ is finite, and $\\beta^4$ is empty.  The error terms appearing in $e(\\alpha, \\alpha')$ cannot be supported over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$ since $p_2=0$.  The error terms supported over $X^3 \\setminus X^4$ are handled (moved away from the finite set $\\beta^3$) as in the previous case.  The error terms supported over $X^4$ are disjoint from $\\widetilde{\\beta}$ since $\\beta^4 = \\emptyset$.  The same reasoning applies with $\\widetilde \\beta$ replaced by $e_\\beta$.\n\nNow we show the vanishing $\\pi_* (\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta) =0$.\nThe error terms in $e(\\beta, \\beta')$ lying over $X^3$ are handled as in the previous case.  It remains to show $\\widetilde{\\alpha} \\cdot e_\\beta = 0$ when $e_\\beta$ is a component of $e(\\beta, \\beta')$ whose generic point is supported over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$.  We let $e_0$ denote the image of $e_\\beta$ in $X^2$, and let $X^2_e$ denote the component of $X^2$ that contains $e_0$.\n\nLet $S$ denote the first two-dimensional center that dominates $X^2_e$.  Then $S \\to X^2_e$ is a resolution of singularities, and it (Stein) factors as $S \\to S' \\to X^2_e$, where $b: S' \\to X^2_e$ omits those blowups along centers landing in $X^4$.  (While $S$ is a closed subvariety in some intermediate $X_j$, the variety $S'$ may not admit a closed immersion into any $X_j$.)  Thus $b$ is a finite morphism, the singular set of $S'$ is contained in $b^{-1}(X^4)$, and the proper transform $e_0^{'} \\hookrightarrow S'$ of $e_0$ via $S' \\to X^2_e$ is supported in the smooth locus of $S'$.\n\nSuppose $e_\\beta$ first appears on the blowup of the two-dimensional center $S_n$, and consider the Stein factorization $S_n \\to S_n' \\to S'$ of the morphism $S_n \\to S'$. (Note $S_n \\to S$ is dominant since the generic point of $e_\\beta$ is supported over $X^2 \\setminus X^3$, and of course $S_n=S$ is possible.)   Again choose an exceptional component $E \\supset e_\\beta$ dominating $S_n$.  Let $e_n$ denote the image of $e_\\beta$ in $S_n$, and $e_n'$ its image in $S_n'$.  Since $S_n' \\to S' \\to X^2_e$ is finite, the preimage of $X^4$ in $S_n'$ is finite.\n\nThe morphism $S_n \\to S_n'$ contracts exactly those curves lying over curves contracted by $S \\to S'$.  Since the curves contracted by $S \\to S'$ (more precisely the zero-dimensional image in $X^2$ of such curves) are disjoint from $e_0$, the morphism $S_n \\to S_n'$ is an isomorphism in a neighborhood of $e_n$, hence $S_n'$ is smooth in a neighborhood of $e_n'$.  Now we proceed as usual.  We find a rational function on $S_n'$ moving $e_n'$ away from the finite preimage of $X^4$.  Then the composite rational function $E \\to S_n \\to S_n' \\dashrightarrow \\mathbb{P}^1$ moves a multiple of $e_\\beta$ away from $\\widetilde{\\alpha}$, as required.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Necessity of condition (AC)} \\label{need integral fibers}\n\nSince the arguments of the previous section may seem intricate, one may ask if there is a simpler description of a stratification for which intersecting on the resolution induces a well-defined pairing.  In this section we show the stratification according to the fiber dimension of the resolution is insufficiently fine to obtain a well-defined intersection product, even when all the strata are smooth.  The example applies to both equivalence relations $\\sim_{\\overline p}$ and $\\sim_{w, \\overline p}$.\nWe work over a field $k$ of characteristic $\\neq 2$.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{An affine example.}  Let $X \\hookrightarrow \\mathbb{A}^4$ be the hypersurface defined by the vanishing of $x^2 - y^2 + tz^2$.  Then $X$ is singular along the line $L$ defined by $x=y=z=0$, and we claim a resolution $\\pi : \\widetilde{X} \\to X$ is obtained by blowing up $X$ along $L$.  On the patch where $x$ generates (say $y = y'x$ and $z = z'x$), the blowup is defined by the vanishing of $1- {(y')}^2 + t{(z')}^2$, which is smooth.  On the patch where $y$ generates, the blowup is defined by the vanishing of ${(x')}^2 -1 + t{(z')}^2$, which is also smooth.  On the patch where $z$ generates, the blowup is defined by the vanishing of ${(x')}^2 - {(y')}^2 +t$, and this too is smooth.\n\nNote that all of the fibers of $\\pi^{-1}(L) \\to L$ are one-dimensional.  Since $L$ is regular, this implies $\\pi^{-1}(L) \\to L$ is flat and so $L \\hookrightarrow X$ is normally flat.  Taking into account only the fiber dimensions in the resolution and the singularities of the centers, we are led to the stratification $X^3 = \\emptyset \\hookrightarrow X^2 = X^1 = L \\hookrightarrow X$.  The relevant feature (which this stratification ignores) is that the fiber of $\\pi$ over $(0,0,0,0)$ has two components ($x'+y' = 0$ and $x'-y' =0$), whereas the fiber over $(t_0, 0, 0, 0)$ is irreducible for $t_0 \\neq 0$.\n\n\nLet $D \\hookrightarrow X$ be the divisor defined by the ideal $(x+y,t)$, let $\\alpha_0$ be the $1$-cycle defined by $(x-y,t,z)$, and let $\\alpha_1$ be the $1$-cycle defined by $(x-y,t-1,z)$.  Each of the cycles $D, \\alpha_0$, and $\\alpha_1$ meets $L$ in a finite set, so $D$ has perversity $\\overline 0$ and the $\\alpha$'s have perversity $\\overline 1 := (1,1,1)$.  Furthermore $\\alpha_0 \\sim \\alpha_1$ since the $\\alpha$'s arise as preimages of distinct values of the regular function $t$ on the surface $S$ cut out by $(x-y,z)$.  The equivalence respects the perversity condition $\\overline 1$ since $t : S \\to \\mathbb{A}^1$ maps $L$ isomorphically onto $\\mathbb{A}^1$, so that each fiber of $t$ meets $L$ exactly once.\n\nNevertheless, $\\widetilde{D} \\cap \\widetilde{\\alpha_0}$ consists of a single (reduced) point: on the patch where $z$ generates, the intersection occurs at $x' =  y' = t = z =0$.  On the other hand, $\\widetilde{D} \\cap \\widetilde{\\alpha_1} = \\emptyset$ (in fact $D \\cap \\alpha_1 = \\emptyset$). \nWe conclude that the stratification is too coarse for the resolution to determine a well-defined intersection product.\nOf course the example disappears if we use instead the stratification $X^3 = (0,0,0,0) \\hookrightarrow X^2=X^1 = L \\hookrightarrow X$, as implied by Theorem \\ref{divisor pairing}.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Behavior at infinity.}  For the reader who does not take degrees of zero-cycles on an affine variety too seriously, we now show the behavior persists on the projective closure.\n\nLet $\\underline {X} \\hookrightarrow \\bb{P}^4_{S,T,X,Y,Z}$ be the hypersurface cut out by $SX^2 - SY^2 + T Z^2$.  The singular locus of $\\underline  X$ consists of three components, each abstractly isomorphic to $\\bb{P}^1$:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\Sigma_1 = Z(X,Y,Z)$, which is the closure of $L$ in the affine example;\n\\item $\\Sigma_2 = Z(X - Y, S, Z)$; and\n\\item $\\Sigma_3 = Z(X + Y, S, Z)$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThe intersection point $p = [0 : 1 : 0 : 0 : 0] = \\Sigma_1 \\cap \\Sigma_2 \\cap \\Sigma_3$ (which did not appear in the affine example) may be placed in ${\\underline X}^3$ (because the singular locus of $\\underline  X$ is itself singular there, or because the resolution has different behavior over $p$).  Our constructions will preserve any perversity condition which forbids incidence with $p$, hence will show\n$${\\underline X}^3 = p \\hookrightarrow {\\underline X}^2 = {\\underline X}^1 = \\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2 \\cup \\Sigma_3 \\hookrightarrow \\underline X$$\nis not fine enough for the intersection product to be well-defined.  As in the affine example, ${\\underline X}^3$ must include $[1:0:0:0:0]$ as well.\n\nA resolution is obtained by blowing up $\\underline  X$ along $\\Sigma_1$, then blowing up the proper transforms $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_2}, \\widetilde{\\Sigma_3} \\hookrightarrow B_{\\Sigma_1} (\\underline  X)$; since $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_2}$ and $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_3}$ are disjoint on $B_{\\Sigma_1} (\\underline  X)$, the order is irrelevant.  Initially blowing up $p$ does not improve the situation, in the sense that one finds a copy of the original singularity on $B_p (\\underline X)$.  This is perhaps not too surprising since one finds Whitney umbrellas along $x=0$ and $y=0$, and these too are not resolved by blowing up the ``worst\" point in the singular locus.\n\n\\begin{proposition} \\label{ex strong res} The morphism\n$$B_{\\widetilde{\\Sigma_2} \\cup \\widetilde{\\Sigma_3}} (B_{\\Sigma_1} (\\underline  X ))\\to B_{\\Sigma_1} (\\underline  X) \\to \\underline  X$$\nis a strong resolution of the singularities of $\\underline  X$. \\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nFirst we verify that the blowup along $\\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2 \\cup \\Sigma_3 - p$ resolves $\\underline  X - p$; for this calculation the order of the blowup is irrelevant.  Then we analyze the behavior near $p$.\n\nFor the blowup along $\\Sigma_1 - p$, we work on $S \\neq 0$ and recover the affine example: the blowup of $x^2 - y^2 + tz^2$ along $x=y=z=0$.  Hence $B_{\\Sigma_1 - p} (\\underline  X - p)$ is smooth above $\\Sigma_1 - p$.  The analysis of the other blowups is similar (work on $X \\neq 0$) and we omit the details.\n\nHaving analyzed the morphism away from $p$, we analyze the blowup along $\\Sigma_1$ where $T \\neq 0$, so that we are blowing up $sx^2 - sy^2 + z^2 = 0$ along $x=y=z=0$.  Where $x$ generates, the blowup is defined by $s - s {(y')}^2 + {(z')}^2 =0$, and is singular along $1-{(y')}^2 = s = z' = 0$; these two singular points are exactly where the proper transforms $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_2}, \\widetilde{\\Sigma_3}$ meet the fiber over $p$.  Where $y$ generates, the blowup is defined by $s{(x')}^2 -s + {(z')}^2 =0$, and is singular along ${(x')}^2-1=s=z'=0$ (so that we see the same two points).  Where $z$ generates, the blowup is smooth.\n\nThe blowup of $B_{\\Sigma_1}(\\underline  X)$ along $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_2}$ is covered by two charts:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item the blowup of $s - s{(y')}^2 + {(z')}^2 =0$ along $1-y' = s = z' = 0$, and\n\\item the blowup of $s{(x')}^2 -s + {(z')}^2 =0$ along $x'-1 = s= z' =0$;\n\\end{itemize}\nboth of these are smooth.  The blowup along $\\widetilde{\\Sigma_3}$ is similar, except one uses the centers $1+y' = s = z' = 0$, and $x'+1 = s= z' =0$ in these charts.\nAll three centers are normally flat in their ambient spaces since the exceptional divisors over them are irreducible, and the centers are regular and one-dimensional.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{lemma} \nThe stratification\n$${\\underline X}^3 = p \\hookrightarrow {\\underline X}^2 = {\\underline X}^1 = \\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2 \\cup \\Sigma_3 \\hookrightarrow \\underline X$$\nsatisfies (BC-1), (BC-2), and (BC-3) with respect to the resolution of Proposition \\ref{ex strong res}.  With respect to this stratification,\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item the divisor $\\underline  D = Z(X+Y, T) \\hookrightarrow \\underline X$ satisfies the perversity condition $\\overline 0$, and\n\\item the 1-cycles $\\underline  \\alpha_0 = Z(X-Y,T,Z)$ and $\\underline  \\alpha_1 = Z(X-Y, T-S,Z)$ satisfy the perversity condition $\\overline 1$ and are equivalent as 1-cycles of perversity $\\overline 1$.\n\\end{itemize} \nNevertheless, $\\deg (\\pi_* ( \\widetilde{\\underline  D} \\cdot \\widetilde{\\underline  \\alpha_0}) ) =1$ and $\\widetilde{\\underline  D} \\cap \\widetilde{\\underline  \\alpha_1} = \\emptyset$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe first claim follows from the following incidence properties: $\\underline  D \\cap \\Sigma_1 = [ 1 : 0 : 0 : 0 : 0 ] \\ , \\ \\underline  D \\cap \\Sigma_2 = \\emptyset \\ , \\ \\underline  D \\cap \\Sigma_3 = [ 0 :0:1:1:0]$.\n\nNext we analyze the rational equivalence relating $\\underline  \\alpha_0 = Z(X-Y,T,Z)$ and $\\underline  \\alpha_1 = Z(X-Y, T-S,Z)$.  Both of these 1-cycles are lines in $\\bb{P}^2 \\cong Z(X - Y, Z) =: P \\hookrightarrow \\underline  X$.  Note $\\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2 \\hookrightarrow P$, so we must ensure the equivalence $\\underline  \\alpha_0 \\sim \\underline  \\alpha_1$ can be chosen to respect the perversity condition.  Since $\\Sigma_3 \\cap P = p$, the component $\\Sigma_3$ poses no difficulty beyond that presented by $\\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2$.\n\nWe claim there exists an $\\mathbb{A}^1$-relative 1-cycle $A \\hookrightarrow \\underline  X \\times \\mathbb{A}^1$ with the following properties:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $A_0 = \\underline \\alpha_0, A_1 = \\underline  \\alpha_1$;\n\\item all of the fibers $A_t$ are disjoint from $p$; and\n\\item all of the fibers $A_t$ meet $\\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2$ in finitely many points (in fact, in exactly two points).\n\\end{enumerate}\nThis means exactly that $A$ determines an $\\mathbb{A}^1$-family of 1-cycles of perversity $\\overline 1$, so that $\\underline \\alpha_0 \\sim_{\\overline 1} \\underline \\alpha_1$.  (Of course $\\underline \\alpha_0$ and $\\underline \\alpha_1$ are then weakly equivalent as 1-cycles of perversity $\\overline 1$.)\n\nWe consider $[\\underline  \\alpha_0], [ \\underline  \\alpha_1], [\\Sigma_1],$ and $[\\Sigma_2]$ as points of $\\check P$, the $\\bb{P}^2$ dual to $P$.  The lines $ \\underline \\alpha_0, \\underline  \\alpha_1, \\Sigma_2$ meet at $[0:0:1:1:0]$, and this point does not belong to $\\Sigma_1$.  Therefore $[\\underline  \\alpha_0], [ \\underline  \\alpha_1],$ and $[\\Sigma_2]$ lie on a line $\\ell \\hookrightarrow \\check P$, and $[\\Sigma_1] \\notin \\ell$.  Then the family $A$ is the family of lines corresponding to the canonical morphism $\\ell - [\\Sigma_2] \\to \\check P$.  Since this family avoids $[\\Sigma_1]$ and $[\\Sigma_2]$, all of the fibers $A_t$ meet $\\Sigma_1 \\cup \\Sigma_2$ exactly twice.  Furthermore, exactly one point $[L] \\in \\ell$ corresponds to a line containing $p$; this is $[\\Sigma_2]$, hence all of the fibers $A_t$ are disjoint from $p$.\n\nThe incidences are contained in the locus where $S \\neq 0$, so are captured by the affine situation.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\nIn this example, the family $A$ of 1-cycles cannot be extended to a $\\bb{P}^1$-family respecting the perversity condition $\\overline 1$.  However, by performing the blowups in a different order, one can find an example of the same essential phenomenon, and so that the $\\mathbb{A}^1$-family relating the 1-cycles extends to a $\\bb{P}^1$-family, all of whose fibers satisfy the perversity condition $\\overline 1$.  Namely, we first blow up $\\Sigma_2$ on $\\underline X$, then blow up the proper transform of $\\Sigma_3$.  The resulting variety $\\underline X'$ is singular exactly along ${\\Sigma'_1}$, the proper transform of $\\Sigma_1$.  There are no incidences $\\underline D' \\cap \\underline \\alpha_i'$ in the exceptional divisors over $\\Sigma_2 \\cup \\Sigma_3$, so the incidences are captured by the affine situation.  The variety $\\underline X'$ is resolved by blowing up $\\Sigma_1$, and $B_{\\Sigma'_1} (\\underline X')$ has one-dimensional fibers over $\\Sigma'_1$, all of which are irreducible except one (the same which appears in the affine example).\n\nNote $\\Sigma_2 \\hookrightarrow P$ is already Cartier, so the proper transform of $P$ via the blowup along $\\Sigma_2$ is isomorphic to $P$.  Since $\\Sigma_3$ meets $P$ in a single point, the transform $P'$ of $P$ on $\\underline X'$ is isomorphic to $\\bb{P}^2$ blown up at a single point.  \n\nThe blown up point is not contained in any of the lines $\\Sigma_1', \\underline \\alpha'_0, \\underline \\alpha'_1$.  The rational function $P \\dashrightarrow \\bb{P}^1$ relating $\\underline \\alpha_0$ to $\\underline \\alpha_1$ may be considered as a rational function $P' \\dashrightarrow \\bb{P}^1$ relating $\\underline \\alpha'_0$ to $\\underline \\alpha'_1$; since $\\Sigma'_1$ does not occur as a fiber of this map, we may think of this function as a $\\bb{P}^1$-family of 1-cycles of perversity $\\overline 1$ for the stratification ${(\\underline X')}^3 = \\emptyset \\hookrightarrow {(\\underline X')}^2 = {(\\underline X')}^1 = \\Sigma'_1 \\hookrightarrow \\underline X'$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\section{Further questions} \\label{sec:further}\n\n\\textbf{Independence of resolution.}  Given two resolutions $\\pi_1 :X_1 \\to X \\ , \\ \\pi_2 : X_2 \\to X$ of the variety $X$, we have defined two stratifications $S_1, S_2$ of $X$, and (in certain situations) products $\\bullet_i : A_{r, \\overline p}(X, S_i) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X, S_i) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X)$ (for $i=1,2$) by pushing forward the intersection formed on the resolution.  (We make explicit the dependence of the group $A_{r, \\overline p}(X)$ on the stratification, and for simplicity we drop the superscript $w$ and the coefficients.)  For any stratification $S$ that refines both $S_1$ and $S_2$, we have canonical morphisms $C^i_{r, \\overline p}: A_{r,  \\overline p}(X, S) \\to A_{r, \\overline p}(X, S_i)$ (for $i=1,2$), and thus it makes sense to ask whether $\\bullet_1 (C^1_{r, \\overline p} \\otimes C^1_{s, \\overline q})$ and $\\bullet_2 (C^2_{r, \\overline p} \\otimes C^2_{s, \\overline q} )$ coincide as morphisms $A_{r,  \\overline p}(X, S) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X, S) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X)$.  We assume we are in one of the situations in which the resolution is known to induce a well-defined product.\n\nThe simplest case is when $\\pi_2$ is obtained from $\\pi_1$ by a sequence of blowups of $X_1$ along smooth centers.  In this case we have a canonical morphism \n$C_{r, \\overline p} : A_{r,  \\overline p}(X, S_2) \\to A_{r, \\overline p}(X, S_1)$ (i.e., the stratification induced by $\\pi_2$ refines the one induced by $\\pi_1$).  \n\n\\begin{proposition} With the notation and hypotheses as above, suppose $f : X_2 \\to X_1$ is a composition of blowups along smooth centers, and set $\\pi_2 = \\pi_1 \\circ f : X_2 \\to X$.  Then we have $\\bullet_2 = \\bullet_1 (C_{r, \\overline p} \\otimes C_{s, \\overline q}) : A_{r, \\overline p}(X,S_2) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X, S_2) \\to A_{r+s-d}(X)$. \\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}  Let $(-)_i$ denote the proper transform of a cycle on $X$ via $\\pi_i : X_i \\to X$.  We have $f^* (\\alpha_1) = \\alpha_2 + e_\\alpha$ and $f^* (\\beta_1) = \\beta_2 + e_\\beta$.  Since $\\alpha_1 \\cdot \\beta_1 = f_* (f^* (\\alpha_1) \\cdot f^* (\\beta_1))$, it follows that\n$${(\\pi_1)}_* (\\alpha_1 \\cdot \\beta_1) = {(\\pi_2)}_* (\\alpha_2 \\cdot \\beta_2) + {(\\pi_2)}_*(\\alpha_2 \\cdot e_\\beta + e_\\alpha \\cdot \\beta_2 + e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta).$$\nThe cycles $e_\\alpha$ and $e_\\beta$ may be thought of as error terms which first appear on one of the blowups occurring in the morphism $f$.  Therefore our arguments apply to show the vanishing of the cycle class of ${(\\pi_2)}_*(\\alpha_2 \\cdot e_\\beta + e_\\alpha \\cdot \\beta_2 + e_\\alpha \\cdot e_\\beta)$, and therefore we obtain the equality ${(\\pi_1)}_* (\\alpha_1 \\cdot \\beta_1) = {(\\pi_2)}_* (\\alpha_2 \\cdot \\beta_2).$\n\\end{proof}\n\nIf $k$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero and $X$ is complete, then two resolutions of $X$ are related by a sequence of smooth blowups and blowdowns by the weak factorization theorem of Abramovich-Karu-Matsuki-W{\\l}odarczyk \\cite[Thm.~0.1.1]{AKMW}.  Since the intermediate varieties do not necessarily admit morphisms to $X$, it is not clear how to obtain a comparison of the products formed via two resolutions.  If the strong factorization conjecture \\cite[Conj~0.2.1]{AKMW} holds, however, then there is variety $Y$ admitting morphisms $f_i : Y \\to X_i$ which are compositions of blowups along smooth centers, and such that $\\pi_1 \\circ f_1 = \\pi_2 \\circ f_2 : Y \\to X$.  In this case we could conclude that the products defined using $X_1$ and $X_2$ agree upon restriction to $A_{r, \\overline p}(X, S_Y) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X, S_Y)$, i.e., the group formed using the stratification induced by the resolution $Y \\to X$.\n\n\n\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Comparison with Goresky-MacPherson product.} It would be interesting to know whether our intersection product (when it is defined) agrees with the intersection pairing defined by Goresky-MacPherson via the cycle class mapping.  The difficulty in making the comparison is that there is no obvious way to take the proper transform of a topological cycle.  A cycle on $X$ gives rise to a canonical cycle on $\\widetilde X$ relative to $\\widetilde E$, and using this one can show the products agree after composing with the canonical map $H_*(X) \\to H_*(X, X^1)$.  For pairs of cycles with supports intersecting properly in each stratum, or more generally any pair which is weakly $(\\sim_{\\overline p}, \\sim_{\\overline q})$-equivalent to such a pair, our intersection product agrees with that of Goresky-MacPherson since in this case both may be described as taking the closure of an intersection product formed on the smooth locus.\n\n\\medskip\n\\textbf{Refinements for small perversities.} If $\\overline p + \\overline q < \\overline t$, is there a refinement\n$$A_{r, \\overline p}(X) \\otimes A_{s, \\overline q}(X) \\to A_{r+s - d, \\overline p + \\overline q}(X) \\ \\ ?$$\nThis seems difficult to achieve using resolutions.  For example, suppose $\\alpha \\in A_{r, \\overline 0}(X)$ and $D \\in A_{d -1, \\overline 0}(X)$.  The fibers of $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cap \\pi^{-1}(X^i) \\to \\alpha \\cap X^i$ are typically $(i-1)$-dimensional (the source is typically $(r-1)$-dimensional, and the target is typically $(r-i)$-dimensional).  To find a representative of $\\pi_* (\\widetilde \\alpha \\cdot \\widetilde D)$ in $A_{r-1, \\overline 0}(X)$, one would seek a divisor $\\widetilde D_1 \\sim \\widetilde D \\hookrightarrow \\widetilde X$ such that the image of $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cap \\pi^{-1}(X^i) \\cap \\widetilde D_1 \\to \\alpha \\cap X^i$ is not dense.  This means $\\widetilde D_1$ misses most fibers of the morphism $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cap \\pi^{-1}(X^i) \\to \\alpha \\cap X^i$.  One might try the following technique for moving divisors, at least in the quasi-projective case: find some effective divisor $D$ (with better incidence properties) such that $\\widetilde D + D$ is ample, then use $\\widetilde D_1 = H-D$ for some $H \\in |\\widetilde D + D|$.\nUnfortunately, the divisor $H$, being ample, will meet \\textit{every} fiber of the morphism $\\widetilde \\alpha \\cap \\pi^{-1}(X^i) \\to \\alpha \\cap X^i$ if $i-1 \\geq 1$.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nLet $\\BB^n=\\{z\\in\\CC^n\\ |\\ |z|<1\\}$ be the unit ball in $\\CC^n$ and\ndenote by $Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$ the set of all proper holomorphic\nrational maps from  $\\BB^n$ to  $\\BB^N$. We say that $f, g\\in\nRat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$ are {\\it holomorphically equivalent} (or {\\it\nequivalent}, for short) if there are $\\sigma\\in Aut(\\BB^n)$ and\n$\\tau\\in Aut(\\BB^N)$ such that $f=\\tau\\circ g\\circ \\sigma$. By a\nwell-known result of Cima-Suffridge \\cite{CS}, $F$ extends\nholomorphically across the boundary $\\p {\\BB}^n$.\n\nFor the equal dimensional case $N=n$, Alexander \\cite{A77} proved\nthat $Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^n)$ must be automorphisms for $n>1$.\nSubsequently, much effort has been paid to the classification of\n$Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$ with $N>n$. When $N \/ n$ is not too large, it\nturns out that the maps are equivalent to relatively simple ones. In\nfact, the classification problem had been done for $N\\leq 3n-3$ and\nthe maps turn out to be all monomial maps. The systematic\ninvestigations on the precise classification of $Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$\ncan be found in the work of\n\\cite{F82,Hu99,HJ01,Ha05,HJX06,CJY18,JY18}, etc. In \\cite{FHJZ10},\nFaran-Huang-Ji-Zhang constructed a family of  maps in $Rat(\\BB^n,\n\\BB^{3n-2})$, which cannot be equivalent to any polynomial maps.\nThis indicates\nthat the maps could be quite\ncomplicated when $N\\geq 3n-2$.\n\n\\medspace\n\nTo study maps in $Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$ , there are two geometric\nproblems which are of fundamental importance. The first one is the\nD'Angelo conjecture.\nFor any rational holomorphic map $H=\\frac{(P_1, ..., P_m)}{Q}$ on\n$\\CC^n$ where $P_j, Q$ are holomorphic polynomials with $(P_1, ...,\nP_m, Q)=1$, the {\\it degree} of $H$ is defined, as in algebraic\ngeometry,  to be $deg(H):=\\max\\{\\deg(P_j), deg(Q),  1\\le j\\le m\\}$.\nThe D'Angelo conjecture is as follows: For any $F\\in Rat(\\BB^n,\n\\BB^N)$, it should have\n\\[\ndeg(F) \\le \\begin{cases}\n2N-3,\\ & if\\ n=2,\\\\\n\\frac{N-1}{n-1},\\ & if\\ n\\ge 3.\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\nThere are several partial results supporting this conjecture. The\nconjecture is true for all monomial maps, as demonstrated   by\nD'Angelo-Kos-Riehl \\cite{DKR03} for the case  $n=2$ and\nby  Lebl-Peter \\cite{LP12} for the case  $n \\ge 3$. If $F$ is a\nrational map with geometric rank one, this conjecture was proved in\n\\cite[corollary 1.3]{HJX06}. If the conjecture is proved, it would\nbe sharp due to the known examples. Also, it is proved that\n$deg(F)\\le \\frac{N(N-1)}{2(2n-3)}$ holds for any $F\\in Rat(\\BB^n,\n\\BB^N)$ with $n=2$ in \\cite{Me06} and with $n\\ge 2$ in \\cite{DL09}.\n\n\\medskip\n\nAnother geometric problem is the gap conjecture.\nFor any integer $k$ with $1\\le k\\le K(n)$ where $K(n):=\\max\\{t\\in\n\\ZZ^+\\ |\\ \\frac{t(t+1)}{2}<n\\}$, we recall the {\\it gap interval}\n(cf. \\cite{HJY09})\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal I}_k:=\\bigg(k n,\\ (k+1)n - \\frac{k(k+1)}{2} \\bigg).\n\\end{equation}\nThe  {\\it gap conjecture}, first raised in \\cite{HJY09}, is stated\nas follows: Any proper holomorphic rational map $F\\in  Rat(\\BB^n,\n\\BB^N)$ where $n\\ge 3$ is equivalent to a map of the form $(G, 0')$\nwhere $G\\in Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^{N'})$ where $N'<N$ if and only if $N\\in\n{\\cal I}_k$ for some $1\\le k\\le K(n)$. The gap conjecture  for the\ncases of $k=1,2,3$ have been proved \\cite{Hu99,HJ01,HJY14}.\nRecently, P. Ebenfelt \\cite{Eb16} proposed a SOS conjecture (i.e.,\nthe Sums of Squares of Polynomial conjecture)  and proved that if\nthe SOS conjecture is true, then it implies the gap conjecture.\n\n\\medskip\n\nThe first gap interval is ${\\cal I}_1=(n, 2n-1)$. Huang \\cite{Hu99}\nshowed that $deg(F)=1$ if $N\\in {\\cal I}_1$.  When $N=2n-1$, it was\nproved by Faran \\cite{F82} that $deg(F)\\le 3$ for $n=2$ and by\nHuang-Ji \\cite{HJ01}  that $deg(F)\\le 2$ for $n>2$. The second gap\ninterval is ${\\cal I}_2=(2n, 3n-3)$. When $N \\le 3n-3$ (and $n\\ge\n4$), we know from \\cite{AHJY15} that $deg(F)\\le 2$. These results\nconfirm the D'Angelo conjecture for the first and the second gap\nintervals.\n\n\\medskip\n\nThe third gap interval is ${\\cal I}_3=(3n, 4n-6)$. If D'Angelo\nconjecture is true, we would have $deg(F)\\le 3$ for any $F\\in\nRat(\\BB^n, \\BB^{4n-6})$ because $deg(F)\\le\n\\frac{4n-6-1}{n-1}=4-\\frac{3}{n-1}$. This is confirmed by our main\nresult of this paper as follows.\n\n\\medskip\n\n\\begin{thm}\\label{mainthm}\n    If $F\\in Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^{4n-6})$ with $n \\ge 7$, then $deg(F)\\le 3$.\n\\end{thm}\n\nThe rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we\nintroduced some known properties for Rat$(\\HH_n,\\HH_N)$, especially\nfor maps of geometric rank $2$. Section 3 was devoted to the proof\nof our main theorem assuming Proposition \\ref{propdeg}. In Sections\n4-7, we gave a detailed proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} according\nto four different cases.\n\n\n\\medspace\n\n\n\\medskip\n\n\\section{Preliminaries}\n\n\n\nLet $\\HH_n=\\{(z, w)\\in\\CC^{n-1}\\times \\CC\\ |\\ \\text{Im}(w)>|z|^2\\}$\nbe the Siegel upper half space and denote by $Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_N)$ the\nset of all proper holomorphic rational maps from $\\HH_n$ to $\\HH_N$.\nBy the Cayley transform, we can identify $\\BB^n$ with  $\\HH_n$ and\nidentify $Rat(\\BB^n,\\BB^N)$ with $Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_N)$. In what\nfollows, we will prove Theorem \\ref{mainthm} through the properties\nof $Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_N)$.\n\n\n\nLet $F=(f,\\phi,g)=(\\widetilde{f}, g)= (f_1,\\cdots$, $f_{n-1}$,\n$\\phi_1,\\cdots$, $\\phi_{N-n},g)\\in Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_{N})$. For each\n$p\\in \\p\\HH_n$, define $\\sigma^0_p\\in \\hbox{Aut}(\\HH_n)$ and\n$\\tau^F_p\\in\\hbox{Aut}(\\HH_N)$ as follows:\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n&\\sigma^0_p(z,w)=(z+z_0, w+w_0+2i \\langle z,\\overline{z_0}\n\\rangle),\\\\\n&\\tau^F_p(z^*,w^*)=(z^*-\\widetilde{f}(z_0,w_0),w^*-\\overline{g(z_0,w_0)}-\n2i \\langle z^*,\\overline{\\widetilde{f}(z_0,w_0)} \\rangle).\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n Then\n$F$ is equivalent to $F_p:=\\tau^F_p\\circ F\\circ\n\\sigma^0_p=(f_p,\\phi_p,g_p)$ and  $F_p(0)=0$. In \\cite{Hu99}, Huang\nconstructed an automorphism $\\tau^{**}_p\\in\n  {Aut}_0({\\HH}_N)$ such that\n$F_{p}^{**}:=\\tau^{**}_p\\circ F_p$ satisfies the following\nnormalization:\n\\[\nf^{**}_{p}=z+{\\frac{i}{ 2}}a^{**(1)}_{p}(z)w+o_{wt}(3),\\ \\phi_p^{**}\n={\\phi_p^{**}}^{(2)}(z)+o_{wt}(2), \\ g^{**}_{p}=w+o_{wt}(4).\n\\]\n\nWrite\n$\\mathcal{A}(p):=-2i(\\frac{\\partial^2(f_p)^{\\ast\\ast}_l}{\\partial\nz_j\n    \\partial w}|_0)_{1\\leq j,l\\leq n-1}$. The {\\it geometric rank} of $F$ at\n$p$ is defined to be  the rank of the $(n-1)\\times (n-1)$ matrix\n$\\mathcal{A}(p)$, which is denoted by $Rk_F(p)$. Now we define the\n{\\it geometric rank} of $F$ to be $\\kappa_0(F)=max_{p\\in\n\\partial\\HH_n} Rk_F(p)$. \\medspace\n\nWhen a map in $ Rat({\\HH}_n,{\\HH}_N)$ is not of full rank (i.e.,\n$\\kappa_0\\le n-2$),  by the works of \\cite{Hu03} and \\cite{HJX06},\nit can further be normalized to the following form:\n\\begin{thm}\n    \\label{normalize **}\n    Suppose that $F\\in Rat({\\HH}_n,{\\HH}_N)$\n    has geometric rank  $1\\le\\kappa_0\\le n-2$ with $F(0)=0$. Then there are\n    $\\sigma\\in \\hbox{Aut}({\\HH}_n)$ and\n    $\\tau\\in \\hbox{Aut}({\\HH}_N)$ such that\n    $\\tau\\circ F\\circ \\sigma $ takes\n    the following form, which is still denoted by $F=(f,\\phi,g)$ for\n    convenience of notation:\n\n   \n    \\begin{equation}\n    \\left\\{\n    \\begin{array}{l}\n    f_l=\\sum_{j=1}^{\\kappa_0}z_jf_{lj}^*(z,w),\\ l\\le\\kappa_0,\\\\\n    f_j=z_j,\\  \\text{for} \\ \\kappa_0+1\\leq j\\leq n-1,\\\\\n    \\phi_{lk}=\\mu_{lk}z_lz_k+\\sum_{j=1}^{\\kappa_0}z_j\\phi^*_{lkj}\\ \\text{for\n    } \\ \\ (l,k)\\in {\\cal S}_0,\\\\\n    \\phi_{lk}=O_{wt}(3),\\ \\ (l,k)\\in {\\cal S}_1,\\\\\n    g=w;\\\\\n    f_{lj}^*(z,w)=\\delta_l^j+\\frac{i\\delta_{l}^j\\mu_l}{2}w+b_{lj}^{(1)}(z)w+O_{wt}(4),\\\\\n    \\phi^*_{lkj}(z,w)=O_{wt}(2),\\ \\  (l,k)\\in {\\cal S}_0,\\\\\n    \\phi_{lk}=\\sum_{j=1}^{\\kappa_0}z_j\\phi_{lkj}^*=O_{wt}(3)\\ \\ for\\\n    (l,k)\\in {\\cal S}_1.\n    \\end{array}\\right.\n    \\label{eqn:hao}\n    \\end{equation}\n    Here, for $1\\le \\kappa_0\\le n-2$, we write ${\\cal S} ={\\cal S}_0\\cup\n    {\\cal S}_1$, the index set  for all components of $\\phi$, where\n    ${\\cal S}_{0}=\\{(j,l): 1\\le j\\leq \\kappa_0, 1\\leq l\\leq n-1, j\\leq\n    l\\}$, $ {\\cal S}_1=\\Big\\{(j, l): j=\\kappa_0+1, \\kappa_0+1\\le l \\le \\kappa_0 +\n    N-n-\\frac{(2n-\\kappa_0-1)\\kappa_0}{2} \\Big\\}$, and\n    \\begin{equation}\n    \\label{mui and mujk} \\mu_{jl}=\\begin{cases}\\sqrt{\\mu_j+\\mu_l} &\\\n    for\\ j<l\\le\n    \\kappa_0; \\\\\n    \\sqrt{\\mu_j} & if \\ j\\le \\kappa_0 < l\\ or\\ if\\ j=l\\le \\kappa_0.\n    \\end{cases}\n    \\end{equation}\n\\end{thm}\n\nWrite $\\phi=(\\Phi_0, \\Phi_1)$ where $\\Phi_0=(\\phi_{lk})_{(l,k)\\in\n{\\cal S}_0}$, $\\Phi_1=(\\phi_{lj})_{(l,k)\\in{\\cal S}_1}$. Define\n$\\Phi_0^{(1,1)}(z)=\\sum^{\\kappa_0}_{j=1} e_j z_j$,\n$\\Phi_1^{(1,1)}(z)=\\sum^{\\kappa_0}_{j=1} \\hat{e_k}z_j$, $e^*_j=(e_j,\n\\hat e_j)$, and $\\xi_j(z)=\\ov{e_j}\\cdot \\Phi^{(2,0)}_0(z)$. Here we\nuse notation $\\Phi^{(s,t)}(z)$ to denote a homogeneous polynomial of\ndegree $s$ in $z$, and\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\Phi^{(s,t)}(z, w)=\\Phi^{(s,t)}(z) w^t,\\\n\\Phi^{(s,t)}(z)=\\sum\\limits_{s_1+\\cdots+s_{n-1}=s}\n\\Phi^{(s_1I_1+\\cdots+s_{n-1}I_{n-1}+tI_n)}z_1^{s_1}\\cdots\nz_{n-1}^{s_{n-1}}.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\n\n\n\nLet  $F$ be as in Theorem \\ref{normalize **}. By \\cite[Corollary\n3.4]{HJY14}, we have the following explicit expression for\n$\\Phi^{(3,0)}_1(z)$.\n\\begin{lem}\n    \\label{phi30} Let $\\kappa_0\\ge 2$ and $(\\kappa_0+1)n-\\kappa_0\n    \\le N\\le (\\kappa_0+2)n - \\kappa_0^2 -2$. Then, after applying\n    a unitary transformation to the $\\Phi_1$-components,\n    $F$ is equivalent to another map such that the new map\n    (still denoted as $F$) has the property\n    \\begin{equation}\n    \\label{Phi(3,0)1}\n    \\Phi^{(3,0)}_1(z)=\\bigg(\\frac{2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_j+\\mu_l}}\n    \\bigg[\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_j}{\\mu_l}}z_j \\xi_l -\n    \\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_l}{\\mu_j}} z_l \\xi_j\\bigg],\\ \\ 0'  \\bigg)_{1\\le\n        j<l\\le \\kappa_0}.\n    \\end{equation}\n   \n   \n\\end{lem}\nWe call a map satisfying Theorem \\ref{normalize **} and\n(\\ref{Phi(3,0)1}) a {\\it normalized map}, and denote it by\n$F^{***}$.\n\n\\medspace\n\nFrom the above lemma and \\cite[(3.7)]{HJY14}, we obtain\n\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{phi (3,0)} \\phi_{jk}^{(3,0)}(z)=\\begin{cases}\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_{jk}}[z_j \\xi_k(z) + z_k \\xi_j(z)],\\ \\ if\\ j<k\\le \\kappa_0,\\\\\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_{jk}} z_l \\xi_j(z),\\ \\ if\\ j=k,\\ or\\ j\\le \\kappa_0 <k,\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\xi=(\\xi_1, ..., \\xi_{\\kappa_0})=\\ov{(e_1, ...,\ne_{\\kappa_0})} \\cdot \\Phi_0^{(2,0)}$.\n\\medskip\n\nNext, we show more properties for $F\\in Rat({\\HH}_n,{\\HH}_{4n-6})$\nwith $n\\geq 7$ and geometric rank $\\kappa_0=2$.\n\n\nFrom (\\ref{Phi(3,0)1}), we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{phi 1}\n\\begin{cases}\n\\phi_{33}^{(3I_1)} = \\frac{2\\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}}\n\\ov{e_{2,11}},\\ \\ \\phi_{33}^{(3I_2)} = - \\frac{2\n\\mu_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{1,22}}, \\ \\\n\\phi_{33}^{(3I_k)} = 0,\\\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_2)} = \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}\n\\ov{e_{2,12}} - \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\n\\ov{e_{1,11}}, \\ \\\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_j)}=\\frac{2 \\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{2,1j}},\\\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)} = \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\n\\ov{e_{2,2j}} - \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} \\ov{e_{1,1j}},\\\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+2I_2)} = \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\n\\ov{e_{2,22}} - \\frac{2\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}} \\ov{e_{1,12}}, \\\n\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_2+I_j)} = - \\frac{2 \\mu_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{1,2j}},\\\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+2I_k)} = \\phi_{33}^{(I_2+2I_k)} =\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+I_k + I_j)} = \\phi_{33}^{(I_2+I_k+I_j)} =\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_i+I_k+I_l)} = 0.\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\n\nFrom \\cite[(4.20) and (4.46)]{HJY14}, we know\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{phi 2}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\phi_{11}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j}\ne_{j,11}\n= \\frac{-2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}z_1 f_1^{(1,2)}(z),\\\\\n&\\phi_{12}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j} e_{j,12}\n= \\frac{-2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}(z_1 f_2^{(1,2)}(z)+z_2 f_1^{(1,2)}(z)),\\\\\n& \\phi_{22}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j}\ne_{j,22}\n= \\frac{-2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}z_2 f_2^{(1,2)}(z),\\\\\n& \\phi_{1\\alpha}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j}\ne_{j,1\\alpha}\n= \\frac{-2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}z_\\alpha f_1^{(1,2)}(z),\\\\\n& \\phi_{2\\alpha}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j}\ne_{j,2\\alpha}\n= \\frac{-2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}z_\\alpha f_2^{(1,2)}(z),\\\\\n& \\phi_{33}^{(2,1)}(z) - 2i \\sum^2_{j=1} \\frac{\\xi_j}{\\mu_j}\ne_{j,33} =\n\\frac{-2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\\bigg(\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}} z_1\nf_2^{(1,2)}(z)\n-\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}} z_2 f_1^{(1,2)}(z)\\bigg).\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\nBy \\cite[(4.3)]{HJY14}, we have $\\frac{i}{2} \\mu_1\na_n^{(1)}(\\epsilon)+f_1^{(1,2)}(\\epsilon,0,...,0)=0,\n\\frac{i}{2}\\mu_2 b_n^{(1)}(\\epsilon)+f_2^{(1,2)}(\\epsilon,0,...,0)$\n$=0$, and $\\phi^{(1,2)}(\\epsilon,0,...,0)+e_1^* a_n^{(1)}(\\epsilon)\n+ e_2^* b_n^{(1)}(\\epsilon)=0$. Thus\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{phi 3} \\phi^{(1,2)}(\\chi, 0)=-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}\nf_1^{(1,2)}(\\chi, 0) e_1^* - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(1,2)}(\\chi, 0)\ne_2^*.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\n\nNext we recall the definitions and the properties of the degeneracy\nranks. These invariants are introduced by Lamel \\cite{La01} and\nEbenfelt-Huang-Zaitsev \\cite{EHZ04}.\n\nLet $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n,\\HH_N)$ and $p\\in \\p\\HH_n$. Write $L^j=\\frac{\\p\n}{\\p z_j} + 2i \\ov{z_j} \\frac{\\p}{\\p w}$. Then $\\{L^j\\}_{1\\le j\\le\nn-1}$ forms a basis of tangent vector fields of $(1,0)$ on\n$\\p\\HH_n$. Denote by $\\hat \\rho(Z, \\ov Z)$  the defining function of\nthe real hypersurface $\\p\\HH_N$, and denote by $\\hat \\rho_{\\ov\nZ}:=\\ov\\p \\hat \\rho$ the complex gradient of $\\rho$. Now we define\nan increasing sequence of linear subspaces $E_{k}(p) \\subset\n\\CC^{N}$ as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\nE_{k}(p)=span_{\\CC}\\{L^{\\alpha_1} ... L^{\\alpha_{n-1}} \\hat\\rho_{\\ov\nZ} \\circ F(p)\\ |\\ \\ |\\alpha_1|+...+|\\alpha_{n-1}|\\le k\\}\n\\end{equation}\nDefine $d_1(p):=0$ and $ \\label{dk(p)} d_k(p):= \\dim_\\CC \\\nE_k(p)\/E_1(p). $  By moving $p$ to a nearby point $p_0$ if\nnecessary, we may assume that all $d_l(p)$ are locally constant near\n$p_0$ and\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{rank} d_2(p)<d_3(p)<...<d_{l_0}(p)=d_{l_0+1}(p)=....\n\\end{equation}\nfor some $l_0$ with $1\\le l_0\\le N-n+1$.  By [EHZ04], $l_0$  is\ncalled the {\\it degeneracy rank} of $F$, and  $d_{l_0}$ is called\nthe {\\it degeneracy dimension} of $F$. These definitions depend on\nthe open subset $U$.  {\\it degeneracy rank} $l_0$ of $F$ is defined\nto be the\n minimization of $l_0$ among all these open sets. Then we have the\n following degree estimates when both $\\kappa_0$ and $l_0$ are\n small.\n\n\n\n\\begin{thm} \\label{nondegenerate rank}\n    (\\cite[Theorem 1.4]{CJY18})\\ \\ \\\n    Let $F\\in Rat(\\BB^n, \\BB^N)$ with $5\\le n\\le N$. Suppose that  $\\kappa_0\\le 2$ and $l_0\\le 2$. Then $deg(F)\\le 2$.\n\\end{thm}\n\n\n\nFinally, we finish this section by recalling a lemma of \\cite{HJ01},\nwhich gives a reduction for the degree estimates of a rational\nholomorphic map.\n\n For any point $q=(\\w q, q_n)\\in \\CC^n$, the Segre family of\n$\\p\\HH_n$ is a family given by $Q_q:=\\{(\\zeta, \\tau)\\in\n\\CC^{n-1}\\times \\CC\\ |\\ \\tau=\\ov{q_n}+ 2i \\langle \\zeta, \\w\nq\\rangle) \\}$. Let $F:\\CC^n\\to \\CC^N$ be a rational holomorphic map.\nThen the restriction $F|_{Q_q}(\\zeta)= F(\\zeta, \\ov{q_n}+2i \\langle\n\\zeta, \\w q\\rangle)$ is a rational holomorphic map in $\\zeta\\in\n\\CC^{n-1}$.\n\n\n\n\\begin{lem}\n\\label{degree} (\\cite[lemmas 5.3-5.4]{HJ01}) Let $F=\\frac{(P_1, ...,\nP_N)}{Q}$ be a rational holomorphic map from $\\CC^n$ into $\\CC^N$\nwhere $P_j$ and $Q$ are as above. Suppose that there exists a fixed\npositive integer $k$ such that one of the following two conditions\nis satisfied:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item $deg(F|_{Q_q})\\le k$ for all $q\\in \\p\\HH_n$.\n\\item $deg(F^{**}_q|_{Q_0})\\le k$ for all $q\\in \\p\\HH_n$.\n\\end{enumerate}\nThen $deg(F)\\le k$.\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\section{Proof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm}}\n\nThis section is devoted to the proof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm},\nassuming Proposition \\ref{propdeg}, whose proof will be given in the\nend of this section and in $\\S 4-7$.\n\nWe start with  some notations. For any $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_{4n-6})$\nand $q\\in \\p \\HH_n$, the map associates to a normalized map\n$F_q^{***}$. We write $F_q^{***}=(f^{***}_q, \\phi^{***}_q,\ng^{***}_q)$ and $\n\\phi_{q}^{***}=\\big((\\Phi_{q}^{***})_0,(\\Phi_{q}^{***})_1\\big) $,\nwhich are decomposed similar to those of $F$ in Theorem\n\\ref{normalize\n**}.\n\n\\begin{lem}\n\\label{lemma N=3n-2} Let $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_{4n-6})$ be a\nnormalized map with $\\kappa_0=2$ and $n\\ge 7$. Then\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{lemma 2.5 1} D^\\alpha F(0)\\in span_{|\\beta|\\le 3} \\{D^\\beta\nF(0)\\}\n\\end{equation}\nfor any index $\\alpha$,  where $D^\\alpha=\\frac{\\p^{|\\alpha|}}{\\p\nz_1^{\\alpha_1}\\cdots \\p z_n^{\\alpha_n}}$ is the standard\ndifferential operator. If, in addition,\n$\\big(\\Phi^{***}_{q}\\big)_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\equiv 0$ for any\n $q$  in\nan open neighborhood of $0$ in $\\p\\HH_n$, then for any index\n$\\alpha$,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{lemma 2.5 2} D^\\alpha F(0)\\in span_{|\\beta|\\le 2} \\{D^\\beta\nF(0)\\}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{lem}\n\n\\medspace\n\n\\begin{proof} By \\cite[Theorem 4.1 and (5.3)]{HJY14}, we have\n$span_{|\\beta|\\le 4}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\beta F|_0\\} \\le span_{|\\alpha|\\le\n3}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\alpha F|_0\\}$. By \\cite[claim (5.5)]{HJY14}, for any\n$p\\in\\p\\HH_n$, the associated map $F_p$ satisfies\n\\[\nspan_{|\\beta|\\le 4}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\beta F_p|_0\\} \\le span_{|\\alpha|\\le\n3}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\alpha F_p|_0\\}.\n\\]\nSince ${\\cal L}^\\alpha (F_p)|_0={\\cal L}^\\alpha F(p)$, it implies\n$span_{|\\beta|\\le 4}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\beta F|_p\\} \\le span_{|\\alpha|\\le\n3}\\{ {\\cal L}^\\alpha F|_p\\}$. Then  by similar argument as that in\n\\cite[p. 139]{HJY14}, through  applying $\\ov{\\cal L}_j, {\\cal L}_k$\nto $F$, we obtain (\\ref{lemma 2.5 1}). If, in addition,\n{$(\\Phi^{***}_q)_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\equiv 0$ for any\n $q$  in\nan open neighborhood of $0$ in $\\p\\HH_n$}, by the last paragraph of\n\\cite[p. 139]{HJY14}, we get (\\ref{lemma 2.5 2}).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm}]\n\nAs mentioned in $\\S 2$, by the Cayley transform, we can\n identify $Rat(\\BB^n,\\BB^N)$ with $Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_N)$. It suffices for us to show for\n  any $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_{4n-6})$ with $n\\geq 7$,\n  we have deg$(F)\\leq 3$.\n\n  By \\cite[Theorem 1.1]{Hu03}, we have $N \\ge n\n  +\\frac{(2n-\\kappa_0-1)\\kappa_0}{2}$. Hence for $N=4n-6$, its\n geometric rank $\\kappa_0\\le 3$. By \\cite{Hu99}, we can suppose $1\\leq \\kappa_0\\le 3$, otherwise the map must be linear fractional.\n  If  $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n,\n\\HH_{4n-6})$ with $n \\ge 3$ and $\\kappa_0=1$, by \\cite[Corollary\n1.3]{HJX06}, we have $deg(F)\\le 3$.  If $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n,\n\\HH_{4n-6})$ with $n \\ge 5$ and $\\kappa_0=3$, by  \\cite[ Theorem\n1.1]{JY18}, we have $deg(F)\\le 2$. Therefore, we assume $\\kappa_0=2$\nfor $F$ in the rest proof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm}.\n\n\n\n\n\nLet $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n, \\HH_{4n-6})$ with $n \\ge 7$ and $\\kappa_0=2$.\nFor any $q\\in \\p\\HH_n$, we study the associated map $(F_{q})^{***}$.\nThere are two cases to consider.\n\n\\medspace\n\n{\\bf Case I:} $F^{***}_{q}$ satisfies\n$\\big(\\Phi_{q}^{***}\\big)_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\equiv 0$ for any $q$ in a\nneighborhood of $0$ in $\\p\\HH_n$. Recall that $F^{***}_{q}$ is a\nnormalized map with geometric rank $2$. Hence by (\\ref{lemma 2.5\n2}), it implies that the degeneracy rank $l_0\\le 2$. Then we apply\nTheorem \\ref{nondegenerate rank} to conclude $deg(F)\\le 2$.\n\n\\medspace\n\n{\\bf Case 2:} $F^{***}_{q_0}$ satisfies that\n$\\big(\\Phi_{q_0}^{***}\\big)_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\not\\equiv 0$  for some\n$q_0\\in \\p\\HH_n$. As in Case I,  $F^{***}_{q_0}$ is a normalized map\nwith geometric rank $2$.  Now we need the following proposition.\n\n\\begin{prop}\\label{propdeg}\n  Let $F\\in Rat(\\HH_n,\\HH_{4n-6})\\ (n\\geq 7)$ be a normalized map, whose geometric rank\n  $\\kappa_0=2$. Suppose that $(\\Phi_1)^{(3,0)}(z)\\not\\equiv 0$.Then\n  \\begin{equation}\\label{reduction 0}\n deg(f(z, 0), \\phi(z, 0))\\le 3.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{prop}\n\nThe proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} will be postponed to the next\nsection. Admitting this proposition temporarily, we continue the\nproof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm}.\n\nNotice that $(\\Phi_{q}^{***})_1^{(3,0)}(z)$ is smooth with respect\nto $q$. From $(\\Phi_{q_0}^{***})_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\not\\equiv 0$, we know\n$(\\Phi_{q}^{***})_1^{(3,0)}(z)\\not\\equiv 0$ for $q$ in a small\nneighborhood of $q_0$. Applying Proposition \\ref{propdeg} with $F$\nreplaced by $F_q^{***}$ for any $q\\in \\p\\HH_n$ in a neighborhood of\n$q_0$, we conclude  that deg$(F_q^{***}(z, 0))\\le 3$. Since maps in\nboth Aut$(\\p \\HH_n) $ and Aut$(\\p \\HH_N) $ are linear fractional, we\nknow deg$(F_q(z, 0))\\le 3$. Now we use Lemma \\ref{degree}  to\ncomplete the proof of Theorem \\ref{mainthm}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nNext we proceed to the proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg}.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg}]\n\nBy \\cite[Lemma 2.3]{HJX06}, we know $f_l(z, 0)=z_l$. From Lemma\n\\ref{phi30}, $\\Phi_1=(\\phi_{j,k})_{(j,k)\\in {\\cal S}_1} =(\\phi_{33},\n\\phi_{34}, ..., \\phi_{3 (n-2)})$ satisfies $\\Phi^{(3)}_1(z,\n0)=(\\phi^{(3)}_{33}(z, 0), 0, ..., 0)$. Then we apply Lemma\n\\ref{lemma N=3n-2} to know\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{reduction 2} \\phi_{34}(z, 0)\\equiv 0, \\cdots, \\phi_{3\n(n-2)}(z, 0)\\equiv 0.\n\\end{equation}\nHence  it suffices to prove\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{reduction} deg\\bigg(deg(\\phi_{jk}(z, 0)), \\ deg(\\phi_{33}(z,\n0)\\bigg) \\le 3,\\ \\ \\ \\forall (j,k)\\in {\\cal S}_0.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\nBy our notation,\n$\\phi^{(3,0)}_{33}=(\\phi_{33}^{(j_1I_1+j_{n-1}I_{n-1})})_{j_1+\\cdots+j_{n-1}=3,j_1+j_2\\geq\n1 }$. From (\\ref{phi 1}) and (\\ref{reduction 2}),\n$(\\Phi_1)_{33}^{(3,0)}(z)\\not\\equiv 0$ if and only if\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{cases} (\\phi_{33}^{(3I_1)}, \\phi_{33}^{(3I_2)},\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_2)}, \\phi_{33}^{(I_1+2I_2)},\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)}, \\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_j)},\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_2+I_j)})\\not=(0, 0, ...., 0).\n\\end{equation}\nThus it is suffices for us to consider the following cases:\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\\label{ABCD}\n &\\text{Case A: } \\phi_{33}^{(3I_1)}\\not=0,\\ \\text{Case A}':\\\n \\phi_{33}^{(3I_2)}\\not=0,\\\\\n&\\text{Case B:}\\  \\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_2)}\\not=0, \\ \\text{Case B}': \\\n\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+2I_2)}\\not=0,\\\\\n&\\text{Case C:}\\ \\phi_{33}^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)}\\not=0,\\\\\n&\\text{Case D:} \\ \\phi_{33}^{(2I_1+I_j)}\\not=0, \\ \\text{Case D}':\\\n\\phi_{33}^{(2I_2+I_j)}\\not=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\n\n\nIn the rest of the paper, we will obtain an explicit expression for\n$\\phi_{33}(z, 0)$ and  $\\phi_{jk}(z, 0)$ with $(j,k)\\in {\\cal S}_0$,\nfrom which we obtain (\\ref{reduction}).\n\nWe start with the following Chern-Moser equation.\n\\[\n\\frac{g(z, w)-\\ov{g(z, w)}}{2i} = f(z, w)\\cdot \\ov{f(z, w)}+\\phi(z,\nw) \\cdot \\ov{\\phi(z, w)}, \\ \\ \\ \\forall\\ \\text{Im}(w)=|z|^2.\n\\]\nBy complexification, we write\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{basic 1} \\frac{g(z, w) - \\ov{g(\\ov\\chi, \\ov\\eta)}}{2i} =\n\\sum^{n-1}_{l=1} f_l(z, w) \\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, \\ov\\eta)} +\n\\sum_{(s,t)\\in {\\cal S}} \\phi_{st}(z, w) \\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi,\n\\ov\\eta)},\\ \\ \\forall\\ \\frac{w-\\eta}{2i}=z\\cdot \\chi.\n\\end{equation}\nApplying ${\\cal L}_j:=\\frac{\\p }{\\p z_j} + 2i \\chi_j \\frac{\\p}{\\p\n    w}$ for $z=0$ and $w=\\eta=0$ to the both sides of the above\nidentity, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{basic 2} \\frac{{\\cal L}_j g(0, 0)}{2i} = \\sum^{n-1}_{l=1}\n{\\cal L}_j f_l(0, 0) \\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal\nS}_0} {\\cal L}_j\\phi_{st}(0, 0) \\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)},\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{basic 3} \\frac{{\\cal L}_j {\\cal L}_k g(0, 0)}{2i} =\n\\sum^{n-1}_{l=1} {\\cal\n    L}_j {\\cal L}_k f_l(0, 0) \\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal S}_0}\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{st}(0, 0) \\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe notice that the index set ${\\cal S}$ in (\\ref{basic 1}) is\nreplaced by ${\\cal S}_0$ in (\\ref{basic 2}) and (\\ref{basic 3})\nbecause $\\phi_{st}^{(2)}(0,0)=0$ for any $(s, t)\\in {\\cal S}_1$. The\nproof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} will be completed in Sections\n$4-7$ according to the different cases in (\\ref{ABCD}).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case A}\n\nIn this section,  we'll proceed to complete the proof of Proposition\n\\ref{propdeg} for Case A.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case A]\nApplying ${\\cal L}_1^3$ to (\\ref{basic 1}), we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{basic 4} \\frac{{\\cal L}_1^3  g(0, 0)}{2i} = \\sum^{n-1}_{l=1}\n{\\cal L}^3_1 f_l(0, 0) \\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal\nS}_0} {\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{st}(0, 0) \\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)} +\n{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{33}(0, 0) \\ov{\\phi_{33}(\\ov\\chi, 0)}.\n\\end{equation}\nHere we have used (\\ref{reduction 2}). We can write these equations\nin terms of matrix,\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\\label{matrixb}\nB\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n\\ov{f_1(\\ov\\chi, 0)}\\\\ \\ov{f_{2}(\\ov\\chi, 0)}\\\\\n\\ov{\\phi(\\ov\\chi, 0)}\n\\end{pmatrix} = \\begin{pmatrix}\n\\chi_1\\\\\n\\chi_{2}\\\\\n0\\\\\n\\vdots\\\\\n0\\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nwhere  $B$ is a non-singular $(2n-1)\\times (2n-1)$ matrix evaluated\nat $(0,0)$:\n\n\\begin{equation}\\label{matrix}\nB:=\\begin{pmatrix} {\\cal L}_jf_{h} & {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{hl} &\n{\\cal L}_j \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_kf_{h} &  {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{hl}\n& {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{33} \\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta f_{h} &\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}^3_1 f_{h}  & {\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{hl} &\n{\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{33} \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}_{1\\leq j,h,l\\leq 2, {3\\leq \\alpha,\\beta\\leq n-1}}\n\\end{equation}\nIn the rest of this section, we'll use (\\ref{matrixb}) to solve\n$\\phi(z, 0)$.\n\n\\medskip\n\nBy our normalization (\\ref{eqn:hao}), we have\n\\begin{equation} \\label{L2 eq}\n\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1^2 f_1|_{(0,0)}=4i \\chi_1 f_1^{(I_1+I_n)} = - 2 \\mu_1 \\chi_1,\\ \\ {\\cal L}_1^2 f_2|_{(0,0)}=0, \\\\\n& {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_2 f_1|_{(0,0)} = 2i \\chi_2 f_1^{(I_1+I_n)} = -\n\\mu_1 \\chi_2,\\ \\\n{\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 f_2|_{(0,0)} = 2i \\chi_1 f_2^{(I_2+I_n)} = -\\mu_2 \\chi_1, \\\\\n& {\\cal L}_2^2 f_1|_{(0,0)} = 0,\\ \\ \\ {\\cal L}_2^2 f_2|_{(0,0)} = 4i \\chi_2 f_2^{(I_2+I_n)} = - 2 \\mu_2 \\chi_2, \\\\\n& {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_\\alpha f_1|_{(0,0)} = 2i \\chi_\\alpha\nf_1^{(I_1+I_n)} = - \\mu_1 \\chi_\\alpha,\n\\ \\ {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_\\alpha f_2|_{(0,0)} = 0,\\\\\n& {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_\\alpha f_1|_{(0,0)} = 0,\\ {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal\nL}_\\alpha f_2|_{(0,0)} = 2i \\chi_\\alpha f_2^{(I_2+I_n)} = - \\mu_2\n\\chi_\\alpha.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nNotice that $f_1^{(2I_1+I_n)}=-\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}},\nf_2^{(2I_2+I_n)}= - \\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{2,11}}$. Recall ${\\cal\nL}_1^3=\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1^3} + 6i \\chi_1 \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1^2 \\p w}\n- 12\\chi_1^2 \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1 \\p w^2} - 8i \\chi_1^3 \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p\nw^3}$.\nThen\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n{\\cal L}_1^3 f_1|_{(0,0)} & = 6i \\chi_1 \\cdot 2 f_1^{(2I_1+I_n)}\n-12\\chi_1^2 \\cdot 2 f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\\\\n& = - 12i \\chi_1 \\cdot \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}-24\\chi_1^2 f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}:=C_1, \\\\\n{\\cal L}_1^3 f_2|_{(0,0)} & =  6i \\chi_1 \\cdot 2 f_2^{(2I_1+I_n)}\n-12\\chi_1^2 \\cdot 2 f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\\\\n& = - 12i \\chi_1 \\cdot \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{2,11}} -24\\chi_1^2\nf_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}:\n= C_2. \\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\nSet\n\\begin{equation}\nB_1:= \\begin{pmatrix}\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{33} \\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{h\\alpha} &\n{\\cal L}^3_1 \\phi_{33} \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}_{1\\leq j,h,l\\leq 2, {3\\leq \\alpha,\\beta\\leq n-1}} \\bigg|_{(0,0)}\n=\\begin{pmatrix}\nB_{1, jk}\\\\\nB_{1, j \\beta}\\\\\nB_{1, 33}\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\nThen (\\ref{matrixb}) takes the following form:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{new form} B_1 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t=A_1,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $A_1=(A_{1,11}, A_{1,12}, A_{1,22}, A_{1,1\\alpha},\nA_{1,2\\alpha}, A_{1,33})^t$:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& A_{1,11}=-{\\cal L}_1^2 f_1|_{(0,0)}\\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_1^2 f_2|_{(0,0)} \\chi_2 = 2 \\mu_1 \\chi_1^2,\\\\\n& A_{1,12}=-{\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_2 f_1 |_{(0,0)}\\chi_1 - {\\cal\nL}_1{\\cal L}_2 f_2|_{(0,0)} \\chi_2\n= \\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_2 + \\mu_2 \\chi_1\\chi_2,\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& A_{1,22}=-{\\cal L}_2^2 f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_2^2 f_2|_{(0,0)} \\chi_2 = 2\\mu_2 \\chi_2^2, \\\\\n& A_{1,1\\alpha} = - {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_\\alpha f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_\\alpha f_2|_{(0,0)} \\chi_2 = \\mu_1  \\chi_1 \\chi_\\alpha,\\\\\n& A_{1,2\\alpha} = -{\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_\\alpha f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1- {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_\\alpha f_2|_{(0,0)}\\chi_2 =\\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_\\alpha,\\\\\n& A_{1,33}=-{\\cal L}_1^3 f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_1^3\nf_2|_{(0,0)} \\chi_2 = -\\chi_1 C_1 - \\chi_2 C_2,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{def of B1}\n\\begin{split}\nB_{1,11}&=(2\\mu_{11} + 4i \\chi_1 e_{1,11}, 4i \\chi_1 e_{1,12}, 4i\\chi_1 e_{1,22}, 4i\\chi_1 e_{1,1\\alpha}, 4i \\chi_1 e_{1,2\\alpha}, 4i \\chi_1 e_{1,33}),\\\\\nB_{1,12}&=(2 \\chi_1 e_{2,11} + 2i \\chi_2 e_{1,11}, \\mu_{12} + 2i \\chi_1 e_{2,12} + 2i \\chi_2 e_{1,12}, 2i\\chi_1 e_{2,22}+2i\\chi_2 e_{1,22}, \\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ 2i\\chi_1 e_{2,1\\alpha}+2i\\chi_2 e_{1,1\\alpha}, 2i\n\\chi_1 e_{2,2\\alpha}\n+2i \\chi_2 e_{1,2\\alpha}, 2i \\chi_1 e_{2,33}+2i\\chi_2e_{1,33}),\\\\\nB_{1,22}&=(4 i \\chi_2 e_{2,11}, 4i \\chi_2 e_{2,12}, 2 \\mu_{22} + 4i\\chi_2 e_{2,22}, 4i\\chi_2 e_{2,1\\alpha}, 4i \\chi_2 e_{2,2\\alpha}, 4i \\chi_2 e_{2,33}),\\\\\nB_{1,1\\beta}&=(2i \\chi_\\beta e_{1,11}, 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{1,12},\n2i\\chi_\\beta e_{1,22},\n\\mu_{1\\alpha} \\delta^\\beta_\\alpha + 2i\\chi_\\beta e_{1,1\\alpha}, 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{1,2\\alpha}, 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{1,33}),\\\\\nB_{1,2\\beta}&=(2i \\chi_\\beta e_{2,11}, 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{2,12},\n2i\\chi_\\beta e_{2,22},\n2i\\chi_\\beta e_{2,1\\alpha}, \\mu_{2\\alpha} \\delta^\\beta_\\alpha + 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{2,2\\alpha}, 2i \\chi_\\beta e_{2,33}),\\\\\nB_{1,33} & = ({\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{11}, {\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{12}, {\\cal\nL}_1^3 \\phi_{22},\n{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{1\\alpha},{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{2\\alpha},  {\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{33}) |_{(0,0)}.\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nBy (\\ref{phi (3,0)})-(\\ref{phi 2}), $B_{1,33}$ can be calculated as\nfollows.\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{11}|_{(0,0)} = 6\\cdot 2 i \\ov{e_{1,11}} + 6i\n\\chi_1 \\cdot 2\\cdot 2i\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,11} + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,11} \\\\\n&\\ \\ -\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\n -12 \\chi_1^2 4i\\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}e_{1,11} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} - \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} e_{2,11} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_1} C_1 - 2i \\bigg(\\frac{e_{1,11}}{\\mu_1} C_1 + \\frac{e_{2,11}}{\\mu_2} C_2 \\bigg),\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{12}|_{(0,0)} = 6\n\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} \\cdot 2 i \\ov{e_{2,11}} + 6i\n\\chi_1 \\cdot 2\\cdot 2i\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,12} + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,12} \\\\\n&\\ \\ -\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\n-12 \\chi_1^2 4i\\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}e_{1,12} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} - \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} e_{2,12} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2} \\chi_1} C_2 - 2i \\bigg(\\frac{e_{1,12}}{\\mu_1} C_1 + \\frac{e_{2,12}}{\\mu_2} C_2 \\bigg),\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{22}|_{(0,0)} = 6i \\chi_1 \\cdot 2\\cdot 2i\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,22} + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,22}\\bigg)\\\\\n&-12 \\chi_1^2 4i\\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}e_{1,22} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} -\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_2} e_{2,22} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\n=  - 2i \\bigg(\\frac{e_{1,22}}{\\mu_1} C_1 + \\frac{e_{2,22}}{\\mu_2} C_2 \\bigg).\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\nFor $j=1$ or $2$, we have\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{j\\alpha}|_{(0,0)} = 6i \\chi_1 \\cdot 2\\cdot 2i\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,j\\alpha} +\n\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,j\\alpha}\n\\bigg)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ -12 \\chi_1^2 4i\\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}e_{1,j\\alpha}\nf_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} - \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} e_{2,j\\alpha}\nf_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\n = - 2i \\bigg(\\frac{e_{1,j\\alpha}}{\\mu_1} C_1 + \\frac{e_{2,j\\alpha}}{\\mu_2} C_2 \\bigg).\\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\nWe also have\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n&{\\cal L}_1^3 \\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)} = 6\\cdot\n\\frac{2\\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{2,11}} + 6i \\chi_1\n\\cdot 2\\cdot 2i\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}}\\cdot\ne_{1,33}\n+ \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,11}} \\cdot e_{2,33}\\\\\n&\\ \\ + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}}\nf_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg) - 12 \\chi_1^2 \\cdot 2\\cdot\n2i\\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}e_{1,33}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} - \\frac{1}{\\mu_2}\ne_{2,33}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\& = \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\ni}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)} \\chi_1} C_2\n - 2i\n\\bigg(\\frac{e_{1,33}}{\\mu_1} C_1+\\frac{e_{2,33}}{\\mu_2} C_2\\bigg).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe write $B_2=(Id-G_1)B_1$ and $A_2=(Id-G_1)A_1$ so that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{new form b} B_2 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t=A_2\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\[\nG_1:=\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{-C_1}{\\mu_1 \\chi_3} & 0 & \\frac{-C_2}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\]\nThen\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& B_{2,11}=B_{1,11} - \\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} B_{1,13}=(2\\mu_{11}, 0,\n0, -\\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3}\n\\mu_{13}, 0, ..., 0),\\\\\n& B_{2,12}=B_{1,12} -\\bigg(\\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} B_{1,13}\n+ \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} B_{1,23} \\bigg)=(0, \\mu_{12}, 0, -\\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} \\mu_{13}, 0, ..., 0, -\\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} \\mu_{23}, 0, ..., 0), \\\\\n& B_{2,22} = B_{1,22} - \\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} B_{1,23}=(0,0,\n2\\mu_{22}, 0, ..., 0,\n-\\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} \\mu_{23}, 0, ..., 0),\\\\\n& B_{2,13}=B_{1,13},\\\\\n& B_{2,23}=B_{1,23}, \\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& B_{2,1\\alpha}=B_{1,1\\alpha} - \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} B_{1,13}\n=(0,0,0, -\\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} \\mu_{13}, 0, .., 0, \\mu_{1\\alpha}, 0, ..., 0),\\\\\n& B_{2,2\\alpha}=B_{1,2\\alpha} - \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} B_{1,23}\n=(0,0,0, 0, ..., 0, -\\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} \\mu_{23}, 0, .., 0, \\mu_{2\\alpha}, 0, ..., 0),\\\\\n& B_{2,33} = B_{1,33} + \\frac{B_{1,13}}{\\mu_1 \\chi_3} C_1 + \\frac{B_{1,23}}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3} C_2\\\\\n& =\\bigg(\\frac{-C_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1} ,\n\\frac{-C_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}\\chi_1}, 0,\n\\frac{C_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}, 0, ..., 0, \\frac{C_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\n\\chi_3}, 0, ..., 0, \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} i\nC_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1}\\bigg),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& A_{2,11} = 2\\mu_1 \\chi_1^2 - \\frac{2 \\chi_1}{\\chi_3} \\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_3 = 0,\\\\\n& A_{2,12} = (\\mu_1+\\mu_2) \\chi_1 \\chi_2 -\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} \\mu_1 \\chi_1\\chi_3\n+ \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} \\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_3 \\bigg) = 0,\\\\\n& A_{2,22} = 2 \\mu_2 \\chi_2^2 - \\frac{2 \\chi_2}{\\chi_3} \\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_3 = 0,\\\\\n& A_{2,13} = A_{1,13},\\ \\ A_{2,23} = A_{1, 23}, \\\\\n& A_{2,1\\alpha} = \\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_\\alpha - \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} \\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_3 = 0,\\\\\n& A_{2,2\\alpha} = \\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_\\alpha - \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} \\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_3 = 0,\\\\\n& A_{2, 33} = - \\chi_1 C_1 - \\chi_2 C_2 + \\frac{\\mu_1 \\chi_1\n\\chi_3}{\\mu_1 \\chi_3} C_1 + \\frac{\\mu_2 \\chi_2\\chi_3}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3}\nC_2 = 0,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $4\\le \\alpha\\le n-1$. From (\\ref{new form b}) we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\\label{rel}\n&\\ov{\\phi_{11}}(\\chi, 0)=\\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi,\n0),\\ \\ \\ov{\\phi_{12}}(\\chi, 0)=\\frac{\\mu_{13}\\chi_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0)\n+ \\frac{\\mu_{23}\\chi_1}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi, 0), \\\\\n& \\ov{\\phi_{22}}(\\chi, 0)=\\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi,\n0),\\ \\ \\ov{\\phi_{1\\alpha}}(\\chi, 0)=\\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0),\\ \\ \\ov{\\phi_{2\\alpha}}(\\chi,\n0)=\\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi, 0),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $4\\le \\alpha\\le n-1$. By considering $B_{2,13} \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi,\n0)^t=A_{2,13}$, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& 2i \\chi_3 e_{1,11} \\ov{\\phi_{11}} + 2i \\chi_3 e_{1,12}\n\\ov{\\phi_{12}}\n+ 2i \\chi_3 e_{1,22} \\ov{\\phi_{22}}+\\mu_{13}\\ov{\\phi_{13}}\\\\\n&+ \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} 2i \\chi_3 e_{1,1\\alpha} \\ov{\\phi_{1\\alpha}}\n+ \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} 2i \\chi_3 e_{1,2\\alpha} \\ov{\\phi_{2\\alpha}}\n+ 2i e_{1,33} \\chi_3 \\ov{\\phi_{33}} = \\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_3.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\nSubstituting (\\ref{rel}) into this equation, we get\n\n\\begin{equation} \\label{2 13 eq}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\bigg[\\mu_{13} + 2i\\bigg(e_{1,11}\\chi_1 +\n\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\mu_{12}} e_{1,12} \\chi_2\n+ \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} e_{1,1\\alpha} \\chi_\\alpha \\bigg) \\bigg] \\ov{\\phi_{13}}\\\\\n& + \\bigg(e_{1,12} \\chi_2 + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\mu_{12}} e_{1,12}\n\\chi_1 + \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} e_{1,2\\alpha} \\chi_\\alpha\\bigg)\n\\ov{\\phi_{23}} + 2i e_{1,33} \\chi_3 \\ov{\\phi_{33}} = \\mu_1 \\chi_1\n\\chi_3.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe can rewrite (\\ref{2 13 eq}) as\n\\begin{equation} \\label{e1}\n(\\mu_{13} + 2i \\sqrt{\\mu_1} E_1) \\ov{\\phi_{13}} + 2i \\sqrt{\\mu_2}\nE_2 \\ov{\\phi_{23}} + 2i e_{1,33} \\chi_3 \\ov{\\phi_{33}} = \\mu_1\n\\chi_1 \\chi_3\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\nE_1= \\frac{1}{\\mu_{11}} e_{1,11}\\chi_1 + \\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}} e_{1,12}\n\\chi_2 + \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} \\frac{1}{\\mu_{1\\alpha}} e_{1,1\\alpha}\n\\chi_\\alpha,\\ \\ E_2= \\frac{1}{\\mu_{22}} e_{1,22}\\chi_2 +\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}} e_{1,12} \\chi_1 + \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3}\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{2\\alpha}} e_{1,2\\alpha} \\chi_\\alpha.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nSimilarly by considering $B_{2,23} \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t = A_{2,23}$,\nwe obtain\n\\begin{equation} \\label{e2}\n\\begin{split}\n2i \\sqrt{\\mu_1} E_3 \\ov{\\phi_{13}} + (\\mu_{23} + 2i \\sqrt{\\mu_2}\nE_4) \\ov{\\phi_{23}} + 2i e_{2,33} \\chi_3 \\ov{\\phi_{33}} = \\mu_2\n\\chi_2 \\chi_3\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation*}\nE_3= \\frac{1}{\\mu_{11}} e_{2,11}\\chi_1 + \\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}} e_{2,12}\n\\chi_2 + \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3} \\frac{1}{\\mu_{1\\alpha}} e_{2,1\\alpha}\n\\chi_\\alpha,\\ \\ E_4= \\frac{1}{\\mu_{22}} e_{2,22}\\chi_2 +\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}} e_{2,12} \\chi_1 + \\sum^{n-1}_{\\alpha=3}\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{2\\alpha}} e_{2,2\\alpha} \\chi_\\alpha.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nSubstituting (\\ref{rel}) into $B_{2,33} \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t =\nA_{2,33}$, we yield\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& -\\frac{C_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1} \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0) -\n\\frac{C_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}\\chi_1}\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\n\\chi_2}{\\mu_{12} \\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0)\n+ \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_1}{\\mu_{12} \\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi, 0) \\bigg)\\\\\n& + \\frac{C_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0) +\n\\frac{C_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi, 0) +\n\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} i C_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1}\n\\ov{\\phi_{33}}(\\chi, 0)=0.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nWe notice that the polynomial $C_2\\not=0$ because $e_{2,11}\\not=0$.\nHere we used the fact that $\\phi_{33}^{(3I_1)}=\\frac{2\n\\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{2,11}}$ $\\not=0$ in Case A.\nThen divided by $C_2$, we obtain from above\n\\[\n\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_2}{\\mu_1+\\mu_2} \\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0) -\n\\frac{\\mu_1 \\chi_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} (\\mu_1+\\mu_2)} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi,\n0) - \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} i \\chi_3}{\\sqrt{(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\mu_2}}\n\\ov{\\phi_{33}}(\\chi, 0) = 0,\n\\]\nand hence\n\\begin{equation} \\label{33 eq}\n\\ov{\\phi_{33}}(\\chi, 0) =\n\\frac{i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}\\chi_3}(-\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_2\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}} + \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_1 \\ov{\\phi_{23}})(\\chi, 0).\n\\end{equation}\nThen (\\ref{e1}) and (\\ref{e2}) further take the form at $(\\chi, 0)$:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\bigg[\\mu_{13}+2i\\sqrt{\\mu_1} E_1 +\n2\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} e_{1,33}\n\\chi_2\\bigg]\\ov{\\phi_{13}} +\\bigg[2i \\sqrt{\\mu_2} E_2 -\n2\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} e_{1,33}\n\\chi_1\\bigg]\\ov{\\phi_{23}} =\n\\mu_1 \\chi_1 \\chi_3,\\\\\n&\\bigg[2i \\sqrt{\\mu_1} E_3 + 2\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\ne_{2,33} \\chi_2\\bigg]\\ov{\\phi_{13}} + \\bigg[\\mu_{23}+2i\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\nE_4 - 2\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} e_{2,33}\n\\chi_1\\bigg]\\ov{\\phi_{23}} = \\mu_2 \\chi_2 \\chi_3.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nIt implies that $\\ov{\\phi_{13}}(\\chi, 0)$ and $\\ov{\\phi_{23}}(\\chi,\n0)$ take the form $\\chi_3 \\frac{P_1^{(2)}(\\chi)}{P_2^{(2)}(\\chi)}$\nwhere $P_1^{(2)}(\\chi)$ and $P_2^{(2)}(\\chi)$ are polynomials of\ndegree 2. Substituting these forms back to (\\ref{rel}) and (\\ref{33\neq}),  we conclude that (\\ref{reduction}) is proved and hence\n$deg(F(z, 0))\\le 3$.\n This completes the proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case A.\n Case A$'$ can be similarly proved.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case B}\n\nThis section is devoted to  the proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg}\nfor Case B.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case B]\nIn this case, we suppose  $\\phi^{(2I_1+I_2)}_{33}\\neq 0$. Thus\n\\[\n\\frac{\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2  g}{2i}|_{(0, 0)} =\n\\sum^{n-1}_{l=1} \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2 f_l|_{(0, 0)}\n\\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal S}_0}\n\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2 \\phi_{st}|_{(0, 0)}\n\\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\n\\phi_{33}|_{(0, 0)} \\ov{\\phi_{33}(\\ov\\chi,\n    0)}.\n\\]\nWrite\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\nD_1=&-4i\\chi_1\\cdot \\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{1,12}} +4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)},\\\\\nD_2=&-4i\\chi_2\\cdot \\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{1,11}} +4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)},\\\\\nD_3=&-4i\\chi_1\\cdot \\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{2,12}} +4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)},\\\\\nD_4=&-4i\\chi_2\\cdot \\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{2,11}} +4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nA direct computation shows that $\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2 =\n\\frac{\\p ^3}{\\p z_1^2 \\p\n    z_2}+2i\\chi_2\\frac{\\p ^3}{\\p z_1^2 \\p w}+4i\\chi_1\\frac{\\p ^3}{\\p z_1\n    \\p z_2 \\p w}+4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\frac{\\p ^3}{\\p z_1 \\p\n    w^2}\n+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\frac{\\p ^3}{\\p z_2 \\p w^2}+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\frac{\\p ^3}{ \\p w^3}$. Thus\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2 f_1|_{(0,0)} =\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2f_1^{(2I_1+I_n)}+4i\\chi_1f_1^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)}\\\\\n&\\ +4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\n + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot 2f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)} = D_1+D_2.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2 f_2|_{(0,0)} = 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2f_2^{(2I_1+I_n)}+4i\\chi_1f_2^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)}\\\\\n&+4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} = D_3+D_4.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nAs in (\\ref{new form}), we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{new formb app} {\\cal B}_1 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t={\\cal A}_1.\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal B}_1:= \\begin{pmatrix}\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{33} \\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_2\\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_2\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} &\n{\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_2 \\phi_{33} \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}_{1\\leq j,k,h,l\\leq 2, {3\\leq \\alpha,\\beta\\leq n-1}} \\bigg|_{(0,0)}\n=\\begin{pmatrix}\nB_{1, jk}\\\\\nB_{1, j \\beta}\\\\\n{\\cal B}_{1, 33}\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\nand ${\\cal A}_1=(A_{1,11}, A_{1,12}, A_{1,22}, A_{1,1\\alpha},\nA_{1,2\\alpha}, {\\cal A}_{1,33})^t$ where ${\\cal A}_{1,33}=-{\\cal\nL}_1^2 {\\cal L}_2 f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_1^2 {\\cal L}_2\nf_2|_{(0,0)}$ $\\chi_2 = -(D_1+D_2) \\chi_1  - (D_3+D_4) \\chi_2$, and\n${\\cal B}_{1,33}=({\\cal L}_1^2{\\cal L}_2  \\phi_{hl}|_{(0,0)},\\ {\\cal\nL}_1^2{\\cal L}_2 \\phi_{h\\alpha}|_{(0,0)},\\ {\\cal L}_1^2{\\cal L}_2\n\\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)})$. Recall\n$\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi|_{(0,0)} =\n2\\phi^{(2I_1+I_2)}+2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\phi^{(2I_1+I_n)}+4i\\chi_1\\phi^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)} +4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2\\phi^{(I_1+2I_n)}+(2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\phi^{(I_2+2I_n)}$. We calculate ${\\cal B}_{1,33}$ in details as\nfollows.\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi_{11}|_{(0,0)} =  2\\cdot\n\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}\\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{1,12}}+2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,11}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,11}) \\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ -\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\n + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot \\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,12}}e_{1,11}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,11})-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,11}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,11}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,11}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,11}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n& =\n-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,11}(D_1+D_2)-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2}e_{2,11}(D_3+D_4)-\\frac{D_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1},\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi_{12}|_{(0,0)} =  2\\cdot\n\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_{12}}}(\\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{2,12}}+\\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{1,11}}\\big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,12}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,12})-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_{12}}}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,12}}e_{1,12}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,12})-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_{12}}(f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}+f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)})\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,12}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,12}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,12}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,12}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& =\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,12}(D_1+D_2)-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2}e_{2,12}(D_3+D_4)\n-\\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}D_3-\\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2}D_2,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi_{22}|_{(0,0) } = 2\\cdot\n\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_{22}}}\\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{2,11}}+2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2\\cdot\n2i\\big(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,22}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,22}\\big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,12}}e_{1,22}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,22})-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_{2}}}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,22}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,22}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,22}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,22}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n& =\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,22}(D_1+D_2)-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,22}(D_3+D_4)\n-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_{2}}\\chi_2}D_4,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi_{j\\alpha}|_{(0,0)} =\n2i\\chi_2\\cdot 2\\cdot\n2i(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,j\\alpha}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,j\\alpha})\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n2i(\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,12}}e_{1,j\\alpha}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,j\\alpha})\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,j\\alpha}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,j\\alpha}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,j\\alpha}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,j\\alpha}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n& =\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,j\\alpha}(D_1+D_2)-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,j\\alpha}(D_3+D_4),\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nfor $j=1, 2$, and\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_2\\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)} = 2\\cdot\n\\frac{2}{\\mu_{12}}\\big(\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{2,12}}\n-\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{1,11}}\\big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ +2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,33}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,33})-\\frac{2}{{\\mu_{12}}}\n\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot\n\\Big(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,12}}e_{1,33}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{12}}{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,33})-\\frac{2}{\\mu_{12}}(\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\n-\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)})\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + 4i\\chi_1\\cdot 2i\\chi_2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,33}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,33}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ + (2i\\chi_1)^2\\cdot\n2\\Big(-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,33}f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,33}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\Big)\\\\\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n=&\\ \\ \\\n-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,33}(D_1+D_2)-\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_2}}e_{2,33}(D_3+D_4)\n+\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1} \\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\nD_3-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2} \\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}  D_2.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe write ${\\cal B}_2=(Id-{\\cal G}_1){\\cal B}_1$ and ${\\cal\nA}_2=(Id-{\\cal G}_1){\\cal A}_1$ so that\n\\[\n{\\cal B}_2 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t = {\\cal A}_2\n\\]\nwhere\n\\[\n{\\cal G}_1:=\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & -\\frac{D_1+D_2}{\\mu_1 \\chi_3} & 0 & -\\frac{D_3+D_4}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\]\nBy the construction of ${\\cal B}_2$ and ${\\cal A}_2$, we see that\n(\\ref{rel})(\\ref{e1}) and (\\ref{e2}) still hold. We further\ncalculate:\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n{\\cal B}_{2,33} & ={\\cal B}_{1,33}+\\frac{B_{1,13}}{\\mu_1\\chi_3}(D_1+D_2)+\\frac{B_{1,23}}{\\mu_2\\chi_3}(D_3+D_4)\\\\\n& =\n\\Big(-\\frac{D_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1},-\\frac{D_3}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}-\\frac{D_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2},\n-\\frac{D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_2},\\frac{D_1+D_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3},0,\\cdots,0,\\\\\n&\\frac{D_3+D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3},\n0,\\cdots,0,\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{D_3}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{D_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big).\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal A}_{2,33} =\n-\\chi_1(D_1+D_2)-\\chi_2(D_3+D_4)+\\frac{\\mu_1\\chi_1\\chi_3}{\\mu_1\\chi_3}(D_1+D_2)\n+\\frac{\\mu_2\\chi_2\\chi_3}{\\mu_2\\chi_3}(D_3+D_4) = 0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe turn to ${\\cal B}_{2,33} \\ov\\phi(\\chi, 0)^t = {\\cal A}_{2,33}$ to\nhave\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{D_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1}\\ov{\\phi}_{11}-\\Big(\\frac{D_3}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}+\\frac{D_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{12}\n-\\frac{D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{22}\\\\\n&+\\frac{D_1+D_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}+\\frac{D_3+D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi}_{23}+\\Big(\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{D_3}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{D_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{33}=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSubstituting (\\ref{rel}) to this equation, we obtain\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{D_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}-\\Big(\\frac{D_3}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}+\\frac{D_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2}\\Big)\\cdot\n\\Big(\\frac{\\mu_{13}\\chi_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{13}}+\\frac{\\mu_{23}\\chi_1}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{23}}\\Big)\n-\\frac{D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\\\\\n&+\\frac{D_1+D_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}+\\frac{D_3+D_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi}_{23}+\\Big(\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{D_3}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{D_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{33}=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nA quick simplification gives\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&\n\\frac{\\mu_2\\chi_1D_2-\\mu_1\\chi_2D_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_1\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n-\\frac{\\mu_2\\chi_1D_2-\\mu_1\\chi_2D_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_2\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n-\\frac{i({\\mu_2\\chi_1D_2-\\mu_1\\chi_2D_3})}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{33}\n=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSince $\\phi^{(2I_1+I_2)}_{33}\\neq 0$ in Case B, the polynomial\n$\\mu_2\\chi_1D_2-\\mu_1\\chi_2D_3\\neq 0$ because of (\\ref{phi 1}). Thus\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_1\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_2\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n-\\frac{i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{33}\n=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nHence we obtain the same formula (\\ref{33 eq}). As in case A, we\nshow $deg(F)\\le 3$. The proof for the case B$'$ is similar to the\ncase B.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case C}\n\nIn this section, we will prove Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case C.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case C]\nIn Case C, we suppose  $\\phi^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)}_{33}\\neq 0$. Then\n\\[\n\\frac{{\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j  g}{2i}|_{(0, 0)} =\n\\sum^{n-1}_{l=1} {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j f_l|_{(0, 0)}\n\\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal S}_0} {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal\nL}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{st}|_{(0, 0)} \\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)}\n\\]\n\\[\n + {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{33}|_{(0, 0)} \\ov{\\phi_{33}(\\ov\\chi, 0)}.\n\\]\n\nRecall ${\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2\\mathcal{L}_j = \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1\nz_2 \\p z_j} + 2i\\chi_1 \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_2 z_j \\p w} +\n2i\\chi_2\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1 \\p z_j \\p w} + 2i\\chi_j\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1\n\\p z_2 \\p w} - 4 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1 \\p w^2} - 4 \\chi_1\n\\chi_j \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_2 \\p w^2} - 4 \\chi_1 \\chi_2 \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p\nz_j \\p w^2} - 8 i \\chi_1\\chi_2 \\chi_j\\frac{\\p^3}{ \\p w^3}$. Then\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_2{\\cal L}_j f_1|_{(0,0)}= 2i\\chi_1\nf_1^{(I_2+I_j+I_n)} + 2i\\chi_2 f_1^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)}\n+ 2i\\chi_j f_1^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)} \\\\\n& \\ \\ - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\nf_1^{(I_2+2I_n)} = \\mathtt{D}_1 + \\mathtt{D}_2 + \\mathtt{D}_3,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1{\\cal L}_2{\\cal L}_j f_2|_{(0,0)}= 2i\\chi_1\nf_2^{(I_2+I_j+I_n)} + 2i\\chi_2 f_2^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)}\n+ 2i\\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)} \\\\\n& \\ \\ - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\nf_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} =\\mathtt{D}_4 + \\mathtt{D}_5 + \\mathtt{D}_6\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere\n\\[\n\\begin{cases}\n\\mathtt{D}_1 = - 2i \\chi_1 \\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} - 4 \\chi_1 \\chi_j f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)},\\\\\n\\mathtt{D}_2 = -2i \\chi_2 \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} - 4 \\chi_2 \\chi_j f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)},\\\\\n\\mathtt{D}_3 = - 2i \\chi_j \\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{1,12}} - 4\n\\chi_1 \\chi_j f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\n- 4\\chi_2\\chi_j f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}, \\\\\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n\\[\n\\begin{cases}\n\\mathtt{D}_4 = - 2i \\chi_1 \\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,2j}} - 4 \\chi_1 \\chi_j f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)},\\\\\n\\mathtt{D}_5 = -2i \\chi_2 \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} - 4 \\chi_2 \\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} ,\\\\\n\\mathtt{D}_6 = - 2i \\chi_j \\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,12}} - 4\n\\chi_1 \\chi_j f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\n- 4\\chi_2\\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}.\\\\\n\\end{cases}\n\\]\n\nAs in (\\ref{new form}), we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{new formbbb} \\mathtt{B}_1 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi, 0)^t=\\mathtt{A}_1.\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathtt{B}_1:= \\begin{pmatrix}\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{33} \\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_2\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} &\n{\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\\phi_{33} \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}_{1\\leq j,k,h,l\\leq 2, {3\\leq \\alpha,\\beta\\leq n-1}} \\bigg|_{(0,0)}\n=\\begin{pmatrix}\nB_{1, jk}\\\\\nB_{1, j \\beta}\\\\\n\\mathtt{B}_{1, 33}\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\nand $\\mathtt{A}_1=(A_{1,11}, A_{1,12}, A_{1,22}, A_{1,1\\alpha},\nA_{1,2\\alpha}, \\mathtt{A}_{1,33})^t$ where\n\n\\noindent $\\mathtt{A}_{1,33}=-{\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\nf_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 - {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j f_2|_{(0,0)}$\n$\\chi_2 = -(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3) \\chi_1  -\n(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) \\chi_2$, and\n\n\\noindent $\\mathtt{B}_{1,33}=({\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2  {\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{hl}|_{(0,0)},\\ {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{h\\alpha}|_{(0,0)},\\  {\\cal L}_1 {\\cal L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)})$. Recall ${\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j\n\\phi|_{(0,0)} = \\phi^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)}$ $+ 2i\\chi_1\n\\phi^{(I_2+I_j+I_n)} + 2i\\chi_2 \\phi^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)} + 2i\\chi_j\n\\phi^{(I_1+I_2+I_n)} - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\phi^{(I_1+2I_n)} - 8 \\chi_1\n\\chi_j \\phi^{(I_2+2I_n)}$. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{11}|_{(0,0)} =\n\\frac{2i\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} + 2i\\chi_1\n\\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,11}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j}\\ov{e_{2,2j}}e_{2,11}\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_2 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,11}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j}\\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,11}\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,11}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,11}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\bigg) \\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,11}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,11}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\ne_{1,11}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,11}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,11}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3) - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,11}\n(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) -\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1} \\mathtt{D}_1,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{12}|_{(0,0)} = \\frac{2 i\n}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\n\\Big(\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{2,2j}}+\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{1,1j}}\\Big)\n + 2i\\chi_1  \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,12}\\\\\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&\\ \\ \\ + \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{2,2j}} e_{2,12}\\bigg) +\n2i\\chi_2  \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,12}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,12}\\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,12}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{2,12}} e_{2,12}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} - \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,12}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,12}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\ne_{1,12}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,12}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,12}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3)\n - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,12} (\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6)\n - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}\\chi_2} \\mathtt{D}_2\n - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2} \\chi_1} \\mathtt{D}_4,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{22}|_{(0,0)} =\n\\frac{2i\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} + 2i\\chi_1\n\\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,22}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j}\\ov{e_{2,2j}}e_{2,22}\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_2 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,22}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j}\\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,22}\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,22}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12}\\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,22}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg) \\\\\n&\n- 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{1,22} - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,22}\\bigg)\\\\\n&\n- 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{1,22} - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,22}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,12}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3) - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,12}\n(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) -\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_2} \\mathtt{D}_5,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{1k}|_{(0,0)} =\n\\frac{2i\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}} \\delta_{jk}\\ov{e_{1,12}} \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_1 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,1k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{2,2j}}e_{2,1k}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}\\delta_{jk} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_2 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,1k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,1k}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}\\delta_{jk} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,1k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,1k}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j\\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{1,1k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,1k}\\bigg)\\\\\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n&- 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{1,1k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,1k}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,1k}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3) - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,1k}\n(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) -\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_j} \\delta_{jk}\\mathtt{D}_3,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{2k}|_{(0,0)} =\n\\frac{2i\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}\\delta_{jk} \\ov{e_{2,12}} \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_1 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,2k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{2,2j}}e_{2,2k}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}\\delta_{jk} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_2 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,2k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,2k}\n-\\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}} \\delta_{jk}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,2k}\n+ \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{2,12}}e_{2,2k}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j\\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{1,2k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,2k}\\bigg)\\\\\n&- 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{1,2k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,2k}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,2k}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3) - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,2k}\n(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) -\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_j} \\delta_{jk}\\mathtt{D}_6,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& {\\cal L}_1 \\mathcal{L}_2 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)}\n= \\frac{2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} \\Big(\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\ov{e_{2,2j}}-\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\ov{e_{1,1j}}\\Big) \\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_1 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{1,2j}} e_{1,33}\n+\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{2j} \\ov{e_{2,2j}} e_{2,33} \\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_2 \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,33}\n+\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,33} \\bigg)\\\\\n& + 2i\\chi_j \\bigg(\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{1,12}} e_{1,33}\n+\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{12} \\ov{e_{2,12}} e_{2,33} \\\\\n&\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ - \\frac{2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1 \\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}}\n\\Big(\\mu_1f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)}\n-\\mu_2 f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\Big)\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 8 \\chi_2 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,33}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,33}\\bigg)\\\\\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_2+2I_n)}\ne_{1,33}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_2+2I_n)} e_{2,33}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,33}\n(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3)\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,33} (\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6)\\\\\n& + \\frac{i \\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1}\n\\mathtt{D}_4 - \\frac{i\n\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_2} \\mathtt{D}_2.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\nWe write $\\mathtt{B}_2=(Id - \\mathtt{G}_1)\\mathtt{B}_1$ and\n$\\mathtt{A}_2=(Id-\\mathtt{G}_1) \\mathtt{A}_1$ so that\n\\[\n\\mathtt{B}_2 \\ov\\phi(\\chi, 0)^t = \\mathtt{A}_2\n\\]\nwhere\n\\[\n\\mathtt{G}_1:=\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & -\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3}{\\mu_1\n\\chi_3} & 0\n& -\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5 + \\mathtt{D}_6}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\]\nBy the construction of $\\mathtt{B}_2$ and $\\mathtt{A}_2$, we see\nthat (\\ref{rel})(\\ref{e1}) and (\\ref{e2}) still hold. We further\ncalculate:\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n\\mathtt{B}_{2,33} & =\n\\mathtt{B}_{1,33}+\\frac{B_{1,13}}{\\mu_1\\chi_3}(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3)\n+\\frac{B_{1,23}}{\\mu_2\\chi_3}(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5 +\\mathtt{D}_6)\\\\\n& = \\Big(-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1},\\\n-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1} -\n\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2},\\\n-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_2}, \\\n\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}, 0,\\cdots,0,\\\\\n&\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3},0, \\cdots,0,\n\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big).\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathtt{A}_{2,33}\n= -\\chi_1(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3)-\\chi_2(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6) \\\\\n&\\ \\ +\n\\frac{\\mu_1\\chi_1\\chi_3}{\\mu_1\\chi_3}(\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2+\\mathtt{D}_3)\n+\\frac{\\mu_2\\chi_2\\chi_3}{\\mu_2\\chi_3}(\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5+\\mathtt{D}_6)\n= 0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe turn to $\\mathtt{B}_{2,33} \\ov\\phi(\\chi, 0)^t =\n\\mathtt{A}_{2,33}$ to have\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1}\\ov{\\phi}_{11}\n-\\Big(\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{12}\n-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{22}\\\\\n&+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n+\\Big(\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{33}=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSubstituting (\\ref{rel}) to this equation, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n-\\Big(\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_2}\\Big)\\cdot\n\\Big(\\frac{\\mu_{13}\\chi_2}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{13}}\n+\\frac{\\mu_{23}\\chi_1}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{23}}\\Big)\n-\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\\\\\n&+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_1+\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n+\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4+\\mathtt{D}_5}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n+\\Big(\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_1}{\\mu_2}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_4}{\\chi_1}\n-\\frac{i}{\\mu_{12}}\\sqrt{\\frac{\\mu_2}{\\mu_1}}\\frac{\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\chi_2}\\Big)\\ov{\\phi}_{33}=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nA quick simplification gives\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{\\mu_1\\chi_2 \\mathtt{D}_4-\\mu_2\\chi_1\n\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_1\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n+\\frac{\\mu_1\\chi_2 \\mathtt{D}_4-\\mu_2\\chi_1\n\\mathtt{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_2\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n+\\frac{i({\\mu_1\\chi_2 \\mathtt{D}_4-\\mu_2\\chi_1\n\\mathtt{D}_2})}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\n    \\chi_1\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{33}\n=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSince $\\phi_{33}^{(I_1+I_2+I_j)}\\not=0$ in Case C, the polynomial\n$\\mu_2\\chi_1 \\mathtt{D}_2-\\mu_1\\chi_2 \\mathtt{D}_4\\neq 0$ because of\n(\\ref{phi 1}). Thus\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_1\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{13}\n+\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_2\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi}_{23}\n+\\frac{i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi}_{33}\n=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nHence we obtain the same formula (\\ref{33 eq}). As in Case A, we can\nfurther get $deg(F)\\le 3$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\medspace\n\n\\section{Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case D}\n\nIn this section, we will prove Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case D.\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} for Case D] In this case, we suppose  $\\phi^{(2I_1+I_j)}_{33}\\neq 0$. Then\n\\[\n\\frac{\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j  g}{2i}|_{(0, 0)} =\n\\sum^{n-1}_{l=1} \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j f_l|_{(0, 0)}\n\\ov{f_l(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\sum_{(s, t)\\in {\\cal S}_0}\n\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j \\phi_{st}|_{(0, 0)}\n\\ov{\\phi_{st}(\\ov\\chi, 0)} + \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\n\\phi_{33}|_{(0, 0)} \\ov{\\phi_{33}(\\ov\\chi,\n    0)}.\n\\]\nWrite\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n\\mathfrak{D}_1 = & - 4i\\chi_1 \\mu_{1j}\\ov{e_{1,1j}} - 8 \\chi_1\n\\chi_j  f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)},\\ \\ \\mathfrak{D}_2 =  - 4i\\chi_j\n\\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{1,11}} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\nf_1^{(I_1+2I_n)},\\\\\n\\mathfrak{D}_3 = & - 4i\\chi_1  \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} - 8 \\chi_1\n\\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)},\\ \\ \\mathfrak{D}_4 = -4i\\chi_j\n\\mu_{11}\\ov{e_{2,11}} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\n f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nHere we used the fact that $f_1^{(I_j+2I_n)}=f_2^{(I_j+2I_n)}=0$ due\nto Theorem 2.1. A direct computation shows that\n$\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j = \\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1^2 \\p z_j} +\n2i\\chi_j\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1^2 \\p w} + 4i\\chi_1\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1\\p\nz_j \\p w} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_1 \\p w^2} - 4\n\\chi_1^2\\frac{\\p^3}{\\p z_j \\p w^2} - 8 i \\chi_1^2 \\chi_j\\frac{\\p^3}{\n\\p w^3}$. Thus\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j f_1|_{(0,0)} = 2i\\chi_j\\cdot 2\nf_1^{(2I_1+I_n)} + 4i\\chi_1 f_1^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)} - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\n\\cdot 2 f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}  = \\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j f_2|_{(0,0)} = 2i\\chi_j\\cdot 2\nf_2^{(2I_1+I_n)} + 4i\\chi_1 f_2^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)}\n - 8 \\chi_1 \\chi_j f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}  = \\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\medspace\n\nAs in (\\ref{new form}), we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{new formbb} \\mathfrak{B}_1 \\ov{\\phi}(\\chi,\n0)^t=\\mathfrak{A}_1.\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathfrak{B}_1:= \\begin{pmatrix}\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_k \\phi_{33} \\\\\n{\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta \\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} & {\\cal L}_j{\\cal L}_\\beta\n\\phi_{33}\\\\\n{\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_j\\phi_{hl} & {\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{h\\alpha} &\n{\\cal L}^2_1 {\\cal L}_j \\phi_{33} \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}_{1\\leq j,h,l\\leq 2, {3\\leq \\alpha,\\beta\\leq n-1}} \\bigg|_{(0,0)}\n=\\begin{pmatrix}\nB_{1, jk}\\\\\nB_{1, j \\beta}\\\\\n\\mathfrak{B}_{1, 33}\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\nand $\\mathfrak{A}_1=(A_{1,11}, A_{1,12}, A_{1,22}, A_{1,1\\alpha},\nA_{1,2\\alpha}, \\mathfrak{A}_{1,33})^t$ where\n$\\mathfrak{A}_{1,33}=-{\\cal L}_1^2 {\\cal L}_j f_1|_{(0,0)} \\chi_1 -\n{\\cal L}_1^2 {\\cal L}_j f_2|_{(0,0)}$ $\\chi_2 =\n-(\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2) \\chi_1 - (\\mathfrak{D}_3 +\n\\mathfrak{D}_4) \\chi_2$, and $\\mathfrak{B}_{1,33}=({\\cal L}_1^2{\\cal\nL}_j  \\phi_{hl}|_{(0,0)},\\ {\\cal L}_1^2{\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{h\\alpha}|_{(0,0)},\\ {\\cal L}_1^2{\\cal L}_j\n\\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)})$.\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe also have $\\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi|_{(0,0)} =\n2\\phi^{(2I_1+I_j)}+2i\\chi_j\\cdot\n2\\phi^{(2I_1+I_n)}+4i\\chi_1\\phi^{(I_1+I_j+I_n)} - 8\\chi_1\n\\chi_j\\cdot 2\\phi^{(I_1+2I_n)} - 4 \\chi_1^2 \\cdot\n2\\phi^{(I_j+2I_n)}$ so that\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{11}|_{(0,0)} = 2\\cdot 2i\n\\ov{e_{1,1j}} + 4i\\chi_j \\bigg(2i (\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1}\n\\ov{e_{1,11}} e_{1,11}\n+ \\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,11}} e_{2,11}) - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_{11}} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& +4i\\chi_1 \\bigg(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{1j}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,1j}}e_{1,11} +\n\\frac{\\mu_{1j}}{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,11})\\bigg)\n - 16 \\chi_1 \\chi_j\\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} e_{1,11} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,11} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = -\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,11}(\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) -\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2}e_{2,11}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4) -\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{1j}\\chi_1} \\mathfrak{D}_1,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{12}|_{(0,0)} =  2 \\frac{2i\n\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} +4i\\chi_j\n\\bigg(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,11}} e_{1,12} +\n\\frac{\\mu_{11}}{\\mu_2}\n\\ov{e_{2,11}} e_{2,12}) -\\frac{2i}{\\mu_{12}} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} \\bigg) \\\\\n& + 4i\\chi_1 \\bigg(2i(\\frac{\\mu_{1j}}{\\mu_1} \\ov{e_{1,1j}} e_{1,12}\n+ \\frac{\\mu_{1j}}{\\mu_2} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,12}) \\bigg)\n- 16\\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{1,12} - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,12}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = -\\frac{2i}{{\\mu_1}}e_{1,12}(\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2)\n-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2}e_{2,12}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4) -\n\\frac{1}{\\mu_{12} \\chi_1} \\mathfrak{D}_3,\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{22}|_{(0,0)} = 4i\\chi_j\n\\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,22}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{2,11}}e_{2,22})\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 4i\\chi_1\\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}}e_{1,22}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}}e_{2,22})\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 16\\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,22}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,22}\\bigg) \\\\\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& = -\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,22}(\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) -\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2}e_{2,22}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{1k}|_{(0,0)} = 2 \\cdot 2i\n\\delta_{jk}\\ov{e_{1,11}} + 4i \\chi_j \\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1}\n\\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,1k}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{2,11}} e_{2,1k}) \\bigg) \\\\\n& + 4i\\chi_1 \\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}}e_{1,1k}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,1k})\n- \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}\\delta_{jk} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 16 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,1k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,1k}\\bigg) \\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,1k} (\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) -\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,1k}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4) -\n\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_j} \\delta_{jk}\\mathfrak{D}_2,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{2k}|_{(0,0)} = 2 \\cdot \\frac{ 2i\n\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}\\delta_{jk}\\ov{e_{2,11}} + 4i \\chi_j\n\\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,2k}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{2,11}} e_{2,2k}) \\bigg) \\\\\n& + 4i\\chi_1 \\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}}e_{1,2k}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,2k})\n- \\frac{2i}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}} \\delta_{jk}f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 16 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,2k}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,2k}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,2k} (\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) -\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,2k}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4)\n - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_j} \\delta_{jk}\\mathfrak{D}_4,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\begin{split}\n& \\mathcal{L}_1^2\\mathcal{L}_j\\phi_{33}|_{(0,0)} = 2 \\cdot\n\\frac{2\\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}} \\ov{e_{2,1j}}\\\\\n& + 4i \\chi_j \\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{11}\n\\ov{e_{1,11}}e_{1,33} + \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{11} \\ov{e_{2,11}}\ne_{2,33}) - \\frac{2 \\mu_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1 \\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}}\nf_2^{(I_1+2I_n)}\n\\bigg) \\\\\n& + 4i\\chi_1 \\bigg(2i(\\frac{1}{\\mu_1} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{1,1j}}e_{1,33}\n+ \\frac{1}{\\mu_2} \\mu_{1j} \\ov{e_{2,1j}} e_{2,33})\\bigg)\\\\\n& - 16 \\chi_1 \\chi_j \\bigg(-\\frac{2i}{\\mu_1} f_1^{(I_1+2I_n)}\ne_{1,33}\n- \\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} f_2^{(I_1+2I_n)} e_{2,33}\\bigg)\\\\\n& = - \\frac{2i}{\\mu_1}e_{1,33} (\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) -\n\\frac{2i}{\\mu_2} e_{2,33}(\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4) + \\frac{i\n\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)} \\chi_1} \\mathfrak{D}_3.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation*}\n\nWe write $\\mathfrak{B}_2:=(Id - \\mathfrak{G}_1) \\mathfrak{B}_1$ and\n$\\mathfrak{A}_2:=(Id - \\mathfrak{G}_1) \\mathfrak{A}_1$ so that\n\\[\n\\mathfrak{B}_2 \\ov\\phi(\\chi, 0)^t = \\mathfrak{A}_2\n\\]\nwhere\n\\[\n\\mathfrak{G}_1:=\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{2\\chi_2}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \\frac{\\chi_\\alpha}{\\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 0 & -\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\mu_1 \\chi_3} & 0\n&\n-\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\mu_2 \\chi_3} & 0 & 0 \\\\\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\]\nBy the construction of $\\mathfrak{B}_2$ and $\\mathfrak{A}_2$, we see\nthat (\\ref{rel})(\\ref{e1}) and (\\ref{e2}) still hold. We further\ncalculate:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n&\\mathfrak{B}_{2,33} = \\mathfrak{B}_{1,33} + \\frac{B_{1,13}}{\\mu_1\n\\chi_3} (\\mathfrak{D}_1 + \\mathfrak{D}_2) +  \\frac{B_{1,23}}{\\mu_2\n\\chi_3} (\\mathfrak{D}_3 + \\mathfrak{D}_4) = \\bigg(-\\frac{1}{\\mu_{1j}\n\\chi_1}, \\mathfrak{D}_1\\ - \\frac{1}{\\mu_{12}\n    \\chi_1} \\mathfrak{D}_3,\\ 0,\\\\\n&\\  - \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_3} \\mathfrak{D}_2 +\n\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_3}, 0, ...,\n0,\\ -\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_3} \\mathfrak{D}_4 +\n\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_3}, 0, ...,\n0,\\ \\frac{i \\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)} \\chi_1}\n\\mathfrak{D}_3 \\bigg)\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& \\mathfrak{A}_{2,33} =\n-\\chi_1(\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2)-\\chi_2(\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4)\n+\\frac{\\mu_1\\chi_1\\chi_3}{\\mu_1\\chi_3}(\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2)\n+\\frac{\\mu_2\\chi_2\\chi_3}{\\mu_2\\chi_3}(\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4)\n= 0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\n\\medspace\n\nWe turn to $\\mathfrak{B}_{2,33} \\ov\\phi(\\chi, 0)^t =\n\\mathfrak{A}_{2,33}$ to have\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n&  -\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1} \\ov{\\phi_{1111}}\n-\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\mu_{12}\\chi_1}\\ov{\\phi_{12}} -\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3}\n- \\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_3}\\bigg)\\ov{\\phi_{13}}\\\\\n&\\ \\ - \\bigg(\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3} -\n\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2} \\chi_3}\n\\bigg)\\ov{\\phi_{23}} + \\frac{i \\sqrt{\\mu_1}\n\\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\\chi_1}\\ov{\\phi_{33}}=0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSubstituting (\\ref{rel}) to this equation, we obtain at $(\\chi, 0)$\n\\begin{equation*}\\begin{split}\n& -\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_1}\n\\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{13}}\n-\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}\\chi_2}\n\\bigg(\\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}} \\frac{\\chi_2}{\\chi_3}\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}} + \\frac{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1+\\mu_2}}\n\\frac{\\chi_1}{\\chi_3} \\ov{\\phi_{23}}\\bigg) \\\\\n& - \\bigg(\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}\\chi_3} -\n\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_1+\\mathfrak{D}_2}{\\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\chi_3}\\bigg)\n\\ov{\\phi_{13}} - \\bigg(\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\\chi_3} -\n\\frac{\\mathfrak{D}_3+\\mathfrak{D}_4}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}\n\\chi_3}\\bigg)\\ov{\\phi_{23}} + \\frac{i \\sqrt{\\mu_1}\n\\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)} \\chi_1} \\ov{\\phi_{33}} =\n0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation*}\n\nA quick simplification gives at $(\\chi, 0)$\n\\begin{equation}\\begin{split}\n& - \\frac{\\mu_1 \\mathfrak{D}_3 }{\\sqrt{\\mu_1}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\n\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{13}} + \\frac{\\mu_1\n\\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2}(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)\\chi_3}\\ov{\\phi_{23}} +\n\\frac{i \\sqrt{\\mu_1} \\mathfrak{D}_3}{\\sqrt{\\mu_2(\\mu_1+\\mu_2)}\n\\chi_2}\\ov{\\phi_{33}} =0.\n\\end{split}\\end{equation}\nSince $\\phi^{(2I_1+I_j)}_{33}\\neq 0$ in Case D, the polynomial\n$\\mu_1 \\mathfrak{D}_3\\neq 0$ because of (\\ref{phi 1}). Hence we\nobtain the same formula (\\ref{33 eq}). As in the case A, we can\nfurther get $deg(F)\\le 3$. The proof for the case D$'$ is similar to\nthe case D.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\medspace\n\nTherefore the proofs of Proposition \\ref{propdeg} and Theorem\n\\ref{mainthm} are complete.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\medskip\n\n\\bibliographystyle{amsalpha}\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nObservations of elliptical galaxies in clusters with {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ and {\\it Chandra} \\ have shown that the cluster environment has a profound impact on the evolution of galaxies. There are several mechanisms by which galaxies in clusters interact with both neighboring galaxies and the surrounding Intracluster Medium (ICM). Most galaxy-galaxy interaction mechanisms usually require low-velocity approaches to be efficient, and typically result in the stripping of both diffuse interstellar gas and a fraction of their stellar populations. Galaxy-ICM interactions commonly result in the stripping of the gas associated with the galaxy halo. In the most dramatic examples, ram pressure stripping can result in tails of both hot and cool gas trailing behind the galaxies for distances of $\\sim 100 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ or longer.\nThe physical processes that operate within these tails, however, are not fully understood. While simulations have shown that simple analytic estimates are fairly accurate in predicting the radius of the gas disc that undergoes ram pressure stripping \\citep{Gunn1972}, complex physics is required to account for the morphology of the stripped gas tails and their multiwavelength properties \\citep[e.g.][]{Roediger2006,Roediger2007,Roediger2008,Tonnesen2010,Tonnesen2011,Tonnesen2012}. The viscosity of the ICM \\citep{Roediger2008b}, turbulence, and magnetic fields \\citep{Ruszkowski2012} are all expected to influence the morphology of the stripped gas and its evolution after it is deposited into the ICM. The relative contributions of these processes remain uncertain. \n\nArguably the ideal site to observe these interaction mechanisms is the nearby, bright Virgo Cluster. The most massive galaxies in this cluster have been studied in detail at multiple wavelengths, and X-ray observations have shown convincing evidence for profound interactions between the galaxies and the ICM. Long tails of cool, stripped gas have been observed trailing in the wake of Virgo ellipticals including NGC 4552 \\citep{Machacek2006}, and NGC 4472 \\citep{Kraft2011}. \n\nObservations of the Virgo Cluster have shown that it is composed of three separate sub-groups: one centered on M87, the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG); one centered on M86, an elliptical galaxy roughly one degree ($\\sim 300 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$) to the west of M87; and the final sub-group centered on NGC 4472 (also known as M49) approximately $4.5^{\\circ}$ to the south of M87 \\citep{Binggeli1987,Binggeli1993,Bohringer1994}. Spectroscopic studies of M86 have shown that it has an absolute blue-shifted velocity of $\\sim 250 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$ while M87 has a red-shifted velocity of $\\sim 1300 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$. Given an average temperature of the ambient Virgo ICM of $\\sim 2.3 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ \\citep[][corresponding to a sound speed of $\\sim 700 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$]{Urban2011}, M86 must be traversing through the Virgo Cluster supersonically with a Mach number of at least $\\mathcal{M} \\gtrsim 2$. \n\nIn the vicinity of M86, additional galaxies are located within approximately $\\sim 100 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ of one another in projection. The two most massive galaxies, M86 and M84, are separated by a projected distance of only $60 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$. Although these galaxies appear similar in optical imaging studies, further studies utilizing optical spectroscopy and X-ray observations show that they are interacting with the ambient Virgo ICM in different manners. Observations of M86 with {\\it Chandra} \\ and {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ \\citep{Finoguenov2004,Randall2008} show that it is undergoing significant ram pressure stripping, with diffuse X-ray emitting gas as well as cooler material trailing behind the galaxy for distances of approximately $\\sim 150 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ in projection to the northwest. There is only sparse evidence for ram pressure stripping in observations of M84 with {\\it Chandra} \\ \\citep{Finoguenov2008}, but there is clear evidence for a powerful AGN outburst at the center of this galaxy \\citep{Finoguenov2008}. M84 has an absolute red-shifted velocity of $\\sim 1000 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$ \\citep{Smith2000,Trager2000}, approximately consistent with the measured velocity for M87. The region in between M84 and M86 is also claimed to be the site of bright intracluster light emission \\citep{Rudick2010}. Two other galaxies are detected in the X-rays nearby: NGC 4388 and NGC 4438. These spiral galaxies have absolute redshifted velocities of $2566 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$ \\citep[NGC 4388,][]{Rines2008} and $71 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$ \\citep[NGC 4438,][]{Kenney1995}, respectively.  \n\nIn this work we present, for the first time, an investigation into the thermodynamic structure spanning the entire region across these four galaxies. Utilizing the full information of five separate {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ observations, including new observations of M84, we are able to investigate the temperature and metallicity structure around these galaxies and investigate how interactions of these galaxies with each other and the ICM have transformed their gas reservoirs. \n\n\nThis paper is structured as follows: in Section 2 we discuss the data sets, their initial processing, and the production of images and spectral maps; in Section 3 we present our results; and in Section 4 we interpret their physical implications. We assume a nominal distance of 17 {\\rm\\thinspace Mpc} \\ to the Virgo Cluster, at which 1 arcsecond corresponds to 82 {\\rm\\thinspace pc}, and 1 arcminute to 4.92 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}.\n\n \n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.95\\textwidth]{BigMap_lr.ps}\n\\caption{\\label{Mosaic} Background-subtracted, exposure corrected mosaic of five {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ pointings surrounding M86 (in units of $\\rm{cts} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$), utilizing the MOS+PN detectors in the energy band of $0.3-1.0 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$. The four X-ray brightest Virgo Cluster members observed in this mosaic (M86, M84, NGC4388, and NGC 4438) are labeled. Diffuse gas is observed trailing to the northwest of M86, to the east of M86 in the direction of NGC 4438, to the south of M84, and to the east of NGC 4388.  }\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\section{Data Processing and Analysis Methods}\\label{datared}\nA total of five separate {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ pointings were analyzed, the details of which are listed in Table \\ref{Observations}. The data products were cleaned and processed using the {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ Science Analysis System (SAS) (version 11.0), and in particular the Extended Source Analysis Software \\citep[{\\it ESAS},][]{Snowden2008} package included with SAS. We have utilized events from the two MOS and PN detectors for this study. Calibration products and event lists were first produced using the standard SAS routines. Good time intervals (GTI's) for each event list were determined using the {\\small MOS-FILTER} and {\\small PN-FILTER} routines. Four of the five pointings had little time contaminated by flares, but the most recent observation (of M84, Observation \\# 0673310101, PI S. Ehlert) was heavily contaminated by flaring, with only $\\sim 40$ ks of the original 130 ks MOS exposure deemed suitable for analysis. No further evidence for flaring was observed in any of the event lists after GTI filtering. \n\\begin{table}\n\\caption{\\label{Observations}Summary of the five {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ observations utilized in this study. Exposure times are the net exposure after all cleaning and processing as described in Section \\ref{datared} for each detector. The M84 observation (Obs \\# 0673310101, denoted by an asterisk) was heavily contaminated by flares. The original event list was split into two separate event lists for each MOS instrument, the summed exposure time of which is shown below.     }\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{ c  c c c c} \n\\\\ \\hline {Obs \\#} & {Obs. Date} & MOS1 (ks) & MOS2 (ks) & PN (ks) \\\\ \\hline\\hline \n\n0108260201 & July 01 2002 & 62.44 & 63.53 & 43.68\\\\\n0110930701 & December 12 2002 & 8.46 & 10.05  & 3.84\\\\ \n0210270101 & December 19 2004 & 25.42 & 25.25 & 23.79\\\\ \n0210270201 & December 27 2004 & 20.38 & 19.92 & 19.02\\\\ \n0673310101* & June 01 2011 & 37.14 & 42.96 & 15.42\\\\ \n\n\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{table}\n\n \n\\subsection{Imaging Analysis}\nBackground-subtracted, exposure corrected images of all five pointings were produced in the soft energy band, $0.3-1.0 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$. The backgrounds for imaging analysis were determined from customized blank-sky observations \\citep{Carter2007} and closed-filter wheel observations to account for the instrumental background. We use blank sky files with similar pointing directions and Galactic absorption column densities to M84 and M86. The closed-filter wheel counts images were subtracted from both the blank-sky and science exposures after renormalizing to match the total counts in each of these images outside of the field-of-view. The remaining blank sky emission was then subtracted from the science images. We also accounted for out-of-time (OOT) events in the PN detector images for each pointing using standard procedures. \n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.95\\textwidth]{Sloan_withXRay_lr.ps}\n\\caption{\\label{Sloan} An r-band image of the region surrounding M86 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The X-ray surface brightness contours are overlaid in white, which show the stripped X-ray emitting gas trailing these galaxies. The stripped gas tail is especially pronounced for the M86 at the center of the image. Tails of stripped gas are observed to the south of M84 and to the northwest of M86. Diffuse soft emission is detected trailing eastward from M86 in the direction of NGC 4438. Faint, diffuse emission is also detected at the position of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4402, located $\\sim 10 \\arcmin$ to the north of M86.   }\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Thermodynamic Mapping}\nOur {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ observations are sufficiently deep for high signal-to-noise spectra to be extracted from relatively small regions. This enables us to carry out detailed, spatially resolved measurements of the thermodynamic quantities across the entire mosaic. All spectral analysis was carried out using {\\small XSPEC} \\rm  \\citep[][version 12.6]{Arnaud2004}. Instrumental background was determined for the source spectra using closed filter wheel observations of the detectors renormalized to have the same count rate in the $10-12 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ energy band. We subtracted the out-of-time events from the PN spectra before performing these fits. We modeled the sky background for each spectral bin using the background model of \\cite{Urban2011}, renormalized to account for the appropriate region geometries. This model assumes a sum of three components: an absorbed power law from the unresolved point sources \\citep{Deluca2004}, absorbed thermal emission with $kT \\sim 0.2 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ from the Galactic halo \\citep{Kuntz2000} and the unabsorbed thermal emission from the Local Hot Bubble \\citep{Sidher1996,Kuntz2000}. Tests show that no additional background components are necessary.  Allowing the temperatures, photon indexes, or normalizations of the background components to vary did not change the results in a significant manner.   \n\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Regions of Interest}\\label{ROI}\nWe identified the independent regions of interest for our spectral analysis by binning the background subtracted image into regions of equal signal to noise. Here we made use of the Weighted Voronoi Tessellations binning algorithm by \\cite{Diehl2006}, which is a generalization of the Voronoi binning algorithm of \\cite{Cappellari2003}. We binned the image using two signal-to-noise thresholds (hereafter the low S\/N and high S\/N maps, respectively). Spectra were extracted from each spectral region, and appropriate response files were generated using the {\\small RMFGEN} and {\\small ARFGEN} tools. All spectral fits were performed in the energy band $0.4-7.0 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$, although we ignored the energy range $1.2-1.8 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ in order to avoid the instrumental Al and Si emission lines in the MOS detectors. In the resulting energy band, there are roughly $\\sim 4000$ counts per region in our low S\/N maps and $\\sim 7000$ counts per region for our high S\/N maps.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Spectral Modeling and Thermodynamic Quantities}\n\nFor the low S\/N regions, we fit the spectra with an absorbed, single temperature {\\small APEC} plasma model. We utilized the photoelectric absorption model of \\cite{McCammon1992} and fixed the Galactic absorption column density to the value derived by \\cite{Kalberla2005} $\\mysub{N}{H}=2.13 \\times 10^{20} {\\rm\\thinspace cm}^{-2}$. We assume the solar element abundance ratios given by \\cite{Grevesse1998}. The temperature, metallicity, and the normalization were all independent free parameters. Best fit model parameters were obtained by minimizing the modified C-statistic in {\\small XSPEC}. All uncertainties quoted are $68\\%$ ($\\Delta C=1$) confidence intervals. \n\nThe high S\/N spectra were fitted with a similar model, but with an additional thermal component to account for the ambient Virgo Cluster emission viewed in projection. The temperature of this thermal emission was fixed to  2.3 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}, in agreement with measurements of the diffuse Virgo ICM at the same distance from M87 \\citep{Urban2011}. The metallicities of the two thermal components were linked to be the same. The exact choice of the temperature of the ambient Virgo ICM does not have a strong influence on the measured temperature or metallicity for the second component.   \n\nTo search for multi-temperature structure in the high S\/N map, we also attempted to fit the spectra with a two-temperature plus cooling flow model ({\\small APEC+APEC+MKCFLOW}). For the cooling flow component we set the upper and lower temperatures to $1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ and $0.1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$, respectively. All of our measured temperatures have an uncertainty of less than $\\sim 10\\%$, regardless of the model.   \n\n\n\\section{Results}\nThe background subtracted, exposure corrected image of the region surrounding M86 is shown in Figure \\ref{Mosaic}. To the north-west of M86 a long tail of diffuse gas is observed, which has been discussed in detail by \\cite{Finoguenov2004} and \\cite{Randall2008}. The length of this tail is $\\sim 150 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ in projection, although given the large line-of-sight velocity of M86 with respect to the ambient Virgo ICM this is likely a conservative lower limit to its true length. The width of this tail in projection, however, is roughly uniform along its entire length. To the east of M86, diffuse emission is observed out to the neighboring galaxy NGC 4438. Diffuse gas is also detected for a distance of approximately $\\sim 15 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ to the south of M84. These tails of X-ray emission trailing M86 and M84 extend beyond the bulk of the optical galaxy emission, as shown in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey image of this field (Figure \\ref{Sloan}). There is no evidence for diffuse emission that bridges between M84 and M86. There is also tentative evidence for diffuse X-ray emission trailing to the east of NGC 4388.  \n\n\n\n\\subsection{Temperature Structure}\nMaps of the temperature and metallicity structure across the region are shown in Figure \\ref{Thermo}. Cool gas with a temperature of $\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ is detected in various directions around M86, with the the majority of this gas phase located in the regions immediately surrounding the galaxy and to the north-west of the galaxy. This $\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ component traces the morphology of M86's X-ray tail, and originates from the ram pressure stripping of M86 \\citep[e.g.][]{Forman1979,Fabian1980,Nulsen1982,White1991,Finoguenov2004,Randall2008}. \n\nTo the east of M86 is a site of cooler X-ray emitting gas, observed to have a temperature of $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$, spatially coincident with the brighter diffuse X-ray emission spanning between M86 and NGC 4438. Gas with a temperature of $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ is also observed just to the north of M86, extending to the northwest in the same direction as the $\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ component. Fitting each spectral bin in the region between M86 and NGC 4438 with a two-temperature plus cooling flow model results in no detection of significant cooling flows. For any particular bin, these fits constrain the spectroscopic cooling rate of X-ray gas from $1.0 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ to $0.1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ to $\\lesssim 0.01 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$, and the upper limit for the integrated spectroscopic cooling rate across all of the bins between these two galaxies is $\\lesssim 0.1 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$.  \n\nIn the vicinity of M84, we detect the presence of cool ($\\sim 0.7 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$) gas trailing to the south of the galaxy, out to a distance of $\\sim 15 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$. This is significantly larger than the scale of AGN feedback in this system (see Figure \\ref{M84Zoom}). The temperature of this gas is observed to increase smoothly to the south, until it becomes indistinguishable from the ambient ICM. The presence of cool gas trailing to the south of M84 suggests ram pressure stripping of its X-ray halo amidst northward motion. \n\nWe use the presence of this tail to provide an order-of-magnitude estimate of the rate at which X-ray gas is stripped from M84. In order to determine the gas mass in the tail, we assume it has a prolate ellipsoidal geometry with a semi-major axis of $7.5 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ and a semi-minor axis of $4.2 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ (shown in Figures \\ref{M84Zoom}). This geometry is based on the extent to which we can detect cooler ($\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$) gas to the south of the cavity regions. We only include the region to the south of the AGN-driven cavities seen in {\\it Chandra} \\ observations of M84. Based on the surface brightness enhancement in this region, we estimate that the density of the gas in the tail is $\\sim 0.005 {\\rm\\thinspace cm}^{-3}$, roughly a factor of 2 denser than the surrounding Virgo ICM \\citep{Urban2011}. With these assumptions, we determine that a mass of $\\sim 7 \\times 10^{7} \\mysub{M}{\\odot}$ of X-ray gas has been stripped by the bulk motion of M84 through the Virgo ICM. Using the sound crossing time as an estimate for the time scale over which this stripping occurred and an assumed sound speed of $700 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$, the overall mass stripping rate is calculated to be $\\sim 7 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$. Since there is no evidence for jumps in the ICM temperature or surface brightness indicative of a shock front to the north of M84, this galaxy is likely traversing through the ICM at sub-sonic speeds\\footnote{Since M84 and M87 have similar line-of-sight velocities, it is also unlikely that M84 has a significant velocity component through the Virgo ICM along the line-of-sight. This maximizes the likelihood that such a shock front, if present, would be detected.}. Resultingly, the mass stripping rate we estimate is likely an upper limit as to the true rate at which M84's X-ray halo gas is being stripped by ram pressure.   \n\n\nTo the west of M86 in the direction of M84, a clear temperature gradient is observed over the entire region. Between the two galaxies is a $\\sim 20 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ band of emission consistent with the ambient Virgo ICM, in both one-temperature and two-temperature fits.\n\n\n\\subsection{Metallicity Structure}\n\nAlthough the single-temperature and two-temperature fits qualitatively agree in their metallicity measurements (see Figures \\ref{Thermo}b and \\ref{Thermo}d), we focus our discussion on the measurements from the two-temperature fits. These measurements are performed at higher signal-to-noise and are less sensitive to biases in metallicity measurements that arise by modeling multi-phase emission with a single temperature \\citep{Buote2002}. For comparative purposes, the metallicity of the Virgo cluster at the same radius from M87 \\citep{Urban2011} is approximately $Z \\sim 0.3 \\ \\mysub{Z}{\\odot}$. \n\nThe metal-richest gas is located near the center of M86, which has a measured metallicity of at least $\\sim 1 \\mysub{Z}{\\odot}$. Metal-rich gas ($\\gtrsim 0.5 \\mysub{Z}{\\odot}$) is observed in the direction of M86's stripped tail, out to distances of $\\sim 90-100 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$. There is no strong evidence for metal-rich gas spanning between M86 and NGC 4438. However, it is possible that a metallicity-measurement bias arising from unaccounted temperature phases is still present here. A smaller enrichment in metals ($Z \\gtrsim 0.5 \\mysub{Z}{\\odot}$) is observed near the core of M84.  \n\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{MosaicTemp1_fix_lr.ps}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{MosaicZ1_fix_lr.ps}\\vspace{0.5mm}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{MosaicTemp2_fix_lr.ps}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{MosaicZ2_fix_lr.ps}\n\n\n\n\\caption{\\label{Thermo} Temperature and metallicity maps of the $\\sim 1^{\\circ}$ region surrounding M86, including the galaxies M84, NGC 4388, and NGC 4438. The upper row shows our low S\/N ($\\sim 4000$ counts per bin) temperature and metallicity maps. The values show our best-fit parameters using a single-temperature thermal emission model. The lower row shows temperature and metallicity maps from our high S\/N spectra ($\\sim 7000$ counts per bin). The values in these maps are derived from a two-temperature fit, with the second temperature fixed to $2.3 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ and the metallicities of both components tied to the same value. This two-temperature fit optimally identifies regions hosting gas significantly cooler than the ambient Virgo Cluster gas, which has an assumed temperature of $2.3 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$. The inclusion of an additional temperature component also reduces metallicity measurement biases.}\n\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\n\\subsection{Ultraviolet Observations with {\\it GALEX}}\n\nWe have also utilized publicly available ultraviolet (UV) observations of the region between M86 and NGC 4438 with {\\it GALEX} in order to search for star formation in this region. We used observation ID ``NGA\\_Virgo\\_MOS10'' (observation date 2004-03-11), part of the {\\it GALEX} Ultraviolet Virgo Cluster Survey \\citep{Boselli2011}, which is well centered between the two galaxies. There are no siginficant detections of young stellar populations in the far UV image of this field. Converting the observed surface brightness of far-UV photons into a star formation rate using \\cite{Kennicutt1998}, we place a strict upper limit on the star formation rate in the region of the H$\\alpha$ filaments of $\\lesssim 0.1 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$. \n\n\n\n\\section{Discussion}\n\nUsing a mosaic of {\\it XMM-Newton} \\ observations of the region surrounding M86, we have identified multiple sites of stripped X-ray emitting gas associated with all four galaxies: M86, M84, and NGC 4438, and NGC 4388. Although the evidence for stripped X-ray emitting gas near NGC 4388 is weak, radio observations of this galaxy show a tail of \\ion{H}{i} gas trailing to the north of this galaxy, with a velocity structure consistent with NGC 4388 \\citep[e.g.][]{Oosterloo2005}. All four of these galaxies are therefore undergoing some form of ram pressure stripping, although each galaxy has its own unique observational signatures associated with it. The stripped X-ray emitting gas trailing to the northwest of M86 and the \\ion{H}{i} tail trailing to the north of NGC 4388 have been detected and discussed in previous work \\citep[e.g.][]{Randall2008,Oosterloo2005}. The stripped X-ray emitting gas to the south of M84 and the cool X-ray emitting gas stretching from M86 to NGC 4438 have not been discussed at length\\footnote{The diffuse tail of gas trailing to the south of M84 was discussed briefly in \\cite{Randall2008}, although there were insufficient counts in the {\\it Chandra} \\ data to resolve its thermodynamic structure.}. We expand our discussion of these two sites of ram pressure stripping below.\n\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{M84_SBTail_lr.ps}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{M84_TTail_fix_lr.ps}\n\\caption{\\label{M84Zoom} A zoomed in view of M84 with {\\it XMM-Newton}. Both of these images show the same field of view. The dashed ellipse denotes the region which we use to estimate the rate at which X-ray halo gas is being stripped from M84.  {\\it Left:} The background subtracted, exposure corrected image of M84 in the $0.3-1.0 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ energy band. The black contours are derived from {\\it Chandra} \\ observations of this galaxy, which show the extent of the AGN-driven cavities \\citep{Finoguenov2008}. {\\it Right:} The corresponding temperature map of this same region, in units of {\\rm\\thinspace keV}. The bin map is similar to that described in  \\S \\ref{ROI}, although with a only $\\sim 250$ net counts per bin in order to resolve smaller scale features. Each bin is fit with a single-temperature plasma model with Galactic absorption (\\small{PHABS $\\times$ APEC}). The same {\\it Chandra} \\ contours are overlaid in black. The brighter gas trailing to the south of M84 is shown to be significantly cooler than the ambient ICM.}  \n\\end{figure*}\n\n\nWhile all four of the galaxies lie near one another in projection, the X-ray data combined with absolute velocity measurements along the line-of-sight suggest that only NGC 4438 and M86 are interacting with one another in any substantial way. There is no evidence in either the X-ray imaging or spectral maps for diffuse emission or cool gas bridging between any other pair of galaxies in a manner suggesting galaxy-galaxy interactions. The reported intracluster light (ICL) between M86 and M84 \\citep{Rudick2010} therefore appears likely to be a projection effect.  \n\n\\subsection{Correlation of the Coolest X-ray Gas and H$\\alpha$ Filaments}\n\n\nIn Figure \\ref{WithHA}a, we show the temperature map of Figure \\ref{Thermo}c zoomed in to better show the $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ gas plume to the east of M86. We have overlaid the H$\\alpha$ filaments identified by \\cite{Kenney2008}, which clearly show that the H$\\alpha$ filaments are located at the same positions as the lowest temperature phases of X-ray emitting gas. This region, at least the half closer to M86, is also observed to be a site of HI emission \\citep{Oosterloo2005}, although based on the velocity structure of that emission it may be primarily associated with NGC 4388 to the south of M86. On the other hand, some of the \\ion{H}{i} filaments detected near M86 have velocity structure similar to M86 \\citep{Kenney2008}. \n\nA similar spatial coincidence between cool X-ray emitting gas and H$\\alpha$ filaments has been seen in a stripped tail behind the galaxy ESO 137-001 falling into the cluster Abell 3627 \\citep{Sun2007}. The stripped gas trailing behind ESO 137-001 is a site of {\\it in situ} star formation taking place outside of the galaxy within the ICM. A similar coincidence of cool X-ray emitting gas (at temperatures of $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$) with filaments of H$\\alpha$ emission (at temperatures of $\\sim 10^{4} {\\rm\\thinspace K}$) has also been observed around the BCGs of nearby cool core clusters such as the Perseus Cluster \\citep{Sanders2007,Fabian2008,Fabian2011}, Centaurus Cluster \\citep{Sanders2002,Sanders2008}, and M87 \\citep[][]{Werner2010,Werner2012}. \n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{On The Origin of the H$\\alpha$ Filaments}\n\n\nThe origin of this $\\sim 10^{4} {\\rm\\thinspace K}$ phase of gas spatially coincident with soft X-ray emission between M86 and NGC 4438 is likely a previous collision between the two. The existing multiwavelength data are all consistent with this scenario, although further data will be required to rigorously confirm this. The X-ray emitting gas in this filament region appears poorer in metals than the gas detected at the center of M86, implying that this cool X-ray emitting gas likely originated in NGC 4438. Measurement biases, due to the presence of multiple temperature phases unaccounted for in our models cannot be ruled out as the reason for the observed low metallicity in this region, however.\n\n\nIn the absence of sources of heating, this stripped gas may be expected to cool to star-forming temperatures, as is observed in the galaxy  ESO 137-001 in Abell 3627 \\citep{Sun2007}. Uncertainties in the filament geometry (specifically the depth of the filament regions along the line of sight) limit our ability to determine the cooling time of the cool gas unambiguously. Based on the combined analysis of all of the spectral bins in this filament region discussed above, we can place an upper limit on the integrated cooling rate from $1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ down to $0.1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ across the whole region of $\\lesssim 0.1 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$. This is in agreement with the upper limit on star formation imposed by far UV emission of this same region discussed above. \n\nSpiral galaxies such as NGC 4438 typically have X-ray halos with an observed temperature of $\\sim 0.2 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$, while the gas associated with the group halo of M86 has a temperature of $\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$. The presence of $\\sim 0.6-0.7 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ gas in between the two galaxies suggests a possible mixture of gas phases. This ``bridge'' of cool gas between the two galaxies may arise either from ram pressure stripping of NGC 4438 by the surrounding Virgo ICM, or from the recent encounter between NGC 4438 and M86. The stripping medium in this latter scenario could either be the X-ray gas halo of M86 or the intragroup medium surrounding it, both of which could result in the observed filament of $\\sim 0.6-0.7 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ gas. \n\n\nThe spatial coincidence between H$\\alpha$ emitting filaments with $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ X-ray emitting gas is similar to that observed in the centers of cool core clusters undergoing AGN feedback. It is therefore possible that similar physical processes drive the evolution of these distinct filament regions, at least after an initial disturbance. As discussed in \\cite[e.g.][]{Fabian2008,Fabian2011,Werner2012}, a potential energy source powering the FIR through UV emission (including the H$\\alpha$+\\ion{N}{ii} optical line emission) in cooling core clusters are hot ICM particles penetrating into the filaments of cold gas, resulting in collisional ionization and heating \\cite[see][]{Ferland2008,Ferland2009}. \\cite{Werner2012} propose that shear instabilities due to shocks or the motion of the filaments through the ambient ICM may facilitate mixing between the hot and cold gas phases. The physics of the multiphase gas in the M86 filament region, which is exposed to shear instabilities as it moves through the Virgo ICM and merger shocks due to the infall of the M86 group, may therefore share similarities with the physics of the optical emission line nebulae seen in the cooling cores of galaxy clusters. One key difference between the filament region discussed here with those observed near cool core clusters, however, is the nature of the initial disturbance. Rather than instabilities triggered by AGN feedback, the collision between M86 and NGC 4438 would be the source of the shearing here. Such triggering may be further encouraged by M86's supersonic motion and subsequent shock heating. \n\nSites within $\\sim 10 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ of the two galaxies have recently been shown to host CO($1 \\rightarrow 0$) line emission, suggesting that molecular hydrogen gas is present between the two galaxies for time scales of at least $\\sim 100 $ Myr \\citep{Dasyra2012}. This molecular gas is inferred to originate primarily from NGC 4438, similar to what we infer for the X-ray emission. Further observations that place stricter constraints on the star formation rate and detailed spectral properties of this region, as well as the mass of cold gas present from emission lines such as \\ion{C}{ii}, will be required to test the connection between the H$\\alpha$ emission presented here and that observed in cool core clusters.  \n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Combining AGN Feedback with Ram Pressure Stripping}\n\nThe detection of a clear tail of X-ray emission trailing to the south of M84 offers another example of a galaxy where feedback and ram pressure stripping work in conjunction to strip its X-ray halo. Ram pressure stripping combined with AGN feedback are also observed in Sersic 159-03 \\citep{Werner2011} and the Virgo elliptical galaxy NGC 4552 \\citep{Machacek2006,Machacek2006b}, and similar processes are observed at larger scales in the Ophiuchus Cluster \\citep{Million2010b} and MACSJ1931.8-2634 \\citep{Ehlert2011}. In these systems, the combined influences of these two processes can rapidly suppress or even destroy cool cores associated with the central regions of the galaxy\/galaxy cluster. It appears as though a configuration where both AGN feedback and ram pressure stripping occur simultaneously is more common than initially expected.  \n\nThe energy injected into the X-ray halo from AGN feedback may allow M84 to be stripped more efficiently now than in its past. At its current stripping rate of $\\lesssim 7  \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$ estimated above, all of the X-ray gas should be stripped from this galaxy within $\\sim 200-300 $ Myr, a time scale likely far shorter than the time elapsed since M84 first crossed the Virgo Cluster's virial radius. We determine whether losses from stellar winds may be sufficient to replenish the X-ray halo of M84, assuming a single-age passively evolving stellar population with a Salpeter IMF. We use the stellar mass-loss rate from \\cite{Ciotti1991} to estimate this rate, $\\mysub{M}{\\star}(t)$,  as\n\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mysub{M}{\\star}(t) \\simeq  1.5 \\times 10^{-11}\\mysub{L}{B}\\mysub{t}{15}^{-1.3}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\noindent where \\mysub{L}{B} is the present-day B-band luminosity in units of \\mysub{L}{B,\\odot}\n\\citep[$\\mysub{L}{B} = 4.5 \\times 10^{10} \\mysub{L}{B,\\odot}$ for M84;][]{Finoguenov2002} and \\mysub{t}{15} is the age of the stellar population in units of 15 Gyr\\footnote{This formula is valid in the range from $\u223c0.5$ to over $15$ Gyr. }. The local stellar mass-loss rate, assuming that the current stellar population is $10$ Gyr old, is of the same order-of-magnitude as the rate of ram pressure stripping ($\\mysub{M}{\\star} \\sim 1 \\mysub{M}{\\odot} {\\rm\\thinspace yr}^{-1}$).   \n\n\n\\subsection{On the Frequency of Stripping in Cluster Member Galaxies}\nPerhaps surprisingly, each of the four X-ray emitting galaxies detected in this mosaic show evidence of being stripped as they traverse through the ICM. Although these galaxies share some common features, no two galaxies are observed to have stripped gas tails sharing all of the same properties. The prevalence of gas trailing in the wake of galaxies in this busy region of the Virgo Cluster suggests that stripping processes may play an important role for nearly all galaxies in clusters. The particular observational signatures associated with the stripping process may depend strongly on the morphology, mass, and gas content of the host galaxy, but it appears typical that gas initially hosted by galaxies is efficiently stripped by the ICM. \n\n\nFor more massive elliptical galaxies hosting large masses of X-ray emitting gas like M86 (likely the central galaxy of an infalling group) and M84, the stripping is most readily observed as tails of X-ray emitting gas trailing the galaxies. The stripped X-ray gas behind these two galaxies, however, suggest that the astrophysical processes that drive the stripping may vary between different sites. One key difference between the stripped X-ray gas between M86 and M84 is the relative length of the apparent tails, which may indicate differences in the gas physics between the two sites. The tail behind M86 remains roughly uniform in width and coherent for distances of at least $\\sim 150 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ in projection without significant evidence for mixing with the surrounding ICM. The true length of this tail is also likely significantly larger than its observed length in projection due to M86's high velocity with respect to Virgo ($\\sim 1500 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$) along the line-of-sight. Maintaining such cohesion over these distances suggests that the stripped gas is undergoing a laminar flow even as the galaxy traverses through the ICM supersonically, and subsequently suggests that the stripped gas may have high viscosity. The gas trailing behind M84, on the other hand, is only observable for distances of $\\sim 15 {\\rm\\thinspace kpc}$ in surface brightness and temperature maps, and the lower velocity of M84 with respect to the Virgo ICM along the line-of-sight ($\\sim 200-300 {\\rm\\thinspace km} {\\rm\\thinspace s}^{-1}$) indicates that this tail is probably not significantly longer than its projected length. The temperature structure in this tail is also observed to increase smoothly with distance from M84. These may be evidence for more efficient mixing between the stripped gas and the surrounding ICM at this site, perhaps associated with a more turbulent flow of the stripped gas. Deeper observations will be required to determine the full length of the stripped gas trailing M84 and subsequently the extent to which turbulence and magnetic fields may be necessary to account for the thermodynamic structure in M84's tail. \n\nSpiral galaxies contain significant masses of gas at much lower temperatures ($\\sim 10-100 {\\rm\\thinspace K}$). The observed differences in the stripped cold gas behind NGC 4388 and NGC 4438 suggest that the manner in which these phases interact and intersperse with the ICM may vary also significantly from site to site, and that the presence of shear instabilities or shocks may play an important role in these processes. This also appears to be true for the X-ray halos, especially when the disruptions due to the surrounding environment are more extreme. Deeper multiwavelength observations will again be necessary to fully understand the range of gas temperatures present in these stripped tails and test the stripping processes from start to finish. \n \n\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{Temp_WithHA_fix_lr.ps}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.47\\hsize]{Xray_WithHA_lr.ps}\n\\caption{\\label{WithHA} The correlation between the cool X-ray gas and H$\\alpha$ emission detected by Kenney et al. 2008. (a) Temperature map of Figure \\ref{Thermo}d zoomed in to emphasize the temperature structure surrounding M86 and overlaid with contours of H$\\alpha$ imaging. There is a clear correlation of the H$\\alpha$ emission with the coolest gas phases in both the eastern and northern plumes extending out from M86. The centers of M86 and NGC 4438 are denoted by the cyan crosses. (b) The X-ray surface brightness image of Figure \\ref{Mosaic}, zoomed in to the same region as (a). The H$\\alpha$ image contours are overlaid in cyan. }\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nWe have measured the X-ray spectral properties in a contiguous $\\sim 1^{\\circ} \\times 1^{\\circ}$ region spanning four Virgo Cluster galaxies, allowing us to view interactions between them. Our key results are as follows: \n\n1) There is clear evidence for cool ($\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$) gas trailing to the northwest of M86 as reported in previous studies, to the east of M86 in the direction of NGC 4438, and to the south of M84. M86 appears to be surrounded in a halo of $\\sim 1 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$ gas, which we interpret as the intragroup medium of a recently merged subcluster undergoing ram pressure stripping by the ambient Virgo ICM. We also observe tentative evidence for stripped X-ray gas to the east of NGC 4388. \n\n2) The presence of stripped gas associated with all four of the largest galaxies in this field of view indicates that, while the particular astrophysical details may vary from site to site, ram pressure stripping is a common occurrence in cluster member galaxies, and has important implications for the heating and enrichment of the ICM. \n\n3) Filaments of H$\\alpha$ emission surrounding M86 are observed at locations spatially coincident with enhanced X-ray emission at temperatures of $\\sim 0.6 {\\rm\\thinspace keV}$. These filament regions have similar X-ray spectra to H$\\alpha$ filaments observed in the centers of cool core clusters. One key difference between this filament region and those detected in cool core clusters, however, is the likely source of the initial disturbance that triggers their formation.  \n\n4) AGN feedback and ram pressure are both observed in M84, and  in tandem these two processes may be encouraging particularly efficient stripping. Without replenishment, M84's X-ray halo gas would be depleted on time scales of $\\sim 300$ Myr. Mass loss from stellar winds, however, appears to be sufficient to replenish the M84's X-ray halo, at least in principle.   \n\n5) Our results for M86 and M84 suggest that there is no significant interactions taking place between them. Of these four galaxies, only M86 and NGC 4438 appear to be undergoing any noticeable galaxy-galaxy interactions. \n\nDisentangling the interactions of the infalling M86 galaxy group in the directions of M84, NGC 4338, and NGC 4438 will require further observations at multiple wavelengths.  \n\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments}\nThis work was carried out with proposed and archival observations with {\\it XMM-Newton}, an ESA science mission\nwith instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. This research has also made use of the NASA\/ IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Support for this work was provided by the National Aeronautics and \nSpace Administration through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship\nAward Number PF9-00070 (A.S.) issued by the Chandra X-ray \nObservatory Center, which is operated for and on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space\nAdministration under contract NAS8-03060. Further support for this work was provided by the \nDepartment of Energy Grant Number DE-AC02-76SF00515. This work is based [in part] on observations made with Herschel, a\nEuropean Space Agency Cornerstone Mission with significant participation by NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through award \\#1428053 issued by JPL\/Caltech.\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{mnras}\n\\input{reference_defs}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{adjustbox}{max width=1.0\\linewidth,center}\n    \\includegraphics{figs\/Intro_cropped.pdf}\n    \\end{adjustbox}\n    \\caption{\\small\n    Results of our approach.\n    (a) Masked input images.\n    (b) Initially restored results from pre-trained inpainting networks in the order of GatedConv\\cite{yu2019free}, EdgeConnect\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect}, and GMCNN\\cite{wang2018image}.\n    (c) Results of fine-tuned versions of GatedConv\\cite{yu2019free}, EdgeConnect\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect}, and GMCNN\\cite{wang2018image} using the proposed learning algorithm. Restored regions are more natural and consistent with other regions than the initial results.}\n    \\label{fig:intro}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\label{sec:introduction}\nImage inpainting, a post image processing technique that removes unnecessary parts of images, such as subtitles and obstacles, and fills these areas with new colors and textures, has extensive applications in areas of photo editing, restoration, and even video editing~\\cite{barnes2009patchmatch, levin2004seamless, yu2019free, newson2014video, kim2019deep}.\nThe main goal of inpainting is to generate plausible images that are semantically consistent with the overall context and to fill the missing area to be continuous with the surrounding area.\n\nMany traditional inpainting approaches based on the diffusion technique compute pixel values of the missing area using pixel values in the surrounding area~\\cite{bertalmio2000image, ballester2001filling, levin2003learning}.\nAlthough diffusion-based approaches are effective in recovering small areas (e.g., subtitle removal), they produce blurry results when the missing area is large (e.g., object removal).\nAs an alternative, patch-match-based methods have been proposed to locate similar patches within the given image and copy intensity values of these similar patches into the missing area~\\cite{liang2001real, hays2007scene, barnes2009patchmatch}.\nThis method can fill the missing area with realistic image contents using information available within the input image.\nHowever, it is difficult to restore faces or complex landscapes that require information outside the given image, and it creates irrelevant structures due to the lack of image context inference capabilities.\n\nThe development of deep learning technologies has remarkably improved the performance of image inpainting techniques and made it possible for neural approaches to reconstruct considerably challenging images.\nFirst, context encoder pioneered the use of deep neural networks in the image inpainting task and introduced an architecture composed of convolutional encoder and decoder with adversarial loss~\\cite{pathak2016context, goodfellow2014generative}.\nThe encoder computes a latent feature representation from the input image and the decoder uses the feature representation to restore pixels in the missing area, consequently inferring and reconstructing the overall structure of the input image.\nThe output demonstrates a realistic texture as it approaches the distribution of the real image through the adversarial loss.\nFollow-up studies carry out various attempts while maintaining encoder-decoder structures with discriminators, presented in the work of context encoders~\\cite{pathak2016context}.\nAmong them, attention modules are exploited to generate realistic textures~\\cite{yu2018generative, ren2019structureflow, zeng2019learning, li2020recurrent}.\nThese attention modules allow searching non-local regions to utilize information among similar structures in the given input image and fill pixel values of missing areas.\nSome studies perform structural restoration before carrying out the inpainting to clarify the boundary of the missing hole~\\cite{ren2019structureflow, nazeri2019edgeconnect, xiong2019foreground}.\n\nAlthough these neural approaches trained in a supervised manner with a large external training dataset for the inpainting task have shown promising and satisfying results, they have difficulties in fully utilizing the information within given test images at the test phase.\nThus, we propose a new learning approach to utilize internal statistics available within the given input test image such as patch-recurrence to overcome this limitation.\nPatch-recurrence is a property that many similar patches are existing within a single natural image and numerous image restoration techniques utilize these recurring patches to improve the restoration quality~\\cite{michaeli2014blind, glasner2009super, huang2015single}.\nIn particular, there are several attempts to train the restoration networks for super-resolution and denoising tasks using only internal statistics without the ground-truth clean images~\\cite{shocher2018zero, krull2019noise2void, batson2019noise2self}, and these self-supervised approaches have shown satisfactory results.\nHowever, these self-supervision-based approaches fail to exert the power of deep learning through large external datasets.\n\nWe demonstrate that inpainting networks can be also trained in a self-supervised manner for the first time and develop a new learning algorithm that combines supervised and self-supervised approaches to benefit from both the external dataset and the given input test image in this work.\nThis approach improves the performance of existing state-of-the-art inpainting networks by simply updating network parameters using the internal information (i.e., repeating structure\/texture and color distribution) available from the given input image at test time.\nSpecifically, we use parameters of fully pre-trained inpainting networks on the large external dataset as initial values.\nWe then fine-tune the network parameters in a self-supervised manner at the test stage by exploiting self-similar patches within the input test image and produce improved results as shown in Figure~\\ref{fig:intro}.\nNote that broken lines and crushed edges of the initial result images are clearly restored and the original shapes are properly predicted with the proposed fine-tuning algorithm.\nOur learning method is not restricted to specific network architecture and can be applied to various conventional networks.\nMoreover, our approach can easily upgrade the parameters of the conventional inpainting networks without changing their original architecture.\nThe main contributions of this study are summarized as follows:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\t\\item A novel self-supervised fine-tuning algorithm that automatically takes advantage of recurring patches within the test image is proposed.\n\t\\item Superior inpainting results on benchmark datasets are achieved by utilizing both internal and external datasets.\n\t\\item Our approach can be applied to various inpainting networks without modifying their original network architecture and loss functions.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\section{Related Work}\n\\label{sec:related}\n\n\\subsection{Image inpainting}\n\\begin{comment}\nTraditional image inpainting methods fill the missing area by progressively propagating information from the surrounding area or selecting highly similar patches within the given input image~\\cite{bertalmio2000image,ballester2001filling,levin2003learning,telea2004image,Darabi12:ImageMelding12, hays2007scene}.\nIn particular, patch-based methods~\\cite{Darabi12:ImageMelding12, hays2007scene,  huang2014image} can take advantage of not only local information but also non-local information and can fill the relatively large hole with meaningful content.\nHowever, these methods struggle to create unique content, such as human faces or complex scenes, because they need to meet the assumption that several patches similar to the missing hole in the image are available.\n\\end{comment}\nRecently, deep learning methods have successfully been used in many computer vision tasks, and several learning-based approaches have been proposed for inpainting.\nContext encoder~\\cite{pathak2016context} introduces an encoder\u2013decoder network based on convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract semantics of the image and employs GAN~\\cite{goodfellow2014generative} architecture to generate realistic details.\nIt overcomes the limitation of traditional methods that struggle to create unique content, such as human faces or complex scenes because they fill the missing area using only the information within the given input~\\cite{bertalmio2000image,ballester2001filling,telea2004image,Darabi12:ImageMelding12,barnes2009patchmatch,huang2014image}.\nIizuka et al.~\\cite{iizuka2017globally} removed the pooling layer and employed dilated convolutions~\\cite{yu2015dilated} in the neural networks to solve the problem of the context encoder that generates blurry outputs because of the reduction of the resolution during the encoding stage.\nAlso, they used two discriminators to maintain continuity in and out of the hole.\nThe local one focus on the missing area and the global one assess the entire image.\nYu et al.~\\cite{yu2018generative} analyzed that CNN creates visual artifacts because of the inability to exploit image contents far from the hole.\nThus, contextual attention module is proposed to overcome this limitation.\nContextual attention module scores the similarity of background patches with pixels of the missing area which are estimated in advance by a coarse network.\nThen, patches with high similarity scores are used to reconstruct the missing area.\nGenerative multi-column CNN~\\cite{wang2018image} uses parallel networks with different receptive field sizes to prevent the error propagation caused by the coarse and fine networks that are connected in series.\nIt also uses the reconstruction loss that gives different weights to the pixels in the hole considering the distance from the boundary to solve the spatial-variant constraints.\nLiu et al.~\\cite{liu2018image} proposed the use of partial convolution to learn various forms of masks.\nPrevious methods could not be utilized in practical cases where images were damaged in various forms because they were typically learned with squared masks.\nPartial convolution updates the mask during the inference and renormalizes weights of the masked area every layer to propagate only valid information of the input.\nIn a similar approach by Yu et al.~\\cite{yu2019free}, gated convolution automatically finds a proper mask for the input and considers the gating value calculated across a spatial location of every layer and channel.\nEdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} introduces a two-stage inpainting network model that first generates the edge map with canny edge detector~\\cite{canny1986computational} and then recovers the whole image.\nHowever, this model is limited by its inability to utilize additional useful information, such as image color.\nStructureFlow~\\cite{ren2019structureflow} uses a smooth image while preserving the edges obtained via RTV~\\cite{xu2012structure} instead of the edge map and employs appearance flow module~\\cite{zhou2016view} to achieve an attention effect for realistic texture.\nLi et al.~\\cite{li2020recurrent} presented recurrent feature reasoning (RFR) network and knowledge consistent attention (KCA) module to cover large holes.\nThey reduce the region of the hole progressively using partial convolution and subsequently merge the inpainting results for each hole.\nAt each iteration, KCA module recurrently calculates the attention score of the missing hole based on the attention score computed in the previous step.\n\n\\subsection{Self-supervised learning for restoration}\nThe self-supervised approach for image restoration primarily refers to the training of the neural networks for the restoration of corrupted images using only information from the input images themselves without corresponding clean images~\\cite{lehtinen2018noise2noise, krull2019noise2void, batson2019noise2self, shocher2018zero}.\nFor the super-resolution task, zero-shot SR (ZSSR)~\\cite{shocher2018zero} trains a small and image-specific CNN during test time and utilizes internal statistics such as patch-recurrence within a given input image.\nHowever, these methods can only utilize internal data because they train the network from random scratch at the test time.\n\nWe present that the self-supervised approach can be applied to image inpainting to fine-tune parameters of networks during test time by exploiting internal statics of a given masked input image.\nMoreover, our method exploits the advantage of both external and internal data by fine-tuning the fully pre-trained networks like~\\cite{park2020fast,lee2020restore} to overcome the limitation of the self-supervised approach that fails to exert the power of deep learning via large external datasets.\n\n\\section{Proposed Method}\nIn this section, we introduce a simple, yet effective self-supervised learning approach to adapt the parameters of pre-trained inpainting networks to the given specific input test image.\n\n\\subsection{Patch-recurrence for inpainting}\nThe internal information available within the input image is very important for the image inpainting task and should be considered to generate semantically consistent and realistic results when filling missing areas.\n\nImages generally demonstrate the property of patch recurrence, which enables the repeated presentation of many identical or similar patches in a single image.\nThe information of similar patches inside the image is used in past patch-match-based methods~\\cite{Darabi12:ImageMelding12, hays2007scene, barnes2009patchmatch, huang2014image} and recent deep-learning methods with the attention mechanism~\\cite{yu2018generative,ren2019structureflow,li2020recurrent}.\nPatch-match-based approaches find similar patches within the target image to fill the hole and paste them.\nBy comparison, the attention module~\\cite{yu2018generative, li2020recurrent} and appearance flow~\\cite{ren2019structureflow} in deep-learning approaches find similar patches\/features in the given input image corresponding to the target (missing) area, and resulting attention maps are used to complete the texture within that area.\nThese methods improve the inpainting results by exploiting the internal information during test time but require an additional network module (e.g., non-local operator) to compute attention maps and are inefficient because they require high computational costs to measure similarity among features at every pixel location.\nSpecifically, $M \\times N$ comparisons are required when the number of pixel values within missing and non-missing areas is $N$ and $M$, respectively, but only a few matches of them produce meaningful high-similarity scores.\n\nTherefore, we introduce a new approach that can fully utilize recurring patches in the given input image during the test phase without explicit similarity comparisons (i.e., patch-match) and also present a new fine-tuning method that enhances the quality of inpainting results of existing networks in a self-supervised manner.\n\n\\subsection{Patch-match-based inpainting without patch-match}\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=1.0\\linewidth]{figs\/fig2_alignment_cropped.pdf}\n    \\caption{\\small Inpainting results by EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} before and after fine-tuning.\n    (a) Fully pre-trained EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} produces artifacts.\n    (b) Fine-tuned EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} using a corresponding patch (red box) within the input can remove artifacts.\n    (c) Fine-tuned EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} using randomly masked input can also remove artifacts without finding correspondences.\n    }\n    \\label{fig:patchrecurrence}\n\\end{figure*}\n\nNetworks in existing learning-based image inpainting methods learn how to reconstruct the missing area using a large number of training images during the training phase.\nHowever, the input image given at the test phase may include unique and unseen information, such as unusual structures, textures, and colors, which are rare in the training dataset although a large external dataset is available for training.\nIn this case, the pre-trained network may generate an unnatural output incompatible with the specific pattern in the background.\nTherefore, we propose a new inpainting approach to exploit the specific information available within the input test image by utilizing multiple similar patches in the input and further improve the pre-trained network by adapting network parameters to the specific input image.\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:patchrecurrence} illustrates how self-similar patches can be used to fine-tune the network parameters and improve the performance of conventional inpainting networks.\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(a), we first obtain an initial inpainting result $I_{pred}$ by applying the fully pre-trained EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect} network $f_{\\theta}$ to an input image $\\tilde{I}$ distorted with a squared mask.\nNext, in Figure~\\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(b), we then generate a newly masked image $\\tilde{I}_{pred}$ to utilize repeating structures of the given input image for inpainting by removing a self-similar patch in $I_{pred}$ (red squared region).\nThen, by minimizing the MSE between $I_{pred}$ and restored image $f_{\\theta}(\\tilde{I}_{pred})$ from the newly masked image $\\tilde{I}_{pred}$, we can fine-tune the network parameters $\\theta$ to $\\theta^*$.\nAccordingly, we can update network parameters to the input image and can improve the performance of the inpainting network.\nNote that we adapt network parameters without using the ground-truth image during the fine-tuning.\nIn Figure \\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(c), we show that we can also fine-tune the network by corrupting the initially restored image with random masks without explicit patch-match to find self-similar patches.\nSpecifically, we generate multiple training images for fine-tuning by corrupting $I_{pred}$ using random masks, then fine-tune the network by minimizing MSE between the initial inpainting result $I_{pred}$ and the restored image $f_{\\theta}(A_i)$ from the newly corrupted image $A_i$.\nBy doing so, we demonstrate that we can adapt network parameters without explicitly searching for self-similar patches within the input as in Figure \\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(b).\n\nTraditional methods require the use of dedicated algorithms and specialized network modules to search similar patches explicitly~\\cite{barnes2009patchmatch, Darabi12:ImageMelding12, hays2007scene, huang2014image}.\nIn contrast, we utilize the self-similar patches by using the randomized masking (corruption) scheme during the test phase without changing the original network architecture.\nMoreover, ours does not require any additional algorithm and\/or network modules to find similar patches (e.g., patch-match).\nAs the area of similar patches can be randomly masked a few times during the randomized masking scheme, these self-similar patches can be naturally exposed to the network during the fine-tuning stage multiple times.\nThus, the inpainting network can learn to restore the missing area using the information from the similar patches, as shown by the result of Figure~\\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(c), which shows similar improvements to Figure~\\ref{fig:patchrecurrence}(b).\nAnother advantage of this approach is that the randomized-masking-based fine-tuning mechanism does not restrict the shape, size, and number of the recurring patches.\n\n\\begin{algorithm}\n\t\\textbf{Input:} input masked image $\\tilde{I}$, original mask $M$\n\t\n\t\\textbf{Require:} inpainting network $f$ and the pre-trained parameter $\\theta_0$,   number of training $T$, random masks $\\{M_{i}\\}$,\n\tlearning rate $\\alpha$\n\t\n\t\\textbf{Output:} enhanced inpainting result $f_{\\theta^*}(\\tilde{I}, M)$\n\t\n\t\n\t\\nl $i$ $\\leftarrow$ 0\n\t\n\t\\nl $\\theta \\leftarrow \\theta_0$\n\t\n\t\\nl $I_{pred} \\leftarrow f_{\\theta_0}(\\tilde{I}, M)$\n\t\n\t\\While{i $<$ T}{\n\t    \n\t    \\nl $\\tilde{I}_{pred} \\leftarrow I_{pred}\\odot \\left ( 1 - M_i \\right )$\n\t    \n\t    \\nl $I_{pred\\left (\\theta \\right )} \\leftarrow f_{\\theta}(\\tilde{I}_{pred}, M_{i})$\n\t   \n\t    \n\t    \\texttt{\\\\}\n\t    \n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\\tcp{\\small Random transformations can be applied for the loss.}\n\t\t\\nl $loss_{rec}(\\theta) \\leftarrow \\|I_{pred}\\odot(1-M)-I_{pred(\\theta)}\\odot(1-M)\\|^2$\n\t\t\n\t\t\\texttt{\\\\}\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\nl $loss_{adv}(\\theta) \\leftarrow \\text{\\small VGG and\/or adversarial~losses}$\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\\nl $Loss(\\theta) \\leftarrow loss_{rec}(\\theta) + loss_{adv}(\\theta)$\n\t\t\n        \\texttt{\\\\}\n\t\t\n\t\t\\tcp{\\small Parameter update}\n\t\t\\nl $\\theta \\leftarrow \\theta - \\alpha \\nabla_{\\theta}  \\textit{Loss}(\\theta)$\n\t\t\n\t\t\n       \n\t\t\\nl $i$ $\\leftarrow $ $i$ + 1  \n\t}\n\n\t\\nl $\\theta^* \\leftarrow \\theta$\n\n\t\\textbf{Return:}  $f_{\\theta^*}(\\tilde{I}, M)$\n\t\\caption{\\small \\textit{Fine-tuning algorithm}}\n\t\\label{algorithm}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\\begin{figure*}[h]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.95\\textwidth]{figs\/overall_flow_cropped.pdf}\n    \\caption{\\small Overall flow of the proposed fine-tuning mechanism.\n    (a) Initial inpainting result from the masked input image using the pre-trained network.\n    (b) Fine-tuning with random masks on the result from the baseline network.\n    (c) Fine-tuned network produces improved result consistent with the input image.}\n    \\label{fig:process}\n\\end{figure*}\n\\subsection{Overall flow}\\label{overall_flow}\n\nThe overall flow of the proposed fine-tuning algorithm is described in Algorithm~\\ref{algorithm} and illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:process}.\n\nFirst, we start the learning (fine-tuning) process with the initially restored image $I_{pred}$ similar to~\\cite{lee2020restore} by using the fully pre-trained inpainting network as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\n    I_{pred} = f_{\\theta_0} (\\tilde{I}, M ),\n    \\label{eq3}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\theta_0$ denotes the fully pre-trained parameters of the baseline inpainting network $f$ and $\\tilde{I}$ denotes the masked input image.\nA binary map $M$ denotes a given input mask that corresponds to the input image, where missing and other areas are represented by 1 and 0, respectively.\n\nSecond, we acquire a training dataset using the initially restored image $I_{pred}$.\nWe generate a new and randomly corrupted masked image at the $i_{th}$ fine-tuning iteration as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\tilde{I}_{pred} = I_{pred}\\odot \\left ( 1 - M_i \\right ),\n    \\label{eq5}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $M_i$ denotes the randomly generated binary mask and $\\odot$ represents the element-wise multiplication.\nThe newly synthesized masked image $\\tilde{I}_{pred}$ and initially restored image $I_{pred}$ become the input and target of our training dataset, respectively.\nWe render a restored image $I_{pred\\left (\\theta \\right )}$ from the newly masked image $\\tilde{I}_{pred}$ using the inpainting network $f_{\\theta}$.\n\nThird, we compute gradient values with respect to network parameters using the predefined loss functions for pre-training the baseline inpainting network and then update network parameters using a conventional optimizer (e.g., ADAM).\nThe loss is calculated using the difference between $I_{pred}$ and $I_{pred\\left (\\theta \\right )}$.\nNotably, if the baseline inpainting network includes GAN architecture, the discriminator of GAN architecture computes the adversarial loss by using the initially restored image $I_{pred}$ as the real sample rather than the ground-truth clean image.\n\nSpecifically, for the pixel-wise loss (i.e., reconstruction loss), we can use the L2 loss function as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\n    loss_{rec}(\\theta) = \\|I_{pred}\\odot(1-M)- I_{pred(\\theta)}\\odot(1-M)\\|^2.\n    \\label{ExcludeMask}\n\\end{equation}\nIn practice, to compute the reconstruction loss, we exclude the part corresponding to the original mask $M$ (i.e., initially restored area) since we can improve the performance by making this slight modification. Note that, we can use any conventional reconstruction losses beyond the L2 loss (e.g., L1).\nMoreover, when considering additional (perceptual) losses, such as VGG and adversarial losses, we do not need to make any modification. We employ the original function used to train the baseline inpainting networks, \nand the expression is $loss_{adv}(\\theta)$.\nThus, overall loss function that updates parameters of the given inpainting network is expressed as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\n    Loss\\left ( \\theta \\right ) = loss_{rec}(\\theta) + loss_{adv}(\\theta).\n    \\label{OverallLoss}\n\\end{equation}\n\nThen, we repeat these steps $T$ times, which is the number of iterations determined experimentally to achieve best results. Notably, random transformations can be applied during fine-tuning to prevent the network from predicting $I_{pred}$ regardless of its input after adaptation.\n\nFinally, the network parameter is upgraded to $\\theta^*$ and we obtain the final fine-tuned image ${f}_{\\theta^*}(\\tilde{I}, M)$ with the original input image $\\tilde{I}$ and mask $M$.\n\nWe call this algorithm ``restore-from-restored\" because this method leverages the already restored image to improve the inpainting performance.\n\n\\section{Experimental result}\nPlease refer to our supplementary material for more results. \nMoreover, the code, dataset, and pre-trained models for the experiments will be included in the supplementary material upon acceptance.\n\\subsection{Implementation details}\nTo evaluate the performance of the proposed fine-tuning algorithm, we use three different inpainting networks, namely, GatedConv~\\cite{yu2019free}, EdgeConnect~\\cite{nazeri2019edgeconnect}, and GMCNN~\\cite{wang2018image}, as baseline networks of our algorithm.\nThe experiment is performed using the official code for each model.\nNotably, EdgeConnect is currently a state-of-the-art inpainting network.\n\nFor our experiments, we use officially available and fully pre-trained network parameters on the Places2 dataset~\\cite{zhou2017places} for each network and fine-tune the pre-trained parameters via the proposed approach in Algorithm.~\\ref{algorithm}.\nWe evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm on test sets in conventional benchmark datasets, such as Places2 ~\\cite{zhou2017places} and Urban100~\\cite{huang2015single}.\nThe Places2 dataset is a mixed dataset of people, landscapes, and buildings; the Urban100 dataset mainly consists of buildings with repetitive patterns.\n\nOur random free-form masks used in the fine-tuning process are obtained by the algorithm for sampling free-form masks introduced in \\cite{yu2019free}.\nThe input image size for the fine-tuning is 256$\\times$256 and each input image includes holes covering approximately 20\\% to 40\\% of the image.\nWe utilize the same optimizer and loss function used in each of the pre-trained models, but we modify the learning rate for the fine-tuning: we use learning rate of $10^{-5}$ for EdgeConnect and GatedConv, and $10^{-4}$ for GMCNN.\n\nOur experiments are conducted with Intel i9 and NVIDIA RTX2080 Ti GPU, and it takes 0.2, 0.3, and 0.7 seconds to perform 1 fine-tuning iteration (patch-size = 256$\\times$256, batch-size = 4) with GMCNN, GatedConv, and EdgeConnect respectively.\n\n\n\\subsection{Ablation study}\\label{sec_ablation}\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figs\/fig4_ablation_cropped.pdf}\n    \\caption{\\small Visual results on the Urban100 dataset according to the fine-tuning progress.\n    Green, red, and yellow boxes represent the results by GatedConv, EdgeConnect, and GMCNN, respectively.\n    (a) Input masked images.\n    (b) Initially restored image and fine-tuned images for $T$ iterations. \n    \\textbf{Green box}: GatedConv results (From left to right: $T$=0, $T$=200, $T$=400, $T$=700). \\textbf{Red box}: EdgeConnect results (From left to right: $T$=0, $T$=100, $T$=500, $T$=1000).\n    \\textbf{Yellow box}: GMCNN results (From left to right: $T$=0, $T$=50, $T$=150, $T$=250).\n    (c) Ground-truth images.}\n    \\label{fig:iterprogress}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure}[]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=1\\linewidth]{figs\/urbanG_final_cropped.pdf}\n    \\caption{\\small Improvement of FID and PSNR values of GatedConv, EdgeConnect, and GMCNN with the fine-tuning process on the Urban100 dataset.\n    High PSNR values and low FID scores indicate better quality of images.}\n    \\label{fig:urbangraph}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\paragraph{Number of fine-tuning iterations and image quality.}\nWe show changes in the image quality depending on the number of fine-tuning iterations through the experiment conducted with the Urban100 dataset.\n\nFigure \\ref{fig:iterprogress} illustrates the results of the fine-tuned network with different numbers of iterations for each pre-trained model.\nThe structure of the results is gradually improved as the fine-tuning progress, and the results become close to the ground-truth when it comes to the pre-fixed iteration.\n\nMoreover, Figure \\ref{fig:urbangraph} shows the trend of Fr\u00e9chet inception distance (FID) scores and peak SNR (PSNR) values with a fine-tuning process for each model.\nWe observe that a large number of iterations for the fine-tuning can lead to over-smoothed results depending on the model, and we demonstrate that the FID score can be an important criterion for determining the proper number of iterations $T$ because of its higher sensitivity to over-smoothing than the PSNR value.\n\nIn the experiments of the remaining sections, we use the fixed number of iterations chosen in this manner for fine-tuning.\nSpecifically, the number of fine-tuning iterations is determined after a small random sample experiment performed on each dataset and model.\nNotably, these datasets used to determine $T$ are excluded in our evaluation.\nAs a result, we fine-tune 500, 1000, and 200 iterations on the Places2 test dataset and 700, 1000, and 250 iterations on the Urban100 dataset for each pre-trained model (i.e., GatedConv, EdgeConnect, and GMCNN) at the test phase.\n\n\n\\begin{comment}\n\\subsubsection{Exclude or include the original mask in the loss calculation}\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{minipage}[b]{55pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/include\/Places365_test_00000045_include_final.png}\\vspace{1pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/include\/Places365_test_00000296_include_final.png}\n    \\end{minipage}\n    \\begin{minipage}[b]{55pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/exclude\/Places365_test_00000045_exclude_final.png}\\vspace{1pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/exclude\/Places365_test_00000296_exclude_final.png}\n    \\end{minipage}\n    \\begin{minipage}[b]{55pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/include\/Places365_test_00000374_include_final.png}\\vspace{1pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/include\/Places365_test_00000598_include_final.png}\n    \\end{minipage}\n    \\begin{minipage}[b]{55pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/exclude\/Places365_test_00000374_exclude_final.png}\\vspace{1pt}\n        \\includegraphics[width=1\\textwidth]{ACCESS\/our_figs\/ablation_study\/qualitative\/exclude\/Places365_test_00000598_exclude_final.png}\n    \\end{minipage}\n    \\caption{\\small Result of fine-tuning with or without the original mask when calculating the loss using the EdgeConnect model.\n    The left side of each image pair shows the case of including the mask, and the right side shows the case of excluding the mask.\n    }\n    \\label{fig:ablationquality}\n\\end{figure}\nAs mentioned in Section \\ref{overall_flow}, we excluded the original mask part when calculating the loss during the fine-tuning step.\nWe perform ablation experiments exploiting the entire baseline image which includes the generated part for the fine-tuning and compare the results with the findings of our method.\nFigure \\ref{fig:ablationquality} presents the comparison of experiments.\nParts of the baseline image generated from the pre-trained network sometimes demonstrate mismatched colors with its surroundings.\nAs a result, colors of generated and surrounding parts are slightly mismatched when these parts are included in the loss calculation at the fine-tuning step, whereas the color of both parts demonstrates satisfactory matching when the mask is excluded.\n\\end{comment}\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Quantitative results}\n\n\\begin{table}[t]\n\\begin{adjustbox}{max width=1.0\\linewidth,center}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{ccccccc}\n\\hline\n\\textbf{Model} & \\textbf{\\# iter.} (=$T$) & \\textbf{PSNR} & \\textbf{SSIM} & \\textbf{L1} (\\%) & \\textbf{FID} & \\textbf{LPIPS} \\\\ \\hline\n\\multirow{5}{*}{\\textbf{\\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Gated\\\\ Conv\\end{tabular}}} & 0 (baseline) & 23.25 & 0.8831 & 2.67 & 60.75 & 0.103 \\\\\n & 100 & 23.10 & 0.8767 & 2.75 & 63.47 & 0.109 \\\\\n & 200 & 23.36 & 0.8820 & 2.69 & 60.70 & 0.103 \\\\\n & 500 & 23.84 & 0.8900 & 2.60 & \\textbf{59.70} & \\textbf{0.097} \\\\\n & 1000 & \\textbf{23.97} & \\textbf{0.8913} & \\textbf{2.60} & 63.51 & 0.101 \\\\ \\hline\n\\multirow{5}{*}{\\textbf{\\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}Edge\\\\ Connect\\end{tabular}}} & 0 (baseline) & 24.00 & 0.8934 & 2.84 & 28.06 & 0.098 \\\\\n & 100 & 24.04 & 0.8941 & 2.83 & 27.94 & 0.098 \\\\\n & 200 & 24.06 & 0.8946 & 2.82 & 27.78 & 0.097 \\\\\n & 500 & 24.09 & 0.8952 & 2.81 & 27.53 & 0.097 \\\\\n & 1000 & \\textbf{24.12} & \\textbf{0.8957} & \\textbf{2.80} & \\textbf{27.23} & \\textbf{0.096} \\\\ \\hline\n\\multirow{5}{*}{\\textbf{GMCNN}} & 0 (baseline)& 23.79 & 0.8477 & 6.02 & 69.92 & 0.078 \\\\\n & 100 & \\textbf{24.70} & \\textbf{0.8586} & \\textbf{5.60} & 65.56 & 0.077 \\\\\n & 200 & 24.61 & 0.8550 & 5.74 & \\textbf{61.60} & \\textbf{0.069} \\\\\n & 500 & 24.41 & 0.8475 & 6.05 & 69.57 & 0.073 \\\\\n & 1000 & 24.18 & 0.8439 & 6.31 & 75.13 & 0.082 \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{adjustbox}\n\\caption{\\small Fine-tuning results of various inpainting models on the Places2 dataset by changing the number of iterations. PSNR, SSIM, L1, FID, and LPIPS values are measured.}\n\\label{tab:places2-table}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\begin{table}[t]\n\\begin{adjustbox}{max width=1.0\\linewidth,center}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{cccc}\n\\hline\n\\textbf{} & \\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\\textbf{GatedConv}\\\\ ($T$=700)\\end{tabular} & \\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\\textbf{EdgeConnect}\\\\ ($T$=1000)\\end{tabular} & \\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\\textbf{GMCNN}\\\\ ($T$=250)\\end{tabular} \\\\ \\hline\n\\textbf{PSNR$^\\star$} & 21.38 $\\rightarrow$ 22.90 & 22.73 $\\rightarrow$ 23.19 & 21.64 $\\rightarrow$ 23.42 \\\\ \\hline\n\\textbf{SSIM$^\\star$} & 0.862 $\\rightarrow$ 0.893 & 0.880 $\\rightarrow$ 0.892 & 0.830 $\\rightarrow$ 0.850 \\\\ \\hline\n\\textbf{FID$^\\dagger$} & 75.34 $\\rightarrow$ 58.15 & 53.98 $\\rightarrow$ 45.34 & 77.96 $\\rightarrow$ 70.71 \\\\ \\hline\n\\textbf{LPIPS$^\\dagger$} & 0.096 $\\rightarrow$ 0.078 & 0.085 $\\rightarrow$ 0.073 & 0.083 $\\rightarrow$ 0.082 \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{adjustbox}\n\\caption{\\small Changes of PSNR, SSIM, FID, and LPIPS values before and after fine-tuning. GatedConv, EdgeConnect, and GMCNN are fined-tuned on the Urban100 test dataset. The fine-tuning iteration (T) is determined empirically (refer to Sec.~\\ref{sec_ablation}).\nLower $^\\dagger$ and higher $^\\star$ scores indicate better quality of images.}\n\\label{tab:urban-table}\n\\end{table}\n\nWe quantitatively evaluate the performance of fine-tuned networks with L1, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) to compare the inpainting results objectively (L1 values are provided because it is a common metric in many inpainting studies~\\cite{pathak2016context, nazeri2019edgeconnect, yu2019free}.).\nThese methods mainly measure the distortion of the results, assuming that the ideal results are the same as the original.\n\nMoreover, we compare the perceptual quality of the results by calculating how plausible the produced image looks from the human perspective.\nThis comparison is necessary because the inpainting task does not simply recover images quantitatively but furthermore produces visually appealing images to humans based on the given input image. \nWe use learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS)~\\cite{zhang2018unreasonable} and Fr\u00e9chet inception distance (FID)~\\cite{heusel2017gans} values for the perceptual comparison.\nTo be specific, LPIPS compares the deep features of images extracted from the image classifier based on a CNN architecture, such as VGG~\\cite{simonyan2014vgg} and AlexNet~\\cite{krizhevsky2014alex}.\nWe use AlexNet in this study.\nFID measures the Wasserstein distance (Fr\u00e9chet distance) between distributions of features from the real and generated images.\nThe mean and covariance of each distribution are calculated through the fully pre-trained Inception-V3~\\cite{szegedy2016rethinking} network.\n\nTable~\\ref{tab:places2-table} and Table~\\ref{tab:urban-table} list the quantitative restoration results.\nFirst, Table~\\ref{tab:places2-table} shows the comparison of the results from each fine-tuning iteration on the Places2 dataset.\nOne thousand images from the Places2 test dataset are used for the evaluation.\nWith the aid of our fine-tuning algorithm, overall metrics values improve consistently compared with the restoration results by the pre-trained baseline models (i.e., $T$=0).\nNext, Table \\ref{tab:urban-table} presents the improvements between the results of pre-trained models and the findings after fine-tuning on the Urban100 test dataset.\nAlthough the initial results from the baseline models are poor since the Urban100 dataset is not used in pre-training the baseline networks, our fine-tuning results show considerable improvements.\nThis finding proves that our fine-tuning method enhances the results although the input test image has a slightly different distribution from the dataset used in pre-training.\n\n\n\\subsection{Qualitative results}\n\\begin{figure*}[h]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{adjustbox}{max width=1.0\\linewidth,center}\n    \\includegraphics{figs\/Qualitative_Results_Urban_cropped.pdf}\n    \\end{adjustbox}\n    \\caption{\\small Qualitative comparison of results on the Urban100 dataset before and after fine-tuning pre-trained models.\n    The first two columns show the ground-truth and masked input image.\n    The next two columns represent image pairs, where the left is the baseline image obtained via the pre-trained inpainting models and the right is the result images by our fine-tuning algorithm.}\n    \\label{fig:qualitative_urban}\n   \n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{adjustbox}{max width=1.0\\linewidth,center}\n    \\includegraphics{figs\/Qualitative_Results_Places2_cropped.pdf}\n    \\end{adjustbox}\n    \\caption{\\small Qualitative comparison of results on the Places2 dataset before and after fine-tuning the pre-trained models.\n    A specific part of each result image is magnified to demonstrate improved detail.\n    }\n    \\label{fig:qualitative_places}\n   \n\\end{figure}\n\nWe compare the qualitative results between the initially restored results by the pre-trained models and our results by fine-tuning the pre-trained baselines.\nFigure~\\ref{fig:qualitative_places} shows visual results on the Places2 test dataset.\nNote that, the generated part in the result images of pre-trained models is distorted or does not match the other part.\nBy comparison, our fine-tuned models generate more natural results.\nFurthermore, the visual results are significantly improved if multiple repetitive patterns, such as windows and stairs, exist in the input image since the network is likely to learn the correct answer using many similar patches.\nFigure~\\ref{fig:qualitative_urban} shows the fine-tuning results on the Urban100 dataset.\nThe results on the Urban100 test dataset demonstrate improved performance for structural restoration due to the property of containing many repetitive structures within the image.\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\nA new self-supervision-based inpainting algorithm that allows the adaptation of fully pre-trained network parameters during the test stage is proposed.\nWe utilize self-similar patches within the given input test image to fine-tune the network without using the ground-truth clean image and elevate the performance of networks by combining internal and large external information.\nWe can easily fine-tune the baseline networks and significantly improve the performance over the baselines by optimizing loss functions, which are used to pre-train the baseline networks.\nThe proposed method achieves state-of-the-art inpainting results on the conventional benchmark datasets, and extensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our method.\n\n\\if\n\\section*{Acknowledgment}\nThis work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2018).\n\\fi\n\n\\clearpage\n\n{\\small\n\\bibliographystyle{ieee_fullname}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n \nThe numerical solution of fluid flow problems  is an important  topic in computational science and engineering, which has received much attention in the last few decades \\cite{bathe2007benchmark,brandt1979multigrid,brandt2011multigrid,connor2013finite,vanka1986block,wesseling2001geometric}.   Stokes-Darcy Brinkman problem is one of them used to model fluid motion in porous media with fractures. The discretization of the fluid flow problems often leads to a saddle-point system, which is ill-conditioned.  Designing fast numerical solution of these problems is often challenging due to the small magnitude of physical parameters of the model. \n\n\nWe consider the multigrid numerical solution of the  Stokes-Darcy Brinkman equations\n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{eq:SDB}\n\\begin{align}\n  - \\epsilon^2 \\Delta\\boldsymbol{u} +\\boldsymbol{u} +  \\nabla  p =&\\boldsymbol{f} \\qquad \\text{in}\\,\\, \\Omega \\label{eq:stokes-DB-one}\\\\\n  \\nabla  \\cdot \\boldsymbol{u}=&g \\qquad \\text{in}\\,\\,  \\Omega \\label{eq:stokes-DB-two} \\\\\n   \\boldsymbol{u} =&0  \\qquad \\text{on}\\,\\,  \\partial \\Omega \\label{eq:stokes-DB-three},  \n\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\nwhere $\\epsilon \\in(0,1]$.    The source term $g$  is assumed to satisfy the solvability condition\n\\begin{equation*}\n \\int_{\\Omega} g\\, d\\Omega =0.\n\\end{equation*} \nThen, equations \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-one}, \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-two}, and \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-three} have a unique solution.  \n\nA variety of discretization schemes are available for equations \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-one}, \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-two}, and \\eqref{eq:stokes-DB-three}, including finite element methods \\cite{gulbransen2010multiscale,vassilevski2014mixed,xie2008uniformly,xu2010new,zhai2016new,zhang2009low,zhao2020new}, finite difference techniques \\cite{he2017finite,sun2019stability}, and divergence-conforming B-spline methods \\cite{evans2013isogeometric}.  When $\\epsilon= 0$, the model problem is reduced to the Darcy problem \\cite{arraras2021multigrid,harder2013family}.  For $\\epsilon \\in(0,1]$, designing a robust discretization and numerical solver is  challenging.  The convergence rate deteriorates as the Stokes-Darcy Brinkman becomes Darcy-dominating when certain stable Stokes elements are used \\cite{hannukainen2011computations}, for example, Taylor\u2013Hood element.  While, as the Stokes-Darcy Brinkman problem becomes Stokes-dominating when Darcy stable elements such as the lowest order Raviart-Thomas elements are used,  degradation on convergence is observed \\cite{mardal2002robust}. \n\nUpon discretization, large-scale indefinite linear systems typically need to be solved, at times repeatedly.  For saddle-point systems,\nwithin the context of multigrid, there are several effective block-structured relaxation  schemes for solving such linear systems, such as Braess-Sarazin  smoother \\cite{braess1997efficient, he2018local,MR1810326},   distributive smoother \\cite{chen2015multigrid,he2018local},  Schwarz-type smoothers \\cite{schoberl2003schwarz}, Vanka smoother \\cite{claus2021nonoverlapping,MR3217219,manservisi2006numerical,molenaar1991two,wobker2009numerical},  and Uzawa-type relaxation \\cite{MR1451114,MR3217219,MR1302679,luo2017uzawa}.  \n\n \n\nWe note also that a number of effective preconditioning methods are available for the Stokes-Darcy Brinkmans problems, for example the scalable block diagonal preconditioner \\cite{vassilevski2013block}, and Uzawa-type preconditioning \\cite{kobelkov2000effective,sarin1998efficient}.  \nMultigrid methods are studied in depth \\cite{butt2018multigrid,coley2018geometric,kanschat2017geometric,larin2008comparative,olshanskii2012multigrid}.   Braess-Sarazin, Uzawa, and Vanka smoothers within multigrid with finite element discretization have been discussed \\cite{larin2008comparative}. However, the convergence rate is highly dependent on physical parameters.  A Gauss\u2013Seidel smoother based on a Uzawa-type iteration is studied \\cite{MR3217219}, where the authors provide an upper bound on the smoothing factor.   Moreover,   the performance of Uzawa with  a Gauss\u2013Seidel type coupled Vanka smoother \\cite{vanka1986block} has been investigated  \\cite{MR3217219}, in which the  pressure and the velocities in a grid cell, are updated simultaneously, showing that the actual convergence of the W-cycle of Uzawa is approximately the same as that obtained by the Vanka smoother.\n\nOur interest is in  the marker and cell scheme (MAC), a finite difference method on a staggered mesh. On a uniform mesh discretization, the method is   second-order accurate for both velocity and pressure \\cite{sun2019stability}. We propose a Vanka-type  Braess-Sarazin relaxation (V-BSR) scheme for the Stokes-Darcy Brinkman equations discretized by the MAC scheme on  staggered meshes.  In contrast to the Vanka smoother \\cite{MR3217219}, our work builds an algorithm that decouples velocity and pressure, which is often preferred considering the cost efficiency.  Specifically, in our relaxation scheme, the shifted Laplacian  operator, $ - \\epsilon^2 \\Delta\\boldsymbol{u} +\\boldsymbol{u}$,  is solved by an additive Vanka-type smoother.  Instead of solving many subproblems involved in Vanka setting, we derive the stencil of the Vanka smoother, which means that we can form the global matrix of the Vanka smoother. As a result,  in our multigrid method we only have matrix-vector products.  This represents significant savings compared to traditional methods that require computationally expensive exact solves; in V-BSR, we solve the Schur complement system by only two or three iterations of the Jacobi method, which achieves the same performance as that of exact solve.  We apply local Fourier analysis (LFA) to select the multigrid damping parameter and predict the actual multigrid performance.  From this analysis, we derive an optimal damping parameter and optimal smoothing factors. Those parameters are dependent on physical parameters and the meshsize, which means that we can propose adaptive damping parameter in each multigrid level. The optimal parameter turns out to be close to one and relatively insensitive to physical parameters and meshsize. This allows for an easy choice of an approximately optimal damping parameter. We  quantitatively compare the results with optimal parameter and the value of one from LFA and present numerical results of two-grid and V-cycle multigrid to validate the high efficiency of our methods. Our V-cycle results outperform these of Uzawa and Vanka smoothers \\cite{MR3217219}, especially for small $\\epsilon$.\n\nThe rest of the work is organized as follows.  In Section \\ref{sec:Discretization-relaxation} we review the MAC scheme for our model problem and propose the afore-mentioned Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation.  We apply LFA to study the smoothing process in Section \\ref{sec:LFA}, where optimal LFA smoothing factor is derived.  In Section \\ref{sec:numerical} we present our LFA predictions for the two-grid method and actual multigrid performance.  Finally, we draw conclusions in Section \\ref{sec:con}.\n\n\n\\section{Discretization and relaxation}\\label{sec:Discretization-relaxation}\n\n\n\nAs mentioned in the Introduction, we  use  throughout the well-known MAC  scheme to solve~\\eqref{eq:SDB}. For  the discretization  of \\eqref{eq:SDB},   a staggered mesh is needed to guarantee numerical stability.  The discrete unknowns $u,v,p,$ are placed in different locations; see Figure \\ref{fig:MAC-stokes-brinkman}.  The stability and convergence of the MAC scheme for this problem has been studied \\cite{sun2019stability}. \n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.5\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/figure_MAC_StokesBrinkman.pdf}\n \\caption{The  location of the unknowns in the staggered grid: $\\Box-u,\\,\\, \\lozenge-v,  \\,\\, \\bigcirc-p$.}\\label{fig:MAC-stokes-brinkman}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe stencil representation of MAC for the Stokes-Darcy Brinkmann  equations is\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Kh--stencil-operator}\n   \\mathcal{K}_h   =\\begin{pmatrix}\n      - \\epsilon^2\\Delta_{h}  + I                         & 0                                          &   (\\partial_{x})_{h\/2}\\\\\n      0                                          & - \\epsilon^2 \\Delta_{h}   + I              &    (\\partial_{y})_{h\/2} \\\\\n      - (\\partial_{x})_{h\/2}        &   - (\\partial_{y})_{h\/2}             & 0\n    \\end{pmatrix},\n  \\end{equation}\nwhere  \n\\begin{equation*}\n   -\\Delta_{h} =\\frac{1}{h^2}\\begin{bmatrix}\n       & -1 &  \\\\\n      -1 & 4 & -1 \\\\\n        & -1 &\n    \\end{bmatrix},\\quad\n     (\\partial_{x})_{h\/2} =\\frac{1}{h}\\begin{bmatrix}\n       -1& 0 & 1 \\\\\n    \\end{bmatrix},\\quad\n     (\\partial_{y})_{h\/2} =\\frac{1}{h}\\begin{bmatrix}\n       1 \\\\\n      0 \\\\\n      -1\n    \\end{bmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\n\nAfter discretization, the corresponding linear system is \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:linear-system}\n\\mathcal{K}_h \\boldsymbol{x}_h=\\begin{pmatrix}\n\\mathcal{A} & \\mathcal{B}^T\\\\\n\\mathcal{B} & 0\n\\end{pmatrix}\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n\\boldsymbol{u}_h\n\\\\\np_h\n\\end{pmatrix}\n=\\begin{pmatrix}\n\\boldsymbol{f}_h\n\\\\\ng_h\n\\end{pmatrix}=b_h,\n\\end{equation} \nwhere $\\mathcal{A}$ is the matrix corresponding to the discretization of $ - \\epsilon^2 \\Delta\\boldsymbol{u} +\\boldsymbol{u}$, and $\\mathcal{B}^T$ is the discrete gradient.\n\nIn order to solve \\eqref{eq:linear-system} efficiently by multigrid we use BSR, with the smoother\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Mh-form}\n\\mathcal{M}_h= \\begin{pmatrix}\n\\mathcal{C} & \\mathcal{B}^T\\\\\n\\mathcal{B} & 0\n\\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathcal{C}$ is an approximation to $\\mathcal{A}$. In the context of preconditioning, such an approach is known as {\\em constraint preconditioning} \\cite{keller2000constraint,chidyagwai2016constraint,rees2007preconditioner}  and it has received quite a bit of attention due to its attactive property of computing interim approximate solutions that satisfy the constraints.\n\nA number of studies  \\cite{he2018local,YH2021massStokes} have shown that the efficiency of solving the Laplacian will determine the convergence of BSR.  To construct an efficient approximation $\\mathcal{C}$, we first investigate the discrete operator $-\\epsilon^2 \\Delta u +u $ denoted by \n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:positive-shift-Laplace-system}\nL=  A+ I,\n\\end{equation} \nwhere  $A$ corresponds to the five-point discretization of  operator  $-\\epsilon^2 \\Delta u$. The stencil notation for the discrete operator $-\\epsilon^2 \\Delta u +u $ is \n\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:shift-Laplace-stencil}\nL= \\frac{\\epsilon^2}{h^2}\n\\begin{bmatrix}\n& -1 & \\\\\n-1 & 4+\\frac{h^2}{\\epsilon^2} & -1 \\\\\n& -1 & \n\\end{bmatrix}=\\frac{\\epsilon^2}{h^2}\n\\begin{bmatrix}\n& -1 & \\\\\n-1 & 4+r & -1 \\\\\n& -1 & \n\\end{bmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $r=\\frac{h^2}{\\epsilon^2}$. When $r=0$,  \\eqref{eq:shift-Laplace-stencil} reduces to the discretization of  $-\\epsilon^2 \\Delta u$.\n \nRecently, we proposed an additive element-wise Vanka smoother \\cite{CH2021addVanka} for $\\Delta u$. Our current goal is to extend our approach to \\eqref{eq:positive-shift-Laplace-system}. An immediate challenge here contrary to \\cite{CH2021addVanka} is the difference in scale between the discretized scaled Laplacian and the identity operator.\n\nDenote the element-wise smoother as $M_e$, which has the form\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:Vanka-operator}\nM_e = \\sum_{j=1}^{N} V_j^T D_j L_j^{-1} V_j,\n\\end{equation} \nwhere $D_j=\\frac{1}{4}I$ with $I$ be the $4\\times 4$-identity matrix,  $L_j$ is the coefficient matrix of $j$-th subproblem defined for one element, and $V_j$ is a restriction operator mapping the global vector to the $j$-th subproblem.\nWe consider\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\mathcal{C}^{-1} = \n\\begin{pmatrix}\nM_e & 0\\\\\n0     & M_e\n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\nThe relaxation scheme  for \\eqref{eq:linear-system}  is \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:BSR-relax-scheme}\n\\boldsymbol{x}^{k+1}_h = \\boldsymbol{x}^k_h+\\omega \\mathcal{M}^{-1}_h(b_h- \\mathcal{K}_h\\boldsymbol{x}^k_h).\n\\end{equation} \nWe refer to the above relaxation as {\\em Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation} (V-BSR). \n\nLet $b_h- \\mathcal{K}_h\\boldsymbol{x}^k_h=( r_{ \\boldsymbol{u}}, r_p)$.  In \\eqref{eq:BSR-relax-scheme}, we need to solve for\n $(\\delta \\boldsymbol{u}, \\delta p)=\\mathcal{M}^{-1}_h(r_{\\boldsymbol{u}}, r_p)$ by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n  (\\mathcal{B}\\mathcal{C}^{-1}\\mathcal{B}^{T})\\delta p&=&\\mathcal{B}\\mathcal{C}^{-1} r_{ \\boldsymbol{u}}-  r_{p}, \\label{eq:solution-schur-complement}\\\\\n  \\delta \\boldsymbol{u}&=&  \\mathcal{C}^{-1}(r_{ \\boldsymbol{u}}-\\mathcal{B}^{T}\\delta p).\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nSolving \\eqref{eq:solution-schur-complement} exactly is prohibitive and impractical in the current context, and it has been shown in a few studies \\cite{he2018local,MR1810326}  that an inexact solve  can be applied and perform well. In the sequel we will present a smoothing analysis for the exact solve, but in practice, for assessing the performance of the multigrid scheme we apply a few iterations of weighted Jacobi to \\eqref{eq:solution-schur-complement}. \n\nThe relaxation error operator for \\eqref{eq:BSR-relax-scheme} is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:relaxation-error-operator}\n\\mathcal{S}_h = I-\\omega \\mathcal{M}^{-1}_h\\mathcal{K}_h,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\omega$ is a damping parameter to be determined. \n\nFor a two-grid method, the error propagation operator  is \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:two-grid-error-operator}\nE_h=S^{\\nu_2}_h (I- P_h(L_{2h})^{-1} R_h L_h) S^{\\nu_1}_h,\n\\end{equation}\n where $L_{2h}$ is rediscretization for the coarse-grid operator and the integers $\\nu_1$ and $\\nu_2$ are the numbers of pre-  and post-smoothing steps.   For simplicity, we denote the overall number of those steps by $\\nu=\\nu_1+\\nu_2$.  We consider  simple restriction operators using  six points  for the $u$ and $v$ components of the velocity,  that is, \n \\begin{equation*} \n    R_{h,u}   =    \\frac{1}{8}\\begin{bmatrix}\n   1 &       & 1  \\\\\n   2 &   \\star   & 2   \\\\\n  1 &      & 1  \n   \\end{bmatrix},\n \\quad \n   R_{h,v}   =    \\frac{1}{8}\\begin{bmatrix}\n   1 &    2  & 1  \\\\\n    &   \\star   &    \\\\\n  1 &   2   & 1  \n   \\end{bmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere the $\\star$ denotes the position (on the coarse grid) at which the discrete operator is applied.  For interpolation, we take  $P_{h,u} =4 R^T_{h,u}$ and     $P_{h,v} =4 R^T_{h,v}$.\nFor the  restriction for the pressure, we use \n \\begin{equation*} \n   R_{h,p}   =    \\frac{1}{4}\\begin{bmatrix}\n   1 &      & 1  \\\\\n    &   \\star   &    \\\\\n  1 &    & 1  \n   \\end{bmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nand $P_{h,p}=4R^T_{h,p}$.  Consequently,\n\\begin{equation*}\nR_h =  \\begin{pmatrix}\n   R_{h,u} & 0     & 0  \\\\\n  0  &   R_{h,v}  & 0   \\\\\n  0 &  0  & R_{h,p} \n   \\end{pmatrix}, \\quad P_h = 4 R^T_h. \n\\end{equation*}  \n\n\\section{Local Fourier analysis}\\label{sec:LFA}\n \n To identify a proper parameter $\\omega$  in \\eqref{eq:BSR-relax-scheme} to construct fast multigrid methods, we apply LFA \\cite{wienands2004practical,trottenberg2000multigrid}  to examine the multigrid relaxation scheme. \nThe LFA smooting factor, see Definition \\ref{def:LFA-mu},  often offers a sharp prediction of actual multigrid performance.  \n \n\\begin{definition}\nLet $L_h =[s_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}}]_{h}$  be a scalar stencil operator acting on grid ${G}_{h}$ as\n\\begin{equation*}\n  L_{h}w_{h}(\\boldsymbol{x})=\\sum_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}\\in{V}}s_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}}w_{h}(\\boldsymbol{x}+\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}h),\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere  $s_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}}\\in \\mathbb{R}$ is constant,   $w_{h}(\\boldsymbol{x}) \\in l^{2} ({G}_{h})$, and  ${V}$ is a finite index set. \nThen, the  symbol of $L_{h}$ is defined as:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:symbol-calculation-form}\n \\widetilde{L}_{h}(\\boldsymbol{\\theta})=\\displaystyle\\sum_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}\\in{V}}s_{\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}}e^{i \\boldsymbol{\\theta}\\cdot\\boldsymbol{\\kappa}},\\qquad i^2=-1. \n\\end{equation} \n\\end{definition}\n\nWe consider standard coarsening. The low and high frequencies are given by  $$\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in  T^{\\rm{L}} =\\left[-\\frac{\\pi}{2}, \\frac{\\pi}{2}\\right)^d;  \\qquad \\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in  T^{\\rm{H}} =\\left[-\\frac{\\pi}{2}, \\frac{3\\pi}{2}\\right)^d \\setminus T^{\\rm{L}}.$$\n\n\\begin{definition}\\label{def:LFA-mu}\nWe define the LFA smoothing factor for relaxation error operator $\\mathcal{S}_h$ as\n\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\mu_{\\rm loc}(\\mathcal{S}_h) = \\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm{H}}}\\{\\rho(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{S}}_h(\\boldsymbol{\\theta}))\\},\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $\\rho(\\widetilde{S}_h(\\boldsymbol{\\theta}))$ stands for the spectral radius of $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{S}}_h(\\boldsymbol{\\theta})$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe symbol of  $\\mathcal{S}_h$ defined in \\eqref{eq:relaxation-error-operator} is a $3\\times 3$ matrix since  $\\mathcal{K}_h$ is a $3\\times 3$ block system; see \\eqref{eq:Kh--stencil-operator}. The same holds for  $\\mathcal{M}_h$, see \\eqref{eq:Mh-form}, and the symbol of each block is a scalar.  For more details on how to compute the symbol of \n$\\mathcal{S}_h$, refer to other studies \\cite{farrell2021local,he2018local}.  Since  $\\mu_{\\rm loc}(\\mathcal{S}_h)$ is a function of the parameter $\\omega$, we are interested in minimizing $\\mu_{\\rm loc}(\\mathcal{S}_h)$ over $\\omega$ to obtain a fast convergence speed. We define the optimal smoothing factor as \n \\begin{equation*}\n\\mu_{\\rm opt} =\\min_{\\omega}\\mu_{\\rm loc}(\\mathcal{S}_h).\n\\end{equation*}\n\nFor the two-grid error operator $E_h$ defined in \\eqref{eq:two-grid-error-operator},   the two-grid LFA convergence factor is \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:LFA-two-grid-convergence-factor}\n\\rho_h(\\nu)= \\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta}\\in T^{\\rm L}}\\{\\rho( \\widetilde{\\mathbf{E}}_h(\\omega,\\boldsymbol{\\theta}))\\},\n\\end{equation} \nwhere $\\widetilde{\\mathbf{E}}_h$ is the two-grid error operator symbol and $\\rho( \\widetilde{\\mathbf{E}}_h)$ stands for the spectral radius of matrix $\\widetilde{\\mathbf{E}}_h$. Since $E_h$ contains the coarse and fine grid operators, its symbol is a $12\\times 12$ matrix, including four harmonic frequencies.  \n\nFrom this point onward, let us drop the subscript $h$, unless it is necessary.\n\nThe  element-wise  Vanka-type  smoother has been successfully applied  to complex-shifted Laplacian systems arising from optimal control problem \\cite{HL2022shiftLaplacianPiTMG}.  Here, we consider  an element-wise additive Vanka smoother applied to \\eqref{eq:shift-Laplace-stencil}. The subproblem coefficient matrix  $L_j$ in \\eqref{eq:Vanka-operator} has a symmetric structure\n \\begin{equation*}\nL_j =\\frac{\\epsilon^2}{h^2}\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n4+r &  -1 &  -1 &0 \\\\ \n-1 &  4+r&  0 &-1\\\\\n-1 & 0 & 4+r &-1\\\\\n0 & -1 & -1 &4+r \n\\end{pmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*}\n\nIt follows that\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq:inverse-Li-form}\nL^{-1}_j =\\frac{h^2}{\\epsilon^2}\n\\begin{pmatrix}\na & b & b &c \\\\\nb & a& c &b\\\\\nb & c & a &b \\\\\nc & b & b &a \n\\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere \n\\begin{subequations}\n\\label{eq:Vanka}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\na&=& \\frac{r^2+8r+14}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}, \\label{eq:Vanka-a}\\\\\nb&=& \\frac{1}{(2+r)(6+r)}, \\label{eq:Vanka-b}\\\\\nc&= & \\frac{2}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}.\\label{eq:Vanka-c}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{subequations} \nIt is easy to show that $a>b>c$, which is useful for our analysis. \n\nBased on \\eqref{eq:Vanka-operator} and \\eqref{eq:inverse-Li-form},  the stencil of the element-wise Vanka smoother $M_e$ is given by\n\\begin{equation*} \nM_e = \\frac{h^2}{4\\epsilon^2} \n\\begin{bmatrix}\nc & 2b  &c\\\\\n2b & 4a  &2b\\\\\nc & 2b  &c\n\\end{bmatrix}.\n\\end{equation*} \nUsing \\eqref{eq:symbol-calculation-form}, we have  \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\widetilde{L} &=&\\frac{\\epsilon^2}{h^2}(4+r-2\\cos \\theta_1 -2\\cos \\theta_2),\\\\\n \\widetilde{M}_e &=&\\frac{h^2}{\\epsilon^2} (a+b\\cos \\theta_1 +b\\cos \\theta_2 +c\\cos\\theta_1\\cos \\theta_2).\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nLet $t= \\epsilon^2 (4+r-2\\cos \\theta_1 -2\\cos \\theta_2)$ and $\\hat{t}=\\frac{\\epsilon^2}{ a+b\\cos \\theta_1 +b\\cos \\theta_2 +c\\cos\\theta_1\\cos \\theta_2)}$. Then,\n\\begin{equation*} \n\\widetilde{\\mathcal{K}}= \\frac{1}{h^2}\\begin{pmatrix}\nt  & 0         & i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2)\\\\\n0 &  t        & i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2)\\\\\n-i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2)       & -i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2)    &0 \n\\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\n and\n\\begin{equation*} \n\\widetilde{\\mathcal{M}}= \\frac{1}{h^2} \\begin{pmatrix}\n\\hat{t}  & 0         &i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2)\\\\\n0 & \\hat{t}      & i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2)\\\\\n-i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2)       & -i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2)    &0 \n\\end{pmatrix},\n\\end{equation*}\nTo identify the eigenvalues of $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{M}}^{-1} \\widetilde{\\mathcal{K}}$, we first compute the determinant of $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{K}}-\\lambda \\widetilde{\\mathcal{M}}$:\n \\begin{eqnarray*}\n | \\widetilde{\\mathcal{K}}-\\lambda\\widetilde{\\mathcal{M}}| &= &  \n \\frac{1}{h^2}\\begin{vmatrix}\n       t-\\lambda \\hat{t}      & 0                      & (1-\\lambda) i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2) \\\\\n      0                     &   t-\\lambda \\hat{t}         & (1-\\lambda) i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2) \\\\\n -(1-\\lambda) i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2)   &(1-\\lambda) i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2)  &0\n    \\end{vmatrix}  \\\\\n    &=&   \\frac{1}{h^2}(t-\\lambda \\hat{t})(1-\\lambda)^2\\left((i 2h \\sin(\\theta_1\/2))^2  + (i 2h \\sin(\\theta_2\/2) )^2\\right)\\\\\n    &=& 4\\hat{t}\\left((\\sin(\\theta_1\/2))^2  + (  \\sin(\\theta_2\/2) )^2\\right)(1-\\lambda)^2 (\\lambda -\\frac{t}{\\hat{t}}).\n \\end{eqnarray*}\nThe three eigenvalues of $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{M}}^{-1} \\widetilde{\\mathcal{K}}$  are $1, 1$ and  $\\frac{t}{\\hat{t}}=:\\lambda^*$, where\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:lambda-form-r}\n\\lambda^*(r;\\cos \\theta_1,\\cos \\theta_2) =(a+b\\cos \\theta_1 +b\\cos \\theta_2 +c\\cos\\theta_1\\cos \\theta_2)(4+r-2\\cos \\theta_1 -2\\cos \\theta_2).\n\\end{equation}\n \n \n For $\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm H}$,  it is easy to show that \n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:cos-range}\n (\\cos\\theta_1,\\cos\\theta_2) \\in \\mathcal{D}=[-1,1] \\times [-1,0] \\bigcup [-1,0]\\times [0, 1].\n\\end{equation}\n\n \n Next, we explore the range of $\\lambda^*$ over $\\boldsymbol{\\theta}$ for high frequencies.\n \n \n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:maxmin-and-theta}\nFor $\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm H}$, \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} }\\lambda^*(r;\\cos \\theta_1,\\cos \\theta_2) &=& \\lambda^*(r;-1,-1) =(a-2b+c)(8+r)=:d_1(r),\\\\\n\\min_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} }\\lambda^*(r;\\cos \\theta_1,\\cos \\theta_2) &=& \\lambda^*(r;1,0) =(a+b)(2+r)=:d_2(r).\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nFor simplicity,  let $\\eta_1=\\cos\\theta_1$ and $\\eta_2=\\cos \\theta_2$. Then,  we rewrite \\eqref{eq:lambda-form-r} as\n\\begin{equation*} \n \\lambda^*=\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) =(a+b\\eta_1+b\\eta_2 +c\\eta_1\\eta_2)(4+r-2\\eta_1 -2\\eta_2).\n\\end{equation*}\n\nWe first consider the critical   point of $ \\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) $ in $\\mathcal{D}$, see \\eqref{eq:cos-range},  by  computing the partial derivatives of $ \\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$, which are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\psi'_{\\eta_1} (\\eta_1,\\eta_2)&=&rb+4b-2a-4b\\eta_1+(4c+cr-4b)\\eta_2-2c\\eta_2^2-4c\\eta_1\\eta_2=0, \\label{eq:partial-psi-eta1}  \\\\\n\\psi'_{\\eta_2}(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) &=&  rb+4b-2a-4b\\eta_2+(4c+cr-4b)\\eta_1-2c\\eta_1^2-4c\\eta_1\\eta_2=0. \\label{eq:partial-psi-eta2} \n\\end{eqnarray}\nSubtracting \\eqref{eq:partial-psi-eta2}  from \\eqref{eq:partial-psi-eta1}  gives \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:critical-point-solu}\n(\\eta_1-\\eta_2)\\left(2(\\eta_1+\\eta_2)-4-r\\right) =0.\n\\end{equation}\nIt follows that $\\eta_1=\\eta_2$ or  $2(\\eta_1+\\eta_2)-4-r=0$. However, $\\eta_1+\\eta_2< 2$, so the latter does not have a real solution. For $\\eta_1=\\eta_2$, we  \nreplace $\\eta_2$ by $\\eta_1$ in \\eqref{eq:partial-psi-eta1}, leading to\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:solve-eta1=0}\n6c\\eta_1^2-(4c+cr-8b)\\eta_1-(rb+4b-2a)=0.\n\\end{equation}\nWe claim that there is no real solution for \\eqref{eq:solve-eta1=0} for $r>0$. We will show that the discriminant  is not positive.\nWe first simplify  $rb+4b-2a$. Using  \\eqref{eq:Vanka-a} and \\eqref{eq:Vanka-b}  gives\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nrb+4b-2a &=&\\frac{ 4+r}{(2+r)(6+r)}-  \\frac{2(r^2+8r+14)}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}\\\\\n               &=&\\frac{ (4+r)^2-2(r^2+8r+14)}{(2+r) (4+r)(6+r)}\\\\\n               &=& -\\frac{1}{4+r}.\n\\end{eqnarray*} \n\n Using \\eqref{eq:Vanka-b} and \\eqref{eq:Vanka-c}, the discriminant of \\eqref{eq:solve-eta1=0} is\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\Phi &=& (4c+cr-8b)^2+4 \\cdot 6c(rb+4b-2a)\\\\\n      &=&\\left(\\frac{8+2r}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)} - \\frac{8(4+r)}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)} \\right)^2-\\frac{48}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)} \\frac{1}{4+r}\\\\\n      &=&\\left (\\frac{-6}{(2+r)(6+r)}\\right)^2-\\frac{48}{(2+r)(4+r)^2(6+r)}\\\\\n      &=& \\frac{12}{(2+r)(6+r)}\\left(\\frac{3}{(2+r)(6+r)}-\\frac{4}{(4+r)^2}\\right)\\\\\n      &=& \\frac{-12r(r+8)}{(2+r)^2(4+r)^2(6+r)^2}\\leq 0.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nThe case $r=0$ has been discussed  \\cite{CH2021addVanka}, where $\\psi'_{\\eta_1} (\\eta_1,\\eta_2)=\\psi'_{\\eta_2} (\\eta_1,\\eta_2)=0$ gives $(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)=(-1,-1)$ the boundary  point of  $\\mathcal{D}$, and $\\lambda^*_{\\rm max}=\\frac{4}{3}$.  When $r>0$,  \\eqref{eq:critical-point-solu} has no real solution and $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$ cannot have extreme values at interior of $\\mathcal{D}$.  This means that we only need to find the   extreme values of $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$ at the boundary of  $\\mathcal{D}$, see \\eqref{eq:cos-range}. To do this, we split the boundary of $\\mathcal{D}$ as follows: \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\partial \\mathcal{D}_1 &=&\\{-1\\} \\times [-1,1], \\\\\n\\partial \\mathcal{D}_2 &=& [-1,1] \\times \\{-1\\}, \\\\\n\\partial \\mathcal{D}_3 &=& \\{1\\} \\times  [-1,0], \\\\\n\\partial  \\mathcal{D}_4 &=& [0,1]\\times \\{0\\}, \\\\\n\\partial \\mathcal{D}_5 &=& \\{0\\} \\times  [0,1], \\\\\n \\partial \\mathcal{D}_6&=& [-1,0] \\times \\{1\\}.  \n\\end{eqnarray*} \n \nDue to the symmetry of $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$, that is $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)=\\psi(\\eta_2,\\eta_1)$, we only need to find the extreme values of $ \\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) $ at $\\partial \\mathcal{D}_1, \\partial \\mathcal{D}_3$  and $\\partial \\mathcal{D}_4$. We present below the  results.\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item For $(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) \\in \\partial \\mathcal{D}_1$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:psi-case1}\n\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) =\\psi(-1,\\eta_2) =(a-b+b\\eta_2-c\\eta_2)(6+r-2\\eta_2).\n\\end{equation} \nNote that  the two roots of the quadratic form \\eqref{eq:psi-case1} are $\\frac{6+r}{2}$ and $\\frac{a-b}{c-b}$.\nUsing \\eqref{eq:Vanka}, we have\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\frac{a-b}{c-b}= -(5+r).\n\\end{equation*} \nThus,  the axis of symmetry is $\\eta_2=\\frac{(6+r)\/2-(5+r)}{2}=-1-\\frac{r}{4}\\leq -1$. Using the fact that $a>b>c$, see \\eqref{eq:Vanka-a}, \\eqref{eq:Vanka-b}, and \\eqref{eq:Vanka-c}, the quadratic function opens downward.  Therefore, \n the maximum and minimum of $\\psi(-1,\\eta_2) $ for $\\eta_2 \\in[-1,1]$ are  \n\\begin{align}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\psi(-1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm max} &=\\psi(-1,-1)  =(a-2b+c)(8+r),\\label{eq:case1-max}\\\\\n\\psi(-1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm min} &=\\psi(-1,1)  = (a-c)(4+r). \n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{align}\n\\item For $(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) \\in \\partial \\mathcal{D}_3$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:psi-case2}\n\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) =\\psi(1,\\eta_2) =(a+b+b\\eta_2+c\\eta_2)(2+r-2\\eta_2).\n\\end{equation} \nThe two roots of quadratic form \\eqref{eq:psi-case2} are $\\frac{2+r}{2}$ and $-\\frac{a+b}{b+c}$.\nUsing \\eqref{eq:Vanka},  we have\n\\begin{equation*}\n-\\frac{a+b}{b+c}= -(3+r).\n\\end{equation*} \nThus,  the axis of symmetry is $\\eta_2=\\frac{(2+r)\/2-(3+r)}{2}=-1-\\frac{r}{4}\\leq -1$. Using the fact that $a>b>c$, the quadratic function opens downward.  It follows that\nfor $\\eta_2 \\in[-1,0]$, the maximum and minimum of $\\psi(1,\\eta_2) $ are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\psi(1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm max} &=&\\psi(1,-1)  =(a-c)(4+r),\\\\\n\\psi(1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm min} &=&\\psi(1,0)  = (a+b)(2+r).\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n\n\\item For $(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) \\in \\partial \\mathcal{D}_4$,\n\\begin{equation*} \n\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) =\\psi(\\eta_1,0) =(a+b\\eta_1)(4+r-2\\eta_1).\n\\end{equation*} \nNote that  the two roots of quadratic form \\eqref{eq:psi-case2} are $\\frac{4+r}{2}$ and $-\\frac{a}{b}$.\nUsing \\eqref{eq:Vanka-a} and \\eqref{eq:Vanka-b}, we have\n\\begin{equation*}\n-\\frac{a}{b}= -(4+r)+\\frac{2}{4+r}.\n\\end{equation*} \nThus,  the axis of symmetry is $\\eta_1=\\frac{(4+r)\/2-(4+r)+\\frac{2}{4+r}}{2}=-1-\\frac{r}{4}+\\frac{1}{4+r}< 0$.  Thus, the maximum and minimum of $\\psi(\\eta_1,0) $ for $\\eta_1 \\in[0,1]$ are  \n \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\psi(\\eta_1,0) _{\\rm max} &=&\\psi(0,0)  =a(4+r),\\label{eq:case3-max}\\\\\n\\psi(\\eta_1,0) _{\\rm min} &=&\\psi(0,1)  = (a+b)(2+r). \\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nBased on the above discussions,  the minimum of $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) $ over $\\partial \\mathcal{D}$ is\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm min} =\\psi(1,0)=\\psi(0,1)  = (a+b)(2+r).\n\\end{equation*} \nNext, we compare $\\psi(-1,-1)$ (see \\eqref{eq:case1-max}) and  $\\psi(0,0)$ (see \\eqref{eq:case3-max})  to determine the maximum.\nUsing   \\eqref{eq:Vanka},  we have \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n\\psi(-1,-1)- \\psi(0,0) &=&(a-2b+c)(8+r)-a(4+r)\\\\\n                              &=& 4a+(c-2b)(8+r)\\\\\n                              & =&\\frac{4(r^2+8r+14)}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)} - \\frac{2-2(4+r)}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}(8+r)\\\\\n                              &=& \\frac{2r^2+10r+8}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}>0.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nIt follows that the maximum of $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$ is given by\n \\begin{equation*}\n\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) _{\\rm max} =\\psi(-1,-1) =(a-2b+c)(8+r).\n\\end{equation*} \nThus, for $(\\eta_1,\\eta_2) \\in \\mathcal{D}$, the maximum and minimum of $\\psi(\\eta_1,\\eta_2)$  are  $\\psi(-1,-1)$ and $\\psi(1,0)=\\psi(0,1)$, respectively. \n\\end{proof}\n\nBased on the results in Theorem \\ref{thm:maxmin-and-theta}, we can further estimate the range of  extreme values of $\\lambda^*$, which plays an important role in determining the optimal smoothing factor for V-BSR.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:form-d1-d2}\nSuppose $r\\in[0,\\infty)$. Then,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:explicit-form-low-up-bound}\nd_1(r)=\\frac{8+r}{6+r}, \\quad d_2(r)=\\frac{3+r}{4+r}. \n\\end{equation}\nFurthermore, \n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n1< &d_1(r)& \\leq \\frac{4}{3}, \\\\\n \\frac{3}{4}\\leq &d_2(r)& <1.\n\\end{eqnarray*} \n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nUsing \\eqref{eq:Vanka},  we simplify $d_1(r)$ as follows:\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nd_1(r) &=&(a-2b+c)(8+r) \\\\\n          &=& \\frac{r^2+8r+14-2(4+r)+2}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)}(8+r)\\\\\n          &=& \\frac{8+r}{6+r}.\n\\end{eqnarray*} \nSince $d_1(r)$ is a decreasing function of $r$, $\\max_r d_1(r)=d_1(0)=\\frac{4}{3}$.\n\nUsing \\eqref{eq:Vanka-a} and \\eqref{eq:Vanka-b},  we  have\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\nd_2(r) &=&(a+b)(2+r) \\\\\n          &=& \\frac{r^2+8r+14+4+r}{(2+r)(4+r)(6+r)} (2+r)\\\\\n          &=&\\frac{r+3}{r+4}.\n\\end{eqnarray*}\nSince $d_2(r)$ is an increasing function of $r$, $\\min_r d_2(r)=d_2(0)=\\frac{3}{4}$. \n\\end{proof}\n\nNow, we are able to derive the optimal smoothing  factor for  V-BSR for the Stokes-Darcy Brinkman problems.\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:opt-mu-omega}\nFor the V-BSR relaxation scheme \\eqref{eq:BSR-relax-scheme} the optimal smoothing factor is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:opt-mu-form-r}\n\\mu_{\\rm opt}(r)=\\min_{\\omega} \\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm H}} \\{|1-\\omega|, |1-\\omega \\lambda^*|\\} = \\frac{3r+14}{2r^2+21r+50},\n\\end{equation}\nprovided that  \n\\begin{equation}\\label{eq:opt-omega}\n\\omega =\\omega_{\\rm opt}= \\frac{2r^2+20r+48}{2r^2+21r+50}.\n\\end{equation}\nMoreover,\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\mu_{\\rm opt}(r)\\leq \\frac{7}{25}=0.28.\n\\end{equation*} \n\n\\end{theorem}\n \\begin{proof}\nFrom Theorem \\ref{thm:maxmin-and-theta} and \\eqref{eq:explicit-form-low-up-bound}, we know  that\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:lambda*-two-roots}\n  \\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm H}} \\{|1-\\omega|, |1-\\omega \\lambda^*|\\} =\\max\\{|1-\\omega d_2(r)|, |1-\\omega d_1(r)| \\}.\n  \\end{equation}\n  To minimize $\\max_{\\boldsymbol{\\theta} \\in T^{\\rm H}} \\{|1-\\omega \\lambda^*|\\}$, we require\n  \\begin{equation*}\n|1-\\omega d_2(r)|= |1-\\omega d_1(r)|,\n\\end{equation*} \nwhich gives $\\omega_{\\rm opt}(r) =\\frac{2}{d_1(r)+d_2(r)}$.  Using Theorem \\ref{thm:form-d1-d2}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation*}\n \\omega_{\\rm opt}(r) =\\frac{2}{d_1(r)+d_2(r)} = \\frac{2r^2+20r+48}{2r^2+21r+50}\n\\end{equation*} \nand\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\mu_{\\rm opt}(r) =\\frac{d_1(r)-d_2(r)}{d_1(r)+d_2(r)} = \\frac{3r+14}{2r^2+21r+50}\\leq \\frac{7}{25}.\n\\end{equation*} \n \\end{proof}\n \n \\begin{remark}\n When $r=0$, Theorem \\ref{thm:opt-mu-omega} is consistent with the existing results \\cite{CH2021addVanka},  which amount to applying an element-wise Vanka smoother  to  the Poisson equation. \n \\end{remark}\n \\begin{proposition}\\label{prop:optimal-mu-decrease}\n $\\mu_{\\rm opt}(r)$ given by \\eqref{eq:opt-mu-form-r} is a decreasing function of $r$.  \n \\end{proposition}\n \\begin{proof}\nThe derivative of $\\mu_{\\rm opt}$ is  given by\n \\begin{equation*}\n \\mu'_{\\rm opt} =  \\frac{-2(r^2+28r+72)}{(2r^2+21r+50)^2}<0.\n\\end{equation*} \n This suggests that when $r$ increases, the optimal smoothing factor decreases. \n \\end{proof}\n\n \nLet us look at the optimal parameter, \\eqref{eq:opt-omega}. It can be shown that\n \\begin{equation*}\n \\omega'_{\\rm opt}(r) =  \\frac{2(r^2+4r-4)}{(2r^2+21r+50)^2}.\n\\end{equation*} \nWhen $r \\in[0, 2\\sqrt{2}-2]$, $\\omega_{\\rm opt}(r)$ is decreasing and  when $r \\in[2\\sqrt{2}-2, \\infty)$, $\\omega_{\\rm opt}(r)$ is increasing. It follows that\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:estimate-opt-omega}\n(\\omega_{\\rm opt}(r))_{\\rm min}=\\omega_{\\rm opt}(2\\sqrt{2}-2) = \\frac{(\\sqrt{2}-1)(4\\sqrt{2}+16)+24}{(\\sqrt{2}-1)(4\\sqrt{2}+17)+25}\\approx 0.959 \\leq \\omega_{\\rm opt}(r) <1.\n\\end{equation} \n %\n Thus, for simplicity, if we take $\\omega=1$, then \\eqref{eq:lambda*-two-roots} gives\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eq:omega-one-mu}\n\\mu(\\omega=1)=\\max_{\\omega=1}\\{|1-\\omega d_2(r)|, |1-\\omega d_1(r)| \\}=\\frac{2}{6+r}\\leq \\frac{1}{3}.\n\\end{equation} \n\nIn practice, we can consider $\\omega=1$.  In multigrid, for fixed $\\epsilon$, in each level, the relaxation schemes has a different convergence speed in each level, which can be computed from \\eqref{eq:omega-one-mu}.   However, note that \\eqref{eq:omega-one-mu} is a decreasing function of $r=\\frac{h^2}{\\epsilon^2}$ or $h$. This means that at the coarse level, the relaxation scheme has a smaller convergence speed compared with that of the fine level.  \n \n \\section{Numerical experiments}\\label{sec:numerical}\n In this section, we first compute LFA two-grid convergence factors using two choices of the damping parameter, that is, $\\omega=1$ and $\\omega=\\omega_{\\rm opt}$, then we report V-cycle multigrid results for different values of the physical parameter $\\epsilon$.\n \n\\subsection{LFA prediction}\nWe compute the two-grid LFA convergence factor \\eqref{eq:LFA-two-grid-convergence-factor},  using   $h=1\/64,\\  \\omega=1$ and  optimal $\\omega$, see \\eqref{eq:opt-omega}, derived from optimizing LFA smoothing factors for different $\\epsilon$.   From Table \\ref{tab:LFA-results-h64-omega} we see a strong agreement between two-grid convergence factors $\\rho_h(1)$  and  the LFA smoothing factors.  Moreover,  the convergence factors  for optimal $\\omega$ are slightly better than those for $\\omega=1$, which is reasonable  since the optimal $\\omega$, see \\eqref{eq:estimate-opt-omega}, is very close to $1$.  From our smoothing analysis, we know that even though  the smoothing factor is dependent on $h$ and $\\alpha$,  the upper bound on the smoothing factor is $\\frac{1}{3}$.  This is also confirmed by our two-grid LFA convergence factor $\\rho_h(1)$ in Table \\ref{tab:LFA-results-h64-omega}. \n \n\n\n    \n   \n    \n\n \\begin{table}[H]\n \\caption{Two-grid LFA convergence factors, $\\rho_h(\\nu)$ with $h=1\/64$ and different choices of $\\omega$.}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{lccccc}\n\\hline\n$\\epsilon,\\omega=1$                      & $\\mu_{\\rm opt}$        &$\\rho_h(1)$      &$\\rho_h(2)$     &$\\rho_h(3)$    & $\\rho_h(4)$  \\\\ \\hline\n \n$1$                                        & 0.333                          & 0.333           &   0.119                   & 0.054                  &0.043    \\\\\n$ 2^{-2} $                                  &0.333                         & 0.333                & 0.119                 & 0.054        & 0.042     \\\\\n$2^{-4}$                                  &0.330                        &  0.330                &0.115                  &0.052           &0.040     \\\\\n$2^{-6}$                                   &0.286                        & 0.286               & 0.082                &  0.023          &   0.012   \\\\\n$2^{-8}$                                   &  0.091                       & 0.091              & 0.008                & 0.001            &0.000     \\\\\n\\hline\n$1, \\omega_{\\rm opt}$                   &0.280                         &0.280                   & 0.096              &  0.056          &  0.044     \\\\\n\n$2^{-2}$         & 0.280                        &0.280                 &0.096                 & 0.056            &0.044     \\\\\n\n$2^{-4}$         & 0.276                       & 0.276                & 0.093              & 0.055         &0.042      \\\\\n\n\n$2^{-6}$          & 0.233                       &0.233               &  0.057             &   0.026          &    0.014      \\\\\n\n$2^{-8}$          & 0.069                        & 0.069                 & 0.005                & 0.000          &  0.000         \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\\label{tab:LFA-results-h64-omega}\n\\end{table}\n\nTo illustrate how the smoothing factor changes as a function of $r$, we plot $\\mu_{\\rm opt}$ defined in \\eqref{eq:opt-mu-form-r} and  $\\mu(\\omega=1)$ in \\eqref{eq:omega-one-mu}  as   functions of $r$ in  Figure \\ref{fig: mu-vs-r}.   It is evident that when $r$ increases, the smoothing factor decreases and approaches zero, and $\\mu(\\omega=1)$ tends towards  $\\mu_{\\rm opt}$. \n\n  \n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.6\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/plot-mu-vs-r.pdf}\n \\caption{Smoothing  factors with optimal $\\omega$ and $\\omega=1$.}\\label{fig: mu-vs-r}\n\\end{figure}\n\n     \n    \n \\subsection{Multigrid performance}\n \n Consider the model problems \\eqref{eq:SDB}  on the unit square domain $[0,1]\\times[0,1]$ with an exact solution \\cite[Section 5]{sun2019stability},   \n and given by \n\\begin{align*}\n u(x,y) &=\\pi \\sin^2(\\pi x) \\sin(2\\pi y),\\\\\n v(x,y) &=-\\pi \\sin(2\\pi x) \\sin^2(\\pi y),\\\\\n p(x,y) &=\\sin(\\pi y) -\\frac{2}{\\pi},\n\\end{align*} \nwith $g=0$. The source term is computed  via $\\boldsymbol{f}=(f_1,f_2)=- \\epsilon^2 \\Delta\\boldsymbol{u} +\\boldsymbol{u} +  \\nabla  p$,  and it is\n\\begin{align*}\nf_1 &=(4\\pi^3\\epsilon^2+\\pi)\\sin^2(\\pi x) \\sin(2\\pi y)-2\\pi^3\\epsilon^2\\cos(2\\pi x)\\sin(2\\pi y), \\\\\nf_2& = -(4\\pi^3\\epsilon^3+\\pi)\\sin(2\\pi x)\\sin^2(\\pi y)+2\\pi^3\\epsilon^2\\sin(2\\pi x)\\cos(2\\pi y)+\\pi \\cos(\\pi y).\n\\end{align*}\n\nTo validate our theoretical LFA predictions, we compute the actual multigrid convergence factors by\n\\begin{equation*}\n\\hat{\\rho}^{(k)}_h=\\left( \\frac{||r_k||}{||r_0||}\\right)^{1\/k},\n\\end{equation*}\nwhere $r_k=b_h-\\mathcal{K}_h\\boldsymbol{z}_k$ is the residual  and $\\boldsymbol{z}_k$ is the $k$-th multigrid iteration. The initial guess is chosen randomly.  In our test, we report  $\\hat{\\rho}^{(k)}_h=:\\hat{\\rho}_h $ with  the smallest $k$ such that $||r_k||\/|r_0|\\leq 10^{-10}$.  \n\nAs mentioned before, computing the exact solution of the Schur complement system \\eqref{eq:solution-schur-complement} is expensive. For our multigrid tests, we apply a few weighted ($\\omega_J$) Jacobi iterations to the Schur complement system. We choose $\\omega_J=0.8$ which seems more robust to $\\epsilon$. The number of Jacobi iterations is set as  three. \n\n\\subsubsection{Two-grid results}\nWe first report actual two-grid convergence factor  using  $h=1\/64$ and  three Jacobi iterations for solving the Schur complement.    Table \\ref{tab:TG-omega1} shows that two-grid actual performance using $\\omega=1$ matches with  the LFA predictions in  Table \\ref{tab:LFA-results-h64-omega}, except for a small difference for a $\\epsilon =2^{-8}$, which might suggest that more iterations are needed for the Schur complement system. However, due to the satisfactory convergence factor of the actual performance, we do not further explore this.  Using optimal $\\omega$, Table \\ref{tab:TG-omega2} shows that the actual two-grid performance matches two-grid LFA predictions reported in Table   \\ref{tab:LFA-results-h64-omega}, except for $\\epsilon=2^{-6}, 2^{-8}$. Again,  the measured convergence factor is satisfactory, and there is no need to consider more Jacobi iterations for the Schur complement system. \n\n \n   \n \\begin{table}[H]\n \\caption{Two-grid measured convergence factor, $\\hat{\\rho}_h(\\nu)$, using three Jacobi iterations for solving the Schur complement,  $h=1\/64$ and   $\\omega=1$.}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccc }\n\\hline\n$  \\epsilon, \\omega=1 $                               &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(1)$      &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(2)$     &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(3)$    & $\\hat{\\rho}_h(4)$  \\\\ \\hline\n \n$1$                                                             & 0.319                  &0.111            &0.033       &   0.023     \\\\\n$2^{-2} $                                                     &0.317                  & 0.109             &0.033         &  0.023   \\\\\n$2^{-4} $                                                    & 0.300                 &  0.094            & 0.029       &  0.021    \\\\\n$2^{-6}$                                                     & 0.209                 &0.047             &0.023       & 0.015       \\\\\n$2^{-8} $                                                     &0.145                   & 0.035             &0.020         & 0.015    \\\\\n\\hline\n \\end{tabular}\\label{tab:TG-omega1}\n\\end{table}\n\n \n   \n \\begin{table}[H]\n \\caption{Two-grid measured convergence facto, $\\hat{\\rho}_h(\\nu)$, using three Jacobi iterations for solving the Schur complement, $h=1\/64$ and  $\\omega_{\\rm opt}$, see \\eqref{eq:opt-omega}.}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccc }\n\\hline\n$\\epsilon, \\omega_{\\rm opt}$                               &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(1)$      &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(2)$     &$\\hat{\\rho}_h(3)$    & $\\hat{\\rho}_h(4)$  \\\\ \\hline\n \n$1$                                                             & 0.266                & 0.082            &0.030       &   0.023      \\\\\n$2^{-2} $                                                    &  0.264             &0.080              & 0.030         &  0.024    \\\\\n$2^{-4}$                                                    &  0.248               &0.068           &0.029            & 0.023   \\\\\n$2^{-6}$                                                     &0.163                &  0.044           & 0.024          &  0.016   \\\\\n$2^{-8}$                                                     & 0.165                &0.040               & 0.019         &0.015   \\\\\n\\hline\n \\end{tabular}\\label{tab:TG-omega2}\n\\end{table}\n\n\\subsubsection{V(1,1)-cycle results}\nA two-grid method is computationally costly since  we have to  solve the coarse problem directly and if the initial mesh is fine, then the next coarser mesh may give rise to a large problem as well.  In practice, deeply-nested W-cycle and V-cycle are preferred.  We now explore the V(1,1)-cycle multigrid methods with two choices of $\\omega$ and varying values of the physical parameter $\\epsilon$.  In order to study the sensitivity of solving the Schur complement system, we consider  one, two, and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system.  We consider different $n\\times n$ finest meshgrids, where $n=32,  64,128, 256$.\n\n{\\bf One iteration for Schur complement system:} We first report the iteration counts for  V(1,1)-cycle multigrid methods using one iteration of Jacobi relaxation for the Schur complement system in Table \\ref{tab:Itn-Schur-Jacobi-number-one} to achieve the tolerance $||r_k||\/|r_0|\\leq 10^{-10}$. We see that using $\\omega=1$ and optimal $\\omega$ give similar performance. When $\\epsilon =2^{-6}, 2^{-8}$, the iteration count increase dramatically.\nTo mitigate the effect of this degradation, we will consider two or three Jacobi iterations for the Schur complement system.    \n    \n    \n   \n \\begin{table}[H]\n \\caption{Iteration accounts for V(1,1)-cycle multigrid with one Jacobi iteration for solving the Schur complement.}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{lcccc }\n\\hline\n$\\epsilon, \\omega=1$                               &$n=32$      &$n=64$     &$n=128$    & $n=256$  \\\\ \n \n$1$                                                             &  13                &   13               &13        &  15            \\\\\n$2^{-2} $                                                   &12                  & 13                 & 13       &  14           \\\\\n$2^{-4}$                                                    &11                 &  11               &  12          &  12         \\\\\n$2^{-6}$                                                    &23                  & 18                 &13        &  11           \\\\\n$2^{-8}$                                                     & 50                 &   50                &47      &  34            \\\\\n\\hline\n$\\epsilon, \\omega_{\\rm opt}$                   &$n=32$      &$n=64$     &$n=128$    & $n=256$  \\\\ \n \n$1$                                                             & 12                   &12                & 12         & 15           \\\\\n$2^{-2} $                                                    & 12                  & 12                  &  12       &  14         \\\\\n$2^{-4}$                                                    & 11                  & 11                  &11          &  11        \\\\\n$2^{-6}$                                                    &  26                  &19               &  14       &  12          \\\\\n$2^{-8}$                                                    &50                  &50                 &50       & 38            \\\\\n\\hline\n \\end{tabular}\\label{tab:Itn-Schur-Jacobi-number-one}\n\\end{table}\n\n   \n   \n  \n{\\bf Two iterations for Schur complement system:} We report the convergence history of the relative residual norm $\\frac{||r_k||}{||r_0||}$  as a function of the number of V(1,1)-cycles using two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system.  Figure \\ref{fig:V-vs-J2-eps0} reports the results for $\\epsilon=1$. We see that using optimal $\\omega$ takes 12  V(1,1)-cycle iterations to achieve the stopping tolerance and it takes 13 iterations for $\\omega=1$. The convergence behavior is independent of meshsize $h$.  A similar performance is seen for  $\\epsilon=2^{-2}, 2^{-4}, 2^{-6}, 2^{-8}$ in Figures  \\ref{fig:V-vs-J2-eps2}, \\ref{fig:V-vs-J2-eps4},  \\ref{fig:V-vs-J2-eps6} and  \\ref{fig:V-vs-J2-eps8}.   Observe that for smaller values of $\\epsilon$, the iteration count does not increase.   Using optimal $\\omega$  has   one iteration number  fewer than that  of $\\omega=1$.  Thus, it is simple and reasonable to use $\\omega=1$ in practice. \n \n\n\\begin{figure}[h!] \n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J2-eps0.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J2-eps0.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=1$ and two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-J2-eps0}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J2-eps2.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J2-eps2.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual  of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-2}$ and two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-J2-eps2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!] \n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J2-eps4.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J2-eps4.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual  of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-4}$ and two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-J2-eps4}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J2-eps6.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J2-eps6.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-6}$ and two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-J2-eps6}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J2-eps8.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J2-eps8.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-8}$ and two Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-J2-eps8}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n \n{\\bf Three iterations for Schur complement system:} We explore V(1,1)-cycle iterations with two choices of $\\omega$ and a varying physical parameter $\\epsilon$, using  three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system.  We report the history of relative residual $\\frac{||r_k||}{||r_0||}$  as a function of the  V(1,1)-cycle iteration counts for $n\\times n$ meshgrid ($n=32,  64,128, 256$).  Figure \\ref{fig:V-vs-eps0} shows the results for $\\epsilon=1$. We see that using optimal $\\omega$ takes 12 iterations of V(1,1)-cycle to achieve the stopping tolerance and it takes 13 iterations for $\\omega=1$. We see that the convergence behavior is independent of meshsize $h$.  A similar performance is seen for  $\\epsilon=2^{-2}, 2^{-4}, 2^{-6}, 2^{-8}$ in Figures \\ref{fig:V-vs-eps2}, \\ref{fig:V-vs-eps4},  \\ref{fig:V-vs-eps6} and  \\ref{fig:V-vs-eps8}.  Compared with two Jacobi iterations for solving the Schur complement system, three Jacobi iterations give a slightly better results for small  $\\epsilon=2^{-6}, 2^{-8}$.  Again using optimal $\\omega$  has   one iteration number  less than that  of $\\omega=1$.  Thus, it is simple and reasonable to use $\\omega=1$ in practice. Moreover, two Jacobi iterations are enough to achieve robustness V(1,1)-cycle multgrid with respect to meshgrid and physical parameter $\\epsilon$.  \n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J3-eps0.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J3-eps0.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=1$ and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-eps0}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J3-eps2.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J3-eps2.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-2}$ and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-eps2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J3-eps4.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J3-eps4.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual  of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-4}$ and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-eps4}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J3-eps6.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J3-eps6.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual  of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-6}$ and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-eps6}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h!]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega1J3-eps8.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=0.49\\textwidth]{.\/figures\/V-omega2J3-eps8.pdf}\n \\caption{Convergence history: Number of iterations versus relative residual of V(1,1)-cycle with $\\epsilon=2^{-8}$ and three Jacobi iterations for Schur complement system (left $\\omega=1$ and right  optimal $\\omega$).} \\label{fig:V-vs-eps8}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n \n \\section{Conclusions}\\label{sec:con}\n \n \n We propose a parameter-robust multigrid method for solving the discrete system of Stokes-Darcy problems, with the maker and cell scheme used for the discretization. The resulting linear system is a saddle-point system.  In contrast to existing Vanka smoothers, where the velocities and pressure unknowns in a grid cell are updated simultaneously,  we propose Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation scheme, where the Laplace-like term in the saddle-point system is solved by an additive Vanka algorithm.  This approach decouples the velocities and pressure unknowns. Moreover, only matrix-vector products are needed in our proposed multigrid method.   LFA is used to analyze the smoothing process and help choose the optimal parameter that minimizing LFA smoothing factor. From LFA, we derive the stencil of  additive Vanka for the Laplace-like operator, which can help form the global iteration matrix, avoiding solving many subproblems in the classical additive Vanka setting. \n \n Our main contribution is that we derive the optimal algorithmic parameter and optimal LFA smoothing factor for Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation scheme, and show that this scheme is highly efficient with respect to physical parameter. Our theoretical results reveal that although the optimal damping parameter is related to physical parameter and meshsize, it is very close to one. We also present the theoretical LFA smoothing factor with damping parameter one. In Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation, we have to solve a Schur complement system. Direct solver is  often expensive.  We propose an inexact version of Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin relaxation, where we apply only two or three iterations of Jacobi to the Schur complement system to achieve the same performance as that of an exact solve.   We show that using damping parameter one can achieve almost the same performance as that of optimal result, and the results are close to exact version. Thus, using damping parameter one is recommended.  Our V-cycle multigrid   illustrates  high efficiency of our relaxation scheme and robustness to physical parameter.  \n \nWe comment that the proposed Vanka-based Braess-Sarazin multigrid method can be used\nas a preconditioner for Krylov subspace methods. We have limited ourselves for  the MAC scheme on uniform grids. However,  it is possible to extend the Vanka-smoother to  non-uniform grids.  \n \n\\bibliographystyle{siam}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nAirspace is utilized today by far lesser aircraft than it can accommodate,\nespecially low altitude airspace. There are more and more applications\nfor UAVs in low altitude airspace, ranging from the on-demand package\ndelivery to traffic and wildlife surveillance, inspection of infrastructure,\nsearch and rescue, agriculture, and cinematography. Moreover, since\nUAVs are usually small owing to portability requirements, it is often\nnecessary to deploy a team of UAVs to accomplish certain missions.\nAll these applications share a common need for both navigation and\nairspace management. One good starting point is NASA's Unmanned Aerial\nSystem Traffic Management (UTM) project, which organized a symposium\nto begin preparations of a solution for low altitude traffic management\nto be proposed to the Federal Aviation Administration. What is more,\nair traffic for UAVs is attracted more and more research \\cite{IoD(2016)},\\cite{Devasia(2016)}.\nTraditionally, the main role of air traffic management (ATM) is to\nkeep a prescribed separation among all aircraft by using centralized\ncontrol. However, it is infeasible for increasing UAVs because the\ntraditional control method lacks scalability. In order to address\nsuch a problem, free flight is a developing air traffic control method\nthat uses no centralized control. Instead, parts of airspace are reserved\ndynamically and automatically in a distributed way using computer\ncommunication to ensure the required separation among aircraft. This\nnew system may be implemented into the U.S. air traffic control system\nin the next decade. Airspace may be allocated temporarily by an ATM\nfor a special task within a given time interval. In this airspace,\nthese aircraft have to be managed so that they can complete their\ntasks meanwhile avoiding collision. In \\cite{IoD(2016)}, the airspace\nis structured similarly to the road network as shown in Figure \\ref{Airspacestructure}(a).\nAircraft are only allowed inside the following three: \\emph{airways}\nplaying a similar role to roads or virtual tubes, \\emph{intersections}\nformed by at least two airways, and \\emph{nodes} which are the points\nof interest reachable through an alternating sequence of airways and\nintersections. \n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.65]{Airspacesturcure} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Practical application scenarios of virtual tube passing problem.}\n\\label{Airspacestructure} \n\\end{figure}\n\nIn this paper, for simplicity, coordinating the motions of VTOL UAVs\nto pass an \\emph{airway }is considered, which can be taken as a virtual\ntube or corridor in the air. Concretely, the main problem is to coordinate\nthe motions of VTOL UAVs include passing a virtual tube, inter-agent\nconflict (coming within the minimum allowed distance between each\nother, not to be confused with a \\emph{collision}) avoidance and keeping\nwithin the virtual tube, which is called the \\emph{virtual tube passing\nproblem }here, which is very common in practice. For example, virtual\ntubes can be paths connecting two places, designed to bypass areas\nhaving the dense population or to be covered by wireless mobile networks\n(4G or 5G). virtual tubes can also be gates, corridors or windows,\nbecause they can be viewed as virtual virtual tubes, as shown in Figure\n\\ref{Airspacestructure}(b). Such problems of coordination of multiple\nagents have been addressed partly using different approaches, various\nstability criteria and numerous control techniques \\cite{Parker(2009)},\\cite{Ren(2011)},\\cite{Antonelli(2013)},\\cite{Yan(2013)},\\cite{Hoy(2015)},\\cite{Oh(2015)},\\cite{Survey}.\nA commonly-used method, namely the dynamic region-following formation\ncontrol, is to organize multiple agents as a group inside a region\nand then move the group to pass virtual tubes, where the size of the\nregion can vary according to the virtual tubes \\cite{Hou(2009)},\\cite{Chen(2018)},\\cite{Dutta(2018)},\\cite{Wang(2007)}.\nHowever, the formation control is not very suited for the air traffic\ncontrol problem considered. First, each UAV has its own task, while\nthe formation control means that one has to wait for other ones. Second,\nhigher-level coordination should be made to decide which ones should\nbe in one group. What is more, the number of UAVs in airspace is varying\ndynamically, which increases the design difficulty of the higher-level\ncoordination. Another way is to plan the trajectories for UAVs \\cite{Liu(2019)},\\cite{Capt},\\cite{Ingersoll(2016)}.\nHowever, planning often depends on global information and may have\nto be updated due to uncertainties in practice, which brings more\ncomplex calculations.\n\nAccording to the consideration above, we propose distributed control\nfor VTOL UAV swarm, each one having the same control protocol. Distributed\ncontrol will not use the global information so that the computation\nonly depends on the number of local UAVs \\cite{Connectedness},\\cite{Liao(2017)},\\cite{Distributed},\\cite{Zhu(2015)}.\nThis framework is applicable to dense air traffic. By the proposed\nprotocol, every UAV can pass a virtual tube freely not in formation,\nmeanwhile avoiding conflict with each other and keeping within the\nvirtual tube once it enters into the virtual tube. During the process,\nsome UAVs with high speed will overtake slow ones. The idea used is\nsimialr to artificial potential field methods because of its ease-of-use,\nwhere designed barrier functions \\cite{Safety} are taken as artificial\npotential functions. The distributed control laws use the negative\ngradient of mixing of attractive and repulsive potential functions\nto produce vector fields that ensure the passing and conflict avoidance,\nrespectively. However, it is not easy to use such an idea, with two\nreasons in the following. \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item The guidance strategy for each UAV has to design. An easy method is\nto set a chain of waypoints for each UAV. However, UAVs may get trapped\nwhen using this method. Namely, they have not arrived at their corresponding\nwaypoints, but velocities are zero. Consequently, in order to avoid\ntrap, a higher-level decision should be made to set these waypoints.\nAs indicated by \\cite{Hernandez(2011)}, the complexity of the calculation\nof undesired equilibria remains an open problem. An example is proposed\nin \\cite{Ingersoll(2016)}, modelling the virtual tube passing problem\nas an objective optimization problem, which can get the optimal path\nto minimize the length, time or energy by designing suitable optimization-based\nalgorithm and objective functions. This algorithm works well for offline\npath-planning. However, if the obstacles to avoid are dynamic, the\noptimization-based algorithm will consume a lot of time to update\nglobal information and the corresponding constraints during the online\npath-planning process, which is not suitable for dense air traffic\nbecause of lacking real-time of control. Compared to the optimal solution\nof targets, safety, real-time and reliability are more necessary in\npractice. \n\\item Besides this problem, the second problem is also encountered in practice\nespecially for UAVs outdoor. The conflict of two agents is often defined\nin control strategies that their distance is less than a safety distance.\nThe area is called \\emph{safety area} of an agent if the distance\nto the agent is less than the safety distance. However, a conflict\nwill happen in practice even if conflict avoidance is proved formally\nbecause some assumptions will be violated in practice. For example,\na UAV may enter into the safety area of another due to an unpredictable\ncommunication delay. On the other hand, most likely, two UAVs may\nnot have a real collision in physics because the safety distance is\noften set large by considering various uncertainties, such as estimate\nerror, communication delay, and control delay. This is a big difference\nfrom some indoor robots with a highly accurate position estimation\nand control. In most literature, if their distance is less than a\nsafety distance, then their control schemes either do not work or\neven push the agent towards the center of the safety area rather than\nleaving the safety area. For example, some studies have used the following\nbarrier function terms for collision avoidance, such as $1\\mathord{\\left\/\\left(\\left\\Vert {\\bf p}_{i}-{\\bf p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}-R\\right)\\right.}$\\cite[p. 323]{Quan(2017)}\nor $\\ln\\left(\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert -R\\right)$\n\\cite{Panagou(2016)}, where $\\mathbf{p}_{i}$, $\\mathbf{p}_{j}$\nare two UAVs'{} positions, and $R>0$ is the separation distance.\nThe principle is to design a controller to make the barrier function\nterms bounded so that $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}>R$\nif $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(0\\right)-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert ^{2}>R$.\nOtherwise, $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}=R$\nwill make the barrier function term unbounded. The separation distance\nfor robots indoor is often the sum of the two robots'{} physical\nradius, namely $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}<R$\nwill not happen in practice. But, the separation distance is set largely\nfor UAVs compared with their sizes. Due to some uncertainties such\nas communication delay, $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}<R$\nwill happen in the air. As a consequence, the control corresponding\nto the barrier function terms mentioned above will make $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}\\rightarrow0$\nif $1\\mathord{\\left\/\\left(\\left\\Vert {\\bf p}_{i}-{\\bf p}_{j}\\right\\Vert ^{2}-R\\right)\\right.}$\nis used (the two UAVs are pushed together by the design controller)\nor appear numerical computation error if $\\ln\\left(\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\right\\Vert -R\\right)$\nis used. \n\\end{itemize}\nMotivated by these problems, practical distributed control is proposed\nhere to solve the virtual tube passing problem. Such a problem can\nbe classified into a \\emph{basic virtual tube passing problem }and\\emph{\n}a\\emph{ general virtual tube passing problem. }The former only considers\nthat all\\textbf{ }UAVs are within the virtual tube at the beginning,\nwhile the latter allows UAVs at everywhere in the beginning. For the\nbasic virtual tube passing problem,\\emph{ }in light of artificial\npotential field methods, one Lyapunov function and two barrier functions\nare designed elaborately for approaching the finishing line, avoiding\nconflict with other UAVs, and keeping within the virtual tube, respectively.\nThe distributed controller design is based on the combination of the\nthree Lyapunov-like functions. A formal proof is given to show that\nall UAVs can pass the virtual tube without trapping, avoid conflict\nand keep within the virtual tube. What is more, by the proposed control,\na UAV can keep away from another UAV or return back to the virtual\ntube as soon as possible, once it enters into the safety area of another\nUAV or has a conflict with the virtual tube during it is passing the\nvirtual tube. For the general virtual tube passing problem,\\emph{\n}several virtual tube type areas are defined to cover the whole airspace.\nAs a consequence, the general virtual tube passing problem is decomposed\ninto several basic\\textbf{ }virtual tube passing problems. As a result,\nfor UAVs in different areas, they have different controllers according\nto the design of the basic virtual tube passing problem. By switching\nthese controllers, the general virtual tube passing problem can be\nsolved.\n\nThe practicability of the proposed distributed control lies on the\nfollowing six features: \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item \\emph{No ID required}. Unlike the formation control, neighboring UAVs'\nIDs of a UAV are not required by the proposed distributed control.\nSome active detection devices such as cameras or radars may only detect\nneighboring UAVs' position and velocity but no IDs, because these\nUAVs may look similarly. This implies that the proposed distributed\ncontrol can work autonomously without communication. \n\\item \\emph{Practical model used}. A double integral model with the given\nvelocity command as input is proposed for UAVs. This model is simple\nand easy to obtain. What is more, distributed control is developed\nfor various tasks based on commercial semi-autonomous autopilots. \n\\item \\emph{Control saturation}. The maximum velocity command in the proposed\ndistributed controller is confined according to the requirement of\nsemi-autonomous autopilots. \n\\item \\emph{Conflict-free}. A formal proof about conflict avoidance and\nkeeping within the virtual tube is given. Even if a UAV enters into\nthe safety area of another UAV or has a conflict with the virtual\ntube, it can keep away from the UAV or can return back to the virtual\ntube as soon as possible. \n\\item \\emph{Convergence}. A formal proof is given to show that all UAVs\npass the finishing line without getting trapped. \n\\item \\emph{Low time complexity}. The proposed control protocol is simple\nand can be computed at high speed, which is more suitable for dense\nair traffic than optimization-based algorithms. The calculation time\nof finding feasible solutions for different strategies will be compared\nin simulation. \n\\end{itemize}\nThe paper is organised as follows. In Section II, a UAV control model\nis proposed, which contains the filtered position model and three\ntypes of areas, to formulate the virtual tube passing problem composed\nof a basic one and a general one. Some functions for different purposes\nare introduced in Section III for controller design. In Section IV,\na controller is designed based on Lyapunov-like functions to solve\nthe basic virtual tube passing problem, where the stability analysis\nis made. In Section V, a controller is designed based on Lyapunov-like\nfunctions to solve the general virtual tube passing problem, by decomposing\nthis problem into several basic virtual tube passing problems. The\neffectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulation\nand flight experiments in Section VI. The conclusions are given in\nSection VII. Some details of mathematical proof process are given\nin Section VIII as appendix.\n\n\\section{Problem Formulation}\n\nIn this section, a UAV control model is introduced first, including\nthree types of areas, namely safety area, avoidance area, and detection\narea, used for control. Then, the virtual tube passing\\emph{ }problem\nis formulated into a basic one and a general one depending on the\ninitial places of UAVs.\n\n\\subsection{UAV Control Model}\n\n\\subsubsection{Position Model}\n\nThere are ${M}$ VTOL UAVs in local airspace at the same altitude\nsatisfying the following model \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{\\dot{p}}_{i} & =\\mathbf{v}_{i}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\mathbf{\\dot{v}}_{i} & =-l_{i}\\left(\\mathbf{v}_{i}-\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\right)\\label{positionmodel_ab_con_i}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $l_{i}>0,$ $\\mathbf{p}_{i}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$ and $\\mathbf{v}_{i}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$\nare the position and velocity of the $i$th VTOL UAV, $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$\nis the velocity command of the $i$th UAV, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M.$ The\ncontrol gain $l_{i}$ depends on the $i$th UAV and the semi-autonomous\nautopilot used, which can be obtained through flight experiments.\nFrom the model (\\ref{positionmodel_ab_con_i}), $\\lim_{t\\rightarrow\\infty}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\right\\Vert =0$\nif $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$ is constant. Here, the velocity command\n$\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$ for the $i$th VTOL UAV, is subject to\na saturation defined as where ${v_{\\text{m},i}}>0$ is the maximum\nspeed of the $i$th VTOL UAVs, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M$, $\\mathbf{v}\\triangleq\\lbrack{{v}_{1}}$\n${{v}_{2}}]{^{\\text{T}}}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$. The saturation function\nsa${\\text{t}}\\left(\\mathbf{v},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)$ and the vector\n$\\mathbf{v}$ are parallel all the time so it can keep the flying\ndirection the same if $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}\\right\\Vert >{v_{\\text{m},i}}$\n\\cite{Quan(2017)}. The saturation function can be rewritten as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\text{sat}\\left(\\mathbf{v},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)={{\\kappa}_{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}}\\left(\\mathbf{v}\\right)\\mathbf{v}\\label{sat0}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere \n\\[\n{{\\kappa}_{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}}\\left(\\mathbf{v}\\right)\\triangleq\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\n1,\\\\\n\\frac{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}\\right\\Vert },\n\\end{array}\\begin{array}{c}\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}\\right\\Vert \\leq{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\\\\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}\\right\\Vert >{v_{\\text{m},i}}\n\\end{array}\\right..\n\\]\nIt is obvious that $0<{{\\kappa}_{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}}\\left(\\mathbf{v}\\right)\\leq1$.\nSometimes, ${{\\kappa}_{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}}\\left(\\mathbf{v}\\right)$\nwill be written as ${{\\kappa}_{{v_{\\text{m},i}}}}$ for short. According\nto this, if and only if $\\mathbf{v=0},$ then \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{v}^{\\text{T}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(\\mathbf{v},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)=0.\\label{saturation1}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\textbf{Remark 1. }It is well-known that a typical multicopter is\na physical system with underactuated dynamics \\cite[pp.126-130]{Quan(2017)}.\nBut, many organizations or companies have designed some open source\nsemi-autonomous autopilots or offered semi-autonomous autopilots with\nsoftware development kits. The semi-autonomous autopilots can be used\nfor velocity control of VTOL UAVs. For example, A3 autopilots released\nby DJI allow the range of the horizontal velocity command from $-10$m\/s$\\sim10$m\/s\n\\cite{A3}. With such an autopilot, the velocity of a VTOL UAV can\ntrack a given velocity command in a reasonable time. Not only can\nthis avoid the trouble of modifying the low-level source code of autopilots,\nbut also it can utilize commercial autopilots to complete various\ntasks. So, the dynamics (\\ref{positionmodel_ab_con_i}) is practical\nespecially for higher-level control.\n\n\\subsubsection{Filtered Position Model}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.9]{Intuitiveinterpretation} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Intuitive interpretation for filtered position}\n\\label{Intuitive} \n\\end{figure}\n\nIn this section, the motion of each VTOL UAV is transformed into a\nsingle integrator form to simplify the controller design and analysis.\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{Intuitive}, although the position distances\nof the three cases are the same, namely a marginal avoidance distance,\nthe case in Figure \\ref{Intuitive}(b) needs to carry out avoidance\nurgently by considering the velocity. However, the case in Figure\n\\ref{Intuitive}(a) in fact does not need to be considered to perform\ncollision avoidance. With such an intuition, a filtered position is\ndefined as follows: \n\\begin{equation}\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\triangleq{\\mathbf{p}}_{i}+\\frac{1}{{l}_{i}}\\mathbf{v}_{i}.\\label{FilteredPosition}\n\\end{equation}\n{Then} \n\\begin{align}\n\\boldsymbol{\\dot{\\xi}}_{i} & =\\mathbf{\\dot{p}}_{i}+\\frac{1}{{l}_{i}}\\mathbf{\\dot{v}}_{i}\\nonumber \\\\\n & =\\mathbf{v}_{i}-\\frac{1}{{l}_{i}}{l}_{i}\\left(\\mathbf{v}_{i}-\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\right)\\nonumber \\\\\n & =\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\label{filteredposdyn}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $i=1,2,\\cdots,M${. Let} \n\\begin{equation}\nr_{\\text{v}}=\\max_{i}\\frac{v_{\\text{m},i}}{l_{i}}.\\label{rv}\n\\end{equation}\n\nIn the following, a relationship between the position error and the\nfiltered position error is shown.\n\n\\textbf{Proposition 1}. Given any $r>0,$ for the $i$th and $j$th\nVTOL UAVs, if $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert \\leq{v_{\\text{m},i}}$\nand the filtered position error satisfies $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert \\geq r+2r_{\\text{v}},$\nthen \n\\[\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{j}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert \\geq r\n\\]\n$t\\geq0,$ where $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M,$ $i\\neq j,\\ r>0$.\n\n\\emph{Proof}. See \\emph{Appendix}. $\\square$\n\n\\subsection{Three Types of Areas around a UAV}\n\nIn light of \\cite{Connectedness}, three types of areas used for control,\nnamely safety area, avoidance area, and detection area, are defined.\nUnlike \\cite{Connectedness}, these areas are suit for UAVs and the\nvelocity is further introduced.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{Threeaera} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Safety area, avoidance area and detection area of a UAV.}\n\\label{Threeaera} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Safety Area}\n\nIn order to avoid a conflict, as shown in Figure \\ref{Threeaera},\nthe \\emph{safety} \\emph{radius} $r_{\\text{s}}$ of a UAV is defined\nas \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{S}_{i}=\\left\\{ \\mathbf{x}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}\\left\\vert \\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\right\\Vert \\leq r_{\\text{s}}\\right.\\right\\} \\label{Safetyaera}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $r_{\\text{s}}>0$ is the safety radius, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M.$ It\nshould be noted that we consider the velocity of the $i$th UAV in\nthe definition of $\\mathcal{S}_{i}$. For all UAVs, no \\emph{confliction}\nwith each other implies \n\\[\n\\mathcal{S}_{i}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{j}=\\varnothing\n\\]\nnamely \n\\begin{equation}\n\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}.\\label{sdis}\n\\end{equation}\n\\textit{Proposition 1} implies that two VTOL UAVs will be separated\nlargely enough if (\\ref{sdis}) is satisfied with a safety radius\\emph{\n}$r_{\\text{s}}$ large enough.\n\n\\subsubsection{Avoidance Area}\n\nBesides the safety area, there exists an \\emph{avoidance area} used\nfor starting avoidance control. If another UAV is out of the avoidance\narea of the $i$th UAV, then the object will not need to be avoided.\nFor the $i$th UAV, the \\emph{avoidance area }for other UAVs is\\emph{\n}defined as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{A}_{i}=\\left\\{ \\mathbf{x}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}\\left\\vert \\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\right\\Vert \\leq r_{\\text{a}}\\right.\\right\\} \\label{Avoidancearea}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $r_{\\text{a}}>0$ is the \\emph{avoidance radius}, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M.$\nIt should be noted that we consider the velocity of the $i$th UAV\nin the definition of $\\mathcal{A}_{i}$. If \n\\[\n\\mathcal{A}_{i}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{j}\\neq\\varnothing,\n\\]\nnamely \n\\[\n\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}\\right\\Vert \\leq r_{\\text{a}}+r_{\\text{s}}\n\\]\nthen the $j$th UAV should be avoided by the $i$th UAV. Since \n\\[\n\\mathcal{A}_{i}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{j}\\neq\\varnothing\\Leftrightarrow\\mathcal{A}_{j}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{i}\\neq\\varnothing\n\\]\naccording to the definition of $\\mathcal{A}_{i},$ the $i$th UAV\nshould be avoided by the $j$th UAV at the same time. When the $j$th\nUAV just enters into the avoidance area of the $i$th UAV, it is required\nthat they have not conflicted at the beginning. Therefore,\\textbf{\n}we require \n\\[\nr_{\\text{a}}>r_{\\text{s}}.\n\\]\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Detection Area}\n\nBy cameras, radars, or Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication, the\nUAVs can receive the positions and velocities of their neighboring\nUAVs. The \\emph{detection area }only\\emph{ }depends on the detection\nrange of the used devices, which is only related to its position.\nFor the $i$th UAV, this area is defined as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal{D}_{i}=\\left\\{ \\mathbf{x}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{2}\\left\\vert \\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}-\\mathbf{p}_{i}\\right\\Vert \\leq r_{\\text{d}}\\right.\\right\\} \\label{DetectionArea}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $r_{\\text{d}}>0$ is the \\emph{detection radius},$\\ i=1,2,\\cdots,M$.\nWhen another UAV is within this area, it can be detected.\n\n\\textbf{Proposition 2}. Suppose $r_{\\text{d}}>r_{\\text{s}}+r_{\\text{a}}+2r_{\\text{v}}{,}$\n$i=1,2,\\cdots,M{.}$ Then for any $i\\neq j,$ if $\\mathcal{A}_{i}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{j}\\neq\\varnothing,$\nthen $\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\in\\mathcal{D}_{i},$ $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\textit{Proof}. It is similar to proof of \\textit{Proposition 1. }$\\square$\n\nTo simplify the following problems, we have the following assumption\nfor all VTOL UAVs.\n\n\\textbf{Assumption 1}. The radius of the detection area satisfies\n$r_{\\text{d}}>r_{\\text{s}}+r_{\\text{a}}+2r_{\\text{v}}{.}$\n\nAccording to \\textit{Assumption 1},\\textbf{ }for the $i$th UAV, any\nother UAV entering into its avoidance area can be detected by the\n$i$th UAV and will not conflict with the $i$th UAV initially, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M{.}$\n\n\\subsection{virtual tube Passing\\emph{ }Problem Formulation}\n\nIn a horizontal plane, as shown in Figure \\ref{airwaytunnel}, a virtual\ntube (analogous to an \\emph{airway} or a \\emph{highway} on the ground)\nhere is a horizontal long band with the width $2r_{\\text{t}}$ and\ncenterline starting from $\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{2}$\nto $\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\in\\mathbb{R}^{2},$ where $r_{\\text{t}}>L{{r}_{\\text{a}}},$\nwhere $L\\in{\\mathbb\n\\mathbb{Z\n}}_{+}$ is the lane number in the virtual tube allowed for UAVs. \n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{airwaytunnel} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Airspace and virtual tube.}\n\\label{airwaytunnel} \n\\end{figure}\n\nDefine \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}},\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right) & \\triangleq\\mathbf{I}_{2}-\\frac{\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right)\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right){}^{\\text{T}}}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right\\Vert ^{2}}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}},\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,3}}\\right) & \\triangleq\\mathbf{I}{}_{2}-\\frac{\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,3}}\\right)\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,3}}\\right){}^{\\text{T}}}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,3}}\\right\\Vert ^{2}}.\\label{define}\n\\end{align}\nHere, matrix $\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}=\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}^{\\text{T}},$\n$\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}=\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}^{\\text{T}}\\in{\\mathbb{R}}^{2\\times2}$\nare positive semi-definite matrices. According to the projection operator\n\\cite[p. 480]{Projection}, the value $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)\\right\\Vert $\nis the distance from $\\mathbf{p\\i\n\\mathbb{R\n}^{2}$ to the straight line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}}$\nas shown in Figure \\ref{Projection}. Particularly, the equation $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)\\right\\Vert =0$\nimplies that $\\mathbf{p}$ is on the straight-line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}}$.\nSimilarly, the value $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\\right\\Vert $\nis the distance from $\\mathbf{p}$ to the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$.\nDefine position errors as \n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}{_{\\text{l,}i}} & \\triangleq\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\\\\\n\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}} & \\triangleq\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{j}}\\\\\n\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}{_{\\text{t,}i}} & \\triangleq\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\n\\end{align*}\nand the filtered position errors as \n\\begin{align*}\n\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{l,}i} & \\triangleq\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left(\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right)\\\\\n\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij} & \\triangleq\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}{}_{j}\\\\\n\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t,}i} & \\triangleq\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left(\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right)\n\\end{align*}\nwhere $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M.$ With the definitions above, according to\n(\\ref{positionmodel_ab_con_i}), the derivatives of the filtered errors\nare \n\\begin{align}\n\\boldsymbol{\\dot{\\tilde{\\xi}}}{_{\\text{l,}i}} & =\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\label{lmodel}\\\\\n\\boldsymbol{\\dot{\\tilde{\\xi}}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}} & =\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}-\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},j}\\label{mmodel}\\\\\n\\boldsymbol{\\dot{\\tilde{\\xi}}}{}_{\\text{t,}i} & =\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\label{tmodel}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{Projection} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Diagram of the projective operator.}\n\\label{Projection} \n\\end{figure}\n\nWith the description above, the following assumptions are proposed.\n\n\\textbf{Assumption 2}. As shown in Figure \\ref{airwaytunnel}, the\ninitial condition $\\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(0\\right),\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(0\\right),$\n$i=1,2,\\cdots,M$ are all within the virtual tube or its extension,\nnamely \n\\begin{align*}\n\\left(\\frac{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}}{\\left\\Vert {{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right\\Vert }\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(0\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right) & <0\\\\\n\\left(\\frac{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}}{\\left\\Vert {{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right\\Vert }\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(0\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right) & <0\n\\end{align*}\nwhere $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$\nis perpendicular to $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}}$\nwith $\\left\\Vert {{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}\\right\\Vert =r_{\\text{t}}.$\n\n\\textbf{Assumption 2}$^{\\prime}$. As shown in Figure \\ref{airwaytunnel},\nthe initial condition $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(0\\right)$ are not\nall within the virtual tube or its extension, but locate the left\nof the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$.\n\n\\textbf{Assumption 3}. The UAVs' initial conditions satisfy \n\\[\n\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(0\\right)-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}},i\\neq j\n\\]\nand $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert \\leq{v_{\\text{m}},}$\nwhere $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\textbf{Assumption 4}. Once a UAV arrives near the finishing line\n$\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$,\nthen it will quit the virtual tube not to affect the UAVs behind.\nMathematically, given ${\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\\i\n\\mathbb{R\n_{+},$ a UAV arrives near the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$\nif \n\\begin{equation}\n{\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\\geq-{\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}.\\label{arrivialairway}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\textbf{Neighboring Set}. Let the set $\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}$\nbe the collection of all mark numbers of other VTOL UAVs whose safety\nareas enter into the avoidance\\emph{ }area of the $i$th UAV, namely\n\\[\n\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}=\\left\\{ \\left.j\\right\\vert \\mathcal{S}_{j}\\cap\\mathcal{A}_{i}\\neq\\varnothing,j=1,\\cdots,M,i\\neq j\\right\\} .\n\\]\nFor example, if the safety areas of the $1$th, $2$th VTOL UAVs enter\ninto in the avoidance\\emph{ }area of the $3$th UAV, then $\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},3}=\\left\\{ 1,2\\right\\} $.\nBased on \\textit{Assumptions} and \\textit{definition} above, two types\nof \\emph{virtual tube passing problems} are stated in the following. \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item \\textbf{Basic virtual tube passing problem}.\\emph{ }Under \\textit{Assumptions\n1-4}, design the velocity input $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$ for the\n$i$th UAV with local information from $\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}$\nto guide it to fly to pass the virtual tube until it arrives near\nthe finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$,\nmeanwhile avoiding colliding other UAVs ($\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$)\nand keeping within the virtual tube ($\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t,}i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}$)\nwhile passing it, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M$. \n\\item \\textbf{General virtual tube passing problem}.\\emph{ }Under \\textit{Assumptions\n1,2}$^{\\prime}$\\textit{,3,4}, design the velocity input $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$\nfor the $i$th UAV with local information from $\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}$\nto guide it to fly to pass the virtual tube until it arrives near\nthe finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$,\nmeanwhile avoiding conflict with other UAVs ($\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$)\nand keeping within the virtual tube when passing it ($\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t,}i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}$),\n$i=1,2,\\cdots,M$. \n\\end{itemize}\n\\textbf{Remark 1}. As shown in Figure \\ref{Remark}, if $\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)>{0,}$\nthen $\\mathbf{p}{_{i}}$ locates the right side of the finishing line\n$\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$;\nif $\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right){<0,}$\nthen $\\mathbf{p}{_{i}}$ locates the left side of the finishing line\n$\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$.\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{Remark} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Position relative to the finishing line.}\n\\label{Remark} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\\textbf{Remark 2}. For \\textit{Assumption 2},\\textbf{ }all\\textbf{\n}UAVs are within the virtual tube (like \\textit{Place 0 }in Figure\n\\ref{airwaytunnel}) or its extension (like \\textit{Place 1 }in Figure\n\\ref{airwaytunnel}). For \\textit{Assumption 2}$^{\\prime}$,\\textbf{\n}UAVs are not all within the virtual tube or its extension. This implies\nthat UAVs may locate everywhere. For example, UAVs may locate the\nplaces, like \\textit{Place 0}, ..., \\textit{Place 5} shown in Figure\n\\ref{airwaytunnel}.\n\n\\section{Preliminaries}\n\n\\subsection{Line Integral Lyapunov Function}\n\nIn the following, we will design a new type of Lyapunov functions,\ncalled \\emph{Line Integral Lyapunov Function. }This type of Lyapunov\nfunctions is inspired by its scalar form \\cite[p.74]{Slotine(1991)}.\nIf $xf\\left(x\\right)>0\\ $for $x\\neq0,$ then $V_{\\text{li}}^{\\prime}\\left(y\\right)=\\int_{0}^{y}f\\left(x\\right)$d$x>0$\nwhen $y\\neq0.$ The derivative is $\\dot{V}_{\\text{li}}^{\\prime}=f\\left(y\\right)\\dot{y}.$\nA line integral Lyapunov function for vectors is defined as \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)=\\int_{C_{\\mathbf{y}}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(\\mathbf{x},a\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\text{d}\\mathbf{x}\\label{Vli0}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $a>0,$ $\\mathbf{x}\\in\\mathbf\n\\mathbb{R\n}^{n},$ $C_{\\mathbf{y}}$ is a line from $\\mathbf{0}$ to $\\mathbf{y}\\i\n\\mathbb{R\n^{n}\\mathbf{.}$ In the following lemma, we will show its properties.\n\n\\textbf{Lemma 1}. Suppose that the line integral Lyapunov function\n$V_{\\text{li}}$ is defined as (\\ref{Vli0}). Then (i) $V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)>0$\nif $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert \\neq0$; (ii) if $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert \\rightarrow\\infty,$\nthen $V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)\\rightarrow\\infty;$ (iii)\nif $V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)$ is bounded, then $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert $\nis bounded.\n\n\\textit{Proof}. Since \n\\[\n\\text{sa{t}}\\left(\\mathbf{x},{a}\\right)={{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)\\mathbf{x}\n\\]\nthe function (\\ref{Vli0}) can be written as \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)=\\int_{C_{\\mathbf{y}}}{{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)\\mathbf{x}^{\\text{T}}\\text{d}\\mathbf{x}\\label{Vli10}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere \n\\[\n{{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)\\triangleq\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\n1,\\\\\n\\frac{{a}}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert },\n\\end{array}\\begin{array}{c}\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert \\leq{a}\\\\\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert >{a}\n\\end{array}\\right..\n\\]\nLet $z=\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert .$ Then the function (\\ref{Vli10})\nbecomes \n\\begin{align*}\nV_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right) & =\\int_{C_{\\mathbf{y}}}\\frac{{{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)}{2}\\text{d}z^{2}\\\\\n & =\\int_{0}^{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert }{{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)z\\text{d}z.\n\\end{align*}\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item If $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert \\leq{a,}$ then ${{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)=1.$\nConsequently, \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)=\\frac{1}{2}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert ^{2}.\\label{Vli2}\n\\end{equation}\n\\item If $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert >{a,}$ then \n\\[\n\\int_{0}^{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert }{{\\kappa}_{{a}}}\\left(\\mathbf{x}\\right)z\\text{d}z=\\int_{0}^{a}z\\text{d}z+\\int_{a}^{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert }\\frac{{a}}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert }z\\text{d}z.\n\\]\nSince $z=\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{x}\\right\\Vert ,$ we have \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)\\geq\\frac{1}{2}a^{2}+{a}\\left(\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert -a\\right).\\label{Vli3}\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{itemize}\nTherefore, from the form of (\\ref{Vli2}) and (\\ref{Vli3}), we have\n(i) $V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)>0$ if $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert \\neq0$.\n(ii) if $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert \\rightarrow\\infty,$ then\n$V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)\\rightarrow\\infty;$ (iii) if\n$V_{\\text{li}}\\left(\\mathbf{y}\\right)$ is bounded, then $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{y}\\right\\Vert $\nis bounded. $\\square$\n\n\\subsection{Two Smooth Functions}\n\nTwo smooth functions are defined for the following Lyapunov-like function\ndesign. As shown in Figure \\ref{saturationa} (upper plot), define\na second-order differentiable `bump' function as \\cite{Panagou(2016)}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\sigma\\left(x,d_{1},d_{2}\\right)=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\n1\\\\\nAx^{3}+Bx^{2}+Cx+D\\\\\n0\n\\end{array}\\right.\\begin{array}{c}\n\\text{if}\\\\\n\\text{if}\\\\\n\\text{if}\n\\end{array}\\begin{array}{c}\nx\\leq d_{1}\\\\\nd_{1}\\leq x\\leq d_{2}\\\\\nd_{2}\\leq x\n\\end{array}\\label{zerofunction}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $A=-2\\left\/\\left(d_{1}-d_{2}\\right)^{3}\\right.,$ $B=3\\left(d_{1}+d_{2}\\right)\\left\/\\left(d_{1}-d_{2}\\right)^{3}\\right.,$\n$C=-6d_{1}d_{2}\\left\/\\left(d_{1}-d_{2}\\right)^{3}\\right.$ and $D=d_{2}^{2}\\left(3d_{1}-d_{2}\\right)\\left\/\\left(d_{1}-d_{2}\\right)^{3}\\right.$.\nThe derivative of $\\sigma\\left(x,d_{1},d_{2}\\right)$ with respect\nto $x$ is \n\\[\n\\frac{\\partial\\sigma\\left(x,d_{1},d_{2}\\right)}{\\partial x}=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\n0\\\\\n3Ax^{2}+2Bx+C\\\\\n0\n\\end{array}\\right.\\begin{array}{c}\n\\text{if}\\\\\n\\text{if}\\\\\n\\text{if}\n\\end{array}\\begin{array}{c}\nx\\leq d_{1}\\\\\nd_{1}\\leq x\\leq d_{2}\\\\\nd_{2}\\leq x\n\\end{array}.\n\\]\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{saturation} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Two smooth functions. For a smooth saturation function, $\\theta_{\\text{s}}=67.5^{\\circ}.$}\n\\label{saturationa} \n\\end{figure}\n\nDefine another smooth function as shown in Figure \\ref{saturationa}\n(lower plot) to approximate a saturation function \n\\[\n\\bar{s}\\left(x\\right)=\\min\\left(x,1\\right),x\\geq0\n\\]\nthat \n\\begin{equation}\ns\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\nx\\\\\n\\left(1-\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)+\\sqrt{\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}^{2}-\\left(x-x_{2}\\right)^{2}}\\\\\n1\n\\end{array}\\right.\\begin{array}{c}\n0\\leq x\\leq x_{1}\\\\\nx_{1}\\leq x\\leq x_{2}\\\\\nx_{2}\\leq x\n\\end{array}\\label{sat}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $x_{2}=1+\\frac{1}{\\tan67.5^{\\circ}}\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}$ and\n$x_{1}=x_{2}-\\sin45^{\\circ}\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}.$ Since it is required\n$x_{1}\\geq0$, one has $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\leq\\frac{\\tan67.5^{\\circ}}{\\tan67.5^{\\circ}\\sin45^{\\circ}-1}.$\nFor any $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\in\\left[0,\\frac{\\tan67.5^{\\circ}}{\\tan67.5^{\\circ}\\sin45^{\\circ}-1}\\right],$\nit is easy to see \n\\begin{equation}\ns\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\leq\\bar{s}\\left(x\\right)\\label{satinequ}\n\\end{equation}\nand \n\\begin{equation}\n\\lim_{\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\rightarrow0}\\underset{x\\geq0}{\\sup}\\left\\vert \\bar{s}\\left(x\\right)-s\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\right\\vert =0.\\label{sata}\n\\end{equation}\nThe derivative of $s\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)$ with respect\nto $x$ is \n\\[\n\\frac{\\partial s\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)}{\\partial x}=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{c}\n1\\\\\n\\frac{x_{2}-x}{\\sqrt{\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}^{2}-\\left(x-x_{2}\\right)^{2}}}\\\\\n0\n\\end{array}\\right.\\begin{array}{c}\n0\\leq x\\leq x_{1}\\\\\nx_{1}\\leq x\\leq x_{2}\\\\\nx_{2}\\leq x\n\\end{array}.\n\\]\nFor any $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}>0,$ we have $\\underset{x\\geq0}{\\sup}\\left\\vert \\partial s\\left(x,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\left\/\\partial x\\right.\\right\\vert \\leq1.$\n\n\\section{Basic virtual tube Passing Problem}\n\nIn this section, three Lyapunov-like functions for approaching the\nfinishing line, avoiding conflict, and keeping within the virtual\ntube are established. Based on them, a controller to solve the basic\\textbf{\n}virtual tube passing problem is derived and then a formal analysis\nis made.\n\n\\subsection{Lyapunov-Like Function Design and Analysis}\n\nFor the basic\\textbf{ }virtual tube passing problem, three subproblems\nare required to solve, namely approaching the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$,\navoiding conflict with other UAVs, and keeping within the virtual\ntube. Correspondingly, three Lyapunov-like functions are proposed.\n\n\\subsubsection{Integral Lyapunov Function for Approaching Finishing Line}\n\nDefine a smooth curve $C_{\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}}}$\nfrom $\\mathbf{0}$ to $\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}}$.\nThen, the line integral of sa${\\text{t}}\\left(\\mathbf{x},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)$\nalong $C_{\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}}}$ is \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{l},i}=\\int_{C_{\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}}}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(k_{1}\\mathbf{x},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\text{d}\\mathbf{x}\\label{Vli}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $k_{1}$ is an adjustable parameter, $i=1,2,\\cdots,M$. From\nthe definition, $V_{\\text{l},i}\\geq0.$ According to Thomas' Calculus\n\\cite[p. 911]{Thomas(2009)}, one has \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{l},i}=\\int_{0}^{t}\\text{sat}\\left(k_{1}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{l,}i}\\left(\\tau\\right),v_{\\text{m},i}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\boldsymbol{\\dot{\\tilde{\\xi}}}{}_{\\text{l,}i}\\left(\\tau\\right)\\text{d}\\tau\\mathbf{.}\\label{Vli1}\n\\end{equation}\nThe objective of the designed velocity command is to make $V_{\\text{l},i}$\nbe zero. This implies that $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}}\\right\\Vert $\ngoes down to zero according to the property (\\ref{Vli}), namely the\n$i$th UAV approaches the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$.\n\n\\subsubsection{Barrier Function for Avoiding Conflict with Other UAVs}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{Lyapunov} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Barrier functions for avoiding collision and keeping within virtual\ntube.}\n\\label{Lyapunovfun} \n\\end{figure}\n\nDefine \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{m},ij}=\\frac{k_{2}\\sigma_{\\text{m}}\\left(\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert \\right)}{\\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right)\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert -2r_{\\text{s}}s\\left(\\frac{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert }{2r_{\\text{s}}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)}.\\label{Vmij}\n\\end{equation}\nHere $\\sigma_{\\text{m}}\\left(x\\right)\\triangleq\\sigma\\left(x,2r_{\\text{s}},r_{\\text{a}}+r_{\\text{s}}\\right)$,\nwhere $\\sigma\\left(\\cdot\\right)$ is defined in (\\ref{zerofunction}).\\ When\n$r_{\\text{s}}=10,$ $r_{\\text{a}}=20,$ $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}=10^{-6},$\n${{k}_{2}=1,}$ the function $V_{\\text{m},ij}$ is shown in Figure\n\\ref{Lyapunovfun} (upper plot), where $V_{\\text{m},ij}\\left(x\\right)=0$\nas $x\\geq r_{\\text{s}}+r_{\\text{a}}=30$ and $V_{\\text{m},ij}\\left(x\\right)$\nis increased sharply as $x\\rightarrow0$ from $x=30.$ The function\n$V_{\\text{m},ij}$ has the following properties: \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item Property (i). $\\partial V_{\\text{m},ij}\\left\/\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert \\right.\\leq0$\nas $V_{\\text{m},ij}\\ $is a nonincreasing function with respect to\n$\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert $; \n\\item Property (ii). If $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert >r_{\\text{a}}+r_{\\text{s}}{,}$\nnamely $\\mathcal{A}_{i}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{j}=\\varnothing$ and $\\mathcal{A}_{j}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{i}=\\varnothing,$\nthen $V_{\\text{m},ij}=0$ and $\\partial V_{\\text{m},ij}\\left\/\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert \\right.=0$;\nif $V_{\\text{m},ij}=0,$ then $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert >r_{\\text{a}}+r_{\\text{s}}>2r_{\\text{s}};$ \n\\item Property (iii). If $0<\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert <2r_{\\text{s}}{,}$\nnamely $\\mathcal{S}_{j}\\cap\\mathcal{S}_{i}\\neq\\varnothing$ (they\nmay not collide in practice), then there exists a sufficiently small\n$\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}>0$ such that \n\\begin{equation}\nV_{\\text{m},ij}\\approx\\frac{k_{2}}{\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert }\\geq\\frac{k_{2}}{2\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}r_{\\text{s}}}.\\label{Vmijd}\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{itemize}\nThe objective of the designed velocity command is to make $V_{\\text{m},ij}$\nbe zero or as small as possible. According to property (ii), this\nimplies $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}{,}$\nnamely the $i$th UAV will not conflict with the $j$th UAV.\n\n\\subsubsection{Barrier Function for Keeping within virtual tube}\n\nDefine \n\\[\nV_{\\text{t},i}=\\frac{k_{3}\\sigma_{\\text{t}}\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert \\right)}{\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}\\right)-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert s\\left(\\frac{r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert +\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)}\n\\]\nwhere $\\sigma_{\\text{t}}\\left(x\\right)\\triangleq\\sigma\\left(x,r_{\\text{s}},r_{\\text{a}}\\right)$.\\ When\n$r_{\\text{t}}=50,$ $r_{\\text{s}}=10,$ $r_{\\text{a}}=20,$ $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}=10^{-6},$\n${{k}_{3}=1},$ the function $V_{\\text{t},i}\\left(x\\right)$ is shown\nin Figure \\ref{Lyapunovfun} (lower plot), where $V_{\\text{t},i}\\left(x\\right)=0$\nas $x\\leq r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{a}}=30$ and $V_{\\text{t},i}\\left(x\\right)$\nis increased sharply as $x\\rightarrow40$ from $x=30.$ The function\n$V_{\\text{t},i}$ has the following properties:\n\n(i) $\\partial V_{\\text{t},i}\\left\/\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert \\right.\\geq0$\nas $V_{\\text{t},i}\\ $is a nondecreasing function with respect to\n$\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert $;\n\n(ii) if $r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert \\geq r_{\\text{a}}{,}$\nnamely the edges of the virtual tube are out of the avoidance area\nof the $i$th UAV, then $\\sigma_{\\text{t}}\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert \\right)=0;$\nconsequently, $V_{\\text{t},i}=0$ and $\\partial V_{\\text{t},i}\\left\/\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert \\right.=0$;\n\n(iii) if $r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{s}},$\nnamely one edge of the virtual tube has entered into the safety area\nof the $i$th UAV, then \n\\[\n\\sigma_{\\text{t},i}\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert \\right)=1\n\\]\nand there exists a sufficiently small $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}>0$ such\nthat \n\\[\ns\\left(\\frac{r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert +\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\approx\\frac{r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert +\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}}<1.\n\\]\nAs a result, \n\\[\nV_{\\text{t},i}\\approx\\frac{k_{3}\\left(\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert +\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}\\right)}{\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}\\right)}\n\\]\nwhich will be very large if $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}$ is very small.\n\nThe objective of the designed velocity command is to make $V_{\\text{t},i}$\nbe zero. This implies $r_{\\text{t}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert \\geq r_{\\text{a}}{\\ }$according\nto property (ii), namely the $i$th UAV will keep within the virtual\ntube.\n\n\\subsection{Controller Design}\n\nThe velocity command is designed as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{T},i}\\label{*}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{T},i} & =-\\text{sat}\\Bigg(\\underset{\\text{Line Approaching}}{\\underbrace{\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\text{sat}\\left(k_{1}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{l,}i},v_{\\text{m},i}\\right)}}+\\underset{\\text{UAV Avoidance}}{\\underbrace{\\underset{j\\in\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}}{{\\displaystyle \\sum}}-b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}}}\\Bigg.\\nonumber \\\\\n & \\Bigg.+\\underset{\\text{Tunnel Keeping}}{\\underbrace{c_{i}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}}},v_{\\text{m},i}\\Bigg)\\label{control_highway_dis}\n\\end{align}\nwith\\footnote{$b_{ij}\\geq0$ according to the property (i) of $V_{\\text{m},ij};$\n$c_{i}\\geq0$ according to the property (i) of $V_{\\text{t},i}.$} \n\\begin{align}\nb_{ij} & =-\\frac{\\partial V_{\\text{m},ij}}{\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert }\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\right\\Vert }\\label{bij}\\\\\nc_{i} & =\\frac{\\partial V_{\\text{t},i}}{\\partial\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert }\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{}_{\\text{t},i}\\right\\Vert }.\\label{ci}\n\\end{align}\nThis is a distributed control form. Unlike the formation control,\nneighboring UAVs' IDs of a UAV are not required. By active detection\ndevices such as cameras or radars may only detect neighboring UAVs'\nposition and velocity but no IDs, because these UAVs may look alike.\nThis implies that the proposed distributed control can work autonomously\nwithout communication.\n\n\\textbf{Remark 3}. It is noticed that the velocity command (\\ref{control_highway_dis})\nis saturated, whose norm will not exceed ${v_{\\text{m},i}.}$ If the\ncase such as $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}\\right\\Vert <2r_{\\text{s}}$\nhappens in practice due to unpredictable uncertainties out of the\nassumptions we make, this may not imply that the $i$th UAV has collided\nthe $j_{i}$th UAV physically. In this case, the velocity command\n(\\ref{*}) degenerates to be \n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i} & =\\mathbf{-}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\Bigg(\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{23}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(k_{1}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}},v_{\\text{m},i}\\right)-\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i,j_{i}}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\Bigg.\\\\\n & \\Bigg.+c_{i}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}-b_{ij_{i}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\Bigg)\n\\end{align*}\nwith $b_{ij_{i}}\\approx\\frac{{{k}_{2}}}{\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}}\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}\\right\\Vert ^{3}}.$\nSince $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}$ is chosen to be sufficiently small, the\nterm $b_{ij_{i}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}$ will\ndominate\\footnote{Furthermore, we assume that the $i$th UAV does not conflict with\nothers except for the $j_{i}$th UAV, or not very close to the edges\nof the virtual tube.} so that the velocity command $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$ becomes \n\\[\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\approx\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(\\frac{{{k}_{2}}}{\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}}\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}\\right\\Vert ^{2}}\\frac{\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}}{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}\\right\\Vert },{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right).\n\\]\nThis implies that, by recalling (\\ref{mmodel}), $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{i}}}\\right\\Vert $\nwill be increased very fast so that the $i$th UAV can keep away from\nthe $j_{i}$th UAV immediately.\n\n\\textbf{Remark 4}. In practice, the case such as $r_{\\text{h}}-\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{h},i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{s}}$\nmay still happen in practice due to unpredictable uncertainties out\nof the assumptions we make. In this case, since $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}$\nis chosen to be sufficiently small, the velocity command $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}$\nbecomes \n\\[\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\approx\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left(-\\frac{{{k}_{3}}}{\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}\\left(r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert }\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right).\n\\]\nThis implies that, by recalling (\\ref{tmodel}), $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert $\nwill be decreased so that the $i$th UAV can return back to the virtual\ntube immediately.\n\n\\subsection{Stability Analysis}\n\nIn order to investigate the basic virtual tube passing problem, a\nfunction is defined as follows \n\\[\n{V}=\\underset{i=1}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}\\left(V_{\\text{l},i}+\\frac{1}{2}\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}V_{\\text{m},ij}+V_{\\text{t},i}\\right).\n\\]\nThe derivative of ${V}$ along the solution to (\\ref{lmodel}),(\\ref{mmodel}),(\\ref{tmodel})\nis\n\\begin{align*}\n{\\dot{V}} & =\\underset{i=1}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}\\Bigg(\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left({{k}_{1}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\Bigg.\\\\\n & \\Bigg.-\\frac{{1}}{2}\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}-\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},j}\\right)+c_{i}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\Bigg)\\\\\n & =\\underset{i=1}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}\\Bigg(\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left({{k}_{1}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)-\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\Bigg.\\\\\n & \\Bigg.+c_{i}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}\\Bigg)^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}.\n\\end{align*}\nSince \n\\[\n\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}=\\underset{j\\in\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}}{\\overset{}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}\n\\]\nby using the velocity input (\\ref{*}), ${\\dot{V}}$ becomes \n\\begin{equation}\n{\\dot{V}}\\leq0.\\label{dV2}\n\\end{equation}\n\nBefore introducing the main result, two lemmas are needed.\n\n\\textbf{Lemma 2}. Under \\textit{Assumptions 1-4},\\textit{ }suppose\nthat the velocity command is designed as {(\\ref{*}). }Then there\nexist sufficiently small $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}>0$\nin $b_{ij}$ and $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}>0$ in $c_{i}$ such that $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}},$\n$\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}},$\n$t\\in\\lbrack0,\\infty)$ for all ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{i}(0)}$, $i=1,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\emph{Proof}. See \\emph{Appendix}. $\\square$\n\nWith \\emph{Lemmas 1-2} in hand, we can state the main result.\n\n\\textbf{Theorem 1}. Under \\textit{Assumptions 1-4},\\textit{ }suppose\n(i) the velocity command in the distributed form is designed as in\n{(\\ref{*}); }(ii) given ${\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\\in\n\\mathbb{R\n}_{+}{,}$ if (\\ref{arrivialairway}) is satisfied, then $b_{ij}\\equiv0$ and\n$c_{i}\\equiv0$ (this implies that the $i$th UAV is removed from\nthe virtual tube mathematically). Then, for given ${\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\\in\n\\mathbb{R\n}_{+}$, there exist sufficiently small $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}},r_{\\text{s}}\\in{\\mathbb{R}}_{+}$\nin $b_{ij}$, $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}},\\in{\\mathbb{R}}_{+}$ in $c_{i}$\nand $t_{1}\\in\n\\mathbb{R\n}_{+}$ such that all UAVs can satisfy (\\ref{arrivialairway}) as $t\\geq t_{1},$\nmeanwhile $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}},$\n$\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}},$\n$t\\in\\lbrack0,\\infty)$ for all ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{i}(0)}$, $i=1,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\textit{Proof}. According to \\textit{Lemma 2}, these VTOL UAVs are\nable to avoid conflict with each other and keep within the virtual\ntube, namely $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$,\n$\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{\\tilde{\\mathbf{p}}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}},$\n$i\\neq j,$ $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,M.$ In the following, the reason why\nthe $i$th UAV is able to approach the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$\nis given.\n\nThe function ${V}$ is not a Lyapunov function. The \\textit{invariant\nset theorem\\cite[p. 69]{Slotine(1991)} }is used to do the analysis\\textit{.} \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item First, we will study the property of function $V$. Let $\\Omega=\\left\\{ \\left.\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{1},\\cdots\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{M}\\right\\vert {V}\\left(\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{1},\\cdots\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{M}\\right)\\leq l\\right\\} ,$\n$l>0.$ According to \\textit{Lemma 2}, $V_{\\text{m},ij},$ $V_{\\text{t},i}>0.$\nTherefore, ${V}\\left(\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{1},\\cdots\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{M}\\right)\\leq l$\nimplies $\\underset{i=1}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}V_{\\text{l},i}\\leq l.$ Furthermore, according to \\textit{Lemma 1(iii)}, $\\Omega$ is bounded.\nWhen $\\left\\Vert \\left[\\begin{array}{ccc}\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{1} & \\cdots & \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{M}\\end{array}\\right]\\right\\Vert \\rightarrow\\infty,$ then $\\underset{i=1}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}V_{\\text{l},i}\\rightarrow\\infty$ according to \\textit{Lemma 1(ii)}, namley ${V}\\rightarrow\\infty$.\nTherefore the function $V$ satisfies the condition that the invariant\nset theorem is requires. \n\\item Secondly, we will find the largest invariant set, then show all UAVs\ncan pass the finishing line. Now, recalling the property (\\ref{saturation1}),\n${\\dot{V}}={0}$ if and only if \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left({{k}_{1}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)-\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}+c_{i}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}=\\mathbf{0}\\label{equilibriumTh5_v}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $i=1,\\cdots,M$. Then $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{0\\ }$according\nto ({\\ref{*}}). Consequently, by (\\ref{positionmodel_ab_con_i}),\nthe system cannot get ``stuck''\\ at an equilibrium value other\nthan $\\mathbf{v}_{i}=\\mathbf{0}$. The equation (\\ref{equilibriumTh5_v})\ncan be further written as \n\\begin{equation}\n{{k}_{1}{\\kappa}_{v_{\\text{m},i}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}{{\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}}_{\\text{l,}i}}-\\underset{j=1,j\\neq i}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}_{\\text{m,}ij}+c_{i}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\mathbf{\\tilde{\\mathbf{p}}}_{\\text{t},i}=\\mathbf{0}.\\label{equilibriumTh5}\n\\end{equation}\nLet the $1$st UAV be ahead, the closest to the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$.\nLet us examine the following equation related to the 1st UAV that\n\\begin{equation}\n{{k}_{1}{\\kappa}_{v_{\\text{w},1}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}{{\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}}_{\\text{l,}1}}-\\underset{j=2}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{1j}\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}_{\\text{m,}1j}+c_{1}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\mathbf{\\tilde{\\mathbf{p}}}_{\\text{t},1}=\\mathbf{0}.\\label{equilibriumTh5_1st}\n\\end{equation}\nSince the $1$st UAV is ahead, we have \n\\begin{equation}\n\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}_{\\text{m,}1j}\\geq0\\label{1st}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere ``$=$''\\ hold if and only if the $j$th UAV is as ahead\nas the $1$st one. On the other hand, one has \n\\begin{equation}\n\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}=0.\\label{perpendicular}\n\\end{equation}\nMultiplying the term $\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}$\nat the left side of {(\\ref{equilibriumTh5_1st}) results in} \n\\[\n{{k}_{1}{\\kappa}_{v_{\\text{w},1}}\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}{{\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}}_{\\text{l,}1}}=\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}\\underset{j=2}{\\overset{M}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{1j}\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}_{\\text{m,}1j}\n\\]\nwhere {(\\ref{perpendicular}) is used. Since }$b_{1j}\\geq0$ and\n{(\\ref{1st}) holds for the 1st UAV, one has} \n\\[\n{\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}{{\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}}_{\\text{l,}1}\\geq0.}\n\\]\nSince ${\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right){^{\\text{T}}}}\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}{{\\mathbf{\\tilde{p}}}_{\\text{l,}1}}\\left(0\\right)<{0\\ }$according\nto \\textit{Assumption 2}, owing to the continuity, given ${\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\\i\n\\mathbb{R\n_{+},$ there must exist a time $t_{11}\\i\n\\mathbb{R\n_{+}$ such that \n\\[\n\\left(\\frac{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}}{\\left\\Vert {{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}\\right\\Vert }\\right)^{\\text{T}}\\left(\\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\\geq-{\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\n\\]\nas $t\\geq t_{11}.$ At the time $t_{11},$ the $1$st UAV is removed\nfrom {(\\ref{equilibriumTh5}) according to \\textit{Assumption 4},\nnamely it quits }the virtual tube. The left problem is to consider\nthe $M-1$ UAVs, namely $2$nd, $3$rd, ..., $M$th UAVs. We can repeat\nthe analysis above to conclude this proof. $\\square$ \n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\section{Controller Design for General virtual tube Passing Problem}\n\nSo far, we have solved the basic\\textbf{ }virtual tube passing problem.\nThen, we are going to solve the general virtual tube passing problem.\nFirst, we define different areas for the whole airspace. Then, the\ngeneral virtual tube passing problem is decomposed into several basic\\textbf{\n}virtual tube passing problems. As a result, for UAVs in different\nareas, they have different controllers, like ({\\ref{*}}). Combining\nthem together, the final controller is obtained.\n\n\\subsection{Area Definition}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{modeswitching} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Area definition and flight sequence.}\n\\label{modeswitching} \n\\end{figure}\n\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{modeswitching}(a), the whole airspace is\ndivided into six areas, namely \\emph{Left} \\emph{Standby Area}, \\emph{Left}\n\\emph{Ready Area}, \\emph{Right} \\emph{Standby Area}, \\emph{Right}\n\\emph{Ready Area}, \\emph{virtual tube, }and\\emph{ virtual tube Extension}.\nMoreover, the Earth-fixed coordinate frame is built. For simplicity,\nlet ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}=\\mathbf{0\\ }$with $x$-axis pointing\nto ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}$ and $y$-axis pointing to its left\nside. \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item \\emph{Left} \\emph{Standby Area }and\\emph{ Right} \\emph{Standby Area\n}are the areas on the outside of \\emph{virtual tube} and the right\nside of \\emph{Starting Line} $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,4}}}},$\nwhere ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,4}}=[0}$ $r_{\\text{t}}{]}^{\\text{T}}.\\mathcal{\\ }$Concretely,\nif \n\\[\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)>0,\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)>r_{\\text{t}}\n\\]\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{Left} \\emph{Standby Area.}\nIf \n\\[\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)>0,\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)<-r_{\\text{t}}\n\\]\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{Right} \\emph{Standby Area.} \n\\item \\emph{Left Ready Area }and\\emph{ Right} \\emph{Ready Area }are the\nareas on the outside of \\emph{virtual tube} \\emph{Extension}\\ and\nthe left side of \\emph{Starting Line} $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,4}}}}$.\nConcretely, if \n\\[\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)\\leq0,\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)>r_{\\text{t}}\n\\]\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{Left} \\emph{Standby Area.}\nIf \n\\[\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)\\leq0,\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)<-r_{\\text{t}}\n\\]\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{Right} \\emph{Standby Area.} \n\\item \\emph{virtual tube }and\\emph{ virtual tube Extension }are\\emph{ }a\nband\\emph{.} Concretely, if \n\\begin{align*}\n\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right) & \\leq0\\text{ \\& }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)>\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right\\Vert \\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}} & \\leq\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)\\leq r_{\\text{t}}\n\\end{align*}\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{virtual tube Extension.}\nIf \n\\begin{align*}\n0 & <\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(1\\right)\\leq\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}-\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\right\\Vert \\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}} & \\leq\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(2\\right)\\leq r_{\\text{t}}\n\\end{align*}\nthen $\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}$ is in \\emph{virtual tube.} \n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\subsection{virtual tube Passing Scheme and Requirements}\n\nAs Assumption 2$^{\\prime}$ points, at the beginning, UAVs may locate\nin the six areas\\emph{. }A flight sequence is given shown in Figure\n\\ref{modeswitching}(b)\\emph{. }The requirement is as follows. \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item From \\emph{Left\/Right Standby Area} to \\emph{Left\/Right} \\emph{Ready\nArea. }{{UAVs}} are required to fly into \\emph{Left\/Right} \\emph{Ready\nArea}, meanwhile avoiding conflict with other UAVs and keeping away\nfrom \\emph{virtual tube }and\\emph{ virtual tube Extension.} \n\\item From \\emph{Left\/Right Ready Area }to\\emph{ virtual tube Extension.\n}{{UAVs}} are required to fly into \\emph{virtual tube Extension},\nmeanwhile avoiding conflict with other UAVs and keeping away from\n\\emph{virtual tube.} \n\\item From \\emph{virtual tube and virtual tube Extension }to \\emph{Finishing\nLine }$\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}.$\n{{UAVs}} are required to pass the virtual tube until it arrives\nnear the finishing line $\\overline{{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}}$,\nmeanwhile avoiding conflict other UAVs and keeping within the virtual\ntube and its extension. \n\\end{itemize}\n\n\\subsection{Controller Design}\n\n\\subsubsection{From Standby Area to Ready Area}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{LS2R} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{LS2R virtual tube is designed for\\emph{ }from Left Standby Area to\nLeft Ready Area.}\n\\label{LS2R} \n\\end{figure}\n\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{LS2R}, a virtual virtual tube, named \\emph{LS2R\nvirtual tube}, is designed with the width $2r_{\\text{sr}}$ and centerline\nstarting from ${\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,1}}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$ to\n${\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,2}}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2},}$ where $r_{\\text{sr}}>0$\nis often sufficiently large ($10000$ in the following simulation\nfor example) that takes all UAVs in \\emph{Left Standby Area }in the\\emph{\n}virtual virtual tube. Moreover, we let all UAVs in \\emph{Left Standby\nArea }approach the finishing line $\\overline{\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,2}}\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,3}}}.$\nHere \n\\[\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,1}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\left(1\\right)\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}+r_{\\text{sr}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,2}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{b}}\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}+r_{\\text{sr}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,3}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{b}}\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}\n\\end{array}\\right]\n\\]\nwhere $r_{\\text{b}}>0,$ $r_{\\text{b}}=r_{\\text{a}}\\ $for example.\nThe intersection of \\emph{LS2R virtual tube }and\\emph{ Left Ready\nArea }is a buffer with length $r_{\\text{b}}$, which can make a UAV\nfly into \\emph{Left Ready Area }not only approaching it.\\emph{ }According\nto (\\ref{arrivialairway}), the controller is designed as $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i},$\nwhere \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i} & ={\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}}\\big(\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{l},i}\\left({k}_{1},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,2}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,3}}\\right)+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{m},i}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right)\\big.\\nonumber \\\\\n & \\big.+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{t},i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{sr}},{\\mathbf{p}}}_{\\text{sr,1}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,2}}\\right),{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\big)\\label{vsrl}\n\\end{align}\nwhere \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{l},i}\\left({{k}_{1},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}},{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}\\right) & \\triangleq-\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,23}}\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}},{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,3}}}\\right)\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}\\left({{k}_{1}}\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{l,}i}},{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\right)\\label{control_line}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{m},i}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right) & \\triangleq\\underset{j\\in\\mathcal{N}_{\\text{m},i}}{\\overset{}\n{\\displaystyle \\sum\n}}b_{ij}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right)\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{m,}ij}\\label{control_mul}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{t},i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{t}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}},{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right) & \\triangleq-c_{i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{t}}}\\right)\\mathbf{A}_{\\text{t,12}}\\left({{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}},{{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}\\right)\\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}_{\\text{t},i}.\\label{control_tun}\n\\end{align}\nFurthermore, according to \\textit{Theorem 1},\\textit{ }UAVs in \\emph{Left\nStandby Area }will fly into \\emph{Left} \\emph{Ready Area}, meaning\nwhile avoiding colliding other UAVs and keeping within \\emph{LS2R\nvirtual tube}, namely keeping away\\emph{ }from \\emph{virtual tube\n}and\\emph{ virtual tube Extension.}\n\nSimilarly, the controller for from \\emph{Right Standby Area} to \\emph{Right\nReady Area}\\ is designed as $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i}^{\\prime},$\nwhere \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i}^{\\prime} & ={\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}}\\big(\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{l},i}\\left({{k}_{1},{\\mathbf{p}}}_{\\text{sr,2}}^{\\prime},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,3}}^{\\prime}\\right)+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{m},i}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right)\\big.\\nonumber \\\\\n & \\big.+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{t},i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{sr}},{\\mathbf{p}}}_{\\text{sr,1}}^{\\prime},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{sr,2}}^{\\prime}\\right),{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\big)\\label{vsrr}\n\\end{align}\nwith \n\\[\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,1}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}\\left(1\\right)\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{sr}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,2}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{b}}\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{sr}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\n\\]\n\n\\[\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{sr,3}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{b}}\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}\n\\end{array}\\right].\n\\]\n\n\n\\subsubsection{From Ready Area to virtual tube Extension}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{LR2T} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{LR2T virtual tube is designed for\\emph{ }from Left Ready Area to virtual\ntube Extension.}\n\\label{LR2T} \n\\end{figure}\n\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{LR2T}, a virtual virtual tube, named \\emph{LR2T\nvirtual tube}, is designed with the width $2r_{\\text{rt}}$ and centerline\nstarting from ${\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,1}}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2}}$ to\n${\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,2}}\\in{{\\mathbb{R}}^{2},}$ where $r_{\\text{rt}}>0$\nis sufficiently large that takes all UAVs in \\emph{Left Ready Area\n}in the\\emph{ }virtual virtual tube. Moreover, all UAVs in \\emph{Left\nReady Area }approach the finishing line $\\overline{\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,2}}\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,3}}}.$\nHere \n\\[\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,1}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{rt}}\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}+r_{\\text{rt}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,2}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{rt}}\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{b}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,3}}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n0\\\\\nr_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{b}}\n\\end{array}\\right].\n\\]\nThe intersection of \\emph{LR2T virtual tube }and\\emph{ virtual tube\nExtension }is a buffer with length $r_{\\text{b}}$, which can make\na UAV fly into \\emph{virtual tube Extension }not only approaching\nit. According to (\\ref{arrivialairway}), the controller is designed\nas $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i},$ where \n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i} & ={\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}}\\big(\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{l},i}\\left({{k}_{1},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,2}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,3}}}\\right)+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{m},i}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right)\\big.\\nonumber \\\\\n & \\big.+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{t},i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{rt}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,1}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,2}}}\\right),{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\big)\\label{vrtl}\n\\end{align}\nAccording to \\textit{Theorem 1},\\textit{ }UAVs in \\emph{Left Ready\nArea }will fly into \\emph{virtual tube Extension}, meanwhile avoiding\nconflict with other UAVs and keeping within \\emph{LR2T virtual tube},\nnamely keeping away\\emph{ }from \\emph{virtual tube.} Similarly, the\ncontroller for \\emph{Right Ready Area} to \\emph{virtual tube Extension}\\ is\ndesigned as $\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i},$ where\n\\begin{align}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i}^{\\prime} & ={\\text{sa}{\\text{t}}}\\big(\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{l},i}\\left({{k}_{1},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,2}}^{\\prime},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,3}}^{\\prime}}\\right)+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{m},i}\\left({{k}_{2}}\\right)\\big.\\nonumber \\\\\n & \\big.+\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{t},i}\\left({{k}_{3},r_{\\text{rt}},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,1}}^{\\prime},{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{rt,2}}^{\\prime}}\\right),{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\big)\\label{vrtr}\n\\end{align}\nwith \n\\[\n\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,1}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{rt}}\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{rt}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,2}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n-r_{\\text{rt}}\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}+r_{\\text{b}}\n\\end{array}\\right],\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{rt,3}}^{\\prime}=\\left[\\begin{array}{c}\n0\\\\\n-r_{\\text{t}}+r_{\\text{b}}\n\\end{array}\\right].\n\\]\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Final Controller}\n\nWith the design above, the final controller is designed as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}=\\left\\{ \\begin{array}{ll}\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{T},i}\\text{ ({\\ref{control_highway_dis}})} & \\text{if }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\text{ in }\\emph{Tunnel\\ and\\ Tunnel\\ Extension}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i}\\text{ (\\ref{vsrl})} & \\text{if }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\text{ in }\\emph{Left\\ Standby\\ Area}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{sr},i}^{\\prime}\\text{ (\\ref{vsrr})} & \\text{if }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\text{ in }\\emph{Right\\ Standby\\ Area}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i}\\text{ (\\ref{vrtl})} & \\text{if }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\text{ in }\\emph{Left\\ Ready\\ Area}\\\\\n\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{rt},i}^{\\prime}\\text{ (\\ref{vrtr})} & \\text{if }\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\text{ in }\\emph{Right\\ Ready\\ Area}\n\\end{array}\\right.\\label{control_general}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $i=1,2,\\cdots,M$. Then, for given ${\\epsilon}_{\\text{0}}\\in\n\\mathbb{R\n}_{+}$, there exist sufficiently small $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}},r_{\\text{s}}\\in{\\mathbb{R}}_{+}$\nin $b_{ij}$, $\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}\\in{\\mathbb{R}}_{+}$ in $c_{i}$\nand $t_{1}\\in\n\\mathbb{R\n}_{+}$ such that all UAVs can satisfy (\\ref{arrivialairway}) as $t\\geq t_{1},$\nmeanwhile $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$\nand $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t,}i}}\\right\\Vert <r_{\\text{t}}-r_{\\text{s}}$\nwhen passing the virtual tube, $t\\in\\lbrack0,\\infty)$ for all ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{i}(0)}$,\n$i=1,\\cdots,M.$\n\n\\section{Simulation and Experiment}\n\nSimulations and experiments are given in the following to show the\neffectiveness of the proposed method, where a video about simulations\nand experiments is available on https:\/\/youtu.be\/LTNG7jWlBdY or http:\/\/weibo.ws\/nJiiXJ.\n\n\\subsection{Simulation}\n\n\\subsubsection{Simulation with 40 UAVs}\n\nWe consider a scenario of $M=40$ UAVs with $r_{\\text{s}}=20$m, $r_{\\text{a}}=30$m,\n$r_{\\text{d}}=80$m, $l_{i}=5$ and $v_{\\text{m},i}=5+\\frac{i}{4}$m${\/}$s,\n${i=1,2,\\cdots,M}$. The virtual tube is a long horizontal band with\nthe width $2r_{\\text{t}}=300$m and centerline through $\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,1}}=[0\\ 0]^{\\text{T}}$\nm and $\\mathbf{p}_{\\text{t,2}}=[500\\ 0]^{\\text{T}}$m. In order {to\nshow the effectiveness of the proposed method, the }general virtual\ntube passing problem is considered directly. {The initial positions\nof all UAVs are at everywhere with initial velocities being zero,\nshown by} $t=0$s in Figure \\ref{motion}, where $\\mathbf{p}_{1}\\left(0\\right)=[0\\ 149.9]^{\\text{T}}$m\n(the 1st UAV has a conflict with the virtual tube); $\\mathbf{p}_{2}\\left(0\\right)=[-500-0.1]^{\\text{T}}$m\nand ${\\mathbf{p}}_{3}\\left(0\\right)=[-500$ $0.1]^{\\text{T}}$m (the\n2nd and 3rd UAVs have a conflict with each other initially) are set\nintentionally. The parameters of controller are $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}=\\epsilon_{\\text{t}}=\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}=10^{-6},$\n$k_{1}=k_{2}=k_{3}=1$. With these conditions and parameters, the\ncontroller is performed for the simulation getting the results shown\nin Figure \\ref{motion} and Figure \\ref{distance}. As shown in Figure\n\\ref{motion}, these UAVs enter into the virtual tube according to\nthe sequence given in Figure \\ref{modeswitching}(b), and pass the\nfinishing line finally about $t=239$s. As shown in Figure \\ref{distance}\n(upper plot), during this process, the minimum distance of all pairs\nof UAVs is $0.2$m because $\\left\\Vert {\\mathbf{p}}_{2}\\left(0\\right)-{\\mathbf{p}}_{3}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert =0.2$m.\nBut, the minimum distance is increased rapidly and then always keeps\nabove $2r_{\\text{s}}=40$m (indicated by a dash line). This shows\nthe effectiveness of the proposed controller that even if a UAV enters\ninto the safety area of another UAV, it can keep away from the UAV\nrapidly. After this conflict, no conflict between any two UAVs will\nhappen again. Similarly, as shown in Figure \\ref{distance} (lower\nplot), during this process, the minimum distance from the virtual\ntube is 0.1m because of the 1st UAV being very close to the virtual\ntube. But, the minimum distance is increased rapidly and then always\nkeeps above $r_{\\text{s}}=20$m (indicated by a dash line). The reason\ncan be found in \\textit{Remark 4}. After this conflict, no conflict\nwith the virtual tube will happen again. \n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{tunnelpassing3} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{UAVs' positions at different time.}\n\\label{motion} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{simulationdistance} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Minimum distance among all UAVs and minimum distance from the virtual\ntube edge to all UAVs.}\n\\label{distance} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Comparison of the Calculation Speed of Different Algorithms}\n\nIn order to show the advantage of the proposed algorithm, we compare\nthe calculation speed with an optimization-based algorithm. In \\cite{Ingersoll(2016)},\na path-planning algorithm using Bezier curves with the open-source\ncode at \\url{https:\/\/github.com\/byuflowlab\/uav-path-optimization}\nis proposed, which can find the optimal solutions to the offline and\nonline path-planning problem. We design a scenario that contains 10\nUAVs with $r_{\\text{s}}=5$m, $r_{\\text{a}}=7.5$m, $r_{\\text{d}}=20$m,\nand a virtual tube with the width $2r_{\\text{t}}=200$m, centerline\nthrough ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}=[0$ $0]^{\\text{T}}$m and ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}=[100\\ 0]^{\\text{T}}$m.\nThe initial position of 1st UAV ${\\mathbf{p}}_{1}\\left(0\\right)={{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}=[0$\n$0]^{\\text{T}}$, while the other UAVs are distributed inside the\nvirtual tube randomly with the same velocity $\\mathbf{v}_{i}=[1\\ 0]^{\\text{T}}$m${\/}$s,\n${i=2,\\cdots,M}$. For two different algorithms, we design 10 sets\nof random initial positions for the other UAVs, run the simulation\non the same computer and record the \\emph{average calculation time}\nwhen the 1st UAV passes the finishing line of the virtual tube. Figure\n\\ref{compare} shows the performance of the density on calculation\nspeed by the changing the safety radius and the number of UAVs separately.\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{compare}, for the same airspace, if the number\nof UAVs increases or the safety radius of UAVs gets larger, the calculation\nspeed of optimization-based algorithm will decrease rapidly because\nthe probability of constraint being triggered is increasing, which\nbrings more complex calculations. On the contrary, the proposed controller\ncan better deal with such situation, in other words, be suitable for\ndense and complex environment. \n\\begin{figure}[ptbh]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.7]{algorithms} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{The calculation speed of different algorithms.}\n\\label{compare} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Flight Experiments}\n\nAs shown in Fig. \\ref{environment}, a set of experiments is carried\nout in a laboratory room with an OptiTrack motion capture system installed,\nwhich provides the positions and orientations of UAVs for distributed\ncontrol. The laptop is connected to the Tello UAVs and OptiTrack by\na local network, running the proposed controller and a real-time position\nplotting module.\n\nIn the first experiment, there are $M=6$ UAVs to pass a virtual tube\n(indicated by a purple rectangle) as shown in Fig. \\ref{exp1}. The\nvirtual tube is a long horizontal band with the width $2r_{\\text{t}}=1.7$m\nand centerline through ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,1}}}=[1.4$ $0]^{\\text{T}}$m\nand ${{\\mathbf{p}}_{\\text{t,2}}}=[-1.4\\ 0]^{\\text{T}}$m. Assuming\nthat $r_{\\text{s}}=0.16$m, $r_{\\text{a}}=0.4$m, ${v_{\\text{m},1}=v_{\\text{m},2}=0.1}$m${\/}$s\nand ${v_{\\text{m},i}=0.2}${m}${\/}${s, }${i=3,4,\\cdots,M}$.\nThe parameters of controller (\\ref{control_general}) are $\\epsilon=r_{\\text{s}}=10^{-6},$\n$k_{1}=k_{2}=k_{3}=1$ and $r_{\\text{b}}=r_{\\text{a}},$ $r_{\\text{sr}}=r_{\\text{rt}}=10000$m.\nAs shown in Fig \\ref{exp1}(a), the initial positions of all UAVs\n(indicated by the dotted circle) are at everywhere with initial velocities\nbeing zero. We track UAVs from three perspectives: the main view,\nlocal view and the Graphical User Interface(GUI) view. As shown in\nFig. \\ref{exp1}(b), after take-off they all enter into the virtual\ntube according to the sequence given in Figure \\ref{modeswitching}(b).\nBy comparing with Fig. \\ref{exp1}(c), we can get the result that\nthe slower UAVs are gradually overtaken by the faster ones. Finally,\nas shown in Fig. \\ref{exp1}(c), all UAVs complete their routes at\n213.88 second, and they always keep a safe distance from others. This\nmeans each UAV passes the virtual tube and avoids each other successfully.\n\n\\begin{figure}[ptbh]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{exp1} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{The position, velocity and mode of each UAV during the first experiment}\n\\label{exp1} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}[ptbh]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics{environment} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Indoor experiment environment.}\n\\label{environment} \n\\end{figure}\n\nIn the experiment, three virtual tubes are added into the flight progress\nas shown by $t=0$s in Figure \\ref{exp2}. UAVs need to pass the three\nvirtual tubes in order of clockwise rotation (indicated by the purple\narrow), during which the faster ones will overtake the slow ones.\nAs shown in Figure \\ref{exp2} (lower plot), the faster UAVs pass\nthe three virtual tube at 195.54 second, while the slower ones are\nstill on the way. By comparing with Figure \\ref{exp2} (upper plot),\nwe can observe that slow UAVs are overtaken by faster ones.\n\n\\begin{figure}[tp]\n\\begin{centering}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{exp2} \n\\par\\end{centering}\n\\caption{Position and velocity during the experiment.}\n\\label{exp2} \n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\n\nThe virtual tube passing problem, which includes passing a virtual\ntube, inter-agent conflict avoidance and keeping within the virtual\ntube, is studied in this paper. Based on the velocity control model\nof UAVs with control saturation, practical distributed control is\nproposed for multiple UAVs to pass a virtual tube. Every UAV has the\nsame and simple control protocol. Lyapunov-like functions are designed\nelaborately, and formal analysis and proofs are made to show that\nthe virtual tube passing problem can be solved, namely passing the\nvirtual tube without getting trapped, avoiding conflict and keeping\nwithin the virtual tube. Besides the functional requirement, the safety\nrequirement is also satisfied. By the proposed distributed control,\na UAV can keep away from another one or return back to the virtual\ntube as soon as possible, once it enters into the safety area of another\nUAV or has a conflict with the virtual tube accidentally during it\nis passing the virtual tube. This is very necessary to guarantee the\nflight safety. Simulations and experiments are given to show the advantages\nof the proposed method over other algorithms in terms of calculation\nspeed of finding feasible solutions, and the effectiveness of the\nproposed method from the functional requirement and the safety requirement.\n\n\\section{Appendix}\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Proposition 1}\n\n\\textit{Proof}. According to (\\ref{positionmodel_ab_con_i}), we have\n\\[\n\\mathbf{v}_{i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{\\dot{v}}_{i}=-l_{i}\\left(\\mathbf{v}_{i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{v}_{i}-\\mathbf{v}_{i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\right).\n\\]\nThen \n\\[\n\\frac{\\text{d}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\right\\Vert }{\\text{d}t}=-l_{i}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\right\\Vert +\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\right\\Vert }\\mathbf{v}_{i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\n\\]\nwhose solution is \n\\begin{align*}\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert  & =e^{-l_{i}t}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert \n{\\displaystyle \\int\\nolimits _{0}^{t}\ne^{-l_{i}\\left(t-\\tau\\right)}\\frac{1}{\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(\\tau\\right)\\right\\Vert }\\mathbf{v}_{i}^{\\text{T}}\\mathbf{v}_{\\text{c},i}\\left(\\tau\\right)\\text{d}\\tau\\\\\n & \\leq e^{-l_{i}t}\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert \n{\\displaystyle \\int\\nolimits _{0}^{t}\ne^{-l_{i}\\left(t-\\tau\\right)}{v_{\\text{m},i}}\\text{d}\\tau.\n\\end{align*}\nIf $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert \\leq{v_{\\text{m},i},}$\nthen \n\\[\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{v}_{i}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert \\leq{v_{\\text{m},i}.}\n\\]\nWith the result, one has \n\\begin{align*}\n\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert  & \\leq\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert +\\left\\Vert \\frac{1}{{l}_{i}}\\mathbf{v}_{i}\\right\\Vert +\\left\\Vert \\frac{1}{{l}_{j}}\\mathbf{v}_{j}\\right\\Vert \\\\\n & \\leq\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\mathbf{p}_{j}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert +2r_{\\text{v}}{.}\n\\end{align*}\nSince $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-\\boldsymbol{\\xi}_{j}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert \\geq r+2r_{\\text{v}},$\none further has \n\\[\n\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{j}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert +r_{\\text{v}}>r+r_{\\text{v}}.\n\\]\nThen $\\left\\Vert \\mathbf{p}_{i}\\left(t\\right)-{{\\mathbf{p}}_{j}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert >r.$\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of Lemma 2}\n\nThe reason why these VTOL UAVs are able to avoid conflict with each\nother, which will be proved by contradiction. Without loss of generality,\nassume that $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\right\\Vert =2r_{\\text{s}}$\noccurs at $t_{\\text{o}}>0$ first, i.e., a conflict between the $i$th$\\ $UAV\nand the $j_{1}$th$\\ $UAV happening. Then, $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$\nfor $j\\neq j_{1}$. Consequently, $V_{\\text{m},ij}{\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\geq0}$\nif $j\\neq j_{1}.$ Since ${V}\\left(0\\right)>0$ and ${{\\dot{V}}\\left(t\\right)}\\leq0$,\nthe function ${V}$ satisfies ${V}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\leq{V}\\left(0\\right),$\n$t\\in\\left[0,\\infty\\right)$. By the definition of ${{V},}$ we have\n\\[\nV{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\leq{V}\\left(0\\right).\n\\]\nAccording to (\\ref{sata}), given any $\\epsilon_{rs}>0,$ there exists\na $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}>0,$ such that \n\\[\ns\\left(1,\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)=1-\\epsilon_{rs}.\n\\]\nThen, at time $t_{\\text{o}},$ the denominator of $V_{\\text{m},ij_{1}}$\ndefined in (\\ref{Vmij}) is \n\\begin{align}\n & \\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right)\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\right\\Vert -2r_{\\text{s}}s\\left(\\frac{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)\\right\\Vert }{2r_{\\text{s}}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\nonumber \\\\\n & =2r_{\\text{s}}\\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right)-2r_{\\text{s}}\\left(1-\\epsilon_{rs}\\right)\\nonumber \\\\\n & =2r_{\\text{s}}\\left(\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}+\\epsilon_{rs}\\right)\\label{bound1}\n\\end{align}\nwhere $\\epsilon_{rs}>0$ can be sufficiently small if $\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}$\nis sufficiently small according to (\\ref{sata}). According to the\ndefinition in (\\ref{Vmij}), we have \n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{1}{2r_{\\text{s}}\\left(\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}+\\epsilon_{rs}\\right)}=\\frac{V{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}\\right)}{k_{2}}\\leq\\frac{{V}\\left(0\\right)}{k_{2}}\\label{fact}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\sigma_{_{\\text{m}}}\\left(\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij_{1}}}\\right\\Vert \\right)=1$\nis used. Consequently, ${{V}\\left(0\\right)}$ is \\emph{unbounded}\nas $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\rightarrow0\\ $and $\\epsilon_{rs}\\rightarrow0.$\nOn the other hand, for any $j$, we have $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}}$\nby \\textit{Assumption 3}. Let $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert =2r_{\\text{s}}+{\\varepsilon_{\\text{m,}ij},}$\n${\\varepsilon_{\\text{m,}ij}}>0$. Then, at time $t=0,$ the denominator\nof $V_{\\text{m},ij}$ defined in (\\ref{Vmij}) is \n\\begin{align*}\n & \\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right)\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert -2r_{\\text{s}}s\\left(\\frac{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert }{2r_{\\text{s}}},\\epsilon_{\\text{s}}\\right)\\\\\n & \\geq\\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right)\\left(2r_{\\text{s}}+{\\varepsilon_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\right)-2r_{\\text{s}}\\bar{s}\\left(\\frac{\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{o,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\right\\Vert }{2r_{\\text{s}}}\\right)\\\\\n & =2r_{\\text{s}}\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}+\\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right){\\varepsilon_{\\text{m,}ij}}.\n\\end{align*}\nThen \n\\[\nV{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)\\leq\\frac{k_{2}}{2r_{\\text{s}}\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}+\\left(1+\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\right){\\varepsilon_{\\text{m,}ij}}}.\n\\]\nConsequently, $V{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(0\\right)$ is still bounded\nas $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\rightarrow0\\ $no matter what $\\epsilon_{rs}\\ $is.\nAccording to the definition of ${V}\\left(0\\right),$ ${V}\\left(0\\right)$\nis still \\emph{bounded} as $\\epsilon_{\\text{m}}\\rightarrow0\\ $and\n$\\epsilon_{rs}\\rightarrow0.$ This is a contradiction. Thus \n\\begin{equation}\n\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{m,}ij}}\\left(t\\right)\\right\\Vert >2r_{\\text{s}},i\\neq j\\label{bounded1}\n\\end{equation}\nfor $i,j=1,2,\\cdots,N,$ $t\\in\\left[0,\\infty\\right).$ Therefore,\nthe UAV can avoid another UAV by the velocity command (\\ref{*}).\n\nThe reason why a UAV can stay within the virtual tube is similar to\nthe above proof. It can be proved by contradiction as well. Without\nloss of generality, assume that $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}^{\\prime}\\right)\\right\\Vert =r_{\\text{t}}-{{r}_{\\text{s}}}$\noccurs at $t_{\\text{1}}^{\\prime}>0,$ i.e., a conflict happening first,\nwhile $\\left\\Vert \\boldsymbol{\\tilde{\\xi}}{_{\\text{t},i}}\\left(t_{\\text{o}}^{\\prime}\\right)\\right\\Vert >r_{\\text{t}}-{{r}_{\\text{s}}}$\nfor $i=1,\\cdots,M$. Similar to the above proof, one can also get\na contradiction. \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nSearching for faint point sources around bright objects is a challenging endeavor. The atmosphere \\citep{roddier1981,racine1999,macintosh2005}, telescope and instruments optics \\citep{marois2003,marois2005,hinkley2007} produce speckles having a range of timescales that limit the direct detection of faint companions. From previous theoretical analysis, it is known that the speckle intensity temporal distribution is a modified Rician \\citep{Goodman1968,soummer2004,fitzgerald2006}. If a large number of uncorrelated speckle realizations are coadded, from the central limit theorem, then the final residual speckle noise follows a Gaussian intensity distribution. Since atmospheric turbulence produces random speckles that have a very short correlation time, a Gaussian distributed residual speckle noise is commonly assumed for ground-based adaptive optics (AO) long integrations and a detection threshold of 5$\\sigma$ is usually considered.\n\nHowever, careful residual noise analysis of AO images have demonstrated that long exposures are not limited by random short-lived atmospheric speckles but by quasi-static speckles \\citep{marois2003,marois2004phd,masciadri2005,marois2005,marois2006} originating from the telescope and instruments. The speckle noise currently limiting high-contrast ground-based imaging is thus very similar to that limiting space-based observations \\citep{schneider2003}. The typical lifetime of ground-based quasi-static speckles has been found to be several minutes to hours \\citep{marois2006,hinkley2007}; the noise in the combination of several images spanning $\\sim$1~hr is very similar to that in a single image (see Fig.~\\ref{f1} for an example; acquired with NIRI\/Altair at the Gemini telescope). In this case, since the quasi-static speckle noise is well correlated for the entire sequence, the central limit theorem does not apply and the speckle noise in the final combined image will be non-Gaussian. Sensitivity limits calculated assuming Gaussian statistics would have lower confidence levels (CL). Finding a robust technique to estimate proper sensitivity limits is fundamental to analyze adequately the sensitivity of an exoplanet survey as a function of angular separation. The contrast limit reached by a survey plays a central role in Monte Carlo simulations to derive exoplanet frequencies around stars and constrain planet formation scenarios \\citep{metchev2006,carson2006,kasper2007,lafreniere2007a}. Understanding the residual noise statistical distribution is thus important for future dedicated surveys of next generation AO systems like NICI \\citep{ftaclas2003}, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI, \\citealp{macintosh2006}), the VLT SPHERE \\citep{dohlen2006}, and as well as future space observatories.\n\nIn this paper, a new technique is presented to estimate sensitivity limits of a noise showing arbitrary statistics using a CL approach. The theory behind speckle statistics is summarized in \\S~\\ref{theo}. Then \\S~\\ref{ci} presents a technique to derive detection thresholds using the probability density function and associated CLs. The technique is applied to simulated (\\S~\\ref{app}) and observational (\\S~\\ref{obsdata}) data to confirm the theory and to validate the technique. The effect of averaging a sequence of independent non-Gaussian noise realizations is discussed in \\S~\\ref{dis}. Concluding remarks follow in \\S~\\ref{con}.\n\n\\section{Speckle Noise Statistics \\label{theo}}\nFollowing the work of \\citet{Goodman1968,soummer2004,fitzgerald2006}, the speckle intensity probability density function (PDF) for one location in the image plane and random temporal phase errors can be shown to be a modified Rician (MR) function. At a specific location in the image plane, the MR PDF $p_{\\rm{MR}}(I)$ is a function of the local time-averaged static point spread function intensity $I_c$ and random speckle noise intensities $I_s$:\n\\begin{equation}\np_{\\rm{MR}}(I) = \\frac{1}{I_s} \\exp \\left( - \\frac{I+I_c}{I_s} \\right) I_0 \\left( \\frac{2\\sqrt{I I_c}}{I_s} \\right)\\rm{,}\n\\end{equation}\n\\noindent where $I$ is the point spread function (PSF) intensity ($I=I_c + I_s$) and $I_0 (x)$ is the zero-order modified Bessel function of the first kind. At a specific point of the PSF, if $I_c \\gg I_s$, relevant to Airy ring pinned speckles, the associated PDF is a Gaussian-like function showing a bright positive tail, while if $I_c \\ll I_s$, relevant to PSF dark rings or coronagaphic PSFs dominated by second order halo speckles, the noise distribution is exponential. The CL $\\alpha$ for a given detection threshold $d$ is simply obtained by:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\alpha (d) = \\int_{-d}^{d} p_{\\rm{{MR}}}^{\\prime} (I) dI\\rm{,}\\label{eqCL}\n\\end{equation}\n\\noindent where $p_{\\rm{MR}}^{\\prime}$ is the mean-subtracted PDF. Fig.~\\ref{f2} illustrates the different possible regimes compared to a Gaussian intensity distribution. For a 5$\\sigma$ detection threshold, where $\\sigma$ is the standard deviation of the noise obtained using the {\\em robust\\_sigma} IDL algorithm\\footnote{The {\\em robust\\_sigma} algorithm uses the median absolute deviation as a first estimate of the standard deviation and then weight points using Tukey's Biweight; this algorithm provides another step of robustness to avoid biasing the standard deviation estimate if bad pixels are present.}, a Gaussian distribution shows a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL while a MR distribution show $\\sim 1-10^{-2}$ to $1-10^{-3}$ CL. The MR distribution is thus producing much more false positive events. For example, consider a survey of many stars where each observation has a $500\\times 500 \\lambda\/D$ field of view (FOV, i.e. the $20^{\\prime \\prime}\\times 20^{\\prime \\prime}$ NIRI\/Gemini FOV at H-band). If a $5\\sigma$ detection threshold is selected, the Gaussian noise distribution would lead to one false positive detection every four stars while the MR distribution would lead to $\\sim $250 to $\\sim $2,500 false positives per star. A detection threshold two to three times higher is required for the MR distribution to show the same CL as a 5$\\sigma$ Gaussian noise and the same number of false positive events.\n\nIn the previous speckle PDF analysis, it was shown that the atmospheric speckle noise PDF is obtained by analyzing the temporal variation at one location of the PSF. For a quasi-static speckle noise, this approach is not adequate since the noise does not vary significantly with time. The quasi-static noise PDF can be derived using a very simple argument. If we consider a PSF produced by a circular aperture and if the PDF is obtained by analyzing pixels inside a narrow annulus centered on the PSF core, azimuthal quasi-static speckle noise variations $I_s$ are produced with the same value of $I_c$ (here, $I_c$ is the unaberrated PSF and it is azimuthally symmetric for a circular aperture). The speckle noise inside a narrow annulus and from a single speckle noise realization thus shows the same PDF as a temporal speckle noise variation from random phase screens at any location inside the annulus.\n\n\\section{Experimental Derivation of the PDF and CL Curves\\label{ci}}\nA robust technique to derive sensitivity limits can be developed using CLs. The pixel PDF inside a specific region of the image is first obtained and the CL curve is then derived and extrapolated to estimate a local detection threshold. To avoid having too many false positive detections without missing possible faint companions, a CL of $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ (5$\\sigma$ if Gaussian) is selected here. The basic steps to derive the PDF, to obtain the CL curves and to estimate the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold is summarized in table~\\ref{tabpdfstep}.\n\nThe local PDF is obtained by producing an histogram of the pixel intensities inside a specific region of the image after subtraction of the mean pixel intensity over the region and division by the noise RMS of the image region. The CL curve as a function of detection threshold can be easily estimated by integrating the PDF inside the interval $\\pm d$ (see Eq.~\\ref{eqCL}). Due to the limited number of resolution elements (one $\\lambda\/D$ for PSFs or a pixel for simulated noise images) in an image, the PDF and CL curves will be known up to a certain detection threshold. In theory, for the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold considered here, each area where the PDF needs to be estimated should have several million independent resolution elements. In practice, for images typically containing up to $500\\times 500 \\lambda\/D$ (250,000 resolution elements), the PDF will be known only up to $\\sim 1 - 10^{-5}$ CL for Gaussian noise. A model fit using a $\\chi^2$ analysis or a polynomial fit are required to extrapolate the CL curve and obtain the detection threshold corresponding to a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL. Since the CL curves of various distributions are nearly linear in a semi-$\\log (1-\\alpha)$ vs detection threshold plot (see Fig.~\\ref{f2}), we have chosen to use a polynomial fit due to its simplicity of implementation, its execution speed, and its accuracy. Due to non-linear effects for detection thresholds near 0$\\sigma$, a linear fit is first performed for detection thresholds above 1.5$\\sigma$. If the detection threshold for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL is below 9$\\sigma$, a second order polynomial fit is used instead to better approximate the CL curve for quasi-Gaussian statistics. The CL extrapolation accuracy will be analyzed in the next section.\n\n\\section{Technique Validation with Simulated Data\\label{app}}\nIn this section, the PDF, the CL curve and the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ detection threshold of simulated data are obtained.\n\n\\subsection{Simulated PDFs}\nSimulated noise images using specific PDFs are used to test the algorithm in recovering the proper $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ detection threshold for known PDFs. To test the effect of the image area size on the CL extrapolation accuracy, images of various sizes are produced following a MR of $I_c\/I_s$ equal to 0.1, 1 and 10 (see Fig.~\\ref{f2}). For each size, 25 independent realizations are computed to derive the extrapolation accuracy. Fig.~\\ref{f3b} and Table~\\ref{tab1} show the CL extrapolation accuracy for simulated statistical distributions. In general, the algorithm slightly underestimates the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ detection threshold for exponential statistics by $\\sim$ 5\\%, but usually within the 2$\\sigma$ error calculated for each area size. Typically, the bigger the area is, the more accurate is the detection threshold. To achieve a detection threshold accuracy of 10\\% for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold, each PDF needs to be known up to a $1-10^{-4}$ CL (10,000 resolution elements per area). For instruments with smaller FOVs (several hundred per several hundred $\\lambda\/D$), an area of $\\sim 50\\times 50 \\lambda\/D$ (2,500 resolution elements) would deliver a detection threshold accuracy of $\\sim $15\\% for all types of distribution. A solution to increase the detection accuracy of small FOVs would be to combine observations of several objects of similar magnitudes and observing conditions to increase the number of independant noise realizations in each area.\n\n\\subsection{Simulated PSFs\\label{simdata}}\nThe algorithm is now tested using simulated aberrated PSFs. For PSF observations, determination of the PDF is more complex. The speckle noise amplitude is decreasing with angular separation and the PDF may change with angular separation due to relative importance of random atmospheric speckles, photon, background and read noises. Since the speckle noise amplitude decreases with angular separation, a signal-to-noise ratio image is first obtained by dividing the pixel intensities, at each radius, by the standard deviation $\\sigma$ of the noise at that radius (estimated using the IDL {\\em robust\\_sigma} algorithm). Finally, since CL are extrapolated, a compromise needs to be found between having a good radial sampling of the PDF and having sections of images big enough to adequately determine the PDF.\n\nPSF simulations are performed using Fast Fourier Transforms of complex $2048\\times 2048$ pixel images with a 512 pixels diameter pupil; the full width half maximum (FWHM) of the PSF is 4 pixels. The pupil has uniform amplitude and includes $\\lambda\/160$ RMS of phase errors generated using a power-law of index $-2.6$. The PSF images are then trimmed to $1024\\times 1024$ pixels to avoid FFT aliasing effects. A non-aberrated reference PSF is subtracted to remove the Airy pattern and a signal-to-noise image is calculated. \n\nFor simplicity, consider the calculation of the PDF within an annulus centered on the PSF. Since the presence of background or companion point sources inside that annulus could bias the statistics for real data (we are assuming that the background star density is such that only one or a few background objects are detected in the field of view (FOV) around any single target; cases with a high background star density will be discussed in section~\\ref{hbsd}), we have chosen to divide the annulus in three azimuthal sections containing 50,000 pixels each ($\\sim$~10,000 resolution elements, see Fig.~\\ref{f3}). The median PDF over the three azimuthal sections is calculated. Given the area of these sections, the PDF will be known down to a $\\sim 1-10^{-4}$ CL for Gaussian statistics and the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ detection threshold will be known to $\\sim $10\\% accuracy (see Tab.~\\ref{tab1}).\n\nTo further avoid cases where a point source is located at the border of two sections, the entire procedure is repeated by rotating the sections by 30 and 60 degrees which respect to the PSF center, and the median PDF over the three orientations is finally obtained. This procedure is repeated at different angular separations.\n\nSince the PDF is estimated in large areas that may contain speckles with $I_c \\gg I_s$, $I_c \\sim I_s$ or $I_c \\ll I_s$, such technique returns an average PDF weighted by the various speckle noise contributions (pinned\/unpinned speckles or Gaussian noises). Simulation with and without a coronagraph (simulated with a Gaussian pupil apodizer having a FWHM equal to a quarter of the pupil diameter) and for $\\lambda\/160$, $\\lambda\/32$ and $\\lambda\/16$ RMS phase aberration are presented (see Fig.~\\ref{f4} and \\ref{f5}). The algorithm clearly detects the MR distribution expected for a pinned speckle dominated PSF and the unpinned (exponential) speckle dominated coronagraphic PSF.\n\nThe non-coronagraphic $\\lambda\/160$ RMS simulations confirm that speckle noise follows a MR (required detection threshold of $\\sim 10\\sigma$ for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL), as expected since pinned speckles are dominant for this case. As the quantity of aberrations increases, the ratio of pinned to non-pinned speckles decreases and the noise becomes exponential. For the Gaussian apodized case, since pinned speckles are strongly attenuated, the halo term dominates and the noise is more exponential. Note that none of these curves are expected to be flat as a function of angular separation since the ratio of pinned to unpinned speckles is varying with angular separation, thus changing the pixel intensity distribution, and some noise is expected from the CL curve extrapolation (see Tab.~\\ref{tab1}). Another simulation was performed using the $\\lambda\/160$ RMS case to show that if a constant Gaussian noise (background or read noise) is added to the image, the algorithm correctly detects the change of intensity distribution of the pixels at wide separations (see Fig.~\\ref{f6}).\n\nIn high-contrast imaging observations, a partially correlated reference star PSF is usually subtracted to remove a fraction of the quasi-static speckle noise. Such reference PSF can be obtained by observing a nearby target, by acquiring the same star at another wavelength (simultaneous spectral differential imaging, \\citealp{marois2005}) or polarization \\citep{potter2001}, or by building the reference using images acquired with different field angles (angular differential imaging, \\citealp{marois2006}). Such a PSF subtraction is now simulated to estimate how its affect the PDF. The observed PSF $I$ is simulated with a $\\lambda\/160$ RMS phase aberration $\\phi$, with and without a Gaussian apodizer. The reference PSF $I_{\\rm{ref}}$ is constructed by combining a perfectly correlated phase aberration $a\\phi$, where $a$ is a constant less than 1, with an uncorrelated part $\\Delta \\phi$ such as:\n\n\\begin{equation}\nI = | \\rm{FT}(Ae^{i\\phi})|^2\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{equation}\nI_{\\rm{ref}} = | \\rm{FT}(Ae^{i(a\\phi+\\Delta \\phi)})|^2 \\rm{,}\n\\end{equation}\n\\noindent where the total noise RMS of $\\phi$ and $a\\phi+\\Delta \\phi$ are equal and the ratio of the noise RMS of $a\\phi$ and $\\Delta \\phi$ is equal to 0.1, 1 and 10. Unless the background, read noise, random atmospheric speckles or photon noises are achieved by the reference PSF subtraction, the residual PDF is essentially unchanged for cases with and without a coronagraph (see Fig.~\\ref{f7}).\n\n\\section{Application to Observational Data\\label{obsdata}}\nThe steps required to use the algorithm with observational data are similar to the ones described in Tab.~\\ref{tabpdfstep} and $\\S~\\ref{simdata}$. Only a few additional reduction steps are necessary. Fig.~\\ref{figexample} illustrates the various steps of the technique using Gemini data.\n\nBeside the usual data reduction, deviant pixels, like diffraction from the secondary mirror support, must first be masked. Diffraction from the secondary mirror support usually produces a bright concentrated flux emanating from the PSF core along several azimuthal directions. Since this flux is not produced by quasi-static aberrations and is very localized in the image, if we include these pixels in the PDF, they will produced a bright positive tail in the PDF and the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold will be overestimated.\n\nSince the main science goal is to detect point sources, noise filtering is also applied to remove the noise that is not at the spatial scale of point sources. An $8\\times 8$ FWHM median filter is first subtracted from the image to reject large spatial period noises. Then, a $1\\times 1$ FWHM median filter is applied to reject bad\/hot pixels and smooth out the noise having spatial period below the resolution limit. The image is finally divided, at each radius, by the standard deviation $\\sigma$ of the noise (again obtained with the IDL {\\em robust\\_sigma} algorithm) to obtain a signal-to-noise ratio image.\n\nThe algorithm is first tested using data obtained at the Gemini telescope with the Altair adaptive optics system \\citep{saddlemyer1998} and the NIRI near-infrared camera \\citep{hodapp2000}. These data are part of the Gemini Deep Planet Survey \\citep{lafreniere2007a} that uses the angular differential imaging (ADI) technique \\citep{marois2006,lafreniere2007b} to detect faint companions. This technique consists in acquiring a sequence of images with continuous FOV rotation. A reference PSF that does not contain any point sources is first obtained by combining images of the sequence, and the quasi-static speckle noise is then attenuated by subtracting the reference ADI PSF. The data for the star HD97334B (program GN-2005A-Q16), acquired on April 18, 2005 with good seeing conditions (Strehl of $0.2$ at H-band), are presented. These data have been reduced, registered and processed using the pipeline described in \\citet{marois2006} with the additional steps mentioned above, i.e. pixel masking and noise filtering \\& normalizing. Given that NIRI images are $1024\\times 1024$ pixels and PSFs have 3 pixels per FWHM, we have chosen the same areas as the simulated PSFs mentioned above (see \\S~\\ref{simdata}) to calculate the PDF. For each region of the image, the pixel intensity histogram is obtained and then integrated to derive the CL curve. The CL is then extrapolated using a polynomial fit and the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold is estimated. The derived detection thresholds for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL are presented (see Fig.~\\ref{f8}) for a single PSF, a PSF minus the ADI reference PSF, and the combined ADI-subtracted images.\n\nThe algorithm is next tested using observational data obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope using the PUEO adaptive optics system \\citep{rigaut1998} and TRIDENT near-infrared camera \\citep{marois2005}. TRIDENT is a triple beam multi-wavelength (1.58, 1.625 and 1.68$\\micron$ with 1\\% bandpass) imager built following the simultaneous spectral differential imaging technique \\citep{racine1999,marois2000}. The technique consists in acquiring several images at different wavelengths and subtracting them to attenuate the speckle noise while retaining most of the flux of nearby companions. These data have been acquired as part of a direct imaging survey of stars confirmed to possess exoplanets from radial velocity analysis. The dataset of the star Ups And, acquired on November 14, 2002, is used here. Seeing conditions were relatively good and the Strehl ratio was of the order of $0.5$. The data have been reduced by subtracting a dark, dividing by a flat field, correcting for bad\/hot pixels, and registering the PSF at the image center. An optimized reference PSF was obtained using a star (Chi And) having a similar spectral type, magnitude and acquired at the same DEC and HA to minimize PSFs evolution from differential atmospheric refraction and flexure effects. Performances with and without the simultaneous reference PSF and the Chi And reference PSF subtractions are analyzed. Due to the limited FOV of TRIDENT, sections of 10,000 pixels (500 resolution elements, given that TRIDENT has 5 pixels per $\\lambda\/D$) are used to derive the PDF. Detection thresholds are thus known to $\\sim$15\\% (see Tab.~\\ref{tab1}).\n\nIt is clear that both TRIDENT and Gemini raw PSFs are limited by a non-Gaussian noise. For both TRIDENT\/CFHT and NIRI\/Gemini images, even after subtraction of a reference PSF, the residuals are still dominated by quasi-static speckles rather than averaged atmospheric speckle, background, read, or photon noises. Only the final combined ADI-subtracted image possessed a clear Gaussian-like noise. Fig.~\\ref{figexample2} shows a visual example of a 5$\\sigma$ detection with and without a Gaussian distributed noise after introducing artificial 5$\\sigma$ point sources. For the Gaussian distributed noise, only the artificial point sources are detected with a detection threshold at 5$\\sigma$,\\footnote{Only approximately half of the artificial point sources are detected $\\ge 5\\sigma$ since the artificial sources, being $5\\sigma$ in intensity, vary in S\/N by $1\\sigma$ RMS due to the underlying noise in the image. A $5\\sigma$ detection threshold thus misses\/detects $\\sim 50$\\% of $5\\sigma$ sources.} while for the Gemini data (a MR distributed noise), numerous false positive sources are observed for the same detection threshold. If instead we select the $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold obtained by the technique described in this paper (here equal to $10\\sigma$, see Fig.~\\ref{f8}), then only the artificial point sources are detected. It is interesting to note that the artificial source detection CL in the left and right panels of Fig.~\\ref{figexample2} are the same.\n\n\\section{Discussions\\label{disc}}\n\n\\subsection{PDF Evolution with Quasi-Static Speckle Averaging\\label{dis}}\nIt was shown in \\S~\\ref{obsdata} that the ADI technique produces a quasi-Gaussian noise. This is mainly due to the FOV rotation that occurs during the observing sequence; the residual noise is averaged incoherently when combining the images after FOV alignment. From the central limit theorem, it is thus expected that the noise in the final combined image shows quasi-Gaussian statistics.\n\nIn this section, simulations are presented to estimate the number of independent speckle noise realizations required to converge to a quasi-Gaussian noise intensity distribution. Random noise images having 10$^{6}$ resolution elements are created following an MR distribution having $I_c\/I_s$ equal to 0.1, 1 and 10. The PDF and CL curves are calculated for a single realization up to the coaddition of 25 independent realizations (see Fig.~\\ref{f9}). Typically, $\\sim $20 independent realizations are required for the MR distribution to converge, to $\\sim $20\\%, to a Gaussian distribution. Fig.~\\ref{f10} shows the detection threshold $d$ for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL as a function of $n_{\\rm{eff}}$, the number of independent noise realizations\n\\begin{equation}\nn_{\\rm{eff}} = n \\frac{t_{\\rm{exp}}}{\\tau_{\\rm{dcorr}}} \\rm{,}\\label{eqneff}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $n$ is the number of acquired images in the sequence, $t_{\\rm{exp}}$ is the integration time per image and $\\tau_{\\rm{dcorr}}$ the speckle noise decorrelation timescale (the equation is valid if $\\tau_{\\rm{dcorr}} \\ge t_{\\rm{exp}}$; if $\\tau_{\\rm{dcorr}} < t_{\\rm{exp}}$ then $n_{\\rm{eff}} = n$). These three curves can be well fit by a simple power-law of the form\n\\begin{equation}\nd(n) = [d_1 - 5] n_{\\rm{eff}}^{-0.63} + 5 \\rm{,}\\label{eqevol}\n\\end{equation}\n\\noindent where $d_1$ is the detection threshold of a single image for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL. This equation is valid for all types of statistical distributions studied here. Eq.~\\ref{eqevol} can be used to predict the detection threshold required for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL and a statistical distribution with a known instantaneous PDF and speckle noise decorrelation timescale. If we consider the Gemini ADI observation ($d_1 \\sim 13$ for a single ADI-subtracted image, see Fig.~\\ref{f8}), for a 70 minute observation sequence with $\\tau_{\\rm{dcorr}} \\sim 1.5$ minutes (at 2$^{\\prime \\prime}$ or 50$\\lambda\/D$, see \\citealp{marois2006}), it is expected that the detection threshold for a $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL of the final combined image ($n_{\\rm{eff}} = 46.7$) will be $\\sim 5.7$ at 50$\\lambda\/D$, in good agreement with the number derived with real images ($\\sim 5.8$, see Fig.~\\ref{f8}).\n\n\\subsection{Targets with a High Background Star Density\\label{hbsd}}\nIn some cases, it is desirable to observe an interesting nearby target situated along the galactic plane or in front of the galactic bulge. In those areas, the high background stellar density implies that numerous background stars will be present in each of the areas defined to derive pixel intensity distributions. The detection threshold obtained will be affected by those stars since the algorithm would consider them as speckles. Several techniques can be used to remove the stars before estimating detection thresholds. A simple solution is to subtract these stars, using a non-saturated image of the primary, and mask any remaining contaminated areas with a not-a-number (NaN) mask. If the observations are obtained using the ADI technique then a star-free residual image can be obtained in the following manner. Prior to combining all the ADI-subtracted images together, instead of rotating them by the angle required to align their field of view, they are rotated by the negative of that angle such that all off-axis sources (the background stars) are eliminated by the median combination. As the amplitude of the rotation between the images is the same as for the ``proper'' combination, the effect of the median combination on the residual noise is expected to be the same and this star-free residual image can be used to estimate the noise distribution. Of course, the proper ADI combination of images must be used to search for companions. Another approach, still within the ADI framework, is to use the final ADI residual image to subtract the off-axis sources from each non-rotated ADI-subtracted image. Then these source-free images are rotated by the negative of the angle needed to align their field of view, such that their median combination eliminates the off-axis sources subtraction residuals. As for the previous technique, this source-free residual image should have the same residual noise distribution as the proper ADI residual image.\n\n\\section{Conclusion\\label{con}}\nA robust technique was elaborated to estimate sensitivity limits using a CL approach. This technique correctly finds the expected MR intensity distributions of simulated and real PSFs, and properly detects a change of PDF as a function of angular separation. Experiments with simulated and observational data confirm the prediction of the theory that raw PSFs obtained with high-contrast imaging instruments are limited by a non-Gaussian noise. A correction factor (up to 3) needs to be applied to detection limits found assuming Gaussian statistics to obtain the desired $1-3\\times 10^{-7}$ CL detection threshold. Properly estimating this effect is important for future high-contrast imaging instruments for both ground- and space-based dedicated missions since a loss of a factor of three in contrast results in less sensitivity to low-mass exoplanets or, if a specific contrast needs to be achieved, integration times need to be at least nine times longer. It was shown that the ADI technique is the only observing strategy currently known that generates, intrinsically, a quasi-Gaussian noise at all separations where sufficient FOV rotation has occurred. A simulation has shown that it takes typically $\\sim 20$ independent speckle noise realizations to produce an average speckle noise that shows quasi-Gaussian statistics. A general power-law is derived to predict the detection threshold required when averaging independent speckle noise realization of known PDFs and decorrelation timescale.\n\n\\acknowledgments\nThe authors would like to thanks R\\'{e}mi Soummer, Mike Fitzgerald, James Graham, Anand Sivaramakrisnan, Lisa Poyneer and Daniel Nadeau for discussions. This research was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W-7405-ENG-48, and also supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under cooperative agreement AST 98-76783. This work is also supported in part through grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada and from the Fonds Qu\\'{e}b\\'{e}cois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies, Qu\\'{e}bec.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{The Probability Representation of Quantum Mechanics} \n\nThe MDF of a random variable $X$ was introduced in \\cite{cahill} as the\nFourier transform of the quantum  characteristic function  \n$\\chi (k) = <e^{ik\\hat X}>$, to be  \n\\begin{equation} \nw(X,t)= {1\\over 2\\pi} \\int dk\\, e^{-ikX}\n<e^{ik\\hat X}>~ , \\label{mdf} \n\\end{equation} \nwhere $\\hat X$ is the operator\nassociated to $X$, $<\\hat A> = \\mbox{\\rm Tr} (\\hat\\rho \\hat\nA)$, and $\\hat\\rho$ is the time-dependent density operator. \nIt is shown in \\cite{cahill} \nthat $w(X,t)$ is positive and normalized to unity, provided $\\hat X$\nis an observable. This theorem may be easily proven taking for \nsimplicity $\\hat\\rho$ to be the density operator for a pure state. \nThen, evaluating the trace in \\eqn{mdf} on eigenstates of the operator \n$\\hat X$, it can be verified that \\eqn{mdf} yields  $w(X,t)= \\rho(X,X,t)$\nwhich is positive and normalized to unity.\n\nWe recall that the quantum characteristic function is, up to factors\nof $i$,  the generating function of  the momenta of any order, for the\nprobability distribution of the operator $\\hat X$. Hence it plays in\nquantum statistical mechanics the same r\\^ole as the generating\nfunctionals for the Green's functions in quantum field theory. In ref.\n\\cite{tom1} $X$ is taken to be a variable of the form \n\\begin{equation}\n X=\\mu q + \\nu p \\, ,\\label{x}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mu, ~\\nu$ are real parameters labelling different reference\nframes in the phase space. $\\mu$ is dimensionless, while $[\\nu]=\n[m^{-1}] [t] $.  Thus, $X$ represents the position coordinate taking\nvalues in an ensemble of reference frames. For such a choice of $\nX$ it was shown that there exists an invertible relation among the MDF\nand the density matrix, respectively in \\cite{tom1} for the 1-d case, \nand in \\cite{dar} for the 2-d case. \nThis relation was originally understood through the Wigner function: \nthe MDF was\nexpressed in terms of the Wigner function which is in turn related to \nthe density matrix and viceversa. The evolution equation of\nthe MDF was then found starting from an evolution equation for the\nWigner function established by Moyal in \\cite{moyal}. This intermediate\nstep in terms of the Wigner function is  not necessary. We can directly\ninvert \\eqn{mdf}, when the variable $X$ and the associated operator are\ngiven by \\eqn{x}. The evolution equation is then obtained (in the\nSchr\\\"odinger representation) by means of the Liouville equation for\nthe density operator, in coordinate representation. In view of the\nsubsequent generalization to $N$ degrees of freedom and to field\ntheory, let us derive these results in some detail for a one\ndimensional system. Equation \\eqn{mdf} is explicitly written as \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nw(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)&=& {1\\over 2\\pi} \\int dk\\, \\int dZ \\, e^{-ikX}\n<Z|\\hat\\rho e^{ik\\hat X}|Z>~ \\nonumber\\\\ \n&=& {1\\over 2\\pi} \\int dk\\, \\int dZ \\, \\rho(Z, Z-k\\nu\\hbar) \ne^{-ik[X-\\mu(Z-k\\nu\\hbar\/2)]} .\n\\end{eqnarray}   \nThe MDF so defined is normalized with respect to the $X$ variable: $ \n\\int dX w(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)=1$.\nPerforming the change of variables $~Z'=Z,~Z''=Z-k\\nu\\hbar$ we may reexpress \nthe MDF in the more convenient form:\n\\begin{equation}\nw(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)={1\\over 2\\pi |\\nu|\\hbar} \\int \\rho(Z',Z'',t) \\exp \n\\left[-i{Z'-Z''\\over \\nu\\hbar}\\left(X-\\mu {Z+Z'\\over 2}\n\\right)\\right] dZ'\\, dZ'' \\label{wro}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich can be inverted to \n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho (X,X',t)=|\\alpha| \\int w(Y,\\mu,{X-X'\\over \\hbar\\alpha}) \\exp \\left[ \ni\\alpha\\left(Y-\\mu{X+X'\\over 2}\\right)\\right] d\\mu \\, dY \\label{row1}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\alpha$ is a parameter with dimension of an inverse length.\nThe density matrix is independent of $\\alpha$. In facts, using the \nhomogeneity of the MDF, $w(\\alpha X, \\alpha\\mu,\\alpha\\nu)=|\\alpha|^{-1} \nw(X, \\mu,\\nu)$, which is evident from the definition, \n\\eqn{row1} may be written as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho (X,X',t)=\\int w(Y,\\mu, X-X') \\exp \\left[ \n{i\\over \\hbar} \\left(Y-\\mu{X+X'\\over 2}\\right)\\right] d\\mu \\, dY \\label{row}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the variables $Y,\\mu$ have been rescaled by $\\alpha$.\nIt is important to note that, for \\eqn{wro} to be invertible, it is \nnecessary that $X$ be a coordinate variable taking values in an \nensemble of phase \nspaces; in other words, the specific choices $\\mu=1, \\nu=0$ or any \nother fixing of the parameters $\\mu$ and $\\nu$ \nwould not allow to reconstruct the density matrix.  \nHence, the MDF contains the same amount of information on a quantum \nstate as the density matrix, only if Eq. \\eqn{x} is assumed. \n\nWe now address the problem of finding the evolution equation for the \nMDF, for Hamiltonians of the form\n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat H = {{\\hat p}^2\\over 2m} +V(\\hat q).\n\\end{equation}\nUsing the Liouville equation\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial \\hat\\rho}{\\partial t} + {i\\over \\hbar} \n[\\hat H,\\hat\\rho]=0 \\label{liou}\n\\end{equation}\nand substituting into Eq. \\eqn{wro}, we have \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot w}(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)&=&-{i\\over 2\\pi |\\nu|\\hbar} \\int \\left[ -{\\hbar^2\\over \n2m}\\left(\n\\frac{\\partial^2}{\\partial Z^2} - \\frac{\\partial^2}{\\partial Z'^2} \\right) \n\\left( V(Z)- V(Z')\\right)\\right] \n\\rho(Z,Z',t) \\nonumber \\\\\n& &\\times\\exp \\left[-i{Z-Z'\\over \n\\nu\\hbar}\\left(X-\\mu{Z+Z'\\over 2}\\right)\\right] dZ\\, d Z' ~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIntegrating by parts and assuming the density matrix to be zero at \ninfinity, we finally have\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot w}(X,\\mu,\\nu,t) &=& \\left\\{{1\\over m} \n\\mu {\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu}+{i\\over \\hbar} \\left[ \nV\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu} \n-{i\\nu\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \n\\partial X}\\right) \\right.\\right.\\nonumber\\\\ \n&-&\\left.\\left. V\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu} \n+{i\\nu\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \\partial X}\\right)\\right]\\right\\} w(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)~,\n\\label{evo}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the operator $({\\partial \\over \\partial X})^{-1}$ is so defined\n\\begin{equation}\n({\\partial \\over \\partial X})^{-1}  \\int f(Z)  e^{g(Z)X}dZ =\n\\int {f(Z)\\over g(Z)}  e^{g(Z)X} dZ~. \n\\label{invder}\n\\end{equation}\nThis equation, which plays the r\\^ole of the Schr\\\"odinger equation in \nthe alternative scheme just outlined, has been studied and solved for \nsome quantum \nmechanical systems \\cite{noipra},\\cite{manko}. \nThe classical limit of \\eqn{evo} is easily seen to be \n\\begin{equation}\n{\\dot w}(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)= \\left\\{\\frac{\\mu}{m} {\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu}+\\nu \nV'\\left(-\\left({\\partial \\over \\partial X}\\right)^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \n\\mu}\\right){\\partial \\over \\partial X} \\right\\} w(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)~,\n\\label{evocl}\n \\end{equation}\nwhere $V'$ is the derivative of the potential with respect to the \nargument. Equation \\eqn{evocl} \nmay be checked to be equivalent to Boltzmann equation \nfor a classical distribution of probability $f(q,p,t)$ ,\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\partial f\\over \\partial t} + {p\\over m} {\\partial f \\over \\partial q} -  {\\partial V \\over \n\\partial q} {\\partial f \\over \\partial p} =0,\n\\end{equation}\nafter performing the change of variables\n\\begin{equation}\nw(X,\\mu,\\nu,t) = {1\\over 2\\pi} \\int f(q,p,t) e^{ik(X-\\mu q -\\nu p) } \ndk~ dq~ dp~;\n\\end{equation}\nHence, the classical and quantum evolution equations only differ by \nterms of higher order in $\\hbar$. Moreover, for potentials quadratic in \n$\\hat q$, higher order terms cancel out and the quantum evolution \nequation coincides with the classical one. \nThis leads to the remarkable result that there is no difference between \nthe evolution of the distributions of probability for quantum and \nclassical observables, when the system is described by a Hamiltonian \nquadratic in positions and momenta. For this kind of systems, the \npropagator is the same  \\cite{ovman}. Of course, what makes the difference \nis the initial condition.\n\n\\section{Generalization to $N$ degrees of freedom}\nWe consider now a system of $N$ interacting particles sitting on the \nsites of a lattice (we choose it to be one-dimensional for simplicity).\nThe Hamiltonian of the system is \n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat H = \\sum_{i=1}^N {{\\hat p_i}^2\\over 2m_i} + V(\\hat q).\\label{hamn}\n\\end{equation}\nWe assume the masses to be equal to unity. We take the potential \nto be of the form:\n\\begin{equation}\nV(\\hat q)= \\sum_{i=1}^N \\left ( {1\\over{2a^2}} (\\hat q_{i+1} - \\hat q_i)^2\n+ U(\\hat q_i)\\right)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $a$ is the lattice spacing and $U(\\hat q_i)$ is the part of the \npotential which depends only on the position of the i-th particle.\nThis specification is not essential for the purposes of this section, \nbut it will become necessary for understanding the limit to the \ncontinuum, which will be considered in next section.\nThe quantum  characteristic function  for the $N$ dimensional system \nmay be defined as \n\\begin{equation}\n\\chi (k_1,...k_N) = <e^{i\\sum_{i} k_i\\hat X_i}>~,\\label{chin}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $<\\hat A> = \\mbox{\\rm Tr} (\\hat\\rho \\hat\nA)$, and $\\hat\\rho$ is the density operator of the system. (In case \nthere is no interaction between different sites of the lattice the \ndensity operator may be factorized and the characteristic function is \njust the product $ \\chi (k_1,...k_N) = \\Pi_{i=1}^N \\chi(k_i) $ .) \n\nPerforming the Fourier transform of \\eqn{chin} the MDF is \nthen given by\n\\begin{equation} \nw(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)= {1\\over (2\\pi)^N} \\int dk_1 ... dk_N\\, \ne^{-i\\sum_ik_iX_i}\n<e^{i\\sum_ik_i\\hat X_i}>~ ; \\label{mdfn} \n\\end{equation} \nwhere $\\sigma$ is a collective index. It may be shown \nthat this is a probability distribution, namely that it is positive \ndefinite and normalized, provided $\\hat X_i$ are observables. The proof \ngoes along with the one-dimensional case. We first suppose that there \nis no interaction between different sites at some initial time $t_0$ \nand we assume for simplicity that the system be in a pure state $|\\psi> \n= |\\psi_1>\\otimes ... \\otimes |\\psi_N>$. Using the factorization \nproperty of the quantum characteristic function Eq. \\eqn{mdfn} may be \nseen to reduce to the product $w(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t_0)= \n\\prod_i\\rho_i(X_i,X_i,t_0)=\\rho(X,X,t_0)$, which is positive and \nnormalized. Then Liouville equation guarantees that this result stays \nvalid when the interaction is switched on.\nIn analogy with the one-dimensional case we now introduce the variables\n\\begin{equation}\nX_i = \\mu_i q_i + \\nu_i p_i \\label{xi}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\hat X_i$ accordingly defined. \n \nIntroducing the notation $|Z_\\sigma>\\equiv |Z_1>\\otimes...\\otimes|Z_N>$\nwe rewrite \\eqn{mdfn} as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& w(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)= {1\\over (2\\pi)^N} \\int \n\\prod_{i=1}^N dk_i \n\\, dZ_i \\, e^{-i\\sum_{j=1}^N k_j X_j}\n<Z_\\sigma | \\hat\\rho e^{i \\sum_{l=1}^N k_l\\hat X_l}|Z_\\sigma>~ \\cr \n&&= {1\\over (2\\pi)^N} \\int \\Pi_{i=1}^N dk_i\\, dZ_i \\, \\rho(Z_\\sigma, \nZ_\\sigma -k_\\sigma \\nu_\\sigma\\hbar ) \ne^{-i\\sum_{j+1}^N k_j[X_j-\\mu_j(Z_j-k_j\\nu_j\\hbar\/2)]} ,\n\\end{eqnarray}   \nwhere $\\rho(Z_\\sigma, Z'_\\sigma)=  <Z_\\sigma|\\hat\\rho |Z'_\\sigma>$.\nPerforming the change of variables \n\\begin{equation}\nZ'_i=Z_i~,~~ Z''_i= Z_i - k_i\\nu_i\\hbar\n\\end{equation}\nwe have\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nw(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)&=&{1\\over (2\\pi\\hbar )^N} \\int \n\\prod_{i=1}^N \\left ({dZ'_i\\, d Z''_i\\over |\\nu_i|}\\right) \n\\rho(Z'_\\sigma,Z''_\\sigma,t) \\nonumber \\\\\n&\\times&\\exp \\left[-i\\sum_{j=1}^N {Z'_j-Z''_j\\over \n\\nu_j\\hbar}\\left(X_j-\\mu_j{Z'_j+Z''_j\\over 2}\\right)\\right] \\label{wron}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhich can be inverted to \n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho (X_\\sigma,X'_\\sigma,t)={1\\over (2\\pi)^N} \\int \\prod_{i=1}^N d\\mu_i \\, dY_i\n~w(Y_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,X_\\sigma-X'_\\sigma)\n  \\exp \\left[ \n{i\\over \\hbar}\\sum_{j=1}^N \\left( Y_j-\\mu_j{X_j+X'_j\\over 2}\\right)\\right] . \n\\label{rown}\n\\end{equation}\nOnce again, we recall that the inversion of \\eqn{wron} is made possible by\nchoosing the variables $X_i$ as in \\eqn{xi}.\nWe now use the Liouville equation \\eqn{liou} to get \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot w}(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t) &=& {-i\\over (2\\pi\\hbar)^N} \n\\int \\prod_{i=1}^N\\left({1\\over |\\nu_i| } dZ_i\\, d Z'_i \\right)\n\\Biggl[ \n\\sum_{j=1}^N -{\\hbar^2\\over 2m}\n\\left( \n\\frac{\\partial^2}{\\partial Z_j^2} - \\frac{\\partial^2}{\\partial Z_j^{'2}}  \n\\right)  \\\\\n&+&  \\left(V(Z_\\sigma) - V(Z'_\\sigma)\\right)\\Biggr] \n\\rho(Z_\\sigma,Z'_\\sigma,t) \n\\exp \\left[-i\\sum_{l=1}^N {Z_l-Z'_l\\over \n\\nu_l\\hbar}\\left(X_l-\\mu_l{Z_l+Z'_l\\over 2}\\right)\\right] ~.\\nonumber\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIntegrating by parts and assuming the density matrix to be zero at \ninfinity, we finally have\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot w}(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t) &=& \\Biggl\\{ \n\\sum_{i=1}^N\\mu_i {\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu_i}+{i\\over \\hbar} \n\\left[ \nV\\left(\n-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n-{i\\nu_\\sigma\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \\partial X_\\sigma} \n\\right) \n\\right. \\nonumber\\\\\n&-& \\left. \nV\\left(\n-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n+{i\\nu_\\sigma\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \\partial X_\\sigma}\n\\right)\n\\right] \\Biggr\\} w(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)~,\n\\label{evon}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the inverse derivative is defined as in \\eqn{invder}.\nWe report for future convenience the term containing the potential when \nexplicitating the interaction between neighbours:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\left[ \nV\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n-{i\\nu\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \n\\partial X_\\sigma}\\right) - V\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} \n{\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n+{i\\nu_\\sigma\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \\partial X_\\sigma}\\right)\\right] \\nonumber\\\\\n&&= \\left[ \nU\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n-{i\\nu\\hbar\\over 2} {\\partial\\over \n\\partial X_\\sigma}\\right) - U\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} \n{\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n+{i\\nu_\\sigma\\hbar \\over 2} {\\partial\\over \\partial X_\\sigma}\\right)\\right]\\nonumber\\\\\n&&- {i\\hbar\\over a^2} \\sum_{i=1}^N \\nu_i \\left[ {\\partial \\over \\partial X_i} \n\\left({\\partial \\over \\partial X_{i+1}}\\right)^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_{i+1}}\n-2 {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_i} + {\\partial \\over \\partial X_i} \n\\left({\\partial \\over \\partial X_{i-1}}\\right)^{-1} \n{\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_{i-1}}\\right]~. \\label{potenital}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nWhen considering the classical limit we have\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot w}(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)&=& \\left\\{\\sum_{i=1}^N\\mu_i \n{\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu_i}+ \\nu_i\n{1\\over a^2} \\left[ {\\partial \\over \\partial X_i} \n\\left({\\partial \\over \\partial X_{i+1}}\\right)^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_{i+1}}\n\\right.\\right. \\nonumber\\\\\n&-& \\left. \\left. 2 {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_i} + {\\partial \\over \\partial X_i} \n\\left({\\partial \\over \\partial X_{i-1}}\\right)^{-1} \n{\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_{i-1}}\\right] \\right. \\nonumber\\\\\n& & \\left. +V_i\\left(-({\\partial \\over \\partial X_\\sigma})^{-1} {\\partial \\over \\partial \n\\mu_\\sigma} \\right) {\\partial\\over  \\partial X_\\sigma}  \\right\\}\nw(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)~,\\label{evoncl}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $U_i$ is the derivative of the self-interaction potential with \nrespect to the $i-th$ variable. \nEquation \\eqn{evoncl} may be seen to be equivalent to the Boltzmann \nequation as in the one-dimensional case. Moreover, Hamiltonians which \nare quadratic in positions and momenta yield the same evolution \nequations for classical and quantum probability distributions.\n\n\\section{Generalization to Field Theory}\nWe now consider a scalar quantum field theory described by the \nHamiltonian \n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat H = \\int d^d x~ \\left[{1\\over 2} \\hat\\pi^2(x) + {1\\over 2} \n\\sum_{b=1}^d(\\partial_b\\hat\\phi(x))^2 + U(\\hat\\phi(x))\\right] ~.\n\\label{hamfi}\n\\end{equation}\n$d$ is the spatial dimension, while \n$U(\\phi(x))$ is the  self-interacting potential, polynomial in the \nfield $\\hat\\phi$. The Hamiltonian \\eqn{hamfi} is easily seen to be \nobtained by the discrete Hamiltonian \\eqn{hamn} by taking the limit to \nthe continuum ($a\\rightarrow 0$) with the following rules:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\na^{-d\/2}\\hat q_i \\rightarrow \\hat\\phi(x)~~&&~~\na^{-d\/2}\\hat p_i \\rightarrow \\hat\\pi(x)\\nonumber\\\\\na^{d}\\sum_i \\rightarrow \\int d^d x~~&&~~\na^{-(d\/2+1)}(\\hat q_{i+1} - \\hat q_i) \\rightarrow {\\partial \\hat \\phi(x)\\over \n\\partial x_b}~.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn analogy with the discrete case we introduce the field\n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat\\Phi(x)= \\mu(x)\\hat\\phi(x) + \\nu(x)\\hat\\pi(x)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mu(x)=\\lim_{a\\rightarrow 0} a^{-d\/2} \\mu_i$, and \n$\\nu(x)=\\lim_{a\\rightarrow 0} a^{-d\/2} \\nu_i$ .  \n\nThe quantum characteristic functional, which now will play the r\\^ole \nof generating functional for correlation functions of the fields, may \nbe defined as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\chi(k(x))= <e^{i\\int d^d x~ k(x) \\hat\\Phi(x)}>=\\mbox{\\rm Tr} \\left(\\hat\\rho(t)\ne^{i\\int d^d x~ k(x) \\hat\\Phi(x)}\\right)~.\n\\end{equation}\nThe functional Fourier transform of $\\chi(k(x))$, what we will call the\nmarginal distribution functional (MD${\\cal F}$), still defines a\nprobability distribution. This can be understood by recognizing that it\nis the limit of the MDF for the discrete $N$-dimensional system\nconsidered in the previous section: \n\\begin{equation}\nw(\\Phi(x), \\mu(x), \\nu(x), t) = \\int {\\cal D}k\\; e^{-i\\int k(x) \\Phi(x) dx} \n\\chi(k)=\\lim_{a\\rightarrow 0} w(X_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)~,\n\\label{mdfc}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\prod_i {dk_i\\over (2\\pi)^N }\\rightarrow \\int {\\cal D} k$.\nAlso, the density matrix functional may be defined as the limit of Eq. \n\\eqn{rown} to be\n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho(\\Phi, \\Phi',t)= \\int {\\cal D} \\mu {\\cal D} \\Psi \\;\nw(\\Psi,\\mu,\\Phi-\\Phi') \\exp\\left\\{ {i\\over \\hbar} \\int dy \n\\left[\\Psi(y)-\\mu(y)\\left({\\Phi(y)-\\Phi'(y)\\over 2}\\right)\\right] \\right\\}~.\n\\end{equation}\nThen, the evolution equation for the probability distribution \nfunctional is easily obtained by taking the limit of \\eqn{evon}: \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&{\\dot w}(\\Phi(x), \\mu(x), \\nu(x), t) = \n\\left\\{  \\int d^d x~ \n\\left[ \\mu(x) {\\delta\\over \\delta \\nu(x)} + 2 \\nu(x){\\delta\\over \\delta\n\\Phi(x)}\\Delta \n\\left[\n\\left(\n{\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\n\\right)^{-1}\n{\\delta\\over \\delta \\mu(x)}   \n\\right]\n\\right]\n\\right.\\nonumber\\\\\n      &&+ \\left. {i\\over \\hbar} \n\\left[ U\n\\left[\n\\left( {-\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\n\\right)^{-1} \n{\\delta\\over\\delta \\mu(x)} - {i \\nu(x)\\hbar\\over 2} {\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\n\\right] \n\\right.\\right.\\nonumber\\\\\n&-& \\left. \\left. U\n\\left[\n\\left(  {-\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\n\\right)^{-1} {\\delta\\over\n\\delta \\mu(x)} + {i \\nu(x)\\hbar\\over 2} \n{\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\n\\right] \n\\right] \n\\right\\}\nw(\\Phi(x), \\mu(x), \\nu(x), t) \\label{evoc}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe inverse functional derivative \n$\\left({\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\\right)^{-1}$ is so defined:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\left({\\delta\\over \\delta \\Phi(x)}\\right)^{-1} \n\\int {\\cal D}k\\; e^{-i\\int k(y) \\Phi(y) dy} \n= \\int {\\cal D}k\\; {i\\over k(x)}e^{-i\\int k(y) \\Phi(y) dy}  ~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhile the notation $\\Delta [f(x)]$ stands for $f(x+\\Delta x )- f(x)$. \nPerforming an expansion in powers of $\\hbar$ the classical limit may be \nobtained as in the previous sections.\n\n\\section{The Quantum Characteristic Function as a Generating Function}\nIn this section we discuss the connection between the \nprobability representation described above both for quantum mechanics \nand quantum field theory and a slightly different point of view\ndeveloped in \\cite{wet2}, where evolution equations are found for a \nsuitably  defined euclidean partition function. \nThere are two main ingredients in our\napproach: one is is the probabilistic interpretation for the\ndistribution describing the observables, the other is the equivalence\nbetween the description based on the MDF and the conventional\ndescription based on the density matrix. The first aspect is guaranteed \nby the Glauber theorem which states that the Fourier transform of the\nquantum characteristic function associated  to observables is a\nprobability distribution. The second aspect, namely the invertibility\nof the MDF in terms of the density matrix, is achieved by introducing\nconfiguration space variables which take value in an ensemble of\nreference frames in phase space, each labelled by the two parameters, $\\mu,\n\\nu$. \nThus, the evolution equations which we have found (\\eqn{evo}, \\eqn{evon}, \n\\eqn{evoc}), together with suitable initial conditions, completely \ncharacterize the state of the given quantum \nsystem. These equations assume a simpler form when their Fourier \ntransform is performed. We have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\chi(k,\\mu,\\nu,t)= \\int dX e^{ikX} w(X,\\mu,\\nu,t)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwith obvious generalizations to the $N$ dimensional case and to field \ntheory.\nFor the one-dimensional quantum systems considered in section 1, \nthe Fourier transform of Eq.\\eqn{evo} yields an evolution equation for \nthe quantum characteristic function itself:\n\\begin{equation}\n{\\dot \\chi}(k,\\mu,\\nu,t) = \\left\\{\\frac{1}{m}\n\\mu {\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu}+{i\\over \n\\hbar} \\left[ \nV\\left({1 \\over i k} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu} -{k\\nu \\hbar\\over2} \\right) \n- V\\left({1 \\over ik}  {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu} \n+{k \\nu \\hbar\\over2}\\right)\\right]\\right\\} \\chi(k,\\mu,\\nu,t)~.\n\\label{evotr}\n\\end{equation}\nFor the $N$-dimensional quantum systems considered in section 2, the \nFourier transform of Eq.\\eqn{evon} yields \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot \\chi}(k_\\sigma,\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t) &=& \\Biggl\\{\n\\frac{1}{m}\\sum_{i=1}^N\\mu_i {\\partial\\over \\partial \\nu_i}+{i\\over \\hbar} \n\\left[ \nV\\left(\n{1\\over i k_\\sigma} {\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n-{\\nu_\\sigma k_\\sigma \\hbar\\over2} \n\\right)  \\right. \\nonumber\\\\\n&-&\\left. \nV\\left( \n{1 \\over i k_\\sigma}  \n{\\partial \\over \\partial \\mu_\\sigma} \n+{\\nu_\\sigma k_\\sigma\\hbar\\over 2} \n\\right)\n\\right]\n\\Biggr\\} \\chi(k_\\sigma,\n\\mu_\\sigma,\\nu_\\sigma,t)~,\n\\label{evontr}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhile Fourier transforming Eq.\\eqn{evoc} we have, for quantum field \ntheory,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n{\\dot \\chi}(k(x), \\mu(x), \\nu(x), t) &=& \\left\\{ \\int d^d x~ \n\\left[ \n\\frac{1}{m}\\mu(x) {\\delta\\over \\delta \\nu(x)} - 2i\\hbar k(x)\\nu(x)\\Delta \n\\left[ \n{1\\over i k(x)}{\\delta\\over \\delta \\mu(x)}   \n\\right] \n\\right] \n\\right. \\nonumber \\\\\n&+& \\left. i \n\\left[\nU\\left[\n{1\\over i k(x)}  {\\delta\\over\\delta \\mu(x)} - {k(x) \\nu(x)\\hbar\\over2} \n\\right] \\right.\\right. \\nonumber\\\\\n&-&\\left. \\left. \nU\\left[ \n{1\\over i k(x)}  {\\delta\\over\\delta \\mu(x)} +{k(x) \\nu(x)\\hbar\\over2} \n\\right] \\right] \\right\\}\n\\chi(k(x), \\mu(x), \\nu(x), t) \\label{evoctr}~ .\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNow the comparison with the results of \\cite{wet2} may be easily understood.\nLet us stick to quantum field theory for definiteness.\nThe quantum characteristic functional which is a generating functional \nfor correlation functions of the $\\Phi$ field \ncoincides with the generating functional considered in\n\\cite{wet2}\n\\begin{equation}\nZ(\\mu', \\nu',t) =  \\mbox{\\rm Tr}  \\left(\n\\hat\\rho(t)\\exp\n\\left\\{ \\int{ d^d x~ \\mu'(x)\\hat\\phi(x)+ \\nu'(x)\\hat\\pi(x) }\n\\right\\}\n\\right)\n~, \\label{part}\n\\end{equation}\nafter rescaling the parameters $\\mu$ and $\\nu$ to $\\mu'=ik\\mu$ and\n$\\nu'=ik\\nu$ (of course, the same holds for quantum mechanics).\nConsequently, the evolution equations for the characteristic functional\nmay be seen to be equal to those found in \\cite{wet2} for the\ngenerating functional \\eqn{part} provided the parameters $\\mu'$ and\n$\\nu'$ are rescaled as specified. \n\nGoing back to the initial remark of this section, we may conclude that,\nthe quantum characteristic function and its evolution equation (or the\ngenerating functional in \\eqn{part}) are more interesting from an\noperative point of view as they determine the correlation functions and\ntheir time evolution. On the other hand the introduction of the MDF is\nboth relevant and necessary from a theoretical point of view. In facts\nit allows a unified description of classical and quantum phenomena in\nterms of probability distributions obeying different evolution\nequations. Also it justifies the introduction of the $X$ variable, as a\nvariable taking values in an ensemble of reference frames \\eqn{x}, in\nview of the invertibility of the MDF in terms of the density matrix.\nThis seems to us the profound motivation for introducing such a\ncombination of phase space variables in the quantum characteristic\nfunctional and in the generating functional \\eqn{part} . We stress once\nagain that $X$ and its field analogue $\\Phi$ are, for each couple\n$(\\mu,\\nu)$, configuration space variables in the transformed reference\nframe labelled by $(\\mu,\\nu)$. \n\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nIn this letter we have presented an extension of the probabilistic\nrepresentation of quantum mechanics to quantum field theory. In this\nframework classical and quantum phenomena, both statistically\ndescribed, only differ by the evolution equations of the distributions\nof probabilities for the relevant observables. Quantum observables  are\ndescribed by a distribution of probability, the MDF, and the time\nevolution by an integro-differential equation for the MDF. We recently\naddressed the problem of finding the Green's function for the\ntime-evolution equation of the MDF \\cite{noipra}. The problem was\nsolved for quadratic Hamiltonians, and a characterization of such a\npropagator in terms of the time--dependent invariants of the system was\nfound. This propagator represents the transition {\\it probability} of\nthe system from a quantum state to another. Thus, a generalization to\nquantum field theory would be interesting in our opinion, and is\npresently under consideration. \nAnother promising application of the probabilistic point of view \n is suggested in\n\\cite{wet2} where it is used to study the approach to equilibrium\nof non equilibrium quantum field theories. \nAn extension to relativistic quantum field theory would be also \ninteresting, though it poses problems of interpretation which are not \nunderstood at the moment.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nDuring the past four decades a great deal of interest has been shown in identifying and characterizing qualitative and quantitative properties of finite dimensional integrable nonlinear dynamical systems \\cite{book1,int12}. Several powerful mathematical methods have been developed to solve\/integrate nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Some widely used methods to solve nonlinear ODEs in the contemporary literature are (i) Painlev$\\acute{e}$ singularity structure analysis \\cite{pain,pain1,mlbook}, (ii) Lie symmetry analysis \\cite{olv,hydon,stephani,blu1,blu,ibr}, (iii) Darboux method \\cite{darb1} and (iv) Jacobi last multiplier method \\cite{jlm1,nuci1,nuci}. Among these the Lie group method advocated by Sophus Lie plays a vital role \\cite{olv,hydon,stephani,blu1,ibr}. The method is essentially based on the invariance of differential equations under a continuous group of point transformations and such transformations usually have the form $T=T(t,x,\\epsilon),~X=X(t,x,\\epsilon),$ where $(t,x)$ and $(T,X)$ are the old and new independent and dependent variables respectively of the given ODE and $\\epsilon$ denotes the group parameter. The transformations depend only on the variables $t$ and $x$ and not on the derivatives, that is $\\dot{x}$. Transformations of this type are called the point symmetry group of a differential equation when this group of transformations leave the differential equation invariant \\cite{hydon,stephani,blu1,blu}. The Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, founder of this method, developed an algorithm to determine the symmetry groups associated with a given differential equation in a systematic way. Once the symmetry group associated with the differential equation is explored, it can be used to analyze the differential equation in several ways. For example, the symmetry groups can be used (i) to derive new solutions from old ones \\cite{blu1,olv}, (ii)  to reduce the order of the given equation \\cite{olv,blu1,hydon}, (iii) to discover whether or not a differential equation can be linearized and to construct an explicit linearization when one exists \\cite{kum1,kum2,new_leach} and (iv) to derive conserved quantities \\cite{olv}. \n\nHowever, studies have also shown that certain nonlinear ODEs which are integrable by quadratures do not admit Lie point symmetries \\cite{lopex,mur1}. To understand the integrability of these nonlinear ODEs, through Lie symmetry analysis, attempts have been made to extend Lie's theory of continuous group of point transformations in several directions. A few notable extensions which have been developed for this purpose are (i) contact symmetries \\cite{cont,ci4,ci5,ci3}, (ii) hidden and nonlocal symmetries \\cite{ci6,non_past,nonlocal,nonlocal1,nonlocal2,nonlocal3,nonlocal4,nonlocal5,nonlocal7,si11,si12,sir2}, (iii) $\\lambda$-symmetries \\cite{mur1,mur3,mur4,tel2}, (iv) adjoint symmetries \\cite{blu,blu1,blu11} and (v) telescopic vector fields \\cite{tel1,tel2}.\n\nIn the conventional Lie symmetry analysis the invariance of differential equations under one parameter Lie group of continuous transformations is investigated with point transformations alone. One may also consider the coefficient functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ (see Eq.(2.2)) in the infinitesimal transformations to be functions of $\\dot{x}$ besides $t$ and $x$. Such derivative included transformations are called contact transformations. In fact, Lie himself considered this extension \\cite{19}. The method of finding contact symmetries for certain linear oscillators (harmonic and damped harmonic oscillators) were worked out by Schwarz and Cerver$\\acute{o}$ and Villarroel \\cite{ci4,ci7}. The integrability of a class of nonlinear oscillators through dynamical symmetries approach was carried out by Lakshmanan and his collaborators, see for example Refs. \\cite{sir_old1,sir_old2}.\n\nInvestigations have also revealed that nonlinear ODEs do admit nonlocal symmetries. A symmetry is nonlocal if the infinitesimal transformations depend upon an integral. Initially some of these nonlocal symmetries were observed as hidden symmetries of ODEs in the following manner. Suppose an $n^{th}$-order ODE is order reduced to $(n-1)^{th}$ order with the help of a Lie point symmetry. Now substituting the transformation (which was used to reduce the $n^{th}$-order to $(n-1)^{th}$ order) in other symmetry vector fields of the $n^{th}$-order equation one observes that these symmetry vector fields turns out to be symmetry vector fields of the order reduced ODE. In other words, all these vector fields satisfy the linearized equation of the order reduced equation. Upon analyzing these vector fields one may observe that some of them retain their point symmetry nature and the rest of them turn out to be nonlocal vector fields of the reduced ODE. Since these nonlocal symmetry vector fields cannot be identified through Lie point symmetry analysis they are coined as hidden symmetries. These nonlocal hidden symmetries were first observed by Olver and later they were largely investigated by Abraham-Shrauner and her collaborators \\cite{nonlocal1, nonlocal3,nonlocal5}. \n\nSubsequently it has been shown that many of these nonlocal or hidden symmetries can be connected to $\\lambda$-symmetries. The $\\lambda$-symmetries concept was introduced by Muriel and Romero \\cite{mur1}. These $\\lambda$-symmetries can be derived by a well-defined algorithm which include Lie point symmetries as a specific sub-case and have an associated order reduction procedure which is similar to the classical Lie method of reduction \\cite{mur3}. Although, $\\lambda$-symmetries are not Lie point symmetries, the unique prolongation of vector fields to the space of variables $(t, x, \\dot{x},\\ddot{x},...)$ for which the Lie reduction method applies is always a $\\lambda$-prolongation, for some functions $\\lambda(t, x, \\dot{x},\\ddot{x},...)$. For more details on $\\lambda$-symmetries approach, one may refer the works of Muriel and Romero \\cite{mur4}. The method of finding $\\lambda$-symmetries for a second-order ODE has been discussed in depth by these authors and the advantage of finding such symmetries has also been demonstrated by them. The authors have also developed an algorithm to determine integrating factors and integrals from $\\lambda$-symmetries for second-order ODEs \\cite{mur3}.\n\n\nVery recently Pucci and Sacomandi have generalized $\\lambda$-symmetries by introducing telescopic vector fields. Telescopic vector fields are more general vector fields which encompose Lie point symmetries, contact symmetries and $\\lambda$-symmetries as their sub-cases. For more details about these generalized vector fields we refer to the works of Pucci and Sacomandi \\cite{tel1}\n\nThe connection between symmetries and integrating factors of higher order ODEs was investigated by several authors \\cite{ci8}. The literature is large and in this paper we discuss only one method, namely adjoint symmetry method which was developed by Bluman and Anco \\cite{blu,blu1}. The main observation of Bluman and Anco was that the integrating factors are the solutions of adjoint equation of the linearized equation. In case the adjoint equation coincides with the linearized equation, then the underlying system is self-adjoint and in this case the symmetries become the integrating factors. A main advantage of this method is that we can find the integrals straightaway by multiplying the integrating factors and integrating the resultant ODE \\cite{blu11}.\n\nThe symmetry methods described above are all applicable to any order. Each method has its own merits and demerits. In this paper, we review the methods of finding symmetries (starting from Lie point symmetries to telescopic vector fields) of a differential equation and demonstrate how these symmetries are helpful in determining integrating factors and integrals of the ODEs and establish the integrability of them. We demonstrate all these symmetry methods for a second-order ODE. The extension of each one of this procedure to higher order ODEs is effectively an extension. We also illustrate each one of the methods with the same example. We consider the same example for all the methods so that the general reader can understand the advantages, disadvantages and complexity involved in each one of these methods. \n\nThe example which we have chosen to illustrate the symmetry methods is the modified Emden equation (MEE) \\cite{exboo2,int14,int15,Dix:1990,int17,chand1,carinena,ames}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\ddot{x}+3{x}\\dot{x}+x^3=0,\\qquad \\qquad.=\\frac{d} {dt}. \\label{main} \n\\end{equation}\nIn the contemporary literature Eq. (\\ref{main}) are also called second-order Riccati equation \/Painlev$\\acute{e}$-Ince equation. This equation has received attention from both mathematicians and physicists for a long time \\cite{int1,int12}. For example, Painlev$\\acute{e}$ had studied this equation with two arbitrary parameters, $\\ddot{x}+\\alpha{x}\\dot{x}+\\beta x^3=0$, and identified Eq. (\\ref{main}) as one of the four integrable cases of it \\cite{pain}. The differential equation (\\ref{main}) arises in a variety of mathematical problems such as univalued functions defined by second-order differential equations \\cite{exboo1} and the Riccati equation \\cite{exboo2}. On the other hand, physicists have shown that this equation arises in different contexts. For example, it arises in the study of equilibrium configurations of a spherical gas cloud acting under the mutual attraction of its molecules and subjected to the laws of thermodynamics \\cite{int15,Dix:1990}. Equation (\\ref{main}) admits time independent nonstandard Lagrangian and Hamiltonian structures \\cite{chand1}. In the contemporary literature, this equation has been considered by several authors in different contexts. For example, Chandrasekar, Senthilvelan and Lakshmanan have studied the linearization and investigated the integrability of this equation through the extended Prelle-Singer procedure \\cite{chand1}. The Lie point symmetries of this equation were also derived by few authors in different contexts. For example, Mahomed and Leach have studied the invariance of this equation and shown that it admits $sl(3,R)$ algebra and constructed a linearizing transformation from the Lie point symmetries. Pandey et al. have identified (\\ref{main}) as one of the nonlinear ODEs that admits maximal Lie point symmetries when they carry out Lie symmetry analysis for the equation, $\\ddot{x}+f(x)\\dot{x}+g(x)=0$, where $f(x)$ and $g(x)$ are functions of $x$ \\cite{pandey1}. Nucci and her group have analyzed this equation in terms of Jacobi last multiplier \\cite{nuci}. $\\lambda$-symmetries and their associated integrating factors for this equation were investigated by Bhuvaneswari et.al. \\cite{bhu1}. Noether symmetries of this equation were also studied in Ref. \\cite{arxiv}. The nonlocal symmetries were also investigated in the Refs. \\cite{nonlocal3,nonlocal} \n\nThe plan of the paper is as follows. In Sec. \\ref{2}, we present Lie's invariance analysis to determine Lie point symmetries of Eq.(\\ref{main}). We also discuss few applications of Lie point symmetries. In Sec. \\ref{noeth}, we describe the method of finding variational symmetries of this equation. In Sec. \\ref{comta}, we consider a more generalized transformation and present the method of finding contact symmetries of the given differential equation. In Sec. \\ref{sec5}, we discuss the methods that connect symmetries and integrating factors. We consider two different methods, namely, (i) adjoint symmetries method and (ii) $\\lambda$-symmetries approach. In Sec. \\ref{hidd}, we introduce the notion of hidden symmetries and enlist some hidden symmetries of MEE which are not obtained through Lie symmetry analysis. In Sec. \\ref{nongan}, we introduce nonlocal symmetries and investigate  the connection between nonlocal symmetries and $\\lambda$-symmetries. In Sec. \\ref{teles}, we consider a more general vector field, namely telescopic vector field and derive these generalized vector fields for the MEE. Finally, we give our conclusions in Sec. \\ref{9th}. \n                             \n             \n\\section{Lie point symmetries}\n\\label{2}\n\nLet us consider a second-order ODE \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\ddot{x}=\\phi(t,x,\\dot{x}),\\label{main1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere overdot denotes differentiation with respect to `$t$'. The invariance of Eq.(\\ref{main1}) under an one parameter Lie group of infinitesimal point transformations \\cite{mahomed1,pandey1},\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&T=t+\\varepsilon \\,\\xi(t,x),~~~X=x+\\varepsilon \\,\\eta(t,x),\\quad \\epsilon \\ll 1,\\label{asjkm}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\xi(t,x)$ and $\\eta(t,x)$ are arbitrary functions of their arguments and $\\varepsilon$ is a small parameter, is given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\hspace{-1.9cm}\\xi \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}+\\eta \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial x}+(\\eta_t+\\dot x (\\eta_x-\\xi_t)-\\dot x^2 \\xi_x)\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{ \\partial \\dot x}-(\\eta_{tt}+(2\\eta_{tx}-\\xi_{tt})\\dot x+(\\eta_{xx}-2\\xi_{tx})\\dot x^2\\nonumber \\\\&& \\hspace{4.30cm}-\\xi_{xx} \\dot x^3+(\\eta_x-2\\xi_t-3\\dot x \\xi_x)\\ddot x) =0.\\label{liec1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSubstituting the known expression $\\phi$ in (\\ref{liec1}) and equating the coefficients of various powers of $\\dot{x}$, to zero one obtains a set of linear partial differential equations for the unknown functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$. Solving them consistently we can get the Lie point symmetries ($\\xi$ and $\\eta$) associated with the given ODE. The associated vector field is given by $V=\\xi \\frac{\\partial} {\\partial t}+\\eta\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x}$. \n\nOne may also introduce a characteristics $Q=\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi$ and rewrite the invariance condition (\\ref{liec1}) in terms of a single variable $Q$ as \\cite{olv}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{d^2Q} {dt^2}-\\phi_{\\dot{x}}\\frac{dQ} {dt}-\\phi_x Q=0.\n\\label{met1411}\n\\end{equation}\nSolving Eq.(\\ref{met1411}) one can get $Q$. From $Q$ one can recover the functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$. The invariants associated with the vector field $V$ can be found by solving the following characteristic equation \\cite{olv,blu1}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{dt} {\\xi}=\\frac{dx} {\\eta}=\\frac{d\\dot{x}}{\\eta^{(1)}}.\\label{invaria}\n\\end{equation}\nHere $\\eta^{(1)}$ represents the first prolongation which is given by $\\eta_t+\\dot x (\\eta_x-\\xi_t)-\\dot x^2 \\xi_x$. Integrating the characteristic equation (\\ref{invaria}) we obtain two invariants, namely $u(t,x)$ and $v(t,x,\\dot{x})$. The derivative of these two invariants, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nw=\\frac{dv} {du}=\\frac{v_t+\\dot{x}v_x+\\phi v_{\\dot{x}}} {u_t+\\dot{x}u_x},\\label{cite1}\n\\end{eqnarray} \ndefines a second-order differential invariant. Integrating the above equation (\\ref{cite1}) we can get the solution for the given equation (\\ref{main1}).\n\\subsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nEq.(\\ref{main}) is invariant under the infinitesimal transformation (\\ref{asjkm}) provided it should satisfy the Eq.(\\ref{liec1}). Substituting the expression $\\phi=-3 x \\dot{x}-x^3$ in (\\ref{liec1}), we get\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1cm}\\eta(-3\\dot{x}&-3x^2)+(\\eta_t+\\dot{x}\\eta_x-\\dot{x}\\xi_t-\\dot{x}^2\\xi_x)(-3x)-(\\eta_{tt}+\\dot{x}(2\\eta_{tx}-\\xi_{tt})\\nonumber \\\\ \n&\\hspace{-0.9cm}+\\dot{x}^2(\\eta_{xx}-2\\xi_{tx})-\\xi_{xx}\\dot{x}^3+(\\eta_x-2\\xi_t-3\\dot{x}\\xi_x)(-3 x \\dot{x}-x^3))=0.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nEquating the coefficients of various powers of $\\dot{x}$ to zero and solving the resultant set of partial differential equations for $\\xi$ and $\\eta$, we obtain \\cite{bhu1,pandey1,new_leach}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\xi&=&x\\bigg(a_2+a_1t-\\frac{c_2+b_1} {2}t^2-\\frac{c_1+d_2} {2}t^3+\\frac{d_1} {4}t^4\\bigg)\\nonumber \\\\&&-\\frac{d_1} {2}t^3+\\bigg(c_1+\\frac{3} {2} d_2\\bigg)t^2+b_1t+b_2,\\nonumber\\\\\n\\eta&=&-x^3\\bigg(a_1t+a_2+\\frac{d_1} {4}t^4-\\bigg(\\frac{c_1+d_2} {2}\\bigg)t^3-\\frac{c_2+b_1} {2}t^2\\bigg)\\nonumber \\\\&&+x^2\\bigg(d_1t^3-3\\bigg(\\frac{c_1+d_2} {2}\\bigg)t^2-(c_2+b_1)t+a_1\\bigg)\\nonumber \\\\&&+x\\bigg(-\\frac{3} {2} d_1t^2+c_1t+c_2\\bigg)+d_1t+d_2,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $a_i,b_i,c_i$ and $d_i,~i=1,2,$ are real arbitrary constants. The associated Lie vector fields are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&V_1=\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}},~~V_2=t\\bigg(1-\\frac{xt} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+x^2t\\bigg(-1+\\frac{xt} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&V_3=x\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}-x^3\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},~~V_4=xt\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+x^2\\bigg(1-xt\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&V_5=-\\frac{xt^2} {2}\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+x\\bigg(1-xt+\\frac{x^2 t^2} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&V_6=t^2\\bigg(1-\\frac{xt} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+xt\\bigg(1-\\frac{3} {2}xt+\\frac{x^2 t^2} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&V_7=\\frac{3} {2}t^2\\bigg(1-\\frac{xt} {3}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+\\bigg(1-\\frac{3} {2}x^2t^2+\\frac{x^3 t^3} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&V_8=-\\frac{t^3} {2}\\bigg(1-\\frac{xt} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{t}}+t\\bigg(1-\\frac{3} {2}xt+x^2t^2-\\frac{x^3t^3} {4}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial{x}}.\\label{vf8}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nOne can explore the algebra associated with the Lie group of infinitesimal transformations (\\ref{asjkm}) by analyzing the commutation relations between the vector fields. Since the example under consideration admits maximal Lie point symmetries (eight) the underlying Lie algebra turns out to be $sl(3,R)$ which can be unambiguously verified from the vector fields (\\ref{vf8}) \\cite{new_leach}. In the following, we present few applications of Lie vector fields (\\ref{vf8}).\n\n\n\\subsection{Applications of Lie point symmetries}\n\\subsubsection{General solution}\n\\label{sol_lie}\nThe first and foremost application of Lie point symmetries is to explore the solution of the given equation through order reduction procedure. The order reduction procedure is carried out by constructing the invariants associated with the vector fields \\cite{olv,blu1}. In the following, we illustrate the order reduction procedure by choosing the vector field $V_3$. For the remaining vector fields one can proceed and obtain the solution in the same manner.\n\nSubstituting the expressions $\\xi$, $\\eta$ and $\\eta^{(1)}$ in the characteristic equation $\\frac{dt} {\\xi}=\\frac{dx} {\\eta}=\\frac{d\\dot{x}} {\\eta^{(1)}}$, we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{dt} {x}=\\frac{dx} {-x^3}=\\frac{d\\dot{x}} {-(3\\dot{x}x^2+\\dot{x}^2)}.\\label{invar}\n\\end{equation}\nIntegrating the characteristic equation (\\ref{invar}) we find the invariants $u$ and $v$ are of the form\n\\begin{equation}\nu=t-\\frac{1} {x},~~v=\\frac{x(\\dot{x}+x^2)} {\\dot{x}}.\\label{vvv}\n\\end{equation}\nThe second-order invariant can be found from the relation $w=\\frac{dv} {du}$ (see Eq.(\\ref{cite1})). Substituting Eq. (\\ref{vvv}) and their derivatives in (\\ref{cite1}) and simplifying the resultant equation we arrive at\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{dv} {du}=x^2(1+2\\frac{x^2} {\\dot{x}}+\\frac{x^4} {\\dot{x}^2})=v^2.\\label{ebt}\n\\end{equation}\nIntegrating equation (\\ref{ebt}) we find $v=-\\frac{1} {I_1+u}$, where $I_1$ is an integration constant. Substituting the expressions $u$ and $v$ in this solution and rewriting the resultant equation for $\\dot{x}$, we end up with \n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\dot{x}-\\frac{x-I_1x^2-tx^2} {I_1+t}=0.\\label{first}\n\\end{eqnarray} \nIntegrating Eq.(\\ref{first}) we obtain the general solution of the MEE equation in the following form\n\\begin{equation}\nx(t)=\\frac{2(I_1+t)} {I_2+2I_1t+t^2},\\label{lie_soln}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $I_2$ is the integration constant. The solution exactly coincides with the one found by other methods \\cite{chand1,bhu1}.\n\n\\subsubsection{Linearization}\n\nOne can also identify a linearizing transformation from the Lie point symmetries if the given equation admits $sl(3,R)$ algebra \\cite{new_leach}. The method of finding linearizing transformation for the modified Emden equation was discussed in detail by Mahomed and Leach \\cite{mahomed1} and later by others \\cite{duarte,chand1}. The underlying idea is the following. One has to choose two vector fields appropriately in such a way that they should constitute a two-dimensional algebra in the real plane \\cite{19} and transform them into the canonical form $\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\tilde{x}}$ and $\\tilde{t}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\tilde{x}}$, where $\\tilde{t}$ and $\\tilde{x}$ are the new independent and dependent variables. For the MEE one can generate this subalgebra by considering the vector fields $V_8$ and $V_9 = V_7 -2V_6$.  To transform them into the canonical forms one should introduce the transformations \\cite{nuci}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\tilde{t}=\\frac{tx-1}{t(tx-2)},~~\\tilde{x}=-\\frac{x}{2t(tx-2)},\\label{ght11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\tilde{t}$ and $\\tilde{x}$ are the new independent and dependent variables respectively. In these new variables, $(\\tilde{t},\\tilde{x})$, Eq.(\\ref{main}) becomes the free particle equation $\\frac{d^2\\tilde{x}}{d\\tilde{t}^2}=0$. From the solution of the free particle solution one can derive the general solution of  MEE (\\ref{main}) with the help of (\\ref{ght11}). The solution coincides with the one given in Eq.(\\ref{lie_soln}).\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Lagrangian from Lie point symmetries}\nAnother interesting application of Lie point symmetries is that one can explore Lagrangians for the given second-order differential equation through the Jacobi last multiplier \\cite{nuci}. The inverse of the determinant $\\Delta$ \\cite{nuci1},\n \\begin{equation}\n\\Delta = \\left| \\begin{array}{ccc}\n1 & \\dot{x} & \\ddot{x} \\\\\n\\xi_1 & \\eta_1 & \\eta_{1}^{(1)} \\\\\n\\xi_2 & \\eta_2 & \\eta_{2}^{(1)}  \\end{array}\\right|,~~~~M=\\frac{1} {\\Delta},\\label{delta}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $(\\xi_1,\\eta_1)$ and $(\\xi_2,\\eta_2)$  are two sets of Lie point symmetries of the second-order ODE (\\ref{main1}) and $\\eta_{1}^{(1)}$ and $\\eta_{2}^{(1)}$ are their corresponding first prolongations, gives the Jacobi last multiplier for the given equation. The determinant establishes the connection between the multiplier and Lie point symmetries. The Jacobi last multiplier $M$ is related to the Lagrangian $L$ through the relation \\cite{nuci1}\n\\begin{equation}  \nM=\\frac{\\partial^2 L}{\\partial \\dot{x}^2}.\\label{met21}\n\\end{equation}\nOnce the multiplier is known, the Lagrangian $L$ can be derived by integrating the expression (\\ref{met21}) two times with respect to $\\dot{x}$. \n\nTo obtain the Jacobi last multiplier $M$ for the MEE, we choose the vector fields $V_3$ and $V_1$. Evaluating the determinant (\\ref{delta}) with these two vector fields, we find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Delta =\\left|\n\\begin{array}{ccc}\n 1 & \\dot{x} & -3x\\dot{x}-x^3 \\\\\nx & -x^3 & -\\dot{x}(\\dot{x}+3x^2) \\\\\n1 & 0 & 0\n\\end{array}\\right|=-(x^2+\\dot{x})^3\n\\end{equation}\nso that\n\\begin{equation}\nM=-\\frac{1} {(x^2+\\dot{x})^3}\\label{mmm1}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe can obtain the Lagrangian by integrating the expression (\\ref{mmm1}) twice with respect to $\\dot{x}$. Doing so, we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nL&=&-\\frac{1} {2(\\dot{x}+x^2)}+f_1(t,x)\\dot{x}+f_2(t,x),\\label{lagra11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $f_1$ and $f_2$ are two arbitrary functions. The Lagrangian (\\ref{lagra11}) leads to the equation of motion (\\ref{main}) with $\\frac{\\partial f_1} {\\partial t}=\\frac{\\partial f_2} {\\partial x}$. One can also find more Lagrangains for Eq.(\\ref{main1}) by considering other vector fields given in (\\ref{vf8}).\n\n\n\\section{Noether symmetries}\n\\label{noeth}\nIn the previous section, we have discussed the invariance of the equation of motion under the one parameter Lie group of infinitesimal transformations (\\ref{asjkm}). If the given second-order equation has a variational structure then one can also determine the symmetries which leave the action integral invariant. Such symmetries are called variational symmetries. Variational symmetries are important since they provide conservation laws via Noether's theorem \\cite{noether}.  In the following, we recall the method of finding variational symmetries \\cite{olv,blu}.\n\nLet us consider a second-order dynamical system described by a Lagrangian $L(t,x,\\dot{x})$ and\nthe action integral associated with the Lagrangian be\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \nS=\\int L(t,x,\\dot{x}) dt.\n\\label {gme08}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNoether's theorem states that whenever the action integral is invariant under\nthe one-parameter group of infinitesimal transformations (\\ref{asjkm}) then the solution of Euler's equation admits the\nconserved quantity \\cite{Gelfand:1963,Lutzky:1978}\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \nI=(\\xi\\dot{x}-\\eta)\\frac{\\partial{L}}{\\partial{\\dot{x}}}-\\xi L+f,\n\\label {gme010}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $f$ is a function of $t$ and $x$. The functions $\\xi,\\;\\eta$ and $f$ can\nbe determined from the equation \n\\begin{eqnarray}            \nE\\{L\\}=\\xi\\frac{\\partial{L}}{\\partial{t}}+\\eta\\frac{\\partial{L}}{\\partial{x}}\n+(\\dot{\\eta}-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial{L}}{\\partial{\\dot{x}}},\n\\label {gme011}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere over dot denotes differentiation with respect to time and \n\\begin{eqnarray}            \nE\\{L\\}=-\\dot{\\xi}L+\\dot{f}.\n\\label {gme012}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nEquation (\\ref{gme011}) can be derived by differentiating the equation\n(\\ref{gme010}) and simplifying the expression in the resultant equation. Solving equation (\\ref{gme011}) one can obtain explicit expressions for the functions $\\xi,\\;\\eta$ and $f$. Substituting these expressions back in (\\ref{gme010}) one can get the associated integral of motion.\n\n\\subsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nIn this sub-section, we illustrate the method of finding Noether symmetries and their associated conserved quantities for the MEE (\\ref{main}) which has a nonstandard Lagrangian of the form (see Eq.(\\ref{lagra11}))\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \nL=\\frac{1}{3(\\dot{x}+x^2)},\\label{lagra}\n\\label {kps03}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere we have chosen the arbitrary functions $f_1$ and $f_2$ to be zero for simplicity. Substituting the Lagrangian (\\ref{lagra}) and its derivatives in (\\ref{gme011}), we get\n\\begin{eqnarray}      \n \\eta\\bigg(-\\frac{1} {3(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2}\\bigg)+\n(\\eta_t+\\dot{x}\\eta_x-\\dot{x}(\\xi_t+\\dot{x}\\xi_x))\\bigg(-\\frac{2x} {3(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2}\\bigg)\\nonumber\\\\\n=-(\\xi_t+\\dot{x}\\xi_x)\\bigg(\\frac{1} {3(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2}\\bigg)\n+f_t+\\dot{x}f_x.\n\\label {gme014}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nEquating the coefficients of various powers of $\\dot{x}$ to zero and solving the\nresultant equations, we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n\\eta&=&12D-6(C+4Dt)x+3(B+3t(C+2Dt))x^2\\nonumber\\\\\n&&-\\frac{3} {2}(A+t(2B+3Ct+4Dt^2))x^3,\\nonumber\\\\           \n\\xi&=&E-3t(C+2Dt)+\\frac{3}{2}(A+t(2B+3Ct+4Dt^2))x,\\nonumber\\\\            \nf&=&At+Bt^2+Ct^3+Dt^4,\n\\label {kps06}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $A, B, C$, $D$ and $E$ are real arbitrary constants. The associated vector fields are\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n\\hspace{-1cm}&&X_1=x\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n-x^3\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~~ X_2=xt\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}   \n\t+\\bigg(x^2-tx^3\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\   \n\\hspace{-1cm}&&X_3=\\bigg(t-\\frac{3t^2x} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\bigg(2x-3tx^2+\\frac{3t^2x^3} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n\\hspace{-1cm}&&X_4=\\bigg(\\frac{t^3x} {2}-\\frac{t^2} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\bigg(1-2tx +\\frac{3t^2x^2} {2}-\\frac{t^3x^3} {2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~X_5=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}.    \n\\label {sgme016}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nThe Noether's symmetries are sub-set of Lie point symmetries. In the above, while the vector fields $X_1, X_2$ and $X_5$ exactly match with the Lie vector fields $V_3,V_4$ and $V_1$ (see Eq. (\\ref{vf8})), the remaining two Noether vector fields $X_3$ and $X_4$ can be expressed as linear combinations of other Lie point symmetries, that is $X_3=V_2+2V_5$ and $X_4=V_7-2V_6$.\n\nSubstituting each one of the vector fields separately into (\\ref{gme010}) we obtain the associated integrals of motions. They turned out to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&I_1= t-\\frac{x}{x^2+\\dot{x}},~~I_2= \\frac{(-x+tx^2+t\\dot{x})^2}{(x^2+\\dot{x})^2},\n\\nonumber\\\\       \n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&I_3=\\frac{-9t^2x^3+3t^3x^4-3x(2+3t^2\\dot{x})+2tx^2(6+3t^2\\dot{x})\n+9t\\dot{x}(6+3t^2\\dot{x})}{(x^2+\\dot{x})^2},\n\\nonumber\\\\           \n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&I_4=\\frac{3(2-2tx+t^2x^2+t^2\\dot{x})}{(x^2+\\dot{x})},\n\\nonumber\\\\ \n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&I_5=\\frac{2\\dot{x}+x^2}{3(x^2+\\dot{x})^2},\\qquad\\qquad \\qquad \\qquad\\frac{dI_i}{dt}=0,~i=1,2,3,4,5.\n\\label {kps11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nOne can easily verify that out of the five integrals two of them are independent and the remaining three can be expressed in terms of these two integrals, that is $I_2=I_1^2,~~ I_3=I_1I_4$ and $I_5=\\frac{1}{9}(I_4-3I_1^2)$. We can construct a general solution of (\\ref{main}) with the help of the two independent integrals $I_1$ and $I_4$. The underlying solution coincides with (\\ref{lie_soln}) after rescaling.\n\n\\section{Contact symmetries}\n\\label{comta}\nIn the previous two cases, Lie point symmetries and Noether symmetries, we have considered the functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ to be functions of $t$ and $x$ only. One may relax this condition by allowing the functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ to depend on $\\dot{x}$ besides $t$ and $x$. This generalization was considered Sophus Lie himself \\cite{19} and later by several authors \\cite{ci4,ci5,sir_old1,sir_old2}. This velocity dependent infinitesimal transformations are called contact transformations and the functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ are called contact symmetries. The contact symmetries for the harmonic and damped harmonic oscillators were worked out explicitly by Schwarz and Cerver$\\acute{o}$ and Villarroel respectively \\cite{ci4,ci5}. Several nonlinear second-order ODEs do not admit Lie point symmetries but they were proved to be integrable by other methods. To demonstrate the integrability of these nonlinear ODEs in Lie's sense one should consider velocity dependent transformations. In the following, we give a brief account of the theory and illustrate the underlying ideas by considering MEE as an example.\n\\subsection{Method of Lie}\nLet a one-parameter group of contact transformation be given by \\cite{ci4}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1cm}T=t+\\varepsilon \\,\\xi(t,x,\\dot{x}),~X=x+\\varepsilon \\,\\eta(t,x,\\dot{x}),~\\dot{X}=\\dot{x}+\\varepsilon \\, \\eta^{(1)}(t,x,\\dot{x}) \\quad \\epsilon \\ll 1.\\label{asm}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ determine an infinitesimal contact transformation if it is possible to write them in the form \\cite{ci7}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\xi(t,x,\\dot{x})=-\\frac{\\partial W} {\\partial \\dot{x}},~~\\eta(t,x,\\dot{x})=W-\\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial W} {\\partial \\dot{x}},~~\\eta^{(1)}=\\frac{\\partial W} {\\partial t}+\\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial W} {\\partial x},\n\\end{eqnarray} where the characteristic function $W(t,x,\\dot{x})$ is an arbitrary function of its arguments. If $W$ is linear in $\\dot{x}$ the corresponding contact transformation is an extended point transformation and it holds that $W(t,x,\\dot{x})=\\eta(t,x)-\\dot{x}\\xi(t,x)$. A second-order differential equation (\\ref{main1}) is said to be invariant under the contact transformation (\\ref{asm}) if $\\xi \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}+\\eta \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial x}+\\eta^{(1)}\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{ \\partial \\dot x}-\\eta^{(2)} =0$ on the manifold $\\ddot{x}-\\phi(t,x,\\dot{x})=0$ in the space of the variables $t,x,\\dot{x}$ and $\\ddot{x}$ \\cite{ci4,ci5}. Here $\\eta^{(1)}$ and $\\eta^{(2)}$ are the first and second prolongations with $\\eta^{(1)}=\\dot{\\eta}-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\xi}$ and $\\eta^{(2)}=\\dot{\\eta}^{(1)}-\\ddot{x}\\dot{\\xi}$. The invariance condition provides the following linear partial differential equation for the characteristic function $W$:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1.4cm}&&\\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial \\dot{x}} \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}  +\\left(\\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial \\dot{x}}-W\\right)\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial x} - \\left(\\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial t} +\\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial x}\\right) \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial \\dot{x}} +\n\\bigg(\\phi^2 \\frac{\\partial ^2 W}{\\partial \\dot{x}^2}+2 \\phi \\frac{\\partial^2 W }{\\partial t \\partial \\dot{x}}\\nonumber \\\\ \\hspace{-1.3cm}&&\\qquad\\qquad \\quad+2 \\phi \\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial^2 W}{\\partial x \\partial \\dot{x}}+\\phi \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial x}+\\frac{\\partial ^2W}{\\partial t^2}+2 \\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial^2 W}{\\partial t\\partial x}+\\dot{x}^2 \\frac{\\partial ^2W}{\\partial x^2}\\bigg)=0.\\label{cintchar}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIntegrating Eq.(\\ref{cintchar}) one can get the characteristics $W$. From $W$ one can recover the contact symmetries $\\xi$ and $\\eta$. One can also recover the necessary independent integrals from the characteristic function (see for example, Ref.\\cite{ci4}).\n\\subsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nTo determine the contact symmetries of MEE, we have to determine the characteristic function (\\ref{cintchar}), by solving the first-order partial differential equation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1.4cm}&&-(3\\dot{x}+3x^2)\\left(\\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial \\dot{x}}-W\\right) +3x \\left(\\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial t} +\\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial x}\\right)  +\\bigg((3x\\dot{x}+x^3)^2 \\frac{\\partial ^2 W}{\\partial \\dot{x}^2}\\nonumber \\\\ \\hspace{-1.4cm}&&\\quad\\quad \\quad-2 (3x\\dot{x}+x^3)\\frac{\\partial^2 W}{\\partial t \\partial \\dot{x}}-2 (3x\\dot{x}+x^3) \\dot{x} \\frac{\\partial^2 W}{\\partial x \\partial \\dot{x}}-(3x\\dot{x}+x^3) \\frac{\\partial W}{\\partial x}\\nonumber \\\\ \\hspace{-1.7cm}&&\\qquad\\qquad \\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad\\qquad+\\frac{\\partial ^2W}{\\partial t^2}+2 \\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial^2 W}{\\partial t \\partial x}+\\dot{x}^2 \\frac{\\partial ^2W}{\\partial x^2}\\bigg)=0.\\label{cintchar1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nOne may find the general solution of the above linear partial differential equation by employing the well known methods for solving linear partial differential equations. In general $W$ depends upon arbitrary functions and the contact Lie group has an infinite number of parameters. \n\nFor the sake of illustration, in the following, we present two particular solutions of Eq.(\\ref{cintchar1}):\n\\begin{eqnarray} \nW_1=\\frac{x^2 (1-t x)}{x^2+\\dot{x}}-t^2 \\dot{x},~~W_2=-\\frac{x \\dot{x}}{\\sqrt{x^2+2 \\dot{x}}}-\\frac{x \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)}{\\sqrt{x^2+2 \\dot{x}}}.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe infinitesimal vector fields read\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_1=t^2\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\frac{x^2(1-tx)} {\\dot{x}+x^2}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~~\\Omega_2=\\frac{x}{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}-x\\frac{(\\dot{x}+x^2)} {\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}.\\label{kinl}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nAs one can see from (\\ref{kinl}) the infinitesimals $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ depend on the velocity terms also. One can derive the general solution from each one of the contact symmetries by solving the characteristic equation associated with the vector field. We demonstrate this procedure in Sec. \\ref{con_sub}.\n\n\\subsection{Method of Gladwin Pradeep et.al}\n\\label{con_sub}\nIn a recent paper Gladwin Pradeep et.al proposed a new method of finding contact symmetries for a class of equations \\cite{cont}. Their method involves two steps. In the first step, one has to find a linearizing contact transformation. In the second step, with the help of contact transformation, one proceeds to construct contact symmetries for the given equation. Once the contact symmetries are determined the order reduction procedure can be employed to derive the general solution of the given differential equation. In the following, we recall this procedure with MEE as an example.\n\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\it Step 1: Linearizing contact transformation} \n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n\nThe MEE (\\ref{main}) can be linearized to the free particle equation $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$ by the contact transformation (for more details one may refer, Ref.\\cite{cont})\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nx=\\frac{2u\\dot{u}}{1+u^2},\\qquad\\dot{x}=\\frac{2\\dot{u}^2(1-u^2)}{(1+u^2)^2}.\\label{contscx}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nOne may also invert the above transformation (\\ref{contscx}) and obtain\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nu=\\frac{x}{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}},~~\n\\dot{u}=\\frac{(\\dot{x}+x^2)}{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}.\\label{conct2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\n\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\it Step 2: Contact symmetries}\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n\n Let us designate the symmetry vector field and its first prolongation of the nonlinear ODE (\\ref{main}) respectively be of the form\n$\n\\Omega=\\lambda \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\n$\nand\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n\\Omega^{1}=\\lambda \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+(\\dot{\\mu}\n-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\lambda})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}},\n\\label {sym04}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\lambda$ and $\\mu$ are the infinitesimals associated with the variables $t$ and $x$, respectively.  \n\nLet the symmetry vector field associated with the linear ODE, $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$, be $\\Lambda=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u},$ and its first extension be $\\Lambda^{1}=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}\n-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{u}}$. Using the contact transformation (\\ref{conct2}) we can deduce the following differential identities, that is $\\frac{\\partial }{\\partial u}=\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial u}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\frac{\\partial \\dot{x}}{\\partial u}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}$ and $\\frac{\\partial }{\\partial \\dot{u}}=\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial \\dot{u}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\frac{\\partial \\dot{x}}{\\partial \\dot{u}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}$. Rewriting the first prolongation $\\Lambda^1$ using these relations, we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-0.8cm}\\Lambda^1=\\xi\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\left(\\eta\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial \\dot{u}}\\right)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\n\\left(\\eta\\frac{\\partial \\dot{x}}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial \\dot{x}}{\\partial \\dot{u}}\\right)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}.\\label{lambda1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNow comparing the vector fields (\\ref{lambda1}) and (\\ref{sym04}), we find\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-0.7cm}\\lambda=\\xi,\\qquad\n\\mu=\\eta\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial x}{\\partial \\dot{u}}=\\frac{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}{\\dot{x}+x^2}\\left(\\eta\\dot{x}+\\dot{\\eta}x\\right)-\\dot{\\xi}x.\\label{arbitrary-sym}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ are the symmetries of the free particle equation. They are given by \\cite{olv,hydon}\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n&&\\Lambda_1=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t},\\quad            \n\\Lambda_2=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u},\\quad \n\\Lambda_3=t \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u},\\quad \n\\Lambda_4=u\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u},\\quad\n\\Lambda_5=u \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t},\\nonumber\\\\ \n&&\\Lambda_6=t \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n,\\quad \n\\Lambda_7=t^2 \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+tu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u},\\quad \n\\Lambda_8=tu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+u^2 \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}.\n\\label {sym11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSubstituting the above symmetry generators $\\Lambda_i$'s, $i=2,\\ldots,8,$ in Eq. (\\ref{arbitrary-sym}), we can determine the function $\\mu$. Substituting $\\lambda=\\xi$ and $\\mu$ in the vector field $\\Omega=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}$, we arrive at the following contact symmetry generators of Eq. (\\ref{main}),\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n&&\\Omega_1=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t},~~\\Omega_2=\\frac{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}{\\dot{x}+x^2}\\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~~\\Omega_3=\\frac{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}{\\dot{x}+x^2}(t\\dot{x}+x)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\Omega_4=\\frac{x(2\\dot{x}+x^2)}{(\\dot{x}+x^2)}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~~\\Omega_5=\\frac{x}{\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}-x\\frac{(\\dot{x}+x^2)} {\\sqrt{2\\dot{x}+x^2}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\&& \\Omega_6=t\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}-x\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x},\n~~ \\Omega_7=t^2\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\frac{x^2(1-tx)} {\\dot{x}+x^2}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\Omega_8=\\frac{tx}{\\sqrt{(2\\dot{x}+x^2)}}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\bigg(\\frac{x^2\\sqrt{(2\\dot{x}+x^2)}} {\\dot{x}+x^2}- \\frac{tx(\\dot{x}+x^2)} {\\sqrt{(2\\dot{x}+x^2)}}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}.\\label{dyna_symm}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nOne can unambiguously verify that all the symmetry generators are solutions of the invariance condition.\n\n\\subsubsection{General solution} \n\nTo derive the general solution of the given equation one has to integrate the Lagrange's system associated with the contact symmetries given above. We demonstrate this procedure by considering the vector field $\\Omega_4$ given in Eq.(\\ref{dyna_symm}). For the other vector fields one may follow the same procedure. \n\nThe characteristic equation associated with the vector field $\\Omega_4$ turns out to be\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{dt}{0}=\\frac{(\\dot{x}+x^2)dx}{x(2\\dot{x}+x^2)}=-\\frac{(\\dot{x}+x^2)d\\dot{x}}{x^4+x^2\\dot{x}-2\\dot{x}^2}. \\label{inpo}\n\\end{equation}\nIntegrating Eq.(\\ref{inpo}) we find the invariants $u$ and $v$ are of the form $u=t$ and $v=\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x$. In terms of these variables one can reduce the order of the equation (\\ref{main}). The reduced equation turns out to be the Riccati equation,\n$\\frac{dv}{dt}=-v^2$, whose general solution is given by $v=\\frac{1}{I_1+u},$\nwhere $I_1$ is the integration constant. Substituting the expressions $u$ and $v$ in the above solution and rearranging the resultant expression for $\\dot{x}$, we find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\dot{x}-\\frac{x} {I_1+t}+x^2=0.\\label{riccati-eg1}\n\\end{equation}\nIntegrating (\\ref{riccati-eg1}) one can obtain the general solution of (\\ref{main}). The general solution coincides with (\\ref{lie_soln}) after appropriate rescaling.\n\n\n\n\\section{Symmetries and integrating factors}\n\\label{sec5}\nIn Sec.\\ref{2}, we have discussed only few applications of Lie point symmetries. One can also determine integrating factors from Lie point symmetries. In fact, Lie himself found the equivalence between integrating factors and Lie point symmetries for the first-order ODEs. For second-order ODEs the equivalence has been established only recently \\cite{mur1}. The reason is that unlike the first-order ODEs (which admit infinite number of symmetries) several second-order ODEs do not admit Lie point symmetries although they are integrable by quadratures. Subsequently attempts have been made to generalize the classical Lie method to yield nontrivial symmetries and integrating factors. Two such generalizations which come out in this direction are (i) adjoint symmetries method \\cite{blu,blu11} and (ii) $\\lambda$-symmetries approach \\cite{mur3,mur4}. The adjoint symmetry method was developed  by Bluman and Anco \\cite{blu1} and the $\\lambda$-symmetry approach was floated by Muriel and Romero. The applicability of both the methods have been demonstrated for the equations which lack Lie point symmetries. In both the methods one can find symmetries, integrating factors and integrals associated with the given equation in an algorithmic way.\n\nIn the following, we recall briefly these two powerful methods and demonstrate the underlying ideas by considering MEE as an example.\n \n\\subsection{Method of Bluman and Anco}\n\nIn general, an integrating factor is a function, multiplying the ODE, which yields a first integral. If the given ODE is self-adjoint, then its integrating factors are necessarily solutions of its linearized system (\\ref{met1411}) \\cite{blu}. Such solutions are the symmetries of the given ODE. If a given ODE is not self-adjoint, then its integrating factors are necessarily solutions of the adjoint system of its linearized system. Such solutions are known as adjoint symmetries of the given ODE \\cite{blu1}. \n\nLet us consider second-order ODE (\\ref{main1}). The linearized ODE for Eq.(\\ref{main1}) is given in (\\ref{met1411}). The adjoint ODE of the linearized equation is found to be\n\\begin{equation}\nL^*[x]w=\\frac{d^2w} {dt^2}+\\frac{d} {dt}(\\phi_{\\dot{x}}w)-\\phi_xw=0.\\label{ajoin1}\n\\end{equation}\nThe solutions $w=\\Lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})$ of the above equation (\\ref{ajoin1}) holding for any $x(t)$ satisfying the given equation (\\ref{main1}) are the adjoint symmetries of (\\ref{main1}) \\cite{blu1}.\n\n\nThe adjoint symmetry of the Eq.(\\ref{main1}) becomes an integrating factor of (\\ref{main1}) if and only if $\\Lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})$ satisfies the adjoint invariance condition \\cite{blu11}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nL^*[x]\\Lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})=-\\Lambda_{x}(\\ddot{x}-\\phi)+\\frac{d} {dt}(\\Lambda_{\\dot{x}}(\\ddot{x}-\\phi)). \\label{comp1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nNow comparing the Eqs. (\\ref{ajoin1}) and (\\ref{comp1}) and collecting the powers of $\\ddot{x}$ and constant terms, we find\n\\numparts\n\\addtocounter{equation}{-1}\n\\label{adjon_con}\n\\addtocounter{equation}{1}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\Lambda_{t\\dot{x}}+\\Lambda_{x\\dot{x}}\\dot{x}+2\\Lambda_{x}+\\Lambda \\phi_{\\dot{x}\\dot{x}}+2\\phi_{\\dot{x}}\\Lambda_{\\dot{x}}+\\phi \\Lambda_{\\dot{x}\\dot{x}}=0,\\label{adjo1}\\\\\n&&\\Lambda_{tt}+2\\Lambda_{tx}\\dot{x}+\\Lambda_{xx}\\dot{x}^2+\\Lambda \\phi_{t\\dot{x}}+\\Lambda \\phi_{x\\dot{x}}\\dot{x}+\\phi_{\\dot{x}}\\Lambda_{t}+\\phi_{\\dot{x}}\\Lambda_{x}\\dot{x}\\nonumber \\\\ &&-\\Lambda \\phi_{x}-\\Lambda_{x}\\phi+\\phi \\Lambda_{t\\dot{x}}+\\phi \\Lambda_{x\\dot{x}}\\dot{x}+\\Lambda_{\\dot{x}}\\phi_t+\\Lambda_{\\dot{x}}\\phi_{x}\\dot{x}=0.\\label{adjo2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\endnumparts\nThe solutions of (\\ref{adjo2}) are called the adjoint symmetries. If these solutions also satisfy Eq.(\\ref{adjo1}) then they become integrating factors for the given second-order ODE (\\ref{main1}). \n\nThe main advantage of this method is that if the given equation is of odd order or does not have variational structure, one can use this method and obtain the integrals in an algorithmic way.\n\n\\subsubsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nFor the MEE equation, the linearized equation is given by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{d^2Q} {dt^2}+3x\\frac{dQ} {dt}+(3\\dot{x}+3x^2) Q=0.\n\\label{met1411ad}\n\\end{equation}\nThe adjoint equation for the above linearized equation turns out that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{d^2w} {dt^2}+\\frac{d} {dt}(-3xw)+(3\\dot{x}+3x^2)w=0.\\label{adj_exam}\n\\end{equation}\nSince Eqs. (\\ref{met1411ad}) and (\\ref{adj_exam}) do not coincide, the function $Q$ is not an integrating factor for the MEE. In this case the integrating factors can be determined from the adjoint symmetry condition (\\ref{adj_exam}). The adjoint symmetry determining equation (\\ref{adj_exam}) for the present example reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\hspace{-1.3cm}\\Lambda_{tt}+2\\Lambda_{tx}\\dot{x}+\\Lambda_{xx}\\dot{x}^2-3\\Lambda\\dot{x}-3x\\Lambda_{t}-3 x\\Lambda_{x}\\dot{x}+(3\\dot{x}+3x^2)\\Lambda \\nonumber \\\\ &&\\hspace{-1.8cm}+(3 x\\dot{x}+x^3)\\Lambda_{x}-(3 x \\dot{x}+x^3)\\Lambda_{\\dot{xt}}-(3x\\dot{x}+x^3)\\dot{x}\\Lambda_{x\\dot{x}}-(3 \\dot{x}+3x^2)\\Lambda_{\\dot{x}}\\dot{x}=0.\\label{adjo3}\n\\end{eqnarray} \nTwo particular solutions of (\\ref{adjo3}) are given by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\Lambda_1= \\frac{x} {(\\dot{x}+x^2)},~~\\Lambda_{2}=\\frac{t(-2+tx)} {2(t\\dot{x}-x+tx^2)^2}.\n\\label{adm112}\n\\end{equation}\n \nThese two adjoint symmetries, $\\Lambda_1$ and $\\Lambda_2$, also satisfy the Eq.(\\ref{adjo1}). So they become integrating factors for the Eq.(\\ref{main}). Multiplying the given equation by each one of these integrating factors and rewriting the resultant expression as a perfect derivative and integrating them we obtain two integrals $I_1$ and $I_2$ which are of the form,\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nI_1&=&-\\frac{(\\dot{x}t-x+tx^2)} {\\dot{x}+x^2},~~I_2=-\\frac{(2+\\dot{x}t^2-2tx+t^2x^2)} {2(\\dot{x}t-x+tx^2)}.\\label{lam117}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nFrom these integrals, $I_1$ and $I_2$, the general solution can be derived. The resultant expression coincides with Eq.(\\ref{lie_soln}) after rescaling.\n\n\n\\subsection{Method of Muriel and Romero}\nAs we mentioned at few places earlier, many second-order nonlinear dynamical systems often lack Lie point symmetries but proved to be integrable by other methods. To overcome this problem, efforts have been made to generalize the classical Lie algorithm and obtain integrals and general solution of these nonlinear ODEs. One such generalization is the $\\lambda$-symmetries approach. This approach was developed by Muriel and Romero \\cite{mur1}. These symmetries are neither Lie point nor Lie-B$\\ddot{a}$cklund symmetries and are called $\\lambda$-symmetries since they are vector fields that depend upon a function $\\lambda$. If we choose this arbitrary function as null we obtain the classical Lie point symmetries. The method of finding $\\lambda$-symmetries for a second-order ODE has been discussed in depth by Muriel and Romero and the advantage of finding such symmetries has also been demonstrated by them \\cite{mur3}. The authors have also developed an algorithm to determine integrating factors and integrals from $\\lambda$-symmetries for the second-order ODEs \\cite{mur4}.\n\nConsider a second-order ODE (\\ref{main1}). Let $\\tilde{V}=\\xi(t,x)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta(t,x)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}$ be a $\\lambda$-symmetry of the given ODE for some function $\\lambda=\\lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})$. The invariance of the given ODE under $\\lambda$-symmetry vector field is given by \\cite{mur1}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\xi\\phi_t+\\eta\\phi_x+\\eta^{[\\lambda,(1)]}\\phi_{\\dot{x}}-\\eta^{[\\lambda,(2)]}=0,\n\\label{beq1}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\eta^{[\\lambda,(1)]}$ and $\\eta^{[\\lambda,(2)]}$ are the first and second $\\lambda$- prolongations. They are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1cm}\\eta^{[\\lambda,(1)]}&=&(D_t+\\lambda)\\eta^{[\\lambda,(0)]}(t,x)-(D_t+\\lambda)(\\xi(t,x))\\dot{x}=\\eta^{(1)}+\\lambda(\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi),\\label{beq2}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\hspace{-1cm}\\eta^{[\\lambda,(2)]}&=&(D_t+\\lambda)\\eta^{[\\lambda,(1)]}(t,\\dot{x})-(D_t+\\lambda)(\\xi(t,x))\\ddot{x}=\\eta^{(2)}+f(\\lambda),\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $f(\\lambda)$ is given by $D[\\lambda](\\eta-\\xi \\dot{x})+2\\lambda(\\eta^{(1)}-\\xi\\ddot{x})+\\lambda^2(\\eta-\\xi \\dot{x})$ and $\\eta^{(0)}=\\eta(t,x)$, and $D$ is the total differential operator $(D=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\phi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}})$.  In the above prolongation formula if we put $\\lambda=0$, we end up at standard Lie prolongation expressions. Solving the invariance condition (\\ref{beq1}) we can determine the functions $\\xi$, $\\eta$ and $\\lambda$ for the given equation. We note here that three unknowns $\\xi$, $\\eta$ and $\\lambda$ have to be determined from the invariance condition (\\ref{beq1}). The procedure is as follows.\n\nLet us suppose that the second-order equation (\\ref{main1}) has Lie point symmetries. In that case, the $\\lambda$-function can be determined in a more simple way  without solving the invariance condition (\\ref{beq1})\n\nIf $V$ is a Lie point symmetry of (\\ref{main1}) and $Q=\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi$ is its characteristics then $v=\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x}$ is a $\\lambda$-symmetry of (\\ref{main1}) for $\\lambda=\\frac{D[Q]} {Q}$. The $\\lambda$-symmetry satisfies the invariance condition \\cite{mur3} \n\\begin{equation}\n\\phi_x+\\lambda \\phi_{\\dot{x}}=D[\\lambda]+\\lambda^2.\\label{lamd}\n\\end{equation}\n\n Once the $\\lambda$-symmetry is determined, we can obtain the first integrals in two different ways.  In the first way, we can calculate the integral directly from the $\\lambda$-symmetry using the four step algorithm given below. In the second way, we can find the integrating factor $\\mu$ from $\\lambda$-symmetry. With the help of integrating factors and $\\lambda$-symmetries we can obtain the first integrals by integrating the system of Eqs.(\\ref{imueq}). In the following, we enumerate both the procedures.\n\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\it (A) Method of finding the first integral directly from $\\lambda$-symmetry \\cite{mur3}}\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n\nThe method of finding integral\ndirectly from $\\lambda$-symmetry is as follows:\n\\begin{enumerate}[(i)]\n\\item\nFind a first integral $w(t,x,\\dot x)$ of $v^{[\\lambda,(1)]}$, that is a particular solution of the equation\n$w_x+\\lambda w_{\\dot{x}}=0,\n$\nwhere subscripts denote partial derivative with respect to that variable and $v^{[\\lambda,(1)]}$ is the first-order $\\lambda$-prolongation of the vector field $v$.\n\\item\nEvaluate $D[w]$ and express $D[w]$ in terms of $(t,w)$ as $D[w]=F(t,w)$.\n\\item\nFind a first integral G of $\\partial_t+F(t,w)\\partial_w$.\n\\item\nEvaluate $I(t,x,\\dot{x})=G(t,w(t,x,\\dot{x}))$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n{\\it (B) Method of finding integrating factors from $\\lambda $ \\cite{mur3}}\n\\vspace{0.2cm}\n\n{\\it \nIf $V$ is a Lie point symmetry of (\\ref{main1}) and $Q=\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi$ is its characteristics, then\n$v=\\partial_{x}$ is a $\\lambda$-symmetry of (\\ref{main1}) for $\\lambda=D[Q]\/Q$ and any solution of the first-order linear system\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nD[\\mu]+(\\phi_{\\dot{x}}-\\frac{D[Q]}{Q})\\mu = 0, \\;\\;\\;\n\\mu_x+(\\frac{D[Q]}{Q}\\mu)_{{\\dot{x}}} = 0,\n\\label{musaa}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nis an integrating factor of (\\ref{main1}). Here $D$ represents the total derivative operator and it is given by $\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\dot{x}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\phi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}$.}\n\nSolving the system of equations (\\ref{musaa}) one can get $\\mu$.  Once the integrating factor $\\mu$ is known then a first integral $I$ such that $I_{\\dot{x}}=\\mu$ can be\nfound by solving the system of equations\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nI_t=\\mu(\\lambda \\dot{x}-\\phi),\\;\\; I_x=-\\lambda \\mu,\\;\\; I_{\\dot{x}}=\\mu.\n\\label{imueq}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nFrom the first integrals, we can write the general solution of the given equation.\n\n\\subsubsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\n\\label{lamb_sec}\n\nSince the second-order ODE under investigation admits Lie point symmetries one can derive the $\\lambda$-symmetries directly from Lie point symmetries \\cite{bhu1} through the relation  $\\lambda=\\frac{D[Q]}{Q}$\n\nTo start with, we consider the vector field $V_3$. In this case, we have $\\xi = x$ and $\\eta = -x^3$, the $Q$ function turns out to be $Q=\\eta-\\xi \\dot{x}$ = $-x(\\dot{x}+x^2)$.  Using the relation $\\lambda=\\frac{D[Q]}{Q}$ we can fix $\\lambda _3 = \\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}-x$. In a similar way one can fix the $\\lambda$-symmetries for the remaining vector fields. The resultant expressions are given in the following Table. One can verify that the functions $\\xi$, $\\eta$ and $\\lambda$ satisfy the invariance condition (\\ref{beq1}). \n{\\tiny\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\begin{center}\n\\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}\n\\hline\nVector & Q & $\\lambda$-symmetries  \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_1$& $-\\dot{x}$  &$-(3 x +\\frac{x^3}{\\dot x})$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_2$  & $\\frac{1} {2}t(-2+tx) (\\dot{x}+x^2)$ & $\\frac{2-\\dot{x}t^2-4 t x+t^2 x^2}{t(2-t x)}$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_3$ & $-x(\\dot{x}+x^2)$  &$\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}-x$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_4$ & $x(-\\dot{x}t+x-tx^2)$  & $\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}-x$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_5$ & $\\frac{x} {2}(2+\\dot{x}t^2-2 t x+t^2 x^2)$  &$\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}-x$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_6$ & $\\frac{t} {2}(-2+tx)(\\dot{x}t-x+tx^2)$  & $(\\frac{2-\\dot{x}t^2-4 t x+t^2 x^2}{t(2-t x)})$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_7$ & $\\frac{1} {2}(2-3t^2x^2+t^3x^3-3\\dot{x}t^2+\\dot{x}t^3x$  &$-\\frac{t(-\\dot{x}^2t^2+\\dot x(6-6tx)+x^2(6-6tx+t^2x^2)} {2-3t^2x^2+t^3x^3+\\dot{x}t^2(-3+tx)}$ \\\\\n\\hline\n$V_8$ & $\\frac{-t} {4}(-2+tx) (2+\\dot{x}t^2-2 tx+t^2x^2$   &$\\frac{2-\\dot{x}t^2-4 t x+t^2 x^2}{t(2-t x)}$  \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{$\\lambda$- symmetries for eight the vector fields admitted by Eq.(\\ref{main})}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{table}}\n\nSince we are dealing with a second-order ODE two different $\\lambda$ functions are sufficient to generate two independent first integrals and hence the general solution. In the following, we consider the vector fields $V_3$ and $V_6$ and their $\\lambda$-symmetries and demonstrate the method of finding their associated integrals.\n\n \\vspace{0.3cm}\n{\\it (i) First integrals directly from $\\lambda$-symmetry}\n\\vspace{0.3cm}\n\n\n\nSubstituting $ \\lambda _3 = \\frac{\\dot x}{x}-x$ in the equation $w_x+\\lambda w_{\\dot{x}}=0,\n$ one gets $w_x+\\left(\\frac{\\dot x}{x}-x\\right)w_{\\dot{x}}=0$. This first-order PDE admits an integral $w(t,x,\\dot{x})$ of the form $w(t,x,\\dot{x}) = \\frac{\\dot x}{x}+x$ (first step). The total differential of this function can be expressed in terms of $w$ itself, that is $D[w] =-w^2= F(t,w)$  (second step). Next, one has to find an integral associated with the first-order partial differential equation $\\frac{\\partial G}{\\partial t}-w^2\\frac{\\partial G}{\\partial w}=0$. A particular solution of this first-order partial differential equation can be given as $G=t-\\frac{1}{w}$ (third step). Finally, one has to express $G(t,w)$ in terms of $(t,x,\\dot{x})$.  Doing so, we find that the integral turns out to be (fourth step)\n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat{I}_1=t-\\frac{x}{\\dot{x}+x^2},~~~~~\\qquad\\frac{d\\hat{I}_1}{dt}=0.\\label{i11}\n\\end{equation\n\n\nNext we consider the function $\\lambda _6$. Following the steps given above, we find the integral associated with $\\lambda_6$ which turns out to be\n\\begin{equation}\n\\hat{I}_2=\\frac{\\dot{x}t-x+tx^2} {2+\\dot{x}t^2-2tx+t^2x^2}\n\\label{i12}\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\frac{d\\hat{I}_2}{dt}=0$. Using these two integrals, $\\hat{I}_1$ and $\\hat{I}_2$, one can construct the general solution of Eq.(\\ref{main}).  The resultant expression coincides with the earlier expression (see Eq.(\\ref{lie_soln})) after rescaling.\n\\vspace{0.5cm}\n\n{\\it (ii) Integrating factors from $\\lambda$-symmetries}\n\\vspace{0.3cm}\n\nIn the following, we discuss the second route of obtaining the integral from $\\lambda$-symmetry.  We solve the system of equations (\\ref{musaa}) in the following way. We first consider the second equation in (\\ref{musaa}) and obtain a solution for $\\mu$.  We then check whether the obtained expression satisfies the first equation or not.  If it satisfies then we treat it as a compatible solution.\n\n\nWe again consider the Lie point symmetries $V_3$ and $V_6$ and discuss the method of deriving integrating factors for these functions. To determine the integrating factor associated with $\\lambda _3$ we first solve the second equation in (\\ref{musaa}), that is $\\mu_x+(\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}-x)\\mu_{\\dot{x}}+\\frac{1}{x}\\mu=0$. A particular solution is $\\mu_1 = -\\frac{x}{(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2}$. This solution also satisfies the first equation in (\\ref{musaa}). To determine the integral we substitute $\\mu_1$ and $\\lambda _3$ in (\\ref{imueq}) and obtain the following set of equations for the unknown $I$, namely\n\\begin{eqnarray}\nI_t=1,\\;\\; I_x=-\\frac{(\\dot{x}-x^2)}{(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2},\\;\\;\nI_{\\dot{x}}=\\frac{x}{(\\dot{x}+x^2)^2}.\n\\label{mu2eq333}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe integral which comes out by integrating the system of equations (\\ref{mu2eq333}), that is $I_1=t-\\frac{x}{x^2+\\dot x}$, coincides exactly with the one found earlier.\n  \n\nLet us now consider the function $\\lambda_6$. Substituting the function $\\lambda _6$  in equation (\\ref{musaa}) we get\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\mu_x+(\\frac{2-\\dot{x}t^2-4tx+t^2x^2} {t(2-tx)}\\mu)_{{\\dot{x}}} = 0.\n\\label{mu1eq11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nEq. (\\ref{mu1eq11}) admits a particular solution of the form\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\mu_2=-\\frac{3 t(2-tx)}\n{(2-2 tx+t^2\\dot{x}+t^2x^2)^2}.\n\\label{mu1eq33}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nWe find that $\\mu_2$ also satisfies the first equation given in (\\ref{musaa}) and forms a compatible solution to the system of equations (\\ref{musaa}).\n\nSubstituting the expressions $\\lambda_6$ and $\\mu_2$ in (\\ref{imueq}) and integrating the resultant set of equations, \n\\begin{eqnarray}\nI_t & = -\\frac{3(2tx^3-t^2x^4+2(1+tx\n-t^2{x}^2)\\dot x-t^2 \\dot x^2)}\n{(2-2tx+t^2\\dot{x}+t^2x^2)^2},\n\\nonumber\\\\\nI_x & = -\\frac{3(2+t^2x^2-4tx\n-t^2\\dot{x})}\n{(2-2tx+t^2\\dot{x}+t^2x^2)^2},\n\\nonumber\\\\\nI_{\\dot{x}} & = -\\frac{3t(2-tx)}\n{(2-2tx+t^2\\dot{x}+t^2x^2)^2},\n\\label{me1eq3}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwe find $3\\tilde{I_2}=\\hat{I_2}$, where $\\hat{I_2}$ is given in (\\ref{i12}). With the help of $\\hat{I_1}$ and $\\tilde{I_2}$, we can derive the general solution for MEE.\n\n\\section{Hidden Symmetries}\n\\label{hidd}\nAn important application of Lie point symmetry is that it can be used to reduce the order of the underlying ordinary differential equation. It was observed that the order of the reduced ODE may admit more or lesser number of symmetries than that of the higher order equation. Such symmetries were termed as ``hidden symmetries\". This type of symmetry was first observed by Olver and later extensively investigated by Abraham-Shrauner and her collaborators \\cite{nonlocal1,nonlocal2,nonlocal3,nonlocal4,nonlocal5,hiden_not}.\n\n\nThe motivation for finding hidden symmetries of differential equations is the possibility of transforming a given ODE which has insufficient number of Lie point symmetries to be solved to another ODE that has enough Lie point symmetries such that it can be solved by integration.  These hidden symmetries cannot be found through the Lie classical method for point symmetries of differential equations.  \n\nA detailed study on the hidden symmetries of differential equations show that there can be two types of hidden symmetries. For example, if a $n^{th}$ order ODE is reduced in order by a symmetry group then two possibilities may occur. The reduced lower order ODE may not retain other symmetry group of the $n^{th}$ order ODE. Here the symmetries of the $n^{th}$ order equation is lost in the reduced equation. This lost symmetry is called a Type I hidden symmetry of the lower order ODE. Conversely, the lower order ODE may possess a symmetry group that is not shared by the $n^{th}$ order ODE. In this case, the lower order ODE has gained one symmetry. This is called as Type II hidden symmetry of the $n^{th}$ order ODE \\cite{nonlocal1,nonlocal2,nonlocal3,nonlocal4,ci1,hiden_not}.\n\nSince we are focusing our attention on second-order ODEs, we again consider the MEE equation as an example and point out the hidden symmetries associated with this equation.\n\n\n\\subsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nLet us consider the MEE equation (\\ref{main}). By introducing the following Riccati transformation\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n x=\\frac{\\dot{y}}{y},~~t=z,\\label{hid_tra}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nthe MEE can be transformed to a linear third-order ODE, that is $\\frac{d^3y}{dz^3}=0$. The transformation (\\ref{hid_tra}) is nothing but the invariants associated with the Lie point symmetry $y\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}$ of the linear third-order ODE. In other words, the third-order equation $\\frac{d^3y}{dz^3}=0$ has been order reduced to MEE by one of its point symmetry generator $y\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}$. The other Lie point symmetries of the third-order linear ODE, $\\frac{d^3y}{dz^3}=0$, are \\cite{olv,nonlocal,hiden_not}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& \\chi_1=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial z},\\,\\chi_2=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y},\\,\\chi_3=z^2\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y},\\,\\chi_4=z\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial z},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\chi_5=z\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y},\\,\\chi_6=y\\frac{\\partial }{\\partial y},\\,\\chi_7=\\frac{z^2}{2}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial z}+yz\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}.\\label{third_free}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\n Substituting the transformation (\\ref{hid_tra}) in the remaining vector fields given in (\\ref{third_free}), they can be transformed into the following forms, namely\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&\\hat{V}_1=\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial t}=V_1,~~\\hat{V}_2=-xe^{-\\int x dt}\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x},~~\\hat{V}_3=\\left(\\frac{t}{x}-\\frac{t^2} {2}\\right)xe^{-\\int xdt}\n\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&\\hat{V}_4=t\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial t}-x\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x}=V_2-V_5,~~\\hat{V}_5=\\left(\\frac{1}{x}-t\\right)xe^{-\\int xdt} \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n\\hspace{-1.2cm}&&\n\\hat{V}_7=\\frac{t^2} {2}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+(1-tx)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}=V_7-V_6,\\label{hid_sym}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\hat{V}_i,~i=1,2,3,4,5,7,$ are the symmetry generators of the MEE (see Eqs.(\\ref{vf8}) and (\\ref{sym12})). While three of the vector fields ($\\hat{V_1}$, $\\hat{V_4}$ and $\\hat{V_7}$) retain their point-symmetry nature, the remaining three vector fields ($\\hat{V}_3, \\hat{V}_3$ and $\\hat{V}_5$) turns out to be nonlocal vector fields. All these vector fields satisfy the invariance condition and turn out to be the vector fields of the MEE. The local vector fields $\\hat{V_1}(=V_1)$, $\\hat{V_4}(=V_2-V_5)$ and $\\hat{V_7}(=V_7-V_6)$ match with the earlier ones (see Eq. (\\ref{vf8})) whereas the nonlocal ($\\hat{V}_3, \\hat{V}_3$ and $\\hat{V}_5$) vector fields emerge as new ones.\n\n\n\nNow we pick up Type-I and Type-II hidden symmetries from them. As we pointed out in the beginning of this section, Type-II hidden symmetries of third-order ODEs are nothing but the symmetries gained by the second-order ODEs. The MEE admits eight Lie point symmetries (see Sec.\\ref{2}). In the above, we obtained only three Lie point symmetries of Eq.(\\ref{main}). The remaining five Lie point symmetries are Type II hidden symmetries of the third-order ODE. These five symmetries can be gained from either non-local symmetries or contact symmetries of the third-order ODE.\n\nType-I hidden symmetries of MEE are the symmetries which may not retain the symmetry group of the third-order ODE. In the present case, they turned out to be $\\chi_3$ and $\\chi_5$ since these two vector fields cannot be found in (\\ref{hid_sym}).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Nonlocal symmetries}\n\\label{nongan}\nThe study of hidden symmetries of ODEs brought out a new result. Besides point and contact symmetries, the ODEs do admit nonlocal symmetries (the symmetry is nonlocal if the coefficient functions $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ depend upon an integral). The associated vector field is of the form $V=\\xi(t,x,\\int u(t,x) dt)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta(t,x,\\int u(t,x) dt)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}$. Subsequently attempts have been made to determine nonlocal symmetries of ODEs. However, due to the presence of nonlocal terms, these nonlocal symmetries cannot be determined completely in an algorithmic way as in the case of Lie point symmetries. The determination of nonlocal symmetries for second-order ODEs was initiated by Govinder and Leach \\cite{nonlocal4}.  Their approach was confined to the determination of these nonlocal symmetries that reduce to point symmetries under reduction of order by $\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}$. Later several authors have studied nonlocal symmetries of nonlinear ODEs \\cite{nonlocal1,nonlocal2,nonlocal3,nonlocal4,nonlocal5,nonlocal7}.  Nucci and Leach have introduced a way to find the nonlocal symmetries \\cite{nonlocal5}.  In the following, we present a couple of methods which determine nonlocal symmetries associated with the given equation. We again consider MEE as an example in both the methods and derive the nonlocal symmetries of it. We also discuss the connection between $\\lambda$-symmetries and nonlocal symmetries.\n\n\\subsection{Method of Bluman et al. \\cite{bl_p}}\nIn this method one essentially introduces an auxiliary ``covering'' system with auxiliary dependent variables.  A Lie symmetry of the auxiliary system, acting on the space of independent and dependent variables of the given ODE as well as the auxiliary variables, yields a nonlocal symmetry of the given ODE if it does not project to a point symmetry acting in its space of the independent and dependent variables. This method was first initiated by Bluman \\cite{bl_p} and later extensively investigated by Gandarias and her collaborators \\cite{si11,si12, sir2}.\n\nLet the given second-order nonlinear ODE be of the form (\\ref{main1}). To derive nonlocal symmetries of this equation, the authors introduced an auxiliary nonlocal variable $y$ with the following auxiliary system \\cite{si11,si12, sir2}, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\ddot{x}-\\phi(t,x,\\dot{x})=0,\\;\\;\\dot{y}=f(t,x,y).\n\\label{eq2}\n\\end{equation}\n Any Lie group of point transformation $V=\\xi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta(t,x,y) \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\psi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}$, admitted by (\\ref{eq2}) yields a nonlocal symmetry of the given ODE (\\ref{main1}) if the infinitesimals $\\xi$ or $\\eta$ depend\nexplicitly on the new variable $y$, that is if the following condition is satisfied $\\xi_y^2+\\eta_y^2 \\neq 0$.\nAs the local symmetries of (\\ref{eq2}) are nonlocal symmetries of (\\ref{main1}) this method provides an algorithm to derive a class of nonlocal symmetries for the given equation.  These nonlocal symmetries can be profitably utilized to derive the general solution for the given\nequation. Using this procedure, Gandarias and her collaborators have constructed nonlocal symmetries for a class of equations \\cite{si11,si12,sir2}.\n\nIn the following, using the ideas given above, we derive nonlocal symmetries for the MEE. \n\\subsubsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nWe introduce a nonlocal variable $y$ and rewrite Eq. (\\ref{main}) in the form \\cite{sir2}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\ddot{x}+3x \\dot{x}+x^3=0,~~\\dot{y}=f(t,x,y),\\label {sents}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $f(t,x,y)$ is an arbitrary function to be determined.  Any Lie group of point transformation $V=\\xi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta(t,x,y) \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\psi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}$ admitted by (\\ref{sents}) yields a nonlocal symmetry of the ODE (\\ref{main}), if the infinitesimals $\\xi$ and $\\eta$  satisfy the equation  $\\label{cod}\\xi_y^2+\\eta_y^2 \\neq 0$.\n\n\nThe invariance of the system (\\ref{sents}) under a one parameter Lie group of point transformations leads to the following set of determining equations $\\xi$, $\\eta$ and $f$, namely\n\\small\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-2cm}\\xi_{xx}= 0,\\;\\;\\psi_x-f\\xi_x = 0,\\;\\;\\eta_{xx}-f_x \\xi_y-2 \\xi_{tx}-2 f \\xi_{xy}+6  x \\xi_{x} &=& 0,\\nonumber\\\\\n\\hspace{-2cm}\\psi_t+f \\psi_y-f\\xi_t-f^2\\xi_y -f_t \\xi-f_x \\eta&=& 0,\\nonumber \\\\ \n\\hspace{-2cm}2 x^{3} \\xi_t+2 f x^{3} \\xi_y- \\eta_x x^{3}+3 \\eta x^{2}+3 \\eta_t x+3 f \\eta_y x +\\eta_{tt}+f^{2} \\eta_{yy} +2 f \\eta_{yt}+f_t \\eta_y&=& 0,\\nonumber\\\\ \n\\hspace{-2cm}3 x \\xi_t-\\xi_{tt} -f^{2} \\xi_{yy}-2 f \\xi_{yt} +3 f x \\xi_{y}\\label{ed} -f_t \\xi_y+3 x^{3} \\xi_{x}+f_x \\eta_y+2 \\eta_{tx}+2 f \\eta_{xy}+3 \\eta &=& 0.\n\\label{sym1}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\normalsize\n\nSolving the overdetermined system (\\ref{sym1}) we obtain the following infinitesimal symmetry generator for the Eq.(\\ref{sents}):\n\\begin{equation}\nV=c(t)e^{y}(x \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+ \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}),\\label{ght}\n\\end{equation}\nwith \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ff}\nf(t,x)= -x-\\frac{c_t}{c},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $c(t)$ is an arbitrary function of $t$. We note here that (\\ref{ght}) is not the only solution set for the determining equation (\\ref{sym1}).\n\nSolving the characteristic equation, we find two functionally independent invariants which are of the form\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{inv1}\\begin{array}{ll}z=t, &\n\\zeta=\\displaystyle \\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x.\n\\end{array}\\end{equation} \nIn terms of these two variables, $z$ and $\\zeta$, Eq.(\\ref{main}) reads as $\\zeta_z+\\zeta^2=0$. The general solution of this first-order ODE can be given readily as $\\zeta=\\displaystyle\n\\frac{1}{t+k_1}$ with $k_1$ as an integration constant.  Plugging this expression in the second equation in (\\ref{inv1}) and rewriting it, we find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x-\\frac{1}{t+k_1}=0.\n\\end{equation}\n  This first-order ODE can be integrated straightforwardly  to yield\n \\begin{equation}\\label{sol2}x= {{2\\,\\left(t+{k_1}\\right)}\\over{t^{2}+2 { k_1}\\,t-2\\,\n { k_2}}}, \\end{equation}\nwhere $k_2$ is the second integration constant. Replacing $k_1=I_1$ and $-2k_2=I_2$ in (\\ref{sol2}), we end up at the expression given in Eq.(\\ref{lie_soln}).\n\n\\subsection{Connection between nonlocal symmetries and $\\lambda$-symmetries}\n\\label{mjk}\nThe exponential nonlocal symmetries admitted by (\\ref{sents}) can also be derived from $\\lambda$-symmetries. To illustrate this we recall the following theorem from Ref.\\cite{tel2}. \n\\begin{thmn}\\label{teocasoparticular}\nLet us suppose that for a given second-order equation (\\ref{main1}) there exists some function $f=f(t,x,\\dot{x})$ such that the system (\\ref{eq2}) admits a Lie point symmetry  $V=\\xi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta(t,x,y) \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\psi(t,x,y)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial y}$ satisfying  $\\xi_y^2+\\eta_y^2 \\neq 0$. We assume that $z=z(t,x)$, $\\zeta=\\zeta(t,x,\\dot{x})$ are two functionally independent functions that verify $V(z)=0, \\left. V^{(1)}(\\zeta)\\right|_\\Delta=0$ and are such that equation (\\ref{main}) can be written in terms of\n$\\{z,\\zeta,\\zeta_z\\}$ as a~first-order ODE.\nThen\n\\begin{enumerate}\\itemsep=0pt\n\\item[$1.$] The vector field $V$ has to be of the form\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{final0}\nV=e^{Cy}\\left(\\xi(t,x)\\partial_t+\\eta(t,x)\\partial_x+\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})\\partial_y\\right)+C_1\\partial_y,\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $C$ and $C_1$ are constants.\n\\item[$2.$] The pair\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{pair2}\nv=\n\\xi(t,x)\\partial_t+\\eta(t,x)\\partial_x,\\qquad\n\\lambda=C f.\n\\end{eqnarray}\ndefines a $\\lambda$-symmetry of the equation (\\ref{main}) and the set $\\{z,\\zeta,\\zeta_z\\}$ is a complete system of invariants of $v^{[\\lambda,(1)]}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{thmn}\nWith the choice $C=1, C_1=0$ and $f=\\lambda$, the vector field (\\ref{final0}) turns out to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{expteo}\nV=e^{y}\\left(\\xi(t,x)\\partial_t+\\eta(t,x)\\partial_x+\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})\\partial_y\\right),\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ are the infinitesimal coefficients of $v$ and $\\psi = \\psi(t, x, \\dot{x})$ satisfy the condition $\nV^{(2)}(\\dot{y} - \\lambda)|_\\Delta = 0$. This equation provides a linear first-order partial differential equation to\ndetermine $\\psi$, that is\n\\begin{eqnarray}\\label{edppsi}\n\\psi_t+\\dot{x}\\psi_x +\\psi_{\\dot{x}}\\phi+\\psi\\lambda=D_t(\\xi)\\lambda+\\xi \\lambda^2+v^{[\\lambda,(1)]}(\\lambda).\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nLet $v=\\xi \\partial_t+\\eta \\partial_x$ be a $\\lambda$-symmetry of (\\ref{main1}) for some $\\lambda=\\lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})$ and $\\psi=\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})$ be a particular solution of the equation (\\ref{edppsi}).  Then (\\ref{expteo})\nis a~nonlocal symmetry of (\\ref{main1})\nassociated to system (\\ref{eq2}) for $f=\\lambda(t,x,\\dot{x})$ \\cite{tel2} .\n\n\\subsubsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nUsing the above, we can demonstrate that the nonlocal symmetries found by Gandarias et.al for the MEE can be extracted from the $\\lambda$-symmetries themselves. To show this let us consider the $\\lambda$-symmetry $\\frac{\\partial} {\\partial x}$ with $\\lambda_3=\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}-x$ (from Table 1). Substituting this expression in Eq.(\\ref{edppsi}) and solving the resultant partial differential equation we can obtain an explicit expression for $\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})$. Let us choose the simplest case $\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})=0$. In this case the left hand side of Eq.(\\ref{edppsi}) disappears and the right hand side of it also vanishes automatically since it is nothing but the $\\lambda$-symmetry determining equation in which $\\lambda_3$ is a solution. Substituting $\\lambda_3=f$ in the second expression given in (\\ref{eq2}) and integrating it, we find\n\\begin{equation}\ny=\\log x-\\int x dt.\n\\end{equation}\nNow substituting the expressions $\\xi=0$, $\\eta=1$, $\\psi=0$ and the above expression of $y$ in (\\ref{expteo}), we obtain a nonlocal symmetry\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\Omega_4=xe^{-\\int xdt}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}.\\label{som_new}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nOne can unambiguously verify that the vector field (\\ref{som_new}) also satisfies the determining equation and turns out to be a nonlocal symmetry of the MEE. We mention here that the nonlocal symmetry (\\ref{som_new}) had already been observed in the order reduction procedure (see Eq. (\\ref{hid_sym})). \n\nThe other choices of $\\lambda$ and\/or $\\psi(t,x,\\dot{x})$ will generate new nonlocal symmetries for the MEE.  For example, the choice $\\psi=c(t),\\xi=0,\\eta=c(t)x$ and $\\lambda=-x-\\frac{c_t}{c}$, provides another nonlocal symmetry (\\ref{ght}) through the above said procedure. \nIn this way, one can also construct nonlocal symmetries from the $\\lambda$-symmetries. \n\n\\subsection{Method of Gladwin Pradeep et.al}\n\\label{anna_work}  \nIn a recent paper Gladwin Pradeep et.al proposed yet another procedure to determine the nonlocal symmetries for the given equation \\cite{nonlocal}. In the following, we briefly recall the essential ideas behind this method with reference to MEE.\n \n\n\nThe MEE (\\ref{main}) can be transformed to the second-order linear ODE $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$\nthrough the nonlocal transformation $u=xe^{\\int xdt}$.\nTo explore the nonlocal symmetries associated with (\\ref{main}), the authors used the identity $\\frac{\\dot{u}} {u}=\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}+x$ (which can be directly deduced from the nonlocal transformation $u=xe^{\\int xdt}$) \\cite{nonlocal}. This nonlocal connection between the free particle equation and MEE allows one to deduce the nonlocal symmetries of Eq. (\\ref{main}) in the following manner.\n \nLet $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ be the infinitesimal point transformations, that is $u'=u+\\epsilon \\eta(t,u)$, $T=t+\\epsilon \\xi(t,u)$, associated with the linear ODE $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$.  The symmetry vector field associated with this infinitesimal transformations reads as $V=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}$\nand its first extension is given by $Pr^{(1)}V=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\eta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}\n-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{u}}$. Then we denote the symmetry vector field and its first prolongation of the MEE (\\ref{main}) as $\\Omega=\\delta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}$ and $Pr^{(1)}\\Omega=\\delta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+(\\dot{\\mu}\n-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\delta})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}$, where $\\delta$ and $\\mu$ are the infinitesimals associated with the variables $t$ and $x$, respectively.  \n\nFrom the identity $\\frac{\\dot{u}} {u}=\\frac{\\dot{x}} {x}+x$, the authors defined a new function, say $X$\n\\begin{eqnarray}            \n\\frac{\\dot{u}}{u}=\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x=X.\\label{x}\n\\label {sym05}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nIn the new variable $X$, the MEE turns out to be the Riccati equation, that is\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\dot{X}+X^2=0.\n\\label{reduced-riccati}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nThe symmetry vector field of this equation can be obtained by using the relation $X=\\frac{\\dot{u}}{u}$ and  rewriting $V^{1}=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\eta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial u}+(\\dot{\\eta}\n-\\dot{u}\\dot{\\xi})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{u}}$ as\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&& V^{1}=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\bigg(\\frac{\\dot{\\eta}}{u}-\\frac{\\eta \\dot{u}}{u^2}\n-X\\dot{\\xi}\\bigg) \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial X}\\equiv\\Sigma.\n\\label {sym06}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nWe note that Eq. (\\ref{reduced-riccati}), being a first-order ODE, admits infinite number of Lie point symmetries.  These Lie point symmetries of Eq. (\\ref{reduced-riccati}) become contact symmetries of the linear second-order ODE $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$ through the relation $X=\\frac{\\dot{u}}{u}$.\n\nSimilarly one can rewrite $\\Omega^{1}=\\delta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+(\\dot{\\mu}\n-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\delta})\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}$, using the relation $X=\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x$, as\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n&&\\Omega^{1}=\\delta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\bigg((-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x}+1)\\mu+(\\dot{\\mu}\n-\\dot{x}\\dot{\\lambda})\\frac{1}{x}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial X}\\equiv\\Xi.\n\\label {sym07}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nAs the symmetry vector fields $\\Sigma$ and $\\Xi$ correspond to the same\nequation (\\ref{reduced-riccati}), their infinitesimal symmetries must be equal.  Therefore, comparing equations (\\ref{sym06}) and (\\ref{sym07}) one obtains\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n&& \\xi =\\delta,\\quad \n \\frac{\\dot{\\eta}}{u}-\\frac{\\eta \\dot{u}}{u^2}\n-x\\dot{\\xi}=(-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x}\n+1)\\mu+\\dot{\\mu}\\frac{1}{x}.\n\\label {sym08}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nRewriting the second equation given in (\\ref{sym08}) we can obtain the following first-order ODE for the unknown function $\\mu$, that is\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n \\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x}+1)\\mu= \n \\frac{d}{dt}(\\frac{\\eta}{u})\n-x\\dot{\\xi}.\n\\label {sym09}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\n\nThe free particle equation $\\frac{d^2u} {dt^2}=0$ admits eight Lie point symmetries which are given in Eq.(\\ref{sym11}). Substituting these symmetries $(\\xi_i,\\eta_i)$, $i=1,2,\\ldots,8$, and $u=xe^{\\int xdt}$, in Eq. (\\ref{sym09}),\nwe get the following seven first-order ODEs for $\\mu$,\n\\numparts\n\\addtocounter{equation}{-1}\n\\label{dumm}\n\\addtocounter{equation}{1}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu+(x^2+\\dot{x})x^{-2}e^{-\\int xdt}=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu-(x-tx^2-t\\dot{x})x^{-2}e^{-\\int xdt}=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu+(x^2+\\dot{x})xe^{-\\int xdt}=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu+x=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu+2tx-1=0,\\\\\n&&\\frac{1}{x}\\dot{\\mu}+(1-\\frac{1}{x^2}\\dot{x})\\mu+2(x^2+\\dot{x})x^2e^{2\\int xdt}-1=0.\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\\endnumparts\nIntegrating each one of the above first-order linear ODEs we can obtain the function $\\mu$.  Substituting the symmetries $\\delta(=\\xi)$ and $\\mu$ in $\\Omega=\\delta \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+\\mu \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}$, we get following nonlocal symmetries,\n\\begin{eqnarray} \n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_1=\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t},~~\\Omega_2=\\left(\\frac{1}{x}-t\\right)xe^{-\\int xdt}\n\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber \\\\   \n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_3=\\left(\\frac{t}{x}-\\frac{t^2} {2}\\right)xe^{-\\int xdt}\n\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},~~\\Omega_4=xe^{-\\int xdt}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\n\\label{omega4-eg1}\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_5=xe^{\\int x dt}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n-\\left(\\int x(\\dot{x}+x^2)e^{\\int(2x) dt}dt\\right)xe^{-\\int x dt}\n\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_6=t\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n-xe^{-\\int( x f_x )dt}\\left(\\int xe^{\\int x dt}dt\\right)  \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_7=t^2 \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+xe^{-\\int{x}dt}\\left(\\int (1-2tx)e^{-\\int x dt}dt\\right)  \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x},\\nonumber\\\\\n&&\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\Omega_8=txe^{\\int x dt}\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}\n+xe^{-\\int{x}dt}\\left(\\int (tx^3+(tx-1)\\dot{x})\ne^{\\int (2x)dt}dt \\right)\n\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}\n\\label {sym12}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nof equation (\\ref{main}). One may observe that some of the nonlocal vector fields $\\Omega_2, \\Omega_3$ and $\\Omega_4$ had already been found as hidden symmetries earlier. It is a straightforward exercise to check that all these nonlocal symmetries satisfy the invariance condition $\\delta \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}+\\mu \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial x}+\\mu^{(1)}\\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial \\dot{x}}-\\mu^{(2)}=0$, where $\\mu^{(1)}$ and $\\mu^{(2)}$ are the first and second prolongations. We mention here that these nonlocal symmetries can also be related to $\\lambda$-symmetries through the theorem given in Sec. \\ref{mjk}.\n\nTo derive the general solution of the given nonlinear ODE one has to solve the Lagrange's system associated with the nonlocal symmetry. For the vector field $\\Omega_4$, the underlying equation reads (Eq. (\\ref{omega4-eg1})),\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{dt}{0}=\\frac{dx}{x}=\\frac{d\\dot{x}}{\\dot{x}-x^2}.\\label{ghfss}\n\\end{equation}\nIntegrating Eq.(\\ref{ghfss}), we find $u=t$ and $v=\\frac{\\dot{x}}{x}+x$. Following the procedure described in Sec.\\ref{con_sub}, we can obtain the general solution of (\\ref{main}) as in the form Eq.(\\ref{lie_soln}).\n\n\n\\section{Telescopic vector fields}\n\\label{teles}\nTelescopic vector fields are more general vector fields than the ones discussed so far. The Lie point symmetries, contact symmetries and $\\lambda$-symmetries are all sub-cases of telescopic vector fields. A telescopic vector field can be considered as a $\\lambda$-prolongation where the two first infinitesimals can depend on the first derivative of the dependent variable \\cite{tel1,tel2}. In the following, we briefly discuss the method of finding telescopic vector fields for a second-order ODE. We then present the telescopic vector fields for the MEE.\n\nLet us consider the second-order equation (\\ref{main1}). The vector field \n\\begin{equation}\nv^{(2)}=\\xi \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial t}+\\eta  \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\zeta^{(1)} \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}+\\zeta^{(2)} \\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\ddot{x}}\n\\end{equation}\nis telescopic if and only if \\cite{tel1}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\xi=\\xi(t,x,\\dot{x}),~\\eta=\\eta(t,x,\\dot{x}),~\\zeta^{(1)}=\\zeta^{(1)}(t,x,\\dot{x})\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwith $\\zeta^{(2)}$ is given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\zeta^{(2)}=D[\\zeta^{(1)}]-\\phi D[\\xi]+\\frac{\\zeta^{(1)}+\\dot{x}D[\\xi]-D[\\eta]}{\\eta-\\dot{x} \\xi}(\\zeta^{(1)}-\\phi \\xi).\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nTo prove that the telescopic vector fields are the more general vector fields, let us introduce two functions $g_1$ and $g_2$ in the following form, namely\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\hspace{-0.3cm}g_1(t,x,\\dot{x})=\\frac{\\zeta^{(1)}+\\dot{x}\\xi_t-\\eta_t+\\dot{x}(\\dot{x}\\xi_x-\\eta_x)}{\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi},~~\n g_2(t,x,\\dot{x})=\\frac{\\dot{x}\\xi_{\\dot{x}}-\\eta_{\\dot{x}}}{\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi}.\\label{telg2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nWe can rewrite the prolongations $\\zeta^{(1)}$ and $\\zeta^{(2)}$ using the above functions $g_1$ and $g_2$ as follows:\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\zeta^{(1)}&=&D[\\eta]-\\dot{x}D[\\xi]+(g_1+g_2 \\phi)(\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi),\\\\\n \\zeta^{(2)}&=&D[\\zeta^{(1)}]-\\phi{x}D[\\xi]+(g_1+g_2 \\phi)(\\zeta^{(1)}-\\phi\\xi).\n\\end{eqnarray}\nThe relationship between telescopic vector fields and previously considered\nvector fields can be given by the following expressions \\cite{tel1,tel2}\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n \\zeta^{(1)}&=&\\eta^{(1)}+(g_1+g_2 \\phi)(\\eta-\\dot{x}\\xi),\\label{kjdf}\\\\\n \\zeta^{(2)}&=&\\eta^{(2)}+(g_1+g_2 \\phi)(\\zeta^{(1)}-\\phi\\xi).\\label{fkds}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nIn the above vector fields if we choose $g_1=g_2=0$ and $\\xi_{\\dot{x}}^2+\\eta_{\\dot{x}}^2 = 0$ we get the Lie point symmetries. The choice $g_1=g_2=0$ and $\\xi_{\\dot{x}}^2+\\eta_{\\dot{x}}^2 \\neq 0$ gives the contact symmetries. To get $\\lambda$-symmetries, we should choose $g_1\\neq 0$ and $\\xi_{\\dot{x}}^2+\\eta_{\\dot{x}}^2 = 0$. As a consequence it can be considered as the more general vector field.\n\\subsection{Example: modified Emden equation}\nTo find the telescopic vector fields admitted by the MEE equation, we have to solve the invariance condition $v^{(2)}(\\phi)=\\xi \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial t}+\\eta  \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial x}+\\zeta^{(1)} \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial \\dot{x}}+\\zeta^{(2)} \\frac{\\partial \\phi}{\\partial \\ddot{x}}=0$, with $\\xi$ and $\\eta$ are functions of $(t,x,\\dot{x})$ and $\\zeta^{(1)}$ and $\\zeta^{(2)}$ are defined through (\\ref{kjdf}) and (\\ref{fkds}) respectively. Substituting Eq.(\\ref{main}) in the invariance condition, we obtain\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n-(3 \\dot{x}+3x^2)\\eta-3x\\zeta^{(1)} -\\zeta^{(2)}=0.\\label{fyuuuu}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nSolving equation (\\ref{fyuuuu}), we obtain a telescopic vector field which is of the form\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-0.5cm}\\gamma_1&=&-\\bigg(\\frac{x}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\bigg(\\frac{x^2-\\dot{x}}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}+\\bigg(\\frac{6 x \\dot{x}}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\ddot{x}}.\\label{tel_com11}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nwhere the components are\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\xi_1=0,~\\eta_1=-\\frac{x}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2},~\\zeta_1^{(1)}=\\frac{x^2-\\dot{x}}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2},~\\zeta_1^{(2)}=\\frac{6 x \\dot{x}}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}.\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nA second telescopic vector field is found to be\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1cm}\\gamma_2&=&-\\bigg(\\frac{t (2-t x)}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial x}+\\bigg(\\frac{t^2 \\left(\\dot{x}-x^2\\right)+4 t x-2}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\dot{x}}\\nonumber \\\\\n\\hspace{-1cm}&&-\\bigg(\\frac{6 (t x-1) (t\\dot{x}+x)}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2}\\bigg)\\frac{\\partial}{\\partial \\ddot{x}}\\label{tel_com21}\n\\end{eqnarray}\nand its components are given by\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\hspace{-1cm}&&\\xi_2=0,~\\eta_2=-\\frac{t (2-t x)}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2},~\\zeta_2^{(1)}=\\frac{t^2 \\left(\\dot{x}-x^2\\right)+4 t x-2}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2},\\nonumber \\\\\n\\hspace{-1cm}&&\\zeta_2^{(2)}=-\\frac{6 (t x-1) (t\\dot{x}+x)}{\\left(t^2 \\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)-2 t x+2\\right)^2}.\\label{tel_com2}\n\\end{eqnarray}\n\nThe invariants associated with a telescopic symmetry vector field can be derived by solving the associated characteristic equation. For the vector field $\\gamma_1$, it reads\n\\begin{eqnarray}\n\\frac{dt} {0}=\\frac{dx} {-\\frac{x}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}}=\\frac{d\\dot{x}} {\\frac{x^2-\\dot{x}}{\\left(x^2+\\dot{x}\\right)^2}}.\n\\end{eqnarray}\nUsing the procedure discussed in Sec.\\ref{sol_lie}, we can integrate the above characteristic equation to obtain the integral given in Eq.(\\ref{i11}). Repeating the procedure for the second telescopic vector field (\\ref{tel_com21}) we end up at the second integral given in Eq.(\\ref{i12}). From these two integrals we can derive the general solution of (\\ref{main}).\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{9th}\nIn this paper, we have reviewed continuous symmetries of second-order ODEs and elaborated the methods of finding them. To begin with we have considered Lie point symmetries and presented Lie's invariance analysis for a second-order ODE. To illustrate the method, we have considered the modified Emden equation (MEE) as an example. We have also discussed few applications of Lie point symmetries. We have demonstrated the connection between symmetries and conservation laws by recalling Noether's theorem. Few conserved quantities including energy have been identified for the MEE  through this theorem. We then considered the velocity dependent transformations and presented the method of finding contact symmetries for the second-order ODEs. We have also pointed out the contact symmetries of the MEE. We have also recalled hidden symmetries of the MEE. Some of them are found to be exponential nonlocal symmetries. The connection between symmetries and the integrating factors of ODEs was discussed through $\\lambda$-symmetries approach and adjoint symmetries method. The method of finding $\\lambda$-symmetries, adjoint symmetries, integrating factors and their associated integrals of a second-order ODE are discussed elaborately and illustrated with MEE as an example. We have also pointed out the connection between exponential nonlocal symmetries and $\\lambda$-symmetries. Finally, we have considered a more generalized vector field, namely telescopic vector field and discussed the method of finding these generalized vector fields. For the MEE we have also brought out a couple of telescopic vector fields. We have also derived the general solution of MEE from each one of these symmetries. The symmetry methods presented here are all extendable to higher order ODEs. Through this review, we have emphasized the utility of symmetry analysis in solving ODEs.\n\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments}\nThe authors wish to thank Professor M. Lakshmanan for suggesting us to write this review and his interest and overall guidance in this program on symmetries. The work of MS forms part of a research project sponsored by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The work of VKC forms part of a research project sponsored by INSA Young Scientist Project. RMS acknowledges the University Grants Commission (UGC-RFSMS), Government of India, for providing a Research Fellowship.\n\n\n\n\n\\section*{References}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n  \nIC 348 is a young (less than 10Myr) and nearby cluster ( distance 316 pcs)\nlocated in the Perseus complex (Lada $\\&$ Lada 1995, Trullols $\\&$\n Jordi 1997, Herbig 1998, Luhman et al. 1998).\nThis cluster  has a number of T Tauri stars\n(Herbig 1954) which are lower mass (lower than 1.5 \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$}) Pre-Main-Sequence\nstars. Deep near infrared imaging survey of IC 348 in the J, H and K bands by\nLada $\\&$ Lada (1995) resulted with 380 NIR sources as probable cluster \nmembers. Herbig (1998) made a survey for stars having H$_\\alpha$ emission\nand discovered over 110 emission line stars brighter than R= 19 magnitude. \nHe found the proportion of WTTSs (weak line TTSs with H$_\\alpha$ \nequivalent width  below 10\\AA~  and H$_\\alpha$ emission can be assumed\n to be chromospheric origin) to CTTSs (classical TTSs with H$_\\alpha$\nequivalent width above 10\\AA~ and H$_\\alpha$ emission is probably dominated by\nthe accretion of circumstellar material on to the stars)\n as 58:51. CTTSs exhibit infrared excess and \nshow a varying photometric light curves irregularly.\n WTTSs show spectroscopic and photometric periodic variability\non time scales of days caused by rotational modulation due to magnetic\n activity. \nLuhman et al. (1998) performed deep infrared and optical spectroscopy of IC 348\n and found that nearly 25$\\%$ of stars within the core of IC 348 and younger\n than 3 Myr exhibits signature of disks in the form of strong H$_\\alpha$.\n\nHerbst et al. (2000) studied the photometry of 150 stars and discovered \n19 periodic variables with periods ranging from 2.24 to\n16.2 days and masses ranging from 0.35 to 1.1 \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$}.\nThis variability is caused by the rotation of the surface with large cool spots whose pattern is often stable for many rotation periods.\nRecently Cohen et al. (2004) presented results based on 5 yr of monitoring this cluster and found that these periodic stars show modulations of\n their amplitude, mean brightness and light curve shape on time scales of less than one year.\n\nX-ray observations of IC 348 with ROSAT by Preibisch et al. (1996) resulted with detection of 116 X-ray sources. They found probable new cluster members.\nThey suggested that these were presumably weak line T Tauri stars\nbecause of their X-ray properties. WTTSs seem to be stronger X-ray emitters\nthan the CTTSs. They could not find any significant correlation\nbetween the H$_\\alpha$ luminosity and X-ray luminosity indicating that \nH$_\\alpha$ emission is not a chromospheric emission for CTTSs.\nPreibisch $\\&$ Zinnecker (2001) detected 215 X-ray sources with the Advanced\nCCD Imaging Spectrometer on board the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.\n58 of these sources were identified as new cluster members.\nThey did not find significant differences between the X-ray properties of WTTSs and CTTSs. About 80$\\%$ of cluster members with masses between 0.15 and 2 \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$}\nwere identified as visible X-ray sources. The observed X-ray emission\n was explained as coronal emission for WTTSs. Chandra X-ray detection\nfraction of the IC 348 cluster was high for spectral types between\nthe late F and M4. In their next study, Preibisch $\\&$ Zinnecker (2002)\nfound a tight correlation between X-ray luminosity and H$_\\alpha$\nluminosity for the WTTSs. They suggested that the chromosphere was heated by\n X-rays from the overlying corona. The CTTSs did not show such a \nrelation since H$_\\alpha$ emission comes mainly from accretion  processes.\nThey pointed out that the use of H$_\\alpha$ emission as an indicator\nfor circumstellar material had some problems. \n\nThe main goal of this study is to find out if there is a variability in\n the light curve of some cluster members which have X-ray counterparts.\nWe wanted to examine correlation between X-ray\nluminosity and rotational period  of stars in this cluster\nin order to see whether rotation is an important \nparameter governing the X-ray emission. We chose\n some X-ray emission sources which were detected and located by Chandra X-Ray\nObservatory. We investigated the corresponding optical \n light curves of these sources obtained by robotic ROTSEIIId \ntelescope in order to search for variability.\nWe also wanted to  investigate the observational results for {$\\delta$ Scuti }  \nstar H254 which is a member of this cluster. \nThis star was previously detected by Ripepi et al. (2002)\nand found as a {$\\delta$ Scuti } star.\n On the basis of observations of Luhman et al. (1998) H254 (L= 31.4\n L$_{\\odot}$ and T$_{e}$= 7200 K) is \n inside the theoretical pulsational\ninstability strip for the PMS stars determined by Marconi and Palla (1998).\nRipepi et al. obtained that H254 pulsates with a pulsation frequency of\n7.406 $d^{-1}$. This frequency was confirmed in our observations.\nRipepi et al.  calculated that this star pulsates either in the fundamental\nmode or in the first overtone. They gave a mass range of 2.3 and 2.6 \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$}\nfor this star by computing a sequence of linear non-adiabatic models.\n In the second section the observations and\ndata reduction were discussed. The results  and discussion \nrelated with the periodic\n variables in this cluster were given in the \nsection 3. We summarized\nour results in the last section.  \n\n\n\\section{Observations and Data reduction}\n\nThe CCD observations of cluster stars were performed during August, 2004 and \nJanuary, 2005 with ROTSEIIId robotic reflecting telescope \nlocated at the Turkish National Observatory (TUG) site, \nBak{\\i}rl{\\i}tepe, Turkey. ROTSEIII telescopes were described\n in detail by Akerlof et al. (2003). They were designed\nfor fast ($\\sim$6 s) responses to Gamma-Ray Burst triggers from\nsatellites such as Swift.\n It has a 45 cm mirror and operates without filters.\nIt has equipped with a CCD, 2048$\\times$2048 pixel,\n the pixel scale is 3.3 arcsec\nper pixel for a total field of view\n 1.$^{\\circ}$85$\\times$1.$^{\\circ}$85. A total of about 1800 CCD\n frames were collected during the observations. Due to\n the other scheduled observations and atmospheric conditions\n we obtained 3 - 40 frames at each night\nwith an exposure time of 5 sec. \nAll images were automatically dark- and flat-field corrected\nas soon as they were exposed.\nFor each corrected image aperture photometry by SExtractor package \n(Bertin $\\&$ \nArnouts 1996) were applied using an aperture of 5 pixels in diameter\nto obtain the instrumental magnitudes. Then these magnitudes were calibrated by comparing all the field stars against USNO A2.0 R-band catalog with a \ntriangle-matching technique.\nBarycentric corrections were made to the times of \neach observation by using JPL DE200 ephemerides prior to the timing analysis \nwith the period determination methods.   \n\n\\section{Results and Discussion}\n\n\\subsection{Pulsation period of {$\\delta$ Scuti } star H254}\n\nWe first attempted to determine the pulsation period of star H254\n(spectral type F0, Harris et al. 1954) \n($\\alpha$=03\\hr 44\\mm 31\\fsec2, $\\delta$=+32\\deg 06\\arcm 22\\farcs1)\nusing our nearly 150 days of\n observational data. Ripepi et al. (2002) identified four frequencies for\n this source by using their eleven days  observations.\n One of these frequencies was at 7.406 $d^{-1}$\n which is typical of {$\\delta$ Scuti } type pulsators. They\nalso reported three more frequencies and explained that these were resulted\nfrom the long term behavior associated with a daily variation of H254\n and partially, with the similar variability in their comparison star H20.\nWe used differential magnitudes which reduces the systematic effects\nsince we are interested in the time series analysis. As a comparison star\nwe chose H89  (see section 3.2) \n($\\alpha$=03\\hr 44\\mm 21\\fsec0, $\\delta$=+32\\deg 07\\arcm 38\\farcs7)\nwhich has a spectral type F8.\nFigure 1 shows ROTSEIIId light curve \n ($\\delta$m$_{R}$=m$_{R}$$^{254}$-m$_{R}$$^{89}$) \nobtained between the nights of MJD 53232 and MJD 53382.\n Period of variation in this light curve was determined by using three separate numerical period searching routines. One is Period98 \n(by Sperl: available at\nwww.astro.univie.ac.at\/$^{\\sim}$dsn\/). The other two are the method of \nScargle (Scargle 1982) and the Clean method (Roberts et al. 1987).\nThese periodograms are essentially discrete Fourier transform of the input \ntime series.\nTo search any periodicity in the  differential light curves, \nwe applied these different period search algorithms mentioned above.\n \\placefigure{fig1}\n For analyzing the periodicity in the light curves periodogram provides an\n approximation to the power spectrum. To be sure about the periodicity\n we applied these different period finding methods.\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\epsscale{0.2}\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f1.ps}\n \\figcaption{RotseIIId light curve of H254. Error bars on data points \n             are not shown for clarity however estimated errors are\n             of the order $\\sim$0\\fmm02}\\label{fig1}\n \\end{figure}\n\nFigure 2 shows the amplitude and \npower spectra of H254. All of \nthem displays the frequency 7.406 $d^{-1}$.\nThe inset in the first panel shows the window function \nwhich is used to describe the response of data analysis system to a perfect \nsine wave. The peak at one day (and its harmonics) in the periodograms is \na signature of nightly windowing of the sampling frequency.\n \\placefigure{fig2}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.30,angle=270]{f2.ps}\n \\figcaption{Power spectra for H254. Panel (a): Scargle algoritm, \n             (b): Clean algoritm and (c): Period98. Dotted line\n             on the upper panel represents $3\\sigma$ confidence level. \n             Inset is the spectrum of the window function.}\\label{fig2}\n \\end{figure}\n\nFor the statistics of periodograms we employed the method of Scargle (Scargle\n1982) and evaluated the confidence levels of periodicities. \nWe estimated the noise level of the periodogram by fitting a constant line.\nThe probability of a signal above this level has an exponential\nprobability distribution \n\\[\n  1- P(Z)=  (1- e^{Z})^{N}  \n\\]\nwhich is essentially a $\\chi^{2}$ distribution for two degrees of freedom.\n$Z$ is the power at a given frequency and $N$ is the number of\nfrequencies sampled. For given parameters the confidence level of the signal \nwas found. The confidence level of the signal for the maximum power \nat 7.406 $d^{-1}$ is \n more than $ 5\\sigma $ level signal detection.\n As seen from Figure 2a\nall other detected powers are below the $3\\sigma $ detection level\nwhich indicate that 0.157, 0.283 and 0.931 $d^{-1}$ frequencies\n detected by Ripepi et al. (2002)\nare not present in our light curve. The light curve phased with the frequency\n 7.406 $d^{-1}$ is shown in Figure 3. The amplitude of pulsation is 4.1 mmag\nwhich is comparable with V band amplitude (5.4 mmag) given by Ripepi et al.\n \\placefigure{fig3}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f3.ps}\n \\figcaption{Light curve of H254 phased with the frequency\n            7.406 d$^{-1}$. }\\label{fig3}\n \\end{figure}\n\n\nThe same period was found using two more different  comparison stars,\n H261 (spectral type F2, \n $\\alpha$=03\\hr 44\\mm 24\\fsec6, $\\delta$=+32\\deg 10\\arcm 14\\farcs4)\n and  H20 (spectral type F8, \n $\\alpha$=03\\hr 43\\arcm 58\\fsec1, $\\delta$=+32\\deg 09\\arcm 47\\farcs5).\nThe amplitude spectra which were obtained\nby using Clean method are shown in Figure 4. The \n peak at the frequency 7.406 $d^{-1}$  corresponding\n to a period of around 3.24 h \n  is seen clearly.\n \\placefigure{fig4}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f4.ps}\n \\figcaption{Amplitude spectrum of H254 with other set of reference stars \n               (a) H261 (b) H20.}\\label{fig4}\n \\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Periodic variations in Optical Counterparts of Chandra Sources}\n\nIn this part of the study we searched for the timing properties \nof the optical counterparts of selected Chandra X-Ray sources. \nX-ray images of the cluster IC 348 with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer \non board the Chandra X-Ray observatory were studied by Preibisch $\\&$ Zinneker\n(2001). They determined the positions\n and count rates of the 215 individual X-ray\n sources. Identification of the\noptical counterparts of the X-ray sources\nwith masses 0.15 and 2 \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$} were performed for 161 X-ray sources.\n\nThe positions of Chandra sources whose optical counterparts were\nidentified by Preibisch $\\&$ Zinneker (2001) \nwere cross correlated with the positions of\nROTSE objects.\nThe main criteria for the selection is 3\\farcs3\/pixel resolution of the ROTSE\nCCD frames. Hence, to match a known coordinate 3 pixel (10\\arcs) diameter\naperture is used. Secondly, if there is an object closer than 4 pixels \nit is rejected. \nThe exposure time is 5 seconds for each frame. This allows us to\nobserve most of the bright stars of IC 348 without overexposing the frames.\nWith this exposure time stars with  magnitudes between 10 and 14 are \nwell detected and it is also possible to detect stars upto 17th magnitude\ndepending on atmospheric conditions.  \nFor each frame mean FWHM of the point spread function (PSF) is calculated \nfor stars with \n 10 $>$ m$_{R}$ $>$ 14\n and if the mean FWHM $>$ 2 pixel (6\\farcs6) that frame \nis also rejected. \nFigure 5a shows the mean of the magnitude measurement  errors \nassigned to each star in finding their mean magnitudes \nduring the whole observation period.\nFor fainter stars the magnitude determining accuracy decreases.\nThe magnitude errors should be excluded from the measured variations\nin order to obtain the correct intrinsic variabilities. The lower limit for\nthe systematic measurement errors is 0.002 for the brightest star\nin our figure. For magnitudes of stars $\\sim$16 mag, this error\nis about 0.15 mag. As this error increases with increasing magnitude\nthe measurement of intrinsic variability becomes difficult.\n \\placefigure{fig5}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f5.ps}\n \\figcaption{Upper panel shows mean magnitude errors\n     in calculating the mean magnitudes  for each star in our sample. \n     The mean magnitude of reference stars and their mean errors \n     for each star under consideration are shown in the lower panel.\n     }\\label{fig5}\n \\end{figure}\n\n\\subsubsection{Time Series Analysis}\nTo determine any  time variability in the selected  stars we chose 3 reference \n(comparison) stars (H89, H20, H139).\n To select and check stability of the reference stars, we chose a set of \nstars with  variances less than 0.01 mag over the observing interval. \nPower spectrums of the candidate reference stars were calculated and the ones \nshowing most random power distribution were selected. H89 and H139 from this\nset was used by Cohen et al. (2004) also. \nHence we adopt these stars as the reference stars.\nTwo of these stars have F spectral type and H139  is a G0 star (Luhman\net al. 1998). The average magnitude of the selected\nreference stars were used in the calculation of differential magnitudes.\nFigure 5b  shows the mean magnitudes of the reference stars obtained\nfor each frame against the mean \nmagnitude errors in measuring the magnitude of the reference stars \nfor the data obtained during the observation period  of\nfive months. Each point is the relevant value for the selected stars \nunder investigation. Scatter in the mean magnitude \nvalues of reference stars are due to different number\nof frames used, changing between 800 and 1300, for each selected star.\nThe selection criteria results in a different number of frames for each\nstar. The mean of the reference stars scatter since the\nstar under question and the reference stars  \nare extracted together from each frame.\nDifferential magnitudes of the selected\nobjects are calculated for each frame with the requirements: Selected\nobject and the reference stars are detected with an accuracy of 3 pixels;\nmagnitude error should be less than 0.2 mag; frame should have a PSF\nFWHM $<6\\farcs6$.\nThe mean magnitude of reference stars changes about 0.04 mag\nwhile the deviation from the mean is \nabout 0.001 in mean magnitude measurement errors.\n Each of the three reference stars displays a standard deviation of\nthe order 0.03 magnitude during 5 months of observation period. \n\n\nWe used differential magnitudes in the time series analysis.\nDifferential photometry eliminates the atmospheric and other systematic\neffects over hundred days of observations. These include seeing variations \nin a specific night and between observation days, and also pointing\nvariations of the order of $\\sim0\\fdeg3$ in large FOV ($1\\fdeg8$).\n After the calculation of differential magnitudes \nWe applied the Period98, Clean and Scargle methods \nto obtain the periodograms. The periodograms were calculated for \nthe frequency range between 0 and 20 $d^{-1}$, \nso it was possible to search for periods as short\nas few hours. The time series of each star  was searched\nfor periodicity by using the above mentioned three different period\nsearch methods. \n Most prominent period detected (whose confidence level is greater \nor equal to $5\\sigma$) was given in Table 1 with \nits confidence level which is calculated in the way described in section 3.1. \nThese periods are attributed to the rotation of star with large cool spots \non its surface.  \nThe variance ($\\sigma_{var}$) of the magnitude variations of each star during \nthe observation interval is also shown in the Table. \n\n \\placetable{table1}\n\n\\subsubsection{Periodic Variables}\nWe found 35 stars  as periodic variables.   \nOf the detected 35 periodic variables, 18 stars are new\nperiodic detections.\nThe rest of them whose HMW (Herbst et al. 2000) numbers are given in \ncolumn 3 of Table 1 were studied also by Cohen et al. (2004).\nThe amplitude spectra of 11 newly detected periodic stars obtained\nby applying Clean method\nto the time series data of stars are shown in Figure 6. \nThe rest of them which are stars 3, 20, 51, 71, 73, 143 and 173  are shown in \nFigure 8, 10 and 11.\n \\placefigure{fig6}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.4,angle=0]{f6.ps}\n \\figcaption{Amplitude spectra of newly detected periodic stars obtained\n             by applying Clean method. Periods corresponding to the detected\n             frequencies for each star  are given in Table 1. }\\label{fig6}\n \\end{figure}\n \\placefigure{fig7}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.4,angle=0]{f7.ps}\n \\figcaption{Phased light curves of newly detected periodic stars\n             folded at the detected frequencies. Vertical axis is\n             in magnitude units.}\\label{fig7}\n \\end{figure}\nFigure 7 shows phased light curves of the stars shown in Figure 6 at the \ndetected frequencies. Binned phase diagrams are obtained by folding each time\nseries at the detected period. \nThe amplitude of modulation for each star changes between 0.02 and 0.20 \nmagnitude.\n\nWe display the power spectra  of  stars 3 and 20\nin Figure 8, together with their phased light curves. \n Stars 3 and 20 are the samples of stars having shortest and longest \n periods  in our study. \nThe other peaks seen in the top panel are the beat frequencies \nbetween the star's and Earth's rotation periods. In the middle panel \ncleaned dirty spectrum obtained by using Clean method is given.\n \\placefigure{fig8}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f8.ps}\n \\figcaption{Star 3 and star 20: Stars having the shortest and longest periods in our sample.\n            Upper panel shows the power spectra\n            obtained by Scargle algoritm. Middle panel presents amplitude\n            spectra obtained by Clean algoritm. \n            Lower panel is the phased light curve. }\\label{fig8}\n \\end{figure}\n\nHerbst et al. (2000) indicated that CTTSs were less likely\nto exhibit periodic variations than WTTSs. \nActive accretion can prevent any rotational signature.\nWTTSs are periodic stars. Their cool spots on the surface which are\nstable for several months (Herbst et al. 2000, Cohen et al. 2004)\nallow us to detect the rotation period. These cool spots are expected to \nbe associated with magnetic fields. \nDetection of periodicity could be difficult if the spot pattern\nand places of them change on a timescale of weeks. \nThe periods determined by Cohen et al. and us \nare similar, that is they are similar with a maximum change\nin period  by 1$\\%$ except for star 114.   \nWe observed a period of 15.88 d for this star which\nis greater about a half day compared to the value of Cohen et al.\nThey detected different periods for this star\nin different seasons so they gave an average period for five seasons\nwhich is 16.40 d. There is a period change of 3$\\%$ for this star.\nThis can be related with the chosen Fourier step size which\ngives a maximum error of 0.7 d.  Hence, the stability of rotation periods of\nTT stars over long time scales is confirmed.\nCohen et al. remarks that the longest time that a spot configuration\ncan remain stable enough is between 0.5 and 1 yr.\n \\placefigure{fig9}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f9.ps}\n \\figcaption{Differential light curves of 6 periodic stars in our\n            sample which were also given by Cohen et al.\n            Numbers for each star refers to HWM catalog.}\\label{fig9}\n \\end{figure}\nIn Figure 9, we plotted the light curves of 6 periodic stars in our\nsample which were also plotted by Cohen et al. \nfor the time interval between 1998 and 2003. \nThese plots make stronger the remarks of Cohen et al. about the change\nof light curve from one season to the other.\n\nThe spectral types of stars that we studied are between A0 and M4.\nFor spectral types earlier than late F type Chandra X-ray\ndetection fraction of the\ncluster is less (Preibisch and Zinnecker 2001). Earlier spectral type\nstars do not show intrinsic X-ray emission. \n Therefore, star 94  did not show rotation \nperiod. For star 187 which is an A0 type star, we found a period of 6.097 d.\nSince we do not expect a chromospheric activity that produce X-ray emission\nfrom this spectral type,\nno rotation period should be observed.\nIt can be explained in the way as Preibisch and Zinnecker (2001) explained;\nthat is this rotation period is due to a very close late type companion\nit is not related with the star itself.\n\n\\subsubsection{CTT Variables}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \\placefigure{fig10}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f10.ps}\n \\figcaption{The daily averages of differential light curves of six CTTSs\n             and star 173 which shows large variations in magnitude\n             although classified as WTTS. }\\label{fig10}\n \\end{figure}\n \\placefigure{fig11}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.42,angle=0]{f11.ps}\n \\figcaption{The amplitude spectra for the \n             CTTSs and star 173 of Figure 10. }\\label{fig11}\n \\end{figure}\nThe daily averages of differential light curves of CTTSs given in Table 1\nare plotted in Figure 10. These are stars 51, 56, 71, 73, 88  and\n143. The star 73 shows a magnitude variation of 0.7 magnitude.\nThe accretion activity is highly variable in time.\nThe continuous activity of this star with its deep minima is seen clearly from\nthe figure. If we think that minima shows the photospheric\nluminosities then the increase in luminosity can be caused by\nthe accretion from a disk around the star. Herbig (1998) classifies this star\nas CTTS (spectral type K0) while Luhmann et al. (1998) measurements of\nH$_\\alpha$ equivalent width indicates a WTTS. \nH$_\\alpha$ emission seems to be time dependent in TT stars (Guenther $\\&$\nEmmerson 1997).\nThe star 143 also\nshows similar variations like star 73, showing a magnitude variations of about\n1.4 mag. Taking typical mass and radius of a K0 star we can calculate the mass accreted on to the star. If increase in luminosity is arising from the accretion from a disk which is comparable to that of gravitational contraction then a\nchange of 0.7 in magnitude corresponds to a mass accretion rate of\n\\.M$ \\sim 10^{19}$ gr\/s. This means that \\.M is $\\sim10^{-7}$\n \\hbox{M$_{\\odot}$}\/yr. \n The other CTTSs are quiet that is variations in their magnitudes\n are small. \n The amplitude  spectra of these stars are given in Figure 11.\nTwo of them (star 51 and 71) show \nrotational periodicities whose periods are given in\nTable 1. Stars 143 and 73 may be in transition phase from\nCTTS to WTTS as Herbst et al. (2000) and Cohen et al. (2004) suggested.\n They also suggested that the deep minima\n seen in the light curves of these stars could be\n caused by occultation events from dust clouds.\nThe maximum powers calculated are above 5$\\sigma$ for these two stars\nat the detected periods of 6.536 d (for star 73) and 32.28 d (for star 143)\nwhich are probably rotation periods. \nAnother star which shows activity in its differential light curve\n like stars 73 and 143\nis star 173 (see Fig.10). This star shows magnitude variations of\n about 1.5 mag. Herbst et al. classifies this star as an active\nnon periodic WTTS since neither previous study gave the strength of \nhydrogen emission line (from which Herbst et al. inferred this line\n was weak). The amplitude spectrum of star 173 (Fig. 11) shows\na periodicity at 22.51 d with a 5$\\sigma$ confidence level.\nThis star may also be thought as CTTS because of its high activity\nsimilar to stars 73 and 143. \nStar 75 whose rotation period was calculated\n as 3.088 d was classified as U (unknown class) by\n Herbst et al. (2000). For this star,\n Luhman et al. (2003) gives the H$_\\alpha$\nequivalent width as 10\\AA. It seems that this star has a\nphase between CTT and WTT. Nevertheless, its light curve is rather quiet;\nit does not show any activity  in its light\n curve as in the case of stars 73, 143 and 173.\n\n\\subsubsection{X-ray Variability and Rotational Periods}\nIn our search we mostly tried to find a period for the optical counterparts\nof the Chandra sources which are classified as WTTSs.\nThe observed X-ray \nemission for WTTSs was explained as coronal emission by\n Preibisch and Zinnecker (2001) and related to the\nstellar rotation.\nAll WTTSs as possible X-ray sources may not have a variability\nduring the time of observation they may be in their spot less\nor changing spot pattern period\nas in the case of stars 77, 103, 115, 148 and 163. To this list\nwe can include also star 17 and 188, since Luhman et al. (2003)\n gives the H$_\\alpha$\nequivalent width smaller than 10\\AA~ for these stars.\n CTTSs have circumstellar accretion disk which could prevent\n the star to show a regular rotation. CTTSs were also detected as X-ray\n sources\n(Preibisch and Zinnecker 2001). Detection frequency among the CTTSs is\n45$\\%$ while among WTTSs it is 73$\\%$. They found no significant\ndifference between the X-ray properties of WTTSs and CTTSs.\n\nPrebisch $\\&$ Zinneker (2002) have shown the light curves (count rates) of\n the sources which shows strong variability during the \nChandra observation. For most of these sources we found rotational\n periods whatever the character of variation of the count rates\n(flare activity, rising or decaying of count rates). \n\n\n \\placefigure{fig12}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f12.ps}\n \\figcaption{The distribution of rotation periods of sample stars \n          in IC 348 cluster for spectral types earlier than M4}\\label{fig12}\n \\end{figure}\nIn Figure 12, we plot the distribution of rotation\n periods in IC 348 cluster using our\n sample sources for spectral types earlier than M4. \nThe number of stars with slow rotation is less.\nCohen et al. (2004) mentioned about the absence of periods \nshorter than 1 day and deficiency of periods between 4 and 5\ndays. They said these characteristics were also shared\n with the period distributions\nof the Orion Nebula Cluster and Taurus.\n We have two stars whose periodicity is shorter than 1 day.\nThe plot of IC 348 cluster star distribution is similar to Cohen et al.'s\nexcept we have periods shorter than 1 day and longer than 16 days.\n\n\nPlot of rotational period versus spectral type is shown in Figure 13.\nThere is an increase in period towards the later spectral types.\nStars whose spectral types later than K3 have wide range of periods\n between 0.74 and 32 d. However, an overall gradual increase  can not\nbe ruled out.\nWhereas G and early K dwarfs have smaller rotation  periods with a mean \nvalue of $\\sim3.7$ days.\nIn Figure 14, we investigate how TTS's rotation\nis related to the chromospheric and coronal activity.\nX-ray luminosities of the sample stars given by \\citet{pre02} were plotted\nagainst the rotational period.\nBouvier (1990) proposed that the correlation between X-ray fluxes and\n rotational periods of TTSs was caused by a solar type dynamo which is \nresponsible for the chromosperic and coronal activity of stars as it is \nin active dwarfs.\nDespite the large scatter in the data, there is a trend toward decreasing\nX-ray luminosity as the rotation period increases.\nOn the other hand stars with periods $<$4 d have \nan average X-ray luminosity of $\\sim 2\\times10^{30}$ erg\/sec \nwith a large scatter.\nAs the stars rotate faster their chromospheric and coronal activity increases.\nRotation seems to be an important parameter which influences the level of\nX-ray emission of stars.\nWe note that WTTSs and CTTSs exhibit similar X-ray luminosities \nat any rotational period.\nWe conclude that X-ray luminosities of TTSs in IC 348 cluster depend on\n rotation.\n\n\n \\placefigure{fig13}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f13.ps}\n \\figcaption{The distribution of rotation periods of sample stars\n          in IC 348 cluster. \n           Open circles denote WTTSs and triangles are CTTSs.\n           }\\label{fig13}\n \\end{figure}\n\n \\placefigure{fig14}\n \\begin{figure}[h]\n \\includegraphics[clip=true,scale=0.3,angle=270]{f14.ps}\n \\figcaption{The distribution of X-ray luminosity  of sample stars\n          in IC 348 cluster as a function of rotational periods.\n          Open circles denote WTTSs and triangles are CTTSs.}\\label{fig14}\n \\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Summary}\n\nThe main results of our analysis of the ROTSE observations of IC 348 \ncluster can be summarized as follows:\n\nWe have 5 months of continuous data of this cluster.\nIn the time series analysis of the stars for the frequency range\n between 0 and 20 $d^{-1}$ we did not find any periodicity shorter than \n0.7 d. Only for the star H254 we confirmed the  \n{$\\delta$ Scuti } pulsation period of 3.24 hr. The other frequencies detected\n0.157, 0.283 and 0.931 $d^{-1}$\nby Ripepi et al. (2002) for  H254 were not present in our light curve.\n\nWe found 35 stars as rotationally periodic stars whose rotation\nperiods change between 0.74 and 32.3 d. 18 of them were  newly \ndetected periodic stars. 8 of the 18 stars (stars  20, 62, 73, 122,\n143, 153, 159, 173) were also studied by \nCohen et al. but they did not give any period for\nthese stars. That can be due to the unstable spot patterns\nduring their observation periods. Perhaps the observation duration was\nnot enough to determine the periods.\nCohen et al. noted that stars may remain spotted but the spot pattern\nevolves such that a period can not be determined over 6 consecutive months\nof observation. Since we detected the periods of these stars it is\nprobably related with the number of data points used in the time series. \nIf the size of the spot is small it can be difficult to detect the period. \n\nMost of the stars whose periods were detected were WTTSs.\nThe periods of non accreting WTTSs are easily detected.\nThere were 7 non periodic WTTSs in our analysis. This may be due\nto a changing spot pattern or spot less period of the star\nduring the observation.\nFor one of them (star 103) Cohen et al. gives a period of\n2.237 d which is an average over all of five seasons\nthey studied. They could not find periodicity for two seasons \nfor this star.\nThe number of CTTSs that we study is less than WTTSs.\nFor the 4 CTTSs (51, 71, 73, 143) we detected rotation period.\nIt would not be possible to detect the periods if the disk\nprevents the detection of rotational variability.\nPrebisch $\\&$ Zinneker (2002) noted that M type stars without any\ncircumstellar material can show H$_\\alpha$ emission.\nThey may not have an accretion disk.\nH$_\\alpha$ emission can also be time dependent in TT stars.\nThese 4 stars may be seen as CTTS at the time of measurement of\nH$_\\alpha$ emission, but at another time H$_\\alpha$ emission\n may be less and they may appear as WTTS. \n\nThe rotational periods found in this study are similar with those of \nCohen et al. with a maximum change of 1$\\%$ in period. \nSmall changes in the rotational periods indicate a rigid rotation.\nRotation periods seems to be stable on a timescale of \n$\\sim$6 yr in this cluster \nwhen evaluated together with the results of Cohen et al.\n\n\nWe found an inverse correlation between X-ray luminosity and the rotational\nperiod in our sample of late type TTSs.\nX-ray luminosity decreases as the  stars\nrotate slower. WTTSs and CTTSs bahave similar in X-ray activity\nat any rotational period. The dispersion in rotational periods at a given\nspectral type results in a  dispersion in X-ray luminosity.\n\n\\acknowledgments\n\nWe thank the referee Prof. Kevin Luhman, for a careful reading and \nvaluable comments.\nThis project utilizes data obtained by the Robotic Optical Transient Search\nExperiment.  ROTSE is a collaboration of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, \nLos Alamos National Lab, and the University of Michigan\n(www.umich.edu\/$\\sim$rotse).\nWe thank the Turkish National Observatory of TUB\\.ITAK\nfor running the optical facilities. This research has made use of the \nSIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. \nSpecial thanks to Tuncay \\\"Oz{\\i}\\c{s}{\\i}k from TUG \nwho keeps hands on ROTSEIIId.\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nChepoi, Estellon and Vax\\`{e}s showed there is a constant $\\rho$ such\nthat any planar graph of diameter at most $2R$ has a subset of at most\n$\\rho$ vertices such that every vertex in the graph is within distance\n$R$ of that subset~\\cite{planarballcover}. Since this can be viewed as\nshowing that there is a constant-sized set cover in the set system of\nballs of radius $R$, we refer to this property as the {\\em ball-cover}\nproperty.  Graphs having constant-sized ball covers admit interval\nrouting schemes with dilation $\\frac{3}{2} \\times \\text{diameter}$ and\ncompactness $O(1)$ where dilation measures the indirectness of the\nrouting scheme and compactness measures the size of the routing\ntable~\\cite{GPRS01}.  We believe the ball-cover property is an\ninherently interesting property.  Graphs having this property could\ndefine an interesting class of graphs and perhaps could have broader\nutility than previously realized.\n\nWe generalize the class of graphs having the ball-cover property to\nthose graph families that can be embedded on a surface of fixed genus\nafter the removal of a constant number of vertices (the {\\em apices});\nthe number of balls required depends only on the genus of the surface\n(either orientable or non-orientable) and the number of apices.  Since\ngraphs of bounded treewidth are also known to have the ball-cover\nproperty~\\cite{GPRS01} by way of the Graph Minor Structure Theorem,\nour result is a significant step toward proving that\nfixed-minor-excluded graphs also have the ball-cover property.  \nWe discuss this more in\nSection~\\ref{sec:apex}.  We start by sketching the proof for the\nplanar case as we use a similar, but more general, tool set here.\n\n\n\\subsection{A sketch of the proof of the ball-cover property for planar graphs}\n\nThroughout, graphs are simple, undirected and unweighted.  Let $B(x)$\nbe the set of all vertices that are within distance $R$ of vertex $x$\nin graph $G$; this is the {\\em ball centered at $x$}. Let ${\\cal B}(G)\n= \\{B(x)\\ : \\ x \\in V(G)\\}$; this is the {\\em ball system} of $G$. We\nsay that ${\\cal B}' \\subset {\\cal B}$ covers $G$ if ${\\cal B}'$ is a\nset cover of $V(G)$.\n\nThe dual of a set system $\\cal S$ with ground set $U$ is defined as\nfollows: the ground set of the dual set system is $\\cal S$ and for\nevery element $x \\in U$, the dual system has a set representing the\nsets of $\\cal S$ containing $x$, i.e., $X = \\{ S\\ : \\ S \\in {\\cal S},\nx \\in S\\}$.  It is easy to see:\n\\begin{observation} \\label{obs:dual}\n  The dual set system of ${\\cal B}(G)$ is ${\\cal B}(G)$.\n\\end{observation}\nSince a hitting set of $\\cal S$ (a subset of the ground set that\ncontains an element in every set) is a set cover of the dual set\nsystem of $\\cal S$, we likewise have that the centers of a subset of\nballs covering $G$ is a hitting set for the ball system.  A hitting\nset of ${\\cal B}(G)$ is exactly a subset of vertices within which\nevery other vertex is distance $R$.\n\nMatou\\u{s}ek gives a characterization of set systems that have small\nhitting sets~\\cite{Matousek04} in terms of the set system's {\\em\n  fractional-Helly} or {\\em $(p,q)$-property} and the dual set\nsystem's {\\em VC-dimension}.\n\n\\subsubsection*{VC-dimension} A set system $\\cal S$ {\\em\n  shatters} a set $X$ if for every subset $Y$ of $X$ there is a set $S\n\\in {\\cal S}$ such that $S \\cap X = Y$. The Vapnik-Chervonenkis\ndimension or VC-dimension of $\\cal S$ is the maximum size of a set\nthat $\\cal S$ can shatter~\\cite{VC71}.  Chepoi et~al. remark that\nthe VC-dimension of the ball system of a graph excluding $K_{r+1}$ as\na minor is at most $r$~\\cite{planarballcover}.  This gives us:\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:vc-dim}\nThe VC-dimension of ball system of a graph excluding $H$ as a\nminor is at most $|H|-1$.\n\\end{lemma}\nRecall that a minor of a graph $G$ is a graph that is obtained from\n$G$ by edge contractions and deletions; a forbidden or excluded minor\nis a graph that {\\em cannot} be obtained this way.  It follows from\nObservation~\\ref{obs:dual} that the dual of the ball system of a graph\nexcluding $K_{r+1}$ as a minor also has VC-dimension at most $r$.\n\n\\subsubsection*{Fractional Helly theorems} If a set system is such that\nevery $d$ sets has a point in common, then the set system is said to\nhave Helly order $d$. A {\\em Helly theorem} is one that shows that\ncertain set systems of Helly order $d$ have a non-empty intersection.\nThe first such theorem was given for the Euclidean plane: if a family\nof convex sets has a nonempty intersection for every triple of sets,\nthen the whole family has a nonempty intersection~\\cite{Helly23}.  A\nset system has {\\em fractional} Helly order $(p,q)$, or {\\em has the\n  $(p,q)$-property}, if among every $p$ sets some $q$ have a point in\ncommon. Matou\\u{s}ek gave the following fractional Helly theorem:\n\\begin{theorem}[Fractional Helly Theorem~\\cite{Matousek04}]\\label{thm:pq}\n  Let $\\cal Q$ be a set system having the $(p,q)$-property (for\n  $p \\ge q$) and whose dual set system has VC-dimension $q-1$.  Then there\n  is a constant $\\rho$ such that $\\cal Q$ has a hitting set of size at\n  most $\\rho$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nGiven Lemma~\\ref{lem:vc-dim}, one could therefore show that, for a\nfixed minor $H$, $H$-minor free graphs have the ball-cover property\nby showing that the corresponding ball system has fractional Helly order $(p,\n|H|)$ for some fixed $p \\ge |H|$.  Chepoi et~al.\\\ndo just this for planar graphs.  Starting with $p$ vertices, they consider the pairwise\nshortest paths between these vertices; each shortest path contains a\nvertex that is contained by the balls centered on the paths'\nendpoints.  Viewing these shortest paths as edges of a complete graph\nand drawn on the plane (as inherited from a drawing of the original\ngraph), they invoke a result showing that such a drawing of $K_p$, for $p$ sufficiently large, must contain at least 7 pairwise\ncrossing edges.  The 7 pairwise crossing shortest paths then witness a\npoint in common to 5 of the balls.  We use this idea at the heart of\nour proof for surface-embedded graphs.\n\n\\subsection{Surface-embedded graphs}\n\nWe start by extending this result to graphs embedded on more general\nsurfaces. We first give some definitions.\n\n A $2$-manifold (or surface) $S$ is a Hausdorff space in\nwhich every point has a neighborhood homeomorphic to the Euclidean\nplane or the closed half plane.  A cycle in a surface is a continuous\nfunction from $S^1$ to the surface; the cycle is called simple if the\nmap is injective. A simple cycle $\\gamma$ is separating if $S\n\\backslash \\gamma$ is not connected; see Figure~\\ref{fig:homologous}.  The genus $g$ of a surface $S$\nis the maximum number of pairwise disjoint non-separating cycles $\\gamma_1,\n\\gamma_2, \\ldots, \\gamma_g$ such that $S \\setminus (\\gamma_1 \\cup \\cdots \\cup \\gamma_g)$ is\nconnected.  \nNote that cutting a surface along a non-separating cycle reduces the genus by 1; this is a common\nalgorithmic technique for reducing the complexity of a surface.\nA surface is non-orientable if and only if it contains a\nsubspace homeomorphic to the M\\\"{o}bius band and is \notherwise orientable.\n\nAn embedding of a graph $G=(V,E)$ on a surface $S$ is a drawing of $G$\non $S$, such that vertices are mapped to distinct points in $S$ and\nedges are mapped to \\emph{internally} disjoint simple paths.  A face\nof an embedding is a maximal connected subset of $S$ that does not\nintersect the image of $G$.  An embedding is cellular if all of its\nfaces are homeomorphic to a topological open disc.  We say that $G$ is\na graph of (orientable or non-orientable) genus $g$ if $G$ has\na cellular embedding on a surface of (orientable or non-orientable)\ngenus $g$.\n\nWe will briefly use the notion of $\\mathbb{Z}_2$-homology in this paper and so include a \nbrief description for completeness; we refer the reader to a topology text for full \ndetails~\\cite{h-at-02,m-t-00}.  A homology cycle is a \nlinear combination of oriented cycles with coefficients from a ring\n$R$; when $R=\\mathbb{Z}_2$, these homology cycles are even-degree subgraphs of $G$.  \nA boundary subgraph is the boundary of a union of faces of $G$.  \nTwo subgraphs are homologous if their symmetric difference is a boundary \nsubgraph, or, more intuitively, if\nthey can be deformed to each other (where the deformation may include\nmerging intersection cycles or splitting at self-intersections or\ndeleting trivial separating cycles); see Figure~\\ref{fig:homologous} for an example.\nBoundary cycles are null-homologous, and since every separating cycle is a boundary cycle, we can view separating cycles as the identity element for homology classes.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[width=3in]{homologous1.pdf}\n\\includegraphics[width=3in]{splitting.pdf}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{Left: An example of homologous cycles: the single dashed red non-separating cycle (above on left) is $\\mathbb{Z}_2$-homologous to two solid blue cycles. Right: A null-homologous separating cycle.}\n\\label{fig:homologous}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsection{Our contribution}\n\nThe bulk of this paper focusses on showing that a graph of genus $g$\nhas the ball-cover property by showing that its ball system has the\n$(p_g,q_g)$-property for numbers $p_g$ and $q_g$ that depend only on\n$g$ (Section~\\ref{sec:pq}). Since $K_n$ has orientable genus $\\lceil \\frac{1}{12}(n-3)(n-4)\n\\rceil$ and non-orientable genus $\\lceil \\frac{1}{6}(n-3)(n-4)\n\\rceil$\\cite{ringel-youngs68}, we set $q_g = c\\cdot g^2$ (where $c$\ndepends only on whether the surface in question is orientable).  Then, since a\ngraph of genus at most $g$ excludes $K_{q_g}$ as a minor, the\nVC-dimension for a graph of genus at most $g$ is at most $q_g-1$.  By\nObservation~\\ref{obs:dual}, Lemma~\\ref{lem:vc-dim} and the Fractional\nHelly Theorem, we will get:\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:main}\n  There exists a constant $\\rho_g$ (depending only on $g$) such that\n  any graph of genus at most $g$ and diameter at most $2R$ can be\n  covered by at most $\\rho_g$ balls of radius $R$.\n\\end{theorem}\nWe show that the same holds if the graph additionally has a fixed\nnumber of apices and discuss how one might generalize to\nfixed-minor-excluded graph families in Section~\\ref{sec:apex}.\n\nIn order to prove that the ball system for a genus-$g$ graph has the\n$(p_g,q_g)$-property, we show that there is a small set of edges of a\nsurface-embedded graph whose removal leaves a planar graph\n(Section~\\ref{sec:sep}) and give bounds on the number of edges in a\ngraph drawn on a surface of fixed genus having a limit on the number\nof crossings (Section~\\ref{sec:cross}).  The former result can be used\nto generalize an edge-separator result for planar graphs due to Gazit\nand Miller~\\cite{GaMi90}.  Both these\nresults are likely of more general interest.  We give background on\nthese problems in their relevant sections.  \n\nThe takeaway from these generalizations will allow us to argue that\nany topological drawing of $K_n$ on a surface of orientable or\nnon-orientable genus $g$ must have a large subset of edges that\npairwise cross.\nIn Section~\\ref{sec:cross}, we will formally define what constitutes a\ntopological drawing on a surface of genus $g$ and prove this theorem.\n\n\n\\section{A norm-sized, planarizing edge set for surface-embedded graphs} \\label{sec:sep}\n\nIn this section, we show there is a small set of edges in a surface-embedded graph whose removal leaves a planar graph.  We start by bounding the size of a non-separating cycle:\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:cycle}\n  The shortest non-separating cycle of a graph $G$ embedded on a surface has length at most ${1\\over 2}||G||_f$.\n\\end{theorem}\nwhere \n\\[\n||G||_f = \\sqrt{\\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}} |f|^2}\n\\]\nis the {\\em face-norm} of $G$ and ${\\cal F}$ is the set of faces of\n$G$.  We use a sequence of $g$ non-separating cycles to {\\em\n  planarize} $G$.  The face-norm was used by Gazit and Miller to\ntighten the bound on the size of edge-separators for planar\ngraphs~\\cite{GaMi90}.  Theorem~\\ref{thm:cycle} implies an $O(g\n||G||_f)$-sized edge separator for genus-$g$ graphs.  We discuss some\nopen problems in this vein at the end of the paper.\n\nLet $G$ be a graph with a cellular embedding on a surface of genus $g$\n(either orientable or not).  We start with a shortest non-separating\ncycle $C$ and generate an ordered family of disjoint cycle sets $\\cal\nC$ each of which is homologous to $C$.  We use this family to build\nanother non-separating cycle $C'$ formed by one vertex from each set\nin $\\cal C$.  Since $C$ is shortest, $C'$ acts a witness giving a\nlower bound on $|\\cal C|$.  Overall, this gives a lower bound on the\nnumber of edges in $\\cal C$, and so an upper bound on $|C|$.\n  \nWe appeal to a combinatorial embedding of the graph which gives, for\neach vertex $v$, a clockwise ordering of the edges incident to $v$ as\nthey are embedded around $v$~\\cite{Edmonds60,Youngs63}.  We note that any such embedding can be\nmaintained under operations such as contraction, deleting, or cutting\nalong a cycle, via appropriate unions, deletions, or duplications of\nthe vertex lists which maintain the clockwise orderings; full details are described by Mohar and Thomassen~\\cite{mt-gs-01-ch4}.\n\nIn the following $\\partial f$ denotes the boundary of face $f$.\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{lem:homol}\n  Let $G$ be a graph with a cellular embedding on a surface $\\cal S$, either orientable or non-orientable.  Let $\\cal F$ be\n  a set faces of $G$.  We can add a set $L$ of edges to $G$ such that\n  \\begin{itemize}\n  \\item $L$ can be incorporated into the embedding of $G$ in a noncrossing way.\n  \\item The endpoints of $L$ are the set of vertices at distance one from the\n    boundaries of $\\cal F$.\n  \\item $L$ decomposes into a set of cycles that is homologous to the boundaries of\n    $\\cal F$.\n  \\end{itemize}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\\begin{proof}\n\n  For a face $f \\in {\\cal F}$, let $\\partial f$ denote the cycle in\n  $G$ giving $f$'s boundary, taken in clockwise order.  Let $X$ be the\n  set of vertices at distance 1 from $\\cal F$ in $G$.  If $f, g \\in\n  {\\cal F}$ are adjacent in $G$ (that is, there is an edge $uv$ such\n  that $u \\in \\partial f$ and $v \\in \\partial g$ or $f$ and $g$ share\n  a vertex $x$), then the vertices at distance 1 from $\\partial f$\n  interferes with $\\partial g$.  To avoid this, we merge adjacent\n  faces.  If $f$ and $g$ share a vertex $x$, we cut open the graph at $x$, merging the interiors of $f$ and $g$ and creating two copies of $x$, both on the boundary of the newly created face.  If $f$ and $g$ are connected by an edge $uv$, we cut open the graph along $uv$, merge the interior of\n  $f$ with that of $g$ resulting in face $h$.  The edge $uv$ is\n  duplicated and both copies appear in $\\partial h$.  We repeat this\n  operation {\\em minimally} until the distance between every pair of faces is at least\n  2: that is, performing a sequence of such operations will guarantee that the interior of the resulting faces are homeomorphic to a disk. \n (Note that on a non-orientable surface, this minimality avoids the possibility that the union of neighboring faces spans a M\\\"obuis strip, and so the interior remains a topological disk.) \n   Let ${\\cal F}'$ be the resulting set of faces and $G'$ the\n  resulting graph.  Note that the boundaries of $\\cal F$ are\n  $\\mathbb{Z}_2$-homologous to the boundaries of ${\\cal F}'$, since\n  the introduction of $uv$ twice cancels under $\\mathbb{Z}_2$\n  homology.  Note further that interior of each face in ${\\cal F}'$ is\n  homologous to a disk and thus the boundaries are contractible, and\n  the set of vertices at distance one from ${\\cal F}'$ is still $X$,\n  the set of vertices at distance 1 from ${\\cal F}$.\n\n  Let $G''$ be the graph obtained by contracting the boundaries of the\n  faces of ${\\cal F}'$.  Let $F'$ be the vertices resulting from these\n  contractions.  Note again that the set of vertices at distance 1 from\n  $F'$ in $G''$ is still $X$, since each vertex at distance 1 from $F'$ must also be within distance 1 of some vertex in $\\partial F$, and vice versa.\n\nWe will build a cycle that is homologous to each face in ${\\cal F}'$ whose vertices are among $X$.  Since the faces in ${\\cal F}'$ are at distance at least two from each other, the cycles we construct will not interact with each other.\n\n\n \\begin{figure}[ht]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=3in]{leveledges2}\n    \\caption{Cycles which are connected by an edge are merged into a single face (shaded above, right), and level edges (shown dashed above) are embedded so that the boundary of the face, incident edges and new edge bounds a topological disk (shaded above, left).}\n    \\label{fig:cycles}\n  \\end{figure}\n\nSubdivide every self-loop $\\ell$ adjacent to a vertex\nin ${\\cal F}'$ into two edges  with a vertex $v_\\ell$.  Let $G'''$ be the resulting graph.  The set of vertices at distance 1 is now $X'$, which consists of vertices from $X$ and vertices which came from loop subdivisions.\n\nFor each vertex $f \\in F'$, consider the cyclic clockwise ordering of the\nedges incident to the vertex corresponding to $f$ in the embedding of $G'''$.  For every two\nconsecutive edges $fu$ and $fv$ in this order we introduce the edge $uv$ and call it\na {\\em level edge}.  Edge $uv$ can be embedded to be arbitrarily close to $fu$ followed by $fv$; on the original surface, this corresponds to a path following the edge from $u$ to the face $f$, followed by a (possibly empty) portion of the face boundary $\\partial f$, followed by the edge from $f$ to $v$; see Figure~\\ref{fig:cycles}.\nLet $L$ be the set of all such\nedges.   Since each such edge can be embedded as described to follow two adjacent edges in the clockwise ordering around the vertex $f$, $G''' \\cup L$ can be embedded in a non-crossing way.  Note that self-loops and parallel edges may be introduced this way, e.g.\\ when a vertex $f \\in F$ has degree 1 or 2, respectively.  See Figure~\\ref{fig:loopleveledges}.\n\nThe level edges corresponding to $f$ inherit a cyclic ordering from\nthe ordering of the edges adjacent to $f$.  That is, $uv$ and $vw$ are\nconsecutive in this ordering if $fu,fv,fw$ are consecutive in the\nordering of edges adjacent to $f$. Further, given how we have embedded $uv$, we know that the cycle $\\partial f$ union the edges $fu, uv, fv$ bounds a topological disk.\nThis implies a partitioning of $L$ into a set of\ncycles ${\\cal C}$ that is homologous to the boundaries of ${\\cal F}'$: simply replace each portion of a face $\\partial f$ with the path $fu, uv, fv$.  Since we are (in $\\mathbb{Z}_2$ homology sense) adding a set of disks to a cycle, each new cycle is homologous to the original.  This proves the second and third implications of Lemma~\\ref{lem:homol}.\n\nHowever, the endpoints of $L$ are not necessarily vertices of $G$,\nsince they include the subdividing vertices.  Refer to Figure~\\ref{fig:loopleveledges}.  Consider such a vertex\n$v_\\ell \\in X'$ which was used to subdivide self-loop $\\ell$.  Merge\nany two consecutive edges $uv_\\ell$, $v_\\ell w$, creating edge $uw$\nand minimally modify the embedding so that $uw$ does not intersect\n$\\ell$.  This maintains the second and third implications.\nIf there are parallel loops (either on an oriented or non-oriented surface), the connecting level edges consist of bigons between loop vertices; these bigons are null-homologous and hence can be disregarded. The set of\nlevel edges may also have included a self-loop centered at a subdividing\nvertex, the new ``edge'' will no longer have any endpoints.  This\n``edge'' must bound a topological disk, since, if we introduced a\nlevel edge centered at $v_\\ell$, $\\ell$ must have bounded a face in\n$G''$.  Therefore, we can remove this ``edge'' while maintaining the same homology type for our set of cycles.  We let $L'$ be the modified and remaining edges.  These are the edges satisfying the three implications of Lemma~\\ref{lem:homol}. \\qed\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \\begin{figure}[ht]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=1.5in]{loopleveledges1}\n    \\includegraphics[width=1.5in]{loopleveledges2}\n    \\caption{A face $f$ (shaded) and its incident edges (solid) with added subdividing vertices (hollow).  Left: the level edges $L$ (dashed) added to $G'''$.  Right: the level edges after connections to the subdividing vertices are removed.  Note that the outer endpoint-less ``edge'' is not included in $L'$.}\n    \\label{fig:loopleveledges}\n  \\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Short non-separating cycles}\n\nWe are now ready to prove Theorem~\\ref{thm:cycle}.\n\nLet $C$ be the shortest non-separating cycle of $G$.  Cut open the\nsurface and graph along $C$, duplicating $C$ into copies $C_0$ and\n$C_0'$; let $G_0$ be the cut open graph.  Glue a disk onto each hole\nleft from cutting open the graph.  $C_0$ and $C_0'$ are now the\nboundaries of faces.\n\nLet $V_i$ be the set of vertices in $G_0$ that are at distance $i$\nfrom $C_0$ and let $s$ be the smallest index such that $V_s \\cap\nV(C_0') \\ne \\emptyset$.  We define sets of cycles $C_i$ in a graph\n$G_i$, $i = 0 \\ldots, s$, starting with $C_0$, inductively as follows:\nGiven the set of cycles $C_{i-1}$ that are the boundaries of faces\n(and starting with $C_0$ as our initial cycle), we define $C_i$ to be\nthe homologous set of cycles going through $V_i$ as guaranteed by\nLemma~\\ref{lem:homol}.  We remove the edges and vertices of $C_{i-1}$\nand the edges adjacent to $C_{i-1}$ to make $C_i$ the boundaries of\nfaces.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n  For any chord $uv$ of a face $f$, let $P_{uv}$ be the shortest\n  $u$-to-$v$ path along the boundary of $f$ and let $\\ell(uv) =\n  |P_{uv}|$.  Gazit and Miller~\\cite{GaMi90} show that for a face $f$\n  and a set of pairwise non-crossing chords $H$ across $f$, $\\ell(H) \\le \\frac{1}{8}|f|^2$.\n  Since the edges of $\\cup_{i = 1}^s C_i$ are chords of the faces of $G$, we get\n  \\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:level-wts}\n    \\sum_{i=0}^s \\ell(C_i) \\le {1\\over 8} (||G||_f)^2\n  \\end{equation}\n\n  By construction $C_i$ is homologous to $C_0$ and so to $C$.  Let\n  $\\bar C_i$ be the set of cycles obtained from $C_i$ by replacing\n  each edge $uv \\in C_i$ with $P_{uv}$.  We get $|\\bar C_i| =\n  \\ell(C_i)$.  Since $\\bar C_i$ is homologous to $C$, $\\bar C_i$ must contain a non-separating cycle $S$.  Since $C$ is the shortest non-separating cycle,\n  \\[\n  |\\bar C_i| \\ge |S| \\ge |C|\n  \\]\n\n  \\begin{figure}[hb]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics{abc.pdf}\n    \\caption{$C$ is the shortest non-separating cycle, $A \\cup B$ is another non-separating cycle.}\n    \\label{fig:ABC}\n  \\end{figure}\n\n  Let $B$ be the shortest path from $C_0$ to $C_0'$.  Let $A$ be the\n  shortest subpath of $C$ that connects $B$'s endpoints.  $A \\cup B$\n  is a non-separating cycle.  See Figure~\\ref{fig:ABC}  Since $|B| = s$ and $|A \\cup B| \\ge\n  |C|$, $s \\ge |C|\/2$.  We have:\n  \\[\n  {1\\over 8}(||G||_f)^2 \\ge \\sum_{i=1}^s\\ell(C_i) =  \\sum_{i=1}^s |\\bar C_i| \\ge |C|^2\/2 \n  \\]\n  Rearranging gives Theorem~\\ref{thm:cycle}.\n\n\\subsection{Planarizing sets}\n\nRepeatedly cutting along non-separating cycles allows us to reduce a surface-embedded graph to a planar graph, while only reducing the face norm:\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:cut-n-contract}\n  Let $G$ be an embedded graph and let $C$ be a non-separating cycle.\n  Cutting open the graph along $C$ and then contracting each resulting\n  copy of $C$ results in a graph $G'$ such that $||G'||_f <\n  ||G||_f$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n  Let $\\cal F$ be the set of faces of $G$ and let ${\\cal F}_C$ be the\n  set of faces of $G$ that have a bounding edge in $C$.  Cutting along\n  a non-separating cycle $C$ of a graph $G$ embedded on surface $\\cal\n  S$ introduces two holes, each bounded by a copy of $C$.  Contracting\n  each hole and each bounding copy of $C$ results in a graph $G'$ with\n  face set ${\\cal F}'$.  Every face in ${\\cal F}$ maps to a face in\n  ${\\cal F}'$ such that the faces in ${\\cal F} \\setminus {\\cal F}_C$\n  are the same size as their image in ${\\cal F}'$ and the faces in\n  ${\\cal F}_C$ are strictly larger than their counterparts ${\\cal F}'_C$ in ${\\cal\n    F}'$ giving:\n  \\[\n  ||G'||_f = \\sqrt{\\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}'} |f|^2 }\n = \\sqrt{ \\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}'\\setminus{\\cal F}'_C} |f|^2 +\\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}'_C} |f|^2 } < \\sqrt{ \\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}\\setminus{\\cal F}_C} |f|^2 +\\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}_C} |f|^2 } = \\sqrt{\\sum_{f \\in {\\cal F}} |f|^2 }= ||G||_f \\] \\qed\n\\end{proof}\n\nCutting along a non-separating cycle $C$ of a graph $G$ embedded on\nsurface $\\cal S$ reduces the genus of the surface by one and\nintroduces two holes, each bounded by a copy of $C$.\nLemma~\\ref{lem:cut-n-contract} shows that if we contract the two\ncopies of $C$ (and the corresponding holes), we only reduce the\nface-norm of the graph.  We can repeat this cut-and-contract procedure\n$g$ times, each time we find a non-separating cycle of length at most\n${1\\over 2}||G||_f$, at which point the surface is a sphere and the\nfinal graph $G'$ is planar.  Of course, applying this method to the\ndual $G^*$ of the graph, results in a set of {\\em planarizing} edges\nwhose size is measured in terms of the vertex-norm\n\\[\n||G||_\\delta = \\sqrt{\\sum_{v \\in V} \\delta(v)^2}\n\\]\nof $G$ where $\\delta(v)$ is the degree of vertex $v$.  Recall that the\ndual of a plane graph is given by a vertex for every face of the primal\ngraph, with dual vertices connected when the corresponding primal\nfaces are adjacent.  By duality, the degree of a vertex is the size of\nthe face in the dual corresponding to the vertex.  We get:\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:planarize}\n  There is a set of $\\frac{g}{2}||G||_\\delta$ edges of a genus-$g$\n  graph whose removal leaves a planar graph.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\n\\section{Pairwise-crossing number of surfaces}\\label{sec:cross}\n\nThere are many measures of how close a graph is to being planar.  One measure is the crossing number which is the minimum number of edge crossings in a planar, topological drawing of the graph~\\cite{Turan77}.  A drawing is {\\em topological} if vertices map to distinct points and edges map to simple Jordan arcs connecting the points their endpoints such that (i) no arc passes through a vertex different from its endpoints, (ii) no two arcs meet in more than one point, and (iii) no three arcs share a common interior point.  Formally the crossing number of a fixed drawing is number of interior points that are shared by two arcs.  The restriction to topological drawings does not increase the crossing number of a graph, see e.g.~\\cite{Felsner04}.  Rather than planar drawings, we are interested in drawings on surfaces of genus $g$ and so will refer to {\\em surface topological drawings}.  This number has been studied by Shahrokhi, Sz\\'{e}kely, S\\'{y}kora and Vrt'o, who give upper and lower bounds on the crossing number of complete graphs drawn on compact 2-manifolds~\\cite{SSSV94,SSSV96}; more specific bounds are also known for surfaces such as the torus~\\cite{Guy1968376}.\n\nWe first use the crossing number of a particular drawing of a graph to give bounds on the size of a set of edges whose removal results in  a topological drawing in the plane.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:topo-planarize}\nA graph $G$ admitting  a topological drawing on a surface $\\cal S$ of genus $g$ with $\\chi$ crossings has a subset of at most \n\\[ {g \\over 2}\\sqrt{16\\chi+||G||_\\delta^2}\\] edges whose removal\nleaves a graph whose inherited drawing is a planar topological\ndrawing.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}Let $H$ be the graph embedded on $\\cal S$ obtained\nfrom $G$ by introducing a vertex at each crossing.  Since the drawing is topological, each of these new vertices has degree 4.  We have that $||H||_\\delta^2 = \\sum_{v\\in H} \\delta_H(v)^2 = 16\\chi+\\sum_{v\\in G} \\delta_G(v)^2$.  By Lemma~\\ref{lem:planarize}, $H$ has a planarizing edge set $S_H$ with at most ${g\\over 2}||H||_\\delta$ edges.  Let $S_G$ be the set of edges of $G$ from which $S_H$ are generated.  Since $|S_G| \\le |S_H|$, the lemma follows.\n\\hfill \\qed \\end{proof}\n\nAnother class of graphs that is close to being planar are the class of\n{\\em $k$-quasi-planar graphs}.  A graph is $k$-quasi-planar if it\nadmits a planar, topological drawing in which no subset of $k+1$ edges\npairwise cross; thus a graph that is 1-quasi-planar is planar.\nVarious bounds on the number of edges in such graphs have been\ngiven~\\cite{AAPPS97,PSS94,FPS13}, culminating in:\n\\begin{theorem}[Suk and Walczak~\\cite{SW13}]\\label{thm:planar-cross}\n  A simple $n$-vertex graph admitting a topological drawing in the\n  plane in which no subset of $k+1$ edges pairwise cross has at most\n  $c_k n \\log n$ edges where $c_k$ is a constant depending only on $k$.\n\\end{theorem}\nIn fact, if one\nfollows the dependence on $k$ through Suk and Walczak's work, one finds that\n\\begin{equation}\nc_k = A^{k^k} \\text{ for a fixed constant }A \\ge 2\\label{eq:ck}\n\\end{equation}\nAs far\nas we know, such bounds have not previously been generalized to more\ngeneral surface topological drawings as we do so here.  The proof of Theorem~\\ref{thm:cross} is based on the analysis technique of Pach\net~al.~\\cite{PSS94}, but here we are able to immediately reduce the genus $g$ topological graph to a planar, topological graph, thus invoking Suk and Walczak's result~\\cite{SW13}.\n\n\\begin{theorem} \\label{thm:cross} A simple $n$-vertex graph admitting\n  a topological drawing on a surface of genus $g > 0$ in which\n  no subset of $k+1$ edges pairwise cross has at most \n  $(2g^2)^k c_k n \\log n$ when $g = O(n)$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n  Let ${\\cal G}_{g,k,n}$ be the family of all graphs with at most $n$\n  vertices and admitting a genus-$g$ topological drawing in which no\n  subset of $k+1$ edges pairwise cross.  Let $m_{g,k,n}$ be the\n  maximum number of edges in any graph in ${\\cal G}_{g,k,n}$.\n\n  We aim to prove the assertion for ${\\cal G}_{g,k,n}$ that \n  \\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:2}\n    m_{g,k,n} \\le (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n\n  \\end{equation}\n  by induction over $k$.  For $k = 1$ (and every $g$ and $n$), the\n  assertion is true since such graphs are genus-$g$ graphs and have\n  $O(n + g)$ edges which is $O(n)$ for $g = O(n)$.  For values of $n$\n  such that $n\\log n \\le (2g^2)^{k}c_k$, the assertion is\n  true since the right-hand side of Inequality~(\\ref{eq:2}) exceeds $n^2$ for all\n  such values of $n$.  We assume that $m_{g,k-1,n} \\le\n  (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n$.\n\n  Consider a graph $G \\in {\\cal G}_{g,k,n}$ and fix a genus-$g$ topological\n  drawing of $G$ in which no subset of $k+1$ edges pairwise cross.\n  Let $\\chi$ be the number of crossings in this drawing.  We first bound $\\chi$ so we may use\n  Lemma~\\ref{lem:topo-planarize}.\n\n  Consider an edge $e$ of $G$ and let $G_e$ be the subgraph of $G$\n  consisting of all the edges crossing $e$.  Let $G_e$ inherit its\n  drawing from $G$.  Since the drawing of $G$ has no $k+1$ pairwise\n  crossing edges, the drawing of $G_e$ has no $k$ pairwise crossing\n  edges for otherwise such a set along with $e$ would witness a set of\n  $k+1$ pairwise crossing edges in the drawing of $G$.  Therefore $G_e\n  \\in {\\cal G}_{g,k-1,n}$ and so $G_e$ has at most $m_{g,k-1,n}$\n  edges.  The number of crossings on $e$ is therefore at most\n  $m_{g,k-1,n}$.  Summing over all edges of $G$, $\\chi \\le\n  \\frac{1}{2}m \\cdot m_{g,k-1,n}$ where $m$ is the number of edges in $G$.  By the inductive hypothesis,\n   \\begin{equation}\n     \\label{eq:3}\n     \\chi \\le \\frac{1}{2} m\\cdot (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n.\n   \\end{equation}\n   \n   Let $S$ be the set of edges forming a planarizing set for $G$ guaranteed by Lemma~\\ref{lem:topo-planarize}.  By\n   Lemma~\\ref{lem:topo-planarize}, Equation~\\eqref{eq:3} and the fact\n   that $||H||_\\delta^2 \\le 2|E(H)|\\cdot|V(H)|$ for any graph $H$,\n   \\begin{equation}\n     \\label{eq:4}\n     |S| \\le \\frac{g}{2} \\sqrt{8 m\\cdot (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n+2mn} \\le \\frac{3g}{2} \\sqrt{ m\\cdot (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n}\n   \\end{equation}\n   where the last inequality holds for $n$ such that $2 < (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1}\\log n$; these coincide with non-base-case values of $n$. \n    Let $G'$ be\n   the graph obtained by deleting $S$ from $G$.  Then $m \\le E(G') +\n   |S|$.  Since $G'$ is a $k$-quasi-planar graph on at most $n$\n   vertices, $|E(G')| \\le c_k n \\log n$ by\n   Theorem~\\ref{thm:planar-cross}.  Combining, we get\n   \\begin{equation*}\n     m \\le c_k n \\log n + \\frac{3g}{2} \\sqrt{ m\\cdot (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n}\n   \\end{equation*}\n   Rearranging:\n   \\begin{equation} \\label{eq:f}\n     m - \\frac{3g}{2}\\sqrt{(2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n} \\sqrt{m} \\le c_k n \\log n \n   \\end{equation}\n   Let $f(m) = m - \\frac{3g}{2}\\sqrt{(2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n}\n   \\sqrt{m}$. We consider the two cases corresponding to the sign of\n   the left-hand side of (\\ref{eq:f}).\n\n   If $f(m) \\le 0$, then\n   \\[m \\le \\left(\\frac{3g}{2}\\right)^2 (2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n =\n   (2g^2)^k \\frac{9}{8}c_{k-1} n \\log n \\le (2g^2)^kc_k n \\log n,\\]\n   where the last inequality follows from ${9 \\over 8} c_{k-1} < c_k$\n   (which is clearly true given Equation~(\\ref{eq:ck})), thus proving\n   the assertion.\n   \n   We note that $f(m)$ is an increasing function for all positive\n   values of $m$ such that $f(m) > 0$.  \nWe will show that\n   \\begin{equation}\nf((2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n) > c_{k} n \\log n, \\label{eq:ff}\n\\end{equation}\nimplying that $m < (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n$ when $f(m) > 0$, proving\nthe assertion.\n\\begin{eqnarray*}\n  f((2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n) &=& (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n -\\frac{3g}{2}\\sqrt{(2g^2)^{k-1}c_{k-1} n \\log n} \\sqrt{(2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n} \\\\\n  & = & (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n - \\frac{3\\sqrt{2}}{4}\\sqrt{(2g^2)^{2k}c_{k-1}c_{k}}n\\log n \\\\\n  & = & (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n  \\left(1-\\frac{3\\sqrt{2}}{4}\\sqrt{\\frac{c_{k-1}}{c_k}}\\right)\\\\\n  & > & (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n  \\left(1-\\frac{3\\sqrt{2}}{4}\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}\\right)\\text{, since $c_k > 2 c_{k-1}$, by Equation~(\\ref{eq:ck})}\\\\\n  & = & (2g^2)^{k}c_k n \\log n  \\left(\\frac{1}{4}\\right)\\\\\n  & > & c_k n \\log n \\mbox{, for $k \\ge 2$ and $g \\ge 1$}\n \\end{eqnarray*}\nThis proves Equation~(\\ref{eq:ff}) and so the theorem.\n\\hfill \\qed \\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{The $(p_g,q_g)$-property of genus-$g$ ball systems}\\label{sec:pq}\n\nThe proof of the fact that the ball system of a graph of genus $g$ has the $(p_g,q_g)$-property is similar to the proof of Proposition 2 in the work of Chepoi, Estellon and Vax\\`{e}s~\\cite{planarballcover}, although we have made efforts to simplify the proof here.\n\nLet $G$ be a graph of diameter at most $2R$ with an embedding on a\nsurface $\\cal S$ of genus $g$.  Let $C$ be a set of $p_g$ vertices; we\nwill define $p_g$ shortly.  Consider a set of shortest paths ${\\cal P}\n= \\{P_{ij}\\ : \\ c_i, c_j \\in C\\}$ where $P_{ij}$ is the shortest\n$c_i$-to-$c_j$ path in $G$.  We can assume, without loss of\ngenerality, that the intersection of any two of these paths is {\\em simple}, having at\nmost one component (a path or vertex), for otherwise, one path could\nbe redirected along another without compromising shortness as\nillustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:simple}.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n  \\centering\n  \\label{fig:simple}\n  \\includegraphics{simple_intersection.pdf}\n  \\caption{If $P$ and $Q$ are both shortest paths, then $P'$ must also be a shortest path between $P$'s endpoints.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n Taking the image of $P_{ij}$ on the surface for each path $P_{ij} \\in {\\cal\n P}$, we get a drawing of the complete graph $K_{p_g}$ on $\\cal S$.  We can\n make this drawing topological by a sequence of simple, local\n transformations, as illustrated in Figure~\\ref{fig:simplify}. Since we\n assumed that path intersections are simple, the first\n transformation modifies the drawing to achieve the first and third\n properties of a topological drawing and the second transformation\n modifies the drawing to achieve the second property of a topological\n drawing.  These transformations {\\em respect intersection} so far as\n that, in the final drawing of $K_{p_g}$, the images of two edges of\n $K_{p_g}$ share a point if and only if the corresponding paths share\n a vertex in $G$.\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n  \\centering\n  \\label{fig:simplify}\n  \\includegraphics{topological.pdf}\n  \\caption{Making a drawing topological; full details are given by Felsner~\\cite{Felsner04}.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nSince the drawing of $K_{p_g}$ is a topological drawing on surface $\\cal S$\nof genus $g$, we can use Theorem~\\ref{thm:cross} to guarantee that, for $p_g$ sufficiently large (and depending only on $g$), this drawing contains a subset of at least\n$2q_g-3$ edges that pairwise cross.  Likewise, since\nthe drawing of $K_{p_g}$ respects intersections, there must be a\nsubset ${\\cal P}'$ of at least $2q_g-3$ paths of $\\cal P$ that pairwise\nintersect.  We pick the {\\em midpoint} of a $c_i$-to-$c_j$ path\n$P_{ij} \\in {\\cal P}$ to be any vertex $m_{ij}$ that is in $B(c_i)\\cap\nB(c_j)$; since diameter of the graph is at most $2R$, the paths $\\cal\nP$ are shortest and the balls have radius $R$, such a point always\nexists.\n\n\\begin{claim}\n  For any two paths $P_{ij}, P_{k\\ell} \\in {\\cal P}'$, either $m_{ij} \\in B(c_k)\\cup B(c_\\ell)$ or $m_{k\\ell}\n\\in B(c_i) \\cup B(c_j)$.\n\\end{claim}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n  Let $x$ be a vertex shared by both $P_{ij}$ and $P_{k\\ell}$.\n  Assume, w.l.o.g., that $c_i$ is the closest of the endpoints of\n  $P_{ij}$ and $P_{k\\ell}$ ($\\{c_i,c_j,c_k,c_\\ell\\}$) to $x$.  Also\n  assume, w.l.o.g., that $x$ is in the $c_k$-to-$m_{k\\ell}$ subpath of\n  $P_{k\\ell}$.  Since $m_{k\\ell} \\in B(c_k)$ the distance from\n  $m_{k\\ell}$ to $x$ to $c_k$ is at most $R$ and since $c_i$ is closer\n  to $x$ than $c_k$, then the distance from $m_{k\\ell}$ to $x$ to\n  $c_i$ is also at most $R$, therefore $m_{k\\ell} \\in B(c_i)$.\n\\hfill \\qed \\end{proof}\n\nSince this claim holds for every pair of paths, by an averaging\nargument, there must be some path $P_{ij}$ whose midpoint is contained\nin the ball centered at the endpoint of at least $\\frac{1}{|{\\cal\n    P}'|} \\cdot {|{\\cal P}'| \\choose 2} = \\frac{1}{2}(|{\\cal P}'|-1)\n\\ge q_g-2$ paths.  Since $m_{ij}$ is additionally contained in $B(c_i)\n\\cap B(c_j)$, $m_{ij}$ is a point contained in $q_g$ balls, showing\nthat the ball system for $G$ has the $(p_g,q_g)$-property.\n\n\n\n\\section{Handling apices and toward minor-excluded graphs} \\label{sec:apex}\n\nThe Graph Minor Structure Theorem is one of many results of Robertson\nand Seymour leading to the Graph Minor theorem.  The Graph Minor\nStructure Theorem shows that for a fixed graph $H$, any graph\nexcluding $H$ as a minor is composed of graphs that, after the removal\nof a fixed number of vertices, can be embedded on a surface in which\n$H$ cannot be embedded with a fixed number of {\\em vortices}\n(described below).  These subgraphs are glued together in a tree-like\nstructure called a tree decomposition.\n\nWe are able to show that we can {\\em remove} the apices, so to speak,\nof one of these graphs (Section~\\ref{sec:rem-ap}) and that there is\none subgraph within which every other vertex is distance $R$ \n(Section~\\ref{sec:central}).  Of course, this subgraph may be quite\nlarge, but since this subgraph is nearly embeddable on some surface,\nafter removal of the apices, it may be possible to use arguments\nsimilar to those in Section~\\ref{sec:pq}.  We discuss this further in\nSection~\\ref{sec:mf-decomp}.\n\n\\subsection{Removing apices} \\label{sec:rem-ap}\n\nWe show something stronger than that of {\\em removing apices from\n  bounded genus graphs}:\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:apex-removal}\n  Let $\\cal G$ be a class of graphs whose ball systems have\n  VC-dimension at most $q-1$ and satisfy the $(p,q)$-property.  Then\n  there is a constant $\\rho$ such that any graph in $\\cal G$ with an\n  additional $\\alpha$ apices and diameter at most $2R$ can be covered\n  by at most $\\rho+\\alpha$ balls of radius $R$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n  Let $G$ be a graph such that for a subset of at most $\\alpha$ vertices $A$, $G\n  \\setminus A \\in {\\cal G}$.  Let $\\cal B$ be the ball system for $G$\n  and let ${\\cal B}'$ be the subset of those balls that do not\n  intersect $A$.  The VC-dimension of ${\\cal B}'$ is at most that of\n  ${\\cal B}$, which is at most $q-1$.  Likewise, since $\\cal B$ has\n  the $(p,q)$-property, so does ${\\cal B}'$.  By the Fractional Helly\n  Theorem, it follows that ${\\cal B}'$ has a hitting set of size at\n  most $\\rho$; this hitting set along with $A$ is a hitting set for\n  $\\cal B$. \n\\hfill \\qed \\end{proof}\n\n\n\\subsection{The central node of a tree decomposition} \\label{sec:central}\n\nA tree decomposition $\\cal T$ of a graph $G = (V,E)$ is a pair $(T,\n{\\cal X})$ where $T$ is a tree and $\\cal X$ is a family of subsets (or\n{\\em bags}) of $V$ such that:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item Each node $a$ of $T$ has a corresponding subset $X_a \\in {\\cal\n    X}$ and $\\cup_{X \\in {\\cal X}} X = V$;\n\\item For every edge $uv \\in E$ there is a bag $X \\in {\\cal X}$ such\n  that $u,v \\in X$.\n\\item For any three nodes $a,b,c \\in T$ such that $b$ is on the\n  $a$-to-$c$ path in $T$, $X_a \\cap X_c \\subseteq X_b$.\n\\end{itemize}\nWe refer to the {\\em nodes} of $T$ and {\\em vertices} of $G$ to avoid\nconfusion.  The width of a tree decomposition $(T,{\\cal X})$ is\n$\\max_{X \\in{\\cal X}} |X|-1$.  Tree decompositions are not unique.\nThe treewidth of a graph is the minimum possible width of a tree\ndecomposition of the graph.\n\nWe show that given a tree decomposition of a graph of diameter $2R$,\nthere is a node $a$ of the tree decomposition such that every vertex\nin the graph is within distance $R$ of some vertex in $X_a$.  This is\nsimilar to Theorem~5 by Gavoille et~al.~\\cite{GPRS01}, but we are\nspecific about the node of interest in the tree decomposition.  We\ninclude the proof below for completeness.\n\n\\begin{theorem}[Central node] \\label{thm:central-node}\n  There is a node $v$ of a tree decomposition ${\\cal T} = (T,{\\cal\n    X})$ of a graph $G$ with diameter at most $2R$ such that every vertex of\n  $G$ is within distance $R$ of some vertex in $X_v$; i.e.\\ $d(x,X_v)\n  \\le R$ for every vertex $x$ of $G$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nConsider a node $u$ of $T$ and the corresponding bag $X_u \\in {\\cal\n  X}$. Removing $u$ from $T$ and $X_u$ from $G$ results in $k \\ge 1$\nsubgraphs, each with a tree decomposition derived from ${\\cal T}$.\nFormally, let $T^1_u, \\ldots, T^k_u$ be the components of $T \\setminus\n\\{u\\}$.  Let ${\\cal X}_u^j$ be the bags corresponding to nodes of\n$T_u^j$ with the vertices in $X_u$ removed: ${\\cal X}_u^j = \\{ X_v\n\\setminus X_u \\ : \\ v \\in T_u^j\\}$.  Let $V_u^j$ be the vertices in\nthe bags corresponding to nodes of $T_u^j$ with $X_v$ removed: $V_u^j\n= \\cup {\\cal X}_u^i$. ${\\cal T}_u^j = (T_u^j, {\\cal\n  X}_u^j)$ is a tree decomposition of the subgraph of $G$ induced by\n$V_u^j$. Since $X_u$ is a vertex separator, any $v$-to-$w$ path in $G$\nfor $v \\in V_u^i$ and $w \\in V_u^j$ ($i \\ne j$) must contain a vertex\nof $X_u$.\n\nLet $d(x,y)$ be the shortest-path distance between $x$ and $y$ in $G$.\nFor a subset of vertices $Y$, let $d(x,Y)$ be the minimum distance\nfrom $x$ to any vertex of $Y$, so $d(x,Y) = \\min_{y \\in Y}d(x,y)$. For\nany two subsets $X$ and $Y$, let $f(X,Y)$ be the furthest vertex in\n$X$ from $Y$; i.e.\\ $f(X,Y) = \\arg\\max_{x \\in X} d(x,Y)$.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:unique}\n  If the distance from the furthest vertex in $V^i_u$ to $X_u$ is\n  greater than $R$ for any $i$, then for every $j \\ne i$, the distance\n  from the furthest vertex in $V^j_u$ is strictly less than $R$.\n \n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n  Let $f_i = f(V^i_u,X_u)$ and let $f_j = f(V^j_u,X_u)$ for $i \\ne j$.\n\n  Let $x$ be a vertex in $X_u$ that is on a shortest path from\n  $f_i$ Note also that since\n  $f(V^i_u,X_u)$\n  and $f(V^j_u,X_u)$ are both vertices in $G$,\n  $d(f(V^i_u,X_u),f(V^j_u,X_u)) \\le 2R$. So we have:\n  \\begin{eqnarray*}\n    2R & \\ge & d(f(V^i_u,X_u),f(V^j_u,X_u)) \n    \\\\&=& d(f(V^i_u,X_u),x)+d(f(V^j_u,X_u),x)\\\\\n    &\\ge& d(f(V^i_u,X_u),X_u)+d(f(V^j_u,X_u),X_u) \\\\\n    &> &R+ d(f(V^j_u,X_u),X_u)\n\\end{eqnarray*}\n  The above then immediately implies that $d(f(V^j_u,X_u),X_u) < R$.\n\\hfill \\qed \\end{proof}\n\n  Consider the following procedure for finding the central node, starting\n  at an arbitrary node $r$:\n  \\begin{tabbing}\n  1\\qquad \\=  {\\sc search}$(r)$\\\\\n  2 \\> \\qquad\\= If $d(x,X_r) \\le R$ for all $x \\in V(G)$, return $r$. \\\\\n  3 \\> \\> Otherwise:\\\\\n  4 \\> \\> \\qquad \\= Let $p$ be a node adjacent to $r$ in $T$ such that $d(f(V_r^i,X_r),X_r) > R$ and $p \\in T_r^i$. \\\\\n  5 \\> \\> \\> {\\sc search}$(p)$.\n  \\end{tabbing}\n  \n  It is clear that if this procedure terminates, then the statement of\n  the lemma is true.  It remains to argue that the algorithm must\n  terminate.  If we we reach line 4, then, by Lemma~\\ref{lem:unique},\n  $p$ is unique.  If {\\sc search} does not terminate, then it is easy\n  to see that {\\sc search} must oscillate between two adjacent nodes\n  $p$ and $q$ of the tree decomposition: {\\sc search}$(p)$ calls {\\sc\n    search}$(q)$ and vice versa.  In this case, there must be a vertex\n  $x \\in T_q^i$ where $i$ is such that $d(f(V_q^i,X_q),X_q) > R$ and\n  $p \\in T_q^i$ and a vertex $y \\in T_p^j$ where $j$ is such that let\n  $d(f(V_p^j,X_p),X_p) > R$ and $q \\in T_p^j$.  Let $S$ be a shortest\n  $x$-to-$y$ path; by definition of $p$ and $q$, $S$ must visit a\n  vertex $a \\in X_p$ and a vertex $b \\in X_q$ (possibly $a = b$). Let\n  $m$ be a vertex closest to the middle of $S$.  Since the diameter of\n  $G$ is at most $2R$, $d(x,m)$ and $d(y,m)$ is at most $R$.\n  Therefore $b$ must come after $m$ along $S$ from $x$ to $y$ and $a$\n  must come after $m$ along $S$ from $y$ to $x$.  It must be that $m =\n  a = b$, contradicting that $d(x,X_q) > R$ and $d(y,X_p) > R$. This\n  concludes the proof of the Central Node Theorem.\n\nTheorem 5 of Gavoille et~al.'s work is an immediate corollary of Theorem~\\ref{thm:central-node}:\n\n\\begin{corollary}[Theorem 5~\\cite{GPRS01}]\n  For a graph with treewidth $tw$ and diameter $2R$, there is a set $S$ of at most\n  $tw+1$ vertices such that $d(x,S) \\leq R$ for every vertex $x$ in\n  the graph.\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Minor-free decompositions} \\label{sec:mf-decomp}\n\nFinally, we outline a direction for extending this result to\nminor-free graph classes and describe the challenges.\n\nRobertson and Seymour showed that for any graph $G_H$ that excludes a\nfixed minor $H$, $G_H$ has a well-defined\nstructure~\\cite{Robertson200343}.  Using the notation and terminology\nof Demaine et~al.~\\cite{HMinorFree_JACM}, the Graph Minor Structure\nTheorem states that $G_H$ is obtained by $h$-clique sums of graphs\nthat are {\\em $h$-almost embeddable} on surfaces in which $H$ cannot\nbe embedded.  A graph $G$ is\n\\emph{$h$-almost-embeddable} on a surface $S$ if:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item There is a set $A$ of at most $h$ vertices, called \\emph{apex}\n  vertices, such that $G\\setminus A$ can be written as a union of graphs $G_0\n  \\cup G_1 \\cup \\cdots \\cup G_h$ where $G_0$ can be cellularly\n  embedded on $S$.\n\n\\item For every $i > 0$, $G_i$ is a graph, called a {\\em vortex}, that\n  has a tree-decomposition that is a path with nodes in order\n  $x_i^1,x_i^2, \\ldots$ and width at most $h$.\n\n\\item For every $i > 0$, there is a face $F_i$ such that $u_i^1,\n  u_i^2, \\ldots$ is a subset of the boundary vertices of $F_i$ in\n  order along the boundary of $F_i$ and $u_i^j \\in X_{x_i^j}$ for all $j$.\n\\end{itemize}\nNote that since $H$ is fixed, the surfaces in which the\ncomponents of $G_H$ are almost embeddable have fixed genus.\n\nAn $h$-clique sum between graphs $A$ and $B$ identifies the vertices\nof a clique on at most $h$ vertices in $A$ and $B$ and then possibly\nremoves some edges of the clique.  The clique-sum of graphs provides a\nnatural tree decomposition.  Specifically, $G_H$ admits a tree\ndecomposition $(T,{\\cal X})$ such that for every $X \\in {\\cal X}$, the\nsubgraph of $G_H$ induced by $X$ is $h$-almost embeddable and the\nintersection of any two sets of $\\cal X$ contains at most $h$\nvertices.  Using this decomposition, we define the {\\em central subgraph}\nof $G_H$ as the subgraph of $G_H$ induced by the vertices in the\ncentral node of this tree decomposition.\n\nFocussing on this central subgraph, we can {\\em remove} the apices by\nway of Lemma~\\ref{lem:apex-removal}.  Now, in the efforts to prove the\n$(p,q)$-property for the set of balls not intersecting apices of the\ncentral subgraph, consider a set of $p$ balls for sufficiently large\n$p$.  We can assume w.l.o.g.\\ that at most one ball center is in each\nof the neighboring $H$-minor-free graphs that are clique-summed to the\ncentral subgraph; if a large number of ball centers are in one\nneighbor, then since the balls must all reach the central subgraph, a\nlarge enough number of them must share a vertex, since the clique sums\nare small.  \n\nWe can then focus on center-to-center shortest paths, as in\nSection~\\ref{sec:pq}.  For this proof technique, we need to show that\namong a set of center-to-center shortest paths, a sufficiently large\nnumber of them share an interior vertex.  While these paths must cross\nthe central subgraph and parts of them must be embedded on the surface\nthat the bulk of the central subgraph is embedded on, these paths can\nuse the clique sums and vortices to {\\em hop} over eachother, crossing\nwithout intersecting.  It does not seem possible to bound how much\nthis can happen since the {\\em number} of vortices and clique sums is\nnot bounded.  so it is likely that a more global argument, taking into\naccount the balls and not just the shortest paths between ball\ncenters, will be required in order to illustrate the $(p,q)$-property.\n\n\\section{Discussion} \\label{sec:future}\n\nThis paper presents a generalization of the ball-cover property to bounded genus graphs with a constant number of apices.  \nThis represents a significant step towards showing this result holds for all minor-free families of graphs.  This work leaves open this direct question and several others.  \n\nFor one, these results, ours and that of Chepoi et~al., do not\nevaluate the explicit number of balls required for coverage, relying\nas we do, on the Fractional Helly Theorem.  Tracing the constant\nthrough Matou\\u{s}ek's work reportedly results in a constant in excess\nof 800~\\cite{talk} while the best lower bound known is\n4~\\cite{GPRS01}.  A direct proof, bypassing the Fractional Helly\nTheorem, is likely necessary to result in more practical answers.\nLikewise, an algorithmic result is desirable, particularly if the\napplication to interval routing is to be taken seriously.\n\nFurther, since our planarizing set (Lemma~\\ref{lem:planarize}) reduces\na graph of genus $g$ to a planar graph after the removal of\n$O(g||G||_\\delta)$ edges and since Gazit and Miller give an\n$O(||G||_\\delta)$ balanced edge separator for planar graphs, we can\ncombine these results to get an $O(g||G||_\\delta)$ edge separator for\ngenus-$g$ graphs.  The obvious question is whether an $O(\\sqrt{g}||G||_\\delta)$, balanced edge separator exists for genus-$g$ graphs.  Much like Gazit and Miller's separator is a strictly tighter bound on size than the pre-existing $O(\\sqrt{\\delta_{\\max} n})$ balanced edge separator for planar graphs~\\cite{Miller86,DDSV93}, an $O(\\sqrt{g}||G||_\\delta)$, balanced edge separator for genus-$g$ graphs would be a strictly tighter bound.  Our implied  $O(g||G||_\\delta)$ edge separator results in a set of planar graphs, since the procedure starts by planarizing the graph; it is likely that a tighter bound of  $O(\\sqrt{g}||G||_\\delta)$ would not result in a set of planar graphs.\n\\iffalse\n\n\n\\subsection{TODO: edge separators}\n\nThe non-separating cycle found in each application of\nthe cut-and-contract procedure has length at most $\\frac{1}{2}||G||_f$\nby Theorem~\\ref{thm:cycle} and Lemma~\\ref{lem:cut-n-contract}.\nApplying Gazit and Miller's\nnorm-sized, balanced separator for planar\ngraphs to $G'$ gives us the following:\n\n\n\\begin{corollary}\n  There is a set of at most $s_g ||G||_f$ edges in a\n  graph $G$ of orientable genus $g$ such that cutting along these\n  edges results in a set of planar graphs, each of which having at\n  most two thirds of the weight of the faces of $G$.\n\\end{corollary}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\n  \\label{eq:sg}\n  s_g = g\/2 +\\sqrt{3\/4}+\\sqrt{1\/2} = \\frac{1}{2}(g+\\sqrt{3}+\\sqrt{2}).\n\\end{equation}\n\n\nOf course, applying this method to the dual $G^*$ of the graph,\nresults in an edge separator whose size is measured in terms of the\nvertex-norm of $G$:\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{cor:or-sep}\n  There is a set of at most $s_g ||G||_\\delta$ edges\n  in a graph $G$ of orientable genus $g$ whose removal results in a\n  set of planar graphs, each of which having at most two thirds of the weights\n  vertices of $G$.\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\\subsection{Balanced edge separators}\\label{sec:sepsep}\n\nTODO ERIN: DO YOU THINK THIS IS A LITTLE EXCESSIVE? {\\em It seems we could remove this and just mention it in one sentence, maybe in the discussion.}\n\nWe take a brief detour to generalize certain balanced, edge-separators\nfor planar graphs to graphs embedded on orientable surfaces.  Although\nthese are not needed for our main result, they are likely of\nindependent interest.\n\nBalanced separators for planar graphs are well-studied and extremely\nuseful objects, both structurally and algorithmically, most often\nproviding a means to design devide-and-conquer algorithms.  A vertex\n(resp.\\ edge) separator is any set of vertices (resp.\\ edges) whose\nremoval leaves more than one connected component.  The size of a\nseparator is the number of vertices (resp.\\ edges) in it.  A separator\nis balanced if each resulting component contains at most some constant\nfraction of the weights of the original graph's vertices, usually two-thirds;\nthroughout {\\em balanced} will refer to two-thirds.  Planar graphs\nhave $O(\\sqrt{n})$-sized, balanced vertex separators~\\cite{LT79} and\n$O(\\sqrt{\\delta n})$-sized, balanced edge\nseparators~\\cite{Miller86,DDSV93} where $n$ is the number of vertices\nin the graph and $\\delta$ is the maximum vertex degree.\n\nBecause of their utility, many generalizations of separators for\nsurface-embedded graphs exist.  For example,\nHutchinson~\\cite{h-snceg-88} proved that the shortest non-contractible\ncycle in a triangulated graph of genus $g$ has length $O(\\sqrt{n\/g} \\log g)$;\ndeleting these vertices reduces the genus by one.  Repeating until a\nplanar graph is left and then using a small, balanced planar separator\nresults in a a balanced vertex separator (where each remaining\ncomponent is planar) of size $O(\\sqrt{gn} \\log g)$.\nDjidjev~\\cite{d-st-81} and Gilbert et~al.~\\cite{ght-stgbg-84}\nindependently presented balanced vertex separators of size\n$O(\\sqrt{gn})$ for surface-embedded graphs; Eppstein~\\cite{e-dgteg-03}\nlater improved the constants and gave efficient algorithms to compute\nthe separators.  S\\'{y}kora and Vrt'o showed that genus $g$ graphs\nhave $O(\\sqrt{\\delta g n })$-sized balanced edge\nseparators~\\cite{SV93}.\n\nEdge separators depending on the maximum degree are not very useful\nexcept for low degree graphs.  Gazit and Miller gave a balanced edge\nseparator for planar graphs of size proportional to the {\\em vertex\n  norm} $||G||_\\delta$ of the graph, defined above~\\cite{GaMi90}.\nGazit and Miller showed that planar graphs admit\n$(\\sqrt{3\/4}+\\sqrt{1\/2})\\,||G||_\\delta$-sized balanced edges\nseparators~\\cite{GaMi90}.  Using the Gazit and Miller separator after\nplanarizing the graph via Lemma~\\ref{lem:planarize} gives:\n\\begin{lemma}\n  There is a set of $\\left(\\sqrt{3\\over 4}+\\sqrt{1\\over\n      2}+\\frac{g}{2}\\right)||G||_\\delta$ edges of a graph with\n  orientable genus $g$ whose removal leaves a set of planar graphs, each of which has at most 2\/3 of the weight of the vertices of the original graph.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\fi\n\n\n\\paragraph{Acknowledgements} We thank Anastasios Sidiropoulos and Mark Walsh for helpful discussions.  This material is based upon work supported by\nthe National Science Foundation under Grant Nos.\\\nCCF-0963921 and CCF-1054779.\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{plain} \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{introduction}\ncotorsion pairs (or cotorsion theory) were invented by \\cite{Sal79} in the category of abelian groups and was rediscovered by Enochs and coauthors in the 1990's. In short, a cotorsion pair in an abelian category $\\mathcal{A} $ is a pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ of classes of objects of $\\mathcal{A} $ each of which is the orthogonal complement of the other with respect to the ${\\rm{Ext}}$ functor. In recent years we have seen that the study of cotorsion pairs is especially relevant to study of covers and envelopes, particularly in the proof of the flat cover conjecture \\cite{BBE}. In 2002, Hovey established a correspondence between the theories of cotorsion pairs and model structures (Hovey's theorem \\cite{Hov02}). So the study of cotorsion pairs on the category of complexes is important, see \\cite{Gil04}, \\cite{Gil06}, \\cite{Gil08}, \\cite{EER08}, \\cite{EEI}, \\cite{EAPT}, \\cite{St}, \\cite{YD15}. Since the concept of $N$-complexes is a generalization of the ordinary complexes, it is natural to study cotorsion pairs on the category of $N$-complexes. The notion of $N$-complexes was introduced by Mayer \\cite{May42} in the his study\nof simplicial complexes and its homological theory was studied by Kapranov and\nDubois-Violette in \\cite{Kap96}, \\cite{DV98}. Besides their applications in theoretical physics \\cite{CSW07}, \\cite{Hen08}, the homological properties of $N$-complexes have become a subject of study for many authors as in, \\cite{Est07}, \\cite{Gil12}, \\cite{GH10}, \\cite{Tik02}. By an $N$-complex $\\mathbf{X}$, we mean a sequence \n$\\cdots \\rightarrow X^{n-1} \\rightarrow X^n \\rightarrow X^{n+1} \\rightarrow \\cdots $\nsuch that composition of any $N$ consecutive maps gives the zero map in $\\mathcal{A} $. \nWe can view the category of $N$-complexes as the category of representation of the quiver $A_{\\infty}^{\\infty}= \\cdots \\rightarrow v_{-1}\\rightarrow v_0\\rightarrow v_1 \\rightarrow v_2 \\rightarrow \\cdots$ with the relations that $N$ consecutive arrows compose to 0. Recently, Holm and Jorgensen in \\cite{HJ} construct model structures on the category of representations of quiver with relations, in particular for the category of $N$-complexes.\n\nIn this work we show some typical ways of getting complete cotorson pairs in the category of $N$-complexes.\nOne method for creating such pairs is by starting with two cotorsion pairs in $\\mathcal{A} $ and then\nusing these pairs to find related pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$,  the category of $N$-complexes over a Grothendieck category $\\mathcal{G} $.  More precisely:\n\\begin{theorem}\nSuppose that $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are two cotorsion pairs in $\\mathcal{G} $ with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq\\mathcal{X} $ and the generator of $\\mathcal{G} $ is in $\\mathcal{F} $. If both $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are cogenerated by sets, then the induced pairs $( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ and $( {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ are complete cotorsion pairs.\n\\end{theorem}\nFor the definition of $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ and $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}$ see section \\ref{section 3}. This theorem recovers some results of recent work of Yang and Cao (see \\cite{YC}) and also includes the case in which the class is not closed under direct limits. As an application, we focus on particular homotopy categories and the existence of adjoint functors between them. The homotopy category $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{A})$ of $N$-complexes of an additive category $\\mathcal{A}$ was studied by Iyama and et al. in \\cite{IKM}. In case $\\mathcal{A} ={\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R$ (the category of all left $R$-modules) they proved that $\\mathbb{K} _N^\\natural({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R) \\cong \\mathbb{K} ^\\natural({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$\nwhere $\\natural = -,b,(-,b)$ and $\\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R)$ is the ring of triangular matrices of order $N-1$ with entries in $R$. In \\cite{BHN} the authors proved that $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is equivalent to $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$ whenever $R$ is a left coherent ring. This equivalence allows us to study the properties of $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ from $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$. For instance  $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is compactly generated whenever $R$ is a left coherent ring. There is a natural question and this is whether it is possible to introduce an $N$-complex version of \\cite[Theorem 0.1]{Nee10}, \\cite[Proposition 8.1]{Nee08}. The answer is not trivial, since we do not have such an equivalence for $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ and $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$. Here we will show that if we consider the complete cotorsion pairs $({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R, {\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$ and $({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R, ({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp)$, then we have a right adjoint functor $j^\\ast:\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ of the natural inclusion $j_{!}:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow K_N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$, and a right adjoint functor of $j^\\ast$.\n\nThe paper is organized as follows. In section \\ref{section 2} we recall some generality on $N$-complexes and provide any background information needed through this paper such as Hill lemma. Our main result appears in section \\ref{section 3} as Theorem \\ref{theorem 3.6}. This result is generalized of \\cite[Theorem 3.13]{YC} and   \\cite[Propositions 4.8 and 4.9]{YC}. The proof of this theorem is completely different from the proof of \\cite{YC}. Finally, in section \\ref{section 4}, we will provide an $N$-complex version of the results that were shown by Neeman in the category of ordinary complexes.  \n\n\n\n\\section{preliminaries}\n\\label{section 2}\n\\subsection{The category of $N$-complexes}\nLet $\\mathcal{C}$ be an additive category. We fix a positive integer $N\\geq 2$. An $N$-complex is a diagram\n$$\\xymatrix{\\cdots \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{X}}} & X^{i} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}}} &X^{i+1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i+1}_{\\mathbf{X}}}  & \\cdots }$$ \nwith $X^i \\in \\mathcal{C}$ and morphisms $d^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}} \\in {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathcal{C}}(X^i,X^{i+1})$ satisfying $d^N=0$. That is, composing any $N$-consecutive maps gives 0. A morphism between $N$-complexes is a commutative diagram\n$$\\xymatrix{\\cdots \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{X}}} & X^{i} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}}} \\ar[d]^{f^i} & X^{i+1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i+1}_{\\mathbf{X}}} \\ar[d]^{f^{i+1}}  & \\cdots \\\\ \\cdots \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{Y}}} & Y^{i} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i}_{\\mathbf{Y}}}& Y^{i+1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i+1}_{\\mathbf{Y}}} & \\cdots  }$$\nWe denote by $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})$ the category of unbounded $N$-complexes. For any object $M$ of $\\mathcal{C}$ and any $j$ and $1\\leq i \\leq N$, let\n$$\\xymatrix{  D^{j}_{i}(M): \\cdots \\ar[r] & 0 \\ar[r] & X^{j-i+1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{j-i+1}_{\\mathbf{X}}} & \\cdots \\ar[r]^{{d}^{j-2}_{\\mathbf{X}}} & X^{j-1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{j-1}_{\\mathbf{X}}}  & X^j \\ar[r] &0 \\ar[r] & \\cdots }$$\nbe an $N$-complex satisfying $X^n=M$ and $d^{n}_{\\mathbf{X}}=1_M$ for all $(j-i+1\\leq n \\leq j)$.\n\\\\\nFor $0\\leq r<N$ and $i\\in \\mathbb{Z}$, we define\n$$ d_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace r\\rbrace}^{i}:=d_{\\mathbf{X}}^{i+r-1} \\cdots d_{\\mathbf{X}}^{i} $$\nIn this notation $d_{\\lbrace 1\\rbrace}^i=d^i$ and $d_{\\lbrace 0\\rbrace}^i=1_{X_i}$.\n\\begin{definition}\nLet $f:\\mathbf{X}\\longrightarrow \\mathbf{Y}$ be a morphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})$. Then the mapping cone $C(f)$ of $f$ define as bellow:\n\\begin{small}\n$$C(f)^m=Y^m \\oplus {\\coprod}_{i=m+1}^{m+N-1}X^i, \\qquad d^{m}_{C(f)}=\n\\left[ \\begin{array}{cccccc}\n\n\nd_{\\mathbf{Y}}^{m} & f^{m+1} & 0 & 0  &\\cdots & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 1 & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\vdots \\\\\n  \\vdots & \\vdots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n   & 0 & \\cdots &  & 1 & 0 \\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & 0 & 1 \\\\\n     0 & -d_{\\mathbf{X} ,\\lbrace N-1\\rbrace}^{m+1} & -d_{\\mathbf{X} ,\\lbrace N-2\\rbrace}^{m+2} & \\cdots & \\cdots & -d_{\\mathbf{X}}^{m+N-1} \\\\\n\\end{array} \\right]  $$\n\\end{small}\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{definition}\n\\label{def 11}\nA morphism $f:\\mathbf{X} \\longrightarrow \\mathbf{Y}$ of $N$-complexes is called null-homotopic if there exists $s^i \\in {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathcal{C}}(X^i,Y^{i-N+1})$ such that\n\\[ f^i=\\sum_{j=0}^{N-1} d_{\\mathbf{Y}, \\lbrace N-1-j\\rbrace}^{i-(N-1-j)}s^{i+j}d^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}, \\lbrace j\\rbrace}\\]\nWe denote by $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C})$ the homotopy category of unbounded $N$-complexes.\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{definition}\nFor $\\mathbf{X}=(X^i,d^i)\\in \\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})$, define suspension functor $\\Sigma:\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C} )\\longrightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C} )$ as follows:\n$$(\\Sigma \\mathbf{X})^m={\\coprod}_{i=m+1}^{m+N-1}X^i, \\qquad d^{m}_{\\Sigma \\mathbf{X}}=\n\\left[ \\begin{array}{cccccc}\n\n\n0 & 1 & 0 & 0  &\\cdots & 0 \\\\\n & 0 & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\vdots \\\\\n  \\vdots & \\vdots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n   &  &  & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & 0 & 1 \\\\\n     -d_{\\lbrace N-1\\rbrace}^{m+1} & -d_{\\lbrace N-2\\rbrace}^{m+2} & \\cdots & \\cdots & \\cdot & -d^{m+N-1} \\\\\n\\end{array} \\right]     \n$$\n$$(\\Sigma^{-1} \\mathbf{X})^m={\\coprod}_{i=m-1}^{m-N+1}X^i, \\qquad d^{m}_{\\Sigma^{-1} \\mathbf{X}}=\n\\left[ \\begin{array}{cccccc}\n\n\n-d^{m-1} & 1 & 0 & \\cdots  &\\cdots & 0 \\\\\n-d_{\\lbrace 2\\rbrace}^{m-1} & 0 & 1 & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\vdots \\\\\n  \\vdots & \\vdots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n   &  &  & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n    -d_{\\lbrace N-2\\rbrace}^{m-1} & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & 0 & 1 \\\\\n     -d_{\\lbrace N-1\\rbrace}^{m-1} & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & \\cdot & 0 \\\\\n\\end{array} \\right]     \n$$\n\\end{definition}\nLet $\\mathcal{S} _N(\\mathcal{C} )$ be the collection of short exact sequence in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} )$ of which each term is split\nexact then it is shown in \\cite{IKM} that $(\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} ), \\mathcal{S} _N(\\mathcal{C} ))$ is a Frobenius category and its stable\ncategory is the homotopy category $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C} )$ of $\\mathcal{C} $. So $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C} )$ together with this suspension\nfunctor is a triangulated category, see \\cite[Theorem 2.6]{IKM}.\n\nRecall that ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} )}(X,Y)$ is the group of (equivalence classes) of short exact sequences\n$0 \\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y} \\rightarrow \\mathbf{Z} \\rightarrow \\mathbf{X} \\rightarrow 0$. We let ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(X,Y)$ be the subgroup of ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} )}(X,Y)$ consisting of those short exact sequences which are split in each degree.\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma02}\nFor N-complex $\\mathbf{X}$ and $\\mathbf{Y}$, we have\n$${\\rm{Ext}}_{dw}^{1}(\\mathbf{Y},\\mathbf{X})\\cong {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _{N}(\\mathcal{C} )}(\\mathbf{Y},\\Sigma \\mathbf{X})  $$\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nDefine a  surjective map $$\\psi:{\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} )}({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y},\\mathbf{X})\\longrightarrow {\\rm{Ext}}_{dw}^{1}(\\mathbf{Y},\\mathbf{X})$$ by sending a morphism $f:{\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}$ to the short exact sequence $0\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X} \\rightarrow C(f)\\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y}\\rightarrow 0$. Then we have the following push out diagram \n$$\\xymatrix{0 \\ar[r] & {\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y} \\ar[r] \\ar[d]^{f} & I({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y}) \\ar[r] \\ar[d] & \\mathbf{Y} \\ar[r] \\ar[d]^{1} & 0 \\\\ 0 \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{X} \\ar[r] & C(f) \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{Y} \\ar[r]  & 0 }$$\nwhere \n$$I({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y})^m= {\\coprod}_{i=m}^{m+N-1}({{\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y}})^i, \\qquad d^{m}_{I({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y})}=\n\\left[ \\begin{array}{cccccc}\n\n\n0 & 1 & 0 & 0  &\\cdots & 0 \\\\\n0 & 0 & 1 & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\vdots \\\\\n  \\vdots & \\vdots & \\ddots & \\ddots & \\ddots & 0 \\\\\n   & 0 & \\cdots &  & 1 & 0 \\\\\n    0 & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & 0 & 1 \\\\\n     0 & 0 & 0 & \\cdots & \\cdots & 0 \\\\\n\\end{array} \\right]  $$\nit is easy to see that $I({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y})$ is a projective-injective object in $(\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C} ), \\mathcal{S} _N(\\mathcal{C} ))$ and all arrows are componentwise split exact sequence. But the kernel of map $\\psi$ is formed precisely by the null-homotopic morphisms $f:{\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}$, since $f$ factors through $I({\\Sigma}^{-1}\\mathbf{Y})$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nLet $\\mathbf{X}$ be an $N$-complex of objects of $\\mathcal{C}$ \n$\\xymatrix{\\cdots \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{X}}} & X^{i} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}}} &X^{i+1} \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i+1}_{\\mathbf{X}}}  & \\cdots }$, \nwe define\n$${\\rm{Z}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}):= {\\rm{Ker}} (d^{i+r-1}_{\\mathbf{X}} \\cdots d^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}}), \\quad {\\rm{B}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}):= {\\rm{Im}} ((d^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{X}} \\cdots d^{i-r}_{\\mathbf{X}})\n$$\n$$\n{\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}):= {\\rm{Coker}}((d^{i-1}_{\\mathbf{X}} \\cdots d^{i-r}_{\\mathbf{X}}), \\quad {\\rm{H}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}):= {\\rm{Z}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})\/ {\\rm{B}}^{i}_{N-r}(\\mathbf{X}) \n$$\n\n\\vspace{0.1cm}\ntherefore in each degree we have $N-1$ cycle and clearly ${\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{N}(\\mathbf{X})=X^n$. \nWe also have a commutative diagram\n$$\\xymatrix{0 \\ar[r] & {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{1}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r]^{{d}^{i}_{\\mathbf{X}}} \\ar[d]^{id} & {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r]^{d} \\ar@{^{(}->}[d]^{\\qquad PB}  & {\\rm{Z}}^{n+1}_{r-1}(\\mathbf{X})\\ar@{^{(}->}[d]  \\\\ 0 \\ar[r] & {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{1}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r] & {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r]^{d} & {\\rm{Z}}^{n+1}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})  }$$ \nwhere the right square is pull-back $(2 \\leq r \\leq N-1) $.\n\n\\begin{definition}\nLet $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C})$. We say $\\mathbf{X}$ is $N$-exact if ${\\rm{H}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})=0$\nfor each $i \\in \\mathbb{Z}$ and all $r=1,2,...,N-1$. We denote the full subcategory of $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{C})$ consisting of $N$-exact complexes by $\\mathcal{E}_N(\\mathcal{C})$ .\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe following result are useful. See \\cite[Lemma 3.9]{IKM}\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma 001}\nLet $\\mathbf{X}$ be an N-complex of objects of an abelian category $\\mathcal{C}$. For a commutative diagram \n$$\\xymatrix{ {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{r}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r]^{d^{n}_{r}} \\ar@{^{(}->}[d]^{\\iota_{r}^{n}\\qquad PB}  & {\\rm{Z}}^{n+1}_{r-1}(\\mathbf{X})\\ar@{^{(}->}[d]^{\\iota_{r-1}^{n+1}}  \\\\  {\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{r+1}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar[r]^{d^{n}_{r+1}} & {\\rm{Z}}^{n+1}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})  }$$\nthe following hold.\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(1)] $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathcal{E}_N(\\mathcal{C})$ if and only if $d^{n}_{r}$ is an epimorphism for any n and r.\n\\item[(2)] $\\mathbf{X}$ is homotopic to 0 if and only if $d^{n}_{r}$ is a split epimorphisms and $\\iota_{r}^{n}$ is a split monomorphisms for any n and r. \n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{remark 001}\nAn $N$-complex $\\mathbf{X}$ is $N$-exact if and only if there exists some $r$ with $1\\leq r\\leq N-1$ such that ${\\rm{H}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})=0$ for each integer $i$, see \\cite{Kap96}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{remark 002}\nBy use of lemma \\ref{lemma 001}, it is easy to show that whenever $\\mathbf{X}$ is an $N$-exact complex then $\\Sigma \\mathbf{X} $ and $\\Sigma^{-1} \\mathbf{X}$ are $N$-exact complexes.\n\\end{remark}\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma01}\nLet $\\mathcal{A} $ be an abelian category. For an object $M \\in \\mathcal{A} $, $1\\leq r \\leq N-1$ and $\\mathbf{X},\\mathbf{Y} \\in \\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$ we have the following isomorphism:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(1)]${\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathcal{A} }^{1}(M,Y^n)\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}^1(D_{N}^{n+N-1}(M),\\mathbf{Y})$\n\\item[(2)]${\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathcal{A} }^{1}(X^n,M)\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}^1(\\mathbf{X},D_{N}^{n}(M))$\n\\item[(3)]${\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}^{1}(D_{r}^{n+r-1}(M),\\mathbf{Y})\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathcal{A} }^{1}(M,{\\rm{Z}}^{n}_{r}(\\mathbf{Y}))$ whenever $\\mathbf{Y}$ is an N-exact complex.\n\\item[(4)]${\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}^{1}(\\mathbf{X},D_{r}^{n}(M))\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathcal{A} }^{1}({\\rm{C}}^{r}_{n}(\\mathbf{X}),M)$ whenever $\\mathbf{X}$ is an N-exact complex.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nSee \\cite[section 4]{GH10} or \\cite[Lemma 2.2]{YC} for more details. \n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{definition}\nA pair of classes $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ in abelian category $\\mathcal{A} $ is a cotorsion pair if the following conditions hold:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[1.]${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A} (F,C)=0$ for all $F\\in \\mathcal{F} $ and $C\\in \\mathcal{C} $\n\\item[2.]If ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A} (F,X)=0$ for all $F\\in \\mathcal{F} $, then $X\\in \\mathcal{C} $.\n\\item[3.]If ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A} (Y,C)=0$ for all $C\\in \\mathcal{C} $, then $Y\\in \\mathcal{F} $.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{definition}\nWe think of a cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ as being ``orthogonal with respect to ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A} $. This is often\nexpressed with the notation $\\mathcal{F}^\\perp=\\mathcal{C}$ and $\\mathcal{F} = {}^\\perp\\mathcal{C}$. A cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ is called complete\nif for every $A \\in \\mathcal{A} $ there exist exact sequences\n\\[0 \\rightarrow Y \\rightarrow W \\rightarrow A \\rightarrow 0 \\ \\ \\ {\\rm and} \\ \\ \\ 0 \\rightarrow A  \\rightarrow Y' \\rightarrow W' \\rightarrow 0,\\]\nwhere $W, W'\\in \\mathcal{F}$ and $Y, Y' \\in  \\mathcal{C}$.\nWe note that if $\\mathcal{S}$ is any class of objects of $\\mathcal{A}$ and if $\\mathcal{S}^\\perp=\\mathcal{B}$ and $\\mathcal{A}={}^\\perp\\mathcal{B}$, then $(\\mathcal{A}, \\mathcal{B})$ is a cotorsion pair. We say it is the cotorsion pair cogenerated by $\\mathcal{S}$. If there is a set $\\mathcal{S}$ that cogenerates $(\\mathcal{A}, \\mathcal{B})$, then we say that $(\\mathcal{A}, \\mathcal{B})$ is cogenerated by a set.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Hill lemma:}\n\\label{subsect 01}\nLet $\\mathcal{G} $ be a Grothendieck category endowed with a faithful functor $U:\\mathcal{G} \\rightarrow\\textbf{Set}$, where \\textbf{Set} denotes the category of sets. By abuse of notation we write $x\\in\\mathcal{G} $ instead of\n$x \\in U(G)$, for any object $G$ in $\\mathcal{G} $. Analogously $|G|$ will denote the cardinality of $U(G)$. We\nwill also assume that there exists an infinite regular cardinal $\\lambda$ such that for each $G\\in \\mathcal{G} $ and\nany set $S\\subseteq G$ with $|S|<\\lambda$, there is a subobject $X\\subseteq G$ such that $S \\subseteq X \\subseteq G$ and $|X|<\\lambda$.\n\nGiven an infinite regular cardinal $\\kappa$. Recall that an object $X \\in \\mathcal{G} $ is called $\\kappa$-presentable if the functor ${\\rm{Hom}}_\\mathcal{G} (X,-):\\mathcal{G}  \\rightarrow \\textbf{Ab}$\npreserves $\\kappa$-filtered colimits. An object $X\\in \\mathcal{G} $ is called $\\kappa$-generated whenever ${\\rm{Hom}}_\\mathcal{G} (X,-)$ preserves $\\kappa$-filtered colimits of monomorphisms. By our assumption it is easy to see that \n$$ |X|<\\lambda \\,\\,\\,\\,\\, \\Leftrightarrow \\,\\,\\,\\,\\, X\\,\\, \\text{is}\\,\\,  \\lambda\\text{-presentable}\\,\\,\\,\\,\\, \\Leftrightarrow \\,\\,\\,\\,\\, X\\,\\, \\text{is}\\,\\,  \\lambda\\text{-generated } $$\n\n\\begin{definition}\nLet $\\mathcal{S} $ be a class of objects of $\\mathcal{G} $. An object $X\\in\\mathcal{G} $ is called $\\mathcal{S} $-filtered if\nthere exists a well-ordered direct system $(X_\\alpha, i_\\alpha\\beta|\\alpha<\\beta\\leq \\sigma)$ indexed by an ordinal number $\\sigma$ such that\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(a)]$X_0=0$ and $X_\\sigma=X$,\n\\item[(b)]For each limit ordinal $\\mu\\leq \\sigma$, the colimit of system $(X_\\alpha, i_{\\alpha\\beta}|\\alpha<\\beta\\leq \\mu)$ is precisely\n$X_\\mu$, the colimit morphisms being $i_{\\alpha\\mu}:X_\\alpha \\rightarrow X_\\mu$,\n\\item[(c)]$i_{\\alpha\\beta}$ is a monomorphism in $\\mathcal{G} $ for each $\\alpha < \\beta \\leq \\sigma$,\n\\item[(d)]${\\rm{Coker}} i_{\\alpha\\alpha+1}\\in \\mathcal{S} $ for each $\\alpha<\\sigma$\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{definition}\nThe direct system $(X_\\alpha, i_\\alpha\\beta)$ is then called an $\\mathcal{S} $-filtration of $X$. The class of all $\\mathcal{S} $-filtered objects in $\\mathcal{G} $ is denoted by Filt-$\\mathcal{S} $.\n\nThe Hill lemma is a way of creating a plentiful supply of a module with a given filtration, but where these submodules have nice properties. This result, whose idea is due to Hill \\cite{Hill} and version of which appeared in \\cite{FL}. In the following we state the Hill lemma for Grothendieck category which is known as the generalized Hill lemma, see \\cite[Theorem 2.1]{St}.\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{theorem Hill}\nLet $\\mathcal{G} $ be as above and $\\kappa$ be a regular infinite cardinal such that $\\kappa\\geq \\lambda$. Suppose that $\\mathcal{S}$ is a set of $\\kappa$-presentable objects and $X$ is an object possessing an $\\mathcal{S} $-filtration $(X_\\alpha\\,\\,|\\,\\, \\alpha\\leq \\sigma)$ for some ordinal $\\sigma$. Then there is a complete sublattice $\\mathcal{L}$ of $(\\mathcal{P}(\\sigma),\\cup,\\cap)$ and $\\ell: \\mathcal{L}\\rightarrow \\text{Subobj}(X)$ which assigns to each $S\\in \\mathcal{L}$ a subobject $\\ell(S)$ of $X$, such that the following hold:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(H1)] For each $\\alpha\\leq\\sigma$ we have $\\alpha=\\lbrace \\gamma \\, \\, | \\, \\, \\gamma<\\alpha\\rbrace\\in \\mathcal{L}$ and $\\ell(\\alpha)=X_\\alpha$.\n\\item[(H2)] If $(S_i)_{i\\in I}$ is a family of elements of $\\mathcal{L}$, then $\\ell(\\cup S_i)=\\sum \\ell(S_i)$ and $\\ell(\\cap S_i)=\\cap \\ell(S_i)$.\n\\item[(H3)] If $S,T\\in \\mathcal{L}$ are such that $S\\subseteq T$, then the object $N=\\ell(T)\/\\ell(S)\\in \\text{Filt-}\\mathcal{S} $.\n\\item[(H4)] For each $\\kappa$-presentable subobject $Y\\subseteq X$, there is $S\\in \\mathcal{L}$ of cardinal $< \\kappa$( so $\\ell(S)$ is $\\kappa$-presentable by (H3)) such that $Y\\subseteq\\ell(S)\\subseteq X$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{theorem}\nLet $\\mathcal{H}=\\lbrace \\ell(S)\\, | \\, S\\in \\mathcal{L}\\rbrace$. We call $\\mathcal{H}$ as the Hill class of subobjects of $X$ relative to $\\kappa$.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\nIf $N\\in \\mathcal{H}$ and $M$ is a $\\kappa$-presentable subobject of $X$, then there exists $P\\in \\mathcal{H}$ such that $N+M\\subseteq P$ and $P\/N$ is $\\kappa$-presentable.\n\\end{corollary}\n\\begin{proof}\nBy using theorem \\ref{theorem Hill} (H4), we can find $S\\in \\mathcal{L}$ of cardinal $< \\kappa$ such that $M\\subseteq \\ell(S)$. Denoting $W=\\ell(S)$, $P=N+W$ and combining (H2) and (H3) of theorem \\ref{theorem Hill} with \\cite[corollary A.5]{St} we observe that $P\\in \\mathcal{H}$ and $P\/N$ is $\\kappa$-presentable.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe need the following lemma and theorem.\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma2.14}\nLet $\\kappa$ be a regular infinite cardinal such that $\\kappa>\\lambda$. Let $\\mathbf{X}\\subseteq\\mathbf{Y}$ be $N$-exact complexes. For each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, let $M^i$ be a $\\kappa$-presentable object of $Y^i$. Then there exists an $N$-exact complex $\\mathbf{E}$ such that $\\mathbf{X} \\subseteq \\mathbf{E}\\subseteq \\mathbf{Y}$ and for each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, $M^i+X^i\\subseteq E^i$ and the object $E^i\/X^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe use the zig-zag technique to construct $\\mathbf{E}$. First, consider the particular case $\\mathbf{X}=0$. We will construct $\\mathbf{E}$ as the union of an increasing sequence of $N$-subcomplexes\n$$\\mathbf{C}_0\\subseteq \\mathbf{C}_1 \\subseteq \\mathbf{C}_2 \\subseteq \\cdots  $$\nof $\\mathbf{E}$ where $M^i\\subseteq C_0^i$, $|C_n^i| \\leq \\kappa$ and ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq {\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{C}_{n+1})$ for all $1\\leq r \\leq N-1$ and $i,n\\in \\mathbb{Z} $. Then if $\\mathbf{E}=\\cup_{n\\in \\mathbb{Z} }\\mathbf{C}_n$, we have ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{E})=\\cup_{n\\in \\mathbb{Z} }{\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq \\cup_{n\\in \\mathbb{Z} }{\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq {\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{E})$. So ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{E})={\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{E})$ for all $1 \\leq r \\leq N-1$ and $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, hence $\\mathbf{E}\\in \\mathcal{E}_N(\\mathcal{G} )$. In this case clearly $M^i\\subseteq E^i$ and $|\\mathbf{E}| \\leq \\kappa$, since $|\\mathbf{C}_n| \\leq \\kappa$. Let $\\mathbf{C}_0=(C_0^i)$ be such that $C_0^{i}=M^i+\\sum_{k=1}^{N-1} d^{i-N+k}_{\\lbrace  N-k \\rbrace}(M^{i-N+k})$. Then $\\mathbf{C}_0$ is a subcomplex of $\\mathbf{Y}$ and clearly $M^i\\subseteq C_0^i$ and $|\\mathbf{C}_0| \\leq \\kappa$. Having constructed $\\mathbf{C}_n$ with $|\\mathbf{C}_n|\\leq \\kappa$, we want to construct $\\mathbf{C}_{n+1}$ with $\\mathbf{C}_n\\subseteq \\mathbf{C}_{n+1}$ such that ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq{\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{C}_{n+1})$ and $|\\mathbf{C}_{n+1}|\\leq \\kappa$. \n\nFor each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, we have ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq {\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{Y})={\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{Y})$. So  by our assumption on $\\kappa$ we can find a subobject $S^{i-N+r}\\subseteq Y^{i-N+r}$ such that ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq d^{i-N+r}_{\\lbrace N-r \\rbrace}(S^{i-N+r})$ for all $1\\leq r \\leq N-1$. Now define $C_{n+1}^i= C_n^i+S^i+\\sum_{k=1}^{N-1} d^{i-N+k}_{\\lbrace  N-k \\rbrace}(S^{i-N+k})$ for all $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $. Clearly $\\mathbf{C}_n\\subseteq \\mathbf{C}_{n+1}$ and by construction ${\\rm{Z}}_r^i(\\mathbf{C}_n)\\subseteq {\\rm{B}}_{N-r}^i(\\mathbf{C}_{n+1})$ so finally we have the  desire $\\mathbf{E}\\subseteq\\mathbf{Y}$.\nIn case $\\mathbf{X}\\neq 0$ let $\\overline{\\mathbf{Y}}=\\mathbf{Y}\/\\mathbf{X} $ and $\\overline{M^i}=(M^i+X^i)\/X^i$. According to the previous part, there is an $N$-exact complex $\\overline{\\mathbf{E}}\\subseteq \\overline{\\mathbf{Y}}$ and for each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, $\\overline{M^i}\\subseteq \\overline{E^i}$, and the object $\\overline{E^i}$ is $\\kappa$-presentable. Then $\\overline{\\mathbf{E}}=\\mathbf{E}\/\\mathbf{X}$ for an $N$-exact subcomplex $\\mathbf{X}\\subseteq\\mathbf{E}\\subseteq\\mathbf{Y}$, and $\\mathbf{E}$ clearly has the required properties. \n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{theorem 2.12}\nLet $\\kappa$ be an uncountable regular cardinal such that $\\kappa > \\lambda$. Let $(\\mathcal{F} , \\mathcal{C} )$ be a\ncotorsion pair in $\\mathcal{G} $ such that $\\mathcal{F} $ contains a family of $\\lambda$-presentable generators of $\\mathcal{G} $. Then the following conditions are equivalent:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(1)]The cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} , \\mathcal{C} )$ is cogenerated by a class of $\\kappa$-presentable objects in $\\mathcal{G} $\n\\item[(2)]Every object in $\\mathcal{F} $ is $\\mathcal{F} ^\\kappa$-filtered, where $\\mathcal{F} ^\\kappa$ is the class of all $\\kappa$-presentable objects in $\\mathcal{F} $.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe refer to \\cite[ Theorem 2.1]{EEI}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section{Induced cotorsion pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$}\n\\label{section 3}\nIn this section we show some typical ways of getting complete cotorson pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$. One method for creating such pairs is by starting with two cotorsion pairs in $\\mathcal{A} $ and then using these pairs to find related pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$. We start with the following proposition:\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop31}\nLet $\\mathcal{A} $ be an abelian category with injective cogenerator $J$ and $\\mathbf{X}$ be an $N$-complex. If every chain map $\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow D^{i-r+1}_r(J)$ extends to $D^{i+N-r}_N(J)$ for each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r\\leq N-1$ then $\\mathbf{X}$ is an $N$-exact complex.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nBy remark \\ref{remark 001}, we show that ${\\rm{H}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})={\\rm{Z}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})\/{\\rm{B}}^i_{N-1}(\\mathbf{X})$ is zero. Consider the monomorphism map $\\imath: X^i\/{\\rm{B}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})\\hookrightarrow J$. Since ${\\rm{B}}^i_{N-1}(\\mathbf{X})\\subseteq {\\rm{B}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})$, so we set $t$ as the following composition\n$$\\xymatrix{t: X^i\/{\\rm{B}}^i_{N-1}(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar@{^{(}->}[r]^{q} & X^i\/{\\rm{B}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X}) \\ar@{^{(}->}[r]^{\\,\\,\\quad\\imath}& J }$$\nNow consider $f:\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow D^i_1(J)$ with $f^n=0$ for $n\\neq i$ and $f^i$ is the composition of morphism $\\pi^i:X^i\\rightarrow X^i\/{\\rm{B}}^i_{N-1}(\\mathbf{X})$ and $t$. It is easy to check that $f$ is a morphism of $N$-complexes. By assumption we can extend this morphism to a morphism $g:\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow D^{i+N-1}_N(J)$, i.e. we have the following commutative diagram\n$$\\xymatrix{ & \\mathbf{X} \\ar[d]^{f} \\ar[dl]_g & \\\\\n            D^{i+N-1}_N(J) \\ar[r]^h & D^i_1(J) \\ar[r] & 0  }$$\nPut $d^i=q^i \\pi^i$. Then we have $t\\pi^i=f^i=h^i g^i=g^i=g^{i-1}d^i=g^{i-1}q^i\\pi^i$. Hence $t=g^{i-1}q^i$, since $\\pi^i$ is epimorphism. This implies that $q^i$ is monomorphism, therefore ${\\rm{Z}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})=\\ker d^i=\\ker(q^i\\pi^i)=\\ker(\\pi^i)={\\rm{B}}^i_{N-1}(\\mathbf{X})$. Hence ${\\rm{H}}^i_1(\\mathbf{X})=0$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{definition}\t\nLet $\\mathcal{A} $ be an abelian category. Given two classes of objects $\\mathcal{X} $ and $\\mathcal{F} $ in\n$\\mathcal{A} $ with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq \\mathcal{X} $. We denote by $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ the class of all $N$-exact complexes $\\mathbf{F}$ with each degree\n$F^i\\in \\mathcal{F} $ and each cycle ${\\rm{Z}}_{r}^{i}(\\mathbf{X}) \\in \\mathcal{X} $ for all $1\\leq r\\leq N-1$ and $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $.\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop 3.3}\nLet $\\mathcal{A} $ be an abelian category with injective cogenerator $J$. Let $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ be two cotorsion pairs with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq \\mathcal{X} $ in $\\mathcal{A} $. Then\n$( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ is a cotorsion pair in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$ and $(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp$ is the class of all $N$-complexes $\\mathbf{C}$\nfor which each $C^i \\in \\mathcal{C} $ and for each map $\\mathbf{F}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{C}$ is null-homotopic whenever $\\mathbf{F}\\in\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\mathcal{W} $ be the class of all $N$-complexes $\\mathbf{C}$ for which each $C^i\\in \\mathcal{C} $ and for which each map $\\mathbf{F}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{C}$ is null-homotopic whenever $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. It is easy to check that $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ is closed under $\\Sigma$ and $\\Sigma^{-1}$. Hence, by \\cite[Corollary 2.16]{YD} we can say that $\\mathcal{W} $ is closed under taking suspensions. Now suppose that $C\\in \\mathcal{C} $ and $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. By lemma \\ref{lemma01} (2) we have ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, D^{i}_{N}(C))\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A}(F^{i},C)=0$. But ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(\\mathbf{F},D^i_{N}(C))={\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, D^{i}_{N}(C))$, so by lemma \\ref{lemma02} we can say that $D^{i}_{N}(C)$ belongs to $\\mathcal{W} $ for each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $.\n Similarly, for any $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$, by lemma \\ref{lemma01}(4) we get that ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, D^{i}_{r}(C))\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A}({\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{F}),C)=0$, since ${\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{F})=F^i\/{\\rm{B}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{X})\\cong {\\rm{Z}}^{i+1}_r(\\mathbf{F})\\in \\mathcal{X} $. \n\nNow we show that $(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N},\\mathcal{W} )$ is a cotorsion pair. First of all suppose that $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ and $\\mathbf{W}\\in \\mathcal{W} $. By assumption any $\\zeta: 0 \\rightarrow \\mathbf{W} \\rightarrow \\mathbf{A} \\rightarrow \\mathbf{F} \\rightarrow 0$ as an object of ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, \\mathbf{W})$ is degreewise split, so belongs to ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{W})$. But by lemma \\ref{lemma02} ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{W})=0$. Hence ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, \\mathbf{W})=0$. Next assume that ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{F}, \\mathbf{A})=0$ for all $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. We will show that $\\mathbf{A}\\in \\mathcal{W} $. To this point let $Z\\in \\mathcal{F} $. By lemma \\ref{lemma01}(1) ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A}(Z,A^i)\\cong{\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(D^{i+N-1}_N(Z),\\mathbf{A} )=0$, Since $D^{i+N-1}_N(Z)$ is clearly belongs to $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. Thus $A^i\\in \\mathcal{C} $. Now let $u:\\mathbf{F}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{A}$ be a morphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$ where $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. Clearly we have that ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(\\mathbf{F},\\Sigma^{-1}\\mathbf{A})={\\rm{Ext}}^1_{dw}(\\Sigma\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{A})$ and the last group equals to 0 since $\\Sigma\\mathbf{F}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ so by lemma \\ref{lemma02} we can say that $u$ is null-homotopic and hence $\\mathbf{A}\\in \\mathcal{W} $. Finally, assume that ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A}, \\mathbf{W})=0$ for all $\\mathbf{W}\\in \\mathcal{W} $. We will show that $\\mathbf{A}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. Let $C\\in \\mathcal{C} $. As we know before $D^i_N(C)\\in \\mathcal{W} $, hence we have ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A}(A^i,C)\\cong{\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A},D^i_N(C) )=0$ and so $A^i\\in \\mathcal{F} $. It is easy to check that $\\mathcal{F}  \\subseteq \\mathcal{X} $ if and only if $\\mathcal{Y} \\subseteq \\mathcal{C} $. Also we know that if $Y\\in \\mathcal{Y} $ then $D^i_r(Y)\\in \\mathcal{W} $. So ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A}, D^i_r(Y))=0$. Consider  the exact sequence $0\\rightarrow D^{i+N-r}_{N-r}(J)\\rightarrow D^{i+N-r}_N(J) \\rightarrow D^{i-r+1}_r(J) \\rightarrow 0$. We apply the convariant functor ${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A},-)$ to the sequence, so we have the following exact sequence\n$$ {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A},D^{i+N-r}_N(J)) \\longrightarrow {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A},D^{i-r+1}_r(J)) \\longrightarrow 0$$   \nHence, by proposition \\ref{prop31} we can say that $\\mathbf{A}$ is an $N$-exact complex. \n\nOn the other hand ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_\\mathcal{A}({\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{A}),Y)\\cong{\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )}(\\mathbf{A}, D^{i}_{r}(Y))=0$. Hence ${\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{A})\\in \\mathcal{X} $ and therefore ${\\rm{Z}}^{i+1}_r(\\mathbf{A})\\in \\mathcal{X} $, since ${\\rm{C}}^{i}_{r}(\\mathbf{A})\\cong{\\rm{Z}}^{i+1}_r(\\mathbf{A})$. So $\\mathbf{A}\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ and we are done.\n\\end{proof}\nWe also have the following result.\n\\begin{proposition}\n Let $\\mathcal{A} $ be an abelian category with generator $G$ and $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ be two cotorsion pairs with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq \\mathcal{X} $ in $\\mathcal{A} $. Then\n$( {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ is a cotorsion pair in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$ and ${}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})$ is the class of all $N$-complexes $\\mathbf{X}$\nfor which each $X^i \\in \\mathcal{X} $ and for each map $\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y}$ is null-homotopic whenever $\\mathbf{Y}\\in\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}$.\n\\end{proposition} \n\\begin{proof}\nIt is dual to the proof of Proposition \\ref{prop 3.3}.\n\\end{proof}\nIn the papers \\cite{Gil04,Gil08} Gillespie introduced some classes of complexes and find new cotorsion pairs in the category of complexes. In similar manner we can define these classes in the category of $N$-complexes. In the following, we summarize these several classes of $N$-complexes.\n\\begin{definition}\n\\label{def 35}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F},\\mathcal{C})$ be a cotorsion pair in $\\mathcal{A} $. Let $\\mathcal{E}_N$ be a class of $N$-exact complexes. We will consider the following subclasses of $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(1)]The class of $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{F})$ complexes (resp. $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})$ complexes), consisting of all $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$ such that $X^i \\in \\mathcal{F}$ (resp. $X^i \\in \\mathcal{C}$) for each $i$. \n\\item[(2)]The class of $\\mathcal{F}$-$N$-complex, that we denote by $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F}}_N$, consisting of all $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathcal{E}_N$ such that ${\\rm{Z}}_{r}^{i}(\\mathbf{X}) \\in \\mathcal{F}$ for all $r,i$.\n\\item[(3)] The class of $\\mathcal{C}$-$N$-complex, that we denote by $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C}}_N$, consisting of all $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathcal{E}_N$ such that ${\\rm{Z}}_{r}^{i}(\\mathbf{X}) \\in \\mathcal{C}$ for all $r,i$.\n\\item[(4)]The class of ${\\rm{dg}}$-$\\mathcal{F}$-$N$-complexes, that we denote by ${\\rm{dg}} \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F}}_N$, consisting of all $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{F})$ such that ${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _{N}(\\mathcal{A})}(\\mathbf{X},\\mathbf{C})=0$ whenever $\\mathbf{C} \\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{C}}_N$.\n\\item[(4)] The class of ${\\rm{dg}}$-$\\mathcal{C}$-$N$-complexes, that we denote by ${\\rm{dg}} \\widetilde{\\mathcal{C}}_N$, consisting of all $\\mathbf{X} \\in \\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})$ such that ${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _{N}(\\mathcal{A})}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{X})=0$ whenever $\\mathbf{F} \\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F}}_N$.\n\\item[(5)]The class ${ex}_N(\\mathcal{F})=\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{F})\\cap \\mathcal{E}_N$(resp. ${ex}_N(\\mathcal{C})=\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{C})\\cap \\mathcal{E}_N$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{example}\nLet ${\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R$ be the category of projective objects in ${\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R$. Consider the cotorsion pair $({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R, {\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$. Then the purpose of a dg-projective $N$-complex is an $N$-complex $\\mathbf{P}$ such that $P^i \\in {\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R$ and  ${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _{N}(R)}(\\mathbf{P},\\mathbf{E})=0$ for all $\\mathbf{E}\\in \\mathcal{E}_N$. This definition is compatible with the definition 3.20 in \\cite{IKM}.\n\\end{example}\nThe next corollary is contained in \\cite[Theorem 3.7]{YC}. Here we present short proof of it for our case.\n\\begin{corollary}\n\\label{corollary 3.7}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ be a cotorsion pair in $\\mathcal{A} $. Then $(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,dg\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$ and $(dg\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$ are cotorsion pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$.\n\\end{corollary} \n\\begin{proof}\nWe just prove one of the statements since the other is dual. If we set consider $\\mathcal{F} =\\mathcal{X} $ and $\\mathcal{C} =\\mathcal{Y} $\nas in proposition \\ref{prop 3.3}, then we can say that $(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{F} _N},(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{F} _N})^\\perp)$ is a cotorsion pair. But clearly $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{F} _N}=\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N$ and $(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{F} _N})^\\perp)=dg\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N$.\n\\end{proof}\nNow let $(\\mathcal{P} ,\\mathcal{A} )$ and $(\\mathcal{A} ,\\mathcal{I} )$ be the usual projective and injective cotorsion pairs, where $\\mathcal{P} $ is the class of projective, $\\mathcal{I} $ is the class of injective objects in $\\mathcal{A} $. Note that for any cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ in $\\mathcal{A} $ we always have inclusions $\\mathcal{P} \\subseteq \\mathcal{F} $ and $\\mathcal{I} \\subseteq\\mathcal{C} $. The next corollary is contained in \\cite[Proposition 4.2]{YC}. In the following, we provide a brief proof of the case, with the difference that we can omit the hereditary condition on $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$.\n\\begin{corollary}\n\\label{corollary 3.8}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ be a cotorsion pair in $\\mathcal{A} $. Then $(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N)^\\perp)$ and $({}^\\perp(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N),ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$ are cotorsion pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$.\n\\end{corollary} \n\\begin{proof}\nWe just prove one of the statements since the other is dual. In order to use proposition \\ref{prop 3.3} we consider $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{A} ,\\mathcal{I} )$. Note that $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq \\mathcal{A} $ so $(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{X} }_N,(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{X} }_N)^\\perp)$ is a cotorsion pair since clearly $ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{X} }_N=\\widetilde{\\mathcal{X} }_{\\mathcal{A} _N}$.\n\\end{proof} \n\n\nFor the rest of this section we assume that $\\mathcal{G} $ is a concrete Grothendieck category as in subsection \\ref{subsect 01}. In the following we will prove that the induced cotorsion pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$ as above are also complete.  \n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{theorem 3.6}\nSuppose that $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are two cotorsion pairs in $\\mathcal{G} $ with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq\\mathcal{X} $ and the generator of $\\mathcal{G} $ is in $\\mathcal{F} $. If both $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are cogenerated by sets, then the induced pairs $( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ and $( {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ are complete cotorsion pairs.\n\\end{theorem}\nWe will prove the theorem in two steps. First we show that $( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ is a complete cotorsion pair.\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{Prop 0001}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ be two cotorsion pairs with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq\\mathcal{X} $ in $\\mathcal{G} $ such that the generator $G$ in $\\mathcal{G} $ is in $\\mathcal{F} $. If both  $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are cogenerated by sets, then so is the induced cotrsion pair $( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ and so it is complete.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nBy Theorem \\ref{theorem 2.12} it is enough to show that each complex $\\mathbf{F}\\in\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ is ${\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}}^\\kappa$-filtered (for some $\\kappa\\geq\\lambda$ regular uncountable) i.e. we construct a filtration $(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha \\mid \\alpha\\leq\\sigma)$ for $\\mathbf{F}$ such that $\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1}\/{\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha}\\in {\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}}^\\kappa$. \nLet $\\mathbf{F}=(F^i)\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$. By definition $\\mathbf{F}$ is an $N$-exact complex with $F^i\\in \\mathcal{F} $ and ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F})\\in \\mathcal{X} $ for $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r \\leq N-1$. Since we have $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq \\mathcal{X} $, it is also ${\\rm{Z}}^i_{N}(\\mathbf{F}) = F^i\\in \\mathcal{X} $. By assumption ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F})$ has $\\mathcal{X} ^\\kappa$- filtration $\\mathcal{M} _{i,r}=(M^{i,r}_\\alpha \\mid \\alpha\\leq \\sigma_{i,r})$ for each $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, $1\\leq r \\leq N$. Using Hill Lemma, we obtain the corresponding families $\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$ for these filtrations.\n\nNow, we recursively construct a filtration $(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha\\in \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N} \\mid \\alpha\\leq\\sigma)$ for $\\mathbf{F}$ with the property that, for each $\\alpha<\\sigma, i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r\\leq N$, the object ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha)$ belongs to $\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$. First, put $\\mathbf{F}_0 = 0$. If $\\alpha$ is a limit ordinal and $\\mathbf{F}_\\beta$ is already defined for each $\\beta<\\alpha$, we simply put $\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha = \\bigcup_{\\beta<\\alpha} \\mathbf{F}_\\beta$. This is again an $N$-exact complex and, by the properties of Hill families, we have  ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha)\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$ for all $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r\\leq N$. We proceed to the crucial isolated step. Let $\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha$ be defined and assume that $\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha \\neq \\mathbf{F}$ (otherwise, we set $\\sigma = \\alpha$ and we are done). Put ${\\rm{G}}_0 = \\mathbf{F}_\\alpha$.\n\nFor each $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $, fix some $M_0^i\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,N}$ such that $G_0^i\\subseteq M_0^i$, $M_0^i\/G_0^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable and, if possible, $G_0^i\\subsetneq M_0^i$. Assuming that $M_n^i$ is defined for some nonnegative integer $n$ and all $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $, and $M_n^i\/G_0^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable, the objects $(M_n^i\\cap {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}))\/{\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha)$ are $\\kappa$-presentable as well for all $1\\leq r\\leq N-1$. Hence we can find $Z_n^{i,r}\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$, $1\\leq r < N$, such that $M_n^i\\cap {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F})\\subseteq Z_n^{i,r}$ and $Z_n^{i,r}\/{\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha)$ is again $\\kappa$-presentable. We define $M_{n+1}^i\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,N}$ in such a way that $M_n^i\\cup\\bigcup_{r=1}^{N-1} Z_n^{i,r}\\subseteq M_{n+1}^i$ and $M_{n+1}^i\/M_n^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable. This is possible by the properties of the Hill family $\\mathcal{H} ^{i,N}$. Consequently, $M_{n+1}^i\/G_0^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable. For each $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $, put $M^i = \\bigcup_{n=0}^\\infty M_n^i$. Then $M^i\/G_0^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable. Moreover, $M^i\\cap {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}) = \\bigcup_{n=0}^\\infty Z_n^{i,r}\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$ for each $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r\\leq N-1$ and $M^i = \\bigcup_{n=0}^\\infty M_n^i\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,N}$.\n\nNow, we use Lemma~\\ref{lemma2.14} to obtain an $N$-exact complex ${\\rm{G}}_1$ such that ${\\rm{G}}_0\\subseteq {\\rm{G}}_1\\subseteq \\mathbf{F}$, the quotient $G_1^i\/G_0^i$ is $\\kappa$-presentable and $M^i\\subseteq G_1^i$ for each $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $. We go back to the beginning of the previous paragraph and repeat the process with ${\\rm{G}}_0$ replaced by ${\\rm{G}}_1$. Using Lemma~\\ref{lemma2.14}, we obtain ${\\rm{G}}_2$ and so on. Finally, we define $\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1} = \\bigcup_{n=0}^\\infty {\\rm{G}}_n$. This is an $N$-exact complex and, for all $i\\in \\mathbb{Z} $, ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1}) = F_{\\alpha+1}\\cap{\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F})$ is the union of elements of the type $M^i\\cap {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F})\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$; thus ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1})$ is an element from $\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$ for all $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r\\leq N$. Moreover, $F^i_{\\alpha+1}\/F^i_\\alpha$ is $\\kappa$-presentable.\n\nThis finishes the construction of the filtration $(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha \\mid \\alpha\\leq\\sigma)$. Finally, we observe that, for each $\\alpha<\\sigma$, the quotient $\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1}\/\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha$ belongs to ${\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}}^\\kappa$: here ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1})\/{\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_\\alpha)\\in\\mathcal{X} $ since ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha}), {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{F}_{\\alpha+1})\\in\\mathcal{H} ^{i,r}$ for all $i\\in\\mathbb{Z} $ and $1\\leq r < N$.\n\nThe completeness of pair $( \\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}, (\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N})^\\perp)$ follows as \\cite[Corollary 6.6]{Hov02} because $\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_{\\mathcal{X} _N}$ contains a generating set of $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{Prop 0002}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ be two cotorsion pairs with $\\mathcal{F} \\subseteq\\mathcal{X} $ in $\\mathcal{G} $ such that the generator $G$ in $\\mathcal{G} $ is in $\\mathcal{F} $. If both  $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ are cogenerated by sets, then so is the induced cotrsion pair $( {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ and so it is complete.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose that $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ is cogenerated by a set $\\lbrace A_j\\,\\, |\\,\\, j\\in J\\rbrace$ and $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ is cogenerated by the set $\\lbrace B_k\\,\\, |\\,\\, k\\in K\\rbrace$ . We claim that $({}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ is cogenerated by \n\\begin{align*}\n\\mathcal{S}  &=\\lbrace D^i_r(G)|\\,\\, i\\in \\mathbb{Z} , \\,\\, 1\\leq r \\leq N-1\\rbrace \\cup \\lbrace D^i_r(A_j)|\\,\\, i\\in \\mathbb{Z} ,\\,\\, 1\\leq r \\leq N-1, \\,\\, j\\in J \\rbrace \n\\\\\n\\qquad &\\cup \\lbrace D^i_N(B_k)|\\,\\, i\\in \\mathbb{Z} ,\\,\\, 1\\leq r \\leq N-1, \\,\\, k\\in K \\rbrace\n\\end{align*}\n \nIn dual manner of the proposition \\ref{prop 3.3} we can prove that $D^i_r(F)\\in {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ whenever $F\\in \\mathcal{F} $ and $D^i_N(X)\\in {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ whenever $X\\in \\mathcal{X} $. So we have  $\\mathcal{S} \\subseteq {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$. Thus $\\mathcal{S} ^\\perp\\supseteq {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})^\\perp=\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}$. \nConversely, let $\\mathbf{Y}\\in \\mathcal{S} ^\\perp$. First, we show that $\\mathbf{Y}$ is an $N$-exact complex. Consider the exact sequence $0 \\rightarrow D^{i+r-1}_r(G)\\rightarrow D^{i+N-1}_N(G)\\rightarrow D^{i+N-1}_{N-r}(G)\\rightarrow 0$. It induces an exact sequence\n$${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(D^{i+N-1}_N(G), \\mathbf{Y})\\rightarrow {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(D^{i+r-1}_r(G), \\mathbf{Y}) \\rightarrow {\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(D^{i+N-1}_{N-r}(G), \\mathbf{Y}) $$\nBut ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(D^{i+N-1}_{N-r}(G), \\mathbf{Y})=0$, since $\\mathbf{Y}\\in \\mathcal{S} ^\\perp$. Hence, by \\cite[Lemma 2.3]{YC} we can say that $\\mathbf{Y}$ is an $N$-exact complex. On the other hand, by lemma \\ref{lemma01} we have \n${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathcal{G} }(A_j, {\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{Y}))\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(D^{i+r-1}_{r}(A_j), \\mathbf{Y})=0$. This implies ${\\rm{Z}}^i_r(\\mathbf{Y})\\in \\mathcal{C} $ since $\\lbrace A_j\\,\\, |\\,\\, j\\in J\\rbrace$ cogenerates the cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$. Also ${\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathcal{G} }^{1}(B_k,Y^i)\\cong {\\rm{Ext}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}^1(D_{N}^{i+N-1}(B),\\mathbf{Y})=0$ for all $k\\in K$. Thus $Y^i\\in \\mathcal{Y} $,  since $(\\mathcal{X} ,\\mathcal{Y} )$ is cogenerated by the set $\\lbrace B_k\\,\\, |\\,\\, k\\in K\\rbrace$ \n\nFinally, since $G$ generates $\\mathcal{G} $, the complexes $D^i_N(G)$ generates $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. Also $D^i_N(G)\\in {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ and so ${}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$ contains the generators $\\lbrace D^i_N(G)\\,\\,|\\,\\, i\\in \\mathbb{Z} \\rbrace$. So by \\cite[Corollary 6.6]{Hov02} we have the completeness of the pair $( {}^\\perp(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N}), \\widetilde{\\mathcal{Y} }_{\\mathcal{C} _N})$\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{corollary}\n\\label{corollary 3.13}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ be a cotorsion pairs in a concrete category $\\mathcal{G} $ as in subsection \\ref{subsect 01} and such that the generator of $\\mathcal{G} $ is in $\\mathcal{F} $. Then \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[(1)]$(\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,dg\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$ and $(dg\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$\n\\item[(2)]$(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N,(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{F} }_N)^\\perp)$ and $({}^\\perp(ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N),ex\\widetilde{\\mathcal{C} }_N)$\n\\end{itemize}\nare complete cotorsion pairs in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{A} )$.\n\\end{corollary}\n\\begin{proof}\nUsing the proof of corollary \\ref{corollary 3.7}, \\ref{corollary 3.8} and Theorem \\ref{theorem 3.6}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nNote that the previous results are improved versions of \\cite[Theorem 3.13]{YC} and\\cite[Proposition 4.8, 4.9]{YC}. Essentially we do not assume that the cotorsion pair $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ is complete hereditary.\n\n\n\\begin{example}\nLet $\\mathcal{Q}  co(\\mathbb{X})$ be the category of quasi-coherent sheaves on a scheme $\\mathbb{X}$. Then $\\mathcal{Q}  co(\\mathbb{X})$ is a Grothendieck category as \\ref{subsect 01}. Note that $U(F)=\\sqcup_{v\\in \\mathcal{V} }F(v)$, where $\\mathcal{V} $ is a fixed open affine cover of $\\mathbb{X}$. If we let $\\mathcal{F} $ be the class of all flat quasi-coherent sheaves, it is known that if $\\mathbb{X}$ is quasi-compact and semi-separated, then $\\mathcal{F} $ contains a generator of  $\\mathcal{Q}  co(\\mathbb{X})$. Moreover, by \\cite[Section 4]{EE} we follow that $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{F} ^\\perp)$ is cogenerated by a set. So corollary \\ref{corollary 3.13} apply.\nAgain, consider the category of quasi-coherent sheaves and let $\\mathcal{F} $ be the\nclass of (non\u2013necessarily finite dimensional) vector bundles and the class of ``restricted'' Drinfeld\nvector bundles (see \\cite{EAPT} for notation and terminology) on suitable schemes. These classes are not\nin general closed under direct limits but we can proceed in the same way and apply corollary \\ref{corollary 3.13}.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\section{Applications}\n\\label{section 4}\n Let $R$ be an associative unitary ring. Let $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ be the homotopy category of $N$-complexes of flat $R$-modules, and let $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ be the homotopy category of $N$-complexes of projective $R$-modules. In \\cite{BHN} the authors proved that $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is equivalent to $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$ whenever $R$ is a left coherent ring and $\\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R)$ is the ring of triangular matrices of order $N-1$ with entries in $R$.\nThis equivalence allows us to study the properties of $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ from $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$. For instance  $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is compactly generated whenever $R$ is a left coherent ring. There is a natural question and this is whether it is possible to introduce an $N$-complex version of \\cite[Theorem 0.1]{Nee10}, \\cite[Proposition 8.1]{Nee08}? The answer is not trivial, since we don not have such an equivalence for $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ and $\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} \\mathbb{T} _{N-1}(R))$. In this section we focus on particular homotopy categories and the existence of adjoint functor between them. First, we start with the following lemma.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma 41}\nLet $\\mathcal{G} $ be a Grothendieck category. Let $\\mathbf{X}$ and $\\mathbf{Y}$ be in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. Given $f\\in {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{X},\\mathbf{Y})$ an associated exact sequence $0\\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y}\\xrightarrow{u}C(f)\\rightarrow \\Sigma \\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow 0$. Then $u$ is split monomorphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$ if and only if it is split monomorphism in $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n``$\\Rightarrow$'' is clear. Conversely suppose that $\\mathbf{Y}\\xrightarrow{u}C(f)$ is split monomorphism in $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. So there is a morphism $r:C(f)\\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y}$ such that $ru\\sim 1_{\\mathbf{Y}}$. Let $t$ be the corresponding homotopy as in the definition \\ref{def 11}. Define $a:C(f)\\rightarrow \\mathbf{Y}$ by \n$$\n(y,x_1,x_2,...x_{N-1})\\longmapsto y+\\sum_{r=1}^{N-1}\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace N-i-r\\rbrace}^{n-(N-i-r)} t^{n+i+r-1} d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace i-1\\rbrace}^{n+r}f^{n+r}(x_r)+r^n(0,x_1,x_2,...x_{N-1})\n$$\nClearly $au=1_{\\mathbf{Y}}$. So it is enough to show that $a=(a^n)_{n\\in \\mathbb{Z} }$ is a morphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$, i.e $d^n_\\mathbf{Y} a^n=a^{n+1}d^n_{C(f)}$ for all $n\\in \\mathbb{Z} $. Given $(y, x_1,...,x_{N-1})\\in Y^n \\oplus \\coprod_{i=n+1}^{n+N-1} X^i$, so we need to show that \n\\begin{align*}\nd^n_{\\mathbf{Y}}(y)&+\\sum_{r=1}^{N-1}\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace N-i-r+1\\rbrace}^{n-(N-i-r)} t^{n+i+r-1} d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace i-1\\rbrace}^{n+r}f^{n+r}(x_r)+d^n_\\mathbf{Y} r^n(0,x_1,x_2,...x_{N-1})\\\\\n&= d^n_\\mathbf{Y}(y) + f^{n+1}(x_1)+ \\sum_{r=1}^{N-2}\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace N-i-r\\rbrace}^{n+1-(N-i-r)} t^{n+i+r} d_{\\mathbf{Y},\\lbrace i-1\\rbrace}^{n+r+1}f^{n+r+1}(x_{r+1})\\\\\n&\\qquad\\qquad - \\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}t^{n+N}f^{n+N}d^{n+i}_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace N-i\\rbrace}(x_i)+r^{n+1}(0,x_2,x_3,...x_{N-1},-\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d^{n+i}_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace N-i\\rbrace}(x_i))\n\\end{align*}\nCanceling the same terms from both side and using the fact that $f$ is a morphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$ and $ru\\sim 1_\\mathbf{Y}$, we are reduced to show that\n\\begin{align*}\n(1-r^{n+1}u^{n+1})(f^{n+1}(x_1))+d^n_\\mathbf{Y} r^n(0,x_1,x_2,...,x_{N-1})&=f^{n+1}(x_1) \\\\\n&+r^{n+1}(0,x_2,...,x_{N-1},-\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d^{n+i}_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace N-i\\rbrace}(x_i))\n\\end{align*}\nOr equivalently,\n$$\nr^{n+1}(f^{n+1}(x_1),0,...,0)=d^n_\\mathbf{Y} r^{n}(0,x_1,...,x_{N-1})+r^{n+1}(0,-x_2,...,-x_{N-1},\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d^{n+i}_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace N-i\\rbrace}(x_i))\n$$\nand this equation satisfies, Since \n$$d^n_\\mathbf{Y} r^{n}(0,x_1,...,x_{N-1})= r^{n+1}(f^{n+1}(x_1),x_2,...,x_{N-1},-\\sum_{i=1}^{N-r}d^{n+i}_{\\mathbf{X},\\lbrace N-i\\rbrace}(x_i))$$\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe idea of the proof of the following Theorem is taken from \\cite[Theorem 3.5]{EBIJR}. We provide here the argument for the reader's convenience.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{theorem 42}\nLet $(\\mathcal{F} ,\\mathcal{C} )$ be a cotorsion pair in $\\mathbb{C} (\\mathcal{G} )$ such that $\\mathcal{F} $ is closed under taking suspensions. Then the embedding $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{F} )\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$ has a right adjoint.\n\\end{theorem}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe define right adjoint $T:\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{F} )$ as follows\n\n\\textbf{On object:} Let $\\mathbf{X}\\in\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. Consider an exact sequence $0\\rightarrow \\mathbf{C} \\rightarrow \\mathbf{F}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow 0$ with $\\mathbf{F}\\in \\mathcal{F} $ and $\\mathbf{C}\\in \\mathcal{C} $. Then define $T(\\mathbf{X}):=\\mathbf{F}$.\n\n\\textbf{On Morphism:} Let $f:\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}'$ be a morphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$ and consider the following diagram:\n$$\\xymatrix{0 \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{C} \\ar[r]  & \\mathbf{F} \\ar[r]^{p}  & \\mathbf{X} \\ar[d]^{f}\\ar[r] & 0 \\\\ 0 \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{C}' \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{F}' \\ar[r]^{q} & \\mathbf{X}' \\ar[r]  & 0 }$$\nBut we have the exact sequence $${\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{F}')\\rightarrow {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{X}')\\rightarrow {\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{C}')=0$$\nHence there exists $g\\in {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{F},\\mathbf{F}')$ such that $fp=qg$. So define $T(f):=g$. This definition is well defined up to homotopy. Indeed, if $f_1, f_2 :\\mathbf{X}\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}'$ are two morphisms such that $f_1\\sim f_2$ and suppose that $T(f_1)=g_1$ and $T(f_2)=g_2$, then we claim $g_1\\sim g_2$. Since $f_1\\sim f_2$ we can say that $f_1 p\\sim f_2 p$ and therefore $f=(f_1 p-f_2 p) \\sim 0$. We show that $g=(g_1-g_2)\\sim 0$. To this point consider the following diagram:\n$$\\xymatrix{0 \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{F}' \\ar[r]^{i}\\ar[d]^{q}  & C(g)\\ar[r] \\ar@{-->}[d]^t  & \\Sigma \\mathbf{F} \\ar@{=}[d]\\ar[r] & 0 \\\\ 0 \\ar[r] & \\mathbf{X}' \\ar[r]^{j} & C(f) \\ar[r] & \\Sigma \\mathbf{F} \\ar[r]  & 0 }$$\nSince $f\\sim 0$, by \\cite[proposition 2.14]{YD} we get that the lower short exact sequence splits. Consider $r:C(f)\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}'$. Since $\\mathbf{F}'\\rightarrow \\mathbf{X}'$ is an $\\mathcal{F} $-precover, then there exists $\\ell:C(g)\\rightarrow \\mathbf{F}'$ such that $rt=q\\ell$. We claim that $\\ell$ provides a retraction of $i:\\mathbf{F}'\\rightarrow C(g)$ in $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. For this, it is easy to check that $q(1_{\\mathbf{F}'}-\\ell i)=0$, So we can say that  $1_{\\mathbf{F}'}-\\ell i$ maps $\\mathbf{F}'$ into the kernel of $q$, that is, into $\\mathbf{C}'$. Again by \\cite[proposition 2.14]{YD} and using this fact ${\\rm{Ext}}^1_{\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\Sigma \\mathbf{F}',\\mathbf{C}')=0$ we can say that $1_{\\mathbf{F}'}-\\ell i$ is homotopic to $0$. So $\\ell i\\sim 1_{\\mathbf{F}'}$, i.e. $\\ell$ provides a retraction of $i:\\mathbf{F}'\\rightarrow C(g)$ in $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$. By Lemma \\ref{lemma 41} $\\mathbf{F}'\\rightarrow C(g)$ is split monomorphism in $\\mathbb{C} _N(\\mathcal{G} )$, hence $0\\rightarrow \\mathbf{F}' \\rightarrow C(g) \\rightarrow \\Sigma \\mathbf{F}\\rightarrow 0$ is split exact. Therefore by \\cite[proposition 2.14]{YD}, we get that $g\\sim 0$.\n\nClearly we see that if $g_1\\sim g_2$ then $f_1\\sim f_2$. Hence  $$\\psi:{\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{F} )}(\\mathbf{F}'',T(\\mathbf{X}))\\rightarrow {\\rm{Hom}}_{\\mathbb{K} _N(\\mathcal{G} )}(\\mathbf{F}'',\\mathbf{X})$$ is injective. Clearly $\\psi$ is surjective and so it is bijective.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma 43}($N$-complex version of Neeman's result \\cite[Theorem 3.2]{Nee10})\nLet $R$ be a ring. The inclusion $i:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow K_N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$ has a right adjoint functor.\n\\end{lemma}\n \\begin{proof}\n Consider the complete cotorsion pair $({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R, {{\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R}^\\perp)$. By  \\cite[Proposition 4.4]{YC} we have a complete cotorsion pair $(\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R), \\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp)$ in $\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$. Since $\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is closed under taking suspensions then by Theorem \\ref{theorem 42} $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$ has right adjoint functor $i^\\ast:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$.\n \\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma 43}($N$-complex version of Neeman's result \\cite[Proposition 8.1]{Nee08})\nThe natural inclusion $j_{!}:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow K_N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ has a right adjoint functor.\n\\end{lemma}\n \\begin{proof}\n Consider the complete cotorsion pair $({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R, {\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$. By  \\cite[Proposition 4.4]{YC} we have a complete cotorsion pair $(\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R), \\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp)$ in $\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$. Since $\\mathbb{C} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is closed under taking suspensions then by Theorem \\ref{theorem 42} $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)$ has right adjoint functor $j:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Mod\\mbox{-}}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$. Then the natural inclusion $j_{!}:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ has a right adjoint $j^\\ast={j_{!}}|_{\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)}$. \n \\end{proof}\n \n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma 44}($N$-complex version of Neeman's result \\cite[Theorem 0.1]{Nee10}) The functor $j^\\ast:\\mathbb{K} ({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ has a right adjoint functor. \n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe functor $j_{!}:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow K_N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is fully faithful and by Lemma \\ref{lemma 43} has a right adjoint $j^\\ast$. Formal nonsense tell us that the right adjoint functor $j^\\ast:\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ is a Verdier quotient. The same formal nonsense also tell us that the right adjoint of Verdier quotient is fully faithful. By \\cite[Remark 2.12]{Nee08} this adjoint functor identifies $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)$ with the Verdier quotient map\n$$\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\/\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp$$\nwhere \n$$\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp=\\lbrace Y\\in \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\, | \\, {\\rm{Hom}}(j_{!}X,Y)=0\\,:\\, \\forall X\\in \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)\\rbrace$$\nBut we can say thet \n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp\\xrightarrow{\\imath} \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)\\xrightarrow{j^\\ast}\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R) \\label{eq-00}\n\\end{equation}\nis an quotient sequence of triangulated functor (see,the definitions in \\cite[chapter 2, pg.15]{Mur}). \nBut clearly, $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp$ concides with $\\mathbb{K} _N(\\widetilde{{\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R})$ (see the Definition \\ref{def 35} and \\cite[Fact 2.14]{Nee08}). Now, by Corollary \\ref{corollary 3.13} $(\\widetilde{{\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R}_N,\\widetilde{{\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R}^\\perp_N)$ is a complete cotorsion pair. So by Theorem \\ref{theorem 42} $\\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Prj}\\mbox{-}} R)^\\perp=\\mathbb{K} _N(\\widetilde{{\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R})\\rightarrow \\mathbb{K} _N({\\rm{Flat}\\mbox{-}} R)$ admits a right adjoint functor. So we can say that the sequence \\ref{eq-00} is a localization sequence. Hence by \\cite[Lemma 2.3]{Mur} $j^\\ast$ has a right adjoint.\n\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgments}\n\nI would like to thank Jan \\v{S}aroch for his interest and for his pivotal role in proving the crucial Proposition \\ref{Prop 0001}\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\n\\section{Introduction}\n\nThe main aim of this paper is to introduce a \\emph{continuous} positive operator valued measure (POVM) \\cite{NCh:00,AlFa:01}, which is \\emph{equivariant} under the symmetry group $SO(3,\\mathbb{R})$ of the qubit state space, and investigate the properties of the qubit state estimation protocol based on the generalized measurement defined by this POVM. There are several similar qubit state tomography protocols in the literature \\cite{PHSzSz:06,PHM:07} operating with cleverly chosen \\emph{discrete} measurements, which respect only a restricted, discrete group of symmetries. Probably the most famous of them is the ``minimal qubit tomography'' protocol \\cite{MinQubit:04}. I found it preferable to be a bit didactic here and to insert a brief account on these discrete qubit tomography protocols, for better comparability of the methods and results, and for the convenience of the reader. Thus the second section together with this introduction summarizes known results, while the new investigations are put in section~\\ref{s:contmeas}. The properties of the different protocols are compared in the concluding section.\n\nIn quantum information theory \\cite{NCh:00} the term \\emph{quantum bit} (or \\emph{qubit}) refers to the simplest nontrivial quantummechanical system, which has only two independent pure states. The Hilbert space of the qubit is $\\mathbb{C}^2$, and its possible states are described by the $2\\times 2$ density matrices $\\rho$, which can be decomposed in terms of the three Pauli matrices\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:Pauli}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\sigma_x &= \\begin{bmatrix} 0 &1 \\\\ 1 &0\\end{bmatrix},&\n\\sigma_y &= \\begin{bmatrix} 0 &-i \\\\ i &0\\end{bmatrix},\n\\\\\n\\sigma_z &= \\begin{bmatrix} 1 &0 \\\\ 0 &-1\\end{bmatrix},&\n\\bm{\\sigma} &=\\begin{bmatrix}\\sigma_x\\\\ \\sigma_y\\\\ \\sigma_z\\end{bmatrix}\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nin the following way:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:rhor}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\rho(\\mathbf{r})&= \\frac{1}{2}(I+\\mathbf{r} \\bm{\\sigma}) =\\frac{1}{2}\n\\begin{bmatrix} 1+z& x-iy\\\\ x+iy& 1-z \\end{bmatrix},\n\\\\\n\\mathbf{r}&= \\begin{bmatrix}x\\\\y\\\\z\\end{bmatrix} \\in \\mathbb{R}^3,\n\\qquad\\qquad\n|\\mathbf{r}| =r \\le 1.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n(The condition $r\\le 1$ ensures that $\\rho(\\mathbf{r}) \\ge 0$.) It means that the possible states of the qubit are in one-to-one correspondence with the points of the unit ball in $\\mathbb{R}^3$, which is conventionally called the \\emph{Bloch ball}. The surface of the ball, the \\emph{Bloch sphere} ($r=1$) represents the pure states, i.e., rank one projectors. The mapping $\\mathbf{r} \\mapsto \\rho(\\mathbf{r})$ respects convex combination (or ``averaging''), so\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:rhoav}\n\\rho(\\alpha \\mathbf{r}_1 +\\beta \\mathbf{r}_2 ) &=\\alpha \\rho(\\mathbf{r}_1) + \\beta \\rho(\\mathbf{r}_2);&\n\\langle \\rho(\\mathbf{r}) \\rangle &=\\rho(\\langle \\mathbf{r} \\rangle)\n\\end{align}\nprovided that $\\alpha +\\beta =1$.\n\nThe state space of the qubit has a nontrivial symmetry group determined by the automorphism group of its event lattice. In terms of density matrices the symmetry transformations are conjugations by unitaries, while in the Bloch ball picture the symmetries correspond to orthogonal rotations of the Bloch ball. The unitary group $SU(2,\\mathbb{C})$ is a two-fold covering of the orthogonal group $SO(3,\\mathbb{R})$, so they both have the same Lie-algebra. The structure of this Lie-algebra is reflected in the multiplication relations of the Pauli matrices, which we shall use in the sequel:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:sigma}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\sigma_x^2 &=\\sigma_y^2 =\\sigma_z^2 =I,&\n\\sigma_x \\sigma_y &=-\\sigma_y \\sigma_x =i \\sigma_z,\\\\\n\\sigma_y \\sigma_z &=-\\sigma_z \\sigma_y =i \\sigma_x,&\n\\sigma_z \\sigma_x &=-\\sigma_x \\sigma_z =i \\sigma_y.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe principal problem of quantum state estimation, or quantum tomography is to give an accurate estimation $\\rho'$ for an unknown qubit state $\\rho_0$ by performing certain quantum measurements on multiple replicas of the unknown quantum bit. In the present approach it is essential that all the replicas are in the same state $\\rho_0$, only one measurement is performed on each single replica, and the choice of the measurement does not depend on the previous results. Because of the inherent probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics the results of the measurements as well as the estimation $\\rho'$ itself are random variables. The estimation is \\emph{unbiased} if $\\langle \\rho' \\rangle =\\rho_0$, where $\\langle \\cdot \\rangle$ designates the expectation value taken over the possible outcomes of the measurements. The accuracy of the estimator $\\rho'$ is characterized by its variance $\\big\\langle d^2(\\rho',\\langle\\rho' \\rangle) \\big\\rangle$, where $d$ is an appropriate distance on the set of density matrices. A usual choice is the distance $d^2(\\rho_1,\\rho_2) =\\Tr(\\rho_2 -\\rho_1)^2$ based on the Hilbert-Schmidt norm for selfadjoint matrices.\n\nIt is worth noting that quantum state estimation is a much more delicate  problem than its classical counterpart because of two main reasons: $i)$~in quantum mechanics two quantities usually cannot be measured at the same time with arbitrary high precision; and $ii)$~measurements destroy the original state of the system. That is why in quantum tomography different, carefully chosen protocols exist for the measurements applied for the estimation of the unknown state.\n\nIn the second section we revisit three existing protocols and their basic properties. In all cases the measurements have a finite set of possible outcomes. The first protocol is based on von~Neumann (projective) spin measurements in three orthogonal directions, thus there are three different measurements, each having two possible outcomes. In the second protocol these three projective measurements are put together to obtain a (non-projective) measurement with six possible outcomes, based on a positive operator valued measure (POVM). The third one, the so called ``minimal state tomography'' protocol \\cite{MinQubit:04} is very much alike the previous protocol, but the number of possible outcomes of the POVM measurement is reduced to four, which is a lower bound in qubit state tomography.\n\nIn these three protocols the maximum likelihood method is applied to obtain the estimator $\\rho'$. Unfortunately in certain cases the likelihood function may take its maximum value outside the Bloch-ball, what makes the further exact analysis rather complicated \\cite{PHM:07}. Disregarding this fact, we show that the ``unrestricted'' estimator is unbiased (for the first and third protocol) or asymptotically unbiased (for the second protocol), and we calculate the variance of the (unrestricted) estimator in all cases. The variance goes to zero as the number $N$ of measurements is increased, what justifies that for large $N$ and mixed states the unrestricted and exact estimators are essentially the same. For pure states, however, the unrestricted estimator is not a good choice. Another principal disadvantage of these discrete protocols is the fact that they do not respect the whole symmetry group of the qubit.\n\nThis last defect is rectified in the third section, where we present a new protocol for qubit tomography based on a POVM, which is supported on the Bloch sphere, and \\emph{equivariant} under the symmetry group of the state space. An interesting novelty is that the POVM applied here is \\emph{continuous}, i.e., the corresponding measurement has an infinite number of possible outcomes, namely all the pure states. Although the maximum likelihood estimator cannot be explicitly constructed, we present another simple unbiased estimator and calculate its variance.\n\nWe conclude by comparing the results obtained for the different discrete and continuous qubit state estimation protocols.\n\n\\section{Discrete measurements}\nOriginally von Neumann defined quantum measurement as choosing one out of a set of pairwise complementary events which form a complete system \\cite{JvN:55}. Translating it into an algebraic language, a von~Neumann type (or projective) measurement is defined by a complete set of orthogonal projections $\\{ P_s \\}_{s\\in S}$. Here $S$ is an appropriate index set, and the projections satisfy the relations\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:vNm}\n\\sum_{s\\in S} P_s &=I,&\nP_s &=P_s^*,&\nP_s P_r &=\\delta_{s,r} P_s.\n\\end{align}\nIn the state $\\rho$ the probability that the measurement results in the event $P_s$ is $p_s =\\Tr (P_s \\rho)$. Usually it is convenient to ``label'' the possible outcomes, i.e., the index set $S$ by real numbers $a_s$ and define a selfadjoint operator $A= \\sum_{s\\in S} a_s P_s$ by its spectral decomposition. In this case we interpret $A$ as an \\emph{observable}, the $a_s$'s are the possible values of the observable (measurement), and the expectation value of $A$ is given by the well known formula $\\Tr (A\\rho)$. But the essential part of the von~Neumann type measurement is the orthogonal decomposition~\\eqref{e:vNm} of unity. Sometimes there is no natural way (or need) for the embedding $S\\stackrel{\\subset}{\\to} \\mathbb{R}$. In this case we can still speak about the probabilities $p_s$, which give a classical probability distribution on $S$, but (without further structure on $S$) the expectation value of the measurement has no meaning.\n\nThis scheme can be generalized to the so called \\emph{positive operator valued measure} (POVM) \\cite{NCh:00,AlFa:01}. In this case the identity is decomposed into the sum of (arbitrary) positive operators:\n\\begin{align}\n\\sum_{s\\in S} Q_s &= I,&\nQ_s &\\ge 0.\n\\end{align}\nThe possible outcomes of the measurement are labelled by the index set $S$, and the probability of the outcome $s$ in the state $\\rho$ is $p_s =\\Tr(Q_s \\rho)$. As in the previous case, the $p_s$'s define a classical probability distribution on $S$.\n\nThe POVM measurements are also called \\emph{weak measurements}, particularly if the investigated system is coupled to another system and the POVM measurement is obtained from a projective measurement performed on the composite system \\cite{NCh:00,AlFa:01}.\n\nIn this section we deal with \\emph{discrete measurements}, what means that the index set $S$ is finite. The continuous case is conceptually the same, only technically more difficult. We turn to this in section~\\ref{s:contmeas}.\n\n\\subsection{Orthogonal spin measurements I. --- Projective case}\nIn this protocol three different von~Neumann spin measurements are performed in three orthogonal directions (see figure~\\ref{f:sp}), so the projections are:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:Pxyzpm}\n\\begin{aligned}\nP_x^{\\pm} &=\\rho(\\pm\\mathbf{x})=\\frac{I\\pm\\sigma_x}{2},&\nP_y^{\\pm} &=\\rho(\\pm\\mathbf{y})=\\frac{I\\pm\\sigma_y}{2},\\\\\nP_z^{\\pm} &=\\rho(\\pm\\mathbf{z})=\\frac{I\\pm\\sigma_z}{2},&&\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\mathbf{x}$, $\\mathbf{y}$ and $\\mathbf{z}$ denote the unit vectors in the three orthogonal directions.\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{spins.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{\\label{f:sp} The six projections belonging to the spin measurements in three orthogonal directions in the Bloch ball.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nLet $N_x= N_x^+ +N_x^-$, $N_y =N_y^+ +N_y^-$ and $N_z =N_z^+ +N_z^-$ be the number of spin measurements performed in the $x$, $y$ and $z$ direction, where $N_k^+$ is the number of $P_k^+$ results, and $N_k^-$ is the number of $P_k^-$ results ($k= x,y,z$). Furthermore, let $\\rho_0 =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0) =\\frac{1}{2}(I+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\bm{\\sigma})$ be the unknown true state of the qubit, and let $\\rho' =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}') =\\frac{1}{2}(I+\\mathbf{r}' \\bm{\\sigma})$ denote its maximum likelihood estimator.\n\nThe probabilities of the different measurement outcomes in the state $\\rho_0$ are\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:ppmxz}\n\\begin{aligned}\np_x^{\\pm} &= \\Tr(\\rho_0 P_x^{\\pm}) =\\frac{1\\pm x_0}{2},&&\n\\\\\np_y^{\\pm} &=\\frac{1\\pm y_0}{2},&\np_z^{\\pm} &=\\frac{1\\pm z_0}{2},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nso the likelihood function $\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0)$ for a given measurement statistics $N_k^{\\pm}$ is\n\\begin{multline}\\label{e:L}\n\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) = \n\\binom{N_x}{N_x^+} (p_x^+)^{N_x^+} (p_x^-)^{N_x^-}\\\\\n\\times \\binom{N_y}{N_y^+} (p_y^+)^{N_y^+} (p_y^-)^{N_y^-}\n\\binom{N_z}{N_z^+} (p_z^+)^{N_z^+} (p_z^-)^{N_z^-}.\n\\end{multline}\nVarying the argument of the likelihood function, it takes the maximum value either on the boundary of the Bloch ball, or at the zero of its gradient:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\grad \\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}') = \\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}')\n\\begin{bmatrix}\n\\frac{N_x^+}{1+x'} -\\frac{N_x^-}{1-x'}\\\\\n\\frac{N_y^+}{1+y'} -\\frac{N_y^-}{1-y'}\\\\\n\\frac{N_z^+}{1+z'} -\\frac{N_z^-}{1-z'}\n\\end{bmatrix}\n=0\n\\end{equation}\nwhich yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:rv}\n\\mathbf{r}' = \n\\begin{bmatrix}\n\\frac{N_x^+ -N_x^-}{N_x}\\\\\n\\frac{N_y^+ -N_y^-}{N_y}\\\\\n\\frac{N_z^+ -N_z^-}{N_z}\n\\end{bmatrix}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nA principal problem with this ``unrestricted'' estimator is that it may fall out of the Bloch ball. In this case either the true maximum place should be found on the boundary of the Bloch ball, or $\\mathbf{r}'$ should be normed in some other way, e.g., by dividing it by $|\\mathbf{r}'|$. For the moment we disregard this problem and continue as if $\\mathbf{r}'$ were a true estimator.\n\nUsing the binomial theorem we obtain that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:avN+}\n\\begin{split}\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{N^+}{N} \\Big\\rangle &=\n\\sum_{N^+ =0}^N \\frac{N^+}{N}\\binom{N}{N^+} {p^+}^{N^+} {p^-}^{N^-} \\\\\n&= \\sum_{N^+ =1}^N \\binom{N-1}{N^+ -1} p^+ {p^+}^{N^+ -1} {p^-}^{N^-} =p^+\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nin any of the three directions, and applying this and the previous equations \\eqref{e:ppmxz}, \\eqref{e:L}, \\eqref{e:rv} a straightforward calculation shows that the estimator $\\mathbf{r}'$ is unbiased:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle\\mathbf{r}'\\rangle =\\sum_{N_x^+=0}^{N_x} \\sum_{N_y^+=0}^{N_y} \\sum_{N_z^+=0}^{N_z}\n\\mathbf{r}' \\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) = \\mathbf{r}_0.\n\\end{equation}\n(The calculation can be carried out separately in the three spin directions.)\n\nNow let us determine the variance of the unrestricted estimator. Again a simple application of the binomial theorem shows that\n\\begin{multline}\\label{e:avN+2}\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{N^+ (N^+-1)}{N (N-1)} \\Big\\rangle =\n\\\\\n=\\sum_{N^+ =2}^N \\binom{N-2}{N^+ -2} {p^+}^2 {p^+}^{N^+ -2} {p^-}^{N^-} ={p^+}^2\n\\end{multline}\nin any of the three spin directions. The  distance square between the expectation value $\\langle \\rho' \\rangle =\\rho_0$ and the estimator is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:d2}\nd^2(\\rho',\\langle \\rho' \\rangle) =\\Tr(\\rho'-\\langle\\rho'\\rangle)^2 =\n\\frac{1}{4} \\Tr(\\Delta\\mathbf{r} \\bm{\\sigma})^2 = \\frac{1}{2}\\Delta r^2.\n\\end{equation}\n(Here $\\Delta \\mathbf{r}$ is a shorthand notation for the vector $\\mathbf{r}' -\\langle \\mathbf{r}' \\rangle$, and $\\Delta r$ is its absolute value.) Again the three directions decouple, what simplifies the calculations. The average of $\\Delta x^2$ can be determined with the help of \\eqref{e:avN+2}:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle \\Delta x^2 \\rangle = \\langle x'^2 \\rangle -\\langle x'\\rangle^2 =\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{(2N_x^+ -N_x)^2}{N_x^2} \\Big\\rangle -x_0^2 =\n\\frac{1-x_0^2}{N_x}.\n\\end{equation}\nIt means that in the states $\\rho_0 =P_x^{\\pm}$ the variance in the $x$ direction is zero, as it is expected. The total variance is obtained by summing similar expressions for the $x$, $y$ and $z$ direction:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:V3spin}\n\\begin{aligned}\nV_{\\ast} &=\n\\langle d^2(\\rho',\\rho_0)\\rangle =\n\\frac{1}{2} \\langle \\Delta x^2 +\\Delta y^2 + \\Delta z^2 \\rangle\n\\\\\n&=\\frac{1-x_0^2}{2N_x} +\\frac{1-y_0^2}{2N_x} +\\frac{1-z_0^2}{2N_z}.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n\nIf we assume that $N_x =N_y =N_z =\\frac{N}{3}$, where $N =N_x +N_y +N_z$ is the total number of measurements, then the variance has the form\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:V3}\nV_{\\ast} = \\frac{9-3r_0^2}{2N}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe variance tends to zero as the number of measurements goes to infinity, what justifies that for large $N$ and for mixed states the unrestricted estimator \\eqref{e:rv} practically coincides with the true maximum likelihood estimator.\n\n\\subsection{Orthogonal spin measurements II. --- POVM case \\label{ss:hexqubt}}\nThis protocol is also based on the six projections $P_{x,y,z}^{\\pm}$ appearing in the spectral decomposition of the three orthogonal spin operators (see equation~\\eqref{e:Pxyzpm}), but this time we form a single POVM out of them, by decomposing the unity in the following way:\n\\begin{equation}\nI =Q_x^+ +Q_x^- +Q_y^+ +Q_y^- +Q_z^+ +Q_z^- ,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $Q_k^{\\pm} = \\frac{1}{3} P_k^{\\pm}$ for $k \\in \\{x,y,z\\}$ [see equation~\\eqref{e:Pxyzpm}]. Performing this POVM measurement on each replica of the qubit, the six different results are obtained with the probabilities\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{aligned}\nq_x^{\\pm} &=\\Tr(\\rho_0 Q_x^{\\pm}) =\\frac{1\\pm x_0}{6},&&\n\\\\\nq_y^{\\pm} &=\\frac{1\\pm y_0}{6},&\nq_z^{\\pm} &=\\frac{1\\pm z_0}{6},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nprovided that the qubit is in the state $\\rho_0 =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0)$.\n\nLet $N_k =N_k^+ +N_k^-$ (for $k\\in \\{ x,y,z \\}$) be the number of measurements with any of the two possible results in the $k$ direction, and let $N=N_x +N_y +N_z$ denote the total number of measurements. The probability of a given measurement statistics $\\{ N_k^{\\pm} \\}$ in the state $\\rho_0$ is described by the multinomial distribution:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) =\nN! \\prod_{k\\in \\{x,y,z\\}} \\frac{(q_k^+)^{N_k^+} (q_k^-)^{N_k^-}}{N_k^+ ! N_k^- !}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe unrestricted maximum likelihood estimator $\\mathbf{r}'$ is obtained again by determining the zero of the gradient of $\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}')$, and we get formally the same expression~\\eqref{e:rv} as in the previous subsection. Now, however, an unavoidable problem is the fact that $N_x$, $N_y$ or $N_z$ may be zero with positive probability! If it happens then we have no information at all about certain component(s) of the Bloch vector $\\mathbf{r}'$, and the division in \\eqref{e:rv} is meaningless. In this case the most natural thing is to use the estimation $0$ for the appropriate component of $\\mathbf{r}'$. (We have to take care of this in the evaluation of the expectation values.) Of course this `ad hoc' choice will bias the estimator towards zero. In addition, the estimator may fall out of the Bloch ball; we disregard it in the followings.\n\nApplying the multinomial theorem it is easy to show that \n\\begin{widetext}\n\\begin{multline}\\label{e:avNx+}\n\\langle x' \\rangle =\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{N_x^+-N_x^-}{N_x} \\Big\\rangle_{N_x \\ge 1} =\n\\sum_{\\{N_k^{\\pm}\\}, N_x \\ge 1} \\frac{N_x^+ -N_x^-}{N_x} \\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) \n=\\sum_{N_x =1}^N \\binom{N}{N_x} (1-q_x)^{N-N_x} \\\\\n\\times \\sum_{N_x^+ =0}^{N_x} \n\\frac{N_x^+ -N_x^-}{N_x} \\binom{N_x}{N_x^+} (q_x^+)^{N_x^+} (q_x^-)^{N_x^-}\n=\\frac{q_x^+ -q_x^-}{q_x} \\sum_{N_x =1}^N \\binom{N}{N_x} (1-q_x)^{N-N_x} q_x^{N_x}\n=x_0 \\bigg(1-\\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N \\bigg).\n\\end{multline}\n\\end{widetext}\n(Here $q_x =q_x^+ +q_x^- =\\frac{1}{3}$, independently of the true state $\\rho_0$.) Similar expressions are valid in the other directions, and it follows that the estimator $\\mathbf{r}'$ is biased, but asymptotically unbiased:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:rbias}\n\\langle \\mathbf{r}' \\rangle =\\mathbf{r}_0 \\bigg(1-\\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N \\bigg).\n\\end{equation}\nNote that the factor $1-(2\/3)^N$ is exactly the probability that none of the $N$ measurement results lies in a particular coordinate direction.\n\nTo determine the variance of the estimator we need averages of the following type:\n\\begin{widetext}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:avNx+Nx-}\n\\begin{split}\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{N_x^+ N_x^-}{N_x^2} \\Big\\rangle_{N_x \\ge 1} &=\n\\sum_{N_x =1}^N \\binom{N}{N_x} \\Big(\\frac{2}{3} \\Big)^{N-N_x} \n\\sum_{N_x^+ =0}^{N_x} \\frac{N_x^+ N_x^-}{N_x^2} \\binom{N_x}{N_x^+}\n(q_x^+)^{N_x^+} (q_x^-)^{N_x^-}\\\\\n&=9q_x^+ q_x^- \\sum_{N_x =1}^N \\Big( 1-\\frac{1}{N_x} \\Big) \\binom{N}{N_x}\n\\Big(\\frac{2}{3} \\Big)^{N-N_x} \\Big(\\frac{1}{3} \\Big)^{N_x}\n=\\frac{1-x_0^2}{4} \\bigg( 1-\\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N -\\frac{F_N}{N} \\bigg),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{widetext}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:FN}\n\\begin{split}\nF_N &=N \\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N \\sum_{n =1}^{N} \\binom{N}{n} \\frac{1}{n} \n\\Big(\\frac{1}{2}\\Big)^{n} \\\\\n&=N \\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N \\bigg(\n\\sum_{n =1}^N \\frac{1}{n} \\Big(\\frac{3}{2}\\Big)^{n}\n-\\sum_{n =1}^{N} \\frac{1}{n} \\bigg).\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nHere the last equation was obtained by integrating the following sum with respect to $q$ from $0$ to $\\frac{1}{2}$:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{d}{dq} \\sum_{n =1}^{N} \\binom{N}{n} \\frac{1}{n} q^{n}=\n\\frac{(1+q)^N -1}{q} =\n\\sum_{n=0}^{N-1} (1+q)^n.\n\\end{equation}\nUnfortunately the sum~\\eqref{e:FN} defining $F_N$ cannot be further simplified, but it can be shown that $\\lim_{N\\to \\infty} F_N =3$. Indeed, the second sum in \\eqref{e:FN} diverges only logarithmically, but it is multiplied with an exponentially descending factor, so it rapidly converges to zero. The first sum $S_N =N \\sum_{n=1}^N \\frac{1}{n} (2\/3)^{N-n}$ satisfies the recursion\n\\begin{equation}\nS_{N+1} -S_N = \\Big(\\frac{2}{3N} -\\frac{1}{3} \\Big)S_N +1,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich means that $\\lim_{N\\to \\infty} S_N =\\lim_{N\\to\\infty} F_N =3$.\n\nUsing~\\eqref{e:avNx+} and \\eqref{e:avNx+Nx-} the average of the error square of the $x$ component of the estimator is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle \\Delta x^2 \\rangle &=\n\\Big\\langle \\frac{N_x^2 -4N_x^+ N_x^-}{N_x^2} \\Big\\rangle_{N_x \\ge 1} \n-\\langle x' \\rangle^2 \\\\\n&= \\frac{F_N}{N} (1-x_0^2) +x_0^2 \\Big(\\frac{2}{3} \\Big)^N \n\\bigg(1-\\Big(\\frac{2}{3}\\Big)^N \\bigg),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nand similar formulas are valid in the other directions. By equation~\\eqref{e:d2} the variance of the estimator is:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:V6}\nV_{\\circledast} =\\frac{F_N (3-r_0^2)}{2N} +r_0^2 \\frac{6^N -4^N}{9^N} \\approx\n\\frac{9-3r_0^2}{2N}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor large $N\\gg 1$ this expression has the same asymptotic behavior as the variance~\\eqref{e:V3} of the estimator using projective spin measurements in orthogonal directions.\n\\subsection{Minimal qubit tomography \\label{ss:minqubt}}\nThis protocol was introduced in \\cite{MinQubit:04}. The protocol is based on a POVM, which is minimal in the sense that it contains only four positive operators $\\{Q_k\\}_{k=1}^4$ in the decomposition of unity. These operators are constant multiples of the four projectors $P_k =\\rho(\\mathbf{a}_k)$ being at the vertexes $\\{\\mathbf{a}_k\\}_{k=1}^4$ of a regular tetrahedron on the Bloch sphere, as shown in figure~\\ref{f:min}:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:a14}\n\\begin{aligned}\n\\mathbf{a}_1 &=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\begin{bmatrix} 1\\\\ 1\\\\ 1\\end{bmatrix},&\n\\mathbf{a}_2 &=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\begin{bmatrix} 1\\\\ -1\\\\ -1\\end{bmatrix},\n\\\\\n\\mathbf{a}_3 &=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\begin{bmatrix} -1\\\\ 1\\\\ -1\\end{bmatrix},&\n\\mathbf{a}_4 &=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}}\\begin{bmatrix} -1\\\\ -1\\\\ 1\\end{bmatrix},\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\n\\begin{align}\nQ_k &= \\frac{1}{4} \\rho(\\mathbf{a}_k) =\\frac{I+\\mathbf{a}_k \\bm{\\sigma}}{8},&\nI&= \\sum_{k=1}^4 Q_k.\n\\end{align}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{mintom.eps}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{\\label{f:min} The four projections $P_k$ at the vertexes $\\mathbf{a}_k$ of a regular tetrahedron on the Bloch sphere.}\n\\end{figure}\n\nDue to the tetrahedral symmetry, the vectors $\\mathbf{a}_k$ have the following properties:\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:propa}\n\\mathbf{a}_k \\mathbf{a}_l &= -\\frac{1}{3} +\\frac{4}{3} \\delta_{k,l}&\n\\sum_{k=1}^4 \\mathbf{a}_k \\circ \\mathbf{a}_k &=\\frac{4}{3} I.\n\\end{align}\n\nIn the state $\\rho_0 =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0)$ the probabilities $p_k$ of the four different measurement outcomes can easily be calculated with the help of the properties~\\eqref{e:sigma} of the Pauli matrices:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:p4}\np_k =\\Tr(\\rho_0 Q_k) =\\frac{\\Tr\\big((I+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\bm{\\sigma}) (I+\\mathbf{a}_k \\bm{\\sigma})\\big)}{8} =\n\\frac{1+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{a}_k}{4}.\n\\end{equation}\nDenoting the number of $k$-th measurement results by $N_k$ and the total number of measurements by $N =\\sum_{k=1}^4 N_k$, the probability of a given measurement statistics in the state $\\rho_0$ is described again by the multinomial distribution:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) =\\frac{N!}{N_1! N_2! N_3! N_4!} \np_1^{N_1} p_2^{N_2} p_3^{N_3} p_4^{N_4}.\n\\end{equation}\nThis likelihood function takes its maximal value at the zero of its gradient, which yields the equation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:lemin}\n\\sum_{k=1}^{4} \\frac{N_k \\mathbf{a}_k}{1+\\mathbf{r}' \\mathbf{a}_k} =0\n\\end{equation}\nfor the Bloch vector $\\mathbf{r}'$ of the estimator $\\rho' =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}')$. For general $\\mathbf{a}_k$ vectors it is hopeless to solve explicitly this equation, but for the symmetrically distributed vectors~\\eqref{e:a14}, using their properties~\\eqref{e:propa} it is easy to check that the unique solution is \n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:rv4}\n\\mathbf{r}' =3\\sum_{k=1}^{4} \\frac{N_k}{N} \\mathbf{a}_k.\n\\end{equation}\nThis solution is well defined for any measurement statistics $\\{ N_k\\}$, but it may fall out of the Bloch ball.\n\nUsing the multinomial theorem it is easy to show that $\\langle N_k \\rangle =Np_k$, so\n\\begin{equation}\n\\langle \\mathbf{r}' \\rangle =3\\sum_{k=1}^4 p_k \\mathbf{a}_k =\n\\frac{3}{4} \\sum_{k=1}^4 \\mathbf{a}_k + \n\\frac{3}{4}\\bigg(\\sum_{k=1}^4 \\mathbf{a}_k \\circ \\mathbf{a}_k \\bigg) \\mathbf{r}_0 =\\mathbf{r}_0,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich means that the estimator $\\rho'$ is unbiased.\n\nApplying again the multinomial theorem, the formulas~\\eqref{e:p4} for the probabilities and the properties~\\eqref{e:propa} of the $\\mathbf{a}_k$ vectors, we obtain that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n\\Big\\langle \\sum_{k=1}^4 N_k^2 \\Big\\rangle &=\n\\sum_{k=1}^4 \\Big( \\big\\langle N_k (N_k -1)\\big\\rangle +\\langle N_k \\rangle \\Big)\\\\\n&=\\sum_{k=1}^4 \\big( N(N-1)p_k^2 + N p_k \\big)\\\\\n&=\\frac{3+r_0^2}{12}(N^2 -N) +N.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nFrom this, using equations~\\eqref{e:rv4} and \\eqref{e:propa} we immediately get that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\big\\langle r'^2 \\big\\rangle =\n\\frac{12}{N^2} \\Big\\langle \\sum_{k=1}^4 N_k^2 \\Big\\rangle-3 =\nr_0^2 +\\frac{9-r_0^2}{N},\n\\end{equation}\nand finally, using~\\eqref{e:d2}, for the variance we obtain:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:V4}\nV_{\\otimes} =\\frac{\\big\\langle r'^2 \\big\\rangle -\\langle \\mathbf{r}' \\rangle^2}{2} =\n\\frac{9-r_0^2}{2N}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nComparing it with the variances~\\eqref{e:V3} and \\eqref{e:V6} obtained for the previous protocols, we see that in all cases the variances decrease as $1\/N$, but for states close to pure states (i.e., if $r_0 \\lessapprox 1$) the minimal qubit tomography protocol is less performant by a factor of $\\frac{9-1}{9-3}= \\frac{4}{3}$.\n\n\\section{Continuous, equivariant measurement \\label{s:contmeas}}\n\nUp to this point we have investigated three different qubit tomography protocols, which were based on (either projective or POVM) measurements with only a finite number of possible outcomes. In a finite $d$ dimensional Hilbert space the maximal number of possible outcomes of a projective measurement is $d$, but this restriction does not hold for generalized, POVM measurements. In this section we construct a new qubit tomography protocol based on a \\emph{continuous} POVM measurement, which is \\emph{equivariant} under the symmetry group of the qubit system, and supported by the set of pure states, i.e., by the Bloch sphere.\n\nThe attribute ``continuous'' refers to the fact that the investigated measurement has an infinite number of possible outcomes, which form a topological manifold---the Bloch sphere in our case. The attribute ``equivariant'' refers to a kind of nice symmetry property, which deserves a deeper investigation.\n\n\\subsection{Equivariance \\label{ss:equiv}}\n\nAt an abstract level the symmetry group $G$ of an (either classical or quantum) system is an automorphism group of its event lattice \\cite{BirkNeu:36,JvN:55}. States are probability measures on the event lattice, so $G$ acts both on events and (by pullback construction) on states. In quantum mechanics events are projections in the Hilbert space $\\mathcal H$ of the system, and by Gleason's theorem \\cite{Gleas:57} states are represented by density operators. By Wigner's theorem~\\cite{Wig:31}, if $\\dim \\mathcal H >2$, every automorphism $g$ of the projector lattice can be realized by conjugation with a unitary (or antiunitary) operator $U_g$, thus we obtain a left $G$-action on the lattice of projections (events) $\\mathcal P$, and a right $G$-action on the set of density operators (states) $\\mathcal S$:\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:GactP}\nG\\times \\mathcal P &\\to \\mathcal P.&\n(g,P) &\\mapsto gP=U_g PU_g^*;\n\\\\ \\label{e:GactS}\n\\mathcal S \\times G &\\to \\mathcal S,&\n(\\rho,g) &\\mapsto \\rho g=U_g^* \\rho U_g,\n\\end{align}\nand, by the pullback construction\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:rhogp}\n\\rho(gP) =\\Tr(\\rho U_g P U_g^* )= \\Tr(U_g^* \\rho U_g P) =(\\rho g)(P).\n\\end{equation}\n\nPerforming many times a measurement with possible outcomes in the Borel space $(S,\\mathcal B)$ we obtain a probability distribution on the space $S$. Thus a measurement can be regarded as assigning to a quantum state $\\rho$ (i.e., probability function on $\\mathcal P$) a classical state $p_{\\rho}$ (i.e., a probability function on $\\mathcal B$). The simplest way to do this is pulling back $\\rho$ by a morphism $P:\\mathcal B \\to \\mathcal P$ between the classical and quantum event lattice:\n\\begin{align}\np_{\\rho} =\\rho \\circ P: \\mathcal B &\\to [0,1], &\nE &\\mapsto p_{\\rho}(E) =\\Tr\\big(\\rho P(E)\\big).\n\\end{align}\nThe classical $\\to$ quantum lattice morphism $P$ is nothing but a projector valued measure, and the above formula is exactly the probability for the outcome of the projective measurement $P$ being in $E$. Formally the generalized, POVM measurements are obtained by changing $P$ to a positive operator valued measure $Q$ on $(S,\\mathcal B)$.\n\nNow let us assume that $S$ is a right $G$-space, and let $\\gamma_g :S \\to S$ denote the transformation corresponding to $g\\in G$. (So $\\gamma_g \\circ \\gamma_h =\\gamma_{hg}$.) Then its inverse image $\\gamma_g^{-1}: \\mathcal B \\to \\mathcal B$ defines a left action of $G$ on $\\mathcal B$. We say that the POVM $Q$ is \\emph{equivariant} with respect to the group actions $\\gamma^{-1}$ and $\\Hat{U} =U\\cdot U^*$ (conjugation by $U$) if for any $E\\in \\mathcal B$ and $g\\in G$ the following diagram commutes:\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:genimp}\n\\begin{CD}\n\\mathcal B @>{\\gamma_g^{-1}}>> \\mathcal B\\\\\n@VQVV @VQVV \\\\\nB(\\mathcal H) @>{\\Hat{U}_g}>> B(\\mathcal H)\n\\end{CD}\n&&\nU_g Q(E) U_g^* &= Q\\big( \\gamma_g^{-1}(E) \\big),\n\\end{align}\nwhere $B(\\mathcal H)$ denotes the set of bounded operators in $\\mathcal H$.\n\nFor projector valued measures this structure was discovered by George W. Mackey \\cite{Mac:76,Mac:78}, while he was studying the foundations of quantum mechanics \\cite{Mac:63}, and he called it \\emph{imprimitivity system}. Mackey, in his \\emph{imprimitivity theorem}, classified and explicitly constructed the possible imprimitivity systems using \\emph{induced representations}. Since then induced representation became a very important tool in the theory of unitary group representation and harmonic analysis, while the imprimitivity theorem turned out to be a cornerstone of quantum mechanics of free systems. Indeed, the equivariance condition~\\eqref{e:genimp}, stated for projector valued measures on the three dimensional Euclidean space, is a very general and deep expression of the canonical commutation relations. Starting from this, many important properties (like the existence of mass, spin) of the elementary particles can be deduced, based on purely spacetime symmetry requirements \\cite{Mac:63,Mac:78,Varad:68,Jau:68}.\n\nBorrowing the terminology from the projective case, we refer to the equivariance condition~\\eqref{e:genimp} as \\emph{general system of imprimitivity}, more precisely, as the POVM $Q$ is a \\emph{generalized system of imprimitivity for $U$ based on $S$}. In the next subsection we give a very simple example for this in terms of a qubit.\n\n\\subsection{Equivariant POVM on the Bloch sphere \\label{ss:equPOVM}}\n\nFirst of all, we note that Wigner's theorem does not apply for two dimensional Hilbert spaces; the projector lattice of $\\mathbb{C}^2$ has a much bigger symmetry group than the symmetries induced by unitaries (and antiunitaries). People consider it as a pathological fact due to the low dimensionality of the space. Here we join this opinion and consider the group $SO(3,\\mathbb{R}) =SU(2,\\mathbb{C})\/\\mathbb{Z}_2$ as the symmetry group $G$ of the qubit. (The reason for the factorization is that conjugation with $U$ and $-U$ is the same transformation.)\n\nFurthermore, as the set $S$ of possible measurement outcomes we choose the set of pure states, i.e., the Bloch sphere itself! It is a very clever choice for several reasons: $i)$~By~\\eqref{e:GactS} $S$ is a right $G$-space in a natural way. $ii)$~Classically pure states are Dirac measures on the phase space, thus in this respect $S$ is the quantum analog of classical phase space. Is there any better measurement than the one returning \\emph{the} (or \\emph{a}?) phase space position (pure state) of the measured system? And finally $iii)$~pure states are rank one projections, i.e., positive operators, thus the POVM $Q$ is ``already there'' on $S$, one has only to normalize it.\n\nThe rank one projectors $\\rho(\\mathbf{s})$ are parametrized by points $\\mathbf{s}$ of the Bloch sphere ($|\\mathbf{s}|=1$), unitaries have the form $U_{\\mathbf{n}} =e^{i\\mathbf{n}\\bm{\\sigma}}$ (where $|\\mathbf{n}| < 2\\pi$), and it can be shown that\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:UrhoU}\nU_{\\mathbf{n}} \\rho(\\mathbf{s}) U_{\\mathbf{n}}^* =\ne^{i\\mathbf{n}\\bm{\\sigma}} \\rho(\\mathbf{s}) e^{-i\\mathbf{n}\\bm{\\sigma}}=\n\\rho(O_{-2\\mathbf{n}} \\mathbf{s}),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $O_{\\mathbf{m}}$ is the orthogonal rotation around the axis $\\mathbf{m}$ at an angle $|\\mathbf{m}|$. (To derive this the equation $[\\mathbf{n}\\bm{\\sigma}, \\mathbf{m} \\bm{\\sigma}] =2i(\\mathbf{n} \\times \\mathbf{m}) \\bm{\\sigma}$ is needed, which is a straightforward consequence of~\\eqref{e:sigma}.) Thus in the Bloch sphere picture the symmetry transformations are the rotations of the sphere! (We remark here that the nonunitary symmetries are arbitrary homeomorphisms of the Bloch sphere which map antipodal points to antipodal points.) Equations~\\eqref{e:GactS} and \\eqref{e:UrhoU} also show that in this case the right $G$-action $\\gamma_{\\mathbf{n}}$ on the space $S$ is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:gam}\n\\gamma_{\\mathbf{n}}(\\mathbf{s}) =\\text{representing point of }U_{\\mathbf{n}}^* \\rho(\\mathbf{s}) U_{\\mathbf{n}} =O_{2\\mathbf{n}} \\mathbf{s}.\n\\end{equation}\n\nNow let $\\omega$ be the normalized area measure on the unit sphere $S$, i.e., in spherical polar coordinates $(\\vartheta, \\varphi)$, $d\\omega(\\vartheta, \\varphi) =\\frac{\\sin \\vartheta}{4\\pi} d\\vartheta d\\varphi$, and for a Borel set $E\\subset S$ let the POVM $Q$ be defined by\n\\begin{subequations}\\label{e:Q}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:Qa}\nQ(E) =2\\int_{\\mathbf{s}\\in E} \\rho(\\mathbf{s}) d\\omega(\\mathbf{s}) \n=2\\omega(E) \\rho\\big(\n{\\textstyle \\int_{\\mathbf{s} \\in E} \\mathbf{s} d\\omega(\\mathbf{s})}\\big),\n\\end{equation}\nor shortly\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:Qb}\ndQ(\\mathbf{s}) &=2\\rho(\\mathbf{s}) d\\omega(\\mathbf{s}),&\nQ &= 2\\rho \\omega. \n\\end{align}\n\\end{subequations}\n(The last equality in~\\eqref{e:Qa} is a consequence of~\\eqref{e:rhoav}.) It is clear that $Q$ is normalized, i.e., $Q(S) =2\\rho(\\mathbf{0}) =I$.\n\nUsing the previous three formulas~(\\ref{e:UrhoU}--\\ref{e:Q}) and the invariance of the area measure $\\omega =\\omega\\circ O^{-1}$ under any rotation $O$, it is simple to show that $Q$ satisfies the equivariance condition~\\eqref{e:genimp}:\n\\begin{multline}\nU_{\\mathbf{n}} Q(E) U_{\\mathbf{n}}^* =\n2{\\textstyle \\omega(E)\\rho\\big( \\int_{\\mathbf{s} \\in E} O_{-2\\mathbf{n}} \\mathbf{s} d\\omega(\\mathbf{s}) \\big)}\n\\\\\n=2{\\textstyle \\omega(E)\\rho\\big( \\int_{\\mathbf{s} \\in O_{-2\\mathbf{n}}E} \\mathbf{s} d\\omega(\\mathbf{s}) \\big)}\n=Q\\big( \\gamma_{\\mathbf{n}}^{-1}(E)\\big).\n\\end{multline}\n(It is worth noticing that here essentially the equation~\\eqref{e:rhogp} and the invariance of $\\omega$ was used.)\n\nWe give the concrete formula of the POVM $Q$ in spherical polar coordinates $(\\vartheta, \\varphi)$, although we will keep on using the abstract form~\\eqref{e:Q}:\n\\begin{equation}\ndQ(\\vartheta, \\varphi) =\\frac{\\sin\\vartheta}{4\\pi}\n\\begin{bmatrix}\n1+\\cos\\vartheta & e^{-i\\varphi} \\sin\\vartheta\\\\\ne^{i\\varphi} \\sin\\vartheta & 1-\\cos\\vartheta\n\\end{bmatrix}\n d\\vartheta d\\varphi.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIntuitively this POVM can be regarded as the limit of discrete POVM's supported by more and more points scattered uniformly on the Bloch sphere. In the previous section we have seen examples for four (subsection~\\ref{ss:minqubt}) and six (subsection~\\ref{ss:hexqubt}) supporting points with tetrahedral and hexagonal symmetry, respectively.\n\nNow let us investigate the distribution of the measurement $Q$ provided that the system is in state $\\rho_0 =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0)$. The probability density function $f_0$ (with respect to $\\omega$) at the outcome $\\mathbf{s} \\in S$ is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:f0}\n\\begin{split}\nf_0 (\\mathbf{s}) &=\\lim_{dE\\to 0}\\frac{\\Tr\\big(\\rho_0 Q(dE)\\big)}{\\omega(dE)}\\\\\n&=2\\Tr\\big(\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0)\\rho(\\mathbf{s})\\big) \n= 1+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{s},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $dE$ is an infinitesimally small area on the sphere $S$ around $\\mathbf{s}$. (The last equality is a direct consequence of~\\eqref{e:sigma}.) This probability distribution is \\emph{unsharp}, even for pure states! If $r_0 =1$, then the maximum is $f_0(\\mathbf{r}_0) =2$, and the minimum is $f_0(-\\mathbf{r}_0) =0$.\n\nHere it is worth noting that the POVM $Q$ defined in~\\eqref{e:Q} is not the unique solution of the equivariance condition \\eqref{e:genimp} (but probably the most reasonable one). Indeed, for any $\\alpha \\in [0,1]$ the POVM\n\\begin{equation}\nQ_{\\alpha} (E) =\\alpha Q(E) + (1-\\alpha)\\omega(E) I\n\\end{equation}\nsatisfies the equivariance condition~\\eqref{e:genimp}, but the density function of $\\Tr\\big(\\rho_0 Q_{\\alpha}(\\cdot )\\big)$ at $\\mathbf{s} \\in S$ is $1+\\alpha \\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{s}$, which is even less sharp then~\\eqref{e:f0}.\n\nFinally it is worth calculating the measure of a semisphere. The ``center of mass'' of the  semisphere $S^+ (\\mathbf{r})$ with midpoint $\\mathbf{r}$ ($|\\mathbf{r}|=1$) is at $\\frac{\\mathbf{r}}{2}$, so by~\\eqref{e:Qa}\n\\begin{equation}\nQ\\big( (S^+ (\\mathbf{r})\\big) =\\rho\\Big( \\frac{\\mathbf{r}}{4}\\Big) =\n\\frac{I}{2}+ \\frac{\\mathbf{r} \\bm{\\sigma}}{4}.\n\\end{equation}\nComparing it to the orthogonal projections~\\eqref{e:Pxyzpm}, we see that if we are interested in a particular spin component of the state $\\rho_0$, then it is better to perform a projective spin measurement than measuring $Q$. But what if we are interested in all components of the vector $\\mathbf{r}_0$?\n\n\\subsection{Maximal qubit tomography}\n\nIn this subsection we investigate a quantum bit state estimation protocol based on the POVM $Q:\\mathcal B(S)\\to B(\\mathbb{C}^2)$ introduced in the previous subsection [see equation~\\eqref{e:Q}]. We find it convenient to call this protocol \\emph{maximal qubit tomography}, since the whole set $S$ of pure states constitute the possible measurement outcomes.\n\nAssume that performing $N$ independent measurements on replicas of the qubit in the same state $\\rho_0$, the measurement outcomes $\\{ \\mathbf{n}_k \\}_{k=1}^N \\subset S$ are obtained, where each $\\mathbf{n}_k$ represents a pure state on the Bloch sphere $S$, i.e., $\\mathbf{n}_k \\in \\mathbb{R}^3$, $|\\mathbf{n}_k|=1$. Using \\eqref{e:f0}, the likelihood function, i.e., the probability density function on $S^N$ of obtaining this measurement statistics in the state $\\rho_0 =\\rho(\\mathbf{r}_0)$ is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:Lmax}\n\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) = \\prod_{k=1}^N (1+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{n}_k ).\n\\end{equation}\nIts gradient at $\\mathbf{r}'$ is $\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}')\\sum_{k=1}^N \\frac{\\mathbf{n}_k}{1+\\mathbf{r}' \\mathbf{n}_k}$, which yields the likelihood equation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:lemax}\n\\sum_{k=1}^N \\frac{\\mathbf{n}_k}{1+\\mathbf{r}' \\mathbf{n}_k}=0.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe second derivative of the logarithm of the likelihood function~\\eqref{e:Lmax}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{\\partial^2}{\\partial \\mathbf{r}^2} \\ln\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}) =\n- \\sum_{k=1}^N \\frac{\\mathbf{n}_k \\circ \\mathbf{n}_k}{(1+\\mathbf{r} \\mathbf{n}_k)^2}\n\\end{equation}\nis everywhere negative definite, so the likelihood equation~\\eqref{e:lemax} \\emph{has a unique} solution for $\\mathbf{r}'$, where $\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}')$ is maximal. Unfortunately for a general measurement statistics $\\{\\mathbf{n}_k\\}_{k=1}^N$ this solution cannot be analytically determined. (In subsection~\\ref{ss:minqubt} a similar equation~\\eqref{e:lemin} was obtained, which could be explicitly solved \\eqref{e:rv4} because of the symmetry of the fixed $\\{\\mathbf{a}_k\\}_{k=1}^4$ vectors.)\n\nInstead of using the maximum likelihood estimator we introduce another obvious estimator\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:rpmax}\n\\mathbf{r}' &=f(N) \\sum_{k=1}^N \\mathbf{n}_k,&\n&\\text{with}&\nf(N) &= \\frac{3}{N}\n\\end{align}\nwhere the (yet) unknown coefficient $f(N)$ is determined from the expectational value of $\\mathbf{r}'$. For this aim we need two simple integrals:\n\\begin{align}\\label{e:ints}\n\\int_{\\mathbf{n} \\in S} \\mathbf{n} d\\omega(\\mathbf{n}) &=0,&\n\\int_{\\mathbf{n} \\in S} \\mathbf{n} \\circ \\mathbf{n} d\\omega(\\mathbf{n}) &= \\frac{1}{3} I,\n\\end{align}\nwhere $\\omega$ is the normalized area on the unit sphere $S$. (The first integral is zero by symmetry, and the second integral can easily be calculated in spherical polar coordinates $(\\vartheta,\\varphi)$, where $d\\omega(\\vartheta,\\varphi) =\\frac{\\sin \\vartheta}{4\\pi} d\\vartheta d\\varphi$.)\n\nThus, using \\eqref{e:Lmax}, \\eqref{e:rpmax}, and then \\eqref{e:ints}, the expectational value of the estimator is\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n\\langle \\mathbf{r}' \\rangle &=\nf(N) \\sum_{k=1}^N \\int_{\\{\\mathbf{n}_k\\} \\in S^N}\n\\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) \\mathbf{n}_k d^N\\omega(\\mathbf{n}_k) \\\\\n&= Nf(N) \\int_{\\mathbf{n} \\in S} \\mathbf{n} (1+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{n}) d\\omega(\\mathbf{n}) =\n\\frac{Nf(N)}{3} \\mathbf{r}_0,\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich means that indeed, $f(N)=\\frac{3}{N}$ should be chosen to get an unbiased estimation. (The integrals decouple, and for every $k$ only the integral over $\\mathbf{n}_k$ gives a nontrivial result, the other integrals are $1$. The obtained result is also in accordance with~\\eqref{e:rv4}.)\n\nIn order to calculate the variance we need another integral, which can be easily obtained from~\\eqref{e:ints}:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\int\\limits_{\\mathbf{n} \\in S} \\int\\limits_{\\mathbf{m} \\in S}\n\\mathbf{n}\\mathbf{m} (1+\\mathbf{r}_0 \\mathbf{n}) (1+\\mathbf{r}_0\\mathbf{m} ) d\\omega(\\mathbf{m}) d\\omega(\\mathbf{n})\n=\\frac{r_0^2}{9}.\n\\end{equation}\nUsing this, we get that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\n\\big\\langle r'^2 \\big\\rangle &=\n\\frac{9}{N^2} \\int_{\\{\\mathbf{n}_k\\} \\in S^N} \n\\Big(\\sum_{k=1}^N \\mathbf{n}_k \\Big)^2 \\mathcal L(\\mathbf{r}_0) d^N\\omega(\\mathbf{n}_k) \\\\\n&=\\frac{9 +(N-1)r_0^2}{N},\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nso, by~\\eqref{e:d2}, the variance of the (unrestricted) estimator~\\eqref{e:rpmax} is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{e:Vmax}\nV_{\\Circle} =\\frac{\\big\\langle r'^2 \\big\\rangle -\\langle \\mathbf{r}'\\rangle^2}{2} \n= \\frac{9-r_0^2}{2N},\n\\end{equation}\nwhich exactly coincides with the one~\\eqref{e:V4} obtained for the minimal qubit tomography protocol.\n\n\\section{Conclusions}\n\nIn table \\ref{t:res} we summarize the results obtained for the four different qubit state estimation protocols. (The variance of the state $\\rho(\\mathbf{r}')$ is calculated from the Hilbert-Schmidt distance, and by equation~\\eqref{e:d2} it is half of the variance of $\\mathbf{r}'$.)\n\n\\begin{table*}\n\\begin{tabular}{|ll|c|c|}\n\\hline\n&\n\\parbox{9cm}{\\vspace{2pt}\\textbf{Protocol}\\vspace{2pt}} & \n\\textbf{mean} &\n\\textbf{\\boldmath variance of $\\rho'$}\n\\\\ \n\\hhline{|==|=|=|}\n$\\ast$ &\n\\parbox{9cm}{projective spin measurements in three orthogonal directions} &\n\\parbox{2.2cm}{unbiased}& \n\\parbox{4cm}{\\vspace{2pt}\n$\\displaystyle \\frac{9-3r_0^2}{2N}$\n\\vspace{2pt}}\n\\\\ \\hline\n$\\circledast$ &\n\\parbox{9cm}{POVM measurement in six orthogonal directions} &\n\\parbox{2.2cm}{asymptotically unbiased} &\n\\parbox{4cm}{\\vspace{2pt}\n$\\displaystyle \\frac{9-3r_0^2}{2N} \\quad\\text{for}\\quad N\\gg 1$\n\\vspace{2pt}}\n\\\\ \\hline\n$\\otimes$ &\n\\parbox{9cm}{\\emph{minimal qubit tomography}\\\\\n(POVM measurement in four tetrahedral directions)} &\n\\parbox{2.2cm}{unbiased} &\n\\parbox{4cm}{\\vspace{2pt}\n$\\displaystyle \\frac{9-r_0^2}{2N}$\n\\vspace{2pt}}\n\\\\ \\hline\n$\\Circle$ &\n\\parbox{9cm}{\\emph{maximal qubit tomography}\\\\\n(POVM measurement uniformly on the whole Bloch sphere)} &\n\\parbox{2.2cm}{unbiased} &\n\\parbox{4cm}{\\vspace{2pt}\n$\\displaystyle \\frac{9-r_0^2}{2N}$\n\\vspace{2pt}}\n\\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{\\label{t:res}The results obtained for the different qubit tomography protocols.}\n\\end{table*}\n\nIt is clearly visible that all estimation schemes perform more or less equally well, although there are projective ($\\ast$), discrete POVM ($\\circledast$, $\\otimes$), and continuous POVM measurements ($\\Circle$) among them. For states close to pure states (i.e., for $r_0 \\lessapprox 1$) the variance of the first two protocols with hexagonal symmetry ($\\ast$ and $\\circledast$) is a bit less than the variance of $\\otimes$ and $\\Circle$. On the other hand, the variance of the minimal and maximal qubit tomography protocol is exactly the same for all states.\n\nBased upon these examples we may draw some general conclusions on the unusual properties of POVM measurements.\n\nIn classical Hamiltonian mechanics the phase space can be identified with the set of pure states of the system, which are simply Dirac measures concentrated on a single point of the phase space. This observation motivates to regard the set of pure states even in a finite dimensional quantum mechanical system as the quantum analog of phase space.\n\nA widespread paradigm of quantum mechanics, based on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, is the fact that all the classical phase space variables cannot be measured simultaneously with arbitrary high precision. Originally this was stated for \\emph{projective measurements}, which are \\emph{sharp} in the sense that for every possible measurement outcome there \\emph{is} a state for which the specified outcome occurs with probability one. (Right after the measurement the system ``jumps'' into a state of this kind.) Coordinate and momentum operators do not commute, thus they do not possess a common projector valued measure.\n\nOn the other hand, there are generalized POVM measurements which yield results corresponding to simultaneous values of noncommuting operators! This fact is, however, not in contradiction with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, since the result of the POVM measurement is \\emph{unsharp}, i.e., for \\emph{any} pure state of the system the measurement results have dispersed probability distributions. A very simple example is the POVM measurement constructed in subsection~\\ref{ss:equPOVM}, which clearly demonstrates all the unusual features of generalized measurements. In summary, in contrast to projective measurements, a POVM measurement\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item[$\\ddot\\smile$]\nmay have a continuous set of possible outcomes, even in a finite dimensional Hilbert space;\n\\item[$\\ddot\\smile$]\nmay yield simultaneously values for incompatible (noncommuting) observables;\n\\item[$\\ddot\\frown$]\nbut these simultaneous results are unsharp. (In particular, it means that repeated measurements do not give the same outcome.)\n\\item[$\\ddot-$]\nFurthermore, the information gains ($\\ddot\\smile$) and information losses ($\\ddot\\frown$) somehow compensate each other, so cleverly chosen POVM measurements yield more or less the same amount of information about the true state as projective measurements.\n\\item[$\\ddot\\smile$]\nLast but not least, POVM measurements can be much better adjusted to respect continuous symmetries of the system than projective measurements.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nFinally we remark that POVM measurements (or \\emph{weak measurements}) are not pure mathematical constructions, they can also be experimentally realized by making an appropriate projective measurement on a composite system.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nThe Roofline performance model \\cite{CACM09_Roofline1} offers an insightful and intuitive way to extracte key computational characteristics for applications in high-performance computing (HPC).\nIts capability to abstract away the complexity of modern memory hierarchies and guide performance analysis and optimization effort has gained its popularity in recent years.\n\n\nRoofline is a throughput-oriented model centered around the interplay between computational capabilities, memory bandwidth, and data locality.  Data locality is the reuse of data once it is being loaded from the main memory, and it is commonly expressed as the arithmetic intensity (AI), ratio between the floating-point operations performed and the data moved (FLOPs\/Byte).\nThe performance (GFLOP\/s) is bound by the following two terms:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\mbox{GFLOP\/s} \\leq \\mbox{min} \\left\\{ \n  \\begin{array}{@{}l@{}}\n    \\mbox{Peak GFLOP\/s}\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\\\\\n    \\mbox{Peak GB\/s} \\times \\mbox{Arithmetic Intensity}\t\n  \\end{array}\n\\right.\n\\label{eq:roofline_naive}\n\\end{equation}\n\n\n\n\n\nConventionally, the Roofline model is focused on one level of the memory system, but this has been extended to the entire memory hierarchy in recent years, named the hierarchical Roofline model. \nThe hierarchical Roofline helps understand cache reuse and data locality and provides additional insights into the efficiency of the application's utilization of the memory subsystem. \nThe hierarchical Roofline has been integrated into Intel Advisor \\cite{advisor,koskela2018novel}, and NVIDIA Nsight Compute \\cite{ncu,nsight_compute}. \nEven though they should be the go-to methods for Roofline analysis, we would like to present in this paper a few other tools for the purpose of flexibility and generality. \n\nWe will discuss the use of Intel Advisor \\cite{advisor}, RRZE LIKWID \\cite{likwid}, Intel SDE \\cite{SDE} and Intel VTune \\cite{VTune} on Intel CPUs, and nvprof \\cite{nvprof}, Nsight Compute metrics, and Nsight Compute section files \\cite{nsight_compute} on NVIDIA GPUs.\nA mini-application will be used for demonstration and validation purpose, and it is extracted from the Material Science code BerkeleyGW \\cite{BGW2} called General Plasmon Pole (GPP) \\cite{examplescripts}. \nArchitecture-wise, we will focus on the Intel Knights Landing (KNL) CPU and NVIDIA V100 GPU.  \n\n \n\n  \n\nTo facilitate the Roofline study, a range of other tools have sprung to life as well,\nfor example, the Empirical Roofline Toolkit (ERT) for more accurate machine characterization \\cite{ert,yang2018empirical}, and \\cite{nerscroofline,yang2018toward,madsen2020timemory,yang2019hierarchical,yang2019cug} for more streamlined data collection methods.\nOther than tools development, there are many studies on the application of the Roofline model in traditional HPC \\cite{Doerfler,yang2019hierarchical,yang2019cug,del2020accelerating,gayatri2018case} and Machine Learning \\cite{yang2019hierarchical,yang2019cug,wang2020pmbs,wang2020dlonsc}, and extension and refinement of the model to related topics in HPC, such as instruction Roofline \\cite{ding2019instruction}, time-based Roofline \\cite{wang2020dlonsc}, Roofline scaling trajectory \\cite{ibrahim2019performance}, performance portability analysis based on Roofline \\cite{yang2018empirical}, and power and energy Roofline  \\cite{powerroofline,alexpowerroofline}.\n\n\n\n\\section{Application and Machine Setup}\n\n\\subsection{Mini-Application General Plasmon Pole (GPP) \\label{sec:gpp}}\n\nThe GPP mini-application~\\cite{examplescripts} is extracted from the Material Science code BerkeleyGW~\\cite{BGW2}, and it represents the work typically done on a single MPI rank.\nIt is written in C++, and parallelized with OpenMP on the CPU and CUDA on the GPU.\nThe computation involved this mini-app is tensor-contraction like, and several pre-calculated complex double precision arrays are multiplied and summed over certain dimensions and collapsed into a small vector. \nThe problem used in this paper is a medium sized one, and it comprises of 512 electrons and 32768 plane wave basis elements.\nThe pseudo code for this mini-app is as follows.\n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  do band = 1, nbands   \n   do igp = 1, ngpown  \n    do ig = 1, ncouls   \n     do iw = 1, nw     \n       load wtilde_array(ig,igp)  \n       load aqsntemp(ig,band)  \n       load eps(ig,igp)  \n       compute wdiff, delw, sch_array, ssx_array\n       reduce on achtemp(iw), asxtemp(iw)\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\nThe real code, job scripts and resulted are available at \\cite{examplescripts}.\n\n \n\\subsection{Machine Setup\\label{sec:machine}}\n\nThis study is conducted on the Cori supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).\n\nCori has three main partitions, Haswell, KNL and GPU, and this study has used its KNL partition \\cite{nerscdocu1} and GPU chassis \\cite{nerscdocu2}. \nEach KNL node is a single-socket Intel Xeon Phi Processor 7250 (Knights Landing) processor and has 68 physical cores.\nThere is 96 GB DDR4 memory and 16 GB MCDRAM (or HBM) per node, with the MCDRAM configured in `cache' mode by default.\nThe GPU chassis is deployed primarily for \nthe NERSC Exascale Science Applications Program (NESAP).\nIt has 18 GPU nodes in total, and each node contains two 20-core Intel Xeon Gold 6148 Skylake CPUs, 384 GB DDR4 memory, \nand 8 NVIDIA V100 Volta GPUs.\nEach GPU has 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), 16 GB HBM2 memory, and is connected to others in a `hybrid cube-mesh' topology.\n\n\\section{Methods and Results}\n\n\\subsection{Roofline Data Collection on Intel CPUs\\label{sec:metho1}}\n\nIntel Advisor \\cite{advisor} provides the production quality, fully integrated hierarchical Roofline analysis on Intel CPUs, with very little user effort required. Compared to LIKWID \\cite{likwid}, it has a higher profiling overhead due to the static instruction analysis and cache simulation. LIKWID \\cite{likwid} is an open-source package developed at the Regional Computing Center Erlangen (RRZE) in Germany. It provides several \n`performance groups' for easier and more streamlined performance analysis, and in this paper, we have identified a few for the hierarchical Roolfine data collection.\nLIKWID uses metrics that are based on micro-ops not instructions, and in some cases, it does not distinguish the different vector lengths, such as scalars, AVX-2\/AVX-512 instructions, and masked\/unmasked vector lanes.\nThis may cause certain inaccuracy and require extra care, however its low overhead has made it a very attractive option for large-scale application analysis.\nTo collect hierarchical Roofline data, another method is to use Intel SDE \\cite{SDE} and VTune \\cite{VTune}.\nSDE has a very high profiling overhead but it provides the most accurate instruction count and it can produce L1 data movement information as well. \nOn the other hand, VTune can be used to collect DDR\/MCDRAM information to complement SDE.\nIn the following few subsections, we will detail the command lines used to collect Roofline data on KNL and the subsequent results.\n\n\\subsubsection{Intel Advisor}\n\nAdvisor can be invoked as follows for Roofline analysis, and Fig.~\\ref{fig:adv} shows that in GPP, the most significant function takes 2s of `Self-Time' and produces 398 GFLOP\/s double-precision performance on 64 OpenMP threads.\nAdvisor naturally provides details on the level of functions and loops, while the methods we will discuss below may require some code instrumentation in order to focus on certain code regions of interest. \n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load advisor\/2020\n  advixe-cl --collect=roofline --project-dir=<dir>\n        -- .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{adv.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on KNL using Advisor}\n\\label{fig:adv}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{RRZE LIKWID}\n\nLIKWID \\cite{likwid} is an open-source software package and here we use its `performance groups', FLOPS\\_DP, HBM\\_CACHE, L2 and DATA (for L1), for hierarchical Roofline data collection. \nEach of these groups contains a set of raw hardware counters and derived performance metrics, without user having to dive deep into the nitty-gritty micro-architecture specs and hardware counter details.\nThe following command can be used to profile with LIKWID, \n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load likwid\/4.3.0\n  groups=('FLOPS_DP' 'HBM_CACHE' 'L2' 'DATA')\n  for gs in ${groups[@]}\n  do\n    likwid-perfctr -c 0-271 -g $gs \n                   .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\n  done\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{likwid.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on KNL using LIKWID}\n\\label{fig:likwid}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe raw results for GPP are as follows, and Fig.~\\ref{fig:likwid} shows that LIKWID produces a similar Roofline chart as Advisor, with close arithmetic intensity and performance.\nThe DDR-level arithmetic intensity is extremely high in Fig.~\\ref{fig:likwid}, because the data set (1.5-2 GB) fits well into the HBM cache and there is little memory transaction between DDR and HBM.\n\n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  Time: 10.2243 secs\n  GFLOPS: 5051.923 \n  MCDRAM Bytes: 742.8158 GB\n  DDR Bytes: 0.8883 GB\n  L2 Bytes: 1387.739 GB\n  L1 Bytes: 6456.799 GB\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Intel VTune and Intel SDE}\n\nThis is a methodology developed a few years before the full integration of Roofline into Advisor, and may still present value to users who would like to investigate the underlying details.\nIn this case, the SDE tool can be used for collection of the FLOPs count and L1 data movement, while VTune can be used for uncore data movement collection.\nThe commands and results for GPP analysis in this paper are listed below, and Fig.~\\ref{fig:sdevtune}  presents the combined data with a very high consistency with the results in Fig.~\\ref{fig:likwid} (albeit the missing L2 data). \n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  # commands for SDE\n  sde64 -knl -d -iform 1 -omix result.sde \n        -global_region \n        -start_ssc_mark 111:repeat \n        -stop_ssc_mark 222:repeat \n        -- .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  # results from SDE\n  GFLOPS: 5839.811\n  L1 Bytes: 3795.623\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  # commands for VTune\n  module load vtune\/2020\n  vtune -start-paused -r my-vtune.knl \n        -collect memory-access \n        -finalization-mode=none \n        -data-limit=0 \n        -- .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\n  vtune -report hw-events \n        -group-by=package \n        -r my-vtune.knl\/ \n        -format csv -csv-delimiter comma  \n        > advisor.html\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  # results from VTune\n  DDR Bytes: 0.735\n  MCDRAM Bytes: 594.562\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{sde-vtune.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on KNL using SDE and VTune}\n\\label{fig:sdevtune}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsection{Roofline Data Collection on NVIDIA GPUs\\label{sec:metho2}}\n\nOn NVIDIA GPUs, an nvprof \\cite{nvprof} based methodology was first proposed in  \\cite{yang2019hierarchical}, then an Nsight Compute \\cite{nsight_compute} metrics based one developed in \\cite{wang2020pmbs,metho}. These methodologies require a dozen of metrics to be collected for hierarchical Roofline analysis, and could incur significant profiling overhead when the number of kernels in the code is high.\nWith nvprof phasing out in the developer toolchain, Nsight Compute has become the focus of the development of Roofline data collection methodology. \nA more simplified set of metrics are identified and validated in \\cite{metho,yang20208}, and it has since been integrated into Nsight Compute 2020 (CUDA 11 release) \\cite{ncu}.\nThe default Roofline feature shipped in Nsight Compute 2020 only includes the HBM level analysis, but it can be extended by using custom section files and\/or job scripts such as \\cite{metho,yang20208}, for hierarchical Roofline analysis.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Custom Section Files in Nsight Compute 2020\\label{sec:ncuprof}}\nNsight Compute uses Google Protocol Buffer messages for the section file, \nand it allows users to quickly create custom section files for their own tailored analysis. \nThe following is an example in \\cite{examplescripts} that can be used to collect the hierarchical double precision Roofline data for GPP, and its results are shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:ncuprof}.\nThe 13 FLOPs\/Byte arithmetic intensity shows that this kernel has well entered the compute bound region on the HBM level, and particular attention should be paid to the utilization of compute resources such as threads and instructions, rather than the memory system.\n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load nsight-compute\/2020.1.0\n  ncu -k NumBandNgpown_kernel \n      -o ncu.prof \n      --section-folder .\/ncu-section-files \n      --section \n      SpeedOfLight_HierarchicalDoubleRooflineChart \n      .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0 \n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{ncuprof.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on V100 using Nsight Compute 2020}\n\\label{fig:ncuprof}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\caption{{nvprof} metrics for Roofline data collection\n\\label{tab:nvprof}\n \n{\\footnotesize\n  \\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}\n  \\hline\n    & \\textbf{Commands\/Metrics}\\\\\n  \\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{Time}\n    & nvprof --print-gpu-summary .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{FP64 FLOPs}\n    & nvprof --metrics flop\\_count\\_dp \\\\\n    \\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{ FP32 FLOPs }\n    & flop\\_count\\_sp \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{ FP16 FLOPs }\n    & flop\\_count\\_hp \\\\\n\\hline\n    Tensor Core & tensor\\_precision\\_fu\\_utilization\\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{L1 Cache}\n         & gld\\_transactions, gst\\_transactions, atomic\\_transactions\\\\ \n         & local\\_load\\_transactions, local\\_store\\_transactions \\\\\n         & shared\\_load\\_transactions, shared\\_store\\_transactions \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{L2 Cache}\n    & l2\\_read\\_transactions, l2\\_write\\_transactions\\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{HBM}\n    & dram\\_read\\_transactions, dram\\_write\\_transactions\\\\\n\\hline\n  \\end{tabular}\n }\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{The nvprof Profiler}\n\nMany developers started their GPU optimization with the nvprof profiler and our initial Roofline methodology also starts with the metrics in nvprof.\nTab.~\\ref{tab:nvprof} lists a set of metrics that can be used for hierarchical Roofline analysis and they are put in three categories, runtime, FLOPs count, and data movement (in bytes) between different memory\/cache levels.\nThese metrics are based on CUPTI and can be mapped to the PerfWorks framework in Nsight Compute through \\cite{metricsmapping}, with certain validation.\nThe following command has been used for the GPP data collection and the results are in Fig.~\\ref{fig:nvprof}, with a very similar set of arithmetic intensities on L1, L2 and HBM levels, and GFLOP\/s performance to those in Fig.~\\ref{fig:ncuprof}.\n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load cuda\/10.2.89\n  metrics='fp_count_dp,...' # see Tab. I\n  nvprof --kernels NumBandNgpown_kernel\n         --metrics $metrics \n         .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0\n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{nvprof.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on V100 using nvprof metrics}\n\\label{fig:nvprof}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Metrics in Nsight Compute 2019}\n\nAs nvprof phases out, we have developed a data collection methodology based on Nsight Compute 2019.\nThese metrics as listed in Tab.~\\ref{tab:ncu10} are more detailed than those in nvprof, and they produce comparable results as seen in Fig.~\\ref{fig:ncu10} and Fig.~\\ref{fig:ncuprof}.\nThe commands used to collect Roofline data for GPP are as follows.\n\n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load cuda\/10.2.89\n  metrics='sm__cycles_elapsed.avg,...' # see Tab. II\n  nv-nsight-cu-cli  -k NumBandNgpown_kernel\n                    --metrics $metrics \n                    .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0 \n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\caption{Nsight Compute 2019 metrics for Roofline data collection}\n\\label{tab:ncu10}\n \n{\\footnotesize\n  \\begin{tabular}{|@{\\;}c@{\\;\\;}|@{\\;\\;}c@{\\;}|}\n  \\hline\n    & \\textbf{Metrics}\\\\\n  \\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{2}{*}{Time}\n    & sm\\_\\_cycles\\_elapsed.avg\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_cycles\\_elapsed.avg.per\\_second\\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{FP64 FLOPs}\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dadd\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dmul\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dfma\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    \\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{FP32 FLOPs}\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_fadd\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_fmul\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_ffma\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{FP16 FLOPs}\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hadd\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hmul\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hfma\\_pred\\_on.sum\\\\\n\\hline\n    Tensor Core & sm\\_\\_inst\\_executed\\_pipe\\_tensor.sum\\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{10}{*}{L1 Cache}\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_global\\_op\\_ld.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_bytes\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_global\\_op\\_st.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_set\\_accesses\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_global\\_op\\_atom.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_set\\_accesses\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_global\\_op\\_red.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_set\\_accesses\\_pipe\\_tex\\_mem\\_surface\\_op\\_atom.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_set\\_accesses\\_pipe\\_tex\\_mem\\_surface\\_op\\_red.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_local\\_op\\_ld.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_mem\\_local\\_op\\_st.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_data\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_wavefronts\\_mem\\_shared\\_op\\_ld.sum\\\\\n    & l1tex\\_\\_data\\_pipe\\_lsu\\_wavefronts\\_mem\\_shared\\_op\\_st.sum\\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{4}{*}{L2 Cache}\n    & lts\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_op\\_read.sum\\\\\n    & lts\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_op\\_write.sum\\\\\n    & lts\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_op\\_atom.sum\\\\\n    & lts\\_\\_t\\_sectors\\_op\\_red.sum\\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{2}{*}{HBM}\n    & dram\\_\\_sectors\\_read.sum\\\\\n    & dram\\_\\_sectors\\_write.sum\\\\\n\\hline\n  \\end{tabular}\n  }\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{ncu10.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on V100 using Nsight Compute 2019 metrics}\n\\label{fig:ncu10}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\\begin{table}[h]\n\\caption{Nsight Compute 2020 metrics for Roofline data collection\n\\label{tab:ncu11}\n \n{\\footnotesize\n  \\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}\n  \\hline\n    & \\textbf{Commands\/Metrics}\\\\\n  \\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{2}{*}{Time}\n    & sm\\_\\_cycles\\_elapsed.avg \\\\ \n    & sm\\_\\_cycles\\_elapsed.avg.per\\_second \\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{FP64 FLOPs}\n& sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dadd\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n& sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dfma\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n& sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_dmul\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n    \\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{ FP32 FLOPs }\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_fadd\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_ffma\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_fmul\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{ FP16 FLOPs }\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hadd\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hfma\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n    & sm\\_\\_sass\\_thread\\_inst\\_executed\\_op\\_hmul\\_pred\\_on.sum \\\\\n\\hline\n     Tensor Core  & \\multirow{1}{*}{sm\\_\\_inst\\_executed\\_pipe\\_tensor.sum}\\\\\n   \n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{L1 Cache}\n         & l1tex\\_\\_t\\_bytes.sum \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{L2 Cache}\n    & lts\\_\\_t\\_bytes.sum \\\\\n\\hline\n\\multirow{1}{*}{HBM}\n    & dram\\_\\_bytes.sum\\\\\n\\hline\n  \\end{tabular}\n }\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Metrics in Nsight Compute 2020}\n\nAs Nsight Compute evolves over time, we have also developed a more simplified data collection methodology with fewer metrics to collect (please see Tab.~\\ref{tab:ncu11}).\nThese metrics are equivalent to the ones used in section files in \\ref{sec:ncuprof}, and scripts based on them \\cite{metho} can be used for easier integration with users' other job submission workflows, and for more customized Roofline presentation (using Matplotlib).\nThe commands we used to collect Roofline information for GPP in this paper are as follows.\n\n \n{\\footnotesize\n\\begin{verbatim}\n  module load nsight-compute\/2020.1.0\n  metrics='sm__cycles_elapsed.avg,...'\n  ncu -k NumBandNgpown_kernel\n      --metrics $metrics \n      .\/gpp 512 2 32768 20 0  \n\\end{verbatim}\n}\n\nFig.~\\ref{fig:ncu11} shows that this methodology produces consistent results as in previous subsections, with very \nmarginal difference on the arithmetic intensity and GFLOP\/s throughput.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n\\centering\n\\makebox[0.5\\textwidth][c]{\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{ncu11.png}}\n\\caption{Roofline analysis of GPP on V100 using Nsight Compute 2020 metrics}\n\\label{fig:ncu11}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Summary}\n\nIn this paper, we have presented a range of methods using a variety of performance tools to collect hierarchical data for Roofline analysis. \nEven though the Roofline model has been integrated into production tools such as Intel Advisor and NVIDIA Nsight Compute, we still expect that this paper fills the gaps for developers who do not have access to those tools, or who would like to investigate the underlying details.\nIt would serve the purpose of flexibility and generality in the Roofline data collection space.\n\n\n\\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\chapter*{References\\@mkboth\n  {REFERENCES}{REFERENCES}}\\list\n  {[\\arabic{enumi}]}{\\settowidth\\labelwidth{[#1]}\\leftmargin\\labelwidth\n    \\advance\\leftmargin\\labelsep\n    \\usecounter{enumi}}\n    \\def\\newblock{\\hskip .11em plus .33em minus .07em}\n    \\sloppy\\clubpenalty4000\\widowpenalty4000\n    \\sfcode`\\.=1000\\relax}\n\\makeatother\n\n\n\n\\makeatletter\n\\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]\n      {\\section*{\\refname\n       \\@mkboth{\\MakeUppercase\\refname}{\\MakeUppercase\\refname\n       \\list{\\@biblabel{\\@arabic\\c@enumiv}\n            {\\settowidth\\labelwidth{\\@biblabel{#1}\n             \\leftmargin\\labelwidth\n             \\advance\\leftmargin20p\n             \\advance\\leftmargin\\labelsep\n             \\setlength\\itemindent{-20pt\n             \\@openbib@code\n             \\usecounter{enumiv\n             \\let\\p@enumiv\\@empty\n             \\renewcommand\\theenumiv{\\@arabic\\c@enumiv}\n       \\sloppy\n       \\clubpenalty4000\n       \\@clubpenalty \\clubpenalty\n       \\widowpenalty400\n       \\sfcode`\\.\\@m}\n      {\\def\\@noitemerr\n        {\\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}\n       \\endlist}\n\\renewcommand\\newblock{\\hskip .11em\\@plus.33em\\@minus.07em}\n\\makeatother\n\n\n\\tolerance=1 \n\\emergencystretch=\\maxdimen\n\\hyphenpenalty=10000\n\\hbadness=10000\n\n\n\n\\title{\\Large Paraphrasing verbal metonymy through \\\\computational methods. }\n\\author{Alberto Mor\\'on Hern\\'andez}\n\\vspace{15mm}\n\\date{\\parbox{\\linewidth}{\\centering2017\\endgraf\n  \\vspace{25mm}\n  A dissertation submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Faculty of Humanities.\n}\n\\vfill\n{\\centering\n  Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Koontz-Garboden\\\\\n  \\vspace{5mm}\n  School of Arts, Languages and Cultures\n  \\vspace{15mm}\n}}\n\n\\begin{document}\n\\pagenumbering{gobble}\n\n\\AddToShipoutPictureBG*\n  \\AtPageUpperLeft{\\hspace{30mm}\\raisebox{-\\height}{\\includegraphics[width=5.5cm]{uomLogo}}}}\n\\maketitle\n\n\n\n\\newpage\\thispagestyle{plain} \n\\pagenumbering{roman}\nI have read and understood the University of Manchester guidelines on plagiarism and declare\nthat this dissertation is all my own work except where I indicate otherwise by proper use of\nquotes and references.\n\n\n\n\\newpage\\thispagestyle{plain} \n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\n\n\\hfill\\vspace{2mm}\n\\begin{table}[H]\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{c}\n\\textit{\"Prefiero caminar con una duda que con un mal axioma.\"}\\hfill\\break\\\\\n\\hfill---Javier Krahe\n\\end{tabular}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nThousands of words and hundreds of lines of code do not write themselves, so there are naturally many people who have my gratitude:\\hfill\\break\n\n\nMy parents, first and foremost, for the unconditional support they have given me during my time away from home. My family, both in Spain and the UK, for always being there for me.\\hfill\\break\n\n\nLecturers at Manchester who have guided me during the past three years, including but not limited to: Dr. Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Dr. Laurel MacKenzie, Dr. Eva Schultze-Berndt and Dr. Wendell Kimper.\\hfill\\break\n\n\nThis dissertation would never have been possible without my time at UMass Amherst. Prof. Brian Dillon, Alan Zaffeti, everyone in LING492B and Jamie, Grusha, Amy \\& Ben have my gratitude for welcoming me to UMass and making it such a memorable experience.\\hfill\\break\n\n\nFinally -- Ra\\'ul, DJ, Serguei \\& Pedro. Gracias. \\textit{La pr\\'oxima, en Cazorla.}\n\n\n\n\\newpage\\thispagestyle{plain} \n\\section*{Disclaimers}\nThis dissertation is supported in part by an Amazon Web Services Educate grant\n(\\#PC1R88EPEV238VD). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations\nexpressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of\nAmazon.com, Inc.\n\\hfill\\break\n\nData cited herein has been extracted from the British National Corpus, managed by Oxford\nUniversity Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. All rights in the texts cited\nare reserved.\n\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\tableofcontents\n\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\listoffigures\n\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\listoftables\n\n\n\\newpage\\thispagestyle{plain}\n\\section*{List of acronyms}\n\n\\medskip\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{2}\n\\begin{tabular}{l@{\\hspace{1em}}l}\nAWS&Amazon Web Services\\\\\nBNC&British National Corpus\\\\\nCBOW&Continuous bag-of-words\\\\\nLSTM&Long Short-Term Memory\\\\\nNLTK&Natural Language Toolkit (Python module)\\\\\nVSM&Vector Space Model\\\\\n\\end{tabular}\n\n\n\\newpage\\thispagestyle{plain}\n\\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Abstract}\n\\section*{Abstract}\nVerbal metonymy has received relatively scarce attention in the field of computational linguistics despite the fact that a model to accurately paraphrase metonymy has applications both in academia and the technology sector. The method described in this paper makes use of data from the British National Corpus in order to create word vectors, find instances of verbal metonymy and generate potential paraphrases. Two different ways of creating word vectors are evaluated in this study: Continuous bag of words and Skip-grams. Skip-grams are found to outperform the Continuous bag of words approach. Furthermore, the Skip-gram model is found to operate with better-than-chance accuracy and there is a strong positive relationship (phi coefficient = 0.61) between the model's classification and human judgement of the ranked paraphrases. This study lends credence to the viability of modelling verbal metonymy through computational methods based on distributional semantics.\n\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\pagenumbering{arabic}\n\n\\chapter{Introduction}\n\nThe central question that guides this study, namely 'to what extent does language have a distributional structure?', can be thought of as an exploration of what we can discover about the meaning of a word from the language that surrounds it. There is much to be learned about a word from its 'neighbourhood'. At first this may seem like an obvious proposition, for when reading a text we store in our memory what came before each word. We catch ourselves anticipating subsequent words and thinking of the ways in which elements of language pattern with each other. We notice that not all words are distributed with equal frequency in everyday speech and that certain words tend to cooccur, as happens with idioms. Zellig Harris notes that \"All elements in a language can be grouped into classes whose relative occurrence can be stated exactly.\" (1954: 146). Harris goes on to say that investigating the occurrence of members of one class relative to those of another class would require the use of statistical analyses informed by an extensive corpus of data. The present study makes use of the British National Corpus (BNC) to create a computational model which paraphrases a particular linguistic phenomenon: that of verbal metonymy.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nMetonymy \u2013 a type of figurative language \u2013 is defined by Shutova et al. as \"the use of a word or phrase to stand for a related concept that is not explicitly mentioned\" (2013: 11). Verbal metonymy extends this idea, and refers to a use of language where noun phrases are interpreted as events rather than as the objects they usually refer to. An example of this would be the sentence 'She enjoyed the book', where an event-selecting verb is combined with an entitydenoting noun. This type clash does not present a problem for native speakers, who will readily accept the sentence. This being said, there is both theoretical (Pustejovsky 1991) and experimental (Lapata et al. 2003) work that investigates how the interpretation of logical metonymy can be influenced by contextual factors, namely the verb's subject. This study pulls on the thread of these findings about context with the intent of successfully finding the meaning of verbal metonymy by using distributional semantics. Phrases that make use of logical metonymy have been found to present a recurring problem for a compositional parsing of meaning (Bouillon et al. 1992; Pustejovsky 1995) \u2013 as such, it is interesting to investigate exactly how it may be possible to paraphrase metonymy. This study understands the main task of a computational understanding of metonymy to be the recovery of the covert event that is not realised in the sentence at a surface level. Taking the aforementioned example of 'She enjoyed the book', native speakers of English are likely to assume the covert event to be 'read', as in 'She enjoyed (reading) the book'. This intuition concerning the covert action being carried out also depends on the subject performing the action: chefs are prone to 'enjoy (cooking) the meal', whereas most other people are likely to 'enjoy (eating) the meal'.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nFor native speakers of English the aforementioned recovery of covert events is a trivial task. This is not so for computers. Despite being increasingly more powerful, faster and cheaper, computers are ill-equipped to handle the subtleties of language. It would seem that there is no such thing as Moore's Law for making sense of natural language (Moore 1965). That is not to say that the entire domain of language is out of bounds for computers. Quite the contrary \u2013 in fact, any computation beyond the punch card is made possibly in part thanks to the fact that there are aspects of language processing at which silicon excels. Abstract syntax tree parsers are a core components in many modern programming languages, for instance, and this deftness carries over when it comes to parsing the syntax of natural language. The rules that govern syntactic derivation are easy for a computer to understand relative to some of the subtleties and ambiguities that semantics has to offer. The reasons why tackling the latter by computational means is worthwhile are twofold. First, studying and expressing ambiguous natural phenomena by using the rigid language of computers is an interesting challenge where there currently exists a gap in the knowledge. Second, it is a stepping stone in the journey towards a more perfect interface between digital repositories of knowledge and the humans who access them by means of natural language queries. To this day, one of the most effective and efficient means of translating native speaker intuitions into code is the Vector Space Model (VSM). Introduced by Salton et al. in 1975, the VSM is a way of representing \"the relative importance of the terms in a document\" (Manning, Raghavan \\& Sch\u00fctze 2008: 110). Words are assigned vectors based on other words that tend to surround them. Much like how the tradition of gematria assigns numerical values to words in biblical texts \u2013 drawing connections between words with equal values \u2013 computational linguistics may be thought of as performing a similar task. Once the vector for each word is computed for a corpus, it is possible to carry out vector algebra with these representations of meaning. To quote an example from Mikolov et al., equations such as \"Paris - France + Italy = Rome\" may be defined thanks to underlying word embeddings (2013b: 9). This word arithmetic has seen wide adoption in the technology sector and academia, with applications ranging from machine translation (Wolf et al. 2014) to visual representations of knowledge (Kottur et al. 2016).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nAn additional motivating factor that has pushed me to pursue this research is to update some of the practices documented in the existing literature. Some of the earliest work on paraphrasing metonymy was performed two decades ago (Verspoor 1997; Utiyama et al. 2000). Three key technological advances have taken place since which make revisiting computational paraphrasing of verbal metonymy a pressing matter. The first is the advent of cloud computing and the natural progression of computers towards becoming more powerful as time goes on. Second, the release of cutting-edge, more robust dependency parsers such as the new Stanford parser (Manning et al. 2016; Manning \\& Schuster 2016). Lastly, the revamped edition of the British National Corpus was released in 2007 in a more accessible XML format (cf. Lapata \\& Lascarides' 2003 paper on metonymy which used an earlier version of the BNC). These factors contribute towards making my study a worthy update to the question of how to best paraphrase verbal metonymy. Moreover, beyond the academic purpose of my research question, this dissertation also aims to document best practices for carrying out Natural Language Processing research using cloud computing techniques.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nThe main source of data for this study, the British National Corpus (BNC), is a structured set of texts that represent British English at the end of the twentieth century. It features both spoken and written language and totals one hundred million words. The BNC is distributed by the University of Oxford, who also makes available the 'BNC Baby', a sample 4\\% the size of the full BNC. Both datasets are used in this paper. The distribution of the data in these proportions makes it ideal for training and testing an algorithm. A portion of the larger, full BNC is used to create a vocabulary of vector representations for the top ten thousand most common words. The BNC Baby is then used to test the model and generate the data on verbal metonymy presented in this paper. The creation of word vectors follows in the footsteps of the pioneering work by Mikolov et al., who in 2013 published the models known collectively as 'word2vec'. More specifically, word2vec presents two alternative ways of generating word embeddings (vectors). The first is Continuous bag-of-words (CBOW), and the second is known as Skip-gram. Before I delve deeper into what either of these do or how they function, it is important to highlight the fact that neither of these qualify as 'deep learning'. Both algorithms are shallow and reject complexity in favour of efficiency. This does not mean that they are ineffective \u2013 quite the contrary. Mikolov et al. (2013b) recommend using Skip-gram as opposed to CBOW. This preference is justified in the context of their study, which concentrates on a phrase analogy task. However, since my research is of a slightly different nature I test both approaches and report on their overall accuracy and the suitability of each for paraphrasing verbal metonymy. Once word vectors have been created from the BNC, the algorithm must look through the BNC Baby for instances of verbal metonymy. Once the set of source sentences which are to be paraphrased has been generated, the next step is to search the BNC Baby again. This time the aim is to find paraphrase candidates whose meaning may approximate that of the original sentence. Once these candidate phrases are validated by a dependency parser, their suitability as paraphrases must be evaluated and each is assigned a confidence score. This scoring is carried out by measuring the cosine similarity between the source metonymy and each of the candidate paraphrases, using data from the pre-computed word vectors. These candidates are then ranked and those with confidence scores above the 0.5 threshold (indicating that the score is better than random chance) are selected as correct paraphrases. The algorithm's performance is assessed by evaluating it as though it were a binary classifier \u2013 one where the labels assigned to the data are either 'valid paraphrase' or 'invalid paraphrase'. The algorithm's accuracy is calculated by computing its phi coefficient and the performance of CBOW versus Skip-gram is assessed using a precision-recall graph.\\hfill\\break\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\chapter{Literature review}\n\nThis chapter presents the background reading that helped to define my research question and critically analyses the methods detailed in previous studies of verbal metonymy. Additionally, it is an account of how reading these papers has informed my decisions in terms of the technologies that I have chosen to use in my experiment. The first section provides an overview of existing studies of verbal metonymy in the literature \u2013 including theoretical, psycholinguistic and early computational approaches. I then explain how word embeddings are constructed and more generally how to carry out an empirical study of language using the vector space model. Lastly, I assess the performance of a number of algorithms and report how I integrate what I learn from their failures and successes in my study.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\section{Previous accounts of verbal metonymy}\n\nThe aim of the study is to develop a model which paraphrases verbal metonymy. Consider the\nfollowing sentences:\\hfill\n\\begin{enumerate}[label={(\\arabic*)}]\n  \\item The cook finished eating the meal.\n  \\item The cook finished the meal.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nIn sentence (1) the aspectual verb 'finish' combines with a verb phrase meaning the event of eating a meal, thus (1) refers to the termination of an event. Contrast this with (2), where 'finish' instead combines with a noun phrase referring to a specific meal. The resulting sentence concerns the termination of an unspecified event involving 'the meal'. Interestingly, the structure of (2), \\break [NP [V [ NP ]]], does not include an event whose termination the sentence could be referring to. Arguments that could pair with the aspectual verb 'finish' are restricted to those with temporal or eventive meanings. This restriction is not directly satisfied by 'the meal', yet human judges are able to make sense of (2). Katsika et al. suggest that the fact that sentences like (2) make sense despite this conflict means that \"a temporal\/eventive argument is supplied [to aspectual verbs] at some point during the interpretation of the sentence\" (2012: 59). Jackendoff describes logical metonymy as an instance of \"enriched composition\" (1997: 49), and Utt et al. (2013) succinctly define it as consisting of an event-selecting verb combining with an entity-denoting noun. Making sense of sentences like (2) entails the recovery of a covert event (e.g. eating, making, cooking).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nMy interest in focusing on verbs stems partly from the fact that other aspects of language have received more attention in past computational studies of semantics. Existing computational accounts of metonymy in the literature explore other instances of metonymy, such as those which use toponyms or proper names in general (Markert and Nissim 2006). Psycholinguistic studies conducted on the interpretation of metonymic language include McElree et al. (2001) and Traxler et al. (2002). The latter tested combinations of metonymic and non-metonymic verbs with both entity- and event-denoting nouns (e.g. The cook [finished \/ saw]V [the meal \/ the fight]NP). The study found that sentences featuring a metonymic verb and an entity-denoting object ('The cook finished the meal' \u2013 the coercion combination) involved higher processing costs. The abundance of psycholinguistic studies of verbal metonymy compared to the relative scarcity of papers from a computational or distributional perspective encouraged me to pursue my research question. The frequency with which metonymy happens in natural language and the ease with which humans can interpret it through context and our knowledge of the world also contribute towards making metonymy an interesting phenomenon to model computationally. Despite general metonymy not generally relying on type clashes as much as verbal metonymy does, there naturally exists a relation between the two. Some of the earliest attempts at generating a computational understanding of general metonymy include Lakoff \\& Johnson's 1980 paper and Verspoor's 1997 study, which searched for possible metonymies computationally yet carried out a paraphrasing task manually. Verspoor's work is also relevant here since she used a previous version of the British National Corpus. One of the earliest attempts at fully automating the process is Utiyama, Masaki \\& Isahara's 2000 paper on Japanese metonymy. Shutova et al.'s 2012 paper on using techniques from distributional semantics to compute likely candidates for the meanings of metaphors has been a major influence in getting me to think about possible obstacles and improvements in regards to the ranking algorithm. A 2003 paper by Lapata \\& Lascarides has been a guiding influence in the creation of my model. For instance, their finding that it is possible to \"discover interpretations for metonymic constructions without presupposing the existence of qualia-structures\" has led to my model consisting of a statistical learner algorithm and a shallow syntactic parser as opposed to a more contrived solution (2003: 41). When considering the question of which verbs to target in order to search for instances of verbal metonymy in the BNC, Utt et al. (2013) have provided an invaluable starting point. Utt et al. ask: \"What is a metonymic verb?\" and \"Are all metonymic verbs alike?\" (2013: 31). They develop empirical answers to these questions by introducing a measure of 'eventhood' which captures the extent to which \"verbs expect objects that are events rather than entities\" (2013: 31). Utt et al. provide both a useful list of metonymic verbs as well as one of non-metonymic verbs. The list builds upon the datasets provided by two previous psycholinguistic studies: Traxler et al. (2002) and Katsika et al. (2012). The existence of this empirical list is useful since it allows me to bypass the ongoing debate regarding whether individual verbs lend themselves to metonymy. This debate has been approached both by theorists (Pustejovsky 1991), psycholinguists (McElree et al. 2001) and computational linguists (Lapata, Keller \\& Scheepers 2003. I return to these studies and their relevance in helping me pick relevant verbs in Chapter 3.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\section{Foundations of computational linguistics}\n\nThough it has been echoed many times when introducing the subject of distributional semantics, J.R. Firth's pithy quip that \"You shall know a word by the company it keeps\" (1957: 11) remains the best way to describe the field in the fewest number of words. The core idea that meaning must be analysed with context and collocations in mind was put forward by Firth as early as 1935, when he stated that \"no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously\" (1935: 37). The distributional hypothesis implies that it is possible to identify words with similar meanings by looking at items which have similar row vectors when a word-context matrix is constructed. Before proceeding, allow me to illustrate what word vectors are and clarify exactly how they are created. A word vector (a term used interchangeably with 'word embedding') is an array of numbers which encodes the context in which a word is typically found in a corpus. For instance, consider the proverb 'What is good for the goose is good for the gander'. This sentence can be represented as a word-context matrix as shown in Table 2.1. The columns represent each word present in the corpus (Table 2.1 assumes there are no other words in the English language besides those in the proverb). The columns are ordered alphabetically from left to right. The rows represent the words we want to generate vectors for \u2013 this usually means each word in the corpus gets its own row, but for illustrative purposes Table 2.1 only generates vectors for 'good' and 'goose'. The numbers at the intersection of two words are generated by calculating \\textit{count($w_{i}$ | $w_{i+1}$)}, where $w_{i}$ is the word we want to generate a vector for and $w_{i+1}$ is the word immediately after it. The word 'for' occurs twice after 'good', which means that the vector for 'good' is [2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]. Similarly, the vector for 'goose' is [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0]. Vectors such as the latter, where the only values are one or zero are known as 'one-hot' arrays, and I return to them in section 3.1.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{0.8}\n\\begin{table}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{c|ccccccc}\n &for&gander&good&goose&is&the&what\\\\\\cline{1-8}\ngood&2&0&0&0&0&0&0\\\\\ngoose&0&0&0&0&1&0&0\\\\\n\\end{tabular}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[An example of a word-context matrix]{An example of a word-context matrix. This matrix uses the\nproverb 'what is good for the goose is good for the gander' as a corpus.}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nIf we were to use the entirety of the BNC as the corpus instead of a single idiom, the vector for good could look something like this: [2, 1, 4, 2, 6, (\u2026)]. When iterating over large datasets the number of rows for which the value is zero is substantial (as can be seen even in the toy example in Table 2.1). To overcome the inefficiency of having arrays full of zeroes and infrequent pieces of actual data, word embeddings are usually stored in what are known as sparse vectors. This means that only columns with non-zero values are stored. Such a vector can have hundreds of rows (also known as dimensions), as is the case of the Google News dataset, which contains vectors for three million words, each vector formed by three hundred rows (Mikolov et al. 2013b: 6). Mikolov et al. reduced the computational complexity of vector generation and released a set of remarkable algorithms when they open sourced their approach to Continuous bag-of-words and Skip-gram under the word2vec tool. They were able to do so by standing on the shoulders of giants, albeit ones who have since received less recognition. Bengio et al. published a paper on probabilistic language models which provided one of the earliest algorithms for generating and interpreting \"distributed representations of words\" (2003: 7). One of the pioneering outcomes of this paper was defeating the so-called 'curse of dimensionality', which Roweis \\& Saul had previously attempted to solve (2000). The curse makes reference to the fact that the sequences of words evaluated when implementing an algorithm are likely to differ from the sequences seen during training. Bengio et al.'s use of vector representations trumped prior solutions based on n-gram concatenation both in efficiency and in overcoming the hurdle of the 'curse'. Another milestone in the path towards word2vec was Franks, Myers \\& Podowski's patent \"System and method for generating a relationship network\", published during their time at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in 2005 (U.S. Patent 7,987,191). This method is exhaustive and more intricate than word2vec, but ultimately this complexity does not translate into gains in accuracy.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\section{The Vector Space Model}\n\nAs mentioned earlier, the techniques introduced by word2vec are not 'deep learning' as such. Both the CBOW algorithm and the Skip-gram approach are shallow models which favour efficiency over intricacy. The choice between deep and shallow learning was a consideration made early in the planning stages of this study. Reading Jason Brownlee's 2014 article on deep learning, in which he speaks of \"the seductive trap of black-box machine learning\", was an early indication that a shallow model may be more suitable for my study (Brownlee 2014: 1). Brownlee highlights issues with neural networks, namely that they are by definition opaque processes. Jeff Clune succinctly summarises the issue by saying: \"even though we make these networks, we are no closer to understanding them than we are a human brain\" (Castelvecchi 2016: 22). Despite Le \\& Zuidema's (2015) recent success in modelling distributional semantics using Long Short Term Memory (a type of recursive neural network), my mind was set against using deep learning in this study for two reasons. First, it would be excessively complicated for the scope of the research being undertaken, and second, the 'black-box' nature of neural networks would complicate writing about the inner workings of my algorithm. Having decided between deep and shallow learning and opting for the latter, I faced another choice before creating my model. I had to decide between the two most widely adopted vector space representations: word2vec (Mikolov et al. 2013b) and GloVe (Global Vectors for Word Representation; Pennington, Socher \\& Manning 2014). Python implementations of both are available as open source, through Kula's (2014) glove-python module for GloVe and Rehurek \\& Sojka's (2010) gensim module for word2vec. The documentation for the gensim module characterises the difference between the two technologies by saying that GloVe requires more memory whereas word2vec takes longer to train (Rehurek 2014). Since memory is expensive and time was not a pressing concern, I chose to use the word2vec algorithms (CBOW and Skip-gram) as implemented by the gensim Python module. This decision was supported by Yoav Goldberg's (2014) case study of the GloVe model. Goldberg disproves Pennington, Socher and Manning's (2014) claims that GloVe outperforms word2vec by a wide margin and does this by testing both on the same corpus, which the authors of the GloVe paper had neglected to do.\\hfill\\break\n\n\nAs mentioned earlier, Mikolov et al. (2013b) recommend using Skip-gram as opposed to CBOW in the paper that introduced word2vec. Their preference for Skip-gram is justified by the impressive accuracy improvements they report over earlier work such as Turian et al.'s 2010 paper on word embeddings. This preference is further substantiated by Goldberg \\& Levy's 2014 study on the negative-sampling word embedding algorithm used by the Skip-gram approach. However, I must draw attention to the fact that Mikolov et al.'s original claims are based mainly on a word and phrase analogy task (extending the work first reported in Mikolov et al. 2013a). Since their original findings, impressive as they are, seem to be limited to this linguistic context I cannot presuppose that the Skip-gram approach is necessarily best for all other cases. As such, part of my study is also devoted to testing whether the CBOW or Skip-gram approach is the most suitable for the task of generating word embeddings which successfully paraphrase verbal metonymy. Success in this task is defined as the algorithm which returns the highest proportion of accurate paraphrases. Since this project is being undertaken over a timespan of months, speed is a secondary concern.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nVectors for each word are created by observing the patterns in which a particular word tends to appear. For instance, when generating the vector for the name of a country it is quite likely that the structure 'citizens of X marched on the streets\u2026' is present many times in the corpus, where X can be a number of countries. The important factor here is that it does not matter whether 'France', 'Italy' or 'Nicaragua' stand in the place of 'X'. Rather, what matters is that the algorithm into which the resulting vectors are fed into learns the relationship between each of these words and eventually recognises that they are all instances of the same kind of entity (despite not necessarily knowing that the label that speakers of English assign to these words is 'country'). An intuitive way of visualising the way in which the algorithm sees these representations of meaning is shown in Figure 2.1. Four vectors are shown in Figure 2.1, which is based on Mikolov et al.'s graphical representation of the Vector Space Model (2013b: 4) and uses data from my model trained on the BNC. Each connects the semantic representation of a country to its corresponding capital city in the vector space. What is of interest is the proximity of each label to each other and the angle at which the connecting vectors (grey dashed lines) are drawn. By observing the proximity of labels, we can intuitively tell that Spain, Italy and France are closer neighbours to each other than Nicaragua is to either of the three European countries. However, if Figure 2.1 were to show the entirety of the BNC, we would see that indeed Nicaragua is closer to Italy, for instance, than it is to 'herring'. The grey lines, the vectors connecting word embeddings, are of relevance when seeking to evaluate the similarity between two entities in the vector space. By computing the cosine similarity between the two lines, normalised similarity scores between the semantics of each word can be obtained (the method and consequences of doing so are explored more in depth in section 3.3). More intuitively, by looking at Figure 2.1 it is evident that the lines have similar angles and bearings, and as such must bear some similarity in the semantic relations they encode.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.5\\textwidth]{SVM}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[A vector space model of country-capital city relations]{A vector space model of country-capital city relations. This model was generated using the Skip-gram approach trained on data from the British National Corpus.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nBesides calculating similarity scores it is also possible to carry out vector algebra with these representations of meaning. Equations such as the aforementioned \"Paris - France + Italy = Rome\" (Mikolov et al. 2013b: 9) are interesting, but this paper makes recurrent use of cosine similarity instead. Mikolov et al.'s stringent accuracy metrics (they accept only exact matches) mean that the overall accuracy of this semantic algebra stands at 60\\% in their original implementation (2013b: 10). However, more recent studies have refined such algorithms and accept 'closest-neighbour' answers rather than limiting themselves to exact matches (Levy, Goldberg \\& Ramat-Gan: 2014; Gagliano et al. 2016). The present study rejects the hindering stringency of Mikolov et al. and instead uses a 'closest-neighbour' evaluation.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\newpage\n\\chapter{Method}\n\n\nIn this chapter I provide an account of how I determined whether the distributional hypothesis can be used to paraphrase verbal metonymy by recovering covert events. The starting point for my research is the British National Corpus, a dataset that is present throughout this study. It is used to first train the model by generating a vocabulary of word embeddings and then employed in searching for paraphrase candidates and evaluating them. Section 3.1 explores what the BNC is and how it is structured, as well as explaining how I implemented the CBOW and Skip-gram algorithms in order to create word vectors. The next section details the search for instances of metonymy in the corpus which are then used as the target phrases. In this context 'target' refers to phrases such as \"I think you should begin the next chapter now\" (Appendix I: begin-4), which are the sentences containing verbal metonymy that I wish to paraphrase. I refer to the phrases that could potentially paraphrase the target as 'candidates' (for the above target 'begin the chapter' candidates include: 'read the chapter, write the chapter, etc.'). Finally, section 3.3 describes the procedure through which I found these candidates, validated them using dependency parsing and generated a confidence score for each with which to rank them. The method described in this chapter was implemented using servers hosted by the cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services (AWS). The specifics of the software versions and hardware specifications can be found in Appendix II. Details of server configuration tailored towards replication of this study are made available in Appendix III. Additionally, all the code used in my research is made available under an open source license and can be located using the Digital Object Identifier \\texttt{doi:10.5281\/zenodo.569505}.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm} \n\n\n\\section{The BNC and word2vec}\n\nThe British National Corpus is a dataset of British English during the second half of the twentieth century. The corpus consists of one hundred million words split across a number of genres, with 90\\% of the data comprising the written part of the BNC, while the rest is composed of transcriptions of spoken English (Burnard 2007). The corpus also includes data from an automatic part-of-speech tagger. Text samples do not exceed forty-five thousand words each and were collected from a variety of mediums writing in a number of genres. The first version of the BNC was released in 1994, with subsequent revisions appearing in 2001 and 2007. This study makes use of the 2007 BNC in XML format. The BNC has been used in studies covering a variety of disciplines, including syntax (Rayson et al. 2001), sociolinguistics (Xiao \\& Tao 2007) and computational linguistics (Verspoor 1997; Lapata \\& Lascarides 2003). Besides being a reputable corpus which has been implemented in a number of studies, a major reason for choosing the BNC is of a more practical nature. The Natural Language Toolkit (a module extending the Python programming language) includes an interface for efficiently iterating over the BNC. Due to my intention to use Python as the main language in this project and my previous experience with the NLTK module, the choice of the BNC as a source of data was an obvious one. I still had to write code of my own with which to parse the corpus, find cooccurrences and create vectors, but the use of NLTK sped up the process considerably. A four-million-word sample (known as the BNC Baby) is available alongside the full BNC. This sample contains the same proportion of spoken and written texts, and the distribution of texts by genre and domain remains the same as in the full corpus. This proportion of data between the BNC Baby and the full corpus makes it ideally split for creating a training set and a test set. In this study, a ten-million-word fragment of the full BNC (different from the words in the BNC Baby) is used to generate the word embeddings on which the model is subsequently trained. The purpose of the training data is to discover relationships between words in the corpus, and as such would be bad practice to test an algorithm on the same data used to train it. Neglecting to do this usually leads to overfitting the data, which means that the model learns too much about the random variation it should not be interested in rather than focusing on the actual relationships (Wei \\& Dunbrack 2013).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm} \n\n\nThe first step in this study is the generation of two vocabularies of word embeddings for the data found in the BNC: one generated using word2vec's Continuous bag-of-words, the other using Skip-grams. First, I analyse the CBOW approach. Consider the following sentence: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it' (Pinker 1999: 164). The first step CBOW takes in order to generate word vectors from this sentence is to 'read' through it one word at a time, as through a sliding window which includes a focus word together with the four previous words and the next four words. This would mean that for the focus word 'past', its context window is formed by 'who cannot remember the condemned to compute it'. A window size of four context words was chosen on account of Shutova et al.'s (2012) experimental success with a smaller window size than the one used by Erk and Pad\u00f3 (2008). Additionally, Mikolov et al.'s original paper also uses four words and warns that window size is one of the most important factors that affect the performance of a model (2013b: 8). The context words are encoded in a 'one-hot' array, as seen previously in the example for 'goose' in Table 2.1. The number of dimensions was set to one hundred columns. Additionally, a weight matrix is constructed, which is a representation of the frequency of each word in the corpus. This weight matrix has V rows, where V is the size of the vocabulary and D columns, where D is the size of the context window, also referred to as the number of dimensions (in my implementation, eight dimensions). The weight matrix does not represent a one-to-one relation between values in the rows and the word the row represents. Rather, the representation of the word is scattered amongst all the columns in the array. In the example of the quote by Pinker, each one-hot array would have eleven dimensions, with only one of its columns set to one, the rest to zero. Once the arrays and weight matrix have been created, the\\break algorithm trains the model with the aim of maximising\\linebreak P($w_{f}$ | $w_{f-4}$ \u2026 $w_{f+4}$). That is, maximising the probability of observing the focus word, $w_{f}$, given the eight context words surrounding it. In our example the objective of training is to maximise the probability of 'past' given the eight words in the context window as an input. Table 3.1 shows a one-hot array with eleven dimensions (vocabulary size) being multiplied by the weight matrix for the corpus (this matrix is truncated and only shows the first three of eleven rows, but does show the full number of dimensions: eight, corresponding to the number of context words). CBOW computes the final vector for each word it encounters by performing this operation many times. Finally, a normalized exponential function (also known as the softmax function) is used to produce a categorical distribution: a probability distribution over D dimensions (Mikolov et al: 2013a; Morin \\& Bengio 2005).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nThe Skip-gram model, on the other hand, takes the Continuous bag-of-words approach and effectively turns it on its head. Where CBOW uses eight one-hot context word arrays as inputs, Skip-gram uses a single array. This input vector is a one-hot array of size D constructed with the focus word instead ('past' in the example above). The same process involving the weight matrix is used, but this time the aim is to output the probability of observing one of the context words. Where CBOW output a single probability distribution, Skip-gram outputs eight different ones. This last step is quite resource intensive, particularly in regards to memory. An efficient and effective solution proposed by Rong is to \"limit the number of output vectors that must be updated per training instance\" (2014: 10). This is achieved using the softmax function again. Softmax represents all the words in the vocabulary as elements of a binary tree and computes the probability of a random walk from the root to any word in the vocabulary. The further intricacies of this approach are beyond the scope of the present paper. Instead, I direct the reader's attention to the work of Morin \\& Bengio (2005), Mnih \\& Hinton (2009) and the aforementioned paper by Rong (2014) which explains in great detail the many parameters of word2vec and the potential optimisations that may be applied to CBOW and Skip-gram. The main advantage of implementing Skip-grams with the improvements suggested by Rong is that there is a boost to speed without a loss of accuracy. Instead of having the Skip-gram algorithm evaluate V output vectors, it only has to process $log_{2}(V)$ arrays instead (Rong 2014: 13). For the Pinker example, this means going from 11 vectors to $log_{2}(11)$ $\\approx$ 3.46 vectors \u2013 a considerable difference since there are 68\\% less arrays to evaluate. Despite the obvious improvements offered by Skip-grams, two separate training sets were created by running CBOW and Skip-grams on a ten-million-word fragment of the British National Corpus. These sets have a vocabulary size of the ten thousand most frequent words in the BNC and the arrays have one hundred dimensions (columns). As a benchmark, this may be compared to the size of the Google News vector dataset. This dataset has become one of the standards for collections of word embeddings in academia and the open source community. Released by Mikolov et al. (2013b), it has a vocabulary composed of the 1 million most frequent words in Google News articles, with each array comprising three hundred dimensions.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{0.8}\n\\begin{table}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{ccc}\ninput&weight matrix&hidden layer\\\\\n1 x V&V x D&1 x D\\\\\n\\lbrack\\ 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 \\rbrack\\ $\\bullet$ &$\\left[ \\begin{array}{cccccccc}\na,&b,&c,&d,&e,&f,&g,&h\\\\\n\\color{orange}i,&\\color{orange}j,&\\color{orange}k,&\\color{orange}l,&\\color{orange}m,&\\color{orange}n,&\\color{orange}o,&\\color{orange}p\\\\\nq,&r,&s,&t,&u,&v,&w,&x\\\\\n & & & & \\dots & & & \\end{array}\\right]$&= \\lbrack\\ \\color{orange}i, \\color{orange}j, \\color{orange}(...) \\color{orange}o, \\color{orange}p \\color{black}\\rbrack \\\\\n\\end{tabular}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[One-hot arrays in the CBOW algorithm]{One-hot vectors in the CBOW algorithm. V is the vocabulary size and D is the size of the context window. The values 'a' through 'x' represent the distribution of weights assigned as a function of each word's frequency in the vocabulary. (Adapted from Colyer 2016).}\\hfill\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\section{Searching for metonymy}\n\nOnce the two training datasets have been generated, they are not needed again until section 3.3, where they are necessary in order to evaluate the paraphrases generated by the model. The next step is to decide the kind of metonymy that the model should aim to paraphrase and look for examples in the test data. The test data is composed of the entirety of the four-million-word BNC Baby. In order to keep the set of sentences to paraphrase and the number of candidates returned by the model manageable, this experiment only considers instances of metonymy which employ one of three verbs. These three verbs are 'begin', 'enjoy' and 'finish'. There are two reasons why these three verbs have been selected. The first is so that verbs from both categories defined by Katsika et al.'s 2012 psycholinguistic study on complement coercion are present. 'Begin' and 'finish' are metonymic aspectual verbs while 'finish' is a metonymic psychological verb (Katsika et al. 2012: 61). Secondly, these three verbs are uniformly distributed across the data presented by Utt et al. (2013). Their paper assigns numerical values to a measure of 'eventhood' which captures the extent to which these verbs \"expect objects that are events rather than entities\" (2013: 31). 'Begin' receives an eventhood score of 0.91, 'finish': 0.66 and 'enjoy' scores 0.57 (the upper bound for eventhood was 0.91, the lower 0.54) and are all confirmed to take part in metonymic constructions (Utt et al. 2013: 7).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nFirst, the BNC Baby is scraped for sentences which contain one of the three target verbs. This aims to cut down on the processing costs of any subsequent tasks so that it is not necessary to iterate over irrelevant sections of the corpus. Next, the algorithm looks through these files for instances of Noun Phrases present immediately after or in close proximity following one of the three verbs \u2013 these are potential instances of metonymy. This is facilitated by the fact that the BNC features an extensive amount of metadata in the tags for each word. Once the list of all sentences which potentially contain verbal metonymy has been created, sentences are inspected manually to discard false positives where there is no target to paraphrase (naturally, it would be ideal to automate this task, and this is considered in the future directions evaluated in Chapter 6). However, it is crucial that these target sentences are actual instances of metonymy, and as such required human judgement. The task described in section 3.3, the actual generation and ranking of paraphrases, is completely automated. The list of target sentences is scraped for the noun phrases that are typically used in conjunction with the three verbs when they are used metonymically. Once this is done, the entirety of the BNC Baby is searched through for sentences containing the noun phrases observed in the previous step. This approach of concentrating on collocations is supported empirically by the results reported by Verspoor (1997), who found it to be the case that \"95.0\\% of the logical metonymies for begin and 95.6\\% the logical metonymies for finish can resolved on the basis of information provided by the noun the verb selects for\" (Lapata \\& Lascarides 2003: 41).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\section{Generating paraphrases}\n\nOnce the model has observed all the sentences in the BNC Baby that contain noun phrases commonly associated with instances of verbal metonymy involving one of the three verbs, it is time for the last two steps of the algorithm. This section contemplates the generation of paraphrases and the subsequent assignment of a confidence score to each of these candidates so that they may be ranked. The first task, that of generating the paraphrases, iterates through the sentences collected at the end of the last section and validates them with the Stanford parser. For example, suppose that the algorithm aims to paraphrase \"He seems to enjoy the job, doesn't he?\" (Appendix 1: enjoy-3). It looks through the BNC Baby looking for collocates of the noun phrase \"the job\" and returns candidate sentences that include constructions such as \"get \/ do \/ see the job\". Once this is done, each candidate is considered separately and submitted to the updated Stanford dependency parser (Manning et al. 2016). Originally released by Marneffe et al. (2006), the parser provides \"both a syntactic and a shallow semantic representation\" (Manning \\& Schuster 2016: 1). The parser outputs typed dependencies (grammatical relations) between the elements of any string provided as input. In this model, it performs the task of checking that the verb and noun in the candidate paraphrase are in a direct object relationship. The final step in the algorithm is to compute the confidence score for any approved candidates. This is done by computing the cosine similarity between the joint word vector of the target phrase and that of the candidate. The similarity is obtained by dividing the dot product of the two vectors by the product of the two vectors' magnitudes, or expressed as a formula:\\hfill\n\n\n\\begin{gather*}\ncos\\mathit{\\theta}  =\n\\frac{\n\\mathit{\\boldsymbol{V_{1}}} \\cdot \\mathit{\\boldsymbol{V_{2}}}}\n{\\left \\| V_{1} \\right \\|\n\\left \\| V_{2} \\right \\|}\n\\end{gather*}\\vspace{2mm}\n\n\nA simple explanation for this formula is that the numerator measures the degree to which the two vectors are related, while the denominator serves as a normalization factor that keeps the result under a maximum value of one. Figure 3.1 shows this graphically \u2013 the angle $\\theta$ between two vectors is measured and the cosine of the angle gives a value which determines how related the two vectors are. The function returns a minimum value of zero corresponding to vectors perpendicular to each other, meaning they are unrelated. Values range up to one, only obtained when comparing identical vectors.\\hfill\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=0.5\\textwidth]{cossim}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[Cosine similarity between word vectors]{Cosine similarity between word vectors. Each sentence is represented by a vector and the cosine of the angle between them yields a similarity score.}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nThe model generates similarity scores for each paraphrase, rejecting those that score below 0.2 as completely irrelevant. Sentences with scores above 0.5 are considered viable paraphrases. Two rankings are created: one that measures similarity against the CBOW word embeddings generated earlier and another that does the same but uses vectors produced using the Skip-gram approach. The algorithm has reached the end of its cycle. The next chapter presents the results of this study, highlighting the successes and pitfalls of the model.\\hfill\n\n\n\\chapter{Results}\n\nThis chapter presents the outcome of the algorithm described above. First, it is important to note that all the data presented henceforth is the result of training the model on vectors generated using the Skip-gram approach to word embeddings. When comparing the two implementations of word2vec, I quickly found that my results agreed with Mikolov et al.'s assessment that Skip-grams provide better accuracy than CBOW (2013a: 10). I later compare CBOW to Skip-grams and empirically evaluate the performance of each approach. In this chapter I first give a general account of the data obtained by running my algorithm on the BNC Baby. This is followed by a more in-depth look at the data by means of analysing individual target sentences and their paraphrases. The data for individual examples I draw attention to is presented in the form of a table for each target sentence. These tables consist of an example of verbal metonymy which is to be paraphrased, followed by a number of candidates which are ranked and for which I list individual confidence scores. Though the system returns a gradient measure of confidence, the best way to evaluate the algorithm's performance is to treat it as performing a binary classification task where the proposed paraphrases are either relevant or they are not. Candidates with scores above 0.5 are marked as viable paraphrases by the algorithm (denoted in the tables by a green background). Those with a score below 0.5 are not considered accurate paraphrases of the target sentence. Occasionally, some scores are preceded by an asterisk and set in bold type. This indicates a false result \u2013 a false positive if on a green background, a false negative when on a grey background. Under the target sentence there is a reference to where in the BNC dataset this phrase was located. It follows the format (\\textit{category\/FILENAME}, sentence: \\#) where category is one of the four categories that the BNC Baby is divided into, filename the XML file in which it was found, and \\# is its position in the file. Additionally, there are mentions of \\textit{verb-\\#} notation for each table, referring to where in Appendix I this table may be found. Appendix I features all the ranking tables for the experiment.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nThe model first scraped 2,621 potential target phrases out of a total of 332,963 sentences in the British National Corpus. These potential target phrases are those which mentioned 'begin', 'enjoy' or 'finish' in any of their forms. Out of these, 41 sentences were selected as instances of verbal metonymy and stored to be subsequently paraphrased. In order to generate paraphrases, 23,029 sentences (out of 332,963) were selected computationally on the basis of featuring matching noun phrases with the aforementioned 41 target sentences. These were vetted by the Stanford dependency parser, which whittled down the final number to 179 candidatesto be scored. To summarise: the final experiment featured 41 instances of metonymy and 179 paraphrases, an average of four paraphrases per original sentence. The candidates were then assigned confidence scores and ranked. The results of the algorithm's efforts to label candidates as either valid or invalid paraphrases can be split four ways. Each result can be a true positive, a true negative, a false positive or a false negative. True positives and negatives are those where human judgement agrees with the algorithm's decision to label a paraphrase as valid or invalid respectively. False positives and negatives are those where human judgement disagrees with the model's output. Figure 4.1 shows an analysis of these results for each of the three verbs. Out of a total of 179 paraphrases 52 were true positives and 94 were true negatives, while false positives and false negatives accounted for 15 and 18 sentences respectively. Out of the 41 sentences, all of the paraphrases suggested for five of these fell below the 0.5 relevance threshold. Conversely, in the case of four target sentences, all of the paraphrases suggested had confidence ratings above 0.5.\\hfill\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[height=0.5\\textwidth]{StackedbarPosNeg}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[Analysis of paraphrases for the three target verbs]{Analysis of paraphrases for the three target verbs. A total of 179 paraphrases were scored and ranked by the model.}\n\\end{figure}\\hfill\n\n\nTable 4.1 shows two such outliers: a ranking with perfect scores and another which does not generate a single viable paraphrase. In the table on the right there is in fact a paraphrase that is evaluated as correct by human judgement, but which the model failed to score as relevant. This has been labelled a false negative as denoted by the preceding asterisk and bold type.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{0.8}\n\\begin{table}[H]\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{ccc|cc|}\n\\cline{1-2} \\cline{4-5}\n\\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\"I've enjoyed the concert but\u2026\"\\\\ (dem\/KPU, sentence 975)\\end{tabular}}      &  & \\multicolumn{2}{c|}{\\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\"Finish the last packet of cigarettes\u2026\"\\\\ (news\/BM4, sentence 1431)\\end{tabular}} \\\\ \\cline{1-2} \\cline{4-5} \n\\multicolumn{1}{|c}{\\cellcolor[HTML]{BBDAFF}Paraphrase candidate} & \\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\cellcolor[HTML]{BBDAFF}Confidence} &  & \\cellcolor[HTML]{BBDAFF}Paraphrase candidate                     & \\cellcolor[HTML]{BBDAFF}Confidence                            \\\\  \n\\multicolumn{1}{|c}{See the concert.}                             & \\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\cellcolor[HTML]{9AFF99}0.68158}    &  & Carry the packet.                                                & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}0.44237                               \\\\ \n\\multicolumn{1}{|c}{Listen to the concert.}                       & \\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\cellcolor[HTML]{9AFF99}0.58792}    &  & Crumple the packet.                                              & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}0.40580                               \\\\ \n\\multicolumn{1}{|c}{Go to the concert.}                           & \\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\\cellcolor[HTML]{9AFF99}0.55673}    &  & Smoke the packet.                                                & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}\\textbf{*0.35518}                     \\\\  \\cline{1-2}\n                                                                   &                                                         &  & Open the packet.                                                 & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}0.36162                               \\\\ \\cline{4-5} \n\\end{tabular}\\break\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[Two rankings showing perfect and failing outliers]{Two rankings showing perfect and failing outliers. The table on the left can be found in Appendix I as enjoy-7, the one on the right under finish-11.}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\nThe model had difficulty parsing the true meaning of five paraphrase candidates, all of which contained phrasal verbs or idioms. Though it failed at assigning them scores above the 0.2 discard threshold, I have kept these five instances in the dataset, partly as a testament to the algorithm's ability to recover more complex structures. They are labelled 'Not in vocabulary' since the algorithm was not attempting to paraphrase the whole phrase, and usually defaulted to giving the score for the verb. These five failures to understand the complexities of English are \"Set out the research\" (found in Appendix I: begin-1), \"Keep the process going\" (begin-2), \"Turn his hand to the task\" (begin-6), \"Keep an eye on the scene\" (enjoy-14) and \"Wade through the book\" (finish-3). This is also seen in paraphrases that were not discarded since they scored higher than 0.2, but nonetheless were not selected since their score was lower than 0.5. One such case is \"Toss back the whisky\" for the target sentence \"She finished the whisky\" (Appendix 1: finish-9). Though the meaning of the paraphrase approximates that of the desired covert event (drink), the algorithm evaluated 'toss' over the compositional meaning of 'toss back'. While in this case other paraphrases included 'drink' and 'gulp', it remains the case that some idioms remain a stumbling block in the way towards a more accurate algorithm. Conversely, there are some paraphrases which suggest that the algorithm is aware on some level of the existence of these idioms. For instance, consider the data in Table 4.2, which shows a ranking of paraphrases for \"finish the job\". There is a single paraphrase that is evaluated as correct, and that is \"do the job\". The paraphrase ranked second is \"get the job\". Though the ranking could be due to the relative frequency of how often 'getting a job' and its variants appear in the BNC, another possibility is that by suggesting 'get' for this particular paraphrase, it is trying to reach 'get on with (something)'. Another fact that also supports this theory about the model's intuitions regarding idioms is the existence of other expressions that use 'get' such as 'get (the job) over and done with'. This idiom actually paraphrases the target meaning of \"finish\" more closely than 'get on with the job' does.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\renewcommand{\\arraystretch}{0.8}\n\\begin{table}[H]\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{|cc|}\n\\hline\n\\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\\begin{tabular}[c]{@{}c@{}}\"...I want to stay on here to finish the job.\"\\\\ (news\/CH3, sentence 307)\\end{tabular}} \\\\\n\\rowcolor[HTML]{BBDAFF} \nParaphrase candidate                                      & Confidence                                                                  \\\\ \nDo the job.                                               & \\cellcolor[HTML]{9AFF99}0.58553                                             \\\\\nGet (on with?) the job.                                   & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}\\textbf{*0.48158}                                   \\\\ \nFind the job.                                             & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}0.42892                                             \\\\ \nHave the job.                                             & \\cellcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}0.37238                                             \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\\break\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[Paraphrase ranking for \"finish the job\"]{ Paraphrase ranking for \"finish the job\". The suggestion \"get the job\" may indicate an awareness of the idioms such as 'get on with (the job)' (Appendix I: finish-10).}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nIn an aim to maximise simplicity, the method through which sentences that potentially contain verbal metonymy are scraped was a na\u00efve one at the start of development. The method was eventually refined, but an early pitfall was the model returning segments such as \"\u2026How about you?' began the top man\u2026\". While this sentence does indeed contain a covert event that could have been recovered (said or spoke), my algorithm's focus of verb-noun phrase collocations made the inclusion of this sentence problematic since it would try to interpret '*begin the top man' rather than the actual 'the top man spoke'. Additionally, during an early stage, the algorithm would occasionally attempt to find synonyms for the verb in the target sentence (i.e. 'begin', 'enjoy' or 'finish') instead of finding the meaning of the covert event. Highly ranked paraphrases for phrases such as \"enjoy the countryside\" would include verbs such as 'love', 'appreciate' or 'savour' as opposed to the desired paraphrase of \"[enjoy] visiting \/ being (in) the countryside\". While steps were taken to reduce this effect, it was not entirely compensated for and as such still appears to a degree in some ranking tables (e.g. Appendix 1: enjoy-19; the aforementioned 'countryside' example).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\chapter{Discussion}\n\nThe best way to evaluate a binary classifier, such as the model described in this paper, is by means of a precision-recall graph. Such a graph provides an empirical, quantitative account of an algorithm's performance and is used here to compare Continuous bag of words and Skip-gram. Figure 5.1 shows two curves. The orange line tracks the performance of my algorithm when fed a vocabulary of word embeddings created using CBOW and the British National Corpus. The blue line shows the model's performance when using word vectors created using the Skip-gram approach. They are plotted in a way that measures precision against recall. Precision is a way of answering the question 'what percentage of positive predictions were correct?'. Precision is calculated by dividing the number of relevant items retrieved (true positives) by the total number of items retrieved (the sum of true positives and false positives). Recall evaluates the capacity of a system to return all relevant items, and is measured by dividing the number of relevant items retrieved (true positives) by the total number of relevant items present in the dataset (the sum of true positives and false negatives). Evaluating my algorithm involves plotting precision against recall every time a paraphrase is generated. As such, each line in Figure 5.1 is made up of 179 discrete data points. Precision-recall graphs show how precision degrades over time, as more queries are handled until recall reaches one, which means all queries have been processed. In the case of Figure 5.1, recall reaching one means that all the paraphrase candidates that the algorithm can generate have been generated. The first piece of information that can be gleaned from the precision-recall graph is that the model that used Skip-grams had far better performance than the one using the CBOW method. The results of my experiment agree with Mikolov et al.'s evaluation of CBOW being a weaker algorithm (2013b). My research is another piece of evidence pointing at the superiority of Skip-grams. However, I am wary about making any sweeping statements about the applicability of this trend to the entirety of algorithms modelling English since both my study and Mikolov et al.'s each consider only small niches within Natural Language Processing (phrase analogy and verbal metonymy, respectively). As such it would be wise to wait for data from a wider variety of studies that continues to confirm this trend.\\hfill\\break\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[H]\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[width=1.0\\textwidth]{P-RgraphVector}\n\\captionsetup{width=0.9\\linewidth}\n\\caption[Precision-recall graph comparing CBOW and Skip-gram]{Precision-recall graph comparing CBOW and Skip-gram. Algorithms above the dashed line are performing better than chance.}\n\\end{figure}\\hfill\n\n\nThere is a third line on Figure 5.1, a dashed grey line at y = 0.5 which represents the baseline against which I have measured both algorithms. Any line above the 0.5 threshold is performing at a rate that is better than chance. This adds another condition with which to evaluate CBOW and Skip-gram. While both models eventually end up performing below the threshold, the difference between when each crosses the 0.5 threshold is notable. Both algorithms start by performing at perfect accuracy. After the first 2\\% of paraphrases are generated, CBOW begins a swift dive towards the chance threshold. There is a slight recovery before it plummets again by the time it has generated the first 10\\% of paraphrases. Skip-gram, on the other hand, maintains perfect accuracy for the first 8\\% of the data it outputs. Accuracy then starts to degrade steadily for a few percentage points until it achieves an equilibrium that keeps it hovering between 80\\% and 90\\% precision. This trend is maintained until Skip-gram has generated over 45\\% of the paraphrases it will generate during its execution. After this a steady slump downwards starts, with the precision-recall line intersecting the 0.5 threshold when Skip-gram has generated 79\\% of its total paraphrases. Only after 95\\% of the total data has been output does Skip-gram's performance degrade to equal that of CBOW. Another important consideration when assessing which of the two algorithms to use is the execution time for each. As mentioned previously, there are significant differences between how long each take, mainly due to the optimisations introduced by Rong (2014). Each set of word vectors, regardless of being generated by CBOW or Skip-gram, had a vocabulary size of the most common ten thousand words. The running time of CBOW increases geometrically with V, where V is the vocabulary size, whereas Skip-gram's execution follows log$_{2}(V)$. Since log$_{2}(10$000) $\\approx$ 13.3, this means that Skip-gram runs three orders of magnitude faster than CBOW in this experiment. While the outstanding performance of Skip-gram is quite a welcome improvement, I would still caution against implementing it directly in a live system (such as a web application or chatbot). The performance results reported here are acceptable for academia and within the context of a research project. Were this technology to be used in developing a product, however, I would suggest pre-generating the confidence scores for a large corpus of data (as this experiment does with word vectors) rather than generating them synchronously with user input. The use of an updated dependency parser (cf. Lapata \\& Lascarides' use of the Cass parser in 2003) also meant some improvements in filtering relevant instances of metonymy from extraneous data. Despite this, some issues still remain, namely those surrounding phrasal verbs and idioms which were analysed in the previous chapter. Lastly, there is the matter of evaluating whether using the BNC was a good choice. Overall, my results points towards it remaining a viable source of data for academic work. However, I must draw attention to the fact that it does contain some anachronistic language that potentially makes it unsuitable for training algorithms that would interact with speakers of modern English. One such example that I came across was the suggestion of 'comp\u00e8re' as a paraphrase for \"begin the evening\". This is perfectly correct \u2013 comp\u00e8re does mean after all to act as a host, or someone who introduces performers in a variety show (OED Online) \u2013 and as such it is reasonable for someone to 'comp\u00e8re the evening'. However, consulting Google's ngram viewer reveals that 'comp\u00e8re' peaked in popularity in 1862 and is no longer as popular as it once was. If nothing else, this underscores the fact that no model is perfect and that any algorithm will only ever be as good as the data it is built upon.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nAn alternative way of measuring the performance of a system is the phi coefficient. The phi\ncoefficient describes the quality of a binary classifier by quantifying the correlation between\nthe predicted labels and the observed data. In fact, it may be a superior measure of performance\nthan a precision-recall plot since the phi coefficient is better at normalising results when there\nare considerable discrepancies between the size of categories. This is the case for this study,\nwhere the number of true negatives (94) is almost twice that of true positives (52). The\nfollowing formula defines the phi coefficient (where $P_{T}$ is true positive, $N_{T}$ true negative, $P_{F}$\nfalse positive and $N_{F}$ false negative):\\hfill\n\n\\begin{gather*}\n\\phi = \\frac{P_{T} \\cdot N_{T} - P_{F} \\cdot N_{F}}{\\sqrt[]{(P_{T} + P_{F})(P_{T} + N_{F})(N_{T} + P_{F})(N_{T} + N_{F})}}\\hfill\\break\n\\end{gather*}\\vspace{2mm}\n\n\nThis formula returns a value between -1 and +1, where -1 means the predicted and observed data are completely at odds with each other, 0 indicates no better than chance performance and +1 is total agreement between prediction and observation. The phi coefficient for my model trained on word vectors generated using Skip-grams equals \\Plus0.61. This indicates a positive correlation between the labels assigned by the classifier and the real values of the data \u2013 coherent with human judgement of the paraphrases as either valid or inappropriate. As such, my hypothesis that paraphrasing verbal metonymy using distributional semantics is possible has been confirmed. Furthermore, my experiment agrees with Mikolov et al.'s calculations concerning the performance of the two algorithms introduced by word2vec (2013b).\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\chapter{Conclusion}\n\nI have proposed a method with which to model computationally instances of verbal metonymy where an event-selecting verb is combined with an entity-denoting noun. The present study has confirmed that this is an area of language that is ripe for further research using Natural Language Processing. My research has confirmed that word embeddings are a viable way of generating paraphrases for covert events encoded by metonymy. The phi coefficient ($\\phi$ = 0.61) for my classifier function indicates a positive correlation between the labels assigned to the data and human judgement of these ranked paraphrases. Additionally, this experiment served to uncover and analyse some of the challenges that lay ahead on the road towards more accurate NLP systems. One such obstacle is generating meaning representations of idioms and phrasal verbs. Ways of refining the current approach with the aim of obtaining a greater degree of accuracy include using more robust dependency parsers and using larger corpora that capture the way people use everyday language. Another way of overcoming this problem is by identifying paraphrases of idioms using the system introduced by Pershina et al. (2015), which could be reimplemented in order to calculate similarity scores as a complement to the model described in the present paper. The second result of my experiment is the confirmation that models trained using the Skip-gram algorithm perform better than those which implement the Continuous bag of words approach. This echoes the findings of Mikolov et al., the authors of both algorithms (2013a; 2013b). Word vectors have proven to be a highly innovative and disruptive technology, yet it is evident that they remain only as good as the corpus they are built from. However, further research that implements word embeddings should not be discouraged, since they provide remarkable results and Mikolov et al. reassure us that \"it should be possible to train the CBOW and Skip-gram models even on corpora with one trillion words, for basically unlimited size of the vocabulary\" (2013a: 10). An ambitious model which makes use of a corpus of these dimensions would most assuredly see gains in accuracy.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\nThe field of computational linguistics is moving at breakneck speed. Currently 'Long ShortTerm Memory' systems \u2013 a type of recurrent neural network \u2013 threaten word embeddings' position as the state of the art solution for distributional semantics. One of the best implementations of the LSTM architecture in recent years is Le \\& Zuidema's paper on training a recurrent neural network to perform sentiment analysis (2015). Their solution allows the model to capture long range dependencies and outperforms traditional neural networks (Le \\& Zuidema 2015). Their tree-structured LSTM network could be a natural progression away from the Skip-gram model for future research on paraphrasing verbal metonymy. However, there are reasons to be wary of using deep learning to solve certain problems, for the 'black box' approach may not always be the best one and there are benefits to having human-interpretable language models. For approaches that continue to use word embeddings, one aspect that can be improved upon is the task of human evaluations of the model. One possible way of doing this is crowdsourcing the evaluation using systems such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Alternatively, performance evaluation could be carried out by using standardised tests. This would make for a simple validation for which human performance is already known. There is precedent for this approach in Rapp (2003) and Turney (2006), who test vector-based representations of meaning on TOEFL and SAT exams and compare their models to the average human score.\\hfill\\break\\vspace{5mm}\n\n\n\\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{References}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{sec:Conclusion}\n\nResearch on adaptive systems received increasing interest over recent years. An important topic is the environment model, as this plays a central role in every approach to adaptive systems that addresses changes in the environment. \n\nIn our  systematic literature review, we found a significant amount of research on environment modeling with an increasing trend.  Overall, 455 publications were collected from different databases and eventually 58~publications were selected as relevant in a systematic and repeatable process described in the paper.\n \nFrom these publications we identified four major modeling approaches: agent-based, goal-based, rule-based, and state machines. Additionally, notational concepts were identified,  analyzed, and combined into a joint meta-model. This meta-model shows the connections among the approaches by using joint modeling concepts, e.g., \\textit{actor}. \nAnother contribution is a categorization, which shows the interests and goals in the area of  environment modeling for adaptive systems.\n\nWe identified several research opportunities. First, we found only one publication that focuses on the elicitation of the environment model.  Also the validation of these models in terms of completeness, traceability, correctness, and consistency is an open topic. Beyond this, various research opportunities exist, which are related to the fact that very different (even conceptually non-overlapping) modeling approaches for environment modeling are used.   \n\\section{Introduction}\n\\label{sec:intro}\n\n\nThe notion of adaptive systems, i.e., systems that react to observations and adapt their behavior accordingly has gained significant interest in the research community, due to its wide applicability~\\cite{DeLemosGieseMueller+13}. The adaptation that happens in the context of adaptive systems is usually due to changes in the environment.\\footnote{Though adaptations based on internal observations, e.g., in the context of self-monitoring, exist as well.} A requirements engineer needs information and knowledge about the environment to identify and develop possible adaptions of a system. The environment information need to be available for the engineers but also for the adaptive system itself in a formalized notation. Despite this need for formalized modeling of environments, there is so far relatively little explicit study on the notion of environment models in software engineering research.  \n\nIn this paper, we aim to change this situation. We performed a systematic literature review of environment modeling in adaptive systems.\n\nWithin this area we are interested both in ways to represent environment models as well as in methods to identify these environment models. This perspective is summarized in the following research questions:\n\n\\begin{description}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt,parsep=0pt,partopsep=0pt]\n\\item[\\RQ{1}] What types of  environment models and respective concepts are used to represent environment models for adaptive systems in the requirements engineering phase?\n\\item[\\RQ{2}] What methods are used to identify the relevant information for environment models in the requirements engineering phase?\n\\end{description}\n\nAs basically all research that we could identify describes a modeling approach, while only very few papers address the methodology aspect as well, the main part of our contribution will be a systematic overview of the modeling approaches typically used for environment modeling. \n\n\nModeling the environment is also discussed in the general RE literature, i.e., outside the realms of adaptive systems, e.g., \\cite{Pohl2010}. There typically  a variety of entities such as users, sensors, actuators, documents, laws) are described. As adaptive systems \\textit{monitor} the environment, we expect to see:\n \n\\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt,parsep=0pt,partopsep=0pt]\n\t\\item a precise, focused understanding of the notion of environment, i.e., what are the environment entities relevant to adaptive systems?\n\t\\item dedicated environment models, e.g. provided by a meta-model of the constituents and their relationships,\n\t\\item specialized constructs in an environment model relevant to adaptive systems,\n\t\\item a methodological treatment of the former points.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThe results of our study may help to cross-fertilize the different views on the environment in different approaches and help to come up with a common understanding of environment modeling for adaptive systems. \n  \nThe remainder of this paper is structured as follows: in Section~\\ref{sec:Method}, we describe our approach for executing the systematic literature survey. We discuss both how we identified the relevant sources as well as how we extracted and systematized the information from the papers. Section~\\ref{sec:Findings} summarizes our findings and discusses some particularly relevant  results. Section~\\ref{sec:relatedWork} presents the related work and discusses the differences to our study. In Section~\\ref{sec:ThreatsToValidity} we present the threats to validity and how we handled these threats.\nFinally, Section~\\ref{sec:Conclusion} provides the conclusion.\n\n\\section{Method}\n\\label{sec:Method}\nThis section describes the method used in our systematic literature review. The structure and process is based on the guidelines provided by Kitchenham et al.~\\cite{Kitchenham07guidelinesfor}.  \n\nIt is structured as follows: we describe  the search strategy in Section~\\ref{subsec:SearchStrategy},  including the databases used and the derived search strings. The selection criteria for screening the papers are given in Section~\\ref{subsec:SelectionCriteria}, while Section~\\ref{subsec:DataExtraction} describes the data extraction process and the documentation of the results.\n\n\\subsection{Search Strategy}\n\\label{subsec:SearchStrategy}\n\nOur systematic literature review uses a systematic derivation of search strings and several electronic databases for identifying the relevant literature. \n\n\\parhead{Electronic Databases.} The following electronic databases were used as resources in order to identify and collect relevant material: IEEE Xplore Digital Library\\footnote{\\url{http:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org}}, Springer Link\\footnote{\\url{http:\/\/link.springer.com}}, Google scholar\\footnote{\\url{https:\/\/scholar.google.de}}.\n\nAll three databases support full text and meta-data search. IEEE Xplore and SpringerLink focus on publications of the respective publishers which resulted in a insufficient amount of publications. Thus, we used Google Scholar as a third resource to ensure a sufficiently broad coverage of all relevant sources. \n\n\n\n\\parhead{Search Strings.}  In order to derive the search strings, we used a basic pattern with three facets. The first is the object of our research: the environment model, the second is a qualification: adaptive and the third is our restriction, the focus on requirements engineering. By identifying alternative wordings for each of these three facets, we determined the final search string. Different alternative wordings were tested to find the best balance between accuracy of the resulting set of publications and feasibility of the study.  \n\n\\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt,parsep=0pt,partopsep=0pt]\n\\item 1-facet: environment model and environmental model. \n\\item 2-facet: adaptive, adaptation, self-adaptive, self-configuring, self-reconfiguration, self-optimization, and self-awareness. \n\\item 3-facet: requirements engineering.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\nThe following search string is produced by combining these facets along with their alternative terms: \n\n\n\\noindent (\"\\textit{environmental model}\" \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \"\\textit{environment model}\") \\texttt{AND}\\xspace\n(\\textit{adaptive} \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \\textit{adaptation} \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \\textit{self-adaptive} \\texttt{OR}\\xspace self-configuring  \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \\textit{self-reconfiguration} \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \\textit{self-optimization} \\texttt{OR}\\xspace \\textit{self-awareness}) \\texttt{AND}\\xspace \n(\"\\textit{requirements engineering}\")\n\nThe three databases and the search string are used during the selection process. This process is described next.\n\n\\subsection{Selection Criteria}\n\\label{subsec:SelectionCriteria}\n\n\nA number of criteria were used for making the selection reproducible, which are given below.\n\n\n\\parhead{Inclusion Criteria.} Only peer-reviewed workshop, conference, and journal papers were accepted, which (1) are from the areas of requirements engineering and self-adaptive systems, (2) include a textual or graphical model to define or describe the environment of a self-adaptive system, or (3) describe the extension of a model to define or describe the environment of a self-adaptive system. \n\n\\parhead{Exclusion Criteria.}\nPapers are excluded if they meet one of the following criteria: papers and reports have been excluded where only the abstract, but  not the full text is  available. Publications have been excluded if they are not written in English. Letters and editorials have been excluded as well as learning materials and theses. Books have been excluded and papers under five pages in length.\n\nThe exclusion of papers takes place after the articles have been ordered and the meta-information that is needed for the selection process is stored.\n\n\\parhead{Selection Process.}\nTo identify the relevant literature for our review, we used an automated search and then applied the criteria to include or exclude a publication. This process consists of three steps:\n\n\\noindent Step 1: Collect and store papers from the chosen databases. The previously defined search strings are used to automatically search for relevant papers. \n\n\\noindent Step 2: The titles and abstracts of identified papers are screened for relevance to the topic. We read the papers and search for violations of the previously defined inclusion or exclusion criteria.\n\n\\noindent Step 3: The full text of papers was analyzed for all studies appearing to meet the inclusion criteria and a final selection was made.\n\n\nThe numbers of included and excluded publications are recorded during the different stages of the search process. We started with 455 publications (Springer 98, IEEE 32, Google Scholar(GS) 325). During Step 2 the total number are reduced to 226 (Springer 66, IEEE 20, GS 140). After Step 3, the selection process resulted in 76 paper (Springer 24, IEEE 10, GS 42). 18 of the 76 papers were identified as duplicates in two of the databases. We ended up with 58 accepted publications for the literature review.\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Data Extraction}\n\\label{subsec:DataExtraction}\n\nDuring the systematic literature review, Citavi\\footnote{\\url{https:\/\/www.citavi.com\/en}} was used for managing the \ncollected references.\nFor each included publication the bibliographic information (title, DOI, etc.) was recorded, along with the abstract and a short note on why the paper was included.\nThe full text of the included papers was stored in a git repository that was used for sharing the results during the search process.\nThe publication in the reference manager and the file in the repository share the same ID (Bib\\_Key).\n\n\n\n\nIn addition to the meta-information, the following information was collected from the selected publications: time stamp of the data extraction, publication type (journal, conference, workshop, etc.), aim and\/or objectives of the publication, name of the used environment model, characteristics of the model (elements, links, textual\/ graphical, etc.),  techniques to elicit the environment (if any), validation method, findings, and conclusion. The three authors of this paper read the selected publications and extracted all important information for the systematic literature survey.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Related Work}\n\\label{sec:relatedWork}\n\nWe identified two literature studies which focus on RE for self-adaptive systems. The first was a systematic literature review  by Yang et al. \\cite{Zhuoqun2014}. Their aim was to identify modeling methods, RE activities, requirements quality attributes, application domains, and research topics in the area of self-adaptive systems. The study consists of 101 relevant papers. \n\nThe second was a mapping study performed by Sucipto et al.~\\cite{Sucipto_2015}. Similar to the first study, their goal was to summarize the research topics, categorize the used modeling methods and requirements activities for the development of self-adaptive systems. They accidentally identified 101 relevant paper as well. The authors report that only 3 out of 101 papers cover elicitation activities which is backed by our results. \n\n\nCompared to our SLR, both studies are much broader in their scope. With respect to our research question RQ1, these studies just name modeling techniques used for adaptive systems. We add to these general findings by providing deeper insights into environment models and their concepts in particular. \n\n\n\n\\section{Threats to Validity}\n\\label{sec:ThreatsToValidity}\nA threat to validity of our analysis is a personal bias, as the analysis was mostly performed by the first author of this paper. Additional randomized analyses were done by the second and third author to identify any issues.  This did not uncover major issues. The search strategy and findings were discussed and agreed upon among all authors.\n\nA second threat is that the results depend on the employed databases. In order to address this threat, we used three different databases with a different, while overlapping coverage. All searches with their results were archived to enable later cross checks. \n\nThe selection of keywords imposes a third threat. First, we tried to find a balance between accuracy of the resulting set of publications and feasibility of the study. A problem in this regard was caused by the term \\textit{context}, which is used frequently (but not always) synonymously to \\textit{environment}. The term \\textit{context} in itself bears a significant vagueness (as it is used also in the sense of \\textit{discourse} or \\textit{setting}). We tried to include \\textit{context} in the search string and also used different alternatives for context, which resulted in sets of 5000 to 20000 publications. As this was significantly outside the acceptable range and caused a huge number of false positives, we ultimately decided to remove this from the search string. \nSecond, we ensured the quality of the keywords by identifying five publications that we consider as relevant to the focus of the study. Then we applied the search strings and checked if these 5 publication were selected. In relation to the third threat, the chosen keywords and resulting set of publications contains theses five publications. \n\\section{Findings}\n\\label{sec:Findings}\n\nIn this Section, we present the findings from our systematic literature review. First, the results related to the two research questions are represented in Section \\ref{subsec:RQ1} (\\RQ{1}) and \\ref{subsec:RQ2} (\\RQ{2}), followed by an Interpretation in Section \\ref{subsec:Interpretation}. The results are interpreted and major findings are highlighted.\n\n\n\\subsection{\\RQ{1} What types of environment models and respective concepts are used to represent environment models for adaptive systems in the requirements engineering phase?}\n\\label{subsec:RQ1}\n\n\n\\vspace*{-2.5em}\n\\begin{table}\n\t\\centering\n\t\n\t\\caption{Modeling approaches used in literature}\n\t\\label{tab:Models}\n\t\\tabcolsep=2pt\n\t\\rotatebox{90}{\n\t\t\\resizebox*{0.8\\textwidth}{!}{\n\t\t\t\\small\n\t\t\t\\begin{tabular}{|l|L{6cm}|L{5cm}|}\n\t\t\t\t\\hline \n\t\t\t\t& Modeling Approach &  Paper\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\multirow{7}{*}{\\rotatebox{90}{Agent-based}} & Agent\t&  \\textbf{\\cite{Choren.2005c}~\\textsuperscript{*}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Choren.2005b}~\\textsuperscript{*}}, ~\\cite{Cossentino.2010}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Liu.2014}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{LopezLorca.2016}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{LopezLorca.2016b}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Mellouli.2004}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\cite{Mili.}, ~\\cite{Mili.2008}, and ~\\textbf{\\cite{Athanasiadis.2009}~\\textsuperscript{-}}\\\\ \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& ROADMAP&  \\cite{Juan.2004}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& VigilAgent &  \\cite{Gascuena.2014}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& UML class diagram notation for Agents&  \\cite{HendersonSellers.2004} and~\\cite{Giese.2007}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\cline{2-3}\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Bio-inspired Task Model &  \\cite{LopezJaquero.2016}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\cline{2-3}\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Capability Model&  \\cite{Stirna.2012}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Enterprise Modeling (EM) and Capability Modeling&  \\cite{Berzisa2015}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\multirow{5}{*}{\\rotatebox{90}{Goal-based}} & Goal & \\cite{Ceret.2013}, ~\\cite{Kim.2009}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Liu.2014}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{LopezLorca.2016}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{LopezLorca.2016b}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Mellouli.2004}~\\textsuperscript{+}}, ~\\textbf{\\cite{Qureshi.2012}~\\textsuperscript{\\#}}, ~\\cite{Jian.2010}, ~\\cite{Jureta.2008} and~\\textbf{\\cite{Baresi.2013}~\\textsuperscript{\\$}}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& i* &  \\cite{Carvallo.2009},~\\cite{Pimentel.2012}, and~\\cite{Sawyer.2007}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& KAOS &  \\cite{Fredericks.2016},~\\cite{Giese.2014b}, and~\\cite{Nakagawa.2011}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Tropos & \\cite{Morandini.2015} \\\\\n\t\t\t\t& NFR Pattern in i* &  \\cite{Cunha.2014}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\multirow{4}{*}{\\rotatebox{90}{Rule-based}}& Domain Assumption&  \\textbf{\\cite{Baresi.2013}~\\textsuperscript{\\$}}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Rule-based & \\cite{Wang.2015} \\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Planning with Action Prioritization (PAP) &  \\cite{Ghosh.2015}\\\\ \n\t\t\t\t& CONSENS & \\cite{Holtmann.2016}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\multirow{10}{*}{\\rotatebox{90}{State machine}} & State machine & \\cite{Lu.2008} \\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Stochastic Hybrid Automata (SHA)&  \\cite{Chen.2015}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Stochastic Timed Automata (STA)&  \\cite{Weyns.2016}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Labeled Transition Systems (LTS)&  \\cite{Dippolito.2011}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Labeled Transition Kripke Structure (LTKS)&  \\cite{DIppolito.2014}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Linear Temporal Logics (LTL) &  \\cite{DIppolito.2010} and~\\cite{DIppolito.2013}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Bigraphs&  \\cite{Yu.2014} and~\\cite{Yu.2016}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Petri net&  \\cite{Han.2012}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& Internal structure and behavior model &  \\textbf{\\cite{Athanasiadis.2009}~\\textsuperscript{-}}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Time Usage Models (TUM)&  \\cite{Siegl.2015}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\cline{2-3}\n\t\t\t\t& RTES Environment Modeling &  \\cite{Iqbal.2012b} and~\\cite{Iqbal.2015b} \\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Behavior & \\cite{Uhrmann.2012}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\t\\multirow{5}{*}{\\rotatebox{90}{Other}}\n\t\t\t\t& Ontology&  \\textbf{\\cite{Choren.2005c}~\\textsuperscript{*}},~\\textbf{\\cite{Choren.2005b}~\\textsuperscript{*}},~\\cite{Qureshi.2011}, \\textbf{\\cite{Qureshi.2012}~\\textsuperscript{\\#}}, and~\\cite{Sharifloo.2015}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\cline{2-3}\n\t\t\t\t& Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) \\& Viable System Model (VSM) &  \\cite{Bustard.2005}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Environment Context Model & \\cite{Ghannem.2015} \\\\\n\t\t\t\t& Digital Virtual Worlds&  \\cite{Pechoucek.2012}\\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\cline{2-3}\n\t\t\t\t& Not specified & \\cite{Axenath.2006},~\\cite{Kromker.2015},~\\cite{Abuseta.2015},~\\cite{Dignum.2002}, and~\\cite{Holtmann.2015}  \\\\\n\t\t\t\t\\hline\n\t\t\t\\end{tabular} \n\t\t}\n\t}\n\\end{table}\n\\vspace*{-1em}\n\nRelated to RQ1 we identified the modeling approaches shown in Table~\\ref{tab:Models}. We recognized four major types of models: \\textit{agent-based} 17 (29\\%), \\textit{goal-based} 18 (31\\%), \\textit{rule-based} 4 (7\\%) and \\textit{state machines} 15 (25\\%). \nIn cases, in which an approach makes use of a particular combination of modeling paradigms, we indicate this by a symbol in superscript at the respective entries in Table \\ref{tab:Models}. For example, all approaches that combine agent and goal modeling are marked with the superscript \\textsuperscript{+}, e.g. Lopez-Lorca et al.~\\cite{LopezLorca.2016}. \n\n\n\nAgent- and goal-based approaches mostly represent environment entities using resource elements that can be monitored or modified. Additionally, some authors define the environment using actors or agents and describe the abilities or resources in the same way as other actors in the system.\n\nRule-based approaches make use of rules that consist of events, conditions, and actions. These rules represent the environment by an event that appears in the environment, which results in an action of the system or in an action of a controllable element in the environment.\n\nState machine approaches describe the behavior of the environment by using states and transitions to represent different environment situations and how the environment changes between these situations.\n\n14  approaches (24\\%) are included in the \\textit{other} category. These works created their own modeling approach, like Ghannem et al.~\\cite{Ghannem.2015}, who focus in their contribution on the development of an environment model for a specific domain (parking lot management).  Ontology approaches model the environment using an ontology. Qureshi et al.~\\cite{Qureshi.2012} for example, propose an ontology based on a goal-based modeling approach, see Table \\ref{tab:Models} superscripts~\\textsuperscript{\\#}.\n\n\nThe publications in the \\textit{not specified} area are vision papers, \"Towards...\" papers, or papers with an unclear description of the environment like a box in a diagram with a brief explanatory text. \n\nThe different concepts of the approaches and their relationships will be discussed later.\n\n\n\\noindent\\fbox{\\parbox[t]{\\dimexpr1\\linewidth-2\\fboxsep-2\\fboxrule\\relax}{\n\t\\textbf{Finding 1:} \\textit{The major modeling approaches are goal-based (31\\%), agent-based (29\\%), state machines (25\\%), and rule-based (7\\%).}\t\n}} \n\nBelow, we discuss  the different modeling approaches using the criteria that we collected during the data extraction (see Section \\ref{subsec:DataExtraction}).Base on the data we propose a meta-model that summarizes the concepts of environment models that we identified in the publications.\n\n\\parhead{Representation of the environment model.}\nThe next criterion is the representation of the environment model. Figure~\\ref{fig:graphictextual} shows that 48\\% are pure \\textit{graphical} models, which consist of 2\\% \\textit{3D} modeling and 46\\% ordinary \\textit{graphical} models. 24\\% make use of a combination of graphical models and textual descriptions. It is the sum of \\textit{Both} 14\\%, \\textit{Graphical Tabular} 8\\%, and \\textit{Graphical (Annotation) Tabular} 2\\%. 10\\% are pure \\textit{textual} descriptions, 6\\% are \\textit{tabular} descriptions to structure the textual information, and 12\\% are not specified. In total, 72\\% of the approaches use a graphical representation compared to 16\\% that use a textual representation.\n\n\\begin{figure}[!t]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.85\\linewidth]{IMG\/graphic_textual_v4}\n\t\\caption{Representations of Environment Models}\n\t\\label{fig:graphictextual}\n\\end{figure}\n\nOne motivation for combining textual and graphical representations is to use the best of both worlds and to avoid clutter and information overload. For example, Jian et al.~\\cite{Jian.2010} use i* models to represent the adaptive system and use tables with additional information for an activity (task), like for instance an environment element, trigger, or condition. This information is used to combine an activity with the environment and to react on changes. Another combination of graphical and textual representations can be seen in the approach of Pimental et al.~\\cite{Pimentel.2012}. They defined annotations for a goal model, which identify relations to the context. These relations are explained in natural language  in a table.\n\nTextual approaches describe the environment with textual elements that follow a pattern. These descriptions are mostly structured in a tabular form. For example, Kim et al.~\\cite{Kim.2009} use tables to structure goals and scenarios, which in turn are used to define states and actions in another table.\n\nThe last representation is a virtual 3D real world simulation of the environment by P{\\v{e}}chou{\\v{c}}ek~\\cite{Pechoucek.2012}. In their \"Towards...\" paper, the authors describe the need for a simulated environment to develop and validate multi-agent systems in an early phase of the development.\n\t\n\n\\noindent\\fbox{\\parbox[t]{\\dimexpr1\\linewidth-2\\fboxsep-2\\fboxrule\\relax}{ \n\t\t\\textbf{Finding 2:} \\textit{72\\% of the approaches use a graphical visualization and 16\\% use textual descriptions.}\t\n}}\n\n\n\\parhead{Meta-Model of existing environment modeling approaches.}\nOne of our major results is a meta-model of concepts for environment modeling, which is shown in Figure~\\ref{fig:ele_all}. All concepts were extracted from the accepted publications. Out of this list we combined concepts with the same meaning. For example, terms like \\textit{environment}, \\textit{environment entity}, \\textit{environment context} are combined to \\textit{environment entity}. Another example is \\textit{monitored entity} which refers to terms like \\textit{sensor}, \\textit{measurable property}, \\textit{input}, and \\textit{context indicator}. \n\\begin{figure}\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.8\\linewidth]{IMG\/ele_all_7}\n\t\\caption{Meta-model of existing environment modeling approaches}\n\t\\label{fig:ele_all}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe \\textit{monitored-} and \\textit{controlled} entities are specializations for an environment entity, which can be monitored, like a sensor or controlled, like an actuator. \n\nWe identified four clusters of concepts, namely agent-based, goal-based, rule-based, and state machine concepts. The clusters are connected, i.e., they share concepts. Also many approaches mix these techniques, for example, goal- and agent-based by Lopez-Lorca et al.~\\cite{LopezLorca.2016} and~\\cite{LopezLorca.2016b}. \n\nConcepts of the state machine and rule-based cluster are often used together with concepts of the agent- or goal-based cluster. As this survey is focused on adaptive systems, these systems need to change after changes in the environment happen. That is, the event that triggers a rule or a state transition results from a change in a resource, such as a monitored entity (e.g., sensor). The conditions are based on quality constraints like QoS or softgoals. These concepts are used in a similar way but can not be combined in a single concept (connected in the meta-model by dashed line). \n\nThe resulting action can be a state transition or an adaptation of any intention, like a goal, a task, or service or a change in the environment (controlled entity).\n\nThe goal of the meta-model is to highlight the connections among the concepts of the different models. Therefore, we excluded some concepts to make the model more general and to avoid overload. These concepts are specific to the domain or system, for instance, aisle, room, furniture, door, location, measurements. Data, parameter, class, attribute, capacity, property are examples for general concepts.\n\n\n\n\n\\vspace*{1ex} \n\\noindent\n\\fbox{\\parbox[t]{\\dimexpr1\\linewidth-2\\fboxsep-2\\fboxrule\\relax}{\n\t\t\\textbf{Finding 3:} \\textit{A meta-model of existing modeling concepts and the connection among the concepts (Figure~\\ref{fig:ele_all}). In this model we combine different terms with the same meaning to generate a general overview of the concepts of environment modeling. Also, we show direct references and  concepts shared among the major approaches.}\t\n}}\\vspace*{1ex} \n\n\n\n\\subsection{\\RQ{2} What methods are used to identify the relevant information for environment models in the requirements engineering phase?}\n\\label{subsec:RQ2}\nFigure~\\ref{fig:methodology} shows the results related to \\RQ{2}. The selected papers contribute to design (39), modeling (39), validation (9), and elicitation (9). That is, the publications mainly focus on the development of self-adaptive systems. In particular, they focus on the design of architecture and on modeling of the environment. These results are expected as we searched for environment models. \n\\begin{figure}[!t]\n\t\\centering\n\t\\includegraphics[width=0.75\\linewidth]{IMG\/methodology_v4}\n\t\\caption{Methodological aspects of Environment Modeling for Requirements Engineering}\n\t\\label{fig:methodology}\n\\end{figure}\n\nUnexpected for us are the few results for validation and elicitation of the environment. Elicitation is addressed mostly with a few sentences that say the environment information is elicited using interviews or meetings, like Athanasiadis et al.~\\cite{Athanasiadis.2009} and Gasecuena et al.~\\cite{Gascuena.2014}, or implicitly through the development of a goal model and scenario descriptions, like Carvallo et al.~\\cite{Carvallo.2009} and Choren et al.~\\cite{Choren.2005b},~\\cite{Choren.2005c}.\n\nOnly one paper focuses on elicitation and compares different elicitation methods like Brainstorming, 6-3-5 method, six thinking hats, field observation, apprenticing, and interviews. We expected a bigger focus on field observation to elicit the environment as information about the environment is a priori often not available.\nUnexpected were also the results for validation. One author addresses the validation of systems with an environment model and the validation of the environment model is discussed in one paper only. Siegl et al.~\\cite{Siegl.2015} discuss properties like completeness, traceability, correctness, and consistency of the environment model.\n\nMost other authors used the model to simulate the environment and to validate and verify the behavior of an adaptive system. For example, P{\\v{e}}chou{\\v{c}}ek et al.~\\cite{Pechoucek.2012} use a mixed-mode simulation. That is, the test system runs in a mix of real system parts and simulated virtual environment.\n\n\\vspace*{1ex} \n\\noindent\\fbox{\\parbox[t]{\\dimexpr1\\linewidth-2\\fboxsep-2\\fboxrule\\relax}{\n\t\t\\textbf{Finding 4:} \\textit{The focus is on the development and design of adaptive systems. Only one paper discusses elicitation in detail and one paper discusses important qualities of an environment model.}\t\n}}\n\\vspace*{1ex} \n \n \n\\subsection{Interpretation of \\RQ{1} and \\RQ{2}}\n\\label{subsec:Interpretation}\nIn this subsection we interpret the results with respect to our expectations (discussed in Section \\ref{sec:intro}). We found examples of environment entities that are relevant to adaptive systems. For example, the heating system used by \\cite{Chen.2015}, refers to additional environment information of a room, like wall thicknesses and sizes, to make better decisions. These properties are not monitored or controlled by the system, but they are required to adapt the system to a particular context. However, we did not find a generalized notion of environment in the context of adaptive systems.\n\nWe expected a dedicated environment model which captures all the environment information relevant to an adaptive system. Yet, we found mostly approaches, which annotate system models to represent the environment conditions (or  contain only parts of the environment). For example, in the goal- and agent-based approaches the environment can be represented as a single concept mostly called \\textit{resource} or as an \\textit{actor} that contains the modeling concepts, which are  used also to represent a system.\n\nAs we expected, some approaches added specific concepts to the environment model, such as a specialization of a \\textit{resource} into a \\textit{controlled} or \\textit{monitored} variable. These specific elements help to separate system and environment resources and also to add more details about the characteristics and capabilities of the environment. \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction} \\label{sec:intro}\n\nJ2030 is a $P=308$\\,ms, $\\tau = 6\\times 10^5$\\,yr radio-quiet pulsar discovered via $\\gamma$-ray pulsations \\citep{Pletsch2012}. With ${\\dot E} = 2.2 \\times 10^{34}{\\rm\\,erg\\,s^{-1}}$, the heuristic $L_\\gamma = ({\\dot E} \\cdot 10^{34} {\\rm\\, erg\/s})^{1\/2}$ law estimates $d \\sim 0.8$\\,kpc; no DM distance is possible. However, this is one of a handful of pulsars sporting an H$\\alpha$ bow shock nebula \\citep[][hereafter BR14]{Brownsberger2014}, This line emission lets us probe the pulsar distance and kinematics. In BR14 we noted a SWIFT X-ray detection, as expected for a nearby, high-${\\dot E}$ PSR. A confirming 25\\,ks ACIS exposure \\citep[ObsID 14827, briefly described in][]{Marelli2015} separates the PSR from a faint $\\sim 25^{\\prime\\prime}$ PWN trail.\n\nThe BR14 H$\\alpha$ image showed two bubbles, trailing the pulsar. A Gemini GMOS IFU exposure, described below, finds a fainter H$\\alpha$ bubble at the apex, surrounding the pulsar. The PWN trail extends through all three bubbles. We obtained a new, deeper {\\it CXO} exposure to explore the relationship of the reverse (PWN X-ray) shock with the forward (H$\\alpha$) bow shock. These data measure a proper motion shift of the X-ray source coincident with the pulsar, reveal complex structure in the PWN interior and discover a remarkable narrow pulsar filament extending at large angle to the proper motion axis (Figure \\ref{fig:HaX}). \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\hspace*{-5mm}\\includegraphics[scale=0.49]{plots\/J2030_field.eps}\n\\caption{The PSR J2030+4415 field with the adaptively smoothed 0.5-5\\,keV {\\it CXO} photons (shown in green) superposed on a narrow band H$\\alpha$ image (shown in red). The faint thin filament extends to the edge of the ACIS-S field of view at right.}\n\\label{fig:HaX}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\section{Observations} \\label{sec:sec2}\n\n\\begin{figure*}\n\\centering\n\\includegraphics[scale=0.99]{plots\/J2030_f2rev.eps}\n\\caption{\\footnotesize Selected H$\\alpha$ radial velocity slices from the GMOS-N IFU data cube. Frames span $6.5^{\\prime\\prime} \\times 6.8^{\\prime\\prime}$ in steps of 47\\,km s$^{-1}$. The pulsar position is marked by a green dot. The $\\sim 0.5^{\\prime\\prime}$ standoff to the bubble 1 leading edge is best visible in the -47km\/s to +47km\/s frames, while the velocity extrema help pin down the spin (polar outflow) axis. Cyan contours on the $RV=0$ km\/s frame show the {\\it CXO} emission, adjusted for pulsar motion to the H$\\alpha$ epoch. The zero-velocity slice of a \\citet{Wilkin2000}-style model for bubbles 1 and 2 is shown in the last panel, with the pulsar spin axis marked with a line. Compare with Figs. \\ref{fig:HaX} and \\ref{fig:pm} for the larger scale X-ray emission.}\n\\label{fig:PWN}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\subsection{H$\\alpha$ bow shock Measurements}\n\nWe observed J2030 on June 23, 2015 with GMOS-N using the R831 grating and the IFU, covering $5^{\\prime\\prime} \\times 7^{\\prime\\prime}$, sampled at $0.2^{\\prime\\prime}$, with 0.339\\,\\AA\/pixel spectral resolution  (Program GN-2015-FT17). J2030 was observed $5\\times 1200$\\,s, along with standard calibrations. Conditions were excellent with $\\sim 0.35^{\\prime\\prime}$ FWHM measured in both an $r$ acquisition image and in the final data cube, which was assembled from a dithered combination of the exposures, using the GMOS IRAF analysis package. A single field star near the PWN apex was detected in continuum, verifying the registration and astrometry. Figure \\ref{fig:PWN} shows a selection of the velocity channel images, which resolve the H$\\alpha$ structure of the bow shock in 15.5\\,km s$^{-1}$ steps. For reference, the X-ray brightness distribution from the pulsar and PWN apex are shown by cyan contours in the zero-velocity panel.\n\nPulsar bow shocks are non-radiative, and the shock limb shows up best in the low velocity channels dominated by H$\\alpha$ from charge transfer from neutrals at the external medium velocity drifting into the shock. Evidently the pulsar is embedded in a faint apex bubble, which appears like a classical bow shock in these low velocity channels. At low velocity we also see the bow shock-like structure of the second bubble terminating behind the pulsar. The higher velocity channels mostly show the apex bubble, which appears to be driving outflow at $\\pm 150$\\,km s$^{-1}$. This outflow is markedly asymmetric with the negative (blue shifted) velocity channels peaking south of the pulsar. This suggests a somewhat elliptical cross section for this bubble with the major axis being driven, plausibly by pulsar polar outflow, at an angle of $\\sim 30^\\circ$ to the line of sight. We can model this H$\\alpha$ structure following the simple bow shock computations of \\citet{Wilkin2000}. The zero velocity channel of a model with bow shocks for bubbles 1 and 2 and a velocity mis-aligned pulsar spin axis is shown in the final panel of Figure \\ref{fig:PWN}. Alas, the model does not follow the detailed H$\\alpha$ structure closely enough for a direct fit.\n\n\\subsection{{\\it CXO} X-ray Measurements}\n\nWe observed J2030 with 4 \\textit{CXO} exposures on April 10-15, 2019 [ObsIDs 20298 (45\\,ks), 22171 (40\\,ks), 22172 (45\\,ks), 22173 (23\\,ks); $\\sim 153$\\,ks total] and compared with an archival exposure [ObsIDs 14827 (42\\,ks)] from April 15, 2014. All exposures placed the target on the ACIS-S S3 chip and exposed in VF mode. The data were processed and analysed using \\textit{CIAO} 4.12 and CALDB 4.9.1. \n\nAn unresolved X-ray source coincident with the pulsar, and the PWN trail are well visible in the new image. In addition we have discovered a remarkable, narrow X-ray filament extending for $5^\\prime$ to the edge of the S3 chip, at $70^\\circ$ to the PWN symmetry axis. The filament is narrow (Figure \\ref{fig:sbcut}); if fit with a simple Gaussian we get a width $\\sigma = 1.67\\pm 0.16^{\\prime\\prime}$.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\vspace{-28mm}\n\\centering\n\\hspace*{-5mm}\\includegraphics[width=3.7 in]{plots\/J2030_f3rev.eps} \\\\\n\\figcaption{Filament cross section (abscissa opposes the proper motion direction) averaged along its length. The dashed curve is a fit with a simple Gaussian, the solid curve show a composite model, fit as a falling exponential convolved with a Gaussian.\n\\label{fig:sbcut}\n}\n\\vspace{-1mm}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThe PWN itself also has an unusual structure, with the X-ray counts trailing in a wedge behind the pulsar through bubble 1, filling bubble 2 with a hollow cavity, and then continuing at near constant width through bubble 3. An adaptively smoothed X-ray image gives the impression of spiral or braided filamentary structure (Figure \\ref{fig:pm}).\n\n\\medskip\n\\leftline{\\bf X-ray proper motion}\n\\medskip\n\nThe H$\\alpha$ velocity range implies $v_\\perp \\approx 300$km s$^{-1}$. We have used a detailed astrometric measurement of the point sources in this image, compared with the 2014 exposure to directly measure the pulsar proper motion. The basic technique compares the observed counts to the Poisson probability of PSF models generated for the spectrum and position of the point sources in each frame. This `Figure of Merit' (FoM) method was used in \\citet{Etten2012} and \\citet{Auchettl2015}, and is further developed here to push the frame registration and pulsar motion accuracy as close as possible to the statistical limit imposed by total counts for a collection of reference sources. We summarize the steps of this method below, for a more detailed discussion of the FoM technique see de Vries et al., in prep. \n\nTo register the 2019 frames to the 2014 reference, we selected 16 point sources on the S2 and S3 chips, using the CIAO tool \\textit{wavdetect} to obtain their positions. For each source we extracted the spectrum and produced a simulated PSF model at its reference position in each frame, using \\textsc{marx}, with a simulated 5\\,Ms exposure. We then generated images of each source and its PSF model, centered on the reference position, using 1\/8th ACIS pixel bins, restricting to 0.5-3.5\\,keV to minimize particle background and high energy PSF broadening. With these images, we constructed the FoM array, shifting the PSF model along the $x$ and $y$ axes. At each step, we calculated the Poisson probability of the data given the PSF model, using all pixels within a $3.5$ pixel circular aperture. The offset between the data and the PSF model, and thus the source-reference position offset, can then be determined from the centroid of a 2D Gaussian fit to the FoM array.\n\nFoM fits were first used to correct the reference frame \\textit{wavdetect} source positions. For the 2019 frames, these positions were offset with the measured GAIA proper motions of the optical counterparts, when available. For each frame we then summed all the data and model images, and constructed a single, coherent FoM to determine the frame offset. The statistical uncertainties in each frame are determined as $\\sim \\theta_{\\rm PSF} \/N^{1\/2}$, and range from $20$ to $33$\\,mas. Additionally, we estimate a systematic uncertainty of $40$\\,mas by varying the PSF energy cuts and aperture sizes.\n\nThe pulsar positions in each frame were also determined using the FoM technique. When constructing the FoM, we masked the PWN, ignoring those pixels in the fit to minimize PWN influence on the measured PSR position. We used the same energy range as for the determining the frame shifts (0.5-3.5\\,keV), and a slightly smaller 3 pixel radius aperture. With this single source the positional statistical uncertainty of an exposure is $37-63$\\,mas. We estimate a systematic uncertainty of $30$\\,mas. The total uncertainty for the proper motion in each frame is then determined by adding in quadrature all statistical and systematic uncertainties for both the frame offset and the pulsar position. \n\nAveraged over the four 2019 frames, we find a proper motion $\\mu_{\\rm RA} = 15 \\pm 11$\\,mas\\,yr$^{-1}$ and $\\rm \\mu_{\\rm DEC} = 84 \\pm 12$\\,mas\\,yr$^{-1}$, for a total motion of $85 \\pm 16$\\, mas\\,yr$^{-1}$. We considered the effects of differential rotation around the Galactic centre, as well as the motion of the sun with respect to the local standard of rest. At $d = 0.8$ kpc and $l \\approx 82 \\degree$, Galactic differential rotation contributes negligibly to this proper motion. However to best estimate the pulsars motion in its local standard of rest, we did correct for the Solar motion \\citep{Schoenrich2010}, which induces an apparent proper motion $\\mu_{\\rm l} \\approx 2$ mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\\mu_{\\rm b} \\approx -1.5$ mas yr$^{-1}$. Correcting for these effects shifts the true direction of J2030's motion slightly SW to $PA=7.2\\pm 7.6^\\circ$.\n\nThe final proper motion offset (extrapolating 100\\,yr) and its uncertainty are shown in Figure \\ref{fig:pm}. The best fit position angle is slightly East, but within 1$\\sigma$ of the PWN symmetry axis; local ISM motions may produce some of this apparent offset. The amplitude indicates a transverse velocity $v = 404\\pm 86 \\,d_{\\rm kpc}$\\,km\\,s$^{-1}$, with the IFU velocity spread indicating $\\sim 300\\,{\\rm km\\,s^{-1}}$ this gives $d_{\\rm kpc} \\approx 0.75$, supporting the heuristic $L_\\gamma$ distance estimate.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centering\n\\vspace{-2mm}\n\\hspace*{-5mm}\\includegraphics[width=3.7 in]{plots\/J2030_f4n.eps} \\\\\n\\figcaption{Close-up of the PWN, showing the vertical range of the X-ray regions for the three bubbles (note Bubble 1 is not visible in this H$\\alpha$ stretch -- see Figure \\ref{fig:PWN}), the symmetry axis and the proper motion position, extrapolated forward 100\\,yr.\n\\label{fig:pm}\n}\n\\vspace{-2mm}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\medskip\n\\leftline{\\bf Spectral Analysis}\n\\medskip\n\nThe results of our basic spectral analysis of the PSR, PWN and filament regions are shown in Table \\ref{table:fits}. The PSR counts were extracted using a small $1.5^{\\prime\\prime}$ radius aperture (applying an ARF correction with the CIAO tool \\textit{arfcorr}) in order to minimize contamination from the PWN. The PWN and filament regions were each fit as whole objects and split into subregions: PWN regions a, b, and c correspond to the 3 H$\\alpha$ bubbles (best observed in Figure \\ref{fig:pm}), while Fil a and b cover the eastern and western halves of the filament respectively.\n\n\\citet{Marelli2015} fit the PSR spectrum as a simple power law (PL), but it more likely combines thermal surface emission with magnetospheric PL. We therefore fit the point source with a composite PL+BB model and use a PL for all other regions. The Galactic hydrogen column density $N_H$ is poorly constrained in the 2019 data. When left as a free parameter, we obtain $N_H \\approx 4.5 \\times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$, an unrealistically large value for $d=0.8$ kpc at these coordinates. Because the 2019 data is not sufficiently constraining, we have fixed the nH value to two different values in our analysis: $N_H = 0.6 \\times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$, the value used by \\citet{Marelli2015}, and $N_H = 2 \\times 10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$, within the errors of our spectral fits. For the low absorption, we find an equivalent blackbody radius of $0.17 d_{\\rm kpc}$km, while the high $N_H$ gives $0.4 d_{\\rm kpc}$km, so in either case this would represent a heated polar cap region. The PL luminosity is $L_{2-10{\\rm keV}} \\approx 1.2\\times 10^{30} d_{\\rm kpc}^2 {\\rm erg\\,s^{-1}}$, which would match the heuristic \\citet{Possenti2002} ${\\dot E}$ scaling at $\\sim 2$\\,kpc. However, given the poor separation of the thermal and PL components, all we can say is that the fluxes are comparable to those of other young pulsars.\n\n\\begin{table}[b!!]\n\\caption{Spectral fit results for PSR, PWN and filament} \n\\smallskip\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{l l l l }\n\\hline\\hline\nComp\t\t& Counts & kT\/$\\Gamma_{2.0}$ &kT\/$\\Gamma_{0.6}$ \\\\[0.5ex\n\\hline\nPSR kT     \t&$181\\pm14$ &$0.11\\pm0.02$ &$0.13\\pm0.03$ \\\\\nPSR PL\t \t& \"         &$1.43 \\pm0.39$  &$1.31\\pm0.40$ \\\\\nPWN    \t\t&$396\\pm33$ &$1.72\\pm0.11$  &$1.48\\pm0.10$ \\\\\nPWN a & $65\\pm8$ & $1.15\\pm0.24$& $1.31\\pm0.26$   \\\\\nPWN b & $173\\pm14$ & $1.39\\pm0.15$ & $1.61\\pm0.16$\\\\\nPWN c & $136\\pm13$ & $1.87\\pm0.19$ & $2.17\\pm0.21$\\\\\nFil   &$330\\pm55$ &$1.41\\pm0.16$  &$1.24\\pm0.14$ \\\\\nFil a\t&$203\\pm40$ &$1.35\\pm0.20$  &$1.18\\pm0.20$ \\\\\nFil b\t&$117\\pm37$ &$1.49\\pm0.25$  &$1.32\\pm0.24$ \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\label{table:fits}\n\\leftline{$N_H$ fixed at $2.0$ or $0.6\\times10^{21}{\\rm cm^{-2}}$. kT units keV.}\n\\vskip -0.5truecm\n\\end{table}\n\nCombined, the PWN components have a flux $f_{\\rm 0.5-10 keV} \\approx 3.7 \\times 10^{-14} {\\rm erg\\,cm^{-2}\\,s^{-1}}$ for a luminosity $L_{\\rm PWN} = 4.4 \\times 10^{30} {\\rm erg\\,s^{-1}}$, nearly independent of $N_H$. This is in agreement with the rough $L_{PWN} \\approx 10^{-3}{\\dot E}$ scaling \\citep[e.g.][]{Possenti2002} at $d=0.75\\,$kpc. Also independent of $N_H$ the PWN flow softens downstream in the PWN with $\\Delta \\Gamma \\approx 0.8 \\pm 0.3$ ($2.5\\sigma$).  This suggests substantial $e+\/e-$ cooling in the 300\\,yr it took the pulsar to traverse this structure. In contrast, there is no significant evidence for cooling along the filament, suggesting fast flow -- this spectral conclusion is tentative, as a $\\Delta \\Gamma=0.5$ cooling break is allowed at the $2 \\sigma$ level, but the near-constant surface brightness along the filament argues against substantial cooling. The $\\tau \\approx 300$\\,yr cooling of the $\\sim$keV PWN synchrotron spectrum indicates typically energetic $\\gamma \\approx 8 \\times 10^7 E_{\\rm keV}^{2\/3} \\tau_{300}^{1\/3}$ $e^\\pm$ and a modestly boosted post-shock PWN field $33 E_{\\rm keV}^{-1\/3} \\tau_{300}^{-2\/3}\\mu$G.\n\n\\section{Filament Morphology and Conclusions}\n\nOnly a handful of pulsar filaments are known, the most famous associated with the Guitar nebula\/PSR B2224+65 \\citep{Bandiera2008}; others are the `Lighthouse'\/PSR J1101$-$6101 \\citep{Pavan2016} and PSR J1509$-$5058 \\citep{Klingler2016}. As seen in the `Lighthouse', our filament flux is nearly identical to that of the PWN (albeit with a harder spectrum); for J1509$-$5058, the filament shows about half the PWN flux, for the Guitar, the PWN is not detected. These PSRs all feature high velocity and a dense upstream medium, ensuring a small stand-off distance for the bow shock and facilitating escape of TeV PSR\/PWN $e^\\pm$. J2030 bears many similarities to the Guitar system (with a multi-bubble H$\\alpha$ bow shock).\n \nThe basic picture for pulsar filaments described by \\citet{Bandiera2008} has been elaborated by later authors \\citep[e.g.][]{Olmi2019, Barkov2019}. Their one-sided nature is posited to track escape to the ISM from a special set of PWN field lines, where the polar PSR\/PWN field breaks the magnetospheric symmetry. The leading hemisphere's field sign determines which side of the bow shock injects most efficiently to the filament. Here it is intriguing that the H$\\alpha$ line maps imply that the spin axis is misaligned with the velocity, pointing NNW into the plane of the sky. The escape must be strongly associated to the western side of the PWN, since we see no evidence for a counter-filament. Thus the forward-facing magnetosphere polarity opposes that of the ambient ISM field. Figure \\ref{fig:HaX} shows striation patterns in the H$\\alpha$ background, roughly parallel to the filament, suggesting that the ISM B-field aligns with this axis. \n\nThe filament width is likely over-estimated, as with the limited counts it proved difficult to follow the slightly curved filament path; thus our length-averaged cross section likely suffers some artificial broadening. However assuming that the $\\gamma_7 \\approx 8$ PWN $e^\\pm$ derived above illuminate the filament, confining the Larmor radius within its Gaussian width $\\sigma =1.7^{\\prime\\prime}$ puts a weak lower bound on the filament $B$ field of $>5\/d_{kpc}\\mu$G. In the case of the Guitar, the filament clearly moves along with the pulsar and has a quasi-exponential fall-off behind. J2030's filament does seem to have some excess counts behind the leading edge (to the right in Figure \\ref{fig:sbcut}). If we fit to a falling exponential convolved with a Gaussian, $\\chi^2$ decreases by 1.5 from the simple Gaussian and we find a tail scale $\\tau=1.52\\pm0.59^{\\prime\\prime}$. However, both models are quite acceptable, with $\\chi^2\/DoF = 0.82$ (Gaussian) and 0.80 (composite model).\n\nInterpreting the $\\tau_c \\approx 1.5^{\\prime\\prime}$ exponential tail as a fading residual of a moving filament implies a cooling time $\\tau_c\/\\mu \\approx 18$\\,y, independent of distance. This implies a much larger typical filament field $B \\sim 100 \\mu$G (if the cooling is faster, $B$ increases as $\\tau_c^{-2\/3}$). This substantially exceeds typical ISM fields, but may be generated by the injected particles. Even more interesting is the lack of cooling, or even surface brightness decrease, along the $l = 5^\\prime$ to the edge of the field of view. To avoid cooling, the flow {\\it along} the field lines must be very rapid, $\\approx l v_{PSR}\/\\tau_c \\approx 6 \\times 10^4 {\\rm\\,km\\, s^{-1}}$ or $\\sim c\/5$. Thus, the particles nearly free-stream along the filament. It would be interesting to trace the filament's full extent and eventual fading, as this probes the long-field propagation -- a timely subject given current interest in $e^+$ escape and diffusion from nearby PWNe. \n\nLike the Guitar, this is a multi-bubble bow shock, but here we see interior X-rays from the shocked pulsar wind. For the Guitar, \\citet{Cordes1993} speculated that the bubbles were caused by ISM density irregularities or episodic variations in the PSR ${\\dot E}$. With several H$\\alpha$ bow shocks showing axisymmetric modulation, attribution to random ISM variations now seems implausible. \\citet{Kerkwijk2008} proposed that the post-bow shock back-flow makes a collimated trail which feeds a bubble at its base until it has lengthened to $\\delta r \\approx 20-60 \\times r_0$ (with $r_0$ the apex standoff distance) at  which time instabilities pinch off the flow. Thus bubbles spaced by $\\delta r$ expand with a Sedov-Taylor solution for energy injection ${\\dot E} \\delta r\/v_{PSR}$.\n\n\\citet{Morlino2015} propose another scenario in which the shock at the H$\\alpha$ apex ionizes and accelerates only a fraction of the ISM gas; most of the H stays neutral, passing through this zone. Downstream, behind the Mach disk, the remaining gas is photo-ionized while embedded in the shocked pulsar wind. The resulting mass loading can cause the flow to decelerate and heat, with a resulting secondary shock flare. This may brighten the H$\\alpha$ limb, adding `shoulders' to the H$\\alpha$ bow shock. While this has some appeal as an explanation for the bubble 1 to bubble 2 transition in J2030, it does not naturally produce closed bubbles or additional downstream features.\n\nWe do not see the feeding axial flow of the \\citet{Kerkwijk2008} picture, but perhaps the X-ray bubbles have already separated and cooled. Our structure does seem more likely to represent variable pulsar injection on the $\\sim 300$\\,yr crossing time. Some precedent comes from radio pulsars with episodic ${\\dot P}$ (and hence ${\\dot E}$) changes. J1841$-$0500 apparently changes ${\\dot E}$ by $2.5\\times$, with modes lasting over 2\\,yr \\citep{Camilo2012}. Perhaps the cylindrical PWN width represents the stalling radius for the high ${\\dot E}$ state, while the spiral pinching represent low-power interludes. In any event, the apparent helical X-ray interior morphology should be verified with more sensitive imaging, but will likely prove a challenge to PWN shock modelers.\n\n\\acknowledgments\nR.W.R. was supported in part by NASA grants G08-19049X and 80NSSC17K0024. \n\n\\vspace{5mm}\n\\facilities{CXO, Gemini - GMOS}\n\n\\bigskip\n\\bibliographystyle{aasjournal}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Appendix: Proof of theorems}\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{thm:spuriousNode}]\nWe sketch the main ideas of the proof. (1) By definition of Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}, for $c$ to be reached during the top-down search, there has to exist a path $c_1, c_2,\\ldots,c_j$, where $c_j=c$, from a root node candidate $c_1$ down to $c$. For each $i$, let $q_i \\in V_Q$ denote the query node for which $c_i \\in \\mathrm{Candidates}(q_i)$ is a candidate. Without loss of generality, let $c_i$ be the \\emph{left-most} child of $c_{i-1}$, $i=2,\\ldots,j$. We next show that we can construct a query result from the path, the subtree rooted at $c_j$, and the \\emph{right} subtrees for all $c_i$, $i < j$.\n\nBy definition, Alg.~\\ref{alg:pruning} only adds a candidate $c_i$ to a query node $q_i$, if there exists a subtree rooted at $c_i$ in $G$ that is isomorphic to the subtree rooted at $q_i$ in query $Q$. (Otherwise $c_i$ would not have been reached during the bottom-up edge traversal from \\emph{all} its leaves.) It is now easy to see that ($i$) the path $q_1, q_2,\\ldots,q_j$, ($ii$) all \\emph{right} subtrees of the nodes in $\\{q_1, q_2,\\ldots, q_{j-1}\\}$, and ($iii$) the subtree rooted at $c_j$, together cover the entire query graph and are pairwise disjoint. Hence the corresponding candidate instances, i.e., ($i$) path $c_1, c_2,\\ldots,c_j$, ($ii$) the right subtree matches rooted at each candidate in $c_1, c_2,\\ldots,c_{j-1}$, and ($iii$) the subtree match rooted at $c_j$, form a query result containing candidate $c_j = c$ for query node $q_j = q$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{lem:priorityMonotonicity}]\nRecall that the priority of a partial pattern $P$ is defined as the sum of the weights of all matched edges, plus the sum of the pre-computed weights of all unmatched subtrees rooted at the corresponding matched candidates in $P$. \nA candidate's subtree weight, by definition, is the minimum over all possible matches in the subtree rooted at this candidate. Hence any successor of $P$, which might not expand along the edges that determined the minimum subtree weights, will have a priority value greater than or equal to the priority value of $P$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{lem:sameWeightPQ}]\nSimilar to the proof for Lemma~\\ref{lem:priorityMonotonicity}, we start with the fact that the priority of a partial pattern $P$ is defined as the sum of the weights of all matched edges, plus the sum of the pre-computed weights of all unmatched subtrees rooted at the corresponding matched candidates in $P$. Since a candidate's subtree weight, by definition, is the minimum over all possible matches in the subtree rooted at this candidate, there exists a full match whose weight is equal to that minimum. For a partial match $P=(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_i)$, successor $(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_i, c_{i+1})$ has the same priority $w$ if the edge connecting $c_{i+1}$ to the pattern is the one that determined the minimum weight value for the corresponding subtree in the parent of $c_{i+1}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{thm:kPop}]\nConsider two results $P=(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_{|V_Q|})$ and $P'=(c'_1, c'_2,\\ldots, c_{|V_Q|})$ with weights $w$ and $w'$, respectively, such that $w < w'$. Assume that the prefix $\\pi$ of $P$ that was expanded into full result $P$ was popped at time $j$; and similarly for prefix $\\pi'$ of $P'$ and time $j'$. We now prove that $j < j'$. Lemma~\\ref{lem:sameWeightPQ} implies that the priority of $\\pi'$ at time $j'$ is $w'$. Similarly, Lemmas~\\ref{lem:priorityMonotonicity} and \\ref{lem:sameWeightPQ} imply that at time $j'$, no prefix of $P$ could have been in \\texttt{pq}. Any such prefix of $P$ has priority less than or equal to $w$, hence would have been in front of $\\pi'$ at time $j'$. By definition, Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} can only push successors of a pattern it pops from \\texttt{pq}. This implies that it can only push patterns that are successors of those partial matches currently in \\texttt{pq}. (Note that it initially pushes all root candidates, guaranteeing the 1-node prefixes of all result patterns are initially in \\texttt{pq}.) Since at time $j'$ there is no prefix of $P$ in \\texttt{pq}, Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} cannot push or pop any such prefix after time $j'$. This in turn implies that it must have popped $\\pi$ in an earlier pop operation before $j'$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{thm:spaceAlg2}]\nThe upper bound follows from Corollary~\\ref{cor:numPushes}.\nWe show that the bound is tight: Assume all results have the same prefix $(c_1,\\ldots, c_{|V_Q|-1})$, except for the last node. Then Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} pushes only root $c_1$, immediately pops it, then expands until reaching $(c_1,\\ldots, c_{|V_Q|-1})$. The next expansion produces \\#results many patterns that are all pushed to \\texttt{pq}, except for the minimal one. Hence at this point there are (\\#results - 1) elements in \\texttt{pq}, each consisting of $|V_Q|$ matched nodes.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{thm:interarrival}]\n\nTheorem~\\ref{thm:spuriousNode} implies $\\mathrm{outdegree} \\le r_H$. Assuming that \\texttt{pq} is implemented using a relaxed heap, then it will have worst case time bound of O(1) for \\textit{decrease key} and O(log n) for \\textit{delete min}\\cite{Driscoll:1988:RHA:50087.50096}.  Due to front-element optimization, the next full match is computed by (1) popping the first element from \\texttt{pq} in time logarithmic in queue size, which is at most $r_H-1$, then (2) expanding the partial match node-by-node until a full match. The latter requires retrieving all edges from a currently matched node in the partial match to the next unmatched node according to pre-order traversal. There are at most $\\mathrm{outDegree}$ such edges, resulting in the corresponding number of pushes to \\texttt{pq}, each at (expected) constant cost because of the constant time inserting into a relaxed heap. This is done at most $|E_Q|$ times, which is a constant (see above).\n\\hide{This bound is tight. Consider a path query where each node on the shortest path has $d$ children, all others have one. Minor caveat: filling up the pq of size $r_H$ is slightly faster than $r_H \\log r_H$.}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\begin{proof}[Proof \\autoref{thm:timeAlg2}]\nFor the lower bound, note that each of the $r_H$ results has to be output. For the total cost of Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}, Theorem~\\ref{thm:kPop} and Corollary~\\ref{cor:numPushes} guarantee that the total number of push and pop operations on \\texttt{pq} is $r_H$. Since the former has constant cost, and the latter is logarithmic in queue size, we obtain an upper bound of $\\mathrm{O}(r_H \\log r_H)$ for operations on \\texttt{pq}. (To be precise, for both bulk-computation and Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}, there is another additive term to account for the number of edges accessed to assemble each result pattern. This number is linear in $r_H$.)\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\label{sec:conclusion}\n\nWe proposed {KARPET} for finding tree patterns in labeled graphs, e.g., heterogeneous information networks. Compared to previous work, it combines two unique properties. First, it is a top-$k$ anytime algorithm, in the sense that it quickly returns the top-ranked results, then incrementally delivers more on request. This is achieved without sacrificing performance for full-result retrieval compared to bulk-computation. Second, while being subject to the same general hardness of graph isomorphism, {KARPET} aggressively exploits the special properties of HINs. We demonstrate this by proving surprisingly strong theoretical guarantees that connect space and time complexity to parameters affected by heterogeneity: result cardinality for the slightly relaxed graph homomorphism problem and number of adjacent edges of a given type. The formulas show that greater heterogeneity of graph and query labels works in our favor by reducing the ``gap'' between homomorphism and isomorphism, and by reducing result size. In future work we will attempt to extend the approach to query patterns with cycles---which appears to be significantly more challenging. Intuitively, it is more challenging to perform elimination of spurious node and edge candidates when pruning based only on local neighborhoods.\n\n\\section{Experiments}\n\\label{sec:exp}\n\nOur experiments evaluate running time, memory consumption, and size of the search space explored by $KARPET$ on several query templates and four data sets against two baseline algorithms. In order to allow reproducible results, our code can be downloaded from our project page~\\cite{Code2018}.\n\n\\introparagraph{Baseline algorithms}\nWe chose two baselines that allow us to evaluate the relative contribution of our two key steps \n(pruning the search space, and guided search) \nto the performance of $KARPET$. \n\n\n\\emph{Unguided} first calculates all results from the candidate graph and only then ranks them. \nSince it uses our pruned search space, but does not include any prioritizing of query results, it serves as a baseline to evaluate the contribution of our guided search phase.\n\n\\emph{Backbone} is intended to evaluate the effect of our aggressive tree-based pruning strategy. It extends the state-of-art top-$k$ algorithm for \\emph{path} queries \non HINs~\\cite{liang2016links}. First, it identifies the longest terminal-to-terminal path $R$ in the tree pattern $Q$ (called the ``\\emph{backbone}'' of $Q$). \nIt then incrementally retrieves the lightest backbone instances in $G$ one-by-one. Note that such an instance is a partial match with smaller unmapped subtrees ``hanging off'' the backbone path. Thus, we can execute {Unguided} on each such subpattern, yielding a divide and conquer algorithm. Since each subpattern is independent, we extract the lightest instance of each subpattern, and merge these solutions with the backbone instance. This involves checking for repeat node occurrences to enforce isomorphism. Then the next heavier subtree matches are explored etc. Given a pre-defined value of $k$, the algorithm can prune the set of remaining backbone instances every time a new full match is found. \\emph{In all our experiments, we supply the ultimate value of $k$ to {Backbone}, to explore the best possible performance this algorithm might achieve (if it was able to guess the correct value of $k$ from the start).}\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Datasets}\nWe use four well-known heterogeneous datasets: \nFlickr \\cite{Flicker},\nDBLP \\cite{liang2016links},\nEnron \\cite{liang2016links},\nand\nYelp \\cite{Yelp}. \nFigure~\\ref{fig:datasets} gives an overview of their properties.\nNotice that Enron, DBLP and Flickr have denser graphs than Yelp.\nIn order to create weights for individual edges, we used the age of the edge with an exponential decay based on the difference between edge creation time and query time.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n    \\begin{tabular}{| l | r | r | c |}\n    \\hline\n    Dataset & \\multicolumn{1}{c|}{$|V|$} &\\multicolumn{1}{c|}{$|E|$} &\\multicolumn{1}{c|}{$|L|$}  \\\\ \\hline\\hline\n    Flickr &2,007,369 &18,147,504 &3  \\\\ \\hline\n    DBLP &2,241,258 &14,747,328 &4  \\\\ \\hline\n    Enron &46,463 &613,838 &4 \\\\ \\hline\n    Yelp &4,301,900 &7,059,472 &6  \\\\ \\hline\n    \\end{tabular}\n\\end{center}\n\\caption{Dataset statistics}\n\\label{fig:datasets}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Query templates}\nWe created five different pattern \\emph{templates} listed in Fig.~\\ref{fig:templates}.\nFor each pattern, we chose 300 different assignments of actual nodes to the query leaves, which gave us 300 queries per template, for a total of 6,000 query instances across all datasets.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.45\\textwidth]{figures\/templates.pdf}\n    \\caption{Templates used to generate queries for each dataset. Shapes indicate node types; the cyan-colored nodes are terminals.}\n    \\label{fig:templates}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Performance metrics}\nWe vary $k$ between 1 and total number of results, and compare the algorithms on three performance metrics. \n1) \\emph{Running time}: We measure the time between having loaded the dataset into memory and returning the k-th result, reporting the average for each template.\n2) \\emph{Memory consumption}: We report the \\emph{maximum} number of nodes (i.e., partial matches weighted by the number of matched nodes they contain) stored at any time during the execution of each algorithm.\n3) \\emph{Size of search space}: We report the \\emph{total} number of partial matches (weighted by the number of matched nodes they contain) that are stored during execution.\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Experimental setup}\nExperiments were run on an Intel Xeon CPU E5-2440 1.90GHz with 200GB of memory running Linux. We compiled the source code with \\texttt{g++} 4.8 (optimization flag \\texttt{O2}).\n\n\n\n\\subsection{\\label{sec:results}\\textbf{Discussion and Highlights}}\n\nTo justify our ``solving isomorphism through homomorphism'' approach, we also ran {KARPET} with node-repetition check turned off. This produces all homomorphic matches, from which we can then determine offline how many were also results for the isomorphism case. We plot both numbers as we increase $k$ in Figure~\\ref{fig:homo_iso}. It shows a representative result, obtained from the Enron dataset using a query from Template~1. The small gap between the lines confirms that the vast majority of homomorphic matches are also isomorphic result patterns.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.4\\textwidth}\n  \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{figures\/isohomo.pdf}  \n\\end{subfigure}\n\\caption{Number of isomorphic and homomorphic matches for an instance of Template 1 on the Enron dataset.}\\label{fig:homo_iso}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\centering\n\\begin{subfigure}[t]{0.4\\textwidth}\n  \\includegraphics[width=\\textwidth]{figures\/TOPK_time.pdf}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\caption{\\label{fig:topk}Running time for increasing k until all results are returned, for {KARPET} and {Unguided}.}\n\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nFigure~\\ref{fig:topk} shows a representative result comparing {KARPET} to {Unguided}, which bulk-computes the entire output and hence is not affected by the choice of $k$. It is clearly visible how our any-$k$ algorithm continuously returns the top-ranked results in order, with very low latency between consecutive outputs. By the time {Unguided} finally returns the first match, {KARPET} has already delivered more than 85\\% of all matches. In the end, it took {KARPET} 4.98s to output \\emph{all} matches. For comparison, bulk-computation by {Unguided} took 4.31s, indicating a small overhead of 0.67s for supporting the anytime property.\n\n\n\\begin{table}[bt]\n\\npdecimalsign{.}\n\n\\footnotesize\n\\begin{tabular}{|l|l|r|r|r|r|r|}\n\\hline\n{Data} &{Algorithm} & { \\: T1  \\:} & {  \\:T2 \\: } & {  \\:T3 \\: } & {  \\:T4 \\: } & {  \\:T5 \\: } \\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\\multirow{3}{*}{Flickr} & {KARPET} &43.86 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&58.17 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&99.28 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&20.12 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&81.92 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\ \n\n{} &{Unguided} &2200 &2085 &5951 &2021 &5518 \\\\ \n\n{} & {Backbone} &2946 &9678 &3033 &4114 &9963 \\\\\\hline\\hline \n\n\\multirow{3}{*}{DBLP} &{KARPET} &9.51 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&8.87 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&104.33\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &8.67\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &8.15 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\ &{Unguided} &1090 &1936 &1995 &814 &1110 \\\\ \n\n&{Backbone} &839 &502 &337 &1109 &1059 \\\\ \n\n\\hline\\hline \n\n\\multirow{3}{*}{Enron} &{KARPET} &10 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&57\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &29\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &57 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&104\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} \\\\ \n\n{} & {Unguided} &202 &1036 &1013 &669 &891 \\\\ \n\n{} & {Backbone} &4914 &18925 &5124 &7056 &11075 \\\\ \n\n\\hline\\hline \n\\nprounddigits{3}\n\\multirow{3}{*}{Yelp} & {KARPET} &0.11\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &0.13 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&0.78 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&0.20\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &0.15\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} \\\\ \n\n{} & {Unguided} &1.68 &1.79 &2.27 &1.40 &2.06 \\\\ \n\n{} & {Backbone} &3.84 &3.53 &1.02 &3.82 &3.02 \\\\ \n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{\\label{tab:running-time}Average running time (milliseconds) for each dataset, algorithm, and template. Cells with the least running time in the three algorithms are marked gray.}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\n\\begin{table}[bt]\n\\npdecimalsign{.}\n\\nprounddigits{3}\n\\footnotesize\n\n\\begin{tabular}{|l|l|r|r|r|r|r|}\n\\hline\n{Data} &{Algorithm} & { \\: T1  \\:} & {  \\:T2 \\: } & {  \\:T3 \\: } & {  \\:T4 \\: } & {  \\:T5 \\: } \\\\\n\\hline\\hline\n\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Flickr} &{KARPET}  &278 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&286   &1212  &458  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1957 \\\\\n {} &{Unguided}  &1212 &294  &17560 &833 &61603\\\\ \n {} &{Backbone}  &460  &139\\cellcolor[gray]{.8}  &76 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&939&1057 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{DBLP} &{KARPET} &162 &146 &387 &251 &253 \\\\\n &{Unguided} &162 &146 &409 &251 &253 \\\\\n  &{Backbone} &29\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &35\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &26 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&72\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &103\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} \\\\\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Enron} &{KARPET} &459 &676 &546 &727 &713 \\\\\n {} &{Unguided} &477 &697 &569 &745 &728 \\\\\n {} &{Backbone} &188 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&109 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&11 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&168\\cellcolor[gray]{.8} &87 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Yelp} &{KARPET} &1.02 &1.02 &1.36 &1.01 &1.02 \\\\\n {} &{Unguided} &1.02 &1.02 &1.36 &1.01 &1.02 \\\\\n {} &{Backbone} &1.03 &1.02 &1.00\\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.01 &1.02 \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{\\label{tab:memory} Average memory measured by the max number of nodes stored, for each dataset, algorithm, and template. Cells using the least memory are marked gray.\n}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\begin{table}[bt]\n\\npdecimalsign{.}\n\\nprounddigits{3}\n\\footnotesize\n\\begin{tabular}{|l|l|r|r|r|r|r|}\n\\hline\n{Data} &{Algorithm} & { \\: T1  \\:} & {  \\:T2 \\: } & {  \\:T3 \\: } & {  \\:T4 \\: } & {  \\:T5 \\: } \\\\\n\\hline \\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Flickr} & {KARPET}&1.16-e6  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.18-e6 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&9.29-e5  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.12-e4 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.56-e6 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n{} &{Unguided} &5.41-e6 &1.55-e6 &1.96-e7 &1.52-e5 &2.20-e7\\\\ \n{} & {Backbone} &5.37-e6 &1.99-e6  &1.16-e6  &1.02-e7 &8.04-e6 \\\\\n\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{DBLP} &{KARPET} &4.84-e4 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&3.98-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&5.48-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&9.35-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&4.55-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n &{Unguided} &7.25-e5 &3.35-e5 &1.58-e6 &2.16-e5 &8.91-e5 \\\\\n  &{Backbone} &4.64-e5 &1.68-e5 &2.91-e5 &9.38-e5 &9.57-e5 \\\\\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Enron} &{KARPET} &4.22-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.13-e5 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&7.39-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&1.29-e4 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&3.52-e4  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n {} & {Unguided} &8.41-e5 &9.50-e5 &9.11-e5 &8.93-e5 &8.60-e5 \\\\\n {} & {Backbone} &1.31-e6 &8.86-e5 &1.39-e6 &3.07-e5 &5.74-e5 \\\\\n \\hline\\hline\n \\multirow{3}{*}{Yelp} & {KARPET} &58&99 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&191 &51 &104 \\\\\n {} & {Unguided} &58 &99 &233 &51 &104 \\\\\n {} & {Backbone} &45 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&100 &17 \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&48  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}&62  \\cellcolor[gray]{.8}\\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{\\label{tab:space} Average search space measured by weighted total number of partial matches, for each dataset, algorithm, and template. Cells exploring the least search space are marked gray.\n}\n\\end{table}\n\n\nFor each template (fixing $k = 5$) we show the average running time, memory usage, and search space of our algorithm, along with the two baselines, on all four datasets in Tables~\\ref{tab:running-time}, \\ref{tab:memory}, and \\ref{tab:space}. In terms of average running time, {KARPET} outperforms the baselines in all cases. On DBLP, we can see 100x faster running time compared to {Unguided}, and 10x speedup compared to {Backbone}. We make the following detailed observations about these results.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{\\textbf{Varying the Dataset}}\n\nWe observed that {KARPET}'s margin of improvement over the baselines is generally greater on denser graphs. Higher density leads to more matches, which {KARPET} can handle best, because it prioritizes the search based on subtree weight more effectively than the two baselines.\nThe \\texttt{Yelp} graph is extremely sparse, causing many queries to have only one or two matches. For those queries, all three algorithms behave nearly identically, e.g., running time for a typical single-match query on \\texttt{Yelp} was $0.15$ msec for {KARPET}, $0.2$ msec for {Unguided}, and $0.16$ msec for {Backbone}.\nHowever, even for this sparse graph, there are several queries for each pattern that have a larger number of candidate instances. \nThese result in a significantly slower average running time for both baselines, while {KARPET} averages to less than 1 msec.\n\n{Backbone} does relatively well compared to {Unguided} on the larger dataset DBLP, and is the same order of magnitude for Flickr, but fails to perform well on Enron. For dense graphs, if the branch-and-bound does not terminate quickly, the overhead required by the divide-and-conquer merging steps can be very large because the same subtree may be visited multiple times.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{\\textbf{Memory}}\n\nThe backbone-based algorithm often uses the least amount of memory, because in each iteration, it only holds the backbone matches and the single instance of the backbone it grows. The memory bottleneck for {Unguided} is the amount of storage needed to hold all matching trees when they are sorted by weight.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{\\textbf{Relative Strengths and Weaknesses}}\n\nFor ``easy'' queries, which only have a few matching instances, all three approaches show similar running time. On the other hand, when a query has to select the top-$k$ from a larger result set, e.g., dozens or 100s of results, {KARPET} has a significant advantage from efficiently pruning the search space at an earlier stage. For such ``hard'' queries, {Unguided} enumerates all matching instances before sorting them. {Backbone} only partially exploits pruning opportunities for the backbone. The non-trivial extensions proposed for {KARPET} are required to fully benefit from the constraints encoded by the entire tree structure.\n\n{Backbone} can exhibit faster running times than {Unguided} in some cases. It achieves this speed-up due to its branch-and-bound nature, filtering out instances that exceed the threshold established by matches for the lightest backbones explored early on. (Note that this type of pruning takes advantage of advance knowledge of the final value of $k$. In practice, the algorithm would not know $k$ and hence could not apply any such pruning.) Either way, in most cases, this advantage is outweighed by the fact that {Backbone} introduces an overhead for merging subtrees and repeatedly visiting some of the subtrees.\n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\\label{sec:intro}\n\nHeterogeneous information networks (HIN)~\\cite{han2010mining}, i.e., graphs with node and\/or edge labels, have recently attracted a lot of attention for their ability to model many complex real-world relationships, thereby enabling rich queries. \nOften labels are used to represent types of nodes and their relationships:\n\n\\begin{example}[Photo-sharing network]\\label{ex:flickr1}\nConsider a photo-sharing social network with three vertex type labels: user, photo, and group. Users are connected to the photos they upload, and photos are connected to groups when they are posted there. Finally, users can connect to groups by joining them. To maintain a vibrant community and alert users about potentially interesting photos, the social network might run queries of the type shown in Figure~\\ref{fig:FlickrExample}: \ngiven \\textit{photo1} and two users, \\textit{user1} and \\textit{user2}, find alternative groups (matching nodes for \\textit{group2}) \nto post the photo in order to reach \\textit{user2} without spamming her directly. \nThis is achieved by identifying a user belonging to both groups (\\textit{user3}), who can post the photo in the other group. \nThere might be hundreds of matching triples (\\textit{group1}, \\textit{user3}, \\textit{group2}), and there would be many more if \\textit{user2} was not given in advance. \nUnder these circumstances, the goal often is not to find \\emph{all} results, but only the \\emph{most important} ones. \nImportance can be determined based on node and edge weights, e.g., weights representing distances (or similarities). \nThen the query should return the lightest (or heaviest) pattern instances. \nFor example, the weight of a group may be based on its number of members, the weight of a user on how active s\/he is, and the weight of a link on the timestamp when it was established (to give preference to long-term relationships or more recent photo posts), or the sum of the PageRanks of its endpoints.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\begin{figure}[tb]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.7\\linewidth]{.\/figures\/flickr.pdf}\n    \\caption{Example query on a photo-sharing network: \n\tfind the most important nodes of types ({user3}, {group1}, {group2}) \n\tfor a given triple of specified nodes of types ({photo1}, {user1}, {user2}).}\n    \\label{fig:FlickrExample}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThese types of rich query semantics also appears in other contexts, e.g., root-cause analysis in distributed systems. \nThe Vitrage service for OpenStack~\\cite{Vitrage}\nmakes use of path and tree patterns to specify rules for automatic root cause deduction of alarms raised by virtual machines and hardware.\nLarge OpenStack deployments---involving thousands of hosts and tens of thousands of virtual machines and hardware components---necessitate pattern matching algorithms to deduce the root cause of such patterns in near real-time.\n\nWe focus on efficient solutions for acyclic pattern queries on general labeled graphs. \nTo this end, we propose the notion of \\emph{any-$k$} algorithms, a novel variant of top-$k$ algorithms. A top-$k$ algorithm exploits knowledge about the given $k$ to produce the top-$k$ lightest patterns faster than the ``full enumeration'' algorithm \n(which first produces all results and then ranks them by weight). \nIn practice, it is difficult for users to know the value of $k$ upfront (``when will I have seen enough?''). An any-$k$ algorithm addresses this issue by not requiring a pre-set value for $k$. Instead, an any-$k$ algorithm\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item returns the top-ranked result as quickly as possible,\n\\item then returns the second-ranked result next, followed by the third-ranked, and so on,\n\\item until the user is satisfied and terminates the process.\n\\end{enumerate}\nIn other words, the ranked enumeration can be stopped \\emph{anytime} and should then return as many top results as possible.\n\nThe queries we are interested in correspond to \\emph{subgraph isomorphism}, which is known to be hard in general.\nIn particular, subgraph isomorphism on homogeneous graphs is \nalready NP-complete in the size of the query\n(even for the path case as Hamiltonian path is a special case). And labeled graphs contain unlabeled graphs as a special case. \nOn the other hand, labels provide more opportunities for achieving better performance \\emph{in practice} by exploiting heterogeneity where present. Note that a key reason for hardness of isomorphism lies in the ``non-repetition constraint,'' i.e., the same graph node cannot occur more than once in an answer. Without this constraint, pattern search would correspond to the easier \\emph{subgraph homomorphism} problem\nwhich can be solved in PTIME.\n\nOur approach is based on three key insights:\n(1) Constraints on node or edge labels can dramatically reduce the number of matching results; \n(2) Mutually exclusive {type} labels ``narrow the gap'' in cardinality between the set of isomorphic subgraphs and the set of homomorphic subgraphs (which includes all isomorphic ones). \nThe reason is that query pattern nodes of different types cannot be mapped to the same graph node, even when the algorithm is only searching for homomorphism. \nIn the example photo-sharing network, users and photos cannot stand in for a group node. In the extreme, if all nodes in the query pattern have different types, then any solution for subgraph homomorphism also satisfies isomorphism. This suggests an approach that aggressively prunes for the homomorphism case and then filters based on node repetitions in the result patterns; and \n(3) In many real-world cases, output size is small relative to the combinatorial size of the pattern search space. Hence algorithm complexity bounds based on output size promise to deliver practically meaningful performance guarantees.\n\n\\textbf{Overview of the Solution.} Our approach combines three conceptually separate steps into a two-phase algorithm.\n\n1) The search space of possible homomorphic patterns is pruned to the provably smallest representation of the original graph. We use insights from the well-known Yannakakis algorithm~\\cite{DBLP:conf\/vldb\/Yannakakis81} for evaluating answers to acyclic conjunctive queries to create this representation in just one bottom-up and a subsequent top-down sweep through the query tree.\n\n2) We devise a novel any-$k$ algorithm for enumerating homomorphic tree patterns. It uses dynamic programming to perform a bottom-up cost calculation, followed by a top-down guided search.\n\n3) A final pruning step removes those homomorphic patterns that do not satisfy the isomorphism requirement.\n\nWe show how to combine the first two steps into just one bottom-up and one top-down phase.\nWe then integrate the third step into the combined top-down phase. Our experiments show that even on graphs with millions of nodes and tens of millions of edges, we can return the top-ranked results in just a few milliseconds, whereas alternative approaches would take orders of magnitude longer. Our implementation can be downloaded from~\\cite{Code2018}.\n\n\\textbf{Main contributions.} We devise {KARPET}  \n(\\underline{K}ernelization\\footnote{\\emph{Kernelization} is a pre-processing technique that replaces the original input by a (usually) smaller representation called ``kernel'' in order to reduce the computation cost. Our approach enumerates solutions over a smaller pruned candidate graph.}\n\\underline{A}nd \\underline{R}apid \\underline{P}runing-based \\underline{E}xploration for \\underline{T}ree patterns), a novel and highly performant any-$k$ algorithm that can quickly identify top-ranked tree patterns in large graphs, then return the next lower-ranked ones when given extra time. \n\n1) {KARPET} is designed as an \\emph{anytime} ranking algorithm that enumerates homomorphic subtrees in order of total edge weight with strong theoretic guarantees: We show that our worst-case time complexity for returning all homomorphism results is identical to full enumeration.\nIn addition, {KARPET} provides strong upper bound guarantees for the time to return the top-ranked homomorphism result, as well as the time between returning a homomorphism result and the next. For cases with ``small gap'' between homomorphism and isomorphism, i.e., when ``sufficiently many'' homomorphic patterns are also isomorphic patterns, these guarantees carry over to subgraph isomorphism.\n\n2) We propose fast and effective \\emph{local} pruning operations that exploit the heterogeneity of labeled graphs, proving that they also guarantee strong \\emph{global} pruning properties. Intuitively, for subgraph homomorphism, we show that inexpensive pruning based on 1-node neighborhoods efficiently removes all candidate nodes that are not part of any result pattern.\n\n3) In contrast to a lot of theoretical work on subgraph isomorphism algorithms, our algorithm is output-sensitive---its worst case complexity depends on the output size, which is smaller when the graph and the query are more heterogeneous, rather than being exponential in the size of the query pattern.\n\n4) We show how to speed up the search for top-ranked isomorphic answers by pushing the pruning for non-repeating nodes into the incremental result enumeration algorithm.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\input{problem_defi}\n\n\\section{Any-k Algorithm}\n\\label{sec:algorithm}\n\nWe next present an approach for sub-graph \\emph{homomorphism}; this is a relaxation of sub-graph isomorphism in that\nwe do not require the mapping $\\lambda$ from query nodes to tree-pattern nodes to be bijective (in other words, a node can be repeated in the result pattern).\nSection~\\ref{sec:repetitions} extends the approach for isomorphism.\n\n{KARPET} consists of two phases:\n1) a bottom-up sweep from leaves to the root of $Q$, and \n2) a top-down depth-first traversal from root to leaves.\nThe first phase prunes some of the spurious candidates and creates a ``\\emph{candidate graph}'' (discussed below) with ``\\emph{minimum subtree weights}.'' The second phase prunes the remaining spurious candidates and performs a search guided by the subtree weights. Here the term \\emph{spurious candidate} refers to a node or edge of the input graph that does not appear in any of the query results.\n\n\n\\subsection{Bottom-Up Phase}\n\\label{sec:bottomUp}\n\n\n\\setlength{\\textfloatsep}{0pt}\n\\begin{algorithm}\n  \\small\n  \\caption{\\label{alg:pruning}Bottom-up Subtree Weight Computation}\n\\begin{flushleft}  \n\\textbf{Input}: query $Q$, node neighborhood index $N(v, \\ell)$ \\\\\n\\textbf{Output}: $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace: u \\mapsto [c \\mapsto [u' \\mapsto w_{\\min}]]$ \\\\\n\\hspace{0mm}\\protect{\\phantom{\\textbf{Output}:}} $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace: (u, u') \\mapsto [c \\mapsto c']$\t\\\\\n\\end{flushleft}\n\\begin{algorithmic}[1]\n\n\\State \\algocomment{\/\/ For each leaf node in the query tree, \nfind graph nodes with required label, add them to the candidates, and set their weights to 0}\n\\For{$u \\in \\bot(Q)$}\t\\label{alg:line:terminal}\n\t\\State $\\forall c \\in V. \n\t\\varphi(c) = \\psi(u) :\n\t\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u).\\textsc{Insert}(c \\mapsto (\\textrm{NIL} \\mapsto 0))$\n\\EndFor\n\n\\State \\algocomment{\/\/ Traverse remaining query nodes in any bottom-up order}\n\\For{$u \\in \\textsc{Traversal}(V_Q)$}\t\\label{alg:line:traversal}\n\n    \\State \\algocomment{\/\/($i$) Find candidate edges adjacent to candidates in all children $u'$}\n    \\For{children $u'$ of $u$ in $Q$, and candidates $c' \\in \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u')$}\n        \\For{neighbors $c \\in N(c',\\psi(u))$} \\label{alg:line:createcandidates}\n          \\State $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace(u, u').\\textsc{Insert}(c \\mapsto c')$\n        \\EndFor\n    \\EndFor\n\t\n\t\\State \\algocomment{\/\/($\\textit{ii}$) Keep only candidates with edges to each of the children of $u$}\n\t\\State $C = \\bigcap_{u' \\textrm{ child nodes of } u} \\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace(u, u').\\textsc{Keys}$\t\\label{alg:line:intersection}\n\n\t\\State \\algocomment{\/\/($\\textit{iii}$) Find min subtree weights for reachable candidates to children}\n\t\\For{$c \\in C$ and all children $u_i$ of $u$}\n\t\t\\State $C' = \\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace(u, u').\\texttt{Get}(c)$\t\n\t\t\\State $w_{i} \\leftarrow \\min_{c' \\in C'}[w(c, c') + \\textsc{Weight}\\xspace(c')]$\t\t\n\t\t\\State $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u).\\textsc{Insert}(c \\mapsto (u_i \\mapsto w_i))$\t\\label{alg:line:minsubtree}\n\t\\EndFor\n\t  \n\\EndFor\n\n\\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure*}[t]\n\\centering\n\n\\begin{subfigure}[t]{.31\\linewidth}\n\t\\includegraphics[scale=0.31]{.\/figures\/Fig_bottom-up1}\n\t\\caption{}\\label{fig:bottomUp1}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\hspace{3mm}\n\\begin{subfigure}[t]{.31\\linewidth}\n\t\\includegraphics[scale=0.31]{.\/figures\/Fig_bottom-up2}\n\t\\caption{}\\label{fig:bottomUp2}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\\hspace{3mm}\n\\begin{subfigure}[t]{.31\\linewidth}\n\t\\includegraphics[scale=0.31]{.\/figures\/Fig_bottom-up3}\n\t\\caption{}\\label{fig:bottomUp3}\n\\end{subfigure}\n\n\\caption{Minimal subtree weight computations: \n(a) after traversing all leaves,\n(b) after traversing middle level,\n(c) after finishing at the root.\nNumbers above node candidates indicate minimum sub-tree weights stored in $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace$; numbers on edges indicate edge weights stored in $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace$.\n}\n\\end{figure*}\n\t\t\n\n\nThe bottom-up phase traverses the query tree in any bottom-up order and\nconstructs a ``candidate graph'' consisting of two index structures:\n(1) $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u)$ returns for query node $u$ a hash index that maps a node candidate $c$ to a list of minimum subtree weights, with one weight for each of $c$'s children.\n(2) $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace(u, u')$ returns for each query edge between a node $u$ and its child $u'$ a hash index that maps a candidate node $c$ of $u$ to all adjacent candidates $c'$ of $u'$.\n\nWe illustrate \nAlgorithm~\\ref{alg:pruning} with Figures~\\ref{fig:bottomUp1}, \\ref{fig:bottomUp2}, and \\ref{fig:bottomUp3}.\nIt first inserts candidate nodes for each query leaf node $u$ into the corresponding candidates $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u)$, \nsetting their weights to zero (line~\\ref{alg:line:terminal}). \nNote that leaves do not have children, hence the NIL value in the expression.\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp1} there is a single candidate per leaf, but in practice it can be a larger subset of $V$ for each query leaf, \ndepending on the node constraints. \nThen, for each query node $u$, the algorithm \n($i$) finds possible candidate nodes,\n($ii$) prunes them, and  \n($iii$) calculates the minimum subtree weights\n\nIn more detail: \n($i$) for each query edge leading to a child $(u,u')$, it first finds all candidate edges $(c, c')$, storing the map \n$\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace: (u, u') \\mapsto [c \\mapsto c']$ (line~\\ref{alg:line:createcandidates}).\n($ii$) Then, the algorithm only keeps the list of candidates \nfor each query node that are \\emph{reachable from candidate instances in all leaves of the query node} (line~\\ref{alg:line:intersection}):\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp3}, the list of \ncandidates for query node \\textit{group1} is $\\{c_1, c_2, c_3\\}$. \nNotice how spurious candidates not reachable from the leaves, e.g., $e_1$ in \\textit{group2}, are not even accessed (compare with Figure~\\ref{fig:joinGraph}). \nSimilarly, while $d_1$ in \\textit{user3} is reachable from the left, it is not reachable from the right subtree and is thus automatically pruned as well.\n($iii$)~Then, the algorithm finds for each reachable node, the min weight along each query edge $(u, u')$ starting at $c$ (line~\\ref{alg:line:minsubtree}).\nFor example, in Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp3},\nthe left weight $5$ for $c_2$ is computed \nas the minimum of weights \nfor following $(d_2, c_2)$, \nwhich is 5 as the sum of the weight of edge $(d_2, c_2)$ (= 2)\nplus the weight of $c_2$ (= 2+1),\nor for following $(d_2, c_3)$, which is 7 as the sum of the weight of edge $(d_2, c_2)$ (= 4)\nplus the weight of $c_3$ (= 2+1).\nNotice we use here $\\textsc{Weight}\\xspace(c)$ as short form for the sum of weights at a node $c$,\nwhich we get from \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace.\nThe two new created indices speed up finding adjacent edges in a subtree of the query pattern during top-down traversal.\n\n\n\\subsection{Top-Down Phase}\n\nThe second part of our algorithm performs top-down search, starting at the root node and proceeding downward to the leaves. This is essential for two reasons: First, the pre-computed subtree weights provide information to guide the search to the lightest patterns before exploring the heavier ones. Second, the top-down traversal implicitly prunes \\emph{all} remaining spurious candidates for sub-graph homomorphism, as we will prove in Section~\\ref{sec:analysis}. Again, pruning actually happens implicitly by not reaching those candidates. To see the latter, consider \\textit{group1} candidate $c_1$ in Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp3}. It is spurious, but could not be removed by the bottom-up sweep. However, it will never be accessed during top-down traversal, because $d_1$ was never recorded in \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace by Algorithm~\\ref{alg:pruning}.\n\n\\setlength{\\textfloatsep}{0pt}\n\\begin{algorithm}[bt]\n  \\small\n  \\caption{\\label{alg:prioritized-search}Prioritized Search (front-element optimization not shown)}\n\\begin{flushleft}  \n\\textbf{Input}: Tree pattern $Q$, \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace, \\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace \\\\\n\\textbf{Output}: All matches of $Q$, one-by-one in increasing order of weight\n\\end{flushleft}\n  \\begin{algorithmic}[1]\n\t\\State \\algocomment{\/\/Initialize \\texttt{pq} with all candidates of the query root node}\n\t\\State $\\texttt{pq} \\gets \\textsc{PriorityQueue}()$\n\t\\For{$c \\in \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(\\top(Q))$}\\label{line:alg:initpq}\n    \t\\State $Z \\gets$ partial tree $(c)$ consisting of just one node \n\t\t\\State $\\texttt{pq}.\\textsc{Insert}(\\textsc{Weight}\\xspace(c), Z)$\n    \\EndFor\n\t\\State \\algocomment{\/\/Expand \\text{pq} until all results returned}\n    \\While{\\texttt{pq}.\\textsc{Size} > 0}\n    \t\\State \\label{line:update-cost} $(\\texttt{oldkey}, Z) \\gets \\texttt{pq}.\\textsc{Pop-Minimum}$\n        \\If{$Z$ is a complete match}\n          \\State return $Z$\n\t\t\\Else\n\t        \\State $(u, u') \\gets \\textsc{NextPreorder}(Q,Z)$ \\label{line:alg:next}\\Comment Edge to expand pattern\n\t        \\For{$c \\in \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u)$}\n\t          \\For{$c'$ returned by $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace(u,u').\\textsc{Get}(c)$}\n\t            \\State $Z' = Z.\\textsc{Append}(c')$\\label{line:expansion}\n\t            \\State $\\texttt{newkey} \\gets \n\t\t\t\t\t\\texttt{oldkey} \n\t\t\t\t\t- \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(u).\\texttt{Get}(c, u')\t\n\t\t\t\t\t+ \n\t\t\t\t\t\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\\phantom{a}\n\t\t\t\t\t\\hspace{21mm}\\phantom{a}\n\t\t\t\t\tw(c,c')\n\t\t\t\t\t+ \\textsc{Weight}\\xspace(c')\n\t\t\t\t\t$\n\t\t\t\t\t\\label{line:newPrio}\t\t\t\n\t            \\State \\texttt{pq}.\\textsc{Push}($\\texttt{newkey}, Z')$\n\t          \\EndFor\n\t\t\t\\EndFor\n        \\EndIf\n    \\EndWhile\n \\end{algorithmic}\n\\end{algorithm}\n\nAlgorithm~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} shows the pseudo-code for top-down guided search. \nInitially, all candidates $c$ in the query root $r$ are inserted into priority queue \\texttt{pq} (line~\\ref{line:alg:initpq}), \nwith their priorities set to the sum of the candidate's weights.\nIn Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp3}, there is a single candidate, $d_2$, of weight $5+3=8$. \nThen the algorithm repeatedly pops the top element from \\texttt{pq} and expands the partial pattern using pre-order traversal. \nFunction $\\textsc{NextPreorder}$ returns the edge, as the pair of parent and child node, along which the partial pattern will be expanded next (line~\\ref{line:alg:next}). \nThe priority value of each expanded partial match is defined as the sum of the pattern's edge weights plus the sum of the weights of the unexplored subtrees. \nIn the example, partial match $(d_2, c_2)$ is inserted into \\texttt{pq} with priority 8 = 2 (edge weight) + (2+1) (weights of $c_2$) + 3 (weight of right subtree of $d_2$). \nSimilarly, partial match $(d_2, c_3)$ is inserted with priority 4+(2+1)+3 = 10. \nNote that those values are computed incrementally during traversal (line~\\ref{line:newPrio}). \nConsider expansion of $(d_2)$ to $(d_2, c_3)$. Priority of $d_2$ was 8, with weight 5 for the newly expanded subtree rooted at \\textit{group1}. \nAfter retrieving $c_3$ from \\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace, priority of $(d_2, c_3)$ is computed as \n8 (\\texttt{old})\n- 5 (newly expanded subtree)\n+ 4 (weight of edge $(d_2, c_3)$ )\n+ 3 (priority of $c_3$) = 10 (line~\\ref{line:newPrio} in Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}).\nThen $(d_2, c_2)$ is popped next, and expanded to partial match $(d_2, c_2, a)$ with priority \n8 = 8 - 2 + 2 + (0+0).\nThis pattern is then expanded next to $(d_2, c_2, a, b)$, $(d_2, c_2, a, b, e_2)$, and finally $(d_2, c_2, a, b, e_2, f)$---all with the same priority of 8. The latter is output as the minimal-weight solution. Only then will partial match $(d_2, c_3)$ with the higher priority value 10 be expanded analogously. Each expansion operation requires a pop operation from priority queue, visiting potential edges once.\n\n\n\n\\section{Algorithm Analysis}\n\\label{sec:analysis}\n\nAll results in this section are for the relaxed version of the problem, based on sub-graph homomorphism instead of isomorphism. We discuss in Section~\\ref{sec:repetitions} how to extend them to the isomorphism case. Proofs were omitted due to space constraints, but can be found in the extended version~\\cite{yang2018}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Minimality of Candidate Graph}\n\nWe show that during top-down search (Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}), no spurious candidate node will ever be accessed. A candidate node $c$ for a query node $q$ is ``\\emph{spurious}'' if there does not exist any homomorphic result pattern where $c$ is matched to $q$. Ensuring that no spurious nodes are accessed is crucial for proving strong upper bounds on the algorithm cost.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:spuriousNode}\nIf node candidate $c \\in \\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace(q)$ for query node $q \\in V_Q$ is accessed by Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}, then there exists a homomorphic result pattern where $\\lambda(q) = c$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\\subsection{Each Pop, One Result---In Order}\n\\label{sec:pq_pops}\n\nNext, we show a powerful result that is crucial in establishing important algorithm properties: \nDuring the top-down guided search, for each query result there is \\emph{at most} one push and \\emph{at most} one pop operation on priority queue \\texttt{pq}.\nFor this, we need the following lemmas.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:priorityMonotonicity}\nThe priority value of a partial pattern $P$ is always less than or equal to the priority of all its successors.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lem:sameWeightPQ}\nAssume that Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} popped partial pattern $P=(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_j)$, $j < |V_Q|$, of priority $w$ from \\texttt{pq}. Then there exists a direct successor $(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_j, c_{j+1})$ that has the same priority $w$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\n\nLemmas~\\ref{lem:priorityMonotonicity} and \\ref{lem:sameWeightPQ} immediately imply:\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{cor:frontOptOk}\nIf the last pop operation on \\texttt{pq} returned an incomplete pattern $P$, then one of the direct successors of $P$ will have priority equal to the minimum priority over all elements in \\texttt{pq}.\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\\begin{example}\\label{ex:PETpriorityValues}\nConsider the changes of \\texttt{pq} for the example in Figure~\\ref{fig:bottomUp3}. Initially it contains $[(d_2):8]$, the sole root node candidate with priority 5+3=8. This element is popped and expanded along edges $(d_2, c_2)$ and $(d_2, c_3)$. The priority of the former is 2 (weight of edge $(d_2, c_2)$) plus (2+1) (subtree weights of $c_2$) plus 3 (right subtree weight of $d_2$) = 8. It is identical to the initial priority of $d_2$, because edge $(d_2, c_2)$ is the one that determined the minimum left subtree weight of 5 in $d_2$. For $(d_2, c_3)$, priority is 10 due to the higher weight of edge $(d_2, c_3)$. After these two patterns are pushed, \\texttt{pq} contains $[(d_2, c_2):8, (d_2, c_3):10]$. The next pop delivers $(d_2, c_2):8$, which is expanded to $(d_2, c_2, a):8$, followed by repeated pop and push operations on this pattern, every time obtaining the same priority of 8, until the top result $(d_2, c_2, a, b, e_2, f)$ of weight 8 is completed. Only then will expansion of $(d_2, c_3):10$ commence.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\introparagraph{Front-element optimization}\nBased on Corollary~\\ref{cor:frontOptOk}, we next introduce an important optimization to Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}. Since the corollary guarantees that one of the direct successors of the partial pattern popped before will have a minimal priority value, we avoid the push-pop cycle for it and keep expanding it directly, only pushing the other direct successors. More precisely, assume the algorithm just popped partial match $P=(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_i)$ of priority $w$ from \\texttt{pq}. While expanding this pattern by one more node, it keeps in memory the first direct successor $P'=(c_1, c_2,\\ldots, c_i, c'_{i+1})$ encountered that also has priority value $w$, pushing all other direct successors to \\texttt{pq}. This way the algorithm still works on a min-priority element, but avoids the push-pop cycle for it. This seemingly minor optimization has strong implications as formalized in the following theorems.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:kPop}\nUsing front-element optimization, for any $k$, the $k$-th pop operation from \\texttt{pq} produces the $k$-th lightest homomorphic result pattern, possibly requiring additional push operations, but no more pop operations until this result pattern is returned.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{cor:numPushes}\nNo matter how many results are retrieved, Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} never performs more than $r_H$ push operations on \\texttt{pq} \\emph{in total}. Here $r_H$ denotes the number of homomorphic subtrees in $G$.\n\\end{corollary}\n\nThis follows directly from Theorem~\\ref{thm:kPop} and the following observation. Assume the algorithm continues to run until all query results are found. At that point it has removed all partial matches from \\texttt{pq} and the queue is empty. Theorem~\\ref{thm:kPop} implies that retrieving all results requires exactly $r_H$ pop operations. If the total number of push operations exceeded this, then the queue would not be empty. (And obviously, any execution of Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} that stops before returning all results will only have performed a subset of the push operations executed by the time all results are returned.)\n\n\n\\subsection{Algorithm Cost}\n\\label{sec:algCost}\n\nTo avoid notational clutter, we treat the size of the query pattern as a small constant and omit it from most formulas. (Note that pattern size is equal to the number of edges in $E_Q$, e.g., 5 in the photo-sharing network example.) It is straightforward to extend the formulas by including $|E_Q|$ as a variable.\n\n\\introparagraph{Algorithm~\\ref{alg:pruning}}\nTheoretical worst case cost is $\\mathrm{O}(|E|)$\\hide{$\\mathrm{O}(|E| \\cdot |E_Q|)$}, i.e., linear in graph size: for each of the query pattern edges, in the worst case all graph edges are accessed. The time for constructing $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace$ and $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace$ adds a constant overhead per edge processed. In practice, only a small fraction of $E$ will be accessed because of the label constraints. In particular, by using $\\texttt{GraphEdge}$ in line~\\ref{alg:line:createcandidates} in Alg.~\\ref{alg:pruning}, all neighbors of matching types (labels) are accessed in time linear in the number of these neighbors. Space cost is upper bounded by the combined size of $\\texttt{CandNode}\\xspace$ and $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace$, i.e., cannot exceed $|E_Q|$ times input graph size.\n\n\\introparagraph{Algorithm~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search}}\nThe results from Section~\\ref{sec:pq_pops} lead to strong guarantees. Space complexity of Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} is equal to the maximum size of the priority queue.\\hide{Since partial matches grow during the search process, we measure queue size not just in terms of the number of elements, but also consider their size---determined by the number of matched nodes.} Corollary~\\ref{cor:numPushes} immediately implies:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:spaceAlg2}\nSpace cost of Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} is upper bounded by $r_H$\\hide{$r_H \\cdot |E_Q|$}, the total result size for sub-graph homomorphism.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\nFrom a user's point of view, the time it takes to produce the next lower-ranked result is crucial:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:interarrival}\nThe initial latency for Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} to return the top-ranked homomorphic match, and also the time between returning any two consecutive homomorphic matches, is $\\mathrm{O}(\\mathrm{outDegree} + \\log r_H)$. \nHere $\\mathrm{outDegree} \\le r_H$ is greater of (1) the number of candidates in the root node and (2) the maximum cardinality of the set of adjacent node candidates $c'$ in $\\texttt{CandEdge}\\xspace: (u, u') \\mapsto [c \\mapsto \\{(c', w(c, c'))\\}]$ for any query graph edge $(u, u')$ and candidate $c$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nThese strong results show that {KARPET} can effectively exploit selective label constraints. For instance, if there are a thousand homomorphic subgraphs in $G$, then Theorems~\\ref{thm:spaceAlg2} and \\ref{thm:interarrival} guarantee that Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} will never store more than a thousand partial matches in memory and will perform at most a thousand (inexpensive) computation steps to deliver the next result to the user---no matter how big or connected the given graph!\n\nWe show next that the anytime property of {KARPET}, i.e., that it can deliver the top-ranked results quickly and then the next ones on request, incurs \\emph{no performance penalty} for producing \\emph{all} homomorphic matches:\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:timeAlg2}\nThe lower bound for producing \\emph{all} homomorphic result patterns is $\\Omega(r_H)$; sorting them costs $\\mathrm{O}(r_H \\log r_H)$. Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} has matching total time complexity $\\mathrm{O}(r_H \\log r_H)$\\hide{$\\mathrm{O}(|E_C| + r_H \\log r_H)$}.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\n\\section{Homomorphism to Isomorphism}\n\\label{sec:repetitions}\n\n{KARPET} as introduced in Section~\\ref{sec:algorithm} returns homomorphic matches. To obtain the desired isomorphic matches, function $\\lambda$ mapping query nodes to tree-pattern nodes has to be bijective. To guarantee this, one simply has to filter out all results where different query nodes are mapped to the same graph node. Instead of filtering on the final result, {KARPET} can perform early pruning by checking in line~\\ref{line:expansion} in Alg.~\\ref{alg:prioritized-search} if newly added node $c'$ already appears in partial match $Z$---discarding $Z'$ if it does. This modification has the following implications for the cost analysis results in Section~\\ref{sec:algCost}.\n\nSince some of the items previously pushed to priority queue \\texttt{pq} will now be discarded early, space consumption as well as computation cost of {KARPET} are lower than for finding all subgraph homomorphism results. However, worst-case complexity as established by Theorems~\\ref{thm:spaceAlg2} and \\ref{thm:timeAlg2} remains the same. And the guarantees for the time between results (Theorem~\\ref{thm:interarrival}) is weaker: In the worst case, e.g., when only the very first and the very last of the homomorphic matches represent isomorphic results, then time between consecutive results grows from $\\mathrm{O}(\\mathrm{outDegree} + \\log r_H)$ to $\\mathrm{O}(r_H \\log r_H)$. Fortunately, as our experiments indicate, heterogeneity indeed results in a small gap between homomorphism and isomorphism, i.e., real-world performance is closer to $\\mathrm{O}(\\mathrm{outDegree} + \\log r_H)$.\n\n\\input{experiment}\n\n\\input{related_work}\n\n\\input{conclusion}\n\n\n\\vspace{2mm}\n\\noindent\n\\textbf{Acknowledgments}.\nThis work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number\nR01 NS091421 and by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under award number CAREER III-1762268. \nThe content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the\nofficial views of NIH or NSF. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their constructive feedback.\n\n\\clearpage\n\n \\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}\n\\balance\n\n\\section{Problem Definition and Hardness}\n\\label{sec:problem}\n\n\\emph{Our goal is to find the lightest subgraphs of a labeled graph $G$ that are isomorphic to a given tree pattern $Q$}. Instead of returning all results at once after a long wait time, we set out to devise an \\emph{anytime algorithm}, which returns the top-ranked match as quickly as possible and then incrementally returns the remaining results over time.\n\n\\begin{definition}[Any-$k$ algorithm]\n\tAn any-$k$ algorithm is a variant of a top-$k$ algorithm in which $k$ is not known at the start of the algorithm. \n\tThe algorithm can be interrupted \\emph{anytime}, returning the top-$k$ results with $k$ being as large as possible.\n\\end{definition}\t\n\nWe define the weight of a pattern as the \\emph{sum} of edge weights.\nThis also supports search for the ``most reliable'' pattern based on probabilities assigned to edges. \nFinding the pattern with the greatest probability of being connected, assuming independence, is equivalent to maximizing the sum of the logarithms of the edge probabilities.\nFor our problem with a fixed query pattern, lightest and heaviest pattern search can be easily converted into each other. It is also straightforward to modify our approach to support pattern weight defined as minimum or maximum of edge weights.\nWe present the formal definitions next. Table~\\ref{tab:notation} summarizes important notation.\n\n\n\\begin{table}[t]\n\\caption{Notation used in this paper}\\label{tab:notation}\n\\centering\n\\small\n\\begin{tabularx}{\\linewidth}{  @{\\hspace{0pt}} >{$}l<{$}  @{\\hspace{2mm}}  X @{}}\n\\hline\n\\textrm{Symbol}\t\t\t& Definition \t\\\\\n\\hline\nG(V, E)\t\t& A labeled graph with node set $V$ and edge set $E$ \\\\\nL\t\t        & Set of node labels \\\\\n\\varphi()   & Function mapping nodes to labels \\\\\nw()     & Function mapping edges to weights \\\\\nQ(V_Q, E_Q)     & Tree pattern with node set $V_Q$ and edge set $E_Q$ \\\\\n\\psi()   & Required labels for a graph node matched to a query node \\\\\n\\bot(Q)       & Set of leaf nodes (or terminals) in $Q$ \\\\\n\\top(Q)       & Chosen root node in $Q$ \\\\\nN(v,\\ell)      & Set of neighbors of $v$ in $G$ with label $\\ell$ \\\\\n\\lambda() & Function mapping query nodes $V_Q$ to graph nodes $V$ \\\\\n\\hline\n\\end{tabularx}\n\\end{table}\n\n\n\\begin{definition}[HIN, labeled graph]\nA \\emph{Weighted Heterogeneous Information Network} (HIN) is a \nlabeled undirected graph $G = (V,E,\\varphi, w)$, \nwhere $V$ is a set of vertices, $E$ is a set of edges,  \n$\\varphi$ is a node labeling function $\\varphi : V \\rightarrow L$,\nand $w$ is an edge weight function $w : E \\rightarrow \\mathbb{R}$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nIn many HINs, a node has at least two different kinds of labels: a unique \\emph{node ID} and a \\emph{type} (or \\emph{class}). In the photo-sharing network example (see Example~\\ref{ex:flickr1}), the labeling function assigns types such as ``user'' or ``photo'' to each node.\nOur approach can be easily extended to include multiple labels per node, as well as (multiple) edge labels, node weights, and directed edges. We omit these straightforward generalizations in order to simplify the exposition. \n\nGiven a vertex $v \\in V$ and label $\\ell \\in L$, we use $N(v, \\ell)$ to denote the set of all \\emph{neighbors} of $v$ with label $\\ell$, i.e., $N(v, \\ell) \\define \\{u : (v, u) \\in E \\land \\varphi(u) = \\ell \\}$.\n\n\\begin{definition}[Tree pattern or query $Q$]\nGiven a labeled graph $G = (V,E,\\varphi, w)$, \na \\emph{tree pattern} is a rooted tree \n$Q = (V_Q,E_Q, \\psi)$\nin which each node $v \\in V_Q$ has a label constraint \n$\\psi : V_Q \\rightarrow L$.\nWe use $\\top(Q) \\in V_Q$\nto denote the root of the tree and $\\bot(Q)$ \nto denote the set of its leaves (or terminals, i.e.\\ nodes of degree one).\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe labeling constraint can encode the selection of specific nodes or node types.\nFor example, in the photo-sharing network scenario, setting $\\psi$ for \\textit{user1} to be the ID of a specific user node limits the candidate set for \\textit{user1} to just this one graph node. Similarly, setting $\\psi$ to the label encoding the type ``group'' will enforce that only graph nodes representing groups, but not users or photos, will be considered.\n\nNotice that $Q$ being rooted is not a restriction: any node in a tree can be chosen to be the root.\nWe merely make use of the fact that the tree pattern is rooted in order to more easily describe our algorithms.\n\n\\begin{definition}[homomorphic match or result pattern]\nA \\emph{homomorphic result pattern} (or \\emph{homomorphic match}) of query $Q$ is a graph $(V' \\subseteq V,E' \\subseteq E)$ such that there exists a function $\\lambda: V_Q \\rightarrow V'$ with the following properties:\n(1) $\\forall u \\in V_Q: \\psi(u) = \\varphi(\\lambda(u))$, and \n(2) $\\forall (u,v) \\in E_Q: (\\lambda(u), \\lambda(v)) \\in E'$. \nThe weight of a result pattern is defined as $\\sum_{(u,v) \\in E'}w(u,v)$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{definition}[match or result pattern]\nAn (isomorphic) \\emph{result pattern} (or \\emph{match}) of query $Q$ is a homomorphic result pattern $(V' \\subseteq V,E' \\subseteq E)$ with a bijective mapping function\n$\\lambda: V_Q \\xrightarrow[]{\\text{1:1}} V'$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe above definitions make it clear that the set of isomorphic matches is a subset of the homomorphic matches; and can be obtained by removing all those homomorphic matches where multiple query nodes are mapped to the same graph node.\n\nIn the discussion below we will also refer to \\emph{partial patterns} \n(or \\emph{partial matches}) for intermediate results of the computation. \nThese are incomplete instances where some of the query nodes are mapped to NIL by $\\lambda$. The \\emph{direct successor} of a partial match is one where exactly one of the NIL targets is replaced by a graph node, growing the pattern by one additional node. With \\emph{successor} we refer to any partial or complete match in the transitive closure of direct successor.\n\nFor fast access to $N(v, \\ell)$, we rely on \\texttt{GraphEdge}, a \\emph{two-level hash index} constructed offline for $G$. It maps a given node ID $v$ to another hash table, which in turn maps a given label $\\ell$ to the set $N(v, \\ell)$ of neighbors of $v$ with label $\\ell$.\nIf no label is specified, all nodes and corresponding edge weights in the secondary hash table for $v$ are returned.\nThis index can be bulk-created from scratch in time linear in the graph size,\nand updated in time linear in the size of the changes.\n\n\\textbf{Hardness.} In general, even the decision version of sub-graph isomorphism, i.e., to determine if a given query graph is isomorphic to a sub-graph of $G$, is NP-complete. When the sub-graph is connected acyclic (i.e., a tree), the best worst-case time bound for the decision problem is a parameterized algorithm of Koutis and Williams~\\cite{KW16} that requires $O(2^{|V_Q|}\\texttt{poly}(|V|))$ time. Their algorithm also has matching conditional lower bounds~\\cite{KT17}: achieving a bound of $O(2^{(1-\\varepsilon)|V_Q|}\\texttt{poly}(|V|))$ time, for any constant $\\varepsilon>0$, would falsify a longstanding conjecture. Note that, since the decision problem is hard, the any-$k$ problem discussed here is at least as hard.\n\n\\begin{figure}[tb]\n    \\centering\n    \\includegraphics[width=0.95\\linewidth]{.\/figures\/Fig_initialGraph}\t\n    \\caption{Candidate instances for matching the example query in Figure~\\ref{fig:FlickrExample}. \n\tEdge sets are named based on the corresponding pairs of adjacent nodes in the query pattern.}\n    \\label{fig:joinGraph}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn practice we often know specific node instances such as $a$ for \\textit{user1} in the photo-sharing network example, and can dramatically reduce the pattern search space by exploring $G$ starting from these nodes. Still, as \\autoref{fig:joinGraph} illustrates, one cannot tell from the immediate neighborhood of node $a$, if edge $(a, c_1)$ will belong to top-ranked results, or any results at all. Worse yet, not even the 3-hop neighborhood of $a$ will answer this question. Hence a pattern search algorithm might suffer from expensive backtracking or the inability to determine, without extensive graph traversal, when the top-$k$ lowest-weight patterns have been found.\n\nTo the best of our knowledge, {KARPET} is the first algorithm for ranked retrieval of graph query patterns that performs pruning and exploration based on ``local'' information, while \\emph{provably guaranteeing} to make the right decisions ``globally.''\n\\section{Related Work}\n\\label{sec:related}\n\nOur proposed notion of an any-$k$ algorithm is novel and extends the functionality of the previously-studied class of top-$k$ algorithms.\nThe problem of fast graph pattern search has been studied in different research communities, such as algorithms,\ngraph databases, and data mining.\nWhile traditional data mining and work in theory focuses on the structure of the graph, meta-path based approaches~\\cite{sun2011pathsim} also leverage the type information. \n\n\\introparagraph{Subgraph isomorphism}\nSubgraph isomorphism is an NP-hard problem~\\cite{lubiw1981some}, and state-of-art algorithms \nare not practical for large graphs.\nLee {\\it et al.\\ } \\cite{lee2012depth} empirically compare the performance of several state-of-art subgraph isomorphism algorithms, including the Generic Subgraph Isomorphism Algorithm~\\cite{cordella2004sub}, Ullmann algorithm~\\cite{ullmann1976algorithm}, VF2~\\cite{cordella2001improved}, QuickSI~\\cite{shang2008taming}, GADDI~\\cite{zhang2009gaddi}, and GraphQL~\\cite{he2008graphs}. They test on real-world datasets AIDS, NASA, Yeast and Human, covering a spectrum of relatively small graphs ($|V|<1000$).\nModern social networks easily exceed that size by orders of magnitude, and the exact sub-graph isomorphism problem remains intractable for larger networks when label constraints and top-$k$ are not fully exploited. Hence, to the best of our knowledge, none of these existing \\emph{precise} pattern matching algorithms could be used for our target application.\n\n\\introparagraph{K-shortest simple paths}\nThe $k$-shortest paths problem is a natural and long-studied generalization of the shortest path problem, in which not one but several paths in increasing order of length are sought. The additional constraint of ``simple'' paths requires that the paths be without loops. This problem has been researched for directed graphs~\\cite{doi:10.1287\/mnsc.17.11.712}, undirected graphs~\\cite{katoh}, approximation algorithms~\\cite{Roditty07}, and algorithm engineering~\\cite{Hershberger:2007:FKS:1290672.1290682,Feng14}. \nHowever, this body of literature was developed for graphs without labels. In contrast, {KARPET} efficiently finds $k$-lightest instances matching a given query pattern by leveraging the heterogeneity constraints on the node and edge types to speed up the computation. Furthermore, in our scenario, $k$ is not known upfront.\n\n\\introparagraph{Querying graph data}\nIn the database community, querying and managing of large-scale graph data has been studied~\\cite{Aggarwal2010:graphSurvey}, {\\it e.g.,\\ } in the context of GIS, XML databases, bioinformatics, social networks, and ontologies. The main focus there has been on identifying connection patterns between the graph vertices~\\cite{faloutsos2004fast,tong2006center,wei2010efficient,kasneci2009ming,ramakrishnan2005discovering,cheng2009efficient}. In contrast, {KARPET} finds matches for a given query pattern.\n\n\n\\introparagraph{HINs and path patterns}\nHeterogeneous Information Networks (HINs)~\\cite{han2010mining} are an abstraction to represent graphs whose nodes are affiliated with different types. To derive complex relations from such information networks, ``meta-paths'' defined as node-typed paths on a heterogeneous network, are a representation of connections between nodes, by specifying the types along a path in the network~\\cite{sun2011pathsim}. Thus, while the focus in that line of research has been on learning good meta-path patterns for various applications,  {KARPET} efficiently finds matches for a given query pattern.\n\nLiang {\\it et al.\\ } \\cite{liang2016links} derived a top-k algorithm for ranking path patterns in HINs. \nHowever, their algorithm does not easily extend to more complicated patterns such as trees; our {Backbone} baseline attempts to adapt their algorithm for ranking tree patterns, and our experiments shows a considerable advantage of {KARPET}.\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Top-k query evaluation in databases} \nThere is considerable amount of work on top-k queries in a ranking environment~\\cite{DBLP:journals\/jcss\/FaginLN03, DBLP:journals\/csur\/IlyasBS08, Akbarinia:2007:BPA:1325851.1325909, DBLP:conf\/vldb\/NatsevCSLV01}. This work aims at minimizing I\/O cost by trading sorted access vs.\\ random access to data. In contrast to that body of work, we focus on main memory applications and a different cost model.\n\n\n\\introparagraph{Graph search on RDFs and XML}\nTop-$k$ keyword search algorithms for XML databases~\\cite{XMLtopK10} combine semantic pruning based on document structure encoding with top-$k$ join algorithms from relational databases. The main challenge lies in dealing with query semantics based on least common ancestors. RDF is a flexible and extensible way to represent information about World Wide Web resources. Searching for a pattern on RDFs can be represented in SPARQL, and can be applied to ontology matching~\\cite{euzenat2007ontology}.  Recent work on graph pattern matching in RDF databases~\\cite[Chapter 2]{A15} has resulted in several different approaches to database layout~\\cite[Chapter 3]{A15}. However, as in the case of top-$k$ query evaluation, it appears that more focus has been placed on scalability issues, such as replication, parallelization, and distribution of workloads~\\cite{HAR11,HS13}, as RDF datasets are often too large for a single machine. It is well known that SPARQL is descriptive enough to capture graph pattern matching queries (so-called basic graph patterns~\\cite[Chapter 2]{A15}), and these queries are typically decomposed into combinations of database primitive operations such as joins, unions, difference, etc.~\\cite[Page 23]{A15}. Although work has been done optimizing these primitive operations in the context of graph patterns for certain types of queries that appear in practice~\\cite{NW10}, we are not aware of a similar approach to {KARPET} being employed for general tree patterns in the context of RDF.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\nIn \\cite{KuperbergWeaver} the authors explore a generalization of metric spaces, called quantum metric spaces, which is related to the quantum graphs of quantum information theory; and they construct many generalizations of familiar metric space concepts, including a generalization of Lipschtiz map they call a co-Lipschitz morphism.  The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the structure theory of quantum metric spaces by applying ideas coming from the large-scale or coarse geometry of classical metric spaces.  Specifically, we propose generalizations of coarse embeddings and asymptotic dimension, and then prove some fundamental results about them.  Coarse geometry is an important area of mathematics with applications in group theory, Banach space theory, and computer science.  It began as a field of study with the polynomial growth theorem of Gromov \\cite{gromov1981}, and the definition of coarse embedding and asymptotic dimension are also both due to Gromov \\cite{Gromov1993}, although large-scale geometric ideas appear as early as the late 1960's in the original proof of Mostow's rigidity theorem \\cite{Mostow1968}.  We refer to \\cite{Nowak-Yu} for an excellent introduction to the subject.\n\nSome notions from coarse geometry have already been explored in the noncommutative setting, see e.g. \\cite{banerjee2015coarse,banerjee2016noncommutative}.\nThere are two important differences between these works and the present paper:  One is that they define and study noncommutative versions of coarse spaces whereas we are studying noncommutative metric spaces in a coarse fashion, but more importantly their approach is $C^*$-algebraic while ours (as clearly stated by the title of \\cite{KuperbergWeaver}) is a von Neumann algebra one.\nA number of noncommutative notions of topological dimension for $C^*$-algebras have been also studied in the literature, see e.g. \\cite{Rieffel,Brown-Pedersen,Kirchberg-Winter,Winter,Winter-Zacharias}.\nLet us emphasize in particular the nuclear dimension from \\cite{Winter-Zacharias}, \nwhich is linked to coarse geometry:  For a discrete metric space of bounded geometry, the nuclear dimension of the associated uniform Roe algebra is dominated by the asymptotic dimension of the underlying space.\nOnce again, the approach to dimension in the present work is significantly different from the aforementioned ones because we are following the von Neumann algebra path.\n\n\nIn Section \\ref{sec:definitions} we recall the definitions we need from \\cite{KuperbergWeaver}, including quantum metric, distance, and diameter.  In Section \\ref{sec:moduli} we generalize the definition of coarse embedding to quantum metric spaces using alternative versions of the usual moduli of expansion (or uniform continuity) and compression defined for classical functions.  It is shown that the moduli for classical functions and their canonically induced quantum functions coincide.  In Section \\ref{sec:asdim} we generalize the definition of asymptotic dimension to quantum metric spaces and show that asymptotic dimension is preserved under coarse embeddings.  We show as a consequence that the asymptotic dimension of a quotient of a quantum metric space is no greater than the asymptotic dimension of the original space and that the asymptotic dimension of a direct sum of quantum metric spaces is equal to the maximum of the asymptotic dimensions of its summands.  We finish Section \\ref{sec:asdim} by establishing the corresponding inequality for arbitrary sums of quantum metric spaces in the case when the sum is a reflexive quantum metric space.  In Section \\ref{sec:expanders}, we show that quantum expanders satisfy a quantum version of a vertex isoperimetric inequality.  This can be used to show that a quantum metric space has infinite asymptotic dimension if it equi-coarsely contains a sequence of reflexive quantum expanders.  In particular, this includes the case when the  sequence of quantum expanders is induced by a sequence of classical expanders.\n\n\\section{Definitions}\\label{sec:definitions}\nWe use the definitions of quantum metric space and related notions found in \\cite{KuperbergWeaver}.  Just as metrics are defined on sets, quantum metrics are defined on von Neumann algebras, and classical metrics on a set $X$ are in a natural one-to-one correspondence with quantum metrics on $\\ell_\\infty(X)$.  We view von Neumann algebras as subsets of some space $\\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$ of bounded linear operators  on a Hilbert space $\\mathcal{H}$. Given the von Neumann algebras $\\mathcal{M}\\subseteq \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H}_1)$, $\\mathcal{N}\\subseteq \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H}_2)$, we denote by $\\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{N}$ their normal spatial tensor product, that is, the weak*-closure of $\\mathcal{M}\\otimes\\mathcal{N}$ in $\\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H}_1\\otimes_2 \\mathcal{H}_2)$.  Given a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$, we denote the commutant of $\\mathcal{M}$ by $\\mathcal{M}'$.  An orthogonal projection in a von Neumann algebra will simply be called a projection.\n\n\\begin{definition}[{\\cite[Definition 2.3]{KuperbergWeaver}}]\nA \\emph{quantum metric} on a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}\\subseteq \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$ is a family $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in [0,\\infty)}$ of weak*-closed subspaces of $\\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$ such that $\\mathcal{V}_0=\\mathcal{M}'$ and for all $t\\in [0,\\infty)$,\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item $\\mathcal{V}_t$ is self-adjoint.\n\\item $\\mathcal{V}_s\\mathcal{V}_t\\subseteq\\mathcal{V}_{s+t}$ for all $s\\in [0,\\infty)$.\n\\item $\\mathcal{V}_t=\\bigcap_{s>t}\\mathcal{V}_s$.\n\\end{itemize}\nA \\emph{quantum metric space} is a pair $(\\mathcal{M}, \\mathbb{V})$ of a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$ with a quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}$ defined on it.  We will often simply call a quantum metric space by its von Neumann algebra if there is no ambiguity regarding the quantum metric being considered.\n\\end{definition}\n\nGiven a metric space $(X,d)$, the canonical quantum metric space associated to it \\cite[Proposition 2.5]{KuperbergWeaver} is $(\\ell_\\infty(X), \\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in [0,\\infty)})$, where \\[\\mathcal{V}_t=\\big\\{A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X))\\mid \\langle Ae_x,e_y \\rangle=0\\mbox{ for all } (x,y)\\notin d^{-1}[0,t]\\big\\}\\] for all $t\\in[0,\\infty ).$  Here $(e_x)_{x\\in X}$ is the canonical basis of $\\ell_2(X)$ and $\\ell_\\infty (X)$ is viewed as a subset of $\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X))$ as diagonal operators in the standard way, that is, via the map $E\\colon \\ell_\\infty\\to \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X))$ defined by $E(\\phi)[f](x)=\\phi(x)f(x)$ for all $\\phi\\in \\ell_\\infty(X)$, all $f\\in\\ell_2(X)$, and all $x\\in X$.  It is in this way that quantum metric spaces are generalizations of classical metric spaces.\nA natural distance function can be defined for projections in a von Neumann algebra that generalizes the notion of distance between subsets of a classical metric space.\n\n\\begin{definition}[{\\cite[Definition 2.6]{KuperbergWeaver}}]\n\\label{def:distance}\nGiven a quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in[0,\\infty\n)}$ on a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$, the \\emph{distance} between two projections $P$ and $Q$ in $\\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ is \n\\[\\dist_\\mathbb{V}(P,Q)=\\inf\\{t\\mid P(A\\otimes \\id)Q\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{V}_t\\}.\\]\nIdentifying $\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\mathcal{M}\\otimes \\id\\subseteq \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ yields the equivalent formula\n\\[\\dist_\\mathbb{V}(P,Q)=\\inf\\{t\\mid PAQ\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{V}_t\\}\\]\nfor projections $P,Q$ in $\\mathcal{M}$.  The subscript will usually be omitted if there is no ambiguity regarding the quantum metric being used.\n\\end{definition}\n\nWe refer to \\cite[Definition 2.7]{KuperbergWeaver} and \\cite[Proposition 2.8]{KuperbergWeaver} for basic properties of quantum distance.  In particular, the distance function associated to a quantum metric satisfies an analog of the triangle inequality.  If $\\mathcal{M}$ is a quantum metric space and $P,Q, R$ are projections in $\\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$, then $\\dist (P,Q)\\leq \\dist (P,R)+\\sup \\{\\dist (\\tilde{R},Q) \\mid R\\tilde{R}\\neq 0\\}$, where $\\tilde{R}$ ranges over projections in $\\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$.  Note that the same proof found in \\cite[Proposition 2.8]{KuperbergWeaver} shows that if $P,Q,R$ are projections in $\\mathcal{M}$, then $\\tilde{R}$ may be taken to range only over projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.   \n\nIt is not hard to see that if $(\\ell_\\infty(X),\\mathbb{V})$ is the canonical quantum metric space associated to metric space $(X,d)$, then $\\dist_\\mathbb{V}(\\chi_S,\\chi_T)=d(S,T)$ for any subsets $S,T$ of $X$.  Likewise, the following definitions for diameter and open $\\varepsilon$-neighborhood of a projection generalize the corresponding notions for a subset.\n\n\\begin{definition}[{\\cite[Proposition 2.16]{KuperbergWeaver}}]\n\\label{def:diameter}\nGiven a quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in[0,\\infty\n)}$ on a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$, the \\emph{diameter} of a nonzero projection $P$ in $\\mathcal{M}$ is\n\\[\\diam_\\mathbb{V}(P)=\\sup \\big\\{\\dist_\\mathbb{V}(Q,R)\\mid Q(PAP\\otimes \\id)R\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})\\big\\}.\\]\nThe diameter of the zero projection is defined to be zero.\nThe subscript will usually be omitted if there is no ambiguity regarding the quantum metric being used.\n\\end{definition}\n\nWe remark that \\cite{KuperbergWeaver} only considers the case of $P$ being the identity of $\\mathcal{M}$ in the definition above, so our notion is really a generalization of theirs.\n\n\\begin{definition}[{\\cite[Proposition 2.17]{KuperbergWeaver}}]\n\\label{def:neighborhood}\nGiven a quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in[0,\\infty\n)}$ on a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$, the \\emph{open $\\varepsilon$-neighborhood} of a projection $P$ in $\\mathcal{M}$ is the projection\n\\[(P)_\\varepsilon=\\id-\\bigvee\\big\\{Q\\in \\mathcal{M}\\mid \\dist_\\mathbb{V}(P,Q)\\geq \\varepsilon\\big\\}.\\]\n\\end{definition}\n\nIt is easy to see from \\cite[Definition 2.14 (b)]{KuperbergWeaver} that $((P)_{\\varepsilon})_\\delta\\leq (P)_{\\varepsilon+\\delta}$ for all $\\varepsilon, \\delta >0$ and projections $P$ in a quantum metric space $\\mathcal{M}$.\n\nOur next definition follows \\cite{kornell2011quantum}.\n\n\\begin{definition}\nA function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ between two von Neumann algebras $\\mathcal{M}$ and $\\mathcal{N}$ is called a \\emph{quantum function} if $\\phi$ is a unital weak*-continuous $*$-homomorphism.\n\\end{definition}\n\nQuantum functions generalize classical functions in the following way:  If $f\\colon X\\to Y$ is a classical function between sets, then $\\phi_f\\colon \\ell_\\infty(Y)\\to \\ell_\\infty(X)$, defined by $\\phi_f(g)=g\\circ f$ for all $g\\in \\ell_\\infty (Y)$, is the canonical quantum function associated to $f$ between the canonical von Neumann algebras associated to $Y$ and $X$, and is such that $\\phi_f(\\chi_{\\{y\\}})=\\chi_{\\{f^{-1}(y)\\}}$ for all $y\\in Y$. \n\nIn what follows, we will often identify a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M}$ with $\\mathcal{M}\\otimes\\id\\subseteq \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ and a quantum function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to\\mathcal{N}$ with $(\\phi\\otimes\\id)\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)\\to \\mathcal{N}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$.\n\nRecall \\cite[p. 17]{KuperbergWeaver} that two projections $P,Q \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are said to be \\emph{unlinkable} if there exist $\\tilde{P},\\tilde{Q} \\in \\id \\otimes \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ satisfying $P \\le \\tilde{P}$, $Q \\le \\tilde{Q}$ and $\\tilde{P}\\tilde{Q} = 0$; otherwise, they are said to be \\emph{linkable}.\nBy \\cite[Prop. 2.13]{KuperbergWeaver}, for a von Neumann algebra $\\mathcal{M} \\subseteq \\mathcal{B}(H)$, two projections $P,Q \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are linkable if and only if there exists $A \\in \\mathcal{B}(H)$ such that $P(A \\otimes \\id)Q \\not=0$.\n\nNote that we may generalize these notions to non-projections:\ntwo operators $S,T \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are said to be \\emph{linkable} if and only if there exists $A \\in \\mathcal{B}(H)$ such that $S(A \\otimes \\id)T \\not=0$; obviously, this is the same as saying that the source projection $\\llbracket S \\rrbracket$ of $S$ and the range projection $[T]$ of $T$ are linkable.\nBy the aforementioned characterization, two operators $S,T \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are not linkable (i.e. \\emph{unlinkable}) if and only if there exist projections $\\tilde{S},\\tilde{T} \\in \\id \\otimes \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ satisfying $\\llbracket S \\rrbracket \\le \\tilde{S}$, $[T] \\le \\tilde{T}$ and $\\tilde{S}\\tilde{T} = 0$.\nNote that this is closely related to our definition of diameter of a projection:\nFor a projection $P$ in $\\mathcal{M}$, its diameter is the supremum of the distances $\\dist(Q,R)$ where $Q,R \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are projections such that  $Q(P\\otimes \\id)$ and $(P \\otimes \\id)R$ are linkable.\n\n\nThe following lemma shows that when $\\phi$ is a quantum function, $\\phi \\otimes \\id$ maps unlinkable pairs of operators to unlinkable pairs of operators.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:quantum-function-unlinkable}\nLet $\\phi : \\mathcal{M} \\to \\mathcal{N}$ be a quantum function between von Neumann algebras. If $S,T \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are unlinkable operators, then $(\\phi \\otimes \\id)S, (\\phi \\otimes \\id)T \\in \\mathcal{N}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are unlinkable as well.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAs above, let $\\tilde{S},\\tilde{T} \\in \\id \\otimes \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ be projections satisfying $\\llbracket S \\rrbracket \\le \\tilde{S}$, $[T] \\le \\tilde{T}$, and $\\tilde{S}\\tilde{T} = 0$.\nNote that since $\\phi \\otimes \\id$ is a $*$-homomorphism and thus preserves order, $(\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\tilde{S},(\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\tilde{T} \\in \\id \\otimes \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ are projections and they satisfy\n$(\\phi\\otimes \\id)\\llbracket S \\rrbracket \\le (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\tilde{S}$, $(\\phi\\otimes \\id)[T] \\le (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\tilde{T}$, and\n$(\\phi\\otimes \\id)\\tilde{S}(\\phi\\otimes \\id)\\tilde{T} = 0$.\nThe desired result will follow once we prove that $(\\phi\\otimes \\id)\\llbracket S \\rrbracket= \\llbracket(\\phi\\otimes \\id)S\\rrbracket$ and $(\\phi\\otimes \\id)[T] = [(\\phi \\otimes \\id)T]$.\n\nBy our definition of quantum function, $\\phi$ is a weak* to weak* continuous $*$-homomorphism.\nBy \\cite[Prop. III.2.2.2]{Blackadar}, $\\phi$ is normal.\nSince the tensor product of normal completely positive contractions is again a normal positive contraction \\cite[III.2.2.5]{Blackadar}, $\\phi \\otimes \\id$ is normal. \nBy \\cite[Prop. III.2.2.2]{Blackadar} again,\n$\\phi \\otimes \\id$ is $\\sigma$-strong to $\\sigma$-strong continuous from \n$\\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ to\n$\\mathcal{N}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$.\nIt is  well-known that the $\\sigma$-strong and the strong topologies coincide on bounded sets \\cite[I.3.1.4]{Blackadar}, so in particular it follows that $\\phi \\otimes \\id$ maps bounded strongly convergent nets to bounded strongly convergent nets.\n\nNow, it is known that $(S^*S)^\\alpha \\to \\llbracket S \\rrbracket$ strongly as $\\alpha \\to 0$ \\cite[I.5.2.1]{Blackadar}.\nSince $\\{(S^*S)^\\alpha\\}_{\\alpha\\in(0,1)}$ is norm bounded (which can be easily shown using functional calculus),\nwe conclude that\n\\[\n(\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\big( (S^*S)^\\alpha \\big) \\xrightarrow[\\alpha\\to 0]{  } (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\llbracket S\\rrbracket\n\\]\nstrongly.\nSince $(\\phi \\otimes \\id)$ is a unital $*$-homomorphism we have $(\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\big( (S^*S)^\\alpha \\big) = \\big( \\big((\\phi \\otimes \\id)S\\big)^*\\big((\\phi \\otimes \\id)S\\big) \\big)^\\alpha$ (again this can be easily shown using functional calculus). \nNow, \n\\[\n\\big( \\big((\\phi \\otimes \\id)S\\big)^*\\big((\\phi \\otimes \\id)S\\big) \\big)^\\alpha \\xrightarrow[\\alpha\\to 0]{  } \\llbracket (\\phi \\otimes \\id)S \\rrbracket\n\\]\nstrongly, and therefore $\\llbracket (\\phi \\otimes \\id)S \\rrbracket = (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\llbracket S \\rrbracket$.\nThe analogous conclusion for the range projection of $T$ follows from the fact that $[T]= \\llbracket TT^* \\rrbracket$ \\cite[I.5.2.1]{Blackadar}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nSome of our results will only apply to quantum metric spaces that are (operator) reflexive; we recall the definition below.\n\n\\begin{definition}[{\\cite[Defns. 1.5 and 2.23]{KuperbergWeaver}}]\nA subspace $\\mathcal{V} \\subseteq \\mathcal{B}(H)$ is \\emph{(operator) reflexive} if\n$\n\\mathcal{V} = \\big\\{ B \\in \\mathcal{B}(H) \\mid P\\mathcal{V}Q =\\{0\\} \\Rightarrow PBQ=0 \\big\\}\n$\nwith $P$ and $Q$ ranging over projections in $\\mathcal{B}(H)$.\nA quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in[0,\\infty\n)}$ is called \\emph{reflexive} if $\\mathcal{V}_t$ is reflexive for each $t\\in[0,\\infty)$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\section{Quantum moduli of expansion and compression}\\label{sec:moduli}\nIn this section, we define coarse embeddings between quantum metric spaces using moduli and then show how this relates to the definitions of co-Lipschitz and co-isometric morphisms found in \\cite{KuperbergWeaver}.\n\nRecall that if $f\\colon X\\to Y$ is a map between metric spaces, we define its modulus of expansion $\\omega_f$ by\n\\[\n\\omega_f(t)=\\sup\\big\\{d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\mid d_X(x,y)\\leq t\\big\\}\n\\]\n and its modulus of compression $\\rho_f$ by\n\\[\n\\rho_f(t)=\\inf\\big\\{d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\mid d_X(x,y)\\geq t\\big\\}\n\\]\n for all $t\\geq 0$.  We say that $f$ is \\emph{expanding} if $\\lim_{t\\to\\infty}\\rho_f(t)=\\infty$, and \\emph{coarse} if $\\omega_f(t)<\\infty$ for all $t\\geq 0$. \nWe say that $f$ is a \\emph{coarse embedding} if $f$ is both coarse and expanding. \n\nFor our purposes, we will use  alternative versions of these moduli.\nLet\n\\[\n\\tilde{\\omega}_f(t)=\\inf\\big\\{ d_X(x,y) \\mid d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\ge t\\big\\}\n\\]\nand let\n\\[\n\\tilde{\\rho}_f(t)=\\sup\\big\\{ d_X(x,y) \\mid d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\le t\\big\\}.\n\\]\nThe following observation is surely well-known.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:coarse definition}\nLet $f \\colon X \\to Y$ be a map between metric spaces. Then:\n\\begin{enumerate}[(a)]\n\\item  $f$ is coarse if and only if $\\lim_{t\\to\\infty}\\tilde{\\omega}_f(t)=\\infty$.\n\\item $f$ is expanding if and only if $\\tilde{\\rho}_f(t)<\\infty$ for all $t \\ge 0$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nNote that $\\tilde{\\omega}$ is an increasing function, and therefore $\\lim_{t\\to\\infty}\\tilde{\\omega}_f(t)=\\infty$ if and only if $\\tilde{\\omega}_f$ is unbounded.\n\nSuppose first that $f$ is not coarse so that by definition there exists $t\\ge 0$ such that $\\omega_f(t)=\\infty$.\nThen for each $n\\in{\\mathbb{N}}$ there exist $x_n,y_n \\in X$ such that $d_Y(f(x_n),f(y_n)) \\ge n$ and $d_X(x_n,y_n) \\le t$.\nThis implies $\\tilde{\\omega}_f(n) \\le t$, so $\\tilde{\\omega}_f$ is bounded above by $t$.\n\nSuppose now that $\\tilde{\\omega}_f$ is bounded above by $t$.\nThen for each $n\\in{\\mathbb{N}}$, there exist $x_n,y_n \\in X$ such that $d_X(x_n,y_n) \\le t+1$ while $d_Y(f(x_n),f(y_n)) \\ge n$. This implies $\\omega_f(t+1) = \\infty$. That is, $f$ is not coarse.  This finishes the proof of (a), and the proof for (b) is analogous.\n\\end{proof}\n\nLet us now define corresponding moduli for quantum functions.\n\n\\begin{definition}\nGiven a quantum function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ between quantum metric spaces $\\mathcal{M}$ and $\\mathcal{N}$, we define $\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi$ and $\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi$ by\n\\[\n\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(t)=\\inf\\big\\{\\dist(\\phi(P),\\phi(Q)) \\mid  \\dist(P,Q) \\geq t\\big\\}\n\\]\nand\n\\[\n\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(t)= \\sup\\big\\{ \\diam( \\phi(P) ) \\mid  \\diam(P) \\le t\\big\\}\n\\]\nfor all $t\\geq 0$, where $P,Q$ range over projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe next proposition shows that the moduli defined above generalize the classical moduli.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:moduli generalization}\nGiven metric spaces $X,Y$ and a function $f\\colon X\\to Y$,\n$\\tilde{\\omega}_{\\phi_f} = \\tilde{\\omega}_f$\nand\n$\\tilde{\\rho}_{\\phi_f} = \\tilde{\\rho}_f$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $P$ be a projection in $\\ell_\\infty(Y)$. Then $P = \\chi_S$ for some $S \\subseteq Y$,\nand $\\phi_f(P) = \\chi_{f^{-1}[S]}$.\nTherefore, for $t \\ge 0$\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\tilde{\\omega}_{\\phi_f}(t)=\\inf\\{\\dist(\\chi_{f^{-1}[S]},\\chi_{f^{-1}[T]}) \\mid  \\dist(\\chi_S,\\chi_T) \\geq t\\} \\\\\n= \\inf\\{ d_X(x,y) \\mid d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\ge t\\}\n\\end{multline*}\nand\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\tilde{\\rho}_{\\phi_f}(t)= \\sup\\{ \\diam( \\chi_{f^{-1}[S]} ) \\mid  \\diam(\\chi_S) \\le t\\} \\\\\n= \\sup\\{ d_X(x,y) \\mid d_Y(f(x),f(y))\\le t\\}.\\qedhere\n\\end{multline*}\n\n\n\\end{proof}\n\nProposition \\ref{prop:moduli generalization} and Lemma \\ref{lem:coarse definition} justify the following definition.  Although it would perhaps be in better keeping with \\cite{KuperbergWeaver} to use the terminology ``co-coarse'', there are two reasons we do not do this.  The first reason is that the inequalities involved concern only a quantum function $\\phi$ and not its amplification $\\phi \\otimes \\id$.  The second reason is that we are only exploring a notion of coarseness for functions between quantum metric spaces and not for operators inside of quantum metric spaces.\n\n\\begin{definition}\nA quantum function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ between two quantum metric spaces is called a \\emph{(quantum) coarse embedding} if $\\lim_{t\\to\\infty}\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(t)=\\infty$ and $\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(t)<\\infty$ for all $t\\geq 0$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nIn \\cite[Definition 2.27]{KuperbergWeaver}, a quantum function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ is called a \\emph{co-Lipschitz morphism} if there is some $C\\geq 0$ such that\n\\[\\dist(P,Q)\\leq C\\dist((\\phi\\otimes \\id)(P),(\\phi\\otimes\\id)(Q))\\]\nfor all projections $P,Q \\in \\mathcal{M}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$.  It is easily observed that if $\\phi$ is a co-Lipschitz morphism, then $\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi (t)\\geq t\/C$ for all $t\\geq 0$.  \n\\end{remark}\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{moduli-for-co-isometric-morphism}\nAlso in \\cite[Definition 2.27]{KuperbergWeaver}, a quantum function $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to\\mathcal{N}$ is called a \\emph{co-isometric morphism} if it is surjective and\n\\[\\dist(\\tilde{P}, \\tilde{Q})=\\sup \\big\\{\\dist(P,Q)\\mid (\\phi\\otimes\\id)(P)=\\tilde{P}, (\\phi\\otimes\\id)(Q)=\\tilde{Q}\\big\\}\\]\nfor all projections $\\tilde{P},\\tilde{Q}\\in \\mathcal{N}\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$.  If $\\phi$ is a co-isometric morphism, then in particular, $\\phi$ is a co-Lipschitz morphism with constant 1, and so $\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(t)\\geq t$ for all $t\\geq 0$;  it may be shown that additionally $\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(t)\\leq t$ for all $t\\geq 0$.  Indeed, if $P$ is a projection in $\\mathcal{M}$, and $\\tilde{Q}, \\tilde{R}$ are projections in $\\mathcal{N}\\overline{\\otimes}\\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ such that $\\tilde{Q}(\\phi(P)\\otimes \\id)$ and $(\\phi(P)\\otimes \\id)\\tilde{R}$ are linkable, then since $\\phi$ is a co-isometric morphism, by Lemma \\ref{lemma:quantum-function-unlinkable},\n\\begin{multline*}\n \\dist  (\\tilde{Q},\\tilde{R})\n = \\sup\\big\\{ \\dist(Q,R) \\mid   (\\phi \\otimes \\id)(Q) =  \\tilde{Q}, (\\phi \\otimes \\id)(R) = \\tilde{R} \\big\\} \\\\\n \\le\n \\sup\\big\\{ \\dist(Q,R) \\mid  (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\big(Q(P\\otimes \\id)\\big) \\text{ and } (\\phi \\otimes \\id)\\big((P \\otimes \\id)R\\big) \\text{ are linkable}   \\big\\}\\\\\n \\le \\sup \\big\\{\\dist(Q,R)\\mid Q(P\\otimes \\id) \\text{ and } (P \\otimes \\id)R \\text{ are linkable} \\big\\}\\\\\n  = \\diam(P). \n \\end{multline*}\nThus, $\\diam(\\phi(P))\\leq \\diam(P)$, and therefore $\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(t)\\leq t$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\section{Asymptotic dimension}\\label{sec:asdim}\nWe will provide a definition of asymptotic dimension that can be applied generally to all quantum metric spaces.  Given the definitions that already exist for diameter and $\\varepsilon$-neighborhood of a projection, we have chosen to base our generalization on Part 2 of \\cite[Theorem 2.1.2]{Bedlewo}.  We do not explore generalizations of the equivalent formulations of asymptotic dimension found in \\cite[Theorem 2.1.2]{Bedlewo}.\n\\begin{definition}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a quantum metric space and $\\mathscr{P}$ a family of projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.  We say that $\\mathscr{P}$ is a \\emph{cover} for $\\mathcal{M}$ if $\\id=\\bigvee_{P\\in\\mathscr{P}}P$. \nWe say that $\\mathscr{P}$ is \\emph{$r$-disjoint} if $(P)_r(Q)_r = 0$ for each $P,Q \\in \\mathscr{P}$ with $P \\not=Q$.   We say that $\\mathscr{P}$ is \\emph{uniformly bounded by $R$} if $\\sup_{P\\in\\mathscr{P}}\\diam(P)\\leq R$,\nand that $\\mathscr{P}$ is \\emph{uniformly bounded} if it is uniformly bounded by some $R>0$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{definition}\n\\label{def:asdim}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a quantum metric space, and let $n \\in {\\mathbb{N}}\\cup \\{0\\}$. We say that $\\mathcal{M}$ has \\emph{asymptotic dimension less than or equal to $n$}, written as $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M}) \\le n$, if\nfor every $r>0$ there exist uniformly bounded, $r$-disjoint families of projections $\\mathscr{P}^0,\\mathscr{P}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{P}^n$  such that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^i$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{M}$.  We say that $\\mathcal{M}$ has \\emph{asymptotic dimension equal to $n$}, written as $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M})=n$, if $n=\\min\\{m\\in \\mathbb{N}\\cup \\{0\\}\\mid \\asdim(\\mathcal{M})\\leq m\\}$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\nLet $(X,d)$ be a metric space, and consider the von Neumann algebra $\\ell_\\infty(X)$ endowed with the canonical quantum metric induced by $d$.\nIt is clear that $\\asdim(X) = \\asdim(\\ell_\\infty(X))$, since the projections in $\\ell_\\infty(X)$ are precisely the indicator functions of subsets of $X$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\nFor classical metric spaces, coarse embeddings are the natural morphisms that preserve asymptotic dimension because for any $r>0$ they map every $R$-disjoint, uniformly bounded family of sets to an $r$-disjoint, uniformly bounded family of sets whenever $R>0$ is large enough.  This follows easily from the definition of coarse embedding using the moduli of expansion and compression.  We show that the same holds true for coarse embeddings between quantum metric spaces.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lemma:boundedness-under-mappings}\nLet $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ be a quantum function between quantum metric spaces.  Then for any projection $P\\in \\mathcal{M}$,\n\\[\\diam(\\phi(P))\\leq \\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(\\diam(P)).\\]\nIn particular, $\\phi$ maps a family of projections uniformly bounded by $R$ to a family of projections uniformly bounded by $\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(R)$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n\\[\\diam(\\phi(P))\n\\leq \\sup \\{\\diam(\\phi(Q))\\mid \\diam(Q)\\leq \\diam(P)\\}\n=\\tilde{\\rho}_\\phi(\\diam(P)).\\qedhere\\]\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:r-disjointness-under-mappings}\nLet $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ be a quantum function between quantum metric spaces, and let $r>0$.\nThen for any projection $P \\in \\mathcal{M}$,\n\\[\n\\big(\\phi(P) \\big)_{\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r)} \\le \\phi\\big( (P)_r \\big). \n\\]\nIn particular, $\\phi$ maps an $r$-disjoint family of projections to an $\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r)$-disjoint family of projections.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSince $\\phi$ is a quantum function and $\\dist(P,Q) \\ge r$ implies $\\dist(\\phi(P),\\phi(Q)) \\ge \\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r)$, we have \n\\begin{align*}\n\\phi\\big( (P)_r \\big) &= \\phi\\big( \\id_{\\mathcal{M}} -  \\bigvee \\big\\{ Q\\in\\mathcal{M} \\mid \\dist(P,Q) \\ge r \\big\\} \\big) \\\\\n&= \\id_{\\mathcal{N}} -  \\bigvee \\big\\{ \\phi(Q) \\mid \\dist(P,Q) \\ge r \\big\\} \\\\\n&\\ge \\id_{\\mathcal{N}} -  \\bigvee \\big\\{ \\phi(Q) \\mid \\dist(\\phi(P),\\phi(Q)) \\ge \\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r) \\big\\} \\\\\n&\\ge \\id_{\\mathcal{N}} -  \\bigvee \\big\\{ R\\in \\mathcal{N} \\mid \\dist(\\phi(P),R) \n\\ge \\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r) \\big\\} \\\\\n&= \\big(\\phi(P) \\big)_{\\tilde{\\omega}_\\phi(r)}.\\qedhere\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nThe next theorem follows immediately.  Note that a quantum function is unital and so it maps covers to covers.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:coarse-embeddings}\nLet $\\phi\\colon \\mathcal{M}\\to \\mathcal{N}$ be a quantum coarse embedding between quantum metric spaces.\nThen $\\asdim(\\mathcal{N}) \\le \\asdim(\\mathcal{M})$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\nAs a consequence of Theorem \\ref{thm:coarse-embeddings}, asymptotic dimension plays well with the quotient \\cite[Definition 2.35]{KuperbergWeaver} and direct sum \\cite[Definition 2.32 (b)]{KuperbergWeaver} constructions for quantum metric spaces.  Compare this to the corresponding results on subspaces and (disjoint) unions of classical metric spaces found in \\cite[Proposition 2.2.6]{Bedlewo} and \\cite[Corollary 2.3.3]{Bedlewo}.\nNote also that these results are related to some of the conditions required of an abstract dimension theory for a class of $C^*$-algebras from \\cite{Thiel}.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ and $\\mathcal{N}$ be quantum metric spaces.\n\\begin{enumerate}[(a)]\n\\item\\label{permanence:quotient}\nIf $\\mathcal{N}$ is a metric quotient of $\\mathcal{M}$, then $\\asdim(\\mathcal{N}) \\le \\asdim(\\mathcal{M})$.\n\\item\\label{permanence:sum}\n$\\asdim( \\mathcal{M} \\oplus \\mathcal{N} ) = \\max \\{ \\asdim(\\mathcal{M}), \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}) \\}$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n\\eqref{permanence:quotient}: This follows immediately from Theorem \\ref{thm:coarse-embeddings} and Remark \\ref{moduli-for-co-isometric-morphism} of this paper and \\cite[Corollary 2.37]{KuperbergWeaver}.\n\n\\eqref{permanence:sum}: \nSince each of $\\mathcal{M}$ and $\\mathcal{N}$ is a metric quotient of $\\mathcal{M} \\oplus \\mathcal{N} $, we have $\\asdim( \\mathcal{M} \\oplus \\mathcal{N} ) \\geq \\max \\{ \\asdim(\\mathcal{M}), \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}) \\}$ from part \\eqref{permanence:quotient}.\nNow let $n = \\max \\{ \\asdim(\\mathcal{M}), \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}) \\}$ and take any $r>0$.\nBy Definition \\ref{def:asdim}, there exist uniformly bounded, $r$-disjoint families of projections $\\mathscr{P}^0,\\mathscr{P}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{P}^n$  such that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^i$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{M}$, and there also exist uniformly bounded, $r$-disjoint families of projections $\\mathscr{Q}^0,\\mathscr{Q}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{Q}^n$  such that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{Q}^i$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{N}$.\nFor $1\\leq j\\leq n$, define $\\mathscr{R}^j = \\{ P \\oplus 0 \\mid P \\in \\mathscr{P}^j\\} \\cup \\{ 0 \\oplus Q \\mid Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}^j\\}$.\nIt is clear that each $\\mathscr{R}^j$ is uniformly bounded, and moreover the union $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{R}^i$ is a cover for $\\mathcal{M} \\oplus \\mathcal{N}$. Additionally, each family $\\mathscr{R}^j$ is $r$-disjoint, since $(P \\oplus 0)_r = (P)_r \\oplus 0$ and $(0 \\oplus Q)_r = 0 \\oplus (Q)_r$, by \\cite[Proposition 2.34]{KuperbergWeaver}.\nTherefore, $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M} \\oplus \\mathcal{N}) \\le n$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\nAn analog of the result concerning asymptotic dimension of possibly nondisjoint unions of classical metric spaces \\cite[Corollary 2.3.3]{Bedlewo} can also be established, at least for reflexive quantum metric spaces.  In a reflexive quantum metric space $\\mathcal{M}$, diameters of projections in $\\mathcal{M}$ may be computed using only projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.  \n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:reflexive_diameter}\nLet $(\\mathcal{M}, \\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in [0,\\infty)})$ be a reflexive quantum metric space and let $P$ be a nonzero projection in $\\mathcal{M}$.  Then\n\\begin{align*}\n\\diam (P)&=\\sup \\{\\dist (Q,R)\\mid QPAPR\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})\\}\\\\\n&=\\sup\\{\\dist (Q,R)\\mid QP,RP\\neq 0\\}\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nIt is clear from Definition \\ref{def:diameter} that \n\\[\\diam (P)\\geq\\sup \\{\\dist (Q,R)\\mid QPAPR\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})\\}.\\]\nThe result is then trivial when $\\diam (P)=0$.  So suppose $\\diam (P)\\neq 0$ and take\nany $0<\\varepsilon<\\diam (P)$.  Let $Q,R$ be any projections in $\\mathcal{M}\\otimes \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$ such that $\\dist (Q,R)>\\diam (P)-\\varepsilon$ while $Q(PAP\\otimes \\id)R\\neq 0$ for some $A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$.  By \\cite[Proposition 2.10]{KuperbergWeaver}, $PAP\\notin \\mathcal{V}_{\\diam (P)-\\varepsilon}$.  But then by \\cite[Proposition 2.24]{KuperbergWeaver}, there exist projections $Q',R'\\in \\mathcal{M}$ such that $\\dist (Q',R')\\geq \\diam (P)-\\varepsilon$ while $QPAPR\\neq 0$.  As $\\varepsilon>0$ was arbitrary, it follows that \n\\[\\diam (P)\\leq\\sup \\{\\dist (Q,R)\\mid QPAPR\\neq 0 \\mbox{ for some }A\\in \\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})\\}.\\qedhere\\]\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma:r-saturated-union}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a reflexive quantum metric space, let $P,Q,R$ be projections in $\\mathcal{M}$, and take any $r,s>0$. Then:\n\\begin{enumerate}[(a)]\n\\item $(P)_rQ \\not=0 \\iff  \\dist(P,Q) < r$.\n\\item $\\dist(Q,R) \\le \\dist(Q,P) +\\dist(R,P) + \\diam(P)$.\n\\item $\\diam\\big( (P)_r \\big) \\le \\diam(P)+2r$.\n\\item $\\diam( P \\vee Q ) \\le \\dist(P,Q)+\\diam(P)+\\diam(Q)$.\n\\item $(P)_r(Q)_s\\neq 0\\implies \\diam (P\\vee Q)\\leq \\diam(P)+\\diam(Q)+2(r+s)$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n(a) The implication $\\implies$ follows immediately from Definition \\ref{def:neighborhood}.\nSo suppose $Q$ is such that $\\dist(P,Q) < r$ and furthermore, that $(P)_rQ = 0$.  Then\n\\[\nQ \\le \\id - (P)_r = \\bigvee\\{Q'\\in \\mathcal{M} \\mid \\dist(P,Q') \\ge r\\} \n\\]\nand thus\n\\[\nr > \\dist(P,Q) \\ge \\dist(P, \\id-(P)_r) = \\inf\\{ \\dist(P,Q') \\mid \\dist(P,Q') \\ge r \\} \\ge r,\n\\]\na contradiction.  Therefore $(P)_rQ \\neq 0$ if $\\dist(P,Q)<r$.\n\n(b) By the remark after Definition \\ref{def:distance}, with $S$ ranging over projections in $\\mathcal{M}$,\n\\begin{align*}\n\\dist(Q&,R)\\\\\n&\\leq \\dist (Q,P)+\\sup \\{\\dist (S,R)\\mid PS\\neq 0\\}\\\\\n&\\leq \\dist (Q,P)+\\dist (R,P)+\\sup\\{\\dist (S,S')\\mid PS\\neq 0, PS'\\neq 0\\}\\\\\n&\\leq \\dist (Q,P)+\\dist (R,P)+\\diam(P),\n\\end{align*}\nwhere the last inequality follows from the fact that $SPAPS'\\neq 0$ for some $A\\in\\mathcal{B}(\\mathcal{H})$ whenever $SP, PS'\\neq 0$.\n\n(c) Suppose $S,S'$ are projections in $\\mathcal{M}$ such that $(P)_rS\\neq 0$ and $(P)_rS'\\neq 0$.  By parts (a) and (b), this means\n$\\dist (S,S')\\leq \\diam (P)+2r$.  As $S,S'$ were arbitrary, Lemma \\ref{lem:reflexive_diameter} implies that $\\diam ((P)_r)\\leq \\diam (P)+2r$.\n\n(d) Suppose $S,S'$ are projections in $\\mathcal{M}$ such that $S(P\\vee Q)\\neq 0$ and $S'(P\\vee Q) \\not=0$.  If $SP \\not=0$ and $S'P\\not=0$, then $\\dist(S,S') \\le \\diam(P)$.  If $SQ \\not=0$ and $S'Q\\not=0$, then $\\dist(S,S') \\le \\diam(Q)$.  Finally, if $SP \\not=0$ and $S'Q\\not=0$, then by part (b),\n\\begin{align*}\n\\dist(S,S') &\\le \\dist(S,Q) + \\dist (Q,S')+\\diam(Q)\\\\\n&\\le \\dist (S,P)+\\dist (P,Q)+ \\diam (P) + \\diam(Q)\\\\\n&= \\dist (P,Q)+\\diam(P) + \\diam(Q).\n\\end{align*}\nThe same inequality holds if $SQ\\neq 0$ and $S'P\\neq 0$.  As $S,S'$ were arbitrary, Lemma \\ref{lem:reflexive_diameter} implies that $\\diam(P\\vee Q)\\leq \\dist(P,Q) +\\diam(P) + \\diam(Q)$.\n\n(e) By parts (c) and (d)\n\\begin{align*}\n    \\diam (P\\vee Q)&\\leq \\diam ((P)_r\\vee (Q)_s)\\\\\n    &\\leq \\dist ((P)_r,(Q)_s)+\\diam ((P)_r)+\\diam((Q)_s)\\\\\n    &\\leq \\diam (P)+\\diam (Q)+2(r+s).\\qedhere\n\\end{align*}\n\\end{proof}\n\nThe following is a direct adaptation of  \\cite[Prop. 2.3.1]{Bedlewo} for reflexive quantum metric spaces.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:r-saturated union}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a reflexive quantum metric space, and let $\\mathscr{P}, \\mathscr{Q}$ be families of projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.  Fix $r>0$ and for each $Q\\in \\mathscr{Q}$, let \n\\[\n    \\mathscr{P}_Q=\\{P\\in \\mathscr{P}\\mid (P)_r(Q)_r \\not=0 \\}\\mbox{ and  }\n    P_Q=\\bigvee_{P\\in\\mathscr{P}_Q}P.\\]\nSuppose that $\\mathscr{P}$ is $r$-disjoint and $R$-bounded with $R > r$,\nand $\\mathscr{Q}$ is $7R$-disjoint and $D$-bounded.\nThen $\\mathscr{Q} \\cup_r \\mathscr{P}$ is $r$-disjoint and $(D + 2(R+D+4r))$-bounded, where\n\\[\\mathscr{Q} \\cup_r \\mathscr{P} = \\left\\{ Q \\vee P_Q  \\mid Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}  \\right\\}\n \\cup \\big\\{ P \\in \\mathscr{P} \\mid (P)_r(Q)_r = 0 \\text{ for all } Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}  \\big\\}.\\]\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nFix $Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}$. By Lemmas \\ref{lem:reflexive_diameter} and \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (b) and (e),\n\\begin{align*}\n\\diam(P_Q)\n&=\\sup \\{\\dist(S,S')\\mid SP_Q, S'P_Q\\neq 0 \\}\\\\\n&\\leq \\sup \\{\\dist(S,Q)+\\dist(S',Q)\\mid SP_Q, S'P_Q\\neq 0\\}+\\diam(Q)\\\\\n&\\leq 2\\sup_{P\\in\\mathscr{P}_Q}\\{\\diam(P\\vee Q)\\}+\\diam(Q)\\\\\n&\\leq 2\\left(\\sup_{P\\in\\mathscr{P}_Q}\\{\\diam (P)\\}+\\diam(Q)+4r\\right)+\\diam(Q)\\\\\n&\\leq 2(R+D+4r)+D.\n\\end{align*}\nThus, the bound on the diameter of $Q\\vee P_Q$ and hence the entire family $\\mathscr{P}\\cup_r\\mathscr{Q}$ is shown.\n\n\n\nWe now show that $\\mathscr{Q} \\cup_r \\mathscr{P} $ is $r$-disjoint.\nIf we take two elements of $\\mathscr{Q} \\cup_r \\mathscr{P} $ coming from $\\mathscr{P}$, then they are $r$-disjoint by assumption.\nUsing the fact that $(R\\vee S)_r=(R)_r\\vee (S)_r$ for all projections $R$ and $S$, it is also clear that any two elements such that one is of the form $Q \\vee P_Q$ and the other is in $\\big\\{ P \\in \\mathscr{P} \\mid (P)_r(Q)_r = 0 \\text{ for all } Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}  \\big\\}$ will be $r$-disjoint.\nThe only remaining case is to consider two elements of the form\n$Q \\vee P_Q$ and $Q' \\vee P_{Q'}$, \nwhere $Q,Q' \\in \\mathscr{Q}$ are distinct.  Note that in this case $(Q)_r(Q')_r=0$.  Consider $P,P'$ such that $P\\in \\mathscr{P}_Q$ and $P'\\in \\mathscr{P}_{Q'}$.  If $(P)_r(Q')_r\\neq 0$, then by Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (a), (b), and (c),\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\dist (Q,Q')\\leq \\dist (Q,(P)_r)+\\dist ((P)_r,Q')+\\diam((P)_r)\\\\\n<2r+\\diam(P)+2r<5R.\n\\end{multline*}  By Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (a), this implies $(Q)_{5R}Q'\\neq 0$, a contradiction.  Thus $(P)_r(Q')_r=0$ and similarly $(P')_r(Q)_r=0$.  And if $(P)_r(P')_r\\neq 0$, then by Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (a), (b), (c), and (d),\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\dist (Q, (Q')_r)\\leq \\dist(Q, (P)_r\\vee (P')_r)+\\diam ((P)_r\\vee (P')_r)\\\\\\leq r+ \\diam (P)+2r +\\diam (P')+2r<7R.\n\\end{multline*}\nBy Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (a), this implies $(Q)_{7R}(Q')_R\\neq 0$, a contradiction.  Thus $(P)_r(P')_r=0$.  As $P$, $P'$ were arbitrary, it follows that $(Q\\vee P_Q)_r(Q'\\vee P_{Q'})_r=0$.  Therefore $\\mathscr{Q} \\cup_r \\mathscr{P} $ is $r$-disjoint.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nWe can now prove the following theorem which provides a bound on the asymptotic dimension of ``nondisjoint unions'' of quantum metric spaces.  Compare this to \\cite[Corollary 2.3.3]{Bedlewo}.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{thm:nondisjoint_union}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a reflexive quantum metric space. Suppose that $\\mathcal{N}_1$ and $\\mathcal{N}_2$ are metric quotients of $\\mathcal{M}$, corresponding to central projections $R_1$ and $R_2$, respectively.\nIf $R_1 \\vee R_2 = \\id$, then \\[\\asdim(\\mathcal{M}) \\le \\max \\{ \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}_1), \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}_2) \\}.\\]\n(Note that, in particular, this includes the case $\\mathcal{M} = \\mathcal{N}_1 \\oplus \\mathcal{N}_2$). \n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $n=\\max \\{ \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}_1), \\asdim(\\mathcal{N}_2) \\}$ and fix $r>0$.\nTake $n+1$ uniformly bounded, $r$-disjoint families of projections $\\mathscr{P}^0,\\mathscr{P}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{P}^n$ in $\\mathcal{N}_1$ such that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^i$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{N}_1$ and let $R>r$ be a uniform diameter bound for $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^i$.\nNow take $n+1$ uniformly bounded, $7R$-disjoint families of projections $\\mathscr{Q}^0,\\mathscr{Q}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{Q}^n$ in $\\mathcal{N}_2$ such that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{Q}^i$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{N}_2$ and let $D>0$ be a uniform diameter bound for $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{Q}^i$.  By viewing a projection $P$ in $\\mathcal{N}_1$ as the projection $P\\oplus 0\\in R_1\\mathcal{M}\\oplus (\\id-R_1)\\mathcal{M}\\cong \\mathcal{M}$ and a projection $Q\\in \\mathcal{N}_2$ as the projection $Q\\oplus 0\\in R_2\\mathcal{M}\\oplus (\\id-R_2)\\mathcal{M}\\cong \\mathcal{M}$, it follows from \\cite[Proposition 2.34]{KuperbergWeaver} that the families $\\mathscr{P}^0,\\mathscr{P}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{P}^n$ and $\\mathscr{Q}^0,\\mathscr{Q}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{Q}^n$ have the same bounds and disjointedness when viewed as families of projections in $\\mathcal{M}$.  \nThus, for each $0\\leq j\\leq n$, the families $\\mathscr{R}^j = \\mathscr{Q}^j \\cup_r \\mathscr{P}^j$ in $\\mathcal{M}$ are $r$-disjoint and uniformly bounded by Proposition \\ref{prop:r-saturated union}.  And since $R_1 \\vee R_2 = \\id$, it follows that $\\bigcup_{i=0}^n \\mathscr{R}^i$ is a cover for $\\mathcal{M}$.  Therefore $\\asdim (\\mathcal{M})\\leq n$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nIn order to prove the general quantum analog of \\cite[Corollary 2.3.3]{Bedlewo} found in Theorem \\ref{thm:nondisjoint_union}, we had to make the assumption that the quantum metric space is reflexive.  Our proof follows \\cite{Bedlewo} rather closely and relies on the ability to place an upper bound on the diameter of a neighborhood of a projection in terms of the diameter of the projection itself.  This bound is found in Part (c) of Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union}, which is the first place we use the reflexivity assumption.  We do not know whether the reflexivity assumption can be dropped in the statement of Theorem \\ref{thm:nondisjoint_union}, but if it can, we expect a method different from that found in \\cite{Bedlewo} would be needed to prove it.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\\section{Asymptotic dimension and quantum expanders}\\label{sec:expanders}\nIn this section, we will show that a quantum metric space equi-coarsely containing a sequence of classical expanders (or more generally, a sequence of reflexive quantum expanders) has infinite asymptotic dimension.  This is a generalization of \\cite[Sec. 2.3]{Dranishnikov-Sapir} which shows that even for general quantum metric spaces, information about their large-scale structure can be inferred from their bounded metric subspaces.  While this statement is quite believable in light of \\cite{Dranishnikov-Sapir} and Theorem \\ref{thm:coarse-embeddings}, it is not obvious at all that a quantum metric space should coarsely contain a classical metric space of infinite asymptotic dimension even though it equi-coarsely contains a sequence of expander graphs!  To prove the statement, we establish a quantum version of a vertex-isoperimetric inequality for expanders from a known edge-isoperimetric inequality.\n\nIn what follows, we denote the space of $n\\times n$ matrices with complex entries by $M_n$.  The $n\\times n$ identity matrix will be denoted by $I_n$.  The Hilbert-Schmidt norm for matrices will be denoted by $\\|\\cdot\\|_{\\HS}$, the trace norm will be denoted by $\\|\\cdot\\|_1$, and the operator norm will be denoted by $\\|\\cdot\\|_\\infty$. We will use the initialization CPTP for a map $\\Phi\\colon M_n\\to M_n$ to indicate that $\\Phi$ is completely positive and trace-preserving.  Given a completely positive map $\\Phi\\colon M_n\\to M_n$, there exist by Choi's theorem \\cite{Choi} matrices $K_1, K_2,\\dots , K_N \\in M_n$ such that $\\Phi(X)=\\sum_{j=1}^N K_jX K_j^*$ for all matrices $X\\in M_n$.  If $\\Phi$ is additionally trace-preserving, it may be shown also that $\\sum_{i=1}^N K_i^* K_i=I_n$.  It is then possible to define a quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}=\\{\\mathcal{V}_t\\}_{t\\in[0,\\infty )}$ on $M_n$ by $\\mathcal{V}_0=\\mathbb{C}\\cdot I_n$, $\\mathcal{V}_1=\\spa\\{K_j^* K_i\\}_{1\\leq i,j\\leq N}$, and $\\mathcal{V}_t=\\mathcal{V}_1^{\\lfloor t\\rfloor }$ for $t>0$ \\cite[Sec. 3.2]{KuperbergWeaver}. \nThere are good information-theoretical reasons \\cite{Duan-Severini-Winter,weaver2015quantum} and metric reasons \\cite{KuperbergWeaver} for regarding a CPTP map $\\Phi$ (or rather, the operator system $\\mathcal{V}_1$) as a quantum analog of a combinatorial graph and the quantum metric $\\mathbb{V}$ a quantum analog of a graph metric.  By an abuse of language, the terminology ``quantum graph'' will be used for any of $\\Phi$, $\\mathcal{V}_1$, and $(M_n, \\mathbb{V})$.\n\n\\begin{definition}\nGiven $\\delta,\\varepsilon, t>0$ and $n\\in \\mathbb{N}$, a quantum metric on $M_n$ is said to satisfy a \\emph{$(\\delta,\\varepsilon,t)$-isoperimetric inequality} if \n\\[\n\\rank\\big( (P)_\\delta \\big) \\ge (1+\\varepsilon) \\rank(P)\n\\]\nfor all projections $P \\in M_n$ such that $\\diam(P) \\le t$.\n\\end{definition}\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{remark:isoperimetric-repeat}\nBy Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (c), if a reflexive quantum metric on $M_n$ satisfies a $(\\delta,\\varepsilon,t)$-isoperimetric inequality, it follows from repeated applications of it that, given any $m\\in{\\mathbb{N}}$,\n\\[\n\\rank\\big( (P)_{m \\delta} \\big) \\ge (1+\\varepsilon)^m \\rank(P)\n\\] for all projections $P \\in M_n$ such that $\\diam(P) + 2m\\delta \\le t$.\n\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\\begin{definition}\nGiven a family of quantum coarse embeddings $\\{\\phi_\\alpha \\colon \\mathcal{M} \\to \\mathcal{N}_\\alpha\\}$, we say that the family is \\emph{equi-coarse} if there exist functions $f,g$\nsatisfying $\\lim_{t\\to\\infty} f(t) = \\infty$ and $g(t)<\\infty$ for all $t\\geq 0$ such that for for each $t\\geq 0$ and each $\\alpha$, $f(t) \\le \\tilde{\\omega}_{\\phi_\\alpha}(t)$ and $\\tilde{\\rho}_{\\phi_\\alpha}(t) \\le g(t)$.\nBy analogy with the classical setting, in this case we say that $\\mathcal{M}$ equi-coarsely contains the family $\\{\\mathcal{N}_\\alpha\\}$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe strategy of proof in the next Proposition is based on \\cite[Thm. 2.9]{Dranishnikov-Sapir}.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:equi_coarse_infinite_dimension}\nLet $\\mathcal{M}$ be a quantum metric space, and fix $\\delta, \\varepsilon >0$.  Suppose that $\\{(M_{n_t}, \\mathbb{V}_t)\\}_{t>0}$ is a family of reflexive quantum metric spaces and $\\{\\phi_t \\colon \\mathcal{M} \\to M_{n_t}\\}_{t>0}$ is an equi-coarse family of quantum coarse embeddings. If $M_{n_t}$ satisfies a $(\\delta,\\varepsilon,t)$-isoperimetric inequality for every $t>0$, then $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M}) = \\infty$. \n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose $\\mathcal{M}$ has finite asymptotic dimension $n$, and take any $m\\in{\\mathbb{N}}$ such that $(1+\\varepsilon )^m -1 > n$.  Let $f,g$ be functions satisfying $\\lim_{r\\to\\infty} f(r) = \\infty$ and $g(r)<\\infty$ for all $r\\geq 0$ such that $f(r) \\le \\tilde{\\omega}_{\\phi_t}(r)$ and $\\tilde{\\rho}_{\\phi_t}(r) \\le g(r)$ for all $t,r >0$; and pick $r>0$ such that $f(r)>m\\delta$.\nLet  $\\mathscr{P}^0,\\mathscr{P}^1, \\dotsc, \\mathscr{P}^n$ be uniformly bounded $r$-disjoint families of projections in $\\mathcal{M}$ such that $\\bigcup_{j=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^j$ is a cover for  $\\mathcal{M}$ and let $d$ be such that $\\diam(P) \\le d$ for every $P \\in \\bigcup_{j=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^j$.  Finally, let $t=2m\\delta +g(d)$.\nIt follows from Lemmas \\ref{lemma:boundedness-under-mappings} and \\ref{lemma:r-disjointness-under-mappings} that for each $0\\leq j\\leq n$, the families\n$\\mathscr{Q}^j = \\{ \\phi_t(P) \\mid P \\in \\mathscr{P}^j \\}$ are $f(r)$-disjoint (and therefore $m\\delta$-disjoint) and uniformly bounded by $g(d)$, and $\\bigcup_{j=0}^n\\mathscr{Q}^j$  is a cover for $M_{n_t}$ since $\\bigcup_{j=0}^n \\mathscr{P}^j$ is a cover for $\\mathcal{M}$.\nThus, the $(\\delta,\\varepsilon,2m\\delta +g(d))$-isoperimetric inequality for $M_{n_t}$ implies by Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union} (c) and Remark \\ref{remark:isoperimetric-repeat} that for each $0\\leq j\\leq n$,\n\\[\nn_t=\\rank(I_{n_t}) \\ge \\sum_{Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}^j} \\rank( (Q)_{m\\delta}  ) \\ge (1+\\varepsilon)^m \\sum_{Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}^j}  \\rank(Q),\n\\]\nand adding over $j$ yields\n\\[\n(n+1) \\cdot n_t \\ge (1+\\varepsilon)^m \\sum_{j=0}^n \\sum_{Q \\in \\mathscr{Q}^j}  \\rank(Q) \\ge (1+\\varepsilon)^m  \\cdot n_t,\n\\]\nwhere the last inequality follows from the fact that $\\bigcup_{j=0}^n \\mathscr{Q}^j$ is a cover for $M_{n_t}$.\nThis implies that $n \\ge (1+\\varepsilon)^m-1>n$, a contradiction.  Therefore $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M}) = \\infty$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe will show that a sequence of reflexive quantum expanders (which includes the case of classical expanders) satisfies the isoperimetric inequality condition found in Proposition \\ref{prop:equi_coarse_infinite_dimension}.  We first recall the definition of quantum expander sequence and an associated Cheeger-type inequality below.\n\n\\begin{definition}[\\cite{Pisier-Quantum-Expanders}]\nGiven $0 < \\varepsilon<1$ and $n\\in\\mathbb{N}$, a CPTP map $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ is said to have an \\emph{$\\varepsilon$-spectral gap} if \n\\[\n\\n{ \\Phi(X) - \\tfrac{1}{n}\\tr(X) I_n }_{\\HS} \\le (1-\\varepsilon) \\n{ X - \\tfrac{1}{n}\\tr(X) I_n }_{\\HS}\n\\]\nfor all $X \\in M_n$.\n\\end{definition}\n\\begin{definition}[\\cite{Pisier-Quantum-Expanders}]\n\\label{def:expander}\nA CPTP map  $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ is called a \\emph{$d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expander} if $\\Phi$ has an $\\varepsilon$-spectral gap and there exist unitaries $U_1,\\dotsc,U_d \\in M_n$ such that $\\Phi(X) = \\frac{1}{d}\\sum_{j=1}^d U_jXU_j^*$ for each $X \\in M_n$.  \nA sequence of CPTP maps $\\{\\Phi_m \\colon M_{n_m} \\to M_{n_m}\\}$ is called a \\emph{sequence of $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expanders} if $\\Phi_m$ is a $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expander for each $m\\in \\mathbb{N}$ and $n_m \\to \\infty$ as $m\\to\\infty$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nThe following is just a restatement of \\cite[Lemma 20]{TKRWV}, which can be described as a quantum Cheeger inequality.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\\label{lemma-Cheeger}\nLet $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ be a CPTP unital map with an $\\varepsilon$-spectral gap. Then \n\\[\n\\frac{\\tr\\big( (I_n-P) \\Phi^*\\Phi(P) \\big)}{\\tr(P)}\\geq (1-\\varepsilon)\/2\n\\]\nfor all projections $P\\in M_n$ such that $0<\\rank (P)\\leq n\/2$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{remark:Cheeger}\nThe expression appearing in the preceding lemma can be rewritten in terms of the inner product associated to the Hilbert-Schmidt norm.  Indeed,\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\tr\\big( (I_n-P) \\Phi^*\\Phi(P) \\big) = \\tr\\big( (I_n-P)^* \\Phi^*\\Phi(P) \\big) \\\\\n= \\pair{\\Phi^*\\Phi(P)}{I_n-P}_{\\HS} = \\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(I_n-P)}_{\\HS}.\n\\end{multline*}\nThus, Lemma \\ref{lemma-Cheeger} says that $\\Phi$ maps orthogonal pairs $P,I_n-P$ to nonorthogonal pairs in a uniform way. \n\\end{remark}\n\nThe next result says that if the rank of a projection inside an expander is small, then any large neighborhood of the projection has strictly larger rank than the projection itself.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:expander_rank_inequality}\nLet $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ be a $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expander.\nThen for any $\\delta>1$,\n\\[\n\\rank\\big( (P)_\\delta \\big) \\ge (1+\\varepsilon') \\rank(P)\n\\]\nwhenever $P\\in M_n$ is a projection such that $\\rank(P) \\le n\/2$,\nwhere the quantum metric on $M_n$ is the one induced by $\\Phi$ and {$\\varepsilon'=(1-\\varepsilon)\/2$}.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $P\\in M_n$ be a projection such that $\\rank (P)\\leq n\/2$.  We will show that if $Q\\in M_n$ is a projection such that $\\dist (P,Q)\\geq \\delta$, then $\\rank (Q)\\leq n - (1+\\varepsilon')\\rank(P)$.  The result will then follow from Definition \\ref{def:neighborhood}.\n\nLet $U_1,\\dotsc,U_d \\in M_n$ be unitaries such that $\\Phi(X) = \\frac{1}{d}\\sum_{j=1}^d U_jXU_j^*$ for each $X \\in M_n$.  If $\\dist(P,Q) \\ge \\delta > 1$, it follows from the definition of the quantum metric induced by $\\Phi$ that $PU_j^*U_i Q = 0$ for all $1 \\le i , j\\le d$.\nThus,\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(Q)}_{\\HS} = \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\pair{U_jPU_j^*}{U_iQU_i^*}_{\\HS} \\\\\n=  \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\tr\\big( U_iQU_i^*U_jPU_j^* \\big) = \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\tr\\big( U_i^*U_jPU_j^*U_iQ \\big) = 0.\n\\end{multline*}\n Therefore, by Lemma \\ref{lemma-Cheeger} (Definition \\ref{def:expander} implies that $\\Phi$ is unital) and Remark \\ref{remark:Cheeger},\n \\begin{equation}\\label{eqn-consequence-of-Cheeger}\n \\varepsilon' \\tr(P) \\le \\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(I_n-P)}_{\\HS} = \\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(I_n-P-Q)}_{\\HS}.\n\\end{equation}\nNow, by the trace duality between the trace and operator norms on $M_n$,\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(R)}_{\\HS} = \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\pair{U_jPU_j^*}{U_iRU_i^*}_{\\HS}  =  \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\tr\\big( U_iRU_i^*U_jPU_j^* \\big)  \\\\\n=  \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\tr\\big( RU_i^*U_jPU_j^*U_i \\big) \\le  \\frac{1}{d^2} \\sum_{i,j=1}^d \\n{R}_{1} \\n{U_i^*U_jPU_j^*U_i }_\\infty \\le \\n{R}_{1}\n\\end{multline*}\nfor all projections $R\\in M_n$.\nTherefore, using the fact that for projections the rank, the trace, and the trace norm coincide, it follows from \\eqref{eqn-consequence-of-Cheeger} that\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\varepsilon' \\rank(P)\\le \\n{I_n-P-Q}_{1} = \\tr(I_n-P-Q)\\\\ = \\tr(I_n) - \\tr(P) - \\tr(Q)=n - \\rank (P)-\\rank (Q),\n\\end{multline*}\nwhich yields the desired inequality.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWe would like to use Proposition \\ref{prop:expander_rank_inequality} to establish that quantum expanders satisfy a $(\\delta, \\varepsilon, t)$-isoperimetric inequality.  To do this, we have to first establish a relationship between the rank and the diameter of a projection inside an expander.  We do this more generally for projections inside any connected quantum graph and then show that expanders are connected.  The importance of the connectedness assumption is that it implies that every projection has finite diameter.  A quantum graph (that is, an operator system) $\\mathcal{S}\\subseteq M_n$ is said to be connected if there is $m\\in \\mathcal{N}$ such that $\\mathcal{S}^m=M_n$ \\cite[Definition 3.1]{alej2019connectivity}.  See \\cite{alej2019connectivity} for more information about connected quantum graphs.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:connected_graph_diameter}\nLet $\\mathcal{S}$ be a connected quantum graph, and $R \\in M_n$ a projection.  If $k\\in \\mathbb{N}$ is such that $\\diam (R)\\leq k$, then $R\\mathcal{S}^kR=RM_nR$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nSuppose to the contrary that $R\\mathcal{S}^kR \\subsetneq RM_nR$, and pick any $A\\in RM_nR\\setminus R\\mathcal{S}^kR$.  Then by \\cite[Lemma 2.8]{Weaver2012Relations}, there exist projections $P,Q\\in RM_nR\\overline{\\otimes} \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2)$ such that $P(RAR\\otimes \\id)Q\\neq 0$, while $P(RBR\\otimes\\id )Q=0$ for all $B\\in \\mathcal{S}^k$.  Let $\\tilde{P}$, $\\tilde{Q}$ be the range projections of $(R\\otimes \\id)P$ and $(R\\otimes \\id)Q$, respectively.  The above implies that $\\tilde{P}(RAR\\otimes \\id)\\tilde{Q}\\neq 0$, while $\\tilde{P} (B\\otimes \\id)\\tilde{Q}=0$ for all $B\\in \\mathcal{S}^k$.  By Definition \\ref{def:distance} and Definition \\ref{def:diameter}, this means that $\\diam (R)>k$.  This is a contradiction, and so $RS^kR=RM_nR$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:small_diameter_low_rank}\nLet $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ be CPTP map and let $K_1, K_2, \\dots , K_N\\in M_n$  be such that $\\Phi(X)=\\sum_{j=1}^N K_jXK_j^*$ for all matrices $X\\in M_n$.  If the quantum graph associated to  $\\Phi$ is connected, then for every projection $R \\in M_n$,\n\\[\n\\rank(R) \\le N^{\\diam(R)},\n\\]\nwhere the diameter is taken with respect to the quantum graph metric associated to $\\Phi$.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof}\n\nLet $k = \\diam(R)$\nand let $\\mathcal{S} = \\spa\\{ K_j^*K_i \\mid 1\\le i,j \\le N \\}$ be the associated quantum graph.\nIt follows from Proposition \\ref{prop:connected_graph_diameter} that\n$RM_nR = R\\mathcal{S}^kR$\nand therefore\n\\[\n\\rank(R)^2 = \\dim( RM_nR ) = \\dim( R\\mathcal{S}^kR) \\le \\dim( \\mathcal{S}^k) \\le (N^2)^k,\n\\]\nwhich yields the desired inequality.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{proposition}\nLet $\\Phi \\colon M_n \\to M_n$ be a CPTP unital map with an $\\varepsilon$-spectral gap.\nThen the associated quantum graph is connected.  In particular, every $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expander is connected.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $K_1,\\dotsc,K_N \\in M_n$ be matrices such that $\\Phi(X) = \\sum_{j=1}^N K_jXK_j^*$ for each $X \\in M_n$.\nSuppose that the quantum graph $\\mathcal{S} = \\spa\\{ K_j^*K_i \\mid 1\\le i,j \\le N \\}$ is disconnected.\nBy \\cite[Theorem 3.3]{alej2019connectivity}, there exists a nontrivial projection $P\\in M_n$ such that $P\\mathcal{S} (I_n-P) =0$,\nand without loss of generality, we may assume $0<\\rank(P)\\le n\/2$.\nIn particular, $PK_j^*K_i(I_n-P)=0$ for all $1\\le i, j\\le N$.\nTherefore\n\\begin{multline*}\n\\pair{\\Phi(P)}{\\Phi(I_n-P)}_{\\HS} = \\sum_{i,j=1}^N \\pair{K_jPK_j^*}{K_i(I_n-P)K_i^*}_{\\HS} \\\\\n=  \\sum_{i,j=1}^N \\tr\\big( K_i(I_n-P)K_i^*K_jPK_j^* \\big) = \\sum_{i,j=1}^N \\tr\\big( K_i^*K_jPK_j^*K_i(I_n-P) \\big) = 0.\n\\end{multline*}\nThis contradicts Lemma \\ref{lemma-Cheeger}, and so the quantum graph associated to $\\Phi$ is connected.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nPropositions \\ref{prop:equi_coarse_infinite_dimension} and \\ref{prop:expander_rank_inequality} and Lemma \\ref{lem:small_diameter_low_rank} together yield our main theorem.\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{thm:infinite-asymptotic-dimension}\nIf a quantum metric space $\\mathcal{M}$ is equi-coarsely embeddable into a sequence of reflexive $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expanders, then $\\asdim(\\mathcal{M})=\\infty$.  In particular, this holds whenever $\\mathcal{M}$ admits a sequence of reflexive $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-quantum expanders as metric quotients.\n\\end{theorem}\n\nWe point out that, in particular, Theorem \\ref{thm:infinite-asymptotic-dimension} covers the case when $\\mathcal{M}$ equi-coarsely contains a sequence of $d$-regular $\\varepsilon$-classical expanders, thanks to the following proposition.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:finite_is_reflexive}\nThe canonical quantum metric associated to a classical metric is always reflexive.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $(X,d)$ be a classical metric.\nLet $t \\ge 0$.\nBy \\cite[Prop. 2.5]{KuperbergWeaver}, the canonical quantum metric on $\\ell_\\infty(X)$ associated to $d$ is given by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{eqn:quantum-metric-associated-to-classical}\n\\mathcal{V}_t = \\big\\{ A \\in \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X)) \\mid d(x,y) > t \\Rightarrow \\pair{Ae_y}{e_x} = 0\\big\\}.\n\\end{equation}\nLet us now show that $\\mathcal{V}_t$ is reflexive.\nTo that end, let $B \\in \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X))$ be such that for any projections $P,Q \\in \\mathcal{B}(\\ell_2(X))$ such that $P \\mathcal{V}_tQ = \\{0\\}$, it follows that $PBQ=0$; we need to show that $B$ belongs to $\\mathcal{V}_t$.\nRecall that $V_{xy}$ denotes the mapping $g \\mapsto \\pair{g}{e_y}e_x$.\nLet $x,y \\in X$ satisfy $d(x,y)>t$.\nNote that $V_{xx}$ and $V_{yy}$ are projections, and it follows from \\eqref{eqn:quantum-metric-associated-to-classical} that $V_{xx}\\mathcal{V}_tV_{yy} = \\{0\\}$.\nTherefore,  $V_{xx}BV_{yy} = 0$. But this implies $\\pair{Be_y}{e_x} = 0$, and thus $B \\in \\mathcal{V}_t$ by apppealing to \\eqref{eqn:quantum-metric-associated-to-classical} again.\n\\end{proof}\n\nOne final remark is in order regarding Theorem \\ref{thm:infinite-asymptotic-dimension} and Proposition \\ref{prop:finite_is_reflexive}.  We have shown that equi-coarse containment of reflexive quantum expanders implies infinite asymptotic dimension and we have also shown that quantum expanders induced by classical expanders are reflexive.  While this is enough to provide a generalization of \\cite[Sec. 2.3]{Dranishnikov-Sapir} to the realm of quantum metric spaces, what we have not shown is the existence of a nontrivial reflexive quantum expander.  That is, we do not actually know whether every reflexive quantum expander is induced by a classical expander.  It would be interesting to know the answer to this question, but it would be more interesting still to know whether the reflexivity assumption in Theorem \\ref{thm:infinite-asymptotic-dimension} (or more generally Proposition \\ref{prop:equi_coarse_infinite_dimension}) can be dropped.  As with the proof of Theorem \\ref{thm:nondisjoint_union}, it was very important to be able to place an upper bound on the diameter of a neighborhood of a projection in terms of the diameter of the projection (Part (c) of Lemma \\ref{lemma:r-saturated-union}).  This is what allowed us to repeatedly apply the isoperimetric inequality to derive the inequality found in Remark \\ref{remark:isoperimetric-repeat}.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\nThe investigation of coupled viscous flow equations to heat conduction has a fifteen-decade long history started with \nBoussinesq \\cite{bous} and Oberbeck \\cite{ober} who applied it to the normal atmosphere. \nThe simplest way to couple these two phenomena together is the Boussinesq approximation which is used in the field of buoyancy-driven flow (also known as natural convection). It ignores density differences except where they appear in terms multiplied by g, the acceleration due to gravity. The essence of the Boussinesq approximation is that the difference in inertia is negligible but gravity is sufficiently strong to make the specific weight appreciably different between the two fluids. Sound waves are completely impossible when the Boussinesq approximation is used since sound waves move via density variations.\nBoussinesq flows are common in nature (such as katabatic winds, atmospheric fronts, oceanic circulation), industry (fume cupboard ventilation, dense gas dispersion) and the built environment (natural ventilation, central heating). Due to the approximation the calculations are easy and straightforward\nto do and the interpretation are quite simple but the precision remains extremely\nhigh. The Boussinesq approximation is applied to problems where the temperature of the fluid depends on the location, driving a flow of fluid and heat transfer. In such systems the mass, momentum and energy conservation is satisfied. In this approximation, density variations only appear when they are multiplied by g, the gravitational acceleration.\n The advantage of the approximation arises because when considering a flow of, say, warm and cold water of density $\\rho_1$ and $\\rho_2$ one needs only to consider a single density $\\rho$: the difference $\\Delta \\rho = \\rho_1 - \\rho_2$ is negligible. The mathematics of the flow is therefore simpler because the density ratio $\\rho_1\/\\rho_2 $, a dimensionless number, does not affect the flow; the Boussinesq approximation states that it may be assumed to be exactly one.\n\nAt the beginning of the sixties---via the stream function formalism---the Lorenz equations were derived from the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation to the equations describing fluid circulation in a shallow layer of fluid, heated uniformly from below and cooled uniformly from above. \\cite{salz} This fluid circulation is known as Rayleigh--B\\`enard convection. The fluid is assumed to circulate in two dimensions (vertical and horizontal) with periodic rectangular boundary conditions.\n\nThe partial differential equations (PDE) modeling the stream function of the system and temperature are subjected to a spectral Galerkin approximation: the hydrodynamic fields are expanded in Fourier series, which are then severely truncated to a single term for the stream function and two terms for the temperature. This reduces the model equations to a set of three coupled, nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODE). A detailed derivation may be found, for example, in nonlinear dynamics textbooks \\cite{hilb,berge}. The Lorenz system is a reduced version of a larger system studied earlier by Barry Saltzman \\cite{salz}. Lorenz \\cite{lorenz} evaluated the numerical solutions with computers and plotted the first strange attractor which was the advent of chaos studies. \n\nInvestigating chaotic dynamical systems are still open up new questions and methods. \nThe Lorenz equations also arise in numerous systems like simplified models for thermosyphons \\cite{gor}, lasers \\cite{haken}, chemical reactions \\cite{port}, dynamos \\cite{knob}, electric circuits \\cite{cuom} and brushless DC motors \\cite{hema}. \nFrom a technical standpoint, the Lorenz system is nonlinear, non-periodic, three-dimensional and deterministic. The Lorenz equations have been the subject of hundreds of research articles, and at least one book-length study \\cite{sparrow}.\n\nRegarding spatially extended systems the thermal convection without boundary layers is studied in Ref.~\\cite{BoOr97}. The idea have been further developed and both numerical and analytical studies have been realized \\cite{Calzavarini2002}, as are the longitudinal structure functions of velocity and temperature. In certain cases analytical or semi-analytical consideration are also presented for some particular situations \\cite{CaDoGi2006,DoOtRe06}. One may also find a considerable number of interesting studies related to the turbulent Rayleigh--B\\`{e}nard convection \\cite{ChavChi2001,LoXi2010}. The dependence of viscosity on temperature have been taken into account, having an effect on dynamics \\cite{SuCaGrLo03}. Convection in flows, where a given geometry may also have a role, is studied in Refs.~\\cite{ScCaLo12,TeKaPeScTo2000,NiToGeTe2002}. In case of the atmosphere, the buoyancy of the moist air may lead to convection with phase changes \\cite{Vaillancourt2001,Andrejczuk2004,Andrejczuk2006}. If the environmental lapse rate---the change of the temperature with altitude---is sufficiently large, then the buoyancy raises an air parcel, which can lead to cloud formation. On the other hand, a relative low environmental lapse rate brings stability \\cite{SzeMa2014,Pernigotti2007,SzeMaKeGh2016}.\n \nIn our former study \\cite{barna} we analyzed the original Boussinesq-Oberbeck PDE system with the self-similar Ansatz ending up with a non-linear coupled ODE system, however the pressure, temperature and velocity field was evaluated in analytic forms with the help of the error functions.\nThe main point is that instead of the well-known linear Fourier series expansion technique we applied a given Ansatz which is a completely different method to analyze a PDE or \na PDE system. Our Ansatz is inherently capable to describe the dispersive \nand dissipative features of the solutions. Till today we could not get any remaining ODE systems (evaluated from PDE via self-similar Ansatz) which show chaotic behavior. \n\nAs main result we could see the possible birth of the Rayleigh--B\\`enard(RB) convection cell which is a type of natural convection, occurring in a plane horizontal layer of fluid heated from below. \nFor a better understanding Fig.~\\ref{egyes1} presents our recent model, which has only two spatial dimensions a horizontal and a vertical one, however it is capable to describe convection rolls, as we will see. \n\nRayleigh--B\\`enard convection is one of the most commonly studied convection phenomena because of its analytical and experimental accessibility. These convection patterns are the most carefully examined example of self-organizing nonlinear systems. \n\\begin{figure} \n\\begin{center}\n\\includegraphics[scale=.25]{BL_convection.png}\n\\caption{The geometrical scheme of two dimensional convection rolls. In our modeling the x-z vertical plain is investigated as a cut of the more irregular three dimensional Rayleigh-B\\`enard convection cells.}\t\n\\label{egyes1}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\nBuoyancy, and hence gravity, is responsible for the appearance of convection cells. The initial movement is the upwelling of lesser density fluid from the heated bottom layer. \n Regular pattern of cells are spontaneously organized by the upwelling. \n\nWhen, the temperature of the bottom plane is increased slightly yielding a flow of thermal energy conducted through the liquid. The system will begin to have a structure of thermal conductivity: the temperature, the pressure and density with it, will vary linearly between the bottom and top plane. A uniform linear gradient of temperature will be established. \nOnce conduction is established, the microscopic random movement spontaneously becomes ordered on a macroscopic level, forming B\\`enard convection cells, with a characteristic correlation length.\nThe rotation of the cells is a stable feature and will alternate from clock-wise to counter-clockwise horizontally, giving a nice example of spontaneous symmetry breaking. B\\`enard cells are metastable which means that a small perturbation will not be able to change the rotation of the cells, but a larger one could affect the rotation, they also exhibit a form of hysteresis.\n\nMicroscopic perturbations of the initial conditions are enough to produce a non-deterministic macroscopic effect. In a repeated experiment clock-wise rotating cells may turn to counter-clockwise. Therefore there is no way to calculate the macroscopic effect of a microscopic perturbation. This inability to predict long-range conditions and sensitivity to initial-conditions are characteristics of chaotic or complex systems. Detailed physical description and exhausted technical details about the field of Rayleigh--B\\`enard convection can be found in the books of \\cite{ben1,ben2,ben3}. \n\nThe connection of the self-similar Ansatz to critical phenomena, scaling, and renormalization was addressed as well. \nAs far as we know all four concepts do not have a properly understood common root. \nAll our studies related to two or three dimensional Navier--Stokes equations analyzed with the self-similar Ansatz can be found in the book of Campos \\cite{imre_book} in Chapter 16. From our analytic velocity field with Fourier transformation additional connections to turbulence or enstropy could be evaluated as well and could be a stating point for further investigations. \n\nIn the present study we generalize the usual Oberbeck--Boussinesq system considering more advanced material equations, like temperature dependent heat conduction coefficient, or viscosity. \nSecondly, we go beyond the simplest Boussinesq approximation which couples heat conduction to fluid dynamics as well. \n\\section{Theory and Results}\nTo describe the problem of two dimensional heat conduction in viscous incompressible fluids one of the simplest way is the above mentioned\nOberbeck--Boussinesq model \\cite{ober,salz}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{nav} \n\\begin{split}\n\\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial x} + w \\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial z}& + \n\\frac{\\partial P}{\\partial x}\\\\ - \\nu \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 u} {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 u} {\\partial z^2} \\right) = 0, \\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial x} + w \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial z}& + \n\\frac{\\partial P}{\\partial z} - eG T_1\\\\ - \\nu \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 w} {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 w} {\\partial z^2} \\right) = 0,\\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial x}& + w \\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial z}\\\\ \n- \\kappa \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 T_1 } {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 T_1} {\\partial z^2} \\right)& = 0,\\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial x} + \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial z}& = 0, \n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $u,w, $ denote respectively the x and z velocity coordinates, $T_1$ is the temperature difference relative\nto the average ($T_1 = T - T_{av}$) and $P$ is the scaled pressure over the density.\nThe free physical parameters are $\\nu, e, G, \\kappa $ kinematic viscosity, coefficient of volume expansion, \nacceleration of gravitation and coefficient of thermal diffusivity, respectively. \n(To avoid further misunderstanding we use $G$ for gravitation acceleration and g which is reserved for a self-similar solution.)\\\nThe first two equations are the Navier--Stokes equations, the third one is the heat conduction equation and the last one is the continuity \nequation. All of them contain two spatial dimensions. \nWe apply Cartesian coordinates and Eulerian description. \n\nFor highly nonlinear media the temperature dependence of the density can be approximated with the following Taylor \nseries \n\\begin{equation}\n\\rho(T) = \\rho_0 + \\frac{\\partial \\rho}{\\partial T }(T-T_1) + \\frac{\\partial^2 \\rho}{\\partial T^2 }(T-T_1)^2,\n\\end{equation}\nconsidering the linear term only gives us the Boussinesq approximation which is presented above. \n\nThe main goal of our forthcoming paper is to discuss physically relevant generalization of Eq.~(1) and calculate the analytic self-similar solutions. \n\nOur present problem can be summarized in the following PDE system:\n\\begin{equation}\\label{nav2} \n\\begin{split}\n\\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial x} + w \\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial z}& + \n\\frac{\\partial P}{\\partial x}\\\\ - \\nu\\left( T_{1} \\right) \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 u} {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 u} {\\partial z^2} \\right) = 0, \\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial x} + w \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial z}& + \n\\frac{\\partial P}{\\partial z} - eG \\cdot k\\left( T_{1} \\right)\\\\ - \\nu\\left( T_{1} \\right) \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 w} {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 w} {\\partial z^2} \\right) = 0,\\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial t} + u \\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial x}& + w \\frac{\\partial T_1}{\\partial z}\\\\ \n- \\kappa\\left( T_{1} \\right) \\left( \\frac{\\partial^2 T_1 } {\\partial x^2} + \\frac{\\partial^2 T_1} {\\partial z^2} \\right)& = 0,\\\\ \n\\frac{\\partial u}{\\partial x} + \\frac{\\partial w}{\\partial z}& = 0, \n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $ k(T_1)$ means any non-linear temperature dependence, $\\nu(T_1)$ and $\\kappa(T_1)$ are temperature dependent viscosities and \nheat conduction coefficients. Of course, much more complex material equations can be considered e.g~non-Newtonian fluids where \nthe viscosity is velocity dependent. Analysis of such media was performed in one of our former studies \\cite{imre_newtoni}.\nWe restrict ourselves however, ``only'' to these degrees of freedom which will open rich mathematical spectra and can give remarkable results \nfor the atmosphere (air) or for oceans (water) as non-linear media. \n \nWe neglect the stream function reformulation of the two dimensional flow and keep the original variables investigating the original hydrodynamical system with the Ansatz of \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ans}\n\\begin{split}\nu(\\eta)& = t^{-\\alpha} f(\\eta),\\\\\nw(\\eta)& = t^{-\\delta} g(\\eta),\\\\\nP(\\eta)& = t^{-\\epsilon} h(\\eta),\\\\\nT_1(\\eta)& = t^{-\\omega} l(\\eta), \n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the new variable is $\\eta = (x+z)\/t^{\\beta}$. \nAll the five exponents $\\alpha,\\beta,\\delta,\\epsilon,\\omega $ are real numbers. (Solutions with \ninteger exponents are the self-similar solutions of the first kind and sometimes can be obtained from dimensional considerations \n\\cite{sedov}.) The $f,g,h,l$ objects are called the shape functions of the corresponding dynamical variables. These functions should have existing first and second derivatives for the spatial coordinates and first existing derivatives for the temporal coordinate. \n Under certain assumptions, the partial differential equations\ndescribing the time propagation can be reduced to ordinary differential\nones which greatly simplifies the problem. This transformation\nis based on the assumption that a self-similar solution\nexists, i.e., every physical parameter preserves its\nshape during the expansion. Self-similar solutions usually\ndescribe the asymptotic behavior of an unbounded or a far-field\nproblem; the time $t$ and the space coordinate $x$ appear\nonly in the combination of $x\/ t^{\\beta}$. It means that the existence\nof self-similar variables implies the lack of characteristic\nlengths and times. These solutions are usually not unique and\ndo not take into account the initial stage of the physical\nexpansion process. \nBy this self-similar construction we hope to find some scaling of certain physical parameters, at least for particular cases---for example at large or small times. \nThis idea has certain similarities with situations where scaling properties have been used \\cite{stanley}. Regarding further areas the principle of scaling occur in the study of networks \\cite{barabasi} or research in connection with neural networks \\cite{gri}. \n More detailed analysis of the properties of the self-similar Ansatz is presented and discussed \nin all our former studies like \\cite{barna,imre_newtoni, barna2}. \n \n\nIn the present study we analyze the generalization of the Oberbeck--Boussinesq approximation. We consider a non-linear temperature coupling $k(T_1) \\sim T^\\lambda$ in \\eqref{nav2} but keeping the constant viscosity and heat conduction coefficients. In our former study the $\\lambda=1$ has been chosen. In present paper $\\lambda$ is a new parameter that measures the strength of the coupling between the temperature field and flow velocity field. We will see there is a non-trivial constrain between $\\omega$ and $\\lambda$. This relation will provide the fast decay of the strong coupling.\n\nWe also investigate the Oberbeck--Boussinesq approximation with non-constant, temperature dependent viscosity $\\nu(x,z,t) \\sim T(x,z,t)^{\\lambda}$ case. This would have been a desired generalization because of accurate functions available for the temperature dependent viscosity for water \\cite{hardy1} or for sea water \\cite{hardy2} evaluated by Hardy.\n\nThe case when Oberbeck--Boussinesq approximation is generalized with constant viscosity but non-constant, temperature dependent heat conduction coefficient also can be investigated. It can be written up in the $\\kappa(x,z,t) \\sim T(x,z,t)^{\\lambda}$ functional form. The aforementioned motivations are the same in this case as well.\n\nWe showed that a system with temperature dependent viscosity cannot be solved by the Ansatz presented in Eq.~\\eqref{ans} because the relations between the exponents turn out to be contradictory. This problem does not arise in the case of the temperature dependent heat conduction but the generalization still cannot be possible because the $\\lambda$ exponent turns out to be $1$ which is the linear case.\n\nOur generalization can be summarized with the following: in Eq.~\\eqref{nav2} $\\nu(T_1)=\\nu=$ const., $\\kappa(T_1)=\\kappa=$ const. and $eGk(T_1)\\rightarrow bGT_1^\\lambda$. It is worth to note that constant $e$ which is the coefficient of volume expansion is changed to another constant $b$ with another physical dimension.\n\nThanks to the free physical parameter $\\lambda$, after some algebraic manipulations only some of the self-similarity exponents got fixed to the following values: $\\alpha = \\delta = \\beta=1\/2$, $\\epsilon = 1$ and $\\lambda \\omega = 3\/2$ which are called the universality relations. \nThese universality relations dictate the corresponding coupled ODE system which has the following form of \n\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ode1}\n\\begin{split}\n-\\frac{f}{2} -\\frac{f'\\eta}{2} + ff' + gf' + h' -2\\nu f'' &= 0,\\\\ \n-\\frac{g}{2} -\\frac{g'\\eta}{2} + fg' + gg' + h' - bGl^{\\lambda} -2\\nu g'' &= 0, \\\\ \n -\\omega l - \\frac{l'\\eta}{2} + fl' +gl' -2\\kappa l'' &= 0,\\\\\nf' + g' &= 0.\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nPrime means derivation in respect to $\\eta$. \nFrom the last (continuity) equation we automatically get the $\nf + g = c $ and $ f''+ g'' =0 $ conditions which are necessary in the following. \n\nFrom the third equation we get \n\\begin{equation}\n 2\\kappa l'' + l'\\left(\\frac{\\eta}{2}-c \\right) + \\frac{3l}{2\\lambda} = 0,\n\\label{tem_shape}\n\\end{equation}\nwhich is an ODE for the temperature shape function. \n\nThe most general solutions are \n\\begin{equation}\\label{kum}\n\\begin{split}\nl = c_1 M\\left(\\frac{3}{2\\lambda},\\frac{1}{2},-\\frac{(2c-\\eta)^2}{8\\kappa} \\right)& +\\\\ c_2 U\\left(\\frac{3}{2\\lambda},\\frac{1}{2},-\\frac{(2c-\\eta)^2}{8\\kappa} \\right),\n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nthe Kummer's functions, for exhaustive details see the NIST Handbook\\cite{NIST}. \n(We use the formal solutions obtained by Maple 12 Software [Copyright (c) Maplesoft, a division of Waterloo Inc.~1981--2008] from now on.)\n\nThe key parameter of this function is $\\lambda$ which meets our physical considerations. \n$c$ is just a shifting constant and $\\kappa $ scales the diffusivity of the results. \nThe smaller the $\\kappa$ value the sharper the main peak of the function. \nIn the following we fix the $c=0$ and $\\kappa = 0.5$ values. \n\nFrom the series expansion of $M(a,b,z)$ we get \n\\begin{equation}\nM(a,b,z) = 1 + \\frac{az}{b} + \\frac{(a)_2 z^2}{(b)_2 2!} +... + \n \\frac{(a)_n z^n}{(b)_n n!}, \n\\end{equation}\nwith the $(a)_n = a(a+1)(a+2)...(a+n-1), (a) _0 =1 $ so-called \nrising factorial or Pochhammer symbol. \nIf $b$ has a fix non-negative integer value (like n) then none of the solutions have poles at $b = -n$. \nFor $M(a,b,z)$ if $a$ has negative integer $a = -m $ numerical value the solution is a polynomial of degree $m$ \nin $z$. In other cases, like now when $a$ is not an integer we get a convergent series for all values of $a,b$ and $z$. \nThere is a connection between the two functions, \n$U$ is defined from $M$ via \n\\begin{equation}\n\\begin{split}\nU(a,b,z) = \\frac{\\pi}{\\sin(\\pi b)} \n\\left[ \\frac{M(a,b,z)}{\\Gamma(1+a-b)\\Gamma(b)} \\right. \\\\\n\\left. \\vphantom{U(a,b,z) = } - z^{1-b}\\frac{M(1+a-b,2-b,z)}{\\Gamma(a)\\Gamma(2-b)} \\right], \n\\end{split}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\Gamma(a)$ is the Gamma function \\cite{NIST}.\n\nFrom the general properties of the self-similar Ansatz we know that \n(except some pathological cases) all positive exponents mean decaying and spreading solutions in time and space. \nOur investigated system due to the dissipative NS part is so, therefore all the exponents should be positive \nwhich means that both $\\lambda$ and $\\omega $ should be positive. \n(Negative integer values of $\\lambda$ define finite degree polynomials in $\\eta$ which are divergent for large $\\eta$ which we skip as non-physical non-dispersive solutions.)\nThere are three different regime available for positive $\\lambda$ which describes the weakness or strengths of the \ncoupling between the heat conduction and flow in the system. \nThese are the followings: \n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item{ $ 0 < \\lambda <1$ where numerous oscillations occur} \n\\item{$ 1 \\le \\lambda < 3 $ with a single aperiodic oscillation, (at $\\eta \\rightarrow +\\infty \\hspace*{2mm} l(\\eta) \\rightarrow 0_{-} $ )} \n\\item{$ 3 \\le \\lambda $ where $l(\\eta) > 0$. }\n\\end{itemize}\n\nFigure \\ref{egyes} presents such curves with different $\\lambda$ values. \n\\begin{figure} \n\\scalebox{0.4}{\n\\rotatebox{0}{\\includegraphics{l_eta}}}\n\\caption{The graphs of Eq.~(\\ref{kum}) for $c_1=c_2=1,$ $c=0$ and $\\kappa = 0.5$, only the real part was taken. \nThe black solid line is for $\\lambda = 0.1$, the black long dashed is for $\\lambda = 0.5$ the blue solid line is for $\\lambda = 1.5$,\nthe green solid line is for $\\lambda = 3 $.}\t\n\\label{egyes}\n\\end{figure}\nThe main results of our study can be clearly seen on this figure. \nWith the decreasing value of $ \\lambda $ (for $\\lambda < 1$) the number of oscillations increase.\nWhich means weaker coupling \nbetween the temperature field and the flow velocities in the second equation of the original system. \nThe term $bGT_1^{\\lambda}$ in the second equation is responsible for the oscillations. \nIn our former study \\cite{barna} the coupling was linear, in other words the $\\lambda = 1$ numerical value has been taken, \nwhich also means a single oscillation. \nWith additional numerical investigation the number of the interceptions of the shape function versus the $\\lambda$ connection can be made clear. \nTable I shows this relationship. \n\n\\begin{table}[h!]\\label{sf}\n\\centering\n\\begin{tabular}{| c | c |} \\hline \\hline\nValue of & Nr. of zeros \\\\ \\hline\n$ 3 < \\lambda $ & 0 \\\\ \\hline\n$ 1 < \\lambda < 3 $ & 1 \\\\ \\hline\n$ 0.6 < \\lambda < 1 $ & 2 \\\\ \\hline\n$ 0.41 < \\lambda < 0.6 $ & 3 \\\\ \\hline\n$ 0.29 < \\lambda < 0.41$ & 4 \\\\ \\hline\n$ 0.19 < \\lambda \\ 0.29$ & 6 \\\\ \\hline\n\\end{tabular}\n\\caption{The connection between the number of interceptions and the values of $\\lambda$ for $\\kappa = 1\/2$ and for $c_1 = c_2 = 1$, $c=0$. }\n\\end{table}\n\nThe argument of the temperature shape function is $\\eta = (x+z)\/t^{1\/2}$, \nwe fix the time and one of the spatial coordinates (e.g. $x$) to given values ($t_0,x_0$),\n even after this restriction there is a range of $\\eta$ (or $z$) where the $l(\\eta)$ function has a minimum and a maximum, \nwhere additional temperature and velocity fluctuation may start the Rayleigh-B\\`enard convection. \n(The analysis of the velocity field clearly showed, that with fixed $t_0,x_0$ the velocity field $v_x(z)$ and $v_z(z)$ are different at the \nminimum and maximum of the temperature field, therefore the driving is present to start the convection.)\nThis was clearly explained in our former study \\cite{barna}. The situation is very similar here, with restricted $t_0$ and $x_0$ values, \nthe shape function has at least one local maximum and minimum, for $\\lambda < 1$ there are two or more such oscillations, which may be the \nplace of birth of parallel Rayleigh--B\\`enard convection cells. It is also clear that fixing the $x$ spatial coordinate the vertical $z$ dependent convection cells are \npresented, however with a fixed $z$ spatial coordinate the horizontal $x$ convection cells are visualized. \n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\scalebox{0.4}{\n\\rotatebox{0}{\\includegraphics{T_xt_3d}}}\n\\caption{The temperature field $T(x,z_0,t)$, where the real part of the solution is presented with the \nparameter set of $c_1 = c_2 =1$, $c= 0$, $\\kappa = 0.5.$ with $\\lambda = 0.5$. The contour lines follow a logarithmic scale. The solid and dashed lines correspond to the positive and negative values of the temperature field, respectively.}\t\n\\end{center} \n\\label{egyesl}\n\\end{figure}\nFigure 3 presents the three dimensional space and time dependent temperature field $T(x,z_0,t)$. \nThe constrain of $\\lambda \\omega = 3\/2$ dictates, that at low $\\lambda$ values (where two or three oscillations occur)\nomega has a large value ($\\approx 3$) which means a quick decay in time. \n\nAt this point for sake of completeness we mention that the solution of Eq.~(\\ref{tem_shape}) for the parameters $\\lambda =2$ and $c=0$ can expressed \nwith the help of the modified Bessel function of the first kind $I_{\\nu}(z)$ and $K_{\\nu}(z)$. \nFor $\\lambda =3$ and $c=0$ however, the solutions are the related to the error function. \n\nAs a second step we calculate the pressure fields as well. \nIn the original OB problem, the shape function of the pressure field $h(\\eta)$ is fully analytic and \ncan be obtained from the temperature shape function via the following equation\n\\eq\nh' = \\frac{1}{2} \\left( b G l^{\\lambda} - \\frac{c}{2} \\right).\n\\label{pressure}\n\\eqe\nUnfortunately, the general solution for an arbitrary $\\lambda$ does not exist in a closed form.\nEven, if we restrict the Kummer functions in Eq.~(\\ref{kum}) to a pure $M$ or $U$ function, the $\\lambda$ exponent makes \nit impossible to get an analytic result. \nAs we mentioned above $T_1 \\sim l(\\eta)$ is the discrepancy from average temperature, so it can be shifted to an arbitrary level, \nit is needed because the fractional exponent value $l^{\\lambda}$ has to be taken before integration of the ODE Eq.~(\\ref{pressure}). \nAfter such a constant shift the general graph of the pressure shape function is presented on Fig. 4. \n\nFrom the first two equations one of the velocity component can be evaluated as follows \n\\eq\n4\\nu g'' + g'(\\eta -2c) + g + \\frac{c}{2} + bGl^{\\lambda} =0. \n\\label{speed}\n\\eqe\nSimilarly to Eq.~(\\ref{pressure}) there is no closed form available to the shape function of the velocity field. \nTo avoid unwanted spurious cuts in the velocity field the original temperature shape function has to be shited to positive values. \nAfter such a transformation Figure \\ref{negyes} presents a typical velocity shape function $g(\\eta)$. For comparison \nwe plotted it together with the original solution for $\\lambda = 1$\nwhere the solution has the form of \n\\eq\ng = c_1 e^{-\\frac{\\eta^2}{8 \\nu}} erf \\left( \\frac{\\eta}{4} \\sqrt{-\\frac{2}{\\nu} } \\right) + c_2 e^{-\\frac{\\eta^2}{8 \\nu}} - \nc_{3}\\frac{ 4eG\\kappa^2 e^{-\\frac{\\eta^2}{8 \\kappa}} }{\\kappa-\\nu}.\n\\label{geta}\n\\eqe \nBoth parameter sets are the same. Note, that in spite of the oscillating behavior in the initial temperature shape function $l(\\eta)$ \nthe velocity field shape functions look very similar and smooth. The twofold integration of Eq.~(\\ref{speed}) smooth out the initial temperature fluctuations.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\begin{center}\n\\scalebox{0.4}{\n\\rotatebox{0}{\\includegraphics{h_eta}}}\n\\vspace*{0.4cm}\n\\caption{The real part of the pressure shape function $h(\\eta)$ of Eq.~(\\ref{pressure}) for the parameter set of $c_1 = c_2 =1$, $c= 0$, $\\kappa = 0.5.$ The black solid line is for $\\lambda = 0.1$, the black long dashed is for $\\lambda = 0.5$ the blue solid line is for $\\lambda = 1.5$, the green solid line is for $\\lambda = 3. $}\t\n\\label{harmas}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\\begin{figure} \n\\begin{center}\n\\scalebox{0.4}{\n\\rotatebox{0}{\\includegraphics{g_eta_linear}}}\n\\vspace*{0.4cm}\n\\caption{The real part of the shape function of $g(\\eta)$ of \\eqref{speed} which is the $z$ component of the velocity field. The black solid line is for the parameter set of $c_1 = c_2 =1$, $c= 0$, $\\kappa = 0.5$, $\\nu = 0.3.$, $\\lambda = 0.1$, the black long dashed is for $\\lambda = 0.5$ the blue solid line is for $\\lambda = 1.5$, the green solid line is for $\\lambda = 3 $, the red dashed line is for the former linear case of \\eqref{geta} ($\\lambda=1$).}\n\\label{negyes}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\\section{Summary and Outlook}\nWith reasonable generalization we investigated the classical OB equation which is the starting point of countless \ndynamical and chaotic systems. Instead of the usual Fourier truncation method we applied\nthe two-dimensional generalization of the self-similar Ansatz and found a coupled non-linear\nODE system which can be solved with quadrature. Our main result is that even this kind of generalization---which is beyond \nthe linear Oberbeck--Boussinesq approximation---gave us an analytic temperature field which have some---not a single---oscillations. These oscillations could be the \npossible birth place of Rayleigh--B\\`enard convection cells. As a second point, we may say that from the field quantities describing the system, the temperature field is the most sensitive for variations of $\\lambda$.\nTo our best knowledge certain parts of the climate models are based on the OB\nequations therefore our results might be an interesting sign to climate experts. \n\n\\section*{References}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section*{\\hfil #1\\hfil}}                   \n\\renewcommand{\\refname}{\\hfil References Cited\\hfil}                  \n\\newcommand{\\sref}[1]{\\S\\ref{#1}}\n\\newcommand{\\rfps}[6]{NSF Grant \\#{#1}, {#2}, \\${#3}, {#4} -- {#5}, PI {#6}}\n\\newcommand{Journal of Geophysical Research}{Journal of Geophysical Research}\n\\newcommand{Astrophysical Journal Letters}{Astrophysical Journal Letters}\n\\newcommand{Physical Review D}{Physical Review D}\n\\newcommand{Physical Review Letters}{Physical Review Letters}\n\\newcommand{The Astrophysical Journal}{The Astrophysical Journal}\n\\newcommand{Astronomy \\& Astrophysics}{Astronomy \\& Astrophysics}\n\\setcounter{MaxMatrixCols}{10}\n\n\\hoffset0.1in\n\\voffset0.15in\n\\setlength{\\textwidth}{16.5cm}\n\\setlength{\\textheight}{22.6cm}\n\\setlength{\\topmargin}{-0.2in}\n\\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-0.2in}\n\\setlength{\\evensidemargin}{-0.2in}\n\\setlength{\\headsep}{8mm}\n\\setlength{\\marginparwidth}{2.2cm}\n\\setlength{\\marginparsep}{3mm}\n\n\\newcommand{\\expect}[1]{{\\left\\langle{#1}\\right\\rangle}}\n\n\\begin{document}\n\n\\fancypagestyle{plain}{%\n\\fancyhf{}%\n\\fancyhead[LO, RE]{XXXVIII International Symposium on Physics in Collision, \\\\ Bogot\\'a, Colombia, 11-15 September 2018}}\n\n\\fancyhead{}%\n\\fancyhead[LO, RE]{XXXVIII International Symposium on Physics in Collision, \\\\ Bogot\\'a, Colombia, 11-15 September 2018}\n\n\\title{Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos}\n\\author{James Madsen$\\thanks{%\ne-mail: james.madsen@uwrf.edu}$~ for the IceCube Collaboration\\footnote{\\protect\\url{http:\/\/icecube.wisc.edu}}, \\\\ Physics Department, University of Wisconsin-River Falls, \\\\ River Falls, WI USA}\n\\date{}\n\\maketitle\n\n\\begin{abstract}\nUltra-high energy neutrinos hold promise as cosmic messengers to advance the understanding of extreme astrophysical objects and environments as well as possible probes for discovering new physics.  This proceeding describes the motivation for measuring high energy neutrinos.  A short summary of the mechanisms for producing high energy neutrinos is provided along with an overview of current and proposed modes of detection.  The science reach of the field is also briefly surveyed. As an example of the potential of neutrinos as cosmic messengers, the recent results from an IceCube Collaboration real-time high energy neutrino alert and subsequent search of archival data are described.     \n\\end{abstract}\n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\nAstrophysics has seen an incredible expansion in the last century or so with new ways of viewing the cosmos revealing extreme objects and environments far exceeding what can be reproduced even in the most ambitious particle accelerator facility.  High energy astrophysics is an exciting field fueled by advances in the capabilities of observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum and in the size and scope of cosmic ray experiments.  Inherently interesting in their own right, astrophysical phenomena also provide a natural source to extend particle physics studies one or more orders of magnitude higher in energy. Cosmic rays and gravity waves were covered in separate talks at this meeting, as were neutrino results from reactors, accelerators, and neutrino-less double beta-decay experiments.  Lower energy neutrino topics, such as searches for sterile neutrinos, solar neutrinos, and coherent neutrino scattering were also presented separately.  Here the focus is on ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrinos of order 1 PeV and above, as well as the recent IceCube results associated with blazar TXS 0506+056.  \n\nNeutrinos as cosmic messengers have many appealing characteristics. They are electrically neutral, traveling in straight lines from their source unaffected by magnetic fields. They interact only through the weak force, so they are mostly unaffected by intervening matter. They also track nuclear processes and can be used to study beyond standard model physics. The paths of nuclear cosmic rays, primarily protons but also heavier nuclei, are altered by magnetic fields so the detected direction does not point back to their source.  Extremely high energy cosmic rays will interact with the cosmic microwave background (CMB).  This is known as the GZK effect \\cite{PhysRevLett.16.748, osti_6066749}; it limits the horizon for seeing protons with energies of 40 EeV and above to less than 100 Mpc.  The universe is also opaque to very high energy gamma rays due to interactions with the CMB.  The highest energy gamma rays detected are of order a hundred TeV, and it is likely gamma rays with energies of order PeV or more would have to be galactic in origin. Neutrinos seem to be the only currently known UHE messenger  capable of reaching the Earth from throughout the entire non-thermal universe.  \n\n\\section{UHE Neutrinos}\nThe compelling case for pursuing UHE neutrinos is tempered by daunting experimental challenges.  From the beginning, it was suggested that neutrino astronomy would require a detector a cubic kilometer in volume to have a hope of collecting enough neutrinos of astrophysical origin to study the cosmos. The event rate is determined by geometric factors such as the cross sectional area and angular acceptance, the detection efficiency which is dependent on both hardware and software design, the neutrino flux, and the neutrino cross section.  The production, detection, and science reach of UHE neutrinos are covered in this section.   \n\\subsection{Production}\nA high-level representation of neutrino production is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:NP}.  An accelerator produces high energy charged particles, shown in the figure as protons but for astrophysical accelerators heavier nuclei may also participate. \n\\begin{wrapfigure} [16] {R}{.25\\textwidth}\n\\vspace{-.3in}\n    \\begin{center}\n        \\includegraphics[width=.23\\textwidth]{figures\/NeutrinoProduction.png}\n  \\end{center}\n  \\vspace{-.3in}\n\\caption{ Generic conditions for producing a neutrino beam.}\n\\label{fig:NP}\n\\end{wrapfigure}\nThe hadronic beam interacts with a target (a beam dump for particle accelerators), radiation or dust, that could be within the same environment where the acceleration took place, or somewhere along the cosmic journey.  The interaction produces secondary mesons; the charged mesons decay producing neutrinos and neutral mesons decay producing gamma rays. For example, neutral pions decay as $\\pi^0\\to\\gamma+\\gamma$ and create a flux of high-energy gamma rays; the charged pions decay into three high-energy neutrinos ($\\nu$) and anti-neutrinos ($\\bar\\nu$) via the decay chain $\\pi^+\\to\\mu^++\\nu_\\mu$ followed by $\\mu^+\\to e^++\\bar\\nu_\\mu +\\nu_e$, and the charge-conjugate process.\n\nThe flux of nuclear cosmic rays provides a test beam of neutrinos.  Cosmic rays that interact with nuclei in the Earth's atmosphere produce pions and kaons that decay giving a measured flux of neutrinos that agrees with model predictions.  The flux of these atmospheric neutrinos becomes very low at energies above $\\sim$100 TeV as the probability increases that the charged mesons interact before they have a chance to decay.  A predicted prompt component at $\\sim$100 TeV from the decay of charm mesons has yet to be seen.  A flux of astrophysical neutrinos with a harder energy spectrum compared to atmospheric neutrinos extending from below 100 TeV to about 10 PeV has been observed.  It will be discussed in section 3. A flux of extremely high energy neutrinos is predicted to result from off-source GZK interactions of extremely high energy cosmic rays with the CMB.  This cosmogenic neutrino flux is significantly smaller if the extremely high energy cosmic rays are composed of heavier nuclei rather than being predominately protons.  \n\n\\subsection{Detection}\n\nThere are three flavors of neutrinos (l=muon, electron, or tau) which can interact by exchanging a W boson (charged current interaction) or a Z boson (neutral current interaction) as indicated in Fig.~\\ref{fig:NI}. Aside from the Glashow resonance at about 6.3 PeV which involves an electron anti-neutrino~\\cite{PhysRev.118.316}, there is not currently a way to experimentally distinguish between a high energy neutrino and anti-neutrino event. Knowing the flavor of the neutrino provides valuable information since astrophysical models make testable predictions of the relative numbers of each type that should be seen.  The detection process relies on the production of high energy charged particles traveling faster than the light speed in the medium producing Cherenkov radiation (near ultraviolet to visible), or the Askaryan effect (radio pulses for E$>$1 PeV), or from fluorescence in the atmosphere.  There are currently three approaches in routine use to search for high energy neutrinos.\n\\begin{wrapfigure} [11] {R}{.4\\textwidth}\n\\vspace{-.3in}\n    \\begin{center}\n        \\includegraphics[width=.38\\textwidth]{figures\/NeutrinoInteraction.png}\n  \\end{center}\n  \\vspace{-.3in}\n\\caption{Neutrino interactions.}\n\\label{fig:NI}\n\\end{wrapfigure}\n\n An optically transparent medium, water or ice, can be instrumented with a grid of photosensors. The science goals determine the optimal configuration: smaller more densely instrumented arrays for low energy phenomena and larger more sparsely instrumented volumes for high energies.  This approach is used by Antares(antares.in2p3.fr) and KM3NeT(www.km3net.org) in the Mediterranean Sea, GVD(baikalgvd.jinr.ru) in Lake Baikal, and IceCube(icecube.wisc.edu) at the South Pole. The three neutral current interactions produce only a hadronic shower that is difficult to distinguish from the electron charged current interaction.  The muon neutrino charged current interaction produces a high energy muon with an identifiable track of light.  Tau charged current interactions produce two showers, one for the initial interaction that also gives a high energy tau.  The tau travels an average distance of 50m\/PeV before decaying, resulting in a second shower. For sufficiently high energies, the two showers can be resolved.  Examples of the event types seen with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:ICSIG}.\n\\begin{figure*}[ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=.9\\textwidth]{figures\/topologies_icecube.png}\n\\vspace{-.25in}\n\\caption{ Event classes for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.  Each sensor is represented by a dot which is colored in with a circle whose diameter is proportional to the number of detected photons.  The color shows the time sequence, red first through blue last.}\n\\label{fig:ICSIG}\n\\end{figure*}\n \n An alternative to detecting light with photosensors is to use antennas embedded in a radio transparent medium such as the ice in Antarctica or Greenland.  The advantage over optical detection is that the radio antennas are cheaper, and that the radio signals travel five to ten further than visible light.  This means large volumes of ice can instrumented at the required spacing for less cost.  The trade off is a much higher energy threshold, at least 1 PeV and perhaps an order of magnitude or two higher than that.  Two examples of this approach with test stations in place are the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA, ara.wipac.wisc.edu\/home) at the South Pole and The Antarctic Ross Ice-Shelf ANtenna Neutrino Array (ARIANNA, arianna.ps.uci.edu).  \n \n Radio waves will also propagate with little loss through space and the atmosphere. The ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA, www.phys.hawaii.edu\/\\textasciitilde anita\/) looks for the radio signal from neutrino interactions via balloon-borne receivers that fly at an altitude of about 35 kilometers, viewing about one million cubic kilometers of ice for about one month. The threshold energy is of order 10$^{18}$ eV, and no definitive neutrino events have been observed to date in four flights.  The detection concepts for ANITA, ARA, and ARIANNA are shown on the left in Fig.~\\ref{fig:Radio}. Projects have also been proposed to look for radio waves with densely instrumented surface radio antenna arrays on the Earth; one example is the Square Kilomter Array (SKA)~\\cite{refId0}. \n \\begin{figure*}[ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/RadioExperiments.png}\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/CosmogenicFlux.png}\n\\vspace{-.25in}\n\\caption{Examples of current projects to detect neutrino interactions using radio detectors(left)~\\cite{Alvarez-Muniz:2017jxp} and their calculated sensitivities compared to cosmogenic neutrino flux models(right)~\\cite{Otte:2018uxj}.}\n\\label{fig:Radio}\n\\end{figure*}\n \n Existing cosmic ray air shower experiments such as Auger (www.auger.org) or the Telescope Array (www.telescopearray.org) can also look for distinctive signals from ultra-high energy neutrino interactions that could occur much deeper in the atmosphere than nuclear cosmic ray interaction.  The resulting air shower can be imaged optically with imaging telescopes to see Cherenkov and Fluorescence light or by a sufficient large and densely instrumented radio array.  Neutrinos have a low probability of interacting in the relatively low density atmosphere and no events have been seen to date with this approach.  Horizontal neutrinos pass though more atmosphere, increasing the chance of interaction.  All flavors and both charged and neutral current interactions should be visible.  \n \n Earth skimming techniques rely on a tau neutrino charged current interaction occurring during a traverse through a small chord through the Earth's surface or while passing passing through a mountain. The much greater density increases the interaction probability but the shower from the first interaction in the Earth is not visible. The shower from the tau decay can be seen if it occurs in the Earth's atmosphere. For more details on the approach see for example a recent paper on the proposed Trinity project~\\cite{Otte:2018uxj} that would use imaging telescopes or the white paper on the proposed Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND) project~\\cite{Alvarez-Muniz:2018bhp}. A summary of the expected sensitivities of several ultra-high energy neutrino telescopes compared to standard (proton) and pessimistic models (heavier nuclei) of the cosmogenic flux are shown on the right in Fig.~\\ref{fig:Radio}~\\cite{Otte:2018uxj}.\n\n \\subsection{Science Reach}\n \\begin{wrapfigure} [21] {R}{.7\\textwidth}\n \\vspace{-.4in}\n    \\begin{center}\n        \\includegraphics[width=.68\\textwidth]{figures\/ScienceReach.png}\n  \\end{center}\n  \\vspace{-.25in}\n\\caption{Neutrino observatories contribute to a wide range of topics.}\n\\label{fig:SR}\n\\end{wrapfigure}Neutrino astronomy may be a main motivator for the construction of facilities to detect high and ultra-high energy neutrinos, but it is not the only one. There is a remarkably wide range of physics that can be probed at energies at and significantly above those that can be achieved with particle accelerators.   A graphic showing the science reach of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:SR} and a review of IceCube particle physics has recently been published \\cite{Ahlers2018}. \n\nThe science capabilities for water-based neutrino observatories with similar energy threshold and total instrumented volume would be the same,  with glaciology replaced by studies associated with fresh or salt water environments. For the much higher energy threshold experiments that are targeting cosmogenic neutrinos, the range of science beyond probing cosmic ray interactions at the highest energies and doing neutrino astronomy, is more limited.  However, they would provide unique opportunities to extend studies of neutrino physics to ultra-high energies, possibly revealing new physics.   \n\n\\section{IceCube}\nThe IceCube Neutrino Observatory (IceCube) consists of a cubic kilometer of instrumented ice starting 1450 meters below the surface at the South Pole as shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:IC}.  It was constructed over seven seasons using a hot water drill to produce 60 cm diameter holes 2450 deep that were then instrumented with 60 light sensors.  Each light sensor, known as a digital optical module (DOM), has an internal clock and data acquisition system.  Power from the surface and data communication to the DOMs is provided by a cable; the cable with the 60 DOMs is referred to as a string.  Seventy-eight strings are spaced on a nominal 125 meter hexagonal grid, with the 60 DOMs 17 meters apart between 1450 and 2450 meters below the surface.  The central region, DeepCore, has 8 more closely spaced strings with most DOMs in the lower half of the ice enabling lower energy neutrinos to be measured.  A surface array, IceTop, consists of 81 stations nominally on the same 125 meter grid as the strings. \n\n\\begin{wrapfigure} [19] {R}{.55\\textwidth}\n\\vspace{-.3in}\n    \\begin{center}\n        \\includegraphics[width=.53\\textwidth]{figures\/IceCube.png}\n  \\end{center}\n  \\vspace{-.3in}\n\\caption{The IceCube Neutrino Observatory.}\n\\label{fig:IC}\n\\end{wrapfigure}\nThe dominate signal seen by IceCube is from muons produced in cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere in the southern sky.  This results in about $10^{11}$ events per year. About one in a million of these events can be identified as neutrinos (about $10^{5}$ per year) either by their trajectory from the northern hemisphere, where the Earth filters cosmic ray muons, or by looking for events that begin inside the array of DOMs.  The latter approach allows neutrino events to be seen from all directions.  Most of the measured neutrinos are produced by cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere but about 10 to 20 times per year a neutrino event is identified with an energy of 100 TeV or more.  The higher the energy, the less likely it is to be from an atmospheric interaction and the more likely it is from an astrophysical source.  \n\\subsection{Neutrino Spectrum} \nThe neutrino flux above 1 TeV measured by IceCube is shown on the left in Fig.~\\ref{fig:IFXCC}.  The flux attributed to muon neutrinos and anti-neutrinos from cosmic ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere from pion and kaon decay is shown in blue.  No evidence is seen for a prompt atmospheric neutrino flux from charm meson decays so a limit is shown in green. The salmon color shows the astrophysical neutrino flux determined from muon neutrino events originating in the northern hemisphere~\\cite{Aartsen:2016xlq}. The data points are the corresponding flux determined by an independent analysis that looked for high energy starting events (HESE) that began inside the detector. The agreement is good between the two results for energies above 200 TeV with a single power fit to the astrophysical muon neutrinos flux having an exponent of 2.19 $\\pm$ 0.1~\\cite{Niederhausen:2017mjk}.\n\n\\subsection{Neutrino Cross Section}\nWell-reconstructed muon neutrino events can be used to determine the neutrino cross section at energies more than order of magnitude higher than previous measurements.  For energies above 40 TeV, the adsorption length is less than one Earth diameter, and neutrinos that pass through the center of the Earth do not make it to the IceCube array.  Events with  larger zenith angles traverse less of the Earth, so neutrino cutoff energy increases with zenith angle. The neutrino cross section was determined by measuring the attenuation of 10,784 IceCube neutrino events with energies between 6.8 TeV and 980 TeV as a function of energy and zenith angle, see Fig.~\\ref{fig:IFXCC} (right). The result was 1.30 $\\pm$$^{+0.21}_{-0.19}$(stat.)$\\pm$$^{+0.39}_{-0.43}$(syst.)times the standard model predictions including charged and neutral current interactions, and is statistically consistent with the standard model prediction\\cite{Aartsen:2017kpd}. \n \\begin{figure*}[ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/ICFlux.png}\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/NeutrinoCrossSection.png}\n\\vspace{-.3in}\n\\caption{The measured IceCube neutrino flux (left) and neutrino cross section (right).}\n\\label{fig:IFXCC}\n\\end{figure*}\n\n\\subsection{Online Alerts and the IceCube event 170922A}\nThe nominal event rate for IceCube is 2.7 kHz.  Sufficient processing power is available at the South Pole to do a fast first fit of the data to look for likely astrophysical neutrino events.  A second astrophysical filter is based on an analysis that looks for extremely high energy (EHE) through going tracks events. The EHE energy criteria for the online alert was lowered to .5 PeV to have a higher capture probability although at a lower signal purity. Events that satisfy the HESE criteria and are track-like rather than a cascade or that pass the EHE filter are processed with a second relatively fast fitting algorithm, and an automated alert is sent out typically in less than a minute.  The public online channel that was activated in April 2016 and a complete description of the alert filters and processes that result in a signal efficiency of 30-50\\% is available. \\cite{Aartsen:2016lmt}\n\n\\begin{figure*}[ht]\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/Fermi.png}\n\\includegraphics[width=.5\\textwidth]{figures\/Magic.png}\n\\vspace{-.3in}\n\\caption{The observations for Fermi (left) and Magic (right) gamma-ray telescopes showing the IceCube reconstruction error contours for event 170922A.}\n\\label{fig:FM}\n\\end{figure*}\nOn September 22, 2017 at 20:54:30.43 UTC the IceCube EHE identified a well-reconstructed slightly upward going muon track event which subsequent analysis showed had an energy loss in the detector of loss 23.7 +\/- 2.8 TeV corresponding to a most probable neutrino energy of 290 TeV~\\cite{IceCube:2018dnn}.  Followup observations by Fermi-LAT reported a gamma ray flaring blazer TXS 0506+056 (ATel\\#10791).  The blazer TXS 0506+056 was seen in further observations by the very high energy gamma-ray Magic telescope (Atel\\#10817), with both observations well within the IceCube error contours as shown in Fig.~\\ref{fig:FM}. Further observations determined that this blazer had a redshift of z = 0.3365 corresponding to a distance of about 4 billion lightyears~\\cite{Paiano:2018qeq}.  The chance probability of a Fermi-IceCube coincident observation was calculated to be at the 3 sigma level.  A subsequent search of 9.5 years of IceCube archival data looking for events in the direction of TXS 0506+056 found 13 excess events compared to background expectation of 5 events between September 2014 and and March 2015~\\cite{IceCube:2018cha}.  This number of events is inconsistent with the background only hypothesis at the 3.5 sigma level.  This calculation is independent of IceCube event 170922A which motivated this archival search.   \n\n\\section{Conclusions}\nNature has provided a beam of high energy neutrinos useful for astrophysics, particle physics, and tests of fundamental physics principles such as Lorentz invariance.  Building instruments capable of seeing statistically significant numbers of high energy neutrinos is a challenge.   However, significant progress has been made and there are multiple projects in operation that demonstrate the viability of the field.  The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is the first functioning cubic kilometer scale detector and there are plans for similiar scale facilities with photosensors deployed in water at sites in the northern hemisphere. IceCube has identified a flux of astrophysical neutrinos that extends up to at least 10 PeV. The neutrino alert from IceCube event 170922A that led to the multimessenger observations of blazar TXS 0506+056 is a major milestone for neutrino astronomy.  There are near term plans, the IceCube Upgrade, to significantly enhance IceCube's low energy capabilities and longer term plans for a IceCube Gen2 instrumented ice volume by an order of magnitude.  Measuring cosmogenic neutrinos produced when extremely high energy cosmic rays interact with CMB photons will require even larger instrumented volumes necessitating a different detector technology.  At present, the two most promising approaches are radio arrays and imaging telescopes to look for signals for tau neutrinos that interact in Earth skimming events or in mountains, and detecting the resulting air shower if the tau decays in the atmosphere.   \n\n\\section*{Acknowledgment}\n\nThanks to  the organizers for the invitation to present at the XXXVIII International Symposium on Physics in Collision, and the local hosts for the warm welcome and great hospitality during the conference.  Travel to the conference was made possible by professional development funds from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.  \n\n\\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\\label{intro}\n\nDirect and inverse scattering  transforms \nplay the key role in the solution of integrable\nsystems. Important results about the scattering transform with decaying initial data (potential)\ncan be found in \\cite{Zhou}. Our main interest lies in  the semiclassical limit of \nthe scattering transform for Zakharov - Shabat (ZS) system\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{ZS}\ni\\varepsilon \\frac{d}{dx} W=\n\\begin{pmatrix}\nz & q\\\\\n\\bar q & -z\n\\end{pmatrix}W~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $z$ is a spectral parameter, $\\varepsilon$ is a small  positive parameter and $W$ is a $2$ by $2$ matrix-function. ZS system \\eqref{ZS}\nis the first (spatial) equation of the\nLax pair  for the  focusing Nonlinear Shr\\\"{o}dinger equation (NLS)\n\\begin{equation}  \\label{FNLS}\ni\\varepsilon\\partial_t q + \\frac{1}{2}\\varepsilon^2\\partial_x^2 q + |q|^2q=0 ~,\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and $t\\ge 0$ are space-time variables. \n\nThe scattering data, corresponding to the initial data  $q(x,0,\\varepsilon)$\nconsists of the reflection coefficient $r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)$,\nas well as\nof the points of discrete spectrum, if any, together with their norming constants. \nSince the time evolution of the scattering data is simple and very well known (\\cite{ZS}),\nthe evolution of a given potential can be obtained through the inverse scattering of the\nevolving scattering data. The inverse scattering problem for the NLS \\eqref{FNLS} at\nthe point $x,t$ can be  \ncast as a matrix Riemann-Hilbert Problem (RHP) in the spectral $z$-plane, which is stated as:\nfind a $2\\times 2$ \nmatrix-valued function $m(z)=m(z;x,t,\\varepsilon)$, which depends on the asymptotic parameter $\\varepsilon$ \nand the external parameters\n$x,t$, such that: i) $m(z)$ is analytic in $\\mathbb C\\backslash \\Gamma$, \nwhere the contour $\\Gamma=\\mathbb R$ with the natural orientation; ii)\n\\begin{equation}\\label{RHPmat}\nm_+=m_-\n\\begin{pmatrix} \n1 + r\\bar r  &  \\bar r\\cr\n r  &1 \\cr\n\\end{pmatrix}\n=m_- V~   \n\\end{equation}\non the contour $\\Gamma$, where $r(z,\\varepsilon)=r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon) \\exp [{2i\\over \\varepsilon}(2z^2 t +zx)]$\nand $m_\\pm(z)=\\lim_{\\d\\rightarrow 0}m(z\\pm i\\d)$ with $\\d>0$ and $z\\in\\mathbb R$; iii)\n$\\lim_{z\\rightarrow\\infty} m(z)=I,$\nwhere $I$ denotes the identity matrix. \nIn the presence of solitons \n the contour $\\Gamma$  contains additional small circles around the eigenvalues \nwith the corresponding jump-matrices (see, for example, \\cite{TVZ1} or \\cite{KMM}).\n\nIn a more general setting, corresponding to  AKNS systems, $\\bar r(z)$ in the the jump matrix $V$ \nshould be replaced by $\\rho(z)$, which represents  another piece of the scattering data that \nis independent of $r(z)$;\n i.e., there is no functional dependence between $r(z)$ and $r^*(z)$ on $\\mathbb R$; \nhowever, this case will not be considered\nin the present paper.  \nIt is well-known (see, for example \\cite{Zh})\nthat the \nRHP \\eqref{RHPmat} has a unique solution $m(z)$ that has\nasymptotics $m(z)=I+{m_1\\over z}+O(z^{-2})$ as $z\\rightarrow\\infty$, \nand that the solution to the NLS \\eqref{FNLS} is given by  $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)=-2(m_1)_{12}$,\nwhere $(m_1)_{12}$ denotes the $(1,2)$ entry of matrix $m_1$. In the case when\n $r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)$ has analytic continuation into the upper halfplane, the RHP for $m(z)$ \ncan be simplified by factorizing the jump matrix \n\\begin{equation}\\label{fact1} \nV=\n\\begin{pmatrix} \n1 + rr^*  &  r^*\\cr\n r  &1 \\cr\n\\end{pmatrix}=\\begin{pmatrix}\n1 & \\bar r\\\\\n0 & 1\n\\end{pmatrix}\n\\begin{pmatrix}\n1 & 0\\\\\n r & 1\n\\end{pmatrix}=V_-V_+~~,\n\\end{equation} \nand ``splitting'' jump condition \\eqref{RHPmat} into two jumps: one with triangular jump matrix\n$V_+$ along some contour $\\Gamma_+$ in the upper halfplane $\\bar \\mathbb C^+$ ($\\mathbb R$ is included in $\\bar \\mathbb C^+$)\n and the other\n with triangular jump matrix $V_-$ along some contour $\\Gamma_-$ in the  lower halfplane $\\bar\\mathbb C^-$.\nContours $\\Gamma_\\pm$ are deformations of $\\mathbb R$.\nDue to the Schwarz symmetry of ZS problem, contours $\\Gamma_\\pm$ can be choosen to be  symmetrical \nto each other with respect to the real axis, and we can restrict our attention to only\none jump condition, say, on the contour $\\Gamma_+\\subset \\bar\\mathbb C^+$. \n\nA contour  $\\Gamma_+\\in\\bar\\mathbb C^+$, which is a smooth deformation of $\\mathbb R$, together with a function\n$\\tilde f(z)$, which is\nanalytic (or even H\\\"{o}lder\ncontinuous) along  $\\Gamma_+$ with ${\\rm Im~} \\tilde f(z)<-\\d$ for all suffisiently large $z\\in\\Gamma_+$, $\\d>0$,\ndefine a solution $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ of the NLS \\eqref{FNLS} in the following way:\nif $\\tilde m(z)$ is the normed at $z=\\infty$ solution of the matrix RHP with the jump matrix\n\\begin{equation}\\label{rtilde}\nV_+=\\begin{pmatrix}\n1 & 0\\\\\n\\tilde r & 1\n\\end{pmatrix},~~~~~~{\\rm where}~~~~~\\tilde r =e^{-\\frac{2i}{\\varepsilon}\\tilde f(z)}\n\\end{equation} \non the contour $\\Gamma_+$, and the corresponding symmetrical  jump $V_-=V_+^*$ (see \\eqref{fact1}) on the\nsymmetrical contour $\\Gamma_-$,\nthan \n\\begin{equation}\\label{qt}\n\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)=-2(\\tilde m_1)_{12},~~~~~~{\\rm where}~~~~~\\tilde m(z)=I+{\\tilde m_1\\over z}+O(z^{-2})\n\\end{equation} \nas $z\\rightarrow\\infty$. This construction holds even if  $\\tilde f(z)$  depends on $\\varepsilon$.\n\nIn the semiclassical limit problem \\eqref{FNLS}, we consider \ninitial data (potential) of the form \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ID}\nq(x,0,\\varepsilon)=A(x)e^{iS(x)\/\\varepsilon},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\nthe amplitude  $A(x)$ is decaying at $\\pm \\infty$, and derivative of the phase \n$S'(x)$ has the limiting behavior\n\\begin{equation}\\label{s'inf}\n\\lim_{x\\rightarrow\\pm\\infty}S'(x)=\\mu_\\pm~\n\\end{equation}\nwith some finite $\\mu_-,\\mu_+, ~~m_-\\le \\mu_+$.\nIn order to calculate the leading order of the solution $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$, $t\\ge 0$, one needs\nto find the leading order   of the solution $m$ to the RHP \\eqref{RHPmat} as $\\varepsilon\\rightarrow 0$. \n\n\n\n\nThe nonlinear steepest descent method (\\cite{DZ1}, \\cite{DZ2}), together with the \n$g$-function mechanism (\\cite{DVZ}), is, perhaps, the most powerful tool of the asymptotic\nanalysis of the RHP \\eqref{RHPmat}. The key part of this method, \nin the setting of our problem (genus zero region),  \nis the following scalar RHP for the unknown  function $g(z)=g(z;x,t)$,  that: i)  is\n analytic (in $z$) in $\\bar\\mathbb C\\setminus \n\\gamma_m$ (including analyticity at $\\infty$); ii) satisfies the jump condition\n\\begin{equation}\\label{rhpg}\ng_+ + g_-=f_0-xz-2tz^2~~~~ {\\rm on}~~\\gamma_{m},\n\\end{equation}\nfor  $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and $t\\ge 0$, and; iii) has the endpoint behavior\n\\begin{equation}\\label{modeq}\ng(z)=O(z-\\a)^{3\\over 2}~ + ~{\\rm analytic~ function~ in~ a~ vicinity~ of~} \\a. \n\\end{equation}\nHere:  $\\gamma_m$ is a  Schwarz-sym\n This observation\nremains true ifmetrical contour\n(called the main arc) with the endpoints $\\bar\\a, \\a$, oriented from $\\bar\\a$ to $ \\a$ and\nintersecting $\\mathbb R$ only at  $\\mu_+$; $g_\\pm$ are the values of $g$ on the positive\n(left) and negative (right) sides of $\\gamma_m$, and;\nfunction $f_0=f_0(z)$, representing the scattering\ndata, is   Schwarz-symmetrical and H\\\"{o}lder-continuous on $\\gamma_m$.\nTaking into the account Schwarz symmetry, it is clear\nthat  behavior of $g(z)$ at both endpoints $\\a$ and  $\\bar \\a$ should be the same.\nAssuming $f_0$ and $\\gamma_m$\nare known, solution $g$ to the RHP \\eqref{rhpg} without the endpoint condition \\eqref{modeq} \ncan be obtained by Plemelj formula\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gform}\ng(z)={{R(z)}\\over{2\\pi i}} \\int_{\\gamma_m}{{f(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-z)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\\label{fzxt}\n f(z)=f(z;x,t)=f_0(z)-xz-2tz^2\n\\end{equation} \nand \n$R(z)=\\sqrt{(z-\\a)(z-\\bar\\a)}$. \nThe branchcut of $R$ coinsides with $\\gamma_m$ and the branch  of \n$R$ we use is defined by \n\\begin{equation}\\label{brR}\n\\lim_{z\\rightarrow\\infty} \\frac{R(z)}{z}=-1~.\n\\end{equation}\nIf $f_0(z)$ is analytic in some region $\\mathcal S$ that \ncontains $\\gamma_m\\setminus\\{\\mu_+\\}$, the formula for $g(z)$   can be rewritten as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gforman}\ng(z)={{R(z)}\\over{4\\pi i}} \\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-z)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\hat \\gamma_m\\subset\\mathcal S$ is a negatively oriented loop\naround $\\gamma_m$ (which is ``pinched'' to $\\gamma_m$ in $\\mu_+$, where $f$ is not analytic)\nthat does not contain $z$. \n\n\n\nIt is well known (see, for example, \\cite{Ga}) that additional smoothness at the endpoints\nput some constrains on the location of these endpoints. To state these constrains, we introduce\n function $h=2g-f$. According to \\eqref{gforman},  \n\\begin{equation}\\label{hform}\nh(z)={{R(z)}\\over{2\\pi i}} \\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-z)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $z$ is inside the loop $\\hat \\gamma_m$. \nThe endpoint condition\n\\eqref{modeq}  can now be written as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{modeqh}\nh(z)=O(z-\\a)^{3\\over 2}~~{\\rm as}~~z\\rightarrow \\a,\n\\end{equation} \nor, equivalently,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{modeqint}\n\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-\\a)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta=0~,\n\\end{equation}\nthe latter equation known as a {\\it modulation equation}. \nSubstituting \\eqref{fzxt} into \\eqref{modeqint} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{xalpeq}\nx+2({\\rm Re~}\\a+\\a)t=\\frac{1}{2\\pi i}\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f_0(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-\\a)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta~.\n\\end{equation}\nIt is clear that for a given  $f_0(z)$, \\eqref{xalpeq}  defines $\\a$ as a function $\\a=\\a(x,t)$.\nThe significance of $\\a(x,t)$ is that  it represents the leading $\\varepsilon$-order term\n\\begin{equation}\\label{q0}\nq_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)=A(x,t)e^{{i\\over \\e} S(x,t)}\n\\end{equation}\nof the solution $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ to the Cauchy problem \\eqref{FNLS}-\\eqref{ID} through\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpAS}\n\\a(x,t) = a(x,t)+ib(x,t)=-\\frac{1}{2} S_x(x,t)+iA(x,t)~.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\nBy  Schwarz symmetry, modulation equation \\eqref{modeqint} holds if $\\a$ is replaced by $\\bar\\a$.\nAdding and subtracting these two equations and using integration by parts, we obtain\nsystem of {\\it moment conditions} \n\\begin{equation}\\label{momloop}\n\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f'(\\zeta)}\\over{R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta=0~,~~~~~~\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{(\\zeta-a)f'(\\zeta)}\\over{R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta=0~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\a=a+ib$, which is  equivalent to \\eqref{modeqint}. \nIf $f_0$ is defined only on the contour $\\gamma_m$ (nonanalytic case), the loop integrals\nin \\eqref{momloop} should be replaced by the integrals over the contour $\\gamma_m$.\nSubstituting \\eqref{fzxt} into \\eqref{momloop}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{momloopxt}\n\\frac{1}{2\\pi i}\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f'_0(\\zeta)}\\over{R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta=x+4ta~,\n~~~~~~\\frac{1}{2\\pi i}\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{(\\zeta-a)f'_0(\\zeta)}\\over{R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta=-2tb^2~.\n\\end{equation}\nFor a fixed $t\\ge 0$, the second moment equation \\eqref{momloopxt} defines a curve $\\S$ in the spectral\nplane, whereas the first moment equation \\eqref{momloopxt} determines a parametrization of $\\S$ by $x\\in\\mathbb R$.\n\nSolving system \\eqref{momloopxt} for a given $f_0(z)$, i.e., finding $\\a(x,t)$ that satisfies \\eqref{momloopxt} for all $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and all $t\\in[0,t_0]$ with some $t_0>0$, is the central part of the inverse scattering procedure  for the leading order solution of the Cauchy problem \\eqref{FNLS}-\\eqref{ID}. Considerable progress has been achieved in solving this problem, \nsee \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{KMM}, \\cite{TVZ3}. However, calculating $f_0$, which represents the leading\norder term of the spectral data corresponding to \\eqref{ID}, continue to pose a considerable challenge.\nIn particular, the spectral data considered in \\cite{TVZ1} and \\cite{KMM} was calculated explicitly,\nbecause ZS system \\eqref{ZS} for the corresponding initial data  was reduced to \nthe hypergeometric equation. In the case of general analytic initial data \\eqref{ID}, \nthe WKB analysis of singularly perturbed ZS systems \\eqref{ZS}\nin the complex $x$-plane seems to be the most  natural approach\nfor the direct scattering. There are, however, considerable difficulties associated with this \napproach  even for relatively simple initial data, such as, for example, the need to keep track\nof a large number of turning points, singularities, Stokes lines that connect them, etc.,  \n(see, for examle, \\cite{Mil}). This is why, in our opinion, the results about the direct scattering \nare quite limited: one can mention  numerical simulations of\nthe discrete spectrum of \\eqref{ZS} in \\cite{Bronski1}, followed by formal WKB calculation in \\cite{Mil} of the $Y$-shaped spectral curve from \\cite{Bronski1}, and  rigorous WKB construction of discrete spectrum\nfor certain special potentials \\eqref{ID} in \\cite{ST}. \n\nThe main goal of the present paper is to derive  an explicit formula for $f_0(z)$ that will \nbe valid for a rather broad class \nof initial data \\eqref{ID} directly from the moment conditions \\eqref{momloop} \n(Section \\ref{AbelHilbert}). We proceed with studying properties of the transforms that connect\n$f_0(z)$ with the scattering data (Sections \\ref{inversion} - \\ref{symmetry}) and,\nat the end, consider a number of examples that include already studied potentials \\eqref{ID}, \nas well as some new cases (Section \\ref{examples}).  \n\nFor the rest of the paper, unless specified otherwise, we assume $t=0$.  Then the first equation\nof \\eqref{momloopxt} can be considered as a transformation \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ftox}\nx(\\a)=\\frac{1}{\\pi i}\\int_{\\gamma_m}{{f'_0(\\zeta)}\\over{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}_+}}d\\zeta\n\\end{equation}\nof a given $f'_0(\\zeta)$ into  $x(\\a)$, which has the meaning of the inverse function to \n$\\a(x)=\\a(x,0),~~x\\in\\mathbb R$. Provided that $\\a(x)$, determined by initial data \\eqref{ID} through  \\eqref{alpAS}, is invertible for all  $x\\in\\mathbb R$,  \n$x(\\a)$ is a real valued function defined on the curve $\\S$ that is the graph \nof $\\a(x), ~~x\\in\\mathbb R$.  The main result of this paper is the formula\n\\begin{equation}\\label{xtof}\nf_0(z)=\\int^{\\mu_+}_{z}\\left[z-\\mu_+ + \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)} \\right]x'(u)du +(z-\\mu_+) x(z)+ f_0(\\mu_+),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $z\\in\\S$ and the integral is taken along $\\S$,\nwhich is {\\it the inversion} of transformation \\eqref{ftox}.  \nHere $f_0(\\mu_+)$ is a free real parameter and the branch of the radical satisfies  normalization \\eqref{brR}. \nTransformations \\eqref{ftox} and \\eqref{xtof} resemble the   pair of \n{\\it Abel transformants} for axially symmetric functions, which is convenient to write in the form \n(\\cite {Bracewell})\n\\begin{equation}\\label{Abel} \nM(\\xi)=-2\\int_\\xi^\\infty N'(\\eta)\\sqrt{\\eta^2-\\xi^2}d\\eta~~~~~{\\rm and}~~~~~~\nN(\\eta)=-\\frac{1}{\\pi}\\int_\\eta^\\infty M'(\\xi)\\frac{d\\xi}{\\sqrt{\\xi^2-\\eta^2}}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\xi,\\eta \\in\\mathbb R$. Indeed, if $\\a\\in i\\mathbb R$ and $\\S\\subset i\\mathbb R$, the radicals in  \\eqref{ftox} and \\eqref{xtof}\nbecome $\\sqrt{\\zeta^2-\\a^2}$ and $\\sqrt{z^2-u^2}$ respectively, and transforms \n \\eqref{ftox} and \\eqref{xtof} become a pair of Abel transforms (with \nsome extra terms\nin \\eqref{xtof} required for  convergence). However, if $\\a\\in \\mathbb R$ and $\\S\\subset \\mathbb R$,\n \\eqref{ftox} becomes  finite Hilbert transform (note that, due to Schwarz symmetry, \n$f'_0(\\zeta)$ has a jump $2i{\\rm Im~} f'_0(\\zeta)$ along the real axis) on $[a,\\mu_+]$.\nTransformations \\eqref{ftox} and \\eqref{xtof} will be referred to as  {\\it Abel-Hilbert (AH) or\ncomplexified  Abel transformations}  defined on a contour $\\S\\subset \\mathbb C$. \n\nA given initial data \\eqref{ID} determines $\\a(x)=\\a(x,0)$ by \\eqref{alpAS}, where $A(x,0)=A(x)$\nand $S_x(x,0)=S'(x)$. We consider the following three objects, defined by initial data \\eqref{ID}:\n 1) solution $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ of the \nCauchy problem \\eqref{FNLS}, \\eqref{ID}; 2) solution $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$  to \\eqref{FNLS} defined\nthrough \\eqref{rtilde}-\\eqref{qt}, where $\\tilde f=f_0(z)-xz-2tz^2$ with $f_0(z)$\nbeing the AH transformation of $x(\\a)$ given\nby \\eqref{xtof}, and $\\Gamma_+=\\S$ (here we assume that $\\a(x)$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$, is invertible with the\ninverse $x(\\a)$; 3) function $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ that is defined by \\eqref{q0}, \\eqref{alpAS}, where \n$\\a(x,t)$ is a smooth in $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and $t\\ge 0$   solution of the moment conditions  \\eqref{momloopxt}\n(analyticity of the initial data \\eqref{ID} on $x\\in\\mathbb R$ is required to define $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ with\n$t>0$).\nSince  $q(x,0,\\varepsilon)=q_0(x,0,\\varepsilon)$  (transformation \\eqref{ftox} is inverse to \\eqref{ftox}), we call\n$q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$  a {\\it leading order semiclassical solution} to Cauchy problem \\eqref{FNLS}, \n\\eqref{ID}, or simply a {\\it  semiclassical solution}. The main achievement of this paper is \nformal construction of the semiclassial solution $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ with some positive $t$ for a given\nanalytic initial data \\eqref{ID}.   \nDoes the semiclassical solution $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ indeed represent a leading order \nbehavior of $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ for $t>0$? Although we do not have the general answer to this question,\nthe following facts and observations indicate that the answer should be affirmative at least for\nsome substantial class of the analytic initial data \\eqref{ID}. \n\nRequirements guaranteeing that $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ is $O(\\varepsilon)$ close to $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ \non a compact subset $D$ of the $x,t$ plane that\ndo not contain breaking points (see below), can be found in\n\\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3}. The first requirement is that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ineq2}\nw(z)={\\rm sign}(\\mu_+-z) {\\rm Im~} f_0(z)<0~~~{\\rm for}~~~ z<\\mu_-~~~~~{\\rm and~~ for}~~~~~ z>\\mu_+;\n\\end{equation}\nmore precisely, $w(z)$ is separated from zero if $ z<\\mu_-$ and if $z>\\mu_+$ except \nfor neighborhoods of $\\mu_\\pm$, where it has behavior $O(z-\\mu_\\pm)$ respectively.\nLet $\\gamma_{c}$ be a bounded smooth oriented contour in the upper halfplane, called complementary arc, \nthat connects $\\a$ and $\\mu_-$ and does not intersect $\\gamma_m$ (except at the common endpoint $\\a$).\nThe second requirement is that for any $(x,t)\\in D$ there exist main and complementary\narcs  $\\gamma_m$ and $\\gamma_c$, connecting $\\a(x,t)$ with $\\mu_\\pm$ respectively, such that  \nthe signs of ${\\rm Im~} h(z)$, where $h$ is  defined by \\eqref{hform},\nsatisfy inequlities (sign distributions)\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ineq1}\n{\\rm Im~} h(z)<0~~~{\\rm on ~both~ sides~ of}~\\gamma_m~~~~{\\rm and} ~~~~{\\rm Im~} h(z)>0~~~{\\rm on~ at ~ least~ one~ side ~of} \\gamma_c. \n\\end{equation}\n\nAs shown in Section \\ref{break},  violation of smoothness of $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ in the process of\ntime evolution leads to the break of the anzatz \\eqref{q0} for the semiclassical solution.\nSince \\eqref{ineq2} is independent of $x,t$, the break at  some point $ (x_b,t_b)$ means that \nat least one of the inequalities \\eqref{ineq1} is violated at some point(s) $z_b\\in\\gamma_m\\cup\\gamma_c$, \n$z_b\\neq \\a(x_b,t_b)$, or that condition \\eqref{modeqh} becomes\n\\begin{equation}\\label{breakatalph}\nh(z)=o(z-\\a)^{3\\over 2}~~{\\rm as}~~z\\rightarrow \\a,\n\\end{equation} \nif $z_b=\\a(x_b,t_b)$. If $z_b$ is not a branchpoint of $f_0(z)$ (regular break), \nthen the situation can be corrected\nby introducing additional main and complementary arcs in the RHP \\eqref{rhpg}-\\eqref{modeq},\nsee \\cite{TVZ1} for details. This corresponds to the change of genus from zero to a positive even number\n(the genus is even because of Schwarz symmetry) of some hyperelliptic\nRiemann surface $\\mathcal R(x,t)$  that shadows the evolution of $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$,\nsee Remark \\ref{higherg} below. Correspondingly,\nthe semiclassical solution $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ can be expressed in terms of Riemann theta functions\ndefined by $\\mathcal R(x,t)$, and  $O(\\varepsilon)$ closeness between $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ and $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ \n extends to the region beyond the break. $O(\\varepsilon)$ accurate approximation of   $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ \nby $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ can be extended through further breaks (see \\cite{TV3}) provided that the breaks\nare regular. The case when $z_b$ is a branchpoint of $f_0(z)$  (singular break) requires additional\nstudy. Approximation of   $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ by $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ allows us to call \n$q_0(x,0,\\varepsilon)$ the {\\it semiclassical limit of the initial data} for solution $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$\n(which is determined by $f_0(z)$).\n\nDoes $q_0$ approximate solution $q$ of the Cauchy problem \\eqref{FNLS}, \\eqref{ID}? The answer \nto this question depends on how accurately solution $\\tilde q$ approximates   solutions $q$.\nA closely related question is how accurately  the scattering data \n$e^{-\\frac{2i}{\\varepsilon}\\tilde f_0(z)}$ (see \\eqref{rtilde}) of $\\tilde q$ approximates the scattering data\n$r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)$ of $q$. The authors are not aware of any general results of this nature,\nhowever, for a special family of initial data where explicit form of $r_{init}(z)$ is available (see \\cite{TVZ1}),\n\\begin{equation}\\label{f0limfinit}\nf_0(z)=\\lim_{\\varepsilon ra 0} \\frac{1}{2} i\\varepsilon\\ln r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)\n\\end{equation}\nat every $z$ in the domain of analyticity of $\\ln r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)$ (with properly located \n branchcuts of $f_0(z)$). Similar result was obtained\nin \\cite{KMM} for  pure soliton solutions of \\eqref{FNLS} ($r_{init}\\equiv 0$), where \n$e^{-\\frac{2i}{\\varepsilon}\\tilde f_0(z)}$ provided a good approximation to the corresponding discrete\nscattering data. The authors expect that \\eqref{f0limfinit} holds for a wide class of general\nanalytic initial data. That is why $f_0(z)$, obtained by AH transformation \\eqref{xtof},\nis called the {\\it   semiclassical limit of the scattering data} that corresponds to \\eqref{ID}.\nThe authors also expect that, subject to certain requirements, the semiclassical solution $q_0$\nis  the leading order approximation of $q$ as $\\varepsilon\\rightarrow 0$.\nEstablishing this fact seems to be \nthe last remaining essential step towards the complete solution of the semiclassical asymptotic problem\nfor the focusing NLS. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{higherg}\nThe RHP \\eqref{rhpg} can be modified \nto include $N$, $N\\in\\mathbb N$, contours (main arcs) where $g$ undergoes a jump. These contours\ndefine a hyperelliptic Riemann surface \n$\\mathcal R=\\mathcal R(x,t)$ of the genus $N-1$, associated with the semiclassical limit of the initial value proble (Cauchy problem) \\eqref{FNLS}-\\eqref{ID}. Higher genus of $\\mathcal R$ indicates that  \nthe corresponding potential can be represented as a modulated $N$-phase wave expressed through \nthe Riemann theta-functions, see, for example, \\cite{TVZ1}. The authors belive that the \nAH transformation \\eqref{xtof} can be generalized to reperesent the \nsemiclassical limit of the direct scattering transform  for the higher genus\ncases, however, this paper is restricted to study  potentials of the form \\eqref{ID} only, i.e.,\nto genus zero potentials.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\section{Inversion formula for the AH transform} \\label{AbelHilbert}\n\nIn this section we prove that under the appropriate assumptions on $\\a(x)$ the transformation\n\\eqref{ftox} inverts the transformation \\eqref{xtof}. Let us assume that:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}\\label{umm}\n \\item $\\a(x)=-\\frac{1}{2} S'(x) + iA(x)$ is a complex valued $C^1$ function on $\\mathbb R$, where $A(x)$ is positive\nand  $S'(x)$ satisfies \\eqref{s'inf};\n \\item $\\a(x)$ is locally\nand globally invertible, i.e., $\\a'(x)\\neq 0$ on $\\mathbb R$ and the graph $S$ of $\\a(x)$ does not\nhave points of self-intersection;\n \\item the inverse function $x(\\a)$, $\\a\\in\\S$, satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{xliminf}\n\\lim_{u\\rightarrow \\mu_+} (u-\\mu_+)x(u) =0,~~u\\in\\S,~~~~~{\\rm and}~~~~~~(u-\\mu_+)x'(u)\\in L^1(\\S_{u_0})\n\\end{equation}\nfor any $u_0\\in\\S$, where $\\S_{u_0}$ denotes the arc of $\\S$ connecting $u_0$ and $\\mu_+$.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{invtheo}\nIf $\\a(x)$ satisfies conditions \\ref{umm} then $f_0(z)$ in \\eqref{xtof} and its derivative\nare well defined. Moreover,\ntransformation \\eqref{ftox} is inverse to \ntransformation \\eqref{xtof}, i.e., the substitution of \\eqref{xtof} into \\eqref{ftox} turns\nthe latter one into the identity.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAccording to our choice \\eqref{brR} of the branch of the radical in \\eqref{xtof}, we \nhave \n\\begin{equation}\\label{radlimm+}\n\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)} \\sim -(z-\\mu_+)\n\\end{equation}\nas $u\\rightarrow\\mu_+$ provided $z$ is separeted from $\\mu_+$. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{convf}\nz-\\mu_+ + \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}=-\\frac{2(z-\\mu_+)(\\mu_+-{\\rm Re~} u)+|\\mu_+-u|^2}\n{\\left[ z-\\mu_+ - \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}\\right] \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, according to \\eqref{radlimm+}, the denominator approaches $-2(z-\\mu_+)^2$ as $u\\rightarrow\\mu_+$.\nNow, convergence of the integral in \\eqref{xtof} follows from \\eqref{convf} and the second condition\nof \\eqref{xliminf}.\nDifferentiation of \\eqref{xtof} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{xtof'}\nf'_0(z)=\\int^{\\mu_+}_{z}\\left[1 + \\frac{z-{\\rm Re~} u}{\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}} \\right]x'(u)du + x(z),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the integrand can be expressed as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{convf'}\n1 +\\frac{z-{\\rm Re~} u}{\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}=-\\frac{({\\rm Im~} u)^2}\n{\\left[ z-\\mu_+ - \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}\\right] \\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}~.\n\\end{equation}\nSince $|{\\rm Im~} u| < |u-\\mu_+|$, convergence of the integral in \\eqref{xtof'} follows from \\eqref{convf'} \nand the second condition of \\eqref{xliminf}.\n\n\nSubstituting of \\eqref{xtof'} into \\eqref{ftox}, which can be converted into\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ftoxim}\nx(\\a)=\\frac{2}{\\pi }{\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\mu_+}^\\a{{f'_0(\\zeta)}\\over{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}_+}}d\\zeta,\n\\end{equation}\nyields\n\\begin{align}\\label{inver1}\nx(\\a)=\\frac{2}{\\pi }{\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\mu_+}^\\a\\left[ \\int_\\zeta^{\\mu_+}\\frac{1+ \\frac{z-{\\rm Re~} u}{\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}}\n{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}x'(u)du + \\frac{x(\\zeta)}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}\\right] d\\zeta=&\\cr\n=-\\frac{2}{\\pi }{\\rm Im~} \\int^{\\mu_+}_\\a\\left[x'(u)\\int_\\a^u\\frac{1+ \\frac{z-{\\rm Re~} u}{\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}}\n{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}d\\zeta+\\frac{x(u)}{\\sqrt{(u-\\a)(u-\\bar\\a)}}\\right] du&\\cr~.\n\\end{align}\n\nDenote by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{pz}\np(\\zeta)=\\frac{1+ \\frac{z-{\\rm Re~} u}{\\sqrt{(z-u)(z-\\bar u)}}}\n{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}\n\\end{equation} \nand by $\\hat\\S$ a negatively oriented loop that contains contour $\\S_\\a\\cup\\overline{\\S_\\a}$. Then \n$\\oint_{\\hat\\S}p(\\zeta)d\\zeta=0$ by Residue Theorem. If $\\hat\\S_0$ denotes a negatively oriented loop\naround contour $\\S_u\\cup\\overline{\\S_u}$, and $\\hat\\S_\\pm$ denote positively oriented loops around \ncontour $\\S_\\a\\setminus \\S_u$ and its complex conjugate respectively, see Figure \\ref{AHconts}, then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{pzident}\n\\oint_{\\hat\\S_0}p(\\zeta)d\\zeta=\\oint_{\\hat\\S_+}p(\\zeta)d\\zeta+\\oint_{\\hat\\S_-}p(\\zeta)d\\zeta~.\n\\end{equation} \nHowever, $\\oint_{\\hat\\S_0}p(\\zeta)d\\zeta=\\oint_{\\hat\\S_0}\\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}$,\nsince the remaining term of $p(\\zeta)$ attains  the same values on both sides of the branchcut \n$\\S_u\\cup\\overline{\\S_u}$. Taking into the account Schwarz symmetry of the intgrands, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{pzend}\n{\\rm Im~} \\int_\\a^u p(\\zeta) d\\zeta = {\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\mu_+}^u \\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=9cm]{AHconts.eps}}\n\\caption{Contours  $\\hat\\S$, $\\hat\\S_0$ and $\\hat\\S_\\pm$. }\n\\label{AHconts}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nReturning to \\eqref{inver1} and taking into the account \\eqref{pzend} and the \nthat $d x(u)=x'(u)du\\in\\mathbb R$ when $u\\in\\S$, we obtain\n\\begin{align}\\label{Iminout}\n{\\rm Im~} \\int^{\\mu_+}_\\a\\left[x'(u)\\int_\\a^u p(\\zeta)d\\zeta\\right]du= & \\int^{\\mu_+}_\\a x'(u){\\rm Im~} \\left[\\int_\\a^u p(\\zeta)d\\zeta\\right]du =\\cr \n\\int^{\\mu_+}_\\a x'(u){\\rm Im~} \\left[ \\int_{\\mu_+}^u \\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}\\right]du = &\n{\\rm Im~}\\int^{\\mu_+}_\\a x'(u) \\int_{\\mu_+}^u \\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}du~.\n\\end{align}\nThus,\n\\begin{align}\\label{inver2}\nx(\\a)=-\\frac{2}{\\pi }{\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\mu_+}^\\a\\left[x'(u)\\int_{\\mu_+}^u \\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}+\n\\frac{x(u)}{\\sqrt{(u-\\a)(u-\\bar\\a)}}\\right] du=& \\cr\n-\\frac{2}{\\pi }\\left. x(u){\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\mu_+}^u \\frac{d\\zeta}\n{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}\\right|^{u=\\mu_+}_{u=\\a}=\nx(\\a)\\left(\\frac{1}{2\\pi i} \\int_{\\hat S} \\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a)(\\zeta-\\bar\\a)}}\\right) &=x(\\a)~,\n\\end{align}\nwhere we used the fact that, according to the limit in \\eqref{xliminf}, the contribution from $u=\\mu_+$ is zero.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Derivation of transformation \\eqref{xtof} for $f_0(z)$} \\label{inversion}\n\nSo far, the observation that transformation \\eqref{ftox} resembles Abel transformation helped us\nto guess transformation \\eqref{xtof}, to which \\eqref{ftox} is inverse. In this section, we will \nshow how transformation \\eqref{xtof} can be derived from the analysis of the RHP \\eqref{rhpg}.\nIn particular, we show that solution $g(z)$ for the  RHP \\eqref{rhpg}, represented by \nintegral \\eqref{gforman}  in  the complex  $z$-plane (Plemelj formula), can  also be represented by \na dual  integral in the  complex $x$-pane\n(see \\eqref{gxzfin} below). The ``input'' data for the integral representation \nin the $z$-plane is $f_0(z)$ and $x$,\nwhereas the ``input'' data for the dual integral representation \nin the $x$-plane is $\\a(x)$ and $z$. \nFunction $h(z)$ has similar integral representations. Then teh semiclassical limit of the spectral data\n$f_0(z)$ is given by $f_0=2g-h +xz$.\n \nWe start our derivation with the following observation.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\\label{dRdalp=0} \nConditions \\eqref{rhpg}-\\eqref{modeq} imply that $\\frac{\\part g(z)}{\\part \\a}\\equiv 0$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nApplying\n\\begin{equation}\\label{dRdalp}\n\\frac{\\part R(z)}{\\part \\a}=-\\frac{R(z)}{2(z-\\a)}~\n\\end{equation}\nand  $\\frac{1}{(\\zeta-z)(\\zeta-\\a)}=\\frac{1}{z-\\a}\\left[\\frac{1}{\\zeta-z}-\\frac{1}{\\zeta-\\a}\\right] $ to \\eqref{gform}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{dRdalpint}\n\\frac{\\part g(z)}{\\part \\a}={{R(z)}\\over{8\\pi i(z-\\a)}} \\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f(\\zeta)}\\over{(\\zeta-\\a)R(\\zeta)_+}}d\\zeta.\n\\end{equation}\nBut, according to \\eqref{modeqint}, the integral in \\eqref{dRdalpint} is zero.\nThe proof is completed.\n\\end{proof} \n\nUnder our convention $t=0$,  functions $R, g,h,f$ depends on $x$ and $z$.\nSince $z$ will be considered as a parameter for the rest of the paper (unless specified\notherwise), it is convenient for us henceforth to put the variable $x$ in these functions \nin the first position. For example, the radical $R$ introduced in  \\eqref{gform}\ncan be now rewritten as\n\\eqref{R} \n\\begin{equation}\\label{R}\nR(x,z)=\\sqrt{(z-a(x))^2+b^2(x)}~\n\\end{equation}\nwith the same choice of the branchcut in the $z$ plane as before.\nThe choice of the branchcut for $R(x,z)$ in the complex $x$-plane is discussed below. \n\nSince $f(x,z)=f_0(z)-xz$, Proposition \\ref{dRdalp=0} implies that total derivatives\n\\begin{equation}\\label{dh\/dxt}\n\\frac{d}{dx}g(x,z)\\equiv \\frac{\\part }{\\part x}g(x,z),~~~~~~~{\\rm and}~~~~~~~~~\n\\frac{d}{dx}h(x,z)\\equiv \\frac{\\part }{\\part x}h(x,z)~\n\\end{equation}\ncoincide with the corresponding partial derivatives. \nDifferentiating both sides of the RHP \\eqref{rhpg} in $x$ and using \\eqref{modeq}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gh_x}\n\\frac{d h(x,z)}{d x}= -R(x,z),~~~~\\frac{d g(x,z)}{d x}= -\\frac{1}{2}[z+R(x,z)]\n\\end{equation}\nfor all $x\\in \\mathbb R$ and $z\\in \\overline{\\mathbb C^+}$, where $z$ is considered as a parameter \nand $\\mathbb C^\\pm$ denotes the upper and the lower halfplane respectively\n(we also use notation $\\cal B^\\pm=\\cal B\\cap \\mathbb C^\\pm$ for any set $\\cal B$). \nThe  fact that derivatives in \\eqref{gh_x} are independent of $f$ opens the way\nto reconstruct $h(x,z),~g(x,z)$ and, thus, $f_0(z)$.\n\nTo construct $f_0(z)$, we require that  \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alph}\n \\a(x)=a(x)+ib(x)= -\\frac{1}{2} S'(x)+iA(x)\n\\end{equation} \nsatisfies the following conditions {\\bf (A)} :\n\\begin{enumerate}\\label{reqab}\n\n\\item $a(x)$ and $b(x)$ are real analytic on $\\mathbb R$ and $b(x)> 0$;\n\\item all but finitely many points of the parametric curve\n\\begin{equation} \\label{Edef}\n\\partial {\\cal E}=\\{z \\in \\mathbb C:\\; z=-S'(x)\/2\\pm i A(x),\\; x \\in \\mathbb R\\}\n\\end{equation}\nare regular points, i.e., the tangent vector $\\a'(x)\\ne 0$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$; moreover,\n$\\partial {\\cal E}$ does not have points of self-intersection (note that we used notation $\\S$ \nfor $\\partial {\\cal E}^+$ in Sections \\ref{intro}, \\ref{AbelHilbert});\n\\item if $\\mathcal D $ denotes the common domain of analyticity of $a(x),b(x)$, then\n$\\a(\\mathcal D)\\supset{\\cal L}$; here $\\a(x)$ is defined by \\eqref{alph}\nand ${\\cal L}$ is an open domain in the upper $z$-halfplane that contains  \nthe union of the strip $\\{z:~0\\le {\\rm Im~} z<L\\}$, where $L>0$, with \n$\\overline{{\\cal E}}^+$, where $\\cal E$ denotes the open region of $\\mathbb C$ bounded by $\\part{\\cal E}$; \n\\item \nthere exist $\\mu_\\pm\\in\\mathbb R$ and $p>1$ such that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ablim}\n\\lim_{{\\rm Re~} x\\rightarrow\\pm\\infty}x^p\\left[ a(x)-\\mu_\\pm\\right] = \\lim_{{\\rm Re~} x\\rightarrow\\pm\\infty}x^pb(x)=0,\n\\end{equation} \nrespectively for all $x$ such that $\\a(x)\\in{\\cal L}$;  \n\n\\end{enumerate}\n\nThe curve $\\partial {\\cal E}$\n connects $\\mu_+$ and $\\mu_-$ in both $\\mathbb C^+$ and $\\mathbb C^-$.  \nCondition {\\bf A2} implies that there exists the inverse function $x(z)$, where \n$x(\\a(x))\\equiv x$~~ $\\forall x\\in\\mathbb R$. Note that $x(z)$ is analytic on \n$\\part{\\cal E}^+$ at all the regular points. \nAny point $x^*\\in\\mathcal D$, such that\n$\\a'(x^*)=0$, is called a point of ramification. The corresponding $z$ is called\na logarithmic (log) point. We can analytically continue $x(z)$ from \n$\\part{\\cal E}^+$ to ${\\cal L}$ with the exception of the log points.   To define $x(z)$ uniquely\nin, ${\\cal L}$\nwe make branchcuts connecting  every log point  $z^*\\in{\\cal L}, ~{\\rm Im~} z>0$ with $\\mathbb R\\cup{\\infty}$ in such a way that they do not intersect ${\\cal E}^+$ and keep ${\\cal L}$ connected. \nLet $\\mathcal C$ denote ${\\cal L}$\nwith the cuts.\nThen $\\mathcal B=x(\\mathcal C)$ is the image of $\\mathcal C$ by the conformal map $x(z)$, see\nFig. \\ref{xmap}.    \n\nAccording to \\eqref{gh_x}, we have \n\\begin{equation} \\label{hxz}\nh(x,z)=-\\int_{x(z)}^x R(y,z)dy\n\\end{equation}\nfor all $z\\in\\mathcal C$ and all $x\\in \\mathcal B$, where the contour of integration \nlies in $\\mathcal B$ and does not cross the branchcut $\\Gamma(z)$ of $R(x,z)$ in the complex $x$-plane ($z$ is fixed),\nwhich is a path connecting $x(z)$ with $-\\infty$\n (see Fig. \\ref{xcut}). \n\nFor any fixed $z\\in\\mathcal C$,  function $h(x,z)$ is analytic in $x$ for all finite $x\\in{\\cal B}$\nexcept the branchpoints $x=x(z)$ and $x=\\overline{x(\\bar z)}$ of the radical $R$ (the latter may or may not be in ${\\cal B}$. On the other hand, \n\\begin{equation}\\label{h_z0}\n\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)=- \\int_{x(z)}^x \\frac{z-a(y)} {\\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\tilde\\a(y))}}dy+\n\\frac{\\sqrt{(z-\\a(x(z)))(z-\\tilde\\a(x(z)))}}{\\a'(x(z))} ~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alphat}\n\\tilde\\a(x)=\\overline{\\a(\\bar x)}=a(x)-ib(x)~.\n\\end{equation}\nSince $\\a(x(z))\\equiv z$ in $\\mathcal B$, it is clear that the latter term is zero\nfor all $z$ except when\n$\\a'(x(z))=0$, i.e., except when $z=\\mu_\\pm$ or $z$ is a log point. So,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{h_z}\n\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)=- \\int_{x(z)}^x \\frac{z-a(y)} {\\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\tilde\\a(y))}}dy ~\n\\end{equation}\nif $\\a'(x(z))\\neq 0$. That means that for any\nfinite\n$x\\in\\mathcal B$ function $h(x,z)$ is analytic in $z\\in\\mathcal C$ except for the log points,\nthe branchpoints\n$z=\\a(x)$, $z=\\tilde \\a(x)$, \nand, possibly,  points $z=\\mu_\\pm$.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=6cm]{xmap.eps}}\n\\caption{Map $x(z)$ maps $\\part{\\cal E^+}$ into the real $x$-axis, $\\overline{\\cal E^+}$  (darker area)\ninto $\\mathcal B^-$ and the rest of ${\\cal L}$ (lighter area) into $\\mathcal B^+$. Possible cuts\nare not shown here.)}\n\\label{xmap}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=3cm]{xcut.eps}}\n\\caption{The branchcut of $R(x,z)$ is shown by the dashed lines:  a path connecting $\\a(x)$ and $\\mu_+$,~~\n$x$ is fixed (left); a path   connecting $x$ and $-\\infty$,~~ $z$ is fixed (right).  }\n\\label{xcut}\n\\end{figure}\n\nDoes  $h(x,z)$ from \\eqref{hxz} coincide with $h$ given by \\eqref{hform}? If the corresponding \n$\\a(x)$ and $f_0(z)$ satisfy\n modulation equation \\eqref{modeqint}, then they may differ\nby an independent of $x$ constant. However, this constant is identically zero since \n$h(x(z),z)\\equiv 0$ for all $z\\in{\\cal C}$\nin both cases of  \\eqref{hxz} and \\eqref{hform}.\n Thus, for any fixed $x\\in{\\cal B}$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{hsamodeq}\nh(x,z)=O(z-\\a(x))^{\\frac{3}{2}}~~~~{\\rm as}~~~~z\\rightarrow\\a(x), \n\\end{equation}\nprovided that $\\a'(x)\\ne 0$.\nEquation \\eqref{hsamodeq} also follows directly from \\eqref{h_z}. \nFinally, for all $x\\in\\mathbb R$, we extend $h(x,z)$ into the lower $z$-halfplane \n$\\mathbb C^-$ by Schwarz reflection. Note that\n$h(x,z)$ has a jump $2i{\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$ for $z\\in\\mathbb R$.  In the case $z\\in\\mathbb C^-$, the values of  \n$h(x,z)$ can be analytically continued from $x\\in\\mathbb R$ to the complex $x$-plane.\n\nTo calculate  $g(x,z)$, we first note that, according to \\eqref{R}, \\eqref{brR} and condition \n{\\bf A3},\n\\begin{equation} \\label{limR}\nR(x,z)=-(z-\\mu_\\pm)+o\\left( x^{-p}\\right)~~~~{\\rm as}~~~  {\\rm Re~} x\\rightarrow \\pm\\infty,~~x\\in{\\cal D}  \n\\end{equation}\nfor any fixed $z\\in\\mathbb C$. Then\n\\begin{align}\\label{limzmR}\nz-\\mu_\\pm +R(x,z)=&\\frac{2(z-\\mu_\\pm)[a(x)-\\mu_\\pm]-[a(x)-\\mu_\\pm]^2-b^2(x)}{z-\\mu_\\pm-R(x,z)}=\\cr\n&a(x)-\\mu_\\pm-\\frac{R^2(x,\\mu_\\pm)}{2(z-\\mu_\\pm)}+o(x^{-2p})\n\\end{align}\nas ${\\rm Re~} x\\rightarrow \\pm\\infty,~x\\in{\\cal D}$, for any fixed $z\\neq \\mu_\\pm$ respectively.\nAccording to  \\eqref{gh_x}, we define $g(x,z)$ as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gxz}\ng(x,z)=-\\frac{1}{2}\\left[\\int_{+\\infty}^x\\left(z-\\mu_+ + R(y,z) \\right)dy +\\mu_+ x \\right] +K(z)\n\\end{equation}\nfor any finite $x\\in{\\cal B}$ and  $z\\in{\\cal C}$, where $K(z)$  does not depend on $x$\nand the contour of integration is in $\\mathcal B$. \nConvergence of the integral in \\eqref{gxz} follows from \\eqref{limzmR}.\n\nAssuming that \n$\\a(x)$ and $f_0(z)$ satisfy\n modulation equation \\eqref{modeqint}, we want to determine $K(z)$ so that  \n$g(x,z)$ defined by \\eqref{gxz} coincide with $g(z)$  defined by \\eqref{gform}.\nNote that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{limg1}\n\\lim_{x\\rightarrow +\\infty} \\left[  g(x,z)+\\frac{1}{2}\\mu_+ x\\right]  =K(z)~.\n\\end{equation}\nRewriting \\eqref{gform} as \n \\begin{equation}\\label{formg}\ng(x,z)=\n{{R(x,z)}\\over{4\\pi i}}\n\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}{{f_0(\\zeta)-x\\zeta}\\over{(\\zeta-z)R_+(x,\\zeta)}}d\\zeta~ \\ \\ \\ \\ \n\\end{equation}\nand taking limit of \\eqref{formg} as  $ x\\rightarrow +\\infty$,~~$x\\in\\mathbb R$,\n$x\\in{\\cal B}$,  \nwe obtain, according to \\eqref{limR}, \n\\begin{align}\\label{limg2}\n&\\lim_{x\\rightarrow +\\infty}  \\left[  g(x,z)+\\frac{1}{2}\\mu_+ x\\right]  = \\cr\n\\lim_{x\\rightarrow +\\infty}&\\left[ \\frac{(z-\\mu_+)(f_0(\\mu_+)-x\\mu_+)}{4\\pi i(z-\\mu_+)}\\int_{\\hat \\gamma_m}\\frac{d\\zeta}{\\sqrt{(\\zeta-\\a(x))(\\zeta-\\overline {\\a(x)})}}+\\frac{1}{2}\\mu_+ x\\right]\n=\\frac{1}{2} f_0(\\mu_+). \\cr\n\\end{align}\nComaring \\eqref{limg1} and \\eqref{limg2}, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{K}\nK(z)=\\frac{1}{2} f_0(\\mu_+) \\in\\mathbb R,\n\\end{equation}\nthe latter follows from the requirement that $g(x,z)$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$ , is Schwarz-symmetrical in $z$.\nThus,  we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gxzfin}\ng(x,z)=-\\frac{1}{2}\\left[\\int_{+\\infty}^x\\left(z-\\mu_+ + R(y,z) \\right)dy +\\mu_+ x \\right] +\\frac{1}{2} f_0(\\mu_+),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $f_0(\\mu_+)$ is a free real parameter.\n\nWe want to emphasize that  \\eqref{gxzfin} represents a new form of  solution to the RHP \n\\eqref{rhpg}-\\eqref{modeq} \n(with $t=0$),  written as an integral in the $x$-plane, see Theorem \\ref{invertmodeq} below.\n\nNote that for a finite fixed $z\\in\\bar\\mathbb C^+$ function $g(x,z)$, defined by \\eqref{gxzfin}, is analytic \nfor all finite $x\\in{\\cal B}$ except $x=x(z)$ and $x=\\overline{x(\\bar z)}$. According to \n\\eqref{limR}, we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{lim1R}\n1+\\frac{z-a(x)}{R(x,z)}=\\frac{a(x)-\\mu_\\pm}{z-\\mu_\\pm}+o(x^{-p})\n\\end{equation}\nas ${\\rm Re~} x\\rightarrow \\pm\\infty,~x\\in{\\cal D}$, for any fixed $z\\neq \\mu_\\pm$ respectively. Thus,\nfor any finite $x\\in{\\cal B}$, function $g(x,z)$, defined by \\eqref{gxzfin}, is analytic \nin all finite $z\\in {\\cal C}$ except $z=\\mu_+$ and branchpoints $z=\\a(x),~z=\\tilde \\a(x)$.\n\nNow, using $f=2g-h$, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{fxz}\nf(x,z)=\\int^{+\\infty}_{x(z)}\\left[z-\\mu_+ + R(y,z) \\right]dy +(z-\\mu_+) x(z)-xz + f_0(\\mu_+)~,\n\\end{equation}\nso that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{finitz}\nf_0(z)=\\int^{+\\infty}_{x(z)}\\left[z-\\mu_+ + R(y,z) \\right]dy +(z-\\mu_+) x(z)+ f_0(\\mu_+).\n\\end{equation}\nSince $h(x,z)$ and $g(x,z)$ are analytic in $z\\in {\\cal C}$ except the branchpoints\n$z=\\a(x),~z=\\tilde \\a(x)$, the log points and, possibly, points $z=\\mu_\\pm$, function\n$f_0(z)= 2g(x,z)-h(x,z)-xz$ is analytic over the same domain. But $f_0(z)$\ndoes not depend on $x$, hence it is analytic everywhere in ${\\cal C}$ except\nthe log points and   possibly, points $z=\\mu_\\pm$, with\n\\begin{equation}\\label{finitz'}\nf'_0(z)=\\int^{+\\infty}_{x(z)}\\left[1 +\\frac{z-a(y)}{ R(y,z)} \\right]dy +x(z).\n\\end{equation}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{invertmodeq}\nFor any  $\\a(x)$ satisfying conditions {\\bf A1} - {\\bf A4}, functions \n $g(x,z)$ and $f_0(z)$, given by \\eqref{gxzfin} and \\eqref{finitz} respectively,\nsatisfy the RHP \\eqref{rhpg}-\\eqref{modeq} all $x\\in\\mathbb R$ such that $\\a'(x)\\ne 0$.\n\\end{theorem}\n \n\\begin{proof}\nThe contour\n$\\gamma_m$ in the RHP \\eqref{rhpg} can be deformed within the domain of analyticity of \n$f_0$ (endpoints $\\a(x), \\bar \\a(x)$ and the midpoint $\\mu_+$ remain fixed)\nwithout affecting the solution $g(x,z)$. \nThere are no more than a finitely many log points in any compact subset of $\\bar{\\cal L}$. \nAccording to the construction, set ${\\cal C}$ is connected, i.e., without any loss of\ngenerality we can assume that $\\gamma_m$ lies within the domain of analyticity of $f_0$ (with\nthe exception of the point $\\mu_+$). Let us fix some $x\\in\\mathbb R$, such that $\\a'(x)\\ne 0$, choose some\n$z$ on the corresponding $\\gamma_m$, and consider $g_+(z) + g_-(z)$. \nThe contours of integration for $g_\\pm$ in \\eqref{gxzfin} lie on opposite sides of the\nbranchcut of $R(x,z)$ in the complex $x$-plane ($z$ is fixed), as shown\non Fig. \\ref{gcont}. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{gsatisrhpg}\ng_+(x,z)+g_-(x,z)=\\int^{+\\infty}_{x(z)}\\left[z-\\mu_+ + R(y,z) \\right]dy+\n\\int_{x}^{x(z)}(z-\\mu_+)dy-\\mu_+x + f_0(\\mu_+)=f(x,z)~.\n\\end{equation}\nTo prove that $g(x,z)$ is analytic at $z=\\infty$ for any $x\\in{\\cal B}\\setminus\\{x(\\infty)\\}$,\nwe fix some $x$ and consider\n\\begin{equation}\\label{g_z}\n\\frac{\\part}{\\part z}g(x,z)=-\\frac{1}{2}\\int_{+\\infty}^x\\left( 1+\\frac{z-a(y)}{R(y,z)}\\right) dy~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the contour of integration does not pass through $x(\\infty)$. Then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{Rzrainf}\nR(y,z)=-(z-a(y))+O\\left( \\frac{b^2(y)}{z-a(y)}\\right) \n\\end{equation}\nas $z\\rightarrow\\infty$ uniformly on the contour of integration. Therefore, the integrand in\n\\eqref{g_z} is of the order $O(b^2(y))$ uniformly on the  contour of integration\nas $z\\rightarrow\\infty$, so that $\\frac{\\part}{\\part z}g(x,z)|_{z=\\infty}$ is well defined.\nProof of  \\eqref{modeq} follows from \\eqref{hsamodeq} and the fact that\n$f_0(z)$ is analytic  at $z=\\a(x)$.\nThus, requirements i) - iii) of the RHP \\eqref{rhpg}-\\eqref{modeq} are satisfied.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{rleft}\nTheorem \\ref{invertmodeq} remains true if in the expressions for $g(x,z)$ and $f_0(z)$\nwe replace $+\\infty$ with $-\\infty$ and $\\mu_+$ with $\\mu_-$. \n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{gcont.eps}}\n\\caption{The branchcut of $R$ in ${\\cal B}$, connecting $x(z)$ and $-\\infty$  is\nshown by the dashed line, contours of integration for $g_\\pm$ are shown by solid lines.}\n\\label{gcont}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{invertabel}\nFor any $z\\in{\\cal E}^+$, the contour of integration in \\eqref{fxz}\nis the interval $[x(z),\\infty)$ of the real axis. Then\nthe change of variables  $u=\\a(y)$ converts \\eqref{fxz}\ninto the transformation \\eqref{xtof}. Note that this is not true for\n$z\\not\\in{\\cal E}^+$, since  $\\bar u\\neq \\overline{\\a(\\bar y)}$ \nfor complex $y$.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Inequalities \\eqref{ineq1}-\\eqref{ineq2} for  $f_0$}\\label{stprf}\n\nIn Sections\n\\ref{AbelHilbert} and \n\\ref{inversion} we constructed the semiclassical \nlimit of the scattering data  $f_0(z)$\nfor ZS system \\eqref{ZS} with a given potential \\eqref{ID}. Let us assume  that potential \\eqref{ID}\nsatisfied conditions {\\bf A}. \nIn this section we discuss inequalities  \\eqref{ineq2} for  $f_0$ as well as existence of\nthe main and the complementary arcs satisfying \\eqref{ineq1} for  all\n$x\\in\\mathbb R$.\n\nWe start with the observation that for any $x\\in\\mathbb R$ we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{imhmu}\n{\\rm Im~} h(x,\\mu_\\pm)=-{\\rm Im~} \\int_{\\pm\\infty}^x \\sqrt{(\\mu_\\pm-\\a(y))(\\mu_\\pm-\\overline{\\a(y)})}dy=0~,\n\\end{equation}\nsince the contour of integration lies on the  real line and the integrand is real valued.  \nConvergence of the integral in \\eqref{imhmu}\nfollows from \\eqref{ablim}. \n \n\n\nLet us consider $w(z), z\\in\\mathbb R$. According to \\eqref{ineq2}, \\eqref{hxz} and Schwarz symmetry of $g(x,z)$,\n$x\\in\\mathbb R$, we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{wzalp}\nw(z)={\\rm sign}(\\mu_+-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{x(z)}^x \\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\tilde \\a(y))}dy,~~\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $x\\in\\mathbb R$ can be choosen arbitrarily, i.e., the right hand side  of\n\\eqref{wzalp} does not depend on a particular choice of $x\\in\\mathbb R$. Therefore,\nwe can choose contour of integration in \\eqref{wzalp} as the vertical segment\n$[x(z),x]$, where $x={\\rm Re~} x(z)$, traversed in the negative direction, i.e., down\n(note that ${\\rm Im~} x(z)>0$). \n\n\\begin{lemma}  \\label{wz>0}\nIf \n\\begin{equation}\\label{arg<pi}\n|\\arg(z-\\a(y))-\\arg(z-\\a(\\bar y))|\\le\\pi\n\\end{equation}\nfor every $y\\in[x(z),{\\rm Re~} x(z)]$, where $z>\\mu_+$, then $w(z)<0$.  If \n\\begin{equation}\\label{arg>pi}\n|\\arg(z-\\a(y))-\\arg(z-\\a(\\bar y))-2\\pi|\\le\\pi\n\\end{equation}\nfor every $y\\in[x(z),{\\rm Re~} x(z)]$, where  $z<\\mu_-$,  then $w(z)<0$.\n\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof} Consider, for example, the case $z>\\mu_+$. Since $dy$ is negative purely imaginary,\nit is sufficient to show that ${\\rm Re~} \\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\tilde \\a(y))}<0$. Taking into\naccount our determination of the square root \\eqref{brR}, the latter condition is equivalent to\n$|\\arg(z-\\a(y))+\\arg(z-\\tilde\\a(y))|\\le\\pi$, which, together with \\eqref{alphat},\nimplies \\eqref{arg<pi}, see Fig. \\ref{contvert}. Similar arguments prove the remaining case $z<\\mu_-$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{contvert.eps}}\n\\caption{Two solid curves in the $x$-plane show the boundaries of $\\mathcal B$.\nThe image of the segment $[x(z),\\overline{x(z)}]$ in $z$-plane is shown by\nthe dashed line.  }\n\\label{contvert}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{suffwz}\nListed below are some sufficient conditions for \\eqref{arg<pi} and \\eqref{arg>pi} to be true for some  $z>\\mu_+$ or some $z<\\mu_-$ respectively.\n\n1. $w(z)<0$ for some  $z>\\mu_+$ or \n some  $z<\\mu_-$ provided \n\\begin{equation}\\label{segincl}\n[x(z),\\overline{x(z)}]\\subset\\mathcal B .\n\\end{equation}\nIndeed, this condition implies that and $\\a(\\bar y)\\in {\\cal E^+}$ for any $y\\in[x(z),x]$, \nsee Fig. \\ref{contvert}. Since\n$\\a(y)\\in \\mathbb C^+\\setminus {\\cal E}$, \nthe inequality \\eqref{arg<pi} is satisfied. Similar considerations are valid for \\eqref{arg>pi}. Condition \\eqref{segincl} is \nsatisfied if, for example, the upper boundary $\\part\\mathcal B^+$ satisfies the vertical line test\nand if the complex conjugate $\\overline{\\part\\mathcal B^+}\\subset\\mathcal B$.\n\n2. According to lemma \\ref{wz>0}, $w(z)<0$ for some  $z>\\mu_+$ \nprovided that for every $y\\in[x,x(z)]$ the angle between $z-\\a(y)$ and \n$z-\\a(\\bar y)$ is less than $\\pi$. This happens, for example, if one can draw a line\n$l$ through the point $z$ so that \nthe curve $\\a(y)$, $y\\in[x(z),\\overline{x(z)}]$ does not cross $l$ (lies in one the halfplanes\nproduced by $l$). In particular, if $l$ is a vertical line, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{Realphineq}\n{\\rm Re~}\\a(y)\\le z ~~\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively  for all $y\\in[x(z),\\overline{x(z)}]$.\nSimilar results hold for $z<\\mu_-$. \n\\end{remark}\n\nWe now consider inequality \\eqref{ineq1} under additional assumption that \n $a(x)$ is a monotonically increasing function.\nWe choose $\\gamma_c^+$\nto be the part of $\\part{\\cal E^+}$ connecting $\\a(x)$ and $\\mu_-$.\nTake any $z\\in\\gamma_c^+$. Then $x(z)$ \nis real and $x(z)<x$. Let us choose any $y\\in [x(z),x]$, it is easy to check,\n(see Fig. \\ref{conthor}) that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{argineq}\n0\\le \\arg\\left((z-\\a(y))(z-\\overline{\\a(y)})\\right)\\le 2\\pi~,\n\\end{equation}\nso that, taking into account \\eqref{hxz} and \\eqref{brR}, we obtain  ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)>0$ on $\\gamma_c$.\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{conthor.eps}}\n\\caption{Vectors $z-\\a(y)$ and $z-\\overline{\\a(y)}$ for $y\\in[x(z),x]\\subset\\mathbb R$. }\n\\label{conthor}\n\\end{figure}\n\nLet us now study the sign of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$ on the main arc $\\gamma_m^+$. Notice\nthat $h_+ + h_-\\equiv 0$ on $\\gamma_m$, so that, in general,  ${\\rm Im~} h$ has \nopposite signs on opposite sides of $\\gamma_m$. Therefore, we have to have\n${\\rm Im~} h\\equiv 0$ on $\\gamma_m$. Let us first find ${\\rm sign} {\\rm Im~} h$ on the arc of\n$\\part{\\cal E^+}$ between $\\a(x)$ and $\\mu_+$. Equivalently, we can think of \ndeforming $\\gamma_m^+$ to the above mentioned arc of $\\part{\\cal E^+}$ and finding\n${\\rm sign} {\\rm Im~} h$ on the negative (external) side of the arc. \nIt is easy to see\nthat if point $z$ will pass over $\\a(x)$ outside (of ${\\cal E}$), then the\nsum of the angles, shown at Fig. \\ref{conthor}, i.e.,  $\\arg\\left((z-\\a(y))(z-\\overline{\\a(y)})\\right)$, satisfies inequalities  \n\\eqref{argineq}. Repeating the previous arguments, we readily obtain \n${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)<0$, $z\\in \\part{\\cal E^+}$ between $\\a(x)$ and $\\mu_+$ on the \nouter (negative) side of the contour. Of course, on the opposite (positive)\nside of the branchcut, ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)>0$. That means, that inequalities on $\\gamma_m^+$\nwill be satisfied if there exists a branch of the level curve ${\\rm Im~} h=0$ ($x\\in\\mathbb R$\nis fixed), connecting $\\mu_+$ and $\\a(x)$. This question is discussed below.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe now want to calculate $\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,\\mu_+^+)$ by taking limit\n$z\\rightarrow\\mu_+$ along the negative (outer) side of $\\gamma_m^+$ (it is still asumed that $\\gamma_m$ deformed to coincide with arc of $\\part{\\cal E^+}$ connecting  $\\a(x)$ and $\\mu_+$).  According to\n\\eqref{h_z}, \n\\begin{equation} \\label{h_z1}\n\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)=  \\int^{x(z)}_x \\frac{z-a(y)} {\\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\overline{\\a(y)})}}dy ~.\n\\end{equation}\nTherefore, the fact that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{h_zarg}\n0<\\varphi -\\frac{1}{2}(\\varphi_1+\\varphi_2) < \\pi~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\varphi=\\arg (z-a(y)),~~\\varphi_1=\\arg(z-\\a(y)),~~\\varphi_2=\\arg(z-\\overline{\\a(y)})$,\ntogether with the determination of the proper branch of the radical $R(y,z)$,\nimply $ {\\rm Im~} \\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)<0$ in \\eqref{h_z1}. \n\nTo prove \\eqref{h_zarg},  we first\nnotice that the monotonicity of $a(x)$ on $\\mathbb R$ implies \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ineqphi}\n0<\\varphi\\le{\\pi\\over 2},~~-{\\pi\\over 2}\\le\\varphi_1<{\\pi\\over 2},~~0<\\varphi_2\\le {\\pi\\over 2},~~\\varphi_2\\ge\\varphi\\ge|\\varphi_1|,\t\n\\end{equation}\nsee Fig. \\ref{angles}, so that the second inequality of \\eqref{h_zarg} follows from \\eqref{ineqphi}.\nNotice that $\\b_1>\\b_2$, where $\\b_1={\\pi\\over 2}+\\varphi_1$, $\\b_2={\\pi\\over 2}-\\varphi_2$. Then the remaining\n inequality \\eqref{h_zarg} becomes \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ineqbet}\n2\\varphi>\\b_1-\\b_2~.\n\\end{equation}\nLet us inscribe the triangle $\\a(y),z, \\overline{\\a(y)}$ into the circle. As shown on\nFig. \\ref{inscribed}, cases $\\varphi_1<0$ and $\\varphi_1>0$, both angles $\\b_1-\\b_2$\nand $2\\varphi$ rest on the arc $z,O,\\bar z$. Then \\eqref{ineqbet}  follows from the fact\nthat the vertex of  angle $\\b_1-\\b_2$ is on the circle, whereas the vertex of  \nangle $2\\varphi$ is inside the circle.  Thus, \\eqref{h_zarg} is proven.\n\nThe fact that $ \\lim_{z\\rightarrow\\mu_+^+}{\\rm Im~}\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)$, if exists, is negative  implies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{w'mu++}\nw'(\\mu_+^+)=- \\lim_{z\\rightarrow\\mu_+^+}{\\rm Im~}\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)>0`.\n\\end{equation}\nChoosing the other branch of $R(y,z)$, we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{w'mu+-}\nw'(\\mu_+^-)=- \\lim_{z\\rightarrow\\mu_+^-}{\\rm Im~}\\frac{\\part h}{\\part z} (x,z)<0\n\\end{equation}\nif the limit exists, where $\\mu_+^-$ is on the positive (inetrior)\npart of $\\gamma_m$. \n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=6cm]{angles.eps}}\n\\caption{Angles $\\varphi_1$ (negative), $\\varphi_2$ and $\\varphi$ for $\\a(y)$, where \n$x\\le y\\le x(z)$.}\n\\label{angles}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=6cm]{inscribed.eps}}\n\\caption{ Triangle $\\a(y),z,\\overline{\\a(y)}$ inscribed in a circle. The left circle shows the case $\\varphi_1<0$, the right circle shows the case $\\varphi_1>0$.}\n\\label{inscribed}\n\\end{figure}\n\nEquations \\eqref{imhmu}, \\eqref{w'mu++} and \\eqref{w'mu+-} show that ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$\nis negative for real $z$ in a vicinity of $\\mu_+$. \nThus, there exists a zero level curve $\\l$ of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$ emanating\nfrom $z=\\mu_+$ into the upper half-plane. Suppose that\n$\\l\\subset\\mathcal C$ and \nconnects $\\mu_+$ with $\\a(x)$. Then the signs of ${\\rm Im~} h$ to the right and to the\nleft of $\\l$ have to be negative, i.e., the first inequality in \\eqref{ineq1}\nis satisfied.\nThe results of this section can be summarized by the following statement.\n\n\\begin{statement}\\label{stat1}\nLet  initial data \\eqref{ID} be such that: assumptions {\\bf (A)} are satisfied\nand $S'(x)$ is monotone on $\\mathbb R$; $w(z)$ satisfies inequalities \\eqref{ineq2}. \nIf for a given $x\\in\\mathbb R$ a zero level curve $\\l$, emanating from $\\mu_+$,\npasses through $\\a(x)$ and does not intersect branchcuts of $f_0$, then\n$q_0(x,0,\\varepsilon)$ is   $O(\\varepsilon)$ approximation of $\\tilde q(x,0,\\varepsilon)$.\n\\end{statement}\n\n\n\n\n\\section{Some geometrical aspects  of transition to a higher genus (breaking) }\\label{break}\n\n\nIn this section we consider $t$ assuming nonnegtive values. \nFunctions $f$ and $h$ are defined by \\eqref{fzxt} and \\eqref{hform} respectively.\nAs it  was established in \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3}, transition from the genus zero\nto a higher genus (genus 2) occurs when an additional branch of zero level curve \nof ${\\rm Im~} h(x,t,z)$ (the branch that begins and ends at $z=\\infty$) intersects with \nthe contour $\\gamma^+=\\gamma_m^+\\cup\\gamma_c^+$ at some point $z_b=z_b(x,t)$, which is not a log point \n(the case of $g^+$ intersecting a log point requires further investigation).  \n There are at least\nfour zero level curves of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,t,z)$ passing through the point  \n$z=z_b(x,t)$, which implies that $h_z(x,t,z_b)=0$. \nIn the case $z_b(x,t)\\not =\\a(x,t)$, the  point $z_b$ is called\na double point. There are exactly four zero level \ncurves  of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,t,z)$ passing through a double point $z_b$ (degenerate cases of multiple level\ncurves collision are not considered here, however, see \\cite{TV3}).\nIn the remaining case \n $z_b(x,t)=\\a(x,t)$,\na triple point. There are five zero level \ncurves  of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z,t)$ passing through a nondegenerate triple point $z_b(x,t)$. \nThe breaking point $x_b,t_b$ on the $x,t$ plane  \nthat corresponds to a triple point $z_b$ is the starting  point of the breaking curve that separates the genus zero and genus two regions for $t\\ge t_b$. Typically, the breaking curve forms a corner at\n $x_b,t_b$. A regular point of the breaking corve corresponds to a double point $z_b$.\nThe simple modulated wave $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ (semiclassical solution), \ngiven by \\eqref{q0}, \\eqref{alpAS} fails to approximate\nsolution $\\tilde q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ in the genus two region beyond $t= t_b$. In this region $\\tilde q$\ncan be approximated by a  two-phase modulated wave constructed through Riemann theta functions\n(see \\cite{TVZ1}). The onset of  a  two-phase wave (genus two)  behavior of $\\tilde q$ corresponds\nto the appearance of a triple point $\\a(x_b,t_b)$ on the spectral plane. The main result of this\nsection is that at the first breaking point $x_b,t_b$ the semiclassical solution $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ \nloses its smoothness. More precisely, if $\\a(x,t)$ is a triple point for some $x=x_b,t=t_b$\nthen the derivative $\\a_x(x_b,t_b)=\\infty$. In other words, genus zero anzatz $q_0(x,t,\\varepsilon)$\nexperiences the first break  at $t=t_b$ only if the amplitude of $q_0$ or  derivative of its phase \n(or both) develops an infinite slope at $x=x_b$. The proof uses representation \\eqref{hxz} of $h(x,z)=\nh(x,t_b,z)$, where $t_b$ is fixed, as an integral in the complex $x$-plane.\n \n\n\n\n\\begin{lemma} \\label{derh_zalp}\nIf assumptions {\\bf A} for $\\a(x)=\\a(x,t_b)$ are satisfied then \nfor any fixed $x\\in\\mathbb R$ we have \n\\begin{equation}\\label{h_zalp}\n\\frac{\\part}{\\part z}h(x,z)=\\frac{\\sqrt{ib(x)}}{\\sqrt{2}\\a'(x)}\\sqrt{z-\\a(x)} +O(z-\\a(x))^{3\/2}\n\\end{equation}\nin a vicinity of the branchpoint $z=\\a(x)$, provided $\\a(x)$ is not a log point.\n\\end{lemma}\n\n\\begin{proof} Since $\\a(x)$ is not a log point, we have \n$$x(\\a(x)+\\d)=x+\\frac{dx}{dz}\\d + o(\\d)=x+\\frac{\\d}{\\a'(x)}+o(\\d),$$\nwhere $\\d\\in\\mathbb C$ is a small.\nUsing \\eqref{h_z}, we calculate\n\\begin{align}\\label{aaaa}\n\\left. \\frac{h_z(x,z)}{R(x,z)}\\right|_{z=\\a(x)}=&\n\\lim_{\\d\\rightarrow 0}\\frac{1}{R(x,\\a(x)+\\d)}\\int_x^{x+\\frac{\\d}{\\a'(x)}}\\frac{z-a(y)} {\\sqrt{(z-\\a(y))(z-\\tilde\\a(y))}}dy=\\cr\n&\\lim_{\\d\\rightarrow 0}\\frac{ib(x)+\\d}{\\a'(x)(2ib(x)+\\d)}\n=\\frac{1}{2\\a'(x)}~,\n\\end{align}\nwhich implies \\eqref{h_zalp}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nAs an immediate consequence of Lemma \\ref{derh_zalp}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{h(alph)}\nh(x,z)=\\left[ \\frac{\\sqrt{2ib(x)}}{3\\a'(x)}+O(\\sqrt{z-\\a(x)})\\right] (z-\\a(x))^{3\/2}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIt is well known that zero genus anzatz for zero dispersion limit of the KdV equation\nbreaks down when it develops infinite slope. The following corollary, which is\nanother immediate consequence of  Lemma \\ref{derh_zalp}, is an  analog of this\nstatement for the focusing NLS equation.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{breakcond}\nIn the conditions of \n Lemma \\ref{derh_zalp} $\\a(x_b)=\\a(x_b,t_b)$ is  a triple point only if $\\a'(x_b)=\\infty$. \n\\end{corollary}\n\\begin{proof}\n$\\a(x_b)$ is a  triple point only if the leading term of \\eqref{h(alph)} is zero. Since   \n$b(x)>0$ on $\\mathbb R$ (condition {\\bf A1}), we conclude  that  $\\a'(x_b)=\\infty$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\nAccording to \\cite{DGC}, solution $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ to Cauchy problem  \\eqref{FNLS},\n\\eqref{ID}  develops {\\it elliptic umbilic singularity} at $(x_b,t_b)$ if \n$\\a(x_b,t_b)$ is a triple point. It is hypotesized there\nthat in a vicinity of $(x_b,t_b)$ a solution $q(x,t,\\varepsilon)$ can be approximated by the special {\\it \ntritronqee} solution of the first Painleve equation P1 (see \\cite{DGC} for further details).\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{breakcfg1.eps}}\n\\caption{Curve $\\a(x,t)$ in $\\mathbb R\\times \\mathbb C$, spectral plane $\\mathbb C$ is orthogonal\nto real $x$-axis. Genus zero case.}\n\\label{breakcfg1}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{breakcfg3.eps}}\n\\caption{Curve $\\a(x,t)$\n in $\\mathbb R\\times \\mathbb C$, spectral plane $\\mathbb C$ is orthogonal\nto real $x$-axis. The curve developed a ``fold\". Three point of intersection\nof $\\a(x,t)$ and the spectral plane are indicated. For the values of $x$, \ncorresponding to the ``fold\", points $(x,t)$ belong to the genus two region.}\n\\label{breakcfg3}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\n\n\nAn obvious geometrical interpretation of Corollary \\eqref{breakcond} is the curve\n$\\a(x)$ in $\\mathbb R\\times \\mathbb C$, where $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and $\\a(x)\\in\\mathbb C$. For any $x\\in\\mathbb R$, this\ncurve has a unique intersection with the  plane perpendicular to $\\mathbb R$ at $x$, which \nwe interpret as a spectral plane $\\mathbb C$, see Fig. \\ref{breakcfg1}. This property is preserved under the NLS\nevolution $\\a(x,t)=a(x,t)+ib(x,t)$, \nwhere $\\a(x,0)=\\a(x)$, as long as $(x,t)$ is in the genus zero region.  \nTo get to a higher genus region, the curve $\\a(x,t)$ must develop a ``fold\" \n(at least in the solitonless case), shown at Fig. \\ref{breakcfg3}. It is clear from the\ntopological point of view that $\\a(x,t)$ should become tangential to the spectral\nplane at some $(x_b,t_b)$ before the fold can develop, see Fig. \\ref{breakcfg2}. The point $(x_b,t_b)$ correspond to a triple point. \nGeometricaly, it is clear that $\\a_x(x_0,t_0)=\\infty$, which \nis exactly the statement of  Corollary \\eqref{breakcond}. \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{breakcfg2.eps}}\n\\caption{Curve $\\a(x,t)$ in $\\mathbb R\\times \\mathbb C$, spectral plane $\\mathbb C$ is orthogonal\nto real $x$-axis. The point  of tangency between $\\a(x,t)$ and $\\mathbb C$ \ncorresponds to a triple point.} \n\\label{breakcfg2}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\n\\section{Symmetry}\\label{symmetry}\n\nIn this section we establish connections between the symmetry of the initial and the scattering data.\n\n\\begin{statement}\\label{symalph}\nInitial data $q(x,0)=q(x,0,\\varepsilon)$ given by \\eqref{ID} is even iff \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alphs}\n\\a(-\\bar x)=-\\overline{\\a(x)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nfor all $x$ in the domain of analyticity $\\mathcal D$ of $\\a(x)$. Here $\\a(x)=a(x)+ib(x)=-\\frac{1}{2} S'(x)+iA(x)$.\n\\end{statement}\n\n\\begin{proof} If $q(x,0)$ is even then $a(x)$ is odd and $b(x)$ is even. Then $\\a(-\\bar x)= -a(\\bar x)+ib(\\bar x) =\n-[\\overline{a(x)}-i\\overline{b(x)}]=-\\overline{\\a(x)}$. Conversly, taking $x\\in\\mathbb R$, we obtain\n$a(-x)+ib(-x)=\\a(-\\bar x)=-\\overline{\\a(x)}=-a(x)+ib(x)$.\\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{statement}\\label{symx}\nEquation \\eqref{alphs} is equivalent to \n\\begin{equation}\\label{xsym}\nx(-\\bar z)=-\\overline{x(z)}~\n\\end{equation}\nthat holds for all $x\\in\\mathcal B$.\n\\end{statement} \n\n\\begin{proof}\n$x=x(z)~\\Leftrightarrow~z=\\a(x)\\Leftrightarrow~ -\\bar z=-\\overline{\\a(x)}$. Then, according to \n\\eqref{alphs}, $-\\bar z=\\a(-\\bar x)$, so that $x(-\\bar z)=-\\overline{x(z)}$. Proof of the converse \nstatement is similar.\\end{proof}\n\nBefore proving the next statement, it's worth reminding that the radical $R(x,z)$ with a fixed $x$ has\na branchcut $\\gamma(x)=\\gamma_m$ connecting $\\a(x)$ and $\\tilde\\a(x)=\\overline{\\a(\\bar x)}$ that passes through $\\mu_+$.\n\n\\begin{statement}\\label{symR2}\nIf $\\a(x)$ is an odd function or if $\\a(x)$ satisfies  \\eqref{alphs} then\n\\begin{equation}\\label{R2sym}\nR^2(-\\bar x,-\\bar z)=\\overline{R^2(x,z)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nfor all ${\\rm Im~} z\\ge 0$ and all $x\\in\\mathcal D$. The converse is also correct. \n\\end{statement} \n\n\\begin{proof} Equation \\eqref{R2sym} can be written as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{quadrpoly}\n[(z-\\a(x))(z-\\overline{\\a(\\bar x)})]=\\overline{[(\\bar z +\\a(-\\bar x))(\\bar z+\\overline{\\a(-x)})]}~.\n\\end{equation}\nThe proof follows from equating coefficients of linear and free terms (in $z$). \\end{proof}\n\n\\begin{remark}\\label{notodd}\nIt is easy to verify using the moment conditions for $\\a(x)$ from \\cite{TVZ3} that odd $\\a(x)$\nwould imply $w(0)=0$ and  \n\\begin{equation}\n\\int_{-\\infty}^{\\infty}\\frac{w'(\\zeta)}{|\\zeta|}d\\zeta=0~.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{remark}\n\n\nEquation \\eqref{R2sym} obviously implies\n\\begin{equation}\\label{Rsym}\nR(-\\bar x,-\\bar z)=\\pm\\overline{R(x,z)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nBased on our choice of the branchcut of $R$, it is clear that in the case \nof  real $x,z$ the sign in \\eqref{Rsym} is positive if $|z|<\\mu_+$ and negative if $|z|>\\mu_+$. \nIn the case $x\\in R$ the branchcut  $\\gamma(x)$ is symmetrical with respect to $\\mathbb R$\nand intesect $\\mathbb R$ only at $z=\\mu_+$.\nIf $x\\in\\mathbb R$ and ${\\rm Im~} z>0$, the sign in \\eqref{Rsym} is positive only if \nthere exists a curve $\\sigma(z)$ connecting $z$ with the origin, such that $\\sigma(z)\\cap \\gamma(x)=\n\\emptyset$ and simultaneously $-\\overline{\\sigma(z)}\\cap \\gamma(-\\bar x)=\\emptyset$. It is clear\nthat if such $\\sigma(z)$ does not exist then $\\sigma(z)$ can be choosen in such a way that   $\\sigma(z)\\cap \\gamma(x)=\n\\emptyset$ and $-\\overline{\\sigma(z)}$ intersects  $\\gamma(-\\bar x)$ only one time. Then the sign in\n\\eqref{Rsym} is negative. In the case of a complex $x\\in\\mathcal B$ the sign in \\eqref{Rsym} is defined as above.\n\n\nLet $\\S_*(x)$ denote the region (not necessarily simple) \nbounded by the curve $\\gamma(-\\bar x)\\cup \\{-\\overline {\\gamma(x)}\\}$, and let \n$\\S(x)=(\\S_*(x)\\cup \\{-\\overline {\\S_*(x)}\\}\\cap \\bar\\mathbb C^+$. Clearly, \n$\\S(x)$ is symmetrical with respect to imaginary axis and has the segment $[-\\mu_+,\\mu_+]$\na its lower boundary.\nThen, for every $x\\in\\mathcal B$, equation \\eqref{R2sym} has positive sign if $z\\in \\S(x)$\nand negative sign if $z\\not\\in \\S(x)$. \n\n\\begin{theorem}\\label{symh}\nIf $\\a(-\\bar x)=-\\overline{\\a(x)}$ then \n\\begin{equation}\\label{hsym}\nh(-\\bar x,-\\bar z)=\\mp \\overline{h(x,z)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the sign is negative if $z\\in \\S(x)$ and positive otherwise.\nConversly, \\eqref{hsym} implies that $\\a(x)$ is odd or $\\a(-\\bar x)=-\\overline{\\a(x)}$.\n\\end{theorem}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAccording to \\eqref{hxz} and to Statements \\ref{symx}, \\ref{symR2},\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alptoh}\nh(-\\bar x,-\\bar z)=\\int_{-\\bar x}^{-\\overline{x(z)}}R(u,-\\bar z)du=\n-\\int_x^{x(z)}R(-\\bar y,-\\bar z)d\\bar y=\\mp\\int_x^{x(z)}\\overline{R(y,z)dy}=\n\\mp\\overline{h(x,z)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $y=-\\bar u$. The last to terms of \\eqref{alptoh} have sign minus if $z\\in \\S(x)$\nand sign plus if $z\\not\\in \\S(x)$.\n\nTo prove the converse, we need to show that \\eqref{alptoh} implies \\eqref{R2sym}.\nLet us choose some $x=iy,~y\\in\\mathbb R$,  $z\\in \\S(x)$ and let us introduce\n\\begin{equation}\\label{mintro}\nm(y,z)=-ih(iy,z)=-ih(x,z)~.\n\\end{equation}\nThen \n\\begin{equation}\nh(-\\bar x,-\\bar z)=h(i\\bar y,-\\bar z)=im(\\bar y,-\\bar z)~~~\n -\\overline{h(x,z)}=i\\overline{m(y,z)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nso, according to \\eqref{alptoh}, \n\\begin{equation}\\label{msym}\nm(\\bar y,-\\bar z)=\\overline{m(y,z)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nSince $m$ is analytic in $y$, we have Taylor expansion $m(y,z)=\\sum_{k=0}^\\infty a_k(z)y^k$,\nso that \\eqref{msym} is equivalent to\n\\begin{equation}\\label{asym}\n\\overline{a_k(z)}=a_k(-\\bar z)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \\forall k\\in \\mathbb N~.\n\\end{equation}\nSince $m_y(y,z)=\\sum_{k=1}^\\infty ka_k(z)y^{k-1}$ has Taylor coefficients satisfying \n\\eqref{asym}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation} \\label{mysym}\nm_y(\\bar y,-\\bar z)=\\overline{m_y(y,z)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nBut $m_y(y,z)=h_x(iy,z)=h_x(x,z)=-R(x,z)$. Thus, \\eqref{mysym} implies \\eqref{Rsym} with \npositive sign. By analyticity of $h$, this result can be extended from purely imaginary\nto all $x$. Similarly, we can obtain \\eqref{Rsym} with \nnegative sign when $z\\not\\in \\S(x)$. Thus, \\eqref{hsym} implies \\eqref{R2sym}.\nStatement \\ref{symR2} completes the proof. \\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{symw}\nIn the case $x,z\\in\\mathbb R$ equation \\eqref{hsym} implies that $w(z)={\\rm sign}(z-\\mu_+){\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$\nis an even function and \n\\begin{align}\\label{wsym}\n{\\rm Re~} h(-x,-z)=-{\\rm Re~} h(x,z)  &~~~~{\\rm if}~~~|z|<\\mu_+\\cr\n{\\rm Re~} h(-x,-z)={\\rm Re~} h(x,z)  &~~~~{\\rm if}~~~|z|>\\mu_+~.\n\\end{align}\n\\end{corollary}\n\nCorollary \\ref{symw} states that ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$ is even on \n$z\\in[-\\mu_+,\\mu_+]$ and is odd outside  \n$[-\\mu_+,\\mu_+]$. Therefore, $h_z(x,z)$ is odd on $z\\in[-\\mu_+,\\mu_+]$ and is even outside\n$[-\\mu_+,\\mu_+]$. \nTaking into account Remark \\ref{notodd} and Statement \\ref{symalph}, we obtain the following \ncorollary.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{qevenpre}\nIf ${\\rm Im~} h(0,0)\\neq 0$ then \\eqref{hsym} implies that the initial potential $q(x,0)$\nis an even function.\n\\end{corollary}\n\nGiven a scattering data (see \\cite{TVZ3}), we know $w(z)$ but not necessarily $h(x,z)$.\nSo, does even $w(z)$ implies even $q(x,0)$ under the inverse scattering procedure of \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3}?\nAccording to \\eqref{hxz}, $h(x,z)$ depends on the branchcut of $R(x,z)$. Let us denote by\n$R_R,R_L$ and $h_R,h_L$ the radical $R(x,z)$ (and  corresponding to it $h(x,z)$)\nwith the branchcut passing through $\\pm\\mu_+$ respectively (in the case of even $w(z)$ we have $\\mu_-=-\\mu_+$). \nIn all the statements above, we \nconsidered $R=R_R$ and $h=h_R$. In the case of $x,z\\in\\mathbb R$ we choose $R_L(x,z)$ to be positive\nfor $z>-\\mu_+$ and preserve the orientation of contour $\\gamma^+$ (from $\\mu_+$ to $-\\mu_+$)\nin the matrix RHP for the inverse scattering transform. With such choice of $R_L$,\nit follows from \\eqref{hxz} that $h_L(x,z)=\\pm h_R(x,z)$ for $x,z\\in\\mathbb R$ and $|z|<\\mu_+$ or \n$|z|>\\mu_+$ respectively.\nIf $\\a(x)$ satisfies \\eqref{alphs}, then, according to Theorem \\ref{symh},\n $h_L(-\\bar x, -\\bar z)=h_R(-\\bar x, -\\bar z)= -\\overline{h_R(x,z)}$ for $z\\in \\S(x)$ and\n$h_L(-\\bar x, -\\bar z)=-h_R(-\\bar x, -\\bar z)= -\\overline{h_R(x,z)}$ for $z\\not\\in \\S(x)$.\nFor $x\\in\\mathbb R$ that means \n\\begin{equation}\\label{hRL}\n{\\rm Im~} h_L(-x,-\\bar z)={\\rm Im~} h_R(x,z)\n\\end{equation}\nfor all $z$. Thus, we can formulate a stronger version of\nCorollary \\ref{qevenpre}.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\\label{qeven}\nIf $w(z)$, $z\\in \\mathbb R$, is even and if for all $x\\ge 0$ the inverse \nscattering procedure of \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3} produces a semiclassical solution  \\eqref{ID}\nwith $a(x)=-\\frac{1}{2} S'(x)$ and $b(x)=A(x)$, such that $\\a(x)$ is analytic in a region containg $x\\ge 0$\n and satisfies \\eqref{alphs} in a vicinity of $x=0$, then $q(x,0)$, evenly continued to the whole $\\mathbb R$,\nis the  initial potential corresponding to the scattering data $w(z)$ \naccording to the procedure of \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3}.\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\\begin{proof} Let $\\a(x)$,  $x\\ge 0$, be solution of the modulation equations (moment conditions),\nexpressed in terms of $w(z)$, see \\cite{TVZ3}, Sect. 3.1.1. \nBy Remark 3.1 of \\cite{TVZ3},\n$\\a(x)=-\\overline{\\a(-x)}$ satisfies modulation equations when $x<0$. Thus, we can assume \nthat $\\a(x)$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$, is analytic on $\\mathbb R$ and satisfies \\eqref{alphs}. \nAccording to Theorem \\ref{symh}, the corresponding $h_R$ and $h_L$ satisfy \\eqref{hsym}.\nBy the assumption, the main and complementary arcs have the required distribution of signs\nof ${\\rm Im~} h_R(x,z)$ for all $x\\ge 0$.\nThen, according to \\eqref{hRL}, in the case of $x<0$ the main and complementary arcs have \nthe required distribution of signs\nof ${\\rm Im~} h_L(x,z)$. \nThus, the initial data represented by $\\a(x)$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$, indeed corresponds to the given\nscattering data $w(z)$ through the inverse scattering procedure of \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Examples}\\label{examples}\n\n\\subsection{Example of \\cite{TVZ1}, $\\mu=2$}\\label{exam1}\n\nThe case of \n\\begin{equation}\\label{ourdata}\na(x)={\\m\\over 2} \\tanh x,~b(x)={\\rm sech~}(x),\n\\end{equation}\n$\\mu>0$,  was studied in details in \\cite{TVZ1}.\nThe leading order (in $\\varepsilon$) \n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq1}\nf_0 (z)=\\lim_{\\varepsilon\\rightarrow 0}\\frac{i\\varepsilon}{ 2}\\ln r_{init} (z,\\varepsilon)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $r_{init}(z,\\varepsilon)$ is the  reflection coefficient of Zakharov-Shabat problem\nfor the focusing NLS with the inital data \\eqref{ID}, $A(x)=b(x)$ and $-\\frac{1}{2} S'(x)=a(x)$,\nis calculated there to be\n\\begin{align}\\label{f1}\nf_{0} (z)=&({\\m\\over 2}-z)\\left[{i\\pi\\over 2}+\\ln({\\m\\over 2}-z)\\right]\n+\\frac{z+T}{2}\\ln(z+T)+\\frac{z-T}{2}\\ln(z-T) \\cr\n&-T\\tanh^{-1}\\frac{T}{{\\m\\over 2}}\n+{\\m\\over 2}\\ln 2+{\\pi\\over 2}\\varepsilon, ~~~~~~~{\\rm when} \\ {\\rm Im~} z\\ge 0,  \\cr\n\\end{align}\nwhere $T=\\sqrt{{\\m^2\\over 4}-1}$. This calculation involved exact solution of Zakharov-Shabat problem\nin terms of hypergeometric functions, followed by Stirling's asymptotic formula.\nNote that $f_0(z)$ has a log point $T\\in{\\cal E}$ in the case $\\mu< 2$  and has no log\npoints in ${\\cal E}$ in the case $\\mu\\ge 2$. This is the  reflection of the fact that the initial data\n\\eqref{ourdata} is purely radiative in the case $\\mu\\ge 2$, and contains points of\nthe descrete spectrum (solitons) on the vertical segment $[-T,T]$ \nin the case $\\mu< 2$ (see \\cite{TV}).\nFrom \\eqref{f1} one readily obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{f'ex}\nf_0 '(z)=-{i\\pi\\over 2}-\\ln({\\m\\over 2}-z)+\\frac{1}{2}\\ln(z^2-T^2)~ ,\n\\end{equation}\nand \n\\begin{equation}\\label{w1'}\nw'(z)=-{\\pi\\over 2}{\\rm sign} z\\left( 1-\\chi_{[-T,T](z)}\\right),~z\\in\\mathbb R. \n\\end{equation}\nSince the asymptotic inverse scattering transform, developed in \\cite{TVZ1}, \\cite{TVZ3},\nuses only the values $w'(z),~z\\in\\mathbb R$, and, in the case $\\mu<2$, the jump of $f_0'(z)$  \nover the slit $[0,T]$, we will focus on calculating these quantitees.\n\nConsider first the simplest case $\\mu=2$. Then $\\mu_\\pm=\\pm 1$,\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpm=2}\n\\a(x)=\\frac{\\sinh x +i}{\\cosh x},~~~~\\tilde\\a(x)=\\frac{\\sinh x -i}{\\cosh x}\n\\end{equation}\nand \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alp'm=2}\n\\a'(x)=\\frac{1-i\\sinh x}{\\cosh^2 x}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nAccording to \\eqref{alpm=2}, $\\a(x)$ is a meromorphic function with poles\nat ${i\\pi\\over 2}+2\\pi im$ and zeroes at  $-{i\\pi\\over 2}+2\\pi im$, $m\\in\\mathbb Z$. \nSince  \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpm=2dB}\n\\a(\\xi\\pm{i\\pi\\over 2})=\\frac{\\cosh \\xi\\pm 1}{\\sinh \\xi}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwe see that $\\mathcal B$ is the strip $-{\\pi\\over 2}\\le {\\rm Im~} x\\le {\\pi\\over 2}$, where ${i\\pi\\over 2}=x(\\pm\\infty)$,\n$-{i\\pi\\over 2}=x(0)$ and $\\pm\\infty=x(\\pm 1)$ respectively, see Fig \\ref{Bscrm2}. Since $\\a'(x)\\neq 0$ inside $\\mathcal B$, there are no branchpoints in $\\mathcal B$. Note that\nfor all $x\\in\\mathbb R$ we have \n\\begin{equation}\\label{Em2}\na^2(x)+b^2(x)=1~,\n\\end{equation}\nso that ${\\cal E}$ is the unit disc.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=4cm]{Bscrm2.eps}}\n\\caption{The strip $\\mathcal B=\\{x:~ -{\\pi\\over 2}\\le {\\rm Im~} x\\le {\\pi\\over 2} \\}$ is mapped onto the upper\nhalf plane of $z$-plane by $z=\\a(x)$, so that $\\a(\\mathcal B^-)={\\cal E^+}$. \nShown in parentheses \nare the  corresponding images of the map $\\a(x)$, i.e.,\nthe preimages of the inverse to $\\a(x)$ map $x(z)$.} \n\\label{Bscrm2}\n\\end{figure}\n\nIn the case $\\mu=2$, the inverse function $x(z)$ to $\\a(x)$ on $\\mathbb C^+$ is very\nsimple.  In order to find it,  we calculate\n\\begin{equation}\\label{abeqm2}\n(z-\\a)(z-\\tilde\\a)=(z-a)^2+b^2=z^2-2az+1=0~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich yields solution $a(z)=\\frac{1}{2}[z+\\frac{1}{z}]$. (Here we use notation  $a(z)$ for   $a(z)=\na(x(z))$.)\nThus\n\\begin{equation}\\label{xzm2} \nx(z)=\\tanh^{-1}a(z)=\\tanh^{-1}\\frac{1}{2}[z+\\frac{1}{z}]~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nAccording to \\eqref{wzalp}, we have \n\\begin{equation} \\label{wzm2}\nw(z)={\\rm sign}(1-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{x(z)}^x\\sqrt{z^2-2z\\tanh y+1 }dy=\n{\\rm sign}(1-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{a(z)}^{\\tanh x}\\sqrt{z^2-2z\\eta+1 }\\frac{d\\eta}{1-\\eta^2}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $z\\in\\mathbb R$, $x\\in\\mathbb R$ is arbitrary and $y=\\tanh^{-1}\\eta$. \nLet us consider the case $z>0$. Then $a(z)>1$, so the contour of integration \nin the latter integral is along the real segment $[\\tanh x, a(z)]$ of the complex\n$\\eta$-plane (complex $a$-plane), except the singular point $\\eta=1$, which is traversed from above or\nfrom below if $z>1$ or $z<1$ respectively, see Fig. \\ref{res1}. Since the integrand is real on $\\mathbb R$,\nonly integration around $\\eta=1$ contribute to the imaginary part of the integral.\nThus\n\\begin{equation} \\label{wzm2+}\nw(z)=\\pi i\\left. {\\rm Res}\\frac{\\sqrt{z^2-2z\\eta+1}}\n{1+\\eta}\\right|_{\\eta=1}={i\\pi\\over 2}(1-z)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the square root is choosen positive when $z<1$ and negative when $z>1$ respectively. By similar argument (but without  ${\\rm sign}(1+z)$ involved), we obtain\n\\begin{equation} \\label{wzm2-}\nw(z)={i\\pi\\over 2}(1+z)~\n\\end{equation}\nfor $z<0$.\nThus, $w(z)$ obtained through \\eqref{wzalp} with initial data from \\eqref{abeqm2} coincides with  ${\\rm Im~} f_0(z),~z\\in\\mathbb R$, where $f_0$ is given by \\eqref{f1} with \n$\\mu=2$ (and $T=0$). The correct distribution of signs of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$  along the main \nand complementary arcs (inequality \\eqref{ineq1}) follows directly from the analysis of zero level \ncurves of ${\\rm Im~} h(x,z)$ with a fixed $x\\in\\mathbb R$ in the upper $z$-halfplane (three zero level curves\nentering $\\mathbb C^+$ at $\\pm 1$ and $\\infty$ respectively meet at the branchpoint $\\a(x)$).\nOne can also observe that $f_0(z)$ given by \\eqref{f1} can be obtained through the Cauchy \ntransform of $w(z)$  (see \\cite{TVZ3}), and that sign distribution \\eqref{ineq1} for this\n$f_0(z)$ was proven in \\cite{TVZ1}. \n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=1cm]{res1.eps}}\n\\caption{Upper contour of integration is  for $z>1$, lower -  for $z<1$.} \n\\label{res1}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\subsection{Example of \\cite{TVZ1},  general case}\\label{exam1gen}\n\n\nWe consider now  the general case $\\mu>0$ in \\eqref{ourdata}. Then \\eqref{alpm=2} -\n\\eqref{abeqm2} become \n\\begin{align}\\label{eqsmugen}\n\\a(x)=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2}\\sinh x +i}{\\cosh x},~~~~&~~~~\\tilde\\a(x)=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2}\\sinh x -i}{\\cosh x},\\cr\n\\a'(x)=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2}-i\\sinh x}{\\cosh^2 x},~~~~&~~~~\\a(\\xi\\pm{i\\pi\\over 2})=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2}\\cosh \\xi\\pm 1}{\\sinh \\xi},\\cr\n\\frac{4}{\\mu^2}a^2(x)&+b^2(x)=1,\\cr\n(z-\\a)(z-\\tilde\\a)=(z-a)^2+b^2=&z^2-\\mu z\\tanh x+1+T^2\\tanh^2x=0~\\cr\n\\end{align}\nrespectively. The latter equation implies \n\\begin{align}\\label{thxz}\n\\tanh x(z)=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2} z\\pm\\sqrt{z^2+\\left(1-{\\mu^2\\over 4}\\right) }}{{\\mu^2\\over 4}-1}~,\n\\end{align}\nwhere the correct branch of the radical in the right hand side should be chosen.\nEquations \\eqref{eqsmugen} show that ${\\cal E}$ is the ellipse centered at $z=0$\nwith horizontal and vertical semiaxes ${\\m\\over 2}$ and $1$ respectively. The complement of \n${\\cal E^+}$ in $\\mathbb C^+$ is mapped onto the strip $0\\le {\\rm Im~} x \\le {\\pi\\over 2}$ in the $x$-plane.\n\nTo find the image of ${\\cal E^+}$, we need to study the branchpoints $x^*$ \nof $x(z)$ defined by \n\\begin{equation}\\label{bpointsmu}\n\\sinh x^*=-{\\m\\over 2} i~.\n\\end{equation}\nThe images of branchpoints in $z$-plane (log points), obtained by substituting \\eqref{bpointsmu} into the expression for $\\a(x)$, are\n\\begin{equation}\\label{logpointsmu}\n z^*=\\pm \\sqrt{{\\mu^2\\over 4}-1}=\\pm T~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIn the case $\\mu>2$ log points $\\pm T\\in(-{\\m\\over 2},{\\m\\over 2})$ are not in the upper halfplane. In the case $\\mu<2$ log points\n$ \\pm T=\\pm i|T|$. In the latter case, we make a branchcut of $x(z)$\nin $\\mathbb C^+$ over the segment $[0,T]$.\nIt is now easy to find the image $\\mathcal B^-$ of the region ${\\cal E^+}$ (with the\ncut if $\\mu<2$), see  Fig. \\ref{Bscr<}, Fig. \\ref{Bscr>} for $\\mu<2,~\\mu>2$\nrespectively. Equations of the arc, connecting\npoints $x(0^\\pm)$ and $x(T)$, case $\\mu<2$, and $x(\\pm T)$ and $x(0)$, case $\\mu>2$,\nare obtained from conditions ${\\rm Re~} \\a(y)=0$ and ${\\rm Im~} \\a(y)=0$ respectively.\nThese equations are \n\\begin{equation}\\label{brnchcteq}\n-\\sin \\eta={\\m\\over 2}\\cosh \\xi~~~~{\\rm  and}~~~~ \\cosh\\xi={\\m\\over 2}\\sin\\eta\n\\end{equation}\nrespectively, where $y=\\xi+i\\eta$.  \n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{Bscrless.eps}}\n\\caption{Mapping $\\a(x)$, case $\\mu<2$. Shown in parentheses \nare the  corresponding images of the map $\\a(x)$, i.e.,\nthe preimages of the inverse to $\\a(x)$ map $x(z)$.\nSet $\\mathcal B$ is the strip $\\{x:~ -{\\pi\\over 2}\\le {\\rm Im~} x\\le {\\pi\\over 2} \\}$\nwithout the region bounded by the dashed contour, which is the \nimage of two sides of the slit $[0,T]$ by the map $x(z)$.} \n\\label{Bscr<}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{Bscrmore.eps}}\n\\caption{Mapping $\\a(x)$, case $\\mu>2$. Shown in parentheses \nare the  corresponding images of the map $\\a(x)$, i.e.,\nthe preimages of the inverse to $\\a(x)$ map $x(z)$.\nSet $\\mathcal B$ is the strip $\\{x:~ -{\\pi\\over 2}\\le {\\rm Im~} x\\le {\\pi\\over 2} \\}$\nwithout the region bounded by the dashed contour, which is the \nimage of the segment $[-T,T]$ by the map $x(z)$. }\n\\label{Bscr>}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nLet us now calculate $w(z)$,  $z\\in\\mathbb R$, for the case $\\mu>2$ (we only consider \n$|z|>T$) or for the case $\\mu<2$. Using \\eqref{eqsmugen}, we obtain direct and inverse \nmaps between the values of $a$ and $z$ by\n\\begin{equation}\\label{mapaz}\nz=a+i\\sqrt{1-\\frac{4}{\\mu^2}a^2},~~~~a=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2} z -\\sqrt{z^2-T^2}}{T^2}\\cdot{\\m\\over 2}  \n\\end{equation}\nThe latter  maps ${\\cal E^+}$ into a part of the lower $a$-halfplane and \n$\\mathbb C^+\\setminus{\\cal E}$ into the upper $a$-halfplane, see Fig. \\ref{mapam>},\nFig. \\ref{mapam<}. Using \\eqref{mapaz}, it is easy to check that if $z\\ge T$, $\\mu>2$\nor $z\\ge 0$, $\\mu<2$,\nthen the corresponding $a=\\hat a(z)=a(x(z))\\in\\mathbb R$ and $a>{\\m\\over 2}$. Making change of \nvariables $a(y)=\\eta$ in \n\\begin{equation} \\label{wzmgen1}\nw(z)={\\rm sign}({\\m\\over 2}-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{x(z)}^x\\sqrt{(z-a(y))^2+b^2(y) }dy~\n\\end{equation} \nand using \\eqref{eqsmugen}, we obtain\n\\begin{align} \\label{wzmgen2} \nw(z)=&{\\rm sign}({\\m\\over 2}-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{a(x(z))}^{a(x)}\\sqrt{(z-\\eta)^2+1-\\frac{4\\eta^2}{\\mu^2} }\\cdot\\frac{d\\eta}{{\\m\\over 2}\\left(1-\\frac{4\\eta^2}{\\mu^2}\\right)}\\cr\n=&{\\rm sign}({\\m\\over 2}-z){\\rm Im~} \\int_{a(x(z))}^{a(x)}\\sqrt{{\\mu^2\\over 4}(z-\\eta)^2+{\\mu^2\\over 4}-\\eta^2}\n\\cdot\\frac{d\\eta}{{\\mu^2\\over 4}-\\eta^2}~.\n\\end{align}\nDirect calculation show that the integrand is real-valued. Thus,\na contribution to the imaginary part of the latter integral can come\nonly from integration around the singular point $\\eta={\\m\\over 2}$.\nRepeating the previous argument (case $\\mu=2$), we obtain  \n\\begin{equation} \\label{wzmgenpm}\nw(z)={\\pi\\over 2}({\\m\\over 2}\\mp z)~\n\\end{equation}\nif ${\\rm sign} z=\\pm 1$ respectively. Using the above technique, one could check\nthat in the case $\\mu>2$, $w(z)$ should be constant on the \nsegment $[-T,T]\\subset \\mathbb R$. \nThus, $w(z)$ satisfies the inequalities \\eqref{ineq2} for all $\\mu>0$. \nIn the pure radiational case $\\mu> 2$,  the proof of the sign distribution\n\\eqref{ineq1} is the same as for the case of $\\mu=2$ in Section \\ref{exam1}.\nThis proof can be extended to the case  $m<2$ providing that the contour $\\gamma$\ndoes not intersect the branchcut of $f_0(z)$. However Lemma 4.11 from \\cite{TVZ1}\nshows that $\\gamma_m=\\gamma_m(x)$, which is defined by $f_0(z)$ given by \\eqref{f1}, \nintersects the branchcut $[0,T]$ if $x$ is negative with sufficiently large $|x|$.\nIn this case one can use Corollary \\ref{qeven} from Section \\ref{symmetry} to show \nthat $q_0(x,0,\\varepsilon)$ is $O(\\varepsilon)$ close to $\\tilde q(x,0,\\varepsilon)$ for all $x\\in \\mathbb R$.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{mapammore.eps}}\n\\caption{Mappings \\eqref{mapaz} in the case $\\mu>2$. The dashed line\nin the $a$-plane is the image of $\\mathbb R$ by the map $\\hat a(z)=a(x(z))$.\nIn particular,\n$\\hat a(\\pm\\infty)=\\pm\\infty,~~\\hat a(\\pm{\\m\\over 2})=\\pm{\\m\\over 2},~~\\hat a(\\pm T)=\\pm\\frac{\\mu^2}{4T},\n~~\\hat a(0)=-\\frac{i\\mu}{2T}$.} \n\\label{mapam>}\n\\end{figure}wzmgenpm\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{mapamless.eps}}\n\\caption{Mappings \\eqref{mapaz} in the case $\\mu<2$. The dashed line\nin the $a$-plane is the image of $\\mathbb R$ by the map $\\hat a(z)=a(x(z))$.\nIn particular,\n$\\hat a(\\pm\\infty)=\\pm\\infty,~~\\hat a(\\pm{\\m\\over 2})=\\pm{\\m\\over 2},~~\\hat a(0^\\pm)=\\pm\\frac{\\mu}{2T},~~\n\\hat a( T)=\\frac{\\mu^2}{4T}$. The solid line shows the contour of integration from\n$a_-$ to $a_+$.} \n\\label{mapam<}\n\\end{figure}\n\nLet us now calculate the jump \n\\begin{equation}\\label{delfz0}\n\\Delta f(z)=f(x,z_-)-f(x,z_+)=h(x,z_+)-h(x,z_-)~\n\\end{equation}\nfor the case $0<\\mu< 2$, where the points $z_\\pm$ are equal  but located\n on the opposite shores of the oriented vertical segment $[T,0]$.\nAccording to \\eqref{hxz}, we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{delfz1}\n\\Delta f(z)=\\int_{x(z_-)}^{x(z_+)}\\sqrt{(z-a(y))^2+b^2(y)}dy\n\\end{equation}  \nwhere $x(z_-), x(z_+)$ are symmetrically located points on the dashed curve,\nFig. \\ref{Bscr<}. Using the change of variables $\\eta=\\tanh x$, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{delfz2}\n\\Delta f(z)=\\int_{\\eta_-}^{\\eta_+}\\sqrt{z^2-\\mu z \\eta+1+T^2\\eta^2}\\cdot\\frac{d\\eta}{1-\\eta^2}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, according to \\eqref{mapaz},\n\\begin{equation}\\label{etapm}\n\\eta_\\pm=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2} z \\pm\\sqrt{z^2-T^2}}{T^2}=\\frac{{\\m\\over 2} iy \\pm\\sqrt{-y^2-T^2}}{T^2}  \n\\end{equation}\nwith $z=iy$, see Fig. \\ref{mapam<}, where $a_\\pm={\\m\\over 2} \\eta_\\pm$.\n\nObserving that $\\eta_\\pm$ are zeroes of the radical in \\eqref{delfz2}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{delfz3}\n\\Delta f(z)=\\frac{1}{2}\\int_\\l\\sqrt{z^2-\\mu z \\eta+1+T^2\\eta^2}\\cdot\\frac{d\\eta}{1-\\eta^2}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\l\\subset\\mathbb C^-$ is a closed, clockwise oriented  curve that contains the segment\n$ [\\eta_-,\\eta_+]$. Thus,\n\\begin{align}\\label{delfz4}\n&\\Delta f(z)=-{i\\pi\\over 2}\\left[{\\rm Res}\\sqrt{z^2-\\mu z \\eta+1+T^2\\eta^2}\\left|_\\infty \n\\pm {\\rm Res}\\sqrt{z^2-\\mu z \\eta+1+T^2\\eta^2}\\right|_{\\eta=\\pm 1}\\right] \\cr\n&={i\\pi\\over 2}\\left[\\sqrt{z^2-\\mu z +{\\mu^2\\over 4}}- \\sqrt{z^2+\\mu z +{\\mu^2\\over 4}}-2T\\right]=i\\pi(z-T) \n~.\n\\end{align}\nThus, we obtained the same value of $\\Delta f(z)$ as \\eqref{f1} has. It is now possible to reconstruct\n$f_0(z)$, given by \\eqref{f1} with $\\mu<2$,  from $w(z)$ defined by \\eqref{wzmgenpm} and\n$\\Delta f(z)$  defined by \\eqref{delfz4} on $[0,T]$.\n\n\\subsection{The ``Y'' - shape of Bronski}\\label{examBr}\n\nIn \\cite{Bronski1}, J. Bronski studied numerically  discrete spectrum of ZS problem\n\\eqref{ZS} with the potential $q(x,0\\varepsilon)$ given by \\eqref{ID}, where \n\\begin{equation}\\label{bronpot}\nA(x)={\\rm sech~} 2x,~~~~~~~~~~S(x)=\\mu {\\rm sech~} 2x.~\n\\end{equation} \nHe found that for real valued $q(x,0\\varepsilon)$, i.e., for $\\mu=0$,\n the accumulation curve for discrete eigenvalues of\n\\eqref{ZS}, \\eqref{bronpot} in $\\mathbb C^+$ in\nthe limit $\\varepsilon\\rightarrow 0$ is a segment $[0,i]$ of the imaginary axis. In the case $\\mu=1$,\nthe accumulation curve has ``Y'' - shaped form, with $z=0$ located at the bottow of ``Y''.\nThe change of shape of the accumulation curve happens at the critical value \n$\\mu^*=2^{-\\frac{3}{2}}$. In this section we show that the endpoints of the accumulation \ncurve coicide with the branchpoints of $f_0(z)$, obtained from the potential \\eqref{ID},\n\\eqref{bronpot} by the AH transformation \\eqref{xtof}. In particular, $\\mu^*$ is a critical\nvalue when one  branchpoint of $f_0(z)$ splits  into two.\n\nFor potential \\eqref{ID}, \\eqref{bronpot}, we have\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpbron}\n\\a(x)=\\frac{\\mu \\sinh 2x}{\\cosh^2 2x} + \\frac{i}{\\cosh 2x}=\\frac{\\mu\\sinh 2x+i\\cosh 2x}{cosh^2 2x}~.\n\\end{equation}\nThen \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alp'bron}\n\\a'(x)=2\\mu \\frac{\\cosh^2 2x- 2 \\sinh^2 2x}{\\cosh^3 2x} -2i \\frac{\\sinh 2x}{\\cosh^2 2x}\n=-\\frac{\\mu \\cosh 4x+i\\sinh 4x-3\\mu}{\\cosh^3 2x}~,\n\\end{equation}\nso, after some algebra, equation $\\a'(x)=0$ for the branchpoints can be written as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{brpteq} \n(\\mu+i)e^{8x}-6\\mu e^{4x}+\\mu-i=0~.\n\\end{equation} \nSolution of  \\eqref{brpteq} is given by \n\\begin{equation}\\label{solrpteq}\n\\left(e^{4x} \\right)_{1,2}=\\frac{3\\mu\\pm\\sqrt{8\\mu^2-1}}{\\mu+i}~. \n\\end{equation}\nThus, for $\\mu=0$ we obtain $e^{4x}=1$, so $x=0$ is a branchpoint and $z=\\a(0)=i$\nis the corresponding log point in the spectral plane. \n\nThe critical value  $\\mu^*$\nis given by equation $8\\mu^2-1=0$, which yields $\\mu^*=2^{-\\frac{3}{2}}$. \nFor $\\mu\\le \\mu^*$, direct calculation show that $|e^{4x}|=1$ for solution $e^{4x}$ given by  \\eqref{solrpteq} with the positive sign. Thus, the corresponding log point $x\\in\\i R$.\nSubstituting $\\mu^*$ into \\eqref{solrpteq}, we find \n$e^{4x^*}=\\frac{1}{3}(1-2\\sqrt{2}i)$, where \n$x^*=-\\frac{i}{2} \\tan^{-1}(2\\sqrt{2})$ is the the branchpoint that corresponds to $\\mu^*$. \nDirect calculations show that the corresponding log point on the spectral plane (the double point on Fig. 11 in \\cite{Bronski1}) is given by $z^*=\\a(x^*)=i\\frac{3\\sqrt{3}}{4\\sqrt{2}}\\thickapprox 0.91856 i$. \n\nTo calculate the log point(s) (endpoint(s) of the accumulation curve) for other values of $\\mu$,\nwe rewrite \\eqref{brpteq} as \n\\begin{equation}\\label{brpteq1} \n(\\mu^2+1)\\cosh^2 4x - 6\\mu^2\\cosh 4x + 9\\mu^2 -1=0~,\n\\end{equation} \nwhich yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{solrpteq1}\n\\left(\\cosh 4x \\right)_{1,2}=\\frac{3\\mu^2 \\pm\\sqrt{1-8\\mu^2}}{\\mu^2+1}~. \n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting $\\mu=0$, we see that for $\\mu<\\mu^*$ we need to choose the positive sign in \\eqref{solrpteq1}.\nCalculating  now $\\cosh 2x$ and $\\sinh 2x$, we can express logpoints $\\a(x)$ for an arbitrary $\\mu>0$\nas \n\\begin{equation}\\label{logbron}\n\\a(x)=\\frac{-\\mu\\sqrt{2\\mu^2-1\\pm\\sqrt{1-8\\mu^2}}+i\\sqrt{4\\mu^2+1\\pm\\sqrt{1-8\\mu^2}}} \n{4\\mu^2+1\\pm\\sqrt{1-8\\mu^2}}\\cdot\\sqrt{2(\\mu^2+1)}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwere only the plus sign should be used for $\\mu<\\mu^*$ (note the choice of signs for the radicals \nrepresenting $\\cosh 2x$ and $\\sinh 2x$).\n\nExpression \\eqref{logbron} \nprovides  the  endpoints of the two ``legs'' of the  ``Y''-shaped accumulation curve\n(as $\\varepsilon\\rightarrow 0$) for the points of the discrete spectrum  in the case $\\mu>\\mu^*$. In the case\n$0\\le \\mu\\le\\mu^*$, it gives the tip of the vertical segment on the imaginary axis where the points \nof the discrete spectrum accumulate.\n\n \n\n\\subsection{Double hump initial data}\\label{exam2}\n\nAnother example of an interesting  initial data is\n\\begin{equation}\\label{dhumpdata}\na(x)=\\tanh x,~b(x)={\\rm sech~} x-k{\\rm sech~}^2 x,~~~~k\\in [0,1],\n\\end{equation}\nwhich contains double hump cases. Indeed, if \n $k>\\frac{1}{2}$, then $b=u-ku^2$,\nwhere $u={\\rm sech~} x$, has a global maximum at $u=1\/2k\\in(0,1)$. So,\n$x=\\pm\\cosh^{-1}(2k)$ are two points of maximum of $b(x)$.\n\nThe points of ramification of the map \n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpdub}\n\\a(x)=\\tanh x+i( {\\rm sech~} x -k{\\rm sech~}^2 x)~~~~{\\rm with}~~~~\\a'(x)=\\frac{1-i\\sinh x +2ik\\tanh x}{\\cosh^2 x}\n\\end{equation}\nsatisfy equation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{alpdub'=0} \n1-i\\sinh x +2ik\\tanh x=0.\n\\end{equation}\nCoefficients of this equation are $2\\pi i$ periodic functions. The substitution\n$u=\\sinh x$ in \\eqref{alpdub'=0} yields a forth order polinomial equation in $u$.\nThus, there are no more than 4 ramification points of $\\a(x)$ within a horizontal \nstrip of width $2\\pi$ in the complex $x$-plane.\n\n\nSeparating real and imaginary parts of \\eqref{alpdub'=0}, we obtain the system\n\\begin{equation}\\label{rptsys}\n\\begin{cases}\n&\\frac{1}{2}\\sinh(2\\xi)\\cos(2\\eta)-2k\\sinh \\xi\\cos\\eta-\\sinh\\xi\\sin\\eta=0 \\cr\n&\\frac{1}{2}\\cosh(2\\xi)\\sin(2\\eta)-2k\\cosh\\xi\\sin\\eta+\\cosh \\xi\\cos\\eta=0, \\cr\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $x=\\xi+i\\eta$. The first equation in \\eqref{rptsys} has a common factor  $\\sinh \\xi$.\nSetting it zero, we obtain $\\xi=0$. Then the second equation \\eqref{rptsys} becomes\n $1+\\sin \\eta=2k\\tan \\eta$. Fig. \\ref{doubfg1}\nshows that this equation has one positive  solution $\\eta_3^*$ \nand one negative solution $\\eta^*_4$ on $(-\\pi,\\pi)$, where $0<\\eta^*_3<{\\pi\\over 2}$\nand $\\eta^*_4<-{\\pi\\over 2}$. We denote by $x_{3,4}^*$ the corresponding ramification points in\nthe complex $x$-plane.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{doubfg1.eps}}\n\\caption{Intersections of functions $1+\\sin\\eta$  and $2k\\tan\\eta$ and points $\\eta^*_{3,4}$.} \n\\label{doubfg1}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nConsidering $\\xi\\neq 0$, we rewrite the first equation in \\eqref{rptsys} as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{rptsys1}\n\\cosh\\xi\\cos(2\\eta)-2k\\cos\\eta-\\sin\\eta=0 ,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{chxi0}\n\\cosh\\xi=\\frac{\\sin\\eta+2k\\cos\\eta}{\\cos(2\\eta)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nSubstitution of \\eqref{chxi0} into the second equation of \\eqref{rptsys} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ch^2xi}\n\\cosh^2\\xi=\\frac{1}{2}\\frac{(4k^2-1)\\sin(2\\eta)-2k\\cos(2\\eta)+\\frac{1}{2}\\sin(2\\eta)\\cos(2\\eta)}{\\sin(2\\eta)\\cos(2\\eta)}~.\n\\end{equation}\nFrom \\eqref{chxi}-\\eqref{ch^2xi} after some algebra we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{cubic}\nu^3+4k^2u+4k=0,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $u=\\sin(2\\eta)$.\nEquation \\eqref{cubic} should yield the remaining two points of ramification. In the case $k=\\frac{1}{2}$\nequation \\eqref{cubic} becomes $(u+1)[u^2-u+2]=0$, which has the only real root $u=-1$.\nSubstituting the corresponding $\\eta=-\\frac{\\pi}{4}$ into the second equation of \\eqref{rptsys},\nwe obtain $\\cosh 2\\xi=2\\sqrt{2\\cosh\\xi}$, or $\\xi=\\pm\\cosh^{-1}\\left(1+\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}\\right)$.\nThus, for $k=\\frac{1}{2}$ we obtain the remaining ramification points\n\\begin{equation} \\label{xk=hf}\nx^*_{1,2}=\\pm\\cosh^{-1}\\left(1+\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}\\right)-\\frac{i\\pi}{4}~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nIt is clear that in the case of arbitrary $k\\ge 0$ equation \\eqref{cubic} has only one real solution.\nIndeed, if that is not the case, then \\eqref{cubic} would have a multiple real root for some\n$k>0$. But equation $m'(u)=3u^2+k^2=0$, where $m(u)= u^3+4k^2u+4k$ has no real roots, so there is a unique real root $u(k)$ of \\eqref{cubic}. Moreover, $u(k)\\in (0,-1]$, \nsince $m(0)>0$ and $m(-1)\\le 0$. Thus, $\\eta=\\frac{1}{2}\\sin^{-1}u(k)$ or $\\eta=-{\\pi\\over 2}-\\frac{1}{2}\\sin^{-1}u(k)$.\nSubstituting one of these values into \\eqref{chxi0} (the former if $k\\ge\\frac{1}{2}$ and the latter\nif $k\\le\\frac{1}{2}$), we find the real components of the two remaining points of ramification $x_{1,2}^*$.\nNote that ${\\rm Re~} x_1^*=-{\\rm Re~} x_2^*$.\n\nTo calculate the pre-images of $z=0$ of the map \\eqref{alpdub}, we set equation\n\\begin{equation}\\label{zeq}\nz\\cosh^2x=\\sinh x \\cosh x+i\\cosh x -ik~.\n\\end{equation}\nFor the same reasons as above, for every $z\\in\\overline{\\mathbb C^+}$ this equation has four roots\nin the strip $-\\pi<{\\rm Im~} x\\le \\pi$. Assuming $z\\in\\mathbb R$ and\nseparating real and imaginary parts of \\eqref{zeq}, we obtain \n\\begin{equation}\\label{zsys}\n\\begin{cases}\n&z(\\cosh(2\\xi)\\cos(2\\eta)+1)=\\sinh(2\\xi)\\cos(2\\eta)-2\\sinh\\xi\\sin\\eta\\cr\n&z(\\sinh(2\\xi)\\sin(2\\eta)=\\cosh(2\\xi)\\sin(2\\eta)+2\\cosh\\xi\\cos\\eta-2k~.\n\\end{cases}\n\\end{equation}\nIf $z=0$ then the first equation yields: 1) $\\sinh\\xi=0$, or; 2)\n\\begin{equation}\\label{z=02}\n\\cosh\\xi\\cos(2\\eta)=\\sin\\eta\n\\end{equation} \nSubstituting $\\xi=0$ in the second equation \\eqref{zsys} yields\n\\begin{equation}\\label{z=0im}\n\\cos\\eta(1+\\sin\\eta)=k,\n\\end{equation}\nwhich has exactly one positive and one negative root on $(-{\\pi\\over 2},{\\pi\\over 2})$.\nThe latter root is denoted $x(0)$, see Fig. \\ref{doubfg2}\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{doubfg2.eps}}\n\\caption{The graph of $\\frac{1+\\sin\\eta}{\\cos\\eta}-\\frac{k}{\\cos^2\\eta}$.} \n\\label{doubfg2}\n\\end{figure}\n\nTo analize the remaining roots of \\eqref{zeq} with $z=0$, we  substitute \n\\begin{equation}\\label{chxi}\n\\cosh\\xi=\\frac{\\sin\\eta}{\\cos 2\\eta}\n\\end{equation}\ninto the second equation \\eqref{zsys} with $z=0$. After some algebra, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{z0comp}\n\\sin^32\\eta+2k\\sin^22\\eta-2k=0~.\n\\end{equation}\nIntroducing $u=\\sin2\\eta$, we can rewrite \\eqref{z0comp} as\n\\begin{equation}\\label{m(u)}\nm(u)=u^3+2ku^2-2k=0~.\n\\end{equation}\nIt is easy to see  that $m(u)$ has a real root $u(k)\\in[0,1)$. Let us show that\n$m(u)$ has only one real root. Indeed, $m'(u)=(3u+4k)u$. So, critical points\nof $m(u)$ are $u_1=-\\frac{4k}{3}$ and $u_2=0$. It is clear that $u_1$ is a local \nmaximum, $u_2$ is a local minimum and $m(u_2)<0$. Since \n$m(u_1)=\\left( \\frac{32}{27}k^2-2\\right)k\\le 0$ for all $k\\in[0,1]$,\nwe conclude that  $m(u)$ has a unique real root $u(k)$ and $u(k)\\in[0,1)$.\n\n\\begin{figure}\n\\centerline{\n\\includegraphics[height=5cm]{calBdoub.eps}}\n\\caption{The image $\\mathcal C$ and the domain $\\mathcal B$ of the map $z=\\a(x)$, where $\\a(x)$ is defined by \\eqref{alpdub}.\nRamification  points $x^*_i$, $i=1,2,3,4$ in the $x$-plane  and the  corresponding log points in $\\mathcal C$  are marked\nby ``crosses\".  Vertical cuts in $\\mathcal C$  and their   pre-images  in $\\mathcal B$ are shown by dashed lines.  Round brackets\nin the $x$-plane are used to denote pre-images of points. The region $\\mathcal C$ consists of the upper $z$-halfplane with\nthree cuts.  The upper boundary of $\\mathcal B$ consists of two curves, connecting the pre-images of $\\pm 1$ with ${i\\pi\\over 2}$\n(pre-images of $z>1$ and $z<-1$ respectively), and the closed dashed curve (the pre-image of the cut from $\\a(x_3^*)$\nto $i\\infty$).  The lower boundary of $\\mathcal B$ consists of two dashed curves that contain points $x_1^*, x_2^*$\n(pre-images of verical cuts in ${\\cal E}^+$),   the curve that connects them and passes through $x(0)$, and curves\nconnecting the dashed curves with $\\pm \\infty$ (the latter three curves form a pre-image ob the interval $(-1,1)$).}\n\n\n\\label{calBdoub}\n\\end{figure}\n\nThus, we obtain $\\sin 2\\eta\\in [0,1)$, which means $2\\eta\\in [0,\\pi]$ or \n$2\\eta[-2\\pi,-\\pi]$. That means $\\eta\\in [0,{\\pi\\over 2}]$ or $\\eta\\in[-\\pi,-{\\pi\\over 2}]$.\nHowever, according to \\eqref{chxi}, we have a restriction\n\\begin{equation}\\label{ch>1}\n\\frac{\\sin\\eta}{\\cos 2\\eta}\\ge 1, \n\\end{equation}\nwhich imply that \n\\begin{equation}\\label{sinetaineq}\n\\sin \\eta<-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}~~~~~{\\rm or}~~~~~ \\frac{1}{2}\\le \\sin \\eta <\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}~.\n\\end{equation}\nCombining \\eqref{sinetaineq} with the above restrictions on $\\eta$, we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\\label{etaineq}\n -\\frac{3\\pi}{4}<\\eta <-\\frac{\\pi}{4}~~~~~{\\rm or}~~~~~\\frac{\\pi}{6}\\le\\eta<\\frac{\\pi}{4}.\n\\end{equation}\nHowever, we will show that latter option is not possible. Indeed, implicitly\ndifferentiating  \\eqref{m(u)}, we obtain \n$$\\frac{du}{dk}=\\frac{2(1-u^2)}{(3u+4k)u}>0$$\nfor any $u\\in(0,1)$. Thus, the root $u(k)$ is monotonically increasing.\nSubstituting $u(k)=\\sin 2\\eta=\\sin\\frac{\\pi}{3}$ into \\eqref{m(u)},\nwe obtain the corresponding $k=\\frac{3\\sqrt{3}}{4}>1$. Thus, for all $k\\in[0,1]$,\nthe corresponding $u(k)<\\frac{\\sqrt{3}}{2}$, so that \\eqref{ch>1} cannot be satisfies \nfor the corresponding $\\eta$.\n\nThus, we proved that for any $k\\in[0,1]$ \nthere exists a unique $\\eta$ and unique $\\cosh\\xi$,\nconnected through \\eqref{chxi}, that satisfy \\eqref{zsys}. Moreover,\nsuch $\\eta\\in\\left( -\\frac{3\\pi}{4},-\\frac{\\pi}{4}\\right) $.  Thus, we proved\nexistence of the second pair of roots of $\\a(x)=0$ located in the strip\n$ -\\frac{3\\pi}{4}<{\\rm Im~} x<-\\frac{\\pi}{4}$ and symmetrical with respect\nto the imaginary axis. \n\nObtained information allows us to sketch the domain $\\mathcal B$\nfor the map \\eqref{dhumpdata}, see Fig. \\ref{calBdoub}.\nCalculation of $w(z)$ and of the jumps $\\Delta f_0(z)$ over the branchcuts is not\nincluded into this paper. \n\n\n\n\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\\section{Introduction}\n\n\nAn ultimate theory of cosmological inflation should be based on quantum gravity and is yet to be constructed. This is related to another open problem of finding an {\\it ultraviolet} (UV) completion of any phenomenologically viable inflationary model. Amongst the most successful and popular inflationary models, Starobinsky inflationary model of $(R+R^2)$ gravity \\cite{Starobinsky:1980te} is special because it is entirely based on gravitational interactions. This model is, however, non-renormalizable and has the UV-cutoff given by Planck scale. In addition, when extrapolating the $(R+R^2)$ gravity beyond the inflationary scale of about $10^{13}$ GeV, i.e. when going to the very large curvature regime, we are left with the scale-invariant $R^2$ gravity. The original motivation  in \\cite{Starobinsky:1980te} was to get rid of the initial singularity of Einstein-Friedmann gravity, in addition to describing inflation in the early Universe. However, demanding the asymptotical scale invariance at very high energies is clearly not the only option. Hence, is still the open question: what should we expect beyond Starobinsky inflation? \n\nTo address this question at least partially, one needs a motivated extension of the $(R+R^2)$ gravity in a specific framework. In this paper, we address the issue in four-dimensional $N=1$ supergravity. The importance of the inflationary model building in supergravity stems from the natural objective to unify gravity with particle physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles and beyond the Standard ($\\Lambda$CDM) Model of cosmology, see e.g., \\cite{Yamaguchi:2011kg,Ketov:2012yz} for a review.\n\nThough supergravity can be considered as the low-energy effective theory of (compactified) superstrings, and the latter can be viewed as a consistent theory of quantum gravity, we obviously need more specific assumptions.\n\nOur additional specific assumptions in this paper are the following:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item Starobinsky inflationary model  should be embedded into a four-dimensional $N=1$ supergravity, with linearly realized (manifest) local supersymmetry,\n\\item inflaton (scalaron) should belong to a massive $N=1$ vector supermultiplet,\n\\item the kinetic terms of the vector supermultiplet should have the Born-Infeld (or Dirac-Born-Infeld) structure, inspired by superstrings and D-branes.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThis leads to the specific (modified) $F(R)$ gravity model, whose peculiar structure is in the focus of our investigation in this paper.\n\nOur paper is organized as follows. In Sec. 2 we outline Born-Infeld (BI) non-linear electrodynamics and the supergravity theory with the BI structure. In Sec. 3 we review the Starobinsky inflationary model. In Sec. 4 we study in detail the  $F(R)$ gravity extension of the $(R+R^2)$ gravity, originating from the  supergravity theory. In Sec.~5 we present the dual description of the same $F(R)$ gravity in terms of the scalar-tensor gravity. Our Conclusion is Sec.~6. In Appendix we formulate the full supergravity theory in terms of superfields in curved superspace.\n\n\n\\section{Born-Infeld structure in gravity and supergravity}\n\nBorn-Infeld (BI) Lagrangian was originally introduced \\cite{Born:1934gh} as a non-linear generalization of the Lagrangian of Maxwell electrodynamics in terms of the abelian field strength \n$F_{\\mu\\nu}=\\pa_{\\mu}A_{\\nu} -\\pa_{\\nu}A_{\\mu}$,\n\\begin{equation} \\label{bi} \nL_{\\rm BI} = -b^{-2}\\left[ \\sqrt{-\\det\\left(\\eta_{\\mu\\nu}+\\frac{b}{e}F_{\\mu\\nu}\\right)} -1\\,\\right]=\n-\\fracmm{1}{4e^2}F^{\\mu\\nu}F_{\\mu\\nu} + {\\cal O}(F^4)~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced the dimensional (BI) coupling constant $b=M^{-2}_{\\rm BI}$ and\nthe gauge (dimensionless) coupling constant $e$. Being {\\it minimally} coupled to gravity, the BI action reads\n\\begin{equation} \\label{big} \nS_{\\rm BI} = b^{-2}\\int d^4x\\,\\left[ \\sqrt{-g} - \\sqrt{-\\det\\left(g_{\\mu\\nu}+\\frac{b}{e}F_{\\mu\\nu}\\right)} \\,\\right]~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThis BI structure also arises (i) in the bosonic part of the open superstring effective action \\cite{Fradkin:1985qd}, (ii) as part of Dirac-Born-Infeld effective action of a D3-brane \\cite{Leigh:1989jq}, and (iii) as part of Maxwell-Goldstone action describing partial supersymmetry breaking of $N=2$ supersymmetry to $N=1$ supersymmetry \\cite{Bagger:1996wp,Rocek:1997hi}. In string theory, $b=2\\pi\\alpha'$, while the BI scale $M_{\\rm BI}$ does not have to coincide with $M_{\\rm Pl}$.~\\footnote{See also  \\cite{Ketov:2001dq,Ketov:1996bm} for more about special properties of the BI action and its supersymmetric extensions.}\n\nIn $N=1$ supersymmetry and supergravity, a vector field belongs to an $N=1$ vector multiplet, whose\nsupergravity couplings are naturally (off-shell) described in superconformal tensor calculus \\cite{Freedman:2012zz} and in curved superspace \\cite{Wess:1992cp}. A {\\it massive} $N=1$ vector multiplet has a single (real) scalar field amongst its bosonic field components, in addition to a massive vector field. In this paper, we identify this real scalar with inflaton, and unify it with the massive vector field whose kinetic terms are assumed to have the BI structure in $N=1$ supergravity (we\ndo not assume any relation between our massive vector field and electromagnetic field). \n\nThe full action of the self-interacting massive vector multiplet with the BI structure in supergravity is very complicated: it was found by using the superconformal tensor calculus in \n\\cite{Abe:2015fha}, and we present this action in Appendix, by using superfields in curved superspace.~\\footnote{See also \\cite{Aldabergenov:2016dcu,Aldabergenov:2017bjt,Addazi:2017ulg} for related papers.}  In particular, local supersymmetry (SUSY) is spontaneously broken in this theory (after inflation also), while goldstino is identified with a massive \"photino\" in the same vector multiplet with inflaton. \n \n For our purposes in this paper, it is enough to notice that in the dual (modified supergravity) picture the BI structure just leads to the presence of the contribution $12R^2\/(e^2M^4_{\\rm BI})$  under the square root of the BI term, in addition to the $F_{\\mu\\nu}$-dependent terms there. When ignoring all other interactions besides the modified gravity itself (i.e. keeping only the $R$-dependent terms),  it gives rise to the following  $F(R)$ gravity model (see Ref.~\\cite{Abe:2015fha} and Appendix):\n\\begin{equation} \\label{mgr}\nS = \\int d^4x \\sqrt{-g}\\left[ \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2} R + \\fracmm{M^4_{\\rm BI}}{3} \\left(\n \\sqrt{ 1 + \\fracmm{12R^2}{e^2M^4_{\\rm BI}} } -1\\right)\\,\\right]~~. \n\\end{equation}\n\nIt is this modified gravity theory that is the main subject of our investigation in this paper. It is worth\nnoticing that it does {\\it not\\\/} imply the upper bound on the values of $R$, unlike the original BI theory \n(\\ref{bi}) that limits the maximal values of the gauge field strength components.\n\nIt is worth noticing here that the idea of finding a \"BI-extension\" of Einstein gravity is old but still popular, although it lacks a good definition and guiding principles, see e.g., \\cite{BeltranJimenez:2017doy} for classification of many such extensions in gravitational theory, and \\cite{Kruglov:2014gva} for other proposals to an $F(R)$ gravity function\nof the BI-type.\n\nA \"BI-extension\" of $N=1$ supergravity is more restrictive, but it suffers similar problems, see e.g., \\cite{Gates:2001ff} for some specific proposals of BI supergravity in curved superspace. Equation (\\ref{mgr}) is just the specific extension of Starobinsky $(R+R^2)$ gravity in the framework of $F(R)$ gravity derived  from supergravity and inspired by string theory. It is directly related to the BI action (\\ref{bi}) that arises together with the $F(R)$ gravity (\\ref{mgr}) in the same supergravity theory having the BI structure.\n\nIt is also worth mentioning that Starobinsky inflation is equivalent to the so-called Higgs inflation in gravity and supergravity, because both lead to the same inflationary observables \\cite{Ketov:2012jt}.\n\n\\section{Starobinsky inflation and $F(R)$ gravity}\n\nStarobinsky model of inflation is defined by the action \\cite{Starobinsky:1980te}\n \\begin{equation} \\label{star}\nS_{\\rm Star.} = \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\int \\mathrm{d}^4x\\sqrt{-g} \\left( R +\\fracmm{1}{6m^2}R^2\\right)~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced the reduced Planck mass $M_{\\rm Pl}=1\/\\sqrt{8\\pi G_{\\rm N}}\\approx\n2.4\\times 10^{18}$ GeV, and the scalaron (inflaton) mass $m$ as the only parameter. We use the\nspacetime signature $(-,+,+,+,)$. The $(R+R^2)$ gravity model (\\ref{star}) can be considered as the simplest extension of the standard Einstein-Hilbert action in the context of (modified) $F(R)$ gravity theories with an action\n \\begin{equation} \\label{fg}\nS_F = \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\int \\mathrm{d}^4x\\sqrt{-g} \\, F(R)~,\n\\end{equation}\nin terms of the function $F(R)$ of the scalar curvature $R$.\n\nThe $F(R)$ gravity action (\\ref{fg}) is classically equivalent to \n\\begin{equation} \\label{eq}\n S[g_{\\mu\\nu},\\chi] = \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2} \\int d^{4}x \\sqrt{- g}~ \\left[ F'(\\chi) (R - \\chi) + F(\\chi) \\right]\n\\end{equation}\nwith the real scalar field $\\chi$, provided that $F''\\neq 0$ that we always assume.  Here the\nprimes denote the derivatives with respect to the argument. The equivalence is easy to verify because the $\\chi$-field equation implies $\\chi=R$. In turn, the factor $F'$ in front of the $R$ in (\\ref{eq}) can be (generically) eliminated by a Weyl transformation of metric $g_{\\mu\\nu}$, that transforms the action (\\ref{eq}) into the action of the scalar field   $\\chi$ minimally coupled to Einstein gravity and having the scalar potential \n\\begin{equation} \\label{spot}\n V =      \\left(\\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\right)       \\fracmm{\\chi F'(\\chi) - F(\\chi)}{F'(\\chi)^{2}}~~.\n\\end{equation}\nDifferentiating this scalar potential yields\n\\begin{equation} \\label{diffp}\n\\frac{dV}{d\\chi} =  \\left(\\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\right)    \n\\fracmm{F''(\\chi)\\left[2F(\\chi) - \\chi F'(\\chi)\\right]}{ (F'(\\chi))^{3}}~~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe kinetic term of $\\chi$ becomes canonically normalized after the field redefinition $\\chi(\\varphi)$ as\n\\begin{equation} \\label{fred}\n  F'(\\chi) =  \\exp \\left(  \\sqrt{\\frac{2}{3}} \\varphi\/M_{\\rm Pl} \\right)~,\\quad\n  \\varphi =  \\fracmm{\\sqrt{3}M_{\\rm Pl}}{\\sqrt{2}}\\ln F'(\\chi) ~~,\n\\end{equation}\nin terms of the canonical inflaton field $\\varphi$, with the total acton\n\\begin{equation} \\label{quint}\nS_{\\rm quintessence}[g_{\\mu\\nu},\\varphi]  = \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\int \\mathrm{d}^4x\\sqrt{-g} R \n - \\int \\mathrm{d}^4x \\sqrt{-g} \\left[ \\frac{1}{2}g^{\\mu\\nu}\\pa_{\\mu}\\varphi\\pa_{\\nu}\\varphi\n + V(\\varphi)\\right]~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe classical and quantum stability conditions of $F(R)$ gravity theory are given by \n\\cite{Ketov:2012yz}\n\\begin{equation} \\label{stab}\n F'(R) > 0 \\quad {\\rm and} \\quad F''(R) > 0~,\n\\end{equation}\nand they are obviously satisfied for Starobinsky model (\\ref{star}) for $R>0$.\n\nDifferentiating the scalar potential $V$ in Eq.~(\\ref{spot}) with respect to $\\varphi$ yields \n\\begin{equation} \\label{diff1}\n    \\frac{d V}{d \\varphi}   = \\frac{d V}{d \\chi} \\frac{d \\chi}{d \\varphi} \n      = \\frac{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2} \\left[ \\frac{\\chi F'' + F' - F'}{F'^{2}} - 2 \\frac{\\chi F' - F}{F'^{3}} F'' \\right] \n\\frac{d \\chi}{d \\varphi}~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have\n\\begin{equation} \\label{diff2}\n  \\frac{d \\chi}{d \\varphi}\n    = \\frac{d \\chi}{d F'} \\frac{ d F'}{d \\varphi}\n    = \\frac{d F'}{d \\varphi} \\left\/ \\frac{d F'}{d\\chi} \\right.\n    = \\fracmm{\\sqrt{2}}{\\sqrt{3}M_{\\rm Pl}}  \\frac{F'}{F''}~~.\n\\end{equation}\nThis implies\n\\begin{equation} \\label{derv}\n  \\frac{d V}{d \\varphi} = M_{\\rm Pl}\\frac{2F-\\chi F'}{\\sqrt{6}  F'^{2}}~~.\n\\end{equation}\nCombining Eqs.~(\\ref{spot}) and (\\ref{derv})  yields $R$ and $F$ in terms of the scalar potential $V$,\n\\begin{align} \\label{inv}\n  & R = \\left[  \\fracmm{\\sqrt{6}}{M_{\\rm Pl}}\n    \\frac{d V}{d \\varphi} + \\fracmm{4V}{M^2_{\\rm Pl}} \\right] \\exp \\left(  \\sqrt{\\frac{2}{3}} \n  \\varphi\/M_{\\rm Pl} \\right),  \\\\\n  & F= \\left[  \\fracmm{\\sqrt{6}}{M_{\\rm Pl}}\n \\frac{d V}{d \\varphi} + \\fracmm{2V}{M^2_{\\rm Pl}} \\right] \\exp \\left(  2 \\sqrt{\\frac{2}{3}} \\varphi\/M_{\\rm Pl}\\right).\n\\end{align}\nThese equations define the function $F(R)$ in the parametric form, in terms of a scalar potential $V(\\varphi)$, i.e. the {\\it inverse} transformation to (\\ref{spot}). This is known as the classical equivalence (duality) between the $F(R)$ gravity theories (\\ref{fg}) and the scalar-tensor (quintessence) theories of gravity (\\ref{quint}).\n\nIn the case of Starobinsky model (\\ref{star}), one gets the famous potential\n\\begin{equation} \\label{starp}\nV(\\varphi) = \\fracmm{3}{4} M^2_{\\rm Pl}m^2\\left[ 1- \\exp\\left(-\\sqrt{\\frac{2}{3}}\\varphi\/M_{\\rm Pl}\\right)\\right]^2~.\n\\end{equation}\nThis scalar potential is bounded from below (non-negative and stable), and it has the absolute  minimum at \n$\\varphi=0$  corresponding to  a Minkowski vacuum. The scalar potential (\\ref{starp}) also has a {\\it plateau} of positive height (related to inflationary energy density), that gives rise to slow roll of inflaton in the inflationary era.\n The Starobinsky model (\\ref{star}) is the particular case of the so-called $\\alpha$-attractor inflationary models \\cite{Galante:2014ifa}, and is also a member of the close family of viable inflationary models of $F(R)$ gravity, originating from higher dimensions \\cite{Nakada:2017uka}.\n\nA duration of inflation is measured in the slow roll approximation by the e-foldings number\n\\begin{equation} \\label{efold}\nN_e\\approx  \\fracmm{1}{M^2_{\\rm Pl}} \\int_{\\varphi_{\\rm end}}^{\\varphi_{*}} \\fracmm{V}{V'}d\\varphi~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\varphi_{*}$ is the inflaton value at the reference scale (horizon crossing), and $\\varphi_{\\rm end}$ is the\ninflaton value at the end of inflation when one of the slow roll parameters\n\\begin{equation} \\label{slowp}\n\\varepsilon_V(\\varphi) = \\fracmm{M^2_{\\rm Pl}}{2}\\left( \\fracmm{V'}{V}\\right)^2 \\quad {\\rm and} \\quad \n\\eta_V(\\varphi) = M^2_{\\rm Pl} \\left( \\fracmm{V''}{V}\\right)~~,\n\\end{equation}\nis no longer small (close to 1).\n\nThe amplitude of scalar perturbations at horizon crossing is given by \\cite{Ellis:2015pla}\n\\begin{equation} \\label{amp}\nA = \\fracmm{V_*^3}{12\\pi^2 M^6_{\\rm Pl}({V_*}')^2}=\\fracmm{3m^2}{8\\pi^2M^2_{\\rm Pl}}\\sinh^4\\left(\n\\fracmm{\\varphi_*}{\\sqrt{6}M_{\\rm Pl}}\\right)~~.\n\\end{equation}\n\nThe Starobinsky model  (\\ref{star}) is the excellent model of cosmological inflation, in very good agreement with the Planck data \\cite{Ade:2015xua,Ade:2015lrj,Array:2015xqh}. The Planck satellite mission measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation \\cite{Ade:2015xua,Ade:2015lrj,Array:2015xqh}\ngive the scalar perturbations tilt as $n_s\\approx 1+2\\eta_V -6\\varepsilon_V\\approx 0.968\\pm 0.006$ and restrict the \ntensor-to-scalar ratio as $r\\approx 16\\varepsilon_V < 0.08$. The Starobinsky inflation yields $r\\approx 12\/N_e^2\\approx 0.004$ and $n_s\\approx 1- 2\/N_e$, where $N_e$ is the e-foldings number between 50 and 60, with the best fit at $N_e\\approx 55$ \\cite{Mukhanov:1981xt,Kaneda:2010ut}.\n\nThe Starobinsky model (\\ref{star}) is geometrical (based on gravity only), while its (mass) parameter $m$ is fixed by the \nobserved CMB amplitude (COBE, WMAP) as \n\\begin{equation} \\label{starm}\nm\\approx 3 \\cdot10^{13}~{\\rm GeV} \\quad {\\rm or}\\quad \\fracmm{m}{M_{\\rm Pl}}\\approx 1.3\\cdot 10^{-5}~.\n\\end{equation}\nA numerical analysis of (\\ref{efold}) with the potential (\\ref{starp}) yields \\cite{Ellis:2015pla}\n\\begin{equation}\\label{sandf}\n\\sqrt{\\fracmm{2}{3}} \\varphi_*\/M_{\\rm Pl} \\approx \\ln\\left( \\fracmm{4}{3}N_e\\right) \\approx 5.5\\quad {\\rm and}\n\\quad \\sqrt{\\fracmm{2}{3}} \\varphi_{\\rm end}\/M_{\\rm Pl} \\approx \\ln\\left[ \\fracmm{2}{11}(4+3\\sqrt{3})\\right]\\approx 0.5~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have used $N_e\\approx 55$.\n\n\\section{BI-modified Starobinsky model}\n\nIn accordance to (\\ref{fg}), the modified gravity theory (\\ref{mgr}) has \n\\begin{equation} \\label{mgrf}\nF(R) = R  + \\fracmm{2g^2}{3\\beta}\\left( \\sqrt{1+12\\beta R^2} -1\\right)~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced the parameters $g=1\/(eM_{\\rm Pl})$ and $\\beta=1\/(e^2M^4_{\\rm BI})$. In\nthis parametrization, our $F$-function (\\ref{mgrf}) exactly agrees with Eq.~(37) of Ref.~\\cite{Abe:2015fha}.\n\nWhen assuming $12\\beta R^2\\ll 1$, the function (\\ref{mgrf}) gives rise to the $(R+R^2)$ gravity model of\nStarobinsky in (\\ref{star}), as it should. It allows us to identify\n\\begin{equation} \\label{eg}\ng^2=\\fracmm{1}{24m^2}\\quad {\\rm and} \\quad e^2=24\\left(\\fracmm{m}{M_{\\rm Pl}}\\right)^2\\approx\n4\\cdot 10^{-9}~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have used (\\ref{starm}). In terms of the dimensionless quantities\n$\\tilde{F} =F\/M^2_{\\rm Pl}$ and $\\tilde{R} = R\/M^2_{\\rm Pl}$, and the dimensionless parameters \n\\begin{equation} \\label{dsp}\n\\alpha = \\fracmm{M_{\\rm BI}}{M_{\\rm Pl}}\\quad {\\rm and} \\quad \\tilde{\\gamma}=e\\alpha^2~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwe have the dimensionless function\n\\begin{equation} \\label{dsfg}\n\\tilde{F}(\\tilde{R})= \\tilde{R} + \\fracmm{2}{3}\\alpha^4  \\left( \\sqrt{1+12\\tilde{R}^2\/\\tilde{\\gamma}^2} -1\\right)\n\\end{equation}\n\nA global shape of this function is given in Fig.~1.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\begin{center}\n\\vspace{1cm}\n\\includegraphics[width=15cm,height=10cm]{F.pdf}\n\\caption{the profile of the $F(R)$ gravity function (\\ref{mgrf}) for $\\alpha=1$ and \n $\\tilde{\\gamma}^{-2}=10^{5}$. This value of the parameter $\\tilde{\\gamma}$ is only chosen to demonstrate the global shape of the function.} \\label{fig:1}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\nThe physical conditions imply the range $\\tilde{R}\\in [-1,1]$ (i.e. up to the UV-cutoff) and  $\\alpha\\in [0.01,1]$ (i.e. between the Grand Unification scale and Planck scale), so that $\\tilde{\\gamma}\\in 6.3\\cdot[10^{-7},10^{-5}]$. The Starobinsky inflation takes place for $0<\\tilde{R}\\ll \\tilde{\\gamma}$.\n\n\\newpage\n\nThe function (\\ref{mgrf}) is well defined for {\\it any} values of $R$, and implies three physical regimes:\n\\begin{itemize}\n\\item the small curvature regime, where gravity is described by the standard Einstein-Hilbert action,\n\\item the inflationary regime, where gravity is described by Starobinsky $(R+R^2)$ action (\\ref{star}),\n\\item the high curvature regime, where gravity is again described by the Einstein-Hilbert action,\nthough with the different (larger) effective Planck scale $M_{\\rm Pl, effective}=M_{\\rm Pl}\n\\left(1+4g^2\/\\sqrt{3\\beta}\\right)^{1\/2}\\leq 189M_{\\rm Pl}$ for large positive values of $R$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nStatic solutions to the $F(R)$ gravity field equations with $R = const.\\equiv R_0$ follow from our\nequations (\\ref{diffp}) and (\\ref{derv}), and are given by solutions to the algebraic equation \\cite{Barrow:1983rx}\n\\begin{equation} \\label{stat}\nRF'(R)=2F(R)~~,\n\\end{equation}\nIn our case (\\ref{mgrf}), with\n\\begin{equation}\nF'(R)=1+\\frac{8g^2R}{\\sqrt{1+12\\beta R^2}} >0 \\quad {\\rm for}\\quad R\\geq 0~,\n\\label{3}\n\\end{equation}\nwe find\n\\begin{equation}\n\\frac{8g^2R^2_0}{\\sqrt{1+12\\beta R_0^2}}=R_0+\\frac{4g^2}{3\\beta}\\left(\\sqrt{1+12\\beta R_0^2}-1\\right)\n\\label{4}\n\\end{equation}\nthat gives rise to the condition\n\\begin{equation}\nR_0\\left[4(16g^4-3\\beta)R_0^3+32g^2R_0^2-R_0+\\frac{8g^2}{3\\beta} \\right]=0.\n\\label{5}\n\\end{equation}\n\nBesides the trivial solution $R_0=0$ corresponding to a stable Minkowski vacuum, any other real positive solution ($R_0>0$) must obey the cubic  equation\n\\begin{equation}\naR_0^3+bR_0^2+cR_0+d=0,\n\\label{6}\n\\end{equation}\nwhose coefficients are $a=4(16g^4-3\\beta)$, $b=32g^2$, $c=-1$ and $d=8g^2\/(3\\beta)$. By using\nthe standard replacement\n\\begin{equation}\ny=R_0+\\frac{b}{3a}~~,\n\\label{7}\n\\end{equation}\nwe can bring (\\ref{6}) to the canonical form\n\\begin{equation}\ny^3+3py+2q=0,\n\\label{8}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have \n\\begin{equation}\n2q = \\frac{2b^3}{27a^3}-\\frac{bc}{3a^2}+\\frac{d}{a}=\\frac{ 4g^2( 1152g^8 -104g^4\\beta +27\\beta^2)}{27\\beta (16g^4-3\\beta)^3}~~,\n\\label{9}\n\\end{equation}\nand\n\\begin{equation}\n3p=\\frac{3ac-b^2}{3a^2}=\\frac{9\\beta-304g^4}{12(16g^4-3\\beta)^2}~.\n\\label{10}\n\\end{equation}\nThe number of real solutions depends upon the sign of the cubic discriminant $D=q^2+p^3$ that in our case reads \n\\begin{equation}\nD = \\frac{(144g^4 +\\beta)(32g^4+3\\beta)^2}{5184 \\beta^2 (16g^4-3\\beta)^4}~~.\n\\label{11}\n\\end{equation}\nSince $D>0$, there is only one real solution. Our numerical studies show that this root $R_0$ \n is negative (e.g., with $\\alpha=1$ we find $R_0\\approx - 10^{-7}M_{\\rm Pl}^2$).\n\nThe second derivative of the $F(R)$ gravity function (\\ref{mgrf}) \n \\begin{equation} \\label{16}\nF''(R)=\\frac{8g^2}{(1+12\\beta R^2)^{3\/2}} >0\n\\end{equation}\ncan be compared to the laboratory bound of E\\\"ot-Wash experiment \\cite{Kapner:2006si} :\n$F''(0)\\leq 2\\times 10^{-6}$ cm$^2$ or\n \\begin{equation}\ng< 0.5\\times10^{-3}\\mbox{cm}^2,\n\\label{17}\n\\end{equation}\nthat is well satisfied because of (\\ref{starm}) and (\\ref{eg}).\n\n\\section{Scalar-tensor gravity and inflaton scalar potential}\n\nIt is instructive to study the same gravitational model (\\ref{mgr}) in the dual (scalar-tensor gravity) picture\ndefined by (\\ref{spot}), (\\ref{fred}) and (\\ref{quint}). The classical equivalence (duality) between the $F(R)$ gravity\ntheories and their scalar-tensor gravity (or quintessence) counterparts is well known, see e.g., \\cite{mf}.\n\nOur equation (\\ref{fred}) implies\n\\begin{equation} \\label{rphi}\n\\fracmm{\\tilde{R}}{\\tilde{\\gamma}} =\n\\fracmm{\\frac{1}{2}\\tilde{\\gamma}\\left(1-e^{-\\sqrt{2\/3}\\tilde{\\varphi}}\\right)}{ \\sqrt{\n16\\alpha^2 -3\\tilde{\\gamma}^2\\left( 1-e^{-\\sqrt{2\/3}\\tilde{\\varphi}}\\right)^2}}~~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced the dimensionless inflaton field $\\tilde{\\varphi}=\\varphi\/M_{\\rm Pl}$. Actually, (\\ref{fred})\ndetermines $R^2$ as the function of $\\varphi$, and our sign choice in (\\ref{rphi}) comes from demanding\na plateau of the scalar potential at positive values of $R$.\n\nIn turn, our equation (\\ref{spot}) yields\n\\begin{equation} \\label{scalarp}\n\\tilde{V}= \\fracmm{\\alpha^4}{3}\\sqrt{ 1+12\\tilde{R}^2\/\\tilde{\\gamma}^2}\\,\n\\fracmm{\\sqrt{1+12\\tilde{R}^2\/\\tilde{\\gamma}^2}-1}{\\left( 8\\alpha^4\\tilde{\\gamma}^{-1}(\\tilde{R}\/\\tilde{\\gamma})+\n\\sqrt{1+12\\tilde{R}^2\/\\tilde{\\gamma}^2}\\right)^2}~~~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have introduced the dimensionless scalar potential $\\tilde{V}=V\/M^4_{\\rm Pl}$. The scalar potential $\\tilde{V}(\\tilde{\\varphi})$ is obtained via a substitution of (\\ref{rphi}) into (\\ref{scalarp}), while\nthe value of the parameter $\\tilde{\\gamma}$, according to Sections 3 and 4, is given by \n$\\tilde{\\gamma}\\approx 6.3\\cdot 10^{-5}\\alpha^2$.\n\nA profile of the scalar potential is given in Fig.~2.\n\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n\\begin{center}\n\\vspace{1cm}\n\\includegraphics[width=15cm,height=8cm]{V.pdf}\n\\caption{the profile of the $V(\\varphi)$ function (\\ref{scalarp}) for $\\alpha=1$ and $\\tilde{\\gamma}=6.3\\cdot \n 10^{-5}$. This function is {\\it not} well defined for all values of $\\tilde{\\varphi}$. It reproduces the inflationary potential (\\ref{starp}) for the relevant values of $\\tilde{\\varphi}$ (Sec.~3). The infinite maximum occurs at  $\\tilde{\\varphi}\\approx -0.6$ that corresponds to $\\tilde{R}\\approx -5\\cdot 10^{-10}$. The only anti-de-Sitter minimum occurs at $\\tilde{\\varphi}\\approx -6.5$ that corresponds to the root $\\tilde{R}_0\\approx -10^{-7}$ found in Sec.~4. The wall on the left-hand-side, where  $V$ sharply goes up to infinity, appears at $\\tilde{\\varphi}\\approx -9$. } \\label{fig:2}\n\\end{center}\n\\end{figure}\n\nAs expected, the scalar potential $V(\\varphi)$ has {\\it a plateau} for positive values of $\\varphi$ and $R$, which corresponds to Starobinsky inflation (Sec.~3). As is clear from (\\ref{rphi}), the higher the values of $\\varphi$ and $R$ are, the closer the potential $V(\\varphi)$ to the Starobinsky potential (\\ref{starp}) with $V_{\\rm max.}=\\fracmm{3}{4}m^2M_{\\rm Pl}^2$ is. Hence, the BI structure does not play a significant role for positive values of $\\varphi$ and $R$.\n\n\nWhen formally sending $\\varphi\\to +\\infty$ in (\\ref{rphi}),  we get $\\tilde{R}_{\\rm max.}=\\fracmm{\\tilde{\\gamma}^2}{2\\sqrt{16\\alpha^2-\n3\\tilde{\\gamma}^2}}>0$. The scalar-tensor gravity description does {\\it not} exist for $\\tilde{R}>\\tilde{R}_{\\rm max.}$, whereas the\n$\\tilde{F}(\\tilde{R})$ gravity description (\\ref{dsfg}) is well defined there. This is an explicit example of {\\it breaking} \nthe naive equivalence between the two dual descriptions.\n\n\nThough the scalar potential  $V(\\varphi)$ {\\it cannot} be trusted for large {\\it negative} values of\n $\\varphi$ and $R$, because of intense particle production (reheating) starting near the absolute minimum of the scalar potential, it is instructive to illustrate two more {\\it breaking patterns} of the naive equivalence between $F(R)$ gravity theories and  scalar-tensor gravity theories in our specific example. \n\nFirst, we observe the {\\it infinite} maximum of the scalar potential in Fig.~2. It happens when the expression under the root in the denominator of (\\ref{scalarp}) vanishes,  that corresponds to zero of $F'(R)$ in \n(\\ref{spot}) at a negative value of $R$. Since this occurs at a {\\it finite} value of $R$, it represents an example of of the broken correspondence, when the $F(R)$ gravity description is regular, but the scalar-tensor description is\nsingular.\n\nSecond, yet another example of the broken correspondence is given by the wall on the left-hand-side of Fig.~2. This wall appears when the expression under the root in the denominator of (\\ref{rphi}) vanishes at a {\\it finite} value of $\\varphi$ that gives rise to the infinite values of $R$ and the scalar potential  $V(\\varphi)$, although the value of $V(R)$ remains finite. Beyond the wall, the scalar-tensor gravity description does not exist in our case.\n\\vglue.2in\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\nOur main results are given in Sections 4 and 5. They provide a viable extension of Starobinsky\n$(R+R^2)$ inflationary model, motivated by the Born-Infeld structure in supergravity, in turn, motivated by string theory. \n\nOur physical motivation is to explore the range of energies beyond the Starobinsky inflationary\nscale of approximately $10^{13}$ GeV up to the (reduced)  Planck scale of approximately \n$10^{18}$ GeV, by using the specific modified gravity function   (\\ref{mgr}) derived from the supergravity model under our assumptions formulated in Sec.~1.\n\nThe significant deviation between our modified $F(R)$ gravity model and Starobinsky $(R+R^2)$ gravity model takes place only for very large positive curvature, with the asymptotic $R^2$ gravity being replaced by the asymptotic Einstein-Hilbert gravity having a larger effective Planck scale. The corresponding values of the inflaton field are {\\it trans-Planckian}, so that the asymptotic gravity  is supposed to be considered with a grain of salt, because it may be affected by quantum gravity effects.\n\nOn the other side, we found explicit examples of breaking the naive correspondence between the\n$F(R)$ gravity theories and the scalar-tensor gravity theories in our model. They are, however, of academic interest in the inflationary physics context, because they occur at large negative values of the curvature.\n\n\\newpage\n\n\\section*{Acknowledgements}\n\nYA and SVK are supported in part by the Competitiveness Enhancement Program of Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia. SVK is also supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) under No.~26400252,  and the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative), MEXT, Japan. \nOne of the authors (SVK) is grateful to Ignatios Antoniadis for useful discussions.\n\\vglue.2in\n\n\\section*{Appendix: supergravity with BI structure in superspace}\n\nThe supersymmetric extension of the $(R+R^2)$ gravity (with Maxwell structure) in the new-minimal formulation of $N=1$ supergravity is given by eq.~(38) of Ref.~\\cite{Abe:2015fha} in the superconformal  tensor calculus. In curved superspace, with $M_{\\rm Pl}=1$, the Lagrangian reads \\cite{Cecotti:1987qe,Farakos:2013cqa} \n\\begin{equation}\n{\\cal L}=\\int d^2\\Theta 2{\\cal E}\\left(-\\frac{3}{16}\\bar{{\\cal D}}^2V_{\\rm R}+\\frac{\\gamma}{4}W^\\alpha(V_{\\rm R})W_\\alpha(V_{\\rm R})\\right)+{\\rm h.c.}~,\\label{one}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $V_{\\rm R}$ is the gauge multiplet of SUSY algebra, representing the new-minimal set of supergravity field components, $W_\\alpha$ is its superfield strength, and $\\gamma\\sim e^{-2}$ is the $R^2$ parameter. The superfield $V_{\\rm R}$ has the following bosonic components (in a \nWess-Zumino gauge):\n\\begin{equation}\n\\bar{{\\cal D}}_{\\dot{\\alpha}}{\\cal D}_\\alpha V_{\\rm R}\\vert=2\\sigma_{\\dot{\\alpha}\\alpha}^mA_m~,~~~\\bar{{\\cal D}}^2{\\cal D}^2V_{\\rm R}\\vert=\\frac{32}{3}b_mA^m+16D_{\\rm R}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $A_m$ is the (dynamical) gauge field,\n$$D_{\\rm R}=\\frac{1}{3}\\left(R+\\frac{3}{2}B_mB^m\\right)$$\nis the gravitational D-term, and $B_m$ is the auxiliary vector field of supergravity multiplet. \nThe old-minimal set of supergravity  is also present via $\\cal E$ and $\\cal R$ that is hidden in the definition of the superfield strength $W_\\alpha\\equiv-\\frac{1}{4}(\\bar{\\cal D}^2-8{\\cal R}){\\cal D}_\\alpha V_{\\rm R}$. \n\nAfter identifying the \"old\" auxiliary field $b_m$ with the \"new\" auxiliary field $B_m$ as $b_m=-\\frac{3}{2}B_m$, we can\nexpand the Lagrangian \\eqref{one} as follows:\n\\begin{equation}\ne^{-1}{\\cal L}=\\frac{1}{2}R+\\frac{3}{4}B_mB^m-\\frac{3}{2}B_mA^m_{\\rm}-\\frac{1}{4e^2} F_{mn}F^{mn}+\\frac{2}{e^2}\\left(R+\\frac{3}{2}B_mB^m\\right)^2+\\ldots~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have kept only the relevant terms. When allowing the superfield $V_{\\rm R}$ to be massive (or not using a WZ gauge), the complex scalar $M$ of the old-minimal set \\cite{Wess:1992cp} also appears.\n\nThe BI extension of the supergravity theory (\\ref{one})  can be written down as follows:\n\\begin{equation} \\label{bione}\n{\\cal L}=\\left(-\\frac{3}{16}\\int d^2\\Theta 2{\\cal E}\\bar{{\\cal D}}^2V_{\\rm R}+{\\rm h.c.}\\right)+\\frac{\\gamma}{4}\\int d^4\\theta EW^2\\bar{W}^2\\Lambda~,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the BI structure function $\\Lambda$ is given by (see e.g., Ref.~\\cite{Ketov:2001dq}) \n\\begin{equation}\n\\Lambda\\equiv\\frac{\\kappa}{1+\\kappa(\\omega+\\bar{\\omega})+\\sqrt{1+\\kappa(\\omega+\\bar{\\omega})+\\frac{\\kappa^2}{4}(\\omega-\\bar{\\omega})^2}}~,\n\\end{equation}\nwith $\\omega\\equiv{\\cal D}^2W^2\/8$ and the BI coupling $\\kappa=b^{-2}=M^{-4}_{\\rm BI}$. The Lagrangian (\\ref{bione}) can be expanded as\n\\begin{equation}\n\\eqalign{\ne^{-1}{\\cal L}~~= & ~~~\\frac{1}{2}R+\\frac{3}{4}B_mB^m-\\frac{3}{2}B_mA^m_{\\rm}\\cr\n& +\\fracmm{M^{4}_{\\rm BI}}{3}\n\\left(\\sqrt{1-\\fracmm{3}{2M^4_{\\rm BI}e^2}\\left(F^2-8(R+\\frac{3}{2}B_mB^m)^2\\right) + \\left(\\fracmm{3}{4M^4_{\\rm BI}e^2}\\right)^2 \n(F\\tilde{F})^2}-1\\right)+\\ldots,~\\cr}\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we have kept only the relevant terms. Using $B_m=F_{mn}=0$ as a solution, we get (\\ref{mgr}).\n\n\\bibliographystyle{utphys} \n\n\\providecommand{\\href}[2]{#2}\\begingroup\\raggedright","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\\section{A general regret bound}\n\n\\input{Appendices\/App-DDA}\n\n\\section{Proofs for variable learning rate methods}\n\\label{apx:adaptive}\n\\input{Appendices\/App-Adaptive}\n\n\n\\section{Proofs related to the \\acl{GPRg}}\n\\input{Appendices\/App-Global}\n\n\n\\section{Proofs related to the optimistic variant}\n\\input{Appendices\/App-Optimistic}\n\\subsection{Undelayed online dual averaging}\n\\label{apx:ODA}\n\nConsidering a sequence of first-order feedback $\\seq{\\gvec}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$, at time $\\run$ dual averaging computes\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\tag{ODA}\n    \\label{eq:dual-avg-apx}\n    \\vt[\\state] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run-1}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step]}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe recall that the mirror map is defined as $\\prox: \\dvec \\mapsto \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} ~ \\product{-\\dvec}{\\point}+\\hreg(\\point)$. We can thus write $\\vt[\\state]=\\prox(\\vt[\\dvec])$ where $\\vt[\\dvec]=-\\vt[\\step]\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run-1}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ may be viewed as the dual point of $\\vt[\\state]$.\nWe have the following standard result concerning the (linearize) regret achieved by the algorithm.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:dual-avg-regret}\nLet online dual averaging \\eqref{eq:dual-avg-apx} be run with non-increasing learning rates  $(\\vt[\\step])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$. Then, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ satisfy\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\linreg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    :=\n    \\sum_{\\run=1}^\\nRuns\n    \\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\comp}\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\vt[\\step][\\run]\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}^2.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\n\nTo prove the above regret bound, we first fix $\\comp\\in\\points$ and define the associated estimate sequence which is key to our analysis\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\estseq](\\point) = \\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1} \\product{\\current[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point-\\comp} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:estseq}\nLet $\\seqinf{\\step}{\\run}$ be non-increasing. The functions $\\seqinf{\\estseq}{\\run}$ satisfy the following properties:\n\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\upshape(\\emph{\\alph*}\\upshape)]\n\\item $\\displaystyle \\current[\\estseq](\\current)\\le\\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step]}-\\frac{\\norm{\\vt[\\state]-\\comp}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}$. \\label{lem:estseq-a}\n\\item $\\displaystyle \\current[\\estseq](\\current) \\le\n\\update[\\estseq](\\update)-\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\update[\\state]-\\comp}\n-\\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]}\\breg(\\update,\\current)$.\n\\label{lem:estseq-b}\n\\end{enumerate}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\n(\\emph{a})\nThe optimality condition of $\\eqref{eq:dual-avg}$ implies that for all $\\point\\in\\points$, we have\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:DA-optimality}\n    \\left\\langle\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]+\\frac{\\grad\\hreg(\\vt)}{\\vt[\\step]}, \\point-\\vt\\right\\rangle\\ge0.\n\\end{equation}\nBy substituting $\\point\\subs\\comp$, the above gives,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:estseq-basic}\n    \\current[\\estseq](\\current)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]}\\product{\\grad\\hreg(\\vt)}{\\comp-\\vt} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\vt)}{\\vt[\\step]}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe recall that $\\hreg$ is $1$-strongly convex with respect to $\\norm{\\cdot}$ and therefore\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:h-strong}\n    \\hreg(\\comp)\\ge\n    \\hreg(\\vt)+\\product{\\grad\\hreg(\\vt)}{\\comp-\\vt}+\\frac{\\norm{\\vt-\\comp}^2}{2}.\n\\end{equation}\nCombining \\eqref{eq:estseq-basic} and \\eqref{eq:h-strong} leads to the desired inequality.\n\n\\smallskip\n(\\emph{b})\nOn one hand, by $\\vt[\\step][\\run+1]\\le\\vt[\\step]$ and the non-negativity of $\\hreg$\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:estseq-diff-1}\n    \\update[\\estseq](\\update)\n    =\\current[\\estseq](\\update)\n    + \\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\update-\\comp}\n    + \\left(\\frac{1}{\\update[\\step]}-\\frac{1}{\\current[\\step]}\\right)\\hreg(\\update)\n    \\ge \\current[\\estseq](\\update)\n    + \\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\update-\\comp}.\n\\end{equation}\nOn the other hand, by substituting $\\point\\subs\\update$ in \\eqref{eq:DA-optimality}, we can write\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\current[\\estseq](\\update)-\\current[\\estseq](\\current)\n    &= \\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\update-\\current}\n    + \\frac{\\hreg(\\update)}{\\vt[\\step]} - \\frac{\\hreg(\\current)}{\\vt[\\step]}\\\\\n    \\label{eq:estseq-diff-2}\n    &\\ge\n    \\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]}\\product{\\grad\\hreg(\\current)}{\\current-\\update}\n     + \\frac{\\hreg(\\update)}{\\vt[\\step]} - \\frac{\\hreg(\\current)}{\\vt[\\step]}\n    = \\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]}\\breg(\\update,\\current).\n\\end{align}\nWe conclude by summing \\eqref{eq:estseq-diff-1}, \\eqref{eq:estseq-diff-2} and rearranging the terms.\n\\end{proof}\n\\begin{proof}[Proof of \\cref{prop:dual-avg-regret}]\nLet $\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns+1]=\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]$ and define $\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+1]$ by \\eqref{eq:dual-avg} (We can do this since $\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+1]$ is not used in the computation of $\\linreg_{\\nRuns}$).\nLeveraging on \\cref{lem:estseq}, we bound the regret as follows:\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\linreg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    & := \\sum_{\\run=1}^\\nRuns\n    \\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\comp}\\\\\n    \\notag\n    & =\\sum_{\\run=1}^\\nRuns\n    \\left(\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\update}\n    +\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\update-\\comp}\\right)\\\\\n    \\notag\n    & \\le\\sum_{\\run=1}^\\nRuns\n    \\left(\\frac{\\vt[\\step]}{2}\\norm{\\vt[\\gvec]}^2\n    +\\frac{\\norm{\\current-\\update}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}\n    +\\update[\\estseq](\\update)-\\current[\\estseq](\\current)\n    -\\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]}\\breg(\\update,\\current)\\right)\\\\\n    \\notag\n     & \\le\n    \\update[\\estseq][\\nRuns](\\update[\\state][\\nRuns])\n    -\\vt[\\estseq][\\start](\\vt[\\state][\\start])\n    +\\sum_{\\run=1}^\\nRuns\n    \\left(\\frac{\\vt[\\step]}{2}\\norm{\\vt[\\gvec]}^2\n    +\\frac{\\norm{\\current-\\update}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}\n    -\\frac{\\norm{\\current-\\update}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}\\right)\\\\\n    \\label{eq:regret-dual-avg-proof}\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\vt[\\step][\\run]\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}^2.\n\\end{align}\nIn the last inequality we use \\cref{lem:estseq}\\ref{lem:estseq-a} along with $\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns+1]=\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]$ and the fact that $\\vt[\\estseq][\\start](\\vt[\\state][\\start])=\\hreg(\\vt[\\state][\\start])\/\\vt[\\step][\\start]\\ge0$. The second to last inequality holds thanks to the $1$-strong convexity of $\\hreg$. \\eqref{eq:regret-dual-avg-proof} is exactly what we want to prove, so this ends the proof.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\subsection{Technical preliminaries}\n\\label{apx:tech-prelim}\n\nWe prove below the non-expansiveness of the mirror map (for a reference, see \\eg \\citealp[Chapter E, Thm. 4.2.1]{HL01}, or \\citealp[Cor. 3.5.11]{Zal02}).\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:prox-nonexp}\nThe mirror map is non-expansive, \\ie $\\norm{\\prox(\\dvec)-\\prox(\\alt{\\dvec})}\\le\\dnorm{\\dvec-\\alt{\\dvec}}$ for all $\\dvec,\\alt{\\dvec}\\in\\vecspace$.\\footnote{Precisely, $\\prox$ is non-expansive because we are assuming that the strong convexity constant of $\\hreg$ is $1$. Otherwise it would just be Lipschitz continuous, and clearly this would only influence our results by a constant factor (that depends on the strong convexity constant of $\\hreg$).}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\point=\\prox(\\dvec)$ and $\\alt{\\point}=\\prox(\\alt{\\dvec})$. By definition of the mirror map,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\point = \\argmin_{\\test\\in\\points}\\product{-\\dvec}{\\test}+\\hreg(\\test), ~~~~\n    \\alt{\\point} = \\argmin_{\\test\\in\\points}\\product{-\\alt{\\dvec}}{\\test}+\\hreg(\\test).\n\\end{equation}\nThe optimality condition implies that for all $\\test\\in\\points$, the following two inequalities hold\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\product{-\\dvec+\\grad\\hreg(\\point)}{\\test-\\point}\\ge 0, ~~~~~\n    \\product{-\\alt{\\dvec}+\\grad\\hreg(\\alt{\\point})}{\\test-\\alt{\\point}}\\ge 0.\n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting respectively $\\test\\subs\\alt{\\point}$ and $\\test\\subs\\point$ in the two inequalities and summing the resulting formulas leads to\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\product{-\\dvec+\\grad\\hreg(\\point)+\\alt{\\dvec}-\\grad\\hreg(\\alt{\\point})}{\\alt{\\point}-\\point}\\ge0.\n\\end{equation}\nTo conclude, we use the Cauchy\u2013Schwarz inequality and the $1$-strong convexity of $\\hreg$ with respect to $\\norm{\\cdot}$.\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\dnorm{\\dvec-\\alt{\\dvec}}\\norm{\\alt{\\point}-\\point}\n    \\ge\n    \\product{\\alt{\\dvec}-\\dvec}{\\alt{\\point}-\\point}\n    \\ge\n    \\product{\\grad\\hreg(\\alt{\\point})-\\grad\\hreg(\\point)}{\\alt{\\point}-\\point}\n    \\ge \\norm{\\point-\\alt{\\point}}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nIt follows immediately $\\dnorm{\\dvec-\\alt{\\dvec}}\\ge\\norm{\\point-\\alt{\\point}}.$\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Proof of \\cref{thm:delay-regret}}\n\\label{apx:proof-delay-regret}\n\n\\DelayRegret*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThanks to the convexity of the loss functions, we first bound our regret by its linearized counterpart\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    =\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\vt[\\obj](\\vt)-\\vt[\\obj](\\comp)\n    \\le\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\comp}.\n\\end{equation}\nTo proceed, we introduce the virtual iterate\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n\\vt[\\virtual] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points}\n\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}.\n\\end{equation}\nand decompose the sum as:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:delay-proof-decomp}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\comp}\n    = \n  \\underbrace{ \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\virtual][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)]-\\comp} }_{(a)}\n    + \\underbrace{\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\vt[\\virtual][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)]}}_{(b)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\n\\emph{$(a)$} The first term can be bounded using \\cref{prop:dual-avg-regret}  with the virtual time order $\\Dpermu(\\start),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)$. Indeed,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:delay-proof-virtual-regret}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\virtual][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)]-\\comp}\n    =\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}{\\vt[\\virtual]-\\comp}\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}^2\n\\end{equation}\nwhere we used our assumption on the learning rate sequence ($\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]\\leq \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$) to apply \\cref{prop:dual-avg-regret}.\n\\smallskip\n\n\\emph{$(b)$} For the second term, we would like to bound the distance between $\\vt$ and $\\vt[\\virtual][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)]$, or equivalently, the distance between $\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ and $\\vt[\\virtual]$ (since we shall consider all the $\\run\\in\\{\\start,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$). To this end, we define\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}] = \\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\run)\\},~~~~~\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}] = \\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\run-1]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe can then write\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)]=\\prox(-\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]),~~~~~ \\vt[\\virtual]=\\prox(-\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\run-1]}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]).\n\\end{align}\nBy the non-expansivity of the mirror map (\\cref{lem:prox-nonexp}), we get\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\norm{\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)]-\\vt[\\virtual]}\n    \\le\n    \\dnorm{    \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\n    \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}]}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n    \\le\n    \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\n    \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}.\n\\end{equation}\nNote that since the permutation $\\Dpermu$ is decent, we have $\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\subset\\{\\Dpermu(1),..,\\Dpermu(\\run-1)\\}=\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\run-1]$ so the above formula is indeed verified.\nSubsequently,\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state]-\\vt[\\virtual][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)]}\n    &=\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}{\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)]-\\vt[\\virtual][\\run]}\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &\\le\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\n    \\norm{\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)]-\\vt[\\virtual][\\run]}\\\\\n    \\label{eq:delay-proof-diff}\n    &\\le\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\n    \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\n    \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}.\n\\end{align}\nCombining \\eqref{eq:delay-proof-decomp}, \\eqref{eq:delay-proof-virtual-regret} and \\eqref{eq:delay-proof-diff}, we obtain the desired result.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection{Introduction}\n\nThe following standard lemma (see \\eg \\citealp[Lemma 3.5]{ACG02}) is useful for proving the regret guarantees of adaptive methods.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:adaptive}\nFor any real numbers $\\seq{\\scalar}{1}{\\nRuns}$ such that $\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run}\\scalar_{\\runalt}>0$ for all $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$, it holds\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\sum_{\\run=1}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\scalar_{\\run}}{\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run}\\scalar_{\\runalt}}}\n    \\le 2 \\sqrt{\\sum_{\\run=1}^{\\nRuns}\\scalar_{\\run}}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe function $y\\in\\R^+\\mapsto\\sqrt{y}$ being concave and has derivative $y\\mapsto1\/(2\\sqrt{y})$, it holds for every $z\\ge0$,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\sqrt{z}\\le\\sqrt{y}+\\frac{1}{2\\sqrt{y}}(z-y).\n\\end{equation}\nTake $y=\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run}\\vt[\\scalar][\\runalt]$ and $z=\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\vt[\\scalar][\\runalt]$ gives\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    2\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\vt[\\scalar][\\runalt]}+\\frac{\\vt[\\scalar][\\run]}{\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run}\\vt[\\scalar][\\runalt]}}\\le2\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run}\\vt[\\scalar][\\runalt]}.\n\\end{equation}\nWe conclude by summing the inequality from $\\run=2$ to $\\run=\\nRuns$ and using $\\sqrt{\\vt[\\scalar][1]}\\le2\\sqrt{\\vt[\\scalar][1]}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\cref{lem:adaptive} is mainly used to produce efficient learning rates by exploiting the structure of the lag. We recall that the lag is defined as\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:gsum2}\n    \\vt[\\gsum] = \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n    \\underbrace{\n        \\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n            \\right) \n        }_{\\vt[\\gsumpar][\\runalt]} \n        = \n        \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\n               \\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in \\vt[\\setdel]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n\\end{align}\nwith $\\vt[\\setdel] \\defeq\\setdef{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}}{\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\run},\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]}$.\nCombining \\cref{lem:adaptive} and \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}, we have immediately the following result.\n\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:adaptive-base}\nLet $(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ be a sequence of non-decreasing numbers satisfying $\\vt[\\gsumupper]\\ge\\vt[\\gsum]$ for all\\;$\\run$.\nWe fix $\\radius>0$ and $\\comp\\in\\points$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$.\nThen, Running \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} with $\\vt[\\step]=\\radius\/\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper]}$, we have\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp) \\le 2\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\nRuns]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n\\begin{proof}\nSince $(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ is non-decreasing, we can apply \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}. Then\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n\\begin{aligned}\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\step][\\run]\n    \\Bigg(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}\n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\Bigg)\\\\\n    &\\le\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\nRuns]}\n    + \\frac{\\radius}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum]}}\n    \\Bigg(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}\n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\Bigg)\\\\\n    &\\le\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\nRuns]}+\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]}\n    \\le 2\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\nRuns]}.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nIn particular, the second to last inequality holds thanks to \\cref{lem:adaptive}.\n\\end{proof}\n    \nFrom the above lemma \\cref{prop:oneovert} follows readily (and in fact we can replace the maximum delay $\\delaybound$ by the maximum unavailability $\\outbound$).\nAs for data-dependent adaptive methods, we need to deepen our understanding of the different quantities that are involved in the regret bound and the algorithms.\nFor the sake of illustration, we make the non-decreasing active feedback assumption so that the set $\\vt[\\setrec]$ collecting timestamps of the feedback arriving before $\\vt[\\gvec]$ can be defined.\nWe also recall the definition $ \\vt[\\setbck] = \\setdef{\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}} {\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set],\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}$.\nThe following characterization of $\\vt[\\setdel]$ and $\\vt[\\setbck]$ are crucial to our analysis.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:delay-set-charac}\nBoth the sets $\\vt[\\setdel]$ and $\\vt[\\setbck]$ can be uniquely characterized by the condition $\\{\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\}$ with an additional constraint on the elements that a pair can take. Precisely,\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\text{\\emph{(}a\\emph{)}}~\n    \\vt[\\setdel]=\n    \\setdef{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\oneto{\\run}}}\n    {\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]};\n    ~~~\n    \\text{\\emph{(}b\\emph{)}}~\n    \\vt[\\setbck]=\n    \\setdef{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\vt[\\set]}}\n    {\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor a set $\\set$, we denote by $\\pairset{\\set}=\\setdef{\\{a,b\\}\\in2^{\\set}}{a\\neq b}$ the set of all subsets of size $2$ of $\\set$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\n(\\emph{a}) For the inclusion we just need to notice that since $\\runano<\\runalt$ we necessarily have $\\runano\\in\\oneto{\\run}$ and $\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$.\nFor the reverse inclusion we can suppose $\\runano<\\runalt$ without loss of generality from which we deduce immediately $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]$.\n\n\\smallskip\n(\\emph{b}) $\\supset$: We follow the same line of reasoning. Since either $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)$ (\\ie $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]$) or $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)$ (\\ie $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setrec][\\runano]$), we may assume $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)$ and it follows $\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}$.\n\n$\\subset$: Let $\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}$ be an unordered pair such that $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ and $\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}$.\nBy the definition of $\\Dpermu$, there exists $\\indg$ such that $\\vt[\\set]=\\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\indg)\\}$.\nFrom $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ we get $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)\\le\\indg$ and from $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]$ we know that $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)$. Combining the two we deduce $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)<\\indg$ and hence $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\set]$.\nMoreover, as $\\run\\notin\\vt[\\set]$, we have $\\indg<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$, or equivalently $\\vt[\\set]\\subset\\vt[\\setrec]$ (notice that this indeed proves that \\emph{$\\Dpermu$ is a faithful permutation}). The same applies to $\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$, that is, $\\vt[\\set][\\runano]\\subset\\vt[\\setrec][\\runano]$. We now conclude by arguing that $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]\\implies\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\setrec][\\runano]\\implies\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$.\n\\end{proof}\n\\cref{prop:delay-set-charac} reveals the fundamental relation between $\\vt[\\setdel]$ and $\\vt[\\setbck]$, at the heart of which is the unique condition $\\{\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\}$.\nThis condition, being independent of how the time indices are ordered, is inherent to the underlying learning process as we will see again in \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen}.\n\n\\subsection{The single-agent setup: \\ref{eq:adadelayO} and \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus}}\n\\label{apx:adadelay}\n\n\\input{Algos\/AdaDelayOPlus}\n\nThanks to \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}, it is now clear that \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus} consists, in fact, of a simple strategy: we replace the terms appearing in $\\vt[\\gsum]$ by their actual values whenever possible and majorize each of the remaining terms by $\\gbound^2$.\n\\cref{algo:adadelayOplus} implements the method in a way that we only need to maintain a minimal number of quantities for the update of $\\vt[\\step]$ (the use of subtraction in line \\ref{algo:adadelayOplus:subtract} is justified by the inclusion $\\vt[\\set]\\subset\\vt[\\setrec]$ proved in the proof of \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}).\nLet us proceed to prove the regret bound of \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus}.\n\n\\PropAdaDelayOPlus*\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\vt[\\gsumupper]=\\radius^2\/\\vt[\\step]^2$ so that $\\vt[\\step]=\\radius\/\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper]}$.\n$(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ is non-decreasing by the definition of $\\vt[\\step]$.\nMoreover, $\\vt[\\gsumupper]\\ge\\vt[\\Gsumbck]+\\vt[\\delayres]\\gbound^2$.\nWe note that\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\Gsumbck] &= \n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2\n        + 2 \\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in \\vt[\\setbck]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]} \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]},\\\\\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\gsum] &= \n        \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2\n        + 2 \\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in \\vt[\\setdel]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]} \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}.\n\\end{align}\nFrom \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac} we have $\\vt[\\setbck]\\subset\\vt[\\setdel]$ (as $\\vt[\\set]\\subset\\oneto{\\run}$).\nUsing the definition of $\\vt[\\delayres]$ and the bounded \\notice{sub}gradient assumption it is clear that $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]+\\vt[\\delayres]\\gbound^2\\ge\\vt[\\gsum]$ and accordingly $\\vt[\\gsumupper]\\ge\\vt[\\gsum]$.\nWith $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\nRuns] = \\max_{1\\le\\run\\le\\nRuns}\\vt[\\Gsumbck]+\\vt[\\delayres]\\gbound^2$, applying \\cref{lem:adaptive-base} readily gives the first inequality.\nFor the second inequality, we use both $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]\\le\\vt[\\gsum]$ and $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]\\le(\\card(\\vt[\\set])+2\\card(\\vt[\\setbck]))\\gbound^2$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nWhen (an upper bound of) the maximum delay is known, it is possible to further bound\\;$\\delayres$ from above, and this leads to \\ref{eq:adadelayO}.\n\n\\PropAdaDelayO*\n\\begin{proof}\nIt is sufficient to show that $\\delayres\\le2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1$.\nTo begin, we have $\\run-\\card(\\vt[\\set]) \\le \\delaybound+1$ as $\\oneto{\\run-\\delaybound-1}\\subset\\vt[\\set]$.\nTo proceed, let us consider a pair $\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setdel]}{\\vt[\\setbck]}$.\nIn particular, we know that $\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}\\not\\subset\\vt[\\set]$, so we have either $\\runalt\\in\\intinterval{\\run-\\delaybound}{\\run}$ or $\\runano\\in\\intinterval{\\run-\\delaybound}{\\run}$.\nWithout loss of generality, we suppose $\\runalt<\\runano$, then $\\runano\\in\\intinterval{\\run-\\delaybound}{\\run}$.\nBy definition of $\\vt[\\setdel]$ we have $\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$, and thus $\\runalt\\in\\intinterval{\\runano-\\delaybound}{\\runano-1}$.\nThis shows $\\card(\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setdel]}{\\vt[\\setbck]})\\le\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1)$. We can therefore conclude $\\vt[\\delayres]\\le2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1)+\\delaybound+1=2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nAs discussed in \\cref{sec:adadelay+}, the bound of \\ref{eq:adadelayO} is always worse than that of \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus}. Therefore, we believe that \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus} should always be preferred to \\ref{eq:adadelayO} and it is particularly in the decentralized setup the bounded delay assumption becomes of importance (see also \\cref{rem:unbounded}).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{The distributed setup}\n\\label{apx:adadelay-decentralized}\n\nWe recall the following notations from \\cref{apx:proof-delay-regret}:\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}] = \\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\run)\\},~~~~~\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}] = \\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\run-1]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}.\n\\end{equation}\nBy analogy with $\\vt[\\gsum]$, we define\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:gsum-sigma}\n    \\gsum^{\\Dpermu}_{\\run}\n    = \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n    \\underbrace{\\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]}^2 \n        + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n    \\right)}_{\\defeq\\vt[\\gsumpar^\\Dpermu][\\runalt]}\n     = \n    \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu]}\n    \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\n        \\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in \\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}]}\n    \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}] \\defeq\\setdef{\\{\\Dpermu(\\runalt),\\runano\\}}{\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\run},\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}][\\runalt]}$.\nUsing \\cref{thm:delay-regret} and \\cref{lem:adaptive}, we can adapt \\cref{lem:adaptive-base} to take into account a faithful permutation $\\Dpermu$. The proof is omitted for it being almost the same as the proof of \\cref{lem:adaptive-base}.\n\n{\n\\addtocounter{lemma}{-1}\n\\renewcommand{\\thelemma}{\\ref{lem:adaptive-base}$'$}\n\\begin{lemma}\n\\label{lem:adaptive-base-decen}\nLet $\\Dpermu$ be a faithful permutation and let $(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ be a sequence of real numbers satisfying $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]\\ge\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ and $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\ge\\vt[\\gsum^{\\Dpermu}]$ for all $\\run$.\nWe fix $\\radius>0$ and $\\comp\\in\\points$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$.\nThen, Running \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} with $\\vt[\\step]=\\radius\/\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper]}$, we have\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp) \\le 2\\radius\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{lemma}\n}\n\nAs a first instantiation of \\cref{lem:adaptive-base-decen}, we prove the following stronger variant of \\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret} where we replace the maximum delay by the maximum unavailability (from which \\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret} is deduced immediately).\n\n{\n\\addtocounter{proposition}{-1}\n\\renewcommand{\\theproposition}{\\ref{prop:decen-decr-regret}$'$}%\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:decen-decr-regret-apx}\nAssume that the maximum unavailability is bounded by $\\outbound$, the norm of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$, and let \\cref{asm:card-in-order} hold.\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} be run with a learning rate sequence \n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\sqrt{(1+2\\outbound)(\\card(\\vt[\\set])+\\outbound+1)}}.\n\\end{align}\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n   2 \\radius \\gbound \\sqrt{(\\nRuns+\\outbound)(1+2\\outbound)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\n}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\vt[\\gsumupper]=\\gbound^2(1+2\\outbound)(\\card(\\vt[\\set])+\\outbound+1)$.\nWe choose a permutation $\\Dpermu$ that satisfies if $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\runalt]<\\vt[\\gsumupper]$ then $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$ (obviously, such a permutation always exists).\nFrom \\cref{asm:card-in-order} and the definition of $\\vt[\\gsumupper]$ we know that $\\Dpermu$ is a faithful permutation.\nMoreover, $(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run}$ is non-decreasing along $\\Dpermu$. Assume otherwise, that is, $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]<\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ for some $\\run$.\nThen $\\run+1=\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\run+1))<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\run))=\\run$, a contradiction.\n\nWe proceed to prove $\\card(\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}])\\le\\outbound$, or equivalently $\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])\\ge\\run-1-\\outbound$.\nFor this we show $\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]\\subset\\oneto{\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])+\\outbound+1}$. Since $\\vt[\\gsumupper]$ is non-decreasing along $\\Dpermu$, for $\\runalt\\le\\run$ we have $\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)])\\le\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])$.\nUsing the bounded unavailability assumption we get $\\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\Dpermu(\\runalt)-1}}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]})\\le\\outbound$ so that\n$\\Dpermu(\\runalt)-1-\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)])\\le\\outbound$ and subsequently $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\le\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])+\\outbound+1$. This proves $\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]\\subset\\oneto{\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])+\\outbound+1}$.\n\nFrom $\\card(\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}])\\le\\outbound$ it follows immediately $\\vt[\\gsumpar^\\Dpermu]\\le\\gbound^2(1+2\\outbound)$ for all $\\run$.\nAlong with $\\run\\le\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])+\\outbound+1$ we deduce $\\vt[\\gsum^{\\Dpermu}]\\le\\gbound^2(1+2\\outbound)(\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)])+\\outbound+1)=\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$.\nApplying \\cref{lem:adaptive-base-decen} and using the fact that $\\card(\\vt[\\set])\\le\\nRuns-1$ for all $\\run$ gives the desired result.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\paragraph{AdaGrad-style}\n\nAs for the analysis of \\ref{eq:adadelayDist}, we shall relate the lag $\\vt[\\gsum^{\\Dpermu}]$ to its estimate $\\vt[\\Gsumbcki]$. To this end, we consider the set\n$\\vwt[\\setbck] \\defeq\n\\setdef{\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}}\n{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set],\\runano\\in\n\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\setrec][\\worker][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}$ so that\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:gsumbcki-apx}\n    \\vt[\\Gsumbcki] = \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n   \n        \\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\worker(\\run),\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n            \\right) \n              \n        = \n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\n               \\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in  \\vwt[\\setbck][\\activeworker{\\run}]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n\\end{align}\nTo simplify the notation, we will write $\\vt[\\setbcki]=\\vwt[\\setbck][\\activeworker{\\run}]$.\nIn the same vein as \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}, we can characterize both $\\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}]$ and $\\vt[\\setbcki]$ by the unique condition $\\{\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\}$.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:delay-set-charac-decen}\nLet $\\Dpermu$ be a faithful permutation and let \\cref{asm:in-order} hold. Then\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\text{\\emph{(}a\\emph{)}}~\n    \\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}]=\n    \\setdef{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}}\n    {\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]};\n    ~~~\n    \\text{\\emph{(}b\\emph{)}}~\n    \\vt[\\setbcki]=\n    \\setdef{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\vt[\\set]}}\n    {\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano], \\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\n(\\emph{a}) $\\subset$: Let $\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\run}$ and $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\runalt]=\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\runalt-1]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]}$. By definition of $\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\run]$ we have $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\run]$ and $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\runalt-1]\\subset\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\run]$. It remains to prove that $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$. We exploit the equivalence\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:apx-charac-D-eqv}\n    \\runano\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\runalt-1]\n    \\iff\n    \\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)\\le\\runalt-1\n    \\iff\n    \\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano) < \\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\runalt))\n    \\iff\n    \\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\notin\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)].\n\\end{equation}\nTo conclude, we use the fact that $\\Dpermu$ is a faithful permutation and accordingly $\\vt[\\set][\\runano]\\subset\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)-1]\\subset\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)]$. Along with \\eqref{eq:apx-charac-D-eqv} we infer that $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$.\n\n$\\supset$: Let $\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}$ such that  $\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$ and $\\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]$. We assume without loss of generality $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runano)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)$. This is indeed equivalent to $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)-1]$ and therefore $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)]$. We complete the proof by noting that $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]$ if and only if $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)\\in\\oneto{\\run}$.\n\\smallskip\n\n(\\emph{b}) By restricting ourselves to the agent $\\activeworker{\\run}$, we can apply the arguments that proved \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}(\\emph{b}). In more detail:\n\n$\\subset$: Let $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ and $\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}$.\nThe inclusion $\\runano\\in\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]$ means that $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]$ arrives earlier than $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ on node $\\activeworker{\\run}$. As all the available gradients are used when playing $\\vt[\\state]$ and $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$, we deduce $\\runano\\in\\vt[\\set]$.\nOn the other hand, $\\runano\\in\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]$ also implies $\\runalt\\notin\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runano]$.\nUsing \\cref{asm:in-order} we know that $\\vt[\\set][\\runano]\\subset\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runano]$, and consequently $\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$.\n\n$\\supset$: Let $\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}\\in\\pairset{\\vt[\\set]}$ such that $\\runalt\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runano]$ and $\\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]$. Since either $\\runano\\in\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]$\nor $\\runalt\\in\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runano]$ (but not both) we conclude immediately $\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}\\in\\vwt[\\setbck][\\activeworker{\\run}]=\\vt[\\setbcki]$. \n\\end{proof}\n\nThanks to \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen}, comparing $\\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}]$ with $\\vt[\\setbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ amounts to comparing~$\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]$ with~$\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$. This incites us to study in more detail what the bounded delay assumption would allow us to say on a faithful permutation. We prove the following.\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:decent-delay-bound}\nLet $\\Dpermu$ be a faithful permutation and assume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$.\nWe have \\emph{(}a\\emph{)} $|\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\run|\\le\\delaybound$ and \\emph{(}b\\emph{)} $\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\\subset\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$.\n\\end{proposition}\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\runalt,\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$ such that $\\runalt\\le\\run$. We claim that $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\le\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$.\nAssume the opposite, that is, $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)>\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$.\nThen, from the bounded delay assumption, $\\Dpermu(\\run)\\in\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]$.\n$\\Dpermu$ being a faithful permutation, this implies $\\run=\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\run))<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\runalt))=\\runalt$, a contradiction.\nUsing the above, we deduce the two properties of $\\Dpermu$ quite easily.\n\n(\\emph{a}) Fix $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$. For all $\\runalt\\le\\run$, we have $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\le\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$ and therefore $\\max_{\\runalt\\le\\run}\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\le\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$.\n$\\Dpermu$ being a permutation of $\\oneto{\\nRuns}$, it holds $\\max_{\\runalt\\le\\run}\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\ge\\run$ and subsequently $\\run\\le\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$. In the same way, we prove $\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound\\le\\run$. Combining the two we conclude $|\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\run|\\le\\delaybound$.\n\n(\\emph{b}) The bounded delay assumption implies $\\oneto{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound-1}\\subset\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$.\nOn the other hand, $\\vt[\\nRuns^{\\Dpermu}]=\\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\run)\\}=\\setdef{\\Dpermu(\\runalt)}{\\runalt\\le\\run}$ and hence $\\vt[\\nRuns^{\\Dpermu}]\\subset\\oneto{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$. Putting the two inclusions together we get effectively $\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\\subset\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$.\n\\end{proof}\n\nInterestingly, \\cref{prop:decent-delay-bound}(\\emph{a}) shows that under the bounded delay assumption, a faithful permutation can at most move an element $\\delaybound$ steps away from its original position.\nOn the other hand, property (\\emph{b}) forms the last building block of the proof of \\cref{prop:adadelayi}.\n\n\\AdaDelayDistRegret*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWe take $\\vt[\\gsumupper]=\\vt[\\Gsumbcki]+\\gbound^2(2\\delaybound+1)^2$ and define a permutation $\\Dpermu$ such that (\\emph{i}) if $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\runalt]<\\vt[\\gsumupper]$ then $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$; (\\emph{ii}) if $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\runalt]=\\vt[\\gsumupper]$ and $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ then $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$. $(\\vt[\\gsumupper])_{\\run}$ is obviously non-decreasing along $\\Dpermu$ (see \\eg proof of \\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret-apx}). We claim that this is a faithful permutation. \nFor this, let $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ and we would like to show  $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$. By \\cref{asm:in-order} we have\n$\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\subset\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]$ and from $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ it holds $\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]\\subset\\vt[\\set]$; accordingly, $\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\subset\\vt[\\set]$.\nInvoking \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen}(\\emph{b}) we deduce $\\vt[\\setbcki][\\runalt]\\subset\\vt[\\setbcki]$.\nUsing \\eqref{eq:gsumbcki-apx} we then get $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\runalt]\\le\\vt[\\gsumupper]$. This inequality along with $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ imply $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$.\n\nTo apply \\cref{lem:adaptive-base-decen}, we still need to prove $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\ge\\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu]$.\nCombing \\eqref{eq:gsum-sigma}, \\eqref{eq:gsumbcki-apx}, \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen} and $\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\subset\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu]$ we know that\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:diff-gsum-sigma-gsumbcki}\n    \\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu]\n    = \\vt[\\Gsumbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\n    + \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2\n    + 2\\sum_{\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setdel^\\Dpermu]}{\\vt[\\setbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}.\n\\end{equation}\nIn particular, $\\vt[\\Gsumbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\le\\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu]\\le\\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu][\\nRuns]=\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]$, which proves the second inequality that appears in the regret bound\n(for the equality $\\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu][\\nRuns]=\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]$, we use \\eqref{eq:gsum2}, \\eqref{eq:gsum-sigma}, \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}(\\emph{a}), \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen}(\\emph{a}) and $\\vt[\\runs^\\Dpermu][\\nRuns]=\\oneto{\\nRuns}$).\nThe end of our proof heavily relies on the use of \\cref{prop:decent-delay-bound}(\\emph{b}).\nThe first immediate consequence is that $\\card(\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]})\\le2\\delaybound+1$ and therefore the second term of \\eqref{eq:diff-gsum-sigma-gsumbcki} can be bounded by $\\gbound^2(2\\delaybound+1)$.\nAs for $\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}][\\run]}{\\vt[\\setbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}$, invoking \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac-decen} and \\cref{prop:decent-delay-bound}(\\emph{b}) we know that either $\\runalt\\in\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$ or $\\runano\\in\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$ and $\\max(\\runalt,\\runano)\\le\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound$.\nWithout loss of generality, we suppose $\\runano<\\runalt$, then $\\runalt\\in\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$.\nFrom $\\runano\\notin\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]$ and the bounded delay assumption we further deduce $\\runano\\in\\intinterval{\\runalt-\\delaybound}{\\runalt-1}$.\nWe can thus conclude $\\card(\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setdel^{\\Dpermu}][\\run]}{\\vt[\\setbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]})\\le(2\\delaybound+1)\\delaybound$ and finally $\\vt[\\gsum^{\\Dpermualt}] \\le\n\\vt[\\Gsumbcki][\\Dpermu(\\run)]+\\gbound^2(2\\delaybound+1)^2$.\nThis proves $\\vt[\\gsumupper][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\ge\\vt[\\gsum^\\Dpermu]$ and applying \\cref{lem:adaptive-base-decen} gives the desired result.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection{Fixed learning rate}\n\\label{apx:globalfixed}\n\n\\GlobalRegretFixLR*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet us start with \\eqref{eq:global-reg-fix-lr-local}. Since the loss functions are $\\gbound$-Lipschitz, the subgradients are bounded by $\\gbound$.\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\indsamp=\\start}^{\\nSamples}\n    \\step\n    \\left(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\runano]}\\right)\\\\\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\frac{\\step}{2}\\sum_{\\indsamp=\\start}^{\\nSamples}\n    (1+2\\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]}))\\gbound^2.\n    \\label{eq:delay-regret-local-prelim}\n\\end{align}\nTo bound $\\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]})$, we write $\\indsamp=\\mapping(\\worker,\\run)$.\nOn one hand, the subgradients\n\\[\\{\\vwt[\\gvec][\\worker-1][\\run],\\ldots,\\vwt[\\gvec][1][\\run]\\}=\\{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp-1],\\ldots,\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp-\\worker+1]\\}\\]\nof instant $\\run$ are necessarily unavailable when making the prediction $\\vwt[\\state][\\worker][\\run]=\\vt[\\alt{\\state}][\\indsamp]$.\nOn the other hand, the maximum delay assumption guarantees that all the subgradients received before time $\\run-\\delaybound$ are used in the computation of $\\vwt[\\state][\\worker][\\run]$.\nThis leads to the inequality\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]})\n    \\le \\worker-1 + \\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run-\\runalt],\n\\end{equation}\nwith the convention $\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\runano]=0$ if $\\runano\\le0$.\nSubsequently, for any $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\sum_{\\indsamp=\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]+1}^\n    {\\vt[\\nSamples]}\\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]})\n    \\le \\frac{\\vt[\\nWorkers](\\vt[\\nWorkers]-1)}{2}\n    +\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run-\\runalt]\n    \\le \\frac{(\\delaybound+1)}{2}\\vt[\\nWorkers^2]\n    +\\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers^2][\\run-\\runalt].\n    \\label{eq:bound-outstanding}\n\\end{equation}\nSubstituting \\eqref{eq:bound-outstanding} in \\eqref{eq:delay-regret-local-prelim} then yields\n\\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:regret-network-local}\n    \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\step(\\delaybound+1)\\gbound^2\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\nWorkers^2].\n\\end{align}\n\nWe proceed to bound the difference $\\norm{\\vwt-\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt]}$ for all $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$ and $\\worker,\\workeralt\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}$.\nIn fact, we have $\\vwt=\\prox(-\\vwt[\\dvec])$ and $\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt]=\\prox(-\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt])$ where $\\vwt[\\dvec]=\\step\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]$ and $\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt]=\\step\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]$.\nFrom the maximum delay assumption we know that $\\vwt[\\set]$ and $\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]$ differ by at most $\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run-\\runalt]$ samples.\nUsing the $\\gbound$-Lipshitz continuity of the loss functions and the non-expansiveness of the mirror map (\\cref{lem:prox-nonexp}), we obtain\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:regret-network-discrepancy}\n    \\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}\n    \\gbound\\norm{\\vwt-\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt]}\n    \\le \\step\\gbound^2\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run-\\runalt]\n    \\le \\step\\gbound^2\\left(\\frac{\\delaybound\\vt[\\nWorkers^2]}{2}\n    +\\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers^2][\\run-\\runalt]\\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\nWith \\eqref{eq:regret-network-local} and \\eqref{eq:regret-network-discrepancy}, invoking \\cref{lem:regret-local-global} gives\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\step(2\\delaybound+1)\\gbound^2\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\nWorkers^2].\n\\end{align}\nThe theorem follows immediately.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Learning rates based on the number of received feedbacks}\n\\label{apx:globalada}\n\n\\GlobalRegretVarLR*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nWith a slight abuse of notation, we will only work with the (worker, time) index pair in this proof, but it should be understood that the change of index $\\mapping$ indeed intervenes implicitly when we apply the arguments of \\cref{sec:decentralized}.\n\nLet us consider a permutation $\\Dpermu$ satisfying $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\workeralt,\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)$ if $\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt][\\runalt])<\\card(\\vwt[\\set])$.\nSuch a $\\Dpermu$ is necessarily faithful according to \\cref{asm:card-in-order-global}.\nWe claim that $\\card(\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)])\\le(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max}$ (where $\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)]=\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)-1]}{\\vwt[\\set]}$).\nLet $\\runalt\\in\\intinterval{0}{\\delaybound}$ such that $\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt-\\delaybound]>\\card(\\vwt[\\set])\\ge\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt-\\delaybound-1]$.\nThen for any $\\workeralt\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run+\\runalt+1]}$ it holds $\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt][\\run+\\runalt+1])\\ge\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt-\\delaybound]>\\card(\\vwt[\\set])$ and accordingly $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\workeralt,\\run+\\runalt+1)$.\nIn other words, if $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\indg,\\runano)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)$ for some $\\runano\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$ and $\\indg\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\runano]}$ then $\\runano\\le\\run+\\runalt$, and subsequently $\\card(\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)-1])\\le\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt]$.\nWe have therefore\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\card(\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)-1]}{\\vwt[\\set]})\n    \\le\n    \\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt]-\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run+\\runalt-\\delaybound-1]\n    =\\sum_{\\runano=0}^{\\delaybound}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run+\\runalt-\\runano]\n    \\le(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max}.\n\\end{equation}\nSince $\\vwt[\\step]\\le\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt][\\runalt]$ if and only if $\\card(\\vwt[\\set])\\ge\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt][\\runalt])$, we have indeed $\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu((\\worker,\\run)+1)]\\le\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\worker,\\run)]$.\nInvoking \\cref{thm:delay-regret}, one has (notice that the sum is ordered differently as stated in the theorem)\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\nRuns],\\nRuns)]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\run]}\n    \\vwt[\\step]\n    \\left(\\dnorm{\\vwt[\\gvec]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vwt[\\gvec]}\n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}][\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\worker,\\run)]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\right)\\\\\n    \\label{eq:regret-local-oblivious}\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\min_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns},\\worker\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}}\\vwt[\\step]}\n   \n    + \\frac{1}{2}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\left(\\max_{\\worker\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}}\\vwt[\\step]\\right)\\gbound^2(2\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\nWorkers_{\\max}.\n\\end{align}\n\nIn the second step we bound the difference $\\norm{\\vwt[\\state]-\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt]}$ for $\\worker,\\workeralt\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}$.\nSimilar to the proof of \\cref{thm:delay-regret-global}, we write $\\vwt=\\prox(-\\vwt[\\dvec])$ and $\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt]=\\prox(-\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt])$ where $\\vwt[\\dvec]=\\vwt[\\step]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]$ and $\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt]=\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]$.\nBy the non-expansiveness of the mirror map (\\cref{lem:prox-nonexp}) it is then sufficient to bound $\\norm{\\vwt[\\dvec]-\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt]}$.\nFor ease of notation, in the rest of the proof we will denote by $\\setinter$ the intersection of $\\vwt[\\set]$ and $\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]$, \\ie $\\setinter=\\vwt[\\set]\\intersect\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]$.\nIt follows\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:discrepancy-oblivious}\n\\begin{aligned}[b]\n\\norm{\\vwt[\\dvec]-\\vwt[\\dvec][\\workeralt]}\n&= \\|(\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt])\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setinter}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]\n+\\vwt[\\step]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\set]}{\\setinter}}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]\n-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]}{\\setinter}}\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]\\|\\\\\n&\\le|\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]|\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setinter}\\norm{\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]}\n+\\vwt[\\step]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\set]}{\\setinter}}\\norm{\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]}\n+\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]\\sum_{(\\indg,\\runalt)\\in\\setexclude{\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]}{\\setinter}}\\norm{\\vwt[\\gvec][\\indg][\\runalt]}\\\\\n&\\le\\gbound(|\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]|\\card(\\setinter)+\\max(\\vwt[\\step],\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt])\\card(\\symdiff{\\vwt[\\set]}{\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]}))\\\\\n&\\le\\gbound(|\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]|\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]+\\max(\\vwt[\\step],\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt])\\delaybound\\nWorkers_{\\max})\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nIn the last inequality we use the fact that if one element belongs to one set but not the other then it must come from the last $\\delaybound$ time steps.\n\nTo control $|\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]|$, we note that for any $b>a>0$, it holds\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{a}}-\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{b}}\n    =\\frac{b-a}{\\sqrt{ab}(\\sqrt{a}+\\sqrt{b})}\n    \\le\\frac{b-a}{2a\\sqrt{a}}.\n\\end{equation}\nFor every $\\indg\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}$, we have $\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\indg])+(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max}\\ge\\vt[\\nSamples]>\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]$.\nTherefore, with the stepsize rule \\eqref{eq:delay-global-oblivious-stepsize}, we get\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:lr-rate-difference}\n    |\\vwt[\\step]-\\vwt[\\step][\\workeralt]|\n    \\le \\frac{\\radius\\thinspace|\\card(\\vwt[\\set])-\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt])|}{2\\gbound\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nSamples]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}}\n    \\le \\frac{\\radius\\delaybound\\nWorkers_{\\max}}{2\\gbound\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nSamples]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}}.\n\\end{equation}\nLet us denote $\\vt[\\step]=\\radius\/(\\gbound\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nSamples]\\nWorkers_{\\max}})$; then $\\vwt[\\step]\\le\\vt[\\step]$ for all $\\worker\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}$.\nWe also take\n\\[\n\\ubar{\\step}=\\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)(\\nSamples\\nWorkers_{\\max}+(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max}^2)}}\n\\]\nso that $\\vwt[\\step]\\ge\\ubar{\\step}$ for all $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns},\\worker\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}$.\nWe conclude with the help of \\cref{lem:regret-local-global,lem:prox-nonexp,lem:adaptive}, and the inequalities \\eqref{eq:regret-local-oblivious}, \\eqref{eq:discrepancy-oblivious} and \\eqref{eq:lr-rate-difference}:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\begin{aligned}\n    \\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\ubar{\\step}}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\left(\\vt[\\step]\\gbound^2(4\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\nWorkers_{\\max}\n    +\\frac{\\radius\\gbound\\delaybound\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}{\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nSamples]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}}\n    \\right)\\\\\n    &=\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\ubar{\\step}}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\n    \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\radius\\gbound(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}{\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\vt[\\nSamples]\\nWorkers_{\\max}}}\\\\\n    &\\le\\radius\\gbound\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)(\\nSamples\\nWorkers_{\\max}+(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max}^2)}\n    +\\radius\\gbound\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)\\nSamples\\nWorkers_{\\max}}.\n    \\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nAccordingly, $\\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp) = \\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\nSamples\\nWorkers_{\\max}})$.\n\\end{proof}\n\\subsection{Delayed optimistic dual averaging}\n\\label{apx:optimistic-delay-regret}\n\n\\OptDelayRegret*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet us consider the virtual iterates\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n   \n    \\vt[\\virtual] = \\vt[\\state][\\start] - \\current[\\step]\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run-1}\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt].\n\\end{equation}\nWe define the estimate sequence\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\estseq](\\point) = \\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1} \\product{\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point-\\comp} + \\frac{\\norm{\\point-\\vt[\\point][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}.\n\\end{equation}\nNotice that the regret is measured with the leading states\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:opt-regret-decomp}\n    \\vt[\\obj](\\inter) - \\vt[\\obj](\\comp)\n    \\le \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter-\\comp}\n   \n    = \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter-\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]-\\comp}\n   \n   \n   \n   \n   \n\\end{align}\nBy \\cref{lem:estseq}\\ref{lem:estseq-b}, we have\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:opt-regret-rec}\n    \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]-\\comp}\n    \\le \\update[\\estseq](\\update[\\virtual]) - \\current[\\estseq](\\current[\\virtual]) - \\frac{1}{2\\vt[\\step]}\\norm{\\update[\\virtual]-\\current[\\virtual]}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nFor the other term, we recall the definition $\\vt[\\setout]=\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\run-1}}{\\vt[\\set]}$ and define $\\vt[\\out]=\\card(\\vt[\\setout])$. Then,\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter-\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]}\n    &=\n    \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter-\\current}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\current-\\current[\\virtual]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\current[\\virtual]-\\update[\\virtual]}\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &=\n    \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{-\\current[\\stepalt]\\inter[\\appr]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\current[\\step]\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\current[\\virtual]-\\update[\\virtual]}\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &=\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right)\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &~~+\n    \\current[\\step]\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\current[\\virtual]-\\update[\\virtual]}\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right)\\\\\n    \\label{eq:opt-regret-decomp-2}\n    &~~+\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\step]}{2}\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2\n    +\\frac{1}{2\\vt[\\step]}\\norm{\\current[\\virtual]-\\update[\\virtual]}^2\n    +\\frac{\\vt[\\out]\\vt[\\step]}{2}\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2\n    +\\frac{\\vt[\\step]}{2}\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2.\n\\end{align}\nCombining \\eqref{eq:opt-regret-decomp}, \\eqref{eq:opt-regret-rec}, \\eqref{eq:opt-regret-decomp-2} and summing from $\\run=\\start$ to $\\nRuns$ yields\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\update[\\estseq][\\nRuns](\\update[\\virtual][\\nRuns])\n    -\\vt[\\estseq][\\start](\\vt[\\virtual][\\start])\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right)\\\\\n    \\label{eq:opt-regret-sum}\n    &~~+\n    \\left(-\\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}+\\frac{(\\vt[\\out]+1)\\vt[\\step]}{2}\n    +\\sum_{\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runano]}\\frac{\\vt[\\step][\\runano]}{2}\\right)\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2.\n\\end{align}\nSince the maximum delay is $\\delaybound$, we have $\\vt[\\out]\\le\\outbound\\le\\delaybound$ and if $\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runano]$ it holds $\\runano>\\run\\ge\\runano-\\delaybound$ giving that $\\card(\\setdef{\\runano}{\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runano]})\\le\\delaybound$. Moreover, as $\\seqinf{\\step}{\\run}$ is a decreasing sequence, $\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runano]$ also implies $\\vt[\\step][\\runano]\\le\\vt[\\step]$. The last term of \\eqref{eq:opt-regret-sum} can thus be bounded as following\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\left(-\\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}+\\frac{(\\vt[\\out]+1)\\vt[\\step]}{2}\n    +\\sum_{\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runano]}\\frac{\\vt[\\step][\\runano]}{2}\\right)\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2\n    \\le \\frac{1}{2}((2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\step]-\\vt[\\stepalt])\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]}^2\\le0,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the second inequality leverages the condition $\\vt[\\stepalt]\\ge(2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\step]$.\n\nTo conclude, we use lemma \\cref{lem:estseq}\\ref{lem:estseq-a} and observe that $\\vt[\\estseq][\\start](\\vt[\\virtual][\\start])=\\vt[\\estseq][\\start](\\vt[\\state][\\start])=0$ by definition, so that\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\update[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right).\n\\end{align}\nLet $\\update[\\step]=\\vt[\\step]$ and we get the desired bound.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{The necessity of scale separation}\n\\label{apx:optimistic-regret-lower-bound}\n\n\\OptRegretLB*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nAssume, for the sake of contradiction, that there exists $\\step=\\step(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ and a corresponding $\\stepalt$ with $\\stepalt\\le\\delaybound\\step$ such that \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} with $\\inter[\\appr]=\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-\\delaybound-1]$ guarantees a regret in $\\smalloh(\\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns}))$.\nFormally, we define a round of the algorithm as a composition a loss sequence, a delay mechanism, a initial point $\\vt[\\state][\\start]$ and a competing vector $\\comp$,\nand denote by $\\mathcal{R}(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ the set of all the rounds with time horizon $\\nRuns$, $(\\delaybound+1)$-variation $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$, uniform delay $\\delaybound$ and $\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}\\le\\radius$.\nThen, fixing $\\radius$ and $\\delaybound$, for every $\\eps>0$, we can find $N>0$ such that if $\\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns})\\ge N$, the regret achieved by the algorithm for every instance in $\\mathcal{R}(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ is smaller than $\\eps\\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns})$.\nThe proof then consists in finding two instances of $\\mathcal{R}(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ such that the regret achieved by the algorithm on these two instances can not be simultaneously smaller than $\\eps\\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns})$.\n\nFor this, we fix the delay $\\delaybound$, set $\\radius=1$ without loss of generality\nand explicit these two instances in the following ($\\points=\\R$):\n\n\\vskip 0.25em\n1. Let $\\nPeriods, \\len > \\delaybound$ be two positive integers.\nWe first consider a loss sequence of length $2\\nPeriods\\len+\\delaybound+1$ (\\ie $\\nRuns=2\\nPeriods\\len+\\delaybound+1$) as illustrated below:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n\\underbrace{\\underbrace{-1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace -1}_{\\len}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{+1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace +1}_{\\len}\\quad\n\\ldots\\quad\n\\underbrace{-1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace -1}_{\\len}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{+1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace +1}_{\\len}}_{2\\nPeriods\\len ~\\text{losses}}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{-1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace -1}_{\\delaybound+1}\n\\end{equation}\nA period is defined as a subsequence of $2\\len$ losses with $\\ell$ consecutive $-1$s followed by $\\ell$ consecutive $+1$s.\nThe whole loss sequence is then composed of $2\\nPeriods$ periods followed by $\\delaybound+1$ consecutive $-1$s.\nWe would like to compute the regret achieved by \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} with $\\step, \\stepalt, \\inter[\\appr]$ as specified in the statement and $\\vt[\\state][\\start]=\\comp=0$.\n\nFor the first $\\delaybound+1$ steps, the algorithm stays at $\\vt[\\state][\\start]=\\comp$ so the accumulative regret is $0$.\nFor the remaining of the round, the algorithm goes through the same trajectory for each period of delayed feedback vectors it receives and this happens $\\nPeriods$ times.\nTo compute the regret, we just need to match the position of the iterate with the actual loss at each moment, which is done in \\cref{fig:optimistic-lower-bound} (as the loss vectors of a single period sum to $0$, after receiving all the vectors from one period it is as if we started again from $\\vt[\\state][\\start]=\\comp=0$).\nNotice that the algorithm uses the most recent vector it receives for extrapolation.\n\\input{Figs\/lower_bound_ex1}\n\nThe regret for each period of feedback is thus\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{per} &= \n    \\frac{-(\\len-\\delaybound-1)(\\len-\\delaybound)\\step}{2}\n    -(\\len-\\delaybound-1)\\stepalt\n    +\\frac{(\\delaybound+1)(2\\len-\\delaybound)\\step}{2}\n    +(\\delaybound+1)\\stepalt\\\\\n\\notag\n    &~~+\\frac{(\\len-\\delaybound-1)(\\len+\\delaybound)\\step}{2}\n    -(\\len-\\delaybound-1)\\stepalt\n    -\\frac{(\\delaybound+1)\\delaybound\\step}{2}\n    +(\\delaybound+1)\\stepalt\\\\\n\\notag\n    &= (\\delaybound+1)(\\len-\\delaybound)\\step +\n    (\\len-\\delaybound-1)\\delaybound\\step\n    +2(2\\delaybound-\\len+2)\\stepalt\\\\\n\\notag\n    &= (\\step+2\\delaybound\\step-2\\stepalt)\\len\n    - 2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1)\\step\n    + (4\\delaybound+4)\\stepalt.\n\\end{align}\nAccordingly, the total regret is\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_1 = \\nPeriods((\\step+2\\delaybound\\step-2\\stepalt)\\len\n    - 2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1)\\step\n    + (4\\delaybound+4)\\stepalt)\n    \\ge \\nPeriods (\\len- 2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1))\\step,\n\\end{equation}\nwhere for the inequality we use the fact that $\\stepalt\\le\\delaybound\\step$.\n\nMoreover, for every $m\\in\\N_{0}$, from time $2m\\len+\\delaybound+2$ to $2m\\len+2\\len+\\delaybound+1$ the $(\\delaybound+1)$-variation increases by $8(\\delaybound+1)$: there are $\\delaybound+1$ switches both from\\;$-1$ to\\;$+1$ and from\\;$+1$ to\\;$-1$ with each switch contributing $4$ to the variation.\nRemember also that in the definition of the $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ we compare the first $\\delaybound+1$ losses with $0$. For the whole sequence we therefore count $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]=(8\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)$.\n\n\\vskip 0.25em\n2. We now construct another example with the same $\\nRuns, \\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ as follows (with $\\len>4\\delaybound+4$):\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n\\underbrace{\\underbrace{0\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 0}_{\\delaybound+1}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 1}_{\\delaybound+1}\\quad\n\\ldots\\quad\n\\underbrace{0\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 0}_{\\delaybound+1}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 1}_{\\delaybound+1}}_{8\\nPeriods(\\delaybound+1) ~\\text{losses}}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{0\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 0}_{2\\nPeriods\\len-8\\nPeriods(\\delaybound+1)}\\enspace\n\\underbrace{1\\thinspace \\ldots\\thinspace 1}_{\\delaybound+1}\n\\end{equation}\nIn particular, $2\\nPeriods\\len-8\\nPeriods(\\delaybound+1)>2\\nPeriods>\\delaybound+1$. It follows immediately $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]=(8\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)$ and of course $\\nRuns=2\\nPeriods\\len+\\delaybound+1$.\n\nLet $\\vt[\\state][\\start]=0$ and $\\comp=-1$.\nIn the sequence the loss $1$ appears $(4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)$ times while the remaining feedback are all $0$s.\nGiven that the last $\\delaybound+1$ losses are never received by the algorithm,\nwe have indeed always $\\vt\\ge-4\\nPeriods(\\delaybound+1)\\step-\\stepalt$.\nThe regret can therefore be lower bounded as:\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_2\n    &= \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^\\nRuns\\vt[\\gvec](\\vt+1)\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &= \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^\\nRuns\\vt[\\gvec]\\vt + (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &\\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) - 4\\nPeriods(4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)^2\\step\n    - (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)\\stepalt\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &\\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) - (4\\nPeriods+1)^2(\\delaybound+1)^2\\step,\n\\end{align}\nwhere in the last inequality we use again $\\stepalt\\le\\delaybound\\step$.\n\n\\vskip 0.25em\n\\textbf{Conclude.}\nWe choose $\\nPeriods,\\len$ so that $\\len=(16\\nPeriods+9)(\\delaybound+1)^2+2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1) > 4\\delaybound+4$.\nNotice that $\\nRuns$ and $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ can be made arbitrarily large.\nWe run the algorithm in question on the two problem instances described above. We have on one side\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_1\n    \\ge \\nPeriods (\\len- 2\\delaybound(\\delaybound+1))\\step\n    = (16\\nPeriods^2 + 9\\nPeriods)(\\delaybound+1)^2\\step.\n\\end{equation}\nOn the other side,\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_2\n    &\\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) - (4\\nPeriods+1)^2(\\delaybound+1)^2\\step\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &\\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) - (16\\nPeriods^2 + 9\\nPeriods)(\\delaybound+1)^2\\step.\n\\end{align}\nRecalling that $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]=(8\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1)$, the above shows\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_1 + \\reg_2 \\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) \\ge \\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]\/2.\n\\end{equation}\nSimilarly, we have\n$\\nRuns=2\\nPeriods\\len+\\delaybound+1\\le(32\\nPeriods^2+22\\nPeriods)(\\delaybound+1)^2$. As a consequence\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_1 + \\reg_2 \\ge (4\\nPeriods+1)(\\delaybound+1) \\ge \\sqrt{\\nRuns}\/2.\n\\end{equation}\nTo summarize, we have proven for some $\\nRuns$ and $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ arbitrarily large, we can find two instances from $\\mathcal{R}(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ so that the regrets achieved by the algorithm on these two instances satisfy\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\max(\\reg_1, \\reg_2) \\ge \\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns})\/2.\n\\end{equation}\nThis is in contradiction with the initial hypothesis by choosing $\\eps=1\/2$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{A lower bound for delayed online learning}\n\\label{apx:lowerboundopt}\n\n\\VarRegretLB*\n\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\len=\\overline{\\variation^{\\delaybound}}\/(4(\\delaybound+1))$ be a positive integer and $\\nRuns = (\\tau+1)\\len$.\nWe consider $\\algo$ an arbitrary online algorithm compatible with delayed feedback.\nFrom $\\algo$ we define $\\algo_{\/\\delaybound}$ another online algorithm as follows: For any sequence of losses with undelayed feedback, we repeat each loss $\\delaybound+1$ times and only send the feedback after a delay of $\\delaybound$.\nIn other words, for the loss sequence $\\gvec_1, \\gvec_2, \\ldots$, at the end of iteration $\\indg(\\delaybound+1)$ to $\\indg(\\delaybound+1)+\\delaybound$ we receive feedback $\\gvec_{\\indg-1}$ (with the convention $\\gvec_0=0$) while we suffer a loss $\\product{\\gvec_\\indg}{\\vt}$ from iteration $p_\\indg=(\\indg-1)(\\delaybound+1)+1$ to $\\indg(\\delaybound+1)$.\nWe then play $\\algo$ on this new loss sequence with delayed feedback and after every $\\delaybound+1$ iterations we return $\\vt[\\avg[\\state]][\\indg]=\\sum_{\\run=p_\\indg}^{p_\\indg+\\delaybound}\\vt[\\state]\/(\\delaybound+1)$. This is a legitimate online algorithm because the knowledge of $\\gvec_\\indg$ is not required for playing $\\vt[\\avg[\\state]][\\indg]$.\nMoreover, the regret achieved by $\\algo$ on the constructed sequence is exactly $\\delaybound+1$ times the regret achieved by $\\algo_{\/\\delaybound}$ on the original sequence.\n\nWe now apply the the well known $\\Omega(\\sqrt{\\len})$ lower bound for a horizon of $\\len$ (see \\eg \\citealp{SS07}), and this proves the existence of a sequence of linear losses of length $\\len$ and a corresponding $\\comp$ with $\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}\\le1$ such that the regret achieved by $\\algo_{\/\\delaybound}$ is $\\Omega(\\sqrt{\\len})$. Moreover, the loss vectors are either $1$ or $-1$.\nLet us now considered the loss sequence constructed as in the previous paragraph.\nThe $(\\delaybound+1)$-variation $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ is then bounded by $(\\delaybound+1)+4(\\delaybound+1)(\\len-1)<\\overline{\\variation^{\\delaybound}}$ and we have effectively $\\nRuns = (\\tau+1)\\len$.\nTo finish, we observe that the regret achieved by $\\algo$ on the constructed sequence is $\\Omega((\\delaybound+1)\\sqrt{\\len})$ and $(\\delaybound+1)\\sqrt{\\len}\\sim\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\overline{\\variation^\\delaybound}}\/2$ (where $\\sim$ stands for asymptotically equivalent).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{Delayed online learning with slow variation}\n\\label{apx:optimistic-slow-var}\n\n\\OptDelayRegretV*\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is immediate from \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}.\nIndeed,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\inter)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2\n    \\le\n    2\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\inter)-\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)}^2\n    +2\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nThen, using the Lipschitz continuity of $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]$ and the condition $2\\vt[\\stepalt^2]\\lips^2\\le1$, we have:\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    2\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\inter)-\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)}^2\n    \\le\n    2\\lips^2\\norm{\\inter-\\current}^2\n    =\n    2\\vt[\\stepalt]^2\\lips^2\\norm{\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2\n    \\le\\norm{\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nIn other words, we have proven $\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\le2\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2$ and the bound follows.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\subsection{More flexible learning rates}\n\\label{apx:optimistic-adaptive}\n\nIn order prove \\cref{prop:optimistic-adaptive}, we exploit ideas from \\cref{sec:decentralized}.\nIn particular, we generalize both \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret} and \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V} to the case where the learning rate is non-increasing along a faithful permutation.\n\n{\n\\addtocounter{theorem}{-1}\n\\renewcommand{\\thetheorem}{\\ref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}$'$}\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-decen}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$. \nConsider a faithful permutation $\\Dpermu$ and let \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} be run with learning rate sequences $\\seqinf[\\oneto{\\nRuns}]{\\step}{\\run}$, $\\seqinf[\\oneto{\\nRuns}]{\\stepalt}{\\run}$ satisfying $\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]\\le\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ and $(4\\delaybound+1)\\max_{\\setdef{\\runalt}{|\\runalt-\\run|\\le\\delaybound}}\\vt[\\step][\\runalt]\\le\\vt[\\stepalt]$ for all $\\run$. Then, the regret of the algorithm (evaluated at the points $\\vt[\\state][\\frac{3}{2}],\\ldots,\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+\\frac{1}{2}]$) satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n}\n\\begin{proof}\nWe define the virtual iterates\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n   \n    \\vt[\\virtual] = \\vt[\\state][\\start] - \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run-1}\\inter[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)].\n\\end{equation}\nWe then decompose\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\obj](\\inter) - \\vt[\\obj](\\comp)\n    \\le \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\inter-\\comp}\n    = \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\frac{1}{2}]-\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]}\n    + \\product{\\inter[\\gvec]}{\\vt[\\virtual][\\run+1]-\\comp}.\n\\end{align}\nFollowing closely the proof of \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}, we obtain\n\\begin{align}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right)\\\\\n    \\notag\n    &~~+\n    \\left(-\\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}{2}+\\frac{(\\card(\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu])+1)\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}{2}\n    +\\sum_{\\Dpermu(\\run)\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\runano]}\\frac{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\runano)]}{2}\\right)\\norm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\frac{1}{2}]}^2.\n\\end{align}\nInvoking \\cref{prop:decent-delay-bound}, we know that $\\setexclude{\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}]}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\\subset\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$.\nGiven that $\\Dpermu(\\run)\\notin\\vt[\\runs^{\\Dpermu}][\\run-1]$, this implies $\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}]\\subset\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\delaybound}{\\Dpermu(\\run)-1}\\union\\intinterval{\\Dpermu(\\run)+1}{\\Dpermu(\\run)+\\delaybound}$.\nTherefore, $\\card(\\vt[\\setout^{\\Dpermu}])\\le2\\delaybound$ and if $\\Dpermu(\\run)\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\runano]$ then $|\\Dpermu(\\run)-\\Dpermu(\\runano)|\\le\\delaybound$ while $\\Dpermu(\\run)\\neq\\Dpermu(\\runano)$, which also shows $\\card(\\setdef{\\runano}{\\Dpermu(\\run)\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\runano]})\\le2\\delaybound$. Accordingly,\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\frac{(\\card(\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu])+1)\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}{2}\n    +\\sum_{\\Dpermu(\\run)\\in\\vt[\\setout^\\Dpermu][\\runano]}\\frac{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\runano)]}{2}\n    \\le \\frac{(4\\delaybound+1)\\max_{\\setdef{\\runalt}{|\\runalt-\\Dpermu(\\run)|\\le\\delaybound}}\\vt[\\step][\\runalt]}{2}.\n\\end{equation}\nWith the assumption $\\vt[\\stepalt]\\ge(4\\delaybound+1)\\max_{\\setdef{\\runalt}{|\\runalt-\\run|\\le\\delaybound}}\\vt[\\step][\\runalt]$, we effectively deduce\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right).\n\\end{equation}\nThis proves the theorem.\n\\end{proof}\n\n{\n\\addtocounter{theorem}{-1}\n\\renewcommand{\\thetheorem}{\\ref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V}$'$}\n\\begin{theorem}\n\\label{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V-decent}\nLet the maximum delay be bounded by $\\delaybound$ and that \\cref{asm:whole-vecfield} holds. Assume in addition that the vector fields  $\\vt[\\vecfield]$ are $\\lips$-Lipschitz continuous.\nConsider a faithful permutation $\\Dpermu$ and take $\\vt[\\appr[\\gvec]]=\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt[\\state])$,\n$\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]\\le\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$, $(4\\delaybound+1)\\max_{\\setdef{\\runalt}{|\\runalt-\\run|\\le\\delaybound}}\\vt[\\step][\\runalt]\\le\\vt[\\stepalt]$, and $2\\vt[\\stepalt^2]\\lips^2\\le1$. \nThen, the regret of \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} (evaluated at the points $\\vt[\\state][\\frac{3}{2}],\\ldots,\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+\\frac{1}{2}]$) satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\stepalt]\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{theorem}\n}\n\\begin{proof}\nApply \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-decen} and bound the term $\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2$ as in the proof of \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\OptAdapt*\n\\begin{proof}\nLet $\\vt[\\varappr]=\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])}^2$.\nWe consider a permutation $\\Dpermu$ such that (\\emph{i}) if $\\vt[\\varappr][\\runalt]<\\vt[\\varappr]$ then $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$; (\\emph{ii}) if $\\vt[\\varappr][\\runalt]=\\vt[\\varappr]$ and $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ then $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$. The sequence $(\\vt[\\varappr])_{\\run}$ is non-decreasing along $\\Dpermu$ (see \\eg proof of \\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret-apx}) and \naccordingly the learning rate sequence $(\\vt[\\step])_{\\run}$ is non-decreasing along $\\Dpermu$.\nMoreover, if $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$, we have $\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]\\subset\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]\\subset\\vt[\\set]$ thanks to \\cref{asm:in-order}.\nThis implies $\\vt[\\varappr][\\runalt]\\le\\vt[\\varappr]$; subsequently $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$.\nThe above shows that $\\Dpermu$ is a faithful permutation.\nThe condition $2\\vt[\\stepalt^2]\\lips^2\\le1$ is automatically satisfied by the definition of $\\vt[\\stepalt]$.\nTo apply \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V-decent}, the last missing piece is to prove $(4\\delaybound+1)\\max_{\\setdef{\\runalt}{|\\runalt-\\run|\\le\\delaybound}}\\vt[\\step][\\runalt]\\le\\vt[\\stepalt]$.\nThis boils down to showing that\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:varappr-diff}\n\\vt[\\varappr][\\runalt]+4\\gbound^2(3\\delaybound+1)\\ge\\vt[\\varappr]+4\\gbound^2(\\delaybound+1)\n\\end{equation}\nfor all $\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}\\intersect\\intinterval{\\run-\\delaybound}{\\run+\\delaybound}$.\nThe maximum delay being bounded by $\\delaybound$, we have $|\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\runalt])-\\card(\\vt[\\set])|\\le|\\runalt-\\run|+\\delaybound$.\nBy bounding each $\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield][\\runano](\\vt[\\state][\\runano])-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]][\\runano](\\vt[\\state][\\runano])}^2$ by $4\\gbound^2$, we indeed prove \\eqref{eq:varappr-diff} for $\\runalt$ such that $|\\runalt-\\run|\\le\\delaybound$.\n\nWith all this at hand, applying \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V-decent} gives\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\stepalt]\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2.\n\\end{equation}\nAs the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$ and the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$, we have $\\vt[\\varappr]+4\\gbound^2(\\delaybound+1)\\ge\\vt[\\variation]$.\nInvoking \\cref{lem:adaptive} then gives\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:opt-adapt-regret-proof}\n\\begin{aligned}\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\frac{\\radius\\sqrt{4\\delaybound+1}}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{\\vt[\\variation]}}\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\current)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}^2\\\\\n    &\\le\\frac{\\radius^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    +\\radius\\sqrt{(4\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]}.\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nWe bound the second term by\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:opt-adapt-regret-proof-2nd}\n    \\radius\\sqrt{(4\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]}\n    \\le\n    \\radius\\sqrt{(4\\delaybound+1)(\\vt[\\varappr][\\nRuns]+4\\gbound^2(3\\delaybound+1))}\n    \\le\\frac{\\radius^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    \\le\\frac{\\radius^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}.\n\\end{equation}\nCombining \\eqref{eq:opt-adapt-regret-proof} and \\eqref{eq:opt-adapt-regret-proof-2nd} we get $\\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2\/\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]$.\nWe can conlcude by using the definition of $\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]$ and $\\vt[\\varappr][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]\\le\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]$.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\n\\section{Introduction}\n\\label{sec:intro}\n\\input{Sections\/Introduction}\n\n\\section{A general framework for asynchronous online optimization}\n\\label{sec:framework}\n\\input{Sections\/Framework}\n\n\\section{Delayed dual averaging and asynchronicity}\n\\label{sec:DDA}\n\\input{Sections\/DDA}\n\n\\section{Tuning the learning rate in distributed systems}\n\\label{sec:decentralized}\n\\input{Sections\/Decentralized}\n\n\\section{A closer look at the decentralized case}\n\\label{sec:global}\n\\input{Sections\/Global}\n\n\\section{An Optimistic Variant}\n\\label{sec:optimistic}\n\\input{Sections\/Optimistic}\n\n\n\\section{Conclusion}\n\\input{Sections\/Conclusion}\n\n\n\\acks\nThis work has been partially supported by MIAI Grenoble Alpes (ANR-19-P3IA-0003).}\n\n\n\n\\renewcommand{\\proofname}{\\normalfont\\textbf{Proof}}\n\n\\subsection{Problem and feedback structure}\n\\label{subsec:framework-prob}\n\nLet us consider a set of $\\nWorkers$ agents playing\nagainst a sequence of time-varying loss functions, with the goal to achieve a low regret.\nFormally, at each time slot $\\run=\\running$, one of the agents becomes \\emph{active},\nplays a point $\\vt[\\state]$ from the constraint set $\\points$,\nand incurs a loss $\\vt[\\obj](\\vt[\\state])$.\\footnote{For simplicity, we assume throughout that only one agent is active at each time step.}\nThe performance of the agents is then measured by the cumulative regret\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\label{eq:reg-def}\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp) = \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns} \\vt[\\obj](\\vt[\\state])\n    - \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns} \\vt[\\obj](\\comp)\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\comp\\in\\points$ is an arbitrary comparator action.\nIn the above, \n$\\points$ is assumed to be a closed convex subset of $\\vecspace$,\nand\neach $\\vt[\\obj]\\from\\vecspace\\to\\R\\cup\\{+\\infty\\}$ is convex and has $\\points\\subset\\dom\\subd\\vt[\\obj]$, where $\\subd\\vt[\\obj]$ denotes the subdifferential of $\\vt[\\obj]$.\nUnless otherwise stated, we assume that the agents receive first-order feedback $\\vt[\\gvec]\\in\\subd\\vt[\\obj](\\vt)$\nat some moment after $\\vt$ is played\n(namely, $\\vt[\\gvec]$ is a subgradient of $\\vt[\\obj]$ at $\\vt$).%\n\\footnote{In a slight abuse of terminology, the terms gradient and subgradient will be used interchangeably in the sequel.}\nWe will refer to $\\vt[\\state]$ as either the \\emph{prediction} made by the active agent or the \\emph{action} played by the active agent at time $\\run$ regardless of the nature of the problem, and we write $\\activeworker{\\run}$ for the agent that is active at time $\\run$.\n\n\n\n\\paragraph{The delay model.}\n\nIn environments with \\emph{delayed feedback}, $\\vt[\\gvec]$ is only received by an agent at a certain amount of time after having played $\\vt[\\state]$.\nIn this regard, we will focus on the following sources of delay:\n\\begin{enumerate*}\n[\\itshape i\\upshape)]\n\\item\n\\emph{inherent delays} that arise when the effect of a decision requires some time to be observed;\n\\item\n\\emph{computation delays} that arise when processing the action takes time (\\eg due to gradient computations);\nand\n\\item\n\\emph{communication delays} that arise in network setups where multiple workers share first-order information.\n\\end{enumerate*}\n\nTo express this formally, we write $\\oneto{\\run-1}\\defeq\\intinterval{\\start}{\\run-1}$ and we introduce $\\vwt[\\set]\\subset\\oneto{\\run-1}$ for the set of gradient timestamps that are available to agent $\\worker$ at time $\\run$;\nin other words, at time $\\run$, the $\\worker$-th agent only has $\\setdef{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\runalt\\in\\vwt[\\set]}$ at their disposal. \nClearly, for all $\\worker = 1,\\dotsc,\\nWorkers$, the sequence $(\\vwt[\\set])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ is non-decreasing, \\ie\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{proper:local-mono}\n\\vwt[\\set]\\subset\\vwt[\\set][\\worker][\\run+1]\n\t\\quad\n\t\\text{for all $\\run=\\running$}\n\\end{equation}\nOf course, at each stage $\\run = \\running$, the active agent $\\activeworker{\\run}$ can only compute $\\vt[\\state]$ based on $\\setdef{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\runalt\\in\\vwtATt[\\set]}$, the set of subgradients available for it at time $\\run$.\nThis quantity is of utmost importance in our framework, so we also define\n\\begin{equation}\n\\vt[\\set]\n\t= \\vwtATt[\\set]\n\t\\qquad\n\t\\text{and}\n\t\\qquad\n\\vt[\\setout]\n\t=\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\run-1}}{\\vt[\\set]}\n\\end{equation}\nfor the set of timestamps that are available (resp.\\;unavailable) to the active agent at time $\\run$.\nAs such, in this notation, the non-delayed setting corresponds to the  case $\\vt[\\set]=\\vwt[\\set]=\\oneto{\\run-1}$ and $\\vt[\\setout]=\\varnothing$.\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Running examples}\n\\label{subsec:framework-exs}\n\nWe now present two examples intended to showcase the range of the proposed framework. In order to better describe practical implementations, we separate the single- and multi-agent cases below. \n\n\\paragraph{Case 1: Single agent with delayed feedback}\n\n\nIn the case of a single agent, the available information simply comes from aggregating first-order feedback from previous actions.\nSince the agent's feedback may be subject to delays, the arrival of gradients may not be sequential or synchronized with the playing times.\nThis is the common \\emph{delayed feedback} setup in the literature (see \\citealp{MS14,JGS13,JGS16,QD15}).\nImportantly, while the available feedback $\\vt[\\set]=\\vwt[\\set][1]$ is necessarily monotone in the single-agent case ($\\vt[\\set]=\\vwt[\\set][1]\\subset \\vwt[\\set][\\run+1][1] = \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$ by \\cref{proper:local-mono}), the gradients may be received out-of-order ($\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ may be received before $\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]$ even if $\\run<\\runalt$).\n\n\\vspace*{-1em}\n\\begin{figure}[h]\n    \\centering\n\\resizebox{0.38\\textwidth}{!}{\n\\input{Figs\/single.tikz}\n}\n\\end{figure}\n\n\\vspace*{-1.4em}\n\\begin{example}\n\\label{ex:single}\nTo provide some intuition on the type feedback arrival that this setup can lead to, we give below an example with $\\nRuns=5$ rounds.\n\\\\\n\\input{Figs\/feedback.tikz}\n\\end{example}\n\n\\smallskip\n\\paragraph{Case 2: Multiple asynchronous agents}\n\nWhen there are multiple agents, feedback delays can come from the agents' own delay in generating the feedback but also from the time taken to communicate with other agents.\nSince there are communications, it is important to define how and why they are done. We exhibit two distinct setups below:\n\n\\begin{enumerate}[label=\\emph{2\\alph*}), ref=\\emph{2\\alph*}]\n    \\item \\label{item:ex-dist-async}\n    A coordinator-worker asynchronous setup where $\\nWorkers$ agents collaborate in a common time-varying environment. The loss then represents a time-varying global problem with asynchronous interactions between the agents and an individual, agent-specific feedback mechanism (that can result itself in delayed feedback). The agents then collaborate by sending their feedbacks to a coordinator that broadcasts the new gathered information to all participants.\\footnote{One can imagine that in order to reduce communications, the workers wait to gather new feedback and only then send their sum to the coordinator (while still performing updates based on these local feedback), which itself can wait for a certain amount of received feedback to broadcast it back. In addition to reduce communication, such a mechanism can also protect some privacy.} This communication naturally induces some delay.\n    \\item \\label{item:ex-dec} \n    A decentralized open network, \\ie a time-varying number  $\\nWorkers_\\run$  of agents connected by a\n    graph, collaborating to improve their individual \n    loss by the help of global information.\n\\end{enumerate}\n\n\\begin{figure}[t]\n    \\centering\n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.47\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        \\resizebox{\\textwidth}{!}{\n        \\input{Figs\/multiple.tikz}\n        }\n        \\vspace{0.5em}\n        \\caption*{2a) An asynchronous coordinator-worker setup.}\n    \\end{subfigure}\n    \\hspace{1em}\n    \\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.47\\textwidth}\n        \\centering\n        \\resizebox{\\textwidth}{!}{\n        \\input{Figs\/distributed.tikz}\n        }\n        \\caption*{2b) A decentralized open network.}\n        \\end{subfigure}\n\\end{figure}\n\\addtocounter{figure}{-1}\n\nFor a schematic representation, see the figure above.\nIt is also worth noting that, since the active agent differs from one time slot to another, the sequence $(\\vt[\\set])_{\\run\\in\\N}$ is not necessarily monotone ($\\vt[\\set]\\not\\subset \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$ even though the sequences $\\vwt[\\set]$ are by \\cref{proper:local-mono}).\nWe make this precise below:\n\n\\begin{example}\n\\label{ex:dist}\nWe provide below an example with $\\nRuns=5$ rounds and two workers. Note that the situation below can arise in both cases.\n\\vspace{1.2em}\n\\input{Figs\/feedback_D.tikz}\n\\end{example}\n\n\n\\subsection{Candidate algorithms}\n\\label{subsec:framework-algo}\n\nThe algorithms that we will examine rely on the use of a suitable regularizer function $\\hreg\\from\\vecspace\\to\\R\\cup\\{+\\infty\\}$ to stabilize the predictions.\nTo define it, we assume that the ambient space $\\vecspace$ is equipped with a norm $\\norm{\\cdot}$, and we write $\\dnorm{\\cdot}$ for the induced dual norm.\nThen, we say that $\\hreg$ is a \\emph{regularizer} on $\\points$ if\nit is lower semi-continuous and $1$-strongly convex relative to $\\norm{\\cdot}$ on $\\points$,\n$\\points\\subset\\dom\\hreg$,\nand the subdifferential $\\subd\\hreg$ admits a continuous selection denoted by $\\grad\\hreg$.\nThis allows us to define the \\emph{Bregman divergence} induced by $\\hreg$ as\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\breg_{\\hreg}(\\point,\\pointalt) = \\hreg(\\point) - \\hreg(\\pointalt) - \\product{\\grad\\hreg(\\pointalt)}{\\point-\\pointalt}\n\\end{equation}\nand the corresponding \\emph{mirror map}\n\\[\\prox \\from \\dvec \\mapsto \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} ~ \\product{-\\dvec}{\\point}+\\hreg(\\point).\\]\n\n\n\n\nTwo of the most popular candidates of $\\hreg$ are the squared $\\ell_2$-norm $\\hreg(\\point)=\\norm{\\point}_2^2\/2$ for arbitrary closed convex $\\points$ and the negative entropy $\\hreg(\\point)=\\sum_{\\indg}\\point[\\indg]\\log(\\point[\\indg])$ for simplex constraints $\\points=\\setdef{\\point}{\\sum_{\\indg=1}^{\\vdim}\\point[\\indg]=1}$ (here $\\point[\\indg]$ denotes the $\\indg^{th}$ coordinate of $\\point$).\nThe first example is $1$-strongly convex relative to the Euclidean norm $\\norm{\\cdot} = \\norm{\\cdot}_{2}$, while the second one is $1$-strongly convex relative to the $\\ell^{1}$ norm $\\norm{\\cdot}_{1}$ on the simplex.\nFinally, without loss of generality, we also assume in the sequel that $\\hreg$ is non-negative.\nIn fact, as $\\hreg$ is strongly convex, $\\min\\hreg$ is always well-defined and replacing $\\hreg$ by $\\hreg-\\min\\hreg$ does not affect any of the algorithms studied in our paper (for example, in the case of entropic gradient descent, we let $\\hreg(\\point)=\\sum_{\\indg}\\point[\\indg]\\log\\point[\\indg]+\\vdim\\log\\vdim$).\n\n\\paragraph{Two families of methods\\dots}\nIn the non-delayed case, the algorithmic strategies that the agents can follow to optimize their regret using first-order feedback follow two closely related trends:\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item\n    \\emph{Online mirror descent:}\n    \\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:mirror-desc}\n\\tag{OMD}\n    \\vt[\\state] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points}\n    \t\\braces*{ \\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-1] }{\\point} + \\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step][\\run-1]} \\breg_{\\hreg}(\\point,\\vt[\\state][\\run-1]) }\n    =\n    \\prox\\left(\\nabla\\hreg(\\vt[\\state][\\run-1]) - \\vt[\\step][\\run-1]\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-1]\\right).\n   \n\\end{equation}\n    \\item\n    \\emph{Online dual averaging:}\n    \\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:dual-avg}\n\\tag{ODA}\n    \\vt[\\state] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points}   \n    \\braces*{\n    \\sum_{\\runalt <\\run }\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{1}{\\vt[\\step]} \\hreg(\\point)\n    }\n    = \\prox\\left( - \\vt[\\step]\\sum_{\\runalt <\\run}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]\\right)\n    .\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{itemize}\n\nThe main difference between the two methods is that \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc} generates a new point by combining the last gradient with the last prediction, while \\eqref{eq:dual-avg} combines all past gradients and then generates a prediction, without explicitly using the last available prediction.\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{rem:mirror}\nThe origins of the above methods can be traced to \\cite{NY83}, but there is otherwise no consensus on terminology in the literature.\nThe specific formulation \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc} is sometimes referred to as ``eager'' mirror descent, in contrast to the method's ``lazy'' variant which outputs $\\vt[\\state] \\gets \\prox(-\\sum_{\\runalt < \\run} \\vt[\\step][\\runalt] \\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt])$, see \\eg \\cite{nesterov2009primal} or \\cite{MZ19}.\nThese variants coincide when $\\hreg$ is infinitely ``steep'' at the boundary of $\\points$, \\ie $\\dom\\subd\\hreg \\cap \\points = \\relint\\points$;\notherwise, they lead to different sequences of play \\citep{KM17}.\nThe ``dual averaging'' variant is due to \\cite{nesterov2009primal}, and differs from the lazy variant of \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc} in that all gradients enter the algorithm with the same weight.\nFrom an online learning viewpoint, \\eqref{eq:dual-avg} can also be seen as a ``linearized'' version of the \\ac{FTRL} class of algorithms \\citep{SSS06}, and coincides with \\ac{FTRL} when the loss functions encountered are linear.\nFor a survey, see \\cite{juditsky2019unifying}, \\cite{mcmahan2017survey}, \\cite{Mer19}, and references therein.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\\paragraph{\\dots not equally robust to delays}\n\nWhen the feedback to the agents is subject to \\emph{delays},\nthe players have to take decisions with information that is possibly out of order.\nTrying to extend \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc} and \\eqref{eq:dual-avg} to cope for such a situation sheds considerable light on their fundamental differences in terms of robustness to delays.\n\nIndeed, if feedback arrives out-of-order, the natural extension \nof the methods would be to use them as if they corresponded to the last played point.\nThe sequence of points generated by the algorithms would then be different than with ordered feedback.\nHowever, for \\eqref{eq:dual-avg}, the final output after all feedback has arrived will be \\emph{the same} for all agents, in contrast to that of \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc}.\nThis is because, in dual averaging, all gradients enter the model with the \\emph{same weight} \\citep[Sec. 1.2]{nesterov2009primal};\nthis is a very appealing feature, especially when trying to incorporate delayed gradients or gradients generated by other agents.\n\nThis feature of  \\eqref{eq:dual-avg}\nis due to the aggregation of gradient feedback as it arrives.\nFor instance, if an agent is given a feedback from another agent, it is not immediate to plug it in the \\eqref{eq:mirror-desc} update whereas it is simply added to the sum in \\eqref{eq:dual-avg}. In addition, dual averaging strategies were also found to perform better in manifold identification \\citep{lee2012manifold} or in the presence of noise \\citep{flammarion2017stochastic}. This suggests that\nthe anonymous feedback aggregation properties of \\eqref{eq:dual-avg} make it the method of choice for online learning with asynchronous delayed feedback.\nIn the rest of our paper, we will act on this intuition and focus exclusively on \\eqref{eq:dual-avg}.\n\n\n\\subsection{More flexible learning rates for asynchronous dual averaging}\n\n\nAs we saw from the running examples, the knowledge of a global time corresponding to the total number of actions played by all agents can be unrealistic in some setting. Thus, implementing a learning rate policy that is non-increasing with respect to time may be impossible. \nNonetheless, the non-increasingness of the learning rate is crucial to the analysis of online dual averaging.\nTo marry these two seemingly irreconcilable components,\nwe need to dig into the intricate relation between the delays and the actual updates,\nwhich is partially made easy thanks to the framework that we have established.\nThen, by reordering the time appropriately, the analysis proceeds and we will be able to bound the regret as desired.\n\nFormally, we define a set of permutations of $\\{\\start,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$, called \\emph{faithful permutations}, over which a non-increasing learning rate leads to to a regret bound similar to that of \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}. \n\n\n\\begin{definition}[faithful permutation]\nA permutation $\\Dpermu$ of the set $\\{\\start,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$ is \\emph{faithful} if and only if $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ (\\ie $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ is available for choosing $\\vt[\\state]$) implies $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\runalt)<\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$.\n\\end{definition}\n\nA permutation $\\Dpermu$ being faithful means that the feedback used at time\\;$\\Dpermu(\\run)$ (whose time indices are in $\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$) form a subset of  $\\{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\start)],\\ldots,\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run-1)]\\}$. Indeed, if $\\Dpermu(\\runalt)\\in\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$, then $\\runalt=\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\runalt)) < \\Dpermu^{-1}(\\Dpermu(\\run)) = \\run $, \\ie $s\\in\\{\\start,\\ldots,\\run-1\\}$. Thus, a faithful permutation can be seen as a reordering of the time that would still be compatible with the feedback used by each agent at every time.\n\n\nNote that obviously the identity is always a faithful permutation. We also encountered another faithful permutation in \\cref{sec:adagrad} when we consider the arrival order of the gradients in the monotonous case $\\vt[\\set] \\subset \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$ (\\cf proof of \\cref{prop:delay-set-charac}).\n\nNow that we have laid out all the necessary ingredients, the next theorem bounds the regret for a learning rate sequence that is non-increasing \\emph{along a faithful permutation}.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{DelayRegret}\n\\label{thm:delay-regret}\nLet $\\Dpermu$ be a faithful permutation of $\\{\\start,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$. Assume that delayed dual averaging \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} is run with a learning rate sequence $(\\vt[\\step])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ such that $\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run+1)]\\le\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]$ for all $\\run$. Then the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\nRuns)]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]\n    \\left(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}\n        \\!\\!\\!\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\setexclude{\\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\run-1)\\}}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}}\\!\\!\\!\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe complete proof is presented in \\cref{apx:proof-delay-regret}. \nTo show this result, we leverage the so-called ``perturbed iterate'' framework for asynchronous algorithms in the spirit of \\cite{MPPR+15} and \\cite{SK19}.\nFormally, we define the following virtual iterate sequence\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n\\vt[\\virtual] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points}\n\\sum_{\\runalt=1}^{\\run-1}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\runalt)]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}.\n\\end{equation}\nand bound the difference between the linearized regret achieved by the sequences\\;$(\\vt[\\state])$ and\\;$(\\vt[\\virtual])$.\nWe then obtain a bound on the algorithm's regret by bounding the regret incurred by the sequence of virtual iterates $\\vt[\\virtual]$ and combining the two.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThis result extends \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first} by providing a larger class of possible learning rate policies (while \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first} is proved by taking $\\Dpermu$ as the identity permutation). This enables us to devise efficient and truly implementable learning rate update schemes in the next section.\n\n\n\\subsection{Variable learning rate methods: the case of distributed learning}\n\nAs in \\cref{sec:adapt}, we aim at providing adaptive learning rate policies.\nHowever, we here place ourselves in the most general framework where the sequence of active feedback $ (\\vt[\\set])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$ is not necessarily non-decreasing and even the knowledge of the global time (\\ie the total number of actions played) is out of reach.\nDoing so, we plan on providing efficient methods for cases \\ref{item:ex-dist-async} and \\ref{item:ex-dec} of our running examples. \n\n\\subsubsection{Pessimistic non-adaptive learning rate}\n\\label{subsubsec:decr-decen}\n\nAs discussed previously, in this very general setup, it is in general infeasible to implement a learning rate schedule that is non-increasing along the time sequence.\nEquipped with the knowledge of (an upper bound of) the maximum delay, it it however possible for an agent to make a pessimistic estimate of the number of actions that has been played, based on the number of the \\notice{sub}gradients that it has received.\nIn this regard, we just need to define a faithful permutation such that along this permutation the learning rate is non-increasing in order to apply \\cref{thm:delay-regret}. To achieve this, we add the following assumption.\n\n\\begin{assumption}\n\\label{asm:card-in-order}\nIf $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ then $\\card(\\vt[\\set][\\runalt])<\\card(\\vt[\\set])$.\n\\end{assumption}\n\nIn words, the assumption requires that if $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ is used to compute $\\vt[\\state]$, then $\\vt[\\state][\\runalt]$ is computed with fewer gradients than $\\vt[\\state]$. This is particularly implied by the upcoming \\cref{asm:in-order} which is itself already a fairly weak assumption (see the accompanying discussion).\nFurthermore, if the agents relay the information $\\card(\\vt[\\set])$ as well, \\cref{asm:card-in-order} can be ensured by delaying the actual usage of a received feedback when necessary.\\footnote{\nIn this case, $\\vt[\\set]$ refers to the timestamps of the gradients that are used for the computation of $\\vt[\\state]$ but this does not necessarily contains all the gradients that $\\activeworker{\\run}$ has received by time $\\run$.}\nThen, when the actual delays are bounded by $\\delaybound$, the gradients $\\{\\vt[\\gvec][\\start],\\ldots,\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-\\delaybound-1]\\}$ can always be used for computing $\\vt[\\state]$. Therefore, introducing this extra delay will not increase the maximum delay and has no effect on the regret bound of the following proposition.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{DecenDecrRegret}\n\\label{prop:decen-decr-regret}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$, the norm of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$, and let \\cref{asm:card-in-order} hold.\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} be run with learning rates\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\sqrt{(1+2\\delaybound)(\\card(\\vt[\\set])+\\delaybound+1)}}.\n\\end{align}\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n   2 \\radius \\gbound \\sqrt{(\\nRuns+\\delaybound)(1+2\\delaybound)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is detailed in \\cref{apx:adadelay-decentralized}. After introducing an appropriate faithful permutation we bound the cardinality of $\\setexclude{\\{\\Dpermu(1),\\ldots,\\Dpermu(\\run-1)\\}}{\\vt[\\set][\\Dpermu(\\run)]}$ and apply the inverse square root of the sum trick (\\cref{lem:adaptive}) to conclude.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret} mirrors \\cref{prop:oneovert}, with the only difference that in lieu of the global time index $\\run$ (which is in general unknown to agents), we use the number of feedbacks that an agent has received.\nThis learning rate scheme can be effectively implemented in a decentralized multi-agent network, and retains the optimal $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\nRuns})$ regret bound.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{AdaGrad-style}\n\n\nThe design of data-dependent learning rates in the distributed setting follows closely its counterpart in the single-agent setup.\nFirst, as $\\vwt[\\set]$ the feedback set \\emph{at some agent $\\worker$} is necessarily growing (\\cref{proper:local-mono}), at each agent $\\worker$, we can define an arrival order per agent in the form of a permutation $\\Dpermu_\\worker$ of $\\{1,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$ such that the $\\grun$-th received feedback comes from $\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu_i(\\grun)]$ (played by $\\worker$ or another player), \\ie the $\\grun$-th received feedback is $\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu_i(\\grun)] \\in  \\subd\\vt[\\obj][\\Dpermu_i(\\grun)](\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu_i(\\grun)])$. \nWith this notation, we can define the set of all feedback received \\emph{before  $\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]$ by agent $\\worker$}; since $\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]$ is the $\\Dpermu_i^{-1}(\\run)$-th feedback, this set can be defined as $\\vwt[\\setrec] \\defeq \\{ \\Dpermu_i(1),\\Dpermu_i(2),\\ldots,\\Dpermu_i(\\Dpermu_i^{-1}(\\run)-1) \\}$.\n\nTo proceed, we make also the following mild assumption: when an agent receives a gradient $\\vt[\\gvec]$, it has already received all the feedback that was used to compute it (\\ie $\\vt[\\set]$).\n\n\\begin{assumption}\n\\label{asm:in-order}\nFor every node $\\worker$ and time $\\run$, we have $\\vt[\\set]\\subset\\vwt[\\setrec]$.\n\\end{assumption}\n\nThe above assumption is notably verified in the following situations:\n\\begin{enumerate*}[\\itshape i\\upshape)]\n    \\item a coordinator-worker scheme in which the transmission of the gradients are \\emph{in order} (first come, first served);\n    \\item broadcasting of newly received and computed gradient over a fixed communication network;\n    \\item whenever two agents communicate their gradient pools are synchronized and the gradients are exchanged in the order they become available to the agents.\n\\end{enumerate*}\nAs a consequence, \\cref{asm:in-order} is satisfied in many relevant setups and can otherwise be enforced by imposing \\emph{iii)} at the price of a higher communication cost.\n\nNow, since at time $\\run$, the active agent $\\worker(\\run)$ has the knowledge of $\\vt[\\set]$ by definition and of $\\vwt[\\setrec][\\activeworker{\\run}][\\runalt]$ for $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$ by construction, we can modify the lag approximation of \\eqref{eq:gsumbck} to\n\\begin{align}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\Gsumbcki] = \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n        \\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\worker(\\run),\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n            \\right) \n\\end{align}\nso that $ \\vt[\\Gsumbcki]$ is computable by the active worker $\\worker(\\run)$ at time $\\run$. \nNote that the $ \\vt[\\Gsumbcki]$ still involves the knowledge of all past $\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]$ (or rather $ \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}$), which imply some additional communication between the agents (of the order of one scalar per feedback sent). The obtained algorithm is detailed in \\cref{algo:adadelay-dist}. Finally, although the feedback monotonicity is no longer assumed, the regret is very close to the one of \\cref{prop:adadelay} (actually only differs by a time-independent constant).\n\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{AdaDelayDistRegret}\n\\label{prop:adadelayi}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$, the norm of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$, and let \\cref{asm:in-order} hold.\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} be run with a learning rate sequence \n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:adadelayDist}\n\\tag{AdaDelay--Dist}\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\frac{\\radius}{\\sqrt{  \\vt[\\Gsumbcki]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound+1)^2}}.\n\\end{align}\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n   2 \\radius \\max_{1\\le\\run\\le\\nRuns} \\sqrt{\\vt[\\Gsumbcki][\\run]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound+1)^2} \\le  2 \\radius \\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound+1)^2}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is reported in \\cref{apx:adadelay-decentralized}. We first show that $\\vt[\\Gsumbcki]$ shares the same characterization as $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]$ thanks to \\cref{asm:in-order}. Then, we prove that $\\vt[\\Gsumbcki][\\run]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound+1)^2$ is an upper bound of a modified notion of lag.\n\\end{proof}\n\nIn \\cref{algo:adadelay-dist}, the global time is no longer present and feedback are treated separately depending on whether they come from other agents (along with additional information) or come from a point played by the agent. Time indices are still present for ease of comprehension, notably to enhance the fact the a worker knows (and keeps track) of the feedback used to produce past point (\\ie $\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}$ for each point $\\vt[\\state]$ played by the worker).\n\n\\begin{remark}\n\\label{rem:unbounded}\nWe did not try to design a learning rate strategy that adapts to unbounded delays in this section since in the decentralized case, an agent can hardly make any sensible estimation of the cumulative unavailability without the knowledge of an upper bound on the maximum delay.\nThe impact of this estimate becomes negligible when $\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]$ goes to infinity in \\cref{prop:adadelayi}. However, if the $\\delaybound$ used in the algorithm is smaller than the actual maximum delay $\\delaybound_{\\max}$, the regret can be deteriorated by a factor of $\\delaybound_{\\max}\/\\delaybound$. \n\\end{remark}\n\n\\input{Algos\/AdaDelayDist}\n\\subsection{Delayed dual averaging}\n\nFollowing the discussion of \\cref{subsec:framework-algo}, our candidate algorithm for this asynchronous setup is the delayed dual averaging policy:\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:delayed-dual-avg}\n\\tag{DDA}\n    \\vt[\\state] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step]} = \\prox\\left( - \\vt[\\step] \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]\\right).\n\\end{equation}\nWe start by establishing a data-dependent regret bound of the algorithm.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{DelayRegretFirst}\n\\label{thm:delay-regret-first}\nAssume that \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} is run with a non-increasing learning rate sequence $(\\vt[\\step])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$. Then the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ satisfy\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\step][\\run]\n    \\Bigg(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]}\n        \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\\Bigg).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\nThis result will be proven as a special case of a more general result in the sequel (\\cref{thm:delay-regret}). We note the bound consists of \nthe usual online dual averaging bound (\\cf \\cref{apx:ODA})\nplus\na term $ \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\setout]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}$ that captures the feedback that \\emph{could} have been used (since the corresponding point was played) but was not because it was delayed.\nIn the literature, this kind of regret bound has only been proven for the single-agent scenario.\nIn more detail, both \\citet{MS14} and \\cite{JGS16} established a very similar regret guarantee for online gradient\/mirror descent when only one agent is involved in the learning process.%\n\\footnote{In \\cite{MS14}, the authors work with the specific setting of coordinate-wise unconstrained gradient methods. Therefore, instead of products of norms they have products of scalars in their analysis.}\nHowever, to the best of our knowledge, this result is not known for dual averaging even in the single-agent case, while a looser bound can be found in \\cite{QD15} for a constant learning rate schedule $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$.%\n\n\n\\subsection{Delays and lag}\n\n\nDelays for the feedback can be measured in several ways. We provide herein four measures that reflect different aspects of delay:\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item The \\emph{maximum delay} $\\delaybound$ is the longest wait to receive a feedback $\\delaybound = \\min \\{ \\tau : \\oneto{\\run-\\delaybound-1}\\subset\\vt[\\set] \\text{ for all } {\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}} \\}$.\n   \n   \n   \n    Notice that as we are in a multi-agent setting, there is not a single delay associated with every individual subgradient (all the agents do not receive a feedback at the same time), while it is still possible to have a bound on the delays of the feedback.\n   \n    \\item The \\emph{maximum unavailability} $\\outbound$  of the feedback is defined by $\\outbound=\\max_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}\\card(\\vt[\\setout])$.\n   \n   \n   \n   \n    This is the maximum number of subgradients that could have (but have not) been communicated to an active agent when it performs the prediction.\n   \n    It is straightforward to see that $\\outbound\\le\\delaybound$.\\footnote{\n    For any $\\run \\in \\oneto{\\nRuns} $, we have $\\oneto{\\run-\\delaybound-1} \\subset \\vt[\\set][\\run]$  and thus $\\vt[\\setout][\\run]=\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\run-1}}{\\vt[\\set][\\run]} \\subset \\intinterval{\\run-\\delaybound-1}{\\run-1}$ which consists of $\\delaybound$ elements.\n    On the other hand, if, for some reason, one feedback is \\emph{lost}, say the first one, then, the maximum delay is $\\tau=\\nRuns-1$ while the maximum unavailability is $\\outbound=1$, in which case $\\outbound \\ll \\delaybound$.}\n   \n    \\item The \\emph{cumulative unavailability} $ \\totaldelay $ is given by\n    $\\totaldelay=\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\card(\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt])$.\n    This generalizes the sum of delays to the multi-agent case; it is direct to see that $\\totaldelay\\le\\outbound\\nRuns$.\n   \n    \\item The \\emph{lag} at time $\\run$ defined by\n   \n   \n   \n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:gsum}\n    \\vt[\\gsum] = \\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n    \\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n    \\right) .\n\\end{equation}\nIt sums over the errors that are caused by the inability of the learners to compensate the missing feedback. It gives the most fine-grained characterization of the effect of delayed feedback on the regret. Similar quantities have also been defined in \\cite{JGS16,MS14}.\n\\end{itemize}\n\nUnder these notions of delay, a direct application of  \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}  with a constant learning rate gives the following result.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\n\\label{cor:delay-regret}\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} run with constant learning rate $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$.\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item If $\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec]}$ is uniformly bounded and $\\step=\\Theta(1\/\\sqrt{\\outbound\\nRuns})$, then $\\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)=\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\outbound\\nRuns})$.\n   \\item If\n    $\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec]}$ is uniformly bounded and $\\step=\\Theta(1\/\\sqrt{\\totaldelay})$, then $\\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)=\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\totaldelay})$.\n    \\item If $\\step=\\Theta(1\/\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]})$, then $\\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)=\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]})$.\n\\end{itemize}\n\\end{corollary}\n\nComparing \\cref{cor:delay-regret} with known results in the literature, we find out that in the single-agent setup, we successfully recover the optimal data-dependent bound in $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]})$ as presented in \\cite{JGS16,MS14}.\nMoreover, if we further assume that $\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec]}\\le\\gbound$ for all $\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}$, we have $\\gsum_{\\nRuns}\\le(\\nRuns+2\\totaldelay)\\gbound^2$ which leads to the well-known $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\totaldelay})$ bound on the regret (see \\eg \\citealp{QD15}).\nFinally, since neither $\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]$ nor $\\totaldelay$ can be known beforehand, in practice one may need to use a more conservative learning rate in the order of $\\Theta(1\/\\sqrt{\\outbound\\nRuns})$.\nWe address this important issue via the design of proper adaptive methods in the next section.\n\n\\subsection{Variable learning rate methods}\n\\label{sec:adapt}\n\nIn this section, we exploit the regret bound of \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first} to design efficient leaning rates that provably achieve low regret.\nTo clarify our objective, we identify here three characteristics that an ideal learning rate schedule would like to have: \\begin{enumerate*}\n[\\itshape i\\upshape)]\n\\item\narbitrary time horizon: the computation of the learning rate does not require the knowledge of a predetermined time horizon $\\nRuns$;\n\\item\ndata-dependant: the regret features the actual feedback instead of an upper bound on the gradient norms;\nand\n\\item delay-adaptive: the regret depends on the actual delays and not only an worst-case estimation.\n\\end{enumerate*}\n\nTo produce a learning rate with the above properties, \nwe rely on the classic trick of ``inverse square root of the sum'' (see \\cref{lem:adaptive} in \\cref{apx:adaptive} for mathematical details).\nTo obtain a $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]})$ regret, it consists in taking $ \\vt[\\step] = 1\/\\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum]} = 1\/\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\\vt[\\gsumpar][\\runalt]}$ where\n\\[\\vt[\\gsumpar][\\runalt]=\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}.\\]\nObviously this policy is not implementable in our context since it involves unobserved feedback. Nevertheless, it can be approximated in some situations.\nTo streamline our presentation, all the proofs of this subsection are deferred to \\cref{apx:adaptive}.\n\n\\subsubsection{Pessimistic non-adaptive learning rate}\n\n\nTo set the stage for the more general analysis to come, we begin with the assumption that the maximum delay $\\delaybound$ (or an upper bound thereof) is known to the agents, and that the norms of the gradients are bounded by a known constant $\\gbound$.\nThis leads to $\\vt[\\gsumpar][\\runalt] \\leq \\gbound^2 (1+2\\outbound) \\leq \\gbound^2 (1+2\\delaybound)$. Combining \\cref{lem:adaptive} and \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}, we obtain the following result.\n\n\n\\begin{proposition}\n\\label{prop:oneovert}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$  and the norms of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$.\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} be run with learning rates\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:decreasing}\n\\tag{Decreasing}\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\sqrt{\\run(1+2\\delaybound)}} .\n\\end{align}\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n   2 \\radius \\gbound \\sqrt{\\nRuns (1+2\\delaybound)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{proposition}\nThis approximation is crude and can be improved with the actual knowledge of the gradients. Also note that the implementation of this basic strategy requires the knowledge of $\\run$, the number of actions that has been played. We will discuss the plausibility of this requirement in \\cref{subsec:back-running}.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Adaptation to bounded delays}\n\\label{sec:adagrad}\n\nIn addition to the bounded delay and gradients assumptions taken before, we add here another assumption that the sequence of active feedback\nis non-decreasing, \\ie $ \\vt[\\set] \\subset  \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$. \nWhen this specific assumption is satisfied, a crucial point is that one can define an \\emph{arrival order} for the received subgradients. Mathematically, we can define a permutation $\\Dpermu$ of $\\{1,\\ldots,\\nRuns\\}$ such that the $\\grun$-th received subgradient comes from playing $\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\grun)]$, \\ie the $\\grun$-th received subgradient is $\\vt[\\gvec][\\Dpermu(\\grun)] \\in  \\subd\\vt[\\obj][\\Dpermu(\\grun)](\\vt[\\state][\\Dpermu(\\grun)])$.\\footnote{This permutation may not be unique (for instance if several gradients arrive at one time slot) but this plays no role in the subsequent analysis.}\nWith this notation, the time index set of all feedback received \\emph{before  $\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]$} can be written as $\\vt[\\setrec] \\defeq \\{ \\Dpermu(1),\\Dpermu(2),..\\Dpermu(\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)-1) \\}$ for that $\\vt[\\gvec][\\run]$ is the $\\Dpermu^{-1}(\\run)$-th feedback.\n\nUsing these definitions and looking closely at the definition of the lag\\;\\eqref{eq:gsum}, we notice that:\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item the quantity $\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2$ cannot be known at instant $\\run$ since the set of gradients available at that time is $\\vt[\\set]$. It is thus natural to consider approximating it by $ \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 $;\n    \\item for each received feedback  $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$, the quantity $ \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]} $, gathering all feedback before $\\runalt$ that were not used to compute  $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$, is in general unknown. Building on the works of \\cite{JGS16,MS14}, a proxy for this sum is $\\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}$. In words, this represents the sum over the feedback received before $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ which was not used to generate it.\n\\end{itemize}\nPutting these two modifications together, we obtain \n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:gsumbck}\n    \\vt[\\Gsumbck] = \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\n        \\left(\n        \\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}^2 + 2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runano]}\n            \\right) \n.\n\\end{align}\nNow, $ \\vt[\\Gsumbck]$ can be computed at time $\\run$ by the player. Bounding $\\vt[\\gsum]$ using $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]$ and the maximum delay, we obtain the following result.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{PropAdaDelayO}\n\\label{prop:adadelay}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$, the norm of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$, and the sequence of active feedback is non-decreasing, \\ie $ \\vt[\\set] \\subset  \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$.\nLet \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} be run with a learning rate sequence \n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:adadelayO}\n\\tag{AdaDelay--O}\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\frac{\\radius}{\\sqrt{  \\vt[\\Gsumbck]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1)}}.\n\\end{align}\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n   2 \\radius \\sqrt{\\vt[\\Gsumbck][\\nRuns]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1)} \\le  2 \\radius \\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum][\\nRuns]  + \\gbound^2 (2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1)}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\nWe call this method \\ref{eq:adadelayO}, where O stands for online.\nWe avoid using the name AdaDelay since it has already been attributed to another algorithm that was designed for stochastic optimization with delays \\citep{SYLS15}.\nWe notice that  \\ref{eq:adadelayO} is similar to the algorithm proposed by \\citet{JGS16} and we obtain a regret bound of the same order.\nNonetheless, their methods were based on mirror descent and FTRL-Prox, while ours is based on dual averaging.\n\n\n\\subsubsection{Adaptation to unbounded delays}\n\\label{sec:adadelay+}\n\n\\cref{prop:oneovert,prop:adadelay} explicitly use the knowledge of (an upper bound of) the maximum delay $\\delaybound$.\nHowever, an investigation into the proof of \\cref{prop:adadelay} shows that by relating $\\vt[\\gsum]$ and $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]$ correctly, it is in reality possible to provide a learning rate policy for which no knowledge about the delay is needed.\nTo that end, let $\\vt[\\totaldelay]\\defeq\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\\card(\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt])$ be the cumulative unavailability at time $\\run$ (so $\\totaldelay=\\vt[\\totaldelay][\\nRuns]$) and $ \\vt[\\setbck]\n    \\defeq\n    \\setdef{\\{\\runalt, \\runano\\}}\n    {\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set],\\runano\\in\n    \\setexclude{\\vt[\\setrec][\\runalt]}{\\vt[\\set][\\runalt]}}$\nbe the set of time index pairs of the proxy term $\\vt[\\Gsumbck]$\n(here $\\{\\runalt,\\runano\\}$ denotes an \\emph{unordered} pair of \\emph{distinct} elements).\nIt suffices then to replace the $(2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1)$ term of \\ref{eq:adadelayO} by $\\vt[\\delayres] \\defeq \\run + 2\\vt[\\totaldelay] - \\card(\\vt[\\set]) - 2\\card(\\vt[\\setbck])$, which can be computed efficiently on the fly (see the pseudo-code in \\cref{apx:adadelay}).\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{PropAdaDelayOPlus}\n\\label{prop:adadelayoplus}\nAssume that the norms of the gradients are bounded by $\\gbound$ and the sequence of active feedback is non-decreasing, \\ie $ \\vt[\\set] \\subset  \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$.\nAssume further that \\acl{DDA} \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} is run with the learning rate sequence\n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:adadelayOplus}\n\\tag{AdaDelay--O+}\n    \\vt[\\step] = \\min\\left(  \\vt[\\step][\\run-1] ,  \\frac{\\radius}{\\sqrt{  \\vt[\\Gsumbck]  + \\gbound^2 \\vt[\\delayres] }} \\right)\n\\end{align}\nwith $\\vt[\\delayres] = \\run + 2\\vt[\\totaldelay] - \\card(\\vt[\\set]) - 2\\card(\\vt[\\setbck])$.\nThen, for any $\\comp$ such that $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, the generated points $\\seq{\\state}{\\start}{\\nRuns}$ enjoy the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    2\\radius\\max_{1\\le\\run\\le\\nRuns}\n    \\sqrt{\\vt[\\Gsumbck] + \\gbound^2\\vt[\\delayres]}\n    \\le\n    2\\radius\n    \\min\\left(\\max_{1\\le\\run\\le\\nRuns}\n    \\sqrt{\\vt[\\gsum]+\\gbound^2\\vt[\\delayres]},\n    \\gbound\\sqrt{\\nRuns+2\\nRuns}\\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\nThis new algorithm is called \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus}.\nTo our knowledge, it is the first adaptive online algorithm that does not require any bounded delay assumption.\nFurthermore, its regret bound achieves the best of both worlds:\n\\begin{enumerate}\n\\item\nWhen the delays are bounded by $\\delaybound$, we have $\\delayres\\le2\\delaybound^2+3\\delaybound+1$ (proved in \\cref{apx:adadelay}), so this bound in the worst case matches the data-dependent bound of \\cref{prop:adadelay}.\n\\item\nIt also achieves the optimal square-root dependence on the cumulative unavailability $\\totaldelay$ no matter whether the delays are bounded or not.\n\\end{enumerate}\nIn this regard, \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus} emerges as an appealing ``go-to'' choice in the presence of delays;\naccordingly, much of the discussion to follow will be based on extending its properties to more general settings.\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{Back to running examples}\n\\label{subsec:back-running}\n\nNow that we have laid out our delayed dual averaging \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} method as well as different learning rate policies, we can go back to our examples to evaluate the reach and implementability of the proposed techniques.\n\n\\paragraph{Case 1: Single agent with delayed feedback}\n\nFor a single agent, \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} can be simply implemented as \\cref{algo:DDA-single}. Note here that \\emph{i}) the iteration number $\\run$ is obviously available to the agent; and \\emph{ii}) that the sequence of active feedback \\ie $ \\vt[\\set] \\subset  \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$ (see \\eg \\cref{ex:single}).\nThis means that all the learning rate policies presented before can be used (constant, \\ref{eq:decreasing}, \\ref{eq:adadelayO}, \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus}); note that the data-dependent stepsizes \\ref{eq:adadelayO} (and \\ref{eq:adadelayOplus} for unbounded delays) are in general preferable to the direct \\ref{eq:decreasing} strategy. \n\n\n\n\n\\begin{algorithm}[!ht]\n    \\caption{\\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} -- Single agent}\n     \\label{algo:DDA-single}\n \\begin{algorithmic}[1]\n     \\STATE {\\bfseries Initialize:}\n         $\\gvecs \\subs \\emptyset$, $\\run\\subs1$.\n    \\WHILE{not stopped}\n    \\STATE {\\bfseries asynchronously} {receive feedback $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ from time $\\runalt$: $\\gvecs \\subs \\gvecs\\union\\{\\runalt\\}$}\n    \\IF{requested to play an action $\\vt[\\state]$}\n     \\STATE $\\vt[\\set] \\subs \\gvecs$\n      \\STATE Play  $\\vt[\\state]  = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step]}$\n     \\STATE $\\run\\subs\\run+1$\n     \\ENDIF\n     \\ENDWHILE\n \\end{algorithmic}\n \\end{algorithm}\n\n\n\n\n\\paragraph{Case 2: Multiple asynchronous agents}\n\nFor multiple agents, \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} can be implemented by an agent $\\worker$ as \\cref{algo:DDA-dist}.  Interestingly, this is the same algorithm for both the coordinator-worker and decentralized cases (\\ref{item:ex-dist-async} and \\ref{item:ex-dec}) since only the set of feedback is essential, not the actual communication scheme.  However, to the difference of the single agent case: \\emph{i}) the iteration number $\\run$ may not be available to the agents; \\emph{ii}) the sequence of active feedback is not non-decreasing \\ie $ \\vt[\\set] \\not\\subset  \\vt[\\set][\\run+1]$ (see \\eg \\cref{ex:dist}).\n\n\n \n\n\\begin{algorithm}[!ht]\n    \\caption{\\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} -- multiple agents -- from the point of view of agent $\\worker$  }\n     \\label{algo:DDA-dist}\n \\begin{algorithmic}[1]\n     \\STATE {\\bfseries Initialize:}\n         $\\gvecs_\\worker \\subs \\emptyset$, $\\run\\subs1$.\n    \\WHILE{not stopped}\n    \\STATE {\\bfseries asynchronously} {receive feedback $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ from time $\\runalt$: $\\gvecs_\\worker \\subs \\gvecs_\\worker \\union\\{\\runalt\\}$\\footnotemark} \\label{algo:DDA-dist:receive}\n    \\IF{the agent becomes active, \\ie $\\activeworker{\\run}=\\worker$}\n     \\STATE $\\vt[\\set] \\subs \\gvecs_\\worker$\n     \\STATE Play $\\vt[\\state] =  \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\product{\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vt[\\step]}$\n     \\STATE Relay $\\vt[\\gvec][\\runalt]$ if necessary\n     \\STATE $\\run\\subs\\run+1$  \n     \\ELSIF{another agent plays an action} \\label{algo:DDA-dist:other}\n     \\STATE $\\run\\subs\\run+1$ \\label{algo:DDA-dist:other2}\n     \\ENDIF\n     \\ENDWHILE\n \\end{algorithmic}\n \\end{algorithm}\n \\footnotetext{ The asynchronous reception in line \\ref{algo:DDA-dist:receive} stands both for the reception of a feedback for a point played by the agent or a (bunch of) feedback gathered by communication.}\n \n \n\n\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item \\emph{Case 2a: Coordinator-worker asynchronous}. \nIn this case, \\cref{algo:DDA-dist} can be applied quite readily. For example, if the agents are queried cyclically and\npool their feedback at the end of every $\\nPeriods$ cycles,\n\\cref{cor:delay-regret} shows that by using a fixed learning rate $\\step=\\Theta(1\/\\sqrt{\\nPeriods\\nWorkers\\nRuns})$, a regret of $\\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)=\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\nPeriods\\nWorkers\\nRuns})$ is obtained under the bounded gradient assumption. \n\nHere, in order to know the current iteration $\\run$,  every agent has to know when the other agents play in order to update its time-counter (see lines  \\ref{algo:DDA-dist:other} and \\ref{algo:DDA-dist:other2}). When a coordinator is used, this could be a reasonable assumptions which allows taking the decreasing learning rate policy\\;\\ref{eq:decreasing}. Since the feedback is not non-decreasing, data-dependent strategies are out of grasp. \n\n\\item \\emph{Case 2b: Decentralized open network.}\nFor this setup, applying \\cref{algo:DDA-dist} is possible but considerably harder. Since in this very flexible setup, no global information is available (e.g. cumulative unavailability, activity, or presence of other agents), lines  \\ref{algo:DDA-dist:other} and \\ref{algo:DDA-dist:other2} are almost impossible to enforce. Thus, even \\ref{eq:decreasing} learning rates are out of scope, let alone data-dependent ones.\n\\end{itemize}\n\n\n\nThe limitations of these strategies can be partly attributed to  \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}, which is only applicable if one takes a non-increasing learning rate policy \\emph{over time} independently of the agents. As we saw above, this is completely impractical in multi-agents settings.\nThis calls for a refined analysis to account for \\emph{implementable}  and \\emph{adaptive} learning rates.\n\n\\subsection{Decentralized Delayed Dual Averaging}\n\nWe previously assumed that  only one prediction was made at each time $\\run$ while in many decentralized environments, multiple predictions can be made simultaneously.\\footnote{In reality, this does not affect the generality of our framework since $\\run$ does not to have any actual physical meaning. In particular, if multiple events happen at the same moment we may endow them with an arbitrary order.} \nFormally, we denote by $\\vt[\\nWorkers]$ the number of active agents at time $\\run$ and identify these agents from $1$ to $\\vt[\\nWorkers]$ instead of identifying each agent independently. This notation clarifies the fact that the agents are anonymous with respect to the algorithm and each other. \nWe also introduce the (root mean square) average number of active agents by $\\rms{\\nWorkers}=\\sqrt{(1\/\\nRuns)\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^\\nRuns\\vt[\\nWorkers]^2}$ and the maximum number of active agents by $\\nWorkers_{\\max}=\\max_{\\start\\le\\run\\le\\nRuns}\\vt[\\nWorkers]$ .\n\n\n\nBefore proceeding with the algorithm, we first slightly extend the previously introduced notations and concepts to adapt to the current framework. The functions and the played points at time $\\run$ are now respectively denoted by $\\vwt[\\obj][1], \\ldots, \\vwt[\\obj][\\vt[\\nWorkers]]$ and $\\vwt[\\state][1], \\ldots, \\vwt[\\state][\\vt[\\nWorkers]]$. The set of available gradients at time $\\run$ for a worker $\\worker$, $\\vwt[\\set]$, now represents the set of the (learner, time) indices of the feedback available for playing $\\vwt$ so that if $(\\workeralt,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]$ then necessarily $\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\run-1}$. Lastly, the maximum delay $\\delaybound$ is to be understood with respect to the global time index $\\run$.\nThat is, for every $\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\run-\\delaybound-1}$ and $\\workeralt\\in\\oneto{\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\runalt]}$ we must have $(\\workeralt,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]$.\n\nWith these notations, the update of decentralized delayed dual averaging algorithm writes at time $\\run$ for an agent $\\worker$\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:DDDA}\n    \\tag{D-DDA}\n    \\vwt[\\state] = \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\points} \\sum_{(\\workeralt,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]}\\product{\\vwt[\\gvec][\\workeralt][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\hreg(\\point)}{\\vwt[\\step]},\n\\end{equation}\nwhere $\\vwt[\\gvec][\\workeralt][\\runalt] \\in \\partial \\vwt[\\obj][\\workeralt][\\runalt](\\vwt[\\state][\\workeralt][\\runalt])$.\n\n\n\\subsection{Effective and collective regrets}\n\\label{sec:localglobal}\n\nBy directly extending the usual notion of regret (\\cref{eq:reg-def}) to our current setup, we obtain the following regret:\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\tag{Effective Regret}\n    \\local[\\reg]_{\\nRuns}(\\comp) = \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]} \\vwt[\\obj](\\vwt[\\state])\n    - \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]} \\vwt[\\obj](\\comp),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere the superscript $\\ell$ means that the regret sums over the \\emph{local} costs of the learners. Each agent only pays for the function it serves and the ultimate goal for a single agent is to perform well on the functions that it encounters. \nAs an example, on-device machine learning aims to equip users' personal devices with intelligent machine features such as conversational understanding and image recognition, for the purposes of providing a satisfying user experience to each individual \\citep{SCZL+16,WHLN+20}.\n\n\n\nIn contrast, we can also define \\emph{global} loss functions $\\vt[\\obj]=\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}\\vwt[\\obj]$ at every instant $\\run$ and evaluate each active agents' action with respect to this function.\nThis leads to the following regret formulation:\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\tag{Collective Regret}\n    \\glob[\\reg]_{\\nRuns}(\\comp) = \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]} \\vwt[\\obj](\\vwt[\\state][\\workeraltG])\n    - \\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]} \\vwt[\\obj](\\comp),\n\\end{equation}\nwhere, instead of evaluating $\\vwt[\\obj]$ at the point $\\vwt[\\state]$ played by learner $\\worker$, we now evaluate all the $\\vwt[\\obj]$ at a single point $\\vwt[\\state][\\workeraltG]$ independently of the worker $\\worker$.\nThe choice of the \\emph{reference agent} can vary with time; it is however possible to fix its index to $\\workeraltG$ in advance given that the attribution of the worker indices at each $\\run$ is arbitrary.\n\nThis definition of \\emph{\\acl{GPRg}} recalls the usual regret formulation appearing in the distributed online optimization literature \\citep{HCM13,SJ17,YSVQ12} and suits better the applications related to wireless sensor networks such as distributed estimation \\citep{RN04} and data fusion \\citep{NLF07,RCMP+15}.\nIn fact, sensor networks are mostly deployed for a common objective  shared by all the sensors.\nTo attain this objective, the sensor nodes may need to cooperate to track some unknown variable\nor to collaborate to learn a global assessment of the situation.\nThe \\acl{GPRg} then measures each agent's performance with respect to this \\emph{collective} mission, hence the name thereof. \n\nMoreover, in a wireless sensor network, the nodes are typically equipped with very limited power supply.\nThe reduction of energy consumption is thus crucial to extend the lifetime of sensor nodes.\nTransmitting all the sensed data to a sink node or too frequent communication should be avoided in order to achieve improved energy efficiency, and that is why a general framework that accounts for asynchronous communication in a decentralized network would be favorable.\nFinally, our formulation also admits the additional flexibility of involving different sets and numbers of agents at each iteration.\nThis is of particularly interest for open multi-agent systems \\citep{HM17} and elastic distributed learning \\citep{NWMC+13}.\n\n\n\n\nNow, provided that all the loss functions $\\vwt[\\obj]$ are $\\gbound$-Lipschitz,  the relation between $\\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns]$ and $\\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns]$ is quite direct as formulated in the following lemma.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{lemma}{RegLocalGlobal}\n\\label{lem:regret-local-global}\nAssume that all the loss functions $\\vwt[\\obj]$ are $\\gbound$-Lipschitz; then, \n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    \\le \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\vt[\\nWorkers]}\n    \\gbound\\norm{\\vwt-\\vwt[\\state][\\workeraltG]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\\subsection{Collective regret with a fixed learning rate}\n\\label{subsec:global-fix-lr}\n\nIn order to understand the mechanics of \\acl{GPRg} in our setup, we first consider the case of a fixed learning rate $\\vwt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$. To bound the  \\acl{GPRg} three elements come into play:\n\\begin{itemize}\n    \\item the \\emph{effective} regret. For this part, we change the time indices to have exactly one point played at each time. We define  $\\vt[\\nSamples]=\\sum_{\\runalt=\\start}^{\\run}\\vt[\\nWorkers][\\runalt]$ and $\\nSamples=\\vt[\\nSamples][\\nRuns]$; then, the index of worker\\;$\\worker$ at time  $\\run$ is changed  to $\\mapping(\\worker,\\run)=\\vt[\\nSamples][\\run-1]+\\worker$ (so that only one action is performed at that time). This maps our problem to the setting of \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first} with $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$ and thus \n\\begin{align}\n\\label{eq:global-reg-fix-lr-local}\n    \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    &\\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\frac{1}{2}\\sum_{\\indsamp=\\start}^{\\nSamples}\n    \\step\n    \\left(\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp]}^2\n        +2\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\indsamp]}\n        \\sum_{\\runano\\in\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]}}\\dnorm{\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\runano]}\\right)\n\\end{align}\nwhere $\\vt[\\alt{\\gvec}][\\mapping(\\worker,\\run)]=\\vwt[\\gvec]$ and $\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\mapping(\\worker,\\run)]=\\setdef{\\mapping(\\workeralt,\\runalt)}{(\\workeralt,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]}$.\n\\item the maximal delay $\\delaybound$. Bounding from above the number of unavailable gradients for a (learner, time) pair and translating this condition to bound $\\card(\\setexclude{\\oneto{\\indsamp-1}}{\\vt[\\alt{\\set}][\\indsamp]})$, we get\n\\begin{align}\n    \\label{eq:regret-network-local-text}\n    \\vt[\\local[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\hreg(\\comp)}{\\step}\n    + \\step(\\delaybound+1)\\gbound^2\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\nWorkers^2].\n\\end{align}\n\\item the non-expansiveness of the mirror map (\\cref{lem:prox-nonexp}).\nThis part enables us to go from the effective regret to the \\acl{GPRg} using \\cref{lem:regret-local-global}. \n\\end{itemize}\n\nPutting together these points we manage to show the following bound on the \\acl{GPRg}, the full proof being deferred to \\cref{apx:globalfixed}.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{GlobalRegretFixLR}\n\\label{thm:delay-regret-global}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$ and that all the loss functions are $\\gbound$-Lipschitz.\nFor any $\\comp$ satisfying $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, running \\acl{DDDA} \\eqref{eq:DDDA} with constant stepsize\n\\[\\vwt[\\step]\\equiv\\step=\\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\rms{\\nWorkers}\\sqrt{(2\\delaybound+1)\\nRuns}}\\]\nguarantees the following upper bound on the \\acl{GPRg}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp) \\le \n    2\\radius\\gbound\\rms{\\nWorkers}\\sqrt{(2\\delaybound+1)\\nRuns}\n    =\\bigoh(\\rms{\\nWorkers}\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\nRuns}).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\nAs a sanity check, we can see that when there is no delay ($\\delaybound=0$) and a fixed number of agents ($\\vt[\\nWorkers]\\equiv\\nWorkers$), the theorem ensures a regret in $\\nWorkers\\sqrt{\\nRuns}$ which corresponds to the regret achieved by dual averaging on $\\vt[\\obj]=\\sum_{\\worker=1}^{\\nWorkers}\\vwt[\\obj]$ which is $\\nWorkers\\gbound$-Lipschitz (\\citealp[Section 5.2]{Hazan16}; \\citealp{Xiao09}; see also \\cref{apx:ODA}).\n\n\n\\subsection{More practical learning rates}\n\nSince the network of agents may be evolving, the average number of workers $\\rms{\\nWorkers}$ may often not be available in advance. A first solution can be taking learning rates of the form $\\vwt[\\step]=\\vt[\\step]=\\Theta(1\/\\nWorkers_{\\max}\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\run})$. However, this still requires the knowledge of the global time\\;$\\run$ which is typically out of reach in the setup we are considering; in addition, it can be overly pessimistic with the dependence in $\\nWorkers_{\\max}\\sqrt{\\delaybound}$.\nTo overcome these issues, we base ourselves on \\cref{sec:decentralized} and show that a learning rate scheme similar to the one considered in \\cref{subsubsec:decr-decen} equally guarantees low \\acl{GPRg}.\nTo begin with, we rewrite \\cref{asm:card-in-order} to accommodate the new notation.\n\n{\n\\addtocounter{assumption}{-1}\n\\renewcommand{\\theassumption}{\\ref{asm:card-in-order}$'$}\n\\begin{assumption}\n\\label{asm:card-in-order-global}\nIf $(\\workeralt,\\runalt)\\in\\vwt[\\set]$ then $\\card(\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt][\\runalt])<\\card(\\vwt[\\set])$.\n\\end{assumption}\n}\n\nUnder this assumption, we prove the following theorem which further extends the result of \\cref{prop:decen-decr-regret}.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{GlobalRegretVarLR}\n\\label{thm:delay-regret-global-oblivious}\nLet \\cref{asm:card-in-order-global} hold. Suppose that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$ and that all the loss functions are $\\gbound$-Lipschitz.\nThen, for any $\\comp$ satisfying $\\hreg(\\comp)\\le\\radius^2$, \\acl{DDDA} \\eqref{eq:DDDA} with stepsizes\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:delay-global-oblivious-stepsize}\n\\vwt[\\step]=\\frac{\\radius}{\\gbound\\sqrt{(5\\delaybound+3)(\\card(\\vwt[\\set])+(\\delaybound+1)\\nWorkers_{\\max})\\nWorkers_{\\max}}}\n\\end{equation}\nguarantees a \\acl{GPRg} in\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\glob[\\reg]][\\nRuns](\\comp) = \\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\nSamples\\nWorkers_{\\max}}).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is reported in \\cref{apx:globalada}. It follows closely the schema introduced in \\cref{subsec:global-fix-lr} while two additional difficulties present:\n\\begin{enumerate*}\n[\\itshape i\\upshape)]\n    \\item the non-monotonicity of learning rates which are solved by the introduction of a suitable faithful permutation;\n    \\item\n    the predictions of a time instant are not generated by the same learning rate, but we still manage to control the deviation since these learning rates are close enough.\n   \n\\end{enumerate*}\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nNote that this bound directly features the total number of actions taken in the full process; it is thus (at least partly) adaptive to the number of agents. However, we leave the design of data-dependent adaptive methods in this setting as an open question.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nFrom our analysis, we notice that all $\\vwt[\\obj]$ may not happen exactly at the same time. More generally, the time index $\\run$ can stand for a time interval in a physical sense. In this case, it is possible to have instantaneous feedback (\\ie  $\\vwt[\\gvec]\\in\\vwt[\\set][\\workeralt]$ for some $\\worker,\\workeralt$) and a single physical agent can play several times during the period corresponding to $\\run$.\nIn such situations, the same proof template can be readily applied.\n\\end{remark}\n\\subsection{Delayed Optimistic Dual averaging}\n\n\nWhile \\ac{OGD} successfully leverages the predictability of the loss sequence for achieving a smaller regret, the effect of delay on this algorithm remains, as far as we are aware, unknown.\n\n\n\n\nBy extending \\eqref{eq:delayed-dual-avg} to incorporate an optimistic step, \\acl{DODA} can then be stated as follows:\\footnote{The same algorithm (in a more general form) is called optimistic FTRL in \\cite{JGS17}. We choose to employ the term optimistic dual averaging to maintain consistency with preceding sections.}\n\\begin{equation}\n\\label{eq:D-ODA}\n\\tag{DODA}\n\\begin{aligned}\n    \\vt[\\state] &= \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\vecspace} \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\product{\\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\norm{\\point-\\vt[\\point][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step]}\n    = \\vt[\\state][\\start] - \\vt[\\step] \\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]} \\inter[\\gvec][\\runalt],\n    \\\\\n    \\inter &= \\argmin_{\\point\\in\\vecspace}\\thinspace\n    \\product{\\inter[\\appr]}{\\point} + \\frac{\\norm{\\point-\\vt[\\point]}^2}{2\\vt[\\stepalt]}\n    = \\vt[\\state] - \\vt[\\stepalt]\\,\\inter[\\appr].\n\\end{aligned}\n\\end{equation}\nFollowing our delay framework, $\\current$ is computed using gradients from time moments $\\vt[\\set]$. Similarly, $\\inter[\\appr]$ must be derived solely based on information available to the active agent $\\activeworker{\\run}$ at time $\\run$.\n\n\nOne key feature of our algorithm is we allow the optimistic step (\\ie the step that leads to $\\inter$) of \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} to use a larger learning rate than the actual update step (\\ie the step that obtains $\\update$), \\ie $\\vt[\\stepalt]\\ge\\vt[\\step]$.\nThis additional flexibility allows us to compensate the missing information that have not arrived due to delays and provides the following regret bound\nproved in\\;\\cref{apx:optimistic-delay-regret}.\n\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{OptDelayRegret}\n\\label{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}\nAssume that the maximum delay is bounded by $\\delaybound$. \nLet \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} be run with learning rate sequences $\\seqinf[\\oneto{\\nRuns}]{\\step}{\\run}$, $\\seqinf[\\oneto{\\nRuns}]{\\stepalt}{\\run}$ satisfying $\\update[\\step]\\le\\current[\\step]$ and $(2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\step]\\le\\vt[\\stepalt]$ for all $\\run$. Then the regret of the algorithm (evaluated at the points $\\vt[\\state][\\frac{3}{2}],\\ldots,\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+\\frac{1}{2}]$) satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\frac{\\vt[\\stepalt]}{2}\\left(\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2-\\norm{\\inter[\\appr]}^2\\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\nIn \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}, we successfully show that \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} retains the desired property of undelayed optimistic gradient descent:\nthe regret of the algorithm is solely determined by the distance between $\\inter[\\gvec]$ and $\\inter[\\appr]$ (see \\cref{eq:OGD-regret}).\nPrecisely, the theorem guarantees a regret in $\\bigoh\\left(\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\sum_{\\run=1}^{\\nRuns}\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2}\\right)$ for fix learning rate sequences $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$, $\\vt[\\stepalt]\\equiv(2\\delaybound+1)\\step$ that are optimally chosen.\nSimilar to the case of delayed mirror descent and delayed dual averaging, an additional factor of $\\sqrt{\\delaybound}$ appears in the regret bound, and their regret is recovered tightly by setting $\\inter[\\appr]=0$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nThe bounded delay assumption can in fact be relaxed in \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}.\nNonetheless, we choose to adopt this assumption for ease of understanding.\nOtherwise, denoting $\\vt[\\delay]=\\card(\\vt[\\setout])+\\card(\\setdef{\\runalt\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}{\\run\\in\\vt[\\setout][\\runalt]})+1$ and employing a constant update learning rate $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$ and $\\vt[\\stepalt]=\\vt[\\delay]\\step$, we achieve a regret in $\\bigoh\\left(\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\vt[\\delay]\\norm{\\inter[\\gvec]-\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]}^2}\\right)$.\nNote that $\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^\\nRuns\\vt[\\delay]=2\\totaldelay+\\nRuns$ and when $\\,\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]=0$ the bound can be inferred from \\cref{thm:delay-regret-first}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\n\n\n\n\\subsection{The necessity of scale separation for robustness to delay}\n\n\n\nIn the following, we discuss the \\emph{necessity} of having a relatively aggressive optimistic step compared to the update ($\\vt[\\stepalt]\\ge\\vt[\\step]$) in order to be robust to delay.\\footnote{The optimistic step is also called \\emph{extrapolation} step to mirror the vocabulary of the extragradient method \\cite{Kor76}.} Note that taking a more aggressive extrapolation update compared to the actual state update was shown to clearly improve the robustness of the extragradient method with respect to both rates and convergence itself in \\cite{hsieh2020explore}.\n\n\nFor this, we consider linear losses $\\vt[\\obj]=\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\cdot}$ and uniform delay $\\delaybound$ (\\ie every feedback becomes available after a delay of $\\delaybound$ time steps).\\footnote{For linear losses, the gradient does not depend on the calling point and thus $\\inter[\\gvec] = \\nabla\\vt[\\obj](\\inter[\\state]) = \\vt[\\gvec]$.}\nWe define the \\emph{$\\delaybound$-variation} of the loss sequence by $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound}][\\nRuns]=\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\norm{\\vt[\\gvec]-\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-\\delaybound]}^2$ where we set $\\vt[\\gvec]=0$ for $\\run\\le0$. For ease of notation we further denote $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]=\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound+1}][\\nRuns]$.\nThe following corollary is immediate from \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret}.\n\n\\begin{corollary}\n\\label{cor:delay-optimistic-linear}\nIn the context of linear losses $\\vt[\\obj]=\\product{\\vt[\\gvec]}{\\cdot}$ and uniform delay $\\delaybound$ ($\\vt[\\set]=\\oneto{\\run-\\delaybound-1}$ for all $\\run$), running \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} with $\\inter[\\appr]=\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-\\delaybound-1]$ and constant learning rates $\\step=\\radius\/\\sqrt{(2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]}$ and $\\stepalt=(2\\delaybound+1)\\step$ where $\\radius\\ge\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}$ guarantees the regret bound\n\\begin{equation}\n    \\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\\le\\radius\\sqrt{(2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]}.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{corollary}\n\n\nThis results indicates that with an optimistic learning rate $\\stepalt$ taken  $(2\\delaybound+1)$ times bigger than the update learning rate $\\step$, one can guarantee a regret bound of the order of the square root of the $(\\delaybound+1)$-variation. \nIn contrast, we now demonstrate the impossibility to obtain a regret  that is sub-linear in $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$ when $\\stepalt=\\step$ (or even when $\\stepalt\\le\\delaybound\\step$).\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{OptRegretLB}\n\\label{thm:optimistic-regret-lower-bound}\nConsider the setup of \\cref{cor:delay-optimistic-linear}. Let $\\step=\\step(\\radius,\\nRuns,\\delaybound,\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns])$ be uniquely determined by $\\radius\\ge \\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}$, the time horizon $\\nRuns$, the uniform delay $\\delaybound$, and the $(\\delaybound+1)$-variation $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$.\nIf we run \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} with $\\inter[\\appr]=\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-\\delaybound-\\frac{1}{2}]$ and $\\stepalt\\le\\delaybound\\step$, it is impossible to guarantee a regret in $\\smalloh(\\max(\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns], \\sqrt{\\nRuns}))$.\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is reported in \\cref{apx:optimistic-regret-lower-bound}; its construction is partially inspired by \\citet{CYLM+12}, and as a special case, in the undelayed setting, we recover the result that the optimistic step is necessary to guarantee a regret in $\\bigoh\\Big(\\sqrt{\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\norm{\\vt[\\gvec]-\\vt[\\gvec][\\run-1]}^2}\\Big)$.\n\nNonetheless, in the original proof of \\cite{CYLM+12}, the learning rate was first fixed and then a loss sequence was constructed to yield large regret, which could possibly also prevent optimistic algorithms to achieve low regret. Our approach fixes this fallacy by informing the algorithm of the variation in advance so that optimistic algorithms provably obtain low regrets on these sequences (cf. \\cref{cor:delay-optimistic-linear}).\n\\end{proof}\n\n\nFinally, we also show that among all the online algorithms with the same prior information, the bound achieved in \\cref{cor:delay-optimistic-linear} is tight in its dependence on $\\delaybound$ and $\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{VarRegretLB}\n\\label{prop:lowerboundopt}\nFor any online learning algorithm with prior knowledge of $\\nRuns$, $\\delaybound$ and $\\overline{\\variation^{\\delaybound}}\\ge\\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]$, there exists a sequence of linear losses such that if the feedback is subject to constant delay $\\delaybound$, then the regret of the algorithm on this sequence with respect to a vector\\;$\\comp$ with $\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}\\le1$ is $\\Omega(\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\overline{\\variation^{\\delaybound}}})$.\n\\end{restatable}\n\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is reported in \\cref{apx:lowerboundopt}. It combines the standard $\\Omega(\\sqrt{\\nRuns})$ lower bound of undelayed online learning with idea from \\cite{LSZ09}.\n\\end{proof}\n\nThus, in this section we showed that using \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} \\emph{with a double learning rate strategy} enables to achieve a  $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaybound \\vt[\\variation^{\\delaybound^+}][\\nRuns]})$ regret which is tight among online learning methods and out of reach of single learning rate \\eqref{eq:D-ODA}.\n\n\n\\subsection{Delayed online learning with slow variation}\n\n\nNow that we laid out our main results concerning the optimistic variant of delayed dual averaging, we investigate the choice of $\\inter[\\appr]$ for slowly varying loss functions $(\\vt[\\obj])_{\\run\\in\\oneto{\\nRuns}}$. \n\n\nFor this, we consider the case where the full gradient $\\grad\\vt[\\obj]$ is obtained as a feedback (and not only $\\vt[\\gvec] = \\grad\\vt[\\obj](\\vt[\\state])$).\nUsing this kind of feedback, we can compute the gradient of the last received function at the current point immediately\\footnote{\\ie without any delay, the delays considered here are either due to communication between agents or inherent to the feedback mechanism.} and use it as a guess for the current function's gradient. Formally, we make the following assumption.\n\n\n\\begin{assumption}\n\\label{asm:whole-vecfield}\nThe feedback associated to time step $\\run$ is the whole vector field $\\vt[\\vecfield]=\\grad\\vt[\\obj]$, the evaluation of which at any point $\\point\\in\\vecspace$ is immediate and does not induce any delay.\n\\end{assumption}\n\nThe first part of the assumption is sometimes referred as the ``full-information'' online learning model, and is typically satisfied when the learning system is used for prediction (\\eg classification, regression). \nIn fact, in such problems, the actions of the agents represent the model parameters, for which the whole loss and its gradient can be computed once the corresponding data is observed \\citep{SS11}.\n\nWith this assumption, we can set  $\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]=\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt[\\state]) $ where $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]] $ is some \\emph{past} vector field (\\ie $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]] = \\vt[\\vecfield][\\runalt]$ for some $\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]$).\nNow, for smooth losses, the following regret bound can be derived.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{theorem}{OptDelayRegretV}\n\\label{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V}\nLet the maximum delay be bounded by $\\delaybound$ and that \\cref{asm:whole-vecfield} holds. Assume in addition that the vector fields  $\\vt[\\vecfield]$ are $\\lips$-Lipschitz continuous.\nTake $\\inter[\\appr[\\gvec]]=\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt[\\state])$,\n$\\update[\\step]\\le\\current[\\step]$, $(2\\delaybound+1)\\vt[\\step]\\le\\vt[\\stepalt]$, and $2\\vt[\\stepalt^2]\\lips^2\\le1$.\nThen, the regret of \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} (evaluated at the points $\\vt[\\state][\\frac{3}{2}],\\ldots,\\vt[\\state][\\nRuns+\\frac{1}{2}]$) satisfies\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\frac{\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}^2}{2\\vt[\\step][\\nRuns]}\n    +\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\n    \\vt[\\stepalt]\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\vt)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt)}^2.\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is immediate from \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret} and is deferred to \\cref{apx:optimistic-slow-var}.\n\\end{proof}\n\n\\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V} reduces the problem of choosing an adequate vector $\\inter[\\appr]$ to that of choosing an operator $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]$ which approximates well $\\vt[\\vecfield]$.\nIn our setup of full gradient feedback with a loss sequence evolving slowly over time, one natural option is reuse some recent function for the constitution of $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]$.\nSince we are in a distributed setting, the evolution of the loss functions may have both global and local components. We discuss these two typical cases below.\n\n\n\\begin{example}[Global variation]\n\\label{ex:global-variation}\nIf the loss functions vary slowly following a global trend, we can timestamp every gradient field which makes it possible to choose $\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]=\\vt[\\vecfield][\\tilde{\\run}]$ where $\\tilde{\\run}=\\max\\vt[\\set]$, \\ie the active agent $\\activeworker{\\run}$ uses the most recent data available at hand (independent of its source) when playing $\\vt[\\state]$. \nThis would however require the agents to share the whole vector field $\\vt[\\vecfield]$.\n\\end{example}\n\n\\begin{example}[Local variation]\n\\label{ex:local-variation}\nIf the loss functions vary slowly for all the agents, the active agent $\\activeworker{\\run}$ can choose the last feedback corresponding to a point it played, \\ie\n$\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]=\\vt[\\vecfield][\\tilde{\\run}]$ where $\\tilde{\\run}=\\max\\setdef{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}{\\activeworker{\\runalt}=\\activeworker{\\run}}$.\nCompared to \\cref{ex:global-variation}, we gain in terms of both data privacy and communication efficiency since only the gradients $\\inter[\\gvec]$ need to be shared among the agents in this scenario.\n\\end{example}\n\n\nDenoting the total deviation of our approximation by $\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]=\\sum_{\\run=\\start}^{\\nRuns}\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\vt)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt)}^2$, \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V} guarantees a regret in $\\bigoh(\\radius^2\\delaybound\\lips+\\radius\\sqrt{\\delaybound\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]})$ for suitably chosen constant learning rate sequences $\\vt[\\step]\\equiv\\step$ and $\\vt[\\stepalt]\\equiv\\stepalt$.\nIn both \\cref{ex:global-variation,ex:local-variation}, $\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]$ characterizes some variation of the loss sequence over time.\nHowever, the optimal choice of the $\\step$ and $\\stepalt$ allowing us to obtain the aforementioned regret guarantee depends on $\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]$, which cannot be known in advance.\nTo circumvent this issue, we can again design an adaptive learning rate schedule in the spirit of AdaGrad by assuming knowledge on an universal bound for the difference $\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\vt)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt)}^2$.\nFor the following result, we simply resort to the standard assumption of bounded gradients.\n\n\\begin{restatable}{proposition}{OptAdapt}\n\\label{prop:optimistic-adaptive}\nLet the maximum delay be bounded by $\\delaybound$ and let \\cref{asm:in-order,asm:whole-vecfield} hold.\nFurther suppose that $\\vt[\\vecfield]$ are $\\lips$-Lipschitz continuous and both $\\vt[\\vecfield], \\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]]$ have their norm bounded by $\\gbound$.\nThen for any $\\comp$ such that $\\norm{\\comp-\\vt[\\state][\\start]}\\le\\radius$, running \\acl{DODA} \\eqref{eq:D-ODA} with $\\vt[\\appr[\\gvec]]=\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt[\\state])$,\n\\begin{gather}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\stepalt]=\\min\\left( \\frac{\\radius\\sqrt{4\\delaybound+1}}{2\\sqrt{\\left(\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])}^2+4\\gbound^2(\\delaybound+1)\\right)}}, \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}\\lips}\\right),\n\\end{gather}\nand\n\\begin{gather}\n    \\notag\n    \\vt[\\step]=\\min\\left( \\frac{\\radius}{2\\sqrt{(4\\delaybound+1)\\left(\\sum_{\\runalt\\in\\vt[\\set]}\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]][\\runalt](\\vt[\\state][\\runalt])}^2+4\\gbound^2(3\\delaybound+1)\\right)}}, \\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}\\lips (4\\delaybound+1)}\\right)\n\\end{gather}\nguarantees\n\\begin{equation}\n\\notag\n    \\reg_{\\nRuns}(\\comp)\n    \\le\n    \\max\\left(\n    \\sqrt{2}\\radius^2\\lips(4\\delaybound+1),\n    2\\radius\\sqrt{(4\\delaybound+1)(\n    \\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]+4\\gbound^2(3\\delaybound+1))}\n    \\right).\n\\end{equation}\n\\end{restatable}\n\\begin{proof}\nThe proof is deferred to \\cref{apx:optimistic-adaptive}. Notice that the adaptive learning rates are not necessarily non-increasing and therefore \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V} can not be directly applied.\nTo address this challenge, we rely on the notions introduced in \\cref{sec:decentralized} and adapt both \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret} and \\cref{thm:optimistic-delay-regret-V} to accommodate more flexible learning rate schedules.\n\\end{proof}\n\nCompared to the optimal regret that can be achieved with prior knowledge of $\\vt[\\variation][\\nRuns]$, the bound is only degraded by a constant factor.\nTo implement this learning rate schedule, the computation of $\\vt[\\stepalt]$ and $\\vt[\\step]$ needs to be made possible.\nThis would require the agents to relay $\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\vt)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt)}$ in addition to $\\inter[\\gvec]=\\vt[\\vecfield](\\inter)$ after receiving $\\vt[\\vecfield]$.\n\n\\begin{remark}\nAt the price of a worse dependence on the constants, we can use the difference $\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\inter)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\current)}$ instead of $\\norm{\\vt[\\vecfield](\\vt)-\\vt[\\appr[\\vecfield]](\\vt)}$ in the computation of the learning rates, which prevents us from an extra evaluation of the operator; see \\eg \\citealp[Corollary 9]{JGS17}.\n\\end{remark}\n\n\\subsection{Our contributions}\n\nThere are three major underlying themes in our analysis.\nAs we discussed above, the first has to do with \\emph{delays:}\neither due to a computing overhead or an inherent lag between ``action'' and ``reaction'', agents may have to update their actions based on feedback that is stale and obsolete.\nThe second has to do with \\emph{multi-agent} systems:\nlearners may have to take decisions with very different information at their disposal, and with no realistic means of coordinating their decision-making mechanisms.\nAccordingly, the third has to do with \\emph{adaptivity:}\nwe are interested in learning algorithms that can be run with minimal information prerequisites at the agent end, while still achieving optimal regret bounds.\n\nTo take all this into account, we introduce in \\cref{sec:framework} a novel, flexible framework that unifies several models of online learning in the presence of delays \\textendash\\ including both single- and multi-agent setups.\nTo achieve no regret in this context, we employ the \\acl{DA} template of \\citet{nesterov2009primal} which we combine with adaptive learning rates inspired by the ``inverse square root of the sum'' blueprint of \\citet{MS10} and \\citet{DHS11}.\nWe show that the resulting policies achieve optimal data-dependent guarantees and can automatically adapt to the delays encountered by the agents (\\cf \\cref{sec:DDA});\nin particular, under a mild monotonicity requirement for the total amount of information available to the decision-making agent, this policy remains optimal \\emph{even if the delays are not bounded.}\nTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first adaptive algorithm that does not require a ``bounded delay'' assumption in this context.\n\nIn the above setting, we do not assume a specific correlation model between the order in which agents perform their updates and the order in which gradients are received;\nhowever, we do assume that each agent can observe a global counter that indicates the number of updates performed in the entire network so far.\nIn many cases of practical interest, this assumption is relatively benign;\nhowever, in fully decentralized deployments of machine learning algorithms, it is not clear how this information can be made available at every device.\nFor this reason, we also provide in \\cref{sec:decentralized} a fully distributed version of our adaptive strategy which enjoys the same data-dependent bounds without requiring a global clock.\nIn addition, in \\cref{sec:global}, we take a closer look at decentralized architectures, and we provide bounds for the agents' effective and collective regret to account for two distinct objectives of the learning system:\nin the former, the goal is to perform well on every upcoming request;\nin the latter, on the collective, collaborative task undertaken by the agents.\n\nFinally, in \\cref{sec:optimistic}, we focus on improving these worst-case bounds by introducing a more ``optimistic'' step-size policy in the spirit of \\citet{RS13-NIPS}.\nThis approach exploits the slow variation of ``predictable'' sequences, thereby improving the regret guarantees of online algorithms.\nHowever, when gradients arrive out of order, the predictability of a loss sequence may be compromised \\textendash\\ and, indeed, in the presence of delays, we show that a crude implementation of optimistic methods cannot yield any obvious benefit.\nTo account for this, we introduce a ``separation of timescales'' between the ``sensing'' and ``updating'' steps of the optimistic \\acl{DA} method, and we show that this variable step-size scaling leads to optimal data-dependent guarantees.\n\n\n\\subsection{Related work}\n\nOur work lies at the interface between multiple active research areas, each tackling a special case of the general framework considered in this paper.\nWe provide below an overview of these related topics, namely:\n\\begin{enumerate*}\n[\\itshape i\\upshape)]\n\\item online learning with delays;\n\\item multi-agent online learning;\n\\item distributed online optimization;\nand\n\\item asynchronous optimization.\n\\end{enumerate*}\n\n\\paragraph{Online learning with delays.} \nThe research on the delayed feedback problem in online learning was pioneered by \\cite{WO02}, in which it was shown that running $\\delaycst+1$ independent learners guaranteed the minimax regret $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaycst\\nRuns})$ when the feedback is uniformly delayed by $\\delaycst$ time steps. The same strategy was further analyzed by \\cite{JGS13} for more complex delay mechanisms.\nHowever, maintaining a pool of learners can be prohibitively resource intensive. Therefore, another line of research focuses on investigating the effect of delays on gradient-based methods.\n\nIn \\cite{LSZ09}, the same $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\delaycst\\nRuns})$ bound on the regret was first derived for a slowed-down version of online gradient descent (\\ie running the algorithm with smaller learning rates) under the constant delay assumption.\nComprehensive studies were later provided by \\citet{MS14}, \\citet{QD15} and \\citet{JGS16}.\nIn more detail, denoting by $\\totaldelay$ the aggregated feedback delay after $\\nRuns$ rounds, \\cite{QD15} established a regret bound in $\\bigoh(\\sqrt{\\totaldelay})$ for online gradient descent and online dual averaging, and suggested using the classical doubling trick to dynamically adjust the learning rate.\\footnote{Due to a lack of consensus in the literature, \\cite{QD15} used the name online mirror descent\n to refer to online dual averaging. See \\cref{rem:mirror} for further discussion.\n}\nAssuming bounded delays, both \\cite{MS14} and \\cite{JGS16} devised delay-adaptive methods in order to obtain data-dependent bounds. The former centered on online gradient descent in the unconstrained case while the latter was based on online mirror descent and FTRL-prox.\nVery recently, \\cite{CZP20} extended the delayed feedback analysis to an online saddle-point algorithm which handled the constraints through Lagrangian relaxation.\n\nOur work differs from the above in that we consider a multi-agent setup in which feedback does not arrive to the agents at the same time. To the best of our knowledge, this situation has never been considered before and gives rise to extra challenges that call for novel techniques. In fact, even though the phrase \\emph{asynchronous distributed} appeared in the title of \\cite{MS14}, it falls into the single-agent case in our framework since only one updater was considered there. In particular, in the single-agent setting, we manage to provide a novel adaptive method that does not require the ``bounded delay'' assumption which is present in the work of \\citet{MS14} and \\citet{JGS16}.\n\nThe impact of delays has also been studied in the literature on multi-armed bandits, both stochastic \\citep{PBASG18,VCP17} and adversarial \\citep{CGM18,LCG19,CGM19}.\nThe setting of these papers is quite different from the online optimization problems we consider in our paper, so there is no overlap in results or techniques.\n\n\n\n\\paragraph{Multi-agent online learning.}\nMulti-agent online learning encompasses a broad spectrum of problems, including distributed online optimization (discussed next),\nmulti-agent bandits\n\\citep{BM19,CGM19,SBHO+13,XTZV15},\nand games \\citep{CBL06,HMZ20}. \nIn a very recent paper, \\cite{CCM20} considered a cooperative online learning problem in which a different set of agents is activated at each round, they encounter the same loss, and they receive immediately the relevant gradient feedback after playing.\nWhile this setting is different from our own (there are no feedback delays and a fixed underlying communication graph is assumed), this is the first paper that we are aware of and which considers asynchronous activation in multi-agent online convex optimization problems.\n\n\n\\paragraph{Distributed online optimization.} \nIn distributed online convex optimization, the agents cooperatively optimize a sequence of global costs which are defined as the sum of local loss functions, each associated with an agent. Under this setup, consensus-based distributed algorithms were proposed and shown to achieve sublinear regret \\citep{HCM13,YSVQ12}. \nMore recently, \\cite{SJ17} and \\cite{ZRZT19} further modified these algorithms to cope with dynamic regret, whereas the case of a time-varying network topology was examined in \\cite{MC14} and \\cite{AGL15}.\n\nNonetheless, all of the above works concern the \\emph{synchronous} scenario, and this is true for both the activation of the agents (all the agents engage in each iteration) and the communication between the agents (which are performed without any delay).\nIn contrast, our framework allows for asynchronous \\emph{activations} as well as asynchronous \\emph{communication}.\nMoreover, the underlying communication topology is not modeled explicitly and it is possible to have agents that leave and join freely during the learning process.\nFinally, we analyze both the \\emph{effective} and the \\emph{collective} regret of the network (see \\cref{sec:localglobal}) whereas the works mentioned above only focus on the latter.\\footnote{The effective and collective regrets are also called ``network'' and ``agent'' regrets in \\cite{MC14} and \\cite{AGL15}.}\n\n\n\\paragraph{Asynchronous optimization.}\nFor optimization problems that have a sum structure (\\eg over different parts of some dataset, or over several agents), a large part of the literature is based on a random sampling of one or several of the functions leading to a partial use of the data or of the links between agents. This stems from the study of randomized fixed point operators \\citep{bianchi2015coordinate,combettes2015stochastic}, later extended to delayed settings \\citep{MPPR+15,peng2016arock,leblond2017asaga}. This kind of randomized algorithms is incompatible with the setup considered in our paper in which the agents are \\emph{activated} \\textendash\\ not sampled.\n\nIn the case when a coordinator uses several workers to gather asynchronously gradient feedback, several variants of the proximal gradient algorithm were shown to be efficient, see \\cite{aytekin2016analysis}, \\cite{vanli2018global}  and \\cite{mishchenko2020distributed}, the latter allowing for unbounded delays. However, the analyses of these methods are based on the study of the distance between the iterates and the minimizer of the problem which hinders their extension to the online setting.  \n\nFinally, we are aware of very few works on open networks where agents can freely join and leave the system. These exceptions treat the simpler problem of averaging local values and focus on the system's stability \\citep{HM17,franceschelli2020stability,de2020open}. These ideas were recently extended to study the stability of decentralized gradient descent in open networks \\citep{hendrickx2020stability} but, again, there is no overlap with our work.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaArXiv"}}
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+{"text":" \nThe author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.\n\nCopyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com\/piracy.\nTO SIMON HALLY\n\nwho first let me develop Doctor Fingal O'Reilly and with a gentle editorial hand guided the eccentric GP from early beginnings to the maturity that finally became the Irish Country Doctor novels\nCONTENTS\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright Notice\n\nDedication\n\nAuthor's Note\n\nIntroducing O'Reilly\n\nThe Lazarus Manoeuvre\n\nGalvin's Ducks\n\nKinky\n\nTroubles at the Table\n\nAnatomy Lesson\n\nSunny Disposition\n\nWell Said, Sir\n\nA Pregnant Silence\n\nWorking as Equals\n\nMurphy's Law\n\nThe Law of Holes\n\nMen of the Cloth (1)\n\nMen of the Cloth (2)\n\nO'Reilly Finds His Way\n\nPowers of Observation\n\nStress of the Moment\n\nO'Reilly's Surprise\n\nShock Therapy\n\nHappy as a Pig in...\n\nBarometer Falling\n\nThe Flying Doctor\n\nForty Shades of Green\n\nA G(h)astly Mistake\n\nBlessed Are the Meek\n\nA Matter of Tact\n\nThe Cat's Meow\n\nO'Reilly at the Helm\n\nO'Reilly Strikes Back\n\nA Word to the Wise\n\nDog Days of Winter\n\nIn a Pig's Ear\n\nArthur and the General\n\nSomething Happened\n\nHell on Wheels\n\nWhat's in a Name?\n\nFill 'er Up\n\nA Curious Affair\n\nCuriouser and Curiouser\n\nA Matter of Time\n\nThe Last Laugh\n\nEasy Come, Easy Go\n\nLateral Thinking\n\nFlight of Fancy\n\nFuel for Thought\n\nTimes Are a-Changing\n\nThe Sting\n\nPipes of Wrath\n\nSam Slither\n\nA Matchless Experience\n\nA Humble Apology\n\nThe Patient Who Broke the Rules\n\nGoing to the Dogs\n\nA Meeting of the Minds\n\nIt's in the Can\n\nA Very Pheasant Evening...\n\n'Tis the Season to Be Jolly\n\nJust a Wee Deoch an' Dorris\n\nWhat's in a Name?\n\nWhat's in a Name? (Part 2)\n\nWhiskey in a Jar\n\nO'Reilly Puts His Foot in It\n\nO'Reilly's Cat\n\nO'Reilly's Dog\n\nO'Reilly's Rival\n\nThe Smoking Gun\n\nRing Around the Rosies\n\nJingle Bells\n\nHome Is the Sailor\n\nAfterword\n\nGlossary\n\nBy Patrick Taylor\n\nAbout the Author\n\nCopyright\nAUTHOR'S NOTE\n\nI have written all my life, or at least since an essay of mine phrased in the style of Sir Francis Bacon was published in my school magazine when I was sixteen. It seems so long ago now that I wonder if the task came easily to me because the old seventeenth-century statesman, jurist, scientist, and author and I were practically contemporaries.\n\nWhenever I give readings from my later works, all novels, someone invariably asks a two-part question, the first part of which is, \"Where did Doctors O'Reilly and Laverty come from?\" It'll take me a page or two to answer that.\n\nThe whole process was a lengthy evolution of a writer and his characters. Much of it seemed to come by chance, a strange admixture of who you know and luck. The short stories included between these covers are the proof of that and I hope you enjoy them.\n\nThe second part of the question will have to await the fuller explanation of part one, but I promise I'll tell you what the query was and answer it before the end of this introduction.\n\nDuring most of my medical research career any literary efforts were confined to the production of scientific papers and, in collaboration with colleagues, half a dozen textbooks. Dull, I can assure you. Very, very dull.\n\nThat changed in 1989. My longtime friend and medical school classmate Doctor Tom Baskett had been appointed editor in chief of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada (JSOGC). To lighten its otherwise dry content he invited me to contribute a regular page of tongue-in-cheek observations about the world of then modern medicine. \"En Passant\" began appearing monthly and lasted for nearly ten years.\n\nTo my surprise the associate editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) noticed the early efforts and commissioned a six-weekly column, \"Medicine Chest,\" for his publication. An idea had begun to germinate and I asked permission to devote five hundred words in each episode to the doings of a fictional Ulster GP, Doctor Reilly\u2014please note Reilly, not yet O'Reilly\u2014and the suggestion was accepted. Unfortunately the electronic records of these stories are lost, but I had fun with the character.\n\nSimon Hally, who over the years has become my friend, was then editor of Punch Digest for Canadian Doctors, which subsequently became Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. He'd read the Reilly stories in the CMAJ and wondered if I'd consider doing a regular piece for him, to be called \"Taylor's Twist.\" He also mentioned a dollar sum that would keep me in paper, ink, and the high technology of the time, floppy discs. I agreed, but asked that rather than doing short, one-paragraph observations I could devote each column to a single, I hoped humorous, anecdote. The first of these stories appeared in 1991, and until 1995 chronicled the vagaries of the life of a medical undergraduate in Belfast in the '50s and '60s, and yes, they were autobiographical, if exaggerated and a bit twisted.\n\nBut old Doctor Reilly, whose antics had ceased with the discontinuation of \"Medicine Chest\" somewhere in 1991, kept muttering to me that he felt he should be resurrected. After four years of undergraduate stories I was running out of steam, and with Simon's permission switched to the recounting of the misadventures of a newly qualified medical graduate who innocently accepts a position of assistant to an irascible, blasphemous, hard-drinking, rural Ulster GP who by now had adopted the name Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. I think you probably know him. Those columns ran until 2001. Like the undergraduate stories they were based on my own and my friends' experiences in Ulster general practice. Some come from good stories heard in pubs.\n\nForgive me if I now digress into some technical aspects of writing fiction, but I needs must if I am going to explain why in these columns I cast myself, Patrick Taylor, as the straight man and narrator in this Hippocratic Laurel and Hardy double act.\n\nThe best modern stories are written in \"point of view.\" The author must slip into the background and let the reader experience the action through the eyes of the \"point of view character.\" This means that, for example, a subsidiary character in a scene cannot comment as an aside on what the main character is thinking or doing. Such asides, while properly called \"authorial intrusion\" in literary fiction, can be the guts of good comedy. And there is a way to use them so they are not intrusive.\n\nIf the point of view character is the narrator, they can make as many asides as they like, and this is even easier if the story-telling character is the first-person \"I,\" as in, \"I saw O'Reilly lift Donal Donnelly by gripping the little man's shoulder in one vast paw and as God is my witness I swear I heard the victim's bones creak. O'Reilly never seemed to know his own strength.\"\n\nTo tell the Stitches stories my own character became the narrator, the butt of many of the jokes, and I had a useful technique to work with. I am frequently asked, \"In the novels are you Doctor Barry Laverty?\" O'Reilly's fictional junior. For structural reasons I did indeed use myself in these columns, but I do not translate into Barry in the Irish Country series.\n\nSo those were the first stumbling steps. I'm afraid they don't quite answer the question of how did the Country Series evolve. That is also the story of my journey to become a novelist.\n\nShortly after graduation from medical school in my twenties I tried my hand as a short-story writer. W. Somerset Maugham had been my teenage hero. The Belfast Troubles had broken out and I tried to set human drama against that background. I am the proud possessor of rejection slips from several magazines of the period, including one from The New Yorker.\n\nBy the mid-'90s I had been appointed editor of the JSOGC. The various humour columns were doing well, and as a sideline I was also selling sailing humour. (I think it's genetic. When an Ulsterman goes to sea, strange things can happen. We, after all, built the RMS Titanic.) In a fit of chutzpah I dug out some of the short stories I'd written back in the '60s and a few more I'd started to experiment with, and sought an opinion from the publisher of the JSOGC and his wife, Adrian and Olga Stein, two people whose interest in the written word is vast. They in turn persuaded Anna Porter, then of Key Porter Books, to take a look, and to my delight she agreed that with editorial help from Carolyn Bateman, who is now my friend and highly valued editor to this day, a short story collection, Only Wounded: Ulster Stories, should be produced. It will be re-released by Forge in 2015.\n\nAnother remarkable man, Jack Whyte, author of the Dream of Eagles series and more novels, suggested I try writing a novel. Emboldened by having had my short stories accepted, I took his advice. Thank you, Jack. To cut a long story short, after numerous rejections a psycho-thriller, Pray for Us Sinners, was published in 2000 in Canada. Flushed with pride I suggested to my house editor, Adrienne Weiss, \"Why don't we take all my Doctor O'Reilly columns, clap on covers, and make a buck or two?\"\n\nShe said, \"If your name was Garrison Keillor I'd say, 'Let's call it Lake Wobegon Days and go for it, but...'\"\n\nHer implication that no one had heard of Patrick Taylor was not lost. She was, however, kind enough to suggest that she liked the character of Doctor O'Reilly. \"Perhaps with the confidence gained from one published novel under my belt I might consider...?\"\n\nThe Apprenticeship of Doctor Laverty, the first novel about O'Reilly, appeared in Canada in 2004 and, thanks to the efforts of Jack Whyte, as well as Natalia Aponte, then acquiring editor for Forge Books, it was republished in the United States in 2007 as An Irish Country Doctor. It was the beginning of the Irish Country series.\n\nAnd so with the support of you, the readers, the continuing story of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly has continued to grow.\n\nI started this introduction by quoting the first part of a two-part question: \"Where did Doctors O'Reilly and Laverty come from?\" and I promised after a long-winded answer to tell you what the second part was. \"You've told us that they came from your humour columns,\" I can hear you say. \"So, when are we going to get to see those old columns?\" And that of course is the second part of the question.\n\nThe answer is that while I have released a few on my Web page as blogs, now through the generosity of Tom Doherty and Forge Books you can have the lot, warts and all, between these covers. The cover illustration was conceived and brought to life by Irene Gallo and beautifully painted by Gregory Manchess. They have been responsible for all the Irish Country dust-jacket art.\n\nIn addition, last March we published a short O'Reilly story, \"Home Is the Sailor,\" in e-format only. You can see how in part it was derived from a column entitled \"The Lazarus Manoeuvre\" first created in late 1995. I now know that many readers who did not have access to the e-reader technology were disappointed. For them, that story, written much later than the columns, is appended in hard copy in this work.\n\nI have had a lot of fun revisiting these long-ago-written friends. I sincerely hope you enjoy them. If you compare them with the Irish Country novels you will see how characters changed and grew, and simple story lines were twisted and embellished.\n\nAnd perhaps having had a glimpse into the origins you will see how a writer and his characters can grow from small beginnings.\n\nWith my best wishes,\n\nPATRICK TAYLOR  \nSalt Spring Island,  \nBritish Columbia,  \nCanada\nOCTOBER 1995\n\nIntroducing O'Reilly\n\nIn which we make the acquaintance of a rather remarkable GP\n\n\"Taylor's Twist\" first appeared in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour in September 1991, as a chronicle of the experiences of a medical student in Belfast in the '50s and '60s. By 1995 I'd written about the life of a medical undergraduate for almost as long as I was one. The editor, Simon Hally, was a generous man and allowed me to switch my attention, and I trust yours, to events of postgraduate life in the North of Ireland in the late '60s. To anyone with the intestinal fortitude actually to want more undergraduate stories, I can only apologize. To the rest, who have followed me thus far, let us boldly go where no sentient entity has gone before\u2014and I don't mean the Canadian House of Commons or the Congress of the United States. Come back with me to Ulster and meet my old tutor, Doctor O'Reilly, ex-navy boxing champion, classical scholar, unregenerate poacher, hard drinker, cryptophilanthropist, foul-mouthed widower, and country GP.\n\nHe was a big man, about six foot fourteen in his socks and weighing twenty stone or, if you prefer, 280 pounds. His complexion might be charitably called florid, the delicate roseate hue of his cheeks having all the softness of an overheated blast furnace. His nose, once perhaps a thing of beauty and a joy forever, had acquired a distinct personality of its own. The tip was squashed and sat at a rakish forty-five degrees to port of the bridge. Boxing, or as it was once known, the manly art of self-defence, carried its own costs. The tip of O'Reilly's nose had one other important characteristic: when he became enraged it turned white.\n\nI stumbled, all unsuspecting, into his clutches after I'd finished my houseman's (intern's) year and was eking out a meagre existence demonstrating anatomy. Weekend and evening locums for GPs helped me make ends if not exactly meet, then at least come within calling distance of each other. I simply answered a newspaper advertisement.\n\nIn the years that I knew O'Reilly, years that encompassed a series of horribly underpaid registrar's (resident's) jobs, he never ceased to astound me. Sometimes my surprise was a result of his absolutely cavalier treatment of a malingerer; on other occasions his encyclopaedic knowledge of his patients astounded me. He had an uncanny sense of clinical smell, and I would still bet O'Reilly's diagnostic acumen against a battery of CT scans, MRI pictures, and the entire arsenal of the biochemistry laboratory.\n\nHe detested bureaucracy with the vitriolic hatred of Torquemada for unrepentant heretics, was kind to widows and small children, and ate public health officers for breakfast. He was stubborn to the point of mulishness when his mind was made up, had a tongue that when aroused would have made Adolf Hitler on a bad day at a Nuremberg rally sound like a cooing dove, yet he'd sit for hours in the dark of the night with a dying patient and still be ready for work as soon as morning surgery, the term for office over there, opened.\n\nI learned more about the art of medicine from that man, and some of the humour of it too, than from a faculty of professors. I wish I could have him with me today when I'm faced with some of the array of meaningful, interactive, holistic, client-centred healthcare providers who want to invade my turf as a physician. You know the kind: the ones who believe that medicine is too important to be left to the doctors (a brilliantly original paraphrasing of old Georges Clemenceau's crack about war and generals, although others would attribute it to Talleyrand) and who, bless their trusting little souls, are convinced that if enough wellness clinics are opened, nasty old diseases will vanish and we'll all live forever.\n\nTo be fair to O'Reilly, in some matters he was well ahead of his time. I thought of him the other day while watching a demonstration in which a healthcare provider held her hands over the sufferer and by concentrating, focused vital healing energies. I saw O'Reilly using a similar approach thirty years ago.\n\nHe'd asked me to join him for morning surgery, which he conducted in the converted front room of his home, sitting in a swivel chair in front of a great rolltop desk. Beside him was a hard-backed chair for the sufferer. One of O'Reilly's ploys was to have sawn off the last inch of the front legs of this seat so the customer would keep sliding forward, be uncomfortable, and thus not be tempted to stay too long.\n\nI occupied the other piece of furniture in the room, a battered examination couch, swinging my legs and wishing that the incessant flow of coughs, colds, and sniffles would dry up, both figuratively and literally.\n\nThe last patient came in. I'd seen her before, twice actually, with vague but time-consuming symptoms. She took one look at me and sniffed. \"The young lad's not helping me, Doctor.\"\n\nO'Reilly rose, and waited until she was seated. He sat and took one of her hands in his, peered over a set of half-moon spectacles, which he affected when he wanted to look particularly wise, and asked, \"What seems to be the trouble, Maggie?\"\n\nShe fired one aggrieved glance in my direction and said in a voice that would have softened Pharaoh's heart if, like Moses, she'd been discussing the holiday plans of the Children of Israel with Ramses, \"It's the headaches, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Um,\" said O'Reilly, leaning forward, left elbow on his knee, chin cupped in his hand, index finger crushing past the side of his bent schnozzle. \"Where are they?\"\n\nShe sighed deeply. \"About two inches above my crown.\"\n\nO'Reilly didn't bat an eyelid. \"Tut-tut.\" He positively oozed solicitousness. \"Tut. Tut!\" He released her hand, swivelled in his chair, grabbed a bottle of some new vitamins that a drug rep had left as a sample, swung back, and handed them to her. He stood, signalling that the consultation was nearly over. She stood. He took her arm, piloting her to the door. \"Now, Maggie,\" he said. \"You must take two of these for the ache over your head...\" he looked at me, one upper eyelid drooping in a slow wink \"... ten minutes before the pain starts.\"\n\nShe thanked him profusely and left.\n\nI saw her a week later. She lost no time telling me what a useless physician I was and how Doctor O'Reilly had effected another miracle cure. I'm sure he would have been a great practitioner of therapeutic touch.\n\nNow you've met Doctor O'Reilly. Next time I'll tell you how he started in practice.\nNOVEMBER\/DECEMBER 1995\n\nThe Lazarus Manoeuvre\n\nHow the young Doctor O'Reilly earned the respect of his community\n\nWe were sitting in the upstairs lounge of Doctor O'Reilly's house at the end of the day. Himself was tucking contentedly into his second large whiskey. \"So,\" he demanded, \"how do you like it?\"\n\nBeing a little uncertain whether he was asking about the spectacular view through the bay window to Belfast Lough, the small sherry I was sipping, or the general status of the universe, I countered with an erudite, \"What?\"\n\nHe fished in the external auditory canal of one thickened, pugilist's ear with the tip of his right little finger and echoed my sentiments: \"What?\"\n\nI thought this conversation could become mildly repetitive and decided to broaden the horizons. \"How do I like what, Doctor O'Reilly?\"\n\nHe extracted his digit and examined the end with all the concentration and knitting of brows of a gorilla evaluating a choice morsel. \"Practice here, you idiot. How do you like it?\"\n\nMy lights went on. \"Fine,\" I said, as convincingly as possible. \"Just fine.\"\n\nMy reply seemed to satisfy him. He grinned, grunted, hauled his twenty stone erect, wandered over to the sideboard, and returned carrying the sherry decanter. He topped up my glass. \"A bird can't fly on one wing,\" he remarked.\n\nI refrained from observing that if he kept putting away the whiskey at his usual rate he'd soon be giving a pretty fair imitation of a mono-winged albatross in a high gale, accepted my fresh drink, and waited.\n\nHe returned the decanter, ambled to the window, and took in the scenery with one all-encompassing wave of his arm. \"I'd not want to live anywhere else,\" he said. \"Mind you, it was touch and go at the start.\"\n\nHe was losing me again. \"What was, Doctor O'Reilly?\"\n\n\"Fingal, my boy. Fingal. For Oscar.\" He gave me one of his most avuncular smiles.\n\nI couldn't for the life of me see him having been named for a small, gilded statuette given annually to movie stars. \"Oscar, er, Fingal?\" I asked.\n\nHe shook his head. \"No. Not Oscar Fingal. Wilde.\"\n\nHe did this to me. Every time I thought I was following him he'd change tack, leaving me in a state of confusion bordering on that usually felt by people recovering from an overdose of chloroform. \"Oscar Fingal Wilde, Fingal?\"\n\nI should have stuck with \"Doctor O'Reilly.\" I could tell by the way the tip of his bent nose was beginning to whiten that he was becoming exasperated. He shook his head. \"Oscar... Fingal... O'Flahertie... Wills... Wilde.\"\n\nI stifled the urge to remark that if you put an air to it you could sing it.\n\nHe must have seen my look of bewilderment. The ischaemia left his nose. \"I was named for him. For Oscar Wilde.\"\n\nThe scales fell from my eyes. \"I see.\"\n\n\"Good. Now where was I?\"\n\n\"You said, 'It was touch and go at the start.'\"\n\n\"Oh yes. Getting the practice going. Touch and go.\" He sat again in the big comfortable armchair, picked up his glass of whiskey, and looked at me over the brim. \"Did I ever tell you how I got started?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, settling back in my own chair, preparing myself for another of his reminiscences, for another meander down the byways of O'Reilly's life.\n\n\"I came here in the early '40s. Took over from Doctor Finnegan.\"\n\nI hoped fervently that we weren't about to embark on the genealogy of James Joyce, and was relieved to hear O'Reilly continue, \"He was a funny old bird.\"\n\nNever, I thought, but kept the thought to myself.\n\nO'Reilly was warming up now. \"Just before he left, Finnegan warned me about a local condition of cold groin abscesses. He didn't understand them.\" O'Reilly took a mouthful of Irish, savoured it, and swallowed. \"He explained to me that when he lanced them he either got wind or shit, but the patient invariably died.\" O'Reilly chuckled.\n\nI was horrified. My mentor's predecessor had been incising inguinal hernias.\n\n\"That's why it was touch and go,\" said O'Reilly. \"My first patient had the biggest hernia I've ever seen. When I refused to lance it, like good old Doctor Finnegan, the patient spread the word that I didn't know my business.\" He sat back and crossed one leg over the other. \"Did you ever hear of Lazarus?\"\n\n\"Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Lazarus?\" I asked.\n\n\"Don't be impertinent.\" He grabbed my by-now-empty glass and headed back to the sideboard. The delivery of a fresh libation, and one for himself, signalled that he hadn't been offended. \"No, the biblical fellow that Jesus raised from the dead.\" He sat.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"That's how I got my start.\"\n\nWas it the sherry or was I really losing my mind? Whatever his skills, I doubted that Doctor O'Reilly had actually effected a resurrection. \"Go on,\" I asked for it.\n\n\"I was in church one Sunday, hoping that if the citizens saw that I was a good Christian they might look upon me more favourably.\"\n\nThe thought of a pious O'Reilly seemed a trifle incongruous.\n\n\"There I was when a farmer in the front pew let out a yell like a banshee, grabbed his chest, and keeled over.\" To add drama to his words O'Reilly stood, arms wide. \"I took out of my pew like a whippet. Examined him. Mutton. Dead as mutton.\"\n\nI knew that CPR hadn't been invented in the '40s. \"What did you do?\"\n\nO'Reilly lowered his arms and winked. \"I got my bag, told everyone to stand back, and gave the poor corpse an injection of whatever came handy. I listened to his heart. 'He's back,' says I. You should have heard the gasp from the congregation.\"\n\nHe sat down. \"I listened again. 'God,' says I, 'he's going again,' and gave the poor bugger another shot.\" O'Reilly sipped his drink. \"I brought him back three times before I finally confessed defeat.\"\n\nInnocence is a remarkable thing. \"Did you really get his heart started?\"\n\nO'Reilly guffawed. \"Not at all, but the poor benighted audience didn't know that. Do you know I actually heard one woman say to her neighbour, 'The Lord only brought Lazarus back once and the new doctor did it three times.'\" He headed for the sideboard again. \"I told you it was touch and go at the start, but the customers started rolling in after that\u2014will you have another?\"\nJANUARY 1996\n\nGalvin's Ducks\n\nHow Doctor O'Reilly mended a broken heart\n\n\"That man Galvin's a bloody idiot!\" Thus spake Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. He was standing in his favourite corner of the bar of the Black Swan Inn, or, as it was known to the locals, the Mucky Duck. O'Reilly's normally florid cheeks glowed crimson and the tip of his bent nose paled. Somehow rage seemed to divert the blood flow from his hooter to his face. I thought it politic to remain silent. I'd seen the redoubtable Doctor O'Reilly like this before.\n\nHe hadn't seemed to be his usual self when we'd repaired to the hostelry after evening surgery, and now, after his fourth pint, whatever had been bothering him was beginning to surface. \"Raving bloody idiot,\" he muttered, taking a generous swallow of his drink and slamming the empty glass on the counter.\n\nAfter six months as his weekend locum and part-time assistant, I'd learned my place in O'Reilly's universe. I nodded to Brendan the barman, who rapidly replaced O'Reilly's empty glass with another full of the velvet liquid product of Mister Arthur Guinness and Sons, St. James's Gate, Dublin.\n\n\"Ta,\" said O'Reilly, the straight glass almost hidden by his big hand. \"I could kill Seamus Galvin.\" He rummaged in the pocket of his rumpled jacket, produced a briar, stoked it with the enthusiasm of Be\u00eblzebub preparing the coals for an unrepentant sinner, and fired up the tobacco, making a smokescreen that would have hidden the entire British North Sea fleet from the attentions of the Panzerschiff Bismarck.\n\nI sipped my shandy and waited, trying to remember if I'd seen the patient in question.\n\n\"Do you know what that benighted apology for a man has done?\"\n\nFrom the tone of O'Reilly's voice, I assumed it must have been some petty misdemeanour\u2014like mass murder perhaps. \"No,\" I said, helpfully.\n\nO'Reilly sighed. \"He has Mary's heart broken.\"\n\nNow I remembered. Seamus Galvin and his wife Mary lived in a cottage at the end of one of the lanes just outside the small Ulster town where O'Reilly practised. Galvin was a carpenter by trade and a would-be entrepreneur. I'd seen him once or twice, usually because he'd managed to hit his thumb with one of his hammers. I said the man was a carpenter; I didn't say he was a good carpenter.\n\n\"Broken,\" said O'Reilly mournfully, \"utterly smashed.\"\n\nThis intelligence came as no great surprise. Mary Galvin was the sheet anchor of the marriage, bringing in extra money by selling her baking, eggs from her hens, and the produce of her vegetable garden. Galvin himself was a complete waster.\n\nO'Reilly prodded my chest with the end of his pipe. \"I should have known a few weeks ago when I saw him and he was telling me about his latest get-rich scheme.\" The big man grunted derisively. \"That one couldn't make money in the Royal Mint.\"\n\nI could only agree, remembering Galvin's previous failed endeavours. His \"Happy Nappy Diaper Service\" had folded. No one in a small town could afford the luxury of having someone else wash their babies' diapers. Only the most sublime optimist could have thought that a landscaping company would have much custom in a predominantly agricultural community. Galvin had soon been banished from his \"Garden of Eden\" lawn care business\u2014presumably because his encounters with the fruit of the tree of knowledge had been limited. I wondered what fresh catastrophe had befallen him.\n\nO'Reilly beat carelessly at an ember that had fallen from the bowl of his pipe onto the lapel of his tweed jacket. \"Mary's the one with sense. She was in to see me a couple of weeks ago. She's pregnant.\" He inspected the charred cloth. \"I've known her since she was a wee girl. I've never seen her so happy.\" His craggy features softened for a moment. \"She told me her secret. She'd been saving her money and had enough for Seamus and herself to emigrate to California.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said.\n\n\"Aye,\" said O'Reilly, \"she has a brother out there. He was going to find Seamus a job with a construction company.\"\n\nI'd read somewhere that California was prone to earthquakes and for a moment thought that this unfortunate geological propensity had been transmitted to Ulster before I realized that the pub's attempt to shimmy like my sister Kate was due to O'Reilly banging his fist on the bar top.\n\n\"That bloody idiot and his bright ideas.\" O'Reilly's nose tip was ashen. \"He's gone into toy making. He thinks he can sell rocking ducks\u2014rocking ducks.\" He shook his head ponderously. \"Mary was in tonight. The wee lass was in tears. He'd taken the money she'd saved and went and bought the lumber to make his damn ducks. That man Galvin's a bloody idiot.\"\n\nO'Reilly finished his pint, set the glass on the counter, shrugged, and said just one more word, \"Home.\"\n\n* * *\n\nAbout a month later, I met Mary Galvin in the High Street. She stopped me and I could see she was bubbling with excitement.\n\n\"How are you, Mary?\"\n\n\"Doctor, you'll never believe it!\" She had wonderfully green eyes and they were sparkling. \"A big company in Belfast has bought all of Seamus's rocking ducks, lock, stock, and barrel.\" She patted her expanding waistline. \"The three of us are off to California next week.\"\n\nI wished her well, genuinely pleased for her good fortune. It wasn't until I'd returned to O'Reilly's house that I began to wonder. He was out making a house call. For the last week he'd taken to parking his car on the street. No. No, he wouldn't have...? When I opened the garage door, a bizarre creature toppled out from a heap of its fellows. The entire space was filled to the rafters with garishly painted ducks\u2014rocking ducks. It only took a moment to stow the one that had made a bid for freedom and close the door. When I introduced Doctor O'Reilly, I described him as, among other things, a cryptophilanthropist. Now you know why.\nFEBRUARY 1996\n\nKinky\n\nEvery practice should have a triage specialist like her\n\nDoctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly wasn't the only character in the practice. Mrs. Kincaid, widow, native of County Kerry, known to one and all as \"Kinky,\" functioned as his housekeeper-cum-receptionist-cum-nurse. She was a big woman, middle-aged, with big hands and blue eyes that could twinkle like the dew on the grass in the morning sun when she was in an expansive mood\u2014or flash like lightning when she was enraged. She treated Doctor O'Reilly with due deference when he behaved himself and sub-Arctic frigidity when he didn't. She was the only person I knew who could bring him to heel. In her native county she would have been known as \"a powerful woman.\"\n\nWhen she was acting in her nursing role, Kinky's speciality was triage. Cerberus at the gates to Hades might have done a fair to middling job keeping the unworthy in the underworld, but when it came to protecting her doctors' time from the malingerers of the town, Kinky made the fabled dog look like an edentulous pussycat. Not only did she get rid of them, she did so with diplomatic skills that would have been the envy of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James.\n\nI began to appreciate her talents one January evening. It had been a tough week. We were in the middle of a 'flu epidemic and O'Reilly, who'd been without much sleep for about four days, had prevailed upon me to come and help him out. By the week's end both of us were knackered. We were sitting in the surgery, me on the examination couch, O'Reilly slumped in the swivel chair. The last patient had left and as far as I knew no emergency calls had come in. O'Reilly's usually ruddy complexion was pallid and his eyes red-rimmed, the whole face looking like two tomatoes in a snowbank. I didn't like to think about my own appearance. He massaged his right shoulder with his left hand. \"God,\" he said, \"I hope that's the last of it for tonight.\" As he spoke the front doorbell rang. \"Bugger!\" said O'Reilly.\n\nI started to rise but he shook his head. \"Leave it. Kinky will see who it is.\"\n\nThe door to the surgery was ajar. I could hear the conversation quite clearly, Kinky's soft Kerry brogue contrasting sharply with harsher female tones. I thought I recognized the second speaker, and when I heard Kinky refer to her as \"Maggie,\" I realized that the caller was the woman who'd come to see O'Reilly complaining of headaches that were located about two inches above the crown of her head. She was in and out of the surgery on a weekly basis. The prospect of having to see her was not pleasant. I needn't have worried.\n\n\"The back, is it, Maggie?\" Kinky's inquiry was dulcet.\n\n\"Something chronic,\" came the reply.\n\n\"Oh dear. And how long has it been bothering you?\"\n\n\"For weeks.\"\n\n\"Weeks, is it?\" The concern never wavered. \"Well, we'll have to get you seen as soon as we can.\"\n\nI shuddered, for it was my turn to see the next patient, but O'Reilly simply smiled, shook his head, and held one index finger in front of his lips.\n\n\"Pity you'll have to wait. The young doctor's out on an emergency. He shouldn't be more than two or three hours. You will wait, won't you?\"\n\nI heard the sibilant indrawing of breath and could picture Maggie's frustration. I heard her harrumph. \"It's the proper doctor that I want to see, not that young lad.\"\n\nSo much for the undying respect of the citizens for their medical advisors. I glanced at O'Reilly and was rewarded with a smug grin.\n\n\"Ah,\" said Kinky. \"Ah, well now, that's the difficulty of it. Doctor O'Reilly's giving a pint of his own blood this very minute, the darling man.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Kincaid\"\u2014Maggie didn't sound as if she was going to be taken in\u2014\"that has to be the fifth pint of blood you've told me about him giving this month.\"\n\nI waited to see how Kinky would wriggle out of that one. I needn't have worried, as I heard her say with completely convincing sincerity, \"And is that not what you'd expect from Doctor O'Reilly, him the biggest-hearted man in the town. Goodnight, Maggie.\" I heard the door close. As I told you, O'Reilly wasn't the only character in the practice.\nMARCH 1996\n\nTroubles at the Table\n\nO'Reilly expounds on the Great Wall of Ulster\n\nDoctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was rarely lost for an opinion, and not only on matters medical. Now it's just possible that you've noticed during the last twenty-five years that there has been a touch of internecine unpleasantness going on in the North of Ireland. Although at this time of writing peace seems to have broken out over there, when I was working for O'Reilly there were nights when I began to wonder when they were going to issue the civil war with a number, like WW1 or WW2. Many great minds had done their collective best to try to come up with a solution. Alas, in vain.\n\nAfter another huge bomb had remodelled another chunk of Belfast, I foolishly asked O'Reilly, over supper one evening, what he thought could be done about the Troubles.\n\nHe paused from disarticulating the roast fowl, stared at me over his half-moon spectacles, and waved vaguely in my general direction with a slice of breast that was impaled on the carving fork. \"Which troubles?\"\n\nI toyed with my napkin, feeling a great urge to have bitten my tongue out\u2014before I'd asked the question. It had been a busy day and Mrs. Kincaid's roast chicken would have gone a long way to easing the hunger pangs. By the way O'Reilly had asked his question in reply, I could tell that he was ready to expound at some length, and I had a horrible suspicion that he might forget that he was meant to be carving.\n\n\"Come on, man.\" He laid the fork and its toothsome burden back on the plate. \"Which troubles?\"\n\nI sighed. Dinner, it seemed, was going to be late. \"The Troubles. The civil war.\"\n\nHe picked up the fork and expertly dislodged the slice of meat with the carving knife\u2014dislodged it onto his own, already heaped plate. \"Oh. Those troubles.\"\n\nNo, Fingal. The outbreak of foot and mouth disease on Paddy Murnaghan's farm, the civil war in Biafra, or the fact that you seem to have forgotten that locums, like gun dogs, need to be fed at least once a day. I kept my thoughts to myself. Captain Bligh and his few loyal crew members had rowed a longboat about two thousand miles to East Timor existing on one ship's biscuit. Perhaps if I let O'Reilly expound for a while he might eventually see fit to toss me the odd crumb of nourishment.\n\nA spoon disappeared into the nether end of the bird and reappeared full of steaming sage-and-onion stuffing.\n\n\"Those troubles.\" O'Reilly hesitated, trying to find room on his plate between the slices of breast and the roast potatoes before deciding to dump the stuffing at random on top of the pile. He replaced the spoon in the bird with the finesse of a proctologist. \"Those troubles. I reckon there's a pretty simple solution. Pass the gravy.\"\n\nI did so. \"Fingal...\" I tried, hoping at least to encourage him to start serving me as he held forth. Try interrupting the incoming tide in the Bay of Fundy.\n\n\"Simple. Now. You tell me: What are the three most pressing problems in Northern Ireland?\" He ingested a forkful and masticated happily while waiting for my reply.\n\nHow about pellagra, scurvy, and beri-beri in underpaid, underfed junior doctors?\n\n\"Come om, come om...\" His words were a little garbled. He swallowed. \"Right, I'll tell you. Unemployment, falling tourism, and the brave lads who like to make things go bang.\"\n\nI was drowning in my own saliva, watching him tuck in. He pointed at me with his fork. \"The solution is a Great Wall of Ulster.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"Great Wall of Ulster.\" He pulled the half-carved chicken toward himself, stood, expertly dissected the remaining drumstick, and laid three roast potatoes between the severed limb and the rest of the carcass. \"Now look. The thigh there's Ulster and the tatties are my wall.\"\n\nBrilliantly pictorial, I had to admit, but I really would have forgone this lesson in political science if a bit of his improvised Ulster or the rest of Ireland, if that was what the breast was meant to represent, could somehow have been transported to my still-empty plate.\n\n\"Now. Tourism. The tourists would come for miles to see the Great Wall.\" He used the carving knife to line the tubers up more straightly. \"The unemployed would have had to build it in the first place, of course.\"\n\nMy unemployed stomach let go with a gurgle like the boiling mud pits of New Zealand.\n\n\"You're excused,\" said O'Reilly. \"Finally\"\u2014he squashed one of the potatoes with the spoon he'd used to help himself to stuffing\u2014\"the brave banging lads could blow it up to their hearts' content and\"\u2014he paused and replaced the mashed spud with a fresh one\u2014\"the unemployed could be kept occupied rebuilding.\" He sat beaming at me. \"Told you it was simple.\"\n\nI hastened to agree, hoping that now he'd finished I might finally get something to eat.\n\nThe door opened and Mrs. Kincaid stuck her head into the dining room. \"Can you come at once, Doctor Taylor? There's been an accident.\"\nAPRIL 1996\n\nAnatomy Lesson\n\nThe things you learn on a Dublin pub crawl\n\nDoctor O'Reilly was a keen sportsman. I think I've remarked previously that he was an ex\u2013boxing champion. He'd also played a fair bit of rugby football in his youth. I found out about his interest in rugby one weekend in January. Ireland was to play Scotland at Lansdowne Road in Dublin. To my great pleasure, O'Reilly invited me to accompany him to the match. He would provide the transportation and tickets, and would pay for my hotel room on the night before the match.\n\nThe drive to Dublin was uneventful and we checked into the Gresham Hotel. I'd barely begun to unpack my bag when there was a knocking at my door. I opened it. There stood O'Reilly, grinning from ear to ear. \"Do you fancy a jar?\"\n\nIt is, I'm told, possible, just possible, for an entertainer to decline the Royal Command to appear at the London Palladium. It was not possible, not remotely possible, for anyone to turn down O'Reilly's invitation for a drink.\n\n\"Right,\" I said, with all the enthusiasm that must be evinced by the prisoner on death row when the chaplain sticks his head round the cell door. I'll say one thing for convicted American murderers: the electric chair is reputed to be very fast. Their suffering is over quickly. I'd been with Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly in full cry on his home turf and had lived, barely, to regret it. What he might be like when he was truly off the leash didn't bear thinking about. Oh well. My life insurance was paid up. \"I'd love one. Where to?\"\n\nHe winked, a great conspiratorial wink. \"Usually the rugby crowd goes to Davy Byrnes, but I thought we might take a wee wander to The Stag's Head at the back of Grafton Street.\"\n\n\"Do you know how to get there?\" I asked, knowing that when O'Reilly was ready for his tot, depriving him of it for long could produce the same effects as poking an alligator in the eye with a blunt stick.\n\n\"Of course. Didn't I go to medical school here, at Trinity College?\"\n\nThat was something I hadn't known. Those of us who were graduates of Queen's University Belfast referred disdainfully to Trinity as \"that veterinary college in Dublin.\" It was unfair to a fine school, but there was a rivalry between Queen's and the other place. The picture of the enraged alligator popped into my mind and I decided not to mention my lack of respect for his old alma mater. \"Silly of me,\" I said. \"Lead on, Fingal.\"\n\nAnd away we went, just like the caissons, over hill, over dale.\n\nNow Dublin isn't that big a city, it just seemed big after about two hours of walking. O'Reilly was becoming just a tad irritable if the pallor of his nose tip was anything to go by.\n\n\"Jasus,\" he remarked, as we found ourselves at the end of yet another publess cul-de-sac, \"I'd have sworn it was down here.\"\n\nI coughed. \"Should we maybe ask directions?\"\n\nI imagine Captain Oates would have received the same kind of look from Robert Scott that O'Reilly hurled at me if the gallant gentleman had asked the same question on the way back from the South Pole. Frosty\u2014very frosty.\n\n\"Not at all,\" O'Reilly countered, making an about-turn on the march and heading back toward the main thoroughfare. \"I know this place like the back of my hand.\" I took little comfort from that statement. He had both hands in his trouser pockets.\n\nDusk was falling as we trudged along Grafton Street for the umpteenth time. O'Reilly was never one to admit defeat gracefully, but his internal drought, which by then was probably on a par with the drier reaches of the Sahara, finally got the better of him.\n\nA grubby youth was washing a shop-front window or, to be more accurate, redistributing the streaks of city grime. O'Reilly tapped him on the shoulder. The youth turned. \"My good man,\" O'Reilly asked in the tones that he reserved for lesser mortals, \"do you know where The Stag's Head is?\"\n\nThe Dubliner wasn't one bit overawed, neither by O'Reilly's size nor his overweening manner. He gave O'Reilly a pitying look and said with an absolutely straight face, \"Do I know where The Stag's Head is? Of course I do\u2014it's about six feet from its arse.\"\n\nI thought O'Reilly was going to explode, but instead he collapsed in peals of helpless laughter.\n\nWe did eventually find the pub in question. The irony was that just kitty-corner from it was another pub, The Vincent Van Gogh, which, believe it or not, is known to the locals as The Stag's Arse. The Dublin lad hadn't even been trying to be funny.\nMAY 1996\n\nSunny Disposition\n\nThe O'Reilly method of social and preventive medicine\n\nDoctor O'Reilly was fond of extolling the virtues of general practice. He reckoned that a good GP should be the master of what he called \"all branches of the medical arts.\" Once I thought I'd caught him out, but as usual he managed to get the better of me. It all came about because Sunny disappeared. O'Reilly was very fond of Sunny and by chance couldn't stand Councillor Bishop.\n\nIf you're feeling confused, don't worry, any association with O'Reilly will do that to you. If you can bear with me, I'll try to explain.\n\nSunny lived in his car\u2014not because he was penurious, far from it; he'd inherited a sizable sum when his father died\u2014and not because he was stupid; he held a Ph.D. He lived in his car because there was no roof on his house.\n\nThere was no roof on his house because twenty years before, the roof had needed new slates. Sunny had engaged Mister Bishop, town councillor, building contractor, and property developer, to do the job. For reasons that are lost in the mists of Ulster history, just at the time that the old roof had been removed, Sunny and Bishop had fallen out. Sunny refused to pay and Bishop refused to finish the job. Sunny moved into his car and decided to retire from the rat race.\n\nO'Reilly had introduced me to Sunny shortly after I'd started to work there. One of us would drop by to check on him about every couple of weeks or so. I don't think I've ever known a more contented sixty-year-old man.\n\nHis car was parked at the front of what had been the garden. One patch of ground remained uncluttered and there Sunny grew his vegetables, which he sold to the locals. The rest of the place looked like a junkyard that had come into close proximity with a tornado on stimulants. Other old cars, perambulators, washing machines, scrap metal, phonograms, two tractors, and an old caravan were piled hither and yon, vaguely covered by tattered tarpaulins, weeds growing merrily in the interstices.\n\nHis treasured possessions did little for local property values but his neighbours tolerated his eccentricity, bought his vegetables, and passed the time of day with him. O'Reilly had mentioned that the caravan had been a gift from Sunny's neighbours, but he'd only lived in it for a week before returning to his car and turning the caravan over to his four dogs, who were his best friends and constant companions.\n\nI was surprised one afternoon when I made a routine call to find that neither Sunny nor his dogs were anywhere to be seen. The woman who lived next door told me that Mister Bishop had taken Sunny away two days earlier and that someone from the animal protection society had come for the dogs yesterday. I thought it seemed strange and raised the matter with O'Reilly during the course of our evening meal.\n\nThe progress of a large slice of steak to O'Reilly's mouth halted precipitously. He lunged at me with the meat-covered fork. \"What?\"\n\nI wondered if the old adage \"don't shoot the messenger\" could be adapted to \"don't skewer him on a dinner fork,\" and repeated the intelligence.\n\n\"Bloody Bishop!\" O'Reilly slammed the meat into his mouth and worried at it like a jackal with a particularly tasty piece of dead zebra. He swallowed, larynx going up and down like an out-of-control U-boat. \"Bloody Bishop!\" he said again as O'Reilly hunched forward, elbows on the table, shoulders high. \"I bet he's found a way to have Sunny put in the home.\" My mentor sat back, pinioned the remains of his steak, and slashed at it with the fervour of a member of the Light Brigade venting his spleen on a Russian gunner. \"He's trying to get his hands on Sunny's land.\" He scowled at his plate and pushed it away. \"Right. You nip round to the home and see if Sunny's there.\" O'Reilly stood. \"I think I'll go and have a chat with Mister Bishop.\"\n\nBy the look in O'Reilly's eyes and the pallor of the tip of his nose, I knew Mister Bishop was shortly going to wish he was spending a relaxing time with a Gestapo interrogator who was suffering from strangulated haemorrhoids.\n\nSure enough, Sunny was in the home. He was a lost, terrified old man. He told me that the nurses scared him, the other inmates were rude, and he couldn't stop worrying about his dogs. He begged me to take him home and cried when I had to explain to him that I'd discovered he was under a restraining order, for his own good, and that until it was lifted, I was powerless to intervene. I stood beside his bed, looking at a man who'd been reduced in two days from an independent, albeit slightly unusual, individual, to a pathetic institutionalized wretch. I could see that he'd lost weight and indeed looked very ill.\n\nI still had his \"Och, please get me out, Doctor\" in my ears as I climbed the stairs to O'Reilly's sitting room. Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was parked in one of the armchairs, pipe belching like a Pittsburgh steelworks chimney. He didn't bother to turn to see who'd come in. \"Well?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Sunny's in the home. You were right.\"\n\nHis big head nodded ponderously, acknowledging his rightness, but he said nothing.\n\nI carried on. \"If we can't get him out of there, I think he's going to die.\"\n\nO'Reilly half turned and waved toward the other chair. \"Sit yourself down, my boy. God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.\"\n\nI started to argue but he interrupted. \"Sunny should be on his way home now.\"\n\n\"But...\"\n\n\"No buts. I explained things to Mister Bishop.\"\n\nThe only word I can find to describe the smile on O'Reilly's battered face is demoniacal. \"You remember the lass we had to ship off to England a couple of months ago\u2014piffy?\"\n\n\"Piffy? Right. PFI, pregnant from Ireland.\" I knew that the Ulster community had about as much tolerance for young women with child, but out of holy wedlock, as a mongoose for a cobra. These unfortunates had to be shipped out. \"What about her?\"\n\nHe blew a smoke ring at the ceiling and stabbed his pipe stem through the hole. \"Mister Bishop's maid. I just explained to him that if the order wasn't lifted, I might just have to have a word with Mrs. Bishop\u2014tell her the real reason that the lassie had to visit her sick sister in Liverpool. That cooled him.\" O'Reilly stood and started heading for the sideboard, remarking over his shoulder, \"The last I saw of Bishop, he was on his way to the Town Hall, aye, and to the animal shelter.\" He poured himself a stiff whiskey. \"They don't teach you young fellows medicine like that.\"\n\nRelieved as I was that Sunny's troubles would soon be over, I thought I might just have a bit of a dig at the self-satisfied Doctor O'Reilly, he who reckoned that good GPs should be masters of all the branches of the healing arts.\n\n\"And what branch of the healing arts would you say you were practising?\" I asked, guilelessly.\n\nO'Reilly stopped in mid-pour, put one finger alongside his bent nose, and said, as if to a not-too-bright child, \"Social and preventive medicine, son. Social and preventive.\"\nJUNE 1996\n\nWell Said, Sir\n\nThe silencing of Doctor O'Reilly\n\n\"How are the mighty fallen?\" David, a biblical king, said something along these lines. I'm sure his sage utterances would have been worth the listen if he'd been in the Mucky Duck the night O'Reilly met his match.\n\nWhen I introduced you to Doctor Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills O'Reilly, I mentioned some of his attributes. As I recollect, I described him as an ex-navy boxing champion, classical scholar, unregenerate poacher, bagpiper, cryptophilanthropist, foul-mouthed widower, and country GP. I may have neglected to note that in addition, he regarded himself as a bit of a wit, and disliked intensely being bested in any verbal joust. The fact that all of his local potential opponents knew very well that Doctor O. could be a great man for prescribing, and on occasion administering, the soap-suds enema as a panacea for just about any minor complaint, if the complaint was brought by someone in whom the font of medical knowledge wasn't well pleased, may in part have taken the edge off the local competition.\n\nOn the particular evening I'm about to describe, Doctor O'Reilly was in full cry. No wonder he was in good voice. He'd just won the local pibroch competition.\n\nThe pibroch is said, by those who understand these matters, to be a thing of complex beauty. It's the classical music of the great highland bagpipe. Only the most experienced and skillful piper will even attempt the pibroch in public. (Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a great relief. To me, the thing is interminable, tuneless, repetitive, embellished with incomprehensible grace notes, and an assault to the civilized ear.) The tune, if it can be so called, is played on the chanter and immediately brings to mind the noise that would accompany the simultaneous gutting and emasculating of a particularly bad-tempered tomcat. Over the melody, on and on, thunder the drones, those pipes that stick up from the back of the bag like the remaining three tentacles of some long-fossilized prehistoric squid.\n\nNeedless to say, playing pibrochs takes a great deal of breath. I forget exactly how much water is lost per expiration, but judging by the post-pibroch intake of uisque beatha by the average exponent of the arcane art, the amount of dehydration suffered must be extensive.\n\nTo return to the public bar of the Black Swan. O'Reilly sat at a table in the middle of a circle of admiring fellow pipers, replacing his lack of bodily fluids like one of those desert flowers that only sees rain once every ten years. I was in my customary corner sipping a small sherry and trying to mind my own business. I'm told that some people in Florida try to ignore hurricanes.\n\nO'Reilly was at his pontifical best. His basso voice thundered on. He'd launched into a monologue several minutes previously on the relative merits of plastic versus bamboo reeds for the chanter. The assembled multitude listened in respectful silence, although judging by the glazed expressions on some of the faces their interest had waned. O'Reilly warmed to his subject, brooking no interruption, rolling like a juggernaut over anyone who might try to get a word in edgewise. He was talking on the intake of breath. I watched as a member of the group signalled for a fresh round of drinks. The barman delivered the glasses shortly afterward. O'Reilly was now up to verbal escape velocity, emphasizing his words with staccato jabs of his right index finger on the beer-ring-stained tabletop.\n\nHe stopped dead\u2014in mid-sentence. A ghastly pallor appeared at the tip of his bent nose. Something had annoyed the great man. I craned forward to see. Catastrophe. Somehow the barman had neglected to deliver a drink for Doctor O.\n\nThe silence, now that he'd shut up, was palpable. He fixed the cowering bartender with an agate stare and demanded, pointing at the appropriate orifice, \"And haven't I got a mouth too?\"\n\nThat was when it happened. A voice, from which of the assembled pipers I never discovered, was heard to say clearly, distinctly, and with heartfelt sincerity, \"And how could we miss it? All night it's been going up and down between your ears like a bloody skipping rope.\"\n\nI do believe David Rex went on to say, after his remarks about the precipitous plummeting of the powerful, \"Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.\"\n\nPhilistines are rare in the North of Ireland. There were no women in the public bar, and it would be a breach of professional confidentiality to tell you who among the party were preputially challenged.\n\nBut the rejoicing\u2014if not in the streets, at least in the Mucky Duck\u2014was vast. And for once, O'Reilly was at a complete loss for words.\nJULY\/AUGUST 1996\n\nA Pregnant Silence\n\nAnother lesson by Doctor O'Reilly, practical psychologist\n\nSome therapeutic interventions simply do not appear in the textbooks.\n\nRegular readers will remember Maggie, she of the incessant complaints, the headache two inches above her head, the chronic backache. In her early fifties, she was what the ministers of the time when reading the banns would have referred to as a \"spinster of this parish,\" except that for Maggie the banns had never been called. She remained what the locals charitably described as \"one of nature's unclaimed treasures.\"\n\nHer trials and tribulations, and the way O'Reilly handled them, let him teach me a lesson in practical psychology, a lesson that I'll be happy to pass on to anyone who has the fortitude to stick with this story to the bitter end.\n\n(As an aside, \"the bitter end\" is the part of a ship's anchor cable that's attached to the vessel. This column isn't called \"Taylor's Twist,\" another nautical term, for nothing.)\n\n\"Pat, that one's driving me bloody well daft,\" said Doctor O'Reilly. We were walking along the main street. O'Reilly stopped and pointed with his blackthorn walking stick through the window of the local grocery store. Naturally, when he stopped, so did I.\n\n\"The grocer?\" I asked, knowing full well that the source of O'Reilly's impending descent into raving lunacy was entirely the fault of the other figure visible through the pane.\n\n\"No. Maggie. Maggie MacCorkle.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" I wondered what was coming\u2014Maggie had been visiting Doctor O'Reilly on a weekly basis for the last three months, and absolutely refused to see me.\n\n\"She's convinced she's pregnant.\" As he spoke, O'Reilly tapped his temple with one thick index finger. \"Nutty. Nutty as a fruitcake.\" He sighed.\n\nI confess her presenting symptoms caught me off guard. Wishing to demonstrate my encyclopaedic grasp of the physiology of the reproductive process, I immediately wondered aloud, \"Would she not have needed a bit of masculine help?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head ponderously. \"She says that it's another immaculate conception, and the responsibility is more than she can bear.\"\n\nI was beginning to see what he meant about Maggie's resemblance to a filbert-filled Christmas confection. The troubled look on his face rapidly disabused me of any notion of making remarks about wise men and stars in the East.\n\n\"She's a sorry old duck.\" O'Reilly leant on his stick with one hand, jamming the knuckles of the other under his nose. \"I'm damned if I can figure out how to persuade her she's just going through the change of life.\"\n\n\"Have you thought about getting her to see a psychiatrist?\" I inquired helpfully. O'Reilly shook his head. \"Sure you know by now what these country folk are like about things like that.\"\n\nI did indeed. The last patient to whom I'd made such a suggestion had bristled like an aggrieved porcupine and stormed out of the surgery. I could imagine Maggie's reaction.\n\n\"Anyway,\" said O'Reilly, \"she's no danger to anyone or herself.\" He produced a large handkerchief from his jacket pocket, buried his battered nose, and made a noise like the RMS Queen Elizabeth undocking.\n\n\"If she tells one of our headshrinking colleagues that she's the mother-to-be of the Second Coming, she'd be in the booby hatch as quick as a ferret down a rat hole.\" He stuffed his 'kerchief back into his pocket. \"She'd really lose her marbles in there. No. It's just a matter of getting her to see that she's not up the builder's.\"\n\nUnable to make any useful suggestions, I began to ruminate about the quaint euphemisms of the day for pregnancy: up the spout, in the family way, up the builder's, bun in the oven, poulticed.\n\nIt was clear from the way Fingal kept furrowing his brow that he was also at a loss for a solution and, knowing him as I'd come to, I could tell that he was worried. Fate intervened.\n\nAs we stood there silently, Maggie bustled out of the grocer's shop. She was carrying a brown paper bag, presumably her purchases. Her face split into a wide grin when she noticed Doctor O'Reilly and she began to hurry toward him. I could see that she'd failed to notice a young lad wheeling a bicycle.\n\nThe resultant collision wasn't quite of the magnitude of the meteor that smacked into planet Earth and, it's rumoured, put paid to the dinosaurs, but the fallout was dramatic.\n\nThe lad picked himself and his cycle up and rode off muttering some less-than-complimentary epithets about old bats who should watch where they were going. Maggie sat on the pavement, hair askew, legs wide under her voluminous skirt, surrounded by the wreckage of the contents of her parcel. A shattered ketchup bottle lay at the edge of a spreading scarlet puddle of its contents. Right in the middle of the crimson tide, the yolks and whites of two broken eggs peered malevolently upward.\n\nI saw a look flit across O'Reilly's face, a look the like of which must have been there when Archimedes spilled his bathwater. Fingal didn't exactly yell \"Eureka,\" but he'd clearly thought of something. He stepped over to where Maggie sat, knelt, put one solicitous hand on her shoulder, whipped out his hanky, dried her eyes, peered closely at the crimson clots and their ocular ova, and pronounced in sad, sombre, sonorous sentences, \"There, there, Maggie. There, there. No need to grieve.\" He looked up at me and winked. \"It couldn't have lived\u2014its eyes were too close together.\"\n\nThe relief on Maggie's face could only have been matched by the joy of the old boy scout Baden-Powell when the British Army arrived at the outerworks of Mafeking.\n\nSome therapeutic interventions simply do not appear in the textbooks.\nSEPTEMBER 1996\n\nWorking as Equals\n\nO'Reilly fails to mellow with time\n\nFrom time to time after I'd emigrated to Canada, I would return to my roots in Ulster. When I did so, I'd always make a point of visiting my old friend Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly to see if he'd mellowed with time. The last time I dropped in to see him, in the early '80s, he was still in harness.\n\nWhen I called at the house, Mrs. Kincaid answered the door. She told me that for the last week Doctor O'Reilly had been dealing with a particularly rough 'flu epidemic. He'd been summoned the night before to see a little girl who was desperately ill with pneumonia. He'd simply loaded the parents and the child into his own car, driven the forty-odd miles to the Royal Victoria Hospital, and then, because the parents had no phone, brought them back to his own home so they could receive regular progress reports. He was like that. He was very tired, she said, but she was sure he'd be glad to see me.\n\nShe knocked on the door. \"Come in.\" I'd have recognized those gravelly tones anywhere. She opened the door. O'Reilly sat at his old rolltop desk. The heavy boxer's shoulders were more bent, his complexion more florid. He was writing a prescription for a young woman. \"Just a minute.\" He didn't look up. \"Remember, Annie. One at breakfast time and one at noon.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor O'Reilly.\" The young woman left.\n\n\"Good God.\" He saw me standing there. \"You still alive?\"\n\nI could tell by the grin he was pleased to see me. He didn't get up. He arched his back. \"I'm buggered. Tell you what: you have a pew\"\u2014he motioned toward the examining table\u2014\"and I'll finish the surgery.\"\n\n\"Right, Fingal.\" I went to the couch, remembering vividly that this was exactly how we'd started.\n\n\"We'll have lunch at the Black Swan when I've finished stamping out disease,\" he said, as Mrs. Kincaid ushered in the next supplicant.\n\nI sat there quietly as he saw patient after patient, 'flu case after 'flu case. In the middle of the chaos, a well-dressed man in his early forties entered the room and took a seat.\n\n\"Good morning,\" said O'Reilly. \"What seems to be the trouble?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm fine,\" said the man, looking disdainfully at the shabby furnishings. \"Perfectly fit.\"\n\nO'Reilly's bushy brows moved closer to each other, like two hairy caterpillars heading for a choice leaf. \"I'm just a bit busy...\"\n\n\"My business will only take a moment. I'm new in this town.\"\n\nThe caterpillars reared their forequarters questioningly. O'Reilly said nothing.\n\n\"Yes.\" The man crossed one immaculately creased trouser leg over the other. \"I'm interviewing healthcare providers.\"\n\nO'Reilly leant forward in his own chair, head cocked to one side. \"You're looking for a what?\" His question sounded so ingenuous he could have been addressing an American tourist who'd inquired where he might find a leprechaun.\n\nThe man shook his head and smiled a pitying smile, the kind he obviously kept for yokels like O'Reilly. \"A healthcare provider. One who will be sensitive to my needs as a consumer.\" He looked down his nose at O'Reilly's rumpled tweed sports jacket. \"One with whom I can work as an equal, defining and discussing my options, so that I can identify the optimal approach to a given problem.\"\n\nO'Reilly sat back. The black brows settled. I saw the tip of his nose begin to whiten, an ominous sign, but his rugged face wrinkled in a vast grin. \"I doubt if I'm the man for the job.\" He shook his head sadly.\n\nThe man sat stiffly. \"And why's that?\"\n\nO'Reilly ran his beefy hands along the lapels of his jacket, like a learned judge about to deliver his opinion, fixed the stranger with a stare that would have been the envy of any passing basilisk, and said, in dulcet tones, \"For one thing, I'm only a country doctor, not one of those healthcare what-do-you-ma-callums you were telling me about.\" An edge had crept into his voice. Any one of O'Reilly's regular patients would have found urgent business elsewhere. \"And I don't think we could work as equals.\"\n\nThe stranger shifted in his chair. \"And why not?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said O'Reilly, rising to his feet, \"you'd be a very old man. You'd need six years of medical school, two years' postgraduate work, and forty-two years in practice.\"\n\nThe man rose, sniffed haughtily and said, \"I don't like your attitude.\"\n\nO'Reilly's smile was beatific. \"I was wrong. We are equals. I don't like yours either.\" He held the door open and waited for the man to leave.\n\nDoctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, I'm glad to say, definitely had not mellowed with time.\nOCTOBER 1996\n\nMurphy's Law\n\nDoctor O'Reilly has the last laugh\n\nI have characterized Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly as an ex-navy boxing champion, classical scholar, unregenerate poacher, hard drinker, cryptophilanthropist, foul-mouthed bachelor, and country GP. This, I believe, is called a thumbnail sketch. There was nothing thumbnail-sized about O'Reilly, however; not his physical dimensions, not his personality, and certainly not his ability to hold a grudge. He could, on occasion, be the perfectly balanced Irishman\u2014a man with a chip on both shoulders.\n\nSomeone described revenge as a \"dish best eaten cold.\" For the life of me I cannot remember if it was that well-known Scots-Italian, Mac E. Avelli, or some other dead white male. No matter. O'Reilly had certainly heard of the concept but as usual had improved on it to suit his own requirements. In O'Reilly's world, revenge wasn't best eaten cold. It should be consumed deep-frozen, preferably at about absolute zero. Job, it's rumoured, was possessed of a modicum of patience, but when it came to waiting for just the right moment to deflate a swollen ego or right a perceived wrong, O'Reilly made Job look like a hyperactive child who'd been fed a sugar-enhanced diet and stimulated with an electric cattle prod.\n\nI first became aware of this attribute when O'Reilly arrived home after making a house call. The barometer of his temper, his bent nose, was pallid from tip to bridge, and his eyes flashed sparks. He helped himself to a rigid whiskey (stiff would have been an understatement) hurled himself into an armchair, and snarled, \"I'll kill the bloody man!\"\n\nI tried to hide behind a copy of the British Medical Journal. King Kong tried the same thing on top of the Empire State Building. At least O'Reilly didn't shoot at me.\n\n\"That *#@##** Doctor Murphy! He's a menace.\" O'Reilly inhaled his drink. \"Put down that comic and listen.\"\n\nHardly respectful of the organ of organized medicine in the U.K., but I felt, given O'Reilly's *#@##*** mood\u2014and please remember that I did describe him as \"foul-mouthed\"\u2014it might be better to say nothing. Besides, I dearly wanted to know what Murphy had done to raise my colleague's ire, temperature, and, judging by the colour of O'Reilly's naturally florid cheeks, blood pressure.\n\n\"Bah,\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"Humbug?\" I inquired.\n\n\"Exactly,\" he agreed, devouring yet more of the potent potable product of Paddy pot-still Distillery.\n\nA modicum of colour was returning to O'Reilly's schnozzle, so either the ethyl alcohol was having its recognized vasodilatory effect\u2014probable\u2014or O'Reilly was beginning to calm down\u2014unlikely.\n\n\"That Murphy. I'll get the &#@**. Do you know what he's just done?\" Definitely vasodilatation. \"Do you remember Maggie MacCorkle?\"\n\nThis was an easier question than its predecessor relating to Doctor Murphy's doings. The answer to the first question required second sight; for the latter, simple recall was all that was needed.\n\n\"Oh, yes, Fingal. The woman with the headaches two inches above her head. The one who thought she was pregnant with the second coming?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" he said. \"The silly old biddy decided to consult that well-known veterinarian, Doctor Murphy.\"\n\nOops. I had a fair idea of what was coming next. Doctor Murphy and Doctor O'Reilly existed at opposite ends of the spectrum, not only of visible light but of electromagnetic waves not yet discovered by physical science. As O'Reilly was rough and ready, Murphy was devious. O'Reilly's clothes tended to fit him where they touched and Murphy always dressed immaculately. O'Reilly would walk on hot coals for his patients; Murphy might venture onto ashes, but only in very stout, highly polished boots. And O'Reilly had a soft spot for Maggie MacCorkle.\n\n\"Poor old duck,\" he said, \"Murphy told her she needed to see a psychiatrist.\" He snorted like a warthog with severe sinusitis. \"It took me two hours to calm her down.\" I knew he didn't begrudge the two hours but did resent the trauma caused to a simple, if somewhat eccentric, woman.\n\n\"Oh dear,\" I said, and waited.\n\n\"Do you know what else he said to her?\"\n\nThe second sight thing again. I shook my head. \"He said, 'Doctor O'Reilly should know better than to play God.'\"\n\nI maintained a diplomatic silence.\n\n\"Play God! Me? That bloody man doesn't play at being God. Murphy works at it. Pour me another.\"\n\nI did as I was told, handed the glass to O'Reilly, and tried to change the subject. \"What did you think of the Irish rugby team's showing last Saturday?\"\n\nHis reply was unprintable. I began to suspect that it was entirely my fault that they'd been beaten by Scotland by a substantial margin, but at least I was able to get him off the subject of Doctor Murphy.\n\n* * *\n\nI forgot about the whole thing until about three months later. There was a meeting of the local medical society. Doctor Murphy was there, immaculate in a three-piece suit. As usual, he took a pontifical stance on most issues and on one occasion, in public, in front of our peers, admonished Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly about the dangers of doctors in general and O'Reilly in particular of playing God.\n\nI'm told that the Manhattan Project scientists hid before they made a little bang at the Alamogordo test site. I looked round for the nearest bunker, but to my surprise O'Reilly said nothing. Absolutely nothing. A nuclear blast would have been preferable. Just imagine the feelings of Doctor Oppenheimer if the switch had been thrown, nothing had happened, and it had been remarked that somebody really ought to nip outside and see what was the matter. Now what?\n\nI found out just as we were about to leave.\n\nDoctor Murphy had slipped into his overcoat but seemed to be having some difficulty adjusting his shiny bowler hat.\n\n\"Bit of trouble with the hat, Murphy?\" O'Reilly inquired solicitously. \"Not surprising, really.\"\n\nThe rest of the company waited expectantly, all knowing full well the lack of brotherly love between the two men.\n\n\"And why not?\" asked Murphy.\n\n\"Ah,\" said O'Reilly. \"It's the playing God thing. A fellah's head must hurt when he's spent most of his life wearing a crown of thorns.\"\n\nThe biblical allusion wasn't lost on those assembled. Poor old Doctor Murphy from that day was known locally as \"Thorny Murphy,\" to his great discomfort and O'Reilly's great joy.\n\nAnd Doctor Murphy never again accused Doctor O' Reilly of playing God.\nNOVEMBER 1996\n\nThe Law of Holes\n\nO'Reilly's near-death experience\n\nI was surprised one day when, after evening \"surgery,\" I retired to the upstairs sitting room to find my senior colleague, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, sitting in his usual armchair sipping what appeared to be a gin and tonic rather than his usually preferred whiskey. He ignored my entrance and my polite inquiry about whether he'd like me to refurbish his drink.\n\nDo remember that such suggestions were usually greeted with the enthusiasm toward an impending monsoon of those peculiar toads that live in states of total dehydration in certain deserts, only coming to full animation when the rains appear.\n\n\"Sure?\" I said, helping myself to a very small sherry.\n\n\"No,\" he replied lugubriously, pulling out his old briar and stoking the infernal device until the smoke clouds gave a fair impression of the aftereffects of the combined weight of the attentions of the RAF and the USAAF on the hapless town of Dresden.\n\n\"No\/yes or no\/no?\" I said brightly.\n\n\"What are you on about, Taylor?\"\n\nAs far as I could tell through the industrial haze, his nose wasn't pallid, yet his use of my surname was an indicator of his general state of displeasure. Foolishly, I ploughed on.\n\n\"Er, no you're not sure you don't want another, which is a way of saying yes you do, because if you had been sure that you wanted no more to drink your answer should have been yes and...\"\n\n\"Sit down,\" he said, \"and shut up.\"\n\nWhich actually seemed like a very sensible thing to do. I sat and said, self-effacingly, \"Right. First law of holes: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.\"\n\nThe thought struck me as, if not original, at least comical.\n\n\"How,\" he said, peering over his half-moon spectacles, \"did you know?\"\n\n\"How did I know about what?\"\n\n\"The hole, you idiot.\"\n\n\"I read it somewhere,\" I confessed.\n\nHe grunted. \"Couldn't have. It only happened last night.\"\n\nI was becoming confused. Truth to tell, my being in a fuddled state around O'Reilly was closer to the norm than his drinking gin and tonic. I felt a sense of relief, the kind of feeling that comes with knowing that God is indeed in His Heaven and all is right with the world.\n\n\"And,\" he said, \"no one knows about it except Seamus Galvin and me.\"\n\nMy confusion was now as dense as the tobacco fog that surrounded us.\n\nO'Reilly sighed heavily. \"Would you like to hear my side?\"\n\nIt almost seemed a shame to be enlightened. \"Please.\"\n\nHe gestured with the glass in his hand. \"I'll have to give it up.\"\n\nEnlightenment was going to be some time coming. I'd thought we were discussing holes. \"Digging holes?\"\n\n\"No.\" He shuddered like a wounded water buffalo. \"The drink.\"\n\nOops. I thought for a moment that I was having an auditory hallucination. Fingal O'Reilly? Give up the drink?\n\n\"All because of the hole, you see.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I said. They'd taught us in psychiatry to humour certain types of raving lunatics. I saw not at all but had no intention of enraging O'Reilly.\n\nHe pointed at his glass. \"Just tonic water,\" he said in tones that would have done a professional mourner great credit. \"Bloody Galvin,\" he added, and lapsed into silence.\n\nTonic water. Holes. Galvin. I had some difficulty seeing any logical connection. Then I remembered. Seamus Galvin and his wife Mary were the ones who were going to emigrate because O'Reilly had restored their family fortunes by clandestinely purchasing a garage full of rocking ducks.\n\nThe Galvins were leaving tomorrow, and last night there had been a send-off at the Mucky Duck. I'd missed it because of a long confinement in an outlying cottage, but O'Reilly had attended. Something Fingal had said earlier came back to me: \"It only happened last night.\" Now, Galvin's party was last night and something concerning a hole had happened, something sufficiently catastrophic as to make O'Reilly decide to take the pledge. I was beginning to feel I merely needed a magnifying glass and a deerstalker to be able to change my name to Sherlock. I might even ask Fingal if I could borrow his pipe. Only one question. What was the \"something\"?\n\nO'Reilly's rumbling interrupted my attempt to reason things out. \"Should never have let Galvin leave by himself.\"\n\nSo it was at the party.\n\n\"I should never have taken a shortcut through the churchyard, but it was pouring, you see.\" He peered over his spectacles.\n\n\"Quite,\" I said solicitously.\n\nO'Reilly took a deep swallow of his tonic water and regarded the glass with a look of total disgust before fixing me with a stony glare and saying, \"No harm telling you, seeing you already know.\"\n\nI merely nodded.\n\n\"I fell into a freshly dug grave.\"\n\nThe\u2014or more accurately, my\u2014mind boggled.\n\n\"I couldn't get out. It was raining, you see,\" he said by way of an explanation. His nose tip was now becoming pallid.\n\nI seem to remember that when stout Horatio made it across the foaming Tiber, his enemies \"could scarce forbear to cheer.\" Being attached to my teeth I felt that despite the mental image of O'Reilly scrabbling like a demented hamster against the slick sides of a muddy six-foot hole, I definitely should forbear to laugh. \"Oh dear.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said aggrievedly. \"Bloody Galvin. How was I to know he'd fallen into the same grave? It was black as half a yard up a chimney down there. And cold. What was I to do?\"\n\n\"Stop digging? First law of holes,\" I said.\n\n\"Don't be so bloody silly. I huddled against a corner and like an eejit said aloud to myself, 'Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, you're not going to get out of here tonight.' Galvin, who must have been lurking in another corner, tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'By God you won't.' But...\" O'Reilly shrugged. \"By God, I did.\"\n\n\"Must have given you an awful shock,\" I remarked, wandering over to the sideboard and pouring a stiff Paddy.\n\n\"It did. Oh, indeed it did. Got the strength of ten men.\"\n\nI handed him the glass. \"I believe shock can be treated with spirits.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" he asked, swallowing a large measure, \"and none of your no\/yes, no\/no rubbish.\"\nDECEMBER 1996\n\nMen of the Cloth (1)\n\nHow the minister learned about sex\n\nIn today's egalitarian society it may be hard to believe that once upon a time some members of a community were held in greater respect than the rest of the common herd. In rural Ulster the possession of a higher education was thought to confer exalted status. The pecking order among the upper echelons wasn't always clear, but it was fair to say that the local teachers, physicians, and men of the cloth were somewhere at the top of the heap.\n\nIn his own eyes at least, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly stood at the apex. Mind you, the challengers for top spot were a motley crew.\n\nMister Featherstonehaugh, the teacher, besides having a name that could strangle a pig, was as tall and skinny as a yard of pump water and suffered from what was known charitably as a \"terrible strong weakness.\" (Which is to say that any pupil foolish enough to come within two feet of Mister F. was at some danger of suffering skin burns from the whiskey fumes of the permanently pissed pedagogue's pulmonary products.)\n\nFather Fitzmurphy was a quiet man who'd taken his vows of humility so seriously that his presence was scarcely noticed. Compared to Father Fitz., Uriah Heep would have looked like a blatant self-promoter.\n\nOn the other side of the sectarian divide, the Presbyterian church was represented by a senior and a junior minister. The senior minister, Reverend Manton Basket, was middle-aged and very tall across, an allusion to the fact that he was in no danger of being suspected of suffering from any form of anorexia. The junior, Mister Angus McWheezle, was of Scottish descent. Actually he hadn't so much descended as plummeted\u2014the kind of man who would have given Charles Darwin some very difficult times wondering if he hadn't got things quite right and perhaps the apes were in fact offspring of the clan McWheezle.\n\nO'Reilly, while nominally of the Protestant persuasion, could not have been described as devout. Well, he could, but it would have been like attributing feelings of piety and love for all mankind to that well-known philanthropist, A. Hitler. Business, however, was business, and O'Reilly did attend morning services on Sundays, if only to try to persuade his potential customers that he was a worthy physician.\n\nYou may well wonder why I'm telling you all this. Bear with me. O'Reilly's relationships with both of the Presbyterian ministers are worth the relating.\n\n\"Good to see you, Doctors.\" Reverend Manton Basket beamed at O'Reilly and me over his chins as he stood outside the church door greeting the departing members of his flock. He had a paternal arm draped over the shoulder of his eldest son, a spherical boy of about twelve. The rest of the tribe, all five of them, were lined up in a row, tallest on the right, shortest on the left, like a set of those chubby Russian dolls.\n\nO'Reilly nodded as he passed the Baskets. \"Powerful sermon, your reverence,\" he said, but he kept hurrying on. I was well aware that he found old Basket dry and, as you know, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's preferences tended more to the wet\u2014the wet that even now was waiting for him in the upstairs sitting room over the surgery.\n\n\"You should have heard his sermons when he came here first,\" O'Reilly said to me. \"I'll tell you all about them when we get home.\"\n\nI had to lengthen my stride to keep up with O'Reilly, who moved from a walk to a canter to practically a full-blown gallop as he neared the source of his sustenance. He relaxed once he was ensconced in his favourite armchair, briar belching, fist clutching a glass of what he'd referred to as his communion wine.\n\n\"Where was I?\"\n\nI settled into the chair opposite and prepared for another of O'Reilly's reminiscences.\n\n\"When?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not 'when,' where.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Not 'what,' not 'when'... where.\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, feeling the inexorable tug of yet another of those moments with O'Reilly when the circuitousness of the conversation began to feel like the Maelstrom. I knew how old Captain Nemo must have felt as the Nautilus sank lower and lower. \"I meant what did you mean when you asked, 'Where?'\"\n\n\"Silly question.\" He exhaled in his best Puff the Magic Dragon fashion. \"I should have asked, 'Who?'\"\n\n\"When?\" It just slipped out.\n\n\"Don't you start.\"\n\n\"What?\" Oops.\n\nFortunately he was in one of his expansive moods. He laughed and handed me his empty glass. \"Who do you think Manton was?\"\n\n\"Why?\" The sight of the tip of O'Reilly's nose beginning to pale pulled me up short. I refilled his glass and waited.\n\n\"Manton was a minor prophet.\" He accepted the tumbler. \"That's who his reverence is named after.\"\n\nI admit I was pleased to be so informed. It was a name I'd never heard before.\n\n\"Came from a very strict family. That's why you should have heard his sermons when he first came here.\"\n\n\"Fire and brimstone?\"\n\n\"And how.\" O'Reilly chuckled. \"You could have felt the spits of him five pews back.\" O'Reilly sipped his drink. \"He's a decent man, Manton Basket. Unworldly, of course.\"\n\nI was about to ask what that meant when O'Reilly continued. \"When he first came here he put an awful amount of effort into denouncing the sins of the flesh.\"\n\n\"Including gluttony?\" I inquired, thinking of Dumbo, Jumbo, and the Reverend Manton Basket.\n\n\"No. Just the sexual kind.\" O'Reilly made a sucking noise through his pipe. The gurgling was like the sound of the runoff through a partially clogged bath drain. \"Pity was, he hadn't a clue what he was talking about.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nO'Reilly rose and stretched and ambled to the big bay window. \"Aye. He'd been here about two years when he came to see me professionally. Seemed he and the wife couldn't get pregnant.\" O'Reilly turned away from the view of Belfast Lough. \"Bit tricky asking a man of the cloth about his procreative efforts. Even worse, his sermon the week before had been about the sin of Onan.\"\n\n\"Onan?\"\n\n\"Yeah. The bloke who spilled his seed on the ground and got clobbered by a thunderbolt for his pains.\"\n\nThe \"bit tricky\" became clearer.\n\n\"Fingal, how did you persuade Reverend Basket to provide a sperm sample? Bottle in one hand, lightning conductor in the other?\"\n\n\"Didn't have to.\" O'Reilly looked smug. \"That's the advantage of a bit of local knowledge. I just asked him to describe exactly what he and his wife did.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Every night for two years they'd knelt together by the bed and prayed for offspring.\"\n\n\"That was all?\"\n\n\"Aye. I had to put his stumbling feet on the paths of righteousness, so to speak.\"\n\n\"Good Lord. How did he take that?\"\n\nO'Reilly chuckled. \"Frostily. Very frostily at first.\"\n\nI had a quick mental picture of the six little Baskets.\n\n\"Ice must have thawed a bit when he got home.\"\n\n\"And he was a big enough man to thank me. He is a decent man.\" A cloud passed over O'Reilly's sunny countenance. \"Not like that weasel McWheezle.\"\n\n\"The assistant minister?\"\n\nBefore O'Reilly could reply, Mrs. Kincaid stuck her head round the door. \"Dinner's ready, Doctors.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" said O'Reilly, \"grub. I'll tell you about McWheezle over dinner.\"\n\nTo be continued.\nJANUARY 1997\n\nMen of the Cloth (2)\n\nO'Reilly exacts a heavy price\n\n\"Aye,\" said Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, helping himself to a liberal dollop of horseradish dressing, \"old Basket's a decent enough chap for a Presbyterian minister.\" Fingal was continuing the conversation that had begun upstairs, a conversation that had been interrupted by Mrs. Kincaid's summons to Sunday dinner. I watched in awe as he spread the white concoction over a slice of roast beef prior to transferring the morsel to his mouth.\n\nThe horse in Mrs. Kincaid's horseradish was not a Shetland pony. It tended more to the Clydesdale: big, muscular, and very, very strong. Strong enough to have stripped paint. I'd been foolish enough to try it once before. I think it took about three weeks for the mucous membrane inside my mouth to regenerate. I watched O'Reilly's happy mastication, expecting steam to appear from his ears. For all the apparent effect, he might as well have been eating ice cream.\n\n\"Here,\" he said, spreading some of the incendiary condiment on my beef, \"spice yours up a bit, young fellow.\"\n\nI smiled weakly and settled for a piece of Yorkshire pudding.\n\n\"Aye,\" said O'Reilly, \"Basket's not a bit like his assistant. That McWheezle. That man has a smile like last year's rhubarb. Mrs. Kincaid reckons that anyone who reared him would drown nothing.\"\n\nI thought it fair to surmise that Doctor O. didn't exactly hold the Reverend Angus McWheezle in high regard.\n\n\"Pass the gravy.\"\n\nI complied, nibbling on a roast potato and avoiding the fifty-megaton meat.\n\n\"Not one of your favourite people, Fingal?\"\n\n\"Him? He's a sanctimonious, mean-spirited, mealy-mouthed, narrow-minded, hypocritical, Bible-thumping little toad. That man has as much Christian charity in him as Vlad the Impaler.\" O'Reilly harrumphed and attacked another slice of beef. \"Bah.\"\n\n\"So you don't like him very much?\" Sometimes my powers of observation astounded even me.\n\n\"How could anyone like a man like that? Do you know what he used to do?\"\n\nI hoped the question was rhetorical. I think I've remarked previously that O'Reilly seemed to think I was blessed with some kind of extrasensory perceptive powers. I simply munched on another piece of Yorkshire pudding and shook my head, both to signify that indeed I didn't know what the Reverend Angus McWheezle had done to draw O'Reilly's ire and to distract him while I tried to hide the horseradish-beef time bomb under a small pile of broccoli.\n\n\"Do you know\"\u2014I continued to shake my head\u2014\"that if there were an Olympic event for smugness and self-satisfaction, the man could represent Ireland?\" O'Reilly helped himself to another roast potato. \"But I fixed the bugger.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Aye. You remember I told you how Mister Basket used to preach against the sins of the flesh?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Well, McWheezle went one better. He used to hound unmarried women who'd fallen pregnant. Humiliate them from his pulpit. Name them. That little @#$&*! didn't think that their being pregnant out of wedlock was hurt enough.\"\n\nO'Reilly's florid cheeks positively glowed\u2014and it wasn't the horseradish. It was his genuine concern for the feelings of his patients, most of whom would have had to leave the village, such was their disgrace.\n\n\"I see what you mean.\"\n\n\"Right. I asked him to stop, but he refused.\" O'Reilly paused from his gustatory endeavours, laid his knife and fork aside for a moment, folded his arms on the tabletop, leant forward, and said, \"But I stopped him anyway.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nO'Reilly chuckled, in much the same way that I imagine Be\u00eblzebub must chortle when a fresh sinner arrives on the griddle. I couldn't prevent a small, involuntary shudder.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said, \"pride cometh... McWheezle showed up in the surgery one day.\n\n\"'It's a very private matter,' says he.\n\n\"'Oh?' says I.\n\n\"'Yes,' says he. 'I seem to have caught a cold on my gentiles.'\n\n\"Threw me for a moment, that. 'Your gentiles?' says I.\n\n\"He waved a limp hand toward his trouser front.\n\n\"'Aha,' says I. 'A cold on your genitals.'\n\n\"'Yes.'\n\n\"'Let's have a look.'\"\n\nO'Reilly's chuckle moved from the Be\u00eblzebubbian to the Satanic.\n\nI knew what was coming next. I knew the story had done the rounds of every medical school in the world, and yet Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was the most honest man I've ever met. If he said what I thought he was going to say had actually happened, I'd believe him.\n\n\"Mister McWheezle unzips. He has the biggest syphillitic chancre on his 'gentiles' that I've ever seen.\n\n\"'It's a bad cold right enough,' says I, handing him a hanky. 'See if you can blow it.'\"\n\nO'Reilly picked up his knife and fork. \"Good thing we had penicillin. Poor old McW. was so terrified that I wrung a promise out of him there and then to leave the wee pregnant girls alone.\" Fingal O'Reilly started to eat. \"Tuck in,\" he ordered.\n\nI was still chuckling at his tale when I suddenly realized that I'd just filled my mouth with enough of Mrs. Kincaid's horseradish sauce to start the second great fire of London.\n\nO'Reilly must have noticed the tears pouring from my eyes. It's hard to miss something with the flow rate of the Horseshoe Falls.\n\n\"Ah, come on now, Pat,\" he said solicitously. \"It's a funny story\u2014but it's not that funny.\"\nFEBRUARY 1997\n\nO'Reilly Finds His Way\n\n\"Doctor Gangrene\" is no match for the rural GP\n\n\"You'd think I'd know my way about up here,\" said Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, looking puzzled as he stood in the middle of the long echoing corridor of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.\n\nI'd bumped into him on my way to the X-ray department from the ward where I was working. If you remember, I was employed as a registrar at the Royal, my day job so to speak, my other source of revenue and a smattering of post-graduate training, when I wasn't functioning as O'Reilly's part-time locum.\n\nI had a moment of smugness. I did know my way about. Not surprising really; I worked in the place. But O'Reilly hadn't specifically asked for directions. He'd simply made a slightly self-deprecatory statement: \"You'd think I'd know my way about up here.\"\n\nThe smug feeling passed. The burning question was, what was I going to do? Offering unsolicited advice to Doctor O. could provoke a minor seismic event. Neglecting to give the necessary directions, and perhaps allowing him to make an idiot of himself, could result in a major tectonic shift with all the resultant unpleasant fallout\u2014usually on me.\n\nIt's a fundamental law of politics and diplomacy that when one is faced with two equally unpalatable options\u2014prevaricate.\n\n\"How long has it been since you worked here?\" I asked.\n\n\"Years.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they've moved the ward you're looking for?\"\n\nHe scratched his head. \"Do you think so? I just popped in to see one of my customers who was admitted here last night.\"\n\n\"It's possible.\"\n\n\"Rubbish. Nothing possible about it.\"\n\n\"But, Fingal, the administrators do it, you know.\"\n\n\"Admit my patients?\"\n\n\"No. Move wards.\"\n\n\"Oh, that.\"\n\nI felt relieved. He and I had nearly set off on another of our tortuous verbal peregrinations and to be honest I was a bit pushed for time. I was supposed to be assisting the senior gynaecologist Sir Gervaise Grant, a man who was obsessional about time. Lord help any assistant who was late in the operating room.\n\nSir Gervaise was renowned for the speed with which he could perform vaginal hysterectomies. \"Watch me like a hawk,\" he would instruct his assistant, the knife flashing, scissors snipping, ligatures going on like trusses in a turkey-plucking factory.\n\nO'Reilly was saying something but I'm afraid I wasn't paying attention. Coming down the hall, white coat flying, minions scurrying in pursuit, was Sir Gervaise himself. I had to get away from O'Reilly.\n\n\"Good God,\" he boomed, in a voice that echoed from the tiled walls, \"there's 'Green Fingers' Grant.\"\n\nThe \"Green Fingers\" soubriquet referred to the fact that Sir Gervaise's wound infection rate was triple that of anyone else. But while he might be called \"Green Fingers\" behind his back, it was a braver man than I who would call him that to his granite-jawed, bristling, silver-mustachioed face. And judging by the scowl on Sir G.'s countenance\u2014the sort that Medusa reserved for those passing Argonauts she really wanted to fix\u2014he'd overheard O'Reilly's remark.\n\nI closed my eyes and adopted the hunch-shouldered crouch favoured by bomb-disposal experts when something unexpectedly goes \"tick.\"\n\n\"To whom are you alluding, O'Reilly?\" Sir Gervaise's treacly voice held all the warmth of a Winnipeg winter.\n\n\"Yourself.\"\n\nI opened one eye.\n\nO'Reilly stood his ground, legs apart, chin tucked in. I could see his meaty fists starting to clench and remembered that the man had been a Royal Navy boxing champion. If a bell rang anywhere in those hallowed halls of healing, Doctor O. was going to come out swinging. One wallop would have rearranged Sir Gervaise's immaculately coiffed hair, his nose, and his teeth as far back as his molars.\n\nThe two men stood scowling at each other like a pair of Rottweilers who've met suddenly and unexpectedly over a raw steak.\n\nDiscretion is the better part of valour. I knew that I should have found some excuse to slink away, but some idiotic impulse led me to step between the two and say, \"Excuse me, Sir Gervaise, but I think we're going to be late.\"\n\nThe great man looked at me with all the condescension of Louis XIV for a grovelling peasant. \"Indeed, Taylor. I don't believe I sought your opinion. Indeed when I do want it, I'll tell you what it is.\"\n\nOh, Lord. I wished I had the tortoise's ability to tuck its head into its carapace.\n\n\"Still. We can't be late. Can't be late. Don't have time to waste on underqualified country quacks.\" He strode off, courtiers following in his wake, with me bringing up the rear.\n\nTo my surprise, the eruption I'd been expecting from Doctor O'Reilly failed to materialize. All I heard him say to our departing backs was, \"And good day to you too, Sir Gangrene.\"\n\nAs we sped down the corridor it began to dawn on me why O'Reilly didn't think highly of Sir Gervaise. I remembered the case quite vividly. The man with the Mach 1 scalpel had whipped her uterus out in something under fifteen minutes. Surgical time, that was. The victim took three months to recover from her postoperative abscess. And she'd been one of O'Reilly's patients.\n\nSir Gervaise seemed to have regained his icy equilibrium as we stood side by side scrubbing for the impending surgery. I wondered if he had any idea what he might have wrought. Recall how Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly lay in wait for Doctor \"Thorny\" Murphy. I could still hear the words \"underqualified country quack\" and picture the malevolence under O'Reilly's grin as he bade Sir Gervaise \"good day.\"\n\nWhen I was a boy I used to delight in a firecracker called a Thunderbomb. The instructions on the side read, \"Light blue touchpaper and retire immediately.\" Whether he knew it or not, Sir G. had lit O'Reilly's touchpaper. There was a phone message waiting for me when I left the theatre. Would Doctor Taylor please report to the Pathology Department and see Professor Callaghan?\n\nI imagine an altar boy would feel much as I did had he been summoned unexpectedly by the Pope. Awe, fear, and trembling. Professor Callaghan was the dean of the faculty and, in the eyes of us junior doctors, outranked the Pope. There was even some suspicion that he outranked God.\n\nI ran to his office and knocked on the door.\n\n\"Enter.\"\n\nOh, Lord. I opened the door and to my surprise saw his exalted magnificence sitting at his desk, head bowed over a piece of paper, which also seemed to be fascinating none other than Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.\n\n\"That should do it, Fingal.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Snotty.\"\n\nSnotty! Snotty? O'Reilly's familiarity was on a par with that of the young American naval officer who, at some embassy function, asked Queen Elizabeth II, Fid. Def., Ind. Imp., \"How's your mum?\"\n\n\"Ah, Taylor.\" O'Reilly took the piece of paper from Professor Callaghan. \"You know my old classmate, Professor Callaghan?\"\n\nI nodded. Yes, and I was on first-name terms with President Nixon and the British prime minister too.\n\n\"He and I played rugby together. He's just done me a little favour.\" O'Reilly rose. \"We won't detain you any longer, Snotty.\"\n\n\"My pleasure, Fingal.\"\n\nI felt a bit like the Emperor's new clothes: not there, as far as Professor Callaghan was concerned.\n\n\"Now,\" said O'Reilly, \"let's get a cup of tea.\"\n\nHe headed for the cafeteria with the unerring accuracy of a Nike missile, and this was the man who'd started today by remarking, \"You'd think I'd know my way about up here.\"\n\nHe refused to show me the paper until we were seated, teacups on the plastic tabletop. \"Here,\" he said, \"take a look at this.\"\n\nI could see immediately that it was a copy of a pathology report form. Three pages of detailed description of a uterus that had been removed by\u2014I flipped back to the first page\u2014Sir Gervaise Grant. The sting was in the tail. Just one line, which read, \"The specimen of ureter submitted showed no abnormalities.\"\n\nDear God. The complication most feared by gynaecological surgeons. Damage to the tube that carried urine from the kidney to the bladder. \"Is it true?\" I asked in a whisper.\n\nO'Reilly guffawed then said, \"Not at all, but it should give old 'Green Fingers' pause for thought, possibly a cardiac arrest when he reads it, before he realises that the patient is fine and the report must be wrong,\" said O'Reilly. He sipped his tea. \"Decent chap, Snotty Callaghan, to fudge the report. He can't stand Sir Gangrene either.\"\n\nHe smiled beatifically. \"And you thought I didn't know my way round up here.\"\nMARCH 1997\n\nPowers of Observation\n\nO'Reilly accepts a bet\n\n\"Powers of observation,\" O'Reilly mumbled through a mouthful of breakfast kipper.\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"Why? You didn't do anything. Did you?\" He pulled a thicker than usual piece of fishbone from between his teeth and smiled at me. \"Good kippers.\"\n\n\"Yes. That was my observation.\"\n\nYou would have thought that after working for Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly as a part-time locum for almost two years, I would have learned not to play the one-upmanship game with the redoubtable man. I had about as much chance of beating him as Tiny Tim had of wresting the world heavyweight championship from a Mister Muhammad Ali.\n\n\"What was?\"\n\n\"What was what?\"\n\n\"Your observation.\"\n\n\"That the kippers were rather good.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, after some thought. \"That was my observation.\"\n\n\"Well yes, I suppose so. But that's why I said, 'Pardon?'\"\n\n\"Because I had observed that the kippers were good?\"\n\n\"Er, not exactly.\"\n\n\"They're bad?\"\n\n\"Not the kippers.\"\n\n\"Sometimes, Taylor,\" he shook his great head ponderously, \"sometimes I wonder about you.\"\n\nHe was not alone. Sometimes I had a similar feeling of confusion, usually at a time like this when our conversation seemed to be taking one of those wandering paths that inevitably led to my utter loss of the thread. Still, something lost, something gained: I usually ended up with a pounding headache.\n\n\"Fingal, you said, 'Powers of observation.'\"\n\n\"Of the quality of the kippers?\"\n\n\"No. Not the kippers. I asked, 'Pardon?' because I wondered what you meant by the remark.\"\n\n\"Haven't the faintest idea. Pass the marmalade.\" He rose from the table and wandered off, happily munching a slice of toast. \"Don't be late for the surgery. It's antenatal clinic today.\" He stopped in the doorway. \"I'll teach you about my powers of observation. Mark of a good physician, you know.\"\n\n\"Now,\" said O'Reilly, some time later, leaning forward from his swivel chair, \"I'm going to teach you something you didn't learn at medical school.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" His craggy face split into a great, conspiratorial grin. \"I bet you didn't know that you can tell what underwear a pregnant woman is wearing just by observing her urine sample.\"\n\nSure, and you could pick the winner at Goodwood racetrack by consulting the entrails of chickens. I smiled a skeptical little smile. \"A pound says you can't.\"\n\n\"You're on.\" He stretched out his hand and we shook. \"Seems a shame to take your money.\"\n\nWe'll see, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. We'll see.\n\nThe door opened and Mrs. Kincaid ushered in our first patient, dressed in her Dior creation with a split down the back. So he wasn't going to be able to fool me by making an intelligent guess by looking at each woman's outer garments.\n\n\"Mrs. Robertson,\" said Kinky, handing O'Reilly the chart and a small glass bottle containing the patient's urine sample.\n\n\"Good morning, Mrs. Robertson.\"\n\nO'Reilly rose from his chair and took the sample. \"Doctor Taylor here will just take you behind the screens and examine you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor O'Reilly.\"\n\nI ushered the patient behind the screens, rapidly took her blood pressure, and then examined her abdomen. She was wearing black silk underpants. \"Everything looks fine,\" I said in my best professional manner. She left.\n\n\"Black silk,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nDammit. He must have caught a glimpse through the split in the back of the gown. I hoped that was the explanation. I could feel my hard-earned pound slipping away.\n\n\"Jeannie Neely,\" said Mrs. Kincaid.\n\n\"Sample,\" said O'Reilly. \"Morning, Jeannie.\"\n\n\"Morning, Doctor.\"\n\nHe nodded toward the screens. I escorted the woman to the examining couch, taking great care to place myself between her retreating back and Fingal. I stole a surreptitious glance in his direction. He couldn't have cared less. He was bending over the sink, urine-testing stick in one hand, the specimen in the other, and a look on his face of sublime confidence.\n\n\"Red flannel drawers,\" he said when she left. He was right again. I swallowed. This was getting serious. That pound was meant to be taking me and my girlfriend to the cinema on Saturday night.\n\n\"Annie O'Rourke,\" said Mrs. Kincaid, ushering in a woman who either was carrying quintuplets or had single-handedly by her eating habits almost caused the second great potato famine. She had, I think, a singleton, vertex, and probably had inherited some genes from old Ahab's mate, the great white whale. More importantly, her complete lack of underwear was going to be O'Reilly's downfall.\n\n\"Off you go, Annie.\"\n\nShe left.\n\n\"None,\" said O'Reilly with the absolute confidence of a master.\n\nI saw eighteen women that morning. He was wrong just once. I could only hope that the light of my life would be happy to settle for a long walk on Saturday.\n\nO'Reilly leaned back in his chair and stretched out his hand. \"I believe you owe me a pound.\"\n\nI grudgingly handed it over.\n\n\"Ta.\" He stuffed the note into his trouser pocket.\n\nI gritted my teeth. \"Fingal, how did you do it?\"\n\n\"Powers of observation, my boy.\" His expression wasn't that of the cat who'd got the cream. His face had the felicity of the feline that had feasted on the fermented foaming of an entire dairy.\n\nI was actually thinking of another \"F\" word, but delicacy forbids its use.\n\nHe must have noted my chagrin. \"Come over here, lad.\" He rose and ambled to the sink. There in neat array stood the containers in which the patients had brought their samples. In those days, the niceties of little plastic bottles hadn't yet been introduced. He picked up the first receptacle. \"Here. Mrs. Robertson\u2014Chanel No. 5\u2014black satin; Jeannie Neely\u2014jam jar\u2014red flannel; Annie O'Rourke\u2014Guinness bottle\u2014none.\"\n\nThe old devil.\n\nHe swept the assorted glassware into a wastepaper basket. \"First thing I said this morning, 'powers of observation,' and not of the quality of the kippers.\"\n\nBlast him and blast his powers of observation. My promise to take a certain nurse to see Lawrence of Arabia had gone down the pipe as the urine bottles had been chucked into the rubbish.\n\n\"By the way,\" said O'Reilly, pulling something from his pocket, \"here's the two quid I owe you for staying late the other week.\" He chuckled. \"I was looking at your face, Pat. Amazing what I observed.\"\nAPRIL 1997\n\nStress of the Moment\n\nThe tale of Mister Brown and Miss Gill\n\nI think I've mentioned that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, among his other attributes, was kind to widows and small children. He had a knack of talking to youngsters as if they were adults, taking their concerns with grave sincerity.\n\nPlease remember this was the man who'd crushed Doctor \"Thorny\" Murphy with a single sentence, had given Sir Gervaise Grant enough nightmares to make Edgar Allan Poe look like a beautiful dreamer, yet around the chisslers of the small town he was, in his own quotation of the Bard, \"Naught but a cooing dove.\"\n\nA long afternoon surgery had just finished, and I was perched on the examining table. Mrs. Kincaid knocked on the door.\n\n\"Come in,\" said O'Reilly, eyebrows rising as he looked up from his seat at the rolltop desk. \"Jasus, not more of the sick and suffering?\"\n\nMrs. Kincaid appeared, followed by a little lad of about six who peered out from behind her skirts. He held firmly to the hand of a girl who must have been a couple of years his senior.\n\n\"Mister Brown and Miss Gill would like to have a wee word, Doctor.\" Kinky looked solemn.\n\nO'Reilly's great eyebrows slid back from their attempt to meet his hairline. \"Come right in.\"\n\nKinky ushered the pair forward to stand in front of O'Reilly. I was immediately put in mind of the carollers who visited Rat and Mole in The Wind in the Willows. The boy's short pants almost reached his skinned knees and while one sock was firmly held in place, the other was wrinkled round his ankle. He stood with his toes turned in. He clung to the hand of his companion.\n\nThe girl, clean in a patched grey dress, kept her cornflower blue eyes demurely fixed on the threadbare rug.\n\n\"Well,\" said O'Reilly, \"what can I do for you?\"\n\nI sat quietly watching.\n\nThe little girl looked up at him and said, quite clearly, \"Mister Brown and I are going to get married.\"\n\nO'Reilly didn't bat an eyelid.\n\n\"Married, is it?\" He pushed his half-moon glasses up the bridge of his bent nose, sat back, and steepled his fingers. \"There's a thing now.\"\n\nThe little boy scuffed his toes along the carpet, sniffed, and dragged the back of one forearm across his nostrils.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"Mister Brown proposed to me yesterday.\"\n\n\"Did he now?\"\n\n\"I did,\" said Mister Brown.\n\nI couldn't recollect how my textbook of the diseases of children suggested how one dealt with a paediatric premarital counselling visit, but was quite willing to learn. Besides, I wanted to see how O'Reilly managed to extricate himself from this one. I would probably have laughed and sent them packing.\n\nNot O'Reilly.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"'Marriage is an honourable estate, not one to be entered upon lightly.'\"\n\nI flinched. I couldn't believe he was going to get to the bits about the comforts of the flesh.\n\nMister Brown nodded very seriously. He seemed to be uncomfortable and stood pressing his knees together.\n\n\"Good,\" said O'Reilly, \"that's clear then.\"\n\nMister Brown tugged at the front of his pants.\n\nO'Reilly stood. \"I tell you what. I think we should continue these discussions over a cup of tea. Would you like that, Miss Gill?\"\n\n\"Yes, please.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"Doctor Taylor, would you be kind enough to ask Mrs. Kincaid to put the kettle on and set a tray for four?\"\n\nI thought I might as well go along. I might also have the opportunity to ask Kinky who the children belonged to. I left the room, hearing Fingal say, \"And have you found a nice place to live?\"\n\nHe was standing at the front door when I returned, his big shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. I could see past him to where the betrothed were scurrying down the front path, Mister Brown still clinging to Miss Gill's hand.\n\nHe called after them. \"Are you sure you won't stay for tea?\"\n\nBut Miss Gill called back over her shoulder. \"We can't, Doctor O'Reilly\u2014Mister Brown's just wet himself.\"\nMAY 1997\n\nO'Reilly's Surprise\n\nThe flowers that bloomed in the spring\n\n\"Begod, I'm famished,\" announced Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, helping himself to a canap\u00e9. The morsel vanished with the rapidity of a small insect trapped on a chameleon's tongue. \"There's not enough on these things to keep a flea from starvation. Come back here, you.\"\n\nThe red-jacketed waiter to whom these words were addressed did a quick one-eighty like one of those figure skaters winding up for a death spiral. Donal Donnelly, mostly unemployed, occasional waiter at catered functions, proffered the tray of nibblers to O'Reilly with the subservience of a minion offering John the Baptist's head to Salome on a silver platter.\n\nNow I wouldn't want you to think that Donal was scared of Doctor O'Reilly. Just because Donnelly was a patient of long standing and once upon a time Doctor O. had reduced Donal's dislocated shoulder\u2014without the benefit of anaesthesia\u2014was no reason for the youth to be scared of my mentor. Absolutely, totally, and utterly petrified is probably a better description.\n\n\"Good lad,\" said O'Reilly, grabbing a shrimp and a chippolata on a cocktail stick. \"Run along.\"\n\nDonal scuttled away.\n\n\"So?\" O'Reilly asked, picking a tooth with the chippolata stick. \"What do you think of this hooley?\"\n\n\"Very nice,\" I replied, slightly overawed by my surroundings. I should tell you that in the late '60s, the concept of elitism hadn't been invented yet by the perpetually dissatisfied\u2014those whose only claim to any degree of status is the volume with which they can whinge about perceived wrongs and who reckon because they always came last in the egg-and-spoon race that there's a conspiracy afoot to keep them in their places. The ones who have a personality with a specific gravity that would match that of lead, who feel they should have floated to the top by dint of no other effort than the fact of their existence.\n\nLord Fitzgurgle, twentieth Earl Hurtletoot, hereditary master of the lands surrounding our small village, had no doubts about who was elite and who wasn't. The medical profession, represented by Doctor Fingal O'Reilly, Doctor Murphy (he of the crown of thorns), and myself, were. Just. We'd been invited to the annual \"show the peasants a bit of condescension\" evening at his lordship's stately home.\n\n\"Very nice,\" I said once again.\n\n\"Stop repeating yourself,\" O'Reilly grunted, swallowing a dollop of Black Bush whiskey. \"His lordship keeps a good drop.\" He smacked his lips with the appreciatory enthusiasm of a satisfied orangutan. \"Where the hell's young Donnelly?\"\n\n\"I think he went back to the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Keep an eye out for him.\" O'Reilly adopted the tone he usually reserved for when he was imparting one of his pearls of wisdom. \"I've been to these dos before. Takes forever to get the grub on the table. Take my advice.\" He waved an admonitory finger. \"Stock up now.\"\n\n\"Right, Fingal.\" I cast an eye about for our waiter and hoped he would shortly hove into view. A hungry O'Reilly could become a tad irritable. Like a viper with its tail caught in a vice-grip.\n\n\"Don't go away,\" said O'Reilly. \"I see our esteemed colleague Doctor Murphy over there. I'll just nip over and inquire after his health.\" Fingal had that look in his eye. I deemed it safer to stay where I was.\n\nI stood looking around me. The room was a fine example of the kind of decayed gentility to be found in the houses of the remnants of the nobility in Ireland. Lord Fitzgurgle's ancestors scowled down from the walls. Ranks of oil paintings of peers of the realm. The First Earl looked like a brigand. He'd probably been ennobled for nicking a few sheep for his liege lord or stamping on a few Irish peasants. There was no sitting on your duff in the sixteenth century if you fancied a bit of swift promotion.\n\nBetween the pictures hung assorted trophies. Wicked-looking knobkerries, assegais, a horribly serrated spear, one or two moth-eaten zebra-skin shields. Hunting trophies abounded. Fox heads, stags' heads, and a mounted cape buffalo stared down.\n\n\"That fellow must have come through the wall at a hell of a tilt.\" I turned to see the returned O'Reilly squinting up at the buffalo. \"Faster than that bloody Donnelly.\"\n\nI saw O'Reilly's eyes light up. I followed the direction of his gaze. It was fixed on a large ceramic bowl that sat on a heavily carved sideboard.\n\n\"Peanuts,\" he muttered and set off at a trot.\n\n\"Evening, Doctor.\" His lordship stood at my side. Stiff military bearing, bushy white moustache, and a bulbous nose the colour of raw beef. The quinine in tonic water is prophylactic against malaria. And it had been effective\u2014in all the seventy-six years he'd lived in Ulster he had not contracted malignant quartan. Not once. The brandy with which the duke had for years fortified his tonic accounted for the nose.\n\n\"My lord.\"\n\nIt's difficult to express in writing what my expression actually meant. At first glance you may think it was a greeting appropriate to my host's station. I can only hope he took it that way. In fact it was an exclamation of serious concern.\n\nOut of the corner of my eye I could see O'Reilly. His eyeballs bulged, his face was redder than his lordship's nose. Much redder. And the tip of O'Reilly's nose, the marker of his anger level, was white as driven snow. His cheeks bulged and he was tugging at his collar. This display of facial gymnastics had clearly upset the very attractive woman to whom he'd been talking. She was hastening away, occasionally casting a backward glance at Fingal.\n\n\"Good. Good,\" said Lord Fitzgurgle. \"Enjoy yourself, my boy.\"\n\n\"Thank you, my lord. Excuse me.\" I thought I was witnessing my first case of apoplexy, but as I neared O'Reilly his complexion cleared slightly. He managed an enormous swallow.\n\n\"You all right, Fingal?\"\n\nHe made a gurgling noise for all the world like water running out of a bath and pointed at the bowl of peanuts. Now, it's said that when Horatio swam the swollen Tiber, Lars Porsena of Clusium could scarce forbear to cheer. I had a similar bad attack of the scarce forbearances. In my case, it was laughter I had to suppress.\n\nDoctor O'Reilly, momentarily distracted by the charms of his companion, had seized and stuffed his mouth with an enormous handful, not of peanuts, but of the dried flower petals that had lurked in a potpourri.\n\nHe didn't complain of being hungry for the rest of the evening.\nJUNE 1997\n\nShock Therapy\n\nThe astonishingly rapid cure of Agatha Arbuckle\n\nI may have alluded to the fact that my old tutor, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, could, on occasion, be a little unorthodox. I believe the early Catholic Church regarded Martin Luther in roughly the same light. I do, however, suspect there was a difference between the two men. There's not a shred of published evidence to suggest that the hero of the Reformation had much of a sense of humour. Certainly in any of the woodcuts, lithographs, and other sundry reproductions of the old cleric he looks to have been remarkably po-faced.\n\nO'Reilly could be accused of many things (and frequently was, after the Mucky Duck had closed for the night), but lacking a well-developed sense of the ho-ho-hos was never one of them.\n\nIt has been said that laughter is the best medicine. It could be back then. I'm not so sure today. A well-meaning one-liner may be greeted with a polite titter. It can also lead to a frolicsome chat with the disciplinary committee of your provincial college or a visit from those merry minions of mirth, the harassment police.\n\nDoctor O'Reilly suffered from no such constraints.\n\nJust before Friday-morning surgery was to start, he peered through a crack in the door to the waiting room.\n\n\"Would you look at that lot?\" he said. \"The weary, wilting, woesome, walking wounded wanting our wisdom before the weekend. The scabrous sick searchers after solace for their scorched souls. Jasus.\" He stepped back from the door. \"See for yourself.\"\n\nI chanced a glance.\n\nThe waiting room was full. Four local farmers; three housewives; Donal Donnelly, who I'd last seen waiting at Lord Fitzgurgle's soiree; and Maggie, looking suspiciously as if the pain above her head had returned, sat on benches arranged round the walls of the room. Two small boys ran around the remaining open space, arms outstretched, banking and weaving and making machine-gun noises.\n\nA single wooden chair occupied one corner. Whoever took that seat would be first into the sanctum sanctorum when O'Reilly opened the surgery. This morning's winner was a woman with a smile like last week's rhubarb. Her lips were set at a permanent twenty to four. Her upper body, thin as a rake handle, twitched up and down at about two-second intervals. A series of faint \"hics\" could be heard over the racket of the simulated dogfight.\n\n\"Ha,\" said O'Reilly as he let the door close. \"You'd need the diagnostic skills of a Galen to sort out that lot. Piles, sniffles, backaches, a couple of ruptures. Donnelly'll be looking for another doctor's letter so he can draw his sick pay, and God only knows what Maggie has for us today. And to top it off there's Agatha Arbuckle with her chest going up and down like a hoor on hinges.\"\n\nHe got that glint in his eye and a coercive tone to his voice. \"I don't suppose you'd like to take the surgery today?\"\n\nHe was right. If for no other reason than I had no wish to tend to Maggie or Agatha Arbuckle, I know the oath of a certain classic quack from the isle of Cos has some kind of codicil about ministering unto the sick. Old Hippocrates didn't practise in Ulster. Nor did he have to sort out Maggie or Aggie on a regular basis. \"Sorry, Fingal. Lots of house calls.\" I began to sidle toward the front door.\n\nO'Reilly heaved an enormous sigh, the kind of noise a beached right whale makes just before expiring. \"All right. But I could do without Agatha today.\"\n\n\"Sorry about that,\" I lied. I could do without her too. Agatha Arbuckle, fifty, spinster of this parish, secretary-treasurer of the Presbyterian Women's Union, was not one of my favourite people. Nor one of O'Reilly's. Somewhere in the woman's soul lurked a pool of acid. Not your regular sulphuric or nitric. Oh, no. Agatha's psyche was fuelled by aqua regia, an acid so powerful that one drop can dissolve the armour of a main battle tank.\n\n\"I'll have to be getting on,\" I said. \"Just going to nip upstairs and get my bag.\"\n\nI'd been wrong about the whale. It wasn't one. From O'Reilly's expiratory rumblings it sounded as if a whole school of cetaceans had taken up permanent residence in the hall. As I headed up I heard him say, \"Come in, Agatha. What seems to be the trouble?\" Just as I came back into the hall, doctor's black bag clutched in one hand, the door to the surgery opened and Agatha rushed past me to the front door. The look of shock on her face would have suited the mayor of Hiroshima just after the big bang. What had Fingal said to her? From somewhere I remembered that hiccups could be a sign of terminal ureamia.\n\nO'Reilly sat in his swivel chair at the rolltop desk. He looked enormously self-satisfied. \"Thought you were off doing house calls.\"\n\n\"I'm just going, but I saw Aggie a minute ago. Is she all right?\"\n\n\"Right as rain.\"\n\n\"But...\"\n\n\"No 'buts' about it. I fixed her.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nCertain cats, I believe from the county of Cheshire, are reputed to grin. O'Reilly's vast smirk would have shamed them into expressionlessness. \"Told her she was pregnant.\"\n\n\"You what?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Told her she's up the builder's.\"\n\nAggie? Impossible. \"She couldn't be.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said, rising to his feet and pausing for dramatic effect, \"but it cured her hiccups.\"\nJULY\/AUGUST 1997\n\nHappy as a Pig in...\n\nDiagnosing porcine pregnancy\n\n\"What do you know about pigs?\" O'Reilly inquired.\n\nI paused, a small sherry halfway to my lips. \"Pigs?\"\n\n\"Mmm,\" said O'Reilly, wiping Guinness froth from his upper lip. \"Pigs.\"\n\nI glanced round the snug of the Mucky Duck, but the landlord was nowhere in sight. Erroneously, as it turned out, I'd assumed that O'Reilly was about to make some disparaging remark about mine host, Arthur Turloch Osbaldiston, purveyor of strong drink, intoxicating liquors, and fine tobaccos. A man of substantial proportions, a complexion of a pinkness to match the hue of a hog, and a squashed nose of similar configuration.\n\n\"Pigs?\"\n\n\"Yes. Pigs, man,\" said O'Reilly, his nose tip paling.\n\nWhat the hell was he on about? Male chauvinists, lumps of cast iron, the Saracen armoured personnel carriers of the British Army, or cloven-hoofed mammals? All could legitimately be called pigs. Certainly the APCs were by the citizens of Belfast. \"Pigs, Fingal?\"\n\nO'Reilly's brows knitted. Actually they moved up and down so rapidly it might have been said \"O'Reilly's brows crocheted,\" but it wasn't. Not by me anyway.\n\n\"They say,\" he remarked, idly using an index finger to draw a smile in the white head of his stout, \"that perseveration is an early sign of mental disease. Why do you keep mumbling 'pigs'?\"\n\n\"You asked the question.\"\n\n\"What question?\"\n\n\"Pigs. You asked, 'What do you know about pigs?'\"\n\n\"Did I?\"\n\n\"You did.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nThat seemed to put an end to a rather aimless conversation. I wasn't disappointed, but of course I was wrong. O'Reilly heaved himself vertically, carried his empty glass to the counter, leaned over, and yelled, \"Nurse!\" He wasn't ill. This was his standard summons for anyone with the power to pour him a drink. Arthur Turloch Osbaldiston hove weightily into view, glass in one hand, dishrag in the other. \"Yes, Doctor O'Reilly?\"\n\n\"Two more.\"\n\n\"Right, sir.\" Osbaldiston busied himself seeing to Doctor O'Reilly's next pint. As he ran the black brew into the glass he asked, anxiously, \"Well?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head. \"Doctor Taylor doesn't know anything about pigs.\"\n\nArthur Turloch was so upset he allowed some of the beer to spill. \"Ah, dear,\" he said, handing O'Reilly his pint and a small sherry for me. \"I'll just have to carry on with your advice then, Doctor O'Reilly.\"\n\n\"You will,\" said O'Reilly, neglecting to pay, as he headed back toward our table. He sat, set my second drink beside the unfinished first, and took a deep pull of his own.\n\n\"Pigs,\" he said, mournfully.\n\nI flinched. This, more or less, was where I'd come in. I thought it wiser to agree.\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" I said. \"Pigs.\"\n\n\"Bloody animals. Pity you don't know more about them.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed.\"\n\nHe rummaged round in his jacket pocket, hauled out his briar, stoked the bowl, and lit up. At least it gave me time to see if I could offer any solace on the subject that was troubling him. I could not.\n\n\"Fat and very rotund,\" he said.\n\nI nodded. Did he mean Osbaldiston or the subject of the moment?\n\n\"Bloody difficult to tell if they're pregnant.\"\n\nPigs. Definitely not Arthur Turloch.\n\n\"And Arthur there needs to know.\"\n\n\"If he's pregnant?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not him. His sow.\"\n\nLight began to dawn. Our landlord ran a smallholding on the side. He'd bought a sow last year. She would have been ready for breeding this year, and every visit to the boar cost money.\n\n\"Yes,\" said O'Reilly, \"and he asked me how he could tell if the boar had scored a winner.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I know.\"\n\n\"What do you know?\"\n\n\"About pigs? Nothing.\"\n\nO'Reilly growled, stabbed the stem of his briar in my general direction and said, \"How did you know I'd given him advice?\"\n\n\"Because he said, a moment ago, that he'd just have to go on taking it.\"\n\n\"Damn silly advice too.\" The man had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. \"Do you know how the farmers round here breed pigs?\" he asked.\n\nIt seemed not the most opportune time to remind him that we'd established beyond reasonable doubt that the sum of my knowledge on that subject was zero. I merely shook my head.\n\n\"The usual procedure is to load the sow in a wheelbarrow and trundle her off to the boar.\"\n\n\"Seems sensible.\"\n\n\"Not,\" said O'Reilly, \"if you have to keep repeating the exercise. Gets expensive.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"And you know Arthur would wrestle a bear for a farthing.\"\n\nI nodded, thinking to myself that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly could probably give Osbaldiston a few pointers in the sport of ursine mat-grappling\u2014certainly if there was any prospect of a pecuniary payoff.\n\nO'Reilly sighed. \"The best I could think of was an old farmer's tale that I'd heard years ago.\"\n\nI listened.\n\n\"Seems there was a local belief that recently pregnant sows, if given a choice between mud and grass, would always roll in the mud, so after you'd bred her you waited to see if she'd go to the mud.\"\n\n\"Well,\" I said, \"that makes sense.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Oh yes. The raised progesterone levels of pregnancy would put the animal's temperature up. Naturally she'd prefer the mud. Help her cool off.\"\n\nO'Reilly looked at me suspiciously. \"You're not pulling my leg?\"\n\n\"Me, Fingal? Never.\"\n\nHe brightened up. \"Perhaps I did give him good advice after all. I just hope the wee sow gets into the mud soon.\" O'Reilly chuckled. \"It's a sight every evening to see Arthur toiling up the hill, pushing the barrow with the pig in it.\"\n\nBefore I could reply I became aware that Arthur Turloch had reappeared. He didn't look happy.\n\n\"Ah,\" said O'Reilly, grandiloquently. \"You'll be glad to hear that young Doctor Taylor has applied his understanding of basic science to our problem. He concurs with my opinion.\" O'Reilly held up his now-empty glass and looked hopeful. \"I'll bet your sow will be rolling in the mud already.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Arthur, lugubriously. \"She's not. She's sitting in my wheelbarrow with a smile on her face.\"\nSEPTEMBER 1997\n\nBarometer Falling\n\nFlying would be more accurate\n\nThere's an anaeroid barometer hanging in the hall of the house of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. Barometers, as you know, measure atmospheric pressure. This one no longer does. It's battered, the glass is broken, and the needle is stuck permanently indicating \"fair.\" Let me tell you why.\n\n\"I think...\" said Doctor O'Reilly, and paused.\n\n\"Therefore I am?\" I suggested.\n\nHe scowled at me as a gouty retired colonel might regard a scruffy teenager who'd just run a skateboard over the ex-military man's bandaged foot.\n\n\"Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am,\" I mumbled rapidly, citing my source for good measure. \"Descartes.\"\n\n\"Idiot,\" said O'Reilly. \"Dostoyevsky.\"\n\nI was relieved that Doctor Fingal O'Reilly hadn't dipped further into his encyclopaedic catalogue of the classics. I shuddered to think what he might have called me if he'd taken his riposte from the works of D. H. Lawrence.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said.\n\nO'Reilly harrumphed then said, \"Should bloody well think so.\"\n\nI wondered why O'Reilly's mood, which had been so high earlier in the morning, was now giving a good impression of a pint of milk left out in the sun too long. Sour. Very sour. Morning surgery was over and he'd announced with a broad grin that this afternoon he would take a half-day holiday.\n\nThis, I should tell you, was somewhat out of character. O'Reilly, and indeed most of his generation, took it as a matter of course that single-handed country GPs were on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year. What was even more curious, he'd made the statement immediately after consulting a heavy mahogany-and-brass barometer that hung in the hall. \"Wonderful,\" he'd remarked. \"Barometer's rising and it's already at 'fair.'\"\n\nPestered as I'd been for most of the pre-noon by a passing parade of perambulatory paediatric problems produced for my perusal by their painfully prolix progenitors, I'd forgotten that my senior colleague had some thoughts of recreation after lunch. And in some way the barometer's cheerful prognostication had, in the fore part of the day, lifted O'Reilly's spirits. Now he stood and scowled at the thing. \"I think...\" he began again.\n\nDiscretion is always the better part of valour. I stood like the middle one of the three monkeys, speaking no evil, and wondering what weighty pronouncement was going to fall from O'Reilly's lips.\n\n\"I think...\" he peered at the needle on the face of the anaeroid, \"that sometimes the marvels of modern science could have been somewhat improved.\"\n\nA glance through the window served to confirm his observations. The heavens hadn't so much opened as gaped. I confidently expected to behold a bearded gentleman wearing a burnoose, muttering about cubits and spans, the tardy delivery of gopher wood, and the difficulty of housing diverse animal species two by two.\n\n\"It's raining,\" I said.\n\nThe look he gave me over the pallid tip of his nose would have induced Medusa's serpentine hairs to shed their scaly skins simultaneously. \"You should give up medicine,\" he said. \"You missed your calling. You'd have made a great meteorologist.\"\n\nSome might call that remark brilliant repartee, others biting sarcasm, given the force of the deluge outside. I chose to remember that he who fights and runs away lives to be sworn at another day.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said.\n\n\"I was going golfing,\" O'Reilly said mournfully. He pointed an accusatory finger at the barometer. \"I trusted that bloody thing this morning and phoned an old friend, Charlie Elphinstone. He's coming down from Belfast.\" O'Reilly tapped the instrument's glass with the gentility of a caress from King Kong and scowled at the needle. The pointer, presumably terrified, swung farther into the \"fair.\"\n\nO'Reilly's nose moved from ashen to ivory. His neck veins bulged. \"Fair? Fair?\" He ripped the insultingly inaccurate instrument from the wall and with the powerful grace of a caber tosser hurled it straight through the glass of the window and out into the downpour. \"See for your stupid self!\" O'Reilly yelled, as he set the Irish and all comers' open record for anaeroid barometer throwing. \"Bah,\" he added, but the colour was returning to his proboscis. I could only surmise that his outburst had served the same purpose as one of those vents in the side of an active volcano and that O'Reilly's internal pressure was beginning to subside.\n\nI ventured a query: \"So what will you do?\"\n\n\"Do?\"\n\n\"With your friend from Belfast?\"\n\nIt might have been pouring outside, but the sun came up in O'Reilly's personal heaven. \"Charlie? Play golf, of course.\"\n\n\"Play golf? In this?\"\n\n\"No, you idiot. In the nineteenth hole.\" He turned to leave. \"Be a good lad,\" he said. \"Nip out and collect the barometer.\"\nOCTOBER 1997\n\nThe Flying Doctor\n\nO'Reilly takes the wheel\n\n\"Did you ever see the likes of that chase?\" Doctor O'Reilly asked, fist curled round his second John Jameson's, elbow nestled in its accustomed groove in the bar of the Mucky Duck.\n\n\"Impressive,\" I remarked, cuddling a small sherry and trying to make it last.\n\n\"That Steve McQueen must be a powerful driver.\" He was clearly in awe. I should tell you that he and I had just returned from the local cinema's screening of the film Bullitt. The one with the classic car chase through the hills of San Francisco. It dawned on me, vaguely, that the good Doctor O. might be tempted to emulate McQueen's driving. The prospect of the carnage that would be wrought among the local livestock and itinerant rustic cyclists hardly bore contemplation. Even with his present style of procession in his long-bonnetted Rover he was a force to be reckoned with.\n\nWhen they teach you about side effects at medical school, no mention is ever made of the fact that emergency house calls lead to an increase in the incidence of minor sprains and abrasions.\n\nIf he truly believed that life or limb of one of his patients was at risk, O'Reilly would hurl his motorcar through the streets and byways of our district with all the enthusiasm of Toad of Toad Hall. In fairness, Doctor O. was able to refrain from yelling \"poop poop\" at the top of his voice. If Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly had been driving a panzer for Heinz Guderian in May 1940, the Battle of France would have been finished in two weeks flat.\n\nThe natives, many of whom went about their lawful (and in the case of Turlough Tweezlethumbs the local poacher, unlawful) pursuits mounted on fixed-wheel bicycles, had evolved their own method of dealing with O'Reilly in one of his Charge-of-the-Light-Brigade moments. The fixed-wheel bicycle has no brakes. You stop it by standing on the pedals. It is a slow method of arrest. Too slow for O'Reilly avoidance. I can only assume it was some kind of Darwinian genetics at work. To a man, and the three lady cyclists of the townland, standard operating procedure was to recognize O'Reilly's chariot, flinch, tuck in the head, and deliberately fall off into the ditch. Thus the abrasions and sprains.\n\n\"I hope you'll not be trying to drive like Bullitt,\" I remarked.\n\nDoctor O. was in an expansive mood. He chuckled, swallowed his whiskey, and clapped an avuncular hand on my shoulder. (The bruise faded in four days.) \"Don't worry your head about that, Pat.\"\n\nHis grin bothered me. So did his next words: \"The hills aren't steep enough round here.\"\n\nI forgot about the film and our conversation until about three weeks later. O'Reilly had gone off for the afternoon to visit his brother, Lars Porsena Fabius Cunctator O'Reilly, in the small town of Portaferry, which lies at the mouth of Strangford Lough. It's connected to the village of Strangford on the other shore by a car ferry. By the way, the short road ending at the ferry loading ramp lies at the foot of a steep hill.\n\nI was enjoying the last scraps of one of Mrs. Kincaid's steak-and-kidney puddings and wondering casually where Doctor O. might be. It was most unlike him to be late for supper. His head appeared round the door and his expression could only be described as sheepish.\n\n\"Um,\" he said in a small, very un-O'Reilly voice. \"Um, Pat, could I borrow your car?\"\n\n\"Why?\" I inquired with approximately the same degree of trust as would be evinced by a lamb that has been invited over by a starving lion.\n\n\"It's embarrassing.\"\n\nIt might have been emotionally upsetting for O'Reilly, but more so for me was the thought of what he might do to my poor secondhand Volkswagen\u2014or, to be more precise, the Bank of Ireland's Volkswagen. (They let me drive it while exacting their pound of flesh, two pounds of sinew, and one molar a month.) For once, facing the prospect of financial ruin if he wrecked the thing, I straightened my shoulders, emulated Pharaoh, and hardened my heart. \"Why?\" I demanded.\n\nHe flinched, took a deep breath, and said, \"If you were late and had to get back here from Portaferry, which way would you come?\"\n\n\"Take the ferry to Strangford.\"\n\n\"Right. Cuts a good ten miles off the journey.\"\n\nI couldn't quite grasp what this had to do with borrowing my car, and said so.\n\n\"What would you do if you were at the top of the Portaferry hill and the ferry was just going to leave?\"\n\n\"Wait,\" I said.\n\n\"I didn't.\" O'Reilly's eyes flashed. \"I went down the hill like Ben Hur in the Circus Maximus. There was only about ten feet between the ferry and the dock and the ferry was half-empty. There was as much space on the car deck as on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise. It would be like landing on a carrier with her forward speed making the runway seem even longer.\"\n\n\"You didn't!\" I asked, immediately regretting my superfluous use of words.\n\n\"I did,\" he said. His eyes adopted that glazed look of satisfaction only seen in the orbs of committed opium smokers after a full and satisfying pipeful. \"And it was wonderful. My Rover flew like Bullitt's Mustang.\"\n\n\"So why do you want to borrow my car?\"\n\n\"Because,\" he said, \"the bloody ferry was coming in.\"\nNOVEMBER 1997\n\nForty Shades of Green\n\nAnother O'Reilly driving adventure\n\nYou may remember Doctor O'Reilly's attempts to emulate Wilbur and Orville Wright. As memory serves, and no, I was not a spectator on that memorable day at Kitty Hawk, the \"Wright Flyer\" successfully conquered gravity and landed in one piece. O'Reilly had managed, albeit briefly, the first part of the daring aviator's feat. He'd defied gravity in a Rover car. His landing on the deck of the Portaferry ferry had been less of a three-point job than a full-blown kamikaze attack on the unfortunate vessel. I'm told the Hesperus after being wrecked was in better shape than the ferry after O'Reilly.\n\nI'd stuck to my guns and refused to lend him my Volkswagen, and until his own motor was returned from the body shop, a repair that made the raising of Lazarus seem like prescribing two aspirins for a cold, he'd been forced to make his way round on a bicycle. This had worked wonders for his figure and his wind, but had reduced his tolerance of delays to somewhere on the southern side of absolute zero. Which was unfortunate for Donal Donnelly.\n\nDonal, you will recall, was last seen handing out canap\u00e9s at Lord Fitzgurgle's annual \"be nice to the peasants\" evening. He was a gangly youth, as lacking in self-confidence as Uriah Heep, as unprepossessing as a sack of cold porridge, and to say he was as thick as two short planks was to do disservice to the local woodworking industry. Donal's density made a couple of short planks look like a piece of microfilm. And he was terrified of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.\n\nI should tell you that our town had a traffic light. (I know that stories are meant to have an internal logic and a sequential flow. You should recognize by now, however, that \"logic\" and \"O'Reilly\" are not two words with the happy congruence of, say, \"love\" and \"marriage\" or \"peaches\" and \"cream.\" Try \"oil\" and \"water\" or \"Hatfield\" and \"McCoy.\" Please accept that the town had a traffic light.)\n\nO'Reilly had asked me to accompany him by train to Belfast to collect his refurbished automobile. The old Rover, which must have been rebuilt from scratch, gleamed. The engine purred. O'Reilly beamed. O'Reilly purred. When the prodigal son returned, his father killed the fatted calf. When O'Reilly took possession of his motorcar, it was a good thing he did so in Belfast, not the countryside. In a more bucolic setting, herds of fatted cows, and probably several chubby sheep, would have been slaughtered, so great was Doctor O.'s rejoicing.\n\n\"Come on, Pat,\" he said, \"let's get her home.\"\n\n\"You'll drive carefully?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" I believe a piecrust promise is one that is made to be broken. O'Reilly's pie that day was made of the transparent caramel used for special effects in the cinema. The ones where bad cowboys are hurled through windows to the accompaniment of shattering glass.\n\nI understand that once Mach 1 is exceeded, the pilot can no longer hear the engine of the plane. Either the mechanics had fixed the Rover's motor to the specifications of Rolls-Royce or we were a tad above the speed limit for most of the journey. There were moments, usually in heavier traffic, when I could perceive a high-pitched keening noise. It took me a while before I recognized that I was making it.\n\n\"Got to get home for the match,\" O'Reilly said.\n\nI'd forgotten that Ireland was playing England in a rugby game. Actually, I didn't care. I just wanted to get home in one piece.\n\nNow I made a point of mentioning our town's traffic light and Donal Donnelly. On rare occasions planets line up in conjunction and astrologers foretell the coming of the apocalypse. Donal was driving his father's tractor and was stopped at the light. O'Reilly's home was visible not a hundred yards away, kickoff was in two minutes, and the Rover was stopped behind the tractor as we waited for the light to change.\n\nGreen went the light. O'Reilly, presumably wishing to encourage young Donal, blew his horn.\n\nDonal may have been suffering from grand mal, the battery of the tractor may have shorted and hurled a shock through his scrawny body, or it may just have been abject terror brought on by peering astern to discover that the horn blower was Doctor O. Whatever the cause, he began to tremble uncontrollably and stalled the engine of the tractor.\n\nRed went the light.\n\n\"#@$~#!\" went O'Reilly.\n\nGreen went the light.\n\n\"Nurgley-nurgley-nurgley,\" went the tractor's engine, but failed to start.\n\nRed went the light.\n\nWhite went the tip of O'Reilly's nose.\n\nGreen went the light.\n\n\"Nurgley-nurgley-phtang!\" went the tractor's engine as the exhaust billowed clouds of fumes as dense as the rock dust fallout from the explosion of Krakatoa.\n\nLight red, O'Reilly's nose ivory, smoke black, Donal's face puce. Colourful. Very colourful. O'Reilly swore once more, opened the door of the Rover, and dismounted. I followed. Just as the light turned green for the fourth time, I distinctly heard him say to Donal Donnelly, \"Was there a particular shade of green you were waiting for?\"\n\nI did not hear Donal's reply.\nDECEMBER 1997\n\nA G(h)astly Mistake\n\nO'Reilly christens his propane barbecue\n\nI believe I may have mentioned that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was an ex-naval man. He hadn't been personally responsible for sinking the Bismark or winning the Battle of the Atlantic single-handed, but he claimed to have seen more cases of crab lice than Pharaoh after one of the plagues of Egypt.\n\nHe'd maintained his contact with the sea as the owner of a twenty-six-foot sloop. Apart from washing, this was as close as he was prepared to let H20 come to his body. I once had the temerity to ask for a glass of water and was soundly chastised with the admonishment that if I knew what the stuff did to the outsides of boats, I'd never let it past my lips.\n\nFrom time to time he'd invite me to act as his crew. Perhaps \"invite\" would be rendered better as \"shanghai.\" Dana's Two Years Before the Mast described a pleasure cruise compared to a nautical outing with O'Reilly. His style of skippering, taken straight from Captain Bligh's manual of how to win friends and influence people, left a certain amount to be desired.\n\n\"I need a hand on the boat today,\" he said.\n\nI flinched and sought around for an excuse to run. I imagine French aristocrats had the same impulse when invited to try Doctor Guillotine's new invention\u2014and with about as much success.\n\n\"Come on,\" he said.\n\nMy spirits rose when we reached the dock. He didn't intend to put to sea. Instead he wanted my help to install a propane barbecue on the taffrail.\n\n\"Propane?\" I inquired.\n\n\"Marvellous stuff,\" he said, unpacking the grill from a cardboard box. \"Clean-burning, safe as houses, and these new barbecues are idiot-proof. I've had propane in the galley for years.\"\n\nThe propane that fuels a boat's stove is isolated from belowdecks by a series of solenoids, cut-off valves, and taps. NASA's rockets have similar arrangements. Both systems are designed to prevent the payload, which may be a multimillion-dollar satellite or a small sailboat, from leaving the confines of Earth's gravitational pull prematurely.\n\nClever things, these safety devices. Teams of highly skilled engineers, bomb-disposal experts, and, for all I know, pardoned arsonists have toiled long to ensure the safety of seagoing propane, and O'Reilly was right: the system was idiot-proof. There was no guarantee it was O'Reilly-proof.\n\nIt was a warm day and it took us several hours of fiddling, screwing, unscrewing, rescrewing, bolting, unbolting, rebolting, massaging skinned knuckles, and misplacing screwdrivers and wrenches before the barbecue was fixed in place. I'd thought my vocabulary was fairly complete in the scatological department. O'Reilly would have been an instant nominee for a Nobel if the inventor of dynamite had seen fit to award a prize for blasphemy.\n\n\"That's it,\" he said, sweat streaming down his face with the volume and velocity of the Horseshoe Falls. \"Fixed the @~&**# thing.\"\n\n\"Mmm.\"\n\n\"Now, let's give it a try.\"\n\nHe lifted a locker lid and extracted a squat metal bottle of liquefied gas.\n\n\"Gimme that hose.\"\n\nI handed him a black rubber pipe and watched as he fitted screw couplings to the grill and the bottle. \"Perfect,\" he announced. \"Hang on.\"\n\nHe disappeared below for a moment, only to reappear in the hatchway clutching two bottles of beer. \"Time to christen it.\" He handed me one bottle.\n\n\"I think I'll just go up on the foredeck,\" I said, sidling away as he produced a box of matches. I believe that the men who dispose of unexploded bombs are supposed to keep a distance of four hundred metres between themselves and the device. O'Reilly's twenty-six-foot boat fell a little short, but I had no intention of standing right beside the infernal machine when O'Reilly struck the match.\n\nHe joined me for'ard a minute later. \"It's going like a bomb,\" he said, grinning from ear to ear.\n\nI thought he might have used a different simile.\n\n\"What the hell's that?\" O'Reilly inquired.\n\nFrom aft came a roaring like Mount Vesuvius on one of its more active afternoons. A jet of flame tore across the cockpit and scared the daylights out of a passing gull. It looked as though a leftover storm-trooper from WWII was firing a flammenwerfer (flame thrower for those of you too young to remember).\n\n\"Jasus,\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"Abandon ship?\" I asked, having no wish to emulate the boy standing on the burning deck.\n\n\"Holy thundering Jasus,\" O'Reilly said, heading aft.\n\nCall me boastful if you wish. Feeble-minded is probably a better description. I actually followed him, feeling horribly like one of the \"Noble Six Hundred.\" Into the jaws of death and all that.\n\nAs soon as we reached the boat's cockpit, the source of the conflagration became apparent. When O'Reilly had hooked up the hose he'd managed to let it lie against the barbecue. The flames from the grill had melted the rubber and ignited the escaping propane, which even then howled and flared like something only Red Adair should be asked to tackle.\n\nI watched in awe as O'Reilly bent and turned off the valve on the propane tank. The roaring subsided. The flames died. The only sounds that broke the stillness were the chattering of my teeth and the rattling of my knees.\n\nAnd I stifled my desire to remind O'Reilly of his earlier remarks that propane was as safe as houses and that gas barbecues were idiot-proof.\nJANUARY 1998\n\nBlessed Are the Meek\n\nThe O'Reillys, alas, are not among them\n\n\"It's not fair, Uncle Fingal.\" Thus spake a tear-stained William Butler Yeats O'Reilly, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's nephew. Willy, aged ten, was the son of O'Reilly's brother, Lars Porsena Fabius Cunctator O'Reilly, the one who lived in Portaferry. That's the place, you'll remember, where Doctor O. tried to emulate Steve McQueen and nearly sank the ferry when he hurled his motorcar at the incoming vessel.\n\nOn this occasion, O'Reilly had been invited to his brother's for the pre-Christmas festivities and had dragged me along.\n\n\"Cheer up, Willy. It's not as bad as that,\" said O'Reilly at his avuncular best.\n\n\"It is.\" Willy sniffed and O'Reilly handed him a handkerchief.\n\n\"Blow,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nWilly honked. He was an unprepossessing child, snub-nosed, freckled, and with a shock of ginger hair that stood up from his crown like the crest of an indignant cockatoo. His damp eyes were full of the unspoiled innocence of childhood. I didn't know then that beneath this apparent gentility lurked the O'Reilly propensity for bearing a grudge and that Willy, like his uncle, wasn't one to let a wrong go unpunished. I didn't know that then\u2014but I was going to find out.\n\n\"It's not fair,\" he repeated. \"I've been Joseph twice. I know all the lines.\"\n\n\"And you were a grand Joseph,\" O'Reilly said, retrieving his hanky. \"You'll be a great innkeeper.\"\n\n\"Don't wanna be an innkeeper. Wanna be Joseph.\"\n\nI stood there, both legs the same length, in a state of utter confusion. This was my usual condition when in the company of Doctor O.\n\nHe must have noticed my dazed look. \"Willy was Joseph for the last two years,\" he said.\n\nI'd already grasped that piece of intelligence. \"I see.\"\n\n\"No, you don't.\"\n\n\"Don't what?\"\n\n\"See.\"\n\n\"True.\"\n\n\"Then why did you say you did?\"\n\n\"I wanna be Joseph,\" quoth Willy.\n\n\"Doctor Taylor doesn't see,\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"Don't care,\" said Willy. \"It's not fair.\"\n\nI was beginning to feel a vague pounding at the temples. \"Would somebody please explain,\" I asked.\n\n\"Willy wants to be Joseph,\" O'Reilly said. \"See?\"\n\n\"I see.\" The pounding intensified. I had an overwhelming urge to go and lie down.\n\n\"No, you bloody well don't,\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"Wanna be Joseph.\"\n\n\"Willy's to be the innkeeper this year,\" O'Reilly explained.\n\n\"I...\" I strangled the word \"see\" in mid-utterance and waited.\n\n\"In the school Christmas pageant,\" O'Reilly said.\n\nThe pieces were beginning to come together. \"You mean Willy played Joseph in the pageant for the last two years?\"\n\n\"Now you see,\" said O'Reilly, and indeed I did.\n\n\"And Johnny Fagan gets to be Joseph this year and I've to be the innkeeper.\" Willy had added the last piece to the puzzle. \"He's a little s*#*! I'll get him.\"\n\nThere was a fire in Willy's eyes that made me look closely at his nose tip to see if like his uncle's in moments of great passion it too paled. It did.\n\n* * *\n\nPicture now the parish hall. Serried rows of parents, teachers, older and younger brothers and sisters, half a dozen nuns, itinerant rubberneckers with no attachment to the school but who have nowhere else to go until the pubs open, the O'Reilly clan, and myself. The stage is divided by a wall so the audience can see the courtyard on one side and the interior of the inn, stable, and manger on the other. The innkeeper, known to his friends and family as William Butler Yeats O'Reilly, waits in the inn with sundry shepherds, wise men, angels, cherubim, and seraphim.\n\nEnter stage left Mary, dressed in one of her mother's cut-down dresses. Mary is astride a small, moth-eaten donkey. Joseph, a.k.a. Johnny Fagan, wearing a nightshirt, head wrapped in a tea towel held in place with a piece of rope, leads the donkey. The gum arabic holding his flowing beard has given way and the beard straggles down his chest.\n\nMary. \"Is this the inn, Joseph?\"\n\nJoseph. \"It is. I'll knock and see if the innkeeper's in.\"\n\nJoseph knocks.\n\nThe innkeeper opens the door. (Perhaps I'm the only one in the audience who notices the pallor of his nose.)\n\nInnkeeper. \"Is that you, Mary and Joseph?\"\n\nJoseph. \"It is, innkeeper.\" He gives a sneering inflection to the word \"innkeeper.\"\n\nJoseph. \"All right. Come on in, Mary.\"\n\nMary dismounts and enters.\n\nInnkeeper, glowering at Joseph. \"And you, Joseph\"\u2014the innkeeper pushes Joseph in the chest\u2014\"Joseph, you can just feck off.\"\n\nI swear two nuns fainted.\nFEBRUARY 1998\n\nA Matter of Tact\n\nOr lack of it\n\n\"Tactless,\" Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly remarked. \"Utterly bloody tactless.\"\n\nThis observation was not so much a question of the pot calling the kettle black as referring to it as stygian. O'Reilly could be described as possessing many attributes, indeed he has been, but, and feel free to correct me if you think I err, tact was not among his own most sterling qualities. In most social and professional encounters, O'Reilly was as tactful as a regimental sergeant major discussing the inadvisability of a new recruit's recent unfortunate dropping of his rifle in the middle of a ceremonial parade.\n\nI was puzzled. I'd said nothing. I couldn't have. I'd just entered his surgery as his last patient of the morning left. Nevertheless I automatically assumed a defensive crouch and wondered what sin of social ineptness I was about to be accused of committing.\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said. I believe in criminal circles this is known as \"copping a plea.\"\n\n\"Why?\" asked O'Reilly.\n\n\"Why what?\"\n\n\"Why are you sorry?\"\n\n\"For being tactless.\"\n\n\"You weren't.\"\n\n\"Sorry?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, you idiot, tactless.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Stop apologizing.\" Just a hint of paleness brightened the tip of his nose.\n\nI decided it was time to beat a retreat. \"I'm sor... so glad I wasn't.\"\n\n\"Yes, you were.\"\n\n\"Tactless?\"\n\n\"No. Apologizing.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Do not say 'Sorry' again. Sometimes I wonder about you, Taylor,\" said O'Reilly, staring into the distance and clearly letting his mind wander. \"I really wonder.\"\n\nHe was not alone. Sometimes, in fact frequently since I had fallen into his clutches, I wondered about myself.\n\nI thought it was probably time to give a slight course correction to the conversation\u2014the kind lunar astronauts make to ensure a safe return to Earth rather than a trip to the Oort Cloud.\n\n\"You were saying something about 'tactless,'\" I remarked.\n\nHis gaze focused and he turned to face me. \"Sorry?\" he asked.\n\nI think in cardiovascular circles this is known as a reversal of shunt. I ignored the temptation to tell him there was no need to apologize, and gave the lateral thrusters a little more liquid oxygen: \"You said someone was 'bloody tactless.'\"\n\n\"I did, didn't I?\"\n\n\"Yes, Fingal.\"\n\n\"Sean Millington O'Casey,\" he said.\n\nI knew that Doctor O. had been named for Oscar Wilde, had a nephew yclept William Butler Yeats O'Reilly, but who the blue blazes had been given a combination of Synge and O'Casey?\n\n\"Man's totally lacking in social graces,\" said O'Reilly. \"O'Casey's the bloke that left as you came in.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said.\n\n\"Just had a hell of a row with his wife. He wanted some marital counselling.\" O'Reilly rummaged in his pocket and produced his briar. \"More like martial counselling the way the pair of them go at it.\"\n\nI remembered Mrs. O'Casey. I'd seen her last week for an antenatal visit.\n\n\"They must talk to each other occasionally,\" I observed. \"His wife's pregnant with their fourth.\"\n\n\"Um,\" said O'Reilly, lighting up. \"And that's another miracle. He's a travelling salesman. Away from home a lot.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he writes passionate letters.\"\n\n\"He does more than that. He makes stupid remarks on the telephone. Tactless remarks.\" O'Reilly paused to tamp the tobacco more firmly into his portable blast furnace. \"'What'll I say, Doctor?' says he to me.\n\n\"'What did you say?' says I.\n\n\"'Well,' says he, 'I was in England last week. Staying in a hotel. The phone rings and I picks it up. A woman's voice says, \"You bastard.\" I knew it was the wife.'\n\n\"I told him to go on.\" O'Reilly exhaled. I confidently expected to see Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson appear from the pea-soup fog that poured from O'Reilly's pipe.\n\n\"'I said nothing,' says O'Casey.\" O'Reilly exhaled again. The miasma was thick enough to conceal a hansom cab.\n\n\"Tactful of him,\" I remarked, \"to say nothing.\"\n\n\"He should have kept his mouth shut,\" said O'Reilly. \"Apparently the next thing his wife said was, 'You've gone on the road and you've left me pregnant,' and the daft eejit, quick as a flash, replies, 'And who is this I'm speaking to?'\"\n\n\"Definitely not tactful,\" I observed.\n\n\"So,\" asked O'Reilly, \"if you were advising O'Casey, what would you tell him to say to his wife?\"\n\nIt slipped out before I could help myself. \"Sorry?\"\nMARCH 1998\n\nThe Cat's Meow\n\nOne way of dealing with feline friends\n\nI sucked my lacerated finger. In the fullness of time you'll find out what had caused the trauma. Suffice it to say for the moment, finger notwithstanding, on the day in question O'Reilly and I had finished our house calls, tending to the bedridden, the bewildered, and those too bloody bolshie to come to the surgery.\n\n\"Maggie's next,\" he said. \"I need her advice about the new kitten.\"\n\nI felt the throbbing in my wounded digit and thought unkindly of cats and with some affection of Maggie, spinster of this parish, one of nature's unclaimed treasures, the old duck with, as we say in the mind-healing trade, a bolt loose. Maggie was definitely one stook short of a stack, but she was a gentle soul and O'Reilly had a soft spot for her.\n\n\"I'm sure she'll know what to do.\" He fired up his briar inside the car, the clouds of smoke giving me a fair impression of the last minutes of the poor benighted in one of the humanitarian American states that still favour the gas chamber. I opened the window and as the sulphurous fumes escaped, hauled in a lungful of clean air. I swear rows of barley withered.\n\n\"Haven't seen her for a few weeks,\" he remarked cheerfully, accelerating and paying no attention to a cycling peasant taking refuge in the ditch.\n\nI should tell you that about once a month, if we'd had an easy afternoon making house calls, Doctor O. would drop by to see how Maggie was getting on. The vitamin pills that he'd told her to swallow ten minutes before the start of the headaches two inches above the top of her head had cured that particular problem.\n\nShe rarely needed medical attention. It was simply a mark of the man. He actually cared about his patients, although to have suggested such a thing to his face would have produced a rumble like Vesuvius on an off day and a pallid hue to his nose tip that would have made Greenland's icy mountains look like ebony.\n\nWe arrived at her cottage and left the car. O'Reilly knocked on the door. Maggie answered, smiled, and asked us in.\n\n\"How are you, Maggie?\" he inquired.\n\n\"Grand, Doctor.\"\n\n\"And how's Montgomery?\"\n\nI knew from previous visits that he was referring to Maggie's ginger tomcat. She'd named the animal \"General Montgomery\" in deference to Sir Bernard Law of the same name, victor of El Alamein, the man who Churchill described as being \"In defeat\u2014indefatigable; in victory\u2014insufferable.\"\n\nThe pussy in question appeared from behind a sofa. He rubbed against O'Reilly's leg. Doctor O. bent and tickled the animal's head.\n\n\"He's pleased to see you, Doctor O'Reilly.\"\n\nMaggie's Montgomery looked as though he'd also taken part in the desert triumph of British arms and had been as badly used by the Afrika Korps as a Sherman tank after a debate with one of the Wehrmacht's anti-tank 88s. His left ear was a fragment of cartilage and his right eye scarred and shut. Some contenders who'd had encounters with Joe Louis had similar miens.\n\n\"He's looking well, Maggie,\" O'Reilly said.\n\nI confess I've never been able to find any particular enthusiasm for moggies, particularly\u2014my finger ached\u2014at that moment, but O'Reilly doted on them and his rambling old house was a regular Doctor Barnardo's for waifs and strays of the feline persuasion.\n\n\"I wanted to ask you about that,\" O'Reilly said.\n\n\"What, Doctor?\"\n\n\"I've a new kitten.\"\n\nIndeed he had. A cross between a Siamese and a rabid tiger. If anything moved in the house, like an unsuspecting finger, the kitten would pounce. The damn animal had nailed me this morning and cost me so much blood I suspected I was suffering from anaemia.\n\n\"It claws the furniture,\" Doctor O'Reilly said.\n\nI felt somewhat resentful to be considered part of the furniture. (This was before the days when heads of committees were called \"chairs.\") I also had a clear image of O'Reilly's sofa leaking kapok stuffing stained with my gore.\n\n\"Ah sure that's no problem, Doctor.\" Maggie smiled. \"Montgomery had the same habit. Hang on.\" She trotted off and returned carrying a strange device. \"Get him one of these scratching posts.\"\n\nIt was a cylinder of wood, five inches in diameter, two feet tall, swathed in a strip of old carpet and mounted on a square plywood base.\n\nO'Reilly stared at the device. \"That thing worked for Montgomery?\"\n\nI looked around. General Montgomery cowered under the table, one paw over his tattered ear. He made a whining noise that clearly belied his warlike appellation. His good eye was fixed on the post.\n\n\"Indeed it did, Doctor. The first time he clawed my chair I got this post, didn't I, Montgomery?\"\n\nMontgomery's whining went up two octaves.\n\n\"And you put it by the chair and the wee pussy clawed it instead of the chair?\" O'Reilly was clearly impressed by the simplicity of the solution.\n\nMaggie chortled. \"Not at all, Doctor.\" She looked at the cat and waved the post in his direction. \"I belted him on the head with it.\"\n\nMontgomery fled. And my finger felt much better.\nAPRIL 1998\n\nO'Reilly at the Helm\n\nThings that go bump in the daytime\n\n\"Like the back of my hand,\" O'Reilly remarked as he sat comfortably on the weather side of his sloop, tiller held loosely. \"Been sailing these seas for years.\"\n\nI was tempted to remark that Captain John Smith had made many crossings of the Atlantic before he had a close encounter of the lethal kind with a large lump of solidified water. His tiny navigational oversight did little for the hull of the RMS Titanic or for the reputation of the Belfast shipbuilders who'd constructed the ocean-going leviathan. I comforted myself with the thoughts that O'Reilly's vessel was a tad smaller than the great liner and that icebergs were passing rare in Strangford Lough. Nevertheless I did offer him the chart.\n\n\"Don't be daft,\" he said. \"I don't need that thing.\"\n\nI stowed the results of years of painstaking depth sounding by the survey crews of Her Majesty's cartographers and let myself be lulled by the day.\n\nI confess that as usual I'd agreed with reluctance to crew for the twentieth century's answer to that old Irish seaman, Saint Brendan the Navigator. If you remember, Saint B. had nipped out for a day's boating in a craft constructed of tarred cowhides, taken a wrong turn at St. Kilda, and but for fortuitously running into Newfoundland might have beaten Marco Polo to China by nipping round the back way.\n\nIt did seem that my reluctance had been ill-founded. It was a perfect afternoon. The sun shone from an azure sky. A ten-knot breeze filled O'Reilly's sails and pushed the boat along at a steady five knots. The multitude of islands that dotted the lough were like green jewels in a porcelain sea. God was in his heaven, all was right with the world, O'Reilly was at the helm and, as he'd recently remarked, he knew these seas like the back of his hand. I hoped.\n\n\"Warm,\" he said, inclining his head toward the companionway.\n\nA wink is as good as a nod to a visually challenged equine.\n\n\"Beer?\" I asked.\n\n\"Um,\" he said.\n\n\"Aye aye, Skipper.\" Nautical, I thought, very nautical. I rose and surveyed the lough. Open water for miles. Not a hazard to navigation in sight\u2014except\u2014I noticed a tower close on the lee bow. It was just visible round the corner of the headsail. I'd seen pictures of the seventh wonder of the ancient world, Ptolemy's lighthouse at Alexandria. The local construction in question seemed to be of roughly similar dimensions. It stood out in splendid isolation miles from any other indication of shallows. \"Fingal, there seems to be a marker ahead.\"\n\n\"'Course there bloody well is. It's the light on Danger Reef.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" I'd forgotten that he knew these waters like the dorsal surface of his paw.\n\n\"It's warm!\" he growled.\n\nI knew that when O'Reilly had his mind set on liquid refreshment, those who kept him from his heart's desire ashore could become the recipients of a tongue-lashing. Afloat, keelhauling would probably be the order of the day. The lighthouse seemed to be drawing nearer. It cast a long dark shadow over the surface. Still, he knew these waters... but you already know that.\n\nI slipped below, opened the icebox, and was deafened by a crash like the opening salvo at the away game on the Somme in 1916. I was still travelling at five knots. Apparently the boat wasn't.\n\nAfter I'd disentangled myself from the forward berth and looked with some amazement at the bruise that was rapidly growing on my left shin, I noticed that our gentle heel to starboard had become alarmingly acute. For reasons that I cannot quite explain, a line or two from a poem I'd had to learn at school came into my head:\n\nThe vessel strikes with a shivering shock.\n\nOh, heavens, 'tis the Inchcape rock.\n\nI struggled up the companionway. O'Reilly must have learned the same ode, which, as I recollect, continued:\n\nSir Ralph the Rover tore his hair\n\nAnd cursed himself in his despair.\n\nDoctor O. was giving a pretty fair Sir Ralph impersonation: \"#**@**#ing Danger Reef.\"\n\nWe were hard aground, and O'Reilly's pride, like my shin, was badly bruised. I thought it might be impolitic to inquire whether some local magnetic anomaly had jinxed his retro-manual aid to navigation, and instead sought for words of comfort. Off our bow the lighthouse towered.\n\n\"I see,\" I ventured. \"The lighthouse blocked your view of the shoals.\"\n\nConcern for younger and more sensitive readers prohibits me from printing his reply.\nMAY 1998\n\nO'Reilly Strikes Back\n\nIt was worth the wait\n\nI was back home in the North of Ireland a few summers ago, and I paid a visit to my old mentor, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. I rang the brass front-door bell of his home-cum-surgery. You'll remember that the very first time I'd depressed that particular bell push the door had flown open and a giant of a man had hurled a small supplicant into a rosebush and roared, \"Next time you want me to look at your ankle, wash your bloody feet.\"\n\nThis time I reflexively stepped back. I had no wish to be thumped by a human projectile. You may think I was overreacting. Lightning, it's said, never strikes twice. I wasn't worried about lightning. Those of you who study proverbs, saws, adages, and assorted folk wisdom won't have encountered the gem \"O'Reilly never strikes twice.\" That's because he does. Bear with me and I'll explain.\n\nThe door opened.\n\n\"Good God,\" he said. \"You?\"\n\n\"Me,\" I replied. I wasn't going to claim to be the benevolent deity.\n\n\"Good God.\"\n\n\"I'm not exactly.\"\n\n\"You're not exactly what?\"\n\n\"God.\"\n\n\"Taylor, I was well aware of what you were not when you worked with me.\" He looked me up and down with a gaze as piercing as an oversensitive metal detector in a Canadian airport. \"I see no reason to alter that opinion.\"\n\nNor had O'Reilly changed. Tweed sports jacket that fitted his massive frame only where it touched, pipe ashes on his badly knotted tie, florid cheeks, and, heavens be praised, not a trace of pallor in the tip of his boxer's bent proboscis.\n\n\"Don't stand there with both legs the same length,\" he rumbled. \"Come in.\" He grasped my hand and exerted the kind of pressure that will ultimately cause the San Andreas Fault to let go. I felt a personal tectonic shift of metacarpals and comforted myself with the thought that now my right hand was two inches wide and more than a foot long there could be no doubt that my future as a gynaecologist was assured.\n\n\"How are you, Fingal?\"\n\nHe grunted and made his way into the dining room.\n\nI followed.\n\n\"What time is it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Eleven.\"\n\n\"Not in Moscow.\"\n\n\"Moscow?\"\n\n\"Moscow.\"\n\nPerhaps I'd misjudged him. Perhaps he had changed. Perhaps he was starting to dote.\n\n\"Why Moscow, Fingal?\"\n\n\"Because, you idiot, I never take a drop until the sun's over the yardarm.\"\n\n\"I didn't know Moscow had yardarms.\"\n\nBy the look in his eyes, if chez O'Reilly had been so equipped I'd have been dangling from it. \"It hasn't but it's after noon there. No reason why we shouldn't have a tot here. Sherry?\" He handed me a cut-glass version of a fire bucket. \"Better,\" he said, demolishing half his own whiskey in one swallow and lowering his frame onto a chair. \"Have a pew.\"\n\nI obeyed.\n\n\"Now,\" he said. \"Tell me what you've been up to.\"\n\nI was happy to ramble on about my life in what I thought of as Canada and he kept dismissing as \"the colonies.\" We must have chatted for twenty minutes before I was able to inquire about his doings. For the first time in all the years I'd known O'Reilly I saw a genuine sadness in his eyes.\n\nHe sighed. \"I'm retired. Have been for two years.\"\n\nTo think of medicine without O'Reilly was difficult. The thought of O'Reilly without his practising medicine verged on the incomprehensible.\n\n\"Good God,\" I said.\n\n\"Not exactly.\"\n\n\"Not exactly what?\"\n\n\"God,\" he said, and chuckled.\n\nHe'd not lost his sense of humour. I found myself laughing with him.\n\n\"So what are you up to?\"\n\nHe leaned back in his chair, cocked his head on one side, and said, \"I'm a student.\"\n\n\"Good God!\"\n\n\"Don't start.\"\n\n\"Sorry. It just slipped out. What are you studying?\" I'd forgotten that he was a self-taught classical scholar.\n\nThere was a pride in his voice when he said, \"I'm finishing my second year. Doing a BA in classical literature.\"\n\nI was impressed. \"I don't suppose there are many retired doctors in your faculty?\"\n\nO'Reilly guffawed. \"You're wrong. Remember Sir Gervaise Grant?\"\n\nI had to delve back, but it came to me. Sir Gervaise had, years ago, called O'Reilly \"an underqualified country quack.\" With the connivance of the dean, an old rugby-playing friend, O'Reilly had spoiled the senior gynaecologist's week by arranging for him to receive a pathology report in which appeared the line, \"The specimen of ureter submitted showed no sign of abnormality.\"\n\n\"I do indeed. I had a half-notion you weren't too fond of Sir Gervaise.\"\n\n\"Stuck-up bugger. I got him with the path report.\" O'Reilly gazed happily into the middle distance. \"He's retired and reading classics too. In his first year.\"\n\n\"Good... gracious.\"\n\n\"Mmm,\" said O'Reilly, sipping at his Jameson's. \"I hadn't forgotten what he called me but I don't have to worry about that now.\"\n\n\"Because you're both retired?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head and said with deep sincerity, \"You remember what a class-conscious snob he was?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"I've put him in his box.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"He came up to me all sweetness and light on the first day of term this year. 'Splendid to see you, O'Reilly,' says he. I gave him a cold look. 'Go away,' says I. 'Second-year students never\u2014never\u2014never speak to mere freshmen.'\"\n\nLightning may only strike twice. In top form O'Reilly could strike and go on striking with all the venom of a rattlesnake with grand mal.\n\n\"Good God,\" I said.\n\n\"No,\" said O'Reilly, \"but I outrank Sir Gervaise.\"\nJUNE 1998\n\nA Word to the Wise\n\nO'Reilly waits for a bus\n\nYou may remember that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's method of practising medicine was a trifle unorthodox. But I'm indulging in understatement. Doctor O'Reilly's approach to life, the world, and the entire cosmos was unorthodox\u2014and there was nothing trifling about him. He didn't suffer fools gladly and detested being bested in any verbal joust. He rarely was.\n\nWhen affronted by a lesser mortal, and that definition as far as he was concerned encompassed the rest of the human race, he could use his words with the force of one of King Arthur's boiler-plate-encased knights. I'm sure you've seen them on the cinema screen, happily delivering caresses with a spiked cannonball on a chain to the helmeted dome of an opponent.\n\nOne of O'Reilly's ripostes was less of a rapier thrust than the spoken equivalent of being hit with a mace and trampled by a war-horse simultaneously. The fundamental difference between Good King A.'s round-table mob and O'Reilly was that the former lived by a chivalrous code of honour while O'Reilly belonged to the head-butt, knee-him-in-the-groin, pull-his-lungs-out-through-his-nose school of combat.\n\nHe had to. The citizens of Northern Ireland, and particularly the denizens of Belfast, are no mean contestants when it comes to a bit of the old jocular thrust and parry. The \"Good Book\" says, \"The gentle word turneth away the blow.\" Judging by the number of victims of grievous bodily harm I used to encounter in the ER on Saturday nights after chucking-out time from the pubs, either the Belfast men hadn't appreciated the scriptures or were a bit short in the \"gentle word\" department.\n\nI ask that you try to recall this information while I illustrate how O'Reilly could with one carefully chosen sentence demolish a self-styled humorist who tried to raise a giggle at O'Reilly's expense.\n\nFor reasons that are lost to me I found myself in the Belfast city centre in the company of O'Reilly. We seemed to have walked for miles. He was slightly in the lead and for that I was grateful. I'm small and dislike being jostled by passersby. O'Reilly's progress, in a beeline, parted the throng with all the efficiency of Moses at the Red Sea. Of course both the well-known old Israelite and O'Reilly were highly motivated. Moses had Pharaoh's seventh cavalry hot on his heels. O'Reilly wanted a drink.\n\n\"Get a move on, Taylor.\"\n\nI hurried to keep up.\n\n\"Not far now.\" O'Reilly stopped at a bus stop. A queue of would-be passengers stood waiting to be granted admission to the red omnibus parked at the curb. \"We'll take the bus back to where I left the car.\"\n\nI had mixed feelings. Relief that we wouldn't have to walk back mixed with some minor concerns\u2014the kind of vague worries experienced by the mayor of Hiroshima when he heard the Enola Gay was on its way\u2014about being driven home by a somewhat befuddled O'Reilly.\n\n\"Now?\" I said, hope springing eternal that he might forgo his libation.\n\n\"No, you idiot. After we've had a tot.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, bowing to the inevitable. \"When does the bus go?\"\n\n\"No idea. I'll ask.\" With that he strode to the head of the queue. Line jumping was frowned upon in Belfast. O'Reilly ignored the insubordinate chorus of muttering that arose from the line jumpees, who began to form a scrum around the jumper.\n\n\"My good man,\" he roared at the blue-uniformed bus conductor, \"how long is the next bus?\"\n\nO'Reilly's syntax left a certain amount to be desired. I knew he wished to inquire, \"How long will it be until the departure of the next public-transport vehicle?\"\n\nSo, clearly, did the bus conductor, but he'd been given an opportunity that none of his ilk could ignore: an unpopular line jumper, a potentially appreciative crowd, and an ambiguous question. He grasped the metal pole that ran from the floor to the ceiling of the bus's rear platform, swung slightly outward, grinned, looked out over the waiting mob, and said, scorn dripping from his lips like oil from a cracked crankcase, \"Fifty-two feet. Same as this one.\"\n\nI believe the expression used by sports commentators when a goal has been scored is \"The crowd roared.\" It did.\n\nO'Reilly's nose paled. He let the laughter subside, fixed the conductor with a glare the intensity of one of those laser lances that safe-crackers use to cut through tungsten-carbide-toughened steel, and said, \"Thank you.\"\n\nI was amazed. I'd expected bile laced with sulphuric acid.\n\nHe half-turned away, hesitated, turned back, and said in a deceptively level voice that could be heard all the way to the back of the waiting passengers, \"And will that one have a monkey in a blue uniform swinging round the pole too?\"\nJULY\/AUGUST 1998\n\nDog Days of Winter\n\nThe case of the leg-loving Labrador\n\nNormally I like dogs, but I'm prepared to make exceptions. Let me explain\u2014but first let me give you the background. Did I tell you that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was a keen shot? I found it difficult to approve of his pastime. After all, what had a duck ever done to him? Besides, I often found myself taking call at peculiar hours on my days off\u2014either pre- and post-dawn or before and after dusk\u2014so he could slip away to fire feverishly at his feathered friends.\n\nDucks, it seems, are creatures of habit and fly inland to feed at night and back out to sea during the day. They reverse the process in the gloaming. At these times wildfowlers park themselves on the shoreline, like the heavy flak of occupied Europe during the last global unpleasantness, and blaze away at the unsuspecting avians with all the enthusiasm of a regiment of Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunners at a squadron of Lancaster bombers. The only difference is that the ducks can't shoot back.\n\nI'm giving you this information because his hobby was the reason O'Reilly had another member of his household. One I've neglected to tell you about before. Arthur Guinness wasn't the patriarch of the famous family of Dublin brewers but a large black Labrador dog, O'Reilly's constant companion on his murky missions of mayhem against mild-mannered mallard.\n\nArthur had all the attributes of his breed: gentleness, playfulness, boundless enthusiasm, and, I suspected, a willingness to be trained, if O'Reilly had had the slightest notion of how to teach an animal. He didn't. One word from Fingal and Arthur did exactly as he pleased.\n\nOne thing that pleased him enormously was my trousered leg. No matter where we were, as soon as I hove into view Arthur would greet me with a joyful \"Arf,\" rear up, and clasp me to him. Front paws round my thigh, grinning as only Labradors can, he would bash away at my shin like one of those automatic rivet guns. It was a miracle that I didn't give birth to a litter of Labrador puppies with corduroy coats.\n\nI did say I could make exceptions to my generally pleasant feelings toward the genus Canis.\n\nAnother of Arthur's little pleasures was his pint. It seemed that some years previously he'd accompanied O'Reilly into the Mucky Duck, his usual stop for a glass of revivification after huddling on the chilled foreshore. On that particular post-hunting foray, someone had spilled a glass of bitter on the floor and Arthur had lapped it up with the speed of a commercial vacuum cleaner. From that moment the dog had been hooked.\n\nI apologize for taking so long filling in the background, but bear with me. It's all germane.\n\nI was sitting in the surgery at nine o'clock on a December evening. I wasn't in the best of moods but was in my best suit. I was dressed up because I'd planned to take a certain young nurse out to dinner. I was cast down because O'Reilly had pleaded with me to look after the shop.\n\nIt seemed that the wind and tide conditions were so ideal that he might have the best evening's shooting of his life. To deprive him of the opportunity would have been more cruel than Pharaoh's refusal to let the Israelites set off on a package tour of the Sinai Desert. He promised he'd be back by eight. I hadn't had the heart to refuse his entreaties and I could still see my nurse if he kept his word.\n\nBy nine, having just sewn up a lacerated finger when I might have been gazing over a glass of Beaujolais into a pair of marvellously brown eyes, I hoped that his bloody shotgun had exploded.\n\nIt hadn't.\n\nThe door opened. O'Reilly stuck his head round.\n\n\"I'm back.\"\n\nI grunted.\n\n\"Sorry I'm a bit late.\"\n\n\"Very late.\"\n\n\"Come on, Pat, I had a flat tire.\"\n\nI let a silence hang, the kind that psychology research workers achieve in sensory-deprivation chambers.\n\nHe had the good grace to look sheepish. \"Look. I really am sorry. I came straight home. I didn't even stop for a drop in the Duck.\"\n\nPerhaps it wasn't his fault and his sacrifice of his usual post-wildfowling tot was a measure of his contrition.\n\n\"All right, Fingal.\" I managed a weak smile.\n\n\"Good lad.\" He beamed. \"I'll make it up to you. Come on, I'll buy you a jar.\"\n\nWhy not? I had no other plans for the evening now.\n\n\"Fine.\" I rose and followed O'Reilly into the hall.\n\n\"Arf.\" A muddy Arthur Guinness, who must have accompanied his master, greeted me with enthusiasm.\n\nI watched him eying my brand-new trouser legs and prepared to fend off his amatory advances.\n\n\"Hang on to Arthur, Fingal.\"\n\n\"What? Right.\" O'Reilly grabbed the dog by the collar and the three of us set off for the Duck.\n\nOsbaldiston was behind the bar and what's known in Ireland as \"the usual suspects\" were in their accustomed places.\n\n\"Evening, Doctors,\" mine host remarked. \"The usual?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said O'Reilly and planked himself down at a vacant table. I followed suit and Arthur Guinness tucked himself in by O'Reilly's feet. At least he seemed to have lost interest in my pants.\n\nOsbaldiston waddled over, put a whiskey in front of O'Reilly, a small sherry before me, and set a bowl of best bitter on the floor. Arthur Guinness gave a fair impression of the tattered cartoon character leaving the desert and arriving at the oasis. He was the only living creature that could sink a pint faster than Fingal or who had a similar capacity.\n\nBy my count Arthur had consumed half a gallon before we left. He was only a bit shaky on his pins but his perpetual grin was even more lopsided. I was heartily relieved that his inebriation had definitely dampened his amorous ardour. My new pants were safe.\n\nAt least they were until we stopped and waited to cross the road. Arthur must have mistaken my leg for a lamppost. I could have killed him.\nSEPTEMBER 1998\n\nIn a Pig's Ear\n\nWhat a boar\n\n\"What,\" inquired Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, \"do you know about pigs?\"\n\nI stopped in my tracks. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. We'd had this conversation before, six months previously, when the question had reared its ugly head about the fecundity of the publican Arthur Osbaldiston's sow.\n\n\"Absolutely nothing. Don't you remember?\"\n\n\"Pity.\"\n\n\"I agree. It is a pity you don't remember.\"\n\nHe grimaced. \"No, idiot. It's a pity you don't know anything about pigs.\"\n\n\"Why is it a pity, for God's sake?\" I was feeling a tad exasperated.\n\n\"Because,\" he said, pointing vaguely across the field we were crossing, \"there's one coming.\"\n\nI glanced over my shoulder. He was right.\n\nI should tell you that we were making a house call. One of his patients, Dermot Kennedy by name, lived on a small farm on the outskirts of the village. The lane was so rutted that O'Reilly had simply abandoned the car, opened a five-barred gate, and announced, \"We'll take a shortcut through the fields.\" And so we did.\n\nThe grass was knee-deep, dew-bespangled, and absolutely perfect for ensuring that my remaining pair of trousers was sodden. (My other pair was at the dry cleaner's after O'Reilly's alcoholic Labrador, Arthur Guinness, had mistaken me for a lamppost.) The joys, I thought, of rural practice.\n\nAnd it seemed that those joys were to be multiplied.\n\n\"It's coming this way,\" O'Reilly muttered, lengthening his stride.\n\nI chanced another look. I wasn't even sure that the brute in question was a pig. It seemed to me to be about the size of a well-nourished hippopotamus, moved with the same rolling gait, and was indeed heading in our direction. It was a healthy pink colour, except for a pair of very red and rather malevolent-looking eyes, and hippopotami were exceeding rare in the fields of Ulster.\n\n\"It is a pig,\" I said, more to myself.\n\n\"Brilliant. I didn't realize you were an experienced zoologist.\" O'Reilly's walk changed to a canter and I modified my steps to match his, wondering what all the unseemly hurry was about.\n\n\"I read somewhere that domesticated boars can turn ugly,\" he said. He seemed rather short of breath.\n\nI chanced another glance behind, forgetting that such errors have been known to cost Olympic sprinters the gold medal. Our porcine pursuer had no distance to go to live up to O'Reilly's description if my mentor had been alluding to physical appearance. It also had narrowed the gap between two perspiring physicians and itself.\n\n\"Ugly?\" I asked.\n\n\"Right.\" Puff. \"Bloody big teeth.\" O'Reilly's canter moved through the gears to a fully developed gallop.\n\nHe was right about boars' teeth and, more to the point, O'Reilly was opening a respectable distance between me and his rapidly departing back. It dawned on me that if the boar astern had any intentions of using its \"bloody big teeth\" on the intruders in its territory it would settle for the closest to hand\u2014and that was me.\n\nI've heard that a small man, in the heat of adrenaline-driven action, can single-handedly lift an overturned motorcar. As I passed O'Reilly I was covering the turf at a rate that would have beaten Roger Bannister to the four-minute mile. The boar's hoofbeats drew nearer. My only consolation was that O'Reilly was a big man and it would take the animal some time to devour him. I imagine early Christians felt much the same about plumper members of their groups when the lions entered the Circus Maximus.\n\nI was even luckier than a skinny Christian. I had a way out. I was drawing nearer to the far side of the field. I went over the gate like a steeplechaser at the Grand National and nearly collided with a man who stood in the farmyard. I just had time to notice that the onlooker wore a flat tweed cap on his head and a bemused grin, confused by a ferocious squint on his face.\n\nThe quiet of the afternoon was broken only by my heavy breathing and a crashing, rending noise as O'Reilly burst through the blackthorn hedge like a Sherman tank in the Bocage country of Normandy.\n\nI watched as he took several deep breaths, examined the rents in his jacket, and made an heroic effort to regain his dignity. He stumped over to the cloth-capped stranger. Despite his recent exertions, O'Reilly's nose tip was ivory. \"Dermot Kennedy,\" O'Reilly bellowed, \"what the hell is so funny?\"\n\nMister Kennedy was unable to answer. He was doubled over and laughing like a drain.\n\n\"Jasus, Kennedy.\" I thought O'Reilly was going to burst. \"Jasus, Kennedy, you've a man-eating boar in that field. We've just escaped by the skin of our teeth. How in the name of the wee man can you laugh?\"\n\nMister Kennedy straightened up, gathered himself, and said, \"She's not a boar. That's Gertrude, the kids' pet sow. She just wanted her snout scratched.\"\n\nI made a quick preemptive strike. \"I told you, Fingal. I don't know anything about pigs.\"\nOCTOBER 1998\n\nArthur and the General\n\n\"I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree\"\n\n\"Quick, Pat,\" said O'Reilly. \"Take Arthur Guinness inside the house.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked, looking at O'Reilly's black Labrador, who was making a peculiar ululation and staring intently upward into the boughs of the big sycamore tree that grew at the bottom of O'Reilly's back garden.\n\n\"Don't ask, just do it like a good lad. Maggie's coming.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, reaching for Arthur's collar and wondering why O'Reilly wouldn't want Maggie MacCorkle, she of the supracranial headaches, to see his dog. \"Right.\" I'd been impressed as a child when shown a picture of a statue of the Greek mythological figure Laco\u00f6n wrestling with two enormous snakes. I achieved a deeper understanding of the old boy's difficulties when I tried to persuade Arthur Guinness to go where he did not wish. Little boys may be made of \"snaps and snails and puppy dogs' tails,\" but adolescent Labradors are constructed from high-tensile steel springs. I pulled in the general direction of the back door to O'Reilly's house. Arthur dug in his heels, cranked up the volume of his yodelling, and stared straight up.\n\nMy gaze followed his and I wondered what up the tree had captured the dog's undivided attention. There was something just visible in a fork of a high branch. The something was orange-coloured and bore a striking resemblance to\u2014Maggie's ginger tomcat, General Montgomery.\n\nAll was revealed unto me. With the exception of O'Reilly's furniture-clawing kitten, all cats were anathema to Arthur G. It was almost certainly his fault that General Montgomery was up the tree, and that would explain why O'Reilly wanted the dog out of sight when Maggie arrived.\n\nThe least I could do was accommodate my mentor. Besides, I wanted to see what would happen when Maggie discovered the whereabouts of her perpendicularly placed pussycat.\n\n\"Come on, Guinness.\" By dint of superhuman effort I managed to haul the black dog along the path and shove him inside the house. He wasn't happy to be incarcerated and expressed his dissatisfaction by hurling himself against the closed door.\n\nI ignored the dog and headed back. My return to the scene of the action coincided with Maggie's arrival. Now that Guinness was offstage, a semblance of quiet had returned, punctuated only by an intermittent yowling from above.\n\n\"Evening, Maggie,\" I heard O'Reilly say.\n\n\"Evening, Doctor,\" Maggie replied, craning her neck and staring upward. \"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is that you, General? Is that where you are? I've been looking for you. How did you ever get up there?\"\n\nI saw O'Reilly blush and was convinced that my original supposition that the General had been chased up the tree by Arthur Guinness was correct. Fortunately the cat didn't speak English and couldn't give O'Reilly away.\n\n\"Will you not come down now?\" Maggie said and made \"push-wushing\" noises. O'Reilly said nothing and the General gave a fair impression of an air-raid siren. He budged not an inch. In both his colour and his lack of locomotion he could have passed for an Ulster Orangeman whose motto is \"Not an Inch.\"\n\n\"What'll we do, Doctor?\" Maggie implored.\n\nI saw what was coming next and launched a preemptive strike. \"It's a pity about my acrophobia, Maggie,\" I said gravely, adding both for her benefit and for O'Reilly's, \"I've a terrible fear of high places.\"\n\nI could see by the pallor creeping into O'Reilly's nose tip that I'd been right again. He had been going to suggest that I climb the tree. It was his dog that had put the cat there. As far as I was concerned, natural justice demanded that O'Reilly get it down.\n\nGeneral Montgomery yowled. Maggie sniffed. I waited.\n\n\"All right now, Maggie.\" O'Reilly shrugged off his jacket and handed it to me. \"Don't you fret.\" He hauled himself onto the lowest bough. His upward progress reminded me of a nature film I'd once seen of a three-toed sloth as it made its hesitant, ponderous way through the jungle. All O'Reilly needed was a bit more hair.\n\nHis nose drew level with the General's perch. I heard the cat spit and O'Reilly's expletive as claws raked his schnozzle. Perhaps my moving well away from the base of the tree reflected a degree of cowardice but I had no desire to be underneath if O'Reilly lost his hold.\n\nI was impressed by his skilful descent, the General tucked like a rugby ball under one arm. He reached the ground, offered the cat to Maggie, shot me a look of utter disdain, and rubbed the back of his hand over his bloody nose. \"Here you are, Maggie. Now don't let General Montgomery go up any more trees.\"\n\n\"I won't, Doctor.\"\n\nI'm sure Maggie meant it. It was a pity that at that moment Mrs. Kincaid opened the back door to yell, \"There's a phone call for you, Doctor Taylor.\"\n\nMy last picture as I went inside to take the call was of a happy Arthur Guinness at the tree's foot and the tweed-covered backside of O'Reilly as he ascended on his second mission of mercy.\nNOVEMBER 1998\n\nSomething Happened\n\nArthur Guinness has a run-in with the law\n\nI'd been away from the practice for a week and had returned just in time to help O'Reilly with a busy morning's surgery. I didn't have the opportunity to ask him to bring me up to date on the doings in the village of Ballybucklebo. I hoped he'd fill me in over lunch, but after the last patient of the morning departed, O'Reilly wanted to make a house call, on foot, to a nearby cottage. I decided to accompany him.\n\nIt was a glorious June mid-morning, a grand day for a walk, and after the bustle of Belfast I was enjoying the relative tranquillity of Ballybucklebo's only street. As we walked I surmised that it was unlikely that gold had been found in Jimmy Ferguson's manure heap or that Maggie MacCorkle had won the Miss Ireland beauty pageant during my absence. Nothing much ever happened in the place. I knew that.\n\nAs usual, I was wrong.\n\n\"Jasus,\" said O'Reilly, staring straight ahead.\n\nMy gaze followed his and I saw approaching us the portly figure of Police Constable Michael McGillicuddy, Royal Ulster Constabulary, sole uniformed upholder of Lex Britannicus in the village and the surrounding townlands.\n\nI knew that O'Reilly's opinion of PC McGillicuddy, RUC, was rather to the south of contempt. As I remembered, there was something about one of Lord Fitzgurgle's pheasants that had found its way into the backseat of O'Reilly's car\u2014all unknown to his lordship or his gamekeeper\u2014and a debate between the chubby arm of the law and the local representative of Hygeiea and Panacea surrounding the ownership of that deceased member of the family Phaisanus versicolour.\n\nMy musing was interrupted by O'Reilly muttering, \"Bloody dog.\"\n\nI assumed he was referring to Arthur Guinness, but before I had time to inquire, O'Reilly stopped walking and I was forced to follow suit. Our progress was blocked by PC M. McG., RUC.\n\n\"Morning, Doctors.\"\n\n\"Morning, Officer,\" I replied. It has always struck me as sensible to keep on the good sides of policemen, parking wardens, gamekeepers, water bailiffs, and such. I didn't expect O'Reilly to do more than grunt, given his known opinion of the constable in particular and the rest of the human race in general. As you well know, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly treated few people with respect, let alone deference.\n\nI imagine Catherine the Great, or \"Big Katy\" as she would have been called in Northern Ireland, had a similar approach to the citizens of Mother Russia. \"Rodina,\" I believe, is the correct term in Russian for the place\u2014but you probably didn't want to know that. Anyway, Big Katy would condescend to peasant and archduke alike. They in turn would grovel to her.\n\nShe had a bit of an edge over O'Reilly. Although almost every citizen of Ballybucklebo and its environs did metaphorically tug their forelocks to their physician, he didn't have the right to order them shot if they did not. And I know that in his heart he believed he should have that prerogative.\n\nIt was with those thoughts running through my mind that I watched in amazement as he smiled, inclined his head, touched the peak of his cap with the fingers of his right hand, wished Constable McGillicuddy a very good morning, and inquired about his health.\n\n\"I'm grand, Doctor,\" replied the constable. \"Grand altogether.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said O'Reilly. \"Very good. Well. Must be off. Duty calls.\" He sidled past McGillicuddy and I followed. What on earth could have happened to reduce O'Reilly to such a pacific state?\n\n\"Bloody dog,\" he grunted as he strode along.\n\n\"Arthur?\"\n\n\"Arthur.\"\n\n\"More cats in trees?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head. \"Worse.\" He stopped dead. I halted. Fingal turned to face me. \"I had a burglar.\"\n\n\"My God.\" Something had happened in my absence.\n\n\"Indeed. Some misbegotten nitwit broke into my place. Arthur's meant to be a watchdog.\" O'Reilly snorted. \"Bloody animal must have nearly beaten the intruder to death with his tail. Flaming dog didn't even bark, never mind tear the man's throat out.\"\n\nI had no difficulty believing that. Arthur Guinness, apart from an unrequited passion for my trouser leg, was the gentlest dog in Ireland.\n\n\"What was taken?\" I asked.\n\nO'Reilly shrugged. \"Couple of bottles of whiskey. Not much, but I thought I should at least make our local Sherlock Holmes earn his wages, so I telephoned him.\"\n\nAha, I thought, and McGillicuddy had apprehended the villain and recovered O'Reilly's whiskey. That would explain his recent civility.\n\n\"Bloody dog,\" he said.\n\n\"Why?\" I asked. \"Arthur's a retriever, not a Rottweiler. You can hardly blame him for not going for the burglar.\"\n\n\"Burglar? Burglar?\" O'Reilly shook his head. \"I would forgive him that, but just now you saw me being nice to McGillicuddy.\"\n\n\"Because he got your whiskey back.\"\n\n\"I wish,\" said O'Reilly. \"I have to be nice to the constable because, after neglecting to deal with my burglar, do you know what was the first thing Arthur-bloody-Guinness did when McGillicuddy arrived?\"\n\nI shook my head and saw O'Reilly's brows knit and his nose tip pale. \"Arthur-bloody-Guinness bit McGillicuddy.\"\n\nI had difficulty stifling a laugh, which, if the look on O'Reilly's face was anything to go by, would have been as appropriate as a snigger at a funeral.\n\nTo my surprise O'Reilly himself was starting to smile. \"Still,\" he said, turning to stare at the constable's retreating back, \"old Arthur G. does have impeccable taste.\"\nDECEMBER 1998\n\nHell on Wheels\n\nDonal Donnelly and his venerable velocipede\n\nI was walking along the street on my way to make a house call. O'Reilly was taking morning surgery. My forward progress was blocked by Donal Donnelly, who clearly wanted my opinion. \"It's a beauty, isn't it, Doctor Taylor, sir?\" he asked.\n\nYou'll recall Donal, a gangly youth who occasionally worked as an itinerant barman at Lord Fitzgurgle's soirees. You can't place him? Not surprising, really. Donal had once been described by Kinky\u2014O'Reilly's housekeeper\u2014as \"an unpredisposing sort of a kind of a man.\" He was. Utterly unpredisposing. There's no reason why you should remember him.\n\nCast your mind back to the time Donal stalled his father's tractor at the village's only traffic light. That was when O'Reilly, stuck behind as the light kept changing colours, left his car, walked up to the tractor, and asked a terrified Donal if he was waiting for a particular shade of green.\n\nGot him now? Right. Twenty-three, four foot ten, ninety-one pounds, ginger hair, a squint, buck teeth that were the envy of the local hares, and a tendency to acneiform eruptions.\n\nYou're probably wondering why I'm spending so long getting you up to speed on the physical characteristics of Donal Donnelly. You may even have forgotten his opening remarks: \"It's a beauty, isn't it, Doctor Taylor, sir?\"\n\nThe \"it\" in question was a Raleigh bicycle. Donal stood beside it holding on to the handlebars, beaming at the elderly velocipede with all the pride of a new mother looking into her pram.\n\n\"Indeed, Donal.\" The white lie was invented for these situations. \"Beauty\" and Donal's 'cycle could only occupy the same sentence when ice skates are sold in Hades, but Donal was a gentle soul and if he wanted me to admire his new possession I saw no reason not to.\n\nI gazed at the machine. Once it had been black. There were flakes of enamel scattered over the uniform patina of rust that covered the frame. It was the woman's model. Men's bikes had a crossbar that ran horizontally from the front wheel-forks to the saddle post. On the woman's model, the bars dipped from the fork to the bit where the pedals are attached. The arrangement was a hangover from the time women wore voluminous skirts. Real men\u2014the non-quiche-eating types\u2014wouldn't have been caught dead on a woman's bike.\n\n\"It only cost me thirty bob,\" Donal said.\n\n\"You stole it.\" I couldn't bring myself to tell Donal that he might have made a reasonable bargain if the previous owner had paid him thirty shillings to take the thing away.\n\n\"Just you wait until I've fixed her up a bit, Doctor.\" He pushed the lever that should have activated the handlebar-mounted bell. There was no \"ting,\" just a rusty grinding noise. \"Just you wait.\"\n\n\"I'll do that,\" I said, glancing at my watch, \"but I'd best be getting on now, Donal.\"\n\nHe touched the peak of his cloth cap and we parted. I confess I thought little of Donal Donnelly and his bike for several months.\n\n* * *\n\nThe next time I saw the bike it was propped against the side of O'Reilly's house. I didn't recognize it at first as Donal's. He had indeed \"fixed it up a bit.\" The rust had been sandpapered away and the frame painted a screaming primrose yellow. A chrome-plated bell was fixed to the right handlebar. The mudguards' lime green shone in the morning sunlight. Every spoke had been tinted scarlet. This, it must be remembered, was before LSD and the psychedelic movement. I was so engrossed I didn't notice Donal and O'Reilly approaching.\n\n\"Morning, Doctor Taylor.\" I turned and saw Donal grinning from ear to ear. \"Told you I'd fix her up.\" He laid one hand on the saddle. \"And Doctor O'Reilly says I can keep her.\" The relief in his voice was palpable. \"That's right, isn't it, sir?\"\n\n\"Indeed it is, Donal.\" I could see O'Reilly was struggling to keep a straight face.\n\n\"That's good,\" I mumbled, wondering what that last remark meant. I watched Donal cycle away with all the dignity of the maharajah of Ponderistan in his state barouche, then turned to O'Reilly, who was now laughing openly.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" he said, \"poor Donal.\" A frown crossed O'Reilly's craggy visage. \"That bloody man the Reverend McWheezle should have known better.\"\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"Donal's getting married.\"\n\n\"Never. Who to?\"\n\n\"Maggie MacCorkle's niece, Martha, and the pair of them went to McWheezle for a bit of a rehearsal.\"\n\nI was having some difficulty understanding what this had to do with Donal keeping his bicycle.\n\nO'Reilly explained. \"They got to the bit, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow.' Donal asks what 'endow' means. McWheezle tells him Martha gets all Donal's possessions.\"\n\n\"He didn't.\"\n\n\"He did, and poor old Donal's been stewing for a week about whether to give up Martha or his bike.\"\n\n\"And that's why you told him he could keep the bike.\"\n\n\"It is,\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"But how could you outrank McWheezle on a theological question?\"\n\n\"Easy,\" he said, pulling out his briar. \"I told Donal that endowments were made after a man dies. Martha gets the bike in Donal's will.\"\n\nI had to laugh. \"You're a crafty old devil, Fingal. The Wily O'Reilly.\"\n\n\"I am,\" he said, \"and you can buy me a pint.\"\nJANUARY 1999\n\nWhat's in a Name?\n\nO'Reilly checks in\n\nSome ethnic expressions suffer in the translation and yet if left untranslated are well understood. Take the Yiddish \"chutzpa.\" There's no English equivalent nor does there need to be. I know I need not expound further, at least to those of you who know my old mentor, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, when I tell you that he had \"a good conceit of himself.\" And you know he didn't \"suffer fools gladly.\"\n\nThis combination could lead to misunderstandings, pallor of the O'Reilly schnozzle, and as much heat generated as in one of those bizarre chemistry experiments we were forced to conduct as first-year medical students.\n\nI was present when O'Reilly's unwillingness to condescend to lesser mortals led to such an inevitable outcome. To add spice, it was one of those rare situations when O'Reilly was bested in a verbal joust. The reagents in the reaction were Fingal Flahertie and a desk clerk at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin. The catalyst was a suitcase.\n\nIt had been a present to O'Reilly from Lord Fitzgurgle. Fingal was inordinately proud of the buffed pigskin and his name, Doctor F. F. O'Reilly, inscribed on a small brass plaque.\n\nHow the clerk and O'Reilly came into contact requires a few words of explanation. The occasion was one of those annual exercises of legalized thuggery. I refer of course to the sport of rugby football. According to tradition, the game was invented at the English school Rugby, when during a soccer game one young lad picked up the ball and ran with it. I favour an earlier explanation that the modern game is a watered-down version of a contest invented by the Visigoths, who used a human head for a ball.\n\nO'Reilly had been a keen player in his youth. (I believe that if gladiatorial contests had been legal in his salad days he would have taken an active role. He was, as you'll recall, a former boxing champion of Her Majesty's Royal Navy.) He always went to Dublin to cheer on the Irish rugby team. And this was the second time he'd asked me to come as his guest.\n\n\"It'll be a grand trip,\" he announced. \"And we'll stay at the Gresham again.\"\n\n\"Terrific.\" I almost meant it. The internationally recognized luxury of the Gresham Hotel would almost make up for being driven to Dublin by O'Reilly. I won't bore you with an account of the journey. I will take you directly to the Gresham.\n\nO'Reilly strode up the front steps with the force of the Bolshevik Army at the St. Petersburg Winter Palace. He brushed aside the efforts of the uniformed doorman to carry the pigskin portmanteau. \"Jasus, Gallagher. You know I always carry my own luggage.\"\n\nThe doorman tugged at his forelock. \"Sorry, Doctor, sir. I didn't recognize you for a minute.\"\n\n\"You what? Haven't I been coming here for twenty years now?\"\n\n\"Sorry, sir.\"\n\nO'Reilly grunted. \"Come on, Taylor. I want to get us registered and go for a jar.\" He shouldered his way through the crowd in the lobby. \"This won't take long. All the staff know me here.\"\n\nI refrained from remarking that that had not been initially obvious from the way the doorman had behaved, and followed in O'Reilly's footsteps.\n\nHe halted at the registration desk, set his case on the plushly carpeted floor, and leant forward, arms folded on the counter.\n\nThe desk clerk was filing papers in pigeonholes behind the counter. As was the custom in those days, he wore a full morning suit, tail coat and pinstripes.\n\nI heard a low rumbling coming from O'Reilly and knew how much he disliked being ignored.\n\n\"Oi,\" he said.\n\nEither he was not overheard or the clerk chose to overlook the less than polite remark.\n\n\"OI!\"\n\nThe clerk half-turned, looked over a pair of spectacles at O'Reilly, and returned to his filing.\n\nO'Reilly's nose tip paled. I knew he was going to go ballistic. (As an aside, if you believe you've found an anachronism because the expression \"going ballistic\" belongs to the '90s, not the '60s, let me remind you that the original ballista, a Roman artillery piece, predated even O'Reilly by the odd millennium.) He lifted a hand and smashed it down on a bell that adorned the counter. Quasimodo would have been proud of the clangour.\n\n\"OI, YOU!\"\n\nThe clerk turned. \"Is sir addressing me?\"\n\n\"Sir bloody well is. I want to register.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\" The clerk pulled a ledger along the countertop.\n\n\"What name, sir?\"\n\n\"Jasus, not you too,\" said O'Reilly. \"How many years have I been coming here?\"\n\n\"I haven't the faintest idea, sir. I started working here two weeks ago.\" The clerk sniffed. \"Now. What name, sir?\"\n\n\"Use your eyes, you thick bastard.\" O'Reilly pointed at his suitcase. \"My name's on the case.\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir.\" The clerk scrutinized the luggage. \"I see,\" he said. \"Silly of me.\"\n\n\"I should think so,\" said O'Reilly, calming a little, at least until the clerk remarked in unctuous tones, \"And how long will Mister Genuine Pigskin be staying with us?\"\nFEBRUARY 1999\n\nFill 'er Up\n\nDonal Donnelly makes a fuel of O'Reilly\n\nWhen I told you about Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly and the desk clerk at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, I remarked that I wouldn't weary you with an account of our drive there from Belfast. There was no promise, overt or implied, not to tell you about our drive back.\n\nMotorcars were to O'Reilly as explosive-laden bombers were to kamikaze pilots. The only difference between the \"Divine Wind\" fliers in their Mitsubishis and O'Reilly in his long-nosed Rover car was that he confidently expected to return from each mission. In our small village and the environs all the locals were well aware of his propensities and were as adept at taking avoiding action as U.S. warships in Leyte Gulf. Well, most U.S. warships.\n\nLike some of the smaller aircraft carriers in the Philippines, Donal Donnelly was an exception. In his last vehicular encounter with Fingal Flahertie\u2014when Donal's tractor had stalled at a red light\u2014the unfortunate youth had been the subject of a tongue-lashing of ferocious intensity.\n\nThis fact is germane to the rest of the story. I hadn't realized at the time that Donal could harbour a grudge and, like the mills of God, he ground slowly, but he ground exceeding small. I probably would never have known if O'Reilly hadn't told me the story on the drive back from Dublin.\n\nWe left the Gresham on Sunday morning. Ireland had beaten England the day before and we'd celebrated with some of Fingal's old classmates from Trinity College. I had a very sore head, O'Reilly looked as if he might bleed to death from his eyeballs, and I had a distinct impression I'd be better to go home by train.\n\nCertain mystic sects believe the gods are especially protective of small children and idiots. The same deities must also have held a watching brief for O'Reilly when he was behind the wheel\u2014and I leave it to you to decide under which category. If, as O'Reilly's passenger, I qualified for attention from the deities, it was definitely because I was an idiot. There was a perfectly good train service from Dublin to the North of Ireland.\n\n\"Hop in,\" he said, climbing into the driver's seat. \"Great day.\"\n\nAs I boarded I couldn't help but agree. It was one of those crisp February mornings\u2014sun bright, sky eggshell-blue, clouds puffy and white\u2014that God makes in Ireland to ensure that never more than half the population can bring themselves to emigrate.\n\n\"Right,\" said O'Reilly, grinding the Rover into gear and pulling away from the curb in a series of jerks that would have made a musclebound kangaroo proud, \"won't take us long to get home.\"\n\n\"Good.\" I crossed my fingers and hunched down in my seat.\n\nWe managed to leave the city of Dublin more or less intact. I didn't count the dray horse that was last seen disappearing along O'Connell Street at Mach 0.5 or the two dustbins that were bowled over. I was heartily relieved when the Rover hurtled along the country roads, if for no other reason than there were fewer impediments to forward progress.\n\n\"We'll be across the border in no time,\" said O'Reilly, swerving to avoid a chicken.\n\nI glanced at the dashboard instruments. The speedometer read seventy miles per hour and\u2014oops\u2014the petrol gauge read empty.\n\n\"Er, Fingal. I think we're going to run out of petrol.\" I hoped he'd take my word for it and not feel constrained to take his eyes off the road.\n\nHe glanced down at the gauge. The car wobbled across the white line and back to O'Reilly's side, missing a gypsy caravan by the width of a coat of paint.\n\n\"You're right,\" he said. \"We'll stop at the next petrol pump.\"\n\nI was surprised. O'Reilly always mistrusted instruments that didn't show him what he wanted to see. And petrol was at that time considerably cheaper in the North of our divided country.\n\n\"You believe the gauge?\" I asked.\n\nHe laughed like a drain. \"I do now,\" he said, \"ever since that Donal Donnelly gave me my come-uppance.\"\n\n\"What\u2014?\" I was momentarily interrupted as the car crested a small rise and for several seconds was airborne. The crash of our yielding to Earth's gravitational field muffled O'Reilly's chuckles, then he said, \"A while back there I was very interested in the petrol consumption of this motorcar.\"\n\n\"I remember.\" I did indeed. He'd been extremely boring on the subject and then inexplicably had lost interest.\n\n\"Do you recall the week I thought I was going to get a hundred miles to the gallon?\"\n\n\"Watch the sheep, Fingal.\"\n\nI swear he drove the only vehicle that could go from seventy to zero in less than a microsecond. The halted Rover oscillated on its springs while two black-faced ewes ambled across the road. The gears ground and the Rover continued on its way.\n\n\"Can you imagine I really thought this car would do a hundred miles on one gallon of petrol?\" O'Reilly snorted. \"Boy, was I the right eejit.\"\n\nI was relieved that we were travelling rather more sedately. I was also surprised that Fingal would admit to having been wrong\u2014and smile about it.\n\n\"I'd spent all week telling the lads at the Mucky Duck I'd got her up to forty, then fifty. They started taking bets when I'd hit seventy.\"\n\nIn those days, thirty miles to the gallon was pretty impressive. \"So you're telling me the instruments were wrong?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not at all. They were spot on. I might have believed I'd made the hundred if I hadn't caught him.\"\n\nAre you a bit lost? Don't worry. I was often confused and confounded by O'Reilly.\n\n\"Him?\" I inquired as O'Reilly pulled the car off the road beside a single petrol pump.\n\n\"Him,\" he said. \"Donal Donnelly.\"\n\n\"Right,\" I agreed, happy that the car had stopped. I watched a red-faced gentleman, presumably the owner of the pump, amble toward our car.\n\n\"Aye,\" said O'Reilly, rolling down the window. \"Donal had heard about the whole business. Every night he'd been slipping into my garage, and do you know what he'd done?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\nO'Reilly nodded at the pump's proprietor. \"Fill her up, please.\" He turned back to me. \"Just like Donal. Just to make a goat of me, Donal Donnelly had been topping up my petrol tank.\"\nMARCH 1999\n\nA Curious Affair\n\nThings that go \"yeeow\" in the night\n\n\"Riven\" is a word that has slipped from common usage, but I can't think of a better one to describe the effects of the shriek that tore through the fabric of the early morning hours chez O'Reilly. Believe me, the night was riven\u2014positively riven\u2014by a caterwauling like the death throes of a banshee.\n\nI sat up in bed. I didn't have goose bumps; I had ostrich wens. My erector pilae were in spasm. I silently begged the Deity to ensure that whatever was making the noise would find the slumbering O'Reilly in his bedroom on the floor below before it came after me. I hauled the blankets up round my chin and listened.\n\n\"Thumpity-thump\" came from below, drowning the chattering of my teeth. That would be O'Reilly's feet hitting the floor.\n\n\"Stop making that **#**#@!* noise!\"\n\nThree miles offshore the lighthouse keepers must have heard O'Reilly's dulcet tones.\n\nThe creature ignored his blandishments and went up and down the scale like an air-raid siren with operatic pretensions.\n\nJudging by the clumping on the stairs, O'Reilly was heading down.\n\n\"Shut up!\" O'Reilly's command made the glasses on my nightstand rattle. The eldritch howling ceased as if the sound waves had been sliced with a razor. The front door opened and was slammed. I heard O'Reilly climbing the stairs muttering, \"Bloody cat.\"\n\nWhen O'Reilly appeared for breakfast, my initial thought was to avoid any mention of the mysterious events of the earlier part of the morning. I'd slept badly and was not in the mood for conversation.\n\n\"Did you hear all that row?\" he asked, helping himself to a pair of Mrs. Kincaid's poached kippers from a steamer on the sideboard.\n\nI could imagine the mayor of Hiroshima asking a passing citizen, \"Did you notice that bang?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" I said, waiting for O'Reilly to be seated at the table. \"Most curious.\" I hoped my uninterested tone would stifle any further discussion. \"Some tea?\"\n\nHe ignored my offer to pour. \"Curiosity, my boy. Curiosity. You've said it.\" His speech was muffled by a mouthful of kipper.\n\n\"Actually, I said, 'Most curious,' but it's probably the same thing.\"\n\n\"It's not,\" he said. \"'Most curious' describes your appreciation of the events. 'Curiosity' is the property that was responsible for the row.\"\n\n\"Curiouser and curiouser,\" I remarked.\n\n\"Do not,\" he said, \"try to confuse matters by quoting Lewis Carroll. The issue is one of curiosity.\"\n\n\"Killed the cat, I believe.\" I hoped that might put an end to the discussion. I was unprepared for the effects of that remark.\n\nHe guffawed\u2014loudly\u2014almost choked on a kipper bone, and slapped himself on the chest. \"Absolutely right. It damn nearly did.\"\n\nI remembered his \"bloody cat\" remark.\n\n\"This morning?\" I inquired.\n\n\"Umm,\" he said, holding out his teacup. \"Pour.\"\n\nI did as I was told. \"Lady Macbeth couldn't contain hers.\" He shovelledsugar into his cup.\n\nYou may remember an episode with a kitten that had savaged my finger. She'd grown into a massive moggie and rejoiced in the name of Lady Macbeth. It sounded as though something untoward had happened to my feline nemesis. \"Go on,\" I said.\n\n\"Piqued your curiosity, have I?\"\n\nI let the remark pass, although the frustrating thing was that he had.\n\n\"Thought so.\" O'Reilly reached for the milk jug. \"Well, the old curiosity piqued Lady Macbeth last night. Mrs. Kincaid must have set a couple of mouse traps.\"\n\nMouse traps. Little wooden devices with bait and a spring-loaded bar. Mouse took the bait, dislodged a lock, and released the bar, which snapped over with enough force to break the mouse's neck.\n\n\"Lady MacB must have decided to investigate.\" He poured milk into his tea. \"Stupid animal had one stuck on the end of her nose.\"\n\nDespite my dislike of the beast I couldn't help feeling a certain sympathy for her plight.\n\n\"No real harm done, in spite of the row she was making,\" said O'Reilly. \"More a matter of hurt pride.\" He lifted a forkful of kipper. \"She can have the leftover kippers for her breakfast. That'll cheer her up.\" He masticated slowly and swallowed. \"It might teach her a lesson. Like the one I taught Donal Donnelly.\"\n\n\"Donal?\"\n\n\"Um. He was most curious.\"\n\nI confess so was I, until O'Reilly glanced at his watch and said, \"Come on. Eat up. We're going to be late for morning surgery. I'll tell you that story at lunchtime.\"\n\nTo be continued.\nAPRIL 1999\n\nCuriouser and Curiouser\n\nThings that go \"aargh\" in the day\n\n\"I'll tell you that story at lunchtime.\" That had been O'Reilly's parting remark as we finished our breakfasts and headed off to our morning tasks. He'd gone to visit Lord Fitzgurgle to make comforting noises about his lordship's gout\u2014and probably spend the rest of the morning sampling the baronial sherry.\n\nI'd not had much time to wonder about the story that was meant to be forthcoming at lunchtime. The question of Donal Donnelly's curiosity had been pushed aside by the demands of a busy morning.\n\nI ushered Maggie MacCorkle, my last patient, into the surgery. She'd come in for a fresh supply of the vitamin pills that, if taken ten minutes before the onset, prevented the recurrence of headaches two inches above the crown of her head.\n\nI reached into the cubbyhole of the rolltop desk where O'Reilly kept his free samples and produced the magic placebo.\n\n\"Ah, thanks, Doctor,\" said Maggie, stuffing the bottle into her handbag.\n\nI hoped she was going to leave, as it was now half an hour past lunchtime, but she was anxious to tell me about the doings of her cat, General Montgomery.\n\nI listened\u2014I hope patiently. Perhaps it was my empty stomach's quite believable impression of those boiling mud pits in New Zealand that prompted her to remark, \"Ah sure but I've taken up enough of your time, Doctor sir.\"\n\n\"That's all right, Maggie.\" I held the door, waiting for her to leave. \"Glad to hear the General's still bright as a bee.\"\n\nShe sniffed. \"He is that\u2014and it's more than I can say for that buck-eejit Donal.\"\n\nDonal Donnelly, you'll remember\u2014he of the psychedelic bicycle\u2014was married to Maggie's niece, Martha. \"You'll not need me to be telling you about that one,\" she said. \"Away on, Doctor dear, and get your lunch.\"\n\n\"Right, Maggie.\"\n\nAs I watched her go, I began to wonder about a strange series of coincidences. Maggie's chat about her cat had led her admittedly sometimes off-centre thoughts to Donal Donnelly. Last night O'Reilly's cat, Lady Macbeth, had suffered a misfortune. It had led his usually convoluted intellectual processes to Donal Donnelly.\n\nSomewhere in the back of my invariably muddled mind I started to hear the theme music of an American TV program that was starting to gain some notoriety even in Ireland. A little subconscious voice said, \"Welcome to the Twilight Zone\"\u2014although in Ballybucklebo it would more likely be the \"Early Evening Environs.\"\n\nComforting myself with the thought that whatever supernatural events had befallen Donal were more likely to have been the result of too long a stay in the Mucky Duck rather than a close encounter of the third kind, I left the surgery, crossed the hall, and went into the dining room.\n\n\"Busy?\" O'Reilly muttered through a mouthful of chicken pot pie. I could see the congealed remnants of what half an hour ago would have been another of Mrs. Kincaid's culinary gems.\n\nI nodded, helped myself to a glutinous plateful, and sat at the big table. \"I've just been having a chat with Maggie.\"\n\nHe hiccupped. So he had been at the sherry.\n\n\"She mentioned Donal. You said you were going to tell me a story about him.\"\n\n\"Did I?\"\n\n\"You did. About curiosity.\"\n\n\"That's right,\" he said, and hiccupped. \"Poor old Donal.\"\n\nI chewed my chilled chicken.\n\n\"Do you know what a polecat is?\" he asked, and before I could answer, continued, \"It's a member of the ferret family\u2014but bigger. More teeth, more claws.\"\n\nI knew as much about overgrown weasels as I did about pigs. Nothing. I'd conveniently forgotten that years ago, when I introduced you to O'Reilly, I may have remarked that among his many attributes he was an unregenerate poacher\u2014and in Ireland ferrets were as much tools of that particular trade as scalpels are to surgeons.\n\n\"That's nice,\" I said.\n\n\"Donal didn't think so.\"\n\nI swallowed. \"Fingal, it's been a long morning. I've a list of home visits as long as your arm to do after my late and thus nearly inedible lunch. If you want me to say I'm curious, consider it said, but please get to the point.\"\n\n\"What point?\" He footered about lighting his briar. I swear O'Reilly did it simply to irritate.\n\nI pushed my half-finished plate away. \"This morning you said that Donal was curious, you taught him a lesson, and that you would explain at lunch.\"\n\n\"I am explaining.\"\n\n\"Then what does my state of knowledge about stickcats have to do with Donal?\"\n\n\"Polecats, son. Polecats. They bite.\"\n\n\"Fingal.\"\n\nHe hiccupped, exhaled smoke, and chuckled. \"All right. Donal used to do odd jobs for me, but apart from his congenital dimness he had a fatal flaw.\"\n\n\"Let me guess. Curiosity?\"\n\n\"Right. He couldn't keep his nose out of things that didn't concern him.\" O'Reilly's brow wrinkled. \"I didn't really mind him rummaging about in the drinks cabinet, but I drew the line when I caught him reading patients' charts.\"\n\nMy immediate thought was that under those circumstances Doctor O. would have been less likely to draw a line than dig an enormous trench. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"I spoke to Fergal McGillicutty and borrowed something from him.\"\n\nMcGillicutty was a farm labourer who, for a price and no questions asked, was always able to produce a brace of pheasants or a fat hare for Mrs. Kincaid.\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"I put it in a box in the back garden just before Donal came over to cut the grass. I told him that under no circumstances was he to open the box.\"\n\n\"He opened the box, didn't he, Fingal?\"\n\n\"Curiosity killed the cat.\" O'Reilly could barely contain himself. \"But Donal survived. He only needed six stitches.\"\n\n\"Good God. What was in the box?\"\n\n\"I told you,\" said O'Reilly. \"Polecats bite.\"\n\nMy involuntary laughter was cut short when he looked pointedly at his watch and said, \"Isn't it about time you were off to see your customers?\"\n\n\"Right,\" I said, rising.\n\n\"Don't you want to know what I'm going to be up to this afternoon?\"\n\nI knew very well he'd go to sleep off this morning's load of sherry, but I said, and I meant it, \"I'm not curious, Fingal. Not in the least.\"\nMAY 1999\n\nA Matter of Time\n\nO'Reilly bends the law\n\nThere's a difference between broken and bent. If you don't believe me, I'll explain. As with anything vaguely related to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, you may find the explanation convoluted.\n\nWhen I worked for Doctor O'Reilly, Ireland had returned to daylight saving time, but during the second great numbered unpleasantness we'd had a peculiar system of \"double summer time\" when the clocks were advanced not one but two hours.\n\nThis, it was widely believed, had been introduced to foil the Luftwaffe's night bombing raids. How, the denizens of Ballybucklebo reasoned, could the German air force indulge itself in a touch of nocturnal bombing when there was no longer such a thing as night, and the sun, literally, shone at midnight? (It was this kind of reasoning that allowed the Irish to plan a manned mission to the sun. They'd avoid the heat by going after dark.) The Germans short-circuited the defensive ploy by resorting to what was, according to the new clock settings, very early morning bombing raids. This upset that sense of fairness so dear to the hearts of the average Ulsterman; the Germans were regarded as no longer playing by the rules.\n\nDoctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly would never have failed to play by the rules. Never. He was, or at least as far as Her Majesty's Royal Navy had been concerned, he had been, an officer and a gentleman. I can categorically assure you I never saw him break a single rule during all the time I spent with him.\n\nBending was another matter. It's said the first pretzel was designed by O'Reilly when he mistook a straight biscuit for a statute of which he disapproved.\n\nYou may be wondering what the vagaries of springing forward, falling back, and O'Reilly's disdain for the laws of mere mortals have in common. To help you see the connection let me add the catalyst\u2014alcohol. Still confused? Bear with me.\n\nYou do know that O'Reilly enjoyed a shot, both in the \"of whiskey\" sense and at the occasional unsuspecting duck. It might help if I explained that the months for molesting migratory mallard ran from September to February. You also are aware, because I've been at some pains to tell you, that when the omens were propitious on any given autumn or winter Saturday, Doctor O. would stick me with being on call, summon Arthur Guinness, and vanish in the pre-dawn blackness to bang and blaze barrel after barrel at the bewildered birds.\n\nOn the third Saturday of October in the year of our Lord I don't remember exactly, O'Reilly and the faithful hound had been somewhere on the foreshore of Strangford Lough since well before dawn. I'd been ministering to the medical emergencies: one cut finger, one marble up a nostril, and one hangover\u2014Donal Donnelly's\u2014that could have been mistaken for the symptoms of a brain tumour in anyone who actually possessed such an organ. I'd eaten a splendid late supper\u2014slices of one of Mrs. Kincaid's roast hams\u2014and for once feeling like a bit of company had wandered over to the Mucky Duck.\n\nBy this stage of my apprenticeship with Doctor O. I was well known to the locals and they to me. The snug was full of the usual suspects\u2014Arthur Osbaldiston behind the bar, Fergal McGillicutty, Donal Donnelly \"having a hair of the dog,\" as the English call it, or, as the Irish say, \"taking the cure\"\u2014in front. The local constable leant against the bar, straight glass of stout clutched in one hand.\n\n\"Evening, Doc. Sherry?\" Arthur asked.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nHe poured, handed it to me, and glanced over to where a large clock hung high up on the opposite wall. It was eight minutes to ten. \"Himself's late the night.\"\n\n\"The ducks,\" I remarked, sipping from my glass.\n\n\"Oh aye,\" said Arthur, polishing a glass with a grubby dishcloth, \"Doctor O'Reilly's a terrible man for the ducks.\" He glanced back at the clock and his head made an almost indiscernible twitch toward the rotund arm of the law. \"The doctor'd better get himself in soon if he wants a wee hot whiskey to keep away the dew. I've to close in five minutes.\" He smiled obsequiously at the constable. \"Isn't that right, officer?\"\n\n\"It is, Mister Osbaldiston. The licensing laws are very strict. Very strict.\" He held out his now-empty glass. \"I've just the time for the one more.\"\n\n\"Time, gentlemen,\" called Arthur as he started to build the policeman's pint.\n\nAt precisely 9:55 the door flew open and O'Reilly, pursued by Arthur Guinness, entered. His cheeks were a slate grey, his nose a screaming red. He blew on his hands, rubbed the palms vigorously together, and blew on them again.\n\n\"Jasus, it's cold as a witch's tit out there,\" he remarked to the bar in general, and, \"Hot Irish. Double,\" to Arthur Osbaldiston in particular.\n\nThe constable turned and glared first at O'Reilly then at Arthur Guinness. I suspected the episode when Arthur had mistaken the man for a burglar and had bitten him still rankled.\n\n\"Last shout's been called. It's nearly ten o'clock, Doctor.\"\n\nO'Reilly looked at the clock, then back to the officer. I may have been the only one in the place to notice the change in the colour of O'Reilly's nose tip, but he hid his anger well.\n\n\"True, officer, true,\" he said, \"and I know you're just doing your job.\"\n\nThe constable hurried to finish his pint within the five minutes drinking-up time permitted by the law. \"True, sir.\"\n\n\"But,\" said O'Reilly, \"if I could prove you're wrong about the time could I buy you a pint and have a wee warmer myself?\"\n\nEvery eye was on the peeler. The silence was such that the dropping of a single pin might have resulted in a bang of sufficient magnitude to rupture eardrums.\n\n\"Well...\"\n\n\"Walking stick, Arthur,\" said O'Reilly in his best quarterdeck voice.\n\nThe stick was produced.\n\nO'Reilly stepped over to the clock, pushed open the glass front with the stick's rubber-tipped ferrule, and with great concentration used the thing to turn the minute hand back. It was now, local Mucky Duck time, 8:58.\n\n\"But,\" spluttered the constable, \"you can't just do that.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" said O'Reilly, \"I can't, but Her Majesty's government can.\" He glared round the room. \"Today is the third Saturday of October, and what happens tonight?\"\n\nTo give him credit, Donal Donnelly saw it first. \"Jasus, Doctor. The clocks go back.\"\n\n\"They do,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nThe constable began, \"But not until two...\"\n\n\"Drinks have been poured, officer. One for you and, Arthur, a hot double John Jameson for me.\"\n\nThe constable laughed. \"All right, Doctor. I'll allow that you're not breaking the law\u2014only bending it.\"\n\n\"Right,\" said O'Reilly, lifting his steaming glass. \"Cheers.\"\nJUNE 1999\n\nThe Last Laugh\n\nMrs. Bishop's will\n\n\"We'd better be off,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nThe temptation to suggest that he'd been going off for quite some time was firmly resisted. It was after all a solemn occasion, and in deference to the solemnity O'Reilly, as was the local expression, had cleaned up well. He wore black shoes that gleamed like the Koh-i-Noor diamond and pinstriped trousers with creases that would have cut tungsten-strengthened steel. His rusty black jacket covered an immaculately starched white shirt. His tie, as befitted the occasion, was black\u2014except where a stubborn egg stain marred its ebony sheen. The entire ensemble was topped\u2014literally\u2014by a top hat made of velvety beaver pelt.\n\nFunerals were taken seriously in Ballybucklebo.\n\n\"Sad day,\" said O'Reilly. \"The place will miss Mrs. Bishop.\"\n\n\"True,\" I said, shifting uncomfortably in my best dark suit. The waistband of my seldom-worn trousers had shrunk since I'd encountered Mrs. Kincaid's cooking. \"Mrs. Bishop was a decent woman. We will miss her.\"\n\n\"Not as much as Councillor Bishop.\" O'Reilly let one eyelid droop in a slow-motion wink that would have done justice to a voyeur at a strip club. \"I was the witness to her will. I'd to deal with one of her bequests yesterday. And I'd to tell her husband.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" When O'Reilly grinned the way he grinned then, I knew there was more to tell.\n\n\"I'll tell you after the service,\" he said. \"Come on or we'll be late.\" He was unusually quiet as he piloted the long-nosed Rover out to the main Belfast road. Mrs. Bishop was to be cremated and the crematorium was in the big city. I contented myself watching the hedgerows rush by and the occasional cyclist take to the ditch. I tried to puzzle out what he could mean by, \"Not as much as Councillor Bishop.\"\n\nYou may remember he was a man who would wrestle a bear for a farthing. Several years ago he'd arranged for a harmless old eccentric, Sunny, to be put in a home so that Bishop could acquire Sunny's land. O'Reilly had resorted to some absolutely ethical blackmail then. He'd suggested to the good Councillor, with all the subtlety of the blow of a battering ram on a castle gate, that unless Sunny was returned to his land and his dogs forthwith, Mrs. Bishop might have to find out about why their maid had left so abruptly for England. In those days being single and pregnant was not regarded enthusiastically in rural Ireland.\n\nNeither was divorce.\n\nI recalled that by means other than O'Reilly, Mrs. Bishop had found out about her husband's little peccadillo. (It's an awful example of authorial intrusion but I can't resist the temptation to remark that no, Viagra would not have helped the man.) Matters in the Bishop household had attained the state of diplomatic relations that existed between England and Denmark when Admiral Nelson won the battle of Copenhagen\u2014armed neutrality. This must have had some effect on the late Mrs. B.'s will\u2014but what? Given that the pair of them shared a house only to avoid the shame of divorce proceedings I would have thought that Bishop might have felt a certain relief when his wife joined the choir invisible. Why would he miss her?\n\n\"Come on, Fingal,\" I paused as he screeched past a cow that had somehow wandered onto the road, \"what was the bequest?\"\n\n\"Later, my boy.\" He grunted, shifted down, and accelerated over one of those little hills in the roads of Ireland which, if taken at the right speed, have the same effect on the motorcar as did the launching ramps of V1 flying bombs in the second numbered unpleasantness. Touchdown came with a ferocious crash.\n\nMy teeth were still chattering when he parked the Rover in the lot at the crematorium.\n\n* * *\n\nIt was, as funerals go, a pleasant one. A couple of hymns, prayers for the departed. The Reverend McWheezle gave the eulogy\u2014and for once kept his words short and to the point.\n\nO'Reilly, as befitted his station, and I, as O'Reilly's minion, had been given pews at the front of the chapel. It was from this vantage point that I was able to observe Mister Bishop's reactions to the proceedings. The portly gentleman seemed to have his emotions reasonably well under control. Occasionally a tear\u2014which even then I regarded as the essence of hypocrisy\u2014leaked from one pallid eye when he glanced at the bier where his late wife's coffin lay.\n\nThe organ began to play \"Nearer my God to Thee,\" and by whatever mechanical miracles make these things happen, the coffin sank slowly from view. The gears of the device were almost soundless, the organ music subdued, but the air was rent with the keening coming from Councillor Bishop. The man was as grief-stricken as Orpheus when he discovered that Eurydice had fallen off the perch. I stole a glance at O'Reilly. His features were composed, his hands folded primly before him, and his eyes held that sparkle that I only saw when God was definitely in his Heaven and all was very right with O'Reilly's world.\n\n\"Fingal,\" I whispered, \"tell me.\"\n\nHe bent his head and said, sotto voce, \"She had the money in the family. Inherited it from her people.\" O'Reilly nodded toward the hapless Bishop. \"Her last bequest\u2014and I had the pleasure of telling him last night\u2014was that all her\u2014hang on\u2014\"\n\nBishop's wailing had reached epic proportions. I looked at one of the glass chandeliers to satisfy myself it had not shattered. I had a last glimpse as the coffin vanished and the lid of the bier slid back into place.\n\nI heard O'Reilly try to stifle a snigger \"\u2014that all her money was to be put into ten-pound notes and used to line her coffin.\"\n\nI wondered how I was going to explain my unseemly guffaws to the rest of the mourners. My struggling to compose myself wasn't helped by O'Reilly's next suggestion: \"Maybe Bishop could put the ashes in an egg timer\u2014after all, time is money.\"\n\nAuthor's note: A friend who read this manuscript before it was submitted has pointed out that the money-in-the-coffin ploy was used in a Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack movie, Ocean's Eleven. Unfortunately Ol' Blue Eyes himself has shuffled off this mortal coil\u2014otherwise he'd be hearing from me on the subject of plagiarism.\nJULY 1999\n\nEasy Come, Easy Go\n\nO'Reilly triumphs again\n\n\"Would you fancy a day at Loughbrickland?\"\n\nO'Reilly wandered into the surgery just as Maggie left. I barely heard his question, thinking as I was about Maggie MacCorkle's sore back that had failed to respond to everything I'd tried. I'd even used his vitamin-pill trick, telling her to take the placebo exactly seventeen minutes before the pain started. O'Reilly had cured the aches above her head that way. Why were my ministrations not working?\n\n\"Have you gone deaf?\" he asked.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You have\u2014either deaf or stupid. I just offered you one of the best days out you'll ever have.\" He fired up his briar. \"Of course if you don't want to go to the races maybe Lord Fitzgurgle would enjoy the trip.\"\n\n\"Sorry, Fingal. I was thinking about Maggie.\"\n\n\"Oh? Headaches or backaches?\"\n\n\"Back.\"\n\n\"What have you tried?\"\n\nI sighed. \"Everything.\"\n\nHe laughed, a deep throaty rumbling noise, the sort of sound you might hear when one tectonic plate shifts over its neighbour. \"No, you haven't.\"\n\nI sniffed. \"I bloody well have.\" My professional pride had been stung by my failure.\n\nI should have seen the glint in his eye, heeded the warning signals. It's said that a leaden hue to the sky, humid air that's almost drinkable, and an oily calm on a breathless sea is a sure harbinger of a tropical hurricane. That glint in O'Reilly's baby-blues was as accurate a predictor of squalls. I ignored it when he said, \"Bet you I can fix her.\"\n\n\"Don't be daft. I've done everything.\"\n\nHis eyebrows knitted and he said, slowly and deliberately, \"I believe I remarked, 'Bet you.' Would you like to chance five pounds?\"\n\nThat stopped me. Five pounds was a lot of money. I hesitated.\n\n\"What's that business about 'money' and 'mouth'?\" he asked.\n\n\"All right, Fingal. You're on.\"\n\nHe grinned like an open drainpipe as he shook my hand. \"We'll see her together the day after tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Why not tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Because,\" he said, shaking his head, \"tomorrow you and me are going to Loughbrickland.\"\n\nAnd, on the morrow, go we did. Loughbrickland is the site of one of those peculiarly Irish events, point-to-point horse racing. The English aristocracy may turn out in their ducal splendour in the paddock at Royal Ascot or Epsom Downs. Tame affairs. The horses there are true thoroughbreds that run round a level track. An Irish point-to-point is a cross between Ben Hur's endeavours in the Circus Maximus, without the chariots, of course, and a ride on the \"Sky Demon\" roller coaster. The horses and jockeys thunder round a course that's interrupted at intervals by hedges, gates, ditches, and sometimes combinations of hedges and ditches. At least they try to. Most horses finish but a goodly number of riders part company with their mounts before journey's end. The spectators aren't usually drawn from the ranks of those whose names appear in Burke's Peerage, but the craic, as they say in Ireland, is powerful.\n\nTis there you'll see the fiddlers and the pipers all competing,\n\nThe nimble footed dancers and they trippin' on the daisies,\n\nAnd others crying cigars and lights and bills for all the races,\n\nWith the colours of the jockeys and the price and horses' ages.\n\nThat stanza from a song called \"The Galway Races\" puts the point-to-point in a nutshell\u2014particularly the bit about the horses' prices. At one end of the track the bookmakers, who in Ireland rejoice in the title of \"Turf Accountant,\" set up their stands, cry the odds, and happily take the punters' money.\n\nWe'd parked the old Rover in an adjacent field.\n\n\"Come on,\" said O'Reilly, as eager to get down to the track as any one of the horses awaiting the start of the first race.\n\nI trotted along in his wake, trying not to step in too many cow-claps or twist an ankle in one of the ruts in the ground. I was breathing heavily as he shouldered his way through the crowd of farmers and townsfolk, stopping at last in front of a stand that bore the slogan \"Honest Bobby Greer.\"\n\n\"Is it yourself, Doctor dear?\" enquired a florid-faced gentleman standing on a raised platform beneath the sign. This, I assumed, was Trustworthy Robert. He wore a yellow-checked waistcoat beneath a Donegal tweed jacket, moleskin trousers, and a bowler hat tipped forward over his brow. He clearly knew O'Reilly of old and, judging by the huge smile on Greer's face, had lightened O'Reilly's wallet more than once in the past.\n\n\"Good day, Bobby,\" said O'Reilly. He handed over a ten-shilling note. \"Finnegan's Fancy both ways in the first.\" I watched as he accepted a ticket.\n\n\"Are you not having a flutter, Pat?\" he inquired. I shook my head. I'd let him put his ten bob on a horse in the hopes that it would finish in the first three. I'd be quite happy to follow its progress vicariously. Besides, there was the small matter of tomorrow's wager.\n\n\"Come on then,\" he called over his shoulder as he forced his way to the fence near the finish line. I followed.\n\n\"They're off!\" cried the starter. The faint pounding of hooves grew louder. The ground trembled. The punters yelled encouragement. The mass of equine bodies hurtled past. No wonder, I thought, caught up by the moment, no wonder Liza Doolittle encouraged the horse she'd backed to \"Move your bleeding arse.\"\n\n\"Bugger,\" said O'Reilly, tearing up his ticket. \"Come on.\"\n\nOff we went back to Honest Bobby. Ten shillings changed hands. Next race. Steaming horses, crouching jockeys, turf clods flying from hooves.\n\n\"Bugger,\" said O'Reilly, tearing up his ticket.\n\nHe said that word seven times all told.\n\nThe eighth and final race would start in ten minutes. Off we went back to a now happily grinning Bobby Greer.\n\n\"So what's your fancy, Doctor dear?\"\n\n\"I've got you now,\" said O'Reilly. I saw a five-pound note. \"That on Butcher's Boy to win.\" He took the ticket.\n\nI hadn't placed a bet all day but the name of a filly took my eye: Strangford Sally. The current love of my life was a young woman from Strangford and, yes, you've guessed her name. The odds were twenty to one, but I thought there might be an omen so I risked five shillings.\n\nAs we walked back to our places at the finish, O'Reilly said, \"I've got Greer on this one. Donal Donnelly's father owns Butcher's Boy. He's never been out before. I've seen him jump.\" He rubbed his hands. \"That horse loves hedges like Orpheus loved Eurydice. Just goes at the nearest one as if his legs were springs.\"\n\n\"They're off!\" I waited, fingers crossed, peering up the track, wondering what the commotion was near the start. A horse with its jockey clinging on to its neck had left the track and was charging up a hill like Lord Cardigan's mount at Balaclava. I was so intrigued I nearly missed the finish and that would have been a shame.\n\nI was feeling rather smug the next morning as I sat in the surgery beside a chastened O'Reilly. Strangford Sally had come in at twenty to one, which made me five pounds better off. Butcher's Boy had lived up to expectations and had, like winged Pegasus, soared over the nearest hedge. Unfortunately, it had been the one marking the boundary of the track. As O'Reilly had remarked yesterday, \"At the rate the bloody thing was going up that hill it's probably in County Antrim by now.\" Only one tiny matter remained to be resolved.\n\n\"Come in, Maggie,\" said O'Reilly as she hobbled in. \"It's the back again?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Let's have a look.\"\n\nI watched as O'Reilly palpated her sides. He didn't even ask her to take off her dress. He bent and whispered something to her. She nodded and moved behind the screens. I heard the rustling of material. Maggie reappeared, smiling to beat the band. Her limp had gone.\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor O'Reilly,\" she said. \"Oh, that's better.\"\n\n\"Go on with you now, Maggie,\" he said.\n\nShe left. He turned to me. \"I believe you owe me a fiver.\"\n\nI fished in my pocket for yesterday's winnings. \"What did you do?\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"Her corset stays were too tight. I told her to loosen them.\"\n\nI handed him the bank note. Easy come, easy go.\n(no column in august 1999)  \nSEPTEMBER 1999\n\nLateral Thinking\n\nOr should that be vertical?\n\n\"I wonder what it is about my family?\" muttered Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, sipping his whiskey as he sat comfortably ensconced in the armchair in the upstairs sitting room of his home.\n\nI had a pretty fair idea of some of the peculiarities of the clan O'Reilly, but as my sage old father had often remarked, \"Some questions are better not answered.\" I sat in my armchair, peered through the big bay window, and feigned interest in a fishing boat drifting on the rippled waters of Belfast Lough.\n\n\"Sometimes they can be a bit odd,\" he said.\n\nAs two left feet, I thought, but left the thought unsaid.\n\n\"Do you remember Lars Porsena?\" he asked.\n\n\"'... of Clusium,'\" I countered, \"'by the nine gods he swore, that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more.' Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.\"\n\nO'Reilly grunted. \"So you're not altogether unread. At least you recognize the source.\" He shook his head. \"No. I was thinking of my brother. The one in Portaferry.\"\n\nI had one of those flashbacks that are only supposed to come to patients with recovery of suppressed memories. I pictured Lars Porsena O'Reilly's youngest son devastating the school Christmas pageant by venting his wrath, very publicly, on the boy who'd replaced O'Reilly Minor in the part of Joseph.\n\n\"That Lars Porsena,\" I said.\n\n\"Himself,\" said O'Reilly. \"It's his oldest lad, Liam.\"\n\n\"Who can be a bit odd,\" I prompted.\n\n\"As two left feet,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nI started. Could O'Reilly have read my mind just a few seconds ago?\n\n\"Do you know what he's just done?\" O'Reilly asked.\n\n\"No,\" I replied, taking some comfort that if O'Reilly could have delved into my thoughts he wouldn't have needed to ask the question.\n\n\"Daft bugger,\" he continued, then, noticing my hurt look, added, \"Not you, Pat. Liam.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said.\n\n\"He's just passed his final examination for his B.Sc. up at Queen's University.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have thought that qualified him for what you just called him.\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head. \"He should have had a first-class honours but he managed to upset one of his professors.\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Oh, aye,\" said Fingal. \"Daft B.\" He busied himself lighting his pipe. \"I got the story from Frothelbottom.\"\n\n\"Frothelbottom?\"\n\n\"Professor John Stout\u2014known to his old school friends as Frothelbottom. Froth for short.\"\n\nI waited.\n\n\"Seems Froth had Liam in an oral. Asked him a question about barometers and a block of flats.\"\n\nI remembered the same question from my own undergraduate days. \"If you had a barometer, how could you tell the height of a tall building?\"\n\n\"Do you know what Liam said? 'Go to the top, let down the barometer on a piece of string, and measure the length of the string.'\"\n\nI confess I'd considered a different approach, but Liam's solution would have worked.\n\n\"Froth told Liam he could do it that way, but could he suggest another. 'Sure,' says Liam. 'Go to the top, chuck the barometer off, and time its descent. Then use the acceleration formula to calculate the distance fallen.'\n\n\"'Um,' says Froth, 'but is there another way?'\n\n\"'Yes. Measure the barometer and walk up the stairwell. Turn the barometer end over end and multiply the length by the number of revolutions.'\"\n\nAt this point I was quite intrigued. Fingal's nephew must have been possessed of a keen mind to come up with these original approaches. \"Seems that he should have got his pass mark by this point,\" I observed.\n\n\"I agree,\" said O'Reilly, \"but as Froth admitted to me, by this time he wasn't getting the answer he wanted, and was beginning to take a dislike to young Liam.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear.\"\n\n\"Indeed. Oh dear. 'Try again,' says Froth. 'Measure the barometer, stand it vertically on the ground, and at noon measure the lengths of the shadows cast by the barometer and the building. Now you'd have a ratio and could calculate the height from that.'\"\n\nFor the life of me I could see nothing wrong with that answer.\n\nO'Reilly sighed, blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke, and muttered, \"I wish old Froth had packed it up after that, but he told me that by then he was determined to wring the real correct answer out of young Liam. 'Mister O'Reilly,' says Froth, 'there's only one more way and if you tell it to me I'll give you a pass with honours.'\"\n\n\"Seems to me that was a pretty fair offer.\"\n\n\"It was,\" said O'Reilly, \"but Froth hadn't allowed for the O'Reilly oddness.\"\n\nNeither had I when I joined his practice, but you already know that.\n\nFingal shrugged. \"I thought I understood a bit of physics, and I tell you, Pat, by that time I could only think of one more way to skin that particular cat. When old Froth started the last of the story he had me rightly flummoxed.\"\n\nI waited.\n\n\"'Only one way?' says Liam. 'Rubbish.'\" O'Reilly sighed. \"Students don't say 'rubbish' to senior professors.\"\n\n\"Liam did.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said O'Reilly, \"and do you know what? He was right. He finally allowed that if he measured the difference in barometric pressure between the ground and the roof he'd be able to calculate the height of the building.\"\n\nThat was the very answer I'd given some years before. But apparently Liam had known another way. \"He should have called it a day right then,\" I said.\n\n\"I know. I know. But he didn't. 'Right,' says Froth, and as he admitted to me, he was just about ready to forgive the young fellow his impertinence when Liam says, 'Do you not want to know the other way?' 'I do,' says Froth. You'll never guess what Liam said.\"\n\nHe was right.\n\n\"Says Liam, 'I'd go to the caretaker's flat, knock on the door, and when he opened it, I'd say, 'Mister, if you tell me the height of the building, I'll give you this bloody barometer.'\"\n\nI couldn't stop laughing.\n\n\"It's all very well for you to cackle like a broody hen, Pat Taylor. You don't have to wonder what it is about your family.\"\nOCTOBER 1999\n\nFlight of Fancy\n\nThe dog who loved planes\n\nWhen I introduced you to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, I numbered among his attributes his propensity for kindness to small children and animals. There is of course an adage that \"the exception proves the rule,\" and loyal readers will remember that even O'Reilly's faunophilia didn't extend to Sus scrofa, the domesticated pig. Perhaps it was to compensate for his mistrust of all things porcine\u2014unless roasted, glazed, or served in thick rashers by Mrs. Kincaid\u2014that he was especially attached to members of the tribe Canis familiaris, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a \"domesticated carnivore.\" Arthur Guinness, O'Reilly's Labrador retriever, was assuredly carnivorous. His domesticity was another matter. One word from O'Reilly and the brute did exactly as he pleased. The merest sight of my corduroy trousers either drove him into a state of sexual arousal previously recorded only at some of Nero's classier Roman orgies or reminded him that his bladder was full. In my opinion he was as domesticated as a rabid Tasmanian devil.\n\nBut O'Reilly doted on Arthur G., and showed his adoration in some of the most peculiar ways. (Please do not misinterpret that last remark. Remember, Honi soit qui mal 'y pense.) On reflection, perhaps a few words of explanation are warranted. Bear with me and I'll give you an example.\n\nIt was a perfect late-summer evening. O'Reilly and I had retired to his spacious back garden to ruminate on the state of the universe in general and the vagaries of medical practice in Ballybucklebo in particular. The air was soft, rose-perfumed, and drowsy with humming bees. O'Reilly sat on a wooden chair clutching his John Jameson, sucking contentedly on his briar. I squatted on the grass at his feet. We must have looked like the setup for an early Edwardian photograph. All I needed was an Eton jacket and a tasselled cap. Even Arthur Guinness, lolling under O'Reilly's chair, seemed hypnotized by the tranquillity.\n\nI thought, occasionally God really is in his heaven and all is right with the world. I became aware of a distant droning, but before I could turn to try to identify the source of the increasingly loud noise, Arthur Guinness crawled out from under O'Reilly's chair, sat erect, and stared at the sky.\n\nI knew that Labradors owed their retrieving ability to remarkably accurate vision so I followed his line of sight and saw on the horizon a small monoplane coming our way. Probably going to the Belfast airport, which at that time rejoiced in the name of Nutt's Corner. Honestly.\n\nAs the aircraft approached, Arthur began to ululate. I'd never heard him make the noise before. It fell somewhere between the falsetto keening of professional mourners at an Irish wake and the harsh wailing attributed to the banshee. And its volume increased until, as the plane passed overhead, I glanced hurriedly at the kitchen windows to assure myself that Arthur's yodelling hadn't cracked them.\n\nI had only enough time to note the panes' integrity when I caught a blur of movement. Guinness's wailing had changed to a bark that would have been the envy of a California sea lion, and I swear he was already approaching Mach 1 as he raced the length of the garden, staring upward and roaring his battle cry. Only the distant hedge stopped his career, and his ranting didn't cease until the aircraft was out of view.\n\nO'Reilly was on his feet. \"Come in here, sir.\"\n\nArthur looked over his shoulder, his view interrupted by his still-raised hackles.\n\n\"Come here, I say.\"\n\nPresumably misinterpreting this command for one to \"sit,\" Arthur planted his glossy behind, wagged his tail, but kept his back to O'Reilly.\n\n\"Daft bloody dog,\" O'Reilly rumbled in my general direction.\n\nDaft? Arthur's recent display had been, at least to my mind, closer to raving lunacy than mere daftness. If the Baskerville canine had ever needed a stand-in, I could have pointed it in the right direction.\n\n\"What on earth,\" I asked, \"was that all about?\"\n\n\"Ducks,\" said O'Reilly, shaking his head. \"He thinks they're ducks.\"\n\nI thought O'Reilly was finally beginning to assume some of the less balanced attributes of his gun dog but said, with a gently interrogative inflection, \"Ducks?\"\n\n\"He keeps mistaking aeroplanes for ducks. You saw how happy he was chasing that one.\"\n\n\"That was happiness?\"\n\n\"Oh yes. Just look at him.\"\n\nArthur must have meandered back. O'Reilly bent and patted the dog's head. \"Who's a good lad?\" he inquired.\n\nArthur's tail moved so rapidly it seemed to stand still. The fact that it was in action was given away by the frenetic shimmy of his backside. His face wore a grin and his pink tongue dripped. In the fullness of time, disdaining even a sideways glance at my trouser leg, Arthur subsided under O'Reilly's chair. Even I was convinced that the pursuit of the aircraft had in some inexplicable way brought great joy to the dimmer recesses of Arthur's brain.\n\nIt was then that I first glimpsed O'Reilly's peculiar ways of demonstrating his adoration.\n\n\"Um,\" he said, a beginning I'd learned always prefaced his asking for a favour, \"um, Pat, I don't suppose you'd consider working this Saturday? I'd pay you a bit extra.\"\n\n\"Why, Fingal?\"\n\nHe hesitated. \"It's special or I wouldn't ask.\"\n\n\"What's special, Fingal?\"\n\n\"It's Arthur's birthday. I want to give him a treat.\"\n\nI had to laugh. \"I suppose you're going to take him to the airport so he can really get close to some of those big 'ducks.'\"\n\nO'Reilly's jaw dropped. \"How in the hell did you know that? And keep your voice down.\" He glanced at the black dog under the chair. \"It's meant to be a surprise.\"\n\nI agreed to work on O'Reilly's behalf. How could I be so unfeeling as to keep the pair of them from a trip they so clearly warranted? To Nutt's Corner.\nNOVEMBER 1999\n\nFuel for Thought\n\nO'Reilly and the Texan\n\n\"Curious people, Americans,\" observed O'Reilly as he helped himself to a plateful of Mrs. Kincaid's devilled kidneys.\n\nIt was suppertime chez O'Reilly and the pair of us was ensconced at the big mahogany dining table. I'd finished the afternoon surgery and Fingal, now masticating with the fervour of a cud-chewing yak, had come back from what I assumed must have been a successful confinement of Mrs. McGillicutty's fourth. Certainly if the grin on his craggy face was anything to go by, something had pleased him enormously. Of course, what Americans had to do with the labour of a farmer's wife was anyone's guess.\n\nForgetting the old adage about the impetuous entry of idiots into environs where the winged denizens of the celestial sphere would not venture, I decided to find out.\n\n\"Curious, Fingal?\"\n\n\"Curious.\" He mumbled, mouth full, fist-held fork on its way to deposit another load.\n\n\"Do you mean they, like the ancient Greeks, are possessed of inquiring minds, or was that a comment about certain ethnic peculiarities?\"\n\nHe stopped in mid-chew. \"What the hell are you on about, Taylor?\"\n\nIt was not an unreasonable question. I flinched. \"Sorry, Fingal. Just\u2014I was wondering aloud about what kind of curiousness the Americans had.\"\n\nHe grunted. \"Odd bunch, the Yanks.\" And lapsed into a digestive silence.\n\nI thought it better to follow suit, and let my mind wander on the subject under discussion. Americans. They'd started coming to our corner of Ireland in the late '50s. They came by the coach-load\u2014friendly, large people who dressed in baseball caps, tartan sports jackets, and Bermuda shorts and spoke loudly about \"finding our roots in li'l ol' Ireland.\"\n\nThe natives regarded their transatlantic cousins with gentle amusement and, ever with an eye to the main chance, grasping avarice. Prices in the Mucky Duck soared. Bed-and-breakfasts blossomed. Donal Donnelly had shown remarkable enterprise. He'd fashioned a leprechaun costume, complete with buckled brogues, knee britches, waistcoat, and stovepipe hat, equipped himself with a shillelagh, and parked himself on a stool outside the Duck. A hand-lettered sign beside him announced, \"Will say 'Begorrah' for $1.\" He'd done very well.\n\nMy mental meanderings were interrupted.\n\n\"Well, do you want to know why I think Americans are curious?\"\n\nI glanced across the table. No sign of nasal pallor. The grin was back. \"Oh, indeed.\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"What do you know about petrol tanks?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\" I was about to add that I didn't see the connection between petrol\u2014what Americans would call gasoline\u2014and Americans themselves, when O'Reilly charged on.\n\n\"There's a funny arrangement in my Rover car.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Aye. The outflow pipe is an inch above the bottom of the tank.\"\n\nHis line of reasoning was like Maggie MacCorkle's headaches\u2014at least two inches above my head.\n\n\"It's to stop dirt in the bottom of the tank getting into the carburettor and clogging it,\" he explained.\n\n\"That's nice.\"\n\nHis brows knitted. \"It can be a bloody nuisance when you're low on petrol and the engine stops.\"\n\n\"I can see that.\"\n\n\"But there's a way round it.\"\n\n\"Go on.\" I tried to sound enraptured.\n\n\"I had to use it this afternoon.\"\n\nI could only hope that O'Reilly, like Roald Amundsen, who, as you'll remember, announced that he was setting off for the North Pole but arrived at the South to the disgust of one Robert Falcon Scott, would eventually come back onto his true course.\n\n\"Bloody car conked out on the way to the McGillicuttys, and you know how fast her labours are.\"\n\nIndeed I did. I'd confined her last year. The term \"precipitate\" when applied to Jean McGillicutty's second stage was about as descriptive as calling the then-recent puncturing of the sound barrier as \"a wee bit fast, like.\"\n\nO'Reilly mopped up his gravy with a slice of bread. \"Do you know what I did?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"I'd no time to walk to the garage. I had to get the car to go, so I got out and peed in the petrol tank.\"\n\n\"You what?\"\n\n\"Peed in the tank. The petrol floats on the pee, is able to get into the feed pipe, and the engine'll run for a while longer\u2014\"\n\nI sat in awe of his ingenuity.\n\n\"\u2014trouble was, I'd been in such a rush I hadn't noticed the American tour bus parked at the side of the road\u2014\"\n\nAha. Perhaps Amundsen was going to head north.\n\n\"\u2014one of the Yanks had been watching me. 'Watcha doin', buddy?' says he.\" O'Reilly gave a very creditable imitation of John Wayne. \"'Refuelling, pilgrim,' I told him. 'Is that a fact,' says he. 'Ah never heard of using that fer fuel\u2014and ah'm from Texas and that's oil country.' 'I've heard that,' says I, 'but this is Ireland\u2014and this is Guinness country. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm in a bit of a rush.' 'Mighty fine,' says he, 'do you think it would work with Budweiser?'\"\n\nI had no doubt that O'Reilly had assured the innocent that such indeed would be the case. My mental image of some poor bewildered Texan shaking his head over a stalled Lincoln Continental was too much. I had what was known locally as \"a fit of the giggles.\"\n\nO'Reilly's guffaws drowned my strangled squeaks.\n\n\"Told you,\" he gasped, \"they're a curious people. And, by the way, I made it to the McGillicuttys in time.\"\nDECEMBER 1999\n\nTimes Are a-Changing\n\nOr are they?\n\nThe smell in O'Reilly's surgery would have gagged a maggot. He stood at the sink, test tube grasped in one hand, oblivious to the acrid fumes spewing forth with all the fervour of a genie who has been in his bottle for centuries too long.\n\nMaggie MacCorkle sat expectantly, awaiting the pronouncement from her oracle.\n\n\"No sugar in that, Maggie.\" O'Reilly looked pontifically over his half-moon spectacles. \"Run along, now. And leave the door open.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor.\" Maggie rose, gave me her usual look of disdain, and left. Her departure allowed a modicum of fresh air to penetrate the fug.\n\n\"God's strewth, Fingal, what were you about?\" My eyes watered and my words were muffled by a series of involuntary constrictions of my throat.\n\n\"Fehling's test, my boy.\" He waved the noisome vessel under my nose.\n\nFor readers who didn't attend a medical school that boasted either Hippocrates or Galen as members of its faculty, Fehling's test involved boiling one test tube of the mystical Fehling's solution and another of the patient's urine. The two were mixed. If nothing exploded, the appearance of a blue tinge indicated the presence of glycosuria. Maggie may not have had glucose in her specimen, but something had managed to slip through her glomeruli\u2014probably, I thought, burnt Wellington boots.\n\nIt was always tricky\u2014as in trying to remove a piece of well-decayed cow from a starving alligator\u2014to suggest to O'Reilly that he might not be entirely up to date. It was going to be even more so because I did remember the hypochondriac who'd insisted on calling O'Reilly in the middle of the night. Doctor O. had instructed the victim to pass urine every hour on the hour until morning and use dipsticks on every specimen. So he couldn't have been entirely unfamiliar with the things.\n\nIn the spirit of scientific inquiry, and with a precautionary glance to assure myself that the door was still open, I began.\n\n\"Er,\" I asked, \"er, Fingal, would it not have been easier to use a dipstick?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he said benignly, dumping the fuming mixture down the drain, \"but remember, there's art to medicine as well as science.\" He chuckled. \"Maggie would never have believed the results of a wee bit of cardboard but she's absolutely convinced by my pyrotechnics.\"\n\nLord help us, I thought, if he ever decides she needs leeching, but although I kept the sentiments to myself, my cynical look must have betrayed me.\n\n\"You don't believe me?\" he asked.\n\nI have difficulty with the concepts that the Earth is flat, the moon is made of green cheese, and Darwin and armies of palaeontologists are wrong. \"Well...\"\n\n\"There's nobody\u2014I mean nobody,\" he shook his head, \"absolutely nobody as resistant to change as Ulsterfolk.\"\n\nThere was some truth to that. Half of us were still fighting a battle that officially ended in 1690\u2014with no need for a couple of periods of overtime, never mind three centuries of rematches. There was, however, an increasing subset of the inhabitants of the northeastern corner of the Emerald Isle who had moved with the times. Instead of pikes and muskets, they used Semtex. \"Yes, but...\" I tried, but he rolled over me.\n\n\"I'll prove it. Do you remember Sunny?\"\n\n\"Sunny? The chap who lives in his car?\"\n\n\"The very one.\"\n\nOf course I remembered Sunny and his run-in with Councillor Bishop, he whose wife had had herself cremated, with the family wealth in ten-pound notes in the coffin.\n\n\"I should remember him. Don't I call to see him and his dogs every week or so?\"\n\n\"Still living in his car?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" I was having some difficulty following Fingal's line of reasoning\u2014but that was something that would never change. As is a corkscrew to a ruler, so was O'Reilly's convoluted logic to linear cogitation. I suspected he was probably the originator of divergent thinking.\n\n\"But,\" I said, \"I don't see what that has to do with the inflexibility of the average Ulsterman.\"\n\n\"Huh. Do you know what Sunny's chief delight was\u2014other than his dogs?\"\n\nI had to admit I did not.\n\n\"His car had a wireless. He'd listen to it for hours.\"\n\n\"And I suppose you're going to tell me that when the BBC added new stations he refused to listen to them because he's an Ulsterman and Ulsterfolk are resistant to change.\"\n\n\"Not at all. He took to them like a duck to water.\"\n\n\"So he did change.\"\n\n\"Up to a point,\" said O'Reilly. His face softened. I knew he had a warm spot for his eccentric patient. \"But the car was 1940s vintage and eventually the radio stopped working.\"\n\nI'm sure that on occasions in darkest Africa Stanley must have despaired of ever finding Doctor Livingstone.\n\n\"I don't see...\"\n\n\"'Course you don't.\" A smile played round O'Reilly's lips. \"But somebody bought Sunny a television set and ran an electrical cable from his deserted house to the car.\"\n\nArchimedes is reputed to have leapt from his bathtub yelling, \"Eureka.\" I had an urge to mutter the same Hellenic expletive\u2014not because I had the faintest idea what this piece of intelligence had to do with O'Reilly's thesis about stubbornness, but because I was certain who the \"somebody\" had been.\n\nTo accuse O'Reilly of anything resembling kindness would have upset the big man. Like the Good Lord, Fingal liked to \"move in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.\" Lest my expression give me away for a second time, I tried to steer O'Reilly back to his original argument.\n\n\"So,\" I said, \"Sunny did change. He switched from listening to the radio to watching television.\" Adopting my best Perry Mason manner, I remarked, \"I rest my case.\"\n\n\"Almost,\" said O'Reilly. \"You're almost right.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" The argument seemed pretty solid to me.\n\n\"He used the set. No doubt about that\u2014but do you know what he said to me after he'd had the thing for a month?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\nO'Reilly's big frame quivered. \"Sunny said\u2014Sunny said, 'Do you know, Doctor dear, but thon TV's the powerful thing. All you have to do is watch it with your eyes shut and it's near as good as my old wireless.'\"\n\nI had to laugh.\n\n\"Change an Ulsterman?\" said O'Reilly. \"You'd have a better chance getting Niagara Falls to run uphill.\"\n\nNow, after thirty years, I can look back and laugh at myself, and O'Reilly was wrong. Some Ulsterman do change. If they didn't, I'd be writing this with a quill pen instead of my trusty Underwood typewriter.\nJANUARY 2000\n\nThe Sting\n\nO'Reilly bags a wasps' nest\n\n\"Holy thundering mother of Jasus,\" O'Reilly roared, springing from his deck chair, dousing me with the contents of his glass, and clapping a hand to the back of his neck with enough force to have decapitated a lesser mortal.\n\nI leapt to my feet, simultaneously dabbing at the large John Jameson stain on my pants and wondering what could have provoked the big man's outburst.\n\n\"Little bugger,\" O'Reilly growled.\n\nI thought he was addressing me\u2014he was prone to using such terms of endearment\u2014but he wasn't looking at me. Instead he glowered at an insectoidal remnant clutched between his finger and thumb. It was a very wide, very flat, very dead wasp. One of the kamikaze breed. Only an insect with no desire to continue its existence would have had the temerity to sting Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, MB, BCh, BAO.\n\nHe discarded the corpse and rubbed the back of his neck. I could see the red weal. \"Blue bag,\" he grunted as he galloped from the garden and into the house.\n\nWhen he reappeared\u2014fresh whiskey in one hand\u2014a deep blue splodge covered his nuchal lump. I hadn't the faintest idea what resided within the famous blue bag, but I did know that its application to insect stings was soothing. Certainly it seemed to have calmed O'Reilly.\n\n\"Wouldn't be summer without the odd wasp,\" he said mildly.\n\nI nodded. The beasts were pests in late August and\u2014I watched one as it clung to the edge of my sherry glass\u2014there seemed to be more of them on that particular evening. Lots more. Two had joined the original sherry seeker and five were having a go at O'Reilly's whiskey.\n\nI've neglected to tell you that we'd set our deck chairs under the shade of the sycamore tree at the bottom of O'Reilly's garden. It was a magnificent specimen, tall, leafy, ancient, and from among its branches squadrons of the brutes buzzed in close formation. They made beelines, or perhaps that should be wasp-lines, for our drinks.\n\nI dislike physical pain and it seemed to me that the odds against my being stung were going down dramatically. There were so many yellow-and-black bodies on the wing that I began to wonder if Pharaoh and Moses had taken up residence in Ballybucklebo and that the old patriarch had given up on locusts and moved on to wasps as a method of softening Ramses' ossified cardiac organ.\n\n\"I think we should go in, Fingal.\"\n\nHe ignored me and stared up into the leafy canopy overhead.\n\n\"C'mere, Pat.\" He pointed upward.\n\nI moved beside him and followed the line of his outstretched finger.\n\n\"What do you make of that?\"\n\nHigh in the tree, suspended from a branch, was a grey thing, narrow at the bottom, wide at the top, and about the size of the ill-fated Hindenburg dirigible.\n\n\"It's the biggest wasps' nest I've ever seen, Fingal.\" One settled on my ear. \"I really do think we should be going in,\" I remarked, sidling toward the house, leaving my drink on a garden table, hoping the wasps would be distracted long enough for me to make my getaway unscathed.\n\nHe grabbed my arm.\n\n\"It's got to go,\" he said. \"Got to.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" I said, and instantly regretted my words. Someone was going to have to make the nest go, and from the look on O'Reilly's face I realized that he thought he'd found his volunteer. I imagine Lord Wellington's eyes took on the same steely glare when he selected the poor devils to be first to storm the breach in the walls of a French-held fort. The term for those wretches was \"the forlorn hope.\"\n\n\"Sorry, Fingal, but remember when Maggie MacCorkle's cat got stuck up this tree?\"\n\n\"Right,\" he said, \"right. I'd forgotten you had acrophobia.\" And a highly developed sense of self-preservation, I thought.\n\n\"Donal,\" he said. \"Donal Donnelly's the man for the job.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWriters of tales of darkest Africa often mentioned the jungle telegraph, as in \"... the heat, the heat, and the native drums.\" Plains Indians reputedly communicated using smoke signals. How messages were transmitted in Ballybucklebo, where few of the natives possessed telephones, was a mystery to me, but communicate they did. I called this phenomenon the bog telegraph. It had worked with its usual celerity.\n\nHalf an hour after O'Reilly's pronouncement, Donal Donnelly showed up at the house, wheeling his psychedelic bicycle and wearing his simple smile.\n\n\"Hear you've a wee job for me, Doctor, sir,\" he said, knuckling his forehead\u2014a very thin strip between his eyebrows and hairline\u2014and bending to remove his bicycle clips, strange metallic devices worn around the ankles to prevent the 'cycle's chain from devouring the wearer's trousers.\n\n\"Indeed I do,\" said an avuncular O'Reilly, draping a fond arm round Donal's narrow shoulders and regarding the victim with the expression I've always imagined Lewis Carroll's walrus used when talking to a group of oysters. \"Just a wee one. Come on in,\" he said, \"and I'll show you.\"\n\nDonal trotted in O'Reilly's wake and I brought up the rear. Once in the back garden, O'Reilly started to explain the nature of the \"wee job.\"\n\n\"Here's your ladder, Donal.\" O'Reilly bent, picked up a wooden extending ladder, and loaded it onto Donal's shoulder.\n\n\"Painting, is it, Doctor?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head.\n\n\"Here's your sack.\" Fingal handed Donal a large potato sack.\n\nDonal frowned as he accepted the thing.\n\n\"There's the tree.\"\n\nDonal's face lightened. \"Another wee pussycat up your tree, Doctor, sir?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\"\n\nThe frown came back.\n\n\"It's a wasps' nest, Donal.\"\n\nDonal froze. I believe his eyeballs swole in their sockets. \"Jasus, Mary, and Joseph and all the little saints,\" he whispered.\n\n\"Nothing to it, Donal. Nip up the ladder, whip the sack round the nest, snap off its stalk, and hold the mouth of the sack tight shut.\"\n\nDonal's head nodded like one of those big-beaked, globular-bodied, feather-tailed toy birds which if clipped to the rim of a water glass would oscillate back and forth for hours.\n\n\"There's a good lad,\" said O'Reilly, pushing Donal in the direction of the elm. \"By the time you bring the nest down in the sack, I'll have a bonfire lit. We can cremate the whole bloody lot of them.\" This last was said with a leer that would have looked well on the face of a Roman emperor giving the thumbs down to an army of defeated gladiators.\n\nI retreated inside the kitchen doorway. Donal went to the tree. My last glimpse was of his legs disappearing up through the leaves. O'Reilly bent to his work making a heap of dried leaves and twigs, his ample behind pointing straight at the old elm.\n\nI heard Donal yelling from his leafy aerie, \"I've got them, Doctor, sir. It's going to be all right.\"\n\nAnd it would have been\u2014if the bottom hadn't fallen out of the mouldy old sack and the nest's infuriated occupants hadn't been released when the nest hit the ground.\nFEBRUARY 2000\n\nPipes of Wrath\n\nThe man who silenced O'Reilly\n\nVery few people ever told that medical gentleman, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, what to do, but it could be done. I saw it happen. By the way, please remember that a gentleman may be defined as \"a man who can play the bagpipes\u2014but doesn't.\" By this account Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was certainly no gentleman. His weekly practices with the local pipe band were one thing. They took place in an old barn sufficiently far from Ballybucklebo that the natives were scarcely if ever disturbed. I could even find it in my heart to forgive his solitary warbling on his miniature chanter.\n\nChanter? For those unfamiliar with the great highland bagpipe and wondering what on Earth I'm on about, let me explain the arcane workings of the things. The bits that stick up over the player's shoulder are the drones. There are no prizes for guessing why. The tube that connects the apparently apoplectic puffer's mouth to the tartan-covered bag is the blowstick. The chanter is the perforated pipe up and down which the musician's fingers ripple as though the digits' owner had forgotten to take his anticonvulsants for at least a week. It's from the chanter that the tune is wrung.\n\nPipers with consciences can exercise their chanter fingering on a miniature version. The full-sized job roars like the booming of some long-dead dinosaur. A regimental pipe band can re-create the noises of the entire Jurassic period. Massed bands, like those at the Annual Edinburgh Tattoo, for example, can emulate the racket of the Mesozoic Era. The miniature version produces a gentler note\u2014somewhere between an oboe and a ruptured duck\u2014and is barely audible at a range of a spear's throw, the average distance used by Sassenachs to decide whether to flee from the noise or try to show their disapproval in a more pointed way. No, I had little cause for complaint when O'Reilly confined himself to the mini version.\n\nLife only became auditorily awful when himself would fire up the whole set and march up and down the back garden playing something called a pibroch. According to O'Reilly, the pibroch was the classical music of the pipes. I didn't seem to recognize the names of Beethoven or Brahms among the composers of these works but I'm sure it was due to an oversight. Mozart's rarely if ever played K1007\u00bd was probably a concerto for pibroch and orchestra.\n\nPicture if you will, O'Reilly, bag under left arm, drones on left shoulder, face florid, nose flashing from scarlet to white (the latter when he missed a note, although how anyone but him could tell was beyond me), pacing up and down the back garden, pipes roaring, birds fleeing from the trees in panic, and the faithful Arthur Guinness marching at his master's side, gazing with the eyes of a besotted fool at the Labrador's version of God and lending his not inconsiderable howling in counterpoint.\n\nThe natives of Ballybucklebo tolerated these outbursts, less because of any great affection for their medical advisor, but rather from a deep-seated local belief that so awful was the wailing that the indigenous banshees fled in terror. And as everyone knew, no one could die in Ballybucklebo without a preliminary hullabaloo from the banshee.\n\nOn the night in question I was cowering in the upstairs sitting room, praying that the row would stop, beseeching the Almighty with all the fervour of one of Custer's cavalrymen asking that the Indians go away. Somewhere in my pounded ears I became aware of an insistent ringing. I knew that tinnitus could be provoked by too many decibels. For a happy moment I hoped it might be the harbinger of a merciful deafness, then I realized it was the front doorbell\u2014and it was Mrs. Kincaid's night off.\n\nWhen I answered the door, a small, bekilted man stood there. He looked like a Scottish garden gnome that had climbed down from its concrete plinth. His face was as weathered as if he'd spent his entire life\u2014which must have been at least seventy winters\u2014in the open air.\n\n\"Good evening,\" I remarked, expecting to be addressed in the almost incomprehensible burr of the Glaswegian.\n\n\"Aye. Chust so.\" His speech was soft, melodious. I was conversing with a highlander or a man from the Western Isles.\n\n\"It will be the Doctor himself that I am hearing?\"\n\nNo, I thought, it's the wrath of God. But I nodded.\n\n\"Chust so. And could I be speaking with himself?\"\n\n\"Actually I'm on call tonight, Mister... er...\"\n\n\"MacKay of the Island MacKays.\" He offered his hand as a laird would to a peasant.\n\nI shook it gravely. \"Come into the surgery. Please.\" I ushered him in. Even with the heavy door closed behind us the awful ululation thundered on.\n\n\"What can I do for you, Mister MacKay?\"\n\n\"Well...\" His face contorted into a rictus of such anguish that I thought the little man was having a heart attack.\n\n\"Are you all right?\"\n\nHis features softened. \"Fine. Ah'm grand. It's himself.\" He inclined his bald pate in the direction of the piping. \"The Doctor cannae get the grace notes right.\"\n\n\"And is that why you wanted to see him?\" I asked.\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"Right,\" I said. \"I'll go and get him.\" At last, I thought, someone who can tell O'Reilly to shut up. Then a thought struck me. \"Mister McKay, if he's making mistakes, does that mean he'll have to practise harder?\"\n\n\"Chust so.\"\n\n\"Could you do me a favour? Could you suggest he uses the practice chanter?\"\n\nA very knowing look spread across the old Scotsman's face. \"Aye, son. Chust so.\"\n\nMy heart soared as I sped to the back garden. It took about five minutes to attract O'Reilly's attention. He lowered the bag and the moaning ceased slowly. The noise would have been described locally as \"the tune the old cow died to.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\" he roared.\n\nDo not try to take a raw steak from a pit bull. Do not interrupt O'Reilly's pibroch.\n\n\"There's a Mister MacKay to see you, Fingal.\"\n\nO'Reilly flinched. \"Lord,\" he muttered.\n\n\"He says something about your not getting your grace notes right.\"\n\nO'Reilly looked as if he had been struck by lightning. His voice fell to a whisper\u2014the first bit of peace and quiet I'd had for what seemed like hours. \"Did he?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Jasus. Do you know who he is?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"Angus MacKay was the Lord of the Isles piper before he moved here to Ballybucklebo.\" By the look on Fingal's face the position must have been on a par with the Archangel Gabriel's in a more elevated sphere. \"He taught me to play.\"\n\n\"And,\" I said, \"he says you need a lot more practice. On the little chanter.\"\n\nO'Reilly hung his head.\n\nAnd for a while, I thought, blessing the name of Angus MacKay, there will be peace in the valley.\nMARCH 2000\n\nSam Slither\n\nWhat noise annoys an oyster?\n\nDoctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was a man of definite likes\u2014you know about his terrible strong weakness for the product of John Jameson's distillery\u2014and his share of well-formulated dislikes.\n\nWhen it came to certain members of the species Homo sapiens\u2014Councillor Bishop immediately springs to mind\u2014O'Reilly regarded them with the distaste of a South Seas cannibal for banana fritters. Nor did he confine his animus to specified individuals. Certain subspecies\u2014district health officials, a well-defined breed of Presbyterian minister (the Angus McWheezles of this world) and lawyers, for example\u2014he would condemn to perdition en bloc. Not that he ever let his general disgust stand in the way if the opportunity to attack a particular member of one of the subsets presented itself.\n\nTake the case of Samuel P. Shaughnessy, LLB, known to the citizens of Ballybucklebo as \"Sam Slither.\" The \"slither\" part was an allusion to the man's slippery courtroom carryings-on.\n\nThe legal eagle in question had visited us because he was troubled by a persistent cough. Shaughnessy was a little man, birdlike. He had beady eyes and a hooked nose that wouldn't have been out of place on the face of a peregrine falcon. He strutted into the surgery, breast thrust out like a pouter pigeon\u2014and a particularly haughty pouter at that.\n\nFrom his opening, \"Well, O'Reilly?\"\u2014not, you will note, \"Doctor O'Reilly\"\u2014he treated my senior colleague as a duke would treat a scullion. He simply ignored me. He left without as much as a thank you.\n\nO'Reilly had dealt with the man in an entirely professional manner\u2014and about as much warmth as the blizzard that finally saw off Scott of the Antarctic.\n\n\"Jasus,\" said O'Reilly as soon as Slither, S., had left the surgery, \"I can't abide that man. He'd better not go swimming.\"\n\n\"Because it would be bad for his cough?\" I asked naively.\n\nO'Reilly snorted. \"Not at all. If he ever went in the water, the whole of the coast guard would be out to clean up the oil slick.\"\n\nI knew of Shaughnessy's reputation. \"You're right, Fingal,\" I said, but contained my desire to laugh. O'Reilly's nose tip was pure alabaster.\n\n\"I don't like Mister Shaughnessy,\" growled O'Reilly. \"Not one bit.\"\n\nIt seemed superfluous to remark that I could have guessed that. I assumed that Mister S. was in O'Reilly's bad books as a side effect of the little lawyer's profession. As usual when it came to guessing why Doctor O. behaved the way he did, I wasn't entirely right.\n\nO'Reilly rummaged in his pocket and produced and lit up his briar. \"Come to think of it, keeping him away from the water's another good reason that he should never be let loose on the deck of a yacht.\"\n\nAha, I thought, there's more to this than immediately collides with the contents of the eye-socket.\n\nYou'll remember that O'Reilly was a keen sailor. So was Shaughnessy. Indeed he was commodore of the local yacht club, and to add insult to injury, his boat and O'Reilly's were tied at four wins each in the biweekly race series.\n\n\"It's your day off on Saturday,\" O'Reilly remarked, catching me quite off guard. \"What are you up to?\"\n\nWith my unerring ability to fabricate a plausible excuse on the spur of the moment, I answered, \"Um...\"\n\n\"Good,\" said O'Reilly. \"It's the last race in the series and I...\"\n\n\"Need a crew?\"\n\n\"Exactly, my boy.\" He beamed and exhaled a cloud of tobacco smoke that would have cleared the first two lines of enemy trenches in World War I. \"I'm sure we can get a locum down from Belfast. You'll have a wonderful sail.\"\n\nI wondered if Mister Christian had offered similar comforting words as he cast Captain Bligh adrift on the start of his two-thousand-mile journey in an open longboat.\n\n* * *\n\nI won't weary you with the details of the great yacht race. I'll merely remark that O'Reilly's boat and Shaughnessy's crossed the start line bow to bow and immediately engaged in what I'm told is referred to as a tacking duel. The shining hours passed with tacks, gybes, luffing ups, and sundry other arcane manoeuvres, all accompanied by roars of command to the crew\u2014me\u2014and abusive bellows of \"Starboard!\" and \"Water!\" hurled from vessel to vessel. I believe if O'Reilly's boat had been armed he'd have given Shaughnessy a broadside and ordered me to \"board him in the smoke.\"\n\nThe ferocity of the competition would have made an America's Cup race look like the endeavours of two model boats on a duck pond. O'Reilly's boat crossed the finishing line a mere two feet ahead of the competition.\n\nI was soaked, frozen, and felt as though single-handedly I'd hauled a grand piano to the summit of Mount Everest. Pulling on ropes on a yacht isn't called grinding for nothing. But I confess there was a sense of satisfaction. Not only had O'Reilly beaten Shaughnessy, he had, as far as I understood these things, won the series.\n\nI glanced at Shaughnessy's boat and noticed a red flag flying from the piece of string that ran from the blunt end to the top of the mast. Assuming this signal to be some kind of gracious concession of defeat, I happily drew the matter to O'Reilly's attention.\n\nHe erupted. \"Bloody lawyers! Bloody Sam Slither. Trust him to hoist a protest flag.\"\n\n\"Protest?\"\n\n\"Protest. He's saying that somewhere we broke one of the rules.\" Given the ferocity of the recent competition, I couldn't help remarking, \"The Marquess of Queensberry Rules?\"\n\n\"No, you nitwit. Racing rules. We'll have to meet with the race committee. He'll present his case\u2014bloody lawyer\u2014and we'll have to try to defend ourself. That little weasel knows the laws of sailing better than a Talmudic scholar knows the Torah.\" The sound of O'Reilly grinding his teeth was so intense that I thought we'd run aground\u2014again.\n\n* * *\n\nThe atmosphere at the post-race buffet was frosty. The committee had met. Shaughnessy had presented his case, and to the obvious disappointment of the committee members and the huge chagrin of O'Reilly, they'd had to find, purely on some abstruse point of maritime law, in Slippery Sam's favour. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to describe O'Reilly as crushed, but he was distinctly subdued.\n\nI believe revenge has been described as \"a dish best eaten cold.\" If the originator of the remark had been at the buffet he might have changed the remark to \"a dish not eaten at all,\" but then its author Joseph Marie Eug\u00e8ne Sue couldn't have known O'Reilly.\n\nHe stood at the table, pint in one hand, plate in the other. He was accepting the condolences of his many cronies.\n\nShaughnessy pushed his way through the little throng. He carried a plate of raw oysters.\n\nI listened as he addressed O'Reilly.\n\n\"To make up for my victory,\" I saw the man's chest puff out farther than usual, \"let me buy you a drink.\"\n\nO'Reilly did not speak.\n\nNor did any other member of the yacht club. A dropping pin would have sounded like the eruption of Krakatoa, so deep was the silence.\n\n\"Well, at least have an oyster. Quite delicious.\"\n\nI saw O'Reilly's grin start and steeled myself.\n\n\"Shaughnessy,\" Fingal said in gentle tones, \"you're a quare dab hand at the law.\" Sam Slither's pullover nearly burst.\n\n\"But my trade's medicine, and you know... so I'll pass on the oysters.\" His pause wasn't merely pregnant. It was carrying triplets. He inclined his head to the plate of slithery bivalves and said in gentle but very widely audible tones, \"I always advise my patients never\u2014never\u2014to eat anything as slimy as a lawyer.\"\nAPRIL 2000\n\nA Matchless Experience\n\nPity the stranger visiting Ballybucklebo\n\nOccasionally, outsiders wandered into Ballybucklebo. Some of them, when confronted with the likes of Maggie MacCorkle, Donal Donnelly, the Reverend Angus McWheezle, and indeed the redoubtable Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly himself, must have wondered if they'd stumbled into a dress rehearsal for one of the more bizarre efforts of Le Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Grand-Guignol.\n\nI'm sure that collectively the denizens of our little village could have kept teams of geneticists happily employed for years. Behavioural psychologists could have filled countless journal pages with arcane articles with titles like, \"The Immediate Onset of Incomprehensible Gibbering Among Strangers on First Being Introduced to Maggie MacCorkle\" or \"The Impact of Entering the Mucky Duck on the Cognitive Processes of Otherwise Well-Balanced Persons.\"\n\nUsually, the poor benighted who stumbled into our little backwater had arrived there by mistake. Most had taken a wrong turning on the Belfast-to-Donaghadee Road. Even the mere act of seeking directions to return a wayward traveller on their merry way could lead to nervous exhaustion. Such clearly stated navigational tips as, \"Go down the road 'til you come to a red barn, sir. Now don't turn right there,\" or, \"When you've not turned at the red barn, go on three more fields. There'll be a black-and-white cow there unless Willy John has her in the red barn for milking. Go two fields past and follow your nose.\"\n\nI once heard Donal Donnelly at his most helpful reduce a bewildered-looking city gent to a state bordering on hysteria. The party in question halted his Rolls-Royce, wound down the window, and said to the passing Donal, \"My good man, how would I get from here to Donaghadee?\"\n\nDonal, as you'll remember, was a bit slow. Indeed snails had been known to cover vast distances while Donal puzzled out the answer to a question.\n\n\"Come on, man. I haven't got all day.\"\n\n\"It's Donaghadee you want, sir?\"\n\n\"I just told you that.\"\n\n\"Donaghadee? Aye, indeed. Donaghadee.\"\n\n\"Yes. Donaghadee.\" There was a great deal of drumming of fingers on the steering wheel.\n\n\"That's a hard one, sir. That's a very hard one. You know\"\u2014here Donal paused and a beautiful smile plastered itself across his normally bland face\u2014\"if I was you I wouldn't have tried to get to Donaghadee from here in the first place.\"\n\n* * *\n\nYou can understand why few non-natives, apart from impecunious assistants to established general practitioners, would decide to let their caravans rest in that rural loony bin. And yet once in a navy blue moon someone would appear from the great world outside, sample the village, and decide to stay. They usually didn't last long unless they were able to adapt to the aboriginal ways and, more importantly, gain acceptance into the Ballybucklebo social circle. In Ireland such recent arrivals are known as \"blow-ins.\"\n\nIt might have been his acknowledged virtuosity on the great highland bagpipe\u2014after all, the man had been piper to the Lord of the Isles\u2014that led to the initial acceptance of Angus MacKay.\n\nThe fact that he'd had the temerity to point out to O'Reilly his inability to master certain grace notes as he throttled a thing called a pibroch from his tartan-clad octopus would have raised MacKay's stock further with the locals. His complete bringing into the fold was assured on the night when MacKay simultaneously reaffirmed his Scotsness and succeeded in discomfiting a visiting Sassenach.\n\nAngus worked as a shepherd. He lived in a cottage about ten miles from the village and it had become his wont to walk into Ballybucklebo on a Saturday, stop at the Mucky Duck for a wee dram, purchase one bottle of single malt, and hike back to his cottage.\n\nO'Reilly had hauled me into the Duck. The place was relatively quiet. Only one or two of the usual suspects held up the far end of the bar. A stranger leaned dispiritedly, alone as a heron on a mudflat, toying with a half-pint. The poor man had probably popped in to ask directions.\n\nO'Reilly and I were sitting at a table when Angus came in. As usual he wore a tam-o'-shanter and was bekilted and besporranned.\n\n\"Good evening, Doctors,\" said Angus.\n\n\"Evening, Angus.\"\n\nHe propped his cromach, the long crook beloved by Scottish shepherds, in a corner and walked over to the bar. He was so short his nose barely reached the countertop.\n\n\"Evening, Angus.\" Arthur Osbaldiston, our red-faced, spherical host, beamed over the bar. \"The usual?\"\n\n\"Chust so, and a packet of Woodbines.\"\n\n\"Twenty?\"\n\nAngus rummaged in his sporran, produced a handful of coins, consulted them with the concentration of a Viking warlock examining his runes, shook his head, and said, \"No. Ten will be chust fine.\"\n\nSpendthrift and Angus MacKay did not have quite the happy relationship of say, peaches and cream.\n\nArthur delivered the cheap cigarettes and a glass of whisky.\n\n\"There you are, Angus.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Arthur,\" he said, lifting his tam-o'-shanter with the courtesy of a Spanish grandee. He pulled out and lit one cigarette, leaving the packet on the counter, said, \"Slainte,\" and sipped his drink.\n\nPerhaps it was his accent, so different from those of the locals, that persuaded the stranger to sidle along the bar and try to strike up a conversation.\n\n\"Hello, old chap,\" the man said by way of introduction. Immediately I recognized the plummy, marbles-in-the-mouth tones of an English ex\u2013public schoolboy. No wonder, I thought, that he'd been ignored by the others in the place.\n\nAngus inclined his head, but said nothing.\n\n\"Couldn't help noticing you're having a smoke.\"\n\nAngus nodded, but kept his counsel.\n\nThe Englishman's voice was louder than those usually heard in the Duck and I could see that the others in the place were now paying avid attention to the little drama unfolding at the other end of the bar.\n\n\"Um... don't suppose you could spare a match?\"\n\nAha, I thought, the ask-for-a-match gambit as a way of striking up a conversation. I wondered how successful the Englishman would be.\n\nSilently Angus opened his sporran, fumbled in its depths, produced one single match, and gravely offered it to his newfound acquaintance, who accepted the match and said, \"One is terribly grateful. Live round here, do you?\"\n\nAngus's nod was barely perceptible.\n\n\"Nice place, what?\"\n\nI began to rise as the man spoke. His hands were moving rapidly over his body, patting himself here and there. I thought I was witnessing my first case of Saint Vitus's dance.\n\n\"Do you know\"\u2014the man's hands stilled and he nodded his head toward the packet of Woodbines on the bar counter\u2014\"terribly stupid of me. I seem to have come out without my cigarettes.\"\n\nEvery eye in the place was focused with the pinpoint accuracy of radar sets on the pair at the bar.\n\nThe stranger finally succeeded in getting Angus to say something. He probably wished he hadn't.\n\nThe little Scotsman's usually soft speech was softer yet, but not a word was lost on his audience.\n\nHe held out one hand and said, \"In that case, sir, you'll no' be needing my match.\"\nMAY 2000\n\nA Humble Apology\n\nO'Reilly comes to the rescue once again\n\nI'd last seen Angus MacKay, shepherd and piper extraordinaire, in the company of the Reverend McWheezle. The man of the cloth had tried to suggest that the splendour of Angus's garden was largely attributable to the work of the Almighty. Angus, and I must say I'd thought he'd been pretty diplomatic, had simply asked the Lord's local representative if he could recall what the garden had looked like when the Celestial Being had been left in sole charge of the then-weed-infested plot.\n\nThe Reverend McWheezle took to being bested verbally with all the enthusiasm of a man having a fingernail yanked out, and from that day had gone out of his way to belittle Angus MacKay. The schism between them had developed into a chasm that would have made the Grand Canyon look like an irrigation ditch.\n\nMister McWheezle took every opportunity, usually thinly veiled as prim pastoral piety, to take a verbal swipe at Angus. The old Scot bore this vituperation with apparent sangfroid, although unknown to all of us in Ballybucklebo, the sang that ran in the little Scot's veins was coursing at about absolute zero.\n\nI confess that from time to time I wondered when Angus would stop turning the other cheek and turn the other set of knuckles\u2014as in a right cross or jab and uppercut. But no matter how hard the reverend pushed, Angus would mutter a civil, \"Chust so,\" and walk away. He kept his counsel until the day McWheezle moved from Angus-baiting to a direct frontal assault upon Angus's nation\u2014an attack as forceful as the one that delivered Badajoz into the hands of the Iron Duke.\n\n\"Ah,\" said McWheezle, in front of a small crowd of his congregation outside the kirk at the end of morning service, \"been praying, MacKay?\"\n\n\"Chust so, your reverence.\" Angus tipped his caubeen most civilly.\n\n\"Just like the Scots,\" said McWheezle, vinegar oozing through the honey of his words. \"Pray on their knees on a Sunday\u2014and their neighbours for the rest of the week.\"\n\nAngus stopped dead. His kilt shuddered like an electrocuted jellyfish. He turned, faced the reverend gentleman, and said in low but measured tones, \"Mister McWheezle, sir?\"\n\n\"Yes, Angus?\"\n\n\"It would be a cause of great pleasure to me, sir\u2014with all due deference to your station\u2014it would be a cause of great pleasure to me, sir, if you would kindly bugger off.\"\n\nThe words were clear, deliberate, and greeted with the kind of stunned silence that would have marked a royal wedding if the answer to the question, \"Do you take this prince...\" had been \"Sod this for a game of soldiers.\" Every mouth gaped. Lips pursed. The members of the audience looked like a school of expiring codfish.\n\n\"Aye,\" said Angus\u2014in fencing circles his original remark had been a parry; now came the riposte\u2014\"and as soon and as fast as possible.\" He spun on his heel and strode off, cromac clattering on the pavement.\n\nFrom the look on the Reverend McWheezle's face he'd been taken off guard as much as a certain King Edward at a spot called Bannockburn. It was a good thing the old church was built of granite, so great was the huffing and puffing of the practically paralyzed Presbyterian.\n\nThe only sound that could be heard over the reverend's respiratory rasping was a gargantuan grumbling\u2014the kind of noise an antiquated steam boiler with a stuck safety valve might make if the internal pressure was reaching a critical point. I turned and realized it was O'Reilly trying to control himself.\n\n* * *\n\nWe didn't see Angus for several weeks, then he resurfaced as the very last patient of a busy morning's surgery. O'Reilly ushered him in. O'Reilly seated himself at the rolltop desk and, as usual, I parked myself on the examining couch.\n\n\"Have a seat, Angus.\" O'Reilly gestured toward a chair.\n\nThe little Scot shook his head. He stood silently, holding his caubeen in both hands.\n\nI waited. O'Reilly waited. Angus said nothing. The silence stretched like a piece of knicker elastic caught in the spokes of a bicycle wheel.\n\n\"Well,\" said O'Reilly, at last, \"what seems to be the trouble?\"\n\n\"It is that man,\" said Angus. \"Himself. The dominie.\"\n\nDomino? I thought. Whatever was he on about?\n\n\"Mister McWheezle?\" asked O'Reilly.\n\n\"Chust so. It was a terrible thing.\"\n\n\"What he said to you?\" O'Reilly probed.\n\n\"No,\" said Angus with a mighty shake of his head. \"What I said to him.\"\n\n\"Come on, Angus. He was asking for it.\"\n\nAngus drew himself up\u2014well to half-mast; remember he was less than five feet tall. \"It was not a thing to be forgiven. A shentleman\"\u2014I realized he meant gentleman\u2014\"from the Isles should never lose his temper.\" The little Scot was clearly distressed.\n\n\"Um,\" said O'Reilly, \"um, I don't suppose you'd consider apologizing?\"\n\nFrom the look on the little man's face I guessed that he would rather have eaten his haggis raw.\n\n\"This is upsetting you, Angus, isn't it?\" said O'Reilly.\n\n\"Chust so, Doctor. It is what you might call a dilemma.\"\n\nRight, I thought. Come on, O'Reilly, let's see you solve this one.\n\nO'Reilly bent his head over to Angus, whispered something I couldn't hear, and straightened up. The thunderclouds fled from Angus's wrinkled face. The sun gleamed on the hills and valleys of his cheeks. His deep blue eyes twinkled.\n\n\"Chust so. Sunday then, Doctor... Thank you, sir.\" He turned and left.\n\n\"What...?\" I began.\n\n\"The power of authority,\" said O'Reilly, and that was all he would say.\n\nAfter service that Sunday, a larger congregation than usual gathered on the church steps. O'Reilly and I kept our places at the front of the crowd as Angus MacKay approached the Reverend McWheezle.\n\n\"It is a word I would like, your reverence.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said McWheezle with the inflated dignity of a Doge of Venice and all the warmth of an Atlantic northeaster.\n\n\"Well,\" said Angus mildly, \"well, you'll no' have forgotten that I telled ye tae bugger off?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said McWheezle.\n\n\"Aye, and soon.\"\n\nMcWheezle sniffed.\n\n\"Well,\" said Angus slowly, \"after giving the matter consideration, and after consultation with Doctor O'Reilly, I have come to the conclusion that...\"\n\nThe reverend's chest puffed up like the Hindenburg before her final flight. \"You must apologize?\" he sneered.\n\n\"Oh no,\" said Angus, \"no, it's chust that Doctor O'Reilly says you need nae bother\u2014but if you must, you'll no' be needing tae rush.\"\nJUNE 2000\n\nThe Patient Who Broke the Rules\n\nAnd why O'Reilly didn't mind\n\nDevotees of Ray Bradbury, and indeed many students of physics, know that paper bursts into flame at a temperature of 451\u00b0F. Devotees of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly know that his flashpoint was considerably lower. If he'd been a volcano, teams of vulcanologists would have set up permanent encampments in his garden, ever ready to be on hand for his next inevitable eruption. Living in his house, as I did, was akin to dwelling on the lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius.\n\nEver since the first report of the dangers of secondhand smoke\u2014written, I believe, by one of the Plinys, describing the minor upset that engulfed Pompeii\u2014Neapolitans have developed a kind of early warning system. They rely on the behaviour of animals, their own ability to sense earth tremors, and any release of smoke from the summit of their local planetary safety vent.\n\nEver since I'd witnessed the ejection of Donal Donnelly by my mentor, I'd developed my own early warning system. I relied on the rapid disappearance of Arthur Guinness, O'Reilly's cerebrally challenged Labrador, my own ability to see the great man tremble, and any suggestion of pallor in the tip of his nose.\n\nNeapolitans are always prepared to beat hasty retreats at the slightest sign of instability. Removing myself from the great man's presence wasn't always possible but at least I'd evolved a pretty acute idea of when to keep my mouth shut and look the other way.\n\nI also kept a mental checklist of people and circumstances likely to provoke one of his outbursts. Councillor Bishop, the Reverend McWheezle, and Doctor \"Thorny\" Murphy, unkindness to widows or eccentrics who lived in old cars, hypocrisy, and shoddy medical practice... but if we take the list of characters I've just mentioned, I repeat myself.\n\nMalingerers with sore backs weren't high on O'Reilly's list of preferred patients. Slow historians\u2014you know the type, the ones who in response to the question \"Does anyone in your family suffer from anything similar?\" will start with the utterly unrelated complaint of a distant ancestor whose name was recorded in the Domesday Book, and ramble glacially through the generations\u2014slow historians would get shrift of such shortness from O'Reilly that it couldn't have been measured with a micrometer. At least that had been my experience until the day I sat in on a consultation with a local fisherman.\n\nDeclan O'Tomelty was a large man. He sat in the chair, boots firmly planted on the floor, knees apart, gnarled hands resting on his thighs. He wore moleskin trousers held up at the knee by those leather thongs that the Scots call knicky-tams.\n\nO'Reilly sat before his rolltop desk, half-moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose, elbow on knee, chin resting on the back of his hand. He looked like a rustic version of Rodin's Thinker.\n\nI kept a close eye on O'Reilly's schnozzle. By all the usual indicators, it should have borne an even closer resemblance to old Auguste R.'s lump of bronze on a marble pedestal\u2014glanced at my watch\u2014at least ten minutes ago. The history of O'Tomelty's sore back seemed to be going on forever, but O'Reilly simply sat, immobile, only occasionally making a sympathetic grunt.\n\nO'Tomelty's epic expostulation eventually ended.\n\nO'Reilly rose and gestured to me to get down from my perch on the examining table. He asked O'Tomelty to undress and lie on the table, and once the man had painfully climbed up, O'Reilly examined his patient's back with a thoroughness and gentleness that surprised me.\n\n\"Right,\" he said, \"hop down, Declan. I've just to make a phone call.\"\n\nO'Reilly lifted the receiver and dialed. \"Hello? Royal Victoria? Orthopaedics, please.\" His fingers drummed on the desktop. \"Professor Muldoon, please.\" Just a hint of nasal pallor. \"I don't give a tinker's damn who he's busy with. This is Doctor Fingal O'Reilly. What? I should bloody well think so.\"\n\nI wondered if the recipient's receiver was melting.\n\n\"Hello? Monkey Nuts?\"\n\nGood Lord, I thought. Professor Michael Muldoon had been the terror of all of us when we were students, and O'Reilly has the temerity to call the old fire-eater \"Monkey Nuts\"?\n\n\"No, sorry, I can't make it for golf on Saturday. No, I need a favour. Patient of mine. You'll see him at five? Splendid.\" O'Reilly put down the phone and spoke quietly to the now fully dressed O'Tomelty. \"Have a pew in the waiting room, Declan. Doctor Taylor here won't mind finishing the surgery. I'll run you up to Belfast.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor, sir,\" O'Tomelty said as he left.\n\nMy mouth hung open. The man had broken at least two of O'Reilly's rules\u2014thou shalt not have a sore back nor give a rambling history\u2014as effectively as a murderer and an adulterer would have bent a couple of the Ten Interesting Suggestions that Moses brought down from the Mount, numbers five and ten by the Augustinian method of reckoning if memory serves, and yet O'Reilly had listened patiently and...\n\n\"I know what you're thinking, Taylor,\" he said, \"so stop it.\"\n\n\"I promise,\" I replied. The Neapolitans, when in doubt, run.\n\n\"You don't know Declan O'Tomelty the way I do.\" O'Reilly's hazel eyes had a faraway look. \"Don't suppose you know much naval history either.\"\n\nI was about to remark that I wasn't entirely ignorant of the fate of the Spanish Armada when I remembered that O'Reilly had had a distinguished career in His Majesty's floating forces in the last great nastiness. He continued, \"I hadn't been in practice here for long when Declan showed up, quite late at night. His back was sore. I wasn't too pleased.\"\n\nNor was King Charles I when Olly Cromwell decided that the royal locks needed a bit of a trim\u2014permanently.\n\n\"Maybe,\" said O'Reilly pensively, \"maybe I was a bit easier in those days. I listened to the man.\"\n\nYou what? I thought.\n\n\"Just showed me the value of a well-taken history. 'All right,' says I, 'how did you hurt your back?' 'Wasn't me that hurt it, Doc,' says he, 'it was them Germans.' 'Pardon,' says I. 'Well,' says he, 'I was in the navy.' I suppose because he and I had something in common I paid a bit more attention. 'Go on,' says I. 'I was minding my own business, strapped to my antiaircraft gun. Then there was a bloody great bang and me and the gun is heading up\u2014right up. God knows what happened to the gun, but I headed down, and I'll tell you, Doc, that water was bloody cold, so it was.' 'Right,' says I, and I'll tell you, Pat, I was tired and not too pleased with his story. I only asked him one more question.\"\n\n\"'Are you going to get out of here?'\" I suggested.\n\nO'Reilly shook his head. \"No. I asked him, 'What ship were you on?' 'I don't suppose, Doc,' says he, 'that you ever heard of the Hood?'\"\n\n\"The Hood?\" I said, \"but there were only three survivors.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said O'Reilly. \"Declan really is one of them.\"\n\nO'Reilly strode to the door. \"His back has given him gip ever since. I think he's earned a ride to the hospital.\"\n\nAuthor's note: I usually make up these stories but this is a retelling of an actual episode of my own early years in practice, although the name Declan O'Tomelty and his occupation are fictitious. I had no reason to doubt O'Reilly.\n(no column in july 2000)  \nAUGUST 2000\n\nGoing to the Dogs\n\nO'Reilly places a bet\n\n\"Good Lord,\" said O'Reilly, \"I wonder if he'll paint it the same colours as his bicycle.\"\n\nWe were strolling along the main, indeed the only, street of the humming metropolis of Ballybucklebo. Approaching us was Donal Donnelly, who was being tailed by something vaguely canine. After closer inspection, as our respective paths converged, I noticed that the beast was attached to Donal by a piece of frayed rope.\n\nDonal, you will remember, wasn't overly bright\u2014in the way that Mount Everest isn't overly short\u2014and definitely belonged to the Charles Atlas School of Bodybuilding, Class of '61\u2014Failures. Anyone who'd ever seen Donal stripped for action was immediately reminded of some poor shipwrecked wretch who'd survived for several months on the boilings of his leather shoes and the smell of a greasy rag. Donal's visage would have been a geometrician's dream, pointed as it was both vertically and fore and aft.\n\nI tell you this because the greyhound, for such it was, bore a striking resemblance to its master. There was nothing of the creature but a muzzle like a weasel's, ribs that only needed little paper chef's hats to pass muster as a rack of lamb, and a tail that the animal carried between its legs.\n\nThe last attribute was Donal's normal demeanour when addressing Doctor O'Reilly, but on that particular morning Donal was distinctly cocky. \"She's a beauty, isn't she, Doctor O'Reilly?\" Donal wasn't bursting with pride\u2014he was exploding.\n\n\"Mmm,\" said O'Reilly noncommittally as he bent to examine the dog.\n\n\"You should see her run,\" said Donal. \"Greased lightning wouldn't get a look in.\"\n\nI thought back to my classes in nutrition and some arcane formula concerning rate of caloric expenditure and weight loss. Looking at Donal's greyhound, it seemed to me that the mere effort of standing was probably generating a calorific deficit. Running might make the animal disappear completely.\n\n\"What do you call her?\" O'Reilly inquired, diplomatically.\n\n\"Bluebird,\" said Donal, smugly.\n\n\"Bluebird. Would that be after Sir Malcolm Campbell's speedboat?\" asked O'Reilly.\n\n\"Aye, Doctor. Boys-a-dear, you should see that thing go.\"\n\n\"Donal,\" said O'Reilly, \"That Bluebird runs on water.\"\n\nDonal held one finger alongside his nose. His left upper eyelid drooped like a sagging theatre curtain\u2014the nearest Donal could manage to a wink\u2014and he inclined his head to the dog. \"So does she, Doctor.\"\n\nFor the life of me I couldn't understand why O'Reilly guffawed, slapped Donal on the shoulder, and said, \"You'll tell me when she runs dry, won't you, Donal?\"\n\n\"Indeed, Doctor. Indeed I will.\" Donal took his leave, pursued by the faithful Bluebird.\n\n\"Smart lad, that Donal,\" said O'Reilly. \"That dog will bear watching.\"\n\nO'Reilly's attribution of smartness to a man whose thickness was an affront to all short planks so dumbfounded me that I neglected to ask why Bluebird would bear scrutiny. I didn't find out for several months\u2014and, as usual, I found out to my cost. I found out when O'Reilly and I went to the dogs\u2014literally.\n\nI may have neglected to mention that in the rural Ulster communities, working dogs were the order of the day\u2014haughty police Alsatians, super-intelligent border collies, gentle guide dogs, and, oh yes, the dimwitted, boozing, look-there's-Taylor's-trouser-leg-let's-have-a-go-at-it, so-called gun dog, Arthur Guinness.\n\nBluebird was nominally a worker. Her task was to charge round an oval track in pursuit of a mechanical hare, beat all the other dogs, and by so doing enrich those who'd seen fit to wager on the outcome.\n\nI'd learned from O'Reilly that those who chanced a flutter on Donal's dog were forming a line on the left for admittance to the local poorhouse. It was locally supposed that the only chance the animal would ever have of coming in first was to be almost overtaken by the dogs entered in the next race after the one she'd come last in.\n\nThe seasons followed their preordained paths in Ballybucklebo. O'Reilly swore at Councillor Bishop, practised his bagpipe grace notes (almost to the satisfaction of Angus MacKay), increased the share values of both the Guinness brewery and John Jameson's distillery, and allowed the practice of medicine to interfere with his busy schedule as little as possible. He had, after all, acquired the services of a junior assistant\u2014me\u2014and, as he was fond of remarking, \"There's no sense buying a dog and barking yourself.\" Perhaps his allusion to dogs was what eventually made me inquire about the celerity of a certain Bluebird, the dog that ran on water.\n\n\"Tell you what,\" he said, \"let's find out. We'll go and watch her run on Saturday.\"\n\nAnd so we did.\n\n* * *\n\nOn the appointed day, O'Reilly took me to the stadium. You may remember the Loughbrickland horse racing. The greyhound races bore a striking resemblance to their equestrian counterpart. A low fence surrounded the track. Between the fence and the spectators, the \"turf accountants\" had their stands. Florid-faced men in loud tweeds stood on their daises calling the odds and turning the purses of the punters to penury. Bluebird, it seemed, was to appear in the third race.\n\nDonal materialized like a genie from a bottle. As he passed O'Reilly, his eyelid managed its slow descent and all he murmured was, \"Very dry today, Doctor.\"\n\nO'Reilly brightened considerably.\n\n\"Come on,\" he said, pushing his way through the crowd with all the gentility of a Tiger tank. He clattered to a halt before \"Honest\" Joe Johnston's stand and examined the odds chalked on a board above the platform.\n\n\"Bluebird's at one hundred to one,\" he remarked. \"Take my advice, Pat, put a couple of quid on her.\" He muttered this as he proffered five pounds to Honest Joe.\n\n\"Bluebird on the nose,\" O'Reilly said.\n\nHonest Joe hesitated. Perhaps, I thought, even a bookie has a sense of decency. Taking O'Reilly's money seemed about as ethical as selling London Bridge to an unsuspecting antipodean.\n\n\"Bluebird,\" said O'Reilly. \"To win.\"\n\nThe bookie shrugged, took the note, and gave O'Reilly a ticket.\n\n\"Well?\" O'Reilly said, looking straight at me.\n\nI shook my head. Given Bluebird's dismal record, I'd decided it would have been less painful simply to tear up one of my hard-earned pounds.\n\n\"You'll be sorry,\" O'Reilly growled.\n\nI won't weary you with the details of the race. I'll simply remark that Bluebird, the slowest dog in all Ballybucklebo, obeying Einstein's laws of relativity, actually lengthened by a good two inches, so close did she come to the speed of light. If I'd taken O'Reilly's advice I'd have been a hundred pounds better off.\n\nHe chuckled all the way home and made me wait until we were safely ensconced in his upstairs sitting room before he deigned to explain the day's proceedings.\n\n\"You see, Pat,\" he said, \"Bluebird really did run on water.\"\n\nI was mystified.\n\n\"Look, the dog fancy aren't above helping their animals along.\"\n\n\"I don't...\"\n\n\"They give the poor things stimulants.\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Oh, aye. That's why all winners have a dope test.\"\n\n\"But if Donal gave Bluebird something, that'll show up\u2014and you'll have to give back the money.\"\n\nThe aspidistra that adorned the corner of the room grew a good two inches before he stopped laughing.\n\n\"They'll not find a thing,\" he said when he'd finally collected himself. \"Donal's been stopping the dog.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Water,\" said O'Reilly. \"Good old H2O. Donal's been keeping the animal dry for a day before every race and then he's given her a bucket of water just before the start. Slows the dog down\u2014and no one ever tests the losers. Dog finishes last time after time, up go the odds, and then...\"\n\n\"Lord,\" I said, \"that's what Donal meant by 'It's a dry day.' He didn't give her the water today.\"\n\n\"Bingo,\" said O'Reilly. \"They can test the wee bitch 'til hell freezes over.\"\n\n\"Dry day,\" I muttered, thinking of the hundred quid I hadn't collected.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said O'Reilly smugly, heading for the decanter on the sideboard, \"we can always have our own wee wet.\"\nSEPTEMBER 2000\n\nA Meeting of the Minds\n\nThe first lesson of general practice\n\n\"Old men forget.\" For the life of me I can't remember the originator of that quotation, but I can recall my first meeting with Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly\u2014classical scholar, bagpiper, poacher, hard drinker, and foul-mouthed country GP\u2014as if it were yesterday.\n\nParenthetically, I also do know that loss of short-term memory and clarity of long-term recall characterize dementia, but with regards to dumuntia\u2014I reckon if I can still spell it I ain't got it.\n\nNor had Doctor Fingal Flahertie O. When I met him, and in subsequent years when I returned to Ulster to visit him, his cortical processes would have made the workings of a Pentium chip look like the slow grinding of an unwound grandfather clock. He coupled his mental acuity with an unshakable belief that actions spoke louder than words\u2014which was often just as well. While his actions could be precipitate, his words, when he was riled, could be as cutting as the obsidian knives so beloved by the ancient Aztecs for slicing the hearts out of living victims. Add to that his propensity for salting his vituperations with a lexicon of blasphemy that would have made a sailor blush, and you can understand why Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly was as much a force to be reckoned with as a supercharged bulldozer.\n\nAnd yet his patients loved him, and I suppose in time, so did I\u2014although when I first met him, love at first sight seemed about as likely as the survival of a woodlouse under the front cylinder of a steamroller.\n\nI'd just graduated from the Queen's University of Belfast. The ink on my diploma where the dean, one Hippocrates of Kos, had made his mark, had barely had time to dry. I was young, idealistic, determined to carry healing to darkest Ulster, wet behind the ears, sanctimonious\u2014in short an inexperienced, opinionated pain in the arse. I had more rough edges than a piece of Precambrian rock. O'Reilly was responsible for smoothing the more jagged bits to something that more closely resembled a piece of emery paper. I will forever be in his debt\u2014but had I followed my instincts when we first met, I would have fled from his village of Ballybucklebo with the single-mindedness of the Israelites on their package trip out of Egypt.\n\nI'd driven down from Belfast, parked my elderly Volkswagen, and walked along a gravel path flanked by rosebushes to the front door of an imposing three-storey granite block house. I stood on the front doorstep, brand-new black bag clutched in one hand, and read the brass plate affixed to the door frame: \"Doctor F. F. O'Reilly, MB, BCh, BAO, Physician and Surgeon.\"\n\nTwo bell pushes resided in their recesses in the plate. One was labelled \"Day Bell,\" the other, \"Night Bell.\" Above the plate, the mouthpiece of a speaking tube glistened dully in the summer sunlight. As I later learned, O'Reilly had been in practice since before the telephone had reached Ballybucklebo. Patients needing to consult the great man were expected to whisper their complaints along the tube as Pyramus and Thisbe spoke to each other through the crack in the wall in A Midsummer Night's Dream.\n\nI was wondering whether to apply my own mouth to the orifice when the front door opened, much as I imagine the jaws of hell gape for an unregenerate sinner. I took a step backward.\n\nA large man, a man who stood about six foot thirteen and had the shoulders of Atlas, stood on the front steps. His face was as wrinkled as dried-out chamois leather, his cheeks florid, and his nose tip an alabaster white. His right hand grasped the coat collar and his left the seat of a pair of moleskin trousers on a much smaller man. I noticed that the grabee's left foot was bare and not altogether clean. The victim wriggled and whimpered, \"Ah, Jesus, no, Doctor...\"\n\nWhatever the rest of his sentiments might have been, they were cut off by a high-pitched keening as he was hurled bodily into one of the rosebushes.\n\nThe ogre bent, picked up a shoe and a sock, and hurled the footwear after the now-crash-landed chap. I'll never forget Doctor O'Reilly's words, delivered in a voice that would have made old Stentor sound like a sufferer from laryngitis.\n\n\"Next time, Donal Donnelly, next time you want me to look at a sore ankle... wash your bloody feet!\"\n\nHe spun on me. \"Who are you and what the hell do you want?\"\n\nImmediate transportation to a place of sanctuary seemed like a good idea, but I was so numbed, all I could think of was to hold my black bag in front of me. I suppose I thought it might have offered some protection. The captain of H.M.S. Hood probably felt the same way about his ship's armour plating\u2014before the Bismark let go.\n\n\"I said,\" he roared, \"what the hell do you want?\" As he spoke he advanced toward me.\n\n\"Doctor O'Reilly?\"\n\n\"No. John\u2014bloody\u2014Wayne.\"\n\nI wondered why I didn't simply mutter, \"My mistake,\" and make tracks. Instead I swallowed, took my black bag and my courage in both hands, and said, \"I'm Taylor. Your locum.\"\n\nHe guffawed. \"Then why didn't you say so?\"\n\nBecause I'd been feeling like a rabbit confronted by a boa constrictor. Because it wasn't the cat that had got my tongue, it was a pride of rabid lions. Because...\n\n\"Never mind,\" he said, \"come on in.\"\n\nHis handshake would have done justice to a gravel crusher. Before turning to go into the house, he pointed an admonitory finger at the heap of human wreckage that was still struggling to disentangle itself from a mass of floribunda. \"Go on home now, Donal, do what I said.\" Doctor O'Reilly consulted his watch. \"Surgery hours are over but if you're back within an hour I'll wait for you and Doctor\u2014what did you say your name was?\"\n\n\"Taylor.\"\n\n\"Doctor Taylor and I will have a look at your hind leg.\" He didn't wait for a reply, but turned and went in. I followed, closing the door behind me. He stood in a spacious hall, beaming from ear to ear, the tip of his nose now the colour of the rest of his face. \"Let that be your first lesson, Taylor. If you want to succeed in practice, never\u2014never, never, never\u2014let the customers get the upper hand.\"\nOCTOBER 2000\n\nIt's in the Can\n\nO'Reilly takes the bait\n\nMy loyal reader stopped me in the corridor of the hospital yesterday and remarked that he still enjoyed his monthly dose of O'Reilly. He asked how I'd developed the ability to conjure up such farfetched pieces of fiction. I could have explained to him too, poor chap, if he hadn't been running late for his appointment with his psychiatrist.\n\nMy answer would have been that many lower species\u2014and no, I don't mean Donal Donnelly\u2014have developed remarkable survival strategies. Certain sea slugs, when threatened, eviscerate themselves. In my case, rather than performing repeated seppuku\u2014the Samurai warrior's do-it-yourself total colectomy\u2014I'd learned to be pretty quick off the mark with plausible excuses when in the company of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.\n\nThe need to do so was never more pressing than when Admiral Lord Horatio O'Reilly tried to inveigle me into accompanying him for a day's outing on the briny deep. You'll remember that he was the proud owner of a twenty-six-foot sloop. I believe he'd bought the wretched vessel after she'd failed the admittedly low entrance standards to qualify her as a coffin ship during the great Irish potato challenge of the 1840s.\n\nOnce O'Reilly had taken the helm, he seemed to think he was a direct descendant of Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and James Cook. In fact, his navigational skills were such that if Noah had signed O'Reilly on as navigator, given the reproductive rates among animals, the old patriarch would have been skipper of a pretty crowded Ark and might be looking for Mount Ararat to this very day.\n\nSince the day when Fingal had piled his craft up on a reef\u2014a reef that was clearly marked by a lighthouse\u2014it had been my avowed intent never again to set foot on his decks. I often amazed myself with my rapid creativity when there was the slightest hint of an oceangoing jaunt. O'Reilly more often amazed me with his uncanny ability to beat me to the punch.\n\n\"What,\" he asked, one sunny August Saturday, \"do you know about crabs?\"\n\nMy mind was elsewhere\u2014probably on a permanent leave of absence. \"Not much,\" I said. \"They walk sideways, have dirty great claws, and live on the bottom of the sea.\" The mention of the crustaceans' natural habitat should have set my alarm bells ringing, but you already know that I wasn't concentrating properly.\n\n\"Very tasty,\" he observed with a faraway look on his face. \"Fancy some for tea?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Come on, then,\" he said, heading for the door.\n\nI followed, neglecting to pay attention to the fact that he was wearing a Guernsey sweater and a pair of corduroy trousers\u2014his favoured seagoing rig.\n\nIt was a short walk to the shops. He surprised me by turning into the grocery store instead of the fishmonger's.\n\n\"Cat food,\" he announced, paying for a can. \"Nothing like it.\"\n\n\"For supper for us\u2014or for the cat?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"No. For the crabs.\"\n\nSomewhere deep in the recesses of my mind a tiny red light glowed weakly.\n\n\"Cat food for crabs?\"\n\n\"Bait, my boy. They love it.\"\n\nMy cortical red light flashed on and off like the Eddystone Lighthouse. Sirens howled. \"Er, Fingal, did I mention I had plans to...\"\n\n\"Nonsense, my boy. We'll have a wonderful time.\"\n\nMy heart plummeted like a U-boat in a crash dive.\n\n\"Not on your boat, Fingal?\" My hopes were about as valid as those of an early Christian martyr who has tried to persuade himself that the lions in the Coliseum were of a peculiarly vegetarian breed.\n\nHe draped an avuncular arm round my shoulder and, with the gentility of a hydraulic ram, propelled me toward the door. \"Where else, my boy? Where else?\"\n\nTo have suggested that the innermost circle of Dante's Inferno held a certain appeal would have been churlish. Besides, his hand gripped my arm the way Godzilla caressed one of his foes.\n\n* * *\n\nFor once, the seagoing day turned out to be more pleasant than I'd anticipated. I suffered only a minor concussion when the boom and my head came into immediate juxtaposition during a manouevre he referred to as a gibe. When we dropped anchor in the lee of a small island, I was comforted by the thought that the ground tackle's ability to hold us in position was no doubt augmented by the extra weight it was carrying from the pounds of flesh the chain had ripped from my hands.\n\n\"Marvellous,\" said O'Reilly. \"Absolutely marvellous. Now. Crabs.\"\n\nHe opened a locker and hauled out a Heath-Robinson device of netting and metal struts.\n\n\"Cat food,\" he demanded.\n\nI handed him the tin. He wrestled it into the infernal machine, lifted the thing, and tossed it over the side.\n\n\"Er, Fingal...\"\n\n\"Not now, boy. I'm busy.\" He was. He was paying out fathoms of rope that I assumed were attached to the crab pot.\n\nI waited until he'd made the rope fast to the taffrail.\n\n\"Er, Fingal...\"\n\n\"Not now, boy. Beer,\" he ordered.\n\nI'd noticed something about the tinned cat food that was surely going to spoil his afternoon, but in the confusion of falling down the companionway, dropping the lid of the ice chest on my fingers, and hitting my head on the hatch cover as I returned to the deck, whatever it was must have slipped my mind\u2014or perhaps I decided to let it slip. I handed him his beer and sat beside him.\n\n\"If you listen carefully,\" he said, \"you'll hear the scrabbling of crustacean claws as the little darlins fight to get at the bait. They do love it, you know.\"\n\nI remembered what had bothered me, but said nothing.\n\n\"Mrs. Kincaid will do them a treat. Boiled. Melted butter.\" O'Reilly was salivating so heavily at the thought of his upcoming feast that if he hadn't been consuming beer at his usual rate he would probably have suffered dehydration.\n\nFor one hour he extolled the virtues of boiled crab. I would have been bored by the monologue had I not been given periodic respite by being sent below for more beer.\n\n\"Right,\" he finally announced, \"let's get at 'em.\" He rose and began hauling in the rope. The bay must have been on the edge of the Marianas Trench. I watched as coils of manila filled the cockpit. O'Reilly's fluid deprivation was mightily increased by the rivulets of sweat pouring from his brow.\n\nFinally the crab pot broke the surface.\n\n\"Gotcha,\" he roared in triumph, hauling it into the boat.\n\nThe device was as empty as Donal Donnelly's mind. Not a single crab, not even a shrimp. The cat food can sparkled in the sunlight.\n\n\"Can't understand it,\" said O'Reilly. \"Cat food usually works a treat.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it does, Fingal,\" I observed as gently as I could, \"but I think you're meant to open the can.\"\n\n\"What?\" he roared, reaching into the trap and pulling out the can, pristine in all its unpunctured glory. \"Well, I'll be damned.\"\n\n\"Never mind,\" I said, probably less than tactfully, \"I'm sure Mrs. Kincaid can work wonders with cat food.\"\nNOVEMBER 2000\n\nA Very Pheasant Evening...\n\n... and another pain in the arse for his lordship\n\n\"Thank you, Fingal,\" said the only denizen of Ballybucklebo\u2014other than myself\u2014to be accorded the privilege of addressing Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, MB, BCh, BAO, without using the great healer's title.\n\nThe patient buttoned up his tweed trousers.\n\n\"My pleasure, John,\" O'Reilly said, dropping a rubber glove into a disposal bin.\n\nO'Reilly had just finished examining the fat, feudal fundament of John Fitzgurgle, DSO, MC, and bar, Viscount Ballybucklebo. Under the circumstances, Doctor O. was in the position to call the great man just about anything he chose.\n\n\"Haemorrhoids, I'm afraid. Sorry, John,\" O'Reilly said, his half-hidden smile giving the lie to his spoken regrets. \"Here.\" O'Reilly sat at his desk and scribbled out a prescription. \"Twice a day. Should clear them up in about a week.\"\n\n\"Damn,\" said his lordship, \"today's Tuesday. Had rather hoped they'd be gone by Saturday. I'm having a shoot. Won't possibly be able to walk the coverts.\"\n\n\"Lots of birds this year, John?\" asked O'Reilly with the innocence of a choirboy inquiring after the health of a beloved choirmaster.\n\n\"Rather,\" said his lordship. \"Mostly in the Leprechauns' Wood.\"\n\nI saw O'Reilly smile. Mata Hari must have had the same look on her face after she'd extracted some juicy tidbit from a member of the French high command.\n\n\"Lots of time in the season left for you to get a shot or two, John,\" O'Reilly said helpfully as he showed his lordship to the door.\n\n\"Isn't that interesting, Pat?\" O'Reilly asked, after the pathetically piles-pained peer had perambulated through the portal.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" I said, trying frantically to guess which night O'Reilly had in mind for using his recently acquired intelligence. I knew I had to have an ironclad excuse for being somewhere else\u2014anywhere else.\n\nPerhaps the reason for my panic-stricken preemptive planning requires a word of elaboration. For those unfamiliar with sporting life in Ulster or with one of Doctor F. F. O'Reilly's eccentricities, let me offer an explanatory note.\n\nThe landed gentry stocked their estates with large numbers of Phaisanus versicolour\u2014the ring-necked pheasant. The birds were raised from chicks, and during their formative months were given the kind of loving care usually reserved for tiny premature infants. The pampered pheasants were fed, kept warm, and thoroughly coddled. Coddled, that was, until the start of the shooting season. Then the bewildered birds were rousted from their avian Eden. Flapping fearfully in full flight, they were set upon by hordes of happy hunters who blazed away with all the enthusiasm of Montgomery's artillery during the warm-up to the away match at El Alamein.\n\nBeing a pheasant was no bed of roses. Lord Fitzgurgle's guests, poltroons who paid for the privilege of joining in the awful avicide, weren't the only ones the birds should have feared. Several of Ballybucklebo's citizens, in the spirit of Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and the rest of the French revolutionaries, saw no reason not to indulge in a bit of egalitarian free enterprise.\n\nLesser mortals had practised poaching for years. This activity was mightily frowned upon by the upper crust. In days of yore they spent considerable resources to ensure that vast tracts of Australia were populated by platoons of penurious peasants who'd purloined or pilfered privately purchased pheasants.\n\nAnd I hope you'll remember that when I first introduced you to my mentor, I described him as, among other things, an unregenerate poacher. Well, he might fancy a night in the woods. I did not.\n\nAs usual, my wishes and my fate were on widely divergent courses.\n\n\"Whiskey,\" said O'Reilly. \"Whiskey and oatmeal.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed.\" I wondered what on Earth he was talking about, and quite lost track of my search for a self-preserving alibi.\n\n\"Come on,\" said O'Reilly, leaving the surgery and heading for the kitchen. I followed.\n\nHe opened a cupboard and removed a bottle of a well-known Scotch brand's Red Label, not one of his favoured Irish whiskeys.\n\n\"Cooking whisky's good enough,\" he remarked, producing a bag of oatmeal.\n\nA bucket came next, the oatmeal was dumped into the bucket, and the spirits poured in. O'Reilly left just enough in the bottom of the bottle to allow him to take a healthy swallow as he stirred the soggy mess. \"No need to let it all go to waste,\" he remarked, and burped.\n\nI was lost. Oatmeal was used to make porridge. If Mrs. Kincaid decided to boil some up from the contents of the bucket, my performance at morning surgery would certainly not be up to scratch. \"What...?\"\n\n\"You'll see, my boy. You'll see.\" And so I did\u2014but not until Friday night.\n\nWe were sitting in the upstairs room. The curtains were open and I was admiring the effects of the full moon on the waters of Belfast Lough. In the distance, the Hills of Antrim stood dark against a darker sky. A single coal boat ploughed a dark furrow through a sea like burnished silver. From somewhere inland, the liquid call of a barn owl was the only sound to disturb the velvet silence. The evening was idyllic, peaceful...\n\n\"Right,\" said O'Reilly, \"go and put on some dark clothes.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Get a move on. I'll get the oatmeal and I'll meet you at the car.\"\n\nThe oatmeal. I'd forgotten about it and was curious to know its purpose. Utterly forgetting the catastrophic consequences of curiosity to the cat\u2014who became a cadaver with a certain degree of celerity\u2014I went and changed.\n\nIt was a short drive through the darkened countryside. I wondered why O'Reilly switched off the engine and let the car glide silently for the last part of our journey\u2014until I realized that we'd stopped by a large copse. A copse that I instantly recognized as Leprechauns' Wood.\n\n\"Oh no, Fingal...\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" he said. \"Out, and keep very quiet.\"\n\nTogether we wriggled through a barbed-wire fence and went on our way. O'Reilly carried the bucket of whisky-soaked oatmeal. I merely bore a two-inch laceration of my left hand. He made his way through the dimly lit undergrowth as silently as Daniel Boone might have approached a hostile Indian encampment. I trailed behind, making only the occasional acquaintance with briars' thorns.\n\nWhen we arrived in a small clearing, he stopped, held an extended finger to his lips, and began to peer intently up into the trees. My gaze followed his. There, silhouetted against the night sky, I saw the rotund shapes of roosting birds.\n\nO'Reilly grinned at me and silently scattered the oatmeal on the forest floor. He rejoined me and guided me back into the undergrowth. He lay down. I lay down. Among a stand of broad-leafed plants. Pity they were nettles.\n\nO'Reilly cupped his hands to his mouth and produced a most peculiar sound. I clapped my stung hands to my mouth and tried not to whimper.\n\nSomething stirred in the branches. One after another the sleeping birds sat bolt upright. One after another they fluttered to the ground. They bent and pecked at the oatmeal with the enthusiasm of a set of small pile-drivers. Sated at last, they fluttered back up to their perches, tucked their heads under their wings and, like a row of dominoes, one after another they lost their grips and tumbled to the ground.\n\nThey were a party of profoundly pissed pheasants, beautifically blotto birds, drunk as a lord\u2014to whom, lest we forget, they actually belonged.\n\nO'Reilly rose, walked into the clearing, grabbed two birds, and rapidly dispatched them. At least, I thought, they died happy. I wondered if the birds he left behind would awaken with horrible hangovers.\n\nIt struck me quite forcibly as we made our way back to the car that for Lord Fitzgurgle, haemorrhoids were not the only pains in the arse.\nDECEMBER 2000\n\n'Tis the Season to Be Jolly\n\nO'Reilly and the turkey\n\nSir Stamford Raffles was an empire builder. He gave his name to a magnificent hotel in Singapore where, if the works of W. Somerset Maugham are to be believed, the tuans and memsa'bs would sit at tiffin sipping their chota pegs\u2014and a good thing too. There's quinine in tonic water, without which gin and tonic would be merely gin, the despised tot of the \"other ranks\" of His Majesty's armed nitwits. Without the quinine, G&T would have absolutely no antimalarial powers whatsoever. It would be like Christmas without the presents.\n\nAnd what, you may be wondering, does this have to do with the Machiavellian machinations of one Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, MB, BCh, BAO? Those who have come to know and love the old reprobate would immediately assume there might be some connection with alcoholic consumption. A logical, almost Holmesian piece of deductive reasoning, but of course putting logic and O'Reilly in the same sentence is about as sensible as mixing water and sodium and chucking in a dose of gasoline for good measure. No, the link is rather more obscure. I'll explain.\n\nPlease picture his surgery. It was mid-December. As I entered, his last patient of the day\u2014Finnula Finucane, widowed mother of three\u2014pushed past me. I could see the swelling beneath her usually lively green eyes and the silver tracks on her cheeks that spoke sadly of recent tears. \"Finnula...\" I began, but she hustled by without speaking. O'Reilly sat in his swivel chair staring over his half-moons at her departing back. I don't think he even knew I was there. \"Bugger it,\" he muttered to himself, then, looking up, scowled at me.\n\n\"What's wrong with her?\" I asked, knowing full well that for all his bluster O'Reilly could care deeply for his patients.\n\n\"Bloody Santa Claus.\"\n\n\"What?\" For the life of me I failed to see how old Saint Nick could be the cause of Finnula's grief.\n\nHe ignored me, hunched forward, clearly lost in his thoughts, then straightened, pointed one finger at me, and said, \"We'll just have to fix it. It'll be Christmas in a week.\"\n\n\"Yes. Right,\" I said, utterly at sea, but it seemed simpler to agree.\n\nHe rose, strode to the door, and roared, \"Mrs. Kincaid!\"\n\nI heard her coming along the corridor.\n\n\"Yes, Doctor O'Reilly?\"\n\n\"Kinky, have you bought our turkey yet?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Well, buy two.\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\nI was trying to make sense of all of this. Finnula in tears. O'Reilly's strange outbursts: \"Bloody Santa Claus,\" \"It'll be Christmas in a week,\" \"Buy two turkeys.\" Good Lord, was O'Reilly going to cast himself as the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, somehow hoping that Finnula or one of her youngsters would greet his gift of a turkey with a \"God bless us each and every one\"? I couldn't quite see Finnula's youngest\u2014a carrot-haired six-year-old whose mischief was legend in Ballybucklebo\u2014as a latter-day Tiny Tim.\n\nO'Reilly grunted, then scratched his bent nose and continued, \"Do you have any of those tickets you used for the parish dance left?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Get them, please.\"\n\nShe left.\n\n\"Fingal, I...\"\n\n\"Not now, Taylor. I need to think.\"\n\nMrs. Kincaid reappeared and handed O'Reilly a roll of paper tickets.\n\n\"Thanks, Kinky.\" O'Reilly ripped one free.\n\n\"I want you, Taylor, to buy a raffle ticket.\"\n\n\"What for?\" I think he detected the hint of suspicion in my voice. My tones were ones I imagined were used by flies following an invitation to visit a spider's domicile.\n\n\"What for? A pound.\"\n\n\"No, Fingal. I mean...\"\n\n\"You might win a turkey.\"\n\n\"No, Fingal. I mean what's the draw in aid of?\"\n\nHis face split into a grin of heroic proportions. \"Santa Claus,\" he muttered conspiratorially. \"Now give.\" He held out his hand.\n\nI surrendered a note with all the enthusiasm of a Chicago South Side speakeasy owner who has just assured a large gentleman in a trench coat and a bulge under one armpit that nothing would be more gratifying than to buy beer from Mister Alphonsus Capone's brewery\u2014and, yes, an assurance that nothing nasty would go \"bang\" on the premises would be appreciated.\n\n\"Here.\" He gave me my ticket. \"It's for a good cause.\"\n\nThe departure of some of my hard-earned cash drove away any charitable thoughts I might have been harbouring about O'Reilly giving a turkey to Finnula Finucane. I had a horrible suspicion that I'd just contributed to the F. F. O'Reilly Christmas festivities fund. As P. G. Wodehouse remarked, I was suffering from a distinct lack of gruntle.\n\n\"Come on,\" he bellowed, heading for the door, \"the Mucky Duck's open.\"\n\nI swallowed. Could he actually have the temerity to take my money and immediately go and spend it?\n\nI followed in his wake like a very small dinghy being dragged along by a very large motorboat.\n\nThe Duck was packed. O'Reilly accosted the usual suspects. All, including Arthur Osbaldiston, Donal Donnelly, and even the notoriously tight-fisted Angus MacKay, were given a ticket and relieved of their pounds with a skill and apparent ease of a London pickpocket divesting his prey of their wallets and fob-watches. The rapine and pillage was over before it had sunk in to the befuddled mob that they'd been fleeced. I noticed that Angus MacKay looked as though he might be going to object. O'Reilly must have read the signs.\n\n\"Home,\" he roared before any of the recently shorn could object.\n\nAnd he hadn't even stopped for a drink.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen we were once more ensconced in his surgery, O'Reilly pulled out a wad of notes and counted them with a well-licked thumb.\n\n\"Sixty-four quid,\" he remarked, \"less one for the cost of the prize.\" He shoved a note into his trousers pocket. \"Leaves sixty-three. That should do it.\" His smile was like a morning sunrise.\n\n\"Fingal...?\"\n\n\"Yes, my boy.\"\n\n\"What exactly was that all about?\"\n\nHe stuffed the notes into an envelope.\n\n\"Finnula,\" he said, \"and bloody Santa Claus. Didn't I explain?\"\n\nIt was my turn to grunt.\n\nIt must have been the imminence of the \"season to be jolly.\" His next words were ones I'd never\u2014not in a month of Sundays\u2014expected to hear pass O'Reilly's lips: \"Sorry about that, but it would have been a catastrophe of the first magnitude. We had to do something.\"\n\nI tried to ignore the \"we.\" My contribution had been a grudgingly given pound. And I was no closer to getting an explanation.\n\n\"Fingal...\"\n\n\"You see, Pat,\" his voice softened, \"Finnula has been having a hard time making a go of it since her husband died. But she wanted her kids to enjoy Christmas. Do you know, she saved her egg money every week to buy them little treats.\"\n\n\"Was she robbed?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"Worse. Remember when you were a kid you'd write a letter to Santa, tell him what you wanted, and send it up the chimney?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Her wee ones did\u2014but the things they asked for were away beyond her budget. She did her best to explain to them that Santa was a bit hard up this year.\"\n\n\"Sensible.\"\n\n\"You'd have thought so, but she hadn't counted on the wee redheaded one. She told me today that she'd gone out and when she'd come home she'd just been in time to see the lad send the last of her hard-saved pounds up the chimney because, 'Santa could use a bit of help.' She hadn't the heart to chastise him.\"\n\n\"So that's what the money's for.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" he said. \"We just have to work out how to get her to accept it. She's a very proud woman.\"\n\n\"You'll think of something, Fingal,\" I said, and I meant it.\n\n\"I will,\" he fixed me with a steely glare, \"and you'll keep your mouth shut about it\u2014or I'll kill you.\"\n\nAnd what has all this to do with one of the Founders of Empire? I believe the selling of tickets to a group of unwilling punters in the hope that one will win a prize\u2014and somehow the turkey found its way to the table of Angus MacKay\u2014is called a raffle.\n\nAnd with that, nothing remains but for me to wish my reader\u2014I can't believe that there's actually more than one\u2014a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.\nJANUARY 2001\n\nJust a Wee Deoch an' Dorris\n\nWith apologies to Sir Harry Lauder\n\nO'Reilly paused, shook the water from his tweed coat, and shouldered his way to the bar of the Mucky Duck. His words would have been audible from the quarterdeck to the main-top-gallant mast of HMS Victory in a Force 10 gale, and indeed, given the state of the weather that night, with the rain pelting off the roof like bursts of Maxim gunfire and the wind rattling the pub's shutters, there was some justification for his raising his voice. Of course he had another, more pressing reason to make himself heard. \"I believe your estate can sue the landlord if you die of thirst in a public house,\" he roared.\n\nPatience, you'll recall, was not in his catalogue of virtues, particularly when the thirst was on him.\n\nI watched as other patrons sidled away along the bar, studiously avoided his gaze, found fascinating areas of exploration under their fingernails, and otherwise tried, like a child who pulls a blanket over his head in the belief that he's now invisible to the outside world, to avoid attracting the attention of Ballybucklebo's resident ogre. O'Reilly in need of a drink was like a bear with a sore head\u2014a sore head that had been brought on by repeated applications of a heavy blunt instrument to the top of the ursine skull.\n\nOnly Angus MacKay, piper, shepherd, Highland gentleman, a man held in enormous esteem by the locals for once daring to point out to O'Reilly that his bagpipe playing needed as much work to clean up his grace notes as the Earth did following Noah's boat trip\u2014only Angus held his ground. I noticed he had no drink in front of him but stood quietly at the bar, apparently waiting for something to arrive.\n\nArthur Osbaldiston trundled along behind the counter, bowing as much as his three hundred pounds allowed and sweating like a jaunting-car pony after a trip to the summit of Ballybucklebo Hills with Osbaldiston in the trap. He shoved something out of sight under the bar counter and asked, \"Large whiskey and a small sherry, Doctor, sir?\"\n\n\"Jasus, Arthur,\" O'Reilly rumbled, \"if you ever get out of the pub business you can always get a job in the circus as a mind reader.\"\n\n\"Or as Art the Human Whale,\" called a voice I didn't recognize, from somewhere in a darker corner of the establishment.\n\nO'Reilly spun like a principal dancer in mid-pirouette, pointed an admonitory finger and, keeping his quarterdeck voice at full decibels, announced, \"That was uncalled-for, Paddy Finnegan. Arthur can't help his weight. It's in his genes, and for those who don't know what genes are, they're little small thingies in the cells.\"\n\nA respectful muttering filled the room. In one sentence O'Reilly had established his sympathy for Arthur Osbaldiston's obesity and his own intellectual preeminence in the Ballybucklebo pecking order.\n\nAnd I'd recognized an edge creep into his voice\u2014the one that appeared when he was about to cut someone down to size with the finality of a chain saw.\n\n\"Cells,\" he pronounced. \"Cells, Paddy\u2014but then you'd know all about that, wouldn't you now?\"\n\nLaughter swept the company as a breaker roars over a shingle beach. Every man there knew that Paddy Finnegan had just returned from six months as a guest of Her Majesty Elizabeth II Regina, Dei Gratia, Fid. Def. A small matter of four salmon from Lord Fitzgurgle's river, as I now recalled.\n\n\"Here you are, Doctors,\" said Osbaldiston, setting the drinks on the counter. \"Five shillings, please.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said O'Reilly, ignoring mundane things like money and the look of supplication on the landlord's face. \"Better,\" he said, taking a hefty pull, \"much better.\"\n\nI slipped Arthur the necessary coins, sipped my sherry, and waited.\n\nO'Reilly, placated now by the success of his repart\u00e9e and the taste of his John Jameson's, turned his attention to his immediate neighbour.\n\n\"How are you, Angus?\" he asked.\n\nThe little Scot pondered his reply with all the gravity of a High Court judge prior to donning the black cap and handing down the death penalty. Finally he vouchsafed, \"I am well.\"\n\n\"Grand,\" said O'Reilly. \"Good to see you in town.\"\n\nAngus nodded.\n\nI remembered. Today was Friday. It was Angus's day to walk the ten miles from his cottage to visit Ballybucklebo. I'd only once made the mistake of offering him a lift. Angus MacKay would be beholden to no one.\n\n\"You walk in every Friday, don't you, Angus?\" I asked.\n\n\"Chust so.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" said O'Reilly, waving his now-empty glass in the general direction of Osbaldiston, who'd been hovering at our end of the bar like a waiting peregrine falcon and who now stooped on the glass at roughly the same speed as the world's fastest bird. Parenthetically, for those who think I should have written \"swooped\" instead of \"stooped,\" the action of a diving peregrine is a \"stoop.\" But to continue.\n\n\"Bit of a walk on a day like today,\" O'Reilly mused. \"Ten miles there and ten miles back. Be careful not to catch your death of cold.\"\n\n\"I will, sir. I have my medicine.\"\n\n\"Medicine?\" asked O'Reilly, looking at me questioningly.\n\nI shook my head to answer his unasked question.\n\n\"So, who has been prescribing for you, Angus?\"\n\nThe Scot's eyes twinkled. \"Doctor Osbaldiston here.\"\n\n\"Who?\" asked O'Reilly incredulously.\n\n\"Himself there,\" said Angus, nodding to the landlord who'd set O'Reilly's refilled glass on the counter.\n\n\"Arthur? Doctor Arthur?\" O'Reilly was clearly baffled.\n\n\"Could I trouble you for my parcel?\" Angus asked Arthur, who reached beneath the countertop and produced a brown bag.\n\n\"Thank you, Mister Osbaldiston.\" Angus accepted the bag and handed over two pound notes. \"My medicine,\" he remarked, opening the neck of the bag and showing the contents to O'Reilly.\n\nO'Reilly laughed. \"Whisky. Is that your medicine, Angus?\"\n\nThe Scot became very serious. \"Chust so, Doctor, chust so. But if you examine the label, sir, this is real whisky\u2014from the highlands.\"\n\n\"So you don't think much of Irish?\" O'Reilly inquired, lowering the contents of his glass by a good half.\n\n\"It will do very well for the cooking with,\" Angus allowed, \"but should only be drunk by a chentleman in moments of great stress.\"\n\nI thought O'Reilly might take offence, but he clapped the little Scot on the shoulder. \"Would you have an Irish with me, Angus?\" he asked, signalling to Arthur to refill his glass.\n\n\"Thank you, no, sir,\" said Angus, \"but it's a handsome offer.\" He took his change from Arthur, who'd also given O'Reilly his third double whiskey. \"I must be getting along now, for it's a fair tramp.\"\n\n\"Hold on,\" said O'Reilly. \"Do you walk twenty miles every Friday to buy one bottle of whisky, Angus?\"\n\nAngus nodded. \"Chust so.\"\n\n\"But,\" said O'Reilly, knocking back most of his third double, \"why not buy half a dozen bottles and save yourself the long weekly walk?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said Angus solemnly, eyeing O'Reilly's nearly empty glass, \"as you no doubt will have observed, Doctor O'Reilly, when the whisky is close at hand, it's like butter in summer.\"\n\n\"Why?\" I asked.\n\n\"Because when it's close by\"\u2014Angus nodded at O'Reilly's glass\u2014\"it does nae keep very well.\"\nFEBRUARY 2001\n\nWhat's in a Name?\n\nYe banks and braes of bonnie Ballybucklebo\n\nBallybucklebo, home of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly and an assorted cast of characters whose intellects on their communal best days would make the inmates of the old Bedlam Asylum look like a collection of dons from a Cambridge college. Ballybucklebo, site of my introduction to the art and craft of medicine\u2014if not the science. Ballybucklebo, a name to conjure with and a name that has led my loyal reader to inquire, just what the hell does it mean?\n\nIn truth, Irish place names can be a mite confusing to the foreigner. There's a plethora of Kil-something-or-others, Drum-whatchamacallums, and Bally-this-that-and-the-other-things. A smattering of knowledge of the origins of the prefixes can cast a little light on the matter. And as those of you who have accompanied me through the darker reaches of Ballybucklebo well know, illumination of anything pertaining to that particularly peculiar place can only be to our mutual advantage.\n\nT. S. Eliot, who may very well have had Ballybucklebo in mind when he wrote The Waste Land, was quite particular in his instructions for The Naming of Cats. I, in my turn, will now dilate further on the naming of Irish locales.\n\n\"Kil\" simply means \"the church of,\" so Kiltoom is the church of the burial mound. \"Drum\" is \"ridge,\" \"bo\" is \"cow.\" Drumbo: cow ridge. \"Bally\" is the \"townland\"\u2014an old feudal method of establishing the boundaries of the countryside surrounding a particular geographical feature. \"Bally\" was also used as a polite euphemism for \"bloody,\" leading to a popular verbal play on real place names: \"If you hadn't been so Ballymena with your Ballymoney, you'd have a Ballycastle for your Ballyholme.\" But I digress.\n\nWhat about Ballybucklebo? All right. Bally, \"townland,\" buckle (or in Irish, buachaill), \"boy,\" bo\u2014those with retentive memories will already have learned that \"bo\" means \"cow.\" Ballybucklebo: the townland of the boy's cow. Quite simple, really.\n\nWell, actually it's not, and I'm sure that comes as no surprise. In fact, the village had grown up on the banks of the River Bucklebo, where legend had it a great calamity had befallen an invading English army, a calamity precipitated by a wandering cow that had magically distracted the Sassenach troops at a crucial point during the statutory clashing of halberds, swords, axes, maces, and other macabre methods of mediaeval mayhem. The date of the awful affray is lost in the mists of Celtic twilight, but in Ireland history has a habit of repeating itself, and it was on the banks of that very Bucklebo that I witnessed the downfall of another English invader\u2014not at the hands of the Irish but from the actions of one Angus MacKay, Scot, shepherd, piper extraordinaire, and Highland gentleman.\n\nI'll tell you about it.\n\n* * *\n\nO'Reilly had gone to Belfast, ostensibly to attend a postgraduate course. Knowing him as you do, you'll no doubt have surmised already that while his cerebrum might be mildly stimulated, his tonsils would undoubtedly receive a thorough inundation and his liver a workout of gargantuan proportions. While my mentor was off besporting himself, I'd been left in charge of the practice and, Lord help them, the health of the local citizenry. I stuck my head into the waiting room expecting to summon Angus MacKay. I'd noticed him coming in some time ago and by my reckoning he should have been my last patient of the afternoon.\n\nInstead I was greeted by a stranger who addressed me in the plummy accents of an English public school.\n\n\"You must be the local quack, what?\"\n\n\"I'm Doctor Taylor,\" I replied, noting his three-piece suit, old school tie, watery eyes, and distinct lack of chin.\n\n\"Taylor? Oh. His lordship\u2014I'm Cholmondely, guest of the Fitzgurgles, you know\u2014his lordship said I should consult a Doctor O'Reilly.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said. \"Doctor O'Reilly has gone to Belfast. He'll be back tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Blast! Can't wait 'til then.\" He grimaced. \"Oh well, I'll just have to make do. Beggars can't be choosers, what?\"\n\n\"I'll do what I can,\" I said as civilly as I could, \"but Mister MacKay\"\u2014I nodded at Angus, who'd been sitting quietly, and clearly observing the exchange\u2014\"has been here for rather a long time. If you'd care to wait, I'll...\"\n\n\"Wait? Don't be ridiculous. This fellow won't mind hanging on, will you, my good man?\"\n\n\"Chust so,\" said Angus quietly, but knowing him as I did I could tell he was remembering Bannockburn, the battle where King Robert of Scotland took the gold, silver, and bronze, and left King Edward of England holding nothing but a few splinters from the wooden spoon. It's generally recommended that blunt sticks not be forcibly inserted into the orbits of rabid dogs, but perhaps the newcomer hadn't learned the parallel between such activities and the act of patronizing a Scot from the Western Isles.\n\n\"Come along, Doctor,\" the newcomer said, then he turned to Angus. \"Won't take a jiffy, old boy.\"\n\nI stole a glance at Angus, who nodded.\n\nSo Cholmondely accompanied me into the surgery, where I dealt with his medical difficulties. I have no doubt that Hippocrates wouldn't have approved of my secret delight when I discovered that the man had a case of inflamed haemorrhoids.\n\n\"Here you are,\" I said, handing him a prescription for an anti-inflammatory cream.\n\nHe did have the courtesy to thank me. He rose. \"One more thing,\" he said. \"Did I by any chance hear you refer to that chappie next door as MacKay?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Small world. He must be the laddie his lordship mentioned. I'm over for the fishing, d'you see?\"\n\nI did see. Lord Fitzgurgle owned the fishing rights to a large stretch of the Bucklebo, and Angus, when not occupied with his sheep, worked as a ghillie, tending to the waters, the salmon therein, and guiding his lordship's guests.\n\n\"Better have a word with him,\" the Englishman said, heading for the waiting room. I followed. The upcoming conversation could be interesting.\n\nTo be continued next month.\nMARCH 2001\n\nWhat's in a Name? (Part 2)\n\nScotland 1, England 0\n\nLast month, Doctor Taylor treated the inflamed haemorrhoids of a visiting Englishman named Cholmondely, who was less than courteous to Angus MacKay in the waiting room. That was before Cholmondely learned that Angus worked as a ghillie, looking after Lord Fitzgurgle's waters and salmon...\n\n\"So, MacKay,\" said Cholmondely. \"Hear you're a very fine ghillie.\"\n\n\"Aye.\" Angus's mien was as expressionless as a Highland tarn in a flat calm.\n\n\"Excellent. His lordship says you'll take me on the water tomorrow\u2014at nine.\"\n\n\"Chust so,\" said Angus, \"if that is what the chentleman wants. But the Bucklebo's in spate chust now.\"\n\n\"My good man, I'm here to fish and fish I will. I'll expect you on the bank at nine. Clear?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Angus. He hesitated. \"Doctor, sir, is tomorrow your day off?\"\n\n\"Yes, Angus.\"\n\nA twinkle flashed into the steely eyes of the little Scot, an unholy twinkle that would have dimmed the fires of hell.\n\n\"You'd not mind, sir, if Doctor Taylor came with us? He enjoys the riverbank.\"\n\n\"Bring who you like,\" said Cholmondely, \"but remember one thing. I'm a very expert fisherman and I do not like being advised unless I ask for information. Is that clear?\"\n\n\"Och aye, sir,\" said Angus. \"Och aye.\"\n\nAngus and I arrived at the banks of the Bucklebo promptly at 8:55 A.M. There was no sign of Mister Cholmondely.\n\n\"Would you look at that, sir?\" Angus pointed at the river. Judging by the way the brown waters tossed and roiled, somewhere upstream there was a large gopher-wood vessel, inhabited by pairs of animals and skippered by an older, bearded gentleman in long flowing robes\u2014a gentleman who'd decided that despite the return of a dove with an olive branch he'd better wait until the very last of the deluge had dissipated down the course of the Bucklebo.\n\nAngus's mien was utterly devoid of gruntle. \"He'll no take a fish in yon.\"\n\nMy muttered agreement was interrupted by the arrival of Mister Cholmondely, dressed as I could only suppose he imagined an expert fisherman should be. His tweed deerstalker was so festooned with flies that it had the appearance of an exotic tropical parrot having a bad feather day in a high wind. His tweed suit\u2014hacking jacket and plus-four pants\u2014was complemented by a pair of tartan socks that could only have been knitted by someone from the very-post-impressionist school. Over his shoulder was slung a wicker creel and he carried a rod with the dimensions of one of those old-growth Canadian pines. \"Morning,\" he said, hefting his rod. \"Should do well today.\"\n\nI watched Angus. I could tell he was wrestling with his conscience. His duty as a ghillie was to do his utmost to provide the guest with the best day's fishing possible. His instructions were not to proffer advice. His ethics won.\n\n\"Sir, you see the water. Maybe, at the edge, with the wee rod\"\u2014Angus offered a slim fly rod\u2014\"you might take a trout or two.\"\n\nCholmondely bristled. \"When I want your advice, MacKay, I'll ask for it. This\"\u2014he struggled to wave his own rod\u2014\"this is a double-handed Spey rod.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Angus, \"I ken that.\"\n\n\"Just you watch.\" At that, Cholmondely, grasping his angle in a two-handed grip, began hurling casts at the swollen waters. He thrashed at the river with the enthusiasm of a Nelsonic bos'n laying on the cat-o'-nine-tails. His face reddened. Rivulets of sweat coursed from under his deerstalker. His back casts fouled in trees, rushes, and just missed an inquisitive cow that had wandered down to observe.\n\nAngus dutifully untangled the line and kept his counsel\u2014for an hour. Then he ventured, \"Perhaps, sir, if you tried this wee fly rod...\"\n\n\"MacKay. I do not... not... need advice from you.\"\n\nThen his rod tip flickered. Had he hooked a fish after all?\n\nCholmondely began to reel in. The rod was definitely under some tension. I looked sympathetically at Angus but was rewarded with a tiny smile and an inclination of the little man's head, which said, more loudly than any words, \"Wait and see.\"\n\nFinally, after much reeling in, a fish broke the surface close to the bank. It was a salmon parr, an immature fish the size of an over-developed minnow. Its ordinarily puny ability to put up a fight had been boosted by the force of the water.\n\nCholmondely cranked on until all the line was in and the tiddler flapped weakly at the rod tip, some fifteen feet above the breathless Cholmondely's head. \"Now, my good man,\" he huffed, \"what shall I do?\"\n\nAngus bent slowly, picked up a fair-sized stone from the bank of the Bucklebo, handed it to Cholmondely, and said in dulcet tones, \"If I was you, sir, I'd shinny up yon great rod and beat the wee thing to death with this.\"\nAPRIL 2001\n\nWhiskey in a Jar\n\nO'Reilly goes fishing\n\n\"And what do you think of that?\" asked O'Reilly. He stood in the doorway of the surgery, beaming from ear to ear. He held a rod in his right hand and struggled with his left to hold aloft a salmon that was probably, as the horsey set would say, \"by Moby Dick out of Leviathan.\" It was a superlative specimen of the spectacular species Salmo salar.\n\n\"That's quite a fish,\" I acknowledged testily. If my words were a little clipped it was because he should have been working that afternoon. It was supposed to have been my half day. Mrs. Kincaid had collared me just as I was about to drive away and had regretfully informed me that himself was nowhere to be found and the waiting room was chockablock. I'd been left with no choice but to cancel my arrangements and see the sufferers, rather to the chagrin of one of the tiny number of members of the opposite sex who would agree to share my company\u2014and she had the most alluring brown eyes. At least, I'd assumed, some medical emergency had delayed him. I hadn't for a moment thought that he'd have gone fishing.\n\n\"Sorry it kept you away from the surgery,\" I said. \"You missed some absolutely fascinating head colds.\"\n\nO'Reilly, like a small boy caught with pockets stuffed with apples in someone else's orchard, hung his head for a brief second and then said, sotto voce, \"Sorry.\"\n\nI started. It was the one word I'd never thought to hear from him. If Be\u00eblzebub himself had appeared in the room, enunciating the Lord's Prayer and gargling with holy water, I couldn't have been more surprised.\n\n\"No, really. I should have been here. Thanks for holding the fort.\"\n\nOld Nick had graduated from gargling with holy water to bathing in the stuff. If the films of the time were to be believed, such activities would have led to a considerable degree of dolour on the part of the Devil's disciple.\n\nO'Reilly's look of childish content belied any suggestion that he was truly remorseful, but as he wiggled the fish and said, \"Just look at this beauty,\" I couldn't find it in me to begrudge him his contentment, particularly when he continued, \"I'll make it up to you, Pat. How about I take the calls this Saturday night?\"\n\n\"Well...\" There was a dance in Belfast I would enjoy if a certain ebony-eyed nurse happened to be free. \"Well...\"\n\n\"All right, and Sunday too.\"\n\nHe who hesitates is lost? Not always. Sometimes he improves his bargaining position. For once I had the upper hand and decided that I might as well use it. \"All right, Fingal.\"\n\n\"Great.\"\n\n\"But there's one more condition.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" His eyes narrowed. When it came to bargaining, O'Reilly's techniques were of such effectiveness that Romany horse traders had been known to ask him to take their animals away\u2014and accept a small fee for doing so.\n\n\"And what's that then?\" he asked, smile now replaced by his patented poker face.\n\nI laughed. \"I'm finished for the day. Go and get rid of the fish and then you can take me to the Mucky Duck, tell me the story of how you caught that salmon, and...\"\n\n\"Right.\" He turned to go. You, dear reader, may have forgotten the night in the Duck when he'd been so involved in a discussion with Angus MacKay that I'd been stuck with the cost of the drinks. I had not.\n\n\"... and, Fingal?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You're paying.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe Duck was almost deserted. O'Reilly paid Arthur Osbaldiston, turned from the bar, and carried his own large John Jameson's and my small sherry to our table. \"Here,\" he said, handing me my drink and lowering his bulk into a chair. \"Slainte.\" He sipped his whiskey. \"Grand drop,\" he announced, \"and a potion with remarkable powers.\"\n\n\"Fingal,\" I said, \"I'm sure you're right about the Irish whiskey, but I believe you promised to tell me about the fish.\"\n\n\"I'm doing that,\" he said. \"The last time we were in here I had a chat with Angus MacKay.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I said. \"I got stuck with the bill.\"\n\n\"Yes, right, but it's my shout tonight.\"\n\n\"Correct.\" I savoured my sherry.\n\n\"Anyway,\" he continued, \"Angus was very much of the opinion that Scotch whisky was greatly superior to Irish.\"\n\nI thought about this, but the connection between the relative merits of two kinds of ethnic firewater and the catching of a salmon wasn't instantly apparent.\n\n\"I showed him,\" said O'Reilly smugly.\n\n\"Fingal,\" I glanced at my watch, \"I'm sure this is intriguing, but what about...?\"\n\n\"The salmon?\" He emptied his glass and roared, \"Arthur, two more!\" He turned back to me. \"Patience, my boy. Patience.\"\n\nThe drinks appeared and once again O'Reilly paid. \"Now,\" he said, \"where was I?\"\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\nHis brows knitted. \"Right. The whiskey.\"\n\n\"No, Fingal. The fish.\"\n\n\"Same thing,\" he said. \"Listen and I'll tell you\u2014and don't interrupt.\"\n\n\"I'm all ears.\" Wondering where this was going to lead, I sat back and waited.\n\n\"You know I went fishing today? Well, who should be on the bank of the Bucklebo but Angus MacKay.\n\n\"'Morning, Angus,' says I.\n\n\"'Chust so,' says he.\" O'Reilly made a fair hand at imitating the little Scot's lilt. \"And that was the last we spoke for about four hours.\" O'Reilly glanced round the room. I presumed he was ensuring that he wasn't being overheard. Apparently satisfied, he bent forward and said quietly, \"Angus had six fish on and I hadn't had as much as a nibble.\"\n\nI understood his reluctance to be overheard. The man couldn't stand to be bested at anything, and his next words took me as much by surprise as his earlier apology.\n\n\"I finally went and asked Angus's advice. I'd noticed that he had a little jar of some brown liquid. He dipped his worms into it before he cast. 'What's that, Angus?' I asked him.\"\n\nFor a moment, O'Reilly asking for guidance seemed to me as likely as Julius Caesar having a quick word with a legionary recruit about the advisability of crossing the Rubicon. Then I remembered that Angus was Lord Fitzgurgle's ghillie\u2014a man of undoubted piscatorial expertise.\n\n\"'The whisky,' Angus told me. 'The Scotch whisky.'\n\n\"'Could you spare a drop?'\"\n\nSo there was a connection between the drink and the fish. Interesting, I thought.\n\n\"Angus looked solemn and peered at his jar. 'I'd like to, Doctor, sir, but there's chust enough for me\u2014and the worms.' I don't need to tell you that I was a wee bit disappointed.\"\n\nAs was a Mister Adolf Hitler when his generals informed him that regrettably his plans to own a large chunk of the city of Stalingrad would have to be deferred for a week or two.\n\n\"So what did you do?\" I asked.\n\n\"I remembered that I always carry a flask of Irish\u2014for medicinal purposes. I took it out and showed it to Angus. 'Do you think this might work?'\n\n\"'Would that be the Irish, Doctor, sir?' The wee man looked as disdainful as only Angus can. 'I think it would chust upset your worm,' said he.\n\n\"I needn't tell you, Pat, I considered that a bit of a challenge.\"\n\nThe code of chivalry called for the armoured antagonist to throw down a galvanized gauntlet. In my opinion, Angus MacKay had chucked the mailed glove and accompanied it with a breastplate, a pair of greaves, and the helmet for good measure.\n\n\"'We'll just have to see, won't we, Angus?' I told him. I gave a worm a good soaking and cast.\"\n\nO'Reilly's eyes took on a faraway look. \"Have you ever seen a depth charge go off?\"\n\n\"No. They weren't part of our classes,\" I said, reminding myself that O'Reilly had been in Her Majesty's seagoing forces.\n\n\"It's a thing of beauty,\" he said. \"White water everywhere.\" He chuckled. \"The Bucklebo looked just like that. And do you know what?\"\n\n\"No,\" I replied innocently.\n\n\"When all the spray died down, there on the end of my line was the salmon I brought home, twice as big as anything Angus had caught.\"\n\n\"So you reckon you'd made your point about the superiority of Irish whiskey.\"\n\n\"More than that. When Angus dipped his worms in Scotch, the fish took the bait. It wasn't until I'd landed mine\u2014and fighting him is what kept me away from the surgery\u2014it wasn't until he was on the bank that I saw\u2014and so did Angus, for I called him to see\u2014that my worm had grabbed the fish by the throat.\"\nMAY 2001\n\nO'Reilly Puts His Foot in It\n\nOut of the mouths of babes...\n\n\"I'll kill you, Uncle Fingal. I'll kill you bloody well dead, so I will.\" Thus spake an obviously enraged William Butler Yeats O'Reilly, aged eleven.\n\nI could infer his state of mind by observing the pallor of his nose tip.\n\nWhen gales were impending in coastal areas around Ireland, the coast guard hoisted south cones as a warning to mariners. This information was broadcast on the radio. Seamen who were familiar with the signalling convention made all speed for safe havens. When an eruption by a member of the clan O'Reilly was imminent, the O'Reilly schnozzles blanched. Those who could read the signs were usually well advised to take avoiding action.\n\nOn this particular occasion the wrath of the youngest O'Reilly was directed at Fingal, not me. I decided it might be interesting to stay and observe.\n\nIf you're having some difficulty remembering William Butler Yeats O'Reilly\u2014Willy for short\u2014he was the son of Lars Porsena O'Reilly, who was the brother of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. By intensely exercising your genealogical skills you'll be able to ascertain that Willy was Fingal's nephew.\n\nO'Reilly's brother and family dwelt in the town of Portaferry at the mouth of Strangford Lough, and O'Reilly had dragged me along while he paid a familial pre-Christmas visit. When last Doctor O. and I had ventured down there, young Willy had been the cause of a minor upset, much as one Gavrilo Princip had been the source of a certain amount of dissension when his disposal of the Archduke Ferdinand had inexorably led to the first great numbered unpleasantness.\n\nYou may remember that I told you about Willy, then aged ten, in the Portaferry school's Christmas pageant. That was when, because he'd been relegated from the starring role of Joseph to that of innkeeper, he had, on stage, in public, in front of six nuns, invited Mary into the inn but told the upstart playing the part of Joseph, in no uncertain and very audible tones, to \"feck off!\"\n\nWhen the smoke and dust had died down, Willy's father, Lars Porsena, had taken his son aside and had explained gently that the English language was a precious thing, an instrument of great precision, of beauty, of resonance, not a thing to be taken lightly or profaned. His words, or perhaps his actions, had seemed to make a lasting impression on Willy, who'd stood to take his meals for the next three days.\n\nCertainly since that time Willy's use of profanity, at least within the earshot of potentially offendable adults, had ceased. Until today.\n\n\"It's all your bloody fault.\" Willy spat the words. Some species of cobra have the ability to hurl their venom several feet. They would easily have been outranged by O'Reilly's nephew.\n\nI watched O'Reilly. I could tell by the way he shuffled his feet that he was uncomfortable, and I suspected that although I was completely in the dark about why his nephew should be so irate, O'Reilly might well have some inkling of understanding of the nature of his misdemeanour. He made no attempt to defend himself or to chastise Willy for swearing.\n\n\"Would you like to tell me what happened?\" he asked.\n\n\"Can you not guess?\"\n\n\"Well...\"\n\n\"Aye. Well. Easy for you to say.\" Willy shook his head in the kind of pitying way adults use when they notice a small child or someone of strictly limited intellectual ability\u2014a Donal Donnelly, say\u2014commit some unspeakable act of folly.\n\nThis was what our old professor of psychiatry used to call \"role-reversal\" of the very first magnitude. The boot, as Donal Donnelly was frequently heard to observe, was very firmly on the other shoe.\n\n\"All right, Willy,\" said O' Reilly in his most placating voice, \"tell me what I did.\"\n\n\"Can you not guess?\"\n\n\"Was it the words?\"\n\n\"'Was it the words?'\" Sarcasm dripped from Willy's tongue like gobbets of fat from a tallow candle. \"Was it the bloody words?\"\n\n\"Hah-hm,\" said O'Reilly in a fair imitation of C. S. Forester's fictional sea captain, Horatio Hornblower. \"Hah-hm.\"\n\nI'd stood quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself as I enjoyed his discomfiture, but some imp drove me to inquire, \"What words, Fingal?\"\n\nHe turned and glowered at me.\n\n\"You tell him, Uncle Fingal. Just you tell him,\" said Willy.\n\n\"Well,\" said O'Reilly uneasily, \"Willy here got himself into a little bit of bother at last year's...\"\n\n\"Christmas pageant,\" I said. \"I remember.\"\n\n\"And Dad said he'd marmalize me if he ever caught me swearing again,\" added Willy.\n\n\"He was just right,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nWilly's look of scorn would have stopped a train in its tracks. \"My dad always keeps his promises,\" he said. \"I didn't want that, so I started to use little words.\"\n\n\"Little words?\" I asked.\n\n\"Aye,\" said Willy. \"I'd not say, 'train,' I'd say, 'choo-choo.' I'd call dogs 'bow-wows,' cats 'kitties.'\" He scowled at O'Reilly. \"It's very hard to say, 'Look at what that bloody bow-wow's done now.' And it worked. I never once upset my dad\u2014until he took your advice.\"\n\n\"And what would that have been, Fingal?\" I asked sweetly.\n\n\"Hah-hm,\" said O'Reilly, hanging his head. \"I thought Willy was too old to be using baby talk, so I suggested to Lars Porsena that he should make Willy use proper, adult language.\"\n\n\"And you should have minded your own bloody business,\" said an aggrieved Willy.\n\nO'Reilly sighed. \"All right, Willy,\" he said resignedly, \"perhaps you're right.\"\n\n\"I know I am,\" said Willy. \"Do you know what happened?\"\n\n\"I can guess,\" said Fingal.\n\n\"No, you can't,\" snapped Willy. \"You and your 'adult language.' Dad kept at me for weeks and weeks.\" Willy's pause was pregnant, not with a singleton but with triplets at least. I became impatient. \"Go on,\" I prompted.\n\nWilly looked at me. \"Dad asked me what books I wanted for Christmas.\"\n\nAs was usual in my dealings with the O'Reilly clan, the waters of my hitherto clear understanding of the problem were beginning to become muddied.\n\n\"No,\" said O'Reilly, \"he didn't ask for Lady Chatterley's Lover, if that's what you're thinking.\"\n\n\"I did worse,\" said Willy, \"and it's all your fault, Uncle Fingal. You gave me The House at Pooh Corner last year.\" Willy scowled. \"Dad had been going on so much about me using grown-up language that I got muddled about what book I wanted this year. So I asked for 'something more about Winnie the Shite.'\"\nJUNE 2001\n\nO'Reilly's Cat\n\n\"I must go down to the sea again...\"\n\n\"You're not serious, Fingal?\" I asked the question because his most recent suggestion made about as much sense to me as the thought of climbing into the works of an operating combine harvester.\n\n\"'Course I am. She'll love it. You'll see.\"\n\nThe \"she\" to whom he referred was at that moment imprisoned in a cat-carrying box, from which emanated a series of low, deep, threatening growls that would have made a banshee blanch.\n\nYou may remember that O'Reilly had a cat. Why not? After all, Old MacDonald had a farm. I've told you about the creature\u2014a pure white beast whose ancestors must have come straight from Transylvania if her taste for my blood was anything to go by. I'd earlier given some thought to seeing if a certain Doctor van Helsing was listed in the medical directory.\n\nAfter all, Maggie MacCorkle's advice to belt the beast with a scratching post to discourage her attempts to reduce O'Reilly's furniture to kindling and me to a walking heap of raw meat had been ignored. O'Reilly had dismissed Mrs. Kincaid's pleas and brushed away my protests with an assurance that Lady Macbeth\u2014that's what he'd named her\u2014would grow out of her repeated and totally unpredictable moments when she apparently believed that since there was definitely some sabre-toothed tiger blood in her past, she had a moral obligation to live up to her heritage.\n\nO'Reilly picked up the cat carrier. \"Absolutely love it,\" he said.\n\nJudging by the increased volume of the caterwauling, her ladyship was not of the same mind, but as you well know, dissenting opinions rarely carried much weight with Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. \"Come on,\" he said, \"let's get her down to the boat.\"\n\nThat, you see, was what O'Reilly had decided. Lady Macbeth would love, in his decidedly minority opinion, a trip to sea in his twenty-six-foot sailboat.\n\nOrdinarily, as you know, I'd have used any legitimate excuse short of shooting off one of my toes\u2014a habit referred to during the first great numbered unpleasantness as \"causing self-inflicted injury\"\u2014to avoid another nautical adventure with Ballybucklebo's answer to Captain Ahab. This time, particularly given the dubious outcome for the original old ivory-legged, obsessive-compulsive when he actually caught up with his Moby Dick, nothing would have kept me away. \"Just call me Ishmael,\" I muttered as we headed for the car.\n\n\"What are you on about, Taylor?\" O'Reilly asked, shoving the cat carrier into the backseat. \"Lady Macbeth's a white cat, not a white whale.\"\n\n\"I know. But Ishmael was the only survivor of the Pequod's crew. If it weren't for him the tale would never have been told.\"\n\n\"The only story you'll have to tell will be about how much her ladyship enjoyed herself. Isn't that right, Lady Macbeth?\"\n\nOnly Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, whose self-described ever-open mind had that day clanged shut like a steel trap, could have interpreted the cat's very accurate impression of a hand-cranked air-raid siren with a slipped clutch as an affirmative.\n\n\"I'll leave her below in the saloon,\" O'Reilly announced, squeezing his bulk through the hatch. \"We'll let her on deck once we're well away from the dock.\" He vanished. The cat box vanished. He closed the hatch behind him.\n\nSound carries at sea, even when a vessel is still moored. From my vantage point in the cockpit I had no difficulty hearing, \"Out you come, Lady Macbeth,\" hissing that could have been forced from an over-inflated and recently perforated rubber dinghy, and then a bellowed, \"Yeeeow!\"\n\nIt took some self-control on my part to refrain from passing any remarks about the four red lines on his face that were very evident the moment his head appeared at the hatchway. Still, I thought, with his almost blue cheeks, red stripes, and very white nose tip, his face would have a certain amount of appeal to any passing Ulster Loyalist.\n\n\"It's all a bit strange to her,\" he remarked. \"She'll be all right once we're at sea.\"\n\n\"If you say so, Fingal.\"\n\n\"'Course I do. Now,\" he bent and turned on the engine, \"you let go the dock lines. I'll take the boat out.\"\n\nAnd so it came to pass.\n\nSmall-boat diesel engines tend to be somewhat noisy and their exhaust gases malodorous. It's usually a great relief to hoist the sails and turn the motor off. Then, in the normal course of events, if there's a decent breeze, little can be heard but the gentle singing of the wind in the rigging, the swish and lap of the water. Salty scents fill the nostrils.\n\nThat's in the normal course. O'Reilly had been adamant that Lady Macbeth would love her first seagoing experience, and as was recognized by no less an expert than Billy Shakespeare, \"The course of true love never runs smooth.\"\n\n\"Eldritch\" is the only word I can use to describe Lady M.'s commentary on her situation. She sounded like the entire string section of a symphony orchestra when half have been given the score to one of Shostakovich's tone-poems and the rest upside-down copies of a Sousa march. The song of the wind had no hope of competing. And please remember the hatch was shut.\n\nBorne on the sea breeze came a strange aroma. Pungent, acrid, and very definitely feline, it was something an advertising executive might have described, in a last-ditch attempt to save a failing perfume company, as eau de catpiss.\n\n\"I don't think she's altogether happy, Fingal.\"\n\nI could see that it pained him to have to admit that I might just be right.\n\n\"Be a good lad,\" he said. \"Nip below and see how she's doing.\"\n\nWorms, it is said, can turn. My very acute self-preservatory instincts kicked in. In helminthic terms, I positive whirled on my axis.\n\n\"No,\" I said, surprising myself with the vehemence of my reply. I moved some distance away from him, expecting his response to be on a par with the verbal riposte Captain Bligh must surely have hurled at a certain Mister Fletcher Christian, but to my surprise O'Reilly merely shrugged.\n\n\"Take the helm. I'll go below,\" he said, moving forward and opening the hatch.\n\nSomething white raced past his shoulder, shrieking like every last one of the Furies. I wouldn't have believed the cat's next actions if I hadn't been there in the flesh to bear witness. She went up the mainsail, close to the mast, at something that must have approached the escape velocity the American space scientists of the time were trying to achieve with their Agena rockets, reached the spreaders that stick out from the mast to support the shrouds, and stopped there. She crouched like one of the exotic gargoyles that ancient monks used to adorn the eaves of their more spectacular cathedrals and hurled noisy and vituperative imprecations down onto the heads of the humans below.\n\n\"No,\" I said, forestalling the inevitable suggestion that as O'Reilly was much bigger and stronger than I, then I would be the logical choice to be swayed aloft to try to effect a rescue. \"We'll just have to wait for her to come down.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said an obviously chastened O'Reilly, \"I think we should head back to port.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" I put the helm over. \"And Fingal?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"If she doesn't come down once we've docked, someone's going to have to stay aboard until she decides to budge.\"\n\n\"I know. You wouldn't...?\" He must have seen the look on my face. \"Thought not.\"\n\nHe sat quietly on the short trip home, docked the vessel, and stared up the mast. \"Come on down, sweetie,\" he crooned in his gentlest voice. \"Push-wush. Pushy-wushy.\"\n\nI've never mastered catspeak but I guessed, judging by the arch in the cat's back, the way her tail fluffed like a semi-electrocuted lavatory brush, and the loudness of her hissing, that she was politely declining his blandishments.\n\nShe must have continued to do so for some considerable time, because O'Reilly didn't reappear chez himself until just before my bedtime. I expected him to be somewhat out of sorts, but perhaps the hours of quiet reflection he'd spent on his boat had given him time to mellow.\n\nMind you, I could be wrong. He never went to sea without enough beer aboard to quench the thirsts of the entire supporters' contingent of the Irish rugby football team, and his breath had a certain hoppy quality.\n\n\"Get her down?\" I asked.\n\n\"Eventually. You know, Pat, I think I know what went wrong.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Indeed. It dawned on me while I was waiting for her. Who's ever heard of a sea cat?\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"Mind you, 'sea dog' is an expression with a long and honourable history.\"\n\n\"Drake, Frobisher, Nelson.\"\n\n\"How do you think Arthur Guinness would enjoy a day at sea?\"\n\nI stared at him, trying to decide if he was being facetious. He wasn't.\n\nAnd if you want to know how the big black Labrador fared on the boat, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for next time.\n(no column in july 2001)  \nAUGUST 2001\n\nO'Reilly's Dog\n\nYet another sailing adventure\n\n\"I must down to the sea again \/ To the lonely sea and the sky \/ And all I ask is a tall ship \/ And a star to steer her by...\" O'Reilly's memory for the words of Johnny Masefield's \"Sea Fever\" was, as with all things literary, phenomenal. His voice was not. He may have thought he was singing. I'd assumed he was in some late stage of mortal anguish, so doleful was the noise.\n\nArthur Guinness, who was standing upright in the backseat of the old Rover car, front paws draped over my shoulders, took a break from salivating down my neck and joined in. His \"Ooowwlll...\" did give a certain harmonic counterpoint to O'Reilly's off-key bellowing. When they got to the bit about \"... for the call of the running tide \/ Is a wild call and a clear call...\" I could in all honesty only agree with the first of the sentiments. Clear, in their combined rendition, it definitely was not.\n\nWhat was clear was that O'Reilly had learned nothing from his disastrous experiences when he'd tried to persuade Lady Macbeth, his demoniacally possessed white cat, to enjoy a short sea voyage. Apparently neither her dousing the saloon's upholstery with liquid high in urea content, nor the rents that had miraculously appeared in the mainsail when she'd gone up the mast like one of Nelson's topmen pursued by a bad-tempered bos'n wielding a knotted rope's end, nor the claw marks that had barely healed on his cheek would convince him that taking animals to sea, unless of course your name happened to be Noah and you were under divine protection, was probably not a very good idea. (Parenthetically, I believe that's the longest sentence I've ever managed to write.)\n\nHe'd promised last week, and he was a man who always kept his word, that he intended to retry the nautical experiment, this time with the unsuspecting Arthur Guinness as the subject.\n\n\"Dogs,\" he remarked, pulling the car into the marina's parking lot, \"are much more stable creatures than cats.\"\n\nAnd certain rural general practitioners, I thought, but naturally kept the idea very much to myself.\n\n\"Out,\" he barked.\n\nArthur and I complied.\n\n\"I think that's where we went wrong with Lady Macbeth last week.\"\n\n\"Not 'we'; you, Fingal. I tried to talk you out of it. Remember?\" With, I thought, about as much success as was obtained by a certain King Canute when he commanded the tide to stop coming in.\n\n\"Slip of the tongue,\" he said. \"You're absolutely right. Come on, Arthur.\" And with that he set off across the tarmac, followed by the unsuspecting hound.\n\n* * *\n\nI'd learned early in my acquaintance with Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly that he was always at his most placatory when he wanted something. I knew he wanted me to accompany him on the boat. He didn't know that he need not have been one bit polite to me. After last week's debacle, I wouldn't have missed this Saturday's outing for the world.\n\nAnd it was one of those glorious summer days that grace Ulster with roughly the frequency of a planetary conjunction, a blue moon, and a total eclipse of the sun\u2014all in one twenty-four-hour period. The sun beamed from an azure sky. Not even the thin, diaphanous wisp of an aircraft's contrail marred the unblemished firmament. Had I not been in the company of O'Reilly and his distinctly ditsy dog, I could easily have been persuaded that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.\n\n\"Are you coming?\" he called, as he led Arthur onto the finger where his sloop was moored.\n\n\"Right.\" I trotted down onto the dock and followed the pair of them.\n\nO'Reilly stopped while Arthur investigated the dock's planking, happily trotting from side to side, sniffing here, cocking his leg there, doing the usual doggy things.\n\n\"I want to give him time to get used to his new surroundings,\" O'Reilly said.\n\nThat seemed reasonable. I was a bit lost myself. It was only in the last week that the new facility had been opened. Boats had always been moored to buoys out in Ballybucklebo Bay, but now, borrowing from the American experience, a proper marina had been constructed. Several long docks stuck out into the bay. At right angles to each were shorter slips. There was room for two boats to be moored, stern in, between each slip.\n\n\"We're out at the very end,\" said O'Reilly. \"It's not far.\" He'd grabbed Arthur Guinness by the collar. \"Get out of there, Arthur.\"\n\nWhen I looked to see the nature of the dog's transgression, I noticed that he was standing rigidly, nose thrust forward, tail sticking out astern, staring fixedly at a Siamese cat that lay languidly on a velvet cushion in the cockpit of a very smart yawl that was tied up closest to the shore.\n\n\"He's just being inquisitive, Charley,\" I heard O'Reilly reassure the skipper of the yawl. \"I'll get him down to my boat.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it, Fingal. Cleopatra here can look after herself.\" Charley stroked the cat's head.\n\nObviously, I thought, he hadn't been present when Arthur Guinness had treed Maggie MacCorkle's cat, General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, in O'Reilly's sycamore \u2014twice.\n\nO'Reilly sauntered along, pausing at each moored vessel to exchange pleasantries with other members of the yachting fraternity. It must have been the sunshine that had brought them out in their droves, much as mosquitoes appear in swarms when the sun follows the rain.\n\nMen in shorts, blazers, and Dutch captains' caps, women in short skirts and blue-and-white-striped T-shirts lolled in the cockpit of almost every vessel. I noticed that each member of the nautical set grasped a glass of something, and judging by the sparkling beads of dew on the outsides of the glasses, something cold. If this had been imperial India, it would have been the sahibs and memsa'bs at tiffin.\n\nAll terribly civilized, dontcha know? It was a scene of peacefulness, tranquility, and, unbeknownst to anyone, about to be disrupted by a force with the strength of those mild tropical breezes that used to be identified with women's names\u2014like Hurricane Gladys.\n\nO'Reilly hustled the Labrador onward and it seemed that any interspecies unpleasantness had been avoided. Things may not always be what they seem.\n\nI joined O'Reilly as he encouraged Arthur Guinness to clamber aboard his sloop. The big dog jumped into the cockpit, gave one happy \"Woof,\" turned round three times, curled up, and promptly fell asleep.\n\n\"Told you,\" said O'Reilly. \"To the manner born. Nothing's going to go wrong this time.\"\n\nI was just about to agree when something caught my eye. A small feline figure was moving along the dock. Cleopatra must have taken a short shore leave and was exploring her domain.\n\n\"We'll just give him a few minutes to settle in,\" O'Reilly said. \"Fancy a beer?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"I'll get them.\" He vanished below.\n\nJust as O'Reilly appeared in the hatch, a brimming beer glass held in either hand, thus of course breaking the first law of seagoing vessels, \"One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself,\" Cleopatra jumped nimbly aboard.\n\nThe Americans of the time had developed a sophisticated early warning system to alert them to the presence of anything slightly antisocial\u2014like several gazillion incoming megatons of nuclear firecrackers. I suspect they pinched some of the technology from our animal friends. Although the cat had landed soundlessly, Arthur was awake in one instant and on his feet in the next. Cleopatra let go the contralto-crossed-with-a-bandsaw howl that the Creator gave only to Siamese cats. On this occasion it was the feline equivalent of the orders, \"Dive! Dive! Dive!\" screamed from the conning tower of a submarine that has unexpectedly found itself directly in the path of an enemy destroyer.\n\nCleopatra didn't dive. She took off at maximum revolutions, nimbly leaping from deck to deck of every one of the moored boats as she frantically fled for sanctuary on her own yawl.\n\nArthur boosted himself from the gunnels with the force of one Dick Fosbury trying for yet another Olympic high-jump record, and, if you remember your physics, \"To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.\"\n\nO'Reilly's sloop pitched horribly, thrashing from port to starboard like a gazelle caught in the coils of a boa constrictor. I was too busy grabbing the nearest fixture to see what had caused, almost simultaneously, a roar from O'Reilly, a massive \"thump\" from belowdecks, and the sounds of smashing glass. All I can tell you was that when I did look inboard, he was no longer in the hatchway.\n\nI would have gone to his aid but was distracted by a chorus of screeches, curses, more glass-breaking noises, and the crashing of a series of tsunamis displaced by the rocking hulls of a fleet of wildly tossing yachts. I realized that I could gauge the extent of Arthur's trans-decks progress by the way each mast in succession began to thrash to and fro and the chorus of imprecations increased in volume. The last to be hit was the yawl.\n\nEventually, I'm told, all good things must come to an end. The churned-up waters returned to their previous calm. In sequence, the masthead gyrations lessened in duration and amplitude. In another sequence, nearest vessel first, farthest boat last, the owners of the battered boats began to form a mob, something akin to the one that I imagine stormed the Bastille, on the dock beside O'Reilly's boat.\n\nThe last to arrive was Charley. His blazer was very damp and his yachting cap seemed to have gone missing. He was a big man, much bigger than O'Reilly. The calluses on his knuckles might have been caused by their obvious ability to trail on the ground.\n\n\"I'd like a word with your skipper,\" he said. \"Now.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said, wondering if maritime law, as well as giving captains the right to perform marriages, also waived the usual civilities surrounding suspension from the nearest yardarm. \"He's below.\"\n\n\"And he'll soon be going aloft,\" Charley growled.\n\nThey were going to hang O'Reilly. I could only hope that there was no such crime as aiding and abetting in the nautical legal lexicon.\n\n\"You don't mean...\" I glanced up and swallowed.\n\n\"I bloody well do,\" said Charley. \"Somebody's going to have to get Cleopatra down from my masthead.\"\nSEPTEMBER 2001\n\nO'Reilly's Rival\n\nDoctor Murphy feels the wrath of his fellow physician\n\nO'Reilly smacked his empty pint glass on the bar top of the Mucky Duck, nodded at mine host Arthur Osbaldiston, and turned to me. \"One day...\" muttered O'Reilly. The tip of his nose was alabaster. His eyes flashed with the kind of light that must have given the Hamburg fire chief pause for serious thought in July 1943. \"One day I'm going to marmalize that monstrous mountebank Murphy.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" I remarked, taking a step backward and wondering what Doctor \"Thorny\" Murphy had done this time to, well, rile O'Reilly.\n\n\"He's a qualified quack, a certified charlatan. He's not fit to be a bloody benighted barber-surgeon.\"\n\nYou may recall that deep in hillbilly country there once was a minor misunderstanding between the Hatfield and McCoy families. Their falling-out was an entente cordiale compared to Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's feelings for his medical competitor in the village of Ballybucklebo.\n\nIf you remember, it went back to the occasion when Doctor Murphy had publicly accused Doctor O'Reilly of playing God. O'Reilly had not so much bided his time as lurked, setting up an ambush that would have done credit to the skills of a squadron of the SAS hiding in the hills of County Tyrone awaiting the coming of a unit of the PIRA. And when O'Reilly did strike, his verbal assault had been as devastating as the cross fire from half a dozen assault rifles.\n\nDiscretion, I decided, was definitely the better part of valour. No doubt he would explain his present agitation in the fullness of time. I merely nodded sympathetically and waited.\n\n\"Are you pouring that bloody pint or brewing it, Arthur?\" O'Reilly roared down the bar. \"A man's estate can sue the publican if he lets a customer die of thirst, you know.\"\n\n\"Sorry, Doctor, sir.\" Arthur waddled along from the beer pump and set a full pint glass of Guinness before O'Reilly, who grunted, lifted the glass, and sank half of its contents before gracing me with, \"The College shouldn't suspend Murphy's licence\u2014they should hoist the bloody thing to the top of the tallest flagpole and burn it.\" The second half of his pint disappeared. \"Arthur!\"\n\nI had no doubt that all of the unsuspecting gentlemen named Arthur who lived within a ten-mile radius of the Mucky Duck wondered who was shouting at them.\n\n\"Right, Doctor, sir. Coming, Doctor, sir.\"\n\n\"Worms,\" said O'Reilly to me. \"What do you know about worms?\"\n\nI wondered if we were going fishing but kept the question unspoken.\n\n\"Come on, Taylor.\"\n\n\"Well, they're blind helminthes that burrow around in the soil and turn vegetable matter into humus,\" I tried, quite proud of remembering something from my first-year zoology class at medical school.\n\n\"Not those ones, you ninny. Pinworms. Threadworms.\"\n\nI was on safer ground now and happily trotted out, \"Oxyuris vermicularis. Most common parasitic infection of children. Cause pruritis...\"\n\n\"Exactly. Make life bloody miserable for the wee ones. And how would you treat them?\"\n\n\"Piperazine.\"\n\n\"That's how any self-respecting physician would. I just found out we've got an outbreak here in the Ballybucklebo kindergarten, and do you know what Murphy has been prescribing?\"\n\nI shook my head. By the scowl on O'Reilly's face, the answer might be interesting, but I had to contain my curiosity because of the arrival of Arthur and O'Reilly's new pint. He grabbed the glass and muttered, \"Lime water.\"\n\n\"Looks like Guinness to me,\" I ventured.\n\n\"Not this.\" O'Reilly must have been calming down, I thought. His first swallow merely consumed the upper third of his beverage. \"Lime water is Murphy's miracle cure for worms.\"\n\n\"But...\"\n\n\"Not just lime water. He's been telling the mothers to write 'Et verbum carum factum est,' on a piece of paper and make the sign of the cross over the concoction before they make the kiddies drink it.\"\n\n\"'And the word is made flesh,'\" I translated. \"Biblical.\"\n\n\"Aye. It's an old country remedy that goes back to a Franciscan friar. A fellow called Father Gregory Dunne.\"\n\n\"Your erudition amazes me, Fingal.\"\n\n\"Never mind amazing you. We've got to stop that bloody man.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head. \"Dunno. Yet.\" I saw something in the depths of O'Reilly's brown eyes that would have given Edgar Allen Poe nightmares. \"But I'll think of something.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIt took us three weeks to repair the wreckage wrought by Doctor Murphy's ham-fisted practices. I confess that I felt rather smug as we basked in the gratitude of the mothers of the youngsters who, now properly treated, no longer had to suffer constant perianal irritation. The only one in the village who still had an itch that needed to be scratched was one Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. His opportunity to do so came, as before, at a meeting of the county medical society.\n\nAll of the GPs from County Down had assembled in Belfast, nominally to hear a learned address by some imported speaker. The added attraction was of course the splendid dinner and copious amounts of some very excellent claret, courtesy of an international pharmaceutical company.\n\nO'Reilly was in one of his expansive moods. He was a splendid raconteur and, after the lecture and the meal, had surrounded himself with a coterie of his cronies whom he was entertaining with yet another of his stories of naval life. I hovered at the periphery of the crowd. Judging by the gale of laughter that swept through the assembly, they'd fully appreciated his last rendition.\n\nI became aware of a presence at my shoulder, heard a disdainful sniff, and turned to see the tall, angular, black-suited figure of Doctor \"Thorny\" Murphy.\n\n\"I see your senior associate is up to his usual uncouth antics,\" he remarked in condescending tones. I don't know how he did it, but he always struck me as being arrogantly subservient, a cross between Gilbert and Sullivan's Pooh-Bah and Dickens's Uriah Heep.\n\n\"Doctor Murphy.\" O'Reilly's voice boomed across the room. All heads turned to where we stood.\n\n\"Doctor O'Reilly.\" Murphy inclined his head. His tones were the ones he might have used if he'd stepped into a cesspit.\n\n\"How very pleasant to see you.\" O'Reilly's voice oozed charm.\n\nI glanced round, trying to find cover. Before going anywhere near something that might be a bomb, army bomb-disposal officers don a thing called an \"explosive ordnance device suit.\" It's made of Kevlar. Its protective attributes are of such magnitude that compared with it, a mediaeval suit of armour would offer about as much protection as silk thermal underwear. I knew O'Reilly was going to explode and frankly wished to be well out of range.\n\n\"I thought you did a very nice job with the worms,\" O'Reilly said in his most sincere tones. He addressed the throng. \"Doctor Murphy here is our local expert on traditional healing.\"\n\nO'Reilly had once told me that the secret of being a good physician was sincerity. Once you could fake that, everyone would trust you.\n\nDoctor Murphy inclined his head. \"Well, I...\"\n\n\"Now don't be modest,\" O'Reilly said. \"If anyone here needs to know how to make a nettle-leaf decoction or a mustard plaster, Doctor Murphy's the man to ask.\"\n\nI swear a little blush of pleasure tinged the sere wattles of Murphy's scrawny throat.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" O'Reilly continued. \"Doctor Murphy has been in Ballybucklebo for thirty-five years and the local customers are always talking about his wondrous cures.\"\n\nMurphy's pink turned to a deeper hue. \"Well, I...\"\n\n\"I myself heard, only yesterday, about his cure for infertility.\"\n\n\"What was that?\" a voice asked from the back.\n\n\"Gunpowder,\" O'Reilly said conspiratorially.\n\n\"Now, Doctor O'Reilly...\" Doctor Murphy's brow wrinkled into the beginning of a frown.\n\nA juggernaut was a huge wagon under the wheels of which devotees of Krishna hurled themselves and were crushed to death. It was unstoppable. It was but a wheelbarrow compared with O'Reilly, once he got up a head of steam.\n\n\"Gunpowder,\" O'Reilly continued. \"One of Doctor Murphy's first patients, Paddy Finucane, couldn't get his wife pregnant. Our esteemed colleague told the man to substitute one teaspoonful of black powder for the sugar in his cup of tea, the tea to be taken three times daily.\"\n\n\"I did no such...\"\n\n\"Worked like a charm. Do you know that when he died, old Paddy left six children, fourteen grandchildren...\" O'Reilly's timing was impeccable. He paused and swept his gaze over the clearly enraptured audience before adding, \"... and a bloody great hole where the crematorium used to stand.\"\n\nThe famous roar of the crowd of soccer supporters when Manchester United scored a goal would have been a muted whisper if ranked against the gales of laughter that filled the meeting room.\n\nDoctor Murphy flushed scarlet, gobbled like a cock turkey that had just noticed the pre-Christmas axe, spun on his heel, and fled.\n\n\"Keep up the good work, 'Thorny,'\" O'Reilly roared at the departing back. He lowered his voice and turned to me. \"Maybe now he'll think twice before inflicting his rubbish on the poor unsuspecting supplicants,\" he said.\n\nAnd do you know? He was right.\nOCTOBER 2001\n\nThe Smoking Gun\n\nA lesson in the hazards of tobacco\n\n\"Bah! Rubbish! Fiddlesticks! Unadulterated twaddle. Them eejits in London think they can prove anything with their statistics. This here fellah Vessey's utterly, absolutely, categorically wrong.\"\n\nI knew it was O'Reilly who was making these ex cathedra statements. No one could have mistaken the gravelly tones or the vehemence with which the words were uttered. And a good thing too, because any hopes of actually seeing the orator were roughly on a par with Captain Robert Falcon Scott's chances of finding a room at the Savoy Hotel for a quick overnight stay on his way back from the South Pole. Fingal Flahertie's dining room was filled with a fug of pipe-tobacco smoke that would have made the impenetrable clouds after the first black-powder broadsides at the Battle of Trafalgar seem as clear as the pure crystal air of the Mourne Mountains.\n\nI coughed and flapped an ineffective hand in a vain attempt to clear the pea-souper from which I confidently expected Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to emerge at any moment. My efforts were about as useful as those of the cabin boy who thought he could use a teaspoon to bail out the entire Atlantic Ocean from the depths of R.M.S. Titanic's hold.\n\n\"I thought the article in the British Medical Journal seemed convincing.\"\n\n\"You would,\" O'Reilly growled, \"and you probably believe that duodenal ulcers are caused by some as yet unidentified bacterium.\"\n\n\"Don't be daft. They're caused by stress,\" I said, wondering about the gnawing sensation in my epigastrium, \"but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that there might be an association between smoking and ill health. Doctor Vessey's figures looked pretty impressive to me.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said O'Reilly, \"and if you draw a graph that shows the increase in the rates of purchases of television sets and the rates of heart attacks, they've been roaring upwards at about the same speed. If you want to, you can prove that television is the cause of coronaries.\"\n\nHe laughed at his own razor-sharp repartee. \"Don't believe everything you read in the BMJ.\"\n\n\"Well, I think...\"\n\n\"Jasus, Pat, you'd better watch yourself. If you're that gullible, somebody's going to try to sell you the Queen's Bridge.\"\n\nAccording to the late Jim Croce, \"You don't tug on Superman's cape. \/ You don't spit into the wind.\" According to the still-living P. J. Taylor, you didn't argue with O'Reilly when it was obvious that his mind on a given subject was firmly made up. This simple rule may account for my continued survival. Deciding that discretion was indeed the better part of valour, I conceded defeat. \"You're probably right, Fingal.\"\n\n\"'Course I am,\" he said with the finality of the Spanish geographers who took great pains in explaining to Christopher Columbus that when it came to the configuration of this planet, \"flat\" was the word he was looking for.\n\nClinging to the one remaining shred of my self-respect, I made a last feeble effort. \"Is there anything at all that might convince you?\"\n\n\"That smoking's bad for you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Not a thing, my boy. Not a single thing on God's green Earth.\"\n\nI sighed, not knowing that he was going to be proven wrong.\n\n* * *\n\nThe question of any relationship between smoking and disease was forgotten in the general hurly-burly of rural practice. I probably wouldn't have given the matter much more thought\u2014although I confess I was developing an aversion to being bested by my mentor\u2014if, some months later, fate hadn't intervened.\n\nWe were standing in the hall of his house.\n\n\"Could you do me a favour, Pat?\" O'Reilly's voice oozed charm. My internal alarm bells went off.\n\n\"What is it?\" I asked, with as much trust in my tones as the housefly (order Diptera) must have used when invited into the parlour of a certain arachnid.\n\n\"Have you noticed the weather?\"\n\nIf he'd ever given up the practice of medicine, there would have been a stellar career in elected office for Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. The first rule for that merry bunch of pilgrims is never, never give a straight answer to a direct question.\n\n\"What favour?\" He might be trying to divert the conversation. I was going to keep it on course with all the concentration of the master of a square-rigger trying to navigate through the Straits of Magellan down in Cape Horn country.\n\n\"There's a gale. From the south,\" he said.\n\nPerhaps I'd misjudged him. Meteorology might be his avocation. It certainly must have taken an acutely honed weather sense to have noted the shrieking of the wind in the great sycamore tree at the end of his garden, the intermittent crashes as slates were ripped from roofs and hurled to the road, and the rattle of rain on the windowpanes.\n\n\"It's time Arthur Guinness got out to play, you know,\" he continued. \"You'd be doing him a favour too.\"\n\n\"No, Fingal. I am not going to take him for a walk.\"\n\nO'Reilly laughed. \"Mad dogs and Irishmen go out in the midday rain, and you're not daft, is that it?\"\n\n\"Badly paraphrased Noel Coward. And right, I'm not going out in that lot.\"\n\n\"I wasn't going to ask you to. But this is the very best weather for the ducks.\"\n\nI was tempted to remark that if he could see my feathers I'd venture out of doors, but unless such was the case I intended to stay as firmly put as King Arthur's Excalibur in the famous stone.\n\n\"They'll have to come in low to the ground at evening flight tonight.\"\n\nGale. Arthur Guinness\u2014a gun dog. Low-flying ducks. Somewhere at the back of my mind a series of small synapses went off in sequence. A little red light bulb glowed\u2014dimly, I admit, but it definitely lit up. \"And you want me to run the evening surgery so you can take Arthur and go shooting?\"\n\n\"Jasus,\" he said, \"your powers of deduction would make the Great Detective look like a candidate for a school for the hopelessly muddled.\" He lit his briar. \"I'll make it up to you. I'll do next Saturday and Sunday.\"\n\nI examined the proposition. It seemed to be decidedly deficient in attached strings. No obvious catches were apparent. \"You're on,\" I said, comforting myself with the thought that given the inclemency of the climate, only the true sufferers would brave the elements and make the trip to the surgery. I might have an easy evening.\n\n\"Good man.\" His craggy face lit up with the inner glow only seen on the countenances of small children who have been given the much-desired train set for Christmas. \"I'll be off then.\" He galloped upstairs.\n\nI wandered to the kitchen to see if perhaps Mrs. Kincaid had made an afternoon cup of tea. Moments later O'Reilly reappeared, clad for his outing in hip-waders, a waterproof jacket, and a deerstalker hat. He had a game bag slung over one shoulder and a double-barrelled twelve-bore tucked in the crook of one arm.\n\nMrs. Kincaid looked at him and asked, \"Now have you got all that you need, Doctor dear?\"\n\nO'Reilly checked in his game bag. \"Cartridges. Tobacco. Pipe. Matches.\" He looked at the teapot. \"I don't suppose there's enough of that to fill a thermos.\"\n\n\"Aye.\" Mrs. Kincaid found a flask, filled it with hot tea, and presented it to an obviously impatient O'Reilly. \"Off you go now.\"\n\nAnd off he went. He was too big a man to skip, but the lightness of his step was akin to the dances of \"The Lordly Ones.\" You know, the little folk that \"dwell in the hills \/ in the hollow hills.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Mrs. Kincaid, chuckling after he'd slammed the door, \"whether himself or that great lummox of a dog has more fun when he goes out after the ducks.\"\n\nNeither Mrs. Kincaid nor I could have had the slightest inkling what form O'Reilly's fun would take on that particular evening.\n\n* * *\n\nEvening surgery was, as I'd predicted, light. I retired to the upstairs sitting room and was well into the new James Bond book when I heard the crash of the back door and a heavy tread on the stairs. O'Reilly entered, stage right, with as much force as the gale that still howled outside and all the drama of the Demon King in a Christmas pantomime. He spoke not one word but headed for the sideboard and helped himself to a large John Jameson.\n\nI simply stared. O'Reilly's usually bushy eyebrows had shrunk as if an American Marine Corps barber had given them the full new-recruit treatment. His hairline had receded like a neap tide and his normally florid cheeks had a roseate hue that only John Turner could have rendered in oils. From him emanated a vague smell of something singed.\n\n\"Lord,\" he said, lowering a very large gulp of Irish, \"you and that fellah Vessey were right.\"\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"About the smoking. Just look at me.\"\n\nI did, and by herniating most of my face muscles managed to refrain from grinning. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"I dropped my matches. Couldn't light my pipe. So I did something a bit silly.\"\n\nThis confession coming from the redoubtable O'Reilly would have been on a par with King Charles I admitting that perhaps he had been a little over-optimistic in his opinion of the Divine Right of Kings.\n\n\"Go on,\" I said.\n\n\"Well, I thought it was a brilliant idea at the time.\"\n\nIt had been, I thought, on a par with General Ulysses S. Grant's notion of digging a ditch to divert the entire flow of the mighty Mississippi at the siege of Vicksburg\u2014and obviously O'Reilly had had about as much success.\n\n\"Aye. I really wanted a smoke so I split a cartridge and put the powder on top of a rock. Then I stuck the stem of the pipe in my mouth and the bowl in the powder.\" He finished his whiskey. \"Did you ever make sparks from a couple of pieces of flint?\"\n\n\"No, Fingal, and I never went looking for a gas leak with a lit match either.\"\n\n\"Jasus. It worked a charm. Went off like the crack of doom.\"\n\n\"Worked wonders for your haircut too,\" I said, peering at his frazzled face. \"Do you think maybe we should slap a dab or two of ointment on you?\"\n\n\"I do,\" he said, \"and I'll tell you something else. Smoking can be dangerous to your health. Bloody dangerous.\"\n\nI'm sure that Doctor Vessey, who was eventually knighted for his work linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer, would have been delighted to have received such a ringing endorsement of his theories from no less a personage than Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, MB, BCh, BAO.\nNOVEMBER 2001\n\nRing Around the Rosies\n\nO'Reilly's nephew demonstrates his entrepreneurial prowess\n\nYou may remember O'Reilly's nephew, William Butler Yates O'Reilly, aged eleven. An enterprising boy. Something of an original thinker in the O'Reilly mould. His main claim to fame, at least in Ballybucklebo circles, had been won by his uttering one unscripted sentence at the infamous Christmas pageant.\n\nHe'd been moved from his starring role as Joseph\u2014a part that he'd carried off with dramatic flair in the two previous years\u2014to a supporting spot as the innkeeper, and wasn't one bit happy about his demotion. \"Seething\" is a descriptor often applied to superheated mud pits in remote parts of New Zealand. It would barely have done justice to the pent-up fury inside one small boy.\n\nIt would be unfair to compare Ballybucklebo's thespian retelling of the nativity story with the Oberammergau Passion Play or the Wagnerian Ring Cycle at Bayreuth, but it was nevertheless an annual fixture in our little village's social calendar and well attended. Willy had dropped his bombshell on opening night.\n\nThe effects of his ad lib on the audience had been on a par with the conflagration started by His Majesty's Royal Air Force (Bomber Command), in February 1945 at a spot called Dresden. Willy's father, Lars Porsena O'Reilly, had found himself at the epicentre of the firestorm. Well, you could hardly have expected Willy's immortal lines when admission was sought to the inn by Joseph and Mary\u2014\"You can come in, Mary, but Joseph, you can just feck off!\"\u2014to have been greeted with thunderous applause by an audience of teachers, parents, and a convent's worth of blushing nuns.\n\nWilly had eaten his meals standing up for several days after the event and his pocket money had been stopped for three months. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 would have seemed but a minor readjustment of the markets in the impecunious eyes of William Butler Yates O'Reilly. He was facing fiscal catastrophe. Monetary meltdown. But I did tell you that he was an enterprising boy. Wall Street recovered. So did Willy.\n\nIn the process he caused his uncle, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, and Doctor O'Reilly's junior colleague, myself, a great deal of head scratching\u2014and we weren't alone. We had the village schoolmaster and most of the children from Ballybucklebo's primary school to keep us company. In the case of ourselves and our perplexed parish pedagogue, the capital clawing was metaphorical. In the cases of the little learners, it was literal.\n\nAt first we were caught off guard, but our initial surprise soon turned to complete consternation. O'Reilly began to look like a U-boat skipper who'd surfaced directly under the fifteen-inch guns of one of His Majesty's larger ironclads.\n\nThe first inkling that we might be facing some difficulties came at the end of a busy surgery. The last patient was a small boy\u2014you remember Mister Brown, who once before had come in for prenuptial counselling but had cut the interview short when he'd wet his pants\u2014and his mother. She tugged at his hand and said, \"Take off your cap.\" He removed that peculiar head adornment favoured by the school authorities of the time, a soft, peaked cap embellished with concentric rings in the school colours, which in the case of Ballybucklebo Primary were horribly clashing yellow and orange.\n\nO'Reilly peered at the boy's crown. \"What do you make of that, Doctor Taylor?\" he asked, pointing to a circular bald spot in the middle of the child's head.\n\nI peered at the lesion in question. The hairs had broken off close to the scalp and the stumps had a frosted appearance. \"Tinea capitis?\" I suggested.\n\n\"Brilliant,\" growled O'Reilly. \"I'd guessed that. But which fungus?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Could be anything from Microsporum audouinii to Microsporum canis to one of the Trichophytons.\"\n\nO'Reilly pursed his lips. \"It's ringworm, Mother, but we'll have to send the wee lad up to the skin clinic in Belfast to find out what's the cause.\"\n\nShe looked worried. Mister Brown sniffled and scratched his head.\n\n\"All the way to Belfast, Doctor O'Reilly?\" she said, doubtfully. \"He'll miss a day of school.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said O'Reilly, \"but he may miss more than that.\"\n\nI noticed her frown and her son's grin as O'Reilly continued. \"If it's one of the animal fungi that's the cause, it'll not spread, but if it's the human kind it could infect every kiddie in the class. He'll have to stay home until we know the answer to the test, and if it is the human kind he'll be off school until he's cured.\"\n\nHer mouth rounded into a silent \"O.\" Mister Brown's grin widened.\n\n\"And,\" said O'Reilly, \"burn his cap.\"\n\n\"But it's brand-new.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said O'Reilly, \"the bloody thing gets into the cloth and could be given to another youngster. Now just you wait until I make the arrangements at the Royal Victoria Hospital.\"\n\nThe arrangements were made, the patients dismissed, and O'Reilly fired up his briar. \"If it is Microsporum audouinii, I hope to God we've caught it in time. Once that one gets into a school it can go through the place like wildfire.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIt was, we hadn't, and it did. Within a week, every boy in the school had shown the telltale symptoms and signs. Every boy had been given a prescription for Griseofulvin. Every mother had been given instruction about shaving the affected parts of the scalp. The smoke of the funeral pyres of yellow and orange school caps hung over the village. The streets of Ballybucklebo rang to the sounds of childish laughter, and would continue to do so for at least six more weeks until every child was considered fungus-free. The boys rejoiced in their unexpected holiday. Their mothers wrung their hands and O'Reilly grumbled that unless we could trace the source of the outbreak, the whole epidemic could break out again at any time. He was right and it did. Two days after the last of the lads, who looked like a group of tiny tonsured Trappists, was safely ensconced behind his desk, Mister Brown and his mother were back in the surgery.\n\n\"Bugger,\" said O'Reilly, glowering at the boy's scalp, \"here we go again. We've got to find out where it's starting.\"\n\nI had to agree, but the mystery seemed to be unsolvable\u2014unsolvable, that is, until O'Reilly discovered that he'd run out of Erinmore Flake, his favourite pipe tobacco, a product of Messrs. Gallagher and Sons, who in my opinion added sulphur, Greek fire, and a whiff of the great nineteenth-century fogs of London to their product.\n\n\"Come on,\" he said. \"We'll nip down to the shop.\"\n\nWe strolled along the main street to the little store. The door opened and who should appear but William Butler Yates O'Reilly. His cheeks were bulging. In his left hand he carried a paper bag and in his right a brightly coloured school cap. His eyes widened when he caught sight of his uncle.\n\n\"Morning, Willy,\" said O'Reilly.\n\nWilly's reply was unintelligible. He had difficulty forming the words round an enormous mouthful of peppermint gobstopper.\n\n\"Buying sweeties?\" O'Reilly inquired as he stared at the paper bag.\n\nWilly nodded.\n\n\"Huh,\" said O'Reilly. \"I thought you'd no money.\"\n\nWilly blushed, and tried to hide the cap behind his back.\n\nO'Reilly struck like a cobra. His big hand shot out and grabbed Willy by the ear.\n\n\"Spit out that gobstopper,\" O'Reilly roared.\n\nWilly spat and a great spherical lump of multi-hued hard candy hit the gutter.\n\nI had no idea what was happening, but of course that was often my state of mind when in the company of Fingal Flahertie.\n\n\"Give me that cap.\"\n\nThe item in question was surrendered.\n\n\"How long have you been at it?\" O'Reilly tugged on his nephew's ear.\n\nAt what? I wondered as Willy whimpered.\n\n\"How long?\"\n\n\"Six weeks, Uncle Fingal.\"\n\n\"Jasus.\"\n\n\"You won't tell my dad?\"\n\nO'Reilly paused, pursed his lips, then said, very slowly, \"Not if you tell me how much a rub.\"\n\n\"Sixpence.\"\n\n\"You little...\"\n\n\"Sorry, Uncle Fingal.\"\n\nO'Reilly pointed an admonitory finger. \"No more, do you hear?\" He tweaked Willy's ear to add emphasis to his words.\n\n\"I promise. Honest.\"\n\nO'Reilly released his grip. \"Go on home, but if I catch you at it again...\"\n\nWilly fled.\n\n\"And that's the end of that,\" said O'Reilly, clearly pleased with himself. \"No wonder we couldn't stop the outbreak.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" I was as much at sea as the Ancient Mariner.\n\n\"Ach,\" said O'Reilly, \"in the immortal phrase that the great detective never actually uttered, 'Elementary, my dear Watson.' Nephew Willy has restored his exchequer by selling a rub of his cap\u2014his infected cap\u2014at sixpence a pop. The kids get the ringworm and don't have to go to school and Willy...\" O'Reilly began counting on his fingers, then whistled, \"... by my reckoning he's made nearly two pounds. Crafty little bugger.\"\n\n\"I wonder where he gets that from,\" I muttered, but O'Reilly had already gone into the shop.\n\nWhen we returned to his back garden, I had some difficulty deciding which made the worse stink, O'Reilly's recharged briar or the fumes from the bonfire that consumed Willy's cap. The smoke drifted upward and dissipated, and with it went the great ringworm plague of Ballybucklebo.\n\n\"Do you know,\" said O'Reilly, exuding a certain tangible family pride. \"That nephew of mine's going to go far one day. You just watch.\"\nDECEMBER 2001\n\nJingle Bells\n\nSammy the sweep rises to the occasion\n\nWhile watching a TV quiz show I fell to pondering how popular these things are. In the Yuletide spirit of giving and, as O'Reilly would remark just before he laid into some miscreant, \"It is always more blessed to give than to receive,\" I thought I'd offer my readers a little quiz.\n\nTranslate the following: Airy tipsies, slabbergub, bit of a lig, bletherskite, beelin', boggin', and boke. [Montgomery, M. and F. Montgomery, Barnish County Antrim Dialect Dictionary 1993 \u00a9 Doctor Robert Montgomery. Courtesy Doctor T. F. Baskett.]\n\nGive up? I'm not surprised. You'd not come within a beagle's gowl of the answers unless of course you speak fluent Ulsterese. Please understand, Ulsterese isn't a foreign language but an abstruse form of English embellished with the local expressions used daily in Ballybucklebo and its environs. When rendered at full speed by an upset Ulsterman whose accent would be, in the local parlance, \"thick as champ,\" attempts to comprehend what was being said would have left no less a linguist than Professor Henry Higgins babbling with incomprehension.\n\nOnce, at the height of the Ulster Troubles, I saw an NBC documentary filmed in Belfast. Naturally the ubiquitous man-on-the-street had been interviewed. The folks at the network had thoughtfully provided their viewers with English subtitles. And a good thing too. \"Beagle's gowl. Thick as champ.\" Indeed.\n\nLet me instantly explain that failing to \"come within a beagle's gowl\" is translated as falling short of expectations by the distance from which a howling beagle dog could be heard, and that's a fair stretch of the legs. \"Thick as champ\" refers to the density of a peculiar Irish dish of potatoes, buttermilk, and scallions. It has the gastronomic qualities of a lump of spent plutonium and, when eaten, \"sticks to your ribs like glue.\" Applied in a descriptive fashion to an accent, this phrase suggests a degree of impenetrability that would make the front armour of a main battle tank seem as thin as tissue paper. When used to describe intellectual capacity\u2014say in the case of Donal Donnelly\u2014well, I'm sure you get my drift.\n\nIf you're still wondering about the Airy tipsies list, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until this story is finished before you get the answers, because I really want to explain the expression \"thon one has a heart of corn.\"\n\n\"A what?\" I hear you ask. That's right. \"Thon one has a heart of corn,\" is precisely how O'Reilly described Samuel St. John (pronounced \"sinjin\") Slattery, our local chimney sweep, after the man had left the surgery. He'd been in to see about a nasty cough, an occupational hazard of the sweep's trade. I must say I was glad to see him go. It was Christmas Eve and I was going to a dance in Belfast. I really didn't want to be held up by one of O'Reilly's rambling expositions so I merely nodded.\n\n\"You can't always tell a book by its cover,\" said O'Reilly, washing enough soot from his hands to have replenished the entire York, Notts, and Derby coalfields. \"Just because your man looks like an escapee from a travelling minstrel show...\"\n\n\"Grunts when you ask him a question and has a perpetual scowl on his face that would make the Medusa on a bad hair day seem as mild as a cooing dove...\"\n\n\"I'm telling you,\" said O'Reilly. \"You can hardly blame him for being covered in soot. He'd come here straight from his work.\"\n\nI had a mental flashback to the violent ejection of one Donal Donnelly, who'd dared to show O'Reilly an unwashed foot, but decided that it would be wise to make no comment on that matter. I really did want to get away, but foolishly added, \"Sammy St. John strikes me as a pretty mean-tempered bloke.\"\n\n\"You'd be wrong,\" said O'Reilly, dumping himself in his swivel chair and firing up his pipe.\n\n\"Prove it.\"\n\n\"All right. I will. Park yourself.\"\n\nI glanced at my watch, sighed, and hitched myself up onto the examination table. \"Go on.\"\n\n\"Do you remember Mister Brown and Miss Gill?\"\n\n\"The kids that came to see you because they wanted to get married but had to leave because Mister Brown had wet himself?\"\n\n\"The very ones. Well, I saw Mister Brown on the street today. He was sobbing his wee heart out.\"\n\n\"Fingal, I thought we were discussing Sam Slattery.\"\n\n\"Patience, my boy. All in good time.\"\n\nI fidgeted.\n\n\"'What's up?' I asked him. It took me a few minutes to understand what was the matter. I tell you, Pat, between the howls of him and his wiping his nose on his sleeve, I thought I was going to be there all day. But you couldn't leave a wee lad that upset. Not on Christmas Eve.\"\n\nI had to smile. I told you years ago that O'Reilly was kind to widows and small children.\n\n\"I finally got it out of him. One of the big boys had told him there was no Santa Claus.\"\n\n\"Ach no.\"\n\n\"Ach yes, and there was no comforting him. I know we all have to find it out sooner or later. I don't think it's right to lie to the wee ones when they hear the truth. But on Christmas Eve?\" He shook his big head.\n\n\"So what did you do?\"\n\n\"I took him by the hand and walked him home.\"\n\n\"Let his mother sort it out?\"\n\n\"I suppose that's what I was thinking but, do you know, once in a while things have a habit of working out just fine. Guess who was at the house?\"\n\n\"Donner and Blitzen? Rudolph?\"\n\nInstead of growling at my sarcasm, O'Reilly let go a guffaw that rattled the instruments on the stainless steel instrument trolley. \"The next best thing. Samuel St. John Slattery was there sweeping the Browns' chimney.\" O'Reilly let go a mini-mushroom cloud from his pipe. \"He was just about to climb his ladder when we arrived. 'What's up?' says he to the little lad. He just went on sniffling so I told Sam what the trouble was. I suppose I was hoping maybe Sam could say something to help. 'Is that fact?' was all he said, and he went up the ladder like a monkey up a pole.\"\n\n\"Right enough. The man has a heart of corn. You're not convincing me, Fingal.\"\n\nThis time O'Reilly did glower at me. \"I will,\" he said. \"There was me, both legs the same length, a little boy by the hand, still in floods, no sign of the mother, and Samuel St. John up on the roof. Then it happened.\" His frown vanished and was replaced by a smile so enigmatic that he could have posed for Leonardo da Vinci. \"Sammy came back down, bent over the little lad, and held out a big black hand. The look on old Sam's face was one of complete awe. 'Look what I found up by the chimney,' says he, and opened his hand.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"I watched the wee fellow. I've never seen anything like it. He rubbed his eyes, peered into the callused, sooty hand, and do you know what was there?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"A tiny golden bell. A sleigh bell. 'I wonder what this came off?' says Sammy. It was like the sunrise, the way the wee lad's face lit up. He looked at Sammy. 'You'd better have it,' says Sam, and gave the boy the bell. He tore off into the house yelling, 'Look, Mummy. Look what Santa's reindeer left on our roof.' Old Sam just coughed.\n\n\"'How the hell...' I started to ask him. He stuck his hand into his trousers pocket and pulled out five or six little bells. 'He's not the first nipper I've seen like that. And you don't have to lie to them. Just let them draw their own conclusions. The poor little bugger is going to find out soon enough. Let him enjoy one more Christmas.'\n\n\"'God, Sammy,' says I, 'you've a heart of corn.'\"\n\nI was so amazed I just sat there on the couch with, to use a graphic piece of Ulsterese, my eyes turned up like a duck in thunder.\n\nOh yes, I promised you a translation of other bits of my native tongue. Here you are. Airy tipsies: high winds. Slabbergub: a man with a foul mouth. Bit of a lig: a fool. Beelin': suppurating. Boggin': filthy. Boke: Throw up. And one more thing, in plain English: a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all.\nHome Is the Sailor\n\nAn Irish Country Doctor Story\n\nAuthor's Note\n\nSince Tom Doherty and Associates first began publishing the Irish Country Doctor series in 2007 for a current total of seven novels with one in press, I have been overwhelmed by the number of kind letters that come to me through my Web site and as comments posted on Facebook. Readers have taken the characters in the books to heart and want to know more about them. A recurrent wish is for the works to appear more frequently. Like the title of the 1982 movie starring Jill Clayburgh, \"I'm dancing as fast as I can\"\u2014for me, read, \"I'm writing,\" and my publisher is doing his best, but it takes a while to write 140,000 words and to turn them into a paper book.\n\nSixteen thousand words do not consume as much time, and although this work has had all the technical attention paid to a paper book in terms of editing, design, and cover design, the Internet allows much more rapid publication.\n\nIn this long short story, for want of a better term, you will learn how the recent widower Doctor Fingal O'Reilly returns to Ballybucklebo after the Second World War. His attempts to reestablish his practice seem doomed until, in her usual understated but effective way, Mrs. Kinky Kincaid comes to the rescue.\n\nAlthough this is not a giveaway\u2014authors all have the same recurrent habits of needing to eat and find shelter\u2014it is well priced and I hope will be regarded as a kind of gift from my publisher and me to help fill the gap before my first work about the Ulster Troubles, Pray for Us Sinners, a story of loss of faith and search for atonement, appears in June and Fingal O'Reilly: Irish Doctor, number eight in the Irish Country Doctor series, is on the shelves in October.\n\nAll the citizens of Ballybucklebo and I thank you for your loyalty, encouragement, and patience.\n\nWith my very best wishes,\n\nPATRICK TAYLOR  \nSalt Spring Island,  \nBritish Columbia,  \nNovember 2012\n1\n\nFirst Impressions Are Things You Don't Get a Second Chance to Make\n\nSurgeon-Commander Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O., R.N.R., D.S.C., gave a third hard shove then kept his thumb firmly on the porcelain push of a bell that was mounted on a brass plate. \"Get a move on,\" he said, and hunched his shoulders. It was nippy out here in the mid-February evening. His ship, HMS Warspite, had been placed in Category C reserve on February 1, 1946, and her remaining crew paid off. As soon as he had completed the formalities of his own demobilisation, O'Reilly had headed for the Liverpool cross-channel ferry to Belfast docks and then the train to Ballybucklebo. From there it had only been a short walk.\n\nAn Austin Ruby of early thirties vintage rattled past the Presbyterian church on the other side of Main Street, part of the Bangor to Belfast road.\n\nHe heard a distant ringing and a woman's soft Cork brogue calling, \"I'm coming, so. Take your hurry in your hand now.\"\n\nHe stepped back and regarded the familiar front of the big, old, three-storey house where he had been an assistant in general practice before the war had called him away on naval service for six long years. A steam engine whistled, coming from where the tracks of the Belfast and County Down Railway ran along the shore of Belfast Lough.\n\nWhen he looked at the house again he saw ground-floor bow windows flanking a green-painted front door\u2014a now-open green door wherein stood a solid woman in her late thirties. Fire flashed in her agate eyes as she squinted into the low sun. She dusted flour off her hands then stood arms akimbo. \"You did make the bell sound like the last trump, bye. There's no need to\u2014\" She stepped back, smiling broadly with dimples coming into her cheeks. \"Praise all the saints. It's yourself, sir.\" She stepped aside. \"Welcome home at last. Come in, come in, come in, Doctor O'Reilly, sir. Come into the dining room and I'll make you a cup of tea and a plate of hot buttered barmbrack, so, before I see to your dinner. I've made roast rack of spring lamb with herb stuffing and caper sauce.\"\n\nO'Reilly's tummy rumbled and his grin was vast. \"By God that sounds like manna from heaven.\" After years of eating the efforts of Royal Navy cooks, often little more than corned beef sandwiches and cocoa when the ship was closed up at action stations, one of Mrs. Kinkaid's homemade meals would be bliss. \"How are you, anyway, Kinky? I'm sorry I'm a bit late.\" On Monday, to let her know he'd be arriving Friday, he'd phoned Mrs. Maureen \"Kinky\" Kincaid, until recently housekeeper to the late Doctor Flanagan, to whom O'Reilly had been an assistant before the war. The estate had provided for her wages to be paid until the house and practice had been sold\u2014to O'Reilly.\n\n\"Och, I'm grand, so, and it's better late than never, and I'm all the better for seeing yourself back here, sir.\" She beamed at him.\n\n\"It's good to be home.\" O'Reilly was very glad that she was now going to assume the same housekeeping role for him. He had, while the ship was still in Portsmouth, through his solicitor brother Lars, completed the purchase of the practice and the house and its contents from Doctor Flanagan's estate. It had taken every penny of O'Reilly's demobilisation gratuity and a sizable loan from the Bank of Ireland. It was, he thought, a blessing that Kinky had agreed to stay. With her knowledge of the locals she'd help him rebuild the practice, the patients of which must now be seeking their medical advice elsewhere. Doctor Flanagan had had no assistant before or after O'Reilly.\n\nAnd neither would he, not for many years anyway. Apart from the need to pay off the loan, O'Reilly was looking forward to running a busy, single-handed practice and seeing a variety of patients and their ailments. He'd not delivered a baby for years and he'd always enjoyed midwifery. He wondered if he'd forgotten all he'd ever learned about diseases of women. Medicine on a battleship with a crew of more than twelve hundred healthy young men had largely been confined to treating accidental injuries\u2014when in port the results of barroom brawls, hangovers, and venereal disease, and when in action, war wounds. He shuddered. He'd rather not think of those.\n\nHe cleared his throat. \"It's been quite some time, Kinky,\" he said.\n\n\"A donkey's age, sir, but you do be back so leave your suitcase and overcoat in the hall.\"\n\nHe took off his navy greatcoat, they'd allowed him to keep it, and hung it on the hall coat stand. He felt lucky to have been demobbed at last. British airmen in Ceylon had gone on strike this month to protest against the slow rate of their release from the armed forces.\n\n\"It's a grand tweed suit the navy did give you,\" she said. \"Makes a change from a uniform. Now go you into the dining room, sir, and I'll only be a shmall-little minute, so.\" She left.\n\nO'Reilly looked to what he automatically thought of as the port side of the house, then reminded himself he was on dry land now. This was the front parlour but had served old Doctor Flanagan as his surgery, what North American doctors would call their office. It didn't seem as if much had changed in there. Perhaps not, but he had. Six years of war service would change any man.\n\nHe went into the dining room. The furniture had come with the purchase of the house.\n\nSame old high-backed chairs, long bog oak table, cut-glass chandelier, sideboard. Even the decanters were still there. He'd get a bottle of John Jameson's Irish whiskey tomorrow. He'd much prefer that to the navy's traditional tipple of Plymouth gin and Angostura bitters\u2014pink gin.\n\nThe front doorbell rang. When he'd been an assistant here, it had been Kinky's job to answer. Business already? He hoped so. He waited, heard voices, one soft, Cork, female, the other male, raised, harsh, Ulster. \"I don't give a tinker's toss if he's only arrived five minutes ago and he's getting his afternoon tea. His tea can wait. I want til see a doctor and I want til see him right now. Right now. It was in the County Down Spectator last week that a new quack was taking over here and I need til see him, so I do. Now. I'm a very busy man.\"\n\nO'Reilly rose. He felt the tip of his boxer's bent nose grow cold, an indication that it was blanching, which was itself a sure sign that his temper was rising. He needed patients but not rude and demanding ones. He peered through the slightly open door.\n\nKinky, jaw set, arms folded across the top of her pinafore, stood four square in the front doorway. \"I've told you, sir, the doctor\u2014\"\n\n\"I want him and I want him now. Now.\"\n\nO'Reilly frowned. How dare this rotund little man in a three-piece blue serge suit and bowler hat speak like that to a woman? O'Reilly took a deep breath. Calm down, he told himself. You're dealing with civilians. You need to build up a practice. You can't treat them like naval ratings. And yet echoing in his head was the admonition of Warspite's senior medical officer, Surgeon-Commander Wilcoxson, R.N., to a young Surgeon-Lieutenant O'Reilly, R.N.R., in 1939. Never, never let the patients get the upper hand. He opened the dining room door. \"Can I help you, Mister...?\"\n\nThe man pushed past Kinky and came into the hall. \"I dunno. Can you? Who the hell are you, anyroad?\" The man squinted at O'Reilly. \"Aren't you the young pup that worked with Flanagan before the war? O'Rourke or O'Rafferty or something like that?\"\n\nStruggling to keep his voice level, O'Reilly said, \"I'm Doctor O'Reilly. Yes.\"\n\n\"Right. I'm Mister Albert Bishop. I'm a very important man round here, so I am.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you are,\" O'Reilly said in his most placatory voice while thinking about large fish, ugly ones at that, in small if not puddle-sized ponds. \"What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"I need to talk to you, and in private.\" He flicked his head dismissively at Kinky, who frowned, sniffed, and turned on her heel.\n\n\"Come into the surgery,\" O'Reilly said, overriding his intense desire to throw the man out. Some philosopher had made a crack about a long journey starting with the first step, and O'Reilly had a practice to build. He led the way. He pushed the door closed behind the man.\n\nA swivel chair stood in front of a flat table that had served Doctor Flanagan as a desk. O'Reilly sat in the swivel, stuck a pair of half-moon spectacles on his nose, and waved at one of two simple, hard wooden chairs. \"Have a seat.\"\n\nMister Bishop plumped himself down.\n\n\"And what seems to be the trouble?\"\n\n\"I'm not sick nor nothing.\"\n\nAnd you insisted on seeing me and you were rude to Kinky? O'Reilly told himself again to calm down. \"Then what can I do for you?\"\n\n\"You mind in 1939 we all had til get National Identity Cards?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, I've lost mine, and I need one to prove who I am,\" he shook his head, \"as if everyone round here didn't know, so I can complete a big contract with the army at Palace Barracks outside Holywood. The stupid buggers that issue the cards say I've til fill out this here thing.\" He slammed a government form on the table. \"And I need a doctor's signature, so I do. Like on a passport application.\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head and said levelly, but with a touch of steel in his tones, \"And for that you barged in here, were rude to Mrs. Kincaid...\" Never mind not treating a physician with the courtesy custom demanded.\n\n\"I'm in a hurry, so I am.\" Clearly O'Reilly's attempted admonition had had no effect.\n\nFor a moment he ached to be back on Warspite. A naval rating who'd behaved like this man might have been up before the executive officer, before his feet had touched the deck, on a charge of insolence to a superior officer. Might have. O'Reilly prided himself that he'd never had to invoke naval law. A few well-chosen words roared in what O'Reilly thought of as his quarterdeck voice and an icy stare over half-moon spectacles had always quelled the most intransigent rating. But this Bishop was a civilian, and, O'Reilly reminded himself, he needed patients, and lots of them, if he was going to make a success of this practice. He took a deep breath. \"Give it to me.\"\n\n\"Sign there.\" Bishop pointed.\n\nO'Reilly did, recognising that he had lost the \"upper hand.\" One day, Mister Bishop, he thought, either you are going to have to find a new medical advisor or you and I are going to rethink our doctor-patient relationship. \"Here.\" He wondered what the fee was for signing forms. Perhaps Kinky would know. Doctor Flanagan, as far as O'Reilly knew, had handled the practice finances and had paid O'Reilly a salary.\n\n\"Right.\" Bishop rose and headed for the door.\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" O'Reilly called at the departing back.\n\nBishop stopped, turned. \"I never said nothing.\"\n\n\"Sorry. I thought I distinctly heard you say, 'Thank you, Doctor.'\"\n\nThere was a small smile on O'Reilly's face as Bishop snorted, let himself out, and slammed the door.\n\nO'Reilly headed back to the dining room to be met by Kinky, who had just delivered a tray of tea and hot buttered barmbrack. The scent of its spices was mouth-watering.\n\n\"There you are, sir,\" she said. \"Eat up however little much is in it.\"\n\n\"Thank you, and Kinky?\" He went to the tray and lifted a warm triangle of 'brack.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"What do I charge for filling in a form?\" He bit into the wedge. Delicious.\n\n\"Lord bless you, sir, do not worry your head. Next time you see a patient there's a ledger on the table. Fill in the name and what you did. I send out the accounts every month.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\nShe must have interpreted his relieved surprise as disbelief because she stiffened and said, \"I have my School Leavers Certificate, so. I am not an unlettered woman.\"\n\nO'Reilly swallowed his mouthful. \"I never thought for one minute you were, Kinky.\"\n\n\"That's all right then.\" She smiled. \"It's my job to leave you free for the doctoring.\"\n\n\"I appreciate that.\" Another mouthful. He'd missed Irish cooking.\n\n\"And will you be starting on Monday?\"\n\n\"I will. I'm going up to Charles Hurst in Belfast tomorrow to buy a car, then I'm going down to Portaferry to see my mother and brother.\"\n\n\"Family does be important, so. Most of mine are still in County Cork near Beal na mBl\u00e1th,\" she said wistfully.\n\n\"And you'll want to see them, I'm sure. I'll be able to give you time off soon, but I'll need you for a week or two first, Kinky. My mother has arranged for bits and pieces she's been storing for me to be brought up here tomorrow. You'll need to let the movers in\u2014I'll tell you where things are to go.\"\n\n\"That will not be any trouble, sir.\"\n\n\"And I'll certainly need you here on Monday on my first day as the principal here.\"\n\nShe smiled. \"And I do hope you'll soon be busy for I remember how much you enjoyed your work when you were last here, so.\"\n\n\"I hope so too\u2014and I do have to pay the bank.\"\n\n\"I'll be here to help, and the patients will come back and bring the fees with them, you'll see.\"\n\n\"I just hope they're more pleasant than that Bishop. I don't remember seeing him when I was here before, but he is a thoroughly unpleasant man.\"\n\nShe frowned. \"Mister Bertie Bishop is an influential man here and he is a terrible one for bearing a grudge, so.\"\n\nO'Reilly wondered if his parting shot had been altogether wise, but damn it all he was going to be the local GP and he'd be damned if anybody was going to ride roughshod over Kinky\u2014or him. He'd never tolerated that kind of thing since the day he used his newly discovered wicked right cross to flatten the school persecutor. O'Reilly had spent the last six years fighting one of the biggest bullies the world had ever known, and he'd be damned if he was going to let anyone get away with it here.\n2\n\nHome They Brought Her Warrior\n\nO'Reilly drove his black long-bonnetted Rover 16 with all the flair of the pilot of Warspite's Walrus observation seaplane. The car was a secondhand 1945 model he'd bought on the never-never, as hire-purchase was called. He'd been lucky to get it. New cars could take as long as a year to be delivered and even used models were rare, but those in some occupations, including doctors, were given priority. The motor industry was only now switching back to peacetime production. \"Poop-poop,\" he shouted in what he thought might be a fair imitation of Mister Toad from one of O'Reilly's favourite books, The Wind in the Willows. And he drove like Mister Toad. Heavy on the accelerator and brake.\n\nHe passed elms and sycamores growing in hedgerows. The great gaunt trees were leafless, reaching with bony fingers for a cold blue sky from which an occasional snowflake drifted. Black-faced ewes heavy with winter fleeces huddled in the corners of little fields bordered in drystone walls or blackthorn hedges while the lambs, seemingly oblivious to the cold, ran and bounced, full of the joys of spring. Lord, even if real spring was still some weeks away it was good to be back home in Ulster. There had been times in the last six years when it had seemed to him that, like the crew of the Flying Dutchman, he and his shipmates were doomed eternally to sail their great gallant ship through endless growling seas. But he was home. At last. He roared out,\n\nAnd it's home boys home, home I'd like to be\n\nHome for a while in the old counteree\n\nWhere the oak and the ash and the bonny rowan tree\n\nAre all growin' greener in the old counteree.\n\nAnd in all of Ireland, his own old counteree, here on the shores of Strangford Lough, was the place he loved the best.\n\nOverhead a skein of metallically honking Greylag geese drifted down a gentle wind heading for the islands of the lough that lay to his right. The peace washed round him and if he did hear gunfire, it would only be the report of a wildfowler's shotgun. A far cry from the islands of the Mediterranean Sea where he'd spent tumultuous parts of 1940, '41, and '43, or those of Puget Sound in Washington State where his old ship had gone because a German bomb had blown a great hole in her during the Battle of Crete. After being patched up as best the dockyard could in Alexandria Harbour she had passed through the Suez Canal for her long trip for extensive repairs and modifications in Bremerton Navy Yard and replacement of her worn-out main armament.\n\nO'Reilly had mixed memories, some sad, some grateful, of Bremerton and the kindness of the Americans.\n\nHe sighed. He'd needed kindness, wounded as he'd been, still was, by the death of his wife, Deirdre, in the Belfast Blitz in April 1941. He must try to put it all behind him. Start a new life back here in Ulster. But it hurt. It hurt sore.\n\n\"Damnation.\" He stamped on the brake pedal. A rusty Massey Ferguson tractor was trundling toward him coming the other way. The horse trailer behind took up more than its share of the road and O'Reilly had to pull onto the verge. As soon as he was past he sank his foot and tore off, hardly noticing the lone cyclist who on the Rover's approach hurled himself and his bike into the ditch.\n\nHe turned on the car radio, fiddled with the dial, and found a BBC man's Oxbridge voice saying, \"And finally in sports news; on Thursday in Paris the International Olympics Committee announced that the 1948 Games will be held in London.\" More fiddling before O'Reilly found the classical music he was looking for. He recognised Mozart's Magic Flute and let the cheerful sounds soothe him. He was able to manage a smile by the time he'd turned into the short drive up to Lars's home. O'Reilly'd been singing along with Papageno's \"Der vogelf\u00e4nger bin ich ja\" and accompanying the performer's reed flute with a series of rising \"tiddle-iddle-eyes\u2014\" and falling \"pom-poms.\" He noticed a big Armstrong Siddeley near the house. Lars had warned Fingal of Ma's taste in motorcars. He parked to the final \"pom-pom,\" got out, and crunched across the gravel to the front door where Lars and Ma stood smiling at him.\n\n\"Fingal, welcome home, son,\" Ma said, letting herself be engulfed in his hug. \"Thank God you're safe.\"\n\n\"And sound,\" he said. \"You're looking well.\" And she was, in her short tweed jacket and knee-length skirt.\n\n\"I do my best,\" she said, \"but I'm afraid these wartime austerity fashions leave a certain amount to be desired.\" She laughed. \"I think us ladies complaining about clothes rationing hardly compares with what our troops had to face.\"\n\nHe picked her up and spun her round. \"God, it's good to see you, Ma.\"\n\n\"Put me down, Fingal.\" Her laughter filled the hall.\n\n\"I'm home, Ma. And it'll be a long time before I leave again.\" He set her down.\n\n\"Home is the sailor, home from the sea,\" Lars said.\n\n\"And the hunter home from the hill. 'Requiem.' Robert Louis Stevenson,\" O'Reilly said, and shook Lars's hand. \"And how are you, big brother?\"\n\n\"I'm grand, Finn, and very glad to see you. Come in.\"\n\nHe followed them into the hall. Something giving off a tantalising aroma was cooking somewhere. A large liver and white springer spaniel rushed up to greet him.\n\n\"Sit, Barney,\" Lars said, and the dog obeyed.\n\n\"Old Barney's still going strong,\" Fingal said, noticing grey in the dog's muzzle.\n\n\"Remember when we used to go wildfowling with him? He was a great retriever.\"\n\n\"Still is,\" Lars said.\n\n\"Let me look at you again,\" Ma said. She frowned. \"You've got older, Fingal,\" she said, \"but you're still my handsome young son.\"\n\n\"It's been nearly six years and I think you need specs, Ma,\" he said, \"but thank you.\" He was expecting to be ushered into Lars's spacious sitting room overlooking the narrows where the ripping tides had given the lough its Viking name, Strangfjorthr, the turbulent fjord.\n\nMa said, \"That's a goose you can smell roasting.\" She glanced at her watch. \"It'll be ready in about an hour. I've things to do in the kitchen. I know how long you've been gone, Fingal. There's so much to talk about, but why don't you boys give Barney a walk, go down to the Portaferrry Arms, and have a pint before lunch?\"\n\n\"You sure, Ma?\" Fingal said.\n\n\"Of course I am. I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer. We can blether away to our hearts' content over lunch and in the afternoon. I've a feeling it might snow more heavily later so go on and enjoy yourselves before it does.\"\n\n\"Let me get my coat,\" Lars said.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Do you know,\" said Fingal, \"I don't think this place's changed one bit.\" He was striding beside his brother up the face of a low, rounded hill. Gorse bushes grew, spiny green and dotted with chrome-yellow flowers. Their almond scent was carried on the salty air. He sniffed. There was a more pungent aroma too. \"You got a badger round here, Lars?\"\n\nLars pointed to a burrow under a bank where brown bracken drooped. \"Old Brock has his set in there. He'll be sleeping now. Leave it, Barney. Don't want him getting into a fight with the beast.\"\n\nThe dog, who had made a beeline for the burrow, now turned aside and began investigating the whins. Two rabbits bolted, ears back, scuts white and bobbing. Barney had been trained to know he was not allowed to chase flushed game. He sat abruptly and watched them go.\n\nOverhead, small jackdaws and larger rooks that had flocked together cawed and flapped their way inland. A constant twittering was coming from a leafless blackthorn hedge and Fingal saw a flock of brightly coloured goldfinches take wing and whirl away across the field.\n\nHe strode alongside his brother across the little fields. When Lars asked a question, Fingal was, like most ex-service men, reticent about the details of his war. He was warmed by Lars's concern for Fingal's loss of Deirdre. Lars himself, bachelor solicitor and unable to volunteer because of flat feet, had lived out his war quietly here, keeping an eye on Ma, who'd been terribly busy raising money for the Spitfire Fund and working for a charity for unmarried mothers. No. Lars hadn't married. His disappointment over a judge's daughter in Dublin seemed to have put him off the fair sex for life, yet he appeared content to Fingal. Something to think about, because Fingal himself had no intention of becoming romantically involved. Certainly not for a while yet.\n\nHe followed Lars and Barney over a stile and onto the shore. A little past the tide's edge a heron, blue-grey, gangly legged, and with a pigtail of feathers hanging down behind, darted its head into the water and pulled it back, a silver fish wriggling in the bird's long beak. Across the narrow waters a vee of small geese with grey bellies, narrow white collars, and black heads flew up the lough.\n\n\"Atlantic brent geese,\" Lars said. \"All the way from Greenland and Spitzbergen to winter here. Probably heading up to the Quoile River.\"\n\n\"You always did know your birds, Lars,\" Fingal said.\n\n\"To shoot them. But you know, Finn, I'm beginning to think they need our protection. I haven't been out more than a couple of times this season. I'm thinking of joining the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.\"\n\n\"Not until after next season, please,\" Fingal said. \"You'd better be ready to go out once or twice with me. Unless you count my ship chucking everything she had from fifteen-inch shells to 0.5-inch machine-gun bullets at the enemy, I've not had a shot,\" he laughed, \"for nearly seven years. I'd enjoy a day or two out with you for old times' sake, and,\" he said more softly, \"it would make a nice change if no one's shooting back.\"\n\n\"I suppose it was pretty grim,\" Lars said.\n\nFingal took a deep breath. \"It had its moments\u2014but it's over, and I'm home, and I'm home to stay.\"\n\n\"I'd certainly say you're glad to be back,\" Lars said, picking up a stick and throwing it for Barney to retrieve.\n\n\"I am that.\" Fingal frowned. \"And happy to be.\"\n\n\"Happy to be back, yes, but I'd say you don't sound completely happy, Finn. What's up?\"\n\nFingal shook his head and waited for Lars to take the stick and throw it again. \"Thank you for handling the conveyance of old Doctor Flanagan's practice, Lars.\"\n\n\"It was my pleasure, Finn.\"\n\n\"I'm excited about the practice...\" He hesitated then said, \"But I'm a bit worried. I haven't started work yet, but I just hope the old boy's patients come back. I'll see on Monday morning if anyone shows up.\"\n\n\"I suppose all folks starting a small business have the same worry. I know I did. We put our shingle up and pray they come.\" He clapped Fingal on the shoulder. \"You'll be fine, Finn. I know you will because you're an excellent doctor, but don't be surprised if it's slow at the beginning.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Fingal warmed inside to his brother's touch and reassurance, but outside the snow Ma had warned them about had started and the air was as cold as a witch's tit. And tucked in a corner of his inner glow was a chilly worry that Lars might be wrong and the practice wouldn't grow. Forget it for today, he told himself. \"It's getting bloody bitter,\" Fingal said. \"Come on, big brother, call Barney in and we'll take Ma's advice and head for the Arms\u2014but I'm buying you a hot half-un. It's too bloody cold for a pint.\"\n3\n\nIs of His Own Opinion Still\n\nO'Reilly looked at his watch. Ten o'clock on Monday morning and still no patients. He sat in the swivel chair in the surgery, rolling the top of his father's old desk up and down. It had been delivered on Saturday afternoon. Kinky, as he'd requested, had supervised the moving men in their placing of his few pieces of furniture and leaving packing cases of books in the upstairs lounge.\n\nO'Reilly had spent Sunday afternoon arranging his volumes on the shelves there, wondering how he'd managed to accumulate so many, but then reading was amongst his foremost pleasures. He'd stood for minutes enjoying the sweeping views past the lopsided steeple of the Presbyterian church with its churchyard full of ancient tombstones and sombre snow-dusted yew trees. Looking farther over the roofs of the village to where gulls wheeled and swooped over the sand dunes, his gaze had taken in the calm, washed-out blue of Belfast Lough and in the dim distance the soft darker blue hills of Antrim rolling down to Carrickfergus and its brooding Norman castle. Only a single coalboat shoved her way steadily to the Central Coal Pier in Bangor Harbour, reminding him of a line in John Masefield's poem \"Cargoes\": \"Dirty British coaster with a salt-streaked smoke stack.\" No yachts yet, but in the summer he knew the sailors would be out in force.\n\nLater he'd asked Kinky to give him a hand hanging a photograph on the landing wall outside the lounge.\n\n\"And that does be your big ship, sir?\" she'd asked when they'd finished.\n\n\"That's her,\" he said. \"HMS Warspite. 'The Grand Old Lady.'\" He adjusted the frame to be sure the picture was hanging straight. \"The photo was taken when she was anchored in Grand Harbour, Valetta, in Malta.\"\n\nKinky leant forward to see better. \"She does look a very powerful vessel, so.\"\n\n\"She was, Kinky, she and her four sister Queen Elizabeth class of battleships.\" He pointed to the eight fifteen-inch rifles, two each in X and Y turrets aft and two each in A and B turrets for'ard. \"You see those big guns above the foredeck?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"The dispensary and sick bay where the medical staff worked were two decks below the most for'ard gun barrels. It was like the clap of doom when they were fired over our heads. Their shells weighed 1,950 pounds each, that's not far off one ton, and she could hurl them for fourteen miles.\"\n\n\"From here to Millisle down the Ards Peninsula, bye,\" Kinky said, and took her duster to the frame. \"I can believe those guns would have made ferocious bangs, so. I've seen newsreel of battleships firing at France on D-Day,\" she looked him in the eye, \"but the war does be over and you can settle down now and enjoy the nice peace and quiet of Ballybucklebo, so.\"\n\nPeace and quiet? True enough, but things were a bit too quiet this morning. It wasn't that he wanted people to be sick, but he needed to work. O'Reilly drummed his fingers on the desktop.\n\nThat old piece held memories for O'Reilly of a much younger Fingal who all his life had wanted to study medicine. Father had been sitting at this desk in his study when Fingal had defied him back in '27, telling him, \"I'm not doing nuclear physics.\" That stubbornness had led him into the merchant marine and the Royal Naval Reserve before he'd finally gone to Trinity College in Dublin to fulfil his dream. And that stint in the reserve had led to his call-up when war had broken out, a war that, as Kinky had remarked, was now over. And the Lord be praised. But now what he needed were patients in his surgery so he could get back to the kind of doctoring he loved.\n\nHe rose and for the umpteenth time walked back to the room that had originally been the scullery, but which Doctor Flanagan had used as his waiting room. Not for the first time O'Reilly scowled at the dismal, shiny, green-painted walls. He'd already decided to paper them with something more cheerful. Roses, he thought, roses would do very well.\n\nThe place was as deserted as a Protestant church on a weekday. He bent and lifted a tattered Reader's Digest from a heap of earlier editions, several Women's Own magazines, and some issues of a kiddies' comic book, The Dandy Comic. He smiled at the drawings of Korky the Cat on their front pages. As he was scanning the index of the Digest, the outside door opened and a young woman came in holding the hand of a little girl clutching a well-worn teddy bear. His first real patients. He didn't count Bertie Bishop. \"Good morning,\" a smiling O'Reilly said. \"I'm Doctor O'Reilly.\"\n\n\"I'm Kathy Dunleavy, Willie Dunleavy's wife.\"\n\n\"Are you related to Charles Dunleavy who owns the Black Swan?\"\n\n\"He was my da-in-law. He's gone three years, God rest him. I married his son Willie five years back. He runs the pub now, so he does.\"\n\n\"Good Lord, the last time I saw your husband he was a bachelor kicking a ball around with his mates and looking for divilment.\" O'Reilly shook his head. \"Anyway, what can I do for you?\"\n\n\"I'm worried about wee Mary here.\"\n\n\"Let's see what we can do about that.\" O'Reilly led Mrs. Dunleavy and the child to the surgery and sat in his chair while she took one of the wooden ones and lifted Mary onto her lap.\n\n\"So, what seems to be the trouble with Mary?\"\n\n\"The poor wee button's off her feed for the last couple of days, says she can't swallow right, and I think she's got a fever.\"\n\n\"Mmmh,\" said O'Reilly, already formulating his possible diagnoses. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"No convulsions, vomiting, diarrhoea? No pains anywhere? No earache? No sore throat?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\nAt this time of the year he was probably dealing with acute tonsillitis, which could be a recurrent disease. \"Has she ever had anything like this before?\"\n\nMrs. Dunleavy shook her head.\n\nHe went and hunkered down in front of the girl so his eyes were at the same level as hers. \"Hello, Mary.\"\n\nShe pulled the teddy bear closer and looked at him from big blue eyes, which he noticed were dull.\n\n\"Cat got your tongue?\" He smiled and said to the bear, \"And how old is your mistress?\"\n\n\"He can't talk, thilly,\" she said. \"I'm four.\"\n\n\"Are you now?\" said O'Reilly. \"You are a big girl.\"\n\nThat produced a little smile.\n\n\"Can I put my hand on your neck, please?\"\n\nShe glanced at her mother, who nodded. \"Yeth.\"\n\nO'Reilly quickly examined her neck. He noted a few enlarged lymph nodes and her skin was warm. It was always tricky taking wee ones' temperatures so he'd settle for that inexact observation. The findings so far were in keeping with his thoughts. A couple more observations would confirm them. \"Could you open wide and stick out your tongue?\"\n\n\"Yeth.\" She did.\n\nO'Reilly produced a pencil torch and shone it into her mouth. Small children always gagged if you tried to use a tongue depressor and he was confident he'd be able to find what he was looking for without one. \"Say 'aaah.'\"\n\nHe saw at once that the very back of the oral cavity, the fauces, were red and inflamed and that both tonsils were scarlet and swollen. There was no evidence of membrane formation so he could stop worrying about diphtheria or a rare condition called Vincent's angina, also known as trench mouth. \"Thank you, Mary,\" he said. \"You can close your mouth.\"\n\nShe did.\n\nHe patted the teddy on the head and returned to his chair.\n\n\"You've got tonsillitis, Mary,\" he said, but directed his remarks to her mother. \"We'll have you better in three or four days.\"\n\n\"What do we treat it with, Doctor?\" Mrs. Dunleavy asked. \"My granny in Coalisland in County Tyrone uses a stocking filled with hot salt wrapped round the neck.\"\n\n\"Some folks here in County Down use hot potatoes instead of salt,\" O'Reilly said, \"but do you think you could teach Mary to gargle?\"\n\n\"Aye, certainly.\"\n\n\"Good, because I want you to get some aspirin. You'll not need a scrip. Break a tablet in half and crush one half up in warm water and have her gargle and then swallow the gargle. Do that every eight hours. Keep her in bed until I've seen her again and give her lots to drink. That should see her right in no time. If you are worried send for me.\" It was a great comfort to know that if simple measures failed he could always fall back on sulphas. Although penicillin had been available to the armed forces, it was not yet in use in civilian practice. The few doses he'd had on Warspite late in the war, like all the doses that had been stockpiled before D-Day, had all been produced in America from fungus taken from a mouldy canteloupe from Peoria, Illinois. \"I'll pop in and see her in a day or two.\" And again in three weeks because there was always the risk of rheumatic fever or kidney disease developing if the infecting organism was a haemolytic streptococcus, but he'd not mention that.\n\n\"Thank you very much, sir. Say thank you, Mary.\"\n\n\"Fank oo.\"\n\nAs Kinky had instructed, he made a quick note in the ledger so she could send out the bill. Mary rose. \"And Willy says the next time you're in the Duck the first pint's on him, so it is.\"\n\n\"I'll look forward to that.\" He followed them from the surgery and showed them out through the front door. The snow of Saturday had vanished. Whistling a few bars of Vaughn Monroe's latest hit, \"Let It Snow,\" he walked back to the waiting room. His smile widened when he saw a middle-aged man wearing a bowler hat sitting on one of the chairs. \"I'm Doctor O'Reilly,\" he said, \"will you come with me?\"\n\nBy the time they'd reached the surgery, the man, who was now setting his bowler hat on the second patient's chair, had aleady told O'Reilly his name. \"I was given Hubert, but everybody calls me 'Wowser,' so they do. Wowser Ward. I'm connected with the Ward family, a bunch of highheejins. Lived in Bangor Castle. They gave thirty-seven acres to Bangor for a park, Ward Park, and one of their daughters married Lord Clanmorris from the west of Ireland in 1878, so she did. Me? I'm forty-eight, I'm the foreman for Bishop's Builders, and I was a patient of Doctor Flanagan. I never seen you before the war because I thought you was too young, you know.\" He sighed. \"But now? I heard you'd given Mister Bishop lip last Friday, but beggars can't be choosers, so they can't.\"\n\nHow flattering, O'Reilly thought, and grinned. He'd take no offence. A patient was a patient. After a short rummage in the desk drawer, he found the man's old record card. \"And you live on Station Road. Number 12.\"\n\n\"Bingo,\" he said, \"and if you look at my card you'll see what ailed me then and what ails me again, but worser now, you know. That's why I've come. I want it fixed the day. Right now if you can, sir. The bloody thing aches and aches all day unless I'm lying down.\" He unbuckled his belt.\n\nO'Reilly put on his half-moons and read, Tuesday, 11\/Aug\/42. Cold right groin abscess unchanged. Advised bed rest. May need lancing. He whipped off his spectacles, whistled, and felt the hackles of his neck rising. Back in 1939, Doctor Flanagan had been puzzled by a rare local condition he called a cold groin abscess. Two of the cases he'd lanced in his surgery he explained to O'Reilly had either, \"Wind or shite in them and both patients died. It was most puzzling.\"\n\nNot to the then-young O'Reilly. His senior colleague had been incising ruptures\u2014inguinal hernias. No wonder he'd released bowel contents. Often such bulgings of the peritoneum through a weakness in the lower abdominal wall did contain small bowel. And after Doctor Flanagan's ham-fisted efforts, two of his victims must have succumbed to peritonitis following contamination.\n\n\"So you think you've a groin abscess?\" O'Reilly said.\n\n\"Think? I'm bloody well sure. Doctor Flanagan knew his stuff, so he did.\" Wowser Ward was unbuttoning his fly.\n\nThe old doctor had certainly been convinced of his own infallability and had managed to persuade his patients of the same. Such was often the case with that generation of physicians. O'Reilly's attempt in '39 to suggest to Doctor Flanagan that these were hernias and not abscesses had been met with scorn and anger. And back then, death after surgery was, if not accepted, at least understood by the laity.\n\nNow, with no real local reputation, O'Reilly was going to have to try to contradict the late and omniscient Doctor Flanagan for the sake of the patient. \"All right, Mister Ward. Stand up and lower your pants.\"\n\nThe man did.\n\nEven from where he sat O'Reilly could see a bulging in the fold between the belly and thigh on the right. \"Cough,\" he said.\n\n\"Cough? It's my groin, not my chest's the trouble.\"\n\n\"Please?\"\n\nThe man did, and O'Reilly had no difficulty observing a visible impulse under the skin. A hernia, no doubt, and one that should be repaired surgically. A third-year student could have made the diagnosis without any further examination. Its exact nature would need to be delineated by a surgeon but it was beyond the powers of a GP to fix. O'Reilly coughed and said, \"I think I must tell you, Mister Ward, I believe medicine has moved on since Doctor Flanagan's day.\"\n\n\"How?\" There was acid in the one word.\n\nThis was going to take diplomacy and tact, but if the Ard R\u00ed himself\u2014the High King of all Ireland\u2014appeared and thought he could order O'Reilly to incise an inguinal hernia here in the surgery, his Royal Highness would have another thought coming. \"Mister Ward, I believe that what you have is called a hernia and\u2014\"\n\n\"Why? Hernia? Amn't I a man? If it should be called anything, it should be a hisnia, and it's not nothing like that anyroad. It's a groin abscess and I want it fixed, Doctor.\" He shook his head. \"You call sitting there and getting a fellah to cough an examination? Jasus, a horse trader would look more carefully at a horse, so he would.\"\n\n\"Mister Ward, I really want to get a second opinion from a specialist at the Royal Victoria Hospital.\" Two of O'Reilly's friends from Trinity, Charlie Greer and Donald Cromie, were surgeons there.\n\n\"Aye. Well. You can want. I've no time til be buggering about in Belfast, and them specialists cost a brave wheen of money, so they do. Why will you not do it here for me?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said O'Reilly, realising that he was going to be sending away a dissatisfied customer. Better that than a dead one; although, oddly enough, if he acceded to the patient's request and that gloomy outcome occurred he was more likely to be forgiven by the locals than if he turned the man down. Never mind. The patient's health came first. \"I wish you could under\u2014\"\n\nThe man and the colour in his cheeks both rose. He pulled up his pants and began to close his fly.\n\nO'Reilly flinched.\n\n\"I understand that you're useless til me, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Lancing your hernia might kill you,\" O'Reilly said.\n\n\"Away off and feel your head.\" He buckled his belt, grabbed his bowler, headed for and opened the door. \"Hernia, my aunt Fanny Jane. If you won't fix it, I'll just thole it, so I will, but just you wait till I put out the word you never even examined me properly, never mind put me right.\" Country patients had great faith in the powers of the examination\u2014and of the X-ray. \"I'm paying you nothing, neither. You don't know your arse from your elbow.\" He buckled his belt and slammed the door behind him as he left.\n\nO'Reilly fished out and lit his pipe. He needed a minute to think. He'd been consulted three times and had only sent one customer away satisfied, and although Kathy Dunleavy was a nice young woman she'd hardly be rushing round telling the world how wonderful the newly returned doctor was. What he'd done for her Mary was routine. What would Bishop and Ward be saying and to whom? That neither had paid was not his real concern. The damage they might be doing to his reputation\u2014he blew out a cloud of smoke\u2014hardly bore thinking about.\n\nSetting his pipe in an ashtray he walked back to the waiting room. Empty. No patients. Patience, he told himself and smiled. The words had the same Latin root, patiens, which meant \"waiting\" or \"suffering,\" and both described what he was doing right now. He could only hope that by waiting a bit longer his worry, which in fairness could hardly be called suffering, would be over and his surgeries full. He brightened, remembering Kathy Dunleavy's parting remark. Maybe before supper he'd pop into the Black Swan, or Mucky Duck as the locals called their pub.\n4\n\nAnd Everything in Its Place\n\nThe tips of O'Reilly's ears tingled after his short walk from Number One, past the maypole, and across the Main Street to its junction with Station Road, the corner site of the Black Swan Pub. In the icy, darkening evening, the snow that had stopped falling on Saturday had returned. The flakes were large and damp and barely lay on the pavement.\n\nHe heard the sounds of laughter and chatter even before he pushed through the pub's doors. Once inside he felt as if he'd walked into a wall of warmth coming from a blazing turf fire and a web of tobacco smoke from pipes and cigarettes. As he brushed flakes from and then unbuttoned his coat he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dim lighting.\n\nThe single, narrow room had not changed since his last visit almost seven years ago. There was still sawdust on the plank floor, still the low black ceiling beams, and a few tables and occupied chairs in front of a long bar counter. Bottles of spirits on shelves behind the bar kept company with two barrels of the product of Mister Arthur Guinness and Sons, Saint James's Gate, Dublin, lying on their sides. Each had a brass spigot for drawing off the stout hammered into its bung hole near the bottom of the lower rim. A spile to regulate the release of carbon dioxide had been driven into the middle of each barrel at the top of its upper circumference.\n\nO'Reilly's ears were assailed by a loud hum of men's conversation. Women were not permitted in public bars in Ulster, and the Duck boasted neither a snug nor a lounge bar where women could go\u2014if escorted. Dogs, however, were allowed in, and O'Reilly noticed a border collie under one table, a lurcher\u2014a collie greyhound cross much favoured by poachers for its intelligence and speed in pursuit of game\u2014under another. Its owner had bright carrotty hair. Maybe, O'Reilly thought, one day he'd get himself a Labrador\u2014but not until the practice was busier.\n\nThe rising and falling tides of noise stopped as if a sluice gate had been closed, and he was aware of every eye being fixed on him. \"A very good evening to this house,\" he said, but he might as well have been talking to a room full of deaf men for all the response he got. He'd seen Western films where a stranger comes to the town saloon and is ignored. It was often the setup for a fight scene\u2014in Westerns and in the slums of Dublin where ruggy-ups, bare-knuckle fights, were commonplace, but not in a quiet little place like Ballybucklebo.\n\nThere was space at this end of the bar so he moved there, smiled at a big man in an army greatcoat and duncher\u2014probably recently demobbed like O'Reilly\u2014and took his place leaning on the bar top and putting one foot up on a brass rail beneath. He looked more closely at his companion. \"You're Declan Finnegan,\" O'Reilly said. \"I set a broken arm for you in '39. You were going to join the Tank Regiment when I left here for the navy.\"\n\nThe general level of conversation had risen to its previous levels.\n\n\"That's right, Doctor O'Reilly.\" Declan smiled. \"And my arm mended rightly. You done a great job. And I was a tanker. I fought in Sicily and I drove a Cromwell tank in Normandy, so I did, but I was demobbed in late '45 and come home, you know. I heard you were coming back. It's good to have you here, sir, so it is. I wonder,\" he hesitated, \"I wonder if I could ask you a wee doctoring favour, sir?\"\n\nO'Reilly hesitated. He generally refused such requests on social occasions and had no intention of letting his pub become an annex to his surgery. After all, he was on his own time here, but for just this once said, \"Fire away.\" He'd get an opportunity sooner or later to make his position on pub consultations clear.\n\n\"What'll it be, Doctor O'Reilly?\" a voice said from behind the bar counter.\n\nO'Reilly turned to see the barman. Willie Dunleavy had packed on the beef since his soccer-playing days. He'd be about thirty. He wore a flowery waistcoat and his shirt sleeves were held up by satin-covered elastic garters.\n\n\"I mind my da, God rest him, who used to own this place, saying you were fond of your pint when you worked here before the war.\" He held out his hand. \"Welcome back, sir, and thanks for seeing our wee Mary.\"\n\nO'Reilly shook hands. \"Thank you. I was sorry to hear about your father.\"\n\nWillie shrugged. \"Aye,\" he said. \"Thon cancer's not nice, but... och...\" He took a deep breath. \"And will it be a pint, sir?\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"You're on,\" said Willie, went to the two barrels, and started to pour.\n\nO'Reilly turned back to Declan Finnegan. \"You were going to ask a favour, Declan?\"\n\n\"I wonder, maybe someday soon, if I could bring the missus til see you? We think she's pregnant.\"\n\n\"Of course, of course. Send her round about nine tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Fair enough.\"\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\nDeclan hesitated. \"I'll come too,\" he said. \"Melanie doesn't speak much English yet. She's learning, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Melanie? She's French?\"\n\nDeclan nodded. \"Aye. I met her in 1944, near Mont Pin\u00e7on. She'd volunteered to help the army doctors. I'd been wounded, only a toty wee scratch, like. I was back on my feet in time to rejoin my squadron and fight at Falaise and go the whole way to the Rhine River, but I never forgot Melanie Devereux, so I didn't. Her and me got married last May, after the war in Europe was over.\"\n\n\"Good for you both. More power to your wheels. And the French won't be a problem. Moi, je parle un tres petit peu.\"\n\n\"Merveilleux,\" Declan said. \"Moi aussi.\"\n\n\"And that's enough of the oul parley-voo from you, Declan Finnegan, so it is,\" Willie said with a grin. \"Here's your pint, Doctor O'Reilly, sir, and like Kathy said, it's on the house. A wee welcome home. I hope you'll take a brave wheen more in here over the years.\"\n\n\"I'm beginning to think I will,\" O'Reilly said, hoping this and his easy conversation with Declan were more small steps to his gradual reacceptance in the village and townland. He lifted his pint, said, \"Sl\u00e1inte,\" and took a hefty pull. \"Mother's milk,\" he said, grinned, and fished out his pipe.\n\nThe Murray's Erinmore Flake tobacco was going well when it was time for his second pint and the one he bought for Declan Finnegan.\n\n\"I mind you was quare nor keen on the rugby football, sir,\" Declan was saying. \"You should have a wee word with my younger brother, Fergus. He plays for the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts' Junior Fifteen.\"\n\n\"So you've got the club going again?\" Most athletic pursuits had been interrupted by the war.\n\n\"Och aye. The marquis of Ballybucklebo's their patron. He's played for Ireland, you know.\"\n\nO'Reilly felt a draught as someone opened the door, half-turned, and saw Bertie Bishop followed by Wowser Ward, of all people.\n\nO'Reilly ignored them and said to Declan, \"I did know about his Lordship's caps.\" O'Reilly had three of his own for representing his country, but it would be boastful to say so. Joining the club would increase the circle of his acquaintances\u2014and possible patients\u2014and put him back in touch with a game he loved. \"I will join, Declan. How'd I get ahold of your brother?\"\n\n\"He's no phone in his house. He's a jockey. Rides for the marquis. I'll tell him to come and see you, sir.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nO'Reilly glanced over. A table that he'd noticed upon arriving had been occupied by three obviously working-class men in dunchers and with mufflers wrapped round their necks, one man smoking a clay pipe. They now vacated their places in favour of the great Panjandrum and his friend. O'Reilly had a quick mental image of Mister Bertie Bishop saying, \"I'm a very important man round here, so I am.\"\n\n\"'Scuse me.\" A tall, narrow-faced patron pushed past O'Reilly to get to the bar and call an order. \"Pint and a packet of crisps, please, Willie.\"\n\n\"Right, Archie.\"\n\nO'Reilly had to think. Archie. Archie. Got it. \"Hello, Mister Auchinleck,\" he said. The man shared a surname with a famous British general of Ulster stock who'd taken over command of the British Army in the Middle East after Warspite had left for Bremerton.\n\n\"Doctor O'Reilly. It's yourself. I hardly noticed you there. It's a bit dim in here. I heard you was coming back, so I did. Mrs. Kincaid's been putting the word around. If me or the missus or our wee lad get sick we'll come and see you, so we will.\"\n\nGood for you, Kinky, O'Reilly thought. \"The surgery's open every morning at nine o'clock,\" he said. He felt a tugging at his sleeve, turned, and saw Bishop. \"Yes, Mister Bishop.\"\n\n\"I've not time for til come til your surgery. Bend you your head so I can whisper.\"\n\nO'Reilly stooped to the shorter man, who said what he had to say.\n\nNo. Bloody well no. Declan's polite request had been one thing, this demand another entirely. This was a perfect opportunity to establish that unless someone was bleeding to death or having a heart attack, Doctor O'Reilly was off duty inside the Duck. \"Certainly, Mister Bishop,\" he bellowed in his quarterdeck voice, which could be heard above a howling Atlantic gale. He paused. The falling of a pin would have been as noisy as the eruption of Krakatoa, so silent had the Duck become. \"Just slip off your trousers and climb up on the counter so I can examine you.\" The falling of a single downy feather would probably have registered on the Richter scale. Silence hung until a clearly furious, puce-faced Bishop yelled, \"My trousers? Here? Have you taken a fit of the headstaggers? Do you not know it's a feckin' pub!\"\n\n\"Well, Mister Bishop...\" O'Reilly had deliberately lowered his voice so that his audience would have to strain to hear. \"I thought you didn't know. After all, you insisted on consulting me in here for something that can wait until the surgery opens tomorrow. I didn't think you'd mind being examined in here. But if it upsets you, I'll be happy to see you tomorrow. Tomorrow.\"\n\nBishop spluttered. \"By God, O'Reilly, you've a quare brass neck, so you have. Telling a fellah til take off his pants in public.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said O'Reilly, \"the cervical alloy of copper and zinc is all yours.\" He turned back to Archie and Declan as a wave of laughter swept through the room. I've not made a bosom buddy, O'Reilly thought, but there is a limit. And for the moment, and God bless Surgeon Commander Wilcoxson for his sage advice, the upper hand was back where it belonged. Nor would he be pestered in here in the future by other patients.\n\nHe glanced over to where Bishop and Ward had their heads together. Ward looked over at O'Reilly. The man's eyes were narrowed, his teeth clenched. He shook his fist and mouthed, \"You wait, O'Reilly. Just you wait.\"\n\nO'Reilly turned away. He had clearly offended two locals, but surely the laughter at Bishop's discomfiture signified that there was support for the newly returned doctor too?\n\n\"It's my shout, Doctor,\" Declan Finnegan said. \"And well done putting Mister Bishop in his box. I'm sorry I asked you a medical question. I never thought\u2014\"\n\n\"You didn't ask me a question. You asked if you could bring your wife to see me. That's entirely different.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir. Now, would you like that pint, and maybe one for you, Archie?\"\n\nO'Reilly shook his head and buttoned his coat. If Archie said yes, then the \"my shout\" circle would begin where everyone in the party had to buy a round. He smiled. \"Maybe next time, Declan. It's time I was home.\"\n\nDeclan nodded. \"I understand, sir.\" He lowered his voice. \"See that there Bertie Bishop? His head's full of hobbyhorse shite, so it is.\" He spat into the sawdust. \"Pay him no heed and never you worry, sir, me and Melanie'll be in first thing tomorrow.\"\n\nO'Reilly smiled and said, \"I'll expect you.\" And to hell with Bertie Bishop and Wowser Ward. O'Reilly hoped that the Finnegans would be the start of a steadily growing trade. \"Good night to this house,\" he called, and was gratified by a few, although not everybody's by any means, \"Good night, Doctor.\"\n5\n\nHave You No Bowel, No Tenderness?\n\nO'Reilly pushed away his plate, empty save for a squeezed lemon slice. Not long before a pair of famous Craster kippers had lain, blissfully brown and seductively, steamingly scented. Utterly delicious. While drinking his second cup of tea, he finished reading a story in Tuesday's The Northern Whig. It seemed that fifteen alleged Soviet spies had been arrested in Canada. He wondered what they'd be spying on in that far cold country, tutted, put down the paper, rose, and crossed to the surgery.\n\nHe opened his doctor's bag, went to a cupboard, took out an ampoule of aminophylline, and put it into the bag to replace the one he'd used yesterday for a seven-year-old boy who was having a severe asthmatic attack. That home visit and a case of influenza had been the sum of the day's caseload. What had Lars said? \"Don't be surprised if it's slow at the beginning.\" Slow? Glaciers moved more quickly. Still, O'Reilly thought, Declan Finnegan and his French wife were coming today. He headed for the surgery.\n\nDeclan and a petite but obviously swollen-bellied woman with glossy brown hair sat side by side. And across the room, perched like a gargoyle on a cathedral on one of the hard-backed chairs, was Albert Bishop. Before O'Reilly could even say good morning and invite them to come to his surgery, the man announced, \"The Finnegans don't mind if I go first, O'Reilly.\" As Bishop strode past the couple, Declan raised his eyes to heaven and shook his head.\n\nO'Reilly was sure Bishop had bullied his way past the Finnegans, but did not want to make a fuss about it\u2014yet. He followed him along to the surgery, where Bishop had already seated himself. O'Reilly closed the door. \"Good morning, Mister Bishop. I wasn't expecting to see you today.\" To tell the truth I was not expecting to see you ever after last night, O'Reilly thought, as he took the swivel chair. This was something he'd learned from Doctor Corrigan, his senior in general practice in Dublin. That not every patient and their doctor would get along. Sometimes it was better to come to the parting of the ways and have them seek medical advice elsewhere. He recognised that may have been at the back of his mind when he'd deliberately embarrassed Bishop last night.\n\n\"Aye, nor me you, but I've still not gone since I tried to have a wee quiet word with you. I've been seeing a Doctor Robbins in Bangor, but it's far too far to drive just because I'm bound. My missus, Flo, says she til me, she says, 'Go on, give O'Reilly a try.' I says til her that I tried to tell you on Monday night that I needed a strong laxative, but, no, you were too high and mighty to do me a favour, so you were. Sometimes my Flo does talk sense, but. Says she til me, 'O'Reilly worked here before. He never killed nobody then.'\"\n\nNow there was a backhanded compliment.\n\n\"'And it'll take you an hour til drive til Bangor, see Robbins, and drive back. Go on, try O'Reilly.' So here I am. And it's your last chance with me, so it is. I've already heard you wouldn't treat Wowser Ward, so you'd better see me right or else.\"\n\nO'Reilly frowned. \"Or else what, Mister Bishop?\" O'Reilly had been trained to understand that patients were not always as polite as they might be and to be prepared to make allowances, but this pompous little man didn't seem to recognise how close he was to being thrown out\u2014physically. \"Or else what?\"\n\n\"Wowser and me'll put out the word you're no bloody good.\" He leant back, smiled, and folded his arms across his chest.\n\nTo give himself a moment to consider his reply O'Reilly fished out a pair of half-moon spectacles and perched them on his nose. Decision time. Could he afford to tell Bishop to go to hell, behave like that Anglo-Dubliner the Duke of Wellington and his famous, \"Publish and be damned\"? That would alienate this man when the practice was in an embryonic state. And how much harm could he and Wowser Ward do? Probably quite a lot. On the other hand, if O'Reilly simply ignored Bishop's rudeness and threats, he had no doubt that the man would proudly spread the word around that O'Reilly was so weak he couldn't beat the skin off a rice pudding, and he couldn't afford that either. Half a doctor's ability to treat lay in the esteem in which he was held by his patients. O'Reilly recognised that he was on the horns of what one of his naval patients had called a dilly-ma-ma.\n\nBut\u2014but\u2014he had to struggle to conceal a grin. There was a way to appear to acquiesce but give Bishop a not-so-subtle message that Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, once called by an old Dublin friend The Wily O'Reilly, was not a man to be threatened\u2014ever. \"I see,\" he said levelly. \"Then I'll have to make sure you are treated properly, won't I?\"\n\n\"That's more like it,\" Bishop said.\n\nO'Reilly steepled his fingers. He'd learnt long ago that the makers of patent laxatives had taught the great public that their bowels must move once a day. It wasn't true, but such was the power of advertising. \"When was the last time you went?\"\n\n\"Saturday morning, and that's three whole days.\"\n\n\"I see, and has this kind of thing happened before?\"\n\n\"Aye, and Robbins gives me castor oil.\" He screwed up his face. \"Tastes like shite. I thought you being younger\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sure I do have something better for you, but I need to make sure there's no underlying disease. Have you any belly pains?\"\n\n\"Nah.\"\n\n\"No vomiting?\"\n\n\"No, I've not boked. I'm rightly otherwise, so I am. It's just I'm bound.\"\n\nNo pain, no vomiting, so no suggestion of anything obstructing the bowel. \"Anything else bothering you?\" Constipation if a symptom of something serious was invariably accompanied by other symptoms of distress, and Bishop looked the picture of overweight health.\n\n\"Are you deaf? I just told you. Not at all.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said O'Reilly, gritting his teeth and remembering Ward's anger at not having been examined... \"I'd still better take a look.\"\n\nIt was a simple matter to examine Bishop's tubby belly, which O'Reilly did, finding nothing amiss. \"All right,\" he said. \"Get dressed.\" He went to his desk and found a prescription pad. His old teacher Doctor Micks had preached, It may be dangerous to give a purgative but never to withold one. Not in this case. Bishop appeared to have nothing physically wrong with him. There was nothing to worry about, O'Reilly was quite sure. He removed a fountain pen from an inside pocket, scribbled, and handed the prescription to Bishop. \"Take that to the chemist. It'll do the trick.\"\n\nBishop took the scrip, scowled, and said, \"Thank you. It had better work.\"\n\n\"It will,\" said O'Reilly. \"I promise. Now,\" said O'Reilly, rising. \"I'm sure you're a very busy man and in a rush.\" Not half the hurry you're going to be in after you've taken your medicine, he thought, hiding a grin.\n\n\"Aye. I am.\"\n\nHe took Bishop by the elbow, helped him stand, and began propelling him to the door.\n\n\"Take a teaspoonful of that as soon as you get home\u2014and don't go out.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"Good,\" said O'Reilly, letting Bishop out of the surgery. Only when the door was shut did he allow himself to chuckle. His prescription of Tinct. Crotonis Oleum, tincture of croton oil, was for the strongest purgative available. During the war, the U.S. Navy had added it to the alcohol fuel used in their torpedoes. The violent laxative effects were meant to discourage sailors from draining and drinking the fuel. It was also believed that a number of U-boat patrols from French ports had been abandoned because the French fishermen who supplied the German fleet had packed sardines in croton rather than olive oil. The effects on a U-boat's crew in a vessel with only two heads hardly bore imagining.\n\nThe self-important Mister Bishop was not going to enjoy himself today. He'd be spending a fair bit of it all alone in a small room. But he'd be hard-pressed to complain. He'd explicitly asked for a \"strong\" laxative and had demanded effective treatment. And he probably would have sufficient insight to recognise that messing about with Doctor O'Reilly was a less than smart thing to do.\n\nHe opened the ledger, noted, B. Bishop. Consultation, then headed for the waiting room where another patient, a young woman, had joined the Finnegans.\n\n\"Your turn, Mister and Mrs. Finnegan.\" He smiled at the newcomer. \"I'll not be long.\"\n\nOnce in the surgery and with Declan sitting on one chair, his wife on the other, Declan said, \"Good morning, Doctor O'Reilly. This here's Melanie, so it is.\"\n\nO'Reilly made a little bow. \"Enchant\u00e9, Madame Finnegan.\"\n\nShe smiled, but her torrent of heavily Norman-accented French overwhelmed O'Reilly. \"Je m'excuse,\" he said, \"mais moi, je parle Fran\u00e7ais comme une vache Espagnole. If faut que vous parleriez tres lentement, madame, s'il vous pla\u00eet.\"\n\nShe laughed and said, \"D'accord, monsieur. Je comprend.\"\n\n\"No harm til you, Doctor, but you done very good. And you do not speak French 'like a Spanish cow,'\" said Declan, chuckling at the way native French speakers referred to those who hadn't mastered the language. \"Not one bit. What you just done was set her at her ease that she can talk to you even if she does have to speak more slowly\u2014and I'll help too.\" He turned to his wife, rapidly translated, and was rewarded with a beaming smile that lit up her ebony eyes.\n\n\"I'm sorry you got bumped,\" O'Reilly said.\n\n\"See that there Bishop?\" Declan said. \"He thinks he's no goat's toe, but he puts his trousers on one leg at a time just like ordinary people.\" He lowered his voice. \"If you ask me, he's full of shite.\"\n\nNot for much longer, O'Reilly thought, but said, \"I am sorry you had to wait, and please explain that to Melanie and help me to ask her some questions.\"\n\nWith some of his own French and with Declan translating where needed, O'Reilly soon finished his history-taking and, after Melanie had climbed upon the couch, her physical examination. He'd noted that he was going to be looking after a twenty-three-year-old with no history of serious illness, who was today at about the twenty-sixth week of her first pregnancy and thus was due to deliver in late May. When he'd worked at the Rotunda in Dublin in the late 1930s, the master had begun to institute routine antenatal care aimed at trying to prevent stillbirth and foetal abnormality and screen women for high blood pressure. O'Reilly intended\u2014when more started showing up\u2014to follow that protocol with his patients. At least since 1936, with the advent of Red Prontosil, the first antibiotic, and since the war much better blood transfusion services, the risks of the two great killers of pregnant women, infection and haemorrhage, were being brought under better control.\n\nIn his very best French, O'Reilly, with Declan helping, explained that everything seemed to be fine, that he'd like to see her in a month, and to get hold of him if she was worried about anything.\n\n\"Merci, monsieur le mede\u00e7in. Je suis tr\u00e8s content.\" And those deep eyes smiled at him again.\n\nO'Reilly cleared his throat, then said, \"There is one thing.\" Full obstetrical care was expensive and O'Reilly felt he had an obligation to warn Declan.\n\n\"Aye?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I'll have to charge you eight guineas,\" he rushed on, \"but that includes antenatal visits, delivery, and postpartum care.\" O'Reilly looked at his desktop. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"What the hell for?\" Declan said. \"For God's sakes, Doctor dear, the workman's worth his hire. I don't work for free. How much on account?\"\n\n\"Four guineas, but we'll be sending out the bills at the end of the month.\"\n\n\"Fair enough.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" O'Reilly said, and made an entry in the ledger. Not only did it allow him to keep his accounts straight, it would enable him when the time came to apportion to HM Inspector of Taxes his statutory thirty percent. And with the imminent introduction of Pay as You Earn, PAYE, this would, in O'Reilly's case, have to be paid monthly.\n\n\"We'll be running along, sir,\" Declan said, then, \"Viens, Melanie, and she'll see you in a month, sir. And your Mrs. Kincaid told the ladies at the Woman's Union last night that you took special training in midwifery in Dublin too.\" He winked. \"Never mind that ould git Bishop. I'll give you five til one Melanie isn't the only pregnant woman you'll be seeing soon, sir. You'll be sucking diesel before you know it, so you will.\"\n\nO'Reilly accompanied the couple to the front door and let them out, turned, and went back toward the the waiting room. \"Sucking diesel?\" That was a new one, but by the inflexion in Declan's voice O'Reilly reckoned it was akin to being on the pig's back or in clover. It was comforting for Declan to say so.\n\nHe headed back to the waiting room where another patient awaited. Perhaps things were looking up.\n6\n\nThere Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio\n\nO'Reilly finished his roast pheasant and pushed his plate away. Somehow, despite Kinky's magic way with game birds, he had not relished his dinner. On Tuesday he'd hoped that things were looking up, but they were not. To be sure Tuesday had yielded two more patients after the Finnegans, but from Wednesday until today, Friday, he'd seen only another three, four if he counted a home visit yesterday to Mary Dunleavy. She and her family lived over the Duck, and after he'd reassured himself and her mother that Mary was well mended, he'd not been hard to persuade to have another pint with mine host. Willie had been more reserved than usual and had obviously had to steel himself before he'd been able to ask in a low voice, \"Seeing lots of patients, Doc?\"\n\nO'Reilly had shaken his head. Willie's next words were indelibly imprinted.\n\n\"Aye, well no harm til you, sir, but thon Mister Ward was in here a couple of nights ago. He was telling everybody that you'd refused til treat him right, and that you'd near killed Mister Bishop. I telt him to shut his yap or I'd bar him.\"\n\nO'Reilly had thanked Willie. And finished his pint.\n\nIt looked as if the damage had been done, and although O'Reilly's main reason for wanting the practice to expand was because he really enjoyed his work, there was no escaping the fact that the bank would be expecting his first loan repayment soon.\n\nThere was talk that the government was going to introduce a National Health Service by which all citizens would be insured and GPs would be paid monthly by a government agency so there would be no need for money to come between doctors and their patients. It couldn't be implemented fast enough for O'Reilly. He disliked the need to send bills, particularly to poorer patients, and was sure many of them avoided visiting a doctor because they simply could not afford to. Some found other ways round the difficulty.\n\nHe managed a smile. And once the practice did grow\u2014if it did grow\u2014he'd not object to gifts in lieu of cash. The chicken in return for a linament for a sore back, the brace of mallard instead of the surgery visit fee for a patient with acute conjunctivitis, and the lobster for strapping a sprained wrist he'd been given when he'd worked here before had been most acceptable.\n\nOn Wednesday, the father of a young, carotty-haired buck-toothed lad, Donal Donnelly, had offered O'Reilly a brace of pheasants to pay for his treatment of the boy's middle ear infection. The birds had almost certainly been \"borrowed\" from the marquis's estate, but taking a leaf from another sailor's book, O'Reilly had turned a blind eye. Slices of one of them with roast potatoes, seasonal brussels sprouts, and carrots had been his dinner that night.\n\nThe barter system appealed to O'Reilly and wasn't taxable, and as far as he was concerned what the eye didn't see the heart didn't grieve over. But until his debt was fully discharged, he did need hard currency too, and that would only come when he had full surgeries.\n\nKinky had used her best endeavours to bolster his reputation. The kind words of Declan Finnegan had been comforting, but his French-speaking wife was hardly in a position to shout O'Reilly's praises from the rooftops, at least in words comprehensible to the average villager. And he couldn't advertise. The General Medical Council, the disciplinary body of his profession, regarded that as unethical and could take away his licence if he tried to.\n\nBertie Bishop and Wowser Ward must have succeeded in blackening O'Reilly's name, of that he had no doubt, none whatsoever. Did he regret having given Bishop a laxative that if compared to usually prescribed ones was the atomic bomb of purgatives? Not one bloody bit. It might have been foolhardy, but O'Reilly had consciously decided to accept the risk. Bullies were bullies and had to be checked.\n\nHe rose, went to the sideboard, and poured himself a John Jameson. Sipping the Irish whiskey, he headed for the door, intending to go upstairs to the lounge and finish reading The Captain from Castille, one of last year's bestsellers.\n\nThe door opened and Kinky came in carrying a tray of polished silver. \"Doctor O'Reilly,\" she said, \"you do have a face on you like a Lurgan spade, as I've heard the locals say\u2014although it would mean nothing in County Cork, so.\"\n\nHe shrugged and exhaled.\n\n\"Would you take it ill, sir, if your housekeeper was to ask you if everything is all right?\"\n\nHe hesitated. O'Reilly was not one to cry on other people's shoulders, but tonight... \"I'd not take it that way at all, Kinky,\" he said, and in truth he'd welcome a friendly person to tell his troubles to. His closest friends, Doctors Charlie Greer and Donald Cromie, both surgeons, were up in Belfast. His best naval friend from Warspite days, Tom Laverty, was a career naval officer and was God knew where, still on active service. \"Will you sit down?\"\n\nShe frowned. It wasn't commonplace for servants to sit down with their employers.\n\n\"Kinky,\" he said, \"if I'm going to talk to you like a friend I'm going to treat you like one.\"\n\nShe blushed and said, \"That does be greatly appreciated, so.\" She sat and put the tray on the table.\n\n\"Another thing,\" he said as he sat, \"I got used to calling you Kinky when I was first here because that's what Doctor Flanagan called you. Would you prefer to be Maureen, or Mrs. Kincaid?\"\n\n\"Lord bless you, sir, Kinky's just grand. My late husband, Paudeen Kincaid, God rest him, gave it to me as a nickname because of how I used irons back then to curl my hair. It has a nice familiar sound, so. Kinky it is\u2014but I appreciate your asking. It does be the act of a real gentleman. Now,\" she smoothed her apron, \"can I offer a guess why you are upset?\"\n\n\"Go right ahead.\"\n\n\"I knew from when you were here before the war that it wasn't the money you worked for. You were simply happy at your work.\"\n\n\"I've wanted to be a doctor since I was thirteen.\" O'Reilly shrugged. \"Doctor Flanagan paid me well enough, I had my room here, and...\" He grinned at her. \"I had the best cook in all of Ireland feeding me.\"\n\n\"Go 'way out of that, sir,\" but her grin was one of enormous pleasure, \"and be serious now. You are worried because not enough people are coming to see you, isn't that so?\"\n\nHe pursed his lips and nodded. \"True.\"\n\n\"And there are one or two who I'll not name who are blackguarding you round the village.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"Huh,\" she said, \"there's precious little goes on here I don't know. Haven't I been here nearly twenty years and isn't everyone under that age one of Doctor Flanagan's babies except for the ones delivered by yourself when first you were here?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"And don't I know their mammies and daddies and grannies and grandpas?\"\n\nO'Reilly realised what an important source of information Kinky would be. \"I don't suppose there is much goes on without you knowing.\"\n\n\"There is not. Now, would it help if I told you not to worry?\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"It would be a kindness, but how would you know? Have you heard something?\"\n\n\"More seen.\" She leant forward and said very quietly, \"Now, sir, it does be said in the village that I am a wise woman.\"\n\n\"And are you?\" O'Reilly felt the hairs on his forearms bristle.\n\n\"From time to time I do find myself in a thin place.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"The old Celts believed that for some people in some places or times the gap between this earth and the other world becomes very thin and things can pass between. That is called a thin place. It can give some people, like my ma, it can give them the gift.\"\n\n\"Are you telling me you're fey, Kinky?\"\n\nShe stared at a spot near infinity off to the left of the cut-glass chandelier, and her face became expressionless, her voice far away. \"I was there last night, so.\"\n\nThe hackles rose on the back of his neck.\n\n\"I saw you in church. I saw people amazed. I felt\u2014\" She closed and reopened her eyes. \"I knew all was well.\"\n\nO'Reilly shivered as if a goose had walked on his grave. What was she trying to tell him?\n\n\"So, sir,\" she said in her usual voice, \"it would give me great pleasure if you'd come to morning service with me on Sunday. It would not hurt for the villagers to see that you are a Christian gentleman.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWith the cross of Jesus going on before.\n\nO'Reilly bellowed out the last line of \"Onward Christian Soldiers,\" a cheerful hymn with which the congregation had filled the barrel-vaulted nave of First Ballybucklebo Presbyterian Church. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows. He inhaled the mustiness of two hundred years and the overpowering perfume of Old Spice aftershave coming from a man in the pew behind. Cissie Sloan, whom O'Reilly had seen for acne in 1938, finished with triumphal chords on the harmonium. She and her cousin Aggie Arbuthnot were two of Kinky's friends.\n\nThe service was progressing and so far none of the amazement Kinky had predicted had occurred.\n\nAs O'Reilly sat, his foot nudged the doctor's bag he had set on the floor when he had taken this pew. It had been a habit of both Doctor Corrigan and Doctor Flanagan to go nowhere without their bag. One never knew when an emergency might occur. He patted the left pocket of his jacket to make sure his stethoscope was there too.\n\nHe paid attention to the service. Today Mister Wilson, the septuagenarian minister, was being assisted by a young cleric, a Mister Robinson who, Kinky had told O'Reilly, had recently received the call to be taking over the parish when the older man retired in August. This morning Mister Robinson was to preach the sermon.\n\nHe ascended into a carved pulpit and began, \"The text for today is from the Gospel According to Saint Mark, 12:31. 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'\" He smiled down at Kinky. O'Reilly, who was sitting next to her, wondered if she'd persuaded Mister Robinson to use that text.\n\nHe half-listened and gazed ahead. When they'd arrived this morning, he had simply followed Kinky to her usual place three rows from the front, a place where, Kinky had solemnly assured him on their way to church, that when in good fettle preaching fire and brimstone, Mister Robinson's spits could be felt.\n\nBertie Bishop must not mind the salivary showers. His place was in the very front pew immediately facing the pulpit. He was accompanied by a dumpy woman wearing a pink cloche hat, presumably Mrs. Bishop. There didn't seem to be any little Bishops.\n\nO'Reilly unobtrusively half-turned and stole another look over the congregation. Here and there were people he recognised, either from his previous time in the village or because he'd noticed them in the Duck, or, and he reckoned he could count them on one hand, because they'd recently been patients. There was Alfie Corry in a pew halfway down the nave adjacent to the aisle. The strapping unmarried farmer of, O'Reilly had to calculate\u2014the man had been sixty-four in 1939 when he'd first consulted O'Reilly, so Mister Corry'd be seventy-one now. When O'Reilly and Kinky had arrived this morning to walk to their pew, Alfie'd greeted O'Reilly with a hushed \"Nice til see you back, Doc.\"\n\nAt least somebody thought so.\n\nAnd there was no mistaking Mister and young Donal Donnelly's carrotty hair. Archie Auchinleck sat farther down the nave beside an auburn-haired woman and a little boy of about Donal Donnelly's age.\n\nO'Reilly'd not been surprised that the Finnegans weren't here. Finnegan was a Catholic name and the odds of finding a Protestant bride in rural Normandy would be pretty long indeed.\n\nO'Reilly decided he'd better pay attention to the sermon.\n\n\"And where else better to love our neighbours than a little place like our own dear Ballybucklebo?\"\n\nWhere else indeed, thought O'Reilly. Yet it is such a little place. Perhaps I should have found a practice in Belfast?\n\n\"Sweet Jesus, what's happened?\" A woman's startled voice behind O'Reilly had stopped the sermon.\n\nAnother voice, \"It's Alfie Corry. He's taken a wee turn. I'll run til get the doctor.\"\n\nThat was enough for O'Reilly. He leapt to his feet. \"Excuse me, excuse me,\" he said, and forced his way along the pew and down the aisle. Fainted? The man had had a series of anginal attacks when he'd been here in 1939. O'Reilly shook his head.\n\nAs he pushed forward a man's voice said, \"The doctor's already here, you eejit. Bide where you're at.\"\n\nThe crowd parted to let O'Reilly get at Alfie Corry, who must have pitched sideways out of the pew to land on his back in the aisle. His face was dusky, his eyes open, but glazed, with their pupils dilated, and he was not breathing. Almost certainly the man had just had a fatal coronary thrombosis.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" O'Reilly said to a heavyset woman who wore a hat with pheasant tail feathers and who was taking the victim's pulse.\n\n\"I'm a first-aider,\" she said. \"He's no pulse, you know. Could you try Holger-Neilsen artificial respiration, sir?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" O'Reilly said, \"that's only for people who are nearly drowned. Now if you'd just\u2014?\"\n\nShe needed no further bidding to move aside.\n\nHe unbuttoned the man's shirt and saw a farmer's chest, chalky white save for a tanned vee at the throat and upper chest. It was not moving. If he was right and the man had had a heart attack, there were no means of resuscitating such a patient nor any wonder drug to inject. Despite the accelerated progress of medicine brought about by the war, doctors were still helpless when it came to lethal heart attacks, and O'Reilly stifled a curse of frustration.\n\nNews of what had happened seemed to be spreading throughout the congregation by a series of loud whispers punctuated by, \"Och, dears,\" and a, \"Dear love, Alfie. Sound man. Sound man, so he is.\"\n\nO'Reilly fished out his stethoscope, put the earpieces in, and clapped the bell over the left chest.\n\n\"Everybody wheest now,\" the first-aid lady said. \"The doctor's trying til listen in, so he is.\"\n\nMeanwhile, O'Reilly had felt in the angle of the jaw for the pulse of the carotid artery. There were no audible heart sounds and no pulse. O'Reilly fished out his pencil torch and shone it into each of the victim's eyes. Neither pupil contracted nor, he bent his head to Alfie's mouth, was there any evidence of breathing. Poor Alfie Corry, looking like a stunned mullet, was dead. Dead as mutton. And there was no treatment. None at all.\n\nO'Reilly blew out a long breath against pursed lips. It wasn't as if he was a stranger to death\u2014by disease, natural causes, and accident in peacetime, of the young, but mostly of the old. And death by fire, scalding, drowning, hypothermia, bullets, and explosives in wartime. Senseless, bloody senseless, and the victims so pathetically young. And while O'Reilly had tried to steel himself, had become inured by familiarity, there was always regret when a fellow human died in his hands, a sense of failure.\n\nHe started to rise and heard a familiar voice saying, \"I think poor oul Alfie's gone, so I do.\" Bertie Bishop, not to O'Reilly's surprise, had forced his way to the front of the rubbernecking crowd. His wife stood just behind him. Bertie was a man who had to be at the centre of everything. He'd not have been satisfied at a wake if he wasn't the corpse. \"But then, you'd not expect O'Reilly to have saved him, would youse?\"\n\nNo one else in the congregation spoke. O'Reilly stiffened, and for a moment wondered, was the lack of response in his favour or against him? He took a deep breath, and like the navy he'd served in when attacked, prepared to defend himself with every weapon he possessed. But then an idea pushed into his mind. \"Kinky, bring my bag,\" he roared. \"Your man's gone.\" And nothing, nothing O'Reilly could do could bring him back. And yet... He heard shuffling of feet as a passage was cleared for her.\n\n\"Here, sir.\" Kinky gave him the leather bag.\n\n\"Requiescat in pace,\" O'Reilly muttered, \"and please forgive me for what I'm going to do.\" He hoped his conscience would forgive him too, but the late Alfie might just perform a vital service for the living Fingal O'Reilly. He ripped open the bag, found a hypodermic syringe, filled it from a bottle of whatever was nearest to hand\u2014the label said \"sterile water\"\u2014plunged the needle into Alfie's left breast over the heart, and injected one third of the contents of the syringe.\n\nThe stethoscope was still in O'Reilly's ears so he put the bell over Alfie's chest. O'Reilly put an entirely forced look of awe on his face. \"Praise be. He's got a heartbeat.\" No one could gainsay that.\n\nO'Reilly looked up at a sea of faces, many with hands over their mouths, all of the people with wide, staring eyes. He smiled, put the stethoscope back on the chest. \"Och, no,\" he said, letting his feigned anguish show. \"No. He's going again.\" Another third of the syringe was injected like the first and the bell reapplied. O'Reilly took a long count before he whispered, loudly enough for the nearest of his audience to hear, \"It's beating again.\"\n\nEven with the earpieces in place he heard a voice yell, \"Somebody send for an ambulance.\" That was no bad thing. Unless Alfie had recently been under a doctor's care it was a statutory requirement that a postmortem examination had to be performed to establish the cause of death, so the departed would have to go to the hospital mortuary anyway.\n\nO'Reilly listened again, and knowing the effect his next utterance would have in here loudly said, \"Damnation,\" and injected the remaining sterile water. There was no need for any further explanation and by the loud \"tch, tching\" and \"tut-tutting,\" he could hear, even though his word was disapproved of, the message had got through.\n\nHe waited and this time made a display of taking the wrist pulse and letting a tired smile play on his face. Once more, judging by the communal indrawing of breath, the message of another success had been clearly received.\n\nO'Reilly waited for what he considered to be a reasonable time, never letting go of Alfie's wrist before frowning mightily, clapping the stethoscope back on the corpse's chest, deepening his frown, and shining his torch into the nonresponding eyes. O'Reilly shook his head ponderously, stood slowly still shaking his head, before taking a very deep breath and saying, \"I'm sorry. I did my best. I couldn't save him.\"\n\nNow what?\n\n\"Och, dear,\" and \"God rest him,\" and \"At least he went easy\" rose above the murmuring.\n\n\"May I speak, your reverence?\"\n\nO'Reilly recognised Kinky's voice.\n\n\"Certainly, Mrs. Kincaid.\" Mister Robinson was now standing behind Bertie Bishop.\n\nShe climbed up on a pew and was facing the crowd. \"You said some powerful things, Reverend Robinson, about loving your neighbour. I think there's nobody here\u2014\" She glanced at Bertie Bishop. \"\u2014who would disagree.\"\n\nThere was a murmuring of agreement.\n\n\"But I know some malicious things have been said about Doctor O'Reilly here. You heard one now about not expecting Doctor O'Reilly to have done any good, so.\" She fixed Bertie Bishop with a stare O'Reilly thought would have done justice to Balor the one-eyed Fomorian, whose gaze could turn men to stone.\n\nO'Reilly saw Bishop's wife give him a ferocious dig in the ribs.\n\nKinky continued, \"And you all know the saying about giving a dog a bad name. Now I mean no irreverence, your reverences, but we all know the story of how our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead.\"\n\nThere was a loud muttering of agreement.\n\n\"And didn't Doctor O'Reilly, who could have gone anywhere in the world such a good doctor is he, so.\"\n\nO'Reilly did something he didn't do often. He blushed.\n\n\"Didn't he choose to come back to us here?\"\n\nMore muttering.\n\n\"And while Lazarus was brought back once, didn't Doctor O'Reilly bring back poor old Alfie Corry three times?\"\n\nO'Reilly heard a number of \"Ayes,\" and \"Right enoughs.\"\n\n\"Not once, not once, but three times\u2014three times? I think we do be very lucky and I think it's about time when any of you need a doctor that you remember what you saw here this morning.\" Kinky smiled at O'Reilly. \"I'll say no more, so,\" she said, and clambered down.\n\n\"Thank you, Kinky,\" he mouthed and was going to say it aloud when a woman's harsh voice rang out, \"See you, Bertie Bishop? See you, you great glipe?\"\n\nO'Reilly recognised Mrs. Bishop by her hat.\n\n\"See you and your 'That doctor what's come back is only a quack?' You were trying for til drive him away, so you were. You and that Wowser Ward. Pair of bollixes, so youse are.\"\n\nBertie Bishop glared at his wife. \"Hould your wheest, woman.\" The man was blushing.\n\nO'Reilly saw a number of the congregation look at Bishop and shake their heads before turning to smile at O'Reilly.\n\nBishop, dragging his wife by the hand, headed for the narthex and the way out.\n\nO'Reilly took off his jacket and respectfully covered the dear departed's face. \"Perhaps,\" he said, \"some of you men could give me a hand to carry Mister Corry to the vestry to wait for the ambulance. Will that be all right, Reverend Robinson?\"\n\n\"Please. I'll come too. Say a few words. Reverend Wilson, will you please get everyone else back in their pews. Perhaps a hymn? 'Amazing Grace'?\"\n\nThere was no lack of volunteers to carry Alfie. His corpse was laid on a bench and covered with a minister's robe that was hanging in the vestry so O'Reilly could recover his jacket.\n\nEveryone there bowed their heads as the minister prayed for the soul of the departed.\n\nAll joined in the \"Amen.\"\n\nFrom the church proper came\n\nTwas grace that caused my heart to fear.\n\nAnd grace my fears relieved...\n\nAnd after a moment's silence in the vestry Mister Robinson said, \"Thank you for acting so quickly, Doctor.\"\n\nO'Reilly, knowing full well it had all been a charade for his own benefit, hung his head and muttered, \"It's my job.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless...\" The minister let the sentence hang and then said with a smile, \"And I think under the circumstances,\" he glanced up, \"He will forgive your little indiscretion, and bless your continuing work here among us.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" O'Reilly said, could have kissed the minister, and inside was grateful he'd only said \"damnation.\" He'd had a full naval repertoire to choose from.\n\n\"We'd best be getting back,\" Mister Robinson said.\n\n\"Aye, but,\" one of the men said, \"that was quare nor quick thinking, Doc. Me and the rest of the lads here,\" he glanced round at the other three ruddy-cheeked men, all probably farmers, \"hope you'll stay on like. Isn't that right?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said one, and held out a callused hand, which O'Reilly shook. \"Thank you,\" he said, and in his heart also said, \"I'm sorry, Alfie Corry, but thank you. And bless you, Maureen Kinky Kincaid. Bless you. Bless you.\" Things looked like they were going to be all right after all, and he remembered Lars's recent quotation, \"Home is the sailor, home from the sea.\" For Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, recently Surgeon Commander, R.N.R., D.S.C., and now simply Doctor O'Reilly, this town and these people who would become his patients were his home\u2014and always would be.\nAFTERWORD\n\nby Mrs. Maureen Kincaid,\n\nLately Housekeeper to Doctor Thom\u00e1s Flanagan\n\nNow in That Capacity to Doctor F. F. O'Reilly\n\nWe're back from all that excitement at the church now. I thought Mister Wilson did a fine job of getting everyone calmed down after poor Alfie Corry passed. The Reverend Robinson even finished the service. I was pleased to see how many of the congreation said kindly things to Doctor O'Reilly after. I think he need not worry anymore about his future here, so I told him as much.\n\nSays he, \"Kinky, I think you are right about the future, I thank you, and I'm in your debt.\" Then he surprised me when he went on, \"And I want to be further in. I don't want a part of the past to suffer either. I meant it when I said you were the best cook in Ireland...\" the ould soft-soaper, \"but I'd hate to think of your recipes getting lost to posterity.\"\n\n\"So what would you like me to do?\"\n\n\"Could you please start writing them down?\"\n\n\"I will,\" says I, and here I am, pen in fist, getting the recipe for the first dinner I made for him when he came back after serving on that big ship where he had only men cooking for him, the poor soul. I hope you'll enjoy my roast rack of lamb too, so.\n\nROAST RACK OF LAMB WITH HERB STUFFING AND CAPER SAUCE\n\n2 racks of trimmed lamb\n\nSalt and pepper to season\n\n1 teaspoon chopped rosemary\n\n2 teaspoons of mild-tasting mustard (Dijon)\n\n1 teaspoon of fresh herbs (mint, parsley, and thyme)\n\n1 tablespoon breadcrumbs\n\nPreheat the oven to 200\u00b0 C\/400\u00b0 F\/gas mark 6.\n\nHeat a large roasting pan in the oven. Season the lamb and rub over with a little butter and some chopped rosemary. Place in the pan and cook for about 18\u201320 minutes or longer if you like it less rare.\n\nRemove from the oven and coat the outside with a mixture of the mustard, crumbs, and herbs. Crisp under a hot grill for 2 to 3 minutes, making sure not to let it burn.\n\nStuffing\n\n75 g\/2\u00bd oz.\/1\/3 cup butter\n\n2 shallots, chopped small\n\n75 g mixed herbs (mint, parsley, and thyme)\n\n50 g\/2 oz.\/\u00bc cup chopped dried apricots\n\n100 g\/3\u00bd oz.\/\u00bd cup breadcrumbs\n\nMelt the butter in a pan over a gentle heat. Add the shallots, herbs, and chopped apricots. Cook gently for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently so as not to let it burn. Then add the crumbs and keep warm till needed.\n\nCaper Sauce\n\n50 g\/2 oz. butter\n\n1 tablespoon flour\n\n\u00bd cup lamb stock\n\n50 ml\/\u00bc cup cream\n\nJuice of half a lemon\n\n3 tablespoons capers\n\n1 tablespoon chopped parsley\n\nSalt and pepper\n\nPlace the butter in a saucepan and cook gently until it browns slightly and smells slightly nutty. Remove from the heat and work in the flour. Cook for a minute and whisk in the lamb stock, cream, and lemon juice with the seasoning. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes and add the chopped parsley and capers.\n\nHimself thinks this is a grand feast altogether, so, and likes me to serve it with buttery mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, and mashed and mixed carrots and parsnips.\nGLOSSARY\n\nIn all the Irish Country books I have provided a glossary to help the reader who is unfamiliar with the vagaries of the Queen's English as she may be spoken by the majority of people in Ulster. It is a regional dialect akin to English as spoken in Yorkshire or on Tyneside, American English used in Texas or the Bronx, or Canadian English in Newfoundland or the Ottawa Valley. It is not Gaeilge, the Irish language. It is not Ulster Scots, which is claimed to be a distinct language in its own right. I confess I am not a speaker.\n\nToday in Ulster (but not in 1946 where this book is set) official signs are written in English, Irish, and Ulster Scots. The washroom sign would read Toilets, Leithris, and Cludgies respectively.\n\nI hope what follows here will enhance your enjoyment of the work and unravel some of the mysteries of Ulsterspeak, although, I am afraid, it will not improve your command of Ulster Scots.\n\nanyroad: Anyway.\n\naway off and...: Go away, or you are being stupid. Often succeeded by feel your head or chase yourself.\n\nbar: Refuse admission, as from a public house.\n\nbarge: Force your way through a crowd. Verbally chastise.\n\nbarmbrack: Speckled bread. (See Kinky's recipe, Irish Country Doctor p. 340)\n\nbide (where you're at): Stay (where you are).\n\nboke: Vomit.\n\nbollix: Testicles (impolite). May be used as an expression of vehement disagreement or to describe a person of whom you disapprove.\n\nbonnaught: Irish mercenary of the fourteenth century.\n\nbonnet: Hood (when applied to a car).\n\nboth legs the same length: Standing about uselessly.\n\nbowler hat: Derby hat.\n\nbrass neck: Chutzpah. Impertinence.\n\nbrave: Large or good.\n\nbrave wheen: Large number of.\n\nbut: Ulster folks have a habit of putting \"but\" not at the beginning of a sentence but at the end.\n\ncapped\/cap: A cap was awarded to athletes selected for important teams. Equivalent to a \"letter\" at a University.\n\ncracker: Excellent.\n\ncrisps: Potato chips. In 1946 there was only one flavour and the salt came in a little bag of blue greaseproof paper.\n\ncurrency: In 1946, well prior to decimilisation, sterling was the currency of the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland was a part. The unit was the pound, which contained twenty shillings, each made of twelve pennies, thus there were 240 pennies in a pound. Coins and notes of combined or lesser or greater denominations were in circulation often referred to by slang or archaic terms: halfpenny (two to the penny), threepenny piece (thruppeny bit), sixpenny piece (tanner), two-shillings piece (florin), two-shillings-and-sixpence piece (half a crown), ten-shilling note (ten-bob note), guinea coin worth one pound and one shilling, five-pound note (fiver). In 1946 one pound bought nearly three U.S. dollars.\n\ndemob: Demobilise. Be honourably discharged from the armed forces. Ulster was an anomaly in the Second World War. Unlike the rest of the United Kingdom there was no conscription there. Ulster members of the peacetime reserve forces like the Territorial Army, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and Royal Naval Reserve were called up to fight, but all other Ulstermen, and indeed Irishmen, like RAF fighter pilot Paddy Finucane, were volunteers.\n\ndesperate: Immense, or terrible.\n\ndivil: Devil.\n\ndivilment: Mischief.\n\ndonkey's age: A very long time.\n\ndote\/doting: Something (person or animal) adorable\/being crazy about or simply being crazy (in one's dotage).\n\nduncher: Cloth cap, usually tweed.\n\neejit: Idiot.\n\nface like a Lurgan spade: The turf-cutting spade particular to the town of Lurgan and surounds was longer than most, so, having a very long face.\n\nfeck, and variations: Corruption of \"fuck.\" Its scatalogical shock value is now so debased that it is no more offensive than \"like\" larded into teenagers' chat. Now available at reputable bookstores is the Feckin' Book of Irish... a series of ten books by Murphy and O'Dea.\n\nfeel your head: See away off.\n\nferocious: Extremely bad or very upsetting.\n\nfey: Having the gift of second sight.\n\ngit: Corruption of \"got,\" a short form of \"begotten.\" Often expressed as \"hoor's (whore's) git\" or bastard.\n\ngive lip: Be cheeky or insulting to.\n\nglipe (great): stupid (or very stupid) person.\n\ngo 'way (out of that): I don't believe you, or I know you are trying to fool me.\n\nhead (nautical): Lavatory.\n\nheadstaggers: A disease of sheep where a parasite invades the brain causing the animal to stagger and fall.\n\nhighheejin: Upper-class person.\n\nHMS: His\/Her Majesty's Ship.\n\nhobbyhorse shite: Literally sawdust. Rubbish.\n\nhot half un: Measure of spirits, usually whiskey, to which is added sugar, lemon juice, cloves, and boiling water.\n\nhould your wheest: Keep quiet.\n\nkipper: A butterflied and gutted herring, pickled or salted and cold smoked, usually over oak chips.\n\nknows his onions: Is very knowledgeable about.\n\nmore power to your wheel: Words of encouragement.\n\nno goat's toe: Has a very high and usually misplaced opinion of onesself.\n\nno harm to you: An expression used prior to delivering bad news or disagreeing with the person being addressed.\n\nno mission: Hopeless.\n\non your bike: Forceful \"go away.\"\n\nput in his box: Taken down a peg or two.\n\nquare: Queer. Used to mean very strange, or exceptional.\n\nR.N.\/R.N.R.: These letters following a name indicate either Royal Navy for someone who has joined in a career capacity or Royal Navy Reserve for merchant seamen who volunteered for extra training with the Royal Navy during peacetime and who, in times of emergency, were liable for call-up to active service.\n\nscrip: Prescription.\n\nsee: See you, him, me. Drawing emphasis to the person \"seen.\" It does not actually mean that they are in sight.\n\nshit: Verb.\n\nshite: Noun.\n\nshout: In a bar, the person named's turn to buy.\n\nshut your yap: Shut up.\n\nso (so it is): Much used at the ends of sentences for emphasis in County Cork. (The same in Ulster.)\n\nsoft-soaper: Flatterer.\n\nsound (man): Reliable or very good (man).\n\nstunned mullet: To look stupid, surprised, or absolutely out of touch. A mullet is an ugly saltwater fish.\n\nsucking diesel: Hitting paydirt. Probably in reference to siphoning tractor fuel.\n\ntelt: Told.\n\nthole: Put up with. Suffer in silence.\n\nthon (der): That person or thing (over there).\n\nthran: Bloody-minded.\n\ntinker's toss\/damn\/curse: Tinkers were itinerant menders with tins of pots and pans. Their attributes were not highly prized.\n\nto beat Ban(n)agher: Far exceed realistic expectations or to one's great surprise.\n\ntoty: Very small.\n\nturn: Faint.\n\nwarm: Have lots of money.\n\nwee: Small, but in Ulster can be used to modify almost anything without reference to size. A barmaid, an old friend, greeted me by saying, \"Come in, Pat. Have a wee seat and I'll get you a wee menu, and would you like a wee drink while you're waiting?\"\n\nwee man: The devil.\n\nwell mended: Recovered from a recent illness.\n\nwheen: An indeterminate number.\n\nwheest: Shut up or be quiet.\n\nwind: Bowel gas.\n\nyou know: Verbal punctuation often used when the person being addressed could not possibly be in possession of the information.\n\nyour man (I'm): Someone either whose name is not known, \"Your man over there? Who is he?\" or someone known to all, \"Your man, Van Morrison.\"\n\nyou're on: I will do what you ask or I accept the wager.\n\nyouse: You plural.\nBY PATRICK TAYLOR\n\nOnly Wounded\n\nPray for Us Sinners\n\nNow and in the Hour of Our Death\n\nAn Irish Country Doctor\n\nAn Irish Country Village\n\nAn Irish Country Christmas\n\nAn Irish Country Girl\n\nAn Irish Country Courtship\n\nA Dublin Student Doctor\n\nAn Irish Country Wedding\n\nFingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor\n\nThe Wily O'Reilly\n\n\"Home Is the Sailor\" (e-original)\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nPatrick Taylor, M.D., was born and raised in Bangor, County Down, in Northern Ireland. Dr. Taylor is a distinguished medical researcher, offshore sailor, model-boat builder, and father of two grown children. He now lives on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.\nThis is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the short stories and columns in this collection are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.\n\nTHE WILY O'REILLY: IRISH COUNTRY STORIES\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 by Ballybucklebo Stories Corp.\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nThese columns first appeared in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour, which was published between 1993 and 2003 by Stitches Publishing Inc. of Newmarket, Ontario.\n\n\"Home Is the Sailor\" was originally published as an e-book by Forge in 2013.\n\nCover art by Greg Manchess\n\nA Forge Book\n\nPublished by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC\n\n175 Fifth Avenue\n\nNew York, NY 10010\n\nwww.tor-forge.com\n\nForge\u00ae is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.\n\nThe Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.\n\nISBN 978-0-7653-3838-9 (hardcover)\n\nISBN 978-1-4668-3887-1 (e-book)\n\ne-ISBN 9781466838871\n\nFirst Edition: February 2014\n\ntor-forge.com\/author\/patricktaylor \u2022 Also available in audiobook\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nPublished by The History Press\n\nCharleston, SC 29403\n\nwww.historypress.net\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 by Keven McQueen\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nFirst published 2014\n\ne-book edition 2014\n\nISBN 978.1.62584.861.1\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nMcQueen, Keven.\n\nMurder and mayhem in Indiana \/ Keven McQueen.\n\npages cm\n\nIncludes bibliographical references.\n\nprint edition ISBN 978-1-62619-368-0 (paperback)\n\n1. Murder--Indiana--Case studies 2. Crime--Indiana--Case studies. I. Title.\n\nHV6533.I6M367 2014\n\n364.152'30977209041--dc23\n\n2013047421\n\n_Notice_ : The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.\n_To Amy and Quentin_.\nContents\n\nAcknowledgements\n\n1. The Mystery of Dr. Knabe\n\n2. Picnic of Death\n\n3. The Farmhand and the Acrobat\n\n4. Mr. Wade and Mrs. Brown Hatch a Stupid Plot\n\n5. A Hoosier Makes a Spectacle of Himself in Cincinnati\n\n6. Hazel Triumphant!\n\n7. Pursued by a Monster\n\n8. Justice, Possibly\n\n9. The Honeymooners\n\n10. With a Smile on Her Face\n\n11. The Stage's Loss Was St. Louis's Gain\n\n12. Otto Embellishes\n\n13. William Wants to Get Married\n\n14. A Higher Venue\n\n15. Hypothetical Questions in Abundance\n\n16. Thomas Hoal, Boy Bandit\n\n17. Three Ways to Escape Punishment\n\nBibliography\n\nAbout the Author\nAcknowledgements\n\nGeneta Chumley; Thomas Clark; Drema Colangelo; Greg Dumais and everyone at The History Press; Gaile Sheppard Dempsey; Eastern Kentucky University Department of English and Theatre; Eastern Kentucky University Interlibrary Loan Department (Stefanie Brooks; Heather Frith; Pat New; Shelby Wills); Amy and Quentin Hawkins; Darrell and Swecia McQueen; Darren, Alison and Elizabeth McQueen; Kyle and Bonnie McQueen; Michael, Lori and Blaine McQueen and Evan Holbrook; Lee Mitchum; Jerica Nanik; Mia Temple. Also: the Provider.\n\nThis book was edited by Lee Mitchum.\n1\n\nThe Mystery of Dr. Knabe\n\nThe slaying of Helen Knabe in Indianapolis contains the elements that make true crime stories fascinating: the puzzling, pointless and grisly homicide of a prominent individual; a bungled investigation; legitimate clues and red herrings; a cast of bizarre characters; absurd theories; and, most of all, a genuine sense of mystery.\n\nThe tragedy of Knabe's premature demise is all the more striking because she must have been a truly remarkable person. She succeeded despite obstacles that would have made many people surrender out of sheer despair. Born a German peasant around 1876, as a young girl she denied herself the necessities of life, including food, in order to save enough money to travel to the United States. Once there, she was handicapped in that she could not speak a word of English. She went to work for an Indianapolis physician as a \"house girl of all work\"\u2014that is, she was a maid, a cook, a manual laborer and an all-purpose drudge. But she was intelligent and had a keen interest in medicine and science. Through perseverance and hard work, she learned English, saved her money and entered the Medical College of Indiana, an institution that readers of my book _Forgotten Tales of Indiana_ will recognize as one of the patrons of professional ghoul Rufus Cantrell's peculiar services.\n\nKnabe proved such a brilliant student that she became an instructor in bacteriology and pathology even before she graduated in 1904. For a year after graduation, she was in charge of the school's laboratory. She rose to the position of assistant pathologist in the state board of health's lab and became Indiana's first official state bacteriologist. In 1906, she was named assistant in physical diagnosis at the Medical College of Indiana. On November 1, 1908, she resigned and started her own private practice. In January 1909, she was elected a member of the faculty at the Indiana Veterinary College, where she served as chair of parasitology and hematology. By the time of her death at age thirty-five, she had a roster of upper-class patients in Indianapolis.\n\nDr. Helen Knabe. _From the_ Indianapolis Sun, _October 26, 1911_.\n\nFemale doctors were relatively rare in Knabe's time; according to the book _The Sum of Feminine Achievement_ , in 1910, there were precisely 13,687 in the United States. On the night of October 23, 1911, their number decreased by one. At 8:00 a.m. on October 24, Dr. Knabe's assistant, Katherine McPherson, unlocked the door to the physician's ground-floor rooms at the Delaware, a swanky apartment house where Knabe lived and kept her office. The doctor did not answer McPherson's calls, so McPherson commenced a room-to-room search. McPherson found her employer's body on a blood-soaked bed in the sleeping quarters. Then, she did something that has caused many an open-and-shut murder case to go unsolved forever: rather than call the police right away, the rattled woman called some of the doctor's friends and relatives, many of whom showed up to see the remains for themselves. Despite their good intentions, they contaminated the crime scene. More than an hour after discovering the body, McPherson finally notified the authorities.\n\nWhen detectives arrived, they noticed that the doctor's nightdress was in disarray. Her throat was cut so deeply from ear to ear that she had nearly been decapitated. The furniture in the rest of the apartment was in order, so whatever had happened to Dr. Knabe occurred in her bedroom with great swiftness. But one item was known to be missing: a surgical instrument called a microtome, loaned to Knabe by Dr. C.E. Ferguson. The theory quickly gained ground that it was the murder weapon.\n\nIn some respects, Dr. Knabe's death is reminiscent of the baffling 1929 murder of Isidor Fink in New York City's Harlem. As in the Fink case, all of the apartment's doors were locked from the inside. The windows were closed and locked in all rooms but the doctor's bedroom. There, the windows were up but the screens were intact. The sills were coated with thick dust from street traffic, proving that no one had entered or exited through the windows. The only access into the apartment seemed to be via a dumbwaiter that was too small to hold a man. The front door was secured with a spring mechanism that would automatically lock the door when it was closed; therefore, it was entirely possible for a keyless intruder to lock the door behind him while leaving. The mystery was how Knabe's assailant got into the apartment in the first place.\n\nCoroner C.O. Durham and detectives questioned janitor Jefferson Haynes, who also happened to be an elder at Shiloh Baptist Church; Haynes's daughter, Eva; and a housekeeper named Fannie Winston, all of whom lived in basement rooms under Knabe's apartment. Haynes claimed he had heard the sound of someone falling in the night, followed by a scream and a groan. He assumed the noises were being made by one of the doctor's patients and went back to sleep. He told the story to detectives several times but contradicted himself as to exactly when he heard the sounds. The coroner opined that it was impossible for Dr. Knabe to have groaned, so deep was the cut in her throat. Neither Haynes's daughter nor Mrs. Winston had heard any noises in the night. The police were suspicious of Haynes and detained him.\n\nBy the day after the body was discovered, the police were divided into two camps. Coroner Durham embraced what we might call the Obvious Theory: he felt that Knabe had been murdered, as evidenced by a defensive wound on her left forearm and her throat wound, which was so deep the blade had grazed the spinal cord. By contrast, Captain William Holtz, chief of detectives, adhered to the Barely Plausible Theory: he thought that Dr. Knabe had committed suicide. As a doctor, he argued, she would have known how to do maximum damage to her own throat with a knife slash. As a trained gymnast, she could have put up a fight against an assailant, yet the furniture was undisturbed. There was no discernible motive for murder; she had been neither robbed nor raped. On the other hand, she had gone into considerable debt after opening her private practice and had worried about her financial predicament. Even her furniture and medical instruments were not her own, but the property of her cousin Augusta Knabe.\n\nThe doctor's friends countered that she had often railed against suicide as a cowardly act and pointed out the most glaring flaw in the suicide theory: no knife had been found on the premises. How could Dr. Knabe have given herself such a ghastly injury, capable of causing near-instantaneous death, and managed to dispose of the weapon? Detective Holtz responded that since some of the doctor's friends had come by the apartment before the police arrived, perhaps one of them, wishing to spare the doctor the stigma of suicide, had taken the knife. Katherine McPherson and Augusta Knabe denied taking anything from the crime scene.\n\nThe police spent the best part of a day searching the entire apartment building, going through Knabe's correspondence and questioning all occupants of the flat as well as grilling delivery boys and janitors of neighboring buildings. On October 26, the first real clue turned up: a barkeeper named Joseph Carr told the police that he had been walking home around 1:00 a.m. on the night of the murder, a route that led him past the Delaware apartments. As he approached the building, he heard two screams, the second more muffled than the first; then, a man exited the building's back alley and ran up the sidewalk toward Carr. When the stranger realized he had been seen, he whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his face with it. The man dashed into the night, heading south on Delaware Avenue. (Carr's insistence that he heard two screams supported the story told by Jefferson Haynes, so hopefully Haynes was detained by the police no longer.)\n\nCarr had had only a fleeting glimpse of the mysterious man but thought he was about forty years old and well dressed in a dark suit and a stiff hat. At first, police thought Carr's story improbable, but when they reenacted the scene according to his description, they found that it was possible for a man to leave Knabe's apartment and reach the back alley in the allotted time if he fled immediately after slashing the doctor's throat. Detectives\u2014at least the ones who did not think it a suicide\u2014believed the mysterious man might have been a physician or a patient who attacked Dr. Knabe as she slept. That theory had problems. Had the man hidden in the apartment until she went to sleep? If so, how did he get inside, since it was clear no one had entered through the windows? It was more reasonable to believe that Dr. Knabe, for whatever reason, had allowed the man inside. The authorities were quick not to cast aspersions on the late doctor's character. Detective Holtz told the press that \"Dr. Knabe's reputation was unblemished, and she lectured to young women and men on the necessity of social purity as well as on physical culture and hygiene.\"\n\nBartender Carr's statement jogged the memory of two citizens, who stepped forward with corroborating stories of their own. A man claimed that about eight o'clock on the evening of the murder, he was stopped by a man on the street who asked for directions to the Delaware apartments. He was dressed exactly like the man Carr described. A woman who lived along the route on which the man allegedly escaped said that she heard someone running past her house around the time the suspect fled from Carr. Judging from the sound of the footsteps, the person was running from the vicinity of the Delaware apartments.\n\nSketch of Dr. Knabe's apartment. _From the_ Indianapolis Sun, _October 24, 1911_.\n\nAs Dr. Knabe's body was carted to Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis was invaded by detectives from other cities, working independently from the police. They allegedly were hired by doctors who feared the killer was one of their own or a deranged patient of the slain physician. After running down \"twenty or thirty clues,\" according to the press, the stumped local detectives returned to the barely tenable suicide theory. They grilled the victim's cousin Augusta for three hours on October 29, the tenor of their questions leaning toward the notion that Helen had cut her own throat and some busybody had removed the knife from the scene. Many of her answers were incoherent, and she was so nervous that investigators had to give her frequent breaks and medicinal stimulants. She did no better when testifying before the coroner a couple days later. Nevertheless, detectives were convinced after her performance that Miss Knabe knew more than she was telling.\n\nAn acquaintance of Helen Knabe's, Dr. W.T. Dodds, was adamant that she had committed suicide. His reasons for believing so were not compelling. \"Dr. Knabe was an arrogant, headstrong and merciless woman, whose ambition to succeed in the world was so great that to achieve it she did not hesitate to sacrifice anyone,\" he said. \"During her connection with the State Board of Health, Dr. Knabe made herself so disliked that she was asked to resign...She was a bright and intelligent woman, but she failed in her wish to sweep things before her.\" However, Dr. Dodds's negative character assessment cut two ways (pardon the pun): had Knabe been so arrogant, merciless and disliked, those might be reasons for someone to murder her. Dr. Dodds scoffed at the idea that Knabe, as a physician, might be expected to have opted to end her life with drugs or some other painless method: \"That kind of death would not appeal to her. She wanted something violent, in keeping with the struggle she had made for success in her profession.\" In other words, Dodds thought she chose a painful and gruesome means of suicide over a painless one because she liked its symbolic value. When asked to explain the defensive wound in Knabe's forearm, Dr. Dodds claimed, \"It would seem natural for Dr. Knabe deliberately to cut into her arm to test the weapon or to ascertain what pressure was necessary.\" Well, it seemed natural to Dr. Dodds, anyway.\n\nThe suicide theory was farfetched, but it was deductive brilliance equal to a Hercule Poirot compared to other pet theories that made the rounds. Coroner Durham found among Dr. Knabe's correspondence a letter in which she expressed an interest in Buddhism. Durham refused to explain why he found this significant, but it seems he thought a vicious Buddhist had come after the doctor for reasons undisclosed. The hypothesis was abruptly dropped and never mentioned again. Another somewhat less-than-brilliant supposition came from a female physician, Dr. Carrie Gregory of Elwood, Indiana, who believed Knabe's death was neither suicide nor murder, but the ultimate result of the Hippocratic oath's injunction to \"apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required\" being taken to foolhardy lengths. Dr. Gregory stated that a certain female patient had been suffering from \"an ailment that was drying up the blood\" and that Dr. Knabe was convinced a transfusion of blood from a healthy person would save her. Knabe attempted to prove her point by donating two quarts of her own blood but died during the attempt. The other physicians present during the procedure took the sensible precaution of nearly decapitating the dead Dr. Knabe to make it look as though she had been murdered and then placed her body on her bed. Dr. Gregory claimed that the patient had been saved by Dr. Knabe's heroic sacrifice and was recovering in an Indianapolis hospital. Despite an investigation, the patient never turned up. Newspaper readers were entertained with this sort of folderol for a couple months.\n\nCoroner Durham announced his official verdict a few days after Christmas: Dr. Knabe was murdered. The coroner's statement was all the progress that was made in the case for several months. The police ran out of clues, and the case went cold. Some detectives continued to retain a fondness for the suicide theory despite the improbability of the victim's nearly severing her own head with a knife or razor.\n\nBut the Indianapolis chapter of the Council of Women did not give up. Its president, Dr. Amelia Keller, had been a friend of Dr. Knabe's, and she made it a personal mission to find the killer. The council hired a private detective named Harry Webster to keep working the case. It seemed for a time that the Council of Women had wasted its time and money by hiring Webster because he uncovered no clues to speak of. Nobody held out much hope, but suddenly, the mystery was catapulted back into the headlines with a voluntary confession.\n\nAbout two weeks before the _Titanic_ went down, police in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, arrested a drunken young navy sailor named Seth Nichols. The influence of the grape made Nichols very talkative, and he told the authorities that a well-dressed man he knew only as \"Knight\" had paid him $1,500 to desert the USS _Dixie_ and murder Dr. Knabe. He maintained that he had been in Indianapolis visiting his sister, Mrs. Grace Blakeman, when he met the iniquitous Knight at the Washington Street skating rink. (The reader is invited to relish the improbability of such murderous fellows hanging out in a skating rink.) Nichols claimed to be tormented by guilt and in constant terror of being caught by the police, and he seemed almost relieved to be arrested. He dropped a hint that he would not even mind receiving a death sentence.\n\nThe authorities were delighted to have an arrest and a confession, but Nichols's story immediately fell asunder at nearly every joint. He provided police with details about the murder but told them nothing that could not have been gleaned from reading the daily papers. Other details could be neither proved nor disproved, such as Nichols's contention that he and Knight had slipped into Dr. Knabe's apartment together on the night of the slaying. Nichols contradicted himself: initially, he claimed he left Indianapolis the day after the murder, but later, he said he waited three days. Unsavory details of his background surfaced: he had married Mary McHale, a seventeen-year-old mill girl of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on November 6, 1911, a week after the murder. They were married only three months, Mary having decided to end her life in her sister's Boston home with a dose of mercury on March 11, 1912. That was bad enough, but the Boston police charged Nichols with robbing the house where his bride of three months had died.\n\nSeth Nichols, who confessed to the murder of Dr. Helen Knabe. _From the_ New Orleans Picayune, _April 8, 1912. Courtesy of the_ New Orleans Times-Picayune.\n\nNichols had said that he was visiting Grace Blakeman when he murdered Knabe, but Mrs. Blakeman told the press that Nichols had not been in Indianapolis at the time he claimed. His aunt, Mrs. Glenn Gilbert of Lafayette, Indiana, said that Nichols had suffered a head injury as a child, and afterward, he had never been mentally right. He had a marked tendency to lie and exaggerate. Nichols had said that his dastardly employer Mr. Knight lived in Wonderland Park on North Washington Street, a lie easily run to earth. The final blow came from the commander of the USS _Dixie_ , whose records proved Nichols had been aboard the day of Knabe's murder. He was not even a deserter, but rather had been dishonorably discharged \"for conduct prejudicial to the service\" on December 20, 1911. Not wishing to surrender his moment of shabby glory, Nichols feebly claimed that he and Knight had bribed the ship's records keeper into counting him present while he went on unauthorized shore leave.\n\nThe grand jury met again in April 1912 but, like the former grand jury, failed to vote a true bill of murder. When Nichols's claims were shattered, the investigation into the murder of Dr. Knabe ground to a halt. Nothing more was heard of the case until Christmastime 1912, when, once again, the suicide theory came to the fore. This time a grand jury met and debated the issue. The jury decided once and for all on a verdict of murder after hearing a critical piece of evidence that somehow had been overlooked repeatedly: a large bloody handprint, not Dr. Knabe's, was on the doctor's pillow. The clue revived interest in the case. The Council of Women, led by the indefatigable Dr. Amelia Keller, continued to agitate, and Detective Webster kept searching. Dr. Keller offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the conviction of Dr. Knabe's murderer.\n\nIn December 1912, Detective Webster presented his findings to the grand jury and, at long last, came two arrests and two indictments. Dr. William B. Craig, president of the Indiana Veterinary College, where Dr. Knabe had been a faculty member, had been Knabe's unacknowledged suitor; he had given her rides in his auto, and they had often been seen together. On this\u2014and one hopes, stronger\u2014evidence, the police brought him into custody, along with an undertaker named Alonzo Ragsdale. Craig was charged with murder, Ragsdale with helping to conceal evidence after the fact.\n\nDr. Craig appeared in criminal court on the last day of the year and was set free on a $15,000 bond. Ragsdale paid his bond on New Year's Day. The indictment against Ragsdale came as a surprise, but for quite some time, Dr. Craig had been a \"person of interest in the case,\" as cops say when being diplomatic; he had been questioned for several hours when the grand jury had met back in April.\n\nThere was plenty of evidence concerning the formerly close relationship between Drs. Craig and Knabe. They had met in 1908 while she was the bacteriologist for the state of Indiana. In 1909, Dr. Craig placed her on the faculty at his veterinary college, but at some point, the romance became stormy. Dr. Knabe had been \"a persistent visitor\" at Dr. Craig's home for the two weeks preceding her murder. One night, the housekeeper overheard an argument between the doctors concerning their proposed marriage. Dr. Knabe had said, \"You can continue to practice and I can continue to practice,\" which sounds as if Dr. Craig expected her to give up her career if they got married. Knabe had visited the Craig residence on the night of her death, but only to return a book she had borrowed. Dr. Craig was not at home at the time. None of this was very serious evidence, but a witness named Harry Haskett claimed to have seen Dr. Craig stepping out of the Delaware apartments a little after 11:00 p.m. on the night of the murder. He had been able to pick the doctor's photo out of a group of portraits. Of course, this does not jibe with the previously described 1:00 a.m. encounter between Joseph Carr and the man with the handkerchief on his face, raising the possibility that the murderer invaded the apartment after Craig visited Knabe.\n\nRagsdale, the undertaker, had been the administrator of Dr. Knabe's estate and owned a silk kimono that had belonged to the doctor. An analysis showed that it had been stained with human blood and washed in \"a strong chemical solution.\" His accusers thought he had removed the garment from the house at the insistence of the alleged murderer, Dr. Craig, leaving unanswered the question of why Craig didn't just do it himself. Ragsdale explained that he owned many of Dr. Knabe's effects that were considered to be of little or no value, including the kimono. It is hard to believe that if Ragsdale had helped Dr. Craig commit a perfect murder, he would be foolish enough to keep such an incriminating piece of evidence. Dr. Knabe's body had been clad in a nightdress rather than the kimono, and Augusta Knabe and Katherine McPherson swore that the kimono had not been in the room with the body. Perhaps the killer thought it convenient to wipe his bloody hands on the kimono and then discarded it in another room while escaping.\n\nThe prosecution probably realized the shakiness of its case, for though the trial of Craig and Ragsdale was supposed to begin on June 23, the state asked that it be postponed until October. Craig's trial did not actually get underway until November 28, when the dramatis personae convened in Shelbyville. (It was decided to try Ragsdale later.)\n\nThe case against Craig was made up of suspicious circumstances that may be easily summarized. His association with Dr. Knabe had been souring in the weeks before her death. Judging from arguments heard by witnesses, he had wanted to break off the relationship. The prosecution contended that Dr. Craig had been seeing another woman who lived in Avon, Indiana. The other evidence included the word of the aforementioned Harry Haskett, who claimed he had seen Dr. Craig leaving Knabe's apartment building on the night of the murder. Dr. Eva Templeton told Detective Webster that Dr. Craig had returned home late that night and had changed his clothes; but Dr. Templeton heard this from the Craigs' housekeeper, so the information was secondhand. Nevertheless, Detective Webster was certain he had collared the right man. The Council of Women agreed and employed \"several of the best criminal lawyers in the state\" to assist in Dr. Craig's prosecution. The state's lawyers promised not to seek the death penalty.\n\nOn December 3 came one of the pivotal moments of the trial. Harry Haskett had seemed very confident that he had witnessed Dr. Craig in the act of fleeing Dr. Knabe's apartment, but once on the stand, he faltered and refused to positively identify Dr. Craig. Worse, three witnesses testified that they heard a scream issuing from the apartment after midnight. To believe Haskett had seen a homicidal Dr. Craig leaving the Delaware at 11:00 p.m. was to believe that Dr. Knabe had waited over an hour after her throat had been cut to start screaming.\n\nNotably lacking in accounts about the trial are mentions of the bloody handprint found on Dr. Knabe's pillow. Had the print matched either Craig or Ragsdale, it alone would have made the prosecution's case. At least Seth Nichols was not invited to testify.\n\nThe defense was so certain of acquittal that it made a motion to dismiss the case the moment the prosecution closed. Craig's attorney, Henry Spaan, claimed that the state had failed to build a case against the doctor. The judge agreed, and on December 9, he instructed the jury to dismiss the case. On the same day, an Indianapolis prosecutor had the indictment against Alonzo Ragsdale nolle prossed (a noble Latin phrase that means, legally, \"forget about it\").\n\nAnd that was the end of the Knabe case, probably forever. No one else was ever arrested or tried; no more evidence surfaced; no one made a deathbed confession. The story dropped from the papers and consequently from the mind of the public. Even the Council of Women finally gave up. We are left only with unanswered questions and the faint memory of a woman who, in a better world, would be remembered for her determination and accomplishments rather than for her unsolved murder.\n2\n\nPicnic of Death\n\nIn the early days of the Great Depression, the prosperous Simmons family lived in Simmons Corners near Greenfield. Every year, they met for a combination reunion and picnic. They chose to have their 1931 meeting at Memorial Park in Lebanon, sixty-five miles away, on June 21, the first day of summer. No doubt it seemed impossible to them, as it would to most, that anything evil could come from such a wholesome, harmless event.\n\nYet owing to the fallen nature of man, evil cannot be excluded from any event, not even a picnic. A guest noticed that a chicken sandwich included an extra ingredient: capsules full of mysterious white powder. He immediately left the park and took the item to a local doctor to see what was in it. The physician, who didn't seriously test the powder, guessed that it _might_ be quinine, an antimalarial painkiller. But even if the substance had been relatively harmless quinine, why were capsules of it in the sandwich?\n\nThe attendee hurried back to the picnic, but in his absence, five persons had done a foolhardy thing: they ate the sandwiches anyway, capsules and all. In short order, the five were miserably ill and rushed to a local hospital. Three survived: Lester Carr, Horace Jackson and a wealthy farmer named John W. Simmons. Mr. Simmons's daughter Alice Jean, age ten, died fifteen minutes after she arrived at the hospital, and another daughter, fourteen-year-old Virginia, passed away in the evening. The only other casualties of the picnic were blackbirds that expired after eating crumbs from the sandwiches.\n\nOn the day the girls died, Lebanon's coroner, G.A. Owsley, determined that there were only two opportunities for the poison\u2014later found to be strychnine\u2014to be placed in the sandwiches. \"Once was when they were made,\" he told reporters, \"and the other time was when the family stopped and left the automobile for more than an hour outside the home of Isaac Pollard, a distant relative here [in Lebanon].\"\n\nMr. and Mrs. Simmons. _From the_ Lebanon (IN) Reporter, _June 25, 1931. Courtesy of the_ Lebanon Reporter.\n\nNaturally, suspicion fell on Carrie Barrett Simmons, mother of the two deceased girls and maker of the offending sandwiches, who protested that she had no idea how the capsules got into them. Investigators found that strychnine had been sprinkled on the sweet pickled beets, which Mrs. Simmons also had prepared.\n\nCarrie Simmons was at home in Simmons Corners on June 29, grieving over her lost daughters and being consoled by friends, when police entered and arrested her. She went without protest.\n\nOn July 3, Mrs. Simmons was indicted on the charge of murdering her daughters. There were obvious logical problems with this theory that would present challenges to a prosecutor. Of the eighteen sandwiches she made for the picnic, twelve were poisoned. If she had plotted to kill her daughters in such a bizarre fashion, how could she be sure that they would take one of the contaminated sandwiches? How could she prevent someone she _didn't_ intend to murder from eating one? In fact, three persons other than her daughters did consume the food and nearly died. The lack of subtlety in the killer's chosen method was na\u00efve, almost darkly comical; could any sensible person actually believe that capsules in a sandwich would not be noticed? (Indeed, as already noted, one picnicker did see the capsules in his sandwich.) Perhaps the would-be killer surmised that any resulting deaths would be blamed on food poisoning caused by hot summer weather\u2014but it would not take a mental colossus to realize that there would be plenty of leftover evidence in uneaten sandwiches and in the bodies of the victims.\n\nVirginia and Alice Simmons. _From the_ Lebanon (IN) Reporter, _June 25, 1931. Courtesy of the_ Lebanon Reporter.\n\nDespite these nagging questions, Mrs. Simmons was the most likely suspect and went on trial in Lebanon on two charges of first-degree murder on September 27, after spending three months in jail. Perhaps that stretch in a cheerless cell made her long for fashionable clothes, because she entered the courtroom wearing the height of feminine fashion circa autumn 1931. Her husband had bought her black oxford shoes and an Empress Eugenie hat. Her family and most of her Hancock County neighbors expressed steadfast confidence in her innocence, but the situation was serious: she could go to the electric chair.\n\nIt appeared from the beginning that the state did not have much, if any, evidence against Carrie Simmons other than that she prepared the chicken sandwiches. Prosecutors were also hampered by their inability to produce even the ghost of a motive, financial or otherwise, as to why Mrs. Simmons might desire to send her girls to an early grave.\n\nOn October 1, the state called John Simmons to testify as a reluctant witness against his own wife. Two hours of questioning produced little information that benefited the prosecution, which attempted to show that Mrs. Simmons had tried to poison her daughters two weeks _before_ the picnic.\n\nNot much of interest happened at the trial until October 12, when Indianapolis druggist Charles Friedman testified that Mrs. Simmons had purchased sixty grains of strychnine at his store on June 18\u2014which, if true, suggested that Mrs. Simmons must have had tremendous faith in her murderous abilities if she bought so much poison only three days before committing very public murder and still thought she could fool the authorities. Friedman said the transaction stood out in his mind because it had been the first sale of that particular poison he had made in years. This seemed plenty incriminating, but on October 14, Louise Robinson of Bargersville testified that _she_ was the person who had bought the strychnine from the druggist. In fact, said Robinson, when she had confronted Friedman he recognized her as the actual purchaser and urged her to testify in favor of Mrs. Simmons. Robinson's testimony was considered so decisive that after she left the stand, a weeping Mrs. Simmons shook her hand, saying, \"You have saved my life.\"\n\nThe trial seemed to have more than its share of testimony from less-than-reliable druggists. Another was Harry Short of New Palestine, who claimed under oath that Horace Jackson, Mrs. Simmons's brother-in-law, had bought sixty grains of strychnine at _his_ pharmacy a few days before the picnic. The reader will recall that Jackson was one of the three men who barely survived eating the deadly sandwiches, so if Short's testimony were true, it had to mean that Jackson _poisoned himself as well as the Simmons sisters_. Under cross-examination, the formerly positive Harry Short admitted he was \"not positive\" Jackson was his customer after all.\n\nOn October 15, the jurors heard from Mrs. Claude White of Charlottesville, a housewife who was so interested in the case that she conducted an experiment that was neither scientific nor rigorous but interesting nevertheless. Using the Simmons family kitchen as a lab, she made twelve chicken sandwiches and put strychnine capsules in six of them. Then at the Pollard house in Lebanon, where the Simmonses had stopped for over an hour on June 21 on the way to the reunion, she put capsules in the other six. After waiting slightly over an hour, she drove to Memorial Park and examined the food. In the six sandwiches that were poisoned in the kitchen, the strychnine capsules had nearly dissolved; but in the six poisoned at the Pollard house, the capsules were almost intact. And since the sandwiches that killed the girls contained visibly whole capsules, this suggested that whoever tampered with the food did so at the Pollard residence.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Simmons arriving at the courthouse. _From the_ Lebanon (IN) Reporter, _September 30, 1931. Courtesy of the_ Lebanon Reporter.\n\nCarrie Simmons's sixteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, testified on October 22 that she personally witnessed her mother making the chicken sandwiches and saw her add no untoward ingredients.\n\nNear the end of the trial, the defense provided evidence that the police had questioned Mrs. Simmons with loud, abusive language late on the night when they arrested her and for several days following. They contended that this was the verbal equivalent of third-degree interrogation.\n\nThe Simmons family in the courtroom; Mrs. Simmons is seated at the table. _From the_ Lebanon (IN) Reporter, _November 6, 1931. Courtesy of the_ Lebanon Reporter.\n\nThe trial's highlight came on October 27, when Carrie Simmons took the stand. She said nothing that incriminated herself. The case was given to the jury on November 3; forty-eight hours and nine ballots later, the hopelessly deadlocked members voted eight to four for acquittal.\n\nThe hung jury was dismissed, and Carrie Simmons was taken back to jail. Usually in such a case, there is a second trial later. But at some point, attorneys representing the state must have realized that they did not have a winnable case. In May 1933, all charges against the farm mother were officially and finally dropped.\n\nThe poisoning of the Simmons girls, dubbed by the press as \"the state's most baffling murder case,\" will probably remain forever a mystery. What makes the case so puzzling is the very narrow window of opportunity to commit the crime. If Mrs. Simmons were innocent and did not add strychnine to the sandwiches\u2014and it appears that she didn't\u2014there were only a few other (rather improbable) ways the poison could get there. Did some unknown person have a grudge against the John Simmons family? If so, this person must have seen the family car at their relative Isaac Pollard's house in Lebanon\u2014not back home in Hancock County, as the capsules had not had sufficient time to dissolve; he must have contaminated the sandwiches and pickled beets on the spot, using a supply of strychnine capsules that he just happened to have with him, if we assume that most people don't walk around with a handy supply of deadly poison; and he did this while hoping no one witnessed him meddling with the food.\n3\n\nThe Farmhand and the Acrobat\n\nFirst let's meet the murder victim. She was Alice Martin, fifty-two years old, unmarried and famously grouchy with the hired help. She lived in a miserable shack incongruously located on gorgeous property: a sprawling 150-acre farm atop a bluff four miles from Derby, overlooking a spectacular view of the Ohio River. It was near the spot where Abraham Lincoln had once operated a Kentucky-to-Indiana ferryboat before he realized he was meant for greater things.\n\nMartin was a woman with a mysterious past. She had been a professional acrobat and aerialist for years under the exotic name Alice de Garno (de Garmo in some accounts). Her specialty was swinging on the trapeze, and she worked on the vaudeville circuit and for the Barnum and Bailey Circus; she traveled with the show in the United States, Europe, Canada and South America. A March 18, 1911 article in the _New York Clipper_ \u2014a newspaper that specialized in entertainment-related news\u2014suggests that part of her appeal was that she undressed for success: \"Alice de Garno, of aerial disrobing fame, was the added attraction and was well applauded. This lady does some good stunts on the trapeze, her disrobing part being one of the many.\"\n\nAround 1924, Alice retired from circus life. In 1929, upon the death of her father, William F. Martin, she moved into the family's bluff-top farm for the few remaining years of her life. Perhaps as a reaction to having spent years soaring above lascivious crowds, she now craved seclusion. She lived by herself in her ramshackle house, far from the nearest road and accessible only by a half-mile-long footpath that ran up the bluff. If she had any relatives, she didn't tell neighbors about them.\n\nMartin spent years amazing people on the trapeze, but once she settled down on the farm, she astounded the locals in an entirely different way. She wore men's clothing, and although petite and weighing only ninety pounds, her acrobatic musculature permitted her to do heavy farm work. Her mouth was a veritable profanity mill and the source of shame to many a man who _thought_ he knew how to curse; hers was the sort of salty language that only long years of experience in show business can confer. This rhetorical ability was not appreciated by her hired help, who had to bear the brunt of it when Martin upbraided them for perceived sloth or ineptitude.\n\nAlthough Martin had earned $400 per week at a time when the average American's salary was $750 per year, she lived in Dickensian squalor. The front rooms of her miserable house were choked with debris, broken furniture, bags of powdered cement and barbed wire. One room was used as a chicken roost. An upstairs room held a brand-new comfortable bed that had never been slept in\u2014it had the original wrapping and an unused mattress. She slumbered instead on an iron cot. Some considered Martin eccentric, but she explained that she intended to remodel her house someday and saw no need to fix the place up in the meantime. In any case, the neighbors all agreed that the former circus queen was a good farmer.\n\nDuring the last week of January 1934, Frank Sandage Jr., son of a tenant farmer, twice went to Alice Martin's home to deliver groceries and mail. She was nowhere to be seen either time. Her farmhand Ernest Wright, age thirty-two, told the boy that she had taken a trip to Plainfield, New Jersey. The police thought this explanation reeked of fish. They contacted officials in Plainfield who informed them that wherever Martin was, she was not there.\n\nSuspicions about Wright increased when he also disappeared after police commenced searching Martin's beloved farm. On February 3, the former aerialist's body was found in a shallow grave\u2014covered, perhaps symbolically, with manure\u2014near the barn. She had a fractured skull and a slit throat and had been dead a week. She was dressed in her usual masculine attire, an enchanting ensemble consisting of boots and two pairs of overalls, a shirt, a vest and a jacket. She shared her homemade grave with two blood-soaked gunnysacks. An inspection of her hovel turned up only sixteen dollars and a notable dearth of feminine clothing.\n\nSheriff Anton Voges noticed bloodstains on a block of wood behind the house. Someone had unsuccessfully tried to burn other bloodstains on the ground. Investigators found evidence that the murderer had intended to burn the house down, presumably with Martin's body inside, but then gave up and buried her. A freshly chopped hole in the floor, with a hatchet nearby, suggested that the killer thought Martin had hidden money in the house and searched for it.\n\nIt was no secret around Derby and nearby Tell City that Wright got along with his employer about as amicably as a tarantula and a pregnant wasp in a nature documentary; she was on his case constantly for neglecting chores. This animosity, plus the timing of Wright's disappearance, made him the prime suspect.\n\nA three-state manhunt for Wright ended \"not with a bang but a whimper,\" as T.S. Eliot would have said had he written true crime stories instead of squandering his talent on poetry. The suspect sheepishly surrendered at Cannelton on February 5. Since Sheriff Voges happened not to be at the jail at the time, his cute young daughter Julietta took custody of Wright and locked him up. In addition, a couple hundred people came to the jail when word got out that Wright had been arrested\u2014not to lynch, but merely to gawk. Unwilling to take chances, Sheriff Voges had his prisoner transported to Evansville.\n\nThe authorities were deeply interested in knowing, among other things, how it came to pass that Wright had Alice Martin's feed and livestock in his possession when he surrendered. This is the story he told them with a straight face. Had it been set to music, it could have made a comic opera:\n\nThe farmhand did not kill Alice Martin, he claimed, but he witnessed the murder. Two weeks before Martin's death, a stranger moved into the cottage\u2014Wright couldn't seem to remember his name despite having shared quarters with him for a fortnight, but he thought the man's name was Jack. This Jack fellow, or whatever his name was, must have been Alice's lover because he helped with the chores and she called him \"honey\" and \"sweetheart.\" On the night of January 25, Alice and Jack had a Homeric quarrel that ended with her braining and slashing, after which, Jack forced Ernest at gunpoint to bury his boss and spread manure on her grave. The dastard swore he would return soon and claim Alice's valuable farm as his own, since he had tricked her into signing a phony marriage certificate. Then, Jack fled for Louisville, leaving Ernest Wright behind as a living witness to the murder. Realizing that he looked suspicious, Wright himself abandoned the farm\u2014which of course didn't seem suspicious at all. But, drat the luck, while on the lam he met _another_ crazy man with a gun who forced Wright to accompany him to Tobinsport, where they stole a boat and rowed over to Kentucky. And whom should Wright and his abductor meet there? The mysterious Jack! The villains blindfolded Wright, put him in a car and released him at Cloverport, Kentucky. The fugitive hotfooted it back to Indiana; in Evansville, he found a wallet containing twenty-four fifty-dollar bills, with which he bought the feed and livestock on Alice Martin's farm. After this big adventure, Wright saw the error of flight and turned himself in at Cannelton.\n\nThe Evansville police believed Wright's yarn about as much as you do, and they interrogated him in such fashion as would give a modern civil libertarian a coronary. They denied him sleep and food and subjected him to constant questioning. They also told him that his fingerprints were on the club used to bash in Alice Martin's head. It was a lie, but Wright fell for it and confessed. This time around he told what _really_ happened: Martin had remonstrated to him in her sweet and ladylike way after he lost some tools and broke a wagon. For this, she deducted $2.75 from his wages. She snapped, \"I'll see you in hell before I will pay you!\" In a drunken rage, Wright decided that she must die for her temerity and unfairness.\n\nWright went on trial in March. Judge Oscar Minor, while deploring the Evansville police's strong-arm methods of gaining the confession, ruled that it could be admitted as evidence since the prisoner's constitutional rights had not been violated.\n\nThe jury brought in its verdict on March 23: Wright was guilty of first-degree murder. On March 29, he was sentenced to life in prison. Wright faced the court's judgment with more equanimity than he had shown Alice Martin, former queen of the air, when she insulted him for his incompetence.\n4\n\nMr. Wade and Mrs. Brown Hatch a Stupid Plot\n\nMary Brown and Joe Wade were in love. They were also married\u2014but not to each other, and that's where the trouble began. Was there any way the star-crossed lovers could be together? They thought and thought about the problem and decided there was a way: Joe would divorce his wife and then help Mary murder her husband, and nobody would put two and two together. Perhaps they should have thought a little harder.\n\nMary's husband was nearly twenty years older than she. He was John G.F. Brown, an evil carpenter (and how many evil carpenters could there have been throughout history?). They had married on August 25, 1867, when she was twenty and he was thirty-nine. They lived on a farm one mile south of Irvington, then a rural area on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Over the next thirteen years, they had three children and plenty of near misses with the law. To hear the neighbors tell it, Mr. and Mrs. Brown were united in both matrimony and murder. Persons to whom the Browns were indebted had a habit of disappearing. Mr. Hunter, a young German who lived in Seymour, had worked for Brown in 1875. A year later, he was last seen in the company of Mr. Brown, who owed Hunter back wages. Soon afterward, neighbors noticed Brown filling in a large hole in his garden, but nobody at the time made the connection between the disappearance and the digging. Ben Fletcher, half brother of Mary Brown, later reported seeing Hunter's jewelry in the Brown residence.\n\nNext on the list of the vanished was a nameless old man who started boarding with the Browns after the German's disappearance. His host borrowed $50. The old man was never seen again, but neighbors did observe Mr. Brown filling in another hole in his garden. Soon after this suspicious incident, Brown borrowed $300 from a physician; he was tardy in repaying it, so the doctor made a nonmedical house call. This was unwise. Later, when a farmhand reported seeing a mound resembling a grave in some nearby woods, Brown covered the spot with heavy rails. He had planted acorns there, he explained, and he placed the rails there to prevent hogs from rooting them up. It seems that the rails would also prevent the acorns from sprouting, but nobody asked questions.\n\nIn 1878, Dr. Levi Ritter found an unconscious man with a crushed skull lying on the road in proximity to the Brown farmhouse. Ritter took the man to the City Hospital in Indianapolis, but the injured man died two days later without naming his attacker. In addition to these mysterious occurrences, neighbors pondered the whereabouts of a boy adopted by the Browns. He, too, had disappeared one day and was never seen again.\n\nPerhaps gossipers exaggerated or even invented the couple's many dubious achievements, but one fact is clear: the Browns' neighbors feared them. By fair means or foul, Brown eventually was prosperous enough to own several pieces of property in Indianapolis. Whether or not the Browns were killers, they certainly kept bad company. Their house was used as headquarters by a gang of thieves. At last, the Browns were arrested, not for murder, but for possessing stolen goods. Both husband and wife and a number of accomplices were convicted. Mrs. Brown appears to have served little if any time, but Mr. Brown was sentenced to a year in Northern Prison on January 9, 1879.\n\nWhile Brown was in prison, his wife became enamored of Joe Wade, a local saloonkeeper whom she had met on July 2, 1879. Almost as soon as she met Wade, she asked him to move in with her on the grounds that she had been robbed recently and was afraid to stay alone. He found the suggestion agreeable and, within two months, had moved in permanently, having sold his \"notoriously bad\" Virginia Avenue saloon and divorced his wife. The happy man took on all the connubial duties of Mrs. Brown's absent husband, including tending to the livestock, chopping firewood and digging potatoes. I suppose Mrs. Brown specified which areas to avoid in the garden. She declared later under oath that she paid him for all this hard labor only with free clothing.\n\nAfter the passing of several months, one problem affected the lovers' paradise: Mr. Brown was due to be released from prison soon and would be coming home. Wade suggested that they flee the state, but Mrs. Brown said she could not bear to leave her children. Wade gallantly offered to \"steal them\" from Mr. Brown. The situation was at an impasse when Joseph Brown left jail and returned to Irvington on New Year's Eve 1879. Little did Brown realize that his wife and Joe Wade were plotting his removal.\n\nJoseph Wade. _From the_ National Police Gazette, _March 6, 1880_.\n\nUpon Mr. Brown's return, Wade did not flee the house but instead remained as a boarder. The husband took his set of carpenter's tools and got to work making repairs around the farm. Wade became jealous and threatened Mrs. Brown, saying he would kill her and her husband\u2014or so said Mrs. Brown, who later stated in court that she warned her husband of the threats.\n\nOn the evening of February 6, 1880, the entire family and Wade ate at the dinner table. After the meal, the two eldest children left to visit a neighbor named Smith. Wade asked Mr. Brown if he could borrow his buggy on the pretext that a Dr. Long in Irvington wanted to buy his (Wade's) horse. Brown cheerfully agreed, though he asked Wade why it was necessary to take a buggy when he could ride horseback.\n\nWhen on trial later, Mrs. Brown claimed she took no part in what happened next. As she cleaned the dishes, she said, her husband stood at the table whittling an axe handle. Glancing out the window, she saw the horse hitched to the gate, so she knew Wade had not left on his alleged errand. She took the remaining child, a baby, as she went to perform some chore outside. She heard a loud thumping noise coming from inside the house at the front door. Walking around the house, she saw her paramour standing between the house and the gate and her husband lying next to the buggy, his head covered with a blanket and his body on a red robe. The inference was that Wade had coaxed Brown to the front door, bludgeoned him with some object and then used the robe to drag his body out to the buggy.\n\nWhen Mrs. Brown approached, Wade said curtly, \"Take that child back in the house.\" She did so and then came back. She distinctly heard her husband groaning. As she told it, Mrs. Brown asked, \"Joe, what have you done?\" Like a villain in a stage melodrama, he embraced her and said, \"This is what love will do, darling. I love every hair on your head better than my life!\" She claimed that she wanted to take Mr. Brown into the house, but Wade retorted, \"No, this work must be finished now.\" Wade placed the fatally injured Brown in the buggy, said he was going to dump the body somewhere up the road and ordered Mrs. Brown to clean up any visible bloodstains. When he returned an hour later, they hurried to the house of their neighbor Smith in order to establish an alibi. Wade knew well that he would be suspect number one when Mr. Brown's corpse was discovered, but he thought the Smiths' testimony would keep him out of prison.\n\nMrs. Brown claimed that the next morning, she and Wade went to visit Smith again, the baby and a fiddle in tow. Wade promised he would make a good father for her children and cautioned her to act nonchalant before the Smiths. He also instructed her to tell the Smiths that her husband had gone to Indianapolis to buy a stove. That night she saw Wade burn a mallet, which he acknowledged was the murder weapon. The two then had some interesting experiences removing bloodstains from an area near the front gate, from the front doorstep and from the carpet. A couple days after the murder, Mrs. Brown went to Indianapolis, pretending to be searching for her lamented husband whom she feared had been robbed and murdered, for he had unaccountably disappeared with a large amount of money.\n\nMr. Brown's body was found not in Indianapolis, of course, but by a railroad crossing on Belt Road back home. Brown's head was crushed, and his buggy was nearby, still attached to his patient horse. Wade made disastrous yet darkly comical mistakes when arranging the crime scene. The buggy and the robes within were blood-spattered, yet the horse and outside of the buggy were unharmed; this would have been possible only if Brown had stepped out of his buggy, got hit by a train, climbed back inside the buggy, bled all over it, then climbed out again and expired beside the track.\n\nAlso, Wade had turned Brown's pockets inside out in order to suggest he had been the victim of a robbery, and then apparently changed his mind and decided to make it look as though Brown had been hit by a train. But he forgot to restore Brown's pockets to their original condition. Since trains seldom run over people and then rob them, authorities were suspicious. Conceivably, the train had run over Brown and some greedy passerby had plundered the corpse, but murder was the more likely possibility given local rumors about the closeness between Joe Wade and Mrs. Brown. The grieving widow was called to testify before the coroner; she told the story as Wade had coached her. But then she voluntarily testified a second time and confessed the truth. Her lover had started extorting her for money, and she realized their relationship might not work out. To put it kindly, not everyone was convinced Mrs. Brown was as guiltless as she maintained. It was largely suspected that she wanted to marry Joe Wade and inherit her late husband's money and property.\n\nJoe Wade was arrested and sent to the Marion County jail. As if to prove that life imitates cartoons, Mrs. Brown slipped her lover some saws and a file to help make his escape. Wade was caught with the contraband and betrayed Mrs. Brown's confidence by admitting that she had given him the tools. In short order, the self-made widow was also jailed. She testified at Wade's murder trial on April 22, 1880. She spoke in such a low tone that the jurymen could barely hear her, and they sat only three feet from the witness stand. Perhaps incomprehensibility was part of her strategy.\n\nThe usual labyrinth of contradictory testimony ensued at the trial: a number of neighbors testified that her reputation for truth and veracity was very poor, but cross-examination suggested that many of the negative comments were based on hearsay. On the other hand, Wade had a reputation for being peaceable but had been known to be violent when manhandling rowdies in his saloon. Several incriminating letters allegedly written by Wade to Mrs. Brown were proved to be forgeries at the trial. Despite this evidence in his favor, the _Louisville Courier-Journal_ 's Indianapolis correspondent wrote: \"[I]t is the universal opinion that while Wade is not as guilty as Mrs. Brown, yet he will hang. And if Wade receives the death sentence, Mrs. Brown will also, and the two miserable wretches will swing from the same scaffold.\"\n\nMary Brown. _From the_ National Police Gazette, _March 6, 1880_.\n\nThe journalist rightly stated that things were looking dark for Wade. His attorneys claimed that he was an accessory after the fact\u2014that is, they claimed Mrs. Brown planned and committed the murder of her husband, and Wade was guilty only of concealing evidence afterward. Few believed it, and Wade's only hope for a life sentence lay in a rumor that one member of the jury was opposed to capital punishment. His hope was dashed when the jury rendered its verdict on April 30: the sole juror who held out for life imprisonment was persuaded to vote for the death penalty. Wade remarked that the verdict was about what he expected; he still insisted that Mrs. Brown had murdered her husband and that he had only tried to shield her. He philosophically observed that in any case, he was a marked man, since no jury would believe that Mrs. Brown had committed the crime all by herself.\n\nMrs. Brown expressed delight with Wade's death sentence; truly, the bloom was off the romance. She claimed that Wade got what was coming to him since he \"parted her from her children and murdered her husband.\" These sentiments were the direct opposite of those expressed in love letters she had written to him just after the murder. (Mrs. Brown claimed she could not have written the letters, as she was illiterate, but during her trial, the state brought out several witnesses proving the contrary.)\n\nMrs. Brown went to trial in early July 1880. She had testified against Wade at his trial, and now he testified against her. As he told it, she had become infuriated when, on the night of Mr. Brown's murder, he told her their affair was over and he intended to move to Michigan. Later that night, he said, he saw Mrs. Brown fatally strike her husband on the head with a mallet as he stood at the kitchen table, whittling an axe handle. Horrified, Wade bolted from the house, but Mrs. Brown managed to catch up with him at the front gate while simultaneously dragging her husband's corpse. Improbable, yes, but the story got even better. Wade testified that despite having just witnessed a grotesque murder, he was still intent on riding to Irvington to sell his horse. He prepared to take Mr. Brown's buggy since his late host had given his permission, and besides, he was dead now anyway and would not care. Mrs. Brown, she of the Amazonian strength, cried: \"Joe Wade, if you leave me you'll rue the day. You're a man, and I'm a woman; you've been staying here, and nobody will suspect me of doing this.\" Seeing the wisdom in her words, Wade forgot about his errand and helped his sweetheart wrap robes around the corpse and load it into the buggy. They drove away, Mrs. Brown at the reins; she had cleverly put on some of Wade's clothes so that if they were spotted, eyewitnesses would think she was a man. The pair dropped the body at the train tracks, and on returning home, they cleaned up the murder site and swore each other to secrecy. Then, they visited their neighbors, the Smiths, in order to establish an alibi. It was Mrs. Brown who burned the evil mallet, Wade insisted. After testifying, Wade said to a reporter from the _Indianapolis News_ : \"The only thing I have to regret is that I ever allowed that woman to get the hold on me she did. I tell you she is terrible.\"\n\nThus the jury at Mrs. Brown's trial heard a story almost diametrically opposed to one she had told at Wade's trial. The conclusion could be drawn, and was, that the two were equally guilty and trying to shift the blame on each other. The trial closed on July 10; the jury retired after hearing strong arguments from the prosecution and defense and after receiving careful instructions from the judge \"defining the distinction between the several grades of homicide and the punishment prescribed.\"\n\nTwo days later, the jury announced its decision: Mrs. Brown was guilty and should hang, contrary to the widespread belief that the jury would never recommend that a woman be executed. Mrs. Brown, who had expected a life sentence at worst, was \"paralyzed with horror.\" Ten minutes after the verdict was read, she said to a reporter: \"My poor children! They will be disgraced forever.\" (\"Why didn't she remember them when she killed their father?\" demanded Wade.) Then she begged the reporter to ask Joe Wade \"to tell the truth and not let me die.\" The journalist obligingly went to Wade's cell, but the prisoner displayed no concern for anyone but himself: \"[I]f she had only been sent to the penitentiary, I would have gotten a new trial. But the jury couldn't do anything else. They couldn't hang me and let her live.\" After expressing a fanciful wish that the ghost of the late Mr. Brown could have attended the trial and told what had really happened to shorten his days, Wade added: \"Mrs. Brown can hang, as she deserves to. I believe in justice, though I have not been treated with justice.\"\n\nAs Joe Wade waited in prison for his execution date, he committed another crime by inflicting a couple awful poems on the public via the newspapers. The first, published by the _Indianapolis Herald_ , laid the blame for the murder on the shoulders of his ex-girlfriend. Three verses will more than suffice:\n\n_and when She committed_\n\n_It was few words I could say_\n\n_She said if you leave me now my dear_\n\n_you will always rue the day_.\n\n_I never murdered John_ [sic] _Brown_\n\n_or any man in my life_\n\n_I did not want his money_\n\n_Neither did I want his wife_\n\n_She is a murderess that I know_\n\n_as she told me this before_\n\n_She never Stuck in front she Said_\n\n_but the first lick killed him dead_.\n\nMrs. Brown's three children were adopted by her brother-in-law, who forbade them to visit her prison cell. The Brown property was purchased by a Mr. White, who reported that he received up to forty visitors per day, including some from such foreign places as Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Michigan. They all thirsted to see the place where the famous Brown-Wade murder had occurred.\n\nIn September, Mary Brown and Joe Wade entered the courtroom once again, this time to receive their final sentencing: they were to be hanged from the same scaffold on October 27. \"Awful,\" said the _Courier-Journal_ in a headline, \"But No More So Than Was the Horrible Murder of Old Man Brown.\" Both prisoners protested their innocence before being led back to jail. Mrs. Brown even swooned several times, as women in the nineteenth century were fully expected to do in stressful times.\n\nBrown and Wade still had two chances to avoid the noose: the Indiana Supreme Court could decide to have them retried, and the governor might show executive clemency. As of October 23, neither seemed to be forthcoming, and Sheriff Pressly of Indianapolis purchased new ropes and had the gallows overhauled in preparation for the big day. The _Indianapolis People_ remarked, \"We can hardly bring our minds to believe that Mrs. Brown will ever be hung [ _sic_ ], and yet cannot see how Wade can well be hung [ _sic_ ] unless Mrs. Brown is also. The public will hardly consent that one shall be taken and the other left, and yet the hanging of a woman is repugnant to everyone.\"\n\nThe set date for the hangings came and went\u2014but there were no hangings. It was reported on October 28 that Joe Wade had converted to Catholicism. Governor James D. Williams died on November 20, and his last official act had been to sign a respite for Wade. The Supreme Court of Indiana granted Mary Brown a new trial, to begin in December. It took three and a half days to select a jury, a length of time \"entirely unparalleled in the annals of jurisprudence in Marion County.\" On December 29, Joe Wade again testified against Mrs. Brown. On January 10, 1881, she was sentenced to life in prison. Several years later, she broke out of jail but voluntarily returned the same day. I have been unable to determine whether she fully served her life sentence.\n\nWhile Mrs. Brown endured her second trial, a movement started to spare Wade's life. He was granted a hearing in the Supreme Court of Indiana in February 1881, pled guilty and had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The verdict appears to have been unpopular; the _Indianapolis News_ remarked, \"The Supreme Court, instead of using its powers to enforce the plain purpose of the law, has systematically used them to divert it.\"\n\nFor the next fourteen years, Wade languished in jail. In March 1895, Governor Claude Matthews granted a pardon due to the prisoner's poor health. The formerly robust bartender stepped out of the prison, coughing and wheezing, in the valley of the shadow of death and undoubtedly \"ruing the day,\" to use Mrs. Brown's phrase, that she first stepped into his saloon looking for a roommate.\n5\n\nA Hoosier Makes a Spectacle of Himself in Cincinnati\n\nCharles D. Evans, age fifty, did not get along with his wife, Ellen, age forty-two\u2014no, not at all. That's what neighbors in Indianapolis said when their opinions on the matter became a topic of interest to the authorities. But that was in 1933, and the Evans' domestic warfare had started long before then.\n\nMr. Evans, a real estate salesman and contractor, lived with his wife at 1321 Congress Avenue. He was industrious and owned fourteen pieces of property; she operated a hand laundry in their basement. However, the Great Depression harmed his business interests and properties' values, and he took control of his wife's earnings. This did nothing to increase marital harmony. Neighbors often heard them arguing. Mrs. Evans believed her husband unfaithful and hired a detective to watch him. Apparently, her suspicions were confirmed, because she filed for divorce in February 1933, after thirty-two years of squabbling.\n\nThe couple separated, but by mid-March, they were living in their Congress Avenue residence again. The housemaid, Dorothy Hill, said they had a vociferous argument on March 16. When Hill came to work the next morning, Mrs. Evans wasn't there. Mr. Evans said his wife had left the house in a fit of pique in the middle of the night and had not yet returned.\n\nOn March 19, Mr. and Mrs. Evans were traveling through Cincinnati, Ohio, a city famous for its early founding by hog butchers. Mr. Evans had been born in the city and perhaps had decided to pay a social call on his mother, Alice Hervey, or his brother Ben Evans, both of whom lived in the suburb of Norwood\u2014the former on Forest Avenue and the latter on Melrose Avenue. He was destined not to visit either. Mrs. Evans was making the trip in uncharacteristic silence. Mr. Evans undoubtedly was fuming; he carried a letter from an attorney advising him to pay his wife fifty dollars in monthly alimony.\n\nEvans drove south on Hamilton Avenue and slowed down as he approached floodwaters crossing the road. A sharp-eyed motorcycle police officer, Elmer Joyce, noticed that his sedan bore an expired license plate reading \"Indiana 1932.\"Joyce ordered Evans to pull over at the east end of the Ludlow Avenue viaduct.\n\n\"What about those tags?\" asked Officer Joyce.\n\n\"Oh, I have until April 1 to get new ones.\"\n\n\"In whose name is the car registered?\"\n\n\"My wife's.\"\n\nYet Mrs. Evans was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThe policeman noticed that Evans seemed excessively nervous; also, that a tarpaulin was covering something in the back seat. This suggested he was guilty of something more than a mundane violation. \"A possible bootlegger!\" thought Officer Joyce, who detained Evans while two other policemen, Joseph Cole and Major \"Tip\" O'Neil, arrived on the scene.\n\n\"What have you got in the back of your machine?\" asked Joyce.\n\n\"Household goods.\"\n\nThe policemen removed the tarp, revealing a wash boiler, cooking utensils, kitchen pots and baskets. Joyce lifted the lid off one of the pots, expecting to find liquor. Instead it contained something cold, pink and fleshy.\n\n\"What is this?\" he asked.\n\n\"A ham,\" said Evans. \"I killed a hog.\"\n\n\"Where is your wife?\" asked Joyce as a terrible possibility entered his mind\u2014for he had noticed also that Evans's face was scratched.\n\n\"In Indianapolis,\" said Evans. Next thing the officers knew, he had removed a straight razor from his pocket and was cutting away at his own wrist and throat. Blood cascaded down his shirt and coat.\n\nEvans was no lightweight at 235 pounds, plus he had a weapon. The police shot at his arm to stop his suicide attempt and missed. They tried manual force, but he was so powerfully built that he held off the three would-be rescuers with one arm while slashing his throat repeatedly with the other. Meanwhile, a deeply interested crowd gathered. They had come to see the flood but saw instead a death struggle between an armed giant of a man and the policemen.\n\nUnable to stop Evans and afraid to get too close to him, the police moved to Plan B: they pleaded with him to kindly cease butchering himself in public. By this point, Evans had lost so much blood that the battle reached an impasse. He confessed that he had killed his wife, cut her into fourteen pieces, packed them in cooking pots, loaded them in the auto and motored from Indianapolis to Cincinnati. \"She tried to shoot me,\" he hoarsely explained.\n\nHe took $152 from his wallet and tried to hand it to the police, saying, \"Give this to my mother.\" The officers told him that they refused to come any closer as long as he held the razor. He snarled, put the bills back in his pocket, sank the razor into his jugular vein and expired on the spot.\n\nThe body of Evans, and the fourteen parts comprising his wife, were delivered to the Cincinnati morgue. The upper section of her torso, one arm and one leg were in a copper-lined wash boiler lined with newspapers. The bushel baskets, also lined with paper, held Mrs. Evans's head, her lower torso and her other arm and leg. Two galvanized buckets contained her stomach. The officials at the coroner's department determined that she had been dead several hours and must have been murdered, dismembered, disemboweled and packaged at her home. Indianapolis detectives confirmed the theory when they checked the Evans's house and found flecks of dried blood on the white bathroom walls and cloth rags in the furnace that had failed to burn because they were saturated with blood. Also, a tarpaulin Evans was known to have used to cover a floor-sanding machine was missing. He must _really_ have not wanted to shell out that fifty bucks a month for alimony.\n\nThe professional dissectors of the human body at the Cincinnati coroner's office expressed amazement at what an expert job Evans had done:\n\n_Each_ [section was] _cut carefully at a point of articulation so that no bones had to be sawed or hacked through. The torso had been cut in two just below the ribs. The spine was severed also in a careful manner. Coroner M. Scott Kearns, Dr. J.M. Patterson, coroner's pathologist, and Dr. Edward Dulle...who examined the parts, declared they had never seen a more careful and complete job of dismembering at points of articulation. The legs, arms and neck had been cut through at the joints where a knife would do the work_.\n\nWhere Evans picked up such precise anatomical knowledge remains a mystery. So do his planned ultimate destination on the motor trip and how he intended to dispose of his wife's remains. The fact that he packed her in kitchen pots and baskets and brought utensils with him opens the imagination to some unpleasant, though colorful, possibilities.\n\nThe _Cincinnati Enquirer_ paid the Hoosier salesman a dubious compliment by calling the spectacle he made of himself \"a suicide which for gruesomeness surpasses anything in local annals since the slaying of Pearl Bryan in 1896.\" But that's another story for another book.\n6\n\nHazel Triumphant!\n\nFrank McNally of Hammond was a factory worker, age fifty-four. He was pleased when he married Hazel Hall, an attractive woman only twenty-six years old who looked even younger. Frank married Hazel for a reason other than her youth and attractiveness: more than anything else, he wanted to be a father. His fondest desire was fulfilled\u2014twice over, in fact\u2014when Hazel gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter, in December 1921.\n\nHazel was proud of the babies, too, and did all the expected things: she nursed them, rocked them, bathed them and took them for rides in a baby carriage. Like any happy father, Frank carried his twins around and doted over them. He never fed, bathed or changed them, but that was not unusual in 1921, when such activities were by and large considered \"women's work.\" Anyway, Hazel insisted on doing these chores and refused help from anyone else.\n\nFrank was slow to get suspicious, but after a while, he had to admit Hazel was behaving strangely. She was secretive when ladies came by to see the children and wanted to make a fuss over them. When company came, she invariably said the infants were asleep and could not be bothered. She kept the babies in the dark all the time, a circumstance that provoked much whispering among the neighbors.\n\nOne neighbor, Mrs. Agnes Sphirmer, became so doubtful that she spoke to Frank McNally in private. He agreed that he would let her sneak into the house and inspect the children next time Mrs. McNally was absent.\n\nWhen the opportunity arose, Mrs. Sphirmer entered the twins' room and saw two small forms lying in bed. The cover was pulled back enough that she could see the face of one: stiff, unblinking and expressionless. A wave of horror racked Mrs. Sphirmer's foundation. Were the babies dead? But closer inspection revealed the truth: they were not dead\u2014they were china dolls with straw-stuffed bodies!\n\nFrank's reaction when he found that the children of which he was so proud were actually toys can only be imagined. He remembered that a month after they were born, Hazel had taken them on a mysterious trip to Chicago. There was only one conclusion he could reach: she had murdered her own children and fiendishly replaced them with dolls, unaware that her husband was a match for her cleverness\u2014or more so\u2014and eventually would figure out her ruse.\n\nSo now it was October 1922, and Frank's pretty young wife was sitting in the Hammond courthouse on charges of having murdered her twins\u2014charges brought by the grieving husband himself. During the trial, Hazel did not seem worried by the gravity of the charges against her; in fact, many observers thought she seemed to be having a pretty darned good time.\n\nOne witness, nurse Mary Griffith, testified that she had visited the McNallys two days after the twins were born. She noted that even then, Hazel would not allow anyone to touch them. Mrs. Griffith had not actually handled the babies, and she could not testify that they were human. She explained, \"Mrs. McNally would not let me tend to the babies. I frequently saw her nurse them\u2014at least she appeared to nurse them.\"\n\nWhen Chief of Police Bunde testified, the truth came out. He stated that after Mr. McNally pressed murder charges against his wife, he had questioned Hazel, who told him that she never had actually given birth. She had faked pregnancy, faked childbirth, faked breast feeding, faked bathing the \"babies,\" faked everything\u2014all to hoax her miraculously gullible (to put it politely) husband.\n\nWhy did she do it? An operation she had had before she married Frank rendered her infertile, but she hated to disappoint her husband, who wanted children so badly. So she bought two dolls, pretended to give birth and fooled him good\u2014for several months. The unanswered question: How long did Hazel think she would be able to get away with her scam?\n\nIf Frank McNally felt somewhat akin to an ass, he was not the only one. Mrs. Griffith, the nurse, was loath to admit she had been fooled. She was sure she had seen a spot of blood on one baby's cheek. When Griffith was asked under oath if she held any grudges against Mrs. McNally, this exchange entered the record:\n\n\"Well, it makes me mad to have her say she had dolls when I know she had twins.\"\n\n\"Makes you mad?\"\n\n\"Well, to sit up there nine days with dolls makes me feel foolish.\"\n\n\"You mean it hurt your reputation as a nurse to say you nursed dolls?\"\n\n\"Dolls don't bleed.\"\n\nDr. Cyrenus Campbell, who had attended Mrs. McNally during her fictitious pregnancy, was allowed not to testify when the defense objected that such testimony \"would be violating professional secrets.\" The physician was likely quite relieved that he was excused from having to answer questions about how his patient had pulled the wool over his eyes most egregiously.\n\nIn the end, Judge Henry Cleveland ruled that no one proved there ever had been any real babies, let alone that Hazel had murdered them. She was acquitted on October 20, to thunderous applause of 150 female spectators and probably not a few ribald jests from the menfolk aimed at her clueless husband, who noticeably fidgeted after the verdict was pronounced, standing on one foot and then the other.\n\nAs spectators filed out of the courtroom, Frank McNally insisted that his wife actually had given birth to twins the previous December. Meanwhile, Hazel walked into the nearest department store and walked out triumphantly with her purchase: two enormous life-size dolls.\n7\n\nPursued by a Monster\n\nIt is difficult to imagine a more alarming scene than that which confronted farmer William Starbuck when he returned to his house, located a half mile from Greensboro, on the night of July 9, 1904. He realized with mounting horror that his wife, Mollie, was nowhere to be seen\u2014but she could be heard screaming in the forest. And where was their four-month-old baby, Beulah?\n\nStarbuck ran in the direction of the noise and found his wife and child in an abandoned well one-eighth of a mile from their home. Mrs. Starbuck was hysterical and battered; the baby was dead.\n\nThe stricken man called in a doctor who could do but little. Mollie remained delirious and never regained enough lucidity to answer questions about her attacker. She shouted, \"What are you doing here?\" and \"What are you going to do?\" She did not recognize her husband and referred to being chased by a monster. At times, she raved so violently that she had to be restrained.\n\nShe died on July 11. At the inquest, the coroner noted bruising on her throat and the baby's as though they were choked. The baby had drowned while her mother died of \"acute congestion of the lungs\" caused by exposure to the cold well water and excessive screaming.\n\nAs mother and child were buried in the same grave, detectives got to work. They were baffled by the crime's senselessness: Mrs. Starbuck had been neither robbed nor sexually assaulted, and the murder of the infant was as pointless as any murder could be. In fact, they were not even certain the Starbucks _had_ been murdered. Mollie was bruised and scratched, to be sure, but none of the injuries seemed sufficient enough to cause death. Could she have received her injuries by falling into the well? The house was not in disarray, nor were there any signs of disturbance outside, indicating that no struggle had taken place. A man who had passed by the house twenty minutes before Mr. Starbuck came home said all seemed calm and quiet. Bloodhounds were brought in and sniffed out nothing unusual.\n\nMrs. Starbuck. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _July 24, 1904. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nThese circumstances convinced some that Mrs. Starbuck, a new mother, had fallen victim to what we now call postpartum depression. Her physician, Dr. R.A. Smith, believed that after slaving over a hot stove all day and tending to the baby, Mollie Starbuck went insane and jumped into the well with her child\u2014not with the intention of killing her, but to protect her from the monster Mollie thought was pursuing them. The doctor's hypothesis sounded convincing to the coroner, who ruled that the Starbucks' deaths were the tragic result of the mother's \"puerperal insanity.\"\n\nThe theory, ingenious as it was, required one to believe that Mrs. Starbuck had throttled her baby (depressingly possible) and herself (not so easy), and by the end of July, few people could be found who believed it. Mr. Starbuck had ideas of his own. Some instinct told him that a twenty-one-year-old acquaintance named Haley Gipe was to blame, and he told the police so.\n\nThey summarily arrested Gipe and took him to the jail at New Castle. There he sang like a canary and, according to one account, narrowly avoided being the guest of honor at a lynching. He confessed that he was part of a three-man plot that went awry. The men heard that Mr. Starbuck sold some hogs and had hidden several hundred dollars. Their idea was to perform a home invasion and _scare_ Mollie into handing over the money\u2014but they did not intend to harm anyone. Gipe insisted that he had not actually broken into the house but had merely agreed to keep the plan secret. Another conspirator, he said, was sixty-five-year-old William Lockridge. Gipe refused to name the third party.\n\nBy the end of August, three more men were arrested: Lewis Wales, Frank Wales and Joe George Lanham. The charges against them and Lockridge were eventually dropped. That left only one person to go to trial: Haley Gipe, who had only too obviously done his best to shift the blame onto anyone but himself. He was indicted by the grand jury in October; a _Courier-Journal_ account includes the curious statement, \"As yet he is ignorant of the serious charge that has been placed against him,\" which suggests that the papers knew more about the trouble Gipe was in than Gipe himself did. He found out the hard way on November 1, when he was arrested on a charge of first-degree murder.\n\nOnly a month later, on December 1, a jury convicted Gipe on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter rather than the original charge. It appears the members believed Gipe's story that he meant only to _scare_ Mrs. Starbuck, not _kill_ her. A popular speculation, which the jury may have heard, was that Gipe had so frightened Mrs. Starbuck by breaking into her house that she went insane and jumped down the well with her daughter, undoubtedly leaving him feeling foolish. His indeterminate sentence was two to twenty-one years in the State Reformatory at Jeffersonville. Under the circumstances, he got off lucky.\n\nHowever, this was not good enough for Gipe. At the reformatory, he maintained his innocence and refused to work. After a round of punishment, Gipe straightened up and became a \"good convict,\" an outcome that will not surprise anyone familiar with the concept of \"discipline\" as practiced in prisons of that era. Nevertheless, Gipe swore he'd take his case to the Supreme Court of Indiana to get a new trial. He was so obnoxious about it that a newspaper called him \"one of the most advertised men who ever wore stripes at the Indiana Reformatory.\" As a result of his efforts, some came to believe\u2014as they always will\u2014that an innocent man had been railroaded; in particular, many in Henry County believed he was the pawn of an unscrupulous detective from Ohio. His case was reopened in March 1905.\n\nGipe's retrial took place the following November. He might as well have not bothered. On December 18, the jury returned a second verdict of manslaughter and back he went to jail, where he had many years to reflect on the fact that he was the type of man who, at worst, would toss a young mother and baby down a well or, at best, would frighten them into taking the plunge.\n8\n\nJustice, Possibly\n\nFred and Caroline Buente were wealthy farmers who lived with their family six miles west of Evansville. They may have thought, as many people do, that raising their nine-year-old daughter, Lizzie, away from the big city would keep her from finding evil influences. But on Wednesday, May 12, 1897, evil influences found Lizzie.\n\nOn that date, Lizzie was looking after cattle in an oat field. Someone crept out of the forest, raped the girl and left her for dead. The _Evansville Courier_ described her injuries in no uncertain detail:\n\n[H] _er head was split open and her brains were scattered over the leaves and grass. Her clothes were torn from her lower limbs and the abdomen badly mutilated...The back of the head was mashed almost to a pulp and the brains were oozing out. Her eyes and mouth were filled with mud...The child's lower limbs were horribly bruised and mutilated, the abdomen having been mutilated with a knife before the rapist accomplished his awful work_.\n\nThe weapon was never determined, but examiners thought it was a hoe.\n\nLizzie was found unconscious an hour later and died in the afternoon without regaining consciousness. With her died not only her own hopes and dreams but also those of her parents and friends and all the good her descendants might have done on earth.\n\nThe outraged community got to work immediately. Neighborhood farmers organized posses, including one consisting of three hundred men; if we read between the lines of contemporary news reports, they brought along more rope than one would think necessary, despite a _Courier_ editorial urging that no one resort to vigilantism. The county commissioners held a meeting and offered a reward for the killer's capture. Judge Mattison ordered Sheriff Charles Covert to import R.T. Carter's famous bloodhounds from Seymour.\n\nThe bloodhounds followed a scent to Mount Vernon but lost the trail there. Several \"suspicious Negroes\" were arrested and jailed at that town. When the dogs were allowed to sniff the prisoners, they were interested in the scent of one particular man, Elbert Standard of Princeton, Kentucky. Blood spots allegedly were detected on his clothing; the story was later proved false. He was hustled off to the jail at Evansville for safekeeping. Standard protested that he had done nothing worse than sleep in one of the Buente stables. Police noted that his shoeprints did not match those left at the crime scene.\n\nOn May 14, Standard seemed cleared when word came that the right man\u2014a black man named John Spaulding\u2014had been caught at Morganfield, Kentucky. Nevertheless, mobs expressed a heartfelt desire to get their hands on Standard, and when Sheriff Covert took a special train to Morganfield, he took Standard with him. This was much to the disappointment of about three thousand people who surrounded the county jail and broke down the gate, so great was their wish to have a word with Elbert Standard.\n\nRumor held that a mob intended to travel from Mount Vernon to Kentucky to deal with Spaulding before Indiana authorities could pick him up, but the Morganfield jail was strongly guarded and any would-be lynchers were discouraged. A \"mob\" of six men did materialize, but their actions were limited to walking from the train depot to the jail, seeing the armed guards and then returning sheepishly to the depot.\n\nNo explanation was forthcoming in the papers as to the fate of Elbert Standard.\n\nBy this point, most onlookers were convinced of Spaulding's innocence. A prominent Morganfield attorney, Honorable H.D. Allen, interviewed the prisoner and vowed to defend him. On May 20, the examining trial was held to determine whether Spalding should be extradited to Evansville. Twenty-five witnesses came from Indiana, including Lizzie Buente's parents. A half dozen of them swore they saw Spaulding walking to Mount Vernon from the direction of the murder site. But there was no proof of guilt, and the Kentucky court discharged Spaulding for insufficient evidence.\n\nThe authorities in Evansville were displeased with this verdict and vowed to rearrest Spaulding. They wired back to Indiana requesting a warrant charging him with murder. But it appears nothing more was done.\n\n\"It may be,\" said the _Courier_ as far back as May 14, two days after the crime, \"that the murderer may never have justice meted out to him, but it will be no fault of the authorities and the law abiding people of Vanderburgh County.\" Chief of Detectives Brennecke was convinced the child's attacker hopped a freight train after committing the crime and was possibly hundreds of miles away.\n\nActing on the assumption that Lizzie's killer must be black, the authorities and Lizzie's neighbors may have let the real murderer escape. The _Courier_ noted on May 16:\n\n_There is no proof to justify the statement that Lizzie Buente was killed by a Negro, as the majority of people believe. Many of the neighbors of Mr. Buente believe that the stylishly dressed white man who was seen in the vicinity about 10 o'clock Wednesday morning committed the murder. What makes this theory seem reasonable is the fact that this man has not been seen since nor_ [have] _his whereabouts been ascertained_.\n\nFred Buente mentioned a creepy occurrence that took place on May 16, four days after his daughter's murder. He and his brother-in-law, Mr. Schnerr, were standing on the railroad tracks near the Buente farm when they saw a stranger approaching. Buente and Schnerr hid in the shade and watched the figure, who carried something under his arm. When the man arrived near the murder site, he stopped, hung his head and repeatedly said, \"No, no, I must not do it.\" After this display, the man continued walking to Evansville. For some reason, Mr. Buente did not follow him, a decision he later regretted. Had the killer returned to the scene of the crime?\n\nThe murder of Lizzie Buente was forever unsolved and justice was not done.\n\nOr was it?\n\nOn September 18, 1897, Gus Walters, presumably white and described as \"a young man of good family,\" was found guilty in Evansville of the attempted rape of a six-year-old girl named Frances Weinert on July 6. On September 28, he was sentenced to the Indiana Reformatory for a term of two to fourteen years. The city's correspondent remarked, perhaps na\u00efvely and perhaps not, in the pages of the _Louisville Courier-Journal_ :\n\n_It is a queer coincidence that only a few months ago, when this community was startled with the story of the assault and murder of Lizzie Buente, a little country girl, Gus Walters led a posse in a bloodhound chase for the villain who committed the crime. Only a few weeks later he was arrested for attempting a similar crime_.\n\nIt is possible the Evansville authorities put away a budding young serial killer without knowing it. We know now, as the people of 1897 did not, that a common characteristic of such murderers is their innate need to participate in the hunt for themselves\u2014just as perhaps Walters did after Lizzie Buente was killed.\n9\n\nThe Honeymooners\n\nJames and Lillie May Mastison, an attractive young couple, were married on July 9, 1901\u2014possibly under the encouragement of a shotgun, because only six months later, in January 1902, Lillie gave birth. Soon afterward, the newlyweds moved into the home of Lillie's father, William H. Proctor, at 1418 South Street, New Albany.\n\nAt 9:30 on the evening of Saturday, August 23, 1902, the noticeably unhappy couple got off a streetcar and was walking to Mr. Proctor's house. A nearby patrolman, Jacob Fess, heard seven shots ring out. Investigating, he found Mrs. Mastison crumpled on the ground, shot four times, including once through the heart, dead at only nineteen years old. Mr. Mastison was absent but returned a few minutes later; he said he had run to a telephone to call for help.\n\nThe lighting was poor in that section of the city, but three witnesses\u2014a nurse named Mary Keene, Dr. Ritter and R.B. Frazee\u2014were close enough to hear a woman cry, \"For God's sake, don't kill me! I have a little baby to care for.\" A man answered, \"I'll finish you now.\"\n\nThe pool of suspects was small\u2014in fact, there was only one: Lillie's husband, James, a twenty-three-year-old painter. He told the police that an unknown man had shot at the couple, hitting him in the wrist and killing his wife. What's more, he had the superficial flesh wound to prove it. Patrolmen Jacob Fess and John Rhinehart did not believe Mastison and arrested him at the murder scene.\n\nThe more authorities investigated, the worse Mastison looked. Inquiries established that he and his wife had been \"on the outs\" with each other for a while and had undertaken a violent argument on the Thursday night before her death.\n\nLillie Mastison. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 27, 1902. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nOn the day of the shooting, the Mastisons were supposed to meet downtown. Instead, Lillie went to the business district to make a payment on furniture. James, not finding her at their meeting place, went home in a rage and got a pistol. In other words, he was armed and angry on the night of her death. He went back downtown to look for her, and by coincidence, they boarded the same streetcar. Henry Platt, the motorman, said the pair had been pointedly chilly toward each other all the way home\u2014their mutual hostility was witnessed by every passenger. The bickering couple got off, and less than a minute later, seven shots were fired in the darkness.\n\nCoroner Starr noted that Mrs. Mastison's shirtwaist bore powder burns, so whoever shot her must have been standing close by.\n\nBut how to account for that fact that no gun was found on the suspect, even though police were at Mrs. Mastison's side soon after the shooting? The weeds were high in the area, and it was possible Mastison had thrown it in the underbrush with a plan of retrieving and disposing of it later. He had not counted on help arriving so quickly, the New Albany police theorized, and had to think fast. Confirmation came the day after the crime when a patrolman found a recently fired pistol in a vacant lot near Mr. Proctor's house. The lot was located along the route Mastison had taken to get to the telephone from which he made his emergency call. The pistol fired .32-caliber bullets\u2014the kind that killed Mrs. Mastison\u2014so it appeared that Mr. Mastison's phantom gunman had flung the weapon down rather than sensibly taking it with him.\n\nOf course, there was no phantom gunman. When Mr. Proctor saw the gun, he said it belonged to none other than his son-in-law, James Mastison; it was immediately identifiable by its white handle and a mark filed on the barrel. Mastison could do little more than look glumly at his feet and protest that he had no _earthly_ idea how some villain managed to get hold of his gun.\n\nJames Mastison. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 27, 1902. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nDespite all the circumstantial evidence, Mastison refused to admit his guilt.\n\nOn August 26, the coroner's jury convened. One witness, William Overton, said that he, Albert Drury and Everett O'Connor had been standing a block away from the murder site on the night in question when they, too, heard those seven shots. Shortly thereafter, a man Overton identified as James Mastison came walking up the opposite side of the street. When they asked what the commotion was about, Mastison replied, \"Someone has shot a dog.\" The \"dog\" had emitted humanlike screams, which the three men heard along with the gunfire.\n\nLucretia Proctor, Lillie's mother, said that Mastison had dropped by the house for a few minutes about an hour before the murder was committed. He appeared to be in a jealous rage, and told his mother-in-law, \"She has run off and I expect she has gone over to the river to a dance, and if I catch her on the dancing floor she will come off.\" In fact, said Mrs. Proctor, he had a vicious jealous streak and forbade his wife to so much as look at any other man. On several occasions, Mrs. Proctor had heard him threaten to take Lillie's life.\n\nThe most important witness was Hugh Thomas, who lived at 1307 South Street, mere feet from the murder site. He heard the shots, looked outside and saw a man firing at a woman on the ground. According to Thomas, she said, \"Oh my, you have killed me.\" Her attacker replied, \"Damn you, I have fixed you.\" (The dialogue as Thomas remembered it doesn't sound quite right to modern ears\u2014it has a stilted, stagelike quality to it\u2014but hey, it was 1902.)\n\nThe coroner ordered Mastison\u2014the one and only logical suspect in New Albany, or on the face of the earth for that matter\u2014be tried for murdering his wife. In the face of all this, he still asserted his innocence.\n\nThe X marks the place where James Mastison's revolver was found. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 27, 1902. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nThe grand jury indicted Mastison on October 16. His attorneys asked for a change of venue to Jeffersonville\u2014or was it, as some thought, merely a ploy to gain more time? The request was granted, and the trial was scheduled to begin on November 23; however, it was delayed until December 8 because one of the defense witnesses, Mary Mastison, the prisoner's mother, was ill.\n\nThe accused man's court-appointed attorneys were Charles Schindler, Joseph McKee and Harry Montgomery. At first, they claimed their client was an epileptic\u2014they said he had an \"epileptic eye,\" whatever that meant\u2014but soon dropped this unpromising line of defense. Then, they attempted, none too subtly, to blame the victim. According to a November 30 _Louisville Courier-Journal_ report:\n\n_After his marriage...he became insanely jealous of her. She was good-looking, sprightly and popular, and frequently, it was stated, associated with persons of not the best reputation. Stories of her indiscretions were brought to Mastison, who was greatly in love with her, and these stories aggravated his mental condition_.\n\nAbout the best anyone could say for Mastison was that the killing had been so foolishly executed that it must have been done in the heat of the moment, as no sensible human could premeditate a murder _that_ stupidly. For example, to list just a couple circumstances, the murder occurred only moments after a number witnesses saw him and his wife, obviously angry with each other, getting off a streetcar together, and he killed her next to a residence where, for all he knew, any occupant who happened to be home could see him at work. But arguing for a reduced penalty due to lack of premeditation wasn't good enough for the defense attorneys\u2014they had to dust off the oldest, lamest excuse in the history of jurisprudence and pray for the best: they claimed their client, James Mastison, had been insane on the night he shot his wife down like a dog.\n\nPleading not guilty by reason of insanity was a strategic mistake: all this time, Mastison had steadfastly been denying that he killed his wife. But pleading insanity was a tacit admission that he _had_ pulled the trigger after all.\n\nThe more Mastison pondered his predicament, the more nervous he became. If the creaky insanity tactic did not impress the jury, he would certainly swing from the gallows like a Foucault pendulum. So on December 9, the second day of the trial, he decided the smartest course of action was to come clean. He confessed and entered a plea of guilty. He claimed his deed had been manslaughter rather than a coolly planned murder, which may well have been true considering his extreme incompetence. To a reporter, Mastison said:\n\n_Yes, I killed her. But I was not responsible. I was crazy\u2014crazy on account of her treatment and her way of living. I tried to do the best I could by her, but she did not appreciate my kindness, and deceived me not only once, but every time she got a chance. Had she been true to me the trouble would never have happened. I loved her as long as I thought she was doing right, but when I found out she was betraying the vows she had taken, I began to hate her, and I became insane. There has been insanity in our family, and no wonder I could not stand what she did_.\n\nHe went on to confirm the details that everyone had long before figured out. After slaying Lillie, he had tossed the gun in the high weeds but had been unable to reclaim it as planned because he had been immediately clapped into a jail cell. He added that he didn't think he would be in prison all _that_ long.\n\nThe X marks the place where Lillie Mastison's body was found. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 27, 1902. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nHe was sentenced to life at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City without further delay. If anything, he seemed only too eager to start his prison sentence. He said being alone in his Jeffersonville cell was no fun, and he wanted to go where he could have some company. He also said that he was glad he murdered his wife and should have exterminated her long before he did. One wonders if he had such coldblooded sentiments about his child. The reader will recall that Lillie Mastison's last words were, \"For God's sake, don't kill me! I have a little baby to care for.\" At the time of her murder, her baby was almost eight months old. The child sickened and died five weeks after its mother's death.\n\nMastison was taken to his new, permanent residence on December 14, during appropriately depressing weather. The prisoner and his escort, Jeffersonville sheriff Herman Rave, arrived in the midst of a raging sleet storm that had knocked out Michigan City's electricity. The two slipped on the city streets like fugitives from a Mack Sennett movie until they got to the prison door.\n\nJames Mastison put the state and its taxpayers through much unnecessary trouble and expense; he admitted his obvious guilt only when it would have been preposterous to deny it any further, and even then only to spare himself the indignity of a hanging; and he wasted everyone's time and insulted everyone's intelligence by pretending to be insane. By contrast, and for a refreshing change of pace, let's examine the actions of another Indiana wife-killer whose crime took place in Kokomo on October 7, 1909, only a few years after the Mastison murder.\n\nOn that date, William Robison shot his wife, Jennie, in a dry goods store after she said she wanted a divorce. When he was arrested a few minutes later he said, \"I guess I am crazy.\"\n\nUnlike many killers who feign insanity, Robison actually had a believable claim to inherited craziness. His father, David Robison, had attained unenviable fame in 1875 when he slashed the throats of his two daughters, attempted to murder his wife and took a shot at his son, William. (In fact, the grown-up William had a bullet scar in his cheek, a permanent reminder of the day his old man lost it.) The elder Robison capped his energetic performance by taking a fatal fall off a train while trying to escape.\n\nWilliam Robison inherited not only his father's penchant for murder but also his stubborn streak. Instead of making the legal system jump through hoops as James Mastison had done, Robison immediately pled guilty and refused to use the insanity defense. When told he was entitled to a lawyer, he said he didn't want one. Within twenty-four hours of his crime, he was given a life sentence at Michigan City\u2014the same place Mastison was sent. One wonders if they spent their life sentences comparing notes on how to abuse\u2014or not abuse\u2014the judicial process.\n10\n\nWith a Smile on Her Face\n\nThe first national headline about the crime was datelined December 1, 1930: \"Shock of Attack Is Fatal to Girl.\" In those more demure times, one had to read between the lines to understand that the vague headline meant a young woman had died of injuries sustained during a rape. She was Arlene Draves, age eighteen, who had just graduated from Emerson High School in Gary. Five men were arrested who were barely older than she: Leon Stanford, age twenty-one; Paul Barton, age twenty-one; David Thompson, age unknown; Henry Shirk, age twenty-four; and Virgil Kirkland, age twenty.\n\nSuch a crime would be scandalous to any community, but two of the alleged attackers, Stanford and Kirkland, had been idolized as former football stars at Gary High School. Kirkland had been the team's halfback in 1929 when they won the state championship. According to one account, he was expelled from school\u2014reason not given. He had since gone to work at a steel mill and was the steady boyfriend of the girl he was arrested for raping and killing. Kirkland and Draves were not officially engaged, but it was said that they planned to get married. One of Kirkland's high school friends, Mrs. Ethel Madera, claimed that the couple had gone so far as to drive to Valparaiso for a marriage license, but Arlene appears to have gotten cold feet and called it off.\n\nThe already sufficiently sordid story got worse as details leaked out. The five accused men and Draves had been participants at a \"gin party\"\u2014illegal in itself, since these were Prohibition days. It was held at the home of Thompson, a married man, on the night of November 29.\n\nKirkland told the police in a written confession that Draves got drunk and passed out, so he carried her to the porch to revive her. While there, he raped her. Later that night, the five men loaded Draves into Paul Barton's car and went out for hamburgers. When Kirkland went inside to order the food, the four other men gang-raped Draves\u2014apparently with his encouragement. Kirkland came back to the car and sat with her while his companions went in to eat. She died in the car in the early morning hours of November 30, as attested by a loiterer at the restaurant who heard Kirkland shout to his party pals, \"My God, feel her pulse! I think she's dead!\" The panicking drunks rushed her to Dr. R.O. Wharton, who declared that she had passed away. Kirkland and company fled the scene as fast as they could, while the doctor urged them to come back and take some responsibility.\n\nThe four other prisoners also confessed. The coroner's jury held that Arlene Draves had died of cerebral hemorrhage and shock and recommended that all five be charged with first-degree murder. It was decided that they would be tried separately, with Kirkland's trial to be held first.\n\nIt seemed cut and dried, at least until Virgil Kirkland's trial began in Valparaiso on February 23, 1931, with the prosecution and defense seeking twelve jury members that could pass muster with both sides. Delicate (and indelicate) questions would have to be answered. Were the defendants' confessions legitimate? Was only one of them guilty? Were all of them? None? If any of them killed her, was it intentional or accidental\u2014murder or manslaughter? How had Arlene Draves actually died? Was any sexual activity that took place at the gin party consensual or forced? To get to the truth, many details of the last hours of Draves's short life would be revealed under oath\u2014details that ranged from the tawdry to the downright gruesome. People who enjoyed sensational trials would batten to their heart's content, at least insofar as the nation's newspapers would allow them to. Some details were deemed unprintable and remain mysteries to this day. Portions of the more shocking testimony that did make it past the censors came from acquaintances of Kirkland's, who swore that he said he would \"knock [the] hell out of Arlene\" if she refused to give in to his sexual demands. He also said he would \"spoil Arlene\" so no other man would want her.\n\nThe trial got under way on February 26. So many spectators attended that Judge Grant Crumpacker had to move the trial to a larger courtroom for fear the floor would collapse. A number of detectives and doctors gave testimony detrimental to Kirkland. Lieutenant Paul Thixton told of his initial confession: \"Kirkland denied attacking the girl. [Deputy Coroner Chester] Owens then told Kirkland about the blood and bruises on Arlene's body. Kirkland sobbed on my shoulder and then confessed. He admitted that he and four other men had attacked Arlene during the night.\"\n\nThe police got signed confessions from Kirkland and the other men as well, but the defense objected to Kirkland's statement being entered as evidence on the grounds that it had been \"obtained with the aid of police blackjacks and under police duress.\" They appear to have provided no proof of this serious charge.\n\nAfter a delay, Judge Crumpacker ruled that the statement, in which Kirkland admitted molesting his girlfriend three times, was admissible\u2014but only if references to rapes committed by the other four men were stricken, presumably because such inflammatory statements might jeopardize their chances of getting fair trials later.\n\nThe next day's testimony featured a detail that no novelist would dare include in fiction. The witness was Victoria Leonard, the waitress on duty when Arlene Draves's alleged attackers hauled her to a late-night hamburger stand. Leonard testified that Kirkland and two of the other accused men had bloody hands when they paid for their food.\n\nRichard Sturtridge, former DePauw University athlete, admitted he had supplied the party with alcohol. The defense's theory was that Arlene Draves bled to death when she got intoxicated and fell down, striking her head, and Sturtridge supported their contention. He saw Kirkland and Draves sitting on the porch, and then, \"I went inside and heard a loud crash. I rushed out to find Babe (Arlene) fainted on the floor [of the porch]. Virgil told me she had fallen off a chair, drunk. I helped him pick her up. She was making a sort of sobbing sound.\"\n\nOn the other hand, Dr. James Burcham, coroner's physician, stated that the \"falling off a chair\" theory was nonsense, as it did not explain the extent and location of Draves's injuries. During the previous day's testimony, he said she had died of two hemorrhages, \"one of them of the brain.\" (The papers prudently did not mention the site of the other one.) He now elaborated that her death was caused by \"a cerebral hemorrhage plus shock of repeated attacks.\"\n\nOn March 3, Dr. L.N. Harger of Indianapolis, who had examined Arlene's vital organs, surprised everyone by stating that he found evidence that the liquor had been poisoned\u2014but not poisoned enough to kill her. This did not necessarily mean someone had tried to commit murder by spiking her drink; during Prohibition, bootleg alcohol was liable to be filled with dangerous additives and unwholesome ingredients, and the imbiber of such hooch took his life into his own hands. Later evidence indicated that the party liquor included wood alcohol.\n\nTestimony about Arlene Draves's fatal injuries was so contradictory that the defense requested her body be disinterred and reexamined. The judge ruled in their favor. Caroline Draves, sister of the victim, stood up and asked, \"Can you do that without permission from the family?\" When Judge Crumpacker answered yes, she fainted.\n\nA team of defense physicians, attorneys and reporters took a trip to the small Lutheran cemetery in the town of Reynolds on March 4 to unearth Arlene's gray plush coffin and bring the poor girl once more into the sunlight. Naturally, the graveyard was choked with spectators whose fondest hope was to see something suitably horrifying. The coffin was driven to a small-frame building where the examination was to take place. Gawkers hopped into their cars and followed the lead vehicle to the building in a morbid parade. And it appears, from a March 5 _Courier-Journal_ article, that they were not forbidden from entering:\n\n_They crowded into the tiny room, the coffin was lifted to a table and Coroner W.L. Henry lifted the lid. Arlene's brother and sister stood quietly at the foot of the coffin. Charles Draves, her elderly father, sobbed just outside the room. The spectators started as they beheld the body of the girl, three months dead. The cheeks were rouged, the eyes closed and the mouth smiling_.\n\nShe was probably the only person in the room who was smiling. The assembled spectators had a good look; then, and only then, did the authorities shoo everyone away except four physicians\u2014two for the state, two for the defense. Tissue samples were collected for shipment to expert medical examiners in Chicago, the coffin was resealed, and Arlene once again laid to rest beside the grave of her mother. Charles Draves muttered, \"Why couldn't they have left my child in peace?\"\n\nWhen asked about the exhumation, the defense admitted that matters looked very ominous for Virgil Kirkland and had his former sweetheart dug up out of desperation to find evidence that would exonerate him. Meanwhile, the prosecution made no secret of the fact that it wanted to dust off the electric chair with the seat of Kirkland's pants.\n\nThe experts in Chicago hastily examined Arlene's viscera, and the trial continued on March 5. The result was another stalemate: two defense physicians, Dr. Joseph Springer and Dr. H.O. Seipel, testified that they found no evidence of rape and opined that she had died of a blow to the head. Springer's opinion was convincing; he was Chicago's former coroner's physician and had performed twenty-five thousand postmortems in the course of his career. By contrast, the prosecution brought in Dr. George Bicknell, also of Chicago, who declared that bruises and discreetly unspecified \"other injuries\" were present on Draves's body at both autopsies.\n\nA sensation developed on March 5 when the defense said Virgil Kirkland would take the stand the next day to discuss his relationship with Arlene Draves and describe what transpired at the notorious gin party. This he did, tearfully telling the court how he met and fell in love with Arlene. She had visited him in the hospital when he was recuperating from a football injury. That's where they had their first kiss. Yes, they had had sexual relations, but it was consensual. They were engaged, he said, and they would have married soon had the great tragedy not occurred at the gin party. Concerning that party, he said:\n\n_We drank straight alcohol and wine. Babe and I went to a davenport and embraced each other. We talked of love. Then we went out on the porch to a settee_. [At this point, the attorneys for both sides quarreled like fishwives, after which Kirkland was allowed to continue.] _Arlene was dazed-like. I didn't slap her. I told her I loved her. She said she felt dizzy. And then she fell to the floor. I was dazed. We picked her up_.\n\nHe did not strike his unconscious girlfriend, he said; he merely shook her because she was in a stupor. Instead of calling a doctor, Kirkland and his equally intoxicated friends went out for a bite to eat and took the injured girl with them. As for Arlene's having been raped\u2014either by himself or others\u2014he seemed to know nothing about it.\n\nThe state wrapped up its case on March 9. John Underwood argued that Kirkland was a \"wolfish\" cad determined to \"despoil\" his girlfriend one way or another. Some witnesses, including Richard Sturtridge, had noted that Arlene said she wanted to leave the party and go home; Underwood saw this as evidence that she knew what Kirkland's real motives were. On the other hand, defense attorney John Crumpacker argued that the state had proved neither murder nor rape. (Mr. Crumpacker, incidentally, was the son of the presiding judge. If anyone thought this was peculiar, and possibly a conflict of interest, it does not appear in the record.)\n\nSome of the final testimony came from Dr. Erik Bukhofzer, assistant pathologist at the University of Illinois, who stated that he found tears in a tissue specimen from the dead girl. This was at odds with the defense pathologist, who said he saw no torn tissue. The jury could be forgiven if it was badly confused by the mindboggling, contradictory evidence from the dueling experts\u2014and also by the fact that it was given twenty-two possible verdicts from which to choose.\n\nArlene Draves. _Courtesy of Thomas Clark_.\n\nDespite the confusion, it did not take the jurors long to reach a verdict. On March 10, after deliberating a little less than four hours, they found Kirkland guilty of murder. The evidence showed, they felt, that Kirkland had struck his girlfriend with his fist when she resisted his advances, causing injuries that led to her death later that evening. They were not certain that he had caused other fatal injuries by sexually assaulting her and did not take that into consideration when deciding the verdict. The sentence was life in prison at Michigan City. \"We're satisfied,\" said Kirkland's attorney Barrett O'Hara, which suggests that the defense team expected its client to go to the electric chair. The next day, Mr. O'Hara preposterously opined that _society_ was really to blame for Arlene Draves's death\u2014specifically, Prohibition: \"He wasn't the guilty one, remember. Society with its Prohibition, which brought about such gin parties, is really responsible for that murder.\"\n\nOn March 11, the day after the jury made its decision, the defense attorneys claimed that a mysterious woman had emerged with sensational new evidence that would totally clear Kirkland. The unnamed woman attended the gin party, they said, and had witnessed a girl who was jealous of Arlene Draves strike her over the head with a milk bottle. They did not say where this witness had been when the defense so badly needed her during the trial, nor why she had waited until the proceedings were over to come forward, but they implied that she would be of critical importance in winning Kirkland a reversal of his life sentence. This marvelous surprise witness must not have panned out, because we hear nothing more of her.\n\nNevertheless, Judge Crumpacker granted Virgil Kirkland a second trial in April 1931, scarcely more than a month after his first trial ended, on the grounds that \"the evidence was insufficient to uphold the verdict.\" Crumpacker found fault with the jury's belief that Draves's murder had been premeditated; if that were so, asked the judge, why had Kirkland rushed her off to a doctor? (The judge's logic appears to be faulty in this regard. Kirkland and his pals sought medical help for Arlene only after they stopped off for a leisurely hamburger feast and finally noticed that she wasn't breathing. Also, when Dr. Wharton informed them the girl was dead, the men fled only to be caught later.)\n\nKirkland's second trial began on May 12 after the court had considerable trouble finding twelve jurors. The possibility that Kirkland had killed his girlfriend by punching her would not be considered this time around. According to the _Courier-Journal_ , prosecutor Underwood amended \"the indictments against him to include only two counts charging that Miss Draves was killed as the result of a criminal attack or attempted criminal attack.\" This meant that only two possible fates were now open for Kirkland: either he would be set free or he would go to the electric chair. He could not return to his life sentence.\n\nThe testimony was mostly a repeat of the first trial, but there were some new witnesses: George Regal and Edwin Minner, both Gary policemen, who testified that they witnessed Kirkland's confession after his arrest. Two Gary youths, John Churchill and Fred Phillips, testified that a few days before the gin party, they heard Kirkland say that he would beat up Draves if she didn't \"accede to his demands.\" Nicholas Christoff, owner of the hamburger joint where Kirkland and his classy friends had stopped the night Draves died, said he overheard Kirkland remarking to them, \"I fixed her that time\u2014now's your chance.\" This was understood to be an invitation to his friends to molest the unconscious girl in the car.\n\nTwo of Kirkland's friends at the gin party, Henry Shirk and Paul Barton, testified on May 18 even though they were awaiting their own trials; they spoke voluntarily and had not been promised clemency. The other two partiers, Dave Thompson and Leon Stanford, refused to speak on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves. Kirkland \"seemed to cringe\" when his pals took the stand, according to a reporter. As well he might have: much of what Shirk and Barton said was considered unprintable by the newspapers, but it is clear they admitted participating in a gang rape. The _Courier-Journal_ reported:\n\n_Haltingly when their testimony touched upon the gruesome and the revolting, but without reservation, they admitted their own indiscretions at the party and accused Kirkland of leading the attacks which State physicians say caused the girl's death in an automobile shortly before dawn last November 30..._ [Barton said,] _\"She seemed to be unconscious. Kirkland invited us to be intimate with her.\"_\n\nShirk's testimony corroborated Barton's. It looked like Kirkland was bound for death row instead of freedom, and his attorneys promptly tried to find a way to gain a third option\u2014that of sending him back to jail, for life if necessary and for less if possible. Judge Crumpacker seemed unwilling to give the death penalty to a man barely out of his teenage years, and on May 19, he said that he would grant a third choice for the jury. He would instruct them to reach one of three possible verdicts: guilty of murder by rape, guilty of rape or not guilty. If the jury chose the first option, Kirkland would die; if they chose the second, he would return to prison after all\u2014and instead of his previous life sentence, he would serve between five and twenty-one years.\n\nThe jurors again were treated to the spectacle of respected doctors with excellent reputations and years of professional experience flatly contradicting each other. Dr. George Bicknell testified that Arlene Draves was killed by a blow to the head; Dr. E.S. Jones disagreed, and both physicians were _prosecution_ witnesses. Dr. Harry Kahn for the defense thought Arlene Draves had died solely due to a cerebral hemorrhage, not due to injuries caused by rape. Doctors Dittner, Dobbins and Seipel agreed with him. But defense witness Dr. E.H. Powell rocked the boat when he complained about the nature of the questions Kirkland's attorneys asked:\n\n_That hypothetical question_ [asked by the defense about the hemorrhage] _was phrased so it could be answered in only one way, and that's the reason I answered it that way. As a matter of fact, I believe that the criminal attack, exposure, and extrabural hemorrhage all contributed to the girl's death_.\n\nKirkland himself took the stand again on May 21. \"I couldn't have killed Babe,\" he said. \"Why, we were engaged to be married. I loved her.\" He and Arlene had been sitting on the porch at Dave Thompson's house: \"Then she got dizzy. I slapped her to sober her up.\" (Previously he said he merely shook her.) \"She fell off a chair and hit her head on the floor.\" He admitted he and his cronies had abandoned the dead girl at Dr. Wharton's house but did not say why.\n\nThe case went to the jury on May 26. The jurors were given seven possible verdicts rather than the three choices Judge Crumpacker had said he would give when instructing them. They left the courtroom with the prosecutors' demand that they give Kirkland the death penalty ringing in their ears.\n\nIn a trial loaded with bizarre moments, one of the strangest came when the jury returned its verdict on the night of the twenty-sixth, after two hours' deliberation: Kirkland was guilty of assault and battery with intent to commit rape. The sentence that went with this offense was one to ten years in prison. This meant that, conceivably, he could serve only one year for good behavior. When the jurors discovered this after the fact, they protested that they did not realize the punishment would be so light. They thought the sentence would be death\u2014they had fully intended to send Kirkland to the electric chair.\n\nThe situation was unprecedented. Judge Crumpacker confessed, \"I am frankly puzzled. I do not know what to do.\" But after the sentence was passed, it was too late for a do-over. Virgil Kirkland, who was marked for the chair, escaped it only because of the jury's mistake.\n\nThe remainder of the squalid tale can be told in a few words.\n\nProsecutors threatened to demand that the proceedings be declared a mistrial but never did so. The jurors released a statement on June 7 to the effect that they had been confused because they were told at the beginning of the trial that the only two options for Kirkland were death or freedom but later the judge opened a third possibility. It was to no avail; assistant prosecutor Robert Estil told the press that Kirkland had officially been sentenced and the jury's statement had \"no legal value.\"\n\nOn May 27, Kirkland was sent to the reformatory at Pendleton to serve his comparatively soft one- to ten-year sentence. Judge Crumpacker told the prisoner as he left, \"You have been fortunate.\" A prosecutor remarked, \"Now when you get out, behave yourself.\"\n\nThe defense's victory was marred somewhat when Sheriff Birney Maxwell arrested one of Kirkland's attorneys, Ronald Oldham, on a charge of passing a bad check in Ohio. Oldham settled his bad debt, only to face a charge in early June of practicing law in Illinois without a license, which would cost him a $500 fine.\n\nAnother defense witness, one of the plethora of doctors called to the stand, was found drunk in the street after the verdict was rendered.\n\nOn June 9, Judge Crumpacker put an end to the case when he refused to alter the jury's verdict. The _Courier-Journal_ related: \"The Judge challenged the State to prove that Kirkland should have been given a longer sentence under a jury's verdict of 'guilty of assault and battery with intent to commit criminal assault.' The prosecution offered no evidence.\"\n\nThe other four men who were arrested along with Virgil Kirkland never went to trial even though two of them admitted _under oath_ to being rapists. They were released from jail and slunk back to their everyday lives.\n\nVirgil Kirkland sought a parole in June 1933 and was turned down. He tried again in August 1937 and got lucky. He was set free, having served six years and three months of a sentence that the jury thought far too lenient even if he had served every minute of it.\n\nArlene Draves rests yet in Reynolds with a smile on her face.\n11\n\nThe Stage's Loss Was St. Louis's Gain\n\nOn March 1, 1914, Ada Owsley, formerly from Madison, Indiana, shot her husband, Benjamin, three times in their home at 1219 Warren Street, St. Louis. When the police arrived, they found Mr. Owsley dead on the floor and his wife in an attitude of prayer. She had contusions over the left eye and on her left cheek and leg, and there were signs of a recent struggle in the room. The self-made widow's tone was nothing short of boastful:\n\n_I have been able to shoot squirrels out of a tree with a revolver. My husband and I quarreled, and he insulted me grossly. He then started into another room, saying he was going after a revolver. I took a revolver out of a bureau drawer, and when he returned, I began shooting. He kept coming, and I fired until he dropped. I was surprised, as I am a crack shot and thought several of the shots must have hit him_.\n\nHer story did not jibe with Mr. Owsley's condition. Although she said she shot as he approached her threateningly, the only bullet wound the dead man had was in his _back_ , so he must have been walking away from her when she shot him. Also, she said at first that she fired \"several\" shots but later would claim she fired only twice. Later still, she would include the additional detail that he had brandished a poker, though she said nothing about the weapon in the earliest reports.\n\nOfficers took Mrs. Owsley away\u2014not to jail, as one might expect, but to a hospital\u2014so she could recuperate from the nervous condition that a woman develops after ventilating her husband. At some point, the demure flower must have realized that her piratical braggadocio would not win an acquittal if her case came to trial. While in the observation ward, she made a show of hysterically crying out for her beloved Benjamin and asking the doctors about his condition, as if she were unaware that she had just put a hole in his hide.\n\nParadoxically, while on one hand she claimed that she thought Mr. Owsley still walked among the living, on the other hand, she wrote a confession in which she admitted killing him. She added that the shooting was in self-defense and the culmination of months of physical abuse. He had attempted to \"force indignities upon her\" and, in 1912, had vowed to kill her with a razor and a hatchet. At the hospital, she said, \"I wouldn't have harmed a hair on his head, although he did abuse me. I loved him. I know I killed him, for the Lord stands before me and tells me. I must be a murderess, but I don't care if I am strung up. I will tell the truth.\"\n\nIt seems she was only feigning indifference as to whether she was \"strung up.\" At the coroner's inquest on March 3, she shifted from the arrogance she had displayed after the shooting to a grossly overplayed fearfulness, as though she believed her husband was alive and expected him to give her a thrashing right there in the coroner's office.\n\n\"Have mercy on me!\" she screamed as a patrolman led her into the room. \"Have mercy on me! Where is he? Don't let him beat me anymore!\"\n\nThen, she sobbed bitterly\u2014and ostentatiously\u2014in the arms of her son by a previous marriage, Edward Ricketts.\n\nThe newspapers tell us that \"[s]he became so frantic that the officers were directed to return her to the hospital as quickly as possible.\" Thus, she was spared from telling her story on the stand and facing cross-examination. Edward Ricketts filled in the gap by testifying that his stepfather \"was abusive to his mother, would not speak to her for long periods, often threatened to kill her, and nagged her about other women.\" That last phrase meant that the cad loved to tell her how attractive other women found him.\n\nHowever, her stepson, Robert Owsley, testified that he had heard her boast about her prowess with a pistol and that she said she had shot a woman in Madison in 1905. This interesting revelation appears to have never been further investigated.\n\nThe coroner's jury, possibly impressed by Mrs. Owsley's histrionics, found that she had killed her husband in self-defense. The _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ noted that five of the city's women in the last three years had murdered their spouses, and all five had been acquitted. (One of them, Alma James, claimed she was asleep when she shot her dear Leon; another, Emily Roberts, could provide as a motive only that her William had boasted ceaselessly of his infidelities. The reader may be forgiven for supposing that while women could not vote in 1914, this infringement of their civil rights was somewhat palliated by the ease with which so many of them got away with murder.)\n\nMrs. Owsley was set free and spent another month in the hospital recovering from what was called \"hysteria,\" one of those vague old medical terms that can mean nearly anything.\n\nDespite the coroner's jury's ringing endorsement, Ada Owsley was not out of the woods yet, legally speaking; her stepson, Robert, agitated to have her tried, and the grand jury decreed that she be indicted on a charge of second-degree murder after all.\n\nOne of the state's witnesses in the second trial was Benjamin Owsley's former wife, Rosa, who said she would have some unflattering stories to tell about poor, put-upon Ada\u2014not the least of which was that she was a home-wrecker who had seduced her Benjamin.\n\nAda Owsley's trial began on May 6. She entered the courtroom dramatically: she was dressed in black, heavily veiled and leaning on her natural son's, Edward Ricketts, arm. Her performance in this venue outstripped the comparatively restrained presentation she gave before the coroner's jury. Had she actually been an actress onstage, no doubt she would have employed the then popular\u2014and famously unsubtle\u2014Delsarte method, replete with gestures and gymnastics. During cross-examination, she shrieked and cried, \"Bennie, I didn't want to shoot you! Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul!\" The women in the courtroom wept.\n\nShe said she was a battered wife. Bennie choked her so often that she had to wear a handkerchief around her neck to hide the bruises. On one occasion, the brute ordered her to remove the handkerchief: \"I made those marks!\" she claimed he had said. \"They are signs that I love you!\"\n\nThis is what she said happened just before she shot him. The reader may believe as much of it as he likes:\n\n_He kicked me on the shins as I sat in the Morris chair in the front room after dinner, until I got down on my knees_ [just like a Delsarte actress] _and begged him to stop. He tore off my glasses, saying, \"I don't want to go to the penitentiary for hitting you with your glasses on.\"_ [Yet he apparently didn't mind if she walked around in public with bruises on her throat, visible evidence he had choked her; and did he think he would not go to jail as long as her glasses were off when he struck her?] _He jerked me onto the bed. I tried to get away, but he threw me back again. He knocked me down three times. \"Where's that gun?\" he demanded. I told him it was in a trunk in the front room. As he went into the room to search for it I heard him lock the front door. Then I drew the revolver from the washstand drawer beside the bed. He returned from his search and looking at my face, which was streaming with blood, said: \"I've spoiled your face, kid, now I'll take the poker to you.\" As he reached down for the poker I fired. I don't know how often I fired. All I remember is hearing him shout and seeing him coming toward me with hands stretched out like this and his face looked all purple. Then he fell. I fired because I knew he would kill me_.\n\nAfter this theatrical recitation, she swooned. She revived just in time to shout, \"God have mercy on me!\" as she was carried out of the room by two deputy sheriffs.\n\nA patrolman named Rohlfing testified that Mrs. Owsley had admitted that she shot her husband in the back while he was running away, a flat contradiction of both her initial confession and the story she told under oath. While at the hospital, Mrs. Owsley displayed bruises and cuts she supposedly got before the shooting, but the city's autopsy physician testified that her husband's corpse had a bruised nose and a scratched finger, which infers that the couple had a brawl in which Mrs. Owsley gave as well as she got. Evidence regarding the couple's quarrels was not permitted, and former wife Rosa Owsley's intended testimony about Ada's bad reputation was dismissed as remote.\n\nBut none of that mattered; it was an era when all-male juries were reluctant to find any woman guilty of murder unless she confessed to a crime of unusual magnitude, such as poisoning a couple generations' worth of her family or burying a carload of murdered hobos in her cellar. Had there been some skeptical, nonsympathetic women on the jury, Mrs. Owsley might have found her path more difficult.\n\nAfter deliberating for forty-four hours, the jury could not reach an agreement and was dismissed. The more rational among them pointed out that Mrs. Owsley's pathetic, mouse-like trembling in court did not square with the cool boasts about her excellent marksmanship just after she killed her husband.\n\nEven had she been convicted of third-degree manslaughter, as some jurors wanted, she probably would have received the minimum penalty of three months in jail and a $100 fine. There is no record that Mrs. Owsley was tried a second time for the slaying.\n12\n\nOtto Embellishes\n\nOtto Vest married twenty-three-year-old Lucille Tabor at Seelyville on September 7, 1917. It was her second venture onto the sea of matrimony; her first husband, a man named Bailey, and her two children from that marriage lived at Glen Ayr, a town of microscopic size near Terre Haute. Rumor held that Lucille married Otto without legally severing ties with Mr. Bailey, but we'll let that pass.\n\nThe newlyweds moved to Ninth and Jackson Streets in Columbus to start a life together. Instead, neighbors said they spent a considerable portion of their time quarreling. On October 29, after a few weeks of wedded bliss, Lucille informed Otto that she felt their marriage wasn't working out. She made her point by swallowing fifteen cents' worth of carbolic acid and expiring horribly thirty minutes later. That's the story Otto told the cops\u2014the first story, anyway.\n\nOtto was indignant when the police questioned him about his wife's suicide. He professed not to see anything strange about it. Yes, he admitted, he had purchased the poison. But it wasn't like he deceptively slipped it in her porridge. He openly gave it to her, and she _willingly_ drank it.\n\nWhy on earth would you do that? Why on earth would _she_ do that, asked the cops.\n\nWell, mused Otto, she had often expressed the desire to kill herself. So, being a good husband and not a chauvinist who would prevent a woman from achieving her fondest goals, Otto bought the carbolic acid for her as a sort of present. He watched her quaff deeply of the drink of death\u2014and then he left the house. By the time he returned, she had already become a memory.\n\nAs he touchingly told the police, \"If she was damn fool enough to take it I thought I would just buy it for her.\"\n\nEven at this early stage in the investigation, Vest contradicted himself. He told some that his wife had requested that he buy the acid so she could use it as a disinfectant; to others, he said she wanted to kill herself with it and he obligingly procured it for her; to A.H. Fehring, the druggist who sold it to him, he claimed that he wanted to use it on a horse.\n\nFor some unaccountable reason, the authorities found Otto's story\u2014that is, his _stories_ \u2014farfetched, and they arrested him, but on a charge of manslaughter, not murder. Some official must have believed Vest's claim that he handed his wife carbolic acid knowing that she intended to drink it, making him an accessory, not a murderer.\n\nA third possibility was that Otto Vest was neither guilty of manslaughter nor an innocent dupe; perhaps he had induced his wife to drink the carbolic acid\u2014making him a murderer. We will never know for sure.\n\nThe local paper, the _Evening Republican_ , said in its October 30 edition, \"This morning Vest began to realize the seriousness of the charge against him.\" Evidently, it took several hours for him to figure out that his wife's horrifying demise was no lighthearted frolic and might have distasteful legal ramifications. He asked the police if they would take him to the funeral home so that he might have a final glimpse of his poor Lucille. They obliged, and he spent a while gazing at her face and weeping.\n\nVest was offended by the very idea that he should be arrested and went on a hunger strike as soon as the cell door closed behind him. He asserted that he would soon join his dead wife; presumably, he was eager to quarrel with her again. Cynics thought he might have a less romantic motive for starving himself, i.e., a healthy fear of the electric chair. His strike lasted five days, until his appetite won out over love.\n\nVest was indicted on December 1 for first-degree murder, not the original charge of manslaughter, so someone in the legal system must have changed his mind about the possibility of Vest's innocence. When his trial began on December 19, the parents of his dead bride were among the interested spectators. From the beginning, Otto appeared to have an adversarial relationship with truth; he swore under oath that he was twenty-seven years old but later admitted he was thirty-two.\n\nBy now, Vest had changed his story\u2014and not just in a few trivial details. His new version was a total makeover. No longer did he state that his wife had repeatedly expressed the yen to commit suicide. Perhaps realizing that his first story made him seem unattractively coldblooded, he now claimed that yes, he had given his wife carbolic acid but only because she had used it for medicinal purposes before, so naturally he thought that was what she wanted it for this time, too. How was he to know she intended to down the entire bottle?\n\nThere were, in fact, a few medicinal uses for carbolic acid\u2014it could be used as a home remedy for toothache, for instance. But it was up to the defense to prove that Mrs. Vest had used the drug for such purposes, and it appears they failed to do so. It shouldn't have been difficult because a prescription was needed to purchase something so dangerous, and there would have been records of Mrs. Vest's ailments among doctors and druggists.\n\nThe jury retired on December 20, but despite the unlikeliness of Vest's stories, it was unable to reach a verdict and was dismissed. The majority of jurors were for acquittal.\n\nThe case went to a second jury on February 5, 1918. In less than an hour, Vest was acquitted and free to go tell all the fishy stories he pleased. If he married a second time, his new bride likely poured any beverage he handed her in the cracks of the floorboards when he wasn't looking.\n13\n\nWilliam Wants to Get Married\n\nTwenty-two-year-old William Lee of Boonville had been in love with a luscious lovely named Mina Taylor for some time, and he planned to marry her on August 24, 1911. William spent that night in jail instead of in connubial bliss with his beloved Mina. And all merely because he pulverized the skulls of his father, Richard Lee; his mother, Sarah; and his younger brother, Clarence, and set the house on fire.\n\nWilliam refused to comment on the events of August 24, other than to explain that the house was already on fire when he awoke. He said he got up to rouse his family and sound the alarm\u2014but had taken care to get fully dressed first (because who knows when one might meet ladies, and it would be a deplorable social faux pas to be caught in a nightgown). He theorized that someone else must have murdered his family, lit the fire and run.\n\nThe absurd story might have been believable except for a flaw in William's master plan: firemen extinguished the fire so quickly that a curiosity-seeker took a photograph of William with bystanders and the remains of his family lying under sheets.\n\nInside the house, investigators found a bloodstained axe and hatchet and kerosene-soaked furniture. The bodies' clothing was saturated with coal oil. What _wasn't_ in the house was equally interesting: $100 in cash the Lees had gotten the day before by selling property. Witnesses told the coroner that William received his fair share of the proceeds but had argued with his father that he deserved more because of his impending nuptials. Also, neighbors said Lee's parents objected to his marrying Mina. (The young man was noted for his laziness and for being a drain on his parents' resources, so one would think they'd be happy that he wanted to leave the nest.)\n\nLee family portrait. William Lee is wearing the white shirt and leaning against the wall. The rest of the family is lying under sheets in the foreground. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 26, 1911. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nWilliam was taken to the morgue, where the crushed and toasted bodies of his family were dramatically unsheeted before his eyes. He displayed no emotion and merely lit his pipe. Back in her hometown of Newburg, Mina shrieked before reporters: \"I know he is innocent!\"\n\nThe suspect kept his composure until the next day, when he confessed. Yes, he said, he had killed his father, Richard, but only in self-defense\u2014after Richard first killed his wife and other son. Then, said William, he committed arson because he was sure no one would believe the truth: \"I could smell coal oil, and I found oil had already been poured over the bed. Just because matches were handy and I didn't know what else to do I set fire to the bed clothing and gave the alarm of fire.\" In other words, it just seemed like the thing to do.\n\nSheriff Raymond Scales took Lee to Evansville so he would not be lynched. Physicians disproved Lee's tall tale when they examined the bodies and found they had been dead at least three hours before he alerted neighbors to the fire. His bloody, scorched underwear was found hidden in the bedding.\n\nIn the face of such evidence, Mina turned her back on her former sweetheart and wished that he would be punished if proved guilty. She fainted at the Newburg cemetery when the three coffins of the Lees were lowered into an extra-wide grave. She probably also contemplated how close she came to marrying the type of man who would bludgeon and burn his relatives because he was peeved at them.\n\nThe silly stories he told convinced no one, so on August 26, Lee told the truth: he had butchered his folks out of anger because they disapproved of his marriage and refused to give him money to finance it. In addition to that, his father and brother were insured for $700, and William was the beneficiary\u2014that is, if his mother died before he did. Lee was sent to the Jeffersonville Reformatory, where he resided in the cell formerly occupied by Thomas Hoal, the Boy Bandit (see later chapter about his notorious career).\n\nEarlier in the same day, Mina Taylor declared that she would marry William yet if he were innocent. His confession dashed her hopes. She cried, \"Oh Will, why did you do it?\" and collapsed in hysterics. Her father said she would live with relatives in Colorado until she recovered from the heartbreak.\n\nAt the reformatory, Lee made a third confession, which, like the others, failed to make sense in some particulars. He claimed he had been threatened with death by both parents. He was so certain they intended to kill him that he decided he would kill them first. (No explanation as to why he felt compelled to exterminate his brother.) He said he had not intended to burn the bodies\u2014after applying the axe to his family, he lit a match to contemplate his handiwork and dropped it on the bed, hence the conflagration. (No explanation was given as to how the bodies were first saturated with coal oil.) He claimed additionally that he had been abused by Mr. Lee for years, which for all we know was true.\n\nMina said, \"I will try to forget Willie as soon as possible. I hope time will heal the wounds caused by this terrible tragedy.\"\n\nAt the end of November, William was returned to Boonville on the grounds that potential lynch mobs had cooled down. \"Yes, I killed them,\" the unsentimental fellow said of his family. \"I feel justified because I thought they were going to kill me and because of the whippings they gave me when I was a boy.\" He added with ill-found optimism, \"I expect to get two to twenty-one years for this.\"\n\nLee collected the life insurance on the family he murdered\u2014it must have been a _very_ generous company\u2014and used the proceeds to pay his defense attorneys, brothers Caleb and Thomas Lindsey. He faced the Circuit Court on December 5. Surprisingly, despite his three confessions, William pled not guilty on grounds of self-defense. _Not_ surprisingly, given how many other defendants in this book also tried it, his attorneys entered a plea of insanity as a backup plan.\n\nBefore going on trial, William Lee was moved again, this time to Evansville, where the proceedings would be held due to a change of venue. He was placed in what was called \"the unlucky cell\" because everyone who had occupied it had been convicted.\n\nThe trial began on January 24, 1912. As promised, the defense tried to prove Lee was insane, but its evidence for his hereditary \"mental taint\" was feeble. Rather than being content with one crazy parent, it boldly claimed both were unbalanced. The defense's star witness was Josephine Jones, who had lived with the Lee family for a decade. She thought father Richard Lee was insane because he \"was of an eccentric turn of mind, and refused to believe the world was round, and looked upon the Bible as a fable, and always laughed when he read it because it was so much like a novel.\" Mrs. Jones believed Sarah Lee was crazy, too, because she had once \"rejoiced over the death of her brother.\"\n\nAs for William Lee himself, the evidence for his mental illness largely consisted of his boasting to girls that he was wealthier than he actually was and that he cried a lot. Under oath, Lee recanted all of his confessions and now claimed that he had no idea who slaughtered his family. He polished the old, old chestnut of selective memory loss: he couldn't remember killing anyone, and the whole episode \"seemed like a dream\" to him.\n\nWhen at the jail, however, the \"crazy man\" spent time cracking jokes with fellow prisoners. The prosecutor, Ora Davis, revealed that Lee promised to plead guilty in exchange for life imprisonment, indicating that he wasn't nearly as unbalanced as his attorneys wanted him to seem. Davis responded that he would settle for nothing less than the death penalty.\n\nCountering this woeful evidence for Lee's insanity was Dr. C.E. Laughlin, superintendent of the Southern Indiana Hospital for the Insane, who answered a whopper of a four-thousand-word hypothetical question by saying that in his professional opinion, William Lee was sane.\n\nMany observed that during cross-examination, Lee answered \"I don't know\" to any question that would incriminate him, but his memory was jim-dandy when he was grilled on less serious matters.\n\nOn January 31, the jury decided that Lee was perfectly sane and comprehensively guilty\u2014yet it fixed his punishment only as life imprisonment. It was a relatively light punishment, considering the barbarity of his crime. A _Louisville Courier-Journal_ editorial remarked, \"Kentucky has no monopoly of chicken-hearted jurors...If any criminal in Indiana ever deserved the death penalty that criminal was Lee.\"\n\nA week later, William Hester of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, went on trial in Evansville for murdering his girlfriend. According to a news account, \"The State's Attorney...refused to ask the jurors in the Hester case if they believed in capital punishment, contending that it is impossible to hang a man in this Vanderburgh County.\"\n\nMina Taylor. William Lee was willing to kill so he could marry her. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _August 29, 1911. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nMina Taylor, for whose hand William Lee murdered three people, married a neighbor named Curran Keeler on June 24, 1913. William's thoughts on the matter are not recorded, but it musta hurt!\n\nWilliam had been in prison less than a year when, in November 1912, some Evansville citizens decided it would be a fine thing indeed if a man who killed his family for money were to be turned loose, and they started a petition to secure his parole; their tenderhearted\u2014to say nothing of misguided\u2014efforts were rebuffed. But no matter\u2014William Lee's life sentence was destined to be a short one. He died in his cell in September 1914, age about twenty-five. Was it suicide or natural causes? Prison officials did not say. His relatives did not wish to be burdened with the disposal of his body, and at last report, they considered giving it to the Indiana Anatomical Society in Bloomington, perhaps sparing some other poor soul's body from being snatched from its grave by medical students.\n14\n\nA Higher Venue\n\nDallas Bower, twenty-five years old and something of a lunkhead, lived on a farm with his family two miles from New Washington. For reasons now known only to God, he developed a deep dislike for his stepmother, Mrs. Eliza Bower, and he tended to show it through physical violence. He was arrested for assaulting her on September 22, 1911, and taken to nearby Jeffersonville. He paid a seven-dollar fine and went home.\n\nIn 1912, Bower was again arrested for beating her. He was not punished, not even fined.\n\nAt the beginning of November of the same year, he beat her for a third time. Once more, he got no punishment worthy of the name. It could be argued that the following tragedy resulted from stinginess on the part of the Clark County government. As recently as September, the County Council had refused to appropriate money to cover the expense of taking New Washington prisoners to Jeffersonville; Bower was not arrested after his last outburst because no official wanted to spend his own money to send him to the city. So he was turned loose, and everyone simply hoped he would learn to get along with his stepmother.\n\nBower's animosity reached its zenith on November 10. His father, Clinton Bower, and brother Benton went outside to do chores, leaving only Dallas and Eliza in the house.\n\nWhen Benton Bower returned to the kitchen, he found his stepmother lying on the floor, marinating in a pool of blood, \"her brains oozing from three ghastly wounds on her head,\" as a reporter described it. Neither Dallas nor a weapon was to be seen.\n\nDr. S.L. Adair Jr. was called in. He pronounced Mrs. Bower dying and called the authorities in Jeffersonville. Since Eliza was a goner and there was nothing to occupy the doctor's time until the police arrived, he searched for the object that had inflicted her grievous injuries.\n\nDr. Adair looked in the family smokehouse, and there stood Dallas Bower. The doctor was surprised, and for lack of anything better to say under the circumstances, he inquired: \"Would you mind shucking some corn for me?\"\n\n\"I don't want to,\" replied Dallas.\n\nThe doctor closed the door and locked it, imprisoning Bower. Word traveled fast in the small community, and soon, the farm was choked with neighbors. A guard was stationed at the smokehouse, implying that some of these villagers desired to see how Bower looked wearing a hempen necktie.\n\nWhen the police arrested Bower, he offered no resistance and reacted to all questions with a glum, stubborn silence that became his trademark for the remainder of his days. However, he did confess to belaboring his stepmother's head with a hatchet and said he hid it behind a door near the kitchen's firewood box. The bloody implement was found there. The only motive he offered was that he \"didn't get along\" with Mrs. Bower.\n\nDespite Dr. Adair's gloomy prognosis, poor Mrs. Bower wasn't yet ready to give up the ghost, and she raved with such ferocity\u2014though unconscious\u2014that several men had to hold her down. The doctor gave her opiates to relieve her misery; she spoke, though still insensible, in a garbled and unintelligible fashion. She reached journey's end at noon on November 11, and the charge against Dallas Bower of assault and battery with intent to kill was altered to a charge of murder.\n\nFew news reports about the youthful killer fail to mention his perceived lack of intelligence. From the _Louisville Courier-Journal_ of November 12:\n\n_Bower is a pitiful object to look at, and there is every indication he is not bright. People in the vicinity of New Washington assert he has been feeble-minded all his life. The officers who brought him to Jeffersonville Sunday night assert he did not say five words on the whole trip. On one occasion he acted as if excited and threw his hat out of the automobile_.\n\nBower refused to eat for over a week. He also did not seem to comprehend the enormity of what he had done.\n\nA special grand jury indicted him on November 14. \"Bower still remains silent,\" said a reporter, \"and it is only rarely that he can be induced to even answer questions asked him.\"\n\nWas he authentically dimwitted or was he shamming? Perhaps a jury would have been convinced that he knew right from wrong and convicted him. He could have been acquitted, jailed or become one of the first to try out the state's newfangled electric chair. We will never know for certain, because while awaiting trial in February 1913, he became ill with heart trouble and dropsy, the old-fashioned name for edema (excessive accumulation of fluid in the body's tissues and cavities). The jail physician said he \"may never face the court.\"\n\nThe diagnosis was correct. Bower died on March 5. Had he survived, he was scheduled to go on trial March 14. His last words were, \"I am going home.\" Whether this referred to paradise or perdition was left unclarified, as was the reason why he resented his stepmother so much.\n\nSome anonymous poet of the legal profession made this entry in the docket of the Clark Circuit Court: \"Case venued to a higher court.\"\n\nBower's tale was told\u2014but there was a postscript. The hatchet murder preyed on the mind of his brother, Benton, who had discovered his dying stepmother, until he could take it no more. In July 1913, he went mad and was committed to the Southeastern Hospital for the Insane at North Madison.\n15\n\nHypothetical Questions in Abundance\n\nIn July 1915, Edmund A.H. Kayser of Gary asked Chief of Police Heintz for permission to carry a revolver. Heintz\u2014who was about to become the most overworked man in town\u2014refused. The chief may have been surprised by the request, because the applicant seemed unlikely to need a concealed weapon. Kayser, age forty-two, was pastor of St. James's Evangelical Lutheran Church at Tolleston, a suburb of Gary. Not long after the chief's rejection, Kayser sent his wife, Dora, and their three children to live with her relatives in Grand Haven, Michigan.\n\nWas Reverend Kayser anticipating trouble? If so, he certainly found it. On the night of August 25, someone standing outside his window shot him in the chest as he sat in his library. He opened the door and was shot in the jugular vein. As he slowly bled to death, his assailant dragged him forty feet from the house, tied his wrists and ankles with window cords and dumped him in a nearby lot, where he was found dead by a passerby an hour later.\n\nH.B. Snyder, postmaster of Tolleston, told authorities that for the past several months, Kayser had received threatening anonymous letters, warnings to stay away from a married Gary woman. Kayser turned a batch of them over to Snyder and requested that federal authorities locate the sender. The _New York Times_ reported that a woman's shoeprints were in the dirt outside the pastor's window. Had he been shot by a woman, perhaps the woman mentioned in the mysterious letters? She was located and denied having any untoward relations with Kayser.\n\nThe police sneered at suggested romantic entanglements and favored a second hypothesis: there had been strife and controversy in Kayser's church. Allegedly, the pastor received death threats over his highhanded ways. Was the preacher the victim of an angry parishioner? Reverend Conrad Held, pastor of Bethlehem German Evangelical Church, said that several months before, he received a letter complaining about Kayser. The anonymous letter, from Gary, was written in German and was a bitter rant blaming him for \"mismanagement of the church, unfairness, persecution of the [Saxon Verein] society, and improper relations with women of the church.\" Held passed the letter on to Kayser, who had no comment.\n\nA rival theory that never got much traction held that Kayser was slain because of a bad land or business deal. It appears he was in debt and owed many overdue payments.\n\nThen there was a fourth theory, more colorful and topical than the others. Kayser was originally from W\u00fcrttemberg, Germany, and had a Teutonic surname\u2014why, it was virtually _Kaiser_ \u2014and of course, in August 1915, Europe was embroiled in World War I. America would not enter the conflict until April 1917, but anti-German feeling was strong in the United States. Yet the foolhardy reverend made no secret of his rabidly pro-German stance, making heated remarks about Russia, France, England, America's neutral policy and President Wilson. He sent letters taking his fatherland's side to German and English newspapers. When some parishioners wrote a statement pledging neutrality, he tore up the document and tossed the scraps in their faces. Worst of all in American eyes, he publicly approved Germany's sinking of the British ocean liner _Lusitania_.\n\nHad Kayser been silenced for making statements considered treasonous by his adopted country? On the day of his death, he informed members of his congregation that an anonymous telephone caller told him he would be \"lynched.\" With a grin, he said he had received so many death threats he didn't take them seriously anymore. Then, he dropped a clue before his listeners that suggested the cause of his death might have been a woman after all: \"I have four enemies, and they are the only ones I am afraid of. And if I have trouble with them it will be because of my private affairs. I am not afraid of anything happening because of my political policies.\" If only he had named those \"four enemies\"\u2014but he didn't.\n\nReverend Kayser was buried on August 27, and the mystery of his passing seemed no closer to solution than before. He still had his admirers. The Alliance of German Societies of Evansville, Indiana, sent a wreath bearing the inscription, \"To the protagonist of German truth.\" Later, the same people would raise a fund to find Kayser's killers. In less than two years, America would be at war with Germany, and these lovers of Kayser and the Kaiser would be as popular as a guy eating beans on a submarine.\n\nThree suspects were collared with fanfare and then sheepishly released. On August 26, Gary police arrested George Schneider for two reasons: he was a member of the Saxon Verein, the church organization that had been at loggerheads with Kayser, and he had scratches and bruises on his face. \"Schneider answers the description of the man we have been looking for,\" said Police Chief Heintz, who, by then, must have wished he had given Reverend Kayser that blasted concealed weapon permit and thereby saved himself a lot of trouble. Schneider protested he had been in a fight and was able to prove it, so Heintz released him.\n\nThomas Modjesch, an inspector at the Gary Steel Mills, was brought into custody for reasons the police did not reveal to the press. He was soon freed.\n\nLucas Hamptman, a worker at a steel mill, was arrested on suspicion of being the author of the threatening letters to Kayser. Chief Heintz stated that he believed Hamptman innocent, and the laborer was released.\n\nThe leading explanation for Kayser's untimely end was his openly expressed anti-American sentiments. And some believed he was willing to do more to help the German war effort than merely talk. A woman who claimed to have been in the Kayser residence an hour before his death said she overheard a conversation between the reverend and \"a prominent Gary attorney,\" in which they appeared to discuss plans to sabotage the shipment of arms to the European Allies. (The United States was officially a neutral country, but American munitions companies sold explosives to Europe anyway.) They carried on their furtive chat in German, she said.\n\nJoseph Kramer, employee at Gary's Aetna Powder Works\u2014one of the firms that manufactured explosives to be used against Germany\u2014said he was accosted by two men, \"one of whom looked something like Kayser,\" who offered him $1,500 if he would blow up the plant. Kramer was tempted. But patriotism trumped greed, and he refused.\n\nThe sabotage theory gained support in Gary on August 29, when a disaster was narrowly averted. Someone noticed that the rivets on a plate holding together two train track rails had been filed. It could have derailed the locomotive, which carried volatile guncotton to be used in the war effort. In addition, the damaged track was located just fifty feet from the Aetna Powder Works, an alleged target of pro-German spies. The press reported that Chief Heintz was \"unusually reticent\" concerning this development. Authorities wondered if the attempt at sabotage was connected with Reverend Kayser's murder, but nothing could be proved.\n\nAt first, Chief Heintz believed Kayser had been murdered over a woman, not for his politics. However, he came to think that the preacher's rabid pro-German stance was the motive\u2014especially when the chief also started getting death threats in the mail.\n\nHeintz wasn't the only one who thought so. An important announcement came on September 1. Federal and state authorities were convinced that Reverend Kayser's murderers were involved in a \"war plot.\" Since Kayser was virulently pro-German, his assassins must have been anti-German. Said the _New York Times_ , \"[O]ne or more arrests are expected in a few days.\" It was suggested that Kayser had been a closet Hun, and not closeted very well:\n\n_Telegrams and correspondence seized following the murder are said to link the Rev. Mr. Kayser very closely with the German propaganda in this country. Government Secret Service men are investigating rumors that the pastor was plotting to tamper with or destroy mills making war munitions_.\n\nIf true, one wonders why pro-German saboteurs would select a notorious loudmouth such as Kayser to do their dirty work. His lack of subtlety would make him less than ideal for pulling off covert operations.\n\nA couple days later, the feds suggested that the undercover sabotage operation in America was bigger than they thought:\n\n_Gigantic plots in violation of American neutrality, with two organizations of nation-wide extent in every large city, agents for dynamiting powder mills and arms plants, and recruiting officers secretly working in Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and other northern cities have been unearthed by government agents_.\n\nCharles Clyne, United States district attorney, admitted, \"There are unmistakably agents of warring governments at work in America.\" And these revelations were uncovered when authorities investigated the murder of Reverend Kayser. It seems the best thing he could have done for his beloved Germany\u2014not to mention himself and his family\u2014was to keep his big yap shut.\n\nStrangely, after the initial press releases, nothing more was said about this massive conspiracy. The papers did not report on the promised arrests. Possibly the federal government decided that it was smarter to keep the operations of foreign saboteurs in America a state secret.\n\nPerhaps as a result, Reverend Kayser's slaying remains officially unsolved. On February 19, 1918, Michael Schramm of Bridgeport, Connecticut, confessed to the murder. It appears that no one took him seriously.\n16\n\nThomas Hoal, Boy Bandit\n\nIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, young men were enamored of dime novels. These stories were larded with blood-and-thunder violence, daring rescues, preposterous illustrations and the most stilted language imaginable. And they were very, _very_ popular since they were so cheap.\n\nToday, dime novels are valuable collector's items read by few; back when they served as a literary repast to famished adolescents, reformers considered the books vulgar menaces to society and corruptors of youth. Dime novels were blamed for everything from rising crime rates to boys' lack of respect for their elders, and they were roundly denounced, confiscated and banned from coast to coast\u2014which only served, of course, to make them forbidden and even more popular.\n\nEdmund Pearson declared in _Books in Black or Red_ and _Dime Novels_ that the genre was hokey and harmless; also, rather than reveling in a sense of lawlessness, if anything the stories tended to be as rigidly moralistic as Sunday school primers. Recently, Harold Schechter argued persuasively in his study of the history of violence in American entertainment, _Savage Pastimes_ , that dime novels were a convenient scapegoat on which to blame societal pathologies.\n\nBut although reformers made too much of the dime novel's influence on young minds, surely a few readers were seduced into committing violent acts by reading them, just as a modern fool might imitate some maniacal stunt he saw in a movie\u2014something that would not have occurred to him unless the movie put the idea in his mind. It doesn't mean novels or movies are to blame or should be banned, but we should acknowledge that they can put bad ideas into the heads of suggestible souls.\n\nTake the incident of November 11, 1909, for example.\n\nOur story begins in Louisville, Kentucky. A black chauffeur named James R. Tucker, who worked for Mrs. Walter Escott, was cleaning his employer's car in a garage and minding his own business when he was hijacked by a heavily armed seventeen-year-old. The boy ordered Tucker to drive across the river to the Merchants' National Bank on the corner of Pearl and Main Streets in New Albany, Indiana.\n\nArtist's depiction of a rather happy-looking Thomas Hoal in the Jeffersonville Reformatory. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 12, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nThe teenager forced Tucker to enter the bank ahead of him at gunpoint. He made no attempt at subtlety\u2014he toted _five_ revolvers and hundreds of cartridges\u2014or even secrecy; he came to the side door just as though he had business to conduct.\n\nWhen he stood before the tellers' cages, the young man\u2014who would be universally called \"the Boy Bandit\" in headlines\u2014whipped out two guns from his collection and shouted, \"Hands up! Everybody into the vault!\" Whether due to inexperience, incompetence or just plain nervousness, he didn't give them an opportunity to fulfill his commands. He started shooting without provocation, first into the ceiling and then at the employees. He shot cashier Jacob Hangary \"Gary\" Fawcett through the heart and seriously wounded the bank's president, John K. Woodward, in the abdomen. (In one of those bitter ironies that life enjoys throwing at us, Woodward was due to retire in only six weeks.) According to bookkeeper Frank Fougerousse, the bandit didn't even demand money; apparently, he forgot to in the excitement. Then the boy fled the bank without taking a measly penny, dropping one of his revolvers in flight.\n\n\"Quick, get me out of here!\" the boy ordered James Tucker. Displaying the same foolish impatience as before, the would-be bandit shot the chauffeur in the left side and ran out the door with a pack of policemen and a furious crowd at his heels. They chased him to the river, where he swiped a boat and tried to row to Kentucky. Police caught him, with help from fishermen armed with shotguns, after he was stranded on a sandbar. The mob was in a vengeful humor, and the boy might have had no earthly need for an attorney if the police had not applied some cleverness. The arresting officer instructed the Boy Bandit to feign death; the policeman told the crowd that the shooter had taken poison. The ruse fooled them. The teen was hurried to Jeffersonville Reformatory for his own safety.\n\nIn custody, he refused to give his name. He probably marveled at the ease and speed with which he was arrested, since the antiheroes in dime novels never seemed to get caught. However, his silence was in vain. That evening, William J. Hall of 802 South Preston Street in Louisville\u2014an antique dealer, upholsterer and cabinetmaker of excellent reputation\u2014went to the police saying that the bandit's description matched his wayward son, who had not been home for several hours. He added that his son was an incorrigible reader of dime novels, smoker of cigarettes and terrorizer of his own family. He had even beaten his father. Mr. Hall told a reporter, \"Now when I see what he has done, I am surprised that he never killed me.\" He added that his son was so mean and threatening that he was relieved he was being held in the reformatory. When the news got back to the Boy Bandit, he knew the jig was up and revealed that he was Thomas Jefferson Hall.\n\nExcept that wasn't the family's true name. It was actually Hoal. William Hall had changed their surname when he abandoned his wife Nettie in Knoxville, Tennessee, several months before. He was trying to escape from an unhappy marriage and did not want her to find him. (They had since reconciled and were living together in Louisville.) The killer shall be called \"Hoal\" for the remainder of this account.\n\nWhen the Hoals moved to New Albany from Knoxville in June 1909, they lived across from the bank Tom would attempt to rob in the future. Undoubtedly living in proximity to the bank fueled his juvenile daydreams about making easy money. The family moved to Louisville in September.\n\nJ. Hangary Fawcett, murdered cashier. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 12, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nWhen reporters came to interview Tom Hoal in his cell, they found him stubborn and temperamental. He answered nearly every question with the laconic phrase, \"Not saying,\" and refused to explain why he needlessly shot the workers at the bank, but he was big enough to exonerate James Tucker, whom some thought was an accessory to the crime rather than a hostage: \"I'm sorry for what I did, and I know that nobody can help me now. The Negro didn't know what he was doing. I am the only guilty person. I'm not saying why I did it, and I'm not afraid of the consequences.\" He added, \"[Tucker] is square and should be released. He is telling the truth...He couldn't help himself and shouldn't be held responsible.\"\n\n\"Do you read ten-cent novels?\" a reporter asked.\n\n\"I expect that is the cause of my present trouble,\" he replied. \"I now wish I had let them alone.\" Thus, Hoal admitted his addiction to violence-prone, outlaw-romanticizing dime novels. (In a later interview, Hoal said of the books, \"They had a whole lot to do with it. If I had not read the stories I would not be here.\" Some would consider Hoal's admission evidence of dime novels' evil influence. But then, it is easier to blame your bad behavior on your choice of reading material than to admit you are an amoral idiot.)\n\nHoal continued his show of bravado: \"They can't [do] more than hang me, and we all have to die.\"\n\nThe journalist interjected, with commendable sarcasm, \"Yes, one had to die at New Albany this morning.\"\n\n\"He would not if he had done what I asked him,\" replied Hoal, glossing over the fact that he had not given his victims the opportunity to follow his instructions.\n\nThe condition of the three men shot by Hoal was of paramount concern\u2014or two of them, at least. Cashier Fawcett was beyond help, having died instantly of his wound. For days the papers reported every peak and valley in the recovery of chauffeur Tucker and bank president Woodward. A headline the day after the shooting announced that Tucker might not survive the day; in fact, he almost died and was saved only by injections of salt water. On November 13, Dr. D.F. Davis said Tucker would develop peritonitis. He did, and it was nearly fatal.\n\nJohn Tucker, wounded chauffeur. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 12, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nAs for Woodward, on November 13, it was said that he had about a fifty-fifty chance for recovery. The next day, the newspapers reported that he was getting stronger. He had serious liver damage, and the doctors predicted that if Woodward could live through the next day, November 14, he would likely survive. On the other hand, they did not hold high hopes for Tucker's recovery.\n\nMr. William Hoal visited his son at the reformatory the day after the shooting. The heartbroken older gentleman revealed to reporters that when he had briefly worked as a furniture repairman in New Albany, one of his best customers was Gary Fawcett, the man murdered by his son. \"I am sorry Tom was not the one who lost his life,\" he said. \"I could have stood it better.\"\n\nAt Hoal's residence, investigators found an enormous, waterproof dry goods box with a hinged door. Mr. Hoal said that his son had threatened the family with death if they looked inside. It contained a five-gallon can of water, a bag of food, a flashlight and battery, a change of clothes (all black), a small bed, guns, three road maps, a railroad timetable, a bottle of matches, a ball of cord, a set of automobile goggles, a mask and a false beard. The outside label read \"R.J. Smith, Knoxville, Tenn.\" Tom Hoal's absurd plan was to escape detection by hiding in the box and having himself mailed away! He must have had an accomplice waiting in Knoxville; otherwise, who would have claimed the box? But the mysterious \"R.J. Smith\" appears not to have been investigated.\n\nJohn K. Woodward, wounded bank president. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 12, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nHoal's getaway box proved a source of unending fascination to the public and became a celebrity in its own right. It was taken to Louisville City Hall for safekeeping until the New Albany authorities came for it. Within fifteen minutes of the box's arrival, it drew crowds who wanted to see its ingenious design. A merchant wanted to buy it and put it in his shop window, and a street urchin remarked to a pal, \"Say, guy, this here Hoal was the whole cheese. He's got Nick Carter done to a turn.\" (Judging from his allusion to Carter, hero of many a dime novel, the lad shared his newfound hero's taste in literature.) Officers hauled the box to the police station to prevent souvenir hunters from dismantling it and carrying it away\u2014after all, it was a key piece of evidence.\n\nNew Albany police retrieved the box and took it home; somewhere along the way, somebody stole the mask and false beard secreted within. They locked the box in the jailhouse stable, much to the disappointment of anticipating throngs, but put it on display in the yard on December 2. The box's fascination had not waned even by then, and more than one thousand people with nothing better to do turned out to gaze upon it.\n\nThe Boy Bandit took hold of the public imagination in a phenomenon that we might call Hoalmania. As Tom Hoal awaited his hearing, he proved an irresistible subject for professional experts and amateurs who wanted to plumb his psychology or present him as a perfect example of all that was wrong with society and modern youth. The _Evansville Journal_ and the _South Bend Tribune_ ran editorials on the perils of reading dime novels. The _Journal_ pointed out that while the hero and the cause of good always triumphed in the novels, the villains could be perceived as worthy of emulation by diseased minds: \"[T]he bad people make just as deep and lasting an impression.\" There was serious discussion in Indiana about making illegal the sale of \"yellow-back novels\" (that is, dime novels) through the mail. Postmaster General Hitchcock in Washington, D.C., stated that there was no legal way to prevent their sale as long as they contained no obscene material. He said so regretfully, making it clear that there was nothing he would have loved more than to keep such harmful trash out of the hands of little nosepickers.\n\nTom Hoal became the subject of many a Sunday sermon. His school records were scrutinized; for instance, Professor J. Milton Elliott of the Dudley Public School in Lexington, Kentucky, which Hoal had attended as a child, noted that the student did well until 1905, when he made poor grades and a teacher described him as \"disobedient, untrustworthy, and vicious.\" Professor Elliott suggested that was when Hoal's downward spiral commenced. Elliott ended his speech by warning parents of their duty to make sure their children read good material.\n\nHoal's head was also studied. A phrenologist\u2014that is, a brand of quack scientist who claimed he could tell all about a person's character by studying the shape of his head and the bumps thereon\u2014crowed that he had observed Hoal a month before and had boldly predicted that he was certain to rob a bank. Phrenologists were not the only ones to attempt figuring out Hoal's personality and mentality strictly by his looks. Major David Peyton, superintendent of the reformatory where the prisoner was being held, said:\n\n_I have examined his head and mouth, eyes and ears, and I think he is the most perfect specimen of a pervert that I have ever seen. His teeth are all jumbled up and not regularly set. His palate is wrongly formed, and he had the mind of an 8-year-old boy instead of a young man of 17_.\n\nWilliam Hoal, while not wealthy, persuaded attorneys Laurent Douglas and Samuel G. Wilkerson to save his son from the waiting noose. (Indiana had no law against hanging minors.) On November 13, Tom Hoal confided that he intended to plead insanity. He claimed his mental illness was caused by\u2014wait for it\u2014reading too many dime novels. His bravado had worn off, and his captors described him as cringing and nervous. He no longer seemed so blas\u00e9 about dying, but he had not conquered his hair-trigger temper.\n\nOn November 15, both James Tucker and J.K. Woodward were reported to be \"doing better.\" Doctors confidently stated that Woodward, in particular, had \"passed the crisis.\" The following day, the _Courier-Journal_ reported of the bank president, \"The danger of death is diminishing every hour that he lives.\" The paper said on November 19 that Tucker had entered the valley of the shadow several times but was rescued by \"his strong constitution and youth.\" Tucker finally went home on December 2, in the care of his employer, Mrs. Walter Escott, whose boundless concern for him during his convalescence is one of the few bright spots in the saga of Thomas Hoal. In early February, Woodward went to his home at 511 Park Avenue in Louisville, still in feeble condition.\n\nHoal's attorneys, undoubtedly secretly relieved that he would be tried for one murder instead of three, asked for a change of venue from Floyd County to Clark County on the grounds that too many people in New Albany wanted to string their client up. He was arraigned in the Floyd County Circuit Court early in the morning of November 24, Thanksgiving Day\u2014so early, by design, that he could be sneaked in and out of the courtroom as quickly as possible before the public found out, such was his unpopularity. In spite of the bank employees who saw him shoot, the hundreds of persons who joined the police in chasing him and his own confession, Hoal pled not guilty.\n\nThe change of venue was granted\u2014under Indiana law, the judge could not refuse\u2014and Tom Hoal's destiny would be decided by a jury at Corydon, in Harrison County. With him came his marvelous box\u2014in fact, it arrived in Corydon on January 7, 1910, long before its builder did. Hoal wasn't taken from Jeffersonville until February 19. He spent most of the trip as a little man with a scared look in his eye, quaking in his boots from fear that he would be seized and mobbed. He \"trembled as with palsy,\" wrote one reporter. It was far from the cool, macho image Hoal had tried so hard to cultivate.\n\nOnce the prisoner arrived, a problem became evident: the Corydon jail was frail and rickety and would present little challenge to a highly motivated lynch mob. No trouble was expected, but he was strongly guarded just in case and placed in a specially constructed, reinforced cell. He awoke in a funk of fear on his first morning there, having heard the joyful whoops of small urchins playing in the courthouse square and believing that the long-dreaded mob had arrived.\n\nOn February 23, while Hoal awaited his trial, the papers reported that a sixteen-year-old boy in Cincinnati was fatally shot by his brother as they enacted a scene from their favorite western-themed dime novel. And on February 27 came news that J.K. Woodward had almost fully recovered.\n\nThe trial began on May 4 after an epic struggle to acquire twelve unprejudiced jurors. Two witnesses against Hoal were the men he harmed: James Tucker, who related the story of his abduction and shooting, and J.K. Woodward, who described what happened in the bank that morning. Other testimony came from C.H. Fawcett, father of the murdered cashier, and former chief of police William Adams, who had rescued Hoal from the mob after arresting him. The defense had only one possible strategy: an insanity plea, for which it laid the grounds by calling its client \"mentally defective.\" To make sure everyone got the point, Tom developed a deadpan expression that made Buster Keaton look like Jerry Lewis and contemplated the ceiling with a glassy-eyed stare. No one had mentioned Hoal's tendency to slip into a catatonic state _before_ the trial.\n\nMerchants' National Bank, New Albany. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 12, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nWilliam Hoal was so desperate to save his son from the gallows that he bared a dark family secret in court: his first wife, Tom's mother, had been an alcoholic who drank heavily while pregnant. When the family lived in Lexington, Kentucky, she struck her son on the head with a heavy dish because he hid her whiskey, and after that incident, said Mr. Hoal, Tom was never the same. His son had grown up strong, stubborn and prone to temper tantrums and violence. Oh, and also, he read lots of dime novels.\n\nAlso testifying (allegedly) in Hoal's defense was Major Peyton, the reformatory superintendent who had told reporters that he thought the Boy Bandit was abnormal because he _looked_ abnormal. Hoal's attorneys expected Peyton to state under oath that he considered Hoal to be insane. But Peyton surprised them by refusing to say so under oath. Instead, Peyton protested that he could say nothing definite about the prisoner's mental condition. The angry attorneys introduced into evidence a letter Peyton had written to Katie Fox\u2014Hoal's birth mother\u2014in which he opined that his young charge was mentally defective and had been ruined by reading those dime novels.\n\nA deliveryman standing beside Tom Hoal's celebrated box. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 13, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nThe insanity plea clearly wasn't going anywhere, so Hoal's attorney S.G. Wilkerson offered a novel alternative theory for the defense: the Boy Bandit fired a warning shot into the ceiling, to be sure, but he didn't kill Gary Fawcett. The teller was shot by _someone else_ who fired at Hoal through the window, missed him and _accidentally_ shot the cashier. Who was this civic-minded person who shot at Hoal seconds after the bank robber shot into the air? Wilkerson didn't say, nor did his theory excuse the fact that his client also fired at Woodward and Tucker. Reporters noted that Wilkerson's explanation was greeted with broad smiles all around the courtroom. To be fair, Hoal was so manifestly guilty, and his act of violence so senseless, that his attorneys had no choice but to explore the far frontiers of silliness in hope of sparking reasonable doubt.\n\nWhen the prosecution blistered the Boy Bandit and his deeds in its closing arguments, the \"catatonic,\" \"semi-idiotic\" Hoal noticeably squirmed.\n\nThe case went to the jury on May 6. \"At a late hour tonight,\" dramatically wrote the _Courier-Journal_ 's correspondent, \"twelve grim and troubled men were still wrestling with the question of what shall be done with Thomas Jefferson Hoal.\"\n\nOn May 7, the jury returned with bad news and good news for the defense: it found Hoal guilty (that was the bad news), with a recommended life sentence at the Michigan City penitentiary (that was the good news). A poll of the jurors indicated that they spared Hoal the death penalty only because of his extreme youth. Still, life in prison making the acquaintance of tough convicts was not going to be a carefree existence. Ordinarily, an Indiana prisoner under the age of thirty would be sent to a reformatory, but an exception was made for those convicted of murder.\n\nThe _St. Louis Globe-Democrat_ did not like dime novels. Reprinted in the _Louisville Courier-Journal_ , November 16, 1909. _Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nRumor held that a lynch mob was in the offing, so Hoal was sent to Michigan City immediately. Before the prisoner was taken away, he again displayed the surly attitude that had gotten him into so much trouble in the first place when Judge William Ridley asked him if there were any reason the sentence should not be passed. A reporter described Hoal's response: \"Then, standing before the judge, his body slightly inclined forward, he thundered a venomous 'no.' That one word was the only utterance he made in the courtroom and it contained a world of hatred and disappointment.\"\n\nIt was Corydon sheriff Alva Ward's duty to ride with Hoal to prison. A reporter aboard the train noticed the Boy Bandit's presence, and the sheriff said this to the journalist\u2014in a voice loud enough to make certain Hoal heard every word:\n\n_I had intended to say something good about the boy to the warden of the Indiana State Prison, but he has been so ugly since I started with him from Corydon that I must tell the warden that he is an incorrigible and I hope he will never get out. Before we started from Corydon on Saturday night Hoal got into one of his spells and tore up all of the clothing in his cell. He also tried to break the locks on the door. He is certainly the worst prisoner I have ever handled, but I do not believe he is insane. He will have lots of time to reflect in the State prison during the next ninety-nine years_.\n\nAfter the verdict was announced, the _Courier-Journal_ said of Hoal's father: \"[He] announced that he would never stop working on behalf of his son until he should be free.\" Those words were truer than the author knew, because on May 9, the day after Hoal was sent to prison, officials at the Corydon jail found files and five steel saws capable of cutting iron bars in the mattress in his former cell. His father registered surprise and wondered aloud how Tom possibly could have gotten them. The police didn't wonder. On May 19, William and Nettie Hoal were indicted by the Harrison County grand jury for conspiring to help Tom escape. But the pair was nowhere to be found; they had fled to Kentucky, where they vanished as the will-o'-the-wisp at daybreak.\n\nI am sorry to report that the ultimate fate of Hoal's box, like the whereabouts of his parents, is a mystery.\n\nThomas Hoal's mug shots. _From the_ Louisville Courier-Journal, _November 13, 1909. Courtesy of the_ Courier-Journal.\n\nThe case struck a sour note for nearly everyone involved with it. Hoal's father did not pay his son's lawyers\u2014having disappeared\u2014and they understandably wanted compensation. In September 1910, attorneys Douglas and Wilkerson sent a bill for $528 to the Floyd County Council, but the members refused to appropriate the funds on the grounds that the attorneys had been appointed by a nonlocal judge, Judge Ridley at Corydon; also, there had been no petition for a court-appointed attorney for the young pauper Hoal. In December, their petition was officially denied, and Douglas and Wilkerson had no choice but to eat that $528.\n\nThe defense attorneys weren't the only ones who got shafted in the aftermath of the trial. In June 1910, Gary Fawcett's family tried to collect $5,000 worth of insurance from the Travelers' Protective Association for the benefit of the dead cashier's son, Charles. The company argued that Fawcett was not \"a regular traveling man,\" and therefore, his family was not entitled to the money. (Yet they were happy to insure the non-traveling man and thus take his payment in the first place.) Showing the talent for legal hairsplitting that makes insurance companies so beloved everywhere, Travelers' contended furthermore that since Fawcett was a murder victim, his death did not count as an accident. The other side argued that Fawcett's death _was_ accidental, since \"Hoal was shooting at random without a specific intention to kill him.\" Attorneys argued the case as late as March 1911; I don't know how it concluded.\n\nPrison conditions were not much to Tom Hoal's liking, and he tried for a parole in March 1912. He sent a letter to prosecutor Walter Bulleit beseeching his assistance. The letter's elegance and eloquence indicate that while in prison, Hoal elevated his literary tastes. In any case, the attempt was turned down.\n\nHoal tried again in March 1915, this time seeking aid from Bruce Ulsh, editor of the _New Albany Tribune_. Once again, he blamed his taking the wrong turn in life on dime novels. To show that he had improved himself, Hoal said that he attended prison chapel services and a Bible class, learned the printing trade and played in a band. The _Courier-Journal_ remarked acidly in an editorial:\n\n_That Hoal now plays a cornet and belongs to a Bible class will not be deemed by those who recall the crime sufficient ground for parole...If the murderer of Mr. Fawcett is sincerely religious he should be sufficiently awake to the enormity of his crime to realize that a lifetime of repentance in prison could not atone for it_.\n\nSix months later, on September 27, former bank president J.K. Woodward died at last from the effects of the bullet Thomas Hoal had placed in him nearly six years before.\n\nThe aging Boy Bandit got tired of waiting for that parole and decided to take matters into his own hands. On the night of September 22, 1919, he and four other prisoners escaped.\n\nHoal was never seen again, as far as the record shows. Perhaps he climbed into a well-provisioned box and mailed himself to some exotic location. Undoubtedly, he slumbers far from New Albany under a gravestone bearing a chiseled alias.\n17\n\nThree Ways to Escape Punishment\n\nIndianapolis citizens who rose early on Friday morning, February 2, 1934, saw the rare but unwelcome sight of a man's body slumped in a parked car with the motor running. He had been shot in the back of the head but turned out to be no ordinary thug or bootlegger. The victim was none other than Reverend Gaylord V. Saunders, age thirty-six, former pastor of a Methodist Episcopal church in Wabash.\n\nWhat had Reverend Saunders been doing so far from home? Going to school, actually\u2014embalming school. After retiring from the ministry, he craved a change of careers and had moved to Indianapolis to learn the fine art of giving a pleasantly lifelike appearance to the preserved remains of the dearly departed. His wife, Neoma, chose to stay in Wabash.\n\nBenjamin Franklin once remarked, \"Three may keep a secret if two are dead.\" How right he was. Because of the loose lips of the people involved, the murder was solved by Saturday night.\n\nReverend Saunders's roommate at embalming school was nineteen-year-old Theodore Mathers. (One imagines their bull sessions must have been pretty interesting, perhaps covering such topics as the efficiency of the trocar for aiding in preservation of the abdominal organs and friendly arguments over whether Cintio or Veino was the superior brand of embalming fluid.) Mathers, in turn, had a lifelong pal named Masel Roe; both Mathers and Roe were natives of Coalmont who had relocated to Indianapolis.\n\nA badly rattled Roe turned informer and told the police that he was present when Mathers shot the preacher: \"Several times Mathers told me that his roommate, Saunders, was nuts and was going to kill his wife and children at Wabash. Mathers said he would rather kill Saunders than see him kill the children.\"\n\nTheodore Mathers. _From the_ Wabash (IN) Plain Dealer, _February 5, 1934. Courtesy of the_ Wabash Plain Dealer.\n\nOn the night of Thursday, February 1, Roe and Mathers rode with Saunders down to a tavern called the Brown Derby. Said Roe, \"While Saunders was talking with the manager, Mathers told me that he had to 'do it tonight' or kill himself.\"\n\n(In other words, Mathers considered the reverend dangerously insane, but rather than tell the proper authorities, he thought it better to take matters in his own hands and slay Saunders\u2014and took his mission so seriously that he contemplated suicide if he should be thwarted. The reader may be wondering why young Mathers felt so strongly on the topic of removing Reverend Saunders from the world.)\n\nAccording to Roe, the three got back in the car\u2014Saunders driving, Roe in the passenger seat and Mathers in the back seat. \"Before I knew what had happened, Mathers shot Saunders through the head.\" Then Mathers took the wheel. After driving around the outskirts of the city for a while with a bloody corpse, they parked. Mathers moved the body to the driver's seat and took the dead man's watch, diamond ring and three dollars from his wallet to make it look like a robbery gone bad. After staging the crime scene, he and Roe lammed it home on foot, but Mathers reassured his old pal that he would \"keep Roe's name out of it.\"\n\nRoe responded, of course, by ratting out his best buddy at the soonest opportunity. After hearing this strange story, the police wanted to get Mathers's side of it. They found him at the freshly minted widow's home back in Wabash. He had gone there, he said, to help her make funeral arrangements.\n\nThe reader may be wondering, as did the police, why Mathers took such an interest in the widow of his murdered roommate. He broke down and told Indianapolis chief of police Michael Morrissey that three weeks before, Mrs. Saunders had paid him a princely $10.00 to polish off her husband\u2014out of which he paid a friend $8.50 for the gun.\n\nMrs. Saunders and Theodore Mathers were arrested in Wabash and taken to Indianapolis. The police also arrested Masel Roe and Mabel Balke, a nurse who had attended Mrs. Saunders during a bout with tuberculosis, because Mathers said she knew of the murder conspiracy and even had the reverend's watch and ring hidden at her house. (True to his word, these items were found in Balke's basement.)\n\nOnce in custody, the four suspects sang like a barbershop quartet. Mrs. Saunders confessed to plotting the murder; Mathers confessed to committing it; Roe confessed to being present when it happened; Balke confessed that she was aware of the impending crime. They were in a predicament, especially the matronly looking, thirty-five-year-old Mrs. Saunders, who admitted that she had masterminded (if that is the correct word) the badly executed, poorly thought-out crime. How could she possibly save herself from Indiana's electric chair?\n\nMrs. Saunders. _From_ the Wabash (IN) Plain Dealer, _February 5, 1934. Courtesy of the_ Wabash Plain Dealer.\n\nWhen a murderer is caught red-handed and has even confessed, he has three available options to escape punishment, and Mrs. Saunders shamelessly employed all three of them.\n\nThe first option is the \"abuse excuse.\" She claimed the reverend had been so crazy that she (and Mathers) lived in constant fear. Nurse Balke agreed that Saunders's mind had seemed \"affected\" in the weeks before Mrs. Saunders decided to put him out of her misery. On the other hand, the victim's brother, Reverend Eldridge Saunders of Uniondale, indignantly denied that Gaylord had had any mental problems.\n\nThere is a second option favored by those who commit murder but wish not to be punished: blacken the character of the victim, who is no longer around to defend himself. When Neoma Saunders went to trial on December 7, her defense team made full use of this strategy. In fact, to use its term, Gaylord Saunders had been \"a moral pervert.\" Reverend W. Earl Pittenger offered triple-barreled testimony that Saunders had been a heavy drinker for more than a year before his murder; that he (Pittenger) had urged Mrs. Saunders to have her husband committed because he seemed a \"dangerous type\"; and that Mrs. Saunders confided to him that Gaylord had subjected her to \"indecencies.\" A family friend, Ross Curts, said that the allegedly deranged preacher had once threatened to kill Mrs. Saunders with a butcher knife; when Curts objected, Saunders bit him on the finger. Prosecutor John Kelly objected to this sort of \"mud slinging\" and character assassination, but Judge Laymon overruled him.\n\nThe prosecution introduced a statement made by Mrs. Saunders in her written confession: \"I wanted my husband killed because he was losing his mind and I had papers filed to put him in an insane asylum.\" She never did explain why she thought it better for him to be dead than hospitalized. When she took the stand on December 13, she denied that she had plotted his death, flatly contradicting her confession.\n\nShe also denied under oath that she had been having an affair with young Mathers, as many thought\u2014although that would explain his unnaturally protective attitude toward her, his eagerness to kill her husband and the fact that he was at her house in Wabash when arrested. However, Neoma Saunders was a woman of many contradictions; she quickly reversed course and admitted she had twice scratched the cosmic itch with Mathers. Both times, she said, Gaylord had forced her to do it. Once, he even held a knife to her back!\n\nThe crazy man had abused his long-suffering wife in many other ways, she said. He had threatened to kill their two sons; he drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes excessively; forced her to submit to unnamed \"unspeakable indignities\"; made her look at dirty pictures and read \"lewd stories\" aloud to him; struck her and threatened her with weapons; and he smoked marijuana, too. This effort to paint the minister as a crazed dope fiend was far more convincing then than it would be now. At the time, marijuana was a relatively new and little-understood phenomenon in American culture, and as everyone in 1934 knew, a couple puffs of this dreadful Mexican weed would turn a straight-A divinity student into a hysterical maniac bent on murder and mayhem, perhaps even cannibalism if the smoker happened to have the munchies.\n\nIt should be noted that Mrs. Saunders claimed all of her husband's spectacular dissipation improbably occurred in only the last year or two of his life.\n\nReverend Saunders. _From the_ Wabash (IN) Plain Dealer, _February 5, 1934. Courtesy of the_ Wabash Plain Dealer.\n\nIt may have seemed at this point that the defense was overdoing it, but to play it safe it tried a third time-tested possibility for saving its client: the temporary insanity dodge\u2014no, not her husband's insanity, but her own! In other words, if the jury didn't believe Reverend Saunders was crazy, perhaps it could be persuaded that Mrs. Saunders was. The defense's use of this strategy was implied at the beginning of the trial, when prospective jurors were asked whether they believed in _witchcraft_. They also were asked what their attitude would be toward a woman who believed her spouse was possessed by Old Nick himself. The defense claimed that Mrs. Saunders had been driven insane by those undisclosed \"unnatural acts of the slain man.\" (Genuine cases of temporary insanity are rather rare in everyday life\u2014but not in the courtrooms of America.)\n\nAs we have seen, Mrs. Saunders's attorneys worked overtime to make the minister seem like the living embodiment of depravity and cruelty. (But for some reason, this business about demonic possession was not brought up again.) In contrast to the baroque stories presented by the defense, the prosecution simply said that Mrs. Saunders was a \"cold-blooded murderess\" with a couple easily discernible motives: she wanted to continue her fling with Theodore Mathers, and she wanted the $29,200 she would receive from Gaylord's insurance policies if he should be so unfortunate as to die an unnatural death.\n\nThree physicians examined Mrs. Saunders and declared her _presently_ sane, which meant that if the jury acquitted her, she would be set free immediately.\n\nAnd that's precisely what happened. On December 18, after two hours' deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty due to temporary insanity. Mrs. Saunders greeted the verdict with \"hysterical laughter\"\u2014not _too_ hysterical, mind you, as she was supposed to be perfectly sane now. The judge pronounced her free to go.\n\nMasel Roe and Mabel Balke never went to trial; apparently, they got off with a stern warning, perhaps accompanied with the legal equivalent of a dirty look and shamey-shamey fingers.\n\nTheodore Mathers\u2014the self-confessed actual killer of Reverend Gaylord Saunders\u2014went on trial in April 1935. The temporary insanity stunt had worked so darn well for Mrs. Saunders that Mathers's attorneys employed it, too. They argued with straight faces that Mathers had been driven temporarily insane when the reverend forced him to have sex with Mrs. Saunders.\n\nIt was a noble effort, but there was one law the attorneys failed to take into consideration: the law of diminishing returns. (Perhaps they also should have considered Murphy's Law.) On April 20, the jury found Mathers guilty of involuntary manslaughter and gave him a sentence of one to ten years in prison.\nBibliography\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF DR. KNABE\n\nDorland, W.A. Newman. _The Sum of Feminine Achievement_. Boston, MA: Stratford Co., 1917.\n\n_New Orleans Daily Picayune_. \"Knabe Murder Case Postponed to Fall.\" June 24, 1913, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Trial for Murder of Woman Friday.\" November 24, 1913, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Undertaker and Doctor Accused of Knabe Death.\" January 1, 1913, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Woman Physician Did Not Suicide.\" December 24, 1912, 13.\n\n_New York Times_. \"At Bar for Knabe Murder.\" November 28, 1913, 20.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Buddhism a Clue in Dr. Knabe Case.\" November 1, 1911, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Clue to Dr. Knabe's Slayer.\" October 27, 1911, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Deserter Got $1,500 for Killing Woman.\" April 2, 1912, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Dr. Craig Goes Free.\" December 10, 1913, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Fails to Identify Craig.\" December 4, 1913, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Find Woman Doctor Slain in Her Home.\" October 25, 1911, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Insists He Killed Dr. Helen Knabe.\" April 3, 1912, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Knabe Verdict Is Murder.\" December 30, 1911, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"New Knabe Murder Theory.\" November 14, 1911, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"No Trace of Knife.\" October 26, 1911, 9.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Now Think Dr. Knabe Suicide.\" October 30, 1911, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Seeks Dr. Craig's Acquittal.\" December 5, 1913, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Sleuths on Knabe Case.\" February 11, 1912, I, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Sticks to His Story.\" April 4, 1912, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Sure Dr. Knabe Was Suicide.\" November 2, 1911, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Was Seeking Flats Dr. Knabe Lived In.\" October 28, 1911, 20.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Won't Ask Death Penalty.\" November 30, 1913, II, 14.\n\nPICNIC OF DEATH\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Daughter Testifies in Poison Trial.\" October 23, 1931, 16.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Eleven on Jury to Try Accused Mother.\" October 1, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Food Served at Reunion Kills Sisters.\" June 22, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mother Freed in Poisoning of Girls.\" May 10, 1933, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mother Indicted in Poison Case.\" July 4, 1931, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mother Quizzed in Poison Deaths.\" June 23, 1931, 18.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mother to Be Tried in Poisoning of 2 Girls.\" September 28, 1931, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mrs. Simmons to Go on Stand Today.\" October 28, 1931, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Picnic Poison Case Is Begun.\" September 29, 1931, 9.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Poison Buyer Put on Stand.\" October 15, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Poison Test Told in Court.\" October 16, 1931, 29.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Simmons Case Is Given to Jury.\" November 4, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Simmons Case Jury, Hung, Is Discharged.\" November 6, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Simmons Defense Raps Questioners.\" October 17, 1931, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Simmons Testifies in Poisoning of Girls.\" October 2, 1931, 1.\n\nTHE FARMHAND AND THE ACROBAT\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Alleged Confession of Wright in Woman's Death Held Competent.\" March 23, 1934, 14.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Cannelton Prisoner Rushed to Evansville.\" February 6, 1934, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Ex-Circus Acrobat Slain in Indiana.\" February 4, 1934, I, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana Farm Hand Confesses He Slew Woman Ex-Acrobat.\" February 7, 1934, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Search for Farm Hand in Slaying of Ex-Circus Performer Widens.\" February 5, 1934, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Wright Held Slayer of Ex-Circus Acrobat.\" March 24, 1934, 1+.\n\n_New York Clipper_. \"The Cherry Blossoms.\" March 18, 1911, 12.\n\n_New York Times_. \"Farm Hand Gets Life in Killing.\" March 30, 1934, 7.\n\nMR. WADE AND MRS. BROWN HATCH A STUPID PLOT\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Awful....\" September 4, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Gallows.\" October 24, 1880, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Horrible Story of Crime.\" March 3, 1880, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana.\" November 26, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana.\" January 11, 1881, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana.\" February 5, 1881, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana.\" February 22, 1881, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana Affairs.\" April 30, 1880, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana Affairs.\" May 1, 1880, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana Legislature.\" January 8, 1881, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indianapolis.\" October 29, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indianapolis.\" December 24, 1880, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indianapolis.\" December 30, 1880, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Joe Wade's Story.\" July 3, 1880, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mrs. B's Love Story.\" April 28, 1880, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"A Murderer's Poem.\" July 18, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"A Murderer's Verses.\" August 19, 1880, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Paralyzed with Horror.\" July 13, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Pardoned.\" March 22, 1895, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"A Quiet Man.\" April 27, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Waiting for the Gallows.\" September 5, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"What Love Will Do.\" April 23, 1880, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Whoppers.\" July 9, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Will Mary Brown Hang?\" July 11, 1880, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"A Wretched Woman.\" July 8, 1880, 1.\n\n_National Police Gazette_. \"Hoosier Horror.\" February 21, 1880, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mrs. Brown Frees Her Mind.\" February 28, 1880, 3.\n\nA HOOSIER MAKES A SPECTACLE OF HIMSELF IN CINCINNATI\n\n_Cincinnati Enquirer_. \"Butcher Murder Is Bared in Cincinnati.\" March 20, 1933, 1+.\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Man Cuts Wife into 14 Pieces.\" March 20, 1933, 1.\n\nHAZEL TRIUMPHANT!\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"'Mother' of McNally Doll-Twins is Freed...\" October 21, 1922, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Neighbor Testifies...\" October 19, 1922, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Strange Doll Case...\" December 3, 1922, magazine section, 3.\n\nPURSUED BY A MONSTER\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Another Indiana Mystery.\" Editorial. July 17, 1904, II, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Another Trial.\" November 4, 1905, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Double Murder May Have Attempted.\" July 11, 1904, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Gipe Convicted for the Second Time.\" December 19, 1905, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Gipe Convicted of the Starbuck Murder.\" December 2, 1904, 9.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Haley Gipe Indicted by the Grand Jury.\" November 1, 1904, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Haley Gipe Tells of an Alleged Plot.\" July 26, 1904, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"May Be Innocent.\" March 20, 1905, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mother and Child Buried.\" July 12, 1904, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Three More Arrests in the Starbuck Case.\" August 28, 1904, I, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Wave of Crime in Indiana.\" July 24, 1904, II, 8.\n\nJUSTICE, POSSIBLY\n\n_Evansville Courier_. \"At Morganfield.\" May 20, 1897, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Bloodhounds on the Trail!\" May 14, 1897, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Buente Murder Case.\" May 18, 1897, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lizzie Maria Buente: Funeral Yesterday...\" May 15, 1897, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Patience.\" Editorial. May 15, 1897, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Perry Township Farmers Take Up Arms!\" May 13, 1897, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Preliminary Hearing.\" May 16, 1897, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Reach Verdict in Sixteen Minutes.\" September 29, 1897, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Spaulding Released.\" May 21, 1897, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"A Strange Negro...\" May 17, 1897, 1.\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Arrests of Negroes Suspected...\" May 15, 1897, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Blood on His Clothes.\" May 14, 1897, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Convicted of Attempted Outrage.\" September 29, 1897, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Jail Under Guard.\" May 16, 1897, I, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"John Spalding Released.\" May 21, 1897, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"No Mob Came.\" May 17, 1897, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Outraged and Murdered.\" May 13, 1897, 3.\n\nTHE HONEYMOONERS\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Bullets Fit the Pistol.\" August 26, 1902, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Charges Mastison with Murder.\" October 17, 1902, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Continued.\" November 25, 1902, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Defense of James Mastison Is Outlined by Attorneys.\" November 30, 1902, I, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Experienced Difficulties in Taking Mastison to Prison.\" December 15, 1902, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Fear of Gallows Forces Mastison to Confess.\" December 9, 1902, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"For Trial.\" November 17, 1902, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Held Over.\" August 27, 1902, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Insanity Will Be the Plea of James Mastison.\" December 8, 1902, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Insists That an Unknown Man Shot His Wife.\" August 25, 1902, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kills Wife in Dry Goods Store.\" October 8, 1909, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Preliminary Trial Tuesday.\" August 28, 1902, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Restless.\" December 10, 1902, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Shot Down.\" August 24, 1902, III, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"To Be Tried.\" November 24, 1902, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Wife Murderer Gets Life Sentence.\" October 9, 1909, 1.\n\nWITH A SMILE ON HER FACE\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Arlene Draves' Fall Told Jury.\" May 15, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Body of Arlene Draves Exhumed While Curious Throng Watches.\" March 5, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Death Urged for Kirkland.\" May 26, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Defense Hails New Draves Witness.\" March 12, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Doctor Avers Hemorrhage Killed Girl.\" February 27, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Eleven on Kirkland Jury 'Mistaken.'\" June 7, 1931, I, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Five Youths Held in Girl's Death.\" December 2, 1930, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Football Star Sobs Out Story of Love Affair with Dead Girl.\" March 7, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Judge Orders Body of Girl Exhumed.\" March 4, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Judge Threatens to Use Jobless for Jury.\" May 5, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jury Sought to Try Youth.\" February 24, 1931, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Accused by Two Friends.\" May 19, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Given One to Ten Years.\" May 27, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland in Prison, Case Is Finished.\" May 28, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Is Given Life Sentence.\" March 11, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland May Accuse Four Other Youths.\" April 30, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland May Get Jail Term.\" May 20, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Tells Jury His Love for Arlene.\" May 23, 1931, I, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Term in Gin Death Stands.\" June 10, 1931, 20.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Threat to 'Beat Up' Girl Told.\" May 16, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Trial Adjourned.\" May 2, 1931, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kirkland Trial Is Ready for Arguments.\" May 24, 1931, I, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Parents Give Kirkland Aid.\" May 21, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Parole Given Youth Convicted in Gin Party Death.\" August 28, 1937, I, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Ronald Oldham Faces New Charge.\" June 3, 1931, I, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Ronald Oldham Fined for Illegal Practice.\" August 5, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Shock of Attack Is Fatal to Girl.\" December 1, 1930, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"State Demands Youth's Life as Kirkland Trial Nears End.\" March 10, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Ten of the Jurors...\" Editorial. June 9, 1931, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Two Doctors Lay Arlene Draves' Death to Blow, No Attacks.\" March 6, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Two New Witnesses in Kirkland Trial.\" May 14, 1931, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Virgil Kirkland Denied Liberty.\" June 20, 1933, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Waitress Says Gary Boys Bought Hamburgers with Bloody Hands.\" February 28, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Young Kirkland Faces Death or Freedom in Second Trial.\" May 13, 1931, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Youth in Gin Slaying Gets Second Trial.\" April 7, 1931, 1+.\n\nTHE STAGE'S LOSS WAS ST. LOUIS'S GAIN\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Boasts of Marksmanship After Slaying Husband.\" March 3, 1914, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Owsley Jury Unable to Reach Agreement.\" May 10, 1914, I, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Self-Defense Verdict in Owsley Murder Case.\" March 4, 1914, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Wife Tried for Death of Former Louisville Man.\" May 7, 1914, 2.\n\n_St. Louis Post-Dispatch_. \"Defense in Owsley Trial Begins; Wife No. 1 Not Called.\" May 6, 1914, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Ex-Wife to Testify Against Successor Who Shot Husband.\" May 5, 1914, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Four Women Freed in Last 3 Years After Slaying Husbands.\" March 3, 1914, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Husband Slain in Self-Defense, Is Inquest Verdict.\" March 3, 1914, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jury in Owsley Case Discharged After 44 Hours.\" May 9, 1914, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mrs. Ada Owsley Probably Will Be Tried Second Time.\" May 10, 1914, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mrs. Owsley on Trial for Killing Husband.\" May 4, 1914, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Owsley Case with Jury; First Wife's Story Is Barred.\" May 7, 1914, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Owsley Jury Said to Be 8 to 4 for Conviction.\" May 8, 1914, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Wife Who Shot Husband Doesn't Know He's Dead.\" March 2, 1914, 3.\n\nOTTO EMBELLISHES\n\n_(Columbus, IN) Evening Republican_. \"Attempts Suicide.\" October 29, 1917, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Husband Sorry His Wife Died.\" October 30, 1917, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jury Is Secured for Trial of Murder Case.\" December 19, 1917, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Otto Vest May Not Be Called for Trial Now.\" January 31, 1918, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Vest Jury Unable to Agree on a Verdict.\" December 21, 1917, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Vest Murder Case to Be Settled Very Soon.\" December 20, 1917, 1.\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Acquittal Verdict Returned.\" February 6, 1918, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Bride of Month Poison Victim.\" October 30, 1917, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Faces Trial for Life.\" December 20, 1917, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Otto Vest Indicted on Charge of Wife Murder.\" December 2, 1917, I, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Prisoner Breaks Fast After Hunger Strike.\" November 4, 1917, I, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Prisoner on Hunger Strike.\" November 1, 1917, 7.\n\nWILLIAM WANTS TO GET MARRIED\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Alleged Parricide Repudiates Confession.\" January 28, 1912, I, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Who Slew Parents Dies.\" September 16, 1914, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Case of William Lee.\" Editorial. February 3, 1912, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Change of Venue Granted...\" December 19, 1911, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Confesses to Killing Father.\" August 26, 1911, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Defense Will Attempt to Prove Insanity.\" January 25, 1912, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"In Reformatory.\" August 29, 1911, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Kentuckian on Trial.\" February 7, 1912, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lee Pleads Not Guilty...\" December 6, 1911, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lee Pleads Not Guilty...\" January 5, 1912, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lee's Case Expected to Go to Jury...\" January 29, 1912, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lee's Punishment Fixed at Life Imprisonment.\" February 1, 1912, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Lee to Be Tried on Triple Murder Charge.\" November 30, 1911, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mental Taint Pleaded as Excuse for Lee's Crime.\" January 27, 1912, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Murderer's Lady Love Marries Another.\" June 25, 1913, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Parole Sought for Man Guilty of Triple Murder.\" November 23, 1912, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Physician Declares William Lee Sane.\" January 30, 1912, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Preparing for Defense.\" September 13, 1911, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Slayer of Trio Gives Details.\" August 28, 1911, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"State Demands Death Penalty...\" January 26, 1912, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Tells Story of Killing Family.\" August 27, 1911, I, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Triple Murder Charge Against William Lee.\" December 18, 1911, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Triple Murder Charge Against Young Son.\" August 25, 1911, 1.\n\nA HIGHER VENUE\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Dies of Wounds.\" November 12, 1912, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Grand Jury Drawn.\" November 13, 1912, 9.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hatchet Used.\" November 11, 1912, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Inquest Is Held.\" November 14, 1912, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"In Serious Condition.\" February 27, 1913, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Mind Wrecked.\" July 13, 1913, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Murder Charge.\" November 15, 1912, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Prisoner Has Dropsy.\" February 28, 1913, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Slayer Is Dead.\" March 6, 1913, 9.\n\nRHETORICAL QUESTIONS IN ABUNDANCE\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Confesses He Murdered Priest...\" February 20, 1918, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Death of Gary Preacher Unsolved by Authorities.\" August 27, 1915, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Evansville Admirers Pay Tribute to Kayser.\" August 29, 1915, II, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Fund for the Detection of Kayser's Slayers.\" September 17, 1915, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Gary Letter Reviled Kayser...\" August 27, 1915, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Murdered Minister Buried; Death Unsolved Mystery.\" August 28, 1915, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Pastor Slain; Threatened in Anonymous Letters.\" August 26, 1915, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Police Chief Receives Threats Against Life.\" August 29, 1915, I, 3.\n\n_Milwaukee Journal_. \"Kayser Figured in Bomb Plot?\" August 28, 1915, 2.\n\n_New London (CT) Day_. \"Church Quarrel Caused Murder.\" August 26, 1915, 1.\n\n_New York Times_. \"Charge Gigantic Plots to Violate Neutrality.\" September 3, 1915, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indiana Pastor Slain After Many Threats.\" August 26, 1915, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"To Wreck Explosives Train.\" August 30, 1915, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Trailing Pastor's Slayers.\" September 1, 1915, 20.\n\nTHOMAS HOAL, BOY BANDIT\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"After Parole.\" March 9, 1912, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Alters Name Because of Domestic Troubles.\" November 13, 1909.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"As a Student.\" November 15, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Bandit's Victims Recovering.\" November 19, 1909, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Bank President Is Still Alive.\" November 13, 1909, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Bares Sorrow: Father Tells of Wife's Shame to Save Son.\" May 6, 1910, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Both Victims Doing Better.\" November 15, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit Occupies Cell in Reformatory.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit's Box Is at Central Station.\" November 13, 1909.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit Seeks Pardon.\" March 26, 1915, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit Subject of Lexington School Principal.\" November 20, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit's Victim Nearing Recovery.\" February 27, 1910, I, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit to Be Tried in Harrison County...\" December 18, 1909, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit to Plead Insanity.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Boy Bandit Will Be Tried at This Term of Court.\" April 29, 1910, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Cannot Bar Yellow Backs.\" November 16, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Change of Venue.\" November 27, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Crowd Clamors for View of Bandit's Box.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Curious Crowds See Hoal's Box.\" December 3, 1909, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Denies $500 Fee.\" December 16, 1910, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"The Dime Novel.\" November 14, 1909, II, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Dime Novels Versus Paroles.\" Editorial. March 28, 1915, II, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Dramatic Story J.K. Woodward Tells...\" May 5, 1910, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Drops Revolver as He Leaves the Bank.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Extra Strong Cell Holds Boy Bandit...\" February 21, 1910, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"For the Curious: Hoal's Box...\" December 1, 1909, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Goes to Jury.\" May 7, 1910, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Case Goes Over Until May 3.\" February 24, 1910, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Case Will Be Called at Corydon...\" February 11, 1910, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Case Will Be Called in New Albany...\" November 26, 1909, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Meets His Son in Prison.\" November 13, 1909, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Not Moved: Will Be Kept in the Indiana Reformatory.\" November 28, 1909, IV, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal's Attorneys Get Nothing.\" September 9, 1910, 10.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal's Box Sent to Corydon.\" January 8, 1910, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal's Lawyers Want to Enter an Appearance...\" November 17, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Still in Reformatory.\" November 16, 1909, 2.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal's Trial Begins Wednesday.\" February 17, 1910, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hoal Trial Delayed at Corydon...\" February 23, 1910, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Hopes to Save Neck by Plea of Insanity.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Indictments Against Father and Stepmother...\" May 20, 1910, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Individual Bookkeeper Tells Thrilling Story.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jury Selected...\" May 4, 1910, 5.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Last Ride Taken by Erstwhile Boy Bandit...\" May 9, 1910, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Life Sentence Meted Out...\" May 8, 1910, I, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Louisville Boy Bandit...Flees Prison.\" September 25, 1919, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Negro Chauffeur Has Slim Chance to Live.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Negro Chauffeur May Not Survive the Day.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Negro Chauffeur Tells His Story.\" November 13, 1909.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Negro Chauffeur Wounded by Bandit.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"New Albany Banker Shot in 1909...Dead of Wound.\" September 28, 1915, 8.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Nice Point Raised...\" March 15, 1911, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"On Trial: Suit Against Insurance Company...\" June 16, 1910, 12.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Phrenologist Sizes Boy Bandit Up Right.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Physicians Hopeful of Banker's Recovery.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Planned to Escape in Shipping Case.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Reacting Dime Novel Heroes Boy Kills Brother.\" February 23, 1910, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Reporter Breaks the News to Boy's Father.\" November 12, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"School Record of Youthful Bandit.\" November 14, 1909, IV, 11.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Slip Hoal into Court Secretly.\" November 25, 1909, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Spirited from Jeffersonville.\" February 20, 1910, IV, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Steel Saws Found in Hoal's Corydon Cell.\" May 10, 1910, 7.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"They Want $500.\" November 24, 1910, 6.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Tom Hall, Boy Bandit, Kills Bank Cashier...\" November 12, 1909, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Tucker Taken to His Home.\" December 3, 1909, 5.\n\nTHREE WAYS TO ESCAPE PUNISHMENT\n\n_Louisville Courier-Journal_. \"Four Tell Parts in Preacher's Death.\" February 5, 1934, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jurors Quizzed on Belief in Witchcraft.\" December 8, 1934, 1.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Jury Given Case of Theodore Mathers.\" April 20, 1935, 18.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Slain Minister Termed Insane.\" December 13, 1934, 3.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"State Rests in Trial of Mrs. Saunders.\" December 18, 1934, 4.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Widow and Boy Admit Killing Indiana Minister.\" February 4, 1934, I, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Widow Free in Spouse's Death.\" December 19, 1934, 1+.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. \"Widow of Indiana Preacher Denies She Plotted His Death.\" December 14, 1934, III, 9.\n\n_Reading (PA) Eagle_. \"Youth Found Guilty of Murdering Pastor.\" April 21, 1935, 17.\nAbout the Author\n\nKeven McQueen was born in Richmond, Kentucky, and teaches composition and literature at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of twelve books, including six for The History Press ( _Kentucky Book of the Dead, Strange Tales of Crime and Murder in Southern Indiana, Louisville Murder & Mayhem: Historic Crimes of Derby City, Forgotten Tales of Indiana, The Great Louisville Tornado of 1890, Forgotten Tales of Kentucky_), on Kentucky, Indiana and the deep South, concerning topics such as history, biography, historical true crime, natural disasters and folklore.\nOTHER BOOKS BY KEVEN MCQUEEN\n\nBiography\/History\n\n_Cassius M. Clay, Freedom's Champion_ (Turner Publishing, 2001)\n\n_Offbeat Kentuckians: Legends to Lunatics_ (McClanahan Publishing, 2001)\n\n_More Offbeat Kentuckians_ (McClanahan Publishing, 2004)\n\n_The Great Louisville Tornado of 1890_ (The History Press, 2010)\n\nFolklore\/History\n\n_The Kentucky Book of the Dead_ (The History Press, 2008)\n\n_Forgotten Tales of Kentucky_ (The History Press, 2008)\n\n_Forgotten Tales of Indiana_ (The History Press, 2009)\n\nHistorical True Crime\n\n_Murder in Old Kentucky: True Crime Stories from the Bluegrass_ (McClanahan Publishing, 2005)\n\n_Cruelly Murdered: The Murder of Mary Magdalene Pitts and Other Kentucky True Crime Stories_ (Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2008)\n\n_Strange Tales of Crime and Murder in Southern Indiana_ (The History Press, 2009)\n\n_The Axman Came from Hell and Other Southern True Crime Stories_ (Pelican Publishing, 2011)\n\n_Louisville Murder and Mayhem: Historic Crimes of the Derby City_ (The History Press, 2012)\n\nFor further particulars and an entertaining history-based story every month, check out KevenMcQueenStories.com. Friend me on Facebook\u2014I get kinda lonesome sometimes.\n_Visit us at_\n\nwww.historypress.net\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Chris Curnow, Julia Neufeld and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http:\/\/www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nText enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).\n\nText enclosed in equal signs is in bold (=350=).\n\nText enclosed in plus symbols is Greek transliteration (+diulizo+).\n\nSmall capital text has been replaced with all capitals.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration: THE ANIMALS ENTER THE ARK.\n\nFRONTISPIECE--\"STORY OF THE BIBLE ANIMALS.\"]\n\n\n\n\n  STORY\n  OF THE\n  BIBLE ANIMALS\n\n  A Description of the\n  Habits and Uses of every living\n  Creature mentioned in the Scriptures,\n\n  WITH\n\n  EXPLANATION OF PASSAGES IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT IN\n  WHICH REFERENCE IS MADE TO THEM.\n\n  BY\n  J. G. WOOD,\n  AUTHOR OF \"HOMES WITHOUT HANDS,\"\n  \"THE ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY,\" ETC.\n\n  300 ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\n\n  PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF\n  _CHARLES FOSTER'S PUBLICATIONS_,\n  No. 118 South Seventh Street,\n  PHILADELPHIA, PA.\n\n[Illustration: WAR-HORSES AND ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHARIOT.\n\nSee page 307.]\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1888, BY W. A. FOSTER.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nOwing to the different conditions of time, language, country, and\nrace under which the various books of the Holy Scriptures were\nwritten, it is impossible that they should be rightly understood at\nthe present day without some study of the customs and manners of\nEastern peoples, as well as of the countries in which they lived.\n\nThe Oriental character of the scriptural writings causes them to\nabound with metaphors and symbols taken from the common life of the\ntime.\n\nThey contain allusions to the trees, flowers, and herbage, the\ncreeping things of the earth, the fishes of the sea, the birds of\nthe air, and the beasts which abode with man or dwelt in the deserts\nand forests.\n\nUnless, therefore, we understand these writings as those understood\nthem for whom they were written, it is evident that we shall\nmisinterpret instead of rightly comprehending them.\n\nThe field which is laid open to us is so large that only one\ndepartment of Natural History--namely, Zoology--can be treated in\nthis work, although it is illustrated by many references to other\nbranches of Natural History, to the physical geography of Palestine,\nEgypt, and Syria, the race-character of the inhabitants, and\nhistorical parallels.\n\nThe importance of understanding the nature, habits, and uses of\nthe animals which are constantly mentioned in the Bible, cannot be\noverrated as a means of elucidating the Scriptures, and without this\nknowledge we shall not only miss the point of innumerable passages\nof the Old and New Testaments, but the words of our Lord Himself\nwill often be totally misinterpreted, or at least lose part of their\nsignificance.\n\nThe object of the present work is therefore, to take in its proper\nsuccession, every creature whose name is given in the Scriptures,\nand to supply so much of its history as will enable the reader to\nunderstand all the passages in which it is mentioned.\n\n[Illustration: SHEPHERD LEADING SHEEP AND GOATS TO THEIR FOLD IN THE\nROCK.\n\nSee page 191.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE AUTHOR.\n\n\nThe Rev. J. G. Wood is a native of London, England. He was educated\nat Oxford University, and has long been known, both in England\nand America, as not only a learned and accurate writer on Natural\nHistory, but a popular one as well, having the happy faculty of\nmaking the results of scientific study and painstaking observation,\ninteresting and instructive to all classes of readers.\n\nHe has published a number of works on the most familiar departments\nof the history of animals, designed to awaken popular interest\nin the study. Their titles are \"Sketches and Anecdotes of Animal\nLife;\" \"Common Objects of the Seashore and Country;\" \"My Feathered\nFriends;\" \"Homes Without Hands\"--being a description of the\nhabitations of animals,--and the \"Illustrated Natural History,\" a\nbook which is widely known both in England and America as a standard\nwork of great value. It has given the author celebrity, and has\ncaused him to be considered an eminent authority on the subject\nwhich it treats.\n\nIt is evident, from these facts, that it would be difficult to find\na man better qualified than Mr. Wood, to write a book describing the\nanimals mentioned in the Bible.\n\nProfoundly impressed with the ignorance which prevails towards so\nimportant a feature of the Scriptural Narrative, he has devoted his\nripe powers and special knowledge to the work of dissipating it, and\nin this volume, not only fully describes the nature and habits of\nall the animals mentioned in the Scriptures, but tells the story of\ntheir relations to mankind.\n\nMr. Wood is a clergyman of the Church of England, and was for a\ntime connected with Christ Church, Oxford. He has devoted himself\nmainly, however, to authorship in the field which he has chosen,\nand in which he has become so well known. In his works he usually\nemploys a popular style of writing, and does not make scientific\nterms prominent. This is especially true of the \"Story of the Bible\nAnimals,\" which from its easy and interesting character is adapted\nto the comprehension of young and old.\n\n[Illustration: animals]\n\nMany of the pictures in this book are taken from the living animals,\nor from photographs and sketches by Eastern travellers.\n\nOthers represent imaginary scenes, or ancient historical events, and\nhave been designed by skilful artists after careful study of the\nsubjects.\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\n[A complete Index of Subjects will be found at the end of this\nVolume.]\n\n\n  NO.                                                            PAGE\n\n  1. THE ANIMALS ENTER THE ARK                                      2\n\n  2. WAR-HORSES AND ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHARIOT                        4\n\n  3. SHEPHERD LEADING SHEEP AND GOATS TO THEIR FOLD IN THE ROCK     6\n\n  4. A DESERT-SCENE                                                 8\n\n  5. THE GARDEN OF EDEN                                            19\n\n  6. LION DRINKING AT A POOL                                       21\n\n  7. A LION KILLS THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH                           22\n\n  8. LION AND TIGER                                                23\n\n  9. THE LION REPLIES TO THE THUNDER                               25\n\n  10. LIONESS AND YOUNG                                            27\n\n  11. LION CARRYING HOME SUPPLIES                                  31\n\n  12. AFRICAN LIONS                                                32\n\n  13. THE LION ATTACKS THE HERD                                    34\n\n  14. THE LAIR OF THE LION                                         35\n\n  15. THE LION LISTENS TO THE APPROACH OF THE HUNTER               39\n\n  16. THE LEOPARD                                                  43\n\n  17. LEOPARD ATTACKING A HERD OF DEER                             45\n\n  18. THE LEOPARD LEAPS UPON HIS PREY                              47\n\n  19. WAITING                                                      49\n\n  20. LEOPARD                                                      51\n\n  21. CAT AND KITTENS                                              52\n\n  22. CAT                                                          54\n\n  23. DOGS IN AN EASTERN CITY AT NIGHT                             57\n\n  24. SHIMEI EXULTING OVER KING DAVID                              59\n\n  25. LAZARUS LYING AT THE RICH MAN'S DOOR                         62\n\n  26. THE DEATH OF JEZEBEL                                         63\n\n  27. SYRIAN DOG                                                   64\n\n  28. EASTERN WATER-SELLER                                         68\n\n  29. WOLVES ATTACKING A FLOCK OF SHEEP                            70\n\n  30. WOLVES CHASING DEER                                          72\n\n  31. THE WOLF                                                     73\n\n  32. WOLVES ATTACKING WILD GOATS                                  75\n\n  33. THE JACKAL                                                   76\n\n  34. FOXES OR JACKALS DEVOURING THE CARCASE OF A GOAT             77\n\n  35. A FEAST IN PROSPECT                                          79\n\n  36. A FEAST SECURED                                              81\n\n  37. A TRESPASSER                                                 83\n\n  38. LEOPARD ROBBED OF ITS PREY BY HYAENAS                         87\n\n  39. HYAENAS DEVOURING BONES                                       89\n\n  40. WEASELS                                                      93\n\n  41. THE BITER BIT                                                95\n\n  42. BADGERS                                                      99\n\n  43. SUPPOSED FORM AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE TABERNACLE             101\n\n  44. BEARS DESCENDING THE MOUNTAINS                              105\n\n  45. ON THE WATCH                                                107\n\n  46. SEEKING AN OUTLOOK                                          109\n\n  47. A FAMILY PARTY                                              111\n\n  48. BEAR                                                        112\n\n  49. PORCUPINE                                                   113\n\n  50. THE MOLE-RAT                                                115\n\n  51. THE MOUSE                                                   119\n\n  52. DAGON FALLEN DOWN BEFORE THE ARK                            120\n\n  53. MOUSE AND NEST                                              121\n\n  54. JERBOA OR LEAPING-MOUSE                                     122\n\n  55. THE FIELD-MOUSE                                             123\n\n  56. THE SYRIAN HARE                                             127\n\n  57. A TIMID GROUP                                               129\n\n  58. ALTAR OF BURNT-OFFERING                                     133\n\n  59. THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS                                    134\n\n  60. ABRAHAM OFFERS FOOD TO THE THREE STRANGERS                  135\n\n  61. OXEN TREADING OUT GRAIN                                     139\n\n  62. EASTERN OX-CART                                             140\n\n  63. THE ARK OF THE COVENANT BEING DRAWN BY COWS                 141\n\n  64. PLOUGHING WITH OXEN                                         143\n\n  65. MUMMY OF A SACRED BULL TAKEN FROM AN EGYPTIAN TOMB          146\n\n  66. ANIMALS BEING SOLD FOR SACRIFICE IN THE PORCH OF THE TEMPLE 147\n\n  67. JEROBOAM SETS UP A GOLDEN CALF AT BETHEL                    148\n\n  68. THE BUFFALO                                                 149\n\n  69. THE BHAINSA, OR DOMESTIC BUFFALO, AND CAMEL DRAWING\n         THE PLOUGH                                               151\n\n  70. WILD BULL OR ORYX                                           155\n\n  71. THE ORYX                                                    157\n\n  72. THE UNICORN                                                 158\n\n  73. THE BISON                                                   160\n\n  74. BISON KILLING WOLF                                          161\n\n  75. THE GAZELLE OR ROE OF SCRIPTURE                             163\n\n  76. GAZELLES                                                    164\n\n  77. THE FALCON USED IN OUR HUNT                                 168\n\n  78. THE ARAB IS DELIGHTED AT THE SUCCESS OF THE HUNT            169\n\n  79. THE GAZELLE                                                 170\n\n  80. THE ADDAX                                                   172\n\n  81. THE BUBALE OR FALLOW DEER OF SCRIPTURE                      175\n\n  82. SHEEP                                                       176\n\n  83. ARABS JOURNEYING TO FRESH PASTURES                          178\n\n  84. VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS                                        179\n\n  85. JACOB MEETS RACHEL AT THE WELL                              182\n\n  86. EASTERN SHEPHERD WATCHING HIS FLOCK                         183\n\n  87. DAVID GATHERS STONES FROM THE BROOK TO CAST AT\n         GOLIATH                                                  185\n\n  88. AN EASTERN SHEPHERD                                         186\n\n  89. SHEEP FOLLOWING THEIR SHEPHERD                              187\n\n  90. ANCIENT SHEEP-PEN                                           190\n\n  91. THE POOR MAN'S LAMB                                         193\n\n  92. THE RICH MAN'S FEAST                                        193\n\n  93. FLOCKS OF SHEEP BEING TAKEN INTO JERUSALEM                  195\n\n  94. SOUNDING THE TRUMPETS IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE                202\n\n  95. RAM'S HORN TRUMPET                                          203\n\n  96. A LAMB UPON THE ALTAR OF BURNT OFFERING                     204\n\n  97. THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE                                      206\n\n  98. THE CHAMOIS                                                 211\n\n  99. CHAMOIS DEFENDING ITS YOUNG                                 213\n\n  100. CHASING THE AOUDAD                                         214\n\n  101. THE MOUFLON                                                216\n\n  102. JACOB DECEIVES HIS FATHER AND TAKES ESAU'S BLESSING        218\n\n  103. THE ANGEL APPEARS TO GIDEON                                219\n\n  104. EASTERN WATER-CARRIERS WITH BOTTLES MADE OF GOAT-SKIN      224\n\n  105. GOATS ON THE MARCH                                         228\n\n  106. HERD OF GOATS ATTACKED BY A LION                           231\n\n  107. ARABIAN IBEX, THE WILD GOAT OF SCRIPTURE                   236\n\n  108. THE DEER                                                   238\n\n  109. RED DEER                                                   239\n\n  110. FALLOW DEER OR HIND OF SCRIPTURE                           240\n\n  111. A QUIET SPOT                                               241\n\n  112. RED DEER AND FAWN                                          243\n\n  113. THE LEADER OF THE HERD                                     245\n\n  114. THE WATCHFUL DOE                                           247\n\n  115. A KNEELING CAMEL                                           248\n\n  116. JACOB LEAVES LABAN AND RETURNS TO CANAAN                   249\n\n  117. A CAMP IN THE DESERT                                       250\n\n  118. A GRATEFUL SHADE                                           253\n\n  119. CAMELS LADEN WITH BOUGHS                                   257\n\n  120. MORNING IN THE DESERT: STARTING OF THE CARAVAN             258\n\n  121. THE CAMEL POST                                             261\n\n  122. A RUNAWAY                                                  263\n\n  123. AN ARAB SHEIK MOUNTED UPON HIS CAMEL                       264\n\n  124. AARON'S ROD BEARS ALMONDS                                  266\n\n  125. CAMEL RIDING                                               267\n\n  126. THE DELOUL, OR SWIFT CAMEL                                 268\n\n  127. ANOTHER MODE OF RIDING THE CAMEL                           270\n\n  128. PASSING A CAMEL IN A NARROW STREET OF AN EASTERN CITY      277\n\n  129. MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH                                  278\n\n  130. AN ARAB ENCAMPMENT                                         279\n\n  131. ON THE MARCH                                               281\n\n  132. HAIR OF THE CAMEL                                          283\n\n  133. CAMEL GOING THROUGH A \"NEEDLE'S EYE\"                       285\n\n  134. A REST IN THE DESERT                                       287\n\n  135. BACTRIAN CAMELS DRAWING CART                               289\n\n  136. TRIAL OF ARAB HORSES                                       292\n\n  137. AN ARAB HORSE OF THE KOCHLANI BREED                        293\n\n  138. THE WAR-HORSE                                              295\n\n  139. ARAB HORSES                                                297\n\n  140. BUYING AN ARAB HORSE                                       299\n\n  141. THE ARAB'S FAVORITE STEEDS                                 301\n\n  142. PHARAOH PURSUES THE ISRAELITES WITH CHARIOTS AND\n        HORSES, AND THE SEA COVERS THEM                           302\n\n  143. ELIJAH IS CARRIED UP                                       304\n\n  144. THE ISRAELITES, LED BY JOSHUA, TAKE JERICHO                308\n\n  145. ANCIENT BATTLEFIELD                                        309\n\n  146. CHARIOT OF STATE                                           311\n\n  147. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE REPRESENTING A VICTORIOUS\n        KING IN HIS CHARIOT SLAYING HIS ENEMIES                   313\n\n  148. MUMMY OF AN EGYPTIAN KING OVER THREE THOUSAND\n        YEARS OLD                                                 314\n\n  149. ASS AND DRIVER                                             315\n\n  150. ENTERING JERUSALEM                                         317\n\n  151. SYRIAN ASSES                                               319\n\n  152. A STREET IN CAIRO, EGYPT                                   322\n\n  153. BEGGAR IN THE STREETS OF CAIRO                             324\n\n  154. NIGHT-WATCH IN CAIRO                                       325\n\n  155. HUNTING WILD ASSES                                         331\n\n  156. MULES OF THE EAST                                          334\n\n  157. ABSALOM IS CAUGHT IN THE BOUGHS OF AN OAK TREE             335\n\n  158. DANIEL REFUSES TO EAT THE KING'S MEAT                      337\n\n  159. THE PRODIGAL SON                                           340\n\n  160. ELEAZAR REFUSES TO EAT SWINE'S FLESH                       341\n\n  161. A MOTHER AND HER SEVEN SONS TORTURED FOR REFUSING\n        TO EAT SWINE'S FLESH                                      342\n\n  162. THE EVIL SPIRITS ENTER A HERD OR SWINE                     343\n\n  163. WILD BOARS DEVOURING THE CARCASE OF A DEER                 344\n\n  164. WILD BOARS                                                 345\n\n  165. WILD BOARS DESTROYING A VINEYARD                           347\n\n  166. INDIAN ELEPHANT                                            349\n\n  167. KING SOLOMON, SEATED UPON HIS THRONE, RECEIVES THE\n        QUEEN OF SHEBA                                            350\n\n  168. INDIAN ELEPHANTS                                           351\n\n  169. THE WAR-ELEPHANT                                           355\n\n  170. AFRICAN ELEPHANTS                                          359\n\n  171. ELEPHANTS' WATERING-PLACE                                  361\n\n  172. TIGER                                                      363\n\n  173. TIGER IN THE REEDS                                         364\n\n  174. HEAD OF TIGER                                              365\n\n  175. THE HYRAX                                                  367\n\n  176. HIPPOPOTAMUS                                               372\n\n  177. HIPPOPOTAMUS POOL                                          375\n\n  178. THE GREAT JAWS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS                         376\n\n  179. HIPPOPOTAMUS EMERGING FROM THE RIVER                       377\n\n  180. HIPPOPOTAMUS EATING GRASS                                  379\n\n  181. A HIPPOPOTAMUS-HUNT IN EGYPT                               381\n\n  182. HIPPOPOTAMUS AND TRAP                                      384\n\n  183. THE BABOON                                                 387\n\n  184. THE RHESUS MONKEY                                          389\n\n  185. FEEDING THE MONKEYS IN INDIA                               390\n\n  186. TROUBLESOME NEIGHBORS                                      391\n\n  187. MONKEYS ENTERING A PLANTATION                              392\n\n  188. SLOTHFUL MONKEYS                                           393\n\n  189. A PRIVILEGED RACE                                          394\n\n  190. THE WANDEROO                                               396\n\n  191. THE ENEMY DISCOVERED                                       397\n\n  192. BONNET MONKEYS                                             399\n\n  193. THE BAT                                                    401\n\n  194. BATS' RESTING-PLACE                                        403\n\n  195. GREAT FOX-HEADED BAT, OR FLYING FOX                        405\n\n  196. CAVE NEAR THE SITE OF ANCIENT JERICHO                      406\n\n  197. NIGHT IN THE TROPICS                                       407\n\n  198. LEOPARDS                                                   408\n\n  199. THE HOME OF THE VULTURE                                    411\n\n  200. The LAeMMERGEIER                                            412\n\n  201. A SUCCESSFUL DEFENCE                                       415\n\n  202. STRUCK FROM A DIZZY HEIGHT                                 417\n\n  203. THE VULTURE'S NEST                                         418\n\n  204. THE EGYPTIAN VULTURE, OR GIER EAGLE                        420\n\n  205. VULTURES                                                   425\n\n  206. THE EAGLE AND THE HARE                                     430\n\n  207. EAGLES                                                     432\n\n  208. EAGLE RETURNING TO THE NEST WITH HER PREY                  435\n\n  209. THE OSPREY SEARCHING FOR FISH                              437\n\n  210. SNATCHED FROM THE DEEP: THE OSPREY RISES WITH HIS\n        PREY                                                      439\n\n  211. THE KITE, OR VULTURE OF SCRIPTURE                          441\n\n  212. THE PEREGRINE FALCON, OR GLEDE                             444\n\n  213. THE LANNER FALCON                                          446\n\n  214. THE HAWK                                                   447\n\n  215. KESTREL HOVERING OVER A FIELD IN SEARCH OF PREY            449\n\n  216. THE WIND-HOVER, OR KESTREL                                 450\n\n  217. THE BARN OWL                                               454\n\n  218. THE LITTLE OWL                                             456\n\n  219. CAUGHT NAPPING                                             457\n\n  220. RAVEN.--BARN OWL.--EAGLE OWL                               459\n\n  221. A FAMILY COUNCIL                                           460\n\n  222. THE NIGHT HAWK ON THE WING                                 462\n\n  223. THE NIGHT HAWK                                             463\n\n  224. THE SWALLOW                                                466\n\n  225. LOST FROM THE FLOCK                                        469\n\n  226. THE SWALLOW AND SWIFT                                      471\n\n  227. VIEW OF THE SEA OF GALILEE                                 472\n\n  228. THE SWALLOW'S FAVORITE HAUNT                               473\n\n  229. SWALLOWS AT HOME                                           475\n\n  230. THE HOOPOE                                                 478\n\n  231. EASTERN HOUSETOPS                                          479\n\n  232. READING THE LAW TO THE PEOPLE AFTER THE RETURN\n          FROM CAPTIVITY                                          482\n\n  233. THE BLUE THRUSH, OR SPARROW OF SCRIPTURE                   483\n\n  234. THE TREE SPARROW                                           485\n\n  235. SPARROWS                                                   486\n\n  236. A FOREST SCENE                                             487\n\n  237. THE GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO                                   488\n\n  238. NOAH RECEIVES THE DOVE                                     489\n\n  239. JESUS DRIVES OUT OF THE TEMPLE THE MONEYCHANGERS\n          AND THOSE WHO SOLD DOVES                                493\n\n  240. THE ROCK DOVE                                              494\n\n  241. BLUE ROCK PIGEONS                                          495\n\n  242. THE TURTLE DOVE                                            497\n\n  243. THE HEN AND HER BROOD                                      498\n\n  244. THE DOMESTIC FOWL                                          499\n\n  245. POULTRY                                                    500\n\n  246. THE PEACOCK                                                501\n\n  247. PEAFOWL                                                    503\n\n  248. FEATHERS OF THE PEACOCK                                    504\n\n  249. PARTRIDGES                                                 505\n\n  250. THE GREEK PARTRIDGE                                        507\n\n  251. PARTRIDGE AND THEIR YOUNG                                  508\n\n  252. EASTERN QUAIL                                              509\n\n  253. THE QUAIL                                                  510\n\n  254. FLIGHT OF QUAIL                                            515\n\n  255. THE RAVEN                                                  517\n\n  256. ELIJAH FED BY RAVENS                                       518\n\n  257. RAVENS' ROOSTING-PLACE                                     521\n\n  258. RAVENS' NEST                                               522\n\n  259. OSTRICH AND NEST                                           527\n\n  260. ARABS HUNTING THE OSTRICH                                  533\n\n  261. THE BITTERN                                                537\n\n  262. BITTERN AND CORMORANT                                      539\n\n  263. THE HOME OF THE BITTERN                                    541\n\n  264. THE HERON                                                  543\n\n  265. THE HOME OF THE HERON                                      545\n\n  266. THE PAPYRUS PLANT                                          548\n\n  267. THE HOME OF THE CRANE                                      549\n\n  268. THE CRANE                                                  550\n\n  269.  THE STORK                                                 553\n\n  270.  STORKS AND THEIR NESTS                                    555\n\n  271.  A NEST OF THE WHITE STORK                                 559\n\n  272.  IBIS AND GALLINULE                                        561\n\n  273.  THE PELICAN                                               568\n\n  274.  LIZARDS                                                   575\n\n  275.  TORTOISES                                                 577\n\n  276.  THE DHUBB AND THE TORTOISE                                578\n\n  277.  WATER TORTOISE                                            579\n\n  278.  CROCODILE ATTACKING HORSES                                587\n\n  279.  A CROCODILE POOL OF ANCIENT EGYPT                         590\n\n  280.  CROCODILES OF THE UPPER NILE                              591\n\n  281.  ICHNEUMON DEVOURING THE EGGS OF THE CROCODILE             597\n\n  282.  A CROCODILE TRAP                                          599\n\n  283.  A Fight for Life                                          601\n\n  284.  THE CYPRIUS, OR LIZARD                                    602\n\n  285.  THE CHAMELEON                                             605\n\n  286.  GECKO AND CHAMELEON                                       606\n\n  287.  THE GECKO                                                 609\n\n  288.  SERPENTS                                                  611\n\n  289.  BOA CONSTRICTOR AND TIGER                                 613\n\n  290.  COBRA AND CERASTES                                        615\n\n  291.  THE ISRAELITES ARE BITTEN BY SERPENTS IN THE WILDERNESS,\n        AND MOSES LIFTS UP THE SERPENT OF BRASS                   616\n\n  292.  THE SERPENT-CHARMER                                       619\n\n  293.  THE VIPER                                                 621\n\n  294.  TEACHING COBRAS TO DANCE                                  623\n\n  295.  HORNED VIPER                                              625\n\n  296.  THE VIPER, OR EPHEH                                       627\n\n  297.  THE TOXICOA                                               628\n\n  298.  THE FROG                                                  630\n\n  299.  FISHES                                                    633\n\n  300.  A RIVER SCENE                                             635\n\n  301. PETER CATCHES THE FISH                                     636\n\n  302. MURAENA, LONG-HEADED BARBEL, AND SHEAT FISH                 638\n\n  303. SUCKING FISH, TUNNY, AND CORYPHENE                         640\n\n  304. FISHING SCENE ON THE SEA OF GALILEE                        642\n\n  305. MODE OF DRAGGING THE SEINE NET                             645\n\n  306. NILE PERCH, SURMULLET, AND STAR-GAZER                      647\n\n  307. THE PEARL OYSTER                                           653\n\n  308. INSECTS                                                    655\n\n  309. A SWARM OF LOCUSTS                                         659\n\n  310. THE LOCUST                                                 663\n\n  311. THE BEE                                                    665\n\n  312. THE HORNET AND ITS NEST                                    669\n\n  313. ANTS ON THE MARCH                                          671\n\n  314. ANT OF PALESTINE                                           675\n\n  315. THE CRIMSON WORM                                           677\n\n  316. MORDECAI IS LED THROUGH THE CITY UPON THE KING'S\n        HORSE                                                     679\n\n  317. BUTTERFLIES OF PALESTINE                                   682\n\n  318. NOXIOUS FLIES OF PALESTINE                                 685\n\n  319. THE SCORPION                                               690\n\n  320. CORAL                                                      694\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: more animals]\n\n\n\n\nSTORY OF THE BIBLE ANIMALS.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LION.\n\n     Frequent mention of the Lion in the Scriptures--The Lion\n     employed as an emblem in the Bible--Similarity of the African\n     and Asiatic species--The chief characteristics of the Lion--its\n     strength, activity, and mode of seizing its prey--The Lion hunt.\n\n\nOf all the undomesticated animals of Palestine, none is mentioned so\nfrequently as the LION. This may appear the more remarkable, because\nfor many years the Lion has been extinct in Palestine. The leopard,\nthe wolf, the jackal, and the hyaena, still retain their place in\nthe land, although their numbers are comparatively few; but the\nLion has vanished completely out of the land. The reason for this\ndisappearance is twofold, first, the thicker population; and second,\nthe introduction of firearms.\n\nNo animal is less tolerant of human society than the Lion. In\nthe first place, it dreads the very face of man, and as a rule,\nwhenever it sees a man will slink away and hide itself. There are,\nof course, exceptional cases to this rule. Sometimes a Lion becomes\nso old and stiff, his teeth are so worn, and his endurance so\nslight, that he is unable to chase his usual prey, and is obliged\nto seek for other means of subsistence. In an unpopulated district,\nhe would simply be starved to death, but when his lot is cast in\nthe neighbourhood of human beings, he is perforce obliged to become\na \"man-eater.\" Even in that case, a Lion will seldom attack a man,\nunless he should be able to do so unseen, but will hang about the\nvillages, pouncing on the women as they come to the wells for water,\nor upon the little children as they stray from their parents, and\ncontinually shifting his quarters lest he should be assailed during\nhis sleep. The Lion requires a very large tract of country for his\nmaintenance, and the consequence is, that in proportion as the land\nis populated does the number of Lions decrease.\n\nFirearms are the special dread of the Lion. In the first place, the\nLion, like all wild beasts, cannot endure fire, and the flash of the\ngun terrifies him greatly. Then, there is the report, surpassing\neven his roar in resonance; and lastly, there is the unseen bullet,\nwhich seldom kills him at once, but mostly drives him to furious\nanger by the pain of his wound, yet which he does not dread nearly\nso much as the harmless flash and report. There is another cause of\nthe Lion's banishment from the Holy Land. It is well known that to\nattract any wild beast or bird to some definite spot, all that is\nrequired is to provide them with a suitable and undisturbed home,\nand a certainty of food. Consequently, the surest method of driving\nthem away is to deprive them of both these essentials. Then the Lion\nused to live in forests, which formerly stretched over large tracts\nof ground, but which have long since been cut down, thus depriving\nthe Lion of its home, while the thick population and the general use\nof firearms have deprived him of his food. In fact, the Lion has\nbeen driven out of Palestine, just as the wolf has been extirpated\nfrom England.\n\nBut, in the olden times, Lions must have been very plentiful.\nThere is scarcely a book in the Bible, whether of the Old or New\nTestaments, whether historical or prophetical, that does not contain\nsome mention of this terrible animal; sometimes describing the\nactions of individual Lions, but mostly using the word as an\nemblem of strength and force, whether used for a good purpose or\nabused for a bad one.\n\n[Illustration: LION DRINKING AT A POOL.]\n\n[Illustration: A LION KILLS THE PROPHET FROM JUDAH.]\n\nThere are several varieties of Lion, which may be reduced to two,\nnamely, the African and the Asiatic Lion. It is almost certain,\nhowever, that these animals really are one and the same species,\nand that the trifling differences which exist between an African\nand an Asiatic Lion, are not sufficient to justify a naturalist in\nconsidering them to be distinct species. The habits of both are\nidentical, modified, as is sure to be the case, by the difference of\nlocality; but then, such variations in habit are continually seen in\nanimals confessedly of the same species, which happen to be placed\nin different conditions of climate and locality.\n\nThat it was once exceedingly plentiful in Palestine is evident, from\na very cursory knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. It is every where\nmentioned as a well-known animal, equally familiar and dreaded. When\nthe disobedient prophet was killed by the Lion near Bethel, the fact\nseemed not to have caused any surprise in the neighbourhood. When\nthe people came out to rescue the body of the prophet, they wondered\nmuch because the Lion was standing by the fallen man, but had not\ntorn him, and had left the ass unhurt. But that a Lion should have\nkilled a man seems to have been an event which was not sufficiently\nrare to be surprising.\n\nWe will now proceed to those characteristics of the Lion which bear\nespecial reference to the Scriptures.\n\nIn the first place, size for size, the Lion is one of the strongest\nof beasts.\n\n[Illustration: LION AND TIGER.]\n\nMoreover, the strength of the Lion is equally distributed over the\nbody and limbs, giving to the animal an easy grace of movement which\nis rare except with such a structure. A full-grown Lion cannot only\nknock down and kill, but can carry away in its mouth, an ordinary\nox; and one of these terrible animals has been known to pick up a\nheifer in its mouth, and to leap over a wide ditch still carrying\nits burden. Another Lion carried a two-year old heifer, and was\nchased for five hours by mounted farmers, so that it must have\ntraversed a very considerable distance. Yet, in the whole of this\nlong journey, the legs of the heifer had only two or three times\ntouched the ground.\n\nIt kills man, and comparatively small animals, such as deer and\nantelopes, with a blow of its terrible paw; and often needs to\ngive no second blow to cause the death of its victim. The sharp\ntalons are not needed to cause death, for the weight of the blow is\nsufficient for that purpose.\n\nWhen the hunter pursues it with dogs, after the usual fashion,\nthere is often a great slaughter among them, especially among those\nthat are inexperienced in the chase of the Lion. Urged by their\ninstinctive antipathy, the dogs rush forward to the spot where the\nLion awaits them, and old hounds bay at him from a safe distance,\nwhile the young and inexperienced among them are apt to convert the\nsham attack into a real one. Their valour meets with a poor reward,\nfor a few blows from the Lion's terrible paws send his assailants\nflying in all directions, their bodies streaming with blood, and in\nmost cases a fatal damage inflicted, while more than one unfortunate\ndog lies fairly crushed by the weight of a paw laid with apparent\ncarelessness upon its body. There is before me a Lion's skin, a\nspoil of one of these animals shot by the celebrated sportsman,\nGordon Cumming. Although the skin lies flat upon the floor, and the\npaws are nothing but the skin and talons, the weight of each paw is\nvery considerable, and always surprises those who hear it fall on\nthe floor.\n\nThere are several Hebrew words which are used for the Lion, but\nthat which signifies the animal in its adult state is derived from\nan Arabic word signifying strength; and therefore the Lion is\ncalled the Strong-one, just as the Bat is called the Night-flier.\nNo epithet could be better deserved, for the Lion seems to be a\nvery incarnation of strength, and, even when dead, gives as vivid\nan idea of concentrated power as when it was living. And, when the\nskin is stripped from the body, the tremendous muscular development\nnever fails to create a sensation of awe. The muscles of the limbs,\nthemselves so hard as to blunt the keen-edged knives employed by a\ndissecter, are enveloped in their glittering sheaths, playing upon\neach other like well-oiled machinery, and terminating in tendons\nseemingly strong as steel, and nearly as impervious to the knife.\nNot until the skin is removed can any one form a conception of the\nenormously powerful muscles of the neck, which enable the Lion to\nlift the weighty prey which it kills, and to convey it to a place\nof security.\n\n[Illustration: THE LION REPLIES TO THE THUNDER.]\n\nAlthough usually unwilling to attack an armed man, it is one of the\nmost courageous animals in existence when it is driven to fight, and\nif its anger is excited, it cares little for the number of its foes,\nor the weapons with which they are armed. Even the dreaded firearms\nlose their terrors to an angry Lion, while a Lioness, who fears\nfor the safety of her young, is simply the most terrible animal\nin existence. We know how even a hen will fight for her chickens,\nand how she has been known to beat off the fox and the hawk by the\nreckless fury of her attack. It may be easily imagined, therefore,\nthat a Lioness actuated by equal courage, and possessed of the\nterrible weapons given to her by her Creator, would be an animal\nalmost too formidable for the conception of those who have not\nactually witnessed the scene of a Lioness defending her little ones.\n\nThe roar of the Lion is another of the characteristics for which it\nis celebrated. There is no beast that can produce a sound that could\nfor a moment be mistaken for the roar of the Lion. The Lion has a\nhabit of stooping his head towards the ground when he roars, so\nthat the terrible sound rolls along like thunder, and reverberates\nin many an echo in the far distance. Owing to this curious habit,\nthe roar can be heard at a very great distance, but its locality\nis rendered uncertain, and it is often difficult to be quite sure\nwhether the Lion is to the right or the left of the hearer.\n\nThere are few sounds which strike more awe than the Lion's roar.\nEven at the Zoological Gardens, where the hearer knows that he is in\nperfect safety, and where the Lion is enclosed in a small cage faced\nwith strong iron bars, the sound of the terrible roar always has\na curious effect upon the nerves. It is not exactly fear, because\nthe hearer knows that he is safe; but it is somewhat akin to the\nfeeling of mixed awe and admiration with which one listens to the\ncrashing thunder after the lightning has sped its course. If such be\nthe case when the Lion is safely housed in a cage, and is moreover\nso tame that even if he did escape, he would be led back by the\nkeeper without doing any harm, the effect of the roar must indeed be\nterrific when the Lion is at liberty, when he is in his own country,\nand when the shades of evening prevent him from being seen even at a\nshort distance.\n\n[Illustration: LIONESS AND YOUNG.]\n\nIn the dark, there is no animal so invisible as a Lion. Almost\nevery hunter has told a similar story--of the Lion's approach at\nnight, of the terror displayed by dogs and cattle as he drew near,\nand of the utter inability to see him, though he was so close that\nthey could hear his breathing. Sometimes, when he has crept near\nan encampment, or close to a cattle inclosure, he does not proceed\nany farther lest he should venture within the radius illumined by\nthe rays of the fire. So he crouches closely to the ground, and,\nin the semi-darkness, looks so like a large stone, or a little\nhillock, that any one might pass close to it without perceiving its\nreal nature. This gives the opportunity for which the Lion has been\nwatching, and in a moment he strikes down the careless straggler,\nand carries off his prey to the den. Sometimes, when very much\nexcited, he accompanies the charge with a roar, but, as a general\nfact, he secures his prey in silence.\n\nThe roar of the Lion is very peculiar. It is not a mere outburst of\nsound, but a curiously graduated performance. No description of the\nLion's roar is so vivid, so true, and so graphic as that of Gordon\nCumming: \"One of the most striking things connected with the Lion\nis his voice, which is extremely grand and peculiarly striking.\nIt consists at times of a low, deep moaning, repeated five or six\ntimes, ending in faintly audible sighs. At other times he startles\nthe forest with loud, deep-toned, solemn roars, repeated five or six\ntimes in quick succession, each increasing in loudness to the third\nor fourth, when his voice dies away in five or six low, muffled\nsounds, very much resembling distant thunder. As a general rule,\nLions roar during the night, their sighing moans commencing as the\nshades of evening envelop the forest, and continuing at intervals\nthroughout the night. In distant and secluded regions, however, I\nhave constantly heard them roaring loudly as late as nine or ten\no'clock on a bright sunny morning. In hazy and rainy weather they\nare to be heard at every hour in the day, but their roar is subdued.\"\n\nLastly, we come to the dwelling-place of the Lion. This animal\nalways fixes its residence in the depths of some forest, through\nwhich it threads its stealthy way with admirable certainty. No fox\nknows every hedgerow, ditch, drain, and covert better than the\nLion knows the whole country around his den. Each Lion seems to\nhave his peculiar district, in which only himself and his family\nwill be found. These animals seem to parcel out the neighbourhood\namong themselves by a tacit law like that which the dogs of eastern\ncountries have imposed upon themselves, and which forbids them to\ngo out of the district in which they were born. During the night he\ntraverses his dominions; and, as a rule, he retires to his den as\nsoon as the sun is fairly above the horizon. Sometimes he will be\nin wait for prey in the broadest daylight, but his ordinary habits\nare nocturnal, and in the daytime he is usually asleep in his secret\ndwelling-place.\n\nWe will now glance at a few of the passages in which the Lion is\nmentioned in the Holy Scriptures, selecting those which treat of its\nvarious characteristics.\n\nThe terrible strength of the Lion is the subject of repeated\nreference. In the magnificent series of prophecies uttered by\nJacob on his deathbed, the power of the princely tribe of Judah\nis predicted under the metaphor of a Lion--the beginning of its\npower as a Lion's whelp, the fulness of its strength as an adult\nLion, and its matured establishment in power as the old Lion that\ncouches himself and none dares to disturb him. Then Solomon, in the\nProverbs, speaks of the Lion as the \"strongest among beasts, and\nthat turneth not away for any.\"\n\nSolomon also alludes to its courage in the same book, Prov.\nxxviii. 1, in the well-known passage, \"The wicked fleeth when no\nman pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.\" And, in 2\nSam. xxiii. 20, the courage of Benaiah, one of the mighty three of\nDavid's army, is specially honoured, because he fought and killed a\nLion single-handed, and because he conquered \"two lion-like men of\nMoab.\" David, their leader, had also distinguished himself, when a\nmere keeper of cattle, by pursuing and killing a Lion that had come\nto plunder his herd. In the same book of Samuel which has just been\nquoted (xvii. 10), the valiant men are metaphorically described as\nhaving the hearts of Lions.\n\nThe ferocity of this terrible beast of prey is repeatedly mentioned,\nand the Psalms are full of such allusions, the fury and anger of\nenemies being compared to the attacks of the Lion.\n\nMany passages refer to the Lion's roar, and it is remarkable that\nthe Hebrew language contains several words by which the different\nkind of roar is described. One word, for example, represents the\nlow, deep, thunder-like roar of the Lion seeking its prey, and which\nhas already been mentioned. This is the word which is used in Amos\niii. 4, \"Will a lion roar in the forest when he hath no prey?\" and\nin this passage the word which is translated as Lion signifies the\nanimal when full grown and in the prime of life. Another word is\nused to signify the sudden exulting cry of the Lion as it leaps\nupon its victim. A third is used for the angry growl with which a\nLion resents any endeavour to deprive it of its prey, a sound with\nwhich we are all familiar, on a miniature scale, when we hear a cat\ngrowling over a mouse which she has just caught. The fourth term\nsignifies the peculiar roar uttered by the young Lion after it has\nceased to be a cub and before it has attained maturity. This last\nterm is employed in Jer. li. 38, \"They shall _roar_ together like\nlions; they shall _yell_ as lions' whelps,\" in which passage two\ndistinct words are used, one signifying the roar of the Lion when\nsearching after prey, and the other the cry of the young Lions.\n\nThe prophet Amos, who in his capacity of herdsman was familiar\nwith the wild beasts, from which he had to guard his cattle, makes\nfrequent mention of the Lion, and does so with a force and vigour\nthat betoken practical experience. How powerful is this imagery,\n\"The lion hath roared; who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken;\nwho can but prophesy?\" Here we have the picture of the man himself,\nthe herdsman and prophet, who had trembled many a night, as the\nLions drew nearer and nearer; and who heard the voice of the Lord,\nand his lips poured out prophecy. Nothing can be more complete than\nthe parallel which he has drawn. It breathes the very spirit of\npiety, and may bear comparison even with the prophecies of Isaiah\nfor its simple grandeur.\n\nIt is remarkable how the sacred writers have entered into the spirit\nof the world around them, and how closely they observed the minutest\ndetails even in the lives of the brute beasts. There is a powerful\npassage in the book of Job, iv. 11, \"The old lion perisheth for lack\nof prey,\" in which the writer betrays his thorough knowledge of the\nhabits of the animal, and is aware that the usual mode of a Lion's\ndeath is through hunger, in consequence of his increasing inability\nto catch prey.\n\nThe nocturnal habits of the Lion and its custom of lying in wait\nfor prey are often mentioned in the Scriptures. The former habit is\nspoken of in that familiar and beautiful passage in the Psalms (civ.\n20), \"Thou makest darkness, and it is night; wherein all the beasts\nof the forest do creep forth. The young Lions roar after their\nprey; and seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, they gather\nthemselves together, and lay them down in their dens.\"\n\n[Illustration: LION CARRYING HOME SUPPLIES.]\n\nAn animal so destructive among the flocks and herds could not be\nallowed to carry out its depredations unchecked, and as we have\nalready seen, the warfare waged against it has been so successful,\nthat the Lions have long ago been fairly extirpated in Palestine.\nThe usual method of capturing or killing the Lion was by pitfalls or\nnets, to both of which there are many references in the Scriptures.\n\nThe mode of hunting the Lion with nets was identical with that which\nis practised in India at the present time. The precise locality of\nthe Lion's dwelling-place having been discovered, a circular wall\nof net is arranged round it, or if only a few nets can be obtained,\nthey are set in a curved form, the concave side being towards the\nLion. They then send dogs into the thicket, hurl stones and sticks\nat the den, shoot arrows into it, fling burning torches at it, and\nso irritate and alarm the animal that it rushes against the net,\nwhich is so made that it falls down and envelopes the animal in its\nfolds. If the nets be few, the drivers go to the opposite side of\nthe den, and induce the Lion to escape in the direction where he\nsees no foes, but where he is sure to run against the treacherous\nnet. Other large and dangerous animals were also captured by the\nsame means.\n\n[Illustration: AFRICAN LIONS.]\n\nAnother and more common, because an easier and a cheaper method was,\nby digging a deep pit, covering the mouth with a slight covering\nof sticks and earth, and driving the animal upon the treacherous\ncovering. It is an easier method than the net, because after the pit\nis once dug, the only trouble lies in throwing the covering over\nits mouth. But, it is not so well adapted for taking beasts alive,\nas they are likely to be damaged, either by the fall into the pit,\nor by the means used in getting them out again. Animals, therefore,\nthat are caught in pits are generally, though not always, killed\nbefore they are taken out. The net, however, envelops the animal so\nperfectly, and renders it so helpless, that it can be easily bound\nand taken away. The hunting net is very expensive, and requires a\nlarge staff of men to work it, so that none but a rich man could use\nit in hunting.\n\nThe passages in which allusion is made to the use of the pitfall in\nhunting are too numerous to be quoted, and it will be sufficient\nto mention one or two passages, such as those wherein the Psalmist\nlaments that his enemies have hidden for him their net in a pit, and\nthat the proud have digged pits for him.\n\nLions that were taken in nets seem to have been kept alive in dens,\neither as mere curiosities, or as instruments of royal vengeance.\nSuch seems to have been the object of the Lions which were kept by\nDarius, into whose den Daniel was thrown, by royal command, and\nwhich afterwards killed his accusers when thrown into the same den.\nIt is plain that the Lions kept by Darius must have been exceedingly\nnumerous, because they killed at once the accusers of Daniel, who\nwere many in number, together with their wives and children, who,\nin accordance with the cruel custom of that age and country, were\npartakers of the same punishment with the real culprits. The whole\nof the first part of Ezek. xix. alludes to the custom of taking\nLions alive and keeping them in durance afterwards.\n\nSometimes the Lion was hunted as a sport, but this amusement\nseems to have been restricted to the great men, on account of its\nexpensive nature. Such hunting scenes are graphically depicted in\nthe famous Nineveh sculptures, which represent the hunters pursuing\ntheir mighty game in chariots, and destroying them with arrows.\nRude, and even conventional as are these sculptures, they have a\nspirit, a force, and a truthfulness, that prove them to have been\ndesigned by artists to whom the scene was a familiar one.\n\n[Illustration: THE LION ATTACKS THE HERD.]\n\nUpon the African Continent the Lion reigns supreme, monarch of the\nfeline race.\n\nWhatever may be said of the distinction between the Asiatic and\nAfrican Lion, there seems to be scarcely sufficient grounds for\nconsidering the very slight differences a sufficient warrant for\nconstituting separate species. From all accounts, it seems that\nthe habits of all Lions are very similar, and that a Lion acts\nlike a Lion whether found in Africa or Asia.\n\n[Illustration: THE LAIR OF THE LION.]\n\nAn old Boer, as the Dutch settlers of Southern Africa are called,\ngave me a most interesting account of an adventure with a Lion.\n\nThe man was a well-known hunter, and lived principally by the sale\nof ivory and skins. He was accustomed each year to make a trip into\nthe game country, and traded with the Kaffirs, or native blacks,\nunder very favorable auspices. His stock in trade consisted of guns\nand ammunition, several spans of fine oxen, some horses, and about a\ndozen dogs.\n\nA Lion which appeared to have been roaming about the country\nhappened to pass near this hunter's camp, and scenting the horses\nand oxen, evidently thought that the location would suit him for\na short period. A dense wood situated about a mile from the camp\nafforded shelter, and this spot the Lion selected as a favorable\nposition for his headquarters.\n\nThe hunter had not to wait for more than a day, before the\nsuspicions which had been aroused by some broad footmarks, which he\nsaw imprinted in the soil, were confirmed into a certainty that a\nlarge Lion was concealed near his residence.\n\nIt now became a question of policy whether the Boer should attack\nthe Lion, or wait for the Lion to attack him. He thought it possible\nthat the savage beast, having been warned off by the dogs, whose\nbarking had been continued and furious during the night on which the\nLion was supposed to have passed, might think discretion the better\npart of valor, and consequently would move farther on, in search of\na less carefully guarded locality upon which to quarter himself. He\ndetermined, therefore, to wait, but to use every precaution against\na night-surprise.\n\nThe Lion, however, was more than a match for the man; for during the\nsecond night a strong ox from his best span was quietly carried off,\nand, although there was some commotion among the dogs and cattle, it\nwas then thought that the alarm had scared the Lion away.\n\nThe morning light, however, showed that the beast had leaped the\nfence which surrounded the camp, and, having killed the ox, had\nevidently endeavored to scramble over it again with the ox in his\npossession. The weight of the Lion and the ox had caused the stakes\nto give way, and the Lion had easily carried off his prey through\nthe aperture.\n\nThe track of the Lion was immediately followed by the Boer, who took\nwith him a <DW64> and half a dozen of his best dogs. The tracks were\neasily seen, and the hunter had no difficulty in deciding that the\nLion was in the wood previously mentioned. But this in itself was no\ngreat advance, for the place was overgrown with a dense thicket of\nthorn-bushes, creepers, and long grass, forming a jungle so thick\nand impenetrable that for a man to enter seemed almost impossible.\n\nIt was therefore agreed that the Boer should station himself on one\nside, while the <DW64> went to the other side of the jungle, the dogs\nmeanwhile being sent into the thicket.\n\nThis arrangement, it was hoped, would enable either the hunter or\nthe <DW64> to obtain a shot; for they concluded that the dogs, which\nwere very courageous animals, would drive the Lion out of the bushes.\n\nThe excited barking of the dogs soon indicated that they had\ndiscovered the Lion, but they appeared to be unable to drive him\nfrom his stronghold; for, although they would scamper away every now\nand then, as though the enraged monster was chasing them, still they\nreturned to bark at the same spot.\n\nBoth of the hunters fired several shots, with the hope that a stray\nbullet might find its way through the underwood to the heart of the\nsavage beast, but a great quantity of ammunition was expended and no\nresult achieved.\n\nAt length, as the dogs had almost ceased to bark, it was considered\nadvisable to call them off. But all the whistling and shouting\nfailed to recall more than two out of the six, and one of these was\nfearfully wounded. The others, it was afterwards found, had been\nkilled by the Lion: a blow from his paw had sufficed to break the\nback or smash the skull of all which had come within his reach.\n\nThus the first attempt on the Lion was a total failure, and the\nhunter returned home lamenting the loss of his dogs, and during the\nnight watched beside his enclosure; but the Lion did not pay him a\nsecond visit.\n\nEarly on the following evening, accompanied by the <DW64>, he started\nafresh for the wood; and, having marked the spot from which the Lion\nhad on the former occasion quitted the dense thorny jungle, the two\nhunters ascended a tree and watched during the whole night in the\nhope of obtaining a shot at the hated marauder. But while they\nwere paying the residence of the Lion a visit _he_ favored the camp\nwith a call, and this time, by way of variety, carried away a very\nvaluable horse, which he conveyed to the wood, being wise enough\nto walk out and to return by a different path from that he had\npreviously used, consequently avoiding the ambush prepared for him.\n\nWhen the hunter returned to his camp, he was furious at this new\nloss, and determined upon a plan which, though dangerous, still\nappeared the most likely to insure the destruction of the ravenous\nmonster.\n\nThis plan was to enter the wood alone, without attendant or dogs,\nand with noiseless, stealthy movements creep near enough to the Lion\nto obtain a shot.\n\nNow, when we consider the difficulty of moving through thick bushes\nwithout making a noise, and remember the watchful habits of every\nmember of the cat tribe, we may be certain that to surprise the Lion\nwas a matter of extreme difficulty, and that the probability was\nthat the hunter would meet with disaster.\n\nAt about ten o'clock on the morning after the horse-slaughter,\nthe hunter started for the wood armed with a double-barrelled\nsmooth-bore gun, and prepared to put forth his utmost skill in\nstalking his dangerous enemy.\n\nNow, it is the nature of the Lion, when gorged, to sleep during the\nday; and if the animal has carried off any prey, it usually conceals\nitself near the remnants of its feast, to watch them until ready for\nanother meal.\n\nThe hunter was aware of this, and laid his plans very judiciously.\nHe approached the wood slowly and silently, found the track of the\nLion, and began tracing it to find the spot where the remains of the\nhorse could be seen.\n\nHe moved forward very slowly and with great caution, being soon\nsurrounded by the thick bushes, the brightness of the plain also\nbeing succeeded by the deep gloom of the wood. Being an experienced\nhand at bush-craft, he was able to walk or crawl without causing\neither a dried stick to crack or a leaf to rustle, and he was aware\nthat his progress was without noise; for the small birds, usually so\nwatchful and alert, flew away only when he approached close to them,\nthus showing that their eyes, and not their ears, had made them\nconscious of the presence of man.\n\nBirds and monkeys are the great obstacles in the bush to the\nsuccess of a surprise, for the birds fly from tree to tree and\nwhistle or twitter, whilst the monkeys chatter and grimace,\nexpressing by all sorts of actions that a strange creature is\napproaching. When, therefore, the bushranger finds that birds and\nmonkeys are unconscious of his presence until they see him, he may\nbe satisfied that he has traversed the bush with tolerable silence,\nand has vanquished such dangerous betrayers of his presence as dried\nsticks and dead leaves.\n\n[Illustration: THE LION LISTENS TO THE APPROACH OF THE HUNTER.]\n\nThe hunter had not proceeded thus more than fifty yards into the\njungle, before he found indications that he was close upon the lair\nof the Lion: a strong leonine scent was noticeable, and part of\nthe carcase of his horse was visible between the bushes. Instead,\ntherefore, of advancing farther, as an incautious or inexperienced\nbushranger would have done, he crouched down behind a bush and\nremained motionless.\n\nAll animals are aware of the advantages of a surprise, and the\ncat tribe especially practise the ambuscading system. The hunter,\ntherefore, determined, if possible, to turn the tables on the Lion,\nand to surprise, rather than to be surprised.\n\nHe concluded that the Lion, even when gorged with horseflesh, would\nnot be so neglectful of his safety as to sleep with more than one\neye closed, and that, although he had crept with great care through\nthe bush, he had probably, from some slight sound, caused the Lion\nto be on the alert; if, therefore, he should approach the carcase of\nthe horse, he might be pounced upon at once.\n\nAfter remaining silent and watchful for several minutes, the hunter\nat length saw that an indistinctly-outlined object was moving behind\nsome large broad-leafed plants at about twenty paces from him.\n\nThis object was the Lion. It was crouched behind some shrubs,\nattentively watching the bushes where the hunter was concealed. Its\nhead only was clearly visible, the body being hidden by the foliage.\n\nIt was evident that the Lion was suspicious of something, but was\nnot certain that anything had approached.\n\nThe hunter, knowing that this was a critical period for him,\nremained perfectly quiet. He did not like to risk a shot at the\nforehead of the Lion, for it would require a very sure aim to insure\na death-wound, and the number of twigs and branches would be almost\ncertain to deflect the bullet.\n\nThe Lion, after a careful inspection, appeared to be satisfied, and\nlaid down behind the shrubs. The hunter then cocked both barrels\nof his heavy gun and turned the muzzle slowly around, so that he\ncovered the spot on which the Lion lay, and shifted his position so\nas to be well placed for a shot.\n\nThe slight noise he made in moving, attracted the attention of the\nLion, who immediately rose to his feet. A broadside shot, which was\nthe most sure, could not be obtained, so the hunter fired at the\nhead of the animal, aiming for a spot between the eyes. The ball\nstruck high, as is usually the case when the distance is short, and\nthe charge of powder heavy, but the Lion fell over on its back,\nrising, however, almost immediately and uttering a terrific roar.\n\nIn regaining its feet it turned its side to the hunter, giving him\nthe opportunity he had so anxiously waited for. Aiming at a spot\nbehind the shoulder, he fired again, and had the satisfaction of\nseeing the savage beast, maddened by the pain of a mortal wound,\ntearing up the ground in its fury within a very few paces of his\nhiding-place.\n\nBy degrees its fierce roars subsided into angry growls, and the\ngrowls into heavy moans, until the terrible voice was hushed and\nsilence reigned throughout the wood.\n\nThe hunter immediately started off home, and brought his <DW64>s and\ndogs to the spot, where they found stretched dead upon the ground a\nLion of the largest size.\n\nBefore sunset that evening its skin was pegged down at the hunter's\ncamp, and all were filled with delight, knowing that they would be\nno more disturbed by the fierce marauder.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LEOPARD.\n\n     The Leopard not often mentioned in the Scriptures--its\n     attributes exactly described--Probability that several animals\n     were classed under the name--How the Leopard takes its\n     prey--Craft of the Leopard--its ravages among the flocks--The\n     empire of man over the beast--The Leopard at Bay--Localities\n     wherein the Leopard lives--The skin of the Leopard--Various\n     passages of Scripture explained.\n\n\nOf the LEOPARD but little is said in the Holy Scriptures.\n\nIn the New Testament this animal is only mentioned once, and\nthen in a metaphorical rather than a literal sense. In the Old\nTestament it is casually mentioned seven times, and only in two\nplaces is the word Leopard used in the strictly literal sense.\nYet, in those brief passages of Holy Writ, the various attributes\nof the animal are delineated with such fidelity, that no one could\ndoubt that the Leopard was familiarly known in Palestine. Its\ncolour, its swiftness, its craft, its ferocity, and the nature of\nits dwelling-place, are all touched upon in a few short sentences\nscattered throughout the Old Testament, and even its peculiar habits\nare alluded to in a manner that proves it to have been well known at\nthe time when the words were written.\n\nIt is my purpose in the following pages to give a brief account of\nthe Leopard of the Scriptures, laying most stress on the qualities\nto which allusion is made, and then to explain the passages in which\nthe name of the animal occurs.\n\nIn the first place, it is probable that under the word Leopard are\ncomprehended three animals, two of which, at least, were thought to\nbe one species until the time of Cuvier. These three animals are the\nLEOPARD proper (_Leopardus varius_), the OUNCE (_Leopardus uncia_),\nand the CHETAH, or HUNTING LEOPARD (_Gueparda jubata_). All these\nthree species belong to the same family of animals; all are spotted\nand similar in colour, all are nearly alike in shape, and all are\ninhabitants of Asia, while two of them, the Leopard and the Chetah,\nare also found in Africa.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to mention that the Leopard is a beast\nof prey belonging to the cat tribe, that its colour is tawny,\nvariegated with rich black spots, and that it is a fierce and\nvoracious animal, almost equally dreaded by man and beast. It\ninhabits many parts of Africa and Asia, and in those portions of\nthe country which are untenanted by mankind, it derives all its\nsustenance from the herb-eating animals of the same tracts.\n\n[Illustration: THE LEOPARD.]\n\nTo deer and antelopes it is a terrible enemy, and in spite of their\nactive limbs, seldom fails in obtaining its prey. Swift as is the\nLeopard, for a short distance, and wonderful as its spring, it has\nnot the enduring speed of the deer or antelope, animals which are\nspecially formed for running, and which, if a limb is shattered,\ncan run nearly as fast and quite as far on three legs as they\ncan when all four limbs are uninjured. Instinctively knowing its\ninferiority in the race, the Leopard supplies by cunning the want of\nenduring speed.\n\nIt conceals itself in some spot whence it can see far around without\nbeing seen, and thence surveys the country. A tree is the usual\nspot selected for this purpose, and the Leopard, after climbing the\ntrunk by means of its curved talons, settles itself in the fork of\nthe branches, so that its body is hidden by the boughs, and only\nits head is shown between them. With such scrupulous care does it\nconceal itself, that none but a practised hunter can discover it,\nwhile any one who is unaccustomed to the woods cannot see the animal\neven when the tree is pointed out to him.\n\nAs soon as the Leopard sees the deer feeding at a distance, he\nslips down the tree and stealthily glides off in their direction.\nHe has many difficulties to overcome, because the deer are among\nthe most watchful of animals, and if the Leopard were to approach\nto the windward, they would scent him while he was yet a mile away\nfrom them. If he were to show himself but for one moment in the\nopen ground he would be seen, and if he were but to shake a branch\nor snap a dry twig he would be heard. So, he is obliged to approach\nthem against the wind, to keep himself under cover, and yet to\nglide so carefully along that the heavy foliage of the underwood\nshall not be shaken, and the dry sticks and leaves which strew the\nground shall not be broken. He has also to escape the observation of\ncertain birds and beasts which inhabit the woods, and which would\ncertainly set up their alarm-cry as soon as they saw him, and so\ngive warning to the wary deer, which can perfectly understand a cry\nof alarm, from whatever animal it may happen to proceed.\n\nStill, he proceeds steadily on his course, gliding from one covert\nto another, and often expending several hours before he can proceed\nfor a mile. By degrees he contrives to come tolerably close to them,\nand generally manages to conceal himself in some spot towards which\nthe deer are gradually feeding their way. As soon as they are near\nenough, he collects himself for a spring, just as a cat does when\nshe leaps on a bird, and dashes towards the deer in a series of\nmighty bounds. For a moment or two they are startled and paralysed\nwith fear at the sudden appearance of their enemy, and thus give\nhim time to get among them. Singling out some particular animal, he\nleaps upon it, strikes it down with one blow of his paw, and then,\ncouching on the fallen animal, he tears open its throat, and laps\nthe flowing blood.\n\n[Illustration: LEOPARD ATTACKING A HERD OF DEER.]\n\nIn this manner does it obtain its prey when it lives in the desert,\nbut when it happens to be in the neighbourhood of human habitations,\nit acts in a different manner. Whenever man settles himself in any\nplace, his presence is a signal for the beasts of the desert and\nforest to fly. The more timid, such as the deer and antelope, are\nafraid of him, and betake themselves as far away as possible. The\nmore savage inhabitants of the land, such as the lion, leopard, and\nother animals, wage an unequal war against him for a time, but are\ncontinually driven farther and farther away, until at last they\nare completely expelled from the country. The predaceous beasts\nare, however, loth to retire, and do so by very slow degrees. They\ncan no longer support themselves on the deer and antelopes, but\nfind a simple substitute for them in the flocks and herds which\nman introduces, and in the seizing of which there is as much craft\nrequired as in the catching of the fleeter and wilder animals. Sheep\nand goats cannot run away like the antelopes, but they are penned so\ncarefully within inclosures, and guarded so watchfully by herdsmen\nand dogs, that the Leopard is obliged to exert no small amount of\ncunning before it can obtain a meal.\n\nSometimes it creeps quietly to the fold, and escapes the notice of\nthe dogs, seizes upon a sheep, and makes off with it before the\nalarm is given. Sometimes it hides by the wayside, and as the flock\npass by it dashes into the midst of them, snatches up a sheep, and\ndisappears among the underwood on the opposite side of the road.\nSometimes it is crafty enough to deprive the fold of its watchful\nguardian. Dogs which are used to Leopard-hunting never attack the\nanimal, though they are rendered furious by the sound of its voice.\nThey dash at it as if they meant to devour it, but take very good\ncare to keep out of reach of its terrible paws. By continually\nkeeping the animal at bay, they give time for their master to come\nup, and generally contrive to drive it into a tree, where it can be\nshot.\n\nBut instances have been known where the Leopard has taken advantage\nof the dogs, and carried them off in a very cunning manner. It\nhides itself tolerably near the fold, and then begins to growl in a\nlow voice. The dogs think that they hear a Leopard at a distance,\nand dash towards the sound with furious barks and yells. In so\ndoing, they are sure to pass by the hiding-place of the Leopard,\nwhich springs upon them unawares, knocks one of them over, and\nbounds away to its den in the woods. It does not content itself\nwith taking sheep or goats from the fold, but is also a terrible\ndespoiler of the hen-roosts, destroying great numbers in a single\nnight when once it contrives to find its way into the house.\n\n[Illustration: THE LEOPARD LEAPS UPON HIS PREY.]\n\nAs an instance of the cunning which seems innate in the Leopard, I\nmay mention that whenever it takes up its abode near a village, it\ndoes not meddle with the flocks and herds of its neighbours, but\nprefers to go to some other village at a distance for food, thus\nremaining unsuspected almost at the very doors of the houses.\n\nIn general, it does not willingly attack mankind, and at all events\nseems rather to fear the presence of a full-grown man. But, when\nwounded or irritated, all sense of fear is lost in an overpowering\nrush of fury, and it then becomes as terrible a foe as the lion\nhimself. It is not so large nor so strong, but it is more agile\nand quicker in its movements; and when it is seized with one of\nthese paroxysms of anger, the eye can scarcely follow it as it\ndarts here and there, striking with lightning rapidity, and dashing\nat any foe within reach. Its whole shape seems to be transformed,\nand absolutely to swell with anger; its eyes flash with fiery\nlustre, its ears are thrown back on the head, and it continually\nutters alternate snarls and yells of rage. It is hardly possible\nto recognise the graceful, lithe glossy creature, whose walk is\nso noiseless, and whose every movement is so easy, in the furious\npassion-swollen animal that flies at every foe with blind fury, and\npours out sounds so fierce and menacing that few men, however well\narmed, will care to face it.\n\nAs is the case with most of the cat tribe, the Leopard is an\nexcellent climber, and can ascend trees and traverse their boughs\nwithout the least difficulty. It is so fond of trees, that it is\nseldom to be seen except in a well-wooded district. Its favourite\nresidence is a forest where there is plenty of underwood, at least\nsix or seven feet in height, among which trees are sparingly\ninterspersed. When crouched in this cover it is practically\ninvisible, even though its body may be within arm's length of\na passenger. The spotted body harmonizes so perfectly with the\nbroken lights and deep shadows of the foliage that even a practised\nhunter will not enter a covert in search of a Leopard unless he\nis accompanied by dogs. The instinct which teaches the Leopard to\nchoose such localities is truly wonderful, and may be compared with\nthat of the tiger, which cares little for underwood, but haunts the\ngrass jungles, where the long, narrow blades harmonize with the\nstripes which decorate its body.\n\n[Illustration: WAITING.]\n\nThe skin of the Leopard has always been highly valued on account\nof its beauty, and in Africa, at the present day, a robe made of\nits spotted skin is as much an adjunct of royalty as is the ermine\nthe emblem of judicial dignity in England. In more ancient times, a\nleopard skin was the official costume of a priest, the skin being\nsometimes shaped into a garment, and sometimes thrown over the\nshoulders and the paws crossed over the breast.\n\nSuch is a general history of the Leopard. We will now proceed to\nthe various passages in which it is mentioned, beginning with its\noutward aspect.\n\nIn the first place, the Hebrew word Namer signifies \"spotted,\" and\nis given to the animal in allusion to its colours. The reader will\nnow see how forcible is the lament of Jeremiah, \"Can the Ethiopian\nchange his skin, or the Leopard his spots?\" Literally, \"Can the\nEthiopian change his skin, or the spotted one his spots?\"\n\nThe agility and swiftness of the Leopard are alluded to in the\nprediction by the prophet Habakkuk of the vengeance that would\ncome upon Israel through the Chaldeans. In chap. i. 5, we read: \"I\nwill work a work in your days, which ye will not believe though it\nbe told you. For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and\nhasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to\npossess the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are terrible\nand dreadful; their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of\nthemselves. Their horses also are swifter than the Leopards, and are\nmore fierce than the evening wolves.\"\n\nThe craftiness of the Leopard, and the manner in which it lies in\nwait for its prey, are alluded to in more than one passage of Holy\nWrit. Hosea the prophet alludes to the Leopard in a few simple\nwords which display an intimate acquaintance with the habits of this\nformidable animal, and in this part of his prophecies he displays\nthat peculiar local tone which distinguishes his writings. Speaking\nof the Israelites under the metaphor of a flock, or a herd, he\nproceeds to say: \"According to their pasture so were they filled;\nthey were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they\nforgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion, as a Leopard\nby the way will I observe them.\" The reader will note the peculiar\nforce of this sentence, whereby God signifies that He will destroy\nthem openly, as a lion rushes on its prey, and that he will chastise\nthem unexpectedly, as if it were a Leopard crouching by the wayside,\nand watching for the flock to pass, that it may spring on its prey\nunexpectedly. The same habit of the Leopard is also alluded to by\nJeremiah, who employs precisely the same imagery as is used by\nHabakkuk. See Jer. v. 5, 6, \"These have altogether broken the yoke,\nand burst the bonds. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay\nthem, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall\nwatch over their cities.\" It is evident from the employment of this\nimage by two prophets, the one being nearly a hundred years before\nthe other, that the crafty, insidious habits of the Leopard were\nwell known in Palestine, and that the metaphor would tell with full\nforce among those to whom it was addressed.\n\n[Illustration: leopard]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: cats]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CAT.\n\n     The Cat never mentioned by name in the canonical Scriptures,\n     and only once in the Apocrypha--The Cat domesticated among the\n     Egyptians, and trained in bird-catching--Neglected capabilities\n     of the Cat--Anecdote of an English Cat that caught fish for her\n     master--Presumed reason why the Scriptures are silent about the\n     Cat--The Cat mentioned by Baruch.\n\n\nIt is a very remarkable circumstance that the word CAT is not once\nmentioned in the whole of the canonical Scriptures, and only once in\nthe Apocrypha.\n\nThe Egyptians, as is well known, kept Cats domesticated in their\nhouses, a fact which is mentioned by Herodotus, in his second book,\nand the 66th and 67th chapters. After describing the various animals\nwhich were kept and fed by this nation, he proceeds to narrate the\nhabits of the Cat, and writes as follows: \"When a fire takes place,\na supernatural impulse seizes the cats. For the Egyptians, standing\nat a distance, take care of the cats and neglect to quench the fire;\nbut the cats make their escape, and leaping over the men, cast\nthemselves into the fire, and when this occurs, great lamentations\nare made among the Egyptians. In whatever house a cat dies of\na natural death, all the family shave their eyebrows. All cats\nthat die are carried to certain sacred houses, where, after being\nembalmed, they are buried in the city of Bubastis.\"\n\nNow, as many of those cat-mummies have been discovered in good\npreservation, the species has been identified with the Egyptian\nCat of the present day, which is scientifically termed _Felis\nmaniculatus_. Not only did the Egyptians keep Cats at their houses,\nbut, as is shown by certain sculptures, took the animals with them\nwhen they went bird-catching, and employed them in securing their\nprey. Some persons have doubted this statement, saying, that in the\nfirst place, the Cat is not possessed of sufficient intelligence\nfor the purpose; and that in the second place, as the hunter is\nrepresented as catching wild fowl, the Cat would not be able to\nassist him, because it would not enter the water. Neither objection\nis valid, nor would have been made by a naturalist.\n\nThere are no grounds whatever for assuming that the Cat has not\nsufficient intelligence to aid its master in hunting. On the\ncontrary, there are many familiar instances where the animal has\nbeen trained, even in this country, to catch birds and other game,\nand bring its prey home. By nature the Cat is an accomplished\nhunter, and, like other animals of the same disposition, can be\ntaught to use its powers for mankind. We all know that the chetah,\na member of the same tribe, is in constant use at the present day,\nand we learn from ancient sculptures that the lion was employed for\nthe same purpose. Passing from land to water, mankind has succeeded\nin teaching the seal and the otter to plunge into the water, catch\ntheir finny prey, and deliver it to their owners. Among predaceous\nbirds, we have trained the eagle, the falcon, and various hawks,\nto assist us in hunting the finned and feathered tribes, while we\nhave succeeded in teaching the cormorant to catch fish for its\nmaster, and not for itself. Why, then, should the Cat be excepted\nfrom a rule so general? The fact is, the Cat has been, although\ndomesticated for so many centuries, a comparatively neglected\nanimal; and it is the fashion to heap upon it the contumacious\nepithets of sullen, treacherous, selfish, spiteful, and intractable,\njust as we take as our emblems of stupidity the ass and the goose,\nwhich are really among the most cunning of the lower animals. We\nhave never tried to teach the Cat the art of hunting for her owners,\nbut that is no reason for asserting that the animal could not be\ntaught.\n\nAs to entering the water, every one who is familiar with the habits\nof the Cat knows perfectly well that the Cat will voluntarily enter\nwater in chase of prey. A Cat does not like to wet her feet, and\nwill not enter the water without a very powerful reason, but when\nthat motive is supplied, she has no hesitation about it. A curious\nand valuable confirmation of this fact appeared some time ago in\n\"The Field\" newspaper, in which was recorded the history of an\nold fisherman, whose Cat invariably went to sea with him, and as\ninvariably used to leap overboard, seize fish in her mouth, and\nbring them to the side of the boat, where her kindly owner could\nlift her out, together with the captured fish.\n\nThe Cat, then, having been the favoured companion of the Egyptians,\namong whom the Israelites lived while they multiplied from a family\ninto a nation, it does seem very remarkable that the sacred writers\nshould not even mention it. There is no prohibition of the animal,\neven indirectly, in the Mosaic law; but it may be the case that the\nIsraelites repudiated the Cat simply because it was so favoured by\ntheir former masters.\n\n[Illustration: cat]\n\n\n\n\nTHE DOG.\n\n     Antipathy displayed by Orientals towards the Dog, and\n     manifested throughout the Scriptures--Contrast between European\n     and Oriental Dogs--Habits of the Dogs of Palestine--The\n     City Dogs and their singular organization--The herdsman's\n     Dog--Various passages of Scripture--Dogs and the crumbs--their\n     numbers--Signor Pierotti's experience of the Dogs--Possibility\n     of their perfect domestication--The peculiar humiliation of\n     Lazarus--Voracity of the Wild Dogs--The fate of Ahab and\n     Jezebel--Anecdote of a volunteer Watch-dog--Innate affection of\n     the Dog towards mankind--Peculiar local Instinct of the Oriental\n     Dog--Albert Smith's account of the Dogs at Constantinople--The\n     Dervish and his Dogs--The Greyhound--Uncertainty of the word.\n\n\nScarcely changed by the lapse of centuries, the Oriental of the\npresent day retains most of the peculiarities which distinguished\nhim throughout the long series of years during which the books\nof sacred Scripture were given to the world. In many of these\ncharacteristics he differs essentially from Europeans of the present\nday, and exhibits a tone of mind which seems to be not merely owing\nto education, but to be innate and inherent in the race.\n\nOne of these remarkable characteristics is the strange loathing\nwith which he regards the Dog. In all other parts of the world, the\nDog is one of the most cherished and valued of animals, but among\nthose people whom we popularly class under the name of Orientals,\nthe Dog is detested and despised. As the sacred books were given\nto the world through the mediumship of Orientals, we find that\nthis feeling towards the Dog is manifested whenever the animal is\nmentioned; and whether we turn to the books of the Law, the splendid\npoetry of the Psalms and the book of Job, the prophetical or the\nhistorical portions of the Old Testament, we find the name of the\nDog repeatedly mentioned; and in every case in connexion with some\nrepulsive idea. If we turn from the Old to the New Testament, we\nfind the same idea manifested, whether in the Gospels, the Epistles,\nor the Revelation.\n\nTo the mind of the true Oriental the very name of the Dog carries\nwith it an idea of something utterly repugnant to his nature,\nand he does not particularly like even the thought of the animal\ncoming across his mind. And this is the more extraordinary, because\nat the commencement and termination of their history the Dog was\nesteemed by their masters. The Egyptians, under whose rule they\ngrew to be a nation, knew the value of the Dog, and showed their\nappreciation in the many works of art which have survived to our\ntime. Then the Romans, under whose iron grasp the last vestiges of\nnationality crumbled away, honoured and respected the Dog, made it\ntheir companion, and introduced its portrait into their houses. But,\ntrue to their early traditions, the Jews of the East have ever held\nthe Dog in the same abhorrence as is manifested by their present\nmasters, the followers of Mahommed.\n\nOwing to the prevalence of this feeling, the Dogs of Oriental\ntowns are so unlike their more fortunate European relatives, that\nthey can hardly be recognised as belonging to the same species.\nIn those lands the traveller finds that there is none of the\nwonderful variety which so distinguishes the Dog of Europe. There\nhe will never see the bluff, sturdy, surly, faithful mastiff, the\nslight gazelle-like greyhound, the sharp, intelligent terrier, the\nsilent, courageous bulldog, the deep-voiced, tawny bloodhound, the\nnoble Newfoundland, the clever, vivacious poodle, or the gentle,\nsilken-haired spaniel.\n\nAs he traverses the streets, he finds that all the dogs are alike,\nand that all are gaunt, hungry, half starved, savage, and cowardly,\nmore like wolves than dogs, and quite as ready as wolves to attack\nwhen they fancy they can do so with safety. They prowl about the\nstreets in great numbers, living, as they best can, on any scraps of\nfood that they may happen to find. They have no particular masters,\nand no particular homes. Charitable persons will sometimes feed\nthem, but will never make companions of them, feeling that the very\ncontact of a dog would be a pollution. They are certainly useful\nanimals, because they act as scavengers, and will eat almost any\nanimal substance that comes in their way.\n\nThe strangest part of their character is the organization which\nprevails among them. By some extraordinary means they divide the\ntown into districts, and not one dog ever ventures out of that\nparticular district to which it is attached. The boundaries,\nalthough invisible, are as effectual as the loftiest walls, and not\neven the daintiest morsel will tempt a dog to pass the mysterious\nline which forms the boundary of his district. Generally, these\nbands of dogs are so savage that any one who is obliged to walk in a\ndistrict where the dogs do not know him is forced to carry a stout\nstick for his protection. Like their European relatives, they have\ngreat dislike towards persons who are dressed after a fashion to\nwhich they are unaccustomed, and therefore are sure to harass any\none who comes from Europe and wears the costume of his own country.\nAs is customary among animals which unite themselves in troops, each\nband is under the command of a single leader, whose position is\nrecognised and his authority acknowledged by all the members.\n\n[Illustration: DOGS IN AN EASTERN CITY AT NIGHT.]\n\nThese peculiarities are to be seen almost exclusively in the\ndogs which run wild about the towns, because there is abundant\nevidence in the Scriptures that the animal was used in a partially\ndomesticated state, certainly for the protection of their herds,\nand possibly for the guardianship of their houses. That the Dog was\nemployed for the first of these purposes is shown in Job xxx. i:\n\"But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose\nfathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my\nflock.\" And that the animal was used for the protection of houses is\nthought by some commentators to be shown by the well-known passage\nin Is. lvi. 10: \"His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they\nare all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving\nto slumber.\" Still, it is very probable that in this passage the\nreference is not made to houses, but to the flocks and herds which\nthese watchmen ought to have guarded.\n\nThe rooted dislike and contempt felt by the Israelites towards\nthe Dog is seen in numerous passages. Even in that sentence from\nJob which has just been quoted, wherein the writer passionately\ndeplores the low condition into which he has fallen, and contrasts\nit with his former high estate, he complains that he is despised by\nthose whose fathers he held even in less esteem than the dogs which\nguarded his herds. There are several references to the Dog in the\nbooks of Samuel, in all of which the name of the animal is mentioned\ncontemptuously. For example, when David accepted the challenge of\nGoliath, and went to meet his gigantic enemy without the ordinary\nprotection of mail, and armed only with a sling and his shepherd's\nstaff Goliath said to him, \"Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with\nstaves?\" (1 Sam. xvii. 43.) And in the same book, chapter xxiv. 14,\nDavid remonstrates with Saul for pursuing so insignificant a person\nas himself, and said, \"After whom is the King of Israel come out?\nafter a dead dog, after a flea.\"\n\n[Illustration: SHIMEI EXULTING OVER KING DAVID.]\n\nThe same metaphor is recorded in the second book of the same writer.\nOnce it was employed by Mephibosheth, the lame son of Jonathan, when\nextolling the generosity of David, then King of Israel in the place\nof his grandfather Saul: \"And he bowed himself, and said, 'What\nis thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as\nI am?'\" (2 Sam. ix. 8.) In the same book, chapter xvi. 9, Abishai\napplies this contemptuous epithet to Shimei, who was exulting over\nthe troubled monarch with all the insolence of a cowardly nature,\n\"Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king?\" Abner also makes\nuse of a similar expression, \"Am I a dog's head?\" And we may also\nrefer to the familiar passage in 2 Kings viii. 13, Elisha had\nprophesied to Hazael that he would become king on the death of\nBen-hadad, and that he would work terrible mischief in the land.\nHorrified at these predictions, or at all events pretending to be\nso, he replied, \"But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do\nthis great thing?\"\n\nIf we turn from the Old to the New Testament, we find the same\ncontemptuous feeling displayed towards the Dog. It is mentioned as\nan intolerable aggravation of the sufferings endured by Lazarus the\nbeggar as he lay at the rich man's gate, that the dogs came and\nlicked his sores. In several passages, the word Dog is employed as\na metaphor for scoffers, or unclean persons, or sometimes for those\nwho did not belong to the Church, whether Jewish or Christian. In\nthe Sermon on the Mount our Lord himself uses this image, \"Give not\nthat which is holy unto dogs\" (Matt. vii. 6.) In the same book,\nchapter xv. 26, Jesus employs the same metaphor when speaking to\nthe Canaanitish woman who had come to ask him to heal her daughter:\n\"It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs.\"\nAnd that she understood the meaning of the words is evident from\nher answer, in which faith and humility are so admirably blended.\nBoth St. Paul and St. John employ the word Dog in the same sense.\nIn his epistle to the Philippians, chapter iii. 2, St. Paul writes,\n\"Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.\" And in the Revelation,\nchapter xxii. 14, these words occur: \"Blessed are they that do his\ncommandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may\nenter in through the gates to the city; for without are dogs, and\nsorcerers, ... and murderers, and idolaters, and whomsoever loveth\nand maketh a lie.\"\n\nThat the dogs of ancient times formed themselves into bands just as\nthey do at present is evident from many passages of Scripture, among\nwhich may be mentioned those sentences from the Psalms, wherein\nDavid is comparing the assaults of his enemies to the attacks of the\ndogs which infested the city. \"Thou hast brought me into the dust\nof death; for dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked\nhave enclosed me.\" This passage will be better appreciated when\nthe reader has perused the following extract from a recent work\nby Signor Pierotti. After giving a general account of the Dogs of\nPalestine and their customs, he proceeds as follows:--\n\n\"In Jerusalem, and in the other towns, the dogs have an organization\nof their own. They are divided into families and districts,\nespecially in the night time, and no one of them ventures to quit\nhis proper quarter; for if he does, he is immediately attacked by\nall the denizens of that into which he intrudes, and is driven\nback, with several bites as a reminder. Therefore, when an European\nis walking through Jerusalem by night, he is always followed by a\nnumber of canine attendants, and greeted at every step with growls\nand howls. These tokens of dislike, however, are not intended for\nhim, but for his followers, who are availing themselves of his\nescort to pass unmolested from one quarter to another.\n\n\"During a very hard winter, I fed many of the dogs who frequented\nthe road which I traversed almost every evening, and afterwards,\neach time that I passed, I received the homage not only of the\nindividuals, but of the whole band to which they belonged, for they\naccompanied me to the limits of their respective jurisdictions and\nwere ready to follow me to my own house, if I did but give them a\nsign of encouragement, coming at my beck from any distance. They\neven recollected the signal two years afterwards, though it was but\nlittle that I had given them.\"\n\nThe account which this experienced writer gives of the animal\npresents a singular mixture of repulsive and pleasing traits,\nthe latter being attributable to the true nature of the Dog, and\nthe former to the utter neglect with which it is treated. He\nremarks that the dogs which run wild in the cities of Palestine\nare ill-favoured, ill-scented, and ill-conditioned beasts, more\nlike jackals or wolves than dogs, and covered with scars, which\nbetoken their quarrelsome nature. Yet, the same animals lose their\nwild, savage disposition, as soon as any human being endeavours\nto establish that relationship which was evidently intended to\nexist between man and the dog. How readily even these despised and\nneglected animals respond to the slightest advance, has been already\nshown by Sig. Pierotti's experience, and there is no doubt that\nthese tawny, short-haired, wolf-like animals, could be trained as\nperfectly as their more favoured brethren of the western world.\n\nAs in the olden times, so at the present day, the dogs lie about\nin the streets, dependent for their livelihood upon the offal that\nis flung into the roads, or upon the chance morsels that may be\nthrown to them. An allusion to this custom is made in the well-known\npassage in Matt. xv. The reader will remember the circumstance\nthat a woman of Canaan, and therefore not an Israelite, came to\nJesus, and begged him to heal her daughter, who was vexed with a\ndevil. Then, to try her faith, He said, \"It is not meet to take the\nchildren's bread, and to cast it to dogs.\" And she said, \"Truth,\nLord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's\ntable.\" Now, the \"crumbs\" which are here mentioned are the broken\npieces of bread which were used at table, much as bread is sometimes\nused in eating fish. The form of the \"loaves\" being flat, and much\nlike that of the oat-cake of this country, adapted them well to the\npurpose. The same use of broken bread is alluded to in the parable\nof Lazarus, who desired to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the\nrich man's table, _i. e._ to partake of the same food as the dogs\nwhich swarmed round him and licked his sores.\n\n[Illustration: LAZARUS LYING AT THE RICH MAN'S DOOR.]\n\n[Illustration: THE DEATH OF JEZEBEL.]\n\nThe \"crumbs,\" however liberally distributed, would not nearly\nsuffice for the subsistence of the canine armies, and their chief\nsupport consists of the offal, which is rather too plentifully\nflung into the streets. If the body of any animal, not excluding\ntheir own kind, be found lying in the streets, the dogs will\nassemble round it, and tear it to pieces, and they have no scruples\neven in devouring a human body. Of course, owing to the peculiar\nfeeling entertained by the Orientals towards the Dog, no fate can\nbe imagined more repulsive to the feelings of humanity than to be\neaten by dogs; and therein lies the terror of the fate which was\nprophesied of Ahab and Jezebel. Moreover, the blood, even of the\nlower animals, was held in great sanctity, and it was in those days\nhardly possible to invoke a more dreadful fate upon any one than\nthat his blood should be lapped by dogs.\n\nWe lose much of the real force of the Scriptures, if we do not\npossess some notion of the manners and customs of Palestine and the\nneighbouring countries, as well as of the tone of mind prevalent\namong the inhabitants. In our own country, that any one should be\neaten by dogs would be a fate so contrary to usage, that we can\nhardly conceive its possibility, and such a fate would be out of\nthe ordinary course of events. But, if such a fate should happen to\nbefall any one, we should have no stronger feeling of pity than the\nnatural regret that the dead person was not buried with Christian\nrites.\n\nBut, with the inhabitants of Palestine, such an event was by no\nmeans unlikely. It was, and is still, the custom to bury the corpse\nalmost as soon as life has departed, and such would ordinarily have\nbeen the case with the dead body of Jezebel. But, through fear of\nthe merciless Jehu, by whose command she had been flung from the\nwindow of her own palace, no one dared to remove her mangled body.\nThe dogs, therefore, seized upon their prey; and, even before Jehu\nhad risen from the banquet with which he celebrated his deed,\nnothing was left of the body but the skull, the feet, and the hands.\n\n[Illustration: SYRIAN DOG.]\n\nIn Mr. Tristram's work, the author has recognised the true dog\nnature, though concealed behind an uninviting form: \"Our watch-dog,\nBeirut, attached himself instinctively to Wilhelm, though his canine\ninstinct soon taught him to recognise every one of our party of\nfourteen, and to cling to the tents, whether in motion or at rest,\nas his home. Poor Beirut! though the veriest pariah in appearance,\nthy plebeian form encased as noble a dog-heart as ever beat at the\nsound of a stealthy step.\"\n\nThe same author records a very remarkable example of the sagacity of\nthe native Dog, and the fidelity with which it will keep guard over\nthe property of its master. \"The guard-house provided us, unasked,\nwith an invaluable and vigilant sentry, who was never relieved, nor\never quitted the post of duty. The poor Turkish conscript, like\nevery other soldier in the world, is fond of pets, and in front of\nthe grim turret that served for a guard-house was a collection of\nold orange-boxes and crates, thickly peopled with a garrison of\ndogs of low degree, whose attachment to the spot was certainly not\npurchased by the loaves and fishes which fell to their lot.\n\n\"One of the family must indeed have had hard times, for she had a\nfamily of no less than five dependent on her exertions, and on the\nsuperfluities of the sentries' mess. With a sagacity almost more\nthan canine, the poor gaunt creature had scarcely seen our tents\npitched before she came over with all her litter and deposited\nthem in front of our tent. At once she scanned the features of\nevery member of the encampment, and introduced herself to our\nnotice. During the week of our stay, she never quitted her post,\nor attempted any depredation on our kitchen-tent, which might have\nled to her banishment. Night and day she proved a faithful and\nvigilant sentry, permitting no stranger, human or canine, European\nor Oriental, to approach the tents without permission, but keeping\non the most familiar terms with ourselves and our servants.\n\n\"On the morning of our departure, no sooner had she seen our camp\nstruck, than she conveyed her puppies back to their old quarters\nin the orange-box, and no entreaties or bribes could induce her to\naccompany us. On three subsequent visits to Jerusalem, the same\ndog acted in a similar way, though no longer embarrassed by family\ncares, and would on no account permit any strange dog, nor even her\ncompanions at the guard-house, to approach within the tent ropes.\"\n\nAfter perusing this account of the Dog of Palestine, two points\nstrike the reader. The first is the manner in which the Dog, in\nspite of all the social disadvantages under which it labours,\ndisplays one of the chief characteristics of canine nature, namely,\nthe yearning after human society. The animal in question had already\nattached herself to the guard-house, where she could meet with some\nsort of human converse, though the inborn prejudices of the Moslem\nwould prevent the soldiers from inviting her to associate with them,\nas would certainly have been done by European soldiers. She nestled\nundisturbed in the orange-box, and, safe under the protection of the\nguard, brought up her young family in their immediate neighbourhood.\nBut, as soon as Europeans arrived, her instinct told her that they\nwould be closer associates than the Turkish soldiers who were\nquartered in the guard-house, and accordingly she removed herself\nand her family to the shelter of their tents.\n\nHerein she carried out the leading principle of a dog's nature. A\ndog _must_ have a master, or at all events a mistress, and just in\nproportion as he is free from human control, does he become less\ndog-like and more wolf-like. In fact, familiar intercourse with\nmankind is an essential part of a dog's true character, and the\nanimal seems to be so well aware of this fact, that he will always\ncontrive to find a master of some sort, and will endure a life of\ncruel treatment at the hands of a brutal owner rather than have no\nmaster at all.\n\nThe second point in this account is the singular local instinct\nwhich characterises the Dogs of Palestine and other eastern\ncountries, and which is as much inbred in them as the faculty of\nmarking game in the pointer, the combative nature in the bulldog,\nthe exquisite scent in the bloodhound, and the love of water in\nthe Newfoundland dog. In this country, we fancy that the love of\nlocality belongs especially to the cat, and that the Dog cares\nlittle for place, and much for man. But, in this case, we find that\nthe local instinct overpowered the yearning for human society. Fond\nas was this dog of her newly-found friends, and faithful as she was\nin her self-imposed service, she would not follow them away from the\nspot where she had been born, and where she had produced her own\nyoung.\n\nThis curious love for locality has evidently been derived from the\ntraditional custom of successive generations, which has passed from\nthe realm of reason into that of instinct. The reader will remember\nthat Sig. Pierotti mentions an instance where the dogs which he had\nbeen accustomed to feed would follow him as far as the limits of\ntheir particular district, but would go no farther. The late Albert\nSmith, in his \"Month at Constantinople,\" gives a similar example of\nthis characteristic. He first describes the general habits of the\ndogs.\n\nOn the first night of his arrival, he could not sleep, and went\nto the window to look out in the night. \"The noise I heard then I\nshall never forget. To say that if all the sheep-dogs, in going to\nSmithfield on a market-day, had been kept on the constant bark,\nand pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London,\nthey could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first\nastonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole\ncity rang with one vast riot. Down below me, at Tophane--over-about\nStamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole sixty thousand dogs that\nare said to overrun Constantinople appeared engaged in the most\nactive extermination of each other, without a moment's cessation.\nThe yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were all\nmerged into one uniform and continuous even sound, as the noise of\nfrogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull.\nI went to sleep, and woke again, and still, with my windows open,\nI heard the same tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that\nanything like tranquillity was restored.\n\n\"Going out in the daytime, it is not difficult to find traces of the\nfights of the night about the limbs of all the street dogs. There\nis not one, among their vast number, in the possession of a perfect\nskin. Some have their ears gnawed away or pulled off; others have\ntheir eyes taken out; from the backs and haunches of others perfect\nsteaks of flesh had been torn away; and all bear the scars of\ndesperate combats.\n\n\"Wild and desperate as is their nature, these poor animals are\nsusceptible of kindness. If a scrap of bread is thrown to one of\nthem now and then, he does not forget it; for they have, at times,\na hard matter to live--not the dogs amongst the shops of Galata or\nStamboul, but those whose 'parish' lies in the large burying-grounds\nand desert places without the city; for each keeps, or rather is\nkept, to his district, and if he chanced to venture into a strange\none, the odds against his return would be very large. One battered\nold animal, to whom I used occasionally to toss a scrap of food,\nalways followed me from the hotel to the cross street in Pera,\nwhere the two soldiers stood on guard, but would never come beyond\nthis point. He knew the fate that awaited him had he done so; and\ntherefore, when I left him, he would lie down in the road, and go to\nsleep until I came back.\n\n\"When a horse or camel dies, and is left about the roads near the\ncity, the bones are soon picked very clean by these dogs, and they\nwill carry the skulls or pelves to great distances. I was told that\nthey will eat their dead fellows--a curious fact, I believe, in\ncanine economy. They are always troublesome, not to say dangerous,\nat night; and are especially irritated by Europeans, whom they will\nsingle out amongst a crowd of Levantines.\"\n\nIn the same work there is a short description of a solitary dervish,\nwho had made his home in the hollow of a large plane-tree, in front\nof which he sat, surrounded by a small fence of stakes only a foot\nor so in height. Around him, but not venturing within the fence,\nwere a number of gaunt, half-starved dogs, who prowled about him\nin hopes of having an occasional morsel of food thrown to them.\nSolitary as he was, and scanty as must have been the nourishment\nwhich he could afford to them, the innate trustfulness of the\ndog-nature induced them to attach themselves to human society of\nsome sort, though their master was one, and they were many--he was\npoor, and they were hungry.\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN WATER-SELLER.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE WOLF.\n\n     Identity of the animal indisputable--its numbers, past and\n     present--The Wolf never mentioned directly--its general\n     habits--References in Scripture--its mingled ferocity and\n     cowardice--its association into packs--The Wolf's bite--How it\n     takes its prey--its ravages among the flocks--Allusions to this\n     habit--The shepherd and his nightly enemies--Mr. Tristram and\n     the Wolf--A semi-tamed Wolf at Marsaba.\n\n\nThere is no doubt that the Hebrew word _Zeeb_, which occurs in a\nfew passages of the Old Testament, is rightly translated as WOLF,\nand signifies the same animal as is frequently mentioned in the New\nTestament.\n\nThis fierce and dangerous animal was formerly very plentiful in\nPalestine, but is now much less common, owing to the same causes\nwhich have extirpated the lion from the country. It is a rather\nremarkable fact, that in no passage of Holy Writ is the Wolf\ndirectly mentioned. Its name is used as a symbol of a fierce and\ntreacherous enemy, but neither in the Old nor New Testament does\nany sacred writer mention any act as performed by the Wolf. We have\nalready heard of the lion which attacked Samson and was killed by\nhim, of the lion which slew the disobedient prophet, and of the\nlions which spared Daniel when thrown into their den. We also read\nof the dogs which licked Ahab's blood, and ate the body of Jezebel,\nalso of the bears which tore the mocking children.\n\nBut in no case is the Wolf mentioned, except in a metaphorical\nsense; and this fact is the more remarkable, because the animals\nwere so numerous that they were very likely to have exercised some\ninfluence on a history extending over such a lengthened range of\nyears, and limited to so small a portion of the earth. Yet we never\nhear of the Wolf attacking any of the personages mentioned in\nScripture; and although we are told of the exploit of David, who\npursued a lion and a bear that had taken a lamb out of his fold, we\nare never told of any similar deed in connexion with the Wolf.\n\n[Illustration: WOLVES ATTACKING A FLOCK OF SHEEP.]\n\nThis animal was then what it is now. Seldom seen by day, it lies\nhidden in its covert as long as the light lasts, and steals out in\nsearch of prey in the evening. This custom of the Wolf is mentioned\nin several passages of Holy Scripture, such as that in Jer. v. 5,\n6: \"These have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds.\nWherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of\nthe evenings shall spoil them.\" In this passage the reader will\nsee that the rebellious Israelites are compared to restive draught\ncattle which have broken away from their harness and run loose,\nso that they are deprived of the protection of their owners, and\nexposed to the fury of wild beasts. A similar reference is made in\nHab. i. 8: \"Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are\nmore fierce than the evening wolves.\" The same habit of the Wolf is\nalluded to in Zeph. iii. 3: \"Her princes within her are roaring\nlions; her judges are evening wolves.\"\n\nIndividually, the Wolf is rather a timid animal. It will avoid a man\nrather than meet him. It prefers to steal upon its prey and take\nit unawares, rather than to seize it openly and boldly. It is ever\nsuspicious of treachery, and is always imagining that a trap is laid\nfor it. Even the shallow device of a few yards of rope trailing\nfrom any object, or a strip of cloth fluttering in the breeze, is\nquite sufficient to keep the Wolf at bay for a considerable time.\nThis fact is well known to hunters, who are accustomed to secure the\nbody of a slain deer by simply tying a strip of cloth to its horn.\nIf taken in a trap of any kind, or even if it fancies itself in an\nenclosure from which it can find no egress, it loses all courage,\nand will submit to be killed without offering the least resistance.\nIt will occasionally endeavour to effect its escape by feigning\ndeath, and has more than once been known to succeed in this device.\n\nBut, collectively, the Wolf is one of the most dangerous animals\nthat can be found. Herding together in droves when pressed by\nhunger, the wolves will openly hunt prey, performing this task as\nperfectly as a pack of trained hounds. Full of wiles themselves,\nthey are craftily wise in anticipating the wiles of the animals\nwhich they pursue; and even in full chase, while the body of the\npack is following on the footsteps of the flying animal, one or two\nare detached on the flanks, so as to cut it off if it should attempt\nto escape by doubling on its pursuers.\n\nThere is no animal which a herd of wolves will not attack, and very\nfew which they will not ultimately secure. Strength avails nothing\nagainst the numbers of these savage foes, which give no moment of\nrest, but incessantly assail their antagonist, dashing by instinct\nat those parts of the body which can be least protected, and\nlacerating with their peculiar short, snapping bite. Should several\nof their number be killed or disabled, it makes no difference to\nthe wolves, except that a minute or two are wasted in devouring\ntheir slain or wounded brethren, and they only return to the attack\nthe more excited by the taste of blood. Swiftness of foot avails\nnothing against the tireless perseverance of the wolves, who press\non in their peculiar, long, slinging gallop, and in the end are sure\nto tire out the swifter footed but less enduring animal that flees\nbefore them. The stately buffalo is conquered by the ceaseless\nassaults of the wolves; the bear has been forced to succumb to them,\nand the fleet-footed stag finds his swift limbs powerless to escape\nthe pursuing band, and his branching horns unable to resist their\nfurious onset when once they overtake him.\n\n[Illustration: WOLVES CHASING DEER.]\n\nThat the Wolf is a special enemy to the sheep-fold is shown in\nmany parts of the Scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments,\nespecially in the latter. In John x. 1-16, Jesus compares himself\nto a good shepherd, who watches over the fold, and, if the wolves\nshould come to take the sheep, would rather give up His life than\nthey should succeed. But the false teachers are compared to bad\nshepherds, hired for money, but having no interest in the sheep, and\nwho therefore will not expose themselves to danger in defence of\ntheir charge.\n\nThis metaphor was far more effective in Palestine, and at that time,\nthan it is in this country and at the present day. In this land,\nthe shepherd has no anxiety about the inroads of wild beasts, but\nin Palestine one of his chief cares was to keep watch at night lest\nthe wolves should attack the fold, and to drive them away himself in\ncase they should do so. Therefore the shepherd's life was one which\ninvolved no small danger as well as anxiety, and the metaphor used\nby our Lord gains additional force from the knowledge of this fact.\n\n[Illustration: THE WOLF.]\n\nA similar metaphor is used when Jesus wished to express in\nforcible terms the dangers to which the chosen seventy would oft\nbe subjected, and the impossibility that they should be able to\novercome the many perils with which they would be surrounded. \"Go\nyour ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves\" (Luke x.\n3).\n\nMr. Tristram several times met wolves while he was engaged in his\ntravels, and mostly saw solitary specimens. One such encounter\ntook place in the wilderness of Judah: \"On my way back, I met a\nfine solitary wolf, who watched me very coolly, at the distance of\nsixty yards, while I drew my charge and dropped a bullet down the\nbarrel. Though I sent the ball into a rock between his legs as he\nstood looking at me in the wady, he was not sufficiently alarmed to\ndo more than move on a little more quickly, ever and anon turning\nto look at me, while gradually increasing his distance. Darkness\ncompelled me to desist from the chase, when he quietly turned and\nfollowed me at a respectful distance. He was a magnificent animal,\nlarger than any European wolf, and of a much lighter colour.\"\n\nThose who are acquainted with the character of the animal will\nappreciate the truthfulness of this description. The cautious\nprowl at a distance, the slow trot away when he fancied he might\nbe attacked, the reverted look, and the final turning back and\nfollowing at a respectful distance, are all characteristic traits of\nthe Wolf, no matter to what species it may belong, nor what country\nit may inhabit.\n\nOn another occasion, while riding in the open plain of Gennesaret,\nthe horse leaped over the bank of a little ditch, barely three feet\nin depth. After the horse had passed, and not until then, a Wolf\nstarted out of the ditch, literally from under the horses hoofs,\nand ran off. The animal had been crouching under the little bank,\nevidently watching for some cows and calves which were grazing at\na short distance, under the charge of a Bedouin boy. The same\nauthor mentions that one of the monks belonging to the monastery at\nMarsaba had contrived to render a Wolf almost tame. Every evening at\nsix o'clock the Wolf came regularly across the ravine, ate a piece\nof bread, and then went back again. With the peculiar jealousy of\nall tamed animals, the Wolf would not suffer any of his companions\nto partake of his good fortune. Several of them would sometimes\naccompany him, but as soon as they came under the wall of the\nmonastery he always drove them away.\n\n[Illustration: WOLVES ATTACKING WILD GOATS.]\n\nThe inhabitants of Palestine say that the Wolves of that country\nhunt singly, or at most in little packs of few in number. Still they\ndread the animal exceedingly on account of the damage it inflicts\nupon their flocks of sheep and goats.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE JACKAL.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE FOX OR JACKAL.\n\n     The two animals comprehended under one name--The Jackal--its\n     numbers in ancient and modern Palestine--General habits of the\n     Jackal--Localities where the Jackal is found--Samson, and the\n     three hundred \"foxes\"--Popular objections to the narrative--The\n     required number easily obtained--Signor Pierotti's remarks upon\n     the Jackal--An unpleasant position--How the fields were set on\n     fire--The dread of fire inherent in wild beasts--The truth of\n     the narrative proved--The Fox and Jackal destructive among grapes\n\n\nThere are several passages in the Old Testament in which the word\nFox occurs, and it is almost certain that the Hebrew word _Shual_,\nwhich is rendered in our translation as Fox, is used rather loosely,\nand refers in some places to the Jackal, and in others to the Fox.\nWe will first take those passages in which the former rendering of\nthe word is evidently the right one, and will begin by examining\nthose characteristics of the animal which afford grounds for such an\nassertion.\n\n[Illustration: FOXES OR JACKALS DEVOURING THE CARCASE OF A GOAT.]\n\nEven at the present time, the Jackal is extremely plentiful in\nPalestine; and as the numbers of wild beasts have much decreased\nin modern days, the animals must have been even more numerous than\nthey are at present. It is an essentially nocturnal and gregarious\nanimal. During the whole of the day the Jackals lie concealed in\ntheir holes or hiding-places, which are usually cavities in the\nrocks, in tombs, or among ruins. At nightfall they issue from their\ndens, and form themselves into packs, often consisting of several\nhundred individuals, and prowl about in search of food. Carrion of\nvarious kinds forms their chief subsistence, and they perform in\nthe country much the same task as is fulfilled by the dogs in the\ncities.\n\nIf any animal should be killed, or even severely wounded, the\nJackals are sure to find it out and to devour it before the\ndaybreak. They will scent out the track of the hunter, and feed\nupon the offal of the beasts which he has slain. If the body of\na human being were to be left on the ground, the Jackals would\ncertainly leave but little traces of it; and in the olden times of\nwarfare, they must have held high revelry in the battle-field after\nthe armies had retired. It is to this propensity of the Jackal\nthat David refers--himself a man of war, who had fought on many a\nbattle-field, and must have seen the carcases of the slain mangled\nby these nocturnal prowlers: \"Those that seek my soul, to destroy\nit, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall\nby the sword; they shall be a portion for foxes\" (Ps. lxiii. 9,\n10). Being wild beasts, afraid of man, and too cowardly to attack\nhim even when rendered furious by hunger, and powerful by force of\nnumbers, they keep aloof from towns and cities, and live in the\nuninhabited parts of the country. Therefore the prophet Jeremiah, in\nhis Book of Lamentations, makes use of the following forcible image,\nwhen deploring the pitiful state into which Judaea had fallen: \"For\nthis our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim: because\nof the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it\"\n(Lam. v. 17). And Ezekiel makes use of a similar image: \"O Israel,\nthy prophets are like foxes in the desert.\"\n\nBut, by far the most important passage in which the Fox is\nmentioned, is that wherein is recorded the grotesque vengeance of\nSamson upon the Philistines: \"And Samson went and caught three\nhundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and\nput a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set\nthe brands on fire, he let them go into the standing com of the\nPhilistines, and burnt up both the shocks and also the standing\ncorn, with the vineyards and olives\" (Judges xv. 4, 5). Now, as this\nis one of the passages of Holy Writ to which great objections have\nbeen taken, it will be as well to examine these objections, and see\nwhether they have any real force. The first of these objections is,\nthat the number of foxes is far too great to have been caught at\none time, and to this objection two answers have been given. The\nfirst answer is, that they need not have been caught at once, but\nby degrees, and kept until wanted. But the general tenor of the\nnarrative is undoubtedly in favour of the supposition that this act\nof Samson was unpremeditated, and that it was carried into operation\nat once, before his anger had cooled. The second answer is, that\nthe requisite number of Foxes might have been miraculously sent to\nSamson for this special purpose. This theory is really so foolish\nand utterly untenable, that I only mention it because it has been\nput forward. It fails on two grounds: the first being that a miracle\nwould hardly have been wrought to enable Samson to revenge himself\nin so cruel and unjustifiable a manner; and the second, that there\nwas not the least necessity for any miracle at all.\n\n[Illustration: A FEAST IN PROSPECT.]\n\nIf we put out of our minds the idea of the English Fox, an animal\ncomparatively scarce in this country, and solitary in its habits,\nand substitute the extremely plentiful and gregarious Jackal,\nwandering in troops by night, and easily decoyed by hunger into a\ntrap, we shall see that double the number might have been taken,\nif needful. Moreover, it is not to be imagined that Samson caught\nthem all with his own hand. He was at the head of his people, and\nhad many subordinates at his command, so that a large number of\nhunters might have been employed simultaneously in the capture. In\ncorroboration of this point, I insert an extremely valuable extract\nfrom Signor Pierotti's work, in which he makes reference to this\nvery portion of the sacred history:--\n\n\"It is still very abundant near Gaza, Askalon, Ashdod, Ekron, and\nRamleh. I have frequently met with it during my wanderings by night,\nand on one occasion had an excellent opportunity of appreciating\ntheir number and their noise.\n\n\"One evening in the month of January, while it was raining a perfect\ndeluge, I was obliged, owing to the dangerous illness of a friend,\nto return from Jerusalem to Jaffa. The depth of snow on the road\nover a great part of the mountain, the clayey mud in the plain, and\nthe darkness of the night, prevented my advancing quickly; so that\nabout half-past three in the morning I arrived on the bank of a\nsmall torrent, about half an hour's journey to the east of Ramleh. I\nwished to cross: my horse at first refused, but, on my spurring it,\nadvanced and at once sank up to the breast, followed of course by\nmy legs, thus teaching me to respect the instinct of an Arab horse\nfor the future.\n\n[Illustration: A FEAST SECURED.]\n\n\"There I stuck, without the possibility of escape, and consoled my\nhorse and myself with some provisions that I had in my saddle-bags,\nshouting and singing at intervals, in the hope of obtaining succour,\nand of preventing accidents, as I knew that the year before a mule\nin the same position had been mistaken for a wild beast, and killed.\nThe darkness was profound, and the wind very high; but, happily,\nit was not cold; for the only things attracted by my calls were\nnumbers of jackals, who remained at a certain distance from me, and\nresponded to my cries, especially when I tried to imitate them, as\nthough they took me for their music-master.\n\n\"About five o'clock, one of the guards of the English consulate at\nJerusalem came from Ramleh and discovered my state. He charitably\nreturned thither, and brought some men, who extricated me and my\nhorse from our unpleasant bath, which, as may be supposed, was not\nbeneficial to our legs.\n\n\"During this most uncomfortable night, I had good opportunity of\nascertaining that, if another Samson had wished to burn again the\ncrops in the country of the Philistines, he would have had no\ndifficulty in finding more than three hundred jackals, and catching\nas many as he wanted in springs, traps, or pitfalls. (See Ps. cxl.\n5.)\"\n\nThe reader will now see that there was not the least difficulty in\nprocuring the requisite number of animals, and that consequently the\nfirst objection to the truth of the story is disposed of.\n\nWe will now proceed to the second objection, which is, that if\nthe animals were tied tail to tail, they would remain on or near\nthe same spot, because they would pull in different directions,\nand that, rather than run about, they would turn round and fight\neach other. Now, in the first place, we are nowhere told that the\ntails of the foxes, or jackals, were placed in contact with each\nother, and it is probable that some little space was left between\nthem. That animals so tied would not run in a straight line is\nevident enough, and this was exactly the effect which Samson\nwished to produce. Had they been at liberty, and the fiery brand\nfastened to their tails, they would have run straight to their\ndens, and produced but little effect. But their captor, with\ncruel ingenuity, had foreseen this contingency, and, by the method\nof securing them which he adopted, forced them to pursue a devious\ncourse, each animal trying to escape from the dreaded firebrand, and\nstruggling in vain endeavours to drag its companion towards its own\nparticular den.\n\n[Illustration: A TRESPASSER.]\n\nAll wild animals have an instinctive dread of fire; and there is\nnone, not even the fierce and courageous lion, that dares enter\nwithin the glare of the bivouac fire. A lion has even been struck\nin the face with a burning brand, and has not ventured to attack\nthe man that wielded so dreadful a weapon. Consequently it may be\nimagined that the unfortunate animals that were used by Samson for\nhis vindictive purpose, must have been filled with terror at the\nburning brands which they dragged after them, and the blaze of\nthe fire which was kindled wherever they went. They would have no\nleisure to fight, and would only think of escaping from the dread\nand unintelligible enemy which pursued them.\n\nWhen a prairie takes fire, all the wild inhabitants flee in terror,\nand never think of attacking each other, so that the bear, the wolf,\nthe cougar, the deer, and the wild swine, may all be seen huddled\ntogether, their natural antagonism quelled in the presence of a\ncommon foe. So it must have been with the miserable animals which\nwere made the unconscious instruments of destruction. That they\nwould stand still when a burning brand was between them, and when\nflames sprang up around them, is absurd. That they would pull in\nexactly opposite directions with precisely balanced force is equally\nimprobable, and it is therefore evident that they would pursue a\ndevious path, the stronger of the two dragging the weaker, but being\njerked out of a straight course and impeded by the resistance which\nit would offer. That they would stand on the same spot and fight has\nbeen shown to be contrary to the custom of animals under similar\ncircumstances.\n\nThus it will be seen that every objection not only falls to the\nground, but carries its own refutation, thus vindicating this\nepisode in sacred history, and showing, that not only were the\ncircumstances possible, but that they were highly probable. Of\ncourse every one of the wretched animals must have been ultimately\nburned to death, after suffering a prolonged torture from the\nfirebrand that was attached to it. Such a consideration would,\nhowever, have had no effect for deterring Samson from employing\nthem. The Orientals are never sparing of pain, even when inflicted\nupon human beings, and in too many cases they seem utterly unable\neven to comprehend the cruelty of which they are guilty. And Samson\nwas by no means a favourable specimen of his countrymen. He was the\nvery incarnation of strength, but was as morally weak as he was\ncorporeally powerful; and to that weakness he owed his fall. Neither\ndoes he seem to possess the least trace of forbearance any more than\nof self-control, but he yields to his own undisciplined nature,\nplaces himself, and through him the whole Israelitish nation, in\njeopardy, and then, with a grim humour, scatters destruction on\nevery side in revenge for the troubles which he has brought upon\nhimself by his own acts.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HYAENA.\n\n     The Hyaena not mentioned by name, but evidently alluded\n     to--Signification of the word Zabua--Translated in the\n     Septuagint as Hyaena--A scene described by the prophet\n     Isaiah--The Hyaena plentiful in Palestine at the present\n     day--its well-known cowardice and fear of man--The uses of\n     the Hyaena and the services which it renders--The particular\n     species of Hyaena--The Hyaena in the burial-grounds--Hunting the\n     Hyaena--Curious superstition respecting the talismanic properties\n     of its skin--Precautions adopted in flaying it--Popular legends\n     of the Hyaena and its magical powers--The cavern home of the\n     Hyaena--The valley of Zeboim.\n\n\nAlthough in our version of the Scriptures the Hyaena is not mentioned\nby that name, there are two passages in the Old Testament which\nevidently refer to that animal, and therefore it is described in\nthese pages. If the reader will refer to the prophet Jeremiah, xii.\n7-9, he will find these words: \"I have forsaken mine house, I have\nleft mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into\nthe hand of her enemies. Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in\nthe forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it.\nMine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about\nare against her: come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field,\ncome to devour.\" Now, the word _zabua_ signifies something that\nis streaked, and in the Authorized Version it is rendered as a\nspeckled bird. But in the Septuagint it is rendered as Hyaena, and\nthis translation is thought by many critical writers to be the true\none. It is certain that the word _zabua_ is one of the four names by\nwhich the Talmudical writers mention the Hyaena, when treating of its\ncharacter; and it is equally certain that such a rendering makes the\npassage more forcible, and is in perfect accordance with the habits\nof predacious animals.\n\nThe whole scene which the Prophet thus describes was evidently\nfamiliar to him. First, we have the image of a deserted country,\nallowed to be overrun with wild beasts. Then we have the lion,\nwhich has struck down its prey, roaring with exultation, and\ndefying any adversary to take it from him. Then, the lion having\neaten his fill and gone away, we have the Hyaenas, vultures, and\nother carrion-eating creatures, assembling around the carcase, and\nhastening to devour it. This is a scene which has been witnessed\nby many hunters who have pursued their sport in lands where lions,\nhyaenas, and vultures are found; and all these creatures were\ninhabitants of Palestine at the time when Jeremiah wrote.\n\nAt the present day, the Hyaena is still plentiful in Palestine,\nthough in the course of the last few years its numbers have sensibly\ndiminished. The solitary traveller, when passing by night from one\ntown to another, often falls in with the Hyaena, but need suffer no\nfear, as it will not attack a human being, and prefers to slink out\nof his way. But dead, and dying, or wounded animals are the objects\nfor which it searches; and when it finds them, it devours the whole\nof its prey. The lion will strike down an antelope, an ox, or a\ngoat--will tear off its flesh with its long fangs, and lick the\nbones with its rough tongue until they are quite cleaned. The wolves\nand jackals will follow the lion, and eat every soft portion of the\ndead animal, while the vultures will fight with them for the coveted\nmorsels. But the Hyaena is a more accomplished scavenger than lion,\nwolf, jackal, or vulture; for it will eat the very bones themselves,\nits tremendously-powerful jaws and firmly-set teeth enabling it to\ncrush even the leg-bone of an ox, and its unparalleled digestive\npowers enabling it to assimilate the sharp and hard fragments which\nwould kill any creature not constituted like itself.\n\nIn a wild, or even a partially-inhabited country, the Hyaena is,\ntherefore, a most useful animal. It may occasionally kill a crippled\nor weakly ox, and sometimes carry off a sheep; but, even in that\ncase, no very great harm is done, for it does not meddle with any\nanimal that can resist. But these few delinquencies are more than\ncompensated by the great services which it renders as scavenger,\nconsuming those substances which even the lion cannot eat, and thus\nacting as a scavenger in removing objects which would be offensive\nto sight and injurious to health.\n\n[Illustration: LEOPARD ROBBED OF ITS PREY BY HYAENAS.]\n\nThe species which is mentioned in the Scriptures is the Striped\nHyaena (_Hyaena striata_); but the habits of all the species are\nalmost exactly similar. We are told by travellers of certain towns\nin different parts of Africa which would be unendurable but for the\nHyaenas. With the disregard for human life which prevails throughout\nall savage portions of that country, the rulers of these towns order\nexecutions almost daily, the bodies of the victims being allowed\nto lie where they happened to fall. No one chooses to touch them,\nlest they should also be added to the list of victims, and the\ndecomposing bodies would soon cause a pestilence but for the Hyaenas,\nwho assemble at night round the bodies, and by the next morning have\nleft scarcely a trace of the murdered men.\n\nEven in Palestine, and in the present day, the Hyaena will endeavour\nto rifle the grave, and to drag out the interred corpse. The bodies\nof the rich are buried in rocky caves, whose entrances are closed\nwith heavy stones, which the Hyaena cannot move; but those of the\npoor, which are buried in the ground, must be defended by stones\nheaped over them. Even when this precaution is taken, the Hyaena will\nsometimes find out a weak spot, drag out the body, and devour it.\n\nIn consequence of this propensity, the inhabitants have an utter\ndetestation of the animal. They catch it whenever they can, in\npitfalls or snares, using precisely the same means as were employed\ntwo thousand years ago; or they hunt it to its den, and then kill\nit, stripping off the hide, and carrying it about still wet,\nreceiving a small sum of money from those to whom they show it.\nAfterwards the skin is dressed, by rubbing it with lime and salt,\nand steeping it in the waters of the Dead Sea. It is then made into\nsandals and leggings, which are thought to be powerful charms, and\nto defend the wearer from the Hyaena's bite.\n\nThey always observe certain superstitious precautions in flaying the\ndead animal. Believing that the scent of the flesh would corrupt the\nair, they invariably take the carcase to the leeward of the tents\nbefore they strip off the skin. Even in the animal which has been\nkept for years in a cage, and has eaten nothing but fresh meat,\nthe odour is too powerful to be agreeable, as I can testify from\npractical experience when dissecting a Hyaena that had died in the\nZoological Gardens; and it is evident that the scent of an animal\nthat has lived all its life on carrion must be almost unbearable.\nThe skin being removed, the carcase is burnt, because the hunters\nthink that by this process the other Hyaenas are prevented from\nfinding the body of their comrade, and either avenging its death or\ntaking warning by its fate.\n\n[Illustration: HYAENAS DEVOURING BONES.]\n\nSuperstitions seem to be singularly prevalent concerning the Hyaena.\nIn Palestine, there is a prevalent idea that if a Hyaena meets a\nsolitary man at night, it can enchant him in such a manner as to\nmake him follow it through thickets and over rocks, until he is\nquite exhausted, and falls an unresisting prey; but that over two\npersons he has no such influence, and therefore a solitary traveller\nis gravely advised to call for help as soon as he sees a Hyaena,\nbecause the fascination of the beast would be neutralized by the\npresence of a second person. So firmly is this idea rooted in the\nminds of the inhabitants, that they will never travel by night,\nunless they can find at least one companion in their journey.\n\nIn Northern Africa there are many strange superstitions connected\nwith this animal, one of the most curious of which is founded on\nits well-known cowardice. The Arabs fancy that any weapon which\nhas killed a Hyaena, whether it be gun, sword, spear, or dagger, is\nthenceforth unfit to be used in warfare. \"Throw away that sword,\"\nsaid an Arab to a French officer, who had killed a Hyaena, \"it has\nslain the Hyaena, and it will be treacherous to you.\"\n\nAt the present day, its numbers are not nearly so great in Palestine\nas they used to be, and are decreasing annually. The cause of\nthis diminution lies, according to Signor Pierotti, more in the\ndestruction of forests than in the increase of population and the\nuse of fire-arms, though the two latter causes have undoubtedly\nconsiderable influence.\n\nThere is a very interesting account by Mr. Tristram of the haunt of\nthese animals. While exploring the deserted quarries of Es Sumrah,\nbetween Beth-arabah and Bethel, he came upon a wonderful mass of\nhyaenine relics. The quarries in which were lying the half-hewn\nblocks, scored with the marks of wedges, had evidently formed the\nresort of Hyaenas for a long series of years. \"Vast heaps of bones\nof camels, oxen, and sheep had been collected by these animals, in\nsome places to the depth of two or three feet, and on one spot I\ncounted the skulls of seven camels. There were no traces whatever of\nany human remains. We had here a beautiful recent illustration of\nthe mode of foundation of the old bone caverns, so valuable to the\ngeologist. These bones must all have been brought in by the Hyaenas,\nas no camel or sheep could possibly have entered the caverns alive,\nnor could any floods have washed them in. Near the entrance where\nthe water percolates, they were already forming a soft breccia.\"\n\nThe second allusion to the Hyaena is made in 1 Sam. xiii. 18,\n\"Another company turned to the way of the border that looketh to the\nValley of Zeboim towards the wilderness,\" _i.e._ to the Valley of\nHyaenas.\n\nThe colour of the Striped Hyaena varies according to its age. When\nyoung, as is the case with many creatures, birds as well as mammals,\nthe stripes from which it derives its name are much more strongly\nmarked than in the adult specimen. The general hue of the fur is\na pale grey-brown, over which are drawn a number of dark stripes,\nextending along the ribs and across the limbs.\n\nIn the young animal these stripes are nearly twice as dark and twice\nas wide as in the adult, and they likewise appear on the face and\non other parts of the body, whence they afterwards vanish. The fur\nis always rough; and along the spine, and especially over the neck\nand shoulders, it is developed into a kind of mane, which gives a\nvery fierce aspect to the animal. The illustration shows a group of\nHyaenas coming to feed on the relics of a dead animal. The jackals\nand vultures have eaten as much of the flesh as they can manage,\nand the vultures are sitting, gorged, round the stripped bones. The\nHyaenas are now coming up to play their part as scavengers, and have\nalready begun to break up the bones in their crushing-mills of jaws.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WEASEL.\n\n     Difficulty of identifying the Weasel of Scripture--The Weasel of\n     Palestine--Suggested identity with the Ichneumon.\n\n\nThe word Weasel occurs once in the Holy Scriptures, and therefore it\nis necessary that the animal should be mentioned. There is a great\ncontroversy respecting the identification of the animal, inasmuch as\nthere is nothing in the context which gives the slightest indication\nof its appearance or habits.\n\nThe passage in question is that which prohibits the Weasel and the\nmouse as unclean animals (see Lev. xi. 29). Now the word which is\nhere translated Weasel is _Choled_, or _Chol'd_; and, I believe,\nnever occurs again in the whole of the Old Testament. Mr. W.\nHoughton conjectures that the Hebrew word Choled is identical with\nthe Arabic _Chuld_ and the Syriac _Chuldo_, both words signifying a\nmole; and therefore infers that the unclean animal in question is\nnot a Weasel, but a kind of mole.\n\nThe Weasel does exist in Palestine, and seems to be as plentiful\nthere as in our own country. Indeed, the whole tribe of Weasels\nis well represented, and the polecat is seen there as well as the\nWeasel.\n\nThere is hardly any animal which, for its size, is so much dreaded\nby the creatures on which it preys as the common Weasel.\n\nAlthough its small proportions render a single Weasel an\ninsignificant opponent to man or dog, yet it can wage a sharp battle\neven with such powerful foes, and refuses to yield except at the\nlast necessity.\n\nThe proportions of the Weasel are extremely small, a full-grown male\nnot exceeding ten inches in length. The color of its fur is bright\nreddish-brown on the upper parts of the body, and the under-portions\nare pure white. The audacity and courage of this little animal are\nreally remarkable. It seems to hold every being except itself in the\nmost sovereign contempt, and, to all appearances, is as ready to\nmatch itself against a man as against a mouse.\n\nIt is a terrible foe to many of the smaller animals, such as rats\nand mice, and performs a really good service to the farmer in\ndestroying many of these farmyard pests. The Weasel is specially\ndreaded by rats and mice, because there is no hole through which\nthey can pass that will not also admit the passage of their enemy;\nand, as the Weasel is most persevering and determined in pursuit, it\nseldom happens that rats or mice escape when their little foe has\nset itself fairly on their track.\n\n[Illustration: WEASELS.]\n\nNot only does the Weasel pursue its prey through the windings of\nthe burrows, but it will even cross water in the chase. When it\nhas at last reached its victim, it leaps upon the devoted creature\nand endeavours to fix its teeth in the back of the neck, where it\nretains its deadly hold in spite of every struggle on the part of\nthe wounded animal. If the attack be rightly made and the animal a\nsmall one, the Weasel can drive its teeth into the brain and cause\ninstantaneous death.\n\nThe Weasel is very fond of eggs, and young birds of all kinds. It\nis said that an egg that has been broken by a Weasel, can always be\nrecognized, by the peculiar mode which the little creature employs\nfor the purpose.\n\nInstead of breaking the egg to pieces or biting a large hole in the\nshell, the Weasel contents itself with making quite a small aperture\nat one end, through which it abstracts the liquid contents.\n\nA curious example of the courage of the Weasel, is related by a\ngentleman who while crossing a field at dusk, saw an owl pounce upon\nsome object on the ground, and carry it in the air.\n\nIn a short time the bird showed signs of distress, trying to free\nitself from some annoying object by means of its talons, and\nflapping about in a very bewildered manner.\n\nSoon afterwards the owl fell dead to the earth; and when the\nspectator of the aerial combat approached, a weasel ran away from\nthe dead body of the bird, itself being apparently uninjured. On\nexamination of the owl's body, it was found that the Weasel, which\nhad been marked out for the owl's repast, had in its turn become the\nassailant, and had attacked the unprotected parts which lie beneath\nthe wings. A considerable wound had been made in that spot, and the\nlarge blood-vessels torn through.\n\n[Illustration: THE BITER BIT.]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: scene]\n\n\n\n\nTHE BADGER.\n\n     Difficulty in identifying the _Tachash_ of Scripture--References\n     to \"Badgers' skins\"--The Dugong thought to be the\n     Badger--The Bedouin sandals--Nature of the materials for\n     the Tabernacle--Habits of the Badger--The species found in\n     Palestine--Uses of the Badgers' skins--Looseness of zoological\n     terms.\n\n\nUntil very lately, there was much difficulty in ascertaining whether\nthe word _Tachash_ has been rightly translated as Badger. It occurs\nin several parts of the Scriptures, and almost invariably is used\nin relation to a skin or fur of some sort. We will first examine\nthe passages in which the Badger is mentioned, and then proceed to\nidentify the animal.\n\nNearly all the references to the Badger occur in the book of Exodus,\nand form part of the directions for constructing the Tabernacle and\nits contents. The first notice of the word occurs in Exodus xxv. 5,\nwhere the people of Israel are ordered to bring their offerings for\nthe sanctuary, among which offerings are gold, silver, and brass,\nblue, purple, and scarlet, fine linen, goats' hair, rams' skins dyed\nred, badgers' skins, and shittim wood--all these to be used in the\nconstruction of the Tabernacle. Then a little farther on, in chapter\nxxvi. 14, we find one of the special uses to which the badgers'\nskins were to be put, namely, to make the outer covering or roof of\nthe tabernacle. Another use for the badgers' skins was to form an\nouter covering for the ark, table of shewbread, and other furniture\nof the Tabernacle, when the people were on the march.\n\nIn all these cases the badger-skin is used as a covering to defend a\nbuilding or costly furniture, but there is one example where it is\nemployed for a different purpose. This passage occurs in the book\nof Ezekiel, chapter xvi. 10. The prophet is speaking of Jerusalem\nunder the image of a woman, and uses these words, \"I anointed thee\nwith oil; I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee\nwith badger's skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I\ncovered thee with silk. I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put\nbracelets upon thy hands, and a chain upon thy neck, and I put a\njewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful\ncrown upon thine head.\"\n\nSo we have here the fact, that the same material which was used for\nthe covering of the Tabernacle, and of the sacred furniture, could\nalso be used for the manufacture of shoes. This passage is the more\nvaluable because of an inference which may be drawn from it. The\nreader will see that the badger-skin, whatever it may have been,\nmust have been something of considerable value, and therefore, in\nall probability, something of much rarity.\n\nIn the present instance, it is classed with the most luxurious\nrobes that were known in those days, and it is worthy of special\nmention among the bracelet, earrings, necklace, and coronal with\nwhich the symbolized city was adorned. If the reader will now refer\nto the passage in which the children of Israel were commanded to\nbring their offerings, he will see that in those cases also the\nbadger-skins were ranked with the costliest articles of apparel\nthat could be found, and had evidently been brought from Egypt, the\npeculiar home of all the arts; together with the vast quantity of\ngold and jewels which were used for the same sacred purpose.\n\nNow we find that the badger-skins in question must possess three\nqualities: they must be costly, they must be capable of forming a\ndefence against the weather, and they must be strong enough to be\nemployed in the manufacture of shoes. If we accept the word Tachash\nas signifying a Badger, we shall find that these conditions have\nbeen fulfilled.\n\nBut many commentators have thought that badger-skins could not\nhave been procured in sufficient numbers for the purpose, and have\ntherefore conjectured that some other animal must be signified by\nthe word Tachash.\n\nA species of dugong (_Halicore hemprichii_) is the animal that has\nbeen selected as the Badger of the Scriptures. It is one of the\nmarine mammalia, and always lives near the shore, where it can find\nthe various algae on which it feeds. It is a gregarious animal,\nand, as it frequently ascends rivers for some distance, it may be\ncaptured in sufficient numbers to make both its flesh and skin\nuseful. Moreover, it is of considerable size, fourteen or fifteen\nfeet in length being its usual dimensions, so that a comparatively\nsmall number of the skins would be required for the covering of the\nTabernacle.\n\nThat shoes can be made of it is evident from the fact that at the\npresent day shoes, or rather sandals, are made from its hide, and\nare commonly used by the Bedouins. But the very qualities and\npeculiarities which render it a fit material for the sandal of a\nhalf-naked Bedouin Arab, who has to walk continually over hard, hot,\nsandy, and rough ground, would surely make it unsuitable for the\ndelicate shoes worn by a woman of rank who spends her time in the\nhouse, and the rest of whose clothing is of fine linen and silk,\nembroidered with gold and jewels. In our own country, the hobnailed\nshoes of the ploughman and the slight shoe of a lady are made of\nvery different materials, and it is reasonable to conjecture that\nsuch was the case when the passage in question was written.\n\nThen Dr. Robinson, who admits that the hide of the dugong could\nhardly have been used as the material for a lady's shoe, thinks that\nit would have answered very well for the roof of the Tabernacle,\nbecause it was large, clumsy, and coarse. It seems strange that he\ndid not also perceive that the two latter qualities would completely\ndisqualify such skins for that service. Everything clumsy and\ncoarse was studiously prohibited, and nothing but the very best\nwas considered fit for the Tabernacle of the Lord. By special\nrevelation, Moses was instructed to procure, not merely the ordinary\ntimber of the country for the framework--not only the fabrics which\nwould keep out rain and wind--not simply the metals in common use,\nfrom which to make the lamps and other furniture--not the ordinary\noils for supplying the lamps; but, on the contrary, the finest\nlinen, the most elaborate embroidery, the rarest woods, the purest\ngold, the costliest gems, were demanded, and nothing common or\ninferior was accepted. The commonest material that was permitted\nwas the long, soft fleece of rams' wool; but, even in that case,\nthe wool had to be dyed of the regal scarlet--a dye so rare and so\ncostly that none but the wealthiest rulers could use it. Even the\nvery oil that burned in the lamps must be the purest olive-oil,\nprepared expressly for that purpose.\n\n[Illustration: BADGERS.]\n\nThe very fact, therefore, that any article was plentiful and could\neasily be obtained, would be a proof that such article was not\nused for so sacred a purpose; while it is impossible that anything\ncoarse and clumsy could have been accepted for the construction\nof that Tabernacle within which the Shekinah ever burned over the\nMercy-seat--over which the cloud rested by day, and the fire shone\nby night, visible external proofs of the Divine glory within.\n\nWe therefore dismiss from our minds the possibility of accepting\nany material for it which was not exceptionably valuable, and which\nwould be employed in the uses of ordinary life. The great object of\nthe minutely-elaborate directions which were given through Moses to\nthe Israelites was evidently to keep continually before their eyes\nthe great truth that they owed all to God, and that their costliest\nofferings were but acknowledgments of their dependence.\n\nWe will now presume that the Tachash of the Pentateuch and Ezekiel\nis really the animal which we know by the name of Badger. It exists\nthroughout the whole of the district traversed by the Israelites,\nthough it is not very plentiful, nor is it easily taken. Had such\nbeen the case, its fur would not have been employed in the service\nof the sanctuary.\n\nIt is nocturnal in its habits, and very seldom is seen during the\nhours of daylight, so that it cannot be captured by chase. It is\nnot gregarious, so that it cannot be taken in great numbers, as is\nthe case with certain wild animals which have been thought to be\nthe Tachash of Scripture. It is not a careless animal, so that it\ncannot be captured or killed without the exercise of considerable\ningenuity, and the expenditure of much time and trouble. It is one\nof the burrowing animals, digging for itself a deep subterranean\nhome, and always ready whenever it is alarmed to escape into\nthe dark recesses of its dwelling, from which it can scarcely be\ndislodged. It is not a large animal, so that a considerable number\nof skins would be required in order to make a covering which should\noverlap a structure forty-five feet in length and fifteen in\nbreadth. Were it a solitary animal, there might be a difficulty in\nprocuring a sufficient number of skins. But it is partly gregarious\nin its habits, living together in small families, seven or eight\nbeing sometimes found to inhabit a single dwelling-place. It\nis, therefore, sufficiently rare to make its skin valuable, and\nsufficiently plentiful to furnish the requisite number of skins.\nAll these facts tend to show that the cost of such a covering\nmust have been very great, even though it was the outermost, and,\nconsequently, the least valuable of the four. It has been suggested\nthat these skins were only used to lay over the lines where the\ndifferent sets of coverings overlapped each other, and that, in\nconsequence, they need not have been very numerous.\n\n[Illustration: SUPPOSED FORM AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE TABERNACLE,\nCAMP, ETC.]\n\nBut we find that these same skins, which were evidently those\nwhich formed the external roof, were used, when the Tabernacle was\ntaken down, for the purpose of forming distinct coverings for the\nark of the testimony, the table of shewbread, the seven-branched\ncandlestick, the golden altar, the various vessels used in the\nministrations, and lastly, the altar of sacrifice itself. Thus, when\nwe recollect the dimensions of the ark, the table, the candlestick,\nand the two altars, we shall see that, in order to make separate\ncovers for them, a quantity of material would be used which would be\namply sufficient to cover the whole roof of the Tabernacle, even if\nit had, as was most probably the case, a ridged, and not a flat roof.\n\nWe now come to our next point, namely, the aptitude of the Badger's\nskin to resist weather. Any one who has handled the skin of the\nBadger will acknowledge that a better material could hardly be\nfound. The fur is long, thick, and, though light, is moderately\nstiff, the hairs falling over each other in such a manner as to\nthrow off rain or snow as off a penthouse. And, as to the third\npoint, namely, its possible use as a material for the manufacture\nof shoes, we may call to mind that the skin of the Badger is\nproverbially tough, and that this very quality has caused the animal\nto be subjected to most cruel treatment by a class of sporting men\nwhich is now almost extinct.\n\nThe Septuagint gives little assistance in determining the precise\nnature of the Tachash, and rather seems to consider the word as\nexpressive of the colour with which the fur was dyed than that of\nthe animal from which it was taken. Still, it must be remembered\nthat not only are zoological terms used very loosely in the\nScriptures, but that in Hebrew, as in all other languages, the same\ncombination of letters often expresses two different ideas, so\nthat the word Tachash may equally signify a colour and an animal.\nMoreover, it has been well pointed out that the repeated use of the\nword in the plural number shows that it cannot refer to colour;\nwhile its almost invariable combination with the Hebrew word that\nsignifies a skin implies that it does not refer to colour, but to an\nanimal.\n\nWhat that animal may be, is, as I have already mentioned,\nconjectural. But, as the authorized translation renders the word as\nBadger, and as this reading fulfils the conditions necessary to its\nidentification, and as no other reading does fulfil them, we cannot\nbe very far wrong if we accept that translation as the correct one,\nand assume the Tachash of the Scriptures to be the animal which we\ncall by the name of Badger.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BEAR.\n\n     The Syrian Bear--Identity of the Hebrew and Arabic titles--Its\n     colour variable according to age--Bears once numerous in\n     Palestine, and now only occasionally seen--Reason for their\n     diminution--Present localities of the Bear, and its favourite\n     haunts--Food of the Bear--Its general habits--Its ravages among\n     the flocks--The Bear dangerous to mankind--The Bear robbed of\n     her whelps--Illustrative passages--Its mode of fighting--Various\n     references to the Bear, from the time of Samuel to that of St.\n     John.\n\n\nWhatever doubt may exist as to the precise identity of various\nanimals mentioned in the Scriptures, there is none whatever as to\nthe creature which is frequently alluded to under the name of Bear.\n\nThe Hebrew word is _Dob_, and it is a remarkable fact that the name\nof this animal in the Arabic language is almost identical with the\nHebrew term, namely, _Dubh_. The peculiar species of Bear which\ninhabits Palestine is the Syrian Bear (_Ursus Isabellinus_), and,\nthough it has been variously described by different eye-witnesses,\nthere is no doubt that the same species was seen by them all. As is\nthe case with many animals, the Syrian Bear changes its colour as\nit grows older. When a cub, it is of a darkish brown, which becomes\na light brown as it approaches maturity. But, when it has attained\nits full growth, it becomes cream-, and each succeeding year\nseems to lighten its coat, so that a very old Bear is nearly as\nwhite as its relative of the Arctic regions. Travellers, therefore,\nwho have met the younger specimens, have described them as brown in\nhue, while those who have seen more aged individuals have stated\nthat the colour of the Syrian Bear is white.\n\nOwing to the destruction of forests, the Bear, which is essentially\na lover of the woods, has decreased considerably in number. Yet,\neven at the present time, specimens may be seen by the watchful\ntraveller, mostly about the range of Lebanon, but sometimes at a\nconsiderable distance from that locality. Mr. Tristram, for example,\nsaw it close to the Lake of Gennesaret. \"We never met with so many\nwild animals as on one of those days. First of all, a wild boar got\nout of some scrub close to us, as we were ascending the valley. Then\na deer was started below, ran up the cliff, and wound along the\nledge, passing close to us. Then a large ichneumon almost crossed my\nfeet and ran into a cleft; and, while endeavouring to trace him, I\nwas amazed to see a brown Syrian Bear clumsily but rapidly clamber\ndown the rocks and cross the ravine. He was, however, far too\ncautious to get within hailing distance of any of the riflemen.\"\n\nThe same author mentions that some of the chief strongholds of this\nBear are certain clefts in the face of a precipitous chasm through\nwhich the river Leontes flows. This river runs into the sea a few\nmiles northward of Tyre, and assists in carrying off the melted\nsnows from the Lebanon range of mountains. His description is so\npicturesque, that it must be given in his own words. \"The channel,\nthough a thousand feet deep, was so narrow that the opposite ridge\nwas within gunshot. Looking down the giddy abyss, we could see the\ncliff on our side partially covered with myrtle, bay, and caper\nhanging from the fissures, while the opposite side was perforated\nwith many shallow caves, the inaccessible eyries of vultures,\neagles, and lanner falcons, which were sailing in multitudes around.\nThe lower part had many ledges clad with shrubs, the strongholds\nof the Syrian Bear, though inaccessible even to goats. Far beneath\ndashed the milk-white river, a silver line in a ruby setting of\noleanders, roaring doubtless fiercely, but too distant to be heard\nat the height on which we stood. This _cleft_ of the Leontes was the\nonly true Alpine scenery we had met with in Palestine, and in any\ncountry, and amidst any mountains, it would attract admiration.\"\n\n[Illustration: BEARS DESCENDING THE MOUNTAINS.]\n\nOn those elevated spots the Bear loves to dwell, and throughout the\nsummer-time generally remains in such localities. For the Bear is\none of the omnivorous animals, and is able to feed on vegetable as\nwell as animal substances, preferring the former when they can be\nfound. There is nothing that a Bear likes better than strawberries\nand similar fruits, among which it will revel throughout the whole\nfruit season, daintily picking the ripest berries, and becoming\nwonderfully fat by the constant banquet. Sometimes, when the fruits\nfail, it makes incursions among the cultivated grounds, and is noted\nfor the ravages which it makes among a sort of vetch which is much\ngrown in the Holy Land.\n\nBut during the colder months of the year the Bear changes its diet,\nand becomes carnivorous. Sometimes it contents itself with the\nvarious wild animals which it can secure, but sometimes it descends\nto the lower plains, and seizes upon the goats and sheep in their\npastures. This habit is referred to by David, in his well-known\nspeech to Saul, when the king was trying to dissuade him from\nmatching himself against the gigantic Philistine. \"And Saul said\nto David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight\nwith him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his\nyouth.... Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a\nlion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: and I went out\nafter him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his hand; and\nwhen he arose against me, I caught him by the beard, and smote him,\nand slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this\nuncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath\ndefied the armies of the living God.\"--1 Sam. xvii. 33-36.\n\n[Illustration: ON THE WATCH.]\n\nThough not generally apt to attack mankind, it will do so if first\nattacked, and then becomes a most dangerous enemy. See, for example,\nthat most graphic passage in the book of the prophet Amos, whose\nbusiness as a herdsman must have made him conversant with the\nhabits, not only of the flocks and herds which he kept, but of the\nwild beasts which might devour them:--\"Woe unto you that desire the\nday of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is\ndarkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a\nbear met him; or went into a house, and leaned his hand on the wall,\nand a serpent bit him.\" (v. 19.)\n\nAnother reference to the dangerous character of the Bear is made in\n2 Kings ii. 23, 24, in which is recorded that two she-bears came out\nof the wood near Bethel, and killed forty-two of the children that\nmocked at Elisha.\n\nAs the Bear is not swift of foot, but rather clumsy in its\nmovements, it cannot hope to take the nimbler animals in open chase.\nIt prefers to lie in wait for them in the bushes, and to strike them\ndown with a sudden blow of its paw, a terrible weapon, which it can\nwield as effectively as the lion uses its claws. An allusion to this\nhabit is made in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (iii. 10), \"He was\nunto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.\"\n\nHarmless to man as it generally is, there are occasions on which\nit becomes a terrible and relentless foe, not seeking to avoid his\npresence, but even searching for him, and attacking him as soon\nas seen. In the proper season of the year, hunters, or those who\nare travelling through those parts of the country infested by the\nBear, will sometimes find the cubs, generally two in number, their\nmother having left them in the den while she has gone to search for\nfood. Although they would not venture to take the initiative in an\nattack upon either of the parents, they are glad of an opportunity\nwhich enables them to destroy one or two Bears without danger to\nthemselves. The young Bears are easily killed or carried off,\nbecause at a very early age they are as confident as they are weak,\nand do not try to escape when they see the hunters approaching.\n\nThe only danger lies in the possibility that their deed may be\ndiscovered by the mother before they can escape from the locality,\nand, if she should happen to return while the robbers are still in\nthe neighbourhood, a severe conflict is sure to follow. At any time\nan angry Bear is a terrible antagonist, especially if it be wounded\nwith sufficient severity to cause pain, and not severely enough to\n<DW36> its movements. But, when to this easily-roused ferocity is\nadded the fury of maternal feelings, it may be imagined that the\nhunters have good reason to fear its attack.\n\n[Illustration: SEEKING AN OUTLOOK.]\n\nTo all animals that rear their young is given a sublime and almost\nsupernatural courage in defending their offspring, and from the\nlioness, that charges a host of armed men when her cubs are in\ndanger, to the hen, which defies the soaring kite or prowling fox,\nor to the spider, that will give up her life rather than abandon\nher yet unhatched brood, the same self-sacrificing spirit actuates\nthem all. Most terrible therefore is the wrath of a creature which\npossesses, as is the case of the Bear, the strongest maternal\naffections, added to great size, tremendous weapons, and gigantic\nstrength. That the sight of a Bear bereaved of her young was well\nknown to both writers and contemporary readers of the Old Testament,\nis evident from the fact that it is mentioned by several writers,\nand always as a familiar illustration of furious anger. See for\nexample 2 Sam. xvii. 8, when Hushai is dissuading Absalom from\nfollowing the cautious counsel of Ahithophel, \"For thou knowest thy\nfather and his men, that they be mighty men of war, and they be\nchafed in their minds as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field.\"\nSolomon also, in the Proverbs (xvii. 12), uses the same image, \"Let\na bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his\nfolly.\"\n\nWhen the Bear fights, it delivers rapid strokes with its armed paw,\ntearing and rending away everything that it strikes. A blow from a\nbear's paw has been several times known to strip the entire skin,\ntogether with the hair, from a man's head, and, when fighting with\ndogs, to tear its enemies open as if each claw were a chisel.\n\nBears are capable of erecting themselves on their hinder limbs, and\nof supporting themselves in an upright position with the greatest\nease. When attacked in close combat, they have a habit of rearing\nthemselves upon their hinder feet--a position which enables them to\ndeliver with the greatest effect the terrific blows with their fore\npaws, upon which they chiefly rely in defending themselves.\n\nWith fearful ingenuity, the Bear, when engaged with a human foe,\ndirects its attack upon the head of its antagonist, and, as\npreviously stated, has been known to strike off the entire scalp\nwith a single blow.\n\n[Illustration: A FAMILY-PARTY.]\n\nA hunter who had the misfortune to be struck down by a Bear--and\nthe singular good fortune to afterwards escape from it--says, that\nwhen he was lying on the ground at the mercy of the angry beast,\nthe animal, after biting him upon the arms and legs, deliberately\nsettled itself upon his head and began to scarify it in the fiercest\nmanner, leaving wounds eight and nine inches in length.\n\nBears are the more terrible antagonists from their extreme tenacity\nof life, and the fearful energy which they compress into the last\nmoment of existence, when they are suffering from a mortal wound.\nUnless struck in the heart or brain, the mortally-wounded Bear is\nmore to be feared than if it had received no injury whatever, and\ncontrives to wreak more harm in the few minutes that immediately\nprecede its death, than it had achieved while still uninjured.\n\nMany a hunter has received mortal hurts by incautiously approaching\na Bear, which lay apparently dead, but was in reality only stunned.\n\n[Illustration: bear]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: porcupine]\n\n\n\n\nTHE PORCUPINE.\n\n     Presumed identity of the Kippod with the Porcupine--Habits\n     of the Porcupine--the common Porcupine found plentifully in\n     Palestine.\n\n\nAlthough, like the hedgehog, the Porcupine is not mentioned by name\nin the Scriptures, many commentators think that the word Kippod\nsignifies both the hedgehog and Porcupine.\n\nThat the two animals should be thought to be merely two varieties\nof one species is not astonishing, when we remember the character\nof the people among whom the Porcupine lives. Not having the least\nidea of scientific geology, they look only to the most conspicuous\ncharacteristics, and because the Porcupine and hedgehog are both\ncovered with an armature of quills, and the quills are far more\nconspicuous than the teeth, the inhabitants of Palestine naturally\nclass the two animals together. In reality, they belong to two very\ndifferent orders, the hedgehog being classed with the shrew-mice and\nmoles, while the Porcupine is a rodent animal, and is classed with\nthe rats, rabbits, beavers, marmots, and other rodents.\n\nIt is quite as common in Palestine as the hedgehog, a fact which\nincreases the probability that the two animals may have been\nmentioned under a common title. Being a nocturnal animal, it retires\nduring the day-time to some crevice in a rock or burrow in the\nground, and there lies sleeping until the sunset awakens it and\ncalls it to action. And as the hedgehog is also a nocturnal animal,\nthe similarity of habit serves to strengthen the mutual resemblance.\n\nThe Porcupine is peculiarly fitted for living in dry and unwatered\nspots, as, like many other animals, of which our common rabbit is a\nfamiliar example, it can exist without water, obtaining the needful\nmoisture from the succulent roots on which it feeds.\n\nThe sharply pointed quills with which its body is covered are solid,\nand strengthened in a most beautiful manner by internal ribs, that\nrun longitudinally through them, exactly like those of the hollow\niron masts, which are now coming so much into use. As they are,\nin fact, greatly developed hairs, they are continually shed and\nreplaced, and when they are about to fall are so loosely attached\nthat they fall off if pulled slightly, or even if the animal shakes\nitself. Consequently the shed quills that lie about the localities\ninhabited by the Porcupine indicate its whereabouts, and so\nplentiful are these quills in some places, that quite a bundle can\nbe collected in a short time.\n\nThere are many species of Porcupines which inhabit different parts\nof the world, but that which has been mentioned is the common\nPorcupine of Europe, Asia, and Africa.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOLE.\n\n     The two Hebrew words which are translated as Mole--Obscurity of\n     the former name--A parallel case in our own language--The second\n     name--The Moles and the Bats, why associated together--The\n     real Mole of Scripture, its different names, and its place\n     in zoology--Description of the Mole-rat and its general\n     habits--Curious superstition--Discovery of the species by Mr.\n     Tristram--Scripture and science--How the Mole-rat finds its\n     food--Distinction between the Mole and the present animal.\n\n\nThere are two words which are translated as Mole in our authorized\nversion of the Bible. One of them is so obscure that there seems no\npossibility of deciding the creature that is represented by it. We\ncannot even tell to what class of the animal kingdom it refers,\nbecause in more than one place it is mentioned as one of the unclean\nbirds that might not be eaten (translated as _swan_ in our version),\nwhereas, in another place, it is enumerated among the unclean\ncreeping things.\n\n[Illustration: THE MOLE-RAT.]\n\nWe may conjecture that the same word might be used to designate two\ndistinct animals, though we have no clue to their identification. It\nis rather a strange coincidence, in corroboration of this theory,\nthat our word Mole signifies three distinct objects--firstly, an\nanimal; secondly, a cutaneous growth; and thirdly, a bank of earth.\nNow, supposing English to be a dead language, like the Hebrew, it\nmay well be imagined that a translator of an English book would feel\nextremely perplexed when he saw the word Mole used in such widely\ndifferent senses.\n\nThe best Hebraists can do no more than offer a conjecture founded\non the structure of the word _Tinshemeth_, which is thought by some\nto be the chameleon. Some think that it is the Mole, some the ibis,\nsome the salamander, while others consider it to be the centipede;\nand in neither case have any decisive arguments been adduced.\n\nWe will therefore leave the former of these two names, and proceed\nto the second, _Chephor-peroth_.\n\nThis word occurs in that passage of Isaiah which has already been\nquoted when treating of the bat. \"In that day a man shall cast his\nidols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one to\nhimself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the\nclefts of the rocks and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear\nof the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to\nshake terribly the earth.\"\n\nIt is highly probable that the animal in question is the Mole of\nPalestine, which is not the same as our European species, but is\nmuch larger in size, and belongs to a different order of mammalia.\nThe true Mole is one of the insectivorous and carnivorous animals,\nand is allied to the shrews and the hedgehogs; whereas the Mole of\nPalestine (_Spalax typhlus_) is one of the rodents, and allied to\nthe rabbits, mice, marmots, and jerboas. A better term for it is the\nMole-rat, by which name it is familiar to zoologists. It is also\nknown by the names of Slepez and Nenni.\n\nIn length it is about eight inches, and its colour is a pale slate.\nAs is the case with the true Moles, the eyes are of very minute\ndimensions, and are not visible through the thick soft fur with\nwhich the whole head and body are covered. Neither are there any\nvisible external ears, although the ear is really very large, and\nextremely sensitive to sound. This apparent privation of both\nears and eyes gives to the animal a most singular and featureless\nappearance, its head being hardly recognisable as such but for\nthe mouth, and the enormous projecting teeth, which not only look\nformidable, but really are so. There is a curious superstition in\nthe Ukraine, that if a man will dare to grasp a Mole-rat in his bare\nhand, allow it to bite him, and then squeeze it to death, the hand\nthat did the deed will ever afterwards possess the virtue of healing\ngoitre or scrofula.\n\nThis animal is spread over a very large tract of country, and is\nvery common in Palestine. Mr. Tristram gives an interesting account\nof its discovery. \"We had long tried in vain to capture the Mole\nof Palestine. Its mines and its mounds we had seen everywhere, and\nreproached ourselves with having omitted the mole-trap among the\nitems of our outfit. From the size of the mounds and the shallowness\nof the subterranean passages, we felt satisfied it could not be the\nEuropean species, and our hopes of solving the question were raised\nwhen we found that one of them had taken up its quarters close to\nour camp. After several vain attempts to trap it, an Arab one night\nbrought a live Mole in a jar to the tent. It was no Mole properly so\ncalled, but the Mole-rat, which takes its place throughout Western\nAsia. The man, having observed our anxiety to possess a specimen,\nrefused to part with it for less than a hundred piastres, and\nscornfully rejected the twenty piastres I offered. Ultimately, Dr.\nChaplin purchased it for five piastres after our departure, and I\nkept it alive for some time in a box, feeding it on sliced onions.\"\n\nThe same gentleman afterwards caught many of the Mole-rats, and\nkept them in earthen vessels, as they soon gnawed their way through\nwood. They fed chiefly on bulbs, but also ate sopped bread. Like\nmany other animals, they reposed during the day, and were active\nthroughout the night.\n\nThe author then proceeds to remark on the peculiarly appropriate\ncharacter of the prophecy that the idols should be cast to the\nMoles and the bats. Had the European Mole been the animal to\nwhich reference was made, there would have been comparatively\nlittle significance in the connexion of the two names, because,\nalthough both animals are lovers of darkness, they do not inhabit\nsimilar localities. But the Mole-rat is fond of frequenting\ndeserted ruins and burial-places, so that the Moles and the bats\nare really companions, and as such are associated together in the\nsacred narrative. Here, as in many other instances, we find that\ncloser study of the Scriptures united to more extended knowledge\nare by no means the enemies of religion, as some well-meaning,\nbut narrow-minded persons think. On the contrary, the Scriptures\nwere never so well understood, and their truth and force so well\nrecognised, as at the present day; and science has proved to be,\nnot the destroyer of the Bible, but its interpreter. We shall soon\ncease to hear of \"Science _versus_ the Bible,\" and shall substitute\n\"Science and the Bible _versus_ Ignorance and Prejudice.\"\n\nThe Mole-rat needs not to dig such deep tunnels as the true Moles,\nbecause its food does not lie so deep. The Moles live chiefly upon\nearthworms, and are obliged to procure them in the varying depths\nto which they burrow. But the Mole-rat lives mostly upon roots,\npreferring those of a bulbous nature. Now bulbous roots are, as\na rule, situated near the surface of the ground, and, therefore,\nany animal which feeds upon them must be careful not to burrow too\ndeeply, lest it should pass beneath them. The shallowness of the\nburrows is thus accounted for. Gardens are often damaged by this\nanimal, the root-crops, such as carrots and onions, affording plenty\nof food without needing much exertion.\n\nThe Mole-rat does not keep itself quite so jealously secluded as\ndoes our common Mole, but occasionally will come out of the burrow\nand lie on the ground, enjoying the warm sunshine. Still it is not\neasily to be approached; for though its eyes are almost useless, the\nears are so sharp, and the animal is so wary, that at the sound of a\nfootstep it instantly seeks the protection of its burrow, where it\nmay bid defiance to its foes.\n\nHow it obtains its food is a mystery. There seems to be absolutely\nno method of guiding itself to the precise spot where a bulb may\nbe growing. It is not difficult to conjecture the method by which\nthe Mole discovers its prey. Its sensitive ears may direct it to\nthe spot where a worm is driving its way through the earth, and\nshould it come upon its prey, the very touch of the worm, writhing\nin terror at the approach of its enemy, would be sufficient to act\nas a guide. I have kept several Moles, and always noticed that,\nthough they would pass close to a worm without seeming to detect\nits presence, either by sight or scent, at the slightest touch they\nwould spring round, dart on the worm, and in a moment seize it\nbetween their jaws. But with the Mole-rat the case is different. The\nroot can utter no sound, and can make no movement, nor is it likely\nthat the odour of the bulb should penetrate through the earth to a\nvery great distance.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: mice]\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOUSE.\n\n     The Mice which marred the land--The Field-mouse--Its destructive\n     habits and prolific nature--The Hamster, and its habits--The\n     Jerboa, its activity and destructiveness--Various species of\n     Dormice and Sand-rats.\n\n\nThat the Mouse mentioned in the Old Testament was some species\nof rodent animal is tolerably clear, though it is impossible to\nstate any particular species as being signified by the Hebrew word\n_Akbar_. The probable derivation of this name is from two words\nwhich signify \"destruction of corn,\" and it is therefore evident\nthat allusion is made to some animal which devours the produce of\nthe fields, and which exists in sufficient numbers to make its\nvoracity formidable.\n\nSome commentators on the Old Testament translate the word Akbar\nas jerboa. Now, although the jerboa is common in Syria, it is not\nnearly so plentiful as other rodent animals, and would scarcely\nbe selected as the means by which a terrible disaster is made to\nbefall a whole country. The student of Scripture is well aware\nthat, in those exceptional occurrences which are called miracles, a\nneedless development of the wonder-working power is never employed.\nWe are not to suppose, for example, that the clouds of locusts that\ndevoured the harvests of the Egyptians were created for this express\npurpose, but that their already existing hosts were concentrated\nupon a limited area, instead of being spread over a large surface.\nNor need we fancy that the frogs which rendered their habitations\nunclean, and contaminated their food, were brought into existence\nsimply to inflict a severe punishment on the fastidious and\nsuperstitious Egyptians.\n\nOf course, had such an exercise of creative power been needed, it\nwould have been used, but we can all see that a needless miracle\nis never worked. He who would not suffer even a crumb of the\nmiraculously multiplied bread to be wasted, is not likely to waste\nthat power by which the miracle was wrought.\n\n[Illustration: DAGON FALLEN DOWN BEFORE THE ARK.]\n\nIf we refer to the early history of the Israelitish nation, as\ntold in 1 Sam. iv.-vi., we shall find that the Israelites made an\nunwarrantable use of the ark, by taking it into battle, and that it\nwas captured and carried off into the country of the Philistines.\nThen various signs were sent to warn the captors to send the ark\nback to its rightful possessors. Dagon, their great god, was\nprostrated before it, painful diseases attacked them, so that many\ndied, and scarcely any seem to have escaped, while their harvests\nwere ravaged by numbers of \"mice that marred the land.\"\n\n[Illustration: MOUSE AND NEST.]\n\nThe question is now simple enough. If the ordinary translation is\naccepted, and the word Akbar rendered as Mouse, would the necessary\nconditions be fulfilled, _i.e._ would the creature be destructive,\nand would it exist in very great numbers? Now we shall find that\nboth these conditions are fulfilled by the common Field-mouse.\n\nThis little creature is, in proportion to its size, one of the most\ndestructive animals in the world. Let its numbers be increased from\nany cause whatever, and it will most effectually \"mar the land.\" It\nwill devour every cereal that is sown, and kill almost any sapling\nthat is planted. It does not even wait for the corn to spring up,\nbut will burrow beneath the surface, and dig out the seed before it\nhas had time to sprout. In the early part of the year, it will eat\nthe green blade as soon as it springs out of the ground, and is an\nadept at climbing the stalks of corn, and plundering the ripe ears\nin the autumn.\n\n[Illustration: JERBOA, OR LEAPING MOUSE.]\n\nWhen stacked or laid up in barns, the harvest is by no means safe,\nfor the Mice will penetrate into any ordinary barn, and find their\nway into any carelessly-built stack, from which they can scarcely be\nejected. The rat itself is not so dire a foe to the farmer, as the\nless obtrusive, but equally mischievous Field-mouse. The ferret will\ndrive the rats out of their holes, and if they have taken possession\nof a wheat-stack they can be ejected by depriving them of access to\nwater. But the burrows of the Field-mouse are so small that a ferret\ncannot make its way through them, and the nightly dew that falls on\nthe stack affords an ample supply of water.\n\n[Illustration: THE FIELD-MOUSE.]\n\nWhen the Field-mouse is deprived of the food which it loves best,\nit finds a subsistence among the trees. Whenever mice can discover\na newly-planted sapling, they hold great revel upon it, eating away\nthe tender young bark as high as they can reach, and consequently\ndestroying the tree as effectually as if it were cut down. Even\nwhen the young trees fail them, and no tender bark is to be had,\nthe Field-mice can still exert their destructive powers. They will\nthen betake themselves to the earth, burrow beneath its surface,\nand devour the young rootlets of the forest trees. All botanists\nknow that a healthy tree is continually pushing forward fresh roots\nbelow the ground, in order to gain sufficient nourishment to supply\nthe increasing growth above. If, therefore, these young roots are\ndestroyed, the least harm that can happen to the tree is that its\nfurther growth is arrested; while, in many cases, the tree, which\ncannot repair the injuries it has received, droops gradually, and\nfinally dies. Even in this country, the Field-mouse has proved\nitself a terrible enemy to the agriculturist, and has devastated\nconsiderable tracts of land.\n\nSo much for the destructive powers of the Field-mouse, and the next\npoint to be considered is its abundance.\n\nNearly all the rats and mice are singularly prolific animals,\nproducing a considerable number at a brood, and having several\nbroods in a season. The Field-mouse is by no means an exception to\nthe general rule, but produces as many young in a season as any of\nthe Mice.\n\nNot only is it formidable from its numbers, but from the insidious\nnature of its attacks. Any one can see a rabbit, a hare, or even\na rat; but to see a Field-mouse is not easy, even when the little\ncreatures are present in thousands. A Field-mouse never shows itself\nexcept from necessity, its instinct teaching it to escape the\nobservation of its many furred and feathered enemies. Short-legged\nand soft-furred, it threads its noiseless way among the herbage\nwith such gentle suppleness that scarcely a grass-blade is stirred,\nwhile, if it should be forced to pass over a spot of bare ground,\nthe red-brown hue of its fur prevents it from being detected by an\ninexperienced eye. Generally the Field-mouse is safe from human\nfoes, and has only to dread the piercing eye and swift wings of the\nhawk, or the silent flight and sharp talons of the owl.\n\nAlthough there can be no doubt that the Field-mouse is one of the\nanimals to which the name of Akbar is given, it is probable that\nmany species were grouped under this one name. Small rodents of\nvarious kinds are very plentiful in Palestine, and there are several\nspecies closely allied to the Field-mouse itself.\n\nAmong them is the Hamster (_Cricetus frumentarius_), so widely\nknown for the ravages which it makes among the crops. This terribly\ndestructive animal not only steals the crops for immediate\nsubsistence, but lays up a large stock of provisions for the winter,\nseeming to be actuated by a sort of miserly passion for collecting\nand storing away. There seems to be no bounds to the quantity of\nfood which a Hamster will carry into its subterranean store-house,\nfrom seventy to one hundred pounds' weight being sometimes taken\nout of the burrow of a single animal. The fact of the existence\nof these large stores shows that the animal must need them, and\naccordingly we find that the Hamster is only a partial hibernator,\nas it is awake during a considerable portion of the winter months,\nand is consequently obliged to live on the stores which it has\ncollected.\n\nIt is an exceedingly prolific animal, each pair producing on an\naverage twenty-five young in the course of a year. The families\nare unsociable, and, as soon as they are strong enough to feed\nthemselves, the young Hamsters leave their home, and make separate\nburrows for themselves. Thus we see that the Hamster, as well as the\nField-mouse, fulfils the conditions which are needed in order to\nclass it under the general title of Akbar.\n\nI have already stated that some translators of the Bible use the\nword Jerboa as a rendering of the Hebrew Akbar. As the Jerboa\ncertainly is found in Palestine, there is some foundation for this\nidea, and we may safely conjecture that it also is one of the\nsmaller rodents which are grouped together under the appellation of\nMouse.\n\nThe Common Jerboa (_Dipus AEgyptiacus_) is plentiful in Palestine,\nand several other species inhabit the same country, known at once\nby their long and slender legs, which give them so curious a\nresemblance to the kangaroos of Australia. The Jerboas pass over the\nground with astonishing rapidity. Instead of creeping stealthily\namong the grass-blades, like the short-limbed field-mouse, the\nJerboa flies along with a succession of wonderful leaps, darting\nhere and there with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow\nits wayward movements. When quiet and undisturbed, it hops along\ngently enough, but as soon as it takes alarm, it darts off in its\npeculiar manner, which is to the ordinary walk of quadrupeds what\nthe devious course of a frightened snipe is to the steady flight of\nbirds in general.\n\nIt prefers hot and dry situations, its feet being defended by a\nthick coating of stiff hairs, which serve the double purpose of\nprotecting it from the heat, and giving it a firm hold on the\nground. It is rather a destructive animal, its sharp and powerful\nteeth enabling it to bite its way through obstacles which would\neffectually stop an ordinary Mouse. That the Jerboa may be one of\nthe Akbarim is rendered likely by the prohibition in Lev. xi. 29,\nforbidding the Mouse to be eaten. It would be scarcely probable\nthat such a command need have been issued against eating the common\nMouse, whereas the Jerboa, a much larger and palatable animal, is\nalways eaten by the Arabs. The Hamster is at the present day eaten\nin Northern Syria.\n\nBeside these creatures there are the Dormice, several species of\nwhich animal inhabit Palestine at the present day. There are also\nthe Sand-rats, one species of which is larger than our ordinary\nrats. The Sand-rats live more in the deserts than the cultivated\nlands, making their burrows at the foot of hills, and among the\nroots of bushes.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HARE.\n\n     The prohibitions of the Mosaic law--The chewing of the\n     cud, and division of the hoof--Identity of the Hare of\n     Scripture--Rumination described--The Hare a rodent and not\n     a ruminant--Cowper and his Hares--Structure of the rodent\n     tooth--The Mosaic law accommodated to its recipients--The Hares\n     of Palestine and their habits.\n\n\nAmong the many provisions of the Mosaic law are several which refer\nto the diet of the Israelites, and which prohibit certain kinds of\nfood. Special stress is laid upon the flesh of animals, and the list\nof those which may be lawfully eaten is a singularly restricted one,\nall being excluded except those which \"divide the hoof and chew\nthe cud.\" And, lest there should be any mistake about the matter,\nexamples are given both of those animals which may and those which\nmay not be eaten.\n\nThe ox, sheep, goat, and antelopes generally are permitted as\nlawful food, because they fulfil both conditions; whereas there is\na special prohibition of the swine, because it divides the hoof but\ndoes not chew the cud, and of the camel, coney, and hare because\nthey chew the cud, but do not divide the hoof. Our business at\npresent is with the last of these animals.\n\nConsiderable discussion has been raised concerning this animal,\nbecause, as is well known to naturalists, the Hare is not one of\nthe ruminant animals, but belongs to the same order as the rat,\nrabbit, beaver, and other rodents. Neither its teeth nor its stomach\nare constructed for the purpose of enabling it to ruminate, _i.e._\nto return into the mouth the partially-digested food, and then to\nmasticate it afresh; and therefore it has been thought that either\nthere is some mistake in the sacred narrative or that the Hebrew\nword has been mistranslated.\n\n[Illustration: THE SYRIAN HARE.]\n\nTaking the latter point first, as being the simplest of the two, we\nfind that the Hebrew word which is rendered as Hare is Arnebeth, and\nthat it is rendered in the Septuagint as Dasypus, or the Hare,--a\nrendering which the Jewish Bible adopts. That the Arnebeth is really\nthe Hare may also be conjectured from the fact that the Arabic name\nfor that animal is Arneb. In consequence of the rather wide sense\nto which the Greek word Dasypus (_i.e._ hairy-foot) is used, some\ncommentators have suggested that the rabbit may have been included\nin the same title. This, however, is not at all likely, inasmuch as\nthe Hare is very plentiful in Palestine, and the rabbit is believed\nnot to be indigenous to that part of the world. And, even if the two\nanimals had been classed under the same title, the physiological\ndifficulty would not be removed.\n\nBefore proceeding further, it will be as well to give a brief\ndescription of the curious act called rumination, or \"chewing the\ncud.\"\n\nThere are certain animals, such as the oxen, antelopes, deer,\nsheep, goats, camels, &c. which have teeth unfitted for the rapid\nmastication of food, and which therefore are supplied with a\nremarkable apparatus by which the food can be returned into the\nmouth when the animal has leisure, and be re-masticated before it\npasses into the true digestive organs.\n\nFor this purpose they are furnished with four stomachs, which are\narranged in the following order. First comes the paunch or \"rumen\"\n(whence the word \"ruminating\"), into which passes the food in a\nvery rough state, just as it is torn, rather than bitten, from the\nherbage, and which is analogous to the crop in birds. It thence\npasses into the second stomach, or \"honeycomb,\" the walls of which\nare covered with small angular cells. Into those cells the food is\nreceived from the first stomach, and compressed into little balls,\nwhich can be voluntarily returned into the mouth for mastication.\n\nAfter the second mastication has been completed, the food passes at\nonce into the third stomach, and thence into the fourth, which is\nthe true digesting cavity. By a peculiar structure of these organs,\nthe animal is able to convey its food either into the first or third\nstomach, at will, _i.e._ into the first when the grass is eaten, and\ninto the third after rumination. Thus it will be seen that an animal\nwhich chews the cud must have teeth of a certain character, and be\npossessed of the fourfold stomach which has just been described.\n\nTwo points are conceded which seem to be utterly irreconcilable with\neach other. The first is that the Mosaic law distinctly states that\nthe Hare chews the cud; the second is that in point of fact the\nHare is not, and cannot be, a ruminating animal, possessing neither\nthe teeth nor the digestive organs which are indispensable for that\nprocess. Yet, totally opposed as these statements appear to be, they\nare in fact, not so irreconcilable as they seem.\n\n[Illustration: A TIMID GROUP.]\n\nWhy the flesh of certain animals was prohibited, we do not at the\npresent time know. That the flesh of swine should be forbidden food\nis likely enough, considering the effects which the habitual eating\nof swine's flesh is said to produce in hot countries. But it does\nseem very strange that the Israelites should have been forbidden\nto eat the flesh of the camel, the coney (or hyrax), and the Hare,\nand that these animals should have been specified is a proof that\nthe eating or refraining from their flesh was not a mere sanitary\nregulation, but was a matter of importance. The flesh of all these\nthree animals is quite as good and nutritious as that of the oxen,\nor goats, which are eaten in Palestine, and that of the Hare is far\nsuperior to them. Therefore, the people of Israel, who were always\napt to take liberties with the restrictive laws, and were crafty\nenough to evade them on so many occasions, would have been likely\nto pronounce that the flesh of the Hare was lawful meat, because\nthe animal chewed the cud, or appeared to do so, and they would\ndiscreetly have omitted the passage which alluded to the division of\nthe hoof.\n\nTo a non-scientific observer the Hare really does appear to chew\nthe cud. When it is reposing at its ease, it continually moves its\njaws about as if eating something, an action which may readily\nbe mistaken for true rumination. Even Cowper, the poet, who kept\nsome hares for several years, and had them always before his eyes,\nwas deceived by this mumbling movement of the jaws. Speaking of\nhis favourite hare, \"Puss,\" he proceeds as follows: \"Finding him\nexceedingly tractable, I made it my custom to carry him always after\nbreakfast into the garden, where he hid himself generally under the\nleaves of a cucumber vine, sleeping, _or chewing the cud_, till\nevening.\"\n\nThe real object of this continual grinding or mumbling movement is\nsimple enough. The chisel-like incisor teeth of the rodent animals\nneed to be rubbed against each other, in order to preserve their\nedge and shape, and if perchance such friction should be wanting to\na tooth, as, for example, by the breaking of the opposite tooth,\nit becomes greatly elongated, and sometimes grows to such a length\nas to prevent the animal from eating. Instinctively, therefore,\nthe Hare, as well as the rabbit and other rodents, always likes to\nbe nibbling at something, as any one knows who has kept rabbits in\nwooden hutches, the object of this nibbling not being to eat the\nwood, but to keep the teeth in order.\n\nBut we may naturally ask ourselves, why the Mosaic law, an emanation\nfrom heaven, should mention an animal as being a ruminant, when its\nvery structure shows that such an act was utterly impossible? The\nanswer is clear enough. The law was suited to the capacity of those\nfor whom it was intended, and was never meant to be a handbook of\nscience, as well as a code of religious duties and maxims. The Jews,\nlike other Orientals, were indifferent to that branch of knowledge\nwhich we designate by the name of physical science, and it was\nnecessary that the language in which the law was conveyed to them\nshould be accommodated to their capabilities of receiving it.\n\nIt would have been worse than useless to have interrupted the solemn\nrevelation of Divine will with a lesson in comparative anatomy; the\nobject of the passage in question being, not to teach the Jews the\ndistinctive characteristics of a rodent and a ruminant, but to guard\nagainst their mistaking the Hare for one of the ruminants which\nwere permitted as food. That they would in all probability have\nfallen into that mistake is evident from the fact that the Arabs are\nexceedingly fond of the flesh of the Hare, and accept it, as well as\nthe camel, as lawful food, because it chews the cud, the division of\nthe hoof not being considered by them as an essential.\n\nHares are very plentiful in Palestine, and at least two species are\nfound in that country. One of them, which inhabits the more northern\nand hilly portion of Palestine, closely resembles our own species,\nbut has not ears quite so long in proportion, while the head is\nbroader. The second species, which lives in the south, and in the\nvalley of the Jordan, is very small, is of a light dun colour, and\nhas very long ears. In their general habits, these Hares resemble\nthe Hare of England.\n\n\n\n\nCATTLE.\n\n     The cattle of Palestine, and their decadence at the present\n     day--Ox-flesh not used for food in modern times--Oxen of\n     the stall, and oxen of the pasture--The use of the ox in\n     agriculture--The yoke and its structure--The plough and the\n     goad--The latter capable of being used as a weapon--Treading\n     out the corn--The cart and its wheels--The ox used as a\n     beast of burden--Cattle turned loose to graze--The bulls of\n     Bashan--Curiosity of the ox-tribe--A season of drought--Branding\n     the cattle--An Egyptian field scene--Cattle-keeping an\n     honourable post--The ox as used for sacrifice--Ox-worship--The\n     bull Apis, and his history--Persistency of the\n     bull-worship--Jeroboam's sin--Various names of cattle--The\n     Indian buffalo.\n\n\nUnder this head we shall treat of the domesticated oxen of\nScripture, whether mentioned as Bull, Cow, Ox, Calf, Heifer, &c.\n\nTwo distinct species of cattle are found in Palestine, namely, the\nordinary domesticated ox, and the Indian buffalo, which lives in the\nlow-lying and marshy valley of the Jordan. Of this species we shall\ntreat presently.\n\nThe domesticated cattle are very much like our own, but there is not\namong them that diversity of breed for which this country is famous;\nnor is there even any distinction of long and short horned cattle.\nThere are some places where the animals are larger than in others,\nbut this difference is occasioned simply by the better quality and\ngreater quantity of the food.\n\nAs is the case in most parts of the world where civilization\nhas made any progress, Domesticated Cattle were, and still are,\nplentiful in Palestine. Even at the present time the cattle are in\ncommon use, though it is evident, from many passages of Holy Writ,\nthat in the days of Judaea's prosperity cattle were far more numerous\nthan they are now, and were treated in a better fashion.\n\nTo take their most sacred use first, a constant supply of cattle\nwas needed for the sacrifices, and, as it was necessary that every\nanimal which was brought to the altar should be absolutely perfect,\nit is evident that great care was required in order that the breed\nshould not deteriorate, a skill which has long been rendered useless\nby the abandonment of the sacrifices.\n\n[Illustration: ALTAR OF BURNT-OFFERING.]\n\nAnother reason for their better nurture in the times of old is that\nin those days the ox was largely fed and fatted for the table, just\nas is done with ourselves. At the present day, the flesh of the\ncattle is practically unused as food, that of the sheep or goat\nbeing always employed, even when a man gives a feast to his friends.\nBut, in the old times, stalled oxen, _i.e._ oxen kept asunder from\nthose which were used for agricultural purposes, and expressly\nfatted for the table, were in constant use. See for example the\nwell-known passage in the Prov. xv. 17, \"Better is a dinner of herbs\nwhere love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.\" Again,\nthe Prophet Jeremiah makes use of a curious simile, \"Egypt is\nlike a very fair heifer, but destruction cometh; it cometh out of\nthe north. Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fatted\nbullocks [or, bullocks of the stall], for they also are turned\nback, and are fled away together.\" (Jer. xlvi. 20.) And in 1 Kings\niv. 22, 23, when describing the glories of Solomon's household,\nthe sacred writer draws a distinction between the oxen which were\nespecially fattened for the table of the king and the superior\nofficers, and those which were consumed by the lower orders of his\nhousehold: \"And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures\nof fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and\ntwenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts,\nand roebucks, and fallow-deer, and fatted fowl.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS, AND THE FATTED CALF IS\nKILLED.]\n\nCalves--mostly, if not always, bull-calves--were largely used\nfor food in Palestine, and in the households of the wealthy were\nfatted for the table. See, for example, the familiar parable of\nthe prodigal son, in which the rejoicing father is mentioned as\npreparing a great feast in honour of his son's return, and ordering\nthe fatted calf to be killed--the calf in question being evidently\none of the animals that were kept in good condition against any\nfestive occasion. And, even in the earliest history of the Bible,\nthe custom of keeping a fatted calf evidently prevailed, as is shown\nby the conduct of Abraham, who, when he was visited by the three\nheavenly guests, \"ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf, tender\nand good,\" and had it killed and dressed at once, after the still\nexisting fashion of the East.\n\n[Illustration: ABRAHAM OFFERS FOOD TO THE THREE STRANGERS.]\n\nBut, even in the times of Israel's greatest prosperity, the chief\nuse of the ox was as an agricultural labourer, thus reversing the\ncustom of this country, where the horse has taken the place of the\nox as a beast of draught, and where cattle are principally fed for\nfood. Ploughing was, and is, always performed by oxen, and allusions\nto this office are scattered plentifully through the Old and New\nTestaments.\n\nWhen understood in this sense, oxen are almost always spoken of in\nconnexion with the word \"yoke,\" and as each yoke comprised two oxen,\nit is evident that the word is used as we employ the term \"brace,\"\nor pair. The yoke, which is the chief part of the harness, is a very\nsimple affair. A tolerably stout beam of wood is cut of a sufficient\nlength to rest upon the necks of the oxen standing side by side,\nand a couple of hollows are scooped out to receive the crest of the\nneck. In order to hold it in its place, two flexible sticks are bent\nunder their necks, and the ends fixed into the beam of the yoke. In\nthe middle of this yoke is fastened the pole of the plough or cart,\nand this is all the harness that is used, not even traces being\nrequired.\n\nIt will be seen that so rude an implement as this would be very\nlikely to gall the necks of the animals, unless the hollows were\ncarefully smoothed, and the heavy beam adapted to the necks of\nthe animals. This galling nature of the yoke, so familiar to the\nIsraelites, is used repeatedly as a metaphor in many passages of\nthe Old and New Testaments. These passages are too numerous to be\nquoted, but I will give one or two of the most conspicuous among\nthem. The earliest mention of the yoke in the Scriptures is a\nmetaphor.\n\nAfter Jacob had deceived his father, in procuring for himself the\nblessing which was intended for his elder brother, Isaac comforts\nEsau by the prophecy that, although he must serve his brother, yet\n\"it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou\nshalt break his yoke from off thy neck.\" Again, in the next passage\nwhere the yoke is mentioned, namely, Lev. xxvi. 13, the word is\nemployed in the metaphorical sense: \"I am the Lord your God, which\nbrought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be\ntheir bondmen, and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made\nyou go upright.\"\n\nThe plough was equally simple, and consisted essentially of a bent\nbranch, one end of which was armed with an iron point by way of a\nshare, while the other formed the pole or beam, and was fastened\nto the middle of the yoke. It was guided by a handle, which was\nusually a smaller branch that grew from the principal one. A nearly\nsimilar instrument is used in Asia Minor to the present day, and\nis a curious relic of the most ancient times of history, for we\nfind on the Egyptian monuments figures of the various agricultural\nprocesses, in which the plough is made after this simple manner.\n\nOf course such an instrument is a very ineffective one, and can but\nscratch, rather than plough the ground, the warmth of the climate\nand fertility of the land rendering needless the deep ploughing of\nour own country, where the object is to turn up the earth to the\ngreatest possible depth. One yoke of oxen was generally sufficient\nto draw a plough, but occasionally a much greater number were\nrequired. We read, for example, of Elisha, who, when he received his\ncall from Elijah, was ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen, _i. e._\ntwenty-four. It has been suggested, that the twelve yoke of oxen\nwere not all attached to the same plough, but that there were twelve\nploughs, each with its single yoke of oxen. This was most probably\nthe case.\n\nThe instrument with which the cattle were driven was not a whip, but\na goad. This goad was a long and stout stick, armed with a spike\nat one end, and having a kind of spud at the other, with which the\nearth could be scraped off the share when it became clogged. Such\nan instrument might readily be used as a weapon, and, in the hands\nof a powerful man, might be made even more formidable than a spear.\nAs a weapon, it often was used, as we see from many passages of the\nScriptures. For example, it is said in Judges iii. 31, \"that Shamgar\nthe son of Anath killed six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad.\"\n\nAfterwards, in the beginning of Saul's reign, when the Israelites\nfairly measured themselves against the Philistines, it was found\nthat only Saul and Jonathan were even tolerably armed. Fearful\nof the numbers and spirit of the Israelites, the Philistines had\ndisarmed them, and were so cautious that they did not even allow\nthem to possess forges wherewith to make or sharpen the various\nagricultural instruments which they possessed, lest they should\nsurreptitiously provide themselves with weapons. The only smith's\ntool which they were allowed to retain was a file with which each\nman might trim the edges of the ploughshares, mattocks, axes, and\nsharpen the points of the goad. The only weapons which they could\nmuster were made of their agricultural implements, and among the\nmost formidable of them was the goad.\n\nHow the goad came into use in Palestine may easily be seen. The\nEgyptians, from among whom the people of Israel passed into the\nPromised Land, did not use the goad in ploughing, but the whip,\nwhich, from the representations on the Egyptian monuments, was\nidentical with the koorbash, or \"cow-hide\" whip, which is now in\nuse in the same country. But this terrible whip, which is capable,\nwhen wielded by a skilful hand, of cutting deep grooves through the\ntough hide of the ox, could not be obtained by the Jews, because the\nhippopotamus, of whose hide it was made, did not live in or near\nPalestine. They therefore were forced to use some other instrument\nwherewith to urge on the oxen, and the goad was clearly the simplest\nand most effective implement for this purpose.\n\nAfter the land was ploughed and sown, and the harvest was ripened,\nthe labours of the oxen were again called into requisition, first\nfor threshing out the corn, and next for carrying or drawing the\ngrain to the storehouses.\n\nIn the earlier days, the process of threshing was very simple. A\ncircular piece of ground was levelled, and beaten very hard and\nflat, its diameter being from fifty to a hundred feet. On this\nground the corn was thrown, and a number of oxen were driven here\nand there on it, so that the constant trampling of their feet shook\nthe ripe grain out of the ears. The corn was gathered together in\nthe middle of the floor, and as fast as it was scattered by the feet\nof the oxen, it was thrown back towards the centre.\n\nAfterwards, an improvement was introduced in the form of a rough\nsledge, called \"moreg,\" to which the oxen were harnessed by a\nyoke, and on which the driver stood as he guided his team round\nthe threshing-floor. This instrument is mentioned in Isa. xli. 15:\n\"Behold, I will make thee a new and sharp threshing instrument\nhaving teeth [or mouths]: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat\nthem small, and shalt make the hills as chaff.\" Mention is also\nmade of the same implement in 2 Sam. xxiv. 22, where it is related\nthat Araunah the Jebusite offered to give David the oxen for a\nburnt-sacrifice, and the moregs and other implements as wood with\nwhich they could be burned.\n\nThe work of treading out the corn was a hard and trying one for the\noxen, and it was probably on this account that the kindly edict was\nmade, that the oxen who trod out the corn should not be muzzled.\nAs a rule, the cattle were not fed nearly as carefully as is done\nwith us, and so the labours of the threshing-floor would find a\ncompensation in the temporary abundance of which the animals might\ntake their fill.\n\n[Illustration: OXEN TREADING OUT GRAIN.]\n\nAfter the corn was threshed, or rather trodden out, the oxen had\nto draw it home in carts. These were but slight improvements on\nthe threshing-sledge, and were simply trays or shallow boxes on a\npair of wheels. As the wheels were merely slices cut from the trunk\nof a tree, and were not furnished with iron tires, they were not\nremarkable for roundness, and indeed, after a little time, were worn\ninto rather irregular ovals, so that the task of dragging a cart\nover the rough roads was by no means an easy one. And, as the axle\nwas simply a stout pole fastened to the bottom of the cart, and\nhaving its rounded ends thrust through holes in the middle of the\nwheels, the friction was enormous. As, moreover, oil and grease were\nfar too precious luxuries to be wasted in lubricating the axles, the\ncreaking and groaning of the wheels was a singularly disagreeable\nand ear-piercing sound.\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN OX-CART.]\n\nThe common hackery of India is a good example of the carts\nmentioned in the Scriptures. As with the plough, the cart was\ndrawn by a couple of oxen, connected by the yoke. The two kinds of\ncart, namely, the tray and the box, are clearly indicated in the\nScriptures. The new cart on which the Ark was placed when it was\nsent back by the Philistines (see 1 Sam. vi. 7) was evidently one\nof the former kind, and so was that which was made twenty years\nafterwards, for the purpose of conveying the Ark to Jerusalem.\n\nAlthough the cattle were evidently better tended in the olden times\nthan at present, those animals which were used for agriculture\nseem to have passed rather a rough life, especially in the winter\ntime. It is rather curious that the Jews should have had no idea of\npreserving the grass by making it into hay, as is done in Europe.\nConsequently the chief food of the cattle was the straw and chaff\nwhich remained on the threshing-floor after the grain had been\nseparated.\n\n[Illustration: THE ARK OF THE COVENANT BEING DRAWN BY COWS.]\n\nThis, indeed, was the only use to which the straw could be put,\nfor it was so crushed and broken by the feet of the oxen and the\nthreshing-sledge that it was rendered useless.\n\nThe want of winter forage is the chief reason why cattle are so\nirregularly disposed over Palestine, many parts of that country\nbeing entirely without them, and only those districts containing\nthem in which fresh forage may be found throughout the year.\n\nExcept a few yoke of oxen, which are kept in order to draw carts,\nand act as beasts of burden, the cattle are turned loose for a\nconsiderable portion of the year, and run about in herds from one\npasturage to another. Thus they regain many of the characteristics\nof wild animals, and it is to this habit of theirs that many of the\nScriptural allusions can be traced.\n\nFor example, see Ps. xxii. 12, \"Many bulls have compassed me,\nstrong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped on me with\ntheir mouths [or, their mouths opened against me] as a ravening and\na roaring lion.\" This passage alludes to the curiosity inherent\nin cattle, which have a habit of following objects which they do\nnot understand or dislike, and surrounding it with looks of grave\nwonderment. Even in their domesticated state this habit prevails.\nWhen I was a boy, I sometimes amused myself with going into a field\nwhere a number of cows and oxen were grazing, and lying down in the\nmiddle of it. The cattle would soon become uneasy, toss their heads\nabout, and gradually draw near on every side, until at last they\nwould be pressed together closely in a circle, with their heads just\nabove the object of their astonishment. Their curious, earnest looks\nhave always been present to my mind when reading the above quoted\npassage.\n\nThe Psalmist does not necessarily mean that the bulls in question\nwere dangerous animals. On the contrary, the bulls of Palestine are\ngentle in comparison with our own animals, which are too often made\nsavage by confinement and the harsh treatment to which they are\nsubjected by rough and ignorant labourers. In Palestine a pair of\nbulls may constantly be seen attached to the same yoke, a thing that\nnever would be seen in this country.\n\nThe custom of turning the herds of cattle loose to find pasture for\nthemselves is alluded to in Joel i. 18, \"How do the beasts groan!\nthe herds of cattle are perplexed because they have no pasture.\"\nWe can easily imagine to ourselves the terrible time to which the\nprophet refers, \"when the rivers of waters are dried up, and the\nfire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness,\" as it is wont to\ndo when a spark falls upon grass dried up and withered, by reason\nof the sun's heat and the lack of water. Over such a country, first\nwithered by drought, and then desolated by fire, would the cattle\nwander, vainly searching on the dusty and blackened surface for the\ntender young blades which always spring up on a burnt pasture as\nsoon as the first rains fall. Moaning and bellowing with thirst\nand disappointment, they would vainly seek for food or water in\nplaces where the seed lies still under the clods where it was sown\n(v. 17), where the vines are dried up, and the fig, the pomegranate\nand the palm (v. 12) are all withered for want of moisture.\n\n[Illustration: PLOUGHING WITH OXEN.]\n\nSuch scenes are still to be witnessed in several parts of the\nworld. Southern Africa is sometimes sadly conspicuous for them, an\nexceptional season of drought keeping back the fresh grass after\nthe old pastures have been burned (the ordinary mode of cultivating\npasture land). Then the vast herds of cattle, whose milk forms the\nstaff of life to the inhabitants, wander to and fro, gathering in\nmasses round any spot where a spring still yields a little water,\nand bellowing and moaning with thirst as they press their way\ntowards the spot where their owners are doling out to each a small\nmeasure of the priceless fluid.\n\nThe cattle are branded with the mark of their owners, so that in\nthese large herds there might be no difficulty in distinguishing\nthem when they were re-captured for the plough and the cart. On one\nof the Egyptian monuments there is a very interesting group, which\nhas furnished the idea for the plate which illustrates this article.\nIt occurs in the tombs of the kings at Thebes, and represents a\nploughing scene. The simple two-handled plough is being dragged by\na pair of cows, who have the yoke fastened across the horns instead\nof lying on the neck, and a sower is following behind, scattering\nthe grain out of a basket into the newly-made furrows. In front of\nthe cows is a young calf, which has run to meet its mother, and is\nleaping for joy before her as she steadily plods along her course.\n\nThe action of both animals is admirably represented; the steady and\nfirm gait of the mother contrasting with the light, gambolling step\nand arched tail of her offspring.\n\nIn the olden times of the Israelitish race, herd-keeping was\nconsidered as an honourable occupation, in which men of the highest\nrank might engage without any derogation to their dignity. We find,\nfor instance, that Saul himself, even after he had been appointed\nking, was acting as herdsman when the people saw the mistake they\nhad made in rejecting him as their monarch, and came to fetch their\ndivinely-appointed leader from his retirement. (See 1 Sam. xi.\n5.) Doeg, too, the faithful companion of Saul, was made the chief\nherdsman of his master's cattle, so that for Saul to confer such an\noffice, and Doeg to accept it, shows that the post was one of much\nhonour. And afterwards, when David was in the zenith of his power,\nhe completed the organization of his kingdom, portioning out not\nonly his army into battalions, and assigning a commanding officer\nto each battalion, but also appointing a ruler to each tribe, and\nsetting officers over his treasury, over the vineyards, over the\nolive-trees, over the storehouses, and over the cattle. And these\noffices were so important that the names of their holders are\ngiven at length in 1 Chron. xxvii. those of the various herdsmen\nbeing thought as worthy of mention as those of the treasurers, the\nmilitary commanders, or the headmen of the tribes.\n\nBefore concluding this necessarily short account of the domesticated\noxen of Palestine, it will be needful to give a few lines to the\nanimal viewed in a religious aspect. Here we have, in bold contrast\nto each other, the divine appointment of certain cattle to be\nslain as sacrifices, and the reprobation of worship paid to those\nvery cattle as living emblems of divinity. This false worship was\nlearned by the Israelites during their long residence in Egypt, and\nso deeply had the customs of the Egyptian religion sunk into their\nhearts, that they were not eradicated after the lapse of centuries.\nIt may easily be imagined that such a superstition, surrounded as\nit was with every external circumstance which could make it more\nimposing, would take a powerful hold of the Jewish mind.\n\nChief among the multitude of idols or symbols was the god Apis,\nrepresented by a bull. Many other animals, specially the cat and the\nibis, were deeply honoured among the ancient Egyptians, as we learn\nfrom their own monuments and from the works of the old historians.\nAll these creatures were symbols as well as idols, symbols to the\neducated and idols to the ignorant.\n\nNone of them was held in such universal honour as the bull Apis. The\nparticular animal which represented the deity, and which was lodged\nwith great state and honour in his temple at Memphis, was thought\nto be divinely selected for the purpose, and to be impressed with\ncertain marks. His colour must be black, except a square spot on the\nforehead, a crescent-shaped white spot on the right side, and the\nfigure of an eagle on his back. Under the tongue must be a knob\nshaped like the sacred scarabaeus, and the hairs of his tail must be\ndouble.\n\n[Illustration: MUMMY OF A SACRED BULL TAKEN FROM AN EGYPTIAN TOMB.]\n\nThis representative animal was only allowed to live for a certain\ntime, and when he had reached this allotted period, he was taken in\nsolemn procession to the Nile, and drowned in its sacred waters. His\nbody was then embalmed, and placed with great state in the tombs at\nMemphis.\n\nAfter his death, whether natural or not, the whole nation went into\nmourning, and exhibited all the conventional signs of sorrow, until\nthe priests found another bull which possessed the distinctive\nmarks. The people then threw off their mourning robes, and appeared\nin their best attire, and the sacred bull was exhibited in state for\nforty days before he was taken to his temple at Memphis. The reader\nwill here remember the analogous case of the Indian cattle, some of\nwhich are held to be little less than incarnations of divinity.\n\nEven at the very beginning of the exodus, when their minds must have\nbeen filled with the many miracles that had been wrought in their\nbehalf, and with the cloud and fire of Sinai actually before their\neyes, Aaron himself made an image of a calf in gold, and set it up\nas a symbol of the Lord. That the idol in question was intended\nas a symbol by Aaron is evident from the words which he used when\nsummoning the people to worship, \"To-morrow is a feast of the Lord\"\n(Gen. xxxii. 5). The people, however, clearly lacked the power of\ndiscriminating between the symbol and that which it represented,\nand worshipped the image just as any other idol might be worshipped.\nAnd, in spite of the terrible and swift punishment that followed,\nand which showed the profanity of the act, the idea of ox-worship\nstill remained among the people.\n\n[Illustration: ANIMALS BEING SOLD FOR SACRIFICE IN THE PORCH OF THE\nTEMPLE.]\n\n[Illustration: JEROBOAM SETS UP A GOLDEN CALF AT BETHEL.]\n\nFive hundred years afterwards we find a familiar example of it in\nthe conduct of Jeroboam, \"who made Israel to sin,\" the peculiar\ncrime being the open resuscitation of ox-worship. \"The king made\ntwo calves of gold and said unto them, It is too much for you to\ngo up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee\nup out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the\nother put he in Dan.... And he made an house of high places, and\nmade priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the\ntribe of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast ... like unto the\nfeast in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel,\nsacrificing unto the calves that he had made.\"\n\nHere we have a singular instance of a king of Israel repeating,\nafter a lapse of five hundred years, the very acts which had drawn\ndown on the people so severe a punishment, and which were so\ncontrary to the law that they had incited Moses to fling down and\nbreak the sacred tables on which the commandments had been divinely\ninscribed.\n\n[Illustration: THE BUFFALO.]\n\nAnother species of the ox-tribe now inhabits Palestine though\ncommentators rather doubt whether it is not a comparatively late\nimportation. This is the true BUFFALO (_Bubalus buffelus_, Gray),\nwhich is spread over a very large portion of the earth, and is very\nplentiful in India. In that country there are two distinct breeds\nof the Buffalo, namely, the Arnee, a wild variety, and the Bhainsa,\na tamed variety. The former animal is much larger than the latter,\nbeing sometimes more than ten feet in length from the nose to the\nroot of the tail, and measuring between six and seven feet in height\nat the shoulder. Its horns are of enormous length, the tail is very\nshort, and tufts of hair grow on the forehead and horns. The tamed\nvariety is at least one-third smaller, and, unlike the Arnee, never\nseems to get into high condition. It is an ugly, ungainly kind of\nbeast, and is rendered very unprepossessing to the eye by the bald\npatches which are mostly found upon its hide.\n\nBeing a water-loving animal, the Buffalo always inhabits the\nlow-lying districts, and is fond of wallowing in the oozy marshes\nin which it remains for hours, submerged all but its head, and\ntranquilly chewing the cud while enjoying its mud-bath. While thus\nengaged the animal depresses its horns so that they are scarcely\nvisible, barely allowing more than its eyes, ears, and nostrils\nto remain above the surface, so that the motionless heads are\nscarcely distinguishable from the grass and reed tufts which stud\nthe marshes. Nothing is more startling to an inexperienced traveller\nthan to pass by a silent and tranquil pool where the muddy surface\nis unbroken except by a number of black lumps and rushy tufts, and\nthen to see these tufts suddenly transformed into twenty or thirty\nhuge beasts rising out of the still water as if by magic. Generally,\nthe disturber of their peace had better make the best of his way out\nof their reach, as the Buffalo, whether wild or tame, is of a tetchy\nand irritable nature, and resents being startled out of its state of\ndreamy repose.\n\nIn the Jordan valley the Buffalo is found, and is used for\nagriculture, being of the Bhainsa, or domesticated variety. Being\nmuch larger and stronger than the ordinary cattle, it is useful in\ndrawing the plough, but its temper is too uncertain to render it a\npleasant animal to manage. As is the case with all half-wild cattle,\nits milk is very scanty, but compensates by the richness of the\nquality for the lack of quantity.\n\nIn the picture which appears on a following page, one of these\ndomesticated Buffaloes is represented, harnessed with a camel, to a\nrude form of plough used in the East.\n\n[Illustration: THE BHAINSA, OR DOMESTIC BUFFALO, AND CAMEL, DRAWING\nTHE PLOUGH.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE WILD BULL.\n\n     The To, Wild Bull of the Old Testament--Passages in which it is\n     mentioned--The Wild Bull in the net--Hunting with nets in the\n     East--The Oryx supposed to be the To of Scripture--Description\n     of the Oryx, its locality, appearance, and habits--The points in\n     which the Oryx agrees with the To--The \"snare\" in which the foot\n     is taken, as distinguished from the net.\n\n\nIn two passages of the Old Testament an animal is mentioned,\nrespecting which the translators and commentators have been somewhat\nperplexed, in one passage being translated as the \"Wild Ox,\" and in\nthe other as the \"Wild Bull.\" In the Jewish Bible the same rendering\nis preserved, but the sign of doubt is added to the word in both\ncases, showing that the translation is an uncertain one.\n\nThe first of these passages occurs in Deut. xiv. 5, where it is\nclassed together with the ox, sheep, goats, and other ruminants,\nas one of the beasts which were lawful for food. Now, although we\ncannot identify it by this passage, we can at all events ascertain\ntwo important points--the first, that it was a true ruminant, and\nthe second, that it was not the ox, the sheep, or the goat. It was,\ntherefore, some wild ruminant, and we now have to ask how we are to\nfind out the species.\n\nIf we turn to Isa. li. 20, we shall find a passage which will help\nus considerably. Addressing Jerusalem, the prophet uses these words,\n\"By whom shall I comfort thee? Thy sons have fainted, they lie at\nthe head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net; they are full\nof the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God.\" We now see that\nthe To or Teo must be an animal which is captured by means of nets,\nand therefore must inhabit spots wherein the toils can be used.\nMoreover, it is evidently a powerful animal, or the force of the\nsimile would be lost. The prophet evidently refers to some large\nand strong beast which has been entangled in the hunter's nets, and\nwhich lies helplessly struggling in them. We are, therefore, almost\nperforce driven to recognise it as some large antelope.\n\nThe expression used by the prophet is so characteristic that it\nneeds a short explanation. In this country, and at the present\nday, the use of the net is almost entirely restricted to fishing\nand bird-catching; but in the East nets are still employed in the\ncapture of very large game.\n\nA brief allusion to the hunting-net is made at page 31, but, as the\npassage in Isaiah li. requires a more detailed account of this mode\nof catching large animals, it will be as well to describe the sport\nas at present practised in the East.\n\nWhen a king or some wealthy man determines to hunt game without\ntaking much trouble himself, he gives orders to his men to prepare\ntheir nets, which vary in size or strength according to the\nparticular animal for which they are intended. If, for example, only\nthe wild boar and similar animals are to be hunted, the nets need\nnot be of very great width; but for agile creatures, such as the\nantelope, they must be exceedingly wide, or the intended prey will\nleap over them. As the net is much used in India for the purpose of\ncatching game, Captain Williamson's description of it will explain\nmany of the passages of Scripture wherein it is mentioned.\n\nThe material of the net is hemp, twisted loosely into a kind of\nrope, and the mode in which it is formed is rather peculiar. The\nmeshes are not knotted together, but only twisted round each other,\nmuch after the fashion of the South American hammocks, so as to\nobtain considerable elasticity, and to prevent a powerful animal\nfrom snapping the cord in its struggles. Some of these nets are\nthirteen feet or more in width, and even such a net as this has been\noverleaped by a herd of antelopes. Their length is variable, but, as\nthey can be joined in any number when set end to end, the length is\nnot so important as the width.\n\nThe mode of setting the nets is singularly ingenious. When a\nsuitable spot has been selected, the first care of the hunters is\nto stretch a rope as tightly as possible along the ground. For this\npurpose stout wooden stakes or truncheons are sunk crosswise in\nthe earth, and between these the rope is carefully strained. The\nfavourite locality of the net is a ravine, through which the animals\ncan be driven so as to run against the net in their efforts to\nescape, and across the ravine a whole row of these stakes is sunk.\nThe net is now brought to the spot, and its lower edge fastened\nstrongly to the ground rope.\n\nThe strength of this mode of fastening is astonishing, and, although\nthe stakes are buried scarcely a foot below the surface, they cannot\nbe torn up by any force which can be applied to them; and, however\nstrong the rope may be, it would be broken before the stakes could\nbe dragged out of the ground.\n\nA smaller rope is now attached to the upper edge of the net, which\nis raised upon a series of slight poles. It is not stretched quite\ntightly, but droops between each pair of poles, so that a net which\nis some thirteen feet in width will only give nine or ten feet of\nclear height when the upper edge is supported on the poles. These\nlatter are not fixed in the ground, but merely held in their places\nby the weight of the net resting upon them.\n\nWhen the nets have been properly set, the beaters make a wide\ncircuit through the country, gradually advancing towards the fatal\nspot, and driving before them all the wild animals that inhabit\nthe neighbourhood. As soon as any large beast, such, for example,\nas an antelope, strikes against the net, the supporting pole\nfalls, and the net collapses upon the unfortunate animal, whose\nstruggles--especially if he be one of the horned animals--only\nentangle him more and more in the toils.\n\nAs soon as the hunters see a portion of the net fall, they run to\nthe spot, kill the helpless creature that lies enveloped in the\nelastic meshes, drag away the body, and set up the net again in\nreadiness for the next comer. Sometimes the line of nets will extend\nfor half a mile or more, and give employment to a large staff of\nhunters, in killing the entangled animals, and raising afresh those\nportions of the net which had fallen.\n\nAccepting the theory that the To is one of the large antelopes that\ninhabit, or used to inhabit, the Holy Land and its neighbourhood, we\nmay safely conjecture that it may signify the beautiful animal known\nas the ORYX (_Oryx leucoryx_), an animal which has a tolerably wide\nrange, and is even now found on the borders of the Holy Land. It is\na large and powerful antelope, and is remarkable for its beautiful\nhorns, which sometimes exceed a yard in length, and sweep in a most\ngraceful curve over the back.\n\nSharp as they are, and evidently formidable weapons, the manner\nin which they are set on the head renders them apparently\nunserviceable for combat. When, however, the Oryx is brought to bay,\nor wishes to fight, it stoops its head until the nose is close to\nthe ground, the points of the horns being thus brought to the front.\nAs the head is swung from side to side, the curved horns sweep\nthrough a considerable space, and are so formidable that even the\nlion is chary of attacking their owner. Indeed, instances are known\nwhere the lion has been transfixed and killed by the horns of the\nOryx. Sometimes the animal is not content with merely standing to\nrepel the attacks of its adversaries, but suddenly charges forward\nwith astonishing rapidity, and strikes upwards with its horns as it\nmakes the leap.\n\n[Illustration: WILD BULL, OR ORYX.]\n\nBut these horns, which can be used with such terrible effect in\nbattle, are worse than useless when the animal is hampered in the\nnet. In vain does the Oryx attempt its usual defence: the curved\nhorns get more and more entangled in the elastic meshes, and become\na source of weakness rather than strength. We see now how singularly\nappropriate is the passage, \"Thy sons lie at the heads of all the\nstreets, as a wild bull (or Oryx) in a net,\" and how completely the\nforce of the metaphor is lost without a knowledge of the precise\nmode of fixing the nets, of driving the animals into them, and of\nthe manner in which they render even the large and powerful animals\nhelpless.\n\nThe height of the Oryx at the shoulder is between three and four\nfeet, and its colour is greyish white, mottled profusely with black\nand brown in bold patches. It is plentiful in Northern Africa, and,\nlike many other antelopes, lives in herds, so that it is peculiarly\nsuited to that mode of hunting which consists in surrounding a\nnumber of animals, and driving them into a trap of some kind,\nwhether a fenced enclosure, a pitfall, or a net.\n\nThere is, by the way, the term \"snare,\" which is specially used\nwith especial reference to catching the foot as distinguished from\nthe net which enveloped the whole body. For example, in Job xviii.\n8, \"He is cast into a net, he walketh on a snare,\" where a bold\ndistinction is drawn between the two and their mode of action. And\nin ver. 10, \"The snare is laid for him in the ground.\" Though I\nwould not state definitely that such is the case, I believe that the\nsnare which is here mentioned is one which is still used in several\nparts of the world.\n\nIt is simply a hoop, to the inner edge of which are fastened a\nnumber of elastic spikes, the points being directed towards the\ncentre. This is merely laid in the path which the animal will\ntake, and is tied by a short cord to a log of wood. As the deer\nor antelope treads on the snare, the foot passes easily through\nthe elastic spikes, but, when the foot is raised, the spikes run\ninto the joint and hold the hoop upon the limb. Terrified by the\ncheck and the sudden pang, the animal tries to run away, but, by\nthe united influence of sharp spikes and the heavy log, it is soon\nforced to halt, and so becomes an easy prey to its pursuers.\n\n[Illustration: THE ORYX.]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: unicorn]\n\n\n\n\nTHE UNICORN.\n\n     The Unicorn apparently known to the Jews--Its evident connection\n     with the Ox tribe--Its presumed identity with the now extinct\n     Urus--Enormous size and dangerous character of the Urus.\n\n\nThere are many animals mentioned in the Scriptures which are\nidentified with difficulty, partly because their names occur only\nonce or twice in the sacred writings, and partly because, when they\nare mentioned, the context affords no clue to their identity by\ngiving any hint as to their appearance or habits. In such cases,\nalthough the translators would have done better if they had simply\ngiven the Hebrew word without endeavouring to identify it with any\nknown animal, they may be excused for committing errors in their\nnomenclature. There is one animal, however, for which no such excuse\ncan be found, and this is the Reem of Scripture, translated as\nUnicorn in the authorized version.\n\nEven in late years the Unicorn has been erroneously supposed to be\nidentical with the Rhinoceros of India. It is, however, now certain\nthat the Unicorn was not the Rhinoceros, and that it can be almost\ncertainly identified with an animal which, at the time when the\npassages in question were written, was plentiful in Palestine,\nalthough, like the Lion, it is now extinct.\n\nOn turning to the Jewish Bible we find that the word Reem is\ntranslated as buffalo, and there is no doubt that this rendering is\nnearly the correct one. At the present day naturalists are nearly\nall agreed that the Unicorn of the Old Testament must have been of\nthe Ox tribe. Probably the Urus, a species now extinct, was the\nanimal alluded to. A smaller animal, the Bonassus or Bison, also\nexisted in Palestine, and even to the present day continues to\nmaintain itself in one or two spots, though it will probably be as\nsoon completely erased from the surface of the earth as its gigantic\ncongener.\n\nThat the Unicorn was one of the two animals is certain, and that it\nwas the larger is nearly as certain. The reason for deciding upon\nthe Urus is, that its horns were of great size and strength, and\ntherefore agree with the description of the Unicorn; whereas those\nof the Bonassus, although powerful, are short, and not conspicuous\nenough to deserve the notice which is taken of them by the sacred\nwriters.\n\nOf the extinct variety we know but little. We do know, however, that\nit was a huge and most formidable beast, as is evident from the\nskulls and other bones which have been discovered. Their character\nalso indicates that the creature was nothing more than a very large\nOx, probably measuring twelve feet in length, and six feet in\nheight. Such a wild animal, armed, as it was, with enormous horns,\nwould prove a most formidable antagonist.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: bison]\n\n\n\n\nTHE BISON.\n\n     The Bison tribe and its distinguishing marks--Its former\n     existence in Palestine--Its general habits--Origin of its\n     name--Its musky odour--Size and speed of the Bison--Its\n     dangerous character when brought to bay--Its defence against the\n     wolf--Its untameable disposition.\n\n\nA few words are now needful respecting the second animal which has\nbeen mentioned in connexion with the Reem; namely, the Bison, or\nBonassus. The Bisons are distinguishable from ordinary cattle by the\nthick and heavy mane which covers the neck and shoulders, and which\nis more conspicuous in the male than in the female. The general\ncoating of the body is also rather different, being thick and woolly\ninstead of lying closely to the skin like that of the other oxen.\nThe Bison certainly inhabited Palestine, as its bones have been\nfound in that country. It has, however, been extinct in the Holy\nLand for many years, and, not being an animal that is capable of\nwithstanding the encroachments of man, it has gradually died out\nfrom the greater part of Europe and Asia, and is now to be found\nonly in a very limited locality, chiefly in a Lithuanian forest,\nwhere it is strictly preserved, and in some parts of the Caucasus.\nThere it still preserves the habits which made its ancient and\ngigantic relative so dangerous an animal. Unlike the buffalo, which\nloves the low-lying and marshy lands, the Bison prefers the high\nwooded localities, where it lives in small troops.\n\n[Illustration: BISON KILLING WOLF.]\n\nIts name of Bison is a modification of the word Bisam, or musk,\nwhich was given to it on account of the strong musky odour of its\nflesh, which is especially powerful about the head and neck. This\nodour is not so unpleasant as might be supposed, and those who\nhave had personal experience of the animal say that it bears some\nresemblance to the perfume of violets. It is developed most strongly\nin the adult bulls, the cows and young male calves only possessing\nit in a slight degree.\n\nIt is a tolerably large animal, being about six feet high at the\nshoulder--a stature nearly equivalent to that of the ordinary\nAsiatic elephant; and, in spite of its great bulk, is a fleet and\nactive animal, as indeed is generally the case with those oxen\nwhich inhabit elevated localities. Still, though it can run with\nconsiderable speed, it is not able to keep up the pace for any great\ndistance, and at the end of a mile or two can be brought to bay.\n\nLike most animals, however large and powerful they may be, it fears\nthe presence of man, and, if it sees or scents a human being, will\ntry to slip quietly away; but when it is baffled in this attempt,\nand forced to fight, it becomes a fierce and dangerous antagonist,\ncharging with wonderful quickness, and using its short and powerful\nhorns with great effect. A wounded Bison, when fairly brought to\nbay, is perhaps as awkward an opponent as can be found, and to kill\nit without the aid of firearms is no easy matter.\n\nAlthough the countries in which it lives are infested with wolves,\nit seems to have no fear of them when in health; and, even when\npressed by their winter's hunger, the wolves do not venture to\nattack even a single Bison, much less a herd of them. Like other\nwild cattle, it likes to dabble in muddy pools, and is fond of\nharbouring in thickets near such localities; and those who have to\ntravel through the forest keep clear of such spots, unless they\ndesire to drive out the animal for the purpose of killing it.\n\nLike the extinct Aurochs, the Bison has never been domesticated,\nand, although the calves have been captured while very young, and\nattempts have been made to train them to harness, their innate\nwildness of disposition has always baffled such efforts.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: gazelle]\n\n\n\n\nTHE GAZELLE, OR ROE OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n     Its swiftness, its beauty, and the quality of its\n     flesh--Different varieties of the Gazelle--How the Gazelle\n     defends itself against wild beasts--Chase of the Gazelle.\n\n\nWe now leave the Ox tribe, and come to the Antelopes, several\nspecies of which are mentioned in the Scriptures. Four kinds of\nantelope are found in or near the Holy Land, and there is little\ndoubt that all of them are mentioned in the sacred volume.\n\nThe first that will be described is the GAZELLE, which is\nacknowledged to be the animal that is represented by the word\n_Tsebi_, or _Tsebiyah_. The Jewish Bible accepts the same\nrendering. This word occurs many times, sometimes as a metaphor,\nand sometimes representing some animal which was lawful food, and\nwhich therefore belonged to the true ruminants. Moreover, its flesh\nwas not only legally capable of being eaten, but was held in such\nestimation that it was provided for the table of Solomon himself,\ntogether with other animals which will be described in their turn.\n\n[Illustration: THE GAZELLE.]\n\nIt is even now considered a great dainty, although it is not at\nall agreeable to European taste, being hard, dry, and without\nflavour. Still, as has been well remarked, tastes differ as well\nas localities, and an article of food which is a costly luxury in\none land is utterly disdained in another, and will hardly be eaten\nexcept by one who is absolutely dying of starvation.\n\nThe Gazelle is very common in Palestine in the present day, and, in\nthe ancient times, must have been even more plentiful. There are\nseveral varieties of it, which were once thought to be distinct\nspecies, but are now acknowledged to be mere varieties, all of\nwhich are referable to the single species _Gazella Dorcas_. There\nis, for example, the Corinna, or Corine Antelope, which is a rather\nboldly-spotted female; the Kevella Antelope, in which the horns are\nslightly flattened; the small variety called the Ariel, or Cora; the\ngrey Kevel, which is a rather large variety; and the Long-horned\nGazelle, which owes its name to a rather large development of the\nhorns.\n\nWhatever variety may inhabit any given spot, they all have the\nsame habits. They are gregarious animals, associating together in\nherds often of considerable size, and deriving from their numbers\nan element of strength which would otherwise be wanting. Against\nmankind, numbers are of no avail; but when the agile though feeble\nGazelle has to defend itself against the predatory animals of\nits own land, it can only defend itself by the concerted action\nof the whole herd. Should, for example, the wolves prowl round\na herd of Gazelles, after their treacherous wont, the Gazelles\ninstantly assume a posture of self-defence. They form themselves\ninto a compact phalanx, all the males coming to the front, and the\nstrongest and boldest taking on themselves the honourable duty of\nfacing the foe. The does and the young are kept within their ranks,\nand so formidable is the array of sharp, menacing horns, that beasts\nas voracious as the wolf, and far more powerful, have been known to\nretire without attempting to charge.\n\nAs a rule, however, the Gazelle does not desire to resist, and\nprefers its legs to its horns as a mode of insuring safety. So fleet\nis the animal, that it seems to fly over the ground as if propelled\nby volition alone, and its light, agile frame is so enduring, that a\nfair chase has hardly any prospect of success. Hunters, therefore,\nprefer a trap of some kind, if they chase the animal merely for\nfood or for the sake of its skin, and contrive to kill considerable\nnumbers at once. Sometimes they dig pitfalls, and drive the Gazelles\ninto them by beating a large tract of country, and gradually\nnarrowing the circle. Sometimes they use nets, such as have already\nbeen described, and sometimes they line the sides of a ravine with\narchers and spearmen, and drive the herd of Gazelles through the\ntreacherous defile.\n\nThese modes of slaughter are, however, condemned by the true hunter,\nwho looks upon those who use them much in the same light as an\nEnglish sportsman looks on a man who shoots foxes. The greyhound\nand the falcon are both employed in the legitimate capture of the\nGazelle, and in some cases both are trained to work together.\nHunting the Gazelle with the greyhound very much resembles coursing\nin our own country, and chasing it with the hawk is exactly like the\nsystem of falconry that was once so popular an English sport, and\nwhich even now shows signs of revival.\n\nIt is, however, when the dog and the bird are trained to work\ntogether that the spectacle becomes really novel and interesting to\nan English spectator.\n\nAs soon as the Gazelles are fairly in view, the hunter unhoods his\nhawk, and holds it up so that it may see the animals. The bird fixes\nits eye on one Gazelle, and by that glance the animal's doom is\nsettled. The falcon darts after the Gazelles, followed by the dog,\nwho keeps his eye on the hawk, and holds himself in readiness to\nattack the animal that his feathered ally may select. Suddenly the\nfalcon, which has been for some few seconds hovering over the herd\nof Gazelles, makes a stoop upon the selected victim, fastening its\ntalons in its forehead, and, as it tries to shake off its strange\nfoe, flaps its wings into the Gazelle's eyes so as to blind it.\nConsequently, the rapid course of the antelope is arrested, so\nthat the dog is able to come up and secure the animal while it is\nstruggling to escape from its feathered enemy. Sometimes, though\nrarely, a young and inexperienced hawk swoops down with such\nreckless force that it misses the forehead of the Gazelle, and\nimpales itself upon the sharp horns, just as in England the falcon\nis apt to be spitted on the bill of the heron.\n\nThe most sportsmanlike mode of hunting the Gazelle is to use the\nfalcon alone; but for this sport a bird must possess exceptional\nstrength, swiftness, and intelligence. A very spirited account of\nsuch a chase is given by Mr. G. W. Chasseaud, in his \"Druses of the\nLebanon:\"--\n\n\"Whilst reposing here, our old friend with the falcon informs us\nthat at a short distance from this spot is a khan called Nebbi\nYouni, from a supposition that the prophet Jonah was here landed by\nthe whale; but the old man is very indignant when we identify the\nplace with a fable, and declare to him that similar sights are to\nbe seen at Gaza and Scanderoon. But his good humour is speedily\nrecovered by reverting to the subject of the exploits and cleverness\nof his falcon. This reminds him that we have not much time to waste\nin idle talk, as the greater heats will drive the gazelles from the\nplains to the mountain retreats, and lose us the opportunity of\nenjoying the most sportsmanlike amusement in Syria. Accordingly,\nbestriding our animals again, we ford the river at that point where\na bridge once stood.\n\n\"We have barely proceeded twenty minutes before the keen eye of the\nfalconer has descried a herd of gazelles quietly grazing in the\ndistance. Immediately he reins in his horse, and enjoining silence,\ninstead of riding at them, as we might have felt inclined to do, he\nskirts along the banks of the river, so as to cut off, if possible,\nthe retreat of these fleet animals where the banks are narrowest,\nthough very deep, but which would be cleared at a single leap by\nthe gazelles. Having successfully accomplished this manoeuvre,\nhe again removes the hood from the hawk, and indicates to us that\nprecaution is no longer necessary. Accordingly, first adding a few\nslugs to the charges in our barrels, we balance our guns in an easy\nposture, and, giving the horses their reins, set off at full gallop,\nand with a loud hurrah, right towards the already startled gazelles.\n\n\"The timid animals, at first paralysed by our appearance, stand and\ngaze for a second terror-stricken at our approach; but their pause\nis only momentary; they perceive in an instant that the retreat to\ntheir favourite haunts has been secured, and so they dash wildly\nforward with all the fleetness of despair, coursing over the plain\nwith no fixed refuge in view, and nothing but their fleetness to aid\nin their delivery. A stern chase is a long chase, and so, doubtless,\non the present occasion it would prove with ourselves, for there is\nmany and many a mile of level country before us, and our horses,\nthough swift of foot, stand no chance in this respect with the\ngazelles.\n\n\"Now, however, the old man has watched for a good opportunity to\ndisplay the prowess and skill of his falcon: he has followed us\nonly at a hand-gallop; but the hawk, long inured to such pastime,\nstretches forth its neck eagerly in the direction of the flying\nprey, and being loosened from its pinions, sweeps up into the air\nlike a shot, and passes overhead with incredible velocity. Five\nminutes more, and the bird has outstripped even the speed of the\nlight-footed gazelle; we see him through the dust and haze that\nour own speed throws around us, hovering but an instant over the\nterrified herd; he has singled out his prey, and, diving with\nunerring aim, fixes his iron talons into the head of the terrified\nanimal.\n\n[Illustration: THE FALCON USED IN OUR HUNT.]\n\n\"This is the signal for the others to break up their orderly\nretreat, and to speed over the plain in every direction. Some,\ndespite the danger that hovers on their track, make straight for\ntheir old and familiar haunts, and passing within twenty yards of\nwhere we ride, afford us an opportunity of displaying our skill as\namateur huntsmen on horseback; nor does it require but little nerve\nand dexterity to fix our aim whilst our horses are tearing over\nthe ground. However, the moment presents itself, the loud report\nof barrel after barrel startles the unaccustomed inmates of that\nunfrequented waste; one gazelle leaps twice its own height into the\nair, and then rolls over, shot through the heart; another bounds on\nyet a dozen paces, but, wounded mortally, staggering, halts, and\nthen falls to the ground.\n\n\"This is no time for us to pull in and see what is the amount of\ndamage done, for the falcon, heedless of all surrounding incidents,\nclings firmly to the head of its terrified victim, flapping its\nstrong wings awhile before the poor brute's terrified eyes, half\nblinding it and rendering its head dizzy; till, after tearing round\nand round with incredible speed, the poor creature stops, panting\nfor breath, and, overcome with excessive terror, drops down fainting\nupon the earth. Now the air resounds with the acclamations and\nhootings of the ruthless victors.\n\n[Illustration: THE ARAB IS DELIGHTED AT THE SUCCESS OF THE HUNT.]\n\n\"The Arab is wild in his transports of delight. More certain of\nthe prowess of his bird than ourselves, he had stopped awhile to\ngather together the fruits of our booty, and now galloped furiously\nup, waving his long gun, and shouting lustily the while the praises\nof his infallible hawk; then getting down, and hoodwinking the bird\nagain, he first of all takes the precaution of fastening together\nthe legs of the fallen gazelle, and then he humanely blows up into\nits nostrils. Gradually the natural brilliancy returns to the dimmed\neyes of the gazelle, then it struggles valiantly, but vainly, to\ndisentangle itself from its fetters.\n\n\"Pitying its efforts, the falconer throws a handkerchief over its\nhead, and, securing this prize, claims it as his own, declaring that\nhe will bear it home to his house in the mountains, where, after a\nfew weeks' kind treatment and care, it will become as domesticated\nand affectionate as a spaniel. Meanwhile, Abou Shein gathers\ntogether the fallen booty, and, tying them securely with cords,\nfastens them behind his own saddle, declaring, with a triumphant\nlaugh, that we shall return that evening to the city of Beyrout with\nsuch game as few sportsmen can boast of having carried thither in\none day.\"\n\nThe gentle nature of the Gazelle is as proverbial as its grace\nand swiftness, and is well expressed in the large, soft, liquid\neye, which has formed from time immemorial the stock comparison of\nOriental poets when describing the eyes of beauty.\n\n[Illustration: THE GAZELLE.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE PYGARG, OR ADDAX.\n\n     The Dishon or Dyshon--Signification of the word\n     Pygarg--Certainty that the Dishon is an antelope, and that it\n     must be one of a few species--Former and present range of the\n     Addax--Description of the Addax.\n\n\nThere is a species of animal mentioned once in the Scriptures under\nthe name of Dishon which the Jewish Bible leaves untranslated, and\nmerely gives as Dyshon, and which is rendered in the Septuagint by\nPugargos, or PYGARG, as one version gives it. Now, the meaning of\nthe word Pygarg is white-crouped, and for that reason the Pygarg\nof the Scriptures is usually held to be one of the white-crouped\nantelopes, of which several species are known. Perhaps it may be one\nof them--it may possibly be neither, and it may probably refer to\nall of them.\n\nBut that an antelope of some kind is meant by the word Dishon is\nevident enough, and it is also evident that the Dishon must have\nbeen one of the antelopes which could be obtained by the Jews. Now\nas the species of antelope which could have furnished food for that\nnation are very few in number, it is clear that, even if we do not\nhit upon the exact species, we may be sure of selecting an animal\nthat was closely allied to it. Moreover, as the nomenclature is\nexceedingly loose, it is probable that more than one species might\nhave been included in the word Dishon.\n\nModern commentators have agreed that there is every probability that\nthe Dishon of the Pentateuch was the antelope known by the name of\nAddax.\n\nThis handsome antelope is a native of Northern Africa. It has a\nvery wide range, and, even at the present day, is found in the\nvicinity of Palestine, so that it evidently was one of the antelopes\nwhich could be killed by Jewish hunters. From its large size, and\nlong twisted horns, it bears a strong resemblance to the Koodoo of\nSouthern Africa. The horns, however, are not so long, nor so boldly\ntwisted, the curve being comparatively slight, and not possessing\nthe bold spiral shape which distinguishes those of the koodoo.\n\n[Illustration: THE ADDAX.]\n\nThe ordinary height of the Addax is three feet seven or eight\ninches, and the horns are almost exactly alike in the two sexes.\nTheir length, from the head to the tips, is rather more than two\nfeet. Its colour is mostly white, but a thick mane of dark black\nhair falls from the throat, a patch of similar hair grows on the\nforehead, and the back and shoulders are greyish brown. There is no\nmane on the back of the neck, as is the case with the koodoo.\n\nThe Addax is a sand-loving animal, as is shown by the wide and\nspreading hoofs, which afford it a firm footing on the yielding\nsoil. In all probability, this is one of the animals which would be\ntaken, like the wild bull, in a net, being surrounded and driven\ninto the toils by a number of hunters. It is not, however, one of\nthe gregarious species, and is not found in those vast herds in\nwhich some of the antelopes love to assemble.\n\n[Illustration: decoration]\n\n\n\n\nTHE FALLOW-DEER, OR BUBALE.\n\n     The word Jachmur evidently represents a species of\n     antelope--Resemblance of the animal to the ox tribe--Its\n     ox-like horns and mode of attack--Its capability of\n     domestication--Former and present range of the Bubale--Its\n     representation on the monuments of ancient Egypt--Delicacy of\n     its flesh--Size and general appearance of the animal.\n\n\nIt has already been mentioned that in the Old Testament there occur\nthe names of three or four animals, which clearly belong to one\nor other of three or four antelopes. Only one of these names now\nremains to be identified. This is the Jachmur, or Yachmur, a word\nwhich has been rendered in the Septuagint as Boubalos, and has been\ntranslated in our Authorized Version as FALLOW DEER.\n\nWe shall presently see that the Fallow Deer is to be identified\nwith another animal, and that the word Jachmur must find another\ninterpretation. If we follow the Septuagint, and call it the BUBALE,\nwe shall identify it with a well-known antelope called by the\nArabs the \"Bekk'r-el-Wash,\" and known to zoologists as the BUBALE\n(_Acronotus bubalis_).\n\nThis fine antelope would scarcely be recognised as such by an\nunskilled observer, as in its general appearance it much more\nresembles the ox tribe than the antelope. Indeed, the Arabic\ntitle, \"Bekk'r-el-Wash,\" or Wild Cow, shows how close must be the\nresemblance to the oxen. The Arabs, and indeed all the Orientals in\nwhose countries it lives, believe it not to be an antelope, but one\nof the oxen, and class it accordingly.\n\nHow much the appearance of the Bubale justifies them in this opinion\nmay be judged by reference to the figure on page 143. The horns are\nthick, short, and heavy, and are first inclined forwards, and then\nrather suddenly bent backwards. This formation of the horns causes\nthe Bubale to use his weapons after the manner of the bull, thereby\nincreasing the resemblance between them. When it attacks, the Bubale\nlowers its head to the ground, and as soon as its antagonist is\nwithin reach, tosses its head violently upwards, or swings it with\na sidelong upward blow. In either case, the sharp curved horns,\nimpelled by the powerful neck of the animal, and assisted by the\nweight of the large head, become most formidable weapons.\n\nIt is said that in some places, where the Bubales have learned to\nendure the presence of man, they will mix with his herds for the\nsake of feeding with them, and by degrees become so accustomed to\nthe companionship of their domesticated friends, that they live with\nthe herd as if they had belonged to it all their lives. This fact\nshows that the animal possesses a gentle disposition, and it is said\nto be as easily tamed as the gazelle itself.\n\nEven at the present day the Bubale has a very wide range, and\nformerly had in all probability a much wider. It is indigenous\nto Barbary, and has continued to spread itself over the greater\npart of Northern Africa, including the borders of the Sahara, the\nedges of the cultivated districts, and up the Nile for no small\ndistance. In former days it was evidently a tolerably common animal\nof chase in Upper Egypt as there are representations of it on the\nmonuments, drawn with the quaint truthfulness which distinguishes\nthe monumental sculpture of that period.\n\n[Illustration: THE BUBALE, OR FALLOW-DEER OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nIt is probable that in and about Palestine it was equally common, so\nthat there is good reason why it should be specially named as one of\nthe animals that were lawful food. Not only was its flesh permitted\nto be eaten, but it was evidently considered as a great dainty,\ninasmuch as the Jachmur is mentioned in 1 Kings iv. 23 as one of the\nanimals which were brought to the royal table. \"Harts and Roebucks\nand Fallow-Deer\" are the wild animals mentioned in the passage\nalluded to.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: sheep and birds]\n\n\n\n\nTHE SHEEP.\n\n     Importance of Sheep in the Bible--The Sheep the chief wealth\n     of the pastoral tribes--Arab shepherds of the present\n     day--Wanderings of the flocks in search of food--Value of the\n     wells--How the Sheep are watered--The shepherd usually a part\n     owner of the flocks--Structure of the sheepfolds--The rock\n     caverns of Palestine--David's adventure with Saul--Use of the\n     dogs--The broad-tailed Sheep, and its peculiarities.\n\n\nWe now come to a subject which will necessarily occupy us for some\nlittle time.\n\nThere is, perhaps, no animal which occupies a larger space in the\nScriptures than the SHEEP. Whether in religious, civil, or domestic\nlife, we find that the Sheep is bound up with the Jewish nation in\na way that would seem almost incomprehensible, did we not recall\nthe light which the New Testament throws upon the Old, and the many\nallusions to the coming Messiah under the figure of the Lamb that\ntaketh away the sins of the world.\n\nIn treating of the Sheep, it will be perhaps advisable to begin the\naccount by taking the animal simply as one of those creatures which\nhave been domesticated from time immemorial, dwelling slightly on\nthose points on which the sheep-owners of the old days differed from\nthose of our own time.\n\nThe only claim to the land seems, in the old times of the\nScriptures, to have lain in cultivation, or perhaps in the land\nimmediately surrounding a well. But any one appears to have taken a\npiece of ground and cultivated it, or to have dug a well wherever he\nchose, and thereby to have acquired a sort of right to the soil. The\nsame custom prevails at the present day among the cattle-breeding\nraces of Southern Africa. The banks of rivers, on account of their\nsuperior fertility, were considered as the property of the chiefs\nwho lived along their course, but the inland soil was free to all.\n\nHad it not been for this freedom of the land, it would have been\nimpossible for the great men to have nourished the enormous flocks\nand herds of which their wealth consisted; but, on account of\nthe lack of ownership of the soil, a flock could be moved to one\ndistrict after another as fast as it exhausted the herbage, the\nshepherds thus unconsciously imitating the habits of the gregarious\nanimals, which are always on the move from one spot to another.\n\nPasturage being thus free to all, Sheep had a higher comparative\nvalue than is the case with ourselves, who have to pay in some way\nfor their keep. There is a proverb in the Talmud which may be curtly\ntranslated, \"Land sell, sheep buy.\"\n\nThe value of a good pasture-ground for the flocks is so great, that\nits possession is well worth a battle, the shepherds being saved\nfrom a most weary and harassing life, and being moreover fewer in\nnumber than is needed when the pasturage is scanty Sir S. Baker, in\nhis work on Abyssinia, makes some very interesting remarks upon the\nArab herdsmen, who are placed in conditions very similar to those of\nthe Israelitish shepherds.\n\n[Illustration: ARABS JOURNEYING TO FRESH PASTURES.]\n\n\"The Arabs are creatures of necessity; their nomadic life is\ncompulsory, as the existence of their flocks and herds depends\nupon the pasturage. Thus, with the change of seasons they must\nchange their localities according to the presence of fodder for\ntheir cattle.... The Arab cannot halt in one spot longer than the\npasturage will support his flocks. The object of his life being\nfodder, he must wander in search of the ever-changing supply. His\nwants must be few, as the constant change of encampment necessitates\nthe transport of all his household goods; thus he reduces to a\nminimum his domestic furniture and utensils....\n\n\"This striking similarity to the descriptions of the Old Testament\nis exceedingly interesting to a traveller when residing among\nthese curious and original people. With the Bible in one's hand,\nand these unchanged tribes before the eyes, there is a thrilling\nillustration of the sacred record; the past becomes the present, the\nveil of three thousand years is raised, and the living picture is a\nwitness to the exactness of the historical description. At the same\ntime there is a light thrown upon many obscure passages in the Old\nTestament by the experience of the present customs and figures of\nspeech of the Arabs, which are precisely those that were practised\nat the periods described....\n\n[Illustration: VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS.]\n\n\"Should the present history of the country be written by an Arab\nscribe, the style of the description would be precisely that of\nthe Old Testament. There is a fascination in the unchangeable\nfeatures of the Nile regions. There are the vast pyramids that have\ndefied time, the river upon which Moses was cradled in infancy,\nthe same sandy desert through which he led his people, and the\nwatering-places where their flocks were led to drink. The wild and\nwandering Arabs, who thousands of years ago dug out the wells in the\nwilderness, are represented by their descendants, unchanged, who now\ndraw water from the deep wells of their forefathers, with the skins\nthat have never altered their fashion.\n\n\"The Arabs, gathering with their goats and sheep around the wells\nto-day, recall the recollection of that distant time when 'Jacob\nwent on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the\neast. And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and lo! there\nwere three flocks of sheep lying by it,' &c. The picture of that\nscene would be an illustration of Arab daily life in the Nubian\ndeserts, where the present is a mirror of the past.\"\n\nOwing to the great number of Sheep which they have to tend, and the\npeculiar state of the country, the life of the shepherd in Palestine\nis even now very different from that of an English shepherd, and\nin the days of the early Scriptures the distinction was even more\ndistinctly marked.\n\nSheep had to be tended much more carefully than we generally think.\nIn the first place, a thoughtful shepherd had always one idea before\nhis mind,--namely, the possibility of obtaining sufficient water\nfor his flocks. Even pasturage is less important than water, and,\nhowever tempting a district might be, no shepherd would venture to\ntake his charge there if he were not sure of obtaining water. In a\nclimate such as ours, this ever-pressing anxiety respecting water\ncan scarcely be appreciated, for in hot climates not only is water\nscarce, but it is needed far more than in a temperate and moist\nclimate. Thirst does its work with terrible quickness, and there are\ninstances recorded where men have sat down and died of thirst in\nsight of the river which they had not strength to reach.\n\nIn places therefore through which no stream runs, the wells are the\ngreat centres of pasturage, around which are to be seen vast flocks\nextending far in every direction. These wells are kept carefully\nclosed by their owners, and are only opened for the use of those who\nare entitled to water their flocks at them.\n\nNoontide is the general time for watering the Sheep, and towards\nthat hour all the flocks may be seen converging towards their\nrespective wells, the shepherd at the head of each flock, and the\nSheep following him. See how forcible becomes the imagery of David,\nthe shepherd poet, \"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He\nmaketh me to lie down in green pastures (or, in pastures of tender\ngrass): He leadeth me beside the still waters\" (Ps. xxiii. 1, 2).\nHere we have two of the principal duties of the good shepherd\nbrought prominently before us,--namely, the guiding of the Sheep to\ngreen pastures and leading them to fresh water. Very many references\nare made in the Scriptures to the pasturage of sheep, both in a\ntechnical and a metaphorical sense; but as our space is limited, and\nthese passages are very numerous, only one or two of each will be\ntaken.\n\nIn the story of Joseph, we find that when his father and brothers\nwere suffering from the famine, they seem to have cared as much\nfor their Sheep and cattle as for themselves, inasmuch as among a\npastoral people the flocks and herds constitute the only wealth.\nSo, when Joseph at last discovered himself, and his family were\nadmitted to the favour of Pharaoh, the first request which they made\nwas for their flocks. \"Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your\noccupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds,\nboth we, and also our fathers.\n\n\"They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land are we\ncome; for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the\nfamine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore, we pray thee,\nlet thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen.\"\n\nThis one incident, so slightly remarked in the sacred history, gives\na wonderfully clear notion of the sort of life led by Jacob and his\nsons. Forming, according to custom, a small tribe of their own, of\nwhich the father was the chief, they led a pastoral life, taking\ntheir continually increasing herds and flocks from place to place as\nthey could find food for them. For example, at the memorable time\nwhen the story of Joseph begins, he was sent by his father to his\nbrothers, who were feeding the flocks, and he wandered about for\nsome time, not knowing where to find them. It may seem strange that\nhe should be unable to discover such very conspicuous objects as\nlarge flocks of sheep and goats, but the fact is that they had been\ndriven from one pasture-land to another, and had travelled in search\nof food all the way from Shechem to Dothan.\n\nIn 1 Chron. iv. 39, 40, we read of the still pastoral Israelites\nthat \"they went to the entrance of Gedor, even unto the east side\nof the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks. And they found fat\npasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable.\"\n\nHow it came to be quiet and peaceable is told in the context. It\nwas peaceable simply because the Israelites were attracted by the\ngood pasturage, attacked the original inhabitants, and exterminated\nthem so effectually that none were left to offer resistance to the\nusurpers. And we find from this passage that the value of good\npasture-land where the Sheep could feed continually without being\nforced to wander from one spot to another was so considerable, that\nthe owners of the flocks engaged in war, and exposed their own\nlives, in order to obtain so valuable a possession.\n\n[Illustration: JACOB MEETS RACHEL AT THE WELL.]\n\nWe will now look at one or two of the passages that mention watering\nthe Sheep--a duty so imperative on an Oriental shepherd, and so\nneedless to our own.\n\nIn the first place we find that most graphic narrative which occurs\nin Gen. xxix. to which a passing reference has already been made.\nWhen Jacob was on his way from his parents to the home of Laban\nin Padan-aram, he came upon the very well which belonged to his\nuncle, and there saw three flocks of Sheep lying around the well,\nwaiting until the proper hour arrived. According to custom, a large\nstone was laid over the well, so as to perform the double office of\nkeeping out the sand and dust, and of guarding the precious water\nagainst those who had no right to it. And when he saw his cousin\nRachel arrive with the flock of which she had the management, he,\naccording to the courtesy of the country and the time, rolled away\nthe ponderous barrier, and poured out water into the troughs for the\nSheep which Rachel tended.\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN SHEPHERD WATCHING HIS FLOCK.]\n\nAbout two hundred years afterwards, we find Moses performing a\nsimilar act. When he was obliged to escape into Midian on account\nof his fatal quarrel with a tyrannical Egyptian, he sat down by a\nwell, waiting for the time when the stone might be rolled away, and\nthe water be distributed. Now it happened that this well belonged\nto Jethro, the chief priest of the country, whose wealth consisted\nprincipally of Sheep. He entrusted his flock to the care of his\nseven daughters, who led their Sheep to the well and drew water as\nusual into the troughs. Presuming on their weakness, other shepherds\ncame and tried to drive them away, but were opposed by Moses, who\ndrove them away, and with his own hands watered the flock.\n\nNow in both these examples we find that the men who performed the\ncourteous office of drawing the water and pouring it into the\nsheep-troughs married afterwards the girl to whose charge the flocks\nhad been committed. This brings us to the Oriental custom which has\nbeen preserved to the present day.\n\nThe wells at which the cattle are watered at noon-day are the\nmeeting-places of the tribe, and it is chiefly at the well that\nthe young men and women meet each other. As each successive flock\narrives at the well, the number of the people increases, and while\nthe sheep and goats lie patiently round the water, waiting for the\ntime when the last flock shall arrive, and the stone be rolled off\nthe mouth of the well, the gossip of the tribe is discussed, and the\nyoung people have ample opportunity for the pleasing business of\ncourtship.\n\nAs to the passages in which the wells, rivers, brooks,\nwater-springs, are spoken of in a metaphorical sense, they are too\nnumerous to be quoted.\n\nAnd here I may observe, that in reality the whole of Scripture has\nits symbolical as well as its outward signification; and that,\nuntil we have learned to read the Bible strictly according to the\nspirit, we cannot understand one-thousandth part of the mysteries\nwhich it conceals behind its veil of language; nor can we appreciate\none-thousandth part of the treasures of wisdom which lie hidden in\nits pages.\n\nAnother duty of the shepherd of ancient Palestine was to guard his\nflock from depredators, whether man or beast. Therefore the shepherd\nwas forced to carry arms; to act as a sentry during the night; and,\nin fact, to be a sort of irregular soldier. A fully-armed shepherd\nhad with him his bow, his spear, and his sword, and not even a\nshepherd lad was without his sling and the great quarter-staff which\nis even now universally carried by the tribes along the Nile--a\nstaff as thick as a man's wrist, and six or seven feet in length. He\nwas skilled in the use of all these weapons, especially in that of\nthe sling.\n\n[Illustration: DAVID GATHERS STONES FROM THE BROOK TO CAST AT\nGOLIATH.]\n\nIn these days, the sling is only considered as a mere toy, whereas,\nbefore the introduction of fire-arms, it was one of the most\nformidable weapons that could be wielded by light troops. Round\nand smooth stones weighing three or four ounces were the usual\nprojectiles, and, by dint of constant practice from childhood, the\nslingers could aim with a marvellous precision. Of this fact we have\na notable instance in David, who knew that the sling and the five\nstones in the hand of an active youth unencumbered by armour, and\nwearing merely the shepherd's simple tunic, were more than a match\nfor all the ponderous weapons of the gigantic Philistine.\n\nIt has sometimes been the fashion to attribute the successful aim of\nDavid to a special miracle, whereas those who are acquainted with\nancient weapons know well that no miracle was wrought, because none\nwas needed; a good slinger at that time being as sure of his aim as\na good rifleman of our days.\n\nThe sling was in constant requisition, being used both in directing\nthe Sheep and in repelling enemies: a stone skilfully thrown in\nfront of a straying Sheep being a well-understood signal that the\nanimal had better retrace its steps if it did not want to feel the\nnext stone on its back.\n\n[Illustration: AN EASTERN SHEPHERD.]\n\nPassing his whole life with his flock, the shepherd was identified\nwith his Sheep far more than is the case in this country. He knew\nall his Sheep by sight, he called them all by their names, and they\nall knew him and recognised his voice. He did not drive them, but he\nled them, walking in their front, and they following him. Sometimes\nhe would play with them, pretending to run away while they pursued\nhim, exactly as an infant-school teacher plays with the children.\n\nConsequently, they looked upon him as their protector as well as\ntheir feeder, and were sure to follow wherever he led them.\n\n[Illustration: SHEEP FOLLOWING THEIR SHEPHERD.]\n\nWe must all remember how David, who had passed all his early years\nas a shepherd, speaks of God as the Shepherd of Israel, and the\npeople as Sheep; never mentioning the Sheep as being driven, but\nalways as being led. \"Thou leddest Thy people like a flock, by\nthe hands of Moses and Aaron\" (Ps. lxxvii. 20); \"The Lord is my\nShepherd.... He leadeth me beside the still waters\" (Ps. xxiii. 1,\n2); \"Lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies\" (Ps. xxvii.\n11); together with many other passages too numerous to be quoted.\n\nOur Lord Himself makes a familiar use of the same image: \"He calleth\nhis own sheep by name, and leadeth them out And when he putteth\nforth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him:\nfor they know his voice.\"\n\nAlthough the shepherds of our own country know their Sheep by sight,\nand say that there is as much difference in the faces of Sheep as of\nmen, they have not, as a rule, attained the art of teaching their\nSheep to recognise their names. This custom, however, is still\nretained, as may be seen from a well-known passage in Hartley's\n\"Researches in Greece and the Levant:\"--\n\n\"Having had my attention directed last night to the words in John\nx. 3, I asked my man if it were usual in Greece to give names to\nthe sheep. He informed me that it was, and that the sheep obeyed\nthe shepherd when he called them by their names. This morning I\nhad an opportunity of verifying the truth of this remark. Passing\nby a flock of sheep, I asked the shepherd the same question which\nI had put to the servant, and he gave me the same answer. I then\nbade him call one of his sheep. He did so, and it instantly left\nits pasturage and its companions, and ran up to the hands of the\nshepherd, with signs of pleasure, and with a prompt obedience which\nI had never before observed in any other animal.\n\n\"It is also true that in this country, 'a stranger will they not\nfollow, but will flee from him.' The shepherd told me that many of\nhis sheep were still wild, that they had not learned their names,\nbut that by teaching them they would all learn them.\"\n\nGenerally, the shepherd was either the proprietor of the flock, or\nhad at all events a share in it, of which latter arrangement we find\na well-known example in the bargain which Jacob made with Laban, all\nthe white Sheep belonging to his father-in-law, and all the dark\nand spotted Sheep being his wages as shepherd. Such a man was far\nmore likely to take care of the Sheep than if he were merely a paid\nlabourer; especially in a country where the life of a shepherd was a\nlife of actual danger, and he might at any time be obliged to fight\nagainst armed robbers, or to oppose the wolf, the lion, or the bear.\nThe combat of the shepherd David with the last-mentioned animals has\nalready been noticed.\n\nIn allusion to the continual risks run by the Oriental shepherd, our\nLord makes use of the following well-known words:--\"The thief cometh\nnot but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that\nthey might have life, and have it more abundantly. I am the Good\nShepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he\nthat is an hireling, ... whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf\ncoming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth\nthem, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is an\nhireling, and careth not for the sheep.\"\n\nOwing to the continual moving of the Sheep, the shepherd had very\nhard work during the lambing time, and was obliged to carry in\nhis arms the young lambs which were too feeble to accompany their\nparents, and to keep close to him those Sheep who were expected\nsoon to become mothers. At that time of year the shepherd might\nconstantly be seen at the head of his flock, carrying one or two\nlambs in his arms, accompanied by their mothers.\n\nIn allusion to this fact Isaiah writes: \"His reward is with Him, and\nHis work before Him. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; He\nshall gather the lambs with His arms and carry them in His bosom,\nand shall gently lead them that are with young\" (or, \"that give\nsuck,\" according to the marginal reading). Here we have presented\nat once before us the good shepherd who is no hireling, but owns\nthe Sheep; and who therefore has \"his reward with him, and his work\nbefore him;\" who bears the tender lambs in his arms, or lays them in\nthe folds of his mantle, and so carries them in his bosom, and leads\nby his side their yet feeble mothers.\n\nFrequent mention is made of the folds in which the Sheep are penned;\nand as these folds differed--and still differ--materially from those\nof our own land, we shall miss the force of several passages of\nScripture if we do not understand their form, and the materials of\nwhich they were built. Our folds consist merely of hurdles, moveable\nat pleasure, and so low that a man can easily jump over them, and so\nfragile that he can easily pull them down. Moreover, the Sheep are\nfrequently enclosed within the fold while they are at pasture.\n\nIf any one should entertain such an idea of the Oriental fold, he\nwould not see the force of the well-known passage in which our\nLord compares the Church to a sheepfold, and Himself to the door.\n\"He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth\nup some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that\nentereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the\nporter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice.... All that ever came\nbefore me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.\nI am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and\nshall go in and out, and find pasture.\"\n\n[Illustration: ANCIENT SHEEP PEN.]\n\nHad the fold here mentioned been a simple enclosure of hurdles, such\nan image could not have been used. It is evident that the fold to\nwhich allusion was made, and which was probably in sight at the time\nwhen Jesus was disputing with the Pharisees, was a structure of some\npretensions; that it had walls which a thief could only enter by\nclimbing over them--not by \"breaking through\" them, as in the case\nof a mud-walled private house; and that it had a gate, which was\nguarded by a watchman.\n\nIn fact, the fold was a solid and enduring building, made of stone.\nThus in Numbers xxxii. it is related that the tribes of Reuben and\nGad, who had great quantities of Sheep and other cattle, asked for\nthe eastward side of Jordan as a pasture-ground, promising to go\nand fight for the people, but previously to build fortified cities\nfor their families, and folds for their cattle, the folds being\nevidently, like the cities, buildings of an enduring nature.\n\nIn some places the folds are simply rock caverns, partly natural\nand partly artificial, often enlarged by a stone wall built outside\nit. It was the absence of these rock caverns on the east side of\nJordan that compelled the Reubenites and Gadites to build folds\nfor themselves, whereas on the opposite side places of refuge were\ncomparatively abundant.\n\nSee, for example, the well-known history related in 1 Sam.\nxxiii.-xxiv. David and his miscellaneous band of warriors, some six\nhundred in number, were driven out of the cities by the fear of\nSaul, and were obliged to pass their time in the wilderness, living\nin the \"strong holds\" (xxiii. 14, 19), which we find immediately\nafterwards to be rock caves (ver. 25). These caves were of large\nextent, being able to shelter these six hundred warriors, and,\non one memorable occasion, to conceal them so completely as they\nstood along the sides, that Saul, who had just come out of the open\nair, was not able to discern them in the dim light, and David even\nmanaged to approach him unseen, and cut off a portion of his outer\nrobe.\n\nThat this particular cave was a sheepfold we learn from xxiv. 2-4:\n\"Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and\nwent to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.\nAnd he came to the sheepcotes by the way.\" Into these strongholds\nthe Sheep are driven towards nightfall, and, as the flocks converge\ntowards their resting-place, the bleatings of the sheep are almost\ndeafening.\n\nThe shepherds as well as their flocks found shelter in these caves,\nmaking them their resting-places while they were living the strange,\nwild, pastoral life among the hills; and at the present day many\nof the smaller caves and \"holes of the rock\" exhibit the vestiges\nof human habitation in the shape of straw, hay, and other dried\nherbage, which has been used for beds, just as we now find the rude\ncouches of the coast-guard men in the cliff caves of our shores.\n\nThe dogs which are attached to the sheepfolds were, as they are\nnow, the faithful servants of man, although, as has already been\nrelated, they are not made the companions of man as is the case with\nourselves. Lean, gaunt, hungry, and treated with but scant kindness,\nthey are yet faithful guardians against the attack of enemies. They\ndo not, as do our sheepdogs, assist in driving the flocks, because\nthe Sheep are not driven, but led, but they are invaluable as\nnocturnal sentries. Crouching together outside the fold, in little\nknots of six or seven together, they detect the approach of wild\nanimals, and at the first sign of the wolf or the jackal they bark\nout a defiance, and scare away the invaders. It is strange that the\nold superstitious idea of their uncleanness should have held its\nground through so many tens of centuries; but, down to the present\nday, the shepherd of Palestine, though making use of the dog as a\nguardian of his flock, treats the animal with utter contempt, not to\nsay cruelty, beating and kicking the faithful creature on the least\nprovocation, and scarcely giving it sufficient food to keep it alive.\n\nSometimes the Sheep are brought up by hand at home. \"House-lamb,\" as\nwe call it, is even now common, and the practice of house-feeding\npeculiar in the old Scriptural times.\n\nWe have an allusion to this custom in the well-known parable of the\nprophet Nathan: \"The poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb,\nwhich he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with\nhim, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of\nhis own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter\"\n(2 Sam. xii. 3). A further, though less distinct, allusion is made\nto this practice in Isaiah vii. 21: \"It shall come to pass in that\nday, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep.\"\n\nHow the Sheep thus brought up by hand were fattened may be\nconjectured from the following passage in Mr. D. Urquhart's valuable\nwork on the Lebanon:--\n\n\"In the month of June, they buy from the shepherds, when pasturage\nhas become scarce and sheep are cheap, two or three sheep; these\nthey feed by hand. After they have eaten up the old grass and the\nprovender about the doors, they get vine leaves, and, after the\nsilkworms have begun to spin, mulberry leaves. They purchase them on\ntrial, and the test is appetite. If a sheep does not feed well, they\nreturn it after three days. To increase their appetite they wash\nthem twice a day, morning and evening, a care they never bestow on\ntheir own bodies.\n\n[Illustration: THE POOR MAN'S LAMB.]\n\n[Illustration: THE RICH MAN'S FEAST.]\n\n\"If the sheep's appetite does not come up to their standard, they\nuse a little gentle violence, folding for them forced leaf-balls and\nintroducing them into their mouths. The mulberry has the property of\nmaking them fat and tender. At the end of four months the sheep they\nhad bought at eighty piastres will sell for one hundred and forty,\nor will realize one hundred and fifty.\n\n\"The sheep is killed, skinned, and hung up. The fat is then removed;\nthe flesh is cut from the bones, and hung up in the sun. Meanwhile,\nthe fat has been put in a cauldron on the fire, and as soon as it\nhas come to boil, the meat is laid on. The proportion of the fat\nto the lean is as four to ten, eight 'okes' fat and twenty lean. A\nlittle salt is added, it is simmered for an hour, and then placed in\njars for the use of the family during the year.\n\n\"The large joints are separated and used first, as not fit for\nkeeping long. The fat, with a portion of the lean, chopped fine, is\nwhat serves for cooking the 'bourgoul,' and is called _Dehen_. The\nsheep are of the fat-tailed variety, and the tails are the great\ndelicacy.\"\n\nThis last sentence reminds us that there are two breeds of Sheep\nin Palestine. One much resembles the ordinary English Sheep, while\nthe other is a very different animal. It is much taller on its\nlegs, larger-boned, and long-nosed. Only the rams have horns, and\nthey are not twisted spirally like those of our own Sheep, but\ncome backwards, and then curl round so that the point comes under\nthe ear. The great peculiarity of this Sheep is the tail, which\nis simply prodigious in point of size, and is an enormous mass\nof fat. Indeed, the long-legged and otherwise lean animal seems\nto concentrate all its fat in the tail, which, as has been well\nobserved, appears to abstract both flesh and fat from the rest of\nthe body. So great is this strange development, that the tail alone\nwill sometimes weigh one-fifth as much as the entire animal. A\nsimilar breed of Sheep is found in Southern Africa and other parts\nof the world. In some places, the tail grows to such an enormous\nsize that, in order to keep so valuable a part of the animal from\ninjury, it is fastened to a small board, supported by a couple of\nwheels, so that the Sheep literally wheels its own tail in a cart.\n\nFrequent reference to the fat of the tail is made in the Authorized\nVersion of the Scriptures, though in terms which would not be\nunderstood did we not know that the Sheep which is mentioned in\nthose passages is the long-tailed Sheep of Syria. See, for example,\nthe history narrated in Exod. xxix. 22, where special details\nare given as to the ceremony by which Aaron and his sons were\nconsecrated to the priesthood. \"Thou shalt take of the ram the fat\nand the rump, and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul\nabove the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them.\"\n\n[Illustration: FLOCKS OF SHEEP BEING TAKEN INTO JERUSALEM.]\n\nThough this particular breed is not very distinctly mentioned in\nthe Bible, the Talmudical writers have many allusions to it. In\nthe Mischna these broad-tailed Sheep are not allowed to leave\ntheir folds on the Sabbath-day, because by wheeling their little\ntail-waggons behind them they would break the Sabbath. The writers\ndescribe the tail very graphically, comparing its shape to that of\na saddle, and saying that it is fat, without bones, heavy and long,\nand looks as if the whole body were continued beyond the hind-legs,\nand thence hung down in place of a tail.\n\nThe Rabbinical writers treat rather fully of the Sheep, and give\nsome very amusing advice respecting their management. If the ewes\ncannot be fattened in the ordinary manner, that end may be achieved\nby tying up the udder so that the milk cannot flow, and the elements\nwhich would have furnished milk are forced to produce fat. If the\nweather should be chilly at the shearing time, and there is danger\nof taking cold after the wool is removed, the shepherd should dip a\nsponge in oil and tie it on the forehead of the newly-shorn animal.\nOr, if he should not have a sponge by him, a woollen rag will do as\nwell. The same potent remedy is also efficacious if the Sheep should\nbe ill in lambing time.\n\nThat the Sheep is liable to the attack of the gadfly, which deposits\nits eggs in the nostrils of the unfortunate animal, was as well\nknown in the ancient as in modern times. It is scarcely necessary\nto mention that the insect in question is the _AEstrus ovis_.\nInstinctively aware of the presence of this insidious and dreaded\nenemy, which, though so apparently insignificant, is as formidable\na foe as any of the beasts of prey, the Sheep display the greatest\nterror at the sharp, menacing sound produced by the gadfly's wings\nas the insect sweeps through the air towards its destination. They\ncongregate together, placing their heads almost in contact with each\nother, snort and paw the ground in their terror, and use all means\nin their power to prevent the fly from accomplishing its purpose.\n\nWhen a gadfly succeeds in attaining its aim, it rapidly deposits an\negg or two in the nostril, and then leaves them. The tiny eggs are\nsoon hatched by the natural heat of the animal, and the young larvae\ncrawl up the nostril towards the frontal sinus. There they remain\nuntil they are full-grown, when they crawl through the nostrils,\nfall on the ground, burrow therein, and in the earth undergo their\nchanges into the pupal and perfect stages.\n\nIt need hardly be said that an intelligent shepherd would devote\nhimself to the task of killing every gadfly which he could find,\nand, as these insects are fond of basking on sunny rocks or\ntree-trunks, this is no very difficult matter.\n\nThe Rabbinical writers, however, being totally ignorant of practical\nentomology, do not seem to have recognised the insect until it had\nreached its full larval growth. They say that the rams manage to\nshake the grubs out of their nostrils by butting at one another\nin mimic warfare, and that the ewes, which are hornless, and are\ntherefore incapable of relieving themselves by such means, ought\nto be supplied with plants which will make them sneeze, so that\nthey may shake out the grubs by the convulsive jerkings of the head\ncaused by inhaling the irritating substance.\n\nThe same writers also recommend that the rams should be furnished\nwith strong leathern collars.\n\nWhen the flock is on the march, the rams always go in the van,\nand, being instinctively afraid of their ancient enemy the wolf,\nthey continually raise their heads and look about them. This line\nof conduct irritates the wolves, who attack the foremost rams and\nseize them by the throat. If, therefore, a piece of stout leather be\nfastened round the ram's neck, the wolf is baffled, and runs off in\nsullen despair.\n\nGenerally, the oldest ram is distinguished by a bell, and, when\nthe flock moves over the hilly <DW72>s, the Sheep walk in file\nafter the leader, making narrow paths, which are very distinct\nfrom a distance, but are scarcely perceptible when the foot of the\ntraveller is actually upon them. From this habit has arisen an\nancient proverb, \"As the sheep after the sheep, so the daughter\nafter the mother,\" a saying which is another form of our own\nfamiliar proverb, \"What is bred in the bone will not come out of the\nflesh.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe now come to the Sheep considered with reference to its uses.\nFirst and foremost the Sheep was, and still is, one of the chief\nmeans of subsistence, being to the pastoral inhabitants of Palestine\nwhat the oxen are to the pastoral inhabitants of Southern Africa.\n\nTo ordinary persons the flesh of the Sheep was a seldom-tasted\nluxury; great men might eat it habitually, \"faring sumptuously every\nday,\" and we find that, among the glories of Solomon's reign, the\nsacred chronicler has thought it worth while to mention that part of\nthe daily provision for his household included one hundred Sheep. No\nparticular pains seem to have been taken about the cooking of the\nanimal, which seems generally to have been boiled. As, however, in\nsuch a climate the flesh could not be kept for the purpose of making\nit tender, as is the case in this part of the world, it was cooked\nas soon as the animal was killed, the fibres not having time to\nsettle into the rigidity of death.\n\nGenerally, when ordinary people had the opportunity of tasting the\nflesh of the Sheep, it was on the occasion of some rejoicing,--such,\nfor example, as a marriage feast, or the advent of a guest, for\nwhom a lamb or a kid was slain and cooked on the spot, a young male\nlamb being almost invariably chosen as less injurious than the ewe\nto the future prospects of the flock. Roasting over a fire was\nsometimes adopted, as was baking in an oven sunk in the ground, a\nremarkable instance of which we shall see when we come to the Jewish\nsacrifices. Boiling, however, was the principal mode; so much so,\nindeed, that the Hebrew word which signifies boiling is used to\nsignify any kind of cooking, even when the meat was roasted.\n\nThe process of cooking and eating the Sheep was as follows.\n\nThe animal having been killed according to the legal form, the skin\nwas stripped off, and the body separated joint from joint, the right\nshoulder being first removed. This, it will be remembered, was the\npriest's portion; see Lev. vii. 32: \"The right shoulder shall ye\ngive unto the priest for an heave offering of the sacrifices of your\npeace offerings.\" The whole of the flesh was then separated from the\nbones, and chopped small, and even the bones themselves broken up,\nso that the marrow might not be lost.\n\nA reference to this custom is found in Micah iii. 2, 3, \"Who pluck\noff their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;\nwho also eat the flesh of my people ... and they break their bones,\nand chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the\ncaldron.\" The reader will now understand more fully the force of\nthe prophecy, \"He keepeth all His bones: not one of them is broken\"\n(Psa. xxxiv. 20).\n\nThe mixed mass of bones and flesh was then put into the caldron,\nwhich was generally filled with water, but sometimes with milk, as\nis the custom with the Bedouins of the present day, whose manners\nare in many respects identical with those of the early Jews. It has\nbeen thought by some commentators that the injunction not to \"seethe\na kid in his mothers milk\" (Deut. xiv. 21) referred to this custom.\nI believe, however, that the expression \"in his mother's milk\" does\nnot signify that the flesh of the kid might not be boiled in its\nmother's milk, but that a kid might not be taken which was still in\nits mother's milk, _i.e._ unweaned.\n\nSalt and spices were generally added to it; see Ezek. xxiv. 10:\n\"Heap on wood, kindle the fire, consume the flesh, and spice it\nwell.\" The surface was carefully skimmed, and, when the meat was\nthoroughly cooked, it and the broth were served up separately. The\nlatter was used as a sort of sauce, into which unleavened bread was\ndipped. So in Judges vi. 19 we read that when Gideon was visited by\nthe angel, according to the hospitable custom of the land, he \"made\nready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he\nput in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out\nunto him under the oak, and presented it to him.\"\n\nValuable, however, as was the Sheep for this purpose, there has\nalways existed a great reluctance to kill the animal, the very sight\nof the flocks being an intense gratification to a pastoral Oriental.\nThe principal part of the food supplied by the Sheep was, and is\nstill, the milk; which afforded abundant food without thinning the\nnumber of the flock. As all know who have tasted it, the milk of the\nSheep is peculiarly rich, and in the East is valued much more highly\nthan that of cattle. The milk was seldom drunk in a fresh state, as\nis usually the case with ourselves, but was suffered to become sour,\ncurdled, and semi-solid.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe now come to a portion of the Sheep scarcely less important than\nthe flesh and the milk, _i.e._ the fleece, or wool.\n\nIn the ancient times nearly the whole of the clothing was made of\nwool, especially the most valuable part of it, namely the large\nmantle, or \"haick,\" in which the whole person could be folded, and\nwhich was the usual covering during sleep. The wool, therefore,\nwould be an article of great national value; and so we find that\nwhen the king of Moab paid his tribute in kind to the king of\nIsrael, it was carefully specified that the Sheep should not be\nshorn. \"And Mesha king of Moab was a sheep-master, and rendered\nunto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred\nthousand rams, with the wool.\"\n\nThe wool of the Sheep of Palestine differed extremely in value; some\nkinds being coarse and rough, while others were fine.\n\nThe wool was dressed in those times much as it is at present, being\ncarded and then spun with the spindle, the distaff being apparently\nunused, and the wool simply drawn out by the hand. The shape of the\nspindle was much like that of the well-known flat spinning-tops that\ncome from Japan--namely, a disc through which passes an axle. A\nsmart twirl given by the fingers to the axle makes the disc revolve\nvery rapidly, and its weight causes the rotation to continue for a\nconsiderable time. Spinning the wool was exclusively the task of the\nwomen, a custom which prevailed in this country up to a very recent\ntime, and which still traditionally survives in the term \"spinster,\"\nand in the metaphorical use of the word \"distaff\" as synonymous with\na woman's proper work.\n\nWhen spun into threads, the wool was woven in the simple loom\nwhich has existed up to our own day, and which is identical in its\ngeneral principles throughout a very large portion of the world. It\nconsisted of a framework of wood, at one end of which was placed the\n\"beam\" to which the warp was attached; and at the other end was the\n\"pin\" on which the cloth was rolled as it was finished.\n\nThe reader may remember that when Delilah was cajoling Samson to\ntell her the secret of his strength, he said, \"If thou weavest the\nseven locks of my head with the web.\" So, as he slept, she interwove\nhis long hair with the fabric which was on her loom, and, to make\nsure, \"fastened it with the pin,\" _i.e._ wove it completely into the\ncloth which was rolled round the pin. So firmly had she done so,\nthat when he awoke he could not disentangle his hair, but left the\nhouse with the whole of the loom, the beam and the pin, and the web\nhanging to his head.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWool was often dyed of various colours; blue, purple, and scarlet\nbeing those which were generally employed. The rams' skins which\nformed part of the covering of the Tabernacle were ordered to be\ndyed scarlet, partly on account of the significance of the colour,\nand partly because none but the best and purest fleeces would be\nchosen for so rare and costly a dye. How the colour was produced we\nshall learn towards the end of the volume.\n\nSheep-shearing was always a time of great rejoicing and revelry,\nwhich seem often to have been carried beyond the bounds of\nsobriety. Thus when Nabal had gathered together his three thousand\nSheep in Carmel, and held a shearing festival, David sent to ask for\nsome provisions for his band, and was refused in accordance with\nthe disposition of the man, who had inflamed his naturally churlish\nnature with wine. \"He held a feast in his house, like the feast of\na king: and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very\ndrunken\" (1 Sam. xxv. 36).\n\nThe same was probably the case when Laban was shearing his Sheep\n(Gen. xxxi. 19). Otherwise it would scarcely have been possible for\nJacob to have gone away unknown to Laban, taking with him his wives\nand children, his servants, his camels, and his flocks, the rapid\nincrease of which had excited the jealousy of his uncle, and which\nwere so numerous that, in fear of his brother Esau, he divided them\ninto two bands, and yet was able to select from them a present to\nhis brother, consisting in all of nearly six hundred sheep, camels,\noxen, goats, and asses.\n\nSometimes the shepherds and others who lived in pastoral districts\nmade themselves coats of the skins of the Sheep, with the wool still\nadhering to it. The custom extends to the present day, and even\nin many parts of Europe the sheep-skin dress of the shepherds is\na familiar sight to the traveller. The skin was sometimes tanned\nand used as leather, but was considered as inferior to that of the\ngoat. Mr. Tristram conjectures that the leathern \"girdle\" worn by\nSt. John the Baptist was probably the untanned sheep-skin coat which\nhas been just mentioned. So it is said of the early Christians, that\n\"they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute,\nafflicted, tormented,\" the sheep-skins in question being evidently\nthe rude shepherd's coats.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe horn of the ram had a national value, as from it were made the\nsacred trumpets which played so important a part in the history of\nthe Jewish nation. There is no doubt that the primitive trumpets\nwere originally formed either from the horn of an animal, such as\nthe ox, the large-horned antelopes, the sheep, and the goat, and\nthat in process of time they were made of metal, generally copper or\nsilver.\n\nReferences are frequently made in the Bible to these trumpets, for\nwhich there were different names, probably on account of their\ndifferent forms. These names are, however, very loosely rendered in\nour version, the same word being sometimes translated the \"cornet,\"\nand sometimes the \"trumpet.\"\n\n[Illustration: SOUNDING THE TRUMPETS IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE.]\n\nThe jubilee year was always ushered in by the blasts of the sacred\ntrumpets. \"Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound\non the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall\nye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land\" (Lev. xxv. 9).\nThen there was the festival known as the Feast of Trumpets. \"In the\nseventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy\nconvocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the\ntrumpets unto you\" (Numb. xxix. 1).\n\nOne of these trumpets is now before me, and is shown in the\naccompanying illustration.\n\nIn length it measures eighteen inches, _i.e._ a cubit, and it is\nformed entirely in one piece. As far as I can judge, it is made from\nthe left horn of the broad-tailed Sheep, which, as has already been\nremarked, is not spiral, but flattish, curved backwards, and forming\nnearly a circle, the point passing under the ear. This structure,\nadded to the large size of the horn, adapts it well for its purpose.\nIn order to bring it to the proper shape, the horn is softened by\nheat, and is then modelled into the very form which was used by the\nJewish priests who blew the trumpet before the ark.\n\n[Illustration: RAM'S HORN TRUMPET.]\n\nAt the present day one such trumpet, at least, is found in every\nJewish community, and is kept by the man who has the privilege of\nblowing it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe now come to the important subject, the use of the Sheep in\nsacrifice.\n\nNo animal was used so frequently for this purpose as the Sheep, and\nin many passages of the Mosaic law are specified the precise age as\nwell as the sex of the Sheep which was to be sacrificed in certain\ncircumstances. Sometimes the Sheep was sacrificed as an offering\nof thanksgiving, sometimes as an expiation for sin, and sometimes\nas a redemption for some more valuable animal. The young male lamb\nwas the usual sacrifice; and almost the only sacrifice for which a\nSheep might not be offered was that of the two goats on the great\nDay of Atonement.\n\n[Illustration: A LAMB UPON THE ALTAR OF BURNT OFFERING.]\n\nTo mention all the passages in which the Sheep is ordered for\nsacrifice would occupy too much of our space, and we will therefore\nrestrict ourselves to the one central rite of the Jewish nation, the\nsacrifice of the Paschal lamb, the precursor of the Lamb of God, who\ntaketh away the sins of the world.\n\nWithout examining in full the various ceremonies of the Paschal\nsacrifice, we will glance over the salient points which distinguish\nit from any other sacrifice.\n\nThe lamb must be a male, which is selected and examined with the\nminutest care, that it may be free from all blemish, and must be of\nthe first year. It must be killed on the fourteenth of the month\nAbib as the sun is setting, and the blood must be sprinkled with\nhyssop. In the first or Egyptian Passover the blood was sprinkled\non the lintels and doorposts of the houses, but afterwards on the\naltar. It must be roasted with fire, and not boiled, after the usual\ncustom in the East; not a bone must be broken. It must be eaten by\nthe household in haste, as if they were just starting on a journey,\nand if any of it should be left, it must be consumed in the fire,\nand not eaten on the following day.\n\nSuch are the chief points in connexion with the Paschal rite, at\nonce a sacrifice and a feast. The original directions not being\nsufficiently minute to meet all the practical difficulties which\nmight hinder the correct performance of the rite, a vast number\nof directions are given by the Rabbinical writers. In order, for\nexample, to guard against the destruction of any part of the animal\nby careless cooking over a fire, or the possible fracture of a bone\nby a sudden jet of flame, the Paschal lamb was rather baked than\nroasted, being placed in an earthen oven from which the ashes had\nbeen removed. In order to prevent it from being burned or blackened\nagainst the sides of the oven, (in which case it would be cooked\nwith earthenware and not with fire), it was transfixed with a wooden\nstake, made from the pomegranate-tree, and a transverse spit was\nthrust through the shoulders. These spits were made of wood, because\na metal spit would become heated in the oven, and would cause all\nthe flesh which it touched to be roasted with metal, and not with\nfire; and the wood of the pomegranate was chosen, because that wood\nwas supposed not to emit any sap when heated. If a drop of water had\nfallen on the flesh, the law would have been broken, as that part of\nthe flesh would be considered as boiled, and not roasted.\n\nAs to the eating of unleavened bread and bitter herbs with the lamb,\nthe custom does not bear on the present subject. In shape the oven\nseems to have resembled a straw beehive, having an opening at the\nside by which the fuel could be removed and the lamb inserted.\n\nThe ceremony of the Passover has been described by several persons,\nsuch as the late Consul Rogers and the Dean of Westminster, the\nlatter of whom has given, a most striking and vivid account of the\nrite in his \"Lectures on the Jewish Church.\"\n\nThe place which is now employed in the celebration of this rite\nis a level spot about two hundred yards from the summit of the\nmountain, a place which is apparently selected on account of its\ncomparative quiet and seclusion. Dean Stanley thinks that in former\ntimes, when the Samaritans were the masters of the country, they\ncelebrated the sacrifice on the sacred plateau on the very summit of\nthe mountain, so that the rite could be seen for a vast distance on\nevery side. Now, however, the less conspicuous place is preferred.\nBy the kindness of the Palestine Exploration Society, I am enabled\nto present the reader with a view of this sacred spot, taken from\na photograph made an hour or two before the time of sacrifice.\nThe rough, rugged character of the mountain is shown by this\nillustration, though not so well as in several other photographs of\nGerizim, in which the entire surface seems to be loosely covered\nwith stones like those of which the low wall is built. Near the\ncentre of the illustration may be seen a pile of sticks and the tops\nof two caldrons, on each of which a stone is laid to keep the cover\nfrom being blown off by the wind. These sticks nearly fill a trench\nin which the caldrons are sunk, and their use will be presently seen\non reading Dean Stanley's narrative. In the far distance are the\nplains of Samaria, and the long-drawn shadows of the priest and his\nnephew, and probable successor, show that the time of sacrifice is\nrapidly approaching.\n\n[Illustration: THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE.]\n\nOn the previous day the whole of the community had pitched their\ntents on the mountain, and as the time of sunset approached the\nwomen retired to the tents, and all the males, except those who were\nunclean according to the provisions of the Mosaic law, assembled\nnear a long deep trench that had been dug in the ground. The men\nare clothed in long white garments, and the six young men who are\nselected as the actual sacrifices are dressed in white drawers and\nshirts. These youths are trained to the duty, but whether they hold\nany sacred office could not be ascertained.\n\nThen, according to the narrative of Dean Stanley, \"the priest,\nascending a large rough stone in front of the congregation, recited\nin a loud chant or scream, in which the others joined, prayers or\npraises chiefly turning on the glories of Abraham and Isaac. Their\nattitude was that of all Orientals in prayer; standing, occasionally\ndiversified by the stretching out of the hands, and more rarely by\nkneeling or crouching, with their knees wrapped in their clothes and\nbent to the ground, towards the Holy Place on the summit of Gerizim.\nThe priest recited his prayers by heart; the others had mostly books\nin Hebrew and Arabic.\n\n\"Presently, suddenly there appeared amongst the worshippers six\nsheep, driven up by the side of the youths before mentioned. The\nunconscious innocence with which they wandered to and fro amongst\nthe bystanders, and the simplicity in aspect and manner of the young\nmen who tended them, more recalled a pastoral scene in Arcadia, or\none of those inimitable patriarchal _tableaux_ represented in the\nAmmergau Mystery, than a religious ceremonial.\n\n\"The sun, meanwhile, which had hitherto burnished up the\nMediterranean in the distance, now sank very nearly to the farthest\nwestern ridge overhanging the plain of Sharon. The recitation became\nmore vehement. The priest turned about, facing his brethren, and\nthe whole history of the Exodus from the beginning of the plagues\nof Egypt was rapidly, almost furiously, chanted. The sheep, still\ninnocently playful, were driven more closely together.\n\n\"The setting sun now touched the ridge. The youths burst into a\nwild murmur of their own, drew forth their long bright knives, and\nbrandished them aloft. In a moment the sheep were thrown on their\nbacks, and the flashing knives rapidly drawn across their throats.\nThen a few convulsive but silent struggles--'as a sheep ... dumb ...\nthat openeth not his mouth,'--and the six forms lay lifeless on the\nground, the blood streaming from them; the one only Jewish sacrifice\nlingering in the world. In the blood the young men dipped their\nfingers, and a small spot was marked on the foreheads and noses of\nthe children. A few years ago the red stain was placed on all. But\nthis had now dwindled away into the present practice, preserved,\nwe were told, as a relic or emblem of the whole. Then, as if in\ncongratulation at the completion of the ceremony, they all kissed\neach other, in the Oriental fashion, on each side of the head.\n\n\"The next process was that of the fleecing and roasting of the\nslaughtered animals, for which the ancient temple furnished such\nample provisions. Two holes on the mountain side had been dug;\none at some distance, of considerable depth, the other, close to\nthe scene of the sacrifice, comparatively shallow. In this latter\ncavity, after a short prayer, a fire was kindled, out of the mass of\ndry heath, juniper, and briers, such as furnished the materials for\nthe conflagration in Jotham's parable, delivered not far from this\nspot.\n\n\"Over the fire were placed two caldrons full of water. Whilst the\nwater boiled, the congregation again stood around, and (as if for\neconomy of time) continued the recitation of the Book of Exodus,\nand bitter herbs were handed round wrapped in a strip of unleavened\nbread--'with unleavened bread and bitter herbs shall they eat\nit.' Then was chanted another short prayer; after which the six\nyouths again appeared, poured the boiling water over the sheep, and\nplucked off their fleeces. The right forelegs of the sheep, with the\nentrails, were thrown aside and burnt. The liver was carefully put\nback. Long poles were brought, on which the animals were spitted;\nnear the bottom of each pole was a transverse peg or stick, to\nprevent the body from slipping off.\"\n\nThis cross-piece does not, however, penetrate the body, which in\nmost cases scarcely touches it, so that there is little or no\nresemblance to a crucifixion. The writer lays especial stress on\nthis point, because the early Christians saw in the transverse spit\nan emblem of the cross. In the Jewish Passover this emblem would\nhave been more appropriate, as in that ceremony the cross-piece was\npassed through the shoulders, and the forefeet tied to it.\n\nThe Sheep being now prepared, they were carried to the oven, which\non this occasion was a deep, circular pit, in which a fire had been\npreviously kindled. Into this the victims were carefully lowered,\nthe stakes on which they were impaled guarding their bodies from\ntouching the sides of the oven, and the cross-piece at the end\npreventing them from slipping off the stake to the bottom of the pit\namong the ashes. A hurdle was then laid on the mouth of the pit,\nand wet earth was heaped upon it so as to close it completely. The\ngreater part of the community then retired to rest. In about five\nhours, the Paschal moon being high in the heavens, announcement\nwas made that the feast was about to begin. Then, to resume Dean\nStanley's narrative,\n\n\"Suddenly the covering of the hole was torn off, and up rose into\nthe still moonlit sky a vast column of smoke and steam; recalling,\nwith a shock of surprise, that, even by an accidental coincidence,\nReginald Heber should have so well caught this striking feature of\nso remote and unknown a ritual:\n\n  'Smokes on Gerizim's mount Samaria's sacrifice.'\n\n\"Out of the pit were dragged successively the six sheep, on their\nlong spits, black from the oven. The outlines of their heads, their\nears, their legs, were still visible--'his head, with his legs, and\nwith the inward parts thereof.' They were hoisted aloft, and then\nthrown on large square brown mats, previously prepared for their\nreception, on which we were carefully prevented from treading, as\nalso from touching even the extremities of the spit.\n\n\"The bodies thus wrapped in the mats were hurried down to the trench\nwhere the sacrifice had taken place, and laid out upon them in a\nline between two files of the Samaritans. Those who had before been\ndressed in white robes still retained them, with the addition now\nof shoes on their feet and staves in their hands, and ropes round\ntheir waists--'thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your\nshoes on your feet, your staff in your hand.' The recitation of\nprayers or of the Pentateuch recommenced, and continued till it\nsuddenly terminated in their all sitting down on their haunches,\nafter the Arab fashion at meals, and beginning to eat. This, too,\nis a deviation from the practice of only a few years since, when\nthey retained the Mosaic ritual of standing whilst they ate. The\nactual feast was conducted in rapid silence, as of men in hunger, as\nno doubt most of them were, and so as soon to consume every portion\nof the blackened masses, which they tore away piecemeal with their\nfingers--'ye shall eat in haste.' There was a general merriment, as\nof a hearty and welcome meal.\n\n\"In ten minutes all was gone but a few remnants. To the priest and\nto the women, who, all but two (probably his two wives), remained\nin the tents, separate morsels were carried round. The remnants\nwere gathered into the mats, and put on a wooden grate, or hurdle,\nover the hole where the water had been originally boiled; the fire\nwas again lit, and a huge bonfire was kindled. By its blaze, and by\ncandles lighted for the purpose, the ground was searched in every\ndirection, as for the consecrated particles of sacramental elements;\nand these fragments of flesh and bone were thrown upon the burning\nmass--'ye shall let nothing remain until the morning; and that which\nremaineth until the morning ye shall burn with fire;' 'there shall\nnot anything of the flesh which thou sacrificest the first day at\neven remain all night until the morning;' 'thou shalt not carry\nforth aught of the flesh abroad out of the house.' The flames blazed\nup once more, and then gradually sank away.\n\n[Illustration: sheep]\n\n\"Perhaps in another century the fire on Mount Gerizim will be the\nonly relic left of this most interesting and ancient rite.\"\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: chamois]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHAMOIS.\n\n     The Zemer or Chamois only once mentioned in the\n     Bible--Signification of the word Zemer--Probability that the\n     Zemer is the Aoudad--Its strength and activity--The Mouflon\n     probably classed with the Aoudad under the name of Zemer.\n\n\nAmong the animals which may be used for food is mentioned one which\nin our version is rendered Chamois. See Deut. xiv. 5, a passage\nwhich has several times been quoted.\n\nIt is evident to any one acquainted with zoology that, whatever\nmay be the Hebrew word, \"Chamois\" cannot be the correct rendering,\ninasmuch as this animal does not inhabit Palestine, nor are there\nany proofs that it ever did so. The Chamois frequents the lofty\ninaccessible crags of the highest mountains, finding its food in the\nscanty herbage which grows in such regions, appearing on the brink\nof awful precipices, and leaping from ledge to ledge with ease and\nsafety. We must, therefore, look for some other animal.\n\nThe Chamois is one of the most wary of Antelopes, and possesses the\npower of scenting mankind at what would seem to be an impossible\ndistance.\n\nIts ears are as acute as its nostrils, so that there are few animals\nwhich are so difficult to approach.\n\nOnly those who have been trained to climb the giddy heights of the\nAlpine Mountains, to traverse the most fearful precipices with a\nquiet pulse and steady head, to exist for days amid the terrible\nsolitudes of ice, rock, and snow,--only these, can hope to come\nwithin sight of the Chamois, when the animal is at large upon its\nnative cliffs.\n\nThe Hebrew word, which has been rendered Chamois, is Zamar, or\nZemer, _i. e._ the leaper, and therefore an animal which is\nconspicuous for its agility. Zoologists have now agreed in the\nopinion that the Zamer of Deuteronomy is the handsome wild sheep\nwhich we know under the name of Aoudad (_Ammotragus Tragelaphus_).\nThis splendid sheep is known by various names. It is the Jaela of\nsome authors, and the Bearded Sheep of others. It is also called the\nFichtall, or Lerwea; and the French zoologists describe it under the\nname of _Mouflon a manchettes_, in allusion to the fringe of long\nhair that ornaments the fore limbs.\n\nThe Aoudad is a large and powerful animal, exceedingly active,\nand has the habits of the goat rather than of the sheep, on which\naccount it is reckoned among the goats by the Arabs of the present\nday, and doubtless was similarly classed by the ancient inhabitants\nof Palestine. The height of the adult Aoudad is about three feet,\nand its general colour is pale dun, relieved by the dark masses of\nlong hair that fall from the neck and the tufts of similar hair\nwhich decorate the knees of the male. The female is also bearded and\ntufted, but the hair, which in the male looks like the mane of the\nlion, in the female is but slightly developed.\n\nIt is so powerful and active an animal, that an adult male which\nlived for some time in the Zoological Gardens was much dreaded\nby the keepers, not even the man who fed it liking to enter the\nenclosure if he could help himself. The animal was given to making\nunexpected charges, and would do so with astonishing quickness,\nspringing round and leaping at the object of his hate with\ntremendous force, and with such rapidity that even the experienced\nkeeper, who knew all the ways of the animals under his charge, had\noften some difficulty in slipping behind the door, against which the\nhorns of the Aoudad would clatter as if they would break the door to\npieces. So fond was he of attacking something that he would often\nbutt repeatedly at the wooden side of the shed, hurling himself\nagainst it with eager fury.\n\n[Illustration: CHAMOIS DEFENDING ITS YOUNG.]\n\n[Illustration: CHASING THE AOUDAD.]\n\nThe horns of the Aoudad are about two feet in length, and are of\nconsiderable diameter. They curve boldly and gracefully backwards,\ntheir points diverging considerably from each other, so that when\nthe animal throws its head up, the points of the horns come on\neither side of the back. This divergence of the horns has another\nobject. They cover a considerable space, so that when the animal\nmakes its charge the object of its anger has much more difficulty in\nescaping the blow than if the horns were closer together.\n\nWhether these horns were used as musical instruments is doubtful,\nsimply because we are not absolutely sure that the Zamar and the\nAoudad are identical, however great may be the probability. But\ninasmuch as the horn-trumpets were evidently of various sizes, it\nis certain that the Jewish musicians would never have neglected to\ntake advantage of such magnificent materials as they would obtain\nfrom the horns of this animal. Perhaps the Chaldaic \"keren\" may have\nbeen the horn of the Aoudad, or of the animal which will next be\nmentioned.\n\nThe Aoudad is wonderfully active, and even the young ones bound to\nan astonishing height. I have seen the marks of their hoofs eight\nfeet from the ground.\n\nIn its wild state the Aoudad lives in little flocks or herds,\nand prefers the high and rocky ground, over which it leaps with\na sure-footed agility equal to that of the Chamois itself. These\nflocks are chased by hunters, who try to get it upon the lowest and\nleast broken ground, where it is at a disadvantage, and then run it\ndown with their horses, as seen in the illustration on page 214.\n\nThe Aoudad was formerly plentiful in Egypt, and even now is\nfound along the Atlas mountain-range. It is seen on the Egyptian\nmonuments, and, owing to its evident profusion, we have every reason\nto conjecture that it was one of those animals which were specially\nindicated as chewing the cud and cleaving the hoof.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPerhaps the MOUFLON (_Caprovis Musimon_) may be the animal which is\nmeant by the Hebrew word Zamar, and it is not unlikely that both\nanimals may have been included in one name.\n\nThis animal, which is nearly allied to the Aoudad, is also very\ngoatlike in general aspect. It is indeed to this resemblance that\nthe name Caprovis, or goat-sheep, has been given to it. The name\nAmmotragus, which, as mentioned above, belongs to the Aoudad, has a\nsimilar signification.\n\nThe horns of the Mouflon belong only to the male animal, and are\nof enormous size, so that if trumpets of deep tone and great power\nwere needed, they could be obtained from the horns of this animal.\nThose of the Aoudad are very large, and would be well adapted for\nthe same purpose, but they would not furnish such instruments as\nthe horns of the Mouflon, which are so large that they seem almost\nunwieldy for an animal of twice the Mouflon's size, and give visible\nproofs of the strength and agility of an animal which can carry them\nso lightly and leap about under their weight so easily as does the\nMouflon.\n\n[Illustration: THE MOUFLON.]\n\nAt the present time the Mouflon is only to be found in Crete,\nSardinia, and Corsica, but formerly it was known to inhabit many\nother parts of the earth, and was almost certainly one of the many\nanimals which then haunted the Lebanon, but which have in later days\nbeen extirpated.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOAT.\n\n     Value of the Goat--Its use in furnishing food--The male kid the\n     usual animal of slaughter--Excellence of the flesh and deception\n     of Isaac--Milk of the Goat--An Oriental milking scene--The hair\n     of the goat, and the uses to which it is put--The Goat's skin\n     used for leather--The \"bottle\" of Scripture--Mode of making\n     and repairing the bottles--Ruse of the Gibeonites--The \"bottle\n     in the smoke\"--The sacks and the kneading troughs--The Goat as\n     used for sacrifice--General habits of the Goat--Separation of\n     the Goats from the sheep--Performing Goats--Different breeds of\n     Goats in Palestine.\n\n\nWhether considered in reference to food, to clothing, or to\nsacrifice, the GOAT was scarcely a less important animal than the\nsheep. It was especially valuable in such a country as Palestine,\nin which the soil and the climate vary so much according to the\nlocality. Upon the large fertile plains the sheep are bred in vast\nflocks, the rich and succulent grass being exactly to their taste;\nwhile in the hilly and craggy districts the Goats abound, and\ndelight in browsing upon the scanty herbage that grows upon the\nmountain-side.\n\nFor food the Goat was even more extensively used than the sheep.\nThe adult male was, of course, not eaten, being very tough, and\nhaving an odour which would repel any but an actually starving man.\nNeither were the females generally eaten, as they were needed for\nthe future increase of the flocks. The young male kid formed the\nprincipal material of a feast, and as soon as a stranger claimed the\nhospitality of a man in good circumstances, the first thing that was\ndone was to take a young male kid and dress it for him.\n\nFor example, when the angel visited Gideon in the guise of a\nstranger, Gideon \"went in and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes\nof an ephah of flour,\" and brought them to his guest (Judges vi.\n19). And when Isaac was on his death-bed and asked Esau to take\nhis bow and arrows and hunt for \"venison,\" which was probably the\nflesh of one of the antelopes which have already been mentioned, a\nready substitute was found in the two kids, from whose flesh Rebekah\nmade the dish for which he longed. The imposition might easily\npass without detection, because the flesh of the kid is peculiarly\ntender, and can scarcely be distinguished from lamb, even when\nsimply roasted. Isaac, therefore, with his senses dulled by his\ngreat age, was the less likely to discover the imposture, when the\nflesh of the kids was stewed into \"savoury meat such as he loved.\"\n\n[Illustration: JACOB DECEIVES HIS FATHER AND TAKES ESAU'S BLESSING.]\n\nA curious illustration of the prevalence of kid's flesh as food is\ngiven in the parable of the prodigal son, for whom his father had\nkilled the fatted calf. \"And he answering said to his father, Lo,\nthese many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any\ntime thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I\nmight make merry with my friends\" (Luke xv. 29). The force of the\nreproval cannot be properly understood unless we are acquainted with\nthe customs of the East. The kid was the least valuable animal that\ncould have been given, less valuable than a lamb, and infinitely\ninferior to the fatted calf, which was kept in wealthy households\nfor some feast of more than ordinary magnificence.\n\nThe kid was cooked exactly in the same manner as the sheep, namely,\nby cutting to pieces and stewing in a caldron, the meat and broth\nbeing served separately. See, for example, the case of Gideon, to\nwhom a reference has already been made. When he brought the banquet\nto his guest, \"the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth\nin a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented\nit. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the\nunleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the\nbroth.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE ANGEL APPEARS TO GIDEON.]\n\nGideon did so, and the angel reached forth the staff that was in his\nhand, and touched the flesh, and there rose up fire out of the rock\nand burnt up the offering.\n\nThe same custom exists at the present day. When an Arab chief\nreceives a guest, a kid is immediately killed and given to the\nwomen to be cooked, and the guest is pressed to stay until it is\nready, in the very words used by Gideon three thousand years ago.\n\"Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring\nforth my present, and set it before thee.\" The refusal of proffered\nhospitality would be, and still is considered to be, either a\nstudied insult, or a proof of bad manners, and no one with any\nclaims to breeding would commit such an action without urgent cause\nand much apology.\n\nLike the sheep, the Goat is extremely valuable as a milk-producer,\nand at the present day the milk of the Goat is used as largely as\nthat of the sheep. \"At Rasheiya, under Mount Hermon,\" writes Mr.\nTristram, \"we saw some hundreds of goats gathering for the night\nin the wide open market-place beneath the castle. It was no easy\nmatter to thread our way among them, as they had no idea of moving\nfor such belated intruders on their rest. All the she-goats of the\nneighbouring hills are driven in every evening, and remain for\ntheir morning's milking, after which they set forth on their day's\nexcursion.\n\n\"Each house possesses several, and all know their owners. The\nevening milking is a picturesque scene. Every street and open space\nis filled with the goats; and women, boys, and girls are everywhere\nmilking with their small pewter pots, while the goats are anxiously\nawaiting their turn, or lying down to chew the cud as soon as it\nis over. As no kids or he-goats are admitted, the scene is very\norderly, and there is none of the deafening bleating which usually\ncharacterises large flocks.\n\n\"These mountain goats are a solemn set, and by the gravity of their\ndemeanour excite a suspicion that they have had no youth, and never\nwere kids. They need no herdsman to bring them home in the evening,\nfor, fully sensible of the danger of remaining unprotected, they\nhurry homewards of their own accord as soon as the sun begins to\ndecline.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLike the wool of the sheep, the hair of the Goat is used for the\nmanufacture of clothing; and, as is the case with wool, its quality\ndiffers according to the particular breed of the animal, which\nassumes almost as many varieties as the sheep or the dog. The hair\nof some varieties is thick and rough, and can only be made into\ncoarse cloths, while others, of which the mohair Goat and Cashmere\nGoat are familiar examples, furnish a staple of surpassing delicacy\nand fineness. It is most likely that the covering and curtains of\nthe Tabernacle mentioned in Exod. xxvi. 7 were of the latter kind,\nas otherwise they would have been out of character with the fine\nlinen, and blue and scarlet, their golden clasps, and the profuse\nmagnificence which distinguished every part of the sacred building.\nMoreover, the hair of the Goat is classed among the costly offerings\nwhich were made when the Tabernacle was built. \"And they came\nforth, men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought\nbracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of\ngold: and every man that offered offered an offering of gold unto\nthe Lord. And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and\nscarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and red skins of rams, and\nbadgers' skins, brought them\" to be used in the structure of that\nwonderful building, in which nothing might be used except the finest\nand costliest that could be procured.\n\nOne of the principal uses to which the goat-skin was applied was\nthe manufacture of leather, for which purpose it is still used,\nand is considered far better than that of the sheep. Perhaps the\nmost common form in which this leather is used is the well-known\nwater-vessel, or \"bottle\" of the Bible.\n\nThese so-called bottles are made from the entire skin of the animal,\nwhich is prepared in slightly different methods according to the\nlocality in which the manufacture is carried on. In Palestine they\nare soaked for some little time in the tanning mixture, and are\nthen filled with water, after the seams have been pitched. In this\nstate they are kept for some time, and are kept exposed to the sun,\ncovered entirely with the tanning fluid, and filled up with water to\nsupply the loss caused by evaporation and leakage.\n\nThe hair is allowed to remain on the skins, because it acts as a\npreservative against the rough usage to which they are subject at\nthe hard hands of the water-carriers. By degrees the hairy covering\nwears off, first in patches, and then over the entire surface, so\nthat a new bottle can be recognised at a glance, and any one who\nwished to sell an old bottle at the price of a new one would be at\nonce detected.\n\nVessels made in this rude manner are absolutely necessary in the\ncountries wherein they are used. Wooden or metal vessels would be\ntoo heavy, and, besides, the slight though constant evaporation\nthat always takes place through the pores of the leather keeps\ndown the temperature of the water, even under a burning sun, the\nslight loss which is caused by the porousness of the skin being\nmore than counterbalanced by the coolness of the water. It is true\nthat the goat-skin communicates to the liquid a flavour far from\npleasant, but in those countries the quality of the water is of\nlittle consequence, provided that it is plentiful in quantity, and\ntolerably cool.\n\nIn all parts of the world where the skin is used for this purpose\nthe mode of manufacture is practically identical. An account of the\nart of preparing the goat-skin as practised in Abyssinia is given by\nMr. C. Johnston, in his \"Travels in Southern Abyssinia:\"--\n\n\"To be of any value it must be taken off uncut, except around the\nneck, and in those situations necessary to enable the butchers to\ndraw the legs out of the skin; also, of course, where the first\nincision is made to commence the process, and which is a circular\ncut carried around both haunches, not many inches from and having\nthe tail for a centre. The hide is then stripped over the thighs,\nand two smaller incisions being made round the middle joint of the\nhind-legs enable them to be drawn out.\n\n\"A stick is now placed to extend these extremities, and by this, for\nthe convenience of the operators, the whole carcase is suspended\nfrom the branch of a tree, and, by some easy pulls around the body,\nthe skin is gradually withdrawn over the fore-legs, which are\nincised around the knees, to admit of their being taken out; after\nwhich, the head being removed, the whole business concludes by the\nskin being pulled inside out over the decollated neck. One of the\nparties now takes a rough stone and well rubs the inside surface,\nto divest it of a few fibres of the subcutaneous muscle which are\ninserted into the skin, and after this operation it is laid aside\nuntil the next day; the more interesting business of attending to\nthe meat calling for immediate attention.\n\n\"These entire skins are afterwards made into sacks by the apertures\naround the neck and legs being secured by a double fold of the\nskin being sewed upon each other, by means of a slender but very\ntough thong. These small seams are rendered quite air-tight, and\nthe larger orifice around the haunches being gathered together by\nthe hands, the yet raw skin is distended with air; and the orifice\nbeing then tied up, the swollen bag is left in that state for a few\ndays, until slight putrefaction has commenced, when the application\nof the rough stone soon divests its surface of the hair. After\nthis has been effected, a deal of labour, during at least one\nday, is required to soften the distended skin by beating it with\nheavy sticks, or trampling upon it for hours together, the labourer\nsupporting himself by clinging to the bough of a tree overhead, or\nholding on by the wall of the house.\n\n\"In this manner, whilst the skin is drying, it is prevented from\ngetting stiff, and, still further to secure it from this evil\ncondition, it is frequently rubbed with small quantities of butter.\nWhen it is supposed that there is no chance of the skin becoming\nhard and easily broken, the orifice is opened, the air escapes, and\na very soft, flaccid leather bag is produced, but which, for several\ndays after, affords an amusement to the owner, when otherwise\nunemployed, by well rubbing it all over with his hands.\"\n\nThe reader will see that the two processes are practically\nidentical, the chief difference being that in one country the skins\nare distended with water and in the other with air.\n\nAs these bottles are rather apt to be damaged by the thorns,\nbranches, rocks, and similar objects with which they come in\ncontact, and are much too valuable to be thrown away as useless,\ntheir owners have discovered methods of patching and repairing\nthem, which enable them to be used for some time longer. Patches of\nconsiderable size are sometimes inserted, if the rent should be of\nimportance, while the wound caused by a thorn is mended by a simple\nand efficacious expedient. The skin is first emptied, and a round\nflat piece of wood, or even a stone of suitable shape, is put into\nit. The skin is then held with the wounded part downwards, and the\nstone shaken about until it comes exactly upon the hole. It is then\ngrasped, the still wet hide gathered tightly under it, so as to\npucker up the skin, and a ligature is tied firmly round it. Perhaps\nsome of my readers may have practised the same method of mending a\npunctured football.\n\nAllusion to this mode of mending the skin bottles is made in Josh.\nix. 4, 13. The Gibeonites \"did work wilily, and went and made as if\nthey had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and\nwine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up ... and said ... these\nbottles of wine, which we filled, were new; and, behold, they be\nrent.\"\n\nIf these skin bottles be allowed to become dry, as is sometimes the\ncase when they are hung up in the smoky tents, they shrivel up,\nand become rotten and weak, and are no longer enabled to bear the\npressure caused by the fermentation of new wine. So, in Ps. cxix.\n81-83: \"My soul fainteth for Thy salvation: but I hope in Thy word.\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN WATER-CARRIERS WITH BOTTLES MADE OF\nGOAT-SKIN.]\n\n\"Mine eyes fail for Thy word, saying, When wilt Thou comfort me?\n\n\"For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget Thy\nstatutes.\"\n\nHow forcible does not this image become, when we realize the early\nlife of the shepherd poet, his dwelling in tents wherein are no\nwindows nor chimneys, and in which the smoke rolls to and fro until\nit settles in the form of soot upon the leathern bottles and other\nrude articles of furniture that are hung from the poles!\n\nIn the New Testament there is a well-known allusion to the weakness\nof old bottles: \"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, or\nthe bottles break and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish;\nbut they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.\" It\nwould be impossible to understand the meaning of this passage unless\nwe knew that the \"bottles\" in question were not vessels of glass or\nearthenware, but merely the partly-tanned skins of goats.\n\nAnother allusion to the use of the goat-skin is made in that part of\nthe Book of Joshua which has already been mentioned. If the reader\nwill refer to Josh. ix. 4, he will see that the Gibeonites took with\nthem not only old bottles, but old sacks. Now, these sacks bore no\nresemblance to the hempen bags with which we are so familiar, but\nwere nothing more than the same goat-skins that were employed in\nthe manufacture of bottles, but with the opening at the neck left\nopen. They were, in fact, skin-bottles for holding solids instead of\nliquids. The sacks which Joseph's brethren took with them, and in\nthe mouths of which they found their money, were simply goat-skin\nbags, made as described.\n\nYet another use for the goat-skin. It is almost certain that the\n\"kneading-troughs\" of the ancient Israelites were simply circular\npieces of goat-skin, which could be laid on the ground when wanted,\nand rolled up and carried away when out of use. Thus, the fact\nthat \"the people took their dough before it was leavened, their\nkneading-troughs being bound up in their clothing upon their\nshoulders,\" need cause no surprise.\n\nNothing could be more in accordance with probability. The women were\nall hard at work, preparing the bread for the expected journey, when\nthe terrified Pharaoh \"called for Moses and Aaron by night, and\nsaid, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and\nthe children of Israel, and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said....\nAnd the Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send\nthem out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.\"\n\nSo the women, being disturbed at their work, and being driven\nout of the country before they had leavened, much less baked,\ntheir bread, had no alternative but to roll up the dough in the\nleathern \"kneading-troughs,\" tie them up in a bundle with their\nspare clothing, and carry them on their shoulders; whereas, if we\nconnect the kneading-troughs with the large heavy wooden implements\nused in this country, we shall form an entirely erroneous idea of\nthe proceeding. As soon as they came to their first halting-place\nat Succoth, they took the leathern kneading-troughs out of their\nclothes, unrolled them, took the dough which had not even been\nleavened, so unexpectedly had the order for marching arrived, made\nit into flat cakes, and baked them as they best could. The same kind\nof \"kneading-trough\" is still in use in many parts of the world.\n\nStone as well as earthenware jars were also used by the inhabitants\nof ancient Palestine; but they were only employed for the storage of\nwine in houses, whereas the bottles that were used in carrying wine\nfrom one place to another were invariably made of leather. Water\nalso was stored in stone or earthenware jars. See, for example,\nJohn ii. 6: \"And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after\nthe manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three\nfirkins apiece.\" Whereas, when it was carried about, it was poured\ninto bottles made of skin. Such was probably the \"bottle of water\"\nthat Abraham put on Hagar's shoulder, when she was driven away by\nthe jealousy of Sarah, and such was the \"bottle of wine\" that Hannah\nbrought as her offering when she dedicated Samuel to the service of\nGod.\n\nIn sacrifices the Goat was in nearly as much requisition as the\nlamb, and in one--namely, that which was celebrated on the Great Day\nof Atonement--the Goat was specially mentioned as the only animal\nwhich could be sacrificed. The reader will, perhaps, remember that\nfor this peculiar sacrifice two Goats were required, on which two\nlots were cast, one for the Lord, _i.e._ with the word \"Jehovah\"\nupon it, and the other for the scapegoat, _i.e._ inscribed with the\nword \"Azazel.\" The latter term is derived from two Hebrew words,\nthe former being \"Az,\" which is the general name for the Goat, and\nthe second \"azel,\" signifying \"he departed.\" The former, which\nbelonged to Jehovah, was sacrificed, and its blood sprinkled upon\nthe mercy-seat and the altar of incense; and the Goat Azazel was\nled away into the wilderness, bearing upon its head the sins of the\npeople, and there let loose.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThese being the uses of the Goat, it may naturally be imagined that\nthe animal is one of extreme importance, and that it is watched as\ncarefully by its owners as the sheep. Indeed, both sheep and Goats\nbelong to the same master, and are tended by the same shepherd, who\nexercises the same sway over them that he does over the sheep.\n\nThey are, however, erratic animals, and, although they will follow\nthe shepherd wherever he may lead them, they will not mix with the\nsheep. The latter will walk in a compact flock along the valley, the\nshepherd leading the way, and the sheep following him, led in their\nturn by the sound of the bell tied round the neck of the master-ram\nof the flock. The Goats, however, will not submit to walk in so\nquiet a manner, but prefer to climb along the sides of the rocks\nthat skirt the valleys, skipping and jumping as they go, and seeming\nto take delight in getting themselves into dangerous places, where a\nman could not venture to set his foot.\n\nIn the evening, when the shepherds call their flocks to repose,\nthey often make use of the caverns which exist at some height in\nthe precipitous side of the hills, as being safe strongholds, where\nthe jackal and the hyaena will not venture to attack them. When such\nis the case, the shepherds take their station by the mouth of the\ncave, and assist the sheep as they come sedately up the narrow path\nthat leads to the cavern. The Goats, however, need no assistance,\nbut come scrambling along by paths where no foot but a Goat's could\ntread, mostly descending from a considerable height above the cave,\nand, as if in exultation at their superior agility, jumping over the\nbacks of the sheep as they slowly file into the accustomed fold.\n\nFriendly as they are, the Goats and sheep never mingle together.\nThere may be large flocks of them feeding in the same pasturage,\nbut the Goats always take the highest spots on which verdure grows,\nwhile the sheep graze quietly below. Goats are specially fond of the\ntender shoots of trees, which they find in plenty upon the mountain\nside; and, according to Mr. Tristram, by their continual browsing,\nthey have extirpated many species of trees which were once common on\nthe hills of Palestine, and which now can only be found in Lebanon\non the east of the Jordan.\n\n[Illustration: GOATS ON THE MARCH.]\n\nEven when folded together in the same enclosure, the Goats never\nmix with the sheep, but gather together by themselves, and they\ninstinctively take the same order when assembled round the wells at\nmid-day.\n\nThis instinctive separation of the sheep and the goats naturally\nrecalls to our minds the well-known saying of our Lord that \"before\nHim shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one\nfrom another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and\nHe shall set the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left.\"\n\nThe image thus used was one that was familiar to all the hearers,\nwho were accustomed daily to see the herds of sheep and Goats under\none shepherd, yet totally distinct from each other. At feeding-time\nthe Goats will be browsing in long lines on the mountain sides,\nwhile the sheep are grazing in the plain or valley; at mid-day, when\nthe flocks are gathered round the wells to await the rolling away\nof the stone that guards the water, the Goats assemble on one side\nand the sheep on the other. And at night, when they are all gathered\ninto one fold by one shepherd, they are still separated from each\nother. The same image is employed by the prophet Ezekiel: \"As for\nyou, O my flock, thus said the Lord God, Behold I judge between\ncattle and cattle, between rams and the he-goats.\"\n\nGenerally, the leading Goat was distinguished by a bell as well as\nthe leading sheep, and in reference to this custom there was an old\nproverb, \"If the shepherd takes the lead, he blinds the bell-goat,\"\nwhile another proverb is based upon the inferior docility of the\nanimal--\"If the shepherd be lame, the Goats will run away.\"\n\nYet the Goat can be tamed very effectively, and can even be\ntaught to perform many tricks. \"We saw just below us, on the\nrudely-constructed 'parade,' a crowd of men and children,\nsurrounding a fantastically-dressed man exhibiting a Goat, which had\nbeen tutored to perform some cunning trick. It stood with its four\nfeet close together on the top of a very long pole, and allowed the\nman to lift it up and carry it round and round within the circle;\nthen the Goat was perched on four sticks, and again carried about. A\nlittle band of music--pipes, drums, and tambourines--called together\nthe people from all parts of the town to witness this performance.\n\n\"The Goat danced and balanced himself obediently and perfectly, in\nvery unnatural-looking positions, as if thoroughly understanding the\nwords and commands of his master. The men who watched the actions of\nthe Goat looked as grave and serious as if they were attending a\nphilosophical or scientific lecture.\" (\"Domestic Life in Palestine,\"\nby Miss Rogers.)\n\nAnother feat is a favourite with the proprietors of trained Goats.\nThe man takes a stool and plants it carefully on the ground, so as\nto be perfectly level, and then orders the Goat to stand upon it.\nA piece of wood about six inches in length, and shaped something\nlike a dice-box, is then placed on the stool, and the Goat manages\nto stand on it, all his sharp, hard hoofs being pressed closely\ntogether on the tiny surface. The man then takes another piece of\nwood and holds it to the Goat's feet. The animal gently removes\nfirst one foot and then another, and, by careful shifting of the\nfeet, enables its master to place the second piece of wood on the\nfirst. Successive additions are made, until at the last the Goat is\nperched on the topmost of some nine or ten pieces of wood balanced\non each other, the whole looking like a stout reed marked off with\njoints.\n\nThe stately steps and bold bearing of the old he-goat is mentioned\nin the Proverbs: \"There be three things which go well, yea, four are\ncomely in going:\n\n\"A lion, which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for\nany;\n\n\"A greyhound; an he-goat also; and a king, against whom there is no\nrising up.\" (Prov. xxx. 29-31.) The word which is here rendered as\nhe-goat signifies literally the \"Butter,\" and is given to the animal\non account of the mode in which it uses its formidable horns. The\nword is not common in the Bible, but it is used even at the present\nday among the Arabs.\n\nSeveral herds of goats exist in Palestine, the most valuable of\nwhich is the Mohair Goat, and the most common the Syrian Goat.\nThese, however dissimilar they may be in appearance, are only\nvarieties of the ordinary domestic animal, the former being produced\nartificially by carefully selecting those specimens for breeding\nwhich have the longest and finest hair. It was from the hair of this\nbreed that the costly fabrics used in the Tabernacle were woven, and\nit is probably to this breed that reference is made in Solomon's\nSong, iv. 1, 2: \"Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art\nfair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock\nof goats, that appear from Mount Gilead.\n\n\"Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which\ncame up from the washing.\" In this passage the careful reader\nwill also note another reference to the habits of the Goats and\nsheep, the hair being compared to the dark-haired Goats that wander\non the tops of the hills, while the teeth are compared to sheep\nthat are ranged in regular order below. The Mohair Goat is known\nscientifically as _Capra Angorensis_. The same image is used again\nin chap. vi. 5.\n\n[Illustration: HERD OF GOATS ATTACKED BY A LION.]\n\nThe second breed is that which is commonest throughout the country.\nIt is known by the name of the Syrian Goat, and is remarkable for\nthe enormous length of its ears, which sometimes exceed a foot from\nroot to tip. This variety has been described as a separate species\nunder the name of _Capra Mambrica_, or _C. Syriaca_, but, like the\nMohair Goat, and twenty-three other so-called species, is simply a\nvariety of the common Goat, _Hircus aegragus_.\n\nReference is made to the long ears of the Syrian Goat in Amos iii.\n12: \"Thus saith the Lord: As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth\nof the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children\nof Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria.\" Such a scene, which\nwas familiar to Amos, the shepherd as well as the prophet, is\nrepresented in the illustration. In the foreground is the goat on\nwhich the lion has sprung, and from which one of the long ears has\nbeen torn away. Its companions are gathering round it in sympathy,\nwhile its kid is trying to discover the cause of its mother's\nuneasiness. In the background is a group of armed shepherds,\nstanding round the lion which they have just killed, while one of\nthem is holding up the torn ear which he has taken out of the lion's\nmouth.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WILD GOAT.\n\n     The Azelim or Wild Goats of Scripture identical with the Beden\n     or Arabian Ibex--Different names of the Beden--Its appearance\n     and general habits--En-gedi, or Goats' Fountain--The Beden\n     formerly very plentiful in Palestine, and now tolerably\n     common--Its agility--Difficulty of catching or killing it--How\n     the young are captured--Flesh of the Beden--Use of the horns at\n     the present day--The Ako of Deuteronomy.\n\n\nIn three passages of the Old Testament occurs a word, \"Azelim,\"\nwhich is variously translated in our Authorized Version.\n\nIt is first seen in 1 Sam. xxiv. 2, in which it is rendered as\n\"Wild Goats.\" \"It was told Saul, saying, Behold, David is in the\nwilderness of En-gedi [_i.e._ the Fountain of the Goat]. Then Saul\ntook three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek\nDavid and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats (_azelim_).\" The\nsame word occurs in Job xxxix. 1: \"Knowest thou the time when the\nwild goats of the rock bring forth?\" It is also found in Ps. civ.\n18: \"The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats.\" In all these\npassages it is rendered as \"wild goats.\" But, in Prov. v. 19, it is\ntranslated as roe: \"Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be\nas the loving hind and pleasant roe (_azelah_).\" The Jewish Bible\nfollows the same diverse renderings.\n\nWe now have to discover the animal which was signified by the word\nAzel. According to its etymology, it is the Climber, just as the\nadult he-goat is called the Butter.\n\nThat it was a climbing animal is evident from its name, and that\nit loved to clamber among precipices is equally evident from the\nrepeated connexion of the word rock with the name of the animal. We\nalso see, from the passage in Job, that it is a wild animal whose\nhabits were not known. There is scarcely any doubt that the Azel of\nthe Old Testament is the ARABIAN IBEX or BEDEN (_Capra Nubiana_).\nThis animal is very closely allied to the well-known Ibex of the\nAlps, or Steinbock, but may be distinguished from it by one or two\nslight differences, such as the black beard and the slighter make\nof the horns, which moreover have three angles instead of four, as\nis the case with the Alpine Ibex.\n\nThe Beden is known by several names. It is sometimes called the\nJaela, sometimes the Nubian Wild Goat, and is also known as the Wild\nGoat of Sinai. The general colour of the Beden is grey, becoming\nbrownish in winter, and being whitish grey beneath. The feet are\nspotted with black and white, and the beard of the male is black,\ndiffering from that of the Alpine Ibex, which is brown. The female\nis beardless. The lines along the back and the sides of the tail are\nblack, and there are three streaks on each ear.\n\nThe Beden generally lives in little herds of eight or ten, and\nis even now to be found in Palestine. At the strange, wild,\nweird-looking En-gedi (Ain Jiddy), or Fountain of the Goats, the\nBeden is still to be seen. Mr. Tristram suggests that David and\nhis followers took up their residence at En-gedi for the sake of\nthe Wild Goats that were plentiful upon the spot, and which would\nfurnish food for himself and his hardy band of outlaws. \"In the\nneighbourhood of En-gedi,\" remarks this traveller, \"while encamped\nby the Dead Sea shore, we obtained several fine specimens, and\nvery interesting it was to find the graceful creature by the very\nfountain to which it gave name.\n\n\"When clambering over the heights above En-gedi, I often, by the\nhelp of my glass, saw the Ibex from a distance, and once, when near\nMar-saba, only a few miles from Jerusalem, started one at a distance\nof four hundred yards. At the south end of the Dead Sea they were\ncommon, and I have picked up a horn both near Jericho on the hills\nand also on the hills of Moab on the eastern side. At Jericho,\ntoo, I obtained a young one which I hoped to rear, but which died\nafter I had had it for ten days, owing, I believe, to the milk with\nwhich it was fed being sour. Further north and west we did not\nfind it, though I have reason to believe that a few linger on the\nmountains between Samaria and the Jordan, and perhaps also on some\nof the spurs of Lebanon. We found its teeth in the breccia of bone\noccurring in the Lebanon, proving its former abundance there.\"\n\nAs the Beden was found so plentifully even in these days when\nfire-arms have rendered many wild animals scarce and wary, so that\nthey will not show themselves within range of a bullet, it is\nevident that in the time when David lived at En-gedi and drank of\nthe Goats' Fountain they were far more numerous, and could afford\nnourishment to him and his soldiers. Travellers, moreover, who do\nnot happen to be experienced hunters, will often fail in seeing\nthe Beden, even in places where it is tolerably plentiful. The\ncolour of its coat resembles so nearly that of the rocks, that an\ninexperienced eye would see nothing but bare stones and sticks where\na practised hunter would see numbers of Beden, conspicuous by their\nbeautifully curved horns.\n\nThe agility of the Beden is extraordinary. Loving the highest and\nmost craggy parts of the mountain ridge, it flings itself from\nspot to spot with a recklessness that startles one who has not\nbeen accustomed to the animal, and the wonderful certainty of its\nfoot. It will, for example, dash at the face of a perpendicular\nprecipice that looks as smooth as a brick wall, for the purpose of\nreaching a tiny ledge which is hardly perceptible, and which is\nsome fifteen feet or so above the spot whence the animal sprang.\nIts eye, however, has marked certain little cracks and projections\non the face of the rock, and as the animal makes its leap, it takes\nthese little points of vantage in rapid succession, just touching\nthem as it passes upwards, and by the slight stroke of its foot\nkeeping up the original impulse of its leap. Similarly, the Ibex\ncomes sliding and leaping down precipitous sides of the mountains,\nsometimes halting with all the four feet drawn together, on a little\nprojection scarcely larger than a penny, and sometimes springing\nboldly over a wide crevasse, and alighting with exact precision\nupon a projecting piece of rock that seems scarcely large enough to\nsustain a rat comfortably.\n\nThe young of the Ibex are sometimes captured and tamed. They are,\nhowever, difficult to rear, and give much more trouble than the\nyoung gazelles when taken in a similar manner. The natives can\ngenerally procure the kids at the proper time of year, and sell them\nat a very cheap rate. They seldom, however, can be reared, and even\nthose who live in the country experience the greatest difficulty in\nkeeping the young Beden alive until it attains maturity.\n\nWere it not for the curious habits of the Beden, the young could\nscarcely ever be obtained alive, as they are so agile that they\ncould easily leap away from their slow two-legged pursuers. But\nthe mother Ibex has a habit of leading a very independent life,\nwandering to considerable distances, and leaving her kid snugly\nhidden in some rock-cleft. The hunters watch the mother as she\nstarts off in the morning, clamber up to the spot where the kid is\nconcealed, and secure it without difficulty. The Arabs say that\nthere are always two kids at a birth, but there is considerable\ndiscrepancy of evidence on this point, which, after all, is of very\nlittle importance.\n\n[Illustration: ARABIAN IBEX, OR BEDEN; THE WILD GOAT OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nThe flesh of the Beden is really excellent. It is far superior to\nthat of the gazelle, which is comparatively dry and hard, and it has\nbeen happily suggested that the Beden was the animal in search of\nwhich Esau was sent to hunt with his quiver and his bow, and which\nfurnished the \"savoury meat\" which Isaac loved. None but a true\nhunter can hope to secure the Beden, and even all the knowledge,\npatience, and energy of the best hunters are tried before they can\nkill their prey. It was therefore no matter of wonder that Isaac\nshould be surprised when he thought that he heard Esau return so\nsoon from the hunting-grounds. \"How is it that thou hast found it so\nquickly, my son?\"\n\nThere are few animals more wary than the Beden, and even the chamois\nof the Alps does not exercise the finest qualities of a hunter more\nthan does the Beden of Palestine. It is gifted with very keen eyes,\nwhich can discern the approach of an enemy long before its grey coat\nand curved horns can be distinguished from the stones and gnarled\nboughs of the mountain side. And, even if the enemy be not within\nrange of the animal's sight, its nostrils are so keen that it can\ndetect a man by scent alone at a considerable distance. Like all\ngregarious animals, the Beden insures the safety of the flock by\nstationing sentries, which are posted on places that command the\nwhole surrounding country, and to deceive the watchful senses of\nthese wary guardians tests all the qualities of the hunter.\n\nThe dawn of day is the time that is generally chosen for approaching\na herd, because the animals are then feeding, and if the hunter can\nmanage to approach them against the wind, he may chance to come\nwithin range. Should however the wind change its direction, he may\nquietly walk home again, for at the first breath of the tainted gale\nthe sentinels utter their shrill whistle of alarm, and the whole\nparty dash off with a speed that renders pursuit useless.\n\nThe horns of the Beden are of very great size, and from their bold\ncurves, with the large rings and ridges which cover their front,\nare remarkably handsome objects. In their own country they are in\ngreat request as handles to knives, and even in England they may be\noccasionally seen serving as handles to carving-knives and forks.\n\nAs to the word Ako, which occurs in Deut. xiv. 5, together with\nother animals, and is rendered as \"Wild Goat,\" there is so much\ndoubt about the correct translation that I can do no more than\nmention that the Jewish Bible follows our authorized edition in\ntranslating Ako as Wild Goat, but adds the doubtful mark to the\nword.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: deer]\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEER.\n\n     The Hart and Hind of Scripture--Species of Deer existing in\n     Palestine--Earliest mention of the Hind--The Hart classed among\n     the clean animals--Passages alluding to its speed--Care of the\n     mother for her young, and her custom of secreting it--Tameable\n     character of the Deer.\n\n\nWe now come to the DEER which are mentioned in Scripture. There are\nnot many passages in which they are mentioned, and one of them is\nrather doubtful, as we shall see when we come to it.\n\nThere is no doubt that the two words HART and HIND (in the Hebrew\n_Ayzal_ and _Ayzalah_) represent Deer of some kind, and the question\nis to find out what kind of Deer is signified by these words. I\nthink that we may safely determine that no particular species is\nmeant, but that under the word Ayzal are comprehended any kinds of\nDeer that inhabit Palestine, and were likely to be known to those\nto whom the earlier Scriptures were addressed. That some kind of\nDeer was plentiful is evident from the references which are made\nto it, and specially by the familiar word Ajala or Ayala, as it is\npronounced, which signifies the Deer-ground or pasture. But the\nattempt to discriminate between one species and another is simply\nimpossible, and the more careful the search the more impracticable\nthe task appears.\n\n[Illustration: RED DEER.]\n\nAs far as can be ascertained, at least two kinds of Deer inhabited\nPalestine in the earlier days of the Jewish history, one belonging\nto the division which is known by its branched horns, and the other\nto that in which the horns are flat or palmated over the tips.\nExamples of both kinds are familiar to us under the titles of the\nRED DEER and the FALLOW DEER, and it is tolerably certain that both\nthese animals were formerly found in Palestine, or that at all\nevents the Deer which did exist there were so closely allied to them\nas to be mere varieties occasioned by the different conditions in\nwhich they were placed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe will now proceed to the various passages in which the Hart and\nHind are mentioned in the Bible.\n\n[Illustration: FALLOW-DEER, OR HIND OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nAs might be expected, we come upon it among the number of the beasts\nwhich divided the hoof and chewed the cud, and were specially\nindicated as fit for food; see Deut. xii. 15: \"Notwithstanding thou\nmayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, ... the unclean and the\nclean may eat thereof, as of the roebuck, and as of the hart.\"\n\nThere is, however, an earlier mention of the word in Gen. xlix.\n21. It occurs in that splendid series of imagery in which Jacob\nblesses his sons, and prophesies their future, each image serving\never afterwards as the emblem of the tribe: \"Naphtali is a hind let\nloose: he giveth goodly words;\"--or, according to the Jewish Bible,\n\"Naphtali is a hind sent forth: he giveth sayings of pleasantness.\"\nNow, such an image as this would never have been used, had not the\nspectacle of the \"hind let loose\" been perfectly familiar to the\neyes both of the dying patriarch and his hearers, and equally so\nwith the lion, the ass, the vine, the serpent, and other objects\nused emblematically in the same prophetic poem.\n\n[Illustration: A QUIET SPOT.]\n\nThe excellence of the Hart's flesh is shown by its occurrence among\nthe animals used for King Solomon's table: see 1 Kings iv. 23, a\npassage which has been quoted several times, and therefore need only\nbe mentioned.\n\nAllusion is made to the speed and agility of the Deer in several\npassages. See, for example, Isa. xxxv. 6: \"Then shall the lame man\nleap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.\" Again, in 2 Sam.\nxxii. 33, 34: \"God is my strength and power: and He maketh my way\nperfect.\n\n\"He maketh my feet like hinds' feet: and setteth me upon my high\nplaces.\"\n\nNearly four hundred years afterwards we find Habakkuk using\nprecisely the same image, evidently quoting David's Psalm of\nThanksgiving:--\"Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the\nGod of my salvation.\n\n\"The Lord God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds'\nfeet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.\" (iii. 18,\n19.)\n\nA passage of a similar character may be found in Solomon's Song, ii.\n8, 9: \"The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the\nmountains, skipping upon the hills.\n\n\"My beloved is like a roe or a young hart.\"\n\nThere is one passage in the Psalms which is familiar to us in many\nways, and not the least in that it has been chosen as the text\nfor so many well-known anthems. \"As the hart panteth after the\nwater-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.\n\n\"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come\nand appear before God?\" (Ps. xlii. 1, 2.)\n\nBeautiful as this passage is, it cannot be fully understood without\nthe context.\n\n[Illustration: RED DEER AND FAWN.]\n\nDavid wrote this psalm before he had risen to royal power, and while\nhe was fleeing from his enemies from place to place, and seeking\nan uncertain shelter in the rock-caves. In verse 6 he enumerates\nsome of the spots in which he has been forced to reside, far away\nfrom the altar, the priests, and the sacrifice. He has been hunted\nabout from place to place by his enemies as a stag is hunted by\nthe hounds, and his very soul thirsted for the distant Tabernacle,\nin which the Shekinah, the visible presence of God, rested on the\nmercy-seat between the golden cherubim.\n\nWild and unsettled as was the early life of David, this was ever\nthe reigning thought in his mind, and there is scarcely a psalm\nthat he wrote in which we do not find some allusion to the visible\npresence of God among men. No matter what might be the troubles\nthrough which he had to pass, even though he trod the valley of the\nshadow of death, the thought of his God was soothing as water to the\nhunted stag, and in that thought he ever found repose. Through all\nhis many trials and adversities, through his deep remorse for his\nsins, through his wounded paternal affections, through his success\nand prosperity, that one thought is the ruling power. He begins his\ncareer with it when he opposed Goliath: \"Thou comest to me with a\nsword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in\nthe name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.\" He\ncloses his career with the same thought, and, in the \"last words\"\nthat are recorded, he charged his son to keep the commandments of\nthe Lord, that he might do wisely all that he did.\n\nWe now come to another point in the Deer's character; namely, the\nwatchful care of the mother over her young. She always retires to\nsome secret place when she instinctively knows that the birth is at\nhand, and she hides it from all eyes until it is able to take care\nof itself. By some strange instinct, the little one, almost as soon\nas it is born, is able to comprehend the signals of its mother, and\nthere is an instance, well known to naturalists, where a newly-born\nDeer, hardly an hour old, crouched low to the earth in obedience to\na light tap on its shoulder from its mother's hoof. She, with the\nintense watchfulness of her kind, had seen a possible danger, and so\nwarned her young one to hide itself.\n\n[Illustration: THE LEADER OF THE HERD.]\n\nThere is scarcely any animal so watchful as the female Deer, as\nall hunters know by practical experience. It is comparatively easy\nto deceive the stag who leads the herd, but to evade the eyes and\nears of the hinds is a very different business, and taxes all the\nresources of a practised hunter. If they take such care of the herd\nin general, it may be imagined that their watchfulness would be\nmultiplied tenfold when the object of their anxiety is their own\nyoung.\n\nIt is in allusion to this well-known characteristic that a passage\nin the Book of Job refers: \"Knowest thou the time when the wild\ngoats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds\ndo calve?\" (xxxix. 1.) A similar image is used in Psa. xxix. 9.\nAfter enumerating the wonders that are done by the voice of the\nLord, the thunders and rain torrents, the devastating tempests, the\nforked lightning, and the earthquake \"that shaketh the wilderness\nof Kadesh,\" the Psalmist proceeds: \"The voice of the Lord maketh\nthe hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests,\"--this being as\nmysterious to the writer as the more conspicuous wonders which he\nhad previously mentioned.\n\nSo familiar to the Hebrews was the watchful care which the female\nDeer exercised over her young, that it forms the subject of a\npowerful image in one of Jeremiah's mournful prophecies: \"Yea, the\nhind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no\ngrass.\" (xiv. 5.) To those who understand the habits of the animal,\nthis is a most telling and picturesque image. In the first place,\nthe Hind, a wild animal that could find food where less active\ncreatures would starve, was reduced to such straits that she was\nobliged to remain in the fields at the time when her young was born,\ninstead of retiring to some sheltered spot, according to her custom.\nAnd when it was born, instead of nurturing it carefully, according\nto the natural maternal instinct, she was forced from sheer hunger\nto abandon it in order to find a sufficiency of food for herself.\n\nThat the Deer could be tamed, and its naturally affectionate\ndisposition cultivated, is evident from a passage in the Proverbs\n(v. 18, 19): \"Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife\nof thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe.\"\n\nWe might naturally expect that the Rabbinical writers would have\nmuch to say on the subject of the Hart and Hind. Among much that\nis irrelevant to the object of the present work there are a few\npassages that deserve mention. Alluding to the annual shedding of\nthe Deer's horns, there is a proverb respecting one who ventures\nhis money too freely in trade, that \"he has hung it on the stag's\nhorns,\" meaning thereby that he will never see it again. It is\nremarkable that in Western Africa there is a proverb of a similar\ncharacter, the imprudent merchant being told to look for his money\nin the place where Deer shed their horns.\n\n[Illustration: THE WATCHFUL DOE.]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: A KNEELING CAMEL.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CAMEL.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n     The two species of Camel, and the mode of distinguishing\n     them--Value of the Camel in the East--Thirst-enduring\n     capability--The hump, and its use to the animal--The Camel as\n     a beast of draught and burden--How the Camel is laden--Camels\n     for riding--Difficulty of sitting a Camel--A rough-paced\n     steed--Method of guiding the Camel--The swift dromedary--Young\n     Camels and their appearance--The deserted Camel.\n\n\nBefore treating of the Scriptural references to the Camel, it will\nbe as well to clear the ground by noticing that two distinct species\nof Camel are known to zoologists; namely, the common Camel (_Camelus\ndromedarius_), which has one hump, and the Bactrian Camel (_Camelus\nBactrianus_), which has two of these curious projections. There is a\npopular but erroneous idea that the dromedary and the Camel are two\ndistinct animals, the latter being distinguished by its huge hump,\nwhereas the fact is, that the dromedary is simply a lighter and more\nvaluable breed of the one-humped Camel of Arabia, the two-humped\nBactrian Camel being altogether a different animal, inhabiting\nCentral Asia, Thibet, and China.\n\nThe Camel is still one of the most valued animals that inhabit\nPalestine, and in former times it played a part in Jewish history\nscarcely inferior to that of the ox or sheep. We shall, therefore,\ndevote some space to it.\n\nIn some parts of the land it even exceeded in value the sheep, and\nwas infinitely more useful than the goat. At the very beginning of\nJewish history we read of this animal, and it is mentioned in the\nNew Testament nearly two thousand years after we meet with it in\nthe Book of Genesis. The earliest mention of the Camel occurs in\nGen. xii. 16, where is related the journey of Abram: \"He had sheep,\nand oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and\nshe-asses, and camels.\"\n\n[Illustration: JACOB LEAVES LABAN AND RETURNS TO CANAAN WITH HIS\nCAMELS, SHEEP, AND CATTLE.]\n\nBelonging, as he did, to the nomad race which lives almost wholly on\nthe produce of their herds, Abram needed Camels, not only for their\nmilk, and, for all we know, for their flesh, but for their extreme\nuse as beasts of burden, without which he could never have travelled\nover that wild and pathless land. The whole of Abram's outer life\nwas exactly that of a Bedouin sheikh of the present day, in whom\nwe find reproduced the habits, the tone of thought, and the very\nverbiage of the ancient Scriptures.\n\nMany years afterwards, when the son of his old age was desirous of\nmarrying a wife of his own kindred, we find that he sent his trusted\nservants with ten of his Camels to Mesopotamia, and it was by the\noffering of water to these Camels, that Rebekah was selected as\nIsaac's wife (see Gen. xxiv. 10, 19). In after days, when Jacob was\nabout to leave Laban, these animals are mentioned as an important\npart of his wealth: \"And the man increased exceedingly, and had much\ncattle, and maid-servants, and men-servants, and camels, and asses\"\n(Gen. xxx. 43).\n\nIt is thought worthy of mention in the sacred narrative that Job\nhad three thousand, and afterwards six thousand Camels (Job i. 3,\nand xlii. 12); that the Midianites and Amalekites possessed camels\nwithout number, as the sand by the seaside.\n\n[Illustration: A CAMP IN THE DESERT.]\n\nThey were valuable enough to be sent as presents from one potentate\nto another. For example, when Jacob went to meet Esau, he gave as\nhis present two hundred and twenty sheep, the same number of goats,\nfifty oxen, thirty asses, and sixty camels, i.e. thirty mothers,\neach with her calf. They were important enough to be guarded by\nmen of position. In 1 Chron. xxvii. 30, we find that the charge\nof David's Camels was confided to one of his officers, Obil the\nIshmaelite, who, from his origin, might be supposed to be skilful in\nthe management of these animals. Bochart, however, conjectures that\nthe word Obil ought to be read as Abal, _i.e._ the camel-keeper, and\nthat the passage would therefore read as follows: \"Over the camels\nwas an Ishmaelitish camel-keeper.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe will now proceed to the uses of the Camel, and first take it in\nthe light of food.\n\nBy the Mosaic law, the Camel was a forbidden animal, because it did\nnot divide the hoof, although it chewed the cud. Yet, although the\nJews might not eat its flesh, they probably used the milk for food,\nas they do at the present day. No distinct Scriptural reference is\nmade to the milk of the Camel; but, as the Jews of the present day\nare quite as fastidious as their ancestors in keeping the Mosaic\nlaw, we are justified in concluding that, although they would not\neat the flesh of the animal, they drank its milk. At the present\ntime, the milk is used, like that of the sheep, goat, and cow, both\nin a fresh and curdled state, the latter being generally preferred\nto the former. A kind of cheese is made from it, but is not much to\nthe taste of the European traveller, on account of the quantity of\nsalt which is put in it. Butter is churned in a very simple manner,\nthe fresh milk being poured into a skin bag, and the bag beaten with\na stick until the butter makes its appearance.\n\nThat it was really used in the patriarchal times is evident by the\npassage which has already been mentioned, where Jacob is related to\nhave brought as a present to his brother Esau thirty milch Camels,\ntogether with their young. So decided a stress would certainly not\nhave been laid upon the fact that the animals were milch Camels\nunless the milk were intended for use.\n\nPerhaps the use of the Camel's milk might be justified by saying\nthat the prohibition extended only to eating and not to drinking,\nand that therefore the milk might be used though the flesh was\nprohibited.\n\nThere was another mode in which the Camel might be used by\ntravellers to sustain life.\n\nThe reader is probably aware that, even in the burning climate in\nwhich it dwells, the Camel is able to go for a long time without\ndrinking,--not that it requires less liquid nourishment than other\nanimals, but that it is able, by means of its internal construction,\nto imbibe at one draught a quantity of water which will last for\na considerable time. It is furnished with a series of cells, into\nwhich the water runs as fast as it is drunk, and in which it can be\nkept for some time without losing its life-preserving qualities. As\nmuch as twenty gallons have been imbibed by a Camel at one draught,\nand this amount will serve it for several days, as it has the power\nof consuming by degrees the water which it has drunk in a few\nminutes.\n\nThis curious power of the Camel has often proved to be the salvation\nof its owner. It has often happened that, when travellers have been\npassing over the desert, their supply of water has been exhausted,\npartly by the travellers and partly by the burning heat which causes\nit to evaporate through the pores of the goat-skin bottle in which\nit was carried. Then the next well, where they had intended to\nrefill their skins and refresh themselves, has proved dry, and the\nwhole party seemed doomed to die of thirst.\n\nUnder these circumstances, only one chance of escape is left them.\nThey kill a Camel, and from its stomach they procure water enough\nto sustain life for a little longer, and perhaps to enable them to\nreach a well or fountain in which water still remains. The water\nwhich is thus obtained is unaltered, except by a greenish hue, the\nresult of mixing with the remains of herbage in the cells. It is,\nof course, very disagreeable, but those who are dying from thirst\ncannot afford to be fastidious, and to them the water is a most\ndelicious draught.\n\nIt is rather curious that, if any of the water which is taken out of\na dead Camel can be kept for a few days, both the green hue and the\nunpleasant flavour disappear, and the water becomes fresh, clear,\nand limpid. So wonderfully well do the internal cells preserve the\nwater, that after a Camel has been dead for ten days--and in that\nhot climate ten days after death are equal to a month here--the\nwater within it has been quite pure and drinkable.\n\nMany persons believe in the popular though erroneous idea that the\nCamel does not require as much water as ordinary animals. He will\nsee, however, from the foregoing account that it needs quite as much\nwater as the horse or the ox, but that it possesses the capability\nof taking in at one time as much as either of these animals would\ndrink in several days. So far from being independent of water, there\nis no animal that requires it more, or displays a stronger desire\nfor it. A thirsty Camel possesses the power of scenting water at a\nvery great distance, and, when it does so, its instincts conquer\nits education, and it goes off at full speed towards the spot,\nwholly ignoring its rider or driver. Many a desert spring has been\ndiscovered, and many a life saved, by this wonderful instinct, the\nanimal having scented the distant water when its rider had lost all\nhope, and was resigning himself to that terrible end, the death by\nthirst. The sacred Zemzem fountain at Mecca was discovered by two\nthirsty Camels.\n\n[Illustration: A GRATEFUL SHADE.]\n\nExcept by the Jews, the flesh of the Camel is eaten throughout\nPalestine and the neighbouring countries, and is looked upon as a\ngreat luxury. The Arab, for example, can scarcely have a greater\ntreat than a Camel-feast, and looks forward to it in a state of\nwonderful excitement. He is so impatient, that scarcely is the\nanimal dead before it is skinned, cut up, and the various parts\nprepared for cooking.\n\nTo European palates the flesh of the Camel is rather unpleasant,\nbeing tough, stringy, and without much flavour. The fatty hump is\nuniversally considered as the best part of the animal, and is always\noffered to the chief among the guests, just as the North American\nIndian offers the hump of the bison to the most important man in the\nassembly. The heart and the tongue, however, are always eatable,\nand, however old a Camel may be, these parts can be cooked and eaten\nwithout fear.\n\nThe hump, or \"bunch\" as it is called in the Bible, has no connexion\nwith the spine, and is a supplementary growth, which varies in size,\nnot only in the species, but in the individual. It is analogous to\nthe hump upon the shoulders of the American bison and the Indian\nzebra, and in the best-bred Camels it is the smallest though the\nfinest and most elastic.\n\nThis hump, by the way, affords one of the points by which the value\nof the Camel is decided. When it is well fed and properly cared for,\nthe hump projects boldly, and is firm and elastic to the touch.\nBut if the Camel be ill, or if it be badly fed or overworked, the\nhump becomes soft and flaccid, and in bad cases hangs down on one\nside like a thick flap of skin. Consequently, the dealers in Camels\nalways try to produce their animals in the market with their humps\nwell developed; and, if they find that this important part does not\nlook satisfactory, they use various means to give it the required\nfulness, inflating it with air being the most common. In fact, there\nis as much deception among Camel-dealers in Palestine as with dog or\npigeon fanciers in England.\n\nHere perhaps I may remark that the hump has given rise to some\nstrange but prevalent views respecting the Camel. Many persons\nthink that the dromedary has one hump and the Camel two--in fact,\nthat they are two totally distinct animals. Now the fact is that\nthe Camel of Palestine is of one species only, the dromedary being\na lighter and swifter breed, and differing from the ordinary Camel\njust as a hunter or racer differs from a cart-horse. The two-humped\nCamel is a different species altogether, which will be briefly\ndescribed at the end of the present article.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Camel is also used as a beast of draught, and, as we find, not\nonly from the Scriptures, but from ancient monuments, was employed\nto draw chariots and drag the plough. Thus in Isa. xxi. 7: \"And\nhe saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses,\nand a chariot of camels.\" It is evident that in this passage some\nchariots were drawn by Camels and some by asses. It is, however,\nremarkable that in Kennard's \"Eastern Experiences\", these two\nvery useful animals are mentioned as being yoked together: \"We\npassed through a fertile country, watching the fellaheen at their\nagricultural labours, and not a little amused at sometimes remarking\na very tall camel and a very small donkey yoked together in double\nharness, dragging a plough through the rich brown soil.\" Camels\ndrawing chariots are still to be seen in the Assyrian sculptures. In\nPalestine--at all events at the present time--the Camel is seldom\nif ever used as a beast of draught, being exclusively employed for\nbearing burdens and carrying riders.\n\nTaking it first as a beast of burden, we find several references in\ndifferent parts of the Scriptures. For example, see 2 Kings viii.\n9: \"So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even\nof every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' burden.\" Again, in\n1 Chron. xii. 40: \"Moreover they that were nigh them, even unto\nIssachar and Zebulun and Naphtali, brought bread on asses, and on\ncamels, and on mules, and on oxen.\" Another allusion to the same\ncustom is made in Isaiah: \"They will carry their riches upon the\nshoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches (or\nhumps) of camels.\"\n\nThe Camel can carry a considerable load, though not so much\nas is generally fancied. A sort of a pack-saddle of a very\nsimple description is used, in order to keep the burden upon so\nstrangely-shaped an animal. A narrow bag about eight feet long is\nmade, and rather loosely stuffed with straw or similar material. It\nis then doubled, and the ends firmly sewn together, so as to form\na great ring, which is placed over the hump, and forms a tolerably\nflat surface. A wooden framework is tied on the pack-saddle, and\nis kept in its place by a girth and a crupper. The packages which\nthe Camel is to carry are fastened together by cords, and slung\nover the saddle. They are only connected by those semi-knots called\n\"hitches,\" so that, when the Camel is to be unloaded, all that is\nneeded is to pull the lower end of the rope, and the packages fall\non either side of the animal. So quickly is the operation of loading\nperformed, that a couple of experienced men can load a Camel in very\nlittle more than a minute.\n\nAs is the case with the horse in England, the Camels that are\nused as beasts of burden are of a heavier, slower, and altogether\ninferior breed to those which are employed to carry riders, and\nall their accoutrements are of a ruder and meaner order, devoid\nof the fantastic ornaments with which Oriental riders are fond of\ndecorating their favourite animals.\n\nIn the large illustration are represented four of the ordinary\nCamels of burden, as they appear when laden with boughs for the\nFeast of Tabernacles. The branches are those of the Hebrew pine,\nand, as may be seen, the animals are so heavily laden with them that\ntheir forms are quite hidden under their leafy burdens. The weight\nwhich a Camel will carry varies much, according to the strength\nof the individual, which has given rise to the Oriental proverb,\n\"As the camel, so the load.\" But an animal of ordinary strength is\nsupposed to be able to carry from five to six hundred pounds for a\nshort journey, and half as much for a long one,--a quantity which,\nas the reader will see, is not so very great when the bulk of the\nanimal is taken into consideration. It is remarkable that the Camel\nknows its own powers, and instinctively refuses to move if its\ncorrect load be exceeded. But, when it is properly loaded, it will\ncarry its burden for hours together at exactly the same pace, and\nwithout seeming more fatigued than it was when it started.\n\n[Illustration: CAMELS LADEN WITH BOUGHS.]\n\n[Illustration: MORNING IN THE DESERT: STARTING OF THE CARAVAN.]\n\nThe riding Camels are always of a better breed than those which are\nused for burden, and maybe divided into two classes; namely, those\nwhich are meant for ordinary purposes, and those which are specially\nbred for speed and endurance. There is as much difference between\nthe ordinary riding Camel and the swift Camel as there is between\nthe road hack and the race-horse. We will first begin with the\ndescription of the common riding Camel and its accoutrements.\n\nThe saddle which is intended for a rider is very different from the\npack-saddle on which burdens are carried, and has a long upright\nprojection in front, to which the rider can hold if he wishes it.\n\nThe art of riding the Camel is far more difficult of accomplishment\nthan that of riding the horse, and the preliminary operation of\nmounting is not the least difficult portion of it. Of course,\nto mount a Camel while the animal is standing is impossible, and\naccordingly it is taught to kneel until the rider is seated.\nKneeling is a natural position with the Camel, which is furnished\nwith large callosities or warts on the legs and breast, which act as\ncushions on which it may rest its great weight without abrading the\nskin. These callosities are not formed, as some have imagined, by\nthe constant kneeling to which the Camel is subjected, but are born\nwith it, though of course less developed than they are after they\nhave been hardened by frequent pressure against the hot sand.\n\nWhen the Camel kneels, it first drops on its knees, and then on\nthe joints of the hind legs. Next it drops on its breast, and then\nagain on the bent hind legs. In rising it reverses the process, so\nthat a novice is first pitched forward, then backward, then forward,\nand then backward again, to the very great disarrangement of his\ngarments, and the probable loss of his seat altogether. Then when\nthe animal kneels he is in danger of being thrown over its head by\nthe first movement, and jerked over its tail by the second; but\nafter a time he learns to keep his seat mechanically.\n\nAs to the movement of the animal, it is at first almost as\nunpleasant as can be conceived, and has been described by several\ntravellers, some of whose accounts will be here given. One\nwell-known traveller declares that any person desiring to practise\nCamel-riding can readily do so by taking a music-stool, screwing\nit up as high as possible, putting it into a cart without springs,\nsitting on the top of it cross-legged, and having the cart driven at\nfull speed transversely over a newly-ploughed field.\n\nThere is, however, as great a difference in the gait of Camels as\nof horses, some animals having a quiet, regular, easy movement,\nwhile others are rough and high-stepping, harassing their riders\ngrievously in the saddle. Even the smooth-going Camel is, however,\nvery trying at first, on account of its long swinging strides, which\nare taken with the legs of each side alternately, causing the body\nof the rider to swing backwards and forwards as if he were rowing in\na boat.\n\nThose who suffer from sea-sickness are generally attacked with the\nsame malady when they make their first attempts at Camel-riding,\nwhile even those who are proof against this particular form of\ndiscomfort soon begin to find that their backs are aching, and that\nthe pain becomes steadily worse. Change of attitude is but little\nuse, and the wretched traveller derives but scant comfort from\nthe advice of his guide, who tells him to allow his body to swing\nfreely, and that in a short time he will become used to it. Some\ndays, however, are generally consumed before he succeeds in training\nhis spine to the continual unaccustomed movement, and he finds that,\nwhen he wakes on the morning that succeeds his first essay, his back\nis so stiff that he can scarcely move without screaming with pain,\nand that the prospect of mounting the Camel afresh is anything but a\npleasant one.\n\n\"I tried to sit erect without moving,\" writes Mr. Kennard, when\ndescribing his experience of Camel-riding. \"This proved a relief for\na few minutes, but, finding the effort too great to continue long in\nthis position, I attempted to recline with my head resting upon my\nhand. This last manoeuvre I found would not do, for the motion of\nthe camel's hind legs was so utterly at variance with the motion of\nhis fore-legs that I was jerked upwards, and forwards, and sideways,\nand finally ended in nearly rolling off altogether.\n\n\"Without going into the details of all that I suffered for the\nnext two or three days--how that on several occasions I slid from\nthe camel's back to the ground, in despair of ever accustoming my\nhalf-dislocated joints to the ceaseless jerking and swaying to and\nfro, and how that I often determined to trudge on foot over the\nhot desert sand all the way to Jerusalem rather than endure it\nlonger--I shall merely say that the day did at last arrive when I\ndescended from my camel, after many hours' riding, in as happy and\ncomfortable a state of mind as if I had been lolling in the easiest\nof arm-chairs.\"\n\nA very similar description of the transition from acute and constant\nsuffering to perfect ease is given by Albert Smith, who states that\nmore than once he has dozed on the back of his Camel, in spite of\nthe swaying backwards and forwards to which his body was subjected.\n\n[Illustration: THE CAMEL POST.]\n\nIf such be the discomfort of riding a smooth-going and good-tempered\nCamel, it may be imagined that to ride a hard-going and\ncross-grained animal must be a very severe trial to an inexperienced\nrider. A very amusing account of a ride on such a Camel, and of\na fall from its back, is given by Mr. Hamilton in his \"Sinai, the\nHedjaz, and Soudan:\"--\n\n\"A dromedary I had obtained at Suk Abu Sin for my own riding did not\nanswer my expectations, or rather the saddle was badly put on--not\nan easy thing to do well, by the way--and one of my servants,\nwho saw how out of patience I was at the many times I had had to\ndismount to have it arranged, persuaded me to try the one he was\nriding, the Sheik's present. I had my large saddle transferred to\nhis beast, and, nothing doubting, mounted it.\n\n\"He had not only no nose-string, but was besides a vicious brute,\nrising with a violent jerk before I was well in the saddle, and\nanxious to gain the caravan, which was a little way ahead, he set\noff at his roughest gallop. Carpets, kufieh, tarbush, all went off\nin the jolting; at every step I was thrown a foot into the air, glad\nto come down again, bump, bump, on the saddle, by dint of holding\non to the front pommel with the left hand, while the right was\nengaged with the bridle, which in the violence of the exercise it\nwas impossible to change to its proper hand. I had almost reached\nthe caravan, and had no doubt my hump-backed Pegasus would relax his\nexertions, when a camel-driver, one of the sons of iniquity, seeing\nme come up at full speed, and evidently quite run away with, took it\ninto his head to come to my assistance.\n\n\"I saw what he was at, and called out to him to get out of the way,\nbut instead of this he stuck himself straight before me, stretching\nhimself out like a St. Andrew's cross, with one hand armed with a\nhuge club, and making most diabolical grimaces. Of course the camel\nwas frightened, it was enough to frighten a much more reasonable\nbeing; so, wheeling quickly round, it upset my unstable equilibrium.\nDown I came head foremost to the ground, and when I looked up, my\nforehead streaming with blood, the first thing I saw was my Arab\nwith the camel, which he seemed mightily pleased with himself for\nhaving so cleverly captured, while the servant who had suggested the\nunlucky experiment came ambling along on my easy-paced dromedary,\nand consoled me by saying that he knew it was a runaway beast, which\nthere was no riding without a nose-string.\n\n\"I now began to study the way of keeping one's seat in such an\nemergency. An Arab, when he gallops his dromedary with one of these\nsaddles, holds hard on with the right hand to the back part of\nthe seat, not to the pommel, and grasps the bridle tightly in the\nother. The movement of the camel in galloping throws one violently\nforward, and without holding on, excepting on the naked back, when\nthe rider sits behind the hump, it is impossible to retain one's\nseat. I afterwards thought myself lucky in not having studied this\npoint sooner, as, from the greater resistance I should have offered,\nmy tumble, since it was _fated_ I should have one, would probably\nhave been much more severe. It is true I might also have escaped it,\nbut in the chapter of probabilities I always think a mishap the most\nprobable.\"\n\n[Illustration: A RUNAWAY.]\n\n[Illustration: AN ARAB SHEIK MOUNTED UPON HIS CAMEL.]\n\nIt may be imagined that a fall from a Camel's back is not a trifle,\nand, even if the unskilful rider be fortunate enough to fall on soft\nsand instead of hard rock, he receives a tolerably severe shock,\nand runs no little risk of breaking a limb. For the average height\nof a Camel's back is rather more than six feet, while some animals\nmeasure seven feet from the ground to the top of the hump.\n\nThis height, however, is of material advantage to the traveller. In\nthe first place it lifts him above the waves of heated air that are\ncontinually rolling over the sand on which the burning rays of the\nsun are poured throughout the day; and in the second place it brings\nhim within reach of the slightest breeze that passes above the\nstratum of hot air, and which comes to the traveller like the breath\nof life. Moreover, his elevated position enables him to see for a\nvery great distance, which is an invaluable advantage in a land\nwhere every stranger may be a robber, and is probably a murderer\nbesides.\n\nThe best mode of avoiding a fall is to follow the Arab mode of\nriding,--namely, to pass one leg over the upright pommel, which, as\nhas been mentioned, is a mere wooden peg or stake, and hitching the\nother leg over the dangling foot. Perhaps the safest, though not the\nmost comfortable, mode of sitting is by crossing the legs in front,\nand merely grasping the pommel with the hands.\n\nYet, fatiguing as is the seat on the Camel's back to the beginner,\nit is less so than that on the horse's saddle, inasmuch as in the\nlatter case one position is preserved, while in the former an\ninfinite variety of seat is attainable when the rider has fairly\nmastered the art of riding.\n\nThe Camel is not held by the bit and bridle like the horse, but by\na rope tied like a halter round the muzzle, and having a knot on\nthe left or \"near\" side. This is held in the left hand, and is used\nchiefly for the purpose of stopping the animal. The Camel is guided\npartly by the voice of its rider, and partly by a driving-stick,\nwith which the neck is lightly touched on the opposite side to that\nwhich its rider wishes it to take. A pressure of the heel on the\nshoulder-bone tells it to quicken its pace, and a little tap on the\nhead followed by a touch on the short ears are the signals for full\nspeed.\n\nThere are three different kinds of stick with which the Camel\nis driven; one of them, a mere almond branch with the bark, and\nan oblique head, is the sceptre or emblem of sovereignty of the\nPrince of Mecca. Mr. Hamilton suggests that this stick, called the\n\"_mesh'ab_,\" is the original of the jackal-headed stick with which\nso many of the Egyptian deities are represented; and that Aaron's\nrod that \"brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded\nalmonds,\" was the _mesh'ab_, the almond-branch sceptre, the emblem\nof his almost regal rank and authority.\n\n[Illustration: AARON'S ROD BEARS ALMONDS.]\n\nThe women mostly ride in a different manner from the men. Sometimes\nthey are hardy enough to sit the animal in the same way as their\nhusbands, but as a rule they are carried by the animal rather than\nride it, sitting in great basket-like appendages which are slung on\neither side of the Camel. These constitute the \"furniture\" which\nis mentioned in Gen. xxxi. 34. When Jacob left the house of Laban,\nto lead an independent life, Rachel stole her father's images, or\n\"teraphim,\" and carried them away with her, true to her affectionate\nthough deceptive nature, which impelled her to incur the guilt of\nrobbery for the sake of enriching her husband with the cherished\nteraphim of her father. From the most careful researches we learn\nthat these teraphim were used for divining the future, and that they\nwere made in the human form. That they were of considerable size\nis evident from the fact that, when Saul was hunting after David,\nhis wife Michal contrived to convey him out of the house, and for\na time to conceal her fraud by putting an image (or teraph) into\nthe bed as a representative of her husband. Had not, therefore, the\ncamel-furniture been of considerable dimensions, images of such a\nsize could not be hidden, but they could well be stowed away in the\ngreat panniers, as long as their mistress sat upon them, after the\ncustom of Oriental travellers and declined to rise on the ready plea\nof indisposition.\n\n[Illustration: CAMEL-RIDING.]\n\nThis sort of carriage is still used for the women and children. \"The\nwife and child came by in the string of camels, the former reclining\nin an immense circular box, stuffed and padded, covered with red\ncotton, and dressed with yellow worsted ornaments. This family\nnest was mounted on a large camel. It seemed a most commodious and\nwell-arranged travelling carriage, and very superior as a mode of\ncamel-riding to that which our Sitteen rejoiced in (_i.e._ riding\nupon a saddle). The Arab wife could change her position at pleasure,\nand the child had room to walk about and could not fall out, the\nsides of the box just reaching to its shoulders. Various jugs and\nskins and articles of domestic use hung suspended about it, and\ntrappings of fringe and finery ornamented it.\"\n\nThis last sentence brings us to another point which is several\ntimes mentioned in the Bible; namely, the ornaments with which the\nproprietors of Camels are fond of bedizening their favourite animals.\n\nTheir leathern collars are covered with cowrie shells sewn on them\nin various fantastic patterns. Crescent-shaped ornaments are made of\nshells sewn on red cloth, and hung so abundantly upon the harness of\nthe animal that they jingle at every step which it takes. Sheiks and\nother men of rank often have these ornaments made of silver, so that\nthe cost of the entire trappings is very great.\n\n[Illustration: THE DELOUL, OR SWIFT CAMEL.]\n\nWe now come to the Swift Camel, or Deloul.\n\nThe limbs of the Deloul are long and wiry, having not an ounce of\nsuperfluous fat upon them, the shoulders are very broad, and the\nhump, though firm and hard, is very small.\n\nA thoroughbred Deloul, in good travelling condition, is not at\nall a pleasing animal to an ordinary eye, being a lank, gaunt, and\nungainly-looking creature, the very conformation which insures its\nswiftness and endurance being that which detracts from its beauty.\nAn Arab of the desert, however, thinks a good Deloul one of the\nfinest sights in the world. As the talk of the pastoral tribes is of\nsheep and oxen, so is the talk of the nomads about Camels. It is a\nsubject which is for ever on their lips, and a true Bedouin may be\nseen to contemplate the beauties of one of these favourite animals\nfor hours at a time,--if his own, with the rapture of a possessor,\nor, if another's, with the determination of stealing it when he can\nfind an opportunity.\n\nInstead of plodding along at the rate of three miles an hour, which\nis the average speed of the common Camel, the Deloul can cover,\nif lightly loaded, nine or ten miles an hour, and go on at the\nsame pace for a wonderful time, its long legs swinging, and its\nbody swaying, as if it were but an animated machine. Delouls have\nbeen reported to have journeyed for nearly fifty hours without\na single stop for rest, during which time the animals must have\ntraversed nearly five hundred miles. Such examples must, however,\nbe exceptional, implying, as they do, an amount of endurance on the\npart of the rider equal to that of the animal; and even a journey of\nhalf that distance is scarcely possible to ordinary men on Delouls.\n\nFor the movements of the Deloul are very rough, and the rider is\nobliged to prepare himself for a long journey by belting himself\ntightly with two leathern bands, one just under the arms, and the\nother round the pit of the stomach. Without these precautions, the\nrider would be likely to suffer serious injuries, and, even with\nthem, the exercise is so severe, that an Arab makes it a matter of\nspecial boast that he can ride a Deloul for a whole day.\n\nA courier belonging to the Sherif of Mecca told Mr. Hamilton that he\noften went on the same dromedary from Mecca to Medina in forty-eight\nhours, the distance being two hundred and forty miles. And a\nthoroughbred Deloul will travel for seven or eight weeks with only\nfour or five days of rest.\n\nEven at the present time, these Camels are used for the conveyance\nof special messages, and in the remarkable Bornu kingdom a regular\nservice of these animals is established, two couriers always\ntravelling in company, so that if one rider or Camel should fail\nor be captured by the Arabs, who are always on the alert for so\nvaluable a prey, the other may post on and carry the message to its\ndestination.\n\n[Illustration: ANOTHER MODE OF RIDING THE CAMEL.]\n\nThe swift dromedary, or Deloul, is mentioned several times in the\nOld Testament. One of them occurs in Isa. lx. 6: \"The multitude of\ncamels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah.\" In\nthis passage a distinction is drawn between the ordinary Camel and\nthe swift dromedary, the former being the word \"gamel,\" and the\nlatter the word \"beker,\" which is again used in Jer. ii. 23: \"See\nthy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift\ndromedary.\"\n\nThere is a passage in the Book of Esther which looks as if it\nreferred to the ordinary Camel and the swift dromedary, but there\nis considerable uncertainty about the proper rendering It runs as\nfollows: \"And he wrote in king Ahasuerus' name, and sealed it with\nthe king's ring, and sent letters and posts on horseback, and riders\non mules, camels, and young dromedaries.\"\n\nThe Jewish Bible, however, translates this passage as follows: \"And\nsent letters by the runners on the horses, and riders on the racers,\nmules, and young mares.\" Now, the word _rekesh_, which is translated\nas \"racer,\" is rendered by Buxtorf as \"a swift horse or mule,\" and\nthe word _beni-rammachim_, which is translated as \"young mares,\"\nliterally signifies \"those born of mares.\"\n\nThe Camel-drivers behave towards their animals with the curious\ninconsistency which forms so large a part of the Oriental character.\n\nPrizing them above nearly all earthly things, proud of them, and\nloving them after their own fashion, the drivers will talk to\nthem, cheer them, and sing interminable songs for their benefit.\nTowards the afternoon the singing generally begins, and it goes on\nwithout cessation in a sort of monotonous hum, as Dr. Bonar calls\nit. The same traveller calls attention to a passage in Caussinus'\n\"Polyhistor Symbolicus,\" in which the learned and didactic author\nsymbolizes the maxim that more can be done by kindness than by\nblows. \"The Camel is greatly taken with music and melody. So much\nso, indeed, that if it halts through weariness, the driver does not\nurge it with stripes and blows, but soothes it by his songs.\"\n\nSeveral travellers have mentioned these songs. See, for example,\nMiss Rogers' account of some Bedouins: \"Their songs were already\nsubdued to harmonize with their monotonous swinging pace, and chimed\nsoftly and plaintively with the tinkling of camel-bells, thus--\n\n    \"'Dear unto me as the sight of mine eyes,\n       Art thou, O my Camel!\n     Precious to me as the health of my life,\n       Art thou, O my Camel!\n     Sweet to my ears is the sound\n       Of thy tinkling bells, O my Camel!\n     And sweet to thy listening ears\n       Is the sound of my evening song.'\n\nAnd so on, _ad libitum_.\"\n\nSometimes a female Camel gives birth to a colt on the journey. In\nsuch a case, a brief pause is made, and then the train proceeds\non its journey, the owner of the Camel carrying the young one in\nhis arms until the evening halt. He then gives it to its mother,\nand on the following day it is able to follow her without further\nassistance. The young Camels are almost pretty, their hair being\npaler than that of the adult animal, and their limbs more slender.\n\nAlthough the young Camel is better-looking than its parents, it is\nnot one whit more playful. Unlike almost all other animals, the\nCamel seems to have no idea of play, and even the young Camel of a\nmonth or two old follows its mother with the same steady, regular\npace which she herself maintains.\n\nIn spite of all the kindness with which a driver treats his\nCamels, he can at times be exceedingly cruel to them, persisting\nin over-loading and over-driving them, and then, if a Camel fall\nexhausted, removing its load, and distributing it among the other\nCamels. As soon as this is done, he gives the signal to proceed, and\ngoes on his way, abandoning the wretched animal to its fate--_i.e._\nto thirst and the vultures. He will not even have the humanity to\nkill it, but simply leaves it on the ground, muttering that it is\n\"his fate!\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE CAMEL.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n     The Camel and its master--Occasional fury of the animal--A\n     boy killed by a Camel--Another instance of an infuriated\n     Camel--Theory respecting the Arab and his Camel--Apparent\n     stupidity of the Camel--Its hatred of a load, and mode of\n     expressing its disapprobation--Riding a Camel through the\n     streets--A narrow escape--Ceremony of weaning a young Camel--The\n     Camel's favourite food--Structure of the foot and adaptation\n     to locality--Difficulty in provisioning--Camel's hair and\n     skin--Sal-ammoniac and Desert fuel--The Camel and the needle's\n     eye--Straining at a gnat and swallowing a Camel.\n\nWe now come to the general characteristics of the Camel.\n\nThe Camels know their master well, some of them being much more\naffectionate than others. But they are liable to fits of strange\nfury, in which case even their own masters are not safe from them.\nThey are also of a revengeful nature, and have an unpleasant\nfaculty of treasuring up an injury until they can find a time of\nrepaying it. Signor Pierotti gives a curious example of this trait\nof character. As he was going to the Jordan, he found a dead Camel\nlying on the roadside, the head nearly separated from the body. On\ninquiry he found that the animal had a master who ill-treated it,\nand had several times tried to bite him. One evening, after the\nCamels had been unloaded, the drivers lay down to sleep as usual.\n\nThe Camel made its way to its master, and stamped on him as he\nslept. The man uttered one startled cry, but had no time for\nanother. The infuriated Camel followed up its attack by grasping his\nthroat in its powerful jaws, and shaking him to death. The whole\nscene passed so rapidly, that before the other drivers could come to\nthe man's assistance he was hanging dead from the jaws of the Camel,\nwho was shaking him as a dog shakes a rat, and would not release\nits victim until its head had been nearly severed from its body by\nsword-cuts.\n\nA similar anecdote is told by Mr. Palgrave, in his \"Central and\nEastern Arabia:\"--\n\n\"One passion alone he possesses, namely, revenge, of which he gives\nmany a hideous example; while, in carrying it out, he shows an\nunexpected degree of forethoughted malice, united meanwhile with\nall the cold stupidity of his usual character. One instance of this\nI well remember--it occurred hard by a small town in the plain of\nBaalbec, where I was at the time residing.\n\n\"A lad of about fourteen had conducted a large camel, laden\nwith wood, from that very village to another at half an hour's\ndistance or so. As the animal loitered or turned out of the way,\nits conductor struck it repeatedly, and harder than it seems to\nhave thought he had a right to do. But, not finding the occasion\nfavourable for taking immediate quits, it 'bided its time,' nor was\nthat time long in coming.\n\n\"A few days later, the same lad had to re-conduct the beast, but\nunladen, to his own village. When they were about half way on the\nroad, and at some distance from any habitation, the camel suddenly\nstopped, looked deliberately round in every direction to assure\nitself that no one was in sight, and, finding the road clear of\npassers-by, made a step forward, seized the unlucky boy's head in\nits monstrous mouth, and, lifting him up in the air, flung him down\nagain on the earth, with the upper part of his head completely torn\noff, and his brains scattered on the ground. Having thus satisfied\nits revenge, the brute quietly resumed its pace towards the village,\nas though nothing were the matter, till some men, who had observed\nthe whole, though unfortunately at too great a distance to be able\nto afford timely help, came up and killed it.\n\n\"Indeed, so marked is this unamiable propensity, that some\nphilosophers have ascribed the revengeful character of the Arabs\nto the great share which the flesh and milk of the camel have in\ntheir sustenance, and which are supposed to communicate, to those\nwho partake of them over-largely, the moral or immoral qualities of\nthe animal to which they belonged. I do not feel myself capable of\npronouncing an opinion on so intricate a question, but thus much I\ncan say, that the camel and its Bedouin master do afford so many and\nsuch divers points of resemblance, that I do not think our Arab of\nShomer far in the wrong, when I once on a time heard him say, 'God\ncreated the Bedouin for the camel, and the camel for the Bedouin.'\"\n\nThe reader will observe that Mr. Palgrave in this anecdote makes\nreference to the stupidity of the Camel. There is no doubt that the\nCamel is by no means an intellectual animal; but it is very possible\nthat its stupidity may in a great measure be owing to the fact that\nno one has tried to cultivate its intellectual powers. The preceding\nanecdotes show clearly that the Camel must possess a strong memory,\nand be capable of exercising considerable ingenuity.\n\nStill it is not a clever animal. If its master should fall off its\nback, it never dreams of stopping, as a well-trained horse would\ndo, but proceeds at the same plodding pace, leaving his master to\ncatch it if he can. Should it turn out of the way to crop some green\nthorn-bush, it will go on in the same direction, never thinking\nof turning back into the right road unless directed by its rider.\nShould the Camel stray, \"it is a thousand to one that he will never\nfind his way back to his accustomed home or pasture, and the first\nman who picks him up will have no particular shyness to get over;\n... and the losing of his old master and of his former cameline\ncompanions gives him no regret, and occasions no endeavour to find\nthem again.\"\n\nHe has the strongest objection to being laden at all, no matter\nhow light may be the burden, and expresses his disapprobation by\ngrowling and groaning, and attempting to bite. So habitual is this\nconduct that if a kneeling Camel be only approached, and a stone as\nlarge as a walnut laid on its back, it begins to remonstrate in its\nusual manner, groaning as if it were crushed to the earth with its\nload.\n\nThe Camel never makes way for any one, its instinct leading it to\nplod onward in its direct course. What may have been its habits in\na state of nature no one can tell, for such a phenomenon as a wild\nCamel has never been known in the memory of man. There are wild\noxen, wild goats, wild sheep, wild horses, and wild asses, but there\nis no spot on the face of the earth where the Camel is found except\nas the servant of man. Through innate stupidity, according to Mr.\nPalgrave, it goes straight forwards in the direction to which its\nhead happens to be pointed, and is too foolish even to think of\nstopping unless it hears the signal for halt.\n\nAs it passes through the narrow streets of an Oriental city, laden\nwith goods that project on either side, and nearly fill up the\nthoroughfare, it causes singular inconvenience, forcing every one\nwho is in front of it to press himself closely to the wall, and\nto make way for the enormous beast as it plods along. The driver\nor rider generally gives notice by continually calling to the\npedestrians to get out of the way, but a laden Camel rarely passes\nthrough a long street without having knocked down a man or two, or\ndriven before it a few riders on asses who cannot pass between the\nCamel and the wall.\n\nOne source of danger to its rider is to be found in the low archways\nwhich span so many of the streets. They are just high enough to\npermit a laden Camel to pass under them, but are so low that they\nleave no room for a rider. The natives, who are accustomed to this\nstyle of architecture, are always ready for an archway, and, when\nthe rider sees an archway which will not allow him to retain his\nseat, he slips to the ground, and remounts on the other side of the\nobstacle.\n\nMr. Kennard had a very narrow escape with one of these arch ways.\n\"I had passed beneath one or two in perfect safety, without being\nobliged to do more than just bend my head forward, and was in\nthe act of conversing with one of my companions behind, and was\ntherefore in a happy state of ignorance as to what was immediately\nbefore me, when the shouting and running together of the people in\nthe street on either side made me turn my head quickly, but only\njust in time to feel my breath thrown back on my face against the\nkeystone of a gateway, beneath which my camel, with too much way on\nhim to be stopped immediately, had already commenced to pass.\n\n\"With a sort of feeling that it was all over with me, I threw\nmyself back as far as I could, and was carried through in an almost\nbreathless state, my shirt-studs actually scraping along against the\nstonework. On emerging again into the open street, I could hardly\nrealize my escape, for if there had been a single projecting stone\nto stop my progress, the camel would have struggled to get free, and\nmy chest must have been crushed in.\"\n\nIt will be seen from these instances that the charge of stupidity\nis not an undeserved one. Still the animal has enough intellect to\nreceive all the education which it needs for the service of man, and\nwhich it receives at a very early age. The ordinary Camel of burden\nis merely taught to follow its conductor, to obey the various words\nand gestures of command, and to endure a load. The Deloul, however,\nis more carefully trained. It is allowed to follow its mother for\na whole year in perfect liberty. Towards the expiration of that\ntime the young animal is gradually stinted in its supply of milk,\nand forced to browse for its nourishment. On the anniversary of its\nbirth, the young Deloul is turned with its head towards Canopus,\nand its ears solemnly boxed, its master saying at the same time,\n\"Henceforth drinkest thou no drop of milk.\" For this reason the\nnewly-weaned Camel is called Lathim, or the \"ear-boxed.\" It is then\nprevented from sucking by a simple though cruel experiment. A wooden\npeg is sharpened at both ends, and one end thrust into the young\nanimal's nose. When it tries to suck, it pricks its mother with\nthe projecting end, and at the same time forces the other end more\ndeeply into the wound, so that the mother drives away her offspring,\nand the young soon ceases to make the attempt.\n\nThe food of the Camel is very simple, being, in fact, anything that\nit can get. As it proceeds on its journey, it manages to browse as\nit goes along, bending its long neck to the ground, and cropping\nthe scanty herbage without a pause. Camels have been known to\ntravel for twenty successive days, passing over some eight hundred\nmiles of ground, without receiving any food except that which they\ngathered for themselves by the way. The favourite food of the Camel\nis a shrub called the ghada, growing to six feet or so in height,\nand forming a feathery tuft of innumerable little green twigs, very\nslender and flexible. It is so fond of this shrub that a Camel can\nscarcely ever pass a bush without turning aside to crop it; and even\nthough it be beaten severely for its misconduct, it will repeat the\nprocess at the next shrub that comes in sight.\n\n[Illustration: PASSING A CAMEL IN A NARROW STREET OF AN EASTERN\nCITY.]\n\nIt also feeds abundantly on the thorn-bushes which grow so\nplentifully in that part of the world; and though the thorns are an\ninch or two in length, very strong, and as sharp as needles, the\nhard, horny palate of the animal enables it to devour them with\nperfect ease.\n\n[Illustration: MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH.]\n\nThere are several species of these thorn-shrubs, which are scattered\nprofusely over the ground, and are, in fact, the commonest growth\nof the place. After they die, being under the fierce sun of that\nclimate, they dry up so completely, that if a light be set to them\nthey blaze up in a moment, with a sharp cracking sound and a roar\nof flame, and in a moment or two are nothing but a heap of light\nashes. No wonder was it that when Moses saw the thorn-bush burning\nwithout being consumed he was struck with awe at the miracle. These\nwithered bushes are the common fuel of the desert, giving out a\nfierce but brief heat, and then suddenly sinking into ashes. \"For as\nthe crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool\"\n(Eccl. vii. 6).\n\nThe dried and withered twigs of these bushes are also eaten by the\nCamel, which seems to have a power of extracting nutriment from\nevery sort of vegetable substance. It has been fed on charcoal, and,\nas has been happily remarked, could thrive on the shavings of a\ncarpenter's workshop.\n\n[Illustration: AN ARAB ENCAMPMENT.]\n\nStill, when food is plentiful, it is fed as regularly as can be\nmanaged, and generally after a rather peculiar manner. \"Our guide,\"\nwrites Mr. Hamilton, in the work which has already been mentioned,\n\"is an elderly man, the least uncouth of our camel-drivers. He\nhas three camels in the caravan, and it was amusing to see his\npreparations for their evening's entertainment. The table-cloth, a\ncircular piece of leather, was duly spread on the ground; on this he\npoured the quantity of dourrah destined for their meal, and calling\nhis camels, they came and took each its place at the feast. It is\nquaint to see how each in his turn eats, so gravely and so quietly,\nstretching his long neck into the middle of the heap, then raising\nhis head to masticate each mouthful; all so slowly and with such\ngusto, that we could swear it was a party of epicures sitting in\njudgment on one of Vachette's _chefs d'oeuvre_.\"\n\nThe foregoing passages will show the reader how wonderfully adapted\nis the constitution of the Camel for the country in which it lives,\nand how indispensable it is to the inhabitants. It has been called\n\"the ship of the desert,\" for without the Camel the desert would be\nas impassable as the sea without ships. No water being found for\nseveral days' journey together, the animal is able to carry within\nitself a supply of water which will last it for several days, and,\nas no green thing grows far from the presence of water, the Camel is\nable to feed upon the brief-lived thorn-shrubs which have sprung up\nand died, and which, from their hard and sharp prickles, are safe\nfrom every animal except the hard-mouthed Camel.\n\nBut these advantages would be useless without another--_i. e._ the\nfoot. The mixed stones and sand of the desert would ruin the feet\nof almost any animal, and it is necessary that the Camel should be\nfurnished with a foot that cannot be split by heat like the hoof of\na horse, that is broad enough to prevent the creature from sinking\ninto the sand, and is tough enough to withstand the action of the\nrough and burning soil.\n\nSuch a foot does the Camel possess. It consists of two long toes\nresting upon a hard elastic cushion with a tough and horny sole.\nThis cushion is so soft that the tread of the huge animal is as\nnoiseless as that of a cat, and, owing to the division of the toes,\nit spreads as the weight comes upon it, and thus gives a firm\nfooting on loose ground. The foot of the moose-deer has a similar\nproperty, in order to enable the animal to walk upon the snow.\n\nIn consequence of this structure, the Camel sinks less deeply into\nthe ground than any other animal; but yet it does sink in it, and\ndislikes a deep and loose sand, groaning at every step, and being\nwearied by the exertion of dragging its hard foot out of the\nholes into which they sink. It is popularly thought that hills are\nimpracticable to the Camel; but it is able to climb even rocky\nground from which a horse would recoil. Mr. Marsh, an American\ntraveller, was much surprised by seeing a caravan of fifty camels\npass over a long ascent in Arabia Petraea. The rock was as smooth as\npolished marble, and the angle was on an average fifteen degrees;\nbut the whole caravan passed over it without an accident.\n\n[Illustration: ON THE MARCH.]\n\nThe soil that a Camel most hates is a wet and muddy ground, on\nwhich it is nearly sure to slip. If the reader will look at a Camel\nfrom behind, he will see that the hinder legs are close together\nuntil the ankle-joint, when they separate so widely that the feet\nare set on the ground at a considerable distance from each other.\nOn dry ground this structure increases the stability of the animal\nby increasing its base; but on wet ground the effect is singularly\nunpleasant. The soft, padded feet have no hold, and slip sideways\nat every step, often with such violence as to dislocate a joint and\ncause the death of the animal. When such ground has to be traversed,\nthe driver generally passes a bandage round the hind legs just below\nthe ankle-joint, so as to prevent them from diverging too far.\n\nIt must be remarked, however, that the country in which the animal\nlives is essentially a dry one, and that moist and muddy ground\nis so exceptional that the generality of Camels never see it in\ntheir lives. Camels do not object to mud an inch or two deep,\nprovided that there is firm ground below; and they have been seen\nto walk with confident safety over pavements covered with mud and\nhalf-frozen snow.\n\nThe animals can ford rivers well enough, provided that the bed be\nstony or gravelly; but they are bad swimmers, their round bodies and\nlong necks being scarcely balanced by their legs, so that they are\napt to roll over on their sides, and in such a case they are sure\nto be drowned. When swimming is a necessity, the head is generally\ntied to the stern of a boat, or guided by the driver swimming in\nfront, while another often clings to the tail, so as to depress the\nrump and elevate the head. It is rather curious that the Camels of\nthe Sahara cannot be safely entrusted to the water. They will swim\nthe river readily enough; but they are apt to be seized with illness\nafterwards, and to die in a few hours.\n\nWe now come to some other uses of the Camel.\n\nIts hair is of the greatest importance, as it is used for many\npurposes. In this country, all that we know practically of the\nCamel's hair is that it is employed in making brushes for painters;\nbut in its own land the hair plays a really important part. At the\nproper season it is removed from the animal, usually by being pulled\naway in tufts, but sometimes by being shorn, and it is then spun by\nthe women into strong thread.\n\nFrom this thread are made sundry fabrics where strength is required\nand coarseness is not an objection. The \"black tents\" of the Bedouin\nArabs, similar to those in which Abraham lived, are made of Camel's\nhair, and so are the rugs, carpets, and cordage used by the nomad\ntribes. Even mantles for rainy or cold weather are made of Camel's\nhair, and it was in a dress of this coarse and rough material that\nSt. John the Baptist was clad. The best part of the Camels hair is\nthat which grows in tufts on the back and about the hump, the fibre\nbeing much longer than that which covers the body. There is also a\nlittle very fine under-wool which is carefully gathered, and, when a\nsufficient quantity is procured, it is spun and woven into garments.\nShawls of this material are even now as valuable as those which are\nmade from the Cachmire goat.\n\n[Illustration: HAIR OF THE CAMEL.]\n\nThe skin of the Camel is made into a sort of leather. It is simply\ntanned by being pegged out in the sun and rubbed with salt.\n\nSandals and leggings are made of this leather, and in some places\nwater-bottles are manufactured from it, the leather being thicker\nand less porous than that of the goat, and therefore wasting less of\nthe water by evaporation. The bones are utilized, being made into\nvarious articles of commerce.\n\nSo universally valuable is the Camel that even its dung is important\nto its owners. Owing to the substances on which the animal feeds,\nit consists of little but macerated fragments of aromatic shrubs.\nIt is much used as poultices in case of bruises or rheumatic pains,\nand is even applied with some success to simple fractures. It is\nlargely employed for fuel, and the desert couriers use nothing else,\ntheir Camels being furnished with a net, so that none of this useful\nsubstance shall be lost. For this purpose it is carefully collected,\nmixed with bits of straw, and made into little rolls, which are\ndried in the sun, and can then be laid by for any time until they\nare needed.\n\nMixed with clay and straw, it is most valuable as a kind of mortar\nor cement with which the walls of huts are rendered weather-proof,\nand the same material is used in the better-class houses to make a\nsort of terrace on the flat roof. This must be waterproof in order\nto withstand the wet of the rainy season, and no material answers\nthe purpose so well as that which has been mentioned. So strangely\nhard and firm is this composition, that stoves are made of it. These\nstoves are made like jars, and have the faculty of resisting the\npower of the inclosed fire. Even after it is burned it has its uses,\nthe ashes being employed in the manufacture of sal-ammoniac.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are two passages in the New Testament which mention the Camel\nin an allegorical sense. The first of these is the proverbial saying\nof our Lord, \"A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of\nheaven. Again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through\nthe eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom\nof God\" (Matt. xix. 23, 24).\n\nNow, this well-known but scarcely understood passage requires some\nlittle dissection. If the reader will refer to the context, he will\nsee that this saying was spoken in allusion to the young and wealthy\nman who desired to be one of the disciples, but clung too tightly\nto his wealth to accept the only conditions on which he could be\nreceived. His possessions were a snare to him, as was proved by his\nrefusal to part with them at Christ's command. On his retiring,\nthe expression was used, \"that a rich man shall hardly (or, with\ndifficulty) enter the kingdom of heaven;\" followed by the simile of\nthe Camel and the needle's eye.\n\nNow, if we are to take this passage literally, we can but draw one\nconclusion from it, that a rich man can no more enter heaven than a\ncamel pass through the eye of a needle, i.e. that it is impossible\nfor him to do so. Whereas, in the previous sentence, Christ says not\nthat it is impossible, but difficult (+dyskolos+) for him to do so.\nIt is difficult for a man to use his money for the service of God,\nthe only purpose for which it was given him, and the difficulty\nincreases in proportion to its amount. But wealth in itself is no\nmore a bar to heaven than intellect, health, strength, or any other\ngift, and, if it be rightly used, is one of the most powerful tools\nthat can be used in the service of God. Our Lord did not condemn\nall wealthy men alike. He knew many; but there was only one whom He\nadvised to sell his possessions and give them to the poor as the\ncondition of being admitted among the disciples.\n\n[Illustration: CAMEL GOING THROUGH A \"NEEDLE'S EYE.\"]\n\nWe will now turn to the metaphor of the Camel and the needle's eye.\nOf course it can be taken merely as a very bold metaphor, but it\nmay also be understood in a simpler sense, the sense in which it\nwas probably understood by those who heard it. In Oriental cities,\nthere are in the large gates small and very low apertures called\nmetaphorically \"needle's-eyes,\" just as we talk of certain windows\nas \"bull's-eyes.\" These entrances are too narrow for a Camel to\npass through them in the ordinary manner, especially if loaded.\nWhen a laden Camel has to pass through one of these entrances, it\nkneels down, its load is removed, and then it shuffles through on\nits knees. \"Yesterday,\" writes Lady Duff-Gordon from Cairo, \"I saw a\ncamel go through the eye of a needle, _i.e._ the low-arched door of\nan enclosure. He must kneel, and bow his head to creep through; and\nthus the rich man must humble himself.\"\n\nThere is another passage in which the Camel is used by our Lord in\na metaphorical sense. This is the well-known sentence: \"Ye blind\nguides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel\" (Matt. xxiii.\n24). It is remarkable that an accidental misprint has robbed this\npassage of its true force. The real translation is: \"which strain\n_out_ the gnat, and swallow the camel.\" The Greek word is +diulizo+,\nwhich signifies to filter thoroughly; and the allusion is made to\nthe pharisaical custom of filtering liquids before drinking them,\nlest by chance a gnat or some such insect which was forbidden as\nfood might be accidentally swallowed.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BACTRIAN CAMEL.\n\n     General description of the animal--Its use in mountain\n     roads--Peculiar formation of the foot--Uses of a mixed\n     breed--Its power of enduring cold--Used chiefly as a beast\n     of draught--Unfitness for the plough--The cart and mode of\n     harnessing--The load which it can draw--Camel-skin ropes--A\n     Rabbinical legend.\n\n\nThe second kind of Camel--namely, the Bactrian species--was probably\nunknown to the Jews until a comparatively late portion of their\nhistory. This species was employed by the Assyrians, as we find by\nthe sculptures upon the ruins, and if in no other way the Jews would\nbecome acquainted with them through the nation by whom they were\nconquered, and in whose land they abode for so long.\n\nThe Bactrian Camel is at once to be distinguished from that which\nhas already been described by the two humps and the clumsier and\nsturdier form. Still the skeletons of the Bactrian and Arabian\nspecies are so similar that none but a very skilful anatomist\ncan distinguish between them, and several learned zoologists\nhave expressed an opinion, in which I entirely coincide, that the\nBactrian and Arabian Camels are but simple varieties of one and the\nsame species, not nearly so dissimilar as the greyhound and the\nbulldog.\n\n[Illustration: A REST IN THE DESERT.]\n\nUnlike the one-humped Camel, the Bactrian species is quite at home\nin a cold climate, and walks over ice as easily as its congener does\nover smooth stone. It is an admirable rock-climber, and is said even\nto surpass the mule in the sureness of its tread. This quality is\nprobably occasioned by the peculiar structure of the foot, which has\nan elongated toe projecting beyond the soft pad, and forming a sort\nof claw. In the winter time the riders much prefer them to horses,\nbecause their long legs enable them to walk easily through snow,\nin which a horse could only plunge helplessly, and would in all\nprobability sink and perish.\n\nA mixed breed of the one-humped and the Bactrian animals is thought\nto be the best for hill work in winter time, and General Harlan\nactually took two thousand of these animals in winter time for a\ndistance of three hundred and sixty miles over the snowy tops of the\nIndian Caucasus; and though the campaign lasted for seven months, he\nonly lost one Camel, and that was accidentally killed. Owing to its\nuse among the hills, the Bactrian species is sometimes called the\nMountain Camel.\n\nIt very much dislikes the commencement of spring, because the warm\nmid-day sun slightly melts the surface of the snow, and the frost\nof night converts it into a thin plate of ice. When the Camel walks\nupon this semi-frozen snow, its feet plunge into the soft substratum\nthrough the icy crust, against which its legs are severely cut. The\nbeginning of the winter is liable to the same objection.\n\nThe mixed breed which has just been mentioned must be procured from\na male Bactrian and a female Arabian Camel. If the parentage be\nreversed, the offspring is useless, being weak, ill-tempered, and\ndisobedient.\n\nThe Bactrian Camel is, as has been mentioned, tolerant of cold, and\nis indeed so hardy an animal that it bears the severest winters\nwithout seeming to suffer distress, and has been seen quietly\nfeeding when the thermometer has reached a temperature several\ndegrees below zero. Sometimes, when the cold is more than usually\nsharp, the owners sew a thick cloth round its body, but even in such\nextreme cases the animal is left to find its own food as it best\ncan. And, however severe the weather may be, the Bactrian Camel\nnever sleeps under a roof.\n\nThis Camel is sometimes employed as a beast of burden, but its\ngeneral use is for draught. It is not often used alone for the\nplough, because it has an uncertain and jerking mode of pulling, and\ndoes not possess the steady dragging movement which is obtained by\nthe use of the horse or ox.\n\n[Illustration: BACTRIAN CAMELS DRAWING CART.]\n\nIt is almost invariably harnessed to carts, and always in pairs. The\nmode of yoking the animals is as simple as can well be conceived.\nA pole runs between them from the front of the vehicle, and the\nCamels are attached to it by means of a pole which passes over their\nnecks. Oxen were harnessed in a similar manner. It was probably\none of these cars or chariots that was mentioned by Isaiah in his\nprophecy respecting Assyria:--\"And he saw a chariot with a couple of\nhorsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels\" (Isa. xxi.\n7). The cars themselves are as simple as the mode of harnessing\nthem, being almost exactly like the ox carts which have already been\ndescribed.\n\nThe weight which can be drawn by a pair of these Camels is really\nconsiderable. On a tolerably made road a good pair of Camels are\nexpected to draw from twenty-six to twenty-eight hundred weight,\nand to continue their labours for twenty or thirty successive\ndays, traversing each day an average of thirty miles. It is much\nslower than the Arabian Camel, seldom going at more than two and a\nhalf miles per hour. If, however, the vehicle to which a pair of\nBactrians are harnessed were well made, the wheels truly circular,\nand the axles kept greased so as to diminish the friction, there is\nno doubt that the animals could draw a still greater load to longer\ndistances, and with less trouble to themselves. As it is, the wheels\nare wretchedly fitted, and their ungreased axles keep up a continual\ncreaking that is most painful to an unaccustomed ear, and totally\nunheeded by the drivers.\n\nThe hair of the Bactrian Camel is long, coarse, and strong; and,\nlike that of the Arabian animal, is made into rough cloth. It is\nplucked off by hand in the summer time, when it naturally becomes\nloose in readiness for its annual renewal, and the weight of the\nentire crop of hair ought to be about ten pounds. The skin is not\nmuch valued, and is seldom used for any purpose except for making\nropes, straps, and thongs, and is not thought worth the trouble of\ntanning. The milk, like that of the Arabian animal, is much used for\nfood, but the quantity is very trifling, barely two quarts per diem\nbeing procured from each Camel.\n\nThere is but little that is generally interesting in the Rabbinical\nwriters on the Camel. They have one proverbial saying upon the\nshortness of its ears. When any one makes a request that is likely\nto be refused, they quote the instance of the Camel, who, it seems,\nwas dissatisfied with its appearance, and asked for horns to match\nits long ears. The result of the request was, that it was deprived\nof its ears, and got no horns.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HORSE.\n\n     The Hebrew words which signify the Horse--The Horse introduced\n     into Palestine from Egypt--Similarity of the war-horse of\n     Scripture and the Arab horse of the present day--Characteristics\n     of the Horse--Courage and endurance of the Horse--Hardness of\n     its unshod hoofs--Love of the Arab for his Horse--Difficulty\n     of purchasing the animal--The Horse prohibited to the\n     Israelites--Solomon's disregard of the edict--The war-chariot,\n     its form and use--Probable construction of the iron chariot--The\n     cavalry Horse--Lack of personal interest in the animal.\n\n\nSeveral Hebrew words are used by the various Scriptural writers to\nsignify the Horse, and, like our own terms of horse, mare, pony,\ncharger, &c., are used to express the different qualities of the\nanimal. The chief distinction of the Horse seemed to lie in its\nuse for riding or driving, the larger and heavier animals being\nnaturally required for drawing the weighty springless chariots. The\nchariot horse was represented by the word _Sus_, and the cavalry\nhorse by the word _Parash_, and in several passages both these words\noccur in bold contrast to each other. See, for example, 1 Kings iv.\n26, &c.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAmong the many passages of Scripture in which the Horse is\nmentioned, there are few which do not treat of it as an adjunct of\nwar, and therefore it is chiefly in that light that we must regard\nit.\n\nThe Horse of the Scriptures was evidently a similar animal to the\nArab Horse of the present day, as we find not only from internal\nevidence, but from the sculptures and paintings which still remain\nto tell us of the vanished glories of Egypt and Assyria. It is\nremarkable, by the way, that the first mention of the Horse in the\nScriptures alludes to it as an Egyptian animal. During the terrible\nfamine which Joseph had foretold, the Egyptians and the inhabitants\nof neighbouring countries were unable to find food for themselves\nor fodder for their cattle, and, accordingly, they sold all their\nbeasts for bread. \"And they brought their cattle unto Joseph, and\nJoseph gave them bread in exchange for horses and the flocks, and\nfor the cattle of herds, and for the asses, and he fed them with\nbread for all their cattle for that year.\"\n\nThis particular breed of Horses is peculiarly fitted for the\npurposes of war, and is much less apt for peaceful duties than the\nheavier and more powerful breeds, which are found in different parts\nof the world. It is remarkable for the flexible agility of its\nmovements, which enable it to adapt itself to every movement of the\nrider, whose intentions it seems to divine by a sort of instinct,\nand who guides it not so much by the bridle as by the pressure of\nthe knees and the voice. Examples of a similar mode of guidance\nmay be seen on the well-known frieze of the Parthenon, where, in\nthe Procession of Horsemen, the riders may be seen directing their\nsteeds by touching the side of the neck with one finger, thus\nshowing their own skill and the well-trained quality of the animals\nwhich they ride.\n\n[Illustration: TRIAL OF ARAB HORSES.]\n\nIts endurance is really wonderful, and a horse of the Kochlani breed\nwill go through an amount of work which is almost incredible. Even\nthe trial by which a Horse is tested is so severe, that any other\nanimal would be either killed on the spot or ruined for life. When a\nyoung mare is tried for the first time, her owner rides her for some\nfifty or sixty miles at full speed, always finishing by swimming\nher through a river. After this trial she is expected to feed\nfreely; and should she refuse her food, she is rejected as an animal\nunworthy of the name of Kochlani.\n\n[Illustration: AN ARAB HORSE OF THE KOCHLANI BREED.]\n\nPartly from native qualities, and partly from constant association\nwith mankind, the Arab Horse is a singularly intelligent animal.\nIn Europe we scarcely give the Horse credit for the sensitive\nintelligence with which it is endowed, and look upon it rather as\na machine for draught and carriage than a companion to man. The\nArab, however, lives with his horse, and finds in it the docility\nand intelligence which we are accustomed to associate with the\ndog rather than the Horse. It will follow him about and come at\nhis call. It will stand for any length of time and await its\nrider without moving. Should he fall from its back, it will stop\nand stand patiently by him until he can remount; and there is a\nwell-authenticated instance of an Arab Horse whose master had been\nwounded in battle, taking him up by his clothes and carrying him\naway to a place of safety.\n\nEven in the very heat and turmoil of the combat, the true Arab Horse\nseems to be in his true element, and fully deserves the splendid\neulogium in the Book of Job (xxxix. 19-25): \"Hast thou given the\nhorse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?\n\n\"Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his\nnostrils is terror.\n\n\"He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on\nto meet the armed men.\n\n\"He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back\nfrom the sword.\n\n\"The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the\nshield.\n\n\"He walketh the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth\nhe that it is the sound of the trumpet.\n\n\"He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle\nafar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.\"\n\nIn another passage an allusion is made to the courage of the Horse,\nand its love for the battle. \"I hearkened and heard, but they spake\nnot aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have\nI done? Every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into\nthe battle.\" (Jer. viii. 6.) Even in the mimic battle of the djereed\nthe Horse seems to exult in the conflict as much as his rider, and\nwheels or halts almost without the slightest intimation.\n\n[Illustration: THE WAR HORSE.]\n\nThe hoofs of the Arab Horses are never shod, their owners thinking\nthat that act is not likely to improve nature, and even among the\nburning sands and hard rocks the Horse treads with unbroken hoof. In\nsuch a climate, indeed, an iron shoe would be worse than useless,\nas it would only scorch the hoof by day, and in consequence of the\nrapid change of temperature by day or night, the continual expansion\nand contraction of the metal would soon work the nails loose, and\ncause the shoe to fall off.\n\nA tender-footed Horse would be of little value, and so we often\nfind in the Scriptures that the hardness of the hoof is reckoned\namong one of the best qualities of a Horse. See, for example, Isa.\nv. 28: \"Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their\nhorses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a\nwhirlwind.\" Again, in Micah iv. 13: \"Arise and thresh, O daughter\nof Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs\nbrass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people.\" Allusion is here\nmade to one mode of threshing, in which a number of Horses were\nturned into the threshing-floor, and driven about at random among\nthe wheat, instead of walking steadily like the oxen.\n\nIn Judges v. 22 there is a curious allusion to the hoofs of the\nHorse. It occurs in the Psalm of Thanksgiving sung by Deborah and\nBarak after the death of Sisera: \"Then were the horse-hoofs broken\nby the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones.\"\n\nHorses possessed of the qualities of courage, endurance, and\nsureness of foot are naturally invaluable; and even at the present\nday the Arab warrior esteems above all things a Horse of the purest\nbreed, and, whether he buys or sells one, takes care to have its\ngenealogy made out and hung on the animal's neck.\n\nAs to the mare, scarcely any inducement is strong enough to make\nan Arab part with it, even to a countryman, and the sale of the\nanimal is hindered by a number of impediments which in point of\nfact are almost prohibitory. Signor Pierotti, whose long residence\nin Palestine has given him a deep insight into the character of the\npeople, speaks in the most glowing terms of the pure Arab Horse,\nand of its inestimable value to its owner. Of the difficulties with\nwhich the sale of the animal is surrounded, he gives a very amusing\naccount:--\n\n\"After this enumeration of the merits of the horse, I will describe\nthe manner in which a sale is conducted, choosing the case of the\nmare, as that is the more valuable animal. The price varies with the\npurity of blood of the steed, and the fortunes of its owner. When he\nis requested to fix a value, his first reply is, 'It is yours, and\nbelongs to you, I am your servant;' because, perhaps, he does not\nthink that the question is asked with any real design of purchasing;\nwhen the demand is repeated, he either makes no answer or puts the\nquestion by; at the third demand he generally responds rudely with\na sardonic smile, which is not a pleasant thing to see, as it is a\nsign of anger; and then says that he would sooner sell his family\nthan his mare. This remark is not meant as a mere jest; for it is no\nuncommon thing for a Bedawy to give his parents as hostages rather\nthan separate himself from his friend.\n\n[Illustration: ARAB HORSES.]\n\n\"If, however, owing to some misfortune, he determines on selling his\nmare, it is very doubtful whether he or his parents will allow her\nto leave their country without taking the precaution to render her\nunfit for breeding.\n\n\"There are many methods of arranging the sale, all of which I should\nlike to describe particularly; however, I will confine myself to a\ngeneral statement. Before the purchaser enters upon the question of\nthe price to be paid, he must ascertain that the parents, friends,\nand allies of the owners give their consent to the sale, without\nwhich some difficulty or other may arise, or perhaps the mare may be\nstolen from her new master. He must also obtain an unquestionable\nwarranty that she is fit for breeding purposes, and that no other\nhas a prior claim to any part of her body. This last precaution may\nseem rather strange, but it arises from the following custom. It\nsometimes happens that, when a Bedawy is greatly in want of money,\nhe raises it most easily by selling a member of his horse; so that\nvery frequently a horse belongs to a number of owners, one of whom\nhas purchased the right fore-leg, another the left, another the\nhind-leg, or the tail, or an ear, or the like; and the proprietors\nhave each a proportionate interest in the profits of its labour or\nsale.\n\n\"So also the offspring are sold in a similar manner; sometimes only\nthe first-born, sometimes the first three; and then it occasionally\nhappens that two or three members of the foal are, as it were,\nmortgaged. Consequently, any one who is ignorant of this custom may\nfind that, after he has paid the price of the mare to her supposed\nowner, a third person arises who demands to be paid the value of his\npart; and, if the purchaser refuse to comply, he may find himself in\na very unpleasant situation, without any possibility of obtaining\nhelp from the local government. Whoever sells his mare entirely,\nwithout reserving to himself one or two parts, must be on good terms\nwith the confederate chiefs in the neighbourhood, and must have\nobtained their formal sanction, otherwise they would universally\ndespise him, and perhaps lie in wait to kill him, so that his only\nhope of escape would be a disgraceful flight, just as if he had\ncommitted some great crime. It is an easier matter to purchase\na stallion; but even in this case the above formalities must be\nobserved.\n\n[Illustration: BUYING AN ARAB HORSE.]\n\n\"These remarks only apply to buying horses of the purest blood;\nthose of inferior race are obtained without difficulty, and at fair\nprices.\"\n\nFor some reason, perhaps the total severance of the Israelites from\nthe people among whom they had lived so long in captivity, the use\nof the Horse, or, at all events, the breeding of it, was forbidden\nto the Israelites; see Deut. xvi. 16. After prophesying that the\nIsraelites, when they had settled themselves in the Promised Land,\nwould want a king, the inspired writer next ordains that the new\nking must be chosen by Divine command, and must belong to one of\nthe twelve tribes. He then proceeds as follows:--\"But he shall not\nmultiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt,\nto the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the Lord\nhath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.\"\n\nThe foresight of this prophetical writer was afterwards shown by the\nfact that many kings of Israel did send to Egypt for Horses, Egypt\nbeing the chief source from which these animals were obtained. And,\njudging from the monuments to which reference has been made, the\nHorse of Egypt was precisely the same animal as the Arab Horse of\nthe present day, and was probably obtained from nomad breeders.\n\nIn spite of the prohibitory edict, both David and Solomon used\nHorses in battle, and the latter supplied himself largely from\nEgypt, disregarding as utterly the interdict against plurality of\nHorses as that against plurality of wives, which immediately follows.\n\nDavid seems to have been the first king who established a force\nof chariots, and this he evidently did for the purpose of action\non the flat grounds of Palestine, where infantry were at a great\ndisadvantage when attacked by the dreaded chariots; yet he did not\ncontrovert the law by multiplying to himself Horses, or even by\nimporting them from Egypt; and when he had an opportunity of adding\nto his army an enormous force of chariots, he only employed as many\nas he thought were sufficient for his purpose. After he defeated\nHadadezer, and had taken from him a thousand chariots with their\nHorses together with seven hundred cavalry, he houghed all the\nHorses except those which were needed for one hundred chariots.\n\n[Illustration: THE ARAB'S FAVOURITE STEEDS.]\n\nSolomon, however, was more lax, and systematically broke the ancient\nlaw by multiplying Horses exceedingly, and sending to Egypt for\nthem. We learn from 1 Kings iv. 26 of the enormous establishment\nwhich he kept up both for chariots and cavalry. Besides those which\nwere given to him as tribute, he purchased both chariots and their\nHorses from Egypt and Syria.\n\nChariots were far more valued in battle than horsemen, probably\nbecause their weight made their onset irresistible against infantry,\nwho had no better weapons than bows and spears. The slingers\nthemselves could make little impression on the chariots; and even\nif the driver, or the warrior who fought in the chariot, or his\nattendant, happened to be killed, the weighty machine, with its two\nHorses, still went on its destructive way.\n\n[Illustration: PHARAOH PURSUES THE ISRAELITES WITH CHARIOTS AND\nHORSES, AND THE SEA COVERS THEM.]\n\nOf their use in battle we find very early mention. For example, in\nExod. xiv. 6 it is mentioned that Pharaoh made ready his chariot to\npursue the Israelites; and in a subsequent part of the same chapter\nwe find that six hundred of the Egyptian chariot force accompanied\ntheir master in the pursuit, and that the whole army was delayed\nbecause the loss of the chariot wheels made them drive heavily.\n\nThen in the familiar story of Sisera and Jael the vanquished general\nis mentioned as alighting from his chariot, in which he would be\nconspicuous, and taking flight on foot; and, after his death, his\nmother is represented as awaiting his arrival, and saying to the\nwomen of the household, \"Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why\ntarry the wheels of his chariot?\"\n\nDuring the war of conquest which Joshua led, the chariot plays a\nsomewhat important part. As long as the war was carried on in the\nrugged mountainous parts of the land, no mention of the chariot is\nmade; but when the battles had to be fought on level ground, the\nenemy brought the dreaded chariots to bear upon the Israelites. In\nspite of these adjuncts, Joshua won the battles, and, unlike David,\ndestroyed the whole of the Horses and burned the chariots.\n\nMany years afterwards, a still more dreadful weapon, the iron\nchariot, was used against the Israelites by Jabin. This new\ninstrument of war seems to have cowed the people completely; for\nwe find that by means of his nine hundred chariots of iron Jabin\n\"mightily oppressed the children of Israel\" for twenty years. It has\nbeen well suggested that the possession of the war chariot gave rise\nto the saying of Benhadad's councillors, that the gods of Israel\nwere gods of the hills, and so their army had been defeated; but\nthat if the battle were fought in the plain, where the chariots and\nHorses could act, they would be victorious.\n\nSo dreaded were these weapons, even by those who were familiar\nwith them and were accustomed to use them, that when the Syrians\nhad besieged Samaria, and had nearly reduced it by starvation, the\nfancied sound of a host of chariots and Horses that they heard in\nthe night caused them all to flee and evacuate the camp, leaving\ntheir booty and all their property in the hands of the Israelites.\n\nWhether the Jews ever employed the terrible scythe chariots is not\nquite certain, though it is probable that they may have done so;\nand this conjecture is strengthened by the fact that they were\nemployed against the Jews by Antiochus, who had \"footmen an hundred\nand ten thousand, and horsemen five thousand and three hundred,\nand elephants two and twenty, and three hundred chariots armed with\nhooks\" (2 Macc. xiii. 2). Some commentators think that by the iron\nchariots mentioned above were signified ordinary chariots armed with\niron scythes projecting from the sides.\n\n[Illustration: ELIJAH IS CARRIED UP.]\n\nBy degrees the chariot came to be one of the recognised forces\nin war, and we find it mentioned throughout the books of the\nScriptures, not only in its literal sense, but as a metaphor which\nevery one could understand. In the Psalms, for example, are several\nallusions to the war-chariot.\" He maketh wars to cease unto the end\nof the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;\nHe burneth the chariot in the fire\" (Ps. xlvi. 9). Again: \"At Thy\nrebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into\na dead sleep\" (Ps. lxxvi. 6). And: \"Some trust in chariots, and\nsome in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God\"\n(Ps. xx. 7). Now, the force of these passages cannot be properly\nappreciated unless we realize to ourselves the dread in which the\nwar-chariot was held by the foot-soldiers. Even cavalry were much\nfeared; but the chariots were objects of almost superstitious fear,\nand the rushing sound of their wheels, the noise of the Horses'\nhoofs, and the shaking of the ground as the \"prancing horses and\njumping chariots\" (Nah. iii. 2) thundered along, are repeatedly\nmentioned.\n\nSee, for example, Ezek. xxvi. 10: \"By reason of the abundance of\nhis horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at\nthe noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots.\"\nAlso, Jer. xlvii. 3: \"At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs\nof his strong horses, at the rushing of his chariots, and at the\nrumbling of his wheels, the fathers shall not look back to their\nchildren for feebleness of hands.\" See also Joel ii. 4, 5: \"The\nappearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen,\nso shall they run.\n\n\"Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they\nleap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble,\nas a strong people set in battle array.\"\n\nIn several passages the chariot and Horse are used in bold imagery\nas expressions of Divine power: \"The chariots of God are twenty\nthousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as\nin Sinai, in the holy place\" (Ps. lxviii. 17). A similar image\nis employed in Ps. civ. 3: \"Who maketh the clouds His chariot:\nwho walketh upon the wings of the wind.\" In connexion with these\npassages, we cannot but call to mind that wonderful day when the\nunseen power of the Almighty was made manifest to the servant\nof Elisha, whose eyes were suddenly opened, and he saw that the\nmountain was full of Horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.\n\nThe chariot and horses of fire by which Elijah was taken from earth\nare also familiar to us, and in connexion with the passage which\ndescribes that wonderful event, we may mention one which occurs in\nthe splendid prayer of Habakkuk (iii. 8): \"Was the Lord displeased\nagainst the rivers? was Thine anger against the rivers? was Thy\nwrath against the sea, that Thou didst ride upon Thine horses and\nThy chariots of salvation?\"\n\nBy degrees the chariot came to be used for peaceful purposes, and\nwas employed as our carriages of the present day, in carrying\npersons of wealth. That this was the case in Egypt from very early\ntimes is evident from Gen. xli. 43, in which we are told that after\nPharaoh had taken Joseph out of prison and raised him to be next in\nrank to himself, the king caused him to ride in the second chariot\nwhich he had, and so to be proclaimed ruler over Egypt. Many years\nafterwards we find him travelling in his chariot to the land of\nGoshen, whither he went to meet Jacob and to conduct him to the\npresence of Pharaoh.\n\nAt first the chariot seems to have been too valuable to the\nIsraelites to have been used for any purpose except war, and it is\nnot until a comparatively late time that we find it employed as a\ncarriage, and even then it is only used by the noble and wealthy.\nAbsalom had such chariots, but it is evident that he used them for\npurposes of state, and as appendages of his regal rank. Chariots or\ncarriages were, however, afterwards employed by the Israelites as\nfreely as by the Egyptians, from whom they were originally procured;\nand accordingly we find Rehoboam mounting his chariot and fleeing\nto Jerusalem, Ahab riding in his chariot from Samaria to Jezreel,\nwith Elijah running before him; and in the New Testament we read of\nthe chariot in which sat the chief eunuch of Ethiopia whom Philip\nbaptized (Acts viii. 28).\n\nAs to the precise form and character of these chariots, they are\nmade familiar to us by the sculptures and paintings of Egypt\nand Assyria, from both of which countries the Jews procured the\nvehicles. Differing very slightly in shape, the principle of the\nchariot was the same; and it strikes us with some surprise that\nthe Assyrians, the Egyptians, and the Jews, the three wealthiest\nand most powerful nations of the world, should not have invented a\nbetter carriage. They lavished the costliest materials and the most\nartistic skill in decorating the chariots, but had no idea of making\nthem comfortable for the occupants.\n\nThey were nothing but semicircular boxes on wheels, and of very\nsmall size. They were hung very low, so that the occupants could\nstep in and out without trouble, though they do not seem to have\nhad the sloping floor of the Greek or Roman chariot. They had no\nsprings, but, in order to render the jolting of the carriage less\ndisagreeable, the floor was made of a sort of network of leathern\nropes, very tightly stretched so as to be elastic. The wheels were\nalways two in number, and generally had six spokes.\n\nTo the side of the chariot was attached the case which contained\nthe bow and quiver of arrows, and in the case of a rich man these\nbow-cases were covered with gold and silver, and adorned with\nfigures of lions and other animals. Should the chariot be intended\nfor two persons, two bow-cases were fastened to it, the one crossing\nthe other. The spear had also its tubular case, in which it was kept\nupright, like the whip of a modern carriage.\n\nTwo Horses were generally used with each chariot, though three were\nsometimes employed. They were harnessed very simply, having no\ntraces, and being attached to the central pole by a breast-band, a\nvery slight saddle, and a loose girth. On their heads were generally\nfixed ornaments, such as tufts of feathers, and similar decorations,\nand tassels hung to the harness served to drive away the flies.\nRound the neck of each Horse passed a strap, to the end of which was\nattached a bell. This ornament is mentioned in Zech. xiv. 20: \"In\nthat day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto\nthe Lord\"--i.e. the greeting of peace shall be on the bells of the\nanimals once used in war.\n\nSometimes the owner drove his own chariot, even when going into\nbattle, but the usual plan was to have a driver, who managed the\nHorses while the owner or occupant could fight with both his hands\nat liberty. In case he drove his own Horse, the reins passed round\nhis waist, and the whip was fastened to the wrist by a thong, so\nthat when the charioteer used the bow, his principal weapon, he\ncould do so without danger of losing his whip.\n\nThus much for the use of the chariot in war; we have now the Horse\nas the animal ridden by the cavalry.\n\nAs was the case with the chariot, the war-horse was not employed by\nthe Jews until a comparatively late period of their history. They\nhad been familiarized with cavalry during their long sojourn in\nEgypt, and in the course of their war of conquest had often suffered\ndefeat from the horsemen of the enemy. But we do not find any\nmention of a mounted force as forming part of the Jewish army until\nthe days of David, although after that time the successive kings\npossessed large forces of cavalry.\n\nMany references to mounted soldiers are made by the prophets,\nsometimes allegorically, sometimes metaphorically. See, for example,\nJer. vi. 23: \"They shall lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel,\nand have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride\nupon horses, set in array as men for war against thee, O daughter\nof Zion.\" The same prophet has a similar passage in chap. l. 42,\ncouched in almost precisely the same words. And in chap. xlvi. 4,\nthere is a further reference to the cavalry, which is specially\nvaluable as mentioning the weapons used by them. The first call of\nthe prophet is to the infantry: \"Order ye the buckler and shield,\nand draw near to battle\" (verse 3); and then follows the command\nto the cavalry, \"Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and\nstand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, and put on the\nbrigandines.\" The chief arms of the Jewish soldier were therefore\nthe cuirass, the helmet, and the lance, the weapons which in all\nages, and in all countries, have been found to be peculiarly\nsuitable to the horse-soldier.\n\n[Illustration: THE ISRAELITES, LED BY JOSHUA, TAKE JERICHO.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBeing desirous of affording the reader a pictorial representation\nof the war and state chariots, I have selected Egypt as the typical\ncountry of the former, and Assyria of the latter. Both have been\nexecuted with the greatest care in details, every one of which, even\nto the harness of the Horses, the mode of holding the reins, the\nform of the whip, and the offensive and defensive armour, has been\ncopied from the ancient records of Egypt and Nineveh.\n\nWe will first take the war-chariot of Egypt.\n\n[Illustration: ANCIENT BATTLE-FIELD.]\n\nThis form has been selected as the type of the war-chariot because\nthe earliest account of such a force mentions the war-chariots of\nEgypt, and because, after the Israelites had adopted chariots as\nan acknowledged part of their army, the vehicles, as well as the\ntrained Horses, and probably their occupants, were procured from\nEgypt.\n\nThe scene represents a battle between the imperial forces and a\nrevolted province, so that the reader may have the opportunity of\nseeing the various kinds of weapons and armour which were in use in\nEgypt at the time of Joseph. In the foreground is the chariot of\nthe general, driven at headlong speed, the Horses at full gallop,\nand the springless chariot leaping off the ground as the Horses\nbound along. The royal rank of the general in question is shown by\nthe feather fan which denotes his high birth, and which is fixed in\na socket at the back of his chariot, much as a coachman fixes his\nwhip. The rank of the rider is further shown by the feather plumes\non the heads of his Horses.\n\nBy the side of the chariot are seen the quiver and bow-case, the\nformer being covered with decorations, and having the figure of a\nrecumbent lion along its sides. The simple but effective harness\nof the Horses is especially worthy of notice, as showing how the\nancients knew, better than the moderns, that to cover a Horse with a\ncomplicated apparatus of straps and metal only deteriorates from the\npowers of the animal, and that a Horse is more likely to behave well\nif he can see freely on all sides, than if all lateral vision be cut\noff by the use of blinkers.\n\nJust behind the general is the chariot of another officer, one\nof whose Horses has been struck, and is lying struggling on the\nground. The general is hastily giving his orders as he dashes past\nthe fallen animal. On the ground are lying the bodies of some slain\nenemies, and the Horses are snorting and shaking their heads,\nsignificative of their unwillingness to trample on a human being.\nBy the side of the dead man are his shield, bow, and quiver, and\nit is worthy of notice that the form of these weapons, as depicted\nupon the ancient Egyptian monuments, is identical with that which is\nstill found among several half-savage tribes of Africa.\n\nIn the background is seen the fight raging round the standards. One\nchief has been killed, and while the infantry are pressing round\nthe body of the rebel leader and his banner on one side, on the\nother the imperial chariots are thundering along to support the\nattack, and are driving their enemies before them. In the distance\nare seen the clouds of dust whirled into the air by the hoofs and\nwheels, and circling in clouds by the eddies caused by the fierce\nrush of the vehicles, thus illustrating the passage in Jer. iv. 13:\n\"Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a\nwhirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we\nare spoiled.\" The reader will see, by reference to the illustration,\nhow wonderfully true and forcible is this statement, the writer\nevidently having been an eye-witness of the scene which he so\npowerfully depicts.\n\n[Illustration: CHARIOT OF STATE.]\n\nThe second scene is intentionally chosen as affording a strong\ncontrast to the former. Here, instead of the furious rush, the\ngalloping Horses, the chariots leaping off the ground, the archers\nbending their bows, and all imbued with the fierce ardour of\nbattle, we have a scene of quiet grandeur, the Assyrian king making\na solemn progress in his chariot after a victory, accompanied by\nhis attendants, and surrounded by his troops, in all the placid\nsplendour of Eastern state.\n\nChief object in the illustration stands the great king in his\nchariot, wearing the regal crown, or mitre, and sheltered from\nthe sun by the umbrella, which in ancient Nineveh, as in more\nmodern times, was the emblem of royalty. By his side is his\ncharioteer, evidently a man of high rank, holding the reins in a\nbusiness-like manner; and in front marches the shield-bearer. In\none of the sculptures from which this illustration was composed,\nthe shield-bearer was clearly a man of rank, fat, fussy, full of\nimportance, and evidently a portrait of some well-known individual.\n\nThe Horses are harnessed with remarkable lightness, but they bear\nthe gorgeous trappings which befit the rank of the rider, their\nheads being decorated with the curious successive plumes with which\nthe Assyrian princes distinguished their chariot Horses, and the\nbreast-straps being adorned with tassels, repeated in successive\nrows like the plumes of the head.\n\nThe reader will probably notice the peculiar high action of the\nHorses. This accomplishment seems to have been even more valued\namong the ancients than by ourselves, and some of the sculptures\nshow the Horses with their knees almost touching their noses. Of\ncourse the artist exaggerrated the effect that he wanted to produce;\nbut the very fact of the exaggeration shows the value that was\nset on a high and showy action in a Horse that was attached to a\nchariot of state. The old Assyrian sculptors knew the Horse well,\nand delineated it in a most spirited and graphic style, though they\ntreated it rather conventionally. The variety of attitude is really\nwonderful, considering that all the figures are profile views, as\nindeed seemed to have been a law of the historical sculptures.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBefore closing this account of the Horse, it may be as well to\nremark the singular absence of detail in the Scriptural accounts. Of\nthe other domesticated animals many such details are given, but of\nthe Horse we hear but little, except in connexion with war. There\nare few exceptions to this rule, and even the oft-quoted passage\nin Job, which goes deeper into the character of the Horse than any\nother portion of the Scriptures, only considers the Horse as an\nauxiliary in battle. We miss the personal interest in the animal\nwhich distinguishes the many references to the ox, the sheep, and\nthe goat; and it is remarkable that even in the Book of Proverbs,\nwhich is so rich in references to various animals, very little is\nsaid of the Horse.\n\n[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE REPRESENTING A VICTORIOUS\nKING IN HIS CHARIOT SLAYING HIS ENEMIES.]\n\n[Illustration: MUMMY OF AN EGYPTIAN KING (OVER THREE THOUSAND YEARS\nOLD).]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: ass]\n\n\n\n\nTHE ASS.\n\n     Importance of the Ass in the East--Its general use for the\n     saddle--Riding the Ass not a mark of humility--The triumphal\n     entry--White Asses--Character of the Scriptural Ass--Saddling\n     the Ass--Samson and Balaam.\n\n\nIn the Scriptures we read of two breeds of Ass, namely, the\nDomesticated and the Wild Ass. As the former is the more important\nof the two, we will give it precedence.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the East, the Ass has always played a much more important part\nthan among us Westerns, and on that account we find it so frequently\nmentioned in the Bible. In the first place, it is the universal\nsaddle-animal of the East. Among us the Ass has ceased to be\nregularly used for the purposes of the saddle, and is only casually\nemployed by holiday-makers and the like. Some persons certainly\nride it habitually, but they almost invariably belong to the\nlower orders, and are content to ride without a saddle, balancing\nthemselves in some extraordinary manner just over the animal's tail.\nIn the East, however, it is ridden by persons of the highest rank,\nand is decorated with saddle and harness as rich as those of the\nhorse.\n\nSo far from the use of the Ass as a saddle-animal being a mark of\nhumility, it ought to be viewed in precisely the opposite light.\nIn consequence of the very natural habit of reading, according\nto Western ideas, the Scriptures, which are books essentially\nOriental in all their allusions and tone of thought, many persons\nhave entirely perverted the sense of one very familiar passage,\nthe prophecy of Zechariah concerning the future Messiah. \"Rejoice\ngreatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold,\nthy King cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation; lowly,\nand riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass\" (Zech.\nix. 9).\n\nNow this passage, as well as the one which describes its fulfilment\nso many years afterwards, has often been seized upon as a proof of\nthe meekness and lowliness of our Saviour, in riding upon so humble\nan animal when He made His entry into Jerusalem. The fact is, that\nthere was no humility in the case, neither was the act so understood\nby the people. He rode upon an Ass as any prince or ruler would have\ndone who was engaged on a peaceful journey, the horse being reserved\nfor war purposes. He rode on the Ass, and not on the horse, because\nHe was the Prince of Peace and not of war, as indeed is shown very\nclearly in the context. For, after writing the words which have just\nbeen quoted, Zechariah proceeds as follows (ver. 10): \"And I will\ncut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and\nthe battle bow shall be cut off: and He shall speak peace unto the\nheathen: and His dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from\nthe river even to the ends of the earth.\"\n\nMeek and lowly was He, as became the new character, hitherto unknown\nto the warlike and restless Jews, a Prince, not of war, as had been\nall other celebrated kings, but of peace. Had He come as the Jews\nexpected--despite so many prophecies--their Messiah to come, as a\ngreat king and conqueror, He might have ridden the war-horse, and\nbeen surrounded with countless legions of armed men. But He came as\nthe herald of peace, and not of war; and, though meek and lowly, yet\na Prince, riding as became a prince, on an Ass colt which had borne\nno inferior burden.\n\nThat the act was not considered as one of lowliness is evident from\nthe manner in which it was received by the people, accepting Him as\nthe Son of David, coming in the name of the Highest, and greeting\nHim with the cry of \"Hosanna!\" (\"Save us now,\") quoted from verses\n25, 26 of Ps. cxviii.: \"Save now, I beseech Thee, O Lord: O Lord, I\nbeseech Thee, send now prosperity.\"\n\n\"Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.\"\n\n[Illustration: ENTERING JERUSALEM.]\n\nThe palm-branches which they strewed upon the road were not chosen\nby the attendant crowd merely as a means of doing honour to Him\nwhom they acknowledged as the Son of David. They were necessarily\nconnected with the cry of \"Hosanna!\" At the Feast of Tabernacles,\nit was customary for the people to assemble with branches of palms\nand willows in their hands, and for one of the priests to recite the\nGreat Hallel, _i.e._ Ps. cxiii. and cxviii. At certain intervals,\nthe people responded with the cry of \"Hosanna!\" waving at the same\ntime their palm-branches. For the whole of the seven days through\nwhich the feast lasted they repeated their Hosannas, always\naccompanying the shout with the waving of palm-branches, and setting\nthem towards the altar as they went in procession round it.\n\nEvery child who could hold a palm-branch was expected to take part\nin the solemnity, just as did the children on the occasion of the\ntriumphal entry. By degrees, the name of Hosanna was transferred to\nthe palm-branches themselves, as well as to the feast, the last day\nbeing called the Great Hosanna.\n\nThe reader will now see the importance of this carrying of\npalm-branches, accompanied with Hosannas, and that those who used\nthem in honour of Him whom they followed into Jerusalem had no idea\nthat He was acting any lowly part.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAgain, the woman of Shunem, who rode on an Ass to meet Elisha, a\nmission in which the life of her only child was involved, was a\nwoman of great wealth (2 Kings iv. 8), who was able not only to\nreceive the prophet, but to build a chamber, and furnish it for him.\n\nNot to multiply examples, we see from these passages that the Ass of\nthe East was held in comparatively high estimation, being used for\nthe purposes of the saddle, just as would a high-bred horse among\nourselves.\n\nConsequently, the Ass is really a different animal. In this country\nhe is repressed, and seldom has an opportunity for displaying the\nintellectual powers which he possesses, and which are of a much\nhigher order than is generally imagined. It is rather remarkable,\nthat when we wish to speak slightingly of intellect we liken the\nindividual to an Ass or a goose, not knowing that we have selected\njust the quadruped and the bird which are least worthy of such a\ndistinction.\n\nPutting aside the bird, as being at present out of place, we shall\nfind that the Ass is one of the cleverest of our domesticated\nanimals. We are apt to speak of the horse with a sort of reverence,\nand of the Ass with contemptuous pity, not knowing that, of the two\nanimals, the Ass is by far the superior in point of intellect. It\nhas been well remarked by a keen observer of nature, that if four or\nfive horses are in a field, together with one Ass, and there be an\nassailable point in the fence, the Ass is sure to be the animal that\ndiscovers it, and leads the way through it.\n\nTake even one of our own toil-worn animals, turned out in a common\nto graze, and see the ingenuity which it displays when persecuted\nby the idle boys who generally frequent such places, and who try to\nride every beast that is within their reach. It seems to divine at\nonce the object of the boy as he steals up to it, and he takes a\npleasure in baffling him just as he fancies that he has succeeded in\nhis attempt.\n\n[Illustration: SYRIAN ASSES.]\n\nShould the Ass be kindly treated, there is not an animal that proves\nmore docile, or even affectionate. Stripes and kicks it resents,\nand sets itself distinctly against them; and, being nothing but a\nslave, it follows the slavish principle of doing no work that it can\npossibly avoid.\n\nNow, in the East the Ass takes so much higher rank than our own\nanimal, that its whole demeanour and gait are different from those\ndisplayed by the generality of its brethren. \"Why, the very slave of\nslaves,\" writes Mr. Lowth, in his \"Wanderer in Arabia,\" \"the crushed\nand grief-stricken, is so no more in Egypt: the battered drudge has\nbecome the willing servant. Is that active little fellow, who, with\nrace-horse coat and full flanks, moves under his rider with the\nlight step and the action of a pony--is he the same animal as that\nstarved and head-bowed object of the North, subject for all pity and\ncruelty, and clothed with rags and insult?\n\n\"Look at him now. On he goes, rapid and free, with his small head\nwell up, and as gay as a crimson saddle and a bridle of light chains\nand red leather can make him. It was a gladdening sight to see the\nunfortunate as a new animal in Egypt.\"\n\nHardy animal as is the Ass, it is not well adapted for tolerance\nof cold, and seems to degenerate in size, strength, speed, and\nspirit in proportion as the climate becomes colder. Whether it\nmight equal the horse in its endurance of cold provided that it\nwere as carefully treated, is perhaps a doubtful point; but it is\na well-known fact that the horse does not necessarily degenerate\nby moving towards a colder climate, though the Ass has always been\nfound to do so.\n\nThere is, of course, a variety in the treatment which the Ass\nreceives even in the East. Signor Pierotti, whose work on the\ncustoms and traditions of Palestine has already been mentioned,\nwrites in very glowing terms of the animal. He states that he formed\na very high opinion of the Ass while he was in Egypt, not only from\nits spirited aspect and its speed, but because it was employed even\nby the Viceroy and the great Court officers, who may be said to use\nAsses of more or less intelligence for every occasion. He even goes\nso far as to say that, if all the Asses were taken away from Egypt,\ntravel would be impossible.\n\nThe same traveller gives an admirable summary of the character of\nthe Ass, as it exists in Egypt and Palestine. \"What, then, are the\ncharacteristics of the ass? Much the same as those which adorn it\nin other parts of the East--namely, it is useful for riding and for\ncarrying burdens; it is sensible of kindness, and shows gratitude;\nit is very steady, and is larger, stronger, and more tractable than\nits European congener; its pace is easy and pleasant; and it will\nshrink from no labour, if only its poor daily feed of straw and\nbarley is fairly given.\n\n\"If well and liberally supplied, it is capable of any enterprise,\nand wears an altered and dignified mien, apparently forgetful of its\nextraction, except when undeservedly beaten by its masters, who,\nhowever, are not so much to be blamed, because, having learned to\nlive among sticks, thongs, and rods, they follow the same system of\neducation with their miserable dependants.\n\n\"The wealthy feed him well, deck him with fine harness and silver\ntrappings, and cover him, when his work is done, with rich Persian\ncarpets. The poor do the best they can for him, steal for his\nbenefit, give him a corner at their fireside, and in cold weather\nsleep with him for more warmth. In Palestine, all the rich men,\nwhether monarchs or chiefs of villages, possess a number of asses,\nkeeping them with their flocks, like the patriarchs of old. No one\ncan travel in that country, and observe how the ass is employed for\nall purposes, without being struck with the exactness with which the\nArabs retain the Hebrew customs.\"\n\nThe result of this treatment is, that the Eastern Ass is an enduring\nand tolerably swift animal, vying with the camel itself in its\npowers of long-continued travel, its usual pace being a sort of easy\ncanter. On rough ground, or up an ascent, it is said even to gain on\nthe horse, probably because its little sharp hoofs give it a firm\nfooting where the larger hoof of the horse is liable to slip.\n\nThe familiar term \"saddling the Ass\" requires some little\nexplanation.\n\nThe saddle is not in the least like the article which we know by\nthat name, but is very large and complicated in structure. Over the\nanimal's back is first spread a cloth, made of thick woollen stuff,\nand folded several times. The saddle itself is a very thick pad of\nstraw, covered with carpet, and flat at the top, instead of being\nrounded as is the case with our saddles. The pommel is very high,\nand when the rider is seated on it, he is perched high above the\nback of the animal. Over the saddle is thrown a cloth or carpet,\nalways of bright colours, and varying in costliness of material and\nornament according to the wealth of the possessor. It is mostly\nedged with a fringe and tassels.\n\nThe bridle is decorated, like that of the horse, with bells,\nembroidery, tassels, shells, and other ornaments.\n\nAs we may see from 2 Kings iv. 24, the Ass was generally guided\nby a driver who ran behind it, just as is done with donkeys hired\nto children here. Owing to the unchanging character of the East,\nthere is no doubt that the \"riders on asses\" of the Scriptures rode\nexactly after the mode which is adopted at the present day. What\nthat mode is, we may learn from Mr. Bayard Taylor's amusing and\nvivid description of a ride through the streets of Cairo:--\n\n[Illustration: A STREET IN CAIRO, EGYPT.]\n\n\"To see Cairo thoroughly, one must first accustom himself to the\nways of these long-eared cabs, without the use of which I would\nadvise no one to trust himself in the bazaars. Donkey-riding is\nuniversal, and no one thinks of going beyond the Frank quarters on\nfoot. If he does, he must submit to be followed by not less than\nsix donkeys with their drivers. A friend of mine who was attended\nby such a cavalcade for two hours, was obliged to yield at last,\nand made no second attempt. When we first appeared in the gateway\nof an hotel, equipped for an excursion, the rush of men and animals\nwas so great that we were forced to retreat until our servant and\nthe porter whipped us a path through the yelling and braying mob.\nAfter one or two trials I found an intelligent Arab boy named Kish,\nwho for five piastres a day furnished strong and ambitious donkeys,\nwhich he kept ready at the door from morning till night. The other\ndrivers respected Kish's privilege, and henceforth I had no trouble.\n\n\"The donkeys are so small that my feet nearly touched the ground,\nbut there is no end to their strength and endurance. Their gait,\nwhether in pace or in gallop, is so easy and light that fatigue is\nimpossible. The drivers take great pride in having high-cushioned\nred saddles, and in hanging bits of jingling brass to the bridles.\nThey keep their donkeys close shorn, and frequently beautify them\nby painting them various colours. The first animal I rode had legs\nbarred like a zebra's, and my friend's rejoiced in purple flanks\nand a yellow belly. The drivers ran behind them with a short stick,\npunching them from time to time, or giving them a sharp pinch on the\nrump. Very few of them own their donkeys, and I understood their\npertinacity when I learned that they frequently received a beating\non returning home empty-handed.\n\n\"The passage of the bazaars seems at first quite as hazardous on\ndonkey-back as on foot; but it is the difference between knocking\nsomebody down and being knocked down yourself, and one certainly\nprefers the former alternative. There is no use in attempting to\nguide the donkey, for he won't be guided. The driver shouts behind,\nand you are dashed at full speed into a confusion of other donkeys,\ncamels, horses, carts, water-carriers, and footmen. In vain you cry\nout '_Bess_' (enough), '_Piacco_,' and other desperate adjurations;\nthe driver's only reply is: 'Let the bridle hang loose!' You\ndodge your head under a camel-load of planks; your leg brushes the\nwheel of a dust-cart; you strike a fat Turk plump in the back; you\nmiraculously escape upsetting a fruit-stand; you scatter a company\nof spectral, white-masked women; and at last reach some more quiet\nstreet, with the sensations of a man who has stormed a battery.\n\n[Illustration: BEGGAR IN THE STREETS OF CAIRO.]\n\n\"At first this sort of riding made me very nervous, but presently I\nlet the donkey go his own way, and took a curious interest in seeing\nhow near a chance I ran of striking or being struck. Sometimes there\nseemed no hope of avoiding a violent collision; but, by a series\nof the most remarkable dodges, he generally carried you through in\nsafety. The cries of the driver running behind gave me no little\namusement. 'The hawadji comes! Take care on the right hand! Take\ncare on the left hand! O man, take care! O maiden, take care! O boy,\nget out of the way! The hawadji comes!' Kish had strong lungs, and\nhis donkey would let nothing pass him; and so wherever we went we\ncontributed our full share to the universal noise and confusion.\"\n\n[Illustration: NIGHT-WATCH IN CAIRO.]\n\nThis description explains several allusions which are made in the\nScriptures to treading down the enemies in the streets, and to the\nchariots raging and jostling against each other in the ways.\n\nThe Ass was used in the olden time for carrying burdens, as it is\nat present, and, in all probability, carried them in the same way.\nSacks and bundles are tied firmly to the pack-saddle; but poles,\nplanks, and objects of similar shape are tied in a sloping direction\non the side of the saddle, the longer ends trailing on the ground,\nand the shorter projecting at either side of the animal's head. The\nNorth American Indians carry the poles of their huts, or wigwams, in\nprecisely the same way, tying them on either side of their horses,\nand making them into rude sledges, upon which are fastened the skins\nthat form the walls of their huts. The same system of carriage is\nalso found among the Esquimaux, and the hunters of the extreme\nNorth, who harness their dogs in precisely the same manner. The\nAss, thus laden, becomes a very unpleasant passenger through the\nnarrow and crowded streets of an Oriental city; and many an unwary\ntraveller has found reason to remember the description of Issachar\nas the strong Ass between two burdens.\n\nThe Ass was also used for agriculture, and was employed in the\nplough, as we find from many passages. See for example, \"Blessed\nare ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet\nof the ox and the ass\" (Isa. xxxii. 20). Sowing beside the waters\nis a custom that still prevails in all hot countries, the margins\nof rivers being tilled, while outside this cultivated belt there is\nnothing but desert ground.\n\nThe ox and the Ass were used in the first place for irrigation,\nturning the machines by which water was lifted from the river, and\npoured into the trenches which conveyed it to all parts of the\ntilled land. If, as is nearly certain, the rude machinery of the\nEast is at the present day identical with those which were used in\nthe old Scriptural times, they were yoked to the machine in rather\nan ingenious manner. The machine consists of an upright pivot, and\nto it is attached the horizontal pole to which the ox or Ass is\nharnessed. A machine exactly similar in principle may be seen in\nalmost any brick-field in England; but the ingenious part of the\nEastern water-machine is the mode in which the animal is made to\nbelieve that it is being driven by its keeper, whereas the man in\nquestion might be at a distance, or fast asleep.\n\nThe animal is first blindfolded, and then yoked to the end of the\nhorizontal bar. Fixed to the pivot, and rather in front of the bar,\nis one end of a slight and elastic strip of wood. The projecting\nend, being drawn forward and tied to the bridle of the animal, keeps\nup a continual pull, and makes the blinded animal believe that it is\nbeing drawn forward by the hand of a driver. Some ingenious but lazy\nattendants have even invented a sort of self-acting whip, _i.e._ a\nstick which is lifted and allowed to fall on the animal's back by\nthe action of the wheel once every round.\n\nThe field being properly supplied with water, the Ass is used for\nploughing it. It is worthy of mention that at the present day the\nprohibition against yoking an ox and an Ass together is often\ndisregarded. The practice, however, is not a judicious one, as the\nslow and heavy ox does not act well with the lighter and more active\nanimal, and, moreover, is apt to butt at its companion with its\nhorns in order to stimulate it to do more than its fair proportion\nof the work.\n\nThere is a custom now in Palestine which probably existed in the\ndays of the Scriptures, though I have not been able to find any\nreference to it. Whenever an Ass is disobedient and strays from its\nmaster, the man who captures the trespasser on his grounds clips a\npiece out of its ear before he returns it to its owner. Each time\nthat the animal is caught on forbidden grounds it receives a fresh\nclip of the ear. By looking at the ears of an Ass, therefore, any\none can tell whether it has ever been a straggler; and if so, he\nknows the number of times that it has strayed, by merely counting\nthe clip-marks, which always begin at the tip of the ear, and extend\nalong the edges. Any Ass, no matter how handsome it may be, that has\nmany of those clips, is always rejected by experienced travellers,\nas it is sure to be a dull as well as a disobedient beast.\n\nThere are recorded in the Scriptures two remarkable circumstances\nconnected with the Ass, which, however, need but a few words. The\nfirst is the journey of Balaam from Pethor to Moab, in the course\nof which there occurred that singular incident of the Ass speaking\nin human language (see Numb. xxii. 21, 35). The second is the\nwell-known episode in the story of Samson, where he is recorded as\nbreaking the cords with which his enemies had bound him, and killing\na thousand Philistines with the fresh jaw-bone of an Ass.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WILD ASS.\n\n     Various allusions to the Wild Ass--Its swiftness and\n     wildness--The Wild Ass of Asia and Africa--How the Wild Ass is\n     hunted--Excellence of its flesh--Meeting a Wild Ass--Origin of\n     the domestic Ass--The Wild Asses of Quito.\n\n\nThere are several passages of Scripture in which the Wild Ass is\ndistinguished from the domesticated animal, and in all of them there\nis some reference made to its swiftness, its intractable nature,\nand love of freedom. It is an astonishingly swift animal, so that\non the level ground even the best horse has scarcely a chance of\novertaking it. It is exceedingly wary, its sight, hearing, and sense\nof scent being equally keen, so that to approach it by craft is a\nmost difficult task.\n\nLike many other wild animals, it has a custom of ascending hills or\nrising grounds, and thence surveying the country, and even in the\nplains it will generally contrive to discover some earth-mound or\nheap of sand from which it may act as sentinel and give the alarm\nin case of danger. It is a gregarious animal, always assembling in\nherds, varying from two or three to several hundred in number, and\nhas a habit of partial migration in search of green food, traversing\nlarge tracts of country in its passage.\n\nIt has a curiously intractable disposition, and, even when captured\nvery young, can scarcely ever be brought to bear a burden or draw a\nvehicle.\n\nAttempts have been often made to domesticate the young that have\nbeen born in captivity, but with very slight success, the wild\nnature of the animal constantly breaking out, even when it appears\nto have become moderately tractable.\n\nAlthough the Wild Ass does not seem to have lived within the limits\nof the Holy Land, it was common enough in the surrounding country,\nand, from the frequent references made to it in Scriptures, was well\nknown to the ancient Jews.\n\nWe will now look at the various passages in which the Wild Ass is\nmentioned, and begin with the splendid description in Job xxxix. 5-8:\n\n\"Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bands\nof the wild ass?\n\n\"Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren lands (or\nsalt places) his dwellings.\n\n\"He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the\ncrying of the driver.\n\n\"The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after\nevery green thing.\"\n\nHere we have the animal described with the minuteness and truth of\ndetail that can only be found in personal knowledge; its love of\nfreedom, its avoidance of mankind, and its migration in search of\npasture.\n\nAnother allusion to the pasture-seeking habits of the animal is to\nbe found in chapter vi. of the same book, verse 5: \"Doth the wild\nass bray when he hath grass?\" or, according to the version of the\nJewish Bible, \"over tender grass?\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA very vivid account of the appearance of the animal in its wild\nstate is given by Sir R. Kerr Porter, who was allowed by a Wild Ass\nto approach within a moderate distance, the animal evidently seeing\nthat he was not one of the people to whom it was accustomed, and\nbeing curious enough to allow the stranger to approach him.\n\n\"The sun was just rising over the summit of the eastern mountains,\nwhen my greyhound started off in pursuit of an animal which, my\nPersians said, from the glimpse they had of it, was an antelope. I\ninstantly put spurs to my horse, and with my attendants gave chase.\nAfter an unrelaxed gallop of three miles, we came up with the dog,\nwho was then within a short stretch of the creature he pursued; and\nto my surprise, and at first vexation, I saw it to be an ass.\n\n\"Upon reflection, however, judging from its fleetness that it must\nbe a wild one, a creature little known in Europe, but which the\nPersians prize above all other animals as an object of chase, I\ndetermined to approach as near to it as the very swift Arab I was\non could carry me. But the single instant of checking my horse to\nconsider had given our game such a head of us that, notwithstanding\nour speed, we could not recover our ground on him.\n\n\"I, however, happened to be considerably before my companions, when,\nat a certain distance, the animal in its turn made a pause, and\nallowed me to approach within pistol-shot of him. He then darted off\nagain with the quickness of thought, capering, kicking, and sporting\nin his flight, as if he were not blown in the least, and the chase\nwas his pastime. When my followers of the country came up, they\nregretted that I had not shot the creature when he was within my\naim, telling me that his flesh is one of the greatest delicacies in\nPersia.\n\n\"The prodigious swiftness and the peculiar manner in which he\nfled across the plain coincided exactly with the description that\nXenophon gives of the same animal in Arabia. But above all, it\nreminded me of the striking portrait drawn by the author of the Book\nof Job. I was informed by the Mehnander, who had been in the desert\nwhen making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Ali, that the wild ass of\nIrak Arabi differs in nothing from the one I had just seen. He had\nobserved them often for a short time in the possession of the Arabs,\nwho told him the creature was perfectly untameable.\n\n\"A few days after this discussion, we saw another of these animals,\nand, pursuing it determinately, had the good fortune to kill it.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has been suggested by many zoologists that the Wild Ass is\nthe progenitor of the domesticated species. The origin of the\ndomesticated animal, however, is so very ancient, that we have no\ndata whereon even a theory can be built. It is true that the Wild\nand the Domesticated Ass are exactly similar in appearance, and that\nan _Asinus hemippus_, or Wild Ass, looks so like an Asiatic _Asinus\nvulgaris_, or Domesticated Ass, that by the eye alone the two are\nhardly distinguishable from each other. But with their appearance\nthe resemblance ends, the domestic animal being quiet, docile, and\nfond of man, while the wild animal is savage, intractable, and has\nan invincible repugnance to human beings.\n\n[Illustration: HUNTING WILD ASSES.]\n\nThis diversity of spirit in similar forms is very curious, and is\nstrongly exemplified by the semi-wild Asses of Quito. They are the\ndescendants of the animals that were imported by the Spaniards, and\nlive in herds, just as do the horses. They combine the habits of\nthe Wild Ass with the disposition of the tame animal. They are as\nswift of foot as the Wild Ass of Syria or Africa, and have the same\nhabit of frequenting lofty situations, leaping about among rocks and\nravines, which seem only fitted for the wild goat, and into which no\nhorse can follow them.\n\nNominally, they are private property, but practically they may be\ntaken by any one who chooses to capture them. The lasso is employed\nfor the purpose, and when the animals are caught they bite, and\nkick, and plunge, and behave exactly like their wild relations of\nthe Old World, giving their captors infinite trouble in avoiding\nthe teeth and hoofs which they wield so skilfully. But, as soon\nas a load has once been bound on the back of one of these furious\ncreatures, the wild spirit dies out of it, the head droops, the\ngait becomes steady, and the animal behaves as if it had led a\ndomesticated life all its days.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MULE.\n\n     Ancient use of the Mule--Various breeds of Mule--Supposed date\n     of its introduction into Palestine--Mule-breeding forbidden to\n     the Jews--The Mule as a saddle-animal--Its use on occasions of\n     state--The king's Mule--Obstinacy of the Mule.\n\n\nThere are several references to the MULE in the Holy Scriptures, but\nit is remarkable that the animal is not mentioned at all until the\ntime of David, and that in the New Testament the name does not occur\nat all.\n\nThe origin of the Mule is unknown, but that the mixed breed between\nthe horse and the ass has been employed in many countries from very\nancient times is a familiar fact. It is a very strange circumstance\nthat the offspring of these two animals should be, for some\npurposes, far superior to either of the parents, a well-bred Mule\nhaving the lightness, surefootedness, and hardy endurance of the\nass, together with the increased size and muscular development of\nthe horse. Thus it is peculiarly adapted either for the saddle or\nfor the conveyance of burdens over a rough or desert country.\n\nThe Mules that are most generally serviceable are bred from the male\nass and the mare, those which have the horse as the father and the\nass as the mother being small, and comparatively valueless. At the\npresent day, Mules are largely employed in Spain and the Spanish\ndependencies, and there are some breeds which are of very great size\nand singular beauty, those of Andalusia being especially celebrated.\nIn the Andes, the Mule has actually superseded the llama as a beast\nof burden.\n\nIts appearance in the sacred narrative is quite sudden. In Gen.\nxxxvi. 24, there is a passage which seems as if it referred to the\nMule: \"This was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness.\"\nNow the word which is here rendered as Mules is \"Yemim,\" a word\nwhich is not found elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. The best\nHebraists are agreed that, whatever interpretation may be put upon\nthe word, it cannot possibly have the signification that is here\nassigned to it. Some translate the word as \"hot springs,\" while the\neditors of the Jewish Bible prefer to leave it untranslated, thus\nsignifying that they are not satisfied with any rendering.\n\n[Illustration: MULES OF THE EAST.]\n\nThe word which is properly translated as Mule is \"Pered;\" and the\nfirst place where it occurs is 2 Sam. xiii. 29. Absalom had taken\nadvantage of a sheep-shearing feast to kill his brother Amnon in\nrevenge for the insult offered to Tamar: \"And the servants of\nAbsalom did unto Amnon as Absalom had commanded. Then all the\nking's sons arose, and every man gat him up upon his mule, and\nfled.\" It is evident from this passage that the Mule must have been\nin use for a considerable time, as the sacred writer mentions, as a\nmatter of course, that the king's sons had each his own riding mule.\n\n[Illustration: ABSALOM IS CAUGHT IN THE BOUGHS OF AN OAK TREE.]\n\nFarther on, chap. xviii. 9 records the event which led to the death\nof Absalom by the hand of Joab. \"And Absalom met the servants of\nDavid. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the\nthick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak,\nand he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule\nthat was under him went away.\"\n\nWe see by these passages that the Mule was held in such high\nestimation that it was used by the royal princes for the saddle, and\nhad indeed superseded the ass. In another passage we shall find that\nthe Mule was ridden by the king himself when he travelled in state,\nand that to ride upon the king's Mule was considered as equivalent\nto sitting upon the king's throne. See, for example, 1 Kings i. in\nwhich there are several passages illustrative of this curious fact.\nSee first, ver. 33, in which David gives to Zadok the priest, Nathan\nthe prophet, and Benaiah the captain of the hosts, instructions for\nbringing his son Solomon to Gihon, and anointing him king in the\nstead of his father: \"Take with you the servants of your lord, and\ncause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down\nto Gihon.\"\n\nThat the Mule was as obstinate and contentious an animal in\nPalestine as it is in Europe is evident from the fact that the\nEastern mules of the present day are quite as troublesome as their\nEuropean brethren. They are very apt to shy at anything, or nothing\nat all; they bite fiercely, and every now and then they indulge\nin a violent kicking fit, flinging out their heels with wonderful\nforce and rapidity, and turning round and round on their fore-feet\nso quickly that it is hardly possible to approach them. There is\nscarcely a traveller in the Holy Land who has not some story to tell\nabout the Mule and its perverse disposition; but, as these anecdotes\nhave but very slight bearing on the subject of the Mule as mentioned\nin the Scriptures, they will not be given in these pages.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: DANIEL REFUSES TO EAT THE KING'S MEAT.]\n\n\n\n\nSWINE.\n\n     The Mosaic prohibition of the pig--Hatred of Swine by Jews and\n     Mahometans--The prodigal son--Supposed connexion between Swine\n     and diseases of the skin--Destruction of the herd of Swine--The\n     wild boar of the woods--The damage which it does to the vines.\n\n\nMany are the animals which are specially mentioned in the Mosaic law\nas unfit for food, beside those that come under the general head of\nbeing unclean because they do not divide the hoof and chew the cud.\nThere is none, however, that excited such abhorrence as the hog, or\nthat was more utterly detested.\n\nIt is utterly impossible for a European, especially one of the\npresent day, to form even an idea of the utter horror and loathing\nwith which the hog was regarded by the ancient Jews. Even at the\npresent day, a zealous Jew or Mahometan looks upon the hog, or\nanything that belongs to the hog, with an abhorrence too deep for\nwords. The older and stricter Jews felt so deeply on this subject,\nthat they would never even mention the name of the hog, but always\nsubstituted for the objectionable word the term \"the abomination.\"\n\nSeveral references are made in the Scriptures to the exceeding\ndisgust felt by the Jews towards the Swine. The portion of the\nMosaic law on which a Jew would ground his antipathy to the flesh of\nSwine is that passage which occurs in Lev. xi. 7: \"And the swine,\nthough he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not\nthe cud; he is unclean to you.\" But the very same paragraph, of\nwhich this passage forms the termination, treats of other unclean\nbeasts, such as the coney (or hyrax) and the hare, neither of which\nanimals are held in such abhorrence as the Swine.\n\nThis enactment could not therefore have produced the singular\nfeeling with which the Swine were regarded by the Jews, and in all\nprobability the antipathy was of far greater antiquity than the time\nof Moses.\n\nHow hateful to the Jewish mind was the hog we may infer from many\npassages, several of which occur in the Book of Isaiah. See, for\nexample, lxv. 3, 4: \"A people that provoketh me to anger continually\nto my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon\naltars of brick;\n\n\"Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which\neat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their\nvessels.\" Here we have the people heaping one abomination upon\nanother--the sacrifice to idols in the gardens, the burning of\nincense upon a forbidden altar and with strange fire, the living\namong the tombs, where none but madmen and evil spirits were\nsupposed to reside, and, as the culminating point of iniquity,\neating Swine's flesh, and drinking the broth in which it was boiled.\n\nIn the next chapter, verse 3, we have another reference to the\nSwine. Speaking of the wickedness of the people, and the uselessness\nof their sacrifices, the prophet proceeds to say: \"He that killeth\nan ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he\nhad cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he\noffered swine's blood.\" We see here how the prophet proceeds from\none image to another: the murder of a man, the offering of a dog\ninstead of a lamb, and the pouring out of Swine's blood upon the\naltar instead of wine--the last-mentioned crime being evidently held\nas the worst of the three. Another reference to the Swine occurs\nin the same chapter, verse 17: \"They that sanctify themselves, and\npurify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst,\neating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be\nconsumed together, saith the Lord.\"\n\nNot only did the Jews refuse to eat the flesh of the hog, but they\nheld in utter abomination everything that belonged to it, and\nwould have thought themselves polluted had they been even touched\nwith a hog's bristle. Even at the present day this feeling has not\ndiminished, and both by Jews and Mahometans the hog is held in utter\nabhorrence.\n\nSome recent travellers have made great use of this feeling. Signor\nPierotti, for example, during his long sojourn in Palestine, found\nthe flesh of the hog extremely beneficial to him. \"How often has the\nflesh of this animal supported me, especially during the earlier\npart of my stay in Palestine, before I had learned to like the\nmutton and the goats' flesh! I give the preference to this meat\nbecause it has often saved me time by rendering a fire unnecessary,\nand freed me from importunate, dirty, and unsavoury guests, who used\ntheir hands for spoons, knives, and forks.\n\n\"A little piece of bacon laid conspicuously upon the cloth that\nserved me for a table was always my best friend. Without this\ntalisman I should never have freed myself from unwelcome company,\nat least without breaking all the laws of hospitality by not\ninviting the chiefs of my escort or the guides to share my meal;\na thing neither prudent nor safe in the open country. Therefore,\non the contrary, when thus provided I pressed them with the utmost\nearnestness to eat with me, but of course never succeeded in\npersuading them; and so dined in peace, keeping on good terms with\nthem, although they did call me behind my back a 'dog of a Frank'\nfor eating pork.\n\n\"Besides, I had then no fear of my stores failing, as I always took\ncare to carry a stock large enough to supply the real wants of my\nparty. So a piece of bacon was more service to me than a revolver,\na rifle, or a sword; and I recommend all travellers in Palestine to\ncarry bacon rather than arms.\"\n\nSuch being the feelings of the Jews, we may conceive the abject\ndegradation to which the Prodigal Son of the parable must have\ndescended, when he was compelled to become a swine-herd for a\nliving, and would have been glad even to have eaten the very husks\non which the Swine fed. These husks, by the way, were evidently the\npods of the locust-tree, or carob, of which we shall have more to\nsay in a future page. We have in our language no words to express\nthe depths of ignominy into which this young man must have fallen,\nnor can we conceive any office which in our estimation would be so\ndegrading as would be that of swine-herd to a Jew.\n\n[Illustration: THE PRODIGAL SON.]\n\nHow deeply rooted was the abhorrence of the Swine's flesh we can\nsee from a passage in 2 Maccabees, in which is related a series of\ninsults offered to the religion of the Jews. The temple in Jerusalem\nwas to be called the Temple of Jupiter Olympus, and that on Gerizim\nwas to be dedicated to Jupiter, the defender of strangers. The\naltars were defiled by forbidden things, and the celebration of the\nSabbath, or of any Jewish ceremony, was punishable with death.\n\nSevere as were all these afflictions, there was one which the Jews\nseem, from the stress laid upon it, to have felt more keenly than\nany other. This was the compulsory eating of Swine's flesh, an act\nwhich was so abhorrent to the Jews that in attempting to enforce it,\nAntiochus found that he was foiled by the passive resistance offered\nto him. The Jews had allowed their temples to be dedicated to the\nworship of heathen deities, they had submitted to the deprivation of\ntheir sacred rites, they had even consented to walk in procession on\nthe Feast of Bacchus, carrying ivy like the rest of the worshippers\nin that most licentious festival. It might be thought that any\npeople who submit to such degradation would suffer any similar\nindignity. But even their forbearance had reached its limits, and\nnothing could induce them to eat the flesh of Swine.\n\n[Illustration: ELEAZAR REFUSES TO EAT SWINE'S FLESH.]\n\nSeveral examples of the resistance offered by them are recorded in\nthe book just mentioned. Eleazer, for example, a man ninety years\nold, sternly refused to partake of the abominable food. Some of the\nofficials, in compassion for his great age, advised him to take\nlawful meat with him and to exchange it for the Swine's flesh.\nThis he refused to do, saying that his age was only a reason for\nparticular care on his part, lest the young should be led away by\nhis example. His persecutors then forced the meat into his mouth,\nbut he rejected it, and died under the lash.\n\nAnother example of similar, but far greater heroism, is given by\nthe same chronicler. A mother and her seven sons were urged with\nblows to eat the forbidden food, and refused to do so. Thinking\nthat the mother would not be able to endure the sight of her sons'\nsufferings, the officers took them in succession, and inflicted a\nseries of horrible tortures upon them, beginning by cutting off\ntheir tongues, hands, and feet, and ending by roasting them while\nstill alive. Their mother, far from counselling her sons to yield,\neven though they were bribed by promises of wealth and rank, only\nencouraged them to persevere, and, when the last of her sons was\ndead, passed herself through the same fiery trial.\n\n[Illustration: A MOTHER AND HER SEVEN SONS TORTURED FOR REFUSING TO\nEAT SWINE'S FLESH.]\n\nIt has been conjectured, and with plausibility, that the pig was\nprohibited by Moses on account of the unwholesomeness of its flesh\nin a hot country, and that its almost universal repudiation in such\nlands is a proof of its unfitness for food. In countries where\ndiseases of the skin are so common, and where the dreaded leprosy\nstill maintains its hold, the flesh of the pig is thought, whether\nrightly or wrongly, to increase the tendency to such diseases, and\non that account alone would be avoided.\n\n[Illustration: THE EVIL SPIRITS ENTER A HERD OF SWINE.]\n\nIt has, however, been shown that the flesh of Swine can be\nhabitually consumed in hot countries without producing any evil\nresults; and, moreover, that the prohibition of Moses was not\nconfined to the Swine, but included many other animals whose flesh\nis used without scruple by those very persons who reject that of the\npig.\n\nKnowing the deep hatred of the Jews towards this animal, we may\nnaturally wonder how we come to hear of herds of Swine kept in\nJewish lands.\n\nOf this custom there is a familiar example in the herd of Swine that\nwas drowned in the sea (Matt. viii. 28-34). It is an open question\nwhether those who possessed the Swine were Jews of lax principles,\nwho disregarded the Law for the sake of gain, or whether they\nwere Gentiles, who, of course, were not bound by the Law. The\nformer seems the likelier interpretation, the destruction of the\nSwine being a fitting punishment for their owners. It must be here\nremarked, that our Lord did not, as is often said, destroy the\nSwine, neither did He send the devils into them, so that the death\nof these animals cannot be reckoned as one of the divine miracles.\nEjecting the evil spirits from the maniacs was an exercise of His\ndivine authority; the destruction of the Swine was a manifestation\nof diabolical anger, permitted, but not dictated.\n\nSwine are at the present day much neglected in Palestine, because\nthe Mahometans and Jews may not eat the flesh, and the Christians,\nas a rule, abstain from it, so that they may not hurt the feelings\nof their neighbours. Pigs are, however, reared in the various\nmonasteries, and by the Arabs attached to them.\n\n[Illustration: WILD BOARS DEVOURING THE CARCASE OF A DEER.]\n\nWe now come to the wild animal. There is only one passage in the\nScriptures in which the WILD BOAR is definitely mentioned, and\nanother in which a reference is made to it in a paraphrase.\n\n[Illustration: WILD BOARS.]\n\nThe former of these is the well-known verse of the Psalms: \"Why hast\nthou broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way\ndo pluck her?\n\n\"The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of\nthe field doth devour it\" (Ps. lxxx. 12, 13). The second passage\nis to be found in Ps. lxviii. 30. In the Authorized Version it is\nthus rendered: \"Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of\nbulls, with the calves of the people.\" If the reader will refer to\nthe marginal translation (which, it must be remarked, is of equal\nauthority with the text), the passage runs thus: \"Rebuke the beasts\nof the reeds,\" &c. Now, this is undoubtedly the correct rendering,\nand is accepted in the Jewish Bible.\n\nHaving quoted these two passages, we will proceed to the description\nand character of the animal.\n\nIn the former times, the Wild Boar was necessarily much more\nplentiful than is the case in these days, owing to the greater\nabundance of woods, many of which have disappeared by degrees, and\nothers been greatly thinned by the encroachments of mankind. Woods\nand reed-beds are always the habitations of the Wild Boar, which\nresides in these fastnesses, and seems always to prefer the reed-bed\nto the wood, probably because it can find plenty of mud, in which it\nwallows after the fashion of its kind. There is no doubt whatever\nthat the \"beast of the reeds\" is simply a poetical phrase for the\nWild Boar.\n\nIf there should be any cultivated ground in the neighbourhood, the\nBoar is sure to sally out and do enormous damage to the crops. It\nis perhaps more dreaded in the vineyards than in any other ground,\nas it not only devours the grapes, but tears down and destroys the\nvines, trampling them under foot, and destroying a hundredfold as\nmuch as it eats.\n\nIf the reader will refer again to Ps. lxxx. he will see that the\nJewish nation is described under the image of a vine: \"Thou hast\nbrought a vine out of Egypt: Thou hast cast out the heathen and\nplanted it,\" &c. No image of a destructive enemy could therefore\nbe more appropriate than that which is used. We have read of the\nlittle foxes that spoil the vines, but the Wild Boar is a much more\ndestructive enemy, breaking its way through the fences, rooting up\nthe ground, tearing down the vines themselves, and treading them\nunder its feet. A single party of these animals will sometimes\ndestroy an entire vineyard in a single night.\n\n[Illustration: WILD BOARS DESTROYING A VINEYARD.]\n\nWe can well imagine the damage that would be done to a vineyard even\nby the domesticated Swine, but the Wild Boar is infinitely more\ndestructive. It is of very great size, often resembling a donkey\nrather than a boar, and is swift and active beyond conception. The\nWild Boar is scarcely recognisable as the very near relation of the\ndomestic species. It runs with such speed, that a high-bred horse\nfinds some difficulty in overtaking it, while an indifferent steed\nwould be left hopelessly behind. Even on level ground the hunter\nhas hard work to overtake it; and if it can get upon broken or\nhilly ground, no horse can catch it. The Wild Boar can leap to a\nconsiderable distance, and can wheel and turn when at full speed,\nwith an agility that makes it a singularly dangerous foe. Indeed,\nthe inhabitants of countries where the Wild Boar flourishes would\nas soon face a lion as one of these animals, the stroke of whose\nrazor-like tusks is made with lightning swiftness, and which is\nsufficient to rip up a horse, and cut a dog nearly asunder.\n\nAlthough the Wild Boar is not as plentiful in Palestine as used to\nbe the case, it is still found in considerable numbers. Whenever the\ninhabitants can contrive to cut off the retreat of marauding parties\namong the crops, they turn out for a general hunt, and kill as many\nas they can manage to slay. After one of these hunts, the bodies are\nmostly exposed for sale, but, as the demand for them is very small,\nthey can be purchased at a very cheap rate. Signor Pierotti bought\none in the plains of Jericho for five shillings. For the few who may\neat the hog, this is a fortunate circumstance, the flesh being very\nexcellent, and as superior to ordinary pork as is a pheasant to a\nbarn-door fowl or venison to mutton.\n\n[Illustration: chase]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: INDIAN ELEPHANT.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE ELEPHANT.\n\n     The Elephant indirectly mentioned in the Authorized\n     Version--The Elephant as an engine of war--Antiochus and\n     his Elephants--Oriental exaggeration--Self-devotion of\n     Eleazar--Attacking the Elephants, and their gradual abandonment\n     in war.\n\n\nExcept indirectly, the Elephant is never mentioned in the Authorized\nVersion of the Canonical Scriptures, although frequent references\nare made to ivory, the product of that animal.\n\nThe earliest mention of ivory in the Scriptures is to be found in 1\nKings x. 18: \"Moreover the king (_i.e._ Solomon) made a great throne\nof ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.\" This passage forms\na portion of the description given by the sacred historian of the\nglories of Solomon's palace, of which this celebrated throne, with\nthe six steps and the twelve lions on the steps, was the central\nand most magnificent object. It is named together with the three\nhundred golden shields, the golden vessel of the royal palace, and\nthe wonderful arched viaduct crossing the valley of the Tyropoeon,\n\"the ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord,\" all of\nwhich glories so overcame the Queen of Sheba that \"there was no more\nspirit in her.\"\n\n[Illustration: KING SOLOMON, SEATED UPON HIS THRONE, RECEIVES THE\nQUEEN OF SHEBA.]\n\nWe see, therefore, that in the time of Solomon ivory was so precious\nan article that it was named among the chief of the wonders to be\nseen in the palace of Solomon, the wealthiest and most magnificent\nmonarch of sacred or profane history.\n\nThat it should not have been previously mentioned is very singular.\nFive hundred years had elapsed since the Israelites escaped from\nthe power of Egypt, and during the whole of that time, though gold\nand silver and precious stones and costly raiment are repeatedly\nmentioned, we do not find a single passage in which any allusion is\nmade to ivory. Had we not known that ivory was largely used among\nthe Egyptians, such an omission would cause no surprise. But the\nresearches of modern travellers have brought to light many articles\nof ivory that were in actual use in Egypt, and we therefore cannot\nbut wonder that a material so valued and so beautiful does not seem\nto have been reckoned among the treasures which were brought by the\nIsraelites from the land of their captivity, and which were so\nabundant that the Tabernacle was entirely formed of them.\n\n[Illustration: INDIAN ELEPHANTS.]\n\nIn the various collections of Europe are many specimens of ivory\nused by the ancient Egyptians, among the chief of which may be\nmentioned an ivory box in the Louvre, having on its lid the name of\nthe dynasty in which it was carved, and the ivory-tipped lynch-pins\nof the splendid war-chariot in Florence, from which the illustration\non page 309 has been drawn.\n\nThe ivory used by the Egyptians was, of course, that of the African\nElephant; and was obtained chiefly from Ethiopia, as we find in\nHerodotus (\"Thalia,\" 114):--\"Where the meridian declines towards the\nsetting sun, the Ethiopian territory reaches, being the extreme part\nof the habitable world. It produces much gold, huge elephants, wild\ntrees of all kinds, ebony, and men of large stature, very handsome\nand long-lived.\"\n\nThe passages in the Bible in which the Elephant itself is named are\nonly to be found in the Apocrypha, and in all of them the Elephant\nis described as an engine of war. If the reader will refer to\nthe First Book of the Maccabees, he will find that the Elephant\nis mentioned at the very commencement of the book. \"Now when the\nkingdom was established before Antiochus, he thought to reign over\nEgypt, that he might have the dominion of two realms.\n\n\"Wherefore he entered into Egypt with a great multitude, with\nchariots, and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy.\" (i. 16,\n17.)\n\nHere we see that the Elephant was considered as a most potent engine\nof war, and, as we may perceive by the context, the King of Egypt\nwas so alarmed by the invading force, that he ran away, and allowed\nAntiochus to take possession of the country.\n\nAfter this, Antiochus Eupator marched against Jerusalem with a vast\narmy, which is thus described in detail:--\"The number of his army\nwas one hundred thousand footmen, and twenty thousand horsemen, and\ntwo and thirty elephants exercised in battle.\n\n\"And to the end that they might provoke the elephants to fight, they\nshowed them the blood of grapes and mulberries.\n\n\"Moreover, they divided the beasts among the armies, and for every\nelephant they appointed a thousand men, armed with coats of mail,\nand with helmets of brass on their heads; and, besides this for\nevery beast were ordained five hundred horsemen of the best.\n\n\"These were ready at every occasion wheresoever the beast was; and\nwhithersoever the beast went they went also, neither departed they\nfrom him.\n\n\"And upon the beasts were there strong towers of wood, which covered\nevery one of them, and were girt fast unto them with devices; there\nwere also upon every one two and thirty strong men that fought upon\nthem, beside the Indian that ruled him.\n\n\"As for the remnant of the horsemen, they set them on this side and\nthat side at the two fronts of the host, giving them signs what to\ndo, and being harnessed all over amidst the ranks.\" (1 Macc. vi. 30,\n&c.)\n\nIt is evident from this description that, in the opinion of the\nwriter, the Elephants formed the principal arms of the opposing\nforce, these animals being prominently mentioned, and the rest of\nthe army being reckoned as merely subsidiaries of the terrible\nbeasts. The thirty-two Elephants appear to have taken such a hold of\nthe narrator's mind, that he evidently looked upon them in the same\nlight that the ancient Jews regarded chariots of war, or as at the\npresent day savages regard artillery. According to his ideas, the\nthirty-two Elephants constituted the real army, the hundred thousand\ninfantry and twenty thousand cavalry being only in attendance upon\nthese animals.\n\nTaken as a whole, the description of the war Elephant is a good\none, though slightly exaggerated, and is evidently written by an\neye-witness. The mention of the native mahout, or \"Indian that\nguided him,\" is characteristic enough, as is the account of the\nhowdah, or wooden carriage on the back of the animal.\n\nThe number of warriors, however, is evidently exaggerated, though\nnot to such an extent as the account of Julius Caesar's Elephants,\nwhich are said to have carried on their backs sixty soldiers, beside\nthe wooden tower in which they fought. It is evident that, in the\nfirst place, no Elephant could carry a tower large enough to hold so\nmany fighting men, much less one which would afford space for them\nto use their weapons.\n\nA good account of the fighting Elephant is given by Topsel (p.\n157):--\"There were certain officers and guides of the Elephants,\nwho were called _Elephantarchae_, who were the governors of sixteen\nElephants, and they which did institute and teach them martial\ndiscipline were called _Elephantagogi_.\n\n\"The Military Elephant did carry four persons on his bare back, one\nfighting on the right hand, another fighting on the left hand, a\nthird, which stood fighting backwards from the Elephant's head, and\na fourth in the middle of these, holding the rains, and guiding the\nBeast to the discretion of the Souldiers, even as the Pilot in a\nship guideth the stem, wherein was required an equall knowledge and\ndexterity; for when the Indian which ruled them said, Strike here on\nthe right hand, or else on the left, or refrain and stand still, no\nreasonable man could yield readier obedience.\"\n\nThis description is really a very accurate as well as spirited one,\nand conveys a good idea of the fighting Elephant as it appeared when\nbrought into action.\n\nStrangely enough, after giving this temperate and really excellent\naccount of the war Elephant, the writer seems to have been unable to\nresist the fascination of his theme, and proceeds to describe, with\ngreat truth and spirit, the mode of fighting adopted by the animal,\nintermixed with a considerable amount of the exaggeration from which\nthe former part of his account is free.\n\n\"They did fasten iron chains, first of all, upon the Elephant that\nwas to bear ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty men, on either side\ntwo panniers of iron bound underneath their belly, and upon them\nthe like panniers of wood, hollow, wherein they placed their men\nat armes, and covered them over with small boards (for the trunck\nof the Elephant was covered with a mail for defence, and upon that\na broadsword two cubits long); this (as also the wooden Castle, or\npannier aforesaid) were fastened first to the neck and then to the\nrump of the Elephant.\n\n\"Being thus armed, they entered the battle, and they shewed unto the\nBeasts, to make them more fierce, wine, liquor made of Rice, and\nwhite cloth, for at the sight of any of these his courage and rage\nincreaseth above all measure. Then at the sound of the Trumpet, he\nbeginneth with teeth to strike, tear, beat, spoil, take up into the\nair, cast down again, stamp upon men under feet, overthrow with his\ntrunck, and make way for his riders to pierce with Spear, Shield,\nand Sword; so that his horrible voice, his wonderful body, his\nterrible force, his admirable skill, his ready and inestimable\nobedience, and his strange and seldom-seen shape, produced in a main\nbattel no mean accidents and overturns.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE WAR ELEPHANT.]\n\nIn this account there is a curious mixture of truth and\nexaggeration. As we have already seen, the number of soldiers which\nthe animal was supposed to carry is greatly exaggerated, and it is\nrather amusing to note how the \"towers\" in which they fought are\nmodified into \"panniers.\" Then the method by which the animal is\nincited to the combat is partly true, and partly false. Of course\nan Elephant is not angered by seeing a piece of white cloth, or by\nlooking at wine, or a liquor made of rice.\n\nBut that the wine, or the \"liquor made of rice,\" _i.e._ arrack,\nwas administered to the Elephant before it was brought into the\nbattle-field, is likely enough. Elephants are wonderfully fond of\nstrong drink. They can be incited to perform any task within their\npowers by a provision of arrack, and when stimulated by a plentiful\nsupply of their favourite drink they would be in good fighting\ncondition.\n\nNext we find the writer describing the Elephant as being furnished\nwith a coating of mail armour on its proboscis, the end of which was\narmed with a sword a yard in length. Now any one who is acquainted\nwith the Elephant will see at once that such offensive and defensive\narmour would deprive the animal of the full use of the proboscis,\nand would, therefore, only weaken, and not strengthen, its use in\nbattle. Accordingly we find that the writer, when describing with\nperfect accuracy the mode in which the Elephant fights, utterly\nomits all mention of the sword and the mailed proboscis, and\ndescribes the animal, not as striking or thrusting with the sword,\nbut as overthrowing with the trunk, taking up into the air, and\ncasting down again--acts which could only be performed when the\nproboscis was unencumbered by armour. The use of weapons was left to\nthe soldiers that fought upon its back, the principal object of the\nhuge animal being to trample its way through the opposing ranks, and\nto make a way for the soldiers that followed.\n\nIt may be easily imagined that, before soldiers become familiarized\nwith the appearance of the Elephant, they might be pardoned for\nbeing panic-struck at the sight of so strange an animal. Not only\nwas it formidable for its vast size, and for the armed men which it\ncarried, but for the obedience which it rendered to its keeper, and\nthe skill with which it wielded the strange but powerful weapon with\nwhich Nature had armed it.\n\nAt first, the very approach of so terrible a foe struck\nconsternation into the soldiers, who knew of no mode by which\nthey could oppose the gigantic beast, which came on in its swift,\nswinging pace, crushing its way by sheer weight through the ranks,\nand striking right and left with its proboscis. No other method of\nchecking the Elephant, except by self-sacrifice, could be found; and\nin 1 Macc. vi. 43-46, we read how Eleazar, the son of Mattathias,\nnobly devoted himself for his country.\n\n\"Eleazar also, surnamed Savaran, perceiving that one of the beasts,\narmed with royal harness, was higher than all the rest, and\nsupposing that the king was upon him,\n\n\"Put himself in jeopardy, to the end he might deliver his people,\nand get him a perpetual name.\n\n\"Whereupon he ran upon him courageously, through the midst of the\nbattle, slaying on the right hand and on the left, so that they were\ndivided from him on both sides.\n\n\"Which done, he crept under the elephant, and thrust him under, and\nslew him; whereupon the elephant fell down upon him, and he died.\"\n\nI may here mention that the surname of Savaran, or Avaran, as it\nought to be called, signifies one who pierces an animal from behind,\nand was given to him after his death, in honour of his exploit.\n\nAt first, then, Elephants were the most formidable engines of war\nthat could be brought into the battle-field, and the very sight of\nthese huge beasts, towering above even the helmets of the cavalry,\ndisheartened the enemy so much that victory became easy.\n\nAfter a while, however, when time for reflection had been allowed,\nthe more intellectual among the soldiers began to think that, after\nall, the Elephant was not a mere engine, but a living animal, and,\nas such, subject to the infirmities of the lower animals. So they\ninvented scheme after scheme, by which they baffled the attacks of\nthese once dreaded foes, and sometimes even succeeded in driving\nthem back among the ranks of their own soldiery, so maddened with\npain and anger, that they dealt destruction among the soldiers for\nwhom they were fighting, and so broke up their order of battle that\nthe foe easily overcame them.\n\nThe vulnerable nature of the proboscis was soon discovered, and\nsoldiers were armed with very sharp swords, set on long handles,\nwith which they continually attacked the Elephants' trunks. Others\nwere mounted on swift horses, dashed past the Elephant, and hurled\ntheir darts before the animal could strike them. Others, again, were\nplaced in chariots, and armed with very long and sharply-pointed\nspears. Several of these chariots would be driven simultaneously\nagainst an Elephant, and sometimes succeeded in killing the animal.\nSlingers also were told off for the express purpose of clearing the\n\"castles,\" or howdahs, of the soldiers who fought on the Elephants'\nbacks, and their especial object was the native mahout, who sat on\nthe animal's neck.\n\nSometimes they made way for the Elephant as it pressed forward, and\nthen closed round it, so as to make it the central mark, on which\nconverged a hail of javelins, arrows, and stones on every side,\nuntil the huge animal sank beneath its many wounds. By degrees,\ntherefore, the Elephant was found to be so uncertain an engine of\nwar, that its use was gradually discontinued, and finally abandoned\naltogether.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Elephant which was employed in these wars was the Indian\nspecies, _Elephas Indicus_, which is thought to be more susceptible\nof education than the African Elephant. The latter, however, has\nbeen tamed, and, in the days of Rome's greatest splendour, was\ntaught to perform a series of tricks that seem almost incredible.\nAs, however, the Indian species is that with which we have here to\ndo, I have selected it for the principal illustrations.\n\nIt may be at once distinguished from its African relative by the\ncomparatively small ears, those of the African Elephant reaching\nabove the back of the head, and drooping well below the neck. The\nshape of the head, too, is different. In the Indian species, only\nthe males bear tusks, and even many of them are unarmed. In the\nAfrican species, however, both sexes bear tusks, those of the male\nfurnishing the best ivory, with its peculiar creamy colour and\nbeautiful graining, and those of the female being smaller in size,\nand producing ivory of a much inferior quality.\n\n[Illustration: AFRICAN ELEPHANTS.]\n\nThe Elephant, whether of Asia or Africa, always lives in herds\nvarying greatly in numbers, and invariably found in the deepest\nforests, or in their near vicinity. Both species are fond of\nwater, and never wander far from some stream or fountain, although\nthey can, and do, make tolerably long journeys for the purpose of\nobtaining the needful supply of liquid.\n\nThey have a curious capability of laying up a store of water in\ntheir interior, somewhat after the fashion of the camel, but also\npossess the strange accomplishment of drawing the liquid supply from\ntheir stomachs by means of their trunks, and scattering it in a\nshower over their backs to cool their heated bodies.\n\nWhen drinking, the Elephant inserts the tip of his trunk into the\nstream, fills it with water, and then, turning it into his throat,\ndischarges the contents.\n\nThe strangest portion of the Elephant is the trunk, or proboscis.\nThis wonderful appendage is furnished at its extremity with a\nfinger-like projection, with which the animal can pluck a single\nblade of grass or pick up a small object from the ground.\n\nThe value of the proboscis to the Elephant can be estimated when it\nis considered that without its aid the animal must soon starve to\ndeath. The short, thick neck and projecting tusks would entirely\nprevent it from reaching any of the vegetation upon which it feeds.\n\nWith the trunk, however, the Elephant readily carries its food to\nits mouth, and employs the useful member just as if it were a long\nand flexible arm.\n\nThe Elephant bears a worldwide fame for its capabilities as a\nservant and companion of man, and for the extraordinary development\nof its intellectual faculties. The Indian or Asiatic Elephant is the\nvariety that is considered most docile and easy to train; these are\nalmost invariably taken in a wild state from their native forests.\nThe Indian hunters usually proceed into the woods with trained\nfemale Elephants. These advance quietly, and by their blandishments\nso occupy the attention of any unfortunate male that they meet that\nthe hunters are enabled to tie his legs together and fasten him to\na tree. His treacherous companions now leave him to struggle in\nimpotent rage until he is so subdued by hunger and fatigue that the\nhunters can drive him home between two tame elephants. When once\ncaptured, he is easily trained.\n\nThe following curious instance of intelligence in an Elephant is\ngiven by a traveller in Ceylon:\n\n\"One evening, while riding in the vicinity of Kandy, my horse showed\nsome excitement at a noise which was heard in the thick jungle,\nsounding something like '_Urmph! Urmph!_' uttered in a hoarse and\ndissatisfied tone. A turn in the forest explained the mystery, by\nbringing me face to face with a tame working Elephant unaccompanied\nby any driver or attendant. He was laboring painfully with a heavy\nbeam of timber, which he had balanced across his tusks and was\ncarrying to the village from which I had come.\n\n\"The pathway being narrow, he was compelled to bend his head\nto one side to permit the passage of the long piece of wood, and\nthe exertion and inconvenience combined, led him to utter the\ndissatisfied sounds which had frightened my horse.\n\n[Illustration: ELEPHANTS' WATERING-PLACE.]\n\n\"On seeing us halt, the Elephant raised his head, looked at us for a\nmoment, then dropped the timber, and forced himself backward among\nthe bushes at the side of the road, so as to leave us plenty of room\nto pass.\n\n\"My horse still hesitated; the Elephant observed this, and\nimpatiently crowded himself still deeper in the jungle, repeating\nhis cry of, '_Urmph! Urmph!_' but in a voice evidently meant to\nencourage us to come on. Still the horse trembled; and, anxious to\nobserve the conduct of the two sagacious creatures, I forbore any\ninterference. Again the Elephant wedged himself farther in among the\ntrees and waited for us to pass him. At last the horse timidly did\nso, after which I saw the wise Elephant come out of the wood, take\nup the heavy timber upon his tusks, and resume his route, hoarsely\nsnorting, as before, his discontented remonstrance.\"\n\nAlthough so valuable an animal for certain kinds of work, the\nElephant is hardly so effective an assistant as might be supposed.\nThe working Elephant is always a delicate animal, and requires\nwatchfulness and care; as a beast of burden he is unsatisfactory,\nfor, although in the matter of mere strength there is hardly any\nweight that could be conveniently placed on him which he could not\ncarry, it is difficult to pack it without causing abrasions of the\nElephant's skin, which afterwards ulcerate.\n\nHis skin is easily chafed by harness, especially in wet weather.\nEither during long droughts, or too much moisture, his feet are also\nliable to sores which render him useless for months.\n\nIn India the Elephant is used more for purposes of state display\nor for hunting than for hard labor. It is especially trained for\ntiger-hunting, and, as there is a natural dread of the terrible\ntiger deeply implanted in almost all Elephants, it is no easy matter\nto teach the animal to approach his powerful foe.\n\nA stuffed tiger-skin is employed for this purpose, and is\ncontinually shown to the Elephant until he learns to lose all\ndistrust of the inanimate object, and to strike it, to crush it with\nhis feet, or to pierce it with his tusks.\n\nAfter a while a boy is put inside the tiger-skin, in order to\naccustom the Elephant to the sight of the tiger in motion.\n\n[Illustration: TIGER.]\n\nThe last stage in the proceedings is to procure a dead tiger, and to\nsubstitute it for the stuffed skin. Even with all this training, it\nmost frequently happens that when the Elephant is brought to face\na veritable living tiger the furious bounds, the savage yells, and\ngleaming eyes of the beast are so terrifying that he turns tail and\nmakes a hasty retreat. Hardly one Elephant out of ten will face an\nangry tiger. The Elephant, when used in tiger-hunting, is always\nguided by a native driver, called a mahout, who sits astride of the\nanimal's neck and guides its movements by means of the voice and the\nuse of an iron hook at the end of a short stick.\n\n[Illustration: THE TIGER IN THE REEDS.]\n\nThe hunters who ride upon the Elephant sit in a kind of box called\na howdah, which is strapped firmly upon the animal's back, or else\nmerely rests upon a large flat pad furnished with cross-ropes for\nmaintaining a firm hold. The Elephant generally kneels to enable\nthe riders to mount, and then rises from the ground with a peculiar\nswinging motion that is most discomposing to beginners in the art.\n\nThe chase of the tiger is among the most exciting and favourite\nsports in India. When starting on a hunt, a number of hunters\nusually assemble, mounted on Elephants trained for the purpose, and\ncarrying with them a supply of loaded rifles in their howdahs, or\ncarriages mounted on the Elephants' backs. Thus armed, they proceed\nto the spot where a tiger has been seen. The animal is usually\nfound hidden in the long grass or jungle, which is frequently\neight or more feet in height; and when roused, it endeavours to\ncreep away under the grass. The movement of the leaves betrays him,\nand he is checked by a rifle-ball aimed at him through the jungle.\nFinding that he cannot escape without being seen, he turns round\nand springs at the nearest Elephant, endeavouring to clamber up it\nand attack the party in the howdah. This is the most dangerous part\nof the proceedings, as many Elephants will turn round and run away,\nregardless of the efforts of their drivers to make them face the\ntiger. Should, however, the Elephant stand firm, a well-directed\nball checks the tiger in his spring; and he then endeavours to\nagain escape, but a volley of rifle-balls from the backs of the\nother Elephants, who by this time have come up, lays the savage\nanimal prostrate, and in a very short time his skin decorates the\nsuccessful marksman's howdah.\n\n[Illustration: tiger]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: jungle scene]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONEY, OR HYRAX.\n\n     The Shaphan of Scripture, and the correct meaning of\n     the word--Identification of the Shaphan with the Syrian\n     Hyrax--Description of the animal--Its feet, teeth, and apparent\n     rumination--Passages in which the Coney is mentioned--Habits of\n     the animal--Its activity and wariness--The South African Hyrax,\n     and its mode of life--Difficulty of procuring it--Similarity in\n     appearance and habits of the Syrian species--Three species of\n     Hyrax known to naturalists.\n\n\nAmong the many animals mentioned in the Bible, there is one which is\nevidently of some importance in the Jewish code, inasmuch as it is\ntwice named in the Mosaic law.\n\nThat it was also familiar to the Jews is evident from other\nreferences which are made to its habits. This animal is the\nShaphan of the Hebrew language, a word which has very wrongly been\ntranslated in the Authorized Version as Coney, _i.e._ Rabbit, the\ncreature in question not being a rabbit, nor even a rodent. No\nrabbit has ever been discovered in Palestine, and naturalists\nhave agreed that the true Coney or Rabbit has never inhabited\nthe Holy Land. There is no doubt that the Shaphan of the Hebrew\nScripture, and the Coney of the Vulgate, was the SYRIAN HYRAX\n(_Hyrax Syriacus_). This little animal is rather larger than an\nordinary rabbit, is not unlike it in appearance, and has many of\nits habits. It is clothed with brown fur, it is very active, it\ninhabits holes and clefts in rocks, and it has in the front of\nits mouth long chisel-shaped teeth, very much like those of the\nrabbit. Consequently, it was classed by naturalists among the\nrodents for many years, under the name of Rock Rabbit. Yet, as I\nhave already mentioned, it is not even a rodent, but belongs to the\npachydermatous group of animals, and occupies an intermediate place\nbetween the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus.\n\n[Illustration: THE HYRAX.]\n\nIf it be examined carefully, the rodent-like teeth will be seen to\nresemble exactly the long curved tusks of the hippopotamus, with\ntheir sharp and chisel-edged tips; the little feet, on a close\ninspection, are seen to be furnished with a set of tiny hoofs just\nlike those of the rhinoceros; and there are many other points in\nits structure which, to the eye of a naturalist, point out its true\nplace in nature.\n\nIn common with the rodents, and other animals which have\nsimilarly-shaped teeth, the Hyrax, when at rest, is continually\nworking its jaws from side to side, a movement which it\ninstinctively performs, in order that the chiselled edges of the\nupper and lower teeth may be preserved sharp by continually rubbing\nagainst each other, and that they may not be suffered to grow too\nlong, and so to deprive the animal of the means whereby it gains\nits food. But for this peculiar movement, which looks very like the\naction of ruminating, the teeth would grow far beyond the mouth,\nas they rapidly deposit dental material in their bases in order to\nsupply the waste caused at their tips by the continual friction of\nthe edges against each other.\n\nIt may seem strange that an animal which is classed with the\nelephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus, all bare-skinned\nanimals, should be clothed with a furry coat. The reader may perhaps\nremember that the Hyrax does not afford a solitary instance of this\nstructure, and that, although the elephants of our day have only a\nfew bristly hairs thinly scattered over the body, those of former\ndays were clad in a thick and treble coat of fur and hair.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are four passages of Scripture in which the CONEY is\nmentioned--two in which it is prohibited as food, and two in which\nallusion is made to its manner of life. In order to understand the\nsubject better, we will take them in their order.\n\nThe first mention of the Coney occurs in Leviticus xi. 5, among the\nlist of clean and unclean animals: \"The coney, because he cheweth\nthe cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.\" The\nsecond is of a like nature, and is to be found in Deut. xiv. 7:\n\"These ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that\ndivide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney:\nfor they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are\nunclean unto you.\"\n\nThe remaining passages, which describe the habits of the Coney,\nare as follow. The first alludes to the rock-loving habits of the\nanimal: \"The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the\nrocks for the conies.\" (Ps. civ. 18.) The second makes a similar\nmention of the localities which the animal frequents, and in\naddition speaks of its wariness, including it among the \"four things\nwhich are little upon the earth, but they are exceedingly wise.\" The\nfour are the ants, the locusts, the spiders, and the Conies, which\n\"are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.\"\n\nWe will take these passages in their order.\n\nIt has already been mentioned that the Hyrax, a true pachyderm,\ndoes not merely chew the cud, but that the peculiar and constant\nmovement of its jaws strongly resembles the act of rumination. The\nJews, ignorant as they were of scientific zoology, would naturally\nset down the Hyrax as a ruminant, and would have been likely to\neat it, as its flesh is very good. It must be remembered that two\nconditions were needful to render an animal fit to be eaten by a\nJew, the one that it must be a ruminant, and the second that it\nshould have a divided hoof. Granting, therefore, the presence of the\nformer qualification, Moses points out the absence of the latter,\nthereby prohibiting the animal as effectually as if he had entered\ninto a question of comparative anatomy, and proved that the Hyrax\nwas incapable of rumination.\n\nWe now come to the habits of the animal.\n\nAs we may gather from the passages of Scripture which have already\nbeen mentioned, the Hyrax inhabits rocky places, and lives in\nthe clefts that are always found in such localities. It is an\nexceedingly active creature, leaping from rock to rock with\nwonderful rapidity, its little sharp hoofs giving it a firm hold\nof the hard and irregular surface of the stony ground. Even in\ncaptivity it retains much of its activity, and flies about its cage\nwith a rapidity that seems more suitable to a squirrel than to an\nanimal allied to the rhinoceros and hippopotamus.\n\nThere are several species--perhaps only varieties--of the Hyrax,\nall of them identical in habits, and almost precisely similar in\nappearance. The best known of these animals is that which inhabits\nSouthern Africa (_Hyrax Capensis_), and which is familiar to the\ncolonists by its name of Klip-das, or Rock-rabbit. In situations\nwhich suit it, the Hyrax is very plentiful, and is much hunted\nby the natives, who esteem its flesh very highly. Small and\ninsignificant as it appears to be, even Europeans think that to kill\nthe Hyrax is a tolerable test of sportsmanship, the wariness of\nthe animal being so great that much hunter's craft is required to\napproach it.\n\nThe following account of the Hyrax has been furnished to me by Major\nA. W. Drayson, R.A.:--\"In the Cape Colony, and over a great portion\nof Southern Africa, this little creature is found. It is never, as\nfar as my experience goes, seen in great numbers, as we find rabbits\nin England, though the caution of the animal is such as to enable\nit to remain safe in districts from which other animals are soon\nexterminated.\n\n\"As its name implies, it is found among rocks, in the crevices and\nholes of which it finds a retreat. When a natural cavity is not\nfound, the klip-das scratches a hole in the ground under the rocks,\nand burrows like a common rabbit. In size it is about equal to a\nhare, though it is much shorter in the legs, and has ears more like\nthose of a rat than a rabbit. Its skin is covered with fur, thick\nand woolly, as though intended for a colder climate than that in\nwhich it is usually found; and, when seen from a distance, it looks\nnearly black.\n\n\"The rock-rabbit is a very watchful creature, and usually feeds on\nthe summit of any piece of rock near its home, always choosing one\nfrom which it can obtain a good view of the surrounding country.\nWhen it sees an enemy approaching, it sits rigidly on the rock and\nwatches him without moving, so that at a little distance it is\nalmost impossible to distinguish it from the rock on which it sits.\nWhen it does move, it darts quickly out of sight, and disappears\ninto its burrow with a sudden leap.\n\n\"In consequence of its activity and cunning, the rock-rabbit is\nseldom killed by white men; and when a hunter does secure one, it is\ngenerally by means of a long shot. The natives usually watch near\nits burrow, or noiselessly stalk it.\n\n\"I once killed one of these animals by a very long shot from a\nrifle, as it was sitting watching us from the top of a large\nboulder, at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards or thereabouts.\nThe Dutch Boers who were with me were delighted at the sight of\nit, as they said it was good eating; and so it proved to be, the\nflesh being somewhat like that of a hare, though in our rough\nfield-cookery we could not do justice to it.\"\n\nThis short narrative excellently illustrates the character of the\nanimal, which is classed among the \"four things which be exceeding\nwise.\" It is so crafty that no trap or snare ever set has induced\na Hyrax to enter it, and so wary that it is with difficulty to be\nkilled even with the aid of fire-arms. \"No animal,\" writes Mr.\nTristram, \"ever gave us so much trouble to secure.... The only\nchance of securing one is to be concealed, particularly about sunset\nor before sunrise, on some overhanging cliff, taking care not to\nlet the shadow be cast below, and then to wait until the little\ncreatures cautiously peep forth from their holes. They are said to\nbe common by those who have not looked for them, but are certainly\nnot abundant in Palestine, and few writers have ever had more than a\nsingle glimpse of one. I had the good fortune to see one feeding in\nthe gorge of the Kedron, and then to watch it as it sat at the mouth\nof its hole, ruminating, metaphorically if not literally, while\nwaiting for sunset.\"\n\nShould the Hyrax manage to catch a glimpse of the enemy, it utters a\nshrill cry or squeal, and darts at once to its hole--an action which\nis followed by all its companions as soon as they hear the warning\ncry. It is a tolerably prolific animal, rearing four or five young\nat a birth, and keeping them in a soft bed of hay and fur, in which\nthey are almost hidden. If surprised in its hole and seized, the\nHyrax will bite very sharply, its long chisel-edged teeth inflicting\nsevere wounds on the hand that attempts to grasp it. But it is of a\ntolerably docile disposition, and in a short time learns to know its\nowner, and to delight in receiving his caresses.\n\nThree species of Hyrax are known to naturalists. One is the\nKlip-das, or Rock-rabbit, of Southern Africa; the second is the\nAshkoko of Abyssinia; and the third is the Syrian Hyrax, or the\nConey of the Bible. The two last species have often been confounded\ntogether, but the Syrian animal may be known by the oblong pale spot\non the middle of its back.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: HIPPOPOTAMUS.]\n\n\n\n\nBEHEMOTH.\n\n     Literal translation of the word Behemoth--Various theories\n     respecting the identity of the animal--The Hippopotamus known\n     to the ancient Hebrews--Geographical range of the animal--\"He\n     eateth grass like the ox\"--Ravages of the Hippopotamus among\n     the crops--Structure of the mouth and teeth--The \"sword or\n     scythe\" of the Hippopotamus--Some strange theories--Haunts\n     of the Hippopotamus--The Egyptian hunter--A valuable\n     painting--Strength of the Hippopotamus--Rising of the\n     Nile--Modern hunters--Wariness of the Hippopotamus--The pitfall\n     and the drop-trap.\n\n\nIn the concluding part of that wonderful poem which is so familiar\nto us as the Book of Job, the Lord is represented as reproving the\nmurmurs of Job, by showing that he could not even understand the\nmysteries of the universe, much less the purposes of the Creator.\nBy presuming to bring a charge of injustice against his Maker, he\nin fact inferred that the accuser was more competent to govern\nthe world than was the Creator, and thus laid himself open to the\nunanswerable irony of the splendid passages contained in chapters\nxl. xli., which show that man cannot even rule the animals, his\nfellow-creatures, much less control the destinies of the human race.\n\nThe passages with which we are at present concerned are to be found\nat the end of the fortieth chapter, and contain a most powerful\ndescription of some animal which is called by the name of Behemoth.\nNow this word only occurs once in the whole of the Scriptures,\n_i.e._ in Job xl. 15: \"Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee,\"\n&c. Some commentators, in consequence of the plural termination\nof the word, which may be literally translated as \"beasts,\" have\nthought that it was a collective term for all the largest beasts of\nthe world, such as the elephant, the hippopotamus, the wild cattle,\nand their like. Others have thought that the elephant was signified\nby the word Behemoth; and some later writers, acquainted with\npalaeontology, have put forward a conjecture that the Behemoth must\nhave been some extinct pachydermatous animal, like the dinotherium,\nin which might be combined many of the qualities of the elephant and\nhippopotamus.\n\nIt is now, however, agreed by all Biblical scholars and naturalists,\nthat the hippopotamus, and no other animal, is the creature which\nwas signified by the word Behemoth, and this interpretation is\nfollowed in the Jewish Bible.\n\nWe will now take the whole of the passage, and afterwards examine it\nby degrees, comparing the Authorized Version with the Jewish Bible,\nand noting at the same time one or two variations in the rendering\nof certain phrases. The passage is given as follows in the Jewish\nBible, and may be compared with our Authorized Version:--\n\n  \"Behold now the river-horse, which I have made with thee: he eateth\n        grass like an ox.\n\n  \"Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his vigour is in the\n        muscles of his body.\n\n  \"He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his thighs are\n        wrapped together.\n\n  \"His bones are pipes of copper; his bones are like bars of iron.\n\n  \"He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can alone\n        reach his sword.\n\n  \"That the mountains should bring forth food for him, and all the\n        beasts of the field play there.\n\n  \"He lieth under wild lotuses, in the covert of the reed, and fens.\n\n  \"Wild lotuses cover him with their shadow; willows of the brook\n        compass him about.\n\n  \"Behold, should a river overflow, he hasteth not: he feels secure\n        should Jordan burst forth up to his mouth.\n\n  \"He taketh it in with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.\"\n\nWe will now take this description in detail, and see how far it\napplies to the now familiar habits of the hippopotamus. A little\nallowance must of course be made for poetical imagery, but we shall\nfind that in all important details the account of the Behemoth\nagrees perfectly with the appearance and habits of the hippopotamus.\n\nIn the first place, it is evident that we may dismiss from our minds\nthe idea that the Behemoth was an extinct pachyderm. The whole tenor\nof the passage shows that it must have been an animal then existing,\nand whose habits were familiar to Job and his friends. Now the date\nof the Book of Job could not have been earlier than about 1500\nB.C., and in consequence, the ideas of a palaeozoic animal must be\ndiscarded.\n\nWe may also dismiss the elephant, inasmuch as it was most unlikely\nthat Job should have known anything about the animal, and it is\ncertain that he could not have attained the familiarity with its\nappearance and habits which is inferred by the context. Moreover,\nit cannot be said of the elephant that \"he eateth grass as an ox.\"\nThe elephant feeds chiefly on the leaves of trees, and when he\ndoes eat grass, he cannot do so \"like an ox,\" but plucks it with\nhis proboscis, and then puts the green tufts into his mouth. So\ncharacteristic a gesture as this would never have passed unnoticed\nin a description so full of detail.\n\nThat the hippopotamus was known to the ancient Hebrews is\ncertain. After their sojourn in Egypt they had necessarily become\nfamiliarized with it; and if, as most commentators believe, the\ndate of the Book of Job be subsequent to the liberation of the\nIsraelites, there is no difficulty in assuming that Job and his\ncompanions were well acquainted with the animal. Even if the book\nbe of an earlier date, it is still possible that the hippopotamus\nmay, in those days, have lived in rivers where it is now as much\nextinct as it is in England. Mr. Tristram remarks on this point: \"No\nhippopotamus is found in Asia, but there is no reason for asserting\nthat it may not have had an eastern range as far as Palestine, and\nwallowed in the Jordan; for its bones are found in the _debris_\nof the rivers of Algeria, flowing into the Mediterranean, when\ntradition is quite silent as to its former existence.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.]\n\nThere is no doubt that the hippopotamus and the urus were the two\nlargest animals known to the Jews, and it is probably on that\naccount that the former received the name of Behemoth.\n\nAssuming, therefore, that the Behemoth is identical with the\nhippopotamus, we will proceed with the description.\n\n\"He eateth grass like the ox.\" The word which is here rendered\n\"grass\" is translated in Numb. xi. 5 as \"leeks.\" It means, something\nthat is green, and is probably used to signify green herbage of\nany description. Now it is perfectly true of the hippopotamus\nthat it eats grass like an ox, or like cattle, as the passage\nmay be translated. In order to supply its huge massive body with\nnourishment, it consumes vast quantities of food. The mouth is\nenormously broad and shovel-shaped, so as to take in a large\nquantity of food at once; and the gape is so wide, that when the\nanimal opens its jaws to their full extent it seems to split its\nhead into two nearly equal portions. This great mobility of jaw is\nassisted by the peculiar form of the gape, which takes a sudden turn\nupwards, and reaches almost to the eyes.\n\n[Illustration: THE GREAT JAWS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.]\n\nJust as the mouth is formed to contain a vast quantity of food,\nso the jaws and teeth are made to procure it. From the front of\nthe lower jaw the incisor teeth project horizontally, no longer\nperforming the ordinary duties of teeth, but being modified into\ntusks, which are in all probability used as levers for prising up\nthe vegetables on which the animal lives. But the most singular\nportion of the jaw is the mode in which the canine teeth are\nmodified so as to resemble the incisor teeth of rodents, and to\nperform a similar office.\n\n[Illustration: THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.]\n\nThese teeth are very long, curved, and chisel-edged at their tips,\ntheir shape being preserved by continual attrition, just as has been\nmentioned of the hyrax. The material of the teeth is peculiarly\nhard, so much so, indeed, that it is in great request for artificial\nteeth, the \"verniers\" of philosophical instruments, and similar\npurposes. Consequently, with these teeth the hippopotamus can cut\nthrough the stems of thick and strong herbage as with shears, and\nthe strength of its jaws is so great that an angered hippopotamus\nhas been known to bite a man completely in two, and to crush a canoe\nto fragments with a single movement of its enormous jaws.\n\nKeeping this description in our minds, we shall see how true is the\nstatement in verse 19. This passage is not adequately rendered in\nthe Authorized Version: the word which is translated as \"sword\" also\nsignifies a scythe, and evidently having that meaning in the text.\nThe passage is best translated thus: \"His Maker hath furnished him\nwith his scythe.\"\n\nThe havoc which such an animal can make among growing crops may be\neasily imagined. It is fond of leaving the river, and forcing its\nway into cultivated grounds, where it eats vast quantities of green\nfood, and destroys as much as it eats, by the trampling of its heavy\nfeet. Owing to the width of the animal, the feet are placed very far\napart, and the consequence is that the hippopotamus makes a double\npath, the feet of each side trampling down the herbage, and causing\nthe track to look like a double rut, with an elevated ridge between\nthem.\n\nSome little difficulty has been made respecting the passage in\nverse 20, \"Surely the mountains bring him forth food.\" Commentators\nignorant of the habits of the hippopotamus, and not acquainted with\nthe character of the country where it lives, have thought that the\nanimal only lived in the rivers, and merely found its food along\nits banks, or at most upon the marshes at the river-side. The\nhippopotamus, say they, is not a dweller on the mountains, but an\ninhabitant of the river, and therefore this passage cannot rightly\nbe applied to the animal.\n\nNow, in the first place, the word _harim_, which is translated\nas \"mountains\" in the Authorized Version, is rendered as \"hills\"\nby many Hebraists. Moreover, as we know from many passages of\nScripture, the word \"mountain\" is applied to any elevated spot,\nwithout reference to its height. Such places are very common\nalong the banks of the Nile, and are employed for the culture\nof vegetables, which would not grow properly upon the flat and\nmarshy lands around them. These spots are very attractive to the\nhippopotamus, who likes a change of diet, and thus finds food\nupon the mountains. In many parts of Egypt the river runs through\na mountainous country, so that the hills are within a very short\ndistance of the water, and are easily reached by the hippopotamus.\n\n[Illustration: THE HIPPOPOTAMUS EATING GRASS.]\n\nWe will now proceed to the next verse. After mentioning that the\nBehemoth can eat grass like an ox, and finds its food upon the\nhills, the sacred writer proceeds to show that in its moments of\nrepose it is an inhabitant of the rivers and marshy ground: \"He\nlieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.\n\n\"The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the\nbrook compass him about.\"\n\nHere I may remind the reader that the compound Hebrew word which is\nrendered in the Authorized Version as \"shady trees\" is translated\nby some persons as \"wild lotuses\"--a rendering which is followed by\nthe editor of the Jewish Bible. Apparently, however, the Authorized\nVersion gives a more correct meaning of the term. Judging from a\nwell-known Egyptian painting, which represents a hunter in the\nact of harpooning the hippopotamus, the tall papyrus reeds are the\nplants that are signified by this word, which occurs in no other\nplace in the Scriptures.\n\nNothing can be more accurate than this description of the habits\nof the animal. I have now before me a number of sketches by Mr.\nT. Baines, representing various incidents in the life of the\nhippopotamus; and in one or two of them, the little islands that\nstud the river, as well as the banks themselves, are thickly clothed\nwith reeds mixed with papyrus, the whole being exactly similar to\nthose which are represented in the conventional style of Egyptian\nart. These spots are the favourite haunts of the hippopotamus, which\nloves to lie under their shadow, its whole body remaining concealed\nin the water, and only the eyes, ears, and nostrils appearing above\nthe surface.\n\nAs reference will be made to this painting when we come to the\nLeviathan, it will be as well to describe it in detail. In\norder that the reader should fully understand it, I have had it\ntranslated, so to speak, from the conventional outline of Egyptian\nart into perspective, exactly as has been done with the Assyrian and\nEgyptian chariots.\n\nIn the foreground is seen the hunter, standing on a boat that\nclosely resembles the raft-boat which is still in use in several\nparts of Africa. It is made of the very light wood called ambatch,\nby cutting down the requisite number of trees, laying them side by\nside so that their bases form the stern and their points the bow of\nthe extemporized boat. They are then firmly lashed together, the\npointed ends turned upwards, and the simple vessel is complete. It\nis, in fact, nothing more than a raft of triangular shape, but the\nwood is so buoyant that it answers every purpose.\n\nIn his hand the hunter grasps the harpoon which he is about to\nlaunch at the hippopotamus. This is evidently the same weapon which\nis still employed for that purpose. It consists of a long shaft,\ninto the end of which a barbed iron point is loosely inserted. To\nthe iron point is attached one end of a rope, and to the other end,\nwhich is held in the left hand of the harpooner, a float of ambatch\nwood is fastened.\n\nWhen the weapon is thrown, the furious struggles of the wounded\nanimal disengage the shaft of the harpoon, which is regained by the\nhunter; and as it dashes through the water, throwing up spray as it\ngoes, the ambatch float keeps the end of the rope at the surface, so\nthat it can be seen as soon as the animal becomes quieter. Sometimes\nit dives to the bottom, and remains there as long as its breath\ncan hold out; and when it comes up to breathe, it only pushes the\nnostrils out of the water under the shadow of the reeds, so that but\nfor the float it might manage to escape.\n\n[Illustration: A HIPPOPOTAMUS HUNT IN EGYPT.\n\n(This picture is taken from an ancient Egyptian painting.)]\n\nIn the meantime, guided by the float, the hunter follows the course\nof the animal, and, as soon as it comes within reach of his weapon,\ndrives another spear into it, and so proceeds until the animal dies\nfrom loss of blood. The modern hunters never throw a second harpoon\nunless the one already fixed gives way, mainly employing a spear to\ninflict the last wounds. But if we may judge from this painting, the\nEgyptian hunter attached a new rope with every cast of his weapon,\nand, when the hippopotamus became weak from its wounds, gathered up\nthe ropes and came to close quarters.\n\nIn the bow of the boat is the hunter's assistant, armed with a rope\nmade lasso-wise into a noose, which he is throwing over the head\nof the hippopotamus, whose attitude and expression show evidently,\nin spite of the rudeness of the drawing, the impotent anger of the\nweakened animal.\n\nBehind the hippopotamus are the tall and dense reeds and papyrus\nunder the shelter of which the animal loves to lie, and on the\nsurface of the water float the beautiful white flowers of the lotus.\n\nIn the Egyptian painting, the artist, in spite of the\nconventionalities to which he was bound, has depicted the whole\nscene with skill and spirit. The head and open mouth of the\nhippopotamus are remarkably fine, and show that the artist who drew\nthe animal must have seen it when half mad with pain, and half dead\nfrom loss of blood.\n\nThe enormous strength of the hippopotamus is shown in verses 16,\n18, the last of which passages requires a little explanation. Two\ndifferent words are used here to express the bones of the animal.\nThe first is derived from a word signifying strength, and means the\n\"strong bones,\" _i.e._ those of the legs. These are hollow, and are\ntherefore aptly compared to tubes or pipes of copper. The second\nterm is thought by some Hebraists to refer to the rib-bones, which\nare solid, and therefore are not likened to tubes, but to bars of\niron.\n\nThe 23d verse has been translated rather variously. The Authorized\nVersion can be seen by reference to a Bible, and another\ntranslation, that of the Jewish Bible, is given on page 374. A\nthird, and perhaps the best rendering of this passage is given by\nthe Rev. W. Drake, in Smith's \"Dictionary of the Bible:\" \"Lo, the\nriver swelleth proudly against him, yet he is not alarmed; he is\nsecurely confident though a Jordan burst forth against his mouth.\"\n\nIn all probability reference is here made to the annual rising of\nthe Nile, and the inundations which it causes. In some years,\nwhen it rises much above its usual height, the floods become most\ndisastrous. Whole villages are swept away, and scarcely a vestige of\nthe mud-built houses is left; the dead bodies of human beings are\nseen intermixed with those of cattle, and the whole country is one\nscene of desolation. Yet the almost amphibious hippopotamus cares\nnothing for the floods, as long as it can find food, and so, \"though\nthe river swelleth proudly against him,\" he is not alarmed.\n\nFrom the use of the word \"Jordan\" in the same verse, it might be\nthought that the river of Palestine was intended. This, however, is\nnot the case. The word \"Jordan\" is simply used as a poetical term\nfor any river, and is derived from a Hebrew word which signifies\n\"descending quickly.\"\n\nWe now come to the last verse of this noble description: \"He taketh\nit in with his eyes.\" These words have also been variously rendered,\nsome translating them as \"He receiveth it (_i.e._ the river) up to\nhis eyes.\" But the translation which seems to suit the context best\nis, \"Who will take him when in his sight? His nose pierceth through\n(_i.e._ detects) snares.\" Now, this faculty of detecting snares is\none of the chief characteristics of the hippopotamus, when it lives\nnear places inhabited by mankind, who are always doing their best\nto destroy it. In the first place, its body gives them an almost\nunlimited supply of flesh, the fat is very highly valued for many\npurposes, the teeth are sold to the ivory-dealers, and the hide is\ncut up into whips, or khoorbashes.\n\nThere is now before me a khoorbash, purchased from a native Egyptian\nwho was beating a servant with it. The whip is identical with that\nwhich was used by the ancient Egyptians in urging the Israelites to\ntheir tasks, and the scene reminded the traveller so forcibly of the\nold Scriptural times that he rescued the unfortunate servant, and\npurchased the khoorbash, which is now in my collection.\n\nNot content with hunting the hippopotamus, the natives contrive\nvarious traps, either pitfalls or drop-traps. The former are simply\npits dug in the path of the animal, covered with sticks and reeds,\nand having at the bottom a sharp stake on which the victim is\nimpaled, and so effectually prevented from escaping or damaging the\npit by its struggles.\n\nThe drop-trap is a log of wood, weighted with stones, and having at\none end an iron spike, which is sometimes poisoned. The path which\nthe animal takes is watched, a conveniently overhanging branch is\nselected, and from that branch the cruel spear is suspended, by a\ncatch or trigger, exactly over the centre of the path. There is no\ndifficulty in finding the precise centre of the path, owing to the\npeculiar gait of the animal, which has already been described. One\nend of the trigger supports the spear, and to the other is attached\na rope, which is brought across the path in such a way that when\ntouched it relieves the spear, which is driven deeply into the\nanimal's back. If well hung, the spear-blade divides the spine, and\nthe wounded animal falls on the spot, but, even if it should miss a\nvital part, the poison soon does its fatal work.\n\n[Illustration: HIPPOPOTAMUS AND TRAP.]\n\nIn consequence of the continual persecution to which it is\nsubjected, the hippopotamus becomes exceedingly wary, and, huge,\nclumsy, and blundering as it looks, is clever enough to detect\neither pitfall or drop-trap that have not been contrived with\nespecial care. An old and experienced hippopotamus becomes so wary\nthat he will be suspicious even of a bent twig, and, rather than\nventure across it, he will leave the path, force for himself a\nroundabout passage, and return to the path beyond the object that\nalarmed him.\n\nMr. T. Baines, to whose sketches I am indebted for the illustration,\ntold me that the hippopotamus is possessed of much more intellect\nthan might be expected from a creature of so dull, clumsy, and\nunpromising aspect. Apathetic it generally is, and, as long as it is\nleft unmolested, does not care to molest even the human beings that\nintrude upon its repose.\n\nIt likes to lie in the shade of the reeds and rushes, and may be\nseen floating in the water, with only the nostrils, the eyes, and\nthe ears above the surface, these organs being set in a line along\nthe head, evidently for the purpose of allowing the whole body to be\nhidden under water while the three most important senses are capable\nof acting.\n\nA canoe-man who knows the habits of the hippopotamus will fearlessly\ntake his fragile vessel through a herd of the animals, knowing\nthat, if he only avoids contact with them, they will not interfere\nwith him. The only danger is, that a hippopotamus may rise under\nthe canoe, and strike itself against the boat, in which case the\nanimal is rather apt to consider the intruding object as an enemy,\nand to attack it, sometimes crushing the canoe between its teeth,\nand mostly upsetting it, and throwing the crew into the water. In\nsuch a case, the men always dive at once to the bottom of the river,\nand hold on to some weed or rock as long as they can exist without\nbreathing. The reason for this proceeding is, that the hippopotamus\nalways looks for its enemy upon the surface of the water, and, if\nthe men were to swim to shore, they would be caught and killed\nbefore they had swum many strokes. But, as it sees nothing but the\ndamaged canoe, its short-lived anger vanishes, and it sinks again\ninto the river, leaving the men at liberty to regain and repair\ntheir vessel.\n\nThere is one passage in the description of the Behemoth which\nrequires a few words of explanation: \"He moveth his tail like a\ncedar\" (v. 17).\n\nSeveral commentators have imagined that this expression shows that\nthe Behemoth must have been an animal which had a very long and\npowerful tail, and have adduced the passage as a proof that the\ncrocodile was the animal that was signified by the Behemoth. Others,\nagain, have shifted the position of the tail, and, by rendering it\nas the \"proboscis,\" have identified the Behemoth with the elephant.\nThere is, however, no necessity for straining the interpretation,\nthe passage evidently signifying that the member in question is\nstiff and inflexible as the cedar-stem.\n\n[Illustration: lily pad scene]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: BABOON.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE APE.\n\n     The Monkey tribe rarely mentioned in Scripture--Why the Ape\n     was introduced into Palestine--Solomon's ships, and their\n     cargo of Apes, peacocks, ivory, and gold--Various species of\n     Monkey that might have been imported--Habits of the Monkey, and\n     reverence in which it is held by the natives--The Egyptians and\n     their Baboon worship--Idols and memorials--The Wanderoo--its\n     singular aspect--Reasons why it should be introduced into\n     Palestine--General habits of the Wanderoo--Various species of\n     Monkey that may be included in the term \"Kophim.\"\n\n\nAnimals belonging to the monkey tribe are but sparingly mentioned in\nHoly Writ. If, as is possible, the Satyr of Scripture signifies some\nspecies of baboon, there are but three passages either in the Old or\nNew Testament where these animals are mentioned. In 1 Kings x. 22,\nand the parallel passage 2 Chron. ix. 21, the sacred historian makes\na passing allusion to apes as forming part of the valuable cargoes\nwhich were brought by Solomon's fleet to Tharshish, the remaining\narticles being gold, ivory, and peacocks. The remaining passage\noccurs in Is. xiii. 21, where the prophet foretells that on the site\nof Babylon satyrs shall dance.\n\nThe reason for this reticence is simple enough. No monkey was\nindigenous to Palestine when the various writers of the Bible lived,\nand all their knowledge of such animals must have been derived\neither from the description of sailors, or from the sight of the few\nspecimens that were brought as curiosities from foreign lands. Such\nspecimens must have been extremely rare or they would not have been\nmentioned as adjuncts to the wealth of Solomon, the wealthiest, as\nwell as the wisest monarch of his time. To the mass of the people\nthey must have been practically unknown, and therefore hold but a\nvery inferior place in the Scriptures, which were addressed to all\nmankind.\n\nThere is scarcely any familiar animal, bird, reptile or insect,\nwhich is not used in some metaphorical sense in the imagery which\npervades the whole of the Scriptures. For example, the various\ncarnivorous animals, such as the lion, wolf, and bear, are used\nas emblems of destruction in various ways; while the carnivorous\nbirds, such as the eagle and hawk, and the destructive insects, such\nas the locust and the caterpillar, are all similarly employed in\nstrengthening and illustrating the words of Holy Writ.\n\nBut we never find any animal of the monkey tribe mentioned\nmetaphorically, possibly because any monkeys that were imported into\nPalestine must only have been intended as objects of curiosity,\njust as the peacocks which accompanied them were objects of beauty,\nand the gold and ivory objects of value--all being employed in the\ndecoration of the king's palace.\n\nThe question that now comes before us is the species of monkey\nthat is signified by the Hebrew word Kophim. In modern days, we\ndistinguish this tribe of animals into three great sections, namely,\nthe apes, the baboons, and the monkey; and according to this\narrangement the ape, being without tails, must have been either the\nchimpanzee of Africa, the orang-outan of Sumatra, or one of the\nGibbons. But there is no reason to imagine that the word Kophim was\nintended to represent any one of these animals, and it seems evident\nthat the word was applied to any species of monkey, whether it had a\ntail or not.\n\nPerhaps the best method of ascertaining approximately the\nparticular species of monkey, is to notice the land from which the\nanimals came. Accordingly, we find that the ships of Solomon brought\ngold, ivory, apes, and peacocks, and that they evidently brought\ntheir cargoes from the same country. Consequently, the country in\nquestion must produce gold, and must be inhabited by the monkey\ntribe, by the elephant, and by the peacock. If the peacock had not\nbeen thus casually mentioned, we should have been at a loss to\nidentify the particular country to which reference is made; but the\nmention of that bird shows that some part of Asia must be signified.\nIt is most probable that the vessels in question visited both India\nand Ceylon, although, owing to the very imperfect geographical\nknowledge of the period, it is not possible to assert absolutely\nthat this is the case. In India, however, and the large island of\nCeylon, gold, elephants, peacocks, and monkeys exist; and therefore\nwe will endeavour to identify the animals which are mentioned under\nthe general term Apes, or Kophim.\n\n[Illustration: THE RHESUS MONKEY.]\n\nWe are quite safe in suggesting that some of the apes in question\nmust have belonged to the Macaques, and it is most likely that one\nof them was the RHESUS MONKEY.\n\n[Illustration: FEEDING THE MONKEYS IN INDIA.]\n\nThis animal is very plentiful in India, and is one of the many\ncreatures which are held sacred by the natives. Consequently, it\ntakes up its quarters near human habitations, feeling sure that it\nwill not be injured, and knowing that plenty of food is at hand.\nIt is said that in some parts of India the natives always leave\none-tenth of their grain-crops for the monkeys, and thus the animals\ncontent themselves with this offering, and refrain from devastating\nthe fields, as they would otherwise do. This story may be true or\nnot. It is certainly possible that in a long series of years the\nmonkeys of that neighbourhood have come to look upon their tithe as\na matter belonging to the ordinary course of things; but whether\nit be true or not, it illustrates the reverence entertained by the\nHindoos for their monkeys.\n\nIn many places where grain and fruit crops are cultivated, the\nmonkeys get rather more than their share, plundering without\nscruple, and finding no hindrance from the rightful owners, who dare\nnot drive them away, lest they should injure any of these sacred\nbeings. However, being of the opinion that no evil will follow a\nforeigner's action, they are only too glad to avail themselves of\nthe assistance of Europeans, who have no scruples on the subject.\nStill, although they are pleased to see the monkeys driven off, and\ntheir crops saved, they would rather lose all their harvest than\nallow a single monkey to be killed, and in the earlier years of the\nIndian colony, several riots took place between the natives and the\nEnglish, because the latter had killed a monkey through ignorance of\nthe reverence in which it was held.\n\n[Illustration: TROUBLESOME NEIGHBORS.]\n\nAnother monkey which may probably have been brought to Palestine\nfrom India is the HOONUMAN, ENTELLUS, or MAKUR, which is more\nreverenced by the Hindoos than any other species. Its scientific\ntitle is _Presbytes entellus_. In some parts of India it is\nworshipped as a form of divinity, and in all it is reverenced and\nprotected to such an extent that it becomes a positive nuisance to\nEuropeans who are not influenced by the same superstitious ideas as\nthose which are so prevalent in India. Being a very common species,\nit could easily be captured, especially if, as is likely to be the\ncase, it was fearless of man through long immunity from harm. The\nsailors who manned Solomon's navy would not trouble themselves about\nthe sacred character of the monkeys, but would take them without the\nleast scruple wherever they could be found.\n\n[Illustration: MONKEYS ENTERING A PLANTATION.]\n\nThe Hoonuman would also be valued by them on account of its docility\nwhen taken young, and the amusing tricks which it is fond of\ndisplaying in captivity as well as in a state of freedom. Moreover,\nit is rather a pretty creature, the general colour being yellowish,\nand the face black.\n\n[Illustration: SLOTHFUL MONKEYS.]\n\nPerfectly aware of the impunity with which they are permitted to\nact, these monkeys prefer human habitations to the forests which\nform the natural home of their race, and crowd into the villages and\ntemples, the latter being always swarming with the long-tailed host.\nAs is the case with the Rhesus, the Hoonuman monkeys are much too\nfond of helping themselves from the shops and stalls, and if they\ncan find a convenient roof, will sit there and watch for the arrival\nof the most dainty fruits.\n\nHowever, the natives, superstitious as they are, and unwilling to\ninflict personal injury on a monkey, have no scruple in making\narrangements by which a monkey that trespasses on forbidden spots\nwill inflict injury on itself. They may not shoot or wound in any\nway the monkeys which cluster on their roofs, and the animals\nare so perfectly aware of the fact, that they refuse to be driven\naway by shouts and menacing gestures. But, they contrive to make\nthe roofs so uncomfortable by covering them with thorns, that the\nmonkeys are obliged to quit their points of vantage, and to choose\nsome spot where they can sit down without fear of hurting themselves.\n\n[Illustration: A PRIVILEGED RACE.]\n\nThat the Hindoos should pay homage almost divine to a monkey,\ndoes seem equally absurd and contemptible. But, strange as\nthis superstition may be, and the more strange because the\nintellectual powers of the educated Hindoos are peculiarly subtle\nand penetrating, it was shared by a greater, a mightier, and a\nstill more intellectual race, now extinct as a nation. The ancient\nEgyptians worshipped the baboon, and ranked it among the most\npotent of their deities; and it can but strike us with wonder\nwhen we reflect that a people who could erect buildings perfectly\nunique in the history of the world, who held the foremost place in\ncivilization, who perfected arts which we, at a distance of three\nthousand years, have only just learned, should pay divine honours to\nmonkeys, bulls, and snakes. Such, however, was the case; and we find\nthat the modern Hindoo shows as great reverence for the identical\nanimals as did the Egyptian when Pharaoh was king, and Joseph his\nprime minister.\n\nIt is said by some, that neither the Egyptian of the ancient times,\nnor the Hindoo of the present day, actually worshipped these\ncreatures, but that they reverenced them as external signs of some\nattribute of God. Precisely the same remarks have been made as\nto the worship of idols, and it is likely enough that the highly\neducated among the worshippers did look upon a serpent merely as\nan emblem of divine wisdom, a bull as an image of divine strength,\nand a monkey as an external memorial of the promised incarnation of\ndivinity. So with idols, which to the man of educated and enlarged\nmind were nothing but visible symbols employed for the purpose of\ndirecting the mind in worship. But, though this was the case with\nthe educated and intellectual, the ignorant and uncultivated, who\ncompose the great mass of a nation, did undoubtedly believe that\nboth the living animal and the lifeless idol were themselves divine,\nand did worship them accordingly.\n\nThere is one species of monkey, which is extremely likely to have\nbeen brought to Palestine, and used for the adornment of a luxurious\nmonarch's palace. This is the WANDEROO, or NIL-BHUNDER (_Silenus\nveter_). The Wanderoo, or Ouanderoo, as the name is sometimes\nspelled, is a very conspicuous animal, on account of the curious\nmane that covers its neck and head, and the peculiarly formed tail,\nwhich is rather long and tufted, like that of a baboon, and has\ncaused it to be ranked among those animals by several writers, under\nthe name of the Lion-tailed Baboon. That part of the hairy mass\nwhich rolls over the head is nearly black, but as it descends over\nthe shoulders, it assumes a greyer tinge, and in some specimens is\nnearly white. As is the case with many animals, the mane is not\nnoticeable in the young specimens, but increases in size with age,\nonly reaching its full dimensions when the animal has attained adult\nage. Only in the oldest specimens is the full, white, venerable,\nwig-like mane to be seen in perfection.\n\nIn captivity, the general demeanour of this monkey corresponds with\nits grave and dignified aspect. It seems to be more sedate than the\nordinary monkeys, to judge from the specimens which have lived in\nthe Zoological Gardens, and sits peering with its shiny brown eyes\nout of the enormous mane, with as much gravity as if it were really\na judge deciding an important case in law. Not that it will not\ncondescend to the little tricks and playful sallies for which the\nmonkeys are so celebrated; but it soon loses the vivacity of youth,\nand when full-grown, presents as great a contrast to its former\nvivacity, as does a staid full-grown cat sitting by the fire, to the\nrestless, lively, playful kitten of three months old. During its\ngrowth, it can be taught to go through several amusing performances,\nbut it has little of the quick, mercurial manner, which is generally\nfound among the monkey tribe.\n\n[Illustration: THE WANDEROO.]\n\nThe docility of the Wanderoo often vanishes together with its youth.\nThe same animal may be gentle, tractable, and teachable when young,\nand yet, when a few years have passed over its head and whitened its\nmane, may be totally obstinate and dull.\n\n[Illustration: THE ENEMY DISCOVERED.]\n\nThe natives of the country in which the Wanderoo lives, attribute\nto it the wisdom which its venerable aspect seems to imply, much as\nthe ancient Athenians venerated the owl as the bird of wisdom, and\nthe chosen companion of the learned Minerva. In many places, the\nWanderoo is thought to be a sort of king among monkeys, and to enjoy\nthe same supremacy over its maneless kinsfolk, that the king-vulture\nmaintains over the other vultures which are destitute of the\nbrilliant crest that marks its rank.\n\nI am induced to believe that the Wanderoo must have been one of the\nmonkeys which were brought to Solomon, for two reasons.\n\nIn the first place, it is a native both of India and Ceylon, and\ntherefore might have formed an article of merchandise, together with\nthe peacock, gold, and ivory. And if, as is extremely probable, the\nTharshish of the Scripture is identical with Ceylon, it is almost\ncertain that the Wanderoo would have been brought to Solomon, in\norder to increase the glories of his palace. Sir Emerson Tennant\npoints out very forcibly, that in the Tamil language, the words for\napes, ivory, and peacocks, are identical with the Hebrew names for\nthe same objects, and thus gives a very strong reason for supposing\nthat Ceylon was the country from which Solomon's fleet drew its\nsupplies.\n\nAnother reason for conjecturing that the Wanderoo would have been\none of the animals sent to grace the palace of Solomon is this. In\nthe days when that mighty sovereign lived, as indeed has been the\ncase in all partially civilized countries, the kings and rulers have\nfelt a pride in collecting together the rarest objects which they\ncould purchase, giving the preference to those which were in any way\nconspicuous, whether for intrinsic value, for size, for beauty, or\nfor ugliness. Thus, giants, dwarfs, and deformed persons of either\nsex, and even idiots, were seen as regular attendants at royal\ncourts, a custom which extended even into the modern history of\nEngland, the \"Fool\" being an indispensable appendage to the train of\nevery person of rank. Animals from foreign lands were also prized,\nand value was set upon them, not only for their variety, but for any\nexternal characteristic which would make them especially conspicuous.\n\nOrdinary sovereigns would make collections of such objects, simply\nbecause they were rare, and in accordance with the general custom;\nand in importing the \"apes\" and peacocks together with the gold and\nivory, Solomon but followed the usual custom. He, however, on whom\nthe gift of wisdom had been especially bestowed, would have another\nmotive besides ostentation or curiosity. He was learned in the study\nof that science which we now call Natural History. It is, therefore,\nextremely probable, that he would not neglect any opportunities of\nprocuring animals from distant lands, in order that he might study\nthe products of countries which he had not personally visited, and\nit is not likely that so conspicuous an animal as the Wanderoo would\nhave escaped the notice of those who provided the cargo for which so\nwealthy a king could pay, and for which they would demand a price\nproportionate to its variety.\n\n[Illustration: BONNET MONKEYS.]\n\nThere is perhaps no monkey which is so conspicuous among its kin\nas the Wanderoo, and certainly no monkey or ape inhabiting those\nparts of the world to which the fleet of Solomon would have access.\nIts staid, sedate manners, its black body, lion-like tail, and huge\nwhite-edged mane, would distinguish it so boldly from its kinsfolk,\nthat the sailors would use all their efforts to capture an animal\nfor which they would be likely to obtain a high price.\n\nThe peculiar and unique character of Solomon affords good reason\nfor conjecture that, not only were several species of the monkey\ntribe included under the general word Kophim, but that the number\nof species must have been very great. He wrote largely of the\nvarious productions of the earth, and, to judge him by ourselves,\nit is certain that with such magnificent means at his command, he\nwould have ransacked every country that his ships could visit, for\nthe purpose of collecting materials for his works. It is therefore\nalmost certain that under the word Kophim may be included all the\nmost plentiful species of monkey which inhabit the countries to\nwhich his fleet had access, and that in his palace were collected\ntogether specimens of each monkey which has here been mentioned,\nbesides many others of which no special notice need be taken, such\nas the Bonnet Monkeys, and other Macaques.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE BAT.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE BAT.\n\n     The Bat mentioned always with abhorrence--Meaning of the Hebrew\n     name--The prohibition against eating Bats--The edible species,\n     their food and mode of life--The noisome character of the Bat,\n     and the nature of its dwelling-place--Its hatred of light--Mr.\n     Tristram's discoveries--Bats found in the quarries from which\n     the stone of the Temple was hewn--Edible Bats in a cave near the\n     centre of Palestine--Another species of long-tailed Bat captured\n     in the rock caves where hermits had been buried--Other species\n     which probably inhabit Palestine.\n\n\nAmong the animals that are forbidden to be eaten by the Israelites\nwe find the BAT prominently mentioned, and in one or two parts of\nScripture the same creature is alluded to with evident abhorrence.\nIn Isaiah ii. 20, for example, it is prophesied that when the day of\nthe Lord comes, the worshippers of idols will try to hide themselves\nfrom the presence of the Lord, and will cast their false gods to the\nbats and the moles, both animals being evidently used as emblems of\ndarkness and ignorance, and associated together for a reason which\nwill be given when treating of the mole. The Hebrew name of the Bat\nis expressive of its nocturnal habits, and literally signifies some\nbeing that flies by night, and it is a notable fact that the Greek\nand Latin names for the bat have also a similar derivation.\n\nIn Lev. xi. 20, the words, \"All fowls that creep, going upon all\nfour, shall be an abomination unto you,\" are evidently intended\nto apply to the bat, which, as is now well known, is not a bird\nwith wings, but a mammal with very long toes, and a well developed\nmembrane between them. Like other mammals, the Bat crawls, or walks,\non all four legs, though the movement is but a clumsy one, and\ngreatly different from the graceful ease with which the creature\nurges its course through the evening air in search of food.\n\nPerhaps the prohibition to eat so unsightly an animal may seem\nalmost needless; but it must be remembered that in several parts\nof the earth, certain species of Bat are used as food. These are\nchiefly the large species, that are called Kalongs, and which\nfeed almost entirely on fruit, thus being to their insectivorous\nrelatives what the fruit-loving bear is among the larger carnivora.\nThese edible Bats have other habits not shared by the generality\nof their kin. Some of the species do not retire to caves and\nhollow trees for shelter during their hours of sleep, but suspend\nthemselves by their hind legs from the topmost branches of the trees\nwhose fruit affords them nourishment. In this position they have a\nmost singular aspect, looking much as if they themselves were large\nbunches of fruit hanging from the boughs. Thus, they are cleanly\nanimals, and are as little repulsive as bats can be expected to be.\n\nBut the ordinary bats, such as are signified by the \"night-fliers\"\nof the Scriptures, are, when in a state of nature, exceedingly\nunpleasant creatures. Almost all animals are infested with parasitic\ninsects, but the Bat absolutely swarms with them, so that it is\nimpossible to handle a Bat recently dead without finding some of\nthem on the hands. Also, the bats are in the habit of resorting\nto caverns, clefts in the rocks, deserted ruins, and similar dark\nplaces, wherein they pass the hours of daylight, and will frequent\nthe same spots for a long series of years. In consequence of this\nhabit, the spots which they select for their resting place become\ninconceivably noisome, and can scarcely be entered by human beings,\nso powerful is the odour with which they are imbued.\n\nSometimes, when travellers have been exploring the chambers of\nruined buildings, or have endeavoured to penetrate into the recesses\nof rocky caves, they have been repelled by the bats which had taken\nup their habitation therein. No sooner does the light of the torch\nor lamp shine upon the walls, than the clusters of bats detach\nthemselves from the spots to which they had been clinging, and fly\nto the light like moths to a candle. No torch can withstand the\nmultitude of wings that come flapping about it, sounding like the\nrushing of a strong wind, while the bats that do not crowd around\nthe light, dash against the explorers, beating their leathery wings\nagainst their faces, and clinging in numbers to their dress. They\nwould even settle on the face unless kept off by the hands, and\nsometimes they force the intruders to beat a retreat. They do not\nintend to attack, for they are quite incapable of doing any real\ndamage; and, in point of fact, they are much more alarmed than those\nwhom they annoy. Nocturnal in their habits, they cannot endure the\nlight, which completely dazzles them, so that they dash about at\nrandom, and fly blindly towards the torches in their endeavours to\nescape.\n\n[Illustration: BATS' RESTING-PLACE.]\n\nIf, then, we keep in mind the habits of the bats, we shall\ncomprehend that their habitations must be inexpressibly revolting\nto human beings, and shall the better understand the force of the\nprophecy that the idols shall be cast to the bats and the moles.\n\nNo particular species of Bat seems to be indicated by the Hebrew\nword Hatalleph, which is evidently used in a comprehensive sense,\nand signifies all and any species of Bat. Until very lately, the\nexact species of Bats which inhabit Palestine were not definitely\nascertained, and could only be conjectured. But, Mr. Tristram, who\ntravelled in the Holy Land for the express purpose of investigating\nits physical history, has set this point at rest, in his invaluable\nwork, \"The Land of Israel,\" to which frequent reference will be made\nin the course of the following pages.\n\nAlmost every cavern which he entered was tenanted by bats, and he\nprocured several species of these repulsive but interesting animals.\nWhile exploring the vast quarries in which the stone for the Temple\nwas worked beneath the earth, so that no sound of tool was heard\nduring the building, numbers of bats were disturbed by the lights,\nand fluttered over the heads of the exploring party.\n\nOn another occasion, he was exploring a cave near the centre of\nPalestine, when he succeeded in procuring some specimens, and\ntherefore in identifying at least one species. \"In climbing the\nrocks soon afterwards, to examine a cave, I heard a singular whining\nchatter within, and on creeping into its recesses, a stone thrown\nup roused from their roosting-places a colony of large bats, the\nsoft waving flap of whose wings I could hear in the darkness. How\nto obtain one I knew not; but on vigorously plying my signal\nwhistle, all the party soon gathered to my help. B. suggested\nsmoking them, so a fire of brushwood was kindled, and soon two or\nthree rushed out. Two fell to our shot, and I was delighted to find\nmyself the possessor of a couple of large fox-headed bats of the\ngenus Pteropus (_Xantharpya aegyptiaca_), and extending twenty and\na half inches from wing to wing. As none of the bats of Palestine\nare yet known, this was a great prize, and another instance of the\nextension westward of the Indian fauna.\" These Bats belong to the\nfruit-eating tribe, and are closely allied to the Flying Foxes of\nJava, Australia, and Southern Africa. Therefore, this would be one\nof the species commonly used for food, and hence the necessity for\nthe prohibition. The present species extends over the greater part\nof Northern Africa and into parts of Asia.\n\n[Illustration: GREAT FOX-HEADED BAT, OR FLYING FOX.]\n\nThe same traveller subsequently discovered several more species of\nbats. On one occasion, he was exploring some caves, near the site of\nthe ancient Jericho. On the eastern face of the cliffs are a number\nof caves, arranged in regular tiers, and originally approached\nby steps cut out of the face of the rock. These staircases are,\nhowever, washed away by time and the rains, and in consequence the\nupper tiers were almost inaccessible. In some of these caves the\nwalls were covered with brilliant, but mutilated frescoes; and in\nothers, hermits had lived and died and been buried. Mr. Tristram and\nhis companions had penetrated to the second tier, and there made a\ncurious discovery.\n\n[Illustration: CAVE NEAR THE SITE OF ANCIENT JERICHO.]\n\n\"In the roof of this was a small hole, athwart which lay a stick.\nAfter many efforts, we got a string across it, and so hauled up\na rope, by which, finding the stick strong enough, we climbed,\nand with a short exercise of the chimney-sweeper's art, we found\nourselves in a third tier of cells, similar to the lower ones, and\ncovered with the undisturbed dust of ages. Behind the chapel was a\ndark cave, with an entrance eighteen inches high. Having lighted\nour lantern, we crept in on our faces, and found the place full of\nhuman bones and skulls; with dust several inches deep. We were in an\nancient burying-place of the Anchorites, or hermits of the country,\nwhose custom it was to retire to such desert and solitary places.\n\n\"Their bones lay in undisturbed order, probably as the corpses had\nbeen stretched after death.\n\n\"After capturing two or three long-tailed bats, of a species new\nto us, which were the only living occupants of the cave, we crept\nout, with a feeling of religious awe, from this strange, sepulchral\ncavern.\"\n\nBesides the species of bats that have been described, it is probable\nthat representatives of several more families of bats inhabit\nPalestine.\n\n[Illustration: bat]\n\n[Illustration: LEOPARDS.]\n\n[Illustration: BIRDS.]\n\n[Illustration: bird and nest]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: ossifrage]\n\n\n\n\nTHE LAeMMERGEIER, OR OSSIFRAGE OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n     Difficulty of identifying the various birds mentioned in\n     Scripture--The vultures of Palestine--The Laemmergeier, or\n     Ossifrage of Scripture--Appearance of the Laemmergeier--Its\n     flight and mode of feeding--Nest of the Laemmergeier.\n\n\nIt has already been mentioned that even the best Biblical scholars\nhave found very great difficulties in identifying several of the\nanimals which are named in Scripture. This difficulty is greatly\nincreased when we come to the BIRDS, and in many instances it is\nabsolutely impossible to identify the Hebrew word with any precise\nspecies. In all probability, however, the nomenclature of the birds\nis a very loose one, several species being classed under the same\ntitle.\n\n[Illustration: THE LAeMMERGEIER.]\n\nKeeping this difficulty in mind, I shall mention all the species\nwhich are likely to have been classed under a single title, giving\na general description of the whole, and a detailed account of the\nparticular species which seems to answer most closely to the Hebrew\nword.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFollowing the arrangement which has been employed in this work, I\nshall begin with the bird which has been placed by zoologists at\nthe head of its class, namely, the LAeMMERGEIER, the bird which may\nbe safely identified with the Ossifrage of Scripture. The Hebrew\nword is \"Peres,\" a term which only occurs twice when signifying a\nspecies of bird; namely, in Lev. xi. 13, and the parallel passage in\nDeut. xiv. 12. The first of these passages runs as follows: \"These\nye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be\neaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and\nthe ospray.\" The corresponding passage in Deuteronomy has precisely\nthe same signification, though rather differently worded: \"These are\nthey of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and\nthe ospray.\"\n\nThe word _peres_ signifies a breaker; and the Latin term Ossifraga,\nor Bone-breaker, is a very good translation of the word. How it\napplies to the Laemmergeier we shall presently see.\n\nThe Laemmergeier belongs to the vultures, but has much more the\nappearance of an eagle than a vulture, the neck being clothed\nwith feathers, instead of being naked or only covered with down.\nIt may at once be known by the tuft of long, hair-like feathers\nwhich depends from the beak, and which has gained for the bird the\ntitle of Bearded Vulture. The colour of the plumage is a mixture of\ndifferent browns and greys, tawny below and beautifully pencilled\nabove, a line of pure white running along the middle of each\nfeather. When young it is nearly black, and indeed has been treated\nas a separate species under the name of Black Vulture.\n\nIt is one of the largest of the flying birds, its length often\nexceeding four feet, and the expanse of its wings being rather more\nthan ten feet. In consequence of this great spread of wing, it\nlooks when flying like a much larger bird than it really is, and\nits size has often been variously misstated. Its flight, as may be\nimagined from the possession of such wings, is equally grand and\ngraceful, and it sweeps through the air with great force, apparently\nunaccompanied by effort.\n\nThe Laemmergeier extends through a very large range of country, and\nis found throughout many parts of Europe and Asia. It is spread\nover the Holy Land, never congregating in numbers, like ordinary\nvultures, but living in pairs, and scarcely any ravine being\nuninhabited by at least one pair of Laemmergeiers.\n\nThe food of the Laemmergeier is, like that of other vultures, the\nflesh of dead animals, though it does not feed quite in the same\nmanner that they do. When the ordinary vultures have found a carcase\nthey tear it to pieces, and soon remove all the flesh. This having\nbeen done, the Laemmergeier comes to the half-picked bones, eats the\nremaining flesh from them, and finishes by breaking them and eating\nthe marrow. That a bird should be able to break a bone as thick and\nhard as the thigh-bone of a horse or ox seems rather problematical,\nbut the bird achieves the feat in a simple and effectual manner.\n\nSeizing the bone in its claws, it rises to an immense height in the\nair, and then, balancing itself over some piece of rock, it lets the\nbone fall, and sweeps after it with scarce less rapidity than the\nbone falls. Should the bone be broken by the fall, the bird picks\nthe marrow out of the fragments; and should it have escaped fracture\nby reason of falling on a soft piece of ground instead of a hard\nrock, the bird picks it up, and renews the process until it has\nattained its object. It will be seen, therefore, that the name of\nOssifrage, or Bone-breaker, may very properly be given to this bird.\n\nNot only does it extract the marrow from bones in this peculiar\nmanner, but it procures other articles of food by employing\nprecisely the same system. If it sees a tortoise, many of which\nreptiles are found in the countries which it inhabits, it does not\nwaste time and trouble by trying to peck the shell open, but carries\nits prey high in the air, drops it on the ground, and so breaks its\nshell to pieces. Tortoises are often very hard-shelled creatures,\nand the Laemmergeier has been observed to raise one of them and\ndrop it six or seven times before the stubborn armour would yield.\nSnakes, too, are killed in a similar manner, being seized by the\nneck, and then dropped from a height upon rocks or hard ground. The\nreader may perhaps be aware that the Hooded Crow of England breaks\nbones and the shells of bivalve molluscs in a similar manner.\n\nMr. Tristram suggests, with much probability, that the \"eagle\" which\nmistook the bald head of the poet AEschylus for a white stone, and\nkilled him by dropping a tortoise upon it, was in all likelihood\na Laemmergeier, the bird being a denizen of the same country, and\nthe act of tortoise-dropping being its usual mode of killing those\nreptiles.\n\n[Illustration: A SUCCESSFUL DEFENCE.]\n\nWe now see why the Laemmergeier is furnished with such enormous\nwings, and so great a power of flight, these attributes being\nneedful in order to enable it to lift its prey to a sufficient\nheight. The air, as we all know, becomes more and more attenuated in\nexact proportion to the height above the earth; and did not the bird\npossess such great powers of flight, it would not be able to carry a\nheavy tortoise into the thinner strata of air which are found at the\nheight to which it soars.\n\nThe instinct of killing its prey by a fall is employed against other\nanimals besides snakes and tortoises, though exerted in a somewhat\ndifferent manner. The bird, as has already been mentioned, lives\namong mountain ranges, and it may be seen floating about them for\nhours together, watching each inch of ground in search of prey.\nShould it see a goat or other inhabitant of the rocks standing near\na precipice, the Laemmergeier sweeps rapidly upon it, and with a blow\nof its wing knocks the animal off the rock into the valley beneath,\nwhere it lies helplessly maimed, even if not killed by the fall.\n\nEven hares and lambs are killed in this manner, and it is from\nthe havoc which the Laemmergeier makes among the sheep that it has\nobtained the name of Laemmergeier, or Lamb-Vulture. So swift and\nnoiseless is the rush of the bird, that an animal which has once\nbeen marked by its blood-red eye seldom escapes from the swoop; and\neven the Alpine hunters, who spend their lives in pursuit of the\nchamois, have occasionally been put in great jeopardy by the sudden\nattack of a Laemmergeier, the bird having mistaken their crouching\nforms for the chamois, and only turned aside at the last moment.\n\nThe reason for employing so remarkable a mode of attack is to be\nfound in the structure of the feet, which, although belonging to\nso large and powerful a bird, are comparatively feeble, and are\nunable, like those of the eagle, to grasp the living animal in a\ndeadly hold, and to drive the sharp talons into its vitals. They\nare not well adapted for holding prey, the talons not possessing\nthe hook-like form or the sharp points which characterise those of\nthe eagle. The feet, by the way, are feathered down to the toes.\nThe beak, too, is weak when compared with the rest of the body,\nand could not perform its work were not the object which it tears\npreviously shattered by the fall from a height.\n\n[Illustration: STRUCK FROM A DIZZY HEIGHT.]\n\nThe nest of the Laemmergeier is made of sticks and sods, and is of\nenormous dimensions. It is almost always placed upon a lofty cliff,\nand contains about a wagon-load or so of sticks rudely interwoven,\nand supporting a nearly equal amount of sods and moss.\n\nAn allied species lives in Northern Africa, where it is called by a\nname which signifies Father Longbeard, in allusion to the beard-like\ntufts of the bill.\n\n[Illustration: bird feeding young]\n\n\n\n\nTHE EGYPTIAN VULTURE, OR GIER-EAGLE.\n\n     The Racham or Gier-Eagle identified with the Egyptian\n     Vulture--Its appearance on the Egyptian monuments--The shape,\n     size, and colour of the bird--Its value as a scavenger, and its\n     general habits--The Egyptian Vultures and the griffons--Its\n     fondness for the society of man--Nest of the Egyptian Vulture.\n\n\nIn the same list of unclean birds which has already been given,\nwe find the name of a bird which we can identify without much\ndifficulty, although there has been some little controversy about\nit. This is the so-called Gier-Eagle, which is named with the\ncormorant and the pelican as one of the birds which the Jews are\nforbidden to eat. The word which is translated as Gier-Eagle is\nRacham, a name which is almost identical with the Arabic name of the\nEGYPTIAN VULTURE, sometimes called Pharaoh's Chicken, because it is\nso often sculptured on the ancient monuments of Egypt. It is called\nby the Turks by a name which signifies White Father, in allusion to\nthe colour of its plumage.\n\nThis bird is not a very large one, being about equal to a raven in\nsize, though its enormously long wings give it an appearance of much\ngreater size. Its colour is white, with the exception of the quill\nfeathers of the wings, which are dark-brown. The bill and the naked\nface and legs are bright ochreous yellow. It does not attain this\nwhite plumage until its third year, its colour before reaching adult\nage being brown, with a grey neck and dull yellow legs and face.\n\nThe Egyptian Vulture, although not large, is a really handsome\nbird, the bold contrast of pure white and dark brown being very\nconspicuous when it is on the wing. In this plumage it has never\nbeen seen in England, but one or two examples are known of the\nEgyptian Vulture being killed in England while still in its\ndark-brown clothing.\n\nIt inhabits a very wide range of country, being found throughout\nall the warmer parts of the Old World. Although it is tolerably\nplentiful, it is never seen in great numbers, as is the case with\nseveral of the vultures, but is always to be found in pairs, the\nmale and female never separating, and invariably being seen close\ntogether. In fact, in places where it is common it is hardly\npossible to travel more than a mile or two without seeing a pair\nof Egyptian Vultures. Should more than two of these birds be seen\ntogether, the spectator may be sure that they have congregated\nover some food. It has been well suggested that its Hebrew name\nof Racham, or Love, has been given to it in consequence of this\nconstant association of the male and female.\n\n[Illustration: EGYPTIAN VULTURE, OR GIER-EAGLE.]\n\nThe Egyptian Vulture is one of the best of scavengers, not only\ndevouring the carcases of dead animals, but feeding on every kind of\noffal or garbage. Indeed, its teeth and claws are much too feeble\nto enable it to cope with the true vultures in tearing up a large\ncarcase, and in consequence it never really associates with them,\nalthough it may be seen hovering near them, and it never ventures\nto feed in their company, keeping at a respectful distance while\nthey feed, and, when they retire, humbly making a meal on the scraps\nwhich they have left.\n\nMr. Tristram narrates an amusing instance of this trait of\ncharacter. \"On a subsequent occasion, on the north side of Hermon,\nwe observed the griffons teaching a lesson of patience to the\ninferior scavengers. A long row of Egyptian vultures were sitting on\nsome rocks, so intently watching a spot in a corn-field that they\ntook no notice of our approach. Creeping cautiously near, we watched\na score of griffons busily engaged in turning over a dead horse, one\nside of which they had already reduced to a skeleton.\n\n\"Their united efforts had just effected this, when we showed\nourselves, and they quickly retired. The inferior birds, who dreaded\nus much less than them, at once darted to the repast, and, utterly\nregardless of our presence within ten yards of them, began to gorge.\nWe had hardly retired two hundred yards, when the griffons came down\nwith a swoop, and the Egyptian vultures and a pair or two of eagles\nhurriedly resumed their post of observation; while some black kites\nremained, and contrived by their superior agility to filch a few\nmorsels from their lordly superiors.\"\n\nSo useful is this bird as a scavenger, that it is protected in all\nparts of the East by the most stringent laws, so that a naturalist\nwho wishes for specimens has some difficulty in procuring the bird,\nor even its egg. It wanders about the streets of the villages, and\nmay generally be found investigating the heaps of refuse which are\nleft to be cleared away by the animals and birds which constitute\nthe scavengers of the East.\n\nIt not only eats dead animal substances, but kills and devours great\nquantities of rats, mice, lizards, and other pests that swarm in\nhot countries. So tame is it, that it may even be observed, like\nthe gull and the rook of our own country, following the ploughman\nas he turns up the ground, and examining the furrow for the purpose\nof picking up the worms, grubs, and similar creatures that are\ndisturbed by the share.\n\nBeing thus protected and encouraged by man, there is good reason\nwhy it should have learned in course of time to fear him far less\nthan its own kind. Indeed, it is so utterly fearless with regard to\nhuman beings, that it habitually follows the caravans as they pass\nfrom one town to another, for the sake of feeding on the refuse food\nand other offal which is thrown aside on the road.\n\nTwo articles of diet which certainly do not seem to fall within the\nordinary range of vulture's food are said to be consumed by this\nbird. The first is the egg of the ostrich, the shell of which is\ntoo hard to be broken by the feeble beak of the Egyptian Vulture.\nThe bird cannot, like the laemmergeier, carry the egg into the air\nand drop it on the ground, because its feet are not large enough\nto grasp it, and only slip off its round and polished surface.\nTherefore, instead of raising the egg into the air and dropping it\nupon a stone, it carries a stone into the air and drops it upon the\negg. So at least say the natives of the country which it inhabits,\nand there is no reason why we should doubt the truth of the\nstatement.\n\nThe other article of food is a sort of melon, very full of juice.\nThis melon is called \"nara,\" and is devoured by various creatures,\nsuch as lions, leopards, mice, ostriches, &c. and seems to serve\nthem instead of drink.\n\nThe nest of the Egyptian Vulture is made in some rocky ledge, and\nthe bird does not trouble itself about selecting a spot inaccessible\nto man, knowing well that it will not be disturbed. The nest is,\nlike that of other vultures, a large and rude mass of sticks,\nsods, bones, and similar materials, to which are added any bits of\nrag, rope, skin, and other village refuse which it can pick up as\nit traverses the streets. There are two, and occasionally three,\neggs, rather variously mottled with red. In its breeding, as in\nits general life, it is not a gregarious bird, never breeding in\ncolonies, and, indeed, very seldom choosing a spot for its nest near\none which has already been selected by another pair.\n\nThe illustration on page 420 represents part of the nest of the\nEgyptian Vulture, in which the curious mixture of bones and sticks\nis well shown. The parent birds are drawn in two characteristic\nattitudes taken from life, and well exhibit the feeble beak, the\npeculiar and intelligent, almost cunning expression of the head,\nand the ruff of feathers which surrounds the upper part of the\nneck. In the distance another bird is drawn as it appears on the\nwing, in order to show the contrast between the white plumage and\nthe dark quill feathers of the wings, the bird presenting a general\nappearance very similar to that of the common sea-gull.\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nGRIFFON VULTURE, OR EAGLE OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n     The Griffon Vulture identified with the Eagle of\n     Scripture--Geographical range of the Griffon--Its mode of\n     flight and sociable habits--The featherless head and neck of\n     the bird--The Vulture used as an image of strength, swiftness,\n     and rapacity--Its powers of sight--How Vultures assemble round\n     a carcase--Nesting-places of the Griffon--Mr. Tristram's\n     description of the Griffon--Rock-caves of the Wady Hamam--Care\n     of the young, and teaching them to fly--Strength of the Griffon.\n\n\nThe Griffon Vulture is found throughout a large portion of the Old\nWorld, inhabiting nearly all the warmer portions of this hemisphere.\nThe colour of the adult bird is a sort of yellowish brown,\ndiversified by the black quill feathers and the ruff of white down\nthat surrounds the neck. The head and neck are without feathers, but\nare sparingly covered with very short down of a similar character to\nthat of the ruff.\n\nIt is really a large bird, being little short of five feet in total\nlength, and the expanse of wing measuring about eight feet.\n\nThe Griffon Vulture is very plentiful in Palestine, and, unlike the\nlesser though equally useful Egyptian Vulture, congregates together\nin great numbers, feeding, flying, and herding in company. Large\nflocks of them may be seen daily, soaring high in the air, and\nsweeping their graceful way in the grand curves which distinguish\nthe flight of the large birds of prey. They are best to be seen in\nthe early morning, being in the habit of quitting their rocky homes\nat daybreak, and indulging in a flight for two or three hours, after\nwhich they mostly return to the rocks, and wait until evening, when\nthey take another short flight before retiring to rest.\n\nAllusion is made in the Scriptures to the gregarious habits of the\nVultures: \"Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be\ngathered together\" (Matt. xxiv. 28). That the Vulture, and not the\neagle, is here signified, is evident from the fact that the eagles\ndo not congregate like the Vultures, never being seen in greater\nnumbers than two or three together, while the Vultures assemble in\nhundreds.\n\nThere is also a curious passage in the Book of Proverbs, chap. xxx.\nver. 17, which alludes to the carnivorous nature of the bird: \"The\neye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother,\nthe ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles\nshall eat it.\"\n\nAllusion is made in several passages to the swiftness of the\nVulture, as well as its voracity. See, for example, a portion of\nDavid's lamentation over the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, who,\naccording to the poet's metaphor, \"were lovely and pleasant in their\nlives, and in their death they were not divided; they were swifter\nthan eagles, they were stronger than lions.\"\n\nThe \"bitter\" people--namely, the Chaldeans--are again mentioned in\na very similar manner by the prophet Jeremiah: \"Our persecutors are\nswifter than the eagles of the heavens; they pursued us upon the\nmountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness\" (Lam. iv. 19).\n\nThere is something peculiarly appropriate in employing the Vulture\nas an image of strength and swiftness when applied to warriors, the\nbird being an invariable attendant on the battle, and flying to the\nfield of death with marvellous swiftness. All who had ever witnessed\na battle were familiar with the presence of the Vulture--the scene\nof carnage, and the image which is employed, would be one which\ncommended itself at once to those for whom it was intended. And, as\nthe earlier history of the Jewish nation is essentially of a warlike\ncharacter, we cannot wonder that so powerful and familiar an image\nshould have been repeatedly introduced into the sacred writings.\n\nWonderful powers of sight are possessed by this bird. Its eyes\nare able to assume either a telescopic or a microscopic character,\nby means of a complex and marvellous structure, which can alter the\nwhole shape of the organ at the will of the bird.\n\n[Illustration: VULTURES.]\n\nNot only can the eye be thus altered, but it changes\ninstantaneously, so as to accommodate itself to the task which it is\nto perform. A Vulture, for example, sees from a vast height the body\nof a dead animal, and instantly swoops down upon it like an arrow\nfrom a bow. In order to enable the bird to see so distant an object,\nthe eye has been exercising its telescopic powers, and yet, in a\nsecond or two, when the Vulture is close to its prey, the whole form\nof the eye must be changed, or the bird would mistake its distance,\nand dash itself to pieces on the ground.\n\nBy means of its powerful eyes, the Vulture can see to an enormous\ndistance, and with great clearness, but neither so far nor so\nclearly as is popularly supposed. It is true that, as soon as a\ncarcase is discovered, it will be covered with Vultures, who arrive\nfrom every side, looking at first like tiny specks in the air,\nscarcely perceptible even to practised eyes, and all directing their\nflight to the same point. \"Where the carcase is, there will the\nvultures be gathered together.\" But, although they all fly towards\nthe same spot, it does not follow that they have all seen the same\nobject. The fact is, they see and understand each other's movements.\n\nA single Vulture, for example, sees a dead or dying sheep, and\nswoops down upon it. The other Vultures which are flying about\nin search of food, and from which the animal in question may be\nconcealed, know perfectly well that a Vulture soars high in the air\nwhen searching for food, and only darts to the earth when it has\nfound a suitable prey. They immediately follow its example, and\nin their turn are followed by other Vultures, which can see their\nfellows from a distance, and know perfectly well why they are all\nconverging to one spot.\n\nIn this way all the Vultures of a neighbourhood will understand, by\na very intelligible telegraph, that a dead body of some animal has\nbeen found, and, aided by their wonderful powers of flight, will\nassemble over its body in an almost incredibly short space of time.\n\nThe resting-place of the Griffon Vulture is always on some lofty\nspot. The Arabian Vulture will build within easy reach, the eagle\nprefers lofty situations, but nothing but the highest and most\ninaccessible spots will satisfy the Vulture. To reach the nest of\nthis bird is therefore a very difficult task, only to be attempted\nby experienced and intrepid cragsmen; and, in consequence, both the\neggs and young of the Griffon Vulture cannot be obtained except for\na very high price. The birds are fond of building in the rock-caves\nwhich are found in so many parts of Palestine, and in some places\nthey fill these places as thickly as rooks fill a rookery.\n\nIn Mr. Tristram's \"Land of Israel,\" there is a very graphic\ndescription of the Griffon's nests, and of the difficulty\nexperienced in reaching them. \"A narrow gorge, with limestone\ncliffs from five hundred to six hundred feet high, into which the\nsun never penetrates, walls the rapid brook on each side so closely\nthat we often had to ride in the bed of the stream. The cliffs\nare perforated with caves at all heights, wholly inaccessible to\nman, the secure resting-place of hundreds of noble griffons, some\nlaemmergeiers, lanner falcons, and several species of eagle....\nOne day in the ravine well repaid us, though so terrific were the\nprecipices, that it was quite impossible to reach any of the nests\nwith which it swarmed.\n\n\"We were more successful in the Wady Hamam, the south-west end of\nthe plain, the entrance from Hattin and the Buttauf, where we spent\nthree days in exploration. The cliffs, though reaching the height of\nfifteen hundred feet, rise like terraces, with enormous masses of\n_debris_, and the wood is half a mile wide. By the aid of Giacomo,\nwho proved himself an expert rope-climber, we reaped a good harvest\nof griffons' eggs, some of the party being let down by ropes, while\nthose above were guided in working them by signals from others below\nin the valley. It required the aid of a party of a dozen to capture\nthese nests. The idea of scaling the cliff with ropes was quite new\nto some Arabs who were herding cattle above, and who could not,\nexcepting one little girl, be induced to render any assistance. She\nproved herself most sensible and efficient in telegraphing.\n\n\"While capturing the griffons' nests, we were re-enacting a\ncelebrated siege in Jewish history. Close to us, at the head of the\ncliffs which form the limits of the celebrated Plain of Hattin, were\nthe ruins of Irbid, the ancient Arbela, marked principally by the\nremains of a synagogue, of which some marble shafts and fragments of\nentablature, like those of Tell Hum, are still to be seen, and were\nafterwards visited by us.\n\n\"Hosea mentions the place apparently as a strong fortress: 'All thy\nfortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel in the\nday of battle' (Hos. x. 14). Perhaps the prophet here refers to the\nrefuges in the rocks below.\n\n\"The long series of chambers and galleries in the face of the\nprecipice are called by the Arabs, Kulat Ibn Maan, and are very\nfully described by Josephus. These cliffs were the homes of a set\nof bandits, who resided here with their families, and for years set\nthe power of Herod the Great at defiance. At length, when all other\nattempts at scaling the fortress had failed, he let down soldiers at\nthis very spot in boxes, by chains, who attacked the robbers with\nlong hooks, and succeeded in rooting them all out.\n\n\"The rock galleries, though now only tenanted by griffons, are very\ncomplete and perfect, and beautifully built. Long galleries wind\nbackwards and forwards in the cliff side, their walls being built\nwith dressed stone, flush with the precipice, and often opening\ninto spacious chambers. Tier after tier rise one after another\nwith projecting windows, connected by narrow staircases, carried\nsometimes upon arches, and in the upper portions rarely broken away.\nIn many of the upper chambers to which we were let down, the dust of\nages had accumulated, undisturbed by any foot save that of the birds\nof the air; and here we rested during the heat of the day, with the\nplains and lake set as in a frame before us. We obtained a full\nzoological harvest, as in three days we captured fourteen nests of\ngriffons.\"\n\nAlthough these caverns and rocky passages are much more accessible\nthan most of the places whereon the Griffons build, the natives\nnever venture to enter them, being deterred not so much by their\nheight, as by their superstitious fears. The Griffons instinctively\nfound out that man never entered these caverns, and so took\npossession of them.\n\nAs the young Griffons are brought up in these lofty and precipitous\nplaces, it is evident that their first flight must be a dangerous\nexperiment, requiring the aid of the parent birds. At first the\nyoung are rather nervous at the task which lies before them, and\nshrink from trusting themselves to the air. The parents, however,\nencourage them to use their wings, take short flights in order to\nset them an example, and, when they at last venture from the nest,\naccompany and encourage them in their first journey.\n\nIn flight it is one of the most magnificent birds that can be seen,\nand even when perched it often retains a certain look of majesty and\ngrandeur. Sometimes, however, especially when basking in the sun, it\nassumes a series of attitudes which are absolutely grotesque, and\nconvert the noble-looking bird into a positively ludicrous object.\nAt one moment it will sit all hunched up, its head sunk between its\nshoulders, and one wing trailing behind it as if broken. At another\nit will bend its legs and sit down on the ankle-joint, pushing its\nfeet out in front, and supporting itself by the stiff feathers of\nits tail. Often it will touch nearly flat on the ground, partly\nspread its wings, and allow their tips to rest on the earth, and\nsometimes it will support nearly all the weight of its body on the\nwings, which rest, in a half doubled state, on the ground. I have\nbefore me a great number of sketches, taken in a single day, of\nthe attitudes assumed by one of these birds, every one of which is\nstrikingly different from the others, and transforms the whole shape\nof the bird so much that it is scarcely recognisable as the same\nindividual.\n\n[Illustration: tree]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: eagle]\n\n\n\n\nTHE EAGLE.\n\n     Signification of the word _Asniyeh_--The Golden Eagle and its\n     habits--The Imperial Eagle--Its solitary mode of life--The\n     Short-toed Eagle--Its domestic habits and fondness for the\n     society of man--The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle--Its mode of\n     catching fish--Its distribution in Palestine.\n\n\nAs to the Eagle, rightly so called, there is little doubt that it\nis one of the many birds of prey that seem to have been classed\nunder the general title of Asniyeh--the word which in the Authorized\nVersion of the Bible is rendered as Osprey. A similar confusion is\nobservable in the modern Arabic, one word, _ogab_, being applied\nindiscriminately to all the Eagles and the large _falconidae_.\n\nThe chief of the true Eagles, namely, the Golden Eagle (_Aquila\nchrysaetos_), is one of the inhabitants of Palestine, and is seen\nfrequently, though never in great numbers. Indeed, its predacious\nhabits unfit it for associating with its kind. Any animal which\nlives chiefly, if not wholly, by the chase, requires a large\ndistrict in order to enable it to live, and thus twenty or thirty\neagles will be scattered over a district of twice the number of\nmiles. Like the lion among the mammalia, the Eagle leads an almost\nsolitary life, scarcely ever associating with any of its kind except\nits mate and its young.\n\nThe whole of the Falconidae, as the family to which the Eagles belong\nis called, are very destructive birds, gaining their subsistence\nchiefly by the chase, seldom feeding on carrion except when pressed\nby hunger, or when the dead animal has only recently been killed.\n\nHerein they form a complete contrast to the vultures, whose usual\nfood is putrefying carrion, and fresh meat the exception.\n\nDestructive though the Eagles may be, they cannot be called cruel\nbirds, for, although they deprive many birds and beasts of life,\nthey effect their purpose with a single blow, sweeping down upon the\ndoomed creature with such lightning velocity, and striking it so\nfiercely with their death-dealing talons, that almost instantaneous\ndeath usually results.\n\nWhen the Eagle pounces on a bird, the mere shock caused by the\nstroke of the Eagle's body is almost invariably sufficient to cause\ndeath, and the bird, even if a large one--such as the swan, for\nexample--falls dead upon the earth with scarcely a wound.\n\nSmaller birds are carried off in the talons of their pursuers, and\nare killed by the grip of their tremendous claws, the Eagle in no\ncase making use of its beak for killing its prey. If the great\nbird carries off a lamb or a hare, it grasps the body firmly with\nits claws, and then by a sudden exertion of its wonderful strength\ndrives the sharp talons deep into the vitals of its prey, and does\nnot loosen its grasp until the breath of life has fled from its\nvictim.\n\nThe structure by means of which the Eagle is enabled to use its\ntalons with such terrible effect is equally beautiful and simple,\ndeserving special mention.\n\nNow, many observant persons have been struck with the curious\npower possessed by birds which enables them to hold their position\nupon a branch or perch even while sleeping. In many instances the\nslumbering bird retains its hold of the perch by a single foot, the\nother being drawn up and buried in the feathers.\n\nAs this grasp is clearly an involuntary one, it is evidently\nindependent of the mere will of the bird, and is due to some\npeculiar formation.\n\nOn removing the skin from the leg of any bird, and separating the\nmuscles from each other, the structure in question is easily seen.\nThe muscles which move the leg and foot, and the tendons, or leaders\nwhich form the attachment of the muscles to the bones, are so\narranged that whenever the bird bends its leg the foot is forcibly\nclosed, and is opened again when the leg is straightened.\n\nA common chicken, as it walks along, closing its toes as it lifts\nits foot from the ground and spreading them as the leg is unbent,\ncannot do otherwise, as the tendons are shortened and lengthened as\neach step is taken.\n\n[Illustration: EAGLES.]\n\nIt will be seen, therefore, that when a bird falls asleep upon a\nbranch the legs are not only bent, but are pressed downwards by the\nweight of the body; so that the claws hold the perch with a firm and\ninvoluntary grasp which knows no fatigue, and which remains secure\nas long as the pressure from above keeps the limbs bent.\n\nTo return to the Eagle. When, therefore, the bird desires to\ndrive his talons into the body of his prey, he needs only to sink\ndownwards with his whole weight, and the forcible bending of his\nlegs will contract the talons with irresistible force, without the\nnecessity of any muscular exertion.\n\nExertion, indeed, is never needlessly used by the Eagle, for it is\nvery chary of putting forth its great muscular powers, and unless\nroused by the sight of prey, or pressed to fly abroad in search of\nfood, will sit upon a tree or point of rock for hours as motionless\nas a stuffed figure.\n\nThe Golden Eagle is a truly magnificent bird in size and appearance.\nA full-grown female measures about three feet six inches in length,\nand the expanse of her wings is nine feet. The male bird is smaller\nby nearly six inches. The colour of the bird is a rich blackish\nbrown on the greater part of the body, the head and neck being\ncovered with feathers of a golden red, which have earned for the\nbird its customary name.\n\nThe Golden Eagle is observed to frequent certain favourite places,\nand to breed regularly in the same spot, for a long series of years.\nThe nest is always made upon some high place, generally upon a ledge\nof rock, and is most roughly constructed of sticks.\n\nIn hunting for their prey the Eagle and his mate assist each other.\nIt may be also mentioned here that Eagles keep themselves to a\nsingle mate, and live together throughout their lives. Should,\nhowever, one of them die or be killed, the survivor does not long\nremain in a state of loneliness, but vanishes from the spot for a\nlonger or shorter time, and then returns with a new mate.\n\nAs rabbits and hares, which form a frequent meal for the Eagle, are\nusually hidden under bushes and trees during the day, the birds are\nfrequently forced to drive them from their place of concealment;\nthis they have been observed to do in a very clever manner. One of\nthe Eagles conceals itself near the cover, and its companion dashes\namong the bushes, screaming and making such a disturbance that the\nterrified inmates rush out in hopes of escape, and are immediately\npounced upon by the watchful confederate.\n\nThe prey is immediately taken to the nest, and distributed to the\nyoung after being torn to pieces by the parent birds.\n\nFour or five species of Eagle are known to inhabit Palestine. There\nis, for example, the Imperial Eagle (_Aquila mogilnik_), which may\nbe distinguished from the Golden Eagle by a white patch on the\nshoulders, and the long, lancet-shaped feathers of the head and\nneck. These feathers are of a fawn colour, and contrast beautifully\nwith the deep black-brown of the back and wings. It is not very\noften seen, being a bird that loves the forest, and that does not\ncare to leave the shelter of the trees. It is tolerably common in\nPalestine.\n\nThen there are several of the allied species, of which the best\nexample is perhaps the Short-toed Eagle (_Circaetus cinereus_), a\nbird which is extremely plentiful in the Holy Land--so plentiful\nindeed that, as Mr. Tristram remarks, there are probably twice as\nmany of the Short-toed Eagles in Palestine as of all the other\nspecies put together. The genus to which this bird belongs does\nnot take rank with the true Eagles, but is supposed by systematic\nnaturalists to hold an intermediate place between the true Eagles\nand the ospreys.\n\nThe Short-toed Eagle is seldom a carrion-eater, preferring to kill\nits prey for itself. It feeds mostly on serpents and other reptiles,\nand is especially fond of frogs. It is a large and somewhat heavily\nbuilt bird, lightness and swiftness being far less necessary than\nstrength in taking the animals on which it feeds. It is rather\nmore than two feet in length, and is a decidedly handsome bird,\nthe back being dark brown, and the under parts white, covered with\ncrescent-shaped black spots.\n\n[Illustration: eagle]\n\n[Illustration: EAGLE RETURNING TO THE NEST WITH HER PREY.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE OSPREY.\n\n     The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle--Its geographical range--Mode of\n     securing prey--Structure of its feet--Its power of balancing\n     itself in the air.\n\n\nWe now come to the Osprey itself (_Pandion haliaetus_), which was\nundoubtedly one of the birds grouped together under the collective\nterm Asniyeh. This word occurs only in the two passages in Deut.\nxiv. and Lev. xi. which have been several times quoted already, and\nneed not be mentioned again.\n\nThis fine bird is spread over a very large range of country, and is\nfound in the New World as well as the Old. In consequence of its\npeculiar habits, it is often called the Fishing Eagle.\n\nThe Osprey is essentially a fish-eater. It seems very strange that\na predacious bird allied to the eagles, none of which birds can\nswim, much less dive, should obtain its living from the water. That\nthe cormorant and other diving birds should do so is no matter of\nsurprise, inasmuch as they are able to pursue the fish in their own\nelement, and catch them by superior speed. But any bird which cannot\ndive, and which yet lives on fish, is forced to content itself\nwith those fish that come to the surface of the water, a mode of\nobtaining a livelihood which does not appear to have much chance of\nsuccess. Yet the Osprey does on a large scale what the kingfisher\ndoes on a small one, and contrives to find abundant food in the\nwater.\n\nIts method of taking prey is almost exactly like that which is\nemployed by the kingfisher. When it goes out in search of food, it\nsoars into the air, and floats in circles over the water, watching\nevery inch of it as narrowly as a kestrel watches a stubble-field.\nNo sooner does a fish rise toward the surface to take a fly, or to\nleap into the air for sport, than the Osprey darts downwards, grasps\nthe fish in its talons, drags the struggling prey from the water,\nand with a scream of joy and triumph bears it away to shore, where\nit can be devoured at leisure.\n\nThe bird never dives, neither does it seize the fish with its beak\nlike the kingfisher. It plunges but slightly into the water, as\notherwise it would not be able to use its strong wings and carry\noff its prey. In order to enable the bird to seize the hard and\nslippery body of the fish, it is furnished with long, very sharp,\nand boldly-hooked talons, which force themselves into the sides of\nthe fish, and hold it as with grappling irons.\n\n[Illustration: THE OSPREY SEARCHING FOR FISH.]\n\nThe flight of the Osprey is peculiarly easy and elegant, as might\nbe expected from a bird the length of whose body is only twenty-two\ninches, and the expanse of wing nearly five feet and a half.\n\nIt is therefore able to hover over the water for long periods of\ntime, and can balance itself in one spot without seeming to move a\nwing, having the singular facility of doing so even when a tolerably\nstrong breeze is blowing. It has even been observed to maintain its\nplace unmoved when a sharp squall swept over the spot.\n\nHarmless though the Osprey be--except to the fish--it is a most\npersecuted bird, being everywhere annoyed by rooks and crows, and,\nin America, robbed by the more powerful white-headed eagle.\n\nSuch a scene is thus described by Wilson:\n\n     \"Elevated on the high, dead limb of a gigantic tree that\n     commanded a wide view of the neighbouring shore and ocean, the\n     great white-headed eagle calmly surveys the motions of various\n     smaller birds that pursue their busy avocations below.\n\n     \"The snow-white gulls slowly winnowing the air; the trains of\n     ducks streaming over the surface; silent and watchful cranes,\n     intent and wading, and all the winged multitude that subsist by\n     the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature.\n\n     \"High over all these, hovers one whose action instantly arrests\n     the eagle's attention. By his wide curvature of wing and sudden\n     suspension in the air he knows him to be the Osprey, settling\n     over some devoted victim of the deep. The eyes of the eagle\n     kindle at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened\n     wings on the branch, he watches the result.\n\n     \"Down, rapid as an arrow, from heaven descends the Osprey, the\n     roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the\n     water, making the surges foam around! At this moment the eager\n     looks of the eagle are all ardour, and, levelling his neck for\n     flight, he sees the Osprey once more emerge, struggling with his\n     prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation.\n\n     \"These are the signals for the eagle, who, launching into the\n     air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Osprey; each\n     exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in this\n     encounter the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions.\n\n     [Illustration: SNATCHED FROM THE DEEP: THE OSPREY RISES WITH HIS\n     PREY.]\n\n     \"The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the\n     point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream,\n     probably of despair and honest execration, the Osprey drops his\n     fish.\n\n     \"The eagle, poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more\n     certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his\n     grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty\n     silently away to the woods.\"\n\nAlthough not very plentiful in Palestine, nor indeed in any other\ncountry, the Osprey is seen throughout the whole of that country\nwhere it can find a sufficiency of water. It prefers the sea-shore\nand the rivers of the coast, and is said to avoid the Sea of Galilee.\n\n\n\n\nTHE KITE, OR VULTURE OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n     The word _Dayah_ and its signification--Dayah a collective term\n     for different species of Kites--The Common or Red Kite plentiful\n     in Palestine--Its piercing sight and habit of soaring--The Black\n     Kite of Palestine and its habits--The Egyptian Kite--The Raah or\n     Glede of Scripture--The Buzzards and their habits--The Peregrine\n     Falcon an inhabitant of Central Palestine, and the Lanner of the\n     eastern parts of the country.\n\n\nIn Lev. xi. 14 and Deut. xiv. 13, we find the Vulture among the list\nof birds which the Jews were not permitted to eat. The word which\nis translated as Vulture is _dayah_, and we find it occurring again\nin Isaiah xxxiv. 15, \"There shall the vultures also be gathered,\nevery one with her mate.\" There is no doubt, however, that this\ntranslation of the word is an incorrect one, and that it ought to be\nrendered as Kite. In Job xxviii. 7, there is a similar word, _ayah_,\nwhich is also translated as Vulture, and which is acknowledged to\nbe not a Vulture, but one of the Kites: \"There is a path which no\nfowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen.\" Both these\nwords are nearly identical with modern Arabic terms which are\nemployed rather loosely to signify several species of Kite. Buxtorf,\nin his Hebrew Lexicon, gives the correct rendering, translating\n_dayah_ as _Milvus_, and the Vulgate in one or two places gives the\nsame translation, though in others it renders the word as Vulture.\n\n[Illustration: THE KITE, OR VULTURE OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nMr. Tristram, who has given much attention to this subject, is\ninclined to refer the word _ayah_ to the Common Kite (_Milvus\nregalis_), which was once so plentiful in this country, and is now\nnearly extinct; and _dayah_ to the Black Kite (_Milvus atra_). He\nfounds this distinction on the different habits of the two species,\nthe Common or Red Kite being thinly scattered, and being in the\nhabit of soaring into the air at very great heights, and the latter\nbeing very plentiful and gregarious.\n\nWe will first take the Red Kite.\n\nThis bird is scattered all over Palestine, feeding chiefly on the\nsmaller birds, mice, reptiles, and fish. In the capture of fish the\nKite is almost as expert as the osprey, darting from a great height\ninto the water, and bearing off the fish in its claws. The wings of\nthis bird are very long and powerful, and bear it through the air in\na peculiarly graceful flight. It is indeed in consequence of this\nflight that it has been called the Glede, the word being derived\nfrom its gliding movements.\n\nThe sight of this bird is remarkably keen and piercing, and, from\nthe vast elevation to which it soars when in search of food, it is\nable to survey the face of the country beneath, and to detect the\npartridge, quail, chicken, or other creature that will serve it for\nfood. This piercing sight and habit of soaring render the passage in\nJob peculiarly appropriate to this species of Kite, though it does\nnot express the habits of the other. Should the Kite suspect danger\nwhen forced to leave its nest, it escapes by darting rapidly into\nthe air, and soaring at a vast height above the trees among which\nits home is made. From that elevation it can act as a sentinel, and\nwill not come down again until it is assured of safety.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOf the habits of the BLACK KITE (_Milvus atra_), Mr. Tristram\ngives an admirable description. \"The habits of the bird bear out\nthe allusion in Isa. xxxiv. 15, for it is, excepting during the\nwinter three months, so numerous everywhere in Palestine as to be\nalmost gregarious. It returns about the beginning of March, and\nscatters itself over the whole country, preferring especially the\nneighbourhood of valleys, where it is a welcome and unmolested\nguest. It does not appear to attack the poultry, among whom it may\noften be seen feeding on garbage. It is very sociable, and the\nslaughter of a sheep at one of the tents will soon attract a large\nparty of black kites, which swoop down regardless of man and guns,\nand enjoy a noisy scramble for the refuse, chasing each other in a\nlaughable fashion, and sometimes enabling the wily raven to steal\noff with the coveted morsel during their contentions. It is the\nbutt of all the smaller scavengers, and is evidently most unpopular\nwith the crows and daws, and even rollers, who enjoy the amusement\nof teasing it in their tumbling flight, which is a manoeuvre most\nperplexing to the kite.\"\n\nThe same writer proceeds to mention that the Black Kite unlike the\nred species, is very careless about the position of its nest, and\nnever even attempts to conceal it, sometimes building it in a tree,\nsometimes on a rock-ledge, and sometimes in a bush growing on the\nrocks. It seems indeed desirous of making the nest as conspicuous as\npossible, and hangs it all over with bits of cloth, strips of bark,\nwings of birds, and even the cast skins of serpents.\n\nAnother species (_Milvus AEgyptiacus_) is sometimes called the Black\nKite from the dark hue of its plumage, but ought rather to retain\nthe title of Egyptian Kite. Unlike the black kite, this bird is\na great thief, and makes as much havoc among poultry as the red\nkite. It is also a robber of other birds, and if it should happen\nto see a weaker bird with food, it is sure to attack and rob it.\nLike the black kite, it is fond of the society of man, and haunts\nthe villages in great numbers, for the purpose of eating the offal,\nwhich in Oriental towns is simply flung into the streets to be\ndevoured by the dogs, vultures, kites, and other scavengers, without\nwhom no village would be habitable for a month.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhether the word _raah_, which is translated as Glede in Deut. xiv.\n13, among the list of birds which may not be eaten, is one of these\nspecies of Kite, or a bird of a different group, is a very doubtful\npoint. This is the only passage in which the word occurs, and we\nhave but small grounds for definitely identifying it with any one\nspecies. The Hebrew Bible retains the word Glede, but affixes a mark\nof doubt to it, and several commentators are of opinion that the\nword is a wrong reading of _dayah_, which occurs in the parallel\npassage in Lev. xi. 14. The reading of the Septuagint follows this\ninterpretation, and renders it as Vulture in both cases. Buxtorf\ntranslates the word _raah_ as Rook, but suggests that _dayah_ is the\ncorrect reading.\n\nAccepting, however, the word _raah_, we shall find that it is\nderived from a root which signifies sight or vision, especially of\nsome particular object, so that a piercing sight would therefore be\nthe chief characteristic of the bird, which, as we know, is one of\nthe attributes of the Kites, together with other birds of prey, so\nthat it evidently must be classed among the group with which we are\nnow concerned. It has been suggested that, granting the _raah_ to\nbe a species distinct from the _dayah_, it is a collective term for\nthe larger falcons and buzzards, several species of which inhabit\nPalestine, and are not distinctly mentioned in the Bible.\n\nSeveral species of buzzard inhabit the Holy Land, and there is\nno particular reason why they should be mentioned except by a\ncollective name. Some of the buzzards are very large birds, and\nthough their wings are short when compared with those of the\nvultures and eagles, the flight of the bird is both powerful and\ngraceful. It is not, however, remarkable for swiftness, and never\nwas employed, like the falcon, in catching other birds, being\nreckoned as one of the useless and cowardly birds of prey. In\nconsonance with this opinion, to compare a man to a buzzard was\nthought a most cutting insult.\n\n[Illustration: THE PEREGRINE FALCON, OR GLEDE OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nAs a general rule, it does not chase its prey like the eagles or the\nlarge-winged falcons, but perches on a rock or tree, watches for\nsome animal on which it can feed, pounces on it, and returns to its\npost, the whole movements being very like those of the flycatcher.\nThis sluggishness of disposition, and the soft and almost owl-like\nplumage, have been the means of bringing the bird into contempt\namong falconers.\n\nAs to the large falcons, which seem to be included in the term\n_raah_, the chief of them is the Peregrine Falcon (_Falco\nperegrinus_), which is tolerably common in the Holy Land. In his\n\"Land of Israel,\" Mr. Tristram gives several notices of this bird,\nfrom which we may take the following picture from a description of\na scene at Endor. \"Dreary and desolate looked the plain, though of\nexuberant fertility. Here and there might be seen a small flock of\nsheep or herd of cattle, tended by three or four mounted villagers,\narmed with their long firelocks, and pistols and swords, on the\nwatch against any small party of marauding cattle-lifters.\n\n\"Griffon vultures were wheeling in circles far over the rounded top\nof Tabor; and here and there an eagle was soaring beneath them in\nsearch of food, but at a most inconvenient distance from our guns.\nHariers were sweeping more rapidly and closely over the ground,\nwhere lambs appeared to be their only prey; and a noble peregrine\nfalcon, which in Central Palestine does not give place to the more\neastern lanner, was perched on an isolated rock, calmly surveying\nthe scene, and permitting us to approach and scrutinize him at our\nleisure.\"\n\nThe habit of perching on the rock, as mentioned above, is very\ncharacteristic of the Peregrine Falcon, who loves the loftiest and\nmost craggy cliffs, and makes its nest in spots which can only be\nreached by a bold and experienced climber. The nests of this bird\nare never built in close proximity, the Peregrine preferring to have\nits home at least a mile from the nest of any other of its kinsfolk.\nSometimes it makes a nest in lofty trees, taking possession of the\ndeserted home of some other bird; but it loves the cliff better\nthan the tree, and seldom builds in the latter when the former is\nattainable.\n\nIn the passage from the \"Land of Israel\" is mentioned the LANNER\nFALCON (_Falco lanarius_), another of the larger falcons to which\nthe term _raah_ may have been applied.\n\nThis bird is much larger than the Peregrine Falcon, and, indeed, is\nvery little less than the great gerfalcon itself. It is one of the\nbirds that were reckoned among the noble falcons; and the female,\nwhich is much larger and stronger than the male, was employed for\nthe purpose of chasing the kite, whose long and powerful wings could\nnot always save it from such a foe.\n\nAlthough the Lanner has been frequently mentioned among the British\nbirds, and the name is therefore familiar to us, it is not even\na visitor of our island. The mistake has occurred by an error in\nnomenclature, the young female Peregrine Falcon, which is much\nlarger and darker than the male bird, having been erroneously called\nby the name of Lanner.\n\n[Illustration: THE LANNER FALCON.]\n\nIn the illustration, a pair of Lanner Falcons are depicted as\npursuing some of the rock-pigeons which abound in Palestine, the\nattitudes of both birds being taken from life.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: hawk]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HAWK.\n\n     The Netz or Hawk--Number of species probably grouped under\n     that name--Rare occurrence of the word--The Sparrow-Hawk and\n     its general habits--Its place of nesting--The Kestrel, or\n     Wind-hover--Various names by which it is known in England--Its\n     mode of feeding and curious flight--The Hariers--Probable\n     derivation of the name--Species of Harier known to inhabit\n     Palestine--Falconry apparently unknown to the ancient Jews.\n\n\nThere is no doubt that a considerable number of species are grouped\ntogether under the single title Netz, or Hawk, a word which is\nrightly enough translated. That a great number of birds should have\nbeen thus confounded together is not surprising, seeing that even\nin this country and at the present time, the single word Hawk may\nsignify any one of at least twelve different species. The various\nfalcons, the hariers, the kestrel, the sparrow-hawk, and the\nhobbies, are one and all called popularly by the name of Hawk, and\nit is therefore likely that the Hebrew word Netz would signify as\nmany species as the English word Hawk. From them we will select one\nor two of the principal species.\n\nIn the first place, the word is of very rare occurrence. We only\nfind it three times. It first occurs in Lev. xi. 16, in which it is\nnamed, together with the eagle, the ossifrage, and many other birds,\nas among the unclean creatures, to eat which was an abomination. It\nis next found in the parallel passage in Deut. xiv. 15, neither of\nwhich portions of Scripture need be quoted at length.\n\nThat the word _netz_ was used in its collective sense is very\nevident from the addition which is made to it in both cases. The\nHawk, \"after its kind,\" is forbidden, showing therefore that\nseveral kinds or species of Hawk were meant. Indeed, any specific\ndetail would be quite needless, as the collective term was quite a\nsufficient indication, and, having named the vultures, eagles, and\nlarger birds of prey, the simple word _netz_ was considered by the\nsacred writer as expressing the rest of the birds of prey.\n\nWe find the word once more in that part of the Bible to which we\nusually look for any reference to natural history. In Job xxxix. 26,\nwe have the words, \"Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and turn [or\nstretch] her wings toward the south?\" The precise signification of\nthis passage is rather doubtful, but it is generally considered to\nrefer to the migration of several of the Hawk tribe. That the bird\nin question was distinguished for its power of flight is evident\nfrom the fact that the sacred poet has selected that one attribute\nas the most characteristic of the Netz.\n\nTaking first the typical example of the Hawks, we find that the\nSPARROW-HAWK (_Accipiter nisus_) is plentiful in Palestine, finding\nabundant food in the smaller birds of the country. It selects for\nits nest just the spots which are so plentiful in the Holy Land,\n_i.e._ the crannies of rocks, and the tops of tall trees. Sometimes\nit builds in deserted ruins, but its favourite spot seems to be\nthe lofty tree-top, and, in default of that, the rock-crevice. It\nseldom builds a nest of its own, but takes possession of that which\nhas been made by some other bird. Some ornithologists think that\nit looks out for a convenient nest, say of the crow or magpie, and\nthen ejects the rightful owner. I am inclined to think, however,\nthat it mostly takes possession of a nest that is already deserted,\nwithout running the risk of fighting such enemies as a pair of angry\nmagpies. This opinion is strengthened by the fact that the bird\nresorts to the same nest year after year.\n\nIt is a bold and dashing bird, though of no great size, and\nwhen wild and free displays a courage which it seems to lose in\ncaptivity. As is the case with so many of the birds, the female is\nmuch larger than her mate, the former weighing about six ounces, and\nmeasuring about a foot in length, and the latter weighing above nine\nounces, and measuring about fifteen inches in length.\n\n[Illustration: KESTREL HOVERING OVER A FIELD IN SEARCH OF PREY.]\n\nThe most plentiful of the smaller Hawks of Palestine is the COMMON\nKESTREL. This is the same species which is known under the names of\nKestrel, Wind-hover, and Stannel Hawk.\n\nIt derives its name of Wind-hover from its remarkable habit of\nhovering, head to windward, over some spot for many minutes\ntogether. This action is always performed at a moderate distance\nfrom the ground; some naturalists saying that the Hawk in question\nnever hovers at an elevation exceeding forty feet, while others,\nmyself included, have seen the bird hovering at a height of twice as\nmany yards. Generally, however, it prefers a lower distance, and is\nable by employing this manoeuvre to survey a tolerably large space\nbeneath. As its food consists in a very great measure of field-mice,\nthe Kestrel is thus able by means of its telescopic eyesight to see\nif a mouse rises from its hole; and if it should do so, the bird\ndrops on it and secures it in its claws.\n\n[Illustration: THE WIND-HOVER, OR KESTREL.]\n\nUnlike the sparrow-hawk, the Kestrel is undoubtedly gregarious, and\nwill build its nest in close proximity to the habitations of other\nbirds, a number of nests being often found within a few yards of\neach other. Mr. Tristram remarks that he has found its nest in the\nrecesses of the caverns occupied by the griffon vultures, and that\nthe Kestrel also builds close to the eagles, and is the only bird\nwhich is permitted to do so. It also builds in company with the\njackdaw.\n\nSeveral species of Kestrel are known, and of them at least two\ninhabit the Holy Land, the second being a much smaller bird than\nthe Common Kestrel, and feeding almost entirely on insects, which\nit catches with its claws, the common chafers forming its usual\nprey. Great numbers of these birds live together, and as they rather\naffect the society of mankind, they are fond of building their nests\nin convenient crannies in the mosques or churches. Independently of\nits smaller size, it may be distinguished from the Common Kestrel by\nthe whiteness of its claws.\n\nThe illustration is drawn from a sketch taken from life. The bird\nhovered so near a house, and remained so long in one place, that the\nartist fixed a telescope and secured an exact sketch of the bird\nin the peculiar attitude which it is so fond of assuming. After a\nwhile, the Kestrel ascended to a higher elevation, and then resumed\nits hovering, in the attitude which is shown in the upper figure. In\nconsequence of the great abundance of this species in Palestine, and\nthe peculiarly conspicuous mode of balancing itself in the air while\nin search of prey, we may feel sure that the sacred writers had it\nspecially in their minds when they used the collective term Netz.\n\nIt is easily trained, and, although in the old hawking days it was\nconsidered a bird which a noble could not carry, it can be trained\nto chase the smaller birds as successfully as the falcons can be\ntaught to pursue the heron. The name Tinnunculus is supposed by some\nto have been given to the bird in allusion to its peculiar cry,\nwhich is clear, shrill, and consists of a single note several times\nrepeated.\n\nOn page 444 the reader may see a representation of a pair of HARIER\nHAWKS flying below the rock on which the peregrine falcon has\nperched, and engaged in pursuing one of the smaller birds.\n\nThey have been introduced because several species of Harier are\nto be found in Palestine, where they take, among the plains and\nlowlands, the place which is occupied by the other hawks and falcons\namong the rocks.\n\nThe name of Harier appears to be given to these birds on account of\ntheir habit of regularly quartering the ground over which they fly\nwhen in search of prey, just like hounds when searching for hares.\nThis bird is essentially a haunter of flat and marshy lands, where\nit finds frogs, mice, lizards, on which it usually feeds. It does\nnot, however, confine itself to such food, but will chase and kill\nmost of the smaller birds, and occasionally will catch even the\nleveret, the rabbit, the partridge, and the curlew.\n\nWhen it chases winged prey, it seldom seizes the bird in the air,\nbut almost invariably keeps above it, and gradually drives it to\nthe ground. It will be seen, therefore, that its flight is mostly\nlow, as suits the localities in which it lives, and it seldom\nsoars to any great height, except when it amuses itself by rising\nand wheeling in circles together with its mate. This proceeding\ngenerally takes place before nest-building. The usual flight is a\nmixture of that of the kestrel and the falcon, the Harier sometimes\npoising itself over some particular spot, and at others shooting\nforwards through the air with motionless wings.\n\nUnlike the falcons and most of the hawks, the Harier does not as a\nrule perch on rocks, but prefers to sit very upright on the ground,\nperching generally on a mole-hill, stone, or some similar elevation.\nEven its nest is made on the ground, and is composed of reeds,\nsedges, sticks, and similar matter, materials that can be procured\nfrom marshy land. The nest is always elevated a foot or so from the\nground, and has occasionally been found on the top of a mound more\nthan a yard in height. It is, however, conjectured that in such\ncases the mound is made by one nest being built upon the remains of\nanother. The object of the elevated nest is probably to preserve the\neggs in case of a flood.\n\nAt least five species of Hariers are known to exist in the Holy\nLand, two of which are among the British birds, namely, the Marsh\nHarier (_Circus aeruginosus_), sometimes called the Duck Hawk and\nthe Moor Buzzard, and the Hen Harier (_Circus cyaneus_), sometimes\ncalled the White Hawk, Dove Hawk, or Blue Hawk, on account of the\nplumage of the male, which differs greatly according to age; and the\nRing-tailed Hawk, on account of the dark bars which appear on the\ntail of the female. All the Hariers are remarkable for the circlet\nof feathers that surrounds the eyes, and which resembles in a lesser\ndegree the bold feather-circle around the eye of the owl tribe.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBefore taking leave of the Hawks, it is as well to notice the entire\nabsence in the Scriptures of any reference to falconry. Now, seeing\nthat the art of catching birds and animals by means of Hawks is a\nfavourite amusement among Orientals, as has already been mentioned\nwhen treating of the gazelle (page 168), and knowing the unchanging\ncharacter of the East, we cannot but think it remarkable that no\nreference should be made to this sport in the Scriptures.\n\nIt is true that in Palestine itself there would be but little scope\nfor falconry, the rough hilly ground and abundance of cultivated\nsoil rendering such an amusement almost impossible. Besides, the use\nof the falcon implies that of the horse, and, as we have already\nseen, the horse was scarcely ever used except for military purposes.\n\nHad, therefore, the experience of the Israelites been confined\nto Palestine, there would have been good reason for the silence\nof the sacred writers on this subject. But when we remember that\nthe surrounding country is well adapted for falconry, that the\namusement is practised there at the present day, and that the\nIsraelites passed so many years as captives in other countries, we\ncan but wonder that the Hawks should never be mentioned as aids\nto bird-catching. We find that other bird-catching implements are\nfreely mentioned and employed as familiar symbols, such as the gin,\nthe net, the snare, the trap, and so forth; but that there is not\na single passage in which the Hawks are mentioned as employed in\nfalconry.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: BARN OWL.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE OWL.\n\n     The words which have been translated as Owl--Use made of the\n     Little Owl in bird-catching--Habits of the bird--The Barn,\n     Screech, or White Owl a native of Palestine--The Yanshuph, or\n     Egyptian Eagle Owl--Its food and nest.\n\n\nIn various parts of the Old Testament there occur several words\nwhich are translated as OWL in the Authorized Version, and in most\ncases the rendering is acknowledged to be the correct one, while in\none or two instances there is a difference of opinion on the subject.\n\nIn Lev. xi. 16, 17, we find the following birds reckoned among\nthose which are an abomination, and which might not be eaten by the\nIsraelites: \"The owl, and the night-hawk, and the cuckoo, and the\nhawk after his kind;\n\n\"And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl.\"\n\nIt is very likely that the Little Owl here mentioned is identical\nwith the Boomah of the Arabs. It is a bird that is common in Europe,\nwhere it is much valued by bird-catchers, who employ it as a means\nof attracting small birds to their traps. They place it on the top\nof a long pole, and carry it into the fields, where they plant the\npole in the ground. This Owl has a curious habit of swaying its\nbody backwards and forwards, and is sure to attract the notice of\nall the small birds in the neighbourhood. It is well known that the\nsmaller birds have a peculiar hatred to the Owl, and never can pass\nit without mobbing it, assembling in great numbers, and so intent\non their occupation that they seem to be incapable of perceiving\nanything but the object of their hatred. Even rooks, magpies, and\nhawks are taken by this simple device.\n\nWhether or not the Little Owl was used for this object by the\nancient inhabitants of Palestine is rather doubtful; but as they\ncertainly did so employ decoy birds for the purpose of attracting\ngame, it is not unlikely that the Little Owl was found to serve as a\ndecoy. We shall learn more about the system of decoy-birds when we\ncome to the partridge.\n\nThe Little Owl is to be found in almost every locality, caring\nlittle whether it takes up its residence in cultivated grounds, in\nvillages, among deserted ruins, or in places where man has never\nlived. As, however, it is protected by the natives, it prefers\nthe neighbourhood of villages, and may be seen quietly perched in\nsome favourite spot, not taking the trouble to move unless it be\napproached closely. And to detect a perched Owl is not at all an\neasy matter, as the bird has a way of selecting some spot where\nthe colours of its plumage harmonize so well with the surrounding\nobjects that the large eyes are often the first indication of its\npresence. Many a time I have gone to search after Owls, and only\nbeen made aware of them by the sharp angry snap that they make when\nstartled.\n\nThe common and well-known Barn Owl, also inhabits Palestine. Like\nthe Little Owl, it affects the neighbourhood of man, though it may\nbe found in ruins and similar localities. An old ruined building\nis sure to be tenanted by the Barn Owl, whose nightly shrieks very\noften terrify the belated wanderer, and make him fancy that the\nplace is haunted by disturbed spirits. Such being the habits of the\nbird, it is likely that in the East, where popular superstition has\npeopled every well with its jinn and every ruin with its spirit, the\nnocturnal cry of this bird, which is often called the Screech Owl\nfrom its note, should be exceedingly terrifying, and would impress\nitself on the minds of sacred writers as a fit image of solitude,\nterror, and desolation.\n\n[Illustration: THE LITTLE OWL.]\n\nThe Screech Owl is scarcely less plentiful in Palestine than the\nLittle Owl, and, whether or not it be mentioned under a separate\nname, is sure to be one of the birds to which allusion is made in\nthe Scriptures.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother name now rises before us: this is the Yanshuph, translated\nas the Great Owl, a word which occurs not only in the prohibitory\npassages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but in the Book of Isaiah. In\nthat book, ch. xxxiv. ver. 10, 11, we find the following passage:\n\"From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass\nthrough it for ever and ever.\n\n[Illustration: CAUGHT NAPPING.]\n\n\"But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl\n(_yanshuph_) also and the raven shall dwell in it: and He shall\nstretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of\nemptiness.\" The Jewish Bible follows the same reading.\n\nIt is most probable that the Great Owl or Yanshuph is the EGYPTIAN\nEAGLE OWL (_Bubo ascalaphus_), a bird which is closely allied to the\ngreat Eagle Owl of Europe (_Bubo maximus_), and the Virginian Eared\nOwl (_Bubo Virginianus_) of America. This fine bird measures some\ntwo feet in length, and looks much larger than its real size, owing\nto the thick coating of feathers which it wears in common with all\ntrue Owls, and the ear-like feather tufts on the top of its head,\nwhich it can raise or depress at pleasure. Its plumage is light\ntawny.\n\nThis bird has a special predilection for deserted places and ruins,\nand may at the present time be seen on the very spots of which the\nprophet spoke in his prediction. It is very plentiful in Egypt,\nwhere the vast ruins are the only relics of a creed long passed away\nor modified into other forms of religion, and its presence only\nintensifies rather than diminishes the feeling of loneliness that\noppresses the traveller as he passes among the ruins.\n\nThe European Eagle Owl has all the habits of its Asiatic congener.\nIt dwells in places far from the neighbourhood of man, and during\nthe day is hidden in some deep and dark recess, its enormous eyes\nnot being able to endure the light of day. In the evening it issues\nfrom its retreat, and begins its search after prey, which consists\nof various birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, fish, and even insects when\nit can find nothing better.\n\nOn account of its comparatively large dimensions, it is able to\novercome even the full-grown hare and rabbit, while the lamb and the\nyoung fawn occasionally fall victims to its voracity. It seems never\nto chase any creature on the wing, but floats silently through the\nair, its soft and downy plumage deadening the sound of its progress,\nand suddenly drops on the unsuspecting prey while it is on the\nground.\n\nThe nest of this Owl is made in the crevices of rocks, or in ruins,\nand is a very large one, composed of sticks and twigs, lined with a\ntolerably large heap of dried herbage, the parent Owls returning to\nthe same spot year after year. Should it not be able to find either\na rock or a ruin, it contents itself with a hollow in the ground,\nand there lays its eggs, which are generally two in number, though\noccasionally a third egg is found. The Egyptian Eagle Owl does much\nthe same thing, burrowing in sand-banks, and retreating, if it fears\ndanger, into the hollow where its nest has been made.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  RAVEN.\n  BARN OWL.\n  EAGLE OWL.\n]\n\n[Illustration: A FAMILY COUNCIL.]\n\nIn the large illustration the two last-mentioned species are given.\nThe Egyptian Eagle Owl is seen with its back towards the spectator,\ngrasping in its talons a dead hare, and with ear-tufts erect is\nlooking towards the Barn Owl, which is contemplating in mingled\nanger and fear the proceedings of the larger bird. Near them is\nperched a raven, in order to carry out more fully the prophetic\nwords, \"the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it.\"\n\n[Illustration: owl]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: night-hawk]\n\n\n\n\nTHE NIGHT-HAWK.\n\n     Different interpretations of the word Tachmas--Probability\n     that it signifies the Nightjar--Various names of the bird--Its\n     remarkable jarring cry, and wheeling flight--Mode of\n     feeding--Boldness of the bird--Deceptive appearance of its size.\n\n\nWe next come to the vexed question of the word Tachmas which is\nrendered in the Authorized Version as NIGHT-HAWK.\n\nThis word only occurs among the list of prohibited birds (see Lev.\nxi. 16, and Deut. xiv. 15), and has caused great controversies among\ncommentators. The balance of probability seems to lie between two\ninterpretations,--namely, that which considers the word _tachmas_\nto signify the Night-hawk, and that which translates it as Owl. For\nboth of these interpretations much is to be said, and it cannot be\ndenied that of the two the latter is perhaps the preferable. If so,\nthe White or Barn Owl is probably the particular species to which\nreference is made.\n\nStill, many commentators think that the Night-hawk or Nightjar is\nthe bird which is signified by the word _tachmas_; and, as we have\nalready treated of the owls, we will accept the rendering of the\nAuthorized Version. Moreover, the Jewish Bible follows the same\ntranslation, and renders _tachmas_ as Night-hawk, but affixes the\nmark of doubt.\n\n[Illustration: THE NIGHT-HAWK.]\n\nIt is not unlikely that the Jews may have reckoned this bird among\nthe owls, just as is the case with the uneducated among ourselves,\nwho popularly speak of the Nightjar as the Fern Owl, Churn Owl, or\nJar Owl, the two last names being given to it on account of its\npeculiar cry. There are few birds, indeed, which have received a\ngreater variety of popular names, for, besides the Goatsucker and\nthe five which have already been mentioned, there are the Wheel-bird\nand Dor-hawk, the former of these names having been given to the\nbird on account of its wheeling round the trees while seeking for\nprey, and the latter on account of the dor-beetles on which it\nlargely feeds.\n\nThis curious variety of names is probably due to the very\nconspicuous character of the Nightjar, its strange, jarring,\nweird-like cry forcing itself on the ear of the least attentive, as\nit breaks the silence of night. It hardly seems like the cry of\na bird, but rather resembles the sound of a pallet falling on the\ncogs of a rapidly-working wheel. It begins in the dusk of evening,\nthe long, jarring note being rolled out almost interminably, until\nthe hearer wonders how the bird can have breath enough for such a\nprolonged sound. The hearer may hold his breath as long as he can,\ntake a full inspiration, hold his breath afresh, and repeat this\nprocess over and over again, and yet the Nightjar continues to trill\nout its rapid notes without a moment's cessation for breath, the\nsound now rising shrill and clear, and now sinking as if the bird\nwere far off, but never ceasing for an instant.\n\nThis remarkable cry has caused the uneducated rustics to look upon\nthe bird with superstitious dread, every one knowing its cry full\nwell, though to many the bird is unknown except by its voice. It is\nprobable that, in the days when Moses wrote the Law, so conspicuous\na bird was well known to the Jews, and we may therefore conjecture\nthat it was one of those birds which he would specially mention by\nname.\n\nThe general habits of the Nightjar are quite as remarkable as its\nnote. It feeds on the wing, chasing and capturing the various moths,\nbeetles, and other insects that fly abroad by night. It may be seen\nwheeling round the branches of some tree, the oak being a special\nfavourite, sometimes circling round it, and sometimes rising high\nin the air, and the next moment skimming along the ground. Suddenly\nit will disappear, and next moment its long trilling cry is heard\nfrom among the branches of the tree round which it has been flying.\nTo see it while singing is almost impossible, for it has a habit of\nsitting longitudinally on the branch, and not across it, like most\nbirds, so that the outline of its body cannot be distinguished from\nthat of the bough of which it is seated. As suddenly as it began,\nthe sound ceases, and simultaneously the bird may be seen wheeling\nagain through the air with its noiseless flight.\n\nBeing a very bold bird, and not much afraid of man, it allows a\ncareful observer to watch its movements clearly. I have often stood\nclose to the tree round which several Nightjars were circling, and\nseen them chase their prey to the ground within a yard or two of\nthe spot on which I was standing. The flight of the Nightjar is\nsingularly graceful. Swift as the swallow itself, it presents a\ncommand of wing that is really wonderful, gliding through the air\nwith consummate ease, wheeling and doubling in pursuit of some\nactive moth, whose white wings glitter against the dark background,\nwhile the sober plumage of its pursuer is scarcely visible, passing\noften within a few feet of the spectator, and yet not a sound or a\nrustle will reach his ears. Sometimes the bird is said to strike\nits wings together over its back, so as to produce a sharp snapping\nsound, intended to express anger at the presence of the intruder. I\nnever, however, heard this sound, though I have watched the bird so\noften.\n\nOwing to the soft plumage with which it is clad, this bird, like\nthe owls, looks larger than really is the case. It is between ten\nand eleven inches in length, with an expanse of wing of twenty\ninches, and yet weighs rather less than three ounces. Its large\nmouth, like that of the swallow tribe, opens as far as the eyes,\nand is furnished with a set of _vibrissae_ or bristles, which remind\nthe observer of the \"whale-bone\" which is set on the jaw of the\nGreenland whale.\n\n[Illustration: trees and bird]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: swallow]\n\n\n\n\nTHE SWALLOW.\n\n     Identification of the smaller birds--Oriental indifference to\n     natural history--Use of collective terms--The Swallow--The Bird\n     of Liberty--Swallows and Swifts--Variety of small birds found in\n     Palestine--The Swallows of Palestine.\n\n\nDifficult as is the identification of the mammalia mentioned in the\nBible, that of the birds is much more intricate.\n\nSome of the larger birds can be identified with tolerable certainty,\nbut when we come to the smaller and less conspicuous species,\nwe are at once lost in uncertainty, and at the best can only\noffer conjectures. The fact is, the Jews of old had no idea of\ndiscriminating between the smaller birds, unless they happened to be\ntolerably conspicuous by plumage or by voice. We need not be much\nsurprised at this. The Orientals of the present day do precisely the\nsame thing, and not only fail to discriminate between the smaller\nbirds, but absolutely have no names for them.\n\nBy them, the shrikes, the swallows, the starlings, the thrushes,\nthe larks, the warblers, and all the smaller birds, are called by\na common title, derived from the twittering sound of their voices,\nonly one or two of them having any distinctive titles. They look\nupon the birds much as persons ignorant of entomology look at a\ncollection of moths. There is not much difficulty in discriminating\nbetween the great hawk-moths, and perhaps in giving a name to one or\ntwo of them which are specially noticeable for any peculiarity of\nform or colour; but when they come to the \"Rustics,\" the \"Carpets,\"\nthe \"Wainscots,\" and similar groups, they are utterly lost; and,\nthough they may be able to see the characteristic marks when the\nmoths are placed side by side, they are incapable of distinguishing\nthem separately, and, to their uneducated eyes, twenty or thirty\nspecies appear absolutely alike.\n\nI believe that there is no country where a knowledge of practical\nnatural history is so widely extended as in England, and yet how few\neducated persons are there who, if taken along a country lane, can\nname the commonest weed or insect, or distinguish between a sparrow,\na linnet, a hedge-sparrow, and a chaffinch. Nay, how many are there\nwho, if challenged even to repeat the names of twelve little birds,\nwould be unable to do so without some consideration, much less to\nknow them if the birds were placed before them.\n\nSuch being the case in a country where the capability of observation\nis more or less cultivated in every educated person, we may well\nexpect that a profound ignorance on the subject should exist in\ncountries where that faculty is absolutely neglected as a matter of\neducation. Moreover, in England, there is a comparatively limited\nlist of birds, whereas in Palestine are found nearly all those which\nare reckoned among British birds, and many other species besides.\nThose which reside in England reside also for the most part in\nPalestine, while the greater part of the migratory birds pass, as we\nmight expect, into the Holy Land and the neighbouring countries.\n\nIf then we put together the two facts of an unobservant people and a\nvastly extended fauna, we shall not wonder that so many collective\nterms are used in the Scriptures, one word often doing duty for\ntwenty or thirty species. The only plan, therefore, which can be\nadopted, is to mention generally the birds which were probably\ngrouped under one name, and to describe briefly one or two of the\nmost prominent.\n\nIt is, however, rather remarkable that the song of birds does not\nappear to be noticed by the sacred writers. We might expect that\nseveral of the prophets, especially Isaiah, the great sacred poet,\nwho drew so many of his images from natural objects, would have\nfound in the song of birds some metaphor expressive of sweetness\nor joy. We might expect that in the Book of Job, in which so many\ncreatures are mentioned, the singing of birds would be brought as\nprominently forward as the neck clothed with thunder of the horse,\nthe tameless freedom of the wild ass, the voracity of the vulture,\nand the swiftness of the ostrich. We might expect the song of birds\nto be mentioned by Amos, the herdman of Tekoa, who introduces into\nhis rugged poem the roar of the old lion and the wail of the cub,\nthe venom of the serpent hidden in the wattled wall of the herdman's\nhut, and the ravages of the palmer-worm among the olives. Above all,\nwe might expect that in the Psalms there would be many allusions\nto the notes of the various birds which have formed such fruitful\nthemes for the poets of later times. There are, however, in the\nwhole of the Scriptures but two passages in which the song of birds\nis mentioned, and even in these only a passing allusion is made.\n\nOne of them occurs in Psalm civ. 12: \"By them (_i.e._ the springs\nof water) shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation,\nwhich sing among the branches.\" This passage is perhaps rendered\nmore closely in the Jewish Bible: \"Over them dwell the fowls of the\nheaven; they let their voices resound (or give their voice) from\nbetween the foliage.\"\n\nThe other occurs in Eccles. xii. 4: \"And the doors shall be shut in\nthe streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall\nrise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music\nshall be brought low.\" The word which is here translated as \"bird,\"\nis that which is rendered in some places as \"sparrow,\" in others\nas \"fowl,\" and in others as \"bird.\" Even in these passages, as the\nreader will have noticed, no marks of appreciation are employed, and\nwe hear nothing of the sweetness, joyousness, or mournfulness of the\nbird's song.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe will now proceed to the words which have been translated as\nSwallow in the Authorized Version.\n\nThese are two in number, namely, _deror_ and _agar_. Hebraists are,\nhowever, agreed that the latter word has been wrongly applied, the\ntranslators having interchanged the signification of two contiguous\nwords.\n\nWe will therefore first take the word _deror_. This word signifies\nliberty, and is well applied to the Swallow, the bird of freedom.\nIt is remarkable, by the way, how some of the old commentators have\ncontrived to perplex themselves about a very simple matter. One of\nthem comments upon the bird as being \"so called, because it has\nthe liberty of building in the houses of mankind.\" Another takes a\nsomewhat similar view of the case, but puts it in a catechetical\nform: \"Why is the swallow called the bird of liberty? Because it\nlives both in the house and in the field.\" It is scarcely necessary\nto point out to the reader that the \"liberty\" to which allusion is\nmade is the liberty of flight, the bird coming and going at its\nappointed times, and not being capable of domestication.\n\n[Illustration: LOST FROM THE FLOCK.]\n\nSeveral kinds of Swallow are known in Palestine, including the true\nSwallows, the martins, and the swifts, and, as we shall presently\nsee, it is likely that one of these groups was distinguished by a\nseparate name. Whether or not the word _deror_ included other birds\nbeside the Swallows is rather doubtful, though not at all unlikely;\nand if so, it is probable that any swift-winged insectivorous bird\nwould be called by the name of Deror, irrespective of its size or\ncolour.\n\nThe bee-eaters, for example, are probably among the number of the\nbirds grouped together under the word _deror_, and we may conjecture\nthat the same is the case with the sunbirds, those bright-plumed\nlittle beings that take in the Old World the place occupied by the\nhumming-birds in the New, and often mistaken for them by travellers\nwho are not acquainted with ornithology. One of these birds, the\n_Nectarinia Oseae_, is described by Mr. Tristram as \"a tiny little\ncreature of gorgeous plumage, rivalling the humming-birds of America\nin the metallic lustre of its feathers--green and purple, with\nbrilliant red and orange plumes under its shoulders.\"\n\nIn order to account for the singular variety of animal life which\nis to be found in Palestine, and especially the exceeding diversity\nof species among the birds, we must remember that Palestine is a\nsort of microcosm in itself, comprising within its narrow boundaries\nthe most opposite conditions of temperature, climate, and soil.\nSome parts are rocky, barren, and mountainous, chilly and cold at\nthe top, and acting as channels through which the winds blow almost\ncontinuously. The cliffs are full of holes, rifts, and caverns, some\nnatural, some artificial, and some of a mixed kind, the original\ncaverns having been enlarged and improved by the hand of man.\n\nAs a contrast to this rough and ragged region, there lie close\nat hand large fertile plains, affording pasturage for unnumbered\ncattle, and of a tolerably equable temperature, so that the animals\nwhich are pastured in it can find food throughout the year. Through\nthe centre of Palestine runs the Jordan, fertilizing its banks with\nperpetual verdure, and ending its course in the sulphurous and\nbituminous waters of the Dead Sea, under whose waves the ruins of\nthe wicked cities are supposed to lie. Westward we have the shore of\nthe Mediterranean with its tideless waves of the salt sea, and on\nthe eastward of the mountain range that runs nearly parallel to the\nsea is the great Lake of Tiberias, so large as to have earned the\nname of the Sea of Galilee.\n\n[Illustration: THE SWALLOW AND SWIFT.]\n\nUnder these favourable conditions, therefore, the number of species\nwhich are found in Palestine is perhaps greater than can be seen\nin any other part of the earth of the same dimensions, and it\nseems probable that for this reason, among many others, Palestine\nwas selected to be the Holy Land. If, for example, the Christian\nChurch had been originated under the tropics, those who lived in a\ncold climate could scarcely have understood the language in which\nthe Scriptures must necessarily have been couched. Had it, on the\ncontrary, taken its rise in the Arctic regions, the inhabitants\nof the tropics and temperate regions could not have comprehended\nthe imagery in which the teachings of Scripture must have been\nconveyed. But the small and geographically insignificant Land of\nPalestine combines in itself many of the characteristics which\nbelong respectively to the cold, the temperate, and the hot regions\nof the world, so that the terms in which the sacred writings are\ncouched are intelligible to a very great proportion of the world's\ninhabitants.\n\n[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SEA OF GALILEE.]\n\nThis being the case, we naturally expect to find that several\nspecies of the Swallow are inhabitants of Palestine, if so migratory\na bird can be said to be an inhabitant of any one country.\n\n[Illustration: THE SWALLOW'S FAVOURITE HAUNT.]\n\nThe chief characteristic of the Swallow, the \"bird of freedom,\"\nis that it cannot endure captivity, but is forced by instinct to\npass from one country to another for the purpose of preserving\nitself in a tolerably equable temperature, moving northwards as the\nspring ripens into summer, and southwards as autumn begins to sink\ninto winter. By some marvellous instinct it traces its way over\nvast distances, passing over hundreds of miles where nothing but\nthe sea is beneath it, and yet at the appointed season returning\nwith unerring certainty to the spot where it was hatched. How it\nis guided no one knows, but the fact is certain, that Swallows,\nremarkable for some peculiarity by which they could be at once\nidentified, have been observed to leave the country on their\nmigration, and to return in the following year to the identical nest\nwhence they started.\n\nIts habit of making its nest among the habitations of mankind is\nmentioned in a well-known passage of the Psalms: \"The sparrow hath\nfound an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may\nlay her young, even Thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my\nGod\" (Ps. lxxxiv. 3). The Swallow seems in all countries to have\nenjoyed the protection of man, and to have been suffered to build\nin peace under his roof. We find the same idea prevalent in the New\nWorld as well as the Old, and it is rather curious that the presence\nof the bird should so generally be thought to bring luck to a house.\n\nIn some parts of our country, a farmer would not dare to kill a\nSwallow or break down its nest, simply because he thinks that if\nhe did so his cows would fail to give their due supply of milk.\nThe connexion between the milking of a cow in the field and the\ndestruction of a Swallow's nest in the house is not very easy to\nsee, but nevertheless such is the belief. This idea ranks with that\nwhich asserts the robin and the wren to be the male and female of\nthe same species, and to be under some special divine protection.\n\nWhatever may be the origin of this superstition, whether it be\nderived from some forgotten source, or whether it be the natural\nresult of the confiding nature of the bird, the Swallow enjoys at\nthe present day the protection of man, and builds freely in his\nhouses, and even his places of worship. The heathen temples, the\nMahometan mosques, and the Christian churches are alike inhabited by\nthe Swallow, who seems to know her security, and often places her\nnest where a child might reach it.\n\nThe bird does not, however, restrict itself to the habitations of\nman, though it prefers them; and in those places where no houses\nare to be found, and yet where insects are plentiful, it takes\npossession of the clefts of rocks, and therein makes its nest.\nMany instances are known where the Swallow has chosen the most\nextraordinary places for its nest. It has been known to build year\nafter year on the frame of a picture, between the handles of a pair\nof shears hung on the wall, on a lamp-bracket, in a table-drawer, on\na door-knocker, and similar strange localities.\n\nThe swiftness of flight for which this bird is remarkable is noticed\nby the sacred writers. \"As the bird by wandering, as the swallow\nby flying, so the curse causeless shall not come\" (Prov. xxvi. 2).\nThis passage is given rather differently in the Jewish Bible, though\nthe general sense remains the same: \"As the bird is ready to flee,\nas the swallow to fly away; so a causeless execration, it shall not\ncome.\" It is possible, however, that this passage may allude rather\nto the migration than the swiftness of the bird.\n\n[Illustration: SWALLOWS AT HOME.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOOPOE, OR LAPWING OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n     The \"Dukiphath\" of Scripture--Various interpretations of the\n     word--The Hoopoe--Its beauty and ill reputation--The unpleasant\n     odour of its nest--Food of the Hoopoe--Its beautiful nest, and\n     remarkable gestures--A curious legend of Solomon and the Hoopoe.\n\n\nIn the two parallel chapters, Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv., there occurs\nthe name of a bird which is translated in the Authorized Version,\nLapwing: \"And the stork, the heron after her kind, the lapwing, and\nthe bat.\"\n\nThe Hebrew word is _dukiphath_, and various interpretations have\nbeen proposed for it, some taking it to be the common domestic fowl,\nothers the cock-of-the-woods, or capercailzie, while others have\npreferred to translate it as Hoopoe. The Jewish Bible retains the\nword lapwing, but adds the mark of doubt. Commentators are, however,\nagreed that of all these interpretations, that which renders the\nword as HOOPOE (_Upupa epops_) is the best.\n\nThere would be no particular object in the prohibition of such a\nbird as the lapwing, or any of its kin, while there would be very\ngood reasons for the same injunction with regard to the Hoopoe.\n\nIn spite of the beauty of the bird, it has always had rather an ill\nreputation, and, whether in Europe or Asia, its presence seems to\nbe regarded by the ignorant with a kind of superstitious aversion.\nThis universal distaste for the Hoopoe is probably occasioned by an\nexceedingly pungent and disagreeable odour which fills the nest of\nthe bird, and which infects for a considerable time the hand which\nis employed to take the eggs.\n\nThe nest is, moreover, well calculated for retaining any unpleasant\nsmell, being generally made in the hollow of a tree, and having\ntherefore but little of that thorough ventilation which is found in\nnearly all nests which are built on boughs and sprays.\n\nThe food of the Hoopoe consists almost entirely of insects They\nhave been said to feed on earth-worms; but this notion seems to be\na mistaken one, as in captivity they will not touch an earth-worm\nso long as they can procure an insect. Beetles of various kinds\nseem to be their favourite food, and when the beetles are tolerably\nlarge--say, for example, as large as the common cockchafer and\ndor-beetle--the bird beats them into a soft mass before it attempts\nto eat them. Smaller beetles are swallowed without any ceremony. The\nvarious boring insects which make their home in decaying wood are\nfavourite articles of diet with the Hoopoe, which digs them out of\nthe soft wood with its long curved beak.\n\nIt has already been mentioned that the nest is usually made in the\nhollow of a tree. In many parts of the country however, hollow trees\ncannot be found, and in that case the Hoopoe resorts to clefts in\nthe rock, or even to holes in old ruins.\n\nThe bird is a peculiarly conspicuous one, not only on account of\nits boldly-barred plumage and its beautiful crest, but by its cry\nand its gestures. It has a way of elevating and depressing its\ncrest, and bobbing its head up and down, in a manner which could\nnot fail to attract the attention even of the most incurious, the\nwhole aspect and expression of the bird varying with the raising and\ndepressing of the crest.\n\nRespecting this crest there is a curious old legend. As is the case\nwith most of the Oriental legends, it introduces the name of King\nSolomon, who, according to Oriental notions, was a mighty wizard\nrather than a wise king, and by means of his seal, on which was\nengraven the mystic symbol of Divinity, held sway over the birds,\nthe beasts, the elements, and even over the Jinns and Afreets,\n_i.e._ the good and evil spirits, which are too ethereal for the\nmaterial world and too gross for the spiritual, and therefore hold\nthe middle place between them.\n\nOn one of his journeys across the desert, Solomon was perishing from\nthe heat of the sun, when the Hoopoes came to his aid, and flew in\na dense mass over his head, thus forming a shelter from the fiery\nsunbeams. Grateful for this assistance, the monarch told the Hoopoes\nto ask for a boon, and it should be granted to them. The birds,\nafter consulting together, agreed to ask that from that time every\nHoopoe should wear a crown of gold like Solomon himself. The request\nwas immediately granted, and each Hoopoe found itself adorned with\na royal crown. At first, while their honours were new, great was\nthe joy of the birds, who paused at every little puddle of water to\ncontemplate themselves, bowing their heads over the watery mirror so\nas to display the crown to the best advantage.\n\nSoon, however, they found cause to repent of their ambition. The\ngolden crown became heavy and wearisome to them, and, besides, the\nwealth bestowed on the birds rendered them the prey of every fowler.\nThe unfortunate Hoopoes were persecuted in all directions for the\nsake of their golden crowns which they could neither take off nor\nconceal.\n\nAt last, the few survivors presented themselves before Solomon, and\nbegged him to rescind his fatal gift, which he did by substituting a\ncrest of feathers for the crown of gold. The Hoopoe, however, never\nforgets its former grandeur, and is always bowing and bending itself\nas it used to do when contemplating its golden crown in the water.\n\n[Illustration: lapwing]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN HOUSE-TOP.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE SPARROW.\n\n     The Sparrow upon the house top--Architecture of the East--Little\n     birds exposed for sale in the market--The two Sparrows sold for\n     a farthing--Bird-catching--The net, the snare, and the trap.\n\n\nWe have already discussed the signification of the compound word\n_tzippor-deror_, and will now take the word _tzippor_ alone.\n\nLike many other Hebrew terms, the word is evidently used in a\ncollective sense, signifying any small bird that is not specially\ndesignated. In several portions of Scripture it is translated as\nSparrow, and to that word we will at present restrict ourselves.\n\nOn turning to Ps. cii. 5-7, we find that the word is used as an\nemblem of solitude and misery: \"By reason of the voice of my\ngroaning, my bones cleave to my skin.\n\n\"I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the\ndesert,\n\n\"I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top.\"\n\nThe word which is here translated as \"Sparrow\" is _tzippor_, the\nsame which is rendered as \"bird\" in Lev. xiv. 4. The Hebrew Bible\nmore consistently uses the collective term \"bird\" in both instances,\nand renders the passage as, \"I watch, and am as a lonely bird upon a\nroof.\"\n\nNow, any one who knows the habits of the Sparrow is perfectly aware\nthat it is a peculiarly sociable bird. It is quarrelsome enough with\nits fellows, and always ready to fight for a stray grain or morsel\nof food; but it is exceedingly gregarious, assembling together in\nlittle parties, enlivening the air with its merry though unmusical\ntwitterings.\n\nThis cosmopolitan bird is plentiful in the coast towns of Palestine,\nwhere it haunts the habitations of men with the same dauntless\nconfidence which it displays in this country. It is often seen upon\nroofs or house-tops, but is no more apt to sit alone in Palestine\nthan it is here. On the contrary, the Sparrows collect in great\nnumbers on the house-tops, attracted by the abundant supply of food\nwhich it finds there. This requires some little explanation.\n\nThe house-tops of the East, instead of being gabled and tiled as\namong ourselves, to allow the rain to run off, are quite flat,\nand serve as terraces or promenades in the evening, or even for\nsleeping-places; and from the house-tops proclamations were made.\nSee, for example, 1 Sam. ix. 25: \"And when they were come down from\nthe high place into the city, Samuel communed with Saul upon the top\nof the house\"--this being the ordinary place which would be chosen\nfor a conversation. In order to keep out the heat of the mid-day\nsun, tents were sometimes pitched upon these flat house-tops. (See\n2 Sam. xvi. 22.) Reference to the use of the house-tops as places\nfor conversation are made in the New Testament. See, for example,\nMatt. x. 27: \"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light;\nand what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops.\"\nAnother passage of a similar nature occurs in Luke xii. 3:\n\"Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in\nthe light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall\nbe proclaimed on the house-tops.\"\n\nThese roofs, instead of being built with sloping rafters like those\nto which we are accustomed in this country, are made with great\nbeams of wood laid horizontally, and crossed by planks, poles, and\nbrushwood packed tightly together. As this roof would not keep out\nthe rain, it is covered with a thick layer of clay mixed with straw,\nand beaten down as hard as possible. This covering has constantly\nto be renewed, as, even in the best made roofs, the heavy rains are\nsure to wash away some portion of the clay covering, which has to be\npatched up with a fresh supply of earth. A stone roller is generally\nkept on the roof of each house for the purpose of making a flat and\neven surface.\n\nThe earth which is used for this purpose is brought from the\nuncultivated ground, and is full of various seeds. As soon as the\nrains fall, these seeds spring up, and afford food to the Sparrows\nand other little birds, who assemble in thousands on the house-tops,\nand then peck away just as they do in our own streets and farm-yards.\n\nIt is now evident that the \"sparrow alone and melancholy upon the\nhouse-tops\" cannot be the lively, gregarious Sparrow which assembles\nin such numbers on these favourite feeding-places. We must therefore\nlook for some other bird, and naturalists are now agreed that we may\naccept the BLUE THRUSH (_Petrocossyphus cyaneus_) as the particular\nTzippor, or small bird, which sits alone on the house-tops.\n\nThe colour of this bird is a dark blue, whence it derives its\npopular name. Its habits exactly correspond with the idea of\nsolitude and melancholy. The Blue Thrushes never assemble in flocks,\nand it is very rare to see more than a pair together. It is fond of\nsitting on the tops of houses, uttering its note, which, however\nagreeable to itself, is monotonous and melancholy to a human ear.\n\nIn connexion with the passage already quoted, \"What ye hear in\nthe ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops,\" I will take the\nopportunity of explaining the passage itself, which scarcely seems\nrelevant to the occasion unless we understand its bearings. The\ncontext shows that our Lord was speaking of the new doctrines which\nHe had come to teach, and the duty of spreading them, and alludes\nto a mode of religious teaching which was then in vogue.\n\nThe long captivity of the Jews in Babylon had caused the Hebrew\nlanguage to be disused among the common people, who had learned\nthe Chaldaic language from their captors. After their return to\nPalestine, the custom of publicly reading the Scriptures was found\nto be positively useless, the generality of the people being\nignorant of the Hebrew language.\n\n[Illustration: READING THE LAW TO THE PEOPLE AFTER THE RETURN FROM\nCAPTIVITY.]\n\nAccordingly, the following modification was adopted. The roll of\nthe Scriptures was brought out as usual, and the sacred words read,\nor rather chanted. After each passage was read, a doctor of the law\nwhispered its meaning into the ear of a Targumista or interpreter,\nwho repeated to the people in the Chaldaic language the explanation\nwhich the doctor had whispered in Hebrew. The reader will now see\nhow appropriate is the metaphor, the whispering in the ear and\nsubsequent proclamation being the customary mode of imparting\nreligious instruction.\n\nIf the reader will now turn to Matt. x. 29, he will find that the\nword \"sparrow\" is used in a passage which has become very familiar\nto us. \"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them\nshall not fall on the ground without your Father.\n\n\"But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.\n\n\"Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.\"\nThe same sentences are given by St. Luke (xii. 6), in almost the\nsame words.\n\n[Illustration: THE BLUE THRUSH, OR SPARROW OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nNow the word which is translated as \"Sparrow\" is _strouthion_, a\ncollective word, signifying a bird of any kind. Without the addition\nof some epithet, it was generally used to signify any kind of small\nbird, though it is occasionally employed to signify even so large\na creature as an eagle, provided that the bird had been mentioned\nbeforehand. Conjoined with the word \"great,\" it signifies the\nostrich; and when used in connexion with a word significative of\nrunning, it is employed as a general term for all cursorial birds.\n\nIn the passages above quoted it is used alone, and evidently\nsignifies any kind of little bird, whether it be a sparrow or not.\nAllusion is made by our Lord to a custom, which has survived to\nthe present day, of exposing for sale in the markets the bodies\nof little birds. They are stripped of their feathers, and spitted\ntogether in rows, and always have a large sale.\n\nVarious birds are sold in this manner, little if any distinction\nbeing made between them, save perhaps in respect of size, the larger\nspecies commanding a higher price than the small birds. In fact,\nthey are arranged exactly after the manner in which the Orientals\nsell their \"kabobs,\" _i.e._ little pieces of meat pierced by wooden\nskewers.\n\nIt is evident that to supply such a market it is necessary that\nthe birds should be of a tolerably gregarious nature, so that a\nconsiderable number can be caught at a time. Nets were employed for\nthis purpose, and we may safely infer that the forms of the nets\nand the methods of using them were identical with those which are\nemployed in the same country at the present day.\n\nThe fowlers supply themselves with a large net supported on two\nsticks, and, taking a lantern with them fastened to the top of a\npole, they sally out at night to the places where the small birds\nsleep.\n\nRaising the net on its sticks, they lift it to the requisite height,\nand hold the lantern exactly opposite to it, so as to place the\nnet between the birds and the lantern. The roosting-places are\nthen beaten with sticks or pelted with stones, so as to awaken the\nsleeping birds. Startled by the sudden noise, they dash from their\nroosts, instinctively make towards the light, and so fall into the\nnet. Bird-catching with nets is several times mentioned in the Old\nTestament, but in the New the net is only alluded to as used for\ntaking fish.\n\nBeside the net, several other modes of bird-catching were used by\nthe ancient Jews, just as is the case at the present day. Boys, for\nexample, who catch birds for their own consumption, and not for the\nmarket, can do so by means of various traps, most of which are made\non the principle of the noose, or snare. Sometimes a great number\nof hair-nooses are set in places to which the birds are decoyed, so\nthat in hopping about many of them are sure to become entangled in\nthe snares. Sometimes the noose is ingeniously suspended in a narrow\npassage which the birds are likely to traverse, and sometimes a\nsimple fall-trap is employed.\n\nWe now pass to another division of the subject. In Ps. lxxxiv. 1-3,\nwe come upon a passage in which the Sparrow is again mentioned: \"How\namiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!\n\n\"My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my\nheart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.\n\n\"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for\nherself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars, O Lord of\nhosts, my King, and my God.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE TREE-SPARROW, OR SPARROW OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nIt is evident that we have in this passage a different bird from the\nSparrow that sitteth alone upon the house-tops; and though the same\nword, _tzippor_, is used in both cases, it is clear that whereas\nthe former bird was mentioned as an emblem of sorrow, solitude,\nand sadness, the latter is brought forward as an image of joy and\nhappiness. \"Blessed are they,\" proceeds the Psalmist, \"that dwell\nin Thy house: they will be still praising Thee.... For a day in Thy\ncourts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in\nthe house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.\"\n\nAccording to Mr. Tristram, this is probably one of the species to\nwhich allusion is made by the Psalmist. While inspecting the ruins\nin the neighbourhood of the Temple, he came upon an old wall. \"Near\nthis gate I climbed on to the top of the wall, and walked along for\nsome time, enjoying the fine view at the gorge of the Kedron, with\nits harvest crop of little white tombs. In a chink I discovered a\nsparrow's nest (_Passer cisalpinus_, var.) of a species so closely\nallied to our own that it is difficult to distinguish it, one of the\nvery kind of which the Psalmist sung.... The swallows had departed\nfor the winter, but the sparrow has remained pertinaciously through\nall the sieges and changes of Jerusalem.\"\n\nThe same traveller thinks that the TREE SPARROW (_Passer montanus_)\nmay be the species to which the sacred writer refers, as it is even\nnow very plentiful about the neighbourhood of the Temple. In all\nprobability we may accept both these birds as representatives of the\nSparrow which found a home in the Temple. The swallow is separately\nmentioned, possibly because its migratory habits rendered it a\npeculiarly conspicuous bird; but it is probable that many species of\nbirds might make their nests in a place where they felt themselves\nsecure from disturbance, and that all these birds would be mentioned\nunder the collective and convenient term of Tzipporim.\n\n[Illustration: sparrows]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: old tree]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CUCKOO.\n\n     The Cuckoo only twice mentioned in Scripture--The common\n     species, and the Great Spotted Cuckoo--Depositing the egg.\n\n\nOnly in two instances is the word CUCKOO found in the Authorized\nVersion of the Bible, and as they occur in parallel passages they\nare practically reduced to one. In Lev. xi. 16 we find it mentioned\namong the birds that might not be eaten, and the same prohibition is\nrepeated in Deut. xiv. 15, the Jews being ordered to hold the bird\nin abomination.\n\nIt is rather remarkable that the Arabic name for the bird is exactly\nthe same as ours, the peculiar cry having supplied the name. Its\nhabit of laying its eggs in the nests of other birds is well known,\ntogether with the curious fact, that although so large a bird,\nmeasuring more than a foot in length, its egg is not larger than\nthat of the little birds, such as the hedge-sparrow, robin, or\nredstart.\n\n[Illustration: THE GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO.]\n\nBesides this species, another Cuckoo inhabits Palestine, and is\nmuch more common. This is the GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO (_Oxylophus\nglandarius_). The birds belonging to this genus have been separated\nfrom the other Cuckoos because the feathers on the head are formed\ninto a bold crest, in some species, such as Le Vaillant's Cuckoo,\nreminding the observer of the crest of the cockatoo. This fine bird\nmeasures nearly sixteen inches in length, and can be distinguished,\nnot only by the crested head, but by the reddish grey of the throat\nand chest, and the white tips of the wing and tail feathers.\n\nThis species lays its eggs in the nests of comparatively large\nbirds, such as the rooks, crows, and magpies.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: NOAH RECEIVES THE DOVE.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE DOVE.\n\n     Parallel between the lamb and the Dove--The Dove and the olive\n     branch--Abram's sacrifice, and its acceptance--The Dove-sellers\n     of the Temple--The Rock Dove and its multitudes.\n\n\nIn giving the Scriptural history of the Doves and Pigeons, we\nshall find ourselves rather perplexed in compressing the needful\ninformation into a reasonable space. There is no bird which plays\na more important part, both in the Old and the New Testaments, or\nwhich is employed so largely in metaphor and symbol.\n\nThe Doves and Pigeons were to the birds what were the sheep and\nlambs to the animals, and, like them, derived their chief interest\nfrom their use in sacrifice. Both the lamb and the young pigeon\nbeing emblems of innocence, both were used on similar occasions, the\nlatter being in many instances permitted when the former were too\nexpensive for the means of the offerer. As to the rendering of the\nHebrew words which have been translated as Pigeon, Dove, and Turtle\nDove, there has never been any discussion. The Hebrew word _yonah_\nhas always been acknowledged to signify the Dove or Pigeon, and the\nword _tor_ to signify the Turtle Dove. Generally, the two words are\nused in combination, so that _tor-yonah_ signifies the Turtle Dove.\n\nThough the interpretation of the word _yonah_ is universally\naccepted, there is a little difficulty about its derivation, and\nits signification apart from the bird. Some have thought that it is\nderived from a root signifying warmth, in allusion to the warmth of\nits affection, the Dove having from time immemorial been selected as\nthe type of conjugal love. Others, among whom is Buxtorf, derive it\nfrom a word which signifies oppression, because the gentle nature of\nthe Dove, together with its inability to defend itself, cause it to\nbe oppressed, not only by man, but by many rapacious birds.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe first passage in which we hear of the Dove occurs in the earlier\npart of Genesis. Indeed, the Dove and the raven are the first\ntwo creatures that are mentioned by any definite names, the word\n_nachosh_, which is translated as \"serpent\" in Gen. iii. 1, being\na collective word signifying any kind of serpent, whether venomous\nor otherwise, and not used for the purpose of designating any\nparticular species.\n\nTurning to Gen. viii. 8, we come to the first mention of the Dove.\nThe whole passage is too familiar to need quoting, and it is only\nneedful to say that the Dove was sent out of the ark in order that\nNoah might learn whether the floods had subsided, and that, after\nshe had returned once, he sent her out again seven days afterwards,\nand that she returned, bearing an olive-branch (or leaf, in the\nJewish Bible). Seven days afterwards he sent the Dove for the third\ntime, but she had found rest on the earth, and returned no more.\n\nIt is not within the province of this work to treat, except in the\nmost superficial manner, of the metaphorical signification of the\nScriptures. I shall, therefore, allude but very slightly to the\nmetaphorical sense of the passages which record the exit from the\nark and the sacrifice of Noah. Suffice it to say that, putting\nentirely aside all metaphor, the characters of the raven and the\nDove are well contrasted. The one went out, and, though the trees\nwere at that time submerged, it trusted in its strong wings, and\nhovered above the watery expanse until the flood had subsided. The\nDove, on the contrary, fond of the society of man, and having none\nof the wild, predatorial habits which distinguish the raven, twice\nreturned to its place of refuge, before it was finally able to find\na resting-place for its foot.\n\nAfter this, we hear nothing of the Dove until the time of Abraham,\nsome four hundred years afterwards, when the covenant was made\nbetween the Lord and Abram, when \"he believed in the Lord, and it\nwas counted to him for righteousness.\" In order to ratify this\ncovenant he was ordered to offer a sacrifice, which consisted of a\nyoung heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtle-dove, and a young dove or\npigeon. The larger animals were severed in two, but the birds were\nnot divided, and between the portions of the sacrifice there passed\na lamp of fire as a symbol of the Divine presence.\n\nIn after days, when the promise that the seed of Abram should be as\nthe stars of heaven for multitude had been amply fulfilled, together\nwith the prophecy that they should be \"strangers in a land that was\nnot theirs,\" and should be in slavery and under oppression for many\nyears, the Dove was specially mentioned in the new law as one of the\ncreatures that were to be sacrificed on certain defined occasions.\n\nEven the particular mode of offering the Dove was strictly defined.\nSee Lev. i. 14-17: \"If the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the\nLord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtle-doves,\nor of young pigeons.\n\n\"And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off his\nhead, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung\nout at the side of the altar.\n\n\"And he shall pluck away his crop with his feathers, and cast it\nbeside the altar, on the east part, by the place of the ashes.\n\n\"And he shall cleave it with the wings thereof, but shall not divide\nit asunder: and the priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the\nwood that is upon the fire.\"\n\nHere we have a repetition not only of the sacrifice of Abram, but\nof the mode in which it was offered, care being taken that the body\nof the bird should not be divided. There is a slight, though not\nvery important variation in one or two portions of this passage.\nFor example, the wringing off the head of the bird is, literally,\npinching off, and had to be done with the thumb nail; and the\npassage which is by some translators rendered as the crop and the\nfeathers, is by others translated as the crop and its contents--a\nreading which seems to be more consonant with the usual ceremonial\nof sacrifice than the other.\n\nAs a general rule, the pigeon was only sanctioned as a sacrificial\nanimal in case one of more value could not be afforded; and so much\ncare was taken in this respect, that with the exception of the two\n\"sparrows\" (_tzipporim_) that were enjoined as part of the sacrifice\nby which the cleansed leper was received back among the people (Lev.\nxiv. 4), no bird might be offered in sacrifice unless it belonged to\nthe tribe of pigeons.\n\nIt was in consequence of the poverty of the family that the\nVirgin Mary brought two young pigeons when she came to present\nher new-born Son in the Temple. For those who were able to\nafford it, the required sacrifice was a lamb of the first year\nfor a burnt-offering, and a young pigeon or Turtle Dove for a\nsin-offering. But \"if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she\nshall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons, the one for the\nburnt-offering and the other for a sin-offering.\" The extraordinary\nvalue which all Israelites set upon the first-born son is well\nknown, both parents even changing their own names, and being called\nrespectively the father and mother of Elias, or Joseph, as the case\nmay be. If the parents who had thus attained the summit of their\nwishes possessed a lamb, or could have obtained one, they would most\ncertainly have offered it in the fulness of their joy, particularly\nwhen, as in the case of Mary, there was such cause for rejoicing;\nand the fact that they were forced to substitute a second pigeon for\nthe lamb is a proof of their extreme poverty.\n\nWhile the Israelites were comparatively a small and compact nation,\ndwelling around their tabernacle, the worshippers could easily offer\ntheir sacrifices, bringing them from their homes to the altar. But\nin process of time, when the nation had become a large and scattered\none, its members residing at great distances, and only coming to the\nTemple once or twice in the year to offer their sacrifices, they\nwould have found that for even the poor to carry their pigeons with\nthem would have greatly increased the trouble, and in many cases\nhave been almost impossible.\n\nFor the sake of convenience, therefore, a number of dealers\nestablished themselves in the outer courts of the Temple, for the\npurpose of selling Doves to those who came to sacrifice. Sheep and\noxen were also sold for the same purpose, and, as offerings of money\ncould only be made in the Jewish coinage, money-changers established\nthemselves for the purpose of exchanging foreign money brought from\na distance for the legal Jewish shekel. That these people exceeded\ntheir object, and endeavoured to overreach the foreign Jews who were\nignorant of the comparative value of money and goods, is evident\nfrom the fact of their expulsion by our Lord, and the epithets which\nwere applied to them.\n\n[Illustration: JESUS DRIVES OUT OF THE TEMPLE THE MONEY-CHANGERS AND\nTHOSE WHO SOLD DOVES.]\n\nAccording to some old writers, the Dove was considered as having a\nsuperiority over other birds in the instinctive certainty with which\nit finds its way from one place to another. At the present time,\nour familiarity with the variety of pigeon known as the Carrier has\ntaught us that the eye is the real means employed by the pigeon\nfor the direction of its flight. Those who fly pigeons for long\ndistances always take them several times over the same ground,\ncarrying them to an increasing distance at every journey, so that\nthe birds shall be able to note certain objects which serve them as\nlandmarks.\n\nBees and wasps have recourse to a similar plan. When a young wasp\nleaves its nest for the first time, it does not fly away at once,\nbut hovers in front of the entrance for some time, getting farther\nand farther away from the nest until it has learned the aspect of\nsurrounding objects. The pigeon acts in precisely the same manner,\nand so completely does it depend upon eyesight that, if a heavy fog\nshould come on, the best-trained pigeon will lose its way.\n\n[Illustration: THE ROCK DOVE.]\n\nThe old writers, however, made up their minds that the pigeon found\nits way by scent, which sense alone, according to their ideas, could\nguide it across the sea. They were not aware of the power possessed\nby birds of making their eyes telescopic at will, or of the enormous\nincrease of range which the sight obtains by elevation. A pigeon at\nthe elevation of several hundred yards can see to an astonishing\ndistance, and there is no need of imagining one sense to receive\na peculiar development when the ordinary powers of another are\nsufficient to obtain the object.\n\nThat dove-cotes were in use among the earlier Jews is well known. An\nallusion to the custom of keeping pigeons in cotes is seen in Isa.\nlx. 8: \"Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their\nwindows?\" or, as the Jewish Bible translates the passage, \"as the\ndoves to their apertures?\" In this passage the sacred writer utters\na prophecy concerning the coming of the world to the Messiah, the\nGentiles flocking to Him as the clouds of pigeons fly homeward to\ntheir cotes.\n\n[Illustration: BLUE ROCK PIGEONS.]\n\nThe practice of pigeon-keeping has survived to the present day, the\nhouses of wealthy men being furnished with separate pigeon-houses\nfor the protection and shelter of these popular birds.\n\nIn the Holy Land are found all the species of Pigeons with which\nwe are familiar, together with one or two others. First, there is\nthe Rock Pigeon, or Blue Rock Dove, which is acknowledged to be the\norigin of our domestic breeds of Pigeons, with all their infinite\nvariety of colour and plumage. This species, though plentiful in\nPalestine, is not spread over the whole of the land, but lives\nchiefly on the coast and in the higher parts of the country. In\nthese places it multiplies in amazing numbers, its increase being\nalmost wholly unchecked by man, on account of the inaccessible\ncliffs in which it lays its eggs and nurtures its young, its only\nenemies being a few of the birds and beasts of prey, which can\nexercise but a trifling influence on these prolific birds.\n\nMr. Tristram, while visiting the Wady (or Valley) Seimun, which lies\nnear the Lake of Gennesaret, witnessed an amusing example of the\nvast number of these Pigeons.\n\n\"No description can give an adequate idea of the myriads of rock\npigeons. In absolute clouds they dashed to and fro in the ravine,\nwhirling round with a rush and a whirr that could be felt like a\ngust of wind. It was amusing to watch them upset the dignity and the\nequilibrium of the majestic griffon as they swept past him. This\nenormous bird, quietly sailing along, was quite turned on his back\nby the sudden rush of wings and wind.\"\n\nIn Palestine these birds are taken in nets, into which they are\ndecoyed by a very effective though cruel device.\n\nWhen one of these birds is trapped or snared, it is seized by its\ncapturers, who spare its life for the sake of using it as a decoy.\nThey blind it by sewing its eyelids together, and then fasten it to\na perch among trees. The miserable bird utters plaintive cries, and\ncontinually flaps its wings, thus attracting others of its kind, who\nsettle on the surrounding branches and are easily taken, their whole\nattention being occupied by the cries of their distressed companion.\n\nWe now come to the Turtle Doves, several of which inhabit the Holy\nLand; but, as they are similar in habits, we will confine ourselves\nto the common species, with which we are so familiar in this\ncountry. Its migratory habits are noticed in the sacred writings.\nSee the following passage in the Song of Solomon:\n\n\"Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers\nappear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and\nthe voice of the turtle is heard in our land\" (Cant. ii. 11, 12).\nThe prophet Jeremiah also refers to the migration of this bird:\n\"Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the\nturtle, and the crane, and the swallow observe the time of their\ncoming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord\" (viii. 7).\n\nBeside this species, there is the Collared Turtle Dove, one variety\nof which is known as the Barbary Dove. It is a large species,\nmeasuring more than a foot in length. Another species is the Palm\nTurtle, so called from its habit of nesting on palm-trees, when it\nis obliged to build at a distance from the habitations of man. It is\na gregarious bird, several nests being generally found on one tree,\nand even, when it cannot find a palm, it will build among the thorns\nin multitudes. Like the common Dove, it is fond of the society of\nman, and is sure to make its nest among human habitations, secure in\nits knowledge that it will not be disturbed.\n\n[Illustration: THE TURTLE DOVE.]\n\nIt is rather a small bird, being barely ten inches in length, and\nhaving no \"collar\" on the neck, like the two preceding species.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: chickens]\n\n\n\n\nPOULTRY.\n\n     Poultry plentiful in Palestine at the present day--The\n     Domestic Fowl unknown in the early times of Israel--The\n     eating and gathering of eggs--References to Poultry in the\n     New Testament--The egg and the scorpion--The fatted fowl of\n     Solomon--The hen brooding over her eggs--Poultry prohibited\n     within Jerusalem--The cock-crowing.\n\n\nAt the present day, poultry are plentiful both in Palestine and\nSyria, and that they were bred in the time of the Apostles is\nevident from one or two references which are made by our Lord. How\nlong the Domestic Fowl had been known to the Jews is extremely\nuncertain, and we have very little to guide us in our search.\n\nThat it was unknown to the Jews during the earlier period of their\nhistory is evident from the utter silence of the Old Testament on\nthe subject. A bird so conspicuous and so plentiful would certainly\nhave been mentioned in the Law of Moses had it been known to the\nIsraelites; but, in all its minute and detailed provisions, the Law\nis silent on the subject.\n\nNeither the bird itself nor its eggs are mentioned, although there\nare a few references to eggs, without signifying the bird which\nlaid them. The humane provision in Deut. xxii. 6, 7, refers not to\na domesticated, but to a wild bird: \"If a bird's nest chance to be\nbefore thee in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young\nones, or eggs, and the dams sitting upon the young, or upon the\neggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: but thou shalt in\nany wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be\nwell with thee, that thou mayest prolong thy days.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE DOMESTIC FOWL.]\n\nThere is but one passage in the Old Testament which has ever been\nconjectured to refer to the Domestic Fowl. It occurs in 1 Kings iv.\n22, 23: \"And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of\nfine flour, and threescore measures of meal,\n\n\"Ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred\nsheep, besides harts, and roebucks, and fallow-deer, and fatted\nfowl.\"\n\nMany persons think that the fatted fowl mentioned in the\nabove-quoted passage were really Domestic Fowl, which Solomon\nhad introduced into Palestine, together with various other birds\nand animals, by means of his fleet. There may be truth in this\nconjecture, but, as there can be no certainty, we will pass from the\nOld Testament to the New.\n\nWe are all familiar with the passages in which the Domestic Fowl\nis mentioned in the New Testament. There is, for example, that\ntouching image employed by our Lord when lamenting over Jerusalem:\n\"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest\nthem that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered\nthy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her\nwings, and ye would not!\" The reference is evidently made to the\nDomesticated Fowl, which in the time of our Lord was largely bred in\nthe Holy Land.\n\nSome writers have taken objection to this statement in consequence\nof a Rabbinical law which prohibited poultry from being kept within\nthe walls of Jerusalem, lest in their search for food they should\nscratch up any impurity which had been buried, and so defile the\nholy city. But it must be remembered that in the time of Christ\nJerusalem belonged practically to the Romans, who held it with a\ngarrison, and who, together with other foreigners, would not trouble\nthemselves about any such prohibition, which would seem to them, as\nit does to us, exceedingly puerile, not to say unjustifiable.\n\nThat the bird was common in the days of our Lord is evident from the\nreference to the \"cock-crowing\" as a measure of time.\n\n[Illustration: chickens]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: peacock]\n\n\n\n\nTHE PEACOCK.\n\n     The foreign curiosities imported by Solomon--The word _Tucciyim_\n     and its various interpretations--Identity of the word with\n     the Cingalese name of the Peacock--Reasons why the Peacock\n     should have been brought to Solomon--Its subsequent neglect and\n     extirpation.\n\n\nAmong the many foreign objects which were imported by Solomon into\nPalestine, we find that the Peacock is specially mentioned. (See a\npassage which has already been mentioned in connexion with ivory and\napes.) The sacred historian, after mentioning the ivory throne, the\ngolden shields and targets, that all the vessels in Solomon's house\nwere of gold, and that silver was so common as to be of no account,\nproceeds to give the reason for this profuse magnificence. \"For the\nking had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in\nthree years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver,\nivory, and apes, and peacocks\" (1 Kings x. 22).\n\nThat this magnificent bird should have been one of those creatures\nthat were imported by Solomon is almost certain. It would be\nimported for the same reason as the apes; namely, for the purpose\nof adding to the glories of Solomon's house, and no bird could have\nbeen selected which would have a more magnificent effect than the\nPeacock. Moreover, although unknown in Palestine, it is extremely\nplentiful in India and Ceylon, inhabiting the jungle by thousands,\nand, by a curious coincidence, being invariably most plentiful in\nthose spots which are most frequented by tigers. In many parts\nof the country, great numbers of Peacocks frequent the temples,\nand live amicably with the sacred monkeys, passing their lives in\nabsolute security, protected by the sanctity of the place.\n\nTheir numbers, therefore, would render them easily accessible to\nSolomon's envoys, who would purchase them at a cheap rate from the\nnative dealers, while their surpassing beauty would render them\nsure of a sale on their arrival in Jerusalem. Indeed, their beauty\nmade so great an impression that they are separately mentioned by\nthe sacred chronicler, the Peacock and the ape being the only two\nanimals that are thought worthy of enumeration.\n\nThe Peacock may safely be termed one of the most beautiful of the\nfeathered tribe, and may even lay a well-founded claim to the\nchief rank among birds, in splendour of plumage and effulgence of\ncolouring.\n\nWe are so familiar with the Peacock that we think little of its\nreal splendour; but if one of these birds was brought to this\ncountry for the first time, it would create a greater sensation than\nmany animals which are now viewed in menageries with the greatest\ncuriosity and interest.\n\nThe train of the male Peacock is the most remarkable feature of this\nbeautiful bird; the feathers composing it are very long, and are\n with green, purple, bronze, gold, and blue in such a manner\nas to form distinct \"eyes.\"\n\nOn the head is a tuft of upright feathers, blackish upon their\nshafts, and rich golden green, shot with blue, on their expanded\ntips. The top of the head, the throat, and neck are the most\nrefulgent blue, changing in different lights to gold and green. The\nwings are darker than the rest of the plumage, the abdomen blackish,\nand the feathers of the thighs are fawn.\n\n[Illustration: THE PEACOCK.]\n\nThe female is much smaller than her mate, and not nearly so\nbeautiful, the train being almost wanting, and the colour\nashy-brown, with the exception of the throat and neck, which are\ngreen.\n\nIt seems that after Solomon's death the breed of Peafowl was not\nkept up, owing in all probability to the troubles which beset the\nthrone after that magnificent monarch died.\n\n[Illustration: feathers]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: partridge]\n\n\n\n\nTHE PARTRIDGE.\n\n     The word _Kore_ and its signification--The Partridge upon\n     the mountains--David's simile--The Desert Partridge and\n     its habits--Hunting the Partridge with sticks--Eggs of the\n     Partridge--Egg-hunting in Palestine--The various species of\n     Partridge.\n\n\nThere is a bird mentioned in the Old Testament, which, although its\nname is only given twice, is a very interesting bird to all students\nof the Scriptures, both passages giving an insight into the manners\nand customs of the scarcely changing East. This is the bird called\nin the Hebrew Kore, a word which has been generally accepted as\nsignifying some kind of Partridge. There is no doubt that, like most\nother Hebrew names of animated beings, the word is a collective one,\nsignifying a considerable number of species.\n\nThe first passage occurs in 1 Sam. xxvi. 20. When David was being\npursued by Saul, and had been forced to escape from the city and\nhide himself in the rocky valleys, he compared himself to the\nPartridge, which frequented exactly the same places: \"The king of\nIsrael is come out to seek a flea, as when one doth hunt a partridge\nupon the mountains.\"\n\nThe appositeness of this simile is perfect. The bird to which David\nalluded was in all probability the Desert Partridge (_Ammoperdix\nHeyii_), a species which especially haunts rocky and desert places,\nand even at the present day is exceedingly plentiful about the Cave\nof Adullam. The males, when they think themselves unobserved, are\nfond of challenging, or calling to each other in a loud ringing\nnote, a peculiarity that has earned for the bird the Hebrew name of\nKore, or \"the caller.\"\n\nIt is a very active bird, not taking to flight if it can escape by\nmeans of its legs, and, when pursued or disturbed, running with\ngreat swiftness to some rocky cleft in which it may hide itself,\ntaking care to interpose, as it runs, stones or other obstacles\nbetween itself and the object of its alarm. Thus, then, it will be\nseen how close was the parallel between this bird and David, who was\nforced, like the Partridge, to seek for refuge in the rocky caves.\n\nBut the parallel becomes even closer when we come to examine the\nfull meaning of the passage. The Partridge is at the present day\nhunted on the mountains exactly as was the case in the time of\nDavid. The usual hunters are boys, who provide themselves with\na supply of stout sticks about eighteen inches in length, and,\narmed with these, they chase the birds, hurling the sticks one\nafter the other along the ground, so as to strike the Partridge as\nit runs. Generally, several hunters chase the same bird, some of\nthem throwing the sticks along the ground, while others hurl them\njust above the bird, so that if it should take to flight, it may\nbe struck as it rises into the air. By pertinaciously chasing an\nindividual bird, the hunters tire it, and contrive to come so close\nthat they are certain to strike it.\n\n[Illustration: THE GREEK PARTRIDGE.]\n\nThe reader will now see how perfect is the image. Driven from\nthe city, David was forced to wander, together with the Desert\nPartridge, upon the hill-sides, and, like that bird, his final\nrefuge is the rock. Then came the hunters and pursued him, driving\nhim from place to place, as the boys hunt the Partridge, until he\nwas weary of his life, and exclaimed in his despair, \"I shall now\nperish one day by the hand of Saul.\"\n\nThe Partridges of Palestine are, like those of our own land,\nexceedingly prolific birds, laying a wonderful number of eggs, more\nthan twenty being sometimes found in a single nest. These eggs are\nused for food, and the consumption of them is very great, so that\nmany a Partridge has been deprived of her expected family: she has\nsat upon eggs, and hatched them not.\n\nJust as hunting the Partridge is an acknowledged sport among the\ninhabitants of the uncultivated parts of Palestine, so is searching\nfor the eggs of the bird a regular business at the proper time of\nyear.\n\n[Illustration: PARTRIDGES AND THEIR YOUNG.]\n\nOf these birds several species inhabit Palestine. There is, for\nexample, the Desert Partridge, which has already been mentioned. It\nis beautifully, though not brilliantly , and may be known by\nthe white spot behind the eye, the purple and chestnut streaks on\nthe sides, and the orange bill and legs. These, however, soon lose\ntheir colour after death.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: EASTERN QUAIL.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE QUAIL.\n\n     Migration of the Quail--Modes of catching the Quail in the\n     East--The Quail-hunters of Northern Africa--Quarrelsome nature\n     of the bird--Quail-fighting in the East--How the Quails were\n     brought to the Israelites.\n\n\nIn one or two parts of the Old Testament is found a word which has\nbeen translated in the Authorized Version of the Bible as QUAIL.\n\nThe word is _selav_, and in every case where it is mentioned it is\nused with reference to the same occurrence; namely, the providing\nof flesh-meat in the wilderness, where the people could find no\nfood. As the passages remarkably bear upon each other, it will be\nadvisable to quote them in the order in which they come.\n\nThe first mention of the Selav occurs in Exod. xvi. Only a few days\nafter the Israelites had passed the Red Sea, they began to complain\nof the desert land into which Moses had led them, and openly said\nthat they wished they had never left the land of their slavery,\nwhere they had plenty to eat. According to His custom, pitying their\nnarrow-minded and short-sighted folly, the natural result of the\nlong servitude to which they had been subject, the Lord promised to\nsend both bread and flesh-meat.\n\n\"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,\n\n\"I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto\nthem, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye\nshall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord\nyour God.\n\n[Illustration: THE QUAIL.]\n\n\"And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered\nthe camp\" (ver. 11-13).\n\nThe next passage records a similar circumstance, which occurred\nabout a year afterwards, when the Israelites were tired of eating\nnothing but the manna, and again wished themselves back in Egypt.\n\"And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from\nthe sea, and let them fall by the camp as it were a day's journey\non this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side,\nround about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face\nof the earth.\n\n\"And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all\nthe next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least\ngathered ten homers; and they spread them all abroad for themselves\nround about the camp\" (Numb. xi. 31, 32).\n\nThe last passage in which Quails are mentioned occurs in the Psalms.\nIn Ps. cv. are enumerated the various wonders done on behalf of the\nIsraelites, and among them is specially mentioned this gift of the\nQuails and manna. \"The people asked, and He brought quails, and\nsatisfied them with the bread of heaven\" (ver. 40).\n\n\"He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of\nheaven,\n\n\"And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of\nthe corn of heaven.\n\n\"Man did eat angels' food: He sent them meat to the full.\n\n\"He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven; and by His power He\nbrought in the south wind.\n\n\"He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as\nthe sand of the sea\" (Ps. lxxviii. 23-27).\n\nIf the ordinary interpretation of _selav_ by \"Quail\" be accepted,\nthe description is exactly correct. The Quails fly in vast flocks,\nand, being weak-winged birds, never fly against the direction of the\nwind. They will wait for days until the wind blows in the required\ndirection, and will then take wing in countless multitudes; so that\nin an hour or two a spot on which not a Quail could be seen is\ncovered with them.\n\nOn account of their short wings, they never rise to any great\nheight, even when crossing the sea, while on land they fly at a very\nlow elevation, merely skimming over the ground, barely a yard or\n\"two cubits high upon the face of the earth.\"\n\nMoreover, the flesh of the Quail is peculiarly excellent, and would\nbe a great temptation to men who had passed so long a time without\neating animal food. Another corroboration of the identity of the\nQuail and the Selav is to be found in the mode in which the flesh is\nprepared at the present day. As soon as the birds have arrived, they\nare captured in vast multitudes, on account of their weariness.\nMany are consumed at once, but great numbers are preserved for\nfuture use by being split and laid out to dry in the sun, precisely\nas the Israelites are said to have spread out the Selavim \"all\nabroad for themselves round about the camp.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAccepting, therefore, the Selav and Quail to be identical, we may\nproceed to the description of the bird.\n\nIt is small, plump, and round-bodied, with the head set closely on\nthe shoulders. Owing to this peculiarity of form, it has its Arab\nname, which signifies plumpness or fatness. The wings are pressed\nclosely to the body, and the tail is pointed, very short, and\ndirected downwards, so that it almost appears to be absent, and the\nbird seems to be even more plump than really is the case.\n\nSeveral modes of capturing these birds are still practised in the\nEast, and were probably employed, not only on the two occasions\nmentioned in Exodus and Numbers, but on many others of which the\nScriptural narrative takes no notice. One very simple plan is, for\nthe hunters to select a spot on which the birds are assembled,\nand to ride or walk round them in a large circle, or rather in a\nconstantly diminishing spiral. The birds are by this process driven\ncloser and closer together, until at the last they are packed in\nsuch masses that a net can be thrown over them, and a great number\ncaptured in it.\n\nSometimes a party of hunters unite to take the Quails, and employ a\nsimilar manoeuvre, except that, instead of merely walking round\nthe Quails, they approach simultaneously from opposite points,\nand then circle round them until the birds are supposed to be\nsufficiently packed. At a given signal they all converge upon the\nterrified birds, and take them by thousands at a time.\n\nIn Northern Africa these birds are captured in a very similar\nfashion. As soon as notice is given that a flight of Quails has\nsettled, all the men of the village turn out with their great\nburnouses or cloaks. Making choice of some spot as a centre, where\na quantity of brushwood grows or is laid down, the men surround it\non all sides, and move slowly towards it, spreading their cloaks in\ntheir outstretched hands, and flapping them like the wings of huge\nbirds. Indeed, when a man is seen from a little distance performing\nthis act, he looks more like a huge bat than a human being.\n\nAs the men gradually converge upon the brushwood, the Quails\nnaturally run towards it for shelter, and at last they all creep\nunder the treacherous shade. Still holding their outspread cloaks\nin their extended hands, the hunters suddenly run to the brushwood,\nfling their cloaks over it, and so enclose the birds in a trap from\nwhich they cannot escape. Much care is required in this method of\nhunting, lest the birds should take to flight, and so escape. The\ncircle is therefore made of very great size, and the men who compose\nit advance so slowly that the Quails prefer to use their legs rather\nthan their wings, and do not think of flight until their enemies are\nso close upon them that their safest course appears to be to take\nrefuge in the brushwood.\n\nBoys catch the Quails in various traps and springes, the\nmost ingenious of which is a kind of trap, the door of which\nover-balances itself by the weight of the bird.\n\nBy reason of the colour of the Quail, and its inveterate habit\nof keeping close to the ground, it easily escapes observation,\nand even the most practised eye can scarcely distinguish a single\nbird, though there may be hundreds within a very small compass.\nFortunately for the hunters, and unfortunately for itself, it\nbetrays itself by its shrill whistling note, which it frequently\nemits, and which is so peculiar that it will at once direct the\nhunter to his prey.\n\nThis note is at the same time the call of the male to the female\nand a challenge to its own sex. Like all the birds of its group,\nthe Quail is very combative, and generally fights a battle for the\npossession of each of its many mates. It is not gifted with such\nweapons of offence as some of its kinsfolk, but it is none the\nless quarrelsome, and fights in its own way as desperately as the\ngame-cock of our own country.\n\nIndeed, in the East, it is used for exactly the same purpose as\nthe game-cock. Battles between birds and beasts, not to say men,\nare the common amusement with Oriental potentates, and, when they\nare tired of watching the combats of the larger animals, they have\nQuail-fights in their own chambers. The birds are selected for this\npurpose, and are intentionally furnished with stimulating food,\nso as to render them even more quarrelsome than they would be by\nnature. Partridges are employed for the same cruel purpose; and as\nboth these birds are easily obtained, and are very pugnacious, they\nare especially suited for the sport.\n\nTwo passages occur in the Scriptures which exactly explain the mode\nin which the Quails were sent to the Israelites. The first is in\nPs. lxxviii. 26. The Psalmist mentions that the Lord \"caused an\neast wind to blow in the heaven, and by His power He brought in the\nsouth wind.\" Here, on examining the geographical position of the\nIsraelites, we see exactly how the south-east wind would bring the\nQuails.\n\nThe Israelites had just passed the Red Sea, and had begun to\nexperience a foretaste of the privations which they were to expect\nin the desert through which they had to pass. Passing northwards\nin their usual migrations, the birds would come to the coast of\nthe Red Sea, and there would wait until a favourable wind enabled\nthem to cross the water. The south-east wind afforded them just the\nvery assistance which they needed, and they would naturally take\nadvantage of it.\n\nIt is remarkable how closely the Scriptural narrative agrees with\nthe habits of the Quail, the various passages, when compared\ntogether, precisely coinciding with the character of the bird. In\nExod. xvi. 13 it is mentioned that \"at even the quails came up and\ncovered the camp.\" Nocturnal flight is one of the characteristics of\nthe Quail. When possible, they invariably fly by night, and in this\nmanner escape many of the foes which would make great havoc among\ntheir helpless columns if they were to fly by day.\n\nThe identity of the Selav with the common Quail is now seen to be\nestablished. In the first place, we have the name still surviving\nin the Arabic language. Next, the various details of the Scriptural\nnarrative point so conclusively to the bird, that even if we were to\nput aside the etymological corroboration, we could have but little\ndoubt on the subject. There is not a detail which is not correct.\nThe gregarious instinct of the bird, which induces it to congregate\nin vast numbers; its habit of migration; its inability to fly\nagainst the wind, and the necessity for it to await a favourable\nbreeze; its practice of flying by night, and its custom of merely\nskimming over the surface of the ground; the ease with which it is\ncaptured; the mode of preserving by drying in the sun, and the\nproverbial delicacy of its flesh, are characteristics which all\nunite in the Quail.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBefore closing our account of the Quail, it will be as well to\ndevote a short space to the nature of the mode by which the\nIsraelites were twice fed. Commentators who were unacquainted\nwith the natural history of the bird have represented the whole\noccurrence as a miraculous one, and have classed it with the\ndivision of the Red Sea and of the Jordan, with the various plagues\nby which Pharaoh was induced to release the Israelites, and with\nmany other events which we are accustomed to call miracles.\n\n[Illustration: birds]\n\nIn reality, there is scarcely anything of a miraculous character\nabout the event, and none seems to have been claimed for it. The\nQuails were not created at the moment expressly for the purpose of\nsupplying the people with food, nor were they even brought from any\ngreat distance. They were merely assisted in the business on which\nthey were engaged--namely, their migration or customary travel from\nsouth to north, and waiting on the opposite side of the narrow sea\nfor a south-east wind. That such a wind should blow was no miracle.\nThe Quails expected it to blow, and without it they could not have\ncrossed the sea. That it was made to blow earlier than might have\nbeen the case is likely enough, but that is the extent of the\nmiraculous character of the event.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RAVEN.\n\n     The Raven tribe plentiful in Palestine--The Raven and the\n     Dove--Elijah and the Ravens--Desert-loving habits of the\n     Raven--Notions of the old commentators--Ceremonial use of the\n     Raven--Return of the Ravens--Cunning of the bird--Nesting-places\n     of the Raven--The magpie and its character--The starling--Its\n     introduction into Palestine.\n\n\nIt is more than probable that, while the Hebrew word _oreb_\nprimarily signifies the bird which is so familiar to us under the\nname of RAVEN, it was also used by the Jews in a much looser sense,\nand served to designate any of the Corvidae, or Crow tribe, such as\nthe raven itself, the crow, the rook, the jackdaw, and the like. We\nwill first take the word in its restricted sense, and then devote a\nbrief space to its more extended signification.\n\nAs might be expected from the cosmopolitan nature of the Raven, it\nis very plentiful in Palestine, and even at the present time is\napparently as firmly established as it was in the days when the\nvarious Scriptural books were written.\n\nThere are few birds which are more distinctly mentioned in the\nHoly Scriptures than the Raven, though the passages in which its\nname occurs are comparatively few. It is the first bird which is\nmentioned in the Scriptures, its name occurring in Gen. viii. 7:\n\"And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the\nwindow of the ark which he had made;\n\n\"And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro until the\nwaters were dried up from off the earth.\"\n\nHere we have, at the very outset, a characteristic account of the\nbird. It left the ark, and flew to and fro, evidently for the\npurpose of seeking food. The dove, which immediately followed\nthe Raven, acted in a different manner. She flew from the ark in\nsearch of food, and, finding none, was forced to return again. The\nRaven, on the contrary, would find plenty of food in the bodies\nof the various animals that had been drowned, and were floating\non the surface of the waters, and, therefore, needed not to enter\nagain into the ark. The context shows that it made the ark a\nresting-place, and that it \"went forth to and fro,\" or, as the\nHebrew Bible renders the passage, \"in going and returning,\" until\nthe waters had subsided. Here, then, is boldly drawn the distinction\nbetween the two birds, the carrion-eater and the feeder on vegetable\nsubstances--a distinction to which allusion has already been made in\nthe history of the dove.\n\n[Illustration: THE RAVEN.]\n\nPassing over the declaration in Lev. xi. 15 and Deut. xiv. 14, that\nevery Raven (_i.e._ the Raven and all its tribe) is unclean, we\ncome to the next historical mention of the bird. This occurs in 1\nKings xvii. When Elijah had excited the anger of Ahab by prophesying\nthree years of drought, he was divinely ordered to take refuge by\nthe brook Cherith, one of the tributaries of the Jordan. \"And it\nshall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded\nthe ravens [_orebim_] to feed thee there.\n\n[Illustration: ELIJAH FED BY THE RAVENS.]\n\n\"So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord: for he went\nand dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.\n\n\"And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and\nbread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook.\"\n\nIn this passage we have a history of a purely miraculous character.\nIt is not one that can be explained away. Some have tried to do so\nby saying that the banished prophet found the nests of the Ravens,\nand took from them daily a supply of food for his sustenance. The\nrepetition of the words \"bread and flesh\" shows that the sacred\nwriter had no intention of signifying a mere casual finding of food\nwhich the Ravens brought for their young, but that the prophet was\nfurnished with a constant and regular supply of bread and meat twice\nin the day. It is a statement which, if it be not accepted as the\naccount of a miracle, must be rejected altogether.\n\nThe desert-loving habit of the Raven is noticed in Isa. xxxiv. 11:\n\"The cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and\nthe raven shall dwell in it: and He shall stretch out upon it the\nline of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe will now pass to the notices of the Raven as given by the writers\nand commentators of the Talmud.\n\nBeing an unclean bird, and one of ill omen, it was not permitted\nto perch on the roof of the Temple. According to some writers, it\nwas kept off by means of scarecrows, and according to others, by\nlong and sharp iron spikes set so closely together that there was\nno room for the bird to pass between them. The latter is by far the\nmore probable account, as the Raven is much too cunning a bird to be\ndeceived by a scarecrow for any length of time. It might be alarmed\nat the first sight of a strange object, but in a very short time it\nwould hold all scarecrows in supreme contempt.\n\nIts carrion-eating propensities were well known to the ancient\nwriters, who must have had many opportunities of seeing the Raven\nunite with the vultures in consuming the bodies, not only of dead\nanimals, but of warriors killed in battle. So fond was the Raven of\nthis food that, according to those writers, the very smell of human\nblood attracted the bird; and, if a man accidentally cut himself, or\nif he were bled for some illness, the odour of the blood would bring\nround the spot all the Ravens of the place.\n\nThe punctuality with which the Raven, in common with all its kin,\nreturns to its roosting-place, was also familiar to the Talmudists,\nwho made rather an ingenious use of this habit The ceremonial law of\nthe Jews required the greatest care in observing certain hours, and\nit was especially necessary to know the precise time which marked\nthe separation of one day from another. This was ascertained easily\nenough as long as the day was clear, but in case of a dull, murky\nday, when the course of the sun could not be traced, some other plan\nwas needed.\n\nIn the olden times, no artificial means of measuring time were\nknown, and the devout Jew was consequently fearful lest he might\nunwittingly break the law by doing on one day an act which ought\nto have been done on another. A convenient method for ascertaining\nthe time was, however, employed, and, as soon as the Ravens, rooks,\nand similar birds were seen returning to their homes, the sun was\nsupposed to be setting.\n\nThis habit of returning regularly at the same time is mentioned by\nMr. Tristram in his \"Land of Israel:\"--\n\n\"Of all the birds of Jerusalem, the raven is decidedly the most\ncharacteristic and conspicuous. It is present everywhere to eye and\near, and the odours that float around remind us of its use. On the\nevening of our arrival we were perplexed by a call-note, quite new\nto us, mingling with the old familiar croak, and soon ascertained\nthat there must be a second species of raven along with the common\n_Corvus corax_. This was the African species (_Corvus umbrinus_,\nHed.), the ashy-necked raven, a little smaller than the world-wide\nraven, and here more abundant in individuals.\n\n\"Beside these, the rook (_Corvus agricola_, Trist.), the common\ngrey, or hooded crow (_Corvus cornix_, L.), and the jackdaw (_Corvus\nmonedula_, L.), roost by hundreds in the sanctuary. We used to watch\nthem in long lines passing over our tents every morning at daybreak,\nand returning in the evening, the rooks in solid phalanx leading the\nway, and the ravens in loose order bringing up the rear, generally\nfar out of shot. Before retiring for the night, popular assemblies\nof the most uproarious character were held together in the trees of\nthe Kedron and Mount Olivet, and not until sunset did they withdraw\nin silence, mingled indiscriminately, to their roosting-places on\nthe walls.\n\n\"My companions were very anxious to obtain specimens of these\nJerusalem birds, which could only be approached as they settled for\nthe night; but we were warned by the Consul that shooting them so\nclose to the mosque might be deemed a sacrilege by the Moslems, and\nprovoke an attack by the guardians of the Haram and the boys of the\nneighbourhood. They finally determined, nevertheless, to run the\nrisk; and stationing themselves just before sunset in convenient\nhiding-places near the walls, at a given signal they fired\nsimultaneously, and, hastily gathering up the spoils, had retreated\nout of reach, and were hurrying to the tents before an alarm could\nbe raised. The discharge of ten barrels had obtained fourteen\nspecimens, comprising five species.\n\n[Illustration: RAVENS' ROOSTING-PLACE.]\n\n\"The same manoeuvre was repeated with equal success on another\nevening; but on the third occasion the ravens had learned wisdom by\nexperience, and, sweeping round Siloam, chose another route to their\ndormitory.\"\n\nThose who have tried to come within gunshot of a Raven, can\nappreciate this anecdote, and can understand how the Raven would\never afterwards keep clear of the spot where the flash and smoke\nof fire-arms had twice appeared. In a large garden in which the\nsparrows used to congregate, it was a custom of the owner to lay a\ntrain of corn for the sparrows to eat, and then to rake the whole\nline with a discharge from a gun concealed in an outhouse. A tame\nRaven lived about the premises, and as soon as it saw any one\ncarrying a gun towards the fatal outhouse, it became much alarmed,\nand hurried off to hide itself. As soon as the gun was fired, out\ncame the Raven from its place of concealment, pounced on one of the\ndead sparrows, carried it off, and ate it in its private haunt.\n\n[Illustration: birds in flight]\n\nThe nest to which the Raven returns with such punctuality is placed\nin some spot where it is safe from ordinary intruders. The tops of\nlofty trees are favoured localities for the nest, and so are old\ntowers, the interior of caves, and clefts in lofty precipices.\n\n\n\n\nTHE OSTRICH.\n\n     Hebrew words designating the Ostrich--Description of the bird\n     in the Book of Job--Ancient use of Ostrich plumes--Supposed\n     heedlessness of eggs and young--Mode of depositing the\n     eggs--Hatching them in the sand--Natural enemies of the\n     Ostrich--Anecdote of Ostriches and their young--Alleged\n     stupidity of the Ostrich--Methods of hunting and snaring the\n     bird--The Ostrich in domestication--Speed of the Ostrich--The\n     flesh of the bird prohibited to the Jews--Ostrich eggs and their\n     uses--Food of the Ostrich--Mode of drinking--Cry of the Ostrich,\n     and reference made to it in Micah.\n\n\nThere is rather a peculiarity about the manner in which this bird is\nmentioned in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures, and, unless\nwe go to the original Hebrew, we shall be greatly misled. In that\nversion the Ostrich is mentioned only three times, but in the Hebrew\nit occurs eight times.\n\nThe Hebrew word _bath-haya'nah_, which is translated in the\nAuthorized Version as \"owl,\" ought really to be rendered as\n\"Ostrich.\" Taking this to be the case, we find that there are\nseveral passages in the Scriptures in which the word has been used\nin the wrong sense.\n\nIn those places, instead of rendering the word as \"owl,\" we ought to\nread it as \"Ostrich.\"\n\nThe first mention of this bird occurs in Lev. xi. 16, and the\nparallel passage of Deut. xiv., in which the Ostrich is reckoned\namong the unclean birds, without any notice being given of its\nappearance or habits.\n\nIn the Book of Job, however, we have the Ostrich mentioned with that\npreciseness and fulness of description which is so often the case\nwhen the writer of that wonderful poem treats of living creatures.\n\n\"Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and\nfeathers unto the ostrich?\n\n\"Who leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust,\n\n\"And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast\nmay break them.\n\n\"She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not\nhers: her labour is in vain without fear;\n\n\"Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He imparted\nto her understanding.\n\n\"What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse\nand his rider.\" (Job xxxix. 13-19.)\n\nThere is rather a peculiarity in the translation of this passage,\nwherein the word which has been translated as \"peacock\" is now\nallowed to be properly rendered as \"Ostrich,\" while the word which\nis translated as \"Ostrich\" ought to have been given as \"feathers.\"\nThe marginal translation gives the last words of ver. 13 in a rather\ndifferent manner, and renders it thus:--\"Gavest thou the goodly\nwings unto the peacocks, or the feathers of the stork and ostrich?\"\nThe Hebrew Bible renders the next verses as follows:--\n\n\"She would yet leave her eggs on the earth, and warm them in dust;\nand forget that the foot may crush them, or that the beast of the\nfield may break them.\n\n\"She is hardened against her young ones, for those not hers; being\ncareless, her labour is in vain.\"\n\nIn the same Book, chap. xxx., is another passage wherein this bird\nis mentioned. \"I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I\ncried in the congregation.\n\n\"I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls,\" or Ostriches,\nin the marginal and correct reading. The Jewish Bible also\ntranslates the word as Ostriches, but the word which the Authorized\nVersion renders as \"dragons\" it translates as \"jackals.\" Of this\npoint we shall have something to say on a future page. A somewhat\nsimilar passage occurs in Isa. xliii. 20: \"The beast of the field\nshall honour me, the dragons and the owls\" (Ostriches in marginal\nreading), \"because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in\nthe desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen.\" The Jewish Bible\nretains the same reading, except that the word \"dragons\" is given\nwith the mark of doubt.\n\nAccepting, therefore, the rendering of the Hebrew as Ostriches, let\nus see how far the passages of Scripture agree with the appearance\nand habits of the bird.\n\nHere I may observe that, although in the Scriptures frequent\nallusions are made to the habits of animals, we are not to look for\nscientific exactness to the Scriptures. Among much that is strictly\nand completely true, there are occasional errors, to which a most\nneedless attention has been drawn by a certain school of critics,\nwho point to them as invalidating the truth of Scripture in general.\nThe real fact is, that they have no bearing whatever on the truth or\nfalsehood of the Scriptural teachings.\n\nThe Scriptures were written at various times, for instruction in\nspiritual and not in temporal matters, and were never intended for\nscientific treatises on astronomy, mathematics, zoology, or any\nsuch branch of knowledge. The references which are made to the\nlast-mentioned subject are in no case of a scientific nature, but\nare always employed by way of metaphor or simile, as the reader must\nhave seen in the previous pages. No point of doctrine is taught by\nthem, and none depends on them.\n\nThe Spirit which conveyed religious instruction to the people\ncould only use the means that existed, and could no more employ\nthe scientific knowledge of the present time than use as metaphors\nthe dress, arms, and inventions of the present day. The Scriptures\nwere written in Eastern lands for Orientals by Orientals, and were\nconsequently adapted to Oriental ideas; and it would be as absurd to\nlook for scientific zoology in the writings of an ancient Oriental,\nas for descriptions of the printing-press, the steam-engine, the\nphotographic camera, or the electric telegraph.\n\nSo, when we remember that only a few years ago the real history of\nthe Ostrich was unknown to those who had made zoology the study of\ntheir lives, we cannot wonder that it was also unknown to those who\nlived many centuries ago, and who had not the least idea of zoology,\nor any kindred science.\n\nStill, even with these drawbacks, it is wonderful how accurate in\nmany instances were the writers of the Scriptures, and the more\nso when we remember the character of the Oriental mind, with its\nlove of metaphor, its disregard of arithmetical precision, and its\npoetical style of thought.\n\nWe will now take the passage in Job xxxix. In ver. 13 reference is\nmade to the wings and feathers of the Ostrich. If the reader will\nrefer to page 310, he will see that the feathers of the Ostrich were\nformerly used as the emblem of rank. In this case, they are shown\nas fastened to the heads of the horses, and also in the form of a\nplume, fixed to the end of a staff, and appended to a chariot, as\nemblematical of the princely rank of the occupier. In the ancient\nEgyptian monuments these Ostrich plumes are repeatedly shown, and in\nevery case denote very high rank. These plumes were therefore held\nin high estimation at the time in which the Book of Job was written,\nand it is evidently in allusion to this fact that the sacred writer\nhas mentioned so prominently the white plumes of the Ostrich.\n\nPassing the next portion of the description, we find that the\nOstrich is mentioned as a bird that is careless of its eggs, and\nleaves them \"in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and\nforgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may\nbreak them.\"\n\nNow it is true that the Ostrich is often known to take the greatest\ncare of its eggs, the male collecting and sitting on them, and\nwatching them with loving assiduity, and by some persons this fact\nhas been brought forward as a proof that the writer of the Book of\nJob was mistaken in his statements. A further acquaintance with the\nhabits of the bird tells us, however, that in those parts of the\nworld which were known to the writer of that book the Ostrich does\nbehave in precisely the manner which is described by the sacred\nwriter.\n\nSeveral females lay their eggs in the same nest, if the title of\nnest can be rightly applied to a mere hollow scooped in the sand,\nand, at least during the daytime, when the sun is shining, they\nsimply cover the eggs with sand, so as to conceal them from ordinary\nenemies, and leave them to be hatched by the warm sunbeams. They\nare buried to the depth of about a foot, so that they receive the\nbenefit of a tolerably equable warmth. So much, then, for the\nassertion that the Ostrich leaves her eggs \"in the earth, and\nwarmeth them in the dust.\"\n\nWe next come to the statement that she forgets that \"the foot may\ncrush them, or that the wild beast may break them.\" It is evident\nfrom the preceding description that eggs which are buried a foot\ndeep in the sand could not be crushed by the foot, even were they of\na fragile character, instead of being defended by a shell as thick,\nand nearly as hard, as an ordinary earthenware plate. Neither would\nthe wild beast be likely to discover much less to break them.\n\n[Illustration: OSTRICH AND NEST.]\n\nA more intimate acquaintance with the history of the Ostrich shows\nthat, even in this particular, the sacred writer was perfectly\ncorrect. Besides the eggs which are intended to be hatched, and\nwhich are hidden beneath the sand to be hatched, a number of\nsupplementary eggs are laid which are not meant to be hatched,\nand are evidently intended as food for the young until they are\nable to forage for themselves. These are left carelessly on the\nsurface of the ground, and may easily be crushed by the hoof of a\nhorse, if not by the foot of man. We meet, however, with another\nstatement,--namely, that they may be broken by the wild beasts. Here\nwe have reference to another fact in the history of the Ostrich.\nThe scattered eggs, to which allusion is made, are often eaten,\nnot only by beasts, but also by birds of prey; the former breaking\nthe shells by knocking them against each other, and the latter by\npicking up large stones in their claws, rising above the eggs, and\ndropping the stones on them. The bird would like to seize the egg,\nrise with it in the air, and drop it on a stone, as mentioned on\npage 414, but the round, smooth surface of the egg defies the grasp\nof talons, and, instead of dropping the egg upon a stone, it is\nobliged to drop a stone upon the egg.\n\nUp to the present point, therefore, the writer of the Book of Job is\nshown to be perfectly correct in his statements. We will now proceed\nto verse 16: \"She is hardened against her young ones, as though they\nwere not hers.\" Now in the Jewish Bible the passage is rendered\nrather differently: \"She is hardened against her young ones, for\nthose not hers;\" and, as we shall presently see, the reading\nperfectly agrees with the character of the Ostrich.\n\nThere has long existed a belief that the Ostrich, contrary to the\ncharacter of all other birds, is careless of her young, neglects\nthem, and is even cruel to them. That this notion was shared by the\nwriter of the Book of Job is evident from the preceding passage.\nIt also prevailed for at least a thousand years after the Book of\nJob was written. See Lam. iv. 3: \"Even the sea monsters draw out\nthe breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my\npeople is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.\"\n\nIt is probable that this idea respecting the cruelty of the Ostrich\ntowards its young is derived from the fact that if a flock of\nOstriches be chased, and among them there be some very young birds,\nthe latter are left behind by their parents, and fall a prey to the\nhunters. But, in reality, the Ostrich has no choice in the matter.\nThe wide sandy desert affords no place of concealment in which it\nmight hide its young. Nature has not furnished it with weapons by\nmeans of which it can fight for them; and consequently it is forced\nto use the only means of escape by which it can avoid sacrificing\nits own life, as well as the lives of the young.\n\nIt does not, however, leave the young until it has tried, by all\nmeans in its power, to save them. For example, it sometimes has\nrecourse to the manoeuvre with which we are so familiar in the\ncase of the lapwing, and pretends to be wounded or lamed, in order\nto draw the attention of its pursuers, while its young escape\nin another direction. An instance of this practice is given by\nMr. Andersson in his \"Lake Ngami.\" \"When we had proceeded little\nmore than half the distance, and in a part of the plain entirely\ndestitute of vegetation, we discovered a male and female ostrich,\nwith a brood of young ones, about the size of ordinary barn-yard\nfowls. We forthwith dismounted from out oxen, and gave chase, which\nproved of no ordinary interest.\n\n\"The moment the parent birds became aware of our intention, they set\noff at full speed--the female leading the way, and the cock, though\nat some little distance, bringing up the rear of the family party.\nIt was very touching to observe the anxiety the birds evinced for\nthe safety of their progeny. Finding that we were quickly gaining\nupon them, the male at once slackened his pace and diverged somewhat\nfrom his course; but, seeing that we were not to be diverted from\nour purpose, he again increased his speed, and, with wings drooping\nso as almost to touch the ground, he hovered round us, now in wide\ncircles, and then decreasing the circumference until he came almost\nwithin pistol-shot, when he abruptly threw himself on the ground,\nand struggled desperately to regain his legs, as it appeared, like a\nbird that has been badly wounded.\n\n\"Having previously fired at him, I really thought he was disabled,\nand made quickly towards him. But this was only a ruse on his part,\nfor, on my nearer approach, he slowly rose, and began to run in a\ndifferent direction to that of the female, who by this time was\nconsiderably ahead with her charge.\" Nor is this a solitary instance\nof the care which the Ostrich will take of her young. Thunberg\nmentions that on one occasion, when he happened to ride near a place\nwhere an Ostrich was sitting on the eggs, the bird jumped up and\npursued him, evidently with the object of distracting his attention\nfrom the eggs. When he faced her, she retreated; but as soon as he\nturned his horse, she pursued him afresh.\n\nThe care of the mother for the young is perhaps less needed with\nthe Ostrich than with most birds. The young are able to run with\nsuch speed that ordinary animals are not able to overtake them, and,\nbesides, they are protected by their colour as long as they are\ncomparatively helpless. Their downy plumage harmonizes completely\nwith the sandy and stony ground, even when they run, and when they\ncrouch to the earth, as is their manner when alarmed, even the most\npractised eye can scarcely see them. Mr. Andersson, an experienced\nhunter, states that when the Ostrich chicks were crouching almost\nunder his feet, he had the greatest difficulty in distinguishing\ntheir forms.\n\nOwing to the great number of the eggs that are laid, the young are\noften very numerous, between thirty and forty chicks sometimes\nbelonging to one brood. In the Ostrich chase which has already been\ndescribed, the brood were eighteen in number, and so great was\ntheir speed that, in spite of their youth and diminutive size, Mr.\nAndersson only succeeded in capturing nine of them after an hour's\nsevere chase.\n\nWe find, therefore, that we must acquit the Ostrich of neglecting\nits young, much more of cruelty towards them; and we will now turn\nto the next charge against the bird, that of stupidity.\n\nIn one sense, the bird certainly may be considered stupid. Like\nnearly all wild creatures which live on large plains, it always runs\nagainst the wind, so as to perceive by scent if any enemies are\napproaching. Its nostrils are very sensitive, and can detect a human\nbeing at a very great distance. So fastidious is it in this respect,\nthat no hunter who knows his business ever attempts to approach the\nOstrich except from leeward. If a nest is found, and the discoverer\nwishes the birds to continue laying in it, he approaches on the\nleeward side, and rakes out the eggs with a long stick.\n\nThe little Bushman, who kills so many of these birds with his tiny\nbow and arrow, makes use of this instinct when he goes to shoot the\nOstrich, disguised in a skin of one of the birds. Should an Ostrich\nattack him, as is sometimes the case, he only shifts his position\nto windward, so as to allow the birds to catch the scent of a human\nbeing, when they instantly make off in terror.\n\nWhen, therefore, the Ostriches are alarmed, they always run to\nwindward, instinctively knowing that, if an enemy should approach\nin that direction, their powers of scent will inform them of the\ndanger. Being aware of this habit, the hunters manage so that while\none of them goes round by a long detour to frighten the game, the\nothers are in waiting at a considerable distance to windward, but\nwell on one side, so that no indication of their presence may\nreach the sensitive nostrils of the birds. As soon as the concealed\nhunters see the Ostriches fairly settled down to their course, they\ndash off at right angles to the line which the birds are taking, and\nin this way come near enough to use their weapons. The antelopes\nof the same country have a similar instinct, and are hunted in\nprecisely the same manner.\n\nThus, then, in one sense the Ostrich may be considered as open to\nthe charge of stupidity, inasmuch as it pursues a course which can\nbe anticipated by enemies who would otherwise be unable to overtake\nit. But it must be remembered that instinct cannot be expected to\nprove a match for reason, and that, although its human enemies are\nable to overreach it, no others can do so, the instinct of running\nagainst the wind serving to guard it from any foe which it is likely\nto meet in the desert.\n\nWhen captured alive and tamed, it certainly displays no particular\namount of intellect. The Arabs often keep tame Ostriches about\ntheir tents, the birds being as much accustomed to their quarters\nas the horses. In all probability they did so in ancient times, and\nthe author of the Book of Job was likely to be familiar with tame\nOstriches, as well as with the wild bird.\n\nStupidity is probably attributed to the tame bird in consequence\nof the habit possessed by the Ostrich of picking up and eating\nsubstances which cannot be used as food. For example, it will eat\nknives, bits of bone or metal, and has even been known to swallow\nbullets hot from the mould. On dissecting the digestive organs of an\nOstrich, I have found a large quantity of stones, pieces of brick,\nand scraps of wood. These articles are, however, not intended to\nserve as food, but simply to aid digestion, and the bird eats them\njust as domestic fowls pick up gravel, and smaller birds grains of\nsand. In swallowing them, therefore, the Ostrich does not display\nany stupidity, but merely obeys a natural instinct.\n\nLastly, we come to the speed of the Ostrich: \"What time she lifteth\nup herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.\"\n\nThis statement is literally true. When the Ostrich puts forth its\nfull speed, there is no horse that can catch it in a fair chase. It\nmay be killed by the ruse which has already been described, but an\nadult Ostrich can run away from the swiftest horse. When it runs\nat full speed, it moves its long legs with astonishing rapidity,\ncovering at each stride an average of twenty-four feet, a fact\nfrom which its rate of speed may be deduced. In consequence of\nthis width of stride, and the small impression made in the sand by\nthe two-toed foot, the track of a running Ostrich is very obscure.\nPerhaps no better proof of the swiftness of the bird can be given\nthan the extreme value set upon it by the Arabs. Although they are\nbred to the desert as much as the Ostrich itself, and are mounted on\nhorses whose swiftness and endurance are proverbial, they set a very\nhigh value on the Ostrich, and to have captured one of these birds\nestablishes an Arab's fame as a hunter.\n\nSometimes the Arabs employ the plan of cutting across the course\nof the bird, but at others they pursue it in fair chase, training\ntheir horses and themselves specially for the occasion. They furnish\nthemselves with a supply of water, and then start in pursuit of the\nfirst flock of Ostriches they find. They take care not to alarm the\nbirds, lest they should put out their full speed and run away out\nof sight, but just keep sufficiently near to force the birds to be\ncontinually on the move. They will sometimes continue this chase for\nseveral days, not allowing their game time to eat or rest, until at\nlast it is so tired that it yields itself an easy prey.\n\nIn Southern Africa, snares are used for taking the Ostrich. They\nare in fact ordinary springes, but of strength suitable to the size\nof the bird. The cord is made fast to a sapling, which is bent down\nby main strength, and the other end is then formed into a noose and\nfastened down with a trigger. Sometimes the bird is enticed towards\nthe snare by means of a bait, and sometimes it is driven over it\nby the huntsmen. In either case, as soon as the Ostrich puts its\nfoot within the fatal noose, the trigger is loosed, the sapling is\nreleased, and, with a violent jerk, the Ostrich is caught by the leg\nand suspended in the air.\n\nWhy the flesh of the Ostrich should have been prohibited to the\nJews is rather a mystery. It is much valued by most natives, though\nsome of the Arab tribes still adhere to the Jewish prohibition, and\nthose Europeans who have tried it pronounce it to be excellent when\nthe bird is young and tender, but to be unpleasantly tough when it\nis old. Mr. Andersson says that its flesh resembles that of the\nzebra, and mentions that the fat and blood are in great request,\nbeing mixed together by cutting the throat of the bird, passing a\nligature round the neck just below the incision, and then shaking\nand dragging the bird about for some time. Nearly twenty pounds of\nthis substance are obtained from a single Ostrich.\n\n[Illustration: ARABS HUNTING THE OSTRICH.]\n\nThe ancient Romans valued exceedingly the flesh of this bird. We\nare told that Heliogabalus once had a dish served at his table\ncontaining six hundred Ostrich brains, and that another emperor ate\na whole Ostrich at a meal. As an adult Ostrich weighs some three\nhundred and fifty pounds, we may presume that the bird in question\nwas a young one.\n\nThe eggs are most valuable articles of food, both on account of\ntheir excellent flavour and their enormous size. It is calculated\nthat one Ostrich egg contains as much as twenty-five ordinary hen's\neggs. Cooking the Ostrich egg is easily performed. A hole is made\nin the upper part of the egg, and the lower end is set on the fire.\nA forked stick is then introduced into the egg, and twirled between\nthe hands, so as to beat up the whole of the interior. Europeans\nusually add pepper and salt, and say that this simple mode of\ncooking produces an excellent omelette.\n\nThe ordinary food of the Ostrich consists of the seeds, buds, and\ntops of various plants. It seems strange, however, that in the\ndeserts, where there is so little vegetation, the bird should be\nable to procure sufficient food to maintain its enormous body. Each\nof the specimens which are kept at the Zoological Gardens eats\non an average a pint of barley, the same quantity of oats, four\npounds' weight of cabbage, and half a gallon of chaff, beside the\nbuns, bread, and other articles of food which are given to them by\nvisitors.\n\nAlthough the Ostrich, like many other inhabitants of the desert,\ncan live for a long time without water, yet it is forced to drink,\nand like the camel, which it resembles in so many of its ways,\ndrinks enormously, taking in the water by a succession of gulps.\nWhen the weather has been exceptionally hot, the Ostrich visits the\nwater-springs daily, and is so occupied in quenching its thirst that\nit will allow the hunter to come within a very short distance. It\nappears, indeed, to be almost intoxicated with its draught, and,\neven when it does take the alarm, it only retreats step by step,\ninstead of scudding off with its usually rapid strides.\n\nThe camel-like appearance of the Ostrich has already been mentioned.\nIn the Arabic language the Ostrich is called by a name which\nsignifies camel-bird, and many of the people have an idea that it\nwas originally a cross between a bird and a camel.\n\nThe cry of the Ostrich is a deep bellow, which, according to\ntravellers in Southern Africa, so resembles the roar of the lion\nthat even the practised ears of the natives can scarcely distinguish\nthe roar of the animal from the cry of the bird. The resemblance is\nincreased by the fact that both the lion and Ostrich utter their\ncry by night. It is evidently to this cry that the prophet Micah\nalludes: \"Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and\nnaked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as\nthe owls\" (Ostriches in marginal reading). The cry of the variety\nof Ostrich which inhabits Northern Africa is said to bear more\nresemblance to the lowing of an ox than the roar of the lion; but as\nthe bird is smaller than its southern relative, the difference is\nprobably accounted for.\n\nIt has been mentioned that the Ostrich has no weapons wherewith\nto fight for its young; still, though it be destitute of actual\nweapons, such as the spur of the gamecock or the beak and talons of\nthe eagle, it is not entirely defenceless. Its long and powerful\nlegs can be employed as weapons, and it can kick with such force\nthat a man would go down before the blow, and probably, if struck on\nthe leg or arm, have the limb broken. The blow is never delivered\nbackward, as is the kick of the horse, but forward, like that of the\nkangaroo. The natives of the countries where it resides say that it\nis able to kill by its kick the jackal that comes to steal its eggs,\nand that even the hyaena and the leopard are repelled by the gigantic\nbird.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: peaceful scene]\n\n\n\n\nTHE BITTERN.\n\n     The Bittern and its general appearance--The bird of\n     solitude--Difficulty of detecting the Bittern in its\n     haunts--Mudie's description of the Bittern and its home--Nest of\n     the Bittern--Scarcity of the bird at the present day--Food of\n     the Bittern.\n\n\nThe Bittern belongs to the same family as the herons, the cranes,\nand the storks, and has many of the habits common to them all. It\nis, however, essentially a bird of solitude, hating the vicinity\nof man, and living in the most retired spots of marshy ground. As\nit sits among the reeds and rushes, though it is a large bird, it\nis scarcely visible even to a practised eye, its mottled plumage\nharmonizing with surrounding objects in such a way that the feathers\nof the bird can scarcely be distinguished from the sticks, stones,\nand grass tufts among which it sits. The ground colour of the\nplumage is dark buff, upon which are sprinkled mottlings and streaks\nof black, chestnut, grey, and brown. These mottled marks harmonize\nwith the stones and tufts of withered grass, while the longitudinal\ndashes of buff and black on the neck and breast correspond with the\nsticks and reeds.\n\nIn a similar manner the tiger, though so large an animal, can lie in\na very small covert of reeds without being detected, its striped fur\ncorresponding with the reeds themselves and the shadows thrown by\nthem; and the leopard can remain hidden among the boughs of a tree,\nits spotted coat harmonizing with the broken light and shade of the\nfoliage.\n\n[Illustration: THE BITTERN.]\n\nThe following powerful description of the Bittern's home is given\nby Mudie: \"It is a bird of rude nature, where the land knows no\ncharacter save that which the untrained, working of the elements\nimpresses upon it; so that when any locality is in the course of\nbeing won to usefulness, the bittern is the first to depart, and\nwhen any one is abandoned, it is the last to return. 'The bittern\nshall dwell there' is the final curse, and implies that the place is\nto become uninhabited and uninhabitable. It hears not the whistle of\nthe ploughman, nor the sound of the mattock; and the tinkle of the\nsheep-bell, or the lowing of the ox (although the latter bears so\nmuch resemblance to its own hollow and dismal voice, that it has\ngiven foundation to the name), is a signal for it to be gone.\n\n\"Extensive and dingy pools--if moderately upland, so much the\nbetter--which lie in the hollows, catching, like so many traps, the\nlighter and more fertile mould which the rains wash and the winds\nblow from the naked heights around, and converting it into harsh and\ndingy vegetation, and the pasture of those loathsome things which\nwriggle in the ooze, or crawl and swim in the putrid and mantling\nwaters, are the habitation of the bittern.\n\n\"Places which scatter blight and mildew over every herb which\nis more delicate than a sedge, a carex, or a rush, and consume\nevery wooded plant that is taller than the sapless and tasteless\ncranberry or the weeping upland willow; which shed murrain over the\nquadrupeds, chills which eat the flesh off their bones, and which,\nif man ventures there, consume him by putrid fever in the hot and\ndry season, and shake him to pieces with ague when the weather is\ncold and humid.\n\n\"Places from which the heath and the lichen stand aloof, and where\neven the raven, lover of disease, and battener upon all that expires\nmiserably and exhausted, comes rarely and with more than wonted\ncaution, lest that death which he comes to seal and riot upon in\nothers should unawares come upon himself. The raven loves carrion\non the dry and unpoisoning moor, scents it from afar, and hastens\nto it upon his best and boldest wing; but 'the reek o' the rotten\nfen' is loathsome to the sense of even the raven, and it is hunger's\nlast pinch ere he come nigh to the chosen habitation, the only loved\nabode, of the bittern.\"\n\nSecure in its retreat, the Bittern keeps its place even if a\nsportsman should pass by the spot on which it crouches. It will not\nbe tempted to leave its retreat by noise, or even by stone throwing,\nfor it knows instinctively that the quaking bogland which it selects\nas its home is unsafe for the step of man.\n\nThe very cry of the Bittern adds to this atmosphere of desolation.\nBy day the bird is silent, but after the sun has gone down it utters\nits strange wild cry, a sound which exactly suits the localities in\nwhich it loves to make its habitation. During part of the year it\nonly emits a sharp, harsh cry as it rises on the wing, but during\nthe breeding season it utters the cry by which it summons its mate,\none of the strangest love-calls that can be imagined. It is\nsomething between the neighing of a horse, the bellow of a bull, and\na shriek of savage laughter. It is very loud and deep, so that it\nseems to shake the loose and marshy ground. There was formerly an\nidea that, when the Bittern uttered this booming cry, it thrust its\nbill into the soft ground, and so caused it to shake. In reality,\nthe cry is uttered on the wing, the bird wheeling in a spiral\nflight, and modulating its voice in accordance with the curves which\nit describes in the air. This strange sound is only uttered by the\nmale bird.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  BITTERN.        CORMORANT.\n]\n\nLike most of the long-legged wading birds, the Bittern is able\nto change its shape, and apparently to alter its size, in an\nastonishing manner. When it is walking over the ground, with head\nerect and eye glanced vigilantly at surrounding objects, it looks\na large, bold, vigorous, and active bird. Next minute it will sink\nits head in its shoulders, so that the long beak seems to project\nfrom them, and the neck totally disappears, the feathers enveloping\neach other as perfectly and smoothly as if it never had had a neck.\nIn this attitude it will stand for an hour at a time on one leg,\nwith the other drawn close to its body, looking as dull, inert, and\nsluggish a bird as can well be imagined, and reduced apparently\nto one half of its former size. The Bittern is represented in one\nof its extraordinary attitudes on the plate which illustrates the\ncormorant.\n\nThe nest of the Bittern is placed on the ground, and near the\nwater, though the bird always takes care to build it on an elevated\nspot which will not be flooded if the water should rise by reason\nof a severe rain. There is, however, but little reason for the\nBittern to fear a flood, as at the time of year which is chosen\nfor nest-building the floods are generally out, and the water\nhigher than is likely to be the case for the rest of the year. The\nmaterials of the nest are found in marshes, and consist of leaves,\nreeds, and rushes.\n\nAs if to add to the general effect of its character, it is\nessentially a solitary bird, and in this characteristic entirely\nunlike its relatives the heron and the stork, which are peculiarly\nsociable, and love to gather themselves together in multitudes. But\nthe Bittern is never found except alone, or at the most accompanied\nfor a time by its mate and one or two young ones.\n\nThe localities in which it resides are sufficient evidence of the\nnature of its food. Frogs appear to be its favourite diet, but it\nalso feeds on various fish, insects, molluscs, worms, and similar\ncreatures. Dull and apathetic as it appears to be, it can display\nsufficient energy to capture tolerably large fish. Though the\nBittern is only about two feet in total length, one of these birds\nwas killed, in the stomach of which were found one perfect rudd\neight inches in length and two in depth, together with the remains\nof another fish, of a full-grown frog, and of an aquatic insect.\nIn another instance, a Bittern had contrived to swallow an eel as\nlong as itself; while in many cases the remains of five or six\nfull-grown frogs have been found in the interior of the bird, some\njust swallowed, and others in various stages of digestion.\n\n[Illustration: wetland]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE HERON.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HERON.\n\n     The Heron mentioned as an unclean bird--Nesting of the\n     Heron--The papyrus marshes and their dangers--Description of the\n     papyrus--Vessels of bulrushes.\n\n\nThe name of the Heron is only mentioned twice in the\nScriptures--namely, in the two parallel passages of Lev. xi. 19 and\nDeut. xiv. 18; in both of which places the Heron is ranked among the\nunclean birds that might not be eaten.\n\nIn some of the cases where beasts or birds are prohibited as food,\nthe prohibition seems scarcely needed. To us of the present day\nthis seems to be the case with the Heron, as it is never brought to\ntable. The reason for this disuse of the Heron as food is not that\nit is unfit for the table, but that it has become so scarce by the\nspread of cultivation and housebuilding, that it has been gradually\nabandoned as a practically unattainable article of diet. The flesh\nof the Heron, like that of the bittern, is remarkably excellent,\nand in the former days, when it was comparatively plentiful, and\nfalconry was the ordinary amusement of the rich, the Heron formed a\nvery important dish at every great banquet.\n\n[Illustration: THE HERON.]\n\nThe bird, however, must be eaten when young. A gentleman who liked\nto try experiments for himself in the matter of food, found that,\nif young Herons were properly cooked, they formed a most excellent\ndish, equal, in his opinion, to grouse. Wishing to have his own\njudgment confirmed by that of others, he had several of them trussed\nand dressed like wild geese, and served up at table under that name.\nThe guests approved greatly of the bird, and compared it to hare,\nthe resemblance being further increased by the dark colour of the\nflesh. There was not the slighest fishy flavour about the bird.\nThis, however, is apt to be found in the older birds, but can be\nremoved by burying them in the earth for several days, just as is\ndone with the solan goose and one or two other sea-birds.\n\nThe abundance of birds belonging to the Heron tribe is well shown by\nsome of the paintings and carvings on Egyptian monuments, in which\nvarious species of Herons and other water-birds are depicted as\nliving among the papyrus reeds, exactly the locality in which they\nare most plentiful at the present day.\n\nUnlike the bittern, the Heron is a most sociable bird, and loves not\nonly to live, but even to feed, in company with others of its own\nspecies.\n\nI have watched the Herons feeding in close proximity to each other.\nThe birds were fond of wading stealthily along the edge of the\nlake until they came to a suitable spot, where they would stand\nimmersed in the water up to the thighs, waiting patiently for their\nprey. They stood as still as if they were carved out of wood, the\nripples of the lake reflected on their plumage as the breeze ruffled\nthe surface of the water. Suddenly there would be a quick dive of\nthe beak, either among the reeds or in the water, and each stroke\nsignified that the Heron had caught its prey.\n\nFrogs and small fishes are the usual food of the Heron, though it\noften grapples with larger prey, having been seen to capture an\neel of considerable size in its beak. Under such circumstances\nit leaves the water, with the fish in its mouth, and beats it\nviolently against a stone so as to kill it. Now and then the bird\nis vanquished in the struggle by the fish, several instances being\nknown in which an eel, in its endeavours to escape, has twisted\nitself so tightly round the neck of the bird that both have been\nfound lying dead on the shore.\n\nIn one such case the Heron's beak had struck through the eyes of the\neel, so that the bird could not disengage itself. In another the\nHeron had tried to swallow an eel which was much too large for it,\nand had been nearly choked by its meal. The eel must necessarily\nhave been a very large one, as the Heron has a wonderful capacity\nfor devouring fish. Even when quite young, it can swallow a fish as\nlarge as a herring, and when it is full grown it will eat four or\nfive large herrings at a meal.\n\nNow when we remember that a man of average appetite finds one\nherring to form a very sufficient breakfast, we can easily imagine\nwhat must be the digestive power of a bird which, though very\ninferior to man in point of bulk, can eat four times as much at a\nmeal. Even though the fish be much larger in diameter than the neck\nof the bird, the Heron can swallow it as easily as a small snake\nswallows a large frog. The neck merely seems to expand as if it were\nmade of Indiarubber, the fish slips down, and the bird is ready for\nanother.\n\n[Illustration: THE HOME OF THE HERON.]\n\nGenerally the Herons feed after sunset, but I have frequently\nseen them busily engaged in catching their prey in full daylight,\nwhen the sunbeams were playing in the water so as to produce the\nbeautiful rippling effect on the Heron's plumage which has already\nbeen mentioned.\n\nThe Heron does not restrict itself to fishes or reptiles, but, like\nthe bittern, feeds on almost any kind of aquatic animal which comes\nwithin its reach. When it lives near tidal rivers, it feeds largely\non the shrimps, prawns, green crabs, and various other crustacea;\nand when it lives far inland, it still makes prey of the fresh-water\nshrimps, the water-beetles, and the boat-flies, and similar aquatic\ncreatures. In fact, it acts much after the fashion of the lions,\ntigers, and leopards, which put up with locusts and beetles when\nthey can find no larger prey.\n\nThe long beak of the Heron is not merely an instrument by which it\ncan obtain food, but is also a weapon of considerable power. When\nattacked, it aims a blow at the eye of its opponent, and makes the\nstroke with such rapidity that the foe is generally blinded before\nperceiving the danger. When domesticated, it has been known to keep\npossession of the enclosure in which it lived, and soon to drive\naway dogs by the power of its beak. When it is young, it is quite\nhelpless, its very long legs being unable to support its body,\nwhich is entirely bare of plumage, and has a very unprepossessing\nappearance.\n\nThe flight of the Heron is very powerful, its wings being very large\nin proportion to its slender body. Sometimes the bird takes to\nascending in a spiral line, and then the flight is as beautiful as\nit is strong. When chased by the falcon it mostly ascends in this\nmanner, each of the two birds trying to rise above the other.\n\nThe nest of the Heron is always made on the top of some lofty tree,\nwhenever the bird builds in places where trees can be found; and as\nthe bird is an eminently sociable one, a single nest is very seldom\nfound, the Heron being as fond of society as the rook. In some parts\nof Palestine, however, where trees are very scarce, the Heron is\nobliged to choose some other locality for its nest, and in that case\nprefers the great thickets of papyrus reeds which are found in the\nmarshes, and which are even more inaccessible than the tops of trees.\n\nOne of these marshes is well described by Mr. Tristram in his \"Land\nof Israel.\" \"The whole marsh is marked in the map as impassable; and\nmost truly it is so. I never anywhere have met with a swamp so vast\nand utterly impenetrable.\n\n\"The papyrus extends right across to the east side. A false step off\nits roots will take the intruder over head in suffocating peat-mud.\nWe spent a long time in attempting to effect an entrance, and at\nlast gave it up, satisfied that the marsh birds were not to be had.\nIn fact, the whole is simply a floating bog of several miles square;\na very thin crust of vegetation covers an unknown depth of water;\nand, if the explorer breaks through this, suffocation is imminent.\nSome of the Arabs, who were tilling the plain for cotton, assured us\nthat even a wild boar never got through it. We shot two bitterns,\nbut in endeavouring to retrieve them I slipped from the root on\nwhich I was standing, and was drawn down in a moment, only saving\nmyself from drowning by my gun, which had providentially caught\nacross a papyrus stem.\"\n\nIt may here be mentioned that the bulrush of Scripture is\nundoubtedly the papyrus. The ark or basket of bulrushes, lined with\nslime and pitch, in which Moses was laid, was made of the papyrus,\nwhich at the present day is used for the manufacture of baskets,\nmats, sandals, and for the thatching of houses. Many tribes which\ninhabit the banks of the Nile make simple boats, or rather rafts,\nof the papyrus, which they cut and tie in bundles; and it is worthy\nof notice that the Australian native makes a reed boat in almost\nexactly the same manner.\n\nCompare Is. xviii. 1, 2: \"Woe to the land shadowing with wings,\nwhich is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.\n\n\"That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes.\"\nDid we not know that vessels are actually made of bulrushes at the\npresent day, a custom which has survived from very ancient times,\nwe might find a difficulty in understanding this passage, while the\nmeaning is intelligible enough when it is viewed by the light of\nthe knowledge that the Ethiopian of the present day takes gold, and\nivory, and other merchandise down the Nile in his boat of papyrus\n(or bulrush) reeds tied together.\n\n[Illustration: THE PAPYRUS PLANT.]\n\nThe papyrus runs from ten to fifteen or sixteen feet in height, so\nthat the Herons are at no loss for suitable spots whereon to place\ntheir nests. From the name \"papyrus\" our word paper is derived. The\nstems of the plant, after having been split into thin slices, joined\ntogether, and brought to a smooth surface, formed the paper upon\nwhich the ancient Egyptians wrote.\n\nThe Egrets, which are probably included under the generic title\nof Anaphah, are birds of passage, and at the proper season are\nplentiful in Palestine. These pretty birds much resemble the heron\nin general form, and in general habits both birds are very much\nalike, haunting the marshes and edges of lakes and streams, and\nfeeding upon the frogs and other inhabitants of the water. In\ncountries where rice is cultivated, the Egret may generally be seen\nin the artificial swamps in which that plant is sown. The colour\nof the Egret is pure white, with the exception of the train. This\nconsists of a great number of long slender feathers of a delicate\nstraw colour. Like those which form the train of the peacock, they\nfall over the feathers of the tail, and entirely conceal them.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: jungle scene]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CRANE.\n\n     Various passages in which the Crane is mentioned--Its migratory\n     habits, and loud voice--Geographical range of the Crane--Its\n     favourite roosting-places--Size of the Crane, and measurement of\n     the wings--The Crane once used as food--Plumes of the Crane and\n     their use--Structure of the vocal organs--Nest and eggs of the\n     Crane.\n\n\nIn the description of the dove and the swallow two passages have\nbeen quoted in which the name of the CRANE is mentioned, one\nreferring to its voice, and the other to its migratory instinct. The\nfirst passage occurs in Isa. xxxviii. 14: \"Like a crane or swallow,\nso did I chatter;\" and the other in Jer. viii. 7: \"The turtle and\nthe crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.\"\n\n[Illustration: THE CRANE.]\n\nIt is rather remarkable that in both these cases the word \"Crane\" is\nused in connexion with the swallow, or rather the swift, and that in\nboth instances the names of the birds should have been interchanged.\nIf we refer to the original of these passages, we shall find that\nthe former of them would run thus, \"Like a _sis_ or an _agur_,\" and\nthe latter thus, \"The turtle and the _sis_ and the _agur_.\" That in\nthese passages the interpretation of the words _sis_ and _agur_ have\nbeen interchanged has already been mentioned, and, as the former\nhas been described under the name of swallow or swift, we shall now\ntreat of the latter under the title of Crane.\n\nThe species here mentioned is the common Crane, a bird which has a\nvery wide range, and which seeks a warm climate on the approach of\nwinter.\n\nThe Crane performs its annual migrations in company, vast flocks of\nmany thousand individuals passing like great clouds at an immense\nheight, whence their trumpet-like cry is audible for a great\ndistance round, and attracts the ear if not the eye to them. Thus we\nhave at a glance both the characteristics to which reference is made\nin the Scriptures, namely, the noisy cry and the habit of migration.\n\nIt is a very gregarious bird, associating with its comrades in\nflocks, just as do the starlings and rooks of our own country,\nand, like these birds, has favourite roosting-places in which it\npasses the night. When evening approaches, the Cranes may be seen in\nlarge flocks passing to their roosting-places, and, on account of\ntheir great size, having a very strange effect. A fair-sized Crane\nwill measure seven feet across the expanded wings, so that even a\nsolitary bird has a very imposing effect when flying, while that of\na large flock of Cranes on the wing is simply magnificent.\n\nThe spots which the Crane selects for its roosting-places are\ngenerally of the same character. Being in some respects a wary bird,\nthough it is curiously indifferent in others, it will not roost\nin any place near bushes, rocks, or other spots which might serve\nto conceal an enemy. The locality most favoured by the Crane is a\nlarge, smooth, sloping bank, far from any spot wherein an enemy\nmay be concealed. The birds keep a careful watch during the night,\nand it is impossible for any foe to approach them without being\ndiscovered. The Crane is noisy on the wing, and, whether it be\nsoaring high over head on its long migratory journeys, or be merely\nflying at dusk to its roosting-place, it continually utters its\nloud, clangorous cry.\n\nThe food of the Crane is much like that of the heron, but in\naddition to the frogs, fish, worms, and insects, it eats vegetable\nsubstances. Sometimes it is apt to get into cultivated grounds,\nand then does much damage to the crops, pecking up the ground with\nits long beak, partly for the sake of the worms, grubs, and other\ncreatures, and partly for the sake of the sprouting seeds.\n\nAlthough by reason of its scarcity the Crane has been abandoned as\nfood, its flesh is really excellent, and in former days was valued\nvery highly.\n\nLike the egret, the Crane is remarkable for the flowing plumes of\nthe back, which fall over the tail feathers, and form a train. These\nfeathers are much used as plumes, both for purposes of dress and as\nbrushes or flappers wherewith to drive off the flies. By reason of\nthis conformation, some systematic zoologists have thought that it\nhas some affinity to the ostrich, the rhoea, and similar birds,\nand that the resemblance is strengthened by the structure of the\ndigestive organs, which are suited to vegetable as well as animal\nsubstances, the stomach being strong and muscular.\n\nThe peculiar voice of the Crane, which it is so fond of using,\nand to which reference is made in the Scriptures, is caused by a\npeculiar structure of the windpipe, which is exceedingly long,\nand, instead of going straight to the lungs, undergoes several\nconvolutions about the breast-bone, and then proceeds to the lungs.\n\nThe Crane makes its nest on low ground, generally among osiers or\nreeds, and it lays only two eggs, pale olive in colour, dashed\nprofusely with black and brown streaks.\n\n[Illustration: water side]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: stork]\n\n\n\n\nTHE STORK.\n\n     Signification of the Hebrew word _Chasidah_--Various passages\n     in which it is mentioned--The Chasidah therefore a large,\n     wide-winged, migratory bird--Its identification with the\n     Stork--The Stork always protected.\n\n\nIn the Old Testament there are several passages wherein is mentioned\nthe word _Chasidah_.\n\nThe Authorized Version invariably renders the word _Chasidah_ as\n\"Stork\" and is undoubtedly right.\n\nIn Buxtorf's Lexicon there is a curious derivation of the word. He\nsays that the word _Chasidah_ is derived from _chesed_, a word that\nsignifies benevolence.\n\nAccording to some writers, the name was given to the Stork because\nit was supposed to be a bird remarkable for its filial piety;\n\"for the storks in their turn support their parents in their old\nage: they allow them to rest their necks on their bodies during\nmigration, and, if the elders are tired, the young ones take them\non their backs.\" According to others, the name is given to the\nStork because it exercises kindness towards its companions in\nbringing them food; but in all cases the derivation of the word is\nacknowledged to be the same.\n\nPartly in consequence of this idea, which is a very old and almost\nuniversal one, and partly on account of the great services rendered\nby the bird in clearing the ground of snakes, insects, and garbage,\nthe Stork has always been protected through the East, as it is to\nthe present day in several parts of Europe. The slaughter of a\nStork, or even the destruction of its eggs, would be punished with a\nheavy fine; and in consequence of the immunity which it enjoys, it\nloves to haunt the habitations of mankind.\n\nIn many of the Continental towns, where sanitary regulations are not\nenforced, the Stork serves the purpose of a scavenger, and may be\nseen walking about the market-place, waiting for the offal of fish,\nfowls, and the like, which are simply thrown on the ground for the\nStorks to eat. In Eastern lands the Stork enjoys similar privileges,\nand we may infer that the bird was perfectly familiar both to the\nwriters of the various Scriptural books in which it was mentioned,\nand to the people for whom these books were intended.\n\nWhen they settle upon a tract of ground, the Storks divide it among\nthemselves in a manner that seems to have a sort of system in it,\nspreading themselves over it with wonderful regularity, each bird\nappearing to take possession of a definite amount of ground. By this\nmode of proceeding, the ground is rapidly cleared of all vermin; the\nStorks examining their allotted space with the keenest scrutiny,\nand devouring every reptile, mouse, worm, grub, or insect that they\ncan find on it. Sometimes they will spread themselves in this\nmanner over a vast extent of country, arriving suddenly, remaining\nfor several months, and departing without giving any sign of their\nintention to move.\n\n[Illustration: STORKS AND THEIR NESTS.]\n\nThe wings of the Stork, which are mentioned in Holy Writ, are very\nconspicuous, and are well calculated to strike an imaginative mind.\nThe general colour of the bird is white, while the quill feathers\nof the wings are black; so that the effect of the spread wings is\nvery striking, an adult bird measuring about seven feet across,\nwhen flying. As the body, large though it may be, is comparatively\nlight when compared with the extent of wing, the flight is both\nlofty and sustained, the bird flying at very great height, and, when\nmigrating, is literally the \"stork in the heavens.\"\n\nNext we come to the migratory habits of the Stork.\n\nLike the swallow, the Stork resorts year after year to the same\nspots; and when it has once fixed on a locality for its nest, that\nplace will be assuredly taken as regularly as the breeding-season\ncomes round. The same pair are sure to return to their well-known\nhome, notwithstanding the vast distances over which they pass, and\nthe many lands in which they sojourn. Should one of the pair die,\nthe other finds a mate in a very short time, and thus the same home\nis kept up by successive generations of Storks, much as among men\none ancestral mansion is inhabited by a series of members of the\nsame family.\n\nSo well is this known, that when a pair of Storks have made their\nnest in a human habitation their return is always expected, and\nwhen they arrive the absentees are welcomed on all sides. In many\ncountries breeding-places are specially provided for the Storks; and\nwhen one of them is occupied for the first time, the owner of the\nhouse looks upon it as a fortunate omen.\n\nThe localities chosen by the Stork for its nest vary according to\nthe surrounding conditions. The foundation which a Stork requires is\na firm platform, the more elevated the better, but the bird seems to\ncare little whether this platform be on rocks, buildings, or trees.\nIf, for example, it builds its nest in craggy places, far from the\nhabitations of man, it selects some flat ledge for the purpose,\npreferring those that are at the extreme tops of the rocks. The\nsummit of a natural pinnacle is a favourite spot with the Stork.\n\nIn many cases the Stork breeds among old ruins, and under such\ncircumstances it is fond of building its nest on the tops of\npillars or towers, the summits of arches, and similar localities.\nWhen it takes up its abode among mankind, it generally selects the\nbreeding-places which have been built for it by those who know its\ntaste, but it frequently chooses the top of a chimney, or some such\nlocality.\n\nSometimes, however, it is obliged to build in spots where it can\nfind neither rocks nor buildings, and in such cases it builds on\ntrees, and, like the heron, is sociable in its nesting, a whole\ncommunity residing in a clump of trees. It is not very particular\nabout the kind of tree, provided that it be tolerably tall, and\nstrong enough to bear the weight of its enormous nest; and the\nreader will at once see that the fir-trees are peculiarly fitted to\nbe the houses for the Stork.\n\nAs may be expected from the localities chosen by the Stork for its\nbreeding-place, its nest is very large and heavy. It is constructed\nwith very little skill, and is scarcely more than a huge quantity of\nsticks, reeds, and similar substances, heaped together, and having\nin the middle a slight depression in which the eggs are laid. These\neggs are usually three, or perhaps four in number, and now and then\na fifth is seen, and are of a very pale buff or cream colour.\n\nAs is the case with the heron, the young of the Stork are quite\nhelpless when hatched, and are most ungainly little beings, with\ntheir long legs doubled under them, unable to sustain their round\nand almost naked bodies, while their large beaks are ever gaping for\nfood. Those of my readers who have had young birds of any kind must\nhave noticed the extremely grotesque appearance which they possess\nwhen they hold up their heads and cry for food, with their bills\nopen to an almost incredible extent. In such birds as the Stork,\nthe heron, and others of the tribe, the grotesque appearance is\nexaggerated in proportion to the length and gape of the bill.\n\nThe Stork is noted for being a peculiarly kind and loving parent\nto its young, in that point fully deserving the derivation of its\nHebrew name, though its love manifests itself towards the young, and\nnot towards the parent.\n\nThe Rev. H. B. Tristram mentions from personal experience an\ninstance of the watchful care exercised by the Stork over its young.\n\"The writer was once in camp near an old ruined tower in the plains\nof Zana, south of the Atlas, where a pair of storks had their nest.\nThe four young might often be seen from a little distance, surveying\nthe prospect from their lonely height, but whenever any of the human\nparty happened to stroll near the tower, one of the old storks,\ninvisible before, would instantly appear, and, lighting on the nest,\nput its feet gently on the necks of all the young, so as to hold\nthem down out of sight till the stranger had passed, snapping its\nbill meanwhile, and assuming a grotesque air of indifference, as if\nunconscious of there being anything under its charge.\"\n\nThe snapping noise which is here mentioned is the only sound\nproduced by the Stork, which is an absolutely silent bird, as far as\nvoice is concerned.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is another species of Stork found in Palestine, to which\nthe fir-trees are especially a home. This is the Black Stork\n(_Ciconia nigra_), which in some parts of the country is even more\nplentiful than its white relative, which it resembles in almost\nevery particular, except that it has a dark head and back, the\nfeathers being glossed with purple and green like those of the\nmagpie. This species, which is undoubtedly included in the Hebrew\nword _chasidah_, always makes its nest on trees whenever it can find\nthem, and in some of the more densely wooded parts of Palestine is\nin consequence plentiful, placing its nest in the deepest parts of\nthe forests. When it cannot obtain trees, it will build its nest on\nrocky ledges. It lays two or three eggs of a greenish white colour.\n\nLike the preceding species, the Black Stork is easily domesticated.\nColonel Montague kept one which was very tame, and would follow\nits keeper like a dog. Its tameness enabled its proceedings to be\nclosely watched, and its mode of feeding was thereby investigated.\nIt was fond of examining the rank grass and mud for food, and while\ndoing so always kept its bill a little open, so as to pounce down at\nonce on any insect or reptile that it might disturb.\n\nEels were its favourite food, and it was such an adept at catching\nthem that it was never seen to miss one, no matter how small or\nquick it might be. As soon as it had caught one of these active\nfish, it went to some dry place, and then disabled its prey by\nshaking and beating it against the ground before swallowing it,\nwhereas many birds that feed on fish swallow their prey as soon\nas it is caught. The Stork was never seen to swim as the heron\nsometimes does, but it would wade as long as it could place its feet\non the bed of the stream, and would strain its head and the whole of\nits neck under water in searching for fish.\n\n[Illustration: A NEST OF THE WHITE STORK.]\n\nIt was of a mild and peaceable disposition, and, even if angered,\ndid not attempt to bite or strike with its beak, but only denoted\nits displeasure by blowing the air sharply from its lungs, and\nnodding its head repeatedly. After the manner of Storks, it always\nchose an elevated spot on which to repose, and took its rest\nstanding on one leg, with its head so sunk among the feathers of its\nshoulders that scarcely any part of it was visible, the hinder part\nof the head resting on the back, and the bill lying on the fore-part\nof the neck.\n\nThough the bird is so capable of domestication, it does not of its\nown accord haunt the dwellings of men, like the White Stork, but\navoids the neighbourhood of houses, and lives in the most retired\nplaces it can find.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SWAN.\n\n     Signification of the word _Tinshemeth_--The Gallinule and the\n     Ibis--Appearance and habits of the Hyacinthine Gallinule--A\n     strange use for the bird--The White or Sacred Ibis.\n\n\nIn the two parallel chapters of Lev. xi. 18 and Deut. xiv. 16, the\nHebrew word _tinshemeth_ is found, and evidently signifies some\nkind of bird which was forbidden as food. After stating (Lev. xi.\n13) that \"these are they which ye shall have in abomination among\nthe fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination,\" the\nsacred lawgiver proceeds to enumerate a number of birds, nearly all\nof which have already been described. Among them occurs the name of\n_tinshemeth_, between the great owl and the pelican.\n\nWhat was the precise species of bird which was signified by this\nname it is impossible to say, but there is no doubt that it could\nnot have been the Swan, according to the rendering of the Authorized\nVersion. The Swan is far too rare a bird in Palestine to have been\nspecially mentioned in the law of Moses, and in all probability it\nwas totally unknown to the generality of the Israelites. Even had\nit been known to them, and tolerably common, there seems to be no\nreason why it should have been reckoned among the list of unclean\nbirds.\n\nOn turning to the Hebrew Bible, we find that the word is left\nuntranslated, and simply given in its Hebrew form, thereby\nsignifying that the translators could form no opinion whatever of\nthe proper rendering of the word. The Septuagint translates the\nTinshemeth as the Porphyrio or Ibis, and the Vulgate follows the\nsame rendering. Later naturalists have agreed that the Septuagint\nand Vulgate have the far more probable reading; and, as two birds\nare there mentioned, they will be both described.\n\n[Illustration: IBIS AND GALLINULE (SWAN OF SCRIPTURE).]\n\nThe first is the Porphyrio, by which we may understand the\nHYACINTHINE GALLINULE (_Porphyrio veterum_). All the birds of this\ngroup are remarkable for the enormous length of their toes, by means\nof which they are enabled to walk upon the loose herbage that floats\non the surface of the water as firmly as if they were treading\non land. Their feet are also used, like those of the parrots, in\nconveying food to the mouth. We have in England a very familiar\nexample of the Gallinules in the common water-hen, or moor-hen,\nthe toes of which are of great proportionate length, though not so\nlong as those of the Purple Gallinule, which almost rivals in this\nrespect the jacanas of South America and China. The water-rail, and\ncorncrake or land-rail, are also allied to the Gallinules.\n\nThe Hyacinthine Gallinule derives its name from its colour, which is\na rich and variable blue, taking a turquoise hue on the head, neck,\nthroat, and breast, and deep indigo on the back. The large bill and\nthe legs are red. Like many other birds, however, it varies much in\ncolour according to age.\n\nIt has a very wide geographical range, being found in many parts of\nEurope, Asia, and Africa, and is common in the marshy districts of\nPalestine, where its rich blue plumage and its large size, equalling\nthat of a duck, render it very conspicuous. The large and powerful\nbill of this bird betokens the nature of its food, which consists\nalmost entirely of hard vegetable substances, the seeds of aquatic\nherbage forming a large portion of its diet. When it searches for\nfood on the seashore, it eats the marine vegetation, mixing with\nthis diet other articles of an animal nature, such as molluscs and\nsmall reptiles.\n\nThough apparently a clumsy bird, it moves with wonderful speed,\nrunning not only swiftly but gracefully, its large feet being no\nhindrance to the rapidity of its movements. It is mostly found in\nshallow marshes, where the construction of its feet enables it to\ntraverse both the soft muddy ground and the patches of firm earth\nwith equal ease. Its wings, however, are by no means equal to its\nlegs either in power or activity; and, like most of the rail tribe,\nit never takes to the air unless absolutely obliged to do so.\n\nThe nest of the Hyacinthine Gallinule is made on the sedge-patches\nwhich dot the marshes, much like that of the coot. The nest, too,\nresembles that of the coot, being composed of reeds, sedges, and\nother aquatic plants. The eggs are three or four in number, white in\ncolour, and nearly spherical in form.\n\nAs the Ibis has an equal claim to the title of Tinshemeth we will\ndevote a few lines to a description of the bird. The particular\nspecies which would be signified by the word _tinshemeth_ would\nundoubtedly be the WHITE or SACRED IBIS (_Ibis religiosa_), a bird\nwhich derives its name of Sacred from the reverence with which it\nwas held by the ancient Egyptians, and the frequency with which its\nfigure occurs in the monumental sculptures. It was also thought\nworthy of being embalmed, and many mummies of the Ibis have been\nfound in the old Egyptian burial-places, having been preserved for\nsome three thousand years.\n\nIt is about as large as an ordinary hen, and, as its name imports,\nhas the greater part of its plumage white, the ends of the\nwing-feathers and the coverts being black, with violet reflections.\nThe long neck is black and bare, and has a most curious aspect,\nlooking as if it were made of an old black kid glove, very much\ncrumpled, but still retaining its gloss.\n\nThe reason for the extreme veneration with which the bird was\nregarded by the ancient Egyptians seems rather obscure. It is\nprobable, however, that the partial migration of the bird was\nconnected in their minds with the rise of the Nile, a river as\nsacred to the old Egyptians as the Ganges to the modern Hindoo. As\nsoon as the water begins to rise, the Ibis makes its appearance,\nsometimes alone, and sometimes in small troops. It haunts the banks\nof the river, and marshy places in general, diligently searching for\nfood by the aid of its long bill. It can fly well and strongly, and\nit utters at intervals a rather loud cry, dipping its head at every\nutterance.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CORMORANT.\n\n     The word _Shalak_ and its signification--Habits of the\n     Cormorant--The bird trained to catch fish--Mode of securing\n     its prey--Nests and eggs of the Cormorant--Nesting in\n     fir-trees--Flesh of the bird.\n\n\nAlthough in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures the word\nCormorant occurs three times, there is no doubt that in two of the\npassages the Hebrew word ought to have been rendered as Pelican, as\nwe shall see when we come presently to the description of that bird.\n\nIn the two parallel passages, Lev. xi. 17 and Deut. xiv. 17, a\ncreature called the Shalak is mentioned in the list of prohibited\nmeats. That the Shalak must be a bird is evident from the context,\nand we are therefore only left to discover what sort of bird it may\nbe. On looking at the etymology of the word we find that it is\nderived from a root which signifies hurling or casting down, and we\nmay therefore presume that the bird is one which plunges or sweeps\ndown upon its prey.\n\nWeighing, carefully, the opinions of the various Hebraists and\nnaturalists, we may safely determine that the word _shalak_ has been\nrightly translated in the Authorized Version. The Hebrew Bible gives\nthe same reading, and does not affix the mark of doubt to the word,\nthough there are very few of the long list of animals in Lev. xi.\nand Deut. xiv. which are not either distinguished by the mark of\ndoubt, or, like the Tinshemeth, are left untranslated.\n\nThe Cormorant belongs to the family of the pelicans, the\nrelationship between them being evident to the most unpractised eye;\nand the whole structure of the bird shows its admirable adaptation\nfor the life which it leads.\n\nIts long beak enables it to seize even a large fish, while the\nhook at the end prevents the slippery prey from escaping. The\nlong snake-like neck gives the bird the power of darting its beak\nwith great rapidity, and at the same time allows it to seize\nprey immediately to the right or left of its course. Its strong,\nclosely-feathered wings enable it to fly with tolerable speed,\nwhile at the same time they can be closed so tightly to the body\nthat they do not hinder the progress of the bird through the water;\nwhile the tail serves equally when spread to direct its course\nthrough the air, and when partially or entirely closed to act as a\nrudder in the water. Lastly, its short powerful legs, with their\nbroadly-webbed feet, act as paddles, by which the bird urges itself\nthrough the water with such wonderful speed that it can overtake and\nsecure the fishes even in their own element. Besides these outward\ncharacteristics, we find that the bird is able to make a very\nlong stay under water, the lungs being adapted so as to contain a\nwonderful amount of air.\n\nThe Cormorant has been trained to play the same part in the water\nas the falcon in the air, and has been taught to catch fish, and\nbring them ashore for its master. So adroit are they, that if one\nof them should catch a fish which is too heavy for it, another bird\nwill come to its assistance, and the two together will bring the\nstruggling prey to land. Trained birds of this description have been\nemployed in China from time immemorial.\n\nIn order to prevent it from swallowing the fish which it takes, each\nbird has a ring or ligature passed round its neck.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Cormorant is a most voracious bird, swallowing a considerable\nweight of fish at a meal, and digesting them so rapidly that it is\nsoon ready for another supply. Although it is essentially a marine\nbird, hunger often takes it inland, especially to places where there\nare lakes or large rivers.\n\nWhile the ducks and teal and widgeons may be stationary on the\npool, the cormorant is seen swimming to and fro, as if in quest of\nsomething. First raising his body nearly perpendicular, down he\nplunges into the deep, and, after staying there a considerable time,\nhe is sure to bring up a fish, which he invariably swallows head\nforemost. Sometimes half an hour elapses before he can manage to\naccommodate a large eel quietly in his stomach.\n\nYou see him straining violently with repeated efforts to gulp it;\nand when you fancy that the slippery mouthful is successfully\ndisposed of, all on a sudden the eel retrogrades upwards from its\ndismal sepulchre, struggling violently to escape. The cormorant\nswallows it again, and up again it comes, and shows its tail a foot\nor more out of its destroyer's mouth. At length, worn out with\nineffectual writhings and slidings, the eel is gulped down into the\ncormorant's stomach for the last time, there to meet its dreaded and\ninevitable fate.\n\nMr. Fortune gives a very interesting account of the feeding of tame\nCormorants in China. The birds preferred eels to all other food,\nand, in spite of the difficulty in swallowing the slippery and\nactive creature, would not touch another fish as long as an eel\nwas left. The bird is so completely at home in the water that it\ndoes not need, like the heron and other aquatic birds, to bring its\nprey ashore in order to swallow it, but can eat fish in the water\nas well as catch them. It always seizes the fish crosswise, and is\ntherefore obliged to turn it before it can swallow the prey with the\nhead downwards. Sometimes it contrives to turn the fish while still\nunder water, but, if it should fail in so doing, it brings its prey\nto the surface, and shifts it about in its bill, making a series of\nlittle snatches at it until the head is in the right direction. When\nit seizes a very large fish, the bird shakes its prey just as a dog\nshakes a rat, and so disables it. It is said to eat its own weight\nof fish in a single day.\n\nSometimes, when it has been very successful or exceptionally hungry,\nit loads itself with food to such an extent that it becomes almost\ninsensible during the process of digestion, and, although naturally\na keen-eyed and wary bird, allows itself to be captured by hand.\n\nThe nest of the Cormorant is always upon a rocky ledge, and generally\non a spot which is inaccessible except by practised climbers\nfurnished with ropes, poles, hooks, and other appurtenances. Mr.\nWaterton mentions that when he descended the Raincliff, a precipice\nsome four hundred feet in height, he saw numbers of the nests and\neggs, but could not get at them except by swinging himself boldly\noff the face of the cliff, so as to be brought by the return swing\ninto the recesses chosen by the birds.\n\nThe nests are mostly placed in close proximity to each other, and\nare made of sticks and seaweeds, and, as is usual with such nests,\nare very inartificially constructed. The eggs are of a greenish\nwhite on the outside, and green on the inside. When found in the\nnest, they are covered with a sort of chalky crust, so that the\ntrue colour is not perceptible until the crust is scraped off. Two\nto four eggs are generally laid in, or rather on, each nest. As may\nbe imagined from the character of the birds' food, the odour of the\nnesting-place is most horrible.\n\nSometimes, when rocks cannot be found, the Cormorant is obliged to\nselect other spots for its nest. It is mentioned in the \"Proceedings\nof the Zoological Society,\" that upon an island in the midst of\na large lake there were a number of Scotch fir-trees, upon the\nbranches of which were about eighty nests of the Cormorant.\n\nThe flesh of the Cormorant is very seldom eaten, as it has a fishy\nflavour which is far from agreeable. To eat an old Cormorant is\nindeed almost impossible, but the young birds may be rendered edible\nby taking them as soon as killed, skinning them, removing the whole\nof the interior, wrapping them in cloths, and burying them for some\ntime in the ground.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PELICAN.\n\n     The Pelican of the wilderness--Attitudes of the bird--Its love\n     of solitude--Mode of feeding the young--Fables regarding the\n     Pelican--Breeding-places of the bird--The object of its wide\n     wings and large pouch--Colour of the Pelican.\n\n\nIt has been mentioned that in two passages of Scripture, the word\nwhich is translated in the Authorized Version as Cormorant, ought\nto have been rendered as PELICAN. These, however, are not the first\npassages in which we meet with the word _kaath_. The name occurs in\nthe two parallel passages of Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv. among the list\nof birds which are proscribed as food. Passing over them, we next\ncome to Ps. cii. 6. In this passage, the sacred writer is lamenting\nhis misery: \"By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave\nto my skin.\n\n\"I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the\ndesert.\"\n\nIn these sentences, we see that the Kaath was a bird of solitude\nthat was to be found in the \"wilderness,\" _i.e._ far from the\nhabitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the\nPelican, which loves not the neighbourhood of human beings, and is\nfond of resorting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be\ndisturbed.\n\nIn them it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it\nretires after feeding, in order to digest in quiet the ample meal\nwhich it has made. Mr. Tristram well suggests that the metaphor of\nthe Psalmist may allude to the habit common to the Pelican and its\nkin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged itself with\nfood, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its\nbreast.\n\nThis is but one of the singular, and often grotesque, attitudes in\nwhich the Pelican is in the habit of indulging.\n\n[Illustration: THE PELICAN.]\n\nThere are before me a number of sketches made of the Pelicans at the\nZoological Gardens, and in no two cases does one attitude in the\nleast resemble another. In one sketch the bird is sitting in the\nattitude which has just been described. In another it is walking, or\nrather staggering, along, with its head on one side, and its beak\nso closed that hardly a vestige of its enormous pouch can be seen.\nAnother sketch shows the same bird as it appeared when angry with\na companion, and scolding its foe in impotent rage; while another\nshows it basking in the sun, with its magnificent wings spread and\nshaking in the warm beams, and its pouch hanging in folds from its\nchin.\n\nOne of the most curious of these sketches shows the bird squatting\non the ground, with its head drawn back as far as possible, and\nsunk so far among the feathers of the back and shoulders that only\na portion of the head itself can be seen, while the long beak is\nhidden, except an inch or two of the end. In this attitude it might\neasily be mistaken at a little distance for an oval white stone.\n\nThe derivation of the Hebrew word _kaath_ is a very curious one. It\nis taken from a verb signifying \"to vomit,\" and this derivation has\nbeen explained in different ways.\n\nThe early writers, who were comparatively ignorant of natural\nhistory, thought that the Pelican lived chiefly on molluscs, and\nthat, after digesting the animals, it rejected their shells, just as\nthe owl and the hawk reject the bones, fur, and feathers of their\nprey.\n\nThey thought that the Pelican was a bird of a hot temperament, and\nthat the molluscs were quickly digested by the heat of the stomach.\n\nAt the present day, however, knowing as we do the habits of the\nPelican, we find that, although the reasons just given are faulty,\nand that the Pelican lives essentially on fish, and not on molluscs,\nthe derivation of the word is really a good one, and that those\nwho gave the bird the name of Kaath, or the vomiter, were well\nacquainted with its habits.\n\nThe bird certainly does eat molluscs, but the principal part of its\ndiet is composed of fish, which it catches dexterously by a sort\nof sidelong snatch of its enormous bill. The skin under the lower\npart of the beak is so modified that it can form, when distended,\nan enormous pouch, capable of holding a great quantity of fish,\nthough, as long as it is not wanted, the pouch is so contracted into\nlongitudinal folds as to be scarcely perceptible. When it has filled\nthe pouch, it usually retires from the water, and flies to a retired\nspot, often many miles inland, where it can sit and digest at its\nease the enormous meal which it has made.\n\nAs it often chooses its breeding-places in similar spots, far from\nthe water, it has to carry the food with which it nourishes its\nyoung for many miles. For this purpose it is furnished, not only\nwith the pouch which has been just mentioned, but with long, wide,\nand very powerful wings, often measuring from twelve to thirteen\nfeet from tip to tip. No one, on looking at a Pelican as it waddles\nabout or sits at rest, would imagine the gigantic dimensions of\nthe wings, which seem, as the bird spreads them, to have almost as\nunlimited a power of expansion as the pouch.\n\nIn these two points the true Pelicans present a strong contrast to\nthe cormorants, though birds closely allied. The cormorant has its\nhome close by the sea, and therefore needs not to carry its food\nfor any distance. Consequently, it needs no pouch, and has none.\nNeither does it require the great expanse of wing which is needful\nfor the Pelican, that has to carry such a weight of fish through\nthe air. Accordingly, the wings, though strong enough to enable the\nbird to carry for a short distance a single fish of somewhat large\nsize, are comparatively short and closely feathered, and the flight\nof the cormorant possesses neither the grace nor the power which\ndistinguishes that of the Pelican.\n\nWhen the Pelican feeds its young, it does so by pressing its beak\nagainst its breast, so as to force out of it the enclosed fish.\nNow the tip of the beak is armed, like that of the cormorant, with\na sharply-curved hook, only, in the case of the Pelican, the hook\nis of a bright scarlet colour, looking, when the bird presses the\nbeak against the white feathers of the breast, like a large drop of\nblood. Hence arose the curious legend respecting the Pelican, which\nrepresented it as feeding its young with its own blood, and tearing\nopen its breast with its hooked bill. We find that this legend is\nexemplified by the oft-recurring symbol of the \"Pelican feeding its\nyoung\" in ecclesiastical art, as an emblem of Divine love.\n\nThis is one of the many instances in which the inventive, poetical,\ninaccurate Oriental mind has seized some peculiarity of form, and\nbased upon it a whole series of fabulous legends. As long as they\nrestricted themselves to the appearance and habits of the animals\nwith which they were familiarly acquainted, the old writers were\ncuriously full, exact, and precise in their details. But as soon as\nthey came to any creature of whose mode of life they were entirely\nor partially ignorant, they allowed their inventive faculties full\nscope, and put forward as zoological facts statements which were\nthe mere creation of their own fancy. We have already seen several\nexamples of this propensity, and shall find more as we proceed with\nthe zoology of the Scriptures.\n\nThe fabulous legends of the Pelican are too numerous to be even\nmentioned, but there is one which deserves notice, because it is\nmade the basis of an old Persian fable.\n\nThe writer of the legend evidently had some partial knowledge of the\nbird. He knew that it had a large pouch which could hold fish and\nwater; that it had large and powerful wings; and that it was in the\nhabit of flying far inland, either for the purpose of digesting its\nfood or nourishing its young. Knowing that the Pelican is in the\nhabit of choosing solitary spots in which it may bring up its young\nin safety, but not knowing the precise mode of its nesting, the\nwriter in question has trusted to his imagination, and put forward\nhis theories as facts.\n\nKnowing that the bird dwells in \"the wilderness,\" he has assumed\nthat the wilderness in question is a sandy, arid desert, far from\nwater, and consequently from vegetation. Such being the case, the\nnurture of the Pelican's young is evidently a difficult question.\nBeing aquatic birds, the young must needs require water for drink\nand bathing, as well as fish for food; and, though a supply of\nboth these necessaries could be brought in the ample pouches of\nthe parents, they would be wasted unless some mode of storing were\nemployed.\n\nAccordingly, the parent birds were said to make their nest in a\nhollow tree, and to line it with clay, or to build it altogether of\nclay, so as to leave a deep basin. This basin the parent birds were\nsaid to use as a sort of store-pond, bringing home supplies of fish\nand water in their pouches, and pouring them into the pond. The wild\nbeasts who lived in the desert were said to be acquainted with these\nnests, and to resort to them daily in order to quench their thirst,\nrepaying their entertainers by protecting their homes.\n\nIn real fact, the Pelican mostly breeds near water, and is fond of\nselecting little rocky islands where it cannot be approached without\ndanger. The nest is made on the ground, and is formed in a most\ninartificial manner of reeds and grass, the general mass of the\nnest being made of the reeds, and the lining being formed of grass.\nThe eggs are white, of nearly the same shape at both ends, and are\nfrom two to five in number. On an average, however, each nest will\ncontain about two eggs.\n\nThe parent birds are very energetic in defence of their eggs or\nyoung, and, according to Le Vaillant, when approached they are \"like\nfurious harpies let loose against us, and their cries rendered us\nalmost deaf. They often flew so near us that they flapped their\nwings in our faces, and, though we fired our pieces repeatedly, we\nwere not able to frighten them.\" When the well-known naturalist\nSonnerat tried to drive a female Pelican from her nest, she appeared\nnot to be frightened, but angry. She would not move from her nest,\nand when he tried to push her off, she struck at him with her long\nbill and uttered cries of rage.\n\nIn order to aid the bird in carrying the heavy weights with which\nit loads itself, the whole skeleton is permeated with air, and is\nexceedingly light. Beside this, the whole cellular system of the\nbird is honeycombed with air-cells, so that the bulk of the bird\ncan be greatly increased, while its weight remains practically\nunaltered, and the Pelican becomes a sort of living balloon.\n\nThe habit of conveying its food inland before eating it is so\ncharacteristic of the Pelican that other birds take advantage of\nit. In some countries there is a large hawk which robs the Pelican,\njust as the bald-headed eagle of America robs the osprey. Knowing\ninstinctively that when a Pelican is flying inland slowly and\nheavily and with a distended pouch it is carrying a supply of food\nto its home, the hawk dashes at it, and frightens it so that the\npoor bird opens its beak, and gives up to the assailant the fish\nwhich it was bearing homewards.\n\nIt is evident that the wings which are needed for supporting such\nweights, and which, as we have seen, exceed twelve feet in length\nfrom tip to tip, would be useless in the water, and would hinder\nrather than aid the bird if it attempted to dive as the close-winged\ncormorant does. Accordingly, we find that the Pelican is not a\ndiver, and, instead of chasing its finny prey under water, after\nthe manner of the cormorant, it contents itself with scooping up\nin its beak the fishes which come to the surface of the water. The\nvery buoyancy of its body would prevent it from diving as does the\ncormorant, and, although it often plunges into the water so fairly\nas to be for a moment submerged, it almost immediately rises, and\npursues its course on the surface of the water, and not beneath it.\nLike the cormorant, the Pelican can perch on trees, though it does\nnot select such spots for its roosting-places, and prefers rocks to\nbranches. In one case, however, when some young Pelicans had been\ncaptured and tied to a stake, their mother used to bring them food\nduring the day, and at night was accustomed to roost in the branches\nof a tree above them.\n\nThough under some circumstances a thoroughly social bird, it is yet\nfond of retiring to the most solitary spots in order to consume at\npeace the prey that it has captured; and, as it sits motionless and\nalone for hours, more like a white stone than a bird, it may well be\naccepted as a type of solitude and desolation.\n\nThe colour of the common Pelican is white, with a very slight\npinky tinge, which is most conspicuous in the breeding season. The\nfeathers of the crest are yellow, and the quill feathers of the\nwings are jetty black, contrasting well with the white plumage of\nthe body. The pouch is yellow, and the upper part of the beak bluish\ngrey, with a red line running across the middle, and a bright red\nhook at the tip. This plumage belongs only to the adult bird, that\nof the young being ashen grey, and four or five years are required\nbefore the bird puts on its full beauty. There is no difference in\nthe appearance of the sexes. The illustration represents a fine old\nmale Crested Pelican. The general colour is a greyish white, with a\nslight yellowish tint on the breast. The pouch is bright orange, and\nthe crest is formed of curling feathers.\n\n[Illustration: scene]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: reptile]\n\n\n\n\nREPTILES.\n\n[Illustration: scene]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: tortoise]\n\n\n\n\nTHE TORTOISE.\n\n     The Tzab of the Scriptures, translated as Tortoise--Flesh\n     and eggs of the Tortoise--Its slow movements--Hibernation\n     dependent on temperature--The Water-Tortoises--Their food and\n     voracity--Their eggs--Their odour terrifying the horses--The\n     Dhubb lizard and its legends--Its food, and localities which it\n     prefers.\n\n\nWe now come to a different class of animated beings. In Levit. xi.\n29, there occurs among the list of unclean beasts a word which is\ntranslated in the Authorized Version as \"tortoise.\" The word is\n_Tzab_, and is rendered in the Hebrew Bible as \"lizard,\" but with\nthe mark of doubt affixed to it. As the correct translation of the\nword is very dubious, we shall examine it in both these senses.\n\nThe common Tortoise is very common in Palestine, and is so plentiful\nthat it would certainly have been used by the Israelites as food,\nhad it not been prohibited by law. At the present day it is cooked\nand eaten by the inhabitants of the country who are not Jews, and\nits eggs are in as great request as those of the fowl.\n\nThese eggs are hard, nearly spherical, thick-shelled, and covered\nwith minute punctures, giving them a roughness like that of a file.\nIn captivity the Tortoise is very careless about the mode in which\nthey are deposited, and I have seen a large yard almost covered\nwith eggs laid by Tortoises and abandoned. The white or albumen of\nthe egg is so stiff and gelatinous that to empty one of them without\nbreaking the shell is a difficult task, and the yolk is very dark,\nand covered with minute spots of black. When fresh the eggs are as\ngood as those of the fowl, and many persons even think them better;\nthe only drawback being that their small size and thick shell cause\nconsiderable trouble in eating them.\n\n[Illustration: THE DHUBB OR LIZARD AND THE TORTOISE].\n\nThe flesh of the Tortoise is eaten, not only by human beings, but by\nbirds, such as the laemmergeier. In order to get at the flesh of the\nTortoise, they carry it high in the air and drop it on the ground so\nas to break the shell to pieces, should the reptile fall on a stone\nor rock. If, as is not often the case in such a rocky land as that\nof Palestine, it should fall on a soft spot, the bird picks it up,\nsoars aloft, and drops it again.\n\nThe Tortoises have no teeth, but yet are able to crop the herbage\nwith perfect ease. In lieu of teeth the edges of the jaws are\nsharp-edged and very hard, so that they cut anything that comes\nbetween them like a pair of shears. Leaves that are pulpy and\ncrisp are bitten through at once, but those that are thin, tough,\nand fibrous are rather torn than bitten, the Tortoise placing its\nfeet upon them, and dragging them to pieces with its jaws. The\ncarnivorous Tortoises have a similar habit, as we shall presently\nsee.\n\n[Illustration: WATER TORTOISE.]\n\nThis is the species from whose deliberate and slow movements the\nfamiliar metaphor of \"slow as a Tortoise\" was derived, and it is\nthis species which is the hero of the popular fable of the \"Hare and\nthe Tortoise.\" Many of the reptiles are very slow in some things and\nastonishingly quick in others. Some of the lizards, for example,\nwill at one time remain motionless for many hours together, or creep\nabout with a slow and snail-like progress, while at others they\ndart from spot to spot with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely\nfollow their movements. This however is not the case with the\nTortoise, which is always slow, and, but for the defensive armour in\nwhich it is encased, would long ago have been extirpated.\n\nDuring the whole of the summer months it may be seen crawling\ndeliberately among the herbage, eating in the same deliberate style\nwhich characterises all its movements, and occasionally resting in\nthe same spot for many hours together, apparently enjoying the warm\nbeams of the sunshine.\n\nAs winter approaches, it slowly scrapes a deep hole in the ground,\nand buries itself until the following spring awakes it once more to\nactive life. The depth of its burrow depends on the severity of the\nwinter, for, as the cold increases, the Tortoise sinks itself more\ndeeply into the earth.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMention has been made of a species of Tortoise that inhabits the\nwater. This is the CASPIAN EMYS (_Emys caspica_), a small species,\nmeasuring about six inches in length. It belongs to the large family\nof the Terrapins, several of which are so well known in America, and\nhas a long, retractile neck, very sharp jaws, and webbed feet, and a\nwell-developed tail.\n\nThe body is flattish, and the colour is olive, with lines of yellow\nedged with black, and the head is marked with longitudinal streaks\nof bright yellow. After the death of the creature these yellow\nstreaks fade away gradually, and at last become nearly black. The\nskin of the head is thin, but very hard. In general appearance it\nis not unlike the chicken Tortoise of America, a species which is\noften brought to England and kept in captivity, on account of its\nhardy nature and the little trouble which is needed for keeping it\nin health.\n\nI have kept specimens of the Caspian Emys for some time, and found\nthem to be more interesting animals than they at first promised\nto be. They were active, swimming with considerable speed, and\nsnatching quickly at anything which they fancied might be food.\n\nThey were exceedingly voracious, consuming daily a quantity of meat\napparently disproportioned to their size, and eating it in a manner\nthat strongly reminded me of the mole when engaged on a piece of\nmeat or the body of a bird or mouse. The Tortoise would plant its\nfore-paws firmly at each side of the meat, seize a mouthful in its\njaws, and, by retracting its head violently, would tear away the\npiece which it had grasped.\n\nThey are most destructive among fish, and are apt to rise quietly\nunderneath a fish as it basks near the surface of the water,\ngrasp it beneath with its sharp-edged jaws, and tear away the\npiece, leaving the fish to die. It is rather remarkable that the\nLepidosiren, or mud-fish of the Gambia, destroys fish in a precisely\nsimilar manner, though, as its jaws are much sharper than those of\nthe Emys, it does not need the aid of fore-paws in biting out its\nmouthful of flesh.\n\nLike the land Tortoise, it is one of the hibernators, and during the\nwinter months buries itself deeply in the earth, choosing for this\npurpose the soft, muddy bed or bank of the pond in which it lives.\n\nIts eggs are white, and hard-shelled, but are more oval than those\nof the land Tortoise, and both ends are nearly alike. In fact, its\negg might well be mistaken for that of a small pigeon. The shell\nhas a porcelain-like look, and is very liable to crack, so that the\nresemblance is increased.\n\nThere is one drawback to these reptiles when kept as pets. They\ngive out a very unpleasant odour, which is disagreeable to human\nnostrils, but is absolutely terrifying to many animals. The monkey\ntribe have the strongest objection to these aquatic Tortoises. I\nonce held one of them towards a very tame chimpanzee, much to his\ndiscomfiture. He muttered and remonstrated, and retreated as far as\nhe could, pushing out his lips in a funnel-like form, and showing\nhis repugnance to the reptile in a manner that could not be mistaken.\n\nHorses seem to be driven almost frantic with terror, not only by the\nsight, but by the odour of these Tortoises. In Southern Africa there\nare Tortoises closely allied to the Caspian Emys, and having the\nsame power of frightening horses.\n\nI have read an account of an adventure there with one of those\nTortoises, which I will give. This variety is described as being of\nan olive colour. When adult, there is a slight depression on either\nside of the vertebral line.\n\n\"Some very awkward accidents have occurred to parties from the\nterror caused by the fresh-water turtle (_Pelamedusa subrufa_).\nCarts have been smashed to fragments, riders thrown, and the utmost\nconfusion caused by them. It is their smell, and it is certainly\nvery disagreeable.\n\n\"My first acquaintance with the fact was in this wise. I was out\nshooting with two young ladies who had volunteered as markers; and,\nas you know, all our shooting is done from horseback. I had jumped\noff for a shot at some francolins near a knill, or water-hole, and,\nafter picking up my birds, was coming round the knoll to windward\nof the horses. In my path scrambled a turtle. I called out to my\nyoung friends, and told them of my find, on which one of them, in\na hasty voice, said, 'Oh, please, Mr. L., don't touch it; you will\nfrighten the horses!'\n\n\"Of course I laughed at the idea, and picked up the reptile, which\ninstantly emitted its pungent odour--its means of defence. Though\na long way off, the moment the horses caught the scent, away they\nflew, showing terror in every action. The girls, luckily splendid\nriders, tugged in vain at the reins; away they went over the Veldt,\nleaving me in mortal fear that the yawning 'aard-vark' holes\n(_Orycteropus capensis_) would break their necks. My own horse,\nwhich I had hitched to a bush, tore away his bridle, and with the\nends streaming in the wind and the stirrups clashing about him,\nsped off home at full gallop, and was only recovered after a severe\nchase by my gallant young Amazons, who, after a race of some miles,\nsucceeded in checking their affrighted steeds and in securing my\nrunaway. But for some hours after, if I ventured to windward, there\nwere wild-looking eyes and cocked ears--the smell of the reptile\nclung to me.\"\n\nShould any of my readers keep any of those water Tortoises, they\nwill do well to supply them plentifully with food, to give them an\nelevated rocky perch on which they can scramble, and on which they\nwill sit for hours so motionless that at a little distance they can\nscarcely be distinguished from the stone on which they rest. They\nshould also be weighed at regular intervals, as decrease of weight\nis a sure sign that something is wrong, and, as a general rule, is\nan almost certain precursor of death.\n\nThis little reptile is not without its legends. According to the old\nwriters on natural history, it is of exceeding use to vine-growers\nin the season when there is excess of rain or hail. Whenever the\nowner of a vineyard sees a black cloud approaching, all he has to do\nis, to take one of these Tortoises, lay it on its back, and carry it\nround the vineyard. He must then go into the middle of the ground\nand lay the reptile on the earth, still on its back; and the effect\nof this proceeding would be that the cloud would pass aside from a\nplace so well protected.\n\n\"But,\" proceeds the narrator, not wishing to be responsible for\nthe statement, \"such diabolical and foolish observations were not\nso muche to be remembered in this place, were it not for their\nsillinesse, that by knowing them men might learn the weaknesse\nof human wisdom when it erreth from the fountain of all science\nand true knowledge (which is Divinity), and the most approved\nassertions of nature. And so I will say no more in this place of the\nsweet-water tortoise.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE DHUBB.\n\n\nWe now come to the second animal, which may probably be the Tzab of\nthe Old Testament.\n\nThis creature is one of the lizards, and is a very odd-looking\ncreature. It is certainly not so attractive in appearance that the\nJews might be supposed to desire it as food; but it often happens\nthat, as is the case with the turtle and iguana, from the most\nungainly, in the latter animal even repulsive, forms are produced\nthe most delicate meats.\n\nThe DHUBB, or EGYPTIAN MASTIGURE, as the lizard is indifferently\ncalled, grows to a considerable size, measuring when adult three\nfeet in length. Its colour is green, variegated with brown, and is\nslightly changeable, though not to the extent that distinguishes\nthe chameleon. The chief peculiarity of this lizard consists in its\ntail, which is covered with a series of whorls or circles of long,\nsharply-pointed, hard-edged scales. The very appearance of this tail\nsuggests its use as a weapon of defence, and it is said that even\nthe dreaded cerastes is conquered by it, when the lizard and the\nsnake happen to find themselves occupants of the same hole.\n\nThe ancients had a very amusing notion respecting the use of the\nspiny tail possessed by the Dhubb and its kin. They had an idea\nthat, comparatively small though it was, it fed upon cattle, and\nthat it was able to take them from the herd and drive them to its\nhome. For this purpose, when it had selected an ox, it jumped on\nits back, and by the pricking of its sharp claws drove the animal\nto gallop in hope of ridding himself of his tormentor. In order to\nguide him in the direction of its home, it made use of its tail,\nlashing the ox \"to make him go with his rider to the place of his\nmost fit execution, free from all rescue of his herdsman, or\npastor, or the annoyance of passengers, where, in most cruel and\nsavage manner, he teareth the limbs and parts one from another till\nhe be devoured.\"\n\nThis very absurd account is headed by an illustration, which, though\nbad in drawing and rude in execution, is yet so bold and truthful\nthat there is no doubt that it was sketched from the living animal.\n\nAs it haunts sandy downs, rocky spots, and similar localities, it\nis well adapted for the Holy Land, which is the home of a vast\nnumber of reptiles, especially of those belonging to the lizards. In\nthe summer time they have the full enjoyment of the hot sunbeams,\nin which they delight, and which seem to rouse these cold-blooded\ncreatures to action, while they deprive the higher animals of all\nspirit and energy. In the winter time these very spots afford\nlocalities wherein the lizards can hibernate until the following\nspring, and in such a case they furnish the reptiles with secure\nhiding-places.\n\nAlthough the Dhubb does not destroy and tear to pieces oxen and\nother cattle, it is yet a rather bloodthirsty reptile, and will kill\nand devour birds as large as the domestic fowl. Usually, however,\nits food consists of beetles and other insects, which it takes\ndeliberately.\n\n[Illustration: rocks and water]\n\n\n\n\nTHE LEVIATHAN OR CROCODILE.\n\n     Signification of the word _Leviathan_--Description in the Book\n     of Job--Structure and general habits of the Crocodile--The\n     throat-valve and its use--Position of the nostrils--Worship of\n     the Crocodile--The reptile known in the Holy Land--Two legends\n     respecting its presence there--Mode of taking prey--Cunning\n     of the Crocodile--The baboons and the Crocodile--Speed of\n     the reptile--Eggs and young of the Crocodile, and their\n     enemies--Curious story of the ichneumon and ibis--Modes of\n     capturing the Crocodile--Analysis of Job's description--The\n     Crocodile also signified by the word _Tannin_. Aaron's rod\n     changed into a Tannin--Various passages in which the word\n     occurs--Use of the word by the prophet Jeremiah.\n\n\nThe word _Leviathan_ is used in a rather loose manner in the Old\nTestament, in some places representing a mammalian of the sea, and\nin others signifying a reptile inhabiting the rivers. As in the most\nimportant of these passages the Crocodile is evidently signified, we\nwill accept that rendering, and consider the Crocodile as being the\nLeviathan of Scripture. The Jewish Bible accepts the word Crocodile,\nand does not add the mark of doubt.\n\nThe fullest account of the Leviathan occurs in Job xli., the whole\nof which chapter is given to the description of the terrible\nreptile. As the translation of the Jewish Bible differs in some\npoints from that of the Authorized Version, I shall here give the\nformer, so that the reader may be able to compare them with each\nother.\n\n  \"Canst thou draw out a crocodile with a hook, or his tongue with a\n        cord which thou lettest down?\n\n  \"Canst thou put a reed into his nose, or bore his jaw through with\n        a thorn?\n\n  \"Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words\n        unto thee?\n\n  \"Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him as a servant\n        for ever?\n\n  \"Wilt thou play with him as with a bird, or wilt thou bind him for\n        thy maidens?\n\n  \"Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him\n        among the merchants?\n\n  \"Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with\n        fish-spears?\n\n  \"Lay thine hand upon him, thou wilt no more remember the battle.\n\n  \"Behold, the hope of him is in vain; shall not one be cast down at\n        the sight of him?\n\n  \"None is so fierce that dare stir him up; who then is able to stand\n        before Me?\n\n  \"Who hath forestalled Me that I should repay him? whatsoever is\n        under the whole heaven is Mine.\n\n  \"I will not be silent of his parts, nor of the matter of his power,\n        nor of his comely proportion.\n\n  \"Who can uncover the face of his garment? who would enter the double\n        row in his jaw?\n\n  \"Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round\n        about.\n\n  \"The strength of his shields are his pride, shut up together as\n        with a close seal.\n\n  \"One is so near to another that no air can come between them.\n\n  \"They are joined one to another, they stick together that they\n        cannot be sundered.\n\n  \"His snortings make light to shine, and his eyes are like the\n        eyelids of the morning dawn.\n\n  \"Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or\n        caldron.\n\n  \"His breath kindleth live coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.\n\n  \"In his neck abideth strength, and before him danceth terror.\n\n  \"The flakes of his flesh are joined together, they are firm in\n        themselves; yea, as hard as nether millstone.\n\n  \"When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid; by reason of\n        breakings they lose themselves.\n\n  \"The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the\n        dart, nor the habergeon.\n\n  \"He esteemeth iron as straw, and copper as rotten wood.\n\n  \"The arrow cannot make him flee: sling-stones are turned with him\n        into stubble.\n\n  \"Clubs are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.\n\n  [Illustration: CROCODILE ATTACKING HORSES.]\n\n  \"His under parts are like sharp points of potsherd; he speaketh\n        sharp points upon the mire.\n\n  \"He maketh the deep to boil like a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot\n        of ointment.\n\n  \"He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be\n        hoary.\n\n  \"Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.\n\n  \"He beholdeth all high things; he is a king over all the children\n        of pride.\"\n\nThis splendid description points as clearly to the Crocodile as the\ndescription of the Behemoth which immediately precedes it does to\nthe hippopotamus, and it is tolerably evident that the sacred poet\nwho wrote these passages must have been personally acquainted with\nboth the Crocodile and the hippopotamus. In both descriptions there\nare a few exaggerations, or rather, poetical licences. For example,\nthe bones of the hippopotamus are said to be iron and copper, and\nthe Crocodile is said to kindle live coals with his breath. These,\nhowever, are but the natural imagery of an Oriental poet, and,\nconsidering the subject, we may rather wonder that the writer has\nnot introduced even more fanciful metaphors.\n\n\nDESCRIPTION OF THE CROCODILE.\n\nThere are several species of Crocodile in different parts of the\nworld, ten species at least being known to science.\n\nSome inhabit India, some tropical America, some Asia, and some\nAfrica, so that the genus is represented in nearly all the warmer\nparts of the world.\n\nThey are all known by the formation of the teeth, the lower canines\nfitting each into a notch on the side of the upper jaw. The feet are\nwebbed to the tips, and though the reptile mostly propels itself\nthrough the water by means of its tail, it can also paddle itself\ngently along by means of its feet.\n\nThe teeth are all made for snatching and tearing, but not for\nmasticating, the Crocodile swallowing its prey entire when possible;\nand when the animal is too large to be eaten entire, the reptile\ntears it to pieces, and swallows the fragments without attempting to\nmasticate them.\n\nIn order to enable it to open its mouth under water, the back\nof its throat is furnished with a very simple but beautiful\ncontrivance, whereby the water is received on a membranous valve\nand, in proportion to its pressure, closes the orifice of the\nthroat. As the Crocodiles mostly seize their prey in their open jaws\nand hold it under water until drowned, it is evident that without\nsuch a structure as has been described the Crocodile would be as\nlikely to drown itself as its prey. But the throat-valve enables\nit to keep its mouth open while the water is effectually prevented\nfrom running down its throat, and the nostrils, placed at the end of\nthe snout, enable it to breathe at its ease, while the unfortunate\nanimal which it has captured is being drowned beneath the surface of\nthe water.\n\nThis position of the nostrils serves another purpose, and enables\nthe Crocodile to breathe while the whole of its body is under the\nwater, and only an inch or two of the very end of the snout is\nabove the surface. As, moreover, the Crocodile, as is the case with\nmost reptiles, is able to exist for a considerable time without\nbreathing, it only needs to protrude its nostrils for a few moments,\nand can then sink entirely beneath the water. In this way the\nreptile is able to conceal itself in case it should suspect danger;\nand as, in such instances, it dives under the herbage of the river,\nand merely thrusts its nose into the air among the reeds and rushes,\nit is evident that, in spite of its enormous size, it baffles the\nobservation of almost every foe.\n\nAmong reptiles, the mailed Crocodiles may be mentioned as most\nformidable foes to man. Vast in bulk, yet grovelling with the belly\non the earth; clad in bony plates with sharp ridges; green eyes with\na peculiar fiery stare, gleaming out from below projecting orbits;\nlips altogether wanting, displaying the long rows of interlocking\nteeth even when the mouth is closed, so that, even when quiet, the\nmonster seems to be grinning with rage,--it is no wonder that the\nCrocodile should be, in all the countries which it inhabits, viewed\nwith dread.\n\nNor is this terror groundless. The Crocodiles, both of the Nile\nand of the Indian rivers, are well known to make man their victim,\nand scarcely can a more terrible fate be imagined than that of\nfalling into the jaws of this gigantic reptile. Strange as it may\nappear, the Crocodile is one of the many animals to which divine\nhonours were paid by the ancient Egyptians. This we learn from\nseveral sources. Herodotus, for example, in \"Euterpe,\" chapter\n69, writes as follows: \"Those who dwell about Thebes and Lake\nMoeris, consider them to be very sacred; and they each of them\ntrain up a Crocodile, which is taught to be quite tame; and they put\ncrystal and gold ear-rings into their ears, and bracelets on their\nfore-paws; and they give them appointed and sacred food, and treat\nthem as well as possible while alive and when dead, they embalm\nthem, and bury them in sacred vaults.\"\n\n[Illustration: A CROCODILE POOL OF ANCIENT EGYPT.]\n\nThe reasons for this worship are several. At the root of them all\nlies the tendency of man to respect that which he fears rather\nthan that which he loves; and the nearer the man approaches the\nsavage state, the more is this feeling developed. By this tendency\nhis worship is regulated, and it will be found that when man is\nsufficiently advanced to be capable of worship at all, his reverence\nis invariably paid to the object which has the greatest terrors\nfor him. The Crocodile, therefore, being the animal that was most\ndreaded by the ancient Egyptians, was accepted as the natural type\nof divinity.\n\n[Illustration: CROCODILES OF THE UPPER NILE.]\n\nOwing to the accuracy of the description in the Book of Job, which\nis evidently written by one who was personally acquainted with\nthe Crocodile, it is thought by many commentators that the writer\nmust have been acquainted with the Nile, in which river both the\nCrocodile and hippopotamus are found at the present day.\n\nIt is possible, however, that the hippopotamus and the Crocodile\nhave had at one time a much wider range than they at present enjoy.\nEven within the memory of man the hippopotamus has been driven\nfurther and further up the Nile by the encroachments of man. It has\nlong been said that even at the present day the Crocodile exists in\nPalestine in the river which is called \"Nhar Zurka,\" which flows\nfrom Samaria through the plains of Sharon. Several of the older\nwriters have mentioned its existence in this river, and, since this\nwork was commenced, the long-vexed question has been set at rest; a\nCrocodile, eight feet in length, having been captured in the Nhar\nZurka.\n\nNo description of the Crocodile would be complete without allusion\nto the mode in which it seizes its prey. It does not attack it\nopenly, neither, as some have said, does it go on shore for that\npurpose. It watches to see whether any animal comes to drink, and\nthen, sinking beneath the surface of the water, dives rapidly,\nrises unexpectedly beneath the unsuspecting victim, seizes it with\na sudden snap of its huge jaws, and drags it beneath the water.\nShould the intended prey be too far from the water to be reached by\nthe mouth, or so large that it may offer a successful resistance,\nthe Crocodile strikes it a tremendous blow with its tail, and knocks\nit into the water. The dwellers on the Nile bank say that a large\nCrocodile will with a single blow of its tail break all the four\nlegs of an ox or a horse.\n\nThese cunning reptiles even contrive to catch birds as they come for\nwater. On the banks of the Nile the smaller birds drink in a very\npeculiar manner. They settle in numbers on the flexible branches\nthat overhang the stream, and when, by their weight, the branch\nbends downwards, they dip their beaks in the water. The Crocodile\nsees afar off a branch thus loaded, swims as near as possible, and\nthen dives until it can see the birds immediately above it, when it\nrises suddenly, and with a snap of its jaws secures a whole mouthful\nof the unsuspecting birds.\n\nSir S. Baker, in his travels on the Nile, gave much attention to\nthe Crocodile, and has collected a great amount of interesting\ninformation about the reptile, much of which is peculiarly valuable,\ninasmuch as it illustrates the Scriptural notices of the creature.\nHe states that it is a very crafty animal, and that its usual mode\nof attack is by first showing itself, then swimming slowly away to a\nconsiderable distance, so as to make its intended victim think that\ndanger is over, and then returning under water. It is by means of\nthis manoeuvre that it captures the little birds. It first makes\na dash at them, open-mouthed, causing them to take to flight in\nterror. It then sails slowly away as if it were so baffled that it\ndid not intend to renew the attack. When it is at a considerable\ndistance, the birds think that their enemy has departed, and return\nto the branch, which they crowd more than ever, and in a minute\nor two several dozen of them are engulfed in the mouth of the\nCrocodile, which has swiftly dived under them.\n\nOn one occasion, Sir S. Baker was walking near the edge of the\nriver, when he heard a great shrieking of women on the opposite\nbank. It turned out that a number of women had been filling their\n\"gerbas\" (water-skins), when one of them was suddenly attacked by\na large Crocodile. She sprang back, and the reptile, mistaking the\nfilled gerba for a woman, seized it, and gave the owner time to\nescape. It then dashed at the rest of the women, but only succeeded\nin seizing another gerba.\n\nA short time previously a Crocodile, thought by the natives to be\nthe same individual, had seized a woman and carried her off; and\nanother had made an attack on a man in a very curious manner. A\nnumber of men were swimming across the river, supported, after\ntheir custom, on gerbas inflated with air, when one of them felt\nhimself seized by the leg by a Crocodile, which tried to drag him\nunder water. He, however, retained his hold on the skin, and his\ncompanions also grasped his arms and hair with one hand, while\nwith the other they struck with their spears at the Crocodile. At\nlast they succeeded in driving the reptile away, and got their\nunfortunate companion to land, where they found that the whole of\nthe flesh was stripped from the leg from the knee downwards. The\npoor man died shortly afterwards.\n\nAnother traveller relates that three young men who were obliged to\ncross a branch of a river in their route, being unable to procure\na boat, endeavoured to swim their horses to the opposite shore.\nTwo of them had reached the bank in safety, but the third loitered\nso long on the brink as only to have just entered the water at the\nmoment his comrades had reached the opposite side. When he was\nnearly half-way across, they saw a large Crocodile, which was known\nto infest this pass, issuing from under the reeds. They instantly\nwarned their companion of his danger; but it was too late for him\nto turn back. When the Crocodile was so close as to be on the point\nof seizing him, he threw his saddle-bag to it. The ravenous animal\nimmediately caught the whole bundle in its jaws, and disappeared for\na few moments, but soon discovered its mistake, and rose in front\nof the horse, which, then seeing it for the first time, reared and\nthrew its rider. He was an excellent swimmer, and had nearly escaped\nby diving towards the bank; but, on rising for breath, his pursuer\nalso rose, and seized him by the middle. This dreadful scene,\nwhich passed before the eyes of his companions, without the least\npossibility of their rendering any assistance, was terminated by the\nCrocodile, having previously drowned the unfortunate man, appearing\non an opposite sand-bank with the body, and there devouring it.\n\nThe crafty Crocodile tries to catch the baboons by lying in wait for\nthem at their drinking places; but the baboons are generally more\nthan a match for the Crocodile in point of cunning and quickness of\nsight. Sir S. Baker witnessed an amusing example of such an attempt\nand its failure.\n\n\"The large tamarind-trees on the opposite bank are generally full\nof the dog-faced baboons (_Cynocephalus_) at their drinking hour.\nI watched a large Crocodile creep slily out of the water and lie\nin waiting among the rocks at the usual drinking place before they\narrived, but the baboons were too wide awake to be taken in so\neasily.\n\n\"A young fellow was the first to discover the enemy. He had\naccompanied several wise and experienced old hands to the extremity\nof a bough that at a considerable height overhung the river; from\nthis post they had a bird's eye view, and reconnoitred before one of\nthe numerous party descended to drink. The sharp eyes of the young\none at once detected the Crocodile, who matched in colour so well\nwith the rocks that most probably a man would not have noticed it\nuntil too late.\n\n\"At once the young one commenced shaking the bough and screaming\nwith all his might, to attract the attention of the Crocodile and to\ninduce it to move. In this he was immediately joined by the whole\nparty, who yelled in chorus, while the large old males bellowed\ndefiance, and descended to the lowest branches within eight or\nten feet of the Crocodile. It was of no use--the pretender never\nstirred, and I watched it until dark. It remained still in the\nsame place, waiting for some unfortunate baboon whose thirst might\nprovoke his fate, but not one was sufficiently foolish, although\nthe perpendicular bank prevented them from drinking except at that\nparticular spot.\"\n\nIt may be imagined that if the Crocodile were to depend entirely\nfor its food upon the animals that it catches on the bank or in\nthe river, it would run a risk of starving. The fact is, that its\nprincipal food consists of fish, which it can chase in the water.\nThe great speed at which the Crocodile darts through the water is\nnot owing to its webbed feet, but to its powerful tail, which is\nswept from side to side, and thus propels the reptile after the\nmanner of a man \"sculling\" a boat with a single oar in the stern.\nThe whales and the fishes have a similar mode of propulsion.\n\nOn land, the tail is the Crocodile's most formidable weapon. It is\none mass of muscle and sinew, and the force of its lateral stroke\nis terrible, sweeping away every living thing that it may meet.\nFortunately for its antagonists, the Crocodile can turn but very\nslowly, so that, although it can scramble along at a much faster\npace than its appearance indicates, there is no great difficulty\nin escaping, provided that the sweep of its tail be avoided. As\nthe Crocodile of the Nile attains when adult a length of thirty\nfeet, one moiety of which is taken up by the tail, it may easily be\nimagined that the power of this weapon can scarcely be exaggerated.\n\nAs if to add to the terrors of the animal, its head, back, and tail\nare shielded by a series of horny scales, which are set so closely\ntogether that the sharpest spear can seldom find its way through\nthem, and even the rifle ball glances off, if it strikes them\nobliquely. Like many other reptiles, the Crocodile is hatched from\neggs which are laid on shore and vivified by the warmth of the sun.\n\nThese eggs are exceedingly small when compared with the gigantic\nlizard which deposited them, scarcely equalling in dimensions those\nof the goose. There is now before me an egg of the cayman of South\nAmerica, a fresh-water lizard but little smaller than the Crocodile\nof the Nile, and this is barely equal in size to an ordinary hen's\negg. It is longer in proportion to its width, but the contents of\nthe two eggs would be as nearly as possible of the same bulk. On\nthe exterior it is very rough, having a granulated appearance, not\nunlike that of dried sharkskin, and the shell is exceedingly thin\nand brittle. The lining membrane, however, is singularly thick and\ntough, so that the egg is tolerably well defended against fracture.\n\nWhen first hatched, the young Crocodile is scarcely larger than a\ncommon newt, but it attains most formidable dimensions in a very\nshort time. Twenty or thirty eggs are laid in one spot, and, were\nthey not destroyed by sundry enemies, the Crocodiles would destroy\nevery living creature in the rivers. Fortunately, the eggs and young\nhave many enemies, chiefly among which is the well-known ichneumon,\nwhich discovers the place where the eggs are laid and destroys them,\nand eats any young Crocodiles that it can catch before they succeed\nin making their way to the water.\n\nThe old writers were aware of the services rendered by the\nichneumon, but, after their wont, exaggerated them by additions of\ntheir own, saying that the ichneumon enters into the mouth of the\nCrocodile as it lies asleep, and eats its way through the body,\n\"putting the Crocodile to exquisite and intolerable torment, while\nthe Crocodile tumbleth to and fro, sighing and weeping, now in\nthe depth of water, now on the land, never resting till strength\nof nature faileth. For the incessant gnawing of the ichneumon so\nprovoketh her to seek her rest in the unrest of every part, herb,\nelement, throws, throbs, rollings, but all in vain, for the enemy\nwithin her breatheth through her breath, and sporteth herself in\nthe consumption of those vital parts which waste and wear away by\nyielding to unpacificable teeth, one after another, till she that\ncrept in by stealth at the mouth, like a puny thief, comes out at\nthe belly like a conqueror, through a passage opened by her own\nlabour and industry.\"\n\nThe author has in the long passage, a part of which is here quoted,\nmentioned that the ichneumon takes its opportunity of entering the\njaws of the Crocodile as it lies with its mouth open against the\nbeams of the sun. It is very true that the Crocodile does sleep\nwith its mouth open; and, in all probability, the older observers,\nknowing that the ichneumon did really destroy the eggs and young\nof the Crocodile, only added a little amplification, and made up\ntheir minds that it also destroyed the parents. The same writer\nwho has lately been quoted ranks the ibis among the enemies of the\nCrocodile, and says that the bird affects the reptile with such\nterror that, if but an ibis's feather be laid on its back, the\nCrocodile becomes rigid and unable to move. The Arabs of the\npresent time say that the water-tortoises are enemies to the eggs,\nscratching them out of the sand and eating them.\n\n[Illustration: ICHNEUMON DEVOURING THE EGGS OF THE CROCODILE.]\n\nAs this reptile is so dangerous a neighbour to the inhabitants of\nthe river-banks, many means have been adopted for its destruction.\n\nOne such method, where a kind of harpoon is employed, is described\nby a traveller in the East as follows:--\n\n\"The most favourable season for thus hunting the Crocodile is\neither the winter, when the animal usually sleeps on sand-banks,\nluxuriating in the rays of the sun, or the spring, after the pairing\ntime, when the female regularly watches the sand islands where she\nhas buried her eggs.\n\n\"The native hunter finds out the place and conceals himself by\ndigging a hole in the sand near the spot where the animal usually\nlies. On its arrival at the accustomed spot the hunter darts his\nharpoon or spear with all his force, for, in order that its stroke\nmay be successful, the iron should penetrate to a depth of at least\nfour inches, in order that the barb may be fixed firmly in the flesh.\n\n\"The Crocodile, on being wounded, rushes into the water, and the\nhuntsman retreats into a canoe, with which a companion has hastened\nto his assistance.\n\n\"A piece of wood attached to the harpoon by a long cord swims on the\nwater and shows the direction in which the Crocodile is moving. The\nhunters pull on this rope and drag the beast to the surface of the\nwater, where it is again pierced by a second harpoon.\n\n\"When the animal is struck it by no means remains inactive; on the\ncontrary, it lashes instantly with its tail, and endeavours to bite\nthe rope asunder. To prevent this, the rope is made of about thirty\nseparate slender lines, not twisted together, but merely placed in\njuxtaposition, and bound around at intervals of every two feet. The\nthin strands get between the Crocodile's teeth, and it is unable to\nsever them.\n\n\"In spite of the great strength of the reptile, two men can drag a\ntolerably large one out of the water, tie up his mouth, twist his\nlegs over his back, and kill him by driving a sharp steel spike into\nthe spinal cord just at the back of the skull.\n\n\"There are many other modes of capturing the Crocodile, one of which\nis the snare portrayed in the illustration.\n\n[Illustration: A CROCODILE TRAP]\n\n\"Two elastic saplings are bent down and kept in position by stout\ncords, one of which, bears a baited hook, while the other is\nfashioned into a noose. These cords are so arranged as to release\nthe bent saplings as soon as the Crocodile pulls upon the baited\nhook. If all works properly, the animal suddenly finds himself\nsuspended in the air, where he remains helpless and at the mercy of\nthe hunter, who soon arrives and despatches him.\n\n\"The extreme tenacity of life possessed by the Crocodile is well\nexemplified by an incident which occurred in Ceylon. A fine specimen\nhad been caught, and to all appearance killed, its interior parts\nremoved, and the aperture kept open by a stick placed across it.\nA few hours afterwards the captors returned to their victim with\nthe intention of cutting off the head, but were surprised to find\nthe spot vacant. On examining the locality it was evident that the\ncreature had retained sufficient life to crawl back into the water.\nFrom this it may be imagined that it is no easy matter to drive the\nbreath out of a Crocodile. Its life seems to take a separate hold\nof every fibre in the creature's body, and though pierced through\nand through with bullets, crushed by heavy blows, and its body\nconverted into a very pincushion for spears, it writhes and twists\nand struggles with wondrous strength, snapping savagely with its\nhuge jaws, and lashing its muscular tail from side to side with such\nvigour that it requires a bold man to venture within range of that\nterrible weapon.\"\n\nSometimes combats occur between this creature and the tiger, one of\nthe fiercest and most terrible of all quadrupeds. Tigers frequently\ngo down to the rivers to drink, and, upon these occasions, the\nCrocodile, if near, may attempt to seize them. The ferocious beast,\nhowever, seldom falls unrevenged; for the instant he finds himself\nseized, he turns with great agility and fierceness on his enemy, and\nendeavours to strike his claws into the Crocodile's eyes, while the\nlatter drags him into the water, where they continue to struggle\nuntil the tiger be drowned, and his triumphant antagonist feasts\nupon his carcass. Such a combat is depicted in the illustration\nwhich appears on an accompanying page.\n\n[Illustration: A FIGHT FOR LIFE.]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE CYPRIUS, OR LIZARD OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE LETAAH OR LIZARD.\n\n     Difficulty of identifying the Letaah--Probability that\n     it is a collective and not a specific term--Various\n     Lizards of Palestine--The Green or Jersey Lizard--The\n     Cyprius, its appearance and habits--The Glass Snake or\n     Scheltopusic--Translation of the word _chomet_--Probability that\n     it signifies the Skink--Medicinal uses of the Lizard--The Seps\n     tribe--The common Cicigna, and the popular belief concerning its\n     habits--The Sphaenops and its shallow tunnel.\n\n\nIn Leviticus xi. 30, the word LIZARD is used as the rendering of the\nHebrew word _letaah_ (pronounced as L'tah-ah). There are one or two\ndifficulties about the word, but, without going into the question\nof etymology, which is beside the object of this work, it will be\nsufficient to state that the best authorities accept the rendering,\nand that in the Jewish Bible the word Lizard is retained, but with\nthe mark of doubt appended to it.\n\nA very common species of Lizard, and therefore likely to be one\nof those which are grouped under the common name of Letaah,\nis the CYPRIUS (_Plestiodon auratum_). This handsome Lizard is\ngolden-yellow in colour, beautifully spotted with orange and\nscarlet, and may be distinguished, even when the colours have fled\nafter death, by the curiously formed ears, which are strongly\ntoothed in front. It is very plentiful in Palestine, and, like\nothers of its kin, avoids cultivated tracts, and is generally found\non rocky and sandy soil which cannot be tilled. It is active, and,\nif alarmed, hides itself quickly in the sand or under stones.\n\nIt belongs to the great family of the Skinks, many of which, like\nthe familiar blind-worm of our own country, are without external\nlegs, and, though true Lizards, progress in a snake-like manner, and\nare generally mistaken for snakes. One of these is the GLASS SNAKE\nor SCHELTOPUSIC (_Pseudopus pallasii_), which has two very tiny hind\nlegs, but which is altogether so snake-like that it is considered\nby the natives to be really a serpent. They may well be excused for\ntheir error, as the only external indications of limbs are a pair of\nslightly-projecting scales at the place where the hind legs would be\nin a fully-developed Lizard.\n\nThough tolerably plentiful, the Scheltopusic is not very often seen,\nas it is timid and wary, and, when it suspects danger, glides away\nsilently into some place of safety. When adult, the colour of this\nLizard is usually chestnut, profusely mottled with black or deep\nbrown, the edge of each scale being of the darker colour. It feeds\nupon insects and small reptiles, and has been known to devour a nest\nfull of young birds.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn Levit. xi. 30 is a Hebrew word, _chomet_, which is given in the\nAuthorized Version as SNAIL. There is, however, no doubt that the\nword is wrongly translated, and that by it some species of Lizard\nis signified. The Jewish Bible follows the Authorized Version,\nbut affixes the mark of doubt to the word. There is another word,\n_shablul_, which undoubtedly does signify the snail, and will be\nmentioned in its proper place.\n\nIt is most probable that the word _chomet_ includes, among other\nLizards, many of the smaller Skinks which inhabit Palestine.\nAmong them we may take as an example the COMMON SKINK (_Scincus\nofficinalis_), a reptile which derives its specific name from the\nfact that it was formerly used in medicine, together with mummy, and\nthe other disgusting ingredients which formed the greater part of\nthe old Pharmacopoeia.\n\nEven at the present day, it is used for similar purposes in the\nEast, and is in consequence captured for the use of physicians,\nthe body being simply dried in the sun, and then sent to market\nfor sale. It is principally employed for the cure of sunstroke,\nnettle-rash, sand-blindness, or fever, and both patient and\nphysician have the greatest confidence in its powers. It is said by\nsome European physicians that the flesh of the Skink really does\npossess medicinal powers, and that it has fallen into disrepute\nchiefly because those powers have been exaggerated. In former days,\nthe head and feet were thought to possess the greatest efficacy, and\nwere valued accordingly.\n\nLike all its tribe, the Skink loves sandy localities, the soil\nexactly suiting its peculiar habits. Although tolerably active,\nit does not run so fast or so far as many other Lizards, and,\nwhen alarmed, it has a peculiar faculty for sinking itself almost\ninstantaneously under the sand, much after the fashion of the\nshore-crabs of our own country. Indeed, it is even more expeditious\nthan the crab, which occupies some little time in burrowing under\nthe wet and yielding sand, whereas the Skink slips beneath the dry\nand comparatively hard sand with such rapidity that it seems rather\nto be diving into a nearly excavated burrow than to be scooping a\nhollow for itself.\n\nThe sand is therefore a place of safety to the Skink, which does\nnot, like the crab, content itself with merely burying its body just\nbelow the surface, but continues to burrow, sinking itself in a few\nseconds to the depth of nearly a yard.\n\nThe length of the Skink is about eight inches, and its very variable\ncolour is generally yellowish brown, crossed with several dark\nbands. Several specimens, however, are spotted instead of banded\nwith brown, while some are banded with white, and others are spotted\nwith white. In all, however, the under-surface is silver grey.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE CHAMELEON.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHAMELEON, MONITOR, AND GECKO.\n\n     Demeanour of the Chameleon on the ground--The independent\n     eyes--Its frequent change of colour--The Nilotic Monitor.\n\n\nIn Levit. xi. 30 there occurs a word which has caused great trouble\nto commentators. The word is _koach_.\n\nThere are two lizards to which the term may possibly be\napplied--namely, the Chameleon and the Monitor; and, as the\nAuthorized Version of the Scriptures accepts the former\ninterpretation, we will first describe the Chameleon.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis reptile is very plentiful in the Holy Land, as well as in\nEgypt, so that the Israelites would be perfectly familiar with\nit, both during their captivity and after their escape. It is but\na small reptile, and the reader may well ask why a name denoting\nstrength should be given to it. I think that we may find the reason\nfor its name in the extraordinary power of its grasp, as it is able,\nby means of its peculiarly-formed feet and prehensile tail, to grasp\nthe branches so tightly that it can scarcely be removed without\ndamage.\n\nI once saw six or seven Chameleons huddled up together, all having\nclasped each other's legs and tails so firmly that they formed a\nbundle that might be rolled along the ground without being broken\nup. In order to show the extraordinary power of the Chameleon's\ngrasp, I have had a figure drawn from a sketch taken by myself from\na specimen which I kept for several months.\n\n[Illustration: GECKO AND CHAMELEON.]\n\nWhen the Chameleon wished to pass from one branch to another, it\nused to hold firmly to the branch by the tail and one hind-foot, and\nstretch out its body nearly horizontally, feeling about with the\nother three feet, as if in search of a convenient resting-place.\nIn this curious attitude it would remain for a considerable time,\napparently suffering no inconvenience, though even the spider-monkey\nwould have been unable to maintain such an attitude for half the\nlength of time.\n\nThe strength of the grasp is really astonishing when contrasted\nwith the size of the reptile, as any one will find who allows the\nChameleon to grasp his finger, or who tries to detach it from the\nbranch to which it is clinging. The feet are most curiously made.\nThey are furnished with five toes, which are arranged like those of\nparrots and other climbing birds, so as to close upon each other\nlike the thumb and finger of a human hand. They are armed with\nlittle yellow claws, slightly curved and very sharp, and when they\ngrasp the skin of the hand they give it an unpleasantly sharp pinch.\n\nThe tail is as prehensile as that of the spider-monkey, to which\nthe Chameleon bears a curious resemblance in some of its attitudes,\nthough nothing can be more different than the volatile, inquisitive,\nrestless disposition of the spider-monkey and the staid, sober\ndemeanour of the Chameleon. The reptile has the power of guiding the\ntail to any object as correctly as if there were an eye at the end\nof the tail. When it has been travelling over the branches of trees,\nI have often seen it direct its tail to a projecting bud, and grasp\nit as firmly as if the bud had been before and not behind it.\n\nSometimes, when it rests on a branch, it allows the tail to\nhang down as a sort of balance, the tip coiling and uncoiling\nunceasingly. But, as soon as the reptile wishes to move, the tail is\ntightened to the branch, and at once coiled round it. There really\nseems to be almost a separate vitality and consciousness on the part\nof the tail, which glides round an object as if it were acting with\nentire independence of its owner.\n\nOn the ground the Chameleon fares but poorly. Its walk is absolutely\nludicrous, and an experienced person might easily fail to identify\na Chameleon when walking with the same animal on a branch. It\ncertainly scrambles along at a tolerable rate, but it is absurdly\nawkward, its legs sprawling widely on either side, and its feet\ngrasping futilely at every step. The tail, which is usually so lithe\nand nimble, is then held stiffly from the body, with a slight curve\nupwards.\n\nThe eyes are strange objects, projecting far from the head, and each\nacting quite independently of the other, so that one eye may often\nbe directed forwards, and the other backwards. The eyeballs are\ncovered with a thick wrinkled skin, except a small aperture at the\ntip, which can be opened and closed like our own eyelids.\n\nThe changing colour of the Chameleon has been long known, though\nthere are many mistaken ideas concerning it.\n\nThe reptile does not necessarily assume the colour of any object on\nwhich it is placed, but sometimes takes a totally different colour.\nThus, if my Chameleon happened to come upon any scarlet substance,\nthe colour immediately became black, covered with innumerable\ncircular spots of light yellow. The change was so instantaneous\nthat, as it crawled on the scarlet cloth, the colour would alter,\nand the fore-part of the body would be covered with yellow spots,\nwhile the hinder parts retained their dull black. Scarlet always\nannoyed the Chameleon, and it tried to escape whenever it found\nitself near any substance of the obnoxious hue.\n\nThe normal colour was undoubtedly black, with a slight tinge of\ngrey. But in a short time the whole creature would become a vivid\nverdigris green, and, while the spectator was watching it, the legs\nwould become banded with rings of bright yellow, and spats and\nstreaks of the same colour would appear on the head and body.\n\nWhen it was excited either by anger or by expectation--as, for\nexample, when it heard a large fly buzzing near it--the colours\nwere singularly beautiful, almost exactly resembling in hue and\narrangement those of the jaguar. Of all the colours, green seemed\ngenerally to predominate, but the creature would pass so rapidly\nfrom one colour to another that it was scarcely possible to follow\nthe various gradations of hue.\n\nSome persons have imagined that the variation of colour depends on\nthe wants and passions of the animal. This is not the case. The\nchange is often caused by mental emotion, but is not dependent on\nit; and I believe that the animal has no control whatever over its\ncolour. The best proof of this assertion may be found in the fact\nthat my own Chameleon changed colour several times after its death;\nand, indeed, as long as I had the dead body before me, changes of\nhue were taking place.\n\nThe food of the Chameleon consists of insects, mostly flies, which\nit catches by means of its tongue, which can be protruded to an\nastonishing distance. The tongue is nearly cylindrical, and is\nfurnished at the tip with a slight cavity, which is filled with\na very glutinous secretion. When the Chameleon sees a fly or\nother insect, it gently protrudes the tongue once or twice, as if\ntaking aim, like a billiard-player with his cue, and then, with a\nmoderately smart stroke, carries off the insect on the glutinous tip\nof the tongue. The force with which the Chameleon strikes is really\nwonderful. My own specimen used to look for flies from my hand, and\nat first I was as much surprised with the force of the blow struck\nby the tongue as I was with the grasping power of the feet.\n\n[Illustration: THE GECKO.\n\nFOOT OF THE GECKO--UNDER SIDE.]\n\nSo much for the Chameleon. We will now take the NILOTIC MONITOR and\nthe LAND MONITOR, the other reptiles which have been conjectured to\nbe the real representatives of the Koach.\n\nThese lizards attain to some size, the former sometimes measuring\nsix feet in length, and the latter but a foot or so less. Of the\ntwo, the Land Monitor, being the more common, both in Palestine and\nEgypt, has perhaps the best claim to be considered as the Koach\nof Scripture. It is sometimes called the Land Crocodile. It is a\ncarnivorous animal, feeding upon other reptiles and the smaller\nmammalia, and is very fond of the eggs of the crocodile, which it\ndestroys in great numbers, and is in consequence much venerated by\nthe inhabitants of the country about the Nile.\n\nThe theory that this reptile may be the Koach of Leviticus is\nstrengthened by the fact that even at the present day it is cooked\nand eaten by the natives, whereas the chameleon is so small and bony\nthat scarcely any one would take the trouble of cooking it.\n\nThe Gecko takes its name from the sound which it utters, resembling\nthe word \"geck-o.\" It is exceedingly plentiful, and inhabits the\ninterior of houses, where it can find the flies and other insects\non which it lives. On account of the structure of the toes, each\nof which is flattened into a disk-like form, and furnished on the\nunder surface with a series of plates like those on the back of\nthe sucking-fish, it can walk up a smooth, perpendicular wall with\nperfect ease, and can even cling to the ceiling like the flies on\nwhich it feeds.\n\nIn the illustration the reader will observe the flat, fan-like\nexpansions at the ends of the toes, by which the Gecko is able to\nadhere to flat surfaces, and to dart with silent rapidity from place\nto place.\n\n[Illustration: serpent]\n\n[Illustration: serpents]\n\n\n\n\nSERPENTS.\n\n     Serpents in general--The fiery Serpents of the\n     wilderness--Explanation of the words \"flying\" and \"fiery\" as\n     applied to Serpents--Haunts of the Serpent--The Cobra, or Asp\n     of Scripture--The Cerastes, or Horned Serpent--Appearance and\n     habits of the reptile--The \"Adder in the path.\"\n\n\nAs we have seen that so much looseness of nomenclature prevailed\namong the Hebrews even with regard to the mammalia, birds, and\nlizards, we can but expect that the names of the Serpents will be\nequally difficult to identify.\n\nNo less than seven names are employed in the Old Testament to\ndenote some species of Serpent; but there are only two which can\nbe identified with any certainty, four others being left to mere\nconjecture, and one being clearly a word which, like our snake or\nserpent, is a word not restricted to any particular species, but\nsignifying Serpents in general. This word is _nachash_ (pronounced\nnah-kahsh). It is unfortunate that the word is so variously\ntranslated in different passages of Scripture, and we cannot do\nbetter than to follow it through the Ola Testament, so as to bring\nall the passages under our glance.\n\nThe first mention of the Nachash occurs in Gen. iii., in the\nwell-known passage where the Serpent is said to be more subtle than\nall the beasts of the field, the wisdom or subtlety of the Serpent\nhaving evidently an allegorical and not a categorical signification.\nWe find the same symbolism employed in the New Testament, the\ndisciples of our Lord being told to be \"wise as serpents, and\nharmless as doves.\"\n\nAllusion is made to the gliding movement of the Serpent tribe in\nProv. xxx. 19. On this part of the subject little need be said,\nexcept that the movements of the Serpent are owing to the mobility\nof the ribs, which are pushed forward in succession and drawn back\nagain, so as to catch against any inequality of the ground. This\npower is increased by the structure of the scales. Those of the\nupper part of the body, which are not used for locomotion, are\nshaped something like the scales of a fish; but those of the lower\npart of the body, which come in contact with the ground, are broad\nbelts, each overlapping the other, and each connected with one pair\nof ribs.\n\nWhen, therefore, the Serpent pushes forward the ribs, the edges of\nthe scaly belts will catch against the slightest projection, and are\nable to give a very powerful impetus to the body. It is scarcely\npossible to drag a snake backwards over rough ground; while on a\nsmooth surface, such as glass, the Serpent would be totally unable\nto proceed. This, however, was not likely to have been studied by\nthe ancient Hebrews, who were among the most unobservant of mankind\nwith regard to details of natural history: it is, therefore, no\nwonder that the gliding of the Serpent should strike the writer of\nthe proverb in question as a mystery which he could not explain.\n\nThe poisonous nature of some of the Serpents is mentioned in several\npassages of Scripture; and it will be seen that the ancient Hebrews,\nlike many modern Europeans, believed that the poison lay in the\nforked tongue. See, for example, Ps. lviii. 4: \"Their poison is\nlike the poison of a serpent\" (_nachash_). Also Prov. xxiii. 32, in\nwhich the sacred writer says of wine that it brings woe, sorrow,\ncontentions, wounds without cause, redness of eyes, and that \"at the\nlast it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.\"\n\n[Illustration: COBRA AND CERASTES, THE ASP AND ADDER OF SCRIPTURE.]\n\nThe idea that the poison of the Serpent lies in the tongue is seen\nin several passages of Scripture. \"They have sharpened their tongues\nlike a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips\" (Ps. cxl. 3).\nAlso in Job xx. 16, the sacred writer says of the hypocrite, that\n\"he shall suck the poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay\nhim.\"\n\nAs to the fiery Serpents of the wilderness, it is scarcely needful\nto mention that the epithet of \"fiery\" does not signify that the\nSerpents in question produced real fire from their mouths, but that\nallusion is made to the power and virulence of their poison, and\nto the pain caused by their bite. We ourselves naturally employ a\nsimilar metaphor, and speak of a \"burning pain,\" of a \"fiery trial,\"\nof \"hot anger,\" and the like.\n\n[Illustration: THE ISRAELITES ARE BITTEN BY SERPENTS IN THE\nWILDERNESS, AND MOSES LIFTS UP THE SERPENT OF BRASS.]\n\nThe epithet of \"flying\" which is applied to these Serpents is\nexplained by the earlier commentators as having reference to a\nSerpent which they called the Dart Snake, and which they believed\nto lie in wait for men and to spring at them from a distance. They\nthought that this snake hid itself either in hollows of the ground\nor in trees, and sprang through the air for thirty feet upon any man\nor beast that happened to pass by.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe will now take the various species of Serpents mentioned in the\nBible, as nearly as they can be identified.\n\nOf one species there is no doubt whatever. This is the Cobra di\nCapello, a serpent which is evidently signified by the Hebrew word\n_pethen_.\n\nThis celebrated Serpent has long been famous, not only for the\ndeadly power of its venom, but for the singular performances in\nwhich it takes part. The Cobra inhabits many parts of Asia, and\nin almost every place where it is found, certain daring men take\nupon themselves the profession of serpent-charmers, and handle\nthese fearful reptiles with impunity, cause them to move in time to\ncertain musical sounds, and assert that they bear a life charmed\nagainst the bite of these deadly playmates.\n\nOne of these men will take a Cobra in his bare hands, toss it about\nwith perfect indifference, allow it to twine about his naked breast,\ntie it around his neck, and treat it with as little ceremony as\nif it were an earth-worm. He will then take the same Serpent--or\napparently the same--make it bite a fowl, which soon dies from the\npoison, and will then renew his performance.\n\nSome persons say that the whole affair is but an exhibition of that\njugglery in which the natives of the East Indies are such wondrous\nadepts; that the Serpents with which the man plays are harmless,\nhaving been deprived of their fangs, and that a really venomous\nspecimen is adroitly substituted for the purpose of killing the\nfowl. It is, moreover, said, and truly, that a snake thought to have\nbeen rendered harmless by the deprivation of its fangs, has bitten\none of its masters and killed him, thus proving the imposture.\n\nStill, neither of these explanations will entirely disprove the\nmastery of man over a venomous Serpent.\n\nIn the first instance, it is surely as perilous an action to\nsubstitute a venomous Serpent as to play with it. Where was it\nhidden, why did it not bite the man instead of the fowl, and how did\nthe juggler prevent it from using its teeth while he was conveying\nit away?\n\nAnd, in the second instance, the detection of one impostor is by no\nmeans a proof that all who pretend to the same powers are likewise\nimpostors.\n\nThe following narrative by a traveller in the East seems to prove\nthat the serpent-charmer possessed sufficient power to induce a\ntruly poisonous Serpent to leave its hole, and to perform certain\nantics at his command:\n\n\"A snake-charmer came to my bungalow, requesting me to allow him\nto show his snakes. As I had frequently seen his performance, I\ndeclined to witness a repetition of it, but told him that if he\nwould accompany me to the jungle and catch a Cobra, that I knew\nfrequented the place, I would give him a present of money. He was\nquite willing, and as I was anxious to test the truth of the charm\nhe claimed to possess, I carefully counted his tame snakes, and put\na guard over them until we should return.\n\n\"Before starting I also examined his clothing, and satisfied myself\nthat he had no snake about his person. When we arrived at the spot,\nhe commenced playing upon a small pipe, and, after persevering for\nsome time, out crawled a large Cobra from an ant-hill which I knew\nit occupied.\n\n\"On seeing the man it tried to escape, but he quickly caught it by\nthe tail and kept swinging it round until we reached the bungalow.\nHe then laid it upon the ground and made it raise and lower its head\nto the sound of his pipe.\n\n\"Before long, however, it bit him above the knee. He immediately\nbandaged the leg tightly above the wound, and applied a piece of\nporous stone, called a snake-stone, to extract the poison. He was in\ngreat pain for a few minutes, but afterwards it gradually subsided,\nthe stone falling from the wound just before he was relieved.\n\n\"When he recovered he held up a cloth, at which the snake flew and\nhung by its fangs. While in this position the man passed his hand up\nits back, and having seized it tightly by the throat, he pulled out\nthe fangs and gave them to me. He then squeezed out the poison, from\nthe glands in the Serpent's mouth, upon a leaf. It was a clear, oily\nsubstance, which when rubbed with the hand produced a fine lather.\n\n\"The whole operation was carefully watched by me, and was also\nwitnessed by several other persons.\"\n\nHow the serpent-charmers perform their feats is not very\nintelligible. That they handle the most venomous Serpents with\nperfect impunity is evident enough, and it is also clear that they\nare able to produce certain effects upon the Serpents by means of\nmusical (or unmusical) sounds. But these two items are entirely\ndistinct, and one does not depend upon the other.\n\nIn the first place, the handling of venomous snakes has been\nperformed by ordinary men without the least recourse to any arts\nexcept that of acquaintance with the habits of Serpents. The late\nMr. Waterton, for example, would take up a rattlesnake in his bare\nhand without feeling the least uneasy as to the behaviour of his\nprisoner. He once took twenty-seven rattlesnakes out of a box,\ncarried them into another room, put them into a large glass case,\nand afterwards replaced them in the box. He described to me the\nmanner in which he did it, using my wrist as the representative of\nthe Serpent.\n\n[Illustration: THE SERPENT-CHARMER.]\n\nThe nature of all Serpents is rather peculiar, and is probably\nowing to the mode in which the blood circulates. They are extremely\nunwilling to move, except when urged by the wants of nature, and\nwill lie coiled up for many hours together when not pressed by\nhunger. Consequently, when touched, their feeling is evidently like\nthat of a drowsy man, who only tries to shake off the object which\nmay rouse him, and composes himself afresh to sleep.\n\nA quick and sudden movement would, however, alarm the reptile, which\nwould strike in self-defence, and, sluggish as are its general\nmovements, its stroke is delivered with such lightning rapidity that\nit would be sure to inflict its fatal wound before it was seized.\n\nIf, therefore, Mr. Waterton saw a Serpent which he desired to\ncatch, he would creep very quietly up to it, and with a gentle,\nslow movement place his fingers round its neck just behind the\nhead. If it happened to be coiled up in such a manner that he could\nnot get at its neck, he had only to touch it gently until it moved\nsufficiently for his purpose.\n\nWhen he had once placed his hand on the Serpent, it was in his\npower. He would then grasp it very lightly indeed, and raise it\ngently from the ground, trusting that the reptile would be more\ninclined to be carried quietly than to summon up sufficient energy\nto bite. Even if it had tried to use its fangs, it could not have\ndone so as long as its captor's fingers were round its neck.\n\nAs a rule, a great amount of provocation is needed before a venomous\nSerpent will use its teeth. One of my friends, when a boy, caught a\nviper, mistaking it for a common snake. He tied it round his neck,\ncoiled it on his wrist by way of a bracelet, and so took it home,\nplaying many similar tricks with it as he went. After arrival in the\nhouse, he produced the viper for the amusement of his brothers and\nsisters, and, after repeating his performances, tried to tie the\nsnake in a double knot. This, however, was enough to provoke the\nmost pacific of creatures, and in consequence he received a bite on\nhis finger.\n\nThe poison was not slow to take effect; first, the wound looked\nand felt like a nettle sting, then like a wasp sting, and in the\ncourse of a few minutes the whole finger was swollen. At this\njuncture his father, a medical man, fortunately arrived, and set the\napproved antidotes, ammonia, oil, and lunar caustic, to the wound,\nhaving previously made incisions about the punctured spot, and with\npaternal affection attempted to suck out the poison. In spite of\nthese remedies a serious illness was the result of the bite, from\nwhich the boy did not recover for several weeks.\n\n[Illustration: snake]\n\nThere is no doubt that the snake-charmers trust chiefly to this\nsluggish nature of the reptile, but they certainly go through\nsome ceremonies by which they believe themselves to be rendered\nimpervious to snake-bites. They will coil the cobra round their\nnaked bodies, they will irritate the reptile until it is in a state\nof fury; they will even allow it to bite them, and yet be none the\nworse for the wound. Then, as if to show that the venomous teeth\nhave not been abstracted, as is possibly supposed to be the case,\nthey will make the cobra bite a fowl, which speedily dies from the\neffects of the poison.\n\nEven if the fangs were extracted, the Serpents would lose little\nof their venomous power. These reptiles are furnished with a whole\nseries of fangs in different stages of development, so that when the\none in use is broken or shed in the course of nature, another comes\nforward and fills its place. There is now before me a row of four\nfangs, which I took from the right upper jawbone of a viper which I\nrecently caught.\n\nIn her interesting \"Letters from Egypt,\" Lady Duff-Gordon gives an\namusing account of the manner in which she was formally initiated\ninto the mysteries of snake-charming, and made ever afterwards\nimpervious to the bite of venomous Serpents:--\n\n\"At Kom Omboo, we met with a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame\nsnakes. After a little talk, he proposed to initiate me: and so we\nsat down and held hands like people marrying. Omar [her attendant]\nsat behind me, and repeated the words as my 'wakeel.' Then the\nRifaee twisted a cobra round our joined hands, and requested me to\nspit on it; he did the same, and I was pronounced safe and enveloped\nin snakes. My sailors groaned, and Omar shuddered as the snakes put\nout their tongues; the darweesh and I smiled at each other like\nRoman augurs.\"\n\nShe believed that the snakes were toothless; and perhaps on this\noccasion they may have been so. Extracting the teeth of the Serpent\nis an easy business in experienced hands, and is conducted in two\nways. Those snake-charmers who are confident of their own powers\nmerely grasp the reptile by the neck, force open its jaws with a\npiece of stick, and break off the fangs, which are but loosely\nattached to the jaw. Those who are not so sure of themselves\nirritate the snake, and offer it a piece of cloth, generally the\ncorner of their mantle, to bite. The snake darts at it, and, as it\nseizes the garment, the man gives the cloth a sudden jerk, and so\ntears away the fangs.\n\nStill, although some of the performers employ mutilated snakes,\nthere is no doubt that others do not trouble themselves to remove\nthe fangs of the Serpents, but handle with impunity the cobra or the\ncerastes with all its venomous apparatus in good order.\n\nWe now come to the second branch of the subject, namely, the\ninfluence of sound upon the cobra and other Serpents. The charmers\nare always provided with musical instruments, of which a sort of\nflute with a loud shrill sound is the one which is mostly used in\nthe performances. Having ascertained, from slight marks which their\npractised eyes easily discover, that a Serpent is hidden in some\ncrevice, the charmer plays upon his flute, and in a short time the\nsnake is sure to make its appearance.\n\nAs soon as it is fairly out, the man seizes it by the end of the\ntail, and holds it up in the air at arm's length. In this position\nit is helpless, having no leverage, and merely wriggles about in\nfruitless struggles to escape. Having allowed it to exhaust its\nstrength by its efforts, the man lowers it into a basket, where\nit is only too glad to find a refuge, and closes the lid. After a\nwhile, he raises the lid and begins to play the flute.\n\n[Illustration: TEACHING COBRAS TO DANCE.]\n\nThe Serpent tries to glide out of the basket, but, as soon as it\ndoes so, the lid is shut down again, and in a very short time the\nreptile finds that escape is impossible, and, as long as it hears\nthe sound of the flute, only raises its head in the air, supporting\nitself on the lower portion of its tail, and continues to wave its\nhead from side to side as long as it hears the sound of the music.\n\nThe rapidity with which a cobra learns this lesson is extraordinary,\nthe charmers being as willing to show their mastery over\nnewly-caught Serpents as over those which have been long in their\npossession.\n\nThe colour of the Cobra is in most cases a brownish olive. The most\nnoted peculiarity is the expansion of the neck, popularly called\nthe hood. This phenomenon is attributable not only to the skin and\nmuscles, but to the skeleton. About twenty pairs of the ribs of\nthe neck and fore part of the back are flat instead of curved, and\nincrease gradually from the head to the eleventh or twelfth pair,\nfrom which they decrease until they are merged into the ordinary\ncurved ribs of the body. When the snake is excited, it brings these\nribs forward so as to spread the skin, and then displays the oval\nhood to best advantage.\n\nIn the Cobra di Capello the back of the hood is ornamented by two\nlarge eye-like spots, united by a curved black stripe, so formed\nthat the whole mark bears a singular resemblance to a pair of\nspectacles.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CERASTES, OR SHEPHIPHON OF SCRIPTURE.\n\n\nThe word _shephiphon_, which evidently signifies some species of\nsnake, only occurs once in the Scriptures, but fortunately that\nsingle passage contains an allusion to the habits of the serpent\nwhich makes identification nearly certain. The passage in question\noccurs in Gen. xlix. 17, and forms part of the prophecy of Jacob\nrespecting his children: \"Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an\nadder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider\nshall fall backward.\"\n\nPutting aside the deeper meaning of this prophecy, there is here an\nevident allusion to the habits of the CERASTES, or HORNED VIPER, a\nspecies of venomous serpent, which is plentiful in Northern Africa,\nand is found also in Palestine and Syria. It is a very conspicuous\nreptile, and is easily recognised by the two horn-like projections\nover the eyes. The name Cerastes, or horned, has been given to it\non account of these projections.\n\nThis snake has a custom of lying half buried in the sand, awaiting\nthe approach of some animal on which it can feed. Its usual diet\nconsists of the jerboas and other small mammalia, and as they are\nexceedingly active, while the Cerastes is slow and sluggish, its\nonly chance of obtaining food is to lie in wait. It will always take\nadvantage of any small depression, such as the print of a camel's\nfoot, and, as it finds many of these depressions in the line of the\ncaravans, it is literally \"a serpent by the way, an adder in the\npath.\"\n\n[Illustration: HORNED VIPER.]\n\nAccording to the accounts of travellers, the Cerastes is much more\nirritable than the cobra, and is very apt to strike at any object\nwhich may disturb it. Therefore, whenever a horseman passes along\nthe usual route, his steed is very likely to disturb a Cerastes\nlying in the path, and to be liable to the attack of the irritated\nreptile. Horses are instinctively aware of the presence of the\nsnake, and mostly perceive it in time to avoid its stroke. Its\nsmall dimensions, the snake rarely exceeding two feet in length,\nenable it to conceal itself in a very small hollow, and its\nbrownish-white colour, diversified with darker spots, causes it to\nharmonize so thoroughly with the loose sand in which it lies buried,\nthat, even when it is pointed out, an unpractised eye does not\nreadily perceive it.\n\nEven the cobra is scarcely so dreaded as this little snake, whose\nbite is so deadly, and whose habits are such as to cause travellers\nconsiderable risk of being bitten.\n\nThe head of the Viper affords a very good example of the venomous\napparatus of the poisonous serpents, and is well worthy of\ndescription. The poison fangs or teeth lie on the sides of the upper\njaw, folded back, and almost undistinguishable until lifted with a\nneedle. They are singularly fine and delicate, hardly larger than a\nlady's needle, and are covered almost to their tips with a muscular\nenvelope, through which the points just peer.\n\nThe poison bags or glands, and the reservoir in which the venom is\nstored, are found at the back and sides of the head, and give to the\nvenomous serpents that peculiar width of head which is so unfailing\na characteristic.\n\nOn examining carefully the poison fangs, the structure by which the\nvenom is injected into the wound will be easily understood. Under a\nmagnifying glass they will be seen to be hollow, thus affording a\npassage for the poison.\n\nWhen the creature draws back its head and opens its mouth to strike,\nthe deadly fangs spring up with their points ready for action, and\nfully charged with their poisonous distillment.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: viper]\n\n\n\n\nTHE VIPER, OR EPHEH.\n\n     The Sand-Viper, or Toxicoa--Its appearance and habits--Adder's\n     poison--The Cockatrice, or Tsepha--The Yellow Viper--Ancient\n     ideas concerning the Cockatrice--Power of its venom.\n\n\nWe now come to the species of snake which cannot be identified with\nany certainty, and will first take the word _epheh_.\n\nMr. Tristram believes that he has identified the Epheh of the Old\nTestament with the Sand-Viper, or Toxicoa. This reptile, though very\nsmall, and scarcely exceeding a foot in length, is a dangerous one,\nbut its bite is not so deadly as that of the cobra or cerastes. It\nis variable in colour, and has angular white streaks on its body,\nwith a row of whitish spots along the back. The top of the head is\ndark, and variegated with arrow-shaped white marks.\n\nThe Toxicoa is very plentiful in Northern Africa, Palestine, Syria,\nand the neighbouring countries, and, as it is exceedingly active, is\nheld in some dread by the natives.\n\nAnother name of a poisonous snake occurs several times in the Old\nTestament. The word is _tsepha_, or _tsiphoni_, and it is sometimes\ntranslated as Adder, and sometimes as Cockatrice. The word is\nrendered as Adder in Prov. xxiii. 32, where it is said that wine\n\"biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.\" Even in this\ncase, however, the word is rendered as Cockatrice in the marginal\ntranslation.\n\n[Illustration: THE TOXICOA. (Supposed to be the viper of Scripture.)]\n\nIt is found three times in the Book of Isaiah. Ch. xi. 8: \"The\nweaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.\" Also, ch.\nxiv. 29: \"Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him\nthat smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's (_nachash_) nest\nshall come forth a cockatrice (_tsepha_), and his fruit shall be a\nfiery flying serpent.\" The same word occurs again in ch. lix. 5:\n\"They hatch cockatrice' eggs.\" In the prophet Jeremiah we again find\nthe word: \"For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices among you,\nwhich will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.\"\n\nAround this reptile a wonderful variety of legends have been\naccumulated. The Cockatrice was said to kill by its very look,\n\"because the beams of the Cockatrice's eyes do corrupt the visible\nspirit of a man, which visible spirit corrupted all the other\nspirits coming from the brain and life of the heart, are thereby\ncorrupted, and so the man dyeth.\"\n\nThe subtle poison of the Cockatrice infected everything near it, so\nthat a man who killed a Cockatrice with a spear fell dead himself,\nby reason of the poison darting up the shaft of the spear and\npassing into his hand. Any living thing near which the Cockatrice\npassed was instantly slain by the fiery heat of its venom, which was\nexhaled not only from its mouth, but its sides. For the old writers,\nwhose statements are here summarized, contrived to jumble together a\nnumber of miscellaneous facts in natural history, and so to produce\na most extraordinary series of legends.\n\nI should not have given even this limited space to such puerile\nlegends, but for the fact that such stories as these were fully\nbelieved in the days when the Authorized Version of the Bible was\ntranslated. The translators of the Bible believed most heartily in\nthe mysterious and baleful reptile, and, as they saw that the Tsepha\nof Scripture was an exceptionally venomous serpent, they naturally\nrendered it by the word Cockatrice.\n\n[Illustration: viper]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: frog]\n\n\n\n\nTHE FROG.\n\n     The Frog only mentioned in the Old Testament as connected with\n     the plagues of Egypt--The severity of this plague explained--The\n     Frog detestable to the Egyptians--The Edible Frog and its\n     numbers--Description of the species.\n\n\nPlentiful as is the FROG throughout Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, it\nis very remarkable that in the whole of the canonical books of the\nOld Testament the word is only mentioned thrice, and each case in\nconnexion with the same event.\n\nIn Exod. viii. we find that the second of the plagues which visited\nEgypt came out of the Nile, the sacred river, in the form of\ninnumerable Frogs. The reader will probably remark, on perusing the\nconsecutive account of these plagues, that the two first plagues\nwere connected with that river, and that they were foreshadowed by\nthe transformation of Aaron's rod.\n\nWhen Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh to ask him to let\nthe people go, Pharaoh demanded a miracle from them, as had been\nforetold. Following the divine command, Aaron threw down his rod,\nwhich was changed into a serpent.\n\nNext, as was most appropriate, came a transformation wrought on\nthe river by means of the same rod which had been transformed into\na Serpent, the whole of the fresh-water throughout the land being\nturned into blood, and the fish dying and polluting the venerated\nriver with their putrefying bodies. In Egypt, a partially rainless\ncountry, such a calamity as this was doubly terrible, as it at the\nsame time desecrated the object of their worship, and menaced them\nwith perishing by thirst.\n\nThe next plague had also its origin in the river, but extended far\nbeyond the limits of its banks. The frogs, being unable to return to\nthe contaminated stream wherein they had lived, spread themselves\nin all directions, so as to fulfil the words of the prediction: \"If\nthou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders\nwith frogs:\n\n\"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up\nand come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy\nbed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and\ninto thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs\" (or dough).\n\nSupposing that such a plague was to come upon us at the present\nday, we should consider it to be a terrible annoyance, yet scarcely\nworthy of the name of plague, and certainly not to be classed with\nthe turning of a river into blood, with the hail and lightning that\ndestroyed the crops and cattle, and with the simultaneous death of\nthe first-born. But the Egyptians suffered most keenly from the\ninfliction. They were a singularly fastidious people, and abhorred\nthe contact of anything that they held to be unclean. We may well\nrealize, therefore, the effect of a visitation of Frogs, which\nrendered their houses unclean by entering them, and themselves\nunclean by leaping upon them; which deprived them of rest by getting\non their beds, and of food by crawling into their ovens and upon the\ndough in the kneading-troughs.\n\nAnd, as if to make the visitation still worse, when the plague was\nremoved, the Frogs died in the places into which they had intruded,\nso that the Egyptians were obliged to clear their houses of the dead\ncarcases, and to pile them up in heaps, to be dried by the sun or\neaten by birds and other scavengers of the East.\n\nAs to the species of Frog which thus invaded the houses of the\nEgyptians, there is no doubt whatever. It can be but the GREEN,\nor EDIBLE FROG (_Rana esculenta_), which is so well known for the\ndelicacy of its flesh. This is believed to be the only aquatic Frog\nof Egypt, and therefore must be the species which came out of the\nriver into the houses.\n\nBoth in Egypt and Palestine it exists in very great numbers,\nswarming in every marshy place, and inhabiting the pools in such\nnumbers that the water can scarcely be seen for the Frogs. Thus the\nmultitudes of the Frogs which invaded the Egyptians was no matter\nof wonder, the only miraculous element being that the reptiles were\nsimultaneously directed to the houses, and their simultaneous death\nwhen the plague was taken away.\n\nFrogs are also mentioned in Rev. xvi. 13: \"And I saw three unclean\nspirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of\nthe mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.\"\nWith the exception of this passage, which is a purely symbolical\none, there is no mention of Frogs in the New Testament. It is\nrather remarkable that the Toad, which might be thought to afford\nan excellent symbol for various forms of evil, is entirely ignored,\nboth in the Old and New Testaments. Probably the Frogs and Toads\nwere all classed together under the same title.\n\n[Illustration: creek]\n\n\n[Illustration: waterfall]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: birds over water]\n\n\n\n\nFISHES.\n\n     Impossibility of distinguishing the different species of\n     Fishes--The fishermen Apostles--Fish used for food--The miracle\n     of the loaves and Fishes--The Fish broiled on the coals--Clean\n     and unclean Fishes--The Sheat-fish, or Silurus--The Eel and the\n     Muraena--The Long-headed Barbel--Fish-ponds and preserves--The\n     Fish-ponds of Heshbon--The Sucking-fish--The Lump-sucker--The\n     Tunny--The Coryphene.\n\n\nWe now come to the FISHES, a class of animals which are repeatedly\nmentioned both in the Old and New Testaments, but only in general\nterms, no one species being described so as to give the slightest\nindication of its identity.\n\nThis is the more remarkable because, although the Jews were, like\nall Orientals, utterly unobservant of those characteristics by which\nthe various species are distinguished from each other, we might\nexpect that St. Peter and other of the fisher Apostles would have\ngiven the names of some of the Fish which they were in the habit of\ncatching, and by the sale of which they gained their living.\n\nIt is true that the Jews, as a nation, would not distinguish between\nthe various species of Fishes, except, perhaps, by comparative\nsize. But professional fishermen would be sure to distinguish one\nspecies from another, if only for the fact that they would sell the\nbest-flavoured Fish at the highest price.\n\nWe might have expected, for example, that the Apostles and disciples\nwho were present when the miraculous draught of Fishes took place\nwould have mentioned the technical names by which they were\naccustomed to distinguish the different degrees of the saleable and\nunsaleable kinds.\n\n[Illustration: PETER CATCHES THE FISH.]\n\nOr we might have expected that on the occasion when St. Peter cast\nhis line and hook into the sea, and drew out a Fish holding the\ntribute-money in his mouth, we might have learned the particular\nspecies of Fish which was thus captured. We ourselves would\nassuredly have done so. It would not have been thought sufficient\nmerely to say that a Fish was caught with money in its mouth, but it\nwould have been considered necessary to mention the particular fish\nas well as the particular coin.\n\nBut it must be remembered that the whole tone of thought differs in\nOrientals and Europeans, and that the exactness required by the one\nhas no place in the mind of the other. The whole of the Scriptural\nnarratives are essentially Oriental in their character, bringing\nout the salient points in strong relief, but entirely regardless of\nminute detail.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe find from many passages both in the Old and New Testaments that\nFish were largely used as food by the Israelites, both when captives\nin Egypt and after their arrival in the Promised Land. Take, for\nexample, Numb. xi. 4, 5: \"And the children of Israel also wept\nagain, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?\n\n\"We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely.\" Then, in\nthe Old Testament, although we do not find many such categorical\nstatements, there are many passages which allude to professional\nfishermen, showing that there was a demand for the Fish which they\ncaught, sufficient to yield them a maintenance.\n\nIn the New Testament, however, there are several passages in which\nthe Fishes are distinctly mentioned as articles of food. Take, for\nexample, the well-known miracle of multiplying the loaves and the\nFishes, and the scarcely less familiar passage in John xxi. 9: \"As\nsoon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there,\nand fish laid thereon, and bread.\"\n\nWe find in all these examples that bread and Fish were eaten\ntogether. Indeed, Fish was eaten with bread just as we eat cheese\nor butter; and St. John, in his account of the multiplication of\nthe loaves and Fishes, does not use the word \"fish,\" but another\nword which rather signifies sauce, and was generally employed to\ndesignate the little Fish that were salted down and dried in the\nsunbeams for future use.\n\nAs to the various species which were used for different purposes, we\nknow really nothing, the Jews merely dividing their Fish into clean\nand unclean.\n\nSome of the species to which the prohibition would extend are\nevident enough. There are, for example, the Sheat-fishes, which have\nthe body naked, and which are therefore taken out of the list of\npermitted Fishes. The Sheat-fishes inhabit rivers in many parts of\nthe world, and often grow to a very considerable size. They may be\nat once recognised by their peculiar shape, and by the long, fleshy\ntentacles that hang from the mouth. The object of these tentacles\nis rather dubious, but as the fish have been seen to direct them at\nwill to various objects, it is likely that they may answer as organs\nof touch.\n\n[Illustration: 1. MURAENA. 2. LONG-HEADED BARBEL. 3. SHEAT-FISH.]\n\nAs might be conjectured from its general appearance, it is one of\nthe Fishes that love muddy banks, in which it is fond of burrowing\nso deeply that, although the river may swarm with Sheat-fishes, a\npractised eye is required to see them.\n\nAs far as the Sheat-fishes are concerned, there is little need for\nthe prohibition, inasmuch as the flesh is not at all agreeable\nin flavour, and is difficult of digestion, being very fat and\ngelatinous. The swimming-bladder of the Sheat-fish is used in some\ncountries for making a kind of isinglass, similar in character to\nthat of the sturgeon, but of coarser quality.\n\nThe lowermost figure in the above illustration represents a species\nwhich is exceedingly plentiful in the Sea of Galilee.\n\nOn account of the mode in which their body is covered, the whole of\nthe sharks and rays are excluded from the list of permitted Fish,\nas, although they have fins, they have no scales, their place being\ntaken by shields varying greatly in size. The same rule excludes the\nwhole of the lamprey tribe, although the excellence of their flesh\nis well known.\n\nMoreover, the Jews almost universally declare that the Muraena and\nEel tribe are also unclean, because, although it has been proved\nthat these Fishes really possess scales as well as fins, and are\ntherefore legally permissible, the scales are hidden under a slimy\ncovering, and are so minute as to be practically absent.\n\nThe uppermost figure in the illustration represents the celebrated\nMuraena, one of the fishes of the Mediterranean, in which sea it is\ntolerably plentiful. In the days of the old Roman empire, the Muraena\nwas very highly valued for the table. The wealthier citizens built\nponds in which the Muraenae were kept alive until they were wanted.\nThis Fish sometimes reaches four feet in length.\n\nThe rest of the Fishes which are shown in the three illustrations\nbelong to the class of clean Fish, and were permitted as food.\nThe figure of the Fish between the Muraena and Sheat-fish is the\nLong-headed Barbel, so called from its curious form.\n\nThe Barbels are closely allied to the carps, and are easily known\nby the barbs or beards which hang from their lips. Like the\nsheat-fishes, the Barbels are fond of grubbing in the mud, for the\npurpose of getting at the worms, grubs, and larvae of aquatic insects\nthat are always to be found in such places. The Barbels are rather\nlong in proportion to their depth, a peculiarity which, owing to the\nlength of the head, is rather exaggerated in this species.\n\nThe Long-headed Barbel is extremely common in Palestine, and may be\ntaken with the very simplest kind of net. Indeed, in some places,\nthe fish are so numerous that a common sack answers nearly as well\nas a net.\n\nIt has been mentioned that the ancient Romans were in the habit of\nforming ponds in which the Muraenae were kept, and it is evident, from\nseveral passages of Scripture, that the Jews were accustomed to\npreserve fish in a similar manner, though they would not restrict\ntheir tanks or ponds to one species.\n\nThe accompanying illustration represents Fishes of the Mediterranean\nSea, and it is probable that one of them may be identified, though\nthe passage in which it is mentioned is only an inferential one. In\nthe prophecy against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the prophet Ezekiel\nwrites as follows: \"I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause\nthe fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring\nthee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy\nrivers shall stick unto thy scales\" (xxix. 4).\n\n[Illustration: FISHES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.\n\n1. SUCKING-FISH. 2. TUNNY. 3. CORYPHENE.]\n\nSome believe that the prophet made allusion to the Sucking-fish,\nwhich has the dorsal fins developed into a most curious apparatus\nof adhesion, by means of which it can fasten itself at will to any\nsmooth object, and hold so tightly to it that it can scarcely be\ntorn away without injury.\n\nThe common Sucking-fish is shown in the upper part of the\nillustration.\n\nThere are, however, other fish which have powers of adhesion which,\nalthough not so remarkable as those of the Sucking-fish, are yet\nvery strong. There is, for example, the well-known Lump-sucker, or\nLump-fish, which has the ventral fins modified into a sucker so\npowerful that, when one of these fishes has been put into a pail of\nwater, it has attached itself so firmly to the bottom of the vessel\nthat when lifted by the tail it raised the pail, together with\nseveral gallons of water.\n\nThe Gobies, again, have their ventral fins united and modified into\na single sucker, by means of which the fish is able to secure itself\nto a stone, rock, or indeed any tolerably smooth surface. These\nfishes are popularly known as Bull-routs.\n\nThe centre of the illustration is occupied by another of the\nMediterranean fishes. This is the well-known Tunny, which furnishes\nfood to the inhabitants of the coasts of this inland sea, and indeed\nconstitutes one of their principal sources of wealth. This fine fish\nis on an average four or five feet in length, and sometimes attains\nthe length of six or seven feet.\n\nThe flesh of the Tunny is excellent, and the fish is so conspicuous,\nthat the silence of the Scriptures concerning its existence shows\nthe utter indifference to specific accuracy that prevailed among the\nvarious writers.\n\nThe other figure represents the Coryphene, popularly, though very\nwrongly, called the Dolphin, and celebrated, under that name, for\nthe beautiful colours which fly over the surface of the body as it\ndies.\n\nThe flesh of the Coryphene is excellent, and in the times of classic\nRome the epicures were accustomed to keep these fish alive, and at\nthe beginning of a feast to lay them before the guests, so that they\nmight, in the first place, witness the magnificent colours of the\ndying fish, and, in the second place, might be assured that when it\nwas cooked it was perfectly fresh. Even during life, the Coryphene\nis a most lovely fish, and those who have witnessed it playing round\na ship, or dashing off in chase of a shoal of flying-fishes, can\nscarcely find words to express their admiration of its beauty.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: fishermen]\n\n\n\n\nFISHES.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n     Various modes of capturing Fish--The hook and line--Military\n     use of the hook--Putting a hook in the jaws--The fishing\n     spear--Different kinds of net--The casting-net--Prevalence\n     of this form--Technical words among fishermen--Fishing\n     by night--The draught of Fishes--The real force of the\n     miracle--Selecting the Fish--The Fish-gate and Fish-market--Fish\n     killed by a draught--Fishing in the Dead Sea--Dagon, the\n     fish-god of Philistina, Assyria, and Siam--Various Fishes of\n     Egypt and Palestine.\n\n\nAs to the various methods of capturing Fish, we will first take the\nsimplest plan, that of the hook and line.\n\nSundry references are made to angling, both in the Old and New\nTestaments. See, for example, the well-known passage respecting the\nleviathan, in Job xli. 1, 2: \"Canst thou draw out leviathan with an\nhook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?\n\n\"Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with\na thorn?\"\n\nIt is thought that the last clause of this passage refers, not to\nthe actual capture of the Fish, but to the mode in which they were\nkept in the tanks, each being secured by a ring or hook and line, so\nthat it might be taken when wanted.\n\nOn referring to the New Testament, we find that the fisher Apostles\nused both the hook and the net. See Matt. xvii. 27: \"Go thou to the\nsea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up.\"\nNow this passage explains one or two points.\n\nIn the first place, it is one among others which shows that,\nalthough the Apostles gave up all to follow Christ, they did not\nthrow away their means of livelihood, as some seem to fancy, nor\nexist ever afterwards on the earnings of others. On the contrary,\nthey retained their fisher equipment, whether boats, nets, or hooks;\nand here we find St. Peter, after the way of fishermen, carrying\nabout with him the more portable implements of his craft.\n\nNext, the phrase \"casting\" the hook into the sea is exactly\nexpressive of the mode in which angling is conducted in the sea and\nlarge pieces of water, such as the Lake of Galilee. The fisherman\ndoes not require a rod, but takes his line, which has a weight just\nabove the hook, coils it on his left arm in lasso fashion, baits the\nhook, and then, with a peculiar swing, throws it into the water as\nfar as it will reach. The hook is allowed to sink for a short time,\nand is then drawn towards the shore in a series of jerks, in order\nto attract the Fish, so that, although the fisherman does not employ\na rod, he manages his line very much as does an angler of our own\nday when \"spinning\" for pike or trout.\n\nSometimes the fisherman has a number of lines to manage, and in this\ncase he acts in a slightly different manner. After throwing out the\nloaded hook, as above mentioned, he takes a short stick, notched at\none end, and pointed at the other, thrusts the sharp end into the\nground at the margin of the water, and hitches the line on the notch.\n\nHe then proceeds to do the same with all his lines in succession,\nand when he has flung the last hook into the water, he sits down\non a heap of leaves and grass which he has gathered together, and\nwatches the lines to see if either of them is moved in the peculiar\njerking manner which is characteristic of a \"bite.\" After a while,\nhe hauls them in successively, removes the Fish that may have been\ncaught, and throws the lines into the water afresh.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe now come to the practice of catching Fish by the net, a custom\nto which the various Scriptural writers frequently refer, sometimes\nin course of historical narrative, and sometimes by way of allegory\nor metaphor. The reader will remember that the net was also used on\nland for the purpose of catching wild animals, and that many of the\nallusions to the net which occur in the Old Testament refer to the\nland and not to the water.\n\nThe commonest kind of net, which was used in the olden times as it\nis now, was the casting-net. This kind of net is circular, and is\nloaded all round its edge with weights, and suspended by the middle\nto a cord. When the fisherman throws this net, he gathers it up in\nfolds in his arms, and, with a peculiar swing of the arms, only to\nbe learned by long practice, flings it so that it spreads out and\nfalls in its circular form upon the surface of the water. It rapidly\nsinks to the bottom, the loaded circumference causing it to assume\na cup-like form, enclosing within its meshes all the Fish that\nhappen to be under it as it falls. When it has reached the bottom,\nthe fisherman cautiously hauls in the rope, so that the loaded\nedges gradually approach each other, and by their own weight cling\ntogether and prevent the Fish from escaping as the net is slowly\ndrawn ashore.\n\nThis kind of net is found, with certain modifications, in nearly\nall parts of the world. The Chinese are perhaps supreme in their\nmanagement of it. They have a net of extraordinary size, and cast it\nby flinging it over their backs, the huge circle spreading itself\nout in the most perfect manner as it falls on the water.\n\nAt the present day, when the fishermen use this net they wade into\nthe sea as far as they can, and then cast it. In consequence of this\ncustom, the fishermen are always naked while engaged in their work,\nwearing nothing but a thick cap in order to save themselves from\nsun-stroke. It is probable that on the memorable occasion mentioned\nby St. John, in chap. xxi., all the fishermen were absolutely,\nand not relatively naked, wearing no clothes at all, not even the\nordinary tunic.\n\nThat a great variety of nets was used by the ancient Jews is\nevident from the fact that there are no less than ten words to\nsignify different kinds of net. At the present day we have very\ngreat difficulty in deciding upon the exact interpretation of these\ntechnical terms, especially as in very few cases are we assisted\neither by the context or by the etymology of the words. It is the\nsame in all trades or pursuits, and we can easily understand how our\nown names of drag-net, seine, trawl, and keer-drag would perplex\nany commentator who happened to live some two thousand years after\nEnglish had ceased to be a living language.\n\n[Illustration: MODE OF DRAGGING THE SEINE-NET.]\n\nThe Sagene, or seine-net, was made in lengths, any number of which\ncould be joined together, so as to enclose a large space of water.\nThe upper edge was kept at the surface of the water by floats, and\nthe lower edge sunk by weights.\n\nThis net was always taken to sea in vessels, and when \"shot\" the\nvarious lengths were joined together, and the net extended in a\nline, with a boat at each end. The boats then gradually approached\neach other, so as to bring the net into a semicircle, and finally\nmet, enclosing thereby a vast number of Fishes in their meshen\nwalls. The water was then beaten, so as to frighten the Fishes\nand drive them into the meshes, and the net was then either taken\nashore, or lifted by degrees on board the boats, and the Fish\nremoved from it.\n\nAs in a net of this kind Fishes of all sorts are enclosed, the\ncontents are carefully examined, and those which are unfit for\neating are thrown away. Even at the present day much care is taken\nin the selection, but in the ancient times the fishermen were still\nmore cautious, every Fish having to be separately examined in order\nthat the presence both of fins and scales might be assured before\nthe captors could send it to the market.\n\nIt is to this custom that Christ alludes in the well-known parable\nof the net: \"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that\nwas cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind;\n\n\"Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and\ngathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLastly, we come to the religious, or rather superstitious, part\nplayed by Fish in the ancient times. That the Egyptians employed\nFish as material symbols of Divine attributes we learn from secular\nwriters, such as Herodotus and Strabo.\n\nThe Jews, who seem to have had an irrepressible tendency to\nidolatry, and to have adopted the idols of every people with whom\nthey came in contact, resuscitated the Fish-worship of Egypt as soon\nas they found themselves among the Philistines. We might naturally\nimagine that as the Israelites were bitterly opposed to their\npersistent enemy, who trod them under foot and crushed every attempt\nat rebellion for more than three hundred years, they would repudiate\nthe worship as well as the rule of their conquerors. But, on the\ncontrary, they adopted the worship of Dagon, the Fish-god, who was\nthe principal deity of the Philistines, and erected temples in his\nhonour.\n\nWe find precisely the same worship at the present day in Siam, where\nDagon has exactly the same form as among the Philistines of old.\nThere is now before me a photograph of a great temple at Ayutia, the\nentrance to which is guarded by two huge images of the Fish-god.\nThey are about sixty feet in height, and have both legs and feet\nlike man, but in addition the lower part of the body is modified\ninto the tail of a Fish, which, in common with the whole of the\nbody, is covered with gilded scales.\n\nIn order that the reader may see examples of the typical Fish which\nare to be found in Egypt and Palestine, I have added three more\nspecies, which are represented in the following illustration.\n\n[Illustration: FISHES OF EGYPT AND PALESTINE.\n\n1. NILE PERCH. 2. SURMULLET. 3. STAR-GAZER.]\n\nThe uppermost figure represents the NILE PERCH. This Fish is\nplentiful in the Nile, and in the mouths of many Asiatic rivers. It\nis brown above, silvery white below, and may be distinguished by the\narmed gill-covers, and the three strong spines of the anal fin. The\ntongue is smooth.\n\nImmediately below the Nile Perch is the STAR-GAZER.\n\nThis Fish is found in the Mediterranean, and derives its name from\nthe singular mode in which the eyes are set in the head, so that it\nlooks upwards instead of sideways. It is one of the mud-lovers,\na fact which accounts for the peculiar position of the eyes. It\nis said to feed after the fashion of the fishing-frog--_i.e._ by\nburying itself in the mud and attracting other Fishes by a worm-like\nappendage of its mouth, and pouncing on them before they are aware\nof their danger.\n\nThis is not a pretty Fish, and as it is very spiny, is not pleasant\nto the grasp, but its flesh is very good, and it is much valued by\nthose who can obtain it.\n\nThe last Fish to be noticed is the SURMULLET, a Fish that is equally\nremarkable for the beauty of its colours and the excellence of its\nflesh.\n\n[Illustration: man]\n\n\n\n\nMOLLUSCS.\n\n     The purple of Scripture--The sac containing the purple\n     dye--Curious change of colour--Mode of obtaining the dye--The\n     Tyrian purple--The king of the Ethiopians and the purple\n     robe--The professional purple dyers--Various words expressive of\n     different shades of purple.\n\n\nLeaving the higher forms of animal life, we now pass to the\nInvertebrated Animals which are mentioned in Scripture.\n\nAs may be inferred from the extreme looseness of nomenclature\nwhich prevails among the higher animals, the species which can be\nidentified are comparatively few, and of them but a very few details\nare given in the Scriptures.\n\nTaking them in their zoological order, we will begin with the\nMOLLUSCS.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are all familiar with the value which was set by the ancients\nupon the peculiar dye which may be called by the name of Imperial\nPurple. In the first place, it was exceedingly costly, not only\nfor its richness of hue, but from the great difficulty with which\na sufficient quantity could be procured for staining a dress.\nPurple was exclusively a royal colour, which might not be worn by a\nsubject. Among the ancient Romans, during the times of the Caesars,\nany one who ventured to appear in a dress of purple would do so at\nthe peril of his life. In the consular days of Rome, the dress of\nthe consuls was white, striped with purple; but the Caesars advanced\nanother step in luxury, and dyed the whole toga of this costly hue.\n\nThe colour of the dye is scarcely what we understand by the term\n\"purple,\" _i.e._ a mixture of blue and red. It has but very little\nblue in it, and has been compared by the ancients to the colour\nof newly-clotted blood. It is obtained from several Shell Fish\nbelonging to the great Whelk family, the chief of which is the\n_Murex brandaris_.\n\nThe shell is shaped something like that of a whelk, but is very\nsmooth and porcelain-like, and is generally white, ornamented with\nseveral  bands. It is, however, one of the most variable of\nshells, differing not only in colour but in form. It always inhabits\nthe belt of the shore between tide-marks, and preys upon other\nMolluscs, such as the mussel and periwinkle, literally licking them\nto pieces with its long riband tongue.\n\nThis tongue is beset with rows of hooked teeth, exactly like the\nshark-tooth weapons of the Samoan and Mangaian Islanders, and with\nit the creature is enabled to bore through the shells of mussels\nand similar Molluscs, and to eat the enclosed animal. It is very\ndestructive to periwinkles, thrusting its tongue through the mouth\nof the shell, piercing easily the operculum by which the entrance is\nclosed, and gradually scooping out the unfortunate inmate.\n\nEven the bivalves, which can shut themselves up between two shells,\nfare no better, the tongue of the Dog-Whelk rasping a hole in the\nhard shell in eight-and-forty hours.\n\nIn order to procure the animal, the shell must be broken with a\nsharp blow of a small hammer, and the receptacle of the colouring\nmatter can then be seen behind the head, and recognised by its\nlighter hue.\n\nWhen it is opened, a creamy sort of matter exudes. It is yellowish,\nand gives no promise of its future richness of hue. There is only\none drop of this matter in each animal, and it is about sufficient\nin quantity to stain a piece of linen the size of a dime.\n\nThe best mode of seeing the full beauty of the purple is to take a\nnumber of the Molluscs, and to stain as large a surface as possible.\nThe piece of linen should then be exposed to the rays of the sun,\nwhen it will go through a most curious series of colours. The yellow\nbegins to turn green, and, after a while, the stained portions of\nthe linen will be entirely green, the yellow having been vanquished\nby the blue. By degrees the blue predominates more and more over the\nyellow, until the linen is no more green, but blue. Then, just as\nthe yellow yielded to the blue, the blue yields to red, and becomes\nfirst violet, then purple, and lastly assumes the blood-red hue of\nroyalty.\n\nThe colour is very permanent, and, instead of fading by time, seems\nrather to brighten.\n\nIn some cases the ancients appear not to have troubled themselves\nwith the complicated operation of taking the animal out of the\nshell, opening the receptacle, and squeezing the contents on the\nfabric to be dyed, but simply crushed the whole of the Mollusc,\nso as to set the colouring matter free, and steeped the cloth\nin the pulp. Tyre was one of the most celebrated spots for this\nmanufacture, the \"Tyrian dye\" being celebrated for its richness.\nHeaps of broken shells remain to the present day as memorials of the\nlong-perished manufacture.\n\nThe value which the ancients set upon this dye is shown by many\npassages in various books. Among others we may refer to Herodotus.\n\nCambyses, it appears, had a design to make war upon three\nnations, the Ammonians, the Carthaginians, and the Ethiopians. He\ndetermined to invade the first by land, and the second by sea;\nbut, being ignorant of the best method of reaching the Ethiopians,\nhe dispatched messengers to them, nominally as ambassadors, but\npractically as spies. He sent to the King of Ethiopia valuable\npresents--namely, a purple mantle, a golden necklace and bracelet,\nan elaborate box of perfumed ointment, and a cask of palm-wine,\nthese evidently being considered a proof of imperial magnificence.\n\nThe Ethiopian king ridiculed the jewels, praised the wine, and\nasked curiously concerning the dye with which the purple mantle\nwas stained. On being told the mode of preparation, he refused\nto believe the visitors, and, referring to the changing hues of\nthe mantle and to the perfume of the ointment, he showed his\nappreciation of their real character by saying that the goods were\ndeceptive, and so were the bearers.\n\nThe Hebrew word _argaman_, which signifies the regal purple, occurs\nseveral times in Scripture, and takes a slightly different form\naccording to the Chaldaic or Hebraic idiom.\n\nFor example, we find it in Exod. xxv. 4: \"This is the offering which\nye shall take of them: gold, and silver, and brass,\n\n\"And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen,\" &c. &c.\n\nIt occurs again in 2 Chron. ii. 7: \"Send me now therefore a man\ncunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron,\nand in purple, and crimson, and blue.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE SNAIL.\n\n     The Snail which melteth--Rendering of the Jewish Bible--Theory\n     respecting the track of the Snail--The Hebrew word\n     _Shablul_--Various Snails of Palestine.\n\n\nThere is a very remarkable and not very intelligible passage in Ps.\nlviii. 8: \"As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass\naway.\" The Jewish Bible renders the passage in a way which explains\nthe idea which evidently prevailed at the time when the Psalms were\ncomposed: \"As a snail let him melt as he passeth on.\"\n\nThe ancients had an idea that the slimy track made by a Snail as it\ncrawled along was subtracted from the substance of its body, and\nthat in consequence the farther it crept, the smaller it became,\nuntil at last it wasted entirely away. The commentators on the\nTalmud took this view of the case. The Hebrew word _shablul_, which\nundoubtedly does signify a Snail of some kind, is thus explained:\n\"The Shablul is a creeping thing: when it comes out of its shell,\nsaliva pours from itself, until it becomes liquid, and so dies.\"\n\nOther explanations of this passage have been offered, but there is\nno doubt that the view taken by these commentators is the correct\none, and that the Psalmist, when he wrote the terrible series of\ndenunciations in which the passage in question occurs, had in his\nmind the popular belief regarding the gradual wasting away of the\nSnail as it \"passeth on.\"\n\nIt is needless to say that no particular species of Snail is\nmentioned, and almost as needless to state that in Palestine there\nare many species of Snails, to any or all of which these words are\nequally applicable.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: PEARL OYSTER.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE PEARL.\n\n     The Pearl of Scripture--Wisdom compared to Pearl--Metaphorical\n     uses of the Pearl--The Pearl of great price--Casting Pearls\n     before swine.\n\n\nThere is only one passage in the Old Testament in which can be found\nthe word which is translated as PEARL, and it is certain that the\nword in question may have another interpretation.\n\nThe word in question is _gabish_, and occurs in Job xxviii.\n18. Treating of wisdom, in that magnificent passage beginning,\n\"But where shall Wisdom be found, and where is the place of\nunderstanding?\" the sacred writer uses these words, \"No mention\nshall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is\nabove rubies.\"\n\nIn consequence of the labour and research required for seeking\nwisdom, it was proverbially likened to a Pearl, and in this sense\nwe must understand the warning of our Lord, not to cast Pearls\nbefore swine. The \"pearl of great price\" is another form of the same\nmetaphor.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe substance of Pearls is essentially the same as that which lines\nmany shells, and is known as \"mother of pearl.\"\n\nAlthough a large number of shell-fish secrete \"mother of pearl,\"\nonly a few of them yield true Pearls. The finest are obtained from\nthe so-called Pearl oyster, an illustration of which is given on the\npreceding page.\n\nThe Ancients obtained their Pearls chiefly from India and the\nPersian Gulf, where to this day the industry of Pearl-fishing is\nstill carried on by the natives.\n\nThe oysters containing the Pearls are brought up from the bottom of\nthe sea by divers, who go out in boats to the fishing-grounds, which\nare some distance from the shore.\n\nLeaping naked into the water, carrying a heavy stone to enable him\nto sink quickly to the bottom, the diver descends to where the\noysters lie, and secures as many of them as possible during the\nlimited time that his breath lasts. On an average the divers remain\nunder water from fifty to eighty seconds, though some can endure a\nmuch longer period.\n\nSharks are the special dread of Pearl-divers, and many are carried\noff by this fierce monster of the deep. To arm himself against their\nattack the diver carries a sharp knife, and instances are known of\nhis having attacked and fairly defeated the dread destroyer in its\nown element.\n\nNot only is the diver exposed to the danger of attack from sharks,\nbut his hazardous calling is necessarily exhausting, and, as a rule,\nhe is a short-lived man.\n\nThere are some kinds of fresh-water mussels which contain Pearls of\nan inferior quality; perhaps the most celebrated of these is the\nPearl Mussel of the Chinese, who make a singular use of it. They\nstring a number of globular pellets, and introduce them between\nthe valves of the mussel, so that in course of time the creature\ndeposits a coating of pearly substance upon them, and forms a very\ngood imitation of real Pearls.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: insects]\n\n[Illustration: butterfly]\n\n\n\n\nINSECTS.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOCUST.\n\n     Insects--The Locust-The two migratory Locusts at rest and on\n     the wing--The Locust swarms--Gordon Cumming's account--Progress\n     of the insect hosts--Vain attempts to check them--Tossed up and\n     down as a Locust--Effect of the winds on the insect--The east\n     and the west winds--Locusts used for food--Ancient and modern\n     travellers--The food of John the Baptist.\n\n\nOf the LOCUSTS there are several species in Palestine, two of which\nare represented in the accompanying plate. Those on the ground are\nthe common Migratory Locusts, while those on the wing, which have\nlong heads, are a species of _Truxalis_.\n\nThe Locust belongs to the great order of Orthoptera, or\nstraight-winged insects. They have, when fully developed, four\nwings, the two front being thick and membraneous, while the\ntwo hinder wings are large, delicate, translucent, and folded\nlongitudinally under the front pair of wings when the insect is at\nrest. In the Locusts these characteristics are admirably shown. The\nappearance of a Locust when at rest and when flying is so different\nthat the creature is at first sight scarcely recognisable as the\nsame creature. When at rest, it is a compact and tolerably stout\ninsect, with a dull though delicately <DW52> body; but when it\ntakes flight it appears to attain twice its previous dimensions.\n\nThe front pair of wings, which alone were seen before they were\nexpanded, became comparatively insignificant, while the hinder\npair, which were before invisible, became the most prominent part\nof the insect, their translucent folds being  with the most\nbrilliant hues, according to the species. The body seems to have\nshrunk as the wings have increased, and to have diminished to half\nits previous size, while the long legs that previously were so\nconspicuous are stretched out like the legs of a flying heron.\n\nAll the Locusts are vegetable-feeders, and do great harm wherever\nthey happen to be plentiful, their powerful jaws severing even the\nthick grass stems as if cut by scissors. But it is only when they\ninvade a country that their real power is felt. They come flying\nwith the wind in such vast multitudes that the sky is darkened as\nif by thunder-clouds; and when they settle, every vestige of green\ndisappears off the face of the earth.\n\nMr. Gordon Cumming once saw a flight of these Locusts. They flew\nabout three hundred feet from the ground, and came on in thick,\nsolid masses, forming one unbroken cloud. On all sides nothing was\nto be seen but Locusts. The air was full of them, and the plain was\ncovered with them, and for more than an hour the insect army flew\npast him. When the Locusts settle, they eat with such voracity that\nthe sound caused by their jaws cutting the leaves and grass can be\nheard at a great distance; and even the young Locusts, which have no\nwings, and are graphically termed by the Dutch colonists of Southern\nAfrica \"voet-gangers,\" or foot-goers, are little inferior in power\nof jaw to the fully-developed insect.\n\nAs long as they have a favourable wind, nothing stops the progress\nof the Locusts. They press forward just like the vast herds of\nantelopes that cover the plains of Africa, or the bisons that once\nblackened the prairies of America, and the progress of even the\nwingless young is as irresistible as that of the adult insects.\nRegiments of soldiers have in vain attempted to stop them. Trenches\nhave been dug across their path, only to be filled up in a few\nminutes with the advancing hosts, over whose bodies the millions of\nsurvivors continued their march. When the trenches were filled with\nwater, the result was the same; and even when fire was substituted\nfor water, the flames were quenched by the masses of Locusts that\nfell into them. When they come to a tree, they climb up it in\nswarms, and devour every particle of foliage, not even sparing the\nbark of the smaller branches. They ascend the walls of houses that\ncome in the line of their march, swarming in at the windows, and\ngnawing in their hunger the very woodwork of the furniture.\n\nWe shall now see how true to nature is the terrible prophecy of\nJoel. \"A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of\nthick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great\npeople and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither\nshall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.\n\n[Illustration: LOCUSTS.]\n\n\"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth:\nthe land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a\ndesolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.\n\n\"And the Lord shall utter His voice before His army: for His camp is\nvery great\" (Joel ii. 2-11).\n\nNothing can be more vividly accurate than this splendid description\nof the Locust armies. First we have the darkness caused by them as\nthey fly like black clouds between the sun and the earth. Then comes\nthe contrast between the blooming and fertile aspect of the land\nbefore they settle on it, and its utter desolation when they leave\nit.\n\nThere is one passage in the Scriptures which at first sight seems\nrather obscure, but is clear enough when we understand the character\nof the insect to which it refers: \"I am gone like the shadow when it\ndeclineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust\" (Ps. cix. 23).\n\nAlthough the Locusts have sufficient strength of flight to remain\non the wing for a considerable period, and to pass over great\ndistances, they have little or no command over the direction of\ntheir flight, and always travel with the wind, just as has been\nmentioned regarding the quail. So entirely are they at the mercy\nof the wind, that if a sudden gust arises the Locusts are tossed\nabout in the most helpless manner; and if they should happen to come\nacross one of the circular air-currents that are so frequently found\nin the countries which they inhabit, they are whirled round and\nround without the least power of extricating themselves.\n\nIn the account of the great plague of Locusts, the wind is mentioned\nas the proximate cause both of their arrival and their departure.\nSee, for example, Exod. x. 12, 13:\n\n\"And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the land\nof Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of\nEgypt, and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath\nleft.\n\n\"And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the\nLord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that\nnight; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.\"\n\nAfterwards, when Moses was brought before Pharaoh, and entreated to\nremove the plague which had been brought upon the land, the west\nwind was employed to take the Locusts away, just as the east wind\nhad brought them.\n\n\"He went out from Pharaoh, and entreated the Lord.\n\n\"And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the\nlocusts, and cast them into the Red Sea; there remained not one\nlocust in all the coasts of Egypt\" (Exod. x. 18, 19).\n\nModern travellers have given accounts of these Locust armies, which\nexactly correspond with the sacred narrative. One traveller mentions\nthat, after a severe storm, the Locusts were destroyed in such\nmultitudes, that they were heaped in a sort of wall, varying from\nthree to four feet in height, fifty miles in length, and almost\nunapproachable, on account of the odour of their decomposing bodies.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe now come to the use of Locusts as food.\n\nVery few insects have been recognised as fit for human food, even\namong uncivilized nations, and it is rather singular that the\nIsraelites, whose dietary was so scrupulously limited, should have\nbeen permitted the use of the Locust. These insects are, however,\neaten in all parts of the world which they frequent, and in some\nplaces form an important article of diet, thus compensating in some\nway for the amount of vegetable food which they consume.\n\nWhen their captors have roasted and eaten as many as they can manage\nto devour, they dry the rest over the fires, pulverize them between\ntwo stones, and keep the meal for future use, mixing it with water,\nor, if they can get it, with milk.\n\nWe will now take a few accounts given by travellers of the present\nday, selecting one or two from many. Mr. W. G. Palgrave, in his\n\"Central and Eastern Arabia,\" gives a description of the custom of\neating Locusts. \"On a sloping bank, at a short distance in front, we\ndiscerned certain large black patches, in strong contrast with the\nwhite glisten of the soil around, and at the same time our attention\nwas attracted by a strange whizzing, like that of a flight of\nhornets, close along the ground, while our dromedaries capered and\nstarted as though struck with sudden insanity.\n\n\"The cause of all this was a vast swarm of locusts, here alighted\nin their northerly wanderings from their birthplace in the Dahna;\ntheir camp extended far and wide, and we had already disturbed their\noutposts. These insects are wont to settle on the ground after\nsunset, and there, half-stupified by the night chill, await the\nmorning rays, which warm them once more into life and movement.\n\n\"This time, the dromedaries did the work of the sun, and it would be\nhard to say which of the two were the most frightened, they or the\nlocusts. It was truly laughable to see so huge a beast lose his wits\nfor fear at the flight of a harmless, stingless insect, for, of all\ntimid creatures, none equal this 'ship of the desert' for cowardice.\n\n\"But, if the beasts were frightened, not so their masters. I really\nthought they would have gone mad for joy. Locusts are here an\narticle of food, nay, a dainty, and a good swarm of them is begged\nof Heaven in Arabia....\n\n\"The locust, when boiled or fried, is said to be delicious, and\nboiled and fried accordingly they are to an incredible extent.\nHowever, I never could persuade myself to taste them, whatever\ninvitations the inhabitants of the land, smacking their lips over\nlarge dishes full of entomological 'delicatesses,' would make me to\njoin them. Barakat ventured on one for a trial. He pronounced it\noily and disgusting, nor added a second to the first: it is caviare\nto unaccustomed palates.\n\n\"The swarm now before us was a thorough godsend for our Arabs, on no\naccount to be neglected. Thirst, weariness, all were forgotten, and\ndown the riders leaped from their starting camels. This one spread\nout a cloak, that one a saddle-bag, a third his shirt, over the\nunlucky creatures, destined for the morning meal. Some flew away,\nwhizzing across our feet; others were caught, and tied up in sacks.\"\n\nMr. Mansfield Parkyns, in his \"Life in Abyssinia,\" mentions that the\ntrue Abyssinian will not eat the Locust, but that the <DW64>s and\nArabs do so. He describes the flavour as being something between\nthe burnt end of a quill and a crumb of linseed cake. The flavour,\nhowever, depends much on the mode of cooking, and, as some say, on\nthe nature of the Locusts' food.\n\nSignor Pierotti states, in his \"Customs and Traditions of\nPalestine,\" that Locusts are really excellent food, and that he was\naccustomed to eat them, not from necessity, but from choice, and\ncompares their flavour to that of shrimps.\n\nDr. Livingstone makes a similar comparison. In Palestine, Locusts\nare eaten either roasted or boiled in salt and water, but, when\npreserved for future use, they are dried in the sun, their heads,\nwings, and legs picked off, and their bodies ground into dust. This\ndust has naturally a rather bitter flavour, which is corrected by\nmixing it with camel's milk or honey, the latter being the favourite\nsubstance.\n\nWe may now see that the food of John the Baptist was, like his\ndress, that of a people who lived at a distance from towns, and\nthat there was no more hardship in the one than in the other.\nSome commentators have tried to prove that he fed on the fruit of\nthe locust or carob tree--the same that is used in some countries\nfor feeding cattle; but there is not the least ground for such\nan explanation. The account of his life, indeed, requires no\nexplanation; Locust-dust, mixed with honey, being an ordinary\narticle of food even at the present day.\n\n[Illustration: locust]\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: flowers]\n\n\n\n\nTHE BEE.\n\n     The Honey Bee of Palestine--Abundance of Bees in the\n     Holy Land--Habitations of the wild Bee--The honey of\n     Scripture--Domesticated Bees and their hives--Stores of wild\n     honey--The story of Jonathan--The Crusaders and the honey.\n\n\nFortunately, there is no doubt about the rendering of the Hebrew\nword _deborah,_ which has always been acknowledged to be rightly\ntranslated as \"Bee.\"\n\nThe Honey Bee is exceedingly plentiful in Palestine, and in some\nparts of the country multiplying to such an extent that the\nprecipitous ravines in which it takes up its residence are almost\nimpassable by human beings, so jealous are the Bees of their\ndomains. Although the Bee is not exactly the same species as that\nof our own country, being the Banded Bee _(Apis fasciata),_ and not\nthe _Apis mellifica,_ the two insects very much resemble each other\nin shape, colour, and habits. Both of them share the instinctive\ndislike of strangers and jealousy of intrusion, and the Banded Bee\nof Palestine has as great an objection to intrusion as its congener\nin this country.\n\nSeveral allusions are made in the Scriptures to this trait in the\ncharacter of the Bee. See, for example, Deut. i. 44: \"And the\nAmorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you,\nand chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto\nHormah.\" All those who have had the misfortune to offend Bees will\nrecognise the truth of this metaphor, the Amorites swarming out of\nthe mountain like wild Bees out of the rocky clefts which serve them\nas hives, and chasing the intruder fairly out of their domains.\n\n[Illustration: THE BEE]\n\nA similar metaphor is employed in the Psalms: \"They compassed me\nabout; yea, they compassed me about; but in the name of the Lord I\nwill destroy them.\n\n\"They compassed me about like bees, they are quick as the fire of\nthorns, but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.\"\n\nThe custom of swarming is mentioned in one of the earlier books of\nScripture. The reader will remember that, after Samson had killed\nthe lion which met him on the way, he left the carcase alone.\nThe various carnivorous beasts and birds at once discover such a\nbanquet, and in a very short time the body of a dead animal is\nreduced to a hollow skeleton, partially or entirely covered with\nskin, the rays of the sun drying and hardening the skin until it is\nlike horn.\n\nIn exceptionally hot weather, the same result occurs even in this\ncountry. Some years before this account was written there was a\nvery hot and dry summer, and a great mortality took place among the\nsheep. So many indeed died that at last their owners merely flayed\nthem, and left their bodies to perish. One of the dead sheep had\nbeen thrown into a rather thick copse, and had fallen in a spot\nwhere it was sheltered from the wind, and yet exposed to the fierce\nheat of the summer's sun. The consequence was that in a few days\nit was reduced to a mere shell. The heat hardened and dried the\nexternal layer of flesh so that not even the carnivorous beetles\ncould penetrate it, while the whole of the interior dissolved into\na semi-putrescent state, and was rapidly devoured by myriads of\nblue-bottles and other larvae.\n\nIt was so thoroughly dried that scarcely any evil odour clung to\nit, and as soon as I came across it the story of Samson received a\nsimple elucidation. In the hotter Eastern lands, the whole process\nwould have been more rapid and more complete, and the skeleton of\nthe lion, with the hard and horny skin strained over it, would\nafford exactly the habitation of which a wandering swarm of Bees\nwould take advantage. At the present day swarms of wild Bees often\nmake their habitations within the desiccated bodies of dead camels\nthat have perished on the way.\n\nAs to the expression \"hissing\" for the Bee, the reader must bear in\nmind that a sharp, short hiss is the ordinary call in Palestine,\nwhen one person desires to attract the attention of another. A\nsimilar sound, which may perhaps be expressed by the letters _tst_,\nprevails on the Continent at the present day. Signor Pierotti\nremarks that the inhabitants of Palestine are even now accustomed to\nsummon Bees by a sort of hissing sound.\n\nWhether the honey spoken of in the Scriptures was obtained from wild\nor domesticated Bees is not very certain, but, as the manners of the\nEast are much the same now as they were three thousand years ago,\nit is probable that Bees were kept then as they are now. The hives\nare not in the least like ours, but are cylindrical vases of coarse\nearthenware, laid horizontally, much like the bark hives employed in\nmany parts of Southern Africa.\n\nIn some places the hives are actually built into the walls of the\nhouses, the closed end of the cylinder projecting into the interior,\nwhile an entrance is made for the Bees in the other end, so that the\ninsects have no business in the house. When the inhabitants wish to\ntake the honey, they resort to the operation which is technically\ntermed \"driving\" by bee-masters.\n\nThey gently tap the end within the house, and continue the tapping\nuntil the Bees, annoyed by the sound, have left the hive. They then\ntake out the circular door that closes the end of the hive, remove\nas much comb as they want, carefully put back those portions which\ncontain grubs and bee-bread, and replace the door, when the Bees\nsoon return and fill up the gaps in the combs. As to the wasteful,\ncruel, and foolish custom of \"burning\" the Bees, the Orientals never\nthink of practising it.\n\nIn many places the culture of Bees is carried out to a very great\nextent, numbers of the earthenware cylinders being piled on one\nanother, and a quantity of mud thrown over them in order to defend\nthem from the rays of the sun, which would soon melt the wax of the\ncombs.\n\nIn consequence of the geographical characteristics of the Holy Land,\nwhich supplies not only convenient receptacles for the Bees in the\nrocks, but abundance of thyme and similar plants, vast stores of\nbee-comb are to be found in the cliffs, and form no small part of\nthe wealth of the people.\n\nThe abundance of wild honey is shown by the memorable events\nrecorded in 1 Sam. xiv. Saul had prohibited all the people\nfrom eating until the evening. Jonathan, who had not heard the\nprohibition, was faint and weary, and, seeing honey dripping on the\nground from the abundance and weight of the comb, he took it up on\nthe end of his staff, and ate sufficient to restore his strength.\n\nThus, if we refer again to the history of John the Baptist and his\nfood, we shall find that he was in no danger of starving for want\nof nourishment, the Bees breeding abundantly in the desert places\nhe frequented, and affording him a plentiful supply of the very\nmaterial which was needed to correct the deficiencies of the dried\nlocusts which he used instead of bread.\n\nThe expression \"a land flowing with milk and honey\" has become\nproverbial as a metaphor expressive of plenty. Those to whom the\nwords were spoken understood it as something more than a metaphor.\nIn the work to which reference has already been made Signor Pierotti\nwrites as follows:--\"Let us now see how far the land could be said\nto flow with milk and honey during the latter part of its history\nand at the present day.\n\n\"We find that honey was abundant in the time of the Crusades, for\nthe English, who followed Edward I. to Palestine, died in great\nnumbers from the excessive heat, and from eating too much fruit and\nhoney.\n\n\"At the present day, after traversing the country in every\ndirection, I am able to affirm that in the south-east and\nnorth-east, where the ancient customs of the patriarchs are most\nfully preserved, and the effects of civilization have been felt\nleast, milk and honey may still be said to flow, as they form a\nportion of every meal, and may even be more abundant than water,\nwhich fails occasionally in the heat of summer.... I have often\neaten of the comb, which I found very good and of delicious\nfragrance.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Bee represented in the illustration is the common Bee of\nPalestine, _Apis fasciata_. The lowest figure in the corner, with\na long body and shut wings, is the queen. The central figure\nrepresents the drone, conspicuous by means of his large eyes, that\nalmost join each other at the top of the head, and for his thicker\nand stouter body, while the third figure represents the worker Bee.\nNear them is shown the entrance to one of the natural hives which\nare so plentiful in the Holy Land, and are made in the \"clefts of\nthe rocks.\" A number of Bees are shown issuing from the hole.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE HORNET AND ITS NEST.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HORNET.\n\n     The Tzirah or Hornet of Scripture--Travellers driven\n     away by Hornets--The Hornet used as a metaphor--Oriental\n     symbolism--Sting of the Hornet.\n\n\nStill keeping to the hymenopterous insects, we come to the Hornet.\nThere are three passages in which occurs the word _tzirah_, which\nhas been translated as Hornet. In every case when the word is\nmentioned the insect is employed in a metaphorical sense. See, for\nexample, Exod. xxiii. 27, 28: \"I will send my fear before thee, and\nwill destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come; and I will make\nall thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.\n\n\"And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the\nHivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.\"\n\nThe Hornet affords a most appropriate image for such a promise\nas was made to the Israelites, and was one which they must\nhave thoroughly comprehended. The Hornets of Palestine and the\nneighbouring countries are far more common than our own Hornets\nhere, and they evidently infested some parts to such an extent that\nthey gave their name to those spots. Thus the word _Zoreah_, which\nis mentioned in Josh. xv. 33, signifies the \"place of Hornets.\"\n\nThey make their nests in various ways; some species placing them\nunderground, and others disposing them as shown in the illustration,\nand merely sheltering them from the elements by a paper cover.\nSuch nests as these would easily be disturbed by the animals which\naccompanied the Israelites on their journeys, even if the people\nwere careful to avoid them. In such a case, the irritated insects\nrush out at the intruders; and so great is the terror of their\nstings, that men and beasts fly promiscuously in every direction,\neach only anxious to escape from the winged foes.\n\nThe recollection of such scenes would necessarily dwell in the\nmemory of those who had taken part in them, and cause the metaphor\nto impress itself strongly upon them.\n\nIt is needless to say that the passages in question might be literal\nstatements of facts, and that the various nations were actually\ndriven out of their countries by Hornets. Let the insects be brought\nupon the land in sufficient numbers, and neither man nor beast\ncould stay in it. It is not likely, however, that such a series of\nmiracles, far exceeding the insect-plagues of Egypt, would have been\nworked without frequent references to them in the subsequent books\nof the Scriptures; and, moreover, the quick, short, and headlong\nflight of the attack of Hornets is a very different thing from\nthe emigration which is mentioned in the Scriptures, and the long\njourneys which such a proceeding involved.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: ANTS ON THE MARCH.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE ANT.\n\n     The Ant of Scripture--Habit of laying up stores of food--The\n     Ants of Palestine, and their habits--The Agricultural or\n     Mound-making Ant--Preparing ground, sowing, tending, reaping,\n     and storing the crop--Different habits of Ants--The winged Ants.\n\n\nOne of the best-known and most frequently quoted passages of\nScripture is found in Proverbs, chap. vi. 6-8: \"Go to the ant, thou\nsluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:\n\n\"Which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler,\n\n\"Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the\nharvest.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn Palestine Ants abound, and the species are tolerably numerous.\nAmong them are found some species which do convey seeds into their\nsubterranean home; and if their stores should be wetted by the heavy\nrains which sometimes prevail in that country, bring them to the\nouter air, as soon as the weather clears up, and dry them in the\nsun.\n\nThe writer of the Proverbs was therefore perfectly right when he\nalluded to the vegetable stores within the nest, and only spoke\nthe truth when he wrote of the Ant that it was exceeding wise. Any\none who wishes to test the truth of his words can easily do so by\nwatching the first Ants' nest which he finds, the species of the Ant\nnot being of much consequence. The nests of the Wood-Ant are perhaps\nthe best suited for investigation, partly because the insect and its\nhabitation are comparatively large, and, secondly, because so much\nof the work is done above-ground.\n\nThe most wonderful Ant in the world is one which hitherto is only\nknown in some parts of America. Its scientific name is _Atta\nmalefaciens_, and it has been called by various popular names, such\nas the Mound-making Ant and the Agricultural Ant on account of its\nhabits, and the Stinging Ant on account of the pungency of its\nvenom. This characteristic has gained for it the scientific name of\n_malefaciens_, or villanous.\n\nThe habits of this Ant were studied in Texas by Dr. Lincecum for\nthe space of twelve years, and the result of his investigations was\ncommunicated to the Linnaean Society by C. Darwin, Esq. It is so\nextraordinary an account that it must be given the narrator's own\nwords:--\n\n\"The species which I have named 'Agricultural' is a large brownish\nant. It dwells in what may be termed paved cities, and, like a\nthrifty, diligent, provident farmer, makes suitable and timely\narrangements for the changing seasons. It is, in short, endowed\nwith skill, ingenuity, and untiring patience sufficient to enable\nit successfully to contend with the varying exigencies which it may\nhave to encounter in the life-conflict.\n\n\"When it has selected a situation for its habitation, if on ordinary\ndry ground, it bores a hole, around which it raises the surface\nthree and sometimes six inches, forming a low circular mound having\na very gentle inclination from the centre to the outer border, which\non an average is three or four feet from the entrance. But if the\nlocation is chosen on low, flat, wet land liable to inundation,\nthough the ground may be perfectly dry at the time the ant sets to\nwork, it nevertheless elevates the mound, in the form of a pretty\nsharp cone, to the height of fifteen to twenty inches or more, and\nmakes the entrance near the summit. Around the mound in either case\nthe ant clears the ground of all obstructions, levels and smooths\nthe surface to the distance of three or four feet from the gate of\nthe city, giving the space the appearance of a handsome pavement, as\nit really is.\n\n\"Within this paved area not a blade of any green thing is allowed to\ngrow, except a single species of grain-bearing grass. Having planted\nthis crop in a circle around, and two or three feet from, the centre\nof the mound, the insect tends and cultivates it with constant care,\ncutting away all other grasses and weeds that may spring up amongst\nit and all around outside of the farm-circle to the extent of one or\ntwo feet more.\n\n\"The cultivated grass grows luxuriantly, and produces a heavy\ncrop of small, white, flinty seeds, which under the microscope\nvery closely resemble ordinary rice. When ripe, it is carefully\nharvested, and carried by the workers, chaff and all, into the\ngranary cells, where it is divested of the chaff and packed away.\nThe chaff is taken out and thrown beyond the limits of the paved\narea.\n\n\"During protracted wet weather, it sometimes happens that the\nprovision stores become damp, and are liable to sprout and spoil.\nIn this case, on the first fine day the ants bring out the damp and\ndamaged grain, and expose it to the sun till it is dry, when they\ncarry it back and pack away all the sound seeds, leaving those that\nhad sprouted to waste.\n\n\"In a peach-orchard not far from my house is a considerable\nelevation, on which is an extensive bed of rock. In the sand-beds\noverlying portions of this rock are fine cities of the Agricultural\nants, evidently very ancient. My observations on their manners\nand customs have been limited to the last twelve years, during\nwhich time the enclosure surrounding the orchard has prevented the\napproach of cattle to the ant-farms. The cities which are outside\nof the enclosure as well as those protected in it are, at the\nproper season, invariably planted with the ant-rice. The crop may\naccordingly always be seen springing up within the circle about the\n1st of November every year.\n\n\"Of late years, however, since the number of farms and cattle has\ngreatly increased, and the latter are eating off the grass much\ncloser than formerly, thus preventing the ripening of the seeds, I\nnotice that the Agricultural ant is placing its cities along the\nturn-rows in the fields, walks in gardens, inside about the gates,\n&c., where they can cultivate their farms without molestation from\nthe cattle.\n\n\"There can be no doubt of the fact, that the particular species of\ngrain-bearing grass mentioned above is intentionally planted. In\nfarmer-like manner the ground upon which it stands is carefully\ndivested of all other grasses and weeds during the time it is\ngrowing. When it is ripe the grain is taken care of, the dry stubble\ncut away and carried off, the paved area being left unencumbered\nuntil the ensuing autumn, when the same 'ant-rice' reappears within\nthe same circle, and receives the same agricultural attention as was\nbestowed upon the previous crop; and so on year after year, as I\n_know_ to be the case, in all situations where the ants' settlements\nare protected from graminivorous animals.\"\n\nIn a second letter, Dr. Lincecum, in reply to an inquiry from Mr.\nDarwin, whether he supposed that the Ants plant seeds for the\nensuing crop, says, \"I have not the slightest doubt of it. And\nmy conclusions have not been arrived at from hasty or careless\nobservation, nor from seeing the ants do something that looked a\nlittle like it, and then guessing at the results. I have at all\nseasons watched the same ant-cities during the last twelve years,\nand I know that what I stated in my former letter is true. I visited\nthe same cities yesterday, and found the crop of ant-rice growing\nfinely, and exhibiting also the signs of high cultivation, and not\na blade of any other kind of grass or weed was to be seen within\ntwelve inches of the circular row of ant-rice.\"\n\nThe economical habits of this wonderful insect far surpass anything\nthat Solomon has written of the Ant, and it is not too much to say\nthat if any of the Scriptural writers had ventured to speak of an\nAnt that not only laid up stores of grain, but actually prepared\nthe soil for the crop, planted the seed, kept the ground free from\nweeds, and finally reaped the harvest, the statement would have been\nutterly disbelieved, and the credibility not only of that particular\nwriter but of the rest of Scripture severely endangered.\n\nAs may be inferred from the above description, the habits of Ants\nvary greatly according to their species and the climate in which\nthey live. All, however, are wonderful creatures; and whether we\nlook at their varied architecture, their mode of procuring food,\nthe system of slave-catching adopted by some, the \"milking\" of\naphides practised by others, their astonishing mode of communicating\nthought to each other, and their perfect system of discipline, we\nfeel how true were the words of the royal naturalist, that the Ants\nare \"little upon earth, but are exceeding wise.\"\n\n[Illustration: ANT OF PALESTINE.]\n\nThere is one point of their economy in which all known species\nagree. Only those which are destined to become perfectly developed\nmales and females attain the winged state. Before they assume the\ntransitional or pupal condition, each spins around itself a slight\nbut tough silken cocoon, in which it lies secure during the time\nwhich is consumed in developing its full perfection of form.\n\nWhen it is ready to emerge, the labourer Ants aid in freeing it\nfrom the cocoon, and in a short time it is ready to fly. Millions of\nthese winged ants rise into the air, seeking their mates, and, as\nthey are not strong on the wing, and are liable to be tossed about\nby every gust of wind, vast numbers of them perish. Whole armies of\nthem fall into the water and are drowned or devoured by fish, while\nthe insectivorous birds hold great festival on so abundant a supply\nof food. As soon as they are mated they bend their wings forward,\nsnap them off, and pass the rest of their lives on the ground.\n\nIn consequence of the destruction that takes place among the winged\nAnts, the Arabs have a proverb which is applied to those who are\nover-ambitious: \"If God purposes the destruction of an ant, He\npermits wings to grow upon her.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE CRIMSON WORM.\n\n     The scarlet or crimson of Scripture--The Coccus or Cochineal of\n     Palestine compared with that of Mexico--Difference between the\n     sexes--Mode of preparing the insect.\n\n\nWe now come to another order of insects.\n\nJust as the purple dye was obtained from a shell-fish, the scarcely\nless valuable crimson or scarlet was obtained from an insect. This\nis an insect popularly known as the Crimson Worm. It is closely\nallied to the cochineal insect of Mexico, which gives a more\nbrilliant dye, and has at the present day nearly superseded the\nnative insect. It is, however, still employed as a dye in some parts\nof the country.\n\nLike the cochineal insect of Mexico, the female is very much larger\nthan her mate, and it is only from her that the dye is procured. At\nthe proper season of year the females are gathered off the trees\nand carefully dried, the mode of drying having some effect upon the\nquality of the dye. During the process of drying the insect alters\ngreatly, both in colour and size, shrinking to less than half its\noriginal dimensions, and assuming a greyish brown hue instead of\na deep red. When placed in water it soon gives out its colouring\nmatter, and communicates to the water the rich colour with which\nwe are familiar under the name of carmine, or crimson. This latter\nname, by the way, is only a corruption of the Arabic _kermes_, which\nis the name of the insect.\n\n[Illustration: THE CRIMSON WORM.]\n\nThe reader will remember that this was one of the three sacred\ncolours--scarlet, purple, and blue--used in the vestments of the\npriests and the hangings of the tabernacle, the white not taking\nrank as a colour.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CLOTHES MOTH.\n\n     The Moth of Scripture evidently the Clothes Moth--Moths and\n     garments--Accumulation of clothes in the East--Various uses of\n     the hoarded robes--The Moths, the rust, and the thief.\n\n\nOne of the insects mentioned by name in the Scriptures is the MOTH,\nby which we must always understand some species of Clothes Moth.\nThese are as plentiful and destructive in Palestine as in this\ncountry.\n\nSeveral references are made to the Moth in the Scriptures, and\nnearly all have reference to its destructive habits. The solitary\nexceptions occur in the Book of Job, \"Behold, He put no trust in His\nservants; and His angels He charged with folly: how much less in\nthem that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,\nwhich are crushed before the moth?\"\n\nIn the New Testament reference is made several times to the Moth.\n\"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust\ndoth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal\" (Matt. vi.\n19).\n\nEven to ourselves these passages are significant enough, but to the\nJews and the inhabitants of Palestine they possessed a force which\nwe can hardly realize in this country. In the East large stores of\nclothing are kept by the wealthy, not only for their own use, but\nas presents to others. At a marriage feast, for example, the host\npresents each of the guests with a wedding garment. Clothes are also\ngiven as marks of favour, and a present of \"changes of raiment,\"\n_i.e._ suits of clothing, is one of the most common gifts. As at the\npresent day, there was anciently no greater mark of favour than for\nthe giver to present the very robe which he was wearing, and when\nthat robe happened to be an official one, the gift included the rank\nwhich it symbolized. Thus Joseph was invested with royal robes, as\nwell as with the royal ring (Gen. xli. 42). Mordecai was clothed in\nthe king's robes: \"Let the royal apparel be brought which the king\nuseth to wear, and the horse the king rideth upon, and the crown\nroyal which is set upon his head.\n\n[Illustration: MORDECAI IS LED THROUGH THE CITY UPON THE KING'S\nHORSE.]\n\n\"And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of\nthe king's most noble princes, that they may array the man withal\nwhom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback\nthrough the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall\nit be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.\" (Esther\nvi. 8, 9.)\n\nThe loose clothing of the East requires no fitting, as is the case\nwith the tight garments of the West; any garment fits any man: so\nthat the powerful and wealthy could lay up great stores of clothing,\nknowing that they would fit any person to whom they were given. An\nallusion to this practice of keeping great stores of clothing is\nmade in Job xxvii. 26: \"Though he heap up silver as the dust, and\nprepare raiment as the clay;\n\n\"He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent\nshall divide the silver.\"\n\nSo large was the supply of clothing in a wealthy man's house, that\nspecial chambers were set apart for it, and a special officer,\ncalled the \"keeper of the garments\" (2 Chron. xxxiv. 22), was\nappointed to take charge of them.\n\nThus, when a man was said to have clothing, the expression was a\nsynonym for wealth and power. See Isa. iii. 6: \"When a man shall\ntake hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou\nhast clothing, be thou our ruler.\"\n\nThe reader will now see how forcible was the image of the Moth and\nthe garments, that is used so freely in the Scriptures. The Moth\nwould not meddle with garments actually in use, so that a poor man\nwould not be troubled with it. Only those who were rich enough to\nkeep stores of clothing in their houses need fear the Moth.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SILKWORM MOTH.\n\n     Probability that the Hebrews were acquainted with Silk--Present\n     cultivation of the Silkworm--The Silk-farms of the\n     Lebanon--Silkworms and thunder.\n\n\nIn the Authorized Version there are several passages wherein silk\nis mentioned, but it is rather doubtful whether the translation be\ncorrect or not, except in one passage of the Revelation: \"And the\nmerchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man\nbuyeth their merchandise any more:\n\n\"The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of\npearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk.\" (xviii. 11, 12.)\n\nThat the Hebrews were acquainted with silk from very early times is\nnearly certain, but it is probable that until comparatively late\nyears they only knew the manufactured material, and were ignorant\nof the source whence it was derived. As to the date at which silk\nwas introduced into Palestine, nothing certain is known; but it is\nmost likely that Solomon's fleets brought silk from India, together\nwith the other valuables which are mentioned in the history of that\nmonarch.\n\nAt the present day silk is largely cultivated, and the silk-farmers\nof the Lebanon are noted for the abundance of the crop which is\nannually produced. The greatest care is taken in rearing the worms.\nAn excellent account of these farms is given by Mr. G. W. Chasseaud\nin his \"Druses of the Lebanon:\"--\n\n\"Proceeding onward, and protected from the fierce heat of the sun's\nrays by the pleasant shade of mountain pines, we were continually\nencountering horseloads of cocoons, the fruit of the industry of the\nDruse silk-rearer. The whole process, from hatching the silkworms'\neggs till the moment that the worm becomes a cocoon, is one series\nof anxiety and labour to the peasant. The worms are so delicate that\nthe smallest change of temperature exposes them to destruction, and\nthe peasant can never confidently count upon reaping a harvest until\nthe cocoon is fairly set.\"\n\nAfter a long and interesting description of the multiplied and\nceaseless labours of the silk-grower in providing food for the\narmies of caterpillars and sheltering them from the elements, the\nwriter proceeds as follows:--\n\n\"The peasant is unwilling to permit of our remaining and watching\noperations. Traditional superstition has inculcated in him a dread\nof the evil eye. If we stop and admire the wisdom displayed by the\nworm, it will, in his opinion, be productive of evil results; either\nthe cocoon will be badly formed, or the silk will be worthless. So,\nfirst clearing the place of all intruders, he puts a huge padlock on\nthe door, and, locking the _khlook_ (room in which the silkworms are\nkept), deposits the key in his _zinnar,_ or waistband.\n\n\"Next week he will come and take out the cocoons, and, separating\nthem from the briars, choose out a sufficiency for breeding\npurposes, and all the rest are handed over to the women of his\nfamily. These first of all disentangle the cocoon from the rich and\nfibrous web with which it is enveloped, and which constitutes an\narticle of trade by itself. The cocoons are then either reeled off\nby the peasant himself or else sold to some of the silk factories\nof the neighbourhood, where they are immediately reeled off, or are\nsuffocated in an oven, and afterwards, being well aired and dried,\npiled up in the magazines of the factory.\n\n\"Such is a brief account or history of these cocoons, of which we\nwere continually encountering horseload after horseload.\n\n\"As you will perceive, unless suffering from a severe cold in\nthe head, the odour arising from these cocoons is not the most\nagreeable; but this arises partly from the neglect and want of\ncare of the peasants themselves, who, reeling off basketful after\nbasketful of cocoons, suffer the dead insects within to be thrown\nabout and accumulate round the house, where they putrefy and emit\nnoxious vapours.\"\n\n[Illustration: BUTTERFLIES OF PALESTINE.\n\n  SYRIAN GRAYLING.\n  SYRIAN ORANGE-TIP.\n  SYRIAN SWALLOW-TAIL.\n]\n\nAlthough our limits will not permit the cultivation of the\nSilkworm to be described more fully, it may here be added that all\nsilk-growers are full of superstition regarding the welfare of the\ncaterpillars, and imagine that they are so sensitive that they will\ndie of fear. The noise of a thunderclap is, in their estimation,\nfatal to Silkworms; and the breeders were therefore accustomed to\nbeat drums within the hearing of the Silkworms, increasing the\nloudness of the sound, and imitating as nearly as possible the crash\nand roll of thunder, so that the caterpillars might be familiar with\nthe sound if the thunderstorm should happen to break near them.\n\n\n\n\nFLIES.\n\n     Flies of Scripture--Annoyance caused by the House-fly--Flies\n     and ophthalmia--Signor Pierotti's account of the Flies--The\n     sovereign remedy against Flies--Causes of their prevalence.\n\n\nThere are two Hebrew words which are translated as \"fly.\" One is\n_zebub_, and the other is _arob_, the latter being applied to the\nflies which were brought upon Egypt in the great plague. It is\nprobable that some different species is here signified, but there\nis no certainty in the matter. Any species, however, would be a\nsufficient plague if they exceeded the usual number which infest\nEgypt, and which at first make the life of a foreigner a burden to\nhim. They swarm in such myriads, that he eats flies, drinks flies,\nand breathes flies.\n\nNot the least part of the nuisance is, that they cluster in the eyes\nof those who are affected with the prevalent ophthalmia, which is so\nfertile a cause of blindness, and so convey the infection with them.\nA stranger is always struck with the appearance of the children, who\nhave quantities of these pests upon and about their eyes, and yet\nseem perfectly unaffected by a visitation which would wellnigh drive\na European mad.\n\nSignor Pierotti writes feelingly on the subject:--\n\n\"These insects sometimes cause no slight suffering in Palestine, as\nI can vouch from my own experience. However large or however small\nthey may be, a rabid and restless foe, they attack alike, and make\nthemselves insufferable in a thousand ways, in every season and\nplace, in the house and in the field, by day and by night.\n\n\"While I was encamped near the tents of the Bedawin, in the\nneighbourhood of the Jordan, and to the south of Hebron, flies were\nbrought in such numbers by the east wind that all, beasts and men,\nwere in danger of being choked by them, as they crept into our\nears, noses, and mouths, and all over our bodies. My servant and I\nwere the first to fly from the pest, as we were spotted all over\nlike lepers with the eruption caused by their bites: the Bedawin\nthemselves were not slow to follow our example.\n\n\"The flies, therefore, still infest Palestine as they did of old,\nexcept that they are not now so numerous as to compel the chiefs of\nthe villages or tribes (answering to the kings of the Pentateuch and\nJoshua) to evacuate the country before them.\n\n\"The Philistines had a special deity whom they invoked against these\npests, Baalzebub, the God of Flies, whose temple was at Ekron.\nThe reason of this is evident at the present day, for the ancient\ncountry of the Philistines is infested with insect plagues, as I\nexperienced to my cost.\n\n\"As, however, we had no faith in Baalzebub, we were obliged to arm\nourselves with fly-traps and stoical patience. Many travellers bring\nwith them a perfect druggist's shop from Europe as a protection\nagainst these nuisances, and leave behind them this only efficacious\nremedy, patience. This I strongly recommend; it is very portable,\nvery cheap, and equally useful in all climates.\n\n\"It is especially valuable in the case of the insects, as they\nare found everywhere in greater or less numbers; especially in\nthe dwellings, where they are nourished by the carrion that lies\nabout, the heaps of rubbish, the filth of the streets, the leakage\nof cesspools and sewers, the dirt in the houses, the filthy\nclothing worn by the people, and the kind of food they eat. Though\nthe country of Baalzebub is deserted and enslaved, the flies are\nstill abundant and free, self-invited guests at the table, unasked\nassistants in the kitchen, tasting everything, immolating themselves\nin their gastronomic ardour, and forming an undesired seasoning in\nevery dish.\"\n\n\n\n\nGNATS.\n\n     The Gnat of Scripture--Straining out the Gnat and swallowing the\n     camel, a typographical error--Probable identity of the Gnat and\n     the mosquito.\n\n\nIt has already been stated that only one species of fly is mentioned\nby name in the Scriptures. This is the Gnat, the name of which\noccurs in the familiar passage, \"Ye blind guides, which strain at a\ngnat and swallow a camel\" (Matt, xxiii. 24).\n\n[Illustration: NOXIOUS FLIES OF PALESTINE.\n\nMOSQUITO. CAMEL FLY. ]\n\nI may again mention here that the words \"strain at\" ought to have\nbeen printed \"strain out,\" the substitution of one for the other\nbeing only a typographical error. The allusion is made to a custom\nwhich is explained by reference to the preceding article on the\nfly. In order to avoid taking flies and other insects into the mouth\nwhile drinking, a piece of thin linen stuff was placed over the cup,\nso that if any insects, as was usually the case, had got into the\nliquid, they would be \"strained out\" by the linen.\n\nWhether or not any particular species of insect was signified by the\nword \"gnat\" is very doubtful, and in all probability the word is\nonly used to express the contrast between the smallest known insects\nand the largest known beasts. Gnats, especially those species which\nare popularly known by the word \"mosquito,\" are very plentiful in\nmany parts of Palestine, especially those which are near water, and\nare as annoying there as in other lands which they inhabit.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOUSE.\n\n     Insect parasites--The plague of Lice--Its effect on the\n     magicians or priests--The Hebrew word _Chinnim_--Probability\n     that it may be represented by \"tick\"--Habits of the ticks, their\n     dwellings in dust, and their effects on man and beast.\n\n\nWe close the history of insects mentioned in Scripture with two\nparasites of a singularly disagreeable character.\n\nWith respect to the former of them, we find it mentioned in the\naccount of the great plagues of Egypt. After the two plagues of the\nwaters and the frogs, both of which were imitated by the magicians,\ni.e. the priests, a third was brought upon Egypt, which affected the\nmagicians even more than the people, for a reason which we shall\npresently see:--\n\n\"And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod,\nand smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice, throughout\nall the land of Egypt.\n\n\"And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod,\nand smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in\nbeast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land\nof Egypt.\n\n\"And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth\nlice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man and upon\nbeast.\"\n\nNow it is hardly possible to conceive a calamity which would have\ntold with greater effect upon the magicians, by whose advice Pharoah\nhad resisted the requests of Moses and Aaron.\n\nLiving in a land where all, from the highest to the lowest, were\ninfested with parasites, the priests were so much in advance of the\nlaity that they were held polluted if they harboured one single\nnoxious insect upon their persons, or in their clothing. The\nclothing, being linen, could be kept clean by frequent washing,\nwhile the possibility of the body being infested by parasites was\nprevented by the custom of shaving the whole of the body, from the\ncrown of the head to the sole of the foot, at least once in every\nthree days.\n\nIt may easily be imagined, therefore, how terrible this visitation\nmust have been to such men. As swine to the Pharisee, as the flesh\nof cattle to the Brahmin, so was the touch of a parasite to the\nEgyptian priest. He was degraded in his own estimation and in\nthat of his fellows. He could perform no sacred offices: so that,\nin fact, all the idolatrous worship of Egypt ceased until this\nparticular plague had been withdrawn.\n\nWe now come to a consideration of the insect which is signified by\nthe Hebrew word _chinnim_. Sir Samuel Baker is of opinion that the\nword ought to have been translated as \"ticks,\" and for the following\nreasons:--\n\nAfter quoting the passage which relates to the stretching of Aaron's\nrod over the dust, and the consequence of that action, he proceeds\nas follows: \"Now the louse that infests the human body and hair has\nno connexion whatever with dust, and, if subjected to a few hours'\nexposure to the dry heat of the burning sand, it would shrivel and\ndie. But a tick is an inhabitant of the dust, a dry horny insect,\nwithout any apparent moisture in its composition. It lives in hot\nsand and dust, where it cannot possibly obtain nourishment until\nsome wretched animal should lie down upon the spot, and become\ncovered with these horrible vermin.\n\n\"I have frequently seen dry desert places so infested with ticks\nthat the ground was perfectly alive with them, and it would have\nbeen impossible to have rested upon the earth. In such spots, the\npassage in Exodus has frequently seemed to me as bearing reference\nto these vermin, which are the greatest enemy to man and beast.\nIt is well known that from the size of a grain of sand, in their\nnatural state, they will distend to the size of a hazel nut after\nhaving preyed for some days on the body of an animal.\"\n\nGranting that this suggestion be the correct one, as it certainly\nis the most consistent both with actual facts and with the words of\nHoly Writ, the plague would lose none of its intensity, but would,\nif anything, be more horrible. Only those who have suffered from\nthem can appreciate the miseries caused by the attack of these\nticks, which cling so tightly that they can scarcely be removed\nwithout being torn in pieces, and without leaving some portion of\ntheir head beneath the skin of their victim. Man and beast suffer\nequally from them, as is implied in the words of Scripture, and,\nunless they are very cautiously removed, painful and obstinate is\nthe result of their bites.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FLEA.\n\nPrevalence of the Flea in the East, and the annoyance caused by\nthem to travellers-Fleas of the Lebanon--The Bey's bedfellows--The\nPasha at the bath--Use of the word in Scripture.\n\n\nThis active little pest absolutely swarms in the East. The\ninhabitants are so used to the Fleas that either the insects do not\ntouch them, or by long custom they become so inured to their attack\nthat the bites are not felt.\n\nBut every traveller in Eastern lands has a tale to tell about the\nFleas, which seem to be accepted as one of the institutions of\nthe country, and to be contemplated with perfect equanimity. Miss\nRogers, for example, in her \"Domestic Life in Palestine,\" mentions\nhow she was obliged to stand upon a box in order to be out of the\nreach of a large company of Fleas that were hopping about on the\nfloor!\n\nMr. Urquhart, experienced Orientalist as he was, found on one\noccasion that the Fleas were too strong for him. He had forgotten\nhis curtain, and was invaded by armies of Fleas, that marched\nsteadily up the bed and took possession of their prey. The people\nwere quite amused at his complaints, and said that their Bey could\nnot sleep without a couple of hundred of them in his bosom. Mr.\nUrquhart suggests that these little creatures act as a wholesome\nirritant to the skin, and says that the last two mouthfuls of every\nmeal are for the benefit of the Fleas.\n\nIn order to show the perfect indifference with which the presence of\nthese little pests is regarded, I quote a passage from Mr. Farley's\n\"Druses of the Lebanon.\" He was in a Turkish bath, and was much\namused at a scene which presented itself.\n\n\"A man, whose skin resembled old discoloured vellum, was occupying\nhimself with the somewhat undignified pursuit of pursuing with great\neagerness something that, from the movement of his hands, seemed\ncontinually to elude him, jumping about and taking refuge in the\ncreases and folds of his shirt, that was spread out over his lap as\nhe sat cross-legged on his bedstead like a tailor on his board. This\noddity was no less a dignitary than a Pasha.\"\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: SCORPION.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE SCORPION.\n\nmud walls--Venom of the Scorpion--Scorpions at sea--The Scorpion\nwhip, and its use--The Scorpion Pass.\n\n\nScorpions are exceedingly common in Palestine, and to a novice\nare a constant source of terror until he learns to be accustomed\nto them. The appearance of the Scorpion is too well known to need\ndescription, every one being aware that it is in reality a kind of\nspider that has the venom claw at the end of its body, and not in\nits jaw. As to the rendering of the word _akrabbim_ as \"Scorpions,\"\nthere has never been any doubt.\n\nThese unpleasant creatures always manage to insinuate themselves in\nsome crevice, and an experienced traveller is cautious where the\nScorpions are plentiful, and will never seat himself in the country\nuntil he has ascertained that no Scorpions are beneath the stones\non or near which he is sitting. Holes in walls are favourite places\nof refuge for the Scorpion, and are very plentiful, the mud walls\nalways tumbling down in parts, and affording homes for Scorpions,\nspiders, snakes, and other visitors.\n\nThe venom of the Scorpion varies much in potency according to the\nspecies and size of the creature, some of the larger Scorpions being\nable to render a man ill for a considerable time, and even to kill\nhim if he should be a sensitive subject. So much feared were the\nScorpions that one of the chief privileges of the Apostles and their\nimmediate followers was their immunity from the stings of Scorpions\nand the bite of venomous serpents.\n\nIt is said, however, that after a person has been stung once by a\nScorpion, he suffers comparatively little the second time, and that\nif he be stung three or four times, the only pain that he suffers\narises from the puncture. Sailors also say that after a week at\nsea the poison of the Scorpion loses its power, and that they care\nnothing for the Scorpions which are sure to come on board inside the\nbundles of firewood.\n\nThose passages which mention the venom of the Scorpion are numerous,\nthough most, if not all, of them occur in the New Testament. See\nRev. ix. 5: \"And to them it was given that they should not kill\nthem, but that they should be tormented five months, and their\ntorment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.\"\nAlso ver. 10 of the same chapter: \"And they had tails like unto\nscorpions: and there were stings in their tails: and their power was\nto hurt men five months.\"\n\nThere is, also, the well-known saying of our Lord, \"If a son shall\nask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?\" (Luke xi. 12.) And in the\npreceding chapter of the same Evangelist Scorpions are classed with\nserpents in their power of injury: \"Behold, I give unto you power\nto tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the\nenemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is another reference to the Scorpion in the Old Testament,\nwhich requires an explanation. It forms part of the rash counsel\ngiven to Rehoboam by his friends: \"My father made your yoke heavy,\nand I will add to your yoke; my father also chastised you with\nwhips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.\"\n\nThe general tenor of this passage is evident enough, namely, that\nhe intended to be far more severe than his father had been. But his\nwords assume a new force when we remember that there was a kind of\nwhip called a Scorpion. This terrible instrument was made for the\nexpress purpose of punishing slaves, so that the mere mention of it\nwas an insult. It consisted of several thongs, each of which was\nloaded with knobs of metal, and tipped with a metal hook, so that it\nresembled the jointed and hooked tail of the Scorpion. This dreadful\ninstrument of torture could kill a man by a few blows, and it was\neven used in combats in the amphitheatre, a gladiator armed with a\nScorpion being matched against one armed with a spear.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SPIDER.\n\nSpiders of Palestine.\n\n\nThere are very many species of Spider in Palestine; some which spin\nwebs, like the common Garden Spider, some which dig subterranean\ncells and make doors in them, like the well-known Trap-door Spider\nof Southern Europe, and some which have no webs, but chase their\nprey upon the ground, like the Wolf and Hunting Spiders.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HORSE LEECH.\n\n     Signification of the word Alukah--Leeches in Palestine--The\n     horse and the Leech.\n\n\nIn Prov. xxx. 15 there is a word which only occurs once in the\nScriptures. This is _alukah,_ which is translated as horse-leech.\n\"The horseleech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give.\"\n\nThe Leeches are very common in Palestine, and infest the rivers to\nsuch an extent that they enter the nostrils of animals who come to\ndrink, and cause great annoyance and even danger. The following\nanecdote, related by Mr. H. Dixon in his \"Holy Land,\" gives us a\ngood idea of the prevalence of the Leeches, and the tenacity with\nwhich they retain their hold:--\n\n\"At Beit-Dejan, on a slight twist in the road, we find the wheel and\nwell, and hear a delicious plash and rustle in the troughs. To slip\nfrom my seat to dip Sabeah's nose into the fluid is the work of a\nsecond; but no sooner has she lapped up a mouthful of water, than\none sees that the refuse falling back from her lips into the tank is\ndabbled and red. Opening her mouth, I find a gorged leech dangling\nfrom her gum. But the reptile being swept off, and the mare's nose\ndipt into the cooling stream, the blood still flows from between her\nteeth, and, forcing them open, I find two other leeches lodged in\nthe roof of her mouth.\n\n\"Poor little beast! how grateful and relieved she seems, how gay,\nhow gentle, when I have torn these suckers from her flesh, and\nsoused the water about her wounds; and how my hunting-whip yearns\nto descend upon the shoulders of that laughing and careless Nubian\nslave!\"\n\nPersons passing through the river are also attacked by them, and, if\nthey have a delicate skin, suffer greatly.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: CORAL.]\n\n\n\n\nSPONGE AND CORAL.\n\n     Use of the Sponge in Scripture--Probability that the ancient\n     Jews were acquainted with it--Sponges of the Mediterranean--The\n     Coral, and its value--Signification of the word _Ramoth_.\n\n\nThere is little to be said on either of these subjects.\n\nSponge is only mentioned with reference to the events of the\nCrucifixion, where it is related that a soldier placed a sponge upon\nhyssop, dipped it in vinegar (_i.e._ the acid wine issued to the\nRoman soldiers), and held it to the Lord's lips. There is little\ndoubt that the ancient Hebrews were fully aware of the value of the\nSponge, which they could obtain from the Mediterranean which skirted\nall their western coasts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Coral is mentioned in two passages of Scripture: \"No mention\nshall be made of coral, or of pearls\" (Job xxviii. 18). The second\noccurrence of the word is in Ezek. xxvii. 16: \"They occupied in thy\nfairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and\ncoral, and agate.\"\n\nThis Coral, which is described as being brought from Syria, was\nprobably that of the Red Sea, where the Coral abounds, and where it\nattains the greatest perfection.\n\n[Illustration: roses]\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\n  A.      PAGE\n\n  Addax, 171-173\n\n  Adder, 628\n\n  Ant, 671\n    agricultural, 672\n    habits of, 674\n    cocoon, 675\n\n  Aoudad, 212-215\n\n  Ape, 387\n    brought by Solomon, 389\n    worshipped in India, 390-395\n\n  Apis, 145\n\n  Ass, 315\n    domesticated, 315\n    royal, 316\n    treatment of, 319\n    saddle, 321\n    in Cairo, 323\n    uses of, 326\n    wild, 328\n\n\n  B.\n\n  Badger, 96\n    skins for tabernacle, 96-112\n    skins for robes and sandals, 97\n    nocturnal in habits, 100\n\n  Barbel, long-headed, 639\n\n  Bat, 401\n\n  Bear, Syrian, 103\n    omnivorous, 106\n    a dangerous enemy, 108\n    robbed of whelps, 110\n    mode of fighting, 110\n\n  Beden, 233-237\n\n  Bee, 664\n    banded, 664\n    hives, 667\n    honey, 667\n\n  Behemoth, 372\n    food, 376\n    hunted, 380\n\n  Bison, 160\n\n  Bittern, 536\n    haunts waste places, 538\n    cry, 538\n    nest, 540\n\n  Blue thrush, 481\n\n  Boer hunting the lion, 36-41\n\n  Bottles, skin, 221-225\n\n  Bubale, 173-175\n\n  Buffalo, 149\n\n  Bull, 142\n    wild, 152\n    hunted with nets, 153\n\n\n  C.\n\n  Calf, 134\n    fatted, 135\n    worshipped, 146, 148\n\n  Camel, 248\n    Arabian, 248\n    Bactrian, 248, 286-290\n    milk of, 251\n    power of carrying water, 252\n    flesh, 254\n    as beast of burden, 255-258\n    riding, 259-268\n    speed, 269\n    malice of, 273\n    food, 277-280\n    foot, 280\n    hair and skin, 283\n    needle's eye, 284\n\n  Caspian emys, 580\n    hibernates, 581\n    terror to horses, 581\n    legends, 582\n\n  Cattle, 132\n\n  Cerastes, 624\n\n  Chameleon, 602\n    strength of grasp, 607\n    eyes, 607\n    change of color, 608\n\n  Chamois, 211\n\n  Chariots, 300-311\n\n  Chetah, 42\n\n  Cobra di capello, 616\n\n  Cockatrice, 628\n\n  Coney, 366\n    ruminant, 368\n    watchful, 370\n\n  Coral, 695\n\n  Cormorant, 563\n    fishing, 564\n    voracious, 565\n    in China, 565\n    nests, 566\n\n  Coryphene, 641\n\n  Crane, 549\n\n  Crocodile, 585\n    description in Job, 586\n    worshipped by Egyptians, 589\n    seizing its prey, 592\n    eggs, 595\n    hunting, 598\n\n  Cuckoo, 487\n    great spotted, 488\n\n  Cyprius, 602\n\n\n  D.\n\n  Deer, 238\n    hunted, 244\n    watchfulness of, 244-246\n\n  Deloul, 268\n\n  Dhubb, 583\n\n  Dishon, 171\n\n  Dove, 489\n    turtle, 489, 496\n    Noah's, 490\n    in sacrifice, 491\n    carrier, 493\n    blue rock, 495\n    collared turtle, 497\n    palm, 497\n    Barbary, 497\n\n\n  E.\n\n  Eagle, 430\n    golden, 433\n    short-toed, 434\n\n  Egret, 548\n\n  Egyptian mastigure, 583\n\n  Elephant, 349\n    ivory, 349\n    in war, 352\n    in hunting, 362\n\n\n  F.\n\n  Falcon, peregrine, 445\n    lanner, 445\n\n  Fallow deer, 173-175\n\n  Field-mouse, 121-124\n\n  Fishes, 635-648\n    apostolic fishermen, 635\n    as food, 637\n    manner of catching, 643\n    as symbols, 646\n\n  Flea, 688\n\n  Flies, 683\n    god of, 684\n\n  Frogs, 630\n    plague of, 631\n    green, 632\n    edible, 632\n\n  Fox, 76\n    plentiful in Palestine, 77\n    feeds upon the slain, 78\n    Samson's foxes, 78-85\n\n\n  G.\n\n  Gazelle, 163\n    mode of defence, 165\n    manner of capture, 166\n    chase of, 166-170\n\n  Gecko, 605\n\n  Gier-eagle, 419\n\n  Gnats, 685\n\n  Goad, 137\n\n  Goat, 217\n    as food, 217-219\n    milking-scene, 220\n    hair for clothing, 220\n    skin bottles, 221-225\n    kneading-troughs, 225\n    scapegoat, 226\n    intractable, 227\n    separated from sheep, 227-229\n\n\n  H.\n\n  Hamster, 124\n\n  Hare, 126\n    not a ruminant, 127\n    two species in Palestine, 131\n\n  Hart, 255\n\n  Hawk, 447\n    sparrow, 448\n    harrier, 451\n    white, 453\n    dove, 453\n    blue, 453\n    ring-tailed, 453\n    night, 462\n\n  Herdsmen, 144\n    Arab, 177\n\n  Heron, 542\n    as food, 542\n    sociable, 544\n    flight, 546\n    nest, 547\n\n  Hind, 255\n\n  Hippopotamus, 374\n\n  Honey, 667\n\n  Hoopoe, 476\n    legend of, 477\n\n  Hornet, 669\n\n  Horse, 291\n    Arab, 291\n    hoofs, 295\n    sale of Arab, 296-300\n    chariots, 300\n\n  Horse-leech, 693\n\n  House-top, 480\n\n  Hyacinthine gallinule, 560\n\n  Hyaena, 85\n    as scavenger, 86-88\n    haunting graves, 88\n    odour of, 89\n    superstitions concerning, 90\n\n  Hyrax, 366\n\n\n  I.\n\n  Ibex, 233-236\n\n  Ibis, white or sacred, 562\n\n  Ichneumon, 596\n\n  Insects, 657\n\n  Ivory, 349-352\n\n\n  J.\n\n  Jackal, 76\n\n  Jerboa, 125\n\n\n  K.\n\n  Kestrel, 449\n\n  Kite, 440\n    red, 441\n    black, 442\n\n  Kneading-troughs, 225\n\n\n  L.\n\n  Laemmergeier, 411\n    food, 414\n    bone-breaker, 414\n\n  Lapwing, 476\n\n  Leviathan, 585\n\n  Lizard, 602\n\n  Locust, 657\n    swarms, 658\n    plague of, 660\n    as food, 661\n\n  Louse, 686\n\n  Lump-fish, 641\n\n\n  M.\n\n  Mole, 114\n    hard to capture, 116\n    frequents ruins, 117\n    food, 118\n\n  Molluscs, 648\n\n  Monitor, 605\n    Nilotic, 610\n    land, 610\n\n  Monkey, 387\n\n  Mosquito, 686\n\n  Mouflon, 215\n\n  Mouse, 119\n    voracity, 119\n\n  Mule, 333\n    ridden by kings, 335\n    perverse, 336\n\n  Muraena, 639\n\n  Moth, clothes, 678\n    silkworm, 680\n\n\n  N.\n\n  Night-hawk, 462\n\n  Nightjar, 462\n    cry, 464\n\n  Nile-perch, 647\n\n  Nineveh, sculptures of, 34\n\n\n  O.\n\n  Oryx, 154-156\n\n  Osprey, 436\n    fishing, 436\n    flight, 438\n\n  Ossifrage, 411\n\n  Ostrich, 523\n    neglect of young, 526-528\n    nest in sand, 526\n    chase, 529\n    scent, 530\n    speed, 531\n    as food, 532\n    eggs, 534\n    cry, 531\n\n  Ounce, 42\n\n  Owl, 454\n    use in bird-catching, 455\n    little, 455\n    barn, 455\n    screech, 456\n    great, 456\n    Egyptian eagle, 458\n    European eagle, 458\n    Virginian eared, 458\n\n  Ox, 133\n    stalled, 133\n    yoke, 136\n    plough, 136\n    goad, 137\n    threshing, 138\n    cart, 139\n    pasturage, 141\n    worshipped, 148\n\n\n  P.\n\n  Palestine, 470\n\n  Partridge, 505\n    desert, 507\n\n  Passover, 204\n    Samaritan, 205-210\n\n  Peacock, 501\n\n  Pearl, 653\n\n  Pelican, 567\n    pouch, 569\n    feeding young, 570\n    legends, 570\n    flight, 572\n    crested, 573\n\n  Pigeon, 489\n\n  Plough, 136\n\n  Porcupine, 113\n\n  Poultry, 498\n\n  Purple dye, 649\n\n  Pygarg, 171\n\n\n  Q.\n\n  Quail, 509\n    sent to Israelites, 510\n    flight, 511\n    as food, 511\n    mode of capture, 512\n\n\n  R.\n\n  Rams' horns, 201-203\n\n  Raven, 516\n    in ark, 516\n    sent to Elijah, 518\n    notices of, in Talmud, 519\n    ashy-necked, 520\n    in Jerusalem, 520\n\n\n  S.\n\n  Scheltopusic, 603\n\n  Scorpion, 690\n\n  Serpents, 613\n    motion, 614\n    poison, 615\n    sluggish, 620\n    anecdotes of, 620\n\n  Sheat-fishes, 637\n\n  Sheep, 177\n    pasturage, 177\n    watering, 180\n    names, 186\n    folds, 189-191\n    dogs, 191\n    broad-tailed, 194\n    uses of, 197\n    in sacrifice, 203\n\n  Shepherds, 185\n    sling, 185\n    care of flock, 188\n\n  Shephiphon, 624\n\n  Silkworm, 681\n\n  Skink, 603\n\n  Snail, 652\n\n  Snake, glass, 603\n    dart, 616\n    charmer, 617\n\n  Sparrow, 479\n    on house-tops, 480\n    value of, 483\n    caught with nets, 484\n    nests, 485\n    tree, 486\n\n  Spider, 692\n\n  Sponge, 694\n\n  Star-gazer, 647\n\n  Stork, 553\n    sacred, 554\n    migratory, 556\n    care of young, 557\n    black, 558\n\n  Sucking-fish, 640\n\n  Surmullet, 648\n\n  Swallow, 466\n    swift, 470, 474\n\n  Swan, 560\n\n  Swine, 337\n    prohibited to Jews, 337\n    hated, 338\n    wild, 334\n\n\n  T.\n\n  Threshing, 138\n\n  Tortoise, 577\n    as food, 577\n    slow-motioned, 579\n\n  Toxicoa, 627\n\n  Tunny, 641\n\n\n  U.\n\n  Unicorn, 158\n    a real animal, 159\n\n\n  V.\n\n  Viper, horned, 624\n    sand, 627\n\n  Vulture, Egyptian, 419\n    scavengers, 421\n    griffon, 423\n\n\n  W.\n\n  Wanderoo, 395-400\n\n  Weasel, 92\n    fond of eggs, 94\n    story of owl and weasel, 94\n\n  Wild bull, 152\n    goat, 233\n    ass, 328\n    boar, 344\n\n  Wind-hover, 449\n\n  Wolf, 69\n    only mentioned symbolically, 69\n    hunting in packs, 71\n    fierceness of, 71\n    special enemy of sheep, 72\n    tamed by a monk, 75\n\n  Wool, 199\n\n  Worm, crimson, 676\n\n\n  Y.\n\n  Yoke, 136\n\n\n\n\n  =THE\n  HOME EDITION\n  OF THE\n  Story of the Bible=\n\n  =Surpasses in Value and Completeness All Former Editions\n  of this Standard Work.=\n\n     It contains fine  Illustrations.\n\n     It contains a Map of the Bible Lands.\n\n     It contains a Steel Plate Engraving after Rembrandt (engraved\n     expressly for the Frontispiece).\n\n     It is printed on extra heavy paper, and bound in rich and\n     attractive style.\n\n=THE HOME EDITION of the Story of the Bible.=\n\nGives admirers of the book an opportunity to procure it in a\nhandsomer form, either for presentation to friends or for use at\nhome.\n\nThe COVER of this edition bears an appropriate and ornamental\ndesign in gold and color. The INSIDE is no less attractive than\nthe outside. On opening it, the ILLUMINATED PRESENTATION PAGE\nfirst meets the eye. This is followed by the beautiful STEEL PLATE\nENGRAVING OF JACOB'S DREAM, as a Frontispiece. A double page \nMAP comes next, showing countries and places mentioned in the Bible.\nSIX RICHLY  PLATES, with 300 ENGRAVINGS, illustrating the\nprincipal scenes and events narrated in the book, are distributed\nthroughout its pages, from beginning to end.\n\n  =FOR SALE=\n  =by the same Dealer from whom this book is obtained.=\n\n\n=The Story of the Gospel.=\n\n=By CHARLES FOSTER, Author of the \"Story of the Bible.\"=\n\n=360 Pages. 16mo. With 150 Illustrations, and a Frontispiece in\nColors.=\n\n     =The New Testament in simple form for Children. Written in\n     Language easy to understand. Printed in large, plain type, and\n     filled with Pictures.=\n\n=100th THOUSAND NOW SELLING.=\n\nThe Author of the \"STORY OF THE BIBLE,\" after publishing that work,\nfound that a smaller and still simpler book on the New Testament\nalone, was needed.\n\nHe therefore prepared the \"STORY OF THE GOSPEL,\" which contains the\nLife of Christ written in a style easily understood by children, and\nillustrated by a large number of excellent wood engravings.\n\n     =_From Rev. M. A. GOODELL, Northwood, Iowa._=\n\n     I am much pleased with the \"STORY OF THE GOSPEL.\" The\n     illustrations are excellent. The Story is told in beautiful\n     language, and in such a way that very difficult points are made\n     plain even to children. It is also a good commentary on the Word\n     for older persons, and should be in every family.\n\n     I lent my copy of the \"STORY OF THE GOSPEL\" to the teacher of\n     the Primary Department in our public school, who used it instead\n     of the Bible in opening school, and after a few days said she\n     could not do without it.\n\n  =FOR SALE\n  by the same Dealer from whom this book is obtained.=\n\n\n  =FIRST STEPS\n  FOR LITTLE FEET IN GOSPEL PATHS.=\n\n  =328 Pages. 16mo. With  Frontispiece and\n  140 Illustrations.=\n\n  By CHARLES FOSTER, Author of the \"Story of the Bible.\"\n\nThere still remained one class of learners whose wants were not\nsupplied by either the STORY OF THE BIBLE or the STORY OF THE\nGOSPEL. These were the little ones in the Nursery, the Infant\nSchool, and the Kinder-Garten. For their instruction the author\nhas prepared a third book, FIRST STEPS FOR LITTLE FEET IN GOSPEL\nPATHS. This book is arranged on a different plan from either of the\npreceding. Instead of being divided into Chapters, it consists of\nseparate passages or Lessons, most of them quite short, and each one\ncomplete in itself. Each Lesson is followed by Questions so simple\nthat the little hearers, if attentive when the passage is read, may\nreadily answer them.\n\n     =From Robert W. Fenwick, President of the Washington Froeebel\n     Society, Washington, D. C.=\n\n     TO THE PUBLISHER: I am the grateful recipient of a nicely-bound,\n     well-printed and illustrated work entitled \"First Steps.\" Upon\n     an examination of it, I feel that every Kinder-Garten teacher\n     should possess this gem of a book for little children. Its\n     simple presentation of great truths and facts, in words as well\n     as in pictures, should be brought home to the heart of every\n     child by the parent or teacher; and, this done, the coming\n     generation will be wiser and better than the past. I am thankful\n     (as President of the Washington Froeebel Society, having under\n     its care the Bethany Free Kinder-Garten) that this book has\n     reached me.\n\n  =FOR SALE by the same Dealer from whom this book is obtained.=\n\n\n  =NEW LIGHTS=\n  --ON--\n  OLD PATHS.\n\n  By Charles Foster, Author of the \"Story of the Bible,\" Etc.\n\n  =QUARTO, 496 PAGES. 350 ILLUSTRATIONS.=\n\nThe author of the stories contained in this beautiful book has given\nlife and power of speech to many of the inanimate objects which we\nmeet in every-day life.\n\nThe Well in the Yard, the Gate and Gate-Post, the Brook and\nWater-Wheel, with other familiar things, give their impressions, in\nthese charming and original tales, of what takes place around them,\nand speak to one another with audible voice.\n\nIf the reader will listen to what they say, he will learn some\nvaluable lessons, and perhaps receive advice that will help him in\ndays to come.\n\nMany familiar places and oft-trodden paths will be given a new\ninterest by reading some of the stories contained in this book.\n\nObjects that have been familiar for years, and which have never\ncaused a moment's reflection as they were carelessly passed by,\nwill now have a new significance, and whenever seen will connect\nthemselves with the imaginary parts they play in this volume.\n\nIn appearance the book is an unusually handsome one, being\nTASTEFULLY BOUND AND PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED. It contains =350=\nPICTURES which in artistic merit, interest, and faithful portrayal\nof the scenes described in the text, are unsurpassed by any book of\nits class.\n\n  Office of Charles Foster's Publications, 118 S. Seventh St.,\n        Philadelphia, Pa.\n\n\n[Illustration: cover New Lights on Old Paths]\n\n  NEW LIGHTS\n  --ON--\n  OLD PATHS.\n\n  By CHARLES FOSTER, Author of the \"Story of the Bible,\" Etc.\n\n  =QUARTO, 496 PAGES. 350 ILLUSTRATIONS.=\n\n  Office of Charles Foster's Publications, 118 S. Seventh St.,\n        Philadelphia, Pa.\n\n\n  =BIBLE PICTURES\n  --AND--\n  WHAT THEY TEACH US.=\n\n  Containing 312 Illustrations from the Old and New Testaments,\n  WITH BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS\n\n  By CHARLES FOSTER, Author of the \"Story of the Bible.\"\n\n  =Quarto, 232 Pages, 312 Engravings, printed on extra heavy calendered\n        paper, and bound in English cloth, black side stamp, gilt\n        title on back.=\n\nThe Collection of Bible Pictures contained in this book is probably\none of the most complete that has ever been brought together in one\nvolume.\n\nIn preparing the work, the greatest care has been observed to use\nonly such designs as will adequately illustrate the Bible scenes and\nfittingly portray the principal events in Bible history.\n\nIt has been a matter of great difficulty to obtain so large a\nnumber of pictures of the necessary merit, as illustrations of\nBible subjects present peculiar difficulties to the artist. While\npreserving the freedom of style and vigor of treatment necessary\nto give life to his designs and reality to the varied scenes of\nthe Scripture narrative, he must preserve for them a feeling of\nreverence and endow them with a dignity worthy of their sacred\ncharacter.\n\nA large number of the pictures in this book are reproduced from\ndesigns by foreign artists who have been celebrated for their skill\nin this branch of art. Others are by artists in this country. All\nthe pictures have been personally selected by, or else drawn under\nthe direction of, the author, who has spent years of labor and\nthousands of dollars in forming this collection.\n\nMany of the engravings in \"BIBLE PICTURES\" were first obtained and\nused for illustrating the \"Story of the Bible\" and the \"Story of the\nGospel,\" two former books by the same author. Other new engravings\nhave been added, and the whole set, THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE in\nnumber, are now brought together in this one volume, in which the\nbroad pages (8 x 9-3\/4 inches), fine, heavy paper and careful\nprinting, display their artistic excellence to the best advantage.\n\nThe book forms a complete pictorial history of the main portion of\nthe Bible. Many parts are so fully illustrated that the narrative\ncan be followed and understood by merely looking at the series of\npictures which illustrate them, so that children unable to read may\nobtain a fair idea of the nature and sequence of Bible events, by\nsimply turning over the pages. The book, however, is by no means\nmerely a picture book. A lucid and brief explanation, written by the\nauthor of the \"Story of the Bible,\" accompanies each picture, on the\nsame page, or on the page immediately facing it, so that the picture\nand the explanation appear simultaneously to the eye.\n\n  =FOR SALE by the same Dealer from whom this book is obtained.=\n\n\n[Illustration: cover Bible Pictures]\n\n  =BIBLE PICTURES,=\n  AND\n  WHAT THEY TEACH US.\n\n  A Book containing 312 Illustrations from the Old and New Testaments,\n  with brief descriptions.\n\n  By CHARLES FOSTER, Author of the \"Story of the Bible,\" etc.\n\n  Quarto, 232 Pages, 312 Engravings, printed on extra heavy calendered\n        paper and bound in English cloth, ornamental side and back\n        stamp.\n\n  Charles Foster's Publications, 118 S. Seventh St., Philadelphia, Pa.\n\n\n  =--THE--\n  STORY OF THE BIBLE ANIMALS.=\n\n  =704 Pages. 300 Illustrations.=\n\nThis book contains a description of each animal mentioned in the\nBible, and tells of its appearance, its habits and the use to which\nit was put by mankind.\n\nThe importance of understanding the nature of these animals, as a\nmeans of making clear the Scriptures, will be readily seen when\nit is remembered how frequently they are mentioned in the Bible,\nand how different many of them must be from those which we are\naccustomed to see.\n\nSome passages in the Bible which have formerly possessed little\nor no meaning to the ordinary reader will have a new significance\nafter the \"=Story of the Bible Animals=\" has been read, and the\ndescriptions which it contains of the animals of the East, and the\nhabits of Eastern people, have become familiar.\n\nThe book is not only interesting and instructive from the stories\nwhich it contains on the ever-popular subject of Natural History,\nbut it also presents a vivid description of life in the Bible lands.\n\nIt describes the appearance at the present time of many of the\nplaces mentioned in the Bible, as well as the manners and customs of\nthe people who dwell there.\n\nAdventures of modern travellers in these unfamiliar and\nseldom-trodden paths form an important part of the book and are of\nabsorbing interest, presenting to the reader a graphic picture of\nlife in the Holy Land as it is to-day.\n\nIn the never-changing East this is in many respects a counterpart\nof the times in which the Bible was written. The Arab as he speeds\nacross the desert upon his swift dromedary, or sits at the door of\nhis tent watching his flocks and herds, retains many of the customs\nwhich prevailed in the time of Abraham.\n\nThe wild animals of these countries still roam through the forests\nand are hunted and slain by mankind. The crocodile and hippopotamus\nof the Nile are yet found in that mighty river, and yield their\nlives to the courage and skill of modern hunters as did those of old.\n\nThese scenes are vividly portrayed in the \"=Story of the Bible\nAnimals=\" by travellers who have taken an active part in the\nadventures which they narrate, and who are thus able to adequately\ndescribe incidents that will be new and strange to most readers.\n\nThe book is also a valuable commentary on many portions of the\nBible, for without some knowledge of the matters upon which it\ntreats, the point of many passages of Scripture must either be\nentirely missed or else wrongly interpreted.\n\n  =Office of Charles Foster's Publications, 118 S. Seventh St.,\n        Philadelphia, Pa.=\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nMinor typographical errors have been corrected without note.\nIrregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as\nprinted.\n\nThe illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up\nparagraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match\nthe page number in the List of Illustrations.\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg's Story of the Bible Animals, by J. G. Wood\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# ALSO BY MCKAY JENKINS\n\nContamiNation\n\nPoison Spring (with E. G. Vallianatos)\n\nBloody Falls of the Coppermine\n\nThe Last Ridge\n\nThe White Death\n\nThe Peter Matthiessen Reader (editor)\n\nThe South in Black and White\n\nAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLC\n\n375 Hudson Street\n\nNew York, New York 10014\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2017 by McKay Jenkins\n\nPenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nMost Avery books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write SpecialMarkets@penguinrandomhouse.com.\n\nEbook ISBN 9780698409835\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Jenkins, McKay, 1963\u2014 author.\n\nTitle: Food fight : GMOs and the future of the American diet \/ McKay Jenkins.\n\nDescription: New York : Avery, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references\n\nand index.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2016054194 (print) | LCCN 2016056950 (ebook) | ISBN\n\n9781594634604 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780698409835 (epub)\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Transgenic plants. | Crops\u2014Genetic engineering.\n\nClassification: LCC SB123.57 .J46 2017 (print) | LCC SB123.57 (ebook) | DDC\n\n631.5\/233\u2014dc23\n\nLC record available at https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2016054194\n\nWhile the author has made every effort to provide accurate Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.\n\nVersion_2\nFor my teachers, my students, and my family\n\n# CONTENTS\n\nALSO BY MCKAY JENKINS\n\nTITLE PAGE\n\nCOPYRIGHT\n\nDEDICATION\n\nPROLOGUE: Square Tomatoes\n\nPart One\n\nROOTS\n\n1. Are GMOs Safe? Is That the Right Question?\n\n 2. The Long, Paved Road to Industrial Food, and the Disappearance of the American Farmer\n\n 3. Mapping and Engineering and Playing Prometheus\n\nPart Two\n\nSEEDS\n\n 4. The Fruit That Saved an Island\n\n 5. Trouble in Paradise\n\n 6. Fighting for That Which Feeds Us\n\nPart Three\n\nFRUIT\n\n 7. Feeding the World\n\n 8. The Plant That Started Civilization, and the Plant That Could Save It\n\n 9. Can GMOs Be Sustainable?\n\n 10. The Farm Next Door\n\nEPILOGUE: Getting Our Hands Dirty\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nNOTES\n\nINDEX\n\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n# PROLOGUE\n\nSquare Tomatoes\n\nBack in 1994, when I was pulling down four bucks an hour grading papers and teaching college students how to write, a friend told me about a can't-lose investment scheme that was sure to lift me from my economic doldrums.\n\nForget about investing in Amazon.com, he said. Here's what you need to get into: Square tomatoes.\n\nThey're going to be great, he said breathlessly. They've had their genes altered by scientists! They stay ripe longer, and soften more slowly, and because they're square, they can be stacked for shipping, which will bring transportation costs way down. It's like the laboratory has taken nature and made it better!\n\nThe company that makes them will make a fortune, my friend said. And so will we!\n\nThere was much truth to what my friend told me, and a good bit of misinformation as well. The product in question turned out to be the Flavr Savr tomato, a newfangled plant designed by a biotech company called Calgene. The Flavr Savr had indeed been designed not for exquisite taste, or enhanced nutrition, but to plug into an industrial food system already rapidly replacing traditional farming practices. Forget small farmers selling their fruit to their neighbors; this was big business. That year, 4 billion dollars' worth of industrial tomatoes were being picked (and shipped) while still hard and green, then reddened with ethylene gas before hitting the supermarket shelves like crates of billiard balls. The genetically altered Flavr Savr, by contrast, was designed to ripen on the vine, but was still tough enough to resist rotting. This meant it could survive both mechanical harvesting and the thousand-mile truck to market.\n\nIn 1994, after three years of negotiations with government regulators, the Flavr Savr became the first genetically modified food approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be sold in the American supermarkets. Rather than being declared formally \"safe,\" the Flavr Savr was considered the \"substantial equivalent\" of a normal tomato. At the time, few people complained, and suspicious critics of genetic engineering were largely drowned out by cheerleaders in industry and the press. Connie Chung, Jane Pauley, and Katie Couric all reported on the Flavr Savr on national television; on _NBC Nightly News_ , Tom Brokaw said the tomato \"stays riper, longer than the nonengineered variety, and they say it's tastier.\"\n\nTo be honest, as a budding English professor, I could never muster much enthusiasm for a product spelled Flavr Savr. The phonetically engineered name offended my ear even before I considered the tomato's provenance or taste, or the many ethical questions surrounding its creation. I decided to save my money, and keep grading papers.\n\nBut the Flavr Savr, it turned out, was just the beginning of what would become a food revolution. Soon I started hearing stories about another tomato, this one created by a company called DNA Plant Technology, which was being outfitted with genes from an Arctic flounder. These \"fish tomatoes,\" the company hoped, would make plants resistant to frost and cold storage, making them easier to grow in northern climates.\n\nIn 2001, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Toronto unveiled a third tomato, this one capable of growing in salty soils\u2014a good thing, since modern irrigation practices were damaging soil so much that the world was losing 25 million acres of cropland a year.\n\nThe fish tomatoes never made it to market. So far, neither have the salt-tolerant tomatoes. The Flavr Savr tomatoes made it to market briefly, but they were a commercial flop; the agrochemical giant Monsanto bought the company in 1996, and dropped the product. The ingenuity of a human-engineered tomato never quite overcame the consensus that the Flavr Savrs tasted terrible. As for the Flavr Savr being square? Well, that turned out to be untrue. Blocky tomatoes had in fact been cultivated by California plant breeders in the 1950s, to make mechanical harvesting easier and to prevent them from rolling off conveyor belts, but squareness was never part of the Flavr Savr profile. This myth was just the first of what would become a long series of myths that continue to tangle themselves around engineered food like aggressive vines.\n\nNow, more than twenty years later, these moribund tomato experiments seem almost quaint. Today, nearly all of our calories\u2014that is to say, nearly all of our food\u2014are grown from genetically modified plants. Chances are that three-quarters of everything you've put in your mouth today\u2014the eggs, the yogurt, and the cereal; the chicken sandwich, the tortilla chips, the mayonnaise, and the salad dressing; the cheeseburger, the french fries, the soda, the cookies, and the ice cream\u2014were processed (or fed) from plants grown from seeds engineered in a laboratory. Same for the food you feed your baby and the food you feed your dog.\n\nThe reason for this is simple: The American diet is composed almost entirely of processed foods that are made from two plants\u2014corn and soybeans (and canola, if you want your food fried). Their seeds, full of dense calories, can be broken down and reconstituted into an infinite variety of prepackaged foods. The vast majority of the 40,000 food products Americans choose from every day are built from ingredients made from engineered plants. This includes almost anything made with high-fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil, or sugar\u2014which is to say, almost all processed food. They can also be ground up and fed to the animals who provide our boundless appetite for meat and dairy products. Fully 85 percent of the feed given to cattle, hogs, and chickens is grown from genetically modified crops. There's more: About half of the sugar we consume is grown from engineered sugar beets. Genetically modified wheat has not yet hit the commercial market, but some of the biggest seed and chemical companies in the world have been working on it for years and have it ready to go.\n\nStrangely\u2014and despite the fact that we're talking about plants\u2014the one place you mostly _won't_ find engineered food is in the produce aisle. Your carrots, your peaches, your lettuce\u2014they are all grown the old-fashioned way. (This, by the way, is true whether or not the produce is labeled \"organic.\") But travel to the middle of your supermarket\u2014or into most fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, or gas stations\u2014and you will discover GM foods at every turn.\n\nDepending on whom you ask, \"genetically modified organisms,\" or more simply \"GMOs,\" represent either a great stride forward in the history of food production or are part of a destructive and dangerous system that allows global food companies to radically damage our land and water, control the way we eat, and flood our bodies with unhealthy food.\n\nAt the most basic level, genetic engineering is a crop-improvement technique, one of many used by plant growers, to alter the quantity, quality, and usefulness of the plants used to make food. A GMO is a plant grown from a seed genetically engineered to express a specific set of traits. These traits can range from an increased tolerance to floods or drought (a critical need given rising global temperatures) to beneficial nutrients (like rice that produces its own beta-carotene) to an improved resistance to certain viruses or insects. Such experiments\u2014often designed by scientists at universities or nonprofit research centers\u2014hold tremendous potential for improving the lives of people around the world. Childhood blindness in Asia, insect infestations in Africa, famines caused by typhoons in the Indian subcontinent: all are problems being addressed by GMO researchers around the world.\n\nBut it is also true that the giant agrochemical companies that produce the vast majority of the world's GMOs do very little of this work\u2014despite their frequent claims that GMO technology can feed the world. These companies, like their cousins in the pharmaceutical industry, are far more interested in creating billion-dollar products for the American consumer market than they are in developing products\u2014cassava, rice, sorghum\u2014that people in the developing world actually eat. In fact, just one-half of 1 percent of American food exports actually goes to developing countries with dire food needs, a recent study by the Environmental Working Group shows. Fully 86 percent goes to wealthy, highly developed countries in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Indeed, far from solving problems, GMO-based industrial farming actually _contributes_ both to a wide variety of health problems, like obesity, diabetes, nutritional deficiency, and exposure to pesticides, and ecological problems, like water pollution, soil depletion, and a profound drop in the biodiversity of plants, animals, and insects. There's a reason the monarch butterfly has become a symbol for anti-GMO activists: Monarch food supplies have been erased by chemical sprays applied to hundreds of millions of acres of monoculture GM crops. Nationwide, monarch populations are down by 96 percent. So when companies say GMOs are necessary to \"feed a starving world,\" the slogan can sound empty, cynical, a bait and switch.\n\nIn the United States, and increasingly in the developing world, GMOs are planted not to improve global nutrition but to maximize corporate profits through the production of corn and soybeans, which are then funneled into a global system of processed food and industrial meat. In order to support production, they are engineered to tolerate vast quantities of chemical sprays, which are often made by the same companies that make the seeds themselves. These sprays significantly damage both human health and environmental integrity. And because only large companies can fund most GMO research and development, they patent any seeds they create, which means they can control how and by whom they are used. Since time immemorial, farmers developed, saved, and traded seeds from one year to the next, bartering their way to better, more fruitful crops. No more. Now, GM seed companies force farmers to sign agreements that they will not save or share seeds, and hire investigators to badger (or sue) them when they do. As a result, our food supply is essentially controlled by a very small number of enormous biotech companies, most of which got their start making explosives, plastics, and pesticides.\n\nThis trend has given rise to a symbiotic but imbalanced relationship between these companies and our government. Because of their size and power, companies hold tremendous sway over federal food policy, from the way food and chemicals are (or are not) regulated to what kinds of farms (and food companies) receive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies to how much information companies need to disclose about their processes and products. The companies that design and sell GM seeds are some of the biggest in the world, and yet they are oddly invisible. You may have heard the names Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow, but these company names do not appear anywhere on your cereal box. In 2009, the top six agrochemical companies (Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow, plus Syngenta, Bayer, and BASF) earned a combined $27.4 billion in seed sales and $44.4 billion in chemical sales. Collectively, they control two-thirds of the world's agrochemical market. By 2019, the global agrochemical industry is expected to reach a value of $261 billion. And since several of the biggest companies are in the process of merging, their influence will soon be consolidated further.\n\nThe closer you look at the GMO debate, the more you are confronted with questions and paradoxes and passionate believers on all sides. Take, for example, the seemingly innocuous question \"Are GMOs safe?\" A great many scientists say altering a plant's genes in a laboratory is merely one incremental improvement in a long history of plant breeding, that GMOs are among the most studied\u2014and thus the safest\u2014foods ever produced, and that there is absolutely nothing to worry about. A library of scientific reports, and reputable organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, support this claim.\n\nBut such pronouncements are less than entirely satisfying, given that many GM crops are grown (indeed, are designed) to be sprayed with hundreds of millions of pounds of petrochemical insecticides (to kill bugs) and herbicides (to kill weeds). Whether or not genetically altered seeds themselves are benign, the chemicals that accompany them are not. The World Health Organization recently declared glyphosate, an herbicide sprayed on Monsanto's Roundup Ready food crops around the world and long considered a relatively tame herbicide, to be a \"probable human carcinogen.\"\n\nThe agrochemical companies\u2014and the giant food-processing companies they supply with grains\u2014have argued vigorously that GMOs are entirely safe. Yet when market demands change\u2014when consumers express fears about GMOs\u2014some of these same companies boast long and loud when they remove them from their products. In a nod to anxious mothers, the Hershey Company says it will stop using GM sugar beets to make its milk chocolate and Hershey's Kisses. General Mills will stop using GM ingredients in Cheerios and recently announced it will label any of its products that contain GMOs. Del Monte, one of the country's biggest producers of canned fruits and vegetables, says it will cease using GM ingredients in most of its products.\n\nMcDonald's refuses to sell GM potatoes grown by J. R. Simplot, one of its biggest french fry suppliers. Do these moves constitute a stance on GMOs, or only a desire to satisfy a nervous market? Hard to say. The meat McDonald's sells is still raised on GM corn, and the soda it sells is still sweetened with GM corn syrup. Cheerios are made mostly of oats, which are never grown with GMOs, so the only change General Mills really has to make is to replace sweeteners made from GM sugar beets and cornstarch made from GM corn. And the company has made it plain that it will continue using GMOs in its other cereals.\n\nA lot of consumers who pay close attention to the GMO debate are convinced that GMOs are in fact unsafe, and a great many of them shop in stores that take advantage of this anxiety. Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Chipotle\u2014these national chains have all made a fuss about going \"GMO free\" to one degree or another. Are these claims trustworthy, or are they merely marketing schemes?\n\nIn Europe, centuries of intertwined, small, local farms have made GMOs a thing of almost continental contempt. As hard as they have tried, giant food conglomerates have had a tough time persuading the French, and the Italians, and the Spanish, to give over their land\u2014and their diets\u2014to industrial corn and soybeans. Globally, there are currently twenty-six countries with total or partial bans on GMOs, including Australia, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. In early 2015, thousands of Polish farmers drove their tractors into the streets in Warsaw to push for a ban on GMOs and to fight a perceived land grab by big ag-biotech companies like Monsanto. \"The health and welfare of the nation depends on consumers and farmers having access to traditional seeds and good-quality food,\" one farmer said. \"The Polish government does not accept this and is destroying the roots of Polish agriculture by listening to corporations rather than the Polish people.\"\n\nFor a variety of reasons, such heat has not been present in the United States. Drive across the country, as my family and I did last summer, and you will find yourself crossing a continent almost entirely given over to corn and soybeans. Granted, there are boundless waves of wheat growing across the northern Midwest, but the route we took\u2014from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the Colorado Rockies, then up to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state\u2014was astonishingly dichromatic. For close to 4,500 miles, my wife and I would switch off driving and snoozing, our kids in the backseat listening to audio books. This was hardly scientific, but our experience was absolutely clear: you can fall asleep passing fields of corn in Ohio and wake up passing fields of soy in Indiana, or vice versa, but that's about it. Only once during the whole cross-country trip did we find ourselves surprised by what we saw: a large farm in Virginia that was actually growing potatoes.\n\nDespite all the romantic rhetoric thrown around about farming in America, it's hard to feel sentimental when all the land you see, for thousands and thousands of miles, is being used to grow corn and soy for cheap chicken and cattle feed, or frying oil, or salty snacks, or ethanol for gasoline. These crops\u2014hundreds of millions of acres of them, and virtually all GMO\u2014are grown far from population centers and out of sight of anyone who is not directly involved in growing them. It's almost like we've decided that the best farm is the farm we can't see.\n\n\u2014\n\nI'VE BEEN INTERESTED IN questions about food and health for many years. My last book, _ContamiNation_ , examined similar questions about the toxic chemicals found in everyday consumer products. Big-box stores are full of things\u2014mattresses, air fresheners, paints, cosmetics\u2014made from some 80,000 different petrochemicals, and of these, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a full set of toxicity information for just 7 percent. Despite frightening spikes in everything from cancer rates to autism, endocrine problems and neurological disorders, 99 percent of these chemicals have never been tested for their effects on human health. In researching that book, I was shocked at the misinformation\u2014if not the total lack of information\u2014about the products we use in our everyday lives.\n\nLikewise, given the amount of confusion surrounding our food system, I set out in search of facts. GMOs, and the chemicals used to grow them, have become so ubiquitous, so stitched into the fabric of our daily lives, that they are essentially invisible. To me, this invisibility is itself a problem: How can something as intimate as the food we eat be so utterly misunderstood?\n\nMy journey to find out took me from farms in New York and Maryland and Pennsylvania to plant laboratories in Delaware and Missouri and Kansas to the \"ground zero\" of the global GMO debate on three islands in Hawaii. During the course of my research, I interviewed some of the world's great agricultural visionaries, some of whom take radically different approaches to the question of GMOs. One scientist, whose engineered papaya plants saved an entire industry from collapse, considers GMOs to be above reproach. Another, who is trying to invent a plant that would replace\u2014 _replace!_ \u2014millions of acres of industrial crops across the farm belt considers GMOs to be a tool the food industry has used to push the American landscape to the brink of ruin.\n\nI spoke with brilliant farmers who think GMOs will help move the world closer to sustainability, and others who think GMOs will accelerate our ecological demise. I spoke with geneticists who are developing plants that could save millions of people from starvation, or from going blind, and others who think such plants represent a Trojan horse that will do more to spread the influence of American companies than actually help the poor.\n\nIt can be hard to hold these competing stories in your mind at the same time. Clearly, genetic engineering has the potential to help solve some of the world's pressing food and nutrition problems. The problem is that this technology is mostly being used not to help small farmers or improve nutrition in the developing world but to create profits for companies selling poor-quality food in the United States. It's not _GMOs_ that are a problem, in other words; it's the industrial _food system_ that is the problem. That system is designed by and for the agrochemical industry to sell two enormously profitable products: chemicals, and the seeds that can withstand those chemicals. This system has been built so thoroughly around us that we don't even see it.\n\nThis book offers a look at something that is both very complex and very fundamental. Understanding what we eat, and how we have come to eat this way, requires thinking not just about food but also about history, and science, and politics, and ethics. Beneath these issues are fundamental questions of culture. How do we want to eat? How do we view the land we live on, and the plants and animals with whom we share that land? Do we trust the industries that are feeding us, or the government that is supposed to be protecting us? Do we trust that science can remain independent of corporate money and corporate power, and provide clear, independent answers to questions that directly affect our lives?\n\nTo help answer these questions, I have organized this book into three parts. Part One examines the central questions most people want to know about GMOs. Are they safe? How are they made? Are they well tested, and are the tests trustworthy? How much control does the food industry exert over government regulators? How much control does this industry have over what we are allowed to know about what we eat? More broadly, how do GMOs fit into the evolution of American culture itself, from the very small (like the birth and growth of advanced genetic science) to the very large (like the postwar development of our highways and suburbs)?\n\nPart Two takes us to the front lines of the GMO debate to see how this system plays out\u2014for better and worse\u2014in real communities. On three islands in Hawaii, the battle over GMOs has been exceptionally heated, and for very different reasons. On the Big Island, a world-renowned professor created\u2014without any help from industry\u2014a GMO fruit that helped save the economy of his beloved homeland. On Kauai, the story is utterly different: there, a group of activists, worried about vast and secret chemical spraying used on experimental GMO farms, are fighting tooth and nail against some of the largest chemical companies in the world. And on Maui, a tiny island that nonetheless serves as the very birthplace for much of the world's GM corn, indigenous Hawaiians and local organic farmers are trying to kick the GMO industry off their island completely. For them, GMOs are not just about food, they are about the misuse of sacred land and the oppression of local people.\n\nPart Three offers a look at alternatives to an industrial farming system that has been so destructive\u2014and that has tarnished the reputation of GMO technology itself. I visit scientists developing GM crops they hope will prevent mass starvation in the developing world, especially as climate change threatens to undermine traditional farming practices in Africa and Asia. I spend time with farmers who use GMOs as part of a larger effort to make American agriculture more sustainable. I interview researchers who say nibbling around the edges of industrial farming isn't enough\u2014they want to develop crops that will overthrow the entire system itself. And I speak to organic farmers\u2014in the country, in the suburbs, and in the city\u2014who say that no technology, no matter how exquisitely designed, will ever take the place of local people growing food for their own neighbors. Their model, they say, is the way farming was done for 10,000 years, and that GMOs, while perhaps helpful, will be useful only if they augment traditional farming practices that take seriously the health of people as well as the health of our planet.\n\nThroughout the process of writing this book, I also tried an experiment of my own. I required my college students to wrestle with the GMO debate, and\u2014at the same time\u2014to work on a very small organic farm. Every week, my students explored the complexities of the American food system, and they tossed hay, fed sheep, and harvested tomatoes. They argued about the best way to feed the world, and the best way to feed themselves. Some left the conversation convinced that GMOs should have a firm place in the future of food. Scientists who can figure out a way to make drought-resistant crops that will support billions of people in a warming world deserve nothing less than a Nobel Prize.\n\nOthers were more cynical. Companies touting the benefits of GMOs are engaged in a global sleight of hand: they claim they want to feed the world, then turn around and sell us all chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, and sixty-four-ounce sodas.\n\nOther students were more philosophical. They left convinced that the primary problem in the American diet is not nutrition or any particular technology, but ignorance. If one way to improve the way we eat is through fancy new technology, maybe another way is to get more people\u2014including English majors\u2014to spend time working on local, small-scale, organic farms. Getting \"more eyes on the acre,\" they said, may be the only way to close the enormous gap that has opened up between most American people and the food they consume every day.\n\nTo my mind, they were all right. I hope the following chapters will explain why.\n\n# Part One\n\n## **1.**\n\n## Are GMOs Safe? Is That the Right Question?\n\n The first thing, and sometimes the only thing, that people want to know about GMOs is simple: Are they safe to eat? It's an obvious question, since we're all consuming them at almost every meal, and a legitimate one, since it's not always clear what GMOs are, how they are made, or where they appear in our diet. In the decades since the creation of the Flavr Savr tomato, we are all eating genetically modified food, whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not.\n\nAdd to this the fact that basic information\u2014even in the form of simple labels on food\u2014is very hard to come by. Although you most likely eat GMOs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, there is simply no way to know it.\n\nMost people, sitting down for a meal, would rather not wrestle with the way small RNAs affect the chromosomes of the corn that went into the cow that went into the burger they are eating. They would certainly rather not contemplate whether that same corn had something to do with climate change, or the obesity epidemic, or the decline of bee populations, or whether they contribute to water pollution, the pesticide contamination of our bodies, or the destruction of small-town America.\n\nIn a way, asking whether GMOs are \"safe\" is like asking whether Froot Loops are safe, or cheeseburgers, or nail polish: if you narrow the question down enough, the answer is almost certainly, sure, GMOs are \"safe,\" but \"safe\" may not be the same thing as \"good for you.\" Not many people get sick from eating a single bowl of Froot Loops, and not many people get sick from painting their nails once or twice. But how many bowls, or manicures, would it take to make a product \"unsafe\"? A great many molecular biologists argue that altering a plant's genetic structure simply mimics natural evolutionary processes and that GM foods are more fully studied\u2014and at least as safe to eat\u2014as anything has ever been. Many hundreds of studies have supported this: food made from plants that have been genetically engineered do not appear to be any more harmful than food grown traditionally.\n\nThose who create, control, and profit from GMOs\u2014the scientists who develop and use the technology, along with the biotech and food companies that make up our industrial food system\u2014consider the debate over genetic engineering to be fully settled. So do highly reputable scientific organizations. The science of GMOs is clear, they say: the technology has been around for decades and has developed into a highly precise method of producing enough food to feed the earth's 7 billion people.\n\nGenetic engineering is simply an incremental step\u2014a new tool, geneticists and molecular biologists say\u2014in the long progression of agricultural science. Since the dawn of the agricultural era 10,000 years ago, farmers have selected seeds from the season's most successful crops and discarded the seeds from the least. This \"human selection\" is merely a manipulated version of the \"natural selection\" that forms the bedrock of evolution. Tinkering with a plant's genome is no different from evolutionary processes that have gone on since time began. Faster, perhaps, but no different.\n\nThese techniques are no more risky than induced mutation, or \"mutagenesis,\" the long-standing practice of exposing seeds to chemicals or radiation to induce random mutations. Mutations happen all the time in nature, and some produce plants with favorable traits like drought tolerance, or higher yields, or better taste. In the last century, more than 3,200 mutagenic plants\u2014from pears to peanuts, from barley to grapefruit\u2014have been released on the market. These crops are not GMOs, and they are considered so benign they are even allowed on organic farms.\n\nBut the minute you open the aperture a bit, the question of \"safety\" becomes considerably more complicated. While the _process_ of engineering plants may be considered \"safe,\" the _consequences_ that ripple out from it are considerably more troubling. The molecular structure of a single GM plant may not be a cause for alarm, but what if almost all GM crops are grown to produce things like cheeseburgers and salty snacks and soft drinks, which have ramped up the country's obesity epidemic? Is that a GMO problem, or not?\n\nWhat about the chemical pesticides and herbicides\u2014many of them known to cause both health and environmental problems\u2014that are sprayed on hundreds of millions of acres of GM crops? These chemicals existed long before GMOs, of course; indeed, they were developed decades ago by the same companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta) that are now the world's leading sellers of GM seeds. Critics often say that GMOs are less necessary for making food than they are a powerful vehicle for selling pesticides; once a company has sold farmers on the idea of GM seeds, they are far more likely to buy chemical sprays that go along with them. If they were using the company's chemicals already, why not also buy seeds that are resistant?\n\nSo are pesticides a \"GMO problem,\" or are GMOs just exacerbating the problem of industrial farming itself?\n\nMore broadly, what happens when entire global industries\u2014and entire swaths of North America\u2014are constructed to keep cheeseburgers and snacks and soft drinks (and thus the GMOs that make them) flowing into our bellies? What if these industries become so enormously profitable, heavily marketed, and politically powerful that the foods they produce began to seem \"conventional\" (or stranger still, \"traditional\")? If problems\u2014even deep problems\u2014began to crop up, would we even be able to see them?\n\nIn other words, most people involved in the GMO debate\u2014no matter what side they are on or how passionately they argue their position\u2014consider the narrow question of safety to be the wrong question.\n\n\"I've been a lawyer for over thirty years, and this is by far the most polarized issue I've ever dealt with,\" Paul Achitoff told me. Achitoff is an environmental attorney for EarthJustice, which is handling a series of major GMO lawsuits in Hawaii. Achitoff has been in the GMO trenches since the beginning.\n\n\"Inevitably, no matter what the subject matter\u2014pesticides, labeling\u2014people always spend their time talking about how dangerous GMOs are to eat. All people want to know is, 'Is it healthy, is there proof?' People in favor of GMOs say they are safe as mother's milk. Others say they are dangerous. I don't even bring that subject up in court. To me, it's not even relevant. It's not even reasonably disputed that there are environmental and socioeconomic consequences here.\"\n\nIndeed, a great many organic farmers, a wide swath of health, consumer, and environmental organizations, and First Amendment \"right to know\" advocates say the GMO debate is about a lot more than molecular science. GMOs, in this view, are the very symbol of all that is wrong with the American food system. Whether or not the technology involved in genetic engineering is \"safe\" (and not all opponents are willing to concede this point), the crops\u2014along with the pesticides and herbicides used to grow them\u2014represent a profound insult to public health and ecological balance.\n\n\"Nature's been around a long time, so to think we can dance in there and take a gene off the shelf and get a product that your body will accept is really arrogant,\" Gerry Herbert, an organic farmer and anti-GMO activist in Hawaii told me. \"It's like throwing a wrench in a moving engine. You're going to have a problem. We don't even know what's in the soil, and yet we're killing it because we can get a quick profit from it. Do we want corporations to control our food? Their whole mandate is to maximize profit. That's why they're there. Are they worried about your nutrition? Not a bit. They will do everything necessary to rearrange genes to maximize their profits.\"\n\nRegardless of its effect on a plant's molecular structure (or that plant's impact on our bodies, or the ecosystem of which the plant is a part), GMO technology is mostly used to turbocharge the engines of an unsustainable farming system that is dousing our land and water with chemicals, wearing out our soil, making us fat, and lining the pockets of companies that already hold far too much economic and political power.\n\nThere is truth on both sides of this debate. There are also half-truths and naked cynicism. There are scientific studies that say GM foods are entirely safe to eat, and others that say they aren't. Earth Open Source, an organization run by the molecular biologist John Fagan, recently published a book called _GMO Myths and Truth_ s with more than 300 pages of studies arguing that GMOs are unhealthy for our bodies, our environment, and our political and economic systems. \"GMO Answers,\" a website overseen by the biotech industry, is larded with studies heralding the benefits (and safety) of GMOs, as well as essays designed to make you feel better about your own doubts (\"Skeptical About GMOs? We Understand.\").\n\nWhich side are we to believe? Consumers can be forgiven for feeling that questions about safety ought to be simple: Is GM food safe to eat, or not? The trouble is, there are complexities at both the micro and macro levels that make such questions of \"safety\" a lot more complicated than they might first appear. The few journalists who have tried to navigate this jungle have found themselves with few reliable guideposts.\n\n\"The quest for greater certainty on genetic engineering leaves you chasing shadows,\" noted Nathanael Johnson in the magazine _Grist_. \"When you're dealing with gaps in knowledge, rather than hard data, it's hard to tell what's an outlandish hypothetical and what's the legitimate danger. Anything, of course, is possible, but we shouldn't be paralyzed by unknown risks, or we'll end up huddled in our basements wearing tinfoil hats.\"\n\nSo let's take a closer look at this.\n\n\u2014\n\nFARMERS HAVE SPENT countless generations crossbreeding, or hybridizing, closely related plants to create desirable traits in their offspring, like bigger fruit, higher yields, and better taste. Do this over and over for many generations and you end up with the apples and lettuces and carrots we recognize today.\n\nGenetic engineering, in this line of thinking, is nothing more than human selection, sped up. GM plants are of two varieties. They are either \"cisgenic,\" which means they are created by taking a gene from a wild apple tree, for example, and stitching it into the genome of a domesticated apple, to prevent the fruit from scabbing. Or they are \"transgenic,\" meaning they are created by taking a gene from one kind of organism (a bacterium, for example) and inserting it into the genome of another kind of organism (a corn plant, say) to help make the corn resistant to plant-eating insects.\n\nThere are only four kinds of genetically engineered plants currently approved for agricultural use: those (like Roundup Ready soybeans) that tolerate the herbicides farmers use to kill weeds; those (like Bt corn) that are engineered to produce their own insecticide; those (like Plenish soybeans) made with altered nutritional components, like healthier fatty acids; and those (like most papaya grown in Hawaii) that have built-in virus resistance. Many other potential applications are in various stages of development.\n\nWhile nothing is absolutely certain when it comes to the interplay between food and health, it seems fair to say that one claim made by industry and its scientific allies is correct: Every day, hundreds of millions of people, in twenty-eight countries, eat food made from (or eat animals fed from) GM plants. Many scientists are willing to leave it at that. After billions of meals served with GM ingredients, \"no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population,\" the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine say. The American Academy for the Advancement of Science agrees: \"Contrary to popular misconceptions, GM crops are the most extensively tested crops ever added to our food supply.\" The World Health Organization considers GMOs to \"have passed risk assessments in several countries and are not likely, nor have been shown, to present risks for human health.\" The scientific adviser to the European Commission has said, \"There is no more risk in eating GMO food than eating conventionally farmed food.\"\n\nMost GMO studies have been done on animals, which makes sense, since food-producing animals consume as much as 90 percent of the GM crops grown worldwide. In the United States, 95 percent of the 9 billion cows, hogs, chickens, and turkeys raised for food eat GM grains. A recent meta-analysis of studies looking at some 100 billion livestock animals raised between 1983 (before the introduction of GMOs) and 2011 (long afterwards) found no \"unfavorable or perturbed trends\" in animal health or productivity. \"No study has revealed any differences in the nutritional profile of animal products derived from [GMO]-fed animals,\" reported researchers at UC-Davis.\n\nAccording to Blake Meyers, a plant geneticist at the University of Delaware, genetically altered plants have been so thoroughly studied that the question of whether or not they are safe to eat is no longer even an interesting scientific question. \"We can say that these products and genes are as safe as we can know, and thus far, the track record of GM products has shown that they are safe,\" Meyers said. \"The study of GM food products already approved for commercial use isn't a topic of interest to most plant biologists\/scientists because the interesting work on them was done years ago, and they are so exhaustively studied that you'd have to work really hard to find something new.\"\n\nSure, there remain gaps in our knowledge about genetic engineering, Meyers says; the field is still only a couple of decades old, and new discoveries about how plants function are happening all the time. But in terms of safety, genetically modified products \"are very well characterized, so I would say that by the time they're taken to market, they're extraordinarily well tested, and they're both predictable and reliable. GM products are also exhaustively analyzed, much more so than nontransgenic food products, so the possibility of an important gap in our knowledge about the introduced genes is typically extremely small.\"\n\nAnxiety over GMO technology has more to do with the human fear of the unknown than it does with actual risk, said Jim Carrington, a plant pathologist. Carrington's credentials are impressive: he's a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, one of the leading nonprofit plant research centers in the world. \"Do we really have so much knowledge about small RNAs or the impact of adding a single gene or two through a GMO approach\u2014do we know so much that we can eliminate any risk? The answer is clearly no,\" Carrington told me. \"But no approach is risk free. We do not have the ability to be confident that we have eliminated all risks. That is the basic fact of risk assessments: you can do your best to assess impacts based on data, and you can know with a high degree of confidence that risks are relatively low and worth taking in view of the benefits.\n\n\"But anyone who says the aim should be to wait until all the data are in, that's foolish. All the data will never be in.\"\n\nThe question about GMOs, Carrington said, should not be \"Are there risks?\" but \"What does science tell us about what is the reasonable likelihood of a problem coming to bear?\" In the case of GMOs, \"the science has been pretty clear. There are over a thousand journal articles that collectively say that the risks are exceedingly low from the standpoint of comparisons to all alternatives\u2014conventional or organic agriculture. The risk is simply very, very low.\"\n\nBut as confident as Meyers and Carrington are\u2014and they represent the majority of scientists working with GMOs\u2014their opinions are not universal. The trouble with such proclamations, critics say, is that genes don't function as neatly (or as predictably) in the world as they do in the laboratory. Instead, they function in the enormously subtle context of other genes (within the organism itself), other organisms (in the soil and in the creatures that eat them), and other ecosystems (in the world at large). There is a randomness in genetics, an unpredictability that lies at the heart of reproduction, and it is this imprecise nature of genetics that scientific critics of GMOs frequently invoke as reason for caution.\n\nA genome itself is a kind of microscopic ecosystem, and \"we all know what can happen when you, for example, try and introduce a single species into an ecosystem,\" John Vandermeer, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan, has written. \"What usually happens is nothing, which of course can lead to complacency. But occasionally the introduction is catastrophic.\"\n\nCane toads in Australia, Nile perch in Africa, kudzu in the American South\u2014there are countless examples of ecological disasters caused by introduced species, Vandermeer writes. \"If genomes are like ecosystems, there is nothing at all that suggests equivalent disruptions could not occur, and the few scientists who remain unaware of this complication need to refresh their graduate education with a course in complex systems.\"\n\nAnd inside our bodies? One of the most frequently raised concerns about GM foods has to do with toxins and allergies. GMOs can introduce proteins into our diet that the human body has never encountered before, and food allergies seem to be rising everywhere. While evidence of a direct link is scarce, the long-term effects of eating clinically undetectable traces of new proteins remain a concern.\n\nAlfredo Huerta, a plant biologist at Miami University in Ohio, pointed me to a short-term (thirty-one-day) study that showed that eating GM corn causes abnormalities in the digestive systems of pigs. A two-year study of pigs fed a mixture of GM corn found they developed severe stomach inflammation (and 25 percent heavier uteruses) than pigs fed non-GM corn. The findings were troubling for a couple of reasons. First, pigs have digestion systems similar to those in humans. Second, the pigs were sickened not by a single GM grain, but by a mixture of different GM grains. Mixed grains, the authors noted, are not tested for toxicity by regulators \"anywhere in the world.\"\n\nAs for humans? In his biology classes, Huerta tells his students that he will give an A to anyone who can show him a long-term clinical trial in humans showing that GMOs are safe.\n\nNo one has ever found one.\n\nWhen industries say that GMOs are safe because billions of people have eaten them and no one has dropped dead, they're being anecdotal, not scientific, Huerta told me. How would we even know if large-scale physical symptoms are caused by GMOs if we don't even know we're eating GMOs? Even leaving aside major issues like cancer or endocrine problems, how many other symptoms\u2014headaches, stomachaches, allergic reactions, changes in the way our immune system functions, microscopic changes in the structure and function of our cells\u2014may be caused by GMOs if we don't know where these ingredients enter our diet, and if we don't conduct proper human clinical trials?\n\n\"We tend to blow off the reason for a migraine, the ill feeling that we had, on something that we will never be able to identify,\" Huerta said. \"How do we know if any of those hidden symptoms are due to having consumed a GMO (such as GM sweet corn, which is designed to be eaten fresh, right off the cob, and full of Bt toxin)? Remember that physical ailments due to smoking usually appear after many years. Things like emphysema, asthma, loss of lung function, secondary metabolic effects, etc. tend to show up after many years of smoking. Do we know if anything like that will happen with GMOs? The answer is no. We don't know the answer to that question.\"\n\nHuerta's skepticism is well founded. Although it is virtually impossible to lay a single illness, let alone an epidemic, at the feet of a single product, that doesn't mean these GMOs are _not_ causing problems. It may just mean that we haven't made the connection yet. These foods are a new thing on the evolutionary scene, and we are eating them in unimaginably vast quantities. While it is true that most scientific research done to date has found little reason to worry, there are other truths (as we will see) that ought to give us pause.\n\n\"The fact is, it is virtually impossible to even conceive of a testing procedure to assess the health effects of genetically engineered foods when introduced to the food chain,\" said Dr. Richard Lacey, a member of the British Royal College of Pathologists. \"The only way to base the claims about the safety of genetically engineered food in science is to establish each one to be safe through standard scientific procedures, not through assumptions that reflect more wishful thinking than hard fact.\"\n\n### Is It the GMOs, or the Chemicals We Spray on GMOs?\n\nOne health concern about which there is considerably less doubt is that GMOs, from the very outset, have been developed alongside synthetic pesticides and herbicides. The companies that sell the most GM seeds\u2014Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta\u2014all started out as chemical companies, and their move into the seed business, whatever else it has done, has vastly expanded their capacity to sell chemical sprays.\n\nEven the most benign of these chemicals are known to cause health and environmental problems, and they are used in enormous quantities. In the United States over the last forty years, the use of glyphosate (sold by Monsanto as Roundup, a product that makes the company $5 billion a year) has grown by a factor of 250, from less than half a million to 113 million kilograms a year. It is so common in England that residues of the compound routinely show up in British bread. A study by David Mortensen, a plant ecologist at Pennsylvania State University, predicts that total herbicide use in the United States will double again before 2025 as a direct result of GM crop use.\n\nGlyphosate has been approved by the EPA and regulatory agencies all over the world, and has earned the lasting loyalty of countless farmers who use it to clear fields of weeds. Scores of studies have shown no link to cancer; a recent report by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment found that glyphosate is not carcinogenic or toxic to fertility in lab animals.\n\nBut this opinion is far from unanimous. The International Agency for Research on Cancer\u2014the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization\u2014recently declared that glyphosate and 2,4-D (another common herbicide) should be classified as, respectively, \"probable\" and \"possible\" human carcinogens. France, the Netherlands, and Sweden have all recently come out against relicensing glyphosate for use in the European Union.\n\nWithin American regulatory agencies, scientists have long been troubled by the influence industry holds over government regulators. There is a well-documented pipeline leading from industry employees to EPA staff, and industry lobbyists have been very effective at limiting federal funding for chemical regulation. Until the summer of 2016, the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, the government's primary tool to regulate chemicals, had not been updated in forty years. In the early 1970s, there were a dozen EPA laboratories dedicated to testing farm chemicals. In 2004, thanks to decades of industry-pressured \"deregulation,\" there were two.\n\nChemical companies routinely hire former senior government officials to help them design corporate strategies and to persuade their former colleagues in government to be lenient in their scrutiny of data. And they are adept at getting their own people into positions of power in government. This was most obvious during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush years, when \"regulatory relief\" led to a dramatic dismantling of the EPA\u2014and such breaches of the public trust by former industry insiders that several were forced to resign for ethics violations and one even went to prison.\n\nPresident George H. W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, a former lawyer for Monsanto, to the Supreme Court; Thomas later wrote the majority opinion in a landmark case granting companies the right to patent GMO seeds. In the 1990s, President Clinton got so cozy with Monsanto's CEO Robert Shapiro that he swooned over the company in his 1997 State of the Union address and named Shapiro to the president's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. There, Shapiro worked closely with Mickey Kantor, Clinton's trade representative before becoming a Monsanto board member himself. In 1998, Clinton personally awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to the Monsanto team that invented Roundup Ready soybeans.\n\nDuring the Obama administration, Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto vice president, was given a senior position in charge of food safety at the FDA. Islam Siddiqui, a Monsanto lobbyist, was named the U.S. Agricultural Trade Representative, put in charge of promoting American farm products overseas. As Obama's U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan wrote a brief requesting the Supreme Court lift a ruling forbidding the planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa. Kagan now sits alongside Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.\n\n\"From the 1940s to the dawn of the twenty-first century, it has seemed as if government has been working for industry rather than overseeing it,\" E. G. Vallianatos, a twenty-five-year veteran of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, has written. \"Most government and academic scientists working on agricultural practices and pest control have obdurately ignored research into nature's intricate and subtle workings. Instead, they have smoothed the way for the poisonous (and hugely profitable) concoctions of the chemical industry, and they are now doing the same for the rapidly growing field of genetic crop engineering.\"\n\nThere will be more on this later in the book, but suffice it to say that the debate over the safety of farm chemicals, like the debate over the safety of GMOs themselves, remains fractious and tangled up as much in money and politics as in concerns for human health.\n\nFood companies like to say that GMOs have reduced the total load of chemicals sprayed on crops, and in one way this is true. Between 1996 and 2011\u2014the first sixteen years of broad GMO planting\u2014the use of the insect-resistant Bt crops (plants inserted with genes from a naturally occurring bacteria found in the soil) reduced the use of insecticides by 123 million pounds. But during those same years, the use of weed killers like glyphosate and atrazine rose by 527 million pounds.\n\nThe net result? An increase of 7 percent, 404 million pounds. Part of this, at least, is the result of a chemical feedback loop: the more farmers use sprays, the more weeds evolve resistance to sprays, which means farmers need to use more, and stronger, chemicals. The magnitude of the increase in herbicide use on GM crops has \"dwarfed\" the reduction in insecticides used on Bt crops, the agricultural economist Charles Benbrook reports, \"and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.\"\n\nNo matter how you slice it, that's a lot of synthetic chemicals going onto (and into) our food. David Pimentel, a Cornell University scientist who has been studying American agriculture for fifty years, has estimated that pesticides cause some 300,000 poisonings a year in the United States; worldwide, the number is more than 26 million, 3 million of whom required hospitalization. Every year, pesticides kill 220,000 people worldwide and cause chronic illness\u2014everything from respiratory problems in farmworkers to cancer and hormone problems in consumers\u2014in another 750,000.\n\n\"The majority of food purchased in supermarkets have detectable levels of pesticide residue,\" Pimentel writes. In 1982, 80 percent of the milk supply on the Hawaiian island of Oahu had to be destroyed because it had been contaminated with the insecticide heptachlor. But at least heptachlor was on the regulatory radar: of the six hundred pesticides now in use, federal regulators search for the residues of only about forty.\n\nAnd those numbers tabulate just the risks for humans. Pimentel has also found that agrochemicals kill some 70 million birds every year in the United States alone. A quarter-million domestic animals are also poisoned every year by pesticides; farmers lose some $30 million a year to animal illness and death caused by pesticide poisonings\u2014an estimate considered low because it includes only numbers reported by veterinarians. \"When a farm animal poisoning occurs and little can be done for the animal, the farmer seldom calls a veterinarian but, rather, either waits for the animal to recover or destroys it,\" Pimentel writes.\n\nIt is true that pesticides and herbicides are not GMOs, and it is also true that farmers sprayed all kinds of chemicals on their crops long before the development of GMOs. Consider wheat, which is not (currently) genetically engineered. Wheat is often sprayed with glyphosate as a desiccant immediately before it is harvested, in order to force the plants to rapidly release their seeds. This puts a concentrated chemical on the plant right before it's processed into food.\n\nSome scientists wonder whether the rash of gluten intolerance currently afflicting the nation is actually Roundup intolerance. Glyphosate may be \"the most important causal factor\" in celiac disease, one study recently found; another found that glyphosate exposure can cause severe depletion of the nutrient manganese, a deficiency of which is associated with everything from anxiety to autism. \"The monitoring of glyphosate levels in food and in human urine and blood has been inadequate,\" the study's authors reported. \"The common practice of desiccation and\/or ripening with glyphosate right before the harvest ensures that glyphosate residues are present in our food supply.\" It is also plausible that \"the recent sharp increase of kidney failure in agricultural workers is tied to glyphosate exposure.\"\n\nThis, then, is not a question of \"the safety of GMOs\"; it is a question of \"the safety of what we spray on our food,\" a whole lot of which _is_ GM. It's obviously impossible to pin a nation's health woes on a single chemical compound, especially when only a tiny fraction of the country's 80,000 synthetic compounds have ever been formally tested for their health consequences. However, few chemicals have been spread as far and wide as glyphosate in the last twenty years, and glyphosate's ability to disrupt the body's detoxification pathways has been shown to intensify the effect of other toxic chemicals.\n\nThere is no question that the explosion in the use of chemicals like glyphosate has tracked right alongside the explosion in the use of GMOs. It has also corresponded with two other trends: a \"huge increase\" in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases, and a \"marked decrease\" in life expectancy in the United States, write the authors of a study published in _The Journal of Organ Systems_. Diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases\u2014all have jumped dramatically, to the point that one-quarter of Americans now suffer from multiple chronic diseases. These numbers run parallel to \"an exponential increase in the amount of glyphosate applied to food crops and in the percentage of GE food crops planted.\" The annual cost of treating these illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is north of $750 billion per year. While direct, causal links have not been firmly established, the correlation\u2014especially given the scale of our exposure to pesticides, GMOs, and the processed foods both help create\u2014surely merits more attention than it has thus far received.\n\nBeyond worries about human health, there is the question of how much longer the pesticides currently associated with GMOs will remain viable. Farmers have sprayed so much glyphosate on their GM crops that weeds\u2014the very things they use glyphosate to control\u2014are evolving resistance to the spray. In 2004, a common weed called amaranth was found to have developed resistance to glyphosate in a single county in Georgia; by 2011, it had spread to seventy-six. \"It got to the point where some farmers were losing half their cotton fields to the weed,\" a Georgia farming consultant reported.\n\nGlyphosate-resistant weeds have now been found in eighteen countries, with significant impacts in Brazil, Australia, Argentina, and Paraguay. In the United States, they have emerged on 100 million acres in thirty-six states, meaning farmers must now return to harsher chemicals (like atrazine, a known carcinogen) or to recently approved \"stacked\" herbicides that combine glyphosate with 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange, the carcinogenic defoliant used during the Vietnam War. Dow AgroSciences, which uses 2,4-D in an herbicide called Enlist Duo, says there are more than 1,500 products with 2,4-D as an active ingredient; over the next few years, the EPA predicts the use of 2,4-D will increase sevenfold.\n\nThe EPA's recent decision to approve \"stacked\" herbicides was deeply flawed, according to Philip Landrigan, a renowned pediatrician and public health scientist, and Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist at Washington State University. The decision was based on studies done thirty years ago, which were not done by independent scientists but by the herbicide manufacturers themselves and were never published. The EPA did not take into account what scientists now know of the dangers such chemicals pose\u2014even at very low doses\u2014to the human endocrine system, especially in children. And they failed to consider the chemicals' impact on the environment, especially its effect on pollinators like the monarch butterfly, whose population is down more than 90 percent.\n\nBy pushing chemicals like glyphosate so hard, and for so long, chemical and seed companies \"have sown the seeds of their own destruction,\" the University of Michigan's John Vandermeer told me. \"We now have twenty-five weeds that are Roundup resistant, so now they're developing 2,4-D\u2013resistant crops. Roundup and 2,4-D are not good things to have around in such huge quantities. Roundup is toxic to amphibians\u2014it's actually toxic to almost everything that people have studied.\n\n\"My worry is that spreading Roundup all over the place has not been a good idea, and now we're about to start spreading 2,4-D around the world. It's not a good idea for the environment, and it's a potential danger for human health. Both chemicals are certainly suspected carcinogens, and Roundup is an endocrine disrupter. These are problems that were well known before there were GMOs. I don't care what technique you use to create Roundup Ready crops. I will always have an objection to the chemicals they encourage. If they had created Roundup Ready crops the old-fashioned way, I still wouldn't like them because of the Roundup.\"\n\nIt would seem that with so much riding on this question of safety\u2014with so much food, so much health, and so much money riding on a clear answer\u2014the federal government would make answering it a priority. The trouble with federal oversight of widely used chemicals like glyphosate is that the agencies responsible for keeping an eye on industry are deeply compromised by the political power of these same industries. The EPA has \"gutted\" both internal and external research programs responsible for safeguarding the public from industrial and agricultural chemicals, Bruce Blumberg, a professor of developmental and cell biology at the University of California, Irvine, told me. The EPA says everything they do is online, but \"damned if you can find it,\" he said.\n\nRelying on the seed and chemical companies to test their own products is folly, Blumberg said. Especially for something as ubiquitous as Roundup, large, long-term, and multigenerational studies ought to be carried out by a federal agency like the National Toxicology Program.\n\n\"This kind of work is the province of government, but they have totally shirked their responsibility,\" Blumberg said. \"We just cannot trust people with financial interest in product sales to do safety tests on these products. Companies will never show all the data unless it is in their interest. Look at history. Look at the tobacco industry. Look at General Motors and the ignition switch debacle at Takata and their exploding air bags. What does history tell us? Nothing good.\"\n\n### The Information Squeeze\n\nIt is the absence\u2014or, if you like, the impossibility\u2014of an absolute proof of safety that has led more than sixty countries all over the world to require foods containing GMOs to be labeled. With certainty so hard to come by, these countries (notably not including the United States) have decided that consumers at least deserve enough information to decide what they want to eat.\n\nEuropeans have bitterly opposed GMOs since the beginning. Their objections cropped up right around the time people in England learned that cows were being fed the brains of other cows. Mad cow disease, which had nothing to do with GMOs, nonetheless made people skittish over both the excesses of industrial agriculture and the paucity of government regulation.\n\nTheatrical demonstrations popped up all over Europe and quickly focused on agricultural technologies of all kinds. Protesters dumped GM soybeans at the doorstep of the British prime minister. Food activists pressured supermarkets to pull GMOs off their shelves. Prince Charles said GM foods took mankind into \"realms that belong to God.\"\n\nIn 1996, the German division of Unilever canceled an order for 650,000 metric tons of soybeans unless they could be guaranteed not to contain GM beans. Four years later, the EU required that food with more than 1 percent GM ingredients carry a label. Such was the European resistance to GMOs that hardly any foods ever actually ended up with a label, because hardly any GM foods were actually available for sale. Around this time, a food analyst for Deutsche Bank in New York declared that \"GMOs are dead.\"\n\nMore recently, nineteen members of the European Union requested that they be able to \"opt out\" of an agreement that allows the planting of GM corn.\n\nIn the United States, poll after poll indicates that a majority of people are confused and frightened by engineered food, and that they share a deep mistrust of the large agribusinesses that make them. They worry about the evolution of superbugs and superweeds, and about the growing dangers of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers needed to keep industrial farms afloat. They worry about the creation of dangerous food allergies, like a GM soybean made with genes from a Brazil nut that became such a suspicious cause of allergies that it never made it to market.\n\n\"The GMO issue is something that continues to be brought up in an unprompted way in our interviews with consumers,\" said Laurie Demeritt, CEO of the food research firm Hartman Group. \"And when we look at things like fat, sodium, and sugar, GMO is showing the strongest growth rate in terms of characteristics that consumers are trying to avoid. . . . Consumers have a vision in their minds of people in lab coats taking syringes and injecting things into a product, a vision of food made in a lab\u2014and that's even worse in their minds than food coming off a factory line.\"\n\nIn a 2013 _New York Times_ poll, three-quarters of Americans surveyed expressed concern about GMOs in their food, with most worried about health risks. More than 90 percent of Americans want GMOs labeled, as they have been required to be in countries such as India, China, Australia, and Brazil.\n\nIn 2011, Gary Hirshberg, chairman and cofounder of Stonyfield, the organic yogurt company, partnered with Just Label It, a national coalition of nearly 450 organizations, to petition the FDA to make GM food labels mandatory. More than a million people have now signed up. In 2014, Vermont became the first state to require labels on foods made with GMOs (though critics complain that the state left a sizable loophole by exempting meat and dairy products, much of which comes from animals fed GM grain).\n\nCompanies have responded aggressively to these moves. They have spent tens of millions of dollars in the United States alone trying to limit the information they must provide about the GM ingredients in their food, or the pesticides they use. They fight citizen groups at the ballot box and pour rivers of money into the pockets of politicians who support them. They place industry insiders at the very top of the federal agencies charged with regulating their own industry. They invest millions of dollars in university laboratories, then urge the scientists they support\u2014who the companies know \"have a big white hat in this debate\"\u2014to explain the benefits of their products in the press and before Congress.\n\nWhen California activists decided to float a petition for food labeling in 2012, they gathered more than a million signatures (and $9 million) in support of Proposition 37. The move was derailed by a massive counter-campaign (and $46 million) from Monsanto, DuPont, Pepsi, and Kraft Foods. In the end, the labeling measure failed 51 percent to 49 percent.\n\nThe story repeated itself in Oregon and Washington state: small-scale activists in favor of labeling followed by multimillion-dollar campaigns financed by the food and agricultural industries. \"Monsanto was writing million-dollar checks at a shot,\" recalled Trudy Bialic, the public-affairs director of a Seattle-based natural-foods co-op chain, who helped draft the initiative. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the lobby for makers of processed food, donated $11 million. \"Boom, boom, boom, millions overnight,\" she said. \"It was death by a thousand cuts.\"\n\nIf some of this sounds familiar, it should. Companies pushing the \"safety\" of GMOs are following a playbook written by Big Tobacco and Big Oil, which spent decades claiming that science (about cancer, or about climate change) was bunk. Yet now, when consumers demand to know more about GMOs\u2014what they are, how they are made, what their health and environmental consequences might be\u2014industry claims to have science \"on its side.\" Consumers should trust these companies to do the right thing, because the science on GMOs is \"clear.\" According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the gap between what scientists and the public believe about GMOs is now wider than on any other issue. Almost 90 percent of scientists believe eating GMOs is safe. Among the public, that number is 37 percent.\n\nThe food industry has always been heavy-handed in its battles over what information the public should be allowed to know. Twenty-five years ago, many of these same companies fought bitterly to prevent the legally strict \"organic\" label from being applied to foods grown without synthetic chemicals. They had reason to be concerned: since the introduction of organic standards, the organic food industry has been growing at 20 percent a year, which has both cut into traditional profit centers and opened the door to a whole new array of growers, preparers, and sellers of food.\n\nBut the GMO labeling debate has a different feel. Requiring a \"Contains GMOs\" label on foods would function as a kind of \"anti-organic\" label, implying (given the public's anxiety over the issue) that the food was somehow unsafe to eat. To big food companies and farmers who use GMOs, requiring a GMO label would do little more than give the organic food industry another big bite out of the American food budget.\n\nAs consumer anxiety over GMOs has grown, so have the marketing opportunities for food companies that do not use GMOs. Some 80 percent of consumers say they would pay more for foods carrying a \"No GMO\" label, even though they don't necessarily trust food labels (or even fully understand GMOs). Whole Foods has pledged that by 2018 it will replace some foods containing genetically modified ingredients and require labels on others. Signs in Trader Joe's proclaim: \"No GMOs Sold Here.\" Sales of products claiming they contain \"no GMOs\" exceeded $10 billion last year and grew at a faster rate than sales of gluten-free items, according to a recent Nielsen study.\n\n\"There's no doubt that the industry is fighting a rear-guard action on this and trying to put it to rest,\" said Carl Jorgensen, director of global consumer strategy for wellness at Daymon Worldwide, a consumer research and consulting firm. \"But there's an aura of inevitability about it now.\"\n\nTen billion dollars for non-GMO foods is a lot, but it's still a vanishing fraction of the $620 billion Americans spent in grocery stores in 2013. But if a traditional grocery chain like Kroger or Safeway were to begin labeling its private-label products, \"that would be a game changer,\" Jorgensen said. Unlike food manufacturers, grocery stores interact directly with consumers, Jorgenson noted; they can see which foods fly off the shelves and which foods remain.\n\nBut this is tricky magic: if companies start boasting that some of their products (like Cheerios) do not contain GMOs, how will consumers react to their other products (like Lucky Charms and even Honey Nut Cheerios)\u2014sitting right there on the same shelf\u2014that do?\n\nIn the absence of broad labeling laws\u2014there are currently eighty-four bills on GMO labeling in thirty states\u2014companies hoping to take advantage of GMO anxiety have found other solutions. On its website, a testing organization called the Non-GMO Project\u2014logo: monarch butterfly\u2014shows a photo of a little blond girl carrying a sign saying \"I Am Not a Science Experiment.\"\n\n\"The sad truth is many of the foods that are most popular with children contain GMOs,\" the site reports. \"Cereals, snack bars, snack boxes, cookies, processed lunch meats, and crackers all contain large amounts of high-risk food ingredients. In North America, over 80% of our food contains GMOs. If you are not buying foods that are Non-GMO Project Verified, most likely GMOs are present at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.\"\n\nThe Non-GMO Project, which calls itself \"North America's only third-party verification for products produced according to the rigorous best practices for GMO avoidance,\" says it has verified more than 34,000 products. The nonprofit group tests ingredients, and anything passing the European standard of less than 0.9 percent GMO is eligible for the \"Non-GMO Project Verified\" seal of approval. Given the almost unavoidable reality of seed and crop cross-contamination, getting to zero\u2014getting to actually \"GMO free\" is (so far) impossible.\n\nRather than mandatory labels on products, the food industry has long pushed the use of voluntary QR barcodes on products, which (they say) consumers could simply scan with their cell phones. The codes would direct you to the company's website, which would reveal further information about the product. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has said the QR codes would solve the label debate \"in a heartbeat.\"\n\nPro-labeling groups consider this move a joke. Bar codes directing you to the Internet make abstract what ought to be utterly present and clear: Does the package in your hand contain GMO ingredients, or not? If you actually take the time to navigate to a company's website, you might (perhaps) find somewhere (in small print) that yes, Coca-Cola uses GM corn to make its high fructose corn syrup; or yes, children's breakfast cereals are sweetened with crystals made from GM sugar beets; or yes, Crisco oil uses GM soybeans. But who's actually going to go to all that trouble? Add to this the fact that 50 percent of the country's poor and 65 percent of the elderly do not even own smartphones, and you have to wonder: Is the goal of this move broad public awareness of what goes into food, or another way for companies to obscure what they are feeding us?\n\nAs with the regulation of toxic chemicals in products like cosmetics or baby bottles, companies have also worked hard to limit the size of their battlefield: a single piece of legislation in Congress is a lot easier to manipulate than bills passing through dozens of state legislatures. In 2014, in the midst of major GMO labeling battles in places like California and Vermont, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) introduced a federal bill seeking to prohibit states from requiring GMO labels on food. Opponents of the measure dubbed it the \"DARK\" Act, for \"Deny Americans the Right to Know,\" and hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions opposing the bill. \"If the DARK Act becomes law, a veil of secrecy will cloak ingredients, leaving consumers with no way to know what's in their food,\" said Scott Faber, senior vice-president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group. \"Consumers in sixty-four countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, have the right to know if their food contains GMOs. Why shouldn't Americans have the same right?\"\n\nOpponents also considered Pompeo's bill a gift to Big Food, and indeed, the Pompeo campaign's top individual contributor has been Koch Industries Inc., the energy, agricultural chemical and fertilizer conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David H. Koch, who are known for their extensive support of conservative political causes.\n\nIn the end, Big Food won. In the summer of 2016, President Obama signed the Senate version of Pompeo's bill into law. Although the administration pitched the move as a step forward in the march toward consumer information, the law accomplished most of what Big Food desired: it keeps labeling rules in the hands of a single federal agency, which will decide what percentage of GMOs in a food product will require labeling; it allows for the use of obscure QR codes rather than clear labels on food packages; and most important, it kills far stricter rules written by states like Vermont, Connecticut, and Maine.\n\nThe Obama administration's fraught decision notwithstanding, the labeling debate continues to raise deeper questions about the ways our food is made. Do you really care only that a food was genetically engineered? Or would you also like to know that it was sprayed with an herbicide that is known to be carcinogenic to humans, or with another chemical known to destroy the plants that monarch butterflies need to survive? That it was sprayed with an insecticide known to kill bees? That it was grown in a monoculture field that is destroying biodiversity generally, or is polluting drinking water supplies? How far do you want to go with this?\n\nWhen it comes to food labels, everything comes down to your level of risk tolerance, Jim Carrington, the president of the Danforth Center and a forceful proponent of the safety and benefits of genetic engineering, told me. Table salt is dangerous if used too much, and every year some people die from drinking too much water. Celery, broccoli, potatoes\u2014lots of plants contain natural toxins that help them survive. Does that mean they deserve labels?\n\n\"The question is not whether something has the potential to cause cancer. There is nothing that is _not_ in that category,\" Carrington said. \"A rooster crows every morning and then the sun comes up. Association does not equal causation.\"\n\nCarrington's view is that food production depends on all kinds of processes and ingredients that can be delivered in ways that are better or worse, and GMOs are no different.\n\n\"So let's say we label something that has a GMO ingredient,\" Carrington said, a note of sarcasm creeping into his voice. \"If we require that, you know what I want to require? I want to know every input that went into that product. I'm concerned about water, and soil erosion, and nitrogen leaching into the waterways. That's all big-time environmentalism. Show me a label for everything in that box. Show me how much water the crops required, how much fertilizer ran into the nearest waterway or aquifer. But don't stop there. I want to know how many gallons of fuel were used per pound of produce, what the miles per gallon were for that tractor, whether or not there were any farm animals within two miles because I want to know about _E. coli_.\n\n\"Marking GMO ingredients as 'different' is marking something that in fact has no impact on what's in the box,\" he continued. \"There is no substantive difference that will affect you. What I'm saying is, if you get to label something that has no bearing on your health or safety, I say let's go all the way. Show me every bit of information about how that product was produced so I, as a consumer, can make an informed choice. If you force a label on something that doesn't matter for reasons you say _do_ matter\u2014'I want to protect my children'\u2014then I want to claim every bit of every other thing I'm concerned about. It's not rational, it's arbitrary, and it has negative consequences.\"\n\nIn a way, Carrington's modest proposal\u2014labeling _everything_ that goes into making our food\u2014precisely reflects the sentiments of people who completely disagree with him about GMOs. It may be that our desire for labels is simply shorthand for our collective desire to know more about a food system that\u2014to most of us\u2014has become utterly industrial, technological, and abstract. We are given so little information about the way our food is grown and have so little contact with people or places that actually grow it. Perhaps the entire debate about GMOs may just be evidence of our cumulative ignorance about one of the most intimate things in our lives: the way we eat.\n\nSo how did we lose our way?\n\n## 2.\n\n## The Long, Paved Road to Industrial Food, and the Disappearance of the American Farmer\n\n The road we have traveled to our current state of eating is actually a very long, interconnected highway. After World War II, American national security strategists decided that protecting the homeland required building a network of broad interstates that mirrored the German Autobahn. This monumental road-building project\u2014now close to 47,000 miles long\u2014was initially conceived as a way to efficiently move troops and military machinery, but it has also had dramatic peacetime consequences for the American landscape, and for the American diet.\n\nSuddenly, big, safe interstates\u2014and the millions of miles of ring roads, state roads, and town roads they encouraged\u2014allowed people to live farther and farther from the cities where they worked. People moved out of cities in droves, looking for new places to live. Land prices outside cities skyrocketed, and small farmers occupying that land had a hard time resisting when real estate developers came to call.\n\nSuburban development hit small American farms like a virus. In the 1950s alone, some 10 million people left family farms. Chances are, your grandparents (or even your parents) can tell you stories about all those farms in your area that over the last few decades have been turned into subdivisions and shopping malls. In Maryland, where I live, suburban development has replaced 900,000 acres of farmland (and 500,000 acres of forest) in just the last forty years.\n\nAll these new roads, and the suburbs and industries to which they gave birth, caused a second tectonic shift in American culture: in the way we came to eat. Car-friendly fast-food chains like McDonald's and Carl's Jr. and Burger King started popping up along the new highways like weeds. By the early 1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was the largest restaurant chain in the United States.\n\nThese restaurants did not cook, exactly; what they did was heat up highly processed, prepackaged foods that tasted exactly the same, whether you were in Dallas or Des Moines. The ingredients didn't need to be fresh, they needed to be uniform, and storable, and\u2014most important, given skyrocketing demand\u2014they needed to be provided in vast quantities.\n\nFast-food joints didn't need local asparagus from New Jersey or collard greens from Georgia or one-of-a-kind apples grown in small orchards in New York. They needed commodity grains to sweeten their sodas, fry their fries, and feed the animals that could be turned into hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken. What these restaurants needed was corn, and wheat, and soybeans. And lots of them.\n\nAs small family farms near population centers went bankrupt or sold their land to developers, and as the American diet started demanding processed meals, food production flowed like beads of mercury to the control of larger and larger industrial farm operations in the Midwest. As food production became centralized, companies that controlled the grains, chemicals, and processing factories became bigger and much more politically powerful. Thanks to intensive lobbying, tens of billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies began flowing to giant agribusinesses that were driving the development of the industrial food system. As early as the 1970s, farmers around the country were being told (in the words of President Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Rusty Butz) to \"get big or get out.\"\n\nMost farmers got out. A little over a hundred years ago, there were 38 million people living in the United States, and 50 percent of them worked on a farm. Today, we have 300 million people. How many work on farms? Two percent.\n\nToday, if you drive across the grain belt\u2014Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas\u2014you will spend many, many hours crossing an ocean of just three crops: corn, wheat, and soybeans. They are being grown by farmers you will likely never meet, processed in factories you will likely never see, into packaged foods containing ingredients that look nothing like the crops from which they were made. You won't see it, but your soda will be sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, which replaced sugar in the 1980s. Your fries will be dunked in boiling soybean oil. And your burgers and nuggets and sliced turkey breast will all be processed from animals fed corn or soybeans, or both.\n\nWhat you most likely won't see, out along on the great American road system, are regional food specialties, or the mom-and-pop diners and restaurants that used to serve them. New England clam chowder, New Orleans gumbo, Maryland crab bisque: all these foods require local ingredients, which (by definition) giant farms in Iowa or Kansas are unable to provide. Replacing them has been the food that these farms can provide: Fast food. Processed food. Soda. Pizza. Chicken nuggets. Cheap hamburgers. A vast culinary sameness, all essentially built out of two or three crops, controlled by a small handful of companies. All available twenty-four hours a day in any restaurant, dining hall, or gas station in the country.\n\nIt wasn't just fast-food restaurants pushing this new food system. Food-processing giants like ADM, ConAgra, and Cargill learned to take monoculture corn and soybeans and turn them into the raw ingredients that could be made into just about anything a supermarket shopper wanted. Companies like General Mills or Coca-Cola could take a few cents' worth of wheat or corn and process it into Cocoa Puffs or a two-liter bottle of soda and sell it for a few dollars. As food scientists became more creative, they learned how to take wheat and corn and soy and turn them (along with the secret \"fragrances\" and \"flavors\" whose provenance only the food scientists seem to know) into limitless quantities of foods sold in suburban supermarkets\u2014as often as not built on top of former farms.\n\nThese new foods were cheap to make, enormously profitable, and consumers seemed to love them. Americans spent $6 billion a year on fast food in 1970. By 2014, they were spending more than $117 billion. Today, Americans drink about 56 gallons of soda a year\u2014about 600 cans per person\u2014and every month, 90 percent of American children visit a McDonald's.\n\nAs industrial farms continued to grow, they gobbled up not just good land but marginal land, changing the face of millions upon millions of acres of forest, grasslands, hillsides, even wetlands. The strange thing was that the plants they grew\u2014corn, soy, wheat\u2014didn't seem to mind this change. The plants could grow, weed-like, even in marginal soil.\n\nSo, for better or worse, could the animals. Industrial feedlots across the Midwest began buying trainloads of corn and soybeans to feed an industry that now slaughters 9 billion animals a year.\n\nAs farms consolidated and grew, and as industrial processors increased their demand for ingredients that could be turned into shelf-stable food, farmers responded by growing what the market demanded\u2014and eliminating what the market did not. Over the course of the twentieth century, the varieties of fruits and vegetables being sold by commercial U.S. seed houses dropped by 97 percent. Varieties of cabbage dropped from 544 to 28; carrots from 287 to 21; cauliflower from 158 to 9; tomatoes from 408 to 79; garden peas from 408 to 25. Of more than 7,000 varieties of apples, more than 6,200 have been lost.\n\n\u2014\n\nTHE DEVELOPMENT of American highways and suburbs caused one of the most dramatic changes in land use in the history of the world. But running parallel to this was an equally momentous shift in agricultural technology, which grew up fast to supply the rapidly changing American diet. In the 1930s, a plant breeder named Henry A. Wallace began boasting of the benefits of crossbred or \"hybrid\" corn, which he had meticulously developed to produce unprecedented yields. Even Wallace knew he was on to something dramatic. \"We hear a great deal these days about atomic energy,\" he said. \"Yet I am convinced that historians will rank the harnessing of hybrid power as equally significant.\"\n\nWallace was right. Corn yields doubled\u2014from around 25 bushels per acre to 50 bushels per acre\u2014in ten years. From 1934 to 1944\u2014even before the postwar boom in agribusiness\u2014hybrid corn seed sales jumped from near zero to more than $70 million, and rapidly replaced the enormous variety of seeds farmers had saved and traded for generations. By 1969, yields were up to 80 bushels an acre, and fully 71 percent of the corn grown in the United States was being grown from just a half-dozen types of hybrid seed. Industrial monoculture had arrived. Wallace's Hi-Bred Corn Company became Pioneer Hi-Bred International, America's largest seed company.\n\nSince the 1960s, corn yields have doubled again, and now stand, in some places, close to 200 bushels per acre\u2014nearly a tenfold increase in a single century. This phenomenal increase in production was dramatically accelerated by the invention, in the early twentieth century, of the Haber-Bosch process, which won its German inventors Nobel Prizes for discovering how to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. The ability to synthesize ammonia\u2014routinely called the most important invention of the twentieth century\u2014made it possible for industry to mass-produce two things that changed the world: explosives during the war and synthetic fertilizers after the war.\n\nBy the late 1940s, the war over, American industries found themselves with an enormous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the primary ingredient used to make TNT and other explosives. Since the synthetic compound also proved to be an excellent source of nitrates for plants, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) started encouraging the use of these chemicals on American farmland.\n\nSuddenly, farmers (and their crops) shifted from a reliance on energy from the sun (in the form of nitrogen-fixing legumes or plant-based manure) to a reliance on energy from fossil fuels. Liberated from the old biological constraints, farms \"could now be managed on industrial principles, as a factory transforming inputs of raw material\u2014chemical fertilizer\u2014into outputs of corn,\" Michael Pollan writes in _The Omnivore's Dilemma_. \"Fixing nitrogen allowed the food chain to turn from the logic of biology and embrace the logic of industry. Instead of eating exclusively from the sun, humanity now began to sip petroleum.\"\n\nA similar pattern emerged for the poison gases that industry had developed for the war: they were repurposed as agricultural pesticides and herbicides. Monsanto had begun the twentieth century making things like aspirin. In 1945, the company began making herbicides like 2,4-D, which would become a prime ingredient in Agent Orange, and is now one of the most popular farm sprays in the world. Monsanto also spent decades making PCBs, a compound used in both pesticides and electrical transformers (and long since banned as a dangerous carcinogen). By the 1960s, Monsanto was making a whole host of pesticides, with tough-sounding cowboy names like Lasso, Lariat, and Bullet. But the company's star product was Roundup, the glyphosate that is now the most popular herbicide in the world\u2014and which, in a few short years, would be the star player in the growth of GMOs.\n\nDuPont, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF\u2014all the world's largest chemical companies made fortunes manufacturing compounds like DDT, atrazine, and scores of other farm chemicals. Today, the six top chemical companies control nearly 75 percent of the world's pesticide market.\n\nThis transition, from wartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals that now cover hundreds of millions of acres in the United States alone, has proven a double-edged sword for the world's farmers, and for the rest of us. For one thing, it means that most of us, in the words of the Indian food activist Vandana Shiva, are \"still eating the leftovers of World War II.\"\n\nTrue, it cranked up the amount of food farmers could grow, but it also (in the words of Czech-Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil) \"detonated the population explosion.\" Farmers could now grow a lot more food, but suddenly\u2014thanks in no small part to all this extra food\u2014there were a lot more people to feed. Since the end of World War II, chemical fertilizer production jumped from 17 million tons per year to more than 200 million tons. Excess fertilizers and pesticides that are not taken up by plants seep into the rivers and bays, where they contaminate drinking water and cause algae blooms (and aquatic dead zones) so large they can be seen from space. They evaporate into the air, where they serve as major contributors to climate change.\n\nAnd it's not just plants that these chemicals fertilize. Since their advent, the human population has nearly tripled. Without these chemicals, Smil writes, billions of people would never have been born. The dousing of our crops with fossil fuels, in other words, meant we could now make unprecedented amounts of food. But now we had to.\n\nFor the large chemical companies, the global demand for more food provided a huge new market opportunity, not only for fertilizers and pesticides but for novel seeds to grow the crops themselves. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the explosion of biotechnology\u2014and especially in the ability of scientists to genetically engineer plants\u2014meant that companies once devoted to chemistry began frantically shifting their emphasis to molecular biology. Chemical giants like Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer began a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, racing each other to dominate the world's seed industry. Monsanto's CEO Robert Shapiro moved especially aggressively in the mid-1990s, spending billions of dollars buying up seed companies and instantly making Monsanto the world's biggest ag-biotech company. The company bought Calgene, the maker of the Flavr Savr tomato, mainly because the smaller firm had ideas about GM cotton and canola.\n\nSimilar changes were under way at Dow and DuPont, which started out as makers of explosives like phenol and dynamite and are now two of the biggest GM seed companies in the world. In 1999, DuPont spent $7.7 billion to buy Pioneer Hi-Bred, which controlled 42 percent of the U.S. market for hybrid corn and 16 percent of the country's soybeans. The deal gave DuPont control of the world's biggest proprietary seed bank, as well as a global seed sales force.\n\nThe consolidation of the agrochemical giants has continued. In late 2015, DuPont and Dow Chemical announced a $130 billion merger, and Monsanto made a $45 billion offer to buy Syngenta. The deal fell through, but Syngenta was immediately targeted by China National Chemical Corp., and Monsanto turned its attention to acquiring the crop science divisions of German chemical giants BASF and Bayer. Bayer responded in the spring of 2016 by offering to buy Monsanto for $62 billion. Monsanto rejected the bid as too low, but the companies remain in negotiations.\n\nAs late as the 1990s, the United States had hundreds of different seed companies; now we have a half-dozen. The biotech industry owns at least 85 percent of the country's corn seed, more than half of it owned by Monsanto alone. \"This is an important moment in human history,\" Monsanto's CEO Robert Shapiro said in 1999. \"The application of contemporary biological knowledge to issues like food and nutrition and human health has to occur. It has to occur for the same reason that things have occurred for the past ten millennia. People want to live better, and they will use the tools they have to do it. Biology is the best tool we have.\"\n\nThis, then, was the monumental shift that gave us GMOs. In a few short years, companies that had long known the power of chemistry discovered the power of biology. And the way we eat has never been the same.\n\n\u2014\n\nGENETIC ENGINEERS are correct when they say that the fruits and vegetables we see in the supermarket look nothing like their wild forebears. The tomatoes we eat today\u2014juicy and sweet, not bitter and toxic\u2014are the result of thousands of years of human selection. So is the corn. The first cultivated carrots\u2014typically yellow or purple\u2014were grown in Afghanistan. It was only after traders carried them to Europe and the Mediterranean, where they were crossed with wild varieties, that their offspring gradually turned orange.\n\nIn the nineteenth century, the Austrian monk and scientist Gregor Mendel discovered how a plant passed its traits from parent to offspring. Taking anthers from one variety and dusting them with pollen from another, he crossed some 10,000 plants: round peas with wrinkled peas; peas from yellow pods with peas from green pods; peas from tall and short plants. Every trait a plant's offspring exhibited\u2014height, color, shape\u2014depended on what Mendel called \"factors\" that were either dominant or recessive. So if a round pod was crossed with a wrinkly pod, three out of four times the offspring would be round, meaning that was the dominant trait. The last one could either be round or wrinkly. That's because these factors apparently came in pairs, one from each parent, and were inherited as distinct characteristics.\n\nDNA was known to be a cellular component by the late nineteenth century, but Mendel and other early geneticists did their work without understanding its role in heredity. By the late 1940s, most biologists believed one specific kind of molecule held the key to inheritance, and turned their focus to chromosomes, which were already known to carry genes. As agricultural research began moving from the field into the laboratory, scientists discovered a new way to mirror natural selection: by exposing plants to chemicals or radiation, they could alter the plant's biochemical development. They could force it to mutate. By some estimates, radiation mutagenesis has introduced some 2,500 new varieties of plants into the world, including many that find their way onto our plates, like wheat, grapefruit, even lettuce.\n\nWith the flowering of genetic engineering in the 1970s and 1980s, scientists figured out how to go into an organism\u2014a plant or an animal, a bacteria or a virus\u2014remove one or more genes, and stitch them into the genetic sequence of another organism. This process became known as recombinant DNA technology.\n\nThe first commercially available product of genetic engineering was synthetic insulin. In humans, insulin is normally made by the pancreas and helps regulate blood glucose; produce too little insulin, and you can develop type 1 diabetes. Traditionally, increasing a diabetic's insulin required collecting insulin from the pancreatic glands of pigs or cattle, a problem not only for the animals but also for people who became allergic to the insulin's different chemical structure.\n\nIn 1978, scientists at the company Genentech used genetic coding to create a synthetic insulin known as humulin, which hit the market in 1982. Today, this GM insulin is produced around the clock in giant fermentation vats and is used every day by more than 4 million people. Similar technology has been used to produce vaccines that combat hepatitis B; human growth hormone, which combats dwarfism; and erythropoietin (EPO), which helps the body produce red blood cells (and has been, illegally, used to boost racing performance by riders in the Tour de France).\n\nIn the late 1980s, genetic engineers turned their sights on cheese. Just a few years before the release of the Flavr Savr tomato, the combination of a single gene from a cow was stitched into the genome of a bacterium (or a yeast) to create rennin, a critical enzyme in the production of hard cheeses. Once obtained as a by-product of the veal industry, rennin was traditionally collected from the lining of a cow's fourth stomach. GM rennin is now used in some 90 percent of the cheese made in the United States.\n\nBut compared with what was to come, these early experiments were, well, small potatoes. The real money, agrochemical companies knew, would come through genetically engineering the crops Americans ate most. Not cheese, but corn and soybeans. Control those crops, and you could dominate a fundamental part of the global economy.\n\nMonsanto's most important push was to create seeds the company could sell alongside Roundup, already the bestselling farm chemical in the world. Creating (and patenting) Roundup-resistant seeds would secure the company's global share in seeds _and_ herbicides. The world's farmers wouldn't buy just one. They would buy both.\n\n\"It was like the Manhattan Project, the antithesis of how a scientist usually works,\" said Henry Klee, a member of Monsanto's Roundup research team. \"A scientist does an experiment, evaluates it, makes a conclusion, and goes on to the next variable. With Roundup resistance, we were trying twenty variables at the same time: different mutants, different promoters, multiple plant species. We were trying everything at once.\"\n\nIt took four years, and a bizarre eureka moment, for Roundup Ready seeds to be born. Frustrated in their lab work, company engineers decided to examine a garbage dump 450 miles south of Monsanto's St. Louis headquarters. There, at the company's Luling plant on the banks of the Mississippi, the engineers found plants that had somehow survived in soil and ponds near contamination pools, where the company treated millions of tons of glyphosate every year. The hardiest weeds were collected, their molecular structure examined, their genes replicated and inserted into potential food crops.\n\nWhen Roundup Ready soybeans were finally launched, in 1996, they instantly became an essential part of a $15 billion soybean industry. Roundup Ready soybeans covered 1 million acres in the United States in 1996; 9 million acres in 1997; and 25 million in 1998. Today, 90 percent of the country's 85 million acres of soybeans are glyphosate resistant.\n\nThe first insecticide-producing corn plant was approved in 1996, the same year Monsanto released its Roundup Ready soybean. Today, the overwhelming majority of the GM crops grown in the United States\u2014some 170 million acres of them\u2014are still grown to feed the industrial food system. In Iowa, GM corn is grown to feed the numberless cows and pigs that enter into the fast-food system. In Maryland, GM soybeans are grown to feed the hundreds of millions of chickens on the state's Eastern Shore, which will enter the same system. In Nebraska, GM canola is grown to make the oil to fry the french fries served in the country's galaxy of drive-through restaurants.\n\nWhy are the crops genetically engineered? For the same reason the highways were built: they make everything faster, more uniform, more efficient. In the United States, GM crops are grown mainly for two reasons: to increase yields and\u2014especially\u2014to allow farmers to spray their crops with chemicals that kill insects, diseases, or weeds. By developing crops that can withstand regular pesticide dousing (or, like Bt corn, that can provide their own insecticide), scientists have enabled farmers to eliminate everything but the crops whose numbers they are trying to maximize. Gone are the weeds. Gone are the insects. The whole system works\u2014in the most literal sense\u2014like a well-oiled machine.\n\nFood and chemical companies\u2014and the farmers who grow for them\u2014say that GM crops allow them to deliver a lot of food to a lot of people for very little money, and this is true, as far as it goes. Americans have become very comfortable spending relatively little money for their food. According to the World Bank, Americans spend considerably less per capita on food than anyone else in the world. Food expenses are much higher in the UK (9 percent), France (14 percent), South Africa (20 percent), and Brazil (25 percent). And our food is cheap not just compared with other countries; it's cheap compared with the food we used to eat, before all our small farms moved to the Midwest. In 1963, the year I was born, Americans were spending close to a third of their income on food. Now we spend about 6 percent.\n\n\u2014\n\nSO HERE WE ARE. Genetic engineering did not create any of the structures that hold up our current food system. It merely added a set of tools\u2014very powerful tools\u2014to keep the whole machine running. The fact that these tools arrived on the scene at the very moment that the American food economy was becoming so intensely industrialized has created both enormous profits for the companies and enormous health and environmental problems for the rest of us. Had genetic engineering come about at a different time\u2014were we still a nation of small farmers, for example, and were biotech companies making seeds to help local farmers grow nutritious produce\u2014things might have turned out entirely differently.\n\nBut that's not what happened. When it comes to GMOs, it's impossible to separate science from industry, or industry from politics. It's all tangled up together, and we are eating all of it. The argument that genetic engineering is just another step in a tradition of plant breeding that goes back 10,000 years is absolutely true. But it is also true that biotechnology has developed at a time when its primary use has been to fuel a food system that is far bigger, more complex, and more destructive than anything the world has ever seen.\n\nBecause this system has become so profitable, companies have gone to great lengths to cement their control over it in all three branches of the federal government. Through the White House, they push their own people to the top of federal regulatory agencies. In Congress, they use lobbyists and political muscle to influence policy, and to keep federal farm subsidies flowing. In the courts, beginning in 1980, they have repeatedly convinced judges that they deserve patents (to quote a famous court decision) on \"anything under the sun that is made by man.\" To date, tens of thousands of gene patents have been awarded to biotech companies, and tens of thousands more wait in the wings. This means, in the most fundamental way, that our food supply is owned and controlled by a very small handful of companies.\n\nThis is nowhere more evident than in the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that move through federal regulatory agencies into the hands of companies these same agencies are supposed to regulate. Between 1995 and 2010, large agricultural companies received $262 billion in federal subsidies, a great percentage of it going to companies developing GM food products.\n\nIt is also evident in the way federal agencies view their relationship with the companies they are charged with overseeing. Since the 1980s, regulation of GMOs has been handled through a complex web of three vast federal agencies. A genetic engineer has to get a permit from the USDA to field-test a GM crop. Then\u2014after several years of trials\u2014the engineer must petition for the deregulation of the crop. If the crop has been designed to be pest-resistant, the EPA will regulate it as pesticide and demand more data. Finally, the FDA evaluates the plant to make sure it is safe for consumption by people or animals.\n\nBut in reality, safety testing of GMOs in the United States is left to the companies that make them. This is very much in line with much of American regulatory policy and is dramatically different from the approach taken in Europe, where regulators require that the introduction of GM foods should be delayed until the long-term ecological and health consequences of the plants are better understood. In the United States, industry and government have decided that GMOs are \"substantially equivalent\" to traditional foods, and therefore should not be subjected to new federal oversight.\n\nU.S. policy \"tends to minimize the existence of _any_ risks associated with GM products, and directs the agencies to refrain from hypothesizing about or affirmatively searching for safety or environmental concerns,\" legal scholar Emily Marden writes.\n\n### Federal Government: Watchdog or Cheerleader?\n\nThe shift in federal policy from \"regulating\" GMO foods to \"promoting\" them was subtle, and to most of the country, entirely invisible. Back at the beginning, in 1974, Paul Berg, often called the father of genetic engineering, persuaded other molecular biologists to be cautious in the pioneering work they were doing in their laboratories. \"There is serious concern that some of these artificial recombinant DNA molecules could prove biologically hazardous,\" Berg wrote at the time. To address these questions, Berg and his colleagues at the National Academy of Sciences urged caution in the development of genetic engineering technology until scientists could form standards for biological and environmental safety. Addressing the technology itself, rather than its application to food production, the now famous \"Berg Letter\" acknowledged that such a cautious approach was based on \"potential rather than demonstrated risk,\" and might well mean the \"postponement or possible abandonment\" of some ongoing experiments.\n\n\"Our concern for the possible unfortunate consequences of indiscriminate application of these techniques,\" Berg wrote, \"motivates us to urge all scientists working in this area to join us in agreeing not to initiate experiments until attempts have been made to evaluate the hazards and some resolution of the outstanding questions has been achieved.\"\n\nAfter Berg's letter was published, a group of scientists organized a closed-door conference at Asilomar, California, in February 1975 to formulate research guidelines that would prevent health or ecological trouble from rippling out from this new technology. But the letter also made it very clear that scientists themselves, and not the government, would be in charge of keeping an eye on things. No new legislation was needed, the letter noted. Scientists could \"govern themselves.\"\n\nJames Watson, one of the discoverers of the double helix structure of DNA and an attendee at the Asilomar conference, made it clear that scientists were not interested in ethical guidance from outside the profession. Although some \"fringe\" groups might consider genetic engineering a matter for public debate, the molecular biology establishment never intended to ask for guidance. \"We did not want our experiments to be blocked by over-confident lawyers, much less by self-appointed bioethicists with no inherent knowledge of, or interest in, our work,\" Watson wrote. \"Their decisions could only be arbitrary.\"\n\nWatson had nothing but contempt for those who would stand in the way of scientific research; he once referred to critics of genetic engineering as \"kooks, shits, and incompetents.\" The risks from this technology, he wrote, were about the same as \"being licked by a dog.\"\n\nThe National Institutes of Health quickly adopted the Asilomar conclusions and turned them into a national research standard: biotechnology research would be largely self-regulated and should be encouraged, not hampered, by federal oversight.\n\nAt first, most of the research being done in biotechnology had to do with medical research, not food production, and given the lack of public debate on the issue, few health or environmental groups paid much attention to genetically engineered food. But within a few years, the potential applications\u2014and the potential profits\u2014in agriculture became obvious. The question was, what would happen once this technology escaped the laboratory and was scaled up to reach all our dinner tables?\n\n\"In the 1970s, we were all trying to keep the genie in the bottle,\" said Arnold Foudin, the deputy director of biotechnology permits at the USDA. \"Then in the 1980s, there was a switch to wanting to let the genie out. And everybody was wondering, 'Will it be an evil genie?'\"\n\nThe genie was released in the 1980s and 1990s by the Reagan and Bush administrations, which had long made industrial deregulation a national priority. To their eyes, the burgeoning biotech industry was a perfect merging of business and science that\u2014if left alone\u2014would generate colossal corporate profits for American agricultural conglomerates.\n\n\"As genetic engineering became seen as a promising investment prospect, a turn from traditional scientific norms and practices toward a corporate standard took place,\" sociologist Susan Wright observes. \"The dawn of synthetic biology coincided with the emergence of a new ethos, one radically shaped by commerce.\"\n\nIf nothing else, all this grain would supercharge the meat industry: Reagan's first secretary of agriculture was in the hog business; his second was president of the American Meat Institute. George H. W. Bush later appointed the president of the National Cattlemen's Association to a senior USDA position.\n\nThe trick was to come up with federal policy that would allow this new technology, and the products it generated, to enter the marketplace without regulatory hassles\u2014and without worrying the public that the foods they made were somehow different from traditional foods.\n\nCreating these rules required some fancy bureaucratic footwork. Since 1958, Congress (through the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) had mandated that \"food additives\"\u2014typically chemical ingredients added to processed foods\u2014should undergo extensive premarket safety testing, including long-term animal studies. Commonly used ingredients, like salt and pepper, were considered GRAS (for \"generally regarded as safe\") and were exempted from further testing.\n\nThe billion-dollar question was: Should genetically altered foods be considered a \"new\" food additive\u2014and thus be forced to undergo extensive testing\u2014or \"safe,\" like salt and pepper?\n\nIn the early 1990s, the FDA put together a scientific task force to study this question. A consensus quickly emerged that these new products should be developed cautiously, and should be tested to see just what impact they might have on the health of people and animals who eat them.\n\n\"The unintended effects cannot be written off so easily by just implying that they too occur in traditional breeding,\" wrote microbiologist Dr. Louis Pribyl. \"There is a profound difference between the types of unexpected effects from traditional breeding and genetic engineering.\"\n\nPribyl said applying the GRAS label to GMOs was not scientifically sound. It was, instead, \"industry's pet idea\"\u2014a way to apply a formal stamp of government approval on foods that were, in fact, a completely new thing under the sun.\n\nThe director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine went further, warning that using GMOs in animal feed could introduce unexpected toxins into meat and milk products. The head of the FDA's Biological and Organic Chemistry Section emphasized that just because GMOs had not been proven to be dangerous did not confirm their safety. Saying that GMOs were as safe as traditional foods \"conveys the impression that the public need not know when it is being exposed to new food additives.\"\n\nLikewise, deep inside the labs of government and university laboratories, enthusiasm for genetically engineered food was not nearly as uniform as its promoters in government or industry claimed. \"This technology is being promoted, in the face of concerns by respectable scientists and in the face of data to the contrary, by the very agencies which are supposed to be protecting human health and the environment,\" said Suzanne Wuerthele, a toxicologist at the EPA. \"The bottom line in my view is that we are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences.\"\n\nBut given the revving engines of industry, it was tough for GMO skeptics in the scientific community to have their voices heard. University scientists applying for grants to look more closely at potential dangers of GMOs were routinely underfunded, squashed, or simply shouted down. Government scientists were stymied by the influence of the food and chemical industries, whose former executives were routinely placed at the top of the very agencies charged with regulating products made by the companies they used to work for.\n\nIt was no secret that the Reagan and Bush administrations had made subsidizing (and deregulating) these companies, and this technology, a national priority. There was no way a regulatory agency could fairly scrutinize an industry it was also funding with so much money, said Philip Regal, a professor at the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences.\n\n\"The more I interacted with biotech developers over the years, the more evident it became that they were not creating a science-based system for assessing and managing risks,\" Regal said. \"And as momentum built and pressures to be on the bandwagon mounted, people in industry and government who were alerted to potential problems were increasingly reluctant to pass the information on to superiors or to deal with it themselves. Virtually no one wanted to appear as a spoiler or an obstruction to the development of biotechnology.\"\n\nFrom biotechnology's earliest days, \"it was clearer than ever that the careers of too many thousands of bright, respected, and well-connected people were at stake\u2014and that too much investment needed to be recovered\u2014for industry or government to turn back,\" Regal said. \"The commercialization of GE foods would be allowed to advance without regard to the demands of science; and the supporting rhetoric would stay stretched well beyond the limits of fact.\"\n\nDespite this backbeat of scientific concern, the administration of George H. W. Bush\u2014with considerable input from policy executives at companies like Monsanto\u2014ruled that GMOs would not be subjected to any more testing than traditional foods. The GRAS policy would be explicitly designed not to test new food science but to assure \"the safe, speedy development of the U.S. biotechnology industry,\" Bush's FDA Commissioner David Kessler wrote.\n\nThe FDA policy made it official: the agency was \"not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way, or that, as a class, foods developed by the new techniques present any different or greater safety concern than foods developed by traditional plant breeding.\"\n\nGenetic manipulation was no different from breeding techniques farmers had been using for centuries, Kessler argued. Properly monitored, GM foods posed no special risk and should not require advance federal approval before being sold. \"New products come to our kitchens and tables every day,\" Kessler said. \"I see no reason right now to do anything special because of these foods.\"\n\nBeyond giving a green light to the technology itself, the FDA even left the decision about whether new GM foods were GRAS to the companies themselves.\n\nThe victory of agribusiness over the FDA's own scientists furthered a decades-long tradition, in which government agencies \"have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do,\" a fifteen-year veteran of the FDA told _The New York Times._ \"What Monsanto wished for from Washington, Monsanto\u2014and by extension, the biotechnology industry\u2014got.\"\n\nGenetic engineering now had the full-throated support of the U.S. government. Administration officials and food industry groups of all kinds lined up to tout the benefits of biotechnology and celebrate the wall that had been erected to protect companies from federal oversight. The hands-off approach was framed as a fine example of what Bush administration officials called \"regulatory relief.\"\n\nSuch policy \"will speed up and simplify the process of bringing better agricultural products, developed through biotech, to consumers, food processors, and farmers,\" Vice President Dan Quayle announced. \"We will ensure that biotech products will receive the same oversight as other products, instead of being hampered by unnecessary regulation.\"\n\nQuayle's declaration put the full weight of the federal government behind a policy that had largely been dictated by agribusiness\u2014especially Monsanto, which by this time had become the world's largest developer of GM seeds.\n\n\"What Monsanto wanted (and demanded) from the FDA was a policy that projected the illusion that its foods were being responsibly regulated but that in reality imposed no regulatory requirement at all,\" writes Steven Druker, an environmental attorney and author of the book _Altered Genes, Twisted Truth_. The FDA \"ushered these controversial products onto the market by evading the standards of science, deliberately breaking the law, and seriously misrepresenting the facts\u2014and that the American people were being regularly (and unknowingly) subjected to novel foods that were abnormally risky in the eyes of the agency's own scientists.\"\n\nIn the twenty-five years since the GRAS decision, the FDA has never overturned a company's safety determination and, thus, has never required food-additive testing of any transgenic crop.\n\n### The Perils of Self-Regulation\n\nAllowing industry to regulate itself has led to a great deal of criticism, of course, since it's rarely in industry's best interest to reveal problems with its products, even when they are well known. This is not a new game, as users of countless other products\u2014from Agent Orange to cigarettes to opioid pain relievers\u2014have learned. In those cases, industry scientists knew their products were harmful, but companies continued to promote them and withhold conflicting data for years.\n\nIn 2002, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, the country's premier scientific advisory body, declared that the USDA's regulation of GMOs was \"generally superficial\": it lacked transparency, used too little external scientific and public review, and freely allowed companies to claim that their own science was \"confidential business information.\" The committee itself complained that it was denied access to the very information it needed to conduct its review\u2014and not just by the companies. The amount of information kept secret by the USDA itself \"hampers external review and transparency of the decision-making process.\"\n\nThe EPA has also come under intense criticism for\u2014among other things\u2014the way it has handled the staggering population declines of bees and monarch butterflies, both of which have been linked to chemicals sprayed on hundreds of millions of acres of GM crops. The monarch is now as much a symbol for the anti-GMO movement as the polar bear is for climate change activists.\n\nAnd the FDA? The agency's own policy states that \"it is the responsibility of the producer of a new food to evaluate the safety of the food.\" Denied essential proprietary data by companies they are supposed to oversee, the FDA \"is unable to identify unintentional mistakes, errors in data interpretation or intentional deception, making it impossible to conduct a thorough and critical review,\" a study by William Freese and David Schubert at the Center for Food Safety found.\n\nSuch voluntary self-regulation means \"government approval\" amounts to little more than a rubber stamp, Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union told me. Even though companies test their products, they have a way of doing tests over and over until they get the results they like, Hansen said, and show only favorable results to the agencies overseeing them. Companies are not always forthcoming with the data they do accumulate, and sometimes actively refuse to turn over research even when federal regulators ask for it.\n\nFor four decades, the American legal system has repeatedly upheld the industry's right to control the seeds underpinning our food. Monsanto alone filed 147 seed patent infringement lawsuits in the United States between 1997 and April 2010, settling all but nine out of court. The cases that went to court were all decided in favor of the company.\n\nNorth of the border, where GMOs are considerably less popular, it has been a bit more complicated.\n\n### Patenting Our Food: The Schmeiser Case\n\nWandering around his canola farm in Saskatchewan in the late 1990s, Percy Schmeiser noticed plants growing not just in the fields, but in a nearby drainage ditch. He did what many farmers would have done to get rid of an unwanted infestation: he sprayed the plants with glyphosate.\n\nNothing happened.\n\nThe canola plants, it turned out, had sprouted from genetically modified Roundup Ready seeds that had floated in from nearby farms. Schmeiser's neighbors\u2014and 30,000 other Canadian farmers\u2014had paid Monsanto $15 an acre for the right to use these GM seeds; their harvests constituted more than 40 percent of Canada's canola crop. Monsanto was keen to protect its product: they had farmers sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant the seeds, and they sent out inspectors to make sure the farmers were complying with seed contracts.\n\nSchmeiser had not been part of this deal. For several years, he had planted his own (non-GM) canola fields with seeds he had saved from his own plants. After discovering Roundup-resistant plants in his ditch, he wondered just how much of his farm had been contaminated by Monsanto's seeds. He sprayed three acres with glyphosate; 60 percent survived.\n\nWhen word got out that Schmeiser had acres of Monsanto-patented seeds growing in his fields, someone called the company, using an anonymous-tip line the company had set up for farmers to turn in their neighbors. Monsanto sent private investigators to patrol the roads near Schmeiser's farm. They took crop samples from his fields, and in 1998, Monsanto notified Schmeiser that he was using the company's seeds without a license.\n\nUndaunted, Schmeiser saved seeds he had harvested from plants that had survived spraying, and planted them on about 1,000 acres. Later tests would confirm that nearly 98 percent of these plants were Roundup resistant.\n\nMonsanto sued Schmeiser for patent infringement. \"We've put years, years, and years of research and time into developing this technology,\" said Randy Christenson, Monsanto's regional director in Western Canada. \"So for us to be able to recoup our investment, we have to be able to pay for that.\"\n\nSchmeiser had a different take. \"I've been farming for fifty years, and all of a sudden I have this,\" he said. \"It's very upsetting and nerve-racking to have a multi-giant corporation come after you. I don't have the resources to fight this.\"\n\nIn court, Schmeiser argued that the GM seeds on his field had arrived the same way seeds have always arrived\u2014they were blown in on the wind. \"You can't control it,\" he said. \"You can't put a fence around it and say that's where it stops. It might end up 10 miles, 20 miles away.\" Furthermore, he argued, a company should not be allowed to patent a higher life form, like a canola plant. Plants were part of the natural order of things, not widgets that came off a company's factory floor.\n\nThis was not the first time Canada's courts had to wrestle with whether a company could own a life form. The country's supreme court had previously ruled that Harvard University did not have the right to patent a genetically altered \"OncoMouse\" (a rodent genetically designed to rapidly develop cancer) even though it had taken university scientists seventeen years to develop it. Courts in Europe and the United States had sided with Harvard, but Schmeiser argued that the Canadian ruling\u2014that an advanced life form could not be patented\u2014ought to apply in his case too.\n\nIn 2001, a trial judge rejected Schmeiser's argument and fined him $20,000 for infringing on Monsanto's patent. On appeal\u2014and in a show of just how complex biology and patent law can be\u2014the Supreme Court agreed, but its 5\u20134 decision was split. The court's minority argued that Monsanto had claimed patent protection over the _gene_ and the _genetic process_ , not the life form (that is, the plant itself), and that Schmeiser should not be held liable for using an (unpatentable) plant. The majority, interestingly, agreed: _plants_ could not be patented in Canada. But the five justices also ruled that a plant's genes _could_ be patented: by \"using\" the plant, Schmeiser had in effect \"used\" the patented gene.\n\nThe ruling forced Schmeiser to turn over any Roundup Ready seeds or crops on his property. In a small consolation, the court ruled that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto for the profits he had made from his crop. Monsanto, for its part, made sure the world knew its point of view. \"The truth is Percy Schmeiser is not a hero,\" the company says. \"He's simply a patent infringer who knows how to tell a good story.\"\n\nIn effect, the Canadian court gave Monsanto legal control over something it could not patent\u2014Roundup Ready canola plants\u2014by giving it legal control over something it could control\u2014the plant's genes. In Canada at least, plants themselves are still not patentable, and farmers are allowed some protection if they don't intentionally use patented seeds. Canadian growers also (for the moment, at least) still enjoy a \"farmer's privilege\"\u2014protected by the national Plant Breeders Rights Act\u2014that allows them to save and replant traditionally bred seeds.\n\nThis is in direct contrast to laws in the United States, where the Supreme Court has ruled that plants can be patented _in spite_ of laws protecting a farmer's right to save seeds. This position\u2014promoting the rights of large companies over the rights of small farmers\u2014is very much in keeping with the American government's longstanding and unwavering support of the biotech industry.\n\nIn the end, the early (and ongoing) rush to develop, plant, and profit from GM seeds has simply outpaced and overwhelmed our ability to understand their impact on our lives, John Vandermeer, the agroecologist at the University of Michigan, told me.\n\n\"I would be far less negative about GMOs had the people developing [them] taken the same approach as they did at Asilomar,\" Vandermeer told me. \"They could have said, 'Let's have a moratorium on selling them until we can be sure that they are safe.' But partly because of the profits involved, that was never done. Had we done this, it's my guess that Bt and Roundup transgenic crops never would have been developed and spread throughout the landscape. What we are discovering is that they should probably never have been used.\"\n\nIt's not just that such company-directed testing might miss (or cover up) a dangerous product. Chemical-intensive farming has also led to a tremendous loss of biodiversity\u2014both above and below ground, Vandermeer says. From the massive genetic biodiversity of traditional agroecosystems, we now have millions upon millions of acres planted with the same hybrid corn variety. Soil, a fantastic ecology of interdependent living organisms, has been reduced to a medium \"as devoid of life as possible,\" Vandermeer writes.\n\nThis positive feedback loop\u2014vast acreage planted with single crops, all propped up by rivers of chemical fertilizers, which then cause the monocultures to flourish\u2014has also created a dramatic increase in the potential for collapse. All it takes is for an insect (or a virus) to pick the lock of a plant's defenses, and an entire crop can disappear. A nineteenth-century blight in Ireland ruined a potato crop, and fully a million people starved to death. In the 1950s, the Gros Michel banana\u2014planted on monoculture plantations across Latin America\u2014was virtually wiped out by a fungus. Today, the Cavendish\u2014the Gros Michel's successor and likely the only banana you have ever eaten, whether you've eaten it in Los Angeles, New York, London, or Hong Kong\u2014is grown on vast plantations in Asia, Australia, and Central America. And a fungus, called Tropical Race 4, has picked its lock. Unless breeders (including geneticists) can figure out a way to get banana trees to develop resistance, there will likely come a day very soon when we\u2014outside the tropics, at least\u2014will have no more bananas.\n\nHere at home, this system also means that companies get to decide what products to create. In the United States, GMOs are designed more to make corn for cheese puffs and cheap hamburgers than to develop nutritionally dense food for people either here or in developing countries. Such uses cheapen the promise of food technology by using it to create empty calories and poor nutrition, serving industry profits but not the general welfare of either people or the planet.\n\nWithout broader research conducted outside the food industry itself, the editors of the scientific journal _Nature_ say, the development of genetic engineering \"will continue to be profit-driven, limiting the chance for many of the advances that were promised thirty years ago\u2014such as feeding the planet's burgeoning population sustainably, reducing the environmental footprint of farming and delivering products that amaze and delight.\"\n\nLeaving the power of GM technology to a group of global food conglomerates is plainly problematic for a whole array of reasons. But there are small pockets out there, mostly in university and other nonprofit research labs, where an entirely different approach to genetic engineering is taking place. Because while most GMOs currently bolster the production of cheap, unhealthy, processed food, there are scientists at work developing foods that could actually change the world for the better.\n\n## 3.\n\n## Mapping and Engineering and Playing Prometheus\n\n As you walk into the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, the first thing you see is a giant double helix engraved on a large piece of Plexiglas. Inside, adorning the walls, are vivid, Technicolor photographs that look like images beamed back from the Hubble Space Telescope: streaks and smears of purples, greens, and reds that could be gas clouds swirling through star clusters. They aren't. They are pictures of cellular components like mitochondria, taken with nanoscale bioimaging so impressive that its inventor won a Nobel Prize\u2014and so sensitive that an entire wing of the building had to be built on a special slab to prevent vibrations from ruining photographic precision.\n\nDeep inside the building, Blake Meyers leads me through a room given over to racks of whirring computers. There are wires and carcasses of old machines everywhere, and a power generator the size of three refrigerators, whose excess heat is balanced by an air-conditioning unit mounted on the building's roof.\n\nThese computers are \"energy hogs,\" Meyers said; if the power goes out, the backup batteries can support them for only about fifteen minutes. The day I visited, Meyers said one of his servers had been crunching data for one project for six weeks straight.\n\nMeyers is a prominent plant geneticist, with degrees from the University of Chicago and UC-Davis, who also did postdoc work for the agrochemical giant DuPont. He is a vegetarian and deeply conscious of environmental problems. Engineering new kinds of plants, he says, could fix problems on a global scale.\n\nTake nitrogen fixation, Meyers said. Modern agriculture uses huge amounts of natural gas to make and add nitrogen fertilizer to fields growing corn, because corn plants suck so many nutrients from the soil. But if you could engineer corn to pull nitrogen straight out of the atmosphere, think of how much synthetic nitrogen you could stop making and applying.\n\n\"This is science fiction right now, but if we could produce corn that fixes nitrogen, we could eliminate hundreds of millions of units of natural gas, plus eliminate massive environmental sources of nitrogen that currently are emitted or run off,\" he said. \"You would have done a really beneficial thing. You would be one huge step closer to growing corn under organic conditions.\"\n\nMeyers lists other promising projects: creating a calorie-dense rice that also fixes its own nitrogen _and_ resists insects _and_ resists drought. \"Think of what you could do,\" he said. \"You could create a supercrop. But you're not going to get there through natural selection and traditional breeding. This would be like super-speeding evolution.\"\n\nMeyers is also entirely skeptical about the ability of small-scale farming to feed the world.\n\n\"We're looking at a future with 9 billion people, and it may be as many as 12 billion\u2014how are we going to feed them, plus generate sustainable fuels and bioproducts?\" Meyers asked me. \"Through small-scale farming? There's not an ice cube's chance in hell that we can do that. We need substantial bumps in agricultural productivity if we're going to provide the resources that people are expecting. Addressing that need is going to take every tool in our toolbox. That's why we think GM technology has to play a role in this.\"\n\nInside his laboratory, Meyers drew me near a machine and asked a lab assistant to punch up a screen. There appeared before me an image of a grid, three squares by three, labeled \"Tile 13.\" Again, if I hadn't known better, I might have assumed I was looking at a photograph of distant galaxies: blurring patches comprising thousands of tiny spots of black, white, and gray.\n\nWhat we were looking at was in fact a constellation of \"small RNAs\" from soybean leaves. It is in this laboratory that Meyers\u2014like scientists all over the world\u2014is either (depending on your point of view) extending a long tradition of plant breeding or taking a Promethean leap once left to the gods.\n\n### The Genetic Equivalent of War and Peace\n\nUnderstanding genetics is frequently compared to learning a language. Just as letters and words are arranged in certain patterns to transmit information on the page (the metaphor goes), so are microscopic elements inside cells arranged in predictable ways. Once these elements have been assigned letters, their combinations (or sequences) can be read just like words, sentences, or entire volumes. And just as the twenty-six letters in the English language can lead to more than a million words (and a virtually infinite number of unique sentences, paragraphs, and books), so do the four letters at the foundation of genetics lead to an unimaginably diverse number of organisms.\n\nThe \"letters\" of genetics, called nucleotides, are A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine), and G (guanine). Inside the nucleus of all living cells, these nucleotides form chains that microbiologists can read: AATTCCGG, for example. Given their chemical makeup, each individual nucleotide is attracted to a very particular mate: A (which has two rings of nitrogen) will bond only with T (a single ring); the two-ring G will pair only with the single-ring C. This makes the pairing of letter chains very predictable: our chain of AATTCCGG, for example, will bond (and form a genetic \"word\") with a complementary, mirrored chain of TTAAGGCC.\n\nComplete sequences (the \"chapters\") of these genetic words are called chromosomes, which can be made up of thousands of different genes (and therefore millions of individual nucleotides). Chromosomes are so densely packed that, linked together and stretched out, the DNA molecules in just one of your cells would be taller than you are. Lined up end to end, all the DNA in all your cells would stretch\u2014in a very thin line\u2014some 6 billion miles.\n\nAll together, an organism's chromosomal chapters make up its entire book-length genome. It took about 3.1 million letters, 588,000 words, and 365 chapters to make _War and Peace_. It takes 3.2 billion nucleotide base pairs, 19,000 genes, and 23 pairs of chromosomes to make a human genome. More relevant for Blake Meyers is the soybean genome, which has more than 1.1 billion base pairs, 46,000 genes, and 20 chromosomes. Or the maize genome, which has 2.3 billion base pairs and 32,000 genes.\n\nCounting genes is one thing. Understanding how they work has been another thing entirely. Scientists once summed up the way genes control cell function with a simple formula known as the Central Dogma: DNA codes for RNA and RNA codes for protein. DNA contains a cell's blueprint; RNA transmits the blueprint to create proteins; proteins carry out a cell's functional tasks, which in turn determine the structure and behavior of the organism itself.\n\nAs our understanding of genetics has sped up, however, new molecular worlds have opened up. When scientists sequenced the human genome a decade ago, it was somewhat like looking at a blueprint in a foreign language\u2014everything was marked in its proper location, but no one could tell what it all meant. Less than 2 percent of our genome seemed to code for proteins that actually do anything, so the vast majority of our DNA has been like biology's dark matter, acting in ways that remain mysterious and only partially understood. For years, long stretches of noncoding genes were simply tossed off as \"junk DNA.\"\n\nThat view has changed. A five-year project called ENCODE\u2014for \"Encyclopedia of DNA Elements\"\u2014found that as much as 80 percent of the human genome is biologically \"functional,\" meaning that even if certain genes don't directly code proteins, they can still influence how nearby genes are expressed, and in which types of cells. These noncoding regions of DNA can have major bearing on diseases and genetic mutations. Because the genes of an organism are interconnected, a single disturbance in gene organization (or function) can affect multiple gene systems. This has potentially serious implications for cellular function and the overall health of the organism. Consider that altering a single letter of the genetic code of a single gene can be a significant step leading to cancer\u2014a disease that involves alterations in the function of multiple genes, proteins, and cellular systems.\n\nSo if every cell in an organism has the same DNA\u2014if the cells in your eyes contain the genes for your toes, and vice versa\u2014why is it that cells are so different from one another, and do one thing, and not another? In other words, why do cells allow you to see out of your eyes and not out of your toes? In the plant world, why is a leaf cell not the same as a root cell or a flower cell? Understanding this requires going back to the idea of genetics as both a code (an \"alphabet\") and a language (a mode of \"expression\").\n\nThe answer lies in the way genes are expressed. Since every cell in an organism contains exactly the same genes, it is in this \"expression\"\u2014as genes are either \"turned on\" or \"turned off\"\u2014that cells become distinct. It's gene expression that causes them to become either a root cell or a leaf cell, and collectively create plants\u2014and whole other organisms\u2014that are distinct. Changing a single letter can make a huge difference. Just as the difference between the words \"tasty\" and \"nasty\" is a single letter, so (in humans) a slight shift in nucleotide sequences could cause changes in amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, that can cause sickle-cell anemia, or Parkinson's, or Alzheimer's.\n\nThe code itself, the sequence of A's, C's, G's, and T's, is inscribed in DNA. But for this code, known as an organism's genotype, to orchestrate an organism's structure and behavior, known as its phenotype, the code must first be \"transcribed\" (inside the nucleus) from DNA to RNA and then \"translated\" (outside the nucleus) into a protein. And that requires an understanding not just of DNA, but of RNA as well.\n\nTo continue the book metaphor, think of an organism's DNA as a very expensive, rare edition; it is the original version of an organism's genetic story. If it is changed or damaged (if it \"mutates\"), the organism may no longer be the same.\n\nRNA is like a photocopy, a \"transcription,\" of paragraphs out of this rare book: it is not the original version, but it contains all the genetic information contained by a short section of the DNA. Unlike DNA, RNA has the capacity to travel: it can move outside the cell's nucleus, into a cell's cytoplasm, or it can travel between cells. Some recent studies have even shown RNA moving between organisms. Once in the cytoplasm, the RNA can be \"translated,\" converting the genetic code into a language made of different letters, the twenty amino acids that make up proteins. These proteins interact with and can make or modify other proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates\u2014an organism's plumbers, carpenters, and electricians\u2014that carry out the work of a cell.\n\nHere's how it works: Just as it does when a cell begins to replicate itself, a sequence of DNA that is being transcribed first unwinds inside the nucleus. But in this case, rather than replicate into an identical double helix of DNA, one strand of the DNA falls to the side, and the other serves as a template for a new strand of RNA. This \"transcript\" resembles DNA in almost every respect, except that the RNA contains the nucleotide U (for uracil) instead of T. So a DNA strand of AGCT would be transcribed into an RNA strand of UCGA.\n\nOnce the transcript of the RNA from the gene is complete (its start and expression activity determined by the \"promoter\" at the beginning and its length determined by the \"terminator\" sequences at the end of the original strand of DNA), the single strand of RNA separates from the single strand of DNA, which then twists up again with its original mate. The strand of RNA (known as messenger RNA, or mRNA, for the protein \"message\" that it encodes) then migrates outside the nucleus, where it binds to a ribosome and the ribosome begins (with the help of transfer RNA, or tRNA) to \"translate\" the information the mRNA contains from the DNA into the language of amino acids.\n\nBut it gets more complex still; it turns out that the Central Dogma\u2014DNA makes RNA, RNA makes proteins\u2014may have been a bit too dogmatic after all. There are RNAs that influence gene expression that are themselves influenced by small or micro RNAs. Some scientists estimate that, in the human genome, a third of all genes may be regulated by micro RNAs\u2014amazing given that no one even knew about them twenty years ago. And the growing field of epigenetics has shown that gene expression can be determined not just by genetic information alone, but also by stored chemical influences from _outside_ a cell, or even outside the organism. (Some research suggests that even mental health and stress affect an organism's genetics and its offspring via epigenetic mechanisms, though there is still much to learn about this.)\n\nUnderstanding the science of the genome and genetics is vital to the GMO debate. Genetic engineering is fundamentally different from conventional plant breeding. With conventional breeding, you take pollen from one plant and put it on the stigma of another, and hope for a beneficial outcome. It's a comparatively uncontrolled process, and in some cases, depending on the complexity of the trait you're studying, you don't know if you are going to find what you're looking for.\n\nTypically, when you have a breeding program, you're trying to improve the bearing height of a tree, or the taste or texture of the fruit, but there are a million other things going on at the same time. There's never really _proof_ that something will work, there's only _history_ \u2014these combinations have worked this way in the past. But within this process there remains a degree of mystery. Flower color and disease resistance can be predicted pretty accurately, because they're controlled by just one or a few genes. But yield and adaptation to environment\u2014these are much more complex because they involve multiple controlling genes and are influenced by environmental conditions. This work requires many more plants and growing them in numerous locations.\n\nExploring these complexities, especially at the level of small RNAs, is what interests Blake Meyers. Working with colleagues from Stanford and UCLA on a sizable grant from the National Science Foundation, Meyers recently helped sequence the small RNAs in the genes of corn anthers, the male reproductive organs in corn plants. He and his colleagues are also creating an \"atlas\" of the small RNAs in different plant organs, tissues, and cells; they have worked out a spatiotemporal map of these molecules in the anthers to help them understand how, where, and when they develop and function in maize reproduction.\n\n\"The work is slow, tedious, and expensive at this point, so we only design the experiments that we think will tell us something really useful,\" Meyers said. \"You never know where the breakthroughs will come for practical purposes. Who knows when we'll find a key regulator that will fix drought resistance or assist with fertility or hybrid seed production? The odds of one lab finding it are low, but multiply that by the hundreds of labs doing this type of work, and I'm optimistic that the field will come up with some important solutions. The rate of discovery is good and picking up speed.\"\n\nWorking backward, then, the science of gene sequencing is the effort of pulling apart the genetic book to examine how its individual chapters and sentences and words are constructed and arranged. How does their order affect the behavior of the organism as a whole?\n\nThis is the mysterious world that Blake Meyers has spent his career trying to penetrate.\n\n\"Remember, there are millions, billions, or even trillions of DNA\/RNA\/protein\/gene-expression processes under way that led to every bite of food that you eat, from every plant or animal that has been consumed in the history of the world,\" Meyers told me. \"I would say all but a relative handful of those have never been studied, perhaps never even characterized, and perhaps vary from one bite of food to another.\"\n\nMeyers and his lab assistants begin sequencing genes by taking a leaf from a soybean plant, for example; freezing it in liquid nitrogen; then grinding it up to break up the leaf's cells. Then, using a series of chemical processes that shatter cell walls, the team extracts the plant's DNA or RNA, and loads them\u2014in chains of fifty to two hundred nucleotides\u2014into a three-inch \"flow cell,\" a kind of glass slide with eight hair-thin capillaries running through it. The slides are then snapped into an Illumina HiSeq gene sequencer.\n\nDepending on whether the team is working on fragments of DNA or short strands of RNA, Meyers's team then needs to code their samples by pumping tiny chains of nucleotides through the flow cells, where they are \"amplified\" in a series of chain reactions that replicate the sequence millions of times.\n\nFluorescently charged nucleotides are hit with laser light and photographed at four different wavelengths, showing up on a computer screen as innumerable pinhead-sized \"spots\" of DNA\u2014the spots that, to my eye, looked like clusters of stars. The microscopic scale of these spots is hard to comprehend. The images are actually measured in microns\u2014that is, each spot is a thousand times smaller than a millimeter\u2014yet each one contains up to 5,000 copies of the same short fragment of genes. And in any series of images, there might be 200 million spots, each one containing a different version of the original piece of DNA or RNA. On each slide, the instruments used by Meyers (and his computers) can detect 1.2 billion sequences of DNA fragments.\n\nThe process requires ten terabytes of computer space for each two-week run of the instrument, about what it would take to store the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress.\n\n\"Sequencing a genome is like putting together _War and Peace_ ,\" Meyers said. \"It's long, and content rich, but these machines can only get you words or paragraphs at a time. The machine generating shorter reads of DNA can find you all the times the word 'the' appears, so then it's up to you to find all the places where 'the' appears in the book. But some machines can now give you sentences or entire paragraphs, so you can make much quicker sense of the whole.\n\n\"This is like making millions of copies of _War and Peace_. The computer can overlap the fragmented text and look for places where Paragraph 1001 ends and Paragraph 1002 begins, and repeat that process millions of times, analyzing millions of short stretches of words, and incrementally assembling sentences, paragraphs, and whole chapters. Eventually this can help you figure out the sequence of the entire text.\"\n\nMeyers's team needs so many copies because, statistically, there is always the chance they might find a glitch\u2014a missing paragraph (or ten paragraphs). The longer the strings of text, the easier it is to get recognizable, repeated, and accurate strings.\n\n\"As biologists, we're designing experiments to take advantage of these sequences to look into solving practical problems, like drought resistance,\" Meyers said. \"What genes are expressed when plants are distressed? We can compare stressed plants to non-stressed plants. These transcripts are like short-term memory. If the plant were a computer, we'd want to know: Under these conditions, what software has it been running? It's like asking an iPhone, 'What apps have you been using to solve the problems you faced today?' If we looked at your iPhone and saw you'd been using the Lonely Planet app for New Delhi, or looking at the Urban Spoon app, from that information, from that software, we could tell what you were up to. It's the same with plants, looking at their patterns of gene activity.\"\n\n### Tinkering with the Genetic Machine\n\nIf understanding a genome is like learning a language, Meyers told me, then using genetics to work on plants is like using a repair manual to fix a faulty wire in a car.\n\n\"A cell is like a big machine,\" Meyers said. \"Genes are the blueprints, and proteins are like the different parts of a car. So let's say you have a warning light in your car, and that light means you have a loose wire. You touch the wire and it shocks you. It's not healthy to have that loose wire. In the old days, you would go in there and add a plastic cap. The anti-GMO argument is that this is not the same car; it's been modified by this protective cap. Even though the phenotype itself is better\u2014it's preventing you from getting shocked.\n\n\"There are new methods that are more like this analogy: 'Let's go in there with a tool, and remove that wire altogether, or unscrew that bolt. Now you've got the car, but removed the offending wire, and you've taken the tool with you. Is that modified car something that you are unhappy with? It's better than having that protective cap.\"\n\nIn the early days of genetic engineering, scientists used .22 caliber rounds\u2014a \"gene gun\"\u2014to literally blast gene sequences into a plant's cells. Scientists would coat tiny particles of gold with thousands (or millions) of copies of a specific gene sequence they knew would confer a phenotype of interest (for example, making a plant resistant to an herbicide like glyphosate). They would then shoot the gold particles into a group of plant cells. The chances that the gene sequence would actually integrate into the genome in a way that was functional were less than a million to one, but do it enough times (or with enough copies of the gene) and you'll eventually find one cell that lives and has an integrated and functional copy of the gene.\n\nThe group of cells would then be treated with glyphosate (aka Roundup), and all of them would die except for a select few. Once a surviving cell was found to have absorbed the foreign gene sequence, it would be allowed to recover and encouraged to proliferate. These cells, now structurally Roundup resistant, could be regenerated by a process of tissue culture into an entire plant.\n\nMeyers doesn't use the gene gun in his lab. Like most of his peers, he uses a bacterium (known as _Agrobacterium tumefaciens_ ) to do the work instead. With a natural ability to insert their own DNA into plant cells, this soil bacterium can be outfitted with gene sequences scientists want to see integrated into a plant's own genome. Plants are dipped in a solution full of the bacteria, then covered up. The bacterium, a plant pathogen, is effective at infecting the plant and will find its way into the plant stem cells, transferring the foreign DNA into the plant genome just as it evolved to do, and creating a stable transgenic plant.\n\nIn his laboratory's \"green vaults\"\u2014growth chambers that resemble walk-in food coolers\u2014Meyers showed me plants maintained with high humidity and variable light and temperature. Inside were hundreds of examples of two plant species that have become the workhorses for plant geneticists: tobacco and Arabidopsis, the latter a member of the brassica family that includes things like broccoli.\n\nThese plants are like lab mice for plants\u2014they flower, they reproduce, they respond to stressors. And the research Meyers is doing is similar to the basic research biomedical researchers do with mice: both are trying to unlock the mysteries of the ways organisms function.\n\nThe Arabidopsis genome is a fraction\u2014perhaps 5 percent\u2014the size of the corn genome. It is small enough to grow several plants to maturity in a single coffee cup, which makes it much easier (and cheaper) to work with than corn, which is happiest in a field, well separated from its neighbors. And since \"core responses\" are similar across all sorts of plants, scientists can play around with an Arabidopsis plant and its genome and extrapolate conclusions that will likely hold true for corn or soybeans.\n\n\"Let's say you take two varieties of Arabidopsis,\" Meyers said. \"One grows well in moist climate like Germany. One grows in dry climate like Utah. You can make a cross between them, then use the progeny and traits segregating in those progeny to map onto the chromosomes the loci controlling responses to these climates. You can then identify the locations in the genome that contribute genes important in the line for Utah for drought resistance that may be missing in the line from Germany.\n\n\"Say that you've found gene X that confers the ability to survive in drought conditions. As a geneticist, to test that function and demonstrate causality, you may want to break gene X, to see what happens when the plant normally happy in Utah loses the gene you think contributes to fitness under dry conditions. Or you can misregulate gene X, or modify key parts of the protein that gene X produces. With the resulting data, we can make insights into how gene X functions and confers the phenotype that had attributed to it through a standard genetic approach. For all this, your work is greatly facilitated by having a plant into which you can easily introduce the gene. With Arabidopsis, you have a generation time of eight weeks, lots of molecular tools and preexisting data, and great toolkit for molecular biology. It's really easy to work with, particularly relative to most crops.\"\n\n\u2014\n\nTHE WORLD INSIDE a plant laboratory is so ordered, so controlled, that scientists can be forgiven for their frustration at the screaming debate that has developed over the work they do. \"Forty years ago when I was in school, we'd see farms using chemicals to prevent diseases, where the soil was sterile because of the methyl bromide used as a fungicide and biocide for strawberries,\" Jim Carrington of the Danforth Center in St. Louis told me. \"We would visit strawberry fields in California and say, 'Wouldn't it be great if there was a different way to do this, to use a plant's own genetics to fight off diseases more effectively, so we wouldn't have to douse them with fungicides\u2014some of which do have adverse human health effects? And wouldn't it be great if we had plants that help build the soil, rather than forcing us to lose carbon and other organic matter?' We'd imagine we could improve plant genetics, and now some of that has come to fruition. We have low- (or no) till farming, doing all those things that fall under desired practices to promote sustainability. As a scientist who envisioned many of those things\u2014to see all those aims co-opted by groups that are antagonistic to science\u2014is really frustrating.\"\n\nScientists are trained to discuss data, not to make political arguments, Blake Meyers said. \"We aren't trained in arguments about whether you prefer organic or nonorganic food,\" Meyers said. \"If you tell me this gene is bad for you, we can have that discussion. Show me the data, I might say. But those aren't the arguments that we are often having. It's like a discussion about evolution versus intelligent design. There is no science supporting intelligent design, so to a scientist this debate will be fruitless, as it's irrational. There's no common ground between the rational scientist and the passionate believer. With GMOs, you get the same sort of situation.\n\n\"On the public side, arguments against GMOs are often not grounded in science,\" he said. \"They may be based on 'the way things should be,' or 'the way things used to be,' or based on someone's individual opinion. This can be very frustrating for scientists. Those are arguments that don't fit the data. Show me an argument based on data, and we can have a reasonable or at least scientific discussion.\"\n\nThe frustration felt by Carrington and Meyers\u2014that arguments mounted by anti-GMO skeptics are not based on data or are even \"antagonistic to science\"\u2014is a common refrain that, to the ears of skeptics, sounds ideological in its own right. Scientists have a way of claiming that their field\u2014or the scientific method itself\u2014is somehow beyond reproach. But no matter the natural laws they seek to discover, scientists are people too\u2014and are thus hamstrung by their own preconceptions, desires, and intellectual parameters. John Fagan is a molecular biologist whose professional change of heart on GMOs has made him a leading figure in the scientific debate. In 1994, Fagan became so concerned about the direction of genetic engineering he returned more than $613,000 in grant money to the National Institutes of Health. He quit an academic job to found the Global ID Group, which developed tools for testing genetically modified food, and now directs Earth Open Source, a leading anti-GMO clearinghouse whose publication _GMO Myths and Truths_ has become a bible for GMO critics.\n\n\"There are bona fide scientists who are doing genetic engineering of crops in one way or another and they really sincerely believe that there is not a problem,\" Fagan said. \"You can get all the way through your PhD without ever having a course in the philosophy of science, or a course that discusses the social or environmental impact of technology. The training is very focused on technical aspects of doing molecular biology in one area or another, and as a result you end up with scientists who are really experts in their own area but oftentimes do not understand the relationship between their work and the world out there. Many of them have the attitude that it would be compromising for them to think about or be involved in a debate about larger issues. They feel that they need to be _scientific_ about what they do, and impartial, and true to numbers they get in a lab. There is some merit in that, but on the other side, to have only that perspective on whether a technology is commercialized on a large scale in the world is a very risky thing.\"\n\nThe safety of genetic engineering is not nearly as settled as the majority view claims it is, Fagan maintains.\n\n\"The evolution of the debate on GMOs has really evolved over the last twenty years,\" Fagan said. \"Early on we were saying, 'Based on what we know about how genes function, and what we know about the process, we feel this is a very sloppy and imprecise process that could lead to unexpected problems.' Today, there is lots of evidence that says GMOs do _not_ function the way we predicted, and there are a lot of unintended side effects that have come up.\"\n\nThe prevailing idea, the Central Dogma\u2014that inserting a single gene into the DNA of another organism will cause a single, predictable change in a single protein, followed by a single change at the cellular level of the organism, a single change at the tissue and organ levels, and a single change at the level of the plant as a whole\u2014fails to recognize the complexity and interconnectedness of the many components of living organisms, according to Fagan.\n\nIt is now thought that most genes encode not just one protein but two, three, four, or more, and that the regulatory sequences associated with one gene can influence the expression of neighboring genes. When a new gene is inserted into the DNA of an organism, that gene is likely to influence the expression not just of one gene, but several. Likewise when the newly inserted gene is expressed as a protein, that protein will not have just a single effect, but several. It will influence multiple cellular processes and, subsequently, multiple processes in tissues, organs, and the entire plant. In other words, instead of a single, predictable effect, the insertion of a single gene can result in multiple effects, which can themselves affect many other processes, from the cellular level on up. The more effects, the more unpredictability.\n\n\"There are spatial and temporal aspects of this,\" Richard Manshardt, a plant virologist who helped develop the GM papaya in Hawaii, told me. \"The idea that a gene occupies a particular location, and makes a particular protein, and that protein has a single function, is long outdated. Genes are complicated, and they can interact with different parts of the genome in different ways and at different times. It's a much more dynamic system, and this is even before RNA. This is just in the coding sequence of DNA. If there are two functional units, one might interact with a different gene on a different part of the chromosome. For sure, science is always finding out how ignorant we are.\"\n\nAnd consider that there are over 20,000 genes in the human genome, but in excess of 200,000 proteins\u2014yet only a small fraction of DNA actually codes for proteins. What is the rest of DNA doing? We don't really know. What was once considered \"junk DNA\" is only now beginning to be understood\u2014which is further reason for caution when spreading engineered genes across the globe, Fagan said.\n\n\"My belief is that nature is parsimonious in what it does,\" he said. \"It doesn't waste anything. There are those hubristic opinions that say, 'If we don't understand it, it doesn't exist, or it's superfluous.' But that's the kind of thinking that allows people to be comfortable with the idea of going in and manipulating new genes in very sloppy ways and being so confident in putting them on millions of acres, and for decades. That kind of logic is really risky.\"\n\nArguments about GMO technology are one thing, in other words. The real anxiety arrives when the technology is applied systematically, across wide swaths of the continent and the globe\u2014almost all of it in the service of industrial food. A big part of the problem is that a great deal of university science is funded by industry, or by a federal government in full-throated support of industry, Larry Bohlen told me. Bohlen is a veteran environmental activist who made international headlines fifteen years ago when he discovered that a GM corn (known as StarLink and approved only for animal feed) had made it into the human food supply.\n\nConsider the funding that flows from the USDA into research on GMOs. \"When I looked at it in 2002, it was $193 million for GMO research, of which $3 million was to look at potential environmental problems\u2014or about 1.5 percent\u2014and zero for health effects,\" Bohlen said. \"That would be $2 billion over the last ten years. If I want to survive in academia, of course I'm going to go after the piece of the pie that is 98.5 percent of the budget. There's no real blame in that\u2014you can just look at it objectively and see that most of the money is going to the promotion of GMOs, so that's where the scientists are going. And somebody is setting that budget.\"\n\nBlake Meyers is matter-of-fact when it comes to the funding of his\u2014and all\u2014scientific research. His work is supported by the NSF and the USDA, but he has also gotten money from the big industrial players: DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, BASF. The building that houses his lab was constructed in the mid-1990s, with funds from the University of Delaware, the state of Delaware, and DuPont, whose world headquarters are just up the road in Wilmington. The institute was designed as a hub for research and teaching in the life sciences, but also to support the development of start-up biotech companies.\n\n\"Thirty years ago the university got 40 percent of its budget from the state,\" Meyers said. \"Now it gets 12 percent. The funding rate for federal grants has declined significantly as well. As these sources of funding have declined, there's been a push to diversify the sources of funding for research. So as scientists, you have to find a way to support your lab and support your graduate students. I'm a basic research scientist. Industry comes to me, and they don't give me money for science because they think I'm a great guy. They say, 'We don't know how to measure small RNAs, and we need some help.' My academic group has expertise that can help them to accomplish their goals, and academics can also learn from projects with our industry colleagues.\"\n\nThis dynamic\u2014the drying up of publicly funded research, and its replacement by research paid for by industry\u2014naturally results in an agricultural system dictated by industry, critics say. But the larger issue has to do with the way this thinking\u2014manipulating genetics to serve industrial purposes\u2014has changed the way scientists see the world. Cells are not really like machines, as Meyers suggests, and tinkering with genes is not really like tinkering with a car engine, Craig Holdrege, a scientist and philosopher who runs the Nature Institute in New York, told me. Like organisms out in the world, genes operate in dynamic systems, and both context and timing are far more complex than most scientists allow.\n\n\"In a way we're treating organisms as if they were made up of independent parts, and you can put things in or exchange them, and come up with a result that you (as a human being) like,\" Holdrege said. \"You think you have that degree of control, and you can manipulate that organism to do what you want it to do. But if you read in the literature of genetics and epigenetics, it's completely clear that context matters, that timing matters, and you cannot say that there is a very particular 'this' that always causes a particular 'that.' That's what we've all been indoctrinated to think. Even though the literature is screaming that at us, the habit of thought about causal mechanisms is very deeply entrenched and not easy to overcome, or to move beyond, or to see its limitations. We need to take more seriously the fluidity, the plasticity, and the interconnectedness of all structures and processes.\"\n\nHow you feel about GMOs, whether you are a consumer or a biologist, may have less to do with your grasp of complex science or tangled agricultural history and more to do with how you view your place in the world. Yale University's Dan Kahan recently asked more than 1,500 Americans to rate the threat of climate change on a scale of 0 to 10, then correlated their responses with their scientific literacy. He found that higher literacy was associated with stronger views at _both_ ends of the spectrum. Science literacy, in other words, promoted polarization, not consensus. People use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs that have already been shaped by their worldview.\n\nSimilar passions have polarized the country on GMOs, in part because so many of the issues are the same as they are with climate change: big corporations, big government, big fears.\n\nAmericans fall into two basic camps, Kahan says. Those who think of themselves as \"egalitarian\" or \"communitarian\" are generally suspicious of industry, which they would like overseen by regulators. In contrast, people who see themselves as \"hierarchical\" or \"individualistic\" respect leaders of industry and dislike government interference, which they presume would lead to taxes or regulations. Take a barber in a rural town in South Carolina, Kahan writes. If his customers were skeptical about climate change, would it be smart for the barber to urge them to petition Congress to limit industrial emissions? If he did, Kahan writes, he would find himself \"out of a job.\"\n\nWhen we argue about GMOs, or climate change, in other words, we are also arguing about who we are and what our crowd believes. \"It's fascinating, almost mesmerizing, how personally involved we get in these things,\" Richard Manshardt, the Hawaiian papaya researcher, told me. \"We don't want to be manipulated. We want to control our destiny, and sometimes that means doing absolutely stupid and irrational things. People think, 'GMOs are bad because the group I'm with doesn't like them,' and it ends up being all about my standing within my group. Your own logic, your own sense of what's right, gets challenged, and most of us are not comfortable with changing that. We are not open to new kinds of challenges.\"\n\nOf course, this works both ways. It's not just members of the \"unscientific public\" who fear being seen as outliers in their own social group. It is scientists too. Indeed, in its intensity\u2014as well as the size of the stakes\u2014the scientific debate over GMOs has become almost theological, Brian Snyder, the head of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, told me. \"We're not just talking about data, we're talking about which worldview to fit data _into_ ,\" Snyder said. \"It's not just this side and that side. People use the same science and reach different conclusions. At the very least, scientists are making subjective decisions about what to study, and often their results will follow from this subjectivity.\n\n\"It's fascinating to me that so much of the technology is being developed in order to address problems caused by the previous technology,\" Snyder said. \"So when you boil that down you realize there's sort of an undying faith that answers are always going to come out of the laboratory, that we're just one discovery away from solving it all.\"\n\nHeisenberg's uncertainty principle suggests that a scientist's worldview has a great deal to say about what he will get from his data, Snyder said. \"We really are right down to pointing out world issues, paradigm issues. We have no effective way of carrying on a conversation about conflicting worldviews. We used to chop the heads off people who said the earth revolves around the sun.\"\n\n### The S\u00e9ralini Affair\n\nIf ever there was a moment when scientists were ready to chop off some heads, it came after a journal article claimed to prove that GMOs\u2014and the common herbicide glyphosate\u2014caused cancer and premature death in rats. The study, by Gilles-\u00c9ric S\u00e9ralini of the University of Caen in Normandy, France, monitored two hundred rats for two years. The rats were divided into ten groups, each with ten males and ten females. Some groups were fed different amounts of a strain of Monsanto corn (called NK603) that had been engineered to resist glyphosate. Some corn had been sprayed with glyphosate, some had not. Other groups were fed glyphosate in their drinking water. There was also a control group, which was fed non-engineered corn and plain water.\n\nS\u00e9ralini found that female rats that ate both the engineered corn and the glyphosate tended to develop mammary tumors and compromised sex hormones\u2014and tended to die earlier\u2014than the rats in the control group. Male rats showed four times as many large, palpable tumors and \"very significant\" kidney deficiencies.\n\nThe study, which passed the traditional peer-review process, was published in 2012 in the journal _Food and Chemical Toxicology_ , one of the leading publications in the field.\n\nIt went off, in the words of France's environment minister, like \"a bomb.\"\n\nJean-Marc Ayrault, France's prime minister, said that if its results were confirmed, then his government would press for a continental ban on NK603 corn. Russia suspended imports of the crop. Kenya banned _all_ GM crops. The article appeared two months before a referendum in California that would require the labeling of all GM foods.\n\nIn other words, a single article threatened to tip the global conversation about GMOs, and not in the food industry's favor.\n\nAlmost instantly, the journal was deluged with letters savaging its conclusions. Critics complained that the experiment used too few animals; that the rats used in the experiment were prone to cancer anyway; that the experimental protocol used could not distinguish tumors caused by GM food from those that would have occurred anyway. It was \"clear from even a superficial reading that this paper was not fit for publication,\" a professor at the University of Cambridge wrote. \"The study appeared to sweep aside all known benchmarks of scientific good practice and, more importantly, to ignore the minimal standards of scientific and ethical conduct in particular concerning the humane treatment of experimental animals,\" a group of prominent scientists concluded.\n\nCiting such \"major flaws,\" industry officials and pro-GMO scientists alike called for the article to be retracted. In an extraordinary and highly unusual move, the journal's editor complied.\n\n\"Unequivocally,\" the editor wrote, there was \"no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data.\" Nonetheless, there was \"legitimate cause for concern regarding both the number of animals in each study group and the particular strain selected.\"\n\nA more in-depth look at the raw data \"revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size regarding the role of either NK603 or glyphosate in regards to overall mortality or tumor incidence,\" the editor wrote. \"Ultimately, the results presented (while not incorrect) are inconclusive, and therefore do not reach the threshold of publication for _Food and Chemical Toxicology_.\"\n\nThe decision to retract caused a second firestorm that was at least as powerful as the first. More than a hundred scientists signed a petition calling the decision \"arbitrary\" and \"groundless.\" Retracting a published, thoroughly peer-reviewed paper \"is without precedent in the history of scientific publishing, and raises grave concerns over the integrity and impartiality of science.\"\n\nAmong other things, critics noted, was the fact that S\u00e9ralini had used the same strain of rats Monsanto had used eight years earlier in its own study, which persuaded European regulators to approve the use of GM corn in the first place. That study\u2014done over ninety days, compared with S\u00e9ralini's two years\u2014had been published in the same journal that was now retracting the new study.\n\n\"The retraction is erasing from the public record results that are potentially of very great importance for public health,\" the petition said. \"It is censorship of scientific research, knowledge, and understanding, an abuse of science striking at the very heart of science and democracy, and science for the public good.\"\n\nThe decision was based \"not on the grounds of fraud, malpractice or data misrepresentation, but simply (as far as I can see) because Monsanto and its legion of followers did not like the results of the research and have given you a hard time,\" wrote the British environmental scientist Brian John.\n\n\"The campaign of synthetic outrage orchestrated by the GM industry against the paper and against S\u00e9ralini personally was something that the scientific community should be thoroughly ashamed of, since it was characterised not just by a lack of respect for the research team and its findings, but by personal vilification the like of which I have not seen for a long time,\" John wrote. \"'Inconclusiveness' is not a ground for retraction\u2014every scientific paper published is inconclusive in the sense that it might show probability and might point the way for future research. That is exactly what the S\u00e9ralini paper does, in a perfectly responsible way. If you press ahead with this, you will also confirm what many people have been increasingly concerned about\u2014corporate control not only of the biotechnology industry but also of the means of publication. That is both scientifically reprehensible and sinister.\"\n\nNot long after the retraction, the journal further infuriated critics by installing Richard Goodman, a former Monsanto scientist, as its new associate editor for biotechnology. Goodman's \"fast-tracked appointment directly onto the upper editorial board raises urgent questions,\" an article in _Independent Science News_ reported. \"Does Monsanto now effectively decide which papers on biotechnology are published in _FCT_? And is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?\"\n\nBrian John offered a sharp answer for this as well. \"Only a fool would assume that there is no connection between his arrival and this decision to retract the S\u00e9ralini paper,\" John wrote. \"And from where I stand this is yet more evidence of the increasing corporate control exerted by the GM industry in the area of biotechnology publications. You clearly do not now have true independence in editorial matters, and the manner in which you have buckled under pressure from this orchestrated anti-S\u00e9ralini campaign is both despicable and deeply depressing.\"\n\nIn an open letter in _Independent Science News_ , a group of scientists wrote that the S\u00e9ralini affair risked undermining the credibility of science itself:\n\nWhen those with a vested interest attempt to sow unreasonable doubt around inconvenient results, or when governments exploit political opportunities by picking and choosing from scientific evidence, they jeopardize public confidence in scientific methods and institutions, and also put their own citizenry at risk. Safety testing, science-based regulation, and the scientific process itself, depend crucially on widespread trust in a body of scientists devoted to the public interest and professional integrity. If instead, the starting point of a scientific product assessment is an approval process rigged in favour of the applicant, backed up by systematic suppression of independent scientists working in the public interest, then there can never be an honest, rational or scientific debate.\n\nThe issues raised by the S\u00e9ralini study have not gone away. In a move that may one day generate as much noise as the S\u00e9ralini affair itself, the Russian National Association for Genetic Safety, a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization based in Moscow, said in 2014 it was raising $25 million to redo S\u00e9ralini's experiments. In a theatrical press release (announcing the _launch_ of the study rather than its results), the designers of the so-called Factor study said the GMO controversy was so hot they would not even disclose where the research would take place.\n\nThe Factor study will use 6,000 rats, rather than the 200 used by S\u00e9ralini; last four years instead of two; and examine the health consequences of both GM food and glyphosate as they manifest through multiple generations. It will adhere to or exceed guidelines set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international research body that works with governments on economic and environmental policy, said Bruce Blumberg, a professor of developmental and cell biology at UC-Irvine, who will serve on the study's scientific oversight board.\n\n\"The study will employ large groups of animals tested throughout their full lifespan, so unless you are Monsanto, the results will not be easily disputable,\" Blumberg told me. \"The work will be very thorough and very transparent. For sure, companies don't do that. They never let their data out.\"\n\nSuch independent science is critical to the GMO debate, Blumberg said, since most of what we know about the safety of glyphosate\u2014the herbicide most commonly sprayed on GM crops\u2014is based on studies Monsanto did back in the 1970s and 1980s.\n\n\"We remain reliant for what we know\u2014about a chemical sprayed on hundreds of millions of acres of food crops\u2014on studies performed by the company that produces and sells it,\" Blumberg said. \"The bottom line is that we know almost nothing about the long-term health effects of this compound and we use it in colossal amounts. If you talk to Monsanto, they will say, 'If you use our seeds, you will use less Roundup,' but the twentyfold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides since 1996 disputes this assertion.\"\n\nBlumberg's own work has focused not on genetic engineering but on the effect on human health caused by hormone-disrupting chemicals. He looks at the ways synthetic chemicals contribute to things like cancer and obesity. \"Obesogens,\" such as those found in certain synthetic plastics and fungicides, for example, can cause a body to make more fat cells, to put more fat _into_ cells, or to change a body's overall metabolism. Any of these disruptions can cause a rat\u2014or a human\u2014to put on weight, regardless of their diet. Significantly, these chemicals can cause such changes not just in exposed individuals, but in their offspring down at least three generations.\n\nLooking over one of Blumberg's research grant proposals ten years ago, a reviewer at the National Institutes of Health wrote, \"How dare you waste our time with such a ridiculous idea\u2014everyone knows obesity is caused by eating too much and exercising too little.\" Now, thanks in part to Blumberg's work, we have come to know much more about the way synthetic chemicals affect our body's subtle hormonal balance\u2014and how easy it is for them to throw this balance out of whack. National trends\u2014from obesity to early-onset puberty in girls or low sperm counts in boys\u2014have been traced to the chemicals used in an enormous variety of everyday consumer products.\n\nBlumberg, in other words, may not have a horse in the GMO race, but he's seen similar contests before.\n\n\"My job is to make sure the study is designed as well as it can be,\" he said. \"The goal is to see if we can test the safety of one of the world's most widely used chemicals. As a human being who inhabits this planet, I'm very interested in seeing this done well. I want to see the results.\"\n\n# Part Two\n\n## 4.\n\n## The Fruit That Saved an Island\n\n The vast majority of GMOs are hidden in highly processed ingredients in the supermarket's meat and junk food sections, but there is one modest little GM fruit you can find in the produce aisle. The Rainbow papaya, grown on the Big Island in Hawaii, is a singular retort to the blanket condemnation of genetic engineering. The fruit is nutritious. It nurtures local farmers. And it was created not by a company, but by a professor.\n\nDennis Gonsalves unlocks the metal gate blocking the entrance to the 80-acre plantation, then returns to the driver's seat of his beat-up white Ford pickup. We pass field after field of scrawny trees, their feet, here on the Big Island, growing in volcanic rock, their crowns bursting with fruit.\n\nMoments later, we pull up to a large, open-air enclosure lined with plastic crates, filled with freshly picked, genetically modified papaya. Gonsalves has had a long love affair with this fruit. He should\u2014he designed it himself.\n\nAt seventy, Gonsalves is physically robust, ebullient, and remarkably charismatic. In the world of genetic engineering, he has long been considered something of a superstar: a university scientist who saved an industry, and who did it without buckets of government or corporate money. Gonsalves, many people say, is the very model of the way science should be done: with the public good, not corporate profits, at heart.\n\nAs he parks his pickup, Gonsalves calls out to the plantation's owner. \"Hey, Alberto!\" Gonsalves shouts as we leave the truck.\n\nAlberto Belmes climbs down from a forklift and comes over to shake hands. Belmes came to Hawaii from the Philippines in 1981 and started planting papaya a year later. Within ten years, his fortunes, and the fortunes of the trees he was planting, were in danger of complete collapse. A pathogen known as ringspot virus was burning through the trees on the Big Island, and neither farmer nor spray gun had any way to stop it. Ringspot had destroyed the papaya crop on Oahu in the 1950s, prompting the entire industry to move to Puna, on the Big Island, where the virus, up until then, had not yet manifested.\n\nBy the early 1990s, ringspot was moving across the Big Island like a wildfire. State agriculture workers did their best to destroy infected trees, but nothing could stop the burn.\n\nLike Belmes, 80 percent of the island's papaya farmers were first-generation immigrants from the Philippines, and few of them spoke English. They were poor, they had few political connections, and they were dependent on their plantation work to feed their families. The ringspot virus was not just killing trees, it was threatening to ruin a fragile human population as well.\n\nAt first, Belmes tried to outsmart the pathogen by planting his trees close to the ocean, where salt air and wind kept many of the aphids spreading the virus at bay. Early on, as other farmers' crops crashed, Belmes's trees were still producing fruit, and he was able to charge a premium: he sold papaya for a dollar a pound, three times what the fruit would command twenty years later.\n\nFlush with cash, and keeping his fingers crossed, Belmes took a risk. He planted another seventy acres and began moving his crop back inland. Maybe the virus had moved on. Maybe he'd get lucky again.\n\nHis plan failed. His newly planted trees were devastated. That year Belmes didn't harvest a single fruit. He lost everything.\n\n\"People forget how bad it was,\" Dennis Gonsalves told me, casting his eyes across the volcanic landscape. \"It was like a war zone here. All the trees were dead.\"\n\n\u2014\n\nTHE PAPAYA is a remarkable plant: a giant herb, really, not a tree. From the moment a seed is planted, it takes just six months for the plant to grow several feet tall and begin flowering, and just six more months to begin producing fruit. After three years, a papaya tree can be eighteen feet tall, producing scores of fruit at a time.\n\nDennis Gonsalves is a remarkable man. He was raised on a Big Island sugar plantation, where his father worked mowing grass. Times were tough: he remembers his family and the rest of the workers eating a lot of Spam. \"The bosses were white people and the workers were locals,\" he said. \"I grew up with that mentality.\"\n\nGonsalves left the island to get his PhD in plant pathology at UC-Davis, then taught at the University of Florida for six years. Bored of spending all his time studying citrus, he moved to Cornell, in New York, where he would spend the next twenty-five years working alongside some of the smartest plant pathologists in the business. As a plant virologist who knew how bad ringspot had been on Oahu, Gonsalves started experimenting on papaya in 1978. He traveled all over the world trying to figure out how to protect the crop from viral pests. This was before genetic engineering was developed, so Gonsalves and his research team tried to protect plants by \"immunizing\" them to protect against serious infection.\n\nInitially, Gonsalves tried a kind of vaccination called cross-protection: he and his team mutated a mild strain of the ringspot virus and used it to inoculate millions of trees. Plants do not have active immune systems, and thus can't produce antibodies to protect themselves against diseases. Plant biologists had long known, though, that when they are exposed to a weak virus, plants can develop some resistance.\n\nCross-protection had drawbacks, however. There was always the chance that the mild virus injected into the trees might mutate into a far more damaging form. Or the virus protecting the papaya could jump species and cause serious infections in another important agricultural crop.\n\nBy 1983, it was clear that cross-protection was working, \"but not that well,\" Gonsalves told me. So, mid-career, the veteran scientist started teaching himself some new tricks.\n\nThe mid-1980s was an exciting time in the field of molecular biology, and Gonsalves didn't have to look far for an example of a promising experiment. Washington University's Roger Beachy had recently managed to take a strand of DNA from the tobacco mosaic virus\u2014a common pest that damages a plant's leaves and can stunt its growth\u2014and insert it into the tobacco plant itself. The strand of virus DNA they used triggered the creation of \"coat proteins,\" which\u2014in the virus\u2014served as a kind of shield against outside infection. When Beachy inserted this viral DNA into the tobacco's DNA, it did the same thing: it protected the tobacco plant from infection\u2014in this case from the very virus that had contributed its DNA to the plant. Though the process remained somewhat mysterious, one thing was clear: the transformed plants were resistant to infection from the tobacco mosaic virus.\n\nFollowing Beachy's lead, Gonsalves and a colleague, Richard Manshardt, wanted to see if they could pull off the same trick using ringspot virus and Hawaiian papaya. They knew how ringspot worked: it hijacked the papaya cell's protein-making machinery. They started experimenting with gene sequences that might cause RNA interference; they wanted to get their papaya to produce a small stretch of genetic code that could, in turn, spur a biochemical process that would seek out and \"silence\" infecting strands of viral RNA. Once attacked, they hoped, the viral RNA would be rendered \"mute.\"\n\nMeanwhile, a Gonsalves colleague at Cornell, John Sanford, was developing the \"gene gun,\" with which he learned to shoot DNA-coated tungsten balls into plant cells. It was an imprecise method, to say the least; only a tiny fraction of the target cells would absorb and incorporate the new DNA. But some DNA did make it into the target cells, and the possibilities for genetic manipulations suddenly opened up.\n\nThe mystery of cell biology\u2014combined with the prospect of real crops facing real disaster\u2014made Dennis Gonsalves's genetic work both intellectually exciting and economically urgent. Given the pending collapse of the papaya industry, there just wasn't time to plod through years of traditional breeding experiments.\n\nFor the papaya plantations on the Big Island, these experiments could not have come at a more critical time. In 1992, a dean at the University of Hawaii at Manoa called Gonsalves to break the news that the ringspot virus\u2014once absent from the Big Island\u2014had popped up in Hilo, just twenty miles north of Puna, where virtually all of Hawaii's commercial papaya crop was being grown. Gonsalves had discovered his professional calling. \"It is rather rare that a potential solution is coincidental with a potential disaster,\" Gonsalves wrote at the time, with considerable scientific understatement.\n\n\"I was new at Cornell, but 95 percent of Hawaii's papaya industry was here on the Big Island,\" he told me later. \"I started to realize that good science could change things at home.\"\n\nAt first, Gonsalves's research did not attract much attention\u2014or money. His initial grant application was rejected by both the USDA and the NSF; small grants came thanks to the reach of Hawaii's U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, who knew the state's economy would take a significant hit if the papaya industry collapsed again. In what has become something of a legend among the world's plant geneticists, there was no corporate money involved.\n\n\"The first grant we got was for $20,000,\" Gonsalves said. \"This was a poor man's biotech project. We were just scientists doing research.\"\n\nNot all of the hurdles were scientific. Gonsalves also had to seek approval from the entire range of the federal bureaucracy: the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA. The research team conducted numerous toxicity tests and protein studies, some of which would never have been required of plants grown in a traditional breeding program. In this, as in its status as one of the earliest GMO experiments, Gonsalves's papaya became a harbinger of future battles.\n\n\"When the Rainbow papaya was first engineered, its developers had to test several kilos of dried papaya leaves to see if the alkaloid content was any different from traditionally bred fruit. It wasn't,\" Richard Manshardt told me. \"That sort of thing would never be looked at in a conventional breeding project.\n\n\"The big difference between traditional breeding and GMO, people think that what we eat now is 'natural' and has been around for centuries. Their experience is okay, and therefore the government isn't under any pressure to impose further testing. But with GMOs, it's a new process. The government requires researchers to do the testing, and the public sees the whole system as suspicious and untrustworthy. Why? Because it's new, there's potential for a Wall Street distortion of reality, where money is more important than the product. So it's a trust issue, I think. From a research standpoint, the regulatory process is important because we don't know everything, and we _know_ we don't know everything.\"\n\nYet by the fall of 1997, with a speed that surprised everyone in the field, Dennis Gonsalves had the approval he needed. GM papayas were officially deemed safe for human consumption, and for the environment, by the American government.\n\nRoger Beachy's technology, which Gonsalves was building on, had already been licensed to Monsanto, and Hawaiian papaya growers were deeply skeptical of the biotech giant, figuring the company would charge millions of dollars for them to use company property. But given Roger Beachy's influence\u2014and his strong desire to see his technology work in the field\u2014Monsanto issued the licenses for almost nothing.\n\nOn May 1, 1998, after the patent licenses came through, the Rainbow papaya seeds were ready for distribution, and Gonsalves handed them out to island farmers for free.\n\nAlberto Belmes was one of the first five farmers to try them. He planted seven acres. \"We didn't know if it would survive, or if people would like it,\" Belmes told me.\n\nGonsalves smiled. \"We scientists\u2014we were confident,\" he said.\n\nOne year later, Dennis Gonsalves's seeds had turned into Alberto Belmes's trees, and they were bearing fruit. Enormous quantities of fruit. Conventionally grown trees, stunted with yellowed, infected leaves, average just 5,000 pounds per acre per year. The GM Rainbow papaya trees provided 125,000 pounds. From a low of 26 million pounds in 1998, the papaya crop grew to 40 million pounds just three years later. Rainbow papaya seeds are currently controlled by a nonprofit industry group called the Papaya Administrative Committee; seeds are distributed to local farmers at cost.\n\nIn 2002, Gonsalves and his research team were awarded the Humboldt Prize for the most significant contribution to U.S. agriculture in the previous five years. Gonsalves is \"a tireless innovator,\" said Pamela Ronald, a plant geneticist at UC-Davis who has done groundbreaking research into genetically engineered rice. \"Not only did he return to his home to help the farmers in his area, he moved beyond basic science to getting his invention out in the field. His work is widely viewed as brilliant.\"\n\nGonsalves's work \"is a model for what should have happened [everywhere],\" said Roger Beachy, whose work on the tobacco mosaic virus helped inspire Gonsalves's own work. \"He just plain stuck to it because the farming industry needed it.\"\n\nAt seventy, Gonsalves remains undaunted. He is currently trying to open the gates to GM papaya in China, one of the world's biggest markets. He has submitted the scientific paperwork and notified the embassies. Chinese scientists have visited Hawaii's plantations; they've done health data tests and rat-feeding experiments. Gonsalves has received permission to send seeds.\n\n\"The Chinese have 40 million people in Beijing and Shanghai alone,\" he said, \"and they _love_ Hawaiian papaya. That's what hard work does.\"\n\nYet ask Gonsalves what makes him most proud, and he will point to working farmers like Alberto Belmes, the papaya farmer who migrated from the Philippines to Hawaii. Were it not for Gonsalves's discoveries in the laboratory and the field, Belmes and many others like him would not have survived these last thirty-five years. Today, Belmes has twelve employees and close to 100 acres of highly productive papaya trees. He has one son who graduated from New York University (and now works in a bank) and another son in college in Hawaii.\n\nThese days, Belmes spends a lot of time touring foreign scientists around his farm, showing them the benefits of genetic engineering. Recently, a group from Japan arrived and\u2014convinced that Belmes must be suffering because of all the anti-GMO rhetoric floating around the world\u2014asked if he had had any second thoughts about his trees.\n\nWhat about organic? they asked. Hadn't the global interest in organic farming made GMOs a risky investment?\n\n\"I said, 'Ever since the Rainbow came out, it has been very good,'\" Belmes told me, chuckling. \"We couldn't even supply the market. They thought I wouldn't be happy. They thought GMOs were dangerous!\"\n\nBelmes's plantation is now one of the biggest on the Big Island. The day Gonsalves and I visited, a half-dozen pickers\u2014equipped with long bamboo poles and canvas bags\u2014were knocking ripe fruit out of trees.\n\n\"Isn't this incredible?\" Gonsalves told me, waving his hand across a landscape of thickly planted, highly productive papaya trees.\n\n\"I used to come here and cry.\"\n\n\u2014\n\nFOR DENNIS GONSALVES, all the noise over GMOs\u2014the politics, and the corporate money, and the anti-technology activism\u2014has proven a long and bitter irony. After retiring from Cornell, Gonsalves was lured back to Hawaii to work in the USDA's Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, where he spent ten years continuing to do science in support of local growers.\n\n\"I decided to come back and do the highest levels of science, but also to work for local issues, with respect for all the local culture,\" he told me. \"This really transformed the center into a place that could relate to people. We saw that we could really help the farmers. If you do good science and help people, things will fall into place.\"\n\nBut his return home, where local activists were beginning to launch a campaign to ban genetically engineered crops, also reminded Gonsalves of his own decades of squabbling over GMOs. Back in 1986, when he was still doing research on cross-protection, a crisis emerged in the papaya crop in Thailand. Cross-protection had been moderately successful, but as the years passed, the country's papaya crop faced collapse. Desperate, an undersecretary of agriculture approached Gonsalves, pleading with him to experiment with a GM plant.\n\nGonsalves asked for a scientist and $15,000 for supplies. By 1997, his team took tissue samples and plants to Thailand. They navigated all the bureaucratic quarantine procedures. They conducted \"beautiful\" field trials and rabbit studies, and were ready to plant. Their scientific work was solid. What they didn't count on was the intensity of global food politics. Corporate GMOs had earned such a toxic reputation that even Gonsalves's nonprofit plant research stirred up a storm.\n\nActivists from Greenpeace, dressed in gas masks and white hazard suits and carrying signs that read \"Stop GMOs!\" destroyed the Thai field trials. Greenpeace was making a larger point: papaya wasn't the only GM plant scientists were experimenting with in Thailand. Monsanto was also in the country, trying to get permission to plant GM corn and cotton. As evidence of GMO contamination of traditional crops began to emerge, the Thai government began taking a harder line on experimental crops. The government eventually placed a moratorium on biotech crops, and Gonsalves's plants \"never saw the light of day.\"\n\n\"Who suffered from that? The farmers,\" Gonsalves told me. \"Greenpeace said, 'This isn't about papaya. It's about opening the door to big companies. What happens if that gate gets opened?'\"\n\nIronically for Gonsalves, this argument soon began bubbling up in Hawaii. Despite Gonsalves's status as an international agricultural star, and despite his GM papaya having become one of the most famous fruits on earth, the GMO debate is far from settled even on Gonsalves's home island. Anti-GMO activists point out that the Rainbow papaya has been shut out of a number of global markets because of local resistance to GMOs. In Jamaica, an experimental crop was shelved because consumers in Britain\u2014the primary market for Jamaican fruit\u2014would not touch it. Japan initially refused to allow GM papaya into its lucrative market, a decision that forced some Big Island growers into bankruptcy. In 2011, after Hawaii spent thirteen years (and $13 million of taxpayer money) lobbying to get the GM papaya into Japan, that country's Ministry of Agriculture finally agreed to let GM papaya in\u2014but only if they are labeled \"GMO.\"\n\nThere have also been problems closer to home. By 2004, contamination\u2014by GM papaya trees of non-GM trees\u2014was found to be ubiquitous on the island, forcing even non-GMO farmers to test their trees and fruit before they were allowed to ship their fruit to Japan. Organic farmers lost markets, seed lines, certifications, and chopped down their trees in order to keep their organic integrity, writes Melanie Bondera, an organic farmer in Kona and a cofounder of several anti-GMO groups in Hawaii.\n\nIn 2002, the year Gonsalves won the Humboldt Award, some anti-GMO activists approached him and\u2014somewhat incredibly\u2014asked him to reevaluate his life's work.\n\n\"They said, 'Come out against GMO papaya and you'll be considered a savior,'\" Gonsalves told me. \"But when they said it was unsafe, I said, 'Show me the data.' You say it's bad for the environment, I say, 'Show me the data.'\"\n\nGonsalves has little patience for the GMO debate, especially when he hears people tell him that his beloved papaya should be grown organically. With 100 inches of rain a year, papaya plantations need no irrigation. But so much rain means an endless challenge from fungi\u2014and the need for regular spraying with fungicide.\n\n\"Organic? Bah!\" he said. \"People live in a make-believe world. Organic is what, 2 percent of the food supply? I don't eat organic. Can you grow organic with this rain? We have a fungus problem. All our organic produce comes from California, and it's going to be that way for a long, long time.\"\n\nWhen it comes to the anti-GMO movement, Gonsalves told me, talk is cheap. \"Farmers are not stupid. They will take the best way they can to make money,\" he said. \"You want us to do things organically and sustainably? Show us how to do it. Don't talk about it. Do it. I'll clap my hands. Wonderful! But _do_ it. Don't just talk about it. _Do_ it.\"\n\nGonsalves now serves on a science advisory board for the Gates Foundation, which is coordinating a great deal of research funding for projects in the developing world. He also continues to consult with global food conglomerates. It's true, the big seed companies have terrible PR, he said; Monsanto continues to pay for its past sins of arrogance, like forcing GM corn on people in Europe.\n\n\"Companies always come to me and say, 'What can we do about our bad PR?' I say, 'Do something that will help the people.' Everything about the big companies, this technology\u2014it's not designed to help small farmers. It's designed to help big companies. If Monsanto had come out with a resistant tomato first, instead of corn, things would have been different. But the company knew there were only millions there, not billions. There was no way they were going to do the tomato.\"\n\nTo be fair, he says, Monsanto has put $80 million into a cassava project in Africa, but does not get enough credit for it. This is the same company, he reminded me, that owned a number of patents on the papaya, but \"gave them all to us.\"\n\nIt's important for people to realize how important GMO technology can be for small-scale farmers whose livelihoods face collapse without them, Gonsalves said. Monsanto will never get into niche markets like papaya; there's just not enough money in it. It's up to publicly funded, university researchers to work on crops that help small farmers and poor consumers. Many researchers have become too comfortable doing work\u2014often funded by the big companies\u2014on crops that flow into the industrial food system. This sentiment has been echoed by the National Academy of Sciences, which cited the lack of biotech work on specialty crops as one of farming's most pressing problems.\n\nThere are signs that Gonsalves's message is getting through. Last year, federal regulators approved a GM plum, developed by USDA scientists, that resists a deadly European pox. Blight-blocking peanuts are under way. In Florida and Texas, scientists are working to develop what is almost certain to become a flash point for consumers: oranges, which are under siege from a bacterial infection known as huanglongbing, or citrus greening. Building on the work Gonsalves did with papaya, and Roger Beachy did with tobacco, scientists are now scrambling to develop GM oranges to block the disease. Public scrutiny, not to say outrage, is sure to follow.\n\nAnd if China starts buying his papaya, the greatest beneficiaries, Gonsalves knows, will be his beloved plantation workers. \"People come to Hawaii to see paradise. They have no idea,\" he told me. \"You know how much people here get paid? Ten dollars an hour. You know how expensive food is?\n\n\"If you don't like the companies, say, 'Break them up like they did with the oil companies!' But don't say, 'It's not safe.' Once the Supreme Court said you could patent everything under the sun, that became the law. If you don't follow the law, how are you going to operate a democracy? You want things to be different? Take them to court!\n\n\"I'm for the underdog, the poor people,\" Gonsalves continued. \"All I know is that farmers here were suffering. The human side of biotech is missing. This is not an industrial crop. It is family farming. All we were ever doing was trying to help farmers. That's all we wanted to do.\"\n\n## 5.\n\n## Trouble in Paradise\n\n The island of Kauai is so beautiful it can make you twitch. The great green slabs thrusting up from the central mountains look like they could be hiding another Machu Picchu; the island's lush, rolling piedmont drops into beaches so famous for their waves that locals have been known to remove uninvited surfers with their fists.\n\nKauai is also a place where you can see a guy dressed up as the Grim Reaper\u2014black cape, flaming red death mask\u2014standing by a major intersection with a sign that says \"Monsanto Sucks!\" It is an island where anger at giant chemical companies is so intense that a man who is both a professional surfer and a professional mixed martial arts fighter recently ran for mayor on an anti-GMO platform and got 40 percent of the vote.\n\nTiny Kauai, perched at the far western edge of the United States, has become ground zero for the global debate over genetically modified food and the spraying of their attendant chemicals on cropland. It is a place where, for years, multinational agrochemical companies have developed the GM seeds that circulate around the globe, but kept their experiments\u2014especially their use of pesticides\u2014secret from the people who live just down the road. And it is a place where a ragtag group of activists have fought these companies to a draw. Like other communities around the world that have fought the agrochemical conglomerates, the people of Kauai feel they are bearing a chemical onslaught their bodies and their beloved island ought not to have to bear. They argue that their land is being used for the good of company profits, that GMOs are really just a vehicle for chemical companies to sell the world more pesticides, and that their fight is a microcosm of the global GMO battle itself. Indeed, when it comes to the global food system, with all its perils and promises, the rest of the world is watching Kauai. Because just as GMOs and their attendant pesticides can spread around the world, so can resistance.\n\nWhen I arrived in Kauai, the guy at the rental car agency asked me why I had come to visit. \"I'm writing a book about GMOs,\" I told him.\n\n\"Huh,\" he said. \"Good idea. Lots of pesticides being sprayed over on the island's west side. A guy I work with just lost his dad over there. It's strange how many people are telling stories like that. I'm glad I work inside.\"\n\nWhen I pulled into my hotel, the woman at the check-in desk also asked me why I had come. I told her.\n\n\"My husband works for a fertilizer company, and he says all this stuff about GMO companies is nonsense,\" she said. \"Closing these companies down would be taking food right out of people's mouths. I just try to keep quiet.\n\n\"Be careful who you talk to\u2014you might end up starting a fight.\"\n\nA few hours later, I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a beat-up Toyota pickup truck being driven by Jeri DiPietro. We had bumped along an endless series of potholes down a long dusty road, finally pulling up next to an abandoned sugar mill, its exterior walls overgrown with trees and weeds. A pair of rusted-out truck chassis sat rotting in front. Behind them, a squat conical building had been emblazed with a line of graffiti: \"It all started here.\"\n\nBehind us, across the dirt road from the abandoned mill, a series of squat plastic silos filled with a yellowish liquid sat baking in the sun.\n\nDiPietro had come to this place\u2014an experimental farm operated by the agribusiness giant DuPont Pioneer, to see if she could figure out what the company was spraying on its fields. She carried with her a series of maps showing the locations of company fields, amended with thick lines of Magic Marker that showed acreage and field boundaries (Pioneer 4,500; BASF 900; Syngenta 3,000; Dow 3,500 + 500), as well as their proximity to local rivers and towns and the pesticides being used there.\n\n\"There is a field in Kamakani on the west side\u2014all we have is Google Earth to see where the fields are,\" DiPietro told me. Chemical companies have fields \"within 450 feet of a preschool, and one of the chemicals they use is paraquat, which has been banned in thirty-six countries. Right on the label, it says that paraquat is fatal if inhaled.\"\n\nDiPietro has been involved in the anti-GMO fight on Kauai since 2002, long before most people on the mainland had ever heard the term. Because the companies running these experimental fields are not forthcoming about their locations, or what crops they are growing, or what they are spraying on them, DiPietro had to create the maps herself. She assembled them from her explorations driving the island's dusty red back roads and looking for the tiny spray sheets the companies post alongside their fields. She has seen plenty of signs noting the chemicals being used: atrazine, lorsban, \"other.\" (As toxic as atrazine and lorsban are, she says, it's the chemicals marked \"other\" that bother her the most.)\n\n\"It's supposed to be against federal law to spray lorsban in winds over ten miles per hour and to spray any restricted-use pesticides in windy conditions,\" DiPietro said. Here on Kauai, \"it's always blowing like this.\"\n\nBecause the fields themselves are shielded from public view, the spray sheets are plainly not intended for the public either. They are posted to advise company workers to stay off the fields for twenty-four to forty-eight hours after a spray. This is serious business: the EPA recently announced it is considering banning chlorpyrifos, another commonly used chemical on Kauai that has sickened dozens of farmworkers in recent years, including at least ten Syngenta workers who were hospitalized in Kauai in January 2016. The workers had walked onto a cornfield twenty hours after it had been sprayed\u2014just four hours earlier than recommended.\n\nDiPietro had driven me by the Grand Hyatt Kauai and the Poipu Bay Golf Course, within easy drifting distance of the experimental farm. Did the golfers know what was being sprayed across the street? Would they care if they did? How about the surfers? The retirees drinking pi\u00f1a coladas or doing yoga on the beach? It is this lack of available information\u2014about chemicals that are well-known health hazards being sprayed in close proximity to places where people live, work, and play\u2014that has driven DiPietro and a host of others on Kauai to take their fight straight to the companies themselves.\n\nA notably gentle woman, DiPietro shielded her dark hair and dark eyes beneath a baseball cap that read \"Kauai Has the Right to Know.\" She had been to this experimental farm many times before and was not, apparently, a welcome presence. As we sat in her cab chatting, she looked in her rearview mirror and saw a white four-by-four coming up fast behind her. She sat tight. \"Looks like we've got a visitor,\" she said.\n\nA white pickup pulled up next to DiPietro, and a bull-necked man with fury on his face glared out from beneath a ball cap.\n\n\"Get the hell out of here and don't come back,\" he seethed. \"And no more pictures!\" The man was enraged, his voice was full of threat, and DiPietro did not try to argue. But she did not seem intimidated so much as resigned. She'd been through this ritual before. She pulled off down the road.\n\n\u2014\n\nLAND USE ON KAUAI has a long and complex history, one that is tied up with centuries-old sugar plantations and an enormous cultural and economic gap between wealthy landowners and native and immigrant laborers. In 1920, several hundred Filipino workers staged a strike against the sugar plantations, protesting wages that amounted to less than a dollar for twelve hours of work. As they gathered, policemen climbed a nearby bluff and fired on the crowd. In what came to be known as the Hanapepe Massacre, sixteen Filipino workers were killed as they fled into a stand of banana trees. The workers were later blamed for the violence: 130 were arrested; 56 were found guilty of rioting and were imprisoned.\n\nA few decades later, chemical companies began testing defoliants for use in the Vietnam War. \"We've been a place for Monsanto to experiment for fifty years,\" a woman named Fern Rosenstiel told me. \"They tested Agent Orange on this island right near where I was born.\"\n\nKing Sugar, as the industry was known, dominated the island's economy for 150 years, placing great wealth in a very few hands but also creating a plantation culture that many say remains in place today. Descendants of the sugar workers from Japan, Portugal, Polynesia, and the Philippines remain in sizable numbers throughout the state. Crippled by foreign competition, Kauai's sugar industry began to collapse in the 1980s and 1990s, and many companies picked up and left. Big Agribusiness has more than stepped into its ample footprint. The companies still hire descendants of the people who worked on the plantations\u2014Chinese, Japanese, native Hawaiians\u2014and these people are happy to have the work. But they also hire a lot of temporary workers from places like Malaysia.\n\n\"Their ancestors were brought here to divert rivers for the benefit of the white people who ran the pineapple plantations and the sugarcane plantations,\" Rosenstiel said. \"Forty million gallons of water still goes out of the Waimea River through diversion, straight out into ocean, because they've never restored the diversions.\"\n\nSome 14,000 acres of Kauai's land are leased to the global agrochemical conglomerates DuPont Pioneer, Dow, Syngenta, and BASF. The corporations chose Kauai because its tropical climate enables them to work their fields year-round. Company workers can plant experimental fields three seasons a year, which can cut in half the time it takes to develop a new genetically altered seed.\n\nThe \"experiments\" taking place on these fields consist of planting genetically engineered seeds\u2014primarily corn\u2014and then dousing the fields with a variety of pesticides to see which plants survive. The chemicals will kill all the weeds and some of the corn plants themselves. Between 2007 and 2012, DuPont Pioneer sprayed fields on Kauai with ninety different chemical formulations with sixty-three active ingredients, and sprayed as many as sixteen times a day, two out of every three days during the year. Statewide, Hawaii leads the nation in the number of experimental fields, with more than 1,100. Studies show that companies use seventeen times more of the highly toxic \"restricted use\" pesticides on experimental plots than do farmers on traditional fields.\n\nThe use of these chemicals has become necessary, at least in part, because softer, \"general use\" pesticides like glyphosate have begun to lose their effectiveness. Chemical companies must now engineer new seeds that will resist other, more intense chemical compounds. Dow, for example, has used its Kauai fields to develop new corn and soybean seeds that are resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D\u2014once an active ingredient in Agent Orange that's been linked to reproductive problems and cancer.\n\nIf a corn plant can survive the chemical sprays\u2014and if the sprays successfully kill every other plant on the field\u2014the resistant seeds will be moved along the development pipeline; one day, this corn's progeny might end up spread across the vast cornfields of Iowa, and Nebraska, and Illinois. More than likely, the harvest from these plants will end up sweetening soft drinks or feeding the millions of cattle and pigs that supply the country's bottomless appetite for inexpensive meat.\n\nBecause GM crops have been legally declared to be the \"substantial equivalent\" of conventionally farmed crops, the island's farms are not required to file Environmental Impact Studies. And because of a variety of legal loopholes, including the shroud wrapped around \"proprietary information,\" companies are not required to tell the public much of anything about what they are spraying, or where, or when.\n\nSince they lease their land from the island's handful of large private landowners (Steve Case, the founder of AOL, owns 38,000 acres of former plantation land known as Grove Farms), the companies are largely shielded from public view. Because the companies get their spraying permits from the federal government, and not from the state or the county or the local planning boards, they do not feel obliged to answer to local complaints. And because their work is regulated by the federal government, the companies say that local laws do not apply to them. They stick to this logic even when their research takes place on thousands of acres of state land.\n\nFor the people who live on Kauai, however, the fight over GMOs and pesticides is just another chapter in a long struggle over the use and misuse of their land. They say the companies have refused to divulge what chemicals they use on their fields. They say that when people complain to the companies, they get no answers. When people complain to their elected officials, and the elected officials complain to the companies, they also get no answers. By fighting even basic disclosure laws, the companies are shutting down any possibility of understanding what consequences their chemical sprays might be having on the health of the local community. Activists, doctors, local politicians\u2014they all want information, and they aren't getting any.\n\n\"For me, this is about the impact on our community, not on whether Doritos have GMOs or not,\" Gary Hooser told me. For years, Hooser, a county councilman (and thus one of the island's highest-ranking public officials), has tried to extract information from the chemical companies. He has had very little success. \"I have issues with corporations controlling the food supply, but that's also not what this is about. This is about industry causing harm. I asked them politely, and in writing, for a list of the pesticides they used, and they said no, they were not going to give it to me. They were very polite.\"\n\nIf chemical companies on Kauai are outwardly uncooperative, their behind-the-scenes influence on the regulatory agencies charged with overseeing their work is virtually complete. Pushing states (and the federal government) to cut regulatory staff has long been a primary industry objective. Here's what this looks like in Hawaii: because of budget cuts, the state Department of Agriculture has only one employee assigned to review pesticide inspection reports. Although the department is responsible for overseeing the federal Clean Water Act, it has no statewide program for testing pesticide use in soil, air, or water. The single position on Kauai meant to monitor toxins in agricultural dust has been vacant for a year. Meanwhile, the state's health department has no programs to test for pesticide contamination in the soil, air, or water.\n\nKauai's sole pesticide inspector says she hasn't gotten around to reviewing most reports in several years\u2014in part because so many concerned people have been asking her for spray records. \"I've had so many requests that I haven't had a chance to work on any of my cases for so many years,\" she said.\n\nAs for federal oversight, the nearest EPA office is 2,000 miles away in San Francisco.\n\nAll of this means that when Gary Hooser asks companies for records about what they are spraying, he finds himself circling in an endless bureaucratic whirlpool. When he asked the state to provide a spreadsheet listing the sales of restricted-use pesticides used by Dow, DuPont Pioneer, Monsanto, BASF, and Syngenta on the island from 2002 to 2004, his request was denied. The disclosure records \"are believed to contain confidential business information (CBI) or trade secrets,\" the state's pesticides program manager wrote Hooser. The decision made it impossible for Hooser or anyone else to determine \"what chemicals are being used, by whom, at what geographical locations,\" Hooser said.\n\nState law requires that companies seeking federal permits to test GMOs or experimental-use pesticides must file a copy of the request with the state. But when Hooser asked the state health department for copies of these requests, he was sent a grand total of eight.\n\n\"I said, 'There must be a problem\u2014there must be more,'\" Hooser told me. A couple of months ago, he asked again. This time, the health department said they had \"a roomful of these things.\" We haven't even opened the boxes, the state people told Hooser, \"but you're welcome to come by and look.\"\n\nAlthough the state has an entire storeroom full of boxes, \"literally nobody at the state looks at these documents,\" Hooser said. \"Nobody. And most are highly redacted.\"\n\nCompanies point to reams of paper to show how regulated they are, but Hooser found that no one was checking up on them. \"The state inspects them maybe five times a year, and they spray 220 days out of the year, and an average of eight to sixteen times a day. It's a tragedy. They look me in the eye and say they are inspected on a regular basis, and 43 percent of the state inspection logs are redacted.\"\n\nA Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) log shows that in 2011 and 2012, the state made 175 inspections on Kauai, but more than a third of these reports had been redacted, the names of companies, employees, and alleged violations crossed out. The log has this note attached: \"On two separate occasions, Kaua'i County Councilmember Hooser has requested in writing from the HDOA 'the nature of the violations and investigations without the accompanying company identification.' This information has not been provided.\"\n\nWhen Hooser finally got his hands on a list of restricted-use pesticide sales from the state Department of Agriculture, \"the core data shocked the hell out of me,\" he said. \"Restricted use\" means the chemicals (in this case including alachlor, atrazine, chlorpyrifos, methomyl, metolachlor, permethrin, and paraquat) are more dangerous\u2014and thus more tightly regulated by the EPA\u2014than general-use pesticides like glyphosate or 2,4-D.\n\n\"Ninety-eight percent of the restricted-use pesticides were being used by just four companies. They were using atrazine by the ton. Paraquat. Eighteen tons a year of twenty-two different kinds of restricted-use pesticides on this island only.\" All these chemicals didn't just disappear, Hooser knew. Some were taken up into plants, but some trickled into the island's soil, the water, the air itself.\n\nState records show that between 2010 and 2012, the agrochemical companies purchased 13 tons (plus nearly 16,000 gallons) of restricted-use pesticides on the island. Pest control companies used an additional 74,000 pounds, mostly to kill termites and ants.\n\nOther records show that between 2013 and 2015, companies sprayed 18 tons of restricted-use pesticides. During this period, companies also used some seventy-five different general-use pesticides, but because of lax enforcement codes, no information was available for how much was used.\n\nSix of the seven restricted-use pesticides are suspected of being endocrine disruptors, which means they may cause sexual development defects in humans and animals, according to the EPA. Four of the seven are also suspected carcinogens. And between them, the seven have been linked to, among other things, neurological and brain problems and damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, adrenal glands, central nervous system, muscles, spleen, and liver. And these are only the most toxic of the lot. As we have seen, even general-use pesticides like glyphosate and 2,4-D have recently been declared \"probable\" and \"possible\" human carcinogens in their own right.\n\nA study published in March 2014 in the British journal _The Lancet_ found that chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin that is restricted in California and many countries, is one of a dozen commonly used chemicals that \"injure the developing brain\" of children.\n\nRecent hair sample testing of children living near the Kauai test fields indicated exposure to thirty-nine different pesticides, including eight restricted-use pesticides. \"It's unconscionable that pesticides are being found in the hair and bodies of our children,\" said Malia Chun, the mother of one of the girls tested. \"State and federal officials have a responsibility to ban chlorpyrifos and make sure our children are protected in our homes and schools from these hazardous chemicals.\"\n\nBut it wasn't just chlorpyrifos. Children were exposed to \"a cocktail of pesticides, and the consequences of exposure to such mixtures over a lifetime are not known, nor is the issue of exposure to such mixtures currently evaluated by our regulatory agencies,\" said Emily Marquez, an endocrinologist and staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network.\n\nAlso in the cocktail: permethrin, a suspected carcinogen thought to compromise kidney, liver, reproductive, and neurological function. When combined in the body with chlorpyrifos, permethrin has been shown to be \"even more acutely toxic,\" according to E. G. Vallianatos, a twenty-five-year veteran of the EPA and author of _Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA._\n\nAnother ingredient in the cocktail: atrazine, the second most widely used herbicide (behind glyphosate) in the United States. A known carcinogen, atrazine is sprayed on half of all corn crops and 90 percent of sugar sold in the United States\u2014which is why it is commonly used on experimental fields in Kauai. \"A little bit of poison to an adult is a lot of poison to a developing baby,\" Dr. Tyrone Hayes, an endocrinologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told an audience on Kauai recently. The poisoning of a young child can cause health problems that can last a lifetime, Hayes said; his own research has found that frogs exposed to barely detectable levels of atrazine developed both male and female genitalia.\n\nOn Kauai, frustration with chemical company behavior grew most acute in the town of Waimea, on the island's west side. In 2000, residents of the town filed a formal complaint claiming that pesticide-laden dust was blowing into their homes from experimental fields operated by DuPont Pioneer. They got nowhere.\n\nSix years later, sixty students in a Waimea school went to their health office complaining that a \"chemical smell\" was making them nauseous and dizzy. Some students fainted. Others were seen covering their noses with their T-shirts. Nearly three dozen were sent home. A local reporter noted that several of the children \"had their heads in their hands and tears in their eyes.\"\n\nThe school is situated just a few dozen yards from experimental fields leased by Syngenta. Firefighters, police, a hazmat team, and officials from the state health and agriculture departments descended on the school to examine students and take samples from the nearby fields.\n\nAt first, company and state officials blamed the outbreak on a malodorous plant called _Cleome gynandra_ , also known as wild spider flower or (more accurately) stinkweed. \"It does stink and as a company we certainly hope the children are feeling better,\" a Syngenta official said.\n\nThough it is eaten (boiled) in some parts of the world, stinkweed has been known to cause headaches and even nausea in some people who are particularly sensitive to it. But Gary Hooser, who was a state senator at the time, was not convinced. He started making phone calls. He wanted the company, or the state, to tell parents what chemicals were being applied to the crops near their children's school. Neither state officials nor Syngenta would tell the senator anything, and repeated attempts by local reporters \"to compel authorities to release the information were unsuccessful.\"\n\nCompany claims about stinkweed contamination struck some scientists and doctors as disingenuous. Given that the company fields were so close to the schools and to local homes, a few things were beyond dispute. There was no questioning the presence of restricted-use pesticides, or that dust from these pesticides routinely migrates into residential properties, or that the chemicals have a well-documented connection to childhood neurological problems, including autism, ADHD, and fetal brain defects, wrote J. Milton Clark, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and a former senior health and science adviser to the EPA, who examined the evidence for an island task force on pesticides.\n\nThere was no evidence to support the stinkweed theory, Clark wrote. \"Symptoms of dizziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory discomfort are consistent with exposure to airborne pesticides,\" he wrote. The children's symptoms \"were far more likely related to pesticide exposures than from exposure to stinkweed.\" If the companies continued spraying, Clark recommended that local health centers near agricultural fields be given kits \"to quickly test for organophosphate poisoning.\"\n\nIt took nearly six years for state health officials to formally weigh in on the incident. When researchers from the University of Hawaii sampled the air around the Waimea Canyon Middle School, they indeed found evidence of stinkweed. But they also found five pesticides, including chlorpyrifos, metolachlor, bifenthrin, benzene hexachlorides (BHCs), and even DDT, which has been banned in the United States for four decades. Although the chemicals were found in amounts below EPA health standards, the presence of agricultural chemicals was clear evidence of \"pesticide drift,\" according to Hawaii's Department of Agriculture. How many years these chemicals\u2014and perhaps dozens of others\u2014had been drifting into Waimea homes and schools was not addressed.\n\nTo Gary Hooser, Waimea's pesticide drift was just part of the problem. The larger issue was the way companies seemed to consider themselves beyond the reach of public oversight. \"The failure to release the information about what is sprayed out there only increases the public's mistrust that something harmful is being sprayed,\" Hooser said at the time. \"They know what was sprayed out there and they should tell the public.\"\n\nWhat the island needed\u2014and what the medical community began demanding\u2014was information about the chemicals being sprayed in their communities. Frustrated by the lack of quantitative data about pesticide use, a group of west-side physicians wrote that they had \"many qualitative examples that point to a higher than normal incidence of many ailments and disease processes occurring in our patient populations.\" They'd seen birth defects involving malformations of the heart that were occurring at ten times the national rate. Miscarriages, gout, cancer, hormonal imbalances\u2014all were occurring at unusually high levels, the doctors wrote, noting that Hawaii had not had surveillance for birth defects since 2005. They called for epidemiology studies by the CDC and Hawaii's Department of Health to better understand the causes.\n\n\"We all share a deep concern for the health of our patients and the concern of what may be happening to our community by being exposed to this unique cocktail of experimental and restricted-use pesticides on an almost daily basis,\" the Kauai doctors wrote. \"We need to understand what chemical toxins are being sprayed, how often they are being sprayed, and how close our patients live to the specific areas being tested with these pesticides. It is unconscionable to allow open-air testing of new combinations and untested chemicals in any location that cannot guarantee the separation of the testing and any unwilling or unknown exposure potential to the public.\"\n\nThe doctors' worries reflected conclusions in a major study by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which contended that a growing body of evidence points to associations between pesticide spray exposure in young children and a range of diseases, from childhood cancers to autism. On Kauai this was especially worrisome for the children of people who work in the fields, said Dr. Lee Evslin, a pediatrician on the island. The AAP \"never had a mandate about pesticides before, but they have now placed it in our laps,\" Evslin said. \"This body carries a lot of weight, and they are basically saying to the pediatricians of the world, 'pay attention to this. These are dangerous substances.'\"\n\nMargie Maupin, a nurse practitioner on the island's west side, said the presence of so many pesticides\u2014and so little information\u2014had left her unable to do her job properly. \"Thousands of reputable studies have already been done that show pesticides are known hazardous toxins,\" she said. \"The probability that these pesticides will hurt a lot of people on the west side, I believe, is high. Some health care providers are already seeing signs of serious illness and disability now, and we are at a loss for how best to protect our patients from this onslaught of known, dangerous exposure.\"\n\n### Taking the Companies to Court\n\nWhen I visited Waimea, I met a man named Klayton Kubo, who has been raging about clouds of dust for fifteen years. When we first sat down at a picnic table in the town center, Kubo refused to talk to me. Too many people around, he said, looking over his shoulder. The companies know who I am.\n\nInstead, we drove to the top of a nearby ridge, parked, and walked along a dry path overlooking the town. To our left, in the near distance, we could see fields operated by both DuPont Pioneer and Dow. Tractors were working the fields, with red dust rising behind them. Perhaps six miles away, the largest of the plumes rose hundreds of feet into the air.\n\n\"If you think this is bad, you should come back during a trade winds day,\" Kubo said. \"It's fucking insane!\n\n\"Two hundred yards outside my living room window, I can see their facility. The wind comes this way, we get it. The wind goes the other way, we get it. And right in the middle is a school and a town.\"\n\nKubo pointed at the plume in the distance. \"What you see right there? That's what's in my kitchen,\" he said. \"I scrape the stuff off my glass-top stove. That's why I've been grumbling the longest.\"\n\nAs we walked down the hill, an official-looking white pickup truck drove by. \"Ha! Syngenta!\" Kubo shouted. \"Don't fuck with my truck!\"\n\nIn 2011, more than a hundred of Klayton Kubo's neighbors filed a lawsuit against DuPont Pioneer claiming that dust from the company's fields was damaging their property. Despite more than a decade of complaints and a formal citizen petition seeking relief from pesticide-laden dust, the lawsuit claimed, Pioneer's GMO operations continually generated \"excessive fugitive dust\" and used dangerous pesticides \"without taking preventative steps to control airborne pollutants as promised by Pioneer and as required by state and county law.\"\n\n\"The community is covered,\" the plaintiffs' lawyer Gerard Jervis said. Residents are \"living in lockdown, unable to open their doors or windows.\" The suit pointedly did not make any health claims, though Jervis said local residents complained frequently of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.\n\nA company spokesperson defended Pioneer's practices. \"We operate our facilities on the islands with the highest standard of safety and environmental responsibility and we plan to vigorously defend our case.\"\n\nAt the beginning of the trial, when residents alluded to health problems they attributed to the dust, the judge in the case reminded his attorneys that the case was about property damage only. The case was not about the effects the chemicals might be having on their health.\n\nJervis reminded the court that the EPA requires that applicators must not allow spray to drift from fields into private property, parks and recreation areas, woodlands, or pastures. He also noted that the state's air quality study did not even try to look for more than thirty pesticides that have been used at the GMO test fields since 2007, including two of the most heavily used and dangerous: methomyl, an insecticide, and paraquat, a weedkiller that (like atrazine) has been linked to Parkinson's disease and (also like atrazine) is made by Syngenta. Paraquat has been banned both in Switzerland, Syngenta's home, and across Europe.\n\nAs the Waimea lawsuit proceeded through its paces, worries about pesticides on Kauai continued to grow. A local Kauai diver discovered a massive die-off of up to 50,000 sea urchins. A biologist for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources speculated that the chemicals sprayed on GM seeds might have been a cause, because when it rains, the loosened red topsoil on treated land flows into streams and rivers that eventually flow out into the ocean and onto coral reefs.\n\n\"Kaua'i produces more GMO seeds than anyplace,\" Don Heacock, the biologist, said. \"Now, there are a whole bunch of people in the genetic engineering camp that say GMO crops need less pesticides, but the new wave of crops is more toxic than ever before. The Bt corn is meant to kill. It has an insecticide protein in the corn. In the Midwest, they found that the residue from GMO corn is related to aquatic insect deaths, which are food for baby fish.\"\n\nThat same winter, the internationally renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva traveled from New Delhi to Kauai to speak to anti-GMO activists. \"I think your island is truth-speaking to the world that GMOs are an extension of pesticides, not a substitute or alternative to it,\" she said. \"[Hawaii] has become like a nerve center for the expansion of destruction. GMOs are not a safe alternative to poisons, they are pushed by a poison industry to both increase the sale of the poisons and simultaneously monopolize the seed.\"\n\nEvoking the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, when a chemical leak from a Union Carbide plant (now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical) killed and injured tens of thousands of people, Shiva said that chemical manufacturers had long since transformed themselves into the biotech industry. \"War and agriculture came together when the chemicals that were produced for warfare lost their market\u2014and the industry organized itself to sell those chemicals as agrochemicals,\" Shiva said.\n\nEnergized, activists on Kauai decided to take their animus against the companies to the streets. In December 2012, Fern Rosenstiel, who grew up near Agent Orange test fields, organized a small protest by the Kauai airport. She was joined by Dustin Barca, a professional surfer who, at the age of twenty-six, had become a successful professional fighter in mixed martial arts. Surfing and fighting had made Barca famous on Kauai and around the state, and he decided to leverage his fame to galvanize people against the chemical companies.\n\nBarca had an idea. That same month, during the Pipeline Masters surfing competition on Oahu, he made headlines just by standing on the beach.\n\n\"There were 30,000 people on the beach, millions more [watching] on TV,\" Barca told me. \"Me and this little kid carried around a bright red and yellow banner that said 'Monsanto's GMO Food Poisons Families.' That was my first, initial move to get the word out, on the north shore of Oahu, the most famous surf spot in world.\"\n\nWhen I met Barca, he, like Klayton Kubo, refused to talk in public. He didn't know who might be watching. But even more than Kubo, Barca is used to fighting. He has the wiry frame of a welterweight. He is missing teeth. His ears have been so damaged they have turned inside out. Ever since he'd entered the political fray, he's had people videotaping him, he said. At a recent anti-GMO rally, he confronted a man taping him with a video camera. \"I told him, 'Whoever sent you is going to have to do better than that,'\" Barca said.\n\n\"Are these companies good for people or nature? How can we tell if they don't give us the information?\" Barca said. \"We know what they're doing. They've admitted they're spraying 2,4-D near our communities, and the trade winds blow every single day. We've gone so far into a place where everything is done behind closed doors. It was the same thing that Dole and others did to overthrow the queen. History repeats itself. You just have to know the blueprint to catch it.\"\n\nEmboldened by the anti-GMO energy he felt at the surfing tournament, Barca decided to see just how much energy he could leverage across the state. He and Rosenstiel set about organizing marches on all five islands where companies were testing GMOs and pesticides.\n\nOn Oahu, close to 3,000 people turned out for a rally in the pouring rain. \"I thought, 'Holy shit, that's a lot of people who feel like I feel,'\" Barca said. \"That set up the momentum.\n\n\"We went to a different island every Saturday. First was Honolulu. There's a town there that is the Waimea of Oahu, surrounded by Monsanto experimental fields. We went to a high school over there. You literally walk fifty feet behind their fields. All the kids are running around, these are experimental fields. There are giant aerial sprayers. They can spray 250 times a year, dozens of times a day.\"\n\nAs word spread, the anti-GMO crowds continued to turn out in droves: 300 came out on Molokai, one of the smallest of the islands; 1,500 on the Big Island; 2,000 on Maui.\n\nMeanwhile on Kauai, with anti-GMO energy reaching a peak, Gary Hooser found himself in a bind. If he encouraged activists to stand out in front of expensive tourist hotels, holding up signs saying that Kauai is \"Ground Zero for Experimental GMOs,\" his community stood to lose tourism dollars. He decided instead to introduce a bill that would force companies to do what they so far had refused to do: disclose what they were spraying, on what crops, and in what fields, \"to see if we have anything to be afraid of.\" The bill also sought to create no-spray buffer zones around schools, homes, and hospitals. His bill carried criminal sanctions for companies that refused to comply; Hooser hoped this would at the very least encourage whistleblowers.\n\n\"People were concerned with pesticides and GMOs, so what was I supposed to do?\" Hooser told me. \"I met with the companies, asked them to give me their data, asked them to help me separate the wheat from the chaff, and the companies wouldn't tell me anything. They wouldn't respond to my questions. They lied to me. They were telling me they 'only use what other farmers use.' No other farmers use this stuff, and not in anything like the toxicity or the volume. The more they lied, the more I dug into it, and the more angry I got.\"\n\nIndustry executives claimed the bill's disclosure rules were unnecessary, unfair, and pseudoscientific. Alicia Maluafiti, the executive director of the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, a biotech trade group, called Kauai's move \"a pretty pissy bill.\"\n\n\"It's not about community health, it's not about pesticide use, it's about getting rid of these companies,\" she said. She called the pesticide disclosure bill \"fearmongering by Mr. Hooser and the extremists on Kauai.\"\n\nCompanies dismissed complaints by repeating that both GMOs and pesticides were highly regulated by the government. Genetically engineered products \"have been out there for seventeen years now,\" said Mark Phillipson, Syngenta's head of corporate affairs in Hawaii. \"There have been 3 trillion meals served that have had genetic-engineered components in them, and not one reported incident, acutely or long term, associated with GM causing an allergen or toxicity issue.\"\n\nDuring the hearings on the bill, hundreds of people from both sides showed up to voice their opinions, many of them wearing colored shirts to show which side they were on.\n\n\"We made shirts with red and yellow, representing the strong in Hawaiian tradition. They wore blue,\" Dustin Barca told me. \"It was almost like the Bloods and the Crips.\"\n\nCompanies urged their employees to show up en masse to counterbalance the protesters. \"The companies bussed workers in here so we couldn't even get in to testify,\" Rosenstiel said.\n\nIndeed, the battle caused a lot of collateral damage in the Kauai community. \"We had a number of doctors come forward\u2014a clear majority of pediatricians signed a letter supporting the bill\u2014but even they paid a political price,\" Hooser told me. \"These doctors get hammered. They didn't say they 'know illnesses are caused by this spraying,' they just said they were concerned. But the pushback by the companies, their bloggers, the media stuff, it's been intense.\"\n\nDuring one hearing, a councilman asked an official from the state Department of Agriculture if there was any evidence of pesticide drift. Complaints do come in, the official said, and the state goes to houses, swipes the windows, and sends the samples out for testing. When the investigation is complete, the neighborhood is notified. The whole process\u2014if it actually gets completed\u2014can take two years.\n\nWhat if it's a pregnant woman or a child who's being exposed? Gary Hooser wanted to know. What good is a two-year lag in the testing to them?\n\nAs the vote neared, Rosenstiel and Barca helped organize another march. Some 4,000 people marched to the Kauai County Building to support the bill. Some wore gas masks. Others wore death masks. Many wore red T-shirts with yellow letters saying \"Pass the Bill.\"\n\nFinally, after a hearing on the bill that went on for nineteen hours straight, the Kauai County Council passed Hooser's bill, 6\u20131. The mayor vetoed the bill, but the council overrode his veto. It was official: Kauai's anti-GMO activists had pushed their elected officials to pass a bill requiring some of the world's most powerful companies to disclose what pesticides they were spraying and where. In a very real sense, the vote was a watershed.\n\nYet within weeks, DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta, BASF, and Agrigenetics Inc. (a company affiliated with Dow AgroSciences) sued the county in federal court. Their argument: Company farming practices adhere to state and federal laws. Local laws have no jurisdiction over them.\n\nIn August 2014, federal judge Barry Kurren agreed with the companies that the state pesticide law preempted any county law regulating pesticides.\n\nAn attorney representing two of the companies said she was very pleased. \"This is what we told the county when they were discussing it initially,\" she said. \"I think they wasted time, effort, and money trying to fight for a law they had no right to pass in the first place.\"\n\nGary Hooser saw the ruling differently. \"We passed the bill with a democratic process, with thousands of citizens involved,\" he told me. \"We got the votes like we were supposed to. We overrode the mayor's veto. And they sued us for the right to spray poisons next to schools.\" The anti-GMO forces on Kauai have appealed the judge's decision; it is now awaiting a hearing in federal court.\n\nBefore the dust from the political fight could settle, Dustin Barca, the surfer and professional MMA fighter who had done so much to organize the anti-GMO rallies, decided to make one last public push: he ran to unseat the mayor who had vetoed Hooser's bill. During the campaign, he ran\u2014literally, ran\u2014around the island; three marathons, back-to-back. Although he didn't win, he did pull 40 percent of the vote.\n\n\"This was totally untypical of me,\" Barca told me. \"I just had a voice in my heart and my head that said, 'You have to do something about this right now.' I threw my whole selfish life away and went into selfless life. I'm not doing this to get rich or famous. I could be making millions fighting in the UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. I'm here for my kids. No other reason.\"\n\nAbout this time, the state Department of Agriculture and Kauai County agreed to set up a fact-finding effort to look into pesticide use. They recruited nine volunteers with backgrounds in agriculture, environmental health, and toxicology. Kauai County split the $100,000 cost of the study with the state Department of Agriculture.\n\n\"The big question, the meta-question if you will, is: Are people being harmed from pesticides being sprayed by GMO companies?\" said Peter Adler, a veteran mediator who will oversee the project. \"We hope to really present some pretty rigorous inventories of what we know, what we don't know, and what we need to know still and find out. People are talking at their conclusion levels and we want to get down to: What's the data? What's the evidence?\"\n\nFor local residents, there were other \"meta-questions,\" like whether they should have a say in how their land is used, and how they can protect their own neighborhoods. They have had some victories: in May 2015, a federal court jury awarded $500,000 to fifteen Waimea residents who claimed the red dust from DuPont Pioneer fields caused \"loss of use and enjoyment of property.\" The verdict said that DuPont Pioneer failed to follow generally accepted agricultural and management practices from 2009 to 2011; the jurors found the \"seriousness of the harm to each plaintiff outweighs the public benefit of Pioneer's farming operation.\"\n\nTen days after the verdict, DuPont Pioneer shut down its 3,000-acre experimental field operation in Kekaha. It plans to consolidate it with operations on Oahu.\n\nAt the end of April 2015, Gary Hooser flew to Switzerland to speak at a Syngenta shareholders meeting in Basel. He wanted to ask the company to stop using chemicals in his district that are already illegal in the company's own country\u2014indeed, across the company's own continent.\n\nThe company did not welcome him. On his blog, Hooser recently wrote:\n\nSyngenta did not want me there and was working on many levels to prevent me from speaking, but legally there was nothing they could do to stop me . . .\n\nI asked them to withdraw from their lawsuit against the County of Kauai, to honor and follow our laws, and to give our community the same respect and protections afforded to the people in their home country of Switzerland. I pointed out that their company uses highly toxic Restricted Use Pesticides (RUPs) in our community, including atrazine, paraquat and four others that they are forbidden by law from using in their own country.\n\nWe are not going away and we will not tap out. So long as these companies continue to disrespect and disregard the wishes of our community, we will continue the battle to make them comply.\n\nFern Rosenstiel, who had organized so many of the marches on Kauai and the other islands, accompanied Hooser on his trip to Switzerland.\n\n\"For me, this island is the trunk of the tree,\" Rosenstiel told me. \"If we can get these companies off this island, if we can cut this tree down, it will cause a positive worldwide reaction. I'll be here until the day I die, or until these guys are gone.\"\n\n## 6.\n\n## Fighting for That Which Feeds Us\n\n Around the time Kauai voters were rattling the biotech world by approving a pesticide disclosure law, a group of indigenous Hawaiians and back-to-the-land farmers on two other Hawaiian islands\u2014Maui and the Big Island\u2014were going a dramatic step further: they were pushing to ban GMOs altogether.\n\nTo the big agrochemical companies, this was a far more dangerous game. Being forced to tell people what they were spraying on experimental farms was one thing. Being voted off an island\u2014by what amounted to a pair of tiny county ordinances\u2014was something else entirely.\n\nThe Big Island, basically, had one GM crop\u2014Dennis Gonsalves's papaya\u2014and wanted to lock the door tight before any of the big companies moved in. Maui was a different story. To companies like Monsanto, Maui was not just a warm place to test out new crops; it was the very center of global GM seed production. The majority of the corn seed Monsanto sells to farmers in its biggest markets\u2014Argentina, Brazil, and the United States\u2014originates on Maui. If the island's voters got their way, Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences (the other biotech giant operating there) would have their GMO operations shaken at their foundation.\n\nBeyond this, of course, was the ongoing global perception game. It was one thing for companies to lose fights in Europe\u2014GMOs had never been welcome there\u2014but losing another major public relations battle in the United States was something else altogether. Banning GMOs on a couple of little islands could ignite larger movements in bigger places that were already primed for the fight. Vermont. Oregon. California. And then? South America? India?\n\nFor the companies, already shaken by the Kauai vote, the battles on Maui and the Big Island were about global markets and their ambition to sell seeds and chemicals to the world. They would spend millions of dollars to prevent the anti-GMO ball from rolling any further. There was no way they were going to let a small group of activists derail their global business plans.\n\nBut for the people on the islands themselves, the battles were far more intimate. To them, the fight against GMOs resembled similar fights not in the United States but in the developing world, where indigenous people and political activists had struggled against global conglomerates for years. They were fighting to protect land they considered sacred. They were fighting to break a long history of colonial oppression. They were fighting for the right to feed themselves.\n\n### The Battle on the Big Island\n\nEven as Dennis Gonsalves traveled the world trying to persuade farmers to adopt his beloved papaya, his neighbors back home on the Big Island were working just as hard trying to ban GMOs altogether. In a way, the anti-GMO activists took the same line as Dennis Gonsalves: they wanted to protect farmers. It's just that the farmers they wanted to protect were of an entirely different sort.\n\nNancy Redfeather is not particularly interested in whether GM papayas continue to sell in China or anywhere else. She wants her island to grow food for itself. All this technology, all these companies, all this talk of a globalized food economy\u2014it all just gets in the way of growing nutritious food for people who live down the road.\n\nThe day I met her, on a stunning 70-degree day, Nancy poured me a glass of tangelo juice her husband, Gerry Herbert, had made from one of the thirty-six varieties of fruit trees the couple grow on their one-acre organic farm. Nancy offered me a cup of coffee, ground from beans they roasted from the twelve varieties of coffee they grow at home. She offered me a plate of fruit\u2014apple bananas, yellow dragon fruit, navel oranges, blush pink grapefruit, star fruit, Tahitian pamplemousse, avocado\u2014all just picked from their farm. Had I stuck around for dinner, we might have eaten a meal made from kabocha pumpkin with cloves, turmeric, ginger, and garlic. Plus wild chickens or wild pigs. (In six months, Gerry caught thirty-nine feral pigs in a trap. Their meat is exquisite, he says; given their proximity to his crops, the pigs eat better than most people.)\n\nNancy and Gerry run a small organic farm near Kona. Nancy moved to Hawaii from California in the mid-1970s, when the back-to-the-land movement sent many mainlanders looking for places to set up sustainable livelihoods. They built their timber-frame home themselves. They have a kitchen inside the house, and another one outside the house. Three-quarters of the food they eat they grow themselves.\n\nAfter lunch, Gerry gave me a tour of his gardens. Here is a sample of what he grows in a single acre: There were trees called jaboticaba (Tupi for \"fat of the flesh of the turtle\") that had strange black berries growing straight from the bark. The berries resemble hefty Concord grapes and yield beautiful pink juice. Gerry freezes this juice, then uses it to make banana bread.\n\nThere were four varieties of black beans, lychee trees, a Rajapuri banana tree that produces 500 pounds of fruit a year. There was an eighty-seven-year-old mango tree that still drops 250 pounds of fruit a year (\"We eat as much as we can and feed the rest to the chickens,\" Gerry said). Black-capped raspberries. Star fruit. Pigeon peas. Dragon fruit growing along a stone wall; coffee bushes that produce 1,500 pounds of beans a year; 120 pounds of macadamia nuts. Five different kinds of avocados, including 180 pounds from a single tree. The Yama avocado, Gerry says, makes Hass avocados \"seem like something you'd only feed to the pigs.\"\n\n\"I've lived all over the States and all over the world, and this is the best growing climate I've ever lived in,\" Gerry said.\n\nGerry got his agricultural degree from UC-Davis, near where the Flavr Savr tomato was first developed, and then spent thirty years farming twenty-two acres in Mendocino. When I asked Gerry if he had ever tried a Flavr Savr, he smiled.\n\n\"I tasted the Flavr Savr. It tasted like rubber,\" he said. \"I thought, 'Wow, you guys are never going to sell this,' and sure enough, it fell on its face.\n\n\"If corporations develop a plant, they develop it for their own reasons. They don't develop it for nutrition. They could care less about nutrition. That's not the people you want growing your food.\"\n\nEspecially given Hawaii's utopian weather and soil, Nancy and Gerry think that using the state's precious land to grow GMOs\u2014including Dennis Gonsalves's papaya\u2014is a travesty, and symptomatic of a farm system focused entirely on making money for exporters. Hawaiian farmers could provide close to 40 percent of the state's fruits, but rather than sell them locally, companies ship them to the mainland. \"We keep one percent,\" Nancy said. \"You can't even find it in stores. By the time it gets somewhere else, it loses its taste and its nutrition\u2014just like the food we import.\"\n\nShe pointed to my plate, brimming over with fresh-picked organic produce.\n\n\"Nothing on that plate can you find in stores,\" she said.\n\nNancy and Gerry's farm is typical of how most farming is done on the Big Island: 80 percent of the farms are under five acres. Their farm creates virtually no waste; the couple generates 1,500 pounds a year and puts all of it back into their soil. \"You can think of this place as a mini experimental station for home producers,\" Nancy told me. \"It's intended to be that. We don't just grow what we know we can grow. We try all kinds of things. We have a lot of failures and a lot of successes. We're also trying to be sustainable, trying to grow with only inputs from right here on the farm.\"\n\nExcept for GM papaya, the only biotech crop grown on the Big Island is a few hundred acres of corn, grown to feed cattle. None of the big companies have tried to push their experimental corn and soy operations. Yet.\n\n\"We are a land of small farms,\" Nancy said. \"The biotech industry didn't come here. We don't have big, flat land they want to grow crops on. It's not as good for them.\"\n\nImagine if the state reorganized its priorities and started buying food from its own farmers, Nancy said. Imagine if it started providing local schoolchildren with fresh produce from right here on the islands, rather than processed food from the mainland? Hawaii spends $470 million a year on obesity care and hardly anything on prevention\u2014and it is imported, processed food that is making people fat. And consider this: virtually all of Hawaii's food imports come through the ports of Los Angeles and San Francisco. If those boats stopped coming here\u2014if there was an earthquake or a terror attack\u2014\"Hawaii would have one week before people started to starve.\"\n\n\"When you put chemicals into the ground, it wipes out all the critters\u2014the fungus, the bacteria\u2014that produce fertility,\" Gerry said. \"We had a hundred years of sugar, and now the soil is just loaded with toxins: lead, arsenic, DDE, Agent Orange. It's just loaded. Now all your nitrogen producers are dead, and you have to buy synthetic fertilizer. It's like an addiction, and after a few years, the land is burned out. The soil is dead. It's a red powder. Even weeds won't grow there.\"\n\nBack in 2000, as the local GMO debate began to heat up, Nancy did some research and discovered there were 4,000 experimental field trials going on all over the state. What the companies were growing, and what they were spraying, was a complete mystery. \"No matter who you asked, no one knew what this was,\" Nancy told me. \"The Big Five companies were all here. So we\u2014five mothers of young children\u2014started looking into it, and decided the community needed to know what was happening here.\"\n\nNancy turned to politics and found an ally in Margaret Wille, a Hawaii County Council member. Wille is as adamant about protecting farmers as Dennis Gonsalves and Nancy Redfeather, but when it comes to GMOs, she falls squarely into Redfeather's camp.\n\nEspecially given volcanic debates about GMOs brewing on Kauai and Maui, Wille considered herself a bulwark against industrial agriculture on her own island. \"We look around and see what's going on in other counties,\" she said. \"On Maui, a major section of agricultural land has been taken by these GMO corporations. Now we have dust storms because most GM corn is done with herbicide-resistant chemicals, which kills the soil, makes it sterile, and makes it unstable, so you get dust storms.\n\n\"My district is a breadbasket district. A lot of it is organic, and there is a whole culture of protecting the land, of planting indigenous crops and heirloom seeds. I've heard GMO people say, 'We're going to be everywhere so you won't have any choice.' It's like having an invasive species or a virus: you can't protect against it. As a culture\u2014we have a big native Hawaiian population\u2014we're going in the opposite direction.\"\n\nIn a move that made international headlines, Wille introduced a bill in 2013 that would ban GMOs from being planted on the Big Island. Papaya plantations (and corn silage farms) would be grandfathered in, so there was no risk that Dennis Gonsalves's brainchild was in any danger. But no other land would be available to industrial, experimental farms. Wille wrote her bill \"to prevent the transfer and uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered organisms on to private property, public lands and waterways.\" But the larger question was clear: voters on Hawaii should have a say in how their land is used and by whom.\n\nAfter a great deal of rancorous debate in the county council, the bill was approved.\n\nBig agricultural companies\u2014worried that the decision would serve as another domino in the global anti-GMO movement\u2014immediately sued to prevent the county from enforcing the law. Lawyers representing major industries\u2014the Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association, the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association, the Big Island Banana Growers Association, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the world's largest biotech trade association\u2014claimed the bill lacked scientific evidence. In the two decades since Dennis Gonsalves began his work, genetically modified farming had become a \"critical and generally accepted part of agriculture,\" their complaint said.\n\nIndustry also claimed that Wille's law was invalid, since local ordinances don't trump state or federal law, and in November 2014, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren, once again, agreed: county law could not override state and federal law. The law banning GMOs was overturned: the county is appealing in federal court.\n\nIndustry representatives were elated. \"This is something to be thankful for,\" one of the plaintiffs' attorneys said. \"This is really important to some of the farmers. It has a big impact on their lives and their livelihoods.\"\n\nNancy Redfeather scoffed at such statements.\n\n\"The Big Ag industry says, 'We're a $270 million industry,'\" she said. \"We say, 'What are your products? What do you sell here?' The answer is: 'Nothing.'\n\n\"We want to be like Vancouver Island: lots of local organic farms,\" Redfeather said. \"That's what I want: to create jobs, healthy food, more dollars floating through our own economy. That's what a lot of people were thinking when we passed this bill. It was really arrogant of Judge Kurren to say, 'It's not the responsibility of the county to regulate what they want.' That 'the health of the land is none of your business, it's the business of the state.' When you look at the state budget for the Department of Ag, the appropriation for local agriculture is so small you can't even see it on a bar graph. The state is not capable of protecting us from anything.\"\n\nBut industry didn't stop there. Given their success in court, companies turned their attention to unseating Margaret Wille, their nemesis on the county council.\n\n\"The super PACs all lined up against me,\" Wille told me. \"They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat me. They sent out fliers with a papaya on it, saying, 'A vote for Margaret is a vote against the community.' They flooded mailboxes with massive mailings, they did phone calls, they went door-to-door leaving all kinds of negative stuff. They brought people in from Honolulu. It was really the first time that big money came in to defeat a local councilperson.\"\n\nAfter a \"tsunami of outrage and objection,\" Wille survived the onslaught. \"We are tired of having these lobbyists control things,\" Wille told me. \"The fact I can win against tremendous odds and money and manpower is very hopeful. This isn't over yet.\"\n\n### The War on Maui\n\nIndeed it wasn't. If anything, the skirmish on the Big Island was just a preview for the real fight, which was already under way across the water on Maui. This time, the global seed companies were not going to wait around for a vote to turn against them. They couldn't afford to: their experimental fields on Maui were the very heart of their global GM seed business. A loss on the Big Island, where there were no experimental farms, was largely symbolic. A loss on Maui would be catastrophic. On Maui, the companies would have to use their muscle\u2014more than $8 million worth\u2014to convince island voters that GMOs were good for them.\n\nBefore agreeing to meet with me, Alika Atay had to consult the moon. He checked his calendar. I'd be arriving on Maui in late March, during a new moon phase. He'd be planting, he said, but could meet me late in the afternoon.\n\nOn my way to meet Alika, I stopped in a local Safeway supermarket to see what kind of fruit was for sale on an island that can produce virtually anything. What I found was the same fruit you would find in a Giant in Baltimore or a Kroger in Dallas or a Piggly Wiggly in Atlanta: Bananas from Costa Rica. Apples from New Zealand. Oranges from Florida.\n\nAs far as I could tell, it was pretty much impossible to buy fruit grown down the street.\n\nFor Alika, as for Nancy Redfeather, this is precisely the problem. In their eyes, the fight against GMOs is part of the much larger fight to loosen the stranglehold that large food companies have on their beloved local food economy. Despite unparalleled weather and growing conditions, the share of produce the state grows for itself has fallen by half since 1990; it now imports two-thirds of its fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2009, for the first time, Hawaii had more land planted for experimental seed crops than for growing fruits and vegetables.\n\nHawaii's agricultural experts have estimated that replacing just 10 percent of the island's food imports with locally grown produce would create 2,300 jobs and $313 million in the local economy and generate nearly $200 million more in sales and tax revenues.\n\n\"The state Department of Education serves 50,000 meals a day, and 90 percent of the food comes from imports,\" Alika said. \"I went over there once and asked to see their order sheet. The first two items on the list were five million pounds of apples and five million pounds of oranges.\n\n\"I said, 'You guys are part of the fucking problem! You say you want to be sustainable, and then you order ten million pounds of apples and oranges from the mainland? Why not order ten million pounds of tangerines and guava and papaya and star fruit that we grow right here?'\"\n\nThe day we met, Alika, as he is known, was dressed in jeans and a green \"MauiThing\" T-shirt adorned with a pitchfork. A camouflage baseball cap barely contained the white curly mane that cascaded down his leathered face and neck. As we talked, Alika's cell phone continued to ring; fellow farmers were checking in about two issues on which Alika has become a charismatic leader: farming and politics.\n\nAlika is the president of the Hawaiian Indigenous Natural Farming Association and a leader in the anti-GMO group called the SHAKA Movement, named for the local hand gesture (a fist with thumb and pinkie extended) used to express cultural solidarity. He is both a grower (he plants, among other things, cucumbers, tomatoes, several varieties of sweet potatoes, and apple bananas) and an educator. He spends a great deal of time teaching sustainable practices to young farmers. He wants them to learn about \"canoe plants,\" the crops that Hawaii's original settlers brought over in tiny boats as they crisscrossed the islands of the Pacific.\n\n\"Our ancestors were pretty cool,\" Alika says. \"Generations ago, they selected particular plants, and for 1,700 years they survived and thrived. They fed millions. And their farming was 100 percent organic. _Nothing_ was imported.\n\n\"Now, we're being asked to grow European seeds, and our soil doesn't have the same geologic composition as it does in the Northeast or in Europe. The cattle and pigs raised here eat our crops, then get 'finished' on the mainland, where they shit out our minerals on someone else's land.\"\n\nAlika sees the struggle against industrial agriculture as far more than just trying to rid his island of GMOs, or pesticides, or global conglomerates: it's about preserving _aina_ , the Hawaiian term for \"that which feeds us.\" _Aina_ represents a sacred bond between people and a place that, once broken, threatens to destroy both humans and the world around them. In their fight against GMOs, Alika and the SHAKA movement considered themselves, as their ancestors did, to be \" _aina_ warriors.\"\n\nForty or fifty years ago, the pineapple plantations sprayed DDT and it leached through the soil, reached local aquifers, and contaminated drinking water. Forty years later, they went back and tested it, and the same wells were _still_ contaminated with DDT. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, heptachlor was being sprayed on the pineapples. The plants got cut up and fed to cattle as \"green chop.\" Then the milk was bottled and served to local kids.\n\n\"For us, this is intergenerational oppression,\" Alika said. \"It's the mentality of the plantation, but instead of plantation bosses, now it's biotech corn bosses. How can you convince people to free themselves from the bonds of oppression?\n\n\"There are two types of power: organized money and organized people,\" he said. \"With organized money, you see the long arm of corruption. They can pervade all levels of government. People make all kinds of decisions because of power and money. When you hear them say, 'We're here to feed the world,' they forgot one word: 'Well.'\"\n\n\u2014\n\nIT IS NOT JUST NATIVE HAWAIIANS who revere the Maui landscape and are willing to fight to preserve it. As on the Big Island, Maui has also been a magnet for back-to-the-land white farmers from the mainland who share the native resistance to corporate agriculture.\n\nGerry Ross and his wife, Janet Simpson, moved to Maui in the 1990s to take over her parents' farm in the middle of the island. Janet left a career as a coffee roaster outside Calgary; Gerry quit his job as a PhD geologist who worked in the Arctic for the Geological Survey of Canada. Today, Gerry is a trim man with a pair of studs in his left ear and two rattails dangling from beneath a dirty white baseball cap; his organic farm produces potatoes, sweet potatoes, lettuces, kale, broccoli, beets, carrots\u2014\"anything you could possibly want to eat except strawberries or asparagus.\"\n\nIt was not always thus. When Gerry and Janet first took over the farm twenty years ago, the local agricultural extension agent told them the first thing they needed to do was fumigate the soil with fungicides and atrazine.\n\n\"My father-in-law passed away fourteen months after we got here, from cancer,\" Gerry Ross said. \"The guy at the ER asked what he did for a living. I said, 'Farmer.' He said, 'Yep. We see it all the time.' I'd be willing to bet that most of the soil being used for GMOs is like what we inherited here.\n\n\"These companies, it's pesticides they want to sell, not food,\" Ross said. \"Theirs is not a farm system designed to feed the world, it's a system designed to sell chemicals.\"\n\nRoss takes his science very seriously. A member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, he applies to soil science the same research instincts he once used as a professor of geology. He pays intimate attention to soil bacteria, and erosion control, and the symbiotic relationship between nitrogen-fixing microbes and the nodules on the roots of plants like sun hemp. Once he figured out that increasing the organic matter beneath his crops by just 1 percent saved 19,000 gallons of water per acre, he started collecting and composting 25 tons of local food waste every year.\n\n\"We're sequestering CO2 like you wouldn't believe,\" Ross said. \"If you're an earth scientist, you understand that with systems, things work together. Plants and microbial rhizomes, that's a 400-million-year-old relationship. Why would we trash that? Why not use 400 million years of evolution instead of fifty years of pesticides?\n\n\"This is why I have such a big problem with GMOs\u2014it's not taking the time to understand natural systems,\" Ross said. \"There's no freaking way a Bt gene should be in corn. There's a certain element of human arrogance. We used to be told 'one gene, one trait.' Now we have epigenetics telling us that echoes can be felt four generations down the line.\"\n\nLike Alika, Ross does a lot more than farm. For years, he taught sustainable agriculture at a nearby learning center for children whose lives, one way or another, had gotten off track. Six times a year, he brought them to his farm to learn science and farming: he taught them about the structure of seeds, how seeds make plants, how plants make food. Mainly, though, he taught them \"to learn that they're not stupid.\"\n\nTo generations of young people, Ross became known as Farmer Gerry. Years later, when the GMO debate started to get hot, these allegiances would prove critical. Young people would come out to vote, many of them for the first time in their lives.\n\n### Who Cares for the Land\u2014the Companies or the People?\n\nFor indigenous farmers like Alika Atay and organic farmers like Gerry Ross, the GMO issue brought old legal debates over land sovereignty to the surface. Hawaii is one of the few states in the country with environmental stewardship written right into the state constitution's \"public trust\" doctrine. When Hawaii held a state constitutional convention in 1978\u20131979, the land stewardship language remained.\n\nFor the benefit of present and future generations, the State and its political subdivisions shall conserve and protect Hawaii's natural beauty and all natural resources, including land, water, air, minerals, energy sources, and shall promote the development and utilization of these resources in a manner consistent with their conservation and in furtherance of the self-sufficiency of the State. All public natural resources are held in trust by the State for the benefit of the people.\n\nAlika considered Maui's anti-GMO movement to be directly connected to this tradition. \"For land and water to be protected as a public trust, for animals and birds and fish to have rights, and most importantly for kids and elders to have health\u2014if you were raised here, you're bound to those core values,\" he said.\n\nAutumn Ness was not born or raised on Maui, but she knew a threat when she saw one. Ness had spent twelve years living in Japan, where, in 2011, she worked for tsunami relief efforts and set up testing facilities after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. When she became pregnant, she sought a home away from the radiation and chose Maui.\n\nIt was a safe bet, she thought, until she came across photographs of handwritten company pesticide spray logs. _July 10, 2014, 10 a.m.: Permethrin. July 15, 2014, 10 a.m.: Lorsban. July 15, 2014, 10 a.m.: Penncap. August 5, 11:30 a.m.: Malathion._\n\n\"When I saw the spray logs, my heart sank,\" Ness said. \"That's when I said, 'Okay, I'm all in.' Those logs came from the _least_ secure fields. Other fields are triple barb-wired, like you're crossing the border between Israel and Palestine. What they were doing on fields you can walk to makes you wonder what they're doing behind all that barbed wire.\"\n\nNess turned to every authority she could think of to find out more about the chemicals being sprayed on the experimental plots and\u2014as people had on Kauai\u2014always came up empty. \"Overshadowing all the issues is the fact that the corporations have hijacked every level of our government,\" she said. \"That's a way bigger issue to me than the spray thing.\n\n\"The cards are institutionally stacked against us, and it's done in a really dishonest way,\" Ness said. \"Everywhere we turned\u2014looking for spray records, or birth defect records, or records of companies spraying near schools\u2014we would get told by every level of people\u2014the workers, the city council, the Department of Health, the Department of Ag\u2014they would all say, 'I understand your problem, but there's nothing I can do for you.' I have to wonder: Who the hell is running the show here? Everyone is giving the companies the keys. Even the judges\u2014we hear, 'I can't do anything for you.' I mean, come on! You're a judge!\"\n\nTogether with Alika's SHAKA Movement, Ness became a central figure in a campaign to get a measure on the county ballot that would put a moratorium on all GM farming until the companies performed full health and environmental safety tests. The original draft included page upon page enumerating the reasons GMOs and their associated pesticides were unwelcome on Maui. The experimental plots were not farms but \"an outdoor laboratory\" that promoted intensive pesticide spraying on Maui and encouraged \"527 million pounds of additional herbicides on the nation's farmland.\" The overuse of pesticides damaged soil, wildlife, and drinking water, all of which have \"cultural and spiritual significance\" to the island's indigenous community. GM crops constituted an \"invasive species\" that threatened the island's delicate balance of native plants and animals, and the pesticides used to grow them posed health risks to both consumers and farmworkers.\n\nThe petition also urged voters to consider the \"Precautionary Principle\" that the U.S. Supreme Court articulated in 1986: federal law mandated that states could not \"sit idly by and wait until potentially irreversible environmental damage has occurred or until the scientific community agrees on what [environmental risks] are or are not dangerous before it acts to avoid such consequences.\"\n\nAutumn Ness got busy knocking on doors. As part of her signature-gathering campaign, she carried along the pesticide spray logs, both as she talked to voters and when she was interviewed in the press. She published them on Facebook and in the newspaper. She circulated satellite images of the island, with experimental fields outlined in red and dramatic yellow and blue arrows indicating the direction in which chemicals would drift into towns through the air or in creeks and rivers. The images, intentionally or not, resemble military target maps, with the arrows passing directly over elementary schools and wildlife refuges.\n\n\"These guys were spraying many times a day,\" she said. \"It's not farming, it's chemical testing. As soon as the companies found out those photos were a central part of our campaign, they went back and ripped down the board where they had posted the spray records.\"\n\nNess needed to work quickly. In order to place the measure before the county council (which could either vote on the referendum directly or pass the measure on to voters instead), organizers needed to gather 8,000 signatures within six months.\n\nBy the end of May, with Alika organizing farmers and people in the indigenous community, and Ness knocking on doors, they had collected more than 11,000 signatures in just six weeks.\n\nThe ball was now in the county council's court. During a series of \"excruciating\" hearings on the measure, people from both sides of the debate showed up to pressure the council. Monsanto organized a rally in front of the Maui County Building. Workers showed up wearing neon yellow hats and T-shirts and carrying signs emblazoned with \"Save Ag Jobs\" and \"Save Farmers.\" \"I think the initiative will threaten not only agriculture, but a lot of great jobs for the people of Maui,\" a worker named Lowella Oasay told a local reporter.\n\nA Monsanto employee named Carol Reimann appeared on a video delivering \"over a thousand pages of weighted studies and documents and research papers that attest to the health and safety of our products and farming practices in Maui County.\" A man wearing a neon yellow shirt with a Monsanto emblem on the breast said, \"I love the research, I love what I do, I love working in agriculture. I've been doing it for seventeen years. It's still what drives me. I know what we do here has an impact around the word, you know, and that's important to me. That's why I do it.\"\n\nAnother Monsanto employee, Dan Clegg, said the documents were evidence of the company's \"transparency.\" \"I don't want to speculate, but I would say there is a group of people that have signed that petition that are thoroughly confused,\" Clegg said. \"They don't have all the information. Now is their opportunity to step back, think about where they want local agriculture to go, get all the information before they make a decision. This is one-stop shopping, okay, for a global round of information.\"\n\nAutumn Ness was impressed\u2014and embittered\u2014by the company's tactics. \"Workers were bussed in from Monsanto and Dow\u2014and they all said, 'If this passes, I'll lose my job,'\" Ness said. \"They all had their testimony written on Monsanto letterhead. For many of them, English was their second language, yet they all used the same colloquialisms. It was obvious that the same person had written their speeches.\"\n\nIn the end, the council declined to vote on the bill outright. The GMO ban became the first voter initiative in Maui's history to make it onto a ballot.\n\nFor the industries confronting the ban, things suddenly got serious. Stopping the GMO ban was no longer a matter of twisting a few arms on the county council; now the companies' global business model would be up to the whims of the people of Maui themselves. The companies \"didn't have any idea we would get as far as we did,\" Ness said. \"They ignored us for a while. There wasn't a peep. Then right about when it became clear we were going to get on the ballot\u2014it's really hard in the state of Hawaii to do that\u2014the companies were like, 'Oh, shit! Now we have something to deal with!'\"\n\n### The Counter Campaign\n\nThe companies reacted swiftly. Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences were determined not to let Maui become another Kauai. Monsanto vowed to mount \"an aggressive campaign against this initiative,\" company spokesperson Dawn Bicoy said. Banning GMOs would \"devastate our county's fragile agricultural economy.\" The initiative, Monsanto claimed, was based on \"false claims that are not supported at all by the overwhelming body of scientific evidence.\" GM crops are \"critical to making food available and affordable to the world while also protecting crops threatened by disease, like Hawaii's own papaya.\"\n\nRather than try to convince Maui voters of the safety of GMOs, the companies tried to change the debate; instead of talking about pesticides or land rights or local produce, they would talk about jobs. The bill was not a ban on \"GMOs,\" it became a ban on \"farming.\" Monsanto and Dow said they employed more than six hundred workers on the island and said the GMO ban would put local farmers out of work. But they also returned to the old playbook: GMOs were necessary to feed the world. \"With almost 18 million farmers worldwide growing genetically engineered crops\u201490% of whom are small farmers in developing countries\u2014the SHAKA Initiative would stop Maui farmers from taking advantage of modern technology to help address some of the most pressing problems facing agriculture today,\" the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, an industry group, said.\n\nA letter, composed on letterhead from the Citizens Against the Maui County Farming Ban, went out to all registered voters. A petition was circulated asking voters if they supported a ban on farming. Ads began appearing on television and the radio, never mentioning GMOs\u2014or that the funding had been provided by Monsanto or Dow.\n\nThe companies also flexed their muscles on the wording of the ballot initiative itself. Ness and the rest of the ban's supporters assumed the bill's ambitious language (with its references to the \"spiritual significance\" of the island's water and land) would be what voters would see on the ballot. This proved to be naive. By the time the ballot measure emerged from the county clerk's office, its language was so muddled that even supporters could barely understand what they were being asked to vote for.\n\nVOTER INITIATIVE: GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ORGANISMS\n\nShould the proposed initiative prohibiting the cultivation or reproduction of genetically engineered organisms within the County of Maui, which may be amended or repealed as to a specific person or entity when required [for] environmental and public health impact studies, public hearings, a two thirds vote and a determination by the County Council that such operation or practice meets certain standards, and which establishes civil and criminal penalties, be adopted for Maui County?\n\n\"When I read it, even I didn't know if _I_ was going to vote for it,\" Autumn Ness said. \"There was no mention of the moratorium. They changed 'GMO' to 'GE.' They did everything they could to make people _not_ understand the question on the ballot. They said if we didn't like the wording, we could sue, but then we would have had to wait until the next election. So we said we would just take it. In the end, we realized we were working against our own government. We just decided we would go out and educate people.\"\n\nTo Gerry Ross, the influence the big companies had on local politics became clear during a meeting of the Maui County Farm Bureau. Ross had served on the farm board for fifteen years, and relationships between small organic farmers like him and the \"corporate guys\" had usually gone pretty well. But one evening, about eight months before the GMO vote, the corporate guys started talking about how the anti-GMO people are all \"anti-science.\" Even the mayor parroted this line, saying that people had been \"genetically modifying food for 10,000 years.\"\n\nThis did not sit well with Ross.\n\n\"I said, 'Wait a minute, Mr. Mayor,'\" Ross told me. \"'We've been _selecting_ seeds for 10,000 years. We've only been genetically _crossing_ for forty years. What would you do if you learned in 1959 that a chemical like atrazine actually turned out to be much more dangerous, and at lower levels, than you first supposed? You really need to study how safe this stuff is.'\n\n\"That's the kind of stuff a small-town mayor doesn't understand.\"\n\nRoss agreed to add his voice to television and radio spots supporting the GMO moratorium. He went back into character as \"Farmer Gerry,\" hoping to reach his former students\u2014now grown up and ready to vote\u2014to get their friends and families to show up at the polls.\n\nAutumn Ness helped organize some four hundred volunteers and set out again to talk to her fellow islanders. There was a lot of ground to cover, especially since it was clear the companies were about to drop a lot of money on the campaign. Going door-to-door, it became clear to Ness that \"nobody knew what a GMO was,\" she said.\n\n\"Right out of the gate the companies turned this into a farming ban,\" Ness said. \"We were out in the community talking to people, and they thought there were two things on the ballot: GMOs and a farming ban. People told me they were going to vote yes on the GMO ban and no on the farming ban\u2014and there was no farming ban.\n\n\"People at the door would be a strong no, then we'd have to talk to them at the door and tell them the info they had was wrong\u2014even if the ad was on TV. We could flip a no to a yes at the door in five or ten minutes. All they needed to know was the truth.\"\n\nNess figures she alone spoke to 3,000 people. She and her team handed out fliers, reminding voters that the moratorium was intended to stop just GM experimentation, not traditional farming. GM farms represented only 1 percent of Maui's 852 farms (and just 6 percent of the island's 54,500 acres of cropland), and almost all the locally grown food people actually ate had nothing to do with GMOs. Local produce farms\u2014farms that produced food that local people actually ate\u2014would not be affected.\n\n### Controlling the Airwaves\n\nIn September 2014, the companies' multimillion-dollar media wave crashed over the island. Legally, Monsanto and Dow could buy only four radio commercials per hour, so that is what they did: four per hour, every hour, per station, Ness said.\n\n\"The TV and radio commercials started, and they were just relentless,\" Ness said. \"There was no limit to airtime on TV, so they bought up every available space on TV. So even if we did raise money for ads, there wasn't any space available. By the time we got some money together, we could only buy spots at eleven p.m.\"\n\nIndustry advertisements\u2014typically attributed to the Citizens Against the Maui County Farming Ban\u2014flashed photographs of farmers working in cornfields. Voice-overs from the head of the local farm bureau emphasized that farming helps \"contribute to the economy, provide jobs, pay taxes, and maintain the land in an environmentally friendly way.\" The companies simply \"bring in supplies\" that help local farmers \"reduce their cost of production.\"\n\nThe ads \"never once mentioned the safety of GMOs, they never talked about toxic chemicals. What they did talk about was a farming ban, and what agriculture means to Maui,\" Ness said. \"The companies got older people, who remembered the plantation days, and told them if the moratorium went into effect, their families would lose their jobs. These Dow and Monsanto reps don't go on TV. They got local people to go on TV and tell their sob stories. It was crazy\u2014really, really intense how emotional it got. They really pulled the heartstrings. They put a Filipino girl on TV saying, in tears, 'I don't know how we're going to pay our rent and our kids doctors' bills.' It even got to me.\"\n\nWeeks later, when campaign finance reports came in, the financial power of the companies became clear. The industry group Citizens Against the Maui County Farming Ban received $5.1 million from a \"citizen\" named Monsanto; $1.7 million from Dow AgroSciences; and $1 million from the pro-industry Council for Biotechnology Information.\n\nThe campaign finance reports themselves were absurdly opaque. The companies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct mail and millions of dollars on media advertising. But they also spent thousands of dollars on \"media training\" and a \"Maui County Farm Fair\" and \"committee meeting prep\" and \"sign waving.\" During a parade at the Maui County Farm Fair, Monsanto employees showed up in large numbers, waving signs; several told Alika the company had paid them $200 to march behind a tractor.\n\nAll told, companies and their lobbying arm spent more than $8 million on a county ballot measure. \"For all the money they spent, they could have done the safety studies and the soil testing and the water testing, and been back in business for way less than that,\" Ness said.\n\nTo Alika, the tactic of using workers to push a political agenda was doubly distasteful.\n\n\"The companies always dangle the carrot of money,\" Alika told me. \"For me, when you step away and look at it, the real issue is this: There are those who live here, and those who just sleep here. A large majority\u2014maybe 80 percent\u2014of the workers on these farms are immigrant Filipinos or Micronesians; they're international migrants. Yeah, they have families, but they're here on work visas. So when I ask them, 'Where are you from? Where is your home?' the Filipino guys say, 'I send all my money home'\u2014meaning back to the Philippines. But then they get paid by the companies to show up at rallies. They had two hundred of them show up at a rally at the county fair, and the guys told me they were paid to be there. They show up at county council hearings, same way.\n\n\"The same thing is true for these big, burly tractor operators from Nebraska. They just sleep here. They come and go. They come here when it's snowing back home, go back when it's warm. Even the scientists\u2014they come from places like France, so they just sleep here too. All these people saying that GMOs are so good\u2014this isn't their home. For us, this is our home. I ask the Filipinos: 'If they sprayed five times a day in your county, what would you do? Why is it okay to poison us?' I don't blame the workers, I blame the economic system that has them working here in the first place.\"\n\nLorrin Pang, a Maui physician and a consultant to the World Health Organization, maintained throughout the campaign that he was \"very concerned\" with the experimental GM crops, especially because of the chemicals they required. \"You may know the effects of each chemical individually, but each new combination could have stunning effects,\" he wrote. \"The minute you combine then, all hell can break loose. We've only recently learned that, on Kauai for example, they are regularly spraying seventy to eighty different chemicals to kill everything in the soil, the microbes, the viruses, the fungi. That represents ten to the twenty-third possible combinations, a trillion trillion, more than all the drops of water in the ocean. And they certainly haven't cleared any of this with the people who have to live with the risk of being exposed to whatever is being tested. This is all quite unethical.\"\n\nWith election day approaching, celebrity anti-GMO activists started showing up to support the effort. Here was Tyrone Hayes, the Berkeley biology professor and former Syngenta scientist who made international headlines for showing that Syngenta's pesticide atrazine causes hormone disruptions. There was Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, speaking about how difficult it was to be GMO-free in the ice cream industry \"because most of the feed given to cows comes from GMO crops.\"\n\nAlika and the SHAKA Movement held a daylong Hawaiian music festival called Aloha da Vote. A party called Shake It for SHAKA advertised \"tribal ethno global beats to move feets & stir us into ecstatic bliss dance heaven.\"\n\n### The Vote\n\nAlika Atay didn't care whether they danced, walked, or drove to the polls, he just wanted to get them there and get them to vote. The early returns did not seem promising. Local television and radio stations continued to bombard Maui residents with ads paid for by Monsanto and Dow, and the tactic seemed to be working: as Alika drove around, he noticed the polling places were empty. With just four hours left before the polls closed, exit interviews indicated that the industry side was winning 60\u201340.\n\nAlika and his team began feverishly working Facebook and Twitter. They called everyone they knew. If you haven't voted yet, get out and vote. If you have voted, fill your car with friends who haven't, and get them to the polls.\n\n\"We had people working all the precincts,\" Alika said. \"We said, 'Let's make our signs the last things people see before they vote.'\"\n\nAutumn Ness said she was never in any doubt. She knew how many doors she had knocked on. Sure enough, when the final vote was tallied, supporters of the moratorium\u2014a shoestring, grassroots organization battling $8 million spent by two of the biggest companies in the world\u2014had won, with just over 51 percent of the votes. The vote to ban all GM farming on the island was decided by just a thousand votes.\n\n\"That night, when people read the results and the reality sank in that we had won, there were a couple thousand people gathered, hugging each other,\" Alika told me. \"I saw a lot of young people, a lot of Hawaiians, coming up to me and saying this was the first time they had ever voted. There were people who had given up on the system\u2014the elders\u2014they chose this time to say, 'Maybe this will be worth it.'\"\n\nThe celebrations were short-lived. SHAKA and the rest of the moratorium's supporters knew the companies would take their victory to federal court, just as they had on Kauai and on the Big Island. So as soon as the votes were counted, they filed a lawsuit\u2014unusual for the side that won an election\u2014seeking to force the county to enforce the ban.\n\nThe next day, Monsanto and Dow Chemical filed their own lawsuit. Just as they did after the Kauai and Big Island votes, the companies claimed the Maui initiative had no authority to preempt state and federal laws that already regulated GMOs. \"This local referendum interferes with and conflicts with long-established state and federal laws that support both the safety and lawful cultivation of GMO plants,\" said John Purcell, a Monsanto executive.\n\nBarry Kurren, the federal judge who struck down both Kauai's bid to restrict GM farming and the Big Island's own GMO restriction, issued an injunction, pushing for more arguments to be heard; the county agreed to wait several months to start enforcement.\n\nKurren reassigned the case to Chief Judge Susan Mollway, and on June 30, 2015, Mollway ruled that the county law was indeed preempted by state and federal law, and that the county had overstepped its authority by banning GMOs. Notably absent from her ruling was any opinion about the safety of GMOs.\n\nNo portion of this ruling says anything about whether GE organisms are good or bad or about whether the court thinks the substance of the ordinance would be beneficial to the county.\n\nAlika Atay, the SHAKA Movement, Lorrin Pang, and a handful of others have appealed the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Their goal: Get the county to enforce the will of its own citizens.\n\nTo Alika, the victory\u2014however compromised\u2014represented a profound moment in the history of his indigenous people. No longer would native Hawaiians feel intimidated by colonial economic forces, no matter how well-heeled.\n\n\"For me, that was the bigger message,\" Alika said. \"It gave these young people a taste of victory. They knew how much hard work and sacrifice came along with that victory. So now, when future challenges come up, they'll know what to do. We were _aina_ warriors.\"\n\n# Part Three\n\n## 7.\n\n## Feeding the World\n\n Dennis Gonsalves saved an industry by redesigning the genes of a single papaya plant. Nigel Taylor is doing similar work, but he's working to protect food for an entire continent.\n\nWhen I visited Taylor, I discovered him deep inside a large greenhouse outside St. Louis. He was looking wistfully over a small forest of foot-tall cassava seedlings, pawing through a canopy of five-lobed leaves. One by one, Taylor pulled up plants, looking closely at the color of the roots. He was hoping to see orange, but\u2014all too often\u2014he saw white instead.\n\nTaylor moves methodically, but there is an unmistakable urgency to his work. A soft-spoken man with a gray beard and ponytail and a rich Scottish accent, Taylor is a senior research scientist at St. Louis's Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, one of the world's leading (and most well-funded) nonprofit plant research institutions. Taylor is experimenting with genetically engineered cassava, an improved version of an essential crop grown by millions of small farmers in Africa. Cassava is dense with calories, it can tolerate heat and drought, and it can be grown in depleted, marginal soil. But like white rice, cassava is also an imperfect source of nutrition: it fills bellies, but does not fully nourish bodies. Inserting genes that would make cassava more nutritious\u2014coding plants to produce and store vitamin A, vitamin E, or iron\u2014might solve significant health and nutritional problems for the 250 million people who depend on the crop.\n\nTaylor yanks up another cassava. The root of this one is the color of a Creamsicle, and Taylor smiles faintly. The gold-orange hue of the root means the plant is generating beta-carotene, the same compound that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their color. Beta-carotene is essential to the body's generation of vitamin A, a crucial nutritional staple whose absence causes blindness and death in hundreds of thousands of children in the developing world. Vitamin A is found in animal products like eggs, liver, and dairy products, but in countries that don't eat much of these things\u2014especially parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America\u2014reliable sources of vitamin A can be hard to come by. With the right genetic tinkering, Taylor's \"golden cassava\" could help solve vitamin A deficiency for the many cultures that experience it.\n\nBut first he has to get all of the components of the genome just right, and it's not just nutrition he has to address to make the crop more productive.\n\nThere are also the flies.\n\nIn recent years, cassava crops have been attacked by growing swarms of whiteflies, which serve as vectors for a pair of viral diseases called mosaic and brown streak. These pathogen-carrying insects have long been a plague, but warming temperatures, possibly caused by climate change, have helped their numbers explode. Traditionally, the only answer has been to spray plants with pesticides, an only marginally effective solution that carries its own dangers for both farmers and the people they feed.\n\n\"Spraying to control whiteflies is not effective, because\u2014like spraying for mosquitoes to get rid of malaria\u2014you have to kill every one,\" Taylor said. \"These flies are incredibly efficient; you can find a couple thousand flies on a single plant. When we were doing our first field trials, they were flying up and we were breathing them in, wheezing them in. It was really unpleasant.\"\n\nIn the 1990s, scientists working across sub-Saharan Africa focused on breeding cassava to develop plants resistant to the mosaic virus. They were very successful, Taylor said.\n\nBut then the brown streak disease came along.\n\nBrown streak had been around in coastal Kenya and Mozambique for a long time, but it started spreading like crazy in the early to middle 2000s. Cassava varieties that had been developed to resist the mosaic virus were helpless before brown streak, which morphed from being an isolated disease to an epidemic throughout coastal East Africa.\n\n\"People have been looking for sources of resistance to the brown streak disease, but so far, it has proved difficult,\" Taylor said. \"When a plant gets infected, it can recognize the pathogen, and this stimulates its defense mechanism. But when it's a battle between the plant and the pathogen, brown streak always triumphs.\"\n\nCassava is \"vegetatively propagated,\" meaning farmers take stem cuttings from one season's crop to establish the next. Therefore, if one year's plants are infected with the disease, it is carried over to the next planting cycle. \"Even with no new infections, your yields are being affected,\" Taylor said. \"Diseases are always there. Insect vectors are always there.\"\n\nWhere traditional breeding is facing challenges, Taylor is counting on genetic engineering to succeed. Like Dennis Gonsalves, a scientist Taylor very much admires, Taylor is hoping to take an existing cultivar and introduce new gene sequences that\u2014if he can get the sequences right\u2014will make cassava resistant to brown streak. In this, his work is very much like that done on Hawaiian papaya. The difference is that on Hawaii, the price of failure is the collapse of a local industry. In Africa, the collapse of cassava would dramatically affect the lives of millions of people.\n\nPaul Anderson, one of Taylor's senior colleagues, has something of a cold-eyed view of the interaction between humans, food, and agricultural technology. Anderson is the director of the Danforth Center's Institute for International Crop Improvement and oversees the center's work on cassava, sweet potato, sorghum, and cowpeas. He has long studied the rise and fall of crops and human civilizations, and when it comes to the human dependence on farming, he has little patience for sentimentality.\n\n\"Human populations rise and fall based on the promise of food produced in those geographies,\" he said. \"There are lots of instances of crops going by the wayside due to various problems, and others arising. This is why some societies succeeded and some did not. One of the key factors was the ability to grow crops, and those that created multiple crops succeeded. Those that didn't were doomed to be hunters and gatherers.\n\n\"Historically, starvation typically arises with too much dependence on one type of crop,\" he said. \"The potato blight in Ireland\u2014that sort of scenario has played itself out in a lot of different places and in different times. Sometimes diseases could be addressed with cultural practices, with farmers noting that some things you did decreased the possibility of disease. You could manage to get by. But that sort of thing takes time. You gotta be really lucky, or get somebody already doing that cultural practice. One always tries to grow a crop where it hasn't been grown before, to find how it is limited by temperature or water availability or what have you, so any plant breeder is going to be working on expanding the value of that acre by growing in many places and having it yield well.\"\n\nTake sorghum and corn. Sorghum tolerates drought quite well in places like the Sahel, the semi-arid band of Africa south of the Sahara desert. Corn (also known as maize) does not. But maize has advantages that sorghum does not: it tastes better, and its nutrients are more readily available. With maize porridge, your body absorbs 80 to 90 percent of the grain's protein, Anderson said. With sorghum, it's only 65 percent.\n\n\"Over the last ten years, more and more people are growing maize, but it is not a stress-tolerant crop,\" Anderson said. \"But farmers really like it, so if they get good growing conditions for two, three, four years in a row, they increase the maize on their farm. But then there will be a drought, and the maize crop will fail.\n\n\"So that happens, and farmers are used to that,\" Anderson said. \"But if it happens two years in a row, the farmers are lost. He leaves the farm and moves into the city. This has happened most recently in Kenya, after a significant drought caused big population movements. The choice of the wrong crop caused a lot of farmers to fail.\"\n\nSo genetic engineers have a couple of options, Anderson said. They can work on drought-tolerant maize, which plant breeders have been pushing for as long as recorded history, or they can develop a sorghum that is more palatable and has improved nutrition, Anderson said.\n\n\"Genetic engineering isn't an end in itself, it's just a crop-improvement practice that extends your ability to make improvements,\" Anderson said. \"So depending on what time in history one was in, one had tools one could use. Genetic engineering very recently added a new tool\u2014a significant tool, but it's no different than other tools, like the fertilization of plants, or the hybridization of corn.\"\n\nThe United Nations estimates that the world will be inhabited by another 2 billion people by 2050, half of them born in sub-Saharan Africa, and 30 percent in South and Southeast Asia. All of these places are projected to experience acute and worsening drought, which may well make the breakdown of food systems one of the most dangerous effects of climate change.\n\nWith such catastrophic changes on the horizon, the need for advanced technology like GMOs has never been so acute, Anderson said. \"Making plants more stress-tolerant\u2014these are difficult issues to address,\" he said. \"It boils down to this: Is there sufficient genetic variation in the crops of interest? If not, then one has to create variation in the crop so it can be manipulated. Drought tolerance, cold tolerance\u2014these have been targets for plant breeders for thousands of years. Genetic engineering is going to be required to make these big changes.\"\n\nTo Anderson, using GM technology to improve crops in the developing world is a solution that ripples far beyond the growing of food.\n\n\"In most limiting situations, you're talking about the ability to provide nutrients and calories to get you through the year,\" Anderson said. \"You don't have to go very far to see that if you double this, or even increase it by 50 percent, you can sell your crops or share them. You can get the leverage that allows you to move out of poverty. It's poverty that's the biggest problem in these situations.\n\n\"Food availability is more dramatic, but it's ongoing poverty that won't allow a person to achieve their potential. Field labor is almost entirely women and children. Fix this, and a farmer's kids might get to go to school or have a book when they go to school.\"\n\n### Paying for Orphans\n\nWith so much at stake, and with genetic engineering offering so much promise, why haven't multinational corporations put more muscle into this work?\n\nThe answer is money. Or, rather, profit.\n\nThe Danforth Center looks like a hybrid between a university and a corporation, and in a way it is: the center's campus is massive, gleaming, and growing, with 200,000 square feet of gorgeous, state-of-the-art laboratory buildings set off by a sky-lit atrium and a lengthy, fountained reflecting pool. This will soon be joined by $45 million of additional research space and another hundred additional researchers\u2014including the University of Delaware's Blake Meyers.\n\nThe Danforth Center's work is also situated somewhere between university research and corporate agriculture: they do basic science, but they also get their plants out into the field. Their work is not just theoretical, in other words; it is meant to help make practical changes in some of the neediest parts of the world. Most academic scientists are more concerned with publishing research papers than implementing full-scale field tests, Nigel Taylor said, and in any case don't have the money or the staff to deal with things like international bureaucracy, which can kill imaginative projects before they ever get off the ground.\n\nOn the other hand, global food companies, with their deep pockets and their eyes on huge profits, have almost exclusively focused their attention on commodity crops\u2014corn, soy, canola\u2014that make them billions of dollars a year in the enormous North American food market. Building laboratories for genetic engineering is expensive, the companies say, and they need a return on their investment to make the whole thing worthwhile. \"Orphan crops\"\u2014so named because of their neglect by big industry\u2014are left to university researchers and nonprofit centers like Danforth. Cassava, papaya, millet\u2014these crops may be critical staples for millions of the world's poor, but they will never generate the kind of profits demanded by multinational corporations.\n\nInstead, companies donate money to nonprofit researchers doing this sort of work: the Danforth Center's cassava project alone has received some $20 million in grants from Monsanto, as well as from the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The nonprofits get research money, and\u2014in the bargain\u2014the multinationals can say they are doing their part for the needy.\n\nIn other words, the Danforth Center sits at the very joint of the GMO debate: its scientists are working to help the world's most vulnerable people, but they also provide excellent public relations for companies like Monsanto to boast that GMOs are \"feeding the world\" and not just \"feeding the fast-food industry.\" The relationship between the two institutions is distinct and blurry at the same time. The Danforth Center was built literally across the street from Monsanto's world headquarters in St. Louis, and both Monsanto's president and its former chief scientist sit on the Danforth Center's board of directors. Scientists move back and forth between industry and the center. Paul Anderson, for example, spent ten years as the research director of food and feed research at Pioneer Hi-Bred, the same DuPont company caught in the fierce GMO debate on Kauai and Maui. Before that, he served as a senior manager in Pioneer's efforts to move the company's grain into Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America.\n\nA cynic might claim that the $20 million Monsanto throws to the Danforth Center is barely a (tax-deductible) rounding error compared with the company's nearly $16 billion in annual sales. More cynical would be the view that developing drought-resistant GM corn for Africa is really just a way for seed companies to gain more influence\u2014and market share\u2014on other continents. The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been American companies, the U.S. Agency for International Development has said. Close to 80 percent of the agency's contracts and grants go directly to American firms. \"Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods, created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans.\"\n\nThe Gates Foundation, which spent close to $500 million on African agricultural development from 2009 to 2011 alone (and which also supports the Danforth Center), has become \"a stalking horse for corporate proponents promoting industrial agriculture paradigms, which view African hunger simply as a business opportunity,\" writes Phil Bereano, a professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Washington. Bereano calls this \"agroindustrial philanthrocapitalism\"; GM crops, he says, \"threaten conventional and organic production as well as the autonomy of African producers and nations.\"\n\nMarion Nestle, a prominent food scientist at New York University, has long been suspicious of industry's humanitarian claims. If giant seed and chemical companies really want to help \"feed the world,\" they should dedicate substantially more resources to helping local farmers in Asia, Africa, and South America develop crops that might only be of _local_ value\u2014even if they don't promote industrial agriculture, and even if they have no potential for corporate profit. How much should companies dedicate to humanitarian food development? Nestle's modest proposal: 10 percent of annual corporate income, a kind of tithing to help those in need.\n\n\"If companies are going to claim that their work will solve world food problems, they need to put substantial resources into working with scientists in developing countries to help farmers produce more food under local conditions,\" Nestle writes in her book _Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism_. \"I continue to believe that to be perceived as credible, the industry must _be_ credible.\"\n\nIndeed, given the destruction that industrial agriculture has done to the American landscape, why should we expect anything different once its technologies are exported to the developing world? \"In the United States, we've seen the number of farms drop by two-thirds and average farm size more than double since World War II,\" wrote veteran food activists Peter Rosset, Frances Moore Lapp\u00e9, and Joseph Collins. \"The gutting of rural communities, the creation of inner-city slums, and the exacerbation of unemployment all followed in the wake of this vast migration from the land. Think what the equivalent rural exodus means in the Third World, where the number of jobless people is already double or triple our own.\"\n\nThis kind of criticism drives scientists like Paul Anderson crazy. Critics of GMOs, especially those in food-secure places like the United States and Europe, have no idea what's at stake for the lives of the poor, he says. Anderson takes an especially dim view of what he calls \"anti-technology groups that are funded by Europeans.\"\n\n\"Do they have the right to do that? Do they have the right to decide who is going to eat what?\" Anderson said.\n\nNigel Taylor agrees. His work on virus-resistant cassava is unlikely ever to serve any corporate interest, and like Dennis Gonsalves, Taylor's primary interest is in serving small African farmers.\n\n\"It's important that African farmers have a strong say in this because it's their livelihood, and they should have the right to access any technology that can improve their standard of living,\" Taylor said. Creating a virus-resistant cassava plant \"would be highly desirable because of the seriousness of brown streak to people's economic security in East Africa.\"\n\nGiven all the noise involved in the GMO debate, Taylor would plainly prefer to leave politics aside and simply work with his cassava plants. He leads me into his tissue culture laboratory to show me minute cassava embryos\u2014clusters of totipotent cells that will be genetically altered before being grown into fully developed plants. Once altered, the cassava cells, under the watchful eyes of Taylor's team, can be cultured and turned into a thousand or more plants. Of these, only a small number will carry the genetic material needed to protect the cassava plant from brown streak. Much work is required to identify and select the most efficacious. The introduced virus defense works by enabling a plant to recognize a viral infection before it occurs, which it does by generating small RNAs and proteins known as argonauts (named for the Greek explorers) that act to \"silence\" the infecting virus.\n\n\"What we can do by triggering this defense mechanism early\u2014it's not an immunization, but it is similar in the manner that it's pre-arming the plant's defense mechanism,\" Taylor said. \"As the virus replicates, it makes double-stranded RNA. The plant can recognize that, and its inherent RNA-silencing mechanisms grab it and chop it up, preventing establishment of the disease. However, in the non-modified plant the virus wins the battle, as the plant cannot fire up these defense mechanisms fast enough to stop the virus replicating and moving to establish infection. By modifying the plant to recognize the virus, and activating the RNA defense mechanisms before the virus arrives, the plant will always stay ahead of the virus and will be resistant. And since the plant makes its own RNA continuously, the plant will always be resistant. So we're not making a new defense mechanism, we're just turning on the plant's inherent resistance systems early and keeping them on.\"\n\nLet's say his lab creates 600 cassava plants. Two-thirds of them would likely need to be thrown out for not expressing virus resistance. Once plants have been selected in St. Louis, they are field tested in Puerto Rico, which, like Hawaii, is a popular growing environment for experimental crops. Then maybe twenty plants get to the field in Africa. These get whittled down to one or two that go through all the stages of testing within the regulatory system. Only one plant line would be submitted for formal approval. If this makes it all the way through regulatory testing and approval, countless crops of this improved cassava line could eventually be grown from this one parent plant.\n\nIn Kenya and Uganda, Taylor and his team work with African scientists and government officials. They have conducted socioeconomic studies to assess if farmers would be receptive to what they are offering.\n\n\"If you frame it up for small farmers for on-farm consumption and local trading, almost everyone says yes,\" Taylor said. \"This is such an important disease, a major threat, and there are very few ways of addressing it. If we can show this works, the farmers have indicated that they would be ready to adopt it.\"\n\nThe question for the people at the Danforth Center is whether their cassava will turn out to be a hit, like Dennis Gonsalves's papaya, or a misfire, like golden rice.\n\n### Golden Rice: The Grain That Will Save Millions of Children\u2014or Won't\n\nIn the summer of 2000, _Time_ trumpeted a cover story about a GM grain that it said could \"save a million kids a year.\" The magazine featured a cover photo of Dr. Ingo Potrykus, a gene scientist who had spent ten years trying to alleviate the suffering of millions of children in the developing world who have deficient levels of vitamin A. Lack of this single nutrient causes blindness in up to half a million children each year and weakens the immune system to the point that some 2 million people die each year of diseases they would otherwise survive.\n\nHow to get more vitamin A into the Asian diet? Potrykus had developed what seemed like a brilliant solution: by inserting genes from daffodils into a rice genome, he had derived a plant fortified with beta-carotene, the same pigment Nigel Taylor is hoping to introduce into cassava. Asia alone produces 417 million tons of rice a year; the trouble is, even if children in many poor countries can get their hands on rice, they frequently do not have access to vitamin-rich fruits or vegetables.\n\nPotrykus visualized peasant farmers \"wading into paddies to set out the tender seedlings and winnowing the grain at harvest time in handwoven baskets,\" _Time_ reported. He pictured \"small children consuming the golden gruel their mothers would make, knowing that it would sharpen their eyesight and strengthen their resistance to infectious diseases. And he saw his rice as the first modest start of a new agricultural revolution, in which ancient food crops would acquire all manner of useful properties: bananas that wouldn't rot on the way to market; corn that could supply its own fertilizer; wheat that could thrive in drought-ridden soil.\"\n\nEven more than Dennis Gonsalves and his GM papaya, golden rice made Potrykus and his research team international celebrities, not least because, like Gonsalves, they had done their work for a nonprofit institution\u2014the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in the Philippines. The project got $100,000 in seed money from the Rockefeller Foundation, and another $2.5 million from the Swiss government and the European Union. But because nearly six dozen genes they were interested in had already been patented by some thirty-two companies, the research team also had to tiptoe through a legal swamp. DuPont, Monsanto, and Zeneca owned a piece of the rice genome, as did Stanford and Columbia universities and the universities of Maryland and California. Patents to the daffodil genes were held by Amoco, DuPont, Zeneca, and Imperial Chemical Industries. The patent for the bacterium was held by Japan's Kirin Brewery.\n\nIn the end, Potrykus and his team struck a deal with AstraZeneca (now Syngenta) that gave the researchers the rights to the seeds they would give to farmers in developing countries earning less than $10,000 a year. The company retained the right to market the rice in places like Japan and the United States. To its supporters, this seemed an ideal partnership between public scientists and private industry, especially after other corporations holding patents also waived their own rights.\n\nThe journal _Science_ announced the successful experiment by distributing magazines to 1,700 journalists around the world. In an accompanying note, editors claimed that \"this application of plant genetic engineering to ameliorate human misery without regard to short-term profit will restore this technology to political acceptability.\"\n\nIndeed, whatever golden rice's prospects for the world's poor, the announcement was a spectacular gift for the biotech industry. After being battered by nearly two decades of growing public resistance to GMOs, biotech companies jumped at the chance to boast that genetic engineering would now feed the world.\n\nThe backlash came swiftly.\n\n\"A rip-off of the public trust,\" grumbled the Rural Advancement Foundation International, an advocacy group based in Winnipeg, Canada. \"Asian farmers get (unproved) genetically modified rice, and AstraZeneca gets the 'gold.'\"\n\nGreenpeace, which had taken a strong stand against GMOs from the beginning, mocked golden rice as an intentional ploy to reverse public anxiety about the technology. \"People are talking about the potential benefits of the second generation of genetically modified crops when almost no questions raised by the first have been answered,\" the group announced. \"You don't have to be paranoid to think the tactics are deliberate.\"\n\nIn an article in _The New York Times Magazine_ titled \"The Great Yellow Hype,\" journalist Michael Pollan suggested that golden rice was being exploited by the biotech industry \"to win an argument rather than solve a public-health problem.\" Malnourished children would have to eat fifteen pounds of cooked rice a day to satisfy their nutritional needs, Pollan wrote, and even if they could eat that much, their fat- and protein-deficient diets would prevent their bodies from taking up the beta-carotene.\n\n\"The unspoken challenge here is that if we don't get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the third world will go blind,\" Pollan wrote. \"Granted, it would be immoral for finicky Americans to thwart a technology that could rescue malnourished children. But wouldn't it also be immoral for an industry to use those children's suffering in order to rescue itself? The first case is hypothetical at best. The second is right there on our television screens, for everyone to see.\"\n\nAnd Vandana Shiva, who would become an international celebrity for vehemently opposing golden rice, called the grain a Trojan horse for the biotech industry. In books like _The Violence of the Green Revolution_ , Shiva had lambasted the planting of Western varieties of wheat and the attendant herbicides, which pushed traditional, vitamin-rich greens like bathua to extinction. Now, she wrote, \"the 'selling' of vitamin A as a miracle cure for blindness is based on the (corporate) blindness to the alternatives.\"\n\nAnd so it has gone. Even in countries where vitamin A deficiency has been most acute\u2014where, one would think, support for such a product would be uniformly enthusiastic\u2014golden rice has been met with acute skepticism and even violence. The government of India is still considering banning all GM field trials for ten years. In Kenya, the government has banned the import of GM food (though not GMO research).\n\nIn August 2013, hundreds of protesters smashed through fences surrounding a field in the Philippines so they could uproot a plant that had been hailed as the potential savior of millions of Asia's malnourished poor. \"We do not want our people, especially our children, to be used in these experiments,\" a farmer and leader of the protest told the Philippine newspaper _Remate_.\n\nTo this day, golden rice\u2014once seen as a savior of the global poor\u2014has not been approved by a single country. What happened?\n\n### The Green Revolution\n\nThe International Rice Research Institute, where Potrykus did his work, had been launching successful breeding projects for decades, and until it started working with GMOs, it had largely met with global gratitude. In the early 1960s, a plant pathologist named Peter Jennings created a fast-growing, high-yielding strain known as India Rice 8 that became so popular that (legend has it) some Indian families even named their children \"IR8.\"\n\nSuch research mirrored work generated by other scientists at the center of what came to be known as the Green Revolution, which used both new plant-breeding techniques and the heavy use of petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides to dramatically increase the amount of food that farmers could grow. Between 1950 and 1983, crop yields of cereal grains doubled, tripled, even quadrupled. Since grains provide about 80 percent of the calories people consume worldwide, such advances dramatically improved the diets of billions of people: between the 1970s and 1980s, the total amount of food available per person in the world increased 11 percent, while the number of hungry people fell 16 percent (from 942 million to 786 million).\n\nWhen Norman Borlaug, a researcher at Texas A&M University, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for developing high-yielding wheat and rice, his citation said that \"more than any person of this age, he helped provide bread for a hungry world.\"\n\nBorlaug has never been shy regarding his feelings about how best to feed the poor and hungry. The organic movement is \"ridiculous,\" Borlaug has said. \"For those who want to go the organic route, God bless them. Let them spend more money for their food. But looking at the world at large, this is an impossibility. . . . Most of the people who are opposing biotechnology, they've never known hunger. These people say that the little farmer should permanently accept that he's going to stay on that three-acre farm with a hoe and a machete. That's fine in Utopia, but don't give the world the false idea that they can produce the food that's needed for 6 billion people.\"\n\nBorlaug's thoughts notwithstanding, the Green Revolution, which laid the global foundation for the spread of GM crops, also left a swath of troubling consequences. The synthetic fertilizers that spurred such high crop yields also created more weeds and insects, which led to a huge increase in the use of herbicides and insecticides. In India, chemically treated land jumped from 15 million acres in 1960 to more than 200 million by the 1980s, contributing to a dramatic global increase in human exposure to toxic chemicals. These poisons also killed natural predators, and soils worldwide edged closer to becoming chemically saturated and lifeless.\n\nM. S. Swaminathan, a renowned Indian geneticist and a leader of India's Green Revolution, later recalled that he had foreseen these complications as early as 1968. \"Exploitive agriculture offers great possibilities if carried out in a scientific way, but poses great dangers if carried out with only an immediate profit motive,\" he said. \"Without first building up a proper scientific and training base to sustain it, [it] may only lead us, in the long run, into an era of agricultural disaster.\"\n\nBy 1999, Swaminathan noted that \"the significance of my 1968 analysis has been widely realized.\"\n\nPlant geneticists like the Danforth Center's Paul Anderson believe GMOs may provide an answer to many of these global food problems. But the debate over spreading GMOs across the developing world has additional complexities, notably that the technology, and the industries pushing it, are largely based in Europe and the United States. The shadow of colonialism has not been lost on local political leaders or on anti-GMO scientists.\n\nIndeed, for every plant scientist who sees GMOs as a powerful tool to feed the world, there is a scientist, or an activist, worried that genetic technology will simply speed up the processes of industrial agriculture that are already in place. Despite the boasts of chemical and biotech companies, there is little evidence that GM crops reduce global chemical use; rather, pushing GMOs at home and in the developing world \"has contributed to the increased use of herbicides to control weeds and the resulting increase in environmental pollution,\" Cornell's David Pimentel writes.\n\nActivists, for their part, have gone to great lengths to make GM crops a symbol of colonial exploitation. In 1999, the Earth Liberation Front torched a genetics research building at Michigan State University where researchers were working on crops for the developing world. The fire caused $900,000 in damage. A spokesman for the group said the research was \"not going to end world hunger, it's going to make more profits for Monsanto.\"\n\nCatherine Ives, the scientist in charge of the lab, was heartbroken. \"I would wonder how much time has been spent by people in this organization in developing countries,\" she told PBS. \"I see women hiking for miles to bring firewood in because they've cut down everything around them and have no productive soils. I see children who are malnourished. They do not have sustainable agricultural practices in place in many parts of the world. That is what we are trying to help them develop.\"\n\n### Feeding the Poor, or Expanding Markets?\n\nCritics say the future of GMOs will play out in the developing world, and not necessarily with the benefit of local people in mind. With upward of 90 percent of American corn and soy crops already planted with GM seeds, the only place for industry to expand is in places like Africa and South America. In this view, GMOs will continue to cause social disruptions that are at least as harmful as their ecological disruptions. Just as they have in the United States, the GM soybeans spreading across countries like Argentina and Paraguay are already replacing diverse, traditional crops with less nutritious monocultures mostly being used to feed livestock for the expanding global market for beef. Just as in the United States, these larger and larger farms move from local control to industrial control.\n\nMonsanto boasts that it has already trained 4,000 farmers in South America to use the company's seeds and pesticides. Paraguay, where 80 percent of the land is controlled by 2 percent of the population, has become the world's fourth-largest exporter of soy, with more than 3 million hectares of fields producing more than 8 million tons of soybeans a year. Most of this is GM, and all of it is heavily doused with chemicals, which has contaminated local water supplies and caused public health scares. In 2013 alone, 914 square miles of pristine forest in a wilderness known as Gran Chaco was cut down and burned to create soybean fields.\n\nParaguay's former president Fernando Lugo took a firm stand against global food companies, at one point ordering his own agriculture department to destroy GM cornfields. The destruction of forests and traditional farming, he argued, was ecologically disastrous and destructive to both traditional farmers and the country's indigenous people.\n\nTwo years later, in 2012, Lugo was ousted in a coup he claimed was orchestrated in part by multinational food companies. His successor, Federico Franco, fast-tracked approval of seven GM soy, cotton, and corn strains; Monsanto, whose Roundup Ready soybeans are used in 95 percent of Paraguay's production, was authorized to sell its new GM seeds in Paraguay just seven months after Franco was sworn in.\n\nIn Argentina, meanwhile, a woman whose infant daughter died because of pesticide poisoning was given the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize, one of the world's most prestigious, for her efforts to ban agricultural spraying. Argentina is the world's third largest exporter of soybeans; industry uses airplanes to spread more than 50 million gallons of pesticides, especially glyphosate and endosulfan, over GM crops. Going door-to-door to collect stories of families whose homes were surrounded by soybean fields, Sofia Gatica found cancer rates forty-one times the national average. Despite enduring threats from police and local business owners, she persuaded Argentina's health minister to investigate. In 2010, the country's supreme court banned agricultural spraying near populated areas, and\u2014reversing a tradition of forcing residents to prove harm\u2014required that companies prove their products were safe. Argentina banned endosulfan in 2013. Gatica and her colleagues are now pushing for a nationwide ban on glyphosate.\n\nIt is in this pot\u2014a world reconsidering both the Green Revolution and what GMOs might contribute to relieving (or worsening) global food problems\u2014that the debate over golden rice remains simmering.\n\nThere are two primary strains of rice grown in Asia: the short-grained _japonica_ (think sushi) and long-grained _indica_ (think jasmine or basmati). In Asia, farmers have been growing countless varieties of rice for thousands of years. Each strain is developed to accommodate both natural forces (like drought and flooding) and personal taste. It's not just that a grain that grows well (and is considered desirable) in Bangladesh is different from a grain in Japan or China; there are grains preferred in individual Bangladeshi villages that are different from grains grown just a few miles away.\n\nHere's the problem: Most of the original research done on genetically modified rice was done on _japonica._ Most of the poor in Asia eat _indica_. You can have short, fat grains that are stacked with all the nutrients on earth, but people won't eat it if they prefer grains that are long and skinny. Equally challenging, most people in Asia prefer white rice, despite the fact that it is considerably less nutritious than brown rice\u2014let alone rice of an unrecognizable golden color.\n\n\"Rice is white, not yellow or golden, and people are very specific about what they will eat,\" Alfred Sommer told me. \"So let's assume it's a yellow version of their local version. Assume it grows well. Will anyone eat yellow rice? Taste, flavor, what it looks like\u2014we don't know that. We haven't tested it out yet, so we don't know. If you gave golden rice to 10,000 people, would they eat it? We have no idea.\"\n\nSommer knows a thing or two about vitamin A deficiency. So successful were his early efforts to combat the problem that his name adorns an entire wing of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, where Sommer is a professor of epidemiology and former dean. Long before the invention of golden rice, Sommer figured out that solving vitamin A deficiency was as simple (and cheap) as getting people to swallow a couple of two-cent vitamin A capsules a year. The trick was getting the pills to the people. Early ideas included combining vitamin A with MSG or salt, but neither really worked. Sugar worked well in places like El Salvador and Guatemala, where people grow their own sugar and process it in factories where vitamin A can be distributed, but these conditions rarely exist in other countries.\n\nSome clinics combined vitamin A distribution with polio vaccinations, but not everyone who lived in the countryside made it into a clinic. Health workers (or volunteers) would have to trudge long distances to reach remote villages.\n\n\"The problem is that there are very few products that poor people consume widely that we can get to them through some kind of central processing,\" Sommer told me. Inserting vitamin A into a universal consumer food like rice seemed like the magic bullet\u2014provided it could be grown locally, would appeal to local tastes, and, critically, provide the nutrient in sufficient quantities. The original version produced a woefully inadequate 1.6 micrograms of beta-carotene per gram of rice; an improved version called golden rice 2 (and developed at Syngenta) replaced the daffodil gene with a gene from corn, and now delivers up to 37 micrograms per gram.\n\nWhen golden rice was first being touted in the mid-1980s, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which had partially financed the research, asked Sommer to write a piece about it. Sommer wrote\u2014and maintains\u2014that although considerable research remains to be done, when all is said and done, golden rice can be an extremely useful tool for combatting vitamin A deficiency.\n\nTwenty years ago, the anti-GMO hysteria was already \"irrational, but well deserved, given what Monsanto's poor PR helped to create,\" Sommer told me. Golden rice was an attempt to bring something to fruition that \"clearly would address a major public health issue and would also help overcome the negative publicity that had been generated by Monsanto's approach to pushing GMO foods, which were not seen as beneficial to anyone but the agriculture industry.\"\n\nIf anything, the prospect of climate change has sped rice research generally into overdrive. In 2004, an international consortium mapped the entire rice genome; two years later, Pamela Ronald of UC-Davis isolated a gene called Sub1 that helps a plant survive even when submerged in floodwaters for two weeks (most plants die after being immersed for three days). The strain has proven popular in flood-prone places like India and Bangladesh, where some 4 million farmers now plant a version of this rice.\n\nIn 2015 alone, scientists published the genomes of 3,000 strains of rice, many focusing on drought- and salt-resistant strains that might survive hotter temperatures and rising sea levels. Researchers are also hoping to produce a photosynthetically enhanced rice grain that would increase yields 30 to 50 percent with the same amount of water and fertilizer. The Gates Foundation has given $20 million to the project, which has twenty-two teams of researchers from nine countries working on it.\n\nOn a hotter planet, with rising tides, growing populations, and diminishing supplies of fresh water, biotechnology will be more important than ever to produce enough food, especially in the developing world, the Danforth Center's Jim Carrington told me. Regions like Africa can have 80 percent of their population living on farms, but because of low productivity and poor infrastructure they can still be the least food-secure places in the world.\n\n\"It's simply not practical to turn all our farming into a Michael Pollan\u2013style idyllic agriculture,\" Carrington said. \"Especially in developing regions of the world like sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, food security crops like cassava, millet, and cowpeas have been produced in ways that would meet organic production standards. But the lack of tools, technology, transportation\u2014all the result of a lot of different things\u2014means that organic production has been exceptionally unproductive. It's a horrible, unfortunate situation.\n\n\"Our research aims are to improve the sustainability of agriculture, to improve the strength of plants to do as much of the work as possible, as opposed to using insecticides and fungicides,\" Carrington said. \"These are not organic versus conventional issues. These are universal issues. We just happen to include GMO in the toolbox. It is not a panacea, and it is not the only tool in the toolbox. It is just one of dozens. But removing that tool we do at our own peril. We don't gain anything; we actually lose the ability to solve a lot of important problems that affect real people.\"\n\nMichael Hansen, of the Consumers Union, has been hearing such arguments for two decades. Back in June 2000, around the time golden rice was on the cover of _Time_ , Hansen went to a congressional hearing to hear what people were saying about the technology's prospects.\n\n\"Right there on the invitation was the statement that golden rice was already saving the eyesight of thousands of children in Asia, and that was all false,\" he told me. \"Fourteen years later, it hasn't saved the eyesight of a single child.\"\n\nIf you go back to the early 1980s, when genetic engineering was in its infancy, everyone said GMOs could do all these wonderful things, Hansen said. Fast-forward to today, and genetic engineering has all been about herbicide tolerance. By now, some 94 percent of our soy is GE, along with 99 percent of our sugar beets, 93 percent of our corn, and 92 percent of our canola. All of these crops were designed to be herbicide tolerant.\n\n\"All those original claims really only led to an explosion of glyphosate, so they needed something to show that GE will benefit people,\" Hansen said. \"Golden rice is still being used to get good PR for industry, to show that they can do something that is clearly good. But look at the millions of dollars that have gone into golden rice, and contrast that with what they've done in the Philippines with the more traditional things they do. They give little pills to people as vitamin supplements, at a cost of about twenty cents a person per year. They have been fortifying noodles with vitamin A. All this was done with no money poured into it.\"\n\nHansen would like to see considerably more investment in traditional foods that support local growers rather than global conglomerates, and that have evolved over millennia to endure droughts and pests. In some places, this is happening. In Kenya, farmers have recently increased the area planted with such indigenous greens (rich in protein, vitamins, iron, and other nutrients) by 25 percent.\n\nYet in June 2016, more than one hundred Nobel laureates signed a letter urging Greenpeace to drop its opposition to golden rice. \"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular,\" the letter stated.\n\nGreenpeace refused to back down. \"Accusations that anyone is blocking genetically engineered 'Golden' rice are false,\" the group said. \"'Golden' rice has failed as a solution and isn't currently available for sale, even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn't even exist.\n\n\"Corporations are overhyping 'Golden' Rice to pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops. This costly experiment has failed to produce results for the last 20 years and diverted attention from methods that already work. Rather than invest in this overpriced public relations exercise, we need to address malnutrition through a more diverse diet, equitable access to food and eco-agriculture.\"\n\nMichael Hansen, who was trained as an evolutionary biologist, spends a great deal of time traveling around Asia teaching farmers and consumers about farming and food. Recently, in the Philippines, he saw an ad on the side of a bus for chicken tenders that had been fortified with vitamin A the old-fashioned way\u2014and not with GMOs. In the Philippines at least, vitamin A deficiency has plummeted, and it has had nothing to do with golden rice. \"If you want to get at these problems, you can deal with the symptoms or with the causes,\" Hansen said. \"This is basically an issue of poverty. All poor people can afford to buy is rice. So the way to get people out of that, you have to deal with poverty. What if all that money had been put into food-fortification techniques, or to teaching people to grow foods that are high in beta-carotene that people actually eat? Mangoes, yellow maize, papaya, yams, red peppers, spinach, cabbage\u2014all have high levels of beta-carotene, and these are all foods that are culturally appropriate.\n\n\"Golden rice is just a PR move,\" he said. \"Now they want to do golden bananas, engineered with vitamin A, and they want to do trials in Uganda. Nobody has published data that has shown these are safe. Yet they are already doing some kind of feeding trials. They're talking about golden corn.\"\n\nAlfred Sommer, the vitamin A expert at Johns Hopkins, takes a different view. To his mind, GMO critics oppose golden rice because they fear it would be a smashing success, and thus ruin their chances of opposing GMOs elsewhere.\n\n\"I've come to accept that GMOs are in fact just a more sophisticated version of hybridization,\" Sommer told me. \"This is just more rapid than crossbreeding things. It's not like there's a mad scientist out there trying to grow people out of corn.\n\n\"I can understand people being concerned, but the fact is that all our soy is GMO, and nobody seems to have been hurt by that,\" Sommer said. \"Big Ag will do what Big Ag does. Today, nobody notices that soy is all GMO, and in twenty years nobody will remember this.\"\n\n## 8.\n\n## The Plant That Started Civilization, and the Plant That Could Save It\n\n If you think about the GM grains that prop up the world's global food system, there is one leg in the stool that is mysteriously missing: wheat. How have corn and soybeans become almost entirely GM, and wheat\u2014the plant that started civilization 10,000 years ago, and that covers tens of millions of acres in the United States alone\u2014has not?\n\nIt has not been for a lack of desire. Monsanto began testing Roundup Ready wheat on experimental farms back in 1994, and in 2004, the FDA declared that the company's wheat posed no health or safety risks. But that same year, Monsanto abandoned plans to release its seeds onto the market, a dramatic decision that food safety advocates (who had long complained that the FDA's information had been provided by Monsanto and did not include the FDA's own tests) considered a \"watershed event.\"\n\nWhat happened? Why aren't we all eating GM bread, and bagels, and hamburger buns?\n\nOne reason has to do with the unimaginably intertwined global food system, which (when it works) can get grain grown on one continent to food processors on another continent to consumers on a third continent. When the system doesn't work, when something gets into the system that is unexpected, unapproved, and unwanted, the whole thing can come to a screeching halt.\n\nJust ask Larry Bohlen. In the summer of 2000, while working for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, Bohlen was spending his time looking over the EPA's approval process for GM crops. One day, he noticed something strange about the approval of a strain of GM corn called StarLink. The corn had been engineered by the company Aventis to carry the insecticide _Bacillus thuringiensis_ , or Bt, which kills the destructive European corn borer. Because the corn contained a protein called Cry9C, which the EPA suspected might cause allergies in people, StarLink had not been approved for human consumption, but Aventis had still been allowed to sell StarLink to farmers to grow corn for animal feed.\n\nGiven the complexity of the crop and food distribution systems, this seemed absurd to Bohlen. \"We were in conversations with farmers who were telling us that most farmers do not separate genetically engineered corn from conventional corn,\" Bohlen said. \"Given that very little of the corn is separated and there's a type of corn not approved for human consumption, I thought there was a good chance that it had made it into our food.\"\n\nBohlen decided to check for himself. He went to his local Safeway and bought twenty-three different corn-based products: boxes of cornflakes and taco shells, tortilla chips, a corn muffin mix, some cornmeal, a couple of enchilada TV dinners. He shipped them to a laboratory with a simple question: Did any of the products contain the unapproved protein Cry9C? If any did, it meant that an entire stream of the country's river of processed food might have been unintentionally contaminated by GM corn.\n\nThe results, in one case, came back positive: the lab found StarLink corn in taco shells branded by Taco Bell. All taco shells containing StarLink corn were recalled.\n\nInside the food industry, the revelation caused an explosion: this was the first GM food to be recalled nationally. Suddenly, food processors could no longer be sure the grain they were buying was free of unapproved GMOs. Although scientists had long assured them that GMOs were safe, the reaction was very much a fear of GM \"contamination.\" If consumers decided they wouldn't eat foods with GM ingredients, it wouldn't just be Monsanto (and the $20 billion biotech industry) that would suffer; it would be any company (in the $500 billion food industry) that made food from Monsanto's grain. If these two industries diverged, Bohlen told me, \"biotech would shift from being a growth industry to being a struggling commodity industry.\"\n\nFor consumers, the StarLink story offered a rare (and bewildering) look inside the mysterious system that delivers Americans processed food. The corn, it turned out, had come from farmers in six different states, who had shipped their grain to a miller in Texas, who had ordered conventional corn and (unwittingly) gotten GM corn instead. The cornmeal was then sent to Mexico, where it was processed into taco shells, then returned to the United States to be distributed everywhere by Kraft Foods.\n\nOnce the news broke in September 2000, food that had been contaminated by StarLink corn started popping up all over the place\u2014and not just in the United States. It was found in Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. Aventis officials said they had \"difficulty imagining how our corn could end up in the human food supply.\"\n\nTo Larry Bohlen, it was entirely obvious. \"Aventis made a big mistake by assuming that thousands of people making decisions every day on their farms would be able to separate the StarLink corn from conventional corn,\" Bohlen said. \"Harvest days last for fourteen hours. Farmers are driving late into the night. They're under a lot of pressure. Farm prices are really low. There's even pressure for some people to sell the StarLink into the food system to get a higher price. There are so many reasons that the StarLink corn can get into the food supply that it was a risk that wasn't worth taking.\"\n\nBohlen also considered the StarLink debacle evidence of the gaping loophole in the food-testing process. \"We've been saying for a long time that federal authorities should be doing this testing, but so far it's been left to groups like us,\" he said. Aventis ended up spending $500 million to withdraw StarLink from the corn market. But it proved much harder to undo the anxieties the contamination had caused\u2014among food manufacturers as well as consumers. Where once the food industry had been in lockstep with the biotech industry, the StarLink affair proved just how precarious this marriage could be.\n\nThings have only gotten rockier with the development of GM \"biopharm\" crops, which pharmaceutical companies are developing to create drugs. Though the USDA has approved more than 300 biopharm plantings around the country since 1995, both states and traditional farmers\u2014worried about StarLink-style contamination\u2014have been more suspect. In 2005, Arkansas-based Riceland Food, the world's largest rice miller, asked federal regulators to deny a permit to a company hoping to plant GM rice for the manufacture of an antidiarrheal drug. Anheuser-Busch, the country's top buyer of rice (as well as its largest brewer), said it would no longer buy any of the $100 million worth of rice grown in Missouri if GM rice was allowed to be grown anywhere in the state.\n\nCalifornia recently rejected a company proposal to grow rice engineered with human genes after traditional rice growers said even the _prospect_ of contamination would scare off international markets. In 2011, the German conglomerate Bayer (which now owns Aventis, the same company that made StarLink corn) agreed to pay $750 million in settlements to 10,000 farmers who claimed the company's GM Liberty Link rice contaminated their domestic crops and drove prices down; global markets just weren't buying it. \"What has really alarmed the food industry was the idea that they might get corn in their cornflakes that had someone else's prescription drugs in it\u2014either by getting mixed up or through cross-pollination,\" Bohlen told me.\n\nIt was right in the middle of all this that Monsanto\u2014despite spending a decade designing it, and despite FDA approval\u2014decided not to release GM wheat. The company still maintained a handful of experimental wheat plots, though, and in 2013, something strange happened. A farmer in Oregon\u2014trying to clear his field by spraying Roundup\u2014found he couldn't kill his own wheat. Some of Monsanto's experimental GM wheat seeds had somehow made their way into his fields.\n\nSuddenly, it was StarLink all over again. As the news of this contamination spread, Japan and South Korea immediately suspended U.S. wheat imports. European officials urged greater screening of U.S. grain. Lawyers for American farmers threatened to sue the company. And\u2014despite USDA assurances that American wheat remains GMO-free\u2014the global prospects for GM wheat were once again put on hold.\n\nAnd for a team of world-renowned scientists working in the middle of Kansas wheat country, that was just fine.\n\n### Reinventing the Plains\n\nSalina, Kansas, sits on the western edge of a thousand miles of corn and soy and wheat. Down at the end of Water Well Road, where the pavement runs out, a small group of plant researchers is leading the effort to overthrow the entire American agricultural system. The Land Institute looks nothing like the Danforth Center. There is no glass and steel here, no ornamental fountains, no multimillion-dollar laboratories. And there is no evidence of corporate agriculture.\n\nInside the president's office, a ramshackle affair with overstuffed wooden bookshelves and a small refrigerator filled with good beer, an eighty-year-old bull of a man named Wes Jackson is holding forth about GMOs, pesticides, and ridding the world of problems caused by \"that outfit in St. Louis.\"\n\nBy which he means Monsanto.\n\n\"The idea of Manifest Destiny\u2014of wiping out the Indians and going to the moon and building a supercollider\u2014it seems like humanity doesn't have the capacity to practice _restraint_ ,\" Jackson told me. \"So you say you can feed 7 billion people, then you can feed 9 billion, then what? A woman recently said to me, 'What about all these new planets?' I said, 'Good: buy one-way tickets, and pay for it yourself.' People have these escape clauses, and that's just being a dummy.\"\n\nJackson is one of the most influential thinkers on agriculture in the country, a renowned scientist with a vision for changing the face of American farming in dramatic, even radical ways. He is also a master of rhetorical flourish and pushes his vision with the stentorian voice (and the moral urgency) of a preacher. The way we grow our food is part of a much larger problem in the way we treat our land, our water, and our climate.\n\n\"There are too many of us, but our consumption is rapacious,\" he told students graduating from the University of Kansas in 2013. \"It is legal to rip the tops off mountains, get the coal and burn it. It is legal to drill for oil and natural gas\u2014from the Gulf to the Arctic\u2014and burn it. It is legal to engage in fracking that threatens groundwater to get natural gas and burn it. It is legal to have our soils erode and toxic chemicals applied, legal to allow our rural communities to decline and watch so much of our cultural seed stock disappear.\"\n\nJackson places much of the blame for this state of affairs on what he calls the \"industrial hero,\" the scientist (or more broadly, the corporation) claiming to have high-tech, silver bullet answers to highly complex problems.\n\n\"These technology fundamentalists are far worse than religious fundamentalists,\" Jackson told me. \"The ultimate fundamentalist doesn't even know he's a fundamentalist. If your efforts are clouded by the desire for financial gain, or clouded by a desire to be famous, then you are not available for the pursuit of wisdom. Where does responsibility come from? 'Feed the world' is a very poor veil to put around the desire to get rich or famous. Rather than think hard about problems, the industrial hero says, 'We must feed the world,' which has an easy move to a profit agenda. Contrast that with the phrase 'The world must be fed,' which carries a social agenda that has to do with social justice. You have two different breeds of cat.\"\n\nMention publicity-generating moves like Monsanto's recent announcement that it would contribute $4 million to study the decline of the monarch butterfly, and you can practically see Jackson's blood start to rise. Sure, the money is nice, he says, \"meanwhile 97 million acres of corn is going to be drenched with Roundup. That's the problem we allow ourselves.\"\n\nJackson has been thinking about feeding the world for five decades. He has published highly influential books, built an internationally recognized research station on a shoestring budget, and been showered with honors (including a MacArthur \"genius grant\") and recognition (he was named by both _Life_ magazine and the Smithsonian as one of the twentieth century's most influential people). All this for work he and his research team have been doing on a plant that has yet to reach the market. When it does, Jackson hopes, farmers may be able to grow vast amounts of food and begin repairing land that has been degraded for centuries.\n\nOne of the first things Jackson likes to show visitors is a pair of vertical posters, hanging above a stairwell in the institute's lab facility. To the left is a picture of a wheat plant, its thready roots extending just inches below the soil. To the right is a picture of a plant Jackson and his scientists have been developing for many years, something known as intermediate wheatgrass. Its roots drop down fully ten feet.\n\n\"The picture to the left is the plant that started civilization,\" Jackson told me. \"The one on the right is the plant that's going to save it.\"\n\n### The Problem with Annuals\n\nAlthough he is one of the country's leading thinkers about agriculture, Wes Jackson is not particularly interested in what's going on in the vegetable aisle. He wants to change the rest of the grocery store. Why? Because 70 percent of the calories we eat\u2014and 70 percent of our farmland\u2014is wrapped up not in fruits and vegetables but in grains. So are 70 percent of the soil erosion and 70 percent of the petrochemicals.\n\n\"You have all these showy images of green, leafy healthy stuff, but humans are grass-seed eaters first and legume-seed eaters second, and the rest is water,\" Jackson said.\n\nFor a farmer and a plant scientist, Jackson is rather cantankerous about the way people plant the land. He doesn't like to talk about problems in agriculture. He likes to talk about the problem _of_ agriculture\u2014a problem that has gotten more complex (and dangerous) since people first put plow to ground.\n\nThis is the story he tells. People have been sowing, reaping, selecting, and trading seeds since they first started growing food 10,000 years ago. If a certain plant did well in a certain soil in a certain climate, the farmer would save the seeds and plant the cultivated variety, or cultivar, again the next year. If a plant did poorly, it was discarded. Human selection mirrored natural selection, but with a twist: the only plants that got to pass on their genes were those that proved useful for the human appetite.\n\nThe trouble began when early farmers chose to breed plants that needed to be planted every year, rather than plants that remained in the ground for years at a time. Although the vast majority of plants on earth are perennials, annuals are far more easily manipulated by farmers (and later by genetic engineers). By choosing seeds from only the hardiest or most productive plants, Neolithic farmers (and many generations that followed) could develop crops that yielded more and more food with each passing year. Go to southern Mexico, the birthplace of corn, and you will see a vast variety of corn species: some are two feet high, some are fifteen. Some are blue, some are yellow. All of these crops were selected, over many generations, to achieve flavors and textures and hardiness unique to the specific places and cultures in which they are planted.\n\nAs breeding science got more and more sophisticated, farmers learned to speed up this process by crossbreeding (or hybridizing) annuals. These crops have an obvious advantage for growers: because they live only a year, they can push a higher percentage of their energy into producing big, high-calorie seeds. (Genetic engineers are correct when they say they have simply taken this one step further, configuring annual corn and soy to resist herbicides, or drought, or insect infestations.) Because all our mountains of annual corn, wheat, and soy can be ground up and turned into everything from breakfast cereal to cattle feed to soda pop, the food industry has turned these crops (for better or worse) into the staples of our national food system.\n\nBut all this efficiency, all this uniformity, has come at a significant cost.\n\nJared Diamond, the scientist and bestselling author of books like _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ , has called annual agriculture \"a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.\" If all of human history is represented by a twenty-four-hour clock, Diamond writes, humans were hunter-gatherers from midnight until 11:54 p.m. We've been _farmers_ \u2014let alone genetic engineers\u2014for only about six minutes. Not a long time, really, to get things right.\n\nLong before GMOs, farmers figured out how to grow lots of cheap calories. But this often came at the expense of poor nutrition, a fact that has become vastly exaggerated in our industrial food era. African Bushmen eat some seventy-five different wild plants, Diamond writes, and could never die of starvation in numbers like the Irish did during the potato famine because of the variety in their diets. The Irish were so dependent on this single crop that when, in 1845, a fungal blight knocked out 90 percent of the crop, a million people\u2014fully one-eighth of the country's population\u2014starved to death. Another 1.3 million people left the country, followed by 5 million more over the next several decades.\n\nIndeed, it has been argued that far from relieving famine, farming actually _contributes_ to it. When a culture's food supply becomes centralized\u2014dependent on a few crops, grown either by a few companies or by a central government\u2014bad things tend to happen. In the late 1950s, during China's Great Leap Forward, Mao dictated that both wheat and rice be planted at densities far beyond the soil's capacity to support them. The result was disastrous crop loss, and some 80 million people died of starvation. In the Soviet Union, Stalin subdued Ukraine (and killed 7 million people) by controlling Europe's breadbasket.\n\nSo consider that the United States' 320 million acres of farmland is planted with 80 percent annual, monoculture crops. (The other 20 percent is perennial\u2014mostly hay and alfalfa for animal feed.) Although these plants are perfectly designed to fit the industrial economy that designed them\u2014perfect for processed food; perfect for ethanol; perfect for feeding 10 billion cows, chickens, and pigs\u2014they are also freighted with serious drawbacks. Annual plants have very shallow root systems that tap into only the top few inches of soil. Add to this annual plowing and spraying, and the ground quickly becomes nutritionally depleted, even barren. Tim Crews, a Land Institute scientist, considers the soil beneath traditional monoculture crops to be \"just this side of a Walmart parking lot in terms of ecological health.\"\n\nDepleted soils, of course, force farmers to use enormous quantities of synthetic fertilizers, which are derived from petrochemicals. But since only about half of these fertilizers actually gets absorbed by plants, the rest ends up elsewhere. Some gets converted into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Some washes downstream where (if we're talking about the Midwest) it eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, where it creates algae blooms. When these massive pulses of aquatic plant growth die back and decompose, they suck so much oxygen from the water that they leave dead zones that can be seen from outer space.\n\nBecause annual plants must be stripped out and replanted every year, the soil beneath them requires vast volumes of herbicides to control the weeds that sweep onto the bare soil. The bare ground is also terribly prone to soil erosion. Even though modern no-till farming has reduced soil loss by 40 percent since the 1980s, many farmers are still tilling extensively, and we are still losing some 1.7 billion tons of topsoil every year. This is a lot when you consider that, left to itself, soil replenishes itself at a rate of about a quarter inch per century. We're running things down in a few decades that took millennia to create.\n\nIt is for these reasons that Wes Jackson considers the GMO question to be something of a bait and switch. From the beginning, biotech companies have said they were developing technologies to \"feed the world.\" What they have in fact done is use the technology to ramp up an already destructive form of industrial farming.\n\nStan Cox, a plant breeder at The Land Institute, likes to show people a sheet with two columns on it: problems caused by conventional farming in 1990, and problems caused by conventional farming in 2015. The lists are exactly the same: soil loss and degradation, toxic chemicals, water pollution, monoculture, factory farming, corporate control. Except for one thing: the 2015 list includes GMOs.\n\nIn other words, even as we squeeze an incredible amount of food energy out of limited cropland, we are pushing plants, soil, and the environment as a whole to their ecological limits. And even if we get rid of GMOs, in other words, we would still have all the problems caused by large-scale farming. It's not the _technology_ that causes the real problems. It's the _system._\n\n\"Let's take the big picture for a moment,\" Jackson told me. \"This GMO thing prevents real thought. It's worse than a digression. It's a _distraction._ We are really interested in social justice and reducing greenhouse gases and reducing poverty. How do we meet a bona fide human need\u2014like reducing poverty as we reduce fossil fuel use\u2014how do we meet that need in a way that goes beyond GMOs? This pipsqueak thing of GMOs enters into the arena and tries to create balloons that fill the whole arena\u2014that's the problem. They de facto baited us to be pulled into a distraction, and we've taken the bait. Our role is to make the subject as complicated as it actually is.\"\n\n### The Promise of Perennials\n\nWhen he and his family started The Land Institute in 1976, Jackson saw in the Kansas landscape both a great problem and a great solution. By the 1970s, despite great federal conservation efforts and federal financing, the soil on monoculture farms was still eroding at about the same rate it had during the dust bowl of the 1930s. By dramatic contrast, Kansas's native prairies\u2014the few that had not been plowed under for crops\u2014were gems of sustainable growth.\n\nInstead of the ecological desert of the monoculture farm, prairies were \"perennial polycultures\": gorgeous, diverse tapestries of soil, plants, insects, animals, and birds that worked in a rich balance that kept the entire system healthy. Prairies did not require annual planting because the plants were virtually all perennials. They didn't require excess petrochemical fertilizers\u2014they just soaked up energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil. Plants that needed soil nitrogen, like wild grasses, were helped by legumes that provided it, like bundleflower. Prairies are not generally plagued by weeds, because their perennial leaf canopies and roots outcompete invasive species. Prairie soils do not wash away in the rain, because perennial plants have far more extensive and woven year-round root structures. Because they have evolved to survive for multiple years, they have developed better disease resistance and can withstand stress (like drought). And because they have evolved diverse relationships with both plants and animals around them, prairie perennials tend to survive (as a system) even if a single species declines.\n\nSo Jackson had an idea: Why couldn't a farm\u2014or even an entire country's farmland\u2014function more like a prairie? Would agricultural \"biomimicry\" work?\n\nThe idea seemed so obvious, Jackson couldn't believe no one had tried it before. If farms\u2014even large-scale farms\u2014mirrored prairies, they would solve a wide variety of intractable problems in industrial agriculture. Because they have permanent root systems, they could eliminate more than half the soil erosion in the United States, saving $9 billion worth of fuel for tilling equipment every year. They would also save nearly $20 billion worth of soil\u2014though how one puts a price on an essential, nonrenewable resource is a bit of a parlor game.\n\nDeep roots would also mean the efficient use of both water and soil nutrients, especially nitrogen\u2014which could radically cut back on the need for both irrigation and fossil fuels, especially synthetic fertilizers. Because perennials outcompete weeds, they would not require herbicides. Because they would not have to be torn up and planted every year, they would improve the land's biodiversity, both underground (in terms of microorganisms in the soil) and aboveground (in terms of food and habitat for everything from bees and monarch butterflies to migratory birds).\n\nWith so many obvious advantages, why hadn't farmers been planting perennials for 10,000 years? To Jackson's scientific mind, the answer lay in the way perennials are built. Because perennials must store energy in their roots to survive year after year, they cannot afford to put all their energy into producing seeds, as annuals do. On the other hand, perennials make up for some of this because they enjoy a much longer growing season.\n\nSo for Jackson's team at The Land Institute, the trick has been trying to figure out how to take the best traits from a perennial plant (deep roots) and combine them with the best traits of an annual (big seeds). How do you take a 10-foot-tall perennial grass and domesticate it to create bigger seeds and higher yields? How do you get wild plants to accept uniform planting and efficient harvesting?\n\nThe work has been slow and laborious. Jackson's scientists, who have been working on this for thirty years, say their work is \"like scratching off lottery tickets.\" But if they can figure it out, they might actually alter the course of agriculture that has been in place for 10,000 years.\n\n### Perennial Calories\n\nOne of the perennial plants Jackson and his team are betting on is a wild relative of wheat from Persia known as intermediate wheatgrass, which produces a (trademarked) grain called Kernza. If it strikes you as odd that the savior of American agriculture might come from Iran, consider that all American wheat\u2014all those \"amber waves of grain\"\u2014comes from Central Asia and the Middle East, where it has been grown for at least 7,000 years.\n\nIn the early 1900s, immigrant farmers like Central European Mennonites brought wheat seed and planted it across the middle and upper Midwest, initially for cattle forage. Now, the Midwest is blanketed with more than 60 million acres of wheat: hard winter wheat blankets Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and North Texas; spring wheat covers North and South Dakota, and eastern and central Montana.\n\nReplacing 60 million acres of annual grain with perennial grains would be an ecological coup of historic proportions. But this is hardly the limit of Jackson's imagination. Intermediate wheatgrass can also be used as a biofuel, which means it could replace some of the 40 million acres of corn American farmers currently grow not for food but for ethanol. (Claims from industrial corn companies that ethanol is a \"green\" substitute for petroleum have long since been discredited; they offer virtually no benefit in terms of reducing carbon emissions. And consider that Brazil is cutting down a million acres of rainforest a year to plant biofuel corn, then ships half of this fuel to Europe. The net effect of this transfer is 50 percent more carbon emissions than gasoline.)\n\nSo, just for starters (and not even counting the perennial rice the Land Institute's colleagues are developing in Asia or the perennial sorghum they are working on in the United States and Africa, or the perennial silphium, a sunflower relative that can be used for oilseed), that's 100 million acres of Walmart parking lot that could be turned into highly productive, ecologically diverse, carbon-sinking perennial polyculture.\n\nGiven the state of our food system, and the state of the climate, the stakes are high. \"The world is not going to be fine waiting around for thirty more years for crops that could be sequestering carbon,\" Tim Crews told me. \"It's not as though there's nothing to lose here.\"\n\nWith world-changing ambitions resting on just a couple of plants, the trick for scientists like Crews and his colleague Shuwen Wang is to take a wild plant (like intermediate wheatgrass) and persuade it to mate with a domestic plant (like wheat) to produce food and fuel that people will like so much they'll be willing to shift their entire approach to the way their land is planted. As is, the grain can be ground up and mixed with regular flour for things that don't need a big rise, like pancakes or cookies. It can be used to make beer. But so far intermediate wheatgrass produces less than half the yield of wheat and (left to itself) doesn't create enough gluten to make bread. One gold ring for The Land Institute's plant scientists is clearly a marriage between the perennial hardiness of intermediate wheatgrass and the big seeds, high yields, and gluten of wheat.\n\nJust as it does for genetic engineers, the secret to this marriage lies in the mysteries of genetics; the team at the Land Institute can't wait 7,000 years (the time it took domestic wheat) for intermediate wheatgrass to produce big, plentiful seeds that release easily during threshing.\n\n\"There's still a lot of things we don't know yet, and yields and seed size are still not where we want them,\" Lee DeHaan told me. \"But we thought it would take a hundred years to get domestication, and we have been surprised at how fast it's been coming along.\"\n\nDeHaan, who grew up on a farm in Minnesota, came to The Land Institute in 2001, armed with a PhD in agronomy and agroecology. He and his team are using two approaches to solve the domestication problem. The first is hybridizing wheat and intermediate wheatgrass to genetically nudge their offspring to express the best traits of both. The second is growing (and selectively breeding) enough generations of wild wheatgrass to get it to perform more like wheat. The goal is essentially the same: Create a plant that makes big, plentiful, easily harvested seeds and also comes equipped with deep roots\u2014and will come back year after year. They are doing this work without engineering any genes, which, especially compared with the relative glitz of engineering powerhouses like the Danforth Center, makes work at the Land Institute both slow and \"unglamorous,\" DeHaan said.\n\n\"It's hard to attract scholars, students, and funding. It looks so tedious and boring,\" he said. \"There's something about lab work that seems so much more attractive and prestigious. The excitement always is for what's new. Funders love that because it's always about what we couldn't do in the past, now we can do. You have all these expensive machines, data being calculated on computers\u2014all that versus slogging it out in the field.\"\n\nWhile DeHaan remains suspicious of the industrial-scale ends to which most GM technology is used, his goal is sustainability, not purity. He's looking for clues to what makes a domesticated plant's seeds nonshattering (meaning the seeds stay in the plant's seed head, rather than blow to the winds, as they do in wild plants) and also free threshing, which means they are easily separated from the chaff during harvesting. His work has long been fully engaged with the techniques of molecular biology\u2014gene sequencing, molecular marking, chromosome staining\u2014that help him figure out a plant's genetic structure. He's just not taking genes from one plant and putting them in another.\n\n\"If DNA is a book, we just want to read it. We're not cutting pages from other books and inserting them into this book,\" DeHaan said. \"Without molecular tools, perennial wheat will never be a reality. If you find a unique marker associated with something like free threshing, you can generate thousands of different segments and see where they lead. This is not GMO, just the ability to sequence genes, to stain chromosomes, track molecular markers, figure out the function of genes. Because these tools are relatively cheap, it doesn't make sense not to use them.\"\n\nBesides his work with wheatgrass, DeHaan and his Land Institute colleagues are also working with scientists in China to develop perennial rice, and with scientists from Africa on perennial sorghum. The day of my visit, he was pawing through a patch of sorghum plants, their seed heads drawn together inside slender paper bags. DeHaan was rather urgently asking the plants to mate.\n\nSorghum looks and acts a bit like corn: it is a large grass plant, with energy-rich seeds that can be used for food, forage, or fuel. Like corn, it has also become one of the world's most important crops; the world currently produces about 70 million tons a year, ranking behind only wheat, corn, barley, and rice. In the United States, 7 million acres of sorghum are planted yearly, mostly for animal feed and to produce biofuels. In Africa, however, sorghum is a critical source of calories on a continent with exhausted soil and the constant threat of drought. After a few weeks without rain, corn will shrivel up and collapse. Sorghum will just stand there and take it. When the rains return, sorghum will start growing again.\n\nAt a nearby lab table, Pheonah Nabukalu, a Land Institute scientist from Uganda, was measuring out sorghum seeds on a small scale and entering data into a computer. Around her, on the table, on nearby racks, were scores of brown paper lunch bags filled with seeds. She was poring over some 500 different experimental lines, all bred in temperate conditions, trying to decipher which plants have the highest yields, and selecting those that have perennial rhizomes. Even if she finds a promising candidate, there remains the challenge of getting a temperate-raised seed to grow in a tropical place like Uganda\u2014or the other places she thinks might benefit, like Mali, Ethiopia, and South Africa.\n\nArmed with a plant breeding PhD from Louisiana State, Nabukalu has been working on developing high-yield grains that are also resistant to pests, diseases, and drought. One project involves American seeds that have already been crossed with perennials, and then crossing these with varieties native to Africa. Using local seed lines has its benefits, since local seeds have already been bred to resist local pests and diseases. But regional specificity is also critical for developing crops that will fit well into the local environment. At field stations in Uganda, she is helping oversee experimental crops in arid, semi-arid, and rainy locations. And she is doing this work slowly, and without GM technology or corporate influence.\n\n\"Companies always want to do it fast because of the money,\" she said. \"The seed companies working in Uganda are mainly working with Monsanto and with corn. Corn is not even native to Africa. It's a colonial import from Mexico, and it's only been in Africa for a hundred years.\"\n\nShe is also suspicious of GM cassava\u2014the kind Nigel Taylor is growing at the Danforth Center\u2014but not for the usual reasons.\n\n\"I've never seen orange cassava,\" she said. \"Our sweet potato is also white fleshed. We cook it for three to four hours, but it holds up nicely. When you cook orange flesh for three hours, it breaks down. Making farmers switch is very hard. Taste is tradition.\"\n\n### Could Perennials Be GMO?\n\nDeHaan's and Nabukalu's ambivalence about biotechnology\u2014interested in some techniques, suspicious of others\u2014is shared by other scientists at The Land Institute. At one level, they can see the benefits: surely it might be easier (and faster) to nudge wheatgrass toward bigger seeds by stitching in a few genes from a wheat plant. And what if you could engineer a plant (like corn) to fix its own nitrogen, like a legume? Think how much petroleum-based fertilizers would no longer have to be applied to tens of millions of acres of nitrogen-fixing corn.\n\n\"The anti-GMO side is too fearful,\" Wes Jackson told me. \"It reminds me of something kids used to say on the playground: 'When in worry, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.' It's okay with me to look at sequenced gene segments, to help speed up the research process. The term 'GMO' is a _generic_ \u2014to come out against them is not to consider the _specifics_.\"\n\nThe anti-GMO movement \"sucks way too much bandwidth away from many other aspects of sustainable agriculture,\" Tim Crews said. \"If we somehow got rid of all GMOs\u2014if sustainable agriculture somehow reared up and achieved this Herculean feat\u2014we would still be back in 1990 with the same list of profound shortcomings in agriculture.\"\n\nSince GM research is so capital intensive (done almost exclusively in corporate laboratories, or in university labs funded by corporations), it has become almost entirely focused on what Crews calls \"patentable objectives\": crops that can make companies a lot of money.\n\nAnd it's this dynamic\u2014corporations getting their hands on technology, and then scaling it up\u2014that causes deep and unpredictable problems.\n\nBy this reckoning, GMOs are like pharmaceutical drugs: they are so expensive to design, and test, and market, that only the biggest corporations have the wherewithal to introduce them. Because of this capital investment, corporations will pursue only those crops that offer a return on their dollar.\n\nBut GMOs are like pharmaceuticals in another way as well. In the right hands, opioid pain pills, for example, can work a kind of therapeutic magic. They have made pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars. But as they have flooded into popular use, pain pills have also caused epidemics of addiction, black markets, and misery.\n\nThis is precisely the kind of \"cascading\" consequence that worries Crews about GMOs. Let's say scientists can figure out how to increase a plant's photosynthetic efficiency. What could go wrong by increasing a plant's energy production? Wouldn't that just make food crops that much more productive?\n\n\"If they could raise that ceiling\u2014that's the Holy Grail,\" Crews said. \"So then what? All of the other resources that are synched up in that ecosystem\u2014all of those things will get out of whack.\"\n\nTaking his cue from the Italian researcher Mario Giampietro, Crews offers a dark example: Consider a spider that can suddenly make a bigger web to catch more insects. Suddenly all spiders are doing this, making bigger webs and catching more insects, until the population of the insects crashes, which leads to a crash in spiders as well. Or consider the burning of fossil fuels: great power, great convenience\u2014and then the countless cascading effects of climate change. Entire natural systems get thrown out of balance.\n\n\"Right now, we have ecosystems that have evolved to be in sync with resources that are available through natural processes over the course of a year,\" Crews said. \"Cacti are in sync with the rain available in a desert, redwoods are in sync with the rain on the coast. When you tweak a plant's genes to make them more productive, you can stress the larger processes\u2014both the plant and its surrounding ecosystem.\n\n\"Let's say you take a grass like oats and make it more photosynthetically efficient. All of a sudden the plant needs all its nutrients in much greater quantities. Which leads to a dynamic like we had during the Green Revolution: all this new productivity requires a huge new increase in nitrogen or phosphorous fertilizer. All of a sudden these nutrients\u2014especially phosphorous\u2014become taxed, or even tapped out, or, if we're talking about nitrogen, require a massive increase in petrochemicals.\n\n\"Then, if those genes get out into the world through cross-pollination with wild plants, the same would be true for natural systems,\" Crews said. \"If the resources are there, these plants would immediately take over, becoming taller, using more resources, outcompeting other plants. Or you run into situations where an ecosystem that is already resource limited grows beyond what they had been before, and what that looks like I don't even know, but it would be a novel situation.\"\n\nLike Lee DeHaan, Crews is not dead-set against the use of GM technology. If GMOs could move genes between plants that already cross naturally (or cisgenically), \"why would we not go there?\" Crews said.\n\n\"There could be a marginal improvement with GMO traits, but it's still the wrong approach for addressing agriculture's shortcomings. The overall sociological phenomenon is not addressing agriculture in ways that need to be addressed. If you take an ecological approach that solves things on this list, then we're talking, whether it involves conventional breeding, or cisgenics, to develop ecological agriculture.\n\n\"The way we're doing things is long term and messy,\" Crews said. \"We are by no means simply trying to introduce a new species here or there to be the next superfood or fill some niche market. Our rather long-term ambition is to replace tilled agriculture with something that is far more ecologically complex and sustainable\u2014agriculture ecosystems that humans could be proud of rather than the most compromised ecosystems imaginable.\"\n\n## 9.\n\n## Can GMOs Be Sustainable?\n\n No matter where you stand on GMOs, it seems reasonable to ask if our food system hasn't somehow become too big to fail. If industrial farming is the real culprit in our national eating disorder, perhaps a solution can be found simply by scaling back. Not in the interest of purity, or in pursuit of utopian visions of food. Not to get rid of GMOs, or even to (completely) rid the world of pesticides. Perhaps it's enough to have food produced on a smaller scale, by farmers who take excellent care of their land.\n\nTo get to Jennie Schmidt's farm, you drive east across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, then hook a left and head north through an endless tapestry of some of the most fertile land on the Eastern Seaboard. Her Maryland farm is just beyond a shooting range, out along Sudlersville Cemetery Road. When I arrived on a cold February day, the Schmidts' dog Dozer met me out front. Jennie apologized for the carpet guys who were replacing the wall-to-wall carpeting that had been covering the floors of their modest home for thirty-seven years.\n\nThe Schmidts work 2,000 acres. It's not a huge operation, by Iowa standards, but consider this: Last year the Schmidts produced 12 million pounds of Roma tomatoes, enough to fill twenty tractor-trailers every day for two weeks. Over the years, the Schmidts have experimented with sweet corn, sweet peas, and lima beans, but given the risks\u2014the Eastern Shore gets forty-five inches of rain a year, much of it during spring growing season\u2014they have settled on their current mix: Tomatoes and green beans for the vegetable market. Soft red wheat, which they ship to a processor in Pennsylvania to make into crackers and pretzels. Twenty-two acres of grapes for local vineyards.\n\nAnd 1,500 acres of soybeans and corn, a good deal of it grown from GM seeds.\n\nAs third-generation farmers, the Schmidts have found a sweet spot between small-scale farms that survive by supplying farmers' markets, and industrial-scale operations that must invest millions into their own harvesting and canning infrastructure. Jennie Schmidt calls her farm a \"supermarket farm,\" but not because most of her crops go into the vegetable aisle. They don't. She and her husband, Hans, grow for canneries, which turn their tomatoes into \"value added\" products like salsa and tomato sauce. Tomatoes harvested at her farm in August are trucked to Pennsylvania and are in jars or cans less than forty-eight hours after they are picked.\n\nSitting as it does in the middle of the Eastern Shore\u2014a lobe of beautifully fertile land stretching from near Wilmington, Delaware, all the way to the bridge to Virginia Beach\u2014the Schmidt farm has had to adapt to the industrial agriculture that has grown up alongside it. Long considered to have some of the most productive soil on the Atlantic coast, the Eastern Shore is also situated near some of the biggest food markets in the world.\n\n\"I'm not a 'farmers' market farmer,'\" Jennie Schmidt told me. \"If I took 12 million pounds of tomatoes to a farmers' market, we'd flood the market. It wouldn't work. We get better income from vegetables than from grain production. But we have the markets for diverse crops. Where in Iowa are they going to sell cannery-grade tomatoes? A hundred miles from a farm in Iowa, you're still in the middle of nowhere. Here, in less than a hundred miles, we can be in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, or Philadelphia. We can be in New York City in three hours. Without the cannery and trucking infrastructure, we wouldn't even be in vegetables.\"\n\nThe Schmidts' farm, while not enormous, still sits at the very center of the industrial food system, and not just because of their tomatoes and the trucking infrastructure. Their corn and soybeans go straight into the maw of giant agribusinesses, overseen and orchestrated by some of the largest and most influential companies in the world. The Schmidts' GM seeds are engineered by companies like DuPont Pioneer, and they use chemical herbicides (like glyphosate) first designed by companies like Monsanto. And their harvested beans are sold to companies like Perdue, which, in addition to being one of the world's largest chicken producers, is also one of the country's largest grain companies. It has to be: the company has to feed most of the 569 million chickens that grow on the Eastern Shore alone.\n\nBut the Schmidts also win awards for environmental stewardship. They practice a wide range of soil conservation techniques that would please even the crankiest environmentalist. Rather than strip their fields bare after a harvest, they leave withered plants to serve as \"green manure.\" They rotate crops. They use integrated pest management. Because they spray their weeds, the Schmidts don't have to till their soil, which means they can reduce their carbon footprint\u2014both by driving their tractor less and by leaving carbon in the soil, where it belongs. They plant cover crops, which both hold their soil in place for future crops and prevent erosion. This prevents both soil and the nutrient phosphorous that attaches to it from running off into the Chesapeake Bay. To avoid StarLink-style contamination of their soybeans, they flush out their combines and grain elevators whenever they harvest to make sure none of the GM beans intended for the chicken feed market get into the seeds grown for the tofu market.\n\n\"The truth is, you will never get to zero,\" Jennie said. \"You can't get rid of every soybean in your combine. But there are those of us who take the time to meet that level of due diligence. Our tofu beans don't get labeled by the Non-GMO Project, but they get tested, and they are non-GMO. If they find half of 1 percent, they get sold on the Perdue market. If we can't verify that they are non-GMO, they don't get sold that way. Most people don't think we pay that level of attention. They think we're just blowing smoke, which is sad.\"\n\nGiven this level of scrupulous attention to soil health, conservation, and best weed- and pest-control practices, the Schmidts' farm has been certified by the state for its \"agricultural stewardship,\" meaning it has met high standards for preserving soil and water quality.\n\nThe Schmidt farm\u2014industrial but local, pro-GMO but pro-sustainability\u2014offers a glimpse at a kind of middle way farming that employs technology at a scale that minimizes many of the ills associated with corporate agriculture. Their approach doesn't answer all questions, like whether we really need to be raising 569 million chickens on some of Maryland's best farmland, or whether we need to be eating so many chicken nuggets in the first place. But until we tackle those larger questions, farms like the Schmidts' suggest that the secret to better food production may lie not with enlightened global agribusinesses, but with enlightened local farmers.\n\n### Providing the Crops That Industry Demands\n\nJennie Schmidt received her bachelor's degree in nutrition and food science, with a minor in international agriculture. She spent a couple of years with 4-H, teaching agricultural techniques to schools in Botswana. She later returned to graduate school for a master's degree in human nutrition; her thesis looked at food and biotechnology just as the GMO industry was finding its legs. Today, she is the only woman on the board of the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board, and now the first female president of the U.S. Wheat Foods Council. She is also past president of the Maryland Grape Growers Association and past chair of the Maryland Farm Bureau's Specialty Crop Committee.\n\nNow that her husband, Hans, has been appointed Maryland's assistant secretary of agriculture, Jennie relies more than ever on help from her in-laws and her brother-in-law. Still, Jennie herself has to do a lot more than just manage the family's twenty-two-acre vineyard, oversee the farm's crew, and keep the books. She also maintains a blog, _The Foodie Farmer_ , on which she spends a lot of time trying to disabuse people of their fears over GMOs. Given the intensity (and in Jennie's opinion, the ignorance) of opinions on the topic, Jennie got into the GMO debate reluctantly. \"I just started writing about biotech this last year,\" Jennie told me. \"I didn't want to bring that into my home. When you criticize a farmer for what they do or don't do, you're criticizing their home. In the blogosphere, it gets very personal.\"\n\nThe Schmidts' neighbors, who run a 350-acre farm across the way, sell their vegetables to local supermarket chains like Giant and Whole Foods. They run a farm stand. When people think about \"local farmers,\" it is the Schmidts' neighbors they have in their heads, not the Schmidts. This is a source of constant irritation.\n\n\"On Facebook, whenever a friend says, 'Support your local farmer,' I always chime in and say, 'You know, if you buy canned tomato products, I was one of the significant growers,'\" Schmidt said. \"That's the disconnect\u2014our faces are not on those products. People don't know who we are.\"\n\nThis \"disconnect\" between consumers and farmers lies at the very root of the GMO debate, Jennie Schmidt says. Forget about gene sequencing\u2014plenty of people don't even understand that potatoes and carrots come out of the ground.\n\nJennie's father-in-law, who still lives across the road, started farming in the 1930s, about ten years after the introduction of hybrid corn, which dramatically boosted the yields growers could get from their fields. Eighty years later, GMOs offer Schmidt Farms a similar boost. Using Bt corn, the Schmidts now get 221 bushels of corn per acre\u2014more than 35 bushels (and $100) per acre more than they get for non-GM corn. It would be hard to persuade a farmer to give up such advantages, and indeed, it is this margin\u2014more corn grown on the same acreage\u2014that has made farmers enthusiastic about GMOs since they were first introduced thirty years ago.\n\nIn recent years, the Schmidts have started planting a new GM soybean engineered by DuPont Pioneer called the Plenish. In addition to being good chicken feed, the Plenish beans, when processed for their oil, create a second market, for fast-food frying oil. Oil made from Plenish soybeans has zero grams of trans fat and 20 percent less saturated fat than hydrogenated vegetable oil, and is high in oleic acid. The oil is also \"shelf stable,\" and so is especially useful in the creation of processed foods that sometimes sit on store shelves for weeks or months. Perdue can use the soybeans to feed its chickens and then process the soybean oil to sell to the fast-food industry, which sees GM soybean oil as the future of fried food.\n\n\"High oleic soy can help reduce lots of health problems, because if you don't have high oleic oil, what you need to do is hydrogenate the oil to be suitable for frying and other cooking, and when you hydrogenate oils you end up with something that's conducive to cardiovascular disease,\" Paul Anderson from the Danforth Center told me. \"High oleic doesn't have the instability that requires hydrogenation. It's very beneficial.\"\n\nThe Plenish beans have clearly been a boon for the Schmidts: they clear $263 per acre for these beans, compared with $124 for feed beans and just $62 for the beans they grow for direct human consumption, like the tofu market.\n\nIn other words, GM seeds are good for the Schmidts. And because the grains they grow help form a significant block in the foundation of the country's industrial food system, from its chicken nuggets to its french fries, the GM seeds are also good for the many food industries that use them. With GM products like the Plenish bean, fast food and processed food will be a bit less unhealthy. To those overseeing this industrial food system, this is a good thing.\n\n\"We've had folks ask us, 'Why didn't the industry get started with a biotech product like this?'\" Russ Sanders, the director of food and industry markets for Pioneer, has said. \"We think it's a great opportunity to help illustrate the positive aspects of biotech that go beyond farmer benefits.\"\n\nClearly, the companies that both provide the seeds and buy the beans from the Schmidts think the system is working. In the fall of 2014, DuPont Pioneer and Perdue AgriBusiness announced that Perdue would more than double\u2014to about 50,000\u2014the acreage contracted to Eastern Shore and Pennsylvania farmers for growing Plenish beans \"with the intention of marketing the high oleic soybean oil by the food industry in 2015.\" Nationwide, the United Soybean Board has set a goal of 18 million acres of high-oleic soybeans by 2023, which would make the beans the fourth largest crop in the United States, behind corn, conventional soybeans, and wheat.\n\nThe move to expand Plenish beans in the Mid-Atlantic was hailed as \"an important milestone for Pioneer in its efforts to bring product innovation to the food industry and complements solutions offered by DuPont Nutrition & Health to address the world's challenges in food.\"\n\n\"We're always looking for ways to bring new market opportunities to our grower customers,\" a Perdue AgriBusiness vice president said. \"By working with DuPont Pioneer on the production of Plenish high oleic soybeans on the Eastern Shore, we're hoping to generate additional profit opportunities and long-term industry growth.\"\n\nSo here we are again: GMOs have always been pitched as \"good\" for farmers, and for farmers like the Schmidts, this is plainly true. They are also clearly good for the companies that make them. But are the foods these grains produce good for the rest of us? Processed foods fried in high-oleic-acid soybeans, after all, are still processed fried foods. Beyond this, are tens (or hundreds) of thousands of acres planted with these new seeds good for the environment?\n\nJennie Schmidt can't control the first question, but she can control the second. She has no interest in telling people what they should or should not eat. If the market demands Roma tomatoes, she will grow them. If the market demands high-oleic-acid soybeans, she will grow them. And she will do it in as sustainable a way as she can. And to her mind, GMOs help with this.\n\nJennie and Hans first started using GM seeds in 1998, and like many GM farmers, they maintain that the crops\u2014which are designed to withstand the herbicide glyphosate\u2014have allowed them to dramatically reduce their use of harsher pesticides, like atrazine. \"We've been farming with GMOs for seventeen years and have seen a real benefit,\" Jennie told me. \"A real reduction in the volume of pesticides for Roundup Ready crops. Using Bt corn has also eliminated a lot of insecticide use. We're using softer chemicals and using less of them.\"\n\nThe Schmidts consider their farm synergistic, in that it uses techniques from all three forms of agriculture: organic, conventional, and biotech. Because they plant GM crops and use synthetic pesticides, the Schmidts farm cannot be certified as \"organic.\" The Schmidts still use some atrazine on their corn, to suppress weeds, and\u2014given the forty-five inches of rain that falls during the growing season\u2014they have to spray their vegetables with fungicides \"just to deal with mold,\" Jennie said.\n\n\"There is no 'one' system that is 'best,'\" Jennie wrote. \"There is no 'one' way of doing things that should be done carte blanche by every farmer, everywhere. There is no 'cookie-cutter' system that should be applied to every farm. What we farmers should be doing is maximizing the synergies of all best management practices that meld together the best for our soils while preserving our inputs and natural resources.\"\n\nJennie Schmidt speaks with honesty and precision about all parts of the growing process on _The Foodie Farmer_. She explains the difference between spraying and dousing, noting (right down to the ounces per acre) exactly what kind and how much fungicide she and Hans apply to their fields. In one post, she showed her readers a photograph of a paper towel she laid down alongside a row of grapevines just before she drove by with her tractor-mounted sprayer. After passing over the towel with the sprayer, she snapped another photo. The towel is speckled, but far from drenched.\n\n\"Because this is spraying and not dousing, I do not need to soak the paper towel,\" she wrote. \"The plants do not get 'doused.' There is no dripping off of chemical solution. They do not need to be soaked in herbicide to achieve good weed control. There is no saturation. There is no dousing.\"\n\nThis is precisely the kind of transparency that activists tried (in vain) to wring from the big companies on Kauai and Maui. The gamble for farmers like the Schmidts is that consumers will be willing to buy produce grown with chemicals\u2014or with GMOs\u2014as long as they trust that their farmer is both skilled and forthcoming about the work that goes into growing their food. For the Schmidts, this approach clearly seems to be working.\n\nBesides, Jennie told me, it's not like the \"natural\" pesticides used by organic farmers are benign. The Schmidts have had as many as 100 acres of certified organic fields in the past, and even then (and even today) they still used \"organic\" fungicides like sulfur and copper sulfate that are, in the strictest sense, toxic.\n\n\"The copper and sulfur we use on our grapes are 'natural,' but they are still very toxic,\" Jennie told me, noting that nicotine, which tobacco plants generate to protect themselves from insects, is also a \"natural\" pesticide. \"If 'natural' were safe, then smoking would be good for us,\" she said. \"I would love a GMO grape. Sulfur is not a fun product to work with.\"\n\nEspecially for a farmer who has experience working organically, Schmidt has very little patience for the way some companies market the \"organic movement.\" She now considers the label \"organic\" to be little more than a cynical marketing ploy that ends up making food more expensive than it needs to be and\u2014worse\u2014pits one kind of farmer against another.\n\nTake Chipotle. In 2015, the fast-food burrito franchise received both praise and rebukes for announcing that it would provide GMO-free ingredients in its many restaurants. This was initially hailed as a victory by anti-GMO forces, until they learned that Chipotle would continue to sell both soda (made with GM corn syrup) and meat (raised on GM corn and soybeans). Pro-GM farmers and scientists were equally appalled, but for far different reasons.\n\nChipotle's campaign creates \"a disservice to American farmers,\" the Danforth Center's Jim Carrington told me. \"It creates the impression that there's evil farming and happy idyllic farming, and they source their meat from happy farms. That's simply marketing. Science has shown that the feelings they are marketing are not grounded in reality.\n\n\"In general, people who have not come from a farm have notions of farming and agriculture that are romantic,\" Carrington said. \"The wholesome farm with happy cows and all that. But the organic industry is a very advanced and well-organized industry that has grown in part by having a villain, and the villain is conventional agriculture. Organic claims to be much better than conventional and commands a price premium. It's a very lucrative premium and is in part defended by marketing campaigns, blogging campaigns, websites, and many other ways with the intent of seeing the organic industry increase in size. There is money to be made.\"\n\nIndeed, like virtually every farmer I spoke with\u2014organic, conventional, or GMO\u2014Jennie Schmidt practically spat when I asked her about the marketing campaigns that tout a food company's \"values.\" She laughed bitterly when I asked her about the posters in Whole Foods that inevitably portray farmers as beautifully tanned models with a bunch of carrots in one hand and a smiling baby in the other.\n\n\"When Whole Foods or Chipotle runs these ad campaigns saying they only use food from 'farmers with values,' it's just like, 'Really? You have to throw everybody under the bus to further your own marketing campaign?'\" Schmidt told me. \"Painting everyone as bad except for the people they do business with? That's really frustrating. That's led a number of us to become more vocal and more transparent. We have to say, 'That's not true for me.'\"\n\n### \"If All Farmers Used GMOs Like I Do, We Wouldn't Have These Problems\"\n\nLike Jennie Schmidt, Steve Groff is a third-generation farmer; he works his acres ninety miles to the west, in Pennsylvania's Amish country. Groff's grandfather started growing tomatoes in the 1950s; his father grew pumpkins in the 1970s. Like Jennie Schmidt, Groff has won awards for his environmental stewardship.\n\nAnd like Jennie Schmidt, Groff grows everything from non-GM sweet corn and tomatoes to (in his case) 165 acres of GM corn and soybeans.\n\nGroff plants Liberty Link soybeans and uses a sprayer mounted on a tractor to spray glyphosate to kill dandelions, Canadian thistle, hemp dogbane (a heavily rooted perennial weed), and annual rye grass. Glyphosate \"does a really good job,\" Groff says.\n\nGroff doesn't grow herbicide-resistant corn, but he has planted Bt corn, which stands up better because the corn borers can't get it. That's where you get the argument that GMOs help farmers use less pesticides, he said.\n\n\"The success of Bt corn\u2014they've really knocked down the corn borers nationwide,\" Groff told me. \"You'd really have to have your head in the sand to dispute that. So with GMOs, I can argue why you should use them, and why you shouldn't. I tend to think objectively and scientifically. I think we need to keep monitoring this, but it's my feeling that people are overreacting to every little sniffle.\"\n\nGroff, like Jennie Schmidt, thinks GMOs and synthetic pesticides have their places, provided they are used intelligently and as part of a larger, sustainable approach to farming. Groff also practices integrated pest management, which means (among other things) that he uses one-quarter of the usual amount of fungicides\u2014and almost no insecticides.\n\nGroff sprays some fields twice a year, and others once every two years. It depends on the rotation, he says, but probably rounds out to about once a year per field\u2014about a third as much as most farmers, he said.\n\n\"Let's get real about this: if all farmers used glyphosate and GMOs like I do, we wouldn't have these problems,\" Groff told me. \"They've been way, _way_ overused. Sure, it's made farming easier for farmers. It's easy to kill stuff. When Roundup first came out, your crops were really clean\u2014there were no weeds. Now you can see resistant mare's tail on this farm. It may have blown in from other farms, but so far they have not been an issue for me. I'm not sitting here worried about how to control weeds.\"\n\nSteve Groff's genius lies far beyond his limited use of GMOs and pesticides. What he is really interested in is radishes\u2014and not the kind people eat. Working with Raymond Weil, a soil and crop scientist at the University of Maryland, Groff has developed something called a tillage radish, which he considers a radically simple way to fix many of the problems created by industrial-scale agriculture.\n\n\"Farmers have nitrogen leaks,\" Groff told me. \"If you had a leak in your barn, you'd fix it. I tell farmers they should fix the leak in their fields.\"\n\nPlanted as a cover crop, tillage radishes perform all kinds of jobs now done with chemicals: they control weeds, so farmers can reduce their need for herbicides. They loosen soil compaction and prevent runoff. Since the radishes pull nitrogen out of the soil and store it in their tubers, they greatly reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers: when the radishes die and break down (without the need for chemical burn down), the nitrogen goes back into the soil, where it can be taken up and used by cash crops.\n\n\"I think generally speaking we've plateaued with where we can go with chemical management styles,\" Groff told me. \"We've seen that soils are not holding up during weather extremes. We _have_ to build up soil resiliency. I'm not saying we have to eliminate fertilizers and pesticides, but we've forgotten and ignored our soil for fifty or sixty years. Some farmers are blind\u2014they say, 'That's the way my granddad did it.' Maybe it served them well, but we're starting to see the limits of that way of thinking. That's where the younger generation of farmers can really help.\"\n\nFor farmers, there are no margins, Groff said; you either make it big or you go under.\n\n\"Once you understand cover crops and the value of taking care of your soil, it's like opening a savings account,\" he said. \"By the very nature of keeping green things in the field, collecting sunlight, changing it into organic matter, it's money in the bank.\"\n\nWhen he started planting radishes\u2014along with nitrogen fixers like hairy vetch and legumes\u2014Groff's soil contained just 2 percent organic matter. With cover crops now depositing up to 40 pounds of nitrogen a year into the soil, he's gotten it up to a very healthy 5 percent\u2014all without the use of petrochemicals.\n\nFarmers should be saving and creating nitrogen, not buying it, Groff said. \"The nitrogen is here. I own it. I'm reaping the interest. And by the way, I'm not polluting the Chesapeake Bay. I don't get paid to plant cover crops, but it's an investment in your soil health. Add it up over ten years, and it will begin to pay off. In extreme weather\u2014wet, dry, hot, or cold\u2014having more organic matter in your soil will make your crops much more biologically resilient. I've seen thirty to forty bushels per acre increase with corn in dry season. You can have soils that are working like an IV without the chemistry.\"\n\nGroff's research into cover crops is on the leading edge of a national trend. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, state officials have pledged to nearly double the amount of farmland planted in cover crops to 460,000 acres, or roughly half of all croplands in the state.\n\nAcross the country, cover cropping has grown 30 percent over the last couple of years and is being used on everything from small organic farms to large industrial operations.\n\n\"I don't know of any other concept that's sweeping agriculture like this,\" Groff told me. \"They're all getting into it. Eighty percent of the Amish farms around here have radishes in them. I had a guy in Illinois say he wanted to buy radishes for 1,000 acres. I said, 'Whoa\u2014you ought to start small.' But he said he had 40,000 acres, so I said okay.\"\n\nGroff's tillage radishes, which he now sells nationwide, have been so successful he now has twenty-two people working for him: selling seeds, doing marketing, conducting research, and influencing agriculture nationwide. Not bad for someone who never went to college.\n\n\"There was never a day I didn't think I was going to be a farmer,\" Groff told me. \"People ask me where I graduated from, I tell them I haven't finished learning yet.\"\n\nLike Steve Groff, Jennie Schmidt is willing to use any farming technique\u2014GM or non-GM, pesticides or no pesticides\u2014as long as it produces for the farm and doesn't run down the larger environment.\n\n\"We tried to tap into the organic market, but it wasn't sustainable for us,\" Schmidt told me. \"People can't believe it when I say that. I don't mean organic is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable for _us_. There's no universal cookie-cutter method for all soil types, or all regions, or all farming sizes. Maybe if we had been less diversified, and had been just in grains, we could have focused on organic farming.\n\n\"If we didn't have so many irons in the fire, and weren't trying to sustain a family farm, and had more time to focus on things like doing organic practices, maybe that would have worked for us. It's a balancing act: this is what works for our farm and our level of risk that we were willing to take. Soil types dictate a lot of it. Smaller organic operations can overcome that, because they plant a smaller variety of many different things and have smaller acres to take care of. When you have 200 acres and a variety of different crops going, you need a very different approach.\"\n\n### Organic? Sustainable? Or Regenerative?\n\nThese ideas sit very nicely with Brian Snyder, head of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and one of the country's leading voices for farming done with the health of the planet in mind. Snyder wonders whether produce grown by farmers like Jennie Schmidt and Steve Groff might be given its own label: not \"GMO\" or \"organic,\" but \"sustainable.\" Marking food as \"sustainable\" would reward farmers for preserving topsoil, for example, or building soil quality through the use of nitrogen fixers, cover crops, or composting\u2014even if they used GM seeds.\n\n\"People accept that 'organic' is never going to include GMO, but the question is whether the term 'sustainable' can include GMO,\" Snyder said. \"The problem is, none of these things are simple. Compared to 'organic,' 'sustainable' offers a bigger tent that includes more than organic produce. No-till agriculture would qualify, and no-till farmers mostly use GMO seeds. We might have to consider a world with GMOs, to save soil and build soil quality. Instead of labeling foods with a skull and crossbones, they'd rather have a 'sustainable' label that is a positive thing, even though it may have GMOs in it. That idea is not completely without merit.\"\n\nGMOs themselves will never cause a fraction of the problems caused by the industrial food system itself. \"We are going to waste a lot of time and energy on whether GMOs are helpful or harmful to people, when that's not the most important question,\" Snyder said. \"The most important question is what kind of _system_ do they generate and support? The most effective criticisms of GMOs are about the peripheral realities of this system. It used to be that farmers always retained a percentage of their crop for seeds for the next year. They did this for thousands of years. Now, in the last couple of decades, almost none do that.\"\n\nThese ideas also sit nicely with Blake Meyers, the University of Delaware geneticist, who thinks GMOs may one day be a key component in sustainable agriculture. \"I buy and eat organic food, and I don't like chemical residue on my food,\" Meyers told me. \"So the question is, why should you not have organically grown GM crops? So far the USDA has said you can't have GMOs and label them organic, but I would prefer to get rid of all the chemistry and confer the desirable traits with genetics. Petroleum won't be with us forever. I'm perfectly okay with transgenics: imagine if we could create a wonder crop that requires genetic modification but is grown organically, free of chemical inputs, and resists drought, resists pests, and outcompetes weeds. I'd be okay with that.\"\n\nSome of the critics of GMOs \"are the same people who spray copper or sulfur on their plants and say it's okay because it's 'organic,'\" Meyers said. \"They apply Bt to their crops, but God forbid you take the same genes they're eating in the bacteria and insert them into the plant. Ultimately, our agriculture has got to be sustainable, or we're not going to be here long term. GM will be a large part of that. Fifty years from now, we'll see that spraying anything on plants created a huge amount of waste and pollution. We'll see that 90 percent of the chemicals washed off, ending up in our soil and water. If you eliminate that waste, if you can use GMOs to replace these inputs, achieving similar yields, without all the chemical inputs, you've done a world of good.\"\n\nThere are legitimate worries, of course, that a comparatively loose term like \"sustainable\" could be distorted and abused\u2014\"greenwashed\"\u2014by industrial farms in ways that a strict, legally precise term like \"organic\" cannot. The word \"sustainable\" has been \"overused, misused, and it has been shamelessly co-opted by corporations for the purpose of greenwashing,\" write veteran food activists Andr\u00e9 Leu and Ronnie Cummins. Indeed, they note, the word is featured prominently on Monsanto's website, where the company boasts of a \"commitment to sustainable agriculture\u2014pledging to produce more, conserve more, and improve farmers' lives by 2030.\"\n\n\"Industrial agriculture today, with its factory farms, waste lagoons, antibiotics and growth hormones, GMOs, toxic pesticides and prolific use of synthetic fertilizers, doesn't come close to 'not using up or destroying natural resources,'\" Leu and Cummins write. Instead of \"sustainable,\" they would like to see foods affixed with one of two labels: \"degenerative\" or \"regenerative.\" Consumers could then choose food produced by chemical-intensive, monoculture-based industrial systems that \"destabilize the climate, and degrade soil, water, biodiversity, health and local economies,\" Leu and Cummins write. Or they could choose food produced using organic regenerative practices that rejuvenate the soil, grasslands, and forests; replenish water; promote food sovereignty; and restore public health and prosperity\u2014\"all while cooling the planet by drawing down billions of tons of excess carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil where it belongs.\"\n\nSuch rhetoric\u2014powerful, convincing, and justifiable as it may be\u2014is plainly directed at giant corporate farms, and the global food companies they serve. The question for midsize farmers like Jennie Schmidt and Steve Groff is: Can they operate inside this system in a way that is more benign? And can GMOs be a part of this? As with everything else in the American food system, there are no simple solutions: as enlightened as Jennie Schmidt and Steve Groff may be, they are still plugged into a larger food system that uses enormous amounts of chemicals on vast swaths of land to create huge quantities of unhealthy food. But it's a start.\n\nTo Jennie Schmidt, this global food system\u2014with all its downsides\u2014will continue to evolve because people will continue to enjoy foods they can't grow themselves.\n\n\"I'm not going to give up coffee or chocolate,\" she told me. \"I love the fact that we have so many food choices. Yes, there are downsides, but there are lots of upsides to it too. I like the fact that in February I can go to Millington, Maryland\u2014two miles away is the closest grocery store\u2014and get fresh produce. Think about what we'd have to do to grow that produce around here, in winter, in hoop houses, and at what cost? When you have to use so much propane to heat the hoop house, that can be more energy-intensive than getting it from Mexico.\n\n\"My concern with people's resistance to the technology of GMOs is that the next generation of products, and the next round of benefits for folks in developing countries\u2014for traits they need to resist certain diseases or yield\u2014don't come about because they are not _allowed_ to, because there has been so much pushback,\" Schmidt said. \"All of plant breeding, whether it's traditional or GMO, has benefits, and my concern is that science will be stifled because there has been so much resistance to it. Think of what we could do if we could get rid of food allergies from soy or peanuts. If you could silence the protein that causes peanut allergies, that would be a big deal. I'm afraid we're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.\"\n\n## 10.\n\n## The Farm Next Door\n\n There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm,\" Aldo Leopold wrote in his landmark book _A Sand County Almanac_ , first published in 1949. \"One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.\"\n\nAlmost seventy years later, these dangers\u2014as Jennie Schmidt knows all too well\u2014are clear and present. As suburban sprawl has continued to eat millions of acres of the nation's prime farmland, fewer and fewer of us\u2014especially those of us living in and around large cities\u2014ever have a chance to connect with the way our food is grown.\n\nWhen it comes to our food, we are all blind, even if it is for different reasons. If we live in the city, we rarely have the chance to see where (or how) food is grown. Ditto for the suburbs: even if there were once crops occupying the fields where subdivisions now sit, they aren't there anymore. Even in rural America, where there are plenty of farms, it's hard to get your eyes on actual food: the corn and soybeans growing across America are sold to industrial food processors, feedlots, and energy companies, not on farm stands or in supermarkets.\n\nBut it's important to remember that industrial-scale farming (with or without GMOs) has been around for only a few short decades; before that, everyone ate what they\u2014or their local farmers\u2014grew for them. And today, in small places all over the country, this sort of farming\u2014small, local, often organic, and decidedly _not_ GMO\u2014is once again beginning to sprout. On small farms in the country, in the suburbs, even in run-down sections of industrial cities, small farmers\u2014responding to a growing unease with industrial food production\u2014are beginning to connect with the people they feed. In the process, consumers are not only paying more attention to their food, but paying more attention to their farmers and to their land.\n\n### Outside the City\n\nDrew Norman is entirely sick of hearing that GMOs are the future of food. Sure, he knows that by the end of the century, the world may well have to accommodate an additional 2 billion people, many of them in the developing world. He knows we will need to grow more food, on less land, in the most efficient way possible. So, are genetically engineered foods the answer?\n\n\"Fuck that,\" Norman told me.\n\nA lanky, graying man in a seed cap and leather boots, Norman is no dewy-eyed environmentalist. He is an avid deer hunter, with trophy heads mounted on his wall. He has few positive things to say about government regulators and considers local environmental groups to be obnoxious to farmers. His son is scaling up the family hog farming business from eight animals to several hundred.\n\nBut Norman is also the owner of One Straw Farm, one of the largest organic vegetable farms in Maryland. Norman started farming thirty years ago and has been running his farm as a community-supported agriculture (CSA) operation since 1998. Working a 65-acre vegetable farm, plus another 150 acres of forest and hayfields, he and his wife, Joan, now supply food to some 10,000 people a week, through their 1,900 CSA members and by delivering to a half-dozen Maryland farmers' markets. In his barn, the day I visited, there were stacks of crates filled with squash, tomatoes, and kale. Four large trucks were preparing to deliver to thirty-eight pickup CSA sites around the state, including some right in the heart of Baltimore.\n\nMargins are small for any farmer, and Norman has had to be nimble. His team has been selling canned tomatoes and peppers for years; they are now doing Bloody Mary mix and are about to market a tomatillo salsa. His son is planning to raise two hundred hogs that will feed on acorns in the farm's oak forest. Chickens may be next.\n\nNorman's counteroffer to corporate, monoculture, GM farming is simple: Buy local. When you buy a cabbage from your local (and preferably organic) farmer, you don't have to worry about whether it's been \"tested,\" because the food was grown the way food has always been grown (or _had_ always been grown, before petrochemicals and genetic technology entered the equation): with seed, soil, sun, and rain. You also don't have to worry about whether part of the cost of the cabbage is going to pay the salaries of seed company executives in an office building in St. Louis, or a political lobbyist in Washington, or a pesticide company in Wilmington. Your money goes to the farmer.\n\nIf there were more farms like his\u2014and until just a few decades ago, there were\u2014none of us would need to eat engineered food, Norman says. His food, organic and local as it is, is also cheap. I pay him $500 every winter for six months of produce in the spring, summer, and fall\u2014which works out to about $20 a week for a large canvas bag stuffed with everything from lettuce, spinach, and collards to acorn squash, sweet potatoes, and watermelon. This is routinely more than my family of four can eat.\n\nNorman runs a farm that is a model of sustainability. He intercrops (strawberries with oats, for example) to prevent erosion. He plants cover crops. He has enormous windrows of compost. His feelings about raising meat mirror his feelings about farming generally.\n\n\"There was an equal number of buffalo when we got here as there are cattle today,\" Norman told me. \"They were eating and doing their thing and providing meat in a pretty environmentally friendly way. If we planted our corn into grass and raised cattle on it, we'd probably have the most environmentally friendly way to produce protein there is.\"\n\nIn Europe, where small farms like Norman's have been the model for hundreds of years, opposition to GM crops has been intense since the beginning. Although typically framed as an issue of food safety, Europe's anti-GMO argument is also fundamentally built on anxiety\u2014or outright anger\u2014over the effect of large-scale farming on small-scale farmers. Italy, France, Spain\u2014they have all spent centuries stitching together small-scale farm economies and take well-earned national pride in the quality and integrity of the food these farms produce.\n\nBut given that by the end of the century less than 10 percent of the world's population will be living in Europe, is a European-style, small-scale agricultural model something the rest of the world can afford to emulate?\n\nDrew Norman, and many others, think the answer is unequivocally yes. Not only would the food this system creates be healthier, it would support local economies and curb the power of global food conglomerates. Regardless of whether GM foods are \"dangerous,\" they are definitely corporate, aggressive, and\u2014in every sense of the word\u2014monopolizing. They so dominate the agricultural, political, and cultural landscape that consumers\u2014here and abroad\u2014can't opt out even if they want to.\n\nTo Norman, the heart of the issue is trust. \"If something is being tested by the people making money from it, I don't trust the tests,\" he said. \"If there's no government oversight or independent testing on the safety of a product, I don't trust the company\u2014who's going to make millions or billions\u2014to be honest.\"\n\nBut can farmers like Drew Norman really feed all of us? Especially given our current eating habits\u2014more bags of chicken nuggets than bundles of organic kale\u2014does the world even _want_ what Drew Norman is growing? Local, organic food, to many people, seems like a yuppie indulgence: boutique, expensive, and\u2014in the end\u2014a lot less satisfying than a burger, some fries, and a Coke. And if this is true in the wealthy United States, isn't it also true in the developing world, where companies are hard at work pushing their GM corn and soy?\n\n\"Look,\" Norman said. \"The Third World can't afford to buy Stouffer's meals. The Third World needs to use local ingredients and cook in their own kitchens. A local food system is a really easy thing to do in the Third World. That's what they've always done, and that's what they're doing right now. Kenya is number three in the world in certified organic farms. They are pretty food sufficient, and they've done that by supporting local food systems and local agriculture.\"\n\nAs for American consumers, who claim they \"have no time\" to cook their own food\u2014let alone think about how (or where) it is grown: \"Quite frankly, by the time you drive to McDonald's and buy your burger and fries, you could have made your meal at home,\" Norman told me. \"Americans are so busy chasing an income to be two-percenters or whatever it is, they don't have time to look around at the environment or their health. All they have to do is look in the mirror, but they're so busy doing what they're doing they don't have time to do even this.\"\n\nI asked Norman about national trends in obesity, diabetes, and all the other ills associated with GMO-driven fast food and processed food, and the next-gen GM products that promise to deliver these same foods with less fat, salt, and sugar. \"It all goes back to money,\" Norman said. \"The likely solution is the stupid solution. GMO potato chips? That's not the solution. The solution is to eat more fruits and veggies, not the thousand-calorie coffee drink. That's where I just think Americans don't look at what they're doing.\"\n\nWe have to question a food system that puts way more energy into food production than we're getting out of it in food calories, Norman said. Conventional farms can use 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food\u2014and this is _before_ calculating the energy it costs to ship food around the country and the world. Food grown in the South and Midwest travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate.\n\nWith the exception of some feather meal he buys from nearby chicken farmers, Norman grows all his own fertilizer through the use of compost and nitrogen-fixing cover crops. A head of lettuce grown with petrochemicals and shipped from an industrial farm in California to Baltimore, in other words, is a far more polluting (and far less efficient) vegetable than lettuce grown with no chemical inputs and shipped twenty miles from Norman's farm.\n\n\"Scientists reduce everything to its simplest forms, but they are not looking at the big picture,\" Norman told me. \"You can do a lot in the laboratory, but it needs to be rounded out by people looking at the big picture, and talking to each other. If the world looked at the problems associated with industrial agriculture as a whole, they would realize the food is not inexpensive. We need ethicists and ecologists to be a part of this conversation. We have to stop looking at everything as only coming down to the bottom line.\"\n\n### In the Country\n\nThree hundred miles to the north, among the rolling hills and dairy farms of New York's Hudson River Valley, Steffen Schneider is doing everything he can to return farming to its rightful place as the center of community life. Schneider, like Drew Norman, thinks that GMOs are merely a symptom of the invisibility of food production.\n\n\"I always come to the conclusion that GMOs are an answer to the wrong question,\" Schneider told me. \"They always say, 'We have to feed the whole world,' but that's not the right way to approach it. Clearly, there is already enough food to feed more people than are alive right now, so that's not the right question. In my mind you would have to look back and reflect on agriculture's role as _humans in relation to food and to the planet_. When you have a compass and you're trying to figure out the way to go, you don't find out by taking the compass apart and breaking it down to its atomic structure. That's not going to get it.\"\n\nSchneider works 400 acres at Hawthorne Valley Farm, ten miles west of the Hudson River about two hours north of Manhattan. His farm includes 15 acres for vegetables and 40 acres for grain. He grazes sixty dairy cows and thirty beef cattle, and he keeps as many as forty hogs. Schneider runs Hawthorne Valley as a \"biodynamic\" operation, following principles put forward by the Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner. Long before the modern organic farming movement, biodynamic farmers paid scrupulous attention to the intertwined ecological health of their entire agricultural system, from soil and weather to plants and livestock. Synthetic chemicals are anathema, as is the kind of mistreatment of animals that has become such a grim trademark of industrial-scale feed and slaughter operations.\n\n\"There needs to be an inner shift\u2014that's been my recognition these last few years,\" Schneider told me. \"People are looking and searching. A big part of our customer base here is mothers and young people worried about feeding their families. Hopefully, over time, we will make these changes. Otherwise, we're just going to stay stuck. What are our responsibilities? Everybody has to ask this of themselves. There is an amazing opportunity to ground this change in agriculture.\"\n\nSchneider got a degree in agronomy in Germany before coming to the United States in 1983 (he worked a dairy farm in Wisconsin for seven years before moving to Hawthorne Valley). Following Steiner's biodynamic ideas, he imports nothing to the farm except tractor fuel and electricity: his fallow fields are protected and enhanced with cover crops like rye, vetch, and red clover; he grows his own hay and produces all his own fertilizer from compost and animal manure. From April until late fall, his cows are in pasture, and his pigs are fed whey during the cheese-making season, food scraps from the Hawthorne Valley grocery store and deli, leftovers from his own sauerkraut, and milk by-products. The closest meat processor is just twenty miles away.\n\nFor Schneider, a farm should be the centerpiece of a local economy, not a cog in the global economic machine. His fields are part of Hawthorne Valley's larger vision for \"social renewal\" that includes\u2014right next door, in the same beatific valley\u2014not only a sizable farm store but also a K\u201312 Waldorf school, a Place-Based Learning Center, and a Farmscape Ecology Program. Schneider's farm provides work for eighty people on the farm itself, and two hundred if you include the store and the school. \"It's a great thing to be able to offer meaningful work to so many people,\" Schneider said.\n\nFarmers and teachers work closely with families throughout the region to connect them with their food as well as their bioregion. Living and eating near Hawthorne Valley, it would be impossible _not_ to know where your food came from, who grew it, or under what conditions. It would also be impossible not to understand the relationship of the farm to the larger landscape.\n\n\"However you define 'sacred,' essentially it's a place you love,\" Conrad Vispo told me. Vispo, a PhD wildlife ecologist, and his wife, Claudia, a PhD botanist, run Hawthorne Valley's Farmscape Ecology Program, an education center committed to documenting the human and natural history of the region's farms and wild landscapes. Teaching farmers, and children, and everyone else about the ways food production fits into a larger ecological context is a sure way to bring people closer to their food\u2014and to open their hearts to the places they live, Vispo told me.\n\n\"Why do you love a place? Your experiences as a people, your individual experiences\u2014you make your judgments based on facts, but also on your core feelings on what is right and wrong,\" Vispo said. \"What we hope to do with our program here is make the land sacred to more people, in the sense of getting more people to love the land. Then the way they think of the land will include more than just how to use the land. It will include how the land will be affected by their actions.\"\n\nIn other words, Hawthorne Valley is as far from an abstracted monoculture industrial farm as it can be. The food, and the farm, and the people\u2014they are all intimately connected. And intimacy, Steffen Schneider said, is the best way to ensure that both people and land will be properly cared for.\n\n\"In any country, the first thing they have to ask is, 'What do we have to do to develop farming systems that are successful _right here_?'\" Schneider said. \"The Green Revolution did a lot of good, but it was also extremely destructive because it destroyed a lot of traditional farming systems. Most people in the world are still eating local food, but these companies are saying this traditional way of farming and eating is not 'modern.' This is not helpful.\"\n\nNo matter where a farmer is working the land\u2014in New York, in Maryland, or in Kenya\u2014\"we need to figure out what local adaption means right there,\" Schneider said. \"We are one human community. We have to look at all of us as one human community. There will still be crops that we share\u2014coffee and chocolate won't happen unless we bring them in. But we need to feed our own communities. We have to envision things radically different. We can't just do it slightly better. Then maybe this whole GMO discussion might just go away.\"\n\nHawthorne Valley functions as a nonprofit, but its business model is still highly sensitive (and responsive) to market demands. The farm produced New York State's first organic yogurt, and now that educated foodies have gone in big for fermented foods, Schneider is producing eight different varieties of sauerkraut. The day I visited, Schneider took me down to the kraut cellar, where workers were producing kimchi from Napa cabbage using a \"vicious\" homemade hot sauce.\n\nThe market to which Schneider has to respond ranges from people in his own rural community to five different farmers' markets in Manhattan. He sells raw milk to locals (state law prevents him from selling it off-site) and sends trucks two hours to Manhattan every Thursday to feed 250 families who are members of his CSA. His organic yogurt makes it all the way to markets in Maryland. In the winter, his greenhouse\u2014heated by radiant hot water piped beneath the soil\u2014produces salad mix and microgreens, both of which collect high prices in the Manhattan markets. \"It's amazing what this stuff commands in NYC,\" Schneider said. \"It's not like any of us are getting rich off this, so I don't feel bad about it.\"\n\nSchneider is thinking about expanding his operation to a \"full-plate\" CSA, with bread and cheese and meat. For years, the farm did not raise chickens because the birds require \"inputs\" of feed, but now that Schneider is growing grain, he may add them. Again, it's all about balance.\n\n\"There would be _lines_ in New York City for our eggs,\" he said. \"People also want us to grow more veggies. We could, but then we would need more animals, and it might throw the whole balance out of whack.\"\n\nHandling the pressure to grow is a mixed blessing for Schneider: if it's forcing him to recalculate the balance more production would require, it's also confirmation that his style of farming is catching hold. He is constantly being asked for advice by young farmers, who see his integrated, even philosophical approach to farming as a far more exciting prospect than growing endless acres of GM soybeans. To the new generation of farmers, Schneider's approach offers more than a job\u2014it engages their imagination.\n\n\"With industrial agriculture, people practicing farming are looked at as having no social standing,\" Schneider said. \"Farmers have become cogs in this industrial system. They aren't happy about it, but they don't feel that they have a choice. We've forced them to produce as much corn and soybeans as cheaply as possible, and they just do it, because they're stuck. Entire communities have been wiped out in the service of industrial monoculture. What's going to happen in twenty years? Agriculture can offer so much by reinventing economic principles, and our relationship with the natural world, and with each other. It's a very exciting time for me to be in agriculture right now.\"\n\nSchneider's fierce commitment to local food production goes \"beyond organic,\" and mirrors Alika Atay's argument on Maui, where schoolchildren are still fed oranges grown in Florida rather than papaya grown next door. It also mirrors Drew Norman's argument in Maryland, where local producers still struggle to get their produce into conventional supermarkets. Their common push is to find ways to support food that is grown\u2014and eaten\u2014within individual communities.\n\nThe market for local food is plainly growing. Nationwide, the number of farmers' markets has increased 76 percent since 2008. In Delaware, where I work, farmers' markets have increased more than eightfold since the state Department of Agriculture began tracking them in 2007. Fresh produce now makes up 60 percent of local produce sales, with the remainder coming from value-added products such as meats, cheeses, jellies, breads, salsa, eggs, and honey.\n\n\"Over the last few years, we have seen an incredible rise in people wanting to eat healthy and buy fresh, local foods for themselves and their children,\" the state's secretary of agriculture said recently. \"Our farmers and producers are working to meet that demand by selling some of the best fresh produce, meats, cheeses and honey that any state can offer. Our farmers' markets also connect the people who eat with the people who grow their food, fostering conversations and friendships that can last a lifetime.\"\n\nThanks to a national surge in demand for both organic and local food, the federal government seems finally to be getting the message. The USDA announced in 2014 that it would spend $52 million to support local and regional food systems, including not just farmers' markets but local food distribution networks, and to do more to encourage research into organic farming methods. The Obama administration has also tripled\u2014to $291 million\u2014federal funding for organic farming, including $125 million for research and $50 million for conservation.\n\nAs helpful as this has been, it's worth keeping these numbers in perspective. The total federal farm bill in 2014 was $956 billion, including more than $44 billion for commodity crop programs. Compared with these numbers, the money given to local or organic farm programs is barely a rounding error.\n\nSteffen Schneider's sense is that for the local, organic sector to grow, it will have to find a way into the kitchens of people who aren't only in search of expensive microgreens. Hawthorne Valley accepts WIC stamps for their CSA. He is exploring ways to open a store in Hudson, a historic city that is popular among weekenders from Manhattan but which remains largely working class. His wife runs a program called Kids Can Cook, a three-week day camp that teaches local kids how to grow, harvest, and cook their own food.\n\nBut to think about the price of local organic outside the context of the way it is grown\u2014and outside the context of the way \"conventional\" food is grown\u2014is to miss a much larger point. In Germany, Schneider said, research has shown that as per capita spending on food goes down, health care costs go up. In other words, the cheaper your food, the worse (and more expensive) your health.\n\nIt may be true that organic farms have generally lower yields than farms that use petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, though recent studies indicate the differences may be smaller than previously thought. Organic corn, soy, and wheat can yield up to 97 percent of crops sprayed with chemicals, one study showed; other crops, in other places, fare almost as well. Gaps can be reduced further\u2014or eliminated completely\u2014by growers who \"mimic nature\" by creating \"ecologically diverse farms that harness important ecological interactions like the nitrogen-fixing benefits of intercropping or cover-cropping with legumes.\"\n\nA thirty-year study conducted by the Rodale Institute found that chemical-dependent farming may outyield organic farming during good years, but over the long haul (and especially during drought years), organic systems, with their vastly healthier soils, outyield conventional systems. Organic farming also reduces the use of fossil fuel energy by about 30 percent and significantly improves the organic matter in the soil itself.\n\nBut comparing yields\u2014pretty much the only metric that \"conventional\" farmers like to use\u2014is a puny way to think about the optimal way to grow food. So is \"convenience,\" the other word industry uses to pitch processed food.\n\n\"Agriculture is not just an economic activity designed only to produce cheap food,\" Schneider said. \"It is a multifunctional reality that underpins all culture and economics and has ecology as its foundation. Looked at that way, farming takes on a whole different meaning.\"\n\nIt is political dogma to say that food has to be cheap, Schneider said; such a stance devalues both food and the farmers who grow it. A far better parameter by which to decide how food should be grown? Health\u2014both human and environmental.\n\n\"Good food should be a right everyone has,\" Schneider said. \"Think how many millions of dollars people are spending to see a new movie. Some of this really requires a rejiggering of awareness. Food has been looked at as sort of an afterthought. It's only recently that people are beginning to realize that this isn't the right place to skimp. Only recently have people begun to think about the link between food and health, which is nuts. Health is really the only sensible outcome by which you can measure agriculture. And by health I mean the health of the earth, of communities, and of individuals. When you think about how effective this industrial agriculture has been, this has been a failure.\"\n\nA couple hundred years ago there was a Hawthorne Valley in every community, and as late as the mid\u2013nineteenth century, more than half of all Americans worked on a farm. Which poses the question: In our advanced technological age, and with our exploded population (thanks in no small part to expanded food production developed during the Green Revolution), is it in fact possible to live in a world without GMOs, or without industrial farming itself? Can there ever again be such a thing as community self-sufficiency, or are networks of enormous farms and global transportation systems here to stay?\n\nIn Europe, large cities like Rome and Lyon\u2014and countless smaller cities, like Orvieto and Avignon\u2014are ringed by hundreds of small, diverse farms. The answer in the United States lies in many more acres, in many more places, involving lots more people\u2014and not just in the middle of the country, said Craig Holdrege, the scientist and philosopher who runs the Nature Institute, an environmental and agriculture education center just down the road from Steffen Schneider's farm.\n\n\"If you think of metropolitan New York's 16 to 20 million people, you can't have a single Hawthorne Valley feed that whole population,\" Holdrege said. \"But the regionalization of food production\u2014that's really happening. You can have urban agriculture\u2014there is a big movement in Detroit\u2014and you can have a lot of farms around these population centers. There would be no problem feeding Chicago from right around the city if you took some of that land out of soybeans and corn. That's how it was done just a hundred years ago. The city was fed by its region.\"\n\n### The City Farm\n\nBaltimore City has 11,000 city employees. Guess how many of them are farmers?\n\nOne.\n\nHis name is Greg Strella, and his 33-acre farm\u2014situated behind a Popeyes chicken joint, a discount mattress warehouse, and a Pep Boys auto parts store\u2014is where Strella is teaching city kids how to grow and eat things most kids wouldn't be caught dead eating. Like beets. And sorrel.\n\nA couple of years ago, Strella, the manager of Great Kids Farm, noticed something strange as he led school kids on tours of his farm. As they walked between farm buildings, the kids kept bending over and sneaking handfuls of a perennial plant called sorrel. Sorrel grows easily along sidewalks, and Strella had planted small batches not as a crop but as a kind of edible landscaping.\n\n\"When you're standing outside with students eating lunch, and students are coming out of the lunchroom and sneaking sorrel and saying, 'Is it okay if I have more sorrel?,' it totally reverses the challenge of getting students to eat something they don't want to eat,\" Strella said.\n\n\"'Sure,' you say. 'You can eat more of this pure food.' It's a beautiful inversion.\"\n\nStrella was not trained as a farmer, he was trained as an artist at the Maryland Institute College of Art. As a student, wherever he went\u2014the classrooms where he studied, the restaurants where he waited tables or worked the kitchens\u2014he was confronted by his own ignorance about food. But he kept asking questions, and every chef he talked to responded with \"an endless willingness to share what they knew and already experienced.\"\n\nStrella has now been farming for more than ten years, ever since he got out of art school. He went to Chicago and volunteered at City Farm, near the Cabrini Green housing projects. He tutored under Will Allen, the legendary urban farmer whose Growing Power operation has become world famous for both feeding and employing people on the farms he's built in downtown Milwaukee. This led to an apprenticeship at a small CSA farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and then a job in Baltimore, as the first farmer the city had ever hired.\n\nThe piece of land he was given did not, at first, seem promising. There were busted-up greenhouses and soil that hadn't been properly cared for in years. And it wasn't like Strella himself was bringing generations of farming wisdom to the table. He had trained as a sculptor.\n\nBut Strella was taken by other things, like the old orphans' home with historic photos of young black teenagers helping black masons put the building's stones in place. The place had a history of craftsmanship and self-determination that Strella liked a great deal.\n\nUrban farming also drew him. Some 20 percent of the world's undernourished people live in cities, and urban \"food deserts\"\u2014where food can mostly be found in gas stations or convenience stores\u2014have become a focus of intense concern for public health experts. Millions of America's poorest city residents have little access to produce of any kind, let alone fruits and vegetables grown in their own neighborhoods. Much of this is due to the flight of middle-class residents (and the markets that served them) to the suburbs; Baltimore has lost fully 300,000 residents since 1950. Replacing supermarkets and vibrant residences, in Baltimore and Detroit and countless other cities, have been vacant lots.\n\nBut into this vacuum a new generation of inventive farmers has begun to break ground. Post-industrial cities like Detroit and Milwaukee\u2014which are now dotted with bona fide farms, not just garden plots\u2014have joined more prosperous places like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, as innovative hubs for young people trying to reinvent the way food is grown, and delivered, to the country's population centers. Detroit alone has some 1,300 community gardens; Portland has twenty-six farmers' markets; gardeners in Austin, Texas, provide the city with more than 100,000 pounds of local food a year. Baltimore's mayor recently started a Vacants to Value program, intended to nurture urban renewal and promote open space; neighborhoods can lease land to create gardens and green space.\n\nUrban farms provide local food and jobs to people who see too little of either. They also provide places of respite and natural beauty within caverns of concrete, especially for school-age kids who suddenly have recreational options beyond the pavement.\n\nWhich brings us back to the magic of sorrel. For his first three years at the farm, that became the most common question Strella got from his students: Can I please have more sorrel? So Strella did what any farmer does: he acknowledged the desires of the market and he provided. The following year, he and his students planted a thousand pounds of sorrel.\n\n\"No adult in their right mind would sit down and design a process to 'create curiosity and participation in eating salad' by serving a tart, lemon-flavored green,\" Strella said.\n\nBy listening to students\u2014and figuring out how to navigate the city's public school bureaucracy\u2014Strella had little doubt what he ought to add to the public school salad bar. \"That probably seemed outrageous to anyone who hadn't just seen thousands of four- to twelve-year-olds enjoying this food,\" Strella said. \"But to us it was the obvious decision, because we had watched our students and listened to our students.\"\n\nThat spring, Strella and his student farmers got sorrel into twelve inner-city lunch programs. Later, when the schools surveyed what the kids were eating, and what they would like to see at the school salad bars, 97 percent said they would eat more sorrel.\n\nAs Great Kids Farm began to take root, Strella and his shoestring staff began organizing visits from elementary and high school students into three parts: some time in a classroom, some time exploring the landscape around the farm, and a tasting experience, where students would sample the foods they were helping to grow on the farm.\n\nThis is where Strella introduced five hundred Baltimore city kids to beets.\n\nThe idea was to find a way to get root vegetables into school cafeterias, and to prepare them in a way the kids would eat.\n\nPotatoes, I could see. Carrots, sure. Even sweet potatoes. But beets? Aren't beets, for American kids, the universal symbol of disgust? In a bit of ironic serendipity, many of the students Strella was trying to convince didn't hate beets because they had never seen one.\n\n\"Part of the quirkiness of the urban environment is that it's almost like the preconception against beets isn't there,\" Strella said. \"This creates different opportunities for forming relationships with food. The kids could just as easily have been out playing basketball. Here they were, harvesting beets.\"\n\nStrella picked six high school seniors to plant, and tend, the entire crop. Once the beets had been harvested, Strella and his chef set up stations with the vegetables prepared five ways. (\"It was kind of like a wine tasting,\" Strella said.) He was sure that the most promising, since it offered the most sweetness, would be beets mixed with orange juice. Station Number Five was shredded raw beets, with nothing added: no sugar, no dressing, no nothing. Strella and his chef had set the station up as a kind of control, to see just how much more kids liked the other four recipes.\n\nTo his surprise, and by a large margin, the kids picked the raw beets.\n\n\"That's just one example of what happens when we put young people in a position to be collaborators, and give them the opportunity to make decisions for themselves and to take the risk of trying new things,\" Strella said.\n\nAs with the sorrel experiment, the beet test turned into something magical. That season, Strella and his student volunteers planted and harvested a lot of beets\u20143,300 pounds of them\u2014and sent them out to sixty schools, where students would serve them to their peers in their cafeterias. Strella's young farmers did all the marketing; they put posters up in their cafeterias\u2014\"What's a cucumber? You'll find out today!\" \"What's a beet? You'll find out today!\"\u2014and included a riff on lyrics from the rapper Drake: _Started from a seed, now we're here._\n\nWord started getting around that something special was happening in Baltimore. Strella and his student-farmers found themselves hosting a series of workshops for 146 food service directors from forty-eight states and Washington, D.C. The students toured visitors around the farm and shared some of the raw shredded beets they were growing for the city's school cafeterias.\n\n\"Here we have all these amazing food service directors from all around the country, and they are eating a raw vegetable that is simply a raw vegetable, not raw beets and sugar, or oil,\" Strella said. \"The directors would say, 'What do we have to do? Where are the labor costs that make it work? The production cost must be so onerous, that must be why I can't see raw shredded beets showing up in our cafeterias.'\n\n\"We said, 'All we can tell you is that we have a tiny little staff of a farmer, a teacher, a chef, and an incredible group of students,'\" Strella said. \"We don't know why this can't exist in your cafeteria. What we do know is that our students can grow them, harvest them, put them in the cafeterias, and eat them. We can tell you that this is what we have done. We don't have access to anything you don't have access to.\"\n\nFor Strella, teaching city kids how to grow and eat their own produce is part of the vision shared by Drew Norman and Steffen Schneider and Wes Jackson and Alika Atay: it is teaching them the value of autonomy, of caring for their bodies and their communities and their local landscape.\n\n\"We see our students change physically,\" Strella said. \"They develop shoulder muscles, a certain pace in how they walk, a certain confidence in how they work in teams, a certain resonance in their voice when they speak to young people, or in front of two hundred people for events. Those ripples, you can see them in the classroom and schoolyards and cafeterias. I'm talking about high school students growing food for their peers. These are seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, and they are planting the seeds and picking the vegetables, and that is something that profoundly changes what it means when those veggies show up in the school cafeteria.\n\n\"When we hear people talking about the world the next generation is going to inherit, where are they right now? What are they eating right now? We want them to take responsibility for participating in that world's creation.\"\n\nArguing that industrial agriculture has a fixed and immutable place in our world is like arguing that because highways are the most efficient mode of transportation, all we need is highways, Strella told me. The truth is, we need sidewalks and bike lanes and side roads too, because \"no one would discount the value of walking down a sidewalk and saying hi to your neighbors, and you can't do that from a highway.\n\n\"That's not to say we don't need highways. But it is to question the singular value of highways,\" Strella said. \"We've had fifty or sixty years to test out our highways and industrial ag, and we now have the vista to see things we couldn't see thirty years ago. So often the debate is an incredible narrowing to cost-benefit analysis. What we're taking about is holding ourselves in relation to a much fuller accounting of the role we play in the world. In the food landscape, even just to narrow it down to 'food' is already too narrow an accounting. In our homes, in our backyards, on our streets\u2014there is incredible value to having our food living with us, even before it gets to our plate. Once you start going up to levels of economy, you start to lose this.\"\n\nSeen from this vantage point\u2014teaching people to think as intimately as they can about the relationship between their bodies, their food, and their soil\u2014the prospect of giant agribusiness seems entirely counterintuitive, Strella said. There are far too many externalized costs\u2014from monoculture and pollution on the farms themselves to obesity and diabetes in the inner-city people who eat them\u2014for GMOs and industrial food generally to make any sense.\n\n\"It's absurd that we talk about industrial agriculture as 'conventional,'\" Strella said. \"As a tool within the industrial system, biotech is propping up systems that are already unraveling. Think of the dead zones in the water, the loss of topsoil, the health of our bodies\u2014biotech is right there at the center of all that. Is the thrill of the speeding train worth the crash that is inevitable? It looks to me like it would go a lot further if you would slow down a little bit, and certainly it would be safer for everybody who lives near the train tracks, which is everybody.\"\n\nWorking with disadvantaged students, on land that was neglected for a long time, has given Strella plenty to contemplate. He has recently turned his energies to the educational farm at Maryland's Pearlstone Center, which focuses on sustainable farming as well as spiritual and social justice work. His conclusions, which he says give him \"depthless hope,\" have been the result of watching both people and landscapes heal.\n\n\"In our fields, you will see dandelions, purslane, clover, chicory, amaranth\u2014two or three dozen edible plants that most people think of as weeds,\" he said. \"You can cut through them with knives, but even in spite of that discouragement, four weeks later, they will all be back. I see that as an extremely hopeful thing, that whatever we do next, we haven't exhausted the natural resilience of our soil to heal that land and maintain an abundant system.\n\n\"That's also how I see our students,\" Strella said. \"Even in circumstances that are a historical anomaly\u2014with young people growing up and not living close to animals or plants\u2014when the opportunity shows up, their curiosity springs forth. It is not exhausted. It's never exhausted. You can make an argument that their circumstances could have exhausted that, but it hasn't. Those human and ecological reserves that we don't create and can't create\u2014that we in fact get in the way of\u2014are still bigger than us. They are still bigger than our technologies.\"\n\n# EPILOGUE\n\n## Getting Our Hands Dirty\n\n So here we are, casting our eyes across the American food landscape, and everywhere we look, we see paradoxes. There is a surging interest in small-scale, local food production, and there is a furious consolidation of the biggest food industries in the world. There are powerful popular movements trying to force companies to reveal how they make their food, and highly financed corporate efforts to resist this disclosure. There are gathering efforts to toughen federal safety laws on GMOs and pesticides, and there are outspoken calls\u2014especially during presidential election seasons\u2014to dismantle the EPA altogether.\n\nThere are billions of dollars at stake in the United States, and potentially billions of lives at stake in the developing world. And underneath all of these trends is the constant forward march of food technology.\n\nUsing a gene-silencing technique called RNA interference, or RNAi, researchers have recently learned to keep apples or potatoes from browning after being harvested\u2014an exciting idea if you are a fast-food company hoping to keep billions of pounds of produce from spoiling on the way to the fryer. Even more dramatic, scientists have invented a new gene-editing technique called CRISPR to edit an organism's genome with ever more impressive precision. DuPont says it will use CRISPR to get drought-tolerant corn and soybeans in fields within five years.\n\nAnd then there are GM animals. Using cutting-edge gene-editing tools, scientists are learning to create cows without horns, pigs without testicles, and chickens that will produce only female egg-layers. In the Netherlands, researchers have discovered how to turn stem cells from cattle into lab-grown \"hamburger.\"\n\nA company called Aqua Bounty just received approval from the USDA to market a GM salmon, which will grow to marketable size in eighteen months\u2014half the time it would take in nature. Since most farm-raised salmon are fed GM corn and soybeans, we may now, for the first time, have GMOs eating GMOs.\n\n\"We're going to see a stream of edited animals coming through because it's so easy,\" says Bruce Whitelaw, a professor of animal biotechnology at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh. \"It's going to change the societal question from 'If we could do it, would we want it?' to 'Next year we will have it, will we allow it?'\"\n\nThese advances have excited scientists, industry, and even some animal rights activists. They argue, for example, that creating cows without horns means the animals won't injure each other during confinement and calves won't have to have their horns burned off with a hot iron. Pigs without testicles will produce tastier meat and will mean pigs won't need to be castrated. The grand prize\u2014growing meat from cell cultures rather than from actual living livestock\u2014could mean all kinds of potentially powerful changes to industrial agriculture. We wouldn't need pesticide-laden GM corn, industrial slaughterhouses, or gasoline, because we wouldn't be feeding, slaughtering, or shipping animals around the country. We also wouldn't need to deal with the mountains (or lakes) of animal waste that contaminate our water, or the clouds of methane that contribute to climate change. And we wouldn't need to kill billions of animals to satisfy our bottomless desire for protein.\n\nIn 2008, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could make a chicken in a test tube. \"If you can grow the chicken flesh from a few cells, that's a lot of birds that won't be suffering,\" said Ingrid Newkirk, the group's leader, noting that Americans currently eat one million chickens an hour. Ditto for the lab-grown hamburgers. \"It is a real burger made of real meat,\" she said. \"It's as real as real can be. The thing that is different about it is that it is not from a filthy slaughterhouse, but from a sterile laboratory.\"\n\nOutside the kitchen, genetic engineers have been making global headlines breeding everything from mosquitoes to trees. By altering the genes of the _Aedes aegypti_ mosquito, a vector for a variety of dangerous diseases, scientists hope to stop the march of the Zika virus, which causes serious neurological damage and birth defects in babies. While the potential impact of GMO mosquitoes on broader ecological systems is still being explored, insects engineered to be sterile, for example, could eliminate the need to return to well-known dangers like aerial spraying South American swamps and jungles with DDT.\n\nFurther north, genetic engineers are hoping to restore the American chestnut, once a royal member of the Eastern forest, whose mid-century population\u2014thanks to a fungus from Asia\u2014was reduced by fully 4 billion trees. After nearly twenty-five years of experimenting, biologists may have finally achieved blight resistance by introducing a gene from a wheat plant. What impact GM trees will have on the American landscape remains unknown, but restoring chestnuts to their former range has long been seen as a kind of reforesting gold ring.\n\nAs with so many of the promises of genetic engineering, it's hard to argue with some of these possibilities. Changes that could make even incremental dents in our industrial food system\u2014or restore deep and broad damage to our ecosystem\u2014are certainly worth exploring. On the other hand, as Wes Jackson and many others have pointed out, it's worth remembering that most technology is designed to fix problems caused by previous technologies. We have had decades of very exciting agricultural innovation, and we have had decades of dramatically compromised environmental and human health. As inspiring as technological advances may sound, there is always the danger of developing a collective belief that\u2014no matter how badly we screw things up\u2014science will somehow manage to provide a safety net. Such thinking, whether it is conscious or unconscious, can serve to absolve us of taking responsibility for our own ignorance and our own behavior.\n\nTo my mind, our learned dependence on (not to say addiction to) industrial food technology has had consequences that are both ecological and philosophical, and include a growing detachment from some of the most fundamental components of life.\n\nLike where a potato comes from.\n\nNancy Bentley, a friend of mine who owns an organic farm near the Delaware\u2013Maryland line, brings potatoes to public schools to show kids something about what they eat. Very few of the kids have ever actually seen a potato before; to them, a potato is a \"chip\" that comes in a bag. Needless to say, when they see flecks of dirt on the potato, they recoil in disgust.\n\nIf a child thinks a potato is a fried, golden, symmetrical chip in a vacuum-sealed bag, then learns that a potato is actually a dirty brown malignancy that comes from underground, naturally they would prefer the former and reject the latter. And if they can eat the chip without ever having to confront the dirty malignancy, so much the better.\n\nAnd so it has become for most of us. Our food is now so uniform, so packaged, that if a potato\u2014or a carrot, or a hamburger\u2014looks even slightly different from the last one we tried, we either won't buy it or we will throw it away. In the United States, misshapen vegetables are thrown out in unimaginable numbers by consumers, line cooks, and supermarkets alike. Farmers discard potatoes too small to harvest mechanically. Supermarkets toss cases of hummus or chocolate one day past their expiration date. Kids throw away 40 percent of their school lunches. A recent story in _National Geographic_ reported in the United States alone, retailers and consumers throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year. That's \"billion\" with a _b_.\n\nSuch waste may not, in itself, be a \"GMO problem,\" but it is symptomatic of a food system that GMOs have dramatically amplified. In just a few short decades, as we have turned over the growing of our food to a handful of companies, and a handful of crops, we have chosen to be fed according to strictures of efficiency and marketing, not of taste, nutrition, or personal (or environmental) health.\n\nPesticides and herbicides are not (technically) \"GMO problems\" either, any more than food waste is, but these compounds are similarly symptomatic of industrial food and scaled up by GMOs. A new study reports that in the United States, the use of glyphosate\u2014sprayed on millions upon millions of agricultural crops\u2014has risen 300-fold since the advent of GMOs; Americans sprayed more than 2.4 billion pounds of the herbicide in the last decade alone. Glyphosate is now sprayed on crops closer and closer to the time of harvest, which means it is showing up in more food and in greater quantities. Rather than crack down on glyphosate, the EPA has approved a doubling of \"tolerable\" herbicide residues on soybeans, a 49-fold increase on tolerable residues on corn grain, and a 2,000-fold increase in residues on alfalfa grown for animal feed. Glyphosate routinely shows up in everything from soy sauce to breast milk, and new studies are finding links between the compound and cancer, as well as problems with liver, kidney, and metabolic function. Glyphosate has also, it's worth repeating, recently been declared a \"probable human carcinogen\" by the World Health Organization.\n\nIt seems plain that food technology like genetic engineering holds both great promise and great peril. But especially for a culture that has so completely taken its eyes off of farming and food production generally, there is another side to this equation, a side that more directly involves shifting our own role as food consumers.\n\nPerhaps, beyond advances in science and engineering, we need to remember our own traditions of growing and eating food. There was a time\u2014from 10,000 years ago until just a couple of generations ago\u2014when we managed to feed ourselves from a wide variety of plants and animals without the aid of huge companies, and without laying waste to our land or our communities. No matter what else you say about the way we eat today, one thing is clear: we eat differently from how any other people in the history of the world have eaten. Even if we accept the potential benefits of advanced technology\u2014and there are many\u2014we ought also to reintroduce ourselves to the simple act of making a meal.\n\nIn my own small way, I've been trying. For the last couple of years, I have required my students to spend time every week working on Fairweather Farm, an organic operation run by my friend Nancy Bentley. My students are mostly humanities majors, not food science majors; mostly future teachers, not future farmers. Admittedly, for my university, the project has been a bit eccentric. I'm not sure I can remember the last time an English professor asked for and received grant money to buy shovels, hoes, and rakes.\n\nMy students and I first showed up in Nancy's greenhouses in February 2015. We started by sifting soil and planting broccoli and cabbage and Swiss chard in dozens of plastic trays. March had us preparing beds outside and planting beets and carrots and peas. In April, we harvested asparagus and planted potatoes, and started moving seedlings from the greenhouse to the outside beds. By May, we were transplanting tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and tomatillos and summer squash.\n\nBy August and September, when a new crop of students returned to school, we were harvesting crates of vegetables, but we were also pulling up wagonloads of thistle, feeding the sheep, and tending the chickens. In October, we were baling hay, and in November, we were preparing beds for winter.\n\nWeek after week, my students wrote journals about their experiences. They talked about what it felt like to do manual labor, some of them for the first time in their lives. They talked about what it felt like to get thistle thorns in their hands, or hay in their eyes, or manure on their shoes. But mostly they wrote about the joy they experienced working outside, in the sun or the rain, talking to their friends and their farmer, and getting to know the sheep, and the chickens, and Waldo the goat. They learned about compost, and mushroom soil, and cover crops. They got to see what potatoes look like when they come out of the ground\u2014dirty!\u2014and how good green salsa tastes if you make it from tomatillos you grew yourself.\n\n\"The feeling that I got every time I went to the farm is unexplainable,\" a student named Danielle wrote. \"The satisfaction that I now have when I take a bite out of an organic tomato is something that I would have never experienced if I didn't take this class. This semester changed me as a person. I now think about everything I do, everything I see, and everything I eat in a completely new perspective.\"\n\nA student named Hannah wrote that before taking the class she was \"a huge foodie. I loved cooking, finding recipes, and even had a job at home where I got to do both of these things with relative freedom. I never once gave thought to where my food came from, and frankly I never even thought to care about it.\"\n\nHannah's sense, vividly confirmed by virtually all of her classmates, is that the gap that exists between people and their food is not just nutritional. It is existential. College students, like the rest of us, feel profoundly disconnected from some of the most fundamental components of their lives. Ask a roomful of twenty-year-olds how many of them can tell you precisely how or where their last meal was grown, and you will get a roomful of blank stares. Ditto if you ask them where the heat\u2014or the light\u2014in their classroom came from, or the water in their shower, or the wood in their homes.\n\nAsk them how many generations of human beings have been so ignorant about these things\u2014food, light, heat, water, and shelter\u2014and you will begin to have a real conversation. Nancy's farm, for these students, offers a chance to unplug from their electronic lives, to feel the warmth of the soil, to go home deeply tired and deeply renewed.\n\nWes Jackson calls this work\u2014physical, communitarian, and ancient\u2014\"walking the beans.\" Tally up all the labor that human beings have done in all our history\u2014building roads, constructing cities, fighting wars\u2014and you'll find that we have spent more time doing one thing than anything else:\n\nPulling weeds.\n\nStrange, given that most of us never do it anymore. We have no need, since we don't grow our own food. We live in an era when physical labor is broadly devalued: we hire other people to do our work _for_ us. Indeed, it may seem counterintuitive for Wes Jackson to recommend that we spend more time doing something as (literally) mundane as pulling weeds from vegetable beds. Isn't manual work what technology was invented to replace?\n\nBut for Jackson, persuading people to relearn the value of manual work is on a par with replacing 50 million acres of annual wheat with 50 million acres of perennial Kernza: it would be a paradigm shift, a game changer. Growing more of our own food would stitch us back to our land, reintroduce us to our physical bodies\u2014maybe even help repair decades of alienation from the most fundamental things in our lives.\n\n\"Nobody likes to walk the beans anymore,\" Jackson told me. \"Instead they use Roundup so\u2014what?\u2014they can go to the gym and jog on a treadmill? Walking the treadmill is okay, hoeing the beans is not? What we need is more eyes per acre.\"\n\nGetting \"more eyes per acre\" is precisely the goal of my Literature of the Land class. There is a whole lot more to learning than you can find in a book or in a classroom. Indeed, every small farmer I spoke to during the course of my research\u2014whether they supported GMOs or rejected them\u2014agreed that closing the gap between people and their food is very long overdue, both for our land and for ourselves.\n\n\"In our time, our consciousness has to keep evolving,\" Steffen Schneider, the farmer at Hawthorne Valley, told me. \"Unless we learn to work with this inner landscape, I think we will continue to have this huge gap. It's something that's bubbling up everywhere. People working on the land\u2014on the one hand, I know how difficult it is to do every single day, but I think if you work with living nature, there is tremendous inspiration to be gotten from reading and discovering natural phenomena. Once one starts looking at things that way, your work becomes very fruitful. It gives your work a whole different context and purpose.\n\n\"That's where we have to start. When I see this amazing enthusiasm to get back to the land\u2014there's this yearning that drives it. If you look at agriculture as a purely economic industry, then one of the primary parameters is efficiency. But this is clearly not complete thinking, because you are dealing with nature, with a living planet, and if you're trying to grow living food, with healthy qualities, it's different than making a shoe or a car. It's a qualitatively different environment. It would be therapeutic for both people and the land if more people did this sort of work.\"\n\nCertainly this has proved true for my students.\n\n\"I, as I imagine many of my peers did, found solace in the farm,\" a student named Kelsey wrote. \"This was where I found peace, where the only material goods I ever required were the occasional shovel or hoe. It was great to go home feeling sore because you had just spent the last two hours pulling weeds, leaving behind a clean bed ready for planting. It was here that I learned so practically the significance of food that you grow yourself. I learned the true meaning of patience and its reward. The joy of eating something picked just moments beforehand, planted perhaps weeks or months beforehand, is indescribable: only understood through experiencing it yourself.\"\n\nIn my class, the idea is not to turn students into farmers, though in recent years a surprising number of them have gone on to work on farms after they graduate. This was not happening five years ago. Now it is. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that students are hungry\u2014literally, hungry\u2014to know more about where their food comes from. They see their generation's relationship with food as emblematic of their engagement with the world generally. Eating microwaved chicken nuggets from the nearest fast-food joint seems considerably less appealing once you have spent dozens of hours tending an organic garden plot\u2014not to mention the friendships you may have developed with a flock of charismatic hens, who trail alongside you as you weed a bed of potatoes.\n\n\"Before this semester, I had never worked on a farm, just the occasional community garden or nature preserve,\" a student named Meghan wrote. \"Now, after these past fourteen weeks, it will feel bizarre to go even a week or two _without_ spending a few hours in that environment. For the first time, my understanding of environmental issues is not based only on articles I've read from newspapers and vague notions I have about sustainability, but also personal experience and several incredible works of literature.\n\n\"On a more interior level, my growth this semester can be harder to see. For me, it happened more slowly. But as I think about it, maybe it shows in the simple fact that feeding cows cabbage at eight-thirty a.m. was the highlight of my entire week, as was kneeling in a greenhouse pulling weeds, talking with Tanya, Rodger, and others about the philosophical things that always seem to come up when your hands are in the dirt.\"\n\n# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nConstructing a book about a topic as complex and diffuse as our industrial food system has required a great deal of assistance, and I am obliged to a long list of people for their help. During the course of my research, I spoke to dozens of scientists, farmers, activists, and philosophers, from Maryland to Kansas to Hawaii. I also dug deeply into the published work of scores of scientists and journalists who have wrestled with these questions for years, and whose work has shaped my own thinking a great deal.\n\nAt the University of Delaware, I have been blessed for twenty years with smart and imaginative students, who have helped me work through a long list of entangled environmental questions. This project owes a special debt to my students in the program in Environmental Humanities, and especially to my research assistants, Kerry Snyder, Tanya Krapf, and Molly Gartland.\n\nAlso at Delaware, Blake Meyers opened his plant science laboratory to me and offered far more patience and guidance than any writer deserves. He has since moved on to the Danforth Center in St. Louis, where he joins Jim Carrington, Nigel Taylor, and Paul Anderson, who generously shared their work and expertise with me. Karla Roeber graciously helped organize my visit to the Danforth Center.\n\nIn Maryland, thanks to farmers Drew Norman, Joan Norman, Nancy Bentley, Greg Strella, Jennie Schmidt, and Hans Schmidt; and to Sheila Kincaide, Larry Bohlen, and Alfred Sommer, professor emeritus and former dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. In Baltimore, my dear friend Arnob Banerjee, MD, PhD, offered his deep expertise on genetics.\n\nIn Pennsylvania, thanks to Brian Snyder, head of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and to farmer and entrepreneur Steve Groff.\n\nIn Kansas, thanks to Wes Jackson, Tim Crews, Lee DeHaan, and Pheonah Nabukalu. Their work at The Land Institute remains a beacon of environmental integrity.\n\nIn Hawaii, thanks to Dennis Gonsalves, Alberto Belmes, Richard Manshardt, Paul Achitoff, Craig Malina, Gary Hooser, Elif Beall, Jeri DiPietro, Fern Rosenstiel, Klayton Kubo, Dustin Barca, Gerry Herbert, Nancy Redfeather, Margaret Wille, Alika Atay, Gerry Ross, Janet Simpson, and Autumn Ness.\n\nIn New York, thanks to Steffen Schneider, Conrad Vispo and Claudia Knab-Vispo, and Craig Holdrege, whose work at Hawthorne Valley Farm, the Farmscape Ecology Program, and the Nature Institute, respectively, serves as the very model of enlightened land stewardship.\n\nIn Chicago, thanks to Naseem Jamnia, who proved an astute and scrupulous copy editor.\n\nFor their help with my understanding of plant genetics and the history of industrial agriculture, I am indebted to a long list of scientists and science writers, whose personal counsel or published work has helped clarify my own. These include especially Evaggelos Vallianatos, John Fagan, John Vandermeer, Marion Nestle, Alfredo Huerta, Bruce Blumberg, David Pimentel, Philip Landrigan, David Mortensen, Steven Druker, Michael Pollan, Nathanael Johnson, Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Carey Gillam, Tom Philpott, Peter Pringle, Pamela Ronald, Richard Manning, Marie-Monique Robin, and Michael Hansen.\n\nAt Avery, thanks to Caroline Sutton, Brittney Ross, Brianna Flaherty, and especially Brooke Carey for helping me envision and shape such an unwieldy project. Copy editor Jennifer Eck polished the manuscript's rough edges. And thanks, again and always, to my agent and old friend, Neil Olson.\n\nAt home, my deepest gratitude remains reserved for Katherine, Steedman, and Annalisa, who not only accompanied me on research trips to Hawaii and Kansas but also joined me for a 4,000-mile road trip across America's amber waves of grain. Their love, support, and goodwill sustain me every day. They are my life's greatest blessing.\n\n# NOTES\n\nPrologue\n\nTom Brokaw said the tomato: Michael Winerip, \"You Call That a Tomato?\" _New York Times,_ June 24, 2013, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/24\/booming\/you-call-that-a-tomato.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1.\n\nGenetically modified wheat: Philip Jones, \"While Popularity Eludes GE Foods, AgBiotech Companies Shift Tactics,\" _Information Systems for Biotechnology_ (May 2014), http:\/\/www.isb.vt.edu\/news\/2014\/May\/Jones.pdf.\n\nIn fact, just one-half: Anne Weir Schechinger, \"Feeding the World: Think U.S. Agriculture Will End World Hunger? Think Again,\" Environmental Working Group, October 5, 2016, http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/research\/feeding-the-world.\n\nThis trend has given rise: \"Global Agrochemicals Industry 2014\u20132019: Trend, Profit and Forecast Analysis,\" _PR NewsWire_ (May 26, 2015), http:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/story\/12911088\/1\/global-agrochemical-industry-2014-2019-trends-profits-and-forecast-analysis.html; Marie-Monique Robin, _The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply_ (New York: The New Press, 2010), 5; \"Pesticides in Paradise: Hawaii's Health and Environment at Risk,\" Hawaii Center for Food Safety (May 2015), http:\/\/www.centerforfoodsafety.org\/files\/pesticidereportfull_86476.pdf.\n\nThe World Health Organization recently declared glyphosate: Lizzie Dearden, \"One of World's Most Used Weedkillers 'Possibly' Causes Cancer, World Health Organization Says,\" _Independent_ , June 23, 2015, http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/science\/one-of-worlds-most-used-weedkillers-possibly-causes-cancer-world-health-organisation-says-10338363.html.\n\nIn a nod to anxious mothers: Oliver Nieburg, \"Hershey's Milk Chocolate and Kisses to Go Non-GM,\" _Confectionary News_ , March 2, 2015, http:\/\/www.confectionerynews.com\/Ingredients\/Hershey-in-non-GMO-and-no-high-fructose-corn-syrup-pledge?utm_source=AddThis_twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=SocialMedia#.VPYk_vvu\u2014s.twitter.\n\nCheerios are made mostly of oats: \"Great-Granddaughter of General Mills Founder Urges Company to Stop Using GMOs,\" _Friends of the Earth_ , Oct. 1, 2014, http:\/\/www.foe.org\/news\/archives\/2014-10-great-granddaughter-of-general-mills-founder-urges-c. General Mills' position did not sit well with Harriet Crosby, an heir to the company fortune, who wrote to its board urging that the company stop using GMOs altogether. GMOs \"are only good for big biotech companies like Monsanto that sell both the genetically engineered seeds and the pesticides they are designed to tolerate,\" Crosby wrote. \"The promises of biotechnology are yet unrealized, especially the erroneous claim that they require fewer pesticides. Just the opposite is true. I believe that General Mills can become an even better, more profitable company by taking global leadership in producing healthy, wholesome, good food without GMOs.\"\n\nIn early 2015, thousands of Polish farmers: Sophie McAdam, \"Anti-GMO Protests Rock Poland as Farmers Demand Food Sovereignty Rights,\" True Activist, March 4, 2015, http:\/\/www.trueactivist.com\/anti-gmo-protests-rock-poland-as-farmers-demand-food-sovereignty-rights\/.\n\nChapter 1\n\nThese techniques are no more risky: B. S. Ahloowalia, M. Maluszynski, and K. Nichterlein, \"Global Impact of Mutation-Derived Varieties,\" _Euphytica_ 135, no. 2 (April 2014): 187\u2013204; Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak, _Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 89.\n\nThere is truth on both sides of this debate: Tamar Haspel, \"Genetically Modified Foods: What Is and Isn't True,\" _Washington Post_ , October 15, 2013, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/food\/genetically-modified-foods-what-is-and-isnt-true\/2013\/10\/15\/40e4fd58-3132-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html; Tamar Haspel, \"The GMO Debate: Five Things to Stop Arguing,\" _Washington Post_ , October 27, 2014, http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/food\/the-gmo-debate-5-things-to-stop-arguing\/2014\/10\/27\/e82bbc10-5a3e-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html. For more on Earth Open Source, see http:\/\/earthopensource.org. For more on \"GMO Answers,\" see http:\/\/GMOAnswers.com.\n\n\"The quest for greater certainty\": Nathanael Johnson, \"The Genetically Modified Food Debate: Where Do We Begin?\" _Grist_ , July 8, 2013, http:\/\/grist.org\/food\/the-genetically-modified-food-debate-where-do-we-begin\/.\n\n\"no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering\": National Research Council and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, _Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects_ (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004), http:\/\/www.nap.edu\/openbook.php?record_id=10977&page=8.\n\n\"Contrary to popular misconceptions\": American Academy for the Advancement of Science Board of Directors, \"AAAS: Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods,\" October 20, 2012, http:\/\/archives.aaas.org\/docs\/resolutions.php?doc_id=464.\n\n\"have passed risk assessments in several countries\": World Health Organization, \"WHO Answers Questions on Genetically Modified Food,\" http:\/\/www.who.int\/mediacentre\/news\/notes\/np5\/en\/.\n\n\"There is no more risk in eating GMO food\": Jeremy Fleming, scientific adviser to the European Commission, \"No Risk With GMO Food, Says EY Chief,\" EurActive.com, July 24, 2012, http:\/\/www.euractiv.com\/section\/science-policymaking\/news\/no-risk-with-gmo-food-says-eu-chief-scientific-advisor\/.\n\nA recent meta-analysis of studies: A. L. Van Eenennaam and A. E. Young, \"Prevalence and Impacts of Genetically Engineered Feedstuffs on Livestock Populations,\" _Journal of Animal Science_ 92, no. 10 (May 28, 2014).\n\n\"we all know what can happen\": John Vandermeer, \"Discovering Science,\" FoodFirst.org, January 8, 2013, http:\/\/www.gmwatch.org\/news\/archive\/2013\/14571-professor-john-vandermeer-challenges-lynas-on-gmos.\n\na short-term (thirty-one-day) study: Maria Walsh et al., \"Effects of Short-Term Feeding of Bt MON810 Maize on Growth Performance, Organ Morphology and Function in Pigs,\" _British Journal of Nutrition_ 107 (2012): 364\u2013371, http:\/\/journals.cambridge.org\/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN107_03%2FS0007114511003011a.pdf&code=c23ec46ee6bbe8ab3592b187924f0996.\n\nA two-year study of pigs: Judy Carman et al., \"A Long-Term Toxicology Study on Pigs Fed a Combined Genetically Modified (GM) Soy and GM Maize Diet,\" _Journal of Organic Systems_ 8, no. 1 (2013): 38\u201354, http:\/\/www.organic-systems.org\/journal\/81\/8106.pdf; Judy Carman, \"Evidence of GMO Harm in Pig Study,\" GMO Judy Carman, June 5, 2013, http:\/\/gmojudycarman.org\/new-study-shows-that-animals-are-seriously-harmed-by-gm-feed.\n\nHuerta's skepticism is well founded: See, for instance, Claire Hope Cummings, _Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 41. See also Richard Lacey's testimony in Alliance for Bio-Integrity et al. v. Donna Shalala et al., U.S. District Court, Civil Action No. 98-1300 (CKK), May 28, 1998, http:\/\/www.saynotogmos.org\/scientists_speak.htm.\n\nresidues of the compound routinely show up in British bread: Arthur Neslen, \"EU Scientists in Row over Safety of Glyphosate Weedkiller,\" _Guardian_ , January 13, 2016, http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/jan\/13\/eu-scientists-in-row-over-safety-of-glyphosate-weedkiller.\n\nA study by David Mortensen: Natasha Gilbert, \"Case Studies: A Hard Look at GMO Crops,\" _Nature_ 497, no. 7447 (May 1, 2013): 24\u201326, http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/case-studies-a-hard-look-at-gm-crops-1.12907.\n\na recent report by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment: \"The BfR Has Finalised Its Draft Report for the Re-evaluation of Glyphosate,\" Bundesinstitut f\u00fcr Risikobewertung, http:\/\/www.bfr.bund.de\/en\/the_bfr_has_finalised_its_draft_report_for_the_re_evaluation_of_glyphosate-188632.html.\n\nPresident George H. W. Bush appointed: Robin, _The World According to Monsanto_ , 187.\n\nDuring the Obama administration: Isabella Kenfield, \"Michael Taylor: Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration,\" Organic Consumers Association, August 14, 2009, https:\/\/www.organicconsumers.org\/news\/michael-taylor-monsantos-man-obama-administration; Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, \"98 Organizations Oppose Obama's Monsanto Man, Islam Siddiqui, for US Agricultural Trade Representative,\" Organic Consumers Association, February 22, 2010, https:\/\/www.organicconsumers.org\/news\/98-organizations-oppose-obamas-monsanto-man-islam-siddiqui-us-agricultural-trade-representative.\n\n\"From the 1940s to the dawn\": E. G. Vallianatos with McKay Jenkins, _Poison Spring: The Secret_ _History of Pollution and the EPA_ (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), ix.\n\nthe debate over the safety of farm chemicals: Dearden, \"One of World's Most Used Weedkillers 'Possibly' Causes Cancer.\"\n\nThe net result?: Wilhelm Klumper and Matin Qaim, \"A Meta-Analysis of the Impacts of Genetically Modified Crops,\" _PLoS ONE_ 9, no. 11 (November 2014): e111629, doi:10.1371\/journal.pone.0111629; Charles Benbrook, \"Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the US\u2014The First Sixteen Years,\" _Environmental Sciences Europe_ 24 (2012), doi:10.1186\/2190-4715-24-24.\n\n\"The majority of food\": David Pimentel, \"Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States,\" _Environment, Development and Sustainability_ (2005) 7:229\u2013252.\n\nof the six hundred pesticides now in use: Vallianatos with Jenkins, _Poison Spring_ , 29.\n\nAnd those numbers tabulate just: David Pimentel et al., \"Assessment of Environmental and Economic Impacts of Pesticide Use,\" in David Pimentel and Hugh Lehman, eds., _The Pesticide Question: Environment, Economics and Ethics_ (New York: Chapman & Hall, 1993), 51.\n\nSome scientists wonder: Anthony Samsel and Stephani Seneff, \"Glyphosate, Pathways to Modern Diseases II: Celiac Sprue and Gluten Intolerance,\" _Interdisciplinary Toxicology_ 6, no. 4 (December 2013): 159\u2013184, http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3945755\/; Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, \"Glyphosate, Pathways to Modern Diseases III: Manganese, Neurological Diseases, and Associated Pathologies,\" _Surgical Neurology International_ 6 (March 24, 2015), http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4392553\/.\n\nThis, then, is not a question: Nancy L. Swanson, Andr\u00e9 Leu, Jon Abrahamson, and Bradley Wallet, \"Genetically Engineered Crops, Glyphosate and the Deterioration of Health in the United States of America,\" _Journal of Organic Systems_ 9, no. 2 (2014), http:\/\/www.organic-systems.org\/journal\/92\/JOS_Volume-9_Number-2_Nov_2014-Swanson-et-al.pdf.\n\n\"It got to the point where some farmers\": Quoted in Gilbert, \"Case Studies: A Hard Look at GMO Crops,\" http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/case-studies-a-hard-look-at-gm-crops-1.12907.\n\nThe EPA's recent decision: Philip J. Landrigan and Charles Benbrook, \"GMOs, Herbicides, and Public Health,\" _New England Journal of Medicine_ 373 (August 20, 2015): 693\u2013695, doi: 10.1056\/NEJMp1505660 _._\n\nRelying on the seed and chemical companies: McKay Jenkins, \"Coming Soon: Major GMO Study (Shhh, It Will Be Done in Secret by Russians),\" _Huffington Post_ , December 18, 2014, http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/mckay-jenkins-phd\/coming-soon-major-gmo-stu_b_6344812.html.\n\nIn 1996, the German division: Diahanna Lynch and David Vogel, \"The Regulation of GMOs in Europe and the United States: A Case Study of Contemporary European Regulatory Politics,\" Council on Foreign Relations Press, April 5, 2001, http:\/\/www.cfr.org\/agricultural-policy\/regulation-gmos-europe-united-states-case-study-contemporary-european-regulatory-politics\/p8688.\n\n\"GMOs are dead\": Peter Pringle, _Food Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto\u2014The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 16.\n\nMore recently, nineteen members: \"Majority of EU Nations Seek Opt-Out from Growing GMO Crops,\" Reuters, October 4, 2015, http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2015\/10\/04\/eu-gmo-opt-out-idUSL6N0M01F620151004#qT5acaZpFMvUoIzp.97.\n\n\"The GMO issue is something\": Stephanie Strom, \"FDA Takes Issue with the Term 'Non-GMO,'\" _New York Times_ , November 21, 2015, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/21\/business\/fda-takes-issue-with-the-term-non-gmo.html.\n\nCompanies have responded aggressively: Eric Lipton, \"Food Industry Enlisted Academics in GMO Lobbying War, Emails Show,\" _New York Times_ , September 5, 2015, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/09\/06\/us\/food-industry-enlisted-academics-in-gmo-lobbying-war-emails-show.html?_r=0; Jacob Bunge, \"Monsanto CEO: 'We Need to Do More,'\" _Wall Street Journal_ , January 28, 2014, http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/corporate-intelligence\/2014\/01\/28\/monsanto-ceo-we-need-to-do-more-to-win-gmo-debate\/.\n\nThe story repeated itself: Molly Ball, \"Want to Know If Your Food Is Genetically Modified?\" _Atlantic_ , May 14, 2014, http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2014\/05\/want-to-know-if-your-food-is-genetically-modified\/370812\/.\n\nAlmost 90 percent of scientists: Cary Funk and Lee Rainie, \"Public and Scientists' Views on Science and Society,\" Pew Research Center, January 29, 2015, http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2015\/01\/29\/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society\/.\n\nrecent Nielsen study . . . \"There's no doubt that the industry\": Stephanie Strom, \"Many GMO-Free Labels, Little Clarity over Rules,\" _New York Times_ , January 30, 2015, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/31\/business\/gmo-labels-for-food-are-in-high-demand-but-provide-little-certainty.html.\n\n\"The sad truth is many\": \"GMOs and Your Family,\" Non-GMO Project, http:\/\/www.nongmoproject.org\/learn-more\/gmos-and-your-family\/.\n\nThe Non-GMO Project: Strom, \"FDA Takes Issue with the Term 'Non-GMO.'\"\n\nPro-labeling groups: Ronni Cummins, \"'QR' Barcodes: The Latest Plot to Keep You in the Dark About GMOs,\" Organic Consumers Association, October 28, 2015, https:\/\/www.organicconsumers.org\/essays\/%E2%80%98qr%E2%80%99-barcodes-latest-plot-keep-you-dark-about-gmos; Andrew Kimbrell, \"Obama's GMO Embarrassment: Why the New Labeling Bill Just Signed Into Law Is a Sham,\" _Salon_ , August 7, 2016, http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/08\/07\/obamas-gmo-embarrassment-why-the-new-labeling-bill-just-signed-into-law-is-a-sham_partner\/.\n\nAs with the regulation: \"Big Food's 'DARK Act' Introduced in Congress,\" Environmental Working Group, April 9, 2014, http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/release\/big-food-s-dark-act-introduced-congress.\n\nOpponents of the measure: Ibid.\n\nthe law accomplished most of what Big Food desired: Kimbrell, \"Obama's GMO Embarrassment.\" See also Ramona Bashshur, \"FDA and Regulations of GMOs,\" _American Bar Association Health eSource_ 9, no. 6, February 2013.\n\nChapter 2\n\nIn the 1950s alone, some 10 million people: Adam Rome, _The Bulldozer in the Countryside_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 123; McKay Jenkins, \"The Era of Suburban Sprawl Has to End. So, Now What?\" _Urbanite_ , May 30, 2012; \"How Long Is the Interstate System?\" Federal Highway Administration, https:\/\/www.fhwa.dot.gov\/interstate\/faq.cfm#question3.\n\nThese new foods were cheap: Eric Schlosser, _Fast Food Nation_ (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), 3; Katherine Muniz, \"20 Ways Americans Are Blowing Their Money,\" _USA Today_ , March 24, 2014, http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/money\/personalfinance\/2014\/03\/24\/20-ways-we-blow-our-money\/6826633\/.\n\nAs industrial farms continued to grow: \"Report: Number of Animals Killed in US Increases in 2010,\" Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), http:\/\/farmusa.org\/statistics11.html.\n\nAs farms consolidated and grew: Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, _Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity_ (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 81.\n\nOver the course of the twentieth century: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, \"Field Crops,\" http:\/\/www.nass.usda.gov\/Charts_and_Maps\/Field_Crops\/.\n\nWallace was right: Jack Kloppenberg, _First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology 1492\u20132000_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 283, cited by Max John Pfeiffer, \"The Labor Process and Capitalist Development of Agriculture,\" _Rural Sociologist_ 2, no. 2 (1982): 72\u201380.\n\nSuddenly, farmers (and their crops): Michael Pollan, _The Omnivore's Dilemma:_ _A Natural History of Four Meals_ (New York: Penguin, 2006), 45.\n\nA similar pattern emerged . . . Today, the six top: \"The World's Top 10 Pesticide Firms\u2014Who Owns Nature?\" Organic Consumers Association, November 1, 2008, https:\/\/www.organicconsumers.org\/news\/worlds-top-10-pesticide-firms-who-owns-nature.\n\nThis transition, from wartime chemicals: Pollan, _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ , 43; Jill Richardson, \"How Monsanto Went from Selling Aspirin to Controlling Our Food Supply,\" _TruthOut_ , April 21, 2013, http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/15856-how-monsanto-went-from-selling-aspirin-to-controlling-our-food-supply.\n\nTrue, it cranked up: Balu Bumb and Carlos Baanante, \"World Trends in Fertilizer Use and Projections to 2020,\" International Food Policy Research Institute, 2020 Brief 38, October 1996, http:\/\/ageconsearch.umn.edu\/bitstream\/16353\/1\/br38.pdf; Smil quoted in Carl Jordan, _An Ecosystem Approach to Sustainable Agriculture_ (New York: Springer, 2013), 51.\n\nSimilar changes were under way: Steven Lipin, Scott Kilman, and Susan Warren, \"DuPont Agrees to Purchase of Seed Firm for $7.7 Billion,\" _Wall Street Journal_ , March 15, 1999, http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/SB921268716949898331.\n\nMonsanto rejected the bid: Jacob Bunge, \"Monsanto Rejects Bayer Merger Offer, Says It's Open to Talks,\" _Wall Street Journal_ , May 25, 2016, http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/monsanto-rejects-bayer-merger-offer-says-its-open-to-talks-1464110057.\n\n\"This is an important moment in human history\": Quoted in Peter Pringle, _Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto\u2014The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 116.\n\nDNA was known to be: Ania Wieczorek and Mark Wright, \"History of Agricultural Biotechnology: How Crop Development has Evolved,\" _Nature, Education Knowledge_ 3, no. 3 (2012): 9\u201315.\n\nIn the late 1980s: Joe Entine and XioaZhi Lim, \"Cheese: The GMO Food Die-Hard GMO Opponents Love (and Oppose a Label For),\" GMO Literacy Project, May 15, 2015, http:\/\/www.geneticliteracyproject.org\/2015\/05\/15\/cheese-gmo-food-die-hard-gmo-opponents-love-and-oppose-a-label-for\/.\n\nMonsanto's most important push: Robin, _The World According to Monsanto,_ 138\u2013142.\n\n\"It was like the Manhattan Project\": Daniel Charles, _Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food_ (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2002), 67.\n\nIt took four years: Robin, _The World According to Monsanto_ , 139.\n\nAmericans have become very comfortable: Alyssa Battistoni, \"Americans Spend Less on Food Than Any Other Country,\" _Mother Jones_ , February 1, 2012, http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/blue-marble\/2012\/01\/america-food-spending-less.\n\nBecause this system has become: Luke Anderson, _Genetic Engineering_ , _Food and Our Environment_ (New York: Chelsea Green, 1999), 70; Stefan Lovgren, \"One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented, Study Reveals,\" _National Geographic News_ , October 13, 2005, http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2005\/10\/1013_051013_gene_patent.html; Matthew Albright, \"The End of the Revolution,\" Council for Responsible Genetics, 2002, http:\/\/www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org\/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=168.\n\nIt is also evident: \"U.S. Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops,\" _Case Studies in Agricultural Biosecurity_ , Federation of American Scientists, http:\/\/fas.org\/biosecurity\/education\/dualuse-agriculture\/2.-agricultural-biotechnology\/us-regulation-of-genetically-engineered-crops.html.\n\nBut in reality: Doug Gurian-Sherman, \"Holes in the Biotech Safety Net: FDA Policy Does Not Assure the Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods,\" Center for Science in the Public Interest, http:\/\/www.cspinet.org\/new\/pdf\/fda_report__final.pdf.\n\nU.S. policy \"tends to minimize\": Emily Marden, \"Risk and Regulation: U.S. Regulatory Policy on Genetically Modified Food and Agriculture,\" _Boston College Law Review_ 44, no. 3 (May 2003), https:\/\/www.bc.edu\/content\/dam\/files\/schools\/law\/lawreviews\/journals\/bclawr\/44_3\/02_TXT.htm. Marden gives an excellent summary of FDA, USDA, and EPA regulatory history.\n\n\"Our concern for the possible\": Paul Berg, \"Potential Biohazards of Recombinant DNA Molecules,\" _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 71, no. 7 (July 1974): 2593\u20132594.\n\nAfter Berg's letter was published: Marcia Barinaga, \"Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today,\" _Science_ 28, no. 5458 (March 2000): 1584.\n\nJames Watson, one of the discoverers: James Watson and John Tooze, _The DNA Story: A Documentary History of Gene Cloning_ (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1981), 49.\n\nWatson had nothing but contempt: Quoted in Diane B. Dutton, _Worse Than the Disease: Pitfalls of Medical Progress_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 195, 327.\n\n\"In the 1970s, we were all trying\": Quoted in Steven Druker, _Altered Genes, Twisted Truth_ (Salt Lake City: Clear River Press, 2015), 37.\n\n\"As genetic engineering became\": Susan Wright, _Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972\u20131982_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 107.\n\nIf nothing else: Schlosser, _Fast Food Nation_ , 206.\n\n\"The unintended effects cannot\": Quoted in Druker, _Altered Genes, Twisted Truth_ , 135.\n\nThe director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine: Ibid., 133\u2013135.\n\n\"This technology is being promoted\": Suzanne Wuerthele, quoted in Jeffrey Smith, \"An FDA-Created Health Crisis Circles the Globe,\" quoted ibid., 186.\n\n\"it was clearer than ever that the careers\": Quoted in Druker, _Altered Genes and Twisted Truth_ , 132.\n\nDespite this backbeat: Memorandum from David Kessler to the Secretary for Health and Human Services, March 20, 1992, quoted in Robin, _The World of Monsanto_ , 259. For more on the effectiveness of federal oversight on GMOs, see William Freese and David Schubert, \"Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods,\" _Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews_ 21 (November 2004), http:\/\/www.centerforfoodsafety.org\/files\/freese_safetytestingandregulationofgeneticallyebgineeredfoods_nov212004_62269.pdf.\n\nThe FDA policy made it official: \"Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties,\" Federal Register 57, no. 104, sec. VI (May 29, 1992): 22991.\n\nGenetic manipulation was no different: Kessler's comments are from Warren Leary, \"Cornucopia of New Foods Is Seen As Policy on Engineering Is Eased,\" _New York Times_ , May 27, 1992, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1992\/05\/27\/us\/cornucopia-of-new-foods-is-seen-as-policy-on-engineering-is-eased.html.\n\nThe victory of agribusiness: Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata, and Melody Petersen \"Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle,\" _New York Times_ , January 25, 2001, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2001\/01\/25\/business\/25FOOD.html.\n\nSuch policy \"will speed up\": Quoted ibid.\n\n\"What Monsanto wanted (and demanded)\": Druker, _Altered Genes, Twisted Truth_ , 138.\n\nIn 2002, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences: National Research Council, \"Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation,\" National Academies Press, 2002, http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK207495\/. For more on the effectiveness of federal oversight on GMOs, see Freese and Schubert, \"Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods.\"\n\nThe agency's own policy states: Freese and Schubert, \"Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods.\" And take, for example, the letter the FDA sent to Monsanto about a strain of GMO corn the company hoped to take to market: \"Based on the safety and nutritional assessment you have conducted, it is our understanding that Monsanto has concluded that corn products derived from this new variety are not materially different in composition, safety, and other relevant parameters from corn currently on the market, and that the genetically modified corn does not raise issues that would require premarket review or approval by FDA,\" the FDA's letter said. \"As you are aware, it is Monsanto's responsibility to ensure that foods marketed by the firm are safe, wholesome and in compliance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.\"\n\nCompanies are not always forthcoming: Nathanael Johnson, \"The GM Safety Dance: What's Rule and What's Real,\" _Grist_ , July 10, 2013, http:\/\/grist.org\/food\/the-gm-safety-dance-whats-rule-and-whats-real\/.\n\nFor four decades, the American legal system: E. Freeman, \"Seed Police? Part 4,\" Monsanto.com (November 10, 2008), http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/newsviews\/Pages\/Seed-Police-Part-4.aspx; E. Freeman, \"Farmers Reporting Farmers, Part 2,\" Monsanto.com (October 10, 2008), http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/newsviews\/Pages\/Farmers-Reporting-Farmers-Part-2.aspx; Jessica Lynd, \"Gone with the Wind: Why Even Utility Patents Cannot Fence in Self-Replicating Technologies,\" _American University Law Review_ 62, no. 3 (2013): 681\u2013682; \"Why Does Monsanto Sue Farmers Who Save Seeds?\" Monsanto.com, http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/newsviews\/pages\/why-does-monsanto-sue-farmers-who-save-seeds.aspx.\n\n\"The truth is Percy Schmeiser\": \"Percy Schmeiser,\" a case summary, Monsanto.com, http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/newsviews\/pages\/percy-schmeiser.aspx.\n\nThis is in direct contrast: \"In-Depth: Genetic Modification: Percy Schmeiser's Battle,\" _CBC News_ , May 21, 2004; Phil Bereano and Martin Phillipson, \"Goliath vs. Schmeiser: Canadian Court Decision May Leave Multinationals Vulnerable,\" _GeneWatch_ 17, no. 4 (July\u2013August 2004); Roger McEowen and Neil Harl, \"Key Supreme Court Ruling on Plant Patents,\" _Ag Decision Maker Newsletter_ , March 2002, https:\/\/www.extension.iastate.edu\/agdm\/articles\/harl\/HarlMar02.htm.\n\nIt's not just that such company-directed: John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto, \"The AgroEcosystem: A Need for the Conservation Biologist's Lens,\" _Conservation Biology_ 11, no. 3 (June 1997).\n\nWithout broader research: \"Fields of Gold: Research on Transgenic Crops Must Be Done Outside Industry If It Is to Fulfill Its Early Promise,\" _Nature_ 497, no. 7447 (May 1, 2013). \"How FDA Regulates Food from Genetically Engineered Plants,\" U.S. Food and Drug Administration, http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/Food\/FoodScienceResearch\/GEPlants\/ucm461831.htm.\n\nChapter 3\n\nComplete sequences (the \"chapters\"): \"DNA, Genes, and Chromosomes,\" University of Leicester, http:\/\/www2.le.ac.uk\/departments\/genetics\/vgec\/highereducation\/topics\/dnageneschromosomes.\n\nAll together, an organism's chromosomal chapters: \"Learn.Genetics,\" Genetic Science Learning Center, University of Utah, http:\/\/learn.genetics.utah.edu. This website offers a useful interactive graphic showing everything from the size of nucleotides and other cellular material to the mechanics of epigenetics.\n\nA five-year project called ENCODE: Francie Diep, \"Friction over Function: Scientists Clash on the Meaning of ENCODE's Genetic Data,\" _Scientific American_ (April 2013), http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/friction-over-function-encode\/; Claire Robinson, Michael Antoniou, and John Fagan, _GMO Myths and Truths_ , 3rd ed. (London: Earth Open Source, 2015): 21\u201322.\n\nThe answer lies in the way genes are expressed: Eric Simon, Jean Dickey, and Jane Reece, _Essential Biology_ (Boston: Pearson, 2013). I have taken much of the description of gene transcription and translation from this excellent text.\n\nOnce the transcript of the RNA: Siwaret Arikit et al., \"An Atlas of Soybean Small RNAs Identifies Phased siRNAs from Hundreds of Coding Genes,\" _Plant Cell_ 26, no. 12 (December 2014): 4584\u20134601, http:\/\/www.plantcell.org\/content\/early\/2014\/12\/02 \/tpc.114.131847.abstract.\n\nSome research suggests that even mental health: Ronald and Adamchak, _Tomorrow's Table_ , 159.\n\nExploring these complexities: Adam Thomas, \"Maize Genomics,\" University of Delaware's _UDaily_ , March 2, 2015, http:\/\/www.udel.edu\/udaily\/2015\/mar\/maize-reproduction-030215.html.\n\nFagan is a molecular biologist: Brandon Copple, \"Scientist, Activist, Yogi?\" _Forbes_ , October 30, 2000, http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes\/2000\/1030\/6612054b.html.\n\nHow you feel about GMOs: Joel Achenbach, \"Why Do So Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?\" _National Geographic_ , March 2015, http:\/\/ngm.nationalgeographic.com\/2015\/03\/science-doubters\/achenbach-text.\n\nThe study, by Gilles-\u00c9ric S\u00e9ralini: Gilles-\u00c9ric S\u00e9ralini et al.,\"Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-Tolerant Genetically Modified Maize,\" _Food and Chemical Toxicology_ 50, no. 11 (November 2012): 4221\u20134231, http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0278691512005637 (where it is now labeled \"Retracted\"); Druker, _Altered Genes, Twisted Truths_ , 302.\n\nJean-Marc Ayrault, France's prime minister: Andrew Pollack, \"Paper Tying Rat Cancer to Herbicide Is Retracted,\" _New York Times_ , November 28, 2013, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/29\/health\/paper-tying-rat-cancer-to-herbicide-is-retracted.html; \"Smelling a Rat,\" _Economist_ , December 7, 2013.\n\nAlmost instantly, the journal was deluged: Jon Entine, \"S\u00e9ralini Threatens Lawsuit in Wake of Retraction of Infamous GMO Cancer Rat Study,\" _Forbes_ , November 29, 2013, http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jonentine\/2013\/11\/29\/notorious-seralini-gmo-cancer-rat-study-retracted-ugly-legal-battle-looms\/; Kate Kelland, \"Journal Withdraws Controversial French Monsanto GMO Study,\" Reuters, November 29, 2013, http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/science-gm-retraction-idUSL2N0JE0FM20131129; \"GMO Study Retracted: Censorship of Caution?\" _Living on Earth_ , December 6, 2013, http:\/\/loe.org\/shows\/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00049&segmentID=2. See also letters to the editor posted at http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0278691512005637.\n\nA more in-depth look: \"Elsevier Announces Article Retraction from Journal _Food and Chemical Toxicology_ ,\" Elsevier.com, November 28, 2013, http:\/\/www.elsevier.com\/about\/press-releases\/research-and-journals\/elsevier-announces-article-retraction-from-journal-food-and-chemical-toxicology#sthash.KgeQj4lq.dpuf.\n\nMore than a hundred scientists . . . \"The retraction is erasing\": \"Scientists Pledge to Boycott Elsevier,\" _Ecologist_ , December 5, 2013, http:\/\/www.theecologist.org\/blogs_and_comments\/commentators\/2187010\/scientists_pledge_to_boycott_elsevier.html.\n\nThe decision was based \"not on the grounds\": Brian John, \"Letter to the Editor,\" _Food and Chemical Toxicology_ 65 (March 2014): 391, http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0278691514000040.\n\nGoodman's \"fast-tracked appointment\": Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, \"The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science,\" _Independent Science News_ , May 20, 2013, https:\/\/www.independentsciencenews.org\/science-media\/the-goodman-affair-monsanto-targets-the-heart-of-science\/.\n\nBrian John offered a sharp answer: John, \"Letter to the Editor,\" _Food and Chemical Toxicology_.\n\n\"When those with a vested interest\": \"Seralini [ _sic_ ] and Science: An Open Letter,\" _Independent Science News_ , October 2, 2012, http:\/\/www.independentsciencenews.org\/health\/seralini-and-science-nk603-rat-study-roundup\/.\n\nThe issues raised by the S\u00e9ralini study: Jenkins, \"Coming Soon: Major GMO Study (Shhh, It Will Be Done in Secret by Russians).\"\n\nBlumberg's own work: \"Chemicals That Promote Obesity down the Generations,\" _Living on Earth_ , January 18, 2013, http:\/\/loe.org\/shows\/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00003&segmentID=1.\n\nLooking over one of Blumberg's: Author interview with Bruce Blumberg.\n\nChapter 4\n\nBy the early 1990s, ringspot: Dennis Gonsalves, \"Transgenic Papaya in Hawaii and Beyond,\" _AgBioForum_ 7, nos. 1 & 2 (2004): 36\u201340, http:\/\/www.agbioforum.org\/v7n12\/v7n12a07-gonsalves.pdf.\n\nThe mid-1980s was an exciting time: Harold Schmeck, \"Plants 'Vaccinated' Against Virus,\" _New York Times_ , May 6, 1986, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1986\/05\/06\/science\/plants-vaccinated-against-virus.html. Eventually, such work on virus resistance would lead to the discovery of \"RNA silencing,\" one of biology's major advances in the past two decades. Silencing RNA has been used to develop a treatment for macular degeneration and is considered a promising field for science leading to therapies for both plants and animals. The technique won a Nobel Prize for Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello in 2006.\n\nFollowing Beachy's lead: Ronald and Adamchak, _Tomorrow's Table_ , 159. For more on how silencing RNAs work.\n\n\"It is rather rare that a potential solution\": Gonsalves, \"Transgenic Papaya in Hawaii and Beyond,\" 37.\n\nOne year later: Jennifer Mo, \"The Man Behind the Rainbow,\" _Biofortified_ , June 21, 2012, http:\/\/www.biofortified.org\/2012\/06\/rainbow\/.\n\n\"a tireless innovator\" . . . \"is a model\": Quoted in Paul Voosen, \"Crop Savior Blazes Biotech Trail, but Few Scientists or Companies Are Willing to Follow,\" _New York Times_ , September 21, 2011, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/gwire\/2011\/09\/21\/21greenwire-crop-savior-blazes-biotech-trail-but-few-scien-88379.html?pagewanted=all.\n\nAs evidence of GMO contamination: Steven Layne, \"Thailand's GMO Experiment, Part 2,\" _Phuket News_ , June 10, 2014, http:\/\/www.thephuketnews.com\/thailand-gmo-experiment-part-2-46788.php.\n\nThere have also been problems: Melanie Bondera, \"Papaya and Coffee: GMO 'Solutions' Spell Market Disaster,\" in Hawaii SEED, _Facing Hawai'i's Future: Essential Information About GMOs_ , 2nd ed. (Koloa, Hawaii: Hawaii SEED, 2012), 48\u201350.\n\nThere are signs that Gonsalves's message: Voosen, \"Crop Savior Blazes Biotech Trail.\"\n\nChapter 5\n\nBecause the fields themselves: Pesticide Action Network, \"Television Show and Body Testing Confirm Children's Exposure to Neurotoxic Pesticide,\" February 4, 2016, http:\/\/www.panna.org\/press-release\/television-show-and-body-testing-confirm-children%E2%80%99s-exposure-neurotoxic-pesticide; Anita Hofschneider, \"Syngenta Workers Seek Medical Aid After Pesticide Use on Kauai,\" _Honolulu_ _Civil Beat_ , January 22, 2016, http:\/\/www.civilbeat.com\/2016\/01\/syngenta-workers-seek-medical-aid-after-pesticide-use-on-kauai\/.\n\nLand use on Kauai: Hank Soboleski, \"Pablo Manlapit and the Hanapepe Massacre,\" _Garden Island_ , September 10, 2006, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/pablo-manlapit-and-the-hanapepe-massacre\/article_57bc7ca1-a576-5c2f-8ad9-1a7641eb4c21.html.\n\nThe \"experiments\" taking place: \"Pesticides in Paradise,\" Hawaii Center for Food Safety.\n\nKauai's sole pesticide inspector: Paul Koberstein, \"GMO Companies Are Dousing Hawaiian Island with Toxic Pesticides,\" _Grist_ , June 16, 2014, http:\/\/grist.org\/business-technology\/gmo-companies-are-dousing-hawaiian-island-with-toxic-pesticides\/; Sophie Cocke, \"Frustrated by State's Inactivity, Kauai County Takes Pesticide Fight Into Its Own Hands,\" _Huffington Post_ , October 8, 2013, http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/10\/08\/kauai-county-gmo-fight_n_4064787.html.\n\nThe disclosure records \"are believed to contain\": Letter from Thomas Matsuda to Gary Hooser, July 22, 2014.\n\nA Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) log: State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture Inspection Log, Kauai, 2011\u20132012.\n\nState records show: Restricted Use Pesticides Sold on Kauai, 2010\u20132012, Hawaii Department of Agriculture.\n\nOther records show: \"Pesticide Use by Large Agribusiness on Kauai: Findings and Recommendations of the Joint Fact Finding Study Group,\" March 2016, http:\/\/www.accord3.com\/docs\/GM-Pesticides\/draft-report\/JFF%20Full%20Report%20-%20DRAFT.pdf.\n\nA study published in March 2014: Philippe Grandjean and Philip Landrigan, \"Neurobehavioural Effects of Developmental Toxicity,\" _Lancet_ 13, no. 3 (March 2014): 330\u2013338, http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/laneur\/article\/PIIS1474-4422(13)70278-3\/abstract.\n\nRecent hair sample testing: Pesticide Action Network, \"Television Show and Body Testing Confirm Children's Exposure to Neurotoxic Pesticide.\"\n\nBut it wasn't just chlorpyrifos: Ibid.\n\nAlso in the cocktail: permethrin . . . chlorpyrifos: See \"The Food We Eat: An International Comparison of Pesticide Regulations,\" David Suzuki Foundation, October 2006, http:\/\/www.davidsuzuki.org\/publications\/downloads\/2006\/DSF-HEHC-Food1.pdf.\n\n\"even more acutely toxic\": E. G. Vallianatos with McKay Jenkins, _Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA_ (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 39.\n\nAnother ingredient in the cocktail: Rachel Aviv, \"A Valuable Reputation,\" _New Yorker_ , February 10, 2014, http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2014\/02\/10\/a-valuable-reputation.\n\n\"had their heads in their hands\": Amanda Gregg, \"'Stink Weed' Sends Some Home from Waimean School,\" _Garden Island_ , November 15, 2006, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/stink-weed-sends-some-home-from-waimea-school\/article_5a66ba3d-2194-53dc-8bda-807e794625ae.html.\n\nThough it is eaten: Ibid.; Adam Harju, \"Odor Investigation Ongoing,\" _Garden Island_ , November 18, 2006, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/odor-investigation-ongoing\/article_650db9f3-06a5-5960-8f47-97a433eac349.html; Amanda Gregg, \"Report Reveals Discrepancies in Spraying Incident,\" _Garden Island_ , March 12, 2007, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/report-reveals-discrepancies-in-spraying-incident\/article_046c3b40-4ecb-54f6-a1b9-e90d3c032153.html.\n\nCompany claims about stinkweed: \"Pesticides in Paradise,\" Hawaii Center for Food Safety.\n\nThere was no questioning . . . There was no evidence: Memo from J. Milton Clark to Peter Adler, chairman of Task Force on Kauai Pesticides and GMO, May 19, 2015, included in \"Pesticides Use by Large Agribusinesses on Kauai.\" See http:\/\/www.accord3.com\/docs\/GM-Pesticides\/report\/JFF%20Report%20Errata.pdf.\n\nWhat the island needed: Paul Achitoff, \"GMOs in Kauai: Not Just Another Day in Paradise,\" _Huffington Post_ , March 5, 2014, http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/paul-achitoff\/gmos-in-kauai-not-just-an_b_4899491.html; \"AAP Makes Recommendations to Reduce Children's Exposure to Pesticides,\" American Academy of Pediatrics, November 26, 2012, https:\/\/www.aap.org\/en-us\/about-the-aap\/aap-press-room\/pages\/AAP-Makes-Recommendations-to-Reduce-Children's-Exposure-to-Pesticides.aspx.\n\n\"many qualitative examples\" . . . \"We all share a deep concern\": \"Doctors and Nurses Implore Mayor: Sign Bill 2491 into Law Now!\" Stop Poisoning Paradise, http:\/\/www.stoppoisoningparadise.org\/#!doctors-and-nurses-letters-to-mayor\/cs1m. Sample letters from doctors and nurses to Kauai County Council, delivered October 20, 2013.\n\nThe doctors' worries reflected: \"August 5, 2013 Kauai County Council Dr Evslin Kauai Pediatrician,\" YouTube video, 7:11, posted by \"Mom's Hui Kaua'i,\" August 10, 2013, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8g6D8xAz6fA.\n\nMargie Maupin, a nurse practitioner: \"Margie Maupin Nurse Practitioner in Support Bill 2491,\" YouTube video, 6:09, posted by \"Occupy Hawaii,\" November 16, 2013, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FrqHU8Y-QCo.\n\nIn 2011, more than a hundred of Klayton Kubo's neighbors filed a lawsuit: For information on the trial and its issues, see Vanessa Van Voorhis, \"Waimea Residents Sue Pioneer,\" _Garden Island_ , December 13, 2011, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/mobile\/article_82ff2c3e-2632-11e1-9ca7-001871e3ce6c.html; Tom LaVenture, \"Waimea Residents Suing Pioneer Hi-Bred,\" _Garden Island_ , June 14, 2012, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/local\/waimea-residents-suing-pioneer-hi-bred\/article_607adf66-b5ff-11e1-a19b-001a4bcf887a.html; Sophie Cocke, \"Does Hawaii's Failure to Enforce Pesticide Use Justify Action by Kauai?\" _Honolulu Civil Beat_ , October 8, 2013, http:\/\/www.civilbeat.com\/2013\/10\/20066-does-hawaiis-failure-to-enforce-pesticide-use-justify-kauais-action\/; Associated Press, \"Jury Awards Kauai Residents over $500K in Dust Lawsuit,\" _Maui News_ , May 10, 2015, http:\/\/www.mauinews.com\/page\/content.detail\/id\/597884\/Jury-awards-Kauai-residents-over\u2014500K-in-dust-lawsuit.html?nav=5031. A year later, residents filed a second suit, claiming Pioneer consistently failed to control the erosion and pesticide-laden dust from its GMO test fields.\n\nJervis reminded the court: Koberstein, \"GMO Companies Are Dousing Hawaiian Island with Toxic Pesticides.\" A 1,500-page report from the state Department of Agriculture concluded that although Syngenta did apply pesticides near the school, it did so correctly, and ruled out the chemical Hi-Tech as the culprit.\n\n\"Kaua'i produces more GMO seeds than anyplace\": Vanessa Van Voorhis, \"Large-Scale Die-off of Sea Urchins Discovered off Kaumakani,\" _Garden Island_ , February 23, 2012, http:\/\/thegardenisland.com\/news\/local\/large-scale-die-off-of-sea-urchins-discovered-off-kaumakani\/article_16081484-5a1b-11e1-bca7-0019bb2963f4.html.\n\nThat same winter . . . Vandana Shiva: Jon Letman, \"Opposition Crops Up to GMO Foods in Hawaii,\" Al Jazeera, February 16, 2013, http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/features\/2013\/02\/20132514512529904.html.\n\nIndustry executives claimed: Cocke, \"Frustrated by State's Inactivity, Kauai County Takes Pesticide Fight into Its Own Hands.\"\n\nCompanies dismissed complaints: Letman, \"Opposition Crops Up to GMO Foods in Hawaii.\"\n\nDuring the hearings on the bill: Kristine Uyeno, \"GMO Public Hearing on Kauai Draws Hundreds,\" KHON-TV, July 31, 2013, http:\/\/khon2.com\/2013\/07\/31\/gmo-public-hearing-on-kauai-draws-hundreds\/.\n\nYet within weeks: Carey Gillam, \"Anti-GMO Crop, Pesticide Ballot Initiative Launched in Hawaii,\" Reuters, February 24, 2014, http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2014\/02\/25\/usa-gmos-hawaii-idUSL1N0LU0A220140225.\n\nAn attorney representing: Nestor Garcia, \"Federal Judge Declares New Kauai GMO, Pesticide Law Invalid,\" KHON-TV, August 25, 2014, http:\/\/khon2.com\/2014\/08\/25\/federal-judge-declares-new-kauai-gmo-pesticide-law-invalid\/.\n\n\"The big question\": Keoki Kerr, \"State, Kauai Set Up Panel to Study GMO Pesticide Impacts,\" _Hawaii News Now_ , December 3, 2014, http:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/story\/27532992\/state-kauai-set-up-panel-to-study-gmo-pesticide-impacts.\n\nFor local residents: Associated Press, \"Jury Awards Kauai Residents over $500K in Dust Lawsuit.\"\n\nTen days after the verdict: Anita Hofschneider, \"DuPont Pioneer Shuts Down One Kauai Facility,\" _Honolulu_ _Civil Beat_ , May 20, 2015, http:\/\/www.civilbeat.com\/2015\/05\/dupont-pioneer-shuts-down-one-kauai-facility\/.\n\n\"Syngenta did not want me there\": Gary Hooser, \"From Kauai to Switzerland\u2014Why We Went, What We Accomplished and What's Next,\" _GaryHooser's Blog_ , https:\/\/garyhooser.wordpress.com\/2015\/05\/03\/from-kauai-to-switzerland-why-we-went-what-we-accomplished-and-whats-next\/.\n\nChapter 6\n\nThe Big Island, basically, had one: Nathanael Johnson, \"Here's Why Hawaii's Anti-GMO Laws Matter,\" _Grist_ , November 20, 2014, http:\/\/grist.org\/food\/heres-why-hawaiis-anti-gmo-laws-matter\/.\n\nBig agricultural companies: Anita Hofschneider, \"Hawaii Farmers, Biotech Industry Challenge Big Island's GMO Ban,\" _Honolulu Civil Beat_ , June 9, 2014, http:\/\/www.civilbeat.com\/2014\/06\/hawaii-farmers-biotech-industry-challenge-big-islands-gmo-ban\/.\n\nIndustry representatives were elated: Associated Press, \"Federal Judge Rules Against Big Island GMO Law,\" _NewsOK_ , November 26, 2104, http:\/\/newsok.com\/federal-judge-rules-against-big-island-gmo-law\/article\/feed\/765175.\n\nDespite unparalleled weather . . . Hawaii's agricultural experts: \"Pesticides in Paradise,\" Hawaii Center for Food Safety.\n\nFor the benefit of present and future generations: The Constitution of the State of Hawaii, Article XI, http:\/\/lrbhawaii.org\/con\/conart11.html.\n\nIt was a safe bet: \"Hawaiians Take on Monsanto and GMOs,\" Pachamama Alliance, June 25, 2014, http:\/\/www.pachamama.org\/webcasts\/hawaiians-take-on-monsanto-gmos.\n\nThe petition also urged voters: \"A Bill Placing a Moratorium on the Cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms,\" Chapter 20.39 of the Maui County Code, http:\/\/www.mauicounty.gov\/Archive\/ViewFile\/Item\/19197.\n\nThe ball was now: Wendy Osher, \"Maui Petition Filed Against GMO Industry, Monsanto Responds,\" _Maui Now_ , April 8, 2014, http:\/\/mauinow.com\/2014\/04\/08\/maui-petition-filed-against-gmo-industry-monsanto-responds\/.\n\nA Monsanto employee . . . Another Monsanto employee: \"Employees Rally in Support of Monsanto on Maui and Molokai\u20144\/3\/14,\" YouTube video, 3:13, posted by \"Maui Now,\" https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VOU7K7Fr5Zw.\n\nRather than try to convince: \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Arguments Against,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014) #Arguments_against; \"Over 11,000 Maui County Citizens Stand Up and Say 'Nuff Already' to Biotech Experimentation with a History Making Social Action,\" PRWeb, April 14, 2014, http:\/\/www.prweb.com\/releases\/2014\/04\/prweb11758961.htm.\n\nThe companies also flexed: For the original language of the initiative and for the text of the final moratorium question, respectively, see \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Full Text,\" Ballotpedia, https:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014),_full_text; \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Ballot Question,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014)#Ballot_question.\n\nIndustry advertisements\u2014typically attributed: \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): TV Ads,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014)#TV_ads.\n\nThe campaign finance reports: For campaign spending reports, see \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Campaign Finance,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014), #Campaign_finance.\n\nLorrin Pang, a Maui physician: \"Over 11,000 Maui County Citizens Stand Up and Say 'Nuff Already' to Biotech Experimentation with a History Making Social Action,\" PRWeb.\n\nAlika and the SHAKA Movement held: Anita Hofschneider, \"1,000 Votes: Maui GMO Farming Ban Squeaks By,\" _Honolulu Civil Beat_ , November 4, 2014, http:\/\/www.civilbeat.com\/2014\/11\/1000-votes-maui-gmo-farming-ban-squeaks-by\/.\n\nSure enough, when the final vote . . . just over 51 percent: \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Election Results,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014)#Election_results.\n\nThe next day, Monsanto: Audrey McAvoy, \"Monsanto, Dow Unit Sue Maui County over GMO Law,\" Associated Press, November 13, 2014, http:\/\/www.ksl.com\/?nid=1200&sid=32342920.\n\nKurren reassigned the case: Audrey McAvoy, \"Maui Group Wins Ability to Intervene in GMO Case,\" Associated Press, December 15, 2014, http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/business\/local\/maui-group-wins-ability-to-intervene-in-gmo-case\/article_99140705-b5df-55e9-9cf4-25a4ebc32f86.html.\n\nNo portion of this ruling: \"Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative (November 2014): Aftermath,\" Ballotpedia, http:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Maui_County_Genetically_Modified_Organism_Moratorium_Initiative_(November_2014)##Aftermath.\n\nChapter 7\n\nIn other words, the Danforth Center: \"Board of Directors,\" Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, https:\/\/www.danforthcenter.org\/about\/leadership\/board-of-directors.\n\nA cynic might claim: Doreen Stabinsky, \"Hearts of Darkness: The Biotech Industry's Exploration of Southern Africa,\" _GeneWatch_ 15, no. 6 (November\u2013December, 2002).\n\n\"a stalking horse for corporate proponents\": Phil Bereano, \"Bill's Excellent African Adventure: A Tale of Technocratic Agroindustrial Philanthrocapitalism,\" _GeneWatch_ 26, no. 1 (January\u2013February 2013): 16.\n\n\"If companies are going to claim\": Marion Nestle, _Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism_ (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 247.\n\n\"In the United States, we've seen\": Peter Rosset, Frances Moore Lapp\u00e9, and Joseph Collins, \"Lessons from the Green Revolution: Do We Need New Technology to End Hunger?\" _Tikkun_ 15, no. 2 (March\/April 2000): 52\u201356.\n\nPotrykus visualized peasant farmers: J. Madeleine Nash, \"This Rice Could Save a Million Kids a Year,\" _Time_ , July 31, 2000, http:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,997586,00.html.\n\nIn the end, Potrykus and his team: Pringle, _Food Inc_ , 31\u201335; Amy Harmon, \"Golden Rice: Lifesaver?\" _New York Times_ , August 24, 2013, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/08\/25\/sunday-review\/golden-rice-lifesaver.html?_r=0.\n\nThe journal Science announced: Mary Lou Guerinot, \"The Green Revolution Strikes Gold,\" _Science_ 287, no. 5451 (January 14, 2000): 241\u2013243.\n\nGreenpeace, which had taken: \"Field of Dreams: Potrykus' Golden Rice,\" _Financial Times_ , February 25, 2000; see http:\/\/www.genepeace.ch\/new\/2000\/fields_of_dreams_2002.htm.\n\nIn an article in The New York Times Magazine: Michael Pollan, \"The Great Yellow Hype,\" _New York Times Magazine_ , March 4, 2011, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2001\/03\/04\/magazine\/04WWLN.html.\n\n\"the 'selling' of vitamin A\": Vandana Shiva, \"Golden Rice: Myth, Not Miracle,\" GMWatch, January 12, 2014, http:\/\/www.gmwatch.org\/news\/archive\/2014\/15250-golden-rice-myth-not-miracle.\n\nAnd so it has gone: Christopher J. M. Whitty, Monty Jones, Alan Tollervey, and Tim Wheeler, \"Biotechnology: Africa and Asia Need a Rational Debate on GM Crops,\" _Nature_ 497 (May 2, 2013): 31\u201333.\n\nIn August 2013, hundreds of protesters: Harmon, \"Golden Rice: Lifesaver?\"\n\nSuch research mirrored work: Frances Moore Lapp\u00e9, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza, _World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Food First_ (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 61.\n\nBorlaug has never been shy: _Harvest of Fear_ , PBS _Frontline\/NOVA_ , April 23, 2001, http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/harvest\/.\n\nM. S. Swaminathan, a renowned: M. S. Swaminathan, \"Perspective: The Challenges Ahead,\" _New Agriculturist_ 11 (April 1999), http:\/\/www.new-agri.co.uk\/99-4\/perspect.html.\n\nIndeed, for every plant scientist: David Pimentel, \"Changing Genes to Feed the World: A Review of _Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Foods_ , by Nina Federoff and Nancy Marie Brown,\" _Science_ 306, no. 5697 (October 29, 2004): 815.\n\nCatherine Ives, the scientist: _Harvest of Fear_ , PBS _Frontline\/NOVA_.\n\nMonsanto boasts that it has already trained: Jonathan Gilbert, \"In Paraguay, the Spread of Soy Strikes Fear in Hearts of Rural Farmers,\" _Time_ , August 9, 2013, http:\/\/world.time.com\/2013\/08\/09\/in-paraguay-rural-farmers-fear-the-spread-of-soy\/; Christine MacDonald, \"Green Going Gone: The Tragic Deforestation of the Chaco,\" _Rolling Stone_ , July 28, 2014, http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/news\/green-going-gone-the-tragic-deforestation-of-the-chaco-20140728.\n\nTwo years later, in 2012: Simon Romero, \"Vast Tracts in Paraguay Forest Being Replaced by Ranches,\" _New York Times_ , March 24, 2012, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/25\/world\/americas\/paraguays-chaco-forest-being-cleared-by-ranchers.html; Tracy Barnett, \"Paraguay Takes Hard Line on GMOs,\" _Huffington Post_ , September 1, 2010, http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/tracy-l-barnett\/paraguay-takes-hard-line-_b_701182.html.\n\nIn Argentina, meanwhile, a woman: \"Sofia Gatica,\" The Goldman Environmental Prize, 2012, http:\/\/www.goldmanprize.org\/recipient\/sofia-gatica\/.\n\n\"The problem is that there are very few\": Alfred Sommer, \"Vitamin A Deficiency Disorders: Origins of the Problem and Approaches to Its Control,\" _AgBioWorld_ , 2011, http:\/\/www.agbioworld.org\/biotech-info\/topics\/goldenrice\/vit_a.html.\n\nIf anything, the prospect of climate change: Felix Chung, \"The Search for the Rice of the Future,\" from a special issue devoted to rice in \"Nature Outlook,\" a supplement to _Nature_ 514, no. 7524 (October 30, 2014); Tim Folger, \"The Next Green Revolution,\" _National Geographic_ , October 2014, http:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/foodfeatures\/green-revolution\/.\n\nIn 2015 alone, scientists published: Leigh Dayton, \"Blue Sky Rice,\" from a special issue devoted to rice in \"Nature Outlook,\" a supplement to _Nature_ 514, no. 7524 (October 30, 2014).\n\nIn Kenya, farmers have: Rachel Cernansky, \"The Rise of Africa's Super Vegetables,\" _Nature_ , June 9, 2015, http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/the-rise-of-africa-s-super-vegetables-1.17712.\n\n**Yet** in June 2016, more than one hundred Nobel laureates: Joel Achenbach, \"107 Nobel Laureates Sign Letter Blasting Greenpeace over GMOs,\" _Washington Post_ , June 29, 2016, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/speaking-of-science\/wp\/2016\/06\/29\/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance\/.\n\nChapter 8\n\nMonsanto began testing Roundup Ready wheat: Justin Gillis, \"Monsanto Pulls Plan to Commercialize Gene-Altered Wheat,\" _Washington Post_ , May 11, 2004, http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A15998-2004May10.html; Steven Mufson, \"Monsanto Shares Fall as South Korea Joins Pause in Wheat Imports,\" _Washington Post_ , May 31, 2013, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/monsanto-shares-fall-as-south-korea-joins-pause-in-wheat-imports\/2013\/05\/31\/5df79a3a-ca2c-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html.\n\nJust ask Larry Bohlen: Marc Kaufman, \"Biotech Critics Cite Unapproved Corn in Taco Shells,\" _Washington_ _Post_ , September 18, 2000, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/politics\/2000\/09\/18\/biotech-critics-cite-unapproved-corn-in-taco-shells\/e7973551-d518-47dc-9bdf-d7931e5e8b49\/.\n\nThe results, in one case: Andrew Pollack, \"Kraft Recalls Taco Shells with Bioengineered Corn,\" _New York Times_ , September 23, 2000, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/09\/23\/business\/kraft-recalls-taco-shells-with-bioengineered-corn.html.\n\nTo Larry Bohlen, it was entirely obvious: _Harvest of Fear_ , PBS _Frontline\/NOVA_.\n\nThings have only gotten rockier: Francie Grace, \"Anheuser-Busch Starts Rice War,\" _CBS News_ , April 13, 2005, http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/anheuser-busch-starts-rice-war\/.\n\nSuddenly, it was StarLink all over again: Richard Vanderford, \"Bayer Settles Rice Contamination Suits for $750M,\" Law360, July 1, 2011, http:\/\/www.law360.com\/articles\/255594\/bayer-settles-rice-contamination-suits-for-750m; Steven Mufson, \"Unapproved Genetically Modified Wheat from Monsanto Found in Oregon,\" _Washington Post_ , May 30, 2013, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/unapproved-genetically-modified-wheat-from-monsanto-found-in-oregon-field\/2013\/05\/30\/93fe7abe-c95e-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html; Jonathan Randles, \"Monsanto's Legal Risk Sprouts as Asia Shuns Modified Wheat,\" Law360, May 31, 2013, http:\/\/www.law360.com\/articles\/446381\/monsanto-s-legal-risk-sprouts-as-asia-shuns-modified-wheat; \"USDA Announces Close and Findings of Investigation in the Detection of Genetically Engineered Wheat in Oregon in 2013,\" September 26, 2014, https:\/\/www.aphis.usda.gov\/newsroom\/2014\/09\/pdf\/ge_wheat.pdf.\n\n\"There are too many of us\": Wes Jackson, \"Commencement Address: The Serious Challenge of Our Time,\" University of Kansas, May 19, 2013, https:\/\/landinstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/WJackson-KU-Commencement-Addr_May2013.pdf.\n\nJared Diamond, the scientist and bestselling author: Jared Diamond, \"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,\" _Discover_ , May 1987, http:\/\/discovermagazine.com\/1987\/may\/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race.\n\nAfrican Bushmen eat some seventy-five different wild plants: Ibid.\n\nThe Irish were so dependent: Richard Manning, _Against the Grain_ (New York: North Point Press, 2005), 72\u201379.\n\nInstead of the ecological desert: Lee DeHaan and David Van Tassel, \"Useful Insights from Evolutionary Biology for Developing Perennial Grain Crops,\" _American Journal of Botany_ 101, no. 10 (2014): 1801\u20131819.\n\nThe idea seemed so obvious: \"Biomimicry: Nature's Alternative to Genetically Engineered Foods,\" _Environment and Ecology_ (2015), http:\/\/environment-ecology.com\/biomimicry-bioneers\/372-biomimicry-natures-alternative-to-genetically-engineered-foods-.html.\n\nDeep roots would also mean: Robert Kunzig, \"Perennial Solution,\" _National Geographic_ , April 2011, http:\/\/ngm.nationalgeographic.com\/2011\/04\/big-idea\/perennial-grains-text.\n\nThe work has been slow: Richard Harris, \"Prairie Pioneer Seeks to Reinvent the Way We Farm,\" National Public Radio, October 21, 2009.\n\nIn the early 1900s: Lance Gibson and Garren Benson, \"Origin, History, and Uses of Oat ( _Avena sativa_ ) and Wheat ( _Triticum aestivum_ ),\" Iowa State University, Department of Agronomy (rev. January 2002), http:\/\/agron-www.agron.iastate.edu\/Courses\/agron212\/Readings\/Oat_wheat_history.htm.\n\nClaims from industrial corn companies: James Conca, \"It's Final: Corn Ethanol Is of No Use,\" _Forbes_ , April 20, 2014, http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2014\/04\/20\/its-final-corn-ethanol-is-of-no-use\/.\n\nChapter 9\n\nthe company has to feed most of the 569 million chickens: \"Look What the Chicken Industry Is Doing for Delmarva,\" Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., 2014, https:\/\/www.dpichicken.org\/faq_facts\/docs\/FACTS14.pdf.\n\nGiven this level of scrupulous attention: Jennie Schmidt, \"The Truth About GMOs,\" _Boston Review_ , September 6, 2013, http:\/\/www.bostonreview.net\/forum\/truth-about-gmos\/farmer-choose-gmos.\n\nThe Plenish beans have clearly been: Jennie Schmidt, \"GMO Versus Non-GMO: The Cost of Production,\" _The Foodie Farmer_ , December 29, 2014, http:\/\/thefoodiefarmer.blogspot.com\/2014\/12\/gmo-versus-nongmo-cost-of-production.html.\n\n\"We've had folks ask us\": Marc Gunther, \"GMO 2.0: Genetically Modified Foods with Added Health Benefits,\" _Guardian_ , June 10, 2014, http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sustainable-business\/2014\/jun\/10\/genetically-modified-foods-health-benefits-soybean-potatoes.\n\nClearly, the companies that both: Sandy Bauers, \"DuPont Develops New Cooking Oil from Genetically Modified Soybeans,\" _Philadelphia Inquirer_ , January 4, 2015, http:\/\/www.philly.com\/philly\/columnists\/sandy_bauers\/20150104_GreenSpace__DuPont_develops_new_cooking_oil_from_genetically-modified_soybeans.html.\n\nIn the fall of 2014, DuPont Pioneer and Perdue AgriBusiness: \"DuPont Pioneer, Perdue Announce Doubling of Acreage for 2014 Plenish High Oleic Soybean Program,\" Pioneer press release, November 18, 2013, https:\/\/www.pioneer.com\/home\/site\/about\/news-media\/news-releases\/template.CONTENT\/guid.17F567F5-5AF2-7ED8-A7D6-27BAA176DEA2.\n\n\"We're always looking for ways\": \"DuPont Pioneer, Perdue AgriBusiness to Double Acreage for 2015 Plenish High Oleic Soybean Program,\" Perdue press release, October 24, 2014, http:\/\/www.perduefarms.com\/News_Room\/Press_Releases\/details.asp?id=1129&title=DuPont%20Pioneer,%20Perdue%20AgriBusiness%20to%20double%20acreage%20for%202015%20Plenish%AE%20high%20oleic%20soybean%20program; Sean Cloughery, \"Delaware Officials Get Behind Popular Plenish Beans,\" AmericanFarm.com, http:\/\/www.americanfarm.com\/publications\/the-delmarva-farmer\/events\/1705-delaware-officials-get-behind-popularity-for-plenish-beans.\n\n\"There is no 'one' system\": Jennie Schmidt, \"Farming Techniques Do Not Belong to One Farming System,\" _The Foodie Farmer_ , June 5, 2015, http:\/\/thefoodiefarmer.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/farming-techniques-do-not-belong-to-one.html.\n\n\"Because this is spraying and not dousing\": Jennie Schmidt, \"Spraying Isn't Dousing,\" _The Foodie Farmer_ , June 15, 2015, http:\/\/thefoodiefarmer.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/spraying-isnt-dousing.html.\n\nIn the Chesapeake Bay watershed: Timothy Wheeler, \"Sodden Fields Delay Planting of Cover Crops to Aid the Bay,\" _Baltimore Sun_ , November 21, 2009, http:\/\/articles.baltimoresun.com\/2009-11-21\/news\/0911200158_1_crop-program-planting-busy-harvesting.\n\nIndeed, they note, the word is featured prominently: \"Our Commitment to Sustainable Agriculture,\" Monsanto.com, http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/whoweare\/pages\/our-commitment-to-sustainable-agriculture.aspx.\n\n\"Industrial agriculture today\": Andr\u00e9 Leu and Ronnie Cummins, \"From 'Sustainable' to 'Regenerative'\u2014The Future of Food,\" _Common Dreams_ , November 10, 2015, http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2015\/10\/28\/sustainable-regenerative-future-food.\n\nChapter 10\n\n\"There are two spiritual dangers\": Aldo Leopold, _A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There_ (1949; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 6.\n\nBut given that by the end of the century: Whitty, Jones, Tollervey, and Wheeler, \"Biotechnology: Africa and Asia Need a Rational Debate on GM Crops.\"\n\n\"Over the last few years\": \"Del. Farmers' Market Sales Double in 5 Years,\" WBOC News, December 26, 2014, http:\/\/www.wboc.com\/story\/27709471\/del-farmers-market-sales-double-in-5-years.\n\nThanks to a national surge: Stephanie Strom, \"USDA to Start Program to Support Local and Organic Farming,\" _New York Times_ , September 28, 2014, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/09\/29\/business\/usda-to-start-program-to-support-local-and-organic-farming.html.\n\nAs helpful as this has been: Brad Plumer, \"The $956 Billion Farm Bill in One Graph,\" _Washington Post_ , January 28, 2014, http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonkblog\/wp\/2014\/01\/28\/the-950-billion-farm-bill-in-one-chart\/.\n\nGaps can be reduced further: Sarah Yong, \"Can Organic Crops Compete with Industrial Agriculture?\" _Berkeley News_ , December 9, 2014, http:\/\/news.berkeley.edu\/2014\/12\/09\/organic-conventional-farming-yield-gap\/.\n\nA thirty-year study: Bill Liebhardt, \"Get the Facts Straight: Organic Agriculture Yields Are Good,\" _Organic Farming Research Foundation_ 10 (Summer): 1, 4\u20135; Pimentel, \"Changing Genes to Feed the World,\" 815.\n\nBut into this vacuum: \"Mission 2014: Feeding the World,\" Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http:\/\/12.000.scripts.mit.edu\/mission2014\/solutions\/urban-agriculture; Trish Popovitch, \"10 American Cities Lead the Way with Urban Agricultural Ordinances,\" _Seedstock_ , May 27, 2014, http:\/\/seedstock.com\/2014\/05\/27\/10-american-cities-lead-the-way-with-urban-agriculture-ordinances\/.\n\nEpilogue\n\nUsing a gene-silencing technique: Tom Philpott, \"The Seven Biggest Food Stories of 2015,\" _Mother Jones_ , December 30, 2015, http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/tom-philpott\/2015\/12\/here-are-biggest-food-and-farm-stories-2015.\n\nAnd then there are GM animals: Maggie Fox, \"Lab-Grown Meat Is Here\u2014But Will Vegetarians Eat It?\" _NBC News_ , August 5, 2013, http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/health\/diet-fitness\/lab-grown-meat-here-will-vegetarians-eat-it-f6C10830536; Kat McGowan, \"This Scientist Might End Animal Cruelty\u2014Unless GMO Hardliners Stop Him,\" _Mother Jones_ , September\u2013October 2015, http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/environment\/2015\/07\/fahrenkrug-genetic-modification-gmo-animals.\n\n\"We're going to see a stream\": Amy Harmon, \"Open Season Is Seen in Gene Editing of Animals,\" _New York Times_ , November 26, 2015, http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/27\/us\/2015-11-27-us-animal-gene-editing.html.\n\nA recent story in National Geographic: Elizabeth Royte, \"How Ugly Fruits and Vegetables Can Help Solve World Hunger,\" _National Geographic_ , March 2016, http:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/magazine\/2016\/03\/global-food-waste-statistics\/.\n\nPesticides and herbicides are not (technically): See Charles Benbrook, \"Trends in Glyphosate Herbicide Use in the United States and Globally,\" _Environmental Sciences Europe_ 28, no. 3 (February 2016), http:\/\/enveurope.springeropen.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12302-016-0070-0; Mary Ellen Kustin, \"Monsanto's Glyphosate Weed-Killer Is Pervasive, GMO Labels Nonexistent,\" Environmental Working Group, April 10, 2015, http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/agmag\/2015\/04\/gmo-weed-killer-pervasive-gmo-labels-nonexistent; Mary Ellen Kustin, \"Americans at Greater Risk of Glyphosate Exposure Than Europeans,\" Environmental Working Group, February 3, 2016, http:\/\/www.ewg.org\/agmag\/2016\/02\/americans-greater-risk-glyphosate-exposure-europeans.\n\n# INDEX\n\nThe page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.\n\nA (adenine), , ,\n\nAchitoff, Paul,\n\nADHD,\n\nAdler, Peter, \u201347\n\nADM,\n\nAdvisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations,\n\n_Aedes aegypti_ mosquito,\n\nAfghanistan,\n\nAfrica, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nAgent Orange, , , , , , ,\n\n\"agricultural stewardship,\"\n\nAgrigenetics Inc.,\n\n_Agrobacterium tumefaciens,_\n\nagrochemical's influence, , , \u20138, , , , , , , , \u201331, , , , \u201344, \u201349, , , , \u201361, \u201369, , \u201395\n\n\"agroindustrial philanthrocapitalism,\"\n\n_aina_ (that which feeds us) warriors, ,\n\nair pollution, , , , , , , , ,\n\nalachlor,\n\nAllen, Will,\n\nallergies, , , , , ,\n\nAloha da Vote festival,\n\n_Altered Genes, Twisted Truth_ (Druker),\n\nalternatives to industrial farming. _See_ fruit\n\nAmerica and GMOs, \u20134, , \u201310, , , \u201314, , , \u201324, \u201329, , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ corn; genetically modified organisms (GMOs); soybeans\n\nAmerican Academy for the Advancement of Science,\n\nAmerican Academy of Pediatrics (AAP),\n\nAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science,\n\nAmerican Meat Institute,\n\nAmish, ,\n\nammonia,\n\nAmoco,\n\nAnderson, Paul, \u201384, , , ,\n\nAnheuser-Busch,\n\nanimals, GM, \u201377\n\nannuals, problem with, \u201319,\n\nanti-GMO movement,\n\nfruit (alternatives to industrial farming), , , , ,\n\nroots (basics about GMOs), , , ,\n\nseeds (front lines of GMO debate), , \u201320, , , , , , , , \u201351, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\nAOL,\n\nAqua Bounty,\n\nArabidopsis, \u201390\n\nArgentina, , , , \u201399\n\nargonauts,\n\nArkansas,\n\nAsia, , , , , , , , , , , , \u20133, , ,\n\nAsilomar, California, ,\n\nAstraZeneca (Syngenta),\n\nAtay, Alika, , \u201359, , , , , , , , \u201376, ,\n\natrazine, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nAustralia, , , , ,\n\nautism, , , ,\n\nautonomy, value of,\n\nAventis, , \u201310,\n\nAyrault, Jean-Marc,\n\n_Bacillus thuringiensis_ (Bt). _See_ Bt crops\n\nBaltimore, Maryland, , , , , , , , ,\n\nbananas, , , , , , , , ,\n\nBangladesh, ,\n\nbanning GMOs, , \u201376\n\nBarca, Dustin, \u201343, , ,\n\nbarley, ,\n\nBASF, , , , , , , ,\n\nbasics about GMOs. _See_ roots\n\nBayer, , , , ,\n\nBeachy, Roger, \u201313, , ,\n\nbees, , ,\n\nbeets, \u201370,\n\nBelmes, Alberto, \u201311, , \u201317\n\nBenbrook, Charles, ,\n\nBen & Jerry's Ice cream,\n\nBentley, Nancy, \u201381,\n\nbenzene hexachlorides (BHCs),\n\nBereano, Phil,\n\nBerg, Paul,\n\nbeta-carotene, , , , , \u20135\n\n_See also_ vitamin A\n\nBhopal, India,\n\nBialic, Trudy,\n\nBicoy, Dawn,\n\nbifenthrin,\n\nBig Island, , , , , , , , , , , \u201357, ,\n\n_See also_ Hawaii\n\nBig Island Banana Growers Association,\n\nbiodiversity loss, \u20136, , , \u201375, ,\n\n\"biodynamic\" operation,\n\n\"biomimicry,\"\n\n\"biopharm\" crops, \u201311\n\nbiotechnology, , , , \u201364, \u201367, , , , \u20132, , , , \u20132, , , , , , , \u201373,\n\n_See also_ genetic engineering\n\nBiotechnology Industry Organization,\n\nblindness, , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ golden rice\n\nBloomberg School of Public Health,\n\nBlumberg, Bruce, , \u20135\n\nBohlen, Larry, , , \u201310,\n\nBondera, Melanie,\n\nbook metaphor, genes, \u201387,\n\nBorlaug, Norman,\n\nBotswana,\n\nbrain problems, , ,\n\nBrazil, , , , ,\n\nbreeding plants (traditional), \u201352, , , , , , , \u201316, \u201350\n\nBritain,\n\nBritish Royal College of Pathologists,\n\nBrokaw, Tom,\n\nbrown streak, , , , ,\n\nBt crops, , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ insecticides\n\nbundleflower,\n\nBurger King,\n\nBush, George H. W., , , , ,\n\nBushmen of Africa,\n\nButz, Rusty,\n\nCalgene, ,\n\nCalifornia, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\ncalories, perennials, \u201326\n\nCanada, , , ,\n\nCanadian Institute for Advanced Research,\n\ncancer, , , , , , \u201335, , , , , , , \u2013100, , , , , , , , ,\n\ncanola, , , , \u201375, ,\n\ncardiovascular disease, , , ,\n\nCargill,\n\nCarl's Jr.,\n\nCarrington, Jim, \u201325, \u201345, , , ,\n\ncarrots, , , , , , , , , ,\n\n\"cascading\" consequences, GMOs, \u201328\n\nCase, Steve,\n\ncassava, , , \u201382, , \u201390, , ,\n\nCavendish banana,\n\nC (cytosine), , ,\n\ncell function controlled by genes, \u201381\n\nCenter for Food Safety,\n\nCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ,\n\nCentral America,\n\nCentral Asia,\n\nCentral Dogma, \u201381, \u201384, \u201394\n\nCentral European Mennonites,\n\nCharles, Prince of Wales,\n\ncheese,\n\nchemicals sprayed on GMOs\n\nagrochemical's influence, \u20137, , , , ,\n\nconventional farming and,\n\nfeeding the world,\n\nGM crops and, ,\n\nKauai and, , \u201348, , , , , , , , ,\n\nmonarch butterflies and, , , , , , ,\n\nsafety question, \u20136, , , , , , , \u201336, , , , \u201344, , , ,\n\n_See also_ ecological problems; fertilizers; health problems; herbicides; insecticides; pesticides; roots (basics about GMOs); safety of GMOs\n\nChesapeake Bay, , , ,\n\nchestnuts, \u201378\n\nchickens, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nchildren and GMOs, , \u201342, \u201343, , , , \u201336, , , , , , , \u201394, , \u20133, ,\n\nChina, , , , , , , , , ,\n\nChina National Chemical Corp.,\n\nChipotle, , \u201341\n\nchlorpyrifos, , \u201333, \u201334,\n\nChristenson, Randy,\n\nchromosomes, , , , , ,\n\nChun, Malia,\n\nChung, Connie,\n\ncisgenics, ,\n\nCitizens Against the Maui County Farming Ban, ,\n\ncity, outside the, \u201357\n\ncity farm, , \u201373\n\nCity Farm, Chicago,\n\nClark, J. Milton,\n\nClean Water Act,\n\nClegg, Dan,\n\n_Cleome gynandra_ (stinkweed), \u201336\n\nclimate change, , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nClinton, Bill,\n\nclover, ,\n\n\"coat proteins,\"\n\nCoca-Cola, ,\n\nCohen, Ben,\n\nCollins, Joseph,\n\ncolonialism, \u201397\n\nColorado,\n\nColumbia University,\n\n\"communitarian,\" ,\n\ncommunity-supported agriculture (CSA), , , , ,\n\ncomplexity of DNA, \u201394, \u201397\n\ncomposting, , , , , ,\n\nConAgra,\n\nConnecticut,\n\nconsequences vs. process of GMOs, \u201319\n\nConsumers Union, ,\n\n_ContamiNation_ (Jenkins),\n\n\"contamination\" of food supply, \u201311\n\ncorn\n\nagrochemical's influence, , , , , ,\n\nAmerica and, , , , , , ,\n\nannuals, problem with, ,\n\nBt corn, , , , , ,\n\nfarm next door, \u201352, , ,\n\nfeeding the world, , , , , , ,\n\nfirst insecticide-producing corn,\n\ngene-editing technique (CRISPR),\n\nhybrid corn, , , ,\n\nKauai, , , ,\n\nmapping, engineering, Prometheus, , , \u201390, , ,\n\nMaui, , , , ,\n\nMonsanto and, , ,\n\nperennials, promise of, , ,\n\nreinventing the Plains, ,\n\nsafety question, , , , ,\n\nStarLink corn, , \u201310, ,\n\nsustainability of, , , , ,\n\nwartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals, ,\n\n_See also_ America and GMOs\n\nCornell, , , , , ,\n\ncotton, , , ,\n\nCouncil for Biotechnology Information,\n\ncounter campaign (Maui), \u201370\n\nCouric, Katie,\n\ncover crops, \u201334, \u201345, , , ,\n\ncowpeas, ,\n\ncows\/cattle, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nCox, Stan,\n\nCrews, Tim, , , , \u201329\n\nCrisco, \u201343\n\nCRISPR (gene-editing technique),\n\ncrop dependency and starvation, \u201375, \u201383, \u201317\n\n_See also_ monoculture\n\ncrossbreeding (hybridizing), , \u201316\n\ncross-protection, ,\n\nCry9C, \u20139\n\nCSA (community-supported agriculture), , , , ,\n\nCummins, Ronnie, \u201349\n\ndaffodil gene, , ,\n\nDanforth Center, St. Louis, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nDanielle's story, \u201382\n\nDARK Act (Deny Americans the Right to Know), \u201344\n\nDaymon Worldwide,\n\nDDT, , , ,\n\ndead zones, , ,\n\ndefoliants, ,\n\n\"degenerative,\"\n\nDeHaan, Lee, , \u201325, ,\n\nDelaware, , , ,\n\nDelaware Biotechnology Institute, \u201378\n\nDel Monte,\n\nDemeritt, Laurie,\n\nDenmark,\n\nDeny Americans the Right to Know (DARK Act), \u201344\n\nDetroit, Michigan, ,\n\nDeutsche Bank,\n\ndiabetes, , , , ,\n\nDiamond, Jared,\n\nDiPietro, Jeri, \u201327\n\nDNA, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nDNA Plant Technology, \u20133\n\ndousing vs. spraying, \u201340\n\nDow, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , \u201350, , , , , , ,\n\nDrake,\n\nDruker, Steven, \u201369\n\nDuPont, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nDuPont Pioneer, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nEarthJustice,\n\nEarth Liberation Front, \u201397\n\nEarth Open Source, ,\n\nEast Africa, ,\n\nEastern Shore, , , , , ,\n\necological problems\n\nair pollution, , , , , , ,\n\nbiodiversity loss, \u20136, , , \u201375, ,\n\nclimate change, , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nGMOs and, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nwater pollution, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; genetically modified organisms (GMOs); soil depletion\n\n\"egalitarian\" Americans,\n\nEl Salvador,\n\nENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements),\n\nendocrine problems, , , , ,\n\nendosulfan, ,\n\nEnlist Duo,\n\nEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA), , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nEnvironmental Working Group,\n\nepigenetics, , ,\n\nerythropoietin (EPO),\n\nethanol, , ,\n\nEthiopia,\n\nEurope, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nEuropean Commission,\n\nevolution and GMOs, \u201319\n\nevolution of American culture and GMOs. _See_ roots (basics about GMOs)\n\nEvslin, Lee,\n\nFaber, Scott,\n\nFacebook, , ,\n\nFactor study,\n\nFagan, John, , \u201393\n\nFairweather Farm, \u201382, ,\n\nfamine. _See_ crop dependency and starvation\n\nfarmers (disappearance) and industrial food, , \u201311, , , \u201376, , ,\n\nfarmers' markets, , , \u201362, ,\n\n\"farmer's privilege,\" \u201374\n\nfarm next door, \u201373\n\nfast-food industry, , , , , , , , , , , \u201376,\n\nFDA. _See_ U.S. Food and Drug Administration\n\nfederal farm subsidies, , \u201349, ,\n\nFederal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, \u201365\n\nfederal government, watchdog or cheerleader, , , , , , , , , , , \u201371, , , , , , \u201334, , , , , , ,\n\nfeeding the world, , , , , , \u201379, , \u201368, \u2013205, , ,\n\nfertilizers\n\nannuals, problem with, \u201318\n\ncomposting, , , , , ,\n\nfeeding the world, , , ,\n\nlocal, organic farmers, , ,\n\nmonoculture caution, \u201375\n\nnitrogen, , , , , , , , , , , \u201344, , ,\n\nperennials, promise of, ,\n\nsafety question, , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs, \u201344,\n\nwartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals, \u201354\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; _specific fertilizers_\n\nFilipinos, , ,\n\nfish tomatoes,\n\nFlavr Savr tomato, \u20132, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ tomatoes\n\nFlorida,\n\n\"flow cell,\"\n\n\"food additives,\" ,\n\nfood allergies, , , , , ,\n\n_Food and Chemical Toxicology,_ , , ,\n\nfood expenses, \u201360, \u201365\n\nfood fight, \u201314\n\n_See also_ genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\n_Foodie Farmer, The_ (blog), ,\n\nfood production, invisibility of, , , \u201314, , \u201352, , , \u201379, \u201383, ,\n\nfood waste, \u201379\n\nfossil fuel, \u201354, , , ,\n\nFoudin, Arnold,\n\nFrance, , , , , ,\n\nFranco, Federico,\n\nFreese, William,\n\nFriends of the Earth,\n\nfront lines of GMO debate. _See_ seeds\n\nfruit (alternatives to industrial farming), \u201313, \u2013273\n\nannuals, problem with, \u201319,\n\nanti-GMO movement, , , , ,\n\ncity, outside the, \u201357\n\ncity farm, , \u201373\n\nfarm next door, \u201373\n\nfeeding the world, , , , , , \u201379, , \u201368, \u2013205, , ,\n\nGreen Revolution, \u201397, , ,\n\nperennials, promise of, , , \u201329\n\nRainbow papaya, , , , , \u201398, \u201322, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nreinventing the Plains, \u201314\n\nsoil depletion, , , , , , , \u201318, , , , , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs, , , \u201350\n\n_See also_ genetically modified organisms (GMOs); industrial food system; organic movement\n\nFukushima nuclear disaster,\n\nfunding for research, \u201396\n\nGates Foundation, , , ,\n\nGatica, Sofia, ,\n\ngene-editing technique (CRISPR),\n\ngene expression, , \u201384, , ,\n\n\"gene gun,\" , ,\n\nGenentech,\n\ngenerally regarded as safe (GRAS) policy, , , ,\n\nGeneral Mills, ,\n\nGeneral Motors, ignition switch debacle,\n\ngene sequencing, \u201387, , , , , ,\n\ngene-silencing technique (RNA interference, RNAi), , , \u201376\n\ngenetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\nagrochemical's influence, , , \u20138, , , , , , , , \u201331, , , , \u201344, \u201349, , , , \u201361, \u201369, , \u201395\n\nevolution and, \u201319\n\nfirst (Flavr Savr tomato), \u20132, , , , ,\n\nglobal rejection of, \u20139\n\nprofit motive, , , , , , , , \u201364, , , , , \u201387, , , ,\n\n_See also_ America and GMOs; anti-GMO movement; ecological problems; food fight; fruit (alternatives to industrial farming); health problems; industrial food system; monoculture; roots (basics about GMOs); seeds (front lines of GMO debate); _specific GMO crops_\n\ngenetic engineering, \u201360, , \u201363, , , , \u201376, , , \u201394, \u201310, , \u201384, , , , , \u201378,\n\n_See also_ biotechnology\n\ngenetic equivalent of _War and Peace,_ \u201387,\n\ngenotype,\n\nGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment,\n\nGermany, , , , , , ,\n\nG (guanine), , ,\n\nGiampietro, Mario,\n\nglobal food system, , , , , , , , , , \u20138, ,\n\nGlobal ID Group,\n\nglobal rejection of GMOs, \u20139\n\ngluten intolerance, , ,\n\nglyphosate\n\nfeeding the world, , ,\n\nGM crops and, \u201380\n\npatenting our food (Schmeiser case),\n\nsafety question, , , , , \u201335, \u201336, , ,\n\nS\u00e9ralini (Gilles-\u00c9ric) affair, \u2013104\n\nsustainability of GMOs, , , ,\n\n_See also_ herbicides; Roundup\n\n\"GMO Answers\" website, \u201322\n\n_GMO Myths and Truths_ (Fagan), ,\n\nGMOs. _See_ genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\ngolden rice, \u201394, \u2013205\n\n_See also_ blindness; rice; vitamin A\n\nGoldman Environmental Prize,\n\nGonsalves, Dennis, \u201322, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nGoodman, Richard,\n\nGran Chaco,\n\nGRAS (generally regarded as safe) policy, , , ,\n\nGreat Kids Farm, Baltimore, ,\n\n\"Great Yellow Hype, The\" (Pollan),\n\ngreen beans,\n\ngreenhouse gases, ,\n\n\"green manure,\"\n\nGreenpeace, , , \u201393, \u20134\n\nGreen Revolution, \u201397, , ,\n\n\"greenwashed,\"\n\n_Grist,_\n\nGrocery Manufacturers Association,\n\nGroff, Steve, \u201345,\n\nGros Michel banana,\n\nGrove Farms,\n\nGrowing Power, Milwaukee,\n\nGuatemala,\n\nGulf of Mexico,\n\n_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ (Diamond),\n\nHaber-Bosch process,\n\nhamburgers, lab-grown, ,\n\nHanapepe Massacre,\n\nHannah's story,\n\nHansen, Michael, , \u20133, \u20135\n\nHartman Group,\n\nHarvard University, \u201373\n\nHawaii, , , , , , , , \u201398, , , , , , , \u201363, ,\n\n_See also_ Big Island; Kauai; Maui; seeds (front lines of GMO debate)\n\nHawaiian Indigenous Natural Farming Association,\n\nHawaii Crop Improvement Association, ,\n\nHawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association,\n\nHawaii Papaya Industry Association,\n\nHawthorne Valley, New York, \u201358, \u201360, , ,\n\nHayes, Tyrone, \u201335,\n\nHeacock, Don, \u201341\n\nheadaches, , ,\n\nhealth, measuring agriculture by,\n\nhealth problems, , , , \u201318, , , , , \u201334, , , ,\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; genetically modified organisms (GMOs); _specific health problems_\n\nHeisenberg's uncertainty principle,\n\nhepatitis B,\n\nheptachlor, ,\n\nHerbert, Gerry, , \u201352, ,\n\nherbicides\n\nannuals, problem with, ,\n\natrazine, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nfeeding the world, , , , ,\n\nperennials, promise of,\n\nsafety question, , , , , , , , \u201333, \u201335,\n\n\"stacked\" herbicides, \u201335\n\nsustainability of GMOs, , ,\n\n2,4-D, , \u201335, \u201336, , , ,\n\nwartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals, \u201354\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; glyphosate; Roundup; _specific herbicides_\n\nHershey Company,\n\n\"hierarchical\" Americans,\n\nhigh-fructose corn syrup, , , , ,\n\nhigh-oleic oil, \u201337,\n\nHirshberg, Gary,\n\nHoldrege, Craig, \u201397, \u201366\n\nHonolulu, Hawaii, \u201343\n\nHooser, Gary, , , , \u201336, , , , , , \u201348\n\nhormone problems, , , \u20135, ,\n\nhuanglongbing (citrus greening),\n\nHuerta, Alfredo, \u201328\n\nhuman genome, , , ,\n\nhuman growth hormone,\n\nhumans in relation to food and the planet, , , , ,\n\nHumboldt Prize, ,\n\nhumulin,\n\nhunter-gatherers vs. farmers, ,\n\nhybridizing (crossbreeding), , \u201316\n\nIllinois, , , ,\n\nIllumina HiSeq gene sequencer,\n\nImperial Chemical Industries,\n\n_Independent Science News,_\n\nIndia, , , , , , , , ,\n\nIndiana, ,\n\nIndia Rice ,\n\n\"individualistic\" Americans,\n\nindustrial food system\n\ndisappearance of American farmer and, , \u201311, , , \u201376, , ,\n\nGMOs and, , \u20134, , , \u201313, , , \u201373, \u201379\n\n_See also_ fruit (alternatives to industrial farming); genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\n\"industrial hero,\"\n\ninformation squeeze (labeling), , \u201346, , , ,\n\nInouye, Daniel,\n\ninsecticides\n\nfeeding the world, , ,\n\nGM crops and,\n\nsafety question, , , , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs,\n\n_See also_ Bt crops; chemicals sprayed on GMOs; pesticides; _specific insecticides_\n\nInstitute of Medicine,\n\ninsulin,\n\nintegrated pest management,\n\nintercropping, ,\n\nInternational Agency for Research on Cancer,\n\nInternational Rice Research Institute (IRRI), , ,\n\ninvisibility of food production, , , \u201314, , \u201352, , , \u201379, \u201383, ,\n\nIowa, , , ,\n\nIran,\n\nIreland, , ,\n\nItaly, , ,\n\nIves, Catherine,\n\nJ. R. Simplot,\n\nJackson, Wes, \u201315, \u201319, \u201321, , , , , ,\n\nJamaica,\n\nJapan, , , , , , , ,\n\nJenkins, McKay,\n\nJennings, Peter,\n\nJervis, Gerard, ,\n\nJohn, Brian, \u20132\n\nJohns Hopkins, ,\n\nJohnson, Nathanael,\n\nJorgensen, Carl,\n\n_Journal of Organ Systems, The,_\n\njunk DNA, ,\n\nJust Label It,\n\nKagan, Elena,\n\nKahan, Dan,\n\nKansas, , , , , , , , , , , , \u201325,\n\nKantor, Mickey,\n\nKauai, , \u201348, , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ Hawaii\n\nKelsey's story,\n\nKentucky Fried Chicken,\n\nKenya, , , , , , , ,\n\nKernza, ,\n\nKessler, David, \u201368\n\nKids Can Cook,\n\nKirin Brewery,\n\nKlee, Henry,\n\nKoch Industries,\n\nKona, Big Island of Hawaii, ,\n\nKorea,\n\nKraft Foods, ,\n\nKubo, Klayton, \u201339,\n\nKurren, Barry, , ,\n\nlabeling (information squeeze), , \u201346, , , ,\n\nLacey, Richard,\n\n_Lancet, The,_\n\nLand Institute in Kansas, , , , , , , , \u201325,\n\nLandrigan, Philip,\n\nland stewardship (Maui), \u201367\n\nLapp\u00e9, Frances Moore,\n\nlarge-scale farming, problems, \u201319,\n\nLatin America, ,\n\nlegumes, , , , , ,\n\nLeopold, Aldo,\n\nlettuces, , , , , ,\n\nLeu, Andr\u00e9, \u201349\n\nLiberty Link, ,\n\n_Life_ magazine,\n\nLiterature of the Land class, , \u201385\n\nlobbyists, , , , , , , , ,\n\nlocal, organic farming. _See_ fruit (alternatives to industrial farming)\n\nlocal food economy oppression (Maui), , \u201376\n\nlong-grained rice _(indica),_\n\nlorsban, ,\n\nLouisiana State,\n\nLugo, Fernando,\n\nMacArthur \"genius grant,\"\n\nmad cow disease,\n\nMaine,\n\nMalaysia,\n\nMali,\n\nMaluafiti, Alicia, \u201344\n\nManhattan, New York, , ,\n\nManhattan Project,\n\nManifest Destiny,\n\nManshardt, Richard, , \u201398, \u201315\n\nMao Tsetung,\n\nmapping, engineering, Prometheus, \u2013105\n\nMarden, Emily,\n\nMarquez, Emily,\n\nMaryland, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nMaryland Farm Bureau's Specialty Crop Committee,\n\nMaryland Grain Producers Utilization Board,\n\nMaryland Grape Growers Association,\n\nMaryland Institute College of Art,\n\nMaui, , , , , , \u201376, , ,\n\n_See also_ Hawaii\n\nMaupin, Margie,\n\nMcDonald's, , , ,\n\nmeat, raising, , , \u201377\n\nMeghan's story,\n\nMendel, Gregor,\n\nmessenger RNA (mRNA),\n\nmethomyl, ,\n\nmetolachlor, ,\n\nMexico, , , ,\n\nMeyers, Blake, , , \u201379, , \u201386, , , , , \u201392, \u201396, , \u201348\n\nMiami University in Ohio,\n\nMichigan, ,\n\nMichigan State University, \u201397\n\nMicronesians,\n\nMiddle East,\n\nmillet, ,\n\nMilwaukee, Wisconsin, ,\n\nMinnesota,\n\nMissouri, , ,\n\nmolecular biology, , , , , , , , ,\n\nMollway, Susan,\n\nMolokai, Hawaii,\n\nmonarch butterflies, , , , , , ,\n\nmonoculture, , , , , \u201375, , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ crop dependency and starvation; genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\nMonsanto\n\n\"contamination\" of food supply, ,\n\nfeeding the world, \u201387, , , ,\n\nindustrial food, , \u201353, , , , , \u201369, , \u201372,\n\ninfluence of, , , ,\n\nKauai, , , , ,\n\nMaui, \u201350, , , , , , , , ,\n\nRainbow papaya, , , \u201321\n\nsafety question, , , , , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs, ,\n\n_See also_ Roundup\n\nMontana,\n\nMortensen, David,\n\nmosaic virus, \u201313, , ,\n\nmosquitoes,\n\nMozambique,\n\nmutagenesis, ,\n\nNabukalu, Pheonah, \u201326\n\nNational Academy of Sciences, , , , \u201370,\n\nNational Cattlemen's Association,\n\n_National Geographic,_\n\nNational Institutes of Health, , ,\n\nNational Medal of Technology and Innovation,\n\nNational Research Council,\n\nNational Science Foundation (NSF), , ,\n\nNational Toxicology Program,\n\nnatural selection, \u201319, , ,\n\n_Nature,_\n\nNature Institute in New York, ,\n\n_NBC Nightly News_ (TV show),\n\nNebraska, , , , ,\n\nNeolithic farmers,\n\nNess, Autumn, \u201365, , , , , \u201371,\n\nNestle, Marion, \u201388\n\nNetherlands,\n\nneurological problems, , , , , ,\n\nNew Delhi,\n\nNewkirk, Ingrid,\n\nNew York, , , , , \u201358, \u201360, , , ,\n\n_New York Times, The,_ ,\n\n_New York Times Magazine, The,_\n\nNew York University, \u201317,\n\nnitrogen, , , , , , , , , , , \u201344, , ,\n\nNixon, Richard,\n\nNK603, ,\n\nNobel Prize, , , , \u20134\n\nNon-GMO Project, , ,\n\nNorman, Drew and Joan, \u201354, , , , ,\n\nNorth Dakota,\n\nno-till agriculture, \u201347\n\nnucleotides, , , ,\n\nOahu, Hawaii, , , , , , ,\n\nOasay, Lowella, \u201366\n\nObama, Barack, , \u201344,\n\nobesity, , , , , , , , , ,\n\nOhio, ,\n\nOklahoma,\n\n_Omnivore's Dilemma, The_ (Pollan),\n\nOncoMouse,\n\nOne Straw Farm,\n\noranges, , , ,\n\nOregon, , , ,\n\norganic movement, , , , , , , , , , , , , \u201364\n\n_See also_ fruit (alternatives to industrial farming)\n\nOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),\n\norphan crops, \u201390\n\nPacific Basin Agricultural Research Center,\n\nPang, Lorrin, ,\n\npapaya, , , , , \u201398, \u201322, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nPapaya Administrative Committee,\n\nParaguay, , \u201398\n\nparaquat, , , ,\n\nParkinson's disease, ,\n\npatenting our food, , , , , \u201374, , , , ,\n\nPauley, Jane,\n\nPBS,\n\nPCBs, \u201353\n\npeanuts, , ,\n\nPearlstone Center, Maryland,\n\npeas, , , , ,\n\nPennsylvania, , , , , , ,\n\nPennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, ,\n\nPennsylvania State University,\n\nPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),\n\nPepsi,\n\nPerdue, , , , ,\n\nperennials, promise of, , , \u201329\n\npermethrin, , ,\n\nPersia,\n\nPesticide Action Network,\n\npesticides\n\nagrochemical's influence,\n\nfarm next door, ,\n\nfeeding the world, , , ,\n\nGM crops and, , , , \u201377,\n\nKauai, \u201348,\n\nMaui, , , , , , ,\n\n\"pesticide drift,\" \u201340, , ,\n\nreinventing the Plains,\n\nsafety question, , , , , , , , , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs, , , , , , , ,\n\nwartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals, \u201354\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; insecticides; _specific pesticides_\n\nPew Research Center,\n\npharmaceutical companies and \"biopharm\" crops, \u201311\n\npharmaceuticals and GMOs, \u201328\n\nphenotype, ,\n\nPhilippines, , , , , , ,\n\nPhillipson, Mark,\n\nphosphorous, ,\n\npigs\/hogs, , , \u201327, , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nPimentel, David, ,\n\nPioneer, , , , ,\n\nPioneer Hi-Bred, , ,\n\nPipeline Masters,\n\nPlant Breeders Rights Act,\n\nplant that started civilization and the plant that could save it, \u201329\n\nPlenish soybeans, , \u201338\n\nplum,\n\n_Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA_ (Vallianatos),\n\nPoland,\n\npolio vaccinations,\n\npolitical power of agrochemical market, , , \u20138, , , , , , , , \u201331, , , , \u201344, \u201349, , , , \u201361, \u201369, , \u201395\n\nPollan, Michael, , ,\n\nPolynesia,\n\nPompeo, Mike, ,\n\nPortland, Oregon,\n\nPortugal,\n\npotato blight in Ireland, , ,\n\npotatoes, \u201379,\n\nPotrykus, Ingo, \u201391, ,\n\nprairies, promise of, , , \u201329\n\n\"Precautionary Principle,\" \u201365\n\nPribyl, Louis,\n\nprocessed foods, , , , , , \u201350, , , , \u201354, , , , , , , ,\n\nproduce, , , \u201351, , , ,\n\nprofit motive, , , , , , , , \u201364, , , , , \u201387, , , ,\n\nPrometheus, mapping, engineering, \u2013105\n\n\"promoter,\"\n\n\"proprietary information\" shroud,\n\npublic relations (feeding the world), , , , , , \u201379, , \u201368, \u2013205, , ,\n\nPuerto Rico,\n\npulling weeds, \u201383,\n\npumpkins, ,\n\nPuna on the Big Island, ,\n\nPurcell, John,\n\nQuayle, Dan,\n\nradishes as cover crop, \u201345\n\nRainbow papaya, , , , , \u201398, \u201322, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nrainforest,\n\nrats study, \u2013104\n\nReagan, Ronald, , ,\n\nrecombinant DNA technology, \u201357,\n\nRedfeather, Nancy, , , \u201354, ,\n\nRegal, Philip, \u201367\n\n\"regenerative,\"\n\nregional food specialties,\n\nregionalization of food production, \u201366\n\nregulation, , , , , , , , , , , \u201371, , , , , , \u201334, , , , , , ,\n\nReimann, Carol,\n\nreinventing the Plains, \u201314\n\n_Remate,_\n\nrennin,\n\nrespiratory problems, ,\n\nRestricted Use Pesticides (RUPs),\n\nretraction of a peer-reviewed paper, \u2013103\n\nrice, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ golden rice\n\nRiceland Food,\n\nringspot virus, \u201311, ,\n\nRNA, , , , , \u201384, , , , , , , \u201376\n\nroad-building after WWII, , , , ,\n\nRockefeller Foundation, ,\n\nRodale Institute,\n\nRonald, Pamela, ,\n\nroots (basics about GMOs), , \u2013105\n\nanti-GMO movement, , , ,\n\nfederal government, watchdog or cheerleader, , , , , , , , , , , \u201371, , , , , , \u201334, , , , , , ,\n\ngenetic equivalent of _War and Peace,_ \u201387,\n\nindustrial food and disappearance of American farmer, , \u201311, , , \u201376, , ,\n\ninformation squeeze (labeling), , \u201346, , , ,\n\nmapping, engineering, Prometheus, \u2013105\n\npatenting our food, , , , , \u201375, , ,\n\nsafety of GMOs, , \u20138, , \u201346, \u201362, \u201371, , , \u2013105, ,\n\nSchmeiser (Percy) case, \u201374\n\nself-regulation, perils of, \u201371\n\nS\u00e9ralini (Gilles-\u00c9ric) affair, \u2013104\n\nsoil depletion, , , , , , , , , ,\n\ntinkering with the genetic machine, \u201398\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs; genetically modified organisms (GMOs)\n\nroot systems, , , , \u201321, ,\n\nRosenstiel, Fern, , , , , ,\n\nRoslin Institute, University of Edinburgh,\n\nRoss, Gerry \"Farmer Gerry,\" \u201363,\n\nRosset, Peter,\n\nRoundup, , , , , , \u201389, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ glyphosate; herbicides; Monsanto\n\nRoundup Ready food crops, , , , , , , ,\n\nRural Advancement Foundation International,\n\nRussia (Soviet Union), , ,\n\nRussian National Association for Genetic Safety,\n\nrye, ,\n\nsacred land misuse (Maui), , \u201376\n\n_Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism_ (Nestle),\n\nsafety of GMOs, , \u20138, , \u201346, \u201362, \u201371, , , \u2013105, , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ chemicals sprayed on GMOs\n\nSalina, Kansas,\n\nsalmon,\n\nsalt-tolerant tomatoes,\n\n_Sand County Almanac, A_ (Leopold),\n\nSanders, Russ,\n\nSanford, John,\n\nSan Francisco, California, , ,\n\nSaudi Arabia,\n\nsauerkraut, , \u201361\n\nSchmeiser (Percy) case, \u201374\n\nSchmidt, Jennie and Hans, \u201336, , \u201340, \u201342, \u201346, \u201350,\n\nSchneider, Steffen, \u201359, \u201362, , \u201365, , \u201384\n\nSchubert, David,\n\n_Science,_\n\nscientific vs. anti-GMO arguments, \u201393\n\nseeds (front lines of GMO debate), , \u201376\n\nanti-GMO movement, , \u201320, , , , , , , , \u201351, , , , ,\n\nBig Island battle, , , , , , , , , , , \u201357, ,\n\nKauai, , \u201348, , , , , , , , ,\n\nMaui war, , , , , , \u201376, , ,\n\nRainbow papaya, , , , , \u201398, \u201322, , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nsoil depletion, , , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ genetically modified organisms (GMOs); Hawaii\n\nself-regulation, perils of, \u201371\n\nS\u00e9ralini (Gilles-\u00c9ric) affair, \u2013104\n\nSHAKA Movement, , , , , \u201375\n\nShake It for SHAKA,\n\nShapiro, Robert, , ,\n\nShiva, Vandana, , ,\n\nshort-grained rice _(japonica),_\n\nSiddiqui, Islam,\n\nsilphium,\n\nSimpson, Janet, ,\n\nsmall RNAs, , , , \u201384, , ,\n\nSmil, Vaclav, ,\n\nSmithsonian,\n\nSnyder, Brian, , \u201347\n\nsoda, , , , , , , ,\n\nsoil depletion,\n\nfruit (alternatives to industrial farming), , , , , , , \u201318, , , , , ,\n\nroots (basics about GMOs), , , , , , , , , ,\n\nseeds (front lines of GMO debate), , , , , , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ ecological problems\n\nSommer, Alfred, \u2013200, \u2013201,\n\nsorghum, , , , ,\n\nsorrel, , , ,\n\nSouth Africa, ,\n\nSouth America, , , , ,\n\nSouth Dakota,\n\nSouth Korea,\n\nSoviet Union (Russia), , ,\n\nsoybeans\n\nagrochemical's influence, , , , , , , ,\n\nAmerica and, , , ,\n\nannuals, problem with,\n\nfarm next door, \u201352, , ,\n\nfeeding the world, , \u201398, ,\n\ngene-editing technique (CRISPR),\n\nKauai,\n\nmapping, engineering, Prometheus, , , ,\n\nPlenish soybeans, , \u201338\n\nsafety question, , , , ,\n\nsustainability, , , , \u201338,\n\n_See also_ America and GMOs\n\nSpain, ,\n\nspecialty crops,\n\nspraying vs. dousing, \u201340\n\nsquare tomato. _See_ Flavr Savr\n\n\"stacked\" herbicides, \u201335\n\nStalin, Joseph,\n\nStanford, ,\n\nStarLink corn, , \u201310, ,\n\nstarvation. _See_ crop dependency and starvation\n\nSteiner, Rudolf,\n\nstinkweed, \u201336\n\nstomach problems, ,\n\nStonyfield,\n\nStrella, Greg, \u201367, \u201373\n\nstudent farming, , \u201373\n\nstudies and testing, \u201325, \u201327, , , , \u2013105, \u201315\n\nSubr gene,\n\nsub-Saharan Africa, , ,\n\nsuburb development, , \u201348, , ,\n\nsugar, \u201328,\n\nsugar beets, , , ,\n\n\"supermarket farm,\"\n\nsupreme courts, , , , , , ,\n\nsustainability of GMOs, , , \u201350\n\nSwaminathan, M. S., \u201396\n\nsweet potatoes, , , , , , ,\n\nSwitzerland, , , ,\n\nSyngenta, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nTaco Bell,\n\nTakata and exploding air bags,\n\nTaylor, Michael,\n\nTaylor, Nigel, \u201380, \u201382, , , , , ,\n\n\"terminator,\"\n\nTexas, ,\n\nTexas A&M University,\n\nThailand,\n\nThomas, Clarence,\n\ntillage radishes as cover crop, \u201345\n\n_Time,_ , ,\n\ntinkering with the genetic machine, \u201398\n\ntobacco, , , \u201313, , ,\n\ntomatoes, , , , , ,\n\n_See also_ Flavr Savr tomato\n\ntopsoil, , , ,\n\nToxic Substances Control Act,\n\nTrader Joe's, ,\n\n\"transcribed\" (DNA to RNA), \u201383\n\ntransgenic GM plants, \u201323, , , ,\n\n\"translated\" (RNA to protein), ,\n\nT (thymine), , ,\n\n2,4-D, , \u201335, \u201336, , , ,\n\nUganda, , , ,\n\nUK,\n\nUkraine,\n\nUltimate Fighting Championship (UFC),\n\nUnilever,\n\nUnion Carbide,\n\nUnited Kingdom,\n\nUnited Nations,\n\nUnited Soybean Board, \u201338\n\nUniversity of Caen,\n\nUniversity of California, ,\n\nUniversity of California, Berkeley, ,\n\nUniversity of California, Davis, , , , , ,\n\nUniversity of California, Irvine, ,\n\nUniversity of Cambridge,\n\nUniversity of Chicago,\n\nUniversity of Delaware, , , ,\n\nUniversity of Edinburgh,\n\nUniversity of Florida,\n\nUniversity of Hawaii, ,\n\nUniversity of Illinois,\n\nUniversity of Kansas,\n\nUniversity of Maryland, ,\n\nUniversity of Michigan, , ,\n\nUniversity of Minnesota,\n\nUniversity of Toronto,\n\nUniversity of Washington,\n\nurban farming, , \u201373\n\nU.S. Agency for International Development, ,\n\nU.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), , , , \u201370, , , , , \u201345, , , , ,\n\nU.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nU.S. Wheat Foods Council,\n\nUtah,\n\nVacants to Value program, Baltimore,\n\nVallianatos, E. G., ,\n\n\"values\" of a food company, \u201342\n\nVandermeer, John, , ,\n\nvegetative propagation,\n\nVermont, , , ,\n\nvetch, ,\n\nVietnam War, ,\n\n_Violence of the Green Revolution, The_ (Shiva),\n\nVirginia Beach,\n\nVispo, Conrad, \u201360\n\nvitamin A, , \u201391, \u201394, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ beta-carotene; golden rice\n\nvote (Maui), \u201376\n\nWaimea, Kauai, \u201341, ,\n\n\"walking the beans,\" ,\n\nWallace, Henry A.,\n\nWang, Shuwen,\n\n_War and Peace,_ genetic equivalent, \u201387,\n\nwartime chemicals to petroleum-based farm chemicals, \u201354\n\nWashington, D.C., , , ,\n\nWashington state, ,\n\nWashington State University, ,\n\nwater pollution, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nWatson, James,\n\nweeds. _See_ herbicides\n\nWeil, Raymond,\n\nwheat, , , \u201333, , , , , , , \u201312, , , , , , , , , ,\n\nwheatgrass, , \u201323, ,\n\nwhiteflies, \u201381\n\nWhitelaw, Bruce,\n\nWhole Foods, , \u201341, ,\n\nWille, Margaret, \u201356, \u201357\n\nWinnipeg, Canada,\n\nWisconsin, , ,\n\nWorld Bank,\n\nWorld Health Organization, , , , ,\n\nworldviews and GMOs, \u201398\n\nWorld War II, , , ,\n\nWright, Susan,\n\nWuerthele, Suzanne,\n\nYale University,\n\nZeneca,\n\nZika virus,\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nMcKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for thirty years. His most recent book, _ContamiNation_ (Avery), chronicled his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals does to our bodies and the environment. His book _Poison Spring_ (Bloomsbury, 2014), cowritten with E. G. Vallianatos, has been called \"a jaw-dropping expos\u00e9 of the catastrophic collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency and the chemical industry\" ( _Booklist_ , starred review).\n\nJenkins's other books include _Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands_ (Random House, 2005); _The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler's Europe_ (Random House, 2003); and _The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone_ (Random House, 2000). Jenkins is also the editor of _The Peter Matthiessen Reader_ (Vintage, 2000).\n\nA former staff writer for _The_ _Atlanta Constitution_ , Jenkins has also written regularly on environmental matters for _The_ _Huffington Post_ , _Outside_ , _Orion_ , _The New Republic_ , and many other publications.\n\nHe holds degrees from Amherst, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a PhD in English. Jenkins is currently the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English, Journalism, and Environmental Humanities at the University of Delaware, where he has won the Excellence in Teaching Award. He lives in Baltimore with his family.\n\n# _What's next on  \nyour reading list?_\n\n[Discover your next  \ngreat read!](http:\/\/links.penguinrandomhouse.com\/type\/prhebooklanding\/isbn\/9780698409835\/display\/1)\n\n* * *\n\nGet personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.\n\nSign up now.\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Also by McKay Jenkins\n  3. Title Page\n  4. Copyright\n  5. Dedication\n  6. Contents\n  7. Prologue | Square Tomatoes\n  8. Part One | ROOTS\n    1. 1. Are GMOs Safe? Is That the Right Question?\n    2. 2. The Long, Paved Road to Industrial Food, and the Disappearance of the American Farmer\n    3. 3. Mapping and Engineering and Playing Prometheus\n  9. Part Two | SEEDS\n    1. 4. The Fruit That Saved an Island\n    2. 5. Trouble in Paradise\n    3. 6. Fighting for That Which Feeds Us\n  10. Part Three | FRUIT\n    1. 7. Feeding the World\n    2. 8. The Plant That Started Civilization, and the Plant That Could Save It\n    3. 9. Can GMOs Be Sustainable?\n    4. 10. The Farm Next Door\n  11. Epilogue | Getting Our Hands Dirty\n  12. Acknowledgments\n  13. Notes\n  14. Index\n  15. About the Author\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Start\n\n  1. i\n  2. ii\n  3. iii\n  4. iv\n  5. vi\n  6. vii\n  7. viii\n  8. ix\n  9. x\n  10. xi\n  11. xii\n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216. \n  217. \n  218. \n  219. \n  220. \n  221. \n  222. \n  223. \n  224. \n  225. \n  226. \n  227. \n  228. \n  229. \n  230. \n  231. \n  232. \n  233. \n  234. \n  235. \n  236. \n  237. \n  238. \n  239. \n  240. \n  241. \n  242. \n  243. \n  244. \n  245. \n  246. \n  247. \n  248. \n  249. \n  250. \n  251. \n  252. \n  253. \n  254. \n  255. \n  256. \n  257. \n  258. \n  259. \n  260. \n  261. \n  262. \n  263. \n  264. \n  265. \n  266. \n  267. \n  268. \n  269. \n  270. \n  271. \n  272. \n  273. \n  274. \n  275. \n  276. \n  277. \n  278. \n  279. \n  280. \n  281. \n  282. \n  283. \n  284. \n  285. \n  286. \n  287. \n  288. \n  289. \n  290. \n  291. \n  292. \n  293. \n  294. \n  295. \n  296. \n  297. \n  298. \n  299. \n  300. \n  301. \n  302. \n  303. \n  304. \n  305. \n  306. \n  307. \n  308. \n  309. \n  310. \n  311. \n  312. \n  313. \n  314. \n  315. \n  316. \n  317. \n  318. \n  319. \n  320. \n  321. \n  322. \n  323. \n  324. \n  325. \n  326. \n  327. \n  328. \n  329. \n  330. \n  331. \n  332. \n  333. \n  334.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nHENRY REYNOLDS is one of Australia's best-known and most widely read historians. He is an adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania. His sustained and meticulous research has played a major part in the political and legal milestones: the Mabo and Wik judgements. Professor Reynolds' books include With the White People, Fate of a Free People, This Whispering in Our Hearts, Why Weren't We Told?, Fate of a Free People and Nowhere People.\n\n# Other Books by Henry Reynolds\n\nAborigines and Settlers   \nRace Relations in North Queensland   \nFrontier   \nThe Law of the Land   \nDispossession   \nWith the White People   \nFate of a Free People\n\n# THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FRONTIER\n\n# Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia\n\n# Henry Reynolds\nA UNSW Press book\n\nPublished by   \nUniversity of New South Wales Press Ltd   \nUniversity of New South Wales   \nSydney NSW 2052   \nAUSTRALIA   \nwww.unswpress.com.au\n\n\u00a9 Henry Reynolds 1981, 1982, 2006\n\nFirst published by James Cook University of North Queensland, 1981   \nPublished by Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1982   \nThis UNSW Press edition 2006\n\nThis book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.\n\nNational Library of Australia   \nCataloguing-in-Publication entry\n\nReynolds, Henry, 1938- .   \nThe other side of the frontier : Aboriginal resistance to   \nthe European invasion of Australia.\n\nRev. ed. Bibliography. Includes index.\n\n9781742240497\n\n1. Aboriginal Australians\u2013History. 2. Aboriginal Australians\u2013Wars. 3. Government, Resistance to\u2013Australia. 4. Australia\u2013Colonization\u2013History. 5. Australia\u2013Race relations\u2013History. I. University of New South Wales. II. Title.\n\nTypeset Thomson Digital\n\nCover design and illustration Di Quick (after J Macfarlane, Aboriginals surprised by a camel team, 1893)\nFor Isabelle Alice Reynolds\n\n# Table of Contents\n\nOther Books by Henry Reynolds  \nTitle Page  \nCopyright Page  \nDedication  \nNEW INTRODUCTION  \nChapter 1 \\- EXPLORERS AND BEFORE  \nChapter 2 \\- CONTINUITY AND CHANGE  \nChapter 3 \\- RESISTANCE: MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES  \nChapter 4 \\- RESISTANCE: TACTICS AND TRADITIONS  \nChapter 5 \\- THE POLITICS OF CONTACT  \nChapter 6 \\- THE PASTORAL FRONTIER  \nChapter 7 \\- OTHER FRONTIERS  \nCONCLUSION  \nNOTES  \nSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY  \nINDEX\n\n# NEW INTRODUCTION\n\nI wrote The Other Side of the Frontier 25 years ago and with some anxiety asked a handful of colleagues to read the manuscript. Their encouragement prompted me to send it to several publishers whose negative responses were deeply disappointing. One publisher observed that there were already too many books about the Aborigines; the other that my manuscript had left out many significant themes and that it would need substantial revision. Feeling that the readers had not appreciated how innovative the work was, I received the support of my head of department at James Cook University, the late B.J. Dalton, and we published the book ourselves and sold it entirely by post. The venture was far more successful than we could have imagined. For weeks the departmental office was overwhelmed with orders from all around the country. The secretaries spent much of their time packing and dispatching books. A year later Penguin was keen to take the book on and over 20 years it was reprinted numerous times.\n\nThe manuscript was the fruit of ten years' intense, if intermittent, research\u2013of the kind that was possible for a busy tertiary teacher. By the end of that time I had worked in the major archives and research libraries all over Australia and in London as well. In 1972 I published a collection of documents entitled Aborigines and Settlers: The Australian Experience, 1788\u20131939, and assorted articles in academic and literary journals. It was an exciting time to be working on Aboriginal history. There was much international interest in race relations and I had taken several honours courses which looked at a number of settler societies and their relations with indigenous people. Young scholars all over Australia were beginning to research hitherto neglected aspects of the country's past. But living in Townsville, in a time before email, I only had limited contact with them. My most important professional associations were with an increasing number of honours and post-graduate students in my own department in Townsville.\n\nBy the end of the 1970s I had gathered together a great deal of material and had begun to feel a sense of urgency about the need to write a substantial book. My plans changed a number of times. Originally it was to be about Queensland in the nineteenth century, then eastern Australia and finally the continent as a whole from 1788 to the early twentieth century. It began to take shape as a study of the European settlers\u2013as much as, or more than, the Aborigines\u2013and of what they did to, planned for and thought of the blacks.\n\nIt was only when I sat down to write with several free months in front of me that I was forced to confront the stylistic problems involved in shifting the focus from settler to indigene and back again. Suddenly, and quite impulsively, I made a decision to write two books and begin with one about the Aboriginal side of the frontier and to put aside by far the larger part of my research for a subsequent book, which eventually appeared in 1987 as Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land. Even then there seemed to be more that needed to be said. In neither frontier books had there been much about the Aborigines\u2013and there were many of them\u2013who worked for and associated with the pioneer settlers. This required a third book, With the White People, which was published in 1990. The three books in the trilogy were, then, closely related and rested on research material quarried at much the same time from the same sources.\n\nWhen I decided to begin with a book about the Aboriginal experience I was not sure that there was enough evidence to support the story. Much of what was available to me had been found by chance and for at least the first five years of research had been collected more out of curiosity than with the idea of producing a book of the kind that eventuated. When writing an introduction to the 1981 James Cook edition I observed:\n\nThe decision to concentrate attention on the other side of the frontier was quite a recent one. Initially, I was convinced, like many previous Australian scholars, that such a study would be impossible to consummate, that the evidence was too fragmentary to sustain serious scholarship, or that the Aboriginal psyche was so different that it was uniquely resistant to the historical imagination. I became convinced that both propositions were awry and in fact they gave way together as the evidence piled up as slowly and inexorably as a sand-drift.\n\nI am sure that much of the momentum of the narrative derived from the sheer excitement of piecing together the small fragments of information and eventually finding that they made a plausible mosaic. Oral history carried out in and around Townsville provided some of the most compelling evidence, although the resulting material was probably less important in itself than the stimulation provided to the imagination and the concurrent growth of empathy.\n\nI recalled one occasion in particular. I was visiting a Murray Islander elder with my friends Noel Loos and Eddie Mabo. The old man orated in characteristic Island style with a loud commanding voice. He retold the stories that he had heard as a child: tales of European castaways, shipwrecks, pearl-diving and the arrival of the London Missionary Society's teachers in 1871. One of the stories was about the appearance of a sailing ship off Murray Island. The old man vividly described the scene. His ancestors were scrutinising the ship and its occupants. They had seen Europeans at the rail just as interested in them. Indeed they were looking through telescopes or what our informant called 'white men's eyes'. I think that may have been the moment when the idea of The Other Side of the Frontier first took root.\n\nThe book was clearly a product of north Australia and the experiences of life there in the 1960s and 1970s, which I was later to outline in Why Weren't We Told. But equally there were academic origins. I had been very impressed with the new social history and the work of English scholar E.P. Thompson with his commitment to see working-class history from below. But to write about Aborigines and their experience of white Australia was quite a different task. I attempted to explain the situation when I argued in the conclusion that the book sought to turn Australian history not upside down, but inside out.\n\nIt was only much later that I realised that what I was trying to do closely paralleled the contemporaneous work of the historians of south Asia who launched the school of subaltern studies. A month or two after The Other Side of the Frontier was published in Townsville, in Canberra Ranajit Guha wrote the preface to the first volume of Subaltern Studies, which he explained would deal with those who were subject to subordination whether expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender or office or in any other way. In Volume III of Subaltern Studies, which appeared in 1984, Guha emphasised his opposition to elitisms and the failure of traditional history to acknowledge the subaltern as the maker of his own destiny.\n\nIn Australia the impact of European colonisation was so varied and so powerful that it would be fanciful to claim that the Aborigines were ever in a position to make their own destiny. But what The Other Side of the Frontier showed was that by reading mainly European texts against the grain, as it is often called, it was possible to create a picture of an indigenous response that was far more varied and creative than had hitherto been supposed.\n\nIn a preface to the 1982 edition I argued that the book was a major challenge to conventional ideas about Aborigines and therefore to the way most Australians viewed important aspects of their past. Even sympathetic whites, I argued, spoke as though there was a single mode of black behaviour. I believed that I had shown that there was always diversity, contradiction, competing objectives; that Aborigines behaved politically even in the most unpromising and challenging circumstances. Previously European writers had depicted a rigid, unchanging Aboriginal society unable to cope with new challenges, which had collapsed suddenly and completely. What I thought I had been able to show was that the Aborigines were curious about white society and endeavoured to incorporate new experiences within the resilient bonds of traditional culture. They reacted creatively to European ideas, techniques, language and commodities. Nor, I argued, were they a particularly peaceful or passive people as conventional studies often suggested. Frontier conflict was apparent in almost every part of Australia, though it varied in duration and intensity. While suffering disproportionately, Aboriginal clans levied a considerable toll on pioneer communities\u2013not just in death and injury but in property loss and prolonged anxiety as well. The cost of colonisation, I argued, was much higher than traditional historical accounts had suggested.\n\nWhile seeking to make Aboriginal behaviour understandable to white readers I hoped to draw parallels with the well-known experience of pioneer settlers. I wrote:\n\nMany themes link the pioneers who looked inward to Aboriginal Australia and the tribesmen who looked outward towards the encroaching wave of European settlement. Like the white colonists the blacks were pioneers, struggling to adjust to a new world of experience and one even stranger and more threatening than the Australian environment was to the Europeans.\n\nIn my enthusiasm I hoped that my readers would find the other side of the frontier a new and exciting province providing fresh insights and forcing a radical reinterpretation of old themes. Aborigines who experienced the massive impact of European invasion with fortitude and courage were, I argued, people who demanded our attention and respect. I wondered if they might eventually earn as much, or even more, admiration than explorers, pioneers and other traditional heroes of nationalist mythology.\n\nThe response to my book was more positive than I could have hoped for. Even our small first edition was soon sold out, while the Penguin edition of 1982 was reprinted several times over the next few years. Over 20 years total sales have amounted to about 35 000 copies. There were many favourable reviews and several literary prizes. But in that time it has been the chance conversations with readers that have given me most encouragement. They have often said that the book allowed them to see Australian history through new eyes. Over the years, singers, composers, painters, poets and film makers have told me how they have drawn on material they found in The Other Side of the Frontier. Beyond a limited number of contacts of that kind an author can only speculate about how their book has been read and received. Certainly the most moving experience I can remember was when visiting Yarrabah, the Aboriginal community near Cairns, an old man showed me his copy of The Other Side of the Frontier. I had never seen a book so worn and so used. It had been passed around the whole community. Almost everyone had read it or had it read to them.\n\nIt is an interesting experience returning to a book written more than 20 years before. One immediate question is whether it should be rewritten or amended or left as an artefact of its time. It would have been tempting to add new evidence turned up in more recent years. But much of it would have merely added to and embellished existing interpretations. One thing that has happened since 1981 is the great expansion of oral history and the placing on the record of large amounts of Aboriginal testimony associated with land claims. There is now a significant body of evidence about the experiences and reactions of those Aboriginal people who had their first sustained experience of Europeans in the twentieth century. There is clearly another, important book to be written that would complement the nineteenth-century material that makes up the great bulk of the text of this book.\n\nSince it first appeared I have often referred to The Other Side of the Frontier, have quoted from it in many lectures, but I had not, until very recently, read it from beginning to end. What immediately struck me was just how much detail the nineteenth-century sources actually provided about the Aboriginal response to the European invasion. But what unfolds is not a simple story at all. On almost every page there is evidence of complexity. It is far from being a facile moral tale of black virtue and white turpitude. It just does not fit into that category stigmatised in the 1990s as black armband history\u2013if indeed such a phenomenon actually exists outside the imagination of conservative commentators.\n\nBut, in retrospect, some of the criticisms of the book do have currency. As any reader will be aware the evidence I used comes from all over Australia and is drawn from every period from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Underpinning the narrative is an assumption about an Aboriginal homogeneity that was never there\u2013and a tendency to treat European settlement as an unchanging presence. These points have to be conceded. They were always there in the back of my mind. But such is the scarcity and the fragmentary nature of much of the evidence that it always seemed to be a case of doing it in the way that I did or not doing it at all.\n\nThe sad fact about Australia is that there are only a few places, and a couple of moments, when much more detailed, specific studies are possible. There was no 'middle ground' in Australia\u2013that long era of American history described by Richard White when Indians, whites and mestizos mixed on terms of equality and left abundant documentary evidence behind. The early years at Sydney were a time when a group of capable Europeans both related closely with resident Aborigines and wrote and thought about the experience. Inga Clendinnen's book Dancing with Strangers illustrates how creatively such documentation can be used. But there were few other moments like that. The early years at Perth offer another example. The Van Diemen's Land journals and letters of George Augustus Robinson are a source still waiting for the researcher of the other side of the frontier, as are the journals and diaries of numerous nineteenth-century missionaries. But over much of the continent we are never likely to uncover more than small shards of evidence\u2013of the kind swept up to help construct the mosaic presented here.\n\nAnother criticism voiced now and then over the last 20 years is that the history of indigenous society is written with modern anthropology in mind; that ideas taken from that discipline are then projected backwards to provide an interpretive framework. It is a practice known as upstreaming. I was always aware of this problem but I'm not sure there is any easy solution to it. It would be unthinkable to approach Aboriginal history without at least a grounding in the principal anthropological works. Having absorbed that material, it cannot be rinsed from the mind before turning to the historical record and trying to interpret the past.\n\nAnother recurring question is that of the role of the historian in writing Aboriginal history. In both editions of the book I declared my position. The work, I explained, was a white man's interpretation, aimed primarily at white Australians. What I now presume about my family's Aboriginal ancestry\u2013as outlined in my recent book Nowhere People \u2014 does not significantly change my view on the matter. I have long believed that, while there are aspects of traditional society that are off limits to anyone without specific permission from elders and custodians, history since 1788 is the story of the interaction of indigenous people and the new settler society; and that the available and relevant records are overwhelmingly written by white men\u2013even when they were reporting and commenting on what Aboriginal informants told them.\n\nOver the years I have heard conflicting opinions from indigenous Australians. Indeed, some have told me in no uncertain terms that I have trespassed on their intellectual territory. Others have spoken up in my defence and many Aboriginal people have supported my work. In Townsville my friends found a different way to deal with the question. They insisted that, although I might not know it, I was actually a Murri\u2013an observation that returned to me with great force when my family began to uncover ancestral secrets.\n\nThe intellectual criticism of the book has long been overshadowed by attacks that are political in motivation. In fact many of them come from people who give the impression of not having actually read the text, yet don't like the idea of it. Some of the antagonism stems from my open avowal that the book could not escape the fate that awaits a political document. In the opening paragraph of both editions I nailed my colours to the mast observing that it was not 'conceived, researched or written in a mood of detached scholarship. It is inescapably political, dealing as it must with issues that have aroused deep passions since 1788 and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future'.\n\nIt is a declaration that may need a little exegesis. The book came out of Townsville, a place where race relations were a matter of everyday concern and discussion. As a lecturer in Australian history, I found that even to raise the subject created consternation\u2013whether expressed vociferously or in deep, thoughtful silence. Almost no-one seemed detached or dispassionate when race was considered, not even in everyday conversation. To talk openly about Aboriginal history was, in itself, a political act and was seen to be so. It would have seemed a complete misrepresentation to fail to mention the fraught context in which the book was conceived, researched and written. And no matter how the book was addressed to an Australian audience in the early 1980s it would inevitably be received politically. This seems to be even more the case today than it was 25 years ago.\n\nThe most common criticism of my work is that I make too much of frontier violence. I have never conceded this point. I think it plays a relatively small part in the text of The Other Side of the Frontier and for that matter in my work as a whole. And the conflict I refer to in chapters three and four is always placed in context in an attempt not to condemn anyone but to explain the circumstances in which violence arose. On re-reading this material I fail to find any tendency at all to moralise about specific violent incidents or to deliberately aggravate a tender white conscience.\n\nBut the section of the book that has acted like a lightning rod for continuing criticism is the one where I sought to determine how many people had died in frontier conflict. I began by mentioning the work of other scholars who had attempted to assess the death rate in specific regions of the country and then wrote:\n\nFor the continent as a whole it is reasonable to suppose that at least 20 000 Aborigines were killed as a direct result of conflict with the settlers. Secondary effects of the invasion\u2013disease, deprivation, disruption\u2013were responsible for the premature deaths of many more although it is almost impossible to arrive at a realistic figure.\n\nIt was the figure of 20 000 that has caused the greatest controversy. Several points need to be made. I debated with myself whether I should attempt to arrive at an estimate of the Aboriginal death toll. I had, after all, spent ten years researching all over Australia. I decided it was incumbent on me to report what conclusion I had arrived at as a result of that research. I thought it would be evasive to do anything else. I could scarcely pretend that I hadn't thought about the question. So it was an estimate and could not have been anything more than that. I did not think 20 000 was an excessive figure for a conflict that occurred continent-wide over a period of close to 150 years. It was a much smaller figure than other writers have suggested given the dramatic decline of the Aboriginal population after 1788. I still think it is reasonable to suppose that the death rate was somewhere near that figure. None of the detailed scholarly work over the last 20 years in books, articles and theses has persuaded me to change my mind on the matter. What still surprises me is that many Australians so clearly resist such a conclusion, despite our national obsession with our war dead in every conflict from the Boer War to the present.\n\nI thought in 1981, as I do now, that there are far more interesting questions than the actual number who died in frontier conflict, which will always have to be a matter of speculation. There is the abiding matter of the politics of the dead or, as I asked in the conclusion, How, then, do we deal with the Aboriginal dead? Are they best forgotten or should they be celebrated and memorialised? Should they receive as much attention and reverence as white Australian soldiers who fell in battle? Should they be celebrated as warriors who died defending their way of life against an all-powerful invader? I certainly thought 25 years ago that we would have made some progress in answering these questions. But they lie there still, quite unresolved. It is time, I believe, they were faced again. Such issues were often discussed during the 1990s, the decade of the Reconciliation movement, but they seem to have disappeared from public discourse.\n\nThe most severe criticism of my estimate of Aboriginal deaths has come from Keith Windschuttle, particularly in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which while focussed on early Tasmania has implications for Australia as a whole. Central to his argument is the proposition that, like many other historians, I had deliberately exaggerated the number of people killed in frontier conflict. He concluded that only about 120 Tasmanians died violently. He also reduced the conventional estimate for the pre-contact population from 5000 to 2000, the better to explain the rapid demographic decline after 1803. There is scarcely anyone familiar with Tasmanian history in the recent past who would agree with either of these figures. In his defence of his low estimate of frontier deaths, Windschuttle turned to already well-known features of the Black War. The rugged and forested terrain favoured the Aborigines, giving them advantages in both attack and escape. Convicts working in the bush were often denied guns and rarely had horses. Even when firearms were available they were cumbersome, inefficient and inaccurate.\n\nGiven these particular features of the conflict of the 1820s we would reasonably expect that the Aboriginal death toll would be greater in later decades in mainland Australia where frontiersmen were invariably mounted and armed with far better weapons. But, even if we leave these considerations aside and project Windschuttle's Tasmanian figures across Bass Strait and into the later years of the nineteenth century, we arrive at what, for many people, may be an unexpected result. Even if we take the lowest estimate of the pre-contact population of 300 000, the presumed death rate\u2013using Tasmania as our model for conflict\u2013would amount to between 18 000 and 19 000: a figure not far short of my estimate of 20 000. However the contemporary view is that 300 000 is much too low a figure, and that the original population might have been twice as large, suggesting further that my contentious estimate of frontier deaths was modest indeed.\n\nWith the assistance of the University of New South Wales Press we relaunch The Other Side of the Frontier. The climate of opinion and the general knowledge of the Australian community is quite different from that in 1981. I am as curious now as I was 25 years ago to discover how a new generation of readers responds to the book.\n\n# Chapter 1\n\n# EXPLORERS AND BEFORE\n\n# FIRST SIGHTINGS\n\nThey never seen a white man in their lives\u2013this is in the early time. There was one white man must've got lost and he followed the Murray River down and there was a big camp and a few dark ladies went out to pick the wild-bean\u2013they go out daily to get this wild food every day. When they went out and they looked up the river and they saw somebody moving and they got up and look again and someone was moving alright and they take it for\u2013they call it the witchcraft man\u2013the witchcraft man must be moving about. They left all their bean trees and they ran home to tell all the people back home in the camp\u2013'We saw something strange up there\u2013It's like a white man!\u2013a white man!!'\n\nThis is one of a number of traditional Aboriginal stories recorded in North Queensland a few years ago. It probably dates from the 1860s or 1870s but it has not been possible to relate it to a known historical event and the detail may have been significantly altered during a hundred years of currency. Similar stories were no doubt told in many parts of Australia during the nineteenth century, but when clans were dispersed and languages lost much of the Aboriginal record of their experience with Europeans was lost. Fragments survive; some in the written accounts of early settlers others embodied in Aboriginal oral tradition. The nineteenth century South Australian missionary George Taplin knew several men who remembered the arrival in 1830 of Sturt's expedition at the mouth of the Murray and the terror experienced as they watched the whale-boat cross Lake Alexandrina. Coastal tribes told European confidants about the awesome appearance of the first sailing ships off hitherto desolate coasts. In 1831 G. A. Robinson noted down in his diary the childhood recollections of a Tasmanian Aborigine who as a boy had first seen a ship anchored off Maria Island (probably the Baudin-Peron expedition of 1802). His perplexed kinsmen thought it looked like a small island but were left bewildered and ran fearfully away from the sea. Swan River Aborigines described with 'great vividness' their impressions on seeing the first ship approach the shore. They imagined it to be some 'huge winged monster' and there was 'a universal consternation'. One man ran fourteen miles inland breathlessly spreading the alarming news. Apprehension was general and women hid their children in the bush. A similar story was related by Port Fairy blacks who recalled that they thought sailing ships were either huge birds or trees growing in the sea. Old men in North Queensland still tell a story about the arrival of a sailing ship at Rockingham Bay:\n\nIn this Cardwell district there was many natives camped along that beach. And one morning they got up and looked out in the sea and they saw this ship was sailing out in the sea. And they wondering what this coming. It was so big!! And they watched it and watched it and watched it and gradually the ship came to the shore.\n\nFor coastal tribes the sudden and unexpected appearance of Europeans was often an awesome event but away from the sea white men did not arrive unannounced. News of them travelled inland well in advance of the encroaching wave of settlement while straying domestic animals and an assortment of European commodities long preceded the bullock drays into the interior.\n\n# EUROPEAN COMMODITIES\n\nTrade routes criss-crossed Aboriginal Australia. Shells, ochre, stone artifacts, spears, woven bags, gum, pituri and many other items were ceremonially exchanged at regular meetings, often hundreds of miles from their point of origin. European commodities gradually infiltrated traditional trade routes beginning within months of earliest contact. At the first settlement on the Tamar in 1804 local blacks gave a necklace to one of the soldiers who found to his surprise a white button threaded among the shells. Robert Dawson witnessed the trade of goods on the central coast of New South Wales in the 1820s. Tribes in the interior exchanged animal skins and fur artifacts with coastal blacks who through contact with Europeans were able to reciprocate with iron axes and pieces of glass along with such traditional objects as sea shells. Late nineteenth-century explorers of the remoter areas of the continent found exotic artifacts in isolated Aboriginal camps illustrating both the importance of traditional trading networks and the increasing use of European commodities. Carnegie found pearl shells in camps 500 miles in the interior of the Western Desert along with assorted European bric-a-brac\u2013an old iron tent peg, the lid of a tin matchbox and small pieces of glass carefully wrapped in covers of woven feathers. Warburton found a large sea-shell and an old butcher's knife in one camp and in another two shells, a steel axe and part of an iron dray tyre. Mulligan's Cape York expedition of 1876 came across a camp where traditional items mingled with an empty sardine box, a jam pot and a sharpened piece of inch-iron. A pioneer pearler on the northwest of Western Australia came across a small cannon in a deserted camp on an island in Vansittart Bay.\n\nThe random discoveries of explorers and pioneers illustrated a more general phenomenon. All over Australia at varying times traditional tool kits were augmented with bottles, glass, strips of cloth, pieces of greenhide, articles of clothing. Iron was particularly attractive. Aborigines were given, found, or scavenged scraps of iron and finished steel tools from camps, stations and homesteads in every district in Australia and traded them back beyond the frontier. Traditional stone artifacts were being rapidly supplanted among most Aboriginal communities even before the arrival of the first permanent white settlers. Aborigines from the far south-west of Queensland told a local pioneer that a few iron tomahawks had preceded the squatters into the district by a good thirty years. Explorers found abundant evidence of Aboriginal use of iron and steel in places well beyond the reach of European settlement. Near the farthest point of his 1846 expedition into central Queensland Mitchell saw a steel axe. 'Even here', he mused, in the heart of the interior 'on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an iron tomahawk glittered on high in the hands of a chief'. Knowledge of axes may have spread even more widely than the desired objects themselves. While on his voyage around Australia in the 1820s P. P. King saw Aborigines on several parts of the coast who came down to the shore making chopping signs with their hands as if asking for European axes. Hovell met a group of blacks in central Victoria in the mid-1820s who pointed in the direction of Port Phillip indicating that they had seen white men fell trees there. Taking an axe they illustrated the way in which the Europeans had used it, 'not forgetting the grunt or hiss which the men invariably do when they are striking anything with force'.\n\nLate in 1847 Edmund Kennedy was returning from an expedition along the lower, unexplored reaches of the Barcoo. As he advanced towards the outer fringes of white settlement he began to notice the increasing evidence of the European presence\u2013at one camp a bundle of spears tied up with a piece of cotton handkerchief, then at succeeding ones a pint pot, a fragment of a blue knitted Guernsey shirt, rags, a broken hobble strap and a buckle. But as well as such material objects Aborigines often had experience of domestic animals\u2013cattle, horses, dogs, cats, donkeys, camels and rabbits\u2013which strayed away from centres of European settlement.\n\n# STRAYING ANIMALS\n\nCattle escaped from the struggling community at Sydney cove within a few weeks of the first landing and many animals subsequently followed the example of these bovine pioneers. Explorers often found their tracks and dung far out beyond the nearest European settlement. Oxley saw tracks 80 to 90 miles west of Bathurst in 1817. During an expedition of 1831 from the infant Swan River settlement over the Darling Range G. F. Moore reported finding what he coyly termed 'symptoms of Cows' which had already ventured into the interior. When deep in the central desert in 1873 Warburton met a group of Aborigines who, he concluded, had heard of cattle both by the signs they made and their 'tolerably good imitation of lowing when they saw the camels'.\n\nThe sudden appearance of cattle must have been a terrifying experience. A few traditional stories that have been preserved refer to the large size of the new animals, their fearsome looking horns, their bellowing and often aggressive behaviour. Davis and Bracefield, convict escapees from Moreton Bay, related that the Aborigines of the upper Brisbane Valley and Wide Bay were terrified of two stray bullocks that rampaged through their country and they clambered up nearby trees at the sound of their approach. South Australian Aborigines told the missionary George Taplin of the fear experienced when a couple of bullocks wandered into their tribal territories. They dubbed the exotic animals 'windwityere', or beings with spears on the head. In the south-east corner of South Australia local blacks told a story about their first sight of European animals. They were terrified by strange sounds in the night that could not be accounted for. At daylight one of the men crept out to investigate the source of the noise but came back deeply perplexed saying that he did not know what the creatures were for they could not be compared with anything seen before in their country. The whole party cautiously approached the strange creatures. 'We had a peep through the bushes', they later recalled:\n\nand saw what we now know to have been sheep, cattle, and horses and a dray. The bullock's bellowing was a terror to us. We saw the tracks of the cattle, sheep and horses, and could not imagine what it could be that made them.\n\nCattle were probably the most common intruders into Aboriginal territory and consciousness but rabbits, cats, camels, donkeys and horses found their way out beyond the fringes of settlement in various parts of the continent. Both the Elder expedition of 1891\u201392 and that of Carnegie five years later discovered domestic cats in remote parts of the western desert. Horne and Aiston reported that a middle aged Aborigine from central Australia told them of his first meeting with a rabbit thirty years earlier. On leaving his camp one morning he saw the strange animal under a bush. He ran back to get his father and several other men and they decided to kill the exotic creature. It was knocked down with boomerangs and then speared and the carcase was carried into the nearest point of European settlement to be identified.\n\nHorses ventured out beyond European settlement as well. Leichhardt's party saw one on the Dawson River in 1844 several hundred miles beyond the nearest stations as did McKinlay at Coopers Creek in 1861. North Queensland blacks tell a story about their forebears' first meeting with a stray horse. The story may date back to the release of several horses by Kennedy's expedition in 1848:\n\nSomebody lost a horse - first time they ever saw a horse... and they got their spears and boomerangs and nulla-nullas and they chased this horse and they speared the horse and they put so many spears in the horse that the old horse fell down. And they walked up and had a look at him and they lift his head up and said, 'What sort of creature is this?' They never see an animal so big. They said, 'I wonder where this animal has come from, it's so big'.\n\nIt is clear then that pioneers were preceded into the interior by feral animals and a range of European commodities. But what about information? How much had Aborigines learnt about the white invaders before they were caught in the onrushing tide of settlement?\n\n# INFORMATION\n\nThere was widespread cultural exchange over large areas of Aboriginal Australia. Ceremonies, songs, dances, words and ideas all flowed back and forth along the traditional trade routes. In his late nineteenth-century study of Aboriginal life in Queensland Roth described how ideas were interchanged:\n\nsuperstitions and traditions [are] handed on from district to district, and more or less modified in transit... new words and terms are picked up, and... corroborees are learnt and exchanged just like any other commodities.\n\nThe large ceremonial gatherings of neighbouring tribes provided the venue for gossip, trade and cultural interchange. The anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner observed such a meeting while studying the Daly River tribes in the early 1930s. He noted that diffusion of ideas took place most propitiously in quiet moments punctuating the large, dramatic ceremonies, while little knots of men and women were resting under the trees or around campfires at night and the songs were chanted, 'the myths retold, the dances rehearsed, the little technological tricks explained.\n\nTribal messengers were widely used in traditional society. These 'living newsmongers' travelled quickly over long distances conveying information from clan to clan. Early European observers of Aboriginal life were impressed with the speed and spread of Aboriginal communications. G. A. Robinson concluded that songs and corroborees current around Melbourne in the 1840s had arrived 'with amazing celerity' from as far north as the Hunter River. At much the same time on the far side of the continent a member of the Port Essington settlement noted that information passed so rapidly from tribe to tribe that 'an event of any importance is known over a large extent of country in the course of a very few months'. Howitt made similar observations while camped near Coopers Creek in 1861. He discovered that messengers were continually coming in from up to 150 miles away with news for the local clans about the movements of McKinlay's contemporaneous expedition. Howitt was later able to confirm the accuracy of reports that his fellow explorer had been caught in flood waters and had consequently abandoned his dray.\n\nCastaways and convict escapees provided additional evidence about the passage of information. Davis and Bracefield reported that news of Europeans frequently passed back from the outer fringes of European settlement while James Morrell confirmed that news soon spread from tribe to tribe. Barbara Thompson found that information about white activities in the Cape York area 'went at once throughout the islands', a judgement supported by John Jardine the Government Resident at Somerset who wrote that:\n\nthe communication between the islanders and the natives of the mainland is frequent, and the rapid manner in which news is carried from tribe to tribe to great distances is astonishing. I was informed of the approach of HMS 'Salamander' on her last visit two days before her arrival here. Intelligence is conveyed by means of fires made to throw smoke up in different forms, or by messengers who perform long and rapid journeys.\n\nDid news of Europeans travel as far as their artifacts? Was the meaning and significance of information significantly altered as it passed from tribe to tribe? If shells could pass right across the continent from north to south could information do likewise? We may never have enough evidence to answer these questions satisfactorily but an interesting event was reported by Windsor-Earl in relation to the Port Essington settlement in the Northern Territory. To the surprise of the Europeans Aborigines visiting the encampment from the interior spoke of 'white people who dwelt in the country to the south, and who built houses of stone', referring, it was assumed, to the new colony in South Australia on the far side of the continent.\n\n# LINGUISTIC DIFFUSION\n\nExplorers were often convinced that previously uncontacted Aborigines had heard of Europeans. Oxley thought it evident from the behaviour of blacks he met that they had 'previously heard of white people'. Early Western Australian exploring parties used black guides to communicate with more remote tribes whose members confirmed that they had been told of the settlers, their behaviour and possessions. As news of Europeans spread a few words of pidgin English were probably carried back beyond the frontier\u2013notably yarraman for horse, jumbuk for sheep, bula or bulloki for cattle, wheelbarrow for dray. These words and one or two others found their way into Aboriginal vocabularies from Bass Strait to Cape York and west into central Australia. Yarraman for instance, which came from the Batemans Bay dialect, was used in a large number of Aboriginal languages all over eastern Australia. In the areas around Adelaide the term pindi nanto or literally the newcomer's or European's kangaroo was coined as a term for horse. The diffusion of these two words\u2013one from New South Wales, the other from South Australia\u2013is a fascinating study. Yarraman reached central Australia from the east to be ultimately borrowed by the Walbri from their neighbours in that direction the Warramanga. But they also used the term nantu which they had borrowed from the Aranda to the south. It would seem therefore, that two currents of linguistic borrowing met and merged in the centre of the continent.\n\nThere is a little evidence from the Aboriginal side of the frontier which helps establish a link in the chain of linguistic diffusion from the Adelaide region to central Australia and beyond. In the 1920s a South Australian pioneer published an account of a series of contact stories he had collected from an old Aborigine who had grown up in the region bounded by the Flinders Ranges and Lake Frome. The old man related how:\n\nsome of the tribe lower down south had seen these strange people, and they had sent a messenger on with news that these people were making up towards their camp, and to be on the lookout for them and their wonderful nantoes\n\nIn the early 1860s Howitt used the word nantoe when conversing with Dieri tribesmen on the shores of Lake Hope near Coopers Creek and was immediately understood. At some stage the term passed on beyond central Australia and eventually reached the far side of the continent entering the vocabulary of the Wagaidj clans around Darwin.\n\nEuropeans typically collected Aboriginal vocabularies after considerable contact, when numerous English and pidgin terms had been adopted directly from the settlers or acculturated blacks from districts of earlier settlement. This frontier pidgin has been studied by a number of writers since 1834 when L. E. Threlkeld published his pioneering work An Australian Grammar which listed over twenty 'barbarisms introduced by sailors and stockmen'. But there is some evidence which suggests that prior borrowing took place from Aboriginal contacts before the arrival of Europeans. In 1846 Mitchell met a group of Aborigines on the Belyando, a locality remote from the nearest white settlement. He was amazed when the blacks exclaimed Yarraman on coming up to the expeditions' horses. McKinlay had a similar experience in the far north-east corner of South Australia in 1861 where there was perhaps slightly more chance of prior European contact. Explorers and pioneer squatters came across Aborigines with no apparent previous contact who used the term white-fellow when speaking of the Europeans. This happened to Mitchell, Alan Macpherson and Leichhardt in different parts of Queensland in the 1840s and to Carnegie in the western desert in 1896. Mitchell commented on this phenomenon in his account of his first expedition in northern New South Wales in 1831\u201332:\n\nWe heard calls in various directions, and 'whitefellow' pronounced very loudly and distinctly. 'Whitefellow', or 'white-ma' appears to be their name... for our race, and this appellation probably accompanies the first intelligence of such strangers, to the most remote, interior region.\n\nHowitt provided the most substantial evidence of the diffusion of information about Europeans and of new terms to express it. He discovered that Aborigines over a wide area of central Australia were aware of the northward progress of McKinlay's expedition of 1861. McKinlay himself was called whilprapinnaru by the blacks living on the outlying cattle stations in South Australia, an expression which meant the old-man, or leader, of the dray, or wheelbarrow as it was termed in pidgin English. Howitt discovered that the word followed McKinlay 'on from tribe to tribe' certainly as far as the south-west corner of Queensland along with assorted information about the expedition's possessions and behaviour.\n\n# FIREARMS\n\nNews of the danger and mysterious power of firearms was almost certainly passed on to Aborigines before they came into physical contact with Europeans. Explorers often found that blacks were highly apprehensive of guns even before they had been fired. While surveying Port Phillip in 1803 Tuckey met local Aborigines who 'signified their knowledge and fear of the effect of firearms'. Oxley found that blacks immediately ran off if anyone picked up a musket and would only return when it was put down 'showing by every simple means in their power their dread of its appearance'. McKinlay, Stuart and Giles all reported similar reactions in remote parts of the interior. Tribesmen who met Stuart pointed meaningfully to the expeditions' guns making loud noises with their mouths; Searcey reported that when he met a group of blacks on a remote beach in the Northern Territory one man came up, touched his revolver and said 'Boom!, Boom!, Boom!' Oral history from Mornington Island confirms this picture. Roughsey related that his father heard about guns long before he had seen white men. Mainland Aborigines told him how the Europeans could kill a man 'with thunder that sent down invisible spears to tear a hole in his body and spill his blood in the sand'.\n\nLinguistic evidence supports the proposition of an early diffusion of knowledge about guns. Numerous Eastern Australian languages contained terms for gun which derived from the English word musket. This suggests that the word passed from tribe to tribe quite early in the history of settlement possibly before muskets became obsolete. None of the variations of the word in question appear in lists of frontier pidgin suggesting that they evolved on the Aboriginal rather than the European side of the frontier. The geographical dispersal of musket words is impressive. They appeared in several Victorian languages\u2013Madjgad in Wergaia and Matjkat in Wemba-Wemba\u2013but were more common in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Marrkin was used by the Budjara around Charleville and the Gugu-Badhun five hundred kilometres away on the upper-Burdekin. Marrgin was employed by the Gugu-Yalanji on Cape York, Makini by the Kalkatungu around Cloncurry, Mugadi by the Djingili at Tennant Creek and Daly Waters, Makati by the Walbri and Mukuta by the Aranda. Variations of the same word were used by Aboriginal tribes living 1500 kilometres apart scattered over an area almost half the size of the continent.\n\nThus while the evidence is fragmentary and widely scattered we can gain some impression of the impact of European settlement on Aboriginal society before face to face contact had occurred. Most clans would have already been using an array of European commodities when pioneer settlers appeared even if they did not always know precisely where the new articles had come from. Feral animals would also have entered their territories\u2013cattle, horses, dogs, cats and pigs from the earliest period; camels, rabbits and donkeys during the second half of the nineteenth century. Information about the Europeans would probably have filtered through from distant tribes especially about the power and danger of their weapons. Along with news of the whiteman a handful of new words would also have entered ancient vocabularies all over the continent.\n\n# A CASTAWAY\n\nMany of the themes discussed to this point were illustrated by the experiences of the English sailor James Morrell (there are various spellings of his name) of the ship 'Peruvian', wrecked on Horseshoe Reef in 1846, who lived with the Jurn and Bindal tribes of the Townsville-Bowen region for seventeen years. Morrell's reminiscences are sketchy and he was not as sharply observant as the contemporaneous castaway Barbara Thompson, but his tribal sojourn was much longer than hers spanning the period of early contact with sea-borne visitors, the first land expeditions, the appearance of feral animals and the eventual arrival of pioneer pastoralists and native police troopers which was a prelude to Morrell giving himself up to two frontier stockmen.\n\nMorrell's tribesmen did not see any of the land expeditions of the 1840s\u2013those of Leichhardt, Mitchell, Gregory\u2013which all travelled inland along the valleys of the Burdekin and its tributaries. However, news of the European parties filtered through to Morrell as he recalled in a letter published in the Rockhampton Bulletin in 1865. But his account presents the historian with some difficulties. He maintained that two reports of European parties were received by his kinsmen in 1855 although it is by no means certain that Morrell had been able to keep track of time during his seventeen years in the bush. Nor do we know how fresh the stories were, or how altered in transit, although it is clear that some information about Europeans did come in from distant tribes.\n\nOne of the reports referred to a party of Europeans seen to the north-west, accompanied by a large number of horses and cattle. The position tallies very well with the southward route travelled by A. C. Gregory's North Australia Expedition of 1855\u201356. The party set out with 50 horses and 200 sheep although the flock would have been much depleted by the time it reached Queensland. But apart from the absence of cattle the Aboriginal report measures up very well with the known facts. Morrell's second story is much harder to pin down. The white party was said to be to the north but that eventually all but one member had grown thin and died. There does not appear to be any obvious source for this story though it may have become significantly changed in its passage down the coast. It could have referred to survivors from shipwreck for there must have been many such unrecorded misadventures; it may have related to the fate of the members of Kennedy's disastrous 1848 expedition who starved to death at Weymouth Bay. There is a scrap of evidence suggesting that news of Kennedy's party passed down the coast at least as far as Townsville making it likely that Morrell would have picked the story up. In the 1880s an old Aboriginal man from the Townsville district told Archibald Meston that as a young man he remembered news of an expedition coming down the coast from the north (Meston assumed it was Kennedy's) and was able to relate considerable details about the party and its assortment of animals and equipment.\n\nFrom the late 1850s news began to filter through to Morrell about the pastoral occupation of central Queensland and the violence accompanying it. A distant tribe reported that they had seen a white man with two horses who shot at a funeral party killing one of the chief mourners. But the European was subsequently caught off-guard, was set upon and killed. A short time later four cattle strayed into Morrell's district and while he did not see them himself his tribal relatives showed him the tracks and carefully described the exotic animals mentioning their horns, teats and big ears. Morrell questioned his kinsmen closely and they said that:\n\nthree had teats and one had none; thus I understood three were cows and one was a bull. I told them they were what we ate, and they chaffed me about their great size, long tails, big ears and horns.\n\nWith the next report the intruders were closer and even more threatening. A party of both black and white men on horseback\u2013presumably the Native Mounted Police\u2013had shot down a group of the Cape Upstart people with whom Morrell had previously lived. His informants had closely observed the violent newcomers, telling him about the saddles, stirrups, bridles and other accoutrements as well as the noise and smoke when the guns were fired. From this time on Morrell received almost daily reports about the Europeans till eventually stockmen arrived in his neighbourhood with a large herd of cattle. Two old women were sent out to watch the white men and report on their activities. They did the job very well for they:\n\nbrought word back that there was a large hut, and that they had seen red and white blankets hanging on the stockyard fences and heard a dog bark, and an old sheep bleating tied to a tree; they also heard the report of a gun twice; but could not see where it came from.\n\nA few days later Morrell approached the stockmen bringing to an end his involuntary seventeen year exile. For his Aboriginal kinsmen the events were even more portentous; many thousands of years of freedom from outside interference were coming to an abrupt and bloody end.\n\nMorrell was one of the few Europeans who witnessed, from the other side of the frontier, the climactic moment as Aboriginal society felt the shock of the arrival of the first permanent settlers. Amongst the small group of Europeans who lived with the Aborigines only a few left any record of their experiences. But the voluminous writing of explorers contains a large amount of material useful to the scholar seeking to understand the Aboriginal response to the European invasion of their homelands.\n\n# MEETING EXPLORERS\n\nExplorers with wide experience beyond the frontiers of European settlement were impressed by the diversity of Aboriginal reactions they encountered. Mitchell found that the 'difference in disposition' between tribes 'not very remote from each other was very striking' while Stokes after circumnavigating the continent remarked that whereas some groups he met were 'most kindly disposed' to the white travellers, others manifested the 'greatest hostility and aversion'.  European and Aborigine met in such a wide variety of circumstances that the historian may never be able to reduce the diversity to simple patterns of behaviour. For the foreseeable future description may have to take precedence over analysis.\n\nIt is probable that a majority of Aborigines had about as much prior notice of the European approach as Morrell's tribesmen. Yet despite forewarning early meetings were still fraught with tension. So much about the whites\u2013their appearance, behaviour, possessions, accompanying animals\u2013were radically new; awesome; unexpected. News of the Europeans' weapons and their apparent control of powerful magic compounded the fear and anxiety. Horses were a further source of anguished curiosity, with their noise and size and speed. Aborigines often asked if horses bit. Gippsland blacks told Alexander McMillan that they had originally thought that the noise of gunfire came from the horses' nostrils. Morrell remarked that neighbouring blacks who had not had the advantage of his advice thought that horses as well as their riders could 'speak and do mischief to them. Elsewhere it was thought that horse and rider were one.\n\nMeetings with Europeans were often terrifying experiences even when violence was absent. Screaming, perspiring, shaking, involuntary urination and defecation\u2013all the normal human reactions to extreme fear were reported at one time or another by white observers. Eyre recalled coming upon an Aboriginal camp at night and provoking a 'wild exclamation of dismay' accompanied by a 'look of indescribable horror and affright'. P. P. King wrote of a party all members of which trembled with fright at the approach of the Europeans. Oxley met Aborigines who 'trembled excessively' being 'absolutely intoxicated with fear'. In the western desert Carnegie thought the 'trembling fear' of local blacks 'painful to witness'.\n\nBut perhaps the most notable feature of such meetings was less the terror induced than the courage displayed by people placed in situations of extraordinary tension. This was surely the hidden, perhaps the larger part, of the heroism of Australian exploration. Explorers often recognized the psychological strength of the blacks they came into contact with. Mitchell met an old man in central Queensland who, though perspiring profusely from terror; allowed no hint of anxiety to cloud his demeanour. Austin noted in Western Australia that although the Aborigines he came across were aware of the superiority of European arms their bearing was always fearless and manly. Sturt made similar observations about blacks he fell in with in central Australia. One man in particular called forth his admiration. 'His composure and apparent self possession', he wrote, 'were very remarkable':\n\nhis whole demeanour was that of a calm and courageous man, who finding himself placed in unusual jeopardy, had determined not to be betrayed into the slightest display of fear or timidity.\n\nBut while the courage of the men who went forward to meet the Europeans was clear it was probably surpassed by that of the young women who were frequently dispatched by their male relatives to appease the sexual appetite of the strange and threatening white men.\n\nAttacks on exploring parties varied considerably in tactics, size and seriousness. Sometimes spears were thrown from cover\u2013of the forest when Kennedy was transfixed, of darkness when Gilbert died. Occasionally large, well organized attacks were mounted like the one reported by Giles on his fourth expedition. But armed resistance to the explorers was less common than might have been expected owing no doubt to a prudent weighing of costs and benefits. The belief that Europeans possessed powerful and malignant magic may have been a crucial factor in limiting Aboriginal aggression. Clans were much more likely to carefully watch the Europeans than openly confront them. Indeed overlanding parties were rarely able to move across country without being seen by resident blacks and news of their movements was carried forward either by messenger or smoke signal. There are many examples of Aboriginal use of smoke signals. When Sturt's party was crossing Lake Alexandrina blacks on a headland lit a large fire as soon as the Europeans noticed them. It was answered from every point of the compass and in less than ten minutes the party counted fourteen different fires. Mitchell reported a similar experience. A fire lit close to the party was a sequel to a whole series of others, extending in 'telegraphic line far to the south'. A party which landed on the Yarrabah Peninsula in 1882 found that as they began to move back from the beach signal fires flared on every hill as far as the eye could reach. J. S. Roe reported that as his party passed across country smoke signals would suddenly rise up within a mile and a half of their line of march. Explorers may have never been out of sight, even of earshot, of local Aborigines even at times when they imagined themselves alone in the wilderness. Some sensed the ubiquitous black presence. Writing after his expedition into north-west Queensland W. O. Hodgkinson observed that the blacks were so expert at hiding that it was unsafe to 'accept their absence from view as proof of nonexistence'.  Oxley, the leader of one of the earliest inland expeditions, remarked that:\n\nit is probable that they may see us without discovering themselves, as it is much more likely for us to pass unobserved the little family of the wandering native, than that our party... should escape their sight, quickened as it is by constant exercise in procuring their daily bread.\n\nEuropeans sensitive to their surroundings felt they were being constantly watched. When landing on apparently deserted coasts Stokes believed that the eyes of the Aborigines were always upon him and that his 'every movement was watched'. Jukes cautioned that no matter how uninhabited a place might appear 'even for days together' the white man should always walk in the expectation that 'a native has his eye upon you'. Gilbert made a similar note in his diary shortly before he was to die from a spear thrown into the camp from the encompassing and apparently unpeopled darkness. The bushman, he fatefully wrote, must never forget that although no blacks could be seen 'they may be within a few yards of his camp closely observing every action'.\n\nExplorers occasionally stumbled on blacks who had been sent to watch them. Young women sentries kept up a constant surveillance of G. A. Robinson during his first expedition in Western Tasmania. Mitchell found that two women had sat in the bush throughout a cold, wet night without fire or water in order to observe his party. While on sentry duty one dark night Jukes nearly trod on an old man who with two or three others was crouching in the grass observing the camp. Expedition members who backtracked for one reason or another found clear evidence that vacated camping sites had been minutely examined and tracks followed for long distances. John Mann, a member of Leichhardt's party of 1844\u201345, observed that the Aborigines 'overturned' the camp sites as soon as they were vacated. Writing of the same expedition Gilbert noted the rush of blacks to search abandoned camps where they were to be seen 'busily engaged in searching about picking up any little thing which attracted their attention'. Aboriginal attraction to deserted European camp sites was emphasised in the contact stories of the Flinders Range-Lake Frome clans. They referred to the arrival of an expedition which entered their country from the south\u2013it was probably Eyre's abortive attempt to push up into central Australia in 1840. The local blacks carefully watched the Europeans from the security of the hills but as soon as the explorers set off in the early morning they rushed into the deserted camp:\n\none of the chief treasures found were parts of a bottle that had got broken... every scrap of bottle was picked up and handed over to the head 'doctor'. These same pieces were afterwards used in their rites in place of flint... Empty tins, a couple of horseshoe nails, bits of rope and twine\u2013every scrap was picked up and taken to camp.\n\nContact between explorers and Aborigines was often friendly and mutually satisfactory. The French navigator Labillardiere, for instance, wrote in praise of hospitable Tasmanians. The attentions, he observed:\n\nlavished on us by these savages astonished us. If our paths were interrupted by heaps of dry branches, some of them walked before, and removed them to either side; they even broke off such as stretched across our way... We could not walk on the dry grass without slipping every moment... but these good savages, to prevent our falling, took hold of us by the arm, and thus supported us.\n\nExplorers have left accounts of many meetings when both whites and blacks behaved with decorum and sensitivity thereby reducing the tension of contact. Flinders wrote of such an occasion on the Tasmanian coast. He gave a local Aborigine a ship's biscuit and in return accepted an old piece of whale flesh. Both parties politely put their presents in their mouths but surreptitiously spat them out when they thought the action would not be noticed.\n\nAborigines afforded significant assistance to white explorers in every corner of the continent supplying valuable, and at times life saving, information about waterholes and springs; fords and paths; mountain passes, easy gradients, short cuts. The West Australian explorer Austin noted the value of such intelligence when recounting his meeting with a local clan whose members gave him the name and position of all the significant places on his line of march as far as the boundaries of their country. He noted down the information and then enquired about the water, rocks, timber and feed to be found at each site. While summing up his extensive experience of Aboriginal Australia, Eyre wrote in appreciation of the hospitality so often afforded:\n\nI have been received by them in the kindest and most friendly manner, had presents made to me of fish, kangaroo, fruit; had them accompany me for miles to point out where water was to be procured, or been assisted by them in getting at it, if from the nature of the soil or my own inexperience, I had any difficulty in doing so myself.\n\nHow can we account for such hospitality? We may never know for certain although glimpses of the Aborigines provided by the explorers allow us to make tentative assessments of their motivation. It seems reasonable to assume that the clans themselves were often divided over the question of an appropriate policy to adopt towards travelling Europeans. On many, perhaps a majority, of occasions the decision was obviously made to watch carefully but avoid contact though this strategy was less likely to be noticed by the explorers. But the attraction of European goods provided a powerful incentive to establish friendly contact and awareness of firearms dampened enthusiasm for confrontation. The provision of guides was probably a deliberate policy to resolve the contradictory objectives of seeking access to the white men's possessions while hastening the departure of potentially dangerous sojourners. Guides may have been additionally motivated to take Europeans on guided tours through their country thereby avoiding sites of spiritual significance. Exploring parties were aware that they were often taken on circuitous routes and usually assumed that detours were made to circumvent unseen geographical hazards. But the objectives of their hosts may have been more religious than topographical. Interest in the strangers; even the simple desire to be hospitable may have encouraged the establishment of friendly contact. From their response to white visitors it is clear that clans were proud of their country, happy to recite its deeply understood amenity and to display their profound knowledge of the environment.\n\n# ABORIGINAL CURIOSITY\n\nHow curious were the Aborigines about the European invaders? Such a question would hardly arise if Australian scholars had not so often asserted that the blacks were a uniquely passive and incurious people, an assessment recently given new authority by Blainey who argued that Aborigines reacted to the sudden appearance of whites with the 'calm apathy' of a people who had lived so long in isolation 'that intruders were inconceivable'. But the historical record provides scant evidence for this view. While we lack detailed information about the social customs of many tribes from districts settled in the nineteenth century it is reasonable to conclude that across wide areas of Australia displays of overt curiosity were considered the height of rudeness. Among many tribes it was customary to totally ignore visitors when they first arrived in camp. Drawing on his experience at Port Phillip in the 1840s E. S. Parker observed that when:\n\nindividuals of other tribes thus arrived on a visit, the etiquette, if I may so term it, was remarkable! The visitor sat down at a little distance, but never spoke. He scarcely looked, indeed, at the parties he came to see.\n\nDecorum not apathy determined Aboriginal behaviour as the more perceptive explorers and settlers realized. Writing of desert Aborigines Giles remarked that 'of course they saw us, but they most perseveringly shunned us'. Eyre noted the 'innate propriety of behaviour' exhibited by blacks in their 'natural state' especially in the 'modest unassuming manner' in which they positioned themselves to watch the Europeans and the total absence of anything that was 'rude or offensive'. Sturt came across a desert Aborigine whose composure and self-possession were 'very remarkable' for despite the awesomeness of the meeting he was clearly determined to exhibit neither 'astonishment nor curiosity'.\n\nBut there were many occasions when curiosity became the over-mastering passion breaking through traditional restraint, overlaying fear and anxiety. Mitchell wrote of a group of Queensland Aborigines for whom 'intense curiosity' overcame 'all the fears of such strangers'. Leichhardt met some old men far in the interior who:\n\nobserved with curious eye, everything we did, and made long explanations to each other of the various objects presented to their gaze. Our eating, drinking, dress, skin, combing, boiling, our blankets, straps, horses, everything in short, was new to them, and was earnestly discussed.\n\nSturt found on his expedition down the Murray and Murrumbidgee that the party was obliged to submit anew to close examination by every group of Aborigines they met. They were pulled about and touched all over; their faces were felt; their fingers counted and their hands and feet measured against those of the investigators. Even the old and decrepit came down to the river to see them. 'The lame', Sturt wrote:\n\nhad managed to hobble along, and the blind were equally anxious to touch us. There were two or three old men stretched upon the bank, from who the last sigh seemed about to depart; yet these poor creatures evinced an anxiety to see us, and to listen to descriptions of our appearance.\n\nIn the early years of settlement the Aborigines were often intensely interested in determining the newcomer's gender. Clothing cloaked their sexual identity and clean shaven faces compounded the uncertainty. While surveying the coastline in 1819\u201320 P. P. King found blacks both curious and importunate demanding that one of his party undress and expose his genitals. Writing of the foundation of the Swan River Settlement, C. H. Fremantle noted that 'they think young men are women and so they want them to take their trousers off'. G. B. Worgan, a first fleet surgeon, described another such encounter:\n\nI must not omit mentioning a very singular Curiosity among the Men here, arising from a Doubt of what Sex we are, for from our not having, like themselves long Beards, and not seeing when they open our Shirt-Bosoms (which they do very roughly and without any Ceremony) the usual distinguishing Characteristics of Women, they start Back with Amazement, and give a Hum! with a significant look, implying. What kind of Creatures are these?!\u2013As it was not possible for Us to satisfy their Inquisitiveness in this Particular, by the simple Words. Yes or No. We had Recourse to the Evidence of Ocular Demonstration, which made them laugh, jump and Skip in an Extravagant Manner.\n\nThe desire to determine the sex of the Europeans may have had more important reasons than idle curiosity. Establishing the sex of a party could help explain its objectives; an all male group might presage conflict, one with women and children a more peaceful mission. Baldwin Spencer noted that in central Australia the fact that a party:\n\nis travelling with women and children is prima-facie evidence that their intentions are not hostile, but a party of men travelling without their women-folk is always looked upon with suspicion.\n\nAborigines with little previous experience of Europeans were often perplexed by their clothes and hats and footwear. It may not have been immediately apparent where the covering ended and the flesh began. Writing of his life while pioneering the Champion Bay district in Western Australia F. F. Wittenoom recalled that one wet night he pulled off his pyjama coat to dry it. A local black watching the procedure let out a shout on seeing the white skin and soon a crowd came round to witness the spectacle. Daniel Brock, a member of Sturt's central Australian expedition of 1844 noted the interest aroused by his clothes among a group of blacks camped close to the exploration party. A curious clansman was inspecting his boots when Brock drew up his trousers exposing the white skin to the amazement of those watching, a reaction which was intensified when he drew off both his boot and his sock. The Aborigines' reaction to European clothing was graphically related in a traditional story about the arrival of Europeans on the beach at Cardwell. The whites came ashore and offered various presents to the assembled clans. They threw clothes and blankets towards the blacks whose reactions of fears and wonder are still remembered:\n\nand they got a big long stick and they picked it up with the stick and they couldn't make out what that was. They thought this man was changing his skin. They said this man left his skin there. All the natives thought this man was taking his skin. They said this man has been peel himself like a snake and they got the stick and they picked it up with a stick and they looked and looked at this shirt and trousers. You know they couldn't make out and they pick up a blanket and have a look, some pretty colours, they couldn't make out and this fellow took his shirt out and threw it down on the ground. They see him how he took his shirt. Don't know what colour was the shirt. But when he took his shirt and he was white they thought he change his colour when he took his shirt off. They pick up that shirt with the stick because they was too frightened to pick it up with a hand because in our custom might be something very dangerous, witchcraft.\n\nAs they cautiously picked up the articles of clothing on the end of a long stick the Cardwell blacks illustrated the ambivalence which characterized the Aboriginal response to Europeans all over the continent, the amalgam of curiosity and fear, attraction to the new yet the resistance to change inherent in the ancient cultures of Aboriginal Australia.\n\n# Chapter 2\n\n# CONTINUITY AND CHANGE\n\n# GHOSTS\n\nThe sudden arrival of Europeans provoked more than fear and curiosity. It sparked intense and often prolonged debate as to the true nature of the white men, their origin and objectives. During the early years of settlement many blacks believed that Europeans were beings returned from the dead, an assessment confirmed by the testimony of the small group of Europeans who gained some insight into tribal attitudes and behaviour. Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, believed it was the 'universal impression' among blacks of that colony. Eyre thought the 'general belief' was that Europeans were 'resuscitated natives' while Stokes considered the view 'universally diffused' among the tribes. Writing of his experience at Port Essington Windsor-Earl noted that local clans recognized the spirits of the dead in all the strangers who visited their country. Castaways and escapees concurred, Buckley reporting that Port Phillip Aborigines were convinced that white men were Aborigines who 'had returned to life in a different colour'. Thompson found on Cape York that all the local blacks thought that white men were the 'spirits of black men come again in a new form'. When Davis, the Moreton Bay escapee, was 'rescued' by an exploring party his relatives said he was going back to join the dead. Linguistic evidence provides further confirmation. All over the continent in areas of early settlement the Aborigines applied to Europeans traditional terms meaning variously, ghost, spirit, eternal, departed, the dead. In north Queensland, settled in the second half of the nineteenth century, the same rule applied. The celebrated ethnographer W. E. Roth observed that in the many local dialects which he had recorded the same word was 'found to do duty for a European and a deceased aboriginal's spirit, ghost'.\n\nWhy was this idea so pervasive? To begin with it is important to stress that far from being an example of childlike fancy or primitive irrationality this view of the European was a logical conclusion premised on important and widely shared beliefs. What were they, then? The Aboriginal cosmos was geographically limited. Most, if not all people, of the known world were kin or potentially so. Outside the circle of known, and at least partially intelligible clans, was the 'cosmological periphery' which had little geographical definition. A contemporary scholar has written that:\n\nOwing to the Australian kinship system everybody is\u2013or can be \u2014 related to everybody else. If a friendly stranger approaches a camp, he is always finally recognized as being related to someone of the group. Consequently, for the Australians, only one 'world' and only one 'human society' exist. The unknown regions outside familiar lands do not belong to the 'world'\u2013just as unfriendly or mysterious foreigners do not belong to the community of men, for they may be ghosts, demonic beings, or monsters.\n\nWhile the secular world was circumscribed and populated by a few hundred, or even a few thousand individuals, the realm of the spirits was wide and vibrant with life. At death the spirit left the body, and unless correct ceremonial was followed it might remain moving about tribal territory, but in the normal course of events it would return to the land of spirits which was variously in the sky, beyond the horizon, or more portentously for many coastal people, beyond the sea. The spirit world was real, tangible and ever present. It was a much more likely starting point for the white strangers than unknown, even unsuspected, countries beyond the horizon.\n\n# COUNTRYMEN AND RELATIVES\n\nIn many cases whites were thought to be not merely re-incarnated blacks but actually returned countrymen. This conclusion was also a perfectly logical one given acceptance of a few basic assumptions. In Aboriginal Australia individuals were thought to belong to their country by powerful spiritual bonds. The unexpected arrival of Europeans caused many to conclude that they too must have belonged to the land in question, or at least know of it, in a previous life. The West Australian pioneer G. F. Moore reported that local blacks had decided that none but those who were 'already acquainted with the country could find their way to it'. Another early settler was asked if Europeans had not known of the country in an earlier existence: 'why should you come here with your wives, your ships, your flour, your cattle? How did you know there was plenty of water? George Grey sensed the logic implicit in the Aboriginal viewpoint. They themselves, he wrote:\n\nnever having an idea of quitting their own land, cannot imagine others doing it;\u2013and thus, when they see white people suddenly appear in their country, and settling themselves down in particular spots, they imagine that they must have formed an attachment for this land in some other state of existence, and hence conclude the settlers were at one period black men, and their own relations.\n\nOther available evidence appeared to support the view that Europeans had returned from the dead. White was a colour widely associated with death; pipe-clay was used extensively in mourning. When Daniel Brock displayed his white feet to inquisitive desert Aborigines they immediately associated the sight with death and sang a lament over him. In parts of the country corpses were peeled of the outer skin leaving them a pinkish colour reminiscent of northern European complexions. South Australian Aborigines in fact called white men grinkai the term for a peeled, pink corpse. A legend told to W. E. Roth on the Pennefeather River in north Queensland confirms the perceived link between the white complexion and the loss of the outer skin. The story concerned a boy who was playing in a lagoon and was swallowed by a big brown snake. The reptile expelled the boy in three or four days but by then he had lost his outer skin and had become a white fellow.\n\nCoastal clans in many parts of the continent believed that at death the spirit travelled across or through the sea to offshore islands or places far over the horizon. An early West Australian settler noted that local blacks 'inform us that the spirits of their departed traverse the great waters and then become white'. Aborigines from Cape Bedford on the far north-Queensland coast believed that spirits travelled east where they entered the bodies of white people. They actually called Europeans ganggal-nakawaraigo or babies coming from the east. West Australian Aborigines explained to the official Aboriginal interpreter that they attributed the pale colour of the Europeans to the influence of saltwater during the long marine journey to the land of spirits.\n\nWith apparently sound reasons for regarding Europeans as reincarnated countrymen it needed only the recognition of characteristics of appearance, mannerisms or gait to claim them as returned relatives. 'Likeness', Grey observed, 'either real or imagined completed the illusion'. Aborigines from around Perth were said to be able to recognize several hundred colonists by their 'countenance, voices and scars of former wounds'. G. W. Moore confirmed this picture. West Australian pioneers were, he wrote, frequently claimed as relatives by old people who treated them 'according to the love they formerly bore to the individuals supposed to be recognized'.  Stokes referred to the case of a settler who was visited by his supposed kin twice a year though it necessitated a journey of sixty miles. Dr S. W. Viveash noted in his diary in February 1840 that the Aborigine Mignet had told him that his real name was Muswite 'a York native who had died and jumped up a white fellow'.  Mrs Edward Shenton recalled that Perth Aborigines had called her grandmother Budgera saying she was a 'black woman jumped up white woman' and they always wanted to make friends with her. An early settler at Port Phillip noted that local blacks informed him that they recognized long lost relatives in the persons of white neighbours. A South Australian woman recalled that she was actually given the name of a deceased member of the local clan and nothing that she said would convince the blacks to do otherwise. Grey wrote of his experiences when claimed as the re-incarnated son of an old Aboriginal woman:\n\nA sort of procession came up, headed by two women, down whose cheeks tears were streaming. The eldest of these came up to me, and looking for a moment at me said... 'Yes, yes, in truth it is him'; and then throwing her arms around me, cried bitterly, her head resting on my breast; and although I was totally ignorant of what their meaning was, from mere motives of compassion, I offered no resistance to her caresses... At last the old lady, emboldened by my submission, deliberately kissed me on each cheek... she then cried a little more, and at length relieving me, assured me that I was the ghost of her son, who had sometime before been killed by a spear wound in his breast... My new mother expressed almost as much delight at my return to my family, as my real mother would have done, had I been unexpectedly restored to her.\n\nBut while the belief in re-incarnated relatives appeared to fit some of the objective circumstances problems constantly arose which required further explanation. Eyre remarked that South Australian Aborigines of his acquaintance could not understand why the settlers did not recognize their former relatives and friends. He had, he said, often been asked why the 'dead were so ignorant, or so forgetful so as not to know their friends'. Similar complaints were reported from other parts of the continent. A West Australian woman wrote in 1839 that the local blacks thought Europeans 'fools and blockheads to have forgotten everything that happened while we were sojourning with them'. Fifty years later Roth found that Cape Bedford blacks wondered how and why the Europeans had 'forgotten all about their aboriginal ancestors'.\n\nThe same problem arose with castaways like Buckley and Thompson who on introduction to tribal society were unable to speak a word of the local languages and were totally ignorant of their hosts' customs and manners. But with enough resilience this too could be explained. It was assumed in both cases that the traumatic experience of death and unexpected return to life had impaired the intelligence and expunged the memory. Thompson was treated with the slightly amused compassion reserved for the simple minded. Her gradual mastery of the local language was taken as a slow restoration of lost linguistic skills. Buckley was humoured and shielded in a similar way being kept out of quarrels and away from recurrent skirmishing. His kinsmen were highly amused when he was unable to eat a dog's leg. 'No doubt', he later reminisced:\n\nthey thought my having died and been made white had strangely altered my taste. My not being able to talk with them they did not seem to think at all surprising\u2013my having been made white after death, in their opinion, having made me foolish; however, they took considerable pains to teach me their language, and expressed great delight when I got hold of a sentence or even a word, so as to pronounce it somewhat correctly, they then would chuckle, and laugh and give me great praise.\n\n# 'NOTHING BUT MEN'\n\nFor how long did this view of the European prevail? Unfortunately, the evidence is so meagre that we must speculate. However, it is realistic to assume that the nature of the white man was a major question of debate within Aboriginal society and that the emergence of a more 'secular' view of the newcomers took place unevenly both between and within tribal groups. A writer in the Perth Gazette remarked in 1836 that it was impossible to dissuade the old people from their original view of the Europeans but the younger ones were beginning 'to have their faith shaken on this point'. Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, sensed the shift of Aboriginal opinion. Local blacks, he wrote, were concluding that white people were 'nothing but men'. There is some linguistic evidence which illustrates the changing view of the Europeans. In Miriam, the language of the Eastern Torres Strait, the original term for white-men which meant ghost or spirit was replaced by a word meaning 'bow-men' referring to the position characteristically taken up by white men in dinghies and luggers. Blacks from the Pennefeather River in north Queensland originally thought Europeans were spirits and called them kai-worda-ngai or bark-sap-spirits, white complexions being compared to the light colour found on the inside of bark on local trees. Eventually they concluded that the white men had nothing to do with the spirits so they dropped the relevant word Ngai and simply used the term Kai-worda on its own.\n\nIn other places attitudes to Europeans altered but ghost words survived while undergoing a subtle pejorative change to eventually mean devil, malignant spirit or simply evil doer. Having been applied to whites in one place ghost words were sometimes adopted elsewhere while the original connotations of spirituality were left behind. This seems to have taken place in central and north Queensland. The word miggloo (there are many variations) appears to have come from central Queensland where it meant both ghost and white man. But it spread throughout the north as the most common word for Europeans while losing its original meaning on the way. It is still widely used today as a derisory, even contemptuous, term for white Australian.\n\nIn areas of later settlement the illusion that Europeans were spirits may never have taken root. The 'secular' view probably arrived 'ready-made' from the other side of the frontier along with diverse information about the Europeans. This is strongly suggested by the linguistic evidence. In more remote areas there was a greater tendency for the blacks to use terms for Europeans which lacked any spiritual connotation. The widespread adoption of variants of 'white fellow' or 'white man' was symptomatic of the change in attitude. These were, after all, new words with no weight of traditional meaning, stemming from European rather than Aboriginal society. Many examples spring to mind\u2013walpala as used around Cloncurry, white-pella on the Georgina, weilbulea along the upper Darling, waelbela among the Aranda and wapala among the Walbri. Other terms were used, sometimes conjointly with 'whitefella' words, referring to physical or cultural attributes of the Europeans. The Walbri had one term meaning 'dusty coloured' and another which meant literally a 'house person'; the Djingili from the central Northern Territory used the generic word for red (sunburn perhaps); some Tasmanian tribes coined the term 'ugly head' for the white intruders.\n\nThe belief that Europeans were relatives returned from the dead had important consequences for the Aboriginal response to the invasion of their territory. It was clearly crucial in determining the fate of castaway mariners and convict bolters. Recognition meant acceptance and security, lack of it ensured death. The unexpected visitor had to be either kinsman re-incarnate or a dangerous spirit from the cosmological periphery. Davis, Morrell, Buckley and Thompson were all accepted and taken in; many others forgotten to history were no doubt killed. Davis observed perceptively that there was always considerable danger when first meeting a new tribe for 'should no-one recognize you as a relative returned to life you are sure to be speared'. When he appeared before a Parliamentary Select Committee he was questioned on this point:\n\nMr. Watts: How did the blacks receive and treat you in the first instance?\n\nDavis: First rate, nothing could be better.\n\nChairman: Knowing you to be a white man?\n\nDavis: Yes, they took me to be the ghost of a black fellow.\n\nBuckley noted that when whites had been killed it was due to the fact that the blacks 'imagined them to have been originally enemies, or belonging to tribes with whom they were hostile'. A traditional story from north Queensland about the first meeting with a white man details the reaction to a person who was considered a malignant spirit:\n\nand all the boys went down and took their spears and their swords and nulla-nulla and they went up to the river and they see this white man was coming down and he was putting his hands up\u2013was surrendering himself to them\u2013but these natives never seen a white man in their life and they run up to him\u2013and the blackfellows speared him because they didn't know he was a white man. They'd never seen a white man. They speared him and they killed him there and then they left him there and they run away for their life. They said this is a witch-craft man come to destroy us and they ran away...\n\nInitially many Aborigines endeavoured to absorb the experience of European invasion within the framework of traditional thought. They were successful to a surprising degree. The sudden appearance of white men could be explained although something had clearly altered the familiar cosmic processes with spirits re-entering the world of men in a radically new guise. But even this could be accommodated by minds made flexible, or gullible if you will, through intimate acquaintance with, and everyday acceptance of, magic. Some followed the apparent line of logic even further assuming that they too would henceforth follow the newly established cycle of death, spirit journey and return as a white man. How widespread this belief was is difficult to say although there were numerous reports of it from pioneer settlers. The Perth Gazette for instance, noted in 1838 that it was a superstition which was 'very general' among local black communities. Another observer believed that many Aborigines were actually looking forward to death in order to 'return with guns, arms and provisions'. At much the same time in Victoria the Aboriginal Protector James Dredge remarked that many local blacks thought that when they died they would 'jump up white men'.\n\nOne consequence of seeing Europeans as returned relatives was that they could be readily absorbed into kinship networks. This had potential advantages for Aboriginal society by defining the appropriate behaviour both by and towards the white people. It also created expectations concerning the Europeans' obligation to share their material abundance. A Western Australian pioneer observed that the blacks had concluded that as the whites were 'their relatives restored to them with plenty of bread and good things' they should 'have a right to share with us, as their law compels them to divide whatever they have'. Once the illusion of re-incarnation had been shattered other mechanisms were used in an endeavour to encompass settlers within the reciprocal sway of kinship. From being resurrected relatives the whites could be regarded as 'de-facto' kin through place of residence, sexual intimacy or mutual gift giving.\n\nAboriginal misconceptions about the white invader had important consequences for the early development of the Australian colonies, shielding infant and insecure settlements from latent black hostility. Perth Aborigines were asked why they speared the settlers if they genuinely looked upon them as ancestors and friends. Their answer was interesting. They said that in their view they had treated the whites with much greater consideration than would have been shown to strange blacks. If unknown Aborigines had attempted to intrude in the way the Europeans had done the local clans would 'have done all in their power to destroy them'. In South Australia Moorhouse noted that as long as the Aboriginal illusions about Europeans survived they 'seldom attacked the whites'. Consequently he wanted to preserve black misconceptions as long as possible otherwise they would come to realize that Europeans could be 'beaten, overcome and murdered by the same means as the natives themselves'.  Similar views were expressed in north Queensland a generation later. The editor of the Port Denison Times remarked in 1866 that local blacks were rapidly losing a portion of the 'awe of the white man, which is so great a safeguard to us'. He was concerned that they would 'very soon lose ... their superstitious dread' of the Europeans, that:\n\nthe less insight the blackfellows are allowed to get into the white man's habits the more awe they will have of him, and the more easy they will be to manage.\n\nThus the Aboriginal debate about the true nature of the white invaders, mirroring similar discussions on the European side of the frontier, had important consequences for both the settlers and the blacks themselves. But there were also many other ways in which Aboriginal society adjusted to the presence of the whites. Developments in language, music, dancing, painting and practically all aspects of material culture illustrated the linked themes of continuity and change, accommodation and resistance.\n\n# LINGUISTIC CHANGE\n\nIt was more common for Aborigines to learn English than for settlers to pick up indigenous dialects although there were notable exceptions. Edward Curr observed in 1880 that most blacks were accustomed from childhood to hear and often speak languages other than their own and consequently learnt new ones more readily than the average colonist. They were, he wrote, usually able to 'quickly pick up sufficient broken English to understand what is necessary, and to make themselves understood'. Communication was facilitated by the use of an Australian pidgin\u2013a melange of words from English, from Pacific creole and more especially from the dialects in use around the earliest settlements. A list of such words includes well known 'Aboriginal' terms like nulla-nulla, woomera, warrigal, coolamon, mia-mia, waddy, boomerang, gibber, gin, kangaroo, carbon, bail, boogery. A few dozen words like these became the linguistic core around which an Australian frontier pidgin was built with variations according to place and period. The origin of many of the words was soon forgotten and in the use of pidgin both blacks and whites laboured under 'the mistaken idea' that each was conversing in the other's language as the missionary Threlkeld perceptively observed.\n\nModern linguistic studies combined with Aboriginal vocabularies collected in the nineteenth century make it possible to chart some of the intellectual currents generated by contact with European society. Three basic developments can be observed\u2013the direct adoption of European words, the creation of new ones and the expansion of old to encompass novel circumstances, objects and concepts. The adoption of English words involved more than a simple linguistic transfer. Foreign terms had to be significantly modified to assimilate to local pronunciation and orthography often producing sufficient alteration to disguise the borrowing to all but the expert ear. In some cases words were borrowed while meanings changed. Thus the Jodajoda called sheep wulubua deriving from the English word wool. Elsewhere words continued to be used in Aboriginal society after they had become archaic in English. The widespread use of musket words in the late nineteenth century and twentieth has been documented above. There are numerous examples of the expansion of traditional words to encompass new meanings. In Kalkatunga sugar was given the traditional name for honey, coins were called pebbles and writing called patterns. In Yidin the word dama which meant anything dangerous like a snake or centipede was extended to include alcohol, opium and medicines. Nineteenth century word lists contain many similar examples. Compasses were called circles in South Australia; in the Burdekin Valley watches were given the same word as the sun. In South Australia pots and kettles, through identification by shape, were given the traditional word for bottle-tree, in Victoria bottles were referred to as being emushaped. Introduced animals were sometimes given traditional names. In Gippsland European cats were given the same name as native ones, in Tasmania pigs were called wombats.\n\nThe various new formations were even more interesting. A simple device was to preface a traditional word with an expression meaning whiteman's as in white man's kangaroo for horse and white man's maggots for rice. Perhaps the greatest variety was shown in the various words coined for policemen\u2013knot maker or tier in Kalkatunga, tie up hands in Wergaren, chainman in Wade-wade, tier or binder in Yutilda, with stripes in Yidin, jumping ant in Gugu-Yalanji, octopus in Gippsland, hatturned-up in Wandwurril, the bitter ones among clans around Boroloola, and in Walbri two words expressive of a significant emotional dichotomy, angry person and elder brother.\n\nEuropean animals called forth a variety of new words. Rabbits were called stand up ears and white bottom in Wembaweba and long ears in Wergaga. In various other Victorian languages sheep were called soft feet and feed on ground, pigs were termed turn ground and roosters call for day. There were several examples of onomatopoeic words\u2013boo.oo for cattle and ba.ba for sheep in Tasmania, gump-gump and neighit-neighit for horse in the Western District. A few other words illustrate the diversity of the Aboriginal linguistic response. In Kalkatunga wind-mills were called turn-turn water-fetchers while boots were termed foot-stinkers in Ngalooma. Clans around Newcastle called peaches tah-rah-kul or literally 'to set the teeth on edge'.\n\n# PAINTING\n\nChange and continuity in Aboriginal languages were paralleled by post-contact development of painting on both rock and bark. In many parts of Australia references to Europeans, their artifacts and animals can be found amid the vast assortment of traditional figures which cluster and overlap at rock-art sites. Around the northern coasts ships, recognizably rigged as schooners, praus or luggers sail incongruously through seas of alien iconography. Feral cats appear among massed marsupials on Hammersly Station; horse and bullock tracks are engraved on the walls at Goat Rock Site in Central Queensland; four horses appear on painted walls on the Cobar Pedeplain. At Laura a giant horse eleven feet long and seven-feet high bestrides the rock shelter. Rifles, revolvers and axes appear at a number of sites and here and there Europeans are depicted\u2013on horseback, with hats and clothes. In the rock shelter near Ingaladdi waterhole in the Northern Territory a nameless drover has been immortalized driving his horses and cattle across the sandstone wall. Painting on trees or bark have generally not survived but nineteenth-century reports leave a few valuable references like the tree painting of a ship in full sail seen on the Darling Downs or the charcoal sketches of a large party of natives spearing a white man seen by G. A. Robinson in Central Victoria. A Tasmanian settler discovered that inland Aborigines were in the habit of 'representing events by drawing on the bark of trees'. He reported that:\n\nthe march of a certain party over a country before unfrequented by us was found a short time afterwards drawn with charcoal on a piece of bark, by a tribe of natives who [had] been observed attentively watching their movements. The carts, the bullocks, the men, were distinctly represented, according to the exact numbers that really existed.\n\n# MUSIC AND DANCE\n\nEuropean tunes, words and themes were gradually introduced into secular songs and corroborees. In the early 1840s G. A. Robinson discovered that 'Italian melodies' were being adopted by Victorian blacks; were sung by the young people with considerable ability and were passing quickly from clan to clan while J. Mathew noted a little later in Queensland that English popular songs were often woven into corroborees. A settler from the Hume River told a government inquiry in 1849 that local blacks punctuated their songs with calls of 'Halleluyah' and 'Oh be Joyful'. Threlkeld heard groups around Newcastle singing and some had 'attempted with no bad effect to imitate the sacred music of the church'. When out in the bush Eyre frequently lay awake to listen to Aboriginal singing. A sentence or two of English, was, he wrote, often introduced by way of direct quotation while 'Europeans, their property, presence, and habits, are frequently the subject of these songs'. Corroborees were composed featuring dramatic events of settler society. Moreton Bay blacks created one about the wreck of the S.S. Sovereign in 1847. Murray River clans created one about the first steamship which sailed the inland waterway. The Rockhampton camp performed a train dance when the railway reached central Queensland; South Australian Aborigines were likewise inspired by the sight of the steam train and sang:\n\nYou see the smoke at Kapunda   \nThe steam puffs regularly   \nShowing quickly, it looks like frost   \nIt runs like running water   \nIt blows like a spouting whale\n\nBarbara Thompson described a white man, or 'ghost ship' dance created by the Mount Ernest Islanders in Torres Strait. Two men were dressed up as Europeans with masks made from light coloured bark and rind from coconut trees. She explained that:\n\nthey don't whiten the mask but put red on the cheeks and leave the other part their natural light yellowish colour... they rubbed white on their legs and wore shirts the white men had given them... they sing songs about ships, that they are gone away to their own land and will come again with biscuits, tobacco and knives and shirts\n\nAboriginal interest in and acute observation of European animals found expression in horse and cattle dances witnessed by Europeans in a number of places during the nineteenth century. There are several accounts of the horse dance of the Tasmanians. Robinson explained how the participants crawled around the fire upon hands and knees, shook their heads, stopped and then imitated horses feeding. A second account detailed how the dancers took hold of each other's loins, followed one another, and then simulated the prancing of the animals while a woman played the part of the driver gently tapping them with a stick as they passed. Several writers left accounts of Queensland cattle dances. The squatter G. S. Lang was most impressed with the accuracy of the imitation; the action and attitude of every individual member of the entire herd being 'ludicrously exact'\u2013some lay down chewing the cud, others stood scratching themselves with hind feet or horns, licking themselves or their calves while several rubbed against each other 'in bucolic friendliness'.\n\n# DOMESTIC ANIMALS\n\nAboriginal reactions to introduced animals is an important aspect of contact history although available evidence is scattered and inadequate. It seems appropriate to distinguish between the response to cattle and sheep, which will be discussed below, and to horses and dogs. One of the most impressive examples of successful adaption was the Tasmanian's utilization of dogs which in a few years became important in tribal society, both for hunting and a variety of other purposes. In a remarkably short time Island blacks had learnt how to control and employ large dog packs. Robinson found that 'the tact these people have in quieting their dogs' was 'truly surprising'.  Some lessons were undoubtedly learned from the settlers, the Launceston Advertiser reporting the discovery of several pieces of bullock-hide rope to which were attached little collars which Island blacks used for the purpose 'of securing their dogs'. But there was evidence of independent adaption as well. Hunting techniques were modified, huts were sometimes enlarged to accommodate the dogs and in southern Tasmania large bark catamarans were built to enable them to be transported across estuaries and out to off-shore islands. Rhys Jones observed that the Tasmanians sought dogs avidly:\n\nincorporating them into their culture with extraordinary rapidity. In so doing they adapted their hunting methods, and managed to make the profound social and psychological adjustments necessary in setting up an affectionate relationship with the new animal, a relationship radically different from anything that they had had with other animals.\n\nIt was much easier for blacks to acquire European dogs than horses which were many times more valuable and therefore closely guarded. Wild horses were hard to catch and domesticate and their size and speed made them objects of awe and fear. The rapidity of pastoral expansion precluded the possibility of a gradual acquisition of the techniques of horsemanship. Yet clearly Aborigines did sometimes succeed in taking horses from the settlers or catching stray ones and then experimenting in their use. In 1883 Edward Curr published a translation of an Aboriginal song relating to such a case although it is impossible to date the piece. Yet it clearly deals with a tentative approach to horse riding:\n\nHalloo! (a)-horse, (canst) thou wild ride?   \nNo! of -horses I (am) afraid.   \nThou why afraid?   \n(The) -horse (might) -throw -(me)   \n(my) bones (Might) -break.   \nTry thou, mount, (to see) whether   \n(he will) -buck.   \nThou-indeed for-the-horses-go, we   \n(shall) -lie in-the-scrub, i.e., camp out.   \nIn-a-little-while (we shall) -go, (the)   \nground (is) damp at-present.\n\nA native police officer in Central Queensland reported seeing a group of young Aborigines experimentally riding fat wethers round a bush clearing. There are accounts from north Queensland of horses being taken and used by blacks before they had 'come in' to European settlement. A Flinders River squatter complained to the Queensland Government that local clans took his horses and rode them sometimes three at once, while an early Cloncurry settler remarked that 'as an instance of their advancement by contact with the whites, the natives have discovered the adaptability of a sheet of bark as a substitute for a saddle'. Yet another outback squatter wrote in anguish to the Brisbane papers complaining that the blacks not only killed cattle and attacked stations but also stole the horses:\n\nto drive the cattle to wherever they may think fit to slaughter them; a thing probably not on record before. It is well known that the blacks in this district have now in their possession five saddle horses which they put to this use.\n\nIn 1884 a police constable found a stockyard in the bush containing two horses which were being regularly fed and ridden by the local Aborigines. A few years earlier a Queensland Native Police detachment followed a group of Aborigines who had speared a European and taken his horse. They led the animal through miles of broken country, hobbled it at night when they camped and practised riding during the day. The catching and corralling of European animals will be considered more fully below. But what of the impact of new commodities on Aboriginal material culture?\n\n# EUROPEAN ARTIFACTS\n\nThe early and widespread adoption of iron has been already mentioned. Its advantages were quickly apparent\u2013it was hard, durable, pliable and easily sharpened and maintained in that condition. It was used for a whole range of implements and weapons\u2013for spearheads, axes, knives and even for boomerangs. Blacks on the west coast of Tasmania collected rust from a shipwreck and after grinding and mixing with water used it as a substitute for ochre. Iron was absorbed into traditional technology and was usually hafted and secured with gum and sinews in the customary manner. It must have often been shaped and sharpened by many hours of grinding and hammering with stone tools. The Queensland explorer R. L. Jack observed that Cape York Aborigines fashioned 'with infinite pains' such 'unconsidered trifles' of old iron as shovels, broken pick heads, scraps of iron hoops, ship's bolts, telegraph wires, nails, cartwheel tyres into weapons and implements. The anthropologist Donald Thomson observed that by the 1920s iron had replaced wood or bone headed harpoons in the armoury of the dugong hunters on the coast of Cape York. 'When it is remembered', he wrote:\n\nthat the only iron available to the native is in the form of odds and ends discarded by the white man, and that his only tools are an unlimited quantity of pumice stone or coral limestone, and perhaps an old discarded file or two, the results he achieves are often remarkable. The bush Aborigine, even after he has learned to use iron for his weapons, has no knowledge of the working of iron hot... if an iron rod, or a piece of wire is to be straightened out, this is always done cold. For the rest he depends upon his natural deftness in technological matters, and an inexhaustible patience.\n\nDid Aborigines elsewhere learn how to use heat when working with iron? Cape York blacks had no direct contact with European settlements. Whites arrived, if at all, by boat. It is just possible that on the vast land frontier knowledge of metal technology passed back beyond the edges of white settlement. Clans in contact with European townships or stations would have soon become aware of the importance of the blacksmith and we can assume were curious about his function and methods. But the Wiradjuri of central New South Wales seem to have been the only people to coin their own term for the blacksmith whom they called burguin mudil or literally the beater out of tomahawks. Beyond that the evidence is very scarce. Europeans occasionally found iron weapons in Aboriginal camps which they assumed had been shaped while the metal was hot but their testimony is far from conclusive.\n\nAfter iron, glass was probably the most important addition to the traditional tool kit. Initially it may have been confused with quartz crystals and therefore assumed to possess magical powers, but its utilitarian properties were ultimately much more important. Glass was even more amenable than iron to the various stone-working techniques\u2013either chipping of flakes or the grinding and sharpening of solid spearheads from thick bottle glass. But successful working in glass could only come with a great deal of experimentation with the medium and accumulation of expertise about its unique properties. Despite the widespread adoption of iron and glass in Aboriginal society there seem to have been some who refused to accept innovation, persevering with traditional stone technology. Horne and Aiston reported that in Central Australia in the early twentieth century there were a few 'strictly conservative workers' who used stone even for the 'rough hewing of the boomerang' and who refused to use bottle glass for 'smoothing down the ridges'.\n\nThe Aborigines were intensely interested in European goods and they expertly pilfered from explorers and pioneers. Mitchell greatly admired their deftness, explaining one technique which involved treading softly on a desired article, seizing it with the toes, passing it up the back or between the arm and side to conceal it in the arm pit or between the beard and throat. Aboriginal camps often became curiosity shops of collected European artifacts. One in Gippsland in 1841 for instance was found to contain a large variety of clothing including shirts, trousers, frocks and a Mackintosh cloak; dress material, thread, thimble, blankets, tools, bottles, the tube of a thermometer, one seal-skin hat, muskets, tomahawks, a pewter two gallon measure, pewter hand basin, camp kettle, two children's copy books, one bible, London, Glasgow and Aberdeen newspapers.\n\nPerhaps few clans were as successful at collecting European goods as this one. Yet contact with the settlers often led to a rapid increase in the number of possessions in any one camp, creating novel problems of transport and storage. Often the newly acquired objects were simply left behind, being too heavy and cumbersome to be carried about from camp to camp. But the unique problem seems to have called forth creative attempts to provide permanent storage of a kind probably unknown in traditional society. Three European observers provided accounts of such structures. Robinson found that Tasmanian blacks had dug a hole to secure their new possessions, had laid grass and bark at the bottom, stones and bark around the stores and a wooden structure above-ground to mark the spot. In central Queensland a generation later a squatter came across a 'plant' of stolen goods. Logs had been placed on the ground to provide a platform for food of all sorts as well as clothes and tools and the whole cache\u2013a drayload and more\u2013had been carefully roofed with bark stripped from nearby trees. An even more interesting case was discussed by William Thomas the Assistant-Protector of Aborigines at Port Phillip. In 1840 he followed up a party of Gippsland blacks who had attacked a station on the eastern fringes of European settlement. They had taken everything from the station that was moveable and on their return to their own country had constructed what Thomas termed, 'two devices'. At the ford of a river they had cut down trees and saplings and made a bridge 'to enable them to more rapidly convey their booty to yonder side'. On the far bank was another structure. Thomas' description is far from clear but he called it an 'artificial grove of saplings and tea tree' which extended for some yards and which had been used as a depot for storing the stolen goods.\n\nThere are two other references to modified building techniques during the period of early contact, one contemporaneous, the other resulting from recent archaeological work. Jorgenson observed in the 1820s that as the Tasmanians were increasingly forced out of the river valleys and into the mountains they began building 'stone structures, not the least resembling the usual wigwams'. In western Victoria scholars have found examples of stone houses with central fireplaces which it is assumed date from the period after contact as the sites yielded such traditional relics as stone flakes admixed with broken glass and clay pipes.\n\n# WHITE MEN'S FOOD\n\nTraditional patterns of cooking and eating underwent a change as well. In most parts of Australia mutton, beef and rabbit meat were added to diets diminished by the impact of settlement. Culinary practices were modified accordingly. There are numerous reports of the evacuation of large earth ovens to accommodate bullock carcases. Thomas Mitchell claimed that in the 1840s in one district of northern New South Wales ovens had been used for the consumption of up to twenty head of cattle a day. Some settlers thought that the blacks had adopted these methods after observing European boiling down works but it seems more probable that they simply adapted existing techniques for cooking the larger marsupials.\n\nChronic insecurity following the European invasion apparently increased the desire to preserve and stock-pile food. As old certainties vanished clans sought new ways to maintain their food supply. Beef and mutton fat was stored and carried in small bark bags or in the knotted legs and arms of European trousers and shirts. Central Australian blacks collected pieces of cow-hide which they soaked, cooked and then ground up before eating. Legs of lamb and mutton were preserved by smoking and apparently carried on walkabout for future use. A Western District pioneer reported that on raiding a local camp he found the remains of many sheep and 'a quantity cut up in hams, which had been smoked and hung up to dry'. In 1865 a central Queensland squatter came across what he called 'a perfect meat curing establishment' hidden in coastal mangroves. The meat had been cut up and portions of it were being smoked.\n\nEuropean flour rapidly won approval over the laboriously collected and prepared indigenous cereals and became one of the favoured targets for Aboriginal raids on stations, tents and drays. Traditional methods of cooking cereals merged with damper making techniques used by Europeans all over frontier Australia. In various parts of the continent blacks attempted to preserve and stockpile supplies of flour. In 1805 a European party was shown forty bushels of wheat 'secreted in a single cavity' on the fringes of white settlement. The hoarders were apparently blacks and not renegade Europeans. In 1830 Tasmanian settlers found a hundredweight of flour baked into dampers in an Aboriginal camp. Queensland police came upon a camp in the rainforest near Maryborough in 1867 and discovered a three hundredweight store of sweet potatoes and a two foot pile of damper and there were similar reports from other parts of Australia. Tea and sugar were also found in Aboriginal camps. In Tasmania the frequent discovery of tea-pots would suggest that the local clans had begun to brew the beverage in the approved European manner. Tobacco was also widely disseminated on the other side of the frontier; its addictive appeal was one of the more powerful forces attracting Aborigines to European settlement. Lumholtz reported that in north Queensland tobacco was bartered, wrapped up in leaves, and was consequently 'known among remote tribes who have never themselves come into contact with Europeans'. There seems no doubt that the desire to obtain tobacco drove many blacks in towards the nearest source of supply. A woman on the Etheridge gold field reported a typical incident. Two strange Aborigines suddenly appeared before her tent. They kept pointing to their mouths saying 'toomback' 'toomback'. When given a supply they quickly disappeared. At much the same time in central Australia Chewings observed that 'the craving for tobacco, in both sexes, is intense'.\n\nEuropean artifacts eventually affected almost every aspect of Aboriginal life. Even the practices and possessions of the 'clever men' or 'doctors' were influenced and the new commodities joined the stones and bones which they seemingly drew from injured or diseased bodies of ailing patients. In his memoirs Simpson Newland recalled that he had seen clever men in South Australia and western New South Wales produce, as the cause of sickness, a bullock's tooth, the bottom of a tumbler, a piece of the jawbone of a sheep, fragments of pottery. Horne and Aiston reported the case of a 'clever man' from central Australia who drew nails and wire out of a patient's chest while Howitt referred to a man who attributed acute rheumatism to the fact that an enemy had put a bottle into his foot. Blacks around Echuca were said to prepare powerful magic by mixing the dried and powdered flesh of a dead man with tobacco which was then given to the unsuspecting victim to smoke. It was a common practice in traditional society to apply heat to an object belonging to an intended victim thereby causing intense pain and even death. Howitt observed that blacks on the Wimmera River successfully adjusted their methods to the new circumstances which followed white settlement. They found the kitchen chimneys of the sheep stations unrivalled places where the object in question could be subjected to prolonged heat.\n\nBecause the Aborigines sought European possessions the settlers assumed they were full of admiration for the skill of white craftsmen and the ingenuity of their manufactures. Such beliefs were central to the European presumption that Aborigines were overawed in face of settler power and material abundance. But it may not have been like that at all. Manufactured goods were not intrinsically more complex or impressive than those occurring naturally. With no experience of European methods of production Aborigines assumed that the newcomers' possessions were organic products of an exotic natural environment. The tribal father of Davis, the Moreton Bay escapee, was given a pocket watch taken from a frontier shepherd. While it ticked he thought it was alive: when it stopped he 'took it for a stone'. Thompson noted similar reactions among her Cape York hosts. Having been on board the Rattlesnake they asked her if the cups and saucers they had seen walked about like shell-fish. As she told her chronicler, O. W. Brierly, the Aborigines thought:\n\nour bottles are shells and ask what kind of fish live in them and where they are found and wonder that there are none of them on their own beaches.\n\nContinuity and change thus ran like an intricate plait through the history of early contact. Aborigines were curious about Europeans, sought their artifacts and were innovative in a wide range of situations. Yet traditional beliefs and assumptions continue to display a strength and resilience resistant to even the most traumatic consequences of the invasion like firearms and epidemic diseases.\n\n# GUNS\n\nGuns were alarming weapons\u2013they made a noise that could be equated only with thunder, could kill and injure at great distance with an unseen missile that often left a wound apparently incommensurate with the resulting injury. Running parallel with the development of tactics to avoid exposure to the lethal firepower was the endeavour to understand the secret of the new weapons. The initial assumption seems to have been that guns were magic. The oral tradition of the Flinders Range-Lake Frome people contained reference to their first experience of firearms. While they were watching the progress of an early exploration party the Europeans shot two crows and a kangaroo, all at considerable distance:\n\nThis was the most startling thing they had seen. Just the bang and there were the things dead... there was much discussion again that night as to how the kangaroo and crows were killed and what killed them. Some suggested it was muldarpie [devil] that did it; it was some years before they could solve that problem.\n\nThe idea that guns were magical at least brought them onto familiar ground for the 'clever men' were almost universally thought to be able to kill at a distance by projecting missiles\u2013quartz crystals, pebbles and the like\u2013through the air and into the bodies of intended victims. In her study of the Euahlayi tribe Mrs K. L. Parker referred to the moolee or death dealing stone which was said to knock a person insensible or even 'strike him dead as lightning would by an instantaneous flash'. R. M. Berndt described the process more precisely while discussing the survival of magical practices in the twentieth century. The clever man, he explained:\n\nconcentrated upon the victim, and moving his chest and shoulders forced the crystal up so that it passed out of his mouth and, travelling at such a velocity that it escaped the notice of other men, entering the victim.\n\nA related belief was that it was possible for clever men to load spears, clubs and boomerangs so that they sped straight to the chosen victim, were unavoidable, and produced paralysis on contact.\n\nEuropean weapons were manifestly dangerous, but not necessarily more so, or more mysterious, than the magic of powerful clever men. Perhaps the most surprising thing about guns for those with little experience of the invaders was that every white man seemed to be able to activate the magic rather than a few select 'men of high degree'. The suggestion that European ballistics were seen in terms of traditional magic received some confirmation from the reminiscences of two elderly Aborigines recorded recently in southern inland Queensland. Both old people recalled the importance of corroborees in the camp life of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the discipline imposed on women and children by the 'clever men' who had become the 'doctors' in the narrative. The old man recalled that 'no-one was ever to laugh or speak at the corroboree, or the doctor there'd give them the bullit'. The old lady confirmed that 'they'd say bullit hit you' if there was any defiance of taboos. Thus the ability of the clever men to kill those defying tribal lore had become closely related to the power of European firearms even down to the creation of the verb 'to bullit' to describe the process.\n\nYet the need to understand the mechanism of guns continued if only to allow the Aborigines to co-opt the European firepower. Knowledge of the range of firearms and frequency of fire was quickly learnt and may even have passed back beyond the frontier. Guns were stolen both to deny them to Europeans and to examine them more closely. Eventually some Aborigines learnt how to use and maintain stolen weapons even experimenting with local flints to provide the spark and with stones as projectiles. By the late 1820s the Tasmanian clans had mastered the mysterious weapons and their success was mirrored elsewhere. Robinson discovered that island Aborigines had hidden caches of well maintained guns which they could handle proficiently and shoot accurately. In 1832 he was shown a hollow tree armoury containing muskets which were primed, loaded and in 'good condition with a piece of blanket thrust into the muzzle'. One of the last island blacks to be brought in from the bush had in his possession:\n\na very excellent carbine for the preservation of which he had made a case from the skin of the kangaroo\u2013he stated further that numerous firearms were concealed in the woods.\n\nThe linguistic evidence concerning guns is of limited use because the widespread adoption of 'musket' words concealed rather than illuminated Aboriginal thinking on the subject. But in some languages there was an obvious attempt to relate gunfire to familiar experiences or objects. Port Lincoln clans used a word for gun meaning also club or stick; those around Perth coined the term winji-bandi. G. F. Moore explained that it meant:\n\nliterally an emu leg or shank, perhaps from the thin handle part of a gun resembling in its carving the rough grains of the skin of an emu's leg. A double-barrelled gun is described as having two mouths. A gun with a bayonet, as the gun with the spear at its nose.\n\nElsewhere words were used which related gunfire to making fire by friction or to banging, rattling or echoing noises. Teichelmann reported that South Australian Aborigines called guns pandapure which appears to have been formed by joining two other words\u2013parndendi meaning to crackle and sparkle and pure meaning a stone. James Gunther recorded that the Wiradjuri of northern New South Wales called muskets barrima from the word barrimarra which meant to get fire by rubbing. In the Gidabal dialect of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland guns were termed dululbi which derived from a word meaning rattling and echoing noises. The Aranda called bullets mukuta anna or the fruits or kernels of muskets while the Kalkatunga coined an even more graphic term for rifle which meant literally holemaker.\n\n# INTRODUCED DISEASE\n\nAborigines clung to their own theory of illness despite the traumatic impact of introduced disease. E. S. Parker, the Assistant-Protector of Aborigines at Port Phillip, reported that the Loddon River blacks rejected the medical advice of the Government doctor despite the serious health problems facing them. They remained convinced that disease was caused by the malignant magic of distant tribes. The one exception which they would allow was venereal disease which they associated directly with sexual contact with the Europeans. More of this interesting case will be made later. G. A. Robinson met a group of Western District Aborigines in 1845 who were apprehensive about a dispute with a neighbouring tribe who, they said, had the power of inflicting a plague. They were in daily expectation of such a visitation. What little evidence we have suggests that the tribes of south-eastern Australia believed malevolent sorcery was the cause of the epidemic\u2013probably of smallpox\u2013which ravaged large areas of the continent in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Wiradjuri attributed the disease to a malignant deity who lived in the south-west, down the river systems. The Euahlayi people of northern New South Wales believed that their enemies sent it in the winds 'which hung it on the trees, over the camps, whence it dropped onto its victims'. In Victoria the source of the disease was believed to be the unleashing by distant tribes of the devastating power of Mindye the Rainbow Serpent. Smallpox was actually called moo-noole mindye, or monola-mindi, the dust of serpent, the skin eruptions lillipe-mindije or lillipook-mindi, the scales of the serpent. The missionary Teichelmann reported that South Australian Aborigines had a song called Nguyapalti, a smallpox song which they said was the only means of stopping the disease. They had learnt it from tribes in the east from whence the disease itself had come.\n\nThe implications of these attitudes are important. Epidemic disease \u2013perhaps the most dramatic consequence of European invasion \u2013was interpreted in traditional ways as being due to human agency and amenable to curative magic. The powerful sorcery of distant tribes was more awesome and devastating than anything the Europeans could do. The Aboriginal way still held the key to the great forces of the universe. These were things which few Europeans even guessed at. Belief in the power of the 'clever men', in their ability to impart and cure disease, to foretell the future, to embark on spirit journeys; all of these survived the invasion. The anthropologists Elkin, Berndt and Reay discovered the amazing vitality of the Aboriginal view of the world while working with fringe and mission-dwelling blacks in New South Wales and Queensland in the 1930s and 1940s one hundred years or more after the initial dispossession.\n\n# SELF-CONFIDENCE\n\nThe intimate relationship with the land was a factor of great importance. On one level this was a matter of practical bush skills and profound knowledge of the environment. Aboriginal self-confidence was noted by Europeans from the earliest years of settlement. While writing about one of the first expeditions inland from Sydney Tench observed that the 'perplexities' of the Europeans afforded accompanying Aborigines 'an inexhaustible fund of merriment'. Robinson found that his black companions were continually testing his ability to find his way in the bush because they entertained 'but a mean opinion of the white people's knowledge'. The Brisbane pioneer Tom Petrie remarked that Aborigines laughed at the inability of the whites to match them in bush skills but perhaps an even more interesting observer was Schmidt the German missionary at Moreton Bay. When giving evidence before the 1845 New South Wales Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines he was asked if in his experience the Aborigines were 'conscious of inferiority' to the Europeans or did they think their own mode of life 'most pleasant and best'. From some of their own expressions, Schmidt remarked, 'I judged that they consider themselves superior to us'. The exchange continued:\n\nDo you mean that they consider themselves superior to the whole of the white race... or only convicts? To the whole; they preferred their mode of living to ours...\n\nAboriginal self-confidence was not based solely on the mastery of practical skills but on the spiritual relationship with the land, the sense of belonging and responsibility for performing the increase ceremonies which ensured the proper ordering of nature, the coming of the rain and the renewal of plant and animal life. Belief in the necessity and the efficacy of increase ceremonies continued on well into the period of European settlement. Europeans brought change and damage to many local ecologies but the larger rhythms of nature remained constant and predictable to those who had learnt the signs. It remained possible despite the European presence to go on believing in the causal link between tribal ceremony and the turn of the seasons. In June 1899 W. E. Roth met a celebrated rainmaker called Ngamumarko on the McIvor River who it was widely assumed had caused the devastating cyclone of the previous March which destroyed the pearling fleet in Princess Charlotte Bay. Darling River Aborigines told Simpson Newland that 'rain never fell without the exercise of aboriginal power, and but for them, the white man, his cattle and sheep, would perish miserably'. While that faith remained even the arrogant white man appeared to be the unwitting beneficiary of Aboriginal wisdom and power. That most Europeans were ignorant of the 'secret life' of the Aborigines merely confirmed their seemingly unquenchable faith in their own moral worth even in the midst of desperate post-contact poverty.\n\nAborigines were neither apathetic in face of the European invasion nor incurious about the newcomer's lifestyle. The historical record indicates that they were not locked into a rigid unchanging culture. They showed themselves just as capable of adapting to altered circumstances as the European pioneers who were learning to strike their own balance between continuity and innovation in the new world. Yet there were aspects of Aboriginal culture and philosophy which proved remarkably resistant to change. Traditional society was, therefore, both more conservative and more innovative than standard accounts have suggested with their picture of a culture too rigid to bend collapsing suddenly and completely under the pressure of European invasion.\n\nThere may be an important clue to Aboriginal behaviour in the attitude of the Loddon River clans to the ravages of venereal infection. While continuing to believe unshakeably in the traditional theories of disease they regarded V.D. as a post-contact phenomenon due to physical contact with Europeans and, unlike other illness, amenable to white medicine. Implicit in this reaction was the acceptance of a realm of experience new to Aboriginal society outside the sway of customary belief and practice. It may have been such judgements that broke the seal of custom and opened the way for innovation, creating in the process the complex pattern of continuity and change discussed to this point. But emphasis on cultural change and adaption should not obscure the overwhelming importance of the violent conflict accompanying the invasion of the continent.\n\n# Chapter 3\n\n# RESISTANCE: MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES\n\nAustralian historians have only recently rediscovered the violence used to secure the conquest and effect the pioneering of the continent. Yet almost every district settled during the nineteenth century had a history of conflict between local clans and encroaching settlers. Many of the Europeans who lived through the time of confrontation were quite realistic about the human cost of colonisation. A small town pioneer wrote in 1869 that his community 'had its foundations cemented in blood'. 'I believe I am not wrong in stating', observed another, that 'every acre of land in these districts was won from the Aborigines by bloodshed and warfare'. Black resistance in its many forms was an inescapable feature of life on the fringes of European settlement from the first months at Sydney Cove until the early years of the twentieth century. The intensity and duration of conflict varied widely depending on terrain, indigenous population densities, the speed of settlement, the type of introduced economic activity, even the period of first contact. Edward Curr, who had perhaps the widest overview of white-Aboriginal relations in nineteenth-century Australia, wrote the classical account of frontier conflict:\n\nIn the first place the meeting of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia and the White pioneer, results as a rule in war, which lasts from six months to ten years, according to the nature of the country, the amount of settlement which takes place in a neighbourhood, and the proclivities of the individuals concerned. When several squatters settle in proximity, and the country they occupy is easy of access and without fastnesses to which the Blacks can retreat, the period of warfare is usually short and the bloodshed not excessive. On the other hand, in districts which are not easily traversed on horseback, in which the Whites are few in numbers and food is procurable by the Blacks in fastnesses, the term is usually prolonged and the slaughter more considerable.\n\nWhile black resistance has gained increasing recognition discussion of Aboriginal motivation is still rudimentary. Nineteenth century writers frequently discussed Aboriginal action but rarely analysed their motives. Compulsions of savagery were often propounded as a satisfactory explanation of black behaviour. 'There are some who affect to believe', observed a humanitarian squatter, 'that it is unnecessary to ask why a black has committed a murder'. 'The cause, say they, is sufficiently accounted for by his savage and blood-thirsty nature'. Modern scholars documenting the resistance have assumed, perhaps understandably, that opposition to invasion is so basic and universal a reaction, that it scarcely warrants discussion, while others have referred to an elemental territoriality. 'All living organisms', wrote Bauer, 'jealously defend to the best of their ability whatever portion of the earth's surface they inhabit'. Regardless of the ultimate value of such generalizations, they offer little to the historian seeking to describe and explain the variety and complexity of Aboriginal behaviour. Yet while biological determinism should be eschewed it is clear that land is central to any discussion of white-Aboriginal relations whether in the nineteenth or twentieth century. Such an investigation must begin with the nature of traditional ownership but that takes the reader into the centre of a major and long running anthropological debate.\n\n# LAND OWNERSHIP\n\nThere are two basic positions. Radcliffe-Brown argued, and has been supported more recently by Tindale and Birdsell, that Aboriginal Australia was divided into clearly defined, discrete territories with fixed and known boundaries. In an essay of 1913 Radcliffe-Brown referred to a 'very rigid system' of land ownership backed up with strict laws relating to trespass. In his classic 1930 study of the social organization of Aboriginal Australia, he defined the horde as a 'small group of persons owning a certain area of territory, the boundaries of which are known, and possessing in common proprietary rights over the land and its products'. In 1974 Tindale argued that all tribes claim and occupy a 'discrete territory with finite limits beyond which members have a sense of trespass'.\n\nThe second view, advocated by Hiatt, Meggitt, Petersen and others, is that boundaries were far less clear and social organization more complex than traditional theories have allowed. The very concept of the self-contained tribe has been called into question with the suggestion that Aborigines identified themselves according to kinship, marriage, territory, totemism, language and ceremony and that these overlapped and intersected in complex ways. Sutton has argued that descent groups owned constellations of sacred sites rather than neat parcels of land. While most of the sites were clustered together a significant number were separated by sites belonging to other groups while some sites were owned by more than one descent group. Estates, he concluded, were not 'whole blocks or tracts of country in the sense of surveyed real estate' but were 'collections of points in a landscape'. Land-use patterns were complex as well. Neighbouring clans intermingled, foraging and hunting on each other's territory; easements were provided for travellers, temporary hospitality for sojourners. While discussing the ritual and economic life of the Yir-Yoront of Cape York Lauriston Sharp carefully defined tribal attitudes to ownership, access and trespass:\n\nA majority of the Yir-Yoront clans have multiple countries which are not contiguous, and which vary from an acre or two up to a number of square miles in area. The countries of a clan, with their natural resources, are owned by all clan members in common... The right of exclusion is exercised only in exceptional cases, in which there is an actual or pretended drain on the resources of the land, indicating that one of chief functions of clan ownership of land is the apportionment and conservation of natural resources. The natives state that a clan may even forbid a man crossing clan territory to get from one of his own clan territories to another, but no example of such extreme clan action could be cited. People gather and hunt, ordinarily, in whatever country they will. Thus there is practically a standing permission which opens a clan's countries to all, but this permission may be withdrawn by the clan for those who are persona non grata.\n\nThe second strand of interpretation seems more pertinent for the assessment of the Aboriginal response to European explorers and pioneers. As a general rule clans did not react immediately to European trespass although illusions about returning relatives or fear of guns may have significantly modified their behaviour. Indeed the history of inland exploration indicates that local groups tolerated the passage of European expeditions provided they behaved with circumspection. On many occasions Aborigines hospitably allowed squatting parties to establish themselves and even assisted them during the first few weeks of their occupation. Clearly white and black perceptions of what was taking place were very wide apart. Unless forewarned Aborigines probably had no appreciation of the European's determination to stay indefinitely and 'own' the soil. After all the first white intruders came and went again in a way that would have fully accorded with black expectations. Even Morrell had difficulty in explaining the objectives of the first squatting party to enter his district. He persuaded his clan to go on a hunting expedition to the hill overlooking the camp of the pioneer stock-men but his kinsmen were doubtful if they would find the Europeans in the same spot as earlier reports had placed them. Thinking that the white men were the 'same as themselves', Morrell explained, 'they were not sure whether they were there'. Initially the white intrusion may have seemed an event of merely transient importance. Cape York Aborigines told the anthropologist Donald Thomson how the appearance of the Europeans fitted in with their sense of history and continuity. 'After the Big Men', they explained, 'the Middle People lived, last we come and we find the white man'. The expectation that the settlers would eventually go away lingered for many years in some places. In the 1960s old Dyirbal people in north Queensland still had 'a solid hope that one day the white man would be driven out, and the tribe would once more be able to resume peaceful occupation of its traditional lands'. The Europeans had been in the district for ninety years.\n\n# DISPOSSESSION\n\nThroughout Aboriginal Australia the appearance of strange blacks carried the threat of revenge killing, abduction of women or the exercise of potent magic. But it did not portend forced dispossession or exile from the homeland. While conflict was ubiquitous in traditional societies territorial conquest was virtually unknown. Alienation of land was not only unthinkable, it was literally impossible. If blacks often did not react to the initial invasion of their country it was because they were not aware that it had taken place. They certainly did not believe that their land had suddenly ceased to belong to them and they to their land. The mere presence of Europeans, no matter how threatening, could not uproot certainties so deeply implanted in Aboriginal custom and consciousness. The black owners may have been pushed aside but many refused to accept that they had been dispossessed; they never conceded the major premise of the invasion. Yet for others ejection from cherished homelands was a shattering experience. The missionary Francis Tuckfield discussed the 'white problem' with Port Phillip blacks who visited his station and complained about being driven from their favourite camping grounds. He concluded that they were acquainted with the 'relative possessions of the Black and White population' and they asked him: 'Will you now select for us also a portion of land? My country all you gone. The White Men have stolen it.'\n\nThe white invasion often forced blacks into a more assertive and possessive stance concerning clan territories. E. S. Parker came to the conclusion that it was an 'important and unquestionable fact' that the Port Phillip Aborigines were 'not insensible to their original right to the soil'. He referred to the experience of a settler who was confronted by an old man who told the whites to leave the district because the land and water belonged to the Aborigines. Robinson reported a similar case in the Western District where a party of Europeans were ordered by local blacks to depart because, they said, 'it was their country, and the water belonged to them, if it was taken away they could not go to another country'. A very similar response was reported at much the same time from Ipswich in southern Queensland. A large party of blacks marched up to a recently established station and ordered the Europeans to be off 'as it was their ground'.\n\nBut Aborigines reacted less to the original trespass than to the ruthless assertion by Europeans of exclusive proprietorial rights often from the very first day of occupation. It was behaviour probably unheard of in traditional society. Increasingly the newcomers impinged on accustomed patterns of life, occupying the flat, open land and monopolizing surface water. Indigenous animals were driven away, plant life eaten or trampled and Aborigines pushed into the marginal country\u2013mountains, swamps, waterless neigh-bourhoods. Patterns of seasonal migration broke down, areas remaining free of Europeans were over utilized and eventually depleted of both flora and fauna. Food became scarcer and available in less and less variety and even access to water was often difficult. Attacks on sheep and cattle, made frequently in desperation, provoked violent retaliation: reprisal and revenge spiralled viciously.\n\nThe missionary William Ridley described the fate of a group of Balonne River blacks in the 1840s. Their situation was typical of what happened all over the country:\n\nOn this river the effect upon the aborigines of the occupation by Europeans of the country was forcibly presented. Before the occupation of this district by colonists, the aborigines could never have been at a loss for the necessaries of life. Except in the lowest part of the river, there is water in the driest seasons; along the banks game abounded; waterfowl, emus, parrot tribes, kangaroos, and other animals might always, or almost always, be found. But when the country was taken up, and herds of cattle introduced, not only did the cattle drive away the kangaroos, but those who had charge of the cattle found it necessary to keep the aborigines away from the river... After some fatal conflicts, in which some colonists and many aborigines have been slain, the blacks have been awed into submission to the orders which forbid their access to the river. And what is the consequence? Black fellows coming in from the west report that last summer very large numbers, afraid to visit the river, were crowded round a few scanty waterholes, within a day's walk of which it was impossible to get sufficient food... that owing to these combined hardships many died.\n\nCeremonial and religious life was disrupted by the settler incursion. Important sacred sites were desecrated, albeit unwittingly in many cases, access to them denied and large ceremonial gatherings often dispersed by anxious frontiersmen or officious police detachments. Cave paintings were daubed with graffiti, sacred boards stolen. Members of the Horn Scientific Expedition of 1894 found a cave of great religious significance in central Australia and took sixty wooden sticks and fifteen stone tablets but left axes, knives and other bric-a-brac in return. But dramatic events like desecration or dispossession were not the only sources of conflict; it often rose up out of bitter arguments between settlers and blacks who had lived in proximity and reasonable accord for some time before the outbreak of hostilities. Aboriginal women and European property were major causes of such confrontations. They were deceptively simple. Settlers caught blacks taking their property; angry shouting, blows, spearing and shooting followed. The pioneers usually assumed that Aborigines were compulsive pilferers and few historians have bothered to look any closer at the question although references to black greediness and cupidity abound in the literature. While it is true that European material abundance was a major focus of tension the assumption that Aboriginal envy was the principal cause of conflict is both superficial and ethnocentric.\n\n# RECIPROCITY VS PRIVATE PROPERTY\n\nAborigines could not help being struck by the quantity of possessions owned by even poorer settlers. But it is far from certain that they admired the whites for their abundance which must have appeared to lack any rationale. The jealous possession of large herds of animals would have seemed totally unnecessary especially when so few were killed for food. J. D. Wood, a settler who had shrewdly studied Aboriginal perceptions, commented that: 'greediness in us, is with them a great crime, their ignorance prevents them having a knowledge of the cost of our property.' The anthropologist Donald Thomson made similar observations about traditionally oriented people he studied in the 1920s. 'White men's meanness', he wrote, in hoarding great quantities of tobacco and other things which could not possibly be used in a day or two was 'hard for them to understand'.\n\nReciprocity and sharing were central to the social organization and ethical standards of traditional society. In her study of the Euahlayi tribe K. L. Parker illustrated how sharing was inculcated from the earliest age. Old women crooned charms over babies to make them generous in later life. She had often heard them singing a song which included the refrain:\n\nGive to me, Baby   \nGive to her, Baby   \nGive to him, Baby   \nGive to one, Baby   \nGive to all, Baby\n\nEuropean observers were struck by the importance of sharing in Aboriginal society. 'They are truly generous among themselves', wrote William Thomas of Port Phillip blacks in the 1840s. 'Meanness is rarely found among these people', noted Donald Thomson while on Cape York a hundred years later. Both men observed that reciprocity was so fundamental to Aboriginal society that the clans they knew had no word meaning 'thank you'. Thomas explained that while food was always distributed among those present it was not considered a gift in the European sense, rather as a right 'and no thanks to the giver'. He was, he thought, the first person 'that taught them the meaning of the word thanks'. European possessiveness was morally obnoxious especially as Aborigines assumed that whites had come by their goods without special effort or obvious virtue. J. D. Wood remarked that the blacks thought whites: 'had only to ask in order that we may receive anything we require and they think us culpable if we refuse them what they covet.' A pioneer squatter told a Queensland Parliamentary Select Committee in 1861 of a pertinent incident which had occurred some years before on the McIntyre River. Local blacks had killed a bullock and advanced on the hut of the beleaguered squatter with the animal's kidney fat stuck on their spears. They called out to the whites offering them a share of the fat saying 'that they were not like the whites themselves\u2013greedy'.\n\nAnger about European possessiveness was clearly one of the motives behind the taking and destruction of their stock and other property. Aborigines acted to make the whites share their goods; the motivation was as much political as economic. It was not so much the possessions that mattered as affirmation of the principles of reciprocity. The great disparity of property merely exacerbated tensions inherent in the situation. Innumerable small skirmishes over European possessions appearing to be little better than unseemly brawls, were in reality manifestations of a fundamental clash of principle, the outward showing of one of the most significant moral and political struggles in Australian history. The settlers were transplanting a policy of possessive individualism, hierarchy and inequality. Aboriginal society was reciprocal and materially egalitarian although there were important political and religious inequalities based on age and sex. Two such diametrically opposed societies could not merge without conflict. One or the other had to prevail.\n\n# SEXUAL COMPETITION\n\nConflict over women was a constant feature of relations between white and black, an aspect of contact stressed by nineteenth century observers and one much more familiar to Aborigines than the struggle for land and water. Women were a major focus of indigenous politics and control of their bestowal was perhaps the principal source of secular power in traditional society. The arrival of the Europeans saw the conjunction of an almost woman-less pioneer population and a society which allowed the ceremonial exchange of women and the offer of sexual favours as a means of hospitality or method of diplomacy. The resulting sexual symbiosis preceded, followed, even punctuated periods of interracial conflict. Some explorers reported the offer of women, others were discreetly silent on the matter, none admitted to temptation. Sturt noted that his camp was overwhelmed with offers of sexual accommodation while in the Centre; Giles found that attractive young women were brought up to his men one after another; while on his Lake Eyre expedition of 1874 Lewis observed that despite the fear his party evoked local clans sent 'as is customary with them six of their lubras as a peace offering'. When Moorhouse visited the tribes on the Lower Murray after intense conflict with the parties travelling from New South Wales to South Australia they told him that all the white people they had ever seen before asked for women to be brought up so they could have sexual intercourse with them.\n\nPhysical understanding, perhaps even mutual gratification, appears to have quickly bridged the gulf between the cultures but an understanding of the social and political ramifications of sexuality took much longer. For most frontiersmen an encounter ended abruptly with ejaculation and withdrawal; for Aboriginal women and their kin that was often just the beginning. The randy woman-less white man was not only encircled in warm flesh: he was also enmeshed in an intricate web of kinship. The acceptance by the settler of what seemed to be quick, casual copulation frequently involved him in expectations of reciprocity, and what was more, continuing reciprocity. Many apparently excessive demands for food, tobacco and the like came from blacks expecting European men to behave henceforth as classificatory brothers, sons and nephews. 'After that familiar intercourse', Moorhouse wrote, 'the Natives seem to claim a liberal and constant supply of food, and in case it is not given, they do not hesitate to use violence in obtaining it'. A similar situation was reported on the Gwydir River in northern New South Wales in the 1830s. Shepherds and stockmen had sexual relations with local Aboriginal women but when they subsequently 'refused the Blacks anything they wanted' attempts were made to kill them.\n\nBut beyond bad behaviour stemming from ignorance of Aboriginal custom European men deliberately cheated, raped and abducted black women. The emergent frontier custom of 'gin-busting' trampled over sexual customs and incest taboos. Moorhouse set out to unravel the reasons for black hostility on the overland route from New South Wales to South Australia and sought the help of a Sydney black who had made the trip several times. The riverine clans indicated that they were becoming enraged with the whites because they had:\n\nused the women... and much abused them. The abuse (they explained), consisted in the Europeans promising the Aborigines food, clothing and tomahawks for the use of their females, but the Europeans did not fulfil their promises, after gratifying their passions, the women were turned out late in the evening or in the night, and instead of the men having their promised rewards, they were laughed at and ridiculed.\n\nSexual relations between white men and black women were, then, a major source of misunderstanding, bitterness and conflict. But many Aboriginal attacks on Europeans were motivated by revenge for previous injury or insult whether there had been any sexual contact or not.\n\n# REVENGE\n\nRevenge was the mainspring of violence in traditional society, source of ever present anxiety about dangerous magic and surreptitious attack. Death was universally attributed to malevolent sorcery, necessitating an inquest to determine guilt and retribution which characteristically took the form of counter-magic or a revenge expedition aimed at the putative killer or a close relative. But while pay-back killing was endemic in traditional society it was usually contained within the resilient bonds of kinship for if clans were near enough neighbours to fight they were liable to be linked by at least classificatory, if not actual, blood relationships. Customary institutions and practices can be seen, therefore, to have promoted intermittent personal violence while at the same time inhibiting the development of widespread conflict. They fostered the feud but prevented escalation into warfare. Revenge killing was also related very closely to the dominant ethic of reciprocity. It was the means of restoring a status quo upset by prior death or injury; of reasserting the balance of rights and obligations. While discussing conflict in Murngin society the American anthropologist Lloyd-Warner observed that:\n\nthe fundamental principle underlying all the causes of Murngin warfare is that of reciprocity: if harm had been done to an individual or a group, it is felt by the injured people that they must repay the ones who have harmed them by an injury that at least equals the one they have suffered.\n\nHow did Europeans fit into this presumably age-old pattern of revenge and reprisal? Deaths resulting from frontier skirmishing could be directly attributed to Europeans and we do not know if inquests were considered necessary in such cases. It is distinctly possible that in the early period of contact Aboriginal enemies were thought to be implicated in marking down the particular victims to be killed by musket balls and bullets. White men may have been seen as unwitting agents of powerful black magic. Did blacks credit Europeans with the powers of sorcery attributed to their own 'clever men'? They initially assumed that guns were magic and may have associated death by European poison with sorcery. In several places in South-Eastern Australia the English word poison was borrowed to describe the powers of local 'clever men'.\n\nDespite the impact of the European invasion the whites may have appeared less formidable than they supposed. Western Australian blacks told the early settlers that they initially considered whites as inferior to themselves, that they saw the Europeans going about unarmed and open to attack, and felt sure of success. While guns were weapons to be reckoned with the Europeans were not necessarily perceived as being more dangerous than distant blacks whose potent magic was blamed for death by accident, disease, deprivation and exposure. At the very time that whites were shooting down blacks along the frontier more were also dying from other causes which were typically attributed to the malevolent sorcery of hostile Aborigines. Howitt related the story of a group of twenty-five Braidwood blacks\u2013men, women and children\u2013who died after drinking what was apparently poisoned alcohol. Blame for their deaths was attributed not to the whites, or even to misadventure, but to clans from Tumut or Goulburn who had put Gubburra or evil magic in their drink. Inter-clan fighting and revenge killing continued throughout the period of open conflict with the Europeans and indeed long after in some places. The pressure of the settlers on both Aboriginal society and the environment may have actually increased the amount of fighting between rival clans. In 1897 the German missionary Poland asked an Aboriginal informant how it was that so many local blacks had been killed in the previous twenty years. He was told that: 'Blacks have killed them, who are hostile towards us, or policemen or white men have shot them or the evil spirit got them.' However a pioneer New South Wales missionary argued that the growing tendency to attribute death to the whites had led to a decline of inter-clan feuding. It was, he wrote:\n\nformerly a custom, when any of their number died, to receive a challenge from another tribe to go to war, to vindicate themselves, from the imputation of having been the cause of his death\u2013but now, they usually attribute their visitations from death to the influence of white men. However unjust this may be to their white neighbours, it is certainly a blessing to themselves, as it saves them from many a desperate and bloody conflict.\n\nBut when Europeans were clearly responsible for the death of Aborigines the desire to exact due revenge remained strong although fear of guns and massive reprisals may have promoted caution and helped determine that sorcery rather than physical attack would be the preferred method of operation. A Western Australian pioneer wrote to the Perth Gazette in 1833 observing:\n\nthe doctrine of taking life for life seems perfectly established, and they avow their determination to act upon it, for though I expressed strong dissent they seemed thoroughly satisfied of its propriety.\n\nA generation later a Queensland squatter remarked that in his experience blacks took 'life for life in some shape or other' though it might take years to consummate and there is no doubt that Aborigines carried out carefully planned executions of specific Europeans for known crimes against kinsmen. Pioneer literature recorded many instances of the kind. In his reminiscences of early pastoral life in Queensland James Nesbit referred to the fate of one McLaren who was expertly tracked for a whole day and was eventually speared when incautiously putting down his gun. G. S. Lang recorded the death of a shepherd on Mt Abundance Station who, during twelve months, never relaxed for an instant while out on the run as he was aware of the determination of the local clans to kill him. A moment's inattention just before his contract expired was long enough to allow a spear to rip through his body. Then there was the case of Anthony Cox who was executed in the Maronoa in 1851. He had been under threat from local clans for three months; eventually an Aborigine walked boldly up to the shepherd's hut and drove a spear into him before the two other Europeans present could intervene although they subsequently shot the executioner.\n\nWhat happened when the guilty European was unknown or beyond reach? When dealing with other Aborigines the more experienced clan members could draw on their knowledge of kinship networks to determine who could appropriately be punished in particular cases. But with white men the situation was entirely different. The basic problem was that of accountability which was in turn dependent on Aboriginal perception of European social organization. Were whites to be considered as one people and thereby mutually responsible? They did speak the one language but on the other hand those in the bush were divided into small residential groups. This was one of those white problems probably widely discussed among Aborigines in contact with the settlers. Davis, the convict escapee, noted Aboriginal uncertainty when they were seeking to determine who to attack in revenge for the 1842 Kilcoy poisoning. They were considering an onslaught on the exploring party led by Thomas Petrie which ventured inland after landing in Wide Bay and asked Davis 'whether they belonged to the Whites who had poisoned their friends'. Davis deflected his kin from their projected attack by arguing that the explorers were totally different people because they had come from the sea and were therefore not accountable for the Kilcoy massacre which was perpetrated by shepherds who had arrived overland from the south.\n\nThe evidence provided by European pioneers underlines the variety of Aboriginal solutions to this problem. An experienced frontier squatter was asked by the 1861 Select Committee on the Queensland Native Police if he knew of any instance when blacks had taken revenge on members of one station for violence dealt out at another. He answered that his experience suggested that they confined their retribution to the family who had injured them. 'They do not make reprisals', he said, 'except to revenge themselves upon particular individuals'.  Twenty years earlier Swan River Aborigines 'seemed to intimate' that their revenge was limited either to place or person. They explained to a European confidant that they were 'very bad foes with respect to some districts' but very good or friendly 'with respect to others'. 'This shows', the settler concluded, 'they consider us devided [sic] into distinct tribes' although he endeavoured to show the blacks that Europeans were all the same; that 'to touch one offended all'.\n\nAs well as seeking to punish particular individuals Aborigines sought to keep revenge proportionate with the original offence as dictated by the principles of reciprocity. In at least some of their dealings with Europeans blacks sought to use violence to restore an equilibrium upset by previous conflict in a manner common in traditional society. This explains the often sporadic nature of Aboriginal attacks on Europeans, the way in which weeks or months of concord were succeeded by periods of antagonism. At Moreton Bay in 1843 the Commissioner for Crown Lands reported that local blacks boldly asserted 'their intention of having a certain number of lives of white men by way of compensation' for kin killed in conflict with the squatters. Blacks around Perth explained that after retaliation had been effected they considered that friendship had been restored. 'White man shoot black man, very bad', they said, 'black men spear white man, very good, very good, plenty shake hands'. Armstrong, the Aboriginal Interpreter, wrote to the West Australian Colonial Secretary explaining that local blacks said that because the settlers had shot one of them they had speared one of the white people and that consequently they were 'all friends now'. J. D. Wood, whose perceptions of Aboriginal behaviour were clearer than his prose, explained in a memo to the Queensland government in 1862 that:\n\nIf you (the Reader or Hearer) kill any Aboriginal his relatives catch me or any other White man supposed to be of the same nation, they will kill us, after which you, (the reader or hearer) may walk about amongst them in perfect safety.\n\nWhile discussing the consequences of the so called Battle of Pinjarra the Western Australian Advocate-General remarked that up until that event the local blacks had believed that, like themselves, Europeans balanced life against life and were 'content if we took a corresponding number of lives to those taken by them'. But the massive onslaught at Pinjarra had caused the 'complete annihilation of this idea'. These remarks are particularly pertinent because they relate to the impact of European violence on Aboriginal behaviour.\n\nTraditional society we can assume had been able to sustain the level of violence created by pay-back killing over long periods of time and inter-clan feuding continued undiminished until well after the Europeans arrived. Occasional fighting with whites may not have appeared a radical departure from these long accepted patterns of violence. But the settlers had no intention of allowing the continuance of a situation which challenged their monopoly of power and the absolute supremacy of the introduced legal code even though they frequently ignored it themselves when dealing with the Aborigines. Pioneer communities appeared to be unable to cope with the psychological tensions produced by even small amounts of inter-racial violence. The punitive expedition\u2013official and unofficial \u2013was the almost universal riposte. The objective was simple: the use of overwhelming force to crush resistance once and for all and drown in blood the Aboriginal determination to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Terror succeeded in many places. Massive force did achieve peace for the pioneer, subjection for the blacks. But elsewhere an ascending spiral of violence forced Aborigines to shift decisively into new patterns of behaviour, to concentrate more and more on the struggle with the settlers.\n\nAborigines were often stunned by the numbers killed in encounters with settlers determined to bring an end to conflict 'once and for all'. The violence must have appeared both totally disproportionate and indiscriminate, sweeping away individuals and sometimes whole local groups who had not necessarily been involved in attacks on the settlers. The desire for revenge, to measure life for life, became increasingly difficult to consummate. The problem of accountability was compounded by the length of the casualty list. At this point some shunned further violence turning to sorcery or sinking into quiescence. But amongst other groups two crucial decisions were made\u2013that white people were mutually accountable and responsible for each other's actions and therefore fit subjects of Aboriginal attack. Colour alone was now enough to identify the enemy. When those conclusions had been reached a shift of decisive importance had been made. For the groups in question the constraints of custom had been circumvented, they had moved from feud to warfare.\n\nInitially, then, the blacks had dealt with Europeans as though they too were Aborigines. Their violence was judicial rather than martial, seeking revenge rather than military victory. But the settlers were determined upon radical changes. They had no interest in peace and equilibrium until the invasion was fully effected and all resistance crushed. Till then violence was bound to escalate. Many contingent factors turned events in the same direction. Misunderstanding, fear and anxiety merged and simmered in the volatile frontier environment. Violent death and succeeding violent revenge built up brutal momentum as the settlers pushed further into Aboriginal Australia.\n\n# THREE CELEBRATED ATTACKS\n\nThree celebrated Aboriginal attacks on Europeans can be examined to illustrate these themes\u2013the Maria 'massacre' in South Australia in 1840, and the successful Aboriginal attacks on Hornet Bank and Cullinlaringoe in Queensland in 1857 and 1861 respectively. Each case was seen at the time as evidence of Aboriginal savagery and treachery and although well reported in contemporary newspapers there have been few satisfactory historical accounts of them.\n\nThe events leading up to the Maria 'massacre' were deceptively simple. The ship travelling from Hobart to Adelaide was wrecked off the Coorong. Twelve survivors were eventually killed by Aborigines who had initially helped them travel along the beach towards the mouth of the Murray. Six months after the event the Aboriginal side of the story was presented by Dr Richard Penny who as surgeon to the whale fishery at Encounter Bay had learnt the local language and arrived at a sophisticated understanding of traditional society. The blacks explained that they had helped the whites travel by carrying their children and providing them with fish and water. When they came to the end of their own country they tried to explain that they could go no further and demanded clothes and blankets in recognition of the trouble taken up to that point. The Europeans refused to give them anything, saying that when they reached Adelaide the blacks would be fully rewarded. They probably did not understand what the Aborigines were trying to tell them. The blacks attempted to help themselves. The whites resisted. Scuffles ensued, tempers flared, and the weaponless Europeans were killed. Their deaths were not inevitable. With a little luck the survivors might have reached Adelaide full of praise for the friendly blacks of the Coorong.\n\nIn October 1861 nineteen Europeans were killed by Aborigines at Cullinlaringoe Station on the Nagoa River in central Queensland. The district had only recently been settled and initially relations between blacks and squatters were amicable. Daniel Cameron, the pioneer of the area, reported that local clans had constantly assisted him during twenty months of occupation and in June 1861 the Commissioner for Crown Lands remarked that the blacks were quiet and friendly on both the Comet and Nagoa. But Native Police patrols were already changing the situation. The Commandant explained to the Colonial Secretary why he had decided to send a large detachment into the district. Blacks were reported to be gathering on the Comet and while they had been peaceably disposed they could not be trusted when able to muster in large numbers. In March the police attacked blacks in the area. Frederick Walker, managing a local property, complained to the Government, warning that Native Police action would inevitably lead to serious conflict. The whole tribe he said was 'dreadfully excited and accused me and all the Europeans, with complicity in what they rightly termed treachery'. C. B. Dutton, a neighbouring squatter, took the matter up with the leader of the detachment, Lieutenant Patrick, speaking of it as an 'unfortunate and untoward event'. According to Dutton's testimony Patrick justified himself by saying that:\n\nother Police Officers before they had been in the force a fortnight had sent in dispatches (I use his own words) 'of lots of blacks shot. And here had he been in the force six months before he had shot a single black'.\n\nLike Walker, Dutton impressed on the Government that the blacks were moved by feelings of:\n\ndeep implacable revenge for unprovoked injuries. They ask me why they are shot. They say 'bail no me kill white fellow... bail take ration, what for shoot him?' How are they to be answered, how appeased?\n\nAnd he answered with venom, 'there is but one answer, you are black and must be shot'.\n\nBut not all the squatters opposed the actions of the Native Police. In his memoirs Jesse Gregson recorded his part in the events of 1861. He established himself at Mt Rainworth Station in May. The local clans persistently endeavoured to establish friendly relations but were rebuffed each time. Gregson believed firmly in the policy of 'keeping the blacks out'. One of his shepherds lost a flock of 500 sheep. It was found by the blacks who began to drive it away. Gregson arrived with Patrick and his detachment and, as he termed it, a brush took place. The Aborigines determined on revenge. They gathered men from the scattered clans and attacked the recently established Cullinlaringoe. The Wills family, who were not expecting trouble, may have died totally unaware of what had gone wrong with the peaceful pattern of contact established during their few weeks in the district. They may have been attacked because they were the closest Europeans to the gathering point of the clans or perhaps they were regarded as the least prepared to repel an attack.\n\nThe events at Hornet Bank are fairly well known. The Frasers were managing the property and had close, if not always amicable, relations with the neighbouring Aboriginal clans camped on or near the station. An apparently well planned and unexpected attack was made late at night and all but one member of the household were killed. It appears that the women were raped before death\u2013an unusual accompaniment of Aboriginal attack Various attempts were made at the time to explain Aboriginal motivation but none could compete with the insistent references to the savagery and treachery. However there are scattered pieces of evidence which enable us to advance beyond the folk-wisdom of the frontier. The Honourable M. C. O'Connell told the 1861 Select Committee on the Native Police that the killings were a consequence of the young men 'having been in the habit of allowing their black boys to rush the gins' in neighbouring camps. Archibald Meston, the Queensland 'expert' on Aborigines, heard from a friend of the surviving Fraser son that the white employees of the family had whipped and raped two local Aboriginal girls. This story was confirmed by W. Robertson who claimed to have discussed the events of 1857 with old Aborigines who as youths had been present at the time. They reported that after the women were raped the local clans attempted to use sorcery against the offending Europeans. When that appeared to have no effect they sent an old woman to the Frasers to explain the circumstances and seek redress. When no action was taken by the whites the clans determined on revenge. So the evidence concurs on the importance of sexual attacks on Aboriginal girls but attributes blame variously to black and white employees of the family. But one account directly implicates the young Fraser men. J. D. Wood explained in a memo to the Colonial Secretary that when arriving in Queensland he made enquiries about Hornet Bank. He was told by a Mr Nicol who had been in the Native Police in 1857 that Mrs Fraser had repeatedly asked him to reprove her sons 'for forcibly taking the young maidens' and that in consequence she 'expected harm would come of it, that they were in the habit of doing so, notwithstanding her entreaties to the contrary'. Several other informants told Wood that the Frasers were 'famous for the young Gins' and all agreed 'that those acts were the cause of the atrocity'.\n\nOf the three cases discussed above the Maria 'massacre' was clearly the most unpremeditated, even accidental event, arising out of the tension and misunderstanding inherent in the situation following the shipwreck. At Hornet Bank and Cullinlarin-goe Aboriginal action was carefully planned and thoroughly considered and followed months of provocation\u2013harassment by the Native Police on the one hand, sexual molestation by some, if not all, the young men on the station on the other. Even the raping of the Fraser women appears in retrospect to have been a deliberate, political act. But there were other aspects of the attack on Hornet Bank which call for comment. It appears to have been part of what Wiseman, the local Commissioner for Crown Lands, called an 'extensive conspiracy'. Writing at a time of extreme anger and anxiety he may have mistakenly seen connections between unrelated events. Yet he noted that many circumstances supported his interpretation. Two or three days before the attack the black women and children left the stations on the Dawson and went away in one direction while the men went in the other. News of the successful onslaught was, he believed, known to blacks a hundred and more miles away well before local Europeans had heard of it. On receipt of the intelligence in the camps 'rejoicing immediately commenced'. Several other attacks were launched in the district at much the same time but they were unsuccessful. Wiseman referred to many other circumstances 'too tedious to relate' which illustrated the Aborigine's 'feeling of hatred' towards the settlers.\n\n# OVERVIEW\n\nWe may never know enough to accurately chart the regional variations of frontier conflict and Aboriginal resistance in every area of Australia. But in a few places the documentary evidence is plentiful. This is true of Tasmania where voluminous official reports, newspapers and other records can be balanced up with the detailed diaries of G. A. Robinson written while travelling extensively in what was still Aboriginal Tasmania. Robinson understood the Tasmanian dialects and spent many hours talking with the blacks at a time when conflict with the whites had reached a bitter crescendo. He provided by far the most important European account of Aboriginal motivation and the cumulative effect of settler brutality. Robinson realized that the Tasmanians had experienced 'a multitude of wrongs from a variety of sources'. The accumulation of private injury and personal tragedy fused to produce the bitter racial hatred and desperate resistance of the Black War of 1827\u20131830. 'They have' wrote Robinson:\n\na tradition amongst them that white men have usurped their territory, have driven them into the forests, have killed their game... have ravished their wives and daughters, have murdered and butchered their fellow countrymen; and are wont whilst brooding over these complicated ills in the dense part of the forest, to goad each other on to acts of bloodshed and revenge for the injuries done to their ancestors and the persecutions offered to themselves through their white enemies.\n\nThe more observant settlers noted the change in Aboriginal attitudes which took place during the second half of the 1820s. One told an official committee that although he had been aware of black hostility in the past it had previously been 'excited by some temporary aggression of the Whites the Remembrance of which gradually gave way to better feelings'. The desire for revenge had not originally extended beyond the 'Tribe; or family, in which it originated'. But the situation had changed and he now detected a 'determined spirit of hostility' among the whole black population. He concluded with the observation:\n\nI think the Blacks look on the whole of the white population as Enemies and are not sensible of any benefit they might derive from living with us on friendly terms.\n\nThe escalation of conflict which occurred in Tasmania in the 1820s was mirrored in other parts of the continent. The occupation of the northern pastoral frontier of New South Wales and Queensland witnessed a similar burgeoning of racial violence as the pastoralists moved deeper into Aboriginal territory. Bloodshed in one district built up expectations about its probability in the next. Squatters came over the horizon with their guns loaded ready to keep the blacks out until they were willing to submit. Expectation of conflict was diffused on the other side of the frontier as well. The pastoralists followed the river valleys and open savannah, riding along those channels of Aboriginal communication where information was most rapidly disseminated. Conflict of the late 1830s and early 1840s took place in north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland where inter-tribal contact was strengthened by the large gatherings to harvest the bunya trees in the ranges north of the Brisbane Valley. Refugees from conflict with the whites almost certainly found succour among clans still beyond the settlers' reach 'relating to each other the history of their wrongs'.\n\nThere was no G. A. Robinson on the northern pastoral frontier but it is possible to gather a little evidence from a variety of sources. Davis provided important material about the Aboriginal reaction to the poisoning of a large number of blacks\u2013probably fifty or so\u2013on Kilcoy Station in the upper Brisbane Valley in 1842. News of the terrible deaths spread widely in Aboriginal society over a significant area of southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. There was a large gathering in the mountains where, according to Davis, representatives of fourteen or fifteen different tribes were present. The suffering and terrible deaths of those poisoned were graphically mimed for the benefit of the visitors, a performance which Davis was later to repeat for his white rescuers. The anger of the assembled blacks was unmistakable. They were, said Davis 'much infuriated' by the news and swore to have vengeance. This decision was apparently widely and rapidly communicated. Schmidt, the German missionary at Moreton Bay was warned by friendly blacks that the tribes to the north had determined 'to attack and kill whites whenever they met any'.\n\nSimilar sentiments, relayed through intermediaries or expressed in frontier pidgin, were reported at various points from northern New South Wales to central Queensland. On the Mooney River in 1843 a group of blacks told beleagured shepherds holed up in their hut that they intended to 'kill or drive all the white fellows off the Mooney, McIntyre and Barwon Rivers'. At Wide Bay in 1851 a squatter reported that the blacks had sent messages through intermediaries to the effect that as soon as the bunya nut was ripe they intended to 'take all the sheep in the district and kill all the white men'. In 1856 when Charles Archer was about to cross the Fitzroy River the local blacks assembled in great numbers on the opposite bank and openly stated their determination to 'attack and destroy all the whites who might attempt the location of the country in that direction'. Two years later four shepherds were besieged in their hut on Camboon station. They offered their attackers all their possessions. But the blacks retorted that they wanted nothing but the lives of the white men and that they would also 'take the lives of all the b - y [sic] white men in the country'. In 1858 Wiseman wrote to his superior in Sydney about Aborigines who openly proclaimed that they would gradually murder all the whites and rid their land of the invader. He was an intelligent and experienced official and after fifteen years on the pastoral frontier had concluded that:\n\nno tribes will allow of the peaceable occupation of their country but, following the counsel of the boldest and strongest men amongst them, will endeavour to check the progress of the white men by spearing their sheep and murdering the shepherds. This I have known to be invariably the case... some solitary murder may occasionally occur owing to the wicked and foolish conduct of the white labouring man in his relations to the Blacks... but the greater number of murders which I know of in these districts I should attribute to the determination of the natives to pillage and murder till they can drive out the white men.\n\nThe evidence, then, suggests that Aborigines attacked and killed Europeans for a variety of reasons. At the time of earliest contact they struck down threatening beings who it was thought had come from the spirit world. Subsequently whites were killed in unpremeditated melees arising from the anxiety and tension inherent in frontier encounters. In many cases Aboriginal action was penal in objective, punishing Europeans as though they were fellow blacks in an attempt to impose on the newcomers the moral standards and social obligations of traditional society. The spear was used to assist the assimilation of the European into the Australian way of life. In many parts of the country, for at least some of the time, absorption of the small numbers of Europeans seemed the most practical solution to the white problem. It should not be seen as less realistic or less worthy than open confrontation which many must have realized from the start was bound to be both futile and suicidal. Assimilation was after all a policy premised on a self-confident belief in the value of Aboriginal society and culture. It was one method of defending them from the unprecedented challenge presented by European invasion. When this policy failed two alternatives remained\u2013acceptance of whatever corner could be found in the new order imposed by the settlers or an attempt to drive the invaders away. In many parts of the country the blacks fought a war against the Europeans. But it did not always begin when the whites first arrived. It was more common at the end of a considerable period of inter-action. In Tasmania, for instance, conflict did not climax for a generation after the first settlement. Elsewhere the shift from feud to warfare was more rapid but on the other hand there were districts where accommodation was achieved before the final stage of conflict was reached and others where massive retaliation crushed the black resistance almost before it began.\n\n# SORCERY\n\nThe role of sorcery is an important aspect of Aboriginal resistance hitherto overlooked by historians. Magic was, after all, widely used against enemies in traditional society, supplementing or supplanting physical attack. That it was similarly used against white foes is beyond doubt especially when open conflict carried such disproportionate danger for the Aborigines. Sorcery was probably employed in order to enhance the chances of success for attacks with spear and club during the earliest period of contact and continued to be used long after overt resistance had come to an end. In the Aboriginal mind this hidden side of the resistance may have been at least as significant as physical confrontation. Unfortunately for the historian magic was likely to have been performed in secret and kept hidden from intended white victims. Yet there is enough evidence to illustrate its importance. It comes from a variety of sources but the most valuable material was provided by officials of the Aboriginal Protectorate in Victoria and South Australia in the 1840s.\n\nIn October 1840 there was a crisis in white-Aboriginal relations at Port Phillip. Following widespread settler concern about black assertiveness in the districts around Melbourne a party of soldiers and border police under the command of Major Lettsom surrounded a large ceremonial gathering a few miles north of the town and captured the whole assembly. They were marched into town and imprisoned overnight. One man was shot at the time of capture and another while escaping from incarceration. The blacks were frightened and infuriated. G. A. Robinson reported that the most influential men amongst the tribes in Melbourne warned him that they intended 'returning to the mountains and forest ranges and killing every white man they could find unprotected'. E. S. Parker told a similar story. The blacks had said they would take to the mountains and try and 'drive the white fellows from the country'.  The Protectorate officials\u2013Robinson, Parker and Thomas\u2013worked hard to restrain the blacks and, given the lack of immediate physical retaliation, felt they had been successful in defusing the situation. But their accounts make it clear that the Aborigines channelled their anger into magic in order to unleash the horrifying power of Mindye the rainbow serpent on the whites and those blacks who were friendly with them, especially the Port Phillip clans. Thomas reported that the blacks from his station at Narre Narre Warren had fled because a celebrated Goulburn River 'clever man' had said the Mindye was about to come. Parker was even more specific. Several of the senior and influential blacks were, he observed, fully sensible of the injustices they had suffered. They warned that the dreaded Mindye would appear with the threat of a pestilence which was 'to sweep off the Port Phillip blacks and all the whites'. Reminiscing later he recalled that at the time of the Lettsom raid several old men told him confidentially that:\n\ndestruction was coming upon the white population not even excepting those whom they knew to be their friends. It was known that they were practising secret incantations with this object.\n\nMonths after the imprisonment Parker found that the Goulburn River clans were still furious about their treatment and were practising magic to call up the Mindye to destroy the Europeans and those Aborigines who had befriended them.\n\nThe reaction of Victorian Aborigines to capture and temporary imprisonment at the hands of Major Lettsom is of great interest. Their anger was intense and sustained. Direct physical retaliation was considered but rejected, whether owing to the advice of Robinson, Parker and Thomas, as they supposed, or to fear of retaliation is impossible to determine. The resort to magic illustrated a profound belief in their continuing power to counter the technological supremacy of the Europeans. It is ironic that they hoped to visit on the whites a pestilence similar to the great epidemic which had struck the Victorian Aborigines a generation earlier and which must have remained vivid in the memories of the older people. The hoped-for pestilence was described to Parker 'graphically enough as producing dreadful sores, dysentry, blindness and death' and he was later able to identify 'the threatened agent of destruction as smallpox'. Yet the action of Major Lettsom and his force was far less violent than the behaviour of whites in many other parts of the country. It is reasonable to assume that the only unique feature of the events in Victoria in 1841\u201342 was that there were three Europeans in close enough contact with the blacks to be able to report on their objectives and motivation.\n\nThomas noted a further but apparently unrelated case of anti-European sorcery at Port Phillip. An old and very celebrated 'clever man' was captured and imprisoned for sheep stealing. His incarceration caused great distress among blacks around Melbourne and news of it was carried to the corners of the Colony. Signal fires were lit and could be seen in all directions; messengers from seven different districts came in for urgent consultation; the Melbourne blacks pleaded with Thomas to let the 'clever man' go. When he explained that he was unable to secure the release the several hundred town blacks fled into the bush warning Thomas that the whites should leave for Sydney or Van Diemens Land because the sorcerer would unleash the Mindye. In 1849 there was a similar occurrence in Adelaide. The local Protector of Aborigines reported that four blacks had arrived from the north with the alarming news that 'clever men' were about to create havoc in the town. Many Aborigines fled to escape the threatened catastrophe. Edward Eyre referred to a similar situation a few years earlier when the appearance of a comet convinced South Australian blacks that powerful northern sorcerers were about to destroy Adelaide because a senior man of their tribe had been imprisoned in the local gaol. The comet, Eyre was told, was: 'the harbinger of all kinds of calamities, and more especially for white people. It was to overthrow Adelaide, destroy all Europeans and their houses'. Similar events were reported from New South Wales. During the 1830's there was a:\n\nsolemn ceremony of the Natives in the Country to the west of Bathurst in which all the tribes around seemed deeply interested, they had all met together to call upon the Great Spirit, they perceived how their ranks were thinning and no children born, they perceived the havoc civilization were [sic] making on their hunting grounds and they met together to implore the aid of the Great Spirit.\n\nAnti-European sorcery often merged with ceremony, dance and song and it was in this form that it was occasionally witnessed by white observers. Tasmanian Aborigines sang every night around their camp fires, their favourite songs those in which they recounted their assaults on, and fights with the whites. Widowson referred to a sort of dance and rejoicing, jumping and singing performed by island blacks when celebrating a successful attack on the Europeans. A Queensland pioneer who had wide experience of Aboriginal society in the post-contact period referred to what he called the death to the white man song which was sung frequently at corroborees with intense bitterness. On a North Queensland station in 1874 a large gathering of blacks was seen to make two effigies of white men and then all those present 'after exciting each other with war songs and dances, attacked the effigies with their tomahawks and cut them to pieces'.\n\nThere are four reports, widely separated in time and space, of a Queensland corroboree depicting a pitched battle between Aborigines and white stockmen. It is not clear if the dance was created in one place and then widely disseminated or if similar corroborees evolved separately although there is a close resemblance in the descriptions provided by the four European observers. The performance began with a group of dancers representing a herd of cattle. Bovine behaviour was minutely and exactly mimed, then a second group dressed as hunters carefully and slowly stalked the 'herd' and eventually attacked them with spear and club. Some 'cattle' fell to the ground, others stampeded into the darkness. The hunters began to prepare the fallen 'beasts' for cooking when a third troupe of dancers appeared from out of the trees. They were made up to look like Europeans with imitation cabbage tree hats, faces whitened with pipe-clay, bodies painted blue or red to represent shirts and legs done up to simulate moleskins and leggings. European behaviour was carefully depicted; the pseudo white men: 'bit the cartridges, put on the caps, and went through all the forms of loading, firing, wheeling their horses, assisting each other, etc, which proved personal observation.' After a protracted struggle with casualties on both sides the whites were ignominiously defeated and depending on the particular dance either all killed or driven away to the intense delight of the spectators.\n\nThe four reports in question all relate to the generation between 1860 and 1890 and to the eastern half of Queensland. It seems probable that such anti-white corroborees were frequently performed. They were obviously entertaining, embodied a good deal of accurate observation of frontier life and allowed the vanquished to experience in art the triumph and revenge no longer attainable in the real world. Whether the Queensland 'battle' dance was associated with anti-European magic is impossible to say. But sorcery was related to a sequence of corroborees danced in far-western Queensland in the 1890s. Roth described a series of dances performed over five successive nights which he called the Molonga corroboree. He determined that it had entered Queensland from the Northern Territory in the early 1890s and travelled from the headwaters of the Georgina River down through western Queensland in the space of two or three years. The German missionary Otto Siebert recorded it as performed by the Dieri in the northwest of South Australia and noted that by the early years of the twentieth century it had passed on as far as Port Augusta at the head of Spencer Gulf. Baldwin Spencer saw the cycle danced by the Arunta at Alice Springs while A. P. Elkin reported performances at Penong on the Great Australian Bight in 1915 and at Horseshoe Bend in 1930.\n\nRoth provided the earliest and most detailed description of the Molonga but he did not understand the meaning or the purpose of the sequence. Fortunately, Siebert provided a brief but fascinating account of the central theme and symbolism of the five nights of dancing. The corroboree had its origin in the desire for revenge against Europeans after the shooting of blacks presumably somewhere in the north-east corner of the Northern Territory. Prominent in the performance were dancers made up to look like Europeans who carried long forked sticks to represent their rifles. At the climax of the sequence a figure\u2013Siebert said a female water spirit\u2013suddenly appeared to devour all the 'European' dancers while the destructive magic was directed out in all directions to kill the settlers and the Aborigines who were friendly with them. Thus it is clear from Siebert's account that the Molonga corroboree was an intensely emotional performance directed specifically at mobilizing the most potent magic available in order to destroy the whites and their black allies.\n\nThere may have been other dance sequences created like the Molonga to turn back the tide of European invasion. Magic must have seemed the most realistic method to adopt given the weapons of the Europeans and their propensity to exact violent and disproportionate revenge. But did Aborigines continue to believe in the efficiency of their sorcery? Twentieth century studies make it clear that faith in magic and in the powers of the 'clever men' has been one of the most enduring features of traditional culture surviving longer than almost anything else, even language itself. There were in-built barriers to scepticism\u2013time-honoured methods of rationalizing failure and claiming authorship of the contingent. The obvious inability of 'clever men' to drive the Europeans away could be readily explained in ways well tried in traditional society. The failure of magic to immediately achieve stated objectives could be seen as being due to faults in the ritual or to the influence of counter-magic performed by other and often distant 'clever men'. As Europeans on the frontier were normally accompanied by strange blacks it was probably often assumed that their magic threw a protective ring around the white men. Violent hostility to such 'tame station blacks' may have stemmed in part from this perception of their role in the advance of the European settlers.\n\nBut we should not assume that Aborigines believed their magic was without effect. Pioneer settlers were often very vulnerable and must have appeared so to the blacks who may have often concluded that sorcery was responsible for the bad seasons, bad luck, and accidents which befell Europeans in every part of the continent. Many were, after all, financially ruined and abandoned farms and stations. Alluvial miners took up and deserted finds with frenetic speed while ships were wrecked all around the Australian coasts. The immediate cause of the white retreat or misfortune would not have been apparent giving scope to those who attributed European misfortune to the magic of the clever men of near or distant tribes. Aiston and Horne referred to a noted kurdaitcha man from central Australia who claimed to be able to make lightning strike where he liked and to have killed a white man with his power. Mrs K. L. Parker recalled that local Aborigines were convinced that a black from the north-west, beyond Euahalayi territory, had called up a storm which wrecked the stable and store on her station. She made an even more interesting observation about the famous rain maker who it was said was so angry with the white people:\n\nwho were driving away all emu, kangaroo, and opossums, the black-fellow's food, and yet made a fuss if their dogs killed a sheep for them sometimes, that he put his rain stone in a fire, and while he did that no rain would fall. He said that if all the sheep died the white fellows would go away again, and then, as long ago, the blackfellows country would have plenty of emu and kangaroo.\n\nSimpson Newland made a similar assessment of Aboriginal motivation observing that they made no attempt to make rain during long periods of drought. Their intention, he believed, was to drive the Europeans out of their country and given the devastating effect of drought on sheep and cattle stations it is reasonable to assume that blacks believed that their magic was often an effective weapon against the white invaders.\n\nR. M. Berndt collected a number of traditional stories at Menindee in western New South Wales in 1943 which illustrated the presumed ability of 'clever men' to unleash their powers on the settlers. One related to an old 'clever man' called Mulgadown Tommy who lived on the fringes of Cobar. His dogs were poisoned by the townspeople and in revenge he brought up the poison which sorcerers were thought to possess and spurted it out so that the fumes covered the nearby mine. The result was that he 'cleaned out a great number of people' until his own friends stopped him. Berndt did not suggest any source for the story but it may have related to a fatal mine accident which in the blacks' camp was thought to be a consequence of powerful magic unleashed to punish the Europeans. A second story referred to another old sorcerer called Billy who was working as a shepherd on a sheep station. One morning Billy woke up too late to take some rams out of their pen, a job which he was expected to do before breakfast. But as the meal was being served he went and got his food and took it into the yard to eat. When the white boss saw the rams still in their pen he abused the old man, grabbed his breakfast and threw it onto the ground. Old Billy got up and walked slowly towards his camp. On the way he let out his magic cord which, unknown to the Europeans, attached itself to the doors and windows of the bosses' house. Before he reached his camp he turned around and looked back at the house:\n\nhe could see all the string, although these were invisible to the ordinary person. Then he released his assistant totem, the lightning, at the same time pulling sharply on the strings, as he did so they went off like a loud report of thunder and an immediate flash of lightning igniting the house. The cook ran around throwing buckets of water upon the flames, but instead of extinguishing the fire it acted like kerosene and the flames flared up more fiercely.\n\nIt seems probable that there were many stories like these ones. They were obviously important because they allowed the seemingly powerless and abject blacks to go on believing in the potency of their culture and in the ability of the 'men of high degree' to harm and humble even the domineering white boss. Magic was then a crucial factor in the psychological resistance to the Europeans.\n\nFrontier conflict was then widespread in colonial Australia. Most districts saw fighting between resident clans and encroaching settlers although it varied greatly in duration and intensity. Conflict was triggered by tension and misunderstanding, by the possessiveness of Europeans towards the land and water, by competition over women and by diametrically opposed concepts of personal property. Once blacks had been injured or killed their relations were impelled to seek vengeance. Reciprocal violence quickly spiralled. Sorcery played an important part in the conflict although it was usually hidden from the Europeans. The problems arising from fighting with the white men demanded adjustments to customary ways as well as the development of new concepts and techniques.\n\n# Chapter 4\n\n# RESISTANCE: TACTICS AND TRADITIONS\n\nThe development of appropriate tactics was another aspect of the Aborigines' white problem which we can assume was widely discussed on the other side of the frontier. A critical issue was the degree to which known methods of fighting could be employed against the Europeans and the extent to which innovation was necessary. In his famous study of the Murngin, entitled A Black Civilization, Lloyd-Warner distinguished six varieties of conflict. How relevant these definitions are to traditional society elsewhere has never been determined but it is reasonable to examine the two major forms of fighting which the ethnographic record suggests were practically universal\u2013the large pitched battle and the small, secret revenge expedition.\n\n# MASSED WARRIORS\n\nPioneer literature contains many references to battles between large Aboriginal parties and they were still being waged years after the arrival of the Europeans. Typically the two sides met at a pre-arranged site and assembled in loose formations. After much shouting of abuse, spears and boomerangs were thrown back and forth between the wavering lines of warriors. After several hours, considerable minor injury and an occasional mortal wound, peace was restored and a corroboree held to mark the cessation of hostilities. Such large formations, with their obvious similarity to the animal drive, were often used against Europeans. But they presented problems, both tactical and logistic. Under normal conditions Aborigines could only gather in significant numbers on those occasions when there was some local and transient abundance of food. It is not clear if Europeans were confronted at times when large groups were already assembled for initiation and other ceremonies in which case clashes with whites were merely a by-product of the normal functioning of traditional society. Another possibility is that fear of Europeans led to the prolonging of customary meetings beyond their appointed time or to the calling together of unseasonal gatherings to deal specifically with the white problem. This seems to have been the case after the Kilcoy poisoning in 1842.\n\nSpecial meetings would present the problem of ensuring an adequate food supply which could be met by increased culling of fauna by way of large and co-ordinated drives or, more portentously, by turning to the flocks and herds of the European or even their supplies stored in buildings or in transit on drays. Frontier settlers were convinced that large gatherings of Aborigines inevitably led to increased attacks on animals and stations. The crucial step of commandeering European food led to escalation of conflict which in turn encouraged large groups to remain together even longer to seek the protection of numbers. Frederick Walker, the first commandant of the native police on the northern frontier of New South Wales, understood the situation well. It was, he wrote:\n\nthe hostile bearing of the settlers that causes the Blacks to keep in large numbers, for they cannot continue the assemblies customary to them for more than a few days at a time, on account of the want of food... They supply this want from the herds of the settlers, and are compelled so to do.\n\nThe many reports of large Aboriginal gatherings\u2013though no doubt often exaggerated by anxious pioneers\u2013emphasise the changes brought about on the other side of the frontier as a result of European pressure. Aboriginal clans coalesced to increase their power and to seek security and there is no doubt that large gatherings did over-awe white communities. Parties of armed settlers avoided conflict with Aborigines on many more occasions than is commonly supposed while the official determination of the New South Wales and later the Queensland government to use the Native Police to disperse any large tribal gathering was eloquent of official concern. But like people confronting armed whites in many parts of the non-European world Aborigines found that concentration merely increased the ability of their opponents to bring their superior fire-power into play.\n\n# GUNS\n\nEuropean accounts allow us to examine, at least in outline, the development of Aboriginal tactics to cope with guns. News of them spread widely but unevenly through traditional society ahead of the white invaders but the amount and sophistication of that knowledge varied considerably. Some clans greatly underestimated the power of firearms and were shot down as a result of their fatal miscalculation. In central Victoria in the 1840s a group of blacks confronted a party of 16 armed and mounted men. They held up shields to keep off the musket balls only to die with the bark, useless and shattered, in their hands. Christie Palmerston wrote of a similar incident in the northern rainforest forty years later. He was challenged by a small hostile party and reached immediately for his gun. 'Their shields may answer very well for the purposes of their wars', he wrote with brutal satisfaction:\n\nbut my rifle drilled them as if they were sheets of paper. Four of the old generals' [sic] comrades ran to his assistance when they saw him wrestling with death. I ceased firing for they seemed so helpless at my mercy on seeing a seam of blood oozing from the ghastly wound...\n\nElsewhere Aboriginal caution betokened prior warning of the danger and capacity of European weapons. G. A. Robinson reported that he had watched blacks cautiously approach overland parties when the least movement of the well armed Europeans would cause them to take shelter behind trees or throw themselves on the ground. Moorhouse, who witnessed some of the pitched battles along the lower Murray, remarked that although the blacks faced the whites in large formations they chose their ground so they could rapidly escape behind trees and into thick vegetation. Perhaps the single most important lesson to learn was the effective range of guns and often this may have been transmitted back beyond the frontier. Pioneers reported that blacks behaved as though they had a rough idea of the distance at which they were safe from ball or bullet. Eventually the Aborigines came to appreciate the limitations of the muskets used in the first half of the nineteenth century which were inaccurate at any appreciable distance, frequently misfired and took some minutes to reload in any but experienced hands. There are numerous reports of confrontations between Aboriginal clans and lone shepherds during which the blacks taunted the European to try and incite him to fire his single charge; the shepherd for his part stood for hours with his loaded musket knowing that his only safety lay in preserving it. Aborigines laughed, made faces and rude gestures when muskets misfired as often happened particularly in wet or misty conditions. When they did attack they chose the moment of total vulnerability when their European foes feverishly sought to reload discharged muskets. However there was far less scope for Aboriginal initiative when they faced settlers armed, as they were later in the century, with revolvers and repeating rifles although a writer in the Cooktown Herald in 1875 noted how Aboriginal tactics had changed in the face of European fire power. Initially their attacks had been 'daringly open' but as the 'knowledge dawned on their minds that the white race had a fatal superiority of weapons' their forays became stealthy, cautious and only made at 'great advantages of numbers and situation'. Thus the blacks in the Cooktown hinterland quickly learnt the lesson that European firepower and mobility made the massing of scattered clans a dangerous and self-defeating policy.\n\n# REVENGE PARTIES\n\nBut there were other traditions to fall back on and especially the revenge expedition or execution party, an institution widely reported in both pioneer and ethnographic literature. The 'stealthy sacrifices' of the Pinya, the Kadaitcha or the Maringo were typically carried out by small groups of men, usually at night and in operations which were well planned, based on good intelligence and timed to allow for the strike and return before dawn. Despite a degree of variation it was a traditional method of punishment, execution and revenge well adapted for use against the Europeans. The opprobrious comments elicited from the settlers were evidence of their unease. 'Their whole art of war', wrote a Tasmanian pioneer, was 'a concealed, silent and treacherous attack'. A contemporary in Perth argued that it was not the 'martial courage of a declared foe' that was to be feared but the 'dastardly duplicity of the secret assassin'. Fifty years later a Cooktown journalist remarked that there was not 'a particle of manhood or even brute bravery about the Aboriginals [sic]... their weapons being treachery patiently nursed'. Their mode of attack, wrote G. A. Robinson, 'is by surreption... they lay in ambush for some time before they make their attack, a sudden and unperceived invasion...' The hunter's skills\u2013expert tracking, stealth, self-control and patience\u2013could be turned to effect when attempting to execute individual Europeans. On returning from the bush Davis acted out an Aboriginal dance which mimed the successful spearing of a shepherd\u2013the creeping through the grass, 'the cat-like watching, the drawing nearer and nearer to the unconscious wretch; the spring, the rush, the fierce blow'.\n\n# SURVEILLANCE\n\nThe gathering of intelligence was one of the most successful aspects of Aboriginal campaigns. They carefully watched the movements of exploring parties, as indicated above, and continued to monitor the actions of pioneer settlers. Women, children and old people were often sent to observe and report on the Europeans. A traditional story from the Herbert River relates how young boys were regularly sent down to the edge of the rainforest to watch the whites and their Kanaka servants. Aborigines employed on stations and around other European settlements almost certainly provided information about the newcomers for kin still in the bush. Attacks on stations often gave indication of accurate information about household layout and domestic routines, raids being frequently mounted when the men had left home and were too far away to intervene. Houses, wrote a concerned Tasmanian settler:\n\nbecame an easy prey to these insidious depredators, who will, for days and weeks, watch a house that they have marked out for plunder, till they find the whole of the males absent, they then pounce upon the dwelling, and with a celerity incredible plunder it of every article they consider valuable.\n\nIt seems that as a general rule Aboriginal intelligence about Europeans was better than the settlers' knowledge of neighbouring clans. Even the Queensland Native Police had difficulty in tracking down blacks who kept a close watch on their movements at all times.\n\n# BUSHCRAFT\n\nApart from effective surveillance the other advantage possessed by the Aborigines was their knowledge of their own country which was intimate and detailed to an extent that no European could hope to match. It was often of great tactical importance. Knowledge of fords, passes, tracks and caves facilitated escape from pursuit, rapidity of march and speed of communication. Settlers were often unable to find the blacks they were pursuing or did not even prosecute the search through a sense of inadequacy in the bush. They were very reluctant to ride into forest, mountain or swamp where their horses were hampered and their mobility restricted. A South Australian settler explained that the blacks he was pursuing had disappeared into thick scrubs 'to which they invariably retreat, and whence they cannot be followed up'. In 1846 a party of police surprised an Aboriginal camp at the head of Spencer Gulf but it was decided that 'to follow them was out of the question from the rocky surface of the whole country'. In Tasmania where European parties usually travelled on foot the Aboriginal advantage was even more marked. 'They are seldom pursued by the settlers', lamented an island colonist, 'from a despair of finding them in the almost inaccessible fastnesses'. Almost despite themselves the Tasmanian settlers came to admire the bush skills of their black adversaries who had proved themselves 'a sagacious and wily race of people'. They were a most 'intricate set of people to capture'; no-one could conjecture how 'crafty and subtle they act in the bush'. Similar observations were made by a squatter on the Gwydir in 1839. He believed that the whole British army would be unable to apprehend one tribe in his district:\n\nso well acquainted are they with every thicket, reedy creek, morass, cave and hollow tree, in which they can secrete themselves, and so inaccessible to a horse of any white man.\n\nThere are several reports of Aboriginal groups expressing their self-confidence by turning and making faces at pursuing whites and shouting abuse at them in pidgin English. In Northern New South Wales a party of settlers confronted a group of blacks who:\n\ntook shelter behind the trees, and kept hooting and telling us they were not frightened, calling us white b ... s [sic] and telling us to come on; we left them as we found them, our force being unable to engage them in the scrubs.\n\nThere are a number of accounts of Aboriginal parties, confident of their superiority in the bush, turning their backs on pursuing Europeans and slapping their buttocks in derision. Reports of this sort came from Port Essington in the 1830s, the Darling Downs in the 1840s, the Maranoa in the 1860s and Central Australia in the 1890s. Writing from the Tempe Downs station in the Alice Springs district in 1891 the local police officer referred to a group of blacks who continued to elude him:\n\nthey kept a constant watch for me and when I passed, they came down on the flats below, and killed cattle, they were hard to get on account of so many ranges, therefore they got cheeky and slapped their behinds at my party.\n\nAboriginal action fell naturally into the archetypal pattern of guerilla warfare which was ideally suited to their loosely articulated clan organization and dispersed population, their hunting and foraging economy and highly developed bush skills. The Hobart Town Courier noted in 1830 that nature had instructed the Aborigine in her 'original language'; that the black man had adopted the 'natural weapons of his condition'. The writer concluded that while settlers might denounce the 'craft, the cunning and the murderous habits' they were but 'natural tactics of war with which providence has provided them'. Governor Arthur well expressed the anguish of the frustrated opponent of the guerilla, which is as fresh today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago: 'They suddenly appear; commit some act of outrage and then as suddenly vanish: if pursued it seems impossible to surround and capture them'.\n\nFor a while on the Australian frontier bushcraft and local knowledge almost equalled the range and power of guns, the speed and endurance of horses. But the balance tipped dramatically in favour of the Europeans as a result of the rapid improvement of their weapons, their growing confidence in the bush and, above all, their using the blacks themselves as guides, trackers and more formally in the para-military native police forces of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The co-option of black bushcraft began with the earliest expeditions inland from the infant settlement at Sydney Cove, George Caley informing Sir Joseph Banks in 1801 that he intended to keep a 'native constant soon, as they can trace anything so well in the bush'. The use of 'friendly blacks' to counter the superior bushcraft of clans in conflict with the Europeans was formally proposed in the 1820s. George Frankland wrote to Governor Arthur arguing that it would be impossible to capture Tasmanian Aborigines 'without the agency of one or more Individuals of that Race'. If the 'peculiar tact' of the blacks could be employed by the Europeans it would at once 'remove the obstacles which exist to the capture of the Tribes'. Jorgenson was another perplexed by the 'superiority of the Blacks' in the bush which would never be overcome 'unless we are taught by them'.\n\nThe argument was accepted and mainland Aborigines were brought to Tasmania to assist in tracking down the hostile clans. The later history of the use of Aboriginal troopers in Port Phillip from 1842 and the northern frontier of New South Wales from 1848 is well known. They appear to have had an immediate and decisive effect in crushing concerted Aboriginal resistance in the Western District of Victoria in 1843 and in south-east Queensland in 1849. The Queensland Native Mounted Police continued to patrol the fringes of European settlement until the beginning of the twentieth century. Black fear of the native police is well documented. At one blow Aboriginal superiority in bushcraft was undermined leading to a serious loss of morale. The Aboriginal trooper combined the tactical advantages pertaining to both sides of the frontier; traditional bush skills were wedded to horsemanship and facility with rifle and revolver. Unwittingly the Europeans may have coopted another, unseen weapon: by hostile clans out in the bush the police troopers were thought to possess the potent magic of strange and distant Aboriginal tribes. The greatest dangers of the new white world fused in the figure of the black trooper with the most serious threat which traditional society could produce.\n\n# NEW TACTICS\n\nBut while traditional skills could be used to considerable effect against the Europeans there was also a need for innovation. The widespread use of European food increased the flexibility of Aboriginal organization allowing large gatherings to stay together for longer than usual or giving greater mobility to small groups released from the need for daily hunting and foraging. Clans in conflict with Europeans could hide away during daylight and concentrate their whole attention on the struggle with the settlers. Jorgenson noted how European food had enabled the Tasmanians 'in a great degree to subsist without hunting' which by compelling them to run over large tracts of ground had exposed them to 'capture and very great danger'. He was also aware of the link between altered patterns of food consumption and modification of methods of resistance. The island blacks, had, he wrote:\n\nin great measure changed the system of warfare and depredations... instead of resorting to their usual mode of obtaining subsistence, they have closed in upon the settlement, robbing the huts of flour and other provisions in very large quantities.\n\nTactics were developed to cope with European firearms and indeed some groups endeavoured to acquire them for their own use. Knowledge of their working was gradually gained particularly from individuals who had worked on pastoral stations or in maritime industries like sealing and pearling. There were frequent reports of blacks using guns to attack Europeans in Tasmania in the 1820s, Victoria in the 1840s and around Cape York in the 1880s and 1890s. The Port Phillip Herald reported in 1840 that several hundred Aborigines had assembled at a station to the north of Melbourne and had threatened to burn down the huts saying that they 'did not care for white men, as they had more muskets than them, showing at the same time nearly thirty guns of different kinds'. Robinson met numerous Aboriginal parties armed with guns during his expeditions around Tasmania. He was told they 'intended using them against the whites as soon as they could get ammunition, and that they often practiced with them'. But while guns were used by Aboriginal groups in various parts of the country they were never adopted on a large enough scale seriously to alter the balance of power between white and black and in fact did not compensate for European co-option of Aboriginal bushcraft.\n\n# ECONOMIC WARFARE\n\nBeyond the influence of European food and guns there was a clear change of objective from the pursuit of revenge or women which inspired traditional fighting to the development of a form of economic warfare. It began with the straightforward destruction of European property over and above animals taken for food. Sheep were run into swamps and over cliffs or killed and injured with spear and club; cattle were stampeded into rough country or caught and hamstrung. On the troubled McIntyre frontier the squatter Jacob Lowe lost seventy-five cattle in a single night raid. The local clans had clubbed and speared the herd but none had been taken for food. In fact only two carcases had been cut open. The hearts had been taken out and were placed on two poles stuck into the turf facing one another. The message was unmistakable. Lowe subsequently told a parliamentary committee that the Aboriginal objective was clearly not food but the desire 'to drive us away out of the district\u2013to frighten us'. Attacks on stations were often highly organized and devastating in effect leaving animals dead, everything moveable carried away and all else put to the torch.\n\nIn various parts of the country tactics were developed to attack and pillage loaded drays at the most vulnerable point of their journey. When a group of drays reached a steep gradient it was common practice for several teams to be combined to pull the drays over the rise one at a time leaving the others vulnerable to sudden attack. If done quickly the raiding party could be out of sight before the bullock drivers were able to intervene. But perhaps the most sophisticated attack on European communications was made on the dray road from Ipswich to the Darling Downs in 1843. The road was barricaded with logs and the stalled drays were attacked by blacks hiding in surrounding vegetation. Two separate sources suggest that the Aboriginal objective was to prevent all supplies reaching the properties on the Darling Downs thereby starving them out. The local Commissioner for Crown Lands was told by 'an intelligent Aborigine named Toby' that the mountain clans had 'formed a plan of intercepting all communications by the high road to the Darling Downs'. The Government Resident at Moreton Bay took the threat seriously and a military detachment was stationed in the area for three years. A pioneer Darling Downs squatter visiting Brisbane at the time was told by a friendly black not to return to his property because the Aborigines intended to fence up the road, cut off all communications and attack the stations.\n\nIn other places Aborigines came to appreciate the crucial importance of horses to the European economy. At the simplest level this meant choosing to carry out raids on sheep and cattle during heavy rain when boggy conditions kept horsemen at home and allowed operations to proceed without fear of attack. In one or two districts there appear to have been systematic attempts to kill all the horses in order to immobilize the Europeans. This seems to have been the case on the Palmer River where several massive raids were made on miners' horses. The Brisbane Courier estimated in 1883 that in the previous ten years over 200 horses had been speared though not all fatally. A recent study has determined that 133 horses were killed on the road from Cooktown to the Palmer in six years during the 1870s. But the evidence is even more specific in relation to the McIntyre River district in the 1840s. Not only were many horses killed\u2013one writer suggested 100 head between 1843 and 1846\u2013but local Aborigines specifically stated their intention. A northern squatter wrote to the Maitland Mercury in 1843 arguing that the blacks were well aware of the crucial role of horses and from what they had told him he had 'every reason to believe that they will destroy all our horses, and thus disable the men from attending to the cattle'. Five months later another writer referred to the continued attacks on European animals which were 'part of the plan of these fellows' which showed the 'premeditated and systematic manner in which they set about the work of plunder'. A further incident was reported at much the same time. A group of shepherds besieged in their hut were dared by their attackers to venture outside. The blacks said they had already 'killed all the horses' and would now kill the settlers. Five years later another McIntyre settler reported that the Aborigines had driven off all the horses and made massive attacks on the cattle:\n\nThe threats they used of killing all our horses first, and then the men, accompanied by the most dreadful yells and shouts, had the effect of striking terror into some of our party.\n\nAttacks on livestock in general and horses in particular were among the most effective tactics employed by the Aborigines in their struggle with the settlers. Fire was potentially an even more potent weapon. The blacks were, after all, experts in the use of fire in the Australian environment; traditionally they understood its value in regeneration of vegetation, its role in the control of undergrowth, the relative fire resistance of various plant species, the importance of such variables as wind, time of day, temperature and fuel build up. Given the expertise readily available the surprising thing is not that fire was used as a weapon but that it was not used more often. The settlers were particularly vulnerable given the general dryness of the climate and in fact they realized the destructive power latent in the simple fire stick. Fear of Aboriginal-induced conflagration was apparent from the early years of the first settlement on the Cumberland Plain. George Caley told Sir Joseph Banks that had the blacks 'been bent for to do us as much injury as we had done them' then the settlement would have been endangered 'for it was in their power for have done us almost an irreparable injury by fire'. Governor Hunter shared the unease about the possibility of Aboriginal attack by fire. In 1800 he wrote:\n\nthe mischiefs which these people can with ease to themselves do to us renders it highly essential to our own comfort and security that we should live on amicable terms with them. Fire in the hands of a body of irritated and hostile natives may with little trouble to them ruin our prospects of an abundant harvest, for that is the very season in which they might spread desolation over our cultivated lands, and reduce us to extreme distress; and they are not ignorant of having that power in their hands, for after the destruction of the above two boys they threatened to burn our crops as soon as it could be effected. I caution'd the settlers in consequence that they might be upon their guard. They did not, however, attempt it.\n\nAs a rule Aboriginal use of fire cohered with the level of conflict as a whole\u2013it was sporadic and used more against individuals and their property than the whole of the white community. But where, as in Tasmania in the 1820s, the struggle had escalated into racial warfare, fire was used more systematically and with much greater effect. After witnessing the burning of houses, fences, crops and haystacks throughout the district the settlers of the Clyde Valley met at Bothwell in 1830 and moved an address to the Governor warning that Aboriginal action was 'affecting not only the lives of the Colonists' but also 'threatening the extinction of the Colony itself by firing our Crops and Dwellings'.\n\n# DIMINUTION\n\nFrontier conflict was ragged, sporadic and uneven. It was uncommon for hostilities to embrace everybody even in relatively small districts. There were usually a few Aboriginal clans that avoided confrontation with the settlers and on the other hand a minority of Europeans who refused to be forced into open antagonism with their black neighbours. Complete racial polarization only occurred at times of very high tension. On the other hand hostilities rarely came to a sudden or complete conclusion. Instead conflict inched away uncertainly. Aborigines eventually decided that the cost of open attacks on Europeans was prohibitively high and only took life when the chances of discovery were low as in the case of lone travellers or solitary prospectors. They learnt to adjust the level of resistance to keep it below the assumed threshold of violent retaliation although European behaviour must have seemed dangerously unpredictable. Forecasting their probable reaction became one of the crucial skills of the emerging interracial politics.\n\nAttacks on property became more selective, secretive, surreptitious. The adjustment of objectives was noted by European observers. The Queensland squatter William Forster argued that after a period of open war the blacks reached a different stage altogether:\n\nwhen they understand our superior power, and at the same time their predatory habits are still in existence\u2013they will carry on small depredations and will no doubt take life at times, but their object is not to take life\u2013it is not war.\n\nThe Commissioner for Crown Lands on the Darling Downs noted a similar diminution of resistance. The local blacks, he wrote in 1845, were no longer at open war with the squatters driving off whole herds of cattle and flocks of sheep but had adopted instead\n\n'a system of pilfering that no foresight can prevent'. Thirty years later and over a thousand miles away the Cooktown Courier distinguished between districts where 'a state of warfare' still existed and those where the Aborigines had given up all avowed hostility 'their depredations if they commit any, taking the nature of larceny'.\n\n# THE IMPACT OF RESISTANCE\n\nConsidering the advantages possessed by the European the resistance was often surprisingly effective and unexpectedly prolonged. A high price was exacted from many pioneer communities in tension and insecurity as much as in property loss, injury or death. Aboriginal attacks on property had devastating effects on the fortunes of individual settlers and at times appeared to threaten the economic viability of pioneer industries\u2013squatting, farming, mining and pearling. There were occasions\u2013as in Tasmania in the late 1820s, New South Wales in the late 1830s and early 1840s and Queensland in the early 1860s\u2013when Aboriginal resistance emerged as one of the major problems of colonial society. An editorial in Queensland's leading newspaper in 1879 summed up the impact of Aboriginal resistance in the colony:\n\nDuring the last four or five years the human life and property destroyed by the Aboriginals in the North totals up to a serious amount... settlement on the land, and the development of the mineral and other resources of the country, have been in a great degree prohibited by the hostility of the blacks, which still continues with undiminished spirit.\n\nYet Europeans were only rarely willing to recognize the intelligence and courage which informed the resistance. When they did their comments were particularly interesting. In 1830 a writer in the Hobart paper The Colonial Times referred to 'a cunning and superiority of tactics which would not disgrace some of the greatest military characters'. Another island settler remarked that the blacks had 'oftentimes evinced superior tact and clearness of head'. The official Tasmanian Aborigines Committee thought the blacks a 'subtle and daring enemy', a 'sagacious and wily race of people'. A report of 1831 observed that the island blacks:\n\nnow conduct their attacks with a surprising organization, and with unexampled cunning, such indeed is their local information and quickness of perception, that all endeavours on the part of the whites to cope with them are unavailing.\n\nIn 1834 Governor Stirling informed his superiors in England that West Australian settlers had found the blacks 'very formidable enemies, and if they could avail themselves of the advantages of combination it would be useless to attempt a settlement in this quarter with our present numbers'. A pioneer colonist concurred, remarking in 1833 that if in addition to their knowledge of the country the local Aborigines had 'firearms and a little discipline' they would 'put an end to the settlement in less than a month'. The Commandant at Port Essington wrote in 1834 that local blacks had shown 'excessive cunning, dexterity, arrangement, enterprise and courage' in their attacks on Europeans. A generation later in north Queensland a writer in the Cooktown Herald remarked that the miners had difficulties enough to contend with:\n\nwithout having to enter into guerilla warfare, and risk their lives fighting their sable foes, who are immeasurably their superiors in tactics and bush fighting.\n\nBut perhaps the most generous tribute was paid by Edward Eyre who wrote:\n\nIt has been said, and is generally believed, that the natives are not courageous. There could not be a greater mistake... nor do I hold it to be any proof that they are cowards, because they dread or give way before Europeans and their firearms. So unequal a match is no criterion of bravery, and yet even thus, among natives, who were labouring under the feelings, naturally produced by seeing a race they were unacquainted with, and weapons that dealt death as if by magic, I have seen many instances of an open manly intrepidity of manner and bearing, and a proud unquailing glance of eye, which instinctively stamped upon my mind the conviction that the individuals before me were very brave men.\n\nThe long running debate endemic in pioneer communities between those who wanted to 'let the blacks in' and others equally determined to 'keep them out' was undoubtedly reflected on the other side of the frontier. 'Staying out' or 'going in' to white society was a major question for Aboriginal clans all over the continent. Either choice presented hazards. The unpredictability of European behaviour made any approach to station, farm, mining camp or township a dangerous and uncertain exercise. Yet life in the bush became increasingly hazardous and eventually 'staying out' became the greater of the two evils. Dwindling indigenous food supplies put enormous pressure on clans seeking to live in isolation from the Europeans. Malnutrition stalked many camps and children and old people may have often died of hunger in the bush. A western Queensland pioneer was told by local blacks after they had come in that during the era of frontier conflict the Europeans:\n\nused to starve numbers of the old men, women and children to death; for, being hunted into the desert, they had neither the means of carrying water nor of catching game... and of course the weaker members of the tribe felt it most.\n\nMany clans were faced with a simple, stark choice. They could take European animals and supplies to meet their immediate and pressing needs with the certainty of ensuing retaliation or they could move in to the fringes of the nearest European settlement to escape the tightening vice of hunger and violence.\n\n# DESTITUTION\n\nEvidence of destitution can be adduced from many parts of the country. The officials of the Port Phillip Protectorate wrote of the plight of Victorian blacks within a few years of the European invasion. After a journey through the Western District in 1841 G. A. Robinson reported that the condition of the blacks was deplorable, their poverty the 'extreme of wretchedness'. The missionary Francis Tuckfield was told by Aboriginal informants that there was scarcely anything left to eat in the bush while E. S. Parker observed that the earliest settlers acknowledged that:\n\nthe Natives are now in a much worse condition and present a far less robust appearance than when they arrived\u2013and that it is their decided conviction, that they must occasionally suffer great privations, from their altered and often emaciated appearance.\n\nThe picture was similar in other parts of the continent. In 1856 Wiseman saw a group of blacks on the banks of the Fitzroy River who appeared to be desperately hungry. They kept striking their bellies and crying out in broken English 'Plower, Plower'. He concluded that they were 'very probably starved' as fear had pinched them into an isolated and barren corner of their territory. In 1877 a correspondent of the Queenslander wrote of the fate of the blacks on the Palmer River. The country, he explained, was infertile and poorly stocked with game and the Europeans had occupied all the watercourses with the result that the local clans were half starved. In 1882 a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald spent a day with a small group of blacks in the coastal rainforest near Cairns. They complained that they found it 'very difficult to get food' and because the whites had taken all the good country 'they had to go to the mountains or rocky places on the coast, where the fish was not plentiful'. Near the Gulf of Carpentaria the blacks were driven away from the cattle stations and 'sent to starve along the coast or in the ranges'. 'The few I saw', wrote a correspondent to the Queenslander in 1886, 'are really being starved to death'.\n\n# 'GOING IN'\n\nMany of those who went into white settlement were refugees from the danger, deprivation and insecurity of life in the bush: they were pushed reluctantly towards European society. Yet in other cases blacks were attracted, or pulled, in the same direction giving rise to Stanner's aphorism that for every Aborigine who had Europeans thrust upon him, at least one other sought them out. Many aspirations combined to attract Aborigines to white settlement. Intellectual curiosity was obviously important \u2013an expedition from the homeland in to the nearest European outpost was an adventure to be equated with foreign and overseas travel in white society. The desire to experience new food, clothes, weapons, sights, sounds, textures, tastes had been apparent even before the arrival of the pioneer settlers. Writing of central Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chewings noted that many blacks living far from European settlements had: 'at some time or other journeyed in through some friendly tribes' country to some cattle, telegraph, or railway station, just to see what the white man really is like.' Like travellers anywhere Aboriginal sojourners did not necessarily intend to stay within the European orbit although return became progressively difficult as months and then years passed. Those who willingly but tentatively approached white settlements were not in a position to foresee the degradation which came to dwell in every fringe camp on the continent and the disease, malnutrition, alcoholism and social disintegration which followed inexorably and almost universally from the move into European society.\n\nDuring the twentieth century there have been many welldocumented examples of voluntary migration from tribal homelands in towards European settlements. This has been particularly important around the fringes of the central and western deserts although outstation movements of the last few years have partially reversed the trend. But twentieth century developments do not necessarily throw interpretive light back onto events of a hundred and more years ago. When applied to the nineteenth century, Stanner's aphorism is not so much wrong as anachronistic. However, it is true that voluntary migration was prevalent in the vicinity of the major towns. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth all attracted Aborigines in from their hinterlands and authorities in Melbourne and Adelaide vainly endeavoured to keep distant clans away from the urban fringe. But outside the compass of major towns the situation was usually quite different. From the start of settlement the Aborigines were comparatively safe in the urban areas\u2013at least from powder and shot if not from fist and phallus. In the bush life was much more dangerous. Violence was so common that it must have seemed an ever present possibility. Aborigines were far less likely to move in towards white settlement because they feared for their lives. Curiosity and the attraction of a new world of experience could not counter the danger which encircled the Europeans like an evil penumbra. For their part the settlers were usually so insecure that they were highly suspicious of Aboriginal attempts to approach station, camp or farm. Tentative initial contact had so often been followed by bloodshed that frontiersmen decided that the only safe procedure was to keep the blacks beyond the range of their ever ready rifles.\n\n# ATTEMPTED NEGOTIATION\n\nThere were aboriginal groups which sought a political solution to their white problem, a middle way between the stark alternatives of staying out or going in. The desire for a negotiated settlement may have been far more widespread than the available evidence will ever suggest yet there are four relevant examples widely separated in time and place. At the height of conflict on the Hawkesbury River in 1804 Governor King met three local blacks who said they objected to the ever increasing spread of settlement along the valley. They were determined to hang on to the few places left on the river bank and told King that 'if they could retain some places on the lower part of the river they would be satisfied and would not trouble the white man'. King thought the request so 'just and equitable' that he assured the blacks that no further settlements would be made lower down the river. Forty years later in northern New South Wales the pioneer settler E.O. Ogilvie came across a group of local blacks living in hostile seclusion in the mountains following a period of conflict with the whites. A limited knowledge of the local dialect helped him exchange views on the existing state of relations between indigenes and settlers. The blacks told Ogilvie to return to his station in the valley. 'You have the river', they said, 'and the open country, and you ought to be content, and leave the mountains to the black people. Go back\u2013keep the plains and leave us the hills'. Ogilvie claimed that he wished to live in peace and wanted nothing in their territory except the grass. An understanding was reached which continued to exert a beneficial effect on race relations in the district. Howitt related an even more interesting story. He was returning from an expedition in central Australia and travelling towards the settled districts of South Australia. While at Lake Hope near Coopers Creek he met a celebrated Dieri called Jelinapiramurana who asked him if he would:\n\ntell the white men who were coming up to his country, according to the information sent him by tribes further down, that they should 'sit down on the one side (Lake Hope) and the (local clans) would sit down on the other, so that they would not be likely to quarrel'.\n\nJames Morrell, the Queensland castaway, was able to fully discuss the white problem with his clansmen. When the first few settlers arrived in the neighbourhood he explained that they were merely the harbingers of a much larger white population. He warned his black kin that 'there were a great many people, many more than themselves' and they had plenty of guns, and that if the blacks went near 'they would be killed'. Morrell told them quite bluntly that the white men had come to take their land away. 'They always understand', he explained 'that might not right, is the law of the world'. But the blacks told Morrell:\n\nto ask the white men to let them have all the ground to the north of the Burdekin, and to let them fish in the rivers; also the low grounds, they live on to get the roots.\n\nOnce restored to European society Morrell appears to have made little attempt to shield his companions of seventeen years from the onslaught of the frontier settlers. Their attempt at negotiation was swept aside as being unworthy of consideration.\n\nThere was no neat or decisive end to conflict between Aborigines and settlers; neither armistice nor treaty; no medals, no speeches, no peace conference. Black resistance did not conclude when the last stockman was speared although methods were modified and objectives altered. Sorcery was probably increasingly favoured over physical confrontation as a means of challenging white domination. Killing ceased but raids on European property continued. The most immediate motive was economic; blacks stole to survive. But there was always a political element in Aboriginal behaviour. They continued to believe that Europeans were under a moral obligation to share their abundance, both because sharing was so central to Aboriginal values, and to provide compensation for the loss of land, water and game. The settlers for their part often regarded Aboriginal depredation as a continuation of resistance in a new guise. They said so on many occasions. A typical remark was that of a writer in the Queenslander in 1871 who said that Aboriginal crime had assumed:\n\na different aspect from the old time spearing of cattle, or the massacre of station hands. The criminal black fellow of the present day frequents the town, gets drunk, robs houses, insults women and otherwise conducts himself like a civilized blackguard.\n\n# BANDITS\n\nAboriginal and part-Aboriginal bandits or bushrangers were common in the generation after settlement. Typically they were young men who had grown up in fringe camps and had worked in varying capacities for the Europeans. They were often competent horsemen and handy with guns while still proficient in the ancient bush skills. Though rarely a serious challenge to European society the black bandits created anxiety in small frontier communities and problems for colonial police forces. 'All settlers will agree with me', wrote a correspondent to the Port Denison Times, that the 'half-civilized blackfellow is a more dangerous and troublesome customer to deal with than the myall'. Queensland seems to have had the largest contingent of such men. The provincial papers of the 1870s and 1880s abound in reports of their careers, crimes and capture. In 1878 a Gladstone correspondent wrote of Billy Burmoondoo who had been 'a terror to the district for years'. Ten years later the Port Denison Times reported the capture of the notorious jimmy, an object of terror and alarm and in 1882 referred to the shooting of Murdering Harry. At Tambo in 1876 the notorious Saturday was taken after 'many depredations' as was Sambo at Wide Bay a few years later. The latter had defied the police for years and during 1875 the terror of 'club law' had become so great that the women accompanied their husbands into the fields 'rather than remain unprotected in their homes'. Sambo's career called forth a comment from the Maryborough correspondent of the Queenslander:\n\nIt is difficult to catch these blacks, who are very cunning, and some of them are noted for the number of successful robberies they have committed. One outlaw by the name of Sambo, is a regular Rob Roy, his stealings have been on such an heroic scale. He has been wanted for years past, and all they know is that he is in the district still. The other blacks shield him as sedulously as in some parts of Ireland they shield a gentleman who has had the misfortune to shoot his landlord.\n\nWhether other bandits received as much protection as Sambo is impossible to say. Some seem to have been outcasts from both black and white communities and there is as much evidence of Aboriginal betrayal as of support and sustenance.\n\nBetween 1878 and 1880 the part-Aborigine Johnny Campbell defied the police in a wide area of south-east Queensland during which time he was the 'sable terror of the whole Wide Bay District'. It is hard to find any detail about Campbell's life before he took to the bush. But it seems that he rejected his Aboriginal heritage taking pride in his command of English and his skill with horse and rifle. Campbell rode the watershed between the tribal resistance of his Aboriginal grandparents and the world of the white bushranger. He was, a writer in the Maryborough Chronicle argued the 'local representative of the Ned Kelly fraternity'.\n\nWith Jimmy and Joe Governor the watershed was crossed. The brothers were part-Aborigines and the white community reacted to their rampage by reference to deeply embedded racial stereotypes. They were dubbed the 'Breelong blacks', newspapers referred to the 'black horror' while the Mudgee Guardian argued that violence was to be expected from Aborigines 'when the inbred passions of the savage nature assert themselves'. There probably was some element of racial antagonism in the Governor's behaviour. A police sergeant at Wollar reported to his superiors that their mother Annie Governor was a woman 'with a grievance' who had 'encouraged her sons to do acts of violence, as she states that the Government took the poor blacks' country, giving them nothing in return'. But Jimmy Governor was, according to his wife Ethel, 'particularly touchy about his colour' and did 'not like to be called a blackfellow'.\n\nThe Governors wanted to be bushrangers. Their model was Ned Kelly not the tribal warrior. Ethel reported that Jimmy was an avid reader of stories about bushrangers. Several months after their marriage he said he would 'be a bushranger before long' and in the period before the murders of the Mawbey family the brothers were frequently 'talking about bushranging at night'. The desire to go out bushranging was a characteristic the Governors shared with many of the poor, rural working class youth of the time. Contemporaries greatly overemphasised the Aboriginal element in their behaviour. Those observers who remained free from racial hysteria realized this. A journalist who travelled with Jimmy Governor on the ship from the northern rivers to his trial in Sydney reported that:\n\nThe outlaw has no trace in his speech of the usual dialect of the Aboriginal. His language is just the same as that of any white Australian... and most of the 'black fellow talk' which has been interwoven with remarks attributed to him has either been introduced with an intention of lending supposedly needed colouring or has been insensibly conveyed from the mind to the lips or the pen of the narrator by reason of the fact that Jimmy Governor is usually spoken of as an aboriginal and is so dark skinned. His grammar is not, of course, of the most elegant description, but his only dialect is the dialect of the average bush labourer. Of the latest slang he is a master, and he freely uses 'flash' talk and slang in his conversation.\n\nWith Jimmy Governor the bushranger had supplanted the tribal warrior; class had superseded race.\n\n# DEATH TOLL\n\nHow many people died as a direct result of frontier conflict? It is a question which white Australians have rarely posed and never satisfactorily answered. The few official estimates made in the nineteenth century are of limited value and normally underestimate the numbers of Aborigines shot down by the settlers. However, recent research work in various parts of Australia provides a more satisfactory basis for assessment. It is much easier to determine the number of Europeans who died violently than to make comparable estimates for the blacks. Loos and Reynolds estimated that 850 Europeans and their allies\u2013Pacific Islanders, Chinese, acculturated Aborigines\u2013died by spear and club in Queensland between 1840 and 1897. Though the count was careful, precision was impossible and the figure may have been as high as 1000. Similar estimates were subsequently made in other parts of Australia. In Tasmania the official figure for European mortality was 160 but Ryan has recently argued that 200 is more realistic. Christie has suggested 200 as a reasonable estimate for Victoria; Green has accounted for 25 deaths in the south-west corner of Western Australia between 1826 and 1852 and Prentis 20 for the northeast corner of New South Wales. There is now enough regional accounting to make an intelligent guess about the country as a whole. It seems reasonable to suggest that Aborigines killed somewhere between 2000 and 2500 Europeans in the course of the invasion and settlement of the continent. There were many hundreds of others who were injured and carried both physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.\n\nCalculating the Aboriginal death toll is much more difficult. Conflict is better documented in Tasmania than anywhere else in the country and Ryan's estimate of 800 is possibly more accurate than any other we can make. Green has accounted for 102 Aboriginal deaths in his segment of Western Australia and Prentis for 100 in the northern rivers district of New South Wales. Christie has recently argued that the whites killed 2000 blacks during their occupation of Victoria while Reynolds suggested that as many as 8000\u201310 000 Aborigines died violently in Queensland. For the continent as a whole it is reasonable to suppose that at least 20 000 Aborigines were killed as a direct result of conflict with the settlers. Secondary effects of the invasion\u2013disease, deprivation, disruption\u2013were responsible for the premature deaths of many more although it is almost impossible to arrive at a realistic figure. Many blacks were wounded but recovered. After an expedition to survey the Aboriginal population in central Victoria in 1846 G. A. Robinson reported that many of the adult men had gun shot wounds and 'other marks of violence on their person'. In 1969 an old Northern Territory black recalled that when he was a child a lot of his people had bullet marks on their arms, legs and backs and one had survived although half his mouth had been shot away.\n\nThe ratio between black and white deaths varied considerably from four to one in Tasmania up to ten to one in Queensland. Such a discrepancy demands explanation. The rugged island terrain undoubtedly assisted Aborigines in both defence and attack. Horses were less common on Tasmanian properties than on sprawling mainland stations and convict servants usually travelled on foot. They were often unarmed as well. The free settlers were unwilling to give guns to their workers because the 'black war' followed a period of serious conflict with gangs of bushrangers. The struggle in Tasmania was over before European weapons underwent their rapid mid nineteenth century improvement with the introduction of breech-loading, repeating rifles and six shot revolvers. Conditions in Queensland were much more favourable to the settlers. The introduction of responsible government in 1859 removed many of the political constraints that had previously held back the full force of white violence. The frontier was vast and in most places favoured the European on horseback while the Native Mounted Police developed into an efficient weapon to 'disperse' Aboriginal tribes.\n\nThere is then a marked discrepancy between the ratios of white deaths to black in Tasmania, the south-west of Western Australia and north-east New South Wales on the one hand and those in Queensland on the other. This may reflect a wider difference between settlement in the south and east of the continent in the first half of the nineteenth century and that of the second half in northern Australia. Christie's ratio of ten to one in Victoria may be anomalous. It is possible that his figure of 2000 Aboriginal death is too high although E. S. Parker kept a careful account of conflict in his area of north-central Victoria and estimated that Europeans killed seven Aborigines for every white man speared. Elsewhere he spoke of a fearful preponderance in the settlers' favour.\n\nThe figure of 20 000 Aboriginal deaths in frontier conflict will be thought too high by some, too low by others. However, the evidence concerning the ubiquity of conflict is overwhelming. It can be found in almost every type of document\u2013official reports both public and confidential, newspapers, letters, reminiscences. Settlers often counted black bodies either in anger or in anguish; members of punitive expeditions confessed to their participation in a spirit of bravado or contrition. Later observers came across bones and skulls; buried, burnt or hidden and occasionally collected and put proudly on display. In a few districts officials and settlers assessed the role of violence in the decline of local populations; others noted the disproportionate number of adult women following frontier conflict and the widespread and prolonged mourning for butchered men-folk. The evidence for a great loss of life is voluminous, various and incontrovertible.\n\nSome will think a figure of 20 000 dead too low considering the alarming decline of the Aboriginal population from about 300 000 in 1788 to not much more than 50 000 in a little over a century. Given ample evidence of massacres should we not significantly extend the death list? To answer this question several points should be made. They relate to both sides of the frontier. An overemphasis on the significance of massacres tends to throw support behind the idea that the blacks were helpless victims of white attack; passive recipients of promiscuous brutality. Such an argument runs easily along well worn channels of historical interpretation. Paternalism and sympathy have often merged in support of the view that the Aboriginal experience was a story 'infinitely pathetic\u2013children as they were, stretching out frail hands to stay the flood tide'.\n\nBut such an assessment parodies the Aboriginal role in frontier conflict. Blacks did not sit around their camp fires waiting to be massacred. They usually knew of the dangers accompanying white settlement even before the Europeans arrived and took action to minimize those perils. While the settlers normally had the advantage of guns and horses the blacks were far more competent in the bush and undoubtedly had a superior intelligence network. Aboriginal clans usually knew in advance what European parties were doing and simply avoided contact. White numbers were too small to scour the country thoroughly while settlers could not afford the luxury of long patrols which took workers away from productive work. Even the Queensland Native Police seems to have spent much of its time in fruitless patrolling without seeing any Aborigines. Clans were most vulnerable when they were in camp and punitive parties often endeavoured to advance on them in the darkness and attack at first light. White tactics succeeded sometimes but the failure rate was certainly very high. Aborigines were inured to fear of night attack from their tribal enemies. It was in consequence hard to take a camp by surprise especially for clumsy and heavy booted Europeans. Many measures were adopted to counter nocturnal danger. Fires were either not lit, kept so small they could not be seen in the distance or shielded by screens of saplings. Without the distant glow of camp fires sleeping blacks were almost impossible to find. Camp sites were chosen on the edges of rivers and swamps and forests or among broken and boulder strewn country to expedite flight and there are numerous accounts of European parties galloping into camps that had already been vacated. Aborigines were acutely observant and their camps were usually surrounded by dogs keen from hunger who provided an effective early warning system.\n\nThere were important constraints on European action\u2013legal, political and moral\u2013which operated even in Queensland where control of Aboriginal policy passed to the settlers while there were still large indigenous populations beyond the reach of the whites. But equally important in determining what happened along the frontier was the action of the Aborigines themselves. Their skills, intelligence and tactics were always a significant element in the equation of contact. The settlers may have wanted to kill more blacks than they did, may have dreamed of easy assassination, but counter-action by the blacks frequently frustrated them. The ratio of four or five deaths to one in favour of the Europeans may have been the best that they could achieve during the first half of the nineteenth century with their inefficient guns and fumbling bushcraft.\n\n# DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE\n\nAnother fact of considerable importance when assessing the frontier death rate is that while the demographic evidence is far from complete it seems that there were still large Aboriginal populations in most areas when open conflict came to an end. The demographic decline did not cease when the shooting stopped and was equally significant in those few relatively peaceful districts where it scarcely began. Disease decimated Aboriginal communities\u2013colds, influenza, T.B., measles, whooping cough, dysentery, malnutrition\u2013all took their grim toll. Epidemic diseases were probably more lethal than punitive expeditions. While traditional culture provided skills to deal with guns there were no effective answers to introduced illness. Even a people like the Kalkatunga (or Kalkadoons) who stood up to the Queensland Native Police proved more vulnerable to measles than Martini-Henry rifles.\n\nThe catastrophic fall in the birth rate was another factor of demographic significance. Aborigines not only died at unprecedented rates; they were not born, or did not survive childhood, in anything like sufficient numbers to replace the loss by premature death. 'A child is now but rarely to be met with', wrote a white official in melancholy mood, 'a birth but seldom known'. The missionary Benjamin Hurst commented in 1841 that he knew of only two children under twelve within a forty mile radius of his station on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. A settler at Lake Colac noted that amongst one hundred or so local women there had not been more than six or eight children born in the previous three years. A contemporary could recall only two births in five years in his district and both children later died. William Thomas kept detailed records of the Port Phillip and Western Port clans. Between 1848 and 1858 the population fell from 92 to 56 and only one child survived. The story was similar all over the continent. In district after district children were found to be 'few beyond all proportion'. Many of the factors\u2013malnutrition, exposure, disease and especially V. D. in a variety of forms\u2013were only too apparent. But beyond even their lethal reach there was the loss of land, the dislocation of the known universe, a previously unthinkable disruption of the cosmic cycle of birth and death and reincarnation. Some groups exhibited an unquenchable determination to survive; for others the onslaught of invasion had destroyed everything. The future itself had been extinguished. Death from disease and chronic infant mortality merely proved that the times were irrecoverably out of joint. The Port Phillip Protectors reported Aboriginal comments eloquent with despair, leached of all hope. Thomas referred to 'this indifference to prolong their race, on the ground as they state of having no country they can call their own'. 'No country, no good have it pickaninnys', one Aborigine explained, while another lamented 'no country now for them... and no more come up pickaniny'. A contemporary of Thomas reported that he was asked: 'Why me have lubra? Why me have piccaninny? You have all this place, no good have children no good have lubra, me tumble down and die very soon now.' During the nineteenth century, European observers frequently argued that given the importance of disease and the plummeting birth rate that frontier violence was only a minor factor in the decline of the Aboriginal population. The argument was a perfect anodyne for the tender colonial conscience but nevertheless did contain an element of truth, certainly sufficient to convince those eager to be persuaded. But it ignored the European input into almost every source of Aboriginal misery and cloaked the full significance of frontier violence which was political just as much as demographic. Violence was used to force submission; the impact spread far beyond the actual casualties. Fear and insecurity ran like fire throughout Aboriginal Australia and the scars of that great conflagration have still not healed. The horror of the punitive expedition was graphically captured by a Victorian black who told James Dredge in 1840: 'Blackfellow by and by all gone, plenty shoot em, whitefellow\u2013long time, plenty, plenty.'\n\nThe memory of the dead, all 20 000 and more, lived on, stamped deeply and indelibly into the consciousness of the survivors, their children, and their children's children. It is probably the most politically potent folk memory in Australian society. Oral history has tapped a number of stories of massacre; sagas of sudden death, of unforgettable horror. Despite the lapse of time the terror is still alive coiled snake\u2013like in the awful narratives. The following story was told by an old black north Queenslander just before he died in the 1970s:\n\nBig mob come up from Atherton   \nall the native police come up   \nall got the rifle, all got handcuffs   \nfire for bullock, roast im, altogether   \nbullock is for tucker   \nshoot im altogether, shoot im altogether   \nchuck im in the fire   \nall the revolvers going on   \ntalk about smell   \nnobody gonna be alive   \nchuck im in the fire, half alive,   \nsing out   \nyou all finished no more   \nNative police shot im all   \nWidow come back cryin   \nshe lose im husband   \nall finished, they shot em live   \nall cryin come home   \nto this valley here\n\n# Chapter 5\n\n# THE POLITICS OF CONTACT\n\n# ATTRACTION\n\nAborigines reacted in complex ways to the European invasion; there was a variety of situation and diversity of motivation which will continually confound the over-confident or over-simple generalization. Yet patterns did recur. One was the interplay of attraction and resistance which ran through the politics of post-contact Aboriginal society. While Europeans were far more likely to notice the resister there were blacks who endeavoured to find a place in the new society. The missionaries and officials at Port Phillip noted several such cases. E. S. Parker claimed that many young blacks were willing to accept European ways and that they openly avowed 'their dislike for the wandering and comfortless habits of their own people'. He instanced the case of youths who established themselves on his station and built themselves 'permanent habitations of saplings and reeds in imitation of one built by Government men'. The Commissioner for Crown Lands in the Monaro in the 1840s reported the case of a local man and woman who separated themselves from their clan, cleared a block of land, built a hut and began farming. When the first Aborigines were recruited for the Port Phillip Native Police Force they 'broke unsolicited their spears and other native weapons' and throwing them into the river said 'they would no longer be black fellows'. The missionary Francis Tuckfield noted in his journal that young blacks had expressed themselves in the 'most decided and encouraging manner about becoming settled and adopting the European mode of living'. Some had made strenuous efforts to do so but had been compelled by their kin to return to the bush. He referred to the case of Kam-kam who built himself a house and when urged to join his clan hunting and skirmishing brought his 'instruments of war to the Missionaries that he might urge this as an excuse for not going'.\n\nTo explain the attraction of white society we must consider how it must have appeared to Aborigines coming in from the bush. We can assume that those young blacks who went willingly towards the Europeans fully expected to be able to participate in their obvious material abundance. Reciprocity and sharing were so fundamental to their own society that they probably expected to meet similar behaviour when they crossed the racial frontier. They presumably thought that residence alone would win them equality, that kinship and sharing would flow naturally from contiguity. Though Aborigines were accustomed to differences in power and status based on age and sex they had no experience of the extremes of wealth and poverty which existed in European society. Material equality was one of the central characteristics of traditional life throughout Australia. Those blacks who wished to live like Europeans can hardly have imagined that the desperate poverty of the fringe camp could sit so near the plenty of town or farm or station.\n\n# YOUNG VS. OLD\n\nBut misconceptions about white society and expectations of reciprocity were only one side of the story. Aspects of traditional life must also be considered. Aboriginal society was loosely articulated; during a typical year groups waxed and waned, clans coalesced and dispersed. Visits to European camps or stations could be easily encompassed within the normal pattern of movement about tribal territory. What is more the attraction of the white settlements worked on latent divisions within traditional society. Discipline was maintained by the older men who managed both the pace at which the young were initiated and the bestowal of women and girls as they became available for marriage. While the fully initiated men controlled the only possible, or conceivable, passes on to the plateau of full adulthood their authority over the young remained unshaken. The Europeans, often unwittingly, challenged that dominance. This was particularly true in the case of young men and women who had not been fully incorporated into traditional society. Still awaiting final initiation they were the group least firmly attached to customary mores. At the same time it was the young who were most useful to the Europeans. They learnt new skills and mastered rudimentary English before the old people and in the case of girls were more sought after as sexual partners by white frontiersmen. So beneath the over-arching clash between black and white there were subsidiary tensions between those who were attracted to and those who resisted the Europeans. This secondary conflict often coincided with lines of stress latent in traditional society and especially those between young and old.\n\nOne of the most interesting accounts of intra-tribal conflict was written by A. C. Grant in his unpublished account of life on a pastoral property in the Burnett district of southern Queensland. The old men, he observed, did not like the changes which gradually deprived them of their authority. The arrival of the Europeans had the effect of making the active young men 'of more importance than the old fellows, who were beyond learning English' and found it difficult to acquire the new skills. They never learnt to ride while the 'youthful generation became adepts'. The young men began to openly challenge traditional food taboos and scoffed at tribal custom although their new assurance rapidly fell away when they were sick. The tribal elders battled to retain their authority by means of 'sacred cor-roborees, incantations, magic bones and stones, etc'. Grant described how the Aboriginal camp was swept by a mania for marble playing and little circular rings of cleared ground could be found everywhere. Even in such a minor aspect of European culture the old were disadvantaged:\n\nOld men, grey headed warriors, Grand fathers, sage in council, valiant in war, played with little demons of grandchildren satanic in their nimbleness of finger, and sureness of aim, and superior in the jargon and tricks of the game... The amusing and saddening feature to me was the airs of equality which an English speaking, useful brat of nine or ten years, would assume towards his grey headed and battle scarred old grandfather.\n\nYet in many tribal groupings the old men managed to minimize the defection of the young. They were often helped by European violence which united the clans in hatred and temporarily closed off the option of going in to white settlement. Among the Walbri, for instance, the Coniston massacre reinforced the authority of the older men who had previously tried with only limited success to 'dissuade their juniors from becoming entangled with white men'. Many nineteenth century sources provide evidence of the effective assertion of tribal authority. The Commissioner for Crown Lands on the McLeay River observed in 1846 that many of the young people who worked casually for the Europeans would be happy to remain permanently about the settlements 'were it not that they were absolutely prevented by the old members of their tribe'. A Victorian settler noted similar developments in the Western District where the old men invariably took away any boys who manifested 'an inclination to leave their wandering habits'. On the far side of the continent Governor Hutt concluded that the older natives, both men and women, were opposed to innovations and expressed 'decided hostility against the youths... who indicate any inclination for civilized habits'.\n\nTribal leaders used an array of methods to preserve their authority \u2013threats, sorcery, ritual spearing, even execution. Howitt referred to the fate of a young Dieri man who accompanied his expedition north into central Australia. He deserted when the Europeans ventured into what to him would have been hostile territory and returned to his own country. However, Howitt learnt that he had been pursued by an armed party of kinsmen and executed because he had become 'too familiar with white men'. The Commissioner for Crown Lands in the Maranoa described the great animosity felt by blacks still in the bush for those working on the stations. 'Every effort and trick is resorted to', he wrote, 'to seduce them away, to destroy their fidelity and attachment'. He instanced the case of his guide Jemmy who had been indispensable to him. Jemmy returned to his tribe for a week only to reappear emaciated almost beyond recognition. He told the Commissioner that he had to immediately leave the white man's service because he had a stone in his stomach and the old men had told him he would die if he stayed with them. Taplin told a similar story of conflict among the Narrinyeri of South Australia. The old men began to complain to him because the young people would not conform to their customs. A youth called Tungeriol eloped with a girl he had no right to and went to live under the protection of Europeans on a nearby cattle station. Some months later he was decoyed into the bush, grabbed by five men and smothered. Taplin tried every means to discover the executioners but was never able to do so. But the fate of the defiant Narrinyeri youth illustrated an issue of much wider significance.\n\n# CONTROL OF WOMEN\n\nThe control and bestowal of women was a major focus for inter-clan conflict both before and after the arrival of the Europeans. Three aspects of traditional society fostered sexual competition and conflict\u2013a marked masculinity in Aboriginal populations, the widespread practice of polygamy and the control by old men over the bestowal of women. Elopement, adultery and abduction were, as a result, common occurrences. The sudden intrusion of an almost womanless white population added considerably to existing tensions. Frontiersmen abducted women and often took them away for considerable periods of time. On the other hand Aboriginal women may have gone to European men willingly and actually sought them out either to escape undesired marriage or tribal punishment or to gain access to the many attractive possessions of the Europeans. The disruption caused by the settlers provided the opportunity for young men to grab control of women from the elders and seek sanctuary among the white men in order to escape retribution. Such a situation was described by the West Australian Inspector of Aborigines on the north-west coast at the turn of the century:\n\nThe tribal laws and customs have been annulled through the natives coming into constant contact with Asiatics; where in former days old men had the young women, who supported them through hunting, to-day most women are in the hands of young men and boys (who by tribal law are not entitled to them), having stolen them from their rightful owners by brute force, leaving the old to fossick for themselves, whilst the young men, with their so-procured women, follow up the pearling boats or go into Broome.\n\nWhere the old men continued to exert their authority they were able to use their control over the bestowal of women to discipline the young men. F. J. Gillen reported the case of a young central Australian man who had lived with Europeans since childhood and so had missed out on initiation and the related operations of circumcision and subincision. Though he spoke good English and had practically forgotten his own language he eventually decided to accept initiation. Gillen explained the circumstances:\n\nOne day he came to me and said 'I think I will go and get cut'... and I said 'look here, Jim, you are a fool to submit to that'. He said in reply 'Well, I can't put up with the cheek of the women and children. They will not let me have a lubra, and the old men will not let me know anything about my countrymen.\n\nIn some cases the old men seemed to have welcomed the chance to send the young away to work for Europeans for the difficult and often prolonged period between puberty and marriage. They appear to have used the pastoral stations or pearling luggers as safety valves to relieve some of the pent up pressures of traditional society intensified by rapid change. Several perceptive observers of Aboriginal society noted this practice. Writing of South Australia in the 1840s Moorhouse noted that young men were persuaded to live with the Europeans in order to keep them away from the old men's wives. At the end of the century W. E. Roth, Queensland's Northern Protector of Aborigines, claimed that old men encouraged youths to ship with pearlers so as to retain their control over the young women. Europeans frequently tried to protect blacks threatened with tribal punishment and their power was often sufficient to provide effective sanctuary from physical violence if not necessarily from sorcery. When faced with interfering white men the blacks turned to secret and surreptitious methods to punish or execute those who continued to defy tribal authority. Governor Hutt endeavoured to uncover the hidden influence of the old men which 'paralysed and menaced' the attempt to assimilate the young, but he was continually frustrated because the 'threats were so vague, the influence so carefully concealed'.\n\n# WHITE PRESSURE\n\nBut the pressure of an assertive white legal system and the physical scattering of tribal populations progressively sapped the power of the old men. They looked on with impotent fury as European influence penetrated deeper into Aboriginal life. E. S. Parker wrote of a clash he had with two influential Loddon River blacks. They objected to Parker's assertive promotion of European culture and the continuous subversion of their children. Parker explained that one of them:\n\ncomplained in his anger that the white fellows had stolen their country, and that I was stealing their children, by taking them away to live in huts, and work, and 'read in book' like white fellows.\n\nSimpson Newland wrote of an old man from the upper Darling who remained intransigent in face of the pervasive influence of European culture. Although he recognized that further resistance was futile and acquiesced in the submission of his kin he refused to have any contact with the white man 'much less work for him, wear his clothes, or even eat his food'. At times the gap between the old people and the young grew so wide that the elders refused to pass on the traditions and beliefs of their tribes. F. J. Gillen saw it happen in Central Australia. No sooner, he wrote, do the blacks come into contact with the white man than the younger men:\n\nbreak away from the control of the older men, who, in normal conditions of the tribe are all powerful. It is only the older men who are really acquainted with the ancient customs and traditions, and these they will not reveal to the younger ones who have broken away from the tribal rules, and refuse to be governed by what to the old men are laws rendered sacred, because they have been handed down from the far past.\n\nThe decision of elderly Aborigines to reject the youth of their own clans was by no means a universal one. Yet in many camps across the continent old men and women drifted towards death, lonely, bitter and disregarded.\n\nClearly the European invasion put great pressure on indigenous political organization and undermined traditional authority. But did new patterns of leadership emerge as a response to the white challenge? It is by any reckoning a complex question and will take some time to answer. The problem is compounded because Europeans who provided most of the evidence often believed that either Aboriginal society had a system of chiefs or should acquire one. In the early period of contact settlers were frequently convinced that renegade Europeans\u2013escaped convicts and the like\u2013had taken control of the Aborigines out in the bush and were stirring up trouble. Thus an official notice of 1796 suggested that two escaped convicts 'direct and assist' attacks on the settlers. Five years later another Government report stated that there was reason to believe that 'some vagabonds' were living with the blacks and 'instigating them to commit many acts of violence on the settlers'. Similar suggestions were made in Tasmania and at Moreton Bay where the blockading of the road to the Darling Downs was attributed to the fact that 'pale faces were at work amongst them'.\n\nFrom what we know of traditional social organization and of the experiences on the other side of the frontier of people like Davis, Morrell, Thompson and Buckley there is little reason to suppose that stray Europeans had any significant influence on Aboriginal behaviour. G. A. Robinson thought the idea of renegade white leaders 'one of the most puerile inventions that was ever conceived'. Far from being thought worthy of emulation Buckley and Thompson were considered as rather simple souls whose minds had been affected by their journey back from the dead. We also know something of a European who lived for years on the islands of the Western Torres Strait. He was neither a powerful chief nor 'the Wild White Man of Badu' and was only able to survive by being both useful and circumspect. Barbara Thompson met him and reported that he was called Weinie by the islanders:\n\nand had no particular authority, being the joint property of two brothers, and was very useful to them in repairing their canoes. She had often heard her own people remark that they would be glad to catch a white man like Weinie to work at their canoes for them.\n\nThe idea that rogue Europeans were responsible for tribal resistance served two functions\u2013like any conspiracy theory it could be used to explain away black hostility while at the same time confirming white belief in Aboriginal incompetence.\n\n# LEADERSHIP\n\nSettlers' accounts abound also in references to powerful Aboriginal chiefs who it was thought directed the attacks of warrior bands on the lives and property of the Europeans. Names like Eaglehawk, Jupiter, Belba and Oromonde were coined for these largely fictitious figures. Much of the evidence concerning Aboriginal leadership was provided by people with little understanding of, or interest in, traditional society and must for that reason be regarded with great suspicion. Moorhouse, the South Australian Protector, carefully observed black methods during one of the large scale attacks on overlanding parties on the lower Murray in the early 1840s. These were possibly the biggest groups ever to confront the settlers but even then Moorhouse could detect no indication of military leadership in the European sense. He wrote that:\n\nthe natives had no chief or leader. They appeared to be arranging their intervals of distance with each other on their approach towards us. I have nothing to lead me to infer that they have chiefs.\n\nThere is more evidence to hand relating to a number of young men who became prominent by their resistance to the Europeans in and near the major colonial towns\u2013Pemulwy in Sydney, Yagan in Perth, Dundalli in Brisbane. They were certainly well enough known to be recognized by the settlers and they were clearly at the forefront of skirmishes with the Europeans although their motives may have been those of personal revenge rather than racial retribution. Each of the three created considerable anxiety among the Europeans who saw them as symbols of black resistance. Pemulwy was, according to Collins, 'said to be at the head of every party that attacked the maize grounds' and to others 'a riotous and troublesome savage', a 'most active enemy to the settlers'. Yagan was thought to be 'at the head and front of any mischief'. In the eyes of another he was 'the Wallace of the Age'. The evidence concerning such people as Yagan and Pemulwy is very much more substantial than what we have about any individuals on the pastoral frontier. But we are still no closer to the question of leadership. Clearly they were courageous and resolute in their reaction to Europeans but that does not mean that they were leaders of their own people especially as they seem to have been relatively young men. In traditional society the old men were paramount in matters of ritual and belief but in more secular areas the fundamental egalitarianism of Aboriginal society militated against the emergence of permanent leadership. Europeans who knew the Aborigines best were aware of this. Symmons, the West Australian Protector, remarked in 1841 that the blacks were a people 'owning no chief\u2013literally a pure democracy'. Writing of South Australian Aborigines Taplin noted that 'all members of the clan are held to be equal'. The early New South Wales missionary William Walker thought Aboriginal society would be better if there was more subordination. But if a man:\n\nwhom Englishmen have called chief, should in the least degree, offend one of those over whom he is placed in authority, he will raise his waddy and knock him down.\n\nDespite the cultural barriers to the emergence of strong secular leadership it is possible that Aborigines were influenced by what they saw of European society with its officers and overseers, governors and superintendents. Evidence for such cultural influence is very difficult to find although there are one or two suggestive scraps of information. The West Australian pioneer G. F. Moore was handing out Government rations to a group of blacks at York when one man came forward saying: 'Give it to me, I, Darrama am the Governor among the Yoongar, as your Governor is among the white men.' Many years later when Logan Jack was on his expedition across Cape York he met a young man who had worked on the pearling boats. Speaking in English he told the white explorer that he was captain of many canoes. Both these cases are interesting but it is impossible to know if the two men in question had merely borrowed English words or if they had also adopted the concepts which they expressed as well.\n\nThere is still another aspect of leadership to consider. It seems that in some places groups of mainly young Aborigines who had broken away from tribal authority coalesced into gangs, or as they might be termed, reconstituted clans, under powerful authoritarian leaders who based their power on personal charisma. Mosquito, the leader of Hobart's 'tame mob' is perhaps the best documented example. He was doubly an outsider\u2013a mainland rather than a Tasmanian Aborigine and considerably acculturated as well. Yet he seems to have exercised great authority over his companions although we will never be certain about the inner dynamics of these groups. A contemporary observed that the 'tame mob' consisted of twenty to thirty blacks who 'had absconded from their proper tribes in the interior' many of them having 'transgressed tribal laws in their own districts, and were obliged to live abroad for a season'. Mosquito, he explained, had power over them: 'in a sense superior to any known among the equality-loving Tasmanians, and governed them after the approved European model.'\n\nThe case of the Tasmanian woman Walyer is even more interesting although the evidence is more fragmentary. Like Mosquito she was considerably acculturated having lived with the Bass Strait sealers. She spoke English, could use guns and had presumably adopted other aspects of European culture. Robinson is the main source of our knowledge about her and he attributed his information to several other Aborigines. She was, he wrote, 'at the head of an Aboriginal banditti' and was known to issue her orders 'in a most determined manner'. As with Mosquito's tame mob her companions were 'the disaffected of several nations'. It was said of her that she:\n\nboasted to the other women how she had taught the blackfellows to load and fire a musket, and instructed them how to kill plenty of white people, and that she was wont to recount her exploits how she used to tell the blackfellows how to act when they used to rob a hut.\n\nThere may have been other 'banditti' like those of Mosquito and Walyer in other parts of the country and indeed the case of Pidgeon in the north-west of Western Australia in the 1890s springs immediately to mind. The members of these gangs seem to have shared many characteristics with Aborigines who rode on the other side of the white man's law, the trackers and troopers of the native police forces. Both outlaws and 'police boys' were typically young, having grown to adulthood after the arrival of the settlers, were considerably acculturated and often rebels against tribal authority. The parallels were underlined by the fact that many outlaws crossed from one side of the white man's law to the other. Mosquito, Pidgeon, the Dora-Dora brothers and many others began their careers riding with the European police and ended up trying to evade them.\n\n# THE DISCIPLINE OF LABOUR\n\nThe move from the bush into white society was not merely a spatial journey. Among other things it was a transfer from one economic system to another, from the domestic mode of production to the burgeoning capitalist economy of colonial Australia. When groups of blacks walked into camps and stations and townships they carried few material possessions. But their cultural luggage was very much richer and more important in determining their reaction to the new world. They came from a society where economic activity was geared to immediate use not to the creation of a surplus for exchange. Once the current needs had been met each day could be devoted to leisure\u2013to sleeping, gossiping, sexual intrigue, to politics, ritual or ceremony. Like hunters and gatherers elsewhere the Aborigines do not seem to have spent more than three or four hours in the field seeking food. Each family unit had direct access to the means of subsistence and each embodied all the various skills needed for survival, if not for sociability. This was the irreducible foundation on which the equality of traditional society rested. Thus Sahlins argued:\n\nPrimitive peoples have invented many ways to elevate a man above his fellows. But the producers' hold on their own economic means rules out the most compelling history has known: exclusive control of such means by some few, rendering dependent the many others.\n\nEuropeans were quite clear as to the economic and social role appropriate to Aborigines who came in from the bush. Governor Macquarie argued that when they had given up their 'Wild wandering and Unsettled Habits' they would become progressively useful to the country either as 'labourers in Agricultural Employ or among the lower Class of Mechanics'. A generation later Governor Gipps gave his attention to the means by which the Aborigines 'could be induced to become voluntary labourers for wages'. Though 'by nature wild' he believed that proof existed that they could be 'induced to submit to the restraints which are imposed on ordinary labourers'. Numerous plans were devised to impose the required discipline on Aboriginal workers. In Perth in the 1840s the Government issued a directive that blacks would only be admitted to the town if they were wearing a woollen shirt which had to be earned by labour, thus practically conveying the lesson 'of the value of acquiring property'. Education of the children was held out to be the great hope especially if they could be separated from their parents and brought up in institutions. A West Australian official put forward a scheme for the socialization of black children in 1840. He argued that an institution be set up to which the children be induced 'and even compelled' to go and enter upon a 'field of action which would gradually wean them from their present erratic habits'. This scheme was quite elaborate. He suggested the children should be taught to walk to and fro for a limited distance in 'Gangs merely to form a habit'. The next step would be to make each boy bring back any loose wood that might by lying about to be used for cooking. Subsequently they would be made to carry an axe to cut wood 'thus gradually bringing them on by steps to a habit of labour'. Other gangs would meanwhile collect ballast stones, grow vegetables, break up ground or make roads.\n\nSeveral attempts were made to encourage Aborigines to become gardeners or small farmers and thereby 'feel the sweets of property'.  In 1815 Macquarie endeavoured to settle a group of Sydney blacks on the shores of the harbour and provided them with huts, small patches of garden, rations, clothes and a European assistant in order that they would learn to prefer 'the productive Effects of their own Labour and Industry to the Wild and precarious Pursuits of the Woods'. The failure of this and similar schemes has usually been attributed to the Aborigines' total lack of understanding of agriculture. Yet traditionally they did harvest root crops and wild grasses and often from the very same patches of soil appropriated by the settlers for agriculture. The big difference lay in the fact that they did not see the need to sit around and wait for the crops to grow. Confident in their knowledge of the environment and their ability to ensure, by appropriate ritual, its continued flowering they arranged their timetable to return to an area when a new crop had matured and ripened. Clearly there was a big gap between the productivity of Aboriginal foraging and European horticulture even in the crude colonial environment. But the crucial difference was not in the use of the land but in the institution of private property. Small European farmers and gardeners remained in one place not just to nurture their crops but because they owned the land and all it produced and residence was required to effect and affirm that ownership.\n\nDuring the first half of the nineteenth century there were numerous settlers who appreciated that the difficulty of 'bringing in' the blacks 'to a habit of labour' was due to lack of motivation rather than incapacity, to the 'difficulty of finding some inducement sufficiently powerful to excite them to continuous labour'. Samuel Marsden remarked in 1825 that he was pessimistic about the future of the Aborigines. 'The time', he wrote:\n\nmay come when they may feel more wants than they do at present \u2013they seem to have all they wish for Idleness and Independence. They have no wants to stimulate their exertions and until they have, I fear they will remain the same.\n\nPerhaps the clearest analysis of the problems of attempting to impose the discipline, punctuality and regularity of wage labour on Aboriginal society was provided by Jack McLaren in his account of his life at the tip of Cape York at the turn of the century. He set out to establish a coconut plantation using the local blacks for labour. Being a solitary European the option of force was not available to him and he was required to use patience and diplomacy to extract the amount of work he required. The blacks sought access to his trade goods but otherwise they could continue to survive independently. He provided an interesting catalogue of his problems. It was, he wrote, no easy matter to persuade the natives to work on succeeding days:\n\nWe worked yesterday and are tired and would rest, they would say adding pointedly that in their habitual mode of life they worked not at all, and hunted only when the need for food was on them. Whereupon I would point out that in their wild life they had no tobacco, or flour, or coloured cloth, or tinned meats or tinned fish, or any other of the luxuries they coveted, and that the only way to obtain them was by working all day every day.\n\nTo his annoyance the blacks took a long time over their meals. Even their method of eating appeared unnecessarily time-consuming. After the midday meal the whole camp would sleep and if McLaren did not wake them they would doze the afternoon through. Even while they were working there were constant distractions. When they came across food they would immediately down tools to dig the yams, cut out the sugar bag, pursue the wallaby, causing disruption which might last several hours. Unless he supervised their work all the time they would sit down, smoke or go to sleep the minute his back was turned. 'Often in those early days', he reminisced:\n\ndid I return from a brief absence to find the whole of the labourers stretched like black shadows on the ground, I tried upbraiding them. It was no use. I tried ridiculing\u2013saying scornfully that they worked like women or children, that they had neither strength nor endurance. That was no use either... There were, in fact, no means by which I could persuade them into sudden acceptance of a daily routine of toil.\n\n# UNWILLING WAGE LABOURERS\n\nThe historical record bristles with colonists' complaints about their problems in trying to get Aborigines to behave as 'voluntary labourers for wages'. Governor Hutt concluded that black attitudes to labour were the 'chief and serious difficulty' which had hampered assimilation. They would not work regularly; would not settle; they were unpunctual. 'Every species of labour seems to be irksome to them', wrote the Commissioner for Crown Lands at Moreton Bay. 'Nothing', commented a woman settler from New England, 'can really repay them for performing any labour beyond that necessary to procure them enough game to enable them to exist from day to day'. Occasionally local blacks worked on her property but 'they all looked on working for us as a personal favour, and gave us to understand as much'. 'If they do service for others', wrote J. B. Walker of the Tasmanians, 'they do it through courtesy'.\n\nBut it was not just the habit of labour that had to be induced but also those concomitants the subordination of servant to master and the separation of the worker from the means of subsistence and production. The second was the most difficult because it was hard to convince the Aborigines that they were working for their own benefit and not for white employers. G. A. Robinson explained to the Superintendent at Port Phillip that on the stations of the Protectorate the blacks were 'taught to feel that their occupation is for their own advantage'. E. S. Parker was even more acutely aware of the problems of convincing the Aborigines of the advantages of wage labour and imbuing them with the ideology of capitalism. In a report from his station on the Loddon he explained how it was essential to bring the blacks 'under the influence of Christian principles' which would provide the fundamental underpinning for the socially desired behaviour. Even then it was essential:\n\nthat in all cases where they are employed they should be made to feel that their occupation is for their own benefit rather than for the advantage of the employer. They appear generally to feel that they owe us nothing and that they are under no obligation to work. If the suspicion therefore be aroused in their minds that they are working more for the benefit of the whites than their own advantage they will speedily recede from their employment.\n\nIt has often been assumed that the blacks were unable to acquire enough skills to compete successfully in colonial society. The evidence suggests otherwise. Aborigines displayed their adaptability within a few years of the settlement at Sydney Cove. Collins believed that if well treated they 'certainly might be made very serviceable people'; in a number of occupations they proved themselves 'as handy and as useful as any other persons could have been'. By the 1840s the catalogue of Aboriginal occupations had grown much larger. G. A. Robinson noted that:\n\nas far as they have been employed, they have been found faithful guides, able Bullock drivers, Efficient Shepherds, Stockkeepers and Whalers, good Boatmen, Horsemen and Houseservants, Husbandmen, Policemen, Handicrafts and other useful employments [sic].\n\nWhen they had only recently arrived on the fringe of white society Aborigines must have found many European occupations incomprehensible. As they lacked any immediate rationale they may have been thought to have ritual significance. Yet many jobs in the colonial economy required only limited formal skills and in some the blacks had distinct advantages. In much of rural industry they may well have been more immediately useful than new-chums from urban Britain. But while they were able to pick up the actual mechanical tasks associated with various jobs they were not willing to accept the social relations and cultural milieu in which they were set. While they might handle the tools of the labourer they were reluctant to accept the discipline that went with them.\n\n# TRADE, PROSTITUTION, BEGGING\n\nAborigines living in and around colonial towns did develop small scale trade in products gained by hunting, fishing or collecting. Fish, shell-fish, crustaceans, bark, sandalwood, skins, birds, feathers were at various times bartered with or sold to Europeans. But markets were uncertain and the blacks were regularly cheated. E. S. Parker noted in 1839 that Victorian Aborigines were the mainstays of a profitable trade in marsupial furs and lyre bird feathers yet the whites acquired them for almost nothing. He endeavoured to secure conditions which would obtain 'for them the just value of the produce of their hunting excursions' and drew up a scale of 'prices' for Aboriginal commodities which he vainly hoped the Protectorate could enforce. The basic unit was the pound of flour:\n\n1 Kangaroo skin\u20132 lbs flour, 3 lbs if large   \n2 Oppossum skins\u20131 lb flour   \n1 Basket, large\u20136 lbs flour   \n1 Basket, middle\u20134 lbs flour   \n1 Basket, small\u20132 lbs flour\n\nOne pound of flour was to be equivalent to 1 lb of rice and 1 lb of meat, \u00bc lb of sugar and \u00bc of rice and one knife. A tomahawk had the value of 2 lbs of flour.\n\nMany Aboriginal groups discovered that prostitution provided a more certain return than vestigial hunting and gathering. In some places a large and lucrative trade developed and especially around the northern coasts where prostitution became one of the essential service industries supporting the pearling fleets. From the critical comments of white authorities it is obvious that substantial sums of money were earned by black communities in towns like Broome and Thursday Island. 'The trading with young girls is very profitable to the natives', wrote the Inspector of Aborigines at Broome, 'as for one nights debauchery from ten shillings to two pounds ten is paid in rations and clothing'. The situation at La Grange Bay would, he said rather coyly, 'speak for itself'. For eight months of the year 'an average of 150 coloured men came into contact fortnightly with the natives'. Money and food earned by the women was shared in the fringe camps allowing most of the men to avoid the need to labour for the Europeans, to 'make a living in ease and idleness'. At Cape York at much the same time officials reported that the ex-trackers Waimara and James were the 'bosses' who organized labour for the luggers and women for the crews. Whether such indigenous entrepreneurs emerged elsewhere is impossible to say.\n\nOfficials in both West Australia and Queensland were determined to stamp out the trade. Waimara and James were deported to a Reserve; police in Broome drove the blacks out of town. Their motives were mixed. There was genuine official concern at the massive health problems accompanying a widespread epidemic of V.D. but it was equally clear that the colonial governments were determined to prevent the blacks from becoming economically independent. When the Western Australian Inspector of Aborigines visited a Broome purged by the local constables his first remarks were instructive. He noted that very few blacks could be seen about the town and residents told him 'they could now get hold of a native willing to work'.\n\nBegging was another means by which blacks could avoid the need for regular wage labour. The morality of the practice looked very different to blacks than to censorious whites. Moorhouse wrote in 1842 that he found it a difficult task to make Adelaide Aborigines believe that 'begging lessens them in the estimation of Europeans and that their supplies would be more certain and more creditable, if gained by cultivation of their own ground'. Begging was a natural response from people who shared without question and who believed that reciprocity was the greatest social good. The conviction that the white man owed a great debt for appropriated land merely strengthened their determination to continue a practice which helped to augment meagre diets and maintain a precarious existence on the rim of European society.\n\n# THE CASTE BARRIER\n\nMany Europeans believed that they genuinely offered their culture and religion to the blacks. Yet white society was less able than Aboriginal society to assimilate outsiders on terms of equality. The only entry point available was at the very bottom of the social hierarchy where resistance to assimilation was at its strongest. For all their fine words colonial elites were not offering equality to the blacks but merely space on the lowest rungs of society. Unskilled Europeans could not afford a similar generosity. They feared the economic competition of cheap labour and were never willing to concede equality to the black outsider who was 'a good deal bullied by the white labourer, who lost no opportunity of asserting his superiority over him'. Unfortunately, wrote E. S. Parker, 'there exists an aversion on the part of most European labourers to see the natives taught to work, avowedly for the reason that a successful result might interfere with the price of labour'. Similar arguments were presented in the Adelaide Examiner in 1842 by Dr. Richard Penny, one of the most perceptive European observers of Aboriginal society in nineteenth-century Australia. His comments are worth quoting at length:\n\nAll the efforts for civilizing the native, have been with the object of his becoming a portion of our labouring, civilized, population, and forming an integral part of it, and it has been this, that has caused all such attempts, to end in failure. The two races can never amalgamate\u2013the white labourer, and the native, (be he ever so useful), can not be brought to work together on equal terms. We could never succeed in incorporating the native with the mass of the labouring population, for there is always enough of that antipathy of races existing, to induce the settler to place the native, however deserving, in an inferior position to his white servants, and to give him the more menial offices to perform; but if the settler being a friend of the Aboriginal cause, were not disposed to make any distinction, but that of merit, the servants themselves would not perform those offices, whilst they could shift it on that of the blacks.\n\nWhen it came to sexual relations the caste barrier was raised even higher preventing almost all contact between black men and white women. 'No European Woman', wrote William Shelley in 1814, 'would marry a Native, unless some abandoned profligate'. Over sixty years later John Green told a Victorian Royal Commission that he had known of several cases where Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal children had been brought up with European families. All would go well, he remarked:\n\nuntil they came to an age that they would like to make love. As soon as this was known by mamma or papa, there must be something done to stop it, so the white daughter or son is told they must not make so free with the darky; they must remember that, although he or she has been educated in the family, it would be degrading to make love with them. So the cold shoulder is soon turned on the darky; they soon feel it, and a change is seen in the darky; instead of one of the most cheerful they will mope about until they can find a chance to join their friends the aborigines.\n\nWith neither property nor marketable skills the Aborigines were stranded, poverty-stricken and powerless, on the fringes of colonial society. A few individuals temporarily escaped the inexorable dictate of the market by being kept in social and even geographical isolation allowing them to achieve an elevated status which could not be sustained once the special circumstances were brought to an end. Guides on exploring expeditions often attained an importance unmatched by blacks elsewhere in the society as a consequence of their special skills, the paramilitary nature of the exploring party and the social limbo of the inland journey. Children and youths taken into the homes of the colonial elite were afforded a status dependent on their hosts' class position rather than their own. Native police troopers were deliberately kept in isolation from the wider community and encouraged to feel superior to the white working class. The original regulations for the force at Port Phillip specified that the troopers were to be prevented from 'associating with those who may instruct them in vicious and disorderly habits'. They must be made to 'discriminate between the differing classes of white people', avoiding the working class while showing 'respect to the upper and well conducted'. Settlers seem to have often adopted similar policies with their Aboriginal servants. The Tasmanian pioneer J. H. Wedge did not allow 'his blackboy' May-day to 'live with or associate with servants'. But once troopers left the native police, expeditions came back from the bush, upper-bourgeois protectors returned to England, the artificial platform was removed. The assertion of social reality, the sudden descent, was a harsh and often shattering experience. This may well explain why so many ex-trackers and ex-troopers ended up as renegades alienated from both white and Aboriginal society. These themes can best be illustrated by reference to the careers of a few blacks who suffered these experiences.\n\nBungaree was a New South Wales Aborigine who was well educated, could speak Latin and behaved 'as a gentleman in elegant society'. He entered the native police but found his position in society anomalous in the extreme and remarked to his superior officer in a 'melancholy tone':\n\nI wish I had never been taken out of the bush, and educated as I have been, for I cannot be a white man, they will never look on me as one of themselves; and I cannot be a blackfellow, I am disgusted with their way of living.\n\nMathinna was a young Tasmanian girl who was temporarily adopted by Governor and Lady Franklin. 'She had dwelt in the Colonial palace', wrote Bonwick, 'had been taught, petted, and trained to high hopes'. When the Franklins returned to England it was thought that Mathinna's health would not stand the journey. She was placed in an orphanage and virtually abandoned to eventually drown while drunk at the Oyster Cove settlement for the remnants of the Tasmanian tribes. At much the same time in South Australia a young Aboriginal girl called Maria was taken into Government House in Adelaide. Seduced by a prominent merchant she was sent away when her pregnancy became apparent and fell 'into disreputable habits of life' and was not even acceptable at the Poonindie mission. George Grey discussed the career of the West Australian youth Miago who sailed for several months on the Beagle and proved a 'temperate, attentive, cheerful' servant. But on his return to Perth he found European society uncongenial and went back to the bush. Grey considered the reasons why:\n\nMiago when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be truly friends of his\u2013they would give him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal\u2013they have no sympathy with him\u2013he could not have married\u2013he had no certain means of subsistence open to him... He had two courses left open to him\u2013he could either have renounced all natural ties, and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites\u2013ever a servant\u2013ever an inferior being\u2013or he could renounce civilization, and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his youth.\n\n# RESISTANCE TO ASSIMILATION\n\nBut most Aborigines were not frustrated guests waiting patiently to be admitted to an unwelcoming white society. Generally speaking blacks were not impressed by what was offered. 'They do not court a life of labour', wrote a Victorian Justice of the Peace in 1849:\n\nthat of our shepherds and hut-keepers\u2013our splitters or bullock drivers\u2013appears to them one of unmeaning toil, and they would by no means consent to exchange their free unhoused condition for the monotonous drudgery of such a dreary existence.\n\nIt was difficult to persuade Aborigines to accept the inequalities of white society. Taplin noted that Aboriginal men had 'quite a dignified bearing with an air of freedom altogether different from low class Europeans'. They do not 'understand exalted rank', wrote a Victorian clergyman, 'and, in fact, it is difficult to get into a blackfellow's head that one man is higher than another'. James Gunther, the pioneer New South Wales missionary, commented on the consequences of the blacks' 'peculiar form of government' which:\n\nadmitting of no distinction of rank, but allowing each man to share in their consultations and decisions as to any questions arising among them stamps a feeling of independence and even haughtiness with an appearance of dignity on the character of the men rarely to be met among differently governed natives. As they have no titles for distinction nor a proper name for a chief so they have neither a word in their language to signify a servant... no man has an idea of serving another, this idea of their own dignity and importance is carried so far that they hesitate long before they apply the term Mr. to any European even when they know full well the distinction we make (between master and servant).\n\nThe value of economic incentives was undermined by the egalitarianism and reciprocity of Aboriginal society. Increased wages awarded for improved efficiency were immediately shared with kin whether they were employed or not. It was difficult, a north Queensland missionary wrote, for Aborigines to 'understand individualism'.  Their system of socialism', commented another, was a barrier to progress because it hindered 'any improvement or rightful ownership'. Taplin observed that South Australian Aborigines 'always resent the payment of superior wages to one man because he is a better workman than another and never will allow he is more worthy of it than themselves.' This aversion, he wrote:\n\nto acknowledge superiority is a great evil when the Aborigines come in contact with the colonists. They will never permit one of their own people to be placed over them as a ganger or overseer.\n\nThomas Mitchell pondered on the problem of the Aboriginal response to white society when he returned to the settled districts after his Queensland expedition and was required to consider what should happen to the guides who had accompanied him into the interior. He appreciated the importance of equality in traditional society\u2013'all there participate in, and have a share of, Nature's gifts. These, scanty though they be, are open to all'. But among Europeans the 'half clad native finds himself in a degraded position... a mere outcast'. Experience in Australia and elsewhere, he argued, had shown the 'absurdity of expecting that any men' would leave their woods purely from choice 'unless they do so on terms of the most perfect equality'. Drawing on his experiences of white-Aboriginal relations in South Australia Richard Penny concluded that if the black was:\n\nto accept the terms of civilization that we offer him, everything would conduce to keep him in the lowest scale of society, he would be constantly subject to all sorts of oppression, and would make but a bad exchange for his native independence.\n\nPenny argued that not only was this the objective situation facing the Aborigines but that they were fully cognizant of it. 'These are things', he wrote, 'which the friends of the Aborigines overlook: but the natives themselves... are well aware of this, and it is a reason assigned by them for not remaining at the stations of the settlers.' Bonwick argued that young Aborigines were not content with their position when living with white families. 'However English lads may reconcile themselves with a life of subordinate servitude' the same could not be expected of the blacks as it was 'too opposite' to their instincts. Backhouse and Walker believed that many experiments with the Aborigines, had failed because they had been 'placed in situations where they felt themselves looked down upon by the whites'.\n\n# AFFIRMATION\n\nBy the middle of the nineteenth century many settlers had concluded that the Aborigines would never adopt European civilization, that they were incapable of 'improvement' and were indeed a doomed race. Yet a minority of whites appreciated that black behaviour manifested faith in their own culture, that it betokened strength not weakness, affirmation not failure. The problem they realized was not the incapacity of tribesmen but their 'intractableness', their 'martial spirit'. The present generation, wrote a Victorian settler, 'cling to confirmed habits and old associations with a tenacity which nothing can overcome'. From the Darling Downs the Commissioner for Crown Lands wrote in 1850 that the 'roving life' still had charms for the blacks 'far too powerful... to overcome'. The Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia observed that:\n\nthe bush has so many attractions, that they prefer the precarious subsistence it affords to the food of the white man which must be earned by labour. Their... roving life still has charms for them far too powerful for any inducement that the habits and customs of civilization can offer to overcome.\n\nA majority of Aborigines endeavoured to maintain direct access to their land both for its spiritual significance and the means of subsistence that it provided. They sought to preserve their independence from the labour market and the abject position that it assigned to them. This increasingly meant that hunting and foraging had to be supplemented by returns from casual labour, prostitution, begging and pilfering. 'Why should they vex themselves with the drudgery of labour' asked a New South Wales settler in the 1830s:\n\nthey are not labourers at all, and for the same reason that any other gentleman is not viz. that he can live without labour. So also can they, and as comfortably as they wish to live.\n\nClearly fringe-dwelling blacks did not live as comfortably as they would have liked but it is essential to stress the element of choice in their predicament. They chose to maintain the maximum degree of independence possible in the circumstances at the cost of their standard of living, even of their well being. They opted for Aboriginal values, settlement patterns, family life, rhythms of work even when that choice meant a miserable level of material comfort. Although Europeans increasingly imposed restraints, and on reserves and missions they were almost overwhelming, the blacks continued to exercise choice and thereby shape their own history. There were great penalties\u2013malnutrition, ill-health, despair, population loss\u2013but by retaining even a small area of autonomy nineteenth-century fringe dwellers ensured the survival of at least elements of Aboriginal culture in those parts of the continent where the impact of the invasion had been most devastating. It was a course of action fraught with risk yet the Aboriginal renaissance of the last decade suggests that ultimately the sacrifices were justified.\n\n# Chapter 6\n\n# THE PASTORAL FRONTIER\n\n# INITIAL ENCOUNTERS\n\nFor a majority of Aborigines their first experience of permanent settlers came when pastoralists arrived in their clan territories bringing with them horses and drays, cattle and sheep and the varied equipment of the pioneer station. The fear evoked by the white man, already discussed above, was soon matched by concern for local ecologies which quickly showed the impact of the exotic animals. The castaway James Morrell witnessed this process in north Queensland in the 1860s. His clansmen brought him news of a large herd of cattle which had suddenly appeared, surrounded a favourite waterhole and emptied it, leaving fish stranded in the mud. Though tempted to rush in and pick up the dying fish they were too intimidated to venture out of their hiding places. The explorer Thomas Mitchell was another who witnessed the impact of cattle herds travelling out beyond the fringes of European settlement in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland in 1846. An Aboriginal guide was taking Mitchell's party to a shallow creek where he expected to find water but on arriving on the bank he was disappointed to find that cattle had already been there and had drunk it all. The black showed Mitchell the 'recent prints of numerous cloven feet' and the explorer was made to feel 'in common with the Aborigines, those privations to which they are exposed by the white man's access to their country'. The experience was repeated the following day. The party approached a pond well known to local clans only to find once again that cattle had drunk the water and trodden the ground 'as dry as a market place'. Elsewhere Mitchell came across springs and ponds which local clans had tried to protect by cutting down nearby trees and placing the logs over the water. Thus it was, he mused, that the Aborigines 'first became sensible of the approach of the white man'. He wrote of the fate of the small man-made waterholes in dry stretches of bush which were like oases surrounded by lush green grass. Cattle, he wrote:\n\nfind these places and come from stations often many miles distant, attracted by the rich verdure usually growing about them, and by thus treading the water into mud, or by drinking it up, they literally destroy the whole country for the Aborigines.\n\n# WATER\n\nMitchell's experience illustrated the widespread conflict over water which arose in arid areas all over the continent and in well watered areas as well during dry seasons. It often began as soon as the Europeans appeared. This was certainly the case in the desert where thirsty camel trains and horse teams consumed huge amounts of precious water in Aboriginal wells and springs and soaks. The pioneer Queensland squatter George Sutherland related a similar experience which illustrated the competition for water in a parched environment. He was driving a flock of thirsty sheep through waterless country towards the Georgina River in western Queensland. The local clans, camping around the only available surface water, scattered in terror when the whole flock stampeded towards the billabong.\n\nConflict was sharpened by the widespread belief among frontier squatters that 'niggers and cattle don't mix'; that the half-wild herds were unsettled by the mere sight or sound of Aborigines. As a result the blacks were repeatedly driven away from river frontages and lagoons. They were shot at or ridden down and stock-whipped. Relevant evidence for this is voluminous, coming from all parts of the continent. 'All the freshwater is surrounded by cattle', wrote Burketown's policeman in 1897, and if a black was unfortunate to be seen by the station hands he was 'hunted, whiped [sic] and severely maltreated'. Inspector Foelsche of the Northern Territory police noted how local squatters kept the blacks away from the inland lagoons and billabongs which were important both as meeting places and sources of food. The Protector of Aborigines at Camooweal remarked in 1901 that the station owners and managers claimed that the sight of the blacks disturbed the cattle with the result that the blacks were 'dispersed by the station hands'. Writing of northern New South Wales in the early 1850s the Commandant of the Native Police noted that with the exception of a few stations the Aborigines were 'in a manner outlawed in their own country, being hunted from the river and creek frontages, and thus deprived of means of lawfully obtaining food'. The impact of these policies on black communities was graphically described by an old Roper River black who recalled in old age the hardships suffered by his people when he was a boy during the early years of the twentieth century:\n\nOh terrible days we used to had: We never walk around much 'mongst the plain country or groun'. We use to upla hill alla time to save our life. Our old people you know used to take us away from plain or river or billabong. Only night time they used to run down to get the lily, alla young men you know. Can't go daytime, frighten for white people.\n\nCattle and sheep were destructive of the environment in other ways as well. Their close cropping of the vegetation destroyed native flora while plants growing in or around water-holes or lagoons were eaten or trampled under hard hoofs. A north Queensland pioneer wrote of the impact of cattle along the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline:\n\nthey trample out the signs of turtles found in dried up swamps, the trail of the crocodile to his nest; they eat the tops of yams, and eat and destroy the lillies, all of which make their (the Aborigines') natural food scarcer and harder to find.\n\nOther introduced animals\u2013pigs, rabbits, camels\u2013damaged sensitive local ecologies as well. An Aboriginal woman from the north Queensland coast told a European visitor in 1895 that feral pigs had eaten large amounts of traditional food. 'I think altogether we die soon', she lamented, 'pig-pig eat him yams; plum fall down, wild pigs too much eat'.\n\n# BLACK SHEPHERDS\n\nPastoral settlement presented a massive challenge to Aboriginal society, altering ecologies and disrupting traditional economies. But clans responded creatively to that challenge all over the continent. They studied the Europeans and their animals and began to weave new ideas into long established patterns of social and economic life, co-opting sheep and cattle for their own use and learning the skills of the shepherd and herdsman. There was, after all, a considerable overlap between the methods of the hunter and the herdsman. Kangaroos and emus were driven long distances to be trapped in rudimentary stockyards made of logs and bushes. There are numerous references in the pioneer literature to the discovery of long races of sticks, boughs and bushes which had been used to control the movements of the larger marsupials. Thus Giles referred to what he termed dilapidated old yards, where the blacks had formerly yarded emu or wallaby; K. L. Parker observed that the Euahlayi tribe made bush yards and caught emus in them. Buckley recalled that the clans he had lived with pursued kangaroos in order to hunt them into corners like flocks of sheep. Writing of north-western Queensland Roth noted that local Aborigines mustered emus like cattle driving them into nets and palisades. G. F. Moore found that West Australian Aborigines used the word yekan meaning to drive or to chase to describe the European's herding of cattle. But while traditional methods overlapped with new we should not overlook the wide ranging adaption apparent in Aboriginal tactics to capture or kill sheep and cattle. There seems to be no doubt that these skills were consciously developed and deliberately improved and that the blacks were proud of their evolving mastery of the new techniques. Davis was told by his Aboriginal hosts in southern Queensland 'with much minuteness how dexterously they had succeeded in carrying off sundry sheep at different times without being even perceived by the shepherds'. How did the blacks so rapidly become efficient sheep stealers and adept shepherds?\n\nStragglers were driven away when out of sight of the shepherds or grabbed by blacks lying immobile in the grass; dogs were trained to rush in and cut out sections of flocks. An observer in southern Queensland noted that local blacks had well developed techniques which exploited the terrain. They waited until the flock approached the summit of a steep ridge, or the trench of a deep gully and then rushed in with their dogs to cut out twenty or thirty sheep and drive them into rough or broken country. The manoeuvre was executed so quickly that the blacks were beyond reach before the shepherds were aware of the raid. Some techniques seem to have been even more sophisticated. A report from the Western District of Victoria in 1842 described how local blacks enticed ewes out of their pens at night without arousing the suspicion of the shepherds:\n\nBreaking the leg of a lamb, the natives placed it at about 50 yards from where the sheep were penned. The bleatings of the poor little animal soon drew the attention of the ewes, and several of them leaped the hurdles, and made for the spot where it was lying. From this they were attracted by the cries of another lamb, placed at a little distance onwards. The same expedient was followed by the savages of mutilating lambs and placing them at distances from each other till they had succeeded in decoying the old sheep several hundred yards away from the hurdles. They then rushed between the hurdles and the sheep, and drove the latter from the station. So silently was the robbery accomplished, that the sheep were not missed till the following day.\n\nSkilful cutting-out was only a start. To avoid violent retaliation from the settlers, or at least the loss of the animals in question, it was essential that the flock be driven away as far and as quickly as possible without allowing the sheep to scatter. Consequently pursuing whites often came up with disputed flocks many miles from their station of origin. In the Portland district in 1843 a squatter and his men pursued a flock of 480 sheep across country for 250 miles. A few years later at Wide Bay in Queensland a settler reported that he had followed a group of Aborigines who had successfully taken 500 sheep over two mountains, through a mile and a half of rain forest and on to another mountain. The blacks quickly learnt that success depended on their ability to cover their tracks before the Europeans ventured in pursuit. Many of the methods employed were probably carried over from traditional society for clans were adept at hiding their movements from their enemies. A group of blacks from the Western District of Victoria were found with a flock of sheep twelve miles away from the station where they had been secured but they had been taken on a circuitous route of at least forty miles and through a series of swamps to confuse white pursuers. On the Glenelg River a flock was driven back on its own tracks to blot them out and was then divided into three lots which were driven in separate directions. Elsewhere the blacks burnt grass for a considerable distance around plundered pens to hide the tell-tale tracks.\n\nRivers presented a considerable problem to black shepherds. Europeans following the tracks of stolen flocks concluded that Aborigines often made repeated attempts to rush their newly acquired sheep down the river banks in order to force them across the water and there are several reports of blacks making log bridges to facilitate the movement of their flocks across stretches of water. In 1850 a party of Wide Bay squatters actually found local blacks in the process of building a bridge while a few years earlier in the Grampians, a native police detachment, pursued a group of Aborigines for eight days through gullies, over ridges and across mountain streams where the blacks had made bridges strong enough for the troop horses to pass over.\n\nBut even when blacks had escaped with their commandeered flocks and evaded pursuers there remained the need to prevent the sheep from straying. A common solution to this problem was to break or dislocate the sheeps' hind legs. The pioneer Victorian squatter Hugh Murray reported how the Colac Aborigines took their animals to some secure neighbourhood and feasted upon them, 'breaking the legs of those they did not at once kill, to detain them'. It was, wrote a fellow squatter 'a cruel sort of tethering resorted to in those days. But less drastic means of securing sheep were widely adopted. Naturally enclosed patches of grass were selected for use, squatters in Wide Bay for instance finding sheep high up on a mountain in a small space surrounded by rain forest which was, they realized, a 'natural paddock'.\n\nOf even greater interest was the widespread construction by Aborigines of folds and stockyards to secure captured flocks, a practice obviously adopted from European shepherds though owing something to traditional use of brush fences to control and corral native animals. There are many such reports and they come from widely scattered parts of the continent. Research to date has turned up over thirty separate eye witness reports from districts as far apart as Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, the upper Burdekin Valley in north Queensland and the Champion Bay district in Western Australia. A few examples will suffice for purposes of illustration.\n\nIn 1840 a party of Western District squatters followed a group of blacks into almost inaccessible mountains and discovered 'a very ingeniously constructed brush yard where the sheep had been kept during the night'. Six years later at the head of Spencer Gulf local blacks took a flock which they regularly folded 'whilst they were regaling themselves upon divers roasted legs and shoulders'. The South Australian Protector of Aborigines reported finding a yard made of branches and capable of holding from two to three hundred sheep. A party of Maranoa settlers following tracks of stolen sheep found that the blacks had made bough yards for them every night, 'as well as a white man could have done'. In the Burdekin Valley blacks drove 400 sheep into the ranges after a successful raid on a station and built a 'proper yard' and regularly shepherded the flock showing 'how closely and for what a length of time they must have watched the habits of Europeans'. The rapid development of Aboriginal sheep raiding techniques was noted by a writer in the Adelaide Observer in 1846. Attacks which were originally 'ill considered and accidental' had been superseded by 'well planned forays':\n\nthe flock is steadily driven, and carefully folded\u2013taken with dexterity and retained with determination. The captors feed upon the sheep until all are consumed\u2013then sally forth in quest of a fresh supply.\n\n# CATTLE HUNTERS\n\nCattle presented Aborigines with a different set of problems. The half-wild animals of frontier districts were larger, faster and more aggressive than sheep and much harder to kill. Indeed it was difficult to kill them at all with traditional wooden or stone-tipped spears. Numerous pioneer squatters reported cases of cattle coming in off the range covered with spear wounds or with the weapons still stuck in their bodies. A Western District settler found one of his bullocks still alive with thirty spears sticking into its tortured flesh. There is no doubt that one of the principal motives for the adoption of iron tipped spears was to facilitate the killing of the large European animals including draught bullocks as well as horses and cattle. The Portland Gazette reported in 1845 that local blacks were adopting iron spears and were systematically attacking cattle herds with them. Clans living close to the growing networks of telegraph lines adopted spear heads fashioned from porcelain insulators while the Loritja people of central Australia were said to have adopted a cruder and hence more expendable spear for killing cattle.\n\nThe greatest problem for the cattle hunters was to immobilize the large beasts long enough to be able to close in for the kill. Many different techniques were tried. The most common appears to have been to rush selected beasts into swampy or muddy ground and then attack them while they were unable to move quickly. 'They now proceed in a most systematic manner', wrote the Commissioner for Crown Lands at Moreton Bay in 1844, 'rushing the cattle into swampy ground during the wet weather and then hamstringing them'. The explorer Thomas Mitchell reported that in northern New South Wales local clans had driven off 800 head of cattle when the country was in flood and the horsemen were unable to travel. In such conditions the cattle stuck fast 'in the soft earth' and were thus 'at the mercy of the natives'. But swampy ground was only available to some clans and for limited periods of time. Elsewhere other techniques had to be developed.\n\nOn the Mulgrave River in north Queensland local blacks dug pits on well used cattle tracks and then speared the trapped beasts. Clans in the Western District rushed in and killed cows while they were calving; in the Bowen hinterland animals were driven through a narrow pass into an enclosed valley. A Riverina pioneer reported that he found a large party of blacks on his run and that they had driven his cattle into a tight circle and were 'ringing them around' and 'riddling them with spears all the time'.\n\nExperienced frontiersmen noted the development of Aboriginal techniques. The Commissioner for Crown Lands on the Liverpool Plains remarked in 1842 that local blacks had become 'much more expert and cunning in watching and hunting cattle' and had trained their dogs to be most efficient assistants to them'. A correspondent wrote to the Moreton Bay Courier in 1849 explaining that on the Pine Rivers the Aborigines had developed:\n\na new system of securing their prey, by wounding the beasts in such a way with their tomahawks that they are easily killed after being driven to the scrubs. This is a considerable improvement on their old system and shows the determined and systematic manner of their outrages. Previously, when the cattle were speared on the river there was a great chance that the savages would be disturbed before they could cut up the carcases and carry them off; and if they drove the herd to the scrubs they would no doubt have considerable difficulty in slaying the infuriated beasts. It was not gratifying... to find that many of their victims escaped after being speared or died too near to the stations for them to secure the anticipated feast. Their present plan has, therefore, been adopted in order that the maimed cattle may fall easily before their spears, when they reach the scrub, exhausted and faint from their previous wounds.\n\nIt appears that some groups killed cattle as near as possible to a river bank in order to use water transport for the large and heavy carcases. A Queensland pioneer reported that the blacks on the Burnett killed cattle on the north side of the river and then conveyed the meat in canoes across to the sanctuary of the rain forest on the south bank. Frederick Curr who settled in the Etheridge district in north Queensland recalled that he had to keep his herds away from the Einasleigh River because local blacks were able to kill the beasts while they were in the water and then tow the carcases downstream where they could be safely cut up and carried away.\n\nAborigines reacted quickly and creatively to the settlers' flocks and herds. They turned to good effect their traditional skills while accepting the need for innovation in both techniques and social organization. Ready access to large amounts of beef and mutton enabled groups to meet more frequently and stay together longer. Cooking methods were modified and diet changed with a probable decline in the collection and consumption of native plants. Yet reactions to cattle and to sheep were qualitatively different. When they pursued, killed and consumed cattle the Aborigines were still behaving like hunter-gatherers though they had modified traditional methods to cope with the introduced animals. But in their use of sheep many black clans had clearly travelled beyond the confines of customary experience. They had become effective herdsmen in their own right presenting a fundamental challenge to European pastoralists. All over the continent Aboriginal groups learnt to shepherd their sheep for long distances over difficult terrain, to train their dogs to assist rather than hinder their operations and to feed and water and corral their commandeered flocks. There are a few reports which suggest that the women took over the new role of shepherd while the men continued to hunt the larger indigenous animals as well as the introduced ones.\n\nThese developments were arguably the most striking examples of creative adaptation in the history of the Aboriginal response to the European invasion. Yet they have been almost completely overlooked by historians and anthropologists, due in part to the fact that the evidence is widely scattered and often in obscure sources. Another reason is that the Aboriginal venture into pastoralism was confined practically everywhere to a very short period of time coinciding with the moment of maximum conflict with the Europeans and coming abruptly to an end when black resistance was crushed and the survivors were let in to pastoral stations and frontier towns.\n\n# CO-ORDINATED ATTACKS\n\nBut the Aborigines also attacked and destroyed the European animals as part of their resistance to the invader as was indicated briefly above. A long list of such onslaughts could be compiled for each colony but a few examples will suffice for the purposes of illustration. In 1830 Tasmanian blacks beat 100 ewes to death on a Longford property; a few years earlier on the north-west coast a similar number of Van Diemens Land Company sheep were driven over cliffs into the sea. In 1816 in New South Wales 200 sheep of the Malgoa estate were destroyed; fifty were mangled and blinded, the rest thrown down a precipice. On the Liverpool Plains thirty years later four hundred young ewes were left dead in a heap on Cobb's Station. In 1842 McIntyre Aborigines killed a horse, cut off its head and two legs and hung the entrails out from bush to bush while on the New England plateau the local blacks burnt 1200 ewes and lambs. On a McIntyre River station local blacks killed eighty head of cattle in a single night and hamstrung others while some of the heads were cut off the carcases and put up on sticks. In 1848 forty cattle were drowned by Aborigines in the Brisbane River. Writing to his father from Bowen Downs in central Queensland in 1867 B. D. Morehead reported that the local clans had destroyed his sheep 'not to satisfy their hunger, but their spite, as in some of their camps there were more than fifty lying dead... or wounded lying about brutally murdered'.\n\nAborigines launched systematic attacks on individual properties which were quite devastating in their impact. Ovens river blacks attacked Dr Mackay's station in 1840 in the absence of the Europeans who returned to a scene of total devastation. Three valuable horses and a working bullock had been destroyed, all but seven of a herd of 1500 cattle driven away; a large barn and four roomed hut burnt to the ground along with forty bushels of wheat, agricultural implements, tools, bedding and clothes. Fifty years later and on the far side of the continent Northern Territory Aborigines burnt and looted Welleroo Station. They killed 30 or 40 fowls and threw them in a heap and carried away almost all moveable property including 20 bags of flour, 4 bags of rice, over 60 pounds of tobacco, all the pipes and matches, two dozen new dungaree suits, two dozen pairs of boots, all the clothes, rugs and blankets, 4 Winchester rifles and 300 cartridges.\n\nAboriginal attacks were occasionally massive enough to ruin pioneer squatters. Two men so affected petitioned the government for assistance leaving a record of their tribulations. In 1840 Victorian blacks raided David Waugh's Station killing the shepherds, running off most of the sheep and taking everything 'that could be, or supposed to be, of use to them'. Waugh's losses which he computed at \u00a31200 were crippling. A generation later John Yeates, one of the pioneer settlers of the Bowen district, assessed his losses while petitioning the Queensland government. The local clans raided his property on several occasions during a three month period in 1867. They took two flocks of sheep amounting to 1300 animals which he valued at 10s a head, 36 rams worth over \u00a32 each and stores worth \u00a355. His total loss of \u00a3800 could not be sustained and he abandoned the station.\n\nBut spectacular attacks on individual properties should not obscure the smaller, more typical Aboriginal operations, which were cumulatively important. Occasionally neighbouring squatters met to discuss their losses and petition distant governments for protection leaving a valuable record of frontier conditions. In 1842 Port Fairy settlers petitioned the Superintendent of Port Phillip computing their collective losses over a few months at 3600 sheep, 100 cattle and 10 horses. Seven years later the squatters on the Condamine wrote to the local Commissioner for Crown Lands complaining that during a four-month period the blacks had taken 6000 sheep and killed 8 shepherds while doing so. In 1851 the Magistrates of the Maranoa met at Surat and petitioned the local native police officer detailing the losses sustained by the squatters which amounted to 6000 cattle and 2000 sheep in the previous eighteen months.\n\nBut the violent and persistent retaliation by frontier squatters and their men forced the blacks to adjust the level of their assaults on European property and seek means to avoid imputation of responsibility. The Sydney Gazette reported in 1824 that the blacks living around the outer settlements had learnt to kill cattle by spearing them carefully in the skull, perforating a hole about the size of a musket ball subsequently claiming that white men were responsible for discovered carcases. In 1847 the Portland Gazette observed that local Aborigines were suspected of killing a bullock but that they had buried the head and skin in a pit in order to avoid detection. In the 1890s on the Diamantina local blacks cooked a bullock in a deep pit dug under a well worn cattle track in order to disguise their culinary operations. At Albany in 1842 a group of blacks devised a scheme to steal one or two sheep from their folds each night over a long period of time. So careful was the operation that the loss was not discovered for several months. A few years later on the Darling Downs the Commissioner for Crown Lands commented that 'everywhere' the blacks had adopted the 'same plan'. Visiting the stations in small numbers 'under the guise of friends' they allowed:\n\nno opportunity to escape of pilfering the huts or destroying any stray cattle they may meet on their way. In several instances they have killed milking cows close to the huts, without so much as being suspected till the Bones of their victims happen to be accidentally met with some days later; in one or two instances they have even buried the Bones...\n\n# ACCOMMODATION\n\nAccommodation between Aborigines and pastoralists was reached everywhere sooner or later, although it took place gradually and unevenly. Occasionally a group of neighbouring squatters made a collective decision to let the local clans in but more commonly it occurred fitfully, station by station, and over a considerable period of time. Aborigines responded tentatively. Typically a few individuals cautiously approached the Europeans and gradually over a year or two their kin began to spend a greater proportion of their time at station camp sites assigned by the squatter. Europeans kidnapped individual blacks for labour or sex; as hostages, even as tutors in local dialects. Equally the Aborigines sent women or young men into the white men's society to act as spies and go-betweens. A settler on the Gascoyne River told a government official in 1882 that he had 'no doubt the women kept by the whites act as spies for their friends in the bush'. Aboriginal shepherds and stockmen furtively fed their kin who had not come in. A government official investigating squatter complaints about sheep loss in the north west of Western Australia concluded that:\n\nin the great majority of cases the sheep have been given away by the shepherds at night. In the day time they allow them to go astray in order that their friends may pick them up.\n\nIn some cases it appears that small groups or individuals remained out in the bush refusing to accept European domination. Simpson Newland wrote of his experiences on the New South Wales-Queensland border with an old and recalcitrant black whom he called Baldy:\n\nOur new employees never gave us the least trouble, and as soon as they understood that neither the Queensland police nor our squatting neighbour would bother them while in our country we had the whole lot at our service\u2013good, bad, and indifferent\u2013all except the redoubtable Baldy. I had messages sent to him to come in, that no one should molest him, but all in vain. I never saw him in all my rides, drives, or walks, nor did the overseer, who was constantly on the run for many years. Much of the country was densely covered with thick polygonum swamps, and we were well aware Baldy lurked there during the day, and late at night often joined the shepherd's camps. Sometimes he went out in back country, away from the hateful white man, and lived the old hunter's life, obtaining water from the roots of the Kurrajong-trees growing on the dry tableland to the west of the Upper Paroo. On an excursion out there on one occasion I saw his tracks and the thick roots drained of their contents. Probably the untamable savage was close by, maybe our blackboy even saw him, but Baldy would hold no communication with the white race, though in return for the protection given and kindness shown to his people he kept the tacitly understood truce.\n\nOn some stations formal understandings were reached between squatters and neighbouring blacks. A Queensland pioneer explained to a Parliamentary Committee in 1861 that he had met the local clans and reached an understanding, telling them that he was 'master on the open ground and they were masters of the scrub and the mountains'. On Gamboola station on the Mitchell River Edward Palmer came to an agreement with the blacks of the district undertaking 'to protect them and give them a beast once a month or so\u2013and let them have one side of the river to hunt upon'. Blacks on Merivale Station in southern Queensland negotiated with the whites to secure the right to hunt and hold corroborees and similar agreements were reached on Woodstock and Jarvisfield Stations in north Queensland. On Strathdon in the Bowen district an Aboriginal woman who had lived on the station for a year acted as an intermediary between the local clans and Bode the resident squatter. The blacks agreed to stop killing cattle and threatening the stockmen while Bode promised his protection against the Native Police as well as hunting rights, free access to the river and supplies of blankets and steel axes. These examples are all from Queensland but it seems reasonable to assume that similar understandings were reached between pastoralists and blacks in many parts of the continent.\n\n# STOCKMEN AND CONCUBINES\n\nMost squatters were only too willing to exploit the labour of the Aboriginal camps. Within a very short time young men were working with the stock and women in and around station homesteads. It is probable that the blacks' eagerness to work for the Europeans varied widely. There are many reports of Europeans using force to recruit and keep their workers and all over Australia young women were forced in concubinage. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Mr Justice Dashwood, the Government Resident of the Northern Territory, told a Select Committee of the South Australian Parliament in 1899 that the 'forcible taking away of lubras' was a commonplace of outback life. Police officers who had spent their whole careers on the frontier had told him 'how men on stations seeing lubras in the bush will pursue them, run them down on their horses, and take them away'. A policeman based at Camooweal said that he felt sure:\n\nthat if half the young lubras now being detained (I won't call it kept, for I know most of them would clear away if they could) were approached on the subject, they would say that they were run down by station blackguards on horseback, and taken to the stations for licentious purposes, and there kept more like slaves than anything else. I have heard it said that these same lubras have been locked up for weeks at a time\u2013anyway whilst their heartless persecutors have been mustering cattle on their respective runs. Some, I have heard take these lubras with them, but take the precaution to tie them up securely for the night to prevent them escaping.\n\nYoung men were kidnapped too and taken to be 'trained up' for stockwork. But evidence of a voluntary acceptance of pastoral work can also be found. A squatter settled near Bowen explained in 1869 that he had allowed local clans to camp near water holes close to his head station and that on the following day a few men had come up on their own accord and joined his kanaka servants at their work, although 'they were more in the way than of service'. Cattle stations probably provided more congenial work for Aboriginal men than any other European undertaking with the possible exception of the maritime industries for sea-coast peoples. There was considerable overlap between the old economy and the new. Local knowledge, the ability to track and to live off the land; all of these were carried over into the life of the Aboriginal stockman. Knowledge of sheep and cattle gained before coming in was rapidly augmented in minds trained to closely observe animal behaviour. 'I don't know what we pioneers should have done without the blacks', wrote a Queensland pioneer cattleman in 1884, 'for they can't be beat at looking after horses and cattle'. Horse-riding was an exhilarating experience for people who had known no means of locomotion other than their own legs. 'Above all', a pioneer squatter wrote of the Burnett blacks in the 1850s, 'horse riding enchanted them'. 'They are ambitious to learn to ride' Chewings observed of young Aborigines in Central Australia, 'and do not mind a few falls in acquiring the art'.\n\nThe pastoral industry provided many young Aborigines with a role in the European economy in which they could find satisfaction and scope for both traditional and acquired skills. That it was not conducive to greater Aboriginal advance was due to the pull of traditional society on one side and the power of white prejudice on the other. Aboriginal workers were given little incentive to increase their efficiency. They were typically underpaid, given no formal training, were rarely praised and often bashed and kicked and whipped. Even when consideration replaced brutality the paternalism remained. The Thargomindah correspondent of the Queenslander provided an unblinking account of the situation of Aboriginal workers in the south-west of the colony in 1885. There were he wrote:\n\nOn all stations... in this western portion of Queensland a certain number of black boys and gins all employed, and it is difficult to see how stations could be worked without their assistance. The vast majority receive no remuneration, save tucker and clothes. They are, of course, bound by no agreements, but are talked of as my, or our... niggers, and are not free to depart when they like. It is not considered etiquette on the part of one station to employ blacks belonging to another. Cases have occurred where blacks belonging to both sexes have been followed, brought back and punished for running away from their nominal employers. For the main part they are fairly well treated, clothed and fed.\n\nThe pastoral industry was clearly a major determinant of the pattern of white-Aboriginal relations in many parts of the continent. Yet there were other areas where the first permanent white settlers were not squatters but farmers, miners, missionaries, sealers, pearlers and townsmen.\n\n# Chapter 7\n\n# OTHER FRONTIERS\n\n# SEA COASTS\n\nRelations between coastal clans and sea-faring Europeans provide an interesting contrast to contact on the land frontier. There were some important differences. Europeans who landed from ships were usually in quite small parties\u2013no more than could conveniently fit into a rowing boat. They were necessarily on foot and had little knowledge of the terrain beyond the tree line or the dunes. The journey by dinghy both to and from the shore was often hazardous, doubly so if potentially hostile blacks were standing on the beach. While stretching uncertain sea legs they could not hope to catch up with local blacks seeking to avoid them either by flight or concealment. When Europeans came upon parties of Aborigines we can assume that it was because the blacks had made a deliberate decision to meet the white men. Though there were violent skirmishes on every part of the Australian coast peaceful contact may have been more common on the shore than it was inland. Both parties stood to benefit from amicable meetings\u2013the Europeans could obtain water, local intelligence and perhaps sexual release; the Aborigines access to the white man's goods without the disadvantages of permanent European settlement. The belief that meetings on the coast were potentially peaceful seems to have been established among the Europeans sailing remote shores and may have influenced their behaviour. Searcey, the Northern Territory pioneer, wrote in 1905, that it was a 'well known fact' that whites from the sea were 'better received than those coming from inland'.\n\nAborigines participated in maritime industries from the early years of European settlement. They were involved in sealing and bay-whaling around the southern coasts during the first half of the nineteenth century and in pearling and b\u00eache de mer gathering around in the northern ones during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. Sea-based industries were probably less disruptive of Aboriginal life than either mining or pastoralism. The Europeans who harvested the sea had no need for land other than small plots for bay-whaling stations and b\u00eache de mer processing depots. Bay whaling fitted easily into accustomed patterns of life along the southern coasts. Coastal clans were used to gathering in large numbers to eat whales cast up on the beaches and may have assumed, as they had done in the past, that Aboriginal magic was responsible for bringing the whales into shore. The Europeans for their part were able to supply local Aborigines with large quantities of unwanted whale flesh. Around the northern coasts from the north-west of Western Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria the European search for b\u00eache de mer would have been immediately comprehensible to clans who had seen for centuries the seasonal coming and going of the Macassar men.\n\nWhile sealers, pearlers and whalers had no hunger for land they often relied heavily on Aboriginal labour for the profitability, and even the survival, of their industries. Bass Strait sealers depended on Aboriginal women from northern Tasmanian clans while at some of the bay-whaling stations Aboriginal crews manned rowing boats, receiving the same pay, or share of the profits, as the whites. The Commissioner for Crown Lands in the Monaro wrote in 1842 of three boats crewed by blacks at Twofold Bay. They were:\n\nstationed on the opposite side of the bay to the other fishermen and they adopted the same habits as the whites. They lived in huts, slept in beds, used utensils in cooking, and made the flour into bread; but as soon as the fishing season was over, they all returned to their tribes in the bush.\n\nIn northern Australia Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were even more extensively employed. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century a thousand or more blacks a year worked during the pearling and b\u00eache de mer seasons.\n\nTraditional expertise was carried over into the maritime trades much as it was on the pastoral frontier. Local knowledge of the location of beds of shell launched the north-western pearling industry. Aboriginal skill and endurance in the water ensured its success on both the east and west coasts until the diving dress was generally adopted in the 1880s. The expertise of the Tasmanian women on both sea and land allowed the European sealers to survive on bleak Bass Strait islands. James Kelly observed their hunting techniques when on Tasmania's east coast in 1816. The women walked to the edge of the water and wet themselves all over to prevent the seals from smelling them. They swam to the rocks where the seals were lying and, keeping to the wind-ward, they crept up to the reclining animals and lay perfectly still allowing the seals to inspect them:\n\nThe women went through the same motions as the seal, holding up their left elbow and scratching themselves with their left hand, taking and keeping the club firm in their right ready for the attack. The seals seemed very cautious, now and then lifting up their heads and looking round, scratching themselves as before and lying down again, the women still imitating every movement as nearly as possible. After they had lain upon the rocks for nearly an hour, the sea occasionally washing over them... all of a sudden the women rose up on their seats, their clubs lifted up at arms length, each struck a seal on the nose and killed him.\n\nThe predominantly male work force of the northern maritime industries sought Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island women for sexual gratification. The degree to which blacks assisted them in this pursuit varied widely according to time and local circumstances. On some occasions Europeans abducted women and kept them by force just as their land-based counterparts did on the pastoral frontier. Torres Strait Islanders told a government official in 1882 that the white men had so ill-treated their women in the past that when a boat was sighted the young women were buried in the sand and kept there until the Europeans sailed away. Yet at other times local communities actively participated in the trade extracting the best possible deal for the services of their women. On both the northwest coast and around Cape York the pearling fleets supported a large and lucrative prostitution industry. Aboriginal clans reorganized their pattern of migration to travel down to the sea coast when the pearling luggers were laid up for the monsoon season and remained there until they sailed away again. The demand for the young women was such that all other clan members could live off the proceeds of their copulation for the duration of the layup season.\n\nThe complexity of Aboriginal motivation was apparent also in the recruitment of labour for the sea-based industries. Force and fraud played a major role in the beginning as it had done in the early years of the labour trade in Melanesia. There is considerable evidence of this from all parts of the continent. In the papers of the Tasmanian settler, J. E. Calder, there is reference to a group of island men who sailed to Port Phillip during the 1820s where they enticed a party of young women on board and then sailed for the Bass Strait Islands where the women were bartered for seal skins. A pioneer of the north-west coast of Western Australia remarked that the method of obtaining labour for the local pearling industry was 'better imagined than described'; it was 'sufficient to say that it was crude'. Having been obtained in diverse ways the blacks were kept for as long as possible. They were 'planted' on off-shore islands on both the north-west and north-east coast during the off-season and picked up when the luggers put to sea again; they were abandoned in coastal towns like Broome, or Thursday Island or Cooktown, far from home, where further recruitment was the only means of survival.\n\nBut force and fraud probably became less important with time. The Queensland and Western Australian Governments began to exercise some supervision around the northern coast from the 1880s and the blacks themselves rapidly grew wise to the ways of the white men. Force and fraud after all could only work once or twice. To suppose otherwise is to assume that the Aborigines were unable to learn from experience. The essential weakness of the European position must be re-emphasised, along with a realistic assessment of what had to be done to recruit labour by force. The white men had to come ashore on a little known coast; protect themselves against attack; catch observant and fleet footed blacks on their own intimately known territory; secure captives; and then take them off the coast in small rowing boats. If the trade were to continue in the use of force this operation would have to be repeated many times over.\n\nIt is apparent that many blacks chose to work on the pearling luggers and b\u00eache de mer boats\u2013incited by their own curiosity, a desire to gain European goods, or to escape punishment or other trouble at home. After recent research on the North Queensland coast Anderson concluded that the relationship between the Aborigines and the lugger captains was not entirely a matter of oneway exploitation. For the blacks employment on the boats was often 'a way out of strife and tension on the domestic scene'. He concluded that there was evidence 'of men escaping the consequences of an adulterous affair, and of men dissolving an unsuccessful or undesirable marriage by simply going out on a lugger'. The Europeans were, then, often used for Aboriginal ends. They provided a new means to implement an old custom\u2013the traditional device of 'resolution of conflict by fission'.\n\nThe experience of labour on the luggers seems to have been woven into traditional patterns of life in other ways as well. The missionary E. R. Gribble noted how at Yarrabah the return of the men from the pearling fleets at the beginning of the wet season was marked by a distinctive ceremony. They were, he wrote:\n\ngiven a great welcome by the natives, and a peculiar ceremony was gone through on the arrival, as they came along the beach in a compact body, they were met by John and an old man, who conducted them along until they sighted the camps, they then stopped short, and facing each other gave a shout, then facing about marched on, each man singing and beating time with a spear on a shield; getting close to the camps a woman met them, bearing in her hands two green boughs, and, dancing along in front of them, led them to a cleared space in front of the little huts... here they stopped, and standing in a circle continued singing, with the woman dancing round the circle, shaking the boughs over their heads until another woman from a group standing near rushed up, and putting her head over the shoulder of one of the men gave a yell and this concluded the ceremony.\n\nAnother important aspect of recruitment was the co-operation of influential older men with the Europeans in order to encourage young men, and young women in some places, to ship with the whites. There is evidence of this from several parts of the continent. In her study of white-Aboriginal relations in Tasmania Ryan has drawn a clear picture of the relations between the Bass Strait sealers and the clans of the north-east coast. The blacks altered their pattern of movement about their territory remaining on the coast throughout the summer in order to keep in contact with the Europeans who bartered hunting dogs and other commodities for the temporary use of young women for their labour and sexual favours. The coastal people abducted women from traditionally hostile clans to meet increasing demands from the Europeans. This picture of relations between the sealers and the Tasmanians was confirmed by such visitors to Bass Strait as James Kelly in 1817 and William Hovell and Dumont Durville during the 1820s. Hovell met sealers and their Aboriginal concubines and discovered that:\n\nthe way these men get those Girls and Women is by purchasing or more properly speaking bartering for them of the different chiefs along the East Coast of Van Diemens Land.\n\nSome girls, he believed, left without regret; others resisted strongly but were forced by the older men to go with the Europeans.\n\nThe situation on the north coast later in the century seems to have been very similar. Young men were encouraged to sail with the whites by the old men who received a commission from the lugger captains. When demand was high the elders could extract substantial rewards. During the 1902 season, for instance, officials at Thursday Island issued permits for 990 recruits but only 334 were forthcoming. W. E. Roth, the Northern Protector of Aborigines, noted how the blacks had taken advantage of this situation to demand large bonuses of tobacco and flour in advance. The desire of the old men to gain exclusive possession of the young women was possibly another reason to send the youths away with the Europeans. Roth concluded that about one third of recruits were married and on their return they usually found their wives living with one or other of the old men. Anderson's work on the oral history of Bloomfield River people led him to the belief that the old men had used the pearling luggers:\n\nto increase their own power and wealth by acting as recruiters of young males for work on the boats\u2013a service for which the old men received tobacco, flour and decreased competition for wives.,\n\nWorking conditions in the maritime industries were often harsh and there was a high mortality rate from disease, personal violence and work-related accidents. Yet many Europeans quickly appreciated that good conditions and fair treatment resulted in greater productivity and certainly less tension on the cramped and stinking luggers. On the other hand the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were more than passive units of labour. They could use the universal stratagems of forced and unwilling workers\u2013going slow, feigning sickness, losing and breaking equipment or simply refusing to find shell under the water. As Europeans rarely dived they were ultimately at the mercy of the blacks who did. A pioneer of the north-western pearling industry wrote in 1886 that 'a kind of freemasonry exists between the men'. At times they agreed amongst themselves not to bring up shell. He referred to a 'notable instance' when divers of four ships declared for days that they could find no shell. When eventually Malay divers were sent down they found the shell stacked in heaps on the bottom.\n\nAborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were in many respects the experts about coastal waters. European and Asian skippers often came to depend on their judgement. The blacks made many of the day to day decisions about diving in much the same way that Aboriginal stockmen determined many questions relating to the management of cattle herds. In fact European pearlers and b\u00eache de mer seekers were probably more dependent on their black assistants when out on the coral reefs than were the squatters on their inland pastoral stations. An official report of 1880 on the Torres Strait pearl fishery concluded that the Aborigines and Islanders were 'quite capable of taking care of themselves'. In fact the divers had:\n\nalmost entirely their own way, and will not bear any superintendence from the whites whilst fishing, so that the practical part of the getting of the shell i.e. the management of the boats, the locality of the fishing, the times of fishing, besides the actual gathering of the shell is entirely left to the divers.\n\nBut the prevalence of peaceful contact around the coasts should not obscure the significance of Aboriginal resistance to sea-faring Europeans. It took many forms. Ships lying at anchor in estuaries or close inshore were raided in many parts of the continent. This was particularly common along the Queensland coast where the sheltered, island studded, waters inside the Barrier Reef gave Aborigines an offshore mobility unmatched elsewhere. The use of outrigger canoes in Torres Strait and along the north-east coast increased the range of blacks living along shore lines and on nearby islands. Reef waters were hazardous at night and ships frequently anchored till dawn leaving them vulnerable to nocturnal attack. This was particularly so in such waterways as the Whitsunday and Hinchinbrook Passages.\n\nAborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (and Papuans as well) launched numerous attacks on Europeans living at isolated b\u00eache de mer stations. Many young men recruited for pearling or b\u00eache de mer voyages eventually turned on the white men killing them or throwing them overboard and then sailed the commandeered vessel back to their mainland or island homes. It was often done simply to get home, sometimes long after an agreed contract period had expired. But boats were also taken to run them ashore, strip them of everything useful and then scuttle or burn them. It appears that eventually groups of young Aborigines and Islanders set out systematically to recruit, kill the Europeans or Asians, take the boat and then if possible repeat the process.\n\nAttacks on the Europeans in the b\u00eache de mer and pearling industries around about Torres Strait were serious enough to create deep concern in coastal communities. A writer in the Cooktown Independent claimed in 1890 that in the previous sixteen years at least 100 Europeans who had sailed from the port had been killed by Aborigines, Islanders and Papuans and many others, as a consequence, had been 'driven back upon southern civilization'. The accuracy of this assertion is difficult to determine. Yet similar anxiety about Aboriginal resistance was voiced in official government reports. One on the fisheries of North Queensland published in 1890 was eloquent with European disquiet:\n\nOf late years, and in the Torres Straits district more particularly, outrages committed by these labourers; in which the boat-owners or their agents have been assaulted and lost their lives, or the boats with stores on board have been stolen, have become so frequent as to paralyse the industry to a very large extent.\n\n# FARMING DISTRICTS\n\nFertile, well watered river valleys notch the east coast of Australia. In most of them Aboriginal clans had their first prolonged contact with timber getters cutting cedar and other valuable trees in sub-tropical and tropical rain forest. They, in turn, were followed by small farmers who grew potatoes, maize, bananas and other crops in patches of cleared land. The overall pattern of race relations was similar to that on the pastoral frontier but there were some significant differences which require comment. Heavy forest provided food and sanctuary for resident clans for many years in some places and slowed down the impact of the Europeans although customary patterns of clan migration and local ecologies were disrupted. Water was normally much easier to find than in the dry inland and many local groups continued to have access to estuaries, stretches of coastline, and off-shore islands.\n\nConflict commonly arose over the question of access to European crops. Blacks not only refused to concede that white farmers had suddenly become the 'owners' of small pockets of clan territory, they also attempted to secure a share of the new vegetable foods which grew there. The increasing pressure on traditional food supplies intensified their determination to harvest the new crops growing on their land. Whenever they could they reaped 'by stealth the product of a tract of land they are themselves too indolent to cultivate' as the Sydney Gazette complained in 1805. Inter-racial tension was often seasonal, culminating when grain crops ripened and potatoes matured. 'These enormities', noted the same paper 'are periodical in their commencement'; the blacks were most threatening 'when the fields of ripened maize were open to their pillage'.\n\nAboriginal raids on the crops often involved many hands. Several acres of maize were taken in one night from a Moreton Bay farm in 1846 and there were similar raids on the corn crop on the Don River in the 1870s, farmers losing 100 bushels or more in a single week. On the Herbert River a few years later a farmer complained that he had lost all his banana crop, one half and one third of successive corn crops, and all of a third one, while from another property the local blacks took all the sweet potatoes, most of the corn and a hundred bunches of bananas. A Barron Valley selector wrote to the Herberton Advertiser in 1888 detailing the impact of black raids on his property:\n\nI deem it my duty to make known to intending settlers the losses, through blacks, I have suffered during the present year. On January 12th they visited my selection; stole corn, and were shot at leaving a dilly bag and bone bodkin, used for husking corn, behind them. On the 13th they again stole corn... on nine occasions between the 12th of January and April 5th the niggers stole corn. On the 14th April, 23rd and 30th May, and June 4th, they stole corn. Off 4 acres planted in July I gathered 10 bushels; off 4 acres planted in November 6 bushels; and off 2 acres in January I got nothing\u2013the niggers had the rest. They have now started removing English potatoes and pumpkin.\n\nDuring successful raids on European crops the Aborigines clearly employed many of their traditional hunting skills\u2013stealth, patience and the ability to move without sound. Farmers at Bowen complained in 1873 that the blacks had succeeded in taking crops growing within ten yards of their huts. The Wild River Times reported in 1887 that tents were raided while selectors were working only fifteen paces away. The Commissioner for Crown Lands at Maryborough explained in a letter to his superior in Sydney in 1852 that the local clans had taken his sweet potatoes despite a watchdog and a paling fence six and a half feet high. He had, he said, found blacks actually 'lying within five yards' of his sitting room at 8:00 o'clock in the evening. They had been watching him write at his table while their companions 'dug the potatoes at about twenty yards further off down the hill'. When Aborigines gathered potatoes they often carefully replaced the stalk and leaves. There were reports of this from places as widely separated as Albany, Portland and the Tasmanian Midlands. It is not clear if this was done simply to escape detection, as the Europeans assumed, or if it was related to the traditional practice of replacing parts of yam plants after harvest. But in his reminiscences of pioneering in Tasmania and Victoria G. T. Lloyd had no doubt about the deliberation involved in Aboriginal tactics. 'Potatoes were rooted up and carried off by the hundred weight', he wrote:\n\nwhilst the cunning fellows re-arranged the ridges so neatly as to hide all appearances of their having been disturbed, erasing their footmarks also with brushwood as they retired. In this manner many industrious farmers found themselves most unaccountably mistaken in their estimate of their crop.\n\nBoth Aboriginal and European population densities were higher in the fertile coastal valleys than on the pastoral frontier. Properties were very much smaller and European neighbours closer together. To be successful Aboriginal raids had to be stealthy and well organized and usually conducted at night. A writer in the Wild River Times observed in 1888 that the local blacks evinced 'a knowledge and cleverness in the manner in which they plan and carry out their raids', which, he concluded, 'could scarcely be rivalled by London cracksmen'. Trickery and deception were called into play to secure the crops of vigilant resident selectors. In 1804 the Sydney Gazette reported that blacks on the Georges River had made a social call on a farmer's wife and kept her talking while others cleared a whole acre of corn and carried the cobs off in canoes. Eighty years later Atherton Tableland clans found a way to rob a German selector who had up till then foiled every attempt made on his crops. An Aborigine approached his hut making rude and insulting gestures. He took the bait and chased his tormentor into the nearby forest. While he was gone a small party moved quickly into his hut and took everything\u2013food, clothes, tools and other personal possessions. The fate of the impulsive German selector illustrated the fact that in many respects the conflict between white and black in small farming districts was more evenly balanced than in all but the most marginal pastoral country and much more even than on the mineral fields of north Australia.\n\n# GOLD RUSHES\n\nIn most parts of Australia mineral discoveries were made after the initial phase of settlement. Miners typically entered districts where Aborigines had already undergone considerable acculturation and where overt resistance had been crushed. But in north Queensland and in one or two parts of Western Australia miners leap-frogged ahead of the most remote pastoral stations and came into contact with clans whose members had never experienced permanent white settlement. The Gilbert was probably the first such field to be followed by the Etheridge, Mulgrave, Palmer, Hodgkinson and Croydon Rushes. Of all forms of European economic activity mining was probably the most devastating in its effects on resident Aborigines. Numbers alone were of decisive importance. Hundreds of miners arrived en masse at sites of promising finds. Even on small fields the Europeans rapidly outnumbered local clans and prospecting parties fossicked their way into the remotest corners of Aboriginal territory. Innumerable sacred sites must have been desecrated as the Europeans scrambled across the ancient landscape in their frenetic search for mineral wealth. The impact of alluvial miners on the environment was massive and immediate\u2013they gouged up the soil, polluted the streams, pillaged nearby stands of timber. The average mining camp had relatively few animals which could have compensated local Aborigines for the destruction of vegetable food and the shooting and driving away of indigenous animals.\n\nMineral rushes put unrelenting pressure on the Aborigines forcing them to seek safety in whatever sanctuary of scrub or mountain left to them. The European impact was exacerbated by the long dry season of north Australia which must have been a lean time for local blacks even before the whites arrived. Of all the European activities mining must have appeared to be the least rational, the most incomprehensible. A correspondent writing from the Etheridge field believed that the local Aborigines were very curious 'as to what the white men were rooting up the sand and soil for'. Their first belief, he remarked:\n\nwas that the object was something to eat, and, as the prospectors proceeded further up the river, down they would come, and commence rooting also in the abandoned holes. This they did perseveringly as the prospectors could see on their way down the river again.\n\nMiners felt little need to accommodate the blacks. Unlike squatters and farmers who were settling on the land the diggers were transients without commitment to the soil they so industriously turned up. They had little use for Aboriginal labour and the preponderance of European numbers obviated the need for the sort of negotiation noted on the pastoral frontier. They often lived in canvas and galvanized iron packed in from the coast rather than in bark huts made from nearby trees; they ate and drank commodities produced in factories in Sydney or Melbourne or even the northern hemisphere and rarely developed the sort of relationship with the environment which elsewhere led Europeans to an appreciation of indigenous knowledge and expertise.\n\nBlacks in the mining areas were often forced into resistance from the earliest period of European intrusion. Violence did not escalate slowly out of personal vendetta as in many districts of older settlement; in many places it was open and indiscriminate from the start. The local clans developed tactics to deal with the specific problems of the mining frontier. They made frequent attacks on the bullock teams supplying the remote mine fields, choosing night time for raids at known staging points along the dray roads and they speared large numbers of horses both to immobilize the Europeans and to eat their large animals. Sudden, well organized raids were launched against prospecting parties in the remoter parts of the mineral fields. Tents were constantly robbed, silently and skilfully, while miners worked nearby claims. So persistent were these robberies that it became customary on northern fields for one man to remain in camp during working hours to guard the tent. But despite their spirited resistance mining pushed the Aborigines to the edge of starvation more rapidly than any other European activity giving their attacks a desperation not often matched in other parts of the continent. 'The white men occupy their only hunting grounds', wrote a Palmer River resident in 1877, 'and in default of the fish, roots and game of the waterholes and creek bottoms, they are in a manner compelled to eat horses and bullocks'. Aborigines presented, 'a very emaciated appearance, as a rule. They appeared to be in very great distress and were, in many cases, starving.'\n\n# MISSION STATIONS\n\nDuring the last quarter of the nineteenth century Aborigines in a number of localities in northern Australia had their first continuous contact with missionaries rather than with pastoralists, pearlers or miners. This was true at Yarrabah, Bloomfield, and Hopevale on the east coast of Cape York and Mapoon and Weipa on the Gulf of Carpentaria; of Daly River and Beagle Bay in the North West; and of Hermannsburg in the Centre. The relations between Aborigines and pioneer missionaries were exceptional enough to merit a brief mention.\n\nThe reaction of local clans to the sudden appearance of missionaries appears to have followed a common pattern. After cautious surveillance from a distance one or two men ventured to meet the white people. Gradually the numbers visiting the missionaries increased and when mutual confidence had been established women and children followed their men folk into the embryonic stations. Individual visits were prolonged till eventually semi-permanent camps developed on the mission reserves and young children and old people were left behind while their kinsfolk faced the rigours and dangers of the bush. The greatest advantage of the missions was that they provided a sanctuary from the depredations of white pastoralists, miners or pearl fishers and from those of traditional Aboriginal enemies as well. Both black and white foes were constrained from attacking clans actually camped within reach of the missionaries.\n\nBlacks who lived for part of the time on mission reserves seem to have carefully chosen the time of their visits to coincide with the leanest and least pleasant period in the bush\u2013the dry season around Hermannsburg, the time of the cool, wet south-easterlies on the east coast of Cape York. Poland, the German missionary from Hopevale, wrote realistically of what motivated local clans to come into the mission:\n\nApril! Australian Autumn. Not much more fruit to be gathered in the bush. The cold wind makes fishing harder and less rewarding. The natives and their dogs are getting thinner. They are beginning to feel cold, their tobacco is almost at an end. So they have to make the bitter decision to give up their free and easy life for a while and go to the mission station and work there.\n\nThe missionaries were important as a source of desired European commodities like steel axes, flour and especially tobacco. Work on the mission station and attendance at often incomprehensible prayer meetings was an accepted price to pay for access to them. But the blacks soon learnt how to bargain for more generous supplies. A local clansman told the Trappists at Beagle Bay that it was a case of 'no more tobacco, no more 'allelulia'.  The blacks were able to play the missionaries off against the other Europeans, quickly appreciating the political possibilities inherent in the situation where different groups of white men were pursuing irreconcilable objectives. 'They do not like working in the fields', noted a north Queensland missionary, and they consider that 'our issues of food and tobacco are not very generous'. The Aborigines asked him pointedly, 'Does the One up in Heaven tell you to give us so little?' The missionary retorted that the gospel taught that he who did not work would not eat. With that the blacks replied by praising the townspeople of Cooktown for their generosity to the blacks.\n\nWhatever success the missionaries had with Aboriginal children the adults strongly resisted the attempts to proselytise them. 'They hold so firmly to their fables', wrote Kempe of the Hermannsburg blacks, 'that they have already told us straight out that we tell them nothing but lies'. At about much the same time Poland was writing of his difficulties with the Aborigines at Hopevale. He had endeavoured to explain the significance of Christmas but the adults looked at him with an 'air of utter disbelief'. They said mockingly that their ears were blocked to his message because they had to sleep on the ground all the time.\n\nBut blacks often developed the ability to appease the missionaries and keep on good terms with them. Poland gave an account of an exchange he had with a group of men just returned from a fishing trip. They had explained how the eldest member of the party had tied up the wind to facilitate their journey and that he could also make rain. The discussion continued with the missionary exclaiming:\n\n'Oh, don't talk such rubbish, I am telling you the truth; only God can let the rain come'.\n\n'Of course he is right', says the rainmaker and looks mockingly at his friends.\n\n'Be quiet and don't mock him', says another one a little anxiously.\n\n'Don't make him angry', another one repeats.\n\n'He may not give us any tobacco otherwise'.\n\n'Now let him talk!', exclaims one man, 'haven't I been telling you all along? He talks well and we ought to stay with him'.\n\nPoland concluded ruefully that the 'bored look' on the face of the last speaker left him in no doubt about the total insincerity of the statement. On other occasions the Aborigines deliberately played down to the low opinions of their ability held by the missionaries. 'We blacks simply can't learn', missionary Hoerlein was told at Bloomfield, 'our heads are too hard. Nothing ever goes in. Learning is only for white people like you.' The missionary's task was all the more difficult because the Aborigines often thought that by letting their children receive instruction they were actually working for the benefit of the white men. The experience of the German missionaries at Moreton Bay in the 1840s was typical of misunderstanding apparent elsewhere. The mission diary for May 1842 contained the passage:\n\nthey consider still their attendance a labour for us, from which they suppose we derive advantage and threaten us sometimes, when they are not quite pleased, no more to work in the school for us.\n\nAborigines found many advantages in the missionary presence, especially in those areas where they continued to have ready access to their own country and the food it provided. But conflict emerged in regard to the education of the children and the questions of marriage and burial where Christian and Aboriginal traditions met head-on. The missionaries attempted to suppress traditional mortuary ceremonies and endeavoured to prevent the tribal marriages of young girls who had grown up on the stations, although it is quite likely that the girls sometimes used the missionaries in order to avoid the dictates of the old men. E. R. Gribble described the tension resulting from the struggle over who would bury the body of a little girl who died at Yarrabah in 1895:\n\nAfter placing it in the coffin I waited some time before putting on the lid; one old woman stepped up and put an old garment and several pieces of bark into the coffin. Then I placed the lid on, and as soon as I did so the old women set up a most fearful din, and acted in a truly disgusting manner, rolling in the sand, throwing it at the coffin and over each other... They did not want the whites to have anything to do with the dead.\n\nThe missions set up in remote localities in the late nineteenth century did shield the Aborigines from some of the worst excesses of frontier contact. It is probable that around the missions the decline of the population was less dramatic, and that demographic recovery occurred sooner, than in many other parts of the continent: health on the missions was normally better than in the typical fringe camp. But the missionaries mounted an intellectual challenge to Aboriginal society and culture far more deliberate, and consistent, than any other group of Europeans in colonial Australia. It was most apparent in the separation of children and parents by the establishment of dormitories which became common on Australian missions established during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. Developments at Yarrabah during the 1890s illustrated a common trend. Gribble summed up his objectives in a number of reports written in the middle of the decade. In the first one of September 1895 he explained that the dormitory was nearing completion, an event eagerly awaited because the Europeans would 'then have the children more under control'. By having them 'under lock and key at night' the mission staff would be able to 'prevent the camp natives taking them off at all hours for corroborees etc'. The old people objected strongly to the incarceration of the children, complaining that the boys and girls were 'getting too much like white fellow.' News of the missionaries' behaviour spread quickly to clans living in the hinterland. Gribble described an incident which took place a few months after the opening of the dormitory. He was travelling in the bush with two black guides some distance away from Yarrabah. The party approached a camp on a creek bank just before sundown. The local men came up to the visitors and interrogated the two guides. Gribble described the following exchange:\n\nAt first little notice was taken of me, the people being busy questioning the two boys while I stood a little apart. Presently one man asked Harry who I was, and on his saying quietly the one word 'Missionary', the effect was wonderful to behold, the women gave me one look full of fear, then clasping their children tightly, vanished; the men stood their ground, but looked as if they would like the ground to open and swallow either me or themselves.\n\nGribble subsequently learned the reason for the hostile reception. Aborigines for miles around had heard of the mission, he wrote, and the idea was 'among them that we intend taking their children forcibly from them'.\n\n# FRONTIER TOWNS\n\nColonial towns played an important role in the history of contact and acculturation. Almost every European community on the continent had at least one fringe camp at some time in its history. Many blacks were driven into these camps just as Aborigines elsewhere were forced onto pastoral stations by the violence of the bush and dwindling indigenous food supplies. 'They are driven from many stations in the bush', wrote a government official in Rockhampton in the 1860s, 'and their dogs which they use for hunting are poisoned... so that the use of their own country is literally taken away from them'. A similar situation was outlined by an Aboriginal woman interviewed in the bush near Cooktown in 1899. She was camped with a small family group which had just returned from town with meat and bread. When asked why she and her kin did not go into the bush and live off the land she replied: 'White fellow along a yarraman, too much break him spear, burn yams, cut him old man with whip, white man too much kill him Kangaroo.'\n\nBut while some Aborigines were pushed in towards the towns others went willingly in the same direction. Curiosity enticed many as did the possibilities for gathering food and tobacco by scavenging, begging, casual labour and prostitution. The larger towns were able to supply a considerable amount of food for people who were accustomed to making use of almost everything edible in their environment. The outskirts of the pioneer towns became convenient locations for clans to meet and hold ceremonies, battles, corroborees and initiations. They could draw on both the town and neighbouring bush for food and were safer from attack than in the hinterland. It seems probable that clans frequently changed the venue of regular gatherings to take advantage of the towns and even altered ceremonial calendars to coincide with such European occasions as the distribution of blankets to Aborigines on Queen Victoria's birthday, 24 May. E. J. Eyre observed the movement of South Australian clans in towards Adelaide in the 1840s. He wrote that:\n\nLarge towns are frequently the centre of meeting for many, and very distant tribes. The facility of obtaining scraps by begging, small rewards for trifling jobs of work, donations from the charitable, and a variety of broken victuals, offal etc enable them to collect in large numbers, and indulge to the uttermost their curiosity in observing the novelties around them, in meeting strange tribes, and joining them either in war or festivity, in procuring tools, clothes etc to carry back and barter in their own districts... Thus, Adelaide is nearly always occupied by tribes from one part or another of the country: on an average, it will support probably six hundred in the way I have described, though occasionally eight hundred have met there.\n\nThe conviviality of fringe camps may have attracted Aborigines in from the bush. The interest was not the European settlement as such but the large Aboriginal gatherings which it made possible. As with so many other features of contact history the blacks appear to have used the Europeans and their towns for their own ends. The anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner remarked that in traditional society:\n\nthe most prized goods of life were to be found, and were deliberately sought, in large associations. Everywhere, it seems, there was a propensity for bands to foregather as long as physical conditions allowed and sociability persisted.\n\nComplaints from townspeople all over Australia emphasised the constant activity of the fringe camps; the succession of corroborees, ceremonies and fighting. 'One night there is a marriage, another a death, and another a pitched battle', wrote a Darwin resident in 1874, 'there is always some occasion for noise and riot'.\n\nThe acute problems which developed in the fringe camps\u2013disease, malnutrition, addiction to alcohol or opium, the psychological tensions of sedentary living\u2013were widely reported by European observers. Yet the dangers may not have been immediately apparent to the blacks who set up camp for the first time on the outskirts of colonial towns. Campsites rarely began as permanent homes, the transition from nomadism to sedentary living often took a generation or more. 'Townblacks' shifted camp regularly even though distances moved were increasingly confined within a shrinking circle of territory. Fringe dwellers continued to shift from places where kin had died in much the same way as they had done before the white men came and such sites may never have been re-occupied.\n\nThough European men wore deep tracks to the blacks' camps on their nocturnal search for sexual excitement the life of fringe-dwelling communities continued without much interference from the townspeople. The distance between town and camp probably suited both the whites and the blacks. The two or three miles typically separating the two settlements allowed the Aborigines to continue with many aspects of traditional life which would have been disrupted if they had lived closer to the Europeans. A recent study of a part-Aboriginal community in southern inland Queensland reported the recollections of old people about their earlier life in the camp on the outskirts of town. Despite the desperate poverty that had characterised their situation what they remembered was 'the warmth, lack of boredom, fewer responsibilities, having fun and being together away from the prying eyes of whites'.\n\nOne of the problems created for the blacks by the establishment of European towns was the degree to which the traditional owners of a town site could control the access of more distant clans to both the town itself and the food and tobacco available there. This issue was probably a major source of conflict all over the continent. The 'inside' clans appealed to tradition, the 'outsiders' felt that the arrival of the white men had radically altered the situation. Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines in Adelaide, noted the tension between the local blacks and those coming in from the Murray who told him they were 'intending to take over and expel Adelaide blacks from town'. For their part the local people abused children from the Murray clans who were going to school in Adelaide, accusing them of 'obtaining food in a territory to which they had no hereditary right'.\n\nConflict between Aborigines and settlers spilt over into the outskirts of a number of small pioneer townships. Blacks speared horses and cattle and occasionally the citizens themselves close to town and townspeople lived with high anxiety, loaded guns and barricaded doors. In places like Maryborough, Cardwell and Port Lincoln the fear of Aboriginal attack appeared to threaten the future of the settlements while acute anxiety about the local clans was probably the major reason for the desertion of Gilberton in 1873. Town blacks for their part appear to have used fringe camps as a base for raids on sheep and cattle in rural hinterlands. After such an excursion they returned quickly to the relative security of the town where even the most ruthless squatters were constrained from exacting revenge. 'The cunning fellows know they are safe in town' wrote a Maryborough resident in 1867 'where it is next to impossible to catch them, and dispersing is not permissible'.\n\nIn some towns the blacks became accomplished thieves and burglars combining their growing understanding of European society with the stealth and patience of the traditional hunter. This development can best be illustrated by reference to Maryborough during the first twenty years of its history. During the 1850s the resident Commissioner for Crown Lands made many complaints about the local black burglars. In 1855 he remarked that their movements were so stealthy and they were 'such adepts in the Commission of robberies which they perpetrate during the night' that it was impossible to detect them. The following year he noted that they were becoming 'very expert in house robberies'. They removed panes of glass to release window catches, cut away sections of wall to loosen bolts, put children through small openings to undo locked doors. The local paper observed some years later that black burglars behaved 'as though they had served an apprentership in London or New York'. Food was the main objective, stores and drays the most common target. During six weeks in November\u2013December 1855 there were twenty six separate robberies in Maryborough which netted the local blacks at least 1500 pounds of flour and 800 pounds of sugar as well as meat, tea, clothes, bedding and utensils.\n\nYet it is likely that many blacks in fringe camps would have preferred to come to a negotiated settlement with the Europeans ensuring them of adequate food and protection from arbitrary violence. There was an incident in Rockhampton late in 1865 which had direct bearing on this question. A group of 'town blacks' demonstrated outside the home of the Police Magistrate. The local paper reported that 'they signified that peace and safety was only assured by the payment of a blackmail in the shape of flour, tobacco and white money.' It is intriguing to consider if such overtly political action was common but merely unreported or not even recognized as such by the white community. The response of the Rockhampton authorities was predictable. On hearing of the occurrence the police sergeant and two mounted troopers 'dispersed the vagabonds'.\n\n# CONCLUSION\n\nThis is the first book to systematically explore the other side of the frontier, to turn Australian history, not upside down, but inside out. It establishes that it is possible to write Aboriginal history and present it to white Australians in such a way that they can understand black motives and appreciate the complexities of their tragic story. W. K. Hancock's judgement of 1930 that Aboriginal society was 'pathetically helpless' when assailed by Europeans can be seen now as a travesty albeit still an influential one. Even today sympathetic whites speak of the blacks as the passive objects of European brutality or charity. Indeed many of the major themes of white history were mirrored on the other side of the frontier.\n\nThe Aboriginal response to invasion was much more positive, creative and complex than generations of white Australians have been taught to believe. The heroes of nationalist mythology had their little known black counterparts. The courage of European explorers pushing out into the interior was matched by that of the Aborigines who met them on the way and by others who travelled in towards the white men's settlements to observe and evaluate the interlopers. Epic journeys of discovery were not the preserve of white men. The explorer's fear of black savages was echoed by Aboriginal alarm about evil spirits and malignant magic. The improvisation and adaption of Europeans settling the land was paralleled by tribesmen who grappled with a new world of experience on the fringes of white settlement. The stoical endurance of pioneer women was matched by that of their black sisters who bore children and battled to keep them alive in conditions of appalling adversity. All over the continent Aborigines bled as profusely and died as bravely as white soldiers in Australia's twentieth century wars.\n\nIn the long run black Australians will be our equals or our enemies. Unless they can identify with new and radical interpretations of our history they will seek sustenance in the anti-colonial traditions of the third world. If they are unable to find a place of honour in the white man's story of the past their loyalties will increasingly dwell with the 'wretched of the earth'. But if the Aboriginal experience is to be woven into new interpretations of Australian history changes will be necessary. We will have to deal with the blacks as equals or they will see our sudden interest in their history as merely another phase of our intellectual usurpation of their culture and traditions. We must give due weight to the Aboriginal perceptions of ourselves and they will not be flattering. Aborigines have seen so much of the dark underside of white Australia; they have lived with it for two hundred years. Blacks believe that Europeans are hypocrites. 'You are very clever people', an old tribesman told W. E. H. Stanner, 'very hard people, plenty humbug'. In Aboriginal eyes the whites were invaders who came preaching the virtues of private property; people who talked much of British justice while unleashing a reign of terror and behaving like an ill-disciplined army of occupation once the invasion was effected; forcinators who pursued black women in every fringe camp on the continent but in daylight disowned both lovers and resulting offspring. Major figures of our history will have to be reassessed\u2013frontiersmen who lavished lead on neighbouring clans; selectors who notched the handles of their Colt revolvers as readily as they ring-barked rainforest trees; jolly swagmen who at night became far from funny shagmen when they staggered into blacks' camps. The high evaluation of explorers needs amendment. They were usually dependent on the expertise of their black guides; they followed Aboriginal paths, drank at their wells; slept in their gunyahs and were often passed on from clan to clan by people who constantly monitored their progress through a landscape the Europeans chose to call a wilderness.\n\nFor many years white Australians have used Aboriginal words, symbols and designs to heighten their national distinctiveness and underline their separate identity. We can scarcely wonder if others judge us in this light and use our attitude to the Aboriginal historical experience as the acid test when they come to judge if white Australians have assimilated to the continent or are still colonists at heart. If we are unable to incorporate the black experience into our national heritage we will stand exposed as a people still emotionally chained to our nineteenth century British origins, ever the transplanted Europeans.\n\nMuch of Aboriginal history since 1788 is political history. Recent confrontations at Noonkanbah and Arukun are not isolated incidents but outcrops of a long range of experience reaching back to the beginnings of European settlement. The Tent Embassy of 1972 did not launch Aborigines into Australian politics but rather reminded white Australians of old truths temporarily forgotten. The questions at stake\u2013land, ownership, development, progress\u2013arrived with Governor Phillip and have been at the pivot of white-Aboriginal relations ever since. They are surely the most enduring issues of Australian politics and will in the long run prove to have been of much greater consequence than many questions which since the middle of last century claimed the attention of parliaments and public for a season or two.\n\nFrontier violence was political violence. We cannot ignore it because it took place on the fringes of European settlement. Twenty thousand blacks were killed before federation. Their burial mound stands out as a landmark of awesome size on the peaceful plains of colonial history. If the bodies had been white our histories would be heavy with their story, a forest of monuments would celebrate their sacrifice. The much noted actions of rebel colonists are trifling in comparison. The Kellys and their kind, even Eureka diggers and Vinegar Hill convicts, are diminished when measured against the hundreds of clans who fought frontier settlers for well over a century. In parts of the continent the Aboriginal death toll overshadows even that of the overseas wars of the twentieth century. About 5,000 Europeans from Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn died in the five wars between the outbreak of the Boer War and the end of the Vietnam engagement. But in a similar period\u2013say the seventy years between the first settlement in north Queensland in 1861 and the early 1930s\u2013as many as 10,000 blacks were killed in skirmishes with the Europeans in north Australia.\n\nHow, then, do we deal with the Aboriginal dead? White Australians frequently say 'all that' should be forgotten. But it will not be. It cannot be. Black memories are too deeply, too recently scarred. And forgetfulness is a strange prescription coming from a community which has revered the fallen warrior and emblazoned the phrase 'Lest We Forget' on monuments throughout the land. If the Aborigines are to enter our history 'on terms of most perfect equality', as Thomas Mitchell termed it, they will bring their dead with them and expect an honoured burial. So our embarrassment is compounded. Do we give up our cherished ceremonies or do we make room for the Aboriginal dead on our memorials, cenotaphs, boards of honour and even in the pantheon of national heroes? If we are to continue to celebrate the sacrifice of men and women who died for their country can we deny admission to fallen tribesmen? There is much in their story that Australians have traditionally admired. They were ever the underdogs, were always outgunned, yet frequently faced death without flinching. If they did not die for Australia as such they fell defending their homelands, their sacred sites, their way of life. What is more the blacks bled on their own soil and not half a world away furthering the strategic objectives of a distant Motherland whose influence must increasingly be seen as of transient importance in the history of the continent. Mother England has gone\u2013the Empire too\u2013yet black and white Australians have still to come to terms almost two hundred years after the British established their first beach-head at Sydney Cove.\n\n# NOTES\n\nAbbreviations\n\nBL | Battye Library  \n---|---  \nHRA | Historical Records of Australia  \nHRNSW | Historical Records of New South Wales  \nJRGS | Journal of Royal Geographical Society  \nML | Mitchell Library  \nNSW Col. Sec. | New South Wales Colonial Secretary, In Letters  \nNSWLAV&P | New South Wales Legislative Assembly Votes and Proceedings  \nNSWLC | New South Wales Legislative Council  \nNSWLCV&P | New South Wales Legislative Council Votes and Proceedings  \nQld Col. Sec. | Queensland Colonial Secretary, In Letters  \nQSA | Queensland State Archives  \nQVP | Queensland Votes and Proceedings  \nRGSSA | Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia, South Australian Branch  \nSA Col. Sec. | South Australian Colonial Secretary, In Letters  \nSMH | Sydney Morning Herald  \nTas. Col. Sec. | Tasmanian Colonial Secretary, In Letters  \nTHRA | Papers and Proceedings of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association  \nTSA | Tasmanian State Archives  \nVPRO | Victorian Public Records Office  \nWA Col. Sec. | Western Australian Colonial Secretary, In Letters  \nWAHS | Journal of the West Australian Historical Society  \nWALCV&P | West Australian Legislative Council Votes and Proceedings\n\n# New Introduction\n\nHenry Reynolds: Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1987.\n\nHenry Reynolds: With the White People, Penguin, Ringwood 1990.\n\nHenry Reynolds: The Other Side of the Frontier, James Cook University of North Queensland 1981, p. 2.\n\nHenry Reynolds: Why Weren't We Told, Viking, Ringwood 1999; and Penguin, Camberwell 2000.\n\nSubaltern Studies I, Oxford University Press, Delhi 1981, p. vii.\n\nSubaltern Studies III, Oxford University Press, Delhi 1984, p. viii.\n\nHenry Reynolds: The Other Side of the Frontier, Penguin, Ringwood 1982, p. 2.\n\nR. White: The Middle Ground, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991.\n\nInga Clendinnen: Dancing with Strangers, Text Publishing, Melbourne 2003.\n\nHenry Reynolds: Nowhere People, Viking, Camberwell 2005.\n\nHenry Reynolds: The Other Side of the Frontier, 1981 edition, p. 99; 1982 edition, p. 122.\n\nKeith Windschuttle: The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Macleay Press, Sydney 2002.\n\n# 1 Explorers and Before\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: History Department, James Cook University.\n\nG. F. Moore: A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Usage Amongst the Aborigines of West Australia, London 1842, p. 108.\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: James Cook University.\n\nT. L. Mitchell: Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, London 1848, p. 325.\n\nW. Hovell, Journal of a Journey from Lake George to Port Phillip, 1824\u201325, Journal Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 7, 1921, p. 371.\n\nM. Doyle (ed.): Extracts from the Letters and Journals of George Fletcher Moore, London 1834, p. 110.\n\nP. Warburton: Journey across the Western Interior of Australia, London, 1875 p. 252.\n\nC. Smith: The Booandick Tribe of South Australian Aborigines, Adelaide 1880, p. 26.\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: History Department, James Cook University.\n\nW. E. Roth: Ethnographical Studies Among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, Brisbane 1897, p. 137\n\nW. E. H. Stanner: Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River etc, Oceania, Vol. 4, No. 2, December 1933, p. 174.\n\nN. Gunson (ed.): Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L. E. Threlkeld etc, 2 vols., Canberra 1974, Vol. 1, p. 48.\n\nG. A. Robinson: Report of an Expedition to the Aboriginal Tribes of the Interior, March-August 1846, p. 25; G. A. Robinson Papers, Vol. 60. Mitchell Library (hereafter ML), MSS\/7081.\n\nG. Windsor-Earl: 'On the Aboriginal Tribes of the Northern Coast of Australia', JRGS, Vol. 16, 1846, p. 248.\n\nD. R. Moore: The Australian & Papuan Frontier in the 1840's, unpublished mss, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, p. 99.\n\nJ. Jardine, Somerset, to Governor Bowen, 1 March 1865 in F. J. Byerley (ed.): Narrative of an Overland Expedition etc, Brisbane 1867, p. 85.\n\nG. Windsor-Earl, op. cit., p. 248.\n\nJ. Oxley: Journals of Two Expeditions, p. 289.\n\n'A Noted Blackfellow', Adelaide Observer, 14 June 1924.\n\nSydney 1834, p. xi.\n\nT. L. Mitchell: Three Expeditions into Eastern Australia, 2 vols, London 1834, I, pp. 71\u201372.\n\nA. H. Howitt: Native Tribes of South East Australia, London 1904, p. 695.\n\nJ. H. Tuckey: An Account of a Voyage to Establish a Colony at Port Phillip etc, London 1805, p. 168.\n\nJ. Oxley: Journals of Two Expeditions, London 1820, p. 328.\n\nA. Searcey: In Northern Seas, Adelaide 1905, p. 23.\n\nD. Roughsey: Moon and Rainbow, Sydney 1971, p. 13.\n\nJ. Morrell: Sketch of a Residence, Brisbane 1863, p. 14.\n\nIbid., p. 15.\n\nT. L. Mitchell: Three Expeditions, I, p. 248.\n\nJ. L. Stokes: Discoveries in Australia etc, 2 vols, London 1846, I, p. 252.\n\nJ. Morrell, op. cit., p. 14.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions of Discovery etc, 2 vols, London 1845, 2, p. 213.\n\nJ. Oxley: Journals of Two Expeditions, p. 171.\n\nD. W. Carnegie: Spinifex and Sand, London 1898, pp. 239, 284.\n\nC. Sturt: Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, 2 vols, London 1849, I, p. 315.\n\nT. L. Mitchell: Three Expeditions, I, p. 129.\n\nReport of the North-Western Exploring Expedition; QVP, 3, 1876, p. 375.\n\nJ. Oxley: Journals of Two Expeditions, p. 163.\n\nJ. L. Stokes: Discoveries in Australia, 2, p. 297.\n\nJ. B. Jukes: Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of HMS Fly, London 1847, p. 56.\n\nJ. Gilbert: Diary, ML\/MSS 2587, p. 52.\n\nJ. F. Mann: Eight Months With Dr. Leichhardt, Sydney 1888, p. 30.\n\nJ. Gilbert: Diary, p. 51.\n\nAdelaide Observer, 14 June 1924.\n\nM. Labillardiere: Voyage in Search of La Perouse, 1791\u20131794, London 1800, pp. 300\u2013301.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions etc, 2, p. 211.\n\nG. Blainey: Triumph of the Nomads, Melbourne 1975, p. 253.\n\nE. S. Parker: The Aborigines of Australia, Melbourne 1854, p. 22.\n\nE. Giles: Australia Twice Traversed, 2 vols, London 1889, 2, p. 282.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions etc, 2, p. 216.\n\nC. Sturt: Narrative of an Expedition, 2, p. 315.\n\nT. L. Mitchell: Journal of an Expedition, p. 143.\n\nL. Leichhardt: Journal of an Overland Expedition, p. 494.\n\nC. Sturt: Two Expeditions etc, 2, p. 135.\n\nDiary & Letters of Sir C. H. Freemantle, London 1928, p. 55.\n\nG. B. Worgan: Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon, Sydney 1978, pp. 6\u20137.\n\nB. Spencer: Wanderings in Wild Australia, 2 vols, London 1928, I, p. 239.\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: History department, James Cook University.\n\n# 2 Continuity and Change\n\nReport of Protector of Aborigines, 3 June 1842, Colonial Secretary Letters Received 1842, South Australian Archives (hereafter SAA), GRG\/24\/6\/483.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions of Discovery, 2, p. 366.\n\nJ. L. Stokes: Discoveries in Australia, I, p. 60.\n\nJ. Morgan: The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, 2nd edition, London 1967 edited, C. E. Sayers, p. 21.\n\nD. R. Moore: Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York, Canberra 1979, p. 143.\n\nW. E. Roth: North Queensland Ethnography: Bulletin No. 5, QVP, 2, 1903, p. 492. See also C. W. Shurmann: Vocabulary of the Parnkalla Language, Adelaide 1844, pp. 72\u201373; L. E. Threlkeld: An Australian Language, Sydney 1892, Appendix D; G. F. Moore: A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Use Amongst the Aborigines of Western Australia, London 1842, p. 28; W. Ridley: Kamilaroi and Other Australian Languages, 2nd edition, Sydney 1875, p. 17; C. G. Teichelmann: Outlines of a Grammar, Vocabulary and Phraseology of the Aboriginal Language of South Australia, Adelaide 1840, p. 39; E. Curr: The Australian Race, 3 vols, Melbourne 1883.\n\nM. Eliade: Australian Religions, Ithaca 1973, pp. 60\u201361. See also: E. Kolig: 'Bi:N and Gadeja' etc, Oceania, 43, I, September 1972.\n\nG. F. Moore: A Descriptive Vocabulary, p. 28.\n\nLetter by 'Delta', The Inquirer, 11 May 1842.\n\nG. Grey: Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery etc, 2 vols, London 1841, 2, pp. 302\u2013303.\n\nLetter of Mr. T. Dodds, Cobham, 1 February 1839 in E. D. Cowan: 'Letters of Early Settlers', WAHS, 1, 1, 1927, p. 57.\n\nG. Grey: Journals of Two Expeditions, 2, pp. 302\u2013303.\n\nF. Armstrong in Perth Gazette, 29 Oct. 1836.\n\nG. F. Moore: A Descriptive Vocabulary, p. 28.\n\nDiary of Dr. S. W. Viveash, 16 February 1840, Battye Library (hereafter BL) MSS, QB\/VIV.\n\nE. Shenton: 'Reminiscences of Perth 1830\u20131840', WAHS, 1, 1, 1927, p. 2.\n\nC. Grey, Journal of Two Expeditions, 1, pp. 301\u20132.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions, 2, p. 367.\n\nE. D. Cowan: 'Letters of Early Settlers', p. 58.\n\nW. E. Roth: North Queensland Ethnography Bulletin No. 5, p. 493.\n\nJ. Morgan: The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, p. 31.\n\n29 October 1836.\n\nReport of Protector of Aborigines, 30 June 1842, Colonial Secretary, Letters Received, SAA, GRG\/24\/6, p. 483.\n\nSelect Committee on the Native Mounted Police, QVP, 1861, p. 56.\n\nIbid, p. 57.\n\nJ. Morgan: The Life of William Buckley etc, p. 21.\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: James Cook University.\n\n6 October 1838.\n\nPerth Gazette, 29 October 1836.\n\nJames Dredge to Bunting, 17 February 1840, James Dredge Notebook, La Trobe Library MSS, 421959.\n\nE. D. Cowan: Letters of Early Settlers etc, p. 58.\n\nManners and Habits of the Aborigines of Western Australia, Perth Gazette, 29 October 1836.\n\nReport of Protector of Aborigines, 30 June 1842, Colonial Secretary, Letters Received 1842, SAA, GRG\/24\/6\/483.\n\n21 July 1866.\n\nE. Curr: The Australian Race, 1, p. 26.\n\nL. E. Threlkeld: An Australian Grammar etc, p. xi.\n\nGeorge Frankland to Governor Arthur, 4 February 1829 in N. J. B. Plomley: Friendly Mission, p. 108.\n\nThrelkeld's Account of Mission to the Aborigines of New South Wales, ML. MSS, Bonwick Transcripts, Box 52.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions etc, 2, p. 240.\n\nG. Taplin: The Narrinyeri, etc, Adelaide 1878, p. 30.\n\nD. R. Moore: Islanders and Aborigines, pp. 199\u2013200.\n\nG. S. Lang: The Aborigines of Australia, Melbourne 1865, p. 28.\n\nN. J. B. Plomley: Friendly Mission, Hobart 1966, p. 264.\n\n23 May 1830.\n\nRhys Jones: 'Tasmanian Aborigines and Dogs', Mankind, 7, 1970, p. 270.\n\nE. Curr: The Australian Race, 3, p. 193.\n\nQueenslander, 20 May 1871.\n\nIbid., 14 October 1871.\n\nReport on Explorations in Cape York Peninsula, QVP, 2, 1881, p. 239.\n\nD. F. Thomson: 'The Dugong Hunters of Cape York', Journal Royal Anthropological Institute, 64, 1934, p. 257.\n\nG. Horne & G. Aiston: Savage Life in Central Australia, London 1928, p. 11.\n\nThomas to Robinson, 15 October 1840; Aboriginal Protectorate\u2013Westernport; Victorian Public Records Office.\n\nJ. Jorgensen: 'A Shred of Autobiography', Hobart Town Almanach and Van Diemens Land Annual, 1838, p. 108.\n\nDeposition of Thomas Grant re Collisons with Blacks at Portland Bay, Port Phillip Papers, 1840, NSW Col. Sec. 4\/2510.\n\nMr. Newbolt in Rockhampton Bulletin, 5 August 1865. See also I. Henry to Col. Sec., Qld Col. Sec., 6952 of 1885, Col A\/437, QSA.\n\nSydney Gazette, 19 May 1805.\n\nC. Lumholtz: 'Among the Natives of Australia', Journal of American Geographical Society, 21, 1889, p. 11.\n\nC. Chewings: Back in the Stone Age, p. 30.\n\nH. S. Russell: The Genesis of Queensland, p. 281.\n\nD. W. Moore: Aborigines and Islanders etc, p. 150.\n\nW. Rogers: 'A Noted Blackfellow', Adelaide Observer, 14 June 1924.\n\nK. L. Parker: The Euahlayi Tribe, London 1905, p. 36.\n\nR. M. Berndt: 'Wuradjeri Magic and Clever Men', Oceania, 18, 1947\u201348, p. 71 and 17, 1946 47, p. 356.\n\nA. K. Eckermann: Half-Caste, Out-Cast, Ph.D. thesis. University of Queensland 1977, pp. 122, 124.\n\nG. A. Robinson to Col. Sec., 31 October 1831, 18 November 1831, 22 January 1835; Tas. Col. Sec. In Letters, Tasmanian State Archives (hereafter TSA), CSO\/1\/318.\n\nG. F. Moore: A Descriptive Vocabulary, p. 105.\n\nK. L. Parker: The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 39.\n\nW. Tench: Sydney's First Four Years, introduced by L. F. Fitzhardinge, Sydney 1961, p. 227.\n\nN. J. B. Plomley: Friendly Mission, p. 262.\n\nSelect Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, New South Wales Legislative Council Votes & Proceedings (hereafter NSWLCV&P), 1845, p. 18.\n\nS. Newland: 'The Parkinjees or the Aboriginal Tribes on the Darling River', Proceedings Royal Geographical Society of Australia, South Australian Branch, 2, 1887\u201388, p. 26.\n\n# 3 Resistance: Motives and Objectives\n\n'Shall We Admit the Blacks'? No. 2, Port Denison Times, 1 May 1869.\n\nG. E. Loyau: The History of Maryborough etc, Brisbane 1897, p. 3.\n\nE. Curr: The Australian Race, 1, pp. 100\u2013106.\n\nC. B. Dutton: Letter in North Australian, 13 December 1861.\n\nF. H. Bauer: 'The Kartans of Kangaroo Island, South Australia' in A. P. Pilling and R. A. Waterman: Diprotodon to Detribalization, Michigan 1970, p. 198.\n\nA. R. Radcliffe-Brown: 'Three Tribes of Western Australia', Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 43, 1913, p. 137.\n\nA. R. Radcliffe-Brown: 'The Social Organization of Australian Tribes', Oceania, 1, 1930, p. 35.\n\nN. B. Tindale: Aboriginal Tribes of Australia, Canberra 1974, p. 115. See also J. B. Birdsell: 'Local Group Composition Among the Australian Aborigines' etc, Current Anthropology, 11, 2, April 1970.\n\nP. Sutton: Language Groups and Aboriginal Land Ownership, Paper delivered to Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Conference, Canberra, May 1980, p. 8.\n\nL. Sharp: 'Ritual Life and Economics of the Yir-Yoront of Cape York Peninsula', Oceania, 5, 1934, p. 23.\n\nJ. Morrell: Sketch of a Residence, p. 15.\n\nD. F. Thomson: 'The Hero Cult, Initiation and Totemism on Cape York', Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 63, 1933, p. 461.\n\nR. M. W. Dixon: The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland, Cambridge 1972, p. 35.\n\nThe Journal of Francis Tuckfield, La Trobe Library, MSS 655, p. 176.\n\nE. S. Parker to G. A. Robinson, 20 June 1839, Port Phillip Papers, 1840 No. 39\/10026, New South Wales Archives, 4\/2510.\n\nAborigines: Australian Colonies, British Parliamentary Papers, 1844, p. 282.\n\nSydney Morning Herald, 7 October 1843.\n\nW. Ridley: Appendix in J. D. Lang: Queensland, London 1861, p. 439.\n\nJ. D. Wood: Remarks on the Aborigines, 10 April 1862, Qld. Col. Sec. 1118 of 1862, QSA.\n\nD. Thomson: 'In Camp With the Stone Age Men', Queenslander, 22 and 29 January 1931.\n\nK. L. Parker: The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 52.\n\nW. Thomas: Brief Remarks on the Aborigines of Victoria, 1838\u201339, La Trobe Library, MSS 7838, p. 3.\n\nIbid.\n\nJ. D. Wood: Remarks on the Aborigines, p. 2.\n\nJacob Lowe, Select Committee on the Native Police, p. 9.\n\nJournal of Mr. Lewis's Lake Eyre Expedition 1874\u201375, South Australia Parliamentary Papers, 2, 1876, p. 20. See also\u2013C. Sturt: Two Expeditions, 2, p. 194 and J. Oxley: Journals of Two Expeditions, p. 347.\n\nM. Moorhouse to A. M. Mundy, 12 July 1841, Protector of Aborigines Letterbook, 21 May 1840\u20136 January 1857, SAA GRG\/52\/7.\n\nJames Flinn to Thomas Scott, 21 November 1837, Papers Relating to the Aborigines, 1796\u20131839, NSW Archives, No. 1161.\n\nM. Moorhouse to Mundy, 12 July 1841, Protector of Aborigines Letterbook, 21 May 1840\u20136 January 1857, SAA GRG\/52\/7.\n\nW. L. Warner: A Black Civilization, New York 1958, p. 151.\n\nKirchliche Mitteilungen (Church News), 29 Sept. 1897.\n\nR. Mansfield, Sydney 28 Nov. 1821, ML. MSS Bonwick Transcripts Box 52.\n\n1 June 1833.\n\nJ. K. Wilson: Select Committee on Native Police, p. 74.\n\nReport of Return of Mr. Petrie etc enclosed in report of Commissioner for Crown Lands, Moreton Bay, 30 May 1842; NSW Colonial Secretary in Letters, (hereafter NSW Col. Sec.) 4284 of 1842.\n\nA. H. Brown: Select Committee on Native Police, p. 120.\n\nPerth Gazette, 1 June 1833.\n\nS. Simpson, Moreton Bay, HRA, Series 1, 24, p. 259.\n\nF. F. Armstrong, Aboriginal Interpreter to Colonial Secretary, West Australia Colonial Secretary, In Letters, (hereafter WA Col. Sec.), 53, 1837.\n\nJ. D. Wood: Remarks on the Aborigines, p. 2.\n\nSubmission of Advocate General to Executive Council, 7 October 1841, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, 1844, p. 396.\n\nWalker to Colonial Secretary, 3 April 1861, Qld. Col. Sec., 944 of 1861.\n\nNorth Australian, 13 December 1861.\n\nJ. D. Wood: Remarks on the Aborigines.\n\nWiseman to Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, 16 November 1857, Qld. Col. Sec., 4319 of 1857.\n\nG. A. Robinson to Col. Sec., 30 January 1832, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/318.\n\nN. J. B. Plomley, Friendly Mission, p. 88.\n\nR. Dry, Answers Given by Settlers . . . to Certain Questions etc, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/323, pp. 289, 291.\n\nQueensland Times, 15 November 1861.\n\nSimpson to Col. Sec., 13 July 1842, New South Wales Colonial Secretary, In Letters, (hereafter NSW Col. Sec.), 4284 of 1842. See also W. Robertson: Cooee Talks, p. 142; H. S. Russell: The Genesis of Queensland, p. 279.\n\nExtract from journal of W. Schmidt, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, p. 297.\n\nMaitland Mercury, 5 February 1843.\n\nJ. D. McTaggart to Col. Sec., NSW Col. Sec., 1530 of 1858.\n\nGovernment Resident, Port Curtis, to Col. Sec., NSW Col. Sec., 2128 of 1856.\n\nLetter, W. H. Wiseman to Attorney General, Camboon, 29 April 1858; Select Committee on the Murders by the Aborigines on the Dawson River, NSW Legislative Assembly Votes and Proceedings, 2, 1858, p. 909.\n\nW. H. Wiseman, Commissioner of Crown Lands, Leichhardt, to Chief Commissioner, Sydney, 28 August 1855; Letterbook of W. H. Wiseman, QSA, CCL 7\/61.\n\nPapers of G. A. Robinson, 57, 1845\u201349, ML, MSS A7078\/1.\n\nE. S. Parker, Quarterly Journal, 1 September-30 November 1840, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate; North Western District, VPRO.\n\nE. S. Parker: The Aborigines of Australia, Melbourne 1854.\n\nE. S. Parker: Quarterly Reports, 1 March 1841 31 August 1841, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate; North Western District, VPRO.\n\nQuoted in A. R. Radcliffe-Brown: 'The Rainbow Serpent Myth in South-East Australia', Oceania, 1, 1930\u201331, p. 346.\n\nM. Moorhouse to Col. Sec., 10 October 1849, Protector of Aborigines Letterbook, 21 May 1840\u20136 January 1857, SAA GRG\/52\/7.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions, 2, pp. 358\u2013359.\n\nDiary, 1839. William Thomas Papers, ML. uncat. MSS 214.\n\nPort Denison Times, 18 April 1874.\n\nE. K. V.: 'Our Aborigines', Queenslander, 26 January 1884; An Ethnologist: 'The Australian Aborigines', Queenslander, 13 July 1895; W. Robertson: Cooee Talks, pp. 25\u201328; G. S. Lang: The Aborigines of Australia, pp. 28, 29.\n\nK. L. Parker: The Euahlayi Tribe, pp. 48\u201349.\n\nR. M. Berndt: Wuradjeri Magic and Clever Men, Part Two, Oceania, 18, 1947\u201348, pp. 73\u201374.\n\n# 4 Resistance: Tactics and Traditions\n\nF. Walker to Col. Sec., 1 March 1852, NSWLCV&P, 1852, p. 791.\n\nDiary of C. Palmerston, Queensland Heritage, 1, 8, May 1968, p. 29.\n\n8 December 1875.\n\nF. D. Browne: Respecting the Habits and Character of the Natives, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/323.\n\nPerth Gazette, 13 April 1833.\n\nCooktown Independent, 19 November 1890.\n\nN. J. B. Plomley: Friendly Mission, p. 553.\n\nH. S. Russell: The Genesis of Queensland, p. 281.\n\nCapt. Clark: Answers Given by Settlers... (to) the Aborigines Committee, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/323. See also: Police Magistrate, Bothwell to Col. Sec., Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/316, p. 39; A. Allingham: Taming the Wilderness, Townsville 1977, p. 157.\n\nF. A. Dutton to Col. Sec., 1 November 1844, SA Col. Sec., GRG\/24\/6, p. 1249.\n\nAdelaide Observer, 18 April 1846.\n\nCapt. Clark: Answers Given by Settlers... etc, Tas. Col. Sec., op. cit.\n\nA. Reid, Great Swanport, 2 January 1829, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/323, p. 77.\n\nT. Hooper, Black Marsh to T. Anstey, 18 August 1830, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/316, pp. 571\u2013574.\n\nIbid.\n\nThe Colonist, 16 February 1839.\n\nJ. Howe: 'Outrages by the Blacks', Hunter River Gazette, 12 February 1842.\n\nJ. Campbell: The Early Settlement of Queensland, Brisbane 1936, p. 11; A. Hodgson, P. M. to Col. Sec., NSW Col. Sec., 9744 of 1841; Native Police Incidents... etc by an ex-officer, Queenslander, 10 June 1899; Geographical Memoir of Melville Island and Port Essington, JRGS, 4, 1834, p. 153; M. Hartwig: The Progress of White Settlement in the Alice Springs District etc., Ph.D. Adelaide 1965, 2, p. 409.\n\n11 September 1830.\n\nArthur to Sir George Murray, 12 September 1829, HRA, 1, 15, p. 446.\n\nHistorical Records of New South Wales (hereafter HRNSW), 5, p. 514.\n\nMemorandum on the Means of Checking the Ravages of the Natives of Van Diemens Land; G. A. Arthur Papers, 19, ML, MSS A2179.\n\nQuoted by J. E. Calder: Tasmanian Aborigines, ML, MSS A612, p. 249.\n\nJ. Jorgensen to T. Anstey, 24 February 1830, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/320.\n\n5 May 1840.\n\nReports of Mr. G. A. Robinson to Col. Sec., Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/318, pp. 383, 511, 513; N. J. B. Plomley: Friendly Mission, p. 553.\n\nSelect Committee on Native Mounted Police, p. 7.\n\nCommissioner of Crown Lands, Moreton Bay to Col. Sec., 3 October 1843, NSW Col. Sec., 7448 of 1843 filed with 4122 of 1846.\n\n21 January 1843.\n\n3 June 1843.\n\nLetter of Mr B. Doyle to C. M. Doyle, 19 January 1843, Maitland Mercury, 28 January 1843.\n\nSydney Morning Herald, 28 November 1848.\n\nG. Caley: 'A Short Account Relative to the Proceedings in New South Wales', HRNSW, 6, p. 300.\n\nHunter to Portland, 2 January 1800, HRNSW, 4, p. 3.\n\nSee Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/316, pp. 127, 430\u2013443.\n\nSelect Committee on Native Police, NSWLCV&P, 1856\u201357, 1, p. 1209.\n\nHRA, 1, 25, p. 2.\n\nCooktown Courier, 1 January 1878.\n\nQueenslander, 15 February 1879.\n\n16 July 1830.\n\nIbid., 1 June 1831.\n\nReport of Aborigines Committee, 27 August 1830, Papers of Aborigines Committee, Tas. Col. Sec., CSO\/1\/319, also CSO\/1\/323, p. 77.\n\nReport of the Aborigines Committee, 20 October 1831; Papers Relative to the Aboriginal Tribes in British Possessions, BPP, 1834, p. 158.\n\nStirling to Aberdeen, 10 July 1835, Despatches to Colonial Office, 14 September 1834\u20136 December 1838, Letter 53, BL.\n\nR. M. Lyon, 'A Glance at the Manners and Language of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of W. Aus.', Perth Gazette, 30 March 1833.\n\nGeographical Memoirs of Melville Island, p. 153.\n\n24 June 1874.\n\nE. J. Eyre: Journals of Expeditions... etc, 2, 216\u2013217.\n\nQueenslander, 10 July 1880.\n\nRobinson to La Trobe, 15 August 1841, Port Phillip Protectorate, In Letters, VPRO.\n\nF. Tuckfield, Journal, pp. 95\u201396; Report of Assistant Protector, E. S. Parker to G. A. Robinson, 20 June 1839, Port Phillip Papers, 1840, Part 1.\n\nW. H. Wiseman to Chief Commissioner, Crown Lands, 7 January 1857, NSW Col. Sec., 796 of 1857.\n\nJ. E. Tenison-Woods, 'A Day with the Myalls', 13 January 1882.\n\nT.S.B., 'The Niggers Again', 26 June 1886.\n\nC. Chewings: Back in the Stone Age, p. 131.\n\nKing to Hobart, 20 December 1804, HRA, 1, 5, pp. 166\u2013167.\n\nSydney Morning Herald, 8 July 1842.\n\nA. W. Howitt: Native Tribes... etc, p. 299.\n\nJ. Morrell: The Story... etc, p. 15.\n\n14 January.\n\n11 September 1880.\n\nQueenslander, 23 February 1878.\n\nIbid., 15 May 1875.\n\n25 September 1875.\n\n30 September 1879. See also Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 32, 1880, p. 306; speech by Mr Baynes, Queenslander, 16, 23 August 1879; Maryborough Chronicle, 16 March 1880; John Mathew Papers, Institute of Aboriginal Studies, MSS 950.\n\nMudgee Guardian, 23 July 1900.\n\nIbid., 3 September 1900.\n\nSydney Morning Herald, 23 November 1900.\n\nIbid., 29 October 1900. See also H. Reynolds, 'Jimmy Governor and Jimmie Blacksmith', Australian Literary Studies, 9, 1, May 1979.\n\nReport in Evening News, cutting enclosed in NSW Archives file, Police\/4\/8581.\n\nG. A. Robinson Papers, 60, ML, MSS A7081, p. 46.\n\nB. Threadgill: South Australian Land Exploration, 1856\u20131880, Adelaide 1922, p. 58.\n\nC. Rolleston, Darling Downs, 11 January 1851, Reports of Commissioners of Crown Lands on the State of the Aborigines for 1850, Colonial Office Papers, CO 201\/412.\n\nRev. J. Y. Wilson, Replies to Circular Letter from Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, NSWLCV&P, 2nd Session 1846, p. 14.\n\nSelect Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, NSWLCV&P, 1845, p. 55.\n\nI. Crawford: William Thomas and the Port Phillip Protectorate 1839\u20131849, M. A. Melbourne 1967, p. 22.\n\nW. Hull, Select Committee on the Aborigines, Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Victoria, 1858\u201359, D8, p. 12.\n\nDredge to Bunting, 17 February 1840, James Dredge Notebook, La Trobe Library, MSS 421959, Box 16\/5.\n\nMurray-Upper tapes, Black Oral History Collection: James Cook University.\n\n# 5 The Politics of Contact\n\nE. S. Parker, Quarterly Report 1 December 1840\u201328 February 1841, Port Phillip Protectorate, 11, North West District, VPRO. Also Parker to Robinson, 1 January 1845; Aborigines 1842\u201352, NSW Col. Sec., 4\/7153, NSW Archives.\n\nLonsdale to Deas Thomson, 28 October 1837, Aborigines and the Native Police, NSW Col. Sec., 4\/1135. 1, NSW Archives.\n\nThe Journal of Francis Tuckfield, p. 299.\n\nA. C. Grant: Early Station Life in Queensland, ML, MSS A858, p. 50.\n\nM. J. Meggitt: Desert People, Sydney 1962, p. 25.\n\nNSWLCV&P, 1846, p. 968.\n\nNSWLCV&P, 1849, p. 18.\n\nSelect Committee on the Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 1849, p. 18.\n\nA. W. Howitt: Native Tribes, pp. 330\u2013332.\n\nReports of Commissioners of Crown Lands for 1850 on the state of the Aborigines, Colonial Office CO 201\/412, p. 239.\n\nG. S. Olivey, Le Grange Bay, 14 May 1901, West Australia Parliamentary Papers, 2, 1901, No. 26, p. 50.\n\n'Natives of Central Australia', Journal of Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australia Branch (hereafter RGSSA), 4, 1898\u20131901, p. 27.\n\nHutt to Stanley, 8 April 1842, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, BPP, 1844, p. 413 also C. Symmons to Col. Sec., 31 December 1842, Ibid., p. 418.\n\nE. S. Parker, quoted in M. F. Christie: Race Relations... in Early Victoria, p. 187.\n\n'Some Aborigines I Have Known', RGSSA, 1894 5, pp. 43\u201345.\n\nF. J. Gillen: 'Natives of Central Australia', p. 27. See also B. Spencer, F. J. Gillen: Across Australia, London 1912, p. 186; The Native Tribes of Central Australia, Dover edition, New York 1968, p. 8; The Arunta, London 1922, p. 7.\n\nGovernment and General Order, 22 February 1796, HRNSW, 3, p. 26.\n\nGovernment and General Order, 22 November 1801, HRNSW, 5, p. 628.\n\nMoreton Bay correspondent, SMH, 12 October 1843.\n\nRobinson to G. Whitcomb, 10 August 1832, Tasmanian Aborigines, ML, MSS A\/612, p. 133.\n\nD. R. Moore: Islanders and Aborigines, pp. 177, 231.\n\nPapers Relative to the Affairs of South Australia, BPP, 1843, p. 299.\n\nD. Collins: Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, 1798\u20131804, 2 vols, London 1802, 2, p. 96.\n\nIbid., 2, pp. 22, 28. See also B. Bridges: 'Pemulwy: A Noble Savage', Newsletter of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 88, 1970, pp. 3\u20134.\n\nPerth Gazette, 2, 16 March, 6 April, 4, 18, 22 May, 1 June, 13 July 1833. See also B. T. Haynes et al: West Australian Aborigines 1622\u20131972, Perth 1973, pp. 5\u20136.\n\nA. Hasluck: 'Yagan the Patriot', WAHS, 7, 1961, pp. 33\u201348. For Dundalli see J. J. Knight: In the Early Days, Brisbane 1895; T. Petrie: Reminiscences of Early Queensland, Brisbane 1932; T. Welsby: Collected Works, 2 vols, Brisbane 1907.\n\nC. Symmons, Protector of Aborigines, quarterly report to Col. Sec., 30 June 1841, WA Col. Sec., 95, 1841.\n\nG. Taplin: The Folklore, Manners, Customs etc, p. 12.\n\nW. Walker, Sydney, 5 December, 1821, Bonwick Transcripts ML:MSS Box 21.\n\nG. F. Moore to Col. Sec., 23 October 1837, WACSO, 56, 1837.\n\nRev. Horton, 1822, reported in J. Bonwick: The Last of the Tasmanians, London 1870, p. 93.\n\nReports of Mr G. A. Robinson whilst in pursuit of the Natives, Tas. Col. Sec., CSC.\n\nM. Sahlens: Stone Age Economics, London 1974, pp. 93\u201394.\n\nMacquarie to Bathurst, 8 October 1814, HRA, 1, 8, 368.\n\nAborigines: Australian Colonies, BPP 1844, p. 119.\n\nQuarterly Report of Protector of Aborigines, 31 March 1842, W.A. Col. Sec., 108\/1842.\n\nPeter Brown, York, 20 July 1840 to Col. Sec., W.A. Col. Sec., 89\/1840.\n\nSelect Committee on the Aborigines and the Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 1849, p. 17.\n\nHRA, 1, 8, pp. 368\u2013369.\n\nSelect Committee on the Aborigines and the Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 1849, p. 17.\n\nMarsden, Sydney, 21 November 1825, Bonwick Transcripts ML\/MSS Box 53.\n\nJ. McLaren: My Crowded Solitude, Sun Books, Melbourne 1966, p. 37.\n\nIbid., p. 40.\n\nHutt to Stanley, 8 April 1842, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, 1844, BPP, p. 412.\n\nS. Simpson, Moreton Bay, 31 December 1849, Commissioners of Crown Lands Reports on the Conditions of the Aborigines for 1849, Colonial Office, CO 201\/430.\n\nA Lady (pseud.): My Experiences in Australia etc, London 1860 in I. McBride (ed.): Records of Time Past, Canberra 1978, p. 249.\n\nJ. B. Walker: Early Tasmania, Hobart 1902, p. 249.\n\nAnnual Report of the Chief Protector of Aborigines, 1841, Port Phillip Aborigines Protectorate, Box 10.\n\nE. S. Parker, Statement without date, Loddon, Port Phillip Aborigines Protectorate, Box 12.\n\nD. Collins: An Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, London 1802, pp. 328\u2013329.\n\nRobinson to La Trobe, 14 December 1839, Aborigines and the Native Police, NSW CSO\/4\/1135.1.\n\nReport of Assistant Protector Parker, 20 June 1839, Port Phillip Papers, NSW Col. Sec., 1840, 4\/2510.\n\nG. S. Olivey, Inspector of Aborigines, La Grange Bay, 14 May 1901, WAPP, 2, 1901, No. 26, p. 50.\n\nIbid, p. 49.\n\nWAPP, 2, 1902 3, No. 32, p. 18.\n\nReport of Protector of Aborigines, 10 February 1842, S. A. Col. Sec., GRG\/24\/6.\n\nE. Curr: Recollections of Squatting in Victoria, Melbourne 1883, p. 299.\n\nAnnual Report, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, 1848, Box 11.\n\n3 December 1842.\n\nHRA, 1, 8, pp. 370\u2013371.\n\nVictorian Parliamentary Papers, 3, 1877\u20131878, No. 76, p. 532.\n\nAborigines and the Native Police, NSW Col. Sec., CSO\/4\/1135.1.\n\nQuoted in J. Bonwick: The Last of the Tasmanians, London 1870, p. 356.\n\nSelect Committee on the Native Police, QVP, 1861, p. 116.\n\nThe Last of the Tasmanians, pp. 382\u2013384.\n\nM. B. Hale: The Aborigines of Australia, London c. 1889, pp. 24\u201325.\n\nG. Grey: Journals... , 2, pp. 370\u2013371.\n\nSelect Committee on the Aborigines and the Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 1849, p. 17.\n\nG. Taplin, The Narrinyeri, pp. 8, 9.\n\nJ. Bulmer: Some Account of the Aborigines of the Lower Murray etc., Proceedings Royal Geographical Society of Victoria, 1, 5, March 1888, p. 30.\n\nJames Gunther Lecture, ML\/MSS B505.\n\nQuoted in The Mapoon Story, 2, Sydney 1975, p. 24.\n\nIbid.\n\nG. Taplin (ed.): The Folklore, Manners, Customs etc., p. 12.\n\nJournal of an Expedition, pp. 416\u2013417.\n\nThe Examiner, 3 December 1842.\n\nIbid.\n\nThe Last of the Tasmanians, p. 349.\n\nReports of J. B. Walker and G. W. Walker, ML\/MSS B706.\n\nSelect Committee on the Aborigines and the Protectorate, NSWLCV&P, 1849, pp. 14, 27.\n\nIbid, p. 25.\n\nReports of the Commissioners of Crown Lands..., Colonial Office, COL\/201\/442.\n\nR. H. Bland to Col. Sec., 4 January 1843, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, 1844, BPP, p. 417.\n\nG. Wyndham: Answer to Questionnaire of Immigration Committee re Aborigines, ML\/MSS A\/611.\n\n# 6 The Pastoral Frontier\n\nJournal of an Expedition, pp. 14, 16, 67, 69, 70.\n\nActing Sergeant J. Dunn, Burketown to Inspector of Police, Normanton, 15 May 1897, Qld Police Commissioner's File 412M, 17785 of 1897.\n\nReport of Northern Protector of Aborigines, 1902, QVP, 2, 1903.\n\nCommandant to Col. Sec., Callandoon, 1 March 1852, NSWLCV&P, 1852, p. 790.\n\nP. Sutton, L. Hercus, Barnabus Roberts in oral history collection pending publication with Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra.\n\n'Bulleta': The Case for the Aboriginals, Queenslander, 12 November 1898.\n\nQueenslander, 20 July 1895.\n\nReport of Return of Mr Petrie from an excursion to the north, NSW Col. Sec., 4284 of 1842.\n\nPortland Mercury, 5 October 1842.\n\nT. F. Bride (ed): Letters from Victorian Pioneers, Melbourne 1969, pp. 103, 270.\n\nH. C. Corfield in NSW Col. Sec., 9029 of 1850.\n\nSMH, 5 October 1840.\n\nAdelaide Observer, 18 April 1846. Report of a Journey to Mt. Bryan, SA Col. Sec., GRG\/24\/6.\n\nA. MacPherson: Mount Abundance, London 1879, p. 32.\n\nC. Eden: My Wife and I in Queensland, London 1872, p. 221.\n\n16 April 1846.\n\nHRA, 1, 24.\n\nA Journal of an Expedition, p. 16.\n\nJ. Gormly: Exploration and Settlement on the Murray and Murrumbidgee [sic], Journal and Proceedings Australian Historical Society, 2, 2, 1966, p. 40.\n\nEdward Mayne, 3 July 1843, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, BPP, 1844, p. 229.\n\n6 January 1849.\n\nD. S. MacMillan: Bowen Downs 1863\u20131903, Sydney 1963, p. 22.\n\nAborigines: Australian Colonies, BPP, 1844, pp. 114\u2013116.\n\nHRA, 1, 25, p. 2.\n\nReports from Resident Magistrate... on Special Duty to the Murchison and Gascoyne Districts, West Australia Legislative Council Votes & Proceedings, 1882, No. 33, p. 10.\n\nIbid.\n\nSome Aborigines I Have Known, pp. 53\u201354.\n\nC. R. Haly, QVP, 1861, p. 80.\n\nE. W. Palmer to A. W. Howitt, 5 August 1882, Howitt Papers, National Museum of Victoria.\n\nSelect Committee on the Aborigines Bill, SAPP, 1899, No. 77, p. 26.\n\nIbid pp. 113\u2013114.\n\nI. F. Kelsey, Bowen to H.E. The Governor, 22 October 1869, Qld Col. Sec., 852 of 1870.\n\nA. S. Haydon, 'Slavery in Queensland', Queenslander, 12 April 1884.\n\nA. C. Grant: Early Station Life, p. 96.\n\nBack in the Stone Age, p. 44.\n\n23 May 1885.\n\n# 7 Other Frontiers\n\nA. Searcy: In Northern Seas, Adelaide 1905, p. 10.\n\nCommissioner of Crown Lands to Col. Sec., 14 January 1842, Aborigines: Australian Colonies, BPP, 1844. For Bass Strait see S. Murray-Smith: 'Beyond the Pale: The Island Community of Bass Strait in the Nineteenth Century', THRA, 20, 4, December 1973, p. 172.\n\nFirst Discovery of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour by Captain James Kelly 1815 16 and 1824, Tasmanian Legislative Council Votes & Proceedings, 1881, No. 75, p. 14.\n\nA. C. V. Bligh: The Golden Quest, Sydney 1938, p. 35. See also Dispatches between the Governor and the Secretary of State, WALCV&P, 1872, No. 5.\n\nC. Anderson: Aboriginal Economy and Contact Relations at Bloomfield River etc, Newsletter Australian Institute of Aboriginal Affairs, 12, September 1979, p. 35.\n\nIbid.\n\nMissionary Notes, 15 January 1896.\n\nW. H. Hovell: Remarks on a Voyage to Western Port, 7 November 1826\u201325 March 1827, La Trobe Library MSS CY, 8, 1\/32C.\n\nC. Anderson: Aboriginal Economy and Contact Relations at Bloomfield River etc, p. 35.\n\nE. W. Streeter: Pearls and Pearling Life, London 1886, p. 158.\n\nReport on the Pearl Shell Fisheries of Torres Strait, QVP, 1880, 2, p. 1165. See also Streeter, p. 166 for the north-west.\n\nEditorial 'Aboriginal Murderers', 19 November 1890.\n\nW. Saville-Kent: Pearl and Pearl Shell Fisheries of North Queensland, QVP, 1890, 3, p. 731.\n\n21 April 1805.\n\n14 May 1814.\n\nE. C. Putt, Barron River, 13 July 1888.\n\nBidwell to Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, Tenana, 14 October 1852, NSW Col. Sec., 9967 of 1852.\n\nThirty-three Years in Tasmania and Victoria, London 1862, p. 57.\n\n27 January.\n\nEtheridge correspondent of Cleveland Bay Express, 25 October 1873.\n\nQueenslander, 8 December 1877.\n\nA. C. Haldane, Mining Warden, Etheridge, QVP, 3, 1888.\n\nA Day in the Life of the Blacks, Church News, 29, 6 June 1897, pp. 46\u201347.\n\nM. Durack, The Rock and the Sand, p. 730.\n\nChurch News, 21, 3, March 1889, p. 21.\n\nM. Hartwig, The Progress of White Settlement in the Alice Springs District, Ph.D., Adelaide 1965, p. 514.\n\nChurch News, 21, February 1889, p. 12.\n\nIbid., 29, 8, August 1897, p. 63.\n\nIbid., 26, 8, 1894.\n\nJournal of W. Schmidt, 28 December 1842\u20136 January 1843, p. 123; Papers of J. D. Lang, Vol. 20, ML MSS A2240.\n\nMissionary Notes, 15 August 1895, p. 72.\n\nIbid., 15 November 1895, p. 72.\n\nIbid., 15 December 1895, p. 104.\n\nIbid., 22 June 1896, p. 44.\n\nIbid.\n\nW. H. Wiseman in Rockhampton Bulletin, 21 January 1871.\n\n'Live and Let Live', Cooktown 3 July, Queenslander, 20 July 1895.\n\n'Aboriginal Territorial Organization', Oceania, 36, 1, September 1965, p. 17.\n\nE. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions, 2, pp. 373, 445.\n\nLetter 'The Nigger Nuisance', J.N.W., Northern Territory Times, 13 February 1874.\n\nA. K. Eckermann, Half-Cast\u2013Out Cast, Ph.D., Queensland 1977, p. 130.\n\nQuarterly Report of Protector of Aborigines, 30 June 1843, SA Col. Sec., GRG\/24\/6 A(1843), p. 132; Quarterly Report of Aborigines Department, SA Col. Sec., GRG\/24\/6 A(1843), p. 812.\n\nMaryborough correspondent, Queenslander, 23 February 1867.\n\nMoreton Bay Courier, 3 July 1858; Maryborough Chronicle, 3 July 1858, 14 May 1863. A. E. Halloran, Commissioner for Crown Lands, Wide Bay to Chief Commissioner, 26 December 1856; Letterbook of Commissioner for Wide Bay and Burnett, QSA 30\/11.\n\nQueenslander, 6 March 1869.\n\nRockhampton News, 13 November 1865 quoted in Queensland Times, 23 November 1865.\n\n# Conclusion\n\nW. K. Hancock, Australia, Jacaranda edition, Brisbane 1960, p. 20.\n\nAfter the Dreaming, Sydney 1969, p. 49.\n\n# SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nOfficial Printed Sources\n\nBRITAIN\n\nHouse of Commons, Sessional Papers\n\n1831, 19, No. 259: Van Diemen's Land. Return to an Address... for Copies of all Correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the Subject of the Military Operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemens land\n\n1831, 19, No. 261: New South Wales. Return to an Address... dated 19 July 1831 for Copies of Instructions given by His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, for Promoting the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of New Holland or Van Diemens Land\n\n1834, 44, No. 617: Aboriginal Tribes (North America, New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land and British Guinea)\n\n1836, 7, No. 538: Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements)\n\n1837, 7, No. 425: Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements)\n\n1839, 34, No. 526: Australian Aborigines... Copies or Extracts of Despatches Relative to the Massacre of Aborigines of Australia...\n\n1843, 33, No. 141: Port Essington: Copies or Extracts of Any Correspondence Relative to the Establishment of a Settlement...\n\n1843, 32, No. 505: Papers Relative to the Affairs of South Australia, (especially pp. 267\u2013340)\n\n1844, 34, No. 627: Aborigines (Australian Colonies)... Return to an address... for Copies or Extracts from the Despatches of the Governors of the Australian Colonies, with the Reports of the Protectors of Aborigines... to illustrate the Condition of the Aboriginal Population of said Colonies...\n\n1897, 61, No. 8350: Western Australia: Correspondence Relating to the Abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board\n\nNEW SOUTH WALES\n\nLegislative Council, Votes and Proceedings\n\n1838: Report from the Committee on the Aborigines Question\n\n1839, 2: Report from the Committee on Police and Gaols\n\n1841: Report from the Committee on Immigration with... Replies to a Circular Letter on the Aborigines\n\n1843: New South Wales (Aborigines). Return to an address by Dr Thomson... comprising details of Government Expenditure on Aborigines, 1837\u201343, and a large collection of correspondence relating to the protectorate and the missions\n\n1844, 1: New South Wales (Aborigines). Return to an address by Sir Thomas Mitchell... for numbers of whites and Aborigines killed in conflicts since the settlement of the Port Phillip District\n\n1845: Report from the Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines\n\n1850, 1: The Native Police, Report of the Commandant to the Colonial Secretary\n\n1852, 1: Letter from Mr F. Walker, Commandant, Native Police\n\n1853, 1: Return of Murders by Aborigines in the Northern Districts\n\n1855, 1: Report of Board of Enquiry Held at Moreton Bay regarding Commandant F. Walker Legislative Assembly: Votes and Proceedings\n\n1856\u201357, 1: Report from the Select Committee on the Native Police Force\n\n1858, 2: Report from the Select Committee on Murders by the Aborigines on the Dawson River\n\nSOUTH AUSTRALIA\n\nParliamentary Papers\n\n1857\u201358, 2, No. 156: Explorations of Mr S. Hack\n\n1857\u201358, 2, No. 193: Northern Exploration\n\n1858, 1, No. 25: Northern Exploration: Reports etc of Explorations... by Babbage, Warburty, Geharty and Parry\n\n1878, 4, No. 209: Journal of Mr Barlay's Exploration\n\n1884, 3: Quarterly Report on the Northern Territory\n\n1885, 4, No. 170: Report on the Pursuit of the Daly River Murderers\n\n1888, 3, No. 53: Government Residents Report on the Northern Territory for 1887\n\n1890, 2, No. 28: Government Residents Report on the Northern Territory for 1889\n\n1892, 3, No. 129: Report on the Mai-Nini Murder Trial\n\n1892, 3, No. 181: Government Residents Report on the Northern Territory for 1891\n\n1899, 2, No. 77a: Report from the Select Committee on the Aborigines Bill\n\n1899, 2, No. 77: Minutes of Evidence on the Aborigines Bill\n\n1900, 3, No. 60: Justice in the Northern Territory; Letter from Mr Justice Dashwood\n\n1901, 2, No. 45: Government Resident's Report on the Northern Territory for 1900\n\n1913, 2, No. 26: Report from the Royal Commission on the Aborigines\n\nTASMANIA\n\nLegislative Council Journals and Papers\n\n1863, No. 48: Half-Caste Islanders in Bass's Straits, Report by the Venerable Archdeacon Reibey\n\n1881, No. 75: First Discovery of Port Davey and Macquarie Harbour by Captain James Kelly in... 1815\u201316 and 1824\n\nVICTORIA\n\nLegislative Council: Votes and Proceedings\n\n1858\u201359, No. D8: Report on the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on the Aborigines\n\nParliamentary Papers\n\n1877\u201378, 3, No. 76: Report of the Royal Commission on the Aborigines\n\n1882\u201383, 2, No. 5: Report of the Board Appointed to Inquire into and Report Upon... the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station\n\n1873\u201384: Ninth to Twentieth Reports of Board for the Protection of Aborigines in the Colony of Victoria, presented to both Houses of Parliament\n\nQUEENSLAND\n\nVotes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly\n\n1860: Report of Select Committee on the Police\n\n1861: Report of Select Committee on Native Police Force\n\n1863: Papers Regarding the Dismissal of J. Donald Harris of the Native Police\n\n1867, 1: Copies of Correspondence... concerning the inquiry into the case of C. J. Blakeney, late Lieutenant of Native Police\n\n1867, 1: Charges Against the Native Police under the Command of Mr Sub-Lieutenant Hill\n\n1867, 2: Alleged Massacre of Blacks at Morinish Diggings\n\n1872: Report of Acting Commandant of Police for 1871\n\n1874, 2: Enquiry into the Claims of Patrick Corbett\n\n1875, 1: Report of Commandant of Police for 1874\n\n1876, 3: Report of the North-Western Exploring Expedition\n\n1876, 3: Report of Expedition in Search of Gold... in the Palmer District by Mulligan and Party\n\n1878, 2: Report of the Aborigines Commissioners\n\n1881, 1: Report of Explorations in Cape York Peninsula by R. L. Jack\n\n1881, 2: Further Reports on the Progress of the Gold Prospecting Expedition in Cape York Peninsula\n\n1883\u201384: Report of Police Magistrate, Thursday Island on Pearl Shell and B\u00eache de Mer Fisheries in Torres Strait\n\n1885, 2: Reports of Mr Douglas's Cruise Among the Islands of Torres Strait\n\n1886, 2: Visit of Inspection to Various Islands in the G.S.S. Albatross\n\n1888, 3: Annual Reports of the Gold Fields Commissioners\n\n1889, 3: Annual Reports of the Gold Fields Commissioners\n\n1890, 3: Report on the Pearl and Pearl Shell Fisheries of North Queensland by W. Saville-Kent\n\n1890, 3: Annual Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island\n\n1894, 2: Annual Report of Government Resident at Thursday Island\n\n1896, 4: Report on the Aborigines of North Queensland by Mr A. Meston\n\n1897, 2: Report on the North Queensland Aborigines and the Native Police by W. Parry Okeden\n\n1900\u20131904: Annual Reports of Northern Protectorate of Aborigines\n\n1902, 1: Report of the Southern Protector of Aboriginals\n\n1903, 2: W. E. Roth: North Queensland Ethnography Bulletin No. 5\n\nWESTERN AUSTRALIA\n\nVotes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council\n\n1871, No. 2: Information Respecting the Habits and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western Australia\n\n1872, No. 5: Despatches between the Governor and the Secretary of State for the Colonies\n\n1875\u201376, No. 12: Correspondence Relative to the State of Affairs on the North-West Coast\n\n1880, No. A16: Report of the Government Resident, Roebourne on the Pearl Shell Industries of the North-West Coast\n\n1882, No. 33: Reports from the Resident Magistrate... in the Murchison and Gascoyne Districts\n\n1884, No. 32: Report of a Commission to Inquire into the treatment of Aboriginal Native Prisoners of the Crown\n\n1885, No. A15: Report of the Select Committee... Appointed to Consider and Report Upon... the Treatment and Condition of the Aboriginal Natives of the Colony\n\nParliamentary Papers of Western Australia\n\n1901, 2, No. 26: Report on Stations Visited by the Travelling Inspector of Aborigines\n\n1902\u201303, 2, No. 32: Report of the Aborigines Department\n\n1903\u201304, 2, No. 32: Report of the Aborigines Department\n\n1905, No. 5: Report of the Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives\n\nDOCUMENTARY COLLECTIONS\n\nHistorical Records of Australia, Series One, 1\u201325 and Series Three, 1\u20136\n\nHistorical Records of New South Wales, 1\u20137\n\nOfficial Manuscript Sources\n\nARCHIVES OFFICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES\n\nColonial Secretary's Correspondence: In Letters (special bundles)\n\nAborigines, 4\/7153\n\nAborigines 1833\u201335, 4\/2219.1\n\nAborigines 1836, 4\/2302.1\n\nAborigines 1837\u201339, 4\/2433.1\n\nAborigines 1849, 4\/1141\n\nAborigines 1849, 4\/2831.1\n\nAborigines 1852, 4\/713.2\n\nAborigines and the Native Police 1835\u201344, 4\/1135.1\n\nAboriginal Outrages, 2\/8020.4\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1839, 4\/2471\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1840, Part 1, 4\/2510\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1840, Part 2, 4\/2511\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1841, Part 1, 4\/2547\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1842, Part 1, 4\/2588 B\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1842, Part 2, 4\/2589 B\n\nPort Phillip Papers, 1846, 4\/2745-2\n\nLetters Received from and about Wide Bay, 1850\u201357, 4\/7173\n\nRaffles Bay, 4\/2060.2\n\nReports on the Border Police, 1843\u201346, 4\/7203\n\nLetters from Moreton Bay, 1843, 4\/2618.1\n\nBathurst 1815\u201323, 4\/1798\n\nBathurst 1824, 4\/1800\n\nBathurst 1826, 4\/1801\n\nBathurst 1824\u201326, 4\/1799\n\nSupreme Court Records\n\nPapers Relating to the Aborigines, 1796\u20131839, 1161\n\nMITCHELL LIBRARY\n\nAborigines MSS A\/611\n\nLetters from Government Officials, MSS A\/664\n\nQueensland Native Police: Answers to Questionnaire, 1856, MSS A467\n\nLetterbook, Commissioner of Crown Land, Darling Downs 1843\u201348, MSS A1764\u20132\n\nSomerset Letterbook No. 1, MSS B1414\n\nTASMANIAN STATE ARCHIVES\n\nPapers Relating to the Aborigines, 7578\n\nReports on the Murders and Other Outrages Committed by the Aborigines, CSO\/1\/316\n\nRecords Relating to the Aboriginals, CSO\/1\/317\n\nReports of Mr G. A. Robinson Whilst in Pursuit of the Natives, CSO\/1\/318\n\nPapers of the Aborigines Committee, CSO\/1\/319\n\nReports of the Roving Parties, CSO\/1\/320\n\nSuggestions Relative to the Capture of the Natives, CSO\/1\/323\n\nPapers Relating to the Black Line, CSO\/1\/324\n\nBATTYE LIBRARY, PERTH\n\nSwan River Papers, 9, 10\n\nColonial Secretary: In Letters, Volumes concerned with the Aborigines\n\n53, April, May 1837\n\n54, June, July 1837\n\n56, October 1837\n\n89, 1840\n\n95, 1841\n\n108, 1842\n\n173, 1848\n\nSTATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA\n\nGovernors Despatches GRG\/2\/6\/1\n\nLetterbook of the Government Resident, Port Lincoln 3\/379\n\nReport of Attack on Barrow Creek Telegraph Station GRG\/24\/6\/1874 Nos. 332, 347\n\nColonial Secretary: In Letters, 1837\u201341, GRG\/24\/1; 1842\u201345, GRG\/24\/6\n\nColonial Secretary's Letterbooks, GRG\/24\/4\/3; GRG\/24\/4\n\nProtector of Aborigines Letterbook 1840\u201357, GRG\/52\/7\n\nVICTORIAN PUBLIC RECORDS OFFICE\n\nRecords of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, especially the boxes \u2014 Westernport, North-Western District, Mainly In-Letters, Mt Rouse\n\nQUEENSLAND STATE ARCHIVES\n\nNew South Wales Colonial Secretary, Letters Received Relating to Moreton Bay and Queensland, 1822\u20131860\n\nMicrofilm copies of material from State Archives of NSW, Reels A2\/1 \u2014 A2\/48 including the special bundles and A2\/48 which contains Commissioner of Crown Lands re Aborigines in the District, 1854 Government Resident, Moreton Bay re complaints about the Native Police 1857\n\nCorrespondence concerning the police firing on the Aborigines\n\nNative Police: Moreton Bay 1857, Reels A2\/47\n\nNative Police Papers QSA\/NMP 48\/100, 48\/111, 48\/120\n\nGovernment Resident, Moreton Bay, QSA\/RES\/2 and 3 48\/101, 48\/102\n\nLetterbook of Commissioner for Crown Lands, Wide Bay and Burnett, 24\/9\/53-30 \/12\/54, QSA\/CCL\/35\/889 and 1\/1\/55-13\/12\/57, QSA\/CCL\/30\/11\n\nLetterbook of W. H. Wiseman, 5\/2\/55-30\/5\/60, QSA\/CCL\/7\/61\n\nColonial Secretary: In Letters, 1860\u20131890, the QSA\/Col\/A files and the Special Bundles Relating to the Aborigines, QSA\/Col\/139-QSA\/Col\/144\n\nJAMES COOK UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, TOWNSVILLE\n\nMicrofilm collection of the Joint Copying Project of Colonial Office Files re New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. Especially useful were the files: New South Wales, Original Correspondence, 1838\u20131849 and Queensland, Original Correspondence 1861\u20131900\n\nOther Manuscript Sources\n\nMITCHELL LIBRARY\n\nPapers of Sir George Arthur, especially Vol. 19, Letters received 1827\u201328, MSS A\/2179, Vol. 20, 1829\u201330, MSS A2180 and Vol. 28\n\nAborigines, 1825\u201337, MSS A2188, Tasmanian Aborigines, MSS A612\n\nPapers of G. A. Robinson, especially Vol. 14\n\nPort Phillip Protectorate, 1839\u201340, MSS A7035\n\nPort Phillip Protectorate: Correspondence 54\u201357a and other papers, 1839\u201349, MSS A7075-7078-2\n\nPort Phillip Protectorate, Official Reports, 59\u201361, 1841\u201349, MSS A7078-MSS A7082\n\nJ. D. Lang, Papers, 20, MSS 2240\n\nW. Gardner, Productions and Resources of the Northern Districts of NSW, 2 vols, 1842\u201354, MSS A176\/1, A176\/2\n\nWilliam Thomas Papers, especially his journal for 1844\u201347, uncatalogued MSS 214\/2 and 3\n\nE. J. Eyre, Autobiographical of Residence and Exploration in Australia, 1832\u201339, MSS A1806\n\nDiary of John Gilbert, 18\/9\/44-22\/6\/45, MSS A2587\n\nJesse Gregson Memoirs, MSS 1382\n\nA. Le Souef, Personal Recollections of Early Victoria, MSS A2762 Reminiscences of Mr James Nesbit, MSS A1533\n\nA. C. Grant, Early Station Life in Queensland, MSS A858\n\nTelfer, Reminiscences, MSS A2376\n\nJ. Backhouse, G. Walker, Report of a Visit to the Penal Settlement, Moreton Bay, MSS B706\n\nH. W. Best Diary, 20\/9\/62-15\/4\/63 MSS B515\/1\n\nArthur Bloxham Diary, May-July 1863, MSS B515\/1\n\nAndrew Murray, Journal of an Expedition 1859\u20131860, MSS 736\n\nR. B. Mitchell, Reminiscences 1855\u201366, MSS B575\n\nJ. Raven, Reminiscences of a Western Queensland Pioneer, MSS A2692\n\nJ. F. Stevens, Histories of Pioneers, MSS 1120\n\nTASMANIAN STATE ARCHIVES\n\nVan Diemens Land Company Papers, Letters and Despatches, 1828\u20131846, VDC 5\/1-7\n\nBATTYE LIBRARY, PERTH\n\nConstance Norris, Memories of Champion Bay or Old Geraldton, Q994.12\/ GER\n\nL. F. Clarke, West Australian Natives: My Experiences With them, PR 2766\n\nMr William Coffin, Oral History Tape, PR 9893\n\nReminiscences of Mr F. H. Townsend, PR 3497\n\nReport of the Rev. John Smithers re the Swan River Aborigines, 1840, PR 1785a\n\nExtracts from the Diary of Lieut. G. F. Dashwood in Perth, September 1832, PR 956\/FC\n\nDiary of Dr S. W. Viveash, QB\/VIV\n\nF. F. B. Wittenoom, Some Notes on his Life QB\/WIT\n\nJournals of Trevarthon C. Scholl, 1865\u201366 QB\/SHO\n\nL. C. Burgess: Pioneers of Nor'-West Australia, PR 40\n\nSTATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA\n\nLetters Written by John Mudge... whilst a trooper at Pt. Lincoln and Mt. Wedge, 1857\u201360, SAA 1518\n\nJ. B. Bull Reminiscences 1835\u201394, SAA 950\n\nExtracts from the Diary of Mary Thomas, SAA 1058M\n\nSimpson Newland, The Ramingaries (Encounter Bay) Tribe of Aborigines, A571\/A4\n\nResolution of the Bush Club, 9\/5\/1839, A546\/B8\n\nLA TROBE LIBRARY, MELBOURNE\n\nW. Thomas, Brief Remarks on the Aborigines of Victoria, 1839, 7838Lt\n\nJournal of Patrick Coady Buckley, 1844\u20131853, 6109, Box 214\/7\n\nDiary of Neil Black, typescript, September 1839-May 1840, Box 99\/1\n\nFoster Fyans Reminiscences, 1810\u20131842, 6940\n\nW. H. Hovell, Remarks on a Voyage to Western Port, 7\/11\/26-25\/3\/27 CY, 8, 1\/32 c\n\nThe Journal of Francis Tuckfield, 655\n\nThe Papers of James Dredge \u2014 Notebook, 421959; Letterbook, 421961 H. Meyrick, Letters to his family in England, 1840\u201347, 7959\n\nOXLEY LIBRARY, BRISBANE\n\nArcher Family Papers, including Durundur Diary, 1843\u201344, Some Letters Mainly from Australia, 1833\u201355\n\nDiary of Captain G. Griffin at Whiteside, 1\/1\/47-16\/5\/49, OM72-42\n\nLetter of T. W. Wells to H. C. A. Harrison, 24\/10\/61 OM66\/2\/f2\n\nReminiscences of Mrs Adelaide Morrison OM69\/8\/f1\n\nRobert Hamilton, Diary at Mt Auburn Station, 18\/11\/61-3\/9\/62, OM68\/28\/Q2\n\nHarry Anning, Thirty Years Ago, OM172\/123\n\nArchibald Meston Papers, OM64\/17\n\nNewspapers\n\nNEW SOUTH WALES\n\nAtlas, 1844\u20131845\n\nAustralian, 1824, 1840\u201341, 1848\n\nColonist, 1837\u20131839\n\nEmpire, 1851\u201352, 1855\u201358\n\nHunter River Gazette, 1841\u201342\n\nMaitland Mercury, 1843\u20131850\n\nSydney Gazette, 1803\u20131830\n\nSydney Morning Herald, 1834\u20131850 (Sydney Herald before July 1842)\n\nTASMANIA\n\nColonial Times, 1825\u20131831\n\nHobart Town Courier, 1827\u20131831\n\nHobart Town Gazette, 1819\u20131825\n\nLaunceston Advertiser, 1829\u20131831\n\nThe Tasmanian, 1827\u20131828\n\nWESTERN AUSTRALIA\n\nGeraldton Express, 1886\u20131890\n\nInquirer, 1840\u20131851\n\nNorthern Public Opinion, 1893\u20131898\n\nPilbara Goldfields News, 1897\u20131898\n\nPerth Gazette, 1833\u20131840\n\nSOUTH AUSTRALIA\n\nAdelaide Examiner, 1842\u20131843\n\nAdelaide Observer, 1844\u20131849\n\nPort Augusta Dispatch, 1877\u20131880\n\nSouth Australian Register, 1839\u20131844\n\nSouthern Australian, 1838\u20131840\n\nVICTORIA\n\nGeelong Advertiser, 1840\u20131844\n\nPortland Gazette, 1845\u20131847\n\nPortland Guardian, 1842\u20131843\n\nPortland Mercury, 1842\u20131844\n\nPort Phillip Gazette, 1838\u20131846\n\nPort Phillip Herald, 1840\n\nPort Phillip Patriot, 1841\u20131842\n\nQUEENSLAND\n\nCairns Post, 1885\u20131888\n\nColonist, (Maryborough) 1884\u20131888\n\nCooktown Courier, 1874\u20131879\n\nCooktown Herald, 1874\u20131877\n\nCooktown Independent, 1888\u20131891\n\nDarling Downs Gazette, 1858\u20131859\n\nHerberton Advertiser, 1884\u20131885\n\nMackay Mercury, 1868\u20131880\n\nMaryborough Chronicle, 1860\u20131880\n\nMoreton Bay Courier, 1846\u20131862\n\nMoreton Bay Free Press, 1852\u20131859\n\nNorth Australian, (Brisbane) 1856\u20131865\n\nPeak Downs Telegram, (Clermont) 1876\n\nPort Denison Times, (Bowen) 1867\u20131883\n\nQueenslander, 1866\u20131900\n\nQueensland Guardian, 1861\u20131863\n\nQueensland Times, (Ipswich) 1864\u20131866\n\nRockhampton Bulletin, 1865\u20131876\n\nWide Bay and Burnett News, 1881\u20131884\n\nWide Bay and Burnett Times, 1859\u20131860\n\nWild River Times, (Herberton) 1886\u20131889\n\nNORTHERN TERRITORY\n\nNorthern Territory Times, 1873\u20131883, 1890\u20131895\n\nMISSIONARY JOURNALS\n\nMissionary Notes of the Australian Board of Missions, 1895\u20131905 Kirchliche Mitteilungen, (Church News) 1886\u20131900\n\nNewspaper Cutting Books on the Aborigines and related topics in Oxley Library, Mitchell Library, State Library of South Australia\n\nA number of the papers listed above were used for periods other than for those specified. But they were in such cases only consulted for a few issues at any one time. Numerous other papers were used for an issue or two but they have not been listed. Reference has been made to a few of these in the endnotes.\n\nResearch Theses\n\nAllingham, A. J., 'Taming the Wilderness': The First Decade of Pastoral Settlement in the Kennedy District, B.A. Hons, James Cook, 1976\n\nBeckett, J., A Study of a Mixed Blood Aboriginal Minority in the Pastoral West of New South Wales, M.A., A.N.U., 1958\n\nBell, D., From Moth Hunters to Black Trackers. An Interpretive Analysis of the Black and White Experience, B.A. Hons, Monash, 1975\n\nBickford, R. A., Traditional Economy of the Aborigines of the Murray Valley, B.A. Hons, Sydney, 1966\n\nBiskup, P., Native Administration and Welfare in Western Australia 1897\u20131954, M.A., West Australia, 1960\n\nBrayshaw, H., Aboriginal Material Culture in the Herbert-Burdekin District, Ph.D., James Cook, 1977\n\nBridges, B., Aboriginal and White Relations in New South Wales 1788\u20131855, M.A., Sydney, 1966\n\nBlundell, V. J., Aboriginal Adaption in North West Australia, Ph.D., Wisconsin, 1975\n\nBrown, R. B., A History of the Gilbert River Goldfield, 1869\u20131874, B.A. Hons, James Cook, 1974\n\nBury, W. R., The Foundations of the Pt McLeay Aboriginal Mission, B.A. Hons, Adelaide, 1964\n\nCritchett, J. F., A History of the Framlingham and Lake Condah Aboriginal Stations, 1860\u20131918, M.A., Melbourne, 1980\n\nChristie, M. F., Race Relations between Aborigines and Colonists in Early Victoria, 1835\u201386, Ph.D., Monash, 1978\n\nCrawford, I. M., William Thomas and the Port Phillip Protectorate, M.A., Melbourne, 1967\n\nCurthoys, A., Race and Ethnicity: A Study of the Response of British Colonists to Aborigines, Chinese and non-British Europeans in N.S.W. 1856\u20131881, Ph.D., Macquarie, 1973\n\nDenholm, D., Some Aspects of Squatting in New South Wales and Queensland, 1847\u20131864, Ph.D., A.N.U., 1972\n\nDesailly, B., The Mechanics of Genocide, M.A., Tasmania, 1978\n\nEckermann, A. K., Half-Caste, Out Caste, Ph.D., Queensland, 1977\n\nEvans, G., Thursday Island, 1878\u20131914, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1972\n\nEvans, K., Missionary Effort Towards the Cape York Aborigines, 1886\u20131910, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1969\n\nEvans, R., European-Aboriginal Relations in Queensland, 1880\u20131910, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1965\n\nGale, F., A Study in Assimilation: Part Aborigines in South Australia, Ph.D., Adelaide, 1956\n\nGraves, A. A., An Anatomy of Race Relations, B.A. Hons, Adelaide, 1973\n\nHardley, R. G., Some of the Factors that influenced the Coastal Riverine and Insular Habits of the Aborigines of South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1975\n\nHarrison, B. W., The Myall Creek Massacre, B.A. Hons, New England, 1966\n\nHartwig, M. C., The Coniston Killings, B.A. Hons, Adelaide, 1960\n\nHartwig, M. C., The Progress of White Settlement in the Alice Springs District and its Effect on the Aboriginal Inhabitants, 1860\u20131914, Ph.D., Adelaide, 1965\n\nHoskin, G., Aboriginal Reserves in Queensland, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1968\n\nJenkin, G., The Aborigines Friends' Association and the Ngarrindjeri People, M.A., Adelaide, 1976\n\nJohnston, S. L., The New South Wales Government Policy Towards the Aborigines, 1880\u20131909, M.A., Sydney, 1970\n\nKrastins, V., The Tiwi: A Culture Contact History of the Australian Aborigines on Bathurst and Melville Islands, 1705\u20131942, B.A. Hons, A.N.U., 1972\n\nLoos, N. A., Aboriginal-European Relations in North Queensland, 1861\u20131897, Ph.D., James Cook, 1976\n\nLoos, N. A., Frontier Conflict in the Bowen District, 1861\u20131874, M.A. Qualifying, James Cook, 1970\n\nMilich, C., Official Attitudes to the South Australian Aborigines in the 1930s, B.A. Hons, Adelaide, 1967\n\nMurray-Prior, J., Women Settlers and Aborigines, B.A. Hons, New England, 1973\n\nO'Kelly, G. J., The Jesuit Mission Stations in the Northern Territory, 1882\u20131899, B.A. Hons, Monash, 1967\n\nPearson, M., The MacIntyre Valley: Field Archaeology and Ethno-history, B.A. Hons, New England, 1973\n\nPrentis, M. D., Aborigines and Europeans in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, 1823\u20131881, M.A., Macquarie, 1972\n\nRosewarne, S., Aborigines in Colonial Queensland, M.A., Melbourne, 1976\n\nRule, M., Relations between the Aborigines and Settlers in Selected Areas of the Hunter Valley, B.A. Hons, Newcastle, 1977\n\nRusso, G. H., Bishop Salvado's Plan to Civilize and Christianize the Aborigines, 1846\u20131900, M.A., Western Australia, 1972\n\nRyan, L., The Aborigines in Tasmania, 1800\u20131974, Ph.D. Macquarie, 1976\n\nSabine, N., An Ethnohistory of the Clarence Valley, B.A. Hons, New England, 1970\n\nShelmerdine, S., The Port Phillip Native Police Corps as an Experiment in Aboriginal Policy and Practice, 1837\u20131853, B.A. Hons, Melbourne 1972\n\nShepherd, B. W., A History of the Pearling Industry of the North-West Coast of Australia, M.A., Western Australia, 1975\n\nSmith, P., Yarrabah, 1892\u20131910, B.A. Hons, James Cook, 1981\n\nTaylor, J. C., Race Relations in South East Queensland, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1967\n\nTaylor, N., The Native Mounted Police of Queensland, 1850\u20131900, B.A. Hons, James Cook, 1970\n\nWalker, J. A., Aboriginal-European Relations in the Maryborough District, 1842\u20131903, B.A. Hons, Queensland, 1975\n\nWillmott, J., The Pearling Industry in Western Australia, 1850\u20131916, B.A. Hons, Western Australia, 1975\n\nContemporary Books, Articles and Pamphlets\n\nArcher, T., Recollections of a Rambling Life, Yokohama, 1897\n\nAtkinson, J., An Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales, London, 1826\n\nAustin, R., Journal of Assistant Surveyor R. Austin, Perth, 1855\n\nBackhouse, J., A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies, London, 1843\n\nBalfour, H., 'On the Method Employed by the Natives of N.W. Australia in the Manufacture of Glass Spear Heads', MAN, 1903\n\nBartlett, T., New Holland, London, 1843\n\nBarton, R. D., Reminiscences of an Australian Pioneer, Sydney, 1917\n\nBennett, M. M., Christison of Lammermoor, London, 1927\n\nBennett, S., The History of Australasian Discovery and Colonization, Sydney, 1867\n\nBeveridge, P., The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina, Melbourne, 1889\n\nBeveridge, P., 'On the Aborigines Inhabiting the... Lower Murray, Lower Murrumbidgee, Lower Lachlan and Lower Darling', Journal of Royal Society of New South Wales, 17, 1883\n\nBolderwood, R., Old Melbourne Memories, Melbourne 1884\n\nBond, G., A Brief Account of the Colony of Port Jackson, Oxford, 1806\n\nBonwick, J., The Last of the Tasmanians, London, 1870\n\nBraim, T. H., A History of New South Wales, 2 vols, London, 1846\n\nBreton, W. H., Excursions in New South Wales, Western Australia and Van Diemens Land, London, 1833\n\nBride, T. F., Letters from Victorian Pioneers, Melbourne, 1898\n\nBrock, D. G., To the Desert With Sturt, Adelaide, 1975\n\nBull, J. W., Early Experiences of Life in South Australia, Adelaide, 1884\n\nBulmer, J., 'Some Account of the Aborigines of the Lower Murray, Wimmera and Maneroo', Proceedings Royal Geographical Society of Victoria, 1, 5, March 1888\n\nBunbury, H. W., Early Days in Western Australia, London, 1930\n\nByerley, F. J., Narrative of an Overland Expedition, Brisbane, 1867\n\nByrne, J. C., Twelve Years Wanderings in the British Colonies, 2 vols, London, 1848\n\nCalder, J. E., The Native Tribes of Tasmania, Hobart, 1875\n\nCalvert, A. F., The Aborigines of West Australia, London, 1894\n\nCampbell, J., The Early Settlement of Queensland, Brisbane, 1936\n\nCarnegie, D., Spinifex and Sand, London, 1898\n\nCarrington, G., Colonial Adventures and Experiences, London, 1877\n\nCarron, W., Narrative of an Expedition of the late Assistant Surveyor Mr E. B. Kennedy, Sydney, 1849\n\nChester, E., Early Days in Albany: Reminiscences of Mr E. Chester, WAHS, 1, 1931\n\nChewings, E., Back in the Stone Age, Sydney, 1936\n\nCollins, D., Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, 1798\u20131804, 2 vols, London, 1802\n\nCurr, E., An Account of the Colony of Van Diemens Land, London, 1824\n\nCurr, E., The Australian Race; its origin, languages, customs, 4 vols, Melbourne, 1886\u201387\n\nCurr, E., Recollections of Squatting in Victoria, Melbourne, 1883\n\nDaly, D., Digging, Squatting and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, London, 1887\n\nDawson, J., Australian Aborigines; the languages and customs of several tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Melbourne, 1881\n\nDawson, R., The Present State of Australia, London, 1830\n\nDe Brebant Cooper, F., Wild Adventures in Australia and New South Wales, London, 1857\n\nDe Satge, E. and O., Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter, London, 1901\n\nDoyle, M. (ed.), Extracts from the Letters and Journals of George Fletcher Moore, London, 1834\n\nDredge, J., Brief Notices on the Aborigines of New South Wales, Geelong, 1845\n\nDumont D'urville, M. J., Voyage de la Corvette L'Astrolabe, Paris, 1830\n\nEden, C., My Wife and I in Queensland, London, 1872\n\nEipper, C., Statement of the Origin, Condition and Prospects of the German Mission to Aborigines at Moreton Bay, Sydney, 1841\n\nEyre, E. J., Journals of Expeditions of Discovery, 2 vols, London, 1845\n\nFenwick, J., 'Diary of John Fenwick', Queensland Heritage, 2, 3, November, 1970\n\nFinlayson, Pastor: Reminiscences, RGSSA, 6, 1902\u201306\n\nField, B., Geographical Memoirs of New South Wales, London, 1825\n\nFlinders, M., A Voyage to Terra Australis, 2 vols, London, 1814\n\nFraser, J., The Aborigines of New South Wales, Sydney, 1892\n\nFremantle, C. H., Diaries and Letters of Admiral Sir C. H. Fremantle, London, 1928\n\nFroggatt, W. W., 'Notes on the Natives of West Kimberley, North West Australia', Proceedings of Linnean Society of New South Wales, 3, May 1888\n\nGiles, E., Australia Twice Traversed, 2 vols, London, 1889\n\nGillen, F. J., 'The Natives of Central Australia', RGSSA, 4, 1898\u20131901\n\nGrant, J., The Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery, London, 1803\n\nGray, R., Reminiscences of India and North Queensland, London, 1913\n\nGrey, G., Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery, 2 vols, London, 1841\n\nGribble, J. B., Black but Comely: Aboriginal Life in Australia, London, 1884\n\nGribble, J. B., Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land, Perth, 1905\n\nHall, T., A Short History of the Downs Blacks, Warwick n.d.\n\nHale, M. B., The Aborigines of Australia, London, c.1889\n\nHawker, J. C., Early Experiences in South Australia, Adelaide, 1899\n\nHaydon, G. H., Five Years Experience in Australia Felix, London, 1846\n\nHaygarth, H. W., Recollections of Bush Life in Australia, London, 1848\n\nHenderson, J., Excursions and Adventures in New South Wales, 2 vols, London, 1851\n\nHenderson, J., Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemens Land, Calcutta, 1832\n\nHives, F., The Journal of a Jackeroo, London, 1930\n\nHodgkinson, C., Australia: From Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, London, 1845\n\nHogson, C. P., Reminiscences of Australia, London, 1846\n\nHorne, G & G. Aiston, Savage Life in Central Australia, London, 1924\n\nHovell, W., 'Journal of a Journey from Lake George to Port Phillip, 1824\u201325', JRAHS, 7, 1921\n\nHowitt, A. W., The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London, 1904\n\nHowitt, R., Impressions of Australia Felix, London, 1845\n\nHull, H. M., Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania, London, 1859\n\nIrwin, F. C., The State and Position of West Australia, London, 1835\n\nJack, R. L., Northmost Australia, 2 vols, London, 1921\n\nJorgensen, J., 'A Shred of Autobiography', Hobart Town Almanach and Van Diemens Land Annual, 1838\n\nJournals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia, London, 1833\n\nJukes, J. B., Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of HMS Fly, London, 1847\n\nKennedy, E. B., The Black Police of Queensland, London, 1902\n\nKennedy, E. B., 'Extracts from the Journal of an Exploring Expedition into Central Australia', JRGS, 22, 1852\n\nKennedy, E. B., Four Years in Queensland, London, 1870\n\nKing, P. P., Narrative of a Survey of the Inter-tropical and Western Coast of Australia, 2 vols, London, 1827\n\nKirby, J., Old Times in the Bush in Australia, Melbourne, 1894\n\nKnight, J. J., In the Early Days, Brisbane, 1895\n\nLabillardiere, M., Voyage in Search of La Perouse, 1791\u20131794, London, 1800\n\nLandor, E. W., The Bushman or Life in a New Country, London, 1847\n\nLang, G. S., The Aborigines of Australia, Melbourne, 1865\n\nLang, J. D., Queensland, London, 1861\n\nLindsay, D., Journal of the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, 1891\u20132, Adelaide, 1892\n\nLloyd, G. T., Thirty-three Years in Tasmania and Victoria, London, 1862\n\nLoyau, G. E., The History of Maryborough, Brisbane, 1897\n\nLumholtz, C., Among Cannibals, London, 1889\n\nLumholtz, C., 'Among the Natives of Australia', Journal of American Geographical Society, 21, 1889\n\nMcCombie, T., Essays on Colonization, London, 1850\n\nMcCombie, T., The History of the Colony of Victoria, Melbourne, 1858\n\nMcCrae, G. C., 'The Early Settlement of the Eastern Shores of Port Phillip Bay', Victorian Historical Magazine, 1, 1911\n\nMacGillivray, J., Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake, 2 vols, London, 1852\n\nMackaness, G. (ed.), Fourteen Journeys Over the Blue Mountains of NSW, 1813\u201341, Sydney, 1965\n\nMackay, R., Recollections of Early Gippsland Goldfields, Traralgon, 1916\n\nMacKillop, D., 'Anthropological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia', RGSSA, 5, 1893\n\nMcKinlay, W., McKinlays Journal of Exploration, Melbourne, 1862\n\nMcLaren, J., My Crowded Solitude, Sun Books edition, Melbourne, 1966\n\nMacPherson, A., Mount Abundance, London, 1897\n\nMajor, T., Leaves from a Squatters Notebook, London, 1900\n\nMann. J. F., Eight Months with Dr Leichhardt, Sydney, 1888\n\nMathew, J., Eaglehawk and Crow, London, 1899\n\nMathew, J., Two Representative Tribes of Queensland, London, 1910\n\nMeston, A., Geographical History of Queensland, Brisbane, 1895\n\nMeyrick, F. J., Life in the Bush, 1840\u201347, London, 1939\n\nMitchell, T. L., Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, London, 1848\n\nMitchell, T. L., Three Expeditions into Eastern Australia, 2 vols, London, 1834\n\nMoore, G. F., Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in West Australia, London, 1884\n\nMoore, G. F., A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Usage Amongst the Aborigines of West Australia, London, 1842\n\nMorrell, J., Sketch of a Residence Among the Aborigines of North Queensland, Brisbane, 1863\n\nMorris, E. E., A Dictionary of Austral English, London, 1898\n\nMorgan, J., The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, London 1967 edition, edited C. E. Sayers\n\nMudie, R., The Picture of Australasia, London, 1829\n\nNewland, S., Memoirs of Simpson Newland, Adelaide, 1928\n\nNewland, S., 'The Parkinjees or the Aboriginal Tribes on the Darling River', RGSSA, 2, 1887\u201388\n\nNewland, S., 'Some Aborigines I Have Known', RGSSA, 1894\u201395\n\nNicolay, C. G., The Handbook of Western Australia, London, 1896\n\nOgle, N., The Colony of Western Australia, London, 1839\n\nOxley, J., Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, London, 1820\n\nPalmerston, C., 'Diary of Christie Palmerston', Queensland Heritage, 1, 8, May 1968\n\nParker, E. S., The Aborigines of Australia, Melbourne, 1854\n\nParker, K. L., The Euahlayi Tribe, London, 1905\n\nPetrie, T., Reminiscences of Early Queensland, Brisbane, 1932\n\nPlomley, N. J. B. (ed.), Friendly Mission: the Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829\u20131834, Hobart, 1966\n\nPridden, W., Australia, Its History and Present Condition, London, 1843\n\nReilly, J. T., Reminiscences of Fifty Years Residence in West Australia, Perth, 1903\n\nRidley, W., Kamilaroi and Other Australian Languages, 2nd edition, Sydney, 1875\n\nRobertson, W., Cooee Talks, Sydney, 1928\n\nRoss, J., 'The Settler in Van Diemens Land Fourteen Years Ago', Hobart Town Almanack, 1836\n\nRoth, H. L., The Aborigines of Tasmania, 2nd edition, Halifax, 1899\n\nRoth, W. G., Ethnographical Studies Among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, Brisbane, 1897\n\nRusden, G. W., History of Australia, 3 vols, London, 1883\n\nRussell, H. S., The Genesis of Queensland, Sydney, 1888\n\nSadlier, R., The Aborigines of Australia, Sydney, 1883\n\nSchurmann, C. W., Vocabulary of the Parnkalla Language, Adelaide, 1844\n\nSearcey, A., In Australian Tropics, London, 1907\n\nSearcey, A., In Northern Seas, Adelaide, 1905\n\nSemon, R., In the Australian Bush, London, 1899\n\nShenton, E., 'Reminiscences of Perth 1830\u20131840', WAHS, 1, 1, 1927\n\nSiebert, O., 'Sagen Und Sitten Der Dieri Und Nachbarst\u00e4mme in Zentral-Australien', Globus, 47, 1916\n\nSinnett, F., The Rush to Port Curtis, Geelong, 1859\n\nSmith, C., The Booandick Tribe of South Australian Aborigines, Adelaide, 1880\n\nSmyth, R. B., The Aborigines of Victoria, 2 vols, Melbourne, 1876\n\nStevenson, J. B., Seven Years in the Australian Bush, Liverpool, 1880\n\nStokes, J. L., Discoveries in Australia, 2 vols, London, 1846\n\nStreeter, E. W., Pearls and Pearling Life, London, 1886\n\nStuart, J. M., Explorations Across the Continent of Australia 1861\u20131862, Melbourne, 1863\n\nSturt, C., Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, 2 vols, London, 1849\n\nSturt, C., Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 2 vols, London, 1833\n\nSutherland, A. G., Victoria and Its Metropolis, Melbourne, 1888\n\nSutherland, G., Pioneering Days: Across the Wilds of Queensland, Brisbane, 1913\n\nTaplin, G., The Narrinyeri, their Manners and Customs, Adelaide, 1878\n\nTaplin, G. (ed.), The Folklore, Manners, Customs and Languages of the South Australian Aborigines, Adelaide, 1879\n\nTaunton, H., Australind, London, 1903\n\nTeichelmann, C. G., Outlines of a Grammar, Vocabulary and Phraseology of the Aboriginal Language of South Australia, Adelaide, 1840\n\nTench, W., Sydney's First Four Years, Sydney 1961 edition introduced by L. F. Fitzhardinge\n\nThrelkeld, L. E., An Australian Language, Sydney, 1892\n\nThrelkeld, L. E., Australian Reminiscences and Papers, edited N. Gunson, Canberra, 1974\n\nTuckey, J. H., An Account of a Voyage to Establish a Colony at Port Phillip, London, 1805\n\nWestgarth, W., Australia Felix, Edinburgh, 1848\n\nWestgarth, W., Australia, Edinburgh, 1861\n\nWestgarth, W., A Report on the Condition, Capabilities and Prospects of the Australian Aborigines, Melbourne, 1846\n\nWestgarth, W., Tracks of McKinlay and Party Across Australia, London, 1863\n\nWalker, J. B., Early Tasmania, Hobart, 1902\n\nWard, A., The Miracle of Mapoon, London, 1908\n\nWarburton, P., Journey Across the Western Interior of Australia, London, 1875\n\nWelsby, T., Collected Works, 2 vols, Brisbane, 1907\n\nWest, J., History of Tasmania, 2 vols, Launceston, 1852\n\nWidowson, H., The Present State of Van Diemens Land, London, 1829\n\nWillshire, W. H., The Aborigines of Central Australia, Adelaide, 1891\n\nWilson, T. B., Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, London, 1835\n\nWindsor-Earl, G., 'On the Aboriginal Tribes of the North Coast of Australia', JRGS, 16, 1846\n\nWindsor-Earl, G., Enterprise in Tropical Australia, London, 1846\n\nWithnell, J. G., The Customs and Traditions of the Aboriginal Natives of North-Western Australia, Roebourne, 1901\n\nWood, K. M., 'A Pioneer Pearler \u2014 Reminiscences of John Wood', WAHS, 2, 12\n\nWoods, J. D. (ed.), The Native Tribes of South Australia, Adelaide, 1879\n\nWorgan, G. B., Journal of a First Fleet Surgeon, Sydney, 1978\n\nYoung, S. B., 'Reminiscences of Mrs Susan Bundarre Young', JRAHS, 8, 1923\n\nZillman, J. H. L., Past and Present Australian Life, London, 1889\n\nRecent Books, Articles\n\nAbbie, A. A., The Original Australians, Wellington, 1969\n\nAllen, J., 'The Archaeology of Nineteenth Century British Imperialism', World Archaeology, 5, 1, June 1973\n\nAnderson, C., 'Aboriginal Economy and Contact Relations at Bloomfield River, North Queensland', Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Newsletter, 12, September 1979\n\nAnell, B., 'Hunting and Trapping Methods in Australia and Oceania', Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensa, 18, 1960\n\nAnderson, R. H., 'The Effect of Settlement upon the New South Wales Flora', Proceedings, Linnean Society of New South Wales, 66, 1941\n\nBach, J., 'The Political Economy of Pearl Shelling', Economic History Review, 14, 1, 1961\n\nBaker, S. J., The Australian Language, Melbourne, 1966\n\nBarwick, D., 'Coranderrk and Cumeroogunga' in T. Epstein (ed.), Opportunity and Response, London, 1972\n\nBasedow, H., The Australian Aboriginal, Adelaide, 1925\n\nBates, D., The Passing of the Aborigines, London, 1938\n\nBauer, F. H., 'The Kartans of Kangaroo Island, South Australia', in A. Pilling and R. Waterman: Diprotodon to Detribalization, Michigan, 1970\n\nBennett, M. M., The Australian Aborigine as a Human Being, London, 1930\n\nBern, J., 'Ideology and Domination', Oceania, 50, 2, December 1979\n\nBerndt, R. M. 'A Preliminary Report of Fieldwork in the Ooldea Region', Oceania, 13, 1942\u201343\n\nBerndt, R. M., 'Surviving Influence of Mission Contact on the Daly River', Neue Zeitschrift Fur Missionswissenschaft, 8\/2-3, 1952\n\nBerndt, R. M., 'Wuradjeri Magic and Clever Men', Oceania, 17, 1946\u201347 and 18, 1947\u201348\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., Arnhem Land: Its History and Its People, Melbourne, 1954\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., The First Australians, 2nd edition, Sydney, 1967\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., From Black to White in South Australia, Melbourne, 1951\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., 'Some Recent Articles on Culture Contact', Oceania, 16, 1945\u201346\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., The World of the First Australians, Sydney, 1965\n\nBerndt, R. M. & C. H., 'An Oenpelli Monologue', Oceania, 22, 1951\u201352\n\nBligh, A. C. V., The Golden Quest, Sydney, 1938\n\nBirdsell, J. B., 'A Basic Demographic Unit', Current Anthropology, 14, 4, October 1973\n\nBirdsell, J. B., 'Some Environmental and Cultural Factors Influencing the Structuring of Australian Aboriginal Populations', American Naturalist, 67, 1953\n\nBirdsell, J. B., 'Ecology, Spacing Mechanisms and Adaptive Behaviour in Aboriginal Land Tenure', in R. G. Crocombe: Land Tenure in the Pacific, Melbourne, 1971\n\nBirdsell, J. B., 'Local Group Composition Among the Australian Aborigines', Current Anthropology, 11, 2, April 1970\n\nBlainey, G., Triumph of the Nomads, Melbourne, 1975\n\nBlack, J., North Queensland Pioneers, Townsville, n.d.\n\nBlake, B. J., The Kalkatunga Language, Canberra, 1969\n\nBrandl, E. J., Australian Aboriginal Paintings in Western and Central Arnhem Land, Canberra, 1973\n\nBridges, B., 'The Colonization of Australia: A Communication', Teaching History, November 1977\n\nBridges, B., The Aborigines and the Land Question in New South Wales', JRAHS, 56, 2, June 1970\n\nBridges, B., 'Pemulwy: A Noble Savage', Newsletter of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 88, 1970\n\nBridges, B., 'The Native Police Corps, Port Phillip District and Victoria 1837-53', JRAHS, 57, 2, June 1971\n\nChaloupka, G., 'Pack-bells on the rock face: Aboriginal paintings of European contact in north-western Arnhem Land', Aboriginal History, 3, 2, 1979\n\nChadwick, N., A Descriptive Study of the Djingili Language, Canberra, 1975\n\nChaseling, W., Yulengor: Nomads of Arnhem Land, London, 1957\n\nCorris, P., Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria, Canberra, 1963\n\nCoutts, P. J. et al, 'Impact of European Settlement on Aboriginal Society in Western Victoria', Records of the Victoria Archaeological Survey, 4, August 1977\n\nCrawford, I. M., The Art of the Wandjina, Melbourne, 1968\n\nDixon, R. M. W., The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland, Cambridge, 1972\n\nDixon, R. M. W., A Grammar of Yidin, Cambridge, 1977\n\nDocker, E. C., Simply Human Beings, Brisbane, 1964\n\nDoolan, J. K., 'Aboriginal Concept of Boundary', Oceania, 44, 3, March 1979\n\nDouglas, W. H., The Aboriginal Languages of the South-West of Western Australia, Canberra, 1968\n\nDurack, M., The Rock and the Sand, Corgi edition, London, 1911\n\nEades, D. K., The Dharawal and Dhurga Languages of the New South Wales South Coast, Canberra, 1976\n\nEliade, M., Australian Religions, Ithaca, 1973\n\nElkin, A. P., The Australian Aborigines, 4th edition, Sydney, 1964\n\nElkin, A. P., Aboriginal Men of High Degree, Sydney, 1954\n\nElkin, A. P., 'Civilized Aborigines and Native Culture', Oceania, 6, December 1935\n\nElkin, A. P., 'Elements of Australian Aboriginal Philosophy', Oceania, 60, 2, December 1969\n\nElkin, A. P., 'Notes on the Aborigines of the Walgett District', Mankind, 3, 2, 1943\n\nElkin, A. P., 'Reaction and Interaction: A Food Gathering People and European Settlement in Australia', American Anthropologist, 53, 1951\n\nElkin, A. P., 'The Secret Life of the Australian Aborigines', Oceania, 3, December 1932\n\nEvans, R. et al, Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination, Sydney, 1975\n\nGale, F., A Study of Assimilation: Part Aborigines in South Australia, Adelaide, 1964\n\nGeytenbeek, B. & H., Gidabal Grammar and Dictionary, Canberra, 1971\n\nGould, R. A., 'Subsistence Behaviour Among the Western Desert Aborigines', Oceania, 39, 1969\n\nGould, R. A., Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian Desert, London, 1969\n\nGould, R. A., 'Uses and Effects of Fire Among the Western Desert Aborigines', Mankind, 8, 1971\n\nGreen, N., 'Aboriginal and Settler Conflict in Western Australia, 1826\u20131852', The Push from the Bush, 3, May 1979\n\nGunson, N. (ed.), Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L. E. Threlkeld, Canberra, 1974\n\nHaddon, A. C., Head Hunters: Black, White and Brown, London, 1932\n\nHaglund, L., 'Dating Aboriginal Relics from the Contact Period', Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, 11, 3, October 1976\n\nHale, H. M. & N. B. Tindale, 'Aborigines of Princess Charlotte Bay, North Queensland', Records of South Australian Museum, 5, 1933\u201336\n\nHale, H. M. & N. B. Tindale, 'Observations on Aborigines of the Flinders Ranges', Records of the South Australian Museum, 3, 1925\u201328\n\nHall, H. A., A Partial Vocabulary of the Ngalooma Language, Canberra, 1921\n\nHallam, S., Fire and Hearth, Canberra, 1975\n\nHamilton, A., 'Blacks and Whites: The Relationships of Change', Arena, 30, 1972\n\nHamman, J., 'The Coorong Massacre', Flinders Journal of Politics and History, 3, 1973\n\nHancock, W. K., Australia, Jacaranda edition, Brisbane, 1960\n\nHasluck, A., 'Yagan the Patriot', WAHS, 7, 1961\n\nHasluck, P., Black Australians, Melbourne, 1942\n\nHaynes, B. T., West Australian Aborigines, 1622\u20131972, Perth, 1973\n\nHercus, L., The Languages of Victoria, Canberra, 1969\n\nHercus, L., 'Tales of Nadu-Dagali (Rib-Bone Billy)', Aboriginal History, 1, 1, 1977\n\nHiatt, B., 'The Food Quest and the Economy of the Tasmanian Aborigines', Oceania, 38, 2 and 3, 1968\n\nHiatt, L. R., 'Local Organization Among the Australian Aborigines', Oceania, 32, 1962\n\nHiatt, L. R., 'The Lost Horde', Oceania, 37, 1965\n\nHughes, I., 'A State of Open Warfare', Lectures on North Queensland History, second series, Townsville, 1975\n\nHutchison, D. E. (ed.), Aboriginal Progress: A New Era?, Perth, 1969\n\nInglis, J., 'One Hundred Years of Point Macleay, South Australia', Mankind, 5, 12, November 1962\n\nJones, R., 'The Demography of Hunters and Farmers in Tasmania', in D. J. Mulvaney and J. Golson: Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, Canberra, 1971\n\nJones, R., 'Tasmanian Aborigines and Dogs', Mankind, 7, 1970\n\nKelly, C., 'Some Aspects of Culture Contact in Eastern Australia', Oceania, 15, 1944\u201345\n\nKolig, E., 'Bi:H and Gadeja', Oceania, 43, 1, September 1972\n\nLaver, P. K., 'Report of a Preliminary Ethno-historical and Archaeological Survey of Fraser Island', University of Queensland, Occasional Papers in Anthropology, No. 8\n\nMcBride, I. (ed.), Records of Time Past, Canberra, 1978\n\nMcCarthy, F. D., Rock Art of the Cobar Pedeplain, Canberra, 1976\n\nMcConnell, U., 'Social Organization of the Tribes of Cape York Peninsula', Oceania, 10, 1, 1939\n\nMcConnell, U., 'The Wik-Munkan Tribe of Cape York Peninsula', Oceania, 1, 1930\u201331\n\nMcMahon, A., 'Tasmanian Aboriginal Women as Slaves', THRA, 23, 2, June 1976\n\nThe Mapoon Story According to the Invaders, Sydney, 1975\n\nMeggitt, M. J., 'The Association between Australian Aborigines and Dingoes', American Association Advancement of Science, Publication No. 78\n\nMeggitt, M. J., Desert People, Sydney, 1962\n\nMeggitt, M. J., 'Indigenous Forms of Government Among the Australian Aborigines' in I. Hogbin and L. R. Hiatt: Readings in Australian and Pacific Anthropology, Melbourne, 1966\n\nMoore, D. R., Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York, Canberra, 1979\n\nMoorwood, M. J., 'Three Rock Art Sites in Central Queensland', University of Queensland: Occasional Papers in Anthropology, 6, 1975\n\nMulvaney, D. J. & J. Golson, Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, Canberra, 1971\n\nMulvaney, D. J., The Pre-history of Australia, revised edition, Ringwood, 1975\n\nMurray-Smith, S., 'Beyond the Pale: The Islander Communities of Bass Strait in the Nineteenth Century', THRA, 20, 4, December, 1973\n\nOates, W. & L., Gugu-Yalanji and Wik-Munkan Language Studies, Canberra, 1964\n\nPetersen, N. (ed.), Tribes and Boundaries in Australia, Canberra, 1976\n\nPiddington, R., 'A Note on Karadjeri Local Organization', Oceania, 61, 4, June 1971\n\nPlomley, N. J. B., A World List of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages, Hobart, 1976\n\nRadcliffe-Brown, A. R., 'Black Australia', Australian Museum Magazine, 4, 4, October-December 1930\n\nRadcliffe-Brown, A. R., 'The Rainbow Serpent Myth in South-East Australia', Oceania, 1, 1930\u201331\n\nRadcliffe-Brown, A. R., 'The Social Organization of Australian Tribes', Oceania, 1, 1930\n\nRadcliffe-Brown, A. R., 'Three Tribes of Western Australia', Journal Royal Anthropological Institute, 43, 1913\n\nReay, M., 'Native Thought in Rural New South Wales', Oceania, 20, 1949\n\nReay, M., 'The Background of Alien Impact' in R. M. & C. H. Berndt (eds): Aboriginal Man in Australia, Sydney, 1965\n\nReece, L., Dictionary of the Wailbri (Walpiri) Language of Central Australia, Sydney, 1975\n\nReece, R. H. W., Aborigines and Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial Society in NSW in the 1830's and 1840's, Sydney, 1974\n\nReece, R. H. W., 'Feasts and Blankets: The History of Some Early Attempts to Establish Relations with the Aborigines of NSW, 1814\u20131846', Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, 2, 3, October 1967\n\nReynolds, H., 'Jimmy Governor and Jimmie Blacksmith', Australian Literary Studies, 9, 1, May 1979\n\nReynolds, H., 'The Unrecorded Battlefields of Queensland', Race Relations in North Queensland, Townsville, 1978\n\nRoughsey, D., Moon and Rainbow, Sydney, 1971\n\nRowley, C. D., 'Aborigines and Other Australians', Oceania, 32, 4, 1962\n\nRowley, C. D., The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Melbourne, 1972\n\nRowley, C. D., The Remote Aborigines, Melbourne, 1972\n\nRowley, C. D., Outcasts in White Australia, Melbourne, 1972\n\nRyan, L., 'The Struggle for Recognition: part Aborigines in Tasmania in the Nineteenth Century', Aboriginal History, 1, 1, 1977\n\nSahlens, M., Stone Age Economics, London, 1974\n\nShaw, B. & J. Sullivan, 'They same as you and me': Encounters with the Gadia in the East Kimberley', Aboriginal History, 3, 2, 1979\n\nSharp, L., 'Steel Axes for Stone Age Australians' in E. H. Spicer (ed.), Human Problems in Technological Change, New York, 1952\n\nSharp, L., 'Ritual Life and Economics of the Yir-Yoront of Cape York Peninsula', Oceania, 5, 1934\n\nSharp, L., 'Social Organization of the Yir-Yoront of Cape York Peninsula', Oceania, 4, 1933\u201334\n\nSpencer, B., Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, London, 1914\n\nSpencer, B., Wanderings in Wild Australia, 2 vols, London, 1928\n\nSpencer, B. & F. J. Gillen, Across Australia, London, 1912\n\nSpencer, B. & F. J. Gillen, The Arunta, London, 1922\n\nSpencer, B. & F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, Dover edition, New York, 1968\n\nStanner, W. E. H., 'Aboriginal Territorial Organization', Oceania, 36, 1965\n\nStanner, W. E. H., After the Dreaming, Sydney, 1969\n\nStanner, W. E. H., 'Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River', Oceania, 4, 2, December 1933\n\nStanner, W. E. H., 'Continuity and Change Among the Aborigines', Australian Journal of Science, 21, 1958\u201359\n\nStanner, W. E. H., 'The Daly River Tribes', Oceania, 3, 4, June 1933\n\nStanner, W. E. H., 'Durmugam, a Nangiomeri', in J. B. Casagrande (ed.), In the Company of Man, New York, 1960\n\nStrehlow, T. G. H., 'Aranda Phonetics', Oceania, 12, 1941\u201342\n\nStrehlow, T. G. H., Journey to Horseshoe Bend, Sydney, 1969\n\nThomson, D. F., 'The Dugong Hunters of Cape York', Journal Royal Anthropological Institute, 64, 1934\n\nThomson, D. F., 'In Camp with Stone Age Men', Queenslander, 22, 29 January 1931\n\nThomson, D. F., 'The Hero Cult, Initiation and Totemism on Cape York', Journal Royal Anthropological Institute, 63, 1933\n\nThorpe, O., First Catholic Mission to the Australian Aborigines, Sydney, 1949\n\nThreadgill, B., South Australian Land Exploration, 1856\u20131880, Adelaide, 1922\n\nTindale, N. B., Aboriginal Tribes of Australia, Canberra, 1974\n\nTindale, N. B., 'Ecology of Primitive Aboriginal Man in Australia', in A. Keast et al: Biogeography and Ecology in Australia, Hague, 1959\n\nTindale, N. B., 'Natives of Groote Eyland and of the West Coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria', Records of South Australian Museum, 2, 1925\u201328\n\nTindale, N. B., 'A Survey of the Half-Caste Problem in South Australia', RGSSA, 42, 1940\u201341\n\nWade-Broun, N., Memoirs of a Queensland Pioneer, Sandgate, 1944\n\nWarner, W. L., A Black Civilization, New York, 1958\n\nWegner, J., 'The Aborigines of the Etheridge Shire' in H. Reynolds (ed.), Race Relations in North Queensland, Townsville, 1979\n\nWilley, K., Boss Drover, Adelaide, 1971\n\nWoolmington, J., Aborigines in Colonial Society, 1788\u20131850, Melbourne, 1973\n\nWorsley, P., 'Utilization of Natural Food Resources by an Australian Aboriginal Tribe', Acta Ethnographica, 10, 1961\n\nWright, B. J., Rock Art of the Pilbara Region, Canberra, 1968\n\nOral History\n\nConsiderable use has been made of tapes in the James Cook University Oral History collection and especially material collected by Caroline Strachan. During the last few years I have read with great interest two excellent oral history collections which have not been published to this moment. They are Jay and Peter Read's A View of the Past and Louise Hercus and Peter Sutton's This is What Happened.\n\n# INDEX\n\nAboriginal\n\nacquisition of European skills\n\nassistance to explorers\n\nattacks on Europeans\n\nattitudes to disease\n\nattitudes to labour\n\nattraction to European settlement\n\nbandits\n\nbegging\n\nbushcraft\n\n'clever men'\n\ncooking methods, post-contact\n\ncorroborees, post-contact\n\ncommunications\n\ncuriosity about Europeans\n\ndecline of population\n\ninfant mortality\n\ninitial beliefs about Europeans\n\ninitial meetings with Europeans\n\ninitiation\n\nkinship\n\nland-ownership, controversy concerning\n\nleadership\n\npainting, post-contact\n\nreaction to European animals\n\nreaction to European clothes\n\nreaction to European firearms\n\nreciprocity\n\nrevenge\n\nsacred sites\n\nsorcery\n\nsurveillance of Europeans\n\ntrade routes\n\nuse of European artifacts\n\nuse of fire\n\nuse of food\n\nuse of pidgin English\n\nuse of tea\n\nuse of tobacco\n\nviolence, in traditional society\n\nviolence, reaction to European\n\nwomen\n\nwomen and Europeans\n\nwomen and tribal elders\n\nAborigines, individuals\n\nBaldy\n\nBelba\n\nBungaree\n\nBurmoondoo, Bill\n\nCampbell, Johnny\n\nDarrama\n\nDundalli\n\nEaglehawk\n\nJames\n\nJelinapiramurana\n\nJemmy\n\nJimmy\n\nKam-Kam\n\nMaria\n\nMathinna\n\nMay-Day\n\nMiago\n\nMignet\n\nMosquito\n\nNgamumarko\n\nOromonde\n\nPemulwy\n\nPidgeon\n\nSaturday\n\nSambo\n\nToby\n\nTungeriol\n\nWaimara\n\nWalyer\n\nYagan\n\nAborigines, tribes\n\nAranda\n\nBindal\n\nBudjara\n\nDieri\n\nDjingili\n\nDyirbal\n\nEuahlayi\n\nGidabal\n\nGugu-Badhun\n\nJoda-Joda\n\nJurn\n\nKalkatunga\n\nLoritja\n\nMurngin\n\nNarrinyeri\n\nNgalooma\n\nWade-Wade\n\nWalbri\n\nWagaidj\n\nWandwurril\n\nWarramanga\n\nWembaweba\n\nWergaga\n\nWiradjuri\n\nYidin\n\nYir-Yoront\n\nYutilda\n\nAdelaide\n\nAiston, G.\n\nAlbany\n\nAnderson, C\n\nArthur, Governor G.\n\nArukun\n\nAtherton Tableland\n\nAustin, R.\n\nbandits, Aboriginal\n\nBass Strait Islands\n\nBattle of Pinjarra, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nBaudin, N.\n\nBauer, F. H.\n\nBeagle Bay\n\nb\u00eache de mer fishing\n\nBerndt, R. M.\n\nBirdselI, J. B.\n\nBlainey, G.\n\nBloomfield River\n\nBode, R.\n\nBonwick, J.\n\nBoroloola\n\nBracefield, D.\n\nBrierly, O.\n\nBrock, D.\n\nBroome\n\nBuckley, W.\n\nburglars, Aboriginal\n\nCalder, J. E.\n\nCaley, G.\n\nCameron, D.\n\nCape York\n\nCarnegie, D.\n\ncastaways, European\n\ncastaways, individuals\n\nBracefield\n\nBuckley\n\nDavis\n\nMorrell\n\nThompson\n\n'Weinie'\n\ncattle, Aboriginal reactions to\n\nChampion Bay\n\nChewings, C.\n\nChristie, M.\n\n'clever men', Aboriginal\n\nclothes, European, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nCollins, D.\n\nConiston Massacre\n\ncooking, Aboriginal, post-contact modification in\n\nCooktown\n\nCoopers Creek\n\ncorroborees, post-contact\n\ncrops, Aboriginal raids on\n\nCroydon Gold Field\n\nCullinlaringoe Station, Qld\n\ncultural exchange, Aboriginal\n\nCurr, E.\n\nDaly River\n\nDarling River\n\nDarwin\n\nDashwood, Mr Justice\n\nDavis, J.\n\nDawson River\n\ndisease, Aboriginal attitudes to\n\ndisease, introduced by Europeans\n\ndogs, European\n\nDredge, J.\n\nDurville, D\n\nDutton, C. B.\n\necology, European impact on\n\nElder Expedition\n\nElkin, A. P.\n\nEtheridge Gold Field\n\nEuropean skills, acquired by Aborigines\n\nEuropeans killed by Aborigines\n\nEyre, E.\n\nfarmers, Aboriginal relations with\n\nfire, Aboriginal use of\n\nfirearms, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nFlinders, M.\n\nFlinders Range\n\nflour, Aboriginal use of\n\nFoelsche, Inspector\n\nFraser family\n\nFremantle, C. H.\n\nfringe-dwellers\n\nghosts, Aboriginal beliefs about\n\nGilbert Gold Field\n\nGilbert, J.\n\nGiles, E.\n\nGipps, Governor G.\n\nGippsland\n\nglass, Aboriginal use of\n\nGovernor, brothers\n\nGrant, A. C.\n\nGregory, A. C.\n\nGregson, J.\n\nGrey, G.\n\nGribble, E. R.\n\nHancock, W. K.\n\nHermannsburg\n\nHiatt, L. R.\n\nHodgkinson, W. O.\n\nHodgkinson Gold Field\n\nHopevale\n\nHorn Scientific Expedition\n\nHornet Bank Station\n\nhorses, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nHorseshoe Bend\n\nHovell, W.\n\nHowitt, A. W.\n\nHunter, Governor\n\nHurst, B.\n\nHutt, Governor\n\ninfant mortality, Aboriginal\n\niron, Aboriginal use of\n\nJack, R. L.\n\nJardine, J.\n\nJones, R.\n\nJorgenson, J.\n\nJukes, J.\n\nKelly, J.\n\nKennedy, E.\n\nKilcoy Massacre\n\nKing, Governor\n\nKing, P. P.\n\nkinship, Aboriginal concepts of\n\nLabillardiere, M.\n\nLang, G. S.\n\nLeichhardt, L.\n\nLettsom, Major\n\nLewis, Mr\n\nlinguistic diffusion\n\nLloyd-Warner, W.\n\nLoos, N.\n\nLumholtz, C.\n\nMabo,Eddie\n\nMcKinlay, W.\n\nMcLaren, J.\n\nMcMillan, A.\n\nMacPherson, A.\n\nMacquarie, Governor L.\n\nmalnutrition\n\nMapoon\n\nMaria 'massacre'\n\nMaryborough\n\nMelbourne\n\nMeston, A.\n\nMiggloo\n\nmining, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nMiriam\n\nmissionaries, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nmissionaries, individuals\n\nGribble, E.\n\nGunther, J.\n\nHoerlein, Herr\n\nHurst, B.\n\nPoland, Herr\n\nRidley, W.\n\nSchmidt, W.\n\nSiebert, O.\n\nTaplin, G.\n\nTeichelmann, C.\n\nThrelkeld, L.\n\nTuckfield, F.\n\nMitchell, T.\n\nMolonga Corroboree\n\nMoorhouse, M.\n\nMoore, G. F.\n\nMorrell, J.\n\nmortality, Aboriginal\n\nMulligan, J. V.\n\nNantoe\n\nNative Mounted Police\n\nNative Mounted Police, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nnegotiation, Aboriginal attempts\n\nNewland, S.\n\nNoonkanbah\n\nOgilvie, E. O.\n\noral history\n\nOxley, J.\n\npainting, Aboriginal\n\nPalmer River\n\nPalmerston, C.\n\nParker, E. S.\n\nParker, Mrs K. L.\n\npearling industry\n\nPenny, Dr R.\n\nPerth\n\nPetrie, T.\n\npidgin English\n\npigs, feral\n\nPoland, Herr\n\nPort Essington\n\nPort Lincoln\n\nPort Phillip\n\npotatoes, Aboriginal use of\n\nPrentis, M.\n\nprostitution\n\nrabbits, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nRadcliffe-Brown, A. R.\n\nRainbow Serpent\n\nrape\n\nReay, M.\n\nreciprocity, Aboriginal\n\nrecruitment of Aboriginal labour\n\nrevenge, Aboriginal\n\nReynolds, H.\n\nRidley, W.\n\nRobertson, W.\n\nRobinson, G. A.\n\nRockhampton\n\nRoth, W. E.\n\nRoughsey, D.\n\nRyan, L.\n\nsacred sites, Aboriginal\n\nSahlins, M.\n\nSchmidt, W.\n\nsealing, Aboriginal participation\n\nSearcey, A.\n\nSharp, L.\n\nsheep, Aboriginal shepherding\n\nShelley, W.\n\nSiebert, O.\n\nsmallpox\n\nsmoke signals, Aboriginal\n\nsorcery, Aboriginal\n\nSpencer, B.\n\nStanner, W. E. H.\n\nsteel axes, Aboriginal use of\n\nStokes, J. L.\n\nStuart, J. M.\n\nSturt, C.\n\nSutton, Peter\n\nSydney\n\nTaplin, G.\n\ntea, Aboriginal use of\n\nTeichelmann, C.\n\nTench, W.\n\nThomas, W.\n\nThompson, B.\n\nThomson, D.\n\nThrelkeld, L. E.\n\nThursday Island\n\nTindale, N. B.\n\ntobacco, Aboriginal reaction to\n\nTorres Strait Islanders\n\ntowns, Aboriginal reactions to\n\ntrade routes, Aboriginal\n\ntribal messengers\n\nTuckfield, F.\n\nvenereal disease\n\nWalker, F.\n\nWarner, W. L.\n\nwater, conflict over\n\nWeinie\n\nwhaling, Aboriginal participation\n\nwhite-fellow words\n\nWills family\n\nWindschuttle, Keith\n\nWindsor-Earl, G.\n\nWiseman, W.\n\nwomen, Aboriginal\n\nWood, J. D.\n\nYarrabah\n\nYarraman\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
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+{"text":" \n# The word inside the book\n\nAs Bastian read and listened to the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, a roaring started up in his ears and he saw spots before his eyes.\n\nWhy, this was all about him! And it was the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, was a character in the book which until now he had thought he was reading. And heaven only knew who else might be reading it at the exact same time, also supposing himself to be just a reader.\n\nAnd now Bastian was afraid. He felt unable to breathe, as though shut up in an invisible prison. He didn't want to read anymore, he wanted to stop.\n\nBut _the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain went on,_\n\nand there was nothing Bastian could do about it. He held his hands over his ears, but it was no use, because the voice came from inside him. He tried desperately to tell himself\u2014though he knew it wasn't true\u2014that the resemblance to his own story was some crazy accident....\n\nPUFFIN BOOKS\n\nAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York\n\nFirst published in Germany as Die Unendliche Geschichte by K. Thienemanns Verlag, 1979\n\nThis translation published in the United States of America by Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1983\n\nPublished simultaneously in Great Britain by Allen Lane Published by Penguin Books, 1984\n\nFirst published by Puffin Books, 1985\n\nSecond Puffin edition, 1997\n\nPublished by Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005\n\nPublished by Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018\n\nCopyright \u00a9 K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart, 1979\n\nTranslation copyright \u00a9 Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1983\n\nPenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nVisit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com\n\nTHE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PUFFIN EDITION AS FOLLOWS:\n\nEnde, Michael.\n\n[Unendliche Geschichte. English]\n\nThe neverending story \/ Michael Ende; translated by Ralph Manheim. p. cm.\n\nSummary: Shy, awkward Bastian is amazed to discover that he has become a character in the mysterious book he is reading and that he has an important mission to fulfill.\n\nISBN 978-0-525-55604-6\n\n[1. Fantasy.] I. Manheim, Ralph, 1907-. II. Title.\n\nPZ7.E6964Ne 1997 [Fic]\u2014dc21 96-51187 CIP AC\n\nPuffin Books ISBN 9780140386332\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nVersion_1\n\n# Contents\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright\n\nI: Fantastica in Danger\n\nII: Atreyu's Mission\n\nIII: Morla the Aged One\n\nIV: Ygramul the Many\n\nV: The Gnomics\n\nVI: The Three Magic Gates\n\nVII: The Voice of Silence\n\nVIII: The Wind Giants\n\nIX: Spook City\n\nX: The Flight to the Ivory Tower\n\nXI: The Childlike Empress\n\nXII: The Old Man of Wandering Mountain\n\nXIII: Perilin, the Night Forest\n\nXIV: The Desert of Colors\n\nXV: Grograman, the Many-Colored Death\n\nXVI: The Silver City of Amarganth\n\nXVII: A Dragon for Hero Hynreck\n\nXVIII: The Acharis\n\nXIX: The Traveling Companions\n\nXX: The Seeing Hand\n\nXXI: The Star Cloister\n\nXXII: The Battle for the Ivory Tower\n\nXXIII: The City of the Old Emperors\n\nXXIV: Dame Eyola\n\nXXV: The Picture Mine\n\nXXVI: The Water of Life\n\nAbout the Author\n\n_This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plateglass door._\n\n_Outside, it was a gray, cold, rainy November morning. The rain ran down the glass and over the ornate letters. Through the glass there was nothing to be seen but the rain-splotched wall across the street._\n\n_Suddenly the door was opened so violently that a little cluster of brass bells tinkled wildly, taking quite some time to calm down. The cause of this hubbub was a fat little boy of ten or twelve. His wet, dark-brown hair hung down over his face, his coat was soaked and dripping, and he was carrying a school satchel slung over his shoulder. He was rather pale and out of breath, but, despite the hurry he had been in a moment before, he was standing in the open doorway as though rooted to the spot._\n\n_Before him lay a long, narrow room, the back of which was lost in the half-light. The walls were lined with shelves filled with books of all shapes and sizes. Large folios were piled high on the floor, and on several tables lay heaps of smaller, leather-bound books, whose spines glittered with gold. The far end of the room was blocked off by a shoulder-high wall of books, behind which the light of a lamp could be seen. From time to time a ring of smoke rose up in the lamplight, expanded, and vanished in darkness. One was reminded of the smoke signals that Indians used for sending news from hilltop to hilltop._ _Apparently someone was sitting there, and, sure enough, the little boy heard a cross voice from behind the wall of books: 'Do your wondering inside or outside, but shut the door. There's a draft.'_\n\n_The boy obeyed and quietly shut the door. Then he approached the wall of books and looked cautiously around the corner. There, in a high worn leather wing chair sat a short, stout man in a rumpled black suit that looked frayed and somehow dusty. His paunch was held in by a vest with a flower design. He was bald except for outcroppings of white hair over his ears. His red face suggested a vicious bulldog. A gold-rimmed pince-nez was perched on his bulbous nose. He was smoking a curved pipe, which dangled from one corner of his mouth and pulled his whole cheek out of shape. On his lap he held a book, which he had evidently been reading, for in closing it he had left the thick forefinger of his left hand between the leaves as a kind of bookmark._\n\n_With his right hand he now removed his spectacles and examined the fat little boy, who stood there dripping. After a while, the man narrowed his eyes, which made him look more vicious than ever, and muttered: 'Goodness gracious.' Then he opened his book and went on reading._\n\n_The little boy didn't know quite what to do, so he just stood there, gaping. Finally the man closed his book_ \u2013 _as before, with his finger between the pages \u2013 and growled: 'Listen, my boy, I can't abide children. I know it's the style nowadays to make a terrible fuss over you \u2013 but I don't go for it. I simply have no use for children. As far as I'm concerned, they're no good for anything but screaming, torturing people, breaking things, smearing books with jam and tearing the pages. It never dawns on them that grown-ups may also have their troubles and cares. I'm only telling you this so you'll know where you're at. Anyway, I have no children's books and I wouldn't sell you the other kind. So now we understand each other, I hope!'_\n\n_After saying all this without taking his pipe out of his mouth, he opened his book again and went on reading._\n\n_The boy nodded silently and turned to go, but somehow he felt that_ _he couldn't take this last remark lying down. He turned around and said softly:_ 'All _children aren't like that.'_\n\n_Slowly the man looked up and again removed his spectacles. 'You still here? What must one do to be rid of you? And what was this terribly important thing you had to tell me?'_\n\n_'It wasn't terribly important,' said the boy still more softly. 'I only wanted... to say that_ all _children aren't the way you said.'_\n\n_'Really?' The man raised his eyebrows in affected surprise. 'Then you must be the big exception, I presume?'_\n\n_The fat boy didn't know what to say. He only shrugged his shoulders a little, and turned to go._\n\n_'And anyway,' he heard the gruff voice behind him, 'where are your manners? If you had any, you'd have introduced yourself.'_\n\n_'My name is Bastian,' said the boy. 'Bastian Balthazar Bux.'_\n\n_'That's a rather odd name,' the man grumbled. 'All those_ B _s. Oh well, you can't help it. You didn't choose it. My name is Carl Conrad Coreander.'_\n\n_'That makes three_ C _s.'_\n\n_'Hmm,' the man grumbled. 'Quite right.'_\n\n_He puffed a few clouds. 'Oh well, our names don't really matter, as we'll never see each other again. But before you leave, there's just one thing I'd like to know: What made you come bursting into my shop like that? It looked to me as if you were running away from something. Am I right?'_\n\n_Bastian nodded. Suddenly his round face was a little paler than before and his eyes a little larger._\n\n_'I suppose you made off with somebody's cashbox,' Mr Coreander conjectured, 'or knocked an old woman down, or whatever little scamps like you do nowadays. Are the police after you, boy?'_\n\n_Bastian shook his head._\n\n_'Speak up,' said Mr Coreander. 'Whom were you running away from?'_\n\n_'The others.'_\n\n_'What others?'_\n\n_'The children in my class.'_\n\n_'Why?'_\n\n_'They won't leave me alone.'_\n\n_'What do they do to you?'_\n\n_'They wait for me outside the schoolhouse.'_\n\n_'And then what?'_\n\n_'Then they shout all sorts of things. And push me around and laugh at me.'_\n\n_'And you just put up with it?'_\n\n_Mr Coreander looked at the boy for a while disapprovingly. Then he asked: 'Why don't you just give them a punch on the nose?'_\n\n_Bastian gaped. 'No, I wouldn't want to do that. And besides, I can't box.'_\n\n_'How about wrestling?' Mr Coreander asked. 'Or running, swimming, football, gymnastics? Are you no good at any of them?'_\n\n_The boy shook his head._\n\n_'In other words,' said Mr Coreander, 'you're a weakling.'_\n\n_Bastian shrugged his shoulders._\n\n_'But you can still talk,' said Mr Coreander. 'Why don't you talk back at them when they make fun of you?'_\n\n_'I tried...'_\n\n_'Well...?'_\n\n_'They threw me into a garbage can and tied the lid on. I yelled for two hours before somebody heard me.'_\n\n_'Hmm,' Mr Coreander grumbled. 'And now you don't dare?'_\n\n_Bastian nodded._\n\n_'In that case,' Mr Coreander concluded, 'you're a scaredy-cat too.'_\n\n_Bastian hung his head._\n\n_'And probably a hopeless grind? Best in the class, teacher's pet? Is that it?'_\n\n_'No,' said Bastian, still looking down. 'I was put back last year.'_\n\n_'Good Lord!' cried Mr Coreander. 'A failure all along the line.'_\n\n_Bastian said nothing, he just stood there in his dripping coat. His arms hung limp at his sides._\n\n_'What kind of things do they yell when they make fun of you?' Mr Coreander wanted to know._\n\n_'Oh, all kinds.'_\n\n_'For instance?'_\n\n_'Namby Pamby sits on the pot. The pot cracks up, says Namby Pamby: I guess it's 'cause I weigh a lot!'_\n\n_'Not very clever,' said Mr Coreander. 'What else?'_\n\n_Bastian hesitated before listing: 'Screwball, nitwit, braggart, liar...'_\n\n_'Screwball? Why do they call you that?'_\n\n_'I talk to myself sometimes.'_\n\n_'What kind of things do you say?'_\n\n_'I think up stories. I invent names and words that don't exist. That kind of thing.'_\n\n_'And you say these things to yourself? Why?'_\n\n_'Well, nobody else would be interested.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander fell into a thoughtful silence._\n\n_'What do your parents say about this?'_\n\n_Bastian didn't answer right away. After a while he mumbled: 'Father doesn't say anything. He never says anything. It's all the same to him.'_\n\n_'And your mother?'_\n\n_'She \u2013 she's gone.'_\n\n_'Your parents are divorced?'_\n\n_'No,' said Bastian. 'She's dead.'_\n\n_At that moment the telephone rang. With some difficulty Mr Coreander pulled himself out of his armchair and shuffled into a small room behind the shop. He picked up the receiver and indistinctly Bastian heard him saying his name. After that there was nothing to be heard but a low mumbling._\n\n_Bastian stood there. He didn't quite know why he had said all he had_ _and admitted so much. He hated being questioned like that. He broke into a sweat as it occurred to him that he was already late for school. He'd have to hurry, oh yes, he'd have to run_ \u2013 _but he just stood there, unable to move. Something held him fast, he didn't know what._\n\n_He could still hear the muffled voice from the back room. It was a long telephone conversation._\n\n_It came to Bastian that he had been staring the whole time at the book that Mr Coreander had been holding and that was now lying on the armchair. He couldn't take his eyes off it. It seemed to have a kind of magnetic power that attracted him irresistibly._\n\n_He went over to the chair, slowly held out his hand, and touched the book. In that moment something inside him went_ click!, _as though a trap had shut. Bastian had a vague feeling that touching the book had started something irrevocable, which would now take its course._\n\n_He picked up the book and examined it from all sides. It was bound in copper-colored silk that shimmered when he moved it about. Leafing through the pages, he saw the book was printed in two colors. There seemed to be no pictures, but there were large, beautiful capital letters at the beginning of the chapters. Examining the binding more closely, he discovered two snakes on it, one light and one dark. They were biting each other's tail, so forming an oval. And inside the oval, in strangely intricate letters, he saw the title:_\n\n### _The Neverending Story_\n\n_Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice everything for a dream that can never come true. Some think their_ _only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people._\n\n_Bastian Balthazar Bux's passion was books._\n\n_If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger -_\n\n_If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early -_\n\n_If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless \u2013_\n\n_If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next._\n\n_Staring at the title of the book, he turned hot and cold, cold and hot. Here was just what he had dreamed of, what he had longed for ever since the passion for books had taken hold of him: A story that never ended! The book of books!_\n\n_He had to have this book \u2013 at any price._\n\n_At any price? That was easily said. Even if he had had more to offer than the bit of pocket money he had on him \u2013 this cranky Mr Coreander had given him clearly to understand that he would never sell him a single book. And he certainly wouldn't give it away. The situation was hopeless._\n\n_Yet Bastian knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him._\n\n_Bastian listened to the mumbling from the little back room. In a twinkling, before he knew it, he had the book under his coat and was hugging it with both arms. Without a sound he backed up to the street door, keeping an anxious eye on the other door, the one leading to the back room. Cautiously he turned the door handle. To keep the brass bells from ringing, he opened the glass door just wide enough for him to slip through. He quietly closed the door behind him._\n\n_Only then did he start running._\n\n_The books, copybooks, pens and pencils in his satchel jiggled and rattled to the rhythm of his steps. He had a stitch in his side. But he kept on running._\n\n_The rain ran down his face and into his collar. The wet cold passed through his coat, but Bastian didn't feel it. He felt hot all over, but not from running._\n\n_His conscience, which hadn't let out a peep in the bookshop, had suddenly woken up. All the arguments that had seemed so convincing melted away like snowmen under the fiery breath of a dragon._\n\n_He had stolen. He was a thief!_\n\n_What he had done was worse than common theft. That book was certainly the only one of its kind and impossible to replace. It was surely Mr Coreander's greatest treasure. Stealing a violinist's precious violin or a king's crown wasn't at all the same as filching money from a cash drawer._\n\n_As he ran, he hugged the book tight under his coat. Regardless of what this book might cost him, he couldn't bear to lose it. It was all he had left in the world._\n\n_Because naturally he couldn't go home anymore._\n\n_He tried to imagine his father at work in the big room he had furnished as a laboratory. Around him lay dozens of plaster casts of human teeth, for his father was a dental technician. Bastian had never stopped to ask himself whether his father enjoyed his work. It occurred to him now for the first time, but now he would never be able to ask him._\n\n_If he went home now, his father would come out of his lab in a white smock, possibly holding a plaster cast, and he would ask: 'Home so soon?' 'Yes,' Bastian would answer. 'No school today?'_ \u2013 _He saw his father's quiet, sad face, and he knew he couldn't possibly lie to him. Much less could he tell him the truth. No, the only thing left for him was to go away somewhere. Far, far away. His father must never find out that his son was a thief. And maybe he wouldn't even notice that Bastian wasn't there anymore. Bastian found this thought almost comforting._\n\n_He had stopped running. Walking slowly, he saw the schoolhouse at the end of the street. Without thinking, he was taking his usual route to school. He passed a few people here and there, yet the street seemed deserted. But to a schoolboy arriving very, very late, the world around the schoolhouse always seems to have gone dead. At every step he felt the fear rising within him. Under the best of circumstances he was afraid of school, the place of his daily defeats, afraid of his teachers, who gently appealed to his conscience or made him the butt of their rages, afraid of the other children, who made fun of him and never missed a chance to show him how clumsy and defenseless he was. He had always thought of his school years as a prison term with no end in sight, a misery that would continue until he grew up, something he would just have to live through._\n\n_But when he now passed through the echoing corridors with their smell of floor wax and wet overcoats, when the lurking stillness suddenly stopped his ears like cotton, and when at last he reached the door of his classroom, which was painted the same old-spinach color as the walls around it, he realized that this, too, was no place for him. He would have to go away. So he might as well go at once._\n\n_But where to?_\n\n_Bastian had read stories about boys who ran away to sea and sailed out into the world to make their fortune. Some became pirates or heroes, others grew rich and when they returned home years later no one could guess who they were._\n\n_But Bastian didn't feel up to that kind of thing. He couldn't conceive of anyone taking him on as a cabin boy. Besides, he had no idea how to reach a seaport with suitable ships for such an undertaking._\n\n_So where_ could _he go?_\n\n_Suddenly he thought of the right place, the only place where_ \u2013 _at least for the time being \u2013 no one would find him or even look for him._\n\n_The attic of the school was large and dark. It smelled of dust and mothballs. Not a sound to be heard, except for the muffled drumming of the rain on the enormous tin roof. Great beams blackened with age rose at regular intervals from the plank floor, joined with other beams at head height, and lost themselves in the darkness. Here and there spider webs as big as hammocks swayed gently in the air currents. A milky light fell from a skylight in the roof._\n\n_The one living thing in this place where time seemed to stand still was a little mouse that came hobbling across the floor, leaving tiny footprints in the dust \u2013 and between them a fine line, a tailprint. Suddenly it stopped and pricked up its ears. And then it vanished_ \u2013 whoosh! \u2013 _into a hole in the floor._\n\n_The mouse had heard the sound of a key in a big lock. The attic door opened slowly, with a loud squeak. For a moment a long strip of light crossed the room. Bastian slipped in. Then, again with a squeak, the door closed. Bastian put the big key in the lock from inside and turned it. Then he pushed the bolt and heaved a sigh of relief. Now no one could possibly find him. No one would look for him here. The place was seldom used_ \u2013 _he was pretty sure of that_ \u2013 _and even if by chance someone had something to do in the attic today or tomorrow, he would simply find the door locked. And the key would be gone. And even if they somehow got the door open, Bastian would have time to hide behind the junk that was stored here._\n\n_Little by little, his eyes got used to the dim light. He knew the place. Some months before, he had helped the janitor to carry a laundry basket full of old copybooks up here. And then he had seen where the key to the_ _attic door was kept_ \u2013 _in a wall cupboard next to the topmost flight of stairs. He hadn't thought of it since. But today he had remembered._\n\n_Bastian began to shiver, his coat was soaked through and it was cold in the attic. The first thing to do was find a place where he could make himself more or less comfortable, because he took it for granted that he'd have to stay here a long time. How long? The question didn't enter his head, nor did it occur to him that he would soon be hungry and thirsty._\n\n_He looked around for a while. The place was crammed with junk of all kinds; there were shelves full of old files and records, benches and ink-stained desks were heaped up every which way, a dozen old maps were hanging on an iron frame, there were blackboards that had lost a good deal of their black, and cast-iron stoves, broken-down pieces of gymnasium equipment \u2013 including a horse with the stuffing coming out through the cracks in its hide \u2013 and a number of soiled mats. There were also quite a few stuffed animals_ \u2013 _at least what the moths had left of them \u2013 a big owl, a golden eagle, a fox, and so on, cracked retorts and other chemical equipment, a galvanometer, a human skeleton hanging on a clothes rack, and a large number of cartons full of old books and papers. Bastian finally decided to make his home on the pile of old gym mats. When he stretched out on them, it was almost like lying on a sofa. He dragged them to the place under the skylight where the light was best. Not far away he found a pile of gray army blankets; they were dusty and ragged but that didn't matter now. He carried them over to his nest. He took off his wet coat and hung it on the clothes rack beside the skeleton. The skeleton jiggled and swayed, but Bastian had no fear of it, maybe because he was used to such things at home. He also removed his wet shoes. In his stocking feet he squatted down on the mats and wrapped himself in the gray blankets like an Indian. Beside him lay his school satchel_ \u2013 _and the copper-colored book._\n\n_It passed through his mind that the rest of them down in the classroom would be having history just then. Maybe they'd be writing a composition on some deadly dull subject._\n\n_Bastian looked at the book._\n\n_'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut up in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.'_\n\n_Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him._\n\n_He settled himself, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read_\n\nThe Neverending Story.\n\n# I\n\n# _Fantastica in Danger_\n\nALL the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.\n\nIt was midnight, the storm wind was whistling through the tops of the great ancient trees. The towering trunks creaked and groaned.\n\nSuddenly a faint light came zigzagging through the woods, stopped here and there, trembling fitfully, flew up into the air, rested on a branch, and a moment later hurried on. It was a glittering sphere about the size of a child's ball; it moved in long leaps, touched the ground now and then, then bounded up again. But it wasn't a ball.\n\nIt was a will-o'-the-wisp. It had lost its way. And that's something quite unusual even in Fantastica, because ordinarily will-o'-the-wisps make others lose their way.\n\nInside this ball of light there was a small, exceedingly active figure, which ran and jumped with all its might. It was neither male nor female, for such distinctions don't exist among will-o'-the-wisps. In its right hand it carried a tiny white flag, which glittered behind it. That meant it was either a messenger or a flag-of-truce bearer.\n\nYou'd think it would have bumped into a tree, leaping like that in the darkness, but there was no danger of that, for will-o'-the-wisps are incredibly nimble and can change directions in the middle of a leap. That explains the zigzagging, but in a general sort of way it moved in a definite direction.\n\nUp to the moment when it came to a jutting crag and started back in a fright. Whimpering like a puppy, it sat down on the fork of a tree and pondered awhile before venturing out and cautiously looking around the crag.\n\nUp ahead it saw a clearing in the woods, and there in the light of a campfire sat three figures of different sizes and shapes. A giant, who looked as if the whole of him were made of gray stone, lay stretched out on his belly. He was almost ten feet long. Propped up on one elbow, he was looking into the fire. In his weather-beaten stone face, which seemed strangely small in comparison with his powerful shoulders, his teeth stood out like a row of steel chisels. The will-o'-the-wisp recognized him as belonging to the family of rock chewers. These were creatures who lived in a mountain range inconceivably far from Howling Forest \u2013 but they not only lived _in_ the mountain range, they also lived _on_ it, for little by little they were eating it up. Rocks were their only food. Luckily a little went a long way. They could live for weeks and months on a single bite of this \u2013 for them \u2013 extremely nutritious fare. There weren't very many rock chewers, and besides it was a large mountain range. But since these giants had been there a long time \u2013 they lived to a greater age than most of the inhabitants of Fantastica \u2013 those mountains had come, over the years, to look very strange \u2013 like an enormous Swiss cheese, full of holes and grottoes. And that is why they were known as the Cheesie-wheezies.\n\nBut the rock chewers not only fed on stone, they made everything they needed out of it: furniture, hats, shoes, tools, even cuckoo clocks. So it was not surprising that the vehicle of this particular giant, which was now leaning against a tree behind him, was a sort of bicycle made entirely of this material, with two wheels that looked like enormous millstones. On the whole, it suggested a steamroller with pedals.\n\nThe second figure, who was sitting to the right of the first, was a little night-hob. No more than twice the size of the will-o'-the-wisp, he looked like a pitch-black, furry caterpillar sitting up. He had little pink hands, with which he gestured violently as he spoke, and below his tousled black hair two big round eyes glowed like moons in what was presumably his face.\n\nSince there were night-hobs of all shapes and sizes in every part of Fantastica, it was hard to tell by the sight of him whether this one had come from far or near. But one could guess that he was traveling, because the usual mount of the night-hobs, a large bat, wrapped in its wings like a closed umbrella, was hanging head-down from a nearby branch.\n\nIt took the will-o'-the-wisp some time to discover the third person on the left side of the fire, for he was so small as to be scarcely discernible from that distance. He was one of the tinies, a delicately built little fellow in a bright-colored suit and a top hat.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp knew next to nothing about tinies. But it had once heard that these people built whole cities in the branches of trees and that the houses were connected by stairways, rope ladders, and ramps. But the tinies lived in an entirely different part of the boundless Fantastican Empire, even farther away than the rock chewers. Which made it all the more amazing that the mount which had evidently carried the tiny all this way was, of all things, a snail. Its pink shell was surmounted by a gleaming silver saddle, and its bridle, as well as the reins fastened to its feelers, glittered like silver threads.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp couldn't get over it that three such different creatures should be sitting there so peacefully, for harmony between different species was by no means the rule in Fantastica. Battles and wars were frequent, and certain of the species had been known to feud for hundreds of years. Moreover, not all the inhabitants of Fantastica were good and honorable, there were also thieving, wicked, and cruel ones. The will-o'-the-wisp itself belonged to a family that was hardly reputed for truthfulness or reliability.\n\nAfter observing the scene in the firelight for some time, the will-o'-the-wisp noticed that each of the three had something white, either a flag or a white scarf worn across his chest. Which meant that they were messengers or flag-of-truce bearers, and that of course accounted for the peaceful atmosphere.\n\nCould they be traveling on the same business as the will-o'-the-wisp?\n\nWhat they were saying couldn't be heard from a distance because of the howling wind in the treetops. But since they respected one another as messengers, mightn't they recognize the will-o'-the-wisp in the same capacity and refrain from harming it? It had to ask someone the way, and there seemed little likelihood of finding a better opportunity at this hour in the middle of the woods. So plucking up courage, it ventured out of its hiding place and hovered trembling in midair, waving its white flag.\n\nThe rock chewer, whose face was turned in that direction, was first to notice the will-o'-the-wisp.\n\n'Lots of traffic around here tonight,' he crackled. 'Here comes another one.'\n\n'Hoo, it's a will-o'-the-wisp,' whispered the night-hob, and his moon eyes glowed. 'Pleased to meet you!'\n\nThe tiny stood up, took a few steps toward the newcomer, and chirped: 'If my eyes don't deceive me, you are here as a messenger.'\n\n'Yes indeed,' said the will-o'-the-wisp.\n\nThe tiny removed his red top hat, made a slight bow, and twittered: 'Oh, do join us. We, too, are messengers. Won't you be seated?'\n\nAnd with his hat he motioned toward an empty place by the fire.\n\n'Many thanks,' said the will-o'-the-wisp, coming timidly closer. 'Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Blubb.'\n\n'Delighted,' said the tiny. 'Mine is Gluckuk.'\n\nThe night-hob bowed without getting up. 'My name is Vooshvazool.'\n\n'And mine,' the rock chewer crackled, 'is Pyornkrachzark.'\n\nAll three looked at the will-o'-the-wisp, who was wriggling with embarrassment. Will-o'-the-wisps find it most unpleasant to be looked full in the face.\n\n'Won't you sit down, dear Blubb?' said the tiny.\n\n'To tell the truth,' said the will-o'-the-wisp, 'I'm in a terrible hurry. I only wanted to ask if by any chance you knew the way to the Ivory Tower.'\n\n'Hoo,' said the night-hob. 'Could you be going to see the Childlike Empress?'\n\n'Exactly,' said the will-o'-the-wisp. 'I have an important message for her.'\n\n'What does it say?' the rock chewer crackled.\n\n'But you see,' said the will-o'-the-wisp, shifting its weight from foot to foot, 'it's a secret message.'\n\n'All three of us \u2013 hoo \u2013 have the same mission as you,' replied Vooshvazool, the night-hob. 'That makes us partners.'\n\n'Maybe we even have the same message,' said Gluckuk, the tiny.\n\n'Sit down and tell us,' Pyornkrachzark crackled.\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp sat down in the empty place.\n\n'My home,' it began after a moment's hesitation, 'is a long way from here. I don't know if any of those present has heard of it. It's called Moldymoor.'\n\n'Hoo!' cried the night-hob delightedly. 'A lovely country!'\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp smiled faintly.\n\n'Yes, isn't it?'\n\n'Is that all you have to say, Blubb?' Pyornkrachzark crackled. 'What is the purpose of your trip?'\n\n'Something has happened in Moldymoor,' said the will-o'-the-wisp haltingly, 'something impossible to understand. Actually, it's still happening. It's hard to describe -the way it began was \u2013 well, in the east of our country there's a lake \u2013 that is, there _was_ a lake \u2013 Lake Foamingbroth we called it. Well, the way it began was like this. One day Lake Foamingbroth wasn't there anymore \u2013 it was gone. See?'\n\n'You mean it dried up?' Gluckuk inquired.\n\n'No,' said the will-o'-the-wisp. 'Then there'd be a dried-up lake. But there isn't. Where the lake used to be there's nothing \u2013 absolutely nothing. Now do you see?'\n\n'A hole?' the rock chewer grunted.\n\n'No, not a hole,' said the will-o'-the-wisp despairingly. 'A hole, after all, is something. This is nothing at all.'\n\nThe three other messengers exchanged glances.\n\n'What \u2013 hoo \u2013 does this nothing look like?' asked the night-hob.\n\n'That's just what's so hard to describe,' said the will-o'-the-wisp unhappily. 'It doesn't look like anything. It's \u2013 it's like \u2013 oh, there's no word for it.'\n\n'Maybe,' the tiny suggested, 'when you look at the place, it's as if you were blind.'\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp stared openmouthed.\n\n'Exactly!' it cried. 'But where \u2013 I mean how \u2013 I mean, have you had the same... ?'\n\n'Wait a minute,' the rock chewer crackled. 'Was it only this one place?'\n\n'At first, yes,' the will-o'-the-wisp explained. 'That is, the place got bigger little by little. And then all of a sudden Foggle, the father of the frogs, who lived in Lake Foamingbroth with his family, was gone too. Some of the inhabitants started running away. But little by little the same thing happened to other parts of Moldymoor. It usually started with just a little chunk, no bigger than a partridge egg. But then these chunks got bigger and bigger. If somebody put his foot into one of them by mistake, the foot \u2013 or hand \u2013 or whatever else he put in \u2013 would be gone too. It didn't hurt \u2013 it was just that a part of whoever it was would be missing. Some would even fall in on purpose if they got too close to the Nothing. It has an irresistible attraction \u2013 the bigger the place, the stronger the pull. None of us could imagine what this terrible thing might be, what caused it, and what we could do about it. And seeing that it didn't go away by itself but kept spreading, we finally decided to send a messenger to the Childlike Empress to ask her for advice and help. Well, I'm the messenger.'\n\nThe three others gazed silently into space.\n\nAfter a while, the night-hob sighed: 'Hoo! It's the same where I come from. And I'm traveling on the exact same errand \u2013 hoo hoo!'\n\nThe tiny turned to the will-o'-the-wisp. 'Each one of us,' he chirped, 'comes from a different province of Fantastica. We've met here entirely by chance. But each one of us is going to the Childlike Empress with the same message.'\n\n'And the message,' grated the rock chewer, 'is that all Fantastica is in danger.'\n\nThe will-o'-the-wisp cast a terrified look at each one in turn.\n\n'If that's the case,' it cried, jumping up, 'we haven't a moment to lose.'\n\n'We were just going to start,' said the tiny. 'We only stopped to rest because it's so awfully dark here in Howling Forest. But now that you've joined us, Blubb, you can light the way.'\n\n'Impossible,' said the will-o'-the-wisp. 'Would you expect me to wait for someone who rides a snail? Sorry.'\n\n'But it's a racing snail,' said the tiny, somewhat miffed.\n\n'Otherwise \u2013 hoo hoo \u2013' the night-hob sighed, 'we won't tell you which way to go.'\n\n'Who are you people talking to?' the rock chewer crackled.\n\nAnd sure enough, the will-o'-the-wisp hadn't even heard the other messengers' last words, for it was already flitting through the forest in long leaps.\n\n'Oh well,' said the tiny, pushing his top hat onto the back of his head, 'maybe it wouldn't have been such a good idea to follow a will-o'-the-wisp.'\n\n'To tell the truth,' said the night-hob, 'I prefer to travel on my own. Because I, for one, fly.'\n\nWith a quick 'hoo hoo' he ordered his bat to make ready. And _whish!_ Away he flew.\n\nThe rock chewer put out the campfire with the palm of his hand.\n\n'I, too, prefer to go by myself,' he crackled in the darkness. 'Then I don't need to worry about squashing some wee creature.'\n\nRattling and grinding, he rode his stone bicycle straight into the woods, now and then thudding into a tree giant. Slowly the clatter receded in the distance.\n\nGluckuk, the tiny, was last to set out. He seized the silvery reins and said: 'All right, we'll see who gets there first. Geeyap, old-timer, geeyap.' And he clicked his tongue.\n\nAnd then there was nothing to be heard but the storm wind howling in the treetops.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck nine. Reluctantly Bastian's thoughts turned back to reality. He was glad the Neverending Story had nothing to do with_ that.\n\n_He didn't like books in which dull, cranky writers describe humdrum events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn't stand it when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that._\n\n_Bastian liked books that were exciting or funny, or that made him_ _dream. Books where made-up characters had marvelous adventures, books that made him imagine all sorts of things._\n\n_Because one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them. When he told himself stories, he sometimes forgot everything around him and awoke_ \u2013 _as though from a dream_ \u2013 _only when the story was finished. And this book was just like his own stories! In reading it, he had heard not only the creaking of the big trees and the howling of the wind in the treetops, but also the different voices of the four comical messengers. And he almost seemed to catch the smell of moss and forest earth._\n\n_Down in the classroom they were starting in on nature study. That consisted almost entirely in counting pistils and stamens. Bastian was glad to be up here in his hiding place, where he could read. This, he thought, was just the right book for him!_\n\nA week later Vooshvazool, the little night-hob, arrived at his destination. He was the first. Or rather, he thought he was first, because he was riding through the air.\n\nJust as the setting sun turned the clouds to liquid gold, he noticed that his bat was circling over the Labyrinth. That was the name of an enormous garden, extending from horizon to horizon and filled with the most bewitching scents and dreamlike colors. Broad avenues and narrow paths twined their way among copses, lawns, and beds of the rarest, strangest flowers in a design so artful and intricate that the whole plain resembled an enormous maze. Of course, it had been designed only for pleasure and amusement, with no intention of endangering anyone, much less of warding off an enemy. It would have been useless for such purposes, and the Childlike Empress required no such protection, because in all the unbounded reaches of Fantastica there was no one who would have thought of attacking her. For that there was a reason, as we shall soon see.\n\nWhile gliding soundlessly over the flowery maze, the night-hob sighted all sorts of animals. In a small clearing between lilacs and laburnum, a group of young unicorns was playing in the evening sun, and once, glancing under a giant bluebell, he even thought he saw the famous phoenix in its nest, but he wasn't quite certain, and such was his haste that he didn't want to turn back to make sure. For at the center of the Labyrinth there now appeared, shimmering in fairy whiteness, the Ivory Tower, the heart of Fantastica and the residence of the Childlike Empress.\n\nThe word 'tower' might give someone who has never seen it the wrong idea. It had nothing of the church or castle about it. The Ivory Tower was as big as a whole city. From a distance it looked like a pointed mountain peak twisted like a snail shell. Its highest point was deep in the clouds. Only on coming closer could you notice that this great sugarloaf consisted of innumerable towers, turrets, domes, roofs, oriels, terraces, arches, stairways, and balustrades, all marvelously fitted together. The whole was made of the whitest Fantastican ivory, so delicately carved in every detail that it might have been taken for the latticework of the finest lace.\n\nThese buildings housed the Childlike Empress's court, her chamberlains and maidservants, wise women and astrologers, magicians and jesters, messengers, cooks and acrobats, her tightrope walkers and storytellers, heralds, gardeners, watchmen, tailors, shoemakers and alchemists. And at the very summit of the great tower lived the Childlike Empress in a pavilion shaped like a magnolia blossom. On certain nights, when the full moon shone most gloriously in the starry sky, the ivory petals opened wide, and the Childlike Empress would be sitting in the middle of the glorious flower.\n\nRiding on his bat, the little night-hob landed on one of the lower terraces, where the stables were located. Someone must have announced his arrival, for five imperial grooms were there waiting for him. They helped him out of his saddle, bowed to him, and held out the ceremonial welcome cup. As etiquette demanded, Vooshvazool took only a sip and then returned the cup. Each of the grooms took a sip, then they bowed again and led the bat to the stables. All this was done in silence. On reaching its appointed place, the bat touched neither food nor drink, but immediately rolled up, hung itself head-down on a hook, and fell into a deep sleep. The little night-hob had demanded a bit too much of his mount. The grooms left it alone and crept away from the stable on tiptoes.\n\nIn this stable there were many other mounts: two elephants, one pink and one blue, a gigantic griffon with the forequarters of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion, a winged horse, whose name was once known even outside of Fantastica but is now forgotten, several flying dogs, a few other bats, and several dragonflies and butterflies for especially small riders. In other stables there were still other mounts, which didn't fly but ran, crawled, hopped, or swam. And each had a groom of its own to feed and take care of it.\n\nOrdinarily one would have expected to hear quite a cacophony of different voices: roaring, screeching, piping, chirping, croaking, and chattering. But that day there was utter silence.\n\nThe little night-hob was still standing where the grooms had left him. Suddenly, without knowing why, he felt dejected and discouraged. He too was exhausted after the long trip. And not even the knowledge that he had arrived first could cheer him up.\n\nSuddenly he heard a chirping voice. 'Hello, hello! If it isn't my good friend Vooshvazool! So glad you've finally made it!'\n\nThe night-hob looked around, and his moon eyes flared with amazement, for on a balustrade, leaning negligently against a flower pot, stood Gluckuk, the tiny, tipping his red top hat.\n\n'Hoo hoo!' went the bewildered night-hob. And again: 'Hoo hoo!' He just couldn't think of anything better to say.\n\n'The other two haven't arrived yet. I've been here since yesterday morning.'\n\n'How \u2013 hoo hoo \u2013 how did you do it?'\n\n'Simple,' said the tiny with a rather condescending smile. 'Didn't I tell you I had a racing snail?'\n\nThe night-hob scratched his tangled black head fur with his little pink hand.\n\n'I must go to the Childlike Empress at once,' he said mournfully.\n\nThe tiny gave him a pensive look.\n\n'Hmm,' he said. 'I put in for an appointment yesterday.'\n\n'Put in for an appointment?' asked the night-hob. 'Can't we just go in and see her?'\n\n'I'm afraid not,' chirped the tiny. 'We'll have a long wait. You can't imagine how many messengers have turned up.'\n\n'Hoo hoo,' the night-hob sighed. 'How come?'\n\n'You'd better take a look for yourself,' the tiny twittered. 'Come with me, my dear Vooshvazool. Come with me!'\n\nThe two of them started out.\n\nThe High Street, which wound around the Ivory Tower in a narrowing spiral, was clogged with a dense crowd of the strangest creatures. Enormous beturbaned djinns, tiny kobolds, three-headed trolls, bearded dwarfs, glittering fairies, goat-legged fauns, nixies with wavy golden hair, sparkling snow sprites, and countless others were milling about, standing in groups, or sitting silently on the ground, discussing the situation or gazing glumly into the distance.\n\nVooshvazool stopped still when he saw them.\n\n'Hoo hoo,' he said. 'What's going on? What are they all doing here?'\n\n'They're all messengers,' Gluckuk explained. 'Messengers from all over Fantastica. All with the same message as ours. I've spoken with several of them. The same menace seems to have broken out everywhere.'\n\nThe night-hob gave vent to a long wheezing sigh.\n\n'Do they know,' he asked, 'what it is and where it comes from?'\n\n'I'm afraid not. Nobody knows.'\n\n'What about the Childlike Empress?'\n\n'The Childlike Empress,' said the tiny in an undertone, 'is ill, very ill. Maybe that's the cause of this mysterious calamity that's threatening all Fantastica. But so far none of the many doctors who've been conferring in the Magnolia Pavilion has discovered the nature of her illness or found a cure for it.'\n\n'That,' said the night-hob breathlessly, 'is \u2013 hoo hoo -terrible.'\n\n'So it is,' said the tiny.\n\nIn view of the circumstances, Vooshvazool decided not to put in for an appointment.\n\nTwo days later Blubb, the will-o'-the-wisp, arrived. Of course, it had hopped in the wrong direction and made an enormous detour.\n\nAnd finally \u2013 three days after that \u2013 Pyornkrachzark, the rock chewer, appeared. He came plodding along on foot, for in a sudden frenzy of hunger he had eaten his stone bicycle.\n\nDuring the long waiting period, the four so unalike messengers became good friends. From then on they stayed together.\n\nBut that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\n# II\n\n# _Atreyu's Mission_\n\nBECAUSE of their special importance, deliberations concerning the welfare of all Fantastica were held in the great throne room of the palace, which was situated only a few floors below the Magnolia Pavilion.\n\nThe large circular room was filled with muffled voices. The four hundred and ninety-nine best doctors in Fantastica had assembled there and were whispering or mumbling with one another in groups of varying sizes. Each one had examined the Childlike Empress \u2013 some more recently than others \u2013 and each had tried to help her with his skill. But none had succeeded, none knew the nature or cause of her illness, and none could think of a cure for it. Just then the five hundredth doctor, the most famous in all Fantastica, whose knowledge was said to embrace every existing medicinal herb, every magic philtre and secret of nature, was examining the patient. He had been with her for several hours, and all his assembled colleagues were eagerly awaiting the result of his examination.\n\nOf course, this assembly was nothing like a human medical congress. To be sure, a good many of the inhabitants of Fantastica were more or less human in appearance, but at least as many resembled animals or were even farther from the human. The doctors inside the hall were just as varied as the crowd of messengers milling about outside. There were dwarf doctors with white beards and humps, there were fairy doctoresses in shimmering silvery-blue robes and with glittering stars in their hair, there were water sprites with big round bellies and webbed hands and feet (sitz baths had been installed for them). There were white snakes, who had coiled up on the long table at the center of the room; there were witches, vampires, and ghosts, none of whom are generally reputed to be especially benevolent or conducive to good health.\n\nIf you are to understand why these last were present, there is one thing you have to know:\n\nThe Childlike Empress \u2013 as her title indicates \u2013 was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; she was something entirely different.\n\nShe didn't rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal.\n\nShe was simply there in a special way. She was the center of all life in Fantastica.\n\nAnd every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, merry or solemn, foolish or wise \u2013 all owed their existence to her existence. Without her, nothing could have lived, any more than a human body can live if it has lost its heart.\n\nAll knew this to be so, though no one fully understood her secret. Thus she was respected by all the creatures of the Empire, and her health was of equal concern to them all. For her death would have meant the end of them all, the end of the boundless Fantastican realm.\n\n_Bastian's thoughts wandered._\n\n_Suddenly he remembered the long corridor in the hospital where his mother had been operated on. He and his father had sat waiting for hours outside the operating room. Doctors and nurses hurried this way and that. When his father asked about his wife, the answer was always evasive. No one really seemed to know how she was doing. Finally a bald-headed man in a white smock had come out to them. He looked tired and sad. Much as he regretted it, he said, his efforts had been in vain. He had pressed their hands and mumbled something about 'heartfelt sympathy.'_\n\n_After that, everything had changed between Bastian and his father._\n\n_Not outwardly. Bastian had everything he could have wished for. He_ _had a three-speed bicycle, an electric train, plenty of vitamin pills, fifty-three books, a golden hamster, an aquarium with tropical fish in it, a small camera, six pocketknives, and so forth and so on. But none of all this really meant anything to him._\n\n_Bastian remembered that his father had often played with him in the past. He had even told him stories. No longer. He couldn't talk to his father anymore. There was an invisible wall around his father, and no one could get through to him. He never found fault and he never praised. Even when Bastian was put back in school, his father hadn't said anything. He had only looked at him in his sad, absent way, and Bastian felt that as far as his father was concerned he wasn't there at all. That was how his father usually made him feel. When they sat in front of the television screen in the evening, Bastian saw that his father wasn't even looking at it, that his thoughts were far away. Or when they both sat there with books, Bastian saw that his father wasn't reading at all. He'd been looking at the same page for hours and had forgotten to turn it._\n\n_Bastian knew his father was sad. He himself had cried for many nights, sometimes he had been so shaken by sobs that he had to vomit_ \u2013 _but little by little it had passed. And after all he was still there. Why didn't his father ever speak to him, not about his mother, not about important things, but just for the feel of talking together?_\n\n'If only we knew,' said a tall, thin fire sprite, with a beard of red flames, 'if only we knew what her illness is. There's no fever, no swelling, no rash, no inflammation. She just seems to be fading away \u2013 no one knows why.'\n\nAs he spoke, little clouds of smoke came out of his mouth and formed figures. This time they were question marks.\n\nA bedraggled old raven, who looked like a potato with feathers stuck onto it every which way, answered in a croaking voice (he was a head cold and sore throat specialist): 'She doesn't cough, she hasn't got a cold. Medically speaking, it's no disease at all.' He adjusted the big spectacles on his beak and cast a challenging look around.\n\n'One thing seems obvious,' buzzed a scarab (a beetle, sometimes known as a pill roller): 'There is some mysterious connection between her illness and the terrible happenings these messengers from all Fantastica have been reporting.'\n\n'Oh yes!' scoffed an ink goblin. 'You see mysterious connections everywhere.'\n\n'My dear colleague!' pleaded a hollow-cheeked ghost in a long white gown. 'Let's not get personal. Such remarks are quite irrelevant. And please \u2013 lower your voices.'\n\nConversations of this kind were going on in every part of the throne room. It may seem strange that creatures of so many different kinds were able to communicate with one another. But nearly all the inhabitants of Fantastica, even the animals, knew at least two languages: their own, which they spoke only with members of their own species and which no outsider understood, and the universal language known as High Fantastican. All Fantasticans used it, though some in a rather peculiar way.\n\nSuddenly all fell silent, for the great double door had opened. In stepped Cairon, the far-famed master of the healer's art.\n\nHe was what in older times had been called a centaur. He had the body of a man from the waist up, and that of a horse from the waist down. And Cairon was furthermore a black centaur. He hailed from a remote region far to the south, and his human half was the color of ebony. Only his curly hair and beard were white, while the horselike half of him was striped like a zebra. He was wearing a strange hat plaited of reeds. A large golden amulet hung from a chain around his neck, and on this amulet one could make out two snakes, one light and one dark, which were biting each other's tail and so forming an oval.\n\nEveryone in Fantastica knew what the medallion meant. It was the badge of one acting on orders from the Childlike Empress, acting in her name as though she herself were present.\n\nIt was said to give the bearer mysterious powers, though no one knew exactly what these powers were. Everyone knew its name: AURYN.\n\nBut many, who feared to pronounce the name, called it the 'Gem' or the 'Glory'.\n\n_In other words, the book bore the mark of the Childlike Empress!_\n\nA whispering passed through the throne room, and some of the doctors were heard to cry out. The Gem had not been entrusted to anyone for a long, long time.\n\nCairon stamped his hooves two or three times. When the disorder subsided, he said in a deep voice: 'Friends, don't be too upset. I shall only be wearing AURYN for a short time. I am merely a go-between. Soon I shall pass the Gem on to one worthier.'\n\nA breathless silence filled the room.\n\n'I won't try to misrepresent our defeat with high-sounding words. The Childlike Empress's illness has baffled us all. The one thing we know is that the destruction of Fantastica began at the same time as this illness. We can't even be sure that medical science can save her. But it is possible \u2013 and I hope none of you will be offended at what I am going to say \u2013 it is possible that we, we who are gathered here, do not possess _all_ knowledge, _all_ wisdom. Indeed it is my last and only hope that somewhere in this unbounded realm there is a being wiser than we are, who can give us help and advice. Of course, this is no more than a possibility. But one thing is certain: The search for this savior calls for a pathfinder, someone who is capable of finding paths in the pathless wilderness and who will shrink from no danger or hardship. In other words: a hero. And the Childlike Empress has given me the name of this hero, to whom she entrusts her salvation and ours. His name is Atreyu, and he lives in the Grassy Ocean beyond the Silver Mountains. I shall transmit AURYN to him and send him on the Great Quest. Now you know all there is to know.'\n\nWith that, the old centaur thumped out of the room.\n\nThose who remained behind exchanged looks of bewilderment.\n\n'What was this hero's name?' one of them asked.\n\n'Atreyu or something of the kind,' said another.\n\n'Never heard of him,' said the third. And all four hundred and ninety-nine doctors shook their heads in dismay.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck ten. Bastian was amazed at how quickly the time had passed. In class, every hour seemed to drag on for an eternity. Down below, they would be having history with Mr Drone, a gangling, ordinarily ill-tempered man, who delighted in holding Bastian up to ridicule because he couldn't remember the dates when certain battles had been fought or when someone or other had reigned._\n\nThe Grassy Ocean behind the Silver Mountains was many days' journey from the Ivory Tower. It was actually a prairie, as long and wide and flat as an ocean. Its whole expanse was covered with tall, juicy grass, and when the wind blew, great waves passed over it with a sound like troubled water.\n\nThe people who lived there were known as 'Grass People' or 'Greenskins'. They had blue-black hair, which the men as well as the women wore long and often in pigtails, and their skin was olive green. They led a hard, frugal life, and their children, girls as well as boys, were brought up to be brave, proud, and generous. They learned to bear heat, cold, and great hardship and were tested for courage at an early age. This was necessary because the Greenskins were a nation of hunters. They obtained everything they needed either from the hard, fibrous prairie grass or from the purple buffaloes, great herds of which roamed the Grassy Ocean.\n\nThese purple buffaloes were about twice the size of common bulls or cows; they had long, purplish-red hair with a silky sheen and enormous horns with tips as hard and sharp as daggers. They were peaceful as a rule, but when they scented danger or thought they were being attacked, they could be as terrible as a natural cataclysm. Only a Greenskin would have dared to hunt these beasts, and moreover they used no other weapons than bows and arrows. The Greenskins were believers in chivalrous combat, and often it was not the hunted but the hunter who lost his life. The Greenskins loved and honored the purple buffaloes and held that only those willing to be killed by them had the right to kill them.\n\nNews of the Childlike Empress's illness and the danger threatening all Fantastica had not yet reached the Grassy Ocean. It was a long, long time since any traveler had visited the tent colonies of the Greenskins. The grass was juicier than ever, the days were bright, and the nights full of stars. All seemed to be well.\n\nBut one day a white-haired black centaur appeared. His hide was dripping with sweat, he seemed totally exhausted, and his bearded face was haggard. On his head he wore a strange hat plaited of reeds, and around his neck a chain with a large golden amulet hanging from it. It was Cairon.\n\nHe stood in the open space at the center of the successive rings of tents. It was there that the elders held their councils and that the people danced and sang old songs on feast days. He waited for the Greenskins to assemble, but it was only very old men and women and small children wide-eyed with curiosity who crowded around him. He stamped his hooves impatiently.\n\n'Where are the hunters and huntresses?' he panted, removing his hat and wiping his forehead.\n\nA white-haired woman with a baby in her arms replied: 'They are still hunting. They won't be back for three or four days.'\n\n'Is Atreyu with them?' the centaur asked.\n\n'Yes, stranger, but how can it be that you know him?'\n\n'I don't know him. Go and get him.'\n\n'Stranger,' said an old man on crutches, 'he will come unwillingly, because this is _his_ hunt. It starts at sunset. Do you know what that means?'\n\nCairon shook his mane and stamped his hooves.\n\n'I don't know, and it doesn't matter. He has something more important to do now. You know this sign I am wearing. Go and get him.'\n\n'We see the Gem,' said a little girl. 'And we know you have come from the Childlike Empress. But who are you?'\n\n'My name is Cairon,' the centaur growled. 'Cairon the physician, if that means anything to you.'\n\nA bent old woman pushed forward and cried out: 'Yes, it's true. I recognize him. I saw him once when I was young. He is the greatest and most famous doctor in all Fantastica.'\n\nThe centaur nodded. 'Thank you, my good woman,' he said. 'And now perhaps one of you will at last be kind enough to bring this Atreyu here. It's urgent. The life of the Childlike Empress is at stake.'\n\n'I'll go,' cried a little girl of five or six.\n\nShe ran away and a few seconds later she could be seen between the tents galloping away on a saddleless horse.\n\n'At last!' Cairon grumbled. Then he fell into a dead faint. When he revived, he didn't know where he was, for all was dark around him. It came to him only little by little that he was in a large tent, lying on a bed of soft furs. It seemed to be night, for through a cleft in the door curtain he saw flickering firelight.\n\n'Holy horseshoes!' he muttered, and tried to sit up. 'How long have I been lying here?'\n\nA head looked in through the door opening and pulled back again. Someone said: 'Yes, he seems to be awake.'\n\nThen the curtain was drawn aside and a boy of about ten stepped in. His long trousers and shoes were of soft buffalo leather. His body was bare from the waist up, but a long purple-red cloak, evidently woven from buffalo hair, hung from his shoulders. His long blue-black hair was gathered together and held back by leather thongs. A few simple white designs were painted on the olive-green skin of his cheeks and forehead. His dark eyes flashed angrily at the intruder; otherwise his features betrayed no emotion of any kind.\n\n'What do you want of me, stranger?' he asked. 'Why have you come to my tent? And why have you robbed me of my hunt? If I had killed the big buffalo today \u2013 and my arrow was already fitted to my bowstring \u2013 I'd have been a hunter tomorrow. Now I'll have to wait a whole year. Why?'\n\nThe old centaur stared at him in consternation.\n\n'Am I to take it,' he asked, 'that you are Atreyu?'\n\n'That's right, stranger.'\n\n'Isn't there someone else of the same name? A grown man, an experienced hunter?'\n\n'No. I and no one else am Atreyu.'\n\nSinking back on his bed of furs, old Cairon gasped: 'A child! A little boy! Really, the decisions of the Childlike Empress are hard to fathom.'\n\nAtreyu waited in impassive silence.\n\n'Forgive me, Atreyu,' said Cairon, controlling his agitation with the greatest difficulty. 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but the surprise has been just too great. Frankly, I'm horrified. I don't know what to think. I can't help wondering: Did the Childlike Empress really know what she was doing when she chose a youngster like you? It's sheer madness! And if she did it intentionally, then... then...'\n\nWith a violent shake of his head, he blurted out: 'No! No! If I had known whom she was sending me to, I'd have refused to entrust you with the mission. I'd have refused!'\n\n'What mission?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'It's monstrous!' cried Cairon indignantly. 'It's doubtful whether even the greatest, most experienced of heroes could carry out this mission... and you!... She's sending you into the unfathomable to look for the unknown... No one can help you, no one can advise you, no one can foresee what will befall you. And yet you must decide at once, immediately, whether or not you accept the mission. There's not a moment to be lost. For ten days and nights I have galloped almost without rest to reach you. But now \u2013 I almost wish I hadn't got here. I'm very old, I'm at the end of my strength. Give me a drink of water, please.'\n\nAtreyu brought a pitcher of fresh spring water. The centaur drank deeply, then he wiped his beard and said somewhat more calmly: 'Thank you. That was good. I feel better already. Listen to me, Atreyu. You don't have to accept this mission. The Childlike Empress leaves it entirely up to you. She never gives orders. I'll tell her how it is and she'll find someone else. She can't have known you were a little boy. She must have got you mixed up with someone else. That's the only possible explanation.'\n\n'What is this mission?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'To find a cure for the Childlike Empress,' the centaur answered, 'and save Fantastica.'\n\n'Is she sick?' Atreyu asked in amazement.\n\nCairon told him how it was with the Childlike Empress and what the messengers had reported from all parts of Fantastica. Atreyu asked many questions and the centaur answered them to the best of his ability. They talked far into the night. And the more Atreyu learned of the menace facing Fantastica, the more his face, which at first had been so impassive, expressed unveiled horror.\n\n'To think,' he murmured finally with pale lips, 'that I knew nothing about it!'\n\nCairon cast a grave, anxious look at the boy from under his bushy white eyebrows.\n\n'Now you know the lie of the land,' he said. 'And now perhaps you understand why I was so upset when I first laid eyes on you. Still, it was you the Childlike Empress named. \"Go and find Atreyu,\" she said to me. \"I put all my trust in him,\" she said. \"Ask him if he's willing to attempt the Great Quest for me and for Fantastica.\" I don't know why she chose you. Maybe only a little boy like you can do whatever has to be done. I don't know, and I can't advise you.'\n\nAtreyu sat there with bowed head, and made no reply. He realized that this was a far greater task than his hunt. It was doubtful whether the greatest hunter and pathfinder could succeed; how then could he hope... ?\n\n'Well?' the centaur asked. 'Will you?'\n\nAtreyu raised his head and looked at him.\n\n'I will,' he said firmly.\n\nCairon nodded gravely. Then he took the chain with the golden amulet from his neck and put it around Atreyu's.\n\n'AURYN gives you great power,' he said solemnly, 'but you must not make use of it. For the Childlike Empress herself never makes use of her power. AURYN will protect you and guide you, but whatever comes your way you must never interfere, because from this moment on your own opinion ceases to count. For that same reason you must go unarmed. You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise, just as it is in the eyes of the Childlike Empress. You may only search and inquire, never judge. Always remember that, Atreyu!'\n\n'AURYN!' Atreyu repeated with awe. 'I will be worthy of the Glory. When should I start?'\n\n'Immediately,' said Cairon. 'No one knows how long your Great Quest will be. Every hour may count, even now. Say goodbye to your parents and your brothers and sisters.'\n\n'I have none,' said Atreyu. 'My parents were both killed by a buffalo, soon after I was born.'\n\n'Who brought you up?'\n\n'All the men and women together. That's why they called me Atreyu, which in our language means \"Son of All\"!'\n\n_No one knew better than Bastian what that meant. Even though his father was still alive and Atreyu had neither father nor mother. To make up for it, Atreyu had been brought up by all the men and women together and was the 'son of all', while Bastian had no one \u2013 and was really 'nobody's son'. All the same, Bastian was glad to have this much in common with Atreyu, because otherwise he resembled him hardly at all, neither physically nor in courage and determination. Yet Bastian, too, was engaged in a Great Quest and didn't know where it would lead him or how it would end._\n\n'In that case,' said the old centaur, 'you'd better go without saying goodbye. I'll stay here and explain.'\n\nAtreyu's face became leaner and harder than ever.\n\n'Where should I begin?' he asked.\n\n'Everywhere and nowhere,' said Cairon. 'From now on you will be on your own, with no one to advise you. And that's how it will be until the end of the Great Quest \u2013 however it may end.'\n\nAtreyu nodded.\n\n'Farewell, Cairon.'\n\n'Farewell, Atreyu. And \u2013 much luck!'\n\nThe boy turned away and was leaving the tent when the centaur called him back. As they stood face to face, the old centaur put both hands on Atreyu's shoulders, looked him in the eye with a respectful smile, and said slowly: 'I think I'm beginning to see why the Childlike Empress chose you, Atreyu.'\n\nThe boy lowered his head just a while. Then he went out quickly.\n\nHis horse, Artax, was standing outside the tent. He was small and spotted like a wild horse. His legs were short and stocky, but he was the fastest, most tireless runner far and wide. He was still saddled as Atreyu had ridden him back from the hunt.\n\n'Artax,' Atreyu whispered, patting his neck. 'We're going away, far, far away. No one knows if we shall ever come back!'\n\nThe horse nodded his head and gave a brief snort.\n\n'Yes, master,' he said. 'But what about your hunt?'\n\n'We're going on a much greater hunt,' said Atreyu, swinging himself into the saddle.\n\n'Wait, master,' said the horse. 'You've forgotten your weapons. Are you going without your bow and arrow?'\n\n'Yes, Artax,' said Atreyu. 'I have to go unarmed because I am bearing the Gem.'\n\n'Humph!' snorted the horse. 'And where are we going?'\n\n'Wherever you like, Artax,' said Atreyu. 'From this moment on we shall be on the Great Quest.'\n\nWith that they galloped away and were swallowed up by the darkness.\n\nAt the same time, in a different part of Fantastica, something happened which went completely unnoticed. Neither Atreyu nor Artax had the slightest inkling of it.\n\nOn a remote night-black heath the darkness condensed into a great shadowy form. It became so dense that even in that moonless, starless night it came to look like a big black body. Its outlines were still unclear, but it stood on four legs and green fire glowed in the eyes of its huge shaggy head. It lifted up its great snout and stood for a long while, sniffing the air. Then suddenly it seemed to find the scent it was looking for, and a deep, triumphant growl issued from its throat.\n\nAnd off it ran through the starless night, in long, soundless leaps.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck eleven. From the downstairs corridors arose the shouts of children running out to the playground._\n\n_Bastian was still squatting cross-legged on the mats. His legs had fallen asleep. He wasn't an Indian after all. He stood up, took his sandwich and an apple out of his satchel, and paced the floor. He had pins and needles in his feet, which took some time to wake up._\n\n_Then he climbed onto the horse and straddled it. He imagined he was Atreyu galloping through the night on Artax's back. He leaned forward and rested his head on his horse's neck._\n\n_'Gee!' he cried. 'Run, Artax! Gee! Gee!'_\n\n_Then he became frightened. It had been foolish of him to shout so loud. What if someone had heard him? He waited awhile and listened. But all he heard was the intermingled shouts from the yard._\n\n_Feeling rather foolish, he climbed down off the horse. Really, he was behaving like a small child!_\n\n_He unwrapped his sandwich and shined the apple on his trousers. But just as he was biting into it, he stopped himself._\n\n_'No,' he said to himself aloud. 'I must carefully apportion my provisions. Who knows how long they will have to last me.'_\n\n_With a heavy heart he rewrapped his sandwich and returned it to his satchel along with the apple. Then with a sigh he settled down on the mats and reached for the book._\n\n# III\n\n# _Morla the Aged One_\n\nCAIRON, the old black centaur, sank back on his bed of furs as Artax's hoofbeats were dying away. After so much exertion he was at the end of his strength. The women who found him next day in Atreyu's tent feared for his life. And when the hunters came home a few days later, he was hardly any better, but he managed nevertheless to tell them why Atreyu had ridden away and would not be back soon. As they were all fond of the boy, their concern for him made them grave. Still, they were proud that the Childlike Empress had chosen him for the Great Quest- though none claimed to understand her choice.\n\nOld Cairon never went back to the Ivory Tower. But he didn't die and he didn't stay with the Greenskins in the Grassy Ocean. His destiny was to lead him over very different and unexpected pathways. But that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nThat same night Atreyu rode to the foot of the Silver Mountains. It was almost morning when he finally stopped to rest. Artax grazed a while and drank water from a small mountain stream. Atreyu wrapped himself in his red cloak and slept a few hours. But when the sun rose, they were already on their way.\n\nOn the first day they crossed the Silver Mountains, where every road and trail was known to them, and they made quick progress. When he felt hungry, the boy ate a chunk of dried buffalo meat and two little grass-seed cakes that he had been carrying in his saddlebag \u2013 originally they had been intended for his hunt.\n\n_'Exactly!' said Bastian. 'A man has to eat now and then.'_\n\n_He took his sandwich out of his satchel, unwrapped it, broke it carefully in two pieces, wrapped one of them up again and put it away. Then he ate the other._\n\n_Recess was over. Bastian wondered what his class would be doing_ _next. Oh yes, geography, with Mrs Flint. You had to reel off rivers and their tributaries, cities, population figures, natural resources, and industries. Bastian shrugged his shoulders and went on reading._\n\nBy sunset the Silver Mountains lay behind them, and again they stopped to rest. That night Atreyu dreamed of purple buffaloes. He saw them in the distance, roaming over the Grassy Ocean, and he tried to get near them on his horse. In vain. He galloped, he spurred his horse, but they were always the same distance away.\n\nThe second day they passed through the Singing Tree Country. Each tree had a different shape, different leaves, different bark, but all of them in growing \u2013 and this was what gave the country its name \u2013 made soft music that sounded from far and near and joined in a mighty harmony that hadn't its like for beauty in all Fantastica. Riding through this country wasn't entirely devoid of danger, for many a traveler had stopped still as though spellbound and forgotten everything else. Atreyu felt the power of these marvelous sounds, but didn't let himself be tempted to stop.\n\nThe following night he dreamed again of purple buffaloes. This time he was on foot, and a great herd of them was passing. But they were beyond the range of his bow, and when he tried to come closer, his feet clung to the ground and he couldn't move them. His frantic efforts to tear them loose woke him up. He started out at once, though the sun had not yet risen.\n\nThe third day, he saw the Glass Tower of Eribo, where the inhabitants of the region caught and stored starlight. Out of the starlight they made wonderfully decorative objects, the purpose of which, however, was known to no one in all Fantastica but their makers.\n\nHe met some of these folk; little creatures they were, who seemed to have been blown from glass. They were extremely friendly and provided him with food and drink, but when he asked them who might know something about the Childlike Empress's illness, they sank into a gloomy, perplexed silence.\n\nThe next night Atreyu dreamed again that the herd of purple buffaloes was passing. One of the beasts, a particularly large, imposing bull, broke away from his fellows and slowly, with no sign of either fear or anger, approached Atreyu. Like all true hunters, Atreyu knew every creature's vulnerable spot, where an arrow wound would be fatal. The purple buffalo put himself in such a position as to offer a perfect target. Atreyu fitted an arrow to his bow and pulled with all his might. But he couldn't shoot. His fingers seemed to have grown into the bowstring, and he couldn't release it.\n\nEach of the following nights he dreamed something of the sort. He got closer and closer to the same purple buffalo \u2013 he recognized him by a white spot on his forehead \u2013 but for some reason he was never able to shoot the deadly arrow.\n\nDuring the days he rode farther and farther, without knowing where he was going or finding anyone to advise him. The golden amulet he wore was respected by all who met him, but none had an answer to his question.\n\nOne day he saw from afar the flaming streets of Salamander, the city whose inhabitants' bodies are of fire, but he preferred to keep away from it. He crossed the broad plateau of the Sassafranians, who are born old and die when they become babies. He came to the jungle temple of Muwamath, where a great moonstone pillar hovers in midair, and he spoke to the monks who lived there. And again no one could tell him anything.\n\nHe had been traveling aimlessly for almost a week, when on the seventh day and the following night two very different encounters changed his situation and state of mind.\n\nCairon's story of the terrible happenings in all parts of Fantastica had made an impression on him, but thus far the disaster was something he had only heard about. On the seventh day he was to see it with his own eyes.\n\nToward noon, he was riding through a dense dark forest of enormous gnarled trees. This was the same Howling Forest where the four messengers had met some time before. That region, as Atreyu knew, was the home of bark trolls. These, as he had been told, were giants and giantesses, who themselves looked like gnarled tree trunks. As long as they stood motionless, as they usually did, you could easily mistake them for trees and ride on unsuspecting. Only when they moved could you see that they had branchlike arms and crooked, rootlike legs. Though exceedingly powerful, they were not dangerous \u2013 at most they liked to play tricks on travelers who had lost their way.\n\nAtreyu had just discovered a woodland meadow with a brook twining through it, and had dismounted to let Artax drink and graze. Suddenly he heard a loud crackling and thudding in the woods behind him.\n\nThree bark trolls emerged from the woods and came toward him. A cold shiver ran down his spine at the sight of them. The first, having no legs or haunches, was obliged to walk on his hands. The second had a hole in his chest, so big you could see through it. The third hopped on his right foot, because the whole left half of him was missing, as if he had been cut through the middle.\n\nWhen they saw the amulet hanging from Atreyu's neck, they nodded to one another and came slowly closer.\n\n'Don't be afraid,' said the one who was walking on his hands, and his voice sounded like the groaning of a tree. 'We're not exactly pretty to look at, but in this part of Howling Forest there's no one else left who might warn you. That's why we've come.'\n\n'Warn?' Atreyu asked. 'Against what?'\n\n'We've heard about you,' moaned the one with the hole in his chest. 'And we've been told about your Quest. Don't go any further in this direction, or you'll be lost.'\n\n'The same thing will happen to you as happened to us,' sighed the halved one. 'Would you like that?'\n\n'What _has_ happened to you?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'The Nothing is spreading,' groaned the first. 'It's growing and growing, there's more of it every day, if it's possible to speak of more _nothing._ All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn't want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us.'\n\n'Is it very painful?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'No,' said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. 'You don't feel a thing. There's just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won't be anything left of us.'\n\n'In what part of the woods did it begin?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'Would you like to see it?' the third troll, who was only half a troll, turned to his fellow sufferers with a questioning look. When they nodded, he said: 'We'll take you to a place where there's a good view of it. But you must promise not to go any closer. If you do, it will pull you in.'\n\n'All right,' said Atreyu. 'I promise.'\n\nThe three turned about and made for the edge of the forest. Leading Artax by the bridle, Atreyu followed them. For a while they went this way and that way between enormous trees, then finally they stopped at the foot of a giant tree so big that five grown men holding hands could scarcely have girdled it.\n\n'Climb as high as you can,' said the legless troll, 'and look in the direction of the sunrise. Then you'll see \u2013 or rather _not_ see it.'\n\nAtreyu pulled himself up by the knots and bumps on the tree. He reached the lower branches, hoisted himself to the next, climbed and climbed until he lost sight of the ground below him. Higher and higher he went; the trunk grew thinner and the more closely spaced side branches made it easier to climb. When at last he reached the crown, he turned toward the sunrise. And then he saw it:\n\nThe tops of the trees nearest him were still green, but the leaves of those farther away seemed to have lost all color; they were gray. A little farther on, the foliage seemed to become strangely transparent, misty, or, better still, unreal. And farther still there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a bare stretch, not darkness, not some lighter color; no, it was something the eyes could not bear, something that made you feel you had gone blind. For no eye can bear the sight of utter nothingness. Atreyu held his hand before his face and nearly fell off his branch. He clung tight for a moment, then climbed down as fast as he could. He had seen enough. At last he really understood the horror that was spreading through Fantastica.\n\nWhen he reached the foot of the great tree, the three bark trolls had vanished. Atreyu swung himself into the saddle and galloped as fast as Artax would carry him in the direction that would take him away from this slowly but irresistibly spreading Nothing. By nightfall he had left Howling Forest far behind him; only then did he stop to rest.\n\nThat night a second encounter, which was to give his Great Quest a new direction, awaited him.\n\nHe dreamed \u2013 much more distinctly than before \u2013 of the purple buffalo he had wanted to kill. This time Atreyu was without his bow and arrow. He felt very, very small and the buffalo's face filled the whole sky. And the face spoke to him. He couldn't understand every word, but this is the gist of what it said:\n\n'If you had killed me, you would be a hunter now. But because you let me live, I can help you, Atreyu. Listen to me! There is, in Fantastica, a being older than all other beings. In the north, far, far from here, lie the Swamps of Sadness. In the middle of those swamps there is a mountain, Tortoise Shell Mountain it's called. There lives Morla the Aged One. Go and see Morla the Aged One.'\n\nThen Atreyu woke up.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck twelve. Soon Bastian's classmates would be going down to the gym for their last class. Today they'd probably be playing with the big, heavy medicine ball which Bastian handled so awkwardly that neither of the two teams ever wanted him. And sometimes they played with a small hard-rubber ball that hurt terribly when it hit you. Bastian was an easy mark and was always getting hit full force. Or perhaps they'd be climbing rope \u2013 an exercise that Bastian especially detested. Most of the others would be all the way to the top while he, with his face as red as a beet, would be dangling like a sack of flour at the very bottom of the rope, unable to climb as much as a foot. They'd all be laughing their heads off. And Mr Menge, the gym teacher, had a special stock of gibes just for Bastian._\n\n_Bastian would have given a good deal to be like Atreyu. He'd have shown them._\n\n_He heaved a deep sigh._\n\nAtreyu rode northward, ever northward. He allowed himself and his little horse only the most necessary stops for sleep and food. He rode by day and he rode by night, in the scorching sun and the pelting rain. He looked neither to the left nor the right and asked no more questions.\n\nThe farther northward he went, the darker it grew. An unchanging, leaden-gray twilight filled the days. At night the northern lights played across the sky.\n\nOne morning, when time seemed to be standing still in the murky light, he looked out from a hilltop and finally glimpsed the Swamps of Sadness. Clouds of mist drifted over them. Here and there he distinguished little clumps of trees. Their trunks divided at the bottom into four, five, or more crooked stilts, which made the trees look like great many-legged crabs standing in the black water. From the brown foliage hung aerial roots resembling motionless tentacles. It was next to impossible to make out where there was solid ground between the pools of water and where there was only a covering of water plants.\n\nArtax whinnied with horror.\n\n'Are we going in there, master?'\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'We must find Tortoise Shell Mountain. It's at the center of those swamps.'\n\nHe urged Artax on and Artax obeyed. Step by step, he tested the firmness of the ground, but that made progress very slow. At length Atreyu dismounted and led Artax by the bridle. Several times the horse sank in, but managed to pull himself loose. But the farther they went into the Swamps of Sadness, the more sluggish became his movements. He let his head droop and barely dragged himself forward.\n\n'Artax,' said Atreyu. 'What's the matter?'\n\n'I don't know, master. I think we should turn back. There's no sense in all this. We're chasing after something you only dreamed about. We won't find anything. Maybe it's too late even now. Maybe the Childlike Empress is already dead, and everything we're doing is useless. Let us turn back, master.'\n\nAtreyu was astonished. 'Artax,' he said. 'You've never spoken like this. What's the matter? Are you sick?'\n\n'Maybe I am,' said Artax. 'With every step we take, the sadness grows in my heart. I've lost hope, master. And I feel so heavy, so heavy. I can't go on!'\n\n'But we must go on!' cried Atreyu. 'Come along, Artax!'\n\nHe tugged at the bridle, but Artax stood still. He had sunk in up to his belly. And he made no further effort to extricate himself.\n\n'Artax!' cried Atreyu. 'You mustn't let yourself go. Come. Pull yourself out or you'll sink.'\n\n'Leave me, master,' said the little horse. 'I can't make it. Go on alone. Don't bother about me. I can't stand the sadness anymore. I want to die!'\n\nDesperately Atreyu pulled at the bridle, but the horse sank deeper and deeper. When only his head emerged from the black water, Atreyu took it in his arms.\n\n'I'll hold you, Artax,' he whispered. 'I won't let you go under.'\n\nThe little horse uttered one last soft neigh.\n\n'You can't help me, master. It's all over for me. Neither of us knew what we were getting into. Now we know why they are called the Swamps of Sadness. It's the sadness that has made me so heavy. That's why I'm sinking. There's no help.'\n\n'But I'm here, too,' said Atreyu, 'and I don't feel anything.'\n\n'You're wearing the Gem, master,' said Artax. 'It protects you.'\n\n'Then I'll hang it around your neck!' Atreyu cried. 'Maybe it will protect you too.'\n\nHe started taking the chain off his neck.\n\n'No,' the little horse whinnied. 'You mustn't do that, master. The Glory was entrusted to you, you weren't given permission to pass it on as you see fit. You must carry on the Quest without me.'\n\nAtreyu pressed his face into the horse's cheek.\n\n'Artax,' he whispered. 'Oh, my Artax!'\n\n'Will you grant my last wish?' the little horse asked.\n\nAtreyu nodded in silence.\n\n'Then I beg you to go away. I don't want you to see my end. Will you do me that favor?'\n\nSlowly Atreyu arose. Half the horse's head was already in the black water.\n\n'Farewell, Atreyu, my master!' he said. 'And thank you.'\n\nAtreyu pressed his lips together. He couldn't speak. Once again he nodded to Artax, then he turned away.\n\n_Bastian was sobbing. He couldn't help it. His eyes filled with tears and he couldn't go on reading. He had to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose before he could go on._\n\nAtreyu waded and waded. For how long he didn't know. The mist grew thicker and he felt as if he were blind and deaf. It seemed to him that he had been wandering around in circles for hours. He stopped worrying about where to set his foot down, and yet he never sank in above his knees. By some mysterious means, the Childlike Empress's amulet led him the right way.\n\nThen suddenly he saw a high, steep mountain ahead of him. Pulling himself up from crag to crag, he climbed to the rounded top. At first he didn't notice what this mountain was made of. But from the top he overlooked the whole mountain, and then he saw that it consisted of great slabs of tortoise shell, with moss growing in the crevices between them.\n\nHe had found Tortoise Shell Mountain.\n\nBut the discovery gave him no pleasure. Now that his faithful little horse was gone, it left him almost indifferent. Still, he would have to find out who this Morla the Aged One was, and where she actually lived.\n\nWhile he was mulling it over, he felt a slight tremor shaking the mountain. Then he heard a hideous wheezing and lip-smacking, and a voice that seemed to issue from the innermost bowels of the earth: 'Sakes alive, old woman, somebody's crawling around on us.'\n\nIn hurrying to the end of the ridge, where the sounds had come from, Atreyu had slipped on a bed of moss. Since there was nothing for him to hold on to, he slid faster and faster and finally fell off the mountain. Luckily he landed on a tree, which caught him in its branches.\n\nLooking back at the mountain, he saw an enormous cave. Water was splashing and gushing inside, and something was moving. Slowly the something came out. It looked like a boulder as big as a house. When it came into full sight, Atreyu saw that it was a head attached to a long wrinkled neck, the head of a turtle. Its eyes were black and as big as ponds. The mouth was dripping with muck and water weeds. This whole Tortoise Shell Mountain \u2013 it suddenly dawned on Atreyu \u2013 was one enormous beast, a giant swamp turtle; Morla the Aged One.\n\nThe wheezing, gurgling voice spoke again: 'What are you doing here, son?'\n\nAtreyu reached for the amulet on his chest and held it in such a way that the great eyes couldn't help seeing it.\n\n'Do you recognize this, Morla?'\n\nShe took a while to answer: 'Sakes alive! AURYN. We haven't seen that in a long time, have we, old woman? The emblem of the Childlike Empress \u2013 not in a long time.'\n\n'The Childlike Empress is sick,' said Atreyu. 'Did you know that?'\n\n'It's all the same to us. Isn't it, old woman?' Morla replied. She seemed to be talking to herself, perhaps because she had had no one else to talk to for heaven knows how long.\n\n'If we don't save her, she'll die,' Atreyu cried out. 'The Nothing is spreading everywhere. I've seen it myself.'\n\nMorla stared at him out of her great empty eyes.\n\n'We don't mind, do we, old woman?'\n\n'But then we shall all die!' Atreyu screamed. 'Every last one of us!'\n\n'Sakes alive!' said Morla. 'But what do we care? Nothing matters to us anymore. It's all the same to us.'\n\n'But you'll be destroyed too, Morla!' cried Atreyu angrily. 'Or do you expect, because you're so old, to outlive Fantastica?'\n\n'Sakes alive!' Morla gurgled. 'We're old, son, much too old. Lived long enough. Seen too much. When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything's empty. Nothing is real. Nothing matters.'\n\nAtreyu didn't know what to answer. The Aged One's dark, empty, pond-sized eyes paralyzed his thoughts. After a while, he heard her speak again:\n\n'You're young, son. If you were as old as we are, you'd know there's nothing but sadness. Why shouldn't we die, you and I, the Childlike Empress, the whole lot of us? Anyway, it's all flim-flam, meaningless games. Nothing matters. Leave us in peace, son. Go away.'\n\nAtreyu tensed his will to fight off the paralysis that flowed from her eyes.\n\n'If you know so much,' he said, 'you must know what the Childlike Empress's illness is and whether there's a cure for it.'\n\n'We do, we do! Don't we, old woman?' Morla wheezed. 'But it's all the same to us whether she's saved or not. So why should we tell you?'\n\n'If it's really all the same to you,' Atreyu argued, 'you might just as well tell me.'\n\n'We could, we could! Couldn't we, old woman?' Morla grunted. 'But we don't feel like it.'\n\n'Then it's _not_ all the same to you. Then you yourself don't believe what you're saying.'\n\nAfter a long silence he heard a deep gurgling and belching. That must have been some kind of laughter, if Morla the Aged One was still capable of laughing. In any case, she said: 'You're a sly one, son. Really sly. We haven't had so much fun in a long time. Have we, old woman? Sakes alive, it's true. We might just as well tell you. Makes no difference. Should we tell him, old woman?'\n\nA long silence followed. Atreyu waited anxiously for Morla's answer, taking care not to interrupt the slow, cheerless flow of her thoughts. At last she spoke:\n\n'Your life is short, son. Ours is long. Much too long. But we both live in time. You a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she's not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn't measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name. She keeps needing new names. Do you know her name, son?'\n\n'No,' Atreyu admitted. 'I never heard it.'\n\n'You couldn't have,' said Morla. 'Not even we can remember it. Yet she has had many names. But they're all forgotten. Over and done with. But without a name she can't live. All the Childlike Empress needs is a new name, then she'll get well. But it makes no difference whether she gets well or not.'\n\nShe closed her pond-sized eyes and began slowly to pull in her head.\n\n'Wait!' cried Atreyu. 'Where can she get a name? Who can give her one? Where can I find the name?'\n\n'None of us,' Morla gurgled. 'No inhabitant of Fantastica can give her a new name. So it's hopeless. Sakes alive! It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.'\n\n'Who then?' cried Atreyu in despair. 'Who can give her the name that will save her and save us all?'\n\n'Don't make so much noise!' said Morla. 'Leave us in peace and go away. Even we don't know who can give her a name.'\n\n'If you don't know,' Atreyu screamed even louder, 'who does?'\n\nShe opened her eyes a last time.\n\n'If you weren't wearing the Gem,' she wheezed, 'we'd eat you up, just to have peace and quiet. Sakes alive!'\n\n'Who?' Atreyu insisted. 'Tell me who knows, and I'll leave you in peace forever.'\n\n'It doesn't matter,' she replied. 'But maybe Uyulala in the Southern Oracle knows. She may know. It's all the same to us.'\n\n'How can I get there?'\n\n'You can't get there at all, son. Not in ten thousand days' journey. Your life is too short. You'd die first. It's too far. In the south. Much too far. So it's all hopeless. We told you so in the first place, didn't we, old woman? Sakes alive, son. Give it up. And most important, leave us in peace.'\n\nWith that she closed her empty-gazing eyes and pulled her head back into the cave for good. Atreyu knew he would learn no more from her.\n\nAt that same time the shadowy being which had condensed out of the darkness of the heath picked up Atreyu's trail and headed for the Swamps of Sadness. Nothing and no one in all Fantastica would deflect it from that trail.\n\n_Bastian had propped his head on his hand and was looking thoughtfully into space._\n\n_'Strange,' he said aloud, 'that no one in all Fantastica can give the Childlike Empress a new name.' If it had been just a matter of giving her a name, Bastian could easily have helped her. He was tops at that._ _But unfortunately he was not in Fantastica, where his talents were needed and would even have won him friends and admirers. On the other hand, he was glad not to be there. Not for anything in the world would he have ventured into such a place as the Swamps of Sadness. And then this spooky creature of darkness that was chasing Atreyu without his knowing it. Bastian would have liked to warn him, but that was impossible. All he could do was hope, and go on reading._\n\n# IV\n\n# _Ygramul the Many_\n\nDIRE hunger and thirst pursued Atreyu. It was two days since he had left the Swamps of Sadness, and since then he had been wandering through an empty rocky wilderness. What little provisions he had taken with him had sunk beneath the black waters with Artax. In vain, Atreyu dug his fingers into the clefts between stones in the hope of finding some little root, but nothing grew there, not even moss or lichen.\n\nAt first he was glad to feel solid ground beneath his feet, but little by little it came to him that he was worse off than ever. He was lost. He didn't even know what direction he was going in, for the dusky grayness was the same all around him. A cold wind blew over the needlelike rocks that rose up on all sides, blew and blew.\n\nUphill and downhill he plodded, but all he saw was distant mountains with still more distant ranges behind them, and so on to the horizon on all sides. And nothing living, not a beetle, not an ant, not even the vultures which ordinarily follow the weary traveler until he falls by the wayside.\n\nDoubt was no longer possible. This was the Land of the Dead Mountains. Few had seen them, and fewer still escaped from them alive. But they figured in the legends of Atreyu's people. He remembered an old song:\n\nBetter the huntsman\n\nShould perish in the swamps,\n\nFor in the Dead Mountains\n\nThere is a deep, deep chasm,\n\nWhere dwelleth Ygramul the Many,\n\nThe horror of horrors.\n\nEven if Atreyu had wanted to turn back and had known what direction to take, it would not have been possible. He had gone too far and could only keep on going. If only he himself had been involved, he might have sat down in a cave and quietly waited for death, as the Greenskin hunters did. But he was engaged in the Great Quest: the life of the Childlike Empress and of all Fantastica was at stake. He had no right to give up.\n\nAnd so he kept at it. Uphill and down. From time to time he realized that he had long been walking as though in his sleep, that his mind had been in other realms, from which they had returned none too willingly.\n\n_Bastian gave a start. The clock in the belfry struck one. School was over for the day._\n\n_He heard the shouts and screams of the children running into the corridors from the classrooms and the clatter of many feet on the stairs. For a while there were isolated shouts from the street. And then the schoolhouse was engulfed in silence._\n\n_The silence descended on Bastian like a great heavy blanket and threatened to smother him. From then on he would be all alone in the big schoolhouse \u2013 all that day, all that night, there was no knowing how long. This adventure of his was getting serious._\n\n_The other children were going home for lunch. Bastian was hungry too, and he was cold in spite of the army blankets he was wrapped in. Suddenly he lost heart, his whole plan seemed crazy, senseless. He wanted to go home, that very minute. He could just be in time. His father wouldn't have noticed anything yet. Bastian wouldn't even have to tell him he had played hooky. Of course, it would come out sooner or later, but there was time to worry about that. But the stolen book? Yes, he'd have to own up to that too. In the end, his father would resign himself as he did to all the disappointments Bastian had given him. Anyway, there was nothing to be afraid of. Most likely his father wouldn't say anything, but just go and see Mr Coreander and straighten things out._\n\n_Bastian was about to put the copper-colored book into his satchel. But then he stopped._\n\n_'No,' he said aloud in the stillness of the attic. 'Atreyu wouldn't give_ _up just because things were getting a little rough. What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.'_\n\n_He felt very lonely, yet there was a kind of pride in his loneliness. He was proud of standing firm in the face of temptation._\n\n_He was a little like Atreyu after all._\n\nA time came when Atreyu really could not go forward. Before him lay the Deep Chasm.\n\nThe grandiose horror of the sight cannot be described in words. A yawning cleft, perhaps half a mile wide, twined its way through the Land of the Dead Mountains. How deep it might be there was no way of knowing.\n\nAtreyu lay on a spur at the edge of the chasm and stared down into darkness which seemed to extend to the innermost heart of the earth. He picked up a stone the size of a tennis ball and hurled it as far as he could. The stone fell and fell, until it was swallowed up in the darkness. Though Atreyu listened a long while, he heard no sound of impact.\n\nThere was only one thing Atreyu could do, and he did it. He skirted the Deep Chasm. Every second he expected to meet the 'horror of horrors', known to him from the old song. He had no idea what sort of creature this might be. All he knew was that its name was Ygramul.\n\nThe Deep Chasm twisted and turned through the mountain waste, and of course there was no path at its edge. Here too there were abrupt rises and falls, and sometimes the ground swayed alarmingly under Atreyu's feet. Sometimes his path was barred by gigantic rock formations and he would have to feel his way, painfully, step by step, around them. Or there would be slopes covered with smooth stones that would start rolling toward the Chasm as soon as he set foot on them. More than once he was within a hairbreadth of the edge.\n\nIf he had known that a pursuer was close behind him and coming closer by the hour, he might have hurried and taken dangerous risks. It was that creature of darkness which had been after him since the start of his journey. Since then its body had taken on recognizable outlines. It was a pitch-black wolf, the size of an ox. Nose to the ground, it trotted along, following Atreyu's trail through the stony desert of the Dead Mountains. Its tongue hung far out of its mouth and its terrifying fangs were bared. The freshness of the scent told the wolf that its prey was only a few miles ahead.\n\nBut suspecting nothing of his pursuer, Atreyu picked his way slowly and cautiously.\n\nAs he was groping through the darkness of a tunnel under a mountain, he suddenly heard a noise that he couldn't identify because it bore no resemblance to any sound he had ever heard. It was a kind of jangling roar. At the same time Atreyu felt that the whole mountain about him was trembling, and he heard blocks of stone crashing down its outer walls. For a time he waited to see whether the earthquake, or whatever it might be, would abate. Then, since it did not, he crawled to the end of the tunnel and cautiously stuck his head out.\n\nAnd then he saw: An enormous spider web was stretched from edge to edge of the Deep Chasm. And in the sticky threads of the web, which were as thick as ropes, a great white luckdragon was struggling, becoming more and more entangled as he thrashed about with his tail and claws.\n\nLuckdragons are among the strangest animals in Fantastica. They bear no resemblance to ordinary dragons, which look like loathsome snakes and live in deep caves, diffusing a noxious stench and guarding some real or imaginary treasure. Such spawn of chaos are usually wicked or ill-tempered, they have batlike wings with which they can rise clumsily and noisily into the air, and they spew fire and smoke. Luckdragons are creatures of air, warmth, and pure joy. Despite their great size, they are as light as a summer cloud, and consequently need no wings for flying. They swim in the air of heaven as fish swim in water. Seen from the earth, they look like slow lightning flashes. The most amazing thing about them is their song. Their voice sounds like the golden note of a large bell, and when they speak softly the bell seems to be ringing in the distance. Anyone who has heard this sound will remember it as long as he lives and tell his grandchildren about it.\n\nBut the luckdragon Atreyu saw could hardly have been in a mood for singing. His long, graceful body with its pearly, pink-and-white scales hung tangled and twisted in the great spider web. His bristling fangs, his thick, luxuriant mane, and the fringes on his tail and limbs were all caught in the sticky ropes. He could hardly move. The eyeballs in his lionlike head glistened ruby-red.\n\nThe splendid beast bled from many wounds, for there was something else, something very big, that descended like a dark cloud on the dragon's white body. It rose and fell, rose and fell, all the while changing its shape. Sometimes it resembled a gigantic long-legged spider with many fiery eyes and a fat body encased in shaggy black hair; then it became a great hand with long claws that tried to crush the luckdragon, and in the next moment it changed to a giant scorpion, piercing its unfortunate victim with its venomous sting.\n\nThe battle between the two giants was fearsome. The luckdragon was still defending himself, spewing blue fire that singed the cloudmonster's bristles. Smoke came whirling through the crevices in the rock, so foul-smelling that Atreyu could hardly breathe. Once the luckdragon managed to bite off one of the monster's long legs. But instead of falling into the chasm, the severed leg hovered for a time in mid-air, then returned to its old place in the black cloud-body. And several times the dragon seemed to seize one of the monster's limbs between its teeth, but bit into the void.\n\nOnly then did Atreyu notice that the monster was not a single, solid body, but was made up of innumerable small steel-blue insects which buzzed like angry hornets. It was their compact swarm that kept taking different shapes.\n\nThis was Ygramul, and now Atreyu knew why she was called 'the Many'.\n\nHe sprang from his hiding place, reached for the Gem, and shouted at the top of his lungs: 'Stop! In the name of the Childlike Empress, stop!'\n\nBut the hissing and roaring of the combatants drowned out his voice. He himself could barely hear it.\n\nWithout stopping to think, he set foot on the sticky ropes of the web, which swayed beneath him as he ran. He lost his balance, fell, clung by his hands to keep from falling into the dark chasm, pulled himself up again, caught himself in the ropes, fought free and hurried on.\n\nAt last Ygramul sensed that something was coming toward her. With the speed of lightning, she turned about, confronting Atreyu with an enormous steel-blue face. Her single eye had a vertical pupil, which stared at Atreyu with inconceivable malignancy.\n\n_A cry of fear escaped Bastian._\n\nA cry of terror passed through the ravine and echoed from side to side. Ygramul turned her eye to left and right, to see if someone else had arrived, for that sound could not have been made by the boy who stood there as though paralyzed with horror.\n\n_Could she have heard my cry? Bastian wondered in alarm. But that's not possible._\n\nAnd then Atreyu heard Ygramul's voice. It was very high and slightly hoarse, not at all the right kind of voice for that enormous face. Her lips did not move as she spoke. It was the buzzing of a great swarm of hornets that shaped itself into words.\n\n'A Twolegs,' Atreyu heard. 'Years upon years of hunger, and now two tasty morsels at once! A lucky day for Ygramul!'\n\nAtreyu needed all his strength to keep his composure. He held the Gem up to the monster's one eye and asked: 'Do you know this emblem?'\n\n'Come closer, Twolegs!' buzzed the many voices. 'Ygramul doesn't see well.'\n\nAtreyu took one step closer to the face. The mouth opened, showing innumerable glittering feelers, hooks, and claws in place of a tongue.\n\n'Still closer,' the swarm buzzed.\n\nHe took one more step, which brought him near enough to distinguish the innumerable steel-blue insects which whirled around in seeming confusion. Yet the face as a whole remained motionless.\n\n'I am Atreyu,' he said. 'I have come on a mission from the Childlike Empress.'\n\n'Most inopportune!' said the angry buzzing after a time. 'What do you want of Ygramul? As you can see, she is very busy.'\n\n'I want this luckdragon,' said Atreyu. 'Let me have him.'\n\n'What do you want him for, Atreyu Twolegs?'\n\n'I lost my horse in the Swamps of Sadness. I must go to the Southern Oracle, because only Uyulala can tell me who can give the Childlike Empress a new name. If she doesn't get one, she will die and all Fantastica with her \u2013 you too, Ygrarmul.'\n\n'Ah!' the face drawled. 'Is that the reason for all the places where there is nothing?'\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'So you too know of them. But the Southern Oracle is too long a journey for a lifetime. That's why I'm asking you for this luckdragon. If he carries me through the air, I may get there before it's too late.'\n\nOut of the whirling swarm that made up the face came a sound suggesting the giggling of many voices.\n\n'You're all wrong, Atreyu Twolegs. We know nothing of the Southern Oracle and nothing of Uyulala, but we do know that this dragon cannot carry you. And even if he were in the best of health, the trip would take so long that the Childlike Empress would die of her illness in the meantime. You must measure your Quest, Atreyu, in terms not of your own life but of hers.'\n\nThe gaze of the eye with the vertical pupil was almost unbearable.\n\n'That's true,' he said in a small voice.\n\n'Besides,' the motionless face went on, 'the luckdragon has Ygramul's poison in his body. He has less than an hour to live.'\n\n'Then there's no hope,' Atreyu murmured. 'Not for him, not for me, and not for you either, Ygramul.'\n\n'Oh well,' the voice buzzed. 'Ygramul would at least have had one good meal. But who says it's Ygramul's last meal? She knows a way of getting you to the Southern Oracle in a twinkling. But the question is: Will you like it?'\n\n'What is that way?'\n\n'That is Ygramul's secret. The creatures of darkness have their secrets too, Atreyu Twolegs. Ygramul has never revealed hers. And you too must swear you'll never tell a soul. For it would be greatly to Ygramul's disadvantage if it were known, yes, greatly to her disadvantage.'\n\n'I swear! Speak!'\n\nThe great steel-blue face leaned forward just a little and buzzed almost inaudibly.\n\n'You must let Ygramul bite you.'\n\nAtreyu shrank back in horror.\n\n'Ygramul's poison,' the voice went on, 'kills within an hour. But to one who has it inside him it gives the power to wish himself in any part of Fantastica he chooses. Imagine if that were known! All Ygramul's victims would escape her.'\n\n'An hour?' cried Atreyu. 'What can I do in an hour?'\n\n'Well,' buzzed the swarm, 'at least it's more than all the hours remaining to you here.'\n\nAtreyu struggled with himself.\n\n'Will you set the luckdragon free if I ask it in the name of the Childlike Empress?' he finally asked.\n\n'No!' said the face. 'You have no right to ask that of Ygramul even if you are wearing AURYN, the Gem. The Childlike Empress takes us all as we are. That's why Ygramul respects her emblem.'\n\nAtreyu was still standing with bowed head. Ygramul had spoken the truth. He couldn't save the white luckdragon. His own wishes didn't count.\n\nHe looked up and said: 'Do what you suggested.'\n\nInstantly the steel-blue cloud descended on him and enveloped him on all sides. He felt a numbing pain in the left shoulder. His last thought was: 'To the Southern Oracle!'\n\nThen the world went black before his eyes.\n\nWhen the wolf reached the spot a short time later, he saw the giant spider web \u2013 but there was no one in sight. There the trail he had been following broke off, and try as he might, he could not find it again.\n\n_Bastian stopped reading. He felt miserable, as though he himself had Ygramul's poison inside him._\n\n_'Thank God I'm not in Fantastica,' he muttered. 'Luckily, such monsters don't exist in reality. Anyway, it's only a story.'_\n\n_But was it only a story? How did it happen that Ygramul, and probably Atreyu as well, had heard Bastian's cry of terror?_\n\n_Little by little, this book was beginning to give him a spooky feeling._\n\n# V\n\n# _The Gnomics_\n\nEVER so slowly Atreyu awoke to the world. He saw that he was still in the mountains, and for a terrible moment he suspected that Ygramul had deceived him.\n\nBut these, he soon realized, were entirely different mountains. They seemed to consist of great rust-red blocks of stone, piled in such a way as to form strange towers and pyramids. In between these structures the ground was covered with bushes and shrubbery. The air was blazing hot. The country was bathed in glaring sunlight.\n\nShading his eyes with his hand, Atreyu looked around him and discovered, about a mile away, an irregularly shaped arch, perhaps a hundred feet high. It too appeared to consist of piled stone blocks.\n\nCould that be the entrance to the Southern Oracle? As far as he could see, there was nothing behind the arch, only an endless empty plain, no building, no temple, no grove, nothing suggesting an oracle.\n\nSuddenly, while he was wondering what to do, he heard a deep, bronzelike voice: 'Atreyu!' And then again: 'Atreyu!'\n\nTurning around, he saw the white luckdragon emerging from one of the rust-red towers. Blood was pouring from his wounds, and he was so weak he could barely drag himself along.\n\n'Here I am, Atreyu,' he said, merrily winking one of his ruby-red eyes. 'And you needn't be so surprised. I was pretty well paralyzed when I was caught in that spider web, but I heard everything Ygramul said to you. So I thought to myself: She has bitten me too, after all, so why shouldn't I take advantage of the secret as well? That's how I got away from her.'\n\nAtreyu was overjoyed.\n\n'I hated leaving you to Ygramul,' he said. 'But what could I do?'\n\n'Nothing,' said the luckdragon. 'You've saved my life all the same \u2013 even if I had something to do with it.'\n\nAnd again he winked, this time with the other eye.\n\n'Saved your life,' Atreyu repeated, 'for an hour. That's all we have left. I can feel Ygramul's poison burning my heart away.'\n\n'Every poison has its antidote,' said the white dragon. 'Everything will turn out all right. You'll see.'\n\n'I can't imagine how,' said Atreyu.\n\n'Neither can I,' said the luckdragon. 'But that's the wonderful part of it. From now on you'll succeed in everything you attempt. Because I'm a luckdragon. Even when I was caught in the web, I didn't give up hope. And as you see, I was right.'\n\nAtreyu smiled.\n\nTell me, why did you wish yourself here and not in some other place where you might have been cured?'\n\n'My life belongs to you,' said the dragon, 'if you'll accept it. I thought you'd need a mount for this Great Quest of yours. And you'll soon see that crawling around the country on two legs, or even galloping on a good horse, can't hold a candle to whizzing through the air on the back of a luckdragon. Are we partners?'\n\n'We're partners,' said Atreyu.\n\n'By the way,' said the dragon. 'My name is Falkor.'\n\n'Glad to meet you,' said Atreyu, 'but while we're talking, what little time we have left is seeping away. I've got to do something. But what?'\n\n'Have luck,' said Falkor. 'What else?'\n\nBut Atreyu heard no more. He had fallen down and lay motionless in the soft folds of the dragon's body.\n\nYgramul's poison was taking effect.\n\nWhen Atreyu \u2013 no one knows how much later \u2013 opened his eyes again, he saw nothing but a very strange face bent over him. It was the wrinkliest, shriveledest face he had ever seen, and only about the size of a fist. It was as brown as a baked apple, and the eyes in it glittered like stars. The head was covered with a bonnet made of withered leaves.\n\nAtreyu felt a little drinking cup held to his lips.\n\n'Nice medicine! Good medicine!' mumbled the wrinkled little lips in the shriveled face. 'Just drink, child. Do you good.'\n\nAtreyu sipped. It tasted strange. Kind of sweet and sour.\n\nAtreyu found it painful to speak. 'What about the white dragon?' he asked.\n\n'Doing fine!' the voice whispered. 'Don't worry, my boy. You'll get well. You'll both get well. The worst is over. Just drink. Drink.'\n\nAtreyu took another swallow and again sleep overcame him, but this time it was the deep, refreshing sleep of recovery.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck two._\n\n_Bastian couldn't hold it in any longer. He simply had to go. He had felt the need for quite some time, but he hadn't been able to stop reading. Besides, he had been afraid to go downstairs. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, that the building was deserted, that no one would see him. But still he was afraid, as if the school were a person watching him._\n\n_But in the end there was no help for it; he just had to go!_\n\n_He set the open book down on the mat, went to the door and listened with pounding heart. Nothing. He slid the bolt and slowly turned the big key in the lock. When he pressed the handle, the door opened, creaking loudly._\n\n_He padded out in his stocking feet, leaving the door behind him open to avoid unnecessary noise. He crept down the stairs to the second floor. The students' toilet was at the other end of the long corridor with the spinach-green classroom doors. Racing against time, Bastian ran as fast as he could and just made it._\n\n_As he sat there, he wondered why heroes in stories like the one he was_ _reading never had to worry about such problems. Once \u2013 when he was much younger \u2013 he had asked his religion teacher if Jesus Christ had had to go like an ordinary person. After all, he had taken food and drink like everyone else. The class had howled with laughter, and the teacher, instead of an answer, had given him several demerits for 'insolence'. He hadn't meant to be insolent._\n\n_'Probably,' Bastian now said to himself, 'these things are just too unimportant to be mentioned in stories.'_\n\n_Yet for him they could be of the most pressing and embarrassing importance._\n\n_He was finished. He pulled the chain and was about to leave when he heard steps in the corridor outside. One classroom door after another was opened and closed, and the steps came closer and closer._\n\n_Bastian's heart pounded in his throat. Where could he hide? He stood glued to the spot as though paralyzed._\n\n_The washroom door opened, luckily in such a way as to shield Bastian. The janitor came in. One by one, he looked into the stalls. When he came to the one where the water was still running and the chain swaying a little, he hesitated for a moment and mumbled something to himself. But when the water stopped running he shrugged his shoulders and went out. His steps died away on the stairs._\n\n_Bastian hadn't dared breathe the whole time, and now he gasped for air. He noticed that his knees were trembling._\n\n_As fast as possible he padded down the corridor with the spinach-green doors, up the stairs, and back into the attic. Only when the door was locked and bolted behind him did he relax._\n\n_With a deep sigh he settled back on his pile of mats, wrapped himself in his army blankets, and reached for the book._\n\nWhen Atreyu awoke for the second time, he felt perfectly rested and well. He sat up.\n\nIt was night. The moon was shining bright, and Atreyu saw he was in the same place where he and the white dragon had collapsed. Falkor was still lying there. His breathing came deep and easy and he seemed to be fast asleep. His wounds had been dressed.\n\nAtreyu noticed that his own shoulder had been dressed in the same way, not with cloth but with herbs and plant fibers.\n\nOnly a few steps away there was a small cave, from which issued a faint beam of light.\n\nTaking care not to move his left arm, Atreyu stood up cautiously and approached the cave. Bending down \u2013 for the entrance was very low \u2013 he saw a room that looked like an alchemist's workshop in miniature. At the back an open fire was crackling merrily. Crucibles, retorts, and strangely shaped flasks were scattered all about. Bundles of dried plants were piled on shelves. The little table in the middle of the room and the other furniture seemed to be made of root wood, crudely nailed together.\n\nAtreyu heard a cough, and then he saw a little man sitting in an armchair by the fire. The little man's hat had been carved from a root and looked like an inverted pipe bowl. The face was as brown and shriveled as the face Atreyu had seen leaning over him when he first woke up. But this one was wearing big eyeglasses, and the features seemed sharper and more anxious. The little man was reading a big book that was lying in his lap.\n\nThen a second little figure, which Atreyu recognized as the one that had bent over him, came waddling out of another room. Now Atreyu saw that this little person was a woman. Apart from her bonnet of leaves, she \u2013 like the man in the armchair \u2013 was wearing a kind of monk's robe, which also seemed to be made of withered leaves. Humming merrily, she rubbed her hands and busied herself with a kettle that was hanging over the fire. Neither of the little people would have reached up to Atreyu's knee. Obviously they belonged to the widely ramified family of the gnomes, though to a rather obscure branch.\n\n'Woman!' said the little man testily. 'Get out of my light. You are interfering with my research!'\n\n'You and your research!' said the woman. 'Who cares about that? The important thing is my health elixir. Those two outside are in urgent need of it.'\n\n'Those two,' said the man irritably, 'will be far more in need of my help and advice.'\n\n'Maybe so,' said the little woman. 'But not until they are well. Move over, old man!'\n\nGrumbling, the little man moved his chair a short distance from the fire.\n\nAtreyu cleared his throat to call attention to his presence. The two gnomes looked around.\n\n'He's already well,' said the little man. 'Now it's my turn.'\n\n'Certainly not!' the little woman hissed. 'He'll be well when I say so. It'll be your turn when I say it's your turn.'\n\nShe turned to Atreyu.\n\n'We would invite you in, but it's not quite big enough, is it? Just a moment. We shall come out to you.'\n\nTaking a small mortar, she ground something or other into a powder, which she tossed in the kettle. Then she washed her hands, dried them on her robe, and said to the little man: 'Stay here until I call you, Engywook. Understand?'\n\n'Yes, Urgl, I understand,' the little man grumbled. 'I understand only too well.'\n\nThe female gnome came out of the cave and looked up at Atreyu from under knitted brows.\n\n'Well, well. We seem to be getting better, don't we?'\n\nAtreyu nodded.\n\nThe gnome climbed up on a rocky ledge, level with Atreyu's face, and sat down.\n\n'No pain?' she asked.\n\n'None worth mentioning,' Atreyu answered.\n\n'Nonsense!' the old woman snapped. 'Does it hurt or doesn't it?'\n\n'It still hurts,' said Atreyu, 'but it doesn't matter.'\n\n'Not to you, perhaps, but it does to me! Since when does the patient tell the doctor what matters? What do you know about it? If it's to get well, it _has to_ hurt. If it stopped hurting, your arm would be dead.'\n\n'I'm sorry,' said Atreyu, who felt like a scolded child. 'I only wanted to say... that is, I wanted to thank you.'\n\n'What for?' said Urgl impatiently. 'I'm a healer, after all. I've only done my professional duty. Besides, Engywook, that's my old man, saw the Glory hanging on your neck. So what would you expect?'\n\n'What about Falkor?' Atreyu asked. 'How's he getting along?'\n\n'Falkor? Who's that?'\n\n'The white luckdragon.'\n\n'Oh. I don't know yet. Took a little more punishment than you. But then he's bigger and stronger, so he ought to make it. Why not? Needs a little more rest. Where did you ever pick up that poison? And where have you come from all of a sudden? And where are you going? And who are you in the first place?'\n\nEngywook was standing in the mouth of the cave. He listened as Atreyu answered Urgl's questions. When Urgl opened her mouth to speak again, he shouted: 'Hold your tongue, woman! Now it's my turn.'\n\nRemoving his pipe-bowl hat, he scratched his bald head, and said: 'Don't let her tone bother you, Atreyu. Old Urgl is a little crude, but she means no harm. My name is Engywook. We are the well-known Gnomics. Ever hear of us?'\n\n'No,' Atreyu confessed.\n\nEngywook seemed rather offended.\n\n'Oh well,' he said. 'Apparently you don't move in scientific circles, or someone would undoubtedly have told you that you couldn't find a better adviser than yours truly if you're looking for Uyulala in the Southern Oracle. You've come to the right address, my boy.'\n\n'Don't give yourself airs,' Urgl broke in. Then she climbed down from her ledge and, grumbling to herself, vanished into the cave.\n\nEngywook ignored her comment.\n\n'I can explain everything,' he went on. 'I've studied the question all my life. Inside and out. I set up my observatory just for that. I'm in the last stage of a great scientific work on the Oracle. \"The Riddle of Uyulala, solved by Professor Engywook.\" That's the title. Sounds all right, doesn't it? To be published in the very near future. Unfortunately a few details are still lacking. You can help me, my boy.'\n\n'An observatory?' asked Atreyu, who had never heard the word.\n\nEngywook nodded and, beaming with pride, motioned Atreyu to follow him.\n\nA narrow path twined its way upward between great stone blocks. In some places where the grade was especially steep, tiny steps had been cut out of the stone. Of course, they were much too small for Atreyu's feet and he simply stepped over them. Even so, he had a hard time keeping up with the gnome.\n\n'Bright moonlight tonight,' said Engywook. 'You'll see them all right.'\n\n'See who?' Atreyu asked. 'Uyulala?'\n\nEngywook only frowned and shook his head.\n\nAt last they came to the top of the hill. The ground was flat, but on one side there was a natural stone parapet. In the middle of this wall there was a hole, obviously the work of gnomian hands. And behind the hole, on a stand made of root wood, stood a small telescope.\n\nEngywook looked through the telescope and made a slight adjustment by turning some screws. Then he nodded with satisfaction and invited Atreyu to look. To put himself on a level with it, Atreyu had to lie down on the ground and prop himself on his elbows.\n\nThe telescope was aimed at the great stone arch, or more specifically at the lower part of the left pillar. And beside this pillar, as Atreyu now saw, an enormous sphinx was sitting motionless in the moonlight. The forepaws, on which she was propped, were those of a lion, the hindquarters were those of a bull; on her back she bore the wings of an eagle, and her face was that of a human woman \u2013 in form at any rate, for the expression was far from human. It was hard to tell whether this face was smiling or whether it expressed deep grief or utter indifference. After looking at it for some time, Atreyu seemed to see abysmal wickedness and cruelty, but a moment later he had to correct his impression, for he found only unruffled calm.\n\n'Don't bother!' he heard the gnome's deep voice in his ear. 'You won't solve it. It's the same with everyone. I've observed it all my life and I haven't found the answer. Now for the other one.'\n\nHe turned one of the screws. The image passed the opening of the arch, through which one saw only the empty plain. Then the right-hand pillar came into Atreyu's view. And there, in the same posture, sat a second sphinx. The enormous body shimmered like liquid silver in the moonlight. She seemed to be staring fixedly at the first, just as the first was gazing fixedly at her.\n\n'Are they statues?' asked Atreyu, unable to avert his eyes.\n\n'Oh no!' said Engywook with a giggle. 'They are real live sphinxes \u2013 very much alive! You've seen enough for now. Come, we'll go down. I'll explain everything.'\n\nAnd he held his hand in front of the telescope, so that Atreyu could see no more. Neither spoke on the way back.\n\n# VI\n\n# _The Three Magic Gates_\n\nFALKOR was still sound asleep when Engywook brought Atreyu back to the gnomes' cave. In the meantime Urgl had moved the little table into the open and put on all sorts of sweets and fruit and herb jellies.\n\nThere were also little drinking cups and a pitcher of fragrant herb tea. The table was lit by two tiny oil lamps.\n\n'Sit down!' Urgl commanded. 'Atreyu must eat and drink something to give him strength. Medicine alone is not enough.'\n\n'Thank you,' said Atreyu. 'I'm feeling fine already.'\n\n'No back talk!' Urgl snapped. 'As long as you're here, you'll do as you're told. The poison in your body has been neutralized. So there's no reason to hurry, my boy. You've all the time you need. Just take it easy.'\n\n'It's not on my account,' said Atreyu. 'But the Childlike Empress is dying. Even now, every hour may count.'\n\n'Rubbish!' the old woman grumbled. 'Haste makes waste. Sit down! Eat! Drink!'\n\n'Better give in,' Engywook whispered. 'I know the woman from A to Z. When she wants something, she gets it. Besides, you and I have a lot to talk about.'\n\nAtreyu squatted cross-legged at the tiny table and fell to. Every bite and every swallow made him feel as if warm, golden life were flowing into his veins. Only then did he notice how weak he had been.\n\n_Bastian's mouth watered. It seemed to him that he could smell the aroma of the gnomes' meal. He sniffed the air, but of course it was only imagination._\n\n_His stomach growled audibly. In the end he couldn't stand it any longer. He took his apple and the rest of his sandwich out of his satchel and ate them both. After that, though far from full, he felt a little better._\n\n_Then he realized that this was his last meal. The word 'last' terrified him. He tried not to think of it._\n\n'Where do you get all these good things?' Atreyu asked Urgl.\n\n'Ah, sonny,' she said. 'It takes lots of running around to find the right plants. But he \u2013 this knuckleheaded Engywook of mine \u2013 insists on living here because of his all-important studies. Where the food is to come from is the least of his worries.'\n\n'Woman,' said Engywook with dignity, 'how would you know what's important and what isn't? Be off with you now, and let us talk.'\n\nMumbling and grumbling, Urgl withdrew into the little cave and a moment later Atreyu heard a great clatter of pots and pans.\n\n'Don't mind her,' said Engywook under his breath. 'She's a good old soul, she just needs something to grumble about now and then. Listen to me, Atreyu. I'm going to let you in on a few things you need to know about the Southern Oracle. It's not easy to get to Uyulala. In fact, it's rather difficult. But I don't want to give you a scientific lecture. Maybe it will be better if you ask questions. I tend to lose myself in details. Just fire away.'\n\n'All right,' said Atreyu. 'Who or what is Uyulala?'\n\nEngywook gave him an angry look. 'Botheration!' he spluttered. 'You're so blunt, so direct. Just like my old woman. Couldn't you start with something else?'\n\nAtreyu thought a while. Then he asked: 'That big stone gate with the sphinxes. Is that the entrance?'\n\n'That's better,' said Engywook. 'Now we'll get somewhere. Yes, that gate is the entrance, but then come two more gates. And Uyulala's home is behind the third \u2013 if one can speak of her having a home.'\n\n'Have you yourself ever been with her?'\n\n'Don't be absurd!' replied Engywook, again somewhat nettled. 'I am a scientist. I have collected and collated the statements of all the individuals who have been there. The ones who have come back, that is. Very important work. I can't afford to take personal risks. It could interfere with my work.'\n\n'I see,' said Atreyu. 'Now what about these three gates?'\n\nEngywook stood up, folded his hands behind his back, and paced.\n\n'The first,' he lectured, 'is known as the Great Riddle Gate; the second is the Magic Mirror Gate; and the third is the No-Key Gate...'\n\n'Strange,' Atreyu broke in. 'As far as I could see, there was nothing behind that stone gate but an empty plain. Where are the other gates?'\n\n'Be still!' Engywook scolded. 'How can I make myself clear if you keep interrupting? It's very complicated: The second gate isn't there until a person has gone through the first. And the third isn't there until the person has the second behind him. And Uyulala isn't there until he has passed through the third. Simply not there. Do you understand?'\n\nAtreyu nodded, but preferred to say nothing for fear of irritating the gnome.\n\n'Through my telescope you have seen the first, the Great Riddle Gate. And the two sphinxes. That gate is always open. Obviously. There's nothing to close. But even so, no one can get through' \u2013 here Engywook raised a tiny forefinger \u2013 'unless the sphinxes close their eyes. And do you know why? The gaze of a sphinx is different from the gaze of any other creature. You and I and everyone else \u2013 our eyes take something in. We see the world. A sphinx sees nothing. In a sense she is blind. But her eyes send something out. And what do her eyes send out? All the riddles of the universe. That's why these sphinxes are always looking at each other. Because only another sphinx can stand a sphinx's gaze. So try to imagine what happens to one who ventures into the area where those two gazes meet. He freezes to the spot, unable to move until he has solved all the riddles of the world. If you go there, you'll find the remains of those poor devils.'\n\n'But,' said Atreyu, 'didn't you say that their eyes sometimes close? Don't they have to sleep now and then?'\n\n'Sleep?' Engywook was shaken with giggles. 'Goodness gracious! A sphinx sleep? I should say not. You really are an innocent. Still, there's some point to your question. All my research, in fact, hinges on that particular point. The sphinxes shut their eyes for some travelers and let them through. The question that no one has answered up until now is this: Why one traveler and not another? Because you mustn't suppose they let wise, brave, or good people through, and keep the stupid, cowardly, and wicked out. Not a bit of it! With my own eyes I've seen them admit stupid fools and treacherous knaves, while decent, sensible people have given up after being kept waiting for months. And it seems to make no difference whether a person has some serious reason for consulting the Oracle, or whether he's just come for the fun of it.'\n\n'Haven't your investigations suggested some explanation?' Atreyu asked.\n\nAngry flashes darted from Engywook's eyes.\n\n'Have you been listening or haven't you? Didn't I just say that so far no one has answered that question? Of course, I've worked up a few theories over the years. At first I thought the sphinxes' judgment might be guided by certain physical characteristics \u2013 size, beauty, strength, and so on. But I soon had to drop that idea. Then I toyed with numerical patterns. The idea, for instance, that three out of five were regularly excluded, or that only prime-numbered candidates were admitted. That worked pretty well for the past, but for forecasting it was no use at all. Since then I've come to the conclusion that the sphinxes' decision is based on pure chance and that no principle whatever is involved. But my wife calls my conclusion scandalous, un-Fantastican, and absolutely unscientific.'\n\n'Are you starting your old nonsense again?' came Urgl's angry voice from the cave. 'Shame on you! Such skepticism only shows that the bit of brain you once had has dried up on you.'\n\n'Hear that?' said Engywook with a sigh. 'And the worst of it is that she's right.'\n\n'What about the Childlike Empress's amulet?' Atreyu asked. 'Do you think they'll respect it? They too are natives of Fantastica, after all.'\n\n'Yes, I suppose they are,' said Engywook, shaking his apple-sized head. 'But to respect it they'd have to _see_ it. And they don't see anything. But their gaze would strike you. And I'm not so sure the sphinxes would obey the Childlike Empress. Maybe they are greater than she is. I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, it's most worrisome.'\n\n'Then what do you advise?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'You will have to do what all the others have done. Wait and see what the sphinxes decide \u2013 without hoping to know why.'\n\nAtreyu nodded thoughtfully.\n\nUrgl came out of the cave. In one hand she held a bucket with some steaming liquid in it, and under her other arm she was carrying a bundle of dried plants. Muttering to herself, she went to the luckdragon, who was still lying motionless, fast asleep. She started climbing around on him and changing the dressings on his wounds. Her enormous patient heaved one contented sigh and stretched; otherwise he seemed unaware of her ministrations.\n\n'Couldn't you make yourself a little useful,' she said to Engywook as she was hurrying back to the kitchen, 'instead of sitting around like this, talking rubbish?'\n\n'I am making myself _extremely_ useful,' her husband called after her. 'Possibly more useful than you, but that's more than a simple-minded woman like you will ever understand!'\n\nTurning to Atreyu, he went on: 'She can only think of practical matters. She has no feeling for the great overarching ideas.'\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck three._\n\n_By now Bastian's father must have noticed \u2013 if he was ever going to \u2013 that Bastian hadn't come home. Would he worry? Maybe he'd go looking for him. Maybe he had already notified the police. Maybe calls had gone out over the radio. Bastian felt a sick pain in the pit of his stomach._\n\n_But if the police had been notified, where would they look for him? Could they possibly come to this attic?_\n\n_Had he locked the door when he came back from the toilet? He couldn't remember. He got up and checked. Yes, the door was locked and bolted._\n\n_Outside, the November afternoon was drawing to a close. Ever so slowly the light was failing._\n\n_To steady his nerves, Bastian paced the floor for a while. Looking about him, he discovered quite a few things one wouldn't have expected to find in a school. For instance, a battered old Victrola with a big horn attached \u2013 God only knew when and by whom it had been brought here. In one corner there were some paintings in ornate gilt frames. They were so faded that hardly anything could be made out \u2013 only here and there a pale, solemn-looking face that shimmered against a dark background. And then there was a rusty, seven-armed candelabrum, still holding the stumps of thick wax candles, bearded with drippings._\n\n_Bastian gave a sudden start, for looking into a dark corner he saw_\n\n_someone moving. But when he looked again, it dawned on him that he had only seen himself, reflected in a large mirror that had lost half its silvering. He went closer and looked at himself for a while. He was really nothing much to look at, with his pudgy build and his bow legs and pasty face. He shook his head and said aloud: 'No!'_\n\n_Then he went back to his mats. By then it was so dark that he had to hold the book up to his eyes._\n\n'Where were we?' Engywook asked.\n\n'At the Great Riddle Gate,' Atreyu reminded him.\n\n'Right. Now suppose you've managed to get through. Then \u2013 and only then \u2013 the second gate will be there for you. The Magic Mirror Gate. As I've said, I myself have not been able to observe it, what I tell you has been gleaned from travelers' accounts. This second gate is both open and closed. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It might be better to say: neither closed nor open. Though that doesn't make it any less crazy. The point is that this gate seems to be a big mirror or something of the kind, though it's made neither of glass nor of metal. What it is made of, no one has ever been able to tell me. Anyway, when you stand before it, you see yourself. But not as you would in an ordinary mirror. You don't see your outward appearance; what you see is your real innermost nature. If you want to go through, you have to \u2013 in a manner of speaking \u2013 go into yourself.'\n\n'Well,' said Atreyu. 'It seems to me that this Magic Mirror Gate is easier to get through than the first.'\n\n'Wrong!' cried Engywook. Once again he began to trot back and forth in agitation. 'Dead wrong, my friend! I've known travelers who considered themselves absolutely blameless to yelp with horror and run away at the sight of the monster grinning out of the mirror at them. We had to care for some of them for weeks before they were even able to start home.'\n\n'We!' growled Urgl, who was passing with another bucket. 'I keep hearing \"we\". When did _you_ ever take care of anybody?'\n\nEngywook waved her away.\n\n'Others,' he went on lecturing, 'appear to have seen something even more horrible, but had the courage to go through. What some saw was not so frightening, but it still cost every one of them an inner struggle. Nothing I can say would apply to all. It's a different experience each time.'\n\n'Good,' said Atreyu. 'Then at least it's _possible_ to go through this Magic Mirror Gate?'\n\n'Oh yes, of course it's possible, or it wouldn't be a gate. Where's your logic, my boy?'\n\n'But it's also possible to go around it,' said Atreyu. 'Or isn't it?'\n\n'Yes indeed,' said Engywook. 'Of course it is. But if you do that, there's nothing more behind it. The third gate isn't there until you've gone through the second. How often do I have to tell you that?'\n\n'I understand. But what about this third gate?'\n\n'That's where things get really difficult! Because, you see, the No-Key Gate is closed. Simply closed. And that's that! There's no handle and no doorknob and no keyhole. Nothing. My theory is that this single, hermetically closed door is made of Fantastican selenium. You may know that there's no way of destroying, bending, or dissolving Fantastican selenium. It's absolutely indestructible.'\n\n'Then there's no way of getting through?'\n\n'Not so fast. Not so fast, my boy. Certain individuals have got through and spoken with Uyulala. So the door can be opened.'\n\n'But how?'\n\n'Just listen. Fantastican selenium reacts to our will. It's our will that makes it unyielding. But if someone succeeds in forgetting all purpose, in wanting nothing at all \u2013 to him the gate will open of its own accord.'\n\nAtreyu looked down and said in an undertone: 'If that's the case \u2013 how can I possibly get through? How can I manage not to _want_ to get through?'\n\nEngywook sighed and nodded, nodded and sighed.\n\n'Just what I've been saying. The No-Key Gate is the hardest.'\n\n'But if I succeed after all,' Atreyu asked, 'will I then be in the Southern Oracle?'\n\n'Yes,' said the gnome.\n\n'But who or what is Uyulala?'\n\n'No idea,' said the gnome, and his eyes sparkled with fury. 'None of those who have reached her has been willing to tell me. How can I be expected to complete my scientific work if everyone cloaks himself in mysterious silence? I could tear my hair out \u2013 if I had any left. If you reach her, Atreyu, will you tell me? Will you? One of these days my thirst for knowledge will be the death of me, and no one, no one is willing to help. I beg you, promise you'll tell me.'\n\nAtreyu stood up and looked at the Great Riddle Gate, which lay bathed in moonlight.\n\n'I can't promise that, Engywook,' he said softly, 'though I'd be glad to show my gratitude. But if no one has told you who or what Uyulala is, there must be a reason. And before I know what that reason is, I can't decide whether someone who hasn't seen her with his own eyes has a right to know.'\n\n'In that case, get away from me!' screamed the gnome, his eyes literally spewing sparks. 'All I get is ingratitude! All my life I wear myself out trying to reveal a secret of universal interest. And no one helps me. I should never have bothered with you.'\n\nWith that he ran into the little cave, and a door could be heard slamming within.\n\nUrgl passed Atreyu and said with a titter: 'The old fool means no harm. But he's always running into such disappointments with this ridiculous investigation of his. He wants to go down in history as the one who has solved the great riddle. The world-famous gnome Engywook. You mustn't mind him.'\n\n'Of course not,' said Atreyu. 'Just tell him I thank him with all my heart for what he has done for me. And I thank you too. If it's allowed, I will tell him the secret \u2013 if I come back.'\n\n'Then you're leaving us?' Urgl asked.\n\n'I have to,' said Atreyu. 'There's no time to be lost. Now I shall go to the Oracle. Farewell! And in the meantime take good care of Falkor, the luckdragon.'\n\nWith that he turned away and strode toward the Great Riddle Gate.\n\nUrgl watched the erect figure with the blowing cloak vanish among the rocks and ran after him, crying: 'Lots of luck, Atreyu!'\n\nBut she didn't know whether he had heard or not. As she waddled back to her little cave, she muttered to herself: 'He'll need it all right \u2013 he'll need lots of luck.'\n\nAtreyu was now within fifty feet of the great stone gate. It was much larger than he had judged from a distance. Behind it lay a deserted plain. There was nothing to stop the eye, and Atreyu's gaze seemed to plunge into an abyss of emptiness. In front of the gate and between the two pillars Atreyu saw only innumerable skulls and skeletons \u2013 all that was left of the varied species of Fantasticans who had tried to pass through the gate but had been frozen forever by the gaze of the sphinxes.\n\nBut it wasn't these gruesome reminders that stopped Atreyu. What stopped him was the sight of the sphinxes.\n\nHe had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest \u2013 he had seen beautiful things and horrible things \u2013 but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.\n\nThe two monsters were bathed in moonlight, and as Atreyu approached them, they seemed to grow beyond measure. Their heads seemed to touch the moon, and their expression as they looked at each other seemed to change with every step he took. Currents of a terrible, unknown force flashed through the upraised bodies and still more through the almost human faces. It was as though these beings did not merely exist, in the way marble for instance exists, but as if they were on the verge of vanishing, but would recreate themselves at the same time. For that very reason they seemed far more real than anything made of stone.\n\nFear gripped Atreyu.\n\nFear not so much of the danger that threatened him as of something above and beyond his own self. It hardly grazed his mind that if the sphinxes' gaze should strike him he would freeze to the spot forever. No, what made his steps heavier and heavier, until he felt as though he were made of cold gray lead, was fear of the unfathomable, of something intolerably vast.\n\nYet he went on. He stopped looking up. He kept his head bowed and walked very slowly, foot by foot, towards the stone gate, Heavier and heavier grew his burden of fear. He thought it would crush him, but still he went on. He didn't know whether the sphinxes had closed their eyes or not. Would he be admitted? Or would this be the end of his Great Quest? He had no time to lose in worrying. He just had to take his chances.\n\nAt a certain point he felt sure that he had not enough will power left to carry him a single step forward. And just then he heard the echo of his footfalls within the great vaulted gate. Instantly every last shred of fear fell from him, and he knew that whatever might happen he would never again be afraid.\n\nLooking up, he saw that the Great Riddle Gate lay behind him. The sphinxes had let him through.\n\nUp ahead, no more than twenty paces away, where previously there had been nothing but the great empty plain, he saw the Magic Mirror Gate. This gate was large and round like a second moon (for the real moon was still shining high in the sky) and it glittered like polished silver. It was hard to imagine how anyone could pass through a metal surface, but Atreyu didn't hesitate for a moment. After what Engywook had said, he expected a terrifying image of himself to come toward him out of the mirror, but now that he had left all fear behind him, he hardly gave the matter a thought.\n\nWhat he saw was something quite unexpected, which wasn't the least bit terrifying, but which baffled him completely. He saw a fat little boy with a pale face \u2013 a boy his own age \u2013 and this little boy was sitting on a pile of mats, reading a book. The little boy had large, sad-looking eyes, and he was wrapped in frayed gray blankets. Behind him a few motionless animals could be distinguished in the half-light \u2013 an eagle, an owl, and a fox \u2013 and farther off there was something that looked like a white skeleton. He couldn't make out exactly what it was.\n\n_Bastian gave a start when he realized what he had just read. Why, that was him! The description was right in every detail. The book trembled in his hands. This was going too far. How could there be something in a book that applied only to this particular moment and only to him? It could only be a crazy accident. But a very remarkable accident._\n\n_'Bastian,' he said aloud, 'you really are a screwball. Pull yourself together.'_\n\n_He had meant to say this very sternly, but his voice quavered a little, for he was not quite sure that what had happened was an accident._\n\n_Just imagine, he thought. What if they've really heard of me in Fantastica! Wouldn't that be wonderful?_\n\n_But he didn't dare say it aloud._\n\nA faint smile of astonishment played over Atreyu's lips as he passed into the mirror image \u2013 he was rather surprised that he was succeeding so easily in something that others had found insuperably difficult. But on the way through he felt a strange, prickly shudder. He had no suspicion of what had really happened to him.\n\nFor when he emerged on the far side of the Magic Mirror Gate, he had lost all memory of himself, of his past life, aims, and purposes. He had forgotten the Great Quest that had brought him there, and he didn't even know his own name. He was like a newborn child.\n\nUp ahead of him, only a few steps away, he saw the No-Key Gate, but he had forgotten its name and forgotten that his purpose in passing through it was to reach the Southern Oracle. He had no idea why he was there or what he was supposed to do. He felt light and cheerful and he laughed for no reason, for the sheer pleasure of it.\n\nThe gate he saw before him was as small and low as a common door and stood all by itself \u2013 with no walls around it \u2013 on the empty plain. And this door was closed.\n\nAtreyu looked at it for a while. It seemed to be made of some material with a coppery sheen. It was nice to look at, but Atreyu soon lost interest. He went around the gate and examined it from behind, but the back looked no different than the front. And there was neither handle nor knob nor keyhole. Obviously this door could not be opened, and anyway why would anyone want to open it, since it led nowhere and was just standing there. For behind the gate there was only the wide, flat, empty plain.\n\nAtreyu felt like leaving. He turned back, went around the Magic Mirror Gate, and looked at it for some time without realizing what it was. He decided to go away,\n\n_'No, no, don't_ _go away,' said Bastian aloud. 'Turn around. You have to go through the No-Key Gate!'_\n\nbut then turned back to the No-Key Gate. He wanted to look at its coppery sheen again. Once more, he stood in front of the gate, bending his head to the left, bending it to the right, enjoying himself. Tenderly he stroked the strange material. It felt warm and almost alive. And the door opened by a crack.\n\nAtreyu stuck his head through, and then he saw something he hadn't seen on the other side when he had walked around the gate. He pulled his head back, looked past the gate, and saw only the empty plain. He looked again through the crack in the door and saw a long corridor formed by innumerable huge columns. And farther off there were stairs and more pillars and terraces and more stairs and a whole forest of columns. But none of these columns supported a roof. For above them Atreyu could see the night sky.\n\nHe passed through the gate and looked around him with wonderment. The door closed behind him.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck four._\n\n_Little by little, the murky light was failing. It was getting too dark to read by. Bastian put the book down._\n\n_What was he to do now?_\n\n_There was bound to be electric light in this attic. He groped his way to the door and ran his hand along the wall, but couldn't find a switch. He looked on the opposite side, and again there was none._\n\n_He took a box of matches from his trouser pocket_ ( _he always had matches on him, for he had a weakness for making little fires_ ) _, but they were damp and the first three wouldn't light. In the faint glow of the fourth he tried to locate a light switch, but there wasn't any. The thought of having to spend the whole evening and night here in total darkness gave him the cold shivers. He was no baby, and at home or in any other familiar place he had no fear of the dark, but this enormous attic with all these weird things in it was something else again._\n\n_The match burned his fingers and he threw it away._\n\n_For a while he just stood there and listened. The rain had let up and now he could barely hear the drumming on the big tin roof._\n\n_Then he remembered the rusty, seven-armed candelabrum he had seen. He groped his way across the room, found the candelabrum, and dragged it to his pile of mats._\n\n_He lit the wicks in the thick stubs \u2013 all seven \u2013 and a golden light spread. The flames crackled faintly and wavered now and then in the draft._\n\n_With a sigh of relief, Bastian picked up the book._\n\n# VII\n\n# _The Voice of Silence_\n\nGLADNESS buoyed Atreyu's heart as he strode into the forest of columns which cast black shadows in the bright moonlight. In the deep silence that surrounded him he barely heard his own footfalls. He no longer knew who he was or what his name was, how he had got there or what he was looking for. He was full of wonder, but quite undismayed.\n\nThe floor was made of mosaic tiles, showing strange ornamental designs or mysterious scenes and images. Atreyu passed over it, climbed broad steps, came to a vast terrace, descended another set of steps, and passed down a long avenue of stone columns. He examined them, one after another, and it gave him pleasure to see that each was decorated with different signs and symbols. Farther and farther he went from the No-Key Gate.\n\nAt last, when he had gone heaven knows how far, he heard a hovering sound in the distance and stopped to listen. The sound came closer, it was a singing voice, but it seemed very, very sad, almost like a sob at times. This lament passed over the columns like a breeze, then stopped in one place, rose and fell, came and went, and seemed to move in a wide circle around Atreyu.\n\nHe stood still and waited.\n\nLittle by little, the circle became smaller, and after a while he was able to understand the words the voice was singing:\n\n'Oh, nothing can happen more than once,\n\nBut all things must happen one day.\n\nOver hill and dale, over wood and stream,\n\nMy dying voice will blow away...'\n\nAtreyu turned in the direction of the voice, which darted fitfully among the columns, but he could see no one.\n\n'Who are you?' he cried.\n\nThe voice came back to him like an echo: 'Who are you?'\n\nAtreyu pondered.\n\n'Who am I?' he murmured. 'I don't know. I have a feeling that I once knew. But does it matter?'\n\nThe singing voice answered:\n\n'If questions you would ask of me,\n\nYou must speak in poetry,\n\nFor rhymeless talk that strikes my ear\n\nI cannot hear, I cannot hear...'\n\nAtreyu hadn't much practice in rhyming. This would be a difficult conversation, he thought, if the voice only understood poetry. He racked his brains for a while, then he came out with:\n\n'I hope it isn't going too far,\n\nBut could you tell me who you are?'\n\nThis time the voice answered at once:\n\n'I hear you now, your words are clear,\n\nI understand as well as hear.'\n\nAnd then, coming from a different direction, it sang:\n\n'I thank you, friend, for your good will.\n\nI'm glad that you have come to me.\n\nI am Uyulala, the voice of silence.\n\nIn the Palace of Deep Mystery.'\n\nAtreyu noticed that the voice rose and fell, but was never wholly silent. Even when it sang no words or when he was speaking, a sound hovered in the air.\n\nFor a time it seemed to stand still; then it moved slowly away from him. He ran after it and asked:\n\n'Oh, Uyulala, tell me where you're hid.\n\nI cannot see you and so wish I did.'\n\nPassing him by, the voice breathed into his ear:\n\n'Never has anyone seen me,\n\nNever do I appear.\n\nYou will never see me,\n\nAnd yet I am here.'\n\n'Then you're invisible?' he asked. But when no answer came, he remembered that he had to speak in rhyme, and asked:\n\n'Have you no body, is that what you mean?\n\nOr is it only that you can't be seen?'\n\nHe heard a soft, bell-like sound, which might have been a laugh or a sob. And the voice sang:\n\n'Yes and no and neither one.\n\nI do not appear\n\nIn the brightness of the sun\n\nAs you appear,\n\nFor my body is but sound\n\nThat one can hear but never see,\n\nAnd this voice you're hearing now\n\nIs all there is of me.'\n\nIn amazement, Atreyu followed the sound this way and that way through the forest of columns. It took him some time to get a new question ready:\n\n'Do I understand you right?\n\nYour body is this melody?\n\nBut what if you should cease to sing?\n\nWould you cease to be?'\n\nThe answer came to him from very near:\n\n'Once my song is ended,\n\nWhat comes to others soon or late,\n\nWhen their bodies pass away,\n\nWill also be my fate.\n\nMy life will last the time of my song,\n\nBut that will not be long.'\n\nNow it seemed certain that the voice was sobbing, and Atreyu, who could not understand why, hastened to ask:\n\n'Why are you so sad? Why are you crying?\n\nYou sound so young. Why speak of dying?'\n\nAnd the voice came back like an echo:\n\n'I am only a song of lament,\n\nThe wind will blow me away.\n\nBut tell me now why you were sent.\n\nWhat have you come to say?'\n\nThe voice died away among the columns, and Atreyu turned in all directions, trying to pick it up again. For a little while he heard nothing, then, starting in the distance, the voice came quickly closer. It sounded almost impatient:\n\n'Uyulala is answer. Answers on questions feed.\n\nSo ask me what you've come to ask,\n\nFor questions are her need.'\n\nAtreyu cried out:\n\n'Then help me, Uyulala, tell me why\n\nYou sing a plaint as if you soon must die.'\n\nAnd the voice sang:\n\n'The Childlike Empress is sick,\n\nAnd with her Fantastica will die.\n\nThe Nothing will swallow this place,\n\nIt will perish and so will I.\n\nWe shall vanish into the Nowhere and Never,\n\nAs though we had never been.\n\nThe Empress needs a new name\n\nTo make her well again.'\n\nAtreyu pleaded:\n\n'Oh, tell me, Uyulala, oh, tell me who can give\n\nThe Childlike Empress the name, which alone will let her live.'\n\nThe voice replied:\n\n'Listen and listen well\n\nTo the truth I have to tell.\n\nThough your spirit may be blind\n\nTo the sense of what I say,\n\nPrint my words upon your mind\n\nBefore you go away.\n\nLater you may dredge them up\n\nFrom the depths of memory,\n\nRaise them to the light of day\n\nExactly as they flow from me.\n\nEverything depends on whether\n\nYou remember faithfully.'\n\nFor a time he heard only a plaintive sound without words. Then suddenly the voice came from right next to him, as though someone were whispering into his ear:\n\n'Who can give the Childlike Empress\n\nThe new name that will make her well?\n\nNot you, not I, no elf, no djinn,\n\nCan save us from the evil spell.\n\nFor we are figures in a book \u2013\n\nWe do what we were invented for,\n\nBut we can fashion nothing new\n\nAnd cannot change from what we are.\n\nBut there's a realm outside Fantastica,\n\nThe Outer World is its name,\n\nThe people who live there are rich indeed\n\nAnd not at all the same.\n\nBorn of the Word, the children of man,\n\nOr humans, as they're sometimes called,\n\nHave had the gift of giving names\n\nEver since our worlds began,\n\nIn every age it's they who gave\n\nThe Childlike Empress life,\n\nFor wondrous new names have the power to save.\n\nBut now for many and many a day,\n\nNo human has visited Fantastica,\n\nFor they no longer know the way.\n\nThey have forgotten how real we are,\n\nThey don't believe in us anymore.\n\nOh, if only one child of man would come,\n\nOh, then at last the thing would be done.\n\nIf only one would hear our plea.\n\nFor them it is near, but for us too far,\n\nNever can we go out to them,\n\nFor theirs is the world of reality.\n\nBut tell me, my hero, you so young,\n\nWill you remember what I have sung?'\n\n'Oh yes!' cried Atreyu in his bewilderment. He was determined to imprint every word on his memory, though he had forgotten what for. He merely had a feeling that it was very, very important. But the singsong voice and the effort of hearing and speaking in rhymes made him sleepy. He murmured:\n\n'I will remember. I will remember every word.\n\nBut tell me, what shall I do with what I've heard?'\n\nAnd the voice answered:\n\n'That is for you alone to decide.\n\nI've told you what was in my heart.\n\nSo this is when our ways divide,\n\nWhen you and I must part.'\n\nAlmost half asleep, Atreyu asked:\n\n'But if you go away,\n\nWhere will you stay?'\n\nAgain he heard the sobbing in the voice, which receded more and more as it sang:\n\n'The Nothing has come near,\n\nThe Oracle is dying.\n\nNo one again will hear\n\nUyulala laughing, sighing.\n\nYou are the last to hear\n\nMy voice among the columns,\n\nSounding far and near.\n\nPerhaps you will accomplish\n\nWhat no one else has done,\n\nBut to succeed, young hero,\n\nRemember what I have sung.'\n\nAnd then, farther and farther in the distance, Atreyu heard the words:\n\n'Oh, nothing can happen more than once,\n\nBut all things must happen one day.\n\nOver hill and dale, over wood and stream,\n\nMy dying voice will blow away.'\n\nThat was the last Atreyu heard.\n\nHe sat down, propped his back against a column, looked up at the night sky, and tried to understand what he had heard. Silence settled around him like a soft, warm cloak, and he fell asleep.\n\nWhen he awoke in the cold dawn, he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky. The last stars paled. Uyulala's voice still sounded in his thoughts. And then suddenly he remembered everything that had gone before and the purpose of his Great Quest.\n\nAt last he knew what was to be done. Only a human, a child of man, someone from the world beyond the borders of Fantastica, could give the Childlike Empress a new name. He would just have to find a human and bring him to her.\n\nBriskly he sat up.\n\n_Ah, thought Bastian. How gladly I would help her! Her and Atreyu too. What a beautiful name I would think up! If I only knew how to reach Atreyu. I'd go this minute. Wouldn't he be amazed if I were suddenly standing before him! But it's impossible. Or is it?_\n\n_And then he said under his breath: 'If there's any way of my getting to you in Fantastica, tell me, Atreyu. I'll come without fail. You'll see.'_\n\nWhen Atreyu looked around, he saw that the forest of columns with its stairways and terraces had vanished. Whichever way he looked there was only the empty plain that he had seen behind each of the three gates before going through. But now the gates were gone, all three of them.\n\nHe stood up and again looked in all directions. It was then that he discovered, in the middle of the plain, a patch of Nothing like those he had seen in Howling Forest. But this time it was much nearer. He turned around and ran the other way as fast as he could.\n\nHe had been running for some time when he saw, far in the distance, a rise in the ground and thought it might be the stony rust-red mountains where the Great Riddle Gate was.\n\nHe started toward it, but he had a long way to go before he was close enough to make out any details. Then he began to have doubts. The landscape looked about right, but there was no gate to be seen. And the stones were not red, but dull gray.\n\nThen, when he had gone much farther, he saw two great stone pillars with a space between them. The lower part of a gate, he thought. But there was no arch above it. What had happened?\n\nHours later, he reached the spot and discovered the answer. The great stone arch had collapsed and the sphinxes were gone.\n\nAtreyu threaded his way through the ruins, then climbed to the top of a stone pyramid and looked out, trying to locate the place where he had left the Gnomics and the luckdragon. Or had they fled from the Nothing in the meantime?\n\nAt last he saw a tiny flag moving this way and that behind the balustrade of Engywook's observatory. Atreyu waved both arms, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted: 'Ho! Are you still there?'\n\nThe sound of his voice had hardly died away when a pearly-white luckdragon rose from the hollow where the gnomes had their cave and flew through the air with lazy, sinuous movements. He must have been feeling playful, for now and then he turned over on his back and looped-the-loop so fast that he looked like a burst of white flame. And then he landed not far from the pyramid where Atreyu was standing. When he propped himself on his forepaws, he was so high above Atreyu that to bring his head close to him, he had to bend his long, supple neck sharply downward. Rolling his ruby-red eyeballs for joy, stretching his tongue far out of his wide-open gullet, he boomed in his bronze-bell voice: 'Atreyu, my friend and master! So you've finally come back! I'm so glad! We had almost given up hope \u2013 the gnomes, that is, not I.'\n\nI'm glad too!' said Atreyu. 'But what has happened in this one night?'\n\n'One night?' cried Falkor. 'Do you think it's been only one night? You're in for a surprise. Climb on, I'll carry you.'\n\nAtreyu swung himself up on the enormous animal's back. It was his first time aboard a luckdragon. And though he had ridden wild horses and was anything but timid, this first short ride through the air took his breath away. He clung fast to Falkor's flowing mane, and Falkor called back with a resounding laugh: 'You'll just have to get used to it.'\n\n'At least,' Atreyu called back, gasping for air, 'you seem to be well again.'\n\n'Pretty near,' said the dragon. 'Not quite.'\n\nThen they landed outside the gnomes' cave, and there in the entrance were Engywook and Urgl waiting for them.\n\nEngywook's tongue went right to work: 'What have you seen and done? Tell us all about it! Those gates, for instance? Do they bear out my theories? And who or what is Uyulala?'\n\nBut Urgl cut him off. 'That'll do! Let the boy eat and drink. What do you think I've cooked and baked for? Plenty of time later for your idle curiosity.'\n\nAtreyu climbed down off the dragon's back and exchanged greetings with the gnomes. Again the little table was set with all sorts of delicacies and a steaming pot of herb tea.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck five. Bastian thought sadly of the two chocolate nut bars that he kept in his bedside table at home in case he should be hungry at night. If he had suspected that he would never go back there, he could have brought them along as an iron ration. But it was too late to think of that now._\n\nFalkor stretched out in the little gully in such a way that his huge head was near Atreyu and he could hear everything.\n\n'Just imagine,' he said. 'My friend and master thinks he was gone for only one night.'\n\n'Was it longer?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'Seven days and seven nights,' said Falkor. 'Look, my wounds are almost healed.'\n\nThen for the first time Atreyu noticed that his own wound too was healed. The herb dressing had fallen off. He was amazed. 'How can it be? I passed through three magic gates. I talked with Uyulala, then I fell asleep. But I can't possibly have slept that long.'\n\n'Space and time,' said Engywook, 'must be different in there. Anyway, no one has ever stayed in the Oracle as long as you. What happened? Are you finally going to speak?'\n\n'First,' said Atreyu, 'I'd like to know what has happened here.'\n\n'You can see for yourself,' said Engywook. 'The colors are all fading. Everything is getting more and more unreal. The Great Riddle Gate isn't there anymore. It looks as if the Nothing were taking over.'\n\n'What about the sphinxes? Where have they gone? Did they fly away? Did you see them go?'\n\n'We saw nothing,' Engywook lamented. 'We hoped you could tell us something. Suddenly the stone gate was in ruins, but none of us saw or heard a thing. I even went over and examined the wreckage. And do you know what I found? The fragments are as old as the hills and overgrown with gray moss, as if they had been lying there for hundreds of years, as if the Great Riddle Gate had never existed.'\n\n'It was there, though,' said Atreyu under his breath, 'because I went through it. And then I went through the Magic Mirror Gate and the No-Key Gate.'\n\nAnd then Atreyu reported everything that had happened to him. Now he remembered every last detail.\n\nAs Atreyu told them his story, Engywook, who at first had impatiently demanded further information, became more and more subdued. And when Atreyu repeated almost word for word what Uyulala had told him, the gnome said nothing at all. His shriveled little face had taken on a look of deepest gloom.\n\n'Well,' said Atreyu in conclusion. 'Now you know the secret. Uyulala is just a voice. She can only be heard. She _is_ where she sings.'\n\nFor a time Engywook was silent. When he spoke, his voice was husky: 'You mean she _was._ '\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'She herself said no one else would ever hear her speak. I was the last.'\n\nTwo little tears flowed down Engywook's wrinkled cheeks.\n\n'All for nothing!' he croaked. 'My whole life work, all my research, my year-long observations. At last someone brings me the last stone for my scientific edifice, finally I'm in a position to complete my work, to write the last chapter \u2013 and it's absolutely futile and superfluous. It's no longer of the slightest interest to anyone, because the object under investigation has ceased to exist. There go my hopes. All shattered.'\n\nHe seemed to break into a fit of coughing, but actually he was shaken with sobs.\n\nMoved to sympathy, Urgl stroked his bald little head and mumbled: 'Poor old Engywook! Poor old Engywook! Don't let it get you down. You'll find something else to occupy you.'\n\n'Woman!' Engywook fumed at her. 'What you see before you is not a poor old Engywook, but a tragic figure.'\n\nOnce again he ran into the cave, and again a door was heard slamming within. Urgl shook her head and sighed. 'He means no harm,' she muttered. 'He's a good old sort. If only he weren't plumb crazy!'\n\nWhen they had finished eating, Urgl stood up and said: 'I've got to pack now. We can't take much with us, but we will need a few things. I'd better hurry.'\n\n'You're going away?' Atreyu asked.\n\nUrgl nodded. 'We have no choice,' she said sadly. 'Where the Nothing takes hold, nothing grows. And now, my poor old man has no reason to stay. We'll just have to see how we make out. We'll find a place somewhere. But what about you? What are your plans?'\n\n'I have to do as Uyulala told me,' said Atreyu. 'Try and find a human and take him to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name.'\n\n'Where will you look for this human?' Urgl asked.\n\n'I don't know,' said Atreyu. 'Somewhere beyond the borders of Fantastica.'\n\n'We'll get there!' came Falkor's bell-like voice. 'I'll carry you. You'll see, we'll be lucky.'\n\n'In that case,' Urgl grunted, 'you'd better get started.'\n\n'Maybe we could give you a lift,' Atreyu suggested. 'For part of the way.'\n\n'That's all I need,' said Urgl. 'You won't catch me gallivanting around in the air. A self-respecting gnome keeps his feet on the ground. Besides, you mustn't let us delay you. You have more important things to do \u2013 for us all.'\n\n'But I want to show my gratitude,' said Atreyu.\n\n'The best way of doing that is to get started and stop frittering the time away with useless jibber-jabber.'\n\n'She's got something there,' said Falkor. 'Let's go, Atreyu.'\n\nAtreyu swung himself up on the luckdragon's back. One last time he turned back and shouted: 'Goodbye!'\n\nBut Urgl was already inside the cave, packing.\n\nWhen some hours later she and Engywook stepped out into the open, each was carrying an overloaded back-basket, and again they were busily quarreling. Off they waddled on their tiny, crooked legs, and never once looked back.\n\nLater on, Engywook became very famous, in fact, he became the most famous gnome in the world, but not because of his scientific investigations. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nAt the moment when the two gnomes were starting out, Atreyu was far away, whizzing through the skies of Fantastica on the back of Falkor, the white luckdragon.\n\n_Involuntarily Bastian looked up at the skylight, trying to imagine how it would be if Falkor came cutting through the darkening sky like a dancing white flame, if he and Atreyu were coming to get him._\n\n_'Oh my,' he sighed. 'Wouldn't that be something!'_\n\n_He could help them, and they could help him. He would be saved and so would Fantastica._\n\n# VIII\n\n# _The Wind Giants_\n\nHIGH in the air rode Atreyu, his red cloak flowing behind him. His blue-black hair fluttered in the wind. With steady, wavelike movements Falkor, the white luckdragon, glided through the mists and tatters of clouds...\n\nUp and down and up and down and up and down...\n\nHow long had they been flying? For days and nights and more days \u2013 Atreyu had lost track. The dragon had the gift of flying in his sleep. Farther and farther they flew. Sometimes Atreyu dozed off, clinging fast to the dragon's white mane. But it was only a light, restless sleep. And more and more his waking became a dream, all hazy and blurred.\n\nShadowy mountains passed below him, lands and seas, islands and rivers... Atreyu had lost interest in them, and gave up trying to hurry Falkor as he had done on first leaving the Southern Oracle. For then he had been impatient, thinking it a simple matter, for one with a dragon to ride, to reach the border of Fantastica and cross it to the Outer World.\n\nHe hadn't known how very large Fantastica was.\n\nNow he had to fight the leaden weariness that was trying to overpower him. His eyes, once as keen as a young eagle's, had lost their distant vision. From time to time he would pull himself upright and try to look around, but then he would sink back and stare straight ahead at the dragon's long, supple body with its pearly pink-and-white scales. Falkor was tired too. His strength, which had seemed inexhaustible, was running out.\n\nMore than once in the course of their long flight they had seen below them spots which the Nothing had invaded and which gave them the feeling that they were going blind. Seen from that height, many of these spots seemed relatively small, but others were as big as whole countries. Fear gripped the luckdragon and his rider, and at first they changed direction to avoid looking at the horror. But, strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often. And since the patches of Nothing became more and more frequent, the travelers were gradually getting used to them.\n\nThey had been flying in silence for quite some time when suddenly Falkor's bronze-bell tone rang out: 'Atreyu, my little master. Are you asleep?'\n\n'No,' said Atreyu, though actually he had been caught up in a terrifying dream. 'What is it, Falkor?'\n\n'I've been wondering if it wouldn't be wiser to turn back.'\n\n'Turn back? Where to?'\n\n'To the Ivory Tower. To the Childlike Empress.'\n\n'You want us to go to her empty-handed?'\n\n'I wouldn't call it that, Atreyu. What _was_ your mission?'\n\n'To discover the cause of her illness and find out what would cure it.'\n\n'But,' said Falkor, 'nothing was said about your bringing her the cure.'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'Maybe it's a mistake, trying to cross the border of Fantastica in search of a human.'\n\n'I don't see what you're driving at, Falkor. Explain yourself.'\n\n'The Childlike Empress is deathly sick,' said the dragon, 'because she needs a new name. Morla the Aged One told you that. But only a human, only a child of man from the Outer World can give her this name. Uyulala told you that. So you've actually completed your mission. It seems to me you should let the Childlike Empress know it as soon as possible.'\n\n'But it won't do her a bit of good,' Atreyu protested, 'unless I bring her the human who can save her.'\n\n'Don't be so sure,' said Falkor. 'She has much greater power than you or I. Maybe she would have no difficulty in bringing a human to Fantastica. Maybe she has ways that are unknown to you and me and everyone else in Fantastica. But to do so she needs to know what you have found out. If that's the way it is, there's no point in our trying to find a human on our own. She might even die while we're looking. But maybe if we turn back in time, we can save her.'\n\nAtreyu made no answer. The dragon could be right, he reflected. But then he could be wrong. If he went back now with his message, the Childlike Empress might very well say: What good does that do me? And now it's too late to send you out again.\n\nHe didn't know what to do. And he was tired, much too tired to decide anything.\n\n'You know, Falkor,' he said, hardly above a whisper, 'you may be right. Or you may be wrong. Let's fly on a little further. Then if we haven't come to a border, we'll turn back.'\n\n'What do you mean by a little further?' the dragon asked.\n\n'A few hours,' Atreyu murmured. 'Oh well, just _one_ hour.'\n\n'All right,' said Falkor, 'just _one_ hour.'\n\nBut that one hour was one hour too many.\n\nThey hadn't noticed that the sky in the north was black with clouds. In the west the sky was aflame, and ugly-looking clouds hung down over the horizon like seaweed. In the east a storm was rising like a blanket of gray lead, and all around it there were tatters of cloud that looked like blue ink blots. And from the south came a sulfur-yellow mist, streaked with lightning.\n\n'We seem to be getting into bad weather,' said Falkor.\n\nAtreyu looked in all directions.\n\n'Yes,' he said. 'It looks bad. But what can we do but fly on?'\n\n'It would be more sensible,' said Falkor, 'to look for shelter. If this is what I think, it's no joke.'\n\n'What _do_ you think?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'I think it's the four Wind Giants, starting one of their battles. They're almost always fighting to see which is the strongest and should rule over the others. To them it's a sort of game, because they have nothing to fear. But God help anyone who gets caught in their little tiffs.'\n\n'Can't you fly higher?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'Beyond their reach, you mean? No, I can't fly that high. And as far as I can see, there's nothing but water below us. Some enormous ocean. I don't see any place to hide in.'\n\n'Then,' said Atreyu, 'we'll just have to wait till they get here. Anyway, there's something I want to ask them.'\n\n'What?!' cried the dragon, so terrified that he jumped, in a manner of speaking, sky-high.\n\n'If they are the four Wind Giants,' Atreyu explained, 'they must know all four corners of Fantastica. If anyone can tell us where the borders are, it's them.'\n\n'Good Lord!' cried the dragon. 'You think you can just stop and chat with Wind Giants?'\n\n'What are their names?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'The one from the north,' said Falkor, 'is called Lirr, the one from the east is Baureo, the one from the south is Sheerek, and the one from the west is Mayestril. But tell me, Atreyu. What are you? Are you a little boy or a bar of iron? How come you're not afraid?'\n\n'When I passed through the sphinxes' gate,' Atreyu replied, 'I lost all my fear. And besides, I'm wearing the emblem of the Childlike Empress. Everyone in Fantastica respects it. Why shouldn't the Wind Giants?'\n\n'Oh, they will,' cried Falkor, 'they will. But they're stupid, and nothing can make them stop fighting one another. You'll see.'\n\nMeanwhile the storm clouds from all four directions had converged. It seemed to Atreyu that he was at the center of a huge funnel, which was revolving faster and faster, mixing the sulfur-yellow, the leaden gray, the blood-red, and the deep black all together. He and his white dragon were spun about in a circle like a matchstick in a great whirlpool. And then he saw the Wind Giants.\n\nActually all he saw was faces, because their limbs kept changing in every possible way \u2013 from long to short, from clear-cut to misty \u2013 and they were so knotted together in a monstrous free-for-all that it was impossible to make out their real shapes, or even how many of them there were. The faces too were constantly changing; now they were round and puffed, now stretched from top to bottom or from side to side. But at all times they could be told apart. They opened their mouths and bellowed and roared and howled and laughed at one another. They didn't even seem to notice the dragon and his rider, who were gnats in comparison to the Wind Giants.\n\nAtreyu raised himself as high as he could. With his right hand he reached for the golden amulet on his chest and shouted at the top of his lungs: 'In the name of the Childlike Empress, be still and listen.'\n\nAnd the unbelievable happened!\n\nAs though suddenly stricken dumb, they fell silent. Their mouths closed, and eight gigantic goggle-eyes were directed at AURYN. The tempest stopped and the air was deathly still.\n\n'Answer me!' cried Atreyu. 'Where are the borders of Fantastica? Do you know, Lirr?'\n\n'Not in the north,' said the black cloud face.\n\n'And you, Baureo?'\n\n'Not in the east,' said the leaden-gray cloud face.\n\n'You tell me, Sheerek!'\n\n'There is no border in the south,' said the sulfur-yellow cloud face.\n\n'Mayestril, do you know?'\n\n'No border in the west,' said the fiery-red cloud face.\n\nAnd then they all spoke as with one mouth: 'Who are you, who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress and don't know that Fantastica has no borders?'\n\nAtreyu made no reply. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him that Fantastica might have no borders whatsoever. Then his whole Quest had been for nothing.\n\nHe hardly noticed it when the Wind Giants resumed their war game. He had given up caring what would happen to him. He clung fast to the dragon's mane when they were hurled upward by a whirlwind. The lightning played around them, they were spun in a circle and almost drowned in a downpour of rain. They were sucked into a fiery wind that nearly burned them up, but a moment later a hailstorm, consisting not of stones but of icicles as long as spears, flung them downward. So it went: up and down, down and up, this way and that. The Wind Giants were fighting for power.\n\nA gust of wind turned Falkor over on his back. 'Hold tight!' he shouted.\n\nBut it was too late. Atreyu had lost his hold and fell. He fell and fell, and then he lost consciousness.\n\nWhen he came to, Atreyu was lying on white sand. He heard the sound of waves, and when he looked around he saw that he had been washed up on a beach. It was a gray, foggy day, but there was no wind. The sea was calm and there was no sign that the Wind Giants had been fighting a battle only a short time before. The beach was flat and there were no hills or rocks in sight, only a few gnarled and crooked trees which, seen through the mist, looked like great clawed hands.\n\nAtreyu sat up. Seeing his red buffalo-hair cloak a few steps away, he crawled over to it and threw it over his shoulders. To his surprise, it was almost dry. So he must have been lying there for quite a while.\n\nHow had he got there? Why hadn't he drowned?\n\nDimly he remembered arms that had carried him, and strange singing voices. Poor child, beautiful child! Hold him! Don't let him go under!\n\nPerhaps it had only been the sound of the waves.\n\nOr could it have been sea nymphs and water sprites? Probably they had seen the Glory and that was why they had saved him.\n\nInvoluntarily, he reached for the amulet \u2013 it was gone. There was no chain around his neck. He had lost the Gem.\n\n'Falkor!' he shouted as loud as he could. He jumped up and ran back and forth, shouting in all directions: 'Falkor! Falkor! Where are you?'\n\nNo answer came \u2013 only the slow, steady sound of the waves breaking against the beach.\n\nHeaven only knew where the Wind Giants had driven the white dragon. Maybe Falkor was looking for his little master in an entirely different place, miles and miles away. Maybe he wasn't even alive.\n\nNo longer was Atreyu a dragon rider, and no longer was he the Childlike Empress's messenger. He was only a little boy. And all alone.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck six._\n\n_By then it was dark outside. The rain had stopped. Not a sound to be heard. Bastian stared into the candle flames._\n\n_Then he gave a start. The floor had creaked._\n\n_He thought he heard someone breathing. He held his breath and listened. Except for the small circle of light shed by the candles, it was dark in the big attic._\n\n_Didn't he hear soft steps on the stairs? Hadn't the handle of the attic door moved ever so slowly?_\n\n_Again the floor creaked._\n\n_What if there were ghosts in this attic!_\n\n_'Nonsense!' said Bastian none too loudly. 'There's no such thing! Everyone knows that.'_\n\n_Then why were there so many stories about them?_\n\n_Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do._\n\nAtreyu wrapped himself up tight in his red cloak, for he was cold, and started inland. The country, as far as he could see through the fog, was flat and monotonous. The only change he noticed as he strode along was the appearance among the stunted trees of bushes which looked as if they were made of rusty sheet metal and were almost as hard. You could easily hurt yourself brushing against them if you weren't careful.\n\nAbout an hour later, Atreyu came to a road paved with bumpy, irregularly shaped stones. Thinking it was bound to lead somewhere, he decided to follow it but preferred to walk on the soft ground beside the bumpy paving stones. The road kept twisting and turning, though it was hard to see why, for there was no sign of any hill, pond, or stream. In that part of the country everything seemed to be crooked.\n\nAtreyu hadn't been skirting the road for very long when he heard a strange thumping sound. It was far away but coming closer. It sounded like the muffled beat of a big drum. In between beats he heard a tinkling of bells and a shrill piping that could have been made by fifes. He hid behind a bush by the side of the road and waited to see what would happen.\n\nSlowly the strange music came closer, and then the first shapes emerged from the fog. They seemed to be dancing, but it was a dance without charm or gaiety. The dancers jumped grotesquely, rolled on the ground, crawled on all fours, leapt into the air, and carried on like crazy people. But all Atreyu could hear was the slow, muffled drumbeats, the shrill fifes, and a whimpering and panting from many throats.\n\nMore and more figures appeared, the procession seemed endless. Atreyu looked at the dancers' faces; they were ashen gray and bathed in sweat, and the eyes had a wild feverish glow. Some of the dancers lashed themselves with whips.\n\nThey're mad, Atreyu thought, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.\n\nThe procession consisted mostly of night-hobs, kobolds, and ghosts. There were vampires as well, and quite a few witches, old ones with great humps and beards, but also young ones who looked beautiful and wicked. If he had had AURYN, he would have approached them and asked what was going on. As it was, he preferred to stay in his hiding place until the mad procession had passed and the last straggler vanished hopping and limping in the fog.\n\nOnly then did he venture out on the road and look after the ghostly procession. Should he follow them? He couldn't make up his mind. By that time, to tell the truth, he didn't know if there was anything that he should or should not do.\n\nFor the first time he was fully aware of how much he needed the Childlike Empress's amulet and how helpless he was without it. And not only or even mainly because of the protection it had given him \u2013 it was thanks to his own strength, after all, that he had stood up to all the hardships and terrors and the loneliness of his Quest \u2013 but as long as he had carried the emblem, he had never been at a loss for what to do. Like a mysterious compass, it had guided his thoughts in the right direction. And now that was changed, now he had no secret power to lead him.\n\nHe had no idea what to do, but he couldn't bear to stand there as though paralyzed. So he made himself follow the muffled drumming, which could still be heard in the distance.\n\nWhile making his way through the fog \u2013 always careful to keep a suitable distance between himself and the last stragglers \u2013 he tried to put his thoughts in order.\n\nWhy, oh, why hadn't he listened when Falkor advised him to fly straight to the Childlike Empress? He would have brought her Uyulala's message and returned the Gem. Without AURYN and without Falkor, he would never be able to reach her. She would wait for him till her last moment, hoping he would come, trusting him to save her and Fantastica \u2013 but in vain.\n\nThat in itself was bad enough, but still worse was what he had learned from the Wind Giants, that Fantastica had no borders. If there was no way of leaving Fantastica, then it would be impossible to call in a human from across the border. Because Fantastica was endless, its end was inevitable.\n\nBut while he was stumbling over the bumpy paving stones in the fog, Uyulala's gentle voice resounded in his memory, and a spark of hope was kindled in his heart.\n\nLots of humans had come to Fantastica in the past and given the Childlike Empress glorious new names. That's what she had sung. So there was a way from the one world to the other!\n\n'For them it is near, but for us too far,\n\nNever can we go out to them.'\n\nYes, those were Uyulala's words. Humans, the children of man, had forgotten the way. But mightn't just one of them, a single one, remember?\n\nHis own hopeless situation mattered little to Atreyu. What mattered was that a human should hear Fantastica's cry of distress and come to the rescue, as had happened many times before. Perhaps, perhaps one had already started out and was on his way.\n\n_'Yes! Yes!' Bastian shouted. Then, terrified of his own voice, he added more softly: 'I'd go and help you if I knew how. I don't know the way, Atreyu. I honestly don't.'_\n\nThe muffled drumbeats and the shrill piping had stopped. Without noticing it, Atreyu had come so close to the procession that he almost ran into the last stragglers. Since he was barefoot, his steps were soundless \u2013 but that wasn't why those creatures took no notice of him. He could have been stomping with hobnailed boots and shouting at the top of his lungs without attracting their attention.\n\nBy that time the procession had broken up and the spooks were scattered over a large muddy field interspersed with gray grass. Some swayed from side to side, others stood or sat motionless, but in all their eyes there was a feverish glow, and they were all looking in the same direction.\n\nThen Atreyu saw what they were staring at in fascinated horror. On the far side of the field lay the Nothing.\n\nIt was the selfsame Nothing that he had seen from the bark trolls' treetop, or on the plain where the Magic Gates of the Southern Oracle had stood, or looking down from Falkor's back \u2013 but up until then he had always seen it from a distance. This time it was close by. It cut across the entire landscape and was coming slowly but irresistibly closer.\n\nAtreyu saw that the spooks in the field ahead of him were twitching and quivering. Their limbs were convulsed and their mouths were wide open, as though they had wanted to scream or laugh, though not a sound came out of them. And then all at once \u2013 like leaves driven by a gust of wind \u2013 they rushed toward the Nothing. They leapt, they rolled, they flung themselves into it.\n\nThe last of the ghostly crowd had just vanished when Atreyu felt to his horror that his own body was beginning to take short, convulsive steps in the direction of the Nothing. He felt drawn to it by an unreasoning desire, and braced his will against it. He commanded himself to stand still. Slowly, very slowly, he managed to turn around and step by step, as though bucking a powerful current, to struggle forward. The force of attraction weakened and he ran, ran with all his might over the bumpy paving stones. He slipped, fell, picked himself up, and ran on. He had no time to wonder where this foggy road would lead him.\n\nHe followed the senseless twists and turns of the road until high pitch-black ramparts appeared in the fog ahead of him. Behind them several crooked towers jutted into the gray sky. The heavy wooden wings of the town gate were rotting away and hung loose on rusty hinges.\n\nAtreyu went in.\n\n_It was growing colder and colder in the attic. Bastian's teeth were chattering._\n\n_What if he should get sick \u2013 what would become of him then? He might come down with pneumonia, like Willy, a boy in his class. Then he would die all alone in this attic. There'd be no one to help him._\n\n_He'd have been very glad just then to have his father come and save him._\n\n_But go home? No, he couldn't. He'd rather die._\n\n_He took the rest of the army blankets and wrapped them around him._\n\n_After a while he felt warmer._\n\n# IX\n\n# _Spook City_\n\nIN the endless sky, somewhere above the roaring waves, Falkor's voice rang out like a great bronze bell:\n\n'Atreyu! Where are you, Atreyu?' The Wind Giants had long finished their war game and had stormed apart. They would meet again in this or some other place, to continue their battle as they had done since time immemorial. They had already forgotten the white dragon and his little rider, for they remembered nothing and knew nothing except their own enormous power.\n\nWhen Atreyu fell, Falkor tried to reach him and catch him. But a sudden whirlwind had driven the dragon upward and far away. When he returned, the Wind Giants were raging over another part of the sea. Falkor tried desperately to find the place where Atreyu had fallen, but even a white luckdragon can't possibly find anything as tiny as a little boy in the seething foam of an angry ocean.\n\nBut Falkor wouldn't give up. He flew high into the air to get a better view, then he skimmed the waves or flew in larger and larger circles, all the while calling Atreyu by name.\n\nBeing a luckdragon, he never doubted for a moment that everything would come out all right in the end. And his mighty voice resounded amid the roaring of the waves: 'Atreyu! Atreyu, where are you?'\n\nAtreyu wandered through the deathly stillness of a deserted city. The place seemed to be under a curse, a city of haunted castles and houses, inhabited only by ghosts. Like everything else in this country, the streets were crooked. Enormous spider webs were suspended over them, and a foul smell rose from the cellars and well shafts.\n\nAt first Atreyu darted from wall to wall for fear that someone would see him, but after a while he didn't even bother to hide. The streets and squares were deserted, and nothing stirred in the houses. He went into some of them, but found only overturned furniture, tattered curtains, broken china and glassware \u2013 signs of devastation but no inhabitants. On one table there was still a half-eaten meal, dishes with black soup in them, and some sticky chunks of something that might have been bread. He ate some of both. The taste was disgusting, but he was very hungry. It struck him as almost fitting that he should end up in this town. Just the place, he thought, for someone who had given up hope.\n\n_Bastian was weak with hunger._\n\n_For some strange reason his thoughts turned to Anna's apple strudel \u2013 the best apple strudel in the whole world._\n\n_Anna came three times a week. She would do a bit of typing for Bastian's father and put the house in order. And usually she would cook or bake something. She was a strapping, bouncy woman with an unrestrained, cheery laugh. Bastian's father was polite to her but seemed hardly aware of her presence. She was seldom able to bring a smile to his worried face. But when she was there, the place was a little more cheerful._\n\n_Though unmarried, Anna had a little daughter. Her name was Christa, she was three years younger than Bastian, and she had beautiful blond hair. At first Anna had brought Christa with her almost every time. Christa was very shy. Bastian spent hours telling her his stories, and she would sit there still as a mouse, watching him wide-eyed. She looked up to Bastian, and he was very fond of her._\n\n_But a year ago Anna had sent her daughter to a boarding school in the country. Since then she and Bastian had seldom seen each other._\n\n_Bastian had been rather cross with Anna. She had tried to explain why it was better for Christa, but he wasn't convinced._\n\n_Even so, he could never resist her apple strudel._\n\n_He wondered in his distress how long a person could go without eating._ _Three days? Two? Maybe you'd get hallucinations after twenty-four hours. On his fingers Bastian counted the hours he had been there. At least ten. Maybe more. If only he had saved his sandwich, or at least his apple._\n\n_In the flickering candlelight the glass eyes of the fox, the owl, and the huge eagle looked almost alive. Their moving shadows loomed large on the attic wall._\n\nAtreyu went out into the street again and wandered aimlessly about. He passed through neighborhoods where all the houses were small and so low that he could reach up to the eaves, and others lined with mansions many stories high, the fronts of which were adorned with statues. But all these statues were of skeletons or demons, which grimaced down at the forlorn wanderer.\n\nThen suddenly he stopped stock-still.\n\nFrom not far away he heard a raucous wailing that sounded so plaintive, so hopeless that it cut him to the heart. All the despair, all the desolation of the creatures of darkness was in that lament, which echoed back from the walls of distant buildings, until in the end it sounded like the howling of a scattered wolf pack.\n\nAtreyu followed the sound, which gradually grew weaker and ended in a hoarse sob. He had to search for some time. He passed a gateway, entered a narrow, lightless court, passed through an arch, and finally came to a damp, grimy backyard. And there, chained, lay a gigantic, half-starved werewolf. Each rib stood out separately under its mangy fur, the vertebrae looked like the teeth of a saw, and its tongue dangled from its half-open mouth.\n\nSlowly Atreyu approached him. When the werewolf noticed him, it raised its great head with a jerk. A greenish light flared up in its eyes.\n\nFor a time the two looked at each other without a word, without a sound. Finally the wolf let out a soft, dangerous-sounding growl: 'Go away. Let me die in peace.'\n\nAtreyu didn't stir. Just as softly he answered: 'I heard your call. That's why I came.'\n\nThe werewolf's head sank back. 'I didn't call anyone,' he growled. 'I was singing my own dirge.'\n\n'Who are you?' Atreyu asked, taking a step closer.\n\n'I am Gmork, the werewolf.'\n\n'Why are you lying here chained?'\n\n'They forgot me when they went away.'\n\n'Who are they?'\n\n'The ones who chained me.'\n\n'Where did they go?'\n\nGmork made no answer. He watched Atreyu from under half-closed lids. After a long silence, he said: 'You don't belong here, little stranger. Neither in this city, nor in this country. What have you come here for?'\n\nAtreyu bowed his head.\n\n'I don't know how I got here. What is the name of this city?'\n\n'It is the capital of the most famous country in all Fantastica,' said Gmork. 'More stories are told about this country and this city than about any other. Surely you've heard of Spook City and the Land of Ghosts?'\n\nAtreyu nodded slowly.\n\nGmork hadn't taken his eyes off the boy. He was amazed that this green-skinned boy should look at him so quietly out of his black eyes and show no sign of fear.\n\n'And who are you?' he asked.\n\nAtreyu thought a while before answering.\n\n'I'm Nobody.'\n\n'What do you mean by that?'\n\n'I mean that I once had a name. It can't be named anymore. That makes me Nobody.'\n\nThe werewolf bared his hideous fangs for a moment in what was no doubt intended as a smile. He was familiar with mental anguish of every kind and sensed a certain kinship in the boy.\n\n'If that's the case,' he said, 'then Nobody has heard me and Nobody has come to me, and Nobody is speaking to me in my last hour.'\n\nAtreyu nodded again. Then he asked: 'Can Nobody free you from your chain?'\n\nThe greenish light in the werewolf's eyes flickered. He began to growl and to lick his chops.\n\n'You'd really do that?' he blurted out. 'You'd really set a hungry werewolf free? Do you know what that means? Nobody would be safe from me.'\n\n'I know,' said Atreyu. 'But I'm Nobody. Why should I be afraid of you?'\n\nHe wanted to approach Gmork. But again the wolf uttered his deep, terrifying growl. The boy shrank back.\n\n'Don't you _want_ me to set you free?' he asked.\n\nAll at once the werewolf seemed very tired.\n\n'You can't do that. But if you come within my reach, I'll have to tear you to pieces, my boy. That would delay my end a little, an hour or two. So keep away from me and let me die in peace.'\n\nAtreyu thought it over.\n\n'Maybe,' he said finally. 'Maybe I can find you something to eat. I'll look around.'\n\nSlowly Gmork opened his eyes. The greenish fire had gone out of them.\n\n'Go to hell, you little fool! Do you want to keep me alive until the Nothing gets here?'\n\n'I thought,' Atreyu stammered, 'that maybe if I brought you food and you were full, I could get close enough to take off your chain...'\n\nGmork gnashed his teeth.\n\n'Do you think I wouldn't have bitten through it myself if this were an ordinary chain?'\n\nAs though to prove his point, he clamped his jaws on the chain. The chain jangled as he tugged and pulled at it. After a while he let it go.\n\n'It's a magic chain. Only the person who put it on can take it off. But she will never come back.'\n\n'Who is that?'\n\nGmork whimpered like a whipped dog. It was some time before he was calm enough to answer.\n\n'It was Gaya, the Dark Princess.'\n\n'Where has she gone?'\n\n'She has leapt into the Nothing \u2013 like everyone else around here.'\n\nAtreyu remembered the mad dancers he had seen outside the city in the foggy countryside.\n\n'Why didn't they run away?' he murmured.\n\n'Because they had given up hope. That makes you beings weak. The Nothing pulls at you, and none of you has the strength to resist it for long.'\n\nGmork gave a deep, malignant laugh.\n\n'What about yourself?' Atreyu asked. 'You speak as if you weren't one of us?'\n\nGmork watched him out of the corner of his eye.\n\n'I am not one of you.'\n\n'Then where are you from?'\n\n'Don't you know what a werewolf is?'\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n'You know only Fantastica,' said Gmork. 'There are other worlds. The world of humans, for instance. But there are creatures who have no world of their own, but are able to go in and out of many worlds. I am one of those. In the human world, I appear in human form, but I'm not human. And in Fantastica, I take on a Fantastican form \u2013 but I'm not one of you.'\n\nAtreyu sat down on the ground and gazed at the dying werewolf out of great dark eyes.\n\n'You've been in the world of humans?'\n\n'I've often gone back and forth between their world and yours.'\n\n'Gmork,' Atreyu stammered, and he couldn't keep his lips from trembling, 'can you tell me the way to the world of humans?'\n\nA green spark shone in Gmork's eyes. He seemed to be laughing deep inside.\n\n'For you and your kind it's easy to get there. There's only one hitch: You can never come back. You'll have to stay forever. Do you want to?'\n\n'What must I do?' Atreyu asked. His mind was made up.\n\n'What everyone else around here has done before you. You must leap into the Nothing. But there's no hurry. Because you'll do it sooner or later in any case, when the last parts of Fantastica go.'\n\nAtreyu stood up.\n\nGmork saw that the boy was trembling all over. Not knowing why, he spoke reassuringly: 'Don't be afraid. It doesn't hurt.'\n\n'I'm not afraid,' said Atreyu. 'But I never expected to get my hope back in a place like this. And thanks to you!'\n\nGmork's eyes glowed like two thin green moons.\n\n'You have nothing to hope for, sonny \u2013 whatever your plans may be. When you turn up in the world of humans, you won't be what you are here. That's the secret that no one in Fantastica can know.'\n\nAtreyu stood there with his arms dangling.\n\n'What will I be? Tell me the secret.'\n\nFor a long time Gmork neither spoke nor moved. Atreyu was beginning to fear that the answer would never come, but at length the werewolf breathed heavily and spoke:\n\n'What do you think I am, sonny? Your friend? Take care. I'm only passing the time with you. At the moment you can't even leave here. I hold you fast with your hope. But as I speak, the Nothing is creeping in from all sides and closing around Spook City. Soon there will be no way out. Then you will be lost. If you stay and listen, your decision is already made. But you can still escape if you choose.'\n\nThe cruel line around Gmork's mouth deepened. Atreyu hesitated for just a moment. Then he whispered: 'Tell me the secret. What will I be in the world of humans?'\n\nAgain Gmork sank into a long silence. His breath came in convulsive gasps. Then suddenly he raised himself on his forepaws. Atreyu had to look up at him. And then for the first time he saw how big and terrifying the werewolf was. When Gmork spoke, his voice was like the jangling of chains.\n\n'Have you seen the Nothing, sonny?'\n\n'Yes, many times.'\n\n'What does it look like?'\n\n'As if one were blind.'\n\n'That's right \u2013 and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You'll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?'\n\n'No,' Atreyu whispered.\n\n'Lies!' Gmork barked.\n\nAtreyu shook his head. All the blood had gone out of his lips.\n\n'How can that be?'\n\nGmork was enjoying Atreyu's consternation. This little talk was cheering him up. After a while, he went on:\n\n'You ask me what you will be there. But what are you here? What are you creatures of Fantastica? Dreams, poetic inventions, characters in a neverending story. Do you think you're real? Well yes, here in your world you are. But when you've been through the Nothing, you won't be real anymore. You'll be unrecognizable. And you will be in another world. In that world, you Fantasticans won't be anything like yourselves. You will bring delusion and madness into the human world. Tell me, sonny, what do you suppose will become of all the Spook City folk who have jumped into the Nothing?'\n\n'I don't know,' Atreyu stammered.\n\n'They will become delusions in the minds of human beings, fears where there is nothing to fear, desires for vain, hurtful things, despairing thoughts where there is no reason to despair.'\n\n'All of us?' asked Atreyu in horror.\n\n'No,' said Gmork, 'there are many kinds of delusion. According to what you are here, ugly or beautiful, stupid or clever, you will become ugly or beautiful, stupid or clever lies.'\n\n'What about me?' Atreyu asked. 'What will I be?'\n\nGmork grinned.\n\n'I won't tell you that. You'll see. Or rather, you won't see, because you won't be yourself anymore.'\n\nAtreyu stared at the werewolf with wide-open eyes.\n\nGmork went on:\n\n'That's why humans hate Fantastica and everything that comes from here. They want to destroy it. And they don't realize that by trying to destroy it they multiply the lies that keep flooding the human world. For these lies are nothing other than creatures of Fantastica who have ceased to be themselves and survive only as living corpses, poisoning the souls of men with their fetid smell. But humans don't know it. Isn't that a good joke?'\n\n'And there's no one left in the human world,' Atreyu asked in a whisper, 'who doesn't hate and fear us?'\n\n'I know of none,' said Gmork. 'And it's not surprising, because you yourselves, once you're there, can't help working to make humans believe that Fantastica doesn't exist.'\n\n'Doesn't exist?' the bewildered Atreyu repeated.\n\n'That's right, sonny,' said Gmork. 'In fact, that's the heart of the matter. Don't you see? If humans believe Fantastica doesn't exist, they won't get the idea of visiting your country. And as long as they don't know you creatures of Fantastica as you really are, the Manipulators do what they like with them.'\n\n'What can they do?'\n\n'Whatever they please. When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts. That's why I sided with the powerful and served them \u2013 because I wanted to share their power.'\n\n'I want no part in it!' Atreyu cried out.\n\n'Take it easy, you little fool,' the werewolf growled. 'When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded...'\n\nFor a time Gmork peered at the boy out of half-closed eyes. Then he added: 'The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be able to make good use of you.'\n\nAtreyu stood there with bowed head.\n\nNow he knew why humans had stopped coming to Fantastica and why none would come to give the Childlike Empress new names. The more of Fantastica that was destroyed, the more lies flooded the human world, and the more unlikely it became that a child of man should come to Fantastica. It was a vicious circle from which there was no escape. Now Atreyu knew it.\n\n_And so did someone else: Bastian Balthazar Bux._\n\n_He now realized that not only was Fantastica sick, but the human world as well. The two were connected. He had always felt this, though he could not have explained why it was so. He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: 'Life is like that,' but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles._\n\n_And now he knew that someone would have to go to Fantastica to make both worlds well again._\n\n_If no human knew the way, it was precisely because of the lies and delusions that came into the world because Fantastica was being destroyed. It was these lies and delusions that made people blind._\n\n_With horror and shame Bastian thought of his own lies. He didn't count the stories he made up. That was something entirely different. But now and then he had told deliberate lies \u2013 sometimes out of fear, sometimes as a way of getting something he wanted, sometimes just to puff himself up. What inhabitants of Fantastica might he have maimed and destroyed with his lies?_\n\n_One thing was plain: He too had contributed to the sad state of Fantastica. And he was determined to do something to make it well_ _again. He owed it to Atreyu, who was prepared to make any sacrifice to bring Bastian to Fantastica. He had to find the way._\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck eight._\n\nThe werewolf had been watching Atreyu closely.\n\n'Now you know how you can get to the human world,' he said. 'Do you still want to go, sonny?'\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n'I don't want to turn into a lie,' he said.\n\n'You'll do that whether you like it or not,' said Gmork almost cheerfully.\n\n'But what about you? Why are you here?'\n\n'I had a mission,' Gmork said reluctantly.\n\n'You too?'\n\nAtreyu looked at the werewolf with interest, almost with sympathy.\n\n'Were you successful?'\n\n'No. If I had been, I wouldn't be lying here chained. Everything went pretty well until I came to this city. The Dark Princess, who ruled here, received me with every honor. She invited me to her palace, fed me royally, and did everything to make me think she was on my side. And naturally the inhabitants of this Land of Ghosts rather appealed to me, they made me feel at home, so to speak. The Dark Princess was very beautiful in her way \u2013 to my taste at least. She stroked me and ran her fingers through my coat. No one had ever caressed me like that. In short, I lost my head and let my tongue get out of hand. She pretended to admire me; I lapped it up, and in the end I told her about my mission. She must have cast a spell on me, because I am ordinarily a light sleeper. When I woke up, I had this chain on me. And the Dark Princess was standing there. \"Gmork,\" she said. \"You forgot that I too am one of the creatures of Fantastica. And that to fight against Fantastica is to fight against me. That makes you my enemy, and I've out-smarted you. This chain can never be undone by anyone but me. But I am going into the Nothing with all my menservants and maidservants, and I shall never come back.\" Then she turned on her heel and left me. But all the spooks didn't follow her example. It was only when the Nothing came closer that more and more of them were unable to resist its attraction. If I'm not mistaken, the last of them have just gone. Yes, sonny, I fell into a trap, I listened too long to that woman. But you have fallen into the same trap, you've listened too long to me. For in these moments the Nothing has closed around the city like a ring. You're caught and there's no escape.'\n\n'Then we'll die together,' said Atreyu.\n\n'So we will,' said Gmork, 'but in very different ways, you little fool. For I shall die before the Nothing gets here, but you will be swallowed up by it. There's a big difference. Because I die first, my story is at an end. But yours will go on forever, in the form of a lie.'\n\n'Why are you so wicked?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'Because you creatures had a world,' Gmork replied darkly, 'and I didn't.'\n\n'What was your mission?'\n\nUp until then Gmork had been sitting up. Now he slumped to the ground. He was plainly at the end of his strength, and he spoke in raucous gasps.\n\n'Those whom I serve decided that Fantastica must be destroyed. But then they saw that their plan was endangered. They had learned that the Childlike Empress had sent out a messenger, a great hero \u2013 and it looked as if he might succeed in bringing a human to Fantastica. They wanted to have him killed before it was too late. That was why they sent me, because I had been in Fantastica and knew my way around. I picked up his trail right away, I tracked him day and night \u2013 gradually coming closer \u2013 through the Land of the Sassafranians \u2013 the jungle temple of Muwamath \u2013 Howling Forest \u2013 the Swamps of Sadness \u2013 the Dead Mountains \u2013 but then in the Deep Chasm by Ygramul's net, I lost the track, he seemed to have dissolved into thin air. I went on searching, he had to be somewhere. But I never found his trail again, and this is where I ended up. I've failed. But so has he, for Fantastica is going under! I forgot to tell you, his name was Atreyu.'\n\nGmork raised his head. The boy had taken a step back.\n\n'I am Atreyu,' he said.\n\nA tremor ran through the werewolf's shrunken body. It came again and again and grew stronger and stronger. Then from his throat came a panting cough. It grew louder and more rasping; it swelled to a roar that echoed back from the city's walls. The werewolf was laughing.\n\nIt was the most horrible sound Atreyu had ever heard. Never again was he to hear anything like it.\n\nAnd then suddenly it stopped.\n\nGmork was dead.\n\nFor a long time Atreyu stood motionless. At length he approached the dead werewolf \u2013 he himself didn't know why \u2013 bent over the head and touched the shaggy black fur. And in that moment, quicker than thought, Gmork's teeth snapped on Atreyu's leg. Even in death, the evil in him had lost none of its power.\n\nDesperately Atreyu tried to break open the jaws. In vain. The gigantic teeth, as though held in place by steel clamps, dug into his flesh. Atreyu sank to the grimy pavement beside the werewolf's corpse.\n\nAnd step by step, soundless and irresistible, the Nothing advanced from all sides, through the high black wall surrounding the city.\n\n# X\n\n# _The Flight to the Ivory Tower_\n\nJUST as Atreyu passed through the somber gateway of Spook City and started on the exploration that was to end so dismally in a squalid backyard, Falkor, the luckdragon, was making an astonishing discovery.\n\nWhile searching tirelessly for his little friend and master, he had flown high into the clouds. On every side lay the sea, which was gradually growing calmer after the great storm that had churned it from top to bottom. Suddenly, far in the distance, Falkor caught sight of something that puzzled and intrigued him. It was as though a beam of golden light were going on and off, on and off, at regular intervals. And that beam of light seemed to point directly at him, Falkor.\n\nHe flew toward it as fast as he could, and when he was directly over it he saw that the light signal came from deep down in the water, perhaps from the bottom of the sea.\n\nLuckdragons, as we know, are creatures of air and fire. Not only is the liquid element alien to them; it is also their enemy. Water can extinguish them like a flame, or it can asphyxiate them, for they never stop breathing in air through their thousands of pearly scales. They feed on air and heat and require no other nourishment, but without air and heat they can only live a short time.\n\nFalkor didn't know what to do. He didn't even know what the strange blinking under the sea was, or whether it had anything to do with Atreyu.\n\nBut he didn't hesitate for long. He flew high into the sky, turned around, and head down, pressing his legs close to his body, which he held stiff and straight as a telegraph pole, he plummeted. The water spouted like a fountain as he hit the sea at top speed. The shock was so great that he almost lost consciousness, but he forced himself to open his ruby-red eyes. By then the blinking beam was close, only a few body lengths ahead of him. Air bubbles were forming around his body, as in a saucepan full of water just before it boils. He felt that he was cooling and weakening. With his last strength he dived still deeper \u2014 and then the source of light was within reach. It was AURYN, the Gem. Luckily the chain of the amulet had got caught on a coral branch growing out of the wall of an undersea chasm. Otherwise the Gem would have fallen into the bottomless depths.\n\nFalkor seized it and put the chain around his neck for fear of losing it \u2014 for he felt that he was about to faint.\n\nWhen he came to, he didn't know where he was, for to his amazement he was flying through the air, and when he looked down, there was the sea again. He was flying in a very definite direction and very fast, faster than would have seemed possible in his weakened condition. He tried to slow down, but soon found that his body would not obey him. An outside will far stronger than his own had taken possession of his body and was guiding it. That will came from AURYN, the amulet suspended from a chain around his neck.\n\nThe day was drawing to a close when at last Falkor sighted a beach in the distance. He couldn't see much of the country beyond, it seemed to be hidden by fog. But when he came closer, he saw that most of the land had been swallowed up by the Nothing, which hurt his eyes and gave him the feeling of being blind.\n\nAt that point Falkor would probably have turned back if he had been able to do as he wanted. But the mysterious power of the gem forced him to fly straight ahead. And soon he knew why, for in the midst of the endless Nothing he discovered a small island that was still holding out, an island covered with high-gabled houses and crooked towers. Falkor had a strong suspicion whom he would find there, and from then on it was not only the powerful will of the amulet that spurred him on but his own as well. It was almost dark in the somber backyard where Atreyu lay beside the dead werewolf. The luckdragon was barely able to distinguish the boy's light-colored body from the monster's black coat. And the darker it grew, the more they looked like one body.\n\nAtreyu had long given up trying to break loose from the steel vise of the werewolf's jaws. Dazed with fear and weakness, he was back in the Grass Ocean. Before him stood the purple buffalo he had not killed. He called to the other children, his companions of the hunt, who by then had no doubt become real hunters. But no one answered. Only the giant buffalo stood there motionless, looking at him. Atreyu called Artax, his horse, but he didn't come, and his cheery neigh was nowhere to be heard. He called the Childlike Empress, but in vain. He wouldn't be able to tell her anything. He hadn't become a hunter, and he was no longer a messenger. He was Nobody.\n\nAtreyu had given up.\n\nBut then he felt something else: the Nothing. It must be very near, he thought. Again he felt its terrible force of attraction. It made him dizzy. He sat up and, groaning, tugged at his leg. But the fangs held fast.\n\nAnd in that he was lucky. For if Gmork's jaws had not held him, Falkor would have come too late.\n\nAs it was, Atreyu suddenly heard the luckdragon's bronze voice in the sky above him: 'Atreyu! Are you there, Atreyu?'\n\n'Falkor!' Atreyu shouted. And then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: 'Falkor! Falkor! I'm here. Help me! I'm here!'\n\nAnd then he saw Falkor's white body darting like a living streak of lightning through the square of darkening sky, far away at first, then closer. Atreyu kept shouting and Falkor answered in his bell-like voice. Then at last the dragon in the sky caught sight of the boy down below, no bigger than a bright speck in a dark hole.\n\nFalkor prepared for a landing, but the backyard was small, there was hardly any light left, and the dragon brushed against one of the high-gabled houses. The roof collapsed with a roar. Falkor felt an agonizing pain; the sharp edge of the roof had cut deep into his body. This wasn't one of his usual graceful landings. He came tumbling down on the grimy wet pavement next to Atreyu and the dead Gmork.\n\nHe shook himself, sneezed like a dog coming out of the water, and said: 'At last! So this is where you are! Oh well, I seem to have got here on time!'\n\nAtreyu said nothing. He threw his arms around Falkor's neck and buried his face in the dragon's silvery-white mane.\n\n'Come!' said Falkor. 'Climb on my back. We have no time to lose.'\n\nAtreyu only shook his head. And then Falkor saw that Atreyu's leg was imprisoned in the werewolf's jaws.\n\n'Don't worry,' he said, rolling his ruby-red eyeballs. 'We'll fix that in a jiffy.'\n\nHe set to with both paws, trying to pry Gmork's teeth apart. They didn't budge by a hairbreadth.\n\nFalkor heaved and panted. It was no use. Most likely he would never have set his young friend free if luck hadn't come to his help. But luckdragons, as we know, are lucky, and so are those they are fond of.\n\nWhen Falkor stopped to rest, he bent over Gmork's head to get a better look at it in the dark, and it so happened that the Childlike Empress's amulet, which was hanging from the chain on the dragon's neck, touched the werewolf's forehead. Instantly the jaws opened, releasing Atreyu's leg.\n\n'Hey!' cried Falkor. 'What do you think of that?'\n\nThere was no answer from Atreyu.\n\n'What's wrong?' cried Falkor. 'Atreyu, where are you?'\n\nHe groped in the darkness for his friend, but Atreyu wasn't there. And while the dragon was trying to pierce the darkness with his glowing red eyes, he himself felt the pull that had snatched Atreyu away from him. The Nothing was coming too close for comfort. But AURYN protected the luckdragon from the pull.\n\nAtreyu was free from the werewolf's jaws, but not from the pull of the Nothing. He tried to fight it, to kick, to push, but his limbs no longer obeyed him. A few feet more, and he would have been lost forever.\n\nIn that moment, quick as lightning, Falkor grabbed him by his long blue-black hair, and carried him up into the night-black sky.\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck nine._\n\nNeither Atreyu nor Falkor could say later how long they had flown through the impenetrable darkness. Had it been only one night? Perhaps time had stopped for them and they were hovering motionless in the limitless blackness. It was the longest night Atreyu had ever known; and the same was true for Falkor, who was much older.\n\nBut even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later. And when the pale dawn came, they glimpsed the Ivory Tower on the horizon.\n\nHere it seems necessary to pause for a moment and explain a special feature of Fantastican geography. Continents and oceans, mountains and watercourses, have no fixed locations as in the real world. Thus it would be quite impossible to draw a map of Fantastica. In Fantastica you can never be sure in advance what will be next to what. Even the directions \u2014 north, south, east, and west \u2014 change from one part of the country to another. And the same goes for summer and winter, day and night. You can step out of a blazing hot desert straight into snowfields. In Fantastica there are no measurable distances, so that 'near' and 'far' don't at all mean what they do in the real world. They vary with the traveler's wishes and state of mind. Since Fantastica has no boundaries, its center can be anywhere \u2014 or to put it another way, it is equally near to, or far from, anywhere. It all depends on who is trying to reach the center. And the innermost center of Fantastica is the Ivory Tower.\n\nTo his surprise Atreyu found himself sitting on the luckdragon's back. He couldn't remember how he had got there. All he remembered was that Falkor had pulled him up by the hair. Feeling cold, he gathered in his cloak, which was fluttering behind him. And then he saw that it was gray. It had lost its color, and so had his skin and hair. And Falkor, as Atreyu discovered in the rising light, was no better off. The dragon looked unreal, more like a swath of gray mist than anything else. They had both come too close to the Nothing.\n\n'Atreyu, my little master,' the dragon said softly. 'Does your wound hurt very badly?' About his own wound he said nothing.\n\n'No,' said Atreyu. 'I don't feel anything anymore.'\n\n'Have you a fever?'\n\n'No, Falkor. I don't think so. Why do you ask?'\n\n'I can feel you trembling,' said the dragon. 'What in the world can make Atreyu tremble now?'\n\nAfter a short silence Atreyu said: 'We'll be there soon! And then I'll have to tell the Childlike Empress that nothing can save her. That's harder than anything else I've had to do.'\n\n'Yes,' said Falkor even more softly. 'That's true.'\n\nThey flew in silence, drawing steadily nearer to the Ivory Tower.\n\nAfter a while the dragon spoke again.\n\n'Have you seen her, Atreyu?'\n\n'Who?'\n\n'The Childlike Empress. Or rather, the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Because that's how you must address her when you come into her presence.'\n\n'No, I've never seen her.'\n\n'I have. That was long ago. Your great-grandfather must have been a little boy at the time. And I was a young cloud-snapper with a head full of foolishness. One night I saw the moon, shining so big and round, and I tried to grab it out of the sky. When I finally gave up, I dropped with exhaustion and landed near the Ivory Tower. That night the Magnolia Pavilion had opened its petals wide, and the Childlike Empress was sitting right in the middle of it. She cast a glance at me, just one short glance, but \u2014 I hardly know how to put it \u2014 that glance made a new dragon of me.'\n\n'What does she look like?'\n\n'Like a little girl. But she's much older than the oldest inhabitants of Fantastica. Or rather, she's ageless.'\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'But now she's deathly sick. How can I tell her that there's no hope?'\n\n'Don't try to mislead her. She can't be fooled. Tell her the truth.'\n\n'But suppose it kills her?'\n\n'I don't think it will work out that way,' said Falkor.\n\n'You wouldn't,' said Atreyu, 'because you're a luckdragon.'\n\nFor a long while nothing was said.\n\nWhen at last they spoke together for the third time, it was Atreyu who broke the silence.\n\n'Falkor,' he said, 'I'd like to ask you one more thing.'\n\n'Fire away.'\n\n_'Who is_ she?'\n\n'What do you mean?'\n\n'AURYN has power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica, the creatures of both light and darkness. It also has power over you and me. And yet the Childlike Empress never exerts power. It's as if she weren't there. And yet she is in everything. Is she like us?'\n\n'No,' said Falkor, 'she's not like us. She's not a creature of Fantastica. We all exist because she exists. But she's of a different kind.'\n\n'Then is she...' Atreyu hesitated. 'Is she human?'\n\n'No,' said Falkor, 'she's not human.'\n\n'Well then...' And Atreyu repeated his question. 'Who _is_ she?'\n\nAfter a long silence Falkor answered: 'No one in Fantastica knows, no one can know. That's the deepest secret of our world. I once heard a wise man say that if anyone were to know the whole answer, he would cease to exist. I don't know what he meant. That's all I can tell you.'\n\n'And now,' said Atreyu, 'she'll die and we'll die with her, and we'll never know her secret.'\n\nThis time Falkor made no answer, but a smile played around the corners of his leonine mouth, as though to say: Nothing of the kind will happen.\n\nAfter that they spoke no more.\n\nA little later they flew over the outer edge of the 'Labyrinth,' the maze of flower beds, hedges, and winding paths that surrounded the Ivory Tower on all sides. To their horror, they saw that there too the Nothing had been at work. True, it had touched only small spots in the Labyrinth, but those spots were all about. The once bright-colored flower beds and shrubbery in between were now gray and withered. The branches of once graceful little trees were gnarled and bare. The green had gone out of the meadows, and a faint smell of rot and mold rose up to the newcomers. The only colors left were those of swollen giant mushrooms and of garish, poisonous-looking blooms that suggested nothing so much as the figments of a maddened brain. Enfeebled and trembling, the innermost heart of Fantastica was still resisting the inexorable encroachment of the Nothing.\n\nBut the Ivory Tower at the center still shimmered pure, immaculately white.\n\nOrdinarily flying messengers landed on one of the lower terraces. But Falkor reasoned that since neither he nor Atreyu had the strength to climb the long spiraling street leading to the top of the Tower, and since time was of the essence, the regulations and rules of etiquette could reasonably be ignored. He therefore decided on an emergency landing. Swooping down over the ivory buttresses, bridges, and balustrades, he located, just in time, the uppermost end of the spiraling High Street, which lay just outside the palace grounds. Plummeting to the roadway, he went into a skid, made several complete turns, and finally came to a stop tail-first.\n\nAtreyu, who had been clinging with both arms to Falkor's neck, sat up and looked around. He had expected some sort of reception, or at least a detachment of palace guards to challenge them \u2014 but far and wide there was no one to be seen. All the life seemed to have gone out of the gleaming white buildings roundabout.\n\n'They've all fled!' he thought. 'They've left the Childlike Empress alone. Or she's already...'\n\n'Atreyu,' Falkor whispered. 'You must give the Gem back to her.'\n\nFalkor removed the golden chain from his neck. It fell to the ground.\n\nAtreyu jumped down off Falkor's back \u2014 and fell. He had forgotten his wound. He reached for the Glory and put the chain around his neck. Then, leaning on the dragon, he rose painfully to his feet.\n\n'Falkor,' he said. 'Where must I go?'\n\nBut the luckdragon made no answer. He lay as though dead.\n\nThe street ended in front of an enormous, intricately carved gate which led through a high white wall. The gate was open.\n\nAtreyu hobbled through it and came to a broad, gleaming-white stairway that seemed to end in the sky. He began to climb. Now and then he stopped to rest. Drops of his blood left a trail behind him.\n\nAt length the stairway ended. Ahead of him lay a long gallery. He staggered ahead, clinging to the balustrade for support. Next he came to a courtyard that seemed to be full of waterfalls and fountains, but by then he couldn't be sure of what he was seeing. He struggled forward as in a dream. He came to a second, smaller gate; then there was a long, narrow stairway, which took him to a garden where everything \u2014 trees, flowers, and animals \u2014 was carved from ivory. Crawling on all fours, he crossed several arched bridges without railings which led to a third gate, the smallest of all. He dragged himself through it on his belly and, slowly raising his eyes, saw a dome-shaped hall of gleaming-white ivory, and on top of it the Magnolia Pavilion. There was no path or stairway leading up to it.\n\nAtreyu buried his head in his hands.\n\nNo one who reaches or has reached that pavilion can say how he got there. The last stretch of the way must come to him as a gift.\n\nSuddenly Atreyu was in the doorway. He went in \u2014 and found himself face to face with the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes.\n\nShe was sitting, propped on many cushions, on a soft round couch at the center of the great round blossom. She was looking straight at him. She seemed infinitely frail and delicate. Atreyu could see how ill she was by the pallor of her face, which seemed almost transparent. Her almond-shaped eyes, the color of dark gold, were serene and untroubled. She smiled. Her small, slight body was wrapped in an ample silken gown which gleamed so white that the magnolia petals seemed dark beside it. She looked like an indescribably beautiful little girl of no more than ten, but her long, smoothly combed hair, which hung down over her shoulders, was as white as snow.\n\n_Bastian gave a start._\n\n_Something incredible had happened._\n\n_Thus far he had been able to visualize every incident of the Neverending Story. Some of them, it couldn't be denied, were very strange, but they could somehow be explained. He had formed a clear picture of Atreyu riding on the luckdragon, of the Labyrinth and the Ivory Tower._\n\n_These pictures, however, existed only in his imagination. But when he came to the Magnolia Pavilion, he_ saw _the face of the Childlike Empress \u2014 if only for a fraction of a second, for the space of a lightning flash. And not only in his thoughts, but with his eyes! It wasn't his imagination, of that Bastian was sure. He had even seen details that were not mentioned in the description, such as her eyebrows, two fine lines that might have been drawn with India ink, arching over her golden eyes, or her strangely elongated earlobes, or the way her head tilted on her slender neck. Bastian knew that he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this face. And in that same moment he knew her name: Moon Child. Yes, beyond a doubt, that was her name._\n\n_And Moon Child had looked at him \u2014 at him, Bastian Balthazar Bux._\n\n_She had looked at him with an expression that he could not interpret. Had she too been taken by surprise? Had there been a plea in that look? Or longing? Or... what could it be?_\n\n_He tried to remember Moon Child's eyes, but was no longer able to._\n\n_He was sure of only one thing: that her glance had passed through his eyes and down into his heart. He could still feel the burning trail it had left behind. That glance, he felt, was embedded in his heart, and there it glittered like a mysterious jewel. And in a strange and wonderful way it hurt._\n\n_Even if Bastian had wanted to, he couldn't have defended himself against this thing that had happened to him. However, he didn't want to. Oh no, not for anything in the world would he have parted with that jewel. All he wanted was to go on reading, to see Moon Child again, to be with her._\n\n_It never occurred to him that he was getting into the most unusual and perhaps the most dangerous of adventures. But even if he had known this, he wouldn't have dreamed of shutting the book._\n\n_With a trembling forefinger he found his place and went on reading._\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck ten._\n\n# XI\n\n# _The Childlike Empress_\n\nKNITTING his brow, powerless to utter a single word, Atreyu stood gazing at the Childlike Empress. He had no idea how to begin or what to do. He had often tried to imagine this moment, he had prepared words and phrases, but they had all gone out of his head.\n\nAt length she smiled at him. Her voice when she spoke was as soft as the voice of a bird singing in its sleep.\n\n'You have returned from the Great Quest, Atreyu.'\n\nAtreyu hung his head.\n\n'Yes,' he managed to say.\n\nAfter a short silence she went on: 'Your lovely cloak has turned gray. Your hair is gray and your skin is like stone. But all that will be as it was, or better. You'll see.'\n\nAtreyu felt as if a band had tightened around his throat. All he could do was nod his head. Then he heard the sweet soft voice saying: 'You have carried out your mission...'\n\nWere these words meant as a question? Atreyu didn't know. He didn't dare look up to read the answer in her face. Slowly he reached for the golden amulet and removed the chain from his neck. Without raising his eyes, he held it out to the Childlike Empress. He tried to kneel as messengers did in the stories and songs he had heard at home, but his wounded leg refused to do his bidding. He fell at the Childlike Empress's feet, and there he lay with his face to the floor.\n\nShe bent forward, picked up AURYN, and let the chain glide through her fingers.\n\n'You have done well,' she said, 'and I am pleased with you.'\n\n'No!' cried Atreyu almost savagely. 'It was all in vain. There's no hope.'\n\nA long silence followed. Atreyu buried his face in the crook of his elbow, and his whole body trembled. How would she react? With a cry of despair, a moan, words of bitter reproach or even anger? Atreyu couldn't have said what he expected.\n\nCertainly not what he heard. Laughter. A soft, contented laugh. Atreyu's thoughts were in a whirl, for a moment he thought she had gone mad. But that was not the laughter of madness. Then he heard her say: 'But you've brought him with you.'\n\nAtreyu looked up.\n\n'Who?'\n\n'Our savior.'\n\nHe looked into her eyes and found only serenity. She smiled again.\n\n'Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes,' he stammered, now for the first time using the official words of address that Falkor had recommended. 'I... no, really... I don't understand.'\n\n'I can see that by the look on your face,' she said. 'But whether you understand or not, you've done it. And that's what counts, isn't it?'\n\nAtreyu said nothing. He couldn't even think of a question to ask. He stood there openmouthed, staring at the Childlike Empress.\n\n'I saw him,' she went on, 'and he saw me.'\n\n'When?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'Just as you came in. You brought him with you.'\n\nInvoluntarily Atreyu looked around.\n\n'Then where is he? I don't see anyone but you and me.'\n\n'Oh, the world is full of things you don't see. You can believe me. He isn't in our world yet. But our worlds have come close enough together for us to see each other. For a twinkling the thin wall between us became transparent. He will be with us soon and then he will call me by the new name that he alone can give me. Then I shall be well, and so will Fantastica.'\n\nAs the Childlike Empress was speaking, Atreyu raised himself with difficulty. He looked up to her as she lay on her bed of cushions. His voice was husky when he asked: 'Then you've known my message all along? What Morla the Aged One told me in the Swamps of Sadness, what the mysterious voice of Uyulala in the Southern Oracle revealed to me \u2014 you knew it all?'\n\n'Yes,' she said. 'I knew it before I sent you on the Great Quest.'\n\nAtreyu gulped.\n\n'Why,' he finally managed to ask, 'why did you send me then? What did you expect me to do?'\n\n'Exactly what you did,' she replied.\n\n'What I did...' Atreyu repeated slowly. His forehead clouded over. 'In that case,' he said angrily, 'it was all unnecessary. There was no need of sending me on the Great Quest. I've heard that your decisions are often mysterious. That may be. But after all I've been through I hate to think that you were just having a joke at my expense.'\n\nThe Childlike Empress's eyes grew grave.\n\n'I was not having a joke at your expense, Atreyu,' she said. 'I am well aware of what I owe you. All your sufferings were necessary. I sent you on the Great Quest \u2014 not for the sake of the message you would bring me, but because that was the only way of calling our savior. He took part in everything you did, and he has come all that long way with you. You heard his cry of fear when you were talking with Ygramul beside the Deep Chasm, and you saw him when you stood facing the Magic Mirror Gate. You entered into his image and took it with you, and he followed you, because he saw himself through your eyes. And now, too, he can hear every word we are saying. He knows we are talking about him, he knows we have set our hope in him and are expecting him. Perhaps he even understands that all the hardship you, Atreyu, took upon yourself was for his sake and that all Fantastica is calling him.'\n\nLittle by little the darkness cleared from Atreyu's face.\n\nAfter a while he asked: 'How can you know all that? The cry by the Deep Chasm and the image in the magic mirror? Did you arrange it all in advance?'\n\nThe Childlike Empress picked up AURYN, and said, while putting the chain around her neck: 'Didn't you wear the Gem the whole time? Didn't you know that through it I was always with you?'\n\n'Not always,' said Atreyu. 'I lost it.'\n\n'Yes. Then you were really alone. Tell me what happened to you then.'\n\nAtreyu told her the story.\n\n'Now I know why you turned gray,' said the Childlike Empress. 'You were too close to the Nothing.'\n\n'Gmork, the werewolf, told me,' said Atreyu, 'that when a Fantastican is swallowed up by the Nothing, he becomes a lie. Is that true?'\n\n'Yes, it is true,' said the Childlike Empress, and her golden eyes darkened. 'All lies were once creatures of Fantastica. They are made of the same stuff \u2014 but they have lost their true nature and become unrecognizable. But, as you might expect from a half-and-half creature like Gmork, he told you only half the truth. There are two ways of crossing the dividing line between Fantastica and the human world, a right one and a wrong one. When Fantasticans are cruelly dragged across it, that's the wrong way. When humans, children of man, come to our world of their own free will, that's the right way. Every human who has been here has learned something that could be learned only here, and returned to his own world a changed person. Because he had seen you creatures in your true form, he was able to see his own world and his fellow humans with new eyes. Where he had seen only dull, everyday reality, he now discovered wonders and mysteries. That is why humans were glad to come to Fantastica. And the more these visits enriched our world, the fewer lies there were in theirs, the better it became. Just as our two worlds can injure each other, they can also make each other whole again.'\n\nFor a time both were silent. Then she went on: 'Humans are our hope. One of them must come and give me a new name. And he will come.'\n\nAtreyu made no answer.\n\n'Do you understand now, Atreyu,' she asked, 'why I had to ask so much of you? Only a long story full of adventures, marvels, and dangers could bring our savior to me. And that was your story.'\n\nAtreyu sat deep in thought. At length he nodded.\n\n'Yes, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes, now I understand. I thank you for choosing me. Forgive my anger.'\n\n'You had no way of knowing these things,' she answered. 'And that too was necessary.'\n\nAgain Atreyu nodded. After a short silence he said: 'But I'm very tired.'\n\n'You have done enough, Atreyu. Would you like to rest?'\n\n'Not yet. First I would like to see the happy outcome of my story. If, as you say, I've carried out my mission, why isn't the savior here yet? What's he waiting for?'\n\n'Yes,' said the Childlike Empress softly. 'What is he waiting for?'\n\n_Bastian felt his hands growing moist with excitement._\n\n_'I can't do it,' he said. 'I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. Maybe the name I've thought of isn't the right one.'_\n\n'May I ask you another question?' said Atreyu.\n\n'Of course,' she answered with a smile.\n\n'Why do you need a new name to get well?'\n\n'Only the right name gives beings and things their reality,' she said. 'A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.'\n\n'Maybe the savior doesn't yet know the right name to give you.'\n\n'Oh yes he does,' she assured him.\n\nAgain they sat silent.\n\n_'I know it all right,' said Bastian. 'I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her. But I don't know what I have to do.'_\n\nAtreyu looked up.\n\n'Maybe he wants to come and just doesn't know how to go about it.'\n\n'All he has to do,' said the Childlike Empress, 'is to call me by my new name, which he alone knows. Nothing more.'\n\n_Bastian's heart pounded. Should he try? What if he didn't succeed? What if he was wrong? What if they weren't talking about him but about some entirely different savior? How could he be sure they really meant him?_\n\n'Could it be,' said Atreyu after a while, 'that he doesn't know it's him and not somebody else we're talking about?'\n\n'No,' said the Childlike Empress. 'Not after all the signs he has had. He can't be that stupid.'\n\n_'I'll give it a try,' said Bastian. But he couldn't get a word out of his mouth._\n\n_What if it actually worked? Then he would somehow be transported to Fantastica. But how? Maybe he would have to go through some sort of change. And what would that be like? Would it hurt? Would he lose consciousness? And did he really want to go to Fantastica? He wanted_ _to go to Atreyu and the Childlike Empress, but he wasn't at all keen on all those monsters the place was swarming with._\n\n'Maybe he hasn't got the courage,' Atreyu suggested.\n\n'Courage?' said the Childlike Empress. 'Does it take courage to say my name?'\n\n'Then,' said Atreyu, 'I can think of only one thing that may be holding him back.'\n\n'And what would that be?'\n\nAfter some hesitation Atreyu blurted out: 'He just doesn't want to come here. He just doesn't care about you or Fantastica. We don't mean a thing to him.'\n\nThe Childlike Empress stared wide-eyed at Atreyu.\n\n_'No! No!' Bastian cried out. 'You mustn't think that! It's not that at all. Oh, please, please, don't think that! Can you hear me? It's not like that, Atreyu.'_\n\n'He promised me he would come,' said the Childlike Empress. 'I saw it in his eyes.'\n\n_'Yes, that's true. And I will come soon. I just need time to think. It's not so simple.'_\n\nAtreyu hung his head and the two of them waited a long while in silence. But the savior did not appear, and there wasn't the slightest sign to suggest that he was trying to attract their attention.\n\n_Bastian was thinking of how it would be if he suddenly stood before them in all his fatness, with his bowlegs and his pasty face. He could literally see the disappointment in the Childlike Empress's face when she said to him: 'What brings_ you _here?'_\n\n_And Atreyu might even laugh._\n\n_The thought brought a blush to Bastian's cheeks._\n\n_Obviously they were expecting a prince, or at any rate some sort of hero. He just couldn't appear before them. It was out of the question. He would do anything for them. Anything but that!_\n\nWhen at last the Childlike Empress looked up, the expression of her face had changed. Atreyu was almost frightened at its grandeur and severity. He knew where he had once seen that expression: in the sphinxes.\n\n'There is one more thing I can do,' she said. 'But I don't like it, and I wish he wouldn't make me.'\n\n'What is that?' Atreyu asked in a whisper.\n\n'Whether he knows it or not, he is already part of the Neverending Story. He can no longer back out of it. He made me a promise and he has to keep it. But by myself I can't make him.'\n\n'Who in all Fantastica,' Atreyu asked, 'can do what you cannot?'\n\n'Only one person,' she replied. 'If he wants to. The Old Man of Wandering Mountain.'\n\nAtreyu looked at the Childlike Empress in amazement.\n\n'The Old Man of Wandering Mountain?' he repeated, stressing every word. 'You mean he exists?'\n\n'Did you doubt it?'\n\n'The old folk in our tent camps tell the children about him when they're naughty. They say he writes everything down in a book, whatever you do or fail to do, and there it stays in the form of a beautiful or an ugly story. When I was little, I believed it, but then I decided it was only an old wives' tale to frighten children.'\n\n'You never can tell about old wives' tales,' she said with a smile.\n\n'Then you know him?' Atreyu asked. 'You've seen him?'\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n'If I find him,' she said, 'it will be our first meeting.'\n\n'Our old folk also say,' Atreyu went on, 'that you never can know where the Old Man's mountain will be at any particular time. They say that when he appears it's always unexpectedly, now here, now there, and that you can only run across him by accident, or because the meeting was fated.'\n\n'That's true,' said the Childlike Empress. 'You can't look for the Old Man of Wandering Mountain. You can only find him.'\n\n'Does that go for you too?'\n\n'Yes,' she said, 'for me too.'\n\n'But what if you don't find him?'\n\n'If he exists I'll find him,' she said with a mysterious smile.\n\nHer answer puzzled Atreyu. Hesitantly he asked: 'Is he \u2014 is he like you?'\n\n'He is like me,' she replied, 'because he is my opposite in every way.'\n\nAtreyu saw that with such questions he would get nothing out of her. And another thought weighed on him.\n\n'You are deathly sick, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes,' he said almost sternly. 'You won't go far by yourself. All your servants and courtiers seem to have abandoned you. Falkor and I would be glad to take you wherever you wish, but, frankly, I don't know if Falkor has the strength. And my foot \u2014 well, you've seen that it won't carry me.'\n\n'Thank you, Atreyu,' she said. 'Thank you for your brave and loyal offer. But I'm not planning to take you with me. To find the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, one must be alone. And even now Falkor is not where you left him. He has been moved to a place where his wounds will be healed and his strength renewed. And you too, Atreyu, will soon be in that same place.'\n\nHer fingers played with AURYN.\n\n'What place is that?'\n\n'There's no need for you to know that now. You will be moved in your sleep. And one day you will know where you were.'\n\n'But how can I sleep?' cried Atreyu, so shaken that he lost his sense of tact. 'How can I sleep when I know you may die any minute?'\n\nThe Childlike Empress laughed softly.\n\n'I'm not quite as forsaken as you think. I've already told you that there are some things you can't hope to understand. I have my seven Powers, which belong to me as your memory or courage or thoughts belong to you. They cannot be seen or heard, and yet they are with me at this moment. I shall leave three of them with you and Falkor to look after you, and I shall take the other four with me as my escort. You needn't worry, Atreyu. You can sleep easy.'\n\nAt these words, all the accumulated weariness of the Great Quest descended on Atreyu like a dark veil. Yet it was not the leaden weariness of exhaustion, but a gentle longing for sleep. He still had many questions to ask the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes, but he felt that her last words had vanquished all his wishes but one, the wish for sleep. His eyes closed and, still in a sitting position, he glided into the darkness.\n\n_The clock in the steeple struck eleven._\n\nAs though far in the distance, Atreyu heard the Childlike Empress give an order in a soft voice. Then he felt powerful arms lifting him gently and carrying him away.\n\nFor a long time, all was dark and warm around him. Much later he half awoke when a soothing liquid touched his parched lips and ran down his throat. He had a vague impression that he was in a great cave with walls of gold. He saw the white luckdragon lying beside him. And then he saw, or thought he saw, a gushing fountain in the middle of the cave, encircled by two snakes, a light one and a dark one, which were biting each other's tail.\n\nBut then an invisible hand brushed over his eyes. The feel of it was infinitely soothing, and again he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.\n\nAt that moment, the Childlike Empress left the Ivory Tower. She lay bedded on soft silken cushions in a glass litter, which seemed to be moving under its own power, but was actually being carried by four of the Empress's invisible servants.\n\nThey crossed the Labyrinth garden, or rather, what was left of it, making frequent detours, since many of the paths ended in the Nothing.\n\nWhen at length they left the Labyrinth, the invisible carriers stopped. They seemed to be waiting for a command.\n\nThe Childlike Empress sat up on her cushions and cast a glance back at the Ivory Tower.\n\nThen, sinking back, she said: 'Keep going! Just keep going \u2014 no matter where.'\n\nBlown by the wind, her snow-white hair trailed behind the glass litter like a flag.\n\n# XII\n\n# _The Old Man of Wandering Mountain_\n\nLONG-THUNDERING avalanches descended from the heights, snow-storms raged between towering ice-coated summits, dipped into hollows and ravines, and swept howling onward over the great white expanse of the glaciers. Such weather was not at all unusual for this part of the country, for the Mountain of Destiny \u2014 that was its name \u2014 was the highest in all Fantastica, and its peaks literally jutted into the heights of heaven.\n\nNot even the most intrepid mountain climbers ventured into these fields of everlasting ice. It had been so very, very long since anyone had succeeded in climbing this mountain that the feat had been forgotten. For one of Fantastica's many strange laws decreed that no one could climb the Mountain of Destiny until the last successful climber had been utterly forgotten. Thus anyone who managed to climb it would always be the first.\n\nNo living creature could survive in that icy waste \u2014 except for a handful of gigantic ice-glumps \u2014 who could barely be called living creatures, for they moved so slowly that they needed years for a single step and whole centuries for a short walk. Which meant, of course, that they could only associate with their own kind and knew nothing at all about the rest of Fantastica. They thought of themselves as the only living creatures in the universe.\n\nConsequently, they were puzzled to the point of consternation when they saw a tiny speck twining its way upward over perilous crags and razor-sharp ridges, then vanishing into deep chasms and crevasses, only to reappear higher up.\n\nThat speck was the Childlike Empress's glass litter, still carried by four of her invisible Powers. It was barely visible, for the glass it was made of looked very much like ice, and the Childlike Empress's white gown and white hair could hardly be distinguished from the snow roundabout.\n\nShe had traveled many days and nights. The four Powers had carried her through blinding rain and scorching sun, through darkness and moonlight, onward and onward, just as she had ordered, 'no matter where.' She was prepared for a long journey and all manner of hardship, since she knew that the Old Man of Wandering Mountain could be everywhere or nowhere.\n\nStill, the four invisible Powers were not guided entirely by chance in their choice of an itinerary. As often as not, the Nothing, which had already swallowed up whole regions, left only a single path open. Sometimes the possibilities narrowed down to a bridge, a tunnel, or a gateway, and sometimes they were forced to carry the litter with the deathly ill Empress over the waves of the sea. These carriers saw no difference between liquid and solid.\n\nTireless and persevering, they had finally reached the frozen heights of the Mountain of Destiny. And they would go on climbing until the Childlike Empress gave them another order. But she lay still on her cushions. Her eyes were closed and she said nothing. The last words she had spoken were the 'no matter where' she had said on leaving the Ivory Tower.\n\nThe litter was moving through a deep ravine, so narrow that there was barely room for it to pass. The snow was several feet deep, but the invisible carriers did not sink in or even leave footprints. It was very dark at the bottom of this ravine, which admitted only a narrow strip of daylight. The path was on a steady incline and the higher the litter climbed, the nearer the daylight seemed. And then suddenly the walls leveled off, opening up a view of a vast white expanse. This was the summit, for the Mountain of Destiny culminated not, like most other mountains, in a single peak, but in this high plateau, which was as large as a whole country.\n\nBut then, surprisingly enough, a smaller, odd-looking mountain arose in the midst of the plateau. It was rather tall and narrow, something like the Ivory Tower, but glittering blue. It consisted of innumerable strangely shaped stone teeth, which jutted into the sky like great inverted icicles. And about halfway up the mountain three such teeth supported an egg the size of a house.\n\nBehind the egg large blue columns resembling the pipes of an enormous organ rose in a semicircle. The great egg had a circular opening, which might have been a door or a window. And in that opening a face appeared. The face was looking straight at the litter.\n\nThe Childlike Empress opened her eyes.\n\n'Stop!' she said softly.\n\nThe invisible Powers stopped.\n\nThe Childlike Empress sat up.\n\n'It's the Old Man of Wandering Mountain,' she said. 'I must go the last stretch of the way alone. Whatever may happen, wait here for me.'\n\nThe face in the circular opening vanished.\n\nThe Childlike Empress stepped out of the litter and started across the great snowfield. It was hard going, for she was barefooted, and there was an icy crust on the snow. At every step she broke through, and the ice cut her tender feet. The wind tugged at her white hair and her gown.\n\nAt last she came to the blue mountain and stood facing the smooth stone teeth.\n\nThe dark circular opening disgorged a long ladder, much longer than there could possibly have been room for in the egg. It soon extended to the foot of the blue mountain, and when the Childlike Empress took hold of it she saw that it consisted of letters, which were fastened together. Each rung of the ladder was a line. The Childlike Empress started climbing, and as she climbed from rung to rung, she read the words:\n\nTURN BACK! TURN BACK AND GO AWAY! FOR COME WHAT WILL AND COME WHAT MAY,\n\nNEVER IN ANY TIME OR PLACE MUST YOU AND I MEET FACE TO FACE. TO YOU ALONE, O CHILDLIKE ONE, THE WAY IS BARRED, TO YOU ALONE. TURNBACK, TURNBACK, FOR NEVER SHALL BEGINNING SEEK THE END OF ALL. THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR INTRUSION CAN ONLY BE EXTREME CONFUSION.\n\nShe stopped to rest and looked up. She still had a long way to go. So far she hadn't even gone halfway.\n\n'Old Man of Wandering Mountain,' she said aloud. 'If you don't want us to meet, you needn't have written me this ladder. It's your disinvitation that brings me.'\n\nAnd she went on climbing.\n\nWHAT YOU ACHIEVE AND WHAT YOU ARE IS RECORDED BY ME, THE CHRONICLER. LETTERS UNCHANGEABLE AND DEAD FREEZE WHAT THE LIVING DID AND SAID. THEREFORE BY COMING HERE TO ME YOU INVITE CATASTROPHE.\n\nTHIS IS THE END OF WHAT YOU ONCE BEGAN.\n\nYOU WILL NEVER BE OLD, AND I, OLD MAN,\n\nWAS NEVER YOUNG. WHAT YOU AWAKEN I LAY TO REST. BE NOT MISTAKEN: IT IS FORBIDDEN THAT LIFE SHOULD SEE ITSELF IN DEAD ETERNITY.\n\nAgain she had to stop to catch her breath.\n\nBy then the Childlike Empress was high up and the ladder was swaying like a branch in the snowstorm. Clinging to the icy letters that formed the rungs of the ladder, she climbed the rest of the way.\n\nBUT IF YOU STILL REFUSE TO HEED THE WARNING OF THE LADDER'S SCREED, IF YOU ARE STILL PREPARED TO DO WHAT IN TIME AND SPACE IS FORBIDDEN YOU,\n\nI WON'T ATTEMPT TO HOLD YOU BACK, THEN WELCOME TO THE OLD MAN'S SHACK.\n\nWhen the Childlike Empress had those last rungs behind her, she sighed and looked down. Her wide white gown was in tatters, for it had caught on every bend and crossbar of the message-ladder. Oh well, she had known all along that letters were hostile to her. She felt the same way about them.\n\nFrom the ladder she stepped through the circular opening in the egg. Instantly it closed behind her, and she stood motionless in the darkness, waiting to see what would happen next.\n\nNothing at all happened for quite some time.\n\nAt length she said softly: 'Here I am.' Her voice echoed as in a large empty room \u2014 or was it another, much deeper voice that had answered her in the same words?\n\nLittle by little, she made out a faint reddish glow in the darkness. It came from an open book, which hovered in midair at the center of the egg-shaped room. It was tilted in such a way that she could see the binding, which was of copper-colored silk, and on the binding, as on the Gem, which the Childlike Empress wore around her neck, she saw an oval formed by two snakes biting each other's tail. Inside this oval was printed the title:\n\n### The Neverending Story\n\n_Bastian's thoughts were in a whirl. This was the very same book that he was reading! He looked again. Yes, no doubt about it, it was the book he had in his hand. How could this book exist inside itself?_\n\nThe Childlike Empress had come closer. On the other side of the hovering book she now saw a man's face. It was bathed in a bluish light. The light came from the print of the book, which was bluish green.\n\nThe man's face was as deeply furrowed as if it had been carved in the bark of an ancient tree. His beard was long and white, and his eyes were so deep in their sockets that she could not see them. He was wearing a dark monk's robe with a hood, and in his hand he was holding a stylus, with which he was writing in the book. He did not look up.\n\nThe Childlike Empress stood watching him in silence. He was not really writing. His stylus glided slowly over the empty page and the letters and words appeared as though of their own accord.\n\nThe Childlike Empress read what was being written, and it was exactly what was happening at that same moment: 'The Childlike Empress read what was being written...'\n\n'You write down everything that happens,' she said.\n\n'Everything that I write down happens,' was the answer, spoken in the deep, dark voice that had come to her like an echo of her own voice.\n\nStrange to say, the Old Man of Wandering Mountain had not opened his mouth. He had written her words and his, and she had heard them as though merely remembering that he had just spoken. 'Are you and I and all Fantastica,' she asked, 'are we all recorded in this book?'\n\nHe wrote, and at the same time she heard his answer: 'No, you've got it wrong. This book _is_ all Fantastica \u2014 and you and I.'\n\n'But where is this book?'\n\nAnd he wrote the answer: 'In the book.'\n\n'Then it's all a reflection of a reflection?' she asked.\n\nHe wrote, and she heard him say: 'What does one see in a mirror reflected in a mirror? Do you know that, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes?'\n\nThe Childlike Empress said nothing for a while, and the Old Man wrote that she said nothing.\n\nThen she said softly: 'I need your help.'\n\n'I knew it,' he said and wrote.\n\n'Yes,' she said. 'I supposed you would. You are Fantastica's memory, you know everything that has happened up to this moment. But couldn't you leaf ahead in your book and see what's going to happen?'\n\n'Empty pages' was the answer. 'I can only look back at what _has_ happened. I was able to read it while I was writing it. And I know it because I have read it. And I wrote it because it happened. The Neverending Story writes itself by my hand.'\n\n'Then you don't know why I've come to you?'\n\n'No.' And as he was writing, she heard the dark voice: 'And I wish you hadn't. By my hand everything becomes fixed and final \u2014 you too, Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. This egg is your grave and your coffin. You have entered into the memory of Fantastica. How do you expect to leave here?'\n\n'Every egg,' she said, 'is the beginning of new life.'\n\n'True,' the Old Man wrote and said, 'but only if its shell bursts open.'\n\n'You can open it,' cried the Childlike Empress. 'You let me in.'\n\n'Your power let you in. But now that you're here, your power is gone. We are shut up here for all time. Truly, you shouldn't have come. This is the end of the Neverending Story.'\n\nThe Childlike Empress smiled. She didn't seem troubled in the least.\n\n'You and I,' she said, 'can't prolong it. But there is someone who can.'\n\n'Only a human,' wrote the Old Man, 'can make a fresh start.' 'Yes,' she replied, 'a human.'\n\nSlowly the Old Man of Wandering Mountain raised his eyes and saw the Childlike Empress for the first time. His gaze seemed to come from the darkest distance, from the end of the universe. She stood up to it, answered it with her golden eyes. A silent, immobile battle was fought between them. At length the Old Man bent over his book and wrote: 'For you too there is a borderline. Respect it.'\n\n'I will,' she said, 'but the one of whom I speak, the one for whom I am waiting, crossed it long ago. He is reading this book while you are writing it. He hears every word we are saying. He is with us.'\n\n'That is true!' she heard the Old Man's voice as he was writing. 'He too is part and parcel of the Neverending Story, for it is his own story.'\n\n'Tell me the story!' the Childlike Empress commanded. 'You, who are the memory of Fantastica \u2014 tell me the story from the beginning, word for word as you have written it.'\n\nThe Old Man's writing hand began to tremble.\n\n'If I do that, I shall have to write everything all over again. And what I write will happen again.'\n\n'So be it!' said the Childlike Empress.\n\n_Bastian was beginning to feel uncomfortable._\n\n_What was she going to do? It had something to do with him. But if even the Old Man of Wandering Mountain was trembling..._\n\nThe Old Man wrote and said: 'If the Neverending Story contains itself, then the world will end with this book.'\n\nAnd the Childlike Empress answered: 'But if the hero comes to us, new life can be born. Now the decision is up to him.'\n\n'You are ruthless indeed,' the Old Man said and wrote. 'We shall enter the Circle of Eternal Return, from which there is no escape.'\n\n'Not for us,' she replied, and her voice was no longer gentle, but as hard and clear as a diamond. 'Nor for him \u2014 unless he saves us all.'\n\n'Do you really want to entrust everything to a human?'\n\n'I do.'\n\nBut then she added more softly: 'Or have you a better idea?'\n\nAfter a long silence the Old Man's dark voice said: 'No.'\n\nHe bent low over the book in which he was writing. His face was hidden by his hood.\n\n'Then do what I ask.'\n\nSubmitting to her will, the Old Man of Wandering Mountain began telling the Neverending Story from the beginning.\n\nAt that moment the light cast by the pages of the book changed color. It became reddish like the letters that now formed under the Old Man's stylus. His monk's habit and the hood also took on the color of copper. And as he wrote, his deep, dark voice resounded.\n\n_Bastian too heard it quite clearly._\n\n_Yet he did not understand the first words the Old Man said. They sounded like: 'Skoob dlo rednaeroc darnoc lrac.'_\n\n_Strange, Bastian thought. Why is the Old Man suddenly talking a foreign language? Or was it some sort of magic spell?_\n\n_The Old Man's voice went on and Bastian couldn't help listening._\n\n'This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plateglass door.\n\n'Outside, it was a gray, cold, rainy November morning. The rain ran down the glass and over the ornate letters. Through the glass there was nothing to be seen but the rain-splotched wall across the street.'\n\n_Bastian was rather disappointed. I don't know that story, he thought. That's not in the book I've been reading. Oh well, it only goes to show that I've been mistaken the whole time. I really thought the Old Man would start telling the Neverending Story from the beginning._\n\n'Suddenly the door was opened so violently that a little cluster of brass bells tinkled wildly, taking quite some time to calm down. The cause of this hubbub was a fat little boy of ten or twelve. His wet, dark-brown hair hung down over his face, his coat was soaked and dripping, and he was carrying a school satchel slung over his shoulder. He was rather pale and out of breath, but, despite the hurry he had been in a moment before, he was standing in the open doorway as though rooted to the spot.'\n\n_As Bastian read this and listened to the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, a roaring started up in his ears and he saw spots before his eyes._\n\n_Why, this was all about him! And it was the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, was a character in the book which until now he had_ _thought he was reading. And heaven only knew who else might be reading it at the exact same time, also supposing himself to be just a reader._\n\n_And now Bastian was afraid. He felt unable to breathe, as though shut up in an invisible prison. He didn't want to read anymore, he wanted to stop._\n\nBut the deep, dark voice of the Old Man of Wandering Mountain went on,\n\n_and there was nothing Bastian could do about it. He held his hands over his ears, but it was no use, because the voice came from inside him. He tried desperately to tell himself \u2014 though he knew it wasn't true \u2014 that the resemblance to his own story was some crazy accident_ ,\n\nbut the deep, dark voice went on,\n\n_and ever so clearly he heard it saying:_\n\n'\"Where are your manners? If you had any, you'd have introduced yourself.\"\n\n'\"My name is Bastian,\" said the boy. \"Bastian Balthazar Bux.\"'\n\n_In that moment Bastian made a profound discovery. You wish for something, you've wanted it for years, and you're sure you want it, as long as you know you can't have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing._\n\n_That is exactly how it was with Bastian._\n\n_Now that he was in danger of getting his wish, he would have liked best to run away. But since you can't run 'away' unless you have some idea where you're at, Bastian did something perfectly absurd. He turned over on his back like a beetle and played dead. He made himself as small as possible and pretended he wasn't there._\n\nThe Old Man of Wandering Mountain went on telling and writing the story of how Bastian had stolen the book, how he had fled to the schoolhouse attic and begun to read. And then Atreyu's Quest began all over again, he spoke with Morla the Aged One, and found Falkor in Ygramul's net beside the Deep Chasm, and heard Bastian's cry of fear. Once again he was cured by old Urgl and lectured by Engywook. He passed through the three magic gates, entered into Bastian's image, and spoke with Uyulala. And then came the Wind Giants and Spook City and Gmork, followed by Atreyu's rescue and the flight to the Ivory Tower. And in between, everything that Bastian had done, how he had lit the candles, how he had seen the Childlike Empress, and how she had waited for him in vain. Once again she started on her way to find the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, once again she climbed the ladder of letters and entered the egg, once again the conversation between her and the Old Man was related word for word, and once again the Old Man of Wandering Mountain began to write and tell the Neverending Story.\n\nAt that point the story began all over again \u2014 unchanged and unchangeable \u2014 and ended once again with the meeting between the Childlike Empress and the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, who began once again to write and tell the Neverending Story...\n\n_... and so it would go on for ever and ever, for any change in the sequence of events was unthinkable. Only he, Bastian, could do anything about it. And he would have to do something, or else he too would be included in the circle. It seemed to him that this story had been repeated a thousand times, as though there were no before and after and everything had happened at once. Now he realized why the Old Man's hand trembled. The Circle of Eternal Return was an end without an end._\n\n_Bastian was unaware of the tears that were running down his_\n\n_cheeks. Close to fainting, he suddenly cried out: 'Moon Child, I'm coming!'_\n\n_In that moment several things happened at once._\n\nThe shell of the great egg was dashed to pieces by some overwhelming power. A rumbling of thunder was heard. And then the storm wind came roaring from afar.\n\n_It blew from the pages of the book that Bastian was holding on his knees, and the pages began to flutter wildly. Bastian felt the wind in his hair and face. He could scarcely breathe. The candle flames in the seven-armed candelabrum danced, wavered, and lay flat. Then another, still more violent wind blew into the book, and the candles went out._\n\n_The clock in the belfry struck twelve._\n\n# XIII\n\n# _Perilin, the Night Forest_\n\nMOON CHILD, I'm coming!' Bastian repeated in the darkness. He felt something indescribably sweet and comforting flow into him from the name and fill his whole being. So he said it again and again: 'Moon Child! Moon Child! I'm coming! Moon Child, here I am.'\n\nBut where was he?\n\nHe couldn't see the slightest ray of light, but this was no longer the freezing darkness of the attic. This was a warm, velvety darkness in which he felt safe and happy.\n\nAll fear and dread had left him, ceased to be anything more than a distant memory. He felt so light and gay that he even laughed softly.\n\n'Moon Child, where am I?' he asked.\n\nHe no longer felt the weight of his body. He groped about and realized that he was hovering in mid-air. The mats were gone, and there was no ground under his feet.\n\nIt was a wonderful feeling, a sense of release and boundless freedom that he had never known before. He was beyond the reach of all the things that had weighed him down and hemmed him in.\n\nCould he be hovering somewhere in the cosmos? But in the cosmos there were stars and here there was nothing of the kind. There was only this velvety darkness and a wonderful, happy feeling he hadn't known in all his life. Could it be that he was dead?\n\n'Moon Child, where are you?'\n\nAnd then he heard a delicate, birdlike voice that answered him and that may have answered him several times without his hearing it. It seemed very near, and yet he could not have said from what direction it came.\n\n'Here I am, my Bastian.'\n\n'Is it you, Moon Child?'\n\nShe laughed in a strangely lilting way.\n\n'Who else would I be? Why, you've just given me my lovely name. Thank you for it. Welcome, my savior and my hero.'\n\n'Where are we, Moon Child?'\n\n'I am with you, and you are with me.'\n\nDream words. Yet Bastian knew for sure that he was awake and not dreaming.\n\n'Moon Child,' he whispered. 'Is this the end?'\n\n'No,' she replied, 'it's the beginning.'\n\n'Where is Fantastica, Moon Child? Where are all the others? Where are Atreyu and Falkor? And what about the Old Man of Wandering Mountain and his book? Don't they exist anymore?'\n\n'Fantastica will be born again from your wishes, my Bastian. Through me they will become reality.'\n\n'From my wishes?' Bastian repeated in amazement.\n\nHe heard the sweet voice reply: 'You know they call me the Commander of Wishes. What will you wish?'\n\nBastian thought a moment. Then he inquired cautiously: 'How many wishes have I got?'\n\n'As many as you want \u2014 the more, the better, my Bastian. Fantastica will be all the more rich and varied.'\n\nBastian was overjoyed. But just because so infinitely many possibilities had suddenly been held out to him, he couldn't think of a single wish.\n\n'I can't think of anything,' he said finally.\n\nFor a time there was silence. And then he heard the birdlike voice: 'That's bad.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Because then there won't be any more Fantastica.'\n\nBastian made no answer. He felt confused. His sense of unlimited freedom was somewhat marred by the thought that everything depended on him.\n\n'Why is it so dark, Moon Child?' he asked.\n\n'The beginning is always dark, my Bastian.'\n\n'I'd awfully like to see you again, Moon Child. The way you were when you looked at me.'\n\nAgain he heard the soft lilting laugh.\n\n'Why are you laughing?'\n\n'Because I'm happy.'\n\n'Happy? Why?'\n\n'You've just made your first wish.'\n\n'Will you make it come true?'\n\nHe held out his hand and felt she was putting something into it. Something very small but strangely heavy. It was very cold and felt hard and dead.\n\n'What is it, Moon Child?'\n\n'A grain of sand,' she replied. 'All that's left of my boundless realm. I make you a present of it.'\n\n'Thank you,' said Bastian, bewildered. What on earth could he do with such a gift? If at least it had been something living.\n\nAs he was mulling it over, he felt something wriggling in his hand. He raised his hand to see what it was.\n\n'Look, Moon Child,' he whispered. 'It's glowing and glittering. And there \u2014 look! a little flame is coming out of it. No, it's not a grain of sand, it's a seed. It's a luminous seed and it's starting to sprout!'\n\n'Well done, my Bastian!' he heard her say. 'You see how easy it is for you.'\n\nBarely perceptible at first, the glow of the speck in Bastian's palm grew quickly, making the two child faces, so very different from each other, gleam in the velvety darkness.\n\nSlowly Bastian withdrew his hand, and the glittering speck hovered between them like a little star.\n\nThe seed sprouted so quickly that one could see it grow. It put forth leaves and a stem and buds that burst into many colored, phosphorescent flowers. Little fruits formed, ripened, and exploded like miniature rockets, spraying new seeds all around them.\n\nFrom the new seeds grew other plants, but these had different shapes. Some were like ferns or small palms, others like cacti, bullrushes, or gnarled trees. Each glowed a different color.\n\nSoon the velvety darkness all around Bastian and Moon Child, over and under them and on every side, was filled with rapidly growing luminous plants. A globe of radiant colors, a new, luminous world hovered in the Nowhere, and grew and grew. And in its innermost center Bastian and Moon Child sat hand in hand, looking around them with eyes of wonder.\n\nUnceasingly new shapes and colors appeared. Larger and larger blossoms opened, richer and richer clusters formed. And all this in total silence.\n\nSoon some of the plants were as big as fruit trees. There were fans of long emerald-green leaves, flowers resembling peacock tails with rainbow-colored eyes, pagodas consisting of superimposed umbrellas of violet silk. Thick stems were interwoven like braids. Since they were transparent, they looked like pink glass lit up from within. Some of the blooms looked like clusters of blue and yellow Japanese lanterns. And little by little, as the luminous night growth grew denser, they intertwined to form a tissue of soft light.\n\n'You must give all this a name,' Moon Child whispered.\n\nBastian nodded.\n\n'Perilin, the Night Forest,' he said.\n\nHe looked into the Childlike Empress's eyes. And once again, as at their first exchange of glances, he sat spellbound, unable to take his eyes off her. The first time she had been deathly ill. Now she was much, much more beautiful. Her torn gown was whole again, the soft-colored light played over the pure whiteness of the silk and of her long hair. His wish had come true.\n\nBastian's eyes swam. 'Moon Child,' he stammered. 'Are you well again?'\n\nShe smiled. 'Can't you see that I am?'\n\n'I wish everything would stay like this forever,' he said.\n\n'The moment is forever,' she replied.\n\nBastian was silent. He didn't understand what she had said, but he was in no mood to puzzle it out. He wanted only to sit there looking at her.\n\nLittle by little the thicket of luminous plants had formed a thick hedge around them. As though imprisoned in a tent of magic carpets, Bastian paid no attention to what was happening outside. He didn't realize that Perilin was growing and growing, that each and every plant was getting big or bigger. Seeds no bigger than sparks kept raining down and sprouted as they hit the ground.\n\nBastian sat gazing at Moon Child. He had eyes for nothing else.\n\nHe could not have said how much time had passed when Moon Child put her hand over his eyes.\n\n'Why did you keep me waiting so long?' he heard her ask. 'Why did you make me go to the Old Man of Wandering Mountain? Why didn't you come when I called?'\n\nBastian gulped.\n\n'It was because,' he stammered, 'I thought \u2014 all sorts of reasons \u2014 fear \u2014 well, to tell you the truth, I was ashamed to let you see me.'\n\nShe withdrew her hand and looked at him in amazement.\n\n'Ashamed? Why?'\n\n'B-because,' Bastian stammered, 'you \u2014 you must have expected somebody who was right for you.'\n\n'What's wrong with you?' she asked. 'Aren't you right for me?'\n\nBastian felt that he was blushing. 'I mean,' he said, 'somebody strong and brave and handsome \u2014 maybe a prince \u2014 anyway, not someone like me.'\n\nHe couldn't see her, for he had lowered his eyes, but again he heard her soft lilting laugh.\n\n'You see,' he said, 'Now you're laughing at me.'\n\nThere was a long silence, and when Bastian finally brought himself to look up, he saw that she was bending very close to him. Her face was grave.\n\n'Let me show you something, my Bastian,' she said. 'Look into my eyes.'\n\nBastian obeyed, though his heart was pounding and he felt dizzy.\n\nIn the golden mirror of her eyes, he saw, small at first as though far in the distance, a reflection which little by little grew larger and more distinct. It was a boy of about his own age; but this boy was slender and wonderfully handsome. His bearing was proud and erect, his face was noble, manly \u2014 and lean. He looked like a young prince from the Orient. His turban was of blue silk and so was the silver-embroidered tunic which reached down to his knees. His high boots, made of the softest red leather, were turned up at the toes. And he was wearing a silver-glittering mantle which hung down to the ground. But most beautiful of all were the boy's hands, which, though delicately shaped, gave an impression of unusual strength.\n\nBastian gazed at the image with wonder and admiration. He couldn't get enough of it. He was just going to ask who this handsome young prince might be when it came to him in a flash that this was his very own self \u2014 his reflection in Moon Child's golden eyes.\n\nIn that moment he was transported, carried out of himself, and when he returned, he found he had become the handsome boy whose image he had seen.\n\nHe looked down, and saw exactly what he had seen in Moon Child's eyes: the soft, red-leather boots, the blue tunic embroidered with silver, the resplendent long mantle. He touched his turban and felt his face. His face was the same too.\n\nAnd then he turned toward Moon Child.\n\nShe was gone!\n\nHe was alone in the round room which the glowing thicket had formed.\n\n'Moon Child!' he shouted. 'Moon Child!'\n\nThere was no answer.\n\nFeeling utterly lost, he sat down. What was he to do now? Why had she left him alone? Where should he go \u2014 that is, if he was free to go anywhere, if he wasn't caught in a trap?\n\nWhile he was wondering why Moon Child should have vanished without a word of explanation, without so much as bidding him goodbye, his fingers started playing with a golden medallion that was hanging from his neck.\n\nHe looked at it and let out a cry of surprise.\n\nIt was AURYN, the Gem, the Childlike Empress's amulet, which made its bearer her representative. Moon Child had given him power over every creature and thing in Fantastica. And as long as he wore that emblem, it would be as though she were with him.\n\nFor a long while Bastian looked at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail, and formed an oval. Then he turned the amulet over and to his surprise found an inscription on the reverse side. It consisted of four words in strangely intricate letters:\n\n### _Do What You Wish_\n\nThere had been no mention of such an inscription in the Neverending Story. Could it be that Atreyu hadn't noticed it?\n\nBut that didn't matter now. What mattered was that the words gave him permission, ordered him in fact, to do whatever he pleased.\n\nBastian approached the wall of luminous plants to see if he could slip through somewhere. To his delight he found that the wall could easily be thrust aside like a curtain. Out he stepped.\n\nIn the meantime, the night plants had kept on growing, gently but irresistibly, and Perilin had become a forest such as no human eye had ever beheld.\n\nThe great trunks were now as high and thick as church towers, and still growing. In places these shimmering, milky-white pillars were so close together that it was impossible to pass between them. And seeds were still falling like a shower of sparks.\n\nOn his way through the luminous forest, Bastian tried hard not to step on the glittering seeds that lay on the ground, but this soon proved impossible. There simply wasn't a foot's breadth of ground from which nothing was sprouting. So he stopped worrying and went wherever the giant trees left a path open for him.\n\nBastian was delighted at being handsome. It didn't bother him that there was no one to admire him. On the contrary, he was glad to have the pleasure all to himself. He didn't care a fig for being admired by the lugs who had always made fun of him. If he thought of them at all, it was almost with pity.\n\nIn this forest, where there were no seasons and no alternation of day and night, the feeling of time was entirely different from anything Bastian had ever known. He had no idea how long he had been on his way. But little by little his pleasure in being handsome underwent a change. He began to take it for granted. Not that he was any less happy about it; but now he had the feeling that he had never been any different.\n\nFor this there was a reason which Bastian was not to discover until much later. The beauty that had been bestowed on him made him forget, little by little, that he had ever been fat and bowlegged.\n\nEven if he had known what was happening, he would hardly have regretted the loss of this particular memory. As it happened, he didn't even realize that he had forgotten anything. And when the memory had vanished completely, it seemed to him that he had always been as handsome as he was now.\n\nAt that point a new wish cropped up. Just being handsome wasn't as wonderful as he had thought. He also wanted to be strong, stronger than anybody! The strongest in the world!\n\nWhile going deeper and deeper into the Night Forest, he began to feel hungry. He picked off a few of the strangely shaped luminous fruits and nibbled gingerly to see if they were edible. Edible was no word for it; some were tart, some sweet, some slightly bitter, but all were delicious. He ate as he walked, and felt a miraculous strength flowing into his limbs.\n\nIn the meantime the glowing underbrush around him had become so dense that it cut off his view on all sides. To make matters worse, lianas and aerial roots were becoming inextricably tangled with the thicket below. Slashing with the side of his hand as if it had been a machete, Bastian opened up a passage. And the breach closed directly behind him as if it had never been.\n\nOn he went, but the wall of giant tree trunks blocked his path.\n\nBastian grabbed hold of two great tree trunks and bent them apart. When he had passed through, the wall closed soundlessly behind him.\n\nBastian shouted for joy.\n\nHe was the Lord of the Jungle!\n\nFor a while he amused himself opening paths for himself, like an elephant that has heard the Great Call. His strength did not abate, he had no need to stop for breath. He felt no stitch in his side, and his heart didn't thump or race.\n\nBut after a while he wearied of his new sport. The next thing he wanted was to look down on his domain from above, to see how big it was.\n\nHe spat on his hands, took hold of a liana, and pulled himself up hand over hand, without using his legs, as he had seen acrobats do in the circus. For a moment a vision \u2014 a pale memory of the past \u2014 came to him of himself in gym class, dangling like a sack of flour from the bottommost end of the rope, while the rest of the class cackled with glee. He couldn't help smiling. How they would gape if they saw him now! They'd be proud to know him. But he wouldn't even look at them.\n\nWithout stopping once he finally reached the branch from which the liana was hanging, climbed up and straddled it. The branch gave off a red glow. He stood up and, balancing himself like a tightrope walker, made his way to the trunk. Here again a dense tangle of creepers barred his way, but he had no difficulty in opening up a passage through it.\n\nAt that height the trunk was still so thick that five men clasping hands could not have encircled it. Another, somewhat higher branch, jutting from the trunk in a different direction, was beyond his reach. So he leapt through the air, caught hold of an aerial root, swung himself into place, made another perilous leap, and grabbed the higher branch. From there he was able to pull himself up to a still higher one. By then he was high above the ground, at least three hundred feet, but the glowing branches and foliage still obstructed his view.\n\nNot until he had climbed to twice that height were there occasional spaces through which he could look around. But then the going became difficult, because there were fewer and fewer branches. And at last, when he had almost reached the top, he had to stop, for there was nothing to hold on to but the smooth, bare trunk, which was still as thick as a telegraph pole.\n\nBastian looked up and saw that the trunk or stalk ended some fifty feet higher up in an enormous, glowing, dark-red blossom. He didn't see how he could ever reach it, but he had to keep going, for he couldn't very well stay where he was. He threw his arms around the trunk and climbed the last fifty feet like an acrobat. The trunk swayed and bent like a blade of grass in the wind.\n\nAt length he was directly below the blossom, which was open at the top like a tulip. He managed to slip one hand between two of the petals and take hold. Then, pushing the petals wide apart, he pulled himself up.\n\nFor a moment he lay there, for by then he was somewhat out of breath. But then he stood up and looked over the edge of the great, glowing blossom, as from the crow's nest of a ship.\n\nThe tree he had climbed was one of the tallest in the whole jungle and he was able to see far into the distance. Above him he still saw the velvety darkness of a starless night sky, but below him, as far as he could see, the treetops of Perilin presented a play of colors that took his breath away.\n\nFor a long time Bastian stood there, drinking in the sight. This was his domain! He had created it! He was the lord of Perilin.\n\nAnd once again he shouted for joy!\n\n# XIV\n\n# _The Desert of Colors_\n\nNEVER had Bastian slept so soundly as in that glowing red blossom. When at last he opened his eyes, the sky overhead was still a velvety black. He stretched and was happy to feel miraculous strength in his limbs.\n\nOnce again, there had been a change in him. His wish to be strong had come true.\n\nWhen he stood up and looked out over the edge of the great blossom, Perilin seemed to have stopped growing. The Night Forest looked pretty much the same as when he had last seen it. He didn't know that this too was connected with the fulfillment of his wish, and that his memory of his weakness and clumsiness had been blotted out at the same time. He was handsome and strong, but somehow that wasn't enough for him. He also felt the need to be tough and inured to hardship like Atreyu. But how was he to come by that quality in this luminous garden, where all manner of fruit was to be had for the picking?\n\nThe first pearly streaks of dawn appeared over the eastern horizon. And with the rising of the light the phosphorescence of the night plants paled.\n\n'High time!' said Bastian aloud. 'I thought the day would never come.'\n\nHe sat down on the floor of the blossom and wondered what he should do. Climb down again and keep going? Of course, since he was lord of Perilin, no one could stop him from wandering around in it for days, if not for months or years. This jungle was so enormous he would never find his way out of it. But beautiful as he found the night plants, he didn't think this prospect would suit him in the long run. Exploring a desert \u2014 that would be something else again. The biggest desert in Fantastica. Yes, that would be something to be proud of.\n\nIn that same moment, a violent tremor shook the giant tree. The trunk bent, and a crackling, groaning sound could be heard. Bastian had to hold tight to keep from rolling out of his blossom, the stem of which tilted more and more, until at last it lay flat.\n\nThe sun, which had risen in the meantime, disclosed a vision of devastation. Hardly anything was left of all the enormous night plants. More quickly than they had sprung up they crumbled under the glaring sunlight into dust and fine, colored sand. Gigantic tree trunks collapsed as sand castles do when they dry out. Bastian's tree seemed to be the last still standing. But when he tried to steady himself by grasping at the petals of his flower, they crumbled in his hands and blew away like a cloud of dust. Now that there was nothing to obstruct the view, he saw how terrifyingly high up he was. He knew he would have to climb down as fast as possible, for the tree was likely to collapse at any moment.\n\nCautiously, he climbed out of the blossom and straddled the stem, which was now bent like a fishing pole. No sooner had he left the blossom than it broke off behind him and crumbled into dust in falling.\n\nEver so gingerly Bastian proceeded downward. Many a man would have panicked on seeing the ground so very far below, but Bastian was free from dizziness and his nerves were steel. Knowing that any abrupt movement might reduce the whole tree to dust, he crept along the bough and finally reached the place where the trunk became vertical. Hugging it, he let himself slide, inch by inch. Several times, great clouds of colored dust fell on him from above. There were no branches left, and what towering stumps remained crumbled when Bastian tried to use them for support. As he continued downward, the trunk became too big for him to hold. And he was still far above the ground. He stopped to think: How was he ever going to get down?\n\nBut then another tremor passed through the giant stump and relieved him of the need for further thought. What was left of the tree disintegrated and settled into a great mound of sand; Bastian rolled down the side of it in a wild whirl, turning a number of somersaults on the way, and finally came to rest at the bottom. He came close to being buried under an avalanche of colored dust, but he fought his way clear, spat the sand out of his mouth, and shook it out of his ears and clothes.\n\nWherever he looked, the sand was moving in slow streams and eddies. It collected into hills and dunes of every shape and size, each with a color of its own. Light-blue sand gathered to form a light-blue hill, and the same with green and violet and so on. Perilin, the Night Forest, was gone and a desert was taking its place; and what a desert!\n\nBastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that recurred in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermilion, lapis lazuli. And so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hills, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand.\n\n'This,' said Bastian aloud, 'is Goab, the Desert of Colors.'\n\nThe sun rose higher and higher and the heat became murderous. The air over the colored sand dunes shimmered, and Bastian realized that he was in a tight spot. He could not stay in this desert, that was certain. If he didn't get out of it soon, he would die of hunger and thirst.\n\nHe took hold of the Childlike Empress's emblem in the hope that it would guide him. And then staunchly he started on his way.\n\nHe climbed dune after dune; hour after hour he plodded on, never seeing anything but hill after hill. Only the colors kept changing. His fabulous strength was no longer of any use to him, for desert distances cannot be vanquished with strength. The air was a searing blast from hell. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth and his face streamed with sweat.\n\nThe sun was a whorl of fire in the middle of the sky. It had been in the same place for a long time and didn't seem to move. That day in the desert was as long as the night in Perilin.\n\nBastian's eyes burned and his tongue felt like a piece of leather. But he didn't give up. His body had dried out, and the blood in his veins was so thick it could hardly flow. But on he went, slowly, with even steps, neither hurrying nor stopping to rest, as if he had had years of experience at crossing deserts on foot. He ignored the torments of thirst. His will had become as hard as steel, neither fatigue nor hardship could bend it.\n\nHe recalled how easily he had been discouraged in the past. He had begun all sorts of projects and given up at the first sign of difficulty. He had always been afraid of not getting enough to eat, or of falling ill, or having to endure pain. All that was far behind him.\n\nNo one before him had dared to cross Goab, the Desert of Colors, on foot, nor would anyone undertake to do so in the future. And most likely no one would ever hear of his exploit.\n\nThis last thought saddened Bastian. Goab seemed to be so inconceivably large he felt sure he would never come to the end of it. Despite his phenomenal endurance he was bound to perish sooner or later. That didn't frighten him. He would die with calm dignity like the hunters in Atreyu's country. But since no one ever ventured into this desert, the news of his death would never be divulged. Either in Fantastica or at home. He would simply be reported missing, and no one would ever know he had been in Fantastica or in the desert of Goab. All Fantastica, he said to himself, was contained in the book that the Old Man of Wandering Mountain had written. This book was the Neverending Story, which he himself had read in the attic. Maybe his present adventures and sufferings were in the book even now. And maybe someone else would read the book someday \u2014 maybe someone was reading it at that very moment. In that case, it must be possible to give that someone a sign.\n\nThe sand hill where Bastian was standing just then was ultramarine blue. And separated from it by a narrow cleft there was a fiery-red dune. Bastian crossed over to it, gathered up sand in both hands and carried it to the blue hill. Then he strewed a long line of red sand on the hillside. He went back, brought more red sand, and repeated the operation. Soon he had fashioned three enormous red letters against the blue ground:\n\n### _B B B_\n\nHe viewed his work with satisfaction. No reader of the Neverending Story could fail to see his message. So whatever happened to him now, someone would know where he had been.\n\nHe sat down to rest on the red hilltop. The three letters glittered bright in the desert sun.\n\nAnother piece of his memory of the old Bastian had been wiped out. He forgot that he had once been a namby-pamby, something of a crybaby, in fact. And he was ever so proud of his toughness. But already a new wish was taking form.\n\n'It's true that I fear nothing,' he said aloud, 'but what I still lack is true courage. Being able to endure hardships is a great thing. But courage and daring are something else again. I wish I could run into a real adventure, something calling for great courage. How grand it would be to meet some dangerous creature \u2014 maybe not as hideous as Ygramul, but much more dangerous. A beautiful, but very, very dangerous creature. The most dangerous creature in all Fantastica. I'd step right up to it and...'\n\nBastian said no more, for in that same moment he heard a roaring and rumbling so deep that the ground trembled beneath his feet.\n\nBastian turned around. Far in the distance he saw something that looked like a ball of fire. Moving with incredible speed, it described a wide arc around the spot where Bastian was sitting, then came straight toward him. In the shimmering desert air, which made the outline of things waver like flames, the creature looked like a dancing fire-demon.\n\nBastian was stricken with terror. Before he knew it, he had run down into the cleft between the red dune and the blue dune. But no sooner had he got there than he felt ashamed and overcame his fear.\n\nHe took hold of AURYN and felt all the courage he had wished for streaming into his heart.\n\nThen again he heard the deep roar that made the ground tremble, but this time it was near him. He looked up.\n\nA huge lion was standing on the fiery-red dune. The sun was directly behind him, and made his great mane look like a wreath of fire. This lion was not a tawny color like other lions, but as fiery red as the dune on which he was standing.\n\nThe beast did not seem to have noticed the boy, so much smaller than himself, who was standing in the cleft between the two dunes, but seemed to be looking at the red letters on the opposite hill. The great rumbling voice said: 'Who did this?'\n\n'I did,' said Bastian.\n\n'What is it?'\n\n'It's my initials,' said Bastian. 'My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\nThen for the first time the lion turned toward Bastian, who for a moment expected to be burned to a crisp by the flames that seemed to surround the lion. But his fear soon passed and he returned the lion's gaze.\n\n'I,' said the huge beast, 'am Grograman, Lord of the Desert of Colors. I am also known as the Many-Colored Death.'\n\nBastian felt the deadly power that flowed from the lion's eyes. But he did not avert his own.\n\nWhen they had measured their strength for some time, the lion looked down. With slow, majestic movements he descended from the dune. When he stepped onto the ultramarine sand, he too changed color, his coat and mane became blue. For a moment the huge beast stood facing Bastian, who had to look up at him as a mouse might look up at a cat. Then suddenly Grograman lay down and touched his head to the ground.\n\n'Master,' he said. 'I am your servant, I await your commands.'\n\n'I'd like to get out of this desert,' said Bastian. 'Can you manage that?'\n\nGrograman shook his mane.\n\n'No, master, that I cannot do.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'Because I carry the desert with me.'\n\nNot knowing what to make of this, Bastian asked: 'Isn't there somebody who can get me out of here?'\n\n'How could that be, master?' said Grograman. 'Where I am no other living creature can exist. My presence alone would suffice to reduce everybody \u2014 even the most powerful of creatures \u2014 into ashes for thousands of miles around. That's why I'm called the Many-Colored Death and Lord of the Desert of Colors.'\n\n'That's not so,' said Bastian. 'Everybody doesn't get burned up in your desert. Look at me.'\n\n'Because you are bearing the Gem, master. AURYN protects you \u2014 even from me, the deadliest creature in Fantastica.'\n\n'You mean that if I didn't have the Gem, I'd be reduced to ashes?'\n\n'That's how it is, master. That's what would happen, though personally I'd regret it. Because you're the first and only being who has ever spoken to me.'\n\nBastian touched the amulet. 'Thank you, Moon Child,' he said under his breath.\n\nGrograman stood up to his full height and looked down at Bastian.\n\n'I believe, master, that we have things to discuss. Perhaps I can acquaint you with certain secrets. And perhaps you can clear up the riddle of my existence for me.'\n\nBastian nodded. 'But first,' he said. 'Could you possibly get me something to drink? I'm very thirsty.'\n\n'Your servant hears and obeys,' said Grograman. 'Will you deign to sit on my back? I shall carry you to my palace, where you will find everything you need.'\n\nBastian climbed up on the lion's back and clutched the flaming mane in both hands. Grograman looked back at his passenger.\n\n'Hold on tight, master, I'm a swift runner. And one more thing: as long as you are in my domain and especially when you are with me \u2014 promise me that you will never for any reason lay down the amulet that protects you.'\n\n'I promise,' said Bastian.\n\nThe lion started off, at first at a slow, dignified gait, then faster and faster. To Bastian's amazement, the lion's coat and mane changed color with every new sand hill. But soon Grograman was making great leaps from hilltop to hilltop, and his coat changed color faster and faster. Bastian's eyes swam, and he saw all the colors at once as in a rainbow. The hot wind whistled around Bastian's ears and tugged at his mantle, which fluttered behind him. He felt the movements of the lion's muscles and breathed the wild, heady smell of the shaggy mane. The triumphant shout that escaped him resembled the cry of a bird of prey, and Grograman answered with a roar that made the desert tremble. For the moment these two different creatures were one. Bastian's heart and mind were in the clouds. He didn't come to himself until he heard Grograman saying: 'We have arrived, master! Will you deign to alight?'\n\nBastian jumped down from the lion's back and landed on the sandy ground. Before him he saw a cleft mountain of black rock. Or was it a ruined building? He didn't know, for the stones which made up the doorframes, walls, columns, and terraces of the building, as well as those that were lying about half buried in colored sand, were deeply creviced and smooth, as though the sandstorms of time had smoothed away all sharp edges and roughness.\n\n'This, master, is my palace \u2014 and my tomb,' Bastian heard the lion's voice saying. 'You are Grograman's first and only guest. Enter and make yourself at home.'\n\nThe sun hung low over the horizon, a great pale-yellow disk, shorn of its searing heat. Apparently the ride had taken much longer than it had seemed to Bastian. The truncated columns or spurs of rock, whichever they might be, cast long shadows. It would soon be night.\n\nAs Bastian followed the lion through a dark doorway leading into the palace, he had the impression that Grograman's steps sounded tired and heavy.\n\nAfter passing a dark corridor and up and down a number of stairways, they came at last to a large double door which seemed to be made of black rock. As Grograman approached, it opened of its own accord, and when they had both gone through, it closed behind them.\n\nNow they were in a large hall, or rather a cave, lit by hundreds of lamps whose flames resembled the play of colors on Grograman's coat. The floor was of colored tiles. At the center was a circular platform surrounded by steps, and on the platform lay an enormous black rock. Grograman seemed spent as he turned to Bastian.\n\n'My time is close at hand, master,' he said, hardly above a whisper. 'There won't be time for our talk. But don't worry, and wait for the day. What has always happened will happen once again. And perhaps you will be able to tell me why.'\n\nThen he pointed his head in the direction of a little gate at the other end of the cave.\n\n'Go in there, master. You will find everything in readiness. That room has been waiting for you since the beginning of time.'\n\nBastian went to the gate, but before opening it, he glanced back. Grograman had sat down on the black rock. He was as black as the stone. In a faint, far-off voice, he said: 'Quite possibly, master, you will hear sounds that will frighten you. Don't be afraid. As long as you carry the emblem, nothing can happen to you.'\n\nBastian nodded and passed through the gate.\n\nThe room he entered was magnificent. The floor was laid with soft, richly colored carpets. The graceful columns supporting the vaulted ceiling were covered with gold mosaic, which fragmented the varicolored light of the lamps. In one corner Bastian saw a broad divan covered with soft rugs and cushions of all kinds, surmounted by a canopy of azure-blue silk. In the opposite corner the stone floor had been hollowed to form a pool filled with golden liquid. On a low table stood bowls and dishes of food, a carafe full of some ruby-red drink, and a golden cup.\n\nBastian squatted down at the table and fell to. The drink had a tart, wild taste and was wonderfully thirst-quenching. The dishes were unknown to Bastian. Some looked like cakes or nuts, others like squash or melons, but the taste was entirely different. Sharp and spicy. Everything was delicious, and Bastian ate his fill.\n\nThen he took his clothes off \u2014 but not the amulet \u2014 and stepped into the pool. For a while he splashed about, washed himself, dived under, and came up puffing like a walrus. Then he discovered some strange-looking bottles at the edge of the pool. Thinking they must be bath oils, he poured a little of each into the water. Green, red, and yellow flames darted hissing over the surface, and a little smoke went up. It smelled of resin and bitter herbs. And then the flames died.\n\nAfter a while Bastian got out of the water, dried himself with the soft towels that lay ready, and put his clothes on. Suddenly he noticed that the lamps were not burning as brightly as before. And then he heard a sound that sent the cold shivers down his spine: a cracking and grinding, as though a rock were bursting under the pressure of expanding ice.\n\nBastian's heart pounded. He remembered that Grograman had told him not to be afraid.\n\nThe sound softened to a moan and soon stopped. It was not repeated, but the stillness was almost more terrible.\n\nDetermined to find out what had happened, Bastian opened the door of the bedchamber. At first he saw no change in the great hall, except that the lamplight now seemed somber and was pulsating like a faltering heartbeat. The lion was still sitting in the same attitude on the black rock. He seemed to be looking at Bastian.\n\n'Grograman!' Bastian cried. 'What's going on? What was that sound? Was it you?'\n\nThe lion made no answer and didn't move, but when Bastian approached him, the lion followed him with his eyes.\n\nHesitantly Bastian stretched out his hand to stroke the lion's mane, but the moment he touched it he recoiled in horror. It was hard and ice-cold like the black rock. And Grograman's face and paws felt the same way.\n\nBastian didn't know what to do. He saw that the black stone doors were slowly opening. He left the hall, but it wasn't until he had passed through the long dark corridor and was on his way up the stairs that he started wondering what he would do when he was outside. In this desert there couldn't be anyone capable of saving Grograman.\n\nBut it wasn't a desert anymore!\n\nWhichever way Bastian looked, he saw glittering dots. Millions of tiny plants were sprouting from the grains of sand which had become seeds again. Perilin the Night Forest was growing once more.\n\nBastian sensed that Grograman's rigidity was somehow connected with this transformation.\n\nHe went back to the cave. The light in the lamps was barely flickering. He went over to the lion, threw his arms around the huge neck, and pressed his face to the beast's face.\n\nThe lion's eyes were black and as dead as the rock. Grograman had turned to stone. The lights flared for an instant and went out, leaving the cave in total darkness.\n\nBastian wept bitterly. The stone lion was wet with his tears. In the end, the boy curled up between the great paws and fell asleep!\n\n# XV\n\n# _Grograman, the Many-Colored Death_\n\nO MASTER,' said the rumbling lion's voice. 'Have you spent the whole night like this?'\n\nBastian sat up and rubbed his eyes. He had been lying between the lion's paws, and Grograman was watching him with a look of amazement. His fur was still as black as the rock he was sitting on, but his eyes sparkled. The lamps in the cave were burning again.\n\n'Oh!' Bastian cried. 'I thought you had turned to stone.'\n\n'So I had,' the lion replied. 'I die with every nightfall, and every morning I wake up again.'\n\n'I thought it was forever,' said Bastian.\n\n'It always _is_ forever,' said Grograman mysteriously.\n\nHe stood up, stretched, and trotted about the cave. His fur shone more and more brightly in the colors of the mosaic floor. Suddenly he stopped still and looked at the boy.\n\n'Did you shed tears over me?' he asked.\n\nBastian nodded.\n\n'Then,' said the lion, 'you are not only the only being who has ever slept between the paws of the Many-Colored Death, but also the only being who has ever mourned his death.'\n\nBastian looked at the lion, who was trotting about again, and finally asked him in a whisper: 'Are you always alone?'\n\nAgain the lion stood still, but this time he did not turn toward Bastian. He kept his face averted and repeated in his rumbling voice: 'Alone!'\n\nThe word echoed through the cave.\n\n'My realm is the desert, and it is also my work. Wherever I go, everything around me turns to desert. I carry it with me. Since I am made of deadly fire, must I not be doomed to everlasting solitude?'\n\nBastian fell into a dismayed silence.\n\n'Master,' said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes.\n\n'You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?'\n\n'So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,' said Bastian.\n\n'Perilin?' said the lion. 'What's that?'\n\nThen Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dreamlike beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman's eyes glowed more and more brightly.\n\n'All that,' Bastian concluded, 'can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn't have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.'\n\nFor a long while Grograman was silent.\n\n'Master,' he said then. 'Now I see that my dying gives life and my living death, and both are good. Now I understand the meaning of my existence. I thank you.'\n\nHe strode slowly and solemnly into the darkest corner of the cave. Bastian couldn't see what he did there, but he heard a jangling of metal. When Grograman came back, he was carrying something in his mouth. With a deep bow he laid this something at Bastian's feet.\n\nIt was a sword.\n\nIt didn't look very impressive. The iron sheath was rusty, and the hilt might have belonged to a child's wooden sword.\n\n'Can you give it a name?' Grograman asked.\n\nBastian examined it carefully.\n\n'Sikanda,' he said.\n\nIn that same moment the sword darted from its sheath and flew into his hand. The blade consisted of pure light and glittered so brightly that he could hardly bear to look at it. It was double-edged and weighed no more than a feather.\n\n'This sword has been destined for you since the beginning of time,' said Grograman. 'For only one who has ridden on my back, who has eaten and drunk of my fire and bathed in it like you, can touch it without danger. But only because you have given it its right name does it belong to you.'\n\n'Sikanda!' said Bastian under his breath as, fascinated by the gleaming light, he swung the sword slowly through the air. 'It's a magic sword, isn't it?'\n\n'Nothing in all Fantastica can resist it,' said Grograman, 'neither rock nor steel. But you must not use force. Whatever may threaten you, you may wield it only if it leaps into your hand of its own accord as it did now. It will guide your hand and by its own power will do what needs to be done. But if your will makes you draw it from its sheath, you will bring great misfortune on yourself and on Fantastica. Never forget that.'\n\n'I will never forget it,' Bastian promised.\n\nThe sword flew back into its sheath and again it looked old and worthless. Bastian grasped the leather belt on which the sheath hung and slung it around his waist.\n\n'And now, master,' Grograman suggested, 'let us, if you wish, go racing through the desert together. Climb on my back, for I must go out now.'\n\nBastian mounted, and the lion trotted out into the open. The Night Forest had long since crumbled into colored sand, and the morning sun rose above the desert horizon. Together they swept over the dunes - like a dancing flame, like a blazing tempest. Bastian felt as though he were riding a flaming comet through light and colors.\n\nToward midday Grograman stopped.\n\n'This, master, is the place where we met.'\n\nBastian's head was still reeling from the wild ride. He looked around but could see neither the ultramarine-blue nor the fiery-red hill. Nor was there any sign of the letters he had made. Now the dunes were olive green and pink.\n\n'It's all entirely different,' he said.\n\n'Yes, master,' said the lion. 'That's the way it is - different every day. Up until now I didn't know why. But since you told me that Perilin grows out of the sand, I understand.'\n\n'But how do you know it's the same place as yesterday?'\n\n'I feel it as I feel my own body. The desert is a part of me.'\n\nBastian climbed down from Grograman's back and seated himself on the olive-green hill. The lion lay beside him and now he too was olive green. Bastian propped his chin on his hand and looked out toward the horizon.\n\n'Grograman,' he said after a long silence. 'May I ask you a question?'\n\n'Your servant is listening.'\n\n'Is it true that you've always been here?'\n\n'Always!'\n\n'And the desert of Goab has always existed?'\n\n'Yes, the desert too. Why do you ask?'\n\nBastian pondered.\n\n'I don't get it,' he finally confessed. 'I'd have bet it wasn't here before yesterday morning.'\n\n'What makes you think that, master?'\n\nThen Bastian told him everything that had happened since he met Moon Child.\n\n'It's all so strange,' he concluded. 'A wish comes into my head, and then something always happens that makes the wish come true. I haven't made this up, you know. I wouldn't be able to. I could never have invented all the different night plants in Perilin. Or the colors of Goab - or you! It's all much more wonderful and real than anything I could have made up. But all the same, nothing is there until I've wished it.'\n\n'That,' said the lion, 'is because you're carrying AURYN, the Gem.'\n\n'But does all this exist only after I've wished it? Or was it all there before?'\n\n'Both,' said Grograman.\n\n'How can that be?' Bastian cried almost impatiently. 'You've been here in Goab, the Desert of Colors, since heaven knows when. The room in your palace was waiting for me since the beginning of time. So, too, was the sword Sikanda. You told me so yourself.'\n\n'That is true, master.'\n\n'But I - I've only been in Fantastica since last night! So it can't be true that all these things have existed only since I came here.'\n\n'Master,' the lion replied calmly. 'Didn't you know that Fantastica is the land of stories? A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.'\n\n'Then Perilin, too, must always have been there,' said the perplexed Bastian.\n\n'Beginning at the moment when you gave it its name,' Grograman replied, 'it has existed forever.'\n\n'You mean that I created it?'\n\nThe lion was silent for a while. Then he said: 'Only the Childlike Empress can tell you that. It is she who has given you everything.'\n\nHe arose.\n\n'Master, it's time we went back to my palace. The sun is low in the sky and we have a long way to go.'\n\nThat night Grograman lay down again on the black rock, and this time Bastian stayed with him. Few words passed between them. Bastian brought food and drink from the bedchamber, where once again the little table had been laid by an unseen hand. He seated himself on the steps leading to the lion's rock, and there he ate his supper.\n\nWhen the light of the lamps grew dim and began to pulsate like a faltering heartbeat, he stood up and threw his arms around the lion's neck. The mane was hard and looked like congealed lava. Then the gruesome sound was repeated. Bastian was no longer afraid, but again he wept at the thought of Grograman's sufferings, for now he knew they would endure for all time.\n\nLater that night Bastian groped his way into the open and stood for a long while watching the soundless growth of the night plants. Then he went back into the cave and again lay down to sleep between the petrified lion's paws.\n\nHe stayed with Grograman for many days and nights, and they became friends. They spent many hours in the desert, playing wild games. Bastian would hide among the sand dunes, but Grograman always found him. They ran races, but the lion was a thousand times swifter than Bastian. They wrestled and there Bastian was the lion's equal. Though of course it was only in fun, Grograman needed all his strength to hold his own. Neither could defeat the other.\n\nOnce, after they had been wrestling and tumbling, Bastian sat down, somewhat out of breath, and said: 'Couldn't I stay with you forever?'\n\nThe lion shook his mane. 'No, master.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'Here there is only life and death, only Perilin and Goab, but no story. You must live your story. You cannot remain here.'\n\n'But how can I leave?' Bastian asked. 'The desert is much too big, I'd never get to the end of it. And you can't carry me out of it, because you take the desert with you.'\n\n'Only your wishes can guide you over the pathways of Fantastica,' said Grograman. 'You must go from wish to wish. What you don't wish for will always be beyond your reach. That is what the words 'far' and 'near' mean in Fantastica. And wishing to leave a place is not enough. You must wish to go somewhere else and let your wishes guide you.'\n\n'But I can't wish to leave here,' said Bastian.\n\n'You must find your next wish,' said Grograman almost sternly.\n\n'And when I find it,' Bastian asked, 'how will I be able to leave here?'\n\n'I will tell you,' said Grograman gravely. 'There is in Fantastica a certain place from which one can go anywhere and which can be reached from anywhere. We call it the Temple of a Thousand Doors. No one has ever seen it from outside. The inside is a maze of doors. Anyone wishing to know it must dare to enter it.'\n\n'But how is that possible if it can't be approached from outside?'\n\n'Every door in Fantastica,' said the lion, 'even the most ordinary stable, kitchen, or cupboard door, can become the entrance to the Temple of a Thousand Doors at the right moment. And none of these thousand doors leads back to where one came from. There is no return.'\n\n'And once someone is inside,' Bastian asked, 'can he get out and go somewhere?'\n\n'Yes,' said the lion. 'But it's not as simple as in other buildings. Only a genuine wish can lead you through the maze of the thousand doors. Without a genuine wish, you just have to wander around until you know what you really want. And that can take a long time.'\n\n'How will I find the entrance?'\n\n'You've got to wish it.'\n\nBastian pondered a long while. Then he said: 'It seems strange that we can't just wish what we please. Where do our wishes come from? What is a wish anyway?'\n\nGrograman gave the boy a long, earnest look, but made no answer.\n\nSome days later they had another serious talk.\n\nBastian had shown the lion the inscription on the reverse side of the Gem. 'What do you suppose it means?' he asked.\n\n'\"DO WHAT YOU WISH.\" That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?'\n\nAll at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed.\n\n'No,' he said in his deep, rumbling voice. 'It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.'\n\n'What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?' 'It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it.'\n\n'How can I find out?'\n\n'By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.'\n\n'That doesn't sound so hard,' said Bastian.\n\n'It is the most dangerous of all journeys.'\n\n'Why?' Bastian asked. 'I'm not afraid.'\n\n'That isn't it,' Grograman rumbled. 'It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.'\n\n'Do you mean because our wishes aren't always good? Bastian asked.\n\nThe lion lashed the sand he was lying on with his tail. His ears lay flat, he screwed up his nose, and his eyes flashed fire. Involuntarily Bastian ducked when Grograman's voice once again made the earth tremble: 'What do you know about wishes? How would you know what's good and what isn't?'\n\nIn the days that followed Bastian thought a good deal about what the Many-Colored Death had said. There are some things, however, that we cannot fathom by thinking about them, but only by experience. So it was not until much later, after all manner of adventures, that he thought back on Grograman's words and began to understand them.\n\nAt this time another change took place in Bastian. Since his meeting with Moon Child he had received many gifts. Now he was favored with a new one: courage. And again something was taken away from him, namely, the memory of his past timidity.\n\nSince he was no longer afraid of anything, a new wish began, imperceptibly at first, then more distinctly, to take shape within him: the wish to be alone no longer. Even in the company of the Many-Colored Death he was alone in a way. He wanted to exhibit his talents to others, to be admired and to become famous.\n\nAnd one night as he was watching Perilin grow, it suddenly came to him that he was doing so for the last time, that he would have to bid the grandiose Night Forest goodbye. An inner voice was calling him away.\n\nHe cast a last glance at the magnificently glowing colors. Then he descended to the darkness of Grograman's palace and tomb, and sat down on the steps. He couldn't have said what he was waiting for, but he knew that he could not sleep that night.\n\nHe must have dozed a little, for suddenly he started as if someone had called his name.\n\nThe door leading to the bedchamber had opened. Through the cleft a long strip of reddish light shone into the dark cave.\n\nBastian stood up. Had the door been transformed for this moment into the entrance of the Temple of a Thousand Doors? Hesitantly he approached the cleft and tried to peer through. He couldn't see a thing. Then slowly the cleft began to close. In a moment his only chance would pass.\n\nHe turned back to Grograman, who lay motionless, with eyes of dead stone, on his pedestal. The strip of light from the door fell full on him.\n\n'Goodbye, Grograman, and thanks for everything,' he said softly. 'I'll come again, I promise, I'll come again.'\n\nThen he slipped through the cleft, and instantly the door closed behind him.\n\nBastian didn't know that he would not keep his promise. Much much later someone would come in his name and keep it for him.\n\nBut that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\n# XVI\n\n# _The Silver City of Amarganth_\n\nPURPLE light passed in slow waves across the floor and the walls of the room. It was a hexagonal room, rather like the enlarged cell of a honeycomb. Every second wall had a door in it, and on the intervening walls were painted strange pictures representing landscapes and creatures who seemed to be half plant and half animal. Bastian had entered through one of the doors; the other two, to the right and left of it, were exactly the same shape, but the left-hand door was black, while the right-hand one was white. Bastian chose the white door.\n\nIn the next room the light was yellowish. Here again the walls formed a hexagon. The pictures represented all manner of contrivances that meant nothing to Bastian. Were they tools or weapons? The two doors leading onward to the right and left were the same color, yellow, but the left-hand one was tall and narrow, while the one on the right was low and wide. Bastian chose the left-hand one.\n\nThe next room was hexagonal like the others, but the light was bluish. The pictures on the walls were of intricate ornaments or characters in a strange alphabet. Here the two doors were the same color, but of different material, one of wood, the other of metal. Bastian chose the wooden door.\n\nIt is not possible to describe all the doors and rooms through which Bastian passed during his stay in the Temple of a Thousand Doors. There were doors that looked like large keyholes, and others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors and rusty iron doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned. The two doors leading out of a room always had something in common - the shape, the material, the size, the color - but there was always some essential difference between them.\n\nBastian had passed many times from one hexagonal room to another. Every decision he made led to another decision that led to yet another decision. But after all these decisions he was still in the Temple of a Thousand Doors. As he went on and on, he began to wonder why this should be. His wish had sufficed to lead him into the maze, but apparently it was not definite enough to enable him to find the way out. He had wished for company. But now he realized that by company he had meant no one in particular. This vague wish hadn't helped him at all. Thus far his decisions had been based on mere whim and involved very little thought. In every case he might just as well have taken the other door. At this rate he would never find his way out.\n\nJust then he was in a room with a greenish light. Three of the six walls had variously shaped clouds painted on them. The door to the left was of white mother-of-pearl, the one on the right of ebony. And suddenly he knew whom he wished for: Atreyu!\n\nThe mother-of-pearl door reminded Bastian of Falkor the luckdragon, whose scales glistened like mother-of-pearl. So he decided on that one.\n\nIn the next room one of the two doors was made of plaited grass, the other was an iron grating. Just then Bastian was thinking of the Grassy Ocean where Atreyu was at home, so he picked the grass door.\n\nIn the next room he found two doors which differed only in that one was made of leather and the other of felt. Bastian chose the leather one.\n\nThen he was faced with two more doors, and again he had time to think. One was purple, the other olive green. Atreyu was a Greenskin and his cloak was made from the hide of a purple buffalo. A symbol such as Atreyu had had on his forehead and cheeks when Cairon came to him was painted in white on the olive-green door. But the purple door had the same symbol on it, and Bastian didn't know that Atreyu's cloak had been ornamented with just such symbols. That door, he thought, must lead to someone else, not to Atreyu.\n\nHe opened the olive-green door - and then he was outside.\n\nTo his surprise he found himself not in the Grassy Ocean but in a bright springtime forest. Sunbeams shone through the young foliage and played their games of light and shade on the mossy ground. The place smelled of earth and mushrooms and the balmy air was filled with the twittering of birds.\n\nBastian turned around and saw that he had just stepped out of a little forest chapel. For that moment its door had been the way out of the Temple of a Thousand Doors. Bastian opened it again, but all he saw was the inside of a small chapel. The roof consisted only of a few rotten beams, and the walls were covered with moss.\n\nBastian started walking. He had no idea where he was going, but he felt certain that sooner or later he would find Atreyu. The thought made him so happy that he whistled to the birds, who answered him and sang every merry tune that entered his head.\n\nA while later he caught sight of a group of figures in a clearing. As he came closer, they proved to be four men in magnificent armor and a beautiful lady, who was sitting on the grass, strumming a lute. Five richly caparisoned horses and a pack mule were standing in the background. A white cloth laid with all manner of viands and drink was spread out on the grass before the company.\n\nBefore joining the group, Bastian hid the Childlike Empress's amulet under his shirt. He thought it best to see what these people were up to before allowing himself to be recognized.\n\nThe men stood up and bowed low at his approach, evidently taking him for an Oriental prince or something of the kind. The fair lady nodded, smiled at him, and went on strumming her lute. One of the men was taller than the rest and more magnificently clad. He had fair hair that hung down over his shoulders.\n\n'I am Hero Hynreck,' he announced, 'and this lady is Princess Oglamar, daughter of the king of Luna. These men are my friends Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn. And what may your name be, young friend?'\n\n'I may not say my name - not yet,' Bastian replied.\n\n'A vow?' Princess Oglamar asked on a note of mockery. 'So young, and you've already made a vow?'\n\n'Have you come a long way?' Hero Hynreck inquired.\n\n'A very long way,' Bastian replied.\n\n'Are you a prince?' asked the princess with a gracious smile.\n\n'That I may not reveal,' said Bastian.\n\n'Well, welcome in any case to our gathering!' cried Hero Hynreck. 'Will you honor us by partaking of our repast?'\n\nBastian accepted with thanks, sat down, and began to eat.\n\nFrom the conversation between the lady and the four knights Bastian learned that a tournament was to be held in the large and magnificent Silver City of Amarganth, which was not far distant. From far and near the boldest heroes, the most skillful hunters, the bravest warriors, and all manner of adventurers as well, had come to take part. Only the three bravest and best, who defeated all the others, were to have the honor of joining in a long and perilous expedition, the aim of which was to find a certain person, the so-called Savior, who was known to be somewhere in one of the numerous regions of Fantastica. Thus far no one knew his name. It appeared that at some time in the past Fantastica had been struck by disaster, but that this Savior had appeared on the scene and saved it in the nick of time by giving the Childlike Empress the name of Moon Child, by which she was now known to everyone in Fantastica. Since then he had been wandering about the country unknown, and the purpose of the expedition was to find him and keep him safe by serving him as a kind of bodyguard. Only the bravest and ablest men would be chosen for the mission, since it seemed more than likely that formidable adventures awaited them.\n\nThe tournament at which the three were to be chosen had been organized by Querquobad, the Silver Sage - the city of Amarganth was always ruled by its oldest man or woman, and Querquobad was a hundred and seven years old. The winners, however, would not be selected by him, but by one Atreyu, a young Greenskin, who was then visiting Sage Querquobad. This Atreyu was to lead the expedition. For he alone was capable of recognizing the Savior, since he had seen him once in his magic mirror.\n\nBastian listened in silence. It wasn't easy for him, for he soon realized that this Savior was his very own self. And when Atreyu's name came up, his heart laughed within him, and he found it very hard not to give himself away. But he was determined to keep his identity a secret for the present.\n\nHero Hynreck, as it turned out, was not so much concerned with the expedition as with the heart of Princess Oglamar. Bastian had seen at a glance that he was head over heels in love with the young lady. For no apparent reason he kept sighing and casting mournful glances at her. And she would pretend not to notice. As Bastian learned later on, she had vowed to marry no one but the greatest of all heroes, who proved himself able to defeat all others. She wouldn't be satisfied with less. But how could Hero Hynreck prove that he was the greatest? After all, he couldn't just go out and kill someone who had done him no harm. And as for wars, there hadn't been any for ages. He would gladly have fought monsters or demons, he would gladly have brought her a fresh dragon's tail for breakfast every morning, but far and wide there were no monsters, demons, or dragons to be found. So naturally, when the messenger from Querquobad, the Silver Sage, had invited him to the tournament, he had accepted forthwith. But Princess Oglamar had insisted on coming along, for she wanted to see his performance with her own eyes.\n\n'Everybody knows,' she said with a smile, 'that heroes are not to be believed. They all tend to exaggerate their achievements.'\n\n'Exaggeration or not,' said Hero Hynreck, 'I can assure you that I'm a better man than this legendary Savior.'\n\n'How can you know that?' Bastian asked.\n\n'Well,' said Hero Hynreck, 'if the fellow was half as strong and brave as I am, he wouldn't need a bodyguard to take care of him. He sounds kind of pathetic to me.'\n\n'How can you say such a thing!' cried Oglamar with indignation. 'Didn't he save Fantastica from destruction?'\n\n'What of it!' said Hero Hynreck with a sneer. 'That didn't take much of a hero.'\n\nBastian decided to teach him a little lesson at the first opportunity.\n\nThe three other knights had merely fallen in with the couple en route. Hykrion, who had a bristling black moustache, claimed to be the most powerful swordsman in all Fantastica. Hysbald, who had red hair and seemed frail in comparison with the others, claimed that no one was quicker and more nimble with a sword than he. And Hydorn was convinced that he had no equal for endurance in combat. His exterior seemed to support his contention, for he was tall and lean, all bone and sinew.\n\nAfter the meal they prepared to resume their journey. The crockery and provisions were packed into the saddlebags. Princess Oglamar mounted her white palfrey and trotted off without so much as a backward look at the others. Hero Hynreck leapt on his coal-black stallion and galloped after her. The three other knights offered Bastian a ride on their pack mule, which he accepted. Whereupon they started through the forest on their splendidly caparisoned steeds, while Bastian brought up the rear. Bastian's mount, an aged she-mule, dropped farther and farther behind. Bastian tried to goad her on, but instead of quickening her pace, the mule stopped still, twisted her neck to look back at him, and said: 'Don't urge me on, sire, I've lagged behind on purpose.'\n\n'Why?' Bastian asked.\n\n'Because I know who you are.'\n\n'How can that be?'\n\n'When a person is only half an ass like me, and not a complete one, she senses certain things. Even the horses had an inkling. You needn't say anything, sire. I'd have been so glad to tell my children and grandchildren that I carried the Savior on my back and was first to welcome him. Unfortunately mules don't get children.'\n\n'What's your name?' Bastian asked.\n\n'Yikka, sire.'\n\n'Look here, Yikka. Don't spoil my fun. Could you keep what you know to yourself for the time being?'\n\n'Gladly, sire.'\n\nAnd the mule trotted off to catch up with the others.\n\nThe group were waiting on a knoll at the edge of the forest, looking down with wonderment at the city of Amarganth, which lay gleaming in the sunlight before them. From the height where they stood, the travelers had a broad view over a large, violet-blue lake, surrounded on all sides by similar wooded hills. In the middle of this lake lay the Silver City of Amarganth. The houses were all supported by boats, and the larger palaces by great barges. Every house and every ship was made of finely chiseled, delicately ornamented silver. The windows and doors of the palaces great and small, the towers and balconies, were all of finely wrought silver filigree, un-equaled in all Fantastica. The lake was studded with boats of all sizes, carrying visitors to the city from the mainland. Hero Hynreck and his companions hastened down to the shore, where a silver ferry with a magnificently curved prow was waiting. There was room in it for the whole company, horses, pack mule, and all.\n\nOn the way over, Bastian learned from the ferryman, whose clothes were of woven silver, that the violet-blue water of the lake was so salty and bitter that only silver, and a special kind of silver at that, could withstand its corrosive action for any length of time. The name of this lake was Moru, or Lake of Tears. In times long past the people of Amarganth had ferried their city to the middle of the lake to protect it from invasion, since ships of wood or iron were quick to disintegrate in the acrid water. And at present there was yet another reason for leaving Amarganth in the middle of the lake, for the inhabitants had got into the habit of regrouping their houses and moving their streets and squares about when the fancy struck them. Suppose, for instance, that two families, living at opposite ends of town, made friends or intermarried. Why, then they would simply move their silver ships close together and become neighbors.\n\nBastian would gladly have heard more, but the ferry had reached the city, and he had to get out with his traveling companions.\n\nTheir first concern was to find lodgings for themselves and their mounts - no easy matter, since Amarganth was literally overrun by visitors who had come from far and near for the tournament. At length they found lodgings in an inn.\n\nAfter taking the she-mule to the stable, Bastian whispered in her ear: 'Don't forget your promise, Yikka. I'll be seeing you soon again.'\n\nYikka nodded.\n\nThen Bastian told his traveling companions that he didn't wish to be a burden to them any longer and would look about the town on his own. After thanking them for their kindness, he took his leave. Actually he was intent on finding Atreyu.\n\nThe large and small boats were connected by gangplanks, some so narrow that only one person could cross them at a time, others as wide as good-sized streets. There were also arched bridges with roofs over them, and in the canals between the palace-ships hundreds of small boats were moving back and forth. But wherever you went or stood, you felt a gentle rise and fall underfoot, just enough to remind you that the whole city was afloat.\n\nThe visitors, who had literally flooded the city, were so varied and colorful that it would take a whole book to describe them. The Amarganthians were easy to recognize, for they all wore clothes of a silver fabric that was almost as fine as Bastian's mantle. Their hair too was silver; they were tall and well-built, and their eyes were as violet-blue as Moru, the Lake of Tears. Most of the visitors were not quite so attractive. There were muscle-bound giants with heads that seemed no larger than apples between their huge shoulders. There were sinister-looking night-rowdies, bold, solitary individuals whom, as one could see at a glance, it was best not to tangle with. There were flimflams with shifty eyes and nimble fingers, and berserkers with smoke coming out of their mouths and noses. There were topsy-turvies who spun like living tops and woodgoblins who trotted about on gnarled, crooked legs, carrying stout clubs over their shoulders. Once Bastian even saw a rock chewer, with teeth like steel chisels jutting out of his mouth. The silver gangplank bent under his weight as he came stomping along. But before Bastian could ask him if by any chance he was Pyornkrachzark, he had vanished in the crowd.\n\nAt length Bastian reached the center of the city, where the tournament was already in full swing. In a circular open space that looked like a giant arena, hundreds of contestants were measuring their strength, showing their mettle. Around the edges a crowd of onlookers egged the participants on, and the windows and balconies of the surrounding palace-ships were packed with enthusiasts. Some had even managed to climb up on the filigree-ornamented roofs.\n\nAt first Bastian paid little attention to the tournament. He was looking for Atreyu, feeling sure that he must be somewhere in the crowd. Then he noticed that the onlookers kept turning expectantly toward one of the palaces - especially when a contestant had performed some particularly impressive feat. But before he could get a good look at the palace, Bastian had to thrust his way across one of the bridges and climb a sort of lamppost.\n\nTwo silver chairs had been set up on a wide balcony. In one sat an aged man whose silver beard and hair hung down to his waist. That must be Querquobad, the Silver Sage. Beside him sat a boy of about Bastian's age. He was wearing long trousers made of soft leather, but he was bare from the waist up, and Bastian saw that his skin was olive green. The expression of his lean face was grave, almost stern. His long, blue-black hair was gathered together and held back by leather thongs. Over his shoulders he wore a purple cloak. He was looking calmly and yet somehow eagerly down at the arena. Nothing seemed to escape his dark eyes. Who could it be but Atreyu!\n\nAt that moment an enormous face appeared in the open balcony door behind Atreyu. It looked rather like a lion's, except that it had white mother-of-pearl scales instead of fur, and long white fangs jutted out of the mouth. The eyeballs sparkled ruby red, and when the head rose high above Atreyu, Bastian saw that it rested on a long, supple neck, from which hung a mane that looked like white fire. Of course, it was Falkor the luckdragon, and he seemed to be whispering something in Atreyu's ear, for Atreyu nodded.\n\nBastian slid down the lamppost. He had seen enough. Now he could watch the tournament.\n\n'Tournament' was hardly the right word. The contests that were in progress added up to something more like a big circus. There was a wrestling match between two giants, who twined their bodies into one huge knot that kept rolling this way and that; individuals of like or divergent species vied with one another in swordsmanship or in skill at handling the club or the lance, but none had any serious intention of killing his adversary. The rules called for fair fighting and the strictest self-control. Any contestant so misled by anger or ambition as to injure an opponent seriously would have been automatically disqualified.\n\nMany defeated combatants had left the arena when Bastian saw Hykrion the Strong, Hysbald the Swift, and Hydorn the Enduring make their appearance. Hero Hynreck and Princess Oglamar were not with them.\n\nBy then there were scarcely more than a hundred contestants left. Since these were a selection from among the best and strongest, Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn had a much harder time of it than they may have expected. It took all afternoon for Hykrion to prove himself the strongest among the strong, Hysbald the swiftest among the swift, and Hydorn the most enduring among the enduring. The onlookers applauded with a will and all three bowed in the direction of the balcony, where Silver Sage Querquobad and Atreyu were sitting. Atreyu was getting up to say something when yet another contestant appeared - Hynreck. An expectant silence fell and Atreyu sat down. Since only three men were to accompany him on his expedition, there was one too many in the field. One would have to withdraw.\n\n'Sires,' said Hynreck in a loud voice, 'I would not suggest that your strength can have been impaired by the little display you have just made of your abilities. Under the circumstances, however, it would be unworthy of me to challenge you singly. Since I have thus far seen no adversary up to my standards, I have not participated in the contests. Consequently, I am still fresh. If any of you should feel too exhausted, he is free to stand aside. Otherwise, I am prepared to face all three of you at once. Any objections?'\n\n'No!' replied all three in unison.\n\nA furious battle followed. Hykrion's blows had lost none of their force, but Hero Hynreck was stronger. Hysbald assailed him from all sides like streaks of lightning, but Hynreck was quicker. Hydorn tried to wear him down, but Hero Hynreck had greater endurance. After barely ten minutes all three were disarmed and all three bent their knees to Hero Hynreck. He looked proudly about him, evidently hoping for an admiring glance from his lady, who must have been somewhere in the crowd. The cheers of the onlookers swept over the arena like a hurricane and could no doubt be heard on the farthermost shore of Lake Moru.\n\nWhen the applause died down, Querquobad, the Silver Sage, stood up and asked in a loud voice: 'Does anyone wish to oppose Hero Hynreck?'\n\nA hush fell on the crowd. Then a boy's voice was heard: 'Yes! I do!'\n\nAll eyes turned toward Bastian. The crowd opened a path for him and he strode into the arena. Cries of amazement and pity were heard. 'How handsome he is!' 'What a shame!' 'This must be stopped!'\n\n'Who are you?' asked Silver Sage Querquobad.\n\n'I will reveal my name afterward,' said Bastian.\n\nHe saw that Atreyu had narrowed his eyes and was studying him closely, but had not yet made up his mind.\n\n'Young friend,' said Hero Hynreck. 'We have eaten and drunk together. Why do you want me to put you to shame? I pray you, withdraw your challenge and go away.'\n\n'No,' said Bastian. 'I meant what I said.'\n\nHero Hynreck hesitated a moment. Then he said: 'It would be wrong of me to measure myself in combat with you. Let us first see who can shoot an arrow higher.'\n\n'Very well!' said Bastian.\n\nA stout bow and an arrow were brought for each of them. Hynreck drew the bowstring and shot the arrow so high that the eye could not follow. At almost the same moment Bastian pulled his bowstring and shot his arrow after it.\n\nIt was some time before the arrows came down and fell to the ground between the two archers. Then it became evident that Bastian's red-feathered arrow had struck Hero Hynreck's blue-feathered arrow at its apogee with such force as to split it open and wedge itself into it.\n\nHero Hynreck stared at the telescoped arrows. He had turned rather pale, but his cheeks had broken out in red spots.\n\n'That can only be an accident,' he muttered. 'Let's see who does better with the foils.'\n\nHe asked for two foils and two decks of cards. Both were brought. He shuffled both decks of cards carefully.\n\nThen he threw one deck high into the air, drew his blade with the speed of lightning, and thrust. When all the other cards had fallen to the ground, it could be seen that he had struck the ace of hearts in the center of its one heart. And holding up his foil with the card spitted on it, he again looked about for his lady.\n\nThen Bastian tossed the other deck into the air and his blade flashed. Not a single card fell to the ground. He had pierced all fifty-two cards of the deck exactly in the middle and moreover in the right order - though Hero Hynreck had shuffled them ever so carefully.\n\nHero Hynreck looked at the cards. He said nothing, but his lips trembled.\n\n'But you won't outdo me in strength,' he stammered finally.\n\nA number of weights were still lying about from the previous contests. He seized the heaviest and slowly, straining every muscle, lifted it. But before he could set it down, Bastian had grabbed hold of him and lifted him along with the weight. Hero Hynreck's face took on a look of such misery that some of the onlookers could not repress a smile.\n\n'Thus far,' said Bastian, 'you have chosen the nature of our contests. Will you allow me to suggest something?'\n\nHero Hynreck nodded in silence. 'Nothing can daunt my courage.'\n\n'In that case,' said Bastian, 'I propose a swimming race. Across the Lake of Tears.'\n\nA breathless silence fell on the assemblage.\n\nHero Hynreck turned red and pale by turns.\n\n'That's no test of courage,' he expostulated. 'It's madness.'\n\n'I'm ready,' said Bastian.\n\nAt that Hero Hynreck lost his self-control.\n\n'No!' he shouted, stamping his foot. 'You know as well as I do that the water of Moru dissolves everything. It would be certain death.'\n\n'I'm not afraid,' said Bastian calmly. 'I've crossed the Desert of Colors. I've eaten and drunk the fire of the Many-Colored Death and bathed in it. I'm not afraid of any water.'\n\n'You're lying!' roared Hero Hynreck, purple with rage. 'No one in all Fantastica can survive the Many-Colored Death. Any child knows that.'\n\n'Hero Hynreck,' said Bastian slowly. 'Instead of calling me a liar, why not admit that you're just plain scared?'\n\nThat was too much for Hero Hynreck. Beside himself with rage, he drew his big sword from its sheath and flung himself on Bastian. Bastian stepped back. He was about to say a word of warning, but Hero Hynreck didn't leave him time. He struck out in earnest, and in that same moment the sword Sikanda leapt from its rusty sheath into Bastian's hand, and began to dance.\n\nWhat happened next was so amazing that not one of the onlookers would forget it as long as he lived. Luckily Bastian couldn't let go of the hilt and was obliged to follow all Sikanda's lightninglike movements. First it sliced Hero Hynreck's lovely armor into little pieces. They flew in all directions, but his skin was not even scratched. Hero Hynreck swung his sword like a madman in a desperate effort to defend himself, but he was blinded by Sikanda's whirling light, and none of his blows struck home. At length he was stripped to his underclothes, but still he went on fighting. And then Sikanda cut his weapon into little bits so quickly that what had been a whole sword only a moment before fell tinkling to the ground like a pile of coins. Hero Hynreck stared aghast at the useless hilt, dropped it, and hung his head. Sikanda left Bastian's hand and flew back into its rusty sheath.\n\nA cry of admiration rose from a thousand throats. The onlookers stormed the arena, seized Bastian, lifted him onto their shoulders, and carried him around in triumph. From his lofty perch Bastian looked for Hero Hynreck. He felt sorry for the poor fellow and wanted to give him a kind word; he hadn't intended to make such a fool out of him. But Hero Hynreck was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThen silence fell. The crowd moved aside. There stood Atreyu, smiling up at Bastian. Bastian smiled back. His bearers let him down from their shoulders. For a long while the two boys looked at each other in silence. Then Atreyu spoke:\n\n'If I still needed someone to accompany me on the search for the Savior of Fantastica, I would content myself with just this one, for he is worth more than a hundred others. But I need no companion, because there will be no expedition.'\n\nA murmur of surprise and disappointment was heard.\n\n'The Savior of Fantastica has no need of our protection,' Atreyu went on, raising his voice, 'for he can defend himself better than all of us together could defend him. And we have no need to look for him, because he has already found us. I didn't recognize him at first, for when I saw him in the Magic Mirror Gate of the Southern Oracle, he was different from now - entirely different. But I didn't forget the look in his eyes. It's the same look that I see now. I couldn't be mistaken.'\n\nBastian shook his head and said with a smile: 'You're not mistaken, Atreyu. It was you who brought me to the Childlike Empress to give her a new name. And for that I thank you.'\n\nAn awed whisper passed over the crowd like a gust of wind.\n\n'You promised,' Atreyu replied, 'to tell me your name, which is known to no one in Fantastica except the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes. Will you tell us now?'\n\n'My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\nAt that the onlookers could contain themselves no longer. Their rejoicing exploded in a thousand cheers. Many of them started dancing. Bridges and gangplanks, the whole square for that matter, began to sway.\n\nLaughing, Atreyu held out his hand to Bastian. Bastian took it, and so - hand in hand - they went to the palace. Silver Sage Querquobad and Falkor the luckdragon were waiting on the palace steps.\n\nThat night the city of Amarganth staged the finest celebration in all its history. All who had legs, long or short, straight or crooked, danced, and all who had voices, sweet or sour, high or low, sang and laughed.\n\nWhen night fell, the Amarganthians lit thousands of colored lamps on their silver ships and palaces. And at midnight there were fireworks such as had never been seen in Fantastica. Bastian stood on the balcony with Atreyu. To the left and right of them stood Falkor and Silver Sage Querquobad, watching as sheaves of many-colored light and the Silver City's thousands of lamps were reflected in the dark waters of Moru, the Lake of Tears.\n\n# XVII\n\n# _A Dragon for Hero Hynreck_\n\nQUERQUOBAD, the Silver Sage, had slumped down in his chair asleep, for already the hour was late. Consequently, he missed an experience more beautiful and more extraordinary than any he had known in the hundred and seven years of his life. And so did many others in Amarganth, citizens as well as visitors, who, exhausted by the festivities, had gone to bed. Only a few were still awake, and those few were uniquely privileged:\n\nFalkor, the white luckdragon, was singing.\n\nHigh in the night sky, he flew in circles over the Lake of Tears, and let his bell-like voice ring out in a song without words, a simple, grandiose song of pure joy. The hearts of all those who heard it opened wide.\n\nAnd so it was with Bastian and Atreyu, who were sitting side by side on the broad balcony of Querquobad's palace. Neither had ever heard the song of a luckdragon before. Hand in hand, they listened in silent delight. Each knew that the other shared his feeling, a feeling of joy at having found a friend. And they took care not to spoil it with idle words.\n\nThe great hour passed. Falkor's song grew faint and gradually died away.\n\nWhen all was still, Querquobad woke up and excused himself: 'I'm afraid,' he said, 'that old men like me need their sleep. I'm sure you youngsters will forgive me, I must really be off to bed.'\n\nThey wished him a good night and Querquobad left them.\n\nAgain the two friends sat for a long while in silence, looking up at the night sky, where the luckdragon was still flying in great slow circles. From time to time he passed across the full moon like a drifting cloud.\n\n'Doesn't Falkor ever sleep?' Bastian asked finally.\n\n'He's asleep now,' Atreyu replied.\n\n'In the air?'\n\n'Oh yes. He doesn't like to stay in houses, even when they're as big as Querquobad's palace. He feels cramped. He's just too big and he's afraid of knocking things over. So he usually sleeps way up in the air.'\n\n'Do you think he'd let me ride him sometime?'\n\n'Of course he would,' said Atreyu. 'Though it's not so easy. You've got to get used to it.'\n\n'I've already ridden Grograman,' said Bastian.\n\nAtreyu nodded and looked at him with admiration.\n\n'So you said during your contest with Hero Hynreck. How did you tame the Many-Colored Death?'\n\n'I have AURYN,' said Bastian.\n\n'Oh!' said Atreyu. He seemed surprised, but he said nothing more.\n\nBastian took the Childlike Empress's emblem from under his shirt and showed it to Atreyu. Atreyu looked at it for a while. Then he muttered: 'So now you are wearing the Gem.'\n\nThinking he detected a note of displeasure, Bastian hastened to ask: 'Would you like to have it back?'\n\nHe started undoing the chain.\n\n'No!'\n\nAtreyu's voice sounded almost harsh, and Bastian wondered what was wrong. Atreyu smiled apologetically and repeated gently: 'No, Bastian, I haven't worn it in a long while.'\n\n'As you like,' said Bastian. Then he turned the amulet over. 'Look,' he said. 'Have you seen the inscription?'\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'I've seen it, but I don't know what it says.'\n\n'How come?'\n\n'Greenskins can read tracks in the forest, but not letters.' This time it was Bastian who said: 'Oh!'\n\n'What does it say?' Atreyu asked.\n\n' \"DO WHAT YOU WISH,\"' Bastian read.\n\nAtreyu stared at the amulet.\n\n'So that's what it says.' His face revealed nothing, and Bastian couldn't guess what he was thinking.\n\n'If you had known,' he asked, 'would it have changed anything for you?'\n\n'No,' said Atreyu. 'I did what I wanted to do.'\n\n'That's true,' said Bastian, and nodded.\n\nAgain they were both silent for a time.\n\n'There's something I have to ask you,' said Bastian finally. 'You said I looked different from when you saw me in the Magic Mirror Gate.'\n\n'Yes, entirely different.'\n\n'In what way?'\n\n'You were fat and pale and you were wearing different clothes.'\n\nBastian smiled. 'Fat and pale?' he asked incredulously. 'Are you sure it was me?' 'Wasn't it?'\n\nBastian thought it over.\n\n'You saw me. I know that. But I've always been the way I am now.'\n\n'Really and truly?'\n\n'I should know. Shouldn't I?' Bastian cried.\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu, looking at him thoughtfully. 'YOU should know.'\n\n'Maybe it was a deforming mirror.'\n\nAtreyu shook his head.\n\n'I don't think so.'\n\n'Then how do you explain your seeing me that way?'\n\n'I don't know,' Atreyu admitted. 'I only know that I wasn't mistaken.'\n\nAfter that they were silent for a long while, and at length they went to sleep.\n\nAs Bastian lay in his bed, the head and foot of which were made of the finest silver filigree, his conversation with Atreyu ran through his head. Somehow it seemed to him that Atreyu was less impressed by his victory over Hero Hynreck and even by his stay with Grograman since he heard that he, Bastian, was wearing the Gem. And true enough, he thought, maybe his feats didn't amount to much, considering that he had the amulet to protect him. But he wanted to win Atreyu's wholehearted admiration.\n\nHe thought and thought. There had to be something that no one in Fantastica could do, even with the amulet. Something of which only he, Bastian, was capable.\n\nAt last it came to him: making up stories.\n\nTime and time again he had heard it said that no one in Fantastica could create anything new. Even the voice of Uyulala had said something of the kind. And just that was his special gift. He would show Atreyu that he, Bastian, was a great storyteller.\n\nHe resolved to prove himself to his friend at the first opportunity. Maybe the very next day. For instance, there might be a storytelling contest, and he would put all others in the shade with his inventions!\n\nOr better still: suppose all the stories he told should come true! Hadn't Grograman said that Fantastica was the land of stories and that even something long past could be born again if it occurred in a story.\n\nAtreyu would be amazed!\n\nAnd while picturing Atreyu's amazement, Bastian fell asleep.\n\nThe next morning, as they were enjoying a copious breakfast in the banquet hall of the palace, Silver Sage Querquobad said: 'We have decided to hold a very special sort of festival for the benefit of our guest, the Savior of Fantastica, and his friend, who brought him to us. Perhaps, Bastian Balthazar Bux, it is unknown to you that in keeping with an age-old tradition we Amarganthians have always been the ballad singers and storytellers of Fantastica. From an early age our children are instructed in these skills. When they grow to adulthood they journey from country to country for several years, practising their art for the benefit of all. Everywhere they are welcomed with joy and respect. But we have one regret: Quite frankly, our stock of stories is small. And many of us must share this little. But word has gone round - whether true or not, I don't know - that you, in your world, are famous for your stories. Is that the truth?'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian. 'They even made fun of me for it.'\n\nSilver Sage Querquobad raised his eyebrows in disbelief.\n\n'Made fun of you for telling stories that no one had ever heard? How is that possible? None of us can make up new stories, and we, my fellow citizens and I, would all be infinitely grateful if you would give us a few. Will you help us with your genius?'\n\n'With pleasure,' said Bastian.\n\nAfter breakfast Bastian, Atreyu, and the Silver Sage went out to the steps of Querquobad's palace, where Falkor was already waiting for them.\n\nA large crowd had gathered, but on this occasion it included few of the outsiders who had come for the tournament and consisted largely of Amarganthians, men, women, and children, all comely and blue-eyed, and all clad in silver. Most were carrying stringed instruments, harps, lyres, guitars, or lutes, all of silver. For almost everyone there hoped to display his art in the presence of Bastian and Atreyu.\n\nAgain chairs had been put in place. Bastian sat in the middle between Querquobad and Atreyu, and Falkor stood behind them.\n\nQuerquobad clapped his hands. When the crowd fell silent, he announced: 'The great storyteller is going to grant our wish and make us a present of some new stories. Therefore, friends, give us your best, to put him in the right mood.'\n\nThe Amarganthians all bowed low. Then the first stepped forward and began to recite. After him came another and still others. All had fine, resonant voices and told their stories well.\n\nSome of their tales were exciting, others merry or sad, but it would take us too long to tell them here. In all, there were no more than a hundred different stories. Then they began to repeat themselves. Those who came last could only tell what their predecessors had told before them.\n\nBastian grew more and more agitated while waiting for his turn. His last night's wish had been fulfilled to the letter, and he could hardly bear the excitement of waiting to see whether everything else would come true as well. He kept casting glances at Atreyu, but Atreyu's face was impassive, showing no sign of what he might be thinking.\n\nAt length Querquobad bade his compatriots desist and turned to Bastian with a sigh: 'I told you, Bastian Balthazar Bux, that our stock of tales was small. It's not our fault. Won't you give us a few of yours?'\n\n'I will give you all the stories I've ever told,' said Bastian, 'for I can always think up new ones. I told many of them to a little girl named Kris Ta, but most I thought up only for myself. No one else has heard them. But it would take weeks and months to tell them all, and we can't stay with you that long. So I've decided to tell you a story that contains all the others in it. It's called \"The Story of the Library of Amarganth,\" and it's very short.' Then after a moment's thought he plunged in:\n\n'In the gray dawn of time, the city of Amarganth was ruled by a Silver Sagess named Quana. In those long-past days Moru, the Lake of Tears, hadn't been made yet, nor was Amarganth built of the special silver that withstands the water of Moru. It was still like other cities with houses of stone and wood. And it lay in a valley among wooded hills.\n\n'Quana had a son named Quin, who was a great hunter. One day in the forest Quin caught sight of a unicorn, which had a glittering stone at the end of its horn. He killed the beast and took the stone home with him. His crime (for it is a crime to kill unicorns) brought misfortune on the city. From then on fewer and fewer children were born to the inhabitants. If no remedy were found, the city would die out. But the unicorn couldn't be brought back to life, and no one knew what to do.\n\n'Quana, the Silver Sagess, sent a messenger to consult Uyulala in the Southern Oracle. But the Southern Oracle was far away. The messenger was young when he started out, but old by the time he got back. Quana had long been dead and her son Quin had taken her place. He too, of course, was very old, as were all the other inhabitants. There were only two children left, a boy and a girl. His name was Aquil, hers was Muqua.\n\n'The messenger reported what Uyulala's voice had revealed. The only way of preserving Amarganth was to make it the most beautiful city in all Fantastica. That alone would make amends for Quin's crime. But to do so the Amarganthians would need the help of the Acharis, who are the ugliest beings in Fantastica. Because they are so ugly they weep uninterruptedly, and for that reason they are also known as the Weepers. Their stream of tears wash the special silver deep down in the earth, and from it they make the most wonderful filigree.\n\n'All the Amarganthians went looking for the Acharis, but were unable to find them, for they live deep down in the earth. At length only Aquil and Muqua were left. They had grown up and all the others had died. Together they managed to find the Acharis and persuade them to make Amarganth the most beautiful city in Fantastica.\n\n'First the Acharis built a small filigree palace, set it on a silver barge, and moved it to the marketplace of the dead city. Then they made their streams of underground tears well up in the valley among the wooded hills. The bitter water filled the valley and became Moru, the Lake of Tears. On it the first silver palace floated, and in the palace dwelt Aquil and Muqua.\n\n'But the Acharis had granted the plea of Aquil and Muqua on one condition, namely, that they and all their descendants should devote their lives to ballad singing and storytelling. As long as they did so, the Acharis would help them, because then their ugliness would help to create beauty.\n\n'So Aquil and Muqua founded a library - the famous library of Amarganth - in which they stored up all my stories. They began with the one you have just heard, but little by little they added all those I have ever told, and in the end there were so many stories that their numerous descendants, who now inhabit the Silver City, will never come to the end of them.\n\n'If Amarganth, the most beautiful city in Fantastica, is still in existence today, it is because the Acharis and the Amarganthians kept their promise to each other - though today the Amarganthians have quite forgotten the Acharis and the Acharis have quite forgotten the Amarganthians. Only the name of Moru, the Lake of Tears, recalls that episode from the gray dawn of history.'\n\nWhen Bastian had finished, Silver Sage Querquobad rose slowly from his chair.\n\n'Bastian Balthazar Bux,' he said, smiling blissfully. 'You have given us more than a story and more than all the stories in the world. You have given us our own history. Now we know where Moru and the silver ships and palaces on it came from. Now we know why we have always, from the earliest times, been a people of ballad singers and storytellers. And best of all, we know what is in that great round building in the middle of the city, which none of us, since the founding of Amarganth, has ever entered, because it has always been locked. It contains our greatest treasure and we never knew it. It contains the library of Amarganth.'\n\nBastian himself could hardly believe it. Everything in his story had become reality (or had it always been? Grograman would probably have said: both!). In any event he was eager to see all this with his own eyes.\n\n'Where is this building?' he asked.\n\n'I will show you,' said Querquobad, and turning to the crowd, he cried: 'Come along, all of you! Perhaps we shall be favored with more wonders.'\n\nA long procession, headed by the Silver Sage, Bastian, and Atreyu, moved over the gangplanks connecting the silver ships with one another and finally stopped outside a large building which rested on a circular ship and was shaped like a huge silver box. The outside walls were smooth, without ornaments or windows. It had only one large door, and that door was locked.\n\nIn the center of the smooth silver door there was a stone set in a kind of ring. It looked like a piece of common glass. Over it the following inscription could be read:\n\nRemoved from the unicorn's horn, I lost my light. I shall keep the door locked until my light is rekindled by him who calls me by name.\n\nFor him I will shine a hundred years.\n\nI will guide him in the dark depths of Yor's Minroud.\n\nBut if he says my name a second time from the end to the beginning, I will glow in one moment with the light of a hundred years.\n\n'None of us can interpret this inscription,' said Querquobad. 'None of us knows what the words \"Yor's Minroud\" mean.\n\nNone of us to this day has ever discovered the stone's name, though we have all tried time and again. For we can only use names that already exist in Fantastica. And since these are all names of other things, none of us has made the stone glow or opened the door. Can you find the name, Bastian Balthazar Bux?'\n\nA deep, expectant silence fell on the Amarganthians and non-Amarganthians alike.\n\n'Al Tsahir!' cried Bastian.\n\nIn that moment the stone glowed bright and jumped straight from its setting into Bastian's hand. The door opened.\n\nA gasp of amazement arose from a thousand throats.\n\nHolding the glowing stone in his hand, Bastian entered the building, followed by Querquobad and Atreyu. The crowd surged in behind them.\n\nIt was dark in the large circular room and Bastian held the stone high. Though brighter than a candle, it was not enough to light the whole room but showed only that the walls were lined with tier upon tier of books.\n\nAttendants appeared with lamps. In the bright light it could be seen that the walls of books were divided into sections, bearing signs such as 'Funny Stories,' 'Serious Stories,' 'Exciting Stories,' and so on.\n\nIn the center of the circular room, the floor was inlaid with an inscription so large that no one could fail to see it:\n\nLIBRARY OF THE COLLECTED WORKS OF BASTIAN BALTHAZAR BUX\n\nAtreyu looked around in amazement. Bastian saw to his delight that his friend was overcome with admiration.\n\n'Is it true,' asked Atreyu, pointing at the silver shelves all around, 'that you made up all those stories?'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian, slipping Al Tsahir into his pocket.\n\nAtreyu could only stand and gape.\n\n'I just can't understand it,' he said.\n\nThe Amarganthians had flung themselves on the books and were leafing through them or reading to one another. Some sat down on the floor and began to learn passages by heart.\n\nNews of the great event spread through the whole city like wildfire.\n\nAs Bastian and Atreyu were leaving the library, they ran into Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn.\n\n'Sir Bastian,' said the red-haired Hysbald, evidently the deftest of the three not only with the sword but with his tongue as well, 'we have heard about your incomparable gifts, and humbly pray you: Take us into your service and let us accompany you on your further travels. Each one of us longs to acquire a story of his own. And though you surely have no need of our protection, you may derive some advantage from the service of three such able and willing knights. Will you have us?'\n\n'Gladly,' said Bastian. 'Anyone would be proud of such companions.'\n\nThe three knights wished to swear fealty by Bastian's sword, but he held them back.\n\n'Sikanda,' he explained, 'is a magic sword. No one can touch it without mortal peril, unless he has eaten, drunk, and bathed in the fire of the Many-Colored Death.'\n\nSo they had to content themselves with a friendly handshake.\n\n'What has become of Hero Hynreck?' Bastian asked.\n\n'He's a broken man,' said Hykrion.\n\n'Because of his lady,' Hydorn added.\n\n'Perhaps you can do something to help him,' said Hysbald.\n\nAll five of them went to the inn where they had stopped on their arrival in Amarganth and where Bastian had brought Yikka to the stable.\n\nWhen they entered, one man was sitting there, bent over the table, his hands buried in his fair hair. The man was Hynreck.\n\nEvidently he had had a change of armor in his luggage, for the outfit he was now wearing was rather simpler than the one that had been cut to pieces the day before.\n\nIn response to Bastian's greeting, he merely stared. His eyes were rimmed with red.\n\nWhen Bastian asked leave to sit down with him, he shrugged his shoulders, nodded, and sank back in his chair. Before him on the table was a sheet of paper, which looked as if it had been many times crumpled and smoothed out again.\n\n'Can you forgive me?' said Bastian.\n\nHero Hynreck shook his head.\n\n'It's all over for me,' he said mournfully. 'Here. Read it.'\n\nHe pushed the note across the table, and Bastian read it.\n\n'I want only the best. You have failed me. Farewell.'\n\n'From Princess Oglamar?' Bastian asked.\n\nHero Hynreck nodded.\n\n'Immediately after our contest, she mounted her palfrey and rode off to the ferry. God knows where she is now. I'll never see her again.'\n\n'Can't we overtake her?'\n\n'What for?'\n\n'Maybe she'll change her mind.'\n\nHero Hynreck gave a bitter laugh.\n\n'You don't know Princess Oglamar,' he said. 'I trained more than ten years to acquire my different skills. With iron discipline I avoided everything that could have impaired my physique. I fenced with the greatest fencing masters and wrestled with the greatest wrestlers, until I could beat them all. I can run faster than a horse, jump higher than a deer. I am best at everything - or rather, I was until yesterday. At the start she wouldn't honor me with a glance, but little by little my accomplishments aroused her interest. I had every reason to hope - and now I see it was all in vain. How can I live without hope?'\n\n'Maybe,' Bastian suggested, 'you should forget Princess Oglamar. There must be others you could love just as much.'\n\n'No,' said Hero Hynreck. 'I love Princess Oglamar just because she won't be satisfied with any but the greatest.'\n\n'I see,' said Bastian. 'That makes it difficult. What _could_ you do? Maybe you could take up a different trade. How about singing? Or poetry?'\n\nHynreck seemed rather annoyed. 'No,' he said flatly. 'I'm a hero and that's that. I can't change my profession and I don't want to. I am what I am.'\n\n'I see,' said Bastian.\n\nAll were silent for a time. The three knights cast sympathetic glances at Hero Hynreck. They understood his plight. Finally Hysbald cleared his throat and turned to Bastian.\n\n'Sir Bastian,' he said. 'I think you could help him.'\n\nBastian looked at Atreyu, but Atreyu had put on his impenetrable face.\n\n'A hero like Hynreck,' said Hydorn, 'is really to be pitied in a world without monsters. See what I mean?'\n\nNo, Bastian didn't see. Not yet at any rate.\n\n'Monsters,' said Hykrion, winking at Bastian and stroking his huge moustache, 'monsters are indispensable if a hero is to be a hero.'\n\nAt last Bastian understood.\n\n'Listen to me, Hero Hynreck,' he said. 'When I suggested giving your heart to another lady, I was only putting your love to the test. The truth is that Princess Oglamar needs your help right now, and that no one else can save her.'\n\nHero Hynreck pricked up his ears.\n\n'Is that true, Sir Bastian?'\n\n'It's true, as you will soon see. Only a few minutes ago Princess Oglamar was seized and kidnapped.'\n\n'By whom?'\n\n'By one of the most terrible monsters that have ever existed in Fantastica. The dragon Smerg. She was riding across a clearing in the woods when the monster saw her from the air, swooped down, lifted her off her palfrey's back, and carried her away.'\n\nHynreck jumped up. His eyes flashed, his cheeks were aglow. He clapped his hands for joy. But then the light went out of his eyes and he sat down.\n\n'That's not possible,' he said. 'There are no more dragons anywhere.'\n\n'You forget, Hero Hynreck, that I come from far away. From much farther than you have ever been.'\n\n'That's true,' said Atreyu, joining in for the first time.\n\n'And this monster really carried her away?' Hero Hynreck cried. Then he pressed both hands to his heart and sighed: 'Oh, my adored Oglamar! How you must be suffering! But never fear, your knight is coming, he is on his way. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I go?'\n\n'Far, far from here,' Bastian began, 'there's a country called Morgul, or the Land of the Cold Fire, because flames there are colder than ice. How you are to reach that country, I can't tell you, you must find out for yourself. In the center of Morgul there is a petrified forest called Wodgabay. And in the center of that petrified forest stands the leaden castle of Ragar. It is surrounded by three moats. The first is full of arsenic, the second of steaming nitric acid, and the third is swarming with scorpions as big as your feet. There are no bridges across them, for the lord of the leaden castle is Smerg, the winged monster. His wings are made of slimy skin and their spread is a hundred feet. When he isn't flying, he stands on his hind legs like a gigantic kangaroo. He has the body of a mangy rat and the tail of a scorpion, with a sting at the end of it. The merest touch of that sting is fatal. He has the hind legs of a giant grasshopper. His forelegs, however, which look small and shriveled, resemble the hands of a small child. But don't let them fool you, there's a deadly power in those hands. He can pull in his long neck as a snail does its feelers. There are three heads on it. One is large and looks like the head of a crocodile. From its mouth he can spit icy fire. But where a crocodile has its eyes, it has two protuberances. These are extra heads. One resembles the head of an old man. With it he can see and hear. But he talks with the second head, which has the wrinkled face of an old woman.'\n\nWhile listening to this description, Hero Hynreck went pale.\n\n'What was this monster's name?' he asked.\n\n'Smerg,' Bastian repeated. 'He has been wreaking his mischief for a thousand years. Because that's how old he is. It's always a beautiful maiden that he kidnaps, and she has to keep house for him until the end of her days. When she dies, he kidnaps another.'\n\n'Why haven't I ever heard of this dragon?'\n\n'Smerg flies incredibly far and fast. Up to now he has always chosen other parts of Fantastica for his raids. Besides, they only happen once in every fifty years or so.'\n\n'Hasn't any of these maidens ever been rescued?'\n\n'No, that would take a very special sort of hero.'\n\nThese words brought the color back to Hero Hynreck's cheeks. And remembering what he had learned about dragons, he asked: 'Has this Smerg a vulnerable spot?'\n\n'Oh,' said Bastian, 'I almost forgot. In the bottommost cellar of Ragar Castle there's a lead ax. It's the only weapon Smerg can be killed with, so naturally he guards it well. You have to cut off the two smaller heads with it.'\n\n'How do you know all this?' asked Hero Hynreck.\n\nBastian didn't have to answer, for at that moment cries of terror were heard in the street.\n\n'A dragon!' - 'A monster!' - 'Up there in the sky!' - 'Horrible!' - 'He's coming this way!' - 'Run for your lives!' - 'No, he's already got somebody!'\n\nHero Hynreck rushed out into the street, and all the others followed.\n\nUp in the sky something that looked like a giant bat was flapping its enormous wings. For a moment, as it came closer, he looked exactly as Bastian had just made him up. And in his two shriveled, but oh so dangerous little arms, he was clutching a young lady, who was screaming and struggling with all her might.\n\n'Hynreck!' she screamed. 'Hynreck! Hynreck, my hero! Help!'\n\nAnd then they were gone.\n\nHynreck had already brought his black stallion from the stable and boarded one of the silver ferries that crossed to the mainland.\n\n'Faster! Faster!' he could be heard shouting at the ferryman. 'I'll give you anything you ask! But hurry!'\n\nBastian looked after him and muttered: 'I only hope I haven't made it too hard for him.'\n\nAtreyu cast a sidelong glance at Bastian. Then he said softly: 'Maybe we should get going too.'\n\n'Going where?'\n\n'I brought you to Fantastica,' said Atreyu. 'I think I ought to help you find the way back to your own world. You mean to go back sooner or later, don't you?'\n\n'Oh,' said Bastian. 'I hadn't thought about it. But you're right, Atreyu. Yes, of course you are.'\n\n'You saved Fantastica,' Atreyu went on. 'And it seems to me you've received quite a lot in return. I have a hunch that you're aching to go home and make your own world well again. Or is there something that keeps you here?'\n\nBastian, who had forgotten that he hadn't always been strong, handsome, and brave, replied: 'No, I can't think of anything.'\n\nAtreyu gave his friend a thoughtful look, and said: 'It may be a long, hard journey. Who knows?'\n\n'Yes,' Bastian agreed. 'Who knows? We can start right now if you like.'\n\nThen the three knights had a short friendly argument, because each claimed the privilege of giving Bastian his horse. Bastian soon settled the matter by asking them for Yikka, their pack mule. Of course, they thought her unworthy of Bastian, but he insisted, and in the end they gave in.\n\nWhile the knights were making ready for the journey, Bastian and Atreyu went to Querquobad's palace to thank the Silver Sage for his hospitality and bid him goodbye. Falkor the luckdragon, who was waiting for Atreyu outside the palace, was delighted to hear they were leaving. Cities just didn't appeal to him - even if they were as beautiful as Amarganth.\n\nSilver Sage Querquobad was deep in a book he had borrowed from the Bastian Balthazar Bux Library.\n\n'I'm sorry you can't stay longer,' he said rather absently.\n\n'It's not every day that a great author like you comes to see us. But at least we have your works to console us.'\n\nWhereupon they took their leave.\n\nAfter seating himself on Falkor's back Atreyu asked Bastian: 'Didn't you want to ride Falkor?'\n\n'Later,' said Bastian. 'Now Yikka is waiting for me. And I've given her my promise.'\n\n'Then we'll wait for you on the mainland,' cried Atreyu.\n\nThe luckdragon rose into the air and was soon out of sight.\n\nWhen Bastian returned to the inn, the three knights were ready. They had taken the pack saddle off Yikka and replaced it with a richly ornamented riding saddle. Yikka didn't learn why until Bastian came over and whispered in her ear: 'You belong to me now, Yikka.'\n\nAs the ferry carried them away from the silver city, the old pack mule's cries of joy resounded over the bitter waters of Moru, the Lake of Tears.\n\nAs for Hero Hynreck he actually succeeded in reaching Morgul, the Land of the Cold Fire. He ventured into the petrified forest of Wodgabay, crossed the three moats of Ragar Castle, found the lead ax, and slew the dragon Smerg. Then he brought Oglamar back to her father. At that point she would gladly have married him. But by then he didn't want her anymore. That, however, is another story and shall be told another time.\n\n# XVIII\n\n# _The Acharis_\n\nRAIN was coming down in buckets. The black, wet clouds hung so low they seemed almost to graze the heads of the riders.\n\nThen big, sticky snowflakes began to fall, and in the end it was snowing and raining in one. The wind was so strong that even the horses had to brace themselves against it. The riders' cloaks were soaked through and flapped heavily against the backs of the beasts.\n\nFor the last three days they had been riding over a desolate high plateau. The weather had been getting steadily worse, and the ground was a mixture of mud and sharp stones that made for hard going. Here and there the monotony of the landscape was broken by clumps of bushes or of stunted wind-bowed trees.\n\nBastian, who rode in the lead on his mule Yikka, was fairly well off with his glittering silver mantle, which, though light and thin, proved to be remarkably warm and shed water like a duck. The low-slung body of Hykrion the Strong almost vanished in his thick blue woolen coat. The delicately built Hysbald had pulled his great loden hood over his red hair. And Hydorn's gray canvas cloak clung to his gaunt frame.\n\nYet in their rather crude way the three knights were of good cheer. They hadn't expected their adventure with Sir Bastian to be a Sunday stroll. Now and then, with more spirit than art, they sang into the storm, sometimes singly and sometimes in chorus. Their favourite song seemed to be one that began with the words:\n\n'When that I was a little tiny boy,  \nWith hey, ho, the wind and the rain...'\n\nAs they explained, this had been sung by a human who had visited Fantastica long years before, name of Shexper, or something of the sort.\n\nThe only one in the group who didn't seem to mind the cold and the rain was Atreyu. On Falkor's back he rode high above the clouds, flying far ahead to reconnoiter and rejoining the company from time to time to report on what he had seen.\n\nThey all, even the luckdragon, believed they were looking for the road that would take Bastian back to his world. Bastian thought so too. He himself didn't realize that he had agreed to Atreyu's suggestion only to oblige his friend and that wasn't what he really wanted. But the geography of Fantastica is determined by wishes, which may or may not be conscious. And since it was Bastian who led the way, they were actually going deeper and deeper into Fantastica, heading for the Ivory Tower at its very center. What the consequences for him would be, he wouldn't learn until much later. For the present, neither he nor his companions had any idea where they were going.\n\nBastian's thoughts were busy with a different problem.\n\nOn the second day of their journey, in the forests surrounding the Lake of Tears, he had seen unmistakable traces of the dragon Smerg. Some of the trees had been turned to stone, no doubt by contact with the monster's ice-cold fire. And the prints of the giant grasshopper feet were clearly discernible. Atreyu, who was skilled in woodcraft, had seen other tracks as well, those of Hero Hynreck's horse. Which meant that Hynreck was close on the dragon's heels.\n\n'That doesn't really thrill me,' said Falkor, rolling his ruby-red eyes. 'Monster or not, this Smerg is a relative of mine - a distant one, to be sure, but a relative all the same.' He was only half in jest.\n\nThey had not followed Hero Hynreck's track but had taken a different direction, since their supposed aim was to find Bastian's way home.\n\nAnd now Bastian was asking himself: Had it really been such a good idea to invent a dragon for Hero Hynreck? True, Hynreck had needed a chance to show his mettle. But was it certain that he would win? What if Smerg killed him? And what about Princess Oglamar? Yes, of course, she had been haughty, but was that a reason for getting her into such a fix? And on top of all that, how was he to know what further damage Smerg might do in Fantastica? Without stopping to think, Bastian had created an unpredictable menace. It would be there long after he was gone and quite possibly kill or maim any number of innocents. As he knew, Moon Child drew no distinction between good and evil, beautiful and ugly. To her mind, all the creatures in Fantastica were equally important and worthy of consideration. But had he, Bastian, the right to take the same attitude? And above all, did he wish to?\n\nNo, Bastian said to himself, he had no wish to go down in the history of Fantastica as a creator of monsters and horrors. How much finer it would be to become famous for his unselfish goodness, to be a shining model for all, to be revered as the 'good human' or the 'great benefactor.' Yes, that was what he wanted.\n\nThe country became mountainous, and Atreyu, returning from a reconnaissance flight, reported that a few miles ahead he had sighted a glen which seemed to offer shelter from the wind. In fact, if his eyes had not deceived him, there were several caves round about where they could take refuge from the rain and snow.\n\nIt was already late afternoon, high time to find suitable quarters for the night. So all the others were delighted at Atreyu's news and spurred their mounts on. They were making their way through a valley, possibly a dried-out riverbed, enclosed in mountains which grew higher as the travelers advanced. Some two hours later they reached the glen, and true enough, there were several caves in the surrounding cliffs. They chose the largest and made themselves as comfortable as they could. The three knights gathered brushwood and branches that had been blown down by the storm, and soon they had a splendid fire going in the cave. The wet cloaks were spread out to dry, the beasts were brought in and unsaddled, and even Falkor, who ordinarily preferred to spend the night in the open, curled up at the back of the cave. All in all, it wasn't such a bad place to be in.\n\nWhile Hydorn the Enduring tried to roast a big chunk of meat over the fire and the others watched him eagerly, Atreyu turned to Bastian and said: 'Tell us some more about Kris Ta.'\n\n'About what?' Bastian asked.\n\n'Your friend Kris Ta, the little girl you told your stories to.'\n\n'I don't know any little girl by that name,' said Bastian. 'And what makes you think I told her stories?'\n\nOnce again Atreyu had that thoughtful look.\n\n'Back in your world,' he said slowly, 'you used to tell lots of stories, some to her and some to yourself.'\n\n'How do you know that, Atreyu?'\n\n'You said so yourself. In Amarganth. And you also said that people made fun of you for it.'\n\nBastian stared into the fire.\n\n'That's true,' he muttered. 'I did say that. But I don't know why. I can't remember.'\n\nIt all seemed very strange.\n\nAtreyu exchanged glances with Falkor and nodded gravely as though something one of them had said had now been proved true. But he said nothing more. Evidently he didn't wish to discuss such matters in front of the three knights.\n\n'The meat's done,' Hydorn announced.\n\nHe cut off a chunk for each one and they all began to eat. 'Done' was a gross exaggeration. The meat was charred on the outside and raw on the inside, but under the circumstances there was no point in being picky and choosy.\n\nFor a while they were all busy chewing. Then Atreyu said to Bastian: 'Tell us how you came to Fantastica.'\n\n'You know all about that,' said Bastian. 'It was you who brought me to the Childlike Empress.'\n\n'I mean before that,' said Atreyu. 'In your world. Where did you live and how did it all happen?'\n\nThen Bastian told how he had stolen the book from Mr Coreander, how he had carried it off to the schoolhouse attic and begun to read. When he came to Atreyu's Great Quest, Atreyu motioned him to stop. He didn't seem interested in what the book said about him. What interested him in the extreme was the how and why of Bastian's visit to Mr Coreander and of his flight to the attic of the schoolhouse.\n\nBastian racked his brains, but about those things he could remember nothing more. He had forgotten everything connected with the fact that he had once been fat and weak and cowardly. His memory had been broken into bits, and the bits seemed as vague and far away as if they had concerned an entirely different person.\n\nAtreyu asked for other memories, and Bastian spoke about the days when his mother was still alive, about his father and his home, about school and the town he lived in - as much as he remembered.\n\nThe three knights had fallen asleep, and Bastian was still talking. It surprised him that Atreyu should take such an interest in the most everyday happenings. Maybe it was because of the way Atreyu listened that these everyday things took on a new interest for Bastian, as though they contained a secret magic that he had never noticed before.\n\nAt last he ran out of memories. It was late in the night, the fire had died down. The three knights were snoring softly. Atreyu sat there with his inscrutable look, as though deep in thought.\n\nBastian stretched out, wrapped himself in his silver mantle, and had almost fallen asleep when Atreyu said softly: 'It's because of AURYN.'\n\nBastian propped his head on his hand and looked sleepily at his friend.\n\n'What do you mean by that?'\n\n'The Gem,' said Atreyu, as though talking to himself, 'doesn't work the same with humans as with us.'\n\n'What makes you think that?'\n\n'The amulet gives you great power, it makes all your wishes come true, but at the same time it takes something away: your memory of your world.'\n\nBastian thought it over. He didn't feel as if anything had been taken away from him.\n\n'Grograman told me to find out what I really wanted. And the inscription on AURYN says the same thing. But for that I have to go from one wish to the next without ever skipping any. That's why I need the Gem.'\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu. 'It gives you the means, but it takes away your purpose.'\n\n'Oh well,' said Bastian, undismayed. 'Moon Child must have known what she was doing when she gave me the amulet. You worry too much, Atreyu. I'm sure AURYN isn't a trap.'\n\n'No,' said Atreyu. 'I don't think so either.'\n\nAnd after a while he added: 'Anyway, it's good we're looking for the way back to your world. We are, aren't we?'\n\n'Oh yes,' said Bastian, already half asleep.\n\nIn the middle of the night he was awakened by a strange sound. He had no idea what it was. The fire had gone out and he was lying in total darkness. Then he felt Atreyu's hand on his shoulder and heard him whisper: 'What's that?'\n\n'I don't know,' Bastian whispered back.\n\nThey crept to the mouth of the cave and listened.\n\nA great many creatures seemed to be trying to fight back their sobs. There was nothing human about it, and it didn't sound like animals in pain. Starting as a whisper, it swelled to a sigh, then ebbed and rose, ebbed and rose. Never had Bastian heard anything so mournful.\n\n'If at least we could see something,' Atreyu whispered.\n\n'Wait,' said Bastian. 'I've got Al Tsahir.'\n\nHe took the glittering stone from his pocket and held it high. It gave hardly more light than a candle, but in its faint glow, the friends saw enough to make their skin crawl with horror.\n\nThe whole glen was alive with hideous, foot-long worms, who looked as if they had been wrapped in soiled rags. Slimy little limbs protruded from the folds in their skin. At one end, two lidless eyes peered out from under the rags, and from every eye flowed tears. Thousands of tears. The whole glen was wet with them.\n\nThe moment the light from Al Tsahir hit them, the creatures froze, and the friends were able to see what they had been doing. At the center of the glen stood a tower of the finest silver filigree - more beautiful and more valuable than any building Bastian had seen in Amarganth. Some of the wormlike creatures had evidently been climbing about on the tower, joining its innumerable parts. But at present they all stood motionless, staring at the light of Al Tsahir.\n\nA ghoulish whisper passed over the glen: 'Alas! Alas! What light has fallen on our ugliness? Whose eye has seen us? Cruel intruder, whoever you may be, have mercy, take that light away.'\n\nBastian stood up.\n\n'I am Bastian Balthazar Bux. Who are you?' 'We are the Acharis. We are the unhappiest beings in all Fantastica.'\n\nBastian said nothing and looked in dismay at Atreyu.\n\n'Then,' he said, 'it's you who created Amarganth, the most beautiful city in Fantastica?'\n\n'Yes!' the creatures cried. 'But take that light away! And don't look at us! Have mercy!'\n\n'And with your weeping you made Moru, the Lake of Tears?'\n\n'Master,' they groaned, 'it's true. But we'll die of shame and horror if you make us stand in this light. Why must you add to our torment? We've never done anything to you.'\n\nBastian put Al Tsahir back in his pocket and again the night was as black as pitch.\n\n'Thank you!' cried the mournful voices. 'Thank you for your merciful kindness.'\n\n'I want to talk with you,' said Bastian. 'I want to help you.'\n\nHe was almost sick with disgust, but he felt very sorry for the poor things. It was clear to him that they were the creatures he had mentioned in his story about the origin of Amarganth, but here again he couldn't be sure whether they had always been there or whether they owed their existence to him. In the latter case, he was responsible for their misery. But either way he was determined to help them.\n\n'Oh, oh!' the plaintive voices whimpered. 'No one can help us.'\n\n'I can,' said Bastian. 'I have AURYN.'\n\nAt that, they all seemed to stop weeping at once.\n\n'Where have you come from?' Bastian asked.\n\nA chorus of many voices whispered: 'We live in the lightless depths of the earth to hide our ugliness from the sun, and there we weep all day and all night. Our tears wash the indestructible silver out of the bedrock, and from it we spin the filigree you have seen. On the darkest nights we mount to the surface, and these caves are our coming-out places. Up here we join together the sections we've made down below. We've come tonight because it was dark enough for us to work without seeing one another. We work to make amends to the world for our ugliness, and that comforts us a little.'\n\n'But you're not to blame for your ugliness,' said Bastian.\n\n'Oh, there are different ways of being to blame,' the Acharis replied. 'In what you do. In what you think... We're to blame for just living.'\n\n'How can I help you?' Bastian asked. He felt so sorry for them that he could hardly hold back his own tears.\n\n'Ah, great benefactor!' the Acharis cried. 'You've got AURYN. With AURYN you can save us - we have only one thing to ask of you. Give us different bodies!'\n\n'Don't worry,' said Bastian. 'I will. Here's my wish: That you shall fall asleep. That when you wake up, you shall crawl out of your skins and turn into bright-colored butterflies. That you shall be lighthearted and happy. And that, beginning tomorrow, you shall no longer be the Acharis, the Everlasting Weepers, but the Shlamoofs, the Everlasting Laughers.'\n\nBastian awaited their answer, but no sound came from the darkness.\n\n'They've fallen asleep,' Atreyu whispered.\n\nThe two friends went back into their cave. Hysbald, Hydorn, and Hykrion were still snoring gently. They had slept through the whole incident.\n\nBastian lay down. He was extremely pleased with himself.\n\nSoon all Fantastica would learn of the good deed he had done. It had really been unselfish, since no one could claim that he had wished anything for himself. There would be nothing to mar the glory of his goodness.\n\n'What do you think, Atreyu?' he whispered.\n\nAtreyu was silent for a while. Then he replied: 'I only wonder what it may have cost you.'\n\nNot until somewhat later, after Atreyu had fallen asleep, did it dawn on Bastian that his friend had been referring, not to his self-abnegation, but to his loss of memory. But he gave the matter no further thought and fell asleep in joyful anticipation of the morrow.\n\nThe next morning the three knights woke him up with their cries of amazement.\n\n'Would you look at that! My word, even my old mare is giggling.'\n\nThey were standing in the mouth of the cave, and Atreyu was with them. But Atreyu wasn't laughing.\n\nBastian got up and went out.\n\nThe whole glen was crawling and flitting and tumbling with the most comical little creatures he had ever seen. They all had bright-colored butterfly wings on their backs and were wearing the weirdest outfits - some checkered, some striped, some ringed, some dotted. All their clothes looked either too loose or too tight, too big or too small, and they were pieced together every which way. Nothing was right and there were patches all over, even on the wings. No two of these creatures were alike. They had faces like clowns, splotched with every imaginable color, little round red noses or absurdly long ones, and enormous rubbery mouths. Some wore top hats, others peaked caps. Some had only three brick-red tufts of hair, and some had shiny bald heads. Most were sitting or hopping about on the delicate filigree tower, or dangling from it, doing gymnastics, and in general doing their best to wreck it.\n\nBastian ran out to them.\n\n'Hey, you guys!' he shouted. 'Cut that out! You can't do that!' The creatures stopped and looked down at him. One at the very top of the tower asked: 'What did he say?'\n\nAnd one from further down replied: 'The whatchamaycallim says we can't do this.'\n\n'Why does he say we can't do it?' asked a third.\n\n'Because you just can't!' Bastian screamed. 'You can't just smash everything up!'\n\n'The whatchamaycallim says we can't smash everything up,' the first butterfly-clown informed the others.\n\n'We can too!' said another, tearing a big chunk out of the tower.\n\nHopping about like a lunatic, the first called down to Bastian: 'We can too!'\n\nThe tower swayed and creaked alarmingly.\n\n'Hey, what are you doing?' Bastian shouted. He was angry and he was frightened, but at the same time he had all he could do to keep from laughing.\n\nThe first butterfly-clown turned to his companions. 'The whatchamaycallim wants to know what we're doing.'\n\n'What _are_ we doing?' asked another.\n\n'We're having fun,' said a third.\n\n'But the tower will collapse if you don't stop!' Bastian screamed.\n\n'The whatchamaycallim,' the first clown informed the others, 'says the tower will collapse if we don't stop.'\n\n'So what?' said another.\n\nAnd the first called down: 'So what?'\n\nBastian was speechless, and before he could find a suitable answer, all the butterfly-clowns on the tower began to do a sort of aerial round dance. But instead of holding hands they grabbed one another by the legs or collars, while some simply whirled head over heels through the air. And all bellowed and laughed.\n\nThe act that the winged creatures were putting on was so lighthearted and comical that Bastian gave up trying to hold back his laughter.\n\n'But you can't do that,' he called to them. 'The Acharis made it and it's beautiful.'\n\nThe first butterfly-clown turned back to the others. 'The whatchamaycallim says we can't do it.'\n\n'We can do anything that's not forbidden!' cried another, turning somersaults in the air. 'And who's going to forbid us? We're the Shlamoofs!'\n\n'Who's going to forbid us anything?' all cried in chorus. 'We're the Shlamoofs!'\n\n'I am!' cried Bastian.\n\n'The whatchamaycallim,' the first clown explained to the others, 'says \"I.\"'\n\n'You?' said the others. 'How can you forbid us anything?'\n\n'No,' said the first. 'Not I. The whatchamaycallim says \"he.\"'\n\n'Why does the whatchamaycallim say \"he\"?' the others wanted to know. 'And who is he saying \"he\" to in the first place?'\n\n'Who are you saying \"he\" to?' the first butterfly-clown called down to Bastian.\n\n'I didn't say \"he,\" Bastian screamed, half fuming, half laughing. 'I said I forbid you to wreck this tower.'\n\n'He forbids us,' said the first clown to the others, 'to wreck this tower.'\n\n'Who does?' inquired one who had just turned up from the far end of the glen.\n\n'The whatchamaycallim,' the others replied.\n\n'I don't know any whatchamaycallim,' said the newcomer. 'Who is he anyway?'\n\nThe first sang out: 'Hey, whatchamaycallim, who are you anyway?'\n\n'I'm not a whatchamaycallim,' said Bastian, who by then was moderately angry. 'I'm Bastian Balthazar Bux, and I turned you into Shlamoofs so you wouldn't have to cry and moan the whole time. Last night you were still miserable Acharis. It wouldn't hurt to show your benefactor some respect.'\n\nThe Shlamoofs all stopped hopping and dancing at once and stood gaping at Bastian. A breathless silence fell.\n\n'What did the whatchamaycallim say?' whispered a butterfly-clown at the edge of the crowd, but his next-door neighbor cracked him on the head so hard that his hat slid down over his eyes and ears, and all the others went: 'Psst!'\n\n'Would you be so kind as to repeat all that very slowly and distinctly,' the first butterfly-clown requested.\n\n'I am your benefactor!' cried Bastian.\n\nThis threw the Shlamoofs into an incredible state of agitation. One passed the word on to the next and in the end the innumerable creatures, who up until then had been scattered all over the glen, gathered into a knot around Bastian, shouting in one another's ears.\n\n'Did you hear that? He's our bemmafixer! His name is Nastiban Baltebux! No, it's Buxian Banninector. Rubbish, it's Saratit Buxibem! No, it's Baldrian Hix! Shlux! Babeltran Billy-scooter! Nix! Flax! Trix!'\n\nBeside themselves with enthusiasm, they shook hands all around, tipped their hats to one another, and raised great clouds of dust by slapping one another on the back or belly.\n\n'We're so lucky!' they cried. 'Three cheers for Buxifactor Zanzibar Bastelben!'\n\nScreaming and laughing, the whole great swarm shot upward and whirled away. The hubbub died down in the distance.\n\nBastian stood there hardly knowing what his right name was.\n\nBy that time he wasn't so sure he had really done a good deed.\n\n# XIX\n\n# _The Traveling Companions_\n\nSUNBEAMS were fighting their way through the cloud cover as the travelers started out that morning. At last the rain and wind had let up. In the course of the morning the travelers ran into two or three sudden showers, but then there was a marked improvement in the weather, and it seemed to grow warmer by the minute.\n\nThe three knights were in a merry mood; they laughed and joked and played all sorts of tricks on one another. But Bastian seemed quiet and out of sorts as he rode ahead on his mule. And the knights had far too much respect for him to break in on his thoughts.\n\nThe rocky high plateau over which they were riding seemed endless. But little by little the trees became larger and more frequent.\n\nAtreyu had noticed Bastian's bad humor. When he and Falkor started on their usual reconnaissance flight, he asked the luckdragon what he could do to cheer his friend up. Falkor rolled his ruby-red eyeballs and answered: 'That's easy \u2013 didn't he want to ride on me?'\n\nWhen some time later the little band rounded a jutting cliff, they found Atreyu and the luckdragon lying comfortably in the sun.\n\nBastian looked at them in amazement.\n\n'Are you tired?' he asked.\n\n'Not at all,' said Atreyu. 'I just wanted to ask if you'd let me ride Yikka for a while. I've never ridden a mule. It must be wonderful, because you never seem to get sick of it. I'll lend you my old Falkor in return.'\n\nBastian flushed with pleasure.\n\n'Is that true, Falkor?' he asked. 'You wouldn't mind carrying me?'\n\n'Of course not, all-powerful sultan,' said the dragon with a wink. 'Hop on and hold tight.'\n\nWithout touching the ground, Bastian vaulted directly from mule to dragon back and clutched the silvery-white mane as Falkor took off.\n\nBastian hadn't forgotten how Grograman had carried him through the Desert of Colors. But riding a white luckdragon was something else again. If sweeping over the ground on the back of the fiery lion had been like a cry of ecstasy, this gentle rising and falling as the dragon adjusted his movements to the air currents was like a song, now soft and sweet, now triumphant with power. Especially when Falkor was looping the loop, when his mane, his fangs, and the long fringes on his limbs flashed through the air like white flames, it seemed to Bastian that the winds were singing in chorus.\n\nToward noon they sighted the others and landed. The ground party had pitched camp beside a brook in a sunlit meadow. There was a flatbread to eat and a kettle of soup was cooking over a wood fire. The horses and the mule were grazing nearby.\n\nWhen the meal was over, the three knights decided to go hunting, for supplies, especially of meat, were running low. They had heard the cry of pheasants in the thicket, and there seemed to be hares as well. Knowing the Greenskins to be great hunters, they asked Atreyu to join them, but he declined. Thereupon the knights took their long bows, buckled on their quivers full of arrows, and went off to the woods.\n\nAtreyu, Falkor, and Bastian stayed behind.\n\nAfter a short silence, Atreyu suggested: 'How about telling us a little more about your world, Bastian?'\n\n'What would interest you?' Bastian asked.\n\nAtreyu turned to the luckdragon: 'What do you say, Falkor?'\n\n'I'd like to hear something about the children in your school,' said the dragon.\n\nBastian seemed bewildered. 'What children?' he asked.\n\n'The ones who made fun of you,' said Falkor.\n\n'Children who made fun of me?' Bastian repeated. 'I don't know of any children \u2013 and I'm sure no child would have dared to make fun of me.'\n\nAtreyu broke in: 'But you must remember that you went to school.'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian thoughtfully. 'I remember school. Yes, that's right.'\n\nAtreyu and Falkor exchanged glances.\n\n'I was afraid of that,' Atreyu muttered.\n\n'Afraid of what?'\n\n'You've lost some more of your memory,' said Atreyu gravely. 'This time it came of changing the Acharis into Shlamoofs. You shouldn't have done that.'\n\n'Bastian Balthazar Bux,' said the luckdragon \u2013 and his tone seemed almost stern \u2013 'if my advice means anything to you, stop using the power that AURYN gives you. If you don't, you're likely to lose your last memories, and without memory how will you ever find your way back to where you came from?'\n\n'To tell the truth,' said Bastian, 'I don't want to go back anymore.'\n\nAtreyu was horrified. 'But you have to go back. You have to go back and straighten out your world so humans will start coming to Fantastica again. Otherwise Fantastica will disappear sooner or later, and all our trouble will have been wasted.'\n\nAt that point Bastian felt rather offended. 'But I'm still here,' he protested. 'It's been only a little while since I gave Moon Child her new name.'\n\nAtreyu could think of nothing to say. But then Falkor spoke up. 'Now,' he said, 'I see why we haven't made the slightest progress in finding Bastian's way back. If he himself doesn't want to...'\n\n'Bastian,' said Atreyu almost pleadingly. 'Isn't there anything that draws you? Something you love? Don't you ever think of your father, who must be waiting for you and worrying about you?'\n\nBastian shook his head.\n\n'I don't think so. Maybe he's even glad to be rid of me.'\n\nAtreyu looked at his friend in horror.\n\n'The way you two carry on!' said Bastian bitterly. 'You almost sound as if you wanted to get rid of me too.'\n\n'What do you mean by that?' asked Atreyu with a catch in his voice.\n\n'Well,' said Bastian. 'You seem to have only one thing on your minds: getting me out of Fantastica as quickly as possible.'\n\nAtreyu looked at Bastian and slowly shook his head. For a long while none of them said a word. Already Bastian was beginning to regret his angry words. He himself knew they were unjust.\n\nThen Atreyu said softly: 'I thought we were friends.'\n\n'You were right!' Bastian cried. 'We are and always will be. Forgive me. I've been talking nonsense.'\n\nAtreyu smiled. 'You'll have to forgive us, too, for hurting your feelings. We didn't mean it.'\n\n'Anyway,' said Bastian. 'I'm going to take your advice.'\n\nAfter a while the three knights returned with several partridges, a pheasant, and a hare. When the party started out again, Bastian was riding Yikka.\n\nIn the afternoon, they came to a forest consisting entirely of tall, straight evergreens, which formed, high overhead, a green roof so dense that a ray of sunlight seldom reached the ground. That may have been why there was no underbrush.\n\nThe soft, smooth forest floor was pleasant to ride on. Falkor had resigned himself to trotting along with the company, because if he had flown above the treetops with Atreyu, he would undoubtedly have lost sight of the others.\n\nAll afternoon they rode through the dark-green twilight. Toward nightfall they spied a ruined castle on a hilltop. They climbed up to it and in the midst of all the crumbling walls and turrets, halls and passageways, they found a vaulted chamber that was in fairly good condition. There they settled down for the night. It was redheaded Hysbald's turn to cook, and he proved to be much better at it than his predecessor. The pheasant he roasted over the fire was as tasty as you please.\n\nThe next morning they resumed their journey. All day they rode through the forest, which looked the same on all sides. It was late in the day when they noticed that they must have been riding in a great circle, for ahead of them they saw the ruins of the castle they had left in the morning, but this time they were approaching it from a different direction.\n\n'This has never happened to me before!' said Hykrion, twirling his black moustache.\n\n'I can't believe my eyes!' grumbled Hysbald, stalking through the ruins on his long, thin legs.\n\nBut so it was. The remains of yesterday's dinner left no room for doubt.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor said nothing, but their thoughts were hard at work. How could they have made such a mistake?\n\nAt the evening meal \u2013 this time it was roast hare, prepared more or less competently by Hykrion \u2013 the three knights asked Bastian if he would care to impart some of his memories of the world he came from. Bastian excused himself by saying he had a sore throat, and since he had been very quiet all that day, the knights believed him. After suggesting a few effective remedies, they lay down to sleep.\n\nOnly Atreyu and Falkor suspected what Bastian was thinking.\n\nEarly in the morning they started off again. All day they rode through the forest, trying their best to keep going in a straight line. But at nightfall they were back at the same ruined castle.\n\n'Well, I'll be!' Hykrion blustered.\n\n'I'm going mad!' groaned Hysbald.\n\n'Friends,' said Hydorn disgustedly, 'we might as well throw our licenses in the trash bin. Some knights errant we turned out to be!'\n\nOn their first night at the castle, Bastian, knowing that Yikka liked to be alone with her thoughts now and then, had found her a special little niche. The company of the horses, who could think of nothing to talk about but their distinguished ancestry, upset her. That night, after Bastian had taken her back to her place, she said to him: 'Master, I know why we're not getting ahead.'\n\n'How can you know that, Yikka?'\n\n'Because I carry you, master. And because I'm only half an ass, I feel certain things.'\n\n'So, according to you, why is it?'\n\n'You don't want to get ahead, master. You've stopped wishing for anything.'\n\nBastian looked at her in amazement.\n\n'You are really a wise animal, Yikka.'\n\nThe mule flapped her long ears in embarrassment.\n\n'Do you know which way we've been going?'\n\n'No,' said Bastian. 'Do you?'\n\nYikka nodded.\n\n'We've been heading for the center of Fantastica.'\n\n'For the Ivory Tower?'\n\n'Yes, master. And we made good headway as long as we kept going in that direction.'\n\n'That's not possible,' said Bastian. 'Atreyu would have noticed it, and certainly Falkor would have. But they didn't.'\n\n'We mules,' said Yikka, 'are simple creatures, not in a class with luckdragons. But we do have certain gifts. And one of them is a sense of direction. We never go wrong. That's how I knew for sure that you wanted to visit the Childlike Empress.'\n\n'Moon Child...' Bastian murmured. 'Yes, I would like to see her again. She'll tell me what to do.'\n\nThen he stroked the mule's white nose and whispered: 'Thanks, Yikka. Thanks.'\n\nNext morning Atreyu took Bastian aside.\n\n'Listen, Bastian. Falkor and I want to apologize. The advice we gave you was meant well \u2013 but it was stupid. We just haven't been getting ahead. Falkor and I talked it over last night. You'll be stuck here and so will we, until you wish for something. It's bound to make you lose some more of your memory, but that can't be helped, there's nothing else you can do. We can only hope that you find the way back before it's too late. It won't do you any good to stay here. You'll just have to think of your next wish and use AURYN's power.'\n\n'Right,' said Bastian. 'Yikka said the same thing. And I already know what my next wish will be. Let's go, I want you all to hear it.'\n\nThey rejoined the others.\n\n'Friends,' said Bastian in a loud voice. 'So far we have been looking in vain for the way back to my world. Now I've decided to go and see the one person who can help me find it. That one person is the Childlike Empress. Our destination is now the Ivory Tower.'\n\n'Hurrah!' cried the three knights in unison.\n\nBut then Falkor's bronze voice rang out: 'Don't do it, Bastian Balthazar Bux. What you wish is impossible. Don't you know that no one can meet the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes more than once? You will never see her again.'\n\nBastian clenched his fists.\n\n'Moon Child owes me a lot,' he said angrily. 'I'm sure she won't keep me away.'\n\n'You'll see,' Falkor replied, 'that her decisions are sometimes hard to understand.'\n\nBastian felt the color rising to his cheeks. 'You and Atreyu,' he said, 'are always giving me advice. You can see where your advice has got us. From now on I'll do the deciding. I've made up my mind, and that's that.'\n\nHe took a deep breath and went on a little more calmly: 'Besides, you always speak from your point of view. You two are Fantasticans and I'm a human. How can you be sure that the same rules apply to me as to you? It was different when Atreyu had AURYN. And who else but me is going to give the Gem back to Moon Child? No one can meet her twice, you say. But I've already met her twice. The first time we saw each other for only a moment, when Atreyu went into her chamber, and the second time when the big egg exploded. With me everything is different. I _will_ see her a third time.'\n\nAll were silent. The knights because they didn't know what it was all about, Atreyu and Falkor because they were beginning to have doubts.\n\n'Well,' said Atreyu finally, 'maybe you're right. We have no way of knowing how the Childlike Empress will deal with you.'\n\nAfter that they started out, and before noon they reached the edge of the forest.\n\nBefore them lay sloping meadows as far as the eye could see. Soon they came to a winding river and followed its course.\n\nAgain Atreyu and Falkor explored the country, describing wide circles around their slow-moving companions. But both were troubled and their flight was not as light and carefree as usual. Looking ahead, they saw that the country changed abruptly at a certain point in the distance. A steep slope led from the plateau to a low-lying, densely wooded plain and the river descended the slope in a mighty waterfall. Knowing that the riders couldn't hope to get that far before the next day, the two scouts turned back.\n\n'Falkor,' Atreyu asked, 'do you suppose the Childlike Empress cares what becomes of Bastian?'\n\n'Maybe not,' said Falkor. 'She draws no distinctions.'\n\n'Then,' said Atreyu, 'she is really a...'\n\n'Don't say it,' Falkor broke in. 'I know what you mean, but don't say it.'\n\nFor a while Atreyu was silent. Then he said: 'But he's my friend, Falkor. We've got to help him. Even against the Childlike Empress's will, if we have to. But how?'\n\n'With luck,' the dragon replied, and for the first time the bronze bell of his voice seemed to have sprung a crack.\n\nThat evening the company chose a deserted log cabin on the riverbank as their night lodging. For Falkor, of course, it was too small, and he preferred to sleep on the air. The horses and Yikka also had to stay outside.\n\nDuring the evening meal Atreyu told the others about the waterfall and the abrupt change in the country. Then he added casually: 'By the way, we're being followed.'\n\nThe three knights exchanged glances.\n\n'Oho!' cried Hykrion, giving his black moustache a martial twirl. 'How many are they?'\n\n'I counted seven behind us,' said Atreyu. 'But even if they ride all night they can't be here before morning.'\n\n'Are they armed?' asked Hysbald.\n\n'I couldn't tell,' said Atreyu, 'but there are more coming from other directions. I saw six in the west, nine in the east, and twelve or thirteen are coming from up ahead.'\n\n'We'll wait and see what they want,' said Hydorn. 'Thirty-five or thirty-six men would hardly frighten the three of us \u2013 much less Sir Bastian and Atreyu.'\n\nOrdinarily Bastian ungirt the sword Sikanda before lying down to sleep. But that night he kept it on and slept with his hand on the hilt. In his dreams he saw Moon Child smiling at him and her smile seemed full of promise. If there was any more to the dream, he forgot it by the time he woke up, but his vision encouraged him in his hope of seeing her again.\n\nGlancing out of the door of the cabin, he saw seven blurred shapes through the mist that had risen from the river. Two were on foot, the others mounted on different sorts of steeds. Bastian quietly awakened his companions.\n\nThe knights unsheathed their swords, and together they stepped out of the cabin. When the figures waiting outside caught sight of Bastian, the riders dismounted and all seven went down on their left knees, bowed their heads and cried out: 'Hail and welcome to Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica!'\n\nThe newcomers were a weird-looking lot. One of the two who had come on foot had an uncommonly long neck and a head with four faces, one pointed in each of the four directions. The first was merry, the second angry, the third sad, and the fourth sleepy. All were rigid and unchanging, but he was able at any time to face forward with the one expressing his momentary mood. This individual was a four-quarter troll, sometimes known as a moody-woody.\n\nThe second pedestrian was what is known in Fantastica as a headfooter. His head was connected directly with his long, thin legs, there being neither neck nor trunk. Headfooters are always on the go and have no fixed residence. As a rule, they roam about in swarms of many hundreds, but from time to time one runs across a loner. They feed on herbs and grasses. The one that was kneeling to Bastian looked young and red-cheeked.\n\nThe three creatures riding on horses no larger than goats were a gnome, a shadowscamp, and a blondycat. The gnome had a golden circlet around his head and was obviously a prince. The shadowscamp was hard to recognize, because to all intents and purposes he consisted only of a shadow cast by no one. The blondycat had a catlike face and long golden-blond curls that clothed her like a coat. Her whole body was covered with equally blond shaggy fur. She was no bigger than a five-year-old child.\n\nAnother, who was riding on an ox, came from the land of the Sassafranians, who are born old and die when they have grown (that is, dwindled) to infancy. This one had a long white beard, a bald head, and a heavily wrinkled face. By Sassafranian standards, he was a youngster, about Bastian's age.\n\nA blue djinn had come on a camel. He was tall and thin and was wearing an enormous turban. His shape was human, but his bare torso with its bulging muscles seemed to be made of some glossy blue metal. Instead of a nose and mouth, he had a huge, hooked eagle's beak.\n\n'Who are you and what do you want?' Hykrion asked rather brusquely. Despite the ceremonious greeting, he wasn't quite convinced of the visitors' friendly intentions. He still had his hand on his sword hilt.\n\nThe four-quarter troll, who up until then had been keeping his sleepy face foremost, now switched to the merry one. Ignoring Hykrion, he addressed himself to Bastian:\n\n'Your Lordship,' he declared, 'we are princes from many different parts of Fantastica, and we have all come to welcome you and ask for your help. The news of your presence has flown from country to country, the wind and the clouds speak your name, the waves of the sea proclaim your glory, and every last brooklet is celebrating your power.'\n\nBastian cast a glance at Atreyu, but Atreyu looked at the troll unsmilingly and almost severely.\n\n'We know,' the blue djinn broke in, and his voice sounded like the rasping cry of an eagle, 'we know that you created Perilin, the Night Forest, and Goab, the Desert of Colors. We know you have eaten and drunk the fire of the Many-Colored Death and bathed in it, something that no one else in Fantastica could have done and still lived. We know that you passed through the Temple of a Thousand Doors, and we know what happened in the Silver City of Amarganth. We know, my lord, that there is nothing you cannot do. When you make a wish, your wishes come to pass. And so we invite you to come and stay with us and favor us with a story of our own. For none of our nations has a story.'\n\nBastian thought it over, then shook his head. 'I can't do what you ask of me just yet. I'll help you later on. But first I must go to the Childlike Empress. I hope you will join us and help me to find the Ivory Tower.'\n\nThe creatures didn't seem at all disappointed. After brief deliberation they agreed to accompany Bastian on his journey. Whereupon the procession, which by now had the look of a small caravan, started out again.\n\nThroughout the day they were joined by new adherents, not only those Atreyu had sighted the day before, but many more. There were goat-legged fauns and gigantic night-hobs, there were elves and kobolds, beetle riders and three-legses, a man-sized rooster in jackboots, a stag with golden antlers who walked erect and wore a Prince Albert. Many of the new arrivals bore no resemblance whatsoever to human beings. There were helmeted copper ants, strangely shaped wandering rocks, flute birds, who made music with their long beaks, and there were three so-called puddlers, who moved by dissolving into a puddle at every step and resuming their usual form a little farther on. But perhaps the most startling of all was a twee, whose fore- and hindquarters had a way of running about independently of one another. Except for its red and white stripes it looked rather like a hippopotamus.\n\nSoon the procession numbered at least a hundred. And all had come to welcome Bastian, the Savior of Fantastica, and beg him for a story of their own. But the original seven told the others that they would first have to go to the Ivory Tower, and all were agreed.\n\nHykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn rode with Bastian in the lead of the now rather impressive procession.\n\nToward evening they came to a waterfall. Leaving the plateau, they made their way down a winding mountain trail, at the end of which they found themselves in a forest of tree-sized orchids with enormous spotted blossoms. These blossoms looked so frightening that when the travelers stopped for the night, they decided to post sentries.\n\nBastian and Atreyu gathered some of the deep, soft moss that lay all about and made themselves a comfortable bed. Falkor protected the two friends by lying down in a circle around them. The air was warm and heavy with the strange and none too pleasant scent of the orchids. That scent seemed fraught with evil.\n\n# XX\n\n# _The Seeing Hand_\n\nTHE dewdrops on the orchids glistened in the morning sun as the caravan started out again. The night had been uneventful except that more and more emissaries kept trailing in. The procession now numbered close to three hundred.\n\nThe farther they went into the orchid forest, the stranger grew the shapes and colors of the flowers. And soon Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn discovered that the fears which had led them to post sentries had not been entirely groundless. For many of the orchids were carnivorous and big enough to swallow a whole calf. True, they could not move of their own volition \u2013 it hadn't been really necessary to post sentries \u2013 but if something or someone touched them, they snapped shut like traps. And several times when a blossom seized the hand, foot, or mount of a fellow traveler the knights were obliged to draw their swords and hack the blossom to pieces.\n\nThroughout the ride Bastian was besieged by all sorts of fantastic creatures who tried to attract his attention or at least get a look at him. But Bastian rode on in withdrawn silence. A new wish had come to him, and for the first time it was one that made him seem standoffish and almost sullen.\n\nHe felt that despite their reconciliation Atreyu and Falkor were treating him like a child, that they felt responsible for him and thought he had to be led by the nose. But come to think of it, hadn't they been that way from the start? Oh yes, they were friendly enough, but they seemed to feel superior to him for some reason, to regard him as a harmless innocent who needed protecting. And that didn't suit him at all. He wasn't innocent, he wasn't harmless, and he'd soon show them. He wanted to be dangerous, dangerous and feared. Feared by all \u2013 including Atreyu and Falkor.\n\nThe blue djinn \u2013 his name, incidentally, was Ilwan \u2013 elbowed his way through the crush around Bastian, crossed his arms over his chest, and bowed.\n\nBastian stopped.\n\n'What is it, Ilwan? Speak!'\n\n'My lord,' said the djinn in his eagle's voice. 'I've been listening in on the conversations of our new traveling companions. Some of them claim to know this part of the country and their teeth are chattering with fear.'\n\n'What are they afraid of?'\n\n'This forest of carnivorous orchids, my lord, belongs to Xayide, the wickedest and most powerful sorceress in all Fantastica. She lives in Horok Castle, also known as the Seeing Hand.'\n\n'Tell the scaredy-cats not to worry,' said Bastian, 'I'm here to protect them.'\n\nIlwan bowed and left him.\n\nA little later Falkor and Atreyu, who had flown far ahead, returned to Bastian. The procession had stopped for the noonday meal.\n\n'I don't know what to make of it,' said Atreyu. 'Three or four hours' journey from here, in the middle of the orchid forest, we saw a building that looks like a big hand jutting out of the ground. There's something sinister about it, and it's directly in our line of march.'\n\nBastian told them what he had heard from Ilwan.\n\n'If that's the case,' said Atreyu, 'wouldn't it be more sensible to change our direction?'\n\n'No,' said Bastian.\n\n'But there's no reason why we should tangle with this Xayide. I think we should steer clear of her.'\n\n'There is a reason,' said Bastian.\n\n'What reason?'\n\n'Because I feel like it,' said Bastian.\n\nAtreyu looked at him openmouthed. The conversation stopped there because Fantasticans were crowding in from all sides to get a look at Bastian. But when the meal was over, Atreyu rejoined Bastian. Trying to make it sound casual, he suggested: 'How about taking a ride with Falkor and me?'\n\nBastian realized that Atreyu wanted a private talk with him. They hoisted themselves up on Falkor's back, Atreyu in front, Bastian behind him, and the dragon took off. It was the first time the two friends had flown together.\n\nOnce they were airborne, Atreyu said: 'It's been hard seeing you alone these days. But we have to talk things over, Bastian.'\n\n'Just as I thought,' said Bastian with a smile. 'What's on your mind?'\n\nAtreyu began hesitantly. 'Have we come to this place and are we heading where we are because of some new wish of yours?'\n\n'I imagine so,' said Bastian rather coldly.\n\n'That's what Falkor and I have been thinking,' said Atreyu. 'What kind of wish is it?'\n\nBastian made no answer.\n\n'Don't get me wrong,' said Atreyu. 'It's not that we're afraid of anything or anyone. But we're your friends, and we worry about you.'\n\n'No need to,' said Bastian still more coldly.\n\nFalkor twisted his neck and looked back at them.\n\n'Atreyu,' he said, 'has a sensible suggestion. I advise you to listen to him, Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\n'Some more of your good advice?' said Bastian with a sardonic smile.\n\n'No, Bastian,' said Atreyu. 'No advice. A suggestion. You may not like it at first. But think it over before you turn it down. We want to help you, and we've been wondering how. The whole trouble is the way the Childlike Empress's amulet affects you. Without AURYN's power you can't wish yourself ahead, but with AURYN's power you're losing yourself and forgetting where you want to go. Pretty soon, unless we do something about it, you won't have any idea where you're going.'\n\n'We've already been through that,' said Bastian. 'So what?'\n\n'When I was wearing the Gem,' said Atreyu, 'it was entirely different. It guided me and it didn't take anything away from me. Maybe because I'm not a human and I have no memory of the human world to lose. In other words, it helped me and did me no harm. So here's what I suggest: Let me have AURYN and trust me to guide you. What do you say?'\n\nBastian replied instantly: 'I say no!'\n\nAgain Falkor looked back.\n\n'Couldn't you at least think it over for a moment?'\n\n'No!' said Bastian.\n\nFor the first time Atreyu grew angry.\n\n'Bastian,' he said, 'think sensibly! You can't go on like this! Haven't you noticed that you've changed completely? You're not yourself anymore.'\n\n'Thanks,' said Bastian. 'Thank you very much for minding my business all the time. But frankly, I can get along without your advice. In case you've forgotten, _I_ saved Fantastica, and Moon Child entrusted her power to _me._ She must have had some reason for it, because she could have let you keep AURYN. But she took it away from you and gave it to me. I've changed, you say. Yes, my dear Atreyu, you may be right. I'm no longer the harmless innocent you take me for. Shall I tell you the real reason why you want me to give up AURYN? Because you're just plain jealous. You don't know me yet, but if you go on like this \u2013 you'll get to know me.'\n\nAtreyu did not reply. Falkor's flight had suddenly lost all its buoyancy, he seemed to be dragging himself through the air, sinking lower and lower like a wounded bird.\n\nAt length Atreyu spoke with difficulty.\n\n'Bastian,' he said. 'You can't seriously believe what you've said. Let's forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, you never said it.'\n\n'All right,' said Bastian, 'let's forget it. Anyway, I didn't start the argument.'\n\nFor a time they rode on in silence.\n\nIn the distance Horok Castle rose up from the orchid forest. It really did look like a giant hand with five outstretched fingers.\n\n'But there's something I want to make clear once and for all,' said Bastian suddenly. 'I've made up my mind. I'm not going back at all. I'm going to stay in Fantastica for good. I like it here. So I can manage without my memories. And if it's the future of Fantastica you're worried about, I can give Moon Child thousands of new names. We don't need the human world anymore.'\n\nFalkor banked for a U-turn.\n\n'Hey!' Bastian shouted. 'What are you doing? Fly ahead! I want to see Horok close up!'\n\n'I can't,' Falkor gasped. 'I honestly can't go on!'\n\nOn their return to the caravan they found their traveling companions in a frenzy of agitation. They had been attacked by a band of some fifty giants, covered with black armor that made them look like enormous two-legged beetles. Many of the traveling companions had fled and were just beginning to return singly or in groups; others had done their best to defend themselves, but had been no match for the armored giants. The three knights, Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, had fought heroically, but without making a dent in any of their assailants. In the end they had been disarmed and dragged away in chains. One of the armored giants had shouted in a strangely metallic voice:\n\n'Xayide, the mistress of Horok Castle, sends greetings to Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica, and makes the following demands: \"Submit to me unconditionally and swear to serve me with body and soul as my faithful slave. Should you refuse, or should you attempt to circumvent my will by guile or stratagem, your three friends Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn will die a slow, shameful, and cruel death by torture. You have until sunrise tomorrow to make up your mind.\" That is the message of Xayide, the mistress of Horok Castle. It has been duly delivered.'\n\nBastian bit his lips. Atreyu and Falkor had wiped all expression off their faces, but Bastian knew exactly what they were thinking. What he minded most was their mask of secrecy. But this was hardly the time to have it out with them. That could wait. Instead, he addressed the company in a loud voice: 'I will never give in to Xayide's blackmail! We must set the prisoners free, and without delay.'\n\n'It won't be easy,' said Ilwan, the blue djinn with the eagle beak. 'All of us together are no match for those black devils. And even if you, my lord, and Atreyu and his luckdragon were to lead us into battle, it would take us too long to capture Horok Castle. The lives of the three knights are in Xayide's hands. She will kill them the moment she finds out that we are attacking.'\n\n'Then we mustn't let her find out,' said Bastian. 'We must take her by surprise.'\n\n'How can we do that?' asked the four-quarter troll, putting forward his angry face, which was rather terrifying. 'Xayide is crafty. I'm sure she has an answer for anything we can think up.'\n\n'I agree,' said the prince of the gnomes. 'There are too many of us. If we move on Horok Castle, she's sure to know it. Even at night so large a troop movement can't be kept secret. She has her spies.'\n\n'Good,' said Bastian. 'We'll fool her with the help of her spies.'\n\n'How can we do that, my lord?'\n\n'The rest of you will start off in a different direction, to make her think we've given up trying to free the prisoners and we're running away.'\n\n'And what will become of the prisoners?'\n\n'I'll attend to that with Atreyu and Falkor.'\n\n'Just the three of you?'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian. 'That is, if Atreyu and Falkor agree to come with me. If not, I'll go alone.'\n\nThe traveling companions looked at him with admiration. Those closest to him passed his words on to those further back in the crowd.\n\n'My lord,' the blue djinn cried out, 'regardless of whether you conquer or die, this will go down in the history of Fantastica.'\n\nBastian turned to Atreyu and Falkor. 'Are you coming, or have you got some more of your suggestions?'\n\n'We're coming,' said Atreyu.\n\n'In that case,' Bastian decreed, 'the caravan must start moving while it's still light. You must hurry \u2013 make it look as if you were in flight. We'll wait here until dark. We'll join you tomorrow morning \u2013 with the three knights or not at all. Go now.'\n\nAfter taking a respectful leave of Bastian, the traveling companions started out. Bastian, Atreyu, and Falkor hid in a clump of orchid trees and waited for nightfall.\n\nIn the late afternoon a faint jangling was heard and five of the black giants approached the abandoned camp. They seemed to be all of black metal, even their faces were like iron masks, and their movements were strangely mechanical. All stopped at once, all looked in the direction where the caravan had gone. Then without a word, all marched off in step.\n\n'My plan seems to be working,' Bastian whispered.\n\n'There were only five,' said Atreyu. 'Where are the others?'\n\n'The five are sure to communicate with the rest,' said Bastian.\n\nAt length, when it was quite dark, Bastian, Atreyu, and Falkor crept from their hiding place, and Falkor rose soundlessly into the air with his two riders. Flying as low as possible over the orchid forest to avoid being seen, he headed in the direction they had taken that afternoon. The darkness was impenetrable, and they wondered how they would ever find the castle. But a few minutes later Horok appeared before them in a blaze of light. There seemed to be a lamp in every one of its thousand windows. Evidently Xayide wanted her castle to be seen. But that was only reasonable, for she was expecting Bastian's visit \u2013 a different sort of visit, to be sure.\n\nTo be on the safe side, Falkor glided to the ground among the orchids, for his pearly-white scales would have reflected the glow of the castle.\n\nUnder cover of the trees they approached. Outside the gate, ten of the armored guards were on watch. And at each of the brightly lit windows stood one of them, black, motionless, and menacing.\n\nHorok Castle was situated on a rise from which the orchid trees had been cleared. True enough, it was shaped like an enormous hand. Each finger was a tower, and the thumb was an oriel surmounted by yet another tower. The whole building was many stories high, and the windows were like glittering eyes looking out over the countryside. It was known with good reason as the Seeing Hand.\n\n'The first thing we have to do,' Bastian whispered into Atreyu's ear, 'is locate the prisoners.'\n\nAtreyu nodded and told Bastian to stay there with Falkor. Then he crawled soundlessly away. He was gone a long time.\n\nWhen he returned, he reported: 'I've been all around the castle. There's only this one entrance, and it's too well guarded. But I've discovered a skylight high up at the tip of the middle finger that seems to be unguarded. Falkor could easily take us up there, but we'd be seen. The prisoners are probably in the cellar. At any rate, I heard a long scream of pain that seemed to come from deep down.'\n\nBastian thought hard. Then he whispered: 'I'll try to reach that skylight. Meanwhile you and Falkor must keep the guards busy. Make them think we're trying to get in by the gate. But don't do any more. Don't get into a fight. Keep them here as long as you can. Give me a few minutes' time before you do anything.'\n\nAtreyu pressed his friend's hand in silence. Then Bastian took off his silver mantle and slipped away through the darkness. He had almost circled the castle when he heard Atreyu shouting:\n\n'Attention! Bastian Balthazar Bux, the Savior of Fantastica, is here. He has come not to beg Xayide for mercy, but to give her a last chance to release the prisoners. If she sets them free, her miserable life will be spared!'\n\nLooking around the corner of the castle, Bastian caught a glimpse of Atreyu, who had put on the silver mantle and coiled his blue-black hair into a kind of turban. To anyone who didn't know the two boys very well there was a certain resemblance between them.\n\nFor a moment the armored giants seemed undecided. Then Bastian could hear in the distance the metallic stamping of their feet as they rushed at Atreyu. The shadows in the windows also began to move as the guards left their posts to see what was going on. And many more of the armored giants poured out through the gate. When the first had almost reached Atreyu, he slipped nimbly away and a moment later appeared over their heads, riding Falkor. The armored giants brandished their swords and leapt high in the air, but they couldn't reach him.\n\nBastian started climbing the wall. Here and there he was helped by outcroppings and window ledges, but more often he had to hold fast with his fingertips. Higher and higher he climbed; once the jutting stone he had set his foot on crumbled away and left him hanging by one hand, but he pulled himself up, found a hold for his other hand, and kept climbing. When at last he reached the towers he made better progress, for they were so close together that he could push himself up by bracing himself between them.\n\nAt length he reached the skylight and slipped through. True enough, there was no guard in the tower room, heaven knows why. Opening a door, he came to a narrow winding staircase and started down. When he reached the floor below, he saw two black guards standing at a window watching the excitement outside. He managed to pass behind them without attracting their notice.\n\nOn he crept, down more stairways, through passages and corridors. One thing was certain. Those armored giants might have been great fighters, but they didn't amount to much as guards.\n\nAt last the cold and the musty smell told him he was in the cellar. Luckily all the guards seemed to have raced upstairs in pursuit of the supposed Bastian Balthazar Bux. Torches along the walls lit the way for him. Lower and lower he went. He had the impression that there were as many floors below the ground as above. Finally he came to the bottommost cellar and soon found the dungeon where Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn were languishing. It was a pitiful sight.\n\nThey were hanging by their wrists over what seemed to be a bottomless pit. The long iron chains that held them were connected by way of overhead rollers with a winch, but the winch was fastened with a great padlock and couldn't be budged. Bastian stood perplexed.\n\nThe three prisoners' eyes were closed. They seemed to be asleep or unconscious. Then Hydorn the Enduring opened his left eye and sang out: 'Hey, friends. Look who's here!'\n\nThe others managed to open their eyes and a smile crossed their lips.\n\n'We knew you wouldn't leave us in the lurch!' cried Hydorn.\n\n'How can I get you down?' Bastian asked. 'The winch is locked.'\n\n'Just take your sword and cut the chains,' said Hysbald.\n\n'And drop us into the pit?' said Hykrion. 'That's not such a good idea.'\n\n'Anyway,' said Bastian, 'I can't draw my sword. I can't use Sikanda unless it jumps into my hand.'\n\n'That's the trouble with magic swords,' said Hydorn. 'When you need them, they go on strike.'\n\n'Hey!' Hysbald whispered. 'The guards had the key to that winch. Where could they have put it?'\n\n'I remember a loose stone,' said Hykrion. 'But I couldn't see very well while they were hoisting me up here.'\n\nBastian looked and looked. The light was dim and flickering, but after a while he discovered a stone flag that was not quite even with the rest. He lifted it cautiously, and there indeed was the key.\n\nHe opened the big padlock and removed it from the winch. Then slowly he began to turn. It creaked and groaned so loud that the armored giants must have heard it by then if they weren't totally deaf. Even so, there was nothing to be gained by stopping. Bastian went on turning until the three knights were level with the floor, though still over the pit. Then, after swinging them to and fro until their feet touched the ground, he let them down. They stretched out exhausted and showed no inclination to move. Besides, they still had the heavy chains on their wrists.\n\nBastian had little time to think, for metallic steps came clanking down the stone stairs. The guards! Their armor glittered in the torchlight like the carapaces of giant insects. All with the same movement, they drew their swords and rushed at Bastian.\n\nThen at last Sikanda leapt from the rusty sheath and into his hand. With the speed of lightning the blade attacked the first of the armored giants and hacked him to pieces before Bastian himself knew what was happening. It was then that he saw what the giants were made of. They were hollow shells of armor. There was nothing inside! He had no time to wonder what made them move.\n\nBastian was in a good position, for only one giant at a time could squeeze through the narrow doorway of the dungeon, and one at a time Sikanda chopped them to bits. Soon their remains lay piled up on the floor like enormous black eggshells. After some twenty of them had been disposed of, the rest withdrew, evidently in the hope of waylaying Bastian in a position more favorable to themselves.\n\nTaking advantage of the breathing spell, Bastian let Sikanda cut the shackles from the knights' wrists. Hykrion and Hydorn dragged themselves to their feet and tried to draw their swords, which strangely enough had not been taken away from them, but their hands were numb from the long hanging and refused to obey them. Hysbald, the most delicate of the three, wasn't even able to stand by himself. His two friends had to hold him up.\n\n'Never mind,' said Bastian. 'Sikanda needs no help. Just stay behind me and don't get in my way.'\n\nThey left the dungeon, slowly climbed the stairs, and came to a large hall. Suddenly all the torches went out. But Sikanda shone bright.\n\nAgain they heard the heavy metallic tread of many armored giants.\n\n'Quick!' cried Bastian. 'Back to the stairs! This is where I'm going to fight.'\n\nHe couldn't see whether the three knights obeyed his order and there was no time to find out, because Sikanda was already dancing in his hand. The entire hall was ablaze with its sharp white light. The assailants managed to push Bastian back from the top of the stairs and to attack him from all sides, yet not one of their mighty blows touched him. Sikanda whirled around him so fast that it looked like hundreds of swords. And a few moments later he was surrounded by a heap of shattered black armor in which nothing stirred.\n\n'Come on up!' Bastian cried to his companions.\n\nThe three knights stood gaping on the stairs. Hykrion's moustache was trembling. 'I've never seen anything like it!' he cried.\n\n'Something to tell my grandchildren!' Hysbald stammered.\n\n'The only trouble,' said Hydorn mournfully, 'is that they won't believe you.'\n\nBastian stood there with sword in hand, wondering what to do next. Suddenly it sprang back into its sheath.\n\n'The danger seems to be over,' he said.\n\n'At least the part that calls for a sword,' said Hydorn. 'What do we do now?'\n\n'Now,' said Bastian, 'I want to make this Xayide's acquaintance. I've got a bone to pick with her.'\n\nAfter climbing several more flights of stairs, Bastian and the knights reached the ground floor, where Atreyu and Falkor were waiting for them in a kind of lobby.\n\n'Well done, you two!' cried Bastian, slapping Atreyu on the back.\n\n'What's become of the armored giants?' asked Atreyu.\n\n'Hollow shells!' said Bastian contemptuously. 'Where's Xayide?'\n\n'Up in her magic throne room,' answered Atreyu.\n\n'Come along,' said Bastian, taking the silver mantle which Atreyu held out to him. And all together, including Falkor, they climbed the broad stairway leading to the upper floors.\n\nWhen Bastian, followed by his companions, entered the magic throne room, Xayide arose from her red-coral throne. She was wearing a long gown of violet silk, and her flaming red hair was coiled and braided into a fantastic edifice. Her face and her long, thin hands were as pale as marble. There was something strangely disturbing about her eyes. It took Bastian a few moments to figure out what it was \u2013 they were of different colors, one green, one red. She was trembling, evidently in fear of Bastian. He looked her straight in the face and she lowered her long lashes.\n\nThe room was full of weird objects whose purpose it was hard to determine. There were large globes covered with designs, sidereal clocks, and pendulums hanging from the ceiling. There were costly censers from which rose heavy clouds of different-colored smoke, which crept over the floor like fog.\n\nThus far Bastian hadn't said a word. That seemed to shatter Xayide's composure, for suddenly she threw herself on the floor in front of him, took one of his feet and set it on her neck.\n\n'My lord and master!' she said in a deep voice that sounded somehow mysterious. 'No one in Fantastica can withstand you. You are mightier than the mighty and more dangerous than all the demons together. If you wish to take revenge on me for being too stupid to recognize your greatness, trample me underfoot. I have earned your anger. But if you wish once again to demonstrate your far-famed magnanimity, suffer me to become your obedient slave, who swears to obey you body and soul. Teach me to do what you deem desirable and I will be your humble pupil, obedient to your every hint. I repent of the harm I tried to do you and beg your mercy!'\n\n'Arise, Xayide!' said Bastian. He had been very angry, but her speech pleased him. If she had really acted out of ignorance and really regretted it so bitterly, then it was beneath his dignity to punish her. And since she even wished to learn what he deemed desirable, he could see no reason to reject her plea.\n\nXayide arose and stood before him with bowed head. 'Will you obey me unconditionally,' he asked, 'however hard you may find it to do my bidding? Will you obey me without argument and without grumbling?'\n\n'I will, my lord and master,' said Xayide. 'You will see there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we combine my artifices and your power.'\n\n'Very well,' said Bastian. 'Then I will take you into my service. You will leave this castle and go with me to the Ivory Tower, where I am expecting to meet Moon Child.'\n\nFor a fraction of a second Xayide's eyes glowed red and green, but then, veiling them with her long lashes, she said: 'I am yours to command, my lord and master.'\n\nThereupon all descended the stairs. Once outside the castle, Bastian observed: 'The first thing to do is find our traveling companions. Goodness knows where they are.'\n\n'Not very far from here,' said Xayide. 'I've led them slightly astray.'\n\n'For the last time,' said Bastian.\n\n'For the last time,' she agreed. 'But how will we get there? Do you expect me to walk? Through the woods and at night?'\n\n'Falkor will carry us,' said Bastian. 'He's strong enough to carry us all.'\n\nFalkor raised his head and looked at Bastian. His ruby-red eyes glittered.\n\n'I'm strong enough, Bastian Balthazar Bux,' boomed the bronze bell-like voice. 'But I will not carry that woman.'\n\n'Oh yes, you will,' said Bastian. 'Because I command it.'\n\nThe luckdragon looked at Atreyu, who nodded almost imperceptibly. But Bastian had seen that nod.\n\nAll took their places on Falkor's back, and he rose into the air.\n\n'Which way?' he asked.\n\n'Straight ahead,' said Xayide.\n\n'Which way?' Falkor asked again, as if he hadn't heard.\n\n'Straight ahead!' Bastian shouted. 'You heard her.'\n\n'Do as she says,' said Atreyu under his breath. And Falkor complied.\n\nHalf an hour later \u2013 already the dawn was graying \u2013 they saw innumerable camphres down below and the luckdragon landed. In the meantime many more Fantasticans had turned up and a lot of them had brought tents. The camp, spread out on a wide, flower-strewn meadow at the edge of the orchid forest, looked like a tent city.\n\n'How many are you now?' Bastian asked.\n\nIlwan, the blue djinn, who had taken charge of the caravan in Bastian's absence, replied that he had not yet been able to make an exact count, but that he guessed there were close to a thousand. 'And there's something else to report,' he added. 'Something rather strange. Soon after we pitched camp, shortly before midnight, five of those armored giants appeared. But they were peaceful and they've kept to themselves. Of course, no one dared to go near them. They brought a big litter made of red coral. But it was empty.'\n\n'Those are my carriers,' said Xayide in a pleading tone to Bastian. 'I sent them ahead last night. That's the pleasantest way to travel. If it does not displease you, my lord.'\n\n'I don't like the look of this,' Atreyu interrupted.\n\n'Why not?' said Bastian. 'What's your objection?'\n\n'She can travel any way she likes,' said Atreyu drily. 'But she wouldn't have sent her litter here last night if she hadn't known in advance that she'd be coming here. She had planned the whole thing. Your victory was really a defeat. She purposely let you win. That was her way of winning you over.'\n\n'Enough of this!' cried Bastian, purple with anger. 'I didn't ask for your opinion. You make me sick with your lecturing. And now you question my victory and ridicule my magnanimity.'\n\nAtreyu was going to say something, but Bastian screamed at him: 'Shut up and leave me be! If the two of you aren't satisfied with what I do and the way I am, go away. I'm not keeping you. Go where you please! I'm sick of you!'\n\nBastian folded his arms over his chest and turned his back on Atreyu. The Fantasticans who had gathered around were dumbfounded. For a time Atreyu stood silent. Up until then Bastian had never reprimanded him in the presence of others. He was so stunned he could hardly breathe. He waited a while, then, when Bastian did not turn back to him, he slowly walked away. Falkor followed him.\n\nXayide smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile.\n\nIn that moment Bastian's memory of having been a child in his world was effaced.\n\n# XXI\n\n# _The Star Cloister_\n\nUNINTERRUPTEDLY new emissaries from all parts of Fantastica poured in to swell the army of those accompanying Bastian on his march to the Ivory Tower. It proved impossible to take a count, because new ones kept arriving while the counting was in progress. Each morning an army several thousand strong got under way. And each night it set up the strangest tent city imaginable. Since Bastian's traveling companions varied enormously in shape and size, some of their night lodgings might have been mistaken for circus tents, while others, at the opposite end of the scale, were no bigger than a thimble. Their vehicles also showed astonishing variety, ranging from common covered wagons and diligences to the most extraordinary rolling barrels, bouncing balls, and crawling containers with automotive legs.\n\nOf all the tents the most magnificent was the one that had been procured for Bastian. The shape and size of a small house, it was made of lustrous, many-colored silk, embroidered with gold and silver. A flag affixed to the roof was decorated with Bastian's coat of arms, a seven-armed candelabrum. The inside was furnished with soft blankets and cushions. Bastian's tent was always set up at the center of the camp. And the blue djinn, who had become his factotum, stood guard at the entrance.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor were still among the host of Bastian's companions, but since the public reprimand he hadn't exchanged a word with them. Secretly, he was waiting for Atreyu to give in and apologize. But Atreyu did nothing of the kind. Nor did Falkor show any inclination to humble himself before Bastian. And that, said Bastian to himself, was just what they must learn to do. If they expected him to back down they had another think coming; his will was of steel. But if they gave in, he'd welcome them with open arms. If Atreyu knelt down to him, he would lift him up and say: Don't kneel to me, Atreyu, you are and remain my friend...\n\nBut for the time being Atreyu and Falkor brought up the rear of the procession. Falkor seemed to have forgotten how to fly; he trudged along on foot and Atreyu walked beside him, most of the time with bowed head. A sad comedown for the proud reconnaissance flyers. Bastian wasn't happy about it, but there was nothing he could do.\n\nHe began to be bored riding the mule Yikka in the lead of the caravan, and took to visiting Xayide in her litter instead. She received him with a great show of respect, gave him the most comfortable seat, and squatted down at his feet. She could always think of something interesting to talk about, and when she noticed that he disliked speaking of his past in the human world, she stopped questioning him about it. Most of the time she smoked her Oriental water pipe. The stem looked like an emerald-green viper, and the mouthpiece, which she held between her marble-white fingers, suggested a snake's head. She seemed to be kissing it as she smoked. The clouds of smoke which poured indolently from her mouth and nose changed color with every puff, from blue to yellow, to pink, to green, and so on.\n\n'Xayide,' said Bastian on one of his visits, looking thoughtfully at the armored giants who were carrying the litter. 'There's something I've been wanting to ask you.'\n\n'Your slave is listening,' said Xayide.\n\n'When I fought your guards,' said Bastian, 'I discovered that there was nothing inside their shell of armor. So what makes them move?'\n\n'My will,' said Xayide with a smile. 'It's because they're empty that they do my will. My will can control anything that's empty.'\n\nShe turned her red and green gaze on Bastian. For a moment it gave him a strangely eerie feeling, but quickly she lowered her lashes.\n\n'Could I control them with my will?' he asked.\n\n'Of course you could, my lord and master,' she replied. 'You could do it a hundred times better than I. I am as nothing beside you. Would you care to try?'\n\n'Not now,' said Bastian, who was rather frightened at the idea. 'Maybe some other time.'\n\n'Tell me,' said Xayide. 'Do you really enjoy riding an old mule? Wouldn't you rather be carried by beings you can move with your will?'\n\n'But Yikka likes to carry me,' said Bastian almost peevishly. 'It gives her pleasure.'\n\n'Then you do it to please her?'\n\n'Why not?' said Bastian. 'What's wrong with that?'\n\nXayide let some green smoke rise from her mouth.\n\n'Oh, nothing at all, my lord. How can anything you do be wrong?'\n\n'What are you driving at, Xayide?'\n\nShe bowed her head of flaming red hair.\n\n'You think of others too much, my lord and master,' she whispered. 'No one is worthy to divert your attention from your own all-important development. If you promise not to be angry, I will venture a piece of advice: Think more of your own perfection.'\n\n'What has that got to do with Yikka?'\n\n'Not much, my lord. Hardly anything. Just this: she's not a worthy mount for someone as important as you. It grieves me to see you riding such an undistinguished animal. All your traveling companions are surprised. You alone, my lord and master, seem unaware of what you owe to yourself.'\n\nBastian said nothing, but Xayide's words had made an impression.\n\nNext day, as the procession with Bastian and Yikka in the lead was passing through lush rolling meadows, interspersed here and there by small copses of fragrant lilac, he decided to take Xayide's advice.\n\nAt noon, when the caravan stopped to rest, he patted the old mule on the neck and said: 'Yikka, the time has come for us to part.'\n\nYikka let out a cry of dismay. 'Why, master?' she asked. 'Have I done my job so badly?' And tears flowed from the corners of her dark eyes.\n\n'Not at all,' Bastian hastened to reassure her. 'You've been carrying me so gently all this time, you've been so patient and willing that I've decided to reward you.'\n\n'I don't want any other reward,' said Yikka. 'I just want to go on carrying you. How could I wish for anything better?'\n\n'Didn't you once tell me it made you sad that mules can't have children?'\n\n'Yes,' said Yikka, 'because when I'm very old I'd like to tell my children about these happy days.'\n\n'Very well,' said Bastian. 'Then I'll tell you a story that will come true. And I'll tell it only to you, to you and no one else, because it's your story.'\n\nThen he took hold of one of Yikka's long ears and whispered into it: 'Not far from here, in a little lilac copse, the father of your son is waiting for you. He's a white stallion with the white wings of a swan. His mane and his tail are so long they touch the ground. He has been following you secretly for days, because he's immortally in love with you.'\n\n'With me?' cried Yikka, almost frightened. 'But I'm only a mule, and I'm not as young as I used to be.'\n\n'In his eyes,' said Bastian in an undertone, 'you're the most beautiful creature in all Fantastica just as you are. And also perhaps because you've carried me. But he's very bashful, he doesn't dare approach you with all these creatures about. You must go to him or he'll die of longing for you.'\n\n'Myohmy!' Yikka sighed. 'Is it as bad as all that?'\n\n'Yes,' Bastian whispered in her ear. 'And now, goodbye, Yikka. Just run along, you'll find him.'\n\nYikka took a few steps, but then she looked back again.\n\n'Frankly,' she said. 'I'm kind of scared.'\n\n'There's nothing to worry about,' said Bastian with a smile. 'And don't forget to tell your children and grandchildren about me.'\n\n'Thank you, master,' said Yikka, and off she went.\n\nFor a long while Bastian looked after her as she hobbled off. He wasn't really happy about sending her away. He went to his luxurious tent, lay down on the soft cushions, and gazed at the ceiling. He kept telling himself that he had made Yikka's dearest wish come true. But that didn't make him feel any better. A person's reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.\n\nBut that made no difference to Yikka, for she really did find the white, winged stallion. They married and she had a son who was a white, winged mule. His name was Pataplan and he made quite a name for himself in Fantastica, but that's another story and shall be told another time.\n\nFrom then on Bastian traveled in Xayide's litter. She even offered to get out and walk alongside so as to give him every possible comfort, but that was more than Bastian would accept. So they sat together in the comfortable red-coral litter, which from then on led the procession.\n\nBastian was still rather gloomy and felt a certain resentment toward Xayide for persuading him to part with his mule. He kept answering her in monosyllables, so that no real conversation was possible. Xayide soon realized what the trouble was.\n\nTo guide his thoughts into different channels, she said brightly: 'I would like to make you a present, my lord and master, if you deign to accept one from me.'\n\nShe rummaged under her cushions and found a richly ornamented casket. As Bastian tingled with eagerness, she opened it and took out a belt with chain links. Each link as well as the clasp was made of clear glass.\n\n'What is it?' Bastian asked.\n\n'It's a belt that makes its wearer invisible. But if you want it to belong to you, my lord, you must give it its name.'\n\nBastian examined it. 'The belt Ghemmal,' he said then.\n\nXayide nodded. 'Now it is yours,' she said with a smile. Bastian took the belt and held it irresolutely in his hand.\n\n'Would you like to try it now?' she asked. 'Just to see how it works?'\n\nTo Bastian's surprise, the belt was a perfect fit. But it gave him a most unpleasant feeling not to see his own body. He wanted to take the belt off, but that wasn't so easy since he could see neither the buckle nor his own hands.\n\n'Help!' he cried in a panic, suddenly afraid that he would never find the buckle and would remain invisible forever.\n\n'You have to learn to handle it,' said Xayide. 'I had the same trouble at first. Permit me to help you, my lord and master.'\n\nShe reached into the empty air. A moment later she had unfastened the belt and Bastian was relieved to see himself again. He laughed, while Xayide drew smoke from her water pipe and smiled.\n\nIf nothing else, she had cheered him up.\n\n'Now you are safe from harm,' she said gently, 'and that means more to me than you can imagine.'\n\n'Harm?' asked Bastian, still slightly befuddled. 'What sort of harm?'\n\n'Oh, no one can contend with you,' Xayide whispered. 'Not if you are wise. The danger is inside you, and that's why it's hard to protect you against it.'\n\n'Inside me? What does that mean?'\n\n'A wise person stands above things, he neither loves nor hates. But you, my lord, set store by friendship. Your heart should be as cold and indifferent as a snow-covered mountain peak, and it isn't. That's why someone can harm you.'\n\n'Someone? What someone?'\n\n'Someone you still care for in spite of all his insolence.'\n\n'Speak more plainly.'\n\n'That rude, arrogant little savage from the Greenskin country, my lord.'\n\n'Atreyu?'\n\n'Yes, and that outrageous, impertinent Falkor!'\n\n'You think they'd want to harm me?' Bastian could hardly keep from laughing.\n\nXayide bowed her head and said nothing.\n\n'I'll never believe that,' said Bastian. 'I won't listen to another word.'\n\nXayide still said nothing. She bowed her head still lower.\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian asked: 'What do you suppose Atreyu is plotting?'\n\n'My lord,' Xayide whispered. 'I wish I hadn't spoken.'\n\n'Well, now that you've started,' Bastian cried, 'tell me everything. Stop beating about the bush. What do you know?'\n\n'I tremble at your anger, my lord,' Xayide stammered, and true enough, she was all atremble. 'But even if it costs me my life, I will tell you. Atreyu is plotting to take the Childlike Empress's amulet away from you, by stealth or by force.'\n\nFor a moment Bastian could hardly breathe.\n\n'Can you prove it?' he asked.\n\nXayide shook her head.\n\n'My knowledge,' she murmured, 'is not of the kind that can be proved.'\n\n'Then keep it to yourself,' said Bastian, the blood rising to his face. 'And don't malign the truest, bravest boy in all Fantastica.'\n\nWith that he jumped out of the litter and left her.\n\nXayide's fingers played with the snake's head and her green-and-red eyes glowed. After a while she smiled again. Violet smoke rose from her mouth and she whispered: 'You will see, my lord and master. The belt Ghemmal will show you.'\n\nWhen the camp was set up that night, Bastian went to his tent. He ordered Ilwan, the blue djinn, not to admit anyone, and especially not Xayide. He wanted to be alone and to think.\n\nWhat the sorceress had told him about Atreyu hardly seemed worth troubling his head about. He had something else on his mind: those few words she dropped about wisdom.\n\nHe had been through so much; he had known joy and fear, discouragement and triumph; he had rushed from wish fulfillment to wish fulfillment, never stopping to rest. And nothing had brought him calm and contentment. To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others. A truly wise man attached no importance to anything. Nothing could upset him and nothing could harm him. Yes, to be like that would be his final wish, the wish that would bring him to what he really wanted. Now he thought he understood what Grograman had meant by those words. And so he wished to become wise, the wisest being in Fantastica.\n\nA little later he stepped out of his tent.\n\nThe moon cast its light on a landscape that he had scarcely noticed up until then. The tent city lay in a hollow ringed about by strangely shaped mountains. The silence was complete. The hollow was fairly well wooded, while on the mountain slopes the vegetation became more sparse and farther up there was none at all. The peaks formed all manner of figures, almost as though a giant sculptor had shaped them. No breeze was blowing and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The stars glittered and seemed nearer than usual.\n\nAt the top of one of the highest peaks Bastian made out a sort of cupola. It seemed to be inhabited, for it gave off a faint light.\n\n'I've noticed it too, my lord,' said Ilwan in his rasping voice. He was standing at his post by the entrance to the tent. 'What can it be?'\n\nHe had no sooner spoken than Bastian heard a strange cry in the distance. It suggested the long-drawn-out hooting of an owl, but it was deeper and louder. It sounded a second and then a third time, but now there were several voices.\n\nOwls they were indeed, six in number, as Bastian was soon to find out. Coming from the direction of the cupola, they glided at an incredible speed on almost motionless wings. Soon they were close enough for Bastian to see how amazingly large they were. Their eyes glittered, and their erect ears were capped with bundles of down. The flight was soundless, but as they landed, a faint whirring of their wings could be heard.\n\nThen they were sitting on the ground in front of Bastian's tent, swiveling their heads with their great round eyes in all directions. Bastian went up to them.\n\n'Who are you?' he asked, 'and who are you looking for?'\n\n'We were sent by Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition,' said one of the six owls. 'We are messengers from Ghigam, the Star Cloister.'\n\n'What sort of cloister is that?' Bastian asked.\n\n'It is the home of wisdom,' said another of the owls, 'where the Monks of Knowledge live.'\n\n'And who is Ushtu?' Bastian asked.\n\n'One of the Three Deep Thinkers who direct the cloister and instruct the monks,' said a third owl. 'We are the night messengers, which puts us in her department.'\n\n'If it were daytime,' said the fourth owl, 'Shirkry, the Father of Vision, would have sent his messengers, who are eagles. And in the twilight hours between day and night, Yisipu, the Son of Reason, sends his messengers, who are foxes.'\n\n'Who are Shirkry and Yisipu?'\n\n'They are the other Deep Thinkers, our Superiors.'\n\n'And what are you doing here?'\n\n'We are looking for the Great Knower,' said the sixth owl. 'The Three Deep Thinkers know he is in this tent city and have sent us to beg him for illumination.'\n\n'The Great Knower?' asked Bastian. 'Who's that?'\n\n'His name,' replied all six owls at once, 'is Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\n'You've found him,' said Bastian. 'It's me.'\n\nThey bowed low, which because of their jerky movements looked almost comical in spite of their great size.\n\n'The Three Deep Thinkers,' said the first owl, 'beg you humbly and respectfully to visit them. They hope you will solve a problem they have been trying in vain to solve all their long lives.'\n\nBastian stroked his chin thoughtfully.\n\n'Very well,' he answered after a while. 'But I must take my two disciples with me.'\n\n'There are six of us,' said the owl. 'Two of us will carry each one of you.'\n\nBastian turned to the blue djinn.\n\n'Ilwan,' he said. 'Bring me Atreyu and Xayide.'\n\nThe djinn bowed and went his way.\n\n'What is this problem they want me to solve?' Bastian asked.\n\n'O Great Knower,' said one of the owls, 'we are only poor ignorant messengers. We don't even belong to the lowest rank of the Monks of Knowledge. How could we possibly have cognizance of the problem which the Deep Thinkers in all their long lives have been unable to solve?'\n\nA few minutes later Ilwan came back with Atreyu and Xayide. On the way he had told them what it was all about.\n\nAs he stood before Bastian, Atreyu asked in an undertone: 'Why me?'\n\n'Indeed,' said Xayide. 'Why him?'\n\n'You will find out,' said Bastian.\n\nWith admirable foresight, the owls had brought trapezes, one for every two owls. Bastian, Atreyu, and Xayide sat on the bars, and the great night birds, each holding a trapeze rope in its claws, rose into the air.\n\nWhen the travelers reached the Star Cloister of Ghigam, they found that the great cupola was only the uppermost part of a large building composed of many cubical compartments. It had innumerable little windows and its outer wall might have been taken for the continuation of a sheer cliff. An unbidden visitor could hardly have gained admittance to the place.\n\nThe cubical compartments contained the cells of the Monks of Knowledge, the libraries, the refectories, and the lodgings of the messengers. The meeting hall, where the Three Deep Thinkers delivered their lectures, was situated under the cupola.\n\nThe Monks of Knowledge were Fantasticans of all kinds, from every part of the realm. But anyone wishing to enter the cloister had to break off all contact with family and country. The lives of these monks were hard and frugal, devoted exclusively to knowledge. The community was far from accepting all applicants. The examinations were difficult and the Three Deep Thinkers set the highest standards. Thus there were seldom more than three hundred monks in the cloister at one time, but these were by far the most intelligent persons in all Fantastica. Occasionally the community dwindled to seven members, but even then there was no thought of relaxing the entrance requirements. At the moment the monks and monkesses numbered roughly two hundred.\n\nWhen Bastian, followed by Atreyu and Xayide, was led into the large lecture hall, he saw a motley assortment of Fantasticans, who differed from his own retinue only in that they all were dressed in rough dark-brown monk's robes. A wandering cliff or a tiny must have looked very strange in such an outfit.\n\nThe Superiors of the order, the Three Deep Thinkers, were built like humans except for their heads. Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition, had the head of an owl; Shirkry, the Father of Vision, the head of an eagle; and Yisipu, the Son of Reason, the head of a fox. They sat in raised stone chairs and looked enormous. The sight of them seemed to intimidate Atreyu and even Xayide. But Bastian stepped right up to them.\n\nWith a motion of his head, Shirkry, who was evidently the oldest of the three and was sitting in the middle, indicated an empty chair facing the Deep Thinkers. Bastian sat down in it.\n\nAfter a prolonged silence, Shirkry spoke. He spoke softly, but his voice sounded surprisingly deep and full.\n\n'Since time immemorial we have been pondering the enigma of our world. Yisipu's reasonings in the matter are different from Ushtu's intuitions, and Ushtu's intuitions differ from my vision, which in turn is different from Yisipu's reasonings. This is intolerable and must not be allowed to go on. That is why we have asked the Great Knower to come here and instruct us. Are you willing?'\n\n'I am,' said Bastian.\n\n'Then, O Great Knower, hear our question: What is Fantastica?'\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: 'Fantastica is the Neverending Story.'\n\n'Give us time to understand your answer,' said Shirkry. 'Let us meet again here tomorrow at the same hour.'\n\nSilently the Three Deep Thinkers and the Monks of Knowledge arose, and all left the hall.\n\nBastian, Atreyu, and Xayide were led to guest cells, where a simple meal awaited them. Their beds were wooden planks covered with rough woolen blankets. Though this didn't matter to Bastian and Atreyu, Xayide would have liked to conjure up a more comfortable bed. But she soon found to her dismay that her magic powers were without effect in this cloister.\n\nLate the following night the monks and the Three Deep Thinkers met again in the great meeting hall. Once again Bastian occupied the high seat. Xayide and Atreyu sat to the left and right of him.\n\nThis time it was Ushtu, the Mother of Intuition, who scrutinized Bastian with her great owl's eyes and said: 'We have meditated on your answer, O Great Knower. But a new question has occurred to us. If, as you say, Fantastica is the Neverending Story, where is the Neverending Story to be found?'\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: 'In a book bound with copper-colored silk.'\n\n'Give us time to understand your words,' said Ushtu. 'Let us meet again tomorrow at the same hour.'\n\nWhen they had gathered in the meeting hall the following night, Yisipu, the Son of Reason, took the floor.\n\n'Again we have meditated on your answer, O Great Knower,' he said. 'And again a new question comes to perplex us. If our world, Fantastica, is a Neverending Story and if this Neverending Story is in a book bound in copper-colored silk \u2013 where then is this book?'\n\nAfter a short silence Bastian replied: 'In the attic of a schoolhouse.'\n\n'O Great Knower,' said the fox-headed Yisipu, 'we do not doubt the truth of what you say. But now we would like to ask you to let us see this truth. Can you do that?'\n\nBastian thought it over. Then he said: 'I believe I can.'\n\nAtreyu looked at Bastian with surprise. Xayide too had a questioning look in her red-and-green eyes.\n\n'Let us meet again tomorrow night at the same hour,' said Bastian. 'But not here. Let us meet on the roof of the Star Cloister. And then you must keep your eyes fixed on the heavens.'\n\nThe following night was as clear as the three before it. At the appointed hour the Three Deep Thinkers and all the Monks of Knowledge were gathered on the roof of the Star Cloister. Atreyu and Xayide, who had no idea what Bastian was up to, were there too.\n\nBastian climbed to the top of the great cupola and looked around. For the first time he saw the Ivory Tower far off on the horizon, shimmering in the moonlight.\n\nHe took the stone Al Tsahir from his pocket. It sent out a soft glow. He then called to mind the inscription he had seen on the door of the Amarganth Library:\n\n... But if he says my name a second time\n\nfrom the end to the beginning,\n\nI will glow in one moment with the light of a hundred years.\n\nHe held the stone up high and cried out: 'Rihast-la!' At that moment there came a flash of lightning so bright that the stars paled and the dark cosmic space behind them was illumined. And that space was the schoolhouse attic with its age-blackened beams. In a moment the vision passed and the light of a hundred years was gone. Al Tsahir had vanished without a trace.\n\nIt was some time before the eyes of those present, including Bastian's, became accustomed to the feeble light of the moon and the stars.\n\nShaken by what they had seen, all gathered in the great lecture hall. Bastian was the last to enter. The Monks of Knowledge and the Three Deep Thinkers arose from their seats and bowed low to him.\n\n'I have no words,' said Shirkry, 'with which to thank you for that flash of illumination, O Great Knower. For in that mysterious attic I glimpsed a being of my own kind, an eagle.'\n\n'You are mistaken, Shirkry,' said the owl-faced Ushtu with a gentle smile. 'I saw the creature plainly. It was an owl.'\n\n'You are both mistaken,' cried Yisipu, his eyes aflame. 'That being is a relative of mine, a fox.'\n\nShirkry raised his hands in horror.\n\n'Here we are back where we started!' he said. 'You alone, O Great Knower, can answer this new question. Which of us is right?'\n\nSmiling serenely, Bastian replied: 'All three.'\n\n'Give us time to understand your answer,' said Ushtu.\n\n'All the time you wish,' Bastian replied, 'for we shall be leaving you now.'\n\nBitter disappointment could be read on the faces of the Three Deep Thinkers and of the Monks of Knowledge. They implored Bastian to stay longer, or better still, forever, but with a rather disrespectful shrug he declined.\n\nWhereupon the six messengers carried him and his two disciples back to the tent city.\n\nThat night the usual harmony of the Three Deep Thinkers was disturbed by a first radical difference of opinion, which years later led to the breakup of the community. Then Ushtu the Mother of Intuition, Shirkry the Father of Vision, and Yisipu the Son of Reason each founded a cloister of his own. But that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nThat night Bastian lost all memory of having gone to school. The attic and the stolen book bound in copper-colored silk vanished from his mind. And he even stopped asking himself how he had come to Fantastica.\n\n# XXII\n\n# _The Battle for the Ivory Tower_\n\nVIGILANT scouts returned to camp, reporting that the Ivory Tower was not far off and could be reached in two or at the most three days' marches.\n\nBut Bastian seemed irresolute. He kept ordering rest stops, but before the troops were half settled he would make them start out again. No one knew why he was behaving so strangely, and no one dared ask him. Since his great feat at the Star Cloister he had been unapproachable, even for Xayide. All sorts of conjectures were rife, but most of the traveling companions were quite willing to obey his contradictory orders. Great wise men, they thought, often strike the common run of people as unpredictable. Atreyu and Falkor were equally at a loss. The incident at the Star Cloister had baffled them completely.\n\nWithin Bastian two feelings were at war, and he was unable to silence either one. He longed to meet Moon Child. Now that he was famous and admired throughout Fantastica, he could approach her as an equal. But at the same time he was afraid she would ask him to return AURYN to her. And what then? Would she try to send him back to the world he had almost forgotten? He didn't want to go back. And he wanted to keep the Gem. But then he had another idea. Was it so certain that she wanted it back? Maybe she would let him have it as long as he wished. Maybe she had made him a present of it and it was his for good. At such moments he could hardly wait to see her again. He rushed the caravan on. But then, assailed by doubts, he would order a stop and think it all over again.\n\nAfter alternating forced marches and prolonged delays, the procession finally reached the edge of the famous Labyrinth, the immense flower garden with its winding avenues and pathways. On the horizon the Ivory Tower gleamed white against the gold-shimmering evening sky.\n\nAwed by the splendor and beauty of the sight, the army of Fantasticans stood silent. And so did Bastian. Even Xayide's face showed a look of wonderment, which had never been seen before and which soon vanished. Atreyu and Falkor, who were in the rear of the procession, remembered how different the Labyrinth had looked the last time they had seen it: wasted with the ravages of the Nothing. Now it was greener and more flourishing than ever before.\n\nBastian decided to go no farther that day and the tents were pitched for the night. He sent out messengers to bring greetings to Moon Child and let her know that he would be arriving at the Ivory Tower next day. Then he lay down in his tent and tried to sleep. He tossed and turned on his cushions, his worries left him no peace. But he was far from suspecting that this would be his worst night since coming to Fantastica.\n\nToward midnight, soon after falling into a restless sleep, he was awakened by excited whisperings outside his tent. He got up and went out.\n\n'What's going on?' he asked sternly.\n\n'This messenger,' replied Ilwan, the blue djinn, 'claims he is bringing you news so important that it can't wait until tomorrow.'\n\nThe messenger, whom Ilwan had picked up by the collar, was a nimbly, a creature bearing a certain resemblance to a rabbit, except that its coat was of bright-colored feathers instead of fur. Nimblies are among the swiftest runners in Fantastica, and can cover enormous distances with incredible speed. When running they become almost invisible except for the trail of dust clouds they leave behind them. That is why the nimbly had been chosen as messenger. After running to the Ivory Tower and back in next to no time, he was desperately out of breath when the djinn set him down in front of Bastian.\n\n'Forgive me, sire,' he said, bowing and panting. 'Forgive me if I make so bold as to disturb your rest, but you would have every reason to be displeased with me if I failed to do so. Moon Child is not in the Ivory Tower; she has not been there for a long, long time, and no one knows where she is.'\n\nSuddenly Bastian felt cold and empty inside. 'You must be mistaken. That can't be.'\n\n'The other messengers will tell you the same thing when they get back, sire.'\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian said tonelessly: 'Thank you. Dismissed.'\n\nHe went back into his tent, sat down on his bed, and buried his head in his hands. This seemed impossible. Moon Child must have known he was on his way to her. Could it be that she didn't want to see him again? Or had something happened to her? No, how could anything happen to her in her own realm?\n\nBut the fact remained: she was gone, which meant that he didn't have to return AURYN to her. At the same time he felt bitterly disappointed that he wouldn't be seeing her again. Whatever her reasons may have been, he found her behavior unbelievable, no, insulting.\n\nThen he remembered what Falkor and Atreyu had told him: that no one could meet the Childlike Empress more than once.\n\nThe thought made him so unhappy that he suddenly longed for Atreyu and Falkor. He needed someone to talk to, to confide in.\n\nThen he had an idea: If he put on the belt Ghemmal and made himself invisible, he could enjoy their comforting presence without mentioning the humiliation he felt.\n\nHe opened the ornate casket, took out the belt, and put it on. Then, after waiting until he had got used to the unpleasant sensation of not seeing himself, he went out and wandered about the tent city in search of Atreyu and Falkor. Wherever he went he heard excited whispers, figures darted from tent to tent, here and there several creatures were huddled together, talking and gesticulating. By then the other messengers had returned, and the news that Moon Child was not in the Ivory Tower had spread like wildfire.\n\nAtreyu and Falkor were under a flowering rosemary tree at the very edge of the camp. Atreyu was sitting with his arms folded, looking fixedly in the direction of the Ivory Tower. The luckdragon lay beside him with his great head on the ground.\n\n'That was my last hope,' said Atreyu. 'I thought she might make an exception for him and let him return the amulet. Now all is lost.'\n\n'She must know what she's doing,' said Falkor.\n\nAt that moment Bastian located them and sat down invisibly nearby.\n\n'Is it certain?' Atreyu murmured. 'He mustn't be allowed to keep AURYN!'\n\n'What will you do?' Falkor asked. 'He won't give it up of his own free will.'\n\n'Then I'll have to take it from him,' said Atreyu.\n\nAt those words Bastian felt the ground sinking from under him.\n\n'That won't be easy,' he heard Falkor saying. 'But if you do take it, I trust that he won't be able to get it back.'\n\n'That's not so sure,' said Atreyu. 'He'll still have his great strength and his magic sword.'\n\n'But the Gem would protect you,' said Falkor. 'Even against him.'\n\n'No,' said Atreyu. 'I don't think so. Not against him.'\n\n'And to think,' said Falkor with a grim laugh, 'that he himself offered it to you on your first night in Amarganth.'\n\nAtreyu nodded. 'I didn't realize then what would happen.'\n\n'How are you going to take it from him?' Falkor asked.\n\n'I'll have to steal it,' said Atreyu.\n\nFalkor's head shot up. With glowing ruby-red eyes he stared at Atreyu, who hung his head and repeated in an undertone: 'I'll have to. There's no other way.'\n\nAfter a long silence Falkor asked: 'When?'\n\n'It will have to be tonight. Tomorrow may be too late.'\n\nBastian had heard enough. Slowly he crept away. His only feeling was one of cold emptiness. Everything was indifferent to him now, just as Xayide had said.\n\nHe went back to his tent and took off the belt Ghemmal. Then he bade Ilwan bring him the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn. As he paced the ground waiting, it came to him that Xayide had foreseen it all. He hadn't wanted to believe her, but now he was obliged to. Xayide, he now realized, was sincerely devoted to him. She was his only true friend. But there was still room for doubt. Perhaps Atreyu wouldn't actually carry out his plan. Maybe he had already repented. In that case Bastian wouldn't ever mention it \u2013 though friendship now meant nothing to him. That was over and done with.\n\nWhen the three knights appeared, he told them he had reason to believe that a thief would come to his tent that night. When they agreed to keep watch and lay hands on the thief whoever he might be, he went to Xayide's coral litter. She lay sound asleep, attended by her five giants in their black armor, who stood motionless on guard. In the darkness they looked like five boulders.\n\n'I wish you to obey me,' Bastian said softly.\n\nInstantly, all five turned their black iron faces toward him.\n\n'Command us, master of our mistress,' said one in a metallic voice.\n\n'Do you think you can handle Falkor the luckdragon?' Bastian asked.\n\n'That depends on the will that guides us,' said the metallic voice.\n\n'It is my will,' said Bastian.\n\n'Then there is no one we cannnot handle,' was the answer.\n\n'Good. Then go close to where he is.' He pointed. 'That way. As soon as Atreyu leaves him, take him prisoner. But keep him there. I'll have you called when I want you.'\n\n'Master of our mistress,' the metallic voice replied, 'it shall be done.'\n\nThe five black giants marched off in step. Xayide smiled in her sleep.\n\nBastian went back to his tent. But once in sight of it, he hesitated. If Atreyu should really attempt to steal the Gem, he didn't want to be there when they seized him.\n\nHe sat down under a tree nearby and waited, wrapped in his silver mantle. Slowly the time passed, the sky paled in the east, it would soon be morning. Bastian was beginning to hope that Atreyu had abandoned his project when suddenly he heard a tumult in his tent. And a moment later Hykrion led Atreyu out with his arms chained behind his back. The two other knights followed. Bastian dragged himself to his feet and stood leaning against the tree.\n\n'So he's actually done it,' he muttered to himself.\n\nThen he went to his tent. He couldn't bear to look at Atreyu, and Atreyu too kept his eyes to the ground.\n\n'Ilwan,' said Bastian to the blue djinn. 'Wake the whole camp! I want everyone here. And tell the black giants to bring Falkor.'\n\nThe djinn hurried off with the rasping cry of an eagle. Wherever he went, the denizens of the tents large and small began to stir.\n\n'He didn't defend himself at all,' said Hykrion, with a movement of his head toward Atreyu, who was standing there motionless with eyes downcast. Bastian turned away and sat down on a stone.\n\nBy the time the five armored giants appeared with Falkor, a large crowd had gathered. At the approach of the stamping metallic steps, the crowd opened up a passage. Falkor was not chained, and the armed guards were not holding him, but merely marching to the left and right of him with drawn swords.\n\n'He offered no resistance, master of our mistress,' said one of the metallic voices.\n\nFalkor lay down on the ground at Atreyu's feet and closed his eyes.\n\nA long silence followed. Creatures poured in from the camp and craned their necks to see what was going on. Only Xayide was absent. Little by little the whispering died down. All eyes shuttled back and forth between Bastian and Atreyu, who stood motionless, looking like stone statues in the gray morning light.\n\nAt length Bastian spoke.\n\n'Atreyu,' he said. 'You tried to steal Moon Child's amulet and take it for yourself. And you, Falkor, were an accomplice to his plan. Not only have you both been untrue to our old friendship, you have also been guilty of disobedience to Moon Child, who gave me the Gem. Do you confess your wrong?'\n\nAtreyu cast a long glance at Bastian; then he nodded.\n\nBastian's voice failed him. It was some time before he could go on.\n\n'I have not forgotten, Atreyu, that it was you who brought me to Moon Child. I have not forgotten Falkor's singing in Amarganth. So I will spare your lives, the lives of a thief and of a thief's accomplice. Do what you will. Just so you go away, the farther the better, and never let me lay eyes on you again. I banish you forever. I have never known you.'\n\nHe bade Hykrion remove Atreyu's chains. Then he turned away.\n\nAtreyu stood motionless for a long while. Then he cast another glance at Bastian. It looked as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He bent down to Falkor and whispered something in his ear. The luckdragon opened his eyes and sat up. Atreyu jumped on his back and Falkor rose into the air. He flew straight into the brightening morning sky, and though his movements were heavy and sluggish, he soon vanished in the distance.\n\nBastian went to his tent and threw himself down on his bed.\n\n'At last you have achieved true greatness,' said a soft voice. 'Now you've stopped caring for anything; now nothing can move you.'\n\nBastian sat up. It was Xayide. She was squatting in the darkest corner of the tent.\n\n'You?' said Bastian. 'How did you get in?'\n\nXayide smiled.\n\n'O my lord and master, no guards can shut me out. Only your command can do that. Do you wish to send me away?'\n\nBastian lay back and closed his eyes. After a while he muttered: 'It's all the same to me. Go or stay!'\n\nFor a long while she watched him from under her half-lowered lids. Then she asked: 'What are you thinking about, my lord and master?'\n\nBastian turned away and did not reply.\n\nIt was plain to Xayide that this was no time to leave him to himself. In such a mood he was capable of slipping away from her. She must comfort him and cheer him up \u2013 in her own way. For she was determined to hold him to the course she had planned for him \u2013 and for herself. And she knew that in the present juncture no magical belts or tricks would suffice. It would take stronger medicine, the strongest medicine available to her, namely, Bastian's secret wishes. She sat down beside him and whispered in his ear: 'When, O lord and master, will you go to the Ivory Tower?'\n\n'I don't know,' said Bastian. 'What can I do there if Moon Child is gone?'\n\n'You could go and wait for her.'\n\nBastian turned to face Xayide.\n\n'Do you think she'll be back?'\n\nHe had to repeat his question more insistently before Xayide replied: 'No, I don't believe so. I believe she has had to leave Fantastica forever, and that you, my lord and master, are her successor.'\n\nSlowly Bastian sat up and looked into Xayide's red-and-green eyes. It was some time before he grasped the full meaning of her words.\n\n'I!?' he gasped. And his cheeks broke out in red spots.\n\n'Do you find the idea so frightening?' Xayide whispered. 'She gave you the emblem of her power. Now she has left you her empire. Now, my lord and master, you will be the Childlike Emperor. It is only your right. You not only saved Fantastica by your coming, you also created it! All of us \u2013 I too! \u2013 are your creatures. Why should you, the Great Knower, fear to take the power that is rightfully yours?'\n\nBastian's eyes glowed with a cold fever. And then Xayide spoke to him of a new Fantastica, a world molded in every detail to Bastian's taste, where he could create and destroy just as he pleased, where every creature, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, wise or foolish, would be the product of his will alone, and he would reign supreme and inscrutable, playing an everlasting game with the destinies of his subjects.\n\n'Then alone,' she concluded, 'will you be truly free, free from all obstacles, free to do as you please. Weren't you trying to find out what you really and truly want? Well, now you know.'\n\nThat same morning they broke camp, and led by Bastian and Xayide in the coral litter, the great procession set out for the Ivory Tower. A well-nigh endless column moved along the twining paths of the Labyrinth. In the late afternoon, when the head of the column reached the Ivory Tower, the last stragglers had barely entered the great flowering maze.\n\nBastian could not have wished for a more festive reception, On every roof and battlement stood elves with gleaming trumpets, blaring away at the top of their lungs. The jugglers juggled, the astrologers proclaimed Bastian's greatness and good fortune, the bakers baked cakes as big as mountains, the ministers and councilors escorted the coral litter through the teeming crowd on the High Street, which wound in an ever-narrowing spiral up the conical tower to the great gate leading into the palace. Followed by Xayide and the dignitaries, Bastian climbed the snow-white steps of the broad stairway, traversed halls and corridors, passed through a second gate, through a garden full of ivory animals, trees, and flowers, mounted higher and higher, crossed a bridge, and passed through the last gate. He was heading for the Magnolia Pavilion at the very top of the tower. But the blossom was closed and the last stretch of the way was so steep and smooth that no one could climb it.\n\nBastian remembered that the wounded Atreyu had not been able to climb that slope, not by his own strength at least, because no one who has ever reached the Magnolia Pavilion can say how he got there. For this victory must come as a gift.\n\nBut Bastian was not Atreyu. If anyone was now entitled to bestow the gift of this victory, it was he. And he had no intention of letting anything stop him.\n\n'Bring workmen,' he commanded. 'I want them to cut steps in this smooth surface. I wish to make my residence up there.'\n\n'Sire,' one of the oldest councilors ventured to object, 'that is where our Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes lives when she is here.'\n\n'Do as you're told!' Bastian roared at him.\n\nThe dignitaries turned pale and shrank back from him. But they obeyed. Workmen arrived with mallets and chisels. But try as they might, they couldn't so much as chip the smooth surface of the dome. The chisels leapt from their hands without leaving the slightest dent.\n\n'Think of something else,' said Bastian angrily. 'My patience is wearing thin.'\n\nThen he turned away, and while waiting for the Magnolia Pavilion to be made accessible, he and his retinue, consisting chiefly of Xayide, the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, and Ilwan, the blue djinn, took possession of the remaining rooms of the palace.\n\nThat same night he summoned all the ministers and councilors who had served Moon Child to a meeting in the large, circular hall where the congress of physicians had once met. There he informed them that the Golden-eyed Commander of Wishes had left him, Bastian Balthazar Bux, power over the endless Fantastican Empire, and that he was now taking her place. In conclusion he demanded perfect obedience.\n\n'Even, or I might say especially,' he added, 'when my decisions are beyond your understanding. For I am not of your kind.'\n\nHe then announced that in exactly seventy-seven days he would crown himself Childlike Emperor of Fantastica and that the event would be celebrated with such splendor that it would outshine anything ever done in Fantastica. And he ordered the councilors to send messengers forthwith to every part of the realm, for he wished every nation of the Fantastican Empire to be represented at his coronation.\n\nThereupon Bastian withdrew, leaving the councilors and other dignitaries alone with their bewilderment.\n\nThey didn't know what to do. What they had heard sounded so monstrous that for a long while they could only stand there silently, hanging their heads. Then they began to deliberate. And after many hours, they came to the conclusion that they would have to obey Bastian's commands, for he bore the emblem of the Childlike Empress, and that that entitled him to obedience regardless of whether Moon Child had really abdicated in his favor or whether this was just another of her unfathomable decisions. And so the messengers were sent and all Bastian's orders were carried out.\n\nHe himself took no further interest in the coronation, but left all the details to Xayide, who kept the whole court so busy that hardly anyone had time to think.\n\nDuring the next days and weeks Bastian spent most of his time in the room he had chosen, staring into space and doing nothing. He would have liked to wish for something or make up a story to amuse himself, but nothing occurred to him. He felt hollow and empty.\n\nAt length he hit on the idea of wishing for Moon Child to come to him. If he was really all-powerful, if all his wishes came true, she would have to obey him. For whole nights he sat there whispering: 'Moon Child, come! You must come! I command you to come!' He thought of her glance, which had lain in his heart like a glittering treasure. But she did not come. And the more he tried to make her come, the fainter became his memory of that glitter in his heart, until in the end all was darkness within him.\n\nHe convinced himself that everything would come right again if only he could be in the Magnolia Pavilion. Time and again, he went up to the workmen and tried to spur them with promises or threats, but all to no avail. Ladders broke, nails bent, chisels split.\n\nHykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, with whom Bastian would gladly have chatted or played games, were as good as useless. In the deepest cellar of the Ivory Tower they had discovered wine. There they sat day and night, drinking, playing dice, bellowing silly songs, or quarreling, and as often as not attacking one another with their swords. Sometimes they staggered up and down the High Street, molesting the fairies, elves, and other female denizens of the Tower.\n\n'What do you expect, sire?' they said when Bastian found fault with them. 'You must give us something to do.'\n\nBut Bastian couldn't think of anything and bade them wait until his coronation, though he himself couldn't have said what difference that would make.\n\nLittle by little the weather changed for the worse. Sunsets of liquid gold became more infrequent. Almost always the sky was gray and overcast, not a breeze stirred, the air grew sultry and lifeless.\n\nThe day appointed for the coronation was near. The messengers returned. Some brought delegates from remote corners of Fantastica. But others arrived empty-handed, for many of the nations refused out of hand to be represented at the ceremony. And in some countries there had been veiled or open rebellion.\n\nBastian stared into space.\n\n'Once you are emperor,' said Xayide, 'you will put the house in order.'\n\n'I want them to want what I want,' said Bastian.\n\nBut already Xayide had hurried off to make new arrangements.\n\nAnd then came the day of the coronation that did not take place. It went down in the history of Fantastica as the day of the bloody battle for the Ivory Tower.\n\nThere was no dawn that morning; the sky was too covered with thick, leaden-gray clouds. The air was almost too heavy to breathe.\n\nWorking hand in hand with the Ivory Tower's fourteen masters of ceremony, Xayide had drawn up an elaborate program for the celebration.\n\nBeginning early in the morning, bands on all the streets and squares played music such as had never been heard in the Ivory Tower \u2013 strident yet monotonous. None who heard it could help jiggling his feet and dancing. The musicians wore black masks. No one knew who they were or where Xayide had found them.\n\nEvery roof and housefront was decorated with bright-colored flags and pennants, but they hung sadly limp, for there was no wind. Along the High Street and on the wall around the palace hundreds of pictures had been set up, ranging in size from small to enormous, and all showed the same face \u2013 Bastian's.\n\nSince the Magnolia Pavilion was still inaccessible, Xayide had prepared another site for the coronation. The throne was to be installed at the foot of the ivory steps near the palace gate where the winding High Street ended. Thousands of golden censers were smoldering, and the smoke, with its lulling yet exciting fragrance, drifted slowly up the steps and down the High Street, finding its way into every last nook and cranny. The armored giants were everywhere. Only Xayide knew how she had managed to multiply the five she had left into such an army. And as if that were not enough, fifty of them were mounted on gigantic horses, which were also made of black metal and moved in perfect unison.\n\nThe armored horsemen escorted a throne up the High Street in a triumphal procession. It was as big as a church door and consisted entirely of mirrors of every size and shape. Only the cushion on the seat was covered with copper-colored silk. Strangely, this enormous glittering object glided up the spiral street unaided, without being pushed or pulled; it seemed to have a life of its own.\n\nWhen it stopped at the great ivory gate, Bastian stepped out of the palace and sat down on it. In the midst of all that glitter and splendor he looked like a tiny doll. The crowd of onlookers, who were held back by a cordon of armored giants, burst into cheers, but for some inexplicable reason their cheers sounded thin and shrill.\n\nThen began the most tedious and wearisome part of the ceremony. The messengers and delegates from all over the Fantastican Empire had to form a line, which extended from the mirror throne down the entire spiraling High Street and deep into the labyrinthine garden. Every single delegate, when his turn came, had to bow down before the throne, touch the ground three times with his forehead, kiss Bastian's right foot, and say: 'In the name of my nation and my species I beseech you, to whom we all owe our existence, to crown yourself Childlike Emperor of Fantastica.'\n\nThis had been going on for two or three hours when a sudden tremor passed through the crowd. A young faun came dashing up the High Street, reeled with exhaustion, pulled himself together, ran till he reached Bastian, and threw himself on the ground, gasping for breath. Bastian bent down to him.\n\n'How dare you interrupt this august ceremony!'\n\n'War, sire!' cried the faun. 'Atreyu has gathered a host of rebels and is on his way here with three armies. They demand that you give up AURYN. If you will not, they mean to take it by force.'\n\nThe rousing music and the shrill cries of jubilation gave way to a deathly silence. Bastian turned pale.\n\nThen the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, appeared on the run. They seemed to be in a remarkably good humor.\n\n'At last there's something for us to do, sire,' all three cried at once. 'Leave it to us. Just get on with your celebration. We'll round up a few good men and get after those rebels. We'll teach them a lesson they won't forget so soon.'\n\nAmong the thousands of creatures present quite a few were utterly useless for military purposes. But most were able to handle some weapon or to fight with their teeth or claws. All these gathered around the three knights, who led their army away. Bastian remained behind with the not-so-martial multitude, to complete the ceremony. But his heart was no longer in it. Time and again his eyes veered toward the horizon, which he could see from his throne. Great clouds of dust showed him that Atreyu's army was no joke.\n\n'Don't worry,' said Xayide, who had stepped up to Bastian. 'My armored giants haven't begun to fight yet. They'll defend your Ivory Tower. No one can stand up to them, except for you and your sword.'\n\nA few hours later the first battle reports came in. Atreyu had enlisted almost all the Greenskins, at least two hundred centaurs, eight hundred and fifty rock chewers, five luckdragons led by Falkor, who kept attacking from the air, a squadron of giant eagles, who had flown from the Mountains of Destiny, and innumerable other creatures, even a sprinkling of unicorns.\n\nThough far inferior in numbers to the troops led by the knights Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, Atreyu's army fought so vigorously that they were soon approaching the Ivory Tower.\n\nBastian wanted to go out and lead his army in person, but Xayide advised against it.\n\n'O lord and master,' she said, 'it is unseemly for the Emperor of Fantastica to take up arms. Leave that to your faithful subjects.'\n\nAll day the battle raged. The entire Labyrinth became a trampled, blood-soaked battlefield. By late afternoon, despite the stubborn resistance of Bastian's army, the rebels had reached the foot of the Ivory Tower.\n\nThen Xayide sent in her armored giants, both mounted and on foot, and they wrought havoc among Atreyu's followers.\n\nA detailed account of the battle for the Ivory Tower would take us too far. To this day Fantasticans sing countless songs and tell innumerable stories about that day and night, for everyone who took part saw it in his own way. Certain of the stories have it that Atreyu's army included several white magicians, who had the power to oppose Xayide's black magic. Of this we have no certain knowledge, but that would explain how, in spite of the armored giants, Atreyu and his followers were able to take the Ivory Tower. But there is another, more likely explanation: Atreyu was fighting not for himself, but for his friend, whom he was trying to save by defeating him.\n\nThe night of the battle was starless, full of smoke and flames. Fallen torches, overturned censers, and shattered lamps had set the Tower on fire in many places. The fighters cast eerie shadows. Weapons clashed and battle shouts resounded. Everywhere, through the flames and the darkness, Bastian searched for Atreyu.\n\n'Atreyu!' he shouted. 'Atreyu, show yourself! Stand up and fight! Where are you?'\n\nBut the sword Sikanda didn't budge from its sheath.\n\nBastian ran from room to room of the palace, then out on the great wall, which at that point was as wide as a street. He was heading for the outer gate where the mirror throne stood \u2013 now shattered into a thousand pieces \u2013 when he saw Atreyu, sword in hand, coming toward him.\n\nThey stood face to face, and still Sikanda did not budge.\n\nAtreyu put the tip of his sword on Bastian's chest.\n\n'Give me the amulet,' he said. 'For your own sake.'\n\n'Traitor!' cried Bastian. 'You are my creature! I created the whole lot of you! Including you! So how can you rebel against me? Kneel down and beg forgiveness.'\n\n'You're mad!' cried Atreyu. 'You didn't create anything! You owe everything to Moon Child! Give me AURYN!'\n\n'Take it if you can.'\n\nAtreyu hesitated.\n\n'Bastian,' he said. 'Why do you force me to defeat you in order to save you?'\n\nBastian tugged at the hilt of his sword. He tugged with all his might and finally managed to draw Sikanda from its sheath. But it did not leap into his hand of its own accord, and at the same moment a sound was heard, a sound so terrible that even the warriors on the High Street outside the gate stood as though frozen to the spot, looking up at the two adversaries. Bastian recognized that sound. It was the hideous cracking and grinding he had heard when Grograman turned to stone. Sikanda's light went out. And then Bastian remembered how the lion had predicted what would happen if someone were to draw the sword of his own will. But by then it was too late to turn back.\n\nAtreyu tried to defend himself with his own sword. But wielded by Bastian, Sikanda cut it in two and struck Atreyu in the chest. Blood spurted from a gaping wound. Atreyu staggered back and toppled from the wall. But at that moment a white flame shot through the swirling smoke, caught Atreyu in his fall, and carried him away. The white flame was Falkor, the luckdragon.\n\nBastian wiped the sweat from his brow with his mantle and saw that its silver had turned black, as black as the night. Still with the sword Sikanda in hand, he left the wall and went down to the palace courtyard.\n\nWith Bastian's victory over Atreyu, the fortunes of war shifted. The rebel army, which had seemed sure of victory a moment before, took flight. Bastian felt as if he were caught in a terrible dream and could not wake up. His victory left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, but at the same time he felt wildly triumphant.\n\nWrapped in his black mantle, clutching the bloody sword, he passed slowly down the High Street. The Ivory Tower was blazing like an enormous torch. Hardly aware of the roaring flames, Bastian went on till he reached the foot of the Tower. There he found the remnants of his army waiting for him in the devastated Labyrinth \u2013 now a far-flung battlefield strewn with the corpses of Fantasticans. Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn were there too, the last two seriously wounded. Ilwan, the blue djinn, was dead. Xayide, holding the belt Ghemmal, was standing beside his corpse.\n\n'He saved this for you, O lord and master,' she said.\n\nBastian took the belt, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.\n\nSlowly he passed his eyes over his companions. Only a few hundred were left. More dead than alive, they looked like a conclave of ghosts in the flickering light of the fires,\n\nAll had their faces turned toward the Ivory Tower, which was collapsing piece by piece. The Magnolia Pavilion at the top flared, its petals opened wide, and one could see that it was empty. Then it too was engulfed by the flames.\n\nBastian pointed his sword at the heap of flaming ruins and his voice cracked as he declared: 'This is Atreyu's doing! For this I will pursue him to the ends of the world!'\n\nHoisting himself up on one of the gigantic metal horses, he cried: 'Follow me!'\n\nThe horse reared, but he bent it to his will and galloped off into the night.\n\n# XXIII\n\n# _The City of the Old Emperors_\n\nWHILE Bastian was racing through the pitch-black night miles ahead, his companions were still making preparations for departure. Most were exhausted and none had anything approaching Bastian's strength and endurance. Even the armored giants on their metallic horses had a hard time getting started, and the foot sloggers couldn't manage to fall into their mechanical tramp-tramp-tramp. Xayide's will, which moved them, seemed to have reached the limits of its power. Her coral litter had been devoured by flames. A new conveyance had been built out of shattered weapons and charred planks from the Ivory Tower, but it looked more like a gypsy wagon than a litter. The rest of the army hobbled and shuffled along as best they could. Even Hykrion, Hysbald, and Hydorn, who had lost their horses, had to hold one another up. No one spoke, but they all knew they would never be able to overtake Bastian.\n\nOn he galloped through the darkness, his black mantle flapping wildly in the wind, the metallic limbs of his gigantic horse creaking and grinding at every movement as the great hooves pounded the earth.\n\n'Gee up!' cried Bastian. 'Gee up! Gee up!'\n\nThe horse wasn't running fast enough for him. He was determined to overtake Atreyu and Falkor at all costs, even if it meant riding this metallic monster to its death.\n\nHe wanted vengeance! He would have attained the goal of all his wishes if Atreyu hadn't interfered. Bastian had not become Emperor of Fantastica. And for that he would make Atreyu repent.\n\nThe joints of Bastian's metallic steed ground and creaked louder and louder, but still it obeyed its rider's will.\n\nBastian rode for hours and hours through the endless night. In his mind's eye he saw the flaming Ivory Tower. Over and over he lived the moment when Atreyu had set the point of his sword to his chest. And then for the first time he asked himself why Atreyu had hesitated. Why, after all that had happened, couldn't he bring himself to strike Bastian and take AURYN by force? And suddenly Bastian thought of the wound he had inflicted on Atreyu and the look in Atreyu's eyes as he staggered and fell.\n\nBastian put Sikanda, which up until then he had been clutching in his fist, back into its rusty sheath.\n\nIn the first light of dawn he saw he was on a heath. Dark clumps of juniper suggested motionless groups of gigantic hooded monks or magicians with pointed hats.\n\nAnd then suddenly, in the midst of a frantic gallop, Bastian's metal steed burst into pieces.\n\nBastian lay stunned by the violence of his fall. When he finally picked himself up and rubbed his bruised limbs, he found himself in the middle of a juniper bush. He crawled out into the open. The fragments of the horse lay scattered all about, as though an equestrian monument had exploded.\n\nBastian stood up, threw his black mantle over his shoulders, and with no idea where he was going, started walking in the direction of the rising sun.\n\nBut a glittering object was left behind in the juniper bush: the belt Ghemmal. Bastian was unaware of his loss and never thought of the belt again. Ilwan had saved it from the flames for nothing.\n\nA few days later Ghemmal was found by a blackbird, who had no suspicion of what this glittering object might be. She carried it to her nest, but that's the beginning of another story that shall be told another time.\n\nAt midday Bastian came to a high earthen wall that cut across the heath. He climbed to the top of it. Behind it, in a craterlike hollow, lay a city. At least the quantity of buildings made Bastian think of a city, but it was certainly the weirdest one he had ever seen.\n\nThe buildings seemed to be jumbled every which way without rhyme or reason, as though they had been emptied at random out of a giant sack. There were neither streets nor squares nor was there any recognizable order.\n\nAnd the buildings themselves were crazy; they had 'front doors' in their roofs, stairways which were quite inaccessible and ended in the middle of nowhere; towers slanted, balconies dangled vertically, there were doors where one would have expected windows, and floors in the place of walls. Bridges stopped halfway, as though the builders had suddenly forgotten what they were doing. There were towers bent like bananas and pyramids standing on their tips. In short, the whole city seemed to have gone mad.\n\nThen Bastian saw the inhabitants \u2013 men, women, and children. They were built like ordinary human beings, but dressed as if they had lost the power to distinguish between clothing and objects intended for other purposes. On their heads they wore lampshades, sand pails, soup bowls, wastepaper baskets, or shoe boxes. Their bodies were swathed in towels, carpets, big sheets of wrapping paper, or barrels.\n\nMany were pushing or pulling handcarts with all sorts of junk piled up on them, broken lamps, mattresses, dishes, rags, and knick-knacks. Others were carrying enormous bales slung over their shoulders.\n\nThe farther Bastian went into the city, the thicker became the crowd. But none of the people seemed to know where they were going. Several times Bastian saw someone dragging a heavily laden cart in one direction, then after a short time doubling back, and a few minutes later changing direction again. Everybody was feverishly active.\n\nBastian decided to speak to one of these people.\n\n'What's the name of this place?'\n\nThe person let go his cart, straightened up, and scratched his head for a while as though thinking it over. Then he went away, abandoning his cart, which he seemed to have forgotten. But a few minutes later, a woman took hold of the cart and started off with it. Bastian asked her if the junk was hers. The woman stood for a while, deep in thought. Then she too went away.\n\nBastian tried a few more times but received no answer.\n\nSuddenly he heard someone giggling. 'No point in asking them,' said the giggler. 'They can't tell you anything. One might, in a manner of speaking, call them the Know-Nothings.'\n\nBastian turned toward the voice and saw a little gray monkey sitting on a window ledge, or rather on what would have been a window ledge if the window hadn't been upside down. The animal was wearing a mortarboard with a dangling tassel and seemed to be busy counting something on his fingers and toes. When he had finished, he grinned and said: 'Sorry to keep you waiting, sir, but there was something I had to figure out.'\n\n'Who are you?' Bastian asked.\n\n'My name is Argax,' said the little monkey, lifting his mortarboard. 'Pleased to meet you. And with whom have I the pleasure?'\n\n'My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\n'Just as I thought,' said the monkey, visibly pleased.\n\n'And what is the name of this city?' Bastian inquired.\n\n'It hasn't actually got a name,' said Argax. 'But one might, in a manner of speaking, call it the City of the Old Emperors.'\n\n'Old Emperors?' Bastian repeated with consternation. 'Why, I don't see anybody who looks like an Old Emperor.'\n\n'You don't?' said the monkey with a giggle. 'Well, believe it or not, all the people you've seen were Emperors of Fantastica in their time \u2013 or wanted to be.'\n\nBastian was aghast.\n\n'How do you know that, Argax?'\n\nThe monkey lifted his mortarboard and grinned.\n\n'I, in a manner of speaking, am the superintendent here.'\n\nBastian looked around. Not far away an old man had dug a pit. He put a lighted candle into it, then shoveled earth over the candle.\n\nThe monkey giggled. 'What would you say to a little tour of the town, sir? To get acquainted, in a manner of speaking, with your future residence.'\n\n'No,' said Bastian. 'What are you talking about?'\n\nThe monkey jumped up on his shoulder. 'Let's go,' he whispered. 'It's free of charge. You've already paid the admission fee.'\n\nBastian obeyed the monkey's orders, though he would rather have run away. He grew more miserable with every step. He watched the people and was struck by the fact that they didn't talk. They were all so busy with their own concerns that they didn't even seem to see one another.\n\n'What's wrong with them?' Bastian asked. 'Why are they so odd?'\n\n'Nothing odd about them!' said Argax. 'They're just like you, in a manner of speaking, or rather, they were in their time.'\n\nBastian stopped in his tracks. 'What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they're humans?'\n\nArgax jumped up and down on Bastian's shoulder. 'Exactly!' he said gleefully.\n\nBastian saw a woman in the middle of the street trying to spear peas with a darning needle.\n\n'How did they get here? What are they doing here?'\n\n'Oh, there have always been humans who couldn't find their way back to their world,' Argax explained. 'First they didn't want to, and now, in a manner of speaking, they can't.'\n\nBastian looked at a little girl who was struggling to push a doll's carriage with square wheels.\n\n'Why can't they?' he asked.\n\n'They'd have to wish it. And they've stopped wishing. They used up their last wish for something else.'\n\n'Their last wish?' said Bastian, going deathly pale. 'Can't a person go on wishing as long as he pleases?'\n\nArgax giggled again. Then he tried to take off Bastian's turban and pick lice out of his hair.\n\n'Stop that!' Bastian cried. He tried to shake the little monkey off, but Argax held on tight and squealed with pleasure.\n\n'No! No!' he chattered. 'You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can't have a future. That's why they don't get older. Just look at them. Would you believe that some of them have been here a thousand years and more? But they stay just as they are. Nothing can change for them, because they themselves can't change anymore.'\n\nBastian watched a man who had lathered a mirror and was starting to shave it. Once that might have struck him as funny; now it made him break out in gooseflesh.\n\nHe hurried on and soon realized that he was going deeper into the city. He wanted to turn back, but something drew him onward like a magnet. He began to run and tried to get rid of the bothersome gray monkey, but Argax clung fast and even spurred him on: 'Faster! Faster!'\n\nBastian stopped running. He realized that he couldn't escape.\n\n'You mean,' he asked, gasping for breath, 'that all these people here were once Emperors of Fantastica, or wanted to be?'\n\n'That's it,' said Argax. 'All the ones who can't find their way back try sooner or later to become Emperor. They didn't all make it, but they all tried. That's why there are two kinds of fools here. Though the result, in a manner of speaking, is the same.'\n\n'What two kinds? Tell me, Argax! I have to know!'\n\n'Easy does it,' said the monkey, giggling as he tightened his grip on Bastian's neck. 'The one kind gradually used up their memories. And when they had lost the last one, AURYN couldn't fulfill their wishes anymore. After that, they came here, in a manner of speaking, automatically. The others, the ones who crowned themselves emperor, lost all their memories at one stroke. So the same thing happened: AURYN couldn't fulfill their wishes anymore, because they had none left. As you see, it comes to the same thing. Here they are, and they can't get away.'\n\n'Do you mean that they all had AURYN at one time?'\n\n'Naturally!' said Argax. 'But they forgot it long ago. And it wouldn't help them anymore, the poor fools!'\n\n'Was it...' Bastian hesitated. 'Was it taken away from them?'\n\n'No,' said Argax. 'When someone crowns himself emperor, it simply vanishes. Obviously, because how, in a manner of speaking, can you use Moon Child's power to take her power away from her?'\n\nBastian felt wretched. He would have liked to sit down somewhere, but the little gray monkey wouldn't let him.\n\n'No, no, our tour isn't done yet. The best is yet to come! Keep moving!'\n\nBastian saw a boy with a heavy hammer trying to drive nails into a pair of socks. A fat man was trying to paste postage stamps on soap bubbles. They kept bursting, but he went on blowing new ones.\n\n'Look!' Bastian heard the giggling voice of Argax and felt his head being twisted by the monkey's little hands. 'Look over there! It's so amusing!'\n\nBastian saw a large group of people, men and women, young and old, all in the strangest clothes. They didn't speak, each one was alone with himself. On the ground lay a large number of cubes, and there were letters on all six sides of the cubes. The people kept jumbling the cubes and then staring at them.\n\n'What are they doing?' Bastian whispered. 'What sort of game is that?'\n\n'It's called the jumble game,' answered Argax. He motioned to the players and cried out: 'Good work, children! Keep at it! Don't give up!'\n\nThen, turning back to Bastian, he whispered in his ear: 'They can't talk anymore. They've lost the power of speech. So I thought up this game for them. As you see, it keeps them busy. It's very simple. If you stop to think about it, you'll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories. Now take a look. What do you see there?'\n\nBastian read:\n\nH G I K L O P F M W E Y V X Q\n\nY X C V B N M A S D F G H J K L O A\n\nQ W E R T Z U I O P U\n\nA S D F G H J K L O A\n\nM N B V C X Y L K J H G F D S A\n\nU P O I U Z T R E W Q A S\n\nQ S E R T Z U I O P U A S D A F\n\nA S D F G H J K L O A Y X C\n\nU P O I U Z T R E W Q\n\nA O L K J H G F D S A M N B V\n\nG K H D S R Z I P\n\nQ E T U O U S F H K O\n\nY C B M W R Z I P\n\nA R C G U N I K Y O\n\nQ W E R T Z I O P L U A S D\n\nM N B V C X Y A S D\n\nL K J U O N G R E F G H I\n\n'Yes, of course,' said Argax with a giggle, 'it usually makes no more sense than that. But if you keep at it for a long time, words turn up now and then. Not very brilliant words, but still words. \"Spinachcramp,\" for instance, or \"sugarbrush,\" or \"nosepolish.\" And if you play for a hundred years, or a thousand or a hundred thousand, the law of chances tells us that a poem will probably come out. And if you play it forever, every possible poem and every possible story will have to come out, in fact every story about a story, and even this story about the two of us chatting here. It's only logical, don't you think?'\n\n'It's horrible,' said Bastian.\n\n'I wouldn't say that,' said Argax. 'It depends on your point of view. It keeps these people, in a manner of speaking, busy. And anyway, what else can we do with them in Fantastica?'\n\nFor a long time Bastian watched the players in silence. Then he asked under his breath: 'Argax, you know who I am, don't you?'\n\n'Of course I do. Is there anyone in Fantastica who doesn't?'\n\n'Tell me one thing, Argax. If I had become emperor yesterday, would I already be here now?'\n\n'Today or tomorrow,' said the monkey. 'Or next week. One way or another, you'd have ended up here.'\n\n'Then Atreyu saved me?'\n\n'You've got me there,' the monkey admitted.\n\n'But if he had succeeded in taking the Gem away from me, what would have happened then?'\n\nThe monkey giggled again.\n\n'You'd have ended up here, in a manner of speaking, all the same.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'Because you need AURYN to find the way back. But frankly, I don't believe you'll make it.'\n\nThe monkey clapped his little hands, lifted his mortarboard, and grinned.\n\n'Tell me, Argax, what must I do?'\n\n'Find a wish that will take you back to your world.'\n\nAfter a long silence Bastian asked: 'Argax, can you tell me how many wishes I have left?'\n\n'Not very many. In my opinion three or four at the most. And that will hardly be enough. You're beginning rather late, and the way back isn't easy. You'll have to cross the Sea of Mist. That alone will cost you a wish. What comes next I don't know. No one in Fantastica knows what road you people must take to get back to your world. Maybe you'll find Yor's Minroud, that's the last hope for people like you. But I'm afraid that for you it's, in a manner of speaking, too far. Be that as it may, you will, just this once, find your way out of the City of the Old Emperors.'\n\n'Thanks, Argax,' said Bastian.\n\nThe little gray monkey grinned.\n\n'Goodbye, Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\nWith one leap Argax vanished into one of the crazy houses. He had taken Bastian's turban with him.\n\nFor a while Bastian stood motionless. He was so stunned by what he had just heard that he couldn't decide what to do. All his plans had collapsed at one stroke. His thoughts seemed to have been stood on end \u2013 like the pyramid he had seen. What he had hoped was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.\n\nAt the moment only one thing was clear to him: he must get out of this insane city. And never come back!\n\nHe started through the jumble of crazy buildings. He soon discovered that it was much harder to get out than to get in. Time and time again he lost his way and found himself back in the center of the city. It took him all afternoon to reach the earthworks. Then he ran out into the heath and kept going until black night \u2013 as black as the night before \u2013 forced him to stop. Exhausted, he collapsed under a juniper tree and fell into a deep sleep. And while he slept, the memory that he could once make up stories left him.\n\nAll night he had the same unchanging vision before his eyes: Atreyu, with the gaping wound in his chest, stood there looking at him in silence.\n\nAwakened by a thunderclap, Bastian started up. Deep darkness lay all around him, but the massive clouds that had been gathering for days had been thrown into wild disorder. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the earth, the storm wind howled over the heath and the juniper trees were bowed to the ground. Rain fell in dense sheets.\n\nBastian arose and stood there wrapped in his black mantle; the water ran down his face.\n\nLightning struck a tree directly in front of him and split the gnarled trunk. The branches went up in flames, the wind blew a shower of sparks over the heath. In a moment they were doused by the rain.\n\nThe crash had thrown Bastian to his knees. He dug into the earth with both hands. When the hole was big enough, he unslung the sword Sikanda and put it in.\n\n'Sikanda,' he said. 'I am taking leave of you forever. Never again shall anyone draw you against a friend. No one shall find you here, until what you and I have done is forgotten.'\n\nHe filled in the hole and covered it over with moss and branches, lest anyone should discover it.\n\nAnd there Sikanda lies to this day. For not until far in the future will one come who can wield it without danger \u2013 but that is another story and shall be told another time.\n\nBastian went his way through the darkness.\n\nToward morning the storm abated, the wind died down, and there was no other sound than the rain dripping from the trees.\n\nThat night was the beginning of a long, lonely journey for Bastian. He no longer wished to return to his traveling companions or Xayide. Now he wanted to find the way back to the human world \u2013 but he didn't know how or where to look for it. Was there somewhere a gate, a bridge, a mountain pass that would take him back?\n\nHe had to wish for it, that he knew. But he had no power over his wishes. He felt like a diver who is searching the bottom of the sea for a sunken ship, but keeps being driven to the surface before he can find anything.\n\nHe also knew that he had few wishes left, so he was careful not to use AURYN. He was determined to sacrifice his last few remaining memories only if he felt sure that this would help him get back to his world.\n\nBut wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.\n\nAnd so, before he knew it, a new wish arose within him and little by little took form.\n\nFor days and nights he had been wandering all alone. And because of being alone, he yearned to belong to some sort of community, to be taken into a group, not as a master or victor or as any special sort of person, but merely as one among many, perhaps as the smallest or least important, provided his membership in the community was unquestioned.\n\nAnd then one day he came to a seacoast. Or so he thought at first. He was standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, and before him lay a sea of congealed white waves. It was some time before he realized that these waves were not really motionless, but were moving very slowly, that there were currents and eddies that moved as imperceptibly as the hands of a clock.\n\nHe had come to the Sea of Mist!\n\nBastian walked along the cliff. The air was warm and slightly damp. There was not the slightest breeze. It was early morning and the sun shone on the snow-white surface of the fog, which extended to the horizon.\n\nHe walked for several hours. Toward noon he espied a small town some distance from the shore. Supported by piles, it formed a sort of island in the Sea of Mist. The long, arching bridge connecting the town with the rocky coast swayed gently as Bastian crossed it.\n\nThe houses were relatively small. The doors, windows, and stairways all seemed to have been made for children. And indeed, the people moving about the streets were no bigger than children, though they all seemed to be grown men with beards or women with pinned-up hair. As Bastian soon noticed, these people looked so much alike that he could hardly tell them apart. Their faces were dark brown like moist earth and they looked calm and gentle. When they saw Bastian, they nodded to him, but none spoke. Altogether they seemed a silent lot; the place was humming with activity, yet he seldom heard a cry or a spoken word. And never did he see any of these people alone; they always went about in groups if not in crowds, locking arms or holding one another by the hand.\n\nWhen Bastian examined the houses more closely, he saw that they were all made of a sort of wicker, some crude and some of a finer weave, and that the streets were paved with the same kind of material. Even the people's clothing, he noticed, their trousers, skirts, jackets, and hats were of wickerwork, though these were artfully woven. Everything in the town seemed to be made of the same material.\n\nHere and there Bastian was able to cast a glance into the artisans' workshops. They were all busy weaving, making shoes, pitchers, lamps, cups, and umbrellas of wickerwork. But never did he see anyone working alone, for these things could be made only by several persons working together. It was a pleasure to see how cleverly they coordinated their movements. And as they worked, they usually sang some simple melody without words.\n\nThe town was not very large, and Bastian had soon come to the edge of it. There he saw hundreds of ships of every size and shape. The town was a seaport, but of a most unusual kind, for all these ships were hanging from gigantic fishing poles and hovered, swaying gently, over a chasm full of swirling white mist. These ships, made of wickerwork like everything else, had neither sails nor masts nor oars nor rudders.\n\nBastian leaned over the railing and looked down into the Sea of Mist. He was able to gauge the length of the stakes supporting the town by the shadows they cast on the white surface below.\n\n'At night,' he heard a voice beside him say, 'the mists rise to the level of the town. Then we can put out to sea. In the daytime the sun reduces the mist and the level falls. That's what you wanted to know, isn't it, stranger?'\n\nThree men were leaning against the railing beside Bastian. They seemed gentle and friendly. They got to talking and in the course of his conversation with them Bastian learned that the town was called Yskal or Basketville. Its inhabitants were known as Yskalnari. The word meant roughly 'the partners.' The three were mist sailors. Not wishing to give his name for fear of being recognized, Bastian introduced himself as 'Someone.' The three sailors told him the Yskalnari had no names for individuals and didn't find it necessary. They were all Yskalnari and that was enough for them.\n\nSince it was lunchtime, they invited Bastian to join them, and he gratefully accepted. They went to a nearby inn, and during the meal Bastian learned all about Basketville and its inhabitants.\n\nThe Sea of Mist, which they called the Skaidan, was an enormous ocean of white vapor, which divided the two parts of Fantastica from each other. No one had ever found out how deep the Skaidan was or where all this mist came from. It was quite possible to breathe below the surface of the mist, and to walk some distance on the bottom of the sea near the coast, where the mist was relatively shallow, but only if one was tied to a rope and could be pulled back. For the mist had one strange property: it fuddled one's sense of direction. Any number of fools and daredevils had died in the attempt to cross the Skaidan alone and on foot. Only a few had been rescued. The only way to reach the other side was in the ships of the Yskalnari.\n\nThe wickerwork, from which the houses, implements, clothing, and ships of Yskal were made, was woven from a variety of rushes that grew under the surface of the sea not far from the shore. These rushes \u2013 as can easily be gathered from the foregoing \u2013 could be cut only at the risk of one's life. Though unusually pliable and even limp in ordinary air, they stood upright in the sea, because they were lighter than the mist. That was what made the wickerwork ships mistworthy. And if any of the Yskalnari chanced to fall into the mist, his regular clothing served the purpose of a life jacket.\n\nBut the strangest thing about the Yskalnari, so it struck Bastian, was that the word 'I' seemed unknown to them. In any case, they never used it, but in speaking of what they thought or did always said 'we.'\n\nWhen he gathered from the conversation that the three sailors would be putting out to sea that night, he asked if he could ship with them as a cabin boy. They informed him that a voyage on the Skaidan was very different from any other ocean voyage, because no one knew how long it would take or exactly where it would end up. When Bastian said that didn't worry him, they agreed to take him on.\n\nAt nightfall the mists began to rise and by midnight they had reached the level of Basketville. The ships that had been dangling in midair were now floating on the white surface. The moorings of the one on which Bastian found himself \u2013 a flat barge about a hundred feet long \u2013 were cast off, and it drifted slowly out into the Sea of Mist.\n\nThe moment he laid his eyes on it, Bastian wondered what propelled this sort of ship, since it had neither sails nor oars nor propeller. He soon found out that sails would have been useless, for there was seldom any wind on the Skaidan, and that oars and propellers do not function in mist. These ships were moved by an entirely different sort of power.\n\nIn the middle of the deck there was a round, slightly raised platform. Bastian had noticed it from the start and taken it for a sort of captain's bridge. Indeed, it was occupied throughout the voyage by two or more sailors. (The entire crew numbered fourteen.) The men on the platform held one another clasped by the shoulders and looked fixedly forward. At first sight, they seemed to be standing motionless. Actually they were swaying very slowly, in perfect unison \u2013 in a sort of dance, which they accompanied by chanting over and over again a simple and strangely beautiful tune.\n\nAt first Bastian regarded this song and dance as some sort of ceremony, the meaning of which escaped him. Then, on the third day of voyage, he asked one of his three friends about it. Evidently surprised at Bastian's ignorance, the sailor explained that those men were propelling the ship by thought-power.\n\nMore puzzled than ever, Bastian asked if some sort of hidden wheels were set in motion.\n\n'No,' one of the sailors replied. 'When you want to move your legs, you have only to think about it. You don't need wheels, do you?'\n\nThe only difference between a person's body and a ship was that to move a ship at least two Yskalnari had to merge their thought-powers into one. It was this fusion of thought-powers that propelled the ship. If greater speed was desired, more men had to join in. Normally, thinkers worked in shifts of three; the others rested, for easy and pleasant as it looked, thought-propulsion was hard work, demanding intense and unbroken concentration. But there was no other way of sailing the Skaidan.\n\nBastian became the student of the mist navigators and learned the secret of their cooperation: dance and song without words.\n\nLittle by little, in the course of the long voyage, he became one of them. During the dance he felt his thought-power merging with those of his companions to form a whole, and this gave him a strange and indescribable sense of harmony and self-forgetfulness. He felt accepted by a community, at one with his companions \u2013 and at the same time he totally forgot that the inhabitants of the world from which he came, and to which he was seeking the way back, were human beings, each with his own thoughts and opinions. Dimly he remembered his home and parents, but nothing more.\n\nHis wish to be no longer alone had come true. But now, deep in his heart, a new wish arose and began to make itself felt.\n\nOne day it struck him that the Yskalnari lived together so harmoniously, not because they blended different ways of thinking, but because they were so much alike that it cost them no effort to form a community. Indeed, they were incapable of quarreling or even disagreeing, because they did not regard themselves as individuals. Thus there were no conflicts or differences to overcome, and it was just this sameness, this absence of stress that gradually came to pall on Bastian. Their gentleness bored him and the unchanging melody of their songs got on his nerves. He felt that something was lacking, something he hungered for, but he could not yet have said what it was.\n\nThis became clear to him sometime later when a giant mist crow was sighted. Stricken with terror, the sailors vanished below deck as fast as they could. But one was not quick enough; the monstrous bird swooped down with a cry, seized the poor fellow, and carried him away in its beak.\n\nWhen the danger was past, the sailors emerged and resumed their song and dance, as though nothing had happened. Their harmony was undisturbed, and far from grieving, they didn't waste so much as a word on the incident.\n\n'Why should we grieve?' said one of them when Bastian inquired. 'None of us is missing.'\n\nWith them the individual counted for nothing. No one was irreplaceable, because they drew no distinction between one man and another.\n\nBastian, however, wanted to be an individual, a someone, not just one among others. He wanted to be loved for being just what he was. In this community of Yskalnari there was harmony, but no love.\n\nHe no longer wanted to be the greatest, strongest, or cleverest. He had left all that far behind. He longed to be loved just as he was, good or bad, handsome or ugly, clever or stupid, with all his faults \u2013 or possibly because of them.\n\nBut what was he actually like?\n\nHe no longer knew. So much had been given to him in Fantastica, and now, among all these gifts and powers, he could no longer find himself.\n\nHe stopped dancing with the mist sailors. All day long and sometimes all night as well, he sat in the prow, looking out over the Skaidan.\n\nAt last the crossing was completed and the mist ship docked. Bastian thanked the Yskalnari and went ashore.\n\nThis was a land full of roses, there were whole forests of roses of every imaginable color. A winding path led through the endless rose garden, and Bastian followed it.\n\n# XXIV\n\n# _Dame Eyola_\n\nXAYIDE'S end is soon told, but hard to understand and full of contradictions like many things in Fantastica. To this day many scholars and historians are racking their brains for an explanation of what happened, while some deny the whole incident or try to interpret it out of existence. Here we shall simply state the facts, leaving others to explain them as best they can.\n\nJust as Bastian was arriving at the town of Yskal, Xayide and her black giants reached the spot where his metallic horse had collapsed under him. In that moment she suspected that she would never find him, and her suspicions became a certainty when she came to the earthen wall and saw Bastian's footprints on it. If he had reached the City of the Old Emperors, he was lost to her plans, regardless of whether he stayed there or whether he managed to escape. In the first case, he would become powerless like everyone there, no longer able to wish for anything \u2013 and in the second, all wishes for power and greatness would die within him. For her, Xayide, the game was over in either case.\n\nShe commandered her armored giants to halt. Strangely, they did not obey but marched on. She flew into a rage, jumped out of her litter, and ran after them with outstretched arms. The armored giants, foot soldiers and riders alike, ignored her commands, turned about, and trampled her with their feet and hooves. At length, when Xayide had breathed her last, the whole column stopped like run-down clockwork.\n\nWhen Hysbald, Hydorn, and Hykrion arrived with what was left of the army, they saw what had happened. They were puzzled, because they knew it was Xayide's will alone that had moved the hollow giants. So, they thought, it must have been her will that they should trample her to death. But knotty problems were not the knights' forte, so in the end they shrugged their shoulders and let well enough alone. But what were they to do next? They talked it over and, deciding that the campaign was at an end, discharged the army and advised everyone to go home. They themselves, however, felt bound by the oath of fealty they had sworn to Bastian and resolved to search all Fantastica for him. That was all well and good, but which way were they to go? They couldn't agree, so deciding that each would search separately, they parted and hobbled off each in a different direction. All three had countless adventures, and Fantastica knows numerous accounts of their futile quest. But these are other stories and shall be told another time.\n\nFor years the hollow, black-metal giants stood motionless on the heath not far from the City of the Old Emperors. Rain and snow fell on them, they rusted and little by little sank into the ground, some vertically, some at a slant. But to this day a few of them can be seen. The place is thought to be cursed, and travelers make a wide circle around it. But let's get back to Bastian.\n\nWhile following the winding path through the rose garden, he saw something that amazed him, because in all his wanderings in Fantastica he had never seen anything like it. It was a pointing hand, carved from wood. Beside it was written: 'To the House of Change.'\n\nWithout haste Bastian took the direction indicated. He breathed the fragrance of the innumerable roses and felt more and more cheerful, as though looking forward to a pleasant surprise.\n\nAt length he came to a straight avenue, bordered by round trees laden with red-cheeked apples. At the end of the avenue a house appeared. As he approached it, Bastian decided it was the funniest house he had ever seen. Under a tall, pointed roof that looked rather like a stocking cap, the house itself suggested a giant pumpkin. The walls were covered with large protuberances, one might almost have said bellies, that gave the house a comfortably inviting look. There were a few windows and a front door, but they seemed crooked, as though a clumsy child had cut them out.\n\nOn his way to the house, Bastian saw that it was slowly but steadily changing. A small bump appeared on the right side and gradually took the shape of a dormer window. At the same time a window on the left side closed and little by little disappeared. A chimney grew out of the roof and a small balcony with a balustrade appeared over the front door.\n\nBastian stopped still and watched the changes with surprise and amusement. Now he understood why the place was called the House of Change.\n\nAs he stood there, he heard a warm, pleasant voice \u2013 a woman's \u2013 singing inside.\n\n'A hundred summers to a day\n\nWe have waited here for you.\n\nSeeing that you've found the way,\n\nIt must certainly be you.\n\nYour hunger and your thirst to still,\n\nAll is here in readiness.\n\nYou shall eat and drink your fill,\n\nSheltered in our tenderness.\n\nRegardless whether good or bad,\n\nYou've suffered much and traveled far.\n\nTake comfort for the trials you've had.\n\nWe'll have you just the way you are.'\n\nAh! thought Bastian. What a lovely voice! If only that song were meant for me!\n\nThe voice began again to sing:\n\n'Great lord, I pray, be small again,\n\nBe a child and come right in.\n\nDon't keep standing at the door,\n\nYou are welcome here, and more.\n\nEverything for many a year\n\nHas been ready for you here.'\n\nBastian felt irresistibly drawn by that voice. He felt sure the singer must be a very friendly person. He knocked at the door and the voice called out:\n\n'Come in, come in, dear boy!'\n\nHe opened the door and saw a small but comfortable room. The sun was streaming in through the windows. In the middle of the room there was a round table covered with bowls and baskets full of all sorts of fruits unknown to Bastian. At the table sat a woman as round and red-cheeked and healthy-looking as an apple.\n\nBastian was almost overpowered by a desire to run to her with outstretched arms and cry: 'Mama, Mama!' But he controlled himself. His mama was dead and was certainly not here in Fantastica. This woman, it was true, had the same sweet smile and the same trustworthy look, but between her and his mother there was little resemblance. His mother had been small and this woman was large and imposing. She was wearing a broad hat covered with fruits and flowers, and her dress was of some sort of bright, flowered material. It was some time before Bastian realized that it consisted of leaves, flowers, and fruits.\n\nAs he stood looking at her, he was overcome by a feeling that he had not known for a long time. He could not remember when and where; he knew only that he had sometimes felt that way when he was little.\n\n'Sit down, dear boy,' said the woman, motioning him to a chair. 'You must be hungry. Do have a bite to eat.'\n\n'I beg your pardon,' said Bastian. 'You're expecting a guest. I've only come here by accident.'\n\n'Really?' said the woman with a smile. 'Oh well, it doesn't matter. You can have a bite to eat all the same. Meanwhile I'll tell you a little story. Go on, don't stand on ceremony.'\n\nBastian took off his black mantle, laid it on a chair, and hesitantly reached for a fruit. Before biting into it, he asked: 'What about you? Aren't you eating? Or don't you care for fruit?'\n\nThe woman laughed heartily, Bastian didn't know why.\n\n'Very well,' she said after composing herself. 'If you insist, I'll have something to keep you company, but in my own way. Don't be frightened.'\n\nWith that she picked up a watering can that was on the floor beside her, held it over her head, and sprinkled herself.\n\n'Oh!' she said. 'That _is_ refreshing!'\n\nNow it was Bastian's turn to laugh. Then he bit into the fruit and instantly realized that he had never eaten anything so good. He took a second fruit and that was even better.\n\n'You like it?' asked the woman, watching him closely.\n\nBastian couldn't answer because his mouth was full. He chewed and nodded.\n\n'I'm glad,' the woman said. 'I've taken a lot of pains with that fruit. Eat as much as you please.'\n\nBastian took a third fruit, and that was a sheer delight. He sighed with well-being.\n\n'And now I'll tell you the story,' said the woman. 'But don't let it stop you from eating.'\n\nBastian found it hard to listen, for each new fruit gave him a more rapturous sensation than the last.\n\n'A long, long time ago,' the flowery woman began, 'our Childlike Empress was deathly ill, for she needed a new name, and only a human could give her one. But humans had stopped coming to Fantastica, no one knew why. And if she had died, that would have been the end of Fantastica. Then one day \u2013 or rather one night \u2013 a human came after all. It was a little boy, and he gave the Childlike Empress the name of Moon Child. She recovered, and in token of her gratitude she promised the boy that all his wishes in her empire would come true \u2013 until he found out what he really and truly wanted. Then the little boy made a long journey from one wish to the next, and each one came true. And each fulfillment led to a new wish. There were not only good wishes but bad ones as well, but the Childlike Empress drew no distinction; in her eyes all things in her empire are equally good and important. In the end the Ivory Tower was destroyed, and she did nothing to prevent it. But with every wish fulfillment the little boy lost a part of his memory of the world he had come from. He didn't really mind, for he had given up wanting to go back. So he kept on wishing, but by then he had spent all his memories, and without memories it's not possible to wish. So he had almost ceased to be a human and had almost become a Fantastican. He still didn't know what he really and truly wanted. It seemed possible that his very last memories would be used up before he found out. And if that happened, he would never be able to return to his own world. Then at last he came to the House of Change, and there he would stay until he found out what he really and truly wanted. You see, it's called the House of Change not only because it changes itself but also because it changes anyone who lives in it. And that was very important to the little boy, because up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn't want to change.'\n\nAt this point she broke off, because her visitor had stopped chewing and was staring openmouthed.\n\n'If that one doesn't taste good,' she said with concern, 'just put it down and take another.'\n\n'W-what?' Bastian stammered. 'Oh no, it's delicious.'\n\n'Then everything's fine,' said the woman. 'But I forgot to tell you the name of the little boy, who had been expected so long at the House of Change. Many in Fantastica called him simply \"the Savior,\" others \"the Knight of the Seven-armed Candelabrum,\" or \"the Great Knower,\" or \"Lord and Master.\" But his real name was Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\nThe woman turned to Bastian with a smile. He swallowed once or twice and said very softly: 'That's my name.'\n\n'Well then!' said the woman, who didn't seem the least surprised.\n\nSuddenly the buds on her hat and dress burst into bloom.\n\n'But,' said Bastian hesitantly, 'I haven't been in Fantastica a hundred years.'\n\n'Oh, we've been waiting for you much longer than that,' said the woman. 'My grandmother and my grandmother's grandmother waited for you. You see, now someone is telling _you_ a story that is new, even though it's about the remotest past.'\n\nBastian remembered Grograman's words. That had been at the beginning of his journey. And now suddenly it seemed to him that a hundred years had indeed elapsed since then.\n\n'But by the way, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Dame Eyola.'\n\nBastian repeated the name several times before he was able to pronounce it properly. Then he took another fruit. He bit into it, and as usual thought the one he was eating was the most delicious of all. But then he noticed with some alarm that there was only one left.\n\n'Do you want more?' asked Dame Eyola, who had caught his glance. When Bastian nodded, she plucked fruit from her hat and dress until the bowl was full again.\n\n'Does the fruit grow on your hat?' Bastian asked in amazement.\n\n'Hat? What _are_ you talking about?' cried Dame Eyola. But then she understood and broke into a loud, hearty laugh. 'So you think it's a hat I've got on my head? Not at all, dear boy. It all grows out of me. Just as your hair grows out of you. That should show you how glad I am that you've finally come. That's why I'm flowering and bearing fruit. If I were sad, I'd wither. But come now, don't forget to eat.'\n\nBastian was embarrassed. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Is it all right to eat something that comes out of somebody?'\n\n'Why not?' asked Dame Eyola. 'Babies drink milk that comes out of their mothers. There's nothing better.'\n\n'That's true,' said Bastian with a slight blush. 'But only when they're very little.'\n\n'In that case,' said Dame Eyola, beaming, 'you'll just have to get to be very little again, my dear boy.'\n\nBastian took another fruit and bit into it. Dame Eyola was delighted and bloomed more than ever.\n\nAfter a short silence she said: 'I think it would like us to move into the next room. I believe it may have arranged something for you.'\n\n'Who?' Bastian asked, looking around.\n\n'The House of Change,' said Dame Eyola, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.\n\nAnd indeed a strange thing had happened. The living room had changed without Bastian noticing that anything was going on. The ceiling had moved upward, while three of the walls had come close to the table. There was still room on the fourth side, where there was a door, which now stood open.\n\nDame Eyola rose, and then he saw how big she was.\n\n'We'd better go,' she suggested. 'It's very stubborn. Opposition is useless if it has thought up a surprise. We may as well let it have its way. It usually means well.'\n\nBastian followed her through the door, but took the fruit bowl with him as a precaution.\n\nHe found himself in a large dining room that looked somehow familiar. Only the furniture seemed strange \u2013 the table and especially the chairs were so large that he couldn't possibly have sat in them.\n\n'Fancy that!' said Dame Eyola with a chuckle. 'The House of Change is always thinking up something new. Now for your benefit it has provided a room as it must look to a small child.'\n\n'You mean,' said Bastian, 'that this room wasn't here before?'\n\n'Of course not. The House of Change is very wide-awake, you see. This is its way of taking part in our conversation. I think it's trying to tell you something.'\n\nThen she sat down in one of the chairs at the table, while Bastian tried in vain to climb up on the other. Dame Eyola had to pick him up and put him on it, but even then his nose was barely level with the tabletop. He was glad he had taken the bowl of fruit, and kept it on his lap. If it had been on the table, it would have been beyond his reach.\n\n'Do you often have to change rooms this way?' he asked.\n\n'Not often,' said Dame Eyola. 'Never more than three or four times a day. Sometimes the House of Change _will_ have its little jokes, and then the rooms are suddenly reversed, the floor on top and the ceiling at the bottom, that sort of thing. But it's only being bumptious and it stops when I give it a piece of my mind. All in all, it's a well-behaved house and I feel very comfortable in it. We have good laughs together.'\n\n'But isn't it dangerous?' Bastian asked. 'For instance, if you're asleep at night and the room gets smaller and smaller?'\n\n'What nonsense, dear boy!' cried Dame Eyola, pretending to be angry. 'It's very fond of me, and it's fond of you too. It's glad to have you here.'\n\n'What if it takes a dislike to somebody?'\n\n'No idea,' she replied. 'What questions you ask! There's never been anyone here but you and me.'\n\n'Oh!' said Bastian. 'Then I'm your first guest?'\n\n'Of course!'\n\nBastian looked around the enormous room.\n\n'This room doesn't seem to go with the house. It didn't look so big from outside.'\n\n'The House of Change,' said Dame Eyola, 'is bigger inside than out.'\n\nMeanwhile night was falling, and it was growing darker and darker in the room. Bastian leaned back in his big chair and propped his head on his hands. He felt deliciously sleepy.\n\n'Why,' he asked, 'did you wait so long for me, Dame Eyola?'\n\n'I always wanted a child,' she said, 'a child I could spoil, who needed my tenderness, a child I could care for \u2013 someone like you, my darling boy.'\n\nBastian yawned. He felt irresistibly lulled by her sweet voice.\n\n'But,' he objected, 'you said your mother and grandmother waited for me.'\n\nDame Eyola's face was now in the darkness.\n\n'Yes,' he heard her say. 'My mother and my grandmother also want a child. They never had one but I have one now.'\n\nBastian's eyes closed. He barely managed to ask: 'How can that be? Your mother had you when you were little. And your grandmother had your mother.'\n\n'No, my darling boy,' said the voice hardly above a whisper. 'With us it's different. We don't die and we're not born. We're always the same Dame Eyola, and then again we're not. When my mother grew old, she withered. All her leaves fell, as the leaves fall from a tree in the winter. She withdrew into herself. And so she remained for a long time. But then one day she put forth young leaves, buds, blossoms, and finally fruit. And that's how I came into being, for I was the new Dame Eyola. And it was just the same with my grandmother when she brought my mother into the world. We Dames Eyola can only have a child if we wither first. And then we're our own child and we can't be a mother anymore. That's why I'm so glad you're here, my darling boy...'\n\nBastian spoke no more. He had slipped into a sweet half-sleep in which he heard her words as a kind of chant. He heard her stand up and cross the room and bend over him. She stroked his hair and kissed him on the forehead. Then he felt her pick him up and carry him out in her arms. He buried his head in her bosom like a baby. Deeper and deeper he sank into the warm sleepy darkness. He felt that he was being undressed and put into a soft, sweet-smelling bed. And then he heard her lovely voice singing far in the distance:\n\n'Sleep, my darling, good night.\n\nYour sufferings are past.\n\nGreat lord, be a little child at last.\n\nSleep, my darling, sleep tight.'\n\nWhen he woke up the next morning, he felt better and happier than ever before. He looked around and saw that he was in a cozy little room \u2013 lying in a crib. Actually, it was a very large crib, or rather it was as large as a crib must look to a baby. For a moment this struck him as ridiculous, because he certainly wasn't a baby anymore, and he was still in possession of all the powers and gifts that Fantastica had given him. The Childlike Empress's amulet was still hanging from his neck. But in the very next moment he stopped caring whether it was ridiculous or not. No one but him and Dame Eyola would ever find out, and they both knew that everything was just as it should be.\n\nHe got up, washed, dressed, and left the room. A flight of wooden steps took him to the big dining room, which had turned into a kitchen overnight. Dame Eyola had breakfast all ready for him. She too was in high spirits, her flowers were in full bloom. She sang and laughed and even danced around the kitchen table with him. After breakfast she sent him outside to get some fresh air.\n\nIn the great rose garden around the House of Change it was summer, a summer that seemed eternal. Bastian sauntered about, watched the bees feasting on the flowers, listened to the birds that were singing in every rosebush, played with the lizards, which were so tame that they crawled up on his hand, and with the hares, which let him stroke them. From time to time he crept under a bush, smelled the sweet scent of the roses, blinked up at the sun, and thinking of nothing in particular, let the time glide by like a brook.\n\nDays became weeks. He paid no attention. Dame Eyola was merry, and Bastian surrendered himself to her motherly care and tenderness. It seemed to him that without knowing it he had long hungered for something which was now being given him in abundance. And he just couldn't get enough of it.\n\nHe spent whole days rummaging through the House of Change from attic to cellar. He never got bored, because the rooms were always changing and there was always something new to discover. Clearly the house was at pains to entertain its guest. It produced playrooms, railway trains, puppet theaters, jungle gyms. There was even a big merry-go-round.\n\nOr else he would explore the surrounding country. But he never went too far from the House of Change, for suddenly he would be overcome by a craving for Dame Eyola's fruit, and when that happened, he could hardly wait to get back to her and eat his fill.\n\nIn the evening they had long talks. He told her about all his adventures in Fantastica, about Perilin and Grograman, about Xayide and Atreyu, whom he had wounded so cruelly and perhaps even killed.\n\n'I did everything wrong,' he said. 'I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica.'\n\nDame Eyola gave him a long look.\n\n'No,' she said. 'I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was _your_ way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there.'\n\nAfter a short silence she added: 'But every way that leads there is the right one.'\n\nSuddenly Bastian began to cry. He didn't know why. He felt as if a knot in his heart had come open and dissolved into tears. He sobbed and he sobbed and couldn't stop. Dame Eyola took him on her lap and stroked him. He buried his face in the flowers on her bosom and wept until he was too tired to weep anymore.\n\nThat evening they talked no more.\n\nBut next day Bastian brought up the subject again.\n\n'Do you know where I can find the Water of Life?'\n\n'On the borders of Fantastica.'\n\n'I thought Fantastica had no borders.'\n\n'It has, though. Only they're not outside but inside. In the place where the Childlike Empress gets all her power from, but where she herself cannot go.'\n\n'How am I to find the way there?' asked Bastian. 'Isn't it too late?'\n\n'There's only one wish that can take you there: your last.'\n\nBastian was terrified. 'Dame Eyola \u2013 all the wishes that have come true thanks to AURYN have made me forget something. Will it be the same with this one?'\n\nShe nodded slowly.\n\n'But if I don't notice it!'\n\n'Did you notice it other times? Once you've forgotten something you don't know you ever had it.'\n\n'What am I forgetting now?'\n\n'I'll tell you at the proper time. If I told you now, you'd hold on to it.'\n\n'Must I lose everything?'\n\n'Nothing is lost,' she said. 'Everything is transformed.'\n\n'But then,' said Bastian in alarm, 'I ought to hurry. I shouldn't be staying here.'\n\nShe stroked his hair.\n\n'Don't worry. It will take time, but when your last wish is awakened, you'll know it \u2013 and so will I.'\n\nFrom that day on something began indeed to change, though Bastian himself noticed nothing at first. The transforming power of the House of Change was taking effect. But like all true transformations, it was as slow and gentle as the growth of a plant.\n\nThe days in the House of Change passed, and it was still summer. Bastian still enjoyed letting Dame Eyola spoil him like a child. Her fruit still tasted as delicious to him as at the start, but little by little his craving had been stilled. He ate less than before. Dame Eyola noticed, though she never mentioned it. He also felt that he had had his fill of her care and tenderness. And as his need for them dwindled, a longing of a very different kind made itself felt, a desire that he had never felt before and that was different in every way from all his previous wishes: the longing to be capable of loving. With surprise and dismay he recognized that he could not love. And the wish became stronger and stronger.\n\nOne evening as they were sitting together, he spoke of it to Dame Eyola.\n\nAfter listening to him, she said nothing for a long while. She looked at Bastian with an expression that puzzled him.\n\n'Now you have found your last wish,' she said finally. 'What you really and truly want is to love.'\n\n'But why can't I, Dame Eyola?'\n\n'You won't be able to until you have drunk of the Water of Life,' she said. 'And you can't go back to your own world unless you take some of it back for others.'\n\nBastian was bewildered. 'But what about you?' he asked. 'Haven't you drunk of it?'\n\n'No,' said Dame Eyola. 'It's different for me. I only needed someone to whom I could give my excess.'\n\n'But isn't that love?'\n\nDame Eyola pondered a while, then she said: 'It was the effect of _your_ wish.'\n\n'Can't Fantasticans love? Are they like me?' he asked anxiously.\n\nShe answered: 'There are some few creatures in Fantastica, so I'm told, who get to drink of the Water of Life. But no one knows who they are. And there is a prophecy, which we seldom speak of, that sometime in the distant future humans will bring love to Fantastica. Then the two worlds will be one. But what that means I don't know.'\n\n'Dame Eyola,' Bastian asked, 'you promised that when the right moment came you'd tell me what I had to forget to find my last wish. Has the time come?'\n\nShe nodded.\n\n'You had to forget your father and mother. Now you have nothing left but your name.'\n\nBastian pondered.\n\n'Father and mother?' he said slowly. But the words had lost all meaning for him. He had forgotten.\n\n'What must I do now?' he asked.\n\n'You must leave me. Your time in the House of Change is over.'\n\n'Where must I go?'\n\n'Your last wish will guide you. Don't lose it.'\n\n'Should I go now?'\n\n'No, it's late. Tomorrow at daybreak. You have one more night in the House of Change. Now we must go to bed.'\n\nBastian stood up and went over to her. Only then, only when he was close to her, did he notice that all her flowers had faded.\n\n'Don't let it worry you,' she said. 'And don't worry about tomorrow morning. Go your way. Everything is just as it should be. Good night, my darling boy.'\n\n'Good night, Dame Eyola,' Bastian murmured.\n\nThen he went up to his room.\n\nWhen he came down the next day, he saw that Dame Eyola was still in the same place. All her leaves, flowers, and fruits had fallen from her. Her eyes were closed and she looked like a black, dead tree. For a long time he stood there gazing at her. Then suddenly a door opened.\n\nBefore going out, he turned around once again and said, without knowing whether he was speaking to Dame Eyola or to the house or both: 'Thank you. Thank you for everything.'\n\nThen he went out through the door. Winter had come overnight. The snow lay knee-deep and nothing remained of the flowering rose garden but bare, black thornbushes. Not a breeze stirred. It was bitter cold and very still.\n\nBastian wanted to go back into the house for his mantle, but the doors and windows had vanished. It had closed itself up all around. Shivering, he started on his way.\n\n# XXV\n\n# _The Picture Mine_\n\nYOR, the blind miner, was standing beside his hut, listening for sounds on the snow-covered plain around him. The silence was so complete that his sensitive hearing picked up the crunching of footsteps in the snow far in the distance. And he knew that the steps were coming his way.\n\nYor was an old man, but his face was beardless and without a wrinkle. Everything about him, his dress, his face, his hair, was stone gray. As he stood there motionless, he seemed carved from congealed lava. Only his blind eyes were dark, and deep within them there was a glow, as of a small, bright flame.\n\nThe steps were Bastian's. When he reached the hut, he said: 'Good day. I've lost my way. I'm looking for the fountain the Water of Life springs from. Can you help me?'\n\nThe miner replied in a whisper: 'You haven't lost your way. But speak softly, or my pictures will crumble.'\n\nHe motioned to Bastian, who followed him into the hut.\n\nIt consisted of a single small, bare room. A wooden table, two chairs, a cot, and two or three wooden shelves piled with food and dishes were the only furnishings. A fire was burning on an open hearth, and over it hung a kettle of soup.\n\nYor ladled out soup for himself and Bastian, put the bowls on the table, and with a motion of his hand invited his guest to eat. They ate in silence.\n\nThen the miner leaned back. His eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance as he asked in a whisper: 'Who are you?'\n\n'My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux.'\n\n'Ah, so you still know your name.'\n\n'Yes. And who are you?'\n\n'I am Yor; people call me the blind miner. But I am blind only in the daylight. In the darkness of my mine, I can see.'\n\n'What sort of mine is it?'\n\n'The Minroud Mine, they call it. It's a picture mine.'\n\n'A picture mine?' said Bastian in amazement. 'I never heard of such a thing.'\n\nYor seemed to be listening for something.\n\n'And yet,' he said, 'it's here for just such as you. For humans who can't find the way to the Water of Life.'\n\n'What kind of pictures are they?' Bastian asked.\n\nYor shut his eyes and was silent for a while. Bastian didn't know whether to repeat his question. Then he heard the miner whisper: 'Nothing gets lost in the world. Have you ever dreamed something and when you woke up not known what it was?'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian. 'Often.'\n\nYor nodded. Then he stood up and beckoned Bastian to follow him. Before they left the hut, he dug his fingers into Bastian's shoulders and whispered: 'But not a word, not a sound, understand? What you are going to see is my work of many years. The least sound can destroy it. So tread softly and don't talk.'\n\nBastian nodded and they left the hut. Behind it there was a wooden headframe, below which a shaft descended vertically into the earth. Passing these by, the miner led Bastian out into the snow-covered plain. And there in the snow lay the pictures, like jewels bedded in white silk.\n\nThey were paper-thin sheets of colored, transparent isinglass, of every size and shape, some round, some square, some damaged, some intact, some as large as church windows, others as small as snuffbox miniatures. They lay, arranged more or less according to size and shape, in rows extending to the snowy horizon.\n\nWhat these pictures represented it was hard to say. There were figures in weird disguise that seemed to be flying through the air in an enormous bird's nest, donkeys in judge's robes, clocks as limp as soft butter, dressmaker's dummies standing in deserted, glaringly lighted squares. There were faces and heads pieced together from animals and others that made up a landscape. But there were also perfectly normal pictures, men mowing a wheat field, women sitting on a balcony, mountain villages and seascapes, battle scenes and circus scenes, streets and rooms and many, many faces, old and young, wise and simple, fools and kings, cheerful and gloomy. There were gruesome pictures, executions and death dances, and there were comical ones, such as a group of young ladies riding a walrus or a nose walking about and being greeted by passersby.\n\nThe longer Bastian looked at the pictures, the less he could make of them. He and Yor spent the whole day walking past row after row of them, and then dusk descended on the great snowfield. Bastian followed the miner back to the hut. After closing the door behind them Yor asked in a soft voice: 'Did you recognize any of them?'\n\n'No,' said Bastian.\n\nThe miner shook his head thoughtfully.\n\n'Why?' Bastian asked. 'What are they?'\n\n'They are forgotten dreams from the human world,' Yor explained. 'Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under our earth. There the forgotten dreams are stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer together they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.'\n\nBastian was wide-eyed with wonderment. 'Are mine there too?' he asked.\n\nYor nodded.\n\n'And you think I have to find them?'\n\n'At least one,' said Yor. 'One will be enough.'\n\n'But what for?' Bastian wanted to know.\n\nNow the miner's face was lit only by the faint glow of the hearth fire. Again his blind eyes looked through Bastian and far into the distance.\n\n'Listen to me, Bastian Balthazar Bux,' he said. 'I'm no great talker. I prefer silence. But I will answer this one question. You are looking for the Water of Life. You want to be able to love, that's your only hope of getting back to your world. To love \u2013 that's easily said. But the Water of Life will ask you: Love whom? Because you can't just love in general. You've forgotten everything but your name. And if you can't answer, it won't let you drink. So you'll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work. Remember what I've said, for I shall never say it again.'\n\nAfter that he lay down on his wooden cot and fell asleep. Bastian had to content himself with the hard, cold floor. But he didn't mind.\n\nWhen he woke up the next morning feeling stiff in all his joints, Yor was gone \u2013 to the mine, no doubt, Bastian decided. He took a dish of the hot soup, which warmed him but didn't taste very good. Too salty. It made him think of sweat and tears.\n\nThen he went out into the snow-covered plain and walked past the pictures. He examined one after another attentively, for now he knew how important it was, but he found none that meant anything in particular to him.\n\nToward evening Yor came up from the mine. Bastian saw him step out of the pit cage. In a frame on his back he was carrying different-sized sheets of paper-thin isinglass. Bastian followed him in silence as he went far out into the plain and carefully bedded his new finds in the soft snow at the end of a row. One of the pictures represented a man whose chest was a birdcage with two pigeons in it, another a woman of stone riding on a large turtle. One very small picture showed a butterfly with letters on its wings. And many more, but none meant anything to Bastian.\n\nBack in the hut with the miner, he asked: 'What will become of the pictures when the snow melts?'\n\n'It's always winter here,' said Yor.\n\nThey had no other conversation that evening.\n\nIn the following days Bastian kept searching among the pictures for one with some special meaning for him \u2013 but in vain. In the evening he sat in the hut with the miner. Since the miner kept silent, Bastian got into the habit of saying nothing, and little by little he adopted Yor's careful way of moving for fear of making the pictures crumble.\n\n'Now I've seen all the pictures,' Bastian said one night. 'None of them is for me.'\n\n'That's bad,' said Yor.\n\n'What should I do?' Bastian asked. 'Should I wait for you to bring up new ones?'\n\nYor thought it over, then he shook his head.\n\n'If I were you,' he whispered, 'I'd go down into the mine and dig for myself.'\n\n'But I haven't got your eyes,' said Bastian. 'I can't see in the dark.'\n\n'Weren't you given a light for your long journey?' Yor asked, looking through Bastian. 'A sparkling stone or something that might help you now?'\n\n'Yes,' said Bastian sadly. 'But I used Al Tsahir for something else.'\n\n'That's bad,' Yor said again.\n\n'Then what do you advise?' Bastian asked.\n\nAfter a long silence the miner replied: 'Then you'll just have to work in the dark.'\n\nBastian shuddered. He still had all the strength and fearlessness AURYN had given him, but the thought of crawling on his belly in the black underground darkness sent the shivers down his spine. He said nothing more and they both lay down to sleep.\n\nThe next morning the miner shook him by the shoulders.\n\nBastian sat up.\n\n'Eat your soup and come with me,' said Yor.\n\nBastian obeyed.\n\nHe followed the miner to the shaft and got into the pit cage with him. Together they rode down into the mine. At first a faint beam of light followed them down the shaft, but it vanished as the cage went deeper. Then a jolt signaled that they had reached the bottom.\n\nHere below it was much warmer than on the wintry plain. The miner walked very fast, and trying to keep up for fear of losing him in the darkness, Bastian was soon covered with sweat. They twined their way over endless passages and galleries, which sometimes opened out into spacious vaults, as Bastian could tell by the echo of their footfalls. Several times Bastian bruised himself against jutting stones or wooden props, but Yor took no notice.\n\nOn this first day and for several that followed, the miner, by wordlessly guiding Bastian's hand, instructed him in the art of separating the paper-thin leaves of isinglass from one another and picking them up. There were tools for the purpose, they felt like wooden or horn spatulas, but Bastian never saw them, for when the day's work was done they stayed down in the mine.\n\nLittle by little he learned to find his way in the darkness. A new sense that he could not have accounted for taught him to distinguish one gallery from another. One day Yor told him silently, with the mere touch of his hands, to work alone in a low gallery, which he could enter only by crawling. Bastian obeyed. It was very close and cramped, and above him lay a mountain of stone.\n\nCurled up like an unborn child in its mother's womb, he lay in the dark depths of Fantastica's foundations, patiently digging for a forgotten dream, a picture that might lead him to the Water of Life.\n\nSince he could see nothing in the eternal night of the mine, he could not choose or come to any decision. He could only hope that chance or a merciful fate would eventually lead him to a lucky find. Evening after evening he brought what he had managed to gather from the Minroud Mine into the failing daylight. And evening after evening his work had been in vain. But Bastian did not complain or rebel. He had lost all self-pity. Though his strength was inexhaustible, he often felt tired.\n\nHow long this painful work went on it is hard to say, for such labor cannot be measured in days and months. Be that as it may, one evening he brought to the surface a picture. It moved him so deeply the moment he looked at it that he needed all his self-control to keep from letting out a cry of surprise that would have crumbled the picture to dust.\n\nOn the fragile sheet of isinglass \u2013 it was not very large, about the size of a usual book page \u2013 he saw a man wearing a white smock and holding a plaster cast in one hand. His posture and the troubled look on his face touched Bastian to the heart. But what stirred him the most was that the man was shut up in a transparent but impenetrable block of ice.\n\nWhile Bastian looked at the picture that lay before him in the snow, a longing grew in him for this man whom he did not know, a surge of feeling that seemed to come from far away. Like a tidal wave, almost imperceptible at first, it gradually built up strength till it submerged everything in its path. Bastian struggled for air. His heart pounded, it was not big enough for so great a longing. That surge of feeling submerged everything that he still remembered of himself. And he forgot the last thing he still possessed: his own name.\n\nLater on, when he joined Yor in the hut, he was silent. The miner was silent too, but for a long while he faced Bastian, his eyes once again seeming to look through him and far into the distance. And for the first time since Bastian had come, a smile passed briefly over the miner's stone-gray features.\n\nThat night, tired as he was, the boy who no longer had a name could not sleep. He kept seeing the picture before his eyes. It was as though this man wanted to say something to him but could not, because of the block of ice he was imprisoned in. The boy without a name wanted to help him, wanted to make the ice melt. As in a waking dream he saw himself hugging the block of ice, trying in vain to melt it with the heat of his body.\n\nBut then all at once he heard what the man was trying to say to him; he heard it not with his ears but deep in his heart.\n\n'Please help me! Don't leave me! I can't get out of this ice alone. Help me! Only you can help me!'\n\nWhen they awoke next morning at daybreak, the boy without a name said to Yor: 'I won't be going down into the mine with you anymore.'\n\n'Are you going to leave me?'\n\nThe boy nodded. 'I'm going to look for the Water of Life.'\n\n'Have you found the picture that will guide you?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Will you show it to me?'\n\nAgain the boy nodded. They went out into the snow where the picture lay. The boy looked at it, but Yor directed his blind eyes at the boy's face, as though looking through it into the distance. For a long while he seemed to be listening for some sound. At length he nodded.\n\n'Take it with you,' he whispered, 'and don't lose it. If you lose it, or if it is destroyed, you will have nothing left in Fantastica. You know what that means.'\n\nThe boy who no longer had a name stood with bowed head and was silent for a while. Then he said just as softly: 'Thank you, Yor, for what you have taught me.'\n\nThey pressed each other's hands.\n\n'You've been a good miner,' Yor whispered. 'You've worked well.'\n\nThen he turned away and went to the mine shaft. Without turning around he got into the pit cage and descended into the depths.\n\nThe boy without a name picked the picture out of the snow and plodded out into the snow-covered plain.\n\nHe had been walking for many hours. Yor's hut had long since disappeared below the horizon. On all sides there was nothing to be seen but the endless snow-covered plain. But he felt that the picture, which he was holding carefully in both hands, was pulling him in a certain direction.\n\nRegardless of how far it might be, he was determined to follow this pull, for he was convinced that it would take him to the right place. Nothing must hold him back. He felt sure of finding the Water of Life.\n\nSuddenly he heard a clamor in the air, as though innumerable creatures were screaming and twittering. Looking up into the sky, he saw a dark cloud like a great flock of birds. But when the flock came closer, he saw what it really was and terror stopped him in his tracks.\n\nIt was the butterfly-clowns, the Shlamoofs.\n\nMerciful heavens! thought the boy without a name. If only they haven't seen me! They'll shatter the picture with their screams!\n\nBut they had seen him.\n\nLaughing and rollicking, they shot down and landed all around him in the snow.\n\n'Hurrah!' they croaked, opening wide their motley-colored mouths. 'At last we've found him! Our great benefactor!'\n\nThey tumbled in the snow, threw snowballs at one another, turned somersaults, and stood on their heads.\n\n'Be still! Please be still!' the boy without a name whispered in desperation.\n\nThe whole chorus screamed with enthusiasm: 'What did he say?' \u2013 'He said we were too still!' \u2013 'Nobody ever told us that before!'\n\n'What do you want of me?' asked the boy. 'Why won't you leave me alone?'\n\nAll whirled around him, cackling: 'Great benefactor! Great benefactor! Do you remember how you saved us, when we were the Acharis? Then we were the unhappiest creatures in all Fantastica, but now we're fed up with ourselves. At first what you did to us was a lot of fun, but now we're bored to death. We flit and we flutter and we don't know where we're at. We can't even plan any decent games, because we haven't any rules. You've turned us into preposterous clowns, that's what you've done. You've cheated us!'\n\n'I meant well,' said the horrified boy.\n\n'Sure, you meant well by yourself,' the Shlamoofs shouted in chorus. 'Your kindness made you feel great, didn't it? But we paid the bill for your kindness, you great benefactor!'\n\n'What should I do?' the boy asked. 'What do you want of me?'\n\n'We've been looking for you,' screamed the Shlamoofs with grimacing clown faces. 'We wanted to catch you before you could make yourself scarce. Now we've caught you, and we won't leave you in peace until you become our chief. We want you to be our Head Shlamoof, our Master Shlamoof, our General Shlamoof! You name it.'\n\n'But why?' the boy asked imploringly.\n\nThe chorus of clowns screamed back: 'We want you to give us orders. We want you to order us around, to make us do something, to forbid us to do something. We want you to give us an aim in life!'\n\n'I can't do that. Why don't you elect one of your number?'\n\n'No, we want you. You made us what we are.'\n\n'No,' the boy panted. 'I have to go! I have to go back!'\n\n'Not so fast, great benefactor!' cried the butterfly-clowns. 'You can't get away from us. You think you can sneak away from Fantastica, don't you? You'd like that, wouldn't you?'\n\n'But I'm at the end of my rope,' the boy protested.\n\n'What about us?' the chorus replied.\n\n'Go away!' cried the boy. 'I can't bother with you anymore.'\n\n'Then you must turn us back!' cried the shrill voices. 'Then we'd rather be Acharis. The Lake of Tears has dried up, Amarganth is on dry land now. And no one spins fine silver filigree anymore. We want to be Acharis again.'\n\n'I can't!' the boy replied. 'I no longer have any power in Fantastica.'\n\n'In that case,' the whole swarm bellowed, whirling and swirling about, 'we'll kidnap you!'\n\nHundreds of little hands seized him and tried to lift him off the ground. The boy struggled with might and main and the butterflies were tossed in all directions. But like angry wasps they kept coming back.\n\nSuddenly in the midst of this hubbub a low yet powerful sound was heard \u2013 something like the booming of a bronze bell.\n\nIn a twinkling the Shlamoofs took flight and their cloud soon vanished in the sky.\n\nThe boy who had no name knelt in the snow. Before him, crumbled into dust, lay the picture. Now all was lost. Now nothing could lead him to the Water of Life.\n\nWhen he looked up, he saw, blurred by his tears, two forms in the snow. One was large, the other small. He wiped his eyes and took another look.\n\nThe two forms were Falkor, the white luckdragon, and Atreyu.\n\n# XXVI\n\n# _The Water of Life_\n\nZIGZAGGING unsteadily, scarcely able to control his feet, the boy who had no name took a few steps toward Atreyu. Then he stopped. Atreyu did nothing, but watched him closely. The wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.\n\nFor a long while they faced each other. Neither said a word. It was so still they could hear each other's breathing.\n\nSlowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go.\n\nIn that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes.\n\nAtreyu, Falkor, and the boy without a name stood side by side, near the head of the black snake, which held the white snake's tail in its jaws. The rigid eye with its vertical pupil was directed at the three of them. Compared to that eye, they were tiny; even the luckdragon seemed no larger than a white caterpillar.\n\nThe motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain.\n\nBut while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life. For in the center of the edifice they encircled there was a great fountain. Its beam danced up and down and in falling created and dispersed thousands of forms far more quickly than the eye could follow. The foaming water burst into a fine mist, in which the golden light was refracted with all the colors of the rainbow. The fountain roared and laughed and rejoiced with a thousand voices.\n\nAs though parched with thirst, the boy without a name looked at the water \u2013 but how was he to reach it? The snake's head did not move.\n\nThen Falkor raised his head. His ruby-red eyeballs glittered.\n\n'Do you understand what the Water is saying?' he asked.\n\n'No,' said Atreyu. 'I don't.'\n\n'I don't know why,' said Falkor. 'But I understand perfectly. Maybe because I'm a luckdragon. All the languages of joy are related.'\n\n'What does the Water say?' Atreyu asked.\n\nFalkor listened closely, and slowly repeated what he heard:\n\n'I am the Water of Life,\n\nOut of myself I grow.\n\nThe more you drink of me,\n\nThe fuller I will flow.'\n\nAgain he listened awhile. Then he said: 'It keeps saying: \"Drink! Drink! Do what you wish!\"'\n\n'How can we get to it?' Atreyu asked.\n\n'It's asking us our names,' Falkor reported.\n\n'I'm Atreyu!' Atreyu cried.\n\n'I'm Falkor!' cried Falkor.\n\nThe boy without a name was silent.\n\nAtreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: 'He's Bastian Balthazar Bux!'\n\n'It asks,' Falkor translated, 'why he doesn't speak for himself.'\n\n'He can't,' said Atreyu. 'He has forgotten everything.'\n\nFalkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain.\n\n'Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won't let him through.'\n\nAtreyu replied: 'I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him.'\n\nFalkor listened.\n\n'It wants to know by what right?'\n\n'I am his friend,' said Atreyu.\n\nAgain Falkor listened attentively.\n\n'That may not be acceptable,' he whispered to Atreyu. 'Now it's speaking of your wound. It wants to know how that came about.'\n\n'We were both right,' said Atreyu, 'and we were both wrong. But now Bastian has given up AURYN of his own free will.'\n\nFalkor listened and nodded.\n\n'Yes,' he said. 'It accepts that. This place is AURYN. We are welcome, it says.'\n\nAtreyu looked up at the enormous golden dome.\n\n'Each of us,' he whispered, 'has worn it around his neck \u2013 you too, Falkor, for a while.'\n\nThe luckdragon motioned him to be still and listened again to the sound of the Water. Then he translated:\n\n'AURYN is the door that Bastian has been looking for. He carried it with him from the start. But \u2013 it says \u2013 the snakes won't let anything belonging to Fantastica cross the threshold. Bastian must therefore give up everything the Childlike Empress gave him. Otherwise he cannot drink of the Water of Life.'\n\n'But we are in her sign!' cried Atreyu. 'Isn't she herself here?'\n\n'It says that Moon Child's power ends here. She is the only one who can never set foot in this place. She cannot penetrate to the center of AURYN, because she cannot cast off her own self.'\n\nAtreyu was too bewildered to speak.\n\n'Now,' said Falkor, 'it's asking whether Bastian is ready.'\n\nAt that moment the enormous black snake's head began to move very slowly, though without releasing the white snake's tail. The gigantic bodies arched until they formed a gate, one half of which was black and the other white.\n\nAtreyu took Bastian by the hand and led him through the terrible gate toward the fountain, which now lay before them in all its grandeur. Falkor followed. As they advanced, one after another of Bastian's Fantastican gifts fell away from him. The strong, handsome, fearless hero became again the small, fat, timid boy. Even his clothing, which had been reduced almost to rags in the Minroud Mine, vanished and dissolved into nothingness. In the end he stood naked before the great golden bowl, at the center of which the Water of Life leapt high into the air like a crystal tree.\n\nIn this last moment, when he no longer possessed any of the Fantastican gifts but had not yet recovered his memory of his own world and himself, he was in a state of utter uncertainty, not knowing which world he belonged to or whether he really existed.\n\nBut then he jumped into the crystal-clear water. He splashed and spluttered and let the sparkling rain fall into his mouth. He drank till his thirst was quenched. And joy filled him from head to foot, the joy of living and the joy of being himself. He was newborn. And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else. Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.\n\nAnd much later, long after Bastian had returned to his world, in his maturity and even in his old age, this joy never left him entirely. Even in the hardest moments of his life he preserved a lightheartedness that made him smile and that comforted others.\n\n'Atreyu!' he cried out to his friend, who was standing with Falkor at the edge of the great golden bowl. 'Come on in! Come and drink! It's wonderful!'\n\nAtreyu laughed and shook his head.\n\n'No,' he called back. 'This time we're only here to keep you company.'\n\n'This time?' Bastian asked. 'What do you mean by that?'\n\nAtreyu exchanged a glance with Falkor. Then he said: 'Falkor and I have already been here. We didn't recognize the place at first, because we were asleep when we were brought here and when we were taken away. But now we remember.'\n\nBastian came out of the water.\n\n'Now I know who I am,' he said, beaming.\n\n'Yes,' said Atreyu, and nodded. 'And now I recognize you. Now you look the way you did when I saw you in the Magic Mirror Gate.'\n\nBastian looked up at the foaming, sparkling water.\n\n'I'd like to bring my father some,' he shouted. 'But how?'\n\n'I don't think you can do that,' said Atreyu. 'It's not possible to carry anything from Fantastica across the threshold.'\n\n'For Bastian it is!' said Falkor, whose voice had resumed its full bronze resonance. 'He can do it.'\n\n'You really are a luckdragon,' said Bastian.\n\nFalkor motioned him to be still while he listened to the roaring voice of the Water.\n\nThen he said: 'The Water says you must be on your way now and so must we.'\n\n'Which is my way?' Bastian asked.\n\n'Out through the other gate,' Falkor answered. 'Where the white snake's head is lying.'\n\n'All right,' said Bastian. 'But how will I get out? The white head isn't moving.'\n\nIndeed, the white snake's head lay motionless. It held the black snake's tail in its jaws and stared at Bastian out of its great eyes.\n\n'The Water asks you,' Falkor translated, 'whether you completed all the stories you began in Fantastica.'\n\n'No,' said Bastian. 'None of them really.'\n\nFalkor listened awhile. His face took on a worried look.\n\n'In that case, it says, the white snake won't let you through. You must go back to Fantastica and finish them all.'\n\n'All the stories?' Bastian stammered. 'Then I'll never be able to go back. Then it's all been for nothing.'\n\nFalkor listened eagerly.\n\n'What does it say?' Bastian wanted to know.\n\n'Hush!' said Falkor.\n\nAfter a while he sighed and said: 'It says there's no help for it unless someone promises to do it in your place. But no one can do that.'\n\n'I can! I will!' said Atreyu.\n\nBastian looked at him in silence. Then he fell on his neck and stammered: 'Atreyu! Atreyu! I'll never forget this!'\n\nAtreyu smiled.\n\n'That's good, Bastian. Then you won't forget Fantastica either.'\n\nHe gave him a brotherly pat on the back, then quickly turned around and headed for the black snake's gate, which was still upraised and open as when they had entered.\n\n'Falkor,' said Bastian. 'How will you and Atreyu finish the stories I have left behind?'\n\nThe white dragon winked one of his ruby-red eyes and replied: 'With luck, my boy! with luck!'\n\nThen he followed his friend and master.\n\nBastian watched as they passed through the gate on their way back to Fantastica. They turned again and waved to him. Then as the black snake's head sank to the ground, Atreyu and Falkor vanished from Bastian's sight.\n\nNow he was alone.\n\nHe turned towards the white snake's head. It had risen and the snake's body now formed a gate just as the black snake's body had done.\n\nQuickly Bastian cupped his hands, gathered as much of the Water of Life as he could hold, ran to the gate, and flung himself into the empty darkness beyond.\n\n'Father!' he screamed. 'Father! I \u2013 am \u2013 Bastian \u2013 Balthazar \u2013 Bux!'\n\n_'Father! Father! I \u2013 am \u2013 Bastian \u2013 Balthazar \u2013 Bux!'_\n\n_Still screaming, he found himself in the schoolhouse attic, which long, long ago he had left for Fantastica. At first he didn't recognize the place, and because of the strange objects around him, the stuffed animals, the skeleton, and the paintings, he thought for a brief moment that this might be a different part of Fantastica. But then, catching sight of his school satchel and the rusty seven-armed candelabrum with the spent candles, he knew where he was._\n\n_How long could it have been since he started on his long journey through the Neverending Story? Weeks? Months? Years? He had once read about a man who had spent just an hour in a magic cave. When he returned home, a hundred years had passed, and of all the people he had known as a child he remembered only one, and he was an old old man._\n\n_Bastian was aware of the gray daylight, but he could not make out whether it was morning or afternoon. It was bitter cold in the attic, just as on the night of Bastian's departure._\n\n_He disentangled himself from the dusty army blankets, put on his shoes and coat, and saw to his surprise that they were as wet as they had been the day when it had rained so hard._\n\n_He looked for the book he had stolen that day, the book that had started him on his adventure. He was determined to bring it back to that grumpy Mr Coreander. What did he care if Mr Coreander punished him for stealing it, or reported him to the police? A person who had ridden on the back of the Many-Colored Death didn't scare so easily. But the book wasn't there._\n\n_Bastian looked and looked. He rummaged through the blankets and looked in every corner. Without success. The Neverending Story had disappeared._\n\n_'Oh well,' Bastian finally said to himself. 'I'll have to tell him it's gone. Of course he won't believe me. There's nothing I can do about that, I'll just have to take the consequences. But maybe he won't even remember the book after all this time. Maybe the bookshop isn't even there anymore.'_\n\n_He would soon find out how much time had elapsed. If when he passed through the schoolhouse the teachers and pupils he ran into were unknown to him, he would know what to expect._\n\n_But when he opened the attic door and went down the stairs, there wasn't a sound to be heard. The building seemed deserted. And then the school clock struck nine. That meant it was morning, so classes must have begun._\n\n_Bastian looked into several classrooms. All were empty. When he went to a window and looked down into the street, he saw a few pedestrians and cars. So the world hadn't come to an end._\n\n_He ran down the steps and tried to open the big front door, but it was locked. He went to the janitor's office, rang the bell and knocked, but no one stirred._\n\n_What was he to do? He couldn't just wait for someone to turn up. Even if he had spilled the Water of Life, he wanted to go home to his father._\n\n_Should he open a window and shout until somebody heard him and had the door opened? No, that would make him feel foolish. It occurred to him that he could climb out of a window, since the windows could be opened from the inside. But the ground-floor windows were all barred. Then he remembered that in looking out of the second-floor window he had seen some scaffolding. Evidently the fa\u00e7ade was being refurbished._\n\n_Bastian went back up to the second floor and opened the window. The scaffolding consisted only of uprights with boards placed horizontally between them at intervals. He stepped out on the top board, which swayed under his weight. For a moment his head reeled and he felt afraid, but he fought his dizziness and fear. To someone who had been lord of Perilin, this was no problem, even if he had lost his fabulous strength and even though the weight of his little fat body was making things rather hard for him. Calmly and deliberately he found holds for his hands and feet and climbed down. Once he got a splinter in his hand, but such trifles meant nothing to him now. Though slightly overheated and out of breath, he reached the street in good shape. No one had seen him._\n\n_Bastian ran home. He ran so hard that the books and pens in his satchel jiggled and rattled to the rhythm of his steps. He had a stitch in his side, but in his hurry to see his father he kept on running._\n\n_When at last he came to the house where he lived, he stopped for a moment and looked up at the window of his father's laboratory. Then suddenly he was seized with fear. For the first time it occurred to him that his father might not be there anymore._\n\n_But his father was there and must have seen him coming, for when Bastian rushed up the stairs, his father came running to meet him. He spread out his arms and Bastian threw himself into them. His father lifted him up and carried him inside._\n\n_'Bastian, my boy!' he said over and over again. 'My dear little boy, where have you been? What happened to you?'_\n\n_A few minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table and Bastian was drinking hot milk and eating breakfast rolls, which his father had lovingly spread with butter and honey. Then the boy noticed that his_ _father's face was pale and drawn, his eyes red and his chin unshaven. But otherwise he looked the same as he had long ago, when Bastian went away. And Bastian told him so._\n\n_'Long ago?' his father asked in amazement. 'What do you mean?'_\n\n_'How long have I been gone?'_\n\n_'Since yesterday, Bastian. Since you went to school. But when you didn't come home, I phoned your teachers and they told me you hadn't been there. I looked for you all day and all night, my boy. I feared the worst, I put the police on your trail. Oh God, Bastian! What happened? I've been half crazy with worry. Where have you been?'_\n\n_Then Bastian began to tell his father about his adventures. He told the whole story in great detail. It took many hours._\n\n_His father listened as he had never listened before. He understood Bastian's story._\n\n_At about midday he interrupted Bastian for a little while. First he called the police to tell them his son had come home and that everything was all right. Then he made lunch for both of them, and Bastian went on with his story. Night was falling by the time Bastian came to the Water of Life and told his father how he had wanted to bring him some but had spilled it._\n\n_It was almost dark in the kitchen. His father sat motionless. Bastian stood up and switched on the light. And then he saw something he had never seen before._\n\n_He saw tears in his father's eyes._\n\n_And he knew that he had brought him the Water of Life after all._\n\n_Bastian's father sat him down on his lap and hugged him. When they had sat like that for a long while, his father heaved a deep sigh, looked into Bastian's face, and smiled. It was the happiest smile Bastian had ever seen on his face._\n\n_'From now on,' said his father, 'everything is going to be different between us. Don't you agree?'_\n\n_Bastian nodded. He couldn't speak. His heart was too full._\n\n_Next morning the winter's first snow lay soft and clean on Bastion's windowsill. The street sounds that came to him were muffled._\n\n_'Do you know what, Bastian?' said his father at breakfast. 'I think we two have every reason to celebrate. A day like this happens only once in a lifetime \u2013 and some people never have one. So I suggest that we do something really sensational. I'll forget about any work and you needn't go to school. I'll write an excuse for you. How does that sound?'_\n\n_'School?' said Bastian. 'Is it still operating? When I passed through the building yesterday, there wasn't a soul. Not even the janitor was there.'_\n\n_'Yesterday?' said his father. 'Yesterday was Sunday.'_\n\n_Bastian stirred his cocoa thoughtfully. Then he said in an undertone: 'I think it's going to take me a little while to get used to things again.'_\n\n_'Exactly,' said his father. 'And that's why we're giving ourselves a little holiday. What would you like to do? We could go for a hike in the country or we could go to the zoo. Either way we'll treat ourselves to the finest lunch the world has ever seen. This afternoon we could go shopping and buy anything you like. And tonight \u2013 how about the theater?'_\n\n_Bastian's eyes sparkled. Then he said firmly: 'Wonderful! But there's something I must do first. I have to go and tell Mr Coreander that I stole his book and lost it.'_\n\n_Bastian's father took his hand._\n\n_'If you like,' he said, 'I'll attend to that for you.'_\n\n_'No,' said Bastian. 'It's my responsibility. I want to do it myself. And I think I should do it right away.'_\n\n_He stood up and put on his coat. His father said nothing, but the look on his face was one of surprise and respect. Such behavior in Bastian was something new._\n\n_'I believe,' he said finally, 'that I too will need a little time to get used to things.'_\n\n_Bastian was already in the entrance hall. 'I'll be right back,' he called. 'I'm sure it won't take long. Not this time.'_\n\n_When he came to Mr Coreander's bookshop, his courage failed him after all. He looked through the pane with the ornate lettering on it. Mr Coreander was busy with a customer, and Bastian decided to wait. He walked up and down outside the shop. It was snowing again._\n\n_At last the customer left._\n\n_'Now!' Bastian commanded himself._\n\n_Remembering how he had gone to meet Grograman in Goab, the Desert of Colors, he pressed the door handle resolutely._\n\n_Behind the wall of books at the far end of the dimly lit room he heard a cough. He went forward, then, slightly pale but with grave composure, he stepped up to Mr Coreander, who was sitting in his worn leather armchair as he had been at their last meeting._\n\n_For a long time Bastian said nothing. He had expected Mr Coreander to go red in the face and scream at him:' Thief! Monster!' or something of the kind._\n\n_Instead, the old man deliberately lit his curved pipe, screwed up his eyes, and studied the boy through his ridiculous little spectacles. When the pipe was finally burning, he puffed awhile, then grumbled: 'What is it this time?'_\n\n_'I...' Bastian began haltingly. 'I stole a book from you. I meant to return it, but I can't, because I lost it, or rather \u2013 well, I haven't got it anymore.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander stopped puffing and took his pipe out of his mouth._\n\n_'What sort of book?' he asked._\n\n_'The one you were reading the last time I was here. I walked off with it. You were telephoning in the back room, it was lying on the chair, and I just walked off with it.'_\n\n_'I see,' said Mr Coreander, clearing his throat. 'But none of my books is missing. What was the title of this book?'_\n\n_'It's called the Neverending Story,' said Bastian. 'It's bound in_ _copper-colored silk that shimmers when you move it around. There are two snakes on the cover, a light one and a dark one, and they're biting each other's tail. Inside it's printed in two different colors \u2013 and there are big beautiful capitals at the beginning of the chapters.'_\n\n_'This is extremely odd,' said Mr Coreander. 'I've never had such a book. You can't have stolen it from me. Maybe you swiped it somewhere else.'_\n\n_'Oh no!' Bastian assured him. 'You must remember. It's \u2013' He hesitated, but then he blurted it out. 'It's a magic book. While I was reading it, I got into the Neverending Story, and when I came out again, the book was gone.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander watched Bastian over his spectacles._\n\n_'Would you be pulling my leg, by any chance?'_\n\n_'No,' said Bastian in dismay. 'Of course not. I'm telling you the truth. You must know that.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander thought for a while, then shook his head._\n\n_'Better tell me all about it. Sit down, boy. Make yourself at home.'_\n\n_He pointed his pipe stem at a second armchair, facing his own, and Bastian sat down._\n\n_'And now,' said Mr Coreander, 'tell me the whole story. But slowly, if you please, and one thing at a time.'_\n\n_And Bastian told his story._\n\n_He told it a little more briefly than he had to his father, but since Mr Coreander listened with keen interest and kept asking for details, it was more than two hours before Bastian had done._\n\n_Heaven knows why, but in all that long time they were not disturbed by a single customer._\n\n_When Bastian had finished, Mr Coreander puffed for a long while, as though deep in thought. At length he cleared his throat, straightened his little spectacles, looked Bastian over, and said: 'One thing is sure: You didn't steal this book from me, because it belongs neither to me nor to you nor to anyone else. If I'm not mistaken, the book itself comes from_ _Fantastica. Maybe at this very moment \u2013 who knows? \u2013 someone else is reading it.'_\n\n_'Then you believe me?' Bastian asked._\n\n_'Of course I believe you,' said Mr Coreander. 'Any sensible person would.'_\n\n_'Frankly,' said Bastian, 'I didn't expect you to.'_\n\n_'There are people who can never go to Fantastica,' said Mr Coreander, 'and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both worlds well again.'_\n\n_'Oh,' said Bastian, blushing slightly. 'I don't deserve any credit. I almost didn't make it back. If it hadn't been for Atreyu I'd have been stuck in the City of Old Emperors for good.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander nodded and puffed at his pipe._\n\n_'Hmm,' he grumbled. 'You're lucky having a friend in Fantastica, God knows, it's not everybody who can say that.'_\n\n_'Mr Coreander,' Bastian asked. 'How do you know all that? I mean \u2013 have you ever been in Fantastica?'_\n\n_'Of course I have,' said Mr Coreander._\n\n_'But then' said Bastian, 'you must know Moon Child.'_\n\n_'Yes, I know the Childlike Empress,' said Mr Coreander, 'though not by that name. I called her something different. But that doesn't matter.'_\n\n_'Then you must know the book!' Bastian cried.' Then you_ have _read the Neverending Story.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander shook his head._\n\n_'Every real story is a Neverending Story.' He passed his eyes over the many books that covered the walls of his shop from floor to ceiling, pointed the stem of his pipe at them, and went on_ :\n\n_'There are many doors to Fantastica, my boy. There are other such magic books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who gets his hands on such books.'_\n\n_'Then the Neverending Story is different for different people?'_\n\n_'That's right,' said Mr Coreander. 'And besides, it's not just books. There are other ways of getting to Fantastica and back. You'll find out.'_\n\n_'Do you think so?' Bastian asked hopefully. 'But then I'd have to meet Moon Child again, and no one can meet her more than once.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander leaned forward and lowered his voice._\n\n_'Let an old Fantastica hand tell you something, my boy. This is a secret that no one in Fantastica can know. When you think it over, you'll see why. You can't visit Moon Child a second time, that's true. But if you can give her a new name, you'll see her again. And however often you manage to do that, it will be the first and only time.'_\n\n_For a moment Mr Coreander's bulldog face took on a soft glow, which made it look young and almost handsome._\n\n_'Thank you, Mr Coreander,' said Bastian._\n\n_'I have to thank you, my boy,' said Mr Coreander. 'I'd appreciate it if you dropped in to see me now and then. We could exchange experiences. There aren't many people one can discuss these things with.'_\n\n_He held out his hand to Bastian. 'Will you?'_\n\n_'Gladly,' said Bastian, taking the proffered hand. 'I have to go now. My father's waiting. But I'll come and see you soon.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander took him to the door. Through the reversed writing on the glass pane, Bastian saw that his father was waiting for him across the street. His face was one great beam._\n\n_Bastian opened the door so vigorously that the little glass bells tinkled wildly, and ran across to his father._\n\n_Mr Coreander closed the door gently and looked after father and son._\n\n_'Bastian Balthazar Bux,' he grumbled. 'If I'm not mistaken, you will show many others the way to Fantastica, and they will bring us the Water of Life.'_\n\n_Mr Coreander was not mistaken._\n\n_But that's another story and shall be told another time._\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n**Michael Ende** was born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in 1929. After attending drama school, he worked variously as an actor, playwright, director, and film critic. His first novel for children, _Jim Knopf and Lukas the Engine Driver_ , published in 1960 in Germany, won much critical acclaim. In 1973, he published the award-winning children's novel, _Momo. The Neverending Story_ was first published in Germany in 1979, where it was the number-one best-seller for three years. Ende lived in Rome until his death in 1995.\n\n# _What's next on  \nyour reading list?_\n\n[Discover your next  \ngreat read!](http:\/\/links.penguinrandomhouse.com\/type\/prhebooklanding\/isbn\/9780525556046\/display\/1)\n\n* * *\n\nGet personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.\n\nSign up now.\n  1. Cover\n  2. Title Page\n  3. Copyright\n  4. Contents\n  5. I: Fantastica in Danger\n  6. II: Atreyu's Mission\n  7. III: Morla the Aged One\n  8. IV: Ygramul the Many\n  9. V: The Gnomics\n  10. VI: The Three Magic Gates\n  11. VII: The Voice of Silence\n  12. VIII: The Wind Giants\n  13. IX: Spook City\n  14. X: The Flight to the Ivory Tower\n  15. XI: The Childlike Empress\n  16. XII: The Old Man of Wandering Mountain\n  17. XIII: Perilin, the Night Forest\n  18. XIV: The Desert of Colors\n  19. XV: Grograman, the Many-Colored Death\n  20. XVI: The Silver City of Amarganth\n  21. XVII: A Dragon for Hero Hynreck\n  22. XVIII: The Acharis\n  23. XIX: The Traveling Companions\n  24. XX: The Seeing Hand\n  25. XXI: The Star Cloister\n  26. XXII: The Battle for the Ivory Tower\n  27. XXIII: The City of the Old Emperors\n  28. XXIV: Dame Eyola\n  29. XXV: The Picture Mine\n  30. XXVI: The Water of Life\n  31. About the Author\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n  3. Chapter\n  4. Cover\n\n  1. \n  2. \n  3. \n  4. \n  5. \n  6. \n  7. \n  8. \n  9. \n  10. \n  11. \n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216. \n  217. \n  218. \n  219. \n  220. \n  221. \n  222. \n  223. \n  224. \n  225. \n  226. \n  227. \n  228. \n  229. \n  230. \n  231. \n  232. \n  233. \n  234. \n  235. \n  236. \n  237. \n  238. \n  239. \n  240. \n  241. \n  242. \n  243. \n  244. \n  245. \n  246. \n  247. \n  248. \n  249. \n  250. \n  251. \n  252. \n  253. \n  254. \n  255. \n  256. \n  257. \n  258. \n  259. \n  260. \n  261. \n  262. \n  263. \n  264. \n  265. \n  266. \n  267. \n  268. \n  269. \n  270. \n  271. \n  272. \n  273. \n  274. \n  275. \n  276. \n  277. \n  278. \n  279. \n  280. \n  281. \n  282. \n  283. \n  284. \n  285. \n  286. \n  287. \n  288. \n  289. \n  290. \n  291. \n  292. \n  293. \n  294. \n  295. \n  296. \n  297. \n  298. \n  299. \n  300. \n  301. \n  302. \n  303. \n  304. \n  305. \n  306. \n  307. \n  308. \n  309. \n  310. \n  311. \n  312. \n  313. \n  314. \n  315. \n  316. \n  317. \n  318. \n  319. \n  320. \n  321. \n  322. \n  323. \n  324. \n  325. \n  326. \n  327. \n  328. \n  329. \n  330. \n  331. \n  332. \n  333. \n  334. \n  335. \n  336. \n  337. \n  338. \n  339. \n  340. \n  341. \n  342. \n  343. \n  344. \n  345. \n  346. \n  347. \n  348. \n  349. \n  350. \n  351. \n  352. \n  353. \n  354. \n  355. \n  356. \n  357. \n  358. \n  359. \n  360. \n  361. \n  362. \n  363. \n  364. \n  365. \n  366. \n  367. \n  368. \n  369. \n  370. \n  371. \n  372. \n  373. \n  374. \n  375. \n  376. \n  377. \n  378. \n  379. \n  380. \n  381. \n  382. \n  383. \n  384. \n  385. \n  386. \n  387. \n  388. \n  389. \n  390. \n  391. \n  392. \n  393. \n  394. \n  395. \n  396. \n  397. \n  398. \n  399. \n  400. \n  401. \n  402. \n  403. \n  404. \n  405. \n  406. \n  407. \n  408. \n  409. \n  410. \n  411. \n  412. \n  413. \n  414. \n  415. \n  416. \n  417. \n  418. \n  419. \n  420. \n  421. \n  422. \n  423. \n  424. \n  425. \n  426. \n  427. \n  428. \n  429. \n  430. \n  431. \n  432. \n  433. \n  434. \n  435. \n  436. \n  437. \n  438. \n  439. \n  440. \n  441. \n  442. \n  443.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nROAD TRIP\n\nRWANDA\n**ALSO BY WILL FERGUSON**\n\nTRAVEL MEMOIRS\n\n_Beyond Belfast:_\n\n_A 560-Mile Walk Across Northern Ireland on Sore Feet_\n\n_Hitching Rides with Buddha:_\n\n_A Journey Across Japan_\n\n_Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw:_\n\n_Travels in Search of Canada_\n\nFICTION\n\n_419_\n\n_Spanish Fly_\n\n_Happiness\u2122_\n\nHUMOUR\n\n_Canadian Pie_\n\n_How to Be a Canadian_ (with Ian Ferguson)\n\n_Why I Hate Canadians_\n\nCHRISTMAS MEMOIR\n\n_Coal Dust Kisses_\n\nAS EDITOR\n\n_The Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour_\n\nAS SONGWRITER\n\nLyricist for the songs \"Con Men and Call Girls, Part One,\" \"When the Circus Comes to Town,\" and \"Losin' Hand\" on the Tom Philips music CD _Spanish Fly_\nROAD TRIP\n\nRWANDA\n\n**A Journey into the New Heart of Africa**\n\n**WILL FERGUSON**\n\nCONTENTS\n\nAUTHOR'S NOTE\n\n**Rusumo Falls**\n\nPART ONE\n\n**A Thousand Hills**\n\nPART TWO\n\n**\"We Are All Rwandans\"**\n\nPART THREE\n\n**King Kong & the Shroud of Turin**\n\nPART FOUR\n\n**The Road to Rusumo**\n\nSOURCES\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n**AUTHOR'S NOTE**\n\nIN 2006, RWANDA REORGANIZED its administrative boundaries, merging twelve smaller provinces into five larger ones. Regional cities and towns that bore the names of the older provinces had their names changed as well. This can be confusing for visitors, especially those with an interest in Rwandan history. Books and testimonies about the genocide, for example, do not refer to \"Huye\" but Butare, not to \"Rubavu\" but Gisenyi. I've employed the older names throughout, while acknowledging the new ones in parentheses. On the maps, I have reversed this, listing the current names followed by _\"formerly_...\"\n**RUSUMO FALLS**\n\nTHE BRIDGE AT THE END OF RWANDA crosses the Akagera River in a single, graceful arc: a thin span joining the scrub hills of southern Rwanda with those of northern Tanzania.\n\nBelow the bridge, a drama is playing out. The milk-tea waters of an otherwise languid river narrow suddenly into the bottleneck of Rusumo Falls, a tumult more heard than seen. Only a trace of mist hints at the waterfall's presence.\n\nTransport trucks from Tanzania rumble across the bridge, the din from their engines drowning out the sound of water, but Rusumo is always there, just out of sight.\n\nI want to walk out onto the bridge and peer down at the falls but I can't, even though the two Rwandan soldiers posted there\u2014a young man and a young woman in heavy olive-green uniforms, rifles slung over shoulders, faces sheened in perspiration\u2014shrugged and gave me a weary \"go ahead\" wave when I asked. Just don't go past the middle of the bridge, they advised, because after that I would be Tanzania's concern.\n\nThis is the crux of the conundrum I face: I have permission, but I don't. Or rather, I have two conflicting sets of permission, one granted by the soldiers at the bridge, the other being withheld by an officious little man who has disappeared with my passport and papers. Normally, I would say take your cues from the people who are armed\u2014in my experience, an AK-47 generally trumps a stamp pad\u2014but one never wants to underestimate the power of a mid-level bureaucrat to ruin one's day.\n\nSo.\n\nI do not walk onto the bridge.\n\nInstead I sit, sticky-shirted in the heat, under the rapidly diminishing slice of shade afforded by the corrugated overhang of the roof at the Rwanda Customs and Immigration\u2014well, _hall_ is too grand a word. _Bungalow_ is more accurate. It's a squat, cement-walled structure with a warren of offices in the back and a pair of bank-teller-type windows out front where forms are duly shuffled and stamped.\n\nA procession of tired-looking Tanzanian truck drivers, paperwork in hand, moves past me. And is there anything more wilted or damp in this world than the paperwork of a Tanzanian truck driver? At times, this procession becomes a crush of bodies, the air pungent with perspiration, and as the men push through, they give me sympathetic nods and deeply curious looks. A _muzungu_ , flesh the colour of boiled pork, forced to wait? Unfathomable.\n\nI appreciate their concern, even if none of the drivers offer to smuggle me across. Under a sack of coffee beans, say.\n\nSo I sit here, marinating in the heat, and I wonder what has become of Jean-Claude. I wonder whether he has been arrested. I wonder whether I will be arrested. More importantly, I wonder what we're going to do about lunch.\n\nI'm stuck in a no man's land, the term a tad misleading at a border crossing packed with drivers and vehicles, trucks wedged in every which way like a giant game of Jenga. At the top of the hill, Rwandan taverns are cooing promises of Primus beer and welcoming shade. But I can't retreat and I can't move forward. I can only wait.\n\nAs one hour drips by, then another, I make friends with a succession of Tanzanian truck drivers. They speak French, Swahili, and a bit of Kinyarwanda, with a smattering of English thrown in more for style than substance.\n\nFortunately, I speak Truck Driver, a form of male-speak found in most countries. Using a range of gestures (often involving eyebrows, puffed-cheek exhalations, and the pantomimed fanning of one's brow), we are able to come to an agreement, for example, that it is very hot out. We likewise agree that a beer would be good right about now. We are also in favour of women. Other points covered include: man, is it hot; too hot, really; someone should sell beer down here, they'd make a lot of money; women, eh? Cor!\n\nThey ask me where I'm from. Really? They have a cousin\/aunt\/uncle\/brother-in-law there! Is it hot like this in my country? And can I sponsor them? Truck driving is hard work, you see. Too hard. And the women in my country? Are they, _you know_ , heh heh? (That last query is delivered non-verbally for the most part, involving the further artful use of eyebrows along with a leering grin, a leering grin being the International Symbol for _Women, eh? Cor blimey!_ )\n\nHiding under a sack of coffee beans is looking better and better. Maybe I'll become a truck driver's turn boy, one of those assistants who guide the massive rigs into car parks. Maybe I'll work my way up to my own rig, become a mythical figure, a wild-eyed muzungu of the plains, crazy from the heat, who made a fortune selling Primus beer outside of immigration offices. They'd write songs about me. Women would run alongside, waving as I passed. Boy, is it hot. Someone should really sell beer down here. They'd make good money.\n\nBefore I can slip dreamily into that other life, Jean-Claude reappears, mightily irked by the slow-motion ordeal he's been put through.\n\nHe's had enough of the Rwandan customs official, that small hovering man who has followed him out and is now pleading for us to wait. This insubstantial gentleman needs to hear from his superiors in the district office on what to do about us. But today is Saturday, and no one is answering the phone.\n\n\"It is a simple request,\" Jean-Claude says to him. \"Can we go out on the bridge and take photographs or not?\"\n\nBut our hovering official doesn't know. He is caught in an administrative no man's land of his own.\n\n\"Are you detaining us?\" Jean-Claude demands. \"Are you placing us under arrest? I didn't think so.\" He turns to me. \"Come on, let's go.\"\n\nWe walk out onto the bridge, leaving the anxious clerk behind, wringing his hands to no avail.\n\n\"Did he want a bribe?\" I ask.\n\n\"This is Rwanda,\" Jean-Claude says. \"We don't pay bribes.\"\n\nThe two soldiers nod as we pass.\n\nJean-Claude and I walk out to where the river is spilling over the boulder-strewn narrows, water splaying across the rocks. Murky currents. Earth-scented air. A permanent rainbow. _This is where the bodies would have tumbled_...\n\nAs trucks roll by, the bridge bounces with a disconcerting sproinginess.\n\n\"I remember that!\" Jean-Claude says with a sudden smile. \"I remember it bouncing. I thought it was just my imagination!\"\n\nHe has never seen this bridge before, though he remembers it well. When he crossed twenty years ago, he was hiding under coffee sacks in the back of a transport truck.\n\n\"What would they have done?\" I ask. \"If they had caught you?\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he says. \"They would have killed me.\"\n\nHe says this without rancour or melodrama, but as a simple statement of fact. _If they'd caught me, they would have killed me_.\n\nPART ONE\n\n**A THOUSAND HILLS**\n**1**\n\nI FIRST MET JEAN-CLAUDE MUNYEZAMU on a summery field in Calgary seven years earlier. Our children were on the same under-five community soccer team ( _\"Go Tigers!\"_ ) and Jean-Claude was one of the volunteer coaches, though coaching kids at that age amounted primarily to making sure they were at least running in the same direction. Jean-Claude and I became friends; our wives became friends, our children as well.\n\nWhen I found out where he was from, one of the first things I asked him\u2014which I cringe at, even now\u2014was \"So you're from Rwanda? Are you a... Tutsi or a Hutu?\"\n\nHe smiled softly. \"Tutsi.\"\n\nI did a quick calibration in my head: _In Rwanda, did the Tutsis kill the Hutus, or did the Hutus kill the Tutsis?_ That's how little I knew. I had only vague recollections of one of the worst mass killings in human history.\n\nAt their home in southwest Calgary, Jean-Claude's wife Christine would cook bubbling stews served with _ugali_ , a loaf-like communal dumpling torn and dipped. Over tall glasses of ginger-laced tea\u2014a Rwandan specialty\u2014Jean-Claude would urge me to visit his country someday.\n\n\"Rwanda is beautiful,\" he'd say, and Christine would agree. \"You have to see it! Take your boys.\"\n\n\"We'll go there together,\" Jean-Claude said. \"We'll bring soccer equipment to donate.\"\n\nI hesitated, not for reasons of safety\u2014but of sadness. I'd always maintained that a sense of humour can be found in any destination, no matter how bruised, how battered, and that through humour we can find a sense of shared humanity. But Rwanda?\n\nThrough Jean-Claude, I'd gotten to know Calgary's Rwandan community, and through them I had gained the smallest glimpse into the terrors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis of Rwanda, when over the course of one hundred horrific days, upward of one million men, women, and children were butchered under the racially charged ideology of Hutu Power. More than 75 percent of the Tutsi population inside Rwanda was wiped out and almost all Hutu political moderates executed in what has been described by analysts as \"the most efficient and complete genocide of modern times.\" Also targeted were independent journalists, lawyers, human rights investigators, members of the opposition\u2014anyone on the wrong side of power. But whereas political opponents had been killed for what they believed, Tutsis were killed simply for having been born. This is the key distinction of a genocide. The Tutsis were not targeted as individuals; they were targeted as a group. It was a deliberate, well-planned, organized undertaking. _One million people in one hundred days_. It was a killing rate five times higher than that attained by the Nazis.\n\nA young Rwandan woman in Calgary, speaking softly, told me how she'd survived the carnage as a little girl by climbing under the \"buddies.\" But no\u2014not buddies. In her lovely accent, so rounded and rich, she was referring not to buddies, but _bodies_.\n\nWhenever I describe Jean-Claude as a genocide survivor, he quietly corrects me. \"I'm not a survivor, I'm an escapee. There is a big difference.\" He was never hunted through the marshes, hacked at by machetes. He never hid under the dwindling warmth of _buddies_.\n\nJean-Claude's mother had died when he was little, so when his father passed away in 1993, Jean-Claude, as a young man of nineteen, knew there was nothing keeping him in Rwanda.\n\n\"As a Tutsi, it was oppressive. You were a second-class citizen. You were targeted constantly.\" Dark clouds were forming. Practice massacres had already occurred in the outlying regions. The walls were closing in, and a sense of dread pervaded every transaction as the radio and newspapers exhorted Rwanda's Hutu majority to \"stop having mercy\" on the Tutsis. Fortunately for Jean-Claude, he had a brother in Kenya, and that would prove to be his escape hatch. He scraped together enough money to pay a truck driver to smuggle him across the border into Tanzania under a cargo of coffee beans, past armed soldiers and then overland to Mombasa.\n\nThe genocide in Rwanda began ten months later.\n\nJean-Claude Munyezamu had made it out alive. His brothers and cousins, his uncles and nephews, were not so lucky. An older sister and her infant child were rescued by UN peacekeepers from a church just before the killers swarmed in. \"She lives with that\u2014with the trauma of that\u2014every day,\" Jean-Claude told me.\n\nJean-Claude reached Canada by a circuitous route that took him first through Tanzania and Kenya, and then as an aid volunteer to Somalia and Sudan, until finally\u2014and most daunting of all, perhaps\u2014he landed in Montreal in the middle of February. \"When I arrived it was minus thirty-two and I was wearing a hoodie. It was the warmest jacket I could find. I grew up on the equator, and when I got out of the airport it felt like the cold was sucking the air out of my lungs.\" He laughed. \"I wondered if I should not have stayed in Africa.\"\n\nGranted permanent residency status, he settled in Alberta, worked as a meat cutter, an oil-rig worker, a taxi driver, learned English, and attained his Canadian citizenship. He began volunteering at Calgary homeless shelters and, in his spare time, set up Soccer Without Boundaries, a volunteer-run program for immigrant and refugee children. The goal was to help them integrate into their local communities through an open-door sports program\u2014and it worked. Very well, in fact. I helped out with his soccer club now and then, was thanked profusely and far in excess of whatever minor assistance I'd provided, and through it got to know parents and children from countries as far afield as\u2014and this is just a partial tally, mind you\u2014Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Korea, the Philippines, Uruguay, and Colombia.\n\nToday, Jean-Claude sits on the Premier's Council on Culture. He has received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work with youth. He is married, with three children. A father, a husband, a community organizer, a soccer coach. And a genocide escapee.\n\n**2**\n\nRUSUMO FALLS IS A FATEFUL BOTTLENECK, for it was at Rusumo, where the river narrows, that an obscure German count first crossed over into the Kingdom of Rwanda. This was in 1894. Other explorers had skirted the edge of this remote realm; none had entered.\n\nRwanda lies in the crosshairs of Africa. Known as the \"Land of a Thousand Hills,\" it is the true heart of the continent, the last region to be reached by Europeans, one never impacted by the slave trade, located along the farthest watersheds of the Congo and Nile rivers.\n\nWhat the German count discovered surprised him. Here, in the deepest reaches of Africa, was a complex, highly organized, semi-feudal society with a divine king, or _mwami_ , in the centre and a network of aristocrats, courtiers, prefects, and vassals radiating outward from his majesty's royal court. It was highly bureaucratic as well, with an administration divided into four levels: prefecture, district, hilltop, and local commune. Every hill had its chiefs, every chief his delegate. Every farm, every home, every house was accounted for.\n\nRwanda was\u2014and still is\u2014the most densely populated country in continental Africa: fertile soil and a fertile populace as well. The culture was cohesive and tightly controlled, and the people were known throughout the region for being law-abiding and compliant\u2014traits that mark Rwanda, for better or worse, right through to today. A Hutu lawyer, struggling to explain how so many of his fellow countrymen could be incited to mass murder, admitted, \"Conformity is very deep, very developed here. In Rwanda, everyone obeys authority.\"\n\nIn many ways, the roots of the 1994 genocide were planted by that first German count pushing across the narrow gap at Rusumo Falls, filling in the last part of the map. Even before the Germans appeared, the mercantile empires of Europe had divided Africa among themselves, drawing presumptuously decisive lines on cartographical charts, claiming tracts of land so vast they defied the imagination. Rwanda was claimed by Germany without anyone from Germany ever having set foot in it; the kingdom was so remote it took nearly ten years before even that first count arrived. Of course, he didn't _tell the_ mwami he had come to claim a kingdom. It was a scouting mission as much as anything, an act of stealth, the opening gambit of a slowly constricting campaign.\n\nAlthough Rwanda was part of German East Africa, German rule didn't last. During World War I, Belgian troops occupied the kingdom, and with Germany's defeat, the colony was handed over to Belgium, which had been ruling the Congo next door in what can only be called a reign of terror. Rwanda was\u2014and still is\u2014one of the most culturally homogeneous nations in Africa: everyone spoke the same language, followed the same religion, shared the same territory. It was certainly more united and homogeneous, both linguistically and culturally, than was Belgium. Or Germany, for that matter.\n\nSociety was divided into numerous clans and two main social classes: the minority Tutsis, who were traditionally cattle herders, and the Hutu majority, who were farmers. Rwanda's royal lineage was drawn exclusively from the Tutsis, who made up roughly 16 percent of the population, though some estimates put the Tutsi population closer to 20 percent. A small number of pygmy hunter-gatherers, known as the Twa, lived in the forests, making up less than 1 percent of the population.\n\nThe Tutsi herders held a higher social status than Hutu farmers, who were often involved with them in a master\u2013client relationship. (The word _Hutu_ signifies \"subject\" or \"servant,\" whereas _Tutsi_ refers to someone rich in cattle.) But the obligations went both ways, and the system was so intricate that it was referred to as \"intertwined fingers.\"\n\nIt's important to note that \"wealthy\" was not synonymous with \"Tutsi.\" Tutsis of high lineage were a minority even among their own people. Most were just as poor and put-upon as their Hutu neighbours, and intermarriage was common enough not to be an issue. It's also important to note that Hutu and Tutsi do not represent different ethnic groups, and certainly not different \"tribes.\" The defining markers of ethnicity\u2014a separate language, territory, religion, or culture\u2014simply don't apply. There was no \"Hutuland,\" no \"Tutsiland\"; no Hutu language, no Tutsi dialect. The two groups didn't even have distinct surnames, unlike in Northern Ireland, say, where the gaping Protestant\u2013Catholic divide, based on competing histories and differing religious affiliations, is easily divined; in Belfast a \"Johnston\" or a \"Murphy,\" a \"Billy\" or a \"Seamus,\" knows immediately which side of the divide the other is on. In Rwanda the categories were more fluid than that; if a Hutu farmer owned enough cattle, for example, he became a Tutsi.\n\nEuropean culture, however, steeped as it was in the proto-fascist ideals of Social Darwinism, was obsessed with notions of race, and in Rwanda the colonial rulers decided that the Tutsi were a separate \"race\" from the Hutu. This was part of a pernicious strain of historical quackery known as the \"Hamitic hypothesis,\" though _myth_ would be a more accurate term.\n\nBaffled when faced with a developed society in the heart of darkest Africa, the Europeans concluded that Rwandan civilization must have come from somewhere _else_. The Tutsis, being taller, lighter skinned, finely featured, and thinner nosed, were considered more \"European\" in appearance, making them, almost by definition in European eyes, superior to the shorter, squatter, broader faced, darker skinned \"Negroid\" Hutus. The Hamitic hypothesis posited that the Tutsis were not \"real\" Africans but rather a lost tribe of Israel, having migrated south from Egypt or Ethiopia as the descendants of Ham, Noah's outcast son. Missionaries embraced this bit of Biblical nonsense, and in doing so granted the Tutsi aristocracy a privileged place in an imperially sanctioned racial hierarchy. Throughout the Bantu region of Africa, this bizarre myth was used to explain\u2014or rather, explain _away_ \u2014all signs of civilization, from the use of iron tools to advanced political systems to monotheistic beliefs, but only in Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi did it become so entrenched, so corrosive.\n\nWhether their much-ballyhooed physiological differences\u2014which are not in any way universal; Rwandans themselves are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to guessing who is a Tutsi and who is a Hutu based solely on appearance\u2014were due to generations of dietary divergence or are in fact the genetic relic of some distant and now-forgotten migration is really a moot point. Any separate origins that might have explained the difference in appearance between Tutsi and Hutu are lost in the mists of time. Their language and culture are now the same. It is worth repeating: Tutsi and Hutu are _social categories_ , not ethnicities.\n\nCertainly, on either end of the spectrum are people who look more \"Hutu\" and those who look more \"Tutsi,\" but most exist in the muddled middle. As a vice-president of the former Rwandan National Assembly confessed, \"Even _we_ can't tell us apart.\" And these physical differences are shrinking as lifestyles change\u2014a telling detail, suggesting as it does that such traits may indeed be the lingering inheritance of an aristocratic diet over that of the commoners, a distinction between milk-drinking pastoralists and hard-working agriculturalists who consumed more grains and root vegetables. (As a French social geographer has pointed out, the difference in height recorded between Hutu and Tutsi was \"exactly the same difference that existed in France between a conscript and a senator in 1815.\")\n\nThis may seem esoteric, but so much of what followed was predicated on exactly these myths and perceived physical differences. During the genocide, people were killed simply for being tall. And one of Jean-Claude's cousins survived because, being short and heavy-set, he was able to bluff his way through the killers' roadblocks by passing himself off, in an angry huff, as a Hutu.\n\nIt was the Germans who first decided that the Tutsis were a more highly evolved \"race,\" but it was the Belgians who brought the idea to fruition, making race _the_ defining aspect of colonial policy in Rwanda. In an eerie foreshadowing of Nazi racial studies, Belgian scientists armed with calipers and clipboards set about measuring the nose length and cranial capacity of Africans, carefully recording height and gradations of skin colour and then classifying subjects into two mutually exclusive groups. _\"Unlike the Tutsi, the Hutu have a wide brachycephalic skull,\"_ a typical entry might read. (The black-and-white photographs of these experiments are unsettling, to say the least.) When in doubt, the Belgians counted cows; if someone owned enough cattle he became \"Tutsi.\" In the 1930s, Belgium began issuing racial ID cards marked HUTU or TUTSI, which every Rwandan was required by law to present. In 1994, these same identity cards would become death warrants.\n\nWhile the mwami himself was traditionally drawn from a Tutsi line, as were his cattle chiefs, the land chiefs were often Hutu and the war chiefs were either. Any given hill might have three different subchiefs overseeing it. Under Belgian rule, that changed. The Hutu chiefs were deposed, one after another, and replaced with Tutsis, and when, as they had in the Congo, the Belgians brought in a system of forced labour and mandatory cash crops, the Tutsis were exempted\u2014just as the Hutu were systematically excluded from positions of power and privilege.\n\nIn imposing forced labour, whether to pick crops, build roads, drain swamps, or clear land, the Belgians favoured strips of sun-dried hippopotamus hide as their primary means of persuasion, and the era of Belgian rule in Rwanda became known as \"the time of the whip.\" The Hutu bore the brunt of it. Tutsi overseers, meanwhile, were forced to push the peasantry to greater and greater limits. \"Whip them or we will whip you\" was the directive they were given as Rwanda became one vast work camp. The inner heart of Africa may have avoided the slave trade of previous centuries, but not its modern manifestations.\n\nAverage Tutsis were hardly pampered. The vast majority remained, as always, just as poor as their Hutu neighbours. Resentment bubbled and boiled nonetheless, and so, on the eve of Rwandan independence in 1962, when Belgium suddenly threw its support behind \"majority rule\" (meaning Hutu), payback was inevitable.\n\nInstead of rejecting the Hamitic hypothesis, Hutu nationalists took it further, citing it as evidence that the Tutsis were foreign interlopers, a \"race of invaders that does not belong in Rwanda.\" Under the clarion cry of the Hutu Manifesto, the Hutu peasantry was presented as the \"pure\" race of Rwanda, its true inhabitants, an oppressed majority. Instead of replacing the racial stereotypes of colonial rule, the Hutu Social Revolution reinforced them, embracing the very myths that had been used against them.\n\nRwanda was declared a republic and its monarchy abolished. (A largely symbolic act, as the king had long been reduced to near-figurehead status.) The Hutu majority took power\u2014with a vengeance. The new nationalist government immediately began purging Tutsis from public office. Racial quotas were imposed, ID cards retained, and violence against Tutsis actively encouraged. A culture of impunity took hold, and what had begun as a cry for justice turned into a lust for revenge; and oh how often are those two ideas\u2014justice and revenge\u2014conflated. A UN Commission warned early on that Rwanda was now in the grip of a regime that employed measures bordering on \"Nazism against the Tutsi minority.\"\n\nThe first massacres aimed at cleansing Rwanda of its Tutsi population had happened even before independence was granted. In the years that followed, the situation only got worse. More than 100,000 Tutsis fled, spilling into refugee camps in Burundi, Uganda, and the Congo. This was only the first wave. The number would eventually top a million as the Tutsi diaspora became Africa's largest and longest-running refugee crisis, one that created a nation-in-exile, a stateless state yearning for return, with the Tutsis as the self-described \"Jews of Africa.\" Sadly, the parallel would not end there.\n\nWhen Tutsi exiles in Burundi launched a series of raids into Rwanda, crossing the border under cover of darkness to attack military posts before melting back into the night, the Hutu government responded in vicious fashion, butchering Tutsi civilians by the score. In December 1963 alone, more than 10,000 people were murdered. British philosopher Bertrand Russell described the atrocities in Rwanda as \"the most horrible and systematic massacres we have witnessed since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.\" As a French witness noted, \"The goal was not just to loot but to kill, to exterminate all those that bore the Tutsi designation.\"\n\nAfter Rwanda's minister of defence, Juv\u00e9nal Habyarimana, a northern Hutu, seized power in 1973, the country was drawn increasingly into the French sphere of influence, with France effectively replacing Belgium as the country's primary patron. Under the banner cry of _la Francophonie_ , Rwanda was seen as a bulwark against creeping Anglo-American influences in the region, and the French government happily supplied arms, cash, and military training to the Habyarimana regime, racist doctrines and ethnic quotas be damned.\n\nLike the boiling of the apocryphal frog, restrictions on Tutsis increased by increments as the heat was slowly turned up. Access to travel, employment, and higher education was severely limited. Having been excluded almost entirely from political life and the military as well, Tutsis in Rwanda carved out a niche for themselves in the private sector instead. But any success they had was resented\u2014murderously so. Like the Jews in pre-war Germany, the Tutsis of Rwanda were accused of hoarding wealth, of secretly controlling the banking system, of being cunning and conniving, treacherous and traitorous.\n\nAnd when the refugees outside of Rwanda began pressing the government for the right of return\u2014a right guaranteed under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights\u2014Habyarimana replied brusquely that Rwanda \"was full,\" and that they could not come home.\n\nThe next time, they would not ask. They would come.\n\n**3**\n\nIN 1988, TUTSI EXILES IN UGANDA formed a rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Several prominent Hutu opposition leaders, having fled the decaying Habyarimana regime, joined their ranks. (Although founded among the Tutsi diaspora, the RPF saw itself as a pan-Rwandan movement whose goal was to topple the Habyarimana regime and end the politics of ethnic identity. Their mantra, often repeated, was \"Our fight is with the government of Rwanda, not the Hutu.\") Among the leaders was a skinny, relentlessly serious young officer who had grown up in the refugee camps of Uganda across from the misted mountains of Rwanda, _that Promised Land, just out of reach_. His parents had fled the anti-Tutsi violence in Rwanda thirty years earlier, carrying him across as a toddler. He was a descendant of the Tutsi aristocracy, his name was Paul Kagame, and he would change the course of history.\n\nIn 1990, the RPF launched a surprise attack from Uganda. The initial invasion was beaten back with the help of French troops and helicopters, but it sent shock waves through the halls of power nonetheless. President Habyarimana had always had an uneasy relationship with the Hutu extremists inside his own party, and in the panicked aftermath of the attack, he lost control of them entirely. Within two weeks of the RPF invasion, government officials were secretly discussing\u2014and organizing\u2014the mass killing of Tutsis.\n\nBy 1992, the Belgian ambassador was warning that a secretive cabal within Habyarimana's inner circle was preparing \"the extermination of the Tutsis of Rwanda.\" His report was promptly ignored. French newspapers likewise raised the alarm that Hutu leaders were planning a \"final solution\" to the ethnic problem\u2014echoing quite intentionally the Nazi wording. In 1993, Paris-based magazine _Lib\u00e9ration_ alerted readers that \"in the far hills of Rwanda... France is supporting a regime which for two years, with militias and death squads, has been trying to organize the extermination of the minority Tutsis.\" The coming holocaust was not an unforeseen event; it was well documented, well prepared, and well known far in advance. Genocide is never spontaneous. It takes planning, it takes _intent_.\n\nThe RPF, meanwhile, had regrouped. They pushed deep into Rwandan territory, sending hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees fleeing before their advance. The RPF had expected to be greeted as liberators; instead they were seen as foreign invaders. Amid the stampeding fears of this invasion, a \"re-conquest\" in the eyes of Hutu extremists, anti-Tutsi sentiment reached its apogee under a racial ideology known as Hutu Power.\n\nAn endless barrage of radio and newspaper propaganda portrayed Tutsis as cockroaches\u2014 _inyenzi_ , a term first used to describe the cross-border raids of the 1960s\u2014and as snakes, racially impure subhumans worthy of eradication. Genocide, after all, is always preceded by propaganda, and in Rwanda the media played a shameful, dishonest role in what followed. The 1994 genocide against the Tutsis was the result of _decades_ of indoctrination. Think of what the Nazis were able to achieve\u2014the hatred and vile scapegoating, the yellow stars and horrors of the Holocaust\u2014in just twelve years. Now imagine the propaganda and brainwashing going on for generations, and you will understand how toxic Rwandan society had become.\n\nG\u00e9rard Prunier, a French scholar of East African history, notes, \"It is not because of its 'primitiveness' that Rwanda could suffer from a genocide; quite the contrary... In Rwanda, all the preconditions for a genocide were present: a well-organized civil service, a small tightly-controlled land area, a disciplined and orderly population, reasonably good communications and a coherent ideology containing the necessary lethal potential.\"\n\nUnder the tactically precise leadership of Paul Kagame, the RPF had fought its way to the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda's capital, before falling back. A distraught Habyarimana, with his back to the wall and his options severely limited, had finally given in and signed a wide-ranging peace agreement in Arusha, Tanzania. The Arusha Accords, as they were known, included the right of return for all Rwandan refugees, integration of the RPF into the armed forces, and the creation of a broad-based transitional government that would include moderates and members of the opposition in Cabinet, leading toward a democratically elected parliament. As a sweeping blueprint for change, with extensive political, legal, social, and military reforms, the Arusha Accords would have transformed Rwanda\u2014had they been implemented.\n\nThe peace agreement also contained a provision for a UN mission to oversee the transition to democratic rule, during which French troops supporting the Habyarimana regime would be required to withdraw. The RPF had assumed that the presence of UN peacekeepers would protect the Tutsi minority. They were wrong.\n\nHutu extremists saw the Arusha Accords as nothing less than capitulation, and they denounced Habyarimana as a traitor and an accomplice. Colonel Th\u00e9oneste Bagosora, a Hutu Power hardliner, had stormed out of the peace negotiations, saying he was going back to Rwanda to prepare _\"Apocalypse deux\"_ \u2014a second apocalypse. Bagosora would prove to be a man of his word.\n\nAn internal U.S. intelligence report warned that if the peace process failed, half a million people could die. As it turned out, the report was overly optimistic in its estimate. Even as the Arusha Accords were being finalized, homes in Kigali were being marked with X's. This was merely for a census, government officials insisted. Only Tutsi homes were being marked.\n\nWhen Canadian general Rom\u00e9o Dallaire was informed that he would be overseeing a peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, he thought, _Great!_ , and then asked, \"That's in Africa, isn't it?\"\n\nThe UN arrived in December 1993 with few supplies and a limited mandate, one that explicitly forbade military intervention. General Dallaire had requested a minimum of 4,500 troops. He received 2,500. They were cobbled together from twenty-four different countries, and included office staff and unarmed military observers: a motley, poorly prepared, minimally equipped assortment of men and women tasked with keeping peace in one of the most volatile regions of the world. This was peacekeeping on the cheap, run on a shoestring, and Dallaire found himself constantly short of fuel, vehicles, ammunition\u2014even food.\n\nPortents soon surfaced. A highly placed informant dubbed \"Jean-Pierre\" whispered to Dallaire that death lists of Tutsi civilians and Hutu opposition members were being compiled and that illegal arms were being stockpiled in defiance of the Arusha Accords. He warned Dallaire that there were plans afoot to kill Belgian peacekeepers as well, with the Hutu Power extremists reasoning\u2014correctly, as it turned out\u2014that at the first sign of casualties, Belgium would cut and run. (Belgian troops made up the core of the mission, and were the best trained and best equipped; extremists knew that losing them would gut the UN presence.) Dallaire faxed UN headquarters in New York, informing them of the warnings he'd received and saying that he was preparing to raid the alleged cache and seize the weapons. The response was immediate and unequivocal: Dallaire was to do no such thing. Such actions were outside his mandate. He was instead to turn the information over to the Rwandan government\u2014the very people who were stockpiling the weapons. The UN raid never went ahead, and Jean-Pierre was never heard from again.\n\nIncredibly, even as hate radio station RTLM was openly calling for the mass extermination of Tutsis, French weapons kept arriving via various conduits. French troops may have been withdrawn under the terms of the Arusha Accords, but France itself provided arms, cash, training, and logistical support to the genocidal regime before, during, and even _after_ the killings. The Habyarimana government had started importing shipments of machetes from China as well, under the guise of \"agricultural implements\"; these were distributed to Hutu militias and neighbourhood groups. In the lead-up to the genocide, more than half a million machetes were brought in, one for every three Hutu adult males. A propaganda newspaper headline asked: WHAT WEAPON SHALL WE USE TO CONQUER THE INYENZI COCKROACHES ONCE AND FOR ALL? Beside it was a picture of a machete.\n\nOn April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot out of the sky.\n\nHe was returning from a one-day summit in Dar es Salaam. Also on board were several of the president's key advisers and confidants, his chief of staff, his private secretary, his head of presidential security, and even his personal physician, as well as the president of neighbouring Burundi who had, fatefully, asked for a ride home. Habyarimana had made it clear that upon his return to Kigali he would\u2014 _finally_ \u2014be swearing in the broad-based transitional government required under the Arusha Accords. Had his plane touched down, it would have signalled the end of Hutu Power.\n\nAnd so, as the presidential Falcon 50 jet came in low on its final approach to the Kigali airport, ground-to-air missiles streaked into the night sky. The jet exploded in mid-air, with the wreckage crashing into the grounds of the Presidential Palace.\n\nA 2012 French judicial inquiry would determine that the missiles had been fired from inside the Kanombe military base, where Colonel Bagosora had once been in charge of the anti-aircraft battery. Bagosora would have been well-versed in the flight path the president's plane would follow as it went directly over the base, but to this day, no one knows for certain who pulled the trigger. What we do know is that the death of Habyarimana was the signal for Bagosora's apocalypse to begin.\n\nExtremist news editorials and Hutu Power radio broadcasts had been predicting just such an event. The editors at the _Kangura_ newspaper had declared that President Habyarimana would be assassinated, not by treacherous Tutsis, but at the hands of Hutu citizens enraged at his betrayal. HABYARIMANA WILL DIE IN MARCH ran one banner headline. They were off by only six days. Soldiers at Camp Kigali had also heard rumours that the president was going to be killed.\n\nOn April 3, RTLM radio had predicted, with ominous confidence, that \"a little something\" would happen in Kigali over Easter. \"On April 7th and 8th you will hear the sound of bullets and grenades exploding.\" They were off by only one day. Within an hour of Habyarimana's death, the systematic slaying of prominent Hutus who'd supported the Arusha Accords had begun. Under the directives of the Presidential Guard, crowds quickly assembled and headed straight for the homes of the ruling party's political opponents. \"Things happened very rapidly,\" Dallaire's chief of staff would later recall. \"As if they had been rehearsed.\"\n\nColonel Bagosora moved swiftly to install an interim government and eliminate potential rivals. The president's death wasn't merely an assassination, it was a coup d'\u00e9tat, and dawn found the colonel addressing a mob of armed militias near the airport. \"Erect roadblocks at the roundabouts, let no one escape,\" he ordered. \"Hunt the Tutsis down, house after house.\" _\"Muhere ruhande,\"_ he had said, meaning, \"Go about it systematically,\" the way one might pull weeds or clear brush.\n\nAmong the first to die was Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Rwanda's prime-minister-in-waiting, a moderate Hutu who had been named transitional leader under the peace accords. She was waiting for Habyarimana to return so that she could be sworn in. As a former schoolteacher and minister of education, she'd tried to end ethnic quotas in public schools and had been physically attacked for it. Although Hutu, she had refused to identify herself as such, saying, \"I am a Rwandese and I am a person. I have a role to play in my country and it does not matter whether I am a man or a woman, a Hutu or a Tutsi.\" They killed her in a particularly brutal fashion.\n\nThe UN soldiers from Belgium and Ghana who had been sent to protect Agathe Uwilingiyimana were quickly disarmed and taken as captives to the Camp Kigali army barracks, where the Ghanaians were released and the Belgians beaten, then murdered. They were being killed even as General Dallaire sped by en route to a meeting with Colonel Bagosora to negotiate their release. Dallaire would later collect their ten bodies, laid out like sacks of potatoes, at the hospital morgue.\n\nA mass evacuation of expats was soon underway. Within four days, almost 4,000 foreign nationals had been airlifted to safety, and within a week Belgium\u2014just as Hutu Power ideologues predicted\u2014had pulled out of Rwanda, abandoning thousands of terrified civilians who had been under their protection. As soon as the Belgians rolled away, the killers rushed in. It was an ignoble retreat, to say the least.\n\nThe killings spread quickly across the country. Roadblocks went up and ID cards were demanded, with Tutsis executed on the spot. (The lack of a card was usually taken as evidence of guilt.) Occasionally, the victims had their feet chopped off first to \"cut them down to size,\" a mocking reference to the tall nature of Tutsis. Machete-wielding members of youth militia groups, many of whom had been trained by French troops and who were known collectively as _interahamwe_ , \"those who work together,\" roamed the streets hooting for blood, carrying lists of names. Others, armed with homemade clubs studded by nails, chased their victims from house to house, room to room, as neighbours killed neighbours and coworkers hunted down former friends. Property that belonged to the victims was often handed over to the people who had killed them, giving a strong economic incentive to the carnage as well. The genocide was, in the words of one commentator, \"a licence to loot.\"\n\nEveryone was targeted, even children\u2014 _especially_ children. \"The child of a snake is still a snake!\" the propagandists cried, reminding listeners constantly that Paul Kagame had been only two years old when his family escaped to Uganda. They must not make the same mistake again. _\"Rip up the weeds by the roots! Wipe them out completely!\"_ This was the message: _Leave none to tell the story_. Once the genocide got underway, a fearful logic compelled it forward. The necessity for complete eradication took hold; you couldn't allow any witnesses to survive, and you had to implicate every Hutu in the crime. The guilt would be shared; no one would be spared.\n\nRwanda became an abattoir as UN troops looked on in horror. Thousands of bodies dumped into rivers floated downstream, where they tumbled over Rusumo Falls and eventually washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria to the stunned disbelief of their Ugandan neighbours. Hundreds of bodies, without end. \"By early May,\" journalist Linda Melvern writes, \"an estimated 5,000 a day were coming down the Akagera River.\" And all of it sanctioned by the screeching voices on the radio, exhorting the racially pure Hutu to wipe out the traitorous Tutsi minority.\n\nRTLM became known as \"Radio Machete,\" providing names, addresses, and even licence plate numbers and makes of the vehicles belonging to those \"cockroaches\" and \"collaborators\" who needed killing. Radio announcers would direct hunters to the hiding places, to the schools and churches, to the homes of \"soft\" Hutus rumoured to be giving shelter to Tutsis, marking them all for death. RTLM even sent out calls to bulldozer drivers when it came time to prepare mass burial pits. \"The graves are still half-empty! Who will help us fill them up?\" the announcers asked, appealing to the population to work ever harder. In Rwanda, radio was like the Voice of God, and it was common to see Hutu militias manning the barricades with a bloodied machete in one hand and a portable FM radio in the other. As Dallaire noted, \"The _g\u00e9nocidaires_ used the media like a weapon.\" The radio and the machete: these were the two primary tools of the genocide, one to give the orders, the other to carry them out. (Given the role the media played throughout the genocide, heavy restrictions now exist in Rwanda forbidding any hint of \"divisiveness.\" Rwandans are not as enamoured as we in the West are with the notion of an unfettered, unbridled media\u2014understandably so, perhaps.)\n\nEven as the Belgians were pulling out, Dallaire was asking for more troops, arguing that with just 5,000 soldiers and an expanded mandate he could stop the slaughter. He received neither. Instead, the UN voted to slash Dallaire's mission, reducing it by 90 percent to a token force of just 270 \"observers.\" Journalist Scott Peterson, on the ground through much of it, noted that \"Rwanda was the first ever case in which the UN responded to a crisis by _reducing_ its commitment.\" (In the end, Dallaire managed to keep 470 personnel, due largely to the unflinching support of countries like Ghana and Tunisia, who stood firm. The men and women of Ghana's peacekeeping force in particular almost singlehandedly salvaged the mission.)\n\nThe United States had just suffered a humiliating defeat in Somalia, and the Clinton administration had no stomach for further humanitarian interventions in Africa; the photo ops were bad. Do you remember those images of the bodies of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu? Rwanda paid the price for that. The White House refused even to use the word \"genocide\" when referring to what was happening; the most they would admit was that \"acts of genocide _may_ have occurred.\" When a reporter tartly asked, \"How many 'acts of genocide' does it take to make a genocide?\" the administration refused to answer. Had the U.S. acknowledged that a genocide was occurring, the UN Security Council would have been required to act under the terms of its own Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Instead, the United States, backed by Great Britain, blocked all attempts at expanding the mission.\n\nA panel of military experts later concluded that Dallaire had been correct in his assessment: 5,000 troops early on, with minimal air cover and a more robust mandate, was all it would have taken to prevent at least half of the deaths that occurred; 500,000 people might have been saved. Dallaire laid the blame squarely on three members of the Security Council: the U.S., the U.K., and France. \"The blood is on their hands,\" he wrote.\n\nOutgunned, outmanned, and often surrounded, the beleaguered UN peacekeepers\u2014unable to stop the killings\u2014focused instead on protecting those already under their care while negotiating prisoner exchanges and arranging temporary ceasefires. Although the mission itself is considered a failure, more than 16,000 lives were saved by Rom\u00e9o Dallaire's small band of blue berets. Among them: Jean-Claude's sister and her baby boy.\n\n**4**\n\nPRIOR TO THE GENOCIDE, Rwanda was known, if at all, as the site of Dian Fossey's groundbreaking research into the endangered mountain gorillas of the Virunga rainforests. In trying to come to terms with Rwanda, I found myself at one point chapter-hopping among three different books: _Gorillas in the Mist_ , Fossey's celebrated account of her time in Rwanda; _Conspiracy to Murder_ , Linda Melvern's powerful rendering of the genocide; and _Rwanda, Inc_. by business analysts Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond, subtitled _How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World_.\n\nI felt like one of the blind sages of Indian lore, groping my way toward an understanding of an elephant in the dark: here the wall of its flank, there the tree trunks of its legs, the serpent of its trunk, the fly-whisk of its tail. How to reconcile these radically different versions of a country that has become a shorthand for failure, on par with Waterloo or Vietnam? _We don't want this turning into another Rwanda_ , we say now. But to which Rwanda are we referring? Given the country's remarkable turnaround, shouldn't we hope for more nations in Africa to follow Rwanda's lead, for more countries to become \"another Rwanda\"? Or is today's Rwanda the oppressive dictatorship that its exiled critics claim?\n\nThe 1994 genocide ended, as all genocides do, not through economic sanctions or UN resolutions or heartfelt good intentions, but through armed intervention. When the killings began, the RPF called off its ceasefire and fought its way into Kigali, forcing the g\u00e9nocidaires to flee westward into Zaire (as the Congo was then known). It took three months, but the government finally fell. The RPF had defeated an armed force twice its size, one backed by sophisticated French weaponry and\u2014in the earlier stages and the latter\u2014French troops as well.\n\nTo the victors came not the spoils, but the wreckage of a failed state. The RPF had taken control of a ruined city. A ruined nation. Corpses clogged the rivers and the irrigation ditches, and lay rotting in heaps in schoolyards and soccer fields. A terrible silence had descended upon the country.\n\nCanadian journalist Hugh McCullum, in Rwanda during the genocide, recalled the challenges the country now faced: \"Nearly a million people had been killed, about three million were refugees and another two million were internally displaced. Africa's most densely populated country had become a ghost state.... The RPF was faced with a bankrupt, depopulated, frightened and traumatized population with none of the infrastructure of government in place.\"\n\nThe Central Bank had been ransacked and its treasury looted, Rwanda's entire reserve of hard currency seized by the departing regime when it fled. The basic institutions of society\u2014sanitation, electrical grids, medical care, policing, judiciary\u2014were either crippled or nonexistent. When the RPF swore in a broad-based coalition government required under the Arusha Accords, Rwanda had no money, no working telephone lines, no electricity, no working offices. The World Bank reported that after the genocide Rwanda was now the poorest nation on earth.\n\nThe turnaround since then has been nothing short of miraculous. Indeed, the very seeds of Rwanda's rebirth lay in its destruction; the genocide had left the country bare, a tabula rasa waiting to be rewritten.\n\nIf there is one lesson that African history teaches us, it is this: _The Western model doesn't work here_. And if madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the West's approach to Africa has been marked by madness. Following the apocalypse of 1994, desperate to rebuild, Rwanda looked east, not west. Where had similar countries been devastated, reduced to rubble and abject poverty\u2014only to pull themselves out of the ruins? The answer: Asia. Japan after Nagasaki and Hiroshima; South Korea and Taiwan after civil war, invasion, and partition. Or how about the emerging Southeast Asian markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, which have taken off over the last twenty years, following Japan and South Korea's lead? If Asia could do it, why not Africa? If Singapore, why not Rwanda? It was Asia, after all, that was once the world's economic basket case, not Africa. It was Asia that was considered hopeless: overpopulated, underdeveloped, and culturally unsuited for modernity\u2014or so we were told. (The same Confucian values used to explain why Asia could never compete economically with the rest of the world are now being cited to explain why Asia has been so remarkably successful. Academics are nothing if not pliable.) In 1969, Africa's GDP per capita was higher than Asia's. South Korea's GDP was once at the same level as Sierra Leone's. Not anymore.\n\nIn light of this, Rwanda has modelled its recovery on the Asian example. Geographically, Rwanda\u2014a small, landlocked, mountainous country\u2014is the \"Switzerland of Africa,\" which is exactly how early European travellers described it. But socially and economically, it is rebranding itself as \"Africa's Singapore\": a tightly controlled, politically stable, economically innovative, autocratic democracy dominated by a single party. (In the last election, the ruling RPF won 41 of 53 elected seats.) If Rwanda's success baffles Western commentators, it is precisely because it is not predicated on a Western model.\n\nIn defiance of African stereotypes, _Economist_ magazine has heralded Rwanda as one of the most business-friendly countries in the world, one \"blessedly free of red tape,\" noting that \"no African country has done more to curb corruption. Ministers have been jailed for it.\" Corruption has long been the bane of African political culture, and Rwanda has tackled this head-on. By 2013, Transparency International had ranked Rwanda as the least corrupt nation in Africa and in the top fifty nations globally. Its ranking has fluctuated since then but is still considerably higher than that of many European states. _Greece, Italy, I'm looking at you_.\n\nEven the doom-and-gloom stalwarts at the World Bank, a group not known for their rah-rah boosterism of African economies, placed Rwanda among the top ten nations in the world in which to start a new business.\n\nI could go on\u2014and I think I will.\n\nThe World Bank also ranks Rwanda among the world's top nations when it comes to the _ease_ of doing business, which includes registering property, obtaining permits, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and more. To help this along, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has set up a \"one-stop\" centre for processing all the permits and paperwork required to incorporate. In Rwanda, a new business can usually be registered and fully ready in as little as six hours and for a nominal fee, free if it's done online.\n\nThe RDB itself is modelled directly on the Singapore Economic Development Board, a government department designed to seek out and actively encourage foreign partnerships in hospitality, manufacturing, and infrastructure. Even the country's new nickname, \"Rwanda Inc.,\" suggesting as it does government and business working closely together, with private and public sectors in sync (rather than in opposition to each other), draws to mind Asian parallels and similar references to \"Japan Inc.\"\n\nThe country's long-term goals include turning Rwanda into a regional financial hub, parlaying its reputation for stringent business practices and a lack of corruption into establishing itself as a banking destination as well. _A financial_ Switzerland, in other words.\n\nOn a smaller scale is the \"value added\" axiom Rwanda has adopted. (This use of simple guiding principles, rules of thumb rather than sweeping ideological agendas, is also very Japanese\/Korean\/Singaporean in its approach.) Instead of shipping raw materials out of the country, the goal now is to add value to them beforehand. For example, whereas Rwanda had once exported raw coffee beans to other countries, where the crops were then washed, sorted, and resold at a much higher price, Rwandan coffee companies, with government backing, have now built more than 240 washing stations across the country, where the beans are cleaned and outer hulls removed. The final product is sorted by grade and quality before it's shipped, all of which greatly adds to its value. The result? A 33 percent increase in income from coffee exports in a single year.\n\nRwanda is still one of the world's poorest countries, with an annual budget heavily dependent on foreign aid and an economy still overly reliant on subsistence farming. But with the government's Vision 2020 blueprint, the aim is to transform Rwanda into a middle-income, knowledge-based economy, one that is competitive regionally and globally. Vision 2020 presents a wide-ranging and ambitious agenda, one focusing on poverty reduction, gender equality, compulsory education, universal health care, skills-based training, and local development initiatives.\n\nHere are some more highlights, presented in convenient bullet form:\n\n\u2022Over the last five years, more than one million people in Rwanda have been lifted out of poverty\u2014in a country of 11 million. By 2020, it's projected that more than 70 percent of the population will be above the base poverty line.\n\n\u2022The economy has been growing by an average of 7 percent a year and has almost doubled in size over the last ten.\n\n\u2022Where literacy rates were at barely 50 percent prior to the genocide, today 97 percent of children are enrolled in primary education, which in Rwanda runs from Grade 1 to 9. According to UNICEF, these are the highest enrolment rates in Africa, with more than 70 percent of the students completing Grade 9. Rwanda now spends more on education than it does on the military. University enrolment is nearing 80,000, compared to just 3,000 before the genocide.\n\n\u2022Early childhood mortality has been reduced by 80 percent, one of the steepest declines ever recorded. The UN credits Rwanda with having saved 590,000 children between 2000 and 2015.\n\n\u2022Ambitious immunization and anti-malaria campaigns, together with a community-based health insurance system and a rapidly rising life expectancy (average life expectancy in Rwanda is now 65 years, up from 48 in 1990), have earned Rwanda accolades from the World Health Organization. And although Rwanda continues to suffer from a serious shortage of doctors and other health care workers, more than 97 percent of the population now has medical coverage, the highest in Africa. A quarter of the national budget goes to health care, which is again the highest proportion of any state in Africa.\n\n\u2022Rwanda has also received awards from the UN for addressing issues of gender-based violence and women's rights. The country's innovative \"one-stop\" centres for women, offering legal, health, reproductive, and protective services under one roof, have been rightfully lauded, as has Rwanda's use of microloans for widows and women in poverty to help them launch small businesses. _With just a little bit of capital and some training, they will make their own opportunities:_ this is the guiding principle, the rule of thumb, behind these small loans. It might just as easily be applied to Rwanda as a whole.\n\nI could go on\u2014but I won't.\n\nI do realize that Africa is littered with similar \"blueprints for success\" and \"visions for a brighter tomorrow,\" but Vision 2020 is no chimera: Rwanda is meeting its targets, is on track, and is even ahead of schedule in several areas. Still overly reliant on foreign aid, true, but working hard to change that.\n\nThe Rwandan approach, a seemingly contradictory combination of progressive social programs and centralized decision making, coupled with radically _de_ centralized governance, is based on a staunchly pro-business philosophy in which enterprise is rewarded and rules are respected. Socially progressive _pro_ -business policies? Centralized decentralized decision making? It's enough to make your head spin\u2014 _if you_ were to try to force it into a pre-set political philosophy. But instead of \"left wing\" or \"right wing,\" Rwanda has been pre-eminently pragmatic. An example: In Singapore, gum on the sidewalks was becoming a problem, so chewing gum was outlawed. Simple, yes? Likewise Rwanda's ban on plastic bags. These non-biodegradable tumbleweeds seen clotting up fence posts and littering the windblown cityscapes of Africa are illegal in Rwanda. And the laws are taken seriously. Walk down the street swinging a plastic bag, and you risk arrest and a fine of $150. Shop owners foolish enough to stock plastic bags face jail time. In Rwanda, it's paper or cloth only, with polythene bags confiscated at the airport with a seriousness usually reserved for baggies filled with weed. There. Problem solved.\n\nRwanda's approach to homosexuality is equally revealing. Unlike in neighbouring countries such as Tanzania, Burundi, and Uganda, or Cameroon and Nigeria, where gay citizens can be imprisoned, beaten, and even threatened with execution, Rwanda's post-genocide constitution explicitly recognizes all citizens as having equal rights and the same legal protections. When influential evangelical church leaders in Rwanda tried to pressure the government into introducing harsh anti-gay laws similar to those recently passed in Uganda (where tabloid newspapers began publishing the names and addresses of \"notorious homosexuals\" to be ostracized and attacked, in much the same way that Hutu Power newspapers in Rwanda had once published lists of Tutsis), the government of Rwanda refused. They knew too well the consequences of targeting one segment of society, of singling out one specific group of people.\n\nIn Rwanda, the ethnic ID cards are long gone, and it is now prohibited to publicly identify or denounce someone as \"Tutsi\" or \"Hutu.\" In private, among friends and family, you may refer to yourself however you like, but the public sphere is a different matter. The official policy is now \"one people, one language, one culture, one Rwanda.\" And in much the same way that Germany, France, and other European nations introduced laws prohibiting Nazi symbols and any denial of the Holocaust after World War II, Rwanda has brought in strict laws concerning genocide denial. Fomenting social divisions or propagating a racial ideology is treated very seriously. And just as, after the catastrophe of Mussolini, Italy made it a crime to publish or promote any \"apologia for fascism,\" in Rwanda the ethnically based doctrine of \"Hutu Power\" is outlawed.\n\nIt is important to remember that Hutu Power is an _ideology_ , not an ethnic identity. So when misguided commentators in the West lecture Rwanda about the need for \"reconciliation\" between the government and supporters of Hutu Power, try replacing the phrase \"Hutu Power\" with \"Nazi propagandists,\" and see how far you get. When people speak about reclaiming Hutu identity (as opposed to a pan-Rwandan identity), keep in mind that this divide was entrenched for generations and always in opposition to that of \"Tutsi.\" Try floating the idea of reintroducing yellow stars for Jews and see the type of reaction this garners, or try arguing that it's your ethnic right as an Aryan to promote a pure-race ideology. The West routinely demands a malleability in Rwandans that they would never expect of themselves.\n\nFrom poverty reduction to increased literacy, from economic growth to environmental reforms, from women's rights to universal health care, Rwanda's recovery has been remarkable, and the person responsible for much of it is the same person who ended the genocide: the controversial and always divisive Paul Kagame.\n\nAs the RPF commander who spearheaded the advance that toppled the Hutu Power government, President Kagame is loved and loathed in equal parts. Hailed as a hero, denounced as a dictator, he is a polarizing figure, inevitably described as a \"strongman,\" but one who is nonetheless credited with bringing about Rwanda's extraordinary reconstruction.\n\nAddressing an American university, the perpetually dour and stick-thin Kagame (he always reminds me of a high school chemistry teacher who's called you into his office because he's disappointed with your grades) repeatedly stressed, \"There is no magic formula.\" Instead, he spoke about the importance of individual Rwandans working with each other in a _collective_ commitment. He was invoking the Rwandan tradition of communal effort, of obeying authority, of following the rules\u2014the same traits the g\u00e9nocidaires had employed to such devastating effect\u2014to help rebuild the country. The goal is to use these cultural mores for constructive rather than destructive purposes, in much the same way that Germanic traits of meticulousness and efficiency, which the Nazis exploited so well, and the Japanese sense of collective identity and a strong work ethic, which the Imperial army took advantage of, would later be harnessed for _economic_ rather than militaristic aims. If countries like Germany and Japan, Korea and Vietnam, have turned themselves around\u2014helped by generous dollops of foreign aid, it should be noted\u2014why not Rwanda?\n\nSocial mobilization, cultural homogenyeity, effective bureaucratic organization, and an emphasis on group obligations over personal entitlements: the \"Rwandan miracle,\" as it is known, is very much in the Asian tradition. In words that could easily have come from the podium of any Japanese post-war leader, Kagame insisted that \"national prosperity will be achieved only through a people's capacity to work together, to find common ground, a common cause, a common purpose. There has not been _a_ Rwandan miracle, as such,\" he noted, \"but millions.\"\n\nIt was time to see this miracle firsthand.\n\n**5**\n\nI ARRIVED IN KIGALI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT to the cool embrace of an equatorial night, surfing my way into the main terminal with a crowd of passengers who were apparently under the impression it was a footrace to the baggage carousel.\n\nJean-Claude had arrived a few days earlier, and he greeted me with a handshake and a hale \"Welcome to Rwanda!\"\n\nOlder travel accounts describe the Kigali airport as cavernous and half-empty, but those days are long gone; the airport has burst its seams like stuffing from a pillow.\n\n\"They are building a new one,\" Jean-Claude shouted as we manoeuvred my bags through the full-court press of passengers at the terminal. (Entire families, it seemed, had come out to greet arriving relatives and see others off.) \"It will be south of the city. Much bigger. Much better.\"\n\nThe relocation was overdue. Rwanda had clearly outgrown its original airport, and in more ways than one: this was the landing strip President Habyarimana's plane was approaching when it was shot down, the missiles fired from a military base that still sits beside it. It was from that base that the first killings had been unleashed as well; the neighbourhoods around the airport were among the first to be \"ethnically cleansed\" of Tutsis. So this airport, in a very real sense, was ground zero of the genocide.\n\nOutside, Jean-Claude led me across the parking lot to where a Toyota 4x4 was jammed into an undersized stall.\n\n\"Land Cruiser GXR,\" he said. \"I picked it up from the rental office this morning.\"\n\nIt would be our home on wheels, our refuge, our albatross, our means of escape, and our dauntless beast over the course of the next three weeks.\n\nInching out of the airport with Jean-Claude at the wheel, we were soon swept into the street lights and leafy darkness of Kigali at night. The silhouettes of tall buildings were arranged along the crest of hills above us like giant chess pieces: the square rooks of hotels, the ornately curled knights of foreign embassies, and the rounded bishop of a new convention centre, a striking-looking structure, imminent and still hidden under scaffolding\u2014the urban equivalent of gift-wrap.\n\nKigali is draped across a loose federation of hills, and the city's main thoroughfares often run along high-wire ridges before dropping suddenly into the valleys below. This layout\u2014the dip and drop, the ridges and sloping descents, the whorls and loops\u2014makes driving through the city akin to navigating a fingerprint.\n\nJean-Claude flung us into a valley and then down a curved street\u2014all streets in Kigali curve; finding a straight one would be a feat\u2014before a final funhouse drop brought us to the Republika Caf\u00e9.\n\nThe Republika, with its large deck and glowing patio lights, is a local landmark. \"Very good food,\" Jean-Claude assured me.\n\nIt didn't hurt, of course, that the owner was stunningly attractive.\n\nRegal and welcoming, Solange Katarebe is a towering beauty of a woman. Formerly a director of Rwandan Tourism and National Parks and now an entrepreneur, Solange was one of the many confident, smart, and engaging women we would encounter over the next few weeks: running enterprises, overseeing government departments, finalizing business deals, managing conservation programs, running hotels. If the country was firing on all cylinders, it was women who were often as not priming the pumps, gunning the engine.\n\nNor was this wishful thinking on my part. By law, one-third of all national representatives in Rwanda must be women; in actuality, the number elected is even greater. It currently sits at 64 percent, the highest in the world, making Rwanda the only parliament on earth where women outnumber men. A third of the Cabinet is female, including the ministers of agriculture, energy, health, labour, and foreign affairs.\n\nRwanda's new constitution also sets a minimum of 30 percent women on the boards of all publicly listed companies. Half of the country's fourteen Supreme Court justices are women, and the World Economic Forum's \"global gender gap\" report\u2014an evaluation based on economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment\u2014ranks Rwanda in the top ten nations _worldwide_ for women.\n\nWhich is to say, Solange was no anomaly.\n\nShe wafted from table to table, laughing, chatting, topping up drinks, waving for new ones, and revising tabs accordingly. The beef skewers were dripping with flavour, and Jean-Claude and I raised a toast to the start of our journey, me with Primus beer, Jean-Claude with bottled water. (Jean-Claude doesn't drink alcohol, something I would learn to begrudgingly accept and eventually forgive.)\n\n\"Finally!\" Jean-Claude said. It seemed we had been talking about this trip since before we met.\n\nThe flickering lights of Kigali formed constellations on the hills across from us, and the beer was as sweet as summer air.\n\n_Finally_.\n\n**6**\n\nJEAN-CLAUDE WAS LIVING IN KENYA when the genocide began.\n\nA teenager on the cusp of his twentieth birthday, he was, as he puts it, \"No longer a boy, but not quite a man.\" Having crossed the bridge at Rusumo Falls, he'd made his way to the humid port city of Mombasa looking for his brother, only to find out that his brother was no longer there. Rwandans living in the city helped Jean-Claude track him down.\n\n\"My brother Sa\u00efd was in Nairobi, was working as a truck driver. He had been hired by the UN, or maybe Red Cross or CARE International\u2014I don't remember which\u2014to deliver supplies to Somalian refugees. There was civil war in Somalia and the refugee camp, it was near the border.\"\n\nThis was around the time of Black Hawk Down, when U.S. forces were running for cover, disengaging themselves with unseemly haste from further humanitarian interventions in Africa. Somalia was notoriously dangerous and unstable.\n\n\"My brother said, 'Wanna come?' I said, 'Sure!' So I jumped in and off we went. It was a long trip. Very long. This was my first time to see the desert, first time to see camels too. Everything was so different from Rwanda. It was all sand; there was no trees, there was no nothing. And flat. We drove, like, five, six days to get to that place and there was nothing there. Just people. These refugees had not even tents. I was puzzled. How can they live in this environment? I couldn't believe anyone could survive in that area. You know, I felt sorry for them.\"\n\nWhile Sa\u00efd arranged for the cargo to be unloaded, Jean-Claude made friends with some of the children in the camp.\n\n\"I showed these kids how to make a soccer ball from plastic bags. There was so much rubbish and plastic blowing around, so what you do, basically, is you take one plastic bag and you put it inside another, then another. There was this kind of twine, you know when they ship stuff, to tie it? I showed these kids how to use that to tighten the plastic, to make it like a real soccer ball. Once I did that, the kids flocked at me. Every child wanted to have their own soccer ball. So I showed them how to make more and more.\" He smiles even now at the memory of it. \"We couldn't talk to each other, we didn't speak the same language. But through soccer, we could become friends, and I said to myself, 'You know what? I think I will come back.'\"\n\nAnd even though Jean-Claude and his brother were robbed at gunpoint by desert bandits on their way home\u2014\"They took my shoes! And those were nice shoes. They were Mizuno running shoes. I hated losing those shoes\"\u2014Jean-Claude knew he had found his calling. He returned on his own to the Somali camps, this time as a volunteer with an NGO connected to CARE International.\n\n\"This American woman at the NGO, she wanted to set up schools for the kids. She needed to identify who used to be a teacher back in Somalia and also to see how many children there was, how many were alone, how many had no mother, no father. So I thought, 'We can use soccer to find this information.' Instead of going to these thousands of people in the camp, calling, 'Parents, bring your children!' the children will come to us. We organized them into teams, according to ages, same as how you would organize a soccer league. I was cataloguing the children's names, where they are from, did they have family, parents. And these kids? They were having fun playing soccer. I stayed in that camp probably for a month. It was very hot. Daytime, it was in the forties. Nighttime, was cold. Then the rainy season came and we couldn't get out! We got stuck for almost two more months in that camp.\" He laughed. \"Even today, I still know many Somali words.\"\n\nWhen Jean-Claude returned to Kenya, he found that Sa\u00efd had left again, this time for Congo.\n\n\"He went to Congo, and I went to Sudan, almost by accident. There was a French organization, maybe Swiss. I went to their headquarters in Nairobi looking for a job, and when I was there, I overheard someone was talking about how they needed a driver to go to a refugee camp, is called Kakuma. It was in northern Kenya near the border with Sudan. So I said, 'Hey, I can drive!' They said, 'Really?' I said, 'Yeah.'\"\n\nWe were sitting in a caf\u00e9 in Kigali, and the waiter brought me a cup of coffee, spiced with ginger. Jean-Claude asked for pineapple juice.\n\n\"But didn't you have to pass a road test?\" I asked. \"Or have some sort of licence for that?\"\n\n\"Oh, they were desperate. They needed someone to go right away, so my driving test was this: I sat in a car with the guy and he said, 'Okay, drive.' We drove to an industrial area where this truck, maybe one-ton, was parked. We filled it with diesel and he gave me some money and he said, 'Okay, you are going to Kakuma.'\"\n\nIt was 1,200 kilometres from Nairobi to the Sudanese refugee camp.\n\n\"I did it in two days. I was bringing, I think, medicine and something to do with sheeting. I was not supposed to bring back that truck, just leave it there and return by bus.\"\n\nBut then luck intervened. When Jean-Claude arrived, he discovered that the same American woman he'd worked with in the Somali camp was there. She was delighted to see Jean-Claude and asked him to stay and set up another soccer program to help her catalogue students and identify youth at risk. \"I've been trying,\" she told him, \"but I can't do it. Organizing teams and making plastic-bag soccer balls is harder than it looks.\"\n\nSo once again, Jean-Claude began manufacturing soccer equipment out of scrap materials and calling kids in for the games. The camp was in the Turkana region, near the arid reaches of southern Sudan.\n\n\"It was like there was no border between Kenya and Sudan at that time. In the camp, it was not a good life, it was very bad. They ate poorly compared to the Somalian refugees I saw before, were malnourished compared to the Somalian kids, and I found this work was very tough. They were living kind of makeshift lives. Some built shelters with dry branches, some with just pieces of whatever they could find, with nothing on top. And there were scorpions. Everywhere! I was nervous to sleep there at night.\"\n\nJean-Claude later crossed into South Sudan as part of a Red Cross aid convoy. \"We went to Lokichogio, to a camp where there was a vaccination program.\" Again, Jean-Claude used soccer to draw the refugees out. \"I started organizing teams for the kids. But before they could take part, they had to have a vaccination. That was the rule. Worked very well. Not only for vaccinations. You know, there is value to feeling you are part of a team. Kids are kids everywhere, and soccer is a language they understand.\"\n\nJean-Claude's experiences in Sudan contrasted sharply with those in the Somali camps. \"South Sudan was hostile. It was a broken-down society. People had no sense of social obligation. There was no one in the community you could trust, no one you could respect. In Somalia, you could go to see the elders or the imams at the mosque when there was a problem. In Sudan, it was a kind of anarchy. They saw death for a long time those people, first fighting against the north\u2014the Arab region who had dominated them so badly, like slaves really\u2014and then fighting each other. It was a kind of tribal war, one tribe killing another. In Somalia, this kind of anarchy had not started\u2014not yet. But in Sudan, if you were Dinka, you were Dinka. You had nothing to do with the Nuers. The Nuer was your enemy to the very end. That was the one rule they had. The only one. For anything else, there was no rules.\"\n\nAfter his tour of duty as a volunteer in South Sudan, Jean-Claude returned to Sa\u00efd's apartment in Nairobi, feeling concerned about the animosities he had witnessed in the camps. \"I made friends in Sudan, was worried about what would happen to them.\" But that would pale in comparison to what was coming in his own country.\n\nOn his first night back in Kenya, the genocide in Rwanda began.\n\n\"It was 5:30 in the morning, and my neighbour Esmaili, he was Congolese, he knocked the door and woke me up. He said, 'Did you hear the news?' I said, 'What news?' He said, 'The president of Rwanda, he has died, together with the president of Burundi. His plane was shot down.' And I thought, 'Oh my God.' I knew this was going to be bad. This is what everybody was preparing for. This is what the radio was predicting. I remembered my Hutu neighbours in Kigali\u2014those youth militias\u2014saying with a big grin, 'We're gonna kill you guys, all of you!' It was not a secret. When they returned from their training camps, they said, 'We're gonna finish you off. You Tutsis, none of you are gonna be left. You are planning to kill us, you are planning to kill the president, but we are gonna kill you first.' So when I heard what had happened, I thought, ' _This is it_. This is what they were preparing for.'\"\n\nThe Rwandan diaspora in Nairobi gathered at a church called Sainte Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, trying amid the panic and rumours to sort out what was happening back home. Some thought the crisis would soon pass. Others feared the worst. Very few were sanguine at the prospects; the future seemed to have opened up like a dark maw.\n\n\"There was some, was studying in Kenya. Their families, all of them, were back in Rwanda. These students felt cut off. Afraid. One said, very quietly, 'I was talking to my mom right now on the phone and she said they killed our neighbours next door, and now they were coming to our house and then\u2014and then the phone cut off.' When we heard that, everybody kind of was in shock.\"\n\nMany of these students and expats were now stranded, alone and without funds, and without family to turn to.\n\n\"They became homeless in an instant. Many of them came to stay with me and my brother. Anyone who doesn't have somewhere to stay, they came to stay with us. There was a time we were seven people in that one-room apartment! Seven with one table to share.\" He laughed. \"And it was a small apartment even when it was just me and my brother. But you know, my brother never minded, even though he was the one paying the rent. I remember that, how kind he was.\"\n\nAs the genocide unfolded on television, Rwandans huddled around their TV sets, watching in disbelief and horror.\n\n\"We could recognize people on TV. We could recognize neighbourhoods. There was one family I knew, was living near the soccer stadium. They had a house there. I knew this family very well and I saw their house is being looted on television, saw someone carrying their mattress. And I knew this person, too.\" Jean-Claude leaned in and looked me in the eyes, still baffled by it, twenty years later. \"The last person you would expect to loot, to steal, was that guy. He was working for the government, for the civil service, a middle-class guy. When I saw him carrying a mattress on his head, stealing from his neighbours, I knew right away that my friends were dead. This guy, he had a machete in his belt. And I thought, _'My country has gone mad.'_ \"\n\n\"Did you call your family? Your brothers, your sister?\"\n\n\"They didn't have a telephone. I tried to phone our neighbour, someone who might know what is happened to my family, but it was impossible to find any information. In my mind, everything went in slow motion. The United Nations had evacuated some Rwandese to Kenya, and they were living in these makeshift tents at the Nairobi airport, so I went there to see if I could find news. I recognized people I knew and I could see they were in shock. I don't know how to say it, except they were _blank_. Some were the only survivors, the only ones who made it. _'They killed my whole family. I escaped by jumping the fence at the airport, but my children couldn't get over the fence and my wife_... _I don't know where they are.'_ Everybody had different stories, everybody had a broken heart. You would find Hutus also who were fleeing the war with their whole family, including this one guy who had been a minister in the government, a moderate Hutu. He went to Switzerland, I think.\"\n\n\"A Hutu among the Tutsis? Was there tension between those who'd escaped?\"\n\n\"Of course. Imagine someone has lost her entire family and here is a government minister with all of his. Imagine you have lost every one of your children, but here is someone who has all of hers. It was very tough.\" Jean-Claude finished his pineapple juice, placed the empty glass on the table in front of him. \"I knew: _I have to go back_.\"\n\n\"To Rwanda?\"\n\n\"To Rwanda.\"\n\nThe RPF had taken control of the eastern regions, were routing the armed forces and youth militias of a collapsing regime. The tide had turned, and the g\u00e9nocidaires knew it.\n\n\"I had to go. I felt a kind of guilt of not being there, for being safe when everyone else is in such danger. I thought, 'If I can get to Kigali, maybe I can find my sister, my brothers, my cousins, my family.'\"\n\nJean-Claude took a long-distance coach to Uganda and from there made his way to the border.\n\n\"I crossed over at a place called Katuna, between Uganda and Rwanda. The RPF, they weren't letting many people come into the country, saying it's too dangerous\u2014unless you had some training to help people, were a nurse or something. There were so many injured people, if you could say 'I know how to put on a band-aid,' oh, they took you right away. They called you doctor and sent you in. For me, I saw there was so many cars stuck at the border with no people to drive them. Some cars, they were there since 1990. So I told them, 'I can drive any type of thing. Motorcycle, sedan, one-ton truck. Anything, I can drive it. Let me.' So this guy talked to another guy, he said, 'Okay, see that truck over there?' It was a pickup truck, a Daihatsu. Was blue, but had been painted black to camouflage it\u2014black, but you could see the blue showing through. It was a big truck. And he said to me, 'You are going to take that truck to Kigali.'\"\n\nThis was at a time when there was still fighting in the capital. I asked Jean-Claude, \"What was your reaction, when they told you where you would be going?\"\n\n\"I said, 'Thank you.'\"\n\n\"And the cargo?\" I asked.\n\n\"Nothing. Was empty. But they needed vehicles near the front, near the fighting, to move the men in and the injured out, to move supplies around.\"\n\nAnd so, barely twenty years old, Jean-Claude Munyezamu set about driving a pickup truck into a war zone.\n\n\"I had three people squeezed in beside me. Two was military, one was civilian. They had their radio on, were listening the whole time. We drove toward Kigali, and when we reached that place called Nyachonga, is maybe forty kilometres from Kigali, I started seeing signs of the genocide. The fields were very green. Nothing had been harvested. The roads were quiet. Everywhere, it was kind of peaceful and very silent, because the Hutu militias had fled and the RPF had already moved on. But when we get to Nyachonga... You know, the interahamwe used to have a major roadblock in that place.\"\n\nThere was a long pause. So long, I thought perhaps he had finished telling his story.\n\n\"There were so many bodies, Will. You can't imagine. You really can't. Lying in fields. Beside the road. Piled on top of each other. It looked like piles of laundry. I slowed the truck down, and when I realized what it was, I said, 'Oh no, oh no.' The others in the vehicle, they looked at me and said, 'You came from where?' I said, 'I came from Kenya.' And they said, 'Prepare yourself. This is nothing. You're gonna see much worse than this.'\"\n\nOn the table between us, wet rings marked the places where Jean-Claude had rested his glass. He drew his finger through them, watched the lines disappear.\n\n\"And they were right,\" he said. \"It got worse. Much worse.\"\n\nAs they neared the outskirts of Kigali, Jean-Claude could see tracer fire across the skyline, could hear the clatter of gunfire, the subterranean thump of mortar shells hitting unseen targets.\n\n\"We passed abandoned checkpoints, saw people chopped. Some, they had no heads. Some, no feet. Some were just pieces of bone and skin.\"\n\nIt was July 3, 1994. Kigali had fallen to the RPF, but pockets of resistance remained, among them the feared Presidential Guards who were making a last stand, holding on till they too were forced to retreat, leaving behind only death and the wreckage of a ruined state.\n\n\"As we drove through the city, I thought, ' _Rwanda is finished_. This is not a country anymore.' I thought maybe this is how the Roman Empire ended. Maybe this is how Egyptian civilization ended. Maybe they just killed themselves.\"\n\nAny sense of victory was muted.\n\n\"You would see these young RPF soldiers, boys who had been fighting since 1990 to reach Kigali, and you would see them, sitting on the doorsteps of their burned homes looking defeated with their rifles propped up beside them, heads down, like this. Their eyes were empty. I don't know how to describe it. Just empty. Many of these soldiers, they were my age. Some had been fighting since they were sixteen. I spoke with a few of them; they said it felt like they fought for nothing.\"\n\nJean-Claude spent two weeks in Kigali his first time back. \"The pickup truck I was driving, it had no owner, so this vehicle became mine while I was there. We were looking for people's relatives and other survivors\u2014we collected so many children who were in the bushes or hiding with Hutu neighbours. I found out my sister Claudine was still alive.\"\n\nAlong with their brother Emmanuel, she had taken refuge at Sainte Famille church in the middle of Kigali. She had her youngest child, a baby boy, with her.\n\n\"My brother Emmanuel tried his best. He tried to protect Claudine, tried to protect her baby.\"\n\nCrowding in with 8,000 other desperate people, Emmanuel and Claudine found themselves surrounded by taunting interahamwe militias who tormented them for weeks on end under the sadistic watch of Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka. A Catholic priest who liked to swagger about with a pistol strapped to his hip, he provided \"death lists\" to the militias and Presidential Guards, who would then raid the church to drag out targeted Tutsis and Hutu moderates. It was a slow, incremental slaughter. Twenty people killed one day. Forty the next. The church had become a concentration camp, and Father Wenceslas began forcing young girls and women into providing sex in exchange for their lives. Caught in the crossfire, the church grounds were later hit by RPF shells, killing a dozen more.\n\n\"My sister was still nursing her baby. When the UN arrived to evacuate people, they started with the women and children. My sister was in the first convoy. I think it was the only convoy that got through.\"\n\nHis brother Emmanuel didn't make it.\n\n\"He put my sister and her baby on the truck, and he said, 'Go. I will follow. I will find you.'\"\n\nBut as soon as the trucks left, the massacres began anew. Thousands died at Sainte Famille under the raptorial gaze of Father Wenceslas. Among the dead, Jean-Claude's brother Emmanuel.\n\n\"We don't know where his body is. When the killers were done, they brought in those excavators to dig a mass grave and they dumped the bodies in it. Later, the RPF exhumed the bones, but we don't know which ones are his.\"\n\n\"You found your sister?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"And how was she?\"\n\nHe thought about this a moment. \"Shattered.\"\n\n**7**\n\nKIGALI IS NO LONGER the hollow shell of a city that the RPF inherited or that Jean-Claude drove through in a daze, bodies still littering the streets.\n\nThose same streets are now very safe, very clean\u2014famously so. Travellers in Africa are always taken aback at how _tidy_ Kigali is. Glass towers are spinning themselves into existence on the dizzying pirouette of construction cranes, but even with the city's population topping a million and growing daily, there are no sprawling slums, no shantytown ghettos stretching into the distance, no garbage pickers living on smouldering hills of trash. This is urban Africa reimagined, something jaded old African hands complain about. Kigali is too clean, they say. Too well-mannered, too manicured. In a word\u2014too _livable_. Even its layout, with clusters of business centres arranged on separate hilltops, gives the Rwandan capital the feel of a much smaller city. A collection of towns, as it were.\n\nJean-Claude and I would use Kigali as our base, falling back to the city between extended excursions to the remoter regions of Rwanda, and it was always a pleasure to return. Through a contact of Jean-Claude, we'd rented a spacious, fifth-floor apartment in Kigali's Kacyiru district in a building owned and operated by Rwanda's national pension fund. (I liked that the rent we paid went to the Rwanda Social Security Board rather than a private company.) My bedroom looked out over the city, leafy green even in the dry season. Although Kigali, like most of Rwanda, is high enough to be outside the more serious malarial zones (the mosquitoes that carry malaria prefer warmer, lower-lying climes), I still took my anti-malarial pills every morning and slept beneath a cascade of silk netting every night, feeling not unlike a drowsy Southern belle.\n\nI would often wake in the early hours as dawn was tiptoeing in. I would slip free of my netting and pad down the hall to the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee and take it out on the balcony, where I would watch Kigali stir and come to life.\n\nThe city revealed itself in layers, shapes appearing like memories in the morning mist. Flowers and ferns. Eucalyptus trees, silhouetted above the rooftops. It was as though they'd built a city in the middle of a garden.\n\nThe haze would give way to light, veils removed one by one to the crescendo of birdsong: whistles and cheeps, melodies musical and not-so-musical. Some echoed the sound of water dripping, others were like question marks given voice. Some birds cooed, some chuckled. Some had songs halfway between a sigh and a sob. It was a far cry from the feuding magpies and cacophonous crows back home. One treetop resident, in the foliage directly below our balcony, would call out, \"Wait a week! Wait a week!\" and I would think, _Wait a week for what?_\n\nKigali is a city of brisk mornings, of early risers. It's purposeful. Older ladies in bent-back postures appear at first light, sweeping the sidewalks by hand, and the _whisk, whisk, whisk_ of their straw brooms feels unnaturally loud in the fragrant hour. On the packed clay of the alleyway below, a security guard tries to coax a kiss from his would-be girlfriend. She declines and walks away, head high, only to stop and throw a smile back his way before she disappears. Just enough to encourage him to try again tomorrow.\n\nChildren walk down the alley to school: girls singing their way to class, boys tromping behind, all of them colour-coded by uniform, laughing and shouting, hurrying along. The parade peaks... then peters out. There's a long pause, and then a single ten-year-old boy comes running, shirt untucked, flip-flops slapping air, books bouncing.\n\nEvery morning I watched the same flow of students pass by, and every morning I saw the same boy, always running, always late. I think about him sometimes, even now. I wonder if he ever made it to class on time.\n\n**8**\n\nKIGALI'S TOWN CENTRE is as lumpy as the rest of the city. This country is famous for its hills, granted, but somehow I thought they'd have staked out at least one flat piece of land to balance their high-rise hotels and office towers upon. But in Kigali there is no flat piece of land; you're always walking up or walking down, except perhaps along the marshy flats of the river below. That stretch is prone to flooding, though, and\u2014until fairly recently\u2014crocodiles.\n\nStrapped into our Toyota 4x4, we followed the contours of Kigali into the downtown core as motorcycle taxis\u2014\"taxi-motos\"\u2014bobbed in and out with a boldness that bordered on bravado. Their minibus competitors, farting along merrily and weighted down with customers, vied for position. Everything was in motion, even the buildings it seemed. New shops were popping up even as we passed; it was like a time-lapse film on double-speed. One such establishment advertised itself proudly as \"The New Better Shop,\" and the name stuck with me. Seemed redundant on first glance, but no. There is _new_ , but not necessarily better. There is _better_ , but not necessarily new. But this is Kigali\u2014and everything was _new better_.\n\nJean-Claude marvelled at this on the drive in: the wide paved thoroughfares, the polished shimmer of new businesses. \"It's amazing,\" he said, hands on the wheel, eyes cranked to the skyline (disconcertingly so, I admit). No matter. Even distracted by the city, he threaded his way through with aplomb.\n\nWe changed some money, purchased pay-as-you-go cell phones and refillable bottles of filtered water: the usual accoutrements of modern travel. The streets of Kigali were heaving with commerce. The entire city seemed filled with a sense of possibilities being seized. Rwanda, I'd been told, is a nation of incipient entrepreneurs, and this fact jostled up against me at every turn.\n\nRwandans are also famously beautiful, famously handsome\u2014and slightly haughty, it must be said, at least here in the capital. This is the image Rwandans have across East Africa: long-limbed, elegant, and ever-confident\u2014and oh, how often those last two go together. Much as I hate to propagate stereotypes, I had to concur.\n\n\"Is there a convention of supermodels in town this weekend?\" I asked.\n\nJean-Claude laughed.\n\nUgandan comedian Anne Kansiime opened a recent show in Kigali by saying, \"You know, back home in Uganda I'm actually very beautiful\u2014and surprisingly tall. Here, it is a different story.\" I had sympathy for Ms. Kansiime. I'd never felt more dishevelled or stumpy than I did shuffling about the streets of Kigali.\n\nGlass office towers, reflecting a blue deeper than the sky they were catching, lined up alongside low-riding shops and overladen stalls. Two versions of Kigali, wedged against each other, often occupying the same space: the Kigali of clay walls and small shops, and that of glass-tower bank centres. Beauty salons and auto parts. Storefront racks of bright-yellow soccer jerseys ( _\"Go Amavubis!\"_ ). Trays filled with children's toys. Soft drinks and running shoes. Fanned displays of magazines. Plumbing gewgaws and electronic gadgets were piled up on sidewalk stalls as the city's street hawkers moved through, selling phone-card top-ups and Holy Bibles of various value: white leather deluxe, red vinyl pocketbook, and everything in between.\n\nSeveral new department stores had opened, and in the downtown Nakumatt we came across HD plasma TVs for sale alongside a wide selection of\u2014Jean-Claude couldn't believe this\u2014treadmills.\n\nTreadmills?\n\n\"Now, that\u2014 _that_ is a good sign!\" he said. You know an economy is taking root, you know people truly have disposable income when, in the words of Jean-Claude, \"they can waste their money on a walking machine. This is Kigali!\" he exclaimed. \"Who needs a treadmill? You are _always_ walking. Up and down, every day, even on a short trip to the store.\"\n\nIn a lane behind Nakumatt, Jean-Claude bumped into someone he once knew, a soft-spoken older businessman named Paul Ruhamyambuga. He was, I later learned, something of a local legend in Kigali.\n\nWhile the rest of the city\u2014indeed, the country\u2014still lay in ruins, Mr. Ruhamyambuga was already imagining its restoration. In a public display of confidence, he built the City Plaza office building amid the rubble, sending a message to investors, to the world\u2014but most importantly, to the people\u2014that this was _not_ the end. A new city would rise.\n\nThe Jean-Claude he'd known had been a gawky teenager living in Kenya. \"The same, but different,\" Mr. Ruhamyambuga said, laughing with genuine warmth on meeting the Jean-Claude of today, the Jean-Claude who'd returned. While the two of them spoke in Kinyarwanda, sharing confidences and small remembrances, I looked up at the tinted glass of the City Plaza office tower with its clamorous jumble of small shops crowding in below.\n\nJean-Claude turned to me and said, \"I remember when this was the tallest building in Kigali.\"\n\nOnce a landmark of the recovery, the City Plaza is now just one building in among the shinier, higher hilltop towers of this new and better Kigali. _You'd hardly have known there was ever a war_...\n\n**9**\n\nFOLLOWING THAT FIRST FORAY into Rwanda after the genocide, Jean-Claude returned to Nairobi, bringing news to families of their loved ones back home.\n\n\"Not all the news was good,\" he notes.\n\nThere was still a pressing need for vehicles and supplies back in Rwanda, and Jean-Claude made the run between Kenya and Kigali ten times or more, ferrying people and goods back and forth, helping to gather children and reunite families\u2014there are people he helped who stay in touch with him to this day. His journeys had a dash of Mad Max about them. \"The situation was still very unstable,\" he said. \"Many of the side roads were filled with landmines. The remote villages were still being attacked.\"\n\nBut a different sort of adventure was about to begin, although Jean-Claude didn't know it at the time. During evening services at Nairobi's Good Shepherd church, he spotted a strikingly beautiful young woman named Christine Karebwayire. She was new to the city, studying at the technical college, and was living nearby with her aunt.\n\nChristine was born into the diaspora. Her parents had fled Rwanda in 1959\u2014during the _first_ genocide against the Tutsis. They'd settled in Burundi and then later in Tanzania, though it might as well have been in Limbo. Although successful in their new life, they were still stateless citizens occupying a liminal world.\n\n\"In Nairobi, the Rwandan community was holding an overnight service once a month,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"It would start maybe at nine o'clock, with greetings and testimonies. Every new person who came, they introduced themself. It was mostly social. It was kind of like open-mike night. I knew almost everybody who was Rwandese living in Nairobi. At that time, I was among the longest-running members of that congregation, so when I saw Christine, I thought, 'Oh my goodness, who is this?' I never seen her before.\"\n\nNot all of Christine's extended family had left Rwanda. Her uncle was a prominent church official, Canon Alphonse Karuhije, dean of Kigali's Anglican cathedral. Denied the rank of bishop by a Hutu rival, he was killed on church grounds during the genocide after being betrayed by a fellow priest.\n\nHis wife, Christine's aunt Thacienne, had escaped the carnage by the slimmest of margins: having gone to visit family in Tanzania over Easter, she was out of the country when the president's plane was shot down. Canon Karuhije had driven his wife and their five children to the border crossing at Rusumo Falls, had said goodbye, then taken a bus back to Kigali while she continued on with the children. He was returning to the city to oversee Easter Mass. His family would never see him again.\n\nChristine's aunt, now widowed, was in Nairobi awaiting sponsorship from the Anglican Church for her and her children to go to Winnipeg. Christine was staying with them while she studied at the college, hoping someday to become a nurse.\n\n\"Was it love at first sight?\" I asked Jean-Claude.\n\n\"You know,\" he said, \"I wasn't thinking that way. At this time, I was taking care of some children who had been separated from their mother, and I was paying school fees for other ones. I had too many things going on, too many responsibilities.\"\n\nHe remembers the car, though. Vividly. \"Christine's aunt still had her husband's sedan, the one she drove out of Rwanda. Was a Peugeot 505. French-built. Very good car.\"\n\nHer aunt needed a mechanic, Jean-Claude helped her find one at a good price, and soon he was spending time with her and her niece.\n\n\"Cars and soccer,\" I said. \"Seems like half your life has been tied to those two, JC.\"\n\nHe laughed. \"I think so.\"\n\nWhen Christine's aunt left for Canada with her children, Christine moved into an apartment with five other students to continue her studies.\n\n\"I used to tease her because she grew up in Tanzania, so she spoke Kinyarwanda mixed with Swahili. Sometimes she didn't know that it wasn't correct. She would use a Tanzanian word and I would tease her about this, saying, 'What is that? That is not Kinyarwanda.'\" (Note the disingenuous use of the past tense on Jean-Claude's part. He _still_ teases her about this.) \"So what's happened is, we became kind of friends. We started hanging out together, then it started to be kind of dating. I remember our first date. It was in the afternoon and she came from school to meet me, still in her school uniform. We went to a fish and chips place, and then after we took a bus to the zoo.\" He smiled. \"It was a good day.\"\n\n\"Do you remember which animals you saw?\"\n\nHe thought about this. \"No. Not really.\"\n\nA simple story of boy meets girl, except that it was set against the backdrop and fallout of an African holocaust. The courtship of Jean-Claude and Christine was a reminder of what the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who covered countless wars and rebellions in Africa, described as \"this beautiful and heartening thing, this obstinate, heroic human striving for normality.\" The normality of spending time with someone you like, of going on a date. Of taking a bus together, of visiting a zoo.\n\nAnd then the unexpected: Jean-Claude received sponsorship from a Catholic diocese in Montreal, which meant he would be leaving Africa for a new life in Canada. He promptly asked Christine to marry him.\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"She said no.\"\n\n\"What? Why?\"\n\n\"That's what I wanted to know! I asked her why and she said, 'I'm not ready to get married. I'm gonna finish my studies. I'm gonna be a nurse.' So I said, 'You can still be a nurse, only now you will be a nurse who is married.' But she said, 'Oh, I think that would be very hard. Let's just continue to be friends instead.'\"\n\nBut then Christine made a serious mistake. She talked to her friends. She told them Jean-Claude had asked for her hand in marriage and that she'd declined.\n\n\"She told the other girls?\"\n\n\"Of course she did! Can you imagine _any_ girl, a boy asks her to marry him and she says no, and she's not gonna tell her friends about it? Of course she told them! Soon everybody in the Rwandan community knew.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"My supporters, they began to lobby on my behalf. They told her, 'You are crazy! You should have said yes!'\"\n\nHis supporters also advised Jean-Claude, on the sly, to maybe try one more time. And so, just before he departed for Montreal, he asked her again. This time she said yes.\n\nChristine came to Canada six months later, having finished her schooling. She moved first to Winnipeg to live with her beloved aunt and then to Calgary to marry Jean-Claude. The ceremony was at a local church, with Christine resplendent in her wedding gown. I've seen the photos; it's clear why Jean-Claude was so smitten.\n\nThere was a Rwandan aspect to the ceremony as well. \"I bought her family a cow,\" he said. \"Is a tradition in Rwanda. The groom presents one to the bride's family. So I sent a cow to her family in Africa.\"\n\n\"What, like by Fedex?\"\n\nHe laughed. \"No, I sent the money to buy one. Was an Ankole cow\u2014they call it the 'Cattle of Kings.' Very elegant animals.\"\n\nHere was the trajectory of lives lived and roads intersecting, of a wedding dress and a kingly gift, and it all started with a truck rumbling across that bridge at Rusumo Falls with a teenage stowaway on board, heart pounding, hidden under heavy sacks of coffee, escaping a coming apocalypse.\n\n**10**\n\nTHE BOULEVARD THAT RAN PAST our apartment in Kigali, palmy in every sense of the word, lacked even the faintest speck of litter. Widows and elderly women are allotted specific sections of major streets, are paid a stipend to keep them clean\u2014and Lord help you if you absent-mindedly drop a candy wrapper on their stretch of pavement. I'd been warned several times that the whisk brooms these ladies wielded could also be used in a pedagogically punitive manner.\n\nJean-Claude and I went for a walk along this ridge-top boulevard one morning, with Jean-Claude pointing out the flora along the way: avocado trees and pears, hanging heavy with fruit; jacaranda with their pi\u00f1ata-like pods ready to burst in a spray of flowers.\n\n\"My father,\" Jean-Claude said, \"his passion was trees. He knew everything about them. With his brother Adalbert he grafted oranges and lemons onto the same plant. One tree with two different fruits, the neighbours were amazed.\"\n\nJean-Claude's grandfather had been a member of the Royal Army of King Rwabugiri and was on hand when the German count crossed into the Kingdom of Rwanda and made first contact.\n\n\"My grandfather, his name was Rugaju, and he was sent east with the son of the king, the prince, to keep the Germans in check. The Germans were already in Tanzania\u2014Tanganyika, they called it back then. My grandfather's main assignment was to keep the Germans from crossing into Rwanda.\"\n\nThe Akagera River marked the outer limits of the kingdom, and the mwami set up a military outpost not far from Rusumo Falls. Jean-Claude's grandfather was granted land in a nearby village. This was where Jean-Claude's father was born.\n\n\"My family still has land in that area, it's still our village. You know, in Africa, everyone, even if they are born and raised in the city, they will have a traditional village that they call home. Mine is in the east, in Rundu village.\"\n\nJean-Claude's father, Ferdinand, was a scholar and a botanist whose talents were recognized early on. \"He was sent to Tanzania to learn how to plant coffee plantations when that was first being introduced into Rwanda. He was among the first people to learn how to do that, and he travelled all over the country doing those kinds of work, teaching people how to plant coffee beans and then later eucalyptus.\"\n\nHis father settled in Kigali with his brother Adalbert, down by the river in a neighbourhood now known as Gisozi.\n\n\"My father and Uncle Adalbert were the first people to live there.\"\n\nAs a leading arborist, Jean-Claude's father was something of a Johnny Appleseed as well, planting trees tirelessly across Rwanda. \"There are forests even now,\" Jean-Claude said, \"that my father planted. When I pass by them, I can still see my father moving about very carefully, examining each tree, nodding. He was a very thoughtful person. Conversations with him were always about serious matters. My uncle Adalbert, he was more open. I think he knew how to talk to children better than my dad. My uncle lived next door. I had many cousins.\"\n\nJean-Claude and I walked along the spacious sidewalks of Umuganda Avenue as early-morning pedestrians clipped past at a brisk pace in crisp white shirts. Minibuses veered in and out, stopping to pack more passengers in or unload others. The city was like a giant clock winding _up_ rather than down.\n\n\"My neighbourhood, the place I grew up, it's over there, on the other side.\" Jean-Claude pointed across the rolling heights of Kigali to a hill opposite, layered with homes. In between, sloping into the valley and then swooping back up the other side, were the rooftops of other homes, so close together as to be overlapping.\n\nWe'd reached the Kacyiru roundabout, tidy and well-tended. A circular garden flowing with traffic, it once marked the frontline in the Battle of Kigali, with RPF soldiers hunkered down on one side, exchanging gunfire with members of the elite Presidential Guards on the other. For three months this roundabout had been in the middle of a war zone. _If no one had told you_...\n\nOn a whim, Jean-Claude suggested we walk to his old neighbourhood, through the streets below us, across the river, and then up the other side.\n\n\"Hmmm. Looks far,\" I said.\n\n\"Yes, but I know a shortcut. I remember a certain way to go.\"\n\nSo we left the wide boulevard of Umuganda Avenue, with its fountain-pen palm trees and its rise-and-shine, starch-shirted commuters, and plunged into the residential area below. A steep path led us into a labyrinth of low-lying clay-brick homes, tightly packed. Every building seemed to be propping up the one next to it, and the lane we were walking down was narrow enough at times that I could have run my hands along both sides.\n\nWe had entered a different Kigali. Smaller, clustered, more intimate. The smell of lye soap and wet charcoal: pots scrubbed and cooking fires doused. The raspy cry of a rooster. A young mother tossing wash-water from a basin onto the ground as her toddler, as toddlers are wont to do, toddles by, beaming at the power of his own locomotion. She begins laying out her hand-wrung laundry on a thorny hedge to dry, keeps a sideward eye on us as we pass. An elderly lady in a patterned apron and matching head scarf sweeps an already clean threshold of hypothetical dirt. (The entire neighbourhood being made of clay, sweeping for dust must be more an existential than a pragmatic endeavour.) She looks up at us, is startled into a smile, eyes lost in a nest of wrinkles, as we squeeze by.\n\nA cadre of young men striding uphill stop as well, taken aback by the sight of us coming down; it was as though Jean-Claude and I were blithely cutting through their living rooms, which in a way I suppose we were. Troops of schoolchildren, startled in mid-gambol, stood gape-eyed and O-mouthed, with the bolder among them venturing a quick \"Good morning, teacher. How are you? I am fine\" as we passed. Learning English in the classroom has given Rwandan students the habit of addressing English speakers, regardless of who they are, as \"teacher.\" This is usually delivered in a single impressive burst: _\"Goo'moaning'teacha'howreyoomfine,\"_ after which they scramble back to the laughter and breathless congratulations of their peers. _\"Muzungu! Muzungu! He talked to a muzungu!\"_ It would be the highlight of their morning, would grow with each telling I'm sure. Some of the smaller children, always with the most encrusted noses it seemed, stopped to force moist handshakes on me, to which I always obliged. Mental note: _Buy hand sanitizer_.\n\n_Muzungu_ is a Swahili word, borrowed by the Rwandese. I assumed it meant \"handsome fellow\" or \"look yonder at that dapper chap!\" because wherever I went, I heard it time and time again, heralding my arrival, departure, existence. The response in Kigali was mild. They see muzungus all the time\u2014not in their local neighbourhoods, maybe, but downtown, fanning themselves in front of banks and hotels, counting bills at the money-changers, looking sweaty and perplexed. Outside of Kigali, however, the refrain of \"Muzungu!\" would increase dramatically, become almost constant, a sort of background chorus. (When I say to Rwandans, \"Muzungu must mean good-looking, right?\" they always get a pained look on their faces. \"No, no, no,\" they explain, \"it means white person,\" as though I were so dense I hadn't figured that out. So then I have to explain I was only joking, which elicits even more brow-knitting concern. At one point, I tried doubling down\u2014\"Muzungu means super-sexy movie star, right?\"\u2014but the response was the same, \"No, no, no, it means...\")\n\nOur path through the maze of clay-walled homes grew steeper with every ankle-rolling step, turning my initial canter into an extended downward stumble as I tried not to trip myself into an uncontrolled forward rush.\n\nWe came out of this rabbit warren of homes onto the side of another, lower thoroughfare. \"I remember this road!\" Jean-Claude said. \"It's paved now. And wider. But it wasn't like this when I was growing up. It used to be so dusty. We would be choking in the dry season.\"\n\nMemories came quicker now. On passing a newly built gas station, Jean-Claude read the sign and said, \"I know him! I know the owner. I knew him as a boy. He taught himself mechanics in his backyard. He has done very well.\" And as we drew closer to the river: \"We used to play along these banks, in those marshes. There were only three cars in our neighbourhood. None of this was paved.\"\n\nThe marshlands of Jean-Claude's youth have largely been filled in. \"There was more water,\" he said, somewhat sadly. But there is always more water in our childhood. More water and taller buildings.\n\nWe walked across the busy Kinamba overpass, vehicles clipping by in both directions, and Jean-Claude said, \"This is where my cousin died. They threw her over the side with the other Tutsis. She was a long time dying. They could hear her crying for two days is what I'm told.\"\n\nDuring the genocide, this overpass was the site of one of the most notorious roadblocks in Kigali. Here, Hutu Power youths tormented and targeted specific people early on, before the more widespread indiscriminate killings began. As the weeks went by, the dead piled up below, began to decompose in the heat; no _buddies_ saved her.\n\nJean-Claude's old neighbourhood of Gisozi was on the other side of this overpass, and as we pushed our way through a crowd of workers trundling toward a nearby lumberyard, the air became spiced with the scent of sawdust and cut wood. The road angled uphill and we walked, leaning into our ascent, until we came to a potholed, packed-clay lane branching off from the main road.\n\n\"This is the street,\" Jean-Claude said. \"This is where I grew up.\"\n\nHis old neighbourhood was now a construction site. The past was under repair, but a few of the older buildings still stood, acting as wary benchmarks on a vastly changed map. It took some time, but with the help of a few young men who lived on the street, we did manage to find a remnant of Jean-Claude's family home. \"Just this part,\" he said, laying a hand on its whitewashed texture. A corner incorporated into another building. \"These two walls, these were part of our house.\"\n\nJean-Claude was four or five when his mother died.\n\n\"I try to find her face, but I can't. I remember her clothes and her voice\u2014I remember how she spoke, very calm, very kind\u2014I remember her calling my brother when he was outside, telling him that the supper was ready. I remember her sending me to get him. I even remember she was feeding me with a spoon when I was little and how this food that she cooked, we call it _igihembe_ , kind of like a lentil, was so tasty. I remember all of those things, but I can't remember her face.\"\n\nShe died in Uganda. She had family there, and when she became ill they sent for her, because Uganda, as a former British colony, had more advanced medical care.\n\n\"She went to Uganda,\" he said. \"And she never came back.\"\n\nJean-Claude was playing outside with his older brother the day he found out.\n\n\"It was raining and we had to come inside, and when we did there was so many people there, aunts and uncles, neighbours. They went very quiet when we came in and my dad called us into the room, me and my brother, and he said, 'I just want to tell you that your mother has passed away.' But I didn't know what that means. I was thinking, 'Okay, so am I gonna see her now?' After that, I asked my cousin and she explained to me. She said, 'It means you will never see her again. They are going to put her in a box in the ground.' That was when I knew my mother was gone and wouldn't be coming back... My dad was a single parent from that moment until he died.\"\n\nJean-Claude's mother had been his father's second wife\u2014he was separated from his first\u2014and the house was filled with the comings-and-goings of step-cousins and assorted siblings.\n\n\"I was the second youngest. There were four children from the first marriage, five with my mom.\"\n\n\"A big family.\"\n\n\"Yes. Always there were people in this house. It was very crowded, but was fun.\"\n\nWhile we stood looking at the remaining walls of Jean-Claude's childhood home, he recited the names of various brothers and sisters, \"Claudine, Marie-Gorette, my brother Elis\u00e9, Denise, Jean-Baptiste, Emmanuel,\" speaking more to himself than to anyone.\n\nBy this point, we were surrounded by young men in undershirts and flip-flops: temporary workers from the looks of it, pants caked with dry mud. We'd attracted a gathering of schoolchildren as well. They followed us down the lane, walking when we walked, stopping when we stopped, looking where we looked. \"Scoot! You'll be late for school,\" Jean-Claude admonished, but school pales in excitement to having a real! live! muzungu set loose in your neighbourhood. At one point a sedan angrily pushed its way through the crowd, the driver casting disapproving glares our way.\n\nThe young men who had helped Jean-Claude locate the partial walls of his old home wanted to be paid for their assistance. Jean-Claude scoffed at this. \"For helping someone, you think you deserve money? Do you think that is the correct way to act?\" He asked them this in Kinyarwanda. Admonished, they stared at their feet with hangdog expressions.\n\nJean-Claude looked back at that last remaining piece of his childhood.\n\n\"Time to go,\" he said after a moment.\n\nNow, the problem with walking _down_ , into a valley, say, is that eventually you have to walk back _up_ , and I was already tired. The sun was itching its prickly heat along the nape of my neck and my throat had grown starchy with thirst.\n\nNo matter. \"We'll follow the river, then cross back farther down, at the next bridge. We can go up the other side over there.\" Jean-Claude pointed out the route we would follow. It would allow us to avoid having to backtrack and would turn our cross-city hike into one extended loop.\n\nThus began the long trudge back, as on a treadmill.\n\nThe road that ran alongside the river, paved as well and busy with traffic, took us past the marshy meadows that formed a bowl in the bottom of Kigali's many hills.\n\n\"The Red Cross owns all of this,\" Jean-Claude said. It would have been prime real estate, save for the constant flooding and the boggy soil, to say nothing of the crocodiles. (Kigali's crocodiles had departed, but one never knows.)\n\nIn a grassy field, a scrawny dog was cavorting with a cow and her calf\u2014at least, that's how the dog saw it, nipping and yapping, in and out of the fray, tail wagging. For the cow it was more akin to harassment; she lowered her head repeatedly, trying to butt the dog clear, but the mutt would scramble aside, sporting that loopy grin dogs wear when caught up in their own hijinks. A tired-looking man in a floppy hat with a long branch resting on his shoulder, a cattle herder by the looks of it, was even now making his way across the field to end the \"fun.\"\n\nDogs are a rare sight in Rwanda, but it wasn't always so. The country once abounded in them, but in the aftermath of the genocide, Rwanda's dogs began running in feral packs, attacking the wounded, eating the dead, chewing on the bones. The advancing RPF instigated a cull, shooting dogs on sight. Today, Rwanda has fewer than almost any country in Africa, maybe the world.\n\nSomething stops Jean-Claude cold.\n\nIn an irrigation ditch he sees a tattered red jacket, clogged in the mud.\n\nJean-Claude stared at it, didn't move, barely breathed. Then: \"I'm sorry. It's just\u2014for a moment I thought...\"\n\nI knew what he thought. He thought it was 1994 all over again. He thought it was a dead body, decomposing. But there were no bodies in the water. Only a discarded jacket. We walked on in silence before Jean-Claude spoke.\n\n\"That's what they looked like,\" he said quietly. \"The bodies. They looked like piles of old clothes.\"\n\nOld clothes and dogs dining on human flesh.\n\nWe crossed a bridge to the other side of the river, started our ascent. Along the way we passed a Twa pottery market. The Twa, or \"pygmies\" as they are known in the West, are the invisible people of Rwanda. Where the Tutsis were cattle owners and the Hutu farmers, the Twa were hunter-gatherers. They lived in the nation's forest fringes, distinct from Rwanda's other two solitudes, but during the genocide the Twa were often targeted, too, for no other reason than, Well, why not? Since we're killing minority groups anyway...\n\nThe Twa remain on the periphery of Rwandan society, even though the national government, to its credit, has launched a development program aimed at addressing this imbalance. A purpose-built \"cultural village,\" where Twa arts and customs are preserved, albeit in a vaguely dioramic form, has been built near Lake Kivu, and new pottery markets, such as the one Jean-Claude and I passed, have been established. Twa pottery is rightly famous, and the line of oversized urns\u2014made of clay, strong and delicate at the same time\u2014attested to their skill. I desperately wanted to buy some but couldn't imagine how I'd ever get them home in one piece.\n\nLarge homes crowded the incline as we walked up, up, up. The lingering effects of jet lag and my own deskbound, ass-in-chair lifestyle were catching up to me as I struggled to suck air into my lungs with less and less success. My chest wouldn't inflate all the way.\n\nIt was a thigh-straining walk, with long zigs and slow zags, and when we finally stopped for something cold to drink at a roadside stall\u2014I staggered up to the counter waving a fistful of Rwandan francs, gasping for _amazi_ (a word I would use often)\u2014a pair of passing motorcycle taxi boys took pity and pulled over. They were looking for a fare, of course, but I imagined they were also concerned about my well-being. I was just about to pant, \"Gentlemen, I will gladly pay whatever it takes to get me to the top of the next hill, here is my wallet, take from it whatever amount you wish,\" when Jean-Claude intervened, magnanimously waving them off. We were fine, he explained. We didn't need a ride.\n\nAs the taxi-moto boys pulled away with a suit-yourself shrug, Jean-Claude saw the stricken look on my face. \"Don't worry,\" he assured me, \"we're almost there.\" And by \"almost,\" he meant another forty-five minutes of slow, steady walking.\n\nMy chest-whistling soundtrack had cast a pall over the proceedings, for I knew full well that in just a few weeks' time we'd be hiking the towering rainforests of the Virunga volcanoes in search of Rwanda's famed, and famously remote, mountain gorillas. If a stroll through the streets of Kigali knocked me out, it didn't bode well. I decided to blame it on the altitude. The country's average elevation is 2,725 metres above sea level\u2014and the lairs of the mountain gorillas are higher still, often 4,000 metres or more. Kigali itself was a \"mile high,\" as they say.\n\n\"Once I ( _wheeze_ ) get acclimatized ( _wheeze_ ) to these higher elevations, I'll ( _wheeze_ ) be fine ( _wheeze_ ),\" I said.\n\nBy the time we got back to our apartment, my lungs were burning from oxygen deprivation and the noonday sun had singed my skin, leaving it an amusing shade of ros\u00e9. It had been a three-hour \"stroll\" by my count.\n\n**11**\n\nSOLACE MINISTRIES RAN A GUEST HOUSE across the alleyway from the apartment building we were staying in. (Our balcony looked down onto their courtyard.) Solace Ministries also provided a lunch and supper buffet, and when Jean-Claude and I were in Kigali, we often took our meals there, a breezy commute of about ten steps, out the back gate and across the clay-packed alley. Slices of fruit, rich Rwandan coffee, cheese and pastries, omelettes made to order. And when Jean-Claude was away in the evenings, visiting his sister or old acquaintances, I would go on long walks through our neighbourhood that always seemed to end at Solace in time for coffee and cake.\n\nAt Solace Ministries, women gather to share their stories. Soft-spoken tales of siblings slaughtered, of husbands hacked down, of mutilations and machetes, of rape and the children born of rape. The woman who ran the office at Solace told us we could sit in and listen if we liked, that we were welcome to hear their stories, but it felt too intrusive. I watched from the wings instead, and even though they spoke in Kinyarwanda, the pain in their voices was unmistakable.\n\nIt was a daily _aide-m\u00e9moire_ of what survivors still face. Every day, Jean-Claude and I would pass the hall of widows and every day were reminded of the ineluctable logic of hatred. Of hatred, taken to its natural conclusion. Of hatred incubated, encouraged, allowed to run free.\n\nSometimes the longest walk of the day was the ten steps across the alleyway to Solace.\n\n**12**\n\nBEYOND ITS GARDEN-LIKE ROUNDABOUTS and well-swept streets, the scars of the genocide are still evident in Rwanda's capital. You need only to look.\n\nFrom the shell-pocked walls of the nation's parliament buildings (where the bullet-hole points of impact have been left as a reminder of the Battle of Kigali, a street-by-street campaign marked by stalemates and sudden sallies, reminiscent of the Siege of Leningrad) to the splattered plaster at the military barracks where the ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed, the capital at times feels like an open-air memorial.\n\nThe Belgian monuments, one for each of the soldiers, are understated and poignant, but with a simmering anger in evidence. The families have never forgiven General Dallaire for not storming in and taking the base by force, a wholly unrealistic option considering that the captured Belgian peacekeepers were being held in what was essentially a military fortress with more than 1,500 armed soldiers on hand, well-equipped and fully armed. (The UN, by contrast, had barely forty-seven rounds per person, which would have lasted three minutes at most in a pitched battle.) But no matter. Grief is never rational, and the families of the dead peacekeepers have written their anguish onto the walls of the building where the massacre occurred, maintained now as a memorial by the Belgian embassy.\n\nOn a chalkboard inside, preserved under plexiglass, is the heartfelt but misguided _j'accuse:_ \"General Dallaire\u2014have you no eyes, no heart?\" The families might have better focused their anger on the French government of Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand, which trained and armed the very soldiers who murdered their sons and husbands, or perhaps have looked more critically at Belgium's own colonial legacy, in both Rwanda and the Congo, but that would be to diminish the pain of those who lost loved ones\u2014a pain shared, quite literally, by _millions_ of Rwandan women, children, men.\n\nScars on buildings, scars on skin.\n\nThe man Jean-Claude rented our vehicle from had a thick line running across his neck, ear to ear, like a rubbery rope: the distinct slash of a machete.\n\nScars of the flesh and of the spirit.\n\nThe scars that remember, the scars that remain.\n\nRwanda's national genocide memorial is just up the road from Jean-Claude's childhood home. If, as Stalin infamously noted, one death is a tragedy but a million is just a statistic, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre strives to put a human face on those numbers, tries to stop them from becoming a mere tally, numbly recited, emptied of meaning.\n\nInside are snapshots and photographs. Candid moments, class photos, wedding portraits, Sunday schools, and graduations. The faces of families, of children, of mothers, husbands, lovers. Gone.\n\nActs of kindness and bravery are commemorated as well: an elderly Hutu woman named Zula Karuhimbi bluffed her local band of killers with nothing more than confidence and a reputation for being a crank. Seventy-one years old, Zula had given refuge to more than twenty frightened Tutsis in her rundown home, including infants. When the interahamwe militias showed up, armed with machetes and demanding she step aside so they could search her hovel on rumours she was harbouring Tutsis, she said, \"Be my guest.\" But be warned, she added. _\"I have supernatural powers.\"_ The killers scoffed, but as an old woman living alone, Zula already had a disquieting reputation. She was known to work with traditional medicines. Was she also a witch? Probably not. But did they really want to take the chance? Zula, diminutive, defiant, looked the killers in the eyes, stared down any doubts they might have had, told them, \"If you want to die, go inside. I have powers, and evil spirits will swallow you up.\" Not one of the mob was brave enough to risk it. They swaggered off, vowing to come back later\u2014but never did. The Tutsis hiding inside survived.\n\nDismas Mutezintare singlehandedly saved 400 Tutsi children and adults at an orphanage. Where is his Hollywood movie? A Muslim man named Yahaya Nsengiumva saved thirty. When asked why, he said it was simple: \"The Koran tells us that saving one life is like saving the whole world.\"\n\nBut the saddest room in all of Rwanda is the Children's Room at the Kigali museum. If you were to roll all the pain, all the senselessness of what happened, into a ball the size of your fist and lodge it deep in your stomach, you will feel it here, in this room. It is calm and softly lit.\n\n**_Fabrice Murinzi Minega_**  \n---  \nAge: | 8  \nFavourite sport: | Swimming  \nFavourite sweets: | Chocolate  \nBest friend: | His mum  \nBehaviour: | Gregarious  \nCause of death: | Bludgeoned with club\n\nThere are no bodies in this room, no human remains, only the illuminated photographs of children lining the walls. And beneath each photograph, an introduction.\n\n**_Aurore Kirezi_** |   \n---|---  \nAge: | 2  \nFavourite drink: | Milk  \nFavourite game: | Hide-and-seek with her big brother  \nBehaviour: | Very talkative  \nCause of death: | Burnt alive at the Gikondo Chapel\n\nHere is a photo of a little boy running in short pants, his name is Patrick; the little girl in a pretty dress beaming at the camera is Aurore. Here is Chandelle on her birthday, Hubert on his bicycle.\n\n**_Fabrice Cyemezo_**  \n---  \nAge: | 15 months  \nFavourite food: | Rice with milk  \nFavourite animal: | Cat  \nEnjoyed: | Making gestures  \nFavourite word: | Auntie  \nCause of death: | Killed at Muhoro Church\n\nLooking back on the events of 1994, Rwandan poet and genocide survivor F\u00e9licien Ntagengwa penned words that often appear at memorials, above doorways, on altars: _Iyo uza kwimenya \/ nanjye ukamenya \/ ntuba waranyishe_. \"If you really knew me, and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.\"\n\n**13**\n\nAS JEAN-CLAUDE AND CHRISTINE settled into their new life in Calgary, a baby boy soon followed. Jean-Claude was working as a meat cutter at the sprawling Cargill plant in High River, which made for a long commute down a winter highway in a rattling second-hand Hyundai.\n\n\"But they were paying me nine bucks an hour!\" he told me with a laugh. \"For an immigrant from Africa, nine bucks an hour right away? I thought, _'This is good!'_ \"\n\nWe were sharing ugali dumplings at a roadside caf\u00e9 as Jean-Claude reminisced about his days in High River, half a world and a lifetime away, it seemed.\n\n\"This meat-packing plant, it was _huge_. Like its own city. Very clean, very efficient too. Cows came in one side alive and left the other side wrapped, sorted, packed, and ready to be shipped. Nothing was wasted. Me? I was fine until I visited the kill floor, where the cows are cut and drained. I saw them being pushed in through that little gate and the cows were pushing back, fighting to avoid it. It was terrible. They _knew_. It was very hard for me to watch because, you know, for Rwandese, cows are kind of like a treasure. Not sacred like in India, but sort of. We don't eat them, we keep them. So for me, it was difficult.\" Suddenly nine dollars an hour didn't seem like very much. \"I worked at that meat plant for three years. I still don't eat hamburgers even now.\"\n\nGetting Jean-Claude to grab a beer and a burger had been pretty much out of the question back in Canada, even though I'd explained to him several times how beer and burgers were two of our national food groups. Now I knew why.\n\nIt was during his time as a meat cutter that Jean-Claude began volunteering at Calgary homeless shelters.\n\n\"I wanted to meet people. I was studying at the college, but my English was not improving as much as I wanted. It was strange. Working at the Cargill meat plant, there was no way you can tell you are in Canada. Almost no one was speaking English. During lunch break there was the Vietnamese table, there was the Filipino table, the Sudanese table, the Ethiopian table. One guy is from Congo, another one is from Haiti, another from Sierra Leone. And so on. No one was integrating; it was like they were in separate worlds.\"\n\nSo he began volunteering at Mustard Seed, a downtown Calgary shelter.\n\n\"I was naive. I couldn't see how anybody can be homeless in Canada. How can someone be poor in such a country like this? But at Mustard Seed I met many people, good people, some had bad luck, some had problems with drugs or abuse, some had been in jail. They all had a story to tell and I would listen, try to help.\"\n\nJean-Claude managed to get one fellow, a former accountant who'd had a mental breakdown and become homeless, a job as a meat cutter at the Cargill plant, even driving him to the interview in High River.\n\n\"This guy, he said to me, 'Jean-Claude, why should I bother, no one is gonna hire me,' and I said, 'Of course not! Not if you look like that!' He was a mess. I told him he had to shave and shower and get cleaned up, and I got him a suit from Goodwill for his interview. He was a very smart man, and seeing him in a suit, he was like a different person. When he got his first paycheque he bought me lunch. He said, 'Getting a paycheque makes you feel worthwhile, makes you feel like a human being.' Later, I found out he has left the meat-cutting plant and is working as an accountant for a big company. He called me and he said, 'Guess what!' You know, Will, sometimes just a small thing can change everything.\"\n\nJean-Claude went on to volunteer at Inn from the Cold, which provided families with hot meals and holiday dinners. They even helped kids with their homework.\n\n\"These events were very fun, like a family atmosphere. We even had movie nights in the basement of a community hall. There were other kids to play with, so they didn't feel alone in their situation. For a moment you could see that these children are able to forget they are homeless or sad.\"\n\nJean-Claude eventually left the Cargill meat-processing plant and signed on as a community resource worker for people with mental disabilities. \"Helping with their banking, driving them to shopping or the swimming pool, that kind of thing. This work was very satisfying. I enjoyed it so much, but the pay was too low and I couldn't support my family on it.\" So after a lucrative but exhausting tour of duty in the Alberta oil patch\u2014\"Very tiring, very dirty, and I was away from home too much\"\u2014he began driving taxi instead.\n\n\"First I was a special needs driver, taking kids with disabilities. Was very rewarding, but I had to switch to regular fares. The hours were more flexible.\"\n\nHe needed to take care of his own children while Christine studied for her certificate in practical nursing. And yet, even with this, he still found time to volunteer as a coach at our local soccer club. (Meanwhile, I feel good about myself if I drop a toonie into a Salvation Army tin at Christmastime.)\n\nIt was around this time that Jean-Claude also noticed something about his local neighbourhood. It had extensive subsidized housing for lower-income families and refugees, but not much else. \"Children from everywhere,\" as he put it. \"With nothing to do.\"\n\nMany of the families had come to Canada from the same refugee camps in Sudan and Somalia that Jean-Claude had visited years before, or had escaped persecution in Syria and Ethiopia, violence in Colombia and Afghanistan, poverty in the Philippines. The parents were often working two jobs and had no time to think about how to involve their children in the community.\n\n\"So these kids, they were just hanging around. In the park or on the street, every night, every weekend. I wondered, when they go to school on Monday and the other children say, 'Oh, I went skiing' or 'I went swimming,' what will they say? When the teacher asks, 'What did you do on the weekend?' what will they tell her?\"\n\nSo one Saturday, Jean-Claude dragged out a bag filled with secondhand soccer balls and plastic cones and began pacing out a field in their local park. The Saturday Soccer Club was born. It was free and it was fun and everyone was welcome, no matter their age or ability\u2014but they had to be respectful and they had to take the club seriously. The boys and girls in the Saturday Soccer Club ran drills, practised scrimmages, worked on their passing, their shooting, their set plays. Soon he had more than a hundred children involved, with an entire team of volunteers overseeing it. Jean-Claude can be very persuasive, and before long he had FIFA-trained youth coaches volunteering their time, too. Other clubs donated shoes and shin guards, and a local car wash sponsored their jerseys.\n\nThe Saturday Soccer Club ran all year, indoor and out, and as talented players emerged they were snatched up by competitive leagues (which gladly waived their fees). Soccer is a sport that crosses international borders. Whether you are from Colombia or Egypt, Syria or Congo, Somalia or Sudan, everyone speaks the language, everyone knows the game.\n\nValerie Fortney, columnist with the _Calgary Herald_ , wrote a feature article on the club, and soon the kids were mini-celebrities, appearing in the _Calgary Journal_ , too, as well as on CBC and Shaw TV. The club has grown. It's now called Soccer Without Boundaries and is in the process of attaining full charitable status (so if you're looking for a place to make a donation, hint hint).\n\nJean-Claude was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work and was asked to join the Premier's Council on Culture specifically to look at how to integrate new Canadians into their community through similar programs.\n\n\"And now,\" Jean-Claude notes proudly, \"when the teacher asks the kids, 'What did you do on the weekend?' they tell their teacher, 'I played soccer. I'm on a team.'\"\n\n**14**\n\nWE HEADED SOUTH FROM KIGALI amid the city's morning crush. Everyone was yielding to everybody and nobody was yielding to anyone: a paradox worthy of Zeno. It was less a rush hour than an ongoing, imminent multi-car pileup that never _quiiiite_ happened. Car horns bleating. Diesel engines roaring. Pedestrians dodging through. At one point an oncoming truck veered directly into our lane, lights flashing, horn sounding, before swinging back onto its side of the road. Head-on collision averted? Check. Muzungu in cardiac arrest? Ditto.\n\n\"He should have been more patient,\" Jean-Claude advised.\n\nA gurgling noise came from the back of my throat, which Jean-Claude took as assent.\n\n\"Exactly,\" he said.\n\nThe motorbike bravado boys were out in full force, performing their usual acts of death-defying derring-do with a studied nonchalance. As we passed yet another young man with yet another young woman hanging onto him, Jean-Claude said, sort of wistfully, \"It must be a wonderful job, driving a taxi-moto at that age. Never boring.\"\n\nWe'd already noticed how, when they had a particularly pretty passenger on board, the boys would handle their bikes more jerkily than usual, gunning and braking in sudden lurches and stuttering false starts, causing the young women in question to squash up against them on the slow-down and then hold on even tighter on the acceleration.\n\n\"It's not entirely innocent, is it?\" I said, and Jean-Claude agreed.\n\nWere I still a young man, unencumbered by notions of my own mortality, driving a motorcycle taxi up and down the hilly curves of Kigali would be a fine way to earn a living. There was apparently only one female taxi-moto driver in the city\u2014the papers had done a story on her\u2014and we did see the occasional old guy (by which I mean \"over thirty\"), but generally this was a young man's sport. Who else would be mad enough to weave through oncoming traffic like that?\n\nI'd also come to realize that Rwanda's ubiquitous traffic police, paced out every four feet or so, were mainly ornamental. They stood on guard, ever vigilant, rifles at the ready\u2014doing absolutely nothing. Even when we passed a truly spectacular snarl-up that was crying out for a bold stride and a sternly raised hand, nothing happened. Not that it mattered. Trying to control the flow of vehicles in Kigali would have been like trying to control a flash flood. And anyway, directing traffic didn't seem to fall under their auspices. Case in point: the snarl-up I just mentioned. A giant backhoe had slipped off a flatbed truck and was now sitting half on the asphalt and half on the flatbed's fallen gate. Leaning at a severely lopsided angle, shovel raised like the Karate Kid in mid-pose, it looked ready to topple over at any moment. Traffic had ground to a halt in both directions, and the backhoe's operator had climbed in and was now\u2014rather cleverly, I thought\u2014trying to use the backhoe's own digger to push the machine up, to pivot the rig back onto the truck. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. If anything, it was causing the backhoe to teeter even more precariously.\n\nFortunately, a crowd of onlookers had gathered to provide the driver with helpful advice. Their suggestions went oddly unappreciated, though, to go by the operator's muttered invective as he yanked first one lever, then another. The heavy treads of the backhoe were starting to chew up the asphalt. Surely, I thought, this is where Kigali's traffic police will spring into action! This is what they'd been training for, waiting for! But no, they just watched like everyone else. Forget the machine guns, I thought. Give them whistles.\n\nThe traffic, like water, finally found its own way past, flowing through a nearby gas station parking lot as the crowd of onlookers grew ever thicker and ever more helpful.\n\nThe plan had been that Jean-Claude would drive in the cities and I would take over once we got on the highway. That scheme, concocted so confidently over road maps back home, quickly changed. Rwanda, as noted, is the most densely populated nation in continental Africa. There are 11 million people crowded into a country the size of Vermont, and at any one time 10 million of them are walking alongside the road you happen to be driving on. Including the highways.\n\nEven as Kigali fell away, the pedestrians never faltered. The pavement was pullulating with them: men in shimmering suits, schoolchildren en route to class, women with woven baskets high on head, moving by with a consummate ease, and all of them using the highway like a hallway, walking beside traffic, into traffic, _through_ traffic.\n\nI had a sickening feeling in my gut. \"Jean-Claude,\" I said, \"I can't do it. If I get behind the wheel, I'll kill somebody, I know it.\"\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he replied. \"I enjoy driving.\"\n\nI felt terrible for having welched on our agreement, though Christine would later laugh off my guilty apologies. \"He was relieved you didn't try to drive,\" she told me. \"He doesn't like other people driving. He's a terrible passenger.\"\n\nI still felt bad, though.\n\nVillages in Rwanda tend to cluster around any excuse for a community\u2014a local market, a rural intersection, a water pump, a slightly wider stretch of road\u2014and although most were of the same \"clay boxes packed in tightly\" arrangement, the shops themselves were often painted in cymbal crashes of colour. This was a side benefit of Rwanda's booming telecommunications market. Everybody in Rwanda, it seemed, from modest goat herder to titan-like business tycoon, owned their own cell phone, and several large service providers had staked their claim on Rwanda's burgeoning IT sector\u2014visually, as well. In much the same way that Pepsi and Coca-Cola provide signs for small-town corner stores back home, with their product name prominently displayed, Rwanda's cell phone companies will happily paint any shop, anywhere, in any village, be it a butcher's, an apothecary, or a beauty salon, so long as it's adorned with their brand name and, just as importantly, decked out in their company's colours: red for Airtel, blue for Tigo, yellow for MTN, and green for Tigo's money-transfer service. Painted top to bottom, you will find solid-yellow beauty salons, blue bicycle repair shops, and green drugstores endlessly repeated in blocks of colour: _red, blue, yellow, green; red, blue, yellow, green_.\n\nRwandan villages used to be rather drab, Jean-Claude said. \"Just brownish-red clay. Very dull and dusty.\" But their shopping areas had now been transformed into cubist compositions, lively and bright. (I don't know who is winning the business war, but Tigo seems to be winning the paint war. Blue was generally the preferred colour.)\n\nJean-Claude and I had MTN phones, so our team colour was yellow, though I do confess I preferred the rich red of Airtel, at least when it came to storefronts. If nothing else, the competition among Rwanda's cell phone providers had been a boon for paint supply companies. Memo to self: _Buy stock in Rwandan paints_.\n\nAs we drove on, the grassy bogs of the southern marshes opened up in front of us. If you imagine Rwanda as a tablecloth, and picture a hand pushing across it, the north and west would be where the fabric folds in on itself, bunching up, forming pleated hills and highlands. The southeast corner of the tablecloth would be flatter, lower, less wrinkled.\n\nWe'd entered the papyrus swamps of the Bugesera, where some of the most prolonged and horrific massacres of the genocide occurred. Here, in the Bugesera marshlands, the killings stretched on and on into endless days of hunter and hunted, predator and prey. Even today, tillers turn up human bones in the muck.\n\nThe Bugesera is also where French journalist Jean Hatzfeld compiled his heartbreaking trilogy of testimonies gathered from survivors and killers alike: _Into the Quick of Life, The Strategy of Antelopes_ , and _A Time for Machetes_ , that last collection also published under the title _Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak_.\n\nIt's a murky landscape, the Bugesera, lush and treacherous at the same time, a grassy wet terrain of hillocks and soft recesses, where thousands upon thousands of women and children fled only to be hunted down, tormented, tortured, chopped.\n\n\"The club is more crushing, but the machete is more natural,\" one of the killers, a farmer, later explained. \"The Rwandan is accustomed to the machete from childhood. Grab a machete\u2014that is what we do every morning. We cut sorghum, we prune banana trees, we hack out vines, we kill chickens... In the end, a man is like an animal: you give him a whack on the head or the neck, and down he goes.\"\n\n\"We no longer saw them as human beings,\" another killer recalled. \"They were abandoned by everyone, even God.\"\n\nAnd though it's difficult to imagine, those who took cover in the sparse forests above the swamps fared even worse. Exposed, trapped on all sides, they were easier to surround, easier to catch. On Kayumba Hill, they started out with 6,000 and ended with twenty.\n\nThe daily massacres lasted for weeks on end, became almost routine. The Hutu men would gather in their local town square or soccer field each morning, plan their day, arrange to flush out a certain area or to chase the Tutsis into an ambush, and would then set off in columns, singing.\n\n\"We could hear them coming,\" one survivor recalled.\n\nAt night, after the day's killings, the interahamwe and others would celebrate with home-brewed beer, driving minivans fluttering with flags up and down the village streets as though they'd won a soccer championship.\n\n\"They were slaughtering our cattle and having barbecues every night. We could hear their songs, could see the smoke rising up from the feasts they were enjoying while we crawled about in the mud digging up root vegetables in the dark.\" When the wind shifted, the Tutsis in the swamps could catch the smell of meat being grilled.\n\nDescriptions of the starving and ragged people who came out of the marshes after the RPF arrived and the killers had fled often emphasized their animalistic appearance. This was something the killers commented upon as well, even though, as one of the survivors noted bitterly, \"We were not the ones who acted like animals.\"\n\n**15**\n\nSUGAR CANE AND MARSHY PLAINS. Papyrus islands in a sea of reeds. A secretive river twists through; we caught glimpses of muddy water in the grass, snaking around this hillock and that. There is beauty here as well: sun-dappled Monet arrangements of lily pads; flamingos lifting off, improbably white against the green; pelicans taking flight; storks in still water.\n\nThe clay-hut homes we drove by looked spectral, seeping smoke from every crack, every open paneless window.\n\n\"Cooking fires,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"Gets very smoky inside. Lots of bronchial problems.\"\n\nWe passed banana-burdened bicycles shepherded by gaunt men, faces thinly stretched, peddlers in every sense. Vignettes appeared and were gone: a procession of brightly wrapped women, gourds perfectly balanced, walking to their local market like a royal cort\u00e8ge. A little boy with a goat on a tether pulls\u2014and is pulled in turn.\n\nWe have come looking for a pair of churches, at Ntarama and Nyamata. A red earth road branches off from the main highway, and Jean-Claude follows the ruts past one crossroads tavern named Le Calme Bar, another named Rendez-vous.\n\nAn old man offered us a broken smile, more gum than tooth in his grin. He was leaning on a staff and wearing a traditional floppy-brimmed hat that marked him as a Tutsi cattle herder. _Had he survived in the swamps? In the hills?_\n\nWhen the killings started, Tutsis crowded into the small red-brick church in Ntarama, seeking sanctuary under its sheet-metal roof. This was God's house. They thought they would be safe here, that the sanctity of the site would protect them. But they were wrong. The killers allowed the Tutsis to gather, encouraged it even. It would make it easier to kill them when the time came. There would be no need to run them down in the marshes, no need to track them through the boggy grass. In Ntarama they would be corralled into one spot, like livestock. Nor did they need ID cards to separate Tutsis from Hutu; in villages like Ntarama, everyone knew everyone. These were their neighbours.\n\nJean-Claude pulled over and parked, and we walked up a grassy path to where the church stood in a shaded grove of trees. On the front of the building, blister marks from the grenades were still visible. Sledgehammered holes in the walls showed where the killers had punched their way through the bricks, with scorch marks fanning upward from the openings, making the church look like a kiln. It brought to mind images of Auschwitz. Of ovens.\n\nThe people inside had fought back with what few weapons they had, with bricks and stones and their bare hands. The killers had grenades and machetes and clubs impaled with nails. Then the Presidential Guard arrived. Those few who managed to break through the circle fled to the marshes, where fresh horrors awaited.\n\nInside Ntarama church, a broken cross leans through a window. ID cards marked TUTSI, a handful of coins, a pair of eyeglasses, and a few discarded shoes were scattered in front of the altar. Caskets draped in cloth were lined up on the bench-like pews. These caskets held the symbolic remains of a hundred victims, representing just a small portion of the 5,000 who died here. Above the coffins the rafters were hung with the matted clothing of victims, a memorial more haunting than any statistic.\n\nBehind the main building were the church kitchen and the Sunday school. Piles of debris. Flip-flops. Broken plates. A wall where the children were killed. _\"The child of a snake is still a snake!\"_ Toddlers and babies-in-arms, battered into nothingness, followed by immolation. A large cooking pot, brittle from the fire, lay heaped amid the everyday aspects of life. Mouldering blankets, foam mattresses, a fallen kitchen cabinet, a child's slipper, a hairbrush, a ladle\u2014all of it rendered in grey by fire and dust. The bodies have been removed, but the rest remains as it was twenty years before. Outside, the rest of Rwanda marched ever onward, but here the past was ever-present. In the stillness, time had slowed to a trickle.\n\nBefore I left for Rwanda, I met with Lynn Gran. She was with the Nature Conservancy of Canada but had previously worked for Oxfam, which was among the first NGOs to enter Rwanda immediately after the genocide.\n\n\"No one wanted to go, so I volunteered,\" she said. \"To this day, I really don't know why. I had a six-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter back in Canada.\"\n\nLynn crossed into Rwanda under harrowing conditions and was taken to a church just like this one. When she arrived, the bodies were still piled up inside.\n\n\"I didn't want to be there. It felt too personal. But I was told, 'You are here to bear witness to what happened.' The iron gates of the church were mangled\u2014you can imagine the force used to blow it open and how it would have felt to be inside. When we entered it was dark, and I had to stand a moment to let my eyes adjust. The smell was overpowering. Bodies were heaped everywhere, in the pews, on the floor, with their clothes decomposing. As I moved through the dark, I tripped, and when I looked down it was a woman's leg. I started to cry. I started to cry and I couldn't stop.\"\n\nThere were children's toys and human heads on the altar.\n\n\"They'd beheaded them and then lined them up and left them there. I'm not a religious person. Spiritual, I suppose. Not religious. But when I was in that church, I knew.\"\n\n\"Knew what?\" I asked.\n\n\"That I was in the presence of evil.\"\n\n**16**\n\nTHE HUB TOWN for the Bugesera region is Nyamata. Once a grim spot with a grim reputation\u2014dripping on the edge of malarial swamps in the wet season, choking on dust and drought in the dry\u2014Nyamata today is a city revived. Many of the marshy meadows have been reclaimed. The major roads are paved, and trade is humming.\n\nNyamata may have the widest main street in Rwanda. It forms a spacious boulevard lined with shop fronts and idling buses, with taxi-motos and their lower-end bicycle equivalents. Loud ad hoc market negotiations flared and faded. Escalating arguments, sudden laughter. Women splitting the crowds, moving through, baskets on head, babies on back. Twenty-four-hour gas stations chugging out petrol, pharmacies and finance centres, taverns and beauty salons, cobblers and charcoal vendors, butchers and bakers and\u2014somewhere in there, I'm sure\u2014candlestick makers, or kerosene sellers at least, which would be the Rwandan equivalent. We parked and waded through the streets, past the Heroes Pub and the Red Lion Tavern, the internet caf\u00e9s and auto-parts emporiums\u2014all sporting fresh paint\u2014down to a soft bower where the girls sashayed and the young men ached.\n\nThere were rows of lively little taverns, all leading to the same small square with its plaque reminding us that in Rwanda you cannot escape 1994, even on a boy-beguiling promenade or a sit-and-stretch park bench. This town\u2014this park\u2014was once a hub of a different sort, the epicentre of Bugesera's genocidal pogroms, a focal point and meeting ground for the killers.\n\n_We could hear them singing as they gathered, singing and beating their drums as they came toward us. One day they followed one path, the next day another. They grew silent only when they were about to attack, as they did not want to give away their positions_.\n\nThe killers burned even the photo albums after they'd looted a house, wanting to erase not only the people who had died there but any trace that they had ever existed. Had the RPF advance been delayed even a week longer, it is likely there would have been not a single Tutsi left in the Bugesera\u2014and no witnesses either.\n\nToday, convicted killers wander the streets of Nyamata freely, as they do elsewhere in Rwanda. A presidential pardon released thousands of lower-ranked g\u00e9nocidaires from prison, for reasons not so much of mercy as mathematics.\n\nIn the aftermath of the genocide, an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was set up in neighbouring Tanzania to prosecute the key figures involved in the genocide. Colonel Bagosora, for one, was captured in Cameroon trying to cash traveller's cheques he'd looted from the Rwanda state treasury. He was then transported to the ICTR, where he was charged and convicted in the murder of the ten Belgian peacekeepers, as well as in the death of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and others. (He was also indicted for the assassination of President Habyarimana, but the evidence wasn't conclusive enough for a conviction.)\n\nThe overwhelming majority of cases, though, were tried in Rwanda. More than 120,000 people were held in squalid, unsanitary conditions in a prison system designed for 15,000. Rwanda's decimated judicial system was overwhelmed. At one point, it was estimated that it would have taken 200 years to process all the cases before the courts.\n\nIt soon became clear that to execute everyone responsible would have required a genocide of its own. During the RPF advance, thousands of people accused of being involved with the killings had been summarily executed in extra-judicial killings (which led to at least 400 RPF soldiers being arrested), and in 1998 twenty-two of the Hutu Power ringleaders were marched out to face firing squads. But passing a death sentence on 120,000 people? That was not an option. Instead, Rwanda did something remarkable: it abolished capital punishment and reinstituted traditional _gacaca_ or \"patch of grass\" courts instead, wherein the lesser accused and their victims' families would meet face-to-face under the direction of locally chosen judges. Punishment would be decided by the community, and confession and repentance would mitigate sentencing. The goal was truth and reconciliation; it was an imperfect solution to an almost intractable problem.\n\nIn 2003, President Kagame went even further, signing the first in a series of sweeping presidential decrees that would see more than 30,000 rank-and-file g\u00e9nocidaires released. Often only contrition, \"re-education,\" and regular community service were required to make amends for their crimes\u2014much to the anguish of survivors, who were now forced to live alongside the men who had killed their families or done horrible things to them and their loved ones. These survivors are re-traumatized every time they pass one of their former tormentors on a cattle path or run into them at the market or in a bar, drinking banana beer in the darkened corners, watching.\n\nIn Nyamata, the church lies in a quiet area on the outside of town. It's larger than the one in nearby Ntarama, though it shares the same modest brick-wall and sheet-metal-roof design. As in Ntarama, thousands of frightened people crammed themselves into the church here when the madness began. Like those who had sought refuge at Ntarama, they thought the killers wouldn't attack a house of worship. And like those who sought refuge in Ntarama, they were wrong.\n\nInside the shadow-box interior: an altar cloth draped in the sepia stains of dried blood; a baptismal font pocked with bullet holes; a punctured ceiling letting in spikes of sun with Mary in the half-light, hands held out somewhere between embrace and surrender. Our Lady of the Sorrows.\n\nAt Nyamata, the clothes of the victims have been left on the pews. Mounds of mouldering cloth, twenty years later: it is a visceral image, a fist constricting around your heart. A heart wrapped in thorns. The taste of rust permeates. Scattered across the altar are the rosaries and hymnals of the dead, and everywhere, those death-sentence identity cards marked TUTSI.\n\nBehind Nyamata church, in underground crypts that smell of earth and old root cellars, the recovered skulls and accompanying bones of 10,000 dead have been exhumed and are now lined up on shelves. When you descend the narrow stairs into the claustrophobic confines of these vaults, you expect it to be eerie, but it isn't. It's not fearful. It's sad, devastatingly so. It's a sadness deeper than hymns, heavier than dirt, as numbing as novocaine.\n\nStanding in the sunlight again, Jean-Claude and I were quiet for a long while.\n\nI didn't know what to say, and when Jean-Claude finally spoke, his voice sounded distant and faint, like someone on the other side of a wall. \"The new airport they're building, it will be near here.\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"It will be better. When it's finished.\"\n\nI nodded again.\n\nWe'd seen signs of the coming boom on our drive in: pre-emptory hotels in place, incongruous four-lane thoroughfares running through banana plantations. Once the Bugesera International Airport opened, this region would become a key commercial zone, charged with energy. As we drove back through the falling dusk toward the lights of Kigali, all I could hope was that once the businessmen and tourists began pouring in, to be shuttled by sedan and air-conditioned coach from Rwanda's sleek new airport to the conference centres in the capital, some of them would find the time to make a small detour to the churches nearby at Ntarama and Nyamata, to stand awhile among the ghosts of Rwanda's past.\n\nPART TWO\n\n**\"WE ARE ALL RWANDANS\"**\n**17**\n\nTHE TRANSPORT TRUCKS THAT BLAST past us on blind corners advertise the specific leap of faith they are making. On the back, sides, and front of their vehicles: ornate messages written in florid curlicues and rooster-plume hues.\n\nJean-Claude helped decipher the religious affiliations as they blurred by.\n\n\" _Bwana Asifiwe_ , that's Swahili,\" he said, shouting to be heard. \"It means 'Praise the Lord,' so we can tell that driver is a born-again Christian. And that one is in Kinyarwanda. _Imana Niyonkuru_. It means 'God Is Great!' So we know that truck driver is Muslim.\"\n\nMinibus drivers had their own theological good-luck slogans, often in English and painted in the same plum-berry purples and parrot greens: ONLY GOD and TRUST GOD and GOD IS KING and THE LORD IS GOD.\n\n_Trust God_ , I thought. _But maybe check the brakes while you're at it_.\n\nOne minibus was aptly named \"Patience.\" A tanker truck rumbled by with its motto, written in French, proclaiming JESUS IS MY SAVIOUR, while the taxicab following in its slipstream boasted a cheerfully informal THANKS GOD.\n\nOther forms of faith vied for our attention as well. Amid the entreaties to Jesus, God, and Allah were trucks and minibuses emblazoned with the names \"Messi\" and \"Iniesta,\" \"Rooney\" and \"Ronaldo.\" Appeals to the soccer gods of Barcelona and Manchester, Arsenal and Madrid, they were given the same divine radiance.\n\n\"A different type of saviour,\" I shouted.\n\nJean-Claude laughed. \"That's true. Soccer is like a religion here, especially the English Premier League. The players are like saints. And I don't know which faith is stronger!\"\n\nWe were heading west, out of the city. The motorcycle taxi boys had given way to heavier traffic, but the pedestrians remained undaunted. Women in bright patterns, hips swaying, with gourds and gunnysacks balancing on their heads, glided through, avoiding oncoming vehicles with a matador's ease. A roadside cobbler worked on a pair of men's shoes while the customer, in suit and tie, stood patiently in stocking feet on a piece of cardboard.\n\nFrom Kigali, the road dipped into a marshy flood plain, then climbed back into the hills\u2014up, up, up. My ears popped, then popped again. Every bend in the road had a sign warning of a sharp turn ahead, but I didn't know why they'd bothered; they could simply have posted one sign at the start with \"etc.\" written underneath it. This was less a highway than a series of corners joined together.\n\n_Land of a thousand hills_ , and we were going to cross them all.\n\nWe occasionally got stuck behind the black-cloud coughs of a transport truck trailing bicyclists who had hitched rides on the back like suckerfish on a shark, one hand on the vehicle's rear bumper, the other on their handlebars. These bicyclists would often have passengers\u2014and sometimes these passengers would have babies wrapped tightly onto their backs. It was like watching a Flying Fellini circus act. Jean-Claude always held back in case one of the bicycles fell in front of our tires.\n\n\"The truck drivers don't mind when bicyclists catch a ride like that,\" Jean-Claude assured me. \"It's like giving someone a lift. With so many steep hills, you have to.\"\n\nThe highway curved through contoured heights, layered in green. Rice paddies filled the valleys below, stirring up memories of Indonesia, of southern Japan. It was all very familiar. And for good reason: agronomists from Asia had been brought in to improve rice cultivation. With so much of the population still supporting itself through subsistence farming, local governments were looking to increase crop diversification as well. They were also investing in programs to prevent soil erosion and loss of forest habitat. It was the start of what's being heralded as Rwanda's Green Revolution.\n\nHomes scaled the steep slopes above us in acts of architectural audacity that defied both gravity and common sense. The sheet-metal rooftops were like mirrors in the heat, reflecting the sun so sharply that it hurt your eyes to look at them. These were the rooftops of the new and improved, cement-walled homes that were going up across Rwanda, replacing the crumbling mud walls and clay roof tiles of another era. The new buildings, simple designs reminiscent of Monopoly pieces, were part of a massive public housing initiative. It is one thing to admire the folkloric appeal of traditional mud-dried homes, another to live in them. Asking Africans to preserve these is like asking North Americans to remain in sod huts.\n\nA light rain had settled the dust and brought out the greens in the fields. Pineapples and plantain. The silvery grey of eucalyptus. In the fall-away glens below us, the treetops swayed like feather dusters.\n\nMarkets, large and small, passed by as the traffic pushed us through a series of ridge-top villages, with the street stalls and storefronts crowding in against each other. _Red, green, yellow, blue_. Children broke like birds around us, running alongside our vehicle, flippity-flop, yelling, _\"Muzungu, muzungu!\"_ I held my hand outside the window, let the wind carry it, riding updrafts.\n\nWe came through a narrow cleft in the hills and dropped suddenly into Gitarama.\n\nGitarama City (or Muhanga, as it is now known) feels like a simplified rendering of Kigali: same hills (only hillier), same incongruous office towers arranged on the hilltops, same hairpin turns buckling through, same kinetic energy\u2014just tighter, more compact. The same women, umbrellas raised to the heat, bundles on head and babies on back, moved through with the same poise, only more so. (There being fewer sidewalks in Gitarama, the streets required even more pirouetting, traffic-avoiding matador moves than Kigali.)\n\nGitarama was the home of Rwanda's first president, Gr\u00e9goire Kayibanda, co-author of the Hutu Manifesto. It was here that the leaders of the Hutu Social Revolution declared Rwanda a republic, and it was here also that Kayibanda died, assassinated in slow motion. Overthrown in a military coup, Kayibanda was locked inside his house with his wife and left to starve to death by his successor and former prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Juv\u00e9nal Habyarimana.\n\nToday, anti-corruption billboards in Gitarama City exhort the population to stay united, work together, get tested for HIV. Other billboards featured strongly worded warnings about gender-based violence, reminding husbands, YOUR WIFE IS NOT YOUR PROPERTY.\n\nGovernment employees had gathered in reluctant ranks in front of their workplaces to exercise.\n\n\"It is required for all public employees,\" Jean-Claude said. \"Every Friday at two o'clock.\"\n\nMandatory office calisthenics: it was very much comparable to what one sees in Japan or South Korea. I could almost hear the familiar _\"Ichi, ni, san!\"_ as we passed.\n\nOffice workers, women in constricting skirts and soft-middled men in neckties, trying desperately to touch their toes. It was an endearing sight.\n\nBeyond the exercising bureaucrats, we passed a newly painted mosque, followed in quick succession by a Pentecostal Revival Hall and a large Seventh-Day Adventist compound, with several other churches and chapels in between. Muslim men in embroidered caps and flowing white robes poured past as a fluster of nuns hurried the other way. A Catholic priest stopped in a doorway to mop his brow with a handful of handkerchief.\n\nOther sanctuaries were on tap as well: taverns and pubs with inviting names like Rest Stop Tranquile and Calm Yourself Bar. They offered pockets of quiet among the crowded, traffic-choked streets of the city. Theirs was a promise of oasis, of transient salvation. Throughout our trip, whenever Jean-Claude stopped to stretch, I would wander off to find a tavern. I liked Rwandan pubs, even if their patrons weren't overly gregarious, were often reserved. This, of course, was undoubtedly due to my presence; to be a muzungu in Africa is to exist in an observer-affected universe, and the dynamic of any place shifted when I walked in. Still, I found the taverns welcoming, if a little wary, sort of like strolling into one of the many clenched pubs in Northern Ireland.\n\nRwandan taverns were always much larger than they looked on the outside. The front, usually just a slab of adobe, opened up onto a warren of smaller rooms arranged around a central, packed-earth courtyard. The reaction when I entered was always entertaining: the bartender's perfectly executed double take, the surreptitious glances exchanged between customers, the silence pregnant with unasked questions. \"Hello, everybody!\" I'd say cheerfully, and they would nod, mumble _\"Bonjour.\"_\n\nThe toilets in these taverns were usually of the squat and strain variety: a simple hole in the floor with a bucket beside to sluice it with. (One brought one's own squashed roll of pocketed toilet paper. Handy travel tip #1.) I was fine with this. Only problem was, every now and then, at the more \"upscale\" taverns, they would employ a young woman to sweep and clean and, yes, sluice the toilets for guests after they'd used them. I really, _really_ didn't want to take advantage of this service. \"No, honest, I'll sluice my own toilet, just point me in the direction of the bucket and I'll\u2014No, really! Don't go in there!\" I would say, trying to block the young woman's entry. This would rouse the perplexed curiosity of other people in the bar, who would crane their heads to peer down the hallway and see what all the commotion was about. _Muzungus were weird, no doubt about it_.\n\nSadly, as much as I appreciated their clay-cooled interiors and oversized, underchilled bottles of beer, as the trip went on I found myself visiting these taverns less and less. Being of chatty Oirish stock, I don't enjoy drinking alone, and I could never inveigle Jean-Claude into joining me for a lukewarm pint of Primus.\n\n\"You go ahead,\" he'd say. \"We'll meet back here later.\"\n\nAs we drove past the beckoning bars of Gitarama City, which looked sleek and urbane, and almost certainly featured luxurious indoor plumbing rather than a sluice bucket, I made yet another sally, asking Jean-Claude for the umpteenth time, \"Are you _sure_ you don't drink? And more to the point, are you sure you don't want to start?\"\n\nHe laughed on the mistaken assumption that I was joking. \"You know, Will, I have never had even a single drink of alcohol in my life, ever.\"\n\n\"So how do you know you don't like it? Maybe if you gave it a try...\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't think Christine\"\u2014his wife and fellow teetotaller\u2014\"would be very happy.\"\n\n\"Who's going to tell her?\" I asked, taking on the role of the proverbial devil-on-one's-shoulder. To no avail, alas. I even tried countering with an appeal to Proverbs 31:6, one of the few Biblical passages my father ever quoted\u2014 _\"Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those in need\"_ (or Boodles Gin in my dad's case)\u2014again, to no effect.\n\nI really have to work on my \"corrupting the souls of others\" technique.\n\n**18**\n\nSOUTH OF GITARAMA CITY, on a palm-lined avenue, we came to Kabgayi Cathedral, seat of the country's first Catholic bishop and still a fulcrum of faith in Rwanda.\n\nKabgayi is referred to as the \"Vatican of Rwanda,\" and its cathedral is an understated yet stately affair, rising up cleanly from the open grounds around it, red bricks and a raised metal roof, with a seminary, a hospital, and a convent attached\u2014as well as a small, half-forgotten museum in behind the main building that was chock-ablock with eclectic pre-colonial relics, each labelled in French with fountain-pen ink under dust as thick as dryer lint. This museum alone was reason enough to stop. The buffet was just a bonus.\n\nA word or two about Rwandan buffets: before we left Kigali, we'd stopped in at the RDB office to pick up the park permits and paperwork for our trip. The head of Tourism and Conservation was an engaging young woman named Rica Rwigamba.\n\n\"We see Rwanda as a _boutique_ tourist destination\" is how she put it. The RDB wasn't looking for free-wheeling budget travellers or youth hostel layabouts. No rat-tailed backpackers, no low-end bus tours. Instead, Rwanda was positioning itself as a higher-end, lower-impact, eco-friendly travel destination with fewer guests staying longer\u2014and spending more money. \"Quality not quantity\" was the rule of thumb in attracting visitors. They wanted to become a Botswana rather than a Kenya. A Costa Rica rather than a Mexico.\n\n\"We'd rather get $1,000 from a single visitor than $100 from ten different people\" was how one tour company operator explained it.\n\nRica agreed. \"We're a small country and our main attractions revolve around conservation. There is a limit to the number of people we can bring in.\"\n\nThe biggest challenge?\n\n\"Building a service-based economy,\" she said with a weary sigh.\n\nRwanda's hotels and restaurants were notorious for their slow, almost languid service. A two-hour wait for a meal wasn't uncommon. The rest of the country was crackling with energy, but the service sectors hadn't caught up, even though tourism revenue had grown exponentially over the last five years.\n\nAcross the hall from Rica's office was that of Vivian Kayitesi, yet another smart, educated, engaging young woman. Vivian was the RDB's head of Investment Promotion and Implementation, and she concurred with Rica. \"Oh, it's a challenge,\" she said, with the same sort of sigh Rica had given.\n\nChanging a country's core cultural perceptions about the value of prompt and attentive service was a difficult undertaking. \"But an important one,\" she stressed. \"Not only for tourists, but for Rwandans also. In the public sector, too. In government departments, we should be able to expect certain standards of service.\"\n\nMuch is made of Rwanda's high population density, as though the country were a ticking demographic time bomb. But Rwanda's population density is less than that of South Korea and roughly on par with that of Holland, and no one is fretting about the Dutch homeland being \"full.\" The Rwandan diaspora continues to return; opportunities abound, and no one is turned away. More than three million people have repatriated since 1994. They come from France and Germany, from Belgium and Switzerland, from neighbouring African countries, and from Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., and they bring with them a new energy, new ideas, and much-needed skill sets. They often find work in banking and hospitality, in IT and education. Today, Rwanda has one of the most international populations in Africa, at least in the larger cities like Kigali and Gitarama. And members of this diaspora, coming home in some cases after generations abroad in North America or Europe, have rankled at the often lackadaisical approach that's greeted them when they arrive. It was the members of this diaspora, impatient and pushing for better customer service, who had been spearheading the move to establish higher standards\u2014even if it was something as simple as showing up for an event on time.\n\nThe goal is to transform Rwanda into not only a knowledge-based economy but a middle-income, service-based economy as well. It's been a long, uphill slog from the sounds of it. Rica and Vivian were both members of the diaspora, exiles returned, determined to help rebuild and reshape their country, yet frustrated at times in their efforts. Which brings us back to the Rwandan talent for buffets. (You thought I'd forgotten the topic at hand.)\n\nWith the economy and country on the move, the average Rwandan can no longer afford to take the entire afternoon off to eat lunch. The solution? A sharp increase in the number of buffets. Rwandan cuisine, with its simmering pots of _matoke_ plantain, its slow-roasted goat brochettes and beef stews served on shovelfuls of rice, its skewered tilapia and the belly-ballast of ugali dumplings, lent itself well to buffet-style eateries.\n\nSimple ingredients in rich sauces, cauldrons of spiced soups and savoury stews: Rwandan fare was simple, yet still hearty\u2014with one notable exception. I speak here of the ongoing travesty that is Rwandan chicken. How to describe the experience of ordering \"chicken\" in Rwanda? Imagine something that is not so much fried as _dried_ , a sort of chicken jerky, stringy and sinewy, more bone than meat and with a skin the thickness\u2014and taste\u2014of broiled bark, though with less nutritional value. Faced with such an offering, one tries in vain to tear off a few measly orts from the withered drumsticks, only to end up gnawing on the bones, which are actually more edible than the rest of the bird.\n\nThese were birds that spent their lives dodging traffic on swift, scrawny legs. \"Rwandan chickens are marathon runners,\" Jean-Claude liked to joke.\n\nSo when he and I discovered that Kabgayi Cathedral ran a guest house _and_ a lunch buffet, we astutely avoided the chicken... while lunging into everything else. I made several trips, trying a bit of this, a bit of that.\n\nThe staff who topped up the heat trays and ran the till and cleared the tables took an abiding interest in what I was putting on my plate every time I went up. I ascribed their fascination to cultural curiosity\u2014I was, after all, the only pink face in the crowd.\n\nJean-Claude, meanwhile, had noticed the sheer amount of food his fellow Rwandans were piling onto their plates. He found it mildly embarrassing.\n\n\"Look how much they are putting on,\" he said, under his breath. \"Even dessert at the same time!\" Pastry and pineapple heaped onto the same dish as the stewed meat and fried vegetables, with everything on top of everything. He shook his head at the gaucheness of it.\n\nJean-Claude and I were more genteel, taking modest portions over several forays. The fruit trays were especially inviting. Jean-Claude kept going back for more passion fruit.\n\n\"These are so hard to find in Canada! And when you do, they are very expensive and are not tasty,\" he said, scooping out the jelly-like seedy pulp of _just one more_. (By the end of the trip, I'd begun to suspect that the real name for passion fruit was \"just one more.\")\n\nI, meanwhile, was captivated by the cantaloupes, a fruit I don't even like\u2014at least, not in the woody, fibrous, fruit-cocktail-filler version I was used to back home. Here, the melons were mouth-meltingly good; it was like eating slices of summer.\n\nFilled to the brim with mangoes and passion fruit, to say nothing of the stewed plantain and kebabs, we finally decided to see the actual cathedral.\n\nAn airy interior. Cool and muggy at the same time. The stained-glass light that streamed in formed coloured shafts on the cathedral's Stations of the Cross, which lined the walls in mosaic-work arrangements. The power of the mob, the suffering of the innocent. A carpenter from Galilee, forced to carry the instrument of his own impending death, whipped by cords, mocked by the crowds. Here, he stumbles. Here, he rises. Here, he falters amid small acts of mercy: a drink of water, a shoulder to share the burden. It might well have been the Stations of Rwanda.\n\nDuring the genocide, tens of thousands of people packed themselves into the ecclesiastical grounds and cavernous interior of Kabgayi Cathedral, asking for mercy. But as at Sainte Famille in Kigali, where Jean-Claude's brother and sister had sought refuge, Kabgayi instead became a concentration camp. Soldiers came in daily to drag away victims\u2014some identified on lists, others at random\u2014or to choose a frightened woman from the crowd to sate other appetites. As the days turned to weeks, starvation and disease took its toll. Skeletal thin, the bodies began to pile up.\n\nChurch and state have always been intimately linked in Rwanda. After the conversion of the Tutsi king in 1943, the entire population followed suit, making it one of the quickest and most thorough mass conversions ever recorded, described by missionaries as a \"tornado.\" Almost overnight, Rwanda had become a Christian kingdom in the heart of Africa.\n\nPresident Kayibanda of Hutu Manifesto notoriety was a devout Catholic and former seminarian, and following Rwanda's independence the Catholic Church became the de facto state religion, intricately tied to the Hutu government. Juv\u00e9nal Habyarimana, the man who overthrew Kayibanda, was a devout Catholic as well, and he strengthened these ties even more. Under two successive dictatorships, the Catholic Church became the most powerful organization in Rwanda (after the government itself). The archbishop sat on the central committee of the ruling party, and the Church had a lock on education. It supported ethnic ID cards and racial quotas and actively encouraged the insidious Hamitic myth that had entrenched these divisions. High-ranking bishops were often outspoken in their support of the genocidal regime, arguing that Tutsis were irredeemably \"bad\" by nature, a form of original sin, a mark of Cain.\n\n\"Regrettably, the Church took the side of the political regime,\" Rwandan human rights commissioner Tom Ndahiro writes. \"It did not denounce political and social injustices, nor did it condemn the first killings, nor those which followed.\"\n\nIndeed, many who took part thought they were doing the will of the Church. Rwandan theologian Laurien Ntezimana explained it thusly: \"Rwandese know how to obey but they do not know how to dialogue.... The church has always exalted the virtue of obedience, and if you talk to ordinary people they will tell you that many of the massacres happened because they blindly obeyed the authorities.\"\n\nMany individual priests and pastors, nuns and deacons, risked their lives to protect Tutsis and denounce the violence. But they did so without the official sanction or support of the Church, and they paid the price. More than 200 nuns and priests were killed during the genocide, a quarter of the country's clergy, and many of them died in a state of grace. But the sad fact is that many high-ranking priests, bishops, and even nuns took part in the killings, encouraging the gangs, providing information, and even picking up a club themselves when needed. Prominent Catholic, Anglican, and Seventh-Day Adventist clergy have all been implicated. Several have been arrested and convicted. Many more are still on the lam, fugitives from the truth.\n\nBy the time the genocide began, Rwanda was the most Christianized country in Africa. Fully 90 percent identified themselves as Christian, and of these, 65 percent belonged to the Catholic Church. Hutus and Tutsis went to the same Sunday services, sat on the same pews, sang from the same hymnals. In previous genocidal campaigns, Tutsis had run to the churches and been safe there. But this time, there would be no shelter. The places where victims should have received sanctuary\u2014hospitals, schools, and especially churches\u2014became prime killing fields. During the genocide, more people were killed in churches and on church grounds than anywhere else.\n\nUnder crowded and filthy conditions, without water or food, the ragged people inside Kabgayi Cathedral prayed and prayed for a salvation that never came.\n\nOn the complicity of the churches in Rwanda, Christian philosopher David P. Gushee came to a crushing conclusion: \"Long study of the Holocaust, and now fresh study of the Rwandan genocide, has led me to the heartbroken realization that the presence of Churches in a country guarantees exactly _nothing_. The self-identification of people with the Christian faith guarantees exactly _nothing_. All of the clerical garb and regalia, all of the structures of religious accountability... guarantee exactly _nothing_.\"\n\nThose few who managed to survive the Dachau of Kabgayi were rescued not by UN troops but by the RPF. Under the directives of Paul Kagame, the RPF's main force had continued its advance, sweeping around Kigali while the battle for the capital still raged, and then pushing forward, driving a wave of refugees in front of them. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians, fearful that the RPF was intent on exterminating them in the same way they had tried to exterminate the Tutsis, had fled, emptying villages and leaving the landscape eerily quiet. There would be no \"revenge genocide,\" but those who had taken part in the killings had reason to fear the RPF's arrival. RPF soldiers often dealt harshly with alleged perpetrators. At one point, Kagame had to issue a direct order to his troops to stop these summary executions. Even then, revenge killings and massacres continued as the advancing RPF forces came across the charred bodies of family and friends. Imagine a Jewish army invading Germany in 1944 only to discover the gas chambers and mass graves, the emaciated prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Now imagine telling them to show restraint.\n\nAs the RPF closed in, the interahamwe militia and government troops at Kabgayi went on a final killing frenzy before they retreated, leaving mountains of dead bodies behind. The RPF soldiers took possession not of a cathedral but a slaughterhouse. More than 30,000 people lay dead in the region around Kabgayi. Later estimates put it as high as 64,000\u2014and yes, you read those numbers right.\n\nThe Catholic Archbishop of Kigali was there to greet the RPF. A former collaborator with the Habyarimana regime, the archbishop was now very ingratiating, very obsequious to the new rulers. He was shot and killed, along with three other bishops and ten priests, by the RPF soldiers assigned to guard them\u2014something that outraged the Catholic Church much more than the murder of women and children that had just occurred in the same area. (Try as I may, I've never understood why the life of a priest is worth more than that of a child.) The four soldiers responsible\u2014teenagers, according to the RPF, who had lost their families in the genocide and blamed the Church\u2014were duly arrested, with one killed trying to escape. Or so it is claimed. The outcome of their courts martial remains murky and difficult to determine.\n\nAs Jean-Claude and I left Kabgayi Cathedral, a site of mass murder and madness, I thought again about the meaning of buffets and the understandable yet profoundly unfair demands being made by Rwandan returnees on those who survived the horrors of 1994.\n\nMembers of the diaspora have been pivotal to the country's remarkable turnaround: they've injected capital and technological know-how into a Rwandan society cauterized by violence, and the results have been electric, like the jolt of a defibrillator to a dying heart. These returnees are building hotels and running banks and launching enterprises with an undeniable vigour. But lost amid the noise and excitement, the breathless sense of opportunity that is everywhere in evidence, is the fact that this is still a traumatized country. To ask a people who have suffered through something as unspeakable as a genocide to now perk up and join the boosterism of a new and improved Rwanda may be asking too much.\n\n\"There are tensions, for sure,\" Jean-Claude said, \"between the people that were here in the genocide and those people who grew up outside. It is like a kind of wall. The people on the other side have trouble imagining what it was like.\"\n\nMany survivors of the genocide are barely getting by. They move through life feeling numb, tormented by memories, often mired in poverty and pain. For them to watch as Rwandan exiles from other countries come swooping in, enjoying a material success untroubled by bad dreams and waking nightmares, well, it can rankle.\n\nI now saw Rwandan buffets for what they were: an attempted solution to a deep social divide. Not between Tutsi and Hutu, not even between expat expectations and embedded cultural habits, but between the newly arrived and those still reeling, between the lucky and the wounded.\n\nJean-Claude was no longer with the Catholic Church, but still considered himself a Christian. It remained a big part of who he was. Being a typical, vaguely non-religious North American, I was puzzled by his ongoing commitment.\n\nAs we drove through the beautiful hills of Rwanda, I asked him, \"How do you do it? How do you keep your faith after something like that?\"\n\n\"It can be difficult,\" he admitted. \"We have a saying in Rwanda, kind of like a proverb. _'Imana yilirwa ahandi igataha i Rwanda.'_ It means, in the daytime God travels far away, but at night he returns to Rwanda. Every night he comes home to these hills. God sleeps in Rwanda.\"\n\n**19**\n\nLUCK COMES IN MANY GUISES.\n\n\"When my brother Elis\u00e9 was ten years old he was kidnapped by Somali truck drivers,\" Jean-Claude said. \"It was his good fortune. And mine.\"\n\nWe were sitting in a small caf\u00e9 taking respite from the road, Jean-Claude with his inevitable bottled water, me with my equally inevitable Primus beer.\n\n\"I was maybe six years old when he was snatched,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"This was after my mother died. What happened was, near my auntie's house, there was a motor park for international trucking companies with these big trucks, and the drivers they were from Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, Somalia. Lots of people everywhere. Somalians were known for long-distance driving, and me and my brother, we looked like we were Somalian. Our hair was very soft, our features were narrow, we were thinner. Even today, if I walk down a street in Calgary and a Somali sees me, he tries to speak to me in the Somalian language.\"\n\nThe truck drivers were convinced that Jean-Claude and his brother were the offspring of a Somali man and a local woman, probably forgotten, possibly abandoned.\n\n\"They thought maybe a truck driver had been with a girl and then he just ran away, or maybe didn't even know that he has children here, or maybe he did, but went away, had an accident, and has died and never came back. They thought _something_ must have happened. For them it was like, _These children, they are our children_. They asked me and my brother if we wanted a ride in their truck. They said we could, but only if we really were Somalian. My brother Elis\u00e9, he wanted a ride in one of these big trucks, so he said, 'Yeah, we're from Somalia.' He got in. And we lost him. For me, I didn't talk with the Somalis because I was little and my auntie always said, 'Stay away from those truck drivers!' But my brother, he wasn't shy like that.\"\n\nWhen Jean-Claude's father found out what had happened, he was distraught.\n\n\"He knew Somalians took my brother, so a search went out. But they couldn't find the trail. They even sent a message to Uganda because the main highway was going there, was passing through. But the Uganda police, they asked, 'Okay, which truck? Which driver? What's the licence plate?' We didn't know.\"\n\n\"That must have been horrible.\"\n\n\"Oh, it was devastating. For the whole family. Especially, I missed him. We used to play together, we used to fight, we used to laugh. If anyone was being a bully to me, I would call Elis\u00e9. He was my big brother. Losing him was very tough.\"\n\n\"What became of him?\"\n\n\"We didn't know, not for many years. But what we found out was, this truck driver and his wife adopted him as their son. He was raised as a Muslim. They changed his name to Sa\u00efd. Hussein Sa\u00efd Abdi. A completely Somalian name. He learned to speak Somalian fluently. He grew up in that environment.\"\n\n\"Was he treated well?\"\n\n\"Oh, very well. They loved him too much. And when the family moved to Kenya, my brother went too. He was working with his Somali dad, driving trucks.\"\n\nEight years after he first disappeared, Elis\u00e9 returned. Or rather, _Sa\u00efd_ returned.\n\n\"He just showed up at our house. It was a shock. He had driven a truck to Kigali, so he came to see us. We were very surprised, because here he was almost a man now, eighteen years, no longer a child.\"\n\n\"Did he stay?\"\n\n\"He was planning to, yes. But after three months, he said 'I'm going home.' He didn't fit in here anymore, so he went back to Kenya. He was a truck driver and his work and business was there, so he left.\"\n\n\"Your dad must have been heartbroken.\"\n\n\"I think more he was thankful just to know what happened to his son, to know that nothing bad had befallen him.\"\n\nAnd so, once again, Jean-Claude's brother drove away.\n\n\"That could just as easily have been you,\" I said. \"Had you gotten into that truck when you were six.\"\n\nJean-Claude nodded. \"Would have been a very different life,\" he said. \"Very different.\"\n\nLater on, his brother Sa\u00efd sent a letter to their dad, along with a photograph of himself in Nairobi. No address, just a photo. But in the background was a clue, and it was this clue that Jean-Claude would eventually pursue across eastern Africa.\n\nWhen Jean-Claude crossed the bridge at Rusumo Falls, it was this brother he was searching for, and it was this brother who would give him shelter during the genocide. Somali kidnappers had inadvertently saved Jean-Claude's life\u2014and Sa\u00efd's.\n\n**20**\n\nFROM THE CATHEDRAL, we drove south on a spool of asphalt that curled across the hills like a loosely unrolled ribbon. We were heading for the royal court of Nyanza, historical seat of the Rwandan monarchy.\n\nBy lining up royal genealogies and historical events with specific solar eclipses, the founding of the Kingdom of Rwanda can be dated between 1312 and 1532. According to legend, it originated even earlier, with the rule of the semi-mythical Mwami Gihanga, whose father was descended from Heaven. Gihanga's kingdom began as a small fiefdom on Gasabo Hill but quickly spread, bringing neighbouring communes under its control.\n\nThus began a cycle of warrior kings and pastoralists, conquerors and consolidators, of rulers known as \"Bwimba the Great\" and \"Ndoli the Restorer,\" as well as the less fortunately monikered \"Yuhi the Senile,\" poet king.\n\nWhat started as a loose affiliation of warring clans became an expanding hegemony, one that would extend northward into what is now Uganda and westward to the rainforests of the Congo, having reached\u2014quite tangibly\u2014the end of the world. (According to Rwandan cosmology, Rwanda sat in the centre of the universe, and the dense forests of the Congo, which held up the sky, marked the outer edge of the inhabited world. Beyond that lay only endless jungle, deeper and deeper, into darkness.)\n\nRwandans were the Romans of central Africa, holding back invasions from Burundi and other adversarial kingdoms while building an impenetrable line of forts along the frontiers, which gave rise to the proverb _\"U Rwanda ruratera ntiruterwa.\"_ (\"Rwanda is never attacked, but always attacks.\") Every citizen was considered _ingabo_ , a \"defender of Rwanda,\" and the symbol of royal authority was the Kalinga drum, which was adorned, not too subtly, with the testicles of the king's defeated enemies.\n\nThe royal intrigues of Rwanda's ruling families would rival those of Shakespeare. Its inner court was home to oracles and soothsayers, tax collectors and clan leaders, chieftains and courtiers, musicians and magicians, fortune tellers and wine stewards, with dynastic poets ever present, singing praises of the king in verse.\n\nIt was to the site of this royal court that Jean-Claude and I were now heading.\n\nGetting to Nyanza proved tricky, however, if only because\u2014at the exact moment I said, \"Y'know, the road's not as congested out here, maybe I should drive\"\u2014we got caught in a duel of the minibuses.\n\n\"Uh-oh,\" said Jean-Claude, which, given the unruffled nature of his temperament, was tantamount to a primal scream.\n\nA pair of competing buses were battling for control of the road, careening wildly as they jockeyed for position, speeding up, slowing down, slamming on their brakes and cutting each other off as they raced to pluck up passengers before their competition could reach them. We were caught in the middle like townspeople at a gunfight as first one minibus then the next zoomed by\u2014only to cut in and fall back. All of this on roads that Evel Knievel would balk at, on corners that skirted the sides of dead-drop slopes. The villages below were very small.\n\nI swallowed my earlier offer and never suggested I take the wheel again. It was all I could do to pry my fingers from the dashboard. _Uh-oh_ , indeed. I wish I could say this was the only minibus duel we saw during our trip, but no, it became so common an occurrence that I rarely shit myself more than, oh, once or twice a day.\n\nThe road was lined with eucalyptus trees. This was not, I realized now, for reasons of aesthetics or erosion control, but of safety. These trees acted like guardrails, something that became evident when we passed the wreck of a car propped up by splintered trees above the sudden-death fields far below.\n\nAnd then we entered the silent green tunnel of a bamboo forest, and all was good again. Bamboo has that effect. It soothes the heart, blots up sunlight, softens sounds.\n\nComing out of this bamboo tunnel, the views opened up. It was breathtaking. Sculpted hills stood muted in the mist. Patchwork fields and contoured heights. It again brought to mind images of Asia. Even the cries of _\"Muzungu!\"_ that greeted us whenever we got out to stretch or buy a bottle of Fanta might easily have been the schoolboy gasp of _\"Gaijin!\"_ that still greets travellers in rural Japan.\n\nThe similarities were fleeting, though, and this was decidedly Africa, decidedly Rwanda. Banana leaves shredded by the wind. Dust and diesel. Women in beautiful patterns. Small children with bundled twigs and jerry cans of water balanced on their heads. Overloaded bicycles. Water-pump gatherings. African smiles, and everyone impeccably dressed. These images were repeated on every turn, and were equally captivating every time: variations on a larger theme.\n\nEach hill revealed another valley, every valley another town. As we drove past roadside markets and crossroad crowds, truck drivers en route to the Burundian border barrelled through, scattering goats and chickens with their air-horn blasts.\n\nAnd then\u2014into Nyanza.\n\nOnce an ancient court, Nyanza today is a newly anointed district capital. A flurry of billboard exhortations greeted us on our arrival: \"REPORT FAMILY VIOLENCE!\" \"TEST FOR HIV!\" \"PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.\" \"WORK TOGETHER STAY UNITED.\" \"UNLEASH YOUR POTENTIAL.\"\n\nNyanza had once had a Wild West reputation, but new hotels and office towers were now springing up, polished glass reflecting the surrounding hills. The streets bustled with activity, as though the entire town was late for a meeting.\n\nThe royal compound at Nyanza, just outside of town, is a much reduced reconstruction, though still striking in its pre-colonial, wholly non-Western layout: a series of conical, beehive-shaped structures constructed from tightly woven straw, arranged inside a high wooden palisade. The buildings resembled the traditional coil-woven _agaseke_ baskets of Rwandan women. (The newly built Convention Centre in Kigali, a conical, highly stylized modernist structure, was inspired by these same agaseke baskets, a national emblem so important they've been given a place of pride on Rwanda's coat of arms.)\n\nBehind the royal residence was a pair of smaller but equally elegant outbuildings: a milk hut and a beer hut, in which would have dwelled, respectively, a milk maid and the royal brewmaster, milk being the iconic drink of the Tutsi royalty and banana beer being a Rwandan delicacy. The man and woman responsible for the beer and milk were, by order of royal decree, virgins who were never allowed to marry. (Though you have to wonder, with the two huts being in such close proximity, whether the milk maid and the beer boy ever met up late at night to relieve certain urges.)\n\nInside the main royal residence, Jean-Claude and I met a group of young Scottish women who were touring Rwanda. They were the ones who told us about the virginal prerequisites of said milky lass and her beery counterpart, as had been explained to them by the Rwandan guide inside.\n\nA pair of virgins? \"Couldn't do that in Glasgow,\" one of them snorted.\n\n\"Aye, not enough candidates like,\" the others laughed.\n\nThey were dressed in loose cotton, damp from the heat, with faces even pinker than mine. University students working as volunteers with a local NGO, they had nothing but good things to say about Rwanda. \"My dad, he used to work in Liberia,\" one of them said, \"and he was right worried when I signed up. Gave me all this advice on safety precautions and security and the like. Didn't need any of it. Feels safer here than back home in Dundee.\"\n\nLike the typical Rwandan tavern, the interior of the royal residence was much roomier than it appeared from the outside, both coolly shaded and unusually aromatic. Enormous wooden beams provided the framework for the straw-woven exterior. (It was akin to stepping inside a geodesic dome.) And the aroma that permeated the walls? A spiced combination of incense and wet earth, it was actually the odour of dried cow-dung braziers. \"They feed the cattle herbs and flowers to create a nice smell,\" the guide explained.\n\nAs our eyes adjusted to the smoky dark, details emerged: Twa pottery, woven mats, hanging partitions, the lowered entrance and raised sleeping quarters of the king.\n\nThe tour guide, a lanky young man with commendable English, was enlivened by the presence of all these young women and steered his talk accordingly. The sexual predilections of the king's matrimonial bed were covered in great detail (and to the keen interest of his audience, it should be noted). Rwanda's more virile mwamis, he explained, were able to juggle multiple wives and several courtesans over a single night, bringing them in discreetly, one by one, through the side door and then up onto the royal bed\u2014a round, voluptuously cushioned platform that needed only a mirrored ceiling and some Barry White to complete its _boom-chika-bow-wow_ vibe. The girls were egging the lad on, asking all sorts of leading questions and being generally saucy in a way that only Scotswomen can. By my estimation, the topics covered by the tour guide were: the geopolitical foundations of Rwanda's pre-colonial political system: 2 percent; the amorous inner workings of the royal bedchambers: 98 percent. And even then, I may have been overly generous in my estimate of the former.\n\nWith the sad wisdom that comes from age, I wanted to pull this young man aside and say, \"You do realize nothing's going to happen, right? These young women are on a schedule, so even if they were up for it there's no way you'd be able to arrange a tryst, let alone a succession of them, let alone convince them to queue up outside your bedroom. The logistics alone would make it all but impossible.\"\n\nStill, a boy's gotta dream, I suppose. Maybe it was the soft light or the delicate scent of dried cow dung that brought out the romantic in me, but I decided not to intervene. Instead, Jean-Claude and I went back outside, leaving our young guide to his bevy of admirers (a.k.a. band of snorting lassies).\n\nAnkole cattle were grazing in a meadow behind the royal compound. These cows, graceful, almost feline, are known as Watusi in North America, after \"Tutsi.\" They are renowned for their beauty: long thin hooves, delicate deer-like features with soft dewlaps\u2014and prominent humps on the males. But what truly sets Ankole cattle apart are their horns. Although originally for defence and body cooling, selective aesthetic breeding over hundreds of years has produced not so much horns as _tusks_. They can reach a staggering two metres in length (surpassing the tusks of many elephants, in fact), and some are so curved they almost meet at the top, forming elongated ovals and heart-shaped outlines. Others form lyres. All are impressive.\n\nAmong the pastoralist Tutsis, the Ankole cattle were symbols of status, a form of \"walking wealth\" prized more for the envy they engendered than for their milk. (The small-uddered Ankole cattle actually produce very little.) They are rarely slaughtered; killing a fertile cow would be like burning money. It's only when they have reached their elder years, or have been injured beyond recovery, that they are reluctantly taken away, their soft leather used for drums, their horns converted into flute-like musical instruments.\n\nThese were the cows that Jean-Claude had referred to as the \"Cattle of Kings,\" and certainly the golden Ankole grazing in the meadow behind Nyanza Courts seemed exceptionally regal to me. Elegant and gentle, sociable and highly intelligent (they are easily trained to recognize their names when their herders sing them), they were a far cry from the lunk-headed, lumbering Holsteins I knew back home\u2014even if said Holsteins do provide more milk and better meat. The cows I'd seen sparring with that mutt back in Kigali were of the square-chested Holstein variety. I don't imagine the cur would have tried the same antics with a more nimble-footed, long-horned Ankole.\n\nAs noted earlier, Ankole cattle lay at the cultural heart of the Tutsi social class, which is precisely why they were targeted by Hutu Power militias. During the genocide, a wholesale slaughter took place, with the animals butchered for prime cuts of meat and the rest left to rot in the fields. Twenty years on, the population of the Ankole is only now recovering.\n\nThe last great king of Rwanda was Kigeri IV Rwabugiri. A severe and unforgiving man, Rwabugiri, having ascended to the throne in 1853, launched a series of military and political campaigns that would extend his authority over a region twice as large as present-day Rwanda, reaching deep into the Congo and as far north as Lake Edward in present-day Uganda. King Rwabugiri spearheaded more than fourteen different military expeditions, forcing neighbouring kingdoms to bow down and pay tribute. His reign would be the high-water mark of the Tutsi ascendency. He crushed rebellions in the northwest and established the complex system of governance, from province to district to hill, that is still in existence today. A warrior in his own right, Rwabugiri was also, in a sense, the Bureaucratic King\u2014albeit one given to public executions over minor perceived slights. Rwabugiri would rule for more than forty years and was still in power, elderly but able, when the first German explorers arrived.\n\nOur band of young Scotswomen had now joined us in the meadow, to the wistful regret of the guide inside the king's chambers, I was sure. We walked up the hill together to a very different royal residence.\n\nAlthough the Belgian-built colonial manor house is only fifty steps or so from the older royal court, it might have been a world away, which I suppose it was. Built in 1932 for a now-acquiescent King of Rwanda, it is thoroughly Western in style, right down to its incongruous\u2014and undersized\u2014bathtub. (The final Tutsi monarch stood almost seven feet tall; how he managed to fold himself into that boxy little tub is a mystery for the ages.) Long and low, the building's doorways and windows opened to views of the hills across from it. A melancholy place, caught in a calming crosswind, it marks the end of many things. The last kings of Rwanda lived here.\n\nRwabugiri died in 1895, soon after the Germans arrived. His death created a dangerous power vacuum, which Germany took advantage of, moving in from Tanzania (or Tanganyika, as it was then known) and claiming the nearby Tutsi kingdom of Burundi as well.\n\nThe hapless son who succeeded Rwabugiri got caught up in a War of the Roses\u2013style struggle between monarchists and rival clans, complete with pretenders to the throne and would-be usurpers. He was ousted in a palace coup and forced to commit ritualistic suicide. This prolonged civil war among the inner circles of the royal court sapped the strength of the monarchy at the very moment the Europeans were making their move. It was a time of cabals and cults, of prophetesses and messianic leaders. One of Rwabugiri's widows fled northward into the mountains with a band of loyal retainers, proclaiming herself Queen of Ndorwa and vowing to expel all encroaching Europeans from Rwanda.\n\nIn the end, an ambitious but distant heir named Musinga wrested power from a competing clan to claim the throne. Musinga allied himself with the Germans to defeat his rivals; he even sent men to fight for Germany against the Belgians in East Africa during World War I. But he had backed the wrong horse, and with Germany's defeat, Rwanda was handed over to Musinga's former foes.\n\nBelgium's relationship with the monarch was tetchy at best. A Belgian commander complained early on that Musinga was \"scorning the orders we give him.\" Clearly appalled at the sovereign's impudence, the commander noted that the king \"intends to play the leading part in politics of his country and to relegate the European authorities to the background.\" That would not do! The Belgians arrested Musinga at gunpoint and threw him in jail, releasing him only in the face of a public revolt. But the damage had been done. The aura of divine power surrounding the king was gone forever. Muzungus were now calling the shots, and when this same king, the last \"pagan monarch\" of Rwanda, refused to be baptized, he was deposed in 1931 and replaced by one of his more compliant sons, Charles Pierre, who had already adopted Western clothes and customs. It was Charles's public embrace of Christianity that sparked the mass conversion of Rwanda. And when King Mutara III Rudahigwa, as Charles was now known, proved troublesome, he too would be removed from the equation.\n\nCharles had become increasingly disillusioned. He chafed under Belgian control and openly questioned the ethnic ID cards Belgium had imposed, insisting, \"There are no objective criteria whereby one can distinguish Hutu from Tutsi.\" While travelling in Burundi, Charles Rudahigwa was invited to dinner by the Belgian authorities to discuss these matters. He took a few bites of his meal and became violently ill. A Belgian doctor was called in; King Rudahigwa was given an injection and died soon after. Another version of these events begins with the king complaining of a migraine but ends in the same manner: a visit from a Belgian doctor, a mysterious injection, sudden death. Was it simply an accident? An allergic reaction, perhaps? Or a cerebral hemorrhage? Possibly. But his death did pave the way for the 1959 Hutu Social Revolution, which abolished the monarchy and proclaimed Rwanda a republic under Belgium's new policy of \"majority rule.\" With Rudahigwa's death, many observers suspected Belgium was simply clearing the deck chairs before handing over power to the Hutu.\n\nNyanza Hill is where the Rwanda of old came to an end, and for all the fusty feudalism of the ancient regime, it is worth noting that prior to 1959, over the course of 600 years of meticulously maintained oral history, there was not a single case of systematic violence between Hutus and Tutsis. Most violence was between competing clans, not \"ethnic\" groups. And most of that was regional as well. The north and southwest were never fully subjugated, and rebellions often flared up. As the French scholar G\u00e9rard Prunier noted, \"It was a centre versus periphery affair and not one of Tutsi versus Hutu.\" Rwandan kings could be cruel and capricious; they were not genocidal. That fatal cleave occurred under colonial rule, aided and abetted by European notions of race and racial superiority.\n\nIt was Rwandans who planned the 1994 genocide and Rwandans who carried it out. Ultimate responsibility lies squarely with them. As the respected Hutu journalist and Catholic priest Andr\u00e9 Sibomana put it, \"Men are products but not prisoners of their history. They decide themselves what to do.\" But it's also important to be aware of both the colonial context and the role Western nations played in making the genocide possible. At Nyanza Hill, two very different royal manors and two very different traditions are in evidence.\n\nAs Jean-Claude and I walked back down through grassy fields, past feline cattle and the woven palaces of a lost Rwanda, I heard a sharp _kii_ and looked up to see a bird of prey turning lazy, lethal circles in the sky. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the laughter of Scottish women growing fainter and fainter.\n\n**21**\n\nSPEAKING OF THE SCOTS, here is the story of how I became world famous in Butare City for forty-seven minutes. That was the length of time needed for my rise to fame and fall from grace to run its course.\n\nButare (now known as Huye) is a university town, and when we stopped at a grocery store on the outskirts of the city, I was pleased to find a small selection of academic books for sale in among the soft drinks and snacks. While Jean-Claude ran to the bank, I poked about the dusty shelves and discovered a military history of pre-colonial Rwanda, including its many kings. Delighted at my find, I took the book up to the counter along with a raisin bun and a bottle of conveniently pre-warmed Fanta.\n\nI am, supposedly, a professional writer. Which means\u2014according to my reading of Revenue Canada regulations, anyway\u2014that every scrap of reading material I ever purchase, up to and including the placemats at my local Chinese restaurant (\"You are born under the sign of the Dragon. You are compatible with Horse, Rat, and Rooster\"), counts as research and is, therefore, gloriously tax deductible.\n\nSo when I made my purchase, I asked for a receipt.\n\nRwandans, I would discover, are terrifically talented when it comes to writing up a bill of sale. They almost seem to enjoy the challenge, asking themselves, _\"All righty then. Let's see just how elaborate and labour-intensive we can make this.\"_ Shopkeepers will often have a large carbon-copy pad from 1942 for exactly this purpose, in which they painstakingly write out such crucial details as your name, nationality, address (while in Rwanda), address (in home country), phone number, age, height, weight, blood type, shoe size, date of birth, mother's maiden name, favourite singer, pet peeves, hobbies (if applicable), date of birth (again, just to be safe), preferred use of a salad fork, etc. When asking for a receipt in Rwanda, it's a good idea to allot the bulk of one's afternoon to complete the transaction.\n\nI should also remind readers of a seemingly unrelated but important point made earlier: Rwandans _love_ English Premier League soccer. They're crazy for it. In Kigali, when I went to buy a Rwanda National Soccer jersey as a souvenir for my son, the shop owner attempted to talk me out of it, saying, \"The Amavubi are having a terrible season. Why don't you buy a Chelsea jersey instead? Or maybe Tottenham? They're doing well this year. Or how about a nice Arsenal jersey?\" They were all the same price, so it's not as if he was attempting to upsell me. I tried to explain to him that I hadn't come all the way to Africa to buy a Chelsea FC soccer jersey, but he couldn't see my point and remained perplexed even as he rang up the sale.\n\nSo\u2014when I gave the shopkeeper in Butare my surname for the receipt he was filling in, he looked up and said, \"Ferguson? Like Alex Ferguson?\"\n\nNow, for those of you (i.e., North Americans) who may not know who Alex Ferguson is, that Rwandan shopkeeper was referring to the legendary manager of Manchester United, a towering figure in the world of soccer who has been knighted by the Queen, no less. Having grown up in a soccer-free zone (i.e., northern Alberta in the 1970s), I'd never heard of _Sir_ Alex Ferguson until my wife and I happened to name our oldest son Alex. It was sheer coincidence, you understand, but soon enough, British friends were saying, \"Alex Ferguson! That's fantastic! You must be a real football fan!\" (as the rest of the world mistakenly calls soccer). They were baffled by my lack of enthusiasm. It was, I learned, like meeting someone whose last name is Gretzky and who had named his son \"Wayne,\" only to look at you blankly when you said, \"Like the hockey player!\" _The hockey who?_\n\nIn Rwanda, Alex Ferguson is a highly respected figure. You catch him in sports magazines and on BBC TV, an older, good-looking fellow often seen yelling at his players. The clerk at that shop didn't think I _was_ Alex Ferguson; that would have been ridiculous.\n\n\"No,\" I said with a laugh. \"No relation.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"But the funny thing is, my son is named Alex.\"\n\n\"Son?\"\n\n\"That's right. _He's_ Alex Ferguson. Just a fluke, of course. Who knew my kid had a famous name? I sure as heck didn't.\"\n\nAnd I left, thinking the matter was done.\n\nJean-Claude and I stopped for lunch at a nearby caf\u00e9, and then headed back to where our vehicle was parked. What we didn't realize was that word had spread, anticipation was mounting.\n\nAs we approached the Land Cruiser, our pace slowed. We could see the shopkeeper standing there, beaming, pen and paper in hand. He asked, somewhat breathlessly, if I might sign my name for him. More and more people appeared, the entire street it seemed, all smiling at me with the same enthusiasm. Several of them had their phones out, camera mode ready, making \"Can I take one?\" gestures.\n\nWe were flummoxed. Jean-Claude had a long and, from the sounds of it, highly convoluted conversation with the shopkeeper in Kinyarwanda. He then pulled me to one side and asked in a hushed and\u2014it must be said\u2014slightly accusatory tone, \"Will, did you tell these people you are Alex Ferguson's son?\"\n\n\"What? God, no.\"\n\n\"But that's what they think. They are asking if they can take their picture with you, get your autograph.\"\n\nI was probably the most famous person ever to stop by that little shop, even if it was under false pretenses.\n\n\"What should I do?\" I whispered to Jean-Claude.\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nJean-Claude and I seriously considered having me shake a few hands, slap a few backs, pose for a few selfies, scribble a few signatures that looked vaguely like _\"Alex Ferguson's son, Esq.\"_ and then leave with a munificent wave of the hand. One hated to pop their bubble. But then I thought, What if word spreads? What if, God forbid, it ends up in the papers? _Alex Ferguson's son tours Rwanda!_\n\nAnd so, against my better instincts, we fessed up to my true (non) identity. Even then, it took some doing for Jean-Claude to convince the group that I was _not_ Alex Ferguson's offspring. When he finally did, their expressions soured. They seemed to think I'd been trying to pull a fast one on them (to what end?), and as they grumpily dispersed, several of them shot _highly_ disapproving glares our way. (I say \"our\" because Jean-Claude was fully implicated by this point.)\n\nSigh.\n\n\"Maybe I should have just signed some autographs,\" I said as we limped away in our 4x4, chests deflated.\n\nJean-Claude agreed. \"I think that would have been better. They were a little bit angry at being tricked.\"\n\n_Tricked?_ But, but\u2014oh, never mind.\n\nEven worse, my Icarus-like arc had reaped no benefits, no rewards, not a single beer cadged or meal on the house proffered. Next time.\n\n**22**\n\nRWANDA, \"LAND OF A THOUSAND HILLS,\" is also renowned as an Empire of Primates, and the first ones I saw were not in the forest but on the road. As we drove into Butare, a monkey scampered across, baby bouncing on its back like a rodeo clown atop a runaway steer. I shouted for Jean-Claude to stop the vehicle as I scrambled to unsheath my camera\u2014a reaction, I soon learned, that was like squealing with delight at the sight of a squirrel in Canada.\n\nWhen we pulled over, a welcoming committee of white-throated L'Hoest's monkeys greeted us. I burst out of the 4x4 like a primate paparazzo, unleashing a salvo of shots in rapid-fire bursts. More and more monkeys appeared, some of them looking awfully shifty, like potential pickpockets\u2014and appropriately so, as it turned out, because Butare, Jean-Claude informed me, used to be where the majority of pickpockets in Rwanda came from. The citizens of Butare, hailing as they do from a university town, considered themselves smarter than average as well, a lethal combination. \"People in Butare are born with a high school education, it's what we say,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"But keep your hand on your wallet.\"\n\nI filled up half a memory card with near-identical photos, and we set off again, leaving our white-bearded, fleet-footed friends behind. As the roads grew more congested, the traffic, counter-intuitively, grew quicker. A battered hatchback from the Better Driving School lurched out in front of us, a nervous young woman clutching the steering wheel with a terrified grasp. Her instructor was teaching her to drive by having her plunge right in, the way our grandparents supposedly learned to swim\u2014anecdotally anyway. _\"Rowed us out to the middle of the lake and tossed us over, said 'See you at the shore.'\"_\n\n\"Did I tell you how I learned to drive?\" Jean-Claude asked.\n\n\"Blindfolded on a tightrope, I'm guessing.\"\n\nBut no.\n\n\"Was at a soccer field in Kigali. It was packed dirt, red clay, where we used to play. This guy, he owned a Volkswagen\u2014I don't know how it was still running, everything inside had been replaced with wood: the floor, the handles, even the gas pedal, it all was wood. This car had nothing. No insurance, no registration. It was manual transmission, too, so maybe even the gears were made from wood! For fifty francs he would let you drive it once around the field, and it didn't matter how old you were. If you could reach the gas pedal, you could drive. And if you couldn't reach the gas pedal, you could sit on someone's lap. Also, there was someone had a motorcycle. Was cheaper. You could drive it around the soccer field for twenty francs.\"\n\n\"You didn't need a learner's licence?\"\n\n\"We weren't driving on the street.\"\n\n\"But\u2014weren't kids playing soccer in the middle of the field?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, but we were careful. We went around the edge.\" He said this as though it were the most reasonable statement one could make about letting children drive a motorcycle and patchwork Volkswagen around a field filled with other children chasing a ball.\n\nJean-Claude saved up any scraps of money he could get\u2014\"If my father gave me a few francs to see a soccer game, I would save the money and sneak into the stadium instead, or I would deliver notes between teenage boys and the girls they liked and they would pay me. City kids always know how to find a little cash here, there\"\u2014and he'd use this money to drive the motorcycle on the soccer field, going round and round and round and round. He was twelve or thirteen at the time.\n\n\"I wanted to drive the car, but this was expensive. So I came to be friends with the owner. He liked to take a nap, listening to the kids driving his car. Even sleeping, he was counting. He knew how many rounds. But also he had to collect the money, or send someone with a five-litres jug to bring back gas for the car, so I said to him, 'I will take care of the business. Just give me a free round.' It became my responsibility. He could sleep and I could learn how to drive.\"\n\nWith that, Jean-Claude steered us into the heart of Butare, the city leaning in from all sides, full of life.\n\nWhen the genocide began, Butare had been an island of sanity amid a welter of madness. The prefecture was the only province in Rwanda with a Tutsi governor, and he refused to issue the order to clean out the \"cockroaches,\" calling instead for level heads and reason to prevail. This insanity would soon pass, he assured the populace.\n\nGiven hope, Tutsis flooded into the region from all over, believing they would be protected. Butare, after all, was a centre of higher learning, known for its tolerance, its inclusiveness, and its sizable Tutsi population, a city where the Hutus and Tutsis got along. Among the southern Hutu of Butare, a burgeoning grassroots movement was even calling for full equality. Surely the killings would not reach Butare.\n\nThe calm lasted two weeks. Outraged at the governor's refusal to follow orders, Rwanda's Hutu Power interim government sent in the Presidential Guard to have him arrested. He was executed, along with his family. As a more obedient governor was being sworn in, trucks rolled up. Youth militias and French-trained soldiers climbed out. They had work to do.\n\nOne of the first to die was the eighty-year-old widow of Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa, the Queen Dowager Rosalie Gicanda. Known as a \"people's queen,\" Rosalie was a much-loved figure, and her execution sent a signal to the entire Tutsi population: no one was safe. The killings in Butare\u2014especially on the campuses\u2014were notably brutal, as Hutu students tortured Tutsi classmates, as professors betrayed their fellow teachers, as moderate journalists and intellectuals were rounded up. Hutu professors who had proven unpopular or students who were too successful and thus resented by their peers\u2014or who simply lived on campus alongside Tutsis\u2014were also purged. Entire villages in the outlying areas were laid to waste, the homes looted, possessions plundered. Genocide can be lucrative.\n\nThe zealous enthusiasm the professors and their students showed for killing people provides a secular parallel to David Gushee's lament: _The presence of universities in a community, the self-identification of people as scholars in the pursuit of knowledge, of understanding, guarantees exactly_ nothing...\n\n**23**\n\nRWANDAN GOATS ARE SURPRISINGLY AGILE.\n\n\"Did you notice?\" Jean-Claude asked. \"They look both ways before they cross the street.\"\n\nHe was right, though I imagine goats that didn't look both ways would have been weeded out rather quickly. The road we were on rose higher and higher as we left Butare. The air was thinner, as was the asphalt; potholes in the pavement revealed pockets of soft red earth underneath.\n\nMotorcycle taxis gave way to scooters. Scooters gave way to bicycles-for-hire, pulling goods and passengers over never-ending humps of hill. And finally, even the bicycles disappeared, replaced by bare feet and head-balanced burdens.\n\nWe were entering the country's remote western region, the Ozarks of Rwanda in a sense. Pedestrians still crowded the roads, but the traffic consisted almost entirely of us. We passed the occasional public bus, riding low and packed with people, but for long stretches we were the only vehicle in sight. A nice change from the PRAISE GOD! trucks that had bullied past us on the main routes, but it actually made driving more dangerous. Having fewer vehicles on the road made people oblivious to our approach. And they weren't as adept at dodging oncoming traffic as pedestrians elsewhere were. Several times children ran alongside us, perilously close, daring each other to touch our truck as we rumbled past. When this happened, Jean-Claude would come to a stop and scold them until they withdrew, looking downcast.\n\n\"It's a dangerous game,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nIt was also evidence of how rare traffic was in the villages we were rolling through. By the time we reached Karambi, the dust on our truck was mottled with fingerprints. We had planned to stop there for some food-stall victuals, but a rural pig auction was underway in the town's main square, and the odour was so overpowering that we rolled up our windows, tried not to inhale, and pushed on.\n\nThe road wound through fields terraced in ascending curves, lush and green all the way up. In the flooded rice paddies below, water reflected the sky like panes of glass. We were now deep into La Zone Turquoise and the tragic history that this region entailed.\n\nAs the old regime collapsed, the RPF had continued its advance across the killing grounds of Rwanda, scattering the interahamwe and government armed forces. With the end of the genocide in sight, France decided to intervene. They announced they would be sending a fully equipped, heavily armed \"humanitarian\" mission into western Rwanda to secure a safe zone to protect\u2014who, exactly? Although Op\u00e9ration Turquoise was ostensibly about saving lives, in reality it was about stopping the RPF and, failing that, providing cover for France's retreating Hutu Power allies: political leaders and high-ranking military officers, government functionaries, and members of the militia and their families, together with a wealth of weaponry and Rwanda's entire reserve of hard currency. The explicit aim was to counterattack later and reclaim the country.\n\nAs journalist Philip Gourevitch notes, \"From the moment they arrived, and wherever they went, the French forces supported and preserved the same local political leaders who had presided over the genocide.\"\n\nThe creation of La Zone Turquoise, as the area under French control was known, effectively allowed the organizers of the genocide to escape. They moved en masse into eastern Zaire (as the Congo was then known), where they were given unconditional support by that country's notorious dictator, President Mobutu, another loyal French ally.\n\nHuman Rights Watch had tracked at least five shipments of weapons and heavy armour delivered by France to the Hutu Power regime at the height of the killings. The French did not arrest a single g\u00e9nocidaire or war criminal and even aided many of them in their getaway. General Dallaire was convinced that the real goal of Op\u00e9ration Turquoise was to split Rwanda in two, like Cyprus, with France's Hutu Power allies ensconced on one side and the English-speaking Ugandan Tutsis of the RPF on the other. Certainly, when French troops did arrive, the interahamwe militias\u2014many still covered in blood\u2014took to the streets dancing and singing. \"Our French brothers have arrived! They are coming to save us!\" Flags were all aflutter. WELCOME FRENCH HUTUS! read the banners.\n\n\"You Hutu girls, wash yourselves and put on your best dresses to welcome our French allies,\" the announcers on Radio RTLM crowed. \"The Tutsi girls are all dead, so now you have your chance!\"\n\nOne of the French soldiers would later complain that he was fed up with being \"cheered along by murderers.\"\n\nFrench troops did indeed set up refugee camps and are credited with having protected perhaps 10,000 Tutsis, maybe more. But their presence cost more lives than it saved. Some of the most complete ethnic cleansings in Rwanda occurred inside the French \"safe\" zone. Unhindered by UN witnesses or RPF incursions, and emboldened by what they took to be France's tacit support, the killers within La Zone Turquoise were able to complete their work with a thoroughness not possible elsewhere. Entire populations of Tutsis were wiped out.\n\n\"What was achieved by Op\u00e9ration Turquoise,\" Linda Melvern writes in _Conspiracy to Murder_ , \"was in fact nothing less than a resurgence in the genocide.... It provided a sanctuary for the killers.\"\n\nFran\u00e7ois Mitterrand, president of France and the man behind many of the African policies implemented at that time, brushed it off: with a perfectly executed Gallic shrug, I imagine. \"In countries such as these,\" he said, \"genocide is not so important.\"\n\nAs we drove in to Murambi, a goat looked right, then left, and then scampered across the road.\n\n**24**\n\nEVEN IN THIS LAND OF PANORAMAS, the rounded summit of the Murambi Technical School stands out. A beautiful symmetry is at play: grassy meadows slope away, giving the school a full 360-degree view of the seven hills surrounding it.\n\nThis very beauty would be the cause of Murambi's infamy. There was no escaping from this hilltop, no secret route, no thick forests or papyrus swamps to flee to: just a wide-open emptiness exposed on all sides. Tidy rows of blond-brick buildings are lined up on top: classrooms and dormitories, would-be lecture halls.\n\nThe school was brand new and had not yet opened when the killings began. Local administrators encouraged Tutsis in the area to seek refuge there. As would become clear, this was done not out of concern for their safety but to better round up the targeted populace in one convenient, central location. More than 50,000 people crowded in on Murambi Hill. Only a dozen survived.\n\nThey fought back as best they could. Armed with rocks and sticks, the men formed a circle around the women and children, held the militias at bay. But then the soldiers came. They surrounded the school, cut off water and food, began handing out grenades to the interahamwe. The attacks lasted for days at a time. Victims of the Murambi massacre were eventually bulldozed into open pits and then buried under packed soil. Many of them were still alive when this happened. Later, French forces would set up camp at Murambi and turn this newly flattened surface into a sports field, would play volleyball on top of these mass graves.\n\nAfter the genocide ended, the burial pits at Murambi were exhumed, and a disconcerting discovery was made: having been packed together so tightly, the remains had mummified under the heat and compression. Contorted in their death throes, the bodies were packed into each other, leather-skinned and macabre.\n\nThousands of these ghostly white figures, preserved in lime, are now laid out, row after row, on wooden platforms inside the classrooms of the Murambi Technical School. As you move silently from one building to the next, a chalky smell clings to you. The heat is stultifying. You don't want to look, but at the same time, you can't avoid it. Your eye is drawn to these endless tableaux. Elongated, etiolated figures, reverse silhouettes with tufts of hair sticking to the skulls. Severed tendons, broken femurs. Many of the bodies are torqued and twisted, with mouths open, arms raised as though fending off a blow. These are the ones who were buried alive, and the terror of their final moments lives on. Several are caught in mid-scream, like real-life renderings of Edvard Munch. Others, already dead when buried, lie like stacks of firewood.\n\nIn _We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families_ , Philip Gourevitch describes the dead of Rwanda as aesthetically attractive, which for him only added to the affront of these sites. \"There was no getting around it,\" he notes. \"The skeleton is a beautiful thing.\" But I must confess, as I moved from room to room, feeling fogbound and forlorn, the beauty eluded me. These weren't statues at Murambi, these were people\u2014people whose lives had been cut short in the ugliest manner possible. There was no beauty here, only a crushing sense of loss.\n\nThe hardest to enter was the Children's Room, where the bodies of infants and toddlers, some found still clinging to their mothers, were laid out on the tables like small offerings. Of the thousands of bodies I saw at Murambi that day, the one that haunts me most was that of a child, maybe two or three, with his tiny hands held over his face. As a father, I knew this posture, knew it with a stomach-blow of recognition. When you're little, you believe that if you can't see something bad, it can't see you either. The child had died with his eyes tightly shut, hands covering his face. It's the desperate strategy of children confronting monsters, but it only works when the monsters are imaginary.\n\nJean-Claude and I were the only two visitors at Murambi that afternoon. Blue skies, clear views. Hills on all sides. Surrounded.\n\nThe thin, angular young man who walked us through the quiet carnage had escaped a similar massacre by, in his words, \"running.\" He was just twelve when the genocide began, he told us, and when the killings started, he ran. He ran and he ran and they did not catch him. He ran and he ran, and he is running still. His head bobbed when he talked, he spoke in dull monotones, could not make eye contact. He recited his story and that of Murambi's as if repeating a redemptive mantra. I imagine it's as much compulsive as it is therapeutic, the need to tell these stories, to tell them again and again.\n\nAnd again.\n\nA sign near one of the open excavation pits reads, with pointed understatement, FRENCH SOLDIERS PLAYED VOLLEY ON THIS SPOT. The museum at Murambi included photographs of French soldiers training interahamwe death squads.\n\nIt was time to leave. The sun was lying low across the grassy fields, and as our guide walked us down to the front gate to let us out, a blond, sun-tousled young man with a rucksack showed up, asking if he could sneak in. He was from Sweden, was down from Kigali for the day, and he wanted to see the bodies. \"Just five minutes. I will be quick. I promise.\" No, he was told. It was closing time. He would have to return during regular hours. But he had travelled all this way, he said, and wouldn't be able to come back. He was leaving Rwanda tomorrow. The young man coaxed and pleaded, tried to charm his way in\u2014and was clearly expecting to be admitted. But the hours of operation at the Murambi Genocide Memorial were clearly posted, and it was time to close up.\n\nJean-Claude and I gave the young Swedish man a ride to the nearest bus centre. He had been travelling around East Africa, was based out of Uganda. \"Too many rules in Rwanda,\" he said with a breezy smile.\n\nI asked him if, in Sweden, people who showed up at a museum or national memorial after hours would be admitted. Well, no, he said. So why should Rwanda be any different?\n\nHe seemed like an affable enough chap, admirably unflustered and travelling light, but I couldn't shake the feeling he had expected to be allowed in solely because he was white. That might have worked elsewhere in Africa. Perhaps. But not here. Not in Rwanda. And for good reason. Figuratively, historically, politically, the West has been playing volley on top of Rwanda's graves for many years.\n\nAt Murambi, the lime had turned the dead the one colour that might have saved them.\n\n**25**\n\nWE FOLLOWED A NARROW ROAD into Gikongoro (now known as Nyamagabe), and along the way passed workers in a field who were dressed in what appeared to be pyjamas.\n\n\"Pink is for the long-term prisoners,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"Orange is for the ones who are going to be released soon.\"\n\n\"So any g\u00e9nocidaires among them would be in pink?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"And both colours are easy to see against the green, if they try to run.\"\n\nPyjamaed prisoners chopping at the earth, churning the rust-coloured soil.\n\nAt Gikongoro Town, three sharp ridges converge, high above the valleys below. A topographical high-wire act, it's an improbable place to build a community, let alone one with a cantilevered hotel hanging over one side and a market spilling out on the other. Being the town drunk in Gikongoro must be a perilous undertaking; one wobbly false step and you would be somersaulting downward a long while.\n\nWe'd come to Gikongoro to find childhood friends of Jean-Claude, friends he hadn't seen in twenty years. Several confused phone calls, false turns, and head-scratching dead ends finally got us onto a rutted road outside of town, where we pulled into a yard and were met by beaming, floodlight smiles. Clementine, who was a few years younger than Jean-Claude, her brother Eric, nicknamed Petite, and their mother, Immacul\u00e9e, had come out to greet us.\n\n\"We thought you were dead!\" the mother exclaimed. And in Rwanda, this is no mere turn of phrase.\n\nThey were thrilled to see him. Several times the mother, in mid-laughter, reached out and touched his arm, softly, almost as if to reassure herself that he was indeed real.\n\nThey'd known Jean-Claude as a boy who often dropped by their neighbourhood in Kigali. \"He was like a little bird\" is how their mother put it. But while Jean-Claude's ethnic identity card was marked TUTSI, theirs had been marked HUTU. And that would make all the difference.\n\nClementine had lost her father and seen her country destroyed and rebuilt. She divided her time between an apartment in Kigali and this modest home in Gikongoro, where her mother and brother now lived. She held a bachelor's degree in economics, was working toward her master's, had been employed at the Ministry of Infrastructure and later at the Ministry of Finance, in economics, and was now the administrative assistant at a nearby United Nations refugee camp housing Congolese who had fled the violence next door.\n\nThe back of our Land Cruiser was weighted down by several duffle bags stuffed with gear: uniforms, goalie gloves and jerseys, deflated soccer balls, and more, all brand new and donated by the Calgary Foothills Soccer Club. Jean-Claude had lugged these bags all the way from Canada, intending to donate them to schools in Rwanda. On hearing that thousands of Congolese children were playing without proper equipment at the refugee camp where Clementine worked, he decided to split his inventory, bringing half here.\n\nThrough Clementine, Jean-Claude and I had contacted the UN Head of Camp, and he had invited us to visit, to deliver the soccer equipment in person and speak with the kids directly.\n\nBut before we headed to the regional UN office in Gikongoro, I thought I'd get some inside dirt on Jean-Claude. While he and Clementine's mother were talking, I sidled up beside Clementine.\n\n\"You remember Jean-Claude?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course. I only had ten years when he left, but I remember him so much.\"\n\n\"What was he like? Any secrets you can share? Troubles he got into. That sort of thing. I promise I won't tell.\"\n\n\"Secrets?\"\n\n\"Bad things he did as a kid.\"\n\n\"Oh no! He was very kind, I remember. Very kind and social. Kind, intelligent, social. Very friendly. And very calm.\"\n\n\"So he hasn't changed.\"\n\nShe looked over at him and smiled. \"He hasn't changed.\"\n\n**26**\n\nBEFORE THE EUROPEANS ARRIVED and began parcelling off sections of it to neighbouring colonies, the Kingdom of Rwanda included broad swaths of what is now eastern Congo. The entire Lake Kivu district, which is now divided between the two countries, was once Rwandan territory, and more than 400,000 Rwandese descendants\u2014the Banyamulenge, as they are known\u2014still live in eastern Congo today, where they are often targeted, attacked, scapegoated, and killed.\n\nWhere tiny Rwanda is one of the most culturally homogeneous countries in Africa, the vast republic of Congo is among its most heterogeneous. Apart from being a geographical description, it's hard to define what \"Congolese\" even means. As a palimpsest of overlapping claims and cultures, Congo is less a nation than a border drawn on a map. It encompasses one of the world's greatest rainforest basins and is ruled by a distant capital. The city of Kinshasa sits on the other side of Congo, some 1,500 kilometres away from the Lake Kivu district, with an endless jungle dividing them. The capital is more overlord than caretaker. Eastern Congo is, in a very real sense, a colony of Kinshasa.\n\nIt's important to remember that the Hutu Power extremists who launched the genocide were not destroyed so much as routed. They have regrouped in the Lake Kivu district of eastern Congo under the Orwellian-named \"Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda\" (usually given with its French acronym, FDLR), and they have continued their campaign to destabilize Rwanda.\n\nThe ominous presence of the FDLR in eastern Congo has been countered by the appearance of the M23 rebels, a group of Tutsi Congolese soldiers who mutinied against the Congolese army and are named for a March 23, 2009, peace accord they signed, which they say has yet to be implemented.\n\nThe M23 have a ruthless reputation, and the Congolese government has accused Rwanda of supplying arms to the rebels, something the Rwandan government has denied with a wide-eyed innocence that isn't fooling anyone. Rwanda, just as pointedly, has asked why the UN and the Democratic Republic of Congo haven't been pursuing the genocidal ideologues of the FDLR with the same enthusiasm they've shown for fighting the M23. The Congolese government, meanwhile, has been giving aid and ammunition to the FDLR to help \"guard their eastern door.\" To complicate matters further, there were at least ten other separate, distinct rebel groups operating in Congo's North Kivu province alone, a mishmash of competing acronyms too difficult to sort out here.\n\nAmid this sabre-rattling brinkmanship, the people in the Lake Kivu region of Congo have been caught, literally at times, in the crossfire. The conflict is about more than protecting minorities or defeating the remnants of a genocidal regime; it is fuelled by the region's diamond, gold, and coltan reserves, the latter being a rare mineral used in cell phones and video game consoles. Which is to say, to blood diamonds and blood oil, we can now add the consumer demand for faster cell phones and better PlayStation controls. South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, and other countries have also elbowed their way into Congo's Lake Kivu region, making it a free-for-all at times. This is a Gordian knot of the first order.\n\nHundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the ongoing violence, and more than 35,000 of them have ended up in Rwanda. The UN has set up several camps to house them, including one in the small town of Kigeme, just west of Gikorongo.\n\nAnd so, with our Land Cruiser loaded down with soccer gear, Jean-Claude, Clementine, and I drove to the UN headquarters nearby, a tidy gated home with pleasant views across the hills, where we were met by Urooj Saifi, the Canadian Head of Camp.\n\nOriginally from Pakistan, now of Oakville, Ontario, Urooj had been with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for twenty-two years, starting in Iraq just after the first Gulf War. But nothing prepared him for the Kigeme refugee camp.\n\nHe had arrived earlier in the year to confront a full crush of humanity. \"It was a shock,\" he admits. \"The camp was designed to hold a maximum of fifteen thousand, and we were already over that. There was very little space, with everyone living on top of each other. It was... a challenge.\"\n\nI liked Urooj. He spoke quietly, thoughtfully. \"Come,\" he said. \"I'll introduce you to Deo, my Rwandan counterpart. He's the camp manager.\"\n\nDeo Ntirenganya was more serious and slightly guarded. We shook hands with a quick clench. Jean-Claude had presented me to Deo, misguidedly perhaps, as \"an important journalist\" here to investigate \"the situation in Rwanda.\"\n\nTrue, _Canadian Geographic_ magazine had asked me to write an article about my trip, and I'd printed up a lavish stack of business cards, which I'd been dealing out with a generous hand and on the slightest provocation. (The cards stated that I was \"on assignment.\") Unfortunately, as I've learned, nothing clenches administrative jaws\u2014or handshakes\u2014quicker than meeting a journalist.\n\nUrooj introduced us to his wife, who was elegant and gracious, as well as their daughter, who was visiting with some of her schoolmates from university in Edinburgh. Urooj's wife also seemed wary about my intentions, but happily Urooj was not.\n\n\"You can talk to anyone you like, ask whatever you wish,\" he said as we changed vehicles, loading the duffle bags and ourselves into the back of a UN jeep for the short but bumpy ride upward to Kigeme Camp. (Hard to imagine, but Kigeme was even higher in the hills than the already ear-popping Gikongoro.) The road grew steeper and steeper, sides flanking away. We were above the clouds now, and the sun opened up like a fan.\n\n\"Kigeme Camp is something unique,\" Urooj said, turning around to talk to me. \"It's a new way of thinking about refugees.\"\n\nThe crowds along the roadside grew thicker, leaving barely a lane's worth of space for our vehicle to squeeze through at times. I leaned up as the truck inched its way along. \"So these people, they're all...\"\n\nUrooj nodded. \"From the camp.\"\n\nOn one of the few flat patches of dirt available, a hundred or more raggedy children, barefoot and shouting, were playing with a soccer ball cobbled together from scraps of foam mattress wrapped in twine. They were calling for passes and sending sprawling shots between bamboo-rigged goalposts. Hundreds of feet kicking up clouds of red dust. We could taste the peppery earth as we passed.\n\n\"It's very congested,\" Urooj said, voice rising to be heard. \"Most other places with refugee camps have more space, a lot of open land. Not Rwanda.\"\n\nThe driver pulled over and we climbed out. The UN site was divided between two hilltop summits, with rows of clay-walled huts and the blue tents of the UN scaling the hills on both sides. We walked uphill, through further crowds of people.\n\nKigeme Camp sits on the edge of a rainforest, deep in the humid heart of Africa. But we were there in the dry season and the sun had baked the gumbo roads into a hardened terra-cotta clay.\n\n\"Rainy season is very tough,\" Urooj said, answering the question I was about to ask.\n\nKigeme Camp was crowded, but not in despair.\n\n\"This camp is meant to be a showcase,\" Urooj explained. A template for Rwanda, and potentially the world. \"The goal,\" he said, \"is integration, not isolation.\"\n\nRefugees at Kigeme Camp are given full legal protection under the same constitution that governs Rwandans. Any children born in the camp, regardless of ethnic background, are given Rwandan citizenship and birth certificates.\n\n\"This camp, and the others in Rwanda, are joint ventures,\" said Urooj. \"The UN,\" he reminded me, \"has to be invited in. We are guests. We have to remember that.\"\n\nThe problems facing the Congolese refugees at Kigeme Camp were daunting, and Deo ticked them off for me as we walked: nutrition, medical attention, child safety, education, employment, overcrowding. Daunting, but again, not insurmountable.\n\nIn refugee zones elsewhere in the world, schooling and medical care are typically provided inside the confines of the camp, with residents limited in their ability to travel outside it or to seek employment beyond. At Kigeme, they can come and go as they wish\u2014\"They are not prisoners,\" as Deo put it\u2014and are actively encouraged to look for outside employment. They are also allowed to sell or barter whatever supplies they accumulate. Indeed, a small market economy had already taken root; on the walk in, we passed stalls set up by some of the more enterprising residents to sell extra soap, candy, packets of laundry powder. Urooj stopped to buy some sweets, and the price immediately jumped 400 percent. He laughed, haggled the seller down to a mere 300 percent. A small victory, for both sides.\n\nChildren jostled in, smiling, laughing, running away when I said, _\"Bonjour, comment \u00e7a va?\"_ (Thereby using up my entire stock of high school French in one throw.)\n\n\"These kids attend school outside the camp as part of the Rwandan school system, following the regular curriculum,\" Urooj said. This included lessons in English.\n\nI pulled out a notepad and pen. If I was going to present myself as a journalist, I might as well do it properly. \"And how are the local schools coping with this huge influx of children?\" I asked.\n\n\"Very well. We expanded the existing schools in this area,\" he explained. \"There are five thousand refugee children from Kigeme Camp in school, and we built sixty-two new classrooms to accommodate them. We provide them with school uniforms and shoes as well, and we helped pay salaries to hire the extra teachers.\"\n\nAnd medical care?\n\n\"We have a small clinic inside the camp for basic health issues: malnutrition, pregnancy care, vaccinations. For anything else, we refer them to the local Rwandan health centre at the district hospital.\"\n\nThe UNHCR had helped recruit and train extra health workers as well.\n\n\"The hospital itself is very close,\" Urooj said. \"Walking distance from the camp.\"\n\nIn many ways, the camp was now part of the community. And rather than seeing the refugees as a drain, the people here, in one of the poorest regions of Rwanda, were seeing tangible benefits in hosting the Congolese: extra classrooms, extra teachers, better medical access.\n\n\"It's working very well,\" Urooj said. \"But employment remains a big challenge.\"\n\nDeo agreed. \"There are people with master's degrees in the camps who can't find work. We are talking to the local business community to see how these educated people can use their training and abilities, instead of wasting their talents. If one person in the camps gets a job, five families benefit.\"\n\nThe initial emergency had stabilized, and Urooj and Deo were now looking at quality of life, as opposed to basic survival needs. \"Skill development, handicap needs, trades. Some of the women are now employed by the camp to sew school uniforms instead of having us buy them from a supply company. It saves the camp a bit of money and provides some income for the women. Many of their husbands were killed, so this income is important.\"\n\nOn the day we arrived, a group of women were attending classes on how to use a new fuel-efficient stove that would be distributed throughout the camp. These stoves, manufactured by a German NGO, had a parabolic design that retained 80 percent of their wood-burning heat. With charcoal in short supply, this increased efficiency was crucial. The women, sent as delegates, listened intently to the instructions so that they in turn could teach their neighbours.\n\nIn addition to thousands of widows, there were thousands of orphans in the camp. Restless children who needed guidance, who needed team building, who needed a sense of belonging. In a word: soccer.\n\nThe camp had organized its own league, all ages, with boys' and girls' teams that regularly challenged neighbouring villages to matches. The sport was well-organized, with volunteer coaches and referees from the camp, regular practices, games... and an utter lack of equipment. Many of the balls they played with were made from inflated condoms, pilfered from the camp's medical kits and bound with strips of scrap taken from UN gunnysacks. The balls were inflated, ingeniously I thought, with medical syringes. They had a nice bounce to them, but were still a far cry from the real thing.\n\nAs the day cooled, Jean-Claude lugged out the duffle bags: roughly 200 soccer uniforms in total, along with goalie gear, deflated balls, and a proper pump. Kids crowded in as the coaches handed out uniforms, noting which numbers went to which kids. The players pulled on their new jerseys and assembled, grinning, looking like the teams they were. Jean-Claude was asked to say a few words.\n\n\"Have fun. Play fair. And remember, being a refugee is not a crime,\" he said. \"Having less doesn't make you a lesser person. Remember, you are the lucky ones. You have the chance to go to school and make something of yourself. Working hard will give you power and a voice. Who knows, there could be a future president among you! Or a future Messi!\"\n\nHis reference to the Argentine soccer star drew a loud cheer from the kids, and afterward I was invited to interview some of the players. Their coach, a Congolese refugee like the others, recommended I speak with a sixteen-year-old striker named Steven Nshizirungu and a goalkeeper named Eric Iradukunda, also sixteen. Stephen and Eric were exemplary players, I was told, dedicated, well-behaved, helpful with the younger children.\n\n\"You can ask them their story,\" Jean-Claude suggested. \"Why they came to this camp.\" But I couldn't. I just couldn't.\n\nIt would have ruined the alchemy of that moment, would have soured the giddy and simple joy of kids suiting up. Of looking _like a real team_. Of having _real soccer balls_. It would have been gauche to confront them with a journalist's horrible and inevitable questions: So tell me, are both your parents dead? How did they die? Did you watch them die? Who killed them, do you know?\n\nNo. None of that. Instead, I decided that these would be _sports_ interviews. This would not be about geopolitical forces beyond their control, but about something very much under their auspices: the handling of a soccer ball, the clarity of a crossover, the sudden strike, the blocked shot, the floating perfection of a chipped-in goal. After all, if they were going to become soccer stars, they had better get used to dealing with the media.\n\nWhen I asked the crowd of kids who their best player was on the girls' team, the response was immediate. A solid-looking sixteen-year-old player named Appoline Nyiramugisha was pushed to the front, looking equal parts embarrassed and proud.\n\nAppoline was a striker and by all accounts formidable.\n\n\"Could you score on Eric?\" I asked. \"On a penalty kick?\"\n\nShe looked him over, slowly, delivered a withering one-word assessment. \"Certainly.\"\n\nThis brought cheers from the girls and loud protests from the boys. But when I asked Appoline who her soccer role model was, which women's player she looked up to, she didn't understand the question. She was puzzled by it, in fact.\n\nAppoline Nyiramugisha didn't know there was such a thing as professional women's soccer players. When I told her there most certainly was, and that, if she kept at it, she might make a living at soccer when she got older, her smile looked as though it were lit from within. (If in the future, a Congolese player named Appoline is tearing up the women's pro-soccer pitch, you will know where she got her start.)\n\nI told her: \"The best women's soccer player in the world is a Canadian. Her name is Christine Sinclair, and she's a striker like you. So when people ask you, Who do you play like? you tell them _I play like Christine Sinclair_.\"\n\nShe practised the name, said it aloud several times. Smiled.\n\nAnd so passed the rest of the afternoon, not in talk of war or hardships or pain, but of something much more important: soccer.\n\nAs the sun softened and evening settled on the hills, as the smell of cooking fires drifted across, Jean-Claude and I said our goodbyes to the kids and met up with Urooj and the others for the steep descent back to the jeep.\n\nThe younger children in the camp had grown bolder, with the more brazen among them risking a hurried burst of English; they'd figured out quickly enough that I didn't speak French. Their greetings were thrown my way like an unexploded water balloon\u2014 _\"Good morning teacher how are you I am fine!\"_ \u2014as the kids in question ran back to squeals of congratulations from their friends. That they were using the exact phrasing the kids in Kigali did was a testament to the fact that they were now part of the Rwandan school curriculum.\n\nUrooj stopped, looked back at the hills above us. He said, \"Good things are happening here.\"\n\nBut Kigeme was still a camp, and these were still refugees.\n\n\"The real solution,\" Deo said back at the UN office, \"is political.\" The turmoil in Congo needed to be resolved.\n\n\"Remember,\" he said, \"these refugees are civilians. They are innocent of any crimes. They had homes, farms, shops. They had full lives. They were established. What do they need, more than anything? What do they want, more than anything? They want to go home.\"\n\n**27**\n\nA SMALL SIGN, caught in the fleeting headlights of dusk, it might have flitted past unnoticed, save for the weight of its message: RIVER CONGO\u2013RIVER NILE DIVIDE: STREAMS FLOWING WEST OF THESE HILLS FLOW INTO THE RIVER CONGO, WHILE THOSE TOWARD THE EAST FLOW INTO THE RIVER NILE.\n\nWe were travelling along Africa's central watershed. The farthest capillaries of the continent's two major arteries came within metres of touching\u2014here, on this remote forest ridge. The great rivers of Africa, sorting themselves out. On one side of the road, rain and runoff were channelled west, through a vast rainforest and a labyrinthine delta, into the warm currents of the equatorial Atlantic; water on the other side ran east and then north, through deserts and swamps, over waterfalls and past pyramids, before emptying at last into the Mediterranean.\n\nJean-Claude and I had been following this watershed without realizing it, along a thin strip of asphalt, the forest pressing in from both sides. Seeing the sign for the Congo\u2013Nile divide, we pulled over to mug for photographs. Tripod and self-timer. Flash frames in the jungle. We considered a shot of Jean-Claude peeing on one side of the road and me on the other, but decided it might not convey the dignity of the moment properly.\n\nAll around us, the forest seemed to be breathing. Cold mist. A mossy smell, part soil, part soggy rot. The taste of mulch and wet leaves. I could hear something whuffling about in the underbrush.\n\nIt was a shame I'd come to Rwanda in the dry season. This is what everyone kept telling me. They bemoaned my timing, arriving in the red-dust days of the dry. \"You should have come in March or November, or in June, right after the rainy season has ended when everything is green.\" I would say, \"It looks green now.\" But they would say, \"No. You haven't seen green. After the rains, _that_ \u2014that is green.\"\n\nBut Rwanda seemed plenty green to me, even in the dry season. Nyungwe Forest in particular seemed to defy the notion of seasons.\n\n\"There is no dry season in Nyungwe,\" I'd been told. \"Even when it's dry, it's wet.\"\n\nNyungwe is where the moist air of the Congo River pushes up against the cooler alpine heights of Rwanda's western mountains. These peaks catch the heavy underbelly of these clouds, splitting them open. Much of the country's groundwater starts here, in these forests, these mountains. In Nyungwe, the annual rainfall is measured in _metres_.\n\nSoon after the sign marking the Congo\u2013Nile divide, we came upon sheaves of broad leaves that had been laid across the road; Jean-Claude quickly geared down as we drove over them. It looked like a clumsy attempt at a highwayman-style ambush, but in actuality was a warning.\n\n\"It's for safety,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"When there's an accident, it is required by law. You must put out leaves to tell the other drivers.\" We slowed up, came around a corner, and there it was: a single-vehicle accident. A transport truck had jackknifed on a sharp turn. No injuries, thankfully, but a great deal of collateral damage. In Jungle vs. Truck Driver, round one had clearly gone to the jungle. The transport truck had slammed sideways into the trees and was now impaled on broken branches.\n\nThe driver, on muddy hands and knees, was trying to wrap the truck's front-winch cable around the axle. He'd already looped the same cable around a large tree trunk and back again, and was clearly planning to hoist the vehicle out under its own steam. It seemed sort of like trying to fly by grabbing hold of one's belt loops and pulling upward, but then again, physics never was my long suit.\n\nWe slowed to a crawl, passing a long-distance bus that was idling on the other side. We had just enough space to squeeze through on the road, but the bus did not. Several passengers had disembarked and were watching the proceedings with frowny-faced interest, poised to leap in with helpful advice at a moment's notice. These passengers were, it goes without saying, of the male persuasion. The women were tending to young children, juggling bundles, preparing food, adjusting shoulder slings. It's a failing of their sex, but they didn't seem to appreciate the art of unsolicited advice. (Men. We're sort of philanthropists that way.)\n\nWe were deep in the protected realm of a national park, and the road, although paved, was exceedingly narrow at certain points. There were times it felt as though we were being swallowed whole by a python, our Land Cruiser a lump moving through a serpentine intestinal tract.\n\n\"Nyungwe has a reputation,\" Jean-Claude said. \"For being scary. A lot of legends. Ghosts and creatures that can flip over cars. For Rwandans, it's like a haunted forest.\"\n\nHa ha, I laughed. Ha ha.\n\nNeither of us said anything for a long while. _Maybe that's what had thrown that transport truck off the road earlier. It had seemed odd, a vehicle suddenly tossing itself into the jungle like that_.\n\nThe air became cooler the higher we went. Bits of mist were caught in the forest canopy, like cotton batting. In the rear-view mirror, the jungle closed behind us. Smatterings of flowers, mad dabs of purple and red among the feathered ferns and tangled vines, flickered past. Scents swirled through the open window, some sweet, some skunky. The silvery leaves of the eucalyptus tree had their own distinct aroma: partly pine, mainly menthol. A medicinal scent. It gave the air a tiger-balm tinge.\n\nThere was one smell, though, that Jean-Claude racked his memory trying to identify. \"Did you catch that?\" he would ask. \"Just now. _There_. Again. Is some kind of plant. Smells like roasted peanuts. I know that smell.\" He never was able to identify it, though. Perhaps it was more a presence than a scent, the echo of something long gone.\n\n\"It's not there anymore,\" he said. \"But I know it. I know that smell.\"\n\nThe road folded in on itself, twisting and turning, almost meeting on the way back. Dizzying views. Stomach-sloshing corners. A low rumble of thunder as the sky cleared its throat. Flashes of light behind the clouds. The road ahead of us was drenched, potholes filled with splash-pockets of water. We were driving into the aftermath of a thunder shower, and tattered debris, blown by wind, was freshly scattered across the road. At every bend we expected to come upon a storm in progress, but we never did. It was like following the path of an advancing army. With each slash of lightning, the thunderclap that followed was farther and farther away. Rwanda was one of the lightning capitals of the world, a place of frequent and sudden strikes. _Forget car-flipping phantasms_ , I thought. _Let's hope the tires on our 4x4 are insulation enough if we get hit_.\n\nAs we wound our way back down into the lower forest, away from potential lightning strikes and car-tossing gremlins, a carpet of bright green appeared: tea plantations, carved out of the jungle. We drove between these tightly rounded hedges, and they seemed to glow in the half-light.\n\nThe road branched off and a gate appeared. Jean-Claude brought the Land Cruiser to a halt as a night watchman, rifle slung loosely over his shoulder, ambled out to check our names against a list. He nodded, shunted the barrier aside, and gave us a sleepy raised-palm wave as we passed. We drove deeper into tea, splitting a sea of green with the prow of our truck.\n\nThings you don't expect to find in the middle of a rainforest: valet parking.\n\nThere is no place in Rwanda quite like Nyungwe Forest Lodge. Clean, modernist lines with African decor, an infinity pool, and a dining-room veranda offering sublime views. Five-star elegance with a low-impact design: the lodge has received environmental accreditation for its low carbon footprint. When Jean-Claude and I pulled up, we were greeted with hot face towels, pineapple juice served in chilled glasses, and a valet to park our vehicle.\n\n\"Here's to roughing it in Africa,\" we said, clinking glasses.\n\nI hadn't come to Nyungwe Forest Lodge merely to soak up the good life, though. No sir. I was on assignment, remember. Jean-Claude and I were here to carry out a socioeconomic investigation of strategic marketing paradigms. (Whatever that meant.) If this required our own private elevated cabins with full bath and cumulus pillows, so be it.\n\nOn the restaurant's veranda we further toasted our good fortune: me with a light Riesling, Jean-Claude with his infernal alcohol-free mineral water. We stretched out our legs under linen tablecloths, dined on the views (and the filet of beef, that too), then retired to our respective cabins, following a path through a sea of tea. A German family pushed past us, impatient to start relaxing. A silver-coin moon hung in the air, and above the lights of the lodge, the Nyungwe mountains formed layered horizons, overlapping in gradations of torn blue. A mood so splendid not even the Germans could ruin it, and that's saying a lot.\n\n**28**\n\nI WOKE TO THE CHIRPLE AND TRILL of tropical birds, the scamper of monkeys across tiled rooftops, the wry chuckle of primates in the trees. My cabin, sitting on stilts, looked out at a wall of forest. The jungle began two feet from my balcony.\n\nI went for an early-morning walk, met the same German family tromping purposefully toward the lodge, circled back, and ate breakfast as far from them as possible. Jean-Claude showed up soon after, looking spry and surprisingly refreshed. \"I dreamed I was driving,\" he said.\n\n\"Oh. Would you like me to...\" I offered half-heartedly.\n\n\"Are you kidding? I'm enjoying this.\"\n\nNyungwe Forest Lodge has won international awards for hotel design, and the person overseeing the operation was another one of those smart, educated young women Rwanda seemed to specialize in. I stopped by to see her after breakfast.\n\nAlice Kampire had been with the lodge for three years, since it first opened. She was originally the financial supervisor, but had been moved to assistant manager, in charge of customer service. The hardest part, she told me, was keeping staff. Having been trained at the highest level, employees often jumped ship to work at other hotels or to launch businesses of their own. Hoteliers, chefs, and niche-market tour company ventures have all sprung from Nyungwe Forest Lodge.\n\n\"We are like a training ground,\" Alice said with a half-sigh. \"But,\" she shrugged, \"it's good for them to grow. And other people are always joining. Many want to work here, so we can pick the best.\"\n\nI'd seen this firsthand over breakfast. When I asked the waiter if they had multi-grain toast, I was told that sadly, no, they had only white or brown. When the meal arrived\u2014slices of fresh fruit, soft-poached eggs with sausage, and caramelized slices of plantain\u2014the toast that accompanied it was exactly what we would call \"multi-grain.\" When I mentioned this to the waiter, he pulled out a pencil and recorded the information for future reference. \"And whole wheat?\" he asked. \"What is that? Sometimes American tourists ask for whole wheat.\"\n\nHe was planning to open a caf\u00e9 on the shores of Lake Kivu, he confided, one that would cater to international guests. \"You will come? When it's open?\" It wasn't really a question, the way he said it. Of course I would. Why wouldn't I? His place would have multigrain _and_ whole wheat.\n\nI thought it best not to mention to Alice that she was about to lose yet another staff member. I did, however, consider canvassing her opinion about the socioeconomic importance of strategic marketing paradigms, but, given that I didn't understand the question myself, decided against it.\n\n\"Ready for the monkeys?\" she asked.\n\n\"I am,\" I said, then added knowingly, \"and for the _chimpanzees_ , too.\" I'd already learned, childhood readings of _Curious George_ to the contrary, that chimpanzees are not technically \"monkeys.\" They are apes, a fact I liked to drop into conversations whenever possible.\n\nJean-Claude and I had booked two nights at the lodge, with primate treks lined up on both days. We'd be starting with the monkeys. The apes would come later.\n\nThirteen distinct species of primate make their home in the forested hills of Rwanda, and Nyungwe Forest contains almost every species save gorillas, a remarkable concentration.\n\nAfter putting together our day packs, we drove\u2014note the ongoing use of the royal \"we\"; Jean-Claude drove, I jotted down insights and observations\u2014to the park's main office to meet up with a trio of guides, two of whom were disquietingly armed. Rebels were operating in Congo, I'd been told, but Congo wasn't that close, surely.\n\n\"The rifles are in case of animals,\" one of the guides explained.\n\n\"What kinds of animals?\"\n\n\"Oh, all kinds.\"\n\nAs the other armed guide passed by, he whispered cryptically, \"Not for animals.\"\n\nThe pursuit of monkeys is a strange undertaking. You go crashing through the underbrush like the clumsy, ground-bound primate you are, engaged in a dogged steeplechase. To what end? Primarily for the amusement of our nimbler airborne cousins, I suspect.\n\nAt the lodge I'd seen fleeting tufts of fur bounding from rooftop to rooftop and into the forest, but those were more heard than seen: the sound of monkeys being monkeys. Out here, on trails so faint they seemed to exist mainly in the imagination of our guides, we were tracking a troop of acrobatic colobus as they leapt from branch to branch far overhead, their white-tipped tails flipping us the bird. We were, apparently, playing an extended game of monkey tag, which is as exhausting as it sounds. Whenever we stopped, hands on knees, panting, they would stop as well, waiting for us to catch our breath before starting the game anew.\n\nAt one point, we came upon a scruffy band of mangabeys hanging out in the lower branches. These monkeys were smaller but scrappier than other species, our guide told us, and the rest of the forest tended to leave them alone. Unlike the gentle-eyed vervets, which everybody else picked on, no one messed with the mangabeys. (I noted how the high-flying colobus monkeys gave the mangabeys a wide berth when they passed them in the forest. _\"That's right, pal, keep movin'.\"_ )\n\n\"If one mangabey gets hurt, the others will fight off anyone who comes near,\" our guide said. \"They are tough little monkeys.\"\n\nThe mangabeys watched us pass with a jaundiced eye. Jaundiced in every sense of the word; their gaze seemed yellow and liquid, as though raw from late-night poker marathons and cigarette smoke. I half-expected to see roll-your-own cheroots dangling from their lips. If monkeys could get tattoos, the mangabeys would be first in line.\n\nPersonally, I was hoping to spot the aptly named owl-faced monkey, if only because they look so sadly comical with their morose eyes and long white stripe down the middle of their noses, but none appeared. Damn rude of them not to show up. Didn't they know we were on a schedule?\n\nThe monkeys that we did see were of the taunting variety. There was something about the sight of a telephoto lens that inspired them. They'd be sitting on a branch in perfect profile, dramatically backlit by a shaft of sun, peering at the far horizon with a look of ancient monkey wisdom, only to bolt the moment I raised my viewfinder. I have an entire catalogue of monkey-butt photographs. Blurred tails. A bunch of leaves where a monkey just was. That sort of thing.\n\nThe trail we were allegedly following traced a line of gummy clay through tanglements of foliage, the air redolent with the smell of growth and decay, of rot and rebirth feeding off each other.\n\n\"Path must be slick in the rainy season,\" I gasped, unsnagging myself again from the grasp of Rwanda's prehensile vines.\n\n\"Yes. Very muddy. But more greener,\" said our lead guide, waving a disappointed hand at the towering stands of beauty surrounding us. \"You should have come after the rains. It's much nicer. More green.\"\n\nThe fluted trunks of strombosia trees rose like cathedral columns under the ceiling of sunshade canopy. _Were these the trees that inspired Rwandan legends about the forests of the Congo holding up the sky?_ Monkeys fed on the nutlike fruit of the strombosia, gnawing off the outside and tossing away the pits. The trails were scattered with them.\n\nA white-bearded L'Hoest's monkey, looking every bit the wizened old hermit, watched us as we came out onto a rutted road. The colobus assembled in the leaves above us, waiting for us to come back and play. When we didn't, they gave a collective shrug and went off to look for some vervets to beat up.\n\nAs we stood on the road chugging water, a band of Twa villagers appeared, walking uphill at a slow, steady pace, bundles on heads, dressed in loose cloth, shoulders bare. They lived in these forests, in remote communities barely linked to the outside world. I was fairly sure one of our own guides was Twa himself (he barely came up to my chest and moved through the forest with an ease the other guides must have envied), but there was no way to ask him without causing all sorts of awkwardness. As the villagers approached, our guide raised his hand in greeting. He spoke with them softly for a moment, nodding when they pointed down the road. More monkeys that way. He thanked them, and we strode off with renewed vigour.\n\nSeveral hours and an enlightening conversation about leopards later\u2014 _\"Yes, there are leopards in these forests, but rarely seen, we'd be 'lucky' if we actually met one, and no the rifles are not for leopards, they are for... other things\"_ \u2014we arrived back at the main road. Our Land Cruiser was waiting right where we'd left it.\n\nOn the assumption that leopards strike from behind, picking off the laggards, I'd pushed my way to the middle of the line, leaving Jean-Claude to pull up the rear. We ended our day with a canopy walk, where a series of ropelike bridges was strung between the tree-tops like a laundry line.\n\nBird calls and the chirr of insects. Vertigo views. The sudden bombastic shake of a tree as a monkey leapt through the leaves below. _Finally, we have the high ground on the little buggers_. One monkey, on hearing our heavy footsteps above, looked up with an expression of abject befuddlement\u2014 _\"What on earth are you doing way up there?\"_ \u2014before scurrying away.\n\nThe canopy below seemed soft and fluffy, as though, if you took a swan dive over the edge, you might bounce on its quilt-like softness. I stood awhile, gently swinging, looking down. We could hear the whoop of monkeys in the distance and, nearer at hand, the panicked cries of a heavy-hipped woman being coaxed onto the cat's cradle of the canopy walk by her barrel-bellied husband.\n\nI'd chatted with them earlier. They ran a boarding school in Kigali, were here on holiday, and as such represented the growing number of Rwandans travelling within their own country: domestic tourists, a sure sign of a nascent middle class. Though, given the woman's shrieks and deathlike grip on the swaying cables, I don't imagine she had quite as positive a take on the matter.\n\n\"What was she saying?\" I asked Jean-Claude afterward. \"In Kinyarwanda.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said. \"Many bad things. Mainly about her husband.\"\n\n\"This is where the rest of my life began.\" Jean-Claude on the bridge over Rusumo Falls.\n\nA fateful bottleneck in the Akagera River.\n\nBullet holes at Camp Kigali where the Belgian peacekeepers were killed.\n\nAftermath of an attack: the communal kitchen at Ntarama.\n\nPutting faces to statistics at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.\n\nThe clothing of victims piled in front of the bullet-scarred tabernacle at Nyamata Church.\n\nCoffins on the pews at Ntarama. The clothing of victims hangs from the rafters.\n\n\"I ran and I ran and they could not catch me.\" Survivor on Murambi Hill.\n\nTwo very different palaces. Belgian-built residence of the last kings of Rwanda.\n\nThe mwami's residence in the Royal Courts of Nyanza.\n\nYoung entrepreneur at the Kigeme refugee camp.\n\n\"They are not prisoners.\" A community takes shape at Kigeme Camp.\n\nJean-Claude with some of the newly suited future soccer stars of Kigeme refugee camp.\n\nOur 4\u00d74 at the end of the known world. The rainforests of the Congo were once thought to hold up the sky.\n\nTrail guide in the Rwandan rainforest. A paint-by-numbers where every colour is green.\n\nIf monkeys could get tattoos, mangabeys would be first in line.\n\n\"Many bad things. Mainly about her husband.\" Canopy walk at Nyungwe.\n\nView from the entranceway of Nyungwe Forest Lodge.\n\nThe art of hitchhiking: Betty, Grace, and Anuarite, the three students we gave a ride to.\n\nDust in the jungle. Our 4\u00d74 marked with fingerprints.\n\n**29**\n\nTHE CHIMPANZEES PROVED MORE MANAGEABLE. Now there's a sentence you don't often read!\n\nWe gathered in the early hours the next morning, an assortment of travellers, all yawns and neck cricks, awaiting instruction. Destinations were confirmed, with some groups bound for waterfalls, others for a summit, still others setting off in search of chimps. A second vehicle would be joining Jean-Claude and me on our trek, an equally dusty 4x4 carrying a psychiatrist from Toronto named Lorne and his indomitable daughter Adriana. Lorne and Adriana had been travelling across East Africa after Adriana's tour of duty as a volunteer in Tanzania ended. She was fifteen and dauntless. Also prone to carsickness, which made their ongoing road trip tough at times. She spent much of it bobble-headed in the backseat.\n\nOver the course of their father-daughter expedition, they'd observed some interesting contrasts between the countries they visited. \"When we crossed into Rwanda,\" Lorne noted, with a nod to their driver, \"everything changed. It was suddenly very clean. The quality of the roads immediately improved, and the police checkpoints simply... stopped.\"\n\nTravellers in Africa so often get used to the mild but constant harassment of police officers and border officials wheedling people for bribes that the sudden absence of this in Rwanda is almost unnerving.\n\n\"Rwanda has a very different vibe,\" Lorne said.\n\nAdriana was more ambivalent about it. Echoing the tousle-haired Swede we'd met earlier, she said, with a sigh, \"There are too many rules in Rwanda.\"\n\nLorne and I exchanged looks. _Ah, youth. When you get older, you won't find messy inefficiency quite so charming_.\n\nWe headed south just before dawn, driving through the tunnel of our own headlights. The road curved sleepily through one village, then the next.\n\nIt would take more than an hour to get to the trailhead in Cyamudongo, where a band of twenty-five chimps was living in a protected enclave of montane, \"cloud,\" forest. It was Sunday, and as if on cue, hundreds of women appeared, dressed in proud patterns, dragging their husbands in ill-fitting suits behind them. Off to church.\n\nWith a jar, the pavement ended.\n\nOur two-vehicle convoy had left the main road and turned onto rougher routes. As we rattled across corduroy surfaces, the father-daughter vehicle in front of us disappeared into a kickback of powdered clay. Our wipers smeared a slurry of mud across the glass, opening up a narrow view. Steep sides dropped away on either side. We were ridge running, half-blind.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" said Jean-Claude, referring to the rows of trees along the side. \"We have guardrails.\"\n\nThe road crested, and we were soon deep in forest again. The vehicle ahead rolled to a stop and we pulled up alongside. When I opened my door, clay fountained off. _Dust in the jungle_. A strange combination.\n\nA pair of trail guides were waiting for us, trim young men dressed in the dark-green uniforms of Rwanda's National Park Service.\n\n\"Welcome to Cyamudongo. From here,\" they said, \"we will walk. This could take an hour, maybe more, maybe less. Probably more.\"\n\nAnother vehicle appeared, and four more people climbed out, Spanish students touring the region. This brought our tally to eight, which was the cap for these treks. The motto, as always, was small numbers, low impact.\n\nThe path was wide and easy to follow. It ran flat for a while and then headed down a steep incline, where the thick roots of trees formed natural steps. When we came upon a pile of monkey poop, we got very excited.\n\n\"Not monkey poop,\" the guide corrected us. \" _Chimpanzee_ poop.\"\n\nNot that it mattered. _Click-whirr, click-whirr, click_. Said poop was immortalized in a flurry of photographs from numerous angles while our guides stood to one side, trying not to shake their heads in wonderment. Like the Twa villagers we'd met in the jungle the day before, they must have thought we were more than a bit batty.\n\n_Forget the primates_ , I thought. _You could tour their poop_. I made a mental note to get rich on this later.\n\nBy now, I had the feeling that our guides\u2014fully trained in forest conservation\u2014were also a wee bit hungover. They were besieged with yawns and bleary of eye. When a bird of prey similar to the one I'd seen at the royal court _kiied_ above us, swooping low and then arcing up and away, I said, \"I've seen that bird before. Is that a hawk or an eagle?\"\n\nThe guide I was walking beside mumbled \"Yes.\"\n\nUm.\n\n\"So... is it a hawk? Or is it an eagle?\" (I don't know why I needed to know; I'm not a birdwatcher or anything.)\n\n\"It's uh\u2014it's a hawk-eagle,\" the guide said.\n\nReally? \"A hawk-eagle?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\nMental note: _Check to see if there really is such a thing as a hawk-eagle_.\n\n\"Sometimes hawk-eagles catch baby monkeys,\" he added helpfully. \"They take them right from the trees.\"\n\n\"You mean, they take baby _chimpanzees_ ,\" I said.\n\nHe shrugged. _Tomayto, tomahto_.\n\nWe came upon more poop, fresher than the last batch, and with anticipation mounting on every step, we stumble-walked through the forest, eyes everywhere except on the trail, ready to catch sight of these mysterious forest denizens.\n\nWe needn't have worried. When you come across chimps, you know it. They are, as Jean-Claude put it, \"the teenagers of the forest.\" Noisy, gratuitously destructive, endlessly argumentative, fully obsessed with bodily functions, and constantly laughing at their own antics. You hear them long before you see them: that reverberating hooting pant, the _ooo-ooo-ooo-ah-ah-ah_ , from the soundtrack of every Tarzan movie. It's a sound that tingles the spine when you hear it, gets louder, more pitched as you draw nearer. And then suddenly, right in front of you, is a tree full of chimps. I don't know if you remember the classic children's book _Go, Dog. Go!_ , but it ends with a dog party! A big dog party! on top of an enormous umbrella-like tree. That's what it was like. A chimp party! A big chimp party! Thirty or so primates with party hats and cake and noisemakers had congregated on a single massive tree.\n\nWe spent an hour watching them as they scrambled from branch to branch, fighting, hooting, mating (eww), grooming, feeding, picking at their anuses. The whole gamut of the chimpanzee lifestyle was on proud display that day.\n\nThey seemed able-footed, but the guides assured us that chimps did fall from trees now and then. \"Sometimes, when they try to jump, they miss. And if they are too high up, they can be killed by the fall.\"\n\nJean-Claude figured that must be the single most embarrassing way to die if you're a monkey: falling from a tree.\n\n\"If the neighbours ask,\" Jean-Claude whispered, \"I will bet the chimpanzee's family will say to them 'He died fighting a leopard,' or had a heart attack.\"\n\nAnything but falling from a tree.\n\nI don't know why we were whispering. It's not as if we were at a chimp funeral; the entire tree was in a ruckus. We were standing on a spongy mat of moss and mulch, and when I climbed over a fallen tree trunk to get a closer look, I didn't notice that I was now standing on top of\u2014\n\nThe guide tapped my shoulder and said, at the exact moment I felt the first burning stings on my ankles, \"Fire ants. You should maybe move.\"\n\nThough, of course, by that point I was already running in circles, mid-air, swatting at my ankles. I may have said something as well. Something along the lines of _\"Gettim off me! Gettim off me!\"_\n\nJean-Claude told me later that several chimps had stopped to watch. \"They were very entertained,\" he said.\n\nShortly before it was time to go, I spotted a solitary chimp sitting on a low branch, lips pursed in a pensive manner as he looked into the middle distance, one long arm hanging down. As I drew closer, the guide again tapped my shoulder. \"Maybe not too close,\" he said. He gestured to the chimp's dangling hand and what was cupped inside it: a moist lump of poop, ready for the flinging. And there he was, looking oh-so-innocent, hoping I would come... just... a little... bit... closer.\n\n\"Was he really going to?\" I asked.\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\nChimpanzees have thirty kinds of sounds to communicate with, from breathy pants to sudden screeches to low growls. They organize hunting parties against colobus monkeys, the guide said as we tromped back toward the trailhead.\n\n\"There are wars going on in these forests?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"All the time.\"\n\n**30**\n\nOUR JOURNEY TO SEE THE CHIMPS had taken us to the edge of the Burundian border. At one point, when I asked the guide which way Burundi lay, he pointed to the next mountain and said, \"Other side.\"\n\nBurundi and Rwanda existed as separate\u2014but mirrored\u2014Tutsi\u2013Hutu kingdoms for centuries prior to European arrival. The Germans lumped them together into a single administrative unit known as \"Ruanda-Urundi.\" Belgium continued this policy, but when the two countries gained independence, their destinies diverged\u2014dramatically.\n\nIn many ways, Burundi and Rwanda are distorted reflections of each other. Much like Rwanda, Burundi was a centralized, semi-feudalistic society with two main social classes: Tutsi herders and Hutu farmers, with the ruling kings drawn from the Tutsi class. But whereas in Rwanda the Hutu majority took control after independence, in Burundi the Tutsi minority dug in. Drawing lessons from the 1959 massacre of Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda, the ruling elite in Burundi tightened their grip, slaughtering Hutu civilians on any pretext, with every failed rebellion or attempt at raising a political opposition.\n\nMulti-party rule in Burundi eventually signalled the end of Tutsi hegemony, but the Tutsi elite would not go down without a fight. In the same month that the Arusha Accords were signed, ending Rwanda's civil war, Burundi elected its first Hutu president. It boded well for democracy in the region. But just four months after he was elected, the new president was assassinated by Tutsi army officers. When the Hutu population rose up, the government responded with a further slaughter of Hutu citizens under a series of scorched-earth pogroms. Hundreds of thousands fled into Rwanda, bringing with them warnings of Tutsi Power. The message was clear: _\"Do not trust the Tutsis!\"_ Burundi and Rwanda were caught in an echo chamber, each one's outrages fuelling the fears and intransigence of the other, a _danse macabre_ in which both sides led, both sides followed. The two countries were, in G\u00e9rard Prunier's memorable description, \"opposite ends of a political seesaw.\"\n\nIn Calgary, I once mistakenly referred to a pastor Jean-Claude had introduced me to as being Rwandan. He wasn't. He was from Burundi. \"But don't worry,\" the pastor laughed. \"This is a very easy mistake to make. In Burundi, you see, we are always copying Rwanda. They kill _their_ president, we have to kill _our_ president. _They_ have a genocide, we have to have one too.\"\n\nJean-Claude and the pastor from Burundi had a good chuckle over this. Gallows humour, I suppose, but true.\n\nIn Burundi, massacres followed counter-massacres in a cycle of violence that feeds itself even now. Burundi was never laid low the way Rwanda was, but it has never rebuilt itself, either. It remains mired in corruption and poverty, with political turmoil and ethnic tensions flaring up constantly.\n\nIf Rwanda today has too many rules, Burundi has too few. The same surveys that routinely place Rwanda among the least corrupt nations in Africa inevitably place Burundi among the worst. Rwanda's economy is growing; Burundi's is stagnant. It remains among the poorest countries on the continent. And even today, along this border, in these remote hills and clandestine forests, secret wars are being waged.\n\n**31**\n\nJEAN-CLAUDE AND I SAID a reluctant farewell to the five-star luxury of Nyungwe Forest Lodge, knowing that every subsequent lodging would suffer by comparison. _\"Glacier-chilled strawberries topped with papaya, you say? At Nyungwe Forest Lodge they had glacier-chilled strawberries topped with papaya_ and _a selection of sliced cantaloupe arranged in festive formations, but I suppose this will have to do.\"_\n\nThe hotel staff had washed the Land Cruiser for us without our asking\u2014the ol' girl gleamed\u2014and as we wound our way through neon-green fields of tea beneath smoke-coloured mountains, an early-morning mist settled on the landscape. It felt as if we were starring in a truck commercial.\n\nJean-Claude told me about a dream he'd been having, in which he and I were being chased by a mob of people. \"I couldn't see who they were, just that they wanted to kill us.\"\n\n\"Us?\" I asked. \"What the hell did I do?\"\n\n\"Guilt by association,\" Jean-Claude said with a laugh. \"Your skin is so light maybe they thought you were a Tutsi.\"\n\n\"Well, keep me out of your nightmares, okay?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"Oh, I can't promise that.\"\n\nWhat must it be like to come back to this landscape, to this land, and dream of faceless people chasing you? I couldn't begin to imagine.\n\nHaving left Nyungwe National Park, we came to a T in the road, freshly paved in both directions with a new market alongside. Women bustled about, setting up shop for the day.\n\n\"Buhinga,\" said Jean-Claude. \"That's the name of this place.\"\n\nIt wasn't even on the map. Formerly a huddle of clay huts, today it is a crossroads town teeming with trade.\n\n\"I was out here once, many years ago,\" Jean-Claude said. \"It's changed.\"\n\n\"For the better?\"\n\nHe looked at me as if I were mad. \"Of course.\"\n\nThey used to hunt Tutsis along the muddy trails outside of Buhinga. Now they were shopping at a new, purpose-built market on freshly paved roads, a reminder that in Rwanda the past was never something to feel nostalgic about. There were no \"good old days\" to pine for.\n\nJean-Claude turned onto wider roads, pointed us north.\n\nBeyond the red-clay escarpments of Buhinga, we got our first clear views of Lake Kivu in the distance. Then, as quickly as it appeared, Kivu was gone, disappearing behind leafy stands of banana trees. Every yard seemed to have several of these oversized plants out front, surrounding and at times obscuring the homes behind them. The tightly bunched bananas formed rubbery green chandeliers.\n\n\"Out here, if you have an extra foot of land, you plant a banana tree.\"\n\nIt felt as though someone had overturned a giant bowl of lettuce on us. The leaves hung down, slapping the sides of the Land Cruiser as we passed. And with every break in the greenery, every gap in the hills, a backdrop of blue.\n\nLess a lake than an inland sea, Kivu divides the Democratic Republic of Congo from that of Rwanda, and as the road grew steeper, we found ourselves looking over across the dramatic headlands of Ijwi Island. The island sits on the Congo side of the great divide, and with the mist that had pooled on the lake, Ijwi seemed to be floating on a fog bank. Other islands hovered above the water as well, but as the sun climbed higher, the mist on Lake Kivu melted away and the Congo emerged, full force, on the far side of the lake. _The end of the known world_.\n\nBeginning a slow descent into the next valley, we passed through the town of Kagano where a new church was taking shape: jerry-rigged scaffolding and red-brick walls the same colour as the soil. Faith, under construction. Like the crossroads community of Buhinga, Kagano sported a brand-new market as well, with freshly painted shops in earthen reds and tawny yellows. (The brighter phone-company-sponsored colours hadn't yet reached this remote region.) A quarry works was taking bloodless bites from the side of a hill as men in sweat-stained undershirts shovelled gravel into wooden containers. A young girl stepped back to watch us pass.\n\nThe road seemed to fall out from under us; we came down so fast I could feel the drop in my stomach. On a marshy plain, the Kamiranzovu flowed into Lake Kivu in a coffee-swirl of silt. We crossed the river on a rickety bridge of dubious integrity, past hordes of small children who were cannonballing off the sides.\n\n\"Morning bath time,\" said Jean-Claude. \"Really just a chance to play.\"\n\nBanyan trees lined the banks of the Kamiranzovu. They looked like plants that, triffid-like, had somehow learned to walk, ambulatory trees struggling to free themselves from reechy waters. We drove alongside Lake Kivu, a polished plane with islands embedded, before starting our ascent anew.\n\nThis would set the pattern for the rest of the day, as we cut across the rise-and-fall fjords of Lake Kivu, climbing over high ridges then slaloming back down the other side, crossing the mouth of a marshy river or stream that emptied into the lake and then climbing back up again over the next row of serrated hills.\n\nAt the RDB tourism office back in Kigali, Rica Rwigamba had confided in me, with a slightly abashed laugh, that the bureau was planning to package this route as the \"Rwanda Riviera.\" It seemed a bit of harmless hubris at the time, but having travelled it, I concur. The scenery along Lake Kivu stands with the best of the Mediterranean.\n\nHowever, as we soon discovered, the road itself wasn't ready for tourists.\n\nIt started off well enough. We'd been driving over asphalt that unfurled as smoothly as silk, an image that was particularly apt because we were, as Jean-Claude noted, travelling on a \"Chinese highway.\"\n\nChina's all-in move into Africa is one of the least-known stories on the continent. Across sub-Saharan Africa, hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers are pouring in, building bridges and dams and massive infrastructure projects: all part of China's long-term strategy to supplant the West as Africa's main trade partner while gaining access to the continent's vast resources. China needs fuel, minerals, raw materials. Africa needs roads, infrastructure, and, to judge by the number of Chinese-made trinkets that have swamped the area, cheap manufactured goods as well. More and more local markets in Africa have come to resemble dollar stores. Africa is not just a source of resources for China but a source of consumers as well.\n\nIn stark contrast to the stance the West takes, at least _pretending_ to make human rights a precondition for favoured trade status, China makes no such demands. (Given their own track record, how could they?) China will happily work with anyone, anywhere, from dictators to struggling democracies, no strings attached. But Rwanda's cooperation comes with stringent conditions, the most important of which is that large-scale projects hire and train a local workforce.\n\nAs we rolled toward what would turn out to be the End of Asphalt, we passed Rwandan surveyors and work crews widening the road base, grading the surfaces, pushing the blacktop ever forward. Chinese supervisors in hard hats and putty-grey uniforms worked alongside, and an open field rumbled with cumbersome trucks and massive earthmovers, looking not unlike a gathering of brontosauri. A few of the younger Rwandan drivers-in-training looked slightly terrified behind the controls, even with a Chinese instructor beside them hanging off the door, but most were thundering about with gusto, shifting gears and communicating\u2014how exactly?\n\n\"The Chinese learn to speak Kinyarwanda,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"They take lessons before they come.\"\n\nIn Africa, the Chinese have circumvented English as the default mode of trade and are communicating with workers in their own language, a feat the West never mastered. From the first German colonizers, through Belgium and France, to Rwanda's current membership in the English-speaking Commonwealth of Nations, the language of business has always depended on what the current political alignment happened to be. As Jean-Claude put it, \"My grandfather learned German, my father learned French, I learned English.\"\n\nEuropeans had always expected Africans to learn their language; the Chinese were the first to meet them halfway. They have made it reciprocal as well, opening \"Confucius Centres\" in several African countries, including Rwanda, where students can learn Chinese culture and language for free.\n\nOn the road north, we passed Chinese dormitories, simple structures with high walls and carefully cultivated rice paddies out front. Behind those doors there would be chopsticks and rice wine, Chinese DVDs and photos of sweethearts back in Shanghai. These were cultural outposts we were passing, where Asia and Africa met, and this stretch of road was the only one where, on seeing my sweaty pink face in the window, children ran alongside shouting _\"Nihau! Nihau!\"_ rather than the usual _\"Goo'moaning'teacha!\"_\n\nThat's right. Out here on Lake Kivu, in the remote would-be Rwanda Riviera of central Africa, I was assumed to be Chinese. It made sense: what else could I be? The only muzungus these kids ever saw were Chinese work crews. I clearly wasn't Rwandese, _ipso facto_... Personally, I loved it. I took to shouting _\"Nihau!\"_ back at them with what I presumed was a fluent Mandarin accent. I even toyed with the idea of getting out and really messing with their heads by introducing myself as Alex Ferguson's son. _\"Alex Ferguson is Chinese?\"_\n\nComing upon one construction site, I caught the eye of a weary-looking Chinese worker. He was taking a break, squatting beside the asphalt, elbow resting on his knees as he smoked the stub of a cigarette, and he gave me a nod as we drove by. Just a pair of muzungus passing on the road.\n\nThe highway was pushing prosperity ahead of it. You could see this in both the number and the quality of new rooftops: sheets of metal, catching the light above crumbling clay walls. And in many cases, not clay but cement, freshly painted. The Rwandans who drove the work trucks were well-paid, and they in turn were injecting income back into the local economy. New homes employed local builders, and builders required supplies. More cash meant more caf\u00e9s. More caf\u00e9s meant more refrigerators, more Fanta to stock, more food to sell. And as we drove north along this Chinese highway, motorcycles began to appear, shiny and new, dipping and weaving with an undeniable \u00e9lan.\n\nFinancial institutions with tinted glass had popped up amid every clutch of homes, it seemed, offering business loans and compound savings accounts with the latest interest rates posted out front, while girls in traditional head wraps herded goats past the front doors. I realize that at this point one is expected to wax elegiac about the woeful effect of wealth on traditional cultures and the \"loss of innocence\" that comes with it. But I've never subscribed to the notion that poverty is quaint or that isolation is somehow ennobling. And anyway, this is Rwanda. There is very little innocence left to lose.\n\n**32**\n\nSOMETHING ELSE WAS GOING ON, just below the surface. The Rwanda Riviera was about to become a conduit for information technology as well.\n\nThe government was taking advantage of highway construction to run fibre-optic and electrical cables up the length of Lake Kivu. A narrow trench had been cut beside the asphalt, and as the road pushed through, braided cables were being unspooled into the earth alongside it. Jean-Claude and I would follow these cables for hundreds of miles. It was a remarkable undertaking for such a rugged and remote region. The goal, of course, was to bring the world to Rwanda, with full internet access for the entire nation, even in the dusty boondocks\u2014especially in the dusty boondocks.\n\nThis embrace of the wider world is also reflected in the country's open-door visa policies. Rwanda is a key member of the East African Community (EAC), which hopes to create a NAFTA-style free-trade zone encompassing Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. The aim is to lower tariffs and increase cross-border trade throughout the region. This would include shared visas and, potentially, a shared currency as well. Rwanda wants to take things even further, and has been calling on all African states to eliminate barriers to trade, study, and travel in order to encourage the open exchange of goods, people, and ideas. Rwanda has led by example, with an open-door visa policy for _all_ Africans, not just members of the EAC.\n\nRwanda today is one of the only countries in the world that issues automatic visas to all African nationals at point of entry. When asked why he'd brought in such sweeping changes, President Kagame answered, \"Common sense and enlightened self-interest.\"\n\nEnlightened self-interest, the notion that what's in the public's best interest is also in the individual's, motivates much of what Rwanda does. This is seen not simply as a way to claim a better future, but to avoid sinking back into a darker past. The strategy\u2014socially, economically, politically\u2014is predicated on a single overriding obsession: to prevent another genocide from occurring. If everyone is invested in the success of the country, if everyone has a stake in its prosperity, they won't be tempted to tear it down.\n\nEven the laws mandating the percentage of women in parliament and on the Supreme Court are based on this notion. The belief is that if women had had a greater say in government policy, there would never have been a genocide in the first place. And much as I hate to pander to preconceptions about gender, and knowing full well that many women _were_ involved, taunting the victims, urging their husbands onward, taking an active role in the lootings, even operating as genocidal militia leaders, the killings themselves were almost exclusively a male undertaking\u2014from the top all the way down. It's hard to imagine a parliament with 64 percent women approving the wholesale slaughter of children.\n\nThis is also the reasoning behind Rwanda's full-scale investment in information technology. If the genocide was caused by ignorance and isolation, change that: connect the populace to a larger network, allow trade to move freely across borders, remove travel restrictions, encourage entrepreneurs, reward initiative. These were more than just fibre-optic cables being unspooled. This was a thin line of hope.\n\nIf you're going to dream, dream big.\n\nRwanda already had widespread Wi-Fi coverage in public buildings, hotels, schools, and bus centres, and it was now positioning itself to become a major IT and telecommunications hub as well. To that end, the government signed a massive public\u2013private partnership with South Korea's KT Corporation to provide high-speed 4G internet access to 95 percent of the population by 2018. But of course, access alone isn't enough. Rwanda also aims to have the internet in 70 percent of households on the same timeline.\n\nThe fibre-optic cables Jean-Claude and I were driving alongside represented just a small part of a 3,000-kilometre network crisscrossing the country. Rwanda has signed onto the One Laptop per Child initiative as well. More than 200,000 laptops have been distributed to hundreds of schools across the country, among the highest levels of any country involved in the program.\n\nIt's all very ambitious, considering that almost 80 percent of Rwandan homes are still not connected to a national power grid. How do you introduce the internet to villages that are without electricity? Easy. Solar-powered battery chargers. The Rwandan Board of Education, together with a U.S. aid organization, provides low-cost solar panels to schools and community centres across Rwanda so that they can charge laptops, DVD players, and even cell phones (which are used in schools for remote audio instruction programs, such as second-language learning). Many of these schools have no light bulbs, yet can access Google. Thomas Edison has yet to reach them, but Bill Gates has already arrived.\n\nRwanda is attempting something extraordinary: to leapfrog directly from the agricultural age into the information age, bypassing the industrial stage entirely. It may seem unrealistic, but Asian countries have done it. As one young Rwandan IT entrepreneur gushed, prematurely perhaps, \"Rwanda is the Silicon Valley of Africa!\" Singapore, Switzerland, and now Silicon Valley: if nothing else, Rwanda may well be the first truly postmodern country in Africa.\n\n_\"Nihau, nihau!\"_ the children yell as they run beside us. Nihau indeed.\n\n**33**\n\nAS WE CONTINUED NORTHWARD, keeping pace with the cables and drawing ever nearer to the dreaded End of Asphalt, I was reminded of something President Kagame said: \"The internet today is not a luxury. It is a public utility as much as water and electricity.\"\n\nKagame is known to be something of a techno-geek himself, commanding a huge following on Twitter and championing IT at every turn. He's been dubbed \"the digital president,\" though a more accurate nickname might be the one the business community gave him. They refer to him not as the president of Rwanda, but its \"CEO.\" It's often said that Kagame runs the country like a corporation, making sure every director is accountable for their department\u2014and to their shareholders. It's about return on investment, streamlining production, increasing market shares. I was struck when speaking to public employees and government officials by how often they referred to their constituents, and the Rwandan people in general, as \"stakeholders.\"\n\nAs the CEO of Rwanda, Kagame is focused on what could best be described as \"results-based management,\" though he uses an older Rwandan term to describe the process. Historically, Rwanda had a custom known as _imihigo_ , wherein chiefs and village leaders would stand before their people and proclaim the goals they wished to achieve that year, and then be held responsible for meeting them. Kagame has brought back imihigo in modern form to ensure that the appointed mayors\u2014or _bourgmestres_ , as they were once known\u2014and other local administrators and regional heads are made accountable to their constituents.\n\nIn a ceremony that's broadcast on television and radio, these leaders make public vows\u2014involving three-year, five-year, and annual plans\u2014and then sign an imihigo contract, which is available online for anyone to read. Their goals have to be ambitious but also measurable and attainable. They might include adding so many classrooms or planting so many trees or distributing a certain number of contraceptives under a family planning program; they might involve paving roads or relocating homes built on a flood plain. If leaders fail to meet their imihigo goals, they are reprimanded or even replaced. (The tenure of mayors in Rwanda is notoriously short.) Those who do meet their goals are feted and publicly praised.\n\nAs a member of the Ministry of Local Government put it, \"People wouldn't understand if you talk about 'performance contracts,' but if you say _imihigo_ they understand.\"\n\nPresident Kagame sees his role very clearly: \"People can complain, but I have a job to do, and that is to give Rwandans security, development, and opportunity.\"\n\n_Note:_ Not \"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,\" but \"security, development, and opportunity.\" Spoken like a true CEO.\n\nOr are these the words of a dictator?\n\nOpen-door visa policies, full internet access, the free flow of trade and information, a zero-tolerance policy for corruption, the abolition of the death penalty\u2014these are not the actions one normally associates with a totalitarian regime. Yet this is precisely the criticism levelled at Paul Kagame: that he is, in fact, presiding over a ruthless dictatorship. And therein lies the Great Paradox of today's Rwanda.\n\nIn 1994, this small landlocked country was, with no exaggeration, _the worst place on earth_. An open-air abattoir, a failed state, a gutted nation, Rwanda was a land left in genocidal ruin. Today, across the board\u2014in terms of child mortality, health care, education, women's rights, poverty reduction\u2014it's leading the way in Africa. The World Economic Forum places Rwanda among the best countries in the world when it comes to good governance, with accountability \"built into the system.\"\n\nBut \"good governance\" is not the same as \"democratic.\"\n\nThe accusation that Paul Kagame is running a dictatorship rests primarily on four pillars: freedom of the press, or lack thereof; the constraints placed on opposition parties; an intolerance for dissent; and most disturbingly, what appears to be the targeted assassination of political opponents both at home and abroad.\n\nHuman Rights Watch, a respected non-partisan organization, may applaud Rwanda's success, but it warns that progress in the social, health care, and economic realms has not been matched in the political arena, that freedom of expression and association is still too tightly controlled. So effective is the RPF's grip on the political sphere that Amnesty International has raised the alarm that Rwanda is in danger of becoming\u2014in tone, if not in fact\u2014a one-party state.\n\nThese are serious charges, yet Kagame has brushed them aside, saying, \"If you don't want to be criticized, say nothing, do nothing and be nothing. I have no desire of doing nothing.\"\n\nLove him or hate him, no one is neutral when it comes to Paul Kagame. His exiled former head of the military has denounced President Kagame as being \"worse than Gaddafi.\" A former economic adviser, also in exile, describes the president as \"no better than Stalin\"\u2014which seems a bit much, considering that Joseph Stalin was responsible for the death of 20 million people, while Paul Kagame led an army that ended a genocide. Even Human Rights Watch credits him with that. If nothing else, Kagame is an equal-opportunity intimidator: prominent Hutus and Tutsis alike have fallen out of favour with him and paid the price. The two men mentioned above? Both are Tutsi, both former RPF insiders.\n\nOn paper, Rwanda has very liberal legislation regarding the media. The country has passed an access to information law, and the media operates under a self-regulated body. But the same constitution that guarantees freedom of speech also forbids propagating \"divisionism,\" which can include merely reporting on issues that involve ethnic, racial, or regional conflict. This \"shoot-the-messenger\" mentality can often inhibit the free discussion of ideas.\n\nThe government cites the murderous hate propaganda of the Hutu Power media as a cautionary tale about allowing unbridled free speech, but critics say that this is simply a smokescreen aimed at stifling honest debate. Human rights organizations warn that government accusations of \"stirring up ethnic divisions\" or propagating a genocidal ideology are being used like a bludgeon to silence opponents.\n\nCertainly, the media in Rwanda _seems_ lively enough. There is a proliferation of private radio (thirty-three stations at last count, while during the genocide the country had only two: a government-run station and the infamous RTLM, both of which promoted ethnic violence). Rwanda has several new television stations, and a wide range of newspapers, both domestic and from across East Africa, are readily available\u2014to say nothing of online access. This isn't exactly North Korea we're talking about. Or Cuba, for that matter.\n\nOne of the news stories I was following while I was in Rwanda was about a knuckle-rapping the government had received. As reported in the papers, the woman heading the Office of the Ombudsman, Aloysie Cyanzayire, was seeking to recover public funds from anti-corruption cases the government had brought forward and lost. Legal experts in the judiciary scolded the government for wasting public money by rushing to prosecute without gathering sufficient evidence first. A fairly mundane story, but its significance shouldn't be overlooked: the government of Rwanda had been going through the courts, not acting by fiat or decree, but through proper judicial process\u2014and had been _losing_. The government was reprimanded for this and, most importantly perhaps, the press had been reporting it. Can you imagine any of that occurring in a country like Putin's Russia? Or Castro's Cuba?\n\nOne article I read while perusing the local papers criticized the government for providing too much public funding to the agricultural sector, arguing that these subsidies were undermining private initiatives. (Imagine a newspaper in Cuba running that story!) Another item, on the front page no less\u2014slow news day, I'm guessing\u2014listed complaints by regional administrators about the amount of money the national government allotted for them to complete their projects, arguing that it wasn't enough. DISTRICTS BLAME MISSED TARGETS ON ALLOCATION GAPS screamed the headline. Sleepy yet? My point, for those of you still awake, is that none of these news stories are unduly remarkable, yet all challenge the notion that Rwanda is some sort of Stalinist state.\n\nWhen I was in Rwanda, President Kagame got in hot water for remarks he'd made at a local youth association when he suggested that the children of g\u00e9nocidaires should ask for forgiveness on behalf of their community (meaning \"on behalf of all Hutus\"). This elicited sharp rebukes in the media and from survivors' groups as well, who pointed out that the Rwandan constitution is very explicit: criminal responsibility is _individual_ and cannot be transferred or extended to other parties\u2014certainly not to an entire group. \"We have children who are below nineteen,\" one newspaper editorial read. \"They were not even born when the genocide was being committed by their relatives, so one cannot ask them to apologize for crimes that they never committed.\" The same newspaper presented the other side as well, quoting a lawyer who argued that in Rwandan culture, \"When people commit mistakes in your name, your ethnicity, you have a duty to apologize on behalf of your people.\" Such an apology would aid reconciliation, he said. The debate was aired in public, in the press.\n\nSo, on the surface anyway, Rwanda's media seems robust. But journalists on the ground tell a different story, one of threats (veiled and not-so-veiled), of political interference and harassment, with a resulting tendency toward \"self-censorship\" when faced with a story that might be damaging to the ruling RPF. Democracy Watch and the advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders both rank Rwanda very low in their freedom of the press index\u2014162 out of 180 countries, at last count. The Committee to Protect Journalists has been equally outspoken, accusing the Rwandan government of imprisoning and even killing journalists it considered troublesome. In the past, the government has closed down newspapers, once during an election campaign while its editors faced a variety of trumped-up charges.\n\nBut it's also worth remembering that at the height of the genocide, the United States refused to take out the broadcast tower, or even jam the signals, of hate-radio RTLM, which was openly calling for the mass murder of Tutsis, even though the American military was the only presence in the region with the capability to block them. The Clinton administration cited \"freedom of speech.\" So now, when the West calls for an unfettered press in Rwanda, it is perhaps not surprising that this is received with stony silence. This doesn't excuse the constraints put on reporters, or attacks on individuals\u2014of course it doesn't\u2014but it does go a long way toward explaining them. Like the clergy, journalists played an active role in promulgating the genocide. It is a distrust born of history.\n\n**34**\n\nHUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS have also accused the Rwandan government of suppressing political opposition, of quashing attempts to launch new parties, and of co-opting those few that do exist. The government often clamps down on the opposition in the lead-up to elections, usually on the pretext of preventing ethnic division.\n\nOne opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire of the UDF-Inkingi Party, met with one of the leaders of the outlawed FDLR (the Hutu Power rebels in eastern Congo, a group classified by the UN as a terrorist organization) and later complained that the Hutus who died in the genocide had not been commemorated properly. (She made her comments while standing in front of the genocide museum in Kigali, which explicitly states that many Hutus also died.) She was arrested and eventually sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of mobilizing ethnic divisions, promoting a \"genocide ideology,\" and collaborating with the FDLR. When she appealed, her sentence was extended to fifteen years.\n\nThe notion that opposition parties are a healthy and needed aspect of political life has never really taken root in Rwanda, where criticism of the government is often considered tantamount to treason. Kagame has purged his own party as well, so often in fact that one begins to suspect that having government ministers arrested is his version of a Cabinet shuffle. When Kagame's former chief of intelligence, a fellow Tutsi, was implicated in a movement to overthrow the government (something the man's supporters adamantly deny), he fled the country, only to turn up dead in a South African hotel room, strangled.\n\nAsked point-blank if he had ordered the hit on his former spy chief, President Kagame replied with typical bluntness, \"No. But I wish we had. I really wish it,\" later adding\u2014at a Sunday prayer meeting, no less\u2014\"You cannot betray Rwanda and get away with it. There are consequences.\" Not a warm and fuzzy guy, our Paul.\n\nMake no mistake. There is a war going on in the shadows, and dozens of government opponents have been forcibly \"disappeared.\" A former prosecutor, a human rights investigator, the vice-president of one of the main opposition parties, and a journalist investigating the attempted assassination of one of Kagame's opponents have all been killed. Anyone with even a passing connection to the FDLR is immediately suspect, and in much the same way that Israel can shut down criticism of its policies by slapping an \"anti-Semite\" label on it, in Rwanda opponents of the ruling party are routinely denounced as \"genocide deniers\" and carted away. And the parallel goes even further than that. Although presented as the \"Singapore of Africa,\" Rwanda is seen by some as an African Israel. \"A country,\" in the words of journalist Geoffrey York, \"that rose from the ashes of a holocaust to become militarily the strongest in its region, often in conflict with its neighbours and unafraid to pursue its enemies abroad.\"\n\nThe dilemma inherent in the West's relationship with Kagame is often posed as a question: _\"Paul Kagame: Rwanda's saviour or strongman?\"_ as though the two were mutually exclusive. Or, as the _Washington Post_ put it: \"Does Rwanda's economic prosperity justify President Kagame's political repression?\"\n\nOnce again, we may be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. We should perhaps be turning our attention east instead, to countries where these contradictory traits are all too common. If you wish to critique the autocratic nature of Rwanda, you probably need to look to Asia to find the proper parallel: to Japan historically, South Korea recently, and Singapore inevitably. Rather than being just another second-rate, tinpot despot in the tradition of a Mugabe or a Mobutu, an Obote or an Emperor Bokassa, Paul Kagame is closer to being the Rwandan Lee Kuan Yew. Lee was the father of modern Singapore, who took his country from poverty-riven backwater to first-world economic powerhouse in a single generation, a man who famously believed in democracy but not too much democracy.\n\n_New York Times_ columnist David Brooks summed up the reality of today's Rwanda by reminding readers that Kagame has \"publicly embraced the Singaporean style of autocracy, which has produced tangible economic progress,\" while still noting that \"those of us who champion democracy might hope that freedom, pluralism and democracy can replace chaos. But the best hope may be along South Korean lines, an authoritarian government that softens over time.\"\n\nJoseph Sebarenzi, a thoughtful and articulate genocide escapee from the Lake Kivu district, was Speaker of the Rwandan Parliament for three years in the post-genocide era. During that time, he strove to assert the parliament's autonomy and legal supremacy over the office of the presidency. \"A real government of checks and balances,\" as he put it. Sebarenzi failed, and having failed, ran afoul of Kagame. Forced to flee Rwanda, he later wrote a memoir about his childhood, the genocide, and his protracted political struggles with President Kagame, titled _God Sleeps in Rwanda_. Sebarenzi describes Rwanda as \"a nation of wounded souls,\" and warns that \"Rwanda moved from a single-party system under President Habyarimana to a cosmetic multi-party system under President Kagame. Before war broke out in 1990, Habyarimana's regime was hailed as a model of development and stability in Africa. But that was an illusion.... Similarly, today Kagame's regime is hailed by the international community as a model of stability and economic development.\"\n\nThis is a chilling passage, if it were true. But I'm not sure it is. It strikes me as an example of false equivalence. Rwanda under Habyarimana was indeed a darling of foreign aid, but that's where the comparison ends. Habyarimana and his cronies filled their own pockets and emptied the nation's coffers while fomenting ethnic divisions and allowing the cancer of corruption to flourish. There are valid criticisms to be made of today's Rwanda, but denouncing Kagame as a dictator on par with Habyarimana\u2014or Stalin or Gaddafi, for that matter\u2014is neither helpful nor accurate.\n\nIn Rwanda's most recent parliamentary election, the RPF garnered 76 percent of the vote. But in the presidential election, held separately, Kagame won with a whopping 93 percent, which raised eyebrows to say the least. It was the sort of result usually claimed by leaders in the former Communist bloc. But here's the weird part\u2014an independent Gallup poll came back with some surprising results: 77 percent of Rwandans felt they enjoyed a high degree of freedom of expression, association, and personal autonomy, and 94 percent\u2014fourth highest in the world\u2014expressed confidence in their national government. So perhaps Kagame's election results were not as off-kilter as we might think. (Jean-Claude comments, \"If you knew what the country was like before, compared to how it is now, you wouldn't be surprised by those results, Will.\") But the poll's most significant finding was in measuring _hope_. A full 93 percent of Rwandans believe that hard work will allow you to get ahead. This is a staggering wellspring of optimism, and it hardly suggests, as one dissident claimed, a gulag state filled with \"11 million prisoners.\"\n\nWhat worries me is not that Rwanda is a Stalinist state whose people are paralyzed with fear\u2014it's not, and those who claim it is are indulging in hyperbole\u2014but that so much of its tightly controlled, Asian-style recovery is centred on the will of one man. _Apr\u00e8s Kagame, le d\u00e9luge?_\n\nIf there even is an apr\u00e8s Kagame.\n\nRwanda's constitution limits the presidential mandate to two terms of seven years each. Having served as vice-president and minister of defence, Paul Kagame was elected president in 2003 and then again in 2010, which means his second and final term will end in 2017. (If you're reading this in the future, you know better than I how it turned out.) But there are already growing calls, carefully orchestrated and presented as \"popular demand,\" for parliament to rewrite the constitution and allow Kagame to rule indefinitely\u2014or at least long enough to see his Vision 2020 blueprint through to completion. Kagame himself has rejected this offer. Repeatedly. But rumours are rife that he will allow himself to be \"talked into\" staying by the so-called will of the people.\n\nWhatever happens, the presidential election of 2017 will be a watershed moment in Rwandan democracy. Will the office change hands peacefully\u2014or will the rules be rewritten to allow Kagame a third term? And if a third, what about a fourth? Or a fifth? This is a Pandora's box waiting to be opened. If you can rewrite your country's foundational rules to suit one leader, what's to stop the next leader from doing the same, or the next? What's to stop a future president from reneging on legal restraints entirely in order to bring back ethnic quotas, to start classifying the populace once again as Hutu or Tutsi? These are the dangers of having an Etch-a-Sketch constitution. Canada is a peaceful and prosperous nation not because of the quality of our leaders (snort) but on the strength of our institutions, and Rwanda will truly be secure only when it can survive lesser leaders, when it doesn't need to rely on having a President Kagame at the helm. If the institutions of state are well-entrenched and unassailable, you can survive less-inspired leaders in the future; you can even survive incompetence. You should be able to put the most inept, stumblebum person you like in power without bringing down the entire structure. Africa is littered with once prosperous states ruined by initially successful men who changed the rules to suit themselves. Here's hoping Rwanda doesn't join their ranks.\n\nSomething else I worry about. At the refugee camp we'd visited earlier, a pair of formal portraits greet you when you enter the main office: one of Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, head of the UNHCR, and the other of President Paul Kagame. The photographs hang side by side on the wall, and yet there is something slightly off about this pair of framed photographs, something askew. Then I spotted it: President Kagame's portrait was set _slightly higher_ than that of Guterres. Maybe an inch or two, but still noticeable.\n\nI'd said to Urooj, the UN Head of Camp, \"I see you put President Kagame's portrait above that of the UN's.\"\n\nI thought I was joking, but no.\n\n\"We had to,\" Urooj admitted. \"When we open a new office, we always put up a portrait of the head of UNHCR. It's standard practice. But in Rwanda we were told we had to put up President Kagame's portrait as well. And when we did, we were then told we had to move the president's picture _up_ , so it would sit above the other one. And so, we did.\"\n\nIt wasn't a big deal to Urooj. Raising a presidential portrait by a couple of inches seemed a simple enough gesture to make, an easy point of protocol to concede. But it gave me a shiver nonetheless. As with other countries in Africa, portraits of His Excellency the President of Rwanda stare down at the populace from the walls of government offices and private businesses. You see him in hotels and coffee shops. In bakeries and banks. That's fine, but Rwanda isn't supposed to be like other countries. This is supposed to be a country that's reinventing itself as a progressive, modern nation\u2014not a regressive realm prone to the cult of personality. When government functionaries are using measuring tapes to see whose portrait is hanging higher than whose, it doesn't bode well. It hints at something unsettling bubbling just below the surface.\n\n**35**\n\nWE WERE HIGH ABOVE LAKE KIVU when the asphalt ended, suddenly and without fanfare, as we left the blacktop and slammed onto rougher roads.\n\nThe unspooling of fibre-optic and electrical cables continued, running in anticipation alongside the unpaved route, but the earth-movers and Chinese engineers were gone; we had outstripped them.\n\nOther than a single bus coming at us downhill, straining in low gear, there was no other traffic. Children were chasing rusted bicycle rims, kept rolling with the deft flick of a stick. They stopped to stare as we passed, letting the rims wobble and fall, too dumbstruck to wave back. The welcoming cry of _\"Nihau!\"_ was gone, as we juddered and jounced across roads rutted and ruined.\n\nWashboard striations and molar-loosening thumps. At times the road threw us forward, then slammed us back, doing its best to buck us off, it seemed. The lake below was a distant haze of blue. _We miss a corner up here, and we'll be a long time falling..._\n\n\"Is a good thing we're driving a 4x4!\" Jean-Claude shouted, and I agreed, one hand on the ceiling, the other on the dash.\n\nAround the next bend we saw the toll these roads could take. A local bus had hit a rut, hard, and had broken down. The driver's turn boy was ambling downhill with a sheaf of leaves cradled in his arms. When he saw our vehicle, he was so startled that he flung the requisite warning leaves down in front of us like a scene from Palm Sunday, and then waved frantically for us to slow down, in case we hadn't spotted the enormous vehicle stranded in the middle of the road.\n\nThe passengers had filed off the bus, and were watching as the driver grappled with a chain. One of the front tires had been wrenched upward at a violent tilt.\n\n\"The axle is broken,\" Jean-Claude said. \"That's not good.\"\n\nWe pulled over to talk to the bus driver, but he wasn't in the mood for any help. Someone had been sent by bicycle to rouse the nearest repairman, and the driver waved us through impatiently.\n\nOver the next hump of hill, we came upon a crowd of people waiting for the very bus that had broken down.\n\n\"It's going to be a long wait,\" Jean-Claude said to me with a sympathetic shake of his head.\n\nAs we slowed down, a high school student in a neatly ironed blouse stepped from the crowd and thrust her hand out at our passing vehicle, wagging her fingers into her upturned palm almost in a \"come here\" gesture. She smiled, dazzlingly bold, as her friends stood back, laughing.\n\nI was puzzled. It looked like she was asking for money. \"Is she asking for money?\"\n\n\"Not money, a ride. It's how we hitchhike in Rwanda, not with our thumb. We do like that.\" On impulse, he pulled over. \"Let's give her a ride. We're going that way anyway.\"\n\nAs soon as the crowd realized we were offering a lift, a mob scene erupted. You'd have thought we were the last helicopter out of Vietnam. One pushy fellow elbowed past women and children, forcing his way to the front, where he grabbed hold of my side mirror and refused to let go. On the mistaken assumption that, being a muzungu, I was somehow in charge, he began wheedling me directly, imploring all the angels and Saints in Heaven in carefully enunciated French (we were in the former Zone Turquoise, after all), pleading for a ride.\n\n\"Hey, don't ask me,\" I said. \"Talk to my friend. He's the one driving.\"\n\nJean-Claude was adamant. The student was the one who had asked for a ride, so she could choose who was coming. With our own luggage and duffle bags of soccer gear weighing us down, we had space for only three people in the back. There were at least half a dozen girls in her group, so they had a quick huddle, decided who would go with us and who would stay behind. They were heading home from boarding school and had their beds with them: foam mattresses rolled up and tied with twine. The three young women who climbed into the backseat had agreed to take the other girls' mattresses with them, which were then shoved in through our rear window, filling what little space we had left.\n\nWedged in, with three well-mannered students in tow, we headed for the other side of the mountain.\n\nThe students were named Betty, Grace, and Anuarite. They were Congolese refugees from a camp similar to the one we'd visited at Kigeme, and though there was a school nearer to them, they attended class out here because it was more academically suitable. One of them was studying accounting, another business. The third wanted to go into engineering. And not just any sort of engineering; she wanted to be a _civil_ engineer, \"but not for the bridge.\" If I followed her heavily accented English, she wanted to be \"an engineer for the chemical surface.\" \"Like paint?\" I asked. No, not for the paint, for the business. So, industrial? Exactly! So, like, industrial paints? No, no, for the chemicals. So... chemical engineering? No, not chemical engineering, engineering _for_ the chemical. And so on. I'll spare you the details. I eventually gave up, much to my relief and hers too, I'm sure. They were speaking to me in their third language, after all\u2014French and their local Congolese dialect taking precedence\u2014while I was speaking in a language I'd long since forgotten (high school chemistry).\n\nJean-Claude chatted with them in French via the rear-view mirror. They told him about the term that had just ended, the teachers they liked, the teachers they didn't, the subjects they found easiest, the ones they found hardest, and about life in the camp. They lived in canvas tents that got very cold at night. They were missing parts of their families. Parents. Siblings. They had made new friends in the camp. Had left old ones behind. They found it tiring travelling back and forth between the refugee camp and the boarding school on buses that often broke down, but all three agreed it was worth it.\n\nWe were still following the braided IT cables, though by now the road itself was little more than a sandy trail. At times the Land Cruiser sank into it, with our wheels barely churning us through.\n\nThe pedestrians we encountered agreed: this was a walking path, not a road. It was as though we were driving a truck down a private hallway, and those who stepped aside did so with marked resentment. The adults, that is; the children once again ran beside us, daring each other to touch our vehicle. Jean-Claude pulled over several times to scold them.\n\nWe followed this road to the heights of Hanika, an improbable town balanced between sheer inclines. No guardrails, of course. _Maybe they should have put those in before they started with the fibre optics_ , I thought. If nothing else, were we to plunge over the side, we would have had a beautiful view on the way down.\n\nThe lake grew larger. Fingers of land reaching out, fingers of water reaching back.\n\nDown, down, down we went, into the sand-bedevilled town of Kibingo. We were still high in the hills above Lake Kivu, yet the road itself was so sandy it had dunes. It was a remarkable juxtaposition, akin to finding a tropical beach suspended in the mountains. A surfer's town, Kibingo; just mind that first drop.\n\nThe roads were so soft it felt as though we were driving over flour. Eucalyptus trees and the wind-shredded leaves of banana plants were completely dusted in it, prematurely grey. And the clustered homes we passed, small as dovecotes, were whitewashed with the stuff, painted pale intentionally.\n\n\"Mixed with water, it makes good paint,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nA final plunge, of the non-fatal variety, took us back to water's edge. We rattled across another river\u2014little more than a trickle in the dry season, brackish green and murky\u2014over a jerry-rigged bridge that was lashed together primarily with old rope and good intentions. Out on the lake, a three-man pirogue drifted across the surface. The cast of a net. The turn of a road. And they were gone, and so were we.\n\nAt the next saddleback of hill we came to a rural intersection. One of the girls leaned up, tapped Jean-Claude on the shoulder.\n\nWe pulled over to say our goodbyes. From here the girls would hike uphill to the refugee camp, a two-and-a-half-hour trek along a narrow footpath. Before they could load up on mattresses and school bags, I asked if I could take their picture.\n\nThey said \"Sure!\"\u2014and instantly struck a pose, arms draped over shoulders with a sudden confidence. They asked to see the photo. I scrolled back, showed them. They frowned, asked for another take, adjusted their poses accordingly. On the third try, I finally got it right. \"Yes!\" they said. \"That's the one.\" Then: \"Can you send us a copy?\"\n\nLet's pause here a moment to consider my advanced age (pushing fifty at the time) and the clutch of assumptions surrounding the terms \"refugee\" and \"refugee camps.\" Given these factors, it is perhaps understandable that I would have a certain notion about how this would play out. I would return to my home, sadder but wiser, would think of these young women, so full of hope, so full of promise. I would print three copies of the photograph I took, wrap them carefully in wax paper and seal them in an envelope, would send it \"to Betty and her two friends\" c\/o the United Nations. A supply plane would airdrop it in, along with foodstuffs and medicines, wherein the children at the camp would crowd around to watch as this treasure was slowly unwrapped. The wonderment in Betty's eyes would be felt an ocean away where, as I puttered about in my garden shed, I would suddenly stop, feel the flutter of wings, and know, in my heart, _The photos have arrived_. The girls' spirits would be lifted, as would mine. Perhaps a single tear would form in the corner of my eye, but, gruff fellow that I am, I would rub it away brusquely with the heel of my hand, allowing myself only a small but satisfied smile. _The photos have arrived_.\n\nHere's what actually happened:\n\nMe, speaking slowly and carefully so that the portentous nature of what I was saying would not be lost: \"Yes. I can send you copies of the photograph.\"\n\nGirls: \"Great.\"\n\nMe: \"And how shall I mail it? Shall I send it to the camp? Or maybe to your boarding school?\"\n\nGirls: \"Can you email it to us instead? That would be easier.\"\n\nYes, in the world we live in, Congolese refugees in the western rainforests of Rwanda have email addresses. _Of course_ they have email addresses. They're students at a high school. The school has a computer. And the kids there all have hotmail accounts. Or Yahoo. Or Gmail.\n\nI transferred the photo they'd selected onto Jean-Claude's smartphone, and he then sent it as an attachment to one of the girls' accounts. Done.\n\n\"Thanks!\" they said and then headed off, mattresses stacked on their heads, bouncing with every step, into a future I couldn't even begin to predict.\n\n**36**\n\nINKLINGS OF PROSPERITY, in the form of sheet-metal rooftops, returned as we neared the lakeside city of Kibuye (now known as Karongi). The evening sun was coming in low across the fields, limning the trees and hilltops with gold.\n\nDriving through a small valley, we came upon a catchment of older homes that stood hollowed out amid tall grass, with scorched walls and fanned stains of charcoal rising above each darkened window. The rooftops were missing, the yards overgrown.\n\nTutsi homes.\n\nJean-Claude stopped so we could investigate the ruins. A goat was ripping up grass inside one of the shells. Small birds flitted through. These were haunted homes, left abandoned, with owners long gone and with few surviving relatives to reclaim them.\n\nWe drove on, into silence.\n\nMore and more shops began to appear. The outskirts of Kibuye clustered closer. Storefront facades once again proclaimed their cell phone company allegiances: that familiar green, red, yellow, blue. We were back on blacktop, and the sudden smoothness provided much-needed succour to my bruised tailbone and saucer-stacked spinal column.\n\n\"That was a fun road to drive,\" Jean-Claude said. \"But I'm glad we are through it.\"\n\nTraffic circles sent us into the centre of town, past several new office buildings perched on hillocks of land scarcely wider than they were. In the cooling breeze of evening, everybody in Kibuye seemed to be out for a stroll. Long considered a getaway for Rwanda's moneyed set, the city had a faded charm about it: patio lights bobbing on the wind, late-night taverns and French caf\u00e9s, but no sense of urgency. It was busy, but in a languid sort of way, as resort towns often are.\n\nOn the way in, we had passed Gatwaro Stadium. \"I lost a friend there, in that stadium,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nThe friend's name was Jean-N\u00e9pomsc\u00e8ne, but everyone called him Nepo.\n\n\"I met him in Kenya. He was a student. He was preparing for university, and we became good friends. He used to take me to Wimpy's. Do you know Wimpy's? It's like a British fast food, very popular in Nairobi at that time. Of all the people who died, Nepo makes me the saddest, because he didn't have to be here. He came back for his uncle's funeral. It was dangerous, and he didn't want to go, but his family pressured him. They told him, 'The UN is here, don't worry. It's safe.' So he went back and that was that. Two days later the president's plane was shot down.\"\n\nTwenty thousand people died in Gatwaro Stadium. Among them, a kind-hearted student named Nepo.\n\nKibuye had been a Tutsi town deep inside the French \"humanitarian\" zone, which meant the killings here were even more thorough than usual. Indeed, the eradication of Tutsis in Kibuye and its outlying regions came very close to reaching a \"final solution.\"\n\nNone of this was reflected in the beauty of the town, though, which was situated among the palm trees and corrugated coves of Lake Kivu. Jean-Claude and I checked in at the Moriah Hill Resort, an older but comfortable hotel built on a bay that was dotted with islands. When we dropped in at the hotel's large, and largely empty, restaurant, we came upon two of our cohorts from the chimpanzee trek: the psychiatrist from Toronto, Lorne, with his daughter Adriana.\n\nThey'd been enjoying a leisurely two-hour wait for dinner. Thus warned away, Jean-Claude and I went to a nearby church-run lodge, the Bethany, where we dined on _isombe_ , stewed cassava leaves and eggplant. No beer though, as alcohol was not served at Bethany due to the Presbyterian dictates of its hosts. The service proved much speedier here; we waited only an hour for our bowl of stewed leaves. We headed back to our hotel only to find Lorne still waiting for his supper, elbows on table, jaw resting on open palms, a Job-like resignation in his eyes. There were no other guests in the restaurant by that point, Adriana having given up and gone back to her room, so why on earth it was taking that long remained a mystery. Perhaps they were waiting for the eggs to hatch so that they could raise the chickens to put on the skewers. Jean-Claude pulled a chair up to join Lorne while I went for a walk along the lake. I wanted to say, _\"Use some reverse psychology on 'em, Lorne ol' boy! I mean, that's your field, right? Maybe say in a loud voice, 'I sure don't want any supper tonight. No sir! And nobody better bring me any!'\"_ But given that he'd already wasted three hours waiting for whatever it was he'd ordered, I feared he might not appreciate my finely tuned japery.\n\nI followed my feet to Lake Kivu instead. Cat tongues of waves, lapping at the shore. A wind, stirring the trees. Lights and laughter across the water. The moon was like a searchlight, sweeping the waves for a wreck that had long since vanished.\n\nHow do you reconcile the barbarity and beauty of such a place? Could you? _Should you?_\n\nA small boat puttered by, more shadow than real, leaving a swirl of light in its wake. I tossed a stone, heard it plunk. Took off my shoes, rolled up my pant legs, and waded out into shallow waves. I stood awhile in Lake Kivu, toes gripping and releasing sand. On other hotel patios on other inlets, Rwandan families were relaxing. I could hear their strangely disembodied voices, muffled but still boisterous.\n\nFamilies had drowned themselves in this lake. Families drowned themselves rather than be raped or hunted or chopped down piece by piece to the mocking jeers of their neighbours. Families drowned themselves. _In this lake_.\n\nI thought of the students who'd hitched a ride with us earlier and of the killings and deprivations that were occurring in Congo even now. I thought of people forced to flee. Those three young women would contribute to Rwanda's success, would work in business, accounting, computers, and\u2014well, some sort of chemical engineering. Their arrival was Rwanda's gain, Congo's loss. Suddenly Rwanda's open-door policies made perfect sense. These people were not a burden, they were an asset. This was _value added_. This was Rwanda.\n\n**37**\n\nJUST ABOUT MY ONLY CLAIM to fame is that I am a descendant of Scottish explorer David Livingstone. A paltry example of pride by proxy, to be sure, and one that would be more impressive had Livingstone not died scurvy-ridden and half-mad, dressed in tattered rags with teeth rotting and an arm crimped from a lion attack years earlier. There was no lucrative Livingstone estate, no snooty inheritance for me and my siblings to squabble over. More's the pity. David Livingstone was but a humble missionary, and a damn poor one at that; the records indicate that over the course of twenty-eight years in Africa, he converted a grand total of 1 (one) person.\n\nDuring his extended treks across central Africa, the saintly Livingstone would sire\u2014then promptly abandon\u2014several illegitimate children with African women, in between praying for their eternal souls, of course. A contradictory character to say the least. Missionary? Hardly. He was an explorer, first and foremost: a driven, obsessive Scotsman with a streak of masochism who was determined to unlock one of the greatest, most pointless quests of his day, the source of the River Nile\u2014or die trying. He never did unlock the secrets of the Nile, but he did succeed handsomely in the latter, dying a tragically avoidable and painfully drawn-out death.\n\nThe Nile is the longest river in the world, flowing more than 6,700 kilometres out of the heart of Africa, through nine different countries. It replenishes the flood plains of Egypt, making it a well-spring of civilization. Its source was one of the world's enduring mysteries. The ancient Greeks tried to find it. Roman emperors sent expeditions inland and failed. As did the Egyptians, the Persians, and others. But it was the English who really picked up the flag and ran with it. The search for the Source of the Nile would become a fixation in Victorian England.\n\nThe greatest explorer of his era, Richard Burton, set out to solve the riddle once and for all. He was accompanied by a thoroughly unlikeable fellow named John Hanning Speke, an early proponent of the Hamitic hypothesis who often wrote about the racial inferiority of the African \"Negroid.\"\n\nBurton was convinced that the source of the Nile lay near Lake Tanganyika. Speke remained unconvinced, and when Burton was laid low with malarial fever, he pushed on without him, heading north instead to become the first European to set eyes upon the vast reaches of Lake Victoria. This was in 1858. Speke hurried back to England ahead of Burton to claim his laurels and, following a second expedition to Lake Victoria, declared, \"The Nile is settled!\" But it wasn't.\n\nA bitter enmity took root between Burton's camp and Speke's, with each man seeking to ruin the other's reputation and destroy his claim. So intense was their rivalry that the Royal Geographical Society decided to hold a Great Debate on the matter in 1864. But on the day of the main event, only hours before it was to begin, Speke had gone hunting and had discharged a shotgun into his own heart while crossing a stile. That was the official version, anyway. Many suspected he had taken his own life rather than face Burton on the podium.\n\nWith the matter still not resolved, the Royal Geographical Society sent respected doctor\/missionary David Livingstone in to confirm or refute Burton's claim that the Nile began at Lake Tanganyika. But Livingstone was convinced the source lay even farther south, and he disappeared into the jungle. Years went by with no word from Livingstone, and as public concern grew, an American newspaper, with much fanfare, sent a Welsh-born reporter by the name of Henry Morton Stanley in to find him. Stanley tracked Livingstone down to an Arab trading post, where he greeted the malnourished and dysentery-ravaged Scotsman with what are arguably the most famous words uttered in the history of British exploration: _\"Jesus, David, you look like shit.\"_ No. The words, of course, were _\"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?\"_\n\nStanley urged Livingstone to return with him, but the doctor refused. His obsession had taken hold of him, and he pushed on, still seeking that elusive wellspring. He died eighteen months later, his quest unanswered. Stanley went on to greater fame, leading an epic cross-African trek that at one point saw him skirting the outer edges of the kingdom known as Rwanda. He'd set up camp on Lake Ihema, in what is now Akagera National Park, but when he attempted to cross over, he was met with a volley of arrows from the mwami's army and decided, what with discretion being the better part of et cetera, he would move on instead. Later, as an agent of King L\u00e9opold, Stanley would help secure the Congo for the Belgian monarch, but the Nile remained unsolved.\n\nIn 1937, a German explorer traced the headwaters to a small spring in Burundi, a site that has been commemorated ever since, but this marked only the _southernmost_ point of the River Nile. Incredibly, the _farthest_ reach of the Nile\u2014the source, in other words\u2014would remain unknown until 2006, when a British-led expedition traced the Nile in its entirety, using GPS satellites to pinpoint it to a remote mountainous hill south of Kibuye City, just inside the northern tip of Nyungwe National Park.\n\nThis would be our next destination.\n\n**38**\n\nI WOKE TO THE SOUND of wind searching my room. I'd left the balcony open to catch a night breeze off the lake, and I lay there awhile watching the aurora borealis movements of the curtains, feeling calmly elated.\n\nToday, I would do my forebear proud. Today, I would reach the uppermost limits of the River Nile, for which stout-hearted men had long strived, many to perish, others to be driven mad with malnutrition and malaria, starved and crippled in body and spirit. But first I had to get some breakfast. One can't go about conquering the Mighty Nile on an empty stomach.\n\nAnd so, after a hearty meal followed by coffee so buttery rich it might have come from the gods themselves, we set out, Jean-Claude having once again passed on a cuppa joe.\n\nHow was this possible? How could anyone from Rwanda not drink coffee? Rwandan coffee has won international awards. It was all very strange.\n\n\"I'm just not a coffee drinker\" was how he put it.\n\nNo matter. Onward and upward.\n\nKibuye is a leafy town, jumbled in around the hills of Lake Kivu, and as the road wound upward in loops and lariats, we had sidelong views of the rolling landscape below.\n\nThe road alternated between a boulder-strewn obstacle course and a clay trail so loamy and soft the 4x4 struggled to get traction.\n\n\"Would hate to try this in the rainy season,\" Jean-Claude said, ratcheting the gears ever higher.\n\nWe were once again ascending to the top of Rwanda, but the top of Rwanda never arrived. Every time we thought we'd reached the ceiling, there was more ceiling beyond. The slopes became steeper and the terraced fields narrower, until they formed the thinnest ribbons of green possible, outlining the elevations like a life-sized contour map.\n\nCattle were following these contour lines with a gingerly step.\n\n\"More mountain goat than cattle,\" I said, and Jean-Claude agreed.\n\n\"Most of this\"\u2014he was referring to the fields below\u2014\"is coffee. With some sweet potatoes, over there. That's cabbage.\"\n\nWe passed a band of young men in baggy pants and broken flip-flops, grinning at the world, lugging kerosene containers on their shoulders.\n\n\"Banana beer,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"They rinse the jugs out, use them to ferment mashed-up bananas. The containers are plastic, so they expand with the gases.\" We could see several that had their sides blown up like balloons.\n\n\"Moonshine!\" I said. \"Home brew.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" Then, just in case I was getting any ideas, \"It's better not to drink it.\"\n\nAs we drove through the Gisovu tea plantations, the world grew lush. Women with wicker baskets slung across their backs were moving through the topiary fields, harvesting the tea leaves by hand. Miniature pickup trucks buzzed about like bumblebees, darting from the nearby warehouses to the endless hand-sculpted hedges and back again. It was a striking arrangement: pastoral, yet busy; bucolic, but all business.\n\nSoon after, we came to the town of Gisovu itself. Shops lined both sides of a single street, and the storefronts were painted a soft shade of blue, giving the place a melancholy feel.\n\nWe stopped for a bit of bellyfare: sticky buns and bottles of Fanta, pulled lukewarm from a fridge. (How Rwandan refrigeration is able to maintain warm drinks is a puzzle I was never able to unravel.) Not a particularly welcoming town, Gisovu. Jean-Claude and I were eyed with a curiosity that bordered on the antagonistic. Even the roadside barbers paused, clippers in mid-air, waiting for me to do something interesting. Oh, if only I could juggle. _\"Alex Ferguson's son juggles?\"_\n\nBeyond Gisovu, the fields gave way to forest. Pine and eucalyptus. Dark-green needles and the silvery-blue shimmer of leaves. We had reached Nyungwe National Park from the other side.\n\nA rough road took us to a clearing where a hiking trail disappeared into the trees. The signpost\u2014in English only, appropriately, given the overwhelmingly British nature of the obsession\u2014identified the Source of the Nile as that-a-way.\n\nI don't know why Livingstone had such trouble finding it. I mean, there was a sign and everything.\n\nIt was still a national park, though, and we needed to check in first. This involved a long bumpy drive to a park office, returning with a pair of park rangers, Joseph and Antoine, who would accompany us on our quest. Nice enough blokes, even if their main task involved leading us down the only marked path in the forest. But this too was appropriate. After all, any such undertaking traditionally required a contingent of Gunga Din\u2013type porters to cut a path through the jungle for pith-helmeted Englishmen adorned with well-waxed handlebar moustaches and long-bore rifles who would later lounge about the campfire, swishing brandy whilst making snide comments about the natives, regaling all and sundry about their time amongst the Zulu and how it wasn't half so bad as this. One couldn't set off without one's entourage.\n\nFurthermore, given my own claim to Nile fame, I thought it apropos to present the account of my Death-Defying Exploration and Subsequent Discoverie Most Fortunate of the Mysterious Source of the River Nyle, Whence So Many a Valiant Standard-Bearer of Empire Has Perished in Quests Thereof with Perils Unparalleled and Dangers Most Foul, in the proper style.\n\nTHE DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, BY ME. AND ONLY ME.\n\n**Tuesday, July 23rd: Heading Out**\n\nI feel it prudent to tally the many torments of which I have been forced to endure if only so that my example may act as a deterrent to anyone who might be tempted to follow, foolishly, in my footsteps.\n\nI woke this day feeling somewhat queasy, both from trepidation at what lies ahead and from the malaria pills I have been taking, an ordeal which\u2014it should be noted\u2014Mr. Livingstone never had to face, for there was no such thing as malaria pills in his day. He simply got malaria and never had to worry about forgetting to take his pills or having a slightly upset stomach afterward. Lucky, lucky chap. Even then, stricken as I was with an almost crippling nausea, did my faithful guides offer to carry me? They did not.\n\n**10:19 a.m.:** We gather our day packs and strike out, single file, into the deepest heart of Africa.\n\n**10:20 a.m.:** We stop at a park bench to adjust our boot laces, poorly tied boot laces being one of the leading causes of death among explorers. That and lions.\n\n**10:21 a.m.:** Forced to step over cow dung on the trail. Is this but a foreshadow of the travails we have yet to face? (Note the etymological relationship between \"travail\" and \"travel.\")\n\n**10:23 a.m.:** We pass a line of electrical towers running through the forest. This would suggest that someone may have been here before us. Dastardly Arab traders no doubt, attempting to undermine the prerogatives of the British Empire, hup hup.\n\n**10:24 a.m.:** Entering a forest of pine and eucalyptus. Fragrant and foreboding. One of the guides falls in beside me (our single-file discipline is already starting to collapse!) and points out a drum tree. _Umuvumu_. \"They can be hollowed out, to make music,\" he tells me. \"Royal drums?\" I ask. \"Yes, for intore dancers.\" These would be the same drums that Rwandan kings used to adorn _with the testicles of their enemies!_ I fear an ambush and do not wish to see my fear-shrunken testes adorning any percussive instrument, royal or otherwise.\n\n**10:38 a.m.:** The trail begins to slope downward under trellises of vine. The path beneath our feet is layered with pine needles, which might seem rustic were it not for the fact that tree roots are lurking beneath this seemingly innocent blanket. I nearly trip several times. (Difficult to walk whilst clutching both hands pre-emptively over one's testicles.)\n\n**10:39 a.m.:** The sound of water! Oh joy! Have we reached the Source of the Nile already? My heart leaps like a salmon in a clear Scottish stream only to be dashed upon the rocks of disappointment, for it is not the sound of water I hear, but only the wind. I'm not sure how much longer I can carry on, parched and harried by thirst as I am.\n\n\"Jean-Claude, can I have some of your water? My bottle's way at the bottom of my rucksack, sort of hard to reach.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" he says. Hands bottle over. Crisis averted.\n\n**10:42 a.m.:** A slight incline up.\n\n**10:43 a.m.:** A slight incline down.\n\n**10:44 a.m.:** As the day drags on, I grow suspicious of my supposedly \"loyal\" companion, Jean-Claude. He seems to be pulling ahead with every stride. Determined to reach the Source of the Nile before me, perchance?\n\n**10:46 a.m.:** Wilderness exploration is simply a matter of learning to read the signs correctly. We have come upon one such clue, a noticeboard with a large arrow and the words FURTHEST SOURCE OF THE NILE THIS WAY painted on it\u2014which, after careful study, I decipher to mean that the coveted wellspring of the Nile lies farther ahead, perhaps in the direction indicated by the arrow. (There is only the one trail, so that helps as well.) _\"This way!\"_ I say with bold initiative. My entourage, however, has pushed on by this point, and I must scurry to catch up. Are they plotting to abandon me in the woods? One must stay on one's toes (figuratively speaking, of course; toe-walking in the jungle is never a good idea).\n\n**10:47 a.m.:** The trail begins a long, steep descent. Knowing that this same descent will become an _ascent_ on our return only adds to the mental anguish I am under.\n\n**10:48 a.m.:** Egads! Wildlife rooting about in the underbrush! We have come upon a bush pig, normally nocturnal, tusks down, snuffling around. Looking for truffles perhaps? (Ah, what I wouldn't give for a plate of truffles right about now. Maybe a dash of sherry.) Having not had the foresight to bring a long-bore rifle with us, we are not able to shoot said creature in a properly perfunctory manner, but must instead creep past so as \"not to frighten him.\"\n\n**10:50 a.m.:** Our way is barred! Oh, fie on you, cruel fates! We have reached what I fear is an insurmountable obstacle: a tree branch has fallen across our path. I am about to turn back when one of our steadfast guides strides forward and lifts said branch, tossing it to one side. \"Heavy winds last night,\" he notes. We continue, spirits buoyed, but also burdened (buoyed _and_ burdened!) with the knowledge that we shall now have to make up for lost time. The Matter of the Fallen Branch has delayed us a good twenty-eight seconds by my count. Will we ever be able to make this up? I am not confident we can, but I put on a brave face and carry on against increasingly demoralizing odds.\n\n**10:52 a.m.:** Monkey spoor has replaced cow flops as the obstacle of choice. High in the trees above us I spot them leaping, long-tailed and lithe, treetop to treetop, mocking our slow, lugubrious progress below. Oh, for a long-bore rifle right about now!\n\n**10:53 a.m.:** The trail begins to descend at an even steeper angle than before. True, there are stairs carved into it, but they are inconsistently sized, which only increases the ordeal. I am not sure how much longer I can continue.\n\n**10:57 a.m.:** The dangers we face continue to multiply. Our guides point out a tall stand of stinging nettles. They also point out something they refer to as a \"tomato fruit,\" telling us that \"birds plant it, and when the fruit turns red, you can eat it.\" The tomato fruits here are still green, but at least now I know what I shall dine upon should we become lost or if our expedition takes too long or if I get a little peckish and find that the sandwiches the hotel packed have not provided sufficient sustenance. Always prepare for the worst! This is the first rule of exploration. The second is: when your hotel is packing you a lunch, ask for an extra sandwich.\n\nThe ground grows squelchier as we descend. Through the trees I see a wooden sign and a small pond. Could it be...?\n\n**11:03 a.m.:** Success! Huzzahs all round!\n\nA hand-painted notice, set in a secluded hollow of forest, informs us that THIS IS THE FURTHEST SOURCE OF NILE RIVER. Little more than a puddle, really. A mountain spring pooled amid mud and mulch, but if it is a puddle, it is a majestic puddle nonetheless, epic in its importance. The world's most sought-after puddle, as it were. Men died, legends were born, empires made, and lives ruined in search of this very puddle. We dip our hands into the cold water, scoop up the Nile, drink it from our palms. It tastes of glory. Clear, clean glory. A splendid milestone, and one\u2014it should also be noted\u2014which David Livingstone was never able to enjoy. I'd achieved that which my venerable forebear never did; this is, in its way, strangely poignant.\n\nAnd let the record show that although _technically_ Jean-Claude arrived at the Source of the Nile at 11:01 a.m., two minutes before I did, I had spotted said puddle through the trees a full four minutes prior to that. Which is to say, I was the first to _see_ the Source of the Nile. Therefore, as I'm sure we can all agree, I should receive sole credit for the discovery.\n\nJean-Claude, unfortunately, seems to be operating under the misconception that \"we\"\u2014meaning he and I equally, if you can imagine such a thing\u2014have reached the Source of the Nile \"together.\" (In his exact words, \"We made it!\" _We_.)\n\nIn the face of such unabashed effrontery, there is but one course of action available to me. I mustn't dally. I must return to civilization immediately and start a campaign to discredit Jean-Claude's claims and destroy his reputation.\n\n\"We did indeed,\" I say, with just the faintest sliver of a smile.\n\n**39**\n\nBACK AT OUR HOTEL ON LAKE KIVU, Jean-Claude started an international incident with a single posting on Facebook.\n\nIt seemed innocuous enough. He'd put up a photo with the message: \"Here I am at the farthest point of the Nile. Sorry Burundi, but the Nile River actually starts in Rwanda!\"\n\nHe then went to sleep not knowing he'd stirred a hornet's nest. Throughout the night angry responses began to pile up. The Rwandan and Burundian communities are intertwined\u2014they're cultural cousins, after all\u2014and word had spread quickly.\n\nThe retorts that set Jean-Claude's Facebook account on fire were of the exclamatory \"Wrong!!! The Source of the Nile is in Burundi! Look at a map, JC!! Burundi is clearly further south than Rwanda and is therefore further away! Case closed!! No appeal!\" variety.\n\nJean-Claude posted a reply reminding everyone that this was not conjecture on his part; a British survey team had located the exact spot using GPS. No one was placated, however. Some smelled a conspiracy. Who were these British surveyors really working for? Everyone knew that Britain favoured Rwanda over Burundi, and a series of increasingly peeved messages flew back and forth across the Atlantic, rhetoric escalating rapidly. It might well have ended in a full-blown political crisis, with ambassadors recalled, lecterns thumped, pyrrhic trade sanctions incurred, and armies massing along the borders, had Jean-Claude not played his trump card.\n\n\"Listen. I visited the geographic source of the Nile with a descendant of David Livingstone, and\"\u2014here Jean-Claude was relying on my expertise as a Fine Arts major\u2014\"he agrees.\" Game, set, and match.\n\nWith that, the protests slowed to a trickle. The flame war flickered and died, but not without a few final forlorn barbs from the Burundians. \"You Rwandans already have everything else. Now you want the Nile too? Can't you at least give us that?\"\n\nJean-Claude's reply? A very Canadian \"Sorry. But no.\"\n\n**40**\n\nWE RETURNED TO GISOVU the next day, following a route first through valleys thick with tea and then high over exposed, raw-knuckle heights.\n\nAt times, it was not clear whether these were roads we were travelling along or simply desiccated riverbeds that had been baked into a hard red clay by the kiln heat of the dry season.\n\nWe had entered the shadowy green hills of Bisesero.\n\nWhen the genocide began, any resistance was soon smothered. Unarmed people, cornered in churches or picked off at roadblocks, were up against well-trained mobs equipped with machetes, grenades, and guns. It was a one-sided slaughter, and those who did fight back\u2014and there were many\u2014were quickly overcome.\n\nBut up here, in the remote and mountainous Bisesero region, the people banded together, falling back to higher ground. Far behind French lines, lost in La Zone Turquoise, the Tutsis in Bisesero were under no illusion that the UN or anyone else in the international community would rescue them. The Tutsis of Bisesero staged the longest, most resolute and sustained resistance seen in Rwanda. This was a heroic landscape. Heroic, and tragic.\n\nAt Bisesero, the Tutsis armed themselves with farming tools. They dug in, set up perimeters, kept the women and children in the middle. They laid traps of their own, ambushing their attackers, fighting them off hand to hand. But time was against them, and as the siege of Bisesero wore on, week after week, through heavy rains and cold nights, starvation and fatigue took their toll. The people's energy was sapped, and the resistance began to falter.\n\nMore than 50,000 people took refuge on that mountain. Of those, only 1,437 are known to have survived. France's role in Bisesero was particularly shameful. When French troops arrived, the survivors thought they were finally going to be rescued. They came out from hiding only to be told by the soldiers to stay put. \"We'll be back in three days,\" the soldiers promised. And then the French... left.\n\nThere is a photograph on display at the Bisesero memorial. It shows Hutu militias taunting a ragged crowd of starving women and children while French soldiers in a jeep look on. Moments after this photo was taken, the French withdrew. The Tutsis fled, and the Hutu militias pursued. The final massacre at Bisesero had begun. All the French had done was to inadvertently flush out targets, making it easier for the g\u00e9nocidaires to do their job.\n\nYou think I'm being unduly harsh? Perhaps. So I will give final word on the matter to a pair of respected French figures. Author and intellectual Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy states, unequivocally, that \"France bears political and moral responsibility for the sadly foreseeable chain of monstrous events that unfolded on its watch.... The sooner France's politicians admit to their responsibility for failures during the Rwandan genocide, the better.\" And the former French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res and in Rwanda himself during the genocide, has publicly called on France to apologize for what it did. Belgium and the United States have apologized. France never has.\n\nThe reason the resistance at Bisesero could be sustained for so long was that the terrain was so inaccessible. Muyira Hill, where most of the fighting took place, is crowded with boulders, cleaved by cliffs, tangled with forest, pocked with bogs, and interlaced with twisting trails that favoured those who knew the lay of the land. Indeed, so rugged is the terrain on Muyira Hill that the Bisesero genocide memorial had to be built on the hill beside it. Even there, the buildings are set at a steep angle.\n\nAt Bisesero, 1,400 skulls are arranged twelve rows deep on a series of elevated platforms. Walking among them, you can identify how people died. Some skulls had been crushed, others impaled. Some bore the puncture holes of nail-studded clubs, others had bullet holes in the back. Many carried the killing slash of a machete, and others were blackened with soot.\n\n\"Burned alive,\" Jean-Claude explained, his voice barely above a whisper.\n\nThe security guard at the Bisesero memorial was a soft-spoken man in his early thirties named F\u00e9licien Nzabamwita. He'd been born in Bisesero, had spent his entire life in these hills, and he accompanied us as we walked among the buildings.\n\nF\u00e9licien was thirteen years old when his family heard the news that President Habyarimana was dead. \"It was mayhem,\" he said quietly. \"Mobs began burning houses and demolishing homes right away. The older people told us this was not the first time. It had happened before. We just needed to band together, and in three or four days it would stop.\"\n\nBut it didn't stop.\n\n\"The older men began organizing people, telling them how they'd done it in the past, where to position ourselves, how to keep the women and children behind the lines, how to fight back without putting ourselves at risk. The younger men would draw the attackers away, running past them, leading them in the opposite direction of where people were hiding.\"\n\nAt the beginning of May, the attacks ceased.\n\n\"It was very quiet for two weeks. But on the 13th of May, they returned. They came from all over. When you looked out you could see them everywhere, all around us. There were so many it looked like grass covering the hills. Buses brought in military men and they began shooting rockets into the mountain, killing so many people. It shattered the rocks.\"\n\nThe Tutsis moved their sick and wounded, along with the younger children and the elderly, into a cave to protect them. When the French arrived, the soldiers called everyone out.\n\n\"We thought, 'We are saved! We are not going to die. They have come to rescue us.' People came out from hiding everywhere. They were starving and tired, but now they had hope. But the interahamwe were watching, and now they knew how many of us there were. They could see where we had been hiding, and as soon as the French left, they attacked. They attacked and they never stopped. By the time the French came back, there were very few people left alive.\"\n\nF\u00e9licien was badly wounded during the final assault, but recovered. Physically, at least.\n\n\"Today, I have a wife and two children. I try to work hard. I do what I can and forget what I can't. But when I went to get married, I could see what the genocide had done. In Rwanda, a wedding is supposed to be about bringing together families. The groom's relatives will go to meet the bride's and get their blessing, and the two families will sit beside each other at the ceremony to celebrate. But at my wedding there was no one there for me. I had no family. My mother, my father, my older brothers and my little sister, six children, they all died. I was the only one left.\" He looked across the green hills of Bisesero. \"That was a difficult moment.\"\n\n**41**\n\nREVEREND ATHANASE SEROMBA, the Catholic priest at Nyange church, had a problem.\n\nFollowing the plane crash that killed President Habyarimana, the massacre of Tutsis had spread across Rwanda like a brush fire buffeted by strong winds. In Nyange, Father Seromba sent urgent word to the Tutsis in his parish to gather at the church. They would be safe there, he promised. Those who were being sheltered by their Hutu neighbours should come out of hiding as well, to join their brethren in the House of God. More than 2,000 people crowded into the Nyange church, desperate and frightened.\n\nThe problem that presented itself to Reverend Seromba was this: How to kill these people in the most efficient manner possible? Grenades? Frontal assault? Set the interior on fire? The church was made of brick; that might work, it might turn the building into an oven. Or should he simply starve them out? The church was completely surrounded, and the streets were ringed with roadblocks, but with a few weak-willed Hutus still sneaking food into the church at night, starvation could take some time. The priest met with local authorities\u2014the bourgmestre, an inspector with the judicial police, a judge, leaders of the local militia\u2014to mull over their options.\n\nThe church at Nyange was a solid Gothic structure built in 1935, with a heavy tower and thick doors. Previous attacks had been repelled. Every sortie had left scores of Tutsis dead, but as a group, the Tutsis had stubbornly refused to die. Gasoline had been sprayed through a window and a banana-leaf torch thrown in, but with recent rains, and the people inside quickly smothering the flames, that had been ineffective. A waste of good fuel. Grenades created only pockets of destruction\u2014those thrown at the door barely scorched the wood\u2014and those few times when the church had been breached and the killers had managed to swarm in with clubs and machetes, they were beaten back. It was most annoying.\n\nA bulldozer had been brought over from a construction site to dig a mass grave, and this presented Father Seromba with a possible solution. Why not simply pull down the church on top of their tall Tutsi heads? That should, in his words, \"clean up the rubbish.\" So a second bulldozer was brought in, and the drivers were given their instructions: start with the main wall. Topple the tower and the roof will follow.\n\nWhen the drivers balked\u2014not out of concern for the people inside, but over desecrating a House of God\u2014they were reassured by the priest not to worry. The chalice and Bible had already been removed, so it was no longer a church. Just a pile of bricks, waiting to be dismantled. Once the cockroaches inside had been killed, Seromba promised he would build a new church.\n\nThe attack began on April 16, 1994. The bulldozers pushed in, collapsing one side of the building, then another. The people cowering within were crushed under the weight of the debris. Some escaped into the tower and were trapped there when it fell, with a mighty groan, in a cloud of dust and mortar. Small children survived longer in the rubble; their cries could be heard even as the wreckage was being bulldozed clear. Those who tried to flee were chopped down outside with machetes and clubs, with sharpened bamboo and spike-headed spears. The broken bodies were then rolled into open pits along with wreckage from the church. Of the almost 2,000 people who fled to Nyange church, only six are known to have survived.\n\nFather Seromba went on to have an exemplary career with the Church, relocating to Italy where he continued preaching the gospel in the Florence area. He was sheltered and protected for years by the hierarchy in Rome, before finally being arrested and extradited on charges of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha. In 2008, an initial sentence of fifteen years was extended on appeal to life imprisonment.\n\nThe bourgmestre who had spearheaded the attacks was captured in Congo, having eluded capture for more than fourteen years. He was caught fighting alongside the FDLR. Other perpetrators of the Nyange atrocities are still at large and, contrary to Father Seromba's promise, the church has never been rebuilt.\n\nToday, the empty grounds form a vacant lot in the heart of the community. Nyange itself is a prosperous arrangement of tidy shops strategically located on the main road between Kibuye and Kigali, high above contoured fields. With its alpine air and pine trees, Nyange feels almost Swiss. It is a Catholic community, still. A monument to the Virgin Mary remains the town centrepiece, but of all the sermons Reverend Seromba preached, the one he never seemed to have gotten around to was that of a single man confronting a murderous mob, telling them, \"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.\"\n\nThere is another monument in the town of Nyange, one that honours neither emptiness nor virgin births, but something smaller. Smaller, but in some ways stronger, more astonishing. Certainly more real.\n\nNyange Secondary School is off the main road, not far from the church. Jean-Claude and I had to stop to let a herd of goats cross. The well-scrubbed storefronts of the main town fell away as we followed a dusty lane along a steep slope. We could see banana trees and the adobe tiles of rooftops directly below us. The Land Cruiser rolled down the lane until we reached what looked like a dead end.\n\nA large metal gate was drawn across the road. We'd arrived unannounced, as was our habit, but were met graciously nonetheless. An elderly security guard rolled open the gate for us. He was a sun-varnished man with crooked limbs and an equally crooked smile, and he followed us in.\n\nNyange Secondary is a boarding school with red-brick dormitories and long, low classrooms arranged around a central courtyard. It seemed sleepy and safe. A Rwandan flag flapped on a listless wind as students milled about discussing upcoming exams with a hushed nervousness. A few were scribbling furiously in their notebooks.\n\nThe school's Master of Discipline (his translation of his job title) came out to meet us. Title aside, he was a soft-spoken younger teacher of uncertain English who invited us in for tea. We were introduced to the school's office manager, a formidably regal woman named Yvette who rose to accept us with the deportment of a queen in the presence of cap-wringing chimney sweeps.\n\nHaving made our introductions, we were taken through the grounds.\n\nNyange Secondary School has impeccably high standards and a solid academic reputation. More than 250 students from across Rwanda, boys and girls alike, come here to study. Here's a sample question posted, in English, outside one of the classrooms:\n\n_S6 ACCOUNTANCY: PRACTICAL EXAM INTERVIEW TOPICS_.\n\n_The student will be required to complete the following and discuss:_\n\n1.Calculate the net profit and net loss\n\n2.Prepare the final accounts\n\n3.Close and reopen the company accounts\n\n4.Design the documents relating to remuneration of employees\n\n5.Participate in the certification of accounting entries\n\n6.Calculate the tax due within the time limits\n\nIt's important to recall that the killings in Rwanda didn't stop when the genocide officially ended. It wasn't a clean cessation, in the manner of a book being closed. Far from it. The leaders of the defeated Hutu Power government-in-exile had fallen back to Zaire, and over the next decade they continued to launch cross-border assaults against civilians, with Hutu and Tutsi alike caught in the middle. When Tutsis were massacred, random Hutus were killed in retaliation by enraged lynch mobs, which was the whole point of the initial attacks: to stir up ethnic divides. Genocide survivors were stalked down and killed (\"finishing the job,\" as it was known) while isolated farms were looted and public buses ambushed. This ongoing terror campaign had left western Rwanda in a state of near collapse. The entire region was in turmoil.\n\nSo on March 18, 1997, when students at Nyange Secondary, having gathered for an evening prep class, heard gunshots nearby, they assumed it was RPF soldiers and Hutu Power rebels exchanging fire. Many of them felt secure knowing they were protected by a gate. They didn't realize it was their own school that was under attack, or that they themselves had been targeted.\n\nNyange, you see, was a mixed school. Hutus and Tutsis were both welcome, and the two sides got on well. This infuriated the Hutu Power rebels. When you trafficked in hatred you couldn't allow that. The school was about to be taught a lesson\u2014or at least, that was the plan. In fact, a very different lesson was about to unfold, a lesson in the strength of the human spirit.\n\nMen armed with grenades and automatic weapons slipped through nearby Mukura Forest and fell upon Nyange Secondary School, killing the night watchman and storming a classroom, shouting for the students to segregate themselves.\n\n\"We want the Tutsis on the left, Hutus on the right!\" they yelled.\n\nThe students knew what that meant.\n\nNo one said a word, so the armed men repeated their command. \"Hutus on the right, Tutsis on the left!\"\n\nA Grade 12 student, Marie-Chantal Mujawamahoro, stood up. Speaking on behalf of her classmates, she replied to the gunmen with a single forceful word: \"No.\"\n\n_No?_ Their attackers were taken aback by this. _What do you mean, no?_\n\n\"No,\" she said quietly. \"We won't do it. There are no Hutus or Tutsis here. We are all Rwandans.\"\n\nThe other students agreed, murmuring the same answer. \"We are all Rwandans.\"\n\nSo the gunmen dragged one of their classmates from the crowd, a girl named Seraphine, who by chance came from a Tutsi family. They killed Seraphine in front of her classmates and then repeated their demand, screaming now: \"We know there are Tutsis among you! Divide yourselves! Hutu on the right, Tutsis on the left.\"\n\nAgain the students refused.\n\n\"We won't do it!\" Marie-Chantal yelled back.\n\nThis time it was a boy named Sylvestre who stood up and repeated the words his classmates had spoken. _\"Twese turi abanyarwanda.\"_ We are all Rwandans.\n\nThe gunmen shot another student, a boy this time.\n\nFlustered and livid, and not knowing who were Tutsis and who were Hutus, the men attacked indiscriminately, lobbing a grenade into the classroom from outside and then firing on the wounded through the smoke. Six students died in the attack, two boys and four girls. Several others were severely wounded, some for life. One of the students, Theodette Abayisenga, lost a leg in the attack; it was mangled so badly by the grenade she had to have it amputated. She now oversees the district's People with Disabilities program and continues to speak on behalf of reconciliation, reminding audiences that they are all Rwandans. She was one of the students who, had she betrayed her classmates, could have walked free.\n\nToday, the room where the attack occurred is still in use, defiantly so to my mind. Students there were studying for their exams when Jean-Claude and I came by. The blast from the grenade still speckles the walls inside, and bullet holes are still visible in the sheet-metal roofing. The students in the classroom looked up at me from their notebooks.\n\n\"I just wanted to wish you luck,\" I said. \"On your test.\"\n\nThey nodded. _\"Murakoze.\"_ Thank you.\n\nBehind the school sits the grave of Marie-Chantal. Located on a knoll looking out over the valley below, it is, perhaps, the most beautiful monument in all of Rwanda. Not in size or grandeur, but in spirit.\n\nOf the million who lost their lives we might, I feel, give name to six here. These are students who died three years _after_ the genocide was supposed to have ended, who died for refusing to betray their classmates, for refusing to label themselves Hutu or Tutsi, for refusing to take part in such a rigged and evil game:\n\nMarie-Chantal Mujawamahoro | Grade 12  \n---|---  \nSylvestre Bizimana | Grade 12  \nB\u00e9atrice Mukambaraga | Grade 12  \nSeraphine Mukarutwaza | Grade 11  \nHel\u00e8ne Benimana | Grade 11  \nValens Ndemeye | Grade 11\n\nThese students remind us that the older animosities are generational. Rwanda today is a remarkably young country; an estimated 60 percent of the population are under the age of twenty-five. They are the first generation in one hundred years to grow up without the artificial construct of a Hutu\u2013Tutsi divide as the defining aspect of their lives. They have never known ID cards or racial quotas or hate radio or propaganda cartoons depicting one segment of their population as cockroaches. They are coming of age in a new Rwanda, a better Rwanda. Those pessimists in the West and elsewhere who insist that Rwanda's \"one people, one language, one culture\" policy is pure folly, doomed to fail (one gets the feeling certain commentators are almost cheering on another ethnic clash), do not realize that the world has changed. The ground has shifted beneath their feet. Sheer demographics and twenty years of growth and opportunity, of _hope_ , have helped dismantle the old paradigms. The six students who died at Nyange didn't die in vain.\n\nI think perhaps it was on that day, March 18, 1997, at 8:00 p.m., at a boarding school in western Rwanda, that the genocide finally came to a close.\n\nPART THREE\n\n**KING KONG & THE SHROUD OF TURIN**\n**42**\n\nSMOKY EYES PEER THROUGH GREEN LEAVES. Furry figures appear, curious and calm, throat-catchingly near. _Gorillas in our midst_.\n\nOur journey to see the mountain gorillas of the Virunga rain-forests began in a suitably roundabout way. Leaving the grounds of Nyange Secondary School, Jean-Claude and I continued across the map in connect-the-dots fashion. But now we were carrying a passenger. Not a hitchhiker catching a lift at the end of the day, but a fully accredited driver and guide with nothing to do.\n\nThe fee for renting a vehicle in Rwanda, as in much of Africa, generally includes the cost of a driver. Making your way through the mountainous roads of a Thousand Hills is no simple task, and most visitors opt to have someone else behind the wheel. Lorne and his daughter had been travelling with the same fellow since Tanzania, I believe. But having Jean-Claude on the driver's side meant there'd been no overriding reason to avail ourselves of this service.\n\nMy role as navigator, meanwhile, had been primarily to sit with the map unfolded on my lap, looking at the scenery and checking off the towns we passed through whilst agreeing with whatever Jean-Claude said. As in: \"This doesn't look right...\" Me: \"No, it does not.\" Alternatively: \"Wait, I think that's the road we're supposed to take over there!\" Me: \"I concur.\" Jean-Claude: \"You know, I have a hunch about this. If we turn left instead of right, we should come back to the main highway.\" Me: \"I agree. I also have a hunch.\"\n\nBut faced with a long northern loop, up to Congo and then east along the Virunga Mountains, I finally convinced a reluctant Jean-Claude to let us take on a driver. This service was included in the price, so I figured we might as well take advantage.\n\n\"I can climb in the back,\" I said. \"He can drive. You can relax.\"\n\nJean-Claude was dubious, and not without cause, it must be said. The driver the rental company sent us looked to be, oh, about twelve years old. His name was Patrice. A sweet kid, dressed in an over-starched, olive-green uniform several sizes too big\u2014\"Don't worry, you'll grow into it,\" I imagine the car rental company had assured him\u2014which only accentuated his undersized presence.\n\nThe two of them would take turns, it was decided, even though Patrice had expected to drive the entire way and was a bit baffled by Jean-Claude's plan. Even then, he was at the wheel only twenty minutes\u2014if that\u2014before Jean-Claude announced it was time to switch. Patrice pulled over, and we all shuffled positions. Me to the front passenger seat, Patrice crawling into the back, Jean-Claude returning to where he clearly wanted to be. _Christine was right_ , I thought. _He really doesn't passenger well_. I wondered if it had something to do with how he had escaped as a teenager: as cargo, hidden, not in control, his life dependent on other drivers. It seemed there was an act of reclamation going on.\n\nMarooned in the backseat, Patrice would occasionally lean up to provide an interesting tidbit about this or that. He carried a well-thumbed guide to _Birds of Rwanda_ and was constantly trying to point out red-footed falcons or pink-bellied pelicans, spot-breasted ibises and scarlet-chested sunbirds and what have you, as we sped by without stopping, or even slowing down. He seemed disappointed when that line of conversation fizzled\u2014at first we feigned interest, but when Jean-Claude and I were deep in conversation, we didn't even bother turning our heads to look, but just made vague _mm-hmm_ sounds. Patrice did confirm the existence of the \"hawk-eagle,\" though, which was about the extent of my interest. Gradually he lapsed into silence, and then sleep. (Later, I found out he'd been misinformed that I was \"an important journalist here to write about birdwatching.\" He must have thought I was the least committed birdwatcher on the planet.)\n\nNo matter. On we went.\n\nPatrice dozed, Jean-Claude drove, and all was well.\n\nMuch more problematic was that in accordance with company policy, Patrice ate separately from us whenever we stopped. This struck me as ridiculous, but no matter how often we tried to call him over to our table, he gently declined. It was an understandable rule, I suppose. The car rental office arranged for separate accommodations for their drivers and provided them with an allowance for meals, and they didn't want them importuning clients. But still.\n\n\"C'mon,\" I would urge. \"Join us. Have a drink. The goat brochettes are excellent. Grab some. We won't tell. I promise.\"\n\nJean-Claude tried as well, cajoling Patrice in Kinyarwanda, but with no better results. I can't tell you how awkward this was, especially when we were the only customers in a place, sitting on opposite sides of the room. We would send food over to his table, have the wait staff add it to our tab, give Patrice a salute with our raised glasses. He would smile and wave back. It was all very uncomfortable.\n\nPatrice would take the Land Cruiser out in the evenings to fill it up, returning with it looking polished and clean, and would give Jean-Claude advice on how to get through this town or that round-about, but for the most part he spent his time either looking out the window, rather wistfully, I thought, or stretched out asleep. He whistled faintly when he snored, much like one of those tropical birds he was always trying to point out to us.\n\nWe boomeranged through the outskirts of Gitarama, resisting the pull of the city's gravity\u2014all those taverns, cooing my name!\u2014before veering northward onto asphalt so smooth it could only be described as supple. After the twists and turns and potholes that had preceded it, it was nice to be back on the open highway.\n\nThe road north ran through alpine forests, with the thick clay waters of the Nyabarongo River curving through below. The shadows seemed darker up here, the greens greener, the blues bluer. As Patrice slept, Jean-Claude confessed to a certain trepidation about driving this route. Rwanda's northern region had once been the heartland of Hutu Power, and in many ways it remained unrepentant. This stretch of highway had long been considered a dangerous one to drive\u2014not for reasons of traffic or road quality. The asphalt here had always been well-maintained; it was the artery of political power, as I would learn. \"It was the people in this area,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"Very aggressive toward outsiders. If your car broke down, if you had an accident, or if you hit someone\u2014you got out and ran. You ran for your life, because they would chase you down.\"\n\nThe theme from _Deliverance_ could be heard playing faintly in my subconscious.\n\n\"And now?\" I asked.\n\n\"And now? I don't know now.\" Jean-Claude hunched forward in his seat, eyes on the road. \"You know, they started killing Tutsis out here even before the genocide began. If you were a Tutsi, you couldn't pass through here. There were roadblocks everywhere; they were looking for you.\"\n\n\"Does it feel creepy?\" I asked. \"Driving through here?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is very weird.\"\n\nThe road descended into grassy meadows, fields shaded by the hills that surrounded them. _If you didn't know the history, you would think only how blandly beautiful it all was_. We crossed the clouded waters of the Nyabarongo, a name that resonates with Rwandans. The bodies dumped here floated downstream all the way to Rusumo Falls, where they formed human log-jams at times, bloated and bobbing, until they eventually reached Lake Victoria. _\"Throw them in the river! Send them back to Ethiopia!\"_ This was the message of L\u00e9on Mugesera, an early propagandist and intellectual architect of the philosophy that would later become known as Hutu Power. He was speaking about _this_ river, this valley, and as we began our slow ascent back into the hills, we passed a turnoff for Mugesera's hometown.\n\n\"He gave that speech near here,\" Jean-Claude said. \"In the next community. In Ngororero.\"\n\nAt a November 22, 1992, rally, Mugesera\u2014a well-regarded university professor and a vice-president of Habyarimana's ruling party\u2014openly called for the extermination of Tutsis, urging Rwanda's Hutus to send their Tutsi neighbours \"back to Ethiopia\" by throwing them into the Nyabarongo River, whose waters fed into the Akagera and eventually the Nile. Here was the Hamitic hypothesis, run amok. _\"Tutsis are not Rwandans. They don't belong here! Send them back to_ _where they came from!\"_ Professor Mugesera reminded his audience that \"the fatal mistake we made in 1959 was letting [the Tutsis] get out. They belong in Ethiopia, and we are going to find a shortcut to get them there,\" he said. \"Wipe them out! Do not let any of them get away!\" He ended this Nuremberg-style rally with the cry \"Long live President Habyarimana!\" In the run-up to the genocide, interahamwe death squads would often chant quotes from Mugesera's speech, and the rivers of Rwanda would indeed be clogged with corpses. The youth of Rwanda had taken his words to heart.\n\nThe 1990 RPF invasion may have been the catalyst, and Habyarimana's assassination may have been the signal, but the groundwork was laid along this river, with those words.\n\nBy the time the genocide began, Mugesera had slipped away. He arrived in Canada with false travel documents and taught at Laval University happily for years. It was like having Goebbels as our guest. Following nearly _two decades_ of protests and petitions from the Rwandan government, Mugesera was finally extradited in 2012, where he currently stands indicted on charges of inciting genocide. Personally? I think they should have thrown him in the Nyabarongo River, seen how he fared.\n\n**43**\n\nNGORORERO IS A PROSPEROUS ENOUGH PLACE TODAY. Metal roof-tops, knife-edged in silver, have replaced worn-out tiles and the town centre is busy with shops and small caf\u00e9s, even a gaudy discoth\u00e8que or two.\n\nNgororero seemed a natural stopping point, so we pulled over to buy a Fanta, maybe a couple of goat kebobs, admire the scenery: the town was perched prettily above a postcard-perfect valley. But we never got out of the Land Cruiser. Jean-Claude parked the truck, but didn't turn off the motor. He sat there, quietly, with the engine idling. We were waiting, though I wasn't sure for what. In the back-seat Patrice rolled over, mumbled something about blue-plumed herons, then fell back to sleep. Jean-Claude still didn't move. After a moment, I said, \"You know what? We don't need to stop here. Why don't we just keep going?\" Jean-Claude nodded, put the vehicle back into drive.\n\nAlpine air. The smell of pine so sharp it seemed like dill. The highway curved through forest and field, putting Ngororero farther behind us with every turn.\n\n\"Did I ever tell you,\" Jean-Claude asked, \"about my practice family? The one I had before I met Christine?\"\n\n\"Practice family?\"\n\n\"The children I rescued.\"\n\nThis was back in 1994. Jean-Claude had been making the run between Kenya and Rwanda, carrying news and letters back and forth between survivors and their families. In Nairobi, he was accosted by a distraught young woman barely out of her teens. She was looking for news about her nephews.\n\n\"When the genocide began, one of her nephews was staying with her at her parents' house. She took the boy and ran with him into the swamps. She was still in high school I think, nineteen maybe. Her parents, her brother, all were killed. But this little boy and her, they made it through alive.\"\n\nThe boy's mother was Hutu. So when the young woman and her nephew finally came out of the swamps, she sent the boy to his mother.\n\n\"The village, it's called Miyove. It was in the north. They were attacking Tutsis again, and she was panicked when she heard this. All her nephews were in the north.\"\n\n\"How many children did her brother have?\" I asked.\n\n\"Three. All boys. Ages were, like, five, seven, and three. When I spoke to that young woman, she was crying so much, saying it's the only family she had left.\"\n\nHutu insurgents were attacking the outlying communities, were still waging a rearguard campaign, and the people in Miyove would be hostile toward the children. Their aunt knew that.\n\n\"In that village,\" Jean-Claude explained, \"every Tutsi had been killed. Every Tutsi, except three.\"\n\n\"But those kids were only _half-Tutsi_ ,\" I said. \"Their mom was Hutu, right?\"\n\n\"If your father is Tutsi, there's nothing half-Tutsi about you, you are Tutsi 100 percent. Was only a matter of time they were going to kill those children too, leave no survivors. No witnesses to what has happened.\"\n\n\"No witnesses? Even if it's just a seven-year-old child?\"\n\n\"This is why their auntie was frantic to get them out of there. I was making another run back to Rwanda, so I said, 'Okay, I'm gonna go to the village, talk to your sister-in-law, and bring your nephews back with me.'\"\n\nWhat Jean-Claude didn't realize was that the village in question, as well as being hostile to Tutsis, was located deep inside insurgent-held territory. The RPF had roadblocks on the highway to prevent people entering; it was simply too dangerous. Jean-Claude avoided these RPF checkpoints by chance more than anything, turning down a secondary road before he reached them.\n\n\"I knew a quicker way,\" he said. (Which didn't surprise me; Jean-Claude always knows a quicker way.) \"So I passed through this dangerous area without knowing. When I reached the village, everybody was surprised. They were watching me very closely, thinking, 'Who is this guy? He looks Tutsi. Is he with the RPF? What is he doing here?' When I found the boys' mother, I said to her, 'Look, I need to take them with me. If they stay, chance is they're gonna be murdered. Somebody is going to kill them at some point.'\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"She said I could take two. The youngest, his name was Oscar, and the middle boy, name was Jean-Marie, they could go. But she wanted the oldest one, the seven-year-old, Xavier, to stay as a kind of hostage.\"\n\n\"A hostage?\"\n\n\"As a protection. She was Hutu, and those villagers, they thought the RPF is going to come and kill everybody, like a revenge genocide. They thought, 'If we keep a Tutsi child here, they won't attack us, we can negotiate.'\"\n\n\"What did you do?\"\n\n\"What could I do? I took the two younger boys with me and left the oldest. I tried so hard, but I couldn't change the mother's mind. It was when I was driving back on the main highway with those two boys that I found out how dangerous that region was. These RPF soldiers came out at a checkpoint, stopped me, said, 'Are you crazy? You came from up there? That is insurgent territory. You have to tell us before you go in. You could have been killed!' Really, I was lucky to get out alive.\"\n\nThe two boys stayed with Jean-Claude's sister in Kigali while he arranged for a vehicle back to Kenya. By the time he got the boys to Nairobi, their aunt was gone. She'd been sponsored by a relative in Canada and had flown out just before they arrived.\n\n\"When I called her to say the good news, I thought she would be happy, but she yelled at me! She said, 'What about Xavier? He is the one I was in the swamps with. We kept each other alive. He is the one you have to rescue!' She was very upset. She said, 'Now he is the _only_ Tutsi left in that village! They're gonna kill him for sure!'\"\n\n\"So what did you do?\"\n\n\"I went back.\"\n\n\"To that same village!\"\n\n\"I couldn't let this boy die.\"\n\nJean-Claude left the other two boys with a Rwandan couple, Peter and Epiphanie, who lived next door and had two boys of their own around the same age as Oscar and Jean-Marie. Jean-Claude then headed back to Rwanda.\n\n\"How long a drive would that be?\"\n\n\"About twelve hundred kilometres, I think. It was like a two-day trip. But this time, I brought photographs of his younger brothers with me, pictures of them in a park in Nairobi, by a pond, smiling, enjoying their new life. You could see how happy they were, how relaxed. When I got to the village, I showed those pictures to the mom, and she said, 'Okay. I changed my mind. You're right. Xavier may be killed soon if you don't take him. The whole village is mad at me for letting the other children go. They said that if this oldest boy grows up, he's gonna tell what happened. He will have memories.'\"\n\nOnce again, Jean-Claude stayed at his sister's house in Kigali till he could find a vehicle for the drive back to Nairobi.\n\n\"It was a very long trip. Xavier was a good boy, very polite. But sad. I think he had seen many things. Sometimes he would have a burst of crying and then become very quiet. But as we travelled, he became happier and he cried less. He held onto those photos of his brothers, was looking at them all the time. He could feel they were going to have a good life. And you know what? They did.\"\n\n\"Their mother never joined them?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nThe Rwandan couple next door helped Jean-Claude take care of the children.\n\n\"Peter and Epiphanie helped so much,\" he said.\n\nJean-Claude enrolled the three boys in a local primary school, arranged for school uniforms, made sure they did their homework every night, and even attended PTA meetings on their behalf. He was just twenty years old at the time.\n\n\"I was with those three boys for two years. I called them my practice family.\"\n\nHe was still taking care of them when he met Christine.\n\n\"Especially, I had a bond with the youngest one, Oscar. I think he was seeing me as a kind of dad.\"\n\nThe boy's aunt, now in Canada, eventually secured sponsorship for them as well. She brought her nephews to Montreal, where all three children were adopted by a foster mom.\n\n\"Their foster mom was French Canadian. She loved them so much. Those boys grew up as Canadian. They learned to skate, to play hockey. But it's funny, even after I moved to Montreal and then to Calgary, any time when there was an issue between the children, I was still the one they would call. They would tell me what the problem was when they wouldn't tell anyone else.\"\n\nAll three are doing well. Two of the boys are studying accounting. The other has his master's degree and is employed with the Department of Health Services, as a social worker at a Montreal hospital. They had escaped a death sentence and claimed an alternative future as their own. And I thought again of what Andr\u00e9 Sibomana had said, and the lesson it conveyed. _We are products but not prisoners of our past_.\n\n**44**\n\nTHE SCENT OF EUCALYPTUS can be as bracing as peppermint, as invigorating as a splash of aftershave.\n\nWe were driving through northern green forests with Patrice asleep in the back. I was tempted to wake him up with a shove, shouting, \"Quick! What kind of bird is\u2014Oh, too late,\" maybe filch a peek at his guidebook beforehand and look up the rarest bird in Rwanda, then describe it to him in great detail. \"I saw this little bird, really small, looked sort of like a yellow-eyed owlet with striped breast feathers, but I could be wrong. Seemed like it might have been a nocturnal species as well, native to mid-range montane forest canopies, but again\u2014I could be wrong. You didn't see it? It was right there.\" In the end, and largely due to Jean-Claude's admonishments, I chose not to disturb Patrice's deeply lathered slumber.\n\n\"Welcome to Jerusalem!\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nWe were passing the turnoff for Gasiza, an otherwise unremarkable village that just happened to be the birthplace of former president Juv\u00e9nal Habyarimana. Gasiza was referred to as \"Jerusalem,\" or sometimes \"Nazareth,\" because it was\u2014and I quote\u2014the \"hometown of God.\"\n\nNorthern Hutu had dominated the Rwandan military under Habyarimana's leadership. Of the eleven military officers who seized power with him in 1973, ten came from this one corner of Rwanda. The men making decisions in Habyarimana's government were almost exclusively Hutu from the north; their southern brethren, though also Hutu, were excluded from almost every key position. It was a geographic divide as much as ethnic. (The only thing the northerners hated more than their southern rivals were the Tutsis.)\n\n\"The people who organized the genocide came from these hills,\" Jean-Claude noted.\n\nNear the turnoff to Jerusalem, a faded, flyblown tavern squatted beside the road. The paint-peeling sign read BAR IBYIMANA, which translates as \"God's Bar.\" Appeals to the deity notwithstanding, the place seemed grim. We didn't stop to find out.\n\nI think we were both looking forward to the end of this section of highway. Tracing my finger ahead on the map, I could see we would come out at a T intersection on the main Congo road. The name of the crossroads town was Mukamira, and as we drew nearer, more and more villages appeared, closer and closer together.\n\nMore and more people as well. Men and women, young and old, milling about the roadsides, hashing through the never-ending quiddities of life, laughing and arguing, shopping and gossiping. Children filed by, lugging their water jugs heavy homeward, while others bounced along on the return, swinging empty containers and enjoying the reprieve. Their smaller siblings, some little more than toddlers, were equally weighted down, their bundled kindling stacked high on their heads. A pair of nattily dressed young men, musicians from the looks of it, were dragging a 1970s relic of a keyboard up a hill. \"Probably performing at a dance club tonight,\" Jean-Claude noted. A tumult of younger kids ran past, chasing the wind with homemade pinwheels, and we saw one poor fellow attempting to move a huge wooden wardrobe on the back of his bicycle, thighs straining, feet wobbly on the pedals. We were going to pull a U-turn and offer to help, but we could see the cumbersome piece of furniture would never fit. Too large for a Land Cruiser, but not for a bicycle. That too was life in Africa.\n\nA string of lakes lay on our right, Gishwati Forest on our left. A paint-by-numbers where every colour was green.\n\nGishwati Forest provided a pocket of calm in an over-cultivated land. During the genocide, thousands of Tutsis fled to these woods seeking safety, only to be set upon by dogs brought in by the interahamwe. No one knows how many died in Gishwati Forest; they don't appear on any census, but even now tree-planting crews will occasionally turn up human bones.\n\nTea plantations appeared after Gishwati, and we were soon once again in among caterpillar hedges and luminescent fields. A marshy river emptied into an equally marshy lake. And then we were past that, too, as the road brought us at last to Mukamira.\n\nA sprawling town, Mukamira. It sat astride a crucial intersection: turn right and you would be swept back to Kigali along the main highway, left and you would be heading straight for Congo.\n\nWe turned left.\n\nAs we rattled across a bridge, Jean-Claude shouted to be heard. \"The River of Beer!\"\n\nThat got my attention.\n\n\"The what now?\"\n\n\"The river, it supplies water to\u2014How do you say it, like a factory to make beer?\"\n\n\"A brewery?\"\n\n\"Yes. A brewery. This town is where Primus beer comes from. The brewery is over there. And the river\u2014\"\n\n\"The one we just crossed?\"\n\n\"The Sebeya. That is where the water comes from. Primus beer is made from the water of the Sebeya River.\"\n\nForget Jerusalem! This was my Holy City!\n\nAlas, as we discovered, the Primus brewery didn't offer guided tours, especially to grinning foreigners who showed up at the factory gates asking about \"samples and such.\"\n\n\"We'll tell them I'm a journalist,\" I said. \"Here to do a story about Rwandan beer and how good it is, pending a proper taste test of course.\"\n\nBut evening was settling over the town, and the various offices were closing down for the day, making it impossible for me to appeal to a higher level.\n\nThe streets of Mukamira (a.k.a. \"the Milwaukee of Rwanda\") were alive with dusk-lit saloons and patio-lanterned taverns selling Primus as fresh as it could possibly be. We passed the Hollywood Bar, the All-Star Bar, the New Star Bar, and somewhere, I'm sure, the Hollywood All-Star Bar.\n\n\"The beer is probably cheaper here as well,\" I said, dropping the hint like a wet bag of cement. \"Seeing as how it's closer to the source.\"\n\n\"Probably,\" said Jean-Claude, and on he drove without stopping.\n\n_I've really got to get this guy drinking_.\n\nThere were other enterprises as well\u2014internet caf\u00e9s with Christmas lights strung around the doorways, mattress shops, and seamstresses with roadside foot-pedal Singer sewing machines where you could get your clothes mended while you waited. There were bakeries and caf\u00e9s with French names\u2014La Vie and Est Belle and C'est Belle\u2014but none had the allure of Sebeya River Gold (as I would now call Primus).\n\nThe air was cooling down. Clay-packed fields had filled up with impromptu matches and the dust-cloud kicks of homemade soccer balls. Serious old men were playing cards on upturned packing crates. The streets of Mukamira had become a promenade, as the town's young women reappeared in fine dresses to stroll past gaggles of admirers, eye-fluttering the boys into distraction. One group of girls had congregated in front of a church and were exchanging sidelong glances with a coltish group of young men, all under the watchful and disapproving gaze of the Virgin Mary.\n\nA Congolese refugee camp hove into view, overflowing with crowds of undefeated humanity. We drove past endless rows of now-familiar UNHCR tents. A patchwork of laundry was laid out on the grass to dry. Women from the camp moved past, bent forward from heavy burdens held against their backs, kept in place by thick straps drawn taut across their foreheads.\n\n\"Congolese,\" Jean-Claude said. \"Rwandese balance stuff on their heads. In Congo they use forehead straps like that. They can carry a lot more that way, but is very hard on their necks, is very hard on their backs.\"\n\nI could imagine. My own shoulders ached just to see it, and I later learned that Congolese women often suffer from compressed vertebrae in their necks.\n\nOnce Jean-Claude had pointed out the difference in how Rwandans and Congolese carried heavy loads, I began to notice it everywhere. Congolese, overburdened with bundles of sugar cane and root vegetables packed into gunnysacks, backs bent almost ninety degrees, canvas straps across their foreheads; Rwandans, in sharp contrast, moving through with their posture perfectly straight, gourds and baskets balanced atop: smaller loads, carried with confidence. I could identify people at a glance simply by how they carried their cargo\u2014 _Congolese, Congolese, Rwandan, Congolese, Rwandan_ \u2014and I thought how easy it was to categorize, and what a short step it was from that to isolation, eradication.\n\nThe sun was falling, pulling the rest of the sky in with it, and as we began our long slow descent toward the border, Lake Kivu reappeared, looking like gold foil in the last light of day. In the distance we could see a net of lights thrown across a darkening shore: Goma City, on the other side of the line. Goma City, where the fighting had been at its worst.\n\nWe'd woken that day to news of war in the Congo. Sadly, there is always news of war in the Congo; at any one time at least a dozen different insurgencies were flaring up in far-flung regions. What made this news significant was the where of it: on the outskirts of Goma City. We were driving directly toward the fighting.\n\nA pitched three-way battle was being waged on the other side of that hill. The FDLR (led by former Hutu Power g\u00e9nocidaires, you may recall) were fighting the M23 rebels (Congolese Tutsi soldiers who'd broken away from the Congolese army), who were in turn facing a full-scale military offensive from the government of Congo backed by UN forces.\n\nSouth Africa and Tanzania were now thoroughly engaged in the conflict (or implicated, depending on your point of view) as part of the United Nations intervention brigade. More troops were on their way from Malawi to join them. These would be no neutral observers. The UN was fighting alongside regulars from the Congolese army: an army with a well-deserved reputation for depravity against its own citizens. There were no good guys in this fight. It was like a game of Risk played with real armies.\n\nCaught between hammer and anvil, hundreds of thousands of people continued to flee the region, many of them ending up in UNHCR refugee camps. Which is to say, the UN, in perfect bureaucratic fashion, was helping to create the very refugees it was now being asked to house and feed. I believe this is called vertical integration.\n\nWe arrived in the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi (now known as Rubavu) as darkness finally settled over Kivu. A heavy moon hung low above the water. We could see flashes of light on the other side of the border.\n\nTwo Rwandan villages nearby had been shelled from positions inside Congo, and President Kagame had warned that if these \"provocations\" continued, Rwanda would send in troops of its own. Gisenyi, however, hardly seemed like a community on the edge of a war zone; the town was brimming with well-dressed night-life celebrants flitting from caf\u00e9 to dance club and back again.\n\nJean-Claude and I checked into the Serena Hotel, beautifully situated on the lake. A string-of-pearl line of lights along the shore curved toward a brighter cluster farther down. That would be Goma.\n\nWe ate our dinner on the hotel patio overlooking the water. In Congo, government forces were lobbing mortars at rebel encampments, armoured convoys were rolling in, attack helicopters were hovering like dragonflies, gunfire was ripping through jungle leaves. But over here, all was calm. It was surreal.\n\nAfter our meal we retreated to the hotel bar to warm up and catch the end of an English Premier League match on the telly. (Something United vs. Something FC. Jean-Claude was more rapt than I\u2014and I don't even think it was live. I think it was a repeat of an earlier match.) It was only when I saw the blond man with the windswept hair stride in that I knew we were in trouble. He ordered a drink, slapped down some money, turned to survey the room with an exorbitant self-regard, as though expecting a buzz of excitement to radiate outward from his presence. His eyes were pale, his face suitably sun-creased; he seemed to be squinting at the far horizon, even though there was no far horizon to squint at. There was only a handful of businessmen milling about, with Jean-Claude and me off in one corner. The fellow with the windswept hair (also odd, now that I think about it, as there was no wind inside the bar either) was wearing a canvas vest with multiple pockets, and he had a telephoto camera slung over his shoulder like a rifle. He was clearly starring in a one-man drama of his own life, and I thought, _Oh shit_. A war correspondent.\n\n**45**\n\nTHE NEXT MORNING I DECIDED to walk to the Congo, if only to be able to mention this in future cocktail conversations with a breezy nonchalance. \"I say, chaps, did I ever mention the time I... _walked to the Congo?\"_ (The italics would be implicit.) But in all honesty, it was less a trek than a saunter, a twenty-minute stroll along the beach and then up onto a leafy boulevard.\n\nI'd woken to the sound of Lake Kivu whispering in my ear. Winds from Congo were pushing waves onto the beach outside my window in a slow, steady rhythm. Early-morning birdsong filled the trees: whistles and warbles, courting calls and sharp rebukes, staccato bursts of maniacal laughter followed by sigh-like coos. One bird was making a loud _chk-chk-chk-chk_ sound, oddly reminiscent of a lawn sprinkler. Another, the low _glug-glug-glug_ of someone pouring wind-shield wiper fluid into a car. (Funny how conditioned our cultural associations are.) It was loud and joyful and discordantly musical, and a reminder that even in the dry season we were deep in the sodden heart of Africa, amid rainforests rich with life.\n\nI got up and got dressed, then wandered through the lobby, past a sleepy desk clerk and a fully asleep security guard who was, apparently, manning the metal detector. Feeling reassured by his catlike presence, knowing he was ready to awaken and pounce at the first sign of danger, I ambled out the front door and down to the lake.\n\nA shiver of mist lay across everything. Lake Kivu was a clouded mirror. Inlets and islands. Outcrops of rock, like hippos surfacing for air. A large sign, posted outside the hotel's front gate, assured visitors that Lake Kivu contained\u2014and I quote\u2014\"no crocodiles.\" _Yessir!_ This lake is completely crocodile free! So go ahead and splash about as much as you like, confident in the knowledge that ABSOLUTELY NO CROCODILES are lurking in the depths, ready to clamp onto your ankles with steel-trap jaws to drag you screaming and flailing into the lake's lower reaches, only to be regurgitated in dissembled form later on. No sir. So you just get that image right out of your mind. (Note to Tourism Rwanda: Some things are better not to call attention to.) I also noticed that the warning said nothing about _alligators_. Alligators don't live in Africa, true, but Kivu is one of the deepest lakes in the world, and who's to say its lower reaches haven't bred some sort of bizarre hawk-eagle-type hybrid: a \"crocodile-alligator,\" skulking about offshore.\n\nIn the end, I decided to hedge my bets. I didn't strip down to my boxers and go galloping about, but instead rolled my pant legs up to mid-calf\u2014and didn't I look fetching in my homemade Capri pants\u2014and then waded barefoot along the side of the lake on the assumption that, worst case, you could probably outrun a croc this close to shore.\n\nAs I followed the palm-treed beach down to a pier, it became evident I wasn't the only one in the water. I could hear it before I saw it: early-morning children, laughing. They were leaping, bathing, shouting, fanning waves at each other, then coughing and sputtering as they swiped water from their faces.\n\n\"Hello, muzungu!\" one of them yelled, bobbing like a fishing buoy as I passed. \"Hello! Bonjour! Bonjour!\"\n\nI didn't see any children getting pulled violently under the water in a pinkish froth, which I took as a good sign, so I waded a little deeper into the lake, crimping my pants ever higher and enjoying the cool pull and repeat of waves across my shins.\n\nThe real danger in Lake Kivu is more insidious than crocodiles. Impossible to see or even sense, the deep waters of Kivu contain some 60 billion cubic metres of methane (which can ignite) and carbon dioxide (which can kill), fed into them by a nearby volcano. These gases are trapped in the lake's lower depths, more than 250 metres below the surface, making Kivu one of three known \"exploding lakes\" in the world. A sudden eruption, or \"lake overturn,\" as it's known, can be cataclysmic. In Cameroon, a similar lake erupted in 1986, suffocating more than 1,700 people. Survivors of an earlier eruption spoke of a wave of vile-smelling gas that moved through, killing everything in its path.\n\nThe longer the gas is allowed to accumulate, the greater the risks. Warned that their lake would kill again if the methane and CO2 weren't removed, Cameroon began siphoning it off, venting the gas into the air. But Rwanda, with an exploding lake of its own to worry about, saw the potential for something more, something better: a \"value added\" venture that would turn a potential natural disaster into a plentiful, self-renewing energy source.\n\nOne of the great hurdles Rwanda faces is its lack of a national power grid. The vast majority of homes are still lit with kerosene; flying over the country at night reveals pockets of light surrounded by darkness. So a test project was set up to see if they could extract gas from Lake Kivu and, rather than simply releasing it into the atmosphere, pipe it to a plant to generate electricity. By lowering a tube deep into the lake, they were able to suck methane-infused water to the surface, where the gas was captured like bubbles from a flute of champagne. Two megawatts of power had already been extracted, and I could see the platform floating in the distance like a giant raft with a straw on top.\n\nThe success of this has led to a far more ambitious project known as KivuWatt. A private venture backed by the Rwandan government and supported with international loans, KivuWatt will extract energy from Lake Kivu on a much larger scale, almost doubling Rwanda's current electrical capacity. It's all part of a wide-reaching plan to bring electricity to 70 percent of the population by 2018. Lake Kivu alone will provide power to more than two million people. It's an incredible judo-flip of a strategy, turning an imminent threat into an energy solution, and it limits the release of greenhouse gas as well, making it a clean energy source.\n\nRwanda is also planning to build geothermal plants to take advantage of the volcanic furnaces smouldering underground. A utility-scale solar energy plant\u2014the first in East Africa\u2014was already underway in the country's sun-baked eastern province. (The Dutch company that built the solar-panel facilities praised the Rwandan government for its \"laser-like focus.\") More than 5 percent of Rwanda's energy capacity already comes from solar power, and the country is looking to invest in hydro as well.\n\nNow, if they could just harness the energy of those kids splashing about in the lake, they'd really be on to something...\n\nSearching for a place to sit down and sock-whip the sand from my feet before pulling my shoes back on, I wandered into a small clearing. There I surprised two middle-aged women dressed head-to-trainers in pink velour jogging outfits, right down to matching sweatbands, who were in the middle of their morning calisthenics. They froze, mortified by my sudden appearance. It was as though I'd caught them doing something wrong.\n\n_\"Muraho!\"_ I said cheerfully as I passed, more or less between them.\n\n_\"Muraho,\"_ they mumbled, looking down, avoiding eye contact, and then bursting into self-conscious laughter after I'd departed.\n\nI felt bad. Imagine: you and a friend have decided, \"Enough of this! We are going to get in shape. We'll do it together. Every morning, you and me, no excuses, down by the lake.\" You buy your outfits and your brand-new running shoes and you suit up and you march down with great determination and you find a spot away from prying eyes, and, no sooner do you start in with the jumping jacks than some big pink-faced muzungu shows up. It must have been embarrassing\u2014and funny. I imagine it gave them a shared story to shriek about over the years. _\"Remember that time we took up exercising...?\"_\n\nThe beach ended at a rocky outcrop. I pulled on my shoes and socks, then walked up onto a boulevard lined with palm trees. This was Avenue de la Coop\u00e9ration, which followed the lakeshore.\n\nIn the grassy verge, birds were walking about on stilted legs, picking through the weeds, looking for insects and seeds. Plumed in blue with thin curved beaks, they were probably some sort of hawk-eagle, or maybe a stork-heron or a pelican-goose. Where was Patrice when I needed him?\n\nAvenue de la Coop\u00e9ration changed names, disconcertingly, to Avenue de la R\u00e9volution as it neared the border with Congo. The road narrowed and the mood shifted. A military transport plane lifted off from the Congo side of the hill, thunder-rumbling low across Lake Kivu before banking west, as though evading artillery fire. A UN supply plane came in just heartbeats after the transport plane had departed\u2014it's a wonder they didn't collide in mid-air\u2014and it made a similar lake-skimming, chest-rattling approach. The noise was deafening; it made your heart beat faster and left a ringing in your ears as sharp as a tuning fork.\n\nThe border crossing was a potholed bottleneck with traffic shoved in from both sides. Uniformed soldiers floated about, serenely calm amid the chaos. At the Rwandan customs office, already crowded this early in the day, I realized\u2014in mid-request for a day visa so that I might stroll over to Congo for my morning repast\u2014that I didn't have my passport with me, or any other identification, for that matter. I hadn't thought to knock on Jean-Claude's door and let him know where I was going, either, so at that moment, nobody on earth knew where I was. If I were detained or spirited away, who would be the wiser? I really should have thought things through.\n\nThis \"walk to the Congo\" jaunt had started as a bit of a lark. But now, wedged in at a teller-like window by a compression of Congolese truck drivers who were working at cross-purposes, waving their papers at the customs officials as if they were bidding at an auction (a Congolese queue is a contradiction in terms, apparently), I realized that it was, perhaps, better not to call attention to myself. I was the only muzungu there at the time, so I was definitely visible. But crossing a border without papers? Not a good idea. So at first chance, I walked off in an apparent huff\u2014\"Please wait a moment? _Please wait a moment?_ I don't have time for this!\"\u2014without having to show my (missing) papers. Short of wrestling a handgun from one of the border guards and shooting my way in, I couldn't see how I'd be able to put one foot inside the Democratic Republic of Congo.\n\nDamn.\n\nA muddy track ran alongside a wall near the customs office. Goma\/Gisenyi is really one contiguous city, split down the middle, and this wall was part of the actual border separating Rwanda from Congo. Homes on the other side looked directly into Rwanda. It was a very porous divide, considering the tensions that crackled along it.\n\nPassing a clutch of money traders\u2014 _\"Dollars am\u00e9ricains!_ Muzungu, muzungu! Best rates! _Fran\u00e7ais? Anglais?\"_ \u2014I turned a corner and ran into an ambush of street sellers hawking items I could have no reasonable interest in buying. (A matching set of toilet seats? Why? Jumper cables? I'm on foot, buddy.) Not that it mattered; I'd forgotten my wallet as well. It was like trying to push my way out of a mosh pit, but I finally managed to writhe through, with the satisfaction of knowing that any pickpockets who might have surreptitiously frisked me en route had come up empty. (Rwanda has very little street crime, but I'm told their pickpockets are of reputable talent.)\n\nOn my way back to the hotel, along Avenue de Independence, I passed a slumbering bar called Sky Nevada. Another called Sun Magic. An auto-parts shop was rattling open for the day, the metal slats rolling upward beneath a government billboard urging people to work harder. Harder? How exactly? It was barely past seven, and the entire city was already up and on the go. Streams of people passed. They _appeared_ to be walking at a leisurely pace, yet glided by me with ease. Even old ladies burdened with baskets pulled up alongside me... then past. I picked up my pace\u2014as a point of pride if nothing else\u2014but it was of little use; it was as though I was on a treadmill set at a lower gear than everyone else. It didn't matter who it was. Schoolboys shouting \"Morning morning morning teacher! I am fine!\" Women with babies wrapped up like plump packages on their backs. Men so thin their suits hung off them as though on clothes hangers. Everyone blew by me, some throwing puzzled glances over their shoulders without breaking stride. They seemed so purposeful, so well turned out. And there's me clomping along in what I thought was a hurried manner with all the vitality of a limp windsock, shirt untucked and hair uncombed, hems of my khakis still sopping wet, yet feeling light-chested and happy nonetheless. I liked Gisenyi. There was a tropical feel to the town\u2014but without any sense of lassitude. It bustled with activity but not impatience. Rwanda in a thimble, it seemed to me.\n\nA clatterfication of bicycles. Minibuses passing in multicoloured blurs. Mosquito-motored scooters zipping in and out. Back on the beach in front of our hotel, waves were sliding onto soft brown sand. Orchestral arrangements of birds once again filled the treetops with song. And then\u2014another transport plane lifted off from Congo with the roar of a lion. A platoon of Rwandan soldiers appeared suddenly, dressed in crisp camouflage, jogging in metronymic formation down the shore, rifles at the ready.\n\nOn the hotel's veranda, I found Jean-Claude having breakfast (if you can call seven courses of passion fruit breakfast). He'd been watching the planes taking off too.\n\nWhen I told him about my aborted attempt at reaching the Congo, he suggested we try again.\n\n\"We'll go back,\" he said, \"and tell them you're a journalist.\"\n\nI didn't think trying to cross an international border between two nations on the brink of war by claiming to be a journalist would help.\n\nHe thought about this. \"We'll tell them you're an _important_ journalist.\"\n\nAnd son of a gun if it didn't work. We returned, me with my passport this time\u2014though I was never asked to produce it. Instead, Jean-Claude spoke with the customs officer and handed him one of my _Canadian Geographic_ calling cards. We weren't permitted to go into Congo, the situation was too dire, but we could at least stand on Congolese soil in the no man's land between borders. The Rwandan customs official walked us over. The only stipulation he made was that I let him review any photos I took.\n\nHis Congolese counterpart, stocky and muscle-jawed, met us halfway and escorted us into the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2014or rather, into the strange twilight world between the two. Transport trucks were everywhere, their cargo stacked this way and that. Goma City was pushing up against the border, the buildings looking like stacked crates teetering on a forklift. We could see Congo, but we couldn't enter. To step through that final barrier would be to invite questioning, detention. \"We would have to bribe our way in and bribe our way out\" was how Jean-Claude put it.\n\nSo I wandered about instead, while Jean-Claude chatted with the Congolese customs officer in French. Or tried to. The man was overtly circumspect and would give only carefully crafted non-answers to Jean-Claude's queries. \"Has the conflict affected transportation?\" Answer: \"The situation is under control.\" \"Is the border busier now? Are more people trying to come over?\" Answer: \"The situation is under control.\" \"Are things cooling down or heating up?\" Answer: \"As far as the situation goes, it is under control.\"\n\nWe thanked him for his help (Jean-Claude had the feeling he was expecting us to slip him a few francs when we shook his hand), and as we walked back to the Rwandan side, we saw an American television crew recording a breathless report about the impending war between Congo and Rwanda. Like the windswept photo journalist we'd seen earlier, the reporter in question wore a tanned, multi-pocketed vest\u2014 _de rigueur_ among the war correspondent set, apparently\u2014and with the Goma cityscape in the background, he was clutching his microphone with both hands and shouting into it, as though shells were falling around him as he spoke.\n\n\"Why is he yelling like that?\" Jean-Claude asked.\n\nHaving completed our walkabout in no man's land, Jean-Claude and I returned to the Rwanda customs office.\n\nA sign greets truck drivers and travellers entering Rwanda from Congo. Not \"Welcome to the Land of a Thousand Hills!\" or \"Enjoy your stay!\" but rather INVESTMENT YES. CORRUPTION NO. I scrolled through the photos I'd taken, for the Rwandan official to check, and he requested I delete only two: one that showed a soldier's face too closely and another that showed a military licence plate too clearly. Otherwise, it was fine.\n\n\"You know,\" the official said to Jean-Claude in Kinyarwanda, \"the main crossing point between Congo and Rwanda is on the north side of the city. That's where most of the trade and foot traffic happens. This crossing is just used mainly for long-distance transport.\"\n\nThe real action was at the other border crossing.\n\nOh.\n\n\"So let's go,\" Jean-Claude said, and off we went.\n\nWe zigzagged our way through the streets of Gisenyi, often along the very walls that delineated the border. On our way, we passed the same throng of money-changers and street vendors I'd squirmed through earlier. The man with the jumper cables watched me go by like the lost sale I was. _So you_ did _have a vehicle!_ I gave him a sympathetic shrug.\n\nThat customs officer hadn't been kidding.\n\nTraffic at the first border crossing was a mere trifle compared to the influx and outflow of people on this wider avenue. Here the two countries ran smack up against each other, with the newly built homes and tidy yards of Rwanda built directly across a muddy stream from the shantytown shacks in Congo.\n\nEven with fighting on the other side of the hill and military planes rumbling overhead, the border was thriving. People were streaming into Rwanda, not as refugees but as merchants, as buyers. Gisenyi was supplying Goma with everything imaginable. It was a decidedly lopsided flow of trade, with the Congolese pouring in empty-handed and leaving laden with goods, loading up and then heading back. Again and again.\n\nThis was cross-border shopping as I'd never seen it, a market on the march, a beehive kicked open. Congolese market women were stocking up on cooking pots and kerosene, on yams and cabbages, on gritty sacks of cooking charcoal, on chandeliers of bananas. _Surely they have banana trees in Congo_ , I thought. _Why would they need to come all the way here to buy them?_ Then I realized that with the fighting raging just outside the city, harvesting any kind of crop would have been dangerous.\n\nThese women were carrying commerce on their backs, supply and demand in immediate response. One woman was taking a towering telescope of plastic buckets back with her, another had cornered the market on lime-green flip-flops. Many of the goods were Chinese-made. One lady had an array of brightly coloured Kleenex boxes roped together and balanced on her head. Her burden was the size of a small refrigerator; I didn't know how she managed the weight of it, let alone at such a brisk pace. (Jean-Claude suggested that the boxes might be empty and that she would slyly restock them with coarser, cheaper tissues back home before reselling them.) Raggedy men in stained shirts and tattered shorts were pushing homemade wooden tricycles, the loads lashed down with twine and rope: full-sized mattresses hog-tied, bundles of clothing, even an entire couch in one case. It flowed without end and without beginning, a Mobius strip of people looping back and forth across the border.\n\nJean-Claude and I spent two nights in Gisenyi. We knocked the dust from our shoes, washed our socks in the sink, strolled among the shops, breathed in the tropical air, and filled our bellies with passion fruit and Primus, respectively. A long drive had brought us here, and our lakeside sojourn felt like one extended satisfying crick of the neck. We finally sent Patrice, our designated but underused driver, home on an express coach, with a generous tip and a warm handshake. It was probably the easiest and strangest assignment he'd ever had.\n\nBefore he left, I asked Patrice if it was true there were no crocodiles in Lake Kivu. (I was still considering a dip\u2014would maybe _swim_ to the Congo!) He said, and these were his exact words, \"Not probably.\"\n\nI never did figure out what he meant by that.\n\n**46**\n\nTWENTY YEARS AGO, the volcanic plains west of Goma were the site of the largest refugee encampment the world had ever seen.\n\nWith the collapse of Hutu Power, a mass migration occurred: more than two and a half million people fled the RPF advance. They were driven forward by interahamwe and Rwandan armed forces who were determined to take the nation with them into exile, denying the victors a people to govern. The first wave went south into Tanzania, the next into Burundi. The rest pushed westward, on foot, into Zaire (as the Congo was known from 1971 to 1997). Most crossed over here, at Gisenyi.\n\nThe bulk of the Hutu army, 22,000 strong, crossed over with the refugees, their combat units and command structure intact, bringing with them heavy weaponry, military vehicles, ammunition, and the entire state treasury\u2014more than US$170 million\u2014leaving Rwanda bankrupt.\n\n\"The RPF may have the country,\" one of the Hutu leaders declared, \"but we have the people.\"\n\nIt was the largest hostage-taking in human history. Rwanda had been hollowed out. Between the genocide and the exodus that followed, 60 percent of the population was now dead, displaced, or on the run.\n\nAs the g\u00e9nocidaires flooded across the border into Zaire, an Oxfam employee looked on in horror. \"They were covered in blood,\" he recalled. \"Not their blood.\"\n\nThe interahamwe quickly took control of the camps. A Hutu Power government-in-exile was proclaimed (including, I kid you not, a \"minister of tourism\"), and the people were forbidden to return to Rwanda\u2014if the innocent left, only the guilty would remain, after all. And anyway, a \"revenge genocide\" at the hands of the RPF would be waiting for them if they were foolish enough to go back. That was the warning. That was the fear.\n\nThe aims of the government-in-exile were clear: reclaim their country and drive the RPF out, and\u2014implicitly\u2014finish the genocide they'd started. Almost immediately, they began launching raids into Rwanda, terrorizing Tutsis in the remoter rural areas left unprotected and vulnerable. (The Hutu gunmen who killed the students at Nyange Secondary School had crossed over from these camps, and it was into one of these zones that Jean-Claude had so blithely driven when he went to rescue the three boys, unaware of the danger.) In Tanzania, a similar scenario was playing out.\n\nThe camps were squalid and dangerous. Cholera and dysentery swept through, leaving thousands dead. International aid, painfully absent in Rwanda during the genocide, now poured in. Armed g\u00e9nocidaires\u2014wanted for war crimes\u2014patrolled the camps unobstructed, confiscating supplies provided by aid agencies, including medicines, and then selling them on the black market to help fund their cross-border campaign. These weren't refugees running the camps, these were fugitives. All the while, French arms continued to arrive, landing in Goma in preparation for the promised counter invasion, aided and abetted by France's longtime ally, Zaire's cartoonish dictator-for-life, Mobutu Sese Seko.\n\nRwanda had internal refugee camps to deal with as well, among them Kibeho Camp in the eastern region. The RPF had moved through, camp by camp, closing each one in turn and sending the people home. Kibeho was the last. Controlled by g\u00e9nocidaires, Kibeho had become a tinderbox. The interahamwe used it as a staging ground for attacks on the surrounding countryside, targeting both the Hutus who had returned and the Tutsis who'd survived\u2014\"killing the evidence,\" as it was known. More than 250,000 people were entrenched in Kibeho, and tensions were rising. When the RPF arrived to close down the camp, the interahamwe fought back, and what started as a military operation turned into a massacre, with soldiers firing directly into the crowds. The frightened people inside crushed each other trying to escape, trampling over bodies while heavy rains pounded down. Mud and blood, churning together. As many as 4,000 people died at Kibeho. Some estimates put it even higher.\n\nRwanda issued a warning to Zaire: close down the bases along its borders or face the consequences. Mobutu refused\u2014and even increased aid to the Hutu Power government-in-exile. And so, in 1996, with support from Uganda, Rwanda invaded. The RPF emptied the refugee camps in eastern Zaire and forcibly repatriated more than 700,000 people, who returned as they'd come, on foot, in a bedraggled column that stretched for miles. The interahamwe and Hutu Power g\u00e9nocidaires in Goma fled into the jungle, leaving behind lists of Tutsis in the Lake Kivu region, carefully recorded in ledgers. These were the same people who would later call themselves the FDLR.\n\nWith Rwandan-backed rebels having reached the outskirts of Kinshasa, President Mobutu fled the country with only moments to spare and died soon after. Rwanda installed what they thought was a puppet president: a fading rebel leader named Laurent Kabila who had been plucked from obscurity by Kigali as much for his pliability as for any political acumen. But when Laurent Kabila, president of the newly renamed Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reneged on his backroom agreement and began targeting Tutsi Congolese and expelling Rwandan military advisers, Rwanda invaded Congo again and toppled him as well.\n\nTwo wars in the Congo in less than a decade have left the country reeling. _Millions_ have died in the DRC: victims of war, anarchy, ethnic killings, criminal cartels, insurgencies, famine, greed, disease, and malnutrition. It's less a country than an ongoing crisis\u2014one that can be traced back directly to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis. The apocalypse that Colonel Bagosora and the g\u00e9nocidaires ignited is burning still.\n\n**47**\n\nFOR A BORDER TOWN teetering on the edge of war, the outdoor markets of Gisenyi were surprisingly orderly. Thriving on trade, they were well-stocked and well-swept, with wide tables piled high with goods. Sheaves of fish, alive with flies. Peppers and pineapples. Bibles and yams.\n\nOne market was filled with housewares and clothing, and it was here that Jean-Claude and I faced our greatest challenge yet: shopping for our wives. It was sad, really, the two of us relying on each other for advice. \"What do you think, do you think she'd like something like this?\" one of us would ask, holding up items more or less at random.\n\nThe farther we pushed into the market, the more crowded it became; we all but snorkelled through at times, surfacing at intervals to exchange concerned looks before plunging back under.\n\nWooden trays were heaped with Allan Quatermain\u2013style treasures: trinkets and talismans, the usual brummagem junk. Unfortunately, after a regrettable incident involving pewter earrings at a marketplace in Mexico, my wife doesn't allow me to purchase jewellery for her anymore, so shiny baubles were out. (My sons were easy. T-shirts at the airport. Done.)\n\nOne tout tried to entice me with jumper cables\u2014 _\"Perhaps m'lady would appreciate some fine automotive accessories as a token of my affection?\"_ \u2014but somehow I resisted the temptation. (And what is it with Rwandans and jumper cables?) Instead, I decided I would buy my Japanese wife some Rwandan fabric. Jean-Claude chose to purchase a CD of gospel music for his better half. (There were booths in the market that\u2014copyright be damned!\u2014would create a mixed tape for you, to order, from their library of CDs while you waited.) We agreed to meet back in forty minutes and wished each other well, much in the manner of paratroopers about to fling themselves from a moving plane on a moonless night. _\"Good luck, it's been an honour serving with you.\"_\n\nHead held high, striding purposefully into quicksand, I marched off into that labyrinth of stalls.\n\nWell, hell, who knew it was so hard to buy some fabric! The traditional dress of Rwandan women is an intricately patterned, brightly dyed wraparound skirt with matching head scarf, artfully tied. I had assumed these were simply large squares of cloth. But no. There was more to it than that. Much more. The cloth came in different shapes, sizes, colours, and combinations\u2014my head swam as I squeezed past row after row of stalls.\n\nJean-Claude's parting piece of advice had been \"Maybe keep your wallet in your underwear, just to be safe.\"\n\nI'd peeled off a fat stack of Rwandan francs for immediate use, then tucked the rest into the nested warmth of my nether regions. (I'll give you a moment to get that image out of your head; a shot of tequila should do it.) If someone was going to pick my pocket, I would at least get a free grope out of the deal.\n\nI had money, I just didn't know how to spend it. I didn't even know where to start.\n\nNo worries. Several lanky men of dubious intent took a break from selling telephone cards and jumper cables to come to my rescue. They formed a phalanx around me, all talking at once, while the wraparound women looked on, trying to warn me away with their eyes.\n\nThe leader of my self-appointed crew, a leather-skinned elder with a chest-rattling catarrhal voice, referred to me repeatedly as \"Monsieur,\" which I thought was terrific. _Monsieur muzungu, that's me!_ When I explained, primarily through the art of pantomime, what I was looking for, he held my wrist, almost daintily, as though taking my pulse, and led me farther into the hugger-mugger of the market. With his friends clearing a path, we soon arrived at a large display of men's suits\u2014all of them North American in style. Despite my protests, he discussed matters at great length with the wide-bosomed woman behind the counter. She didn't look happy. I assumed he and his coterie were demanding a large commission on any sales. But no matter how much they badgered and chivvied, she refused, which left us at an impasse. One man gestured one way, another pointed just as insistently in the opposite direction. This was followed by a highly animated and perfectly disjointed discourse with many a passionate digression, none of which brought us any closer to a solution. Proposals were proffered, solutions offered, objections waved aside.\n\nWhen a dishevelment of grinning schoolboys pushed in, I preempted what was coming with a burst of my own: _\"Good morning students how are you I am fine!\"_ They were under the mistaken impression that I would give them money simply because, well, I was a muzungu, I suppose, and presumably rich. They learned an important lesson that day. Not all muzungus are wealthy or glad-handing in their generosity. Some of us are quite cheap, in fact.\n\nIn the end, I thanked the men for their \"help\" and moved on, though escaping them was a little like trying to disentangle oneself from an overly amorous octopus. They clearly wanted money for their \"services,\" but I pretended I didn't \"understand.\"\n\n\"See ya!\" I chimed.\n\nWhen I ended up at a stall that was selling handmade aprons, I decided that what my wife really wanted was a handmade apron. (Memo to any men out there: Turns out, buying your wife an apron is not considered a romantic gesture.) A smiling-eyed woman laughed her way through our mutual language barrier and, mainly with hand gestures, asked me what size.\n\n\"Small. Really small,\" I said, holding my hand out at waist level. (My wife is four-foot eleven, which she insists on rounding up to five.) There was a tag on the apron explaining that it was made by a women's collective. The fabric was certainly beautiful, a mix of geometric patterns suggestive of an African quilt, and when I went to pay, having completely forgotten to haggle, she kindly dropped the price by 10 percent.\n\nHaving thus taken care of my spousal duties, I rendezvoused with Jean-Claude, who congratulated me on my selection. Which is to say, he was just as clued out as I was.\n\n**48**\n\nNIGHT WATERS, SWIMMERS OFFSHORE. Silhouettes emerging and submerging, coalescing and then dissolving back into the lake. The moon was a fisherman's float in a seaweed of clouds, and I thought, _What a beautiful night_.\n\nJean-Claude and I were on a caf\u00e9 veranda with street views and a cooling wind coming in from Lake Kivu. Women in skirts wafted past, and though I know I'm not supposed to notice this sort of thing, let alone comment upon it, it must be said: all that hill-walking does wonders for a woman's calves. (That's right, I'm not just a leg man but specifically a _calf_ man.) Even in flip-flops they seemed to be wearing seven-inch stilettos.\n\nI looked over at Jean-Claude, my date for the night (once again), and I sighed.\n\n\"Jean-Claude, why couldn't you have been born a beautiful woman?\" I asked.\n\nWe walked back to our hotel past taverns reverberant with laughter. In the shaded doorways, languorous women swayed to music as jellied-jointed drunks staggered by outside, gloriously insensate. The jangle of Congolese music spilled out of every nightclub, every caf\u00e9. Rwanda sent trade goods across the border; Congo sent back its music. I think Rwanda got the better part of the deal.\n\nIt was our final night on Lake Kivu, and the lights of Congo curved into the distance.\n\n\"Really,\" I said to Jean-Claude. \"Why couldn't you have been born a beautiful woman?\"\n\nBack at the hotel, furtive cabals of Congolese men were hunched around tables, discussing business deals and possible exit plans. Ruddy-faced muzungus milled about as well, NGO administrators with acronymed aides in attendance. And then, sweeping through: the familiar sun-bleached hair and multi-pocketed vests of conflict correspondents. It was strange for me to be surrounded by such a swirl of international intrigue while remaining so oblivious to what was going on. Sort of like Marie Antoinette at the onset of the Revolution, I imagine.\n\nThree weeks after we left Gisenyi, more missiles were fired into Rwanda from the Democratic Republic of Congo. One hit the market we had visited, killing two people. Whether this attack was the work of the Congolese armed forces, the FDLR, or, as the UN asserted, the M23 rebels themselves, in an attempt to draw Rwanda into the fight, remains a point of contention.\n\nI considered telling my wife about our near-miss once I got home\u2014how often can you say you cheated death in order to buy your loved one an apron? But given that I'd assured her I wouldn't be going anywhere dangerous when I was in Rwanda, I reconsidered. Some things are better left unsaid.\n\n**49**\n\nMOUNTAIN GORILLAS DIDN'T EXIST in the European imagination until 1902. That was the year a German captain by the name of von Beringe crossed the remote Virunga rainforests of what was then German East Africa. Near the summit of Mount Sabyinyo, he encountered a troop of what he described as large \"human-like monkeys\" that were attempting to flee over a ridge. The encounter came as a wonderful surprise\u2014primates were not known to inhabit such high altitudes\u2014and Beringe celebrated the moment by pulling out his trusty rifle and shooting two of the creatures in the back. They tumbled over the edge of the rocky embankment, sliding down the other side. Beringe managed to drag one of the bodies out of the ravine with a rope and had his porters carry it down the mountain in a sling, where he arranged to have it transported to Germany. He had, in fact, discovered a new species\u2014or rather subspecies\u2014of primate, one that would bear his name: _Gorilla beringei beringei_.\n\nMountain gorillas are immensely impressive animals. Thickly furred and heavily muscled, with males routinely clocking in at 180 kilograms or more (which sounds even more impressive in imperial units: 400 pounds _on average_ ), they were often depicted by Europeans as monstrous \"man-eaters\" and were much sought after by big-game hunters. A 1921 expedition by Sweden's Prince William, conducted with the blessing of Belgian authorities, saw him kill fourteen of the Virunga's mountain gorillas in one go; their taxidermy remains are on proud display in Stockholm even now. But their enormous size and alarming canines aside, these animals are gentle giants, peaceful herbivores whose habitat is limited to one narrow chain of volcanoes in central Africa, high in the cool montane forests that straddle the borders of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda.\n\nAmerican primatologist Dian Fossey spent eighteen years cataloguing the behaviour of these gorillas, often mimicking their cries and grunts\u2014and even belches\u2014until they had become thoroughly habituated to her. As a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of renowned paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey, Fossey was meticulous in her research, discovering intricate social relationships and charting complex genealogies. She began her fieldwork in Congo in 1967, but the country's political turmoil forced her to relocate to the Rwandan side of the border, where she set up the Karisoke Research Center high on a remote hill between volcanoes. Local villagers called her _\"Nyiramacibili,\"_ which Fossey translated, with a great deal of poetic licence, as \"the old lady who lives in the forest without a man.\" (A more accurate rendering would be \"small woman who walks really fast.\")\n\nPoachers infiltrating the park for bushbuck and duikers would often set traps that snagged gorillas as well. The young ones were especially vulnerable. Even adult gorillas, having easily broken free of the snares, could end up with the wires cutting off circulation to their wrists or ankles, creating wounds that could become infected and gangrenous. Buffalo traps\u2014sharp, spiked bamboo hoops set across the trails\u2014were even worse. And when illegal ivory hunters tracking elephants through the forest crossed paths with gorillas, it rarely ended well. A silverback male rearing up to beat his chest, mock-charging and determined to protect the females and children under his care, is in a purely defensive position. But this was usually taken as a threat by the poachers and dealt with as such. The death of a dominant male can be devastating. As Fossey noted, \"No gorilla group can exist without its unifying force, the silverback leader.\" (Something I like to remind my own family of as my hair greys.)\n\n\"When I went to get married, I could see what the genocide had done.\" A survivor of Bisesero.\n\nThe world's most sought-after puddle.\n\nThe road, meeting itself on the way back, somewhere above Lake Kivu.\n\n\"We are all Rwandans.\" Students at Nyange Secondary School stand outside the classroom where the events of that night occurred. The school's self-described Master of Discipline is on the left.\n\nA market on the march: the border crossing at Goma.\n\nEven with fighting on the other side of the hill, trade continued to stream across the border.\n\nThe forests and hills of Rwanda: layers and layers of layers and layers.\n\nSomeone is watching.\n\nKing Kong in a more reflective mood. Mountain gorillas didn't exist in the Western imagination until the early twentieth century.\n\nA baby mountain gorilla ponders her strangely denuded cousins.\n\nOur closest living relatives know how to lounge.\n\nThe feline grace of Masai giraffes.\n\nThe Artful Dodgers of the animal set: the notorious olive baboon.\n\nAkagera National Park. Some sort of bird. Possibly a hawk-eagle.\n\nThe banana seller with whom Jean-Claude entered multilateral trade negotiations.\n\nIt might have changed everything. Sorghum-stalk homes on the road to Akagera National Park.\n\nBarcode arrangements moving across the savannah.\n\n\"My name is Tony, I am a boy.\" \"My name is Asinati, I am a girl.\"\n\nJean-Claude Munyezamu in front of the ruins of his brother's home in Rundu village.\n\nThe children of Rundu village.\n\nA daughter of the new Rwanda: Congolese girl at Kigeme camp.\n\nPoachers later targeted the gorillas directly, for trophies (gorilla-hand ashtrays were a popular souvenir at one point) or to kidnap the babies for transport to zoos in Europe and Asia. Fossey tells the horrific story of one band of poachers-for-hire killing ten gorillas just to capture a single infant on order for a zoo in Germany. Fossey worked in vain to have the terrified baby released\u2014only to find that a second baby had been caught in the same manner for the same zoo, with eight adult gorillas killed that time. A French film crew, meanwhile, had pursued a group of gorillas so relentlessly that one of the females miscarried. (The documentary they were filming would later be broadcast in France to great acclaim.) And with growing pressure from farmers and cattle grazers who were illicitly clearing the forest with slash-and-burn methods and steadily encroaching on their territory, the mountain gorilla population plummeted to 242 by the early 1980s.\n\nFossey was aggressive in her response. She set up wide-ranging anti-poaching patrols. She destroyed hundreds of traps and even arrested intruders\u2014something she had no legal right to do\u2014and would strip them down to their underwear and whip them with nettles as a punishment. Fossey hounded Rwandan authorities until several incorrigible poachers were charged and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. On occasion she would use Halloween masks and fire-crackers to raid illegal encampments, scaring off would-be hunters, and her research assistants had several violent clashes with the people they had challenged. Fossey's own life was threatened several times, but she remained fearless in the face of intimidation.\n\nFew people can claim to have saved an entire species, but this is precisely what Dian Fossey accomplished. And although initially opposed to gorilla tourism, she later came to accept it, admitting that limited conservation tours could help the animals \"if properly directed.\" Today, the world's mountain gorilla population is estimated to be 880. Of these, approximately 400 are in Rwanda. They're one of our closest living relatives, and it was time for us to pop in for a visit.\n\n**50**\n\nWE LEFT THE LAKE KIVU SERENA HOTEL before sunrise, driving into darkness.\n\nEven at five in the morning, the roads were filled with people, and our headlights picked up fleeting images of market women carrying goods, of Muslim men going to mosque, of children on their long walk to school. Given how quickly the sun set in Rwanda\u2014much like a lamp chain being given a decisive yank\u2014it was always strange how slowly it rose: a soft wash, a breath of light, a dimmer switch gradually turning up as the mountains formed around us.\n\nIt took several hours, but when we passed the Dian Fossey Hotel, I knew we were getting close. The rainforests of the Virunga Mountains (the name is a corruption of the Kinyarwanda word for \"volcano\") were looming over us, like waves about to break.\n\nThese mountains\u2014eight volcanoes: six dormant, two active\u2014run along the northern border of Rwanda as part of Volcanoes National Park. A twisting road took us to the main information centre and muster point, where eighty or so other groggy-eyed would-be trekkers had gathered. There were lots of yawns and early-morning shivers. Urns of coffee beckoned, but Jean-Claude once again declined. Surely this was a morning made for coffee, but no. He would climb the Virungas without the aid of caffeine stimulants, poor man.\n\nAccess to Rwanda's habituated gorillas is strictly controlled: eight people per group, with visits limited to one hour, once a day. The gorillas live in extended families, and their populations are clustered in disparate areas throughout the Virungas' misted heights, usually with a dozen or so gorillas under the leadership of a dominant silverback. Some groups were close at hand and others required a treacherous hike to the very top of the volcanoes, so the first order of business was to separate visitors accordingly. Trail guides walked among the assembled guests, sorting us into groups of eight. They put older people and those who looked more out-of-shape in the easiest groups, with the youthful, sporty-looking types assigned to higher, more difficult reaches. It was like a free fitness evaluation, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself grouped in with a band of healthy-looking hikers. I tapped my hands on my belly, thought to myself, _You still got it, Will_.\n\nOur group would be visiting the Amahoro family of gorillas, and when I thumbed through the guidebook, I almost choked. This was the second most difficult band of gorillas to reach, and some even considered the Amahoro hike to be the _most_ difficult, because it went over one side of the mountain and down into the next valley\u2014meaning you had to walk back up again on your return. In contrast, the Suza group, widely considered the most taxing trek, required a gruelling three-hour hike straight up, but once you reached those heights you were done.\n\nI gulped back a bolus of fear and watched as the other members of my hiking group moved about purposefully, strapping themselves into lightweight aluminum day packs with aerodynamically scientific hiking poles. Several of them had water systems that fed tubes directly into their mouths, so they wouldn't have to break stride to rehydrate. I, on the other hand, had two loose bottles of water _somewhere_ in the bottom of my lumpy and decidedly non-aerodynamic rucksack. The entire extent of my prep had been to tuck my pant legs inside my socks to, you know, reduce drag and whatnot.\n\nJean-Claude and I had been placed in a group that featured a tanned young French woman\u2014a medical student who was travelling with her equally tanned, equally fit mom\u2014and a family of four from Spain: a fit-looking husband (with high-tech water resupply system), an even fitter-looking wife, and two derivatively fit-looking teenage daughters. I was hoping these last two would be of the what- _ever_ , eyeball-rolling, stopping every five minutes to take selfies of themselves, \"O my god, we are so random!\" type of teenage girls, but sadly, they were not. As I was soon to discover, these were the quick-striding, \u00fcber-athletic, relentlessly energetic type of teenage girls, the kind who scamper fearlessly ahead on steep jungle trails with nary a hiccup, forcing the rest of their group to play an endless game of catch-up. The type who never seem to sweat but only ever attain a healthy pinkish glow.\n\nIn a panic, I pulled Jean-Claude to one side. \"How the hell did we end up in this group?\" I asked.\n\n\"It was by request.\"\n\nRequest? _Whose request?_ Jean-Claude's of course.\n\n\"I talked with the guides,\" he explained. \"They told me the Amahoro group is the best one to visit right now. The Amahoro gorillas have several new babies. It's why they put us in this group.\"\n\nTurns out, Jean-Claude and I had been slotted to visit one of the nearer, more accessible bands of gorillas, but in his infinite wisdom Jean-Claude had sidled up to one of the guides and explained that I was\u2014quote\u2014\"an important journalist\" here to do a story about conservation in Rwanda. Which is how a thoroughly sedentary, middle-aged author, whose most strenuous daily activity involves hitting CTRL-ALT-DELETE at the same time when his computer freezes up during a particularly demanding round of Minesweeper, found himself assigned to one of the toughest treks in the forest.\n\nThanks to my so-called friend Jean-Claude, I now faced a possible (probable) cardiac arrest somewhere on the side of the Virunga volcanoes. Good thing we had a medical student on board!\n\n\"You want to see the babies,\" Jean-Claude assured me. \"And anyway, it's too late to change your mind. Everybody's leaving. Look.\"\n\nWe headed out in a convoy of Land Cruisers and jeeps, and as the vehicles peeled off onto different routes, the road climbed higher and the air grew thinner. With every turn, the valley fell away, deeper into the distance. In Rwanda, Point A to Point B is never a straight line, is always a squiggle, and when I looked down I could often see where we had just been, directly below us.\n\nEven in a land as fertile as Rwanda, the rich volcanic soils of the Virungas are exceptionally fecund. We passed tangled plots of green beans and peas, flowering potatoes and thickets of maize: single-family farms carved out of the jungle, their crops embedded among ever-present stands of bamboo and eucalyptus.\n\nOn the way, we passed through what had once been a notorious poachers' village. As part of a shared tourism revenue program, the government now plows money from its conservation tours directly back into the villages nearby. The fees paid by tourists have helped build more than a dozen health centres and close to sixty schools. It's an act of strategic altruism, aimed at dissuading poachers and cattle grazers from undermining a source of their community's income.\n\nFormerly among the poorest, most backward regions of Rwanda, the village we passed through now boasted a health clinic and a water-pumping station (sparing the villagers a daily trek up and down the mountain), as well as two new schools, a beekeeping operation, and a small-scale dairy farm, all courtesy of Rwanda's Mountain Gorilla Conservation Programme. Billboards in front of each new facility reminded the populace of this, and the message was clear: there is a direct economic benefit in protecting the gorillas and their habitat. _These schools, this medical clinic, this water? These are courtesy of the gorillas_. Former poachers are now some of the most vocal advocates for conservation, patrolling their areas for intruders. And many of the park's guides were once poachers themselves. After all, they knew the terrain better than anyone.\n\nOur convoy was down to three vehicles. We stopped just past a cluster of mud-walled homes. This was the spot where Dian Fossey used to park her vehicle, our guide told us. The road ahead was too rough for even a 4x4. From here, we would walk.\n\nAs we were getting ready to set off, a motley procession of men appeared, walking their bicycles downhill, handlebars and seats overburdened with gunnysacks of string beans and cassava, bundles of bananas, en route to the village market. This too was a legacy of Dian Fossey. There hadn't been a market here prior to her arrival, but during the time she lived in the mountains, Fossey would come down twice a week to purchase supplies. People soon learned to stock up and wait for her. Word spread, and people from other villages began appearing, bringing in more and varied goods, vying for her business. Fossey was by all accounts a tough negotiator. She didn't simply pay the asking price; she wrangled and bargained and selected her supplies carefully. Those items that Fossey didn't want, people traded among themselves. Today, some thirty years after her death, the market still thrives, twice a week like clockwork, on the same days she would have come down from the mountain.\n\nWe had two guides assigned to us: Olivier and Placide, a pair of soft-spoken but well-armed park rangers.\n\n\"Is that an AK-47?\" I asked.\n\n\"No. Better.\"\n\nThey gathered us in for instructions, and when Placide showed us where we would be going, he didn't point forward, he pointed _up_.\n\nWe set out, single file, beneath the towering indifference of the Virunga volcanoes. A snaggle-toothed trail of volcanic bedrock pushed us past homes that were in various stages of decay and renewal. Some were little more than crumbling piles of clay bricks, others were cement-walled and metal-roofed. Children came running out to holler \"Hello! Hello!\" as we passed. We nodded, waved, trudged on.\n\nA meadow opened up before us. At the far end stood a solid wall of jungle; we followed a raised trail along an irrigation channel until we came to it. A stone barrier, cobbled together from volcanic rock, ran along the edge of the forest, as though corralling the trees inside it.\n\n\"Buffalo fence,\" said Olivier. \"They come out and eat potatoes and flatten the crops. This annoys the farmers too much. Better to keep them away from each other.\"\n\nWe climbed over the stone wall on a rickety stile and began our ascent through the jungle. Almost immediately I was out of breath. Altitude, age, and a dissolute lifestyle were catching up to me, but I'd done enough long-distance hikes to know that I needed to find my own rhythm, and eventually I did. It went like this: _step, stumble, gasp, wheeze; step, stumble, gasp, wheeze; (repeat)_.\n\nI quickly dropped to the back. At some point, extra armed guards joined our group (they must have slipped in behind us, ninja-like, while we trundled along), and I ended up, accidentally, with my own personal bodyguard.\n\n\"For animals?\" I gasped, gesturing to his rifle.\n\nHe smiled and nodded as he loped along, easily keeping pace with me the way I might with a toddler. \"Sometime is for elephant,\" he said in halting English. \"Sometimes is for buffalo.\"\n\nElephants? This was something I always had trouble wrapping my head around: the fact that there were enormous pachyderms hiding in these jungles. Elephants were so bulky, so lumbering, it hardly seemed feasible. I'd always thought of them as a creature of the savannah, lords of the open plains, backlit majestically by rose-madder sunsets, not jungle denizens tromping about on rainforest trails so narrow we required a porter up front just to clear a path.\n\nRunning into an elephant on a trail such as this, hemmed in by trees on either side? That was something best avoided.\n\nSure enough, we soon came upon several knuckles of elephant dung, thick with matted grass. The rest of the group had gathered round to take photos and admire the offerings. Some of the dung seemed fresh, was still moist\u2014to look at, anyway. I wasn't about to go around prodding it with my finger or anything. Instead, I took this as a chance to chug down some water. \"How many elephants live in these forests?\" I asked with a wipe of my mouth.\n\nPlacide hedged. \"We aren't certain. I saw one last week, but we don't know how many, not exactly.\"\n\n_A jungle so big, elephants can hide in it_.\n\nElephants are highly seasonal animals. They move about constantly. They follow food. They roam widely and on a whim, from Congo to Uganda and back again. There was no telling how many or how near any of them were at any one moment.\n\nI gestured to the dung. \"Is there an elephant nearby?\"\n\nHe looked up at the trail, frowned. \"Maybe.\"\n\nWe pushed on, through the mentholated air of the rainforest. For long stretches, all I heard was the sound of my own lungs, panting for oxygen. I could feel my pulse bongo-throbbing in the arteries of my neck as the trail fought its way in and out of the forest, through tangles of greenery, past boulders in a river, furred with moss. Butterflies fluttered by, their wings a deep and abiding iridescent blue, some satin, some velvet, alighting and departing on the faintest whisper of wind.\n\nA break in the forest revealed jungle rolling into the distance, the treetops as tightly bunched as broccoli. Jean-Claude was waiting for me, and he pointed to the hills ahead. We were at the northern border of Rwanda. \"Congo,\" he said, then, pointing the other way, \"Uganda.\" Three nations, converging.\n\nWe'd been hiking an hour to earn that view, and it was almost worth it.\n\nWith Placide in the lead we headed across a clearing, wading through leafy stands of what turned out be stinging nettles. Layers and layers of stinging nettles. My newly purchased state-of-the-art Mountain Equipment Co-op all-terrain protective hiking pants with patented dry-wick technology\u2122 had failed utterly when faced with a _soup\u00e7on_ of African nettles. It was like swimming through a tide of jellyfish, each step, each brush a burning slash. And it. Went. On. Forever.\n\nI could see Jean-Claude ahead, in jeans, arms up, threading his way through the lacerating underbrush with an enviable ease. The rest of us didn't fare as well. We emerged on the other side soaked with sweat, legs and forearms embossed in welts. We shotgunned our water, wiped the sweat from our faces, laughed and compared wounds. One of the Spanish teenagers had been wearing hiking pants that ended mid-calf and her ankles were now covered in a web of crimson. She held her feet out one at a time, admired the damage. The French woman's mother, with admirable foresight, had been pushing the nettles aside with heavy-duty canvas gardening gloves, only to find that her exposed wrists were criss-crossed with abrasions. I'd brought antihistamine tablets with me, which I passed out like breath mints. I swallowed a handful just to bring the swelling down; the nettles had somehow passed _through_ the synthetic fabric of my trousers, leaving the skin below sliced and brightly pink. Had I dropped my pants, I'm sure I would have won the \"Who got it worst?\" contest handily. But, inculcated as I am with old-fashioned notions of modesty, decorum prevailed.\n\n\"Everyone okay?\" asked our guide.\n\nChastised by nettles, we pushed on with decidedly less verve than we'd started with. The trail gradually levelled off, and I realized with a flick of joy that we'd reached the highest point of our trek.\n\n_Made it!_ I thought. And: _Wasn't_ so _bad_.\n\nBut of course, I'd forgotten the salient feature of the Amahoro trek: it levelled off\u2014then dropped down the other side of the mountain all the way to the bottom of the valley, which was lower than the hike's starting point. Which meant a second, even tougher ascent on our way back. That first stretch? The one that almost killed me? That was just a warm-up.\n\nSure enough, the trail fell like a high-diver off an Acapulco cliff: straight down on a ferociously narrow trail. We half-fell, half-ran from tree to tree, bumping into each other at times, then stork-walking wildly, lunging onto vines with a George of the Jungle clumsiness, arms out on every knoll, egg-beating the air for balance. It must have been highly entertaining for the guides.\n\nWe kicked up clouds of red clay that gummed our eyes and clogged our nostrils. When we reached the bottom, the wet-nap I used to blot my face with looked like the Shroud of Turin. And as we gulped down water that we should have been carefully conserving (as I would discover on our death-march return), one of the guides came over to tell us that the Amahoro mountain gorillas were just twenty metres away, \"on the other side of those trees.\"\n\nWell, that snapped us awake! We sorted ourselves out, primed our cameras, left our day packs and lunches behind (one of the guides would stay with them to make sure they weren't, I don't know, jacked by monkeys or something).\n\nNow, I should explain that when our guide said the gorillas were on the other side of \"those trees,\" he was using \"trees\" in the local vernacular, meaning \"a thicket of thorns so tightly woven as to appear cross-hatched.\"\n\nWe pushed our way in with grim resolve, scratched and scraped by flagellant thorns, prodded and poked by sharpened branches, lassoed by overhangs of vine\u2014the thought occurred to me that years later they might find our skeletons, still entangled. \"Oh, so that's what happened; they tried to go _through_ rather than around\"\u2014until we found ourselves at last in a leafy clearing, panting and sweating and beaded with cuts.\n\nOur guide held a finger to his lips, and then pointed into the shadows across from us.\n\nSomeone was watching.\n\n**51**\n\nSMOKY EYES PEERING THROUGH THE LEAVES. Furry figures, moving through the underbrush.\n\nGorillas were suddenly all around us. It was as though we'd stumbled into their living room. They were nuzzled in nests of flattened grass, were sitting on haunches, were chewing on wild celery, crawling over each other and shuffling about with harrumphs and hellos. Just a few metres away, a lower-ranked silverback was stretched out, magnificently supine, one long arm outstretched and drooping loosely above him, the other draped over his eyes. Apparently, gorillas spend up to 40 percent of their time \"resting.\" More if it's hot out. Or cold. Or rainy. Or if it's overcast. They certainly know how to lounge.\n\nThey were both massive and massively cute, awe-inspiring yet wholly adorable. The younger ones looked like teddy bears with weirdly elongated arms. Ill-adapted to tree swinging, they were giving it their best nonetheless, pulling down thin branches, kicking their little legs, falling promptly off. There was something both poignant and heroic about their dogged attempts at becoming arboreal. Here were the clumsiest of all the great apes, still trying to feed that deeply rooted primate imperative: the desire to climb.\n\nThe babies looked impossibly wise, old souls with liquid eyes. Only the moms gave us any heed, keeping a watch from afar as we moved among them. Placide made low greeting grunts to let the moms know we were friends, and they relaxed. Cross-species communication: the females replied with the same low grunt and then went back to grooming their babies.\n\nUnder the authority of a dominant male were several younger silverbacks, each with their own group of females, who in turn tolerated the restless, ass-over-teakettle head rolls of the younger gorillas with a paternal patience. The babies were very curious. They would scramble toward us, and then\u2014realizing we were just a boring bunch of grown-ups, albeit weirdly denuded of fur\u2014return to the serious work of playing. Round bellies, stumpy legs, hand-like feet and toes that looked like thumbs. Every now and then, one of the babies would meet your gaze, and you would find yourself transfixed, staring into their eyes: otherworldly, yet strangely, reassuringly _human_. One of the older gorillas peered at me as though over a pair of reading glasses. It was very calm, very quiet, and a far cry from the agitated back-and-forth pacing one sees at a zoo.\n\nWho knew an hour could be so short, or so full?\n\nI spent the first twenty minutes madly taking photographs, then stopped. I had climbed a mountain to get here, and I decided that experiencing it through a viewfinder wasn't perhaps the best approach. Instead, I slung my camera over my shoulder, soaked the moment in.\n\nAs we watched our overgrown cousins rummage about, Placide told us a sad story. When a gorilla dies, he explained, the other gorillas will spend at least three days with the body, bringing food to it, nudging it, trying to get it to sit up. If it's a baby that has died\u2014and they often do if they're born in the rainy season, from pneumonia\u2014the mother will carry that baby's body for weeks or more.\n\n\"It's very sorrowful,\" Placide said. \"Even though her baby is dead, she won't let go of it, can't. Sometimes the arm will drop off, or the bones will start to stick through the fur, before she finally gives up her child. It's\u2014\" Here he switched from French to Kinyarwanda, using a word Jean-Claude translated as \"heartbreaking.\"\n\nThe hour was over too fast. Olivier gave us our five-minute warning, and no amount of good-natured cajolery could convince him to extend our stay.\n\nBut then, just as we were preparing to leave, we had a close encounter of the gorilla kind. One moment I was standing in the spongy grass, wondering, _Now, where is the big boss, that dominant silverback we're always hearing about?_ and the next moment I looked up and right there\u2014crashing through the grass toward us\u2014was King Kong himself.\n\n\"Get back,\" Placide urged. \"Everybody. Let him pass. And please! No eye contact.\"\n\nWe complied.\n\nThe silverback reared up and beat his chest\u2014not in anger, but just to let us know who was in charge (and truth be told, it was a rather half-hearted, let's-just-get-this-over-with-shall-we? sort of chest-beat, hardly the thunderous kettledrum effect I'd imagined). He pushed past with a shoulder-rolling swagger, forearms reaching out, knuckle-walking with his short back legs hurrying to catch up. A hefty potbelly gave him both girth and gravitas. Musty, too. _Eau de silverback_ is a nuanced blend of junior high boys' locker room on a hot day with a dash of bad breath and a sprinkling of fecal funk thrown in. One whiff and I was almost knocked over, which is not the best reaction when a gorilla is brushing by: swooning into his arms. I was so close I could have run my hand along his back as he passed\u2014was tempted to, for one dizzying moment, if only to be able to say, \"I ever tell you chaps about the time I _petted a mountain gorilla?\"_ But I didn't quite feel like getting torn limb from limb just then, so I let him go by, untouched, through the tall grass. He didn't even deign to look at me as he passed.\n\nPlacide and Olivier were holding their arms out to keep the Spanish family back (they had strayed perilously close to the silverback's route and, let's face it, if anyone was going to be foolish enough to try to pet a gorilla, it was going to be a teenager).\n\nThere has never been a case of a mountain gorilla attacking a tourist in Rwanda. But there's always a first time for everything, right?\n\nI looked at the rifles hanging across the shoulders of our guides, and it occurred to me that if this silverback did decide to tear us limb from limb, there was very little Placide or Olivier could do about it. Before either of them could bolt their rifles, let alone take aim, the silverback would have already been upon them, and the encounter would have ended with Placide and Olivier being flung about like rag dolls while the rest of us tried to climb over each other onto the nearest tree branch with, I imagine, even less finesse than that of a gorilla. That's the sort of image that's hard to shake, once it takes hold.\n\nAs we were preparing to push our way back through the Thorn-of-Christ bushes we'd come through earlier, the French medical student's mother spotted something in the grass to one side: a young gorilla sitting on his own, chewing thoughtfully on stinging nettles (gorillas aren't so much immune to nettles as acclimatized; the stalks simply numb their lips).\n\nThe medical student's mother pointed out that, as we'd spent no time with this _specific_ gorilla, it really shouldn't count as part of our hour. But Placide wasn't persuaded by this. \"I will give you one moment,\" he said. \"If you hurry, you can take photographs. But with this gorilla, stay far back. Don't go any closer. He's a troublemaker.\"\n\nThe gorilla equivalent of a surly teenager, our solitary friend had been shunned by the rest of his group because he kept causing problems, starting fights, lipping off, that sort of thing. He now lingered resentfully on the fringes of gorilla society, an outcast eating his nettles, biding his time, and no doubt plotting his revenge.\n\n\"Adolescence,\" Placide said, as though that explained everything, and maybe it did.\n\nBack on the other side of the thornbushes, we ate our lunches\u2014cheese sandwiches and juice boxes, as opposed to stinging nettles and one's own dung\u2014and I thought about the uphill return we now faced: that all but perpendicular trail we'd slid down earlier. I thought about the two-hour, single-file slog back up it, the kickbacks of dust in one's face, the Shroud of Turin clay we'd be inhaling, and I asked Placide, \"What do you do if someone can't make it, if they have a heart attack on the trail or twist their ankle or something?\" This wasn't an academic question on my part; the prospect of my heart squeezing out its last on the climb ahead was a very real possibility.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"if someone is in serious trouble we call for a stretcher. But\"\u2014and here his voice dropped solemnly\u2014\"if that happens, we must charge them _one hundred U.S. dollars_.\"\n\nYou don't say?\n\nOne hundred dollars to be carried over a mountain as you reclined\u2014eating peeled grapes, presumably\u2014whilst enjoying the dappled play of sunlight on one's face? A bargain, I'd reckon. It was all I could do not to immediately clutch my chest in histrionic fashion, declaiming \"Alas, I fear I am about to perish! Someone send for the porters!\" The air on the way down would have proven salubrious, I was sure, for I would have expected a full recovery by the time we reached our vehicle.\n\n**52**\n\nDIAN FOSSEY NEVER LEFT THE MOUNTAIN.\n\nHaving stared down poachers and hunters, and having butted heads repeatedly with corrupt government officials, she was silenced for good on December 27, 1985, hacked to death by unknown assailants at her base camp. She lies buried beside the ruins of her abandoned research cabin, is on the Virungas still.\n\nFossey's killers were never caught, and rumours remain rife about who ordered her murder and why, but it hardly matters now.\n\nThe gorilla tours today are possible because of Dian Fossey. It was Fossey who first habituated the animals. She had no qualms about petting, grooming, or even cuddling the babies\u2014acts that are strictly forbidden now. And although still endangered, mountain gorillas are safer and more secure today than they have been in years\u2014at least on the Rwandan side of the border. And a good deal of credit for that can be given to Rwanda's community-based approach to conservation and to the ongoing legacy of Fossey herself.\n\nWhen you finally reach the bottom of the mountain, knees grating, thighs aching, face plastered with sweat, tired and elated, filled with marvel, you feel redeemed by the experience\u2014there is no other word for it. It is the shared humanity you remember best, or perhaps the shared _gorillaness_ would be more accurate: their fully rounded personalities, the playful curiosity, the lazy looks, the haughty disdain, the way they cuddle and kiss, lounge and look thoughtfully into the distance. And you realize the debt the world owes to the prickly and abrasive Dian Fossey.\n\nA librarian at my local branch in Calgary had met Dian Fossey many years before. Alina Freedman first went to Africa in 1971 with her husband at the time, an anthropologist named Jim. She was getting her master's in linguistics, and they travelled together to Rwanda on a Fulbright scholarship.\n\n\"We were based in the north, in an abandoned Belgian manor with no running water or electricity. The volcanoes were active back then, and at night, the sky would glow.\"\n\nShe met Dian Fossey the following summer.\n\n\"It was at the American embassy's residence in Kigali. They rented rooms, and she happened to be there when Jim and I came by.\"\n\n\"What was your impression of her?\"\n\nAlina laughed. \"She looked like a hippie. She looked like the rest of us. We were all hippies. But her reputation preceded her. She was already kind of a star. She had Leakey behind her. She had Fulbright money. She was a well-endowed scholar. Strong personality. Friendly enough, but quiet. Not a big talker.\"\n\nThe abandoned manor house Alina and Jim were staying in wasn't far from the mountain where Fossey had established her base camp.\n\n\"So we went to see her. It was a long hike. Very hot and humid. I passed out at one point, sat down on the trail, I remember. We climbed all day, and when we finally got to Dian's place, we said 'Hi!' And she said, 'I'm going out. Bye.' And she left us there. No tea. No small talk. She just left.\"\n\n\"So what did you do?\"\n\n\"We climbed back down.\" Alina thought about this for a moment. \"I don't think she was really interested in people.\"\n\n**53**\n\nJEAN-CLAUDE'S WIFE CHRISTINE had a brother and sister-in-law in Ruhengeri, and Christine had asked us to stop in and see them when we passed through.\n\nI liked Ruhengeri. The town (now known as Musanze) was filled with shops and bustling side lanes, with a scattering of new office buildings plopped down improbably in their midst, yet it didn't feel congested or constrained in the least. Spaced out nicely among the trees, even its \"downtown\" wasn't choked with traffic or clouded with exhaust\u2014remarkable considering it was the gateway community to Volcanoes National Park and as such was on the main tourist beat.\n\nMuzungus were everywhere, post-trek looking weary but happy, pre-trek looking tidy yet nervous. When Jean-Claude and I stopped at La Paillotte, a bakery caf\u00e9 that sold Belgian pastries and suitably murky coffee, it was full of pink faces.\n\nI swirled my cup, finished the last of my croissant. \"The coffee's good,\" I said, prodding Jean-Claude one last time. \"You'd be supporting local industry.\"\n\nWe were sitting on the caf\u00e9's shaded veranda, watching a delivery truck loaded with Primus try to back into a space that was physically smaller than the vehicle itself and\u2014in defiance of all known theories of spatial geometry\u2014somehow succeeding.\n\n\"Zeyad'za formaldehyde,\" said the man next to me. \"To za bier.\"\n\nHe was South African, with straw-blond hair and a face so sunburned his lips looked white. I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly, but as I adjusted for his accent it became horribly clear what he was saying. \"Primus,\" he explained. \"They add formaldehyde, to help preserve it.\"\n\nWith that he downed his espresso as though from a shot glass, donned a canvas sun hat, and bid us adieu, leaving me with a gurgling sensation in my gut.\n\nI turned to Jean-Claude. \"That can't be true, right? I mean...\"\n\nJean-Claude said, \"I don't think so. But look at the positive. If it is true, your insides will be well-preserved.\" And then, underlining the point unnecessarily, I thought, he leaned in and said, \"Very... well... preserved.\"\n\nHe was right. Over the previous couple of weeks, I'd downed enough pints of Primus to pickle a pharaoh, _if_ what the South African had said was true.\n\nChristine's brother Jackson wasn't in Ruhengeri when Jean-Claude and I came through. A member of the Rwandan Armed Forces, he was away on a peacekeeping mission in Sudan, though this in itself was not unusual; Rwanda is one of the leading supporters of UN missions in Africa and abroad, far surpassing anything Canada provides. When I was there, Rwanda had 5,200 peacekeepers serving in UN missions around the world, the highest percentage of peacekeepers per capita of any country and among the top six _total_ contributing nations worldwide.\n\nJackson was in Sudan, but his wife, Madelene, was in Ruhengeri.\n\nShe ran the J Center Restaurant, a buffet-style eatery in one of Ruhengeri's new office buildings. Even then, she'd had trouble finding a space. Vacancies were at a premium in Ruhengeri, and rents were soaring.\n\nShe welcomed us in with a quiet grace. Her two-year-old son Manzi, Christine's nephew, was plump and lovable\u2014and terrified of me. Forget bouncing him on my knee; I couldn't even draw near him without his face scrunching up, his bottom lip trembling, tears welling. If I tried to say hi, he would run for cover into the arms of the nearest non-me adult, bawling.\n\n\"He's shy around strangers,\" Madelene said, unconvincingly.\n\nManzi had been roused from his nap next door and brought over to meet his uncle Jean-Claude\u2014who was a perfect stranger too, as far as he was concerned. Jean-Claude he had no trouble with. But me? Different story. It was disconcerting to be disliked so intensely by someone so small.\n\nThe rest of the staff passed him around like a huggable hamper, as he gurgled and cooed cooperatively... till he got to me. And then the bawling started.\n\nThe staff thought this was hilarious.\n\nMadelene pretended not to know why her son was crying. \"C'mon,\" I said. \"We all know why. And it's not because I'm a 'stranger.' Surely other muzungus must come in here?\"\n\n\"They do,\" Madelene admitted, \"but Manzi isn't usually here. My mother watches him at home.\"\n\nI exhausted my repertoire\u2014jangly keys, peek-a-boo face, coochie-coochie-coo\u2014nothing. Sigh.\n\nAs Jean-Claude and Madelene caught up on family news, I turned my attention to the buffet. As always, it was a Rwandan cornucopia, rich with fresh fruit and trays of savoury fare: stews and dumplings, papa frites and scrawny marathon-chicken legs. As I came back from my third sally, plate dripping, Jean-Claude mentioned to Madelene how we'd noticed the unfortunate lack of restraint shown by his fellow Rwandans when it came to buffets.\n\n\"They always pile their plates so high, instead of taking a little bit and going back for more. It's\"\u2014he wanted to say embarrassing, but stopped himself\u2014\"funny how they do that.\"\n\nJean-Claude, I should note, had already made several trips to the buffet himself.\n\nMadelene gave him a pained look. \"Well, you see, that's because you are only supposed to go up one time. The price is per plate.\"\n\nJean-Claude stopped, mid-chew. He looked shovel-smacked by this. \"You mean\u2014you mean it's not 'all-you-can-eat'?\"\n\nShe clearly felt uncomfortable breaking the awkward news to him, but she had no choice. \"Customers are supposed to pay each time they go up.\"\n\nI looked down at my plate.\n\n\"Every buffet is like that?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Every buffet in Rwanda?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\nI was mortified, as was Jean-Claude. Here we'd been going cheerfully from buffet to buffet across Rwanda, making multiple sorties every time but only paying once\u2014 _and no one had said anything_.\n\n\"They were probably embarrassed to bring it up,\" she said. \"We notice it here as well, how muzungus will go again and again. It's very strange.\"\n\n\"But... no one told me,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nI looked over at him and grinned. \"Face it, JC. You've been gone so long, you're just another muzungu now, like me. They didn't say anything because they figured you didn't know any better.\"\n\nAnd here's the thing: he didn't.\n\nJean-Claude's brow furled, and didn't unfurl for several days.\n\n**54**\n\nA FEW KILOMETRES AWAY from the J Center Restaurant, tucked in behind a school, lies an ancient volcanic cave, complete with a colony of bats and a natural stone bridge formed by prehistoric lava flows.\n\nDuring the genocide, Tutsis took refuge in this cave and were massacred. The cave, an easily accessible and by all accounts fascinating geological attraction, is also a mass grave. Visitors are allowed in only on a special permit from the RDB, which needs to be arranged in advance\u2014as Jean-Claude and I discovered when we showed up, unannounced, only to be turned away by a security guard with a rubber truncheon.\n\nWe could see the opening to the Musanze Cave just below us, down a short flight of stairs. Only a metal fence and that rubber truncheon barred our way, but without a permit from the RDB, stamped in triplicate no doubt, we couldn't enter. The guard hinted, with all the subtlety of a piano dropped from the fourteenth floor, that maybe, just perhaps, he _might_ possibly be able to circumvent the rules\u2014we'd come so far to see the caves, and wouldn't it be a shame not to view them?\u2014were we to, oh, I don't know, compensate him for the inconvenience. Say, five dollars U.S.?\n\nJean-Claude was appalled and refused on our behalf, even as I was reaching for my wallet. I figured, _Five bucks? No problem_. It was the only time we were ever asked for a bribe, and it was such a trifle, on par with what one encounters in, say, Paris or Rome on a daily basis, that I hadn't considered the impact of what I was about to do.\n\nJean-Claude stayed my hand. \"Don't. If you pay, everyone will have to pay and things will begin to break down.\" Zero tolerance of corruption meant zero tolerance. We shouldn't undermine the struggle Rwandans had made to curtail this sort of thing just for the sake of expediency. I knew that, but... the caves were _right there_.\n\n\"We will go back to Kigali,\" Jean-Claude told the guard. (Kigali was at least a two-hour drive away, which would make it a four-hour return.) \"And we will get the permit. And when we do, I will explain to the RDB that someone\u2014I won't say who, not this time\u2014is attempting to extort money from tourists. If you try this sort of thing again, you will be in big trouble.\"\n\nThe man quickly backpedalled, suddenly claiming it was all a misunderstanding. But Jean-Claude strode off and I followed.\n\nAs we walked back along the edge of the school grounds, an epic soccer game was underway: at least, oh, two hundred students or more on either side by my count, with one team in blue pinnies, the other in red, with more students lined up on the sidelines ready to sub in. It was a massive undertaking, and when Jean-Claude asked one of the students watching what was going on, he explained that it was an annual event. Every year, after the final exams were wrapped up, the school's two second-year classes challenged each other to a match.\n\nThis was a science school, and these were mathematics and chemistry students for the most part, so not exactly top-drawer when it came to athletics. Let's just say there were a lot of skinny kids with taped-up glasses chasing the ball that day.\n\nJean-Claude stood watching the match unfold with his arms crossed, frowning. I knew that frown; I'd seen it when he was coaching my son's soccer team.\n\n\"No, no, no, no,\" he said. \"That's not right. That's not right at all.\"\n\nThe ball was fired down the field and just as quickly fired back.\n\n\"Oh my goodness,\" said Jean-Claude. \"They have no positions, no game plan. Who is coaching these kids?\" he asked.\n\n\"No one,\" the student replied. \"They arrange it themselves.\"\n\nThe red team was getting pelted. Their blue-pinnied rivals lobbed a long ball past a flailing goaltender to the sound of groans and cheers, respectively. Just a few minutes later, they scored again.\n\n\"Oh, this is terrible,\" Jean-Claude said. \"Look at that! They're not passing back, they're not crossing over. They are just kicking it as hard as they can.\"\n\nAnd next thing I knew, Jean-Claude had vanished. I'm not sure how he did it. One moment he was standing beside me, the next he was gone. I looked around, couldn't find him anywhere\u2014not at first, anyway. I should have known. Jean-Claude had resurfaced on the other side of the field, where he quickly called a time-out (on what authority? his own, I suppose), bringing the red team in for a huddle.\n\nAlthough mildly confused by his presence, neither side said anything. From where I was standing I could see Jean-Claude frantically carving out angles in the air, explaining to the red-pinnied players how they should come down this way, pass that way, cut across there.\n\nI knew then that we were not going to get to Kigali in time for a cave permit. _The game was afoot!_ after all. In every sense. Getting Jean-Claude off a soccer field was like trying to pry a bottle of Primus from my talon-like hands: a doomed endeavour from the start.\n\nInstead, I settled in to watch the game. Jean-Claude's coaching had an immediate impact. The red team scored\u2014finally!\u2014and then rushed to fill in the gaps in their defence as their new coach called out plays from the sidelines. The blue team was still winning, to be sure, but as Jean-Claude would later say, at least now it was a match.\n\nOther students, on seeing me in the crowd, drifted over to say hi, to ask me what brought me to their school, and, just as curiously, why my friend was coaching one of their teams. I tried to convince them that I was a scout for Manchester United, here on orders from me wee fayther, but they weren't fooled in the least.\n\nTheir English was excellent. They were tired, though, having just finished writing their final exams, and were waiting now on the results. \"We will know how we did on Friday.\" When I asked if they were nervous, most of them said, \"No, no, we will do fine,\" though one girl admitted she prayed more at exam time than she ever did in church, which roused laughter and agreement from her peers.\n\nShe was fifteen and wanted to study industrial chemistry at university.\n\nI didn't miss a beat. \"So engineering for chemicals, not for the paint but for the business?\"\n\n\"Exactly!\" she said. Exactly.\n\n**55**\n\nTHE RPF INVASION OF RWANDA almost ended before it began. In 1990, the RPF, led by the popular and charismatic Fred Rwigyema, crossed over from Uganda into Rwanda, only to be turned back decisively by a barrage from French paratroopers and government forces. Rwigyema himself was killed within the first forty-eight hours.\n\nPresident Habyarimana pronounced the RPF \"finished.\" But they weren't. One of Rwigyema's childhood friends had been a serious young boy named Paul Kagame. They'd grown up together in the same refugee camp, were like brothers. Kagame was enrolled in a military training course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, as a member of the Ugandan military, when news came of the failed invasion. Kagame immediately flew back, crossed into Rwanda, and took command of a scattered and demoralized RPF.\n\nKagame made a tactical retreat, not to Uganda\u2014where anger over the RPF's using their border as a staging ground had ratcheted up tensions\u2014but north instead, into the remote and impenetrable rainforests of the Virunga Mountains. There, in the dripping cold, the RPF regrouped. It was a strange, almost surreal moment in history: guerrillas and gorillas, both in the mist, passing each other on jungle trails. Two worlds overlapping.\n\nAnd it was from those misted heights that the RPF launched an audacious counterattack.\n\nEven Kagame's harshest critics will admit he is a superb tactician. General Dallaire called him \"a military genius\" when it came to outplaying an enemy using feints, speed, and surprise. Looking down from the Virunga Mountains, Kagame zeroed in on Ruhengeri Prison\u2014the \"Rwandan Bastille,\" as it was known, a notorious holding pen that housed hundreds of political prisoners, many of them Hutu opponents of Habyarimana, with others held on the mere suspicion of supporting the rebels.\n\nHabyarimana's generals were still congratulating themselves on having defeated the upstart RPF (with France's assistance, of course) when the attack on Ruhengeri began. During the night, hundreds of RPF soldiers had infiltrated the forests above the city, slipping silently through the woods...\n\nAt dawn, they struck. The prison's warden, Charles Uwihoreye, called Kigali, frantically asking for instructions. \"We are under attack! What should we do? We need the army!\"\n\nThe orders he received? Kill the prisoners. Kill them all. Don't allow the RPF the satisfaction of freeing any of them.\n\nUwihoreye was stunned. He couldn't do such a thing, and he said so. He was a warden, not an executioner. \"I'm sorry, but I cannot do that.\" He hung up the phone and sat there, dazed, as the sound of fighting grew closer.\n\nThe phone rang. When he answered it, the directive was repeated more forcefully than before. It was an order that came directly from President Habyarimana's office: _Kill the prisoners_. Kill them all.\n\nThe warden put the phone down and walked out into the grounds of the prison. Gunfire and panic. Smoke roiling up in the distance.\n\n\"What shall we do?\" one of his guards asked. The RPF were breaking through the back gates, and hundreds of prisoners were about to escape.\n\n\"Let them go,\" he said. \"Let them all go.\"\n\nThe Battle of Ruhengeri lasted throughout the morning, and by midday the RPF had taken control of the town, capturing weapons and food supplies and bringing several high-ranking Hutu opposition members back with them.\n\nCharles Uwihoreye, the warden who had refused to execute unarmed prisoners, returned to his office to await his fate. He was arrested the next day on charges of insubordination and thrown into prison, but was eventually released under pressure from human rights groups.\n\nThe battle would prove a turning point in the war. It shook the Hutu Power's inner circle to the core, spread a fear of the rebels that bordered on hysteria, and demonstrated to the world that the RPF was a force to be reckoned with. News of their success relit a faltering fire, and across Rwanda, young men began slipping away in the night to join their ranks. Under the directives of Paul Kagame, a motley band of rebels became a hardened, disciplined army 15,000 strong. It was the beginning of the end for the Habyarimana regime.\n\nGiven the pivotal role that Ruhengeri Prison had played in the war, Jean-Claude and I decided to stop by. It was easy enough to find, sitting at the end of a long, dirt-packed road. But the prison itself, a collection of bungalow-slab structures arranged around a courtyard, was not what I expected.\n\nIt was, first of all, surprisingly airy, dare I say well-ventilated. As in, boasting lots of open windows and low walls, not features one normally associates with a house of incarceration. Hardly airtight, let alone prisoner-proof. It must have been the easiest thing in the world to escape from Ruhengeri Prison, were one so inclined. The boarding school at Nyange was better barricaded. Hell, the main gate of the prison was simply a booth with an open door behind it. I don't mean the door was left open, I mean there was no door at all. And this was the _main entrance_. It was manned by a single guard with a single rifle, posted on ground level with his back to the prison yard. I could see inmates strolling by, just over his shoulder. Had they wanted to storm him, it would have been the equivalent of a rugby tackle from behind.\n\n\"Are you sure this is the right place?\" I asked Jean-Claude. It seemed more like a rundown summer camp than a penitentiary.\n\nIt got stranger still.\n\nDirectly across from the main entrance was a small shop attached to the prison. The shop was crowded with customers, and when I say customers, I mean, of course, \"prisoners.\" This was, it turns out, the locally run canteen, where inmates in their pyjama-like uniforms came to buy toiletries, foodstuffs, and other small items. The wall of the canteen was completely open\u2014right where the prisoners were queuing.\n\nLet me see if I can convey just how bizarre a sight this was. Jean-Claude and I are waiting to speak with a guard manning the front alcove (it wasn't really a doorway, certainly not a gate) over _here_. And just over _there_ , across from us, maybe six metres away, is a building that juts out from the prison (and is, therefore, located _outside_ the prison walls; do you spot the flaw in that?). And this building is entirely open on one side, forming a breezy expanse, waist high. (\"For the heat,\" Jean-Claude explained, as though that made it any better.) No iron bars, no wire mesh, no panes of reinforced glass. Just one long open-air window. The \"customers\" inside could have jumped over and run away before the frazzled woman at the till could've said anything, and anyway, she was so busy making change and counting out allotments of cigarettes and such that she would hardly have noticed.\n\nSeveral of these prisoners had spotted me by this point and were eyeing us with undue interest, intrigued I suppose by my presence. _\"Now what's a muzungu doing here?\"_ None of the looks were overtly hostile, true, but I felt exposed nonetheless; they could have swarmed Jean-Claude and me in a matter of seconds, and I imagine I would have made an alluring hostage. (More so considering I was Alex Ferguson's son; the ransom demands would have soared.)\n\n\"Um, Jean-Claude?\" I whispered. \"Maybe we should come back later.\"\n\nThe guard we'd been waiting on had been riffling through the papers presented by a visiting family member ahead of us, someone's wife by the looks of it, but now that this was sorted out, he called us forward with a nod.\n\nJean-Claude explained that I was an important journalist here to do a story on Rwandan prison reform and asked if we might speak with the warden, maybe have a tour of the grounds, meet with some of the prisoners. Did we have an appointment? No, not exactly. A letter of some sort? Ah, no.\n\nThe guard rolled his eyes, almost audibly, and said\u2014sighed, really\u2014\"Wait here.\"\n\nAnd he left!\n\nThe only thing now standing in the way of a mass breakout from Ruhengeri Prison was a pair of soccer dads from Canada armed solely with our disarming smiles, indomitable will, and\u2014in my case\u2014a penchant for making children cry. The prisoners inside the main yard were looking at Jean-Claude and me with cocked heads and, to my paranoidally inflamed mind, anyway, they seemed to be inching ever closer. Fortunately, the guard suddenly reappeared at that point, superior officer in tow. I handed this fellow one of my _Canadian Geographic_ business cards. _On assignment, baby!_ And he radioed someone further up the food chain, and so on, until, eventually, the warden himself appeared.\n\nAttempting to gain access to a federal penitentiary under quasi-false pretenses? Was that an indictable offence? And wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if I ended up being incarcerated at this very prison?\n\nThe warden was friendly and courteous. A thin figure with a wry half-smile, he was battling a bad case of laryngitis the day we dropped by, so the conversation was a bit strained.\n\nBecause we didn't have clearance from\u2014well, from anyone really, we couldn't go inside the prison grounds, but the warden said he would be happy to answer any questions I might have here at the front gate. He spoke flawless English, having grown up in Uganda.\n\nWhen he heard \"Uganda,\" Jean-Claude immediately twigged. \"You were with the RPF?\"\n\nThe warden nodded. He had been part of the original invasion, had fought in the Battle of Ruhengeri, had stormed the walls of this very prison. He pointed out the wooded hills where he and the others had crept down, where they had first breached the outer walls and where they had come under the heaviest fire.\n\nI asked him, \"Did you lose men?\"\n\nHe smiled softly. \"Of course. It was war. You always lose men. It's unavoidable.\"\n\nAccording to the warden, Ruhengeri Prison today held around 1,800 inmates. Only 400 of these were genocide perpetrators, successive presidential pardons having released thousands of the lower-rung members.\n\n\"Prisoners grow their own food and are responsible for feeding themselves. They are organized into work groups,\" he explained. \"It keeps them busy.\"\n\nWe could hear the sound of women singing.\n\n\"The women's choir,\" he explained. \"We have male and female prisoners, and of course male and female guards. The women stay in separate sleeping quarters, but there are common areas, too.\" The prison was run on a communal plan, much like a kibbutz.\n\nUnder the old regime, Ruhengeri Prison had a dark and fearsome reputation. When the RPF took it over they knocked down walls and rearranged the layout to such an extent that the rear of the prison now opens up directly onto the hills behind it, where prisoners plant crops, tend fields. I could see a line of men, colour-coded, plodding along a distant ridge, hoes on shoulders. Pyjamaed farmers, tilling the ground, slowly paying their debt.\n\n\"But,\" I protested, trying my best to be tactful, \"not having a back wall, um, doesn't that kind of make it easy for them to escape? I mean, they can just _go_ if they want to.\"\n\nThe warden smiled. \"Go? Where?\"\n\nI looked at the hills that surrounded us, and he was right: every knoll, every nub, every plot of land, every home was tallied and accounted for. One could run for the Virunga rainforest, I suppose, live among the gorillas or try to cross over to the even thicker jungles of Congo, but who would do such a thing? There really is nowhere to hide in Rwanda. That is what made the genocide possible in the first place, that is what made it so horrifically efficient.\n\nThe two most remarkable features of Rwandan society, the two singularities, if you will, are (a) the genocide and (b) the sweeping economic and social recovery that followed. They are equally inexplicable, equally unfathomable, and almost unimaginable in their scale and scope. Standing at the entrance to Ruhengeri Prison, I realized that these two aspects of Rwanda were not at odds with each other, but sprang from the same source, were rooted in the same deeply ingrained national traits. Two sides of the same coin.\n\nAs we walked back up the road from the world's most escapable prison, clouds were curling over the Virungas. The sun was trying to come through. I could hear the _kii_ of a hawk-eagle above us, but when I looked, the bird was lost in the overcast.\n\n**56**\n\nTIME NOW FOR A CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL INTERLUDE. Cryptozoology of course, being the study of mythical creatures reputed to exist but rarely encountered, those dwelling in the cusp between folklore and science: yetis, the Loch Ness monster, sasquatches, and their ilk.\n\nJean-Claude and I were back in the capital again, and Kigali seemed to have grown larger, more hectic in our absence. We were swallowed by the clangour, thrown in and out of whirligig traffic circles, with buses bullying their way through and trucks catapulting past as if fired from a slingshot. It was wonderful.\n\nAs we clattered across a teeth-rattling stretch of cobblestone\u2014a rarity on Rwandan roads, thankfully\u2014I spotted a sign that read OGOPOGO RESTAURANT.\n\nOgopogo?\n\n\"Gotta be owned by a Canadian,\" I said, and we veered over to investigate.\n\nFor those of you who may not be familiar with it, the Ogopogo is Canada's answer to Nessie. The creature is said to haunt the cold waters of British Columbia's Lake Okanagan, and legends of the Ogopogo date back further than those of Loch Ness. The Okanagan First Nations told of a malevolent being that would drag people under the water, not unlike the\u2014entirely nonexistent!\u2014crocodiles of Lake Kivu.\n\nIf you've been wondering why the Ogopogo hasn't been spotted splashing about in Lake Okanagan lately, I may have the answer. The Ogopogo, it would seem, has pulled up stakes and moved to warmer climes. Even so, Kigali struck me as an odd choice. There were no deep lakes here to hide in, only a shallow and marshy river.\n\nThe restaurant's interior was dark and spacious, featuring low ceilings, long tables, and a menu that prominently featured fish skewers\u2014appropriately, considering the restaurant's namesake. I ordered a burger, Jean-Claude had the fish, and when we inquired as to how the caf\u00e9 got its name, several explanations were offered.\n\n\"It's named after a type of dinosaur,\" one of the waiters said. \"It's extinct now.\"\n\nThe bartender cut in. \"Not a dinosaur,\" he said. \"The Ogopogo was never real. It's a myth. Like a dragon.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" another waiter said. \"It's real. The owner's sister lives in Canada. She knows.\"\n\nWas the owner of the restaurant Canadian? A transplanted British Columbian, perhaps?\n\n\"No, he's Rwandan. His older brother owned this place first. It was originally called Papyrus. He renamed it.\"\n\nAnd why would Ogopogo move to Rwanda?\n\n\"Probably got tired of the cold,\" the bartender said with a laugh. \"I hear there is too much winter in Canada. Let me call the owner. He lives nearby. He can tell you better.\"\n\nThe bench cushions featured African motifs of various stylized monsters, but nothing overly Ogopogo-ish. One would think the menu would have at least boasted \"Nessie fries\" or \"Sasquatch shakes,\" but no.\n\nThe owner showed up soon after, an affable young man with an equally affable smile.\n\n\"Hello, my name is Condo Raphael. And you are... Canadian?\"\n\nHow did he know?\n\nCondo spoke English, French, Kinyarwanda, Swahili\u2014and more. My Swahili being a bit rusty, we stuck with rudimentary English and a smattering of Kinyarwanda, as translated by Jean-Claude.\n\nCondo had indeed taken over the original restaurant from his brother.\n\n\"That was in 2011,\" he explained.\n\nHis brother had gotten into an argument with the city over parking regulations. He didn't have adequate spaces, the neighbours were complaining, and this being Rwanda he wasn't able to slip someone a discreet payment to make the problem go away, as one might in Italy or Kenya. Instead, he ended up tearing down half the building, almost out of spite. (Condo's brother sounded a bit hot-headed, the sort who, as they say in Northern Ireland, has \"ruffled enough feathers to build himself an ostrich.\")\n\nCondo, clearly the calmer and more diplomatic of the two, bought out his older brother, added extra parking in front, closed off the noisy open-air patio, and then rebuilt the restaurant almost from scratch, with an indoor deck and a long, inviting bar.\n\n\"Around that time, I was watching a National Geographic nature program on television. It was about the Ogopogo, and it talked about how the creature might have endured. The theory was, he survived the ice age in a deep lake and later came back to life. I realized this was like my restaurant. It had survived and been brought back, just like the Ogopogo.\"\n\nCondo did have a sister-in-law in Canada. That part was true. But the name itself came from a television documentary.\n\n\"Rwandese people are puzzled by the name,\" he said. \"Some people think it's a Nigerian word. In Nigerian languages there are a lot of _O_ sounds.\"\n\nOne of Condo's regulars, a flight engineer with RwandAir, was a Canadian\u2014from the Okanagan, no less.\n\n\"He told me the images of African monsters I have on the cushions are wrong. He said he's going to bring me back some correct images of Ogopogo next time he goes home.\"\n\nCondo liked my idea of naming items on the menu after other mythical creatures, yetis and mermaids and such, and I sketched him a picture of the Ogopogo as a possible mascot, dimly remembered from my days in Kelowna as a teenager. He frowned at my rendering. It didn't look particularly fierce. \"Maybe add fangs,\" I said. \"Or horns.\"\n\nThe resurrection of this restaurant, like the city, like the country, was a lesson in resilience. Rwanda, in its way, was an Ogopogo nation, one brought back from the brink of extinction, reinvented, reborn. And as evening settled over Kigali, the lights of the Ogopogo grew warmer, and the laughter grew louder. It was a welcoming place, much like its owner, and when Jean-Claude and I finally rose to say goodnight, I asked Condo, \"Do Canadians come here?\"\n\n\"They do.\"\n\n\"How many?\" I asked.\n\nHe smiled. \"All of them.\"\n\n**57**\n\nWE SPENT THE NEXT FEW DAYS in Kigali catching up on our laundry, cleaning out the Land Cruiser, and making arrangements for the final leg of our journey.\n\nChristine's mother and grandmother lived in Kigali's Ndera district, a warren of homes in the city's west end, and I went with Jean-Claude on one of his visits. Meeting them was like viewing a set of Russian nesting dolls: Christine was taller than her mom and her mom was taller than her grandma, and they all looked exactly the same, just more and more adorable as they got older. While Christine's mom, Hel\u00e8ne, fussed over us, producing snacks and serving the same ginger-laced tea Christine was famous for back in Calgary, the grandmother tutted and fretted, upset that we weren't staying for supper. (She spoke at great length about this, reprimanding Jean-Claude repeatedly over his breach of etiquette, an eloquent and extended discourse in Kinyarwanda that he translated as \"She wanted to feed us.\")\n\nIt took some doing, but Jean-Claude eventually eased us out of their home with repeated promises to return again when we had a \"proper appetite.\" (\"Once they start feeding you, they won't stop,\" he'd warned.) They were wonderful ladies, but in-laws are in-laws wherever you go in this world, and no matter how long Jean-Claude's visits were they would never be long enough, and anyway, why hadn't he brought Christine and the children with him, they hadn't seen their grandchildren in years! When I showed the photographs I'd taken of them to Christine after I returned to Canada, she got tears in her eyes. It had been so long since she'd seen her mom, her grandma, or her siblings that I felt guilty at having made such a breezy visit, one she dreamed of, yearned for, almost daily. Christine's younger brother Jonas lived with their mom, and he asked us, longingly, about Canada\u2014a country he had never visited. There were opportunities in Rwanda, but he dreamed of a wider trajectory; I'm sure he would have swapped places with his sister at a moment's notice, had he been able to.\n\nRelatives, old friends, former colleagues, future contacts: Jean-Claude had a roll call of people to see over the next two days, and I spent my time sleeping in and occasionally kicking around Kigali. The neighbourhood we were staying in was comfortable, but awfully quiet. There was a definite paucity of pubs, and everything else seemed to shut down at six, so one evening I decided to make the long hike to a nearby hotel. I could see it perched invitingly on a ridge, lit up like the _Queen Mary_ , but no matter how long I trudged it never seemed to grow any nearer, at times even seeming to scuttle farther away from me, sideways like a crab. Walking in Kigali is always an act of misdirection, of oblique angles and coy avenues\u2014the roads are always so decisively indecisive\u2014and I ended up making a long and unfruitful loop down and around, arriving back in the alleyway behind our apartment building, confused as ever. I walked over to the Solace Ministries guest house instead, hoping to catch a late supper.\n\nWhen I went in, I was surprised to find Jean-Claude there, along with Lorne, the psychiatrist from Toronto, and his daughter Adriana. I'd forgotten that Jean-Claude had arranged a meeting between Lorne and Jean-Claude's niece Clementine, who worked as a psychiatric nurse at Ndera Hospital. Jean Gakwandi, the man who had founded Solace Ministries, was there as well, so I pulled up a chair.\n\nMr. Gakwandi was a genocide survivor. \"For some people the genocide is just a fact of history,\" he told me. \"But for those who went through it, it is a reality that we live every day.\"\n\nAbout one-third of those who died in the genocide were children, and many of those children who did survive\u2014men and women now in their late twenties and early thirties\u2014had been exposed to unspeakable acts of violence. Many saw parents and loved ones chopped down in front of them. An investigation by UNICEF revealed that more than 90 percent of the children who survived the Rwandan genocide had witnessed bloodshed. More than half a million were orphaned. They have been described as \"the living victims of the genocide,\" a generation still struggling to get by, often plagued by depression, substance abuse, and other mental illnesses. As one woman told a journalist investigating the effects of these crimes, \"I can't sleep. I'm afraid of dreams.\"\n\nWe know from other genocides\u2014the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian\u2014that the effects last for generations, are handed down from parent to child to grandchild. And yet Rwanda faces a critical shortage of trained medical staff, not just physicians and surgeons but therapists as well. In a nation suffering from post-traumatic stress and other untreated disorders, there are only _six_ psychiatrists available for a population of 11 million. Rwanda spends more on health care than most African countries, but not nearly enough of it has gone toward mental health. The traumatized often feel abandoned, forgotten, empty. The use of sexual violence during the genocide was particularly horrific and widespread.\n\nJean-Claude's niece was explaining to Lorne the need for therapy. Lorne was associated with the University of Toronto, and Jean-Claude had arranged this meeting to discuss the possibility of bringing out an instructor from Canada to work with Rwandan doctors and medical staff to provide the specialized training they needed to deal with these issues, to help people and communities form coping strategies.\n\nA chance meeting during a lighthearted trek to see some chimpanzees had revealed an opportunity to Jean-Claude that many people would have missed. By connecting a psychiatrist from Canada with a nurse from Rwanda, he'd opened a door to the possibility of something bigger, something that might have a real and lasting impact. I'd seen this before, Jean-Claude creating unlikely connections, bringing groups with seemingly unrelated interests together. Had he put these networking skills of his toward purely financial gain, he would have been a millionaire by now. But nooooo, he had to go around _helping people_.\n\nAs we walked back to our apartment across the packed-clay alley, I asked Jean-Claude why he did it.\n\nWe reached the back gate, waited for the night guard to let us in.\n\n\"Rwanda's doctors and nurses need training,\" he said. \"I thought maybe Lorne can help.\"\n\n\"I don't mean just this,\" I said. \"I mean everything, all of it. You came to Canada with nothing. You had just arrived, were working at a meat-cutting plant, yet you started volunteering at the Calgary Food Bank and Mustard Seed and Inn from the Cold. You set up a free soccer program for low-income families, spent four years running it as a volunteer. Why?\"\n\nJean-Claude had once asked me to help him update his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and I'd counted no fewer than nine different volunteer organizations he was involved with, everything from homeless shelters to youth-at-risk outreach programs to soccer camps for underprivileged children.\n\nI thought he might shrug it off and say something like, \"I don't know, Will. It's just something I do. I like to help.\"\n\nBut he took my question seriously. Jean-Claude looked at me\u2014I could hear the guard making his way slowly across the grounds, keys clinking\u2014and he said, \"It kind of haunts you, being alive. You always ask yourself why. Why _me_ , why did I make it out, when so many others did not? Was this luck? Only that? I was a nineteen-year-old kid. It didn't matter if I lived or not. I didn't have children then or a wife or anybody who depended on me. There were people who were doctors, Will. Who were teachers, who had families, who had something to contribute. And they all died. Why them and not me?\" The guard opened the gate, but Jean-Claude didn't go through. He stood a moment at the threshold and then said, \"I guess I feel I owe _something_ , that I need to give back _somehow_. Otherwise, what was the point of it?\"\n\nWe stepped into a dark garden on the other side of the gate, started the long walk up to our building.\n\n\"I think about that,\" he said. \"I think about it all the time.\"\n\n**PART FOUR**\n\n**THE ROAD TO RUSUMO**\n**58**\n\nTHERE IS A WORD IN KINYARWANDA, _kwihaza_ , which means \"to be self-sufficient.\" Kwihaza is the stated goal of Rwanda's long-term development: to end foreign aid entirely and become self-reliant as a people.\n\nAnother word, _umuganda_ , focuses this idea at the local level. Translated as \"communal work,\" umuganda might involve planting trees, repairing school playgrounds, building terraces to stop erosion. During the genocide, however, the meaning of umuganda changed. Militia death squads began referring to themselves as \"work crews,\" and they considered what they were doing to be a form of community service. The killing of Tutsis and moderate Hutus was referred to as \"cutting grass, pulling up the weeds.\"\n\nToday, the word has been reclaimed. Like the _gacaca_ (\"patch of grass\") courts and the _imihigo_ ritual of officials declaring their goals and then being held accountable for their implementation, the concept of umuganda has been revived to fit the current situation.\n\nNo one is exempt. On the last Saturday of the month, everyone\u2014government officials, judges, the prime minister, the president, teachers, students, shop owners, day labourers\u2014is expected to show up at their local umuganda project to help out. You will be fined for not taking part, and if you want to receive certain government services, you may be asked to submit a card, signed and stamped, showing you did. (Religious groups such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, who consider Saturday the Sabbath, are required to organize their own projects on alternative days.) It's true that some people just pay the fine and go back to bed, but they aren't allowed to leave their homes until the umuganda is over. You can't go for a morning drive or a casual stroll on umuganda day.\n\n\"With politicians, umuganda is like flipping pancakes at the Stampede,\" Jean-Claude explained, referring to Calgary's perennially co-opted photo-op. \"If you are a politician in Rwanda you can make a big production from showing up, maybe just to shovel a few scoops of dirt, shake hands, pose for pictures, talk to the voters.\"\n\nBut most Rwandans take it seriously. How seriously? Allow me to illustrate with the following statistic. Over the course of our three weeks in Rwanda, Jean-Claude and I would travel from one end of the country to the other, up and down narrow roads and broad thoroughfares, on dirt lanes and polished asphalt, through cities and hamlets, hills and plains, and we were never stopped by the police. Not once. The number of police checkpoints we encountered was: zero. Except on umuganda day. The number of times we were stopped by police on this, the last Saturday of the month? Seven.\n\nOn each occasion we were pulled over and questioned by gruff police officers who wanted to know why we weren't at our neighbourhood umuganda. Or rather, _Jean-Claude_ was questioned. Foreign visitors to Rwanda are not required to participate, and there was something about me, my body language or my accent or something, that suggested I wasn't from around here. Every time we were stopped, Jean-Claude would have to explain that he was a tourist en route to Akagera National Park, and often as not would be asked to show his passport. Only then would we be allowed through.\n\nThey never asked for my passport, strangely enough. On occasion, I would try to present it anyway, only to have it waved away.\n\n\"This is racial profiling,\" I grumbled to Jean-Claude as we left the latest checkpoint. \"They shouldn't just _assume_ I'm not Rwandan.\"\n\nJean-Claude, meanwhile, was starting to feel guilty, as though he were shirking his civic duty.\n\n\"But you're Canadian now,\" I said. \"You have a Canadian passport, Canadian citizenship. You're allowed to be lazy. In fact, it's positively encouraged.\"\n\nUmuganda had started early. From our apartment window we could see people gathering in the alleyway below. Women started clearing grass along the edge, moving through with a practised swing of their hand scythes. Men in baggy trousers shovelled dirt into potholes and others tramped it down. Given the size of the potholes in that alley, it was a bit like throwing handfuls of sugar into the sea to reduce salinity, but no matter. I quickly realized that the point was not necessarily the work, but that it was shared.\n\nJean-Claude and I didn't get a hundred metres in our Land Cruiser before we were nabbed, waved to the side of a roundabout on an angry blast of whistle\u2014so they did have whistles! A young officer demanded to know why _we_ (meaning Jean-Claude) weren't volunteering. (Though, when it's mandatory like that, you have to wonder about the use of the word \"volunteer.\")\n\n\"You do know it's umuganda today?\" he said. I assumed this was a rhetorical question.\n\nI handed over a couple of my _Canadian Geographic_ business cards and we were allowed to continue.\n\nAnother hundred metres, another roundabout, and another police roadblock. The cross-examinations began anew. At the next roadblock it was a stern-faced female officer who appeared. She was decidedly unswayed by our dashing smiles and good looks. So much for flirting our way through. She wanted to see Jean-Claude's passport, brushed aside my proffered business cards\u2014and here I'd gone and drawn little hearts on them and everything\u2014then let us pass. At the next roadblock it was an older gentleman, who looked as weary of this as we were.\n\nOn it went, like a slow-motion game of Mother-May-I, as we inched our way out of Kigali. Normally, running a gauntlet of police barricades would leave one feeling unsettled, unnerved, even (at the city limits, the roadblock featured a spiked barrier laid across the asphalt). However, when the officers in question aren't checking for contraband goods or illicit weapons but rather asking why you aren't picking up litter or painting the local community centre, it doesn't generate the sense of danger one might expect. We sailed on calmly between checkpoints, resigned to the process. The novelty of it had long since worn off.\n\nWe were heading east, into a different Rwanda. And although much of the country is located in the upper altitudes, the eastern region slopes down into endless banana plantations and eventually scrub-plain savannah.\n\nThe central mountains give Rwanda a surprisingly temperate climate, even with the country being located on the equator. Daytime temperatures rarely vary, hovering around twenty-seven degrees Celsius year-round\u2014hot, but not oppressively so\u2014and the nights are glorious and forgiving, even chilly at times. And although much of the country is technically within Africa's malarial zone, the higher altitudes are blessedly free of _Anopheles gambiae_ , the mosquito in this region that carries the virus. But that changes when you travel east. Here the temperatures creep ever upward as the sun grows prickly and arid.\n\nRwanda's anti-malaria programs have been very successful. Targeted sprayings and the distribution of millions of insecticide-infused mosquito nets, together with medicine during the outbreaks, have reduced deaths from malaria by 85 percent over the last six years, one of the most dramatic drops and effective campaigns the World Health Organization has ever seen. I took my prescribed dose of Malarone every day, slept under Southern-belle nettings at night, and spritzed my ankles with DEET when I went out in the evenings, but otherwise I hadn't been overly concerned\u2014until now.\n\nEastern Rwanda was another matter, almost another world. The east was well within the malarial red zone, with the added presence of trap-jawed crocodiles, malcontent hippos, ill-tempered buffaloes, and even a rogue elephant or two. True, these animals were corralled inside the expansive range of Akagera National Park, but it did add a frisson of danger to our travels. And what's travel without a dash of _frisson?_ It's like beer without the formaldehyde.\n\nBecause this was umuganda day, there was no traffic on the highway. Jean-Claude's foot grew heavier; the speedometer drifted upward and the wind whistled through.\n\n\"All we need are flags on the front,\" he said, \"and some motorcycles with their sirens on and we could be a presidential\u2014What do you call it, like a private parade for VIPs?\"\n\n\"A motorcade?\"\n\n\"Exactly. It is like they closed the highway just for us.\"\n\nHe was right. It did feel as though we were leading our own motorcade, the sort that visiting potentates and Ruritanian rulers might command, except of course that visiting potentates and Ruritanian rulers are rarely pulled over by the police and forced to pull weeds at a local primary school. Not that Jean-Claude and I were forced to pull weeds, but it came close. We'd barely escaped the capital when an officer popped out of nowhere, from behind a bush, I assume, and waved us sternly to the side of the road. He'd already netted an impressive haul: three different minibuses and two taxis. A passenger from one of the taxis, a beefy businessman in an expensive suit, looked very peeved indeed.\n\nThe police officer spoke to us briefly, then waved us through, much to the chagrin of the businessman, who was now being handed a hoe and directed to a nearby field. _If you can't buy your way out of manual labour, what's the point of being rich?_ I gave him a \"Sorry, but what can I do?\" shrug as we passed.\n\nI asked Jean-Claude about the minivan buses that had been flagged down. We'd seen those passengers filing out and being handed farm implements.\n\n\"If people don't have good reason to be travelling, for example to a funeral or the doctor's or a far-away wedding, they must get out and help. Women who have young children, or the elderly people or ill people, they don't have to work, but everybody else does.\" There was an awkward pause. \"I still feel bad about not taking part,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\n\"So do I,\" I lied. \" _So do I_. But hey, what can we do?\" These were the sorts of sacrifices one makes when one is a Very Important Journalist.\n\nWith the road unrolling before us, it seemed to me that the best job to have on umuganda day (other than journalist, of course) was police officer. You got to stride about in a purposeful manner, blowing your purposeful whistle whilst purposefully nabbing layabouts and scofflaws, all without having to dig any actual ditches or pull any actual weeds yourself. And I bet you still got to take part in the picnic at the end, too.\n\nFarther down, we passed rows of motorcycle taxis parked beside an irrigation weir.\n\n\"Umuganda is not set up just by neighbourhoods or by villages,\" Jean-Claude explained, \"but also by job and by trade union. Motorcycle taxi drivers have their own association, so probably they arranged their own project.\"\n\nMan oh man, Rwandans sure do love to organize themselves.\n\nNo wonder the public spaces were always so tidy here. They got fully cleaned, pruned, and swept once a month. It was rather inspiring. Not inspiring enough to ask Jean-Claude to pull over so that I might spit in my palms, grab a shovel, and join in. It was more of a low-level, I-doff-my-hat-to-you-in-passing sort of inspiration. The kind that doesn't require any effort. That kind.\n\n**59**\n\nTHE JELLY-BEAN TOWNS we'd seen elsewhere in Rwanda were on display in the east as well, with the shops brightly coloured _red, blue, yellow, green; red, blue, yellow, green_ , but the landscape around us had grown shaggier, more tangled.\n\nWe were deep in banana country now. If I'd reached out through the window I could have run my fingers through the landscape. Layered leaves swayed in the wind, with entire communities playing hide-and-seek among them. As we drove, Jean-Claude explained the correlation between topography, bananas, and teenage pregnancy.\n\n\"When you have flat ground,\" he assured me, \"you have more babies.\"\n\nSay what?\n\n\"It happens like this,\" he said. \"Flat land is better for growing bananas, and banana farms are easy to take care of. You have a lot of free time, and with the extra bananas, you can make banana beer. The more banana beer, the more get-togethers. The more gettogethers, the more relaxed feelings you have. The more relaxed feelings, the more unexpected pregnancies. A lot of children are raised by their aunts out here.\"\n\nA persuasive syllogism, though I'm not sure how much of it was supported by clinical research, and I daresay the people of the region might take exception. But I did hear from other Rwandans as well that the east was considered more, how shall we say, _lax_ in its moral stringencies.\n\n\"Didn't your wife come from around here?\" I asked.\n\n\"No,\" he said sharply. \"Much farther. In Tanzania.\"\n\nGiven that Christine was a teetotaller like Jean-Claude, I didn't imagine she could have grown up on a diet of banana beer.\n\nWe were approaching Rwamagana Town and with it the Dereva Hotel, a personal landmark of Jean-Claude's.\n\n\"We would stop at the Dereva on our way back to Kigali. I would order an omelette and french fries. Was very tasty. This was with the Japanese nurses.\"\n\nThe first time Jean-Claude met my wife, he had surprised her by greeting her in Japanese.\n\n\"I learned Japanese when I was, like, fifteen, sixteen,\" he'd explained, \"from nurses who were living in Kigali.\"\n\nThe nurses were in Rwanda as volunteers with JOCV (Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers), which also included a major telecommunications project. The Japanese engineers had given Jean-Claude a summer job minding their office equipment (people had been pilfering fax machines and telephones), and he was later hired to help out at the women's dormitory. He was asked to learn Japanese so that he could help interpret.\n\n\"I went to live with them in the fall. Was wonderful! There was six girls in the house, they were like, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, that age. I was in heaven! One was x-ray technician, one was lab technician, one was a teacher, others were nurses. On the first day, when their supervisor was not there, they asked me, 'Can you drive?' I said, 'Sure.' They asked, 'How old are you?' I said, 'Eighteen.' They said, 'Okay, you're going to sneak us out tonight, okay?' Three of them were a bad influence on the other girls, I remember. They said, 'Okay, here's the plan...'\"\n\nOn Friday nights, Jean-Claude would shuttle them around the city, from nightclub to nightclub, and sometimes all the way to Akagera, several hours away, to a hotel discoth\u00e8que.\n\n\"It was booming! Was a very popular place. The nurses would stay up all night dancing. Coming back they would be hangovered, and we would stop at the Dereva Hotel for omelettes and french fries. It is one of my strongest memories\u2014those Japanese nurses, so tired but happy, eating omelettes at the hotel.\"\n\nJean-Claude might have gone on to become a Japanese\u2013Kinyarwanda interpreter\u2014he was just starting to get the hang of the language\u2014but on October 1, 1990, the world changed.\n\n\"The RPF invaded and Rwanda, it went into a kind of panic. A few nights later, there was shooting in Kigali. All across the city. But the RPF was far away, in the east. The soldiers were firing at shadows. The next day, they started picking up Tutsis.\"\n\nJapan decided to pull out of Rwanda.\n\n\"They were ordered to evacuate. The situation was too dangerous for them to stay. One of the engineers, he gave me a pair of running shoes. It was those Mizunos I was wearing that were robbed from me near Somalia. Was very good shoes he gave me. I didn't know then, but it was a goodbye gift.\"\n\nThe nurses closed ranks around Jean-Claude.\n\n\"They told me, 'We're gonna take you with us. Don't worry.' But their boss, this older man, he was called Omomi, he just stood there with his arms crossed, shaking his head, kind of sucking on his teeth. He said, _'Taihen.'_ I knew that meant 'difficult.' The nurses were shouting at him. One was crying. I could understand some of their Japanese now. I could hear them saying 'My family, they are going to take care of him.' 'My family is going to do this or that.' 'He is Tutsi, do you understand that? Do you understand what's gonna happen to him?' But Omomi wouldn't even look at them, not in the eye. He just shook his head and said, _'Taihen.'_ \"\n\nThey might have been arguing with a stone Buddha.\n\n\"These nurses were very upset. They told me, 'It's gonna be okay, go to your house and wait for us, we're gonna send for you.' But they never did.\" There was a long pause. \"Would have been a very different life, if I had gone with them.\"\n\nOn October 5, the Japanese mission to Rwanda was shut down and all staff, volunteers, and other Japanese nationals were evacuated.\n\n\"I never saw them again,\" Jean-Claude said. \"I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.\"\n\nThe Dereva Hotel and Restaurant was a collection of villas in garden-like grounds. The restaurant was airy and open\u2014and largely empty, this being umuganda day. By odd coincidence, the only other customer at the restaurant that day was Japanese. Not a beautiful young nurse, alas, but rather a balding, middle-aged engineer from Nagasaki named Hiro who clearly wasn't expecting to be addressed in his native language. _\"J\u014dzu desu ne!\"_ he said to me in breathy wonderment, meaning roughly, \"Your Japanese is very good!\" A blatant mistruth, but one I happily accepted, insincere flattery being a hallmark of Japanese politeness, after all. (For the record, I speak Japanese the way a bear dances; people aren't impressed that the bear dances _well_ , just that it dances at all.) Hiro was working on an infrastructure project with the Rwandan government, and when Jean-Claude spoke up, Hiro assured him that his Japanese was pretty darn _j\u014dzu_ , too.\n\nAfter chatting with Hiro, Jean-Claude and I sat on the patio eating beef brochettes and grilled plantain, standard fare and deftly prepared, but as we rose to leave I stopped myself with a jolt.\n\n\"We blew it!\" I said. \"We should have ordered omelettes and french fries!\"\n\nJean-Claude smiled. \"I thought about it. But it wouldn't have been the same. They wouldn't have tasted as good as they did when I was fifteen.\"\n\nAnd he was right. The omelettes of our youth are always so much sweeter.\n\n**60**\n\nTHE LAST POLICE CHECKPOINT of the day wasn't\u2014a checkpoint, that is. It was more of a holdup, albeit a very well-mannered one.\n\nJust east of Rwamagana we were stopped not by the shrill trill of a whistle but by raised hands and apologetic smiles from a pair of police officers. Umuganda had ended and vehicles had begun to reappear on the roads\u2014we'd already passed several communal picnics in the fields and villages\u2014so this was unexpected.\n\nThe officers spoke with Jean-Claude softly, almost shyly, and then Jean-Claude turned to me. \"They want to know if they can catch a ride back to their police station. It's in the next town, Kayonza. Usually there is a minibus that picks up police officers at the end of umuganda, but it hasn't arrived and they have been waiting a long time. We're going in that direction anyway.\"\n\nI looked at the automatic rifles the men were carrying. \"Do we have a choice?\" I joked.\n\nJean-Claude was puzzled. \"Of course we have a choice.\"\n\n\"Okay. Sure. Why not?\" I moved our bags around to make space for them in the back.\n\n\"An armed escort,\" I said as we pulled onto the road. \"I like it.\" Now it really was like having our own presidential motorcade.\n\nHaving a pair of armed police officers in the backseat, AK-47s at the ready, certainly gave us some extra swagger. It was the only time on this, or any road trip really, that I actively hoped for an ambush, if only to see the bandit's face when our tinted rear-view window rolled down. _\"What's that you say? Stand and deliver? I think not.\"_\n\nJean-Claude dropped the two officers off at their station: a small brick bungalow shaded by palm trees.\n\nOn our way out of town, we passed a tavern named Imararungu, which Jean-Claude translated as the \"You Won't Be Bored\" Bar (it was doing a roaring trade, post-umuganda), and soon after that the Pretty Beauty Salon (which seemed a tad redundant to my mind) as well as several roadside chopping blocks, busy with customers, which apparently sold only the outer extremities of chickens: feet and heads and other indeterminate bits. The people had a bounce in their step, were gathering on street corners to laugh and exchange greetings in that festive spirit that comes at the end of a shared day's work.\n\nThere was a breeze at play here, but after Kayonza we took a hard turn south, heading for hotter climes.\n\nThis was still banana country, but the earlier claustrophobia had eased. The broad-leafed plantations had stepped back, the valleys had opened up, and the villages had come out of hiding. Spandex-clad cyclists fired past like Luftwaffe dive-bombers in tight formation, helmets sleek as teardrops, legs chuttering, wheels spinning.\n\n\"They're in training,\" Jean-Claude explained, \"for Tour du Rwanda,\" a 910-kilometre multi-stage race modelled on the Tour de France.\n\nThe roadsides were thick with avocado and mango as well.\n\n\"Is this a nostalgic landscape for you?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh my goodness, yes. I have strong memories from this place.\"\n\nWe had entered the Kabarondo district of eastern Rwanda, and although Jean-Claude had been born and raised in the capital, his family's ancestral village was out here, near Akagera National Park.\n\n\"My older brother, Jean-Baptiste, he was living in our family village, taking care of our grandfather's land. The village is, like, nine kilometres from Kabarondo Town. Its name is Rundu. When I was in grade four my father sent me away to stay there. I was maybe nine or ten years old.\"\n\nJean-Claude had been roaming the streets of Kigali, sneaking into soccer games and dodging the consequences with a cocky sense of impunity, sometimes crouching behind the sedans of government officials entering through the side gates and then sprinting past the security guards.\n\n\"I could sneak into any stadium in Kigali,\" he said with a certain misplaced pride. \"I could always find a way in, around, or under that fence. Sometimes they would chase you, but if you could get into the crowd, you could escape. You could disappear and they would never, never find you.\"\n\nJean-Baptiste had come to the city to talk to their father.\n\n\"He said to my dad, 'You are getting to be an older man now. Is hard to keep a watch on Jean-Claude, and there is too much destruction in the city.' Remember, one of our brothers already was kidnapped. Jean-Baptiste said, 'In the village it will be a quiet life. Jean-Claude can focus more in school and it will be good for him.' And my dad agreed. We had many extended family in that village. Aunties, cousins. Would be very hard to get into trouble there.\"\n\nJean-Claude's brother owned one of the only vehicles in the village.\n\n\"Was a Toyota HiAce minibus. Very sturdy. People from surrounding villages were hiring him like a taxi to drive them to appointments. He was like an ambulance, too. If someone was sick or a woman was going into labour, my brother would drive them, wouldn't charge. He was doing very well, was leasing our land and driving the minibus, and was building a new house\u2014a very nice house. Was for his wife, his children. It was made of bricks, not mud or clay.\"\n\nAs a prominent figure in the community, Jean-Baptiste was called upon to settle disputes as well, including one with a neighbouring village that occurred soon after Jean-Claude arrived.\n\n\"It was over a girl,\" Jean-Claude said. \"The other villagers showed up ready to fight, with bows and arrows and long spears. I was from the city, I never saw such a thing before! What happened was, a boy from our village had damaged a girl's reputation very badly and he needed to be punished. The other village demanded it. It was gonna be a war between the two towns, and my brother spent the whole day speaking to both sides, back and forth, and eventually they came to an agreement. My brother told them, 'There are laws. You can't just kill him. We will surrender the boy to the police, okay? But not to a bunch of angry people who are gonna kill him.' So that boy went to jail, and there was no war. I was very impressed with my brother in that moment.\"\n\nJean-Claude attended classes in Rundu during the school year and returned to Kigali for school breaks, holidays, and various weekends.\n\n\"I was there from grade four to grade nine. Was a kind of culture shock for me. I was a city boy, and they could tell.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"First off, I had shoes. Everyone else was barefoot. So when I went to school the first day, the teacher made me take _off my_ shoes! Second, I was like a soccer superstar, because where other kids listened to games on the radio, for me, I had watched it live. I had met many of those players personally. Some were even from my neighbourhood in Kigali. When I told the kids in the village this, they couldn't believe it. For kids in a village, life in the city is like a kind of fiction.\"\n\nBut as Jean-Claude discovered, the village had its own way of ascribing status.\n\n\"In Kigali, I was street smart. I could cross busy roads even at the age of five. I knew which intersections were dangerous, which ones were safe, how to time it, when to go. In the village, there was no traffic\u2014there was no cars!\u2014so these skills were not of any use for me.\"\n\nIn Rundu, the cool kids were the ones who could grow or tend to something that would earn them money, even if it was just a few francs.\n\n\"One kid would boast he had a chicken, was gonna sell the eggs, another one would say she grew beans to sell them, another one, he had a goat. I had to do something about this, so I went to my brother and I said, 'I need a place to plant something.' He said, 'Okay, look around. Pick the place.' I bought some beans from a guy, and I planted them. Next morning I woke up early, ran and looked. Was nothing! So I dug up my beans to see what was the problem. I thought maybe this guy, he sold me defective beans. I was mad, and I threw them away, went and got different beans. Better beans. Again, nothing. Next morning and the next, nothing. I didn't know beans don't grow overnight! When I was about to dig up those beans too, I noticed that the first ones\u2014the beans I threw away\u2014had started to sprout. They were growing! I was amazed.\"\n\nAs we passed lowing cattle of the non-royal variety grazing in a field surrounded by banana plants, Jean-Claude recalled how there had once been lions here as well. Hundreds of them had lived in Akagera, and they would often come out of the park to hunt cattle\u2014though \"hunt\" is perhaps not the best word, cows not being known for their gazelle-like fleetness.\n\n\"A lion came into our village one time. Was maybe 1982. That was the last time, I think. The men hunted it with sticks\u2014\"\n\n\"Spears?\"\n\n\"Not even that. Sticks and a dog is enough. The man who killed it, I think he used an arrow. It gave him a lot of prestige after that. He kept the skin, the mane, even the fat of the lion\u2014he kept it in this clay bowl, and if anyone was injured, they would go to his house and they would put lion oil on it. He became famous for killing that lion.\"\n\nHyenas were even worse, I learned.\n\n\"My village was kind of like a hyenas' capital. That was long ago. The hyenas are gone, but even now, women don't walk alone on the road to my village. Hyenas are more dangerous than lions. If a lion is full, it will just sleep there. I find lions are very lazy. If something is hard to catch, the lion will forget it. But a hyena? A hyena will never be full. They are always hungry. They are like walking appetites. When a hyena attacks, it will never leave empty. That's why, if you throw a boot at a hyena, he will go for the boot. And whatever a hyena catches, if it's your arm, your foot, he's going to take it.\"\n\nWe came into the clay streets of Kabarondo, a town that was dusty and green at the same time.\n\nJean-Claude slowed down. \"That's the church,\" he said, referring to a simple Catholic chapel made from bricks as red as the soil. \"This is the place. This is where my brother Jean-Baptiste ran to when the killings started. He got separated from his family and had to find shelter. So many people were in that church. They thought they will be safe there. Then the interahamwe came.\" Jean-Claude pulled the Land Cruiser over across from it, paused for a moment. \"They were watching. They were waiting for everyone to be inside so they could kill them more easily.\"\n\nWhen the attack came, it was ferocious, with the military firing mortars from across the street and then lobbing grenades through the broken rafters as the interahamwe militias waited outside, prowling the perimeter. In the madness, Jean-Baptiste managed to escape, breaking through the circle of machetes and fleeing into the forest.\n\n\"He went to his friend's house, but they said, 'No no no no. You can't stay here!' Nobody would take him in. Some of these people he had driven to the emergency clinic without charge.\"\n\nJean-Claude sat looking at the red-brick chapel across from us.\n\n\"So many people died in there. But my brother, he escaped. He made it out. He was going north, trying to get to the RPF lines, is what I think, trying to reach the safe zone. And he almost made it, was very close. Was almost past the last barrier. Then someone he knew saw him and shouted, 'I know that guy! He's a Tutsi!' I always wondered why he was walking in the daylight. I wish I could ask him. Maybe he was so close he decided to take a chance, but you know, if he had just waited until night...\"\n\nTrucks rattled by. Women with baskets moved past us on the side of the road. Children chased a bicycle rim.\n\n\"We know who killed him,\" Jean-Claude said. \"We know his name.\"\n\nA silence settled over us.\n\n\"Would you like to go in?\" I asked. \"Take a moment?\"\n\nJean-Claude shook his head, almost imperceptibly, then put the Land Cruiser into gear and pulled us back into traffic, leaving the church at Kabarondo behind. He watched its departure in the rear-view mirror.\n\nThe lions that once hunted among these villages are gone, but their ghosts are not.\n\n\"No,\" Jean-Claude said when I made the comparison. \"Not lions. Hyenas. My brother was killed by hyenas.\"\n\n**61**\n\nTHE CHILDREN LOITERING AROUND the gas station at Kabarondo seemed listless and tired. They asked me for money, and when I said no they stood staring while Jean-Claude filled up the Land Cruiser.\n\nAlthough we were in one of the poorest regions of Rwanda, Jean-Claude still noted how much the town had grown. New banks and electronics shops had opened. Fresh paint and new rooftops were everywhere in evidence. \"Kabarondo has improved so much!\" Jean-Claude had said as we drove through.\n\nHe was oblivious to the sullen glare the children were giving us as we pumped the gas\u2014and then it dawned on me.\n\n\"This is where the tourists stop, isn't it?\" I said. \"This filling station. This must be where they fuel up before heading into Akagera National Park.\"\n\n\"Probably,\" Jean-Claude said, topping up the tank. \"I think this is the last service centre before the park. People going on safari, they must stop here.\"\n\nThat was why the children were so sullen. Muzungus came and muzungus stopped and muzungus gave them money. I was a muzungu, therefore I was supposed to give them money. This was why they were loitering around the gas station instead of chasing bicycle rims down the street or planting beans or lugging pails of water home to their mothers, and it seemed in that moment that this unremarkable gas station on a dusty intersection in eastern Rwanda embodied the entire misguided, well-intentioned but devastating impact of Western aid on Africa. I recalled the signs that greeted truck drivers entering Rwanda from Congo: INVESTMENT YES. CORRUPTION NO. I thought perhaps a similar sign should be posted for visitors at Kigali's international airport and along the main tourist routes: _Investment yes, handouts no_.\n\nJean-Claude gestured with his chin to a packed-clay road that disappeared into an overgrowth of banana leaves. \"My village is that way, on that road.\"\n\nKabarondo had been the nearest shopping area to Rundu, so Jean-Claude had come here often, walking for hours to escape the bucolic boredom of village life.\n\nHe laughed. \"It was worth it. Kabarondo was like Paris to me.\"\n\nJean-Claude returned the pump to its cradle, stood for a moment looking down the road he had walked as a boy. Had he pointed the truck west, we would have reached his childhood village in about twenty minutes. Instead he turned east, and we drove toward Akagera National Park, picking up speed on every hillock, every turn. I noticed Jean-Claude looking in the rear-view mirror again, as though we were being followed. But when I turned around, all I saw was our own rolling cloud of dust pulled behind.\n\nI'd been looking forward to the savannah, picturing broad plains and open vistas, but we were hemmed in by thornbush thickets and barbed scrub verges on either side as we rolled down a road that bobbed and weaved. It was as constricting as the banana plantations we'd driven through earlier, and I realized what I had found so disorienting about this whole journey: the lack of a discernible horizon.\n\nThe long-distance road trips of my youth had been in North America, and you can't spend three weeks there without eventually ending up on an open landscape, driving toward the vanishing point of a highway. It's inevitable. In South America, I'd ridden in drunkenly top-heavy buses along the Amazon watershed; in Japan, I'd hopscotched across the country's island archipelago by ferry and by thumb; in Ireland, I'd bloody well walked (not recommended); and in Europe I'd taken trains and trams and prams and lorries and lollies, or whatever the hell they call them over there. But this was the first long-haul, endless-hours-on-an-open-road trek I'd taken outside of North America, and it was strange never having a long ribbon of highway to look down. Even here in the savannah the landscape was near at hand, shouldering us in, funnelling us through; the route was forever dropping behind hillocks of tussocky grass and then popping up again. Rwanda was all curve and corner, swerve and slide, with sudden heart-catching panoramas revealed on a magician's flourish. In Rwanda, even the plains are hilly. In Rwanda, there is no vanishing point.\n\nWe passed through the derelict shell of a mining town, a tin-ore boomtown gone bust, with buildings broken-backed and falling down. Mud-walled homes were scattered among this dereliction of warehouses and factories, and a congregation of children had gathered around the communal trickle of a water pump, were slowly filling jerry cans and plastic pails for the day's cooking.\n\nRed-earth roads, and red-clay homes. A haze of dust. It was a landscape you breathed in unaware; at the end of the day, I would find reddish mud gummed on the corner of my mouth, the rim of my nostrils. The deep blues and luminescent greens of the forest and field were gone and in their stead, earthen tones: tawny yellows, burnt-orange browns, and a red deeper than rust. It could easily have been the clay from which God had fashioned Adam.\n\nWhen we saw a lone banana seller pushing his green-laden bicycle up a hill, Jean-Claude pulled to the side of the road. We came to a rolling stop and watched as the man plodded toward us.\n\n\"Those are cooking bananas,\" Jean-Claude whispered. \"Very, very delicious. Much better than those we get in Kigali. The soil is better for bananas out here. The price is much cheaper too. Now, because of my accent, he will know I am from Kigali and he will certainly raise his price, but it will still be much less than what we pay in the city. I will run over and buy some of his bananas, bring them back to Kigali as a present for Christine's mom. So get down quickly, hide before he\u2014Too late! He saw you.\"\n\nTurns out there was the Kigali price and then there was the muzungu price. Jean-Claude sighed. He waved to the man and then crossed the road toward him as though only vaguely interested, made a casual offer on two bundles. But with the banana seller having spotted me in the vehicle, the price jumped by 600 percent.\n\nJean-Claude stood his ground, demanding a mere 400 percent markup instead. Our purveyor of plantains took this as a personal affront. He shook his head woefully, wiped his face with a hand towel, fought back tears, and after great deliberation, said the best he could agree to was a mere 399 percent markup\u2014and clearly he would be losing money on the deal, but as it was late in the day he was willing to do this even if it meant his children would go hungry. Why, he would practically be giving the bananas away! But Jean-Claude replied no, no, no, this would not do, for there were surely other banana peddlers along this road who would be more than happy to part with their wares, and here we were, willing to relieve this fellow of the burden of his bananas at the end of the day. We were doing him a favour!\n\nWhile the two of them haggled and sparred, I got out and performed one of those stiff, poorly executed shoulder-turning stretches middle-aged people do in the mistaken belief that this somehow \"limbers us up.\" It was a dust-choked road we were travelling down, and my teeth had a texture to them. My hair was gritted with coarse powder; rubbing it free was like raking sand from your scalp after a day on the beach.\n\nJean-Claude had now made his absolute final offer. The third so far, by my count.\n\nA clutch of clay homes huddled nearby, doorways and windows leaking smoke. Several of the residents had come out to watch, entertained as much by my presence as by the increasingly intricate debate underway between Jean-Claude and our stubbornly resistant banana seller.\n\nA pair of boys watching from the sidelines pushed each other forward, smiled when I said _\"Amakuru?\"_ (\"How are you?\") They scrambled off in what I thought was a case of the giggling jitters, but soon reappeared carrying model homes they'd constructed out of\u2014I checked with Jean-Claude, interrupting the arcane minutiae of his banana valuations to ask\u2014dried sorghum stalks, a plant similar in texture to sugar cane.\n\nThe boys held their creations up for me to see, went solemnly quiet when I took their photo, beamed when I congratulated them on their handiwork.\n\n\"Are they trying to sell these to me?\" I asked, calling out again to Jean-Claude, who was now entering the final stages of what was apparently a multilateral trade deal.\n\n\"What? No. They just want to show them to you.\"\n\nFor one surging moment, I wanted to pull out my wallet and purchase their sorghum-stalk homes, wanted to take them back to Canada as a gift for my own two boys. I thought what a marvellous connective line that would draw across an ocean and between two worlds. I would offer the boys five dollars each, a huge sum for a kid. Their models would make a wonderful memento, and I was sure the two boys would be thrilled. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't because if I did, they would surely waylay the next muzungus they saw and try to sell them small homes as well. They would, I imagined, start to manufacture these models not for fun but for sale\u2014built specifically for passing muzungus. This was the road to Akagera National Park, after all. Tourist convoys rumbled through here all the time. Perhaps these two young boys would set up a roadside stall, try their best to flag down vehicles. Perhaps a small cottage industry would take root, prove semi-lucrative. Or perhaps no one would stop. Perhaps these boys would build their sorghum-stalk homes for nothing, would sit by the road watching Land Cruisers roll past as they waited in vain for wealthy whites to alight.\n\nWhether my actions would foster a local craft or taint their boyhoods with a sense that life was a mere lottery, I couldn't say. But I did know that if I offered to buy their hobby-work it would change things\u2014maybe for the better, but I couldn't be sure, and I couldn't take that chance. All I could do was hope that somehow, through their pride in this work and the words of encouragement from a passing stranger, the seeds of a future architect, a future builder, might be nurtured. Wishful thinking on my part, perhaps. But since coming to this country, I'd met future chemists in refugee camps, future engineers on dusty soccer pitches. This was Rwanda. Anything was possible: the very worst things you could imagine and the very best.\n\nAs these thoughts rattled around in my brain, a bent-backed elderly lady with a walking stick appeared, shuffling slowly toward us. She wore a wraparound skirt, the fabric threadbare and long faded by sunlight and time, reds and purples now pastel pink and pale blue. She had rheumy eyes, and her face was as crumpled as gift-wrap. When she saw me she smiled\u2014smiled as though she'd been expecting me all along. She offered a greeting in Kinyarwanda, chortled at my reply. (There was something about the way I pronounced _\"Nimeza\"_ \u2014\"I'm fine\"\u2014that caused no end of amusement among Rwandans.) Then, having taken an interest in the ongoing trade negotiations between Jean-Claude and our bicycled banana vendor, she made a loud snorting noise, part protest, part disbelief.\n\nAnd that's when the balance of power shifted decidedly in Jean-Claude's favour.\n\nThe old lady was appalled at the price the man was trying to wheedle out of us. Why, that was many times more than what you would pay at the market! She scolded the man for being so greedy. He, in turn, suggested\u2014politely and with all due respect\u2014that she piss off. But the old lady was adamant. Charging visitors that much for bananas! It was unconscionable!\n\nJean-Claude had wisely stepped back to let her do the negotiations for him, giving me a running update on her progress. Before we knew it, the price was plummeting. The lady had pointed with her walking stick to the next farm, where she would guarantee a better price, and with that, it was all over.\n\nThe man, outplayed and outflanked, settled on a much, much lower price\u2014though still far too high for the old lady's liking, and she continued to scold the seller even as Jean-Claude counted out the money for the bananas. She then wished us well and toddled off, but Jean-Claude ran after her to say thank you\u2014and to pay her a small commission. Just a few hundred francs, but she refused. He insisted. She laughed and kept walking, but Jean-Claude was adamant, saying he would be very sad if she didn't take it. So she did, clasping his hand in hers and laughing, saying she was happy to still be useful and telling Jean-Claude to be more wise in the future. He said he would try. She waved away my camera, saying she was too old to be photographed, and then hobbled away, chuckling to herself as she went.\n\nThe banana seller watched her depart with a cold look\u2014he didn't find the old doll quite as endearing as we did\u2014and then untied two large bundles from his bicycle and loaded them into the back of our amazing! ever-expanding! Land Cruiser (it really is astounding how much you can stuff into the back of one of those). He allowed me a single photograph and then, with a nod and a sigh, he too was on his way, pushing a much lighter load uphill with a heavy step.\n\nThere may have been a Kigali price, and there may have been a muzungu price, but as we'd learned, nothing beats a bent-backed lady with a wagging finger.\n\n**62**\n\nTHE TOURIST LODGE IN AKAGERA NATIONAL PARK was a rambling collection of corridors and hallways with angles that didn't add up. Set amid the scrub brush above Lake Ihema, it had the air of a duchess who'd lost everything yet insisted on dressing up in satin gowns and pearls for dinner. At $100 a night, it was overpriced by approximately $98. Still, I liked it. There was an amiable feel to the place, with its open verandas and bug-speckled swimming pools, its unkempt gardens and airy grounds. More to the point, it was the only option available. The only one that included indoor plumbing, anyway. There was one other spot: a campsite where one could bed down in open bush for half the price and twice the inconvenience. But Jean-Claude had earlier put the kibosh on any notion that we might go camping at any point in our trip. That was one of his preconditions for coming to Rwanda with me: no camping.\n\n\"This is something refugees will never understand,\" he'd said. \"Why Canadians love to camp so much.\" It was a concept he had struggled to explain to the immigrant parents he worked with at Soccer Without Boundaries. \"We tried to organize a camping trip for the families one time. And when I explained it to the Somalian and Ethiopian parents, the ones from Sudan or Afghanistan, they couldn't believe it! They said, 'You want us to sleep outside in little tents with no electricity or running water, cooking on a fire? Are you crazy? That's what we left behind in the refugee camps! Why would we want to do that here?'\"\n\nSo the tourist lodge it was. We'd arrived in early evening, making it through the park's southern gate just before it closed as a bored-looking guard waved us through. With our 4x4 loaded with bananas, I'd half-expected to gather a following en route, to arrive at the lodge in grand style, a Pied Piper of primates, leading a victory procession of monkeys behind us, but no. The only cousins there to greet us were a mangy clan of olive baboons slouching about like the dissolute pickpockets they were. \"Windows up,\" Jean-Claude advised. These baboons were of the grab-and-dash variety, and warnings had been posted. Olive baboons: the Artful Dodgers of the animal kingdom.\n\nWe checked in at the front desk. Night was falling, and as Jean-Claude went in search of passion fruit, I wandered down a series of hallways, key in hand, until I eventually stumbled upon my room. It was very dark inside, with blackout curtains drawn as tightly as a state secret. The light switch by the door was, apparently, of a migratory nature, playfully moving up and down, then sideways, depending on where I was slapping my hapless hand at the time. In the end, I groped my way across the room mainly by echolocation, stubbing a toe here, a finger there, using the reverberations of my elaborate invective to chart further obstacles until I bobbled headlong into a dangling cord\u2014which, to go from the shriek I emitted, I initially mistook for some sort of rafter snake. Realizing my mistake, I gave the cord a tentative tug and flooded the room with the crackle and buzz of fluorescent tubes warming up... slowly. Flickering details emerged. Clearly, I was standing in some sort of antechamber or walk-in closet. This shoebox adorned with a pair of sagging cots couldn't possibly constitute my actual room.\n\nOh, wait. It _was_ my room.\n\nNo matter. Time for a bath. I wanted to wash the dust from my face, the road from my scalp. I wanted to soak the stiffness from my back, the weary from my bones. But the faucet in my attractively rust-stained tub was more audible than aquatic, releasing a series of wheezy gurgles as it sputtered out a few slugs of brownish-green water. Ah well, I could skip the bath. I strode across the room and flung open the curtains with a lavish gesture (the lavish flinging of curtains being a forte of mine) and was faced with a jarring spidercrack of glass, fissures radiating across the window from a single violent point of impact. I examined the glass with a Columbo-like determination but was unable to decide whether the crack had come from something outside trying to get in or\u2014worse, to my mind\u2014something inside trying to get out.\n\nI schlepped my bags back to the front desk, arranged for another room, and then tramped down another meandering hallway. Inside my new room, I groped my way again to another slow flood of fluorescent light. Faced with a slightly less brown gurgle of water and no evidence of violent flight, I decided this room would have to do.\n\nFlopping backward onto one of the cots (I almost bounced over onto the other one), I lay awhile, staring up at the rafters. No large snakes were dangling above me, true, but I could easily imagine spiders rappelling down from the ceiling beams during the night like Tom Cruise in, oh, name a Tom Cruise movie; he usually rappels at some point. I was too tired to care, although I did make a mental note not to sleep with my mouth open. When Jean-Claude and I had charted our course over an opened map on a kitchen table back home, with me jotting down the words \"safari lodge,\" I'd pictured myself stretched out beneath the lazy breeze of a ceiling fan like a Persian king recumbent. Instead, I found myself lying pallid under the incessant buzz and excessive clarity of fluorescent tubes. The mosquito mesh, when I finally succeeded in unknotting it, dropped down like a tattered fishing net from days of yore. There was nothing even remotely \"Southern belle\" about it. There were gaping holes so big they wouldn't have kept out bats, let alone mosquitoes.\n\nSigh.\n\nClearly, I wasn't going to be presented with trays of glacier-chilled strawberries and festively arranged slices of papaya at _this_ lodge. In light of these more rustic environs, I eschewed my smoking jacket and ascot, and dressed for dinner instead in a slightly less aromatic T-shirt than the one I had been wearing. (There was a bundle of freshly washed shirts sitting crisply on the bedside table of my room back in Kigali. I had, of course, forgotten to pack them\u2014much to Jean-Claude's chagrin.)\n\nKeenly aware that we were now deep in malaria country, and faced with such a capaciously aerated mosquito net, I doused myself with DDT and PCB and DEET and XYZ, then strolled out in search of sustenance.\n\nIt was a calming night. The air was cool and fragrant with a scent reminiscent of lilacs, underlain with just a hint of DEET and\u2014 _sniff, sniff_ \u2014a touch of baboon feces. I cut across a leafy courtyard, feeling light-chested and content. A flap of wings. The dry-husk rattle of insects, unseen. Something large and clumsy was floundering about in the underbrush, and a waning moon, tangled in the branches overhead, cast a forty-watt light on the matter. Life was good.\n\nGoing for a stroll is always about embracing serendipity, so imagine my delight on finding myself right back in front of the door to my room. Dammit. How one goes about getting lost in a lodge with only two hallways, let alone completing a perfectly executed circular route, is best left for a later date. Instead, noting a shallow cement trench that ran along the perimeter of the hotel and recalling, with an observational prowess worthy of a Livingstone heir, that this same trough ran past the lodge's front entrance and restaurant patio, I followed it through the grass with unerring instinct, around to the main building. I'd done my forebear proud! (I later learned that this was a _snake-catching_ trench I'd been traipsing along, one that encircled the hotel grounds to keep black mambas and other mood spoilers from coiling through the corridors.)\n\nFortunately, no serpents had fallen into the trough that night, and I arrived at the dining hall unpunctured and unperturbed, only to find Jean-Claude digging into his fourth plate of passion fruit. He was starting with dessert, apparently.\n\nThis being a tourist lodge, the buffet was of the proper Western-style, all-you-can-eat variety, and we worked our way through several stacks of brochettes and roasted bananas, stewed plantains and ugali dumplings.\n\nOver dinner, Jean-Claude came up with a way for us to get rich. It involved passion fruit.\n\n\"I have been thinking,\" he said. \"We could sell Rwandan passion fruit in Canada for less than what they charge at Safeway\u2014and we would still make a profit. And it's better fruit! Much tastier, much juicer. People will line up to buy them!\"\n\nBetter in every way, I agreed. \"Only problem,\" I pointed out, \"is that I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to import tropical fruit into Canada.\"\n\n\"Yes, but the seeds?\" He smiled.\n\n\"Well, you'd have to smuggle them in.\"\n\n\"Exactly. So here is what we do. The day before we fly out, we fill up our stomachs with passion fruit. We eat and eat as much passion fruit as we can, and then\"\u2014his smile became a grin, grew wider, took on a positively demonic glint\u2014\"when we get home, _we wait..._ Soon we will have all the seeds we need. We just have to clean them off and plant them. Trust me, if we grow Rwandan passion fruit in Canada, we will make a lot of money! A lot!\"\n\nMuch like belling the cat, it had to be asked: \"And who exactly is going to, ah, clean this bounty of ours?\"\n\n\"Alister and David!\" he said, naming my youngest and his oldest. \"We'll pay them!\"\n\nOh, I'm sure they'd love that. _C'mere, son, I have a job for you_.\n\nFunny thing is, I think Jean-Claude was only half-joking about having us smuggle a trove of seeds out of the country in our lower colons. He was already mourning our return to the land of the fibrous papaya and the shrivelled four-dollar passion fruit; you could see it in the wistful way he scooped out the pulp of just one more, the way he sadly spooned it into his mouth.\n\n**63**\n\nTHE AKAGERA LODGE, as noted, was located on a rise of hill above Lake Ihema. These were the same shores Stanley had once tried to cross into the Kingdom of Rwanda, only to be met with a less than enthusiastic welcome. By which I mean, \"arrows.\"\n\nIn the early morning, I went for a long walk through the hotel grounds, passing several buildings in a state of... ruin? Repair? Renovation? Demolition? It was hard to say. The bamboo scaffolding looked as though it had been standing for some time; several poles had sprouted leaves.\n\nBirdsong matinals filled the treetops like the first morning of creation. There are more than 500 species of birds in Akagera National Park, and every one of them seemed to be out in force that day.\n\nLow above the lake, the sun hung like a swollen orange.\n\nTime to pull on the ol' pith helmet (figuratively speaking, of course; I don't think they even make pith helmets anymore) and stride forth once more into adventure, although admittedly, when there is a lunch box with an apple and a sandwich waiting for you at the front desk, it does take the edge off one's impending exploits.\n\nRwanda is not considered a prime safari destination, certainly not on par with Botswana or Kenya, say. Of the Big Five safari animals\u2014elephant, lion, leopard, rhino, and African buffalo\u2014Akagera is understocked in one (only a handful of leopards haunt the park) and clean out of two: the aforementioned lions of Jean-Claude's youth and the black rhino, once plentiful but wiped out by poachers in the early 1980s. True, Akagera does feature an abundance of sproingy deer-like creatures and flurries of birds, but no lions and no rhinos.\n\nIn reference to her country's penchant for branding itself as a \"boutique tourist destination,\" Rica Rwigamba at the RDB office in Kigali had joked that Akagera offered \"boutique safaris\" as well. Which is to say, a \"boutique\" population of elephants, along with some \"boutique\" giraffes imported from Kenya. Given Akagera's lack of large predators, zebras and antelopes were thriving, and the park boasted a lakeshore known as Hippo Beach, but the sexier big cats were either rarely spotted or nonexistent. This was going to change, though, as the park's success in introducing Masai giraffes had sparked plans to reintroduce lions as well. (No word on how the zebras or antelope felt about this, or whether they were even consulted. I imagine the first zebra to be taken down by a lion in Akagera will die with a perplexed look on its face.)\n\nIn the final years of the Habyarimana regime, the park had reverted to anarchy, with poachers killing elephants for their tusks, rhinoceroses for their horns, and the few remaining lions just for the sport of it. (By that point most of the lions had already been killed off by cattle herders, who regularly planted meat laced with poison in their pastures.) The larger animals fled into neighbouring Tanzania during the turmoil, but were now returning, and their numbers were growing every year: a distinct diaspora of its own, coming home.\n\nPoaching remains a problem. Akagera National Park lies along Rwanda's eastern border, which forms a maze of inaccessible wetlands and marshes, but the western side opens directly onto farmland and pastures. Following the genocide, the area allocated to the park was greatly reduced to make room for returning refugees, but it's still an impressive swath of protected wilderness. An electrified fence runs down the western length of the park now, mainly to keep the animals in. Harder is keeping the poachers out. More than 2,000 snares had been gathered in the previous year alone.\n\nJean-Claude and I drove down to the park's interpretive centre, where it was recommended that we hire a guide, which we did. The Akagera bush is interlaced with trails, and the animals could be hard to find, although the staff had provided us with an admirably optimistic checklist of wildlife to tick off as we went (leopards, spotted hyenas, elephants, unicorns, leprechauns, etc.). I was keen to see an elephant up close; I was tired of being teased with tantalizing glimpses of dung. Several elephants had been spotted roaming nearby, among them\u2014pause here for dramatic effect\u2014a rogue pachyderm by the name of Mutware.\n\nStrange thing was, Jean-Claude knew Mutware, had met him on a family trip years before.\n\nMutware was the most famous elephant in Rwanda. Airlifted into Akagera National Park as a baby in 1975, he quickly asserted himself among the other young ones.\n\n\"His name means 'boss,'\" Jean-Claude explained. \"The park rangers called him that because even as a baby he was bossy.\" As Mutware got older, his attitude only got worse. As with many of us, his teen years were particularly disruptive.\n\n\"He would chase vehicles and smash things for no reason, and he would even steal beer from trucks and drink it.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Really. Elephants can curl their trunks, pick things up. Mutware would grab plastic jugs of banana beer and squeeze until the tops popped off, and then he would drink it. He liked beer too much.\"\n\nMy kind of elephant.\n\n\"When I lived in the village, my brother took me on a drive through the park and we ran into Mutware, with his ears out. This was very scary, because we knew Mutware was angry. He was always angry.\"\n\nNor had Mutware mellowed with age. Just a few weeks before we arrived, he'd rolled a vehicle into Lake Ihema as the passengers scrambled for cover. During the genocide, the park staff explained, members of the militia had gone hunting in Akagera, driving around in a jeep and whooping it up. When they came upon Mutware, one of them fired off a round, hitting the elephant's flank. Mutware fled, wounded, into the bush, where he nursed a grudge\u2014 _for nineteen years_. As people who work with these creatures will tell you, the long memory of elephants is in no way apocryphal, and when the man who'd shot Mutware showed up on a retirees' tour to visit his old hunting grounds, Mutware recognized him. Trumpeting wildly, the elephant charged, sending the driver and passengers running as the animal pushed their vehicle end over end into the croc-infested waters of Lake Ihema. Crazed elephant on one side, crocodile eyes on the other: How fast do you figure those tourists ran? Fortunately, no one was injured, and Mutware, having made his point, padded silently back into the bush. The retired military man left the park that same day.\n\n\"They were driving a Land Cruiser,\" the staff said pleasantly. \"Same as you.\"\n\nThe story of Mutware's nineteen-year-long grudge smacked of urban legend to me, but it certainly was in keeping with Mutware's famed temper. Tuskless and weighing in at six tons, he was only a midsized male, but his fearsome reputation had accorded him a greater stature. The park staff was genuinely afraid of him, and warnings were posted everywhere. Nor was he predictable in his travels. Our Mutware was a ramblin' man; he roamed far and wide across the park and was a good swimmer, too.\n\n\"He swims across sometimes,\" the staff told me. \"To Tanzania.\" When he was away everyone relaxed a little.\n\nMutware was given to radical mood swings as well. He would pose for photos with tourists, even be considered \"semi-habituated,\" but then during the period of _musth_ , when the sides of his head throbbed and his testosterone levels spiked, he would go on a rampage. In 2006, he escaped the park entirely, trampling nearby fields and terrifying villagers. The year before that, after a musth-enraged Mutware wrecked several vehicles in the park, the American embassy issued a travel alert, making Mutware the only single animal to have triggered a security warning from the U.S. government.\n\n\"Most elephants live to be about seventy. And Mutware is in his forties,\" Jean-Claude explained. \"So he is having his mid-life crisis.\"\n\nThe younger females no longer wanted to mate with him, and short of buying an expensive sports car, donning shades, and getting a comb-over, Mutware was not handling it well. He'd been spotted just a few hundred metres from the main office, so I was happy to have our guide steer us clear.\n\nMarcel was a trim, impeccably uniformed young man. He offered to drive, was gently rebuffed by Jean-Claude, and, with a shrug, had crawled into the back of our vehicle. He gave us a concerned look on seeing the mountain of bananas that filled the back.\n\n\"You know that you can't feed the animals, yes?\" he asked.\n\nI turned around and looked at him with a hurt expression. \"But everybody loves bananas,\" I said. \"Elephants. Antelopes. Hippos. Buffaloes. Baboons. Zebras. I was told that they all liked bananas.\"\n\nHorrified at the prospect of us toddling around Akagera National Park flinging bananas out the window in the manner of Luigi in a round of Mario Kart, he protested, \"No, no, no, visitors are not permitted to\u2014\"\n\nAt which point Jean-Claude cut in to explain that the bananas were for his mother-in-law back in Kigali, not the local wildlife, and that I was only \"joking.\"\n\nMarcel nodded slowly, eyed me with an understandable caution. _Ah yes, muzungu humour_.\n\nI grinned back at him. \"Everybody loves bananas!\" I said.\n\nHe was having his doubts about me, you could tell.\n\nA farrago of vehicles and visitors had gathered at the interpretive centre, including a family from Kigali crammed into a single hatchback; a sunburned South African couple in a jeep; a spacious safari-style vehicle with seats lined up on either side, as though the guests were riding an elephant; plus\u2014this is true\u2014a minivan full of nuns. Many of the visitors to Akagera that day were Rwandese, which was always nice to see.\n\nWe set off in a ragged line, vehicles fanning out along various routes depending on the interests and inclination of the guides. With Jean-Claude at the wheel, we headed for Lake Ihema. The road was cratered with potholes, and as we rocked back and forth across them in low gear it felt as though we were riding an elephant, too.\n\n\"Mutware,\" the guide said, pointing to a bend in the bush.\n\nHe was referring to fistfuls of grassy dung rather than the actual elephant.\n\n\"Nearby?\" I asked.\n\nMarcel nodded.\n\nAs we came over a rise in the road, Lake Ihema opened up in front of us. A wind wrinkled the surface of the water and a clamour of birds lifted off, wings winnowing the air. Jean-Claude brought us to a stop beside Ihema's reedy shores, where we got out to admire the view.\n\nSeveral gazebos stood back from the water, for picnics and rainy day rest stops, I imagined, and we saw further evidence of Mutware's presence: one of the pavilions had been attacked, its metal roof peeled back like the top of a tin can.\n\n\"He is in the rutting season,\" Marcel explained. \"He tried to mate with the females but they chased him off, so he became very angry and he smashed this building.\"\n\nNot popular with the ladies, our Mutware.\n\n\"So,\" I said. \"He's like a guy, goes to a bar, tries to make a move on a girl, gets rejected, and then beats up a phone booth on the way home.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Marcel. \"It is exactly like that! I will use that example next time. Mutware will be in a very bad mood, so we must be careful.\" He looked over his shoulder. \"Sometimes he comes here to drink water.\"\n\nLike an idiot, I was secretly hoping to run into Akagera's famous elephant, maybe have him push our vehicle into the lake as well, just for the conversational trove that would provide later. _\"Say, chaps, I ever tell you about the time...\"_ Not sure how the vehicle insurance would cover it, though I'm fairly sure elephants are considered Acts of God.\n\nBut as I was about to learn, there were other perils nearer by that day. I had wanted to get closer to the lake, but the shore was squelchy so I was standing on an upjut of rock instead. A large monitor lizard was digging up eggs from a hollowed-out pit nearby, its tail whipping back and forth in excitement. When I stepped closer, the lizard scrambled away, a fluid ripple disappearing into the grass.\n\n\"What kind of eggs are those?\" I asked, thinking they seemed awfully large for a heron or a flamingo.\n\n\"Crocodile.\"\n\nI froze, felt ice forming in my arteries.\n\nMarcel pointed toward the lake and there, floating offshore, was an armoured log\u2014with eyes.\n\n\"Maybe we should get back a little?\" Marcel suggested.\n\nI heartily agreed.\n\nAs soon as we moved, the crocodile dropped below the surface.\n\n\"Oh no,\" I said. \"We scared him off.\"\n\n\"No, not scared,\" said Marcel. \"Waiting. Just there. See?\"\n\nI looked again, saw a log drifting slowly toward the shore...\n\nBack in the Land Cruiser, panting, out of breath, pulse throbbing in our ears, we congratulated ourselves on not getting eaten. I reconsidered my earlier desire to be playfully rolled into the lake by Mutware. If nothing else, I'd gained an instant respect for monitor lizards: imagine the type of chutzpah it takes to steal eggs from a crocodile. And these weren't your run-of-the-mill crocodiles, either. These were Nile crocodiles, among the largest of their species.\n\n\"Lake Ihema is very peaceful now, and the crocodiles here can live to be one hundred,\" Marcel said. \"So they are able to grow very, very big.\"\n\nJean-Claude told me there was a legend among the local people that if a crocodile licks your shadow, it can pull you under. I could see several dugout canoes lined up along the shore. Hard to imagine, but Ihema was a working lake with fishermen who regularly paddled out onto these waters to bring in catfish and tilapia.\n\n\"Even with crocodiles nearby?\" I asked Marcel.\n\n\"Yes, even with the crocodile. They do die sometimes, the fishermen. It happens, some accidents. But there are also hippos in Lake Ihema, and those are much worse for boats. With crocodiles, we just make sure not to fall into the water. But a hippo will charge you, a hippo will tip boats over and attack you. Hippos kill many more people than crocodiles. Very dangerous animals.\" Then, with a smile: \"Shall we go to see the hippos next?\"\n\n**64**\n\nFROM LAKE IHEMA, the road wound through a sea of tall grass that moved on the wind. It had the same sun-golden hue as a lioness's hide, which was surely no coincidence.\n\n\"This area, it is very much a lion's habitat,\" Marcel said.\n\nFlat-crowned acacia thorn trees opened up like umbrellas above the heat, creating pockets of perfect shade for future prides to lie beneath, panting and waiting. But the lions were nowhere to be seen, and their absence resonated.\n\nWe came upon a magnificent waterbuck, head held high like a stag on royal heraldry as we passed. It is one of the largest and certainly most impressive of the Akagera antelopes. The smallest, a tiny fawnlike creature called the oribi, appeared out of the grass as well, tiptoeing daintily over the road in front of us. It was followed by a slew of impalas who herded themselves across in such numbers that they brought our vehicle to a halt. Ever observant, I wrote in my journal: _Lots of impalas_. I thought a moment, then underlined \"lots\" forcefully. I also ticked _impala, oribi_ , and _waterbuck_ off my list.\n\nApparently this was some sort of impala crosswalk, because they cantered by with a confidence that comes from having the right of way, wholly unconcerned about our idling 4x4. They were looking awfully relaxed, these impalas, and who could blame them? With no lions slinking about, there was no need for them to remain spring-loaded, ready to bolt at the first hint of susurrations in the grass.\n\nAs the Land Cruiser rolled north over rutted trails, the open savannah was swallowed up again by thickets of thornbush wilderness. When we came around a bend in the bush, a man with a rifle lunged out at us. He was a twitchy-looking fellow in a stained undershirt, and he signalled for Jean-Claude to pull over and roll down the window. Ambush? Poacher? No. There was a road crew farther ahead, Jean-Claude explained, and this poor soul had been posted to keep watch for Mutware, armed only with a single-bolt rifle\u2014something that would surely have just pissed the animal off had he actually fired on him. (And given Mutware's long memory, if the man did shoot Mutware, he'd probably have to leave Akagera for good and change his name and assume a new identity, all the while waiting in fear for that fateful knock on the door. _\"Hello there. Remember me?\"_ )\n\n\"Did you see him?\" the man asked. \"Mutware? Was he on the road? Did you pass him?\"\n\nThe man's face was beaded with sweat, and I didn't think it was entirely from the heat. When we told him we hadn't crossed paths with the elephant, only his dung, our reluctant sentry stepped back, staring down the road again as we passed.\n\n\"Mutware can be hard on the road crews,\" Marcel told us. \"During the last rainy season, he got in a shoving match with one of the graders.\"\n\n\"And?\" Jean-Claude asked.\n\n\"The grader lost.\"\n\nI asked Marcel what was the biggest danger tourists faced in Akagera National Park. I expected him to say black mambas or pythons (the park has both). His answer surprised me.\n\n\"Buffaloes,\" he said. \"And if they are alone, it is even worse. A solitary buffalo can be very aggressive. They will charge vehicles for no reason. We park rangers? We don't like buffaloes. They give us too many problems.\"\n\nAnd sure enough, right on cue, we came around a corner to see a lone buffalo standing at the side of the road, glaring at us from under heavily curved horns. African buffaloes always look like they're on the brink of 'roid rage, with their thick brows and muscle-knotted shoulders.\n\nMarcel grew tense. He leaned forward, whispered to Jean-Claude, \"Don't slow down, but don't speed up. Go carefully, carefully... And if he charges, drive\u2014drive very fast.\"\n\nWe rolled by, just metres away, with the brute scowling at us all the while. It was the tensest moment of our trip.\n\nJean-Claude was clutching the steering wheel tightly, foot nursing the accelerator. He may have been reconsidering his offer to drive. I know I was.\n\n**65**\n\nTHERE ARE NO HIPPOS AT HIPPO BEACH.\n\nThe hippopotami of Akagera National Park, being of the free-range variety, had the inconsiderate habit of moving. But at one time, they'd stayed long enough on the southern shores of Lake Mihindi that a beach had been named in their honour, with maps duly updated and road signs posted, just to have the hippos\u2014in what can only be considered an abject display of bad manners\u2014decamp. Rather than chase them across the map, rechristening bodies of water every time the hippos moved on, Rwanda's cartographers decided to let the original name stand, although with more ironic overtones than intended.\n\n\"They should probably put quotes around 'Hippo,'\" I said as we stood, looking out at the hippo-less waters of Hippo Beach.\n\nLake Mihindi forms a pool of reedy wetness in the dry scrublands of the savannah, with bright mossy greens near shore and feathery stands of papyrus islands floating farther out. Amid the growing heat of mid-morning, the waters of Mihindi beckoned to us, but latent dangers were lying in wait. On a marshy lump of land: the low waddle of a crocodile sliding into the water.\n\n\"They should probably put quotes around 'Beach' as well,\" I said after a moment.\n\nI looked at my shadow, stretched by the sun, extending to the water's edge, thought about crocodiles licking at it, pulling me under, pulling me in...\n\nAs we drove along the marshy shores of the next lake, we startled one of Akagera's roving hippos\u2014which in turn startled us; my heart pinged like an elevator at the sight of this overinflated creature running across our path. It hit the water like a ship being launched: a crash followed by silence. It had vanished as cleanly as a magic trick, disappearing into what looked like shallow waters. The waves it left spread outward, then settled, grew calm. And then, just as suddenly, the hippo resurfaced farther down with a loud _pfffft_. More hippos surfaced and more, an entire pod, and we watched them, spellbound: underwater blimps appearing and disappearing, as hypnotic as a lava lamp. One hippo would sink, another would rise. One would hiss, another would dive.\n\nOne of the larger hippos sported fresh wounds: strips of reddish pink, showing through his hide.\n\n\"Because of the crocodile,\" Marcel explained. \"Hippos don't have good relations with them.\"\n\nCrocodiles attack but rarely win, and isn't it funny how we always root for the mammal? Scaly, cold-blooded crocs vs. the soft and fleshy, all-too-human plumpness of the hippo: was there any doubt where our loyalties would lie?\n\n\"A hippo will stay and fight,\" Marcel said. \"Every other animal runs away.\"\n\nThey like to wallow in swamp water, but hippos will roam far inland as well, as much as seven kilometres from the nearest marsh. Bumping into a hippo deep in the leonine grasslands must come as a shock.\n\n\"But it's mainly at night,\" Marcel explained. \"When it's cooler out.\"\n\nA family of warthogs trotted past next, chugging across the trail in front of us. How something that ugly manages to reproduce is a mystery; I suspect banana beer is involved. I'm guessing also that the lovemaking doesn't involve a lot of eye contact. Even the name, \"warthog\": are there any two uglier words in the English language you could put together? The papa was easy to spot because of his tusks, and he held his tufted tail up like a flag for the children to follow. I imagine the mama warthog justifies him to her friends over tea, saying, _\"He's not much to look at, I know. But he's good with the kids.\"_\n\nThe warthog family disappeared one after another into the grass, until only the papa's tail could be seen bobbing above. And then, not even that.\n\nSuddenly: zebras.\n\nFrom Lake Mihindi, we were heading north between ecological zones: swamps on one side of the road, savannah on the other. The Mutumba Hills pushed in from the south; the Tanzanian Highlands rose in the east: sharp blue silhouettes in the shape of axe heads and anvils.\n\nWe had entered the vast bowl of the Kilala Plains, and mud-built termite mounds punctuated the emptiness, forming weirdly sculpted, Gaud\u00ed-like creations. Everything was sticky with sweat; I felt as though I were poaching from the inside out. Although set at a lower altitude than the rest of Rwanda, Akagera _feels_ closer to the sun. It was a heat so heavy you could see it. The distant hills wavered and shimmered in a hazy mirage. Here was the savannah of my mind's eye. Here was what I had imagined all along. The endless sere grasslands, the vaulted skies, the drift of zebras across an open plain.\n\nWe had been distracted by dung (yet again!) and almost didn't see them approaching. Having pulled over beside a particularly fascinating mound of droppings, our guide was explaining the varieties one might encounter in Akagera. This inky-black pile was buffalo (hopefully long gone); hyena poop was crusted with white from the calcium in the bones they ate; the impalas' were rounded pellets; and the balled bundles of straw were, of course, elephant. And then, when we looked up, zebras were all around us: bar-code arrangements moving past, trotting round-bellied out of the grass, tails flicking, hooves kicking up dust.\n\nAbove us, birds of prey were tracing Olympic flags in a sky bleached of colour. Even with sunglasses on, I had to squint. Then, like a cool breeze, giraffes appeared, unhindered and unhurried. They loped past us on glided stride. Compared to the harrumphing of hippos or the Zoetrope trot of the zebras, the giraffes were positively liquid in their movements. It was striking, and instructive, how much sheer _space_ animals in the wild require to feel at home.\n\nMarcel tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to the horizon.\n\nCauliflower clouds were boiling up. We could hear thunder on the far side of somewhere, like the rumble of an empty stomach. We were now above Lake Rwanyakizinga, having crossed almost the entirety of Akagera National Park. Time to turn around.\n\nWe climbed into the Land Cruiser and began reeling ourselves back across the landscape. Birds swooped and whistled, lifting off above the lakes, leaving concentric circles in their wake. A heron hitched a ride on the back of a crocodile, as unperturbed as an empress atop a royal litter.\n\nIt was the end of the day, and a buttery sun was melting in the pan. But the warm glow didn't last. Dark clouds slowly sealed off the sky, lowering the ceiling. Loud bone-cracks of thunder. Sultry air, cool and muggy at the same time. A falling drizzle that hastened the arrival of evening, wipers smearing the dust.\n\nBaboons had sought shelter under thorn-tree canopies, both from the coming downpour and, one supposes, the sheer weight of the sky. And then\u2014bullets of rain hitting the windshield, the wipers flailing, the view in front of us liquefying. The road thickened into mud, and just as quickly the storm broke, lifting as surely as birds off a lake, leaving only bruised skies and wet grass behind. It had been a rainstorm almost without rain.\n\nI'd enjoyed our sojourn in Akagera because Akagera had provided a reprieve. Here in the savannah was something older, something stronger, something beyond the purview of human history. But as evening settled upon us, the past reasserted itself. In Rwanda, it always does.\n\nWe had taken a short detour onto a bluff of land above Lake Ihema, where an abandoned manor house stood, catching the last light of day. Doors boarded. Windows as empty as eye sockets.\n\n\"President Habyarimana,\" Marcel said. \"This was his summer house.\"\n\nWe got out, walked nearer. The manor overlooked a brackish bay. In the grass a sibilant snake appeared, sleek black, moving in misdirections, tasting the air with its tongue. Or was it just the shadow of a snake? A thin question mark uncurling?\n\nHabyarimana's summer home had once echoed with the laughter of cousins and cronies, with the clinking of glasses, the murmur of conclaves. This had been the holiday retreat of a president who, lifted on a rising tide of Hutu Power, would eventually be consumed by it. His death was the signal to unleash hell, and the 1994 genocide remains the Big Bang of Rwandan history, its effects always present, always evident\u2014even here.\n\n\"Not too close to the lake,\" our guide advised. \"Stay back, just in case.\"\n\nWe could discern no eyes in the water, but we knew there were crocodiles nearby, seldom seen but always present, lurking in the murky waters.\n\nAfter we returned to the lodge, I lay sprawled under the lack-lustre breeze of a ceiling fan that not so much cooled the air as stirred it. I thought about a land so green, so brittle. That night I dreamed we were being chased by faceless people trying to kill us.\n\n**66**\n\nWHEN JEAN-CLAUDE MUNYEZAMU was fourteen years old, he got swept up in a failed coup d'\u00e9tat. Imprisoned and interrogated, he was threatened with torture at the hands of the Hutu regime, all because he knew how to drive a motorcycle. Jean-Claude told me this story\u2014which he thought of as funny\u2014during our long drive back to Kabarondo from Akagera National Park.\n\nWe'd woken to grey skies and damp toast, and a family of insufferably chirpy Americans at the next table. They'd been on the night tour of the park and, taking my wan smile as an invitation, set about regaling us with details of how they'd seen a leopard with its kill, hippos flouncing about in the open, elephants riding a unicycle, a zebra playing the banjo\u2014that sort of thing. This did not surprise me in the least. I had long since come to accept, indeed embrace, the fact that I will always be on the Wrong Tour. You would do well, on seeing me at a muster point in an art gallery or before a nature walk, to head in exactly the opposite direction.\n\nEven worse, this family had met the illustrious Mutware.\n\n\"He was blocking the road. He wouldn't let us pass, so finally our guide had to throw a papaya or something into the bush, and when Mutware went to investigate we beat it right past him. It was _so_ exciting! Wasn't it, honey?\"\n\nHoney: \"Yep.\"\n\nSigh.\n\nAs we dropped off our keys, I was disappointed to hear from the desk clerk that a full-scale renovation would soon be underway at Akagera lodge, to bring it up to a four-star standard.\n\n\"The next time you come, it will be completely redone,\" I was assured. \"Like new!\"\n\nBut I liked how it was now, cracked glass and all. I'd grown to appreciate its weathered charms, its old-sweater coziness, its bands of disreputable baboons hanging about the entranceways chewing toothpicks and keeping a sly sideward eye on the tourists. Even without the glacier-chilled strawberries, I enjoyed our time in the lodge, and felt sad at having to say goodbye.\n\nWe drove into a bleary-eyed dawn under dishwater skies. A damp day, but the sun soon baked away the wet, and with one last sighting of Mutware's mighty dung, we were gone. By the time we reached the lake, the clouds had thinned to near nothingness. Splinters of light on deep waters.\n\nThe road took us back over the same hills, past the same tin-ore mining town gone bust, the same clutch of homes where I'd met the children with their sorghum-stalk models. I looked for them as we passed, but they were nowhere to be seen.\n\n\"Did I ever tell you? The time I was almost executed? It was because I knew how to ride a motorcycle. Just for that!\"\n\nThose laps he'd taken around the soccer field had paid off. Jean-Claude became known in his neighbourhood as someone who could drive, which is when the military came calling. Or rather, when one particular officer came calling. A low-ranking NCO with a delicate problem.\n\n\"His name was Fabien Birori. He was a friend with one of my neighbours, and he was often having a beer with them. One day he was saying how he wanted to learn to drive a motorcycle. He couldn't even ride a bicycle! In Rwanda at that time, many kids, if they grew up poor, they never had a bicycle. This guy was from the south. Maybe it was a poor area, I don't know. But my neighbour, Vincent, he pointed to me and said, 'Jean-Claude knows how. He can teach you.'\"\n\nIt was summer, and Jean-Claude was free from schoolwork, so the officer hired him. Feeling embarrassed, and not wanting the other officers to see, Birori would practise with Jean-Claude on a borrowed motorcycle along the side streets, far away from the barracks.\n\n\"Was a big motorcycle. Red. Very powerful. Yamaha DT-125, I think. The officer would be sitting in front, I would sit behind and hold the handlebars, and he would learn to pop the gears with his foot. We went two times, three times, four times. Next day, he held the handles, I worked the gears. Slowly, he got a sense of the balance, how to drive it.\"\n\nWhat Jean-Claude could not have known was that this officer was part of a military clique planning to assassinate key members of Rwanda's armed forces as part of a coup d'\u00e9tat against the Habyarimana regime.\n\n\"One day, Birori told me he was going to Belgium for military training. When he came back, he was a sergeant. There was something different about him. You could see there was an optimism now. When he left, he didn't have it. When he came back, he came with optimism. And he promised me so much stuff! He said, 'I will get you a proper driver's licence, you're gonna be my personal driver, I will give you this and that.'\"\n\nBut what Birori didn't realize was that he was being set up. The coup was largely fictitious, staged mainly to remove a certain Air Force commander, a colonel who had grown too close to the president for the inner circle's liking. Habyarimana had been planning to make this colonel his minister of defence, perhaps even vice-president. It would prove to be a fatal offer.\n\n\"The colonel was already commander of the Rwandan Air Force, and what happened was, Birori killed him.\"\n\nThe sergeant's role, Jean-Claude later learned, had been to assassinate the commander so that the co-conspirators could seize control of the Kanombe military base and adjoining airport. They told him, \"You do that, we'll take care of the rest.\"\n\nSo Birori strode into the Air Force commander's office, shot him point-blank, and... nothing happened. Where were his co-conspirators, the hue and cry of a revolution? Nothing. Just a stunned secretary looking on in silence.\n\n\"What did he do?\" I asked.\n\n\"He ran. He hijacked a motorcycle, then a car. They captured him near his village. He was trying to get to his family home. They arrested him, took him back to Kigali. He was beaten very badly.\"\n\nAnd then came the crackdown. Any military personnel that the inner circle wanted to eliminate were quickly rounded up on the pretext of national security. Also caught in the dragnet was a confused young man who'd been labelled a \"known associate\" of the accused.\n\n\"I remember hearing that Colonel Mayuya had been assassinated, but I didn't think it had anything to do with me. Stanislas Mayuya, that was his name, the air commander that Birori killed. When my dad heard the news, I saw the fear in his eyes. He said, 'This is not good, Jean-Claude. When anything happens, the first thing they do is kill Tutsis. Anything at all, they kill the Tutsis.'\"\n\nSoon after, an unsmiling man in civilian clothes, an intelligence officer most likely, called out to Jean-Claude on the street.\n\n\"He knew my name. He said, 'Do you know this man Birori?' I said 'Sure, he's my friend.' I didn't know at that time it was Birori who had killed the Air Force commander. He asked, 'When did you see him last?' I said, 'Oh, it was on Saturday. I took him to the barracks on this motorcycle he rented for me.' I still didn't know I was in trouble. He said, 'Come with me. There is someone wants to talk to you.' So I got in his car. That's when I realized where we were going.\"\n\nThe presidential compound had a formidable reputation, and as they drove through the gates, Jean-Claude felt panic clawing its way up inside him. He turned around, saw the gates close behind them.\n\nInside the compound dwelled one of the most infamous torturers of the Habyarimana regime: a wheelchair-bound sadist named Pascal Simbikangwa. A distant cousin and close friend of the president, Simbikangwa had been made a high-ranking member of the Presidential Guards and head of the Rwandan Central Intelligence Agency. Paralyzed below the waist in an auto accident, he'd found other ways to spend his time, and when it came to interrogating prisoners, he was known to be a hands-on type of administrator. He enjoyed drawing out a person's final agonies.\n\n\"I knew now where I was going, who I was going to see.\"\n\nWhat Jean-Claude didn't know was why.\n\nArmed men dragged him into a small room, dimly lit. Jean-Claude could hear screams coming from a holding cell somewhere in the bowels of the building. The handiwork of Pascal Simbikangwa, no doubt. Fortunately (for Jean-Claude, that is), so many people had been brought in during the sweep that the man in the wheelchair couldn't get to Jean-Claude right away.\n\n\"While we were waiting, they told me, 'Look, just confess, it will be easier. We know you spent time with Birori. We know you rode a motorcycle.' I was scared. I thought this was to do with not having a driver's licence. I was riding that motorcycle without a licence, you see, and I thought this is why I was arrested. I told them, 'But I was very careful! I didn't pass on the highway. I never went on the main roads. I only drove in the side streets.'\"\n\nHis interrogators wanted to know about Birori, but again Jean-Claude thought this had to do with giving him driving lessons. \"I said to this guy, 'I don't have a licence, is true, but I am a good driver. Ask anyone! I didn't know it was against the law.'\"\n\nThe other man's gaze narrowed. He gestured to dark shapes dangling on hooks in the corner. \"Do you know what those are?\" he asked. \"Those are the testicles of men who lied to me.\"\n\nWhen Jean-Claude told me this, he laughed. \"Probably it wasn't true. But I was terrified! I thought, 'Oh my goodness, they take traffic violations very seriously!' Of course, I was just a kid at that time. I didn't know anything.\"\n\nHaving spent the night in a dark cell, Jean-Claude was brought back for questioning the next day and the next, each time expecting to be greeted by Simbikangwa, his instruments laid out in front of him like a surgeon's tools, but no.\n\nSergeant Birori, meanwhile, had been \"vigorously questioned,\" meaning \"beaten until brain dead,\" and a supposed plot to topple the government had been thwarted.\n\n\"I was lucky to get out of that place in one piece,\" Jean-Claude assured me.\n\n\"And with testicles intact!\" I said.\n\n\"Exactly. Usually when you go into the presidential compound, you don't come out again.\"\n\nIt was Jean-Claude's good fortune that a neighbour of his worked in the compound, and as Jean-Claude was being escorted across the grounds he spotted him, called out.\n\nThe neighbour came over. \"Why are you in here?\" he asked.\n\n\"I was driving a motorcycle without a licence,\" Jean-Claude replied.\n\nBy this point, it must have been clear that the gawky teenage boy had not been involved in any clandestine machinations, and the next day Jean-Claude was released into his neighbour's custody. He drove Jean-Claude home.\n\n\"That must have been a harrowing three days,\" I said.\n\n\"You know, I was so young, I don't think I realized how dangerous the situation was. My arrest was harder on my father than on me. He feared the worst.\"\n\nThe earthen roads of Akagera were rolling under us, and the highway was fast approaching. I didn't know how to broach the matter, but it needed to be asked.\n\n\"Um, you did get your driver's licence at some point though, right?\"\n\nJean-Claude threw back his head and laughed, accelerator sinking ever deeper into the floorboards. The Land Cruiser picked up speed, dust and wind whipping through, and I laughed as well\u2014though I couldn't help but notice he hadn't answered my question.\n\n**67**\n\nHERE WE WERE. Back again at the crossroads town of Kabarondo.\n\nWe filled up our tank at the same gas station, saw the same sullen children hanging around looking for handouts. Again, had we headed west, we would have soon been in Jean-Claude's childhood village. Instead we turned south, heading for Rusumo Falls and the end of Rwanda.\n\nFor Jean-Claude, this was a haunted highway. It was the route he'd taken when he escaped. As we came to the town of Remera, Jean-Claude said, \"I had a friend here. His father was a well-known photographer. Ran a photo studio.\"\n\n\"Want to look him up?\" I asked, but even as the words were coming out of my mouth I knew the answer.\n\n\"He was killed in the genocide. His father, mother. Entire family was pretty much wiped out. I think one daughter survived and\u2014I don't remember her name.\"\n\nWe drove down the main street of Remera, a broad boulevard lined with shops, pulled over, and found the photo studio his friend's father had once owned. It was run by a different photographer now, the front room lined with samples of his handiwork: soft-focus families with strained smiles, neckties and plaid vests on the boys, fanned skirts on the girls. You can see these same photos, with the same diffused lighting and awkwardly arranged poses, at any Sears photo studio back home. They even had the same blue-sky-with-clouds canvas backdrop behind them.\n\nJean-Claude hadn't been to Remera in twenty years\u2014when he'd returned to Rwanda in '94, it was from the northeast, through Uganda\u2014and the people he'd known here were gone. Gone, dead mostly. Sometimes, just gone. Moved, retired, married. Gone. He asked around at the studio and on the street but wasn't able to make any connections, find any links to his younger self. So we drove on. Goats were on the road, and men were hacking out brush from among the banana trees. Women were hanging hand-wrung laundry on the hedges to dry.\n\n\"How does it feel?\" I asked. \"Driving this route, after so long?\"\n\n\"My chest is a little tight,\" he admitted. \"Every hilltop, I expect to see an interahamwe checkpoint. We are getting close to that place where\u2014how would you say it?\u2014that place where you can't change your mind, where you have no choice but to keep going.\"\n\n\"The point of no return?\"\n\n\"Yes, that.\"\n\nKibungo Town (now known as Ngoma) was the last population centre of note before the border with Tanzania. After this intersection, there really was no turning back. From here, the road went only south. You had no alibi, no excuse if you were caught beyond Kibungo. After Kibungo, it was clear you were trying to escape, and young Tutsi males caught slipping away would have been assumed to be leaving to join the RPF.\n\n\"I felt I was going into a blank map,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nHis father had passed away the year before. \"He was, I think, eighty-two when he died, but it was still unexpected. He was always very healthy, my father. I never remember a time when he was sick.\"\n\nThe end, when it came, came quickly.\n\n\"He fell ill and went to a clinic. They transferred him to a big hospital, ran tests, and after one week, he died. He went into a coma and never came back. I still don't know what it was that killed him, what illness he had. Just\u2014he was gone. In our house now it was just my brother Emmanuel and me. Was very quiet.\"\n\n\"If your father hadn't passed away when he did, would you have left Rwanda?\"\n\n\"No, I would have stayed.\"\n\n\"And when the genocide began?\"\n\n\"I would still have been there, taking care of him.\"\n\n\"So... you both would have died.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I'm sure we would not have survived.\"\n\nIn a strange way, dying was the kindest thing Jean-Claude's father could have done for him. \"It was for the best, then?\"\n\nJean-Claude thought about this. \"Maybe, but it didn't feel that way at the time.\"\n\nIn the end, it was the faded photograph of his brother Sa\u00efd, sent from Kenya, that would propel Jean-Claude onto a different path, one that ended not with machetes but marriage, not death but family, not a mass grave but a new life.\n\n\"You know, Kenya was like the China of Africa back then. Manufactured goods, clothes, mattresses, everything came through Kenya. It was why my brother was based there. Mombasa was a trade centre, and he was a truck driver. In his letter he said, 'Anything you need, let me know, I can send it. I'm living in the Jomvu district.' This letter, he had sent it many years before,\" Jean-Claude said. \"But I still kept it. I still had it. No address, no telephone number, not even a street. Just this name: _Jomvu_.\"\n\nThat, and the photograph. It showed Sa\u00efd looking happy and relaxed, smiling at the camera, and in the background, slightly out of focus, was a sign that read THE ZAIRE BAR. A small clue, but a good one. Based on this single image, Jean-Claude Munyezamu set out across East Africa to track down his brother.\n\n\"The first truck driver I approached betrayed me. And he was our neighbour! We knew each other very well. I told him that I was going to Kenya and he said, 'Okay, I will drive you.' I told him it was just to visit my brother. I didn't say to anyone that I wasn't coming back. He said, 'Okay. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. I will take you.' But what he did was, he left that night and didn't tell me.\"\n\nThe next morning, Jean-Claude packed a small bag and went to the truck stop looking for his neighbour.\n\n\"But he was gone. Everybody saw me with this little suitcase. They said, 'What's going on?' When I told them what's happened, they said, 'That guy? He left last night.' I said, 'No, no, no. He's leaving today because he's gonna take me with him.'\"\n\nJean-Claude was astonished at the betrayal, even now, after all these years.\n\n\"I didn't know what to do. I never thought he would lie to me, never. This guy was a born-again Christian! Another truck driver, he overheard what was going on, and he kind of laughed. He said, 'Oh, man. That guy is a born-again Christian and he left you?' I said, 'Yeah. That's weird, right?'\"\n\nThe other driver said, \"Come on. I'll take you.\"\n\nHis name was Hodali. As they climbed into his cab, he turned to Jean-Claude and said, \"From now on, when we come to a roadblock, anyone asks, you're my employee, okay?\"\n\nThere was someone else in the truck as well: the driver's turn boy. In Africa, there are always at least two people in a truck: the driver and his assistant, a turn boy who helps the driver back up, fit in, squeeze by. Hodali's turn boy was an older man who had a well-stamped passport if anyone asked for it. So they decided they would tell people the older man was another driver, catching a ride to a rig parked at Rusumo Falls. Jean-Claude would be the turn boy.\n\n\"When we got near the border, there was this guy, he was running a guest house. He was a friend of this truck driver, they had a kind of business they were doing. The truck driver would bring goods from Kenya, this guy would resell it. In Rwandan culture, it is always about relationships, and these two guys\u2014this driver named Hodali and the owner of the guest house\u2014they had a long relationship. So when Hodali asked him to help, he had to say yes. Even if he didn't want to, he had to say yes.\"\n\nJean-Claude stayed overnight at the owner's house. The owner had a young family, a wife, maybe three or four kids, and was risking a lot.\n\n\"They made a bed for me, and I slept very deep. And then about three in the morning, the owner, he woke me up. It was still very dark out. I think you know the African night now. It is very dark. We had a flashlight. My bag was still with the truck, and Hodali was still sleeping, so I was by myself. The guest-house owner had a bicycle and he said, 'We're gonna ride it to the border. You sit on the back. I will pedal. When we come to a roadblock, we will say that your truck is waiting at the border and I'm giving you a ride. If they ask you for ID, you say it is in the truck.' This guy, the owner of the guest house, he was a Hutu, and he had a thick northern accent. All the soldiers knew him. If they came to drink beer, they were coming to his guest house. Most of those soldiers, they were from northern Rwanda also, so they kind of had this brotherhood relationship. A Hutu with a northern accent? No one is going to expect he is helping a Tutsi.\"\n\n\"Do you remember his name? The owner of the guest house.\"\n\n\"They never told me. He was nervous. He said to Hodali, 'What you are making me do, if they find out they may kill me.' And now, it was just him and me. I got on the back of his bicycle and I held on. I just hoped that he wouldn't betray me.\"\n\n\"Did you run into any roadblocks?\"\n\n\"Maybe three. These were twenty-four-hour roadblocks. At the first checkpoint, they said, 'Where are you going?' He said, 'Oh, I'm going to the border. I have this guy from my guest house, his truck is down there. He was back in Kigali to get some documents he needed to cross.' They said, 'Okay, go ahead.'\"\n\n\"How long a bicycle ride was that?\"\n\n\"Maybe half an hour. It was going downhill. We were coasting most of the way. I remember the air was cool.\"\n\n\"Why a bicycle, why not go in the truck?\"\n\n\"This truck driver Hodali, he was Tutsi. It would be dangerous for him to cross the border with me. When they see his ID card says TUTSI, they might check more carefully. So after we passed through the last police roadblock on the bicycle, the guest-house owner took me to a different truck, very big, an eighteen-wheeler carrying maybe fifty tons of coffee. This other driver, he was a Hutu also, and he wasn't happy about having me. He was angry and didn't want anything to do with me. I think maybe they pressured him to take me. Probably he thought I was running away to join the RPF. The plan was, he would drive me across the bridge, and at the next parking area he would meet up with Hodali and I would change trucks. Then Hodali would take me the rest of the way to Mombasa. This other driver, he only had to get me across to the other side after the border opened.\"\n\n\"Could you trust him?\"\n\n\"I didn't have a choice.\"\n\nAnd so, after making sure no one was watching, they pulled open the tarp on the back of the truck and Jean-Claude climbed in.\n\n\"They told me, 'Go deep, into the middle. Make a hiding place.' These sacks were high on both sides. I was afraid they were going to fall on me. Each sack was fifty kilograms.\" He laughed. \"At that time, I was weighing probably no more than that.\"\n\n\"It was still dark when you climbed in?\"\n\n\"It was. And I waited forever for that truck to cross. I couldn't sleep. I could hear truck engines, people talking. Slowly, I could see light poking through the canvas sides, and I knew the sun was coming up. The heat was becoming stronger. Then the engine started and we began to roll forward.\"\n\nThere was one barrier left to cross.\n\n\"Just before the bridge, there was a kind of gate. I could feel the truck stop and I could hear the military say, 'Open the back!' The driver said, 'It was already checked. It's just finished to be checked.' But they said, 'Open it again.'\"\n\n\"What would they have done?\" I asked. \"If they had found you.\"\n\n\"Oh, they would have killed me.\"\n\nIn Kirehe Town, the plantains had completely taken over, the wind-shredded leaves thick on either side, and I watched as the town appeared and disappeared, overgrown and ongoing, for miles.\n\nOnce we got past Kirehe, the topography changed dramatically. You could feel Tanzania coming to meet us, arid and open. The air grew drier. The greens grew thinner. Stubbled fields. The banners of opposition parties. The deep blue of the Tigo cell phone company. The sunflower yellows of MTN.\n\nWe passed a caf\u00e9 called Taste of Success, and Jean-Claude suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. \"This is the place,\" he said. \"I remember it so much! The guest house was near here.\"\n\nThis was the road Jean-Claude had travelled down in the early hours en route to a rendezvous with a cargo of coffee beans. Nineteen years old on the back of a bicycle. Coasting to Tanzania.\n\n**68**\n\nWHEN JEAN-CLAUDE SLIPPED UNDER THE CANVAS and into the back of that truck at Rusumo Falls, he didn't know he was going to be trapped inside for ten hours.\n\n\"I didn't have any water or food. I hadn't even eaten breakfast before we left. So I was feeling a little dizzy, when all of a sudden that soldier said, 'Open the back!' I hunched down. I was sure he could see me, but he didn't say anything. He just stood a moment and then said, 'Okay, you're good to go.' Even now I think he knew. Maybe he was paid off, I don't know. Or maybe\u2014maybe it was just luck.\"\n\nCrouching under sacks of coffee, Jean-Claude was feeling nauseated.\n\n\"It was very hot, and the smell was giving me a bad headache. This was not roasted coffee. This was raw beans. I could smell vegetation. Not manure, but something green\u2014like a green branch\u2014which is not bad at first, but when you stay there for so long it becomes stronger. And the sacks they put the coffee in, also they have their own smell, a chemical smell, something they spray on them. It was the worst smell I have ever experienced, the coffee and those sacks in the heat.\"\n\nWe had stopped for lunch at a dusty caf\u00e9 in Nyakarambi, a village known for its traditional crafts, particularly that of _imigongo_ , or \"cow-dung paintings.\"\n\nCow dung?\n\nYes. Cow dung. This was an ancient Rwandan art that mixed natural pigments with dried dung to create intricate geometric designs. I considered bringing one home for my wife, y'know, as a token of my love, but wasn't sure how she would feel about hanging it above our dining-room table. If nothing else, it would have made a terrific ice-breaker\/conversation piece. _\"Can you feel the texture of the brush strokes? Wonderful, isn't it? What's it made from, you ask? Well, interesting story that...\"_\n\nAs we waited for our order of skewers to arrive, it hit me.\n\n\"That's why you don't drink coffee, isn't it, Jean-Claude? The heat, the smell of those coffee beans, the chemicals, the nausea and fear, the memory of it. That's why.\"\n\nHe tilted back in his chair, started to say something, then stopped. When the woman came by with our meal he turned to her and said, purposefully, carefully, \"I would like a cup of coffee also.\"\n\n\"Make it two,\" I said.\n\nIt was served strong, in chipped china mugs. A Rwandan brew, rich and dark. If night has a flavour, it tastes like Rwandan coffee.\n\nAfter he finished, I asked him what he thought.\n\n\"Bitter. Very bitter. But good.\"\n\nI never did get Jean-Claude to try beer, but he does drink coffee now\u2014though usually only when he's with me.\n\nA wedding was pouring into Nyakarambi that day, and as we left the caf\u00e9 the streets were alive with colour. A procession of women in bright wrapped dresses passed by, accompanied by the usual men in ill-fitting suits. It was like a slow-moving fashion parade. Hundreds of women, and I don't think any two were wearing the same patterns. They carried gifts on their heads in large woven baskets, the type we had seen at the royal court weeks before.\n\n\"Big wedding,\" I said as the guests filed past. Their numbers stretched down the road, in both directions, as far as we could see.\n\n\"By African standards, this is usual.\" Jean-Claude had been to weddings in Canada, was always surprised how small they were\u2014even the big ones.\n\n\"Are you ready for Rusumo?\" I asked.\n\nHe was.\n\nBeyond Nyakarambi, the road grew heavy with transport trucks, passing on angry blasts from their air horns, hand-painted slogans beseeching Jesus and all the Saints to protect them. _Never mind them, what about us?_ The increased traffic was inevitable, I suppose. This narrow two-lane strip of highway was, after all, the main trade route south to Tanzania and Kenya beyond.\n\nWe climbed higher. And higher still.\n\nHere was a dry season worthy of the name. A haze of chalky dust hung over the fields. Parched sunlight filtered through. Saffron-coloured clouds. Clay-baked villages scattered across the hills. And in the distance, the flat-topped mountains of Tanzania, rippling in the heat.\n\nWe passed the Dar American Saloon amid a cluster of taverns and chophouse caf\u00e9s that were filled with truck drivers, and then we dropped down, suddenly, toward Rusumo Falls.\n\nJean-Claude parked across from the Rwanda Customs and Immigration office. We walked to a knoll of grass above the river, construction going on all around us. The raised roadbed of a new highway curved around; judging from the artist's rendering posted out front, it would be four lanes wide and emblazoned with streetlights. We could see the cement pylons of this Bridge of Tomorrow already marching across the river, billboards proclaiming it a joint venture of Rwanda, Tanzania, and Japan. And I wondered if Hiro from Nagasaki was somewhere in among the many earthmovers and bulldozers that were rumbling about.\n\nThe falls themselves were hidden from sight, and when we approached a pair of Rwandan soldiers, a young man and woman, faces sheened with perspiration, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, they gave us a shrug and a wave of their hand. If we wanted to walk onto the bridge and take some photographs, that was fine with them. Just don't go past the middle of the bridge, they advised, because after that we would be Tanzania's responsibility. Oh, and try not to get clipped by one of the trucks that were constantly roaring across. It was a tight squeeze.\n\nI was about to walk out when Jean-Claude stopped me.\n\n\"We should check in with the immigration office first,\" he said, referring to the cement building set farther back. \"Just to let them know we are here.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? The soldiers already said it was okay.\"\n\n\"Don't worry. It will take only a moment. I promise.\"\n\n**69**\n\nTWO HOURS AND ONE ARTFULLY CALLED BLUFF LATER, We finally ended up on the bridge above Rusumo Falls.\n\n\"Define 'moment,'\" I said to Jean-Claude.\n\nHe noted, wryly, that it had almost been easier for him to cross twenty years ago than it was today.\n\nTransport trucks from Tanzania rumbled by, the bridge bouncing under their weight. Jean-Claude remembered the sound of the waterfall as well, the muffled roar of it as they passed over. But he had never seen it until now. \"I could hear the water,\" he said. \"Then it just faded away...\"\n\nOn the Tanzania side of the river, we could see the adjoining ramp where the new bridge would be built, and I said to Jean-Claude, \"It's good we came now. Next time, the bridge you crossed will be gone.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"I'm glad I finally saw it. This is where the rest of my life began.\"\n\nThe waters at Rusumo continued to fall. A few scribblings of cloud uncurled above us like the absentminded doodles of a distracted god. As we walked back to our vehicle, I asked Jean-Claude, \"Where to now?\" We'd run out of Rwanda to drive across.\n\n\"There is one last stop,\" he said. \"At my village.\"\n\n**70**\n\nAFTER CROSSING THE BRIDGE under a cargo of coffee and being tossed about like a castaway on high seas, Jean-Claude had waited for the signal. The truck he was in lurched uphill, then came to a shuddering halt. The driver cut the engine. Three short raps on the side of the truck told him it was all clear. Hodali had come to collect him.\n\nSo began Jean-Claude's long, elated journey across Tanzania to Kenya and the sea.\n\n\"Hodali fed me. He paid the police at roadblocks. Paid for my room at the guest homes we stayed at. I gave him just five thousand francs, which didn't cover very much. He even helped me track down the Zaire Bar.\"\n\nUsing the photograph Jean-Claude had of his brother, they threaded their way through the port city of Mombasa until they found the Jomvu district and eventually the bar.\n\n\"Was very small and smoky. They were roasting meat outside. Goat meat. You could smell it. People were drinking beer, and they were playing Congolese music. The bar was Kenyan, but the music was Congolese. This is famous music in East Africa.\"\n\nRwandans who knew Jean-Claude's brother sent word down the line, from truck driver to truck driver, to find him.\n\n\"I stayed with them while I waited to hear what's happened.\"\n\n\"How was Mombasa?\"\n\n\"Hot. In Rwanda we don't have heat like that, or such humidity. It was very congested, very crowded. And Kenyans are different. Modern. They don't care about you. Everybody goes about their business. It was a kind of culture shock. I felt like a foreigner for the first time. But there was also a sense of freedom. And\"\u2014Jean-Claude smiled\u2014\"I saw the ocean for the first time. It was so huge! I saw those container ships passing. I think that was the biggest thing I had ever seen.\"\n\nJean-Claude would finally meet up with his brother Sa\u00efd, would join him on a run to the Somali refugee camps. Jean-Claude would travel on his own to Sudan, where he would see the desert for the first time, and eventually to Montreal, where he would see snow.\n\n\"What a long, strange trip it's been,\" I said, and Jean-Claude nodded.\n\n\"It has.\"\n\n\"Did you keep in touch with the truck driver, the one who took you to Mombasa?\"\n\n\"Hodali? I did. He came to see me in Kenya. He was very happy to know I was okay. He passed away in 1997 or '99, I think. He lost his entire family in the genocide. His wife, his children. Everyone. He only survived because he was not in Rwanda at that time. He was outside of the country, driving truck. So he survived.\"\n\n\"He was lucky, then.\"\n\n\"Lucky?\" Jean-Claude thought about this. \"I don't know if that's the right word.\"\n\n**71**\n\nOVER THE COURSE OF OUR TRAVELS in Rwanda we'd been shedding our supply of soccer gear\u2014team uniforms, goalie equipment, hand pumps. There was only one duffle bag left, and one destination: Rundu village, where Jean-Claude had lived as a child and where his brother Jean-Baptiste had once built a handsome home.\n\nJean-Baptiste had been killed by Hutu militias, but his scattered children had survived, and among them was his daughter Odile.\n\n\"We call her Fifi, it's like a nickname,\" Jean-Claude said.\n\nOdile was the superintendent of schools for the region, and we stopped in to see her on our way back through Kabarondo.\n\n\"How did she survive the genocide?\" I asked Jean-Claude as we drove down a narrow residential lane.\n\n\"In Rwanda, you never ask that. You don't ask what someone did to survive. If they want to tell you, they will, but you never ask. I have friends I have known for many years who lived through it, and they have never talked to me about it.\" He put the vehicle in park, looked at me. \"So maybe don't ask.\"\n\nHis niece lived in a tidy cement-walled home alongside other tidy cement-walled homes on an equally tidy well-swept lane. We sat in the dimly lit softness of her living room around a low table adorned with a doily and a sprig of flowers in a vase.\n\nOdile's husband, Hussein, was an agricultural engineer. He was away, but their four-year-old son Tony was on hand, along with his elfin-like cousin Asinati. Odile had a new baby as well. He was sleeping on a woven mat in the next room; I could see his chubby legs and twitching toes through an open door, cooled by the cross-breeze.\n\nWhile Jean-Claude and his niece discussed various matters concerning their family's property, I chatted with the little ones. They were learning English at their local kindergarten and had proven to be attentive pupils.\n\n\"Hello,\" I said. \"How are you?\"\n\nOdile's son piped up immediately. _\"Hello teacher, my name is Tony, I am a boy, I am four years old.\"_ This was delivered in one extended breath. Impressive.\n\nAs Tony beamed up at me, his cousin launched into her own version of the same: _\"Hello teacher, my name is Asinati, I am a girl, I am four years old.\"_\n\n\"So, do you like school?\"\n\n_\"Hello teacher, my name is Tony, I am a boy, I am four years old.\"_\n\nFollowed by: _\"Hello teacher, my name is Asinati, I am a girl, I am four years old.\"_\n\n\"Do you like sports?\"\n\n_\"My name is Tony, I am a boy, I am four years old.\"_\n\n\"How about you? Do you like sports?\"\n\n_\"My name is Asinati, I am a girl, I am four years old.\"_\n\nPutting this down on paper makes it seem repetitive, even annoying, but it wasn't. Not in the least. I was absolutely charmed by their chimed recitals of English; they were clearly so proud of what they'd learned.\n\nWhen we got up to leave, I shook their hands solemnly and said, \"Goodbye, Tony. Goodbye, Asinati. It was very nice to meet you.\"\n\nTo which they replied\u2014Well, you know what they replied.\n\nOdile accompanied us to Rundu; there was paperwork to sort out and documents to review at the village office. Jean-Claude followed a roughly hewn road past tumbledown farms and tattered banana plantations. A road that had once seen hyenas and lions, but no longer.\n\nOn the way, we stopped for a mother who was standing by the side of the road with a swaddled baby on her back. She climbed in beside Odile and held the baby on her lap as we bounced along, carefully draping a scarf over her child's face to protect it from the nasal blast of our air conditioning. When I noticed, I gave Jean-Claude a nudge and he turned it off. A narrow lane led us to her farm, hidden in the undergrowth, where she softly thanked us and got out.\n\nDuring our time in this country, I'd grown fascinated with the spice box of Rwanda's earth, from the gritty cinder dust of the Virungas to the talcum-powdered heights above Lake Kivu, from the terra-cotta clays of the Bugesera to the blood-rust soils of Akagera. But here, in Jean-Claude's childhood village, lived a shade of vermilion that was richer than I'd seen before. It was a colour almost tactile, with its own texture and warmth.\n\nRundu itself was hard beset, a reminder that despite the impressive strides Rwanda has made, the country has a long way to go. There were a thousand hills yet to climb, and the way was often steep. Rundu itself seemed to lie in a half-forgotten realm. The area was once reputed to harbour malevolent spirits and apparitions unholy. It was said to be the dwelling place of witches and necromancers, but today its most striking feature is simply the poverty that marks it. It's a poverty that lacks the optimism in other reaches of Rwanda. Here, you have the feeling of a people passed by, left behind.\n\nThere are no fibre-optic cables connecting Rundu to the outside world, no billboards exhorting the citizens to greater heights; there isn't even electricity. The homes are dark and lit by lamp oil; the shops are drab, lacking the brightly painted facades you find elsewhere. No phone companies are sponsoring Rundu's shops. Most of the buildings are crude wattle-and-mud arrangements, with the plaster falling away at times to reveal the woven-branch framework underneath, like bones through an animal's hide.\n\nWe visited one home\u2014dirt floors, clay walls, soot-filled interior\u2014where Jean-Claude spoke with an arthritic old lady and her twelve-year-old grandson. They lived alone, just the two of them in a crumbling house the size of a shed. Jean-Claude and the grandmother were discussing the possible cost of having her grandson board at his school.\n\nRather than attend the local school, the boy, who had shown real academic potential, walked two hours every day to Kabarondo. A small stipend from Jean-Claude would allow him to remain at his school during the week, where he could study under electric lights and be spared the exhausting back-and-forth daily trek. Jean-Claude agreed to help on the condition that the student keep his grades up. It would be a small amount of money, given twice a year, but one that would have a huge impact. Odile and Jean-Claude would work out how the funds would be sent, who would keep tabs, and how the student's progress would be evaluated.\n\n\"Odile told me about this boy,\" Jean-Claude explained as we stepped back outside. \"A good student, trying hard. She thought maybe I could help.\"\n\nJean-Claude's next meeting was not so convivial. It was with a sinewy man in a frayed shirt, the cloth patched over many times, who'd been encroaching on Jean-Claude's family property for years. Jean-Claude confronted him, and there was a terse exchange with warnings of legal action. The sinewy man hung his head, avoiding JC's gaze as he mumbled something ineffectual in his defence. Once a member of the feared Hutu militia, free to chop whomever he liked, he was now required to follow the rules like anyone else.\n\n\"That man,\" Jean-Claude told me later. \"He looted my brother's house after my brother was killed.\"\n\nAs Jean-Claude dealt with these and other matters, I wandered among the mud-walled homes of Rundu, past scuttling chickens and tethered goats. I soon had a mob of children, assorted ages and sizes, accompanying me. Not as brash as the kids in the cities, but equally amazed at my existence. They'd heard about muzungus, now they were seeing one firsthand! I felt I should do something entertaining\u2014maybe turn a cartwheel or juggle some gourds\u2014if only not to disappoint them. Instead, I said _\"Amakuru?\"_ which caused them to scatter, regroup, and then tiptoe back in. More than one child, egged on by his peers, snuck up, poked me, and then ran away. Others hung back shyly. Several smiled with a heartbreaking lack of guile. One of the older boys, having been to the city and therefore clearly more cosmopolitan than the rest, was selected by the other children to act as their spokesperson. A smiling beanpole of a kid with a natural confidence, he was, I imagined, what Jean-Claude must have been like when he was young.\n\n\"How are you, America?\" he asked and then, voice dropping to a whisper, he confided: \"I am fine.\"\n\n**72**\n\nJEAN-CLAUDE'S BROTHER had been a prominent member of the village, and his house had been among the finest in Rundu. Made of brick, with glass windows and a metal roof, it featured a new latrine in the backyard as well. When the genocide began, Jean-Baptiste's home was torn apart, brick by brick, down to its foundations. Following that, the Tutsi boys in the village were rounded up.\n\n\"They kept the women and younger girls for themselves and killed the men. The boys they tossed into our latrine.\"\n\n\"Alive?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"One of the little ones, maybe five years old, they could hear him crying for days and days until his voice gave out. Other boys were pushed on top of him. Then they filled it in.\"\n\nYears later, these bodies would be exhumed. The excavation left behind an open pit, overgrown but clearly visible.\n\nWe stood beside it awhile.\n\nIt hit me. \"Your family home is a genocide site.\"\n\nJean-Claude looked over at me and said, \"All of Rwanda is a genocide site.\"\n\nFrom the ruins of his brother's house, we walked out into nearby fields. Jean-Claude wanted to show me his family's land, banana plantations mainly, some of it leased, some of it surreptitiously encroached upon, much of it lying fallow, awaiting crops.\n\nOf the adults who came out to watch, holding back, eyeing us warily, many were undoubtedly killers. And yet I could sense no anger on Jean-Claude's part, no simmering rage, no eye-for-an-eye thirst for vengeance. Instead, we climbed back into the Land Cruiser with Odile and then drove our final bag of soccer equipment and uniforms out to the local elementary school, where we lugged the bag onto the field.\n\nThe Rundu girls' soccer team was particularly strong. They'd beaten many of their opponents from larger towns while playing in bare feet with their school uniform skirts hitched up. Their coach, a friendly young teacher, was thrilled with the shining jerseys and soccer gear Jean-Claude had brought with him for both the girls' team and the boys'.\n\n\"They will feel like superstars!\" he said.\n\nI looked at the children crowding in around us, and I turned to Jean-Claude. \"You know, a lot of these kids will be the children of murderers.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"That's true. Many of the parents killed people in the genocide. But their children did not.\"\n\nIt's a fine line, isn't it, between honouring the past and reaching out for a better future, between fixating and forgiving. It would be so easy to succumb to bitterness. Or to rush forward into selective amnesia, to pretend none of it ever happened, to wish the past away. I thought about the many roads that had taken us here. It was a journey that began on the bridge that carried Jean-Claude away from Rwanda, and ended on a schoolyard soccer field, with a visit and a parting gift.\n\nThe children ran headlong down the pitch, kicking up dust and trailing laughter behind them.\n**SOURCES**\n\nTHE STATISTICS CITED in _Road Trip Rwanda_ \u2014from reports by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, Transparency International, the World Bank, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Gallup International, the World Economic Forum, and Democracy Watch\u2014as well as the articles quoted from _Economist_ magazine, _The Globe and Mail_ , and _The New York Times_ are all readily available online.\n\nFor the historical and cultural background on Rwanda, and the genocide, I relied on the following sources:\n\n**Adekunle, Julius O.** _Culture and Customs of Rwanda_. Greenwood, 2007.\n\n**Anyidoho, Henry Kwami.** _Guns Over Kigali: The Rwandese Civil War_ \u2014 _1994 (A Personal Account)_. Fountain, 1997.\n\n**Berkeley, Bill.** _The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa_. Basic, 2001.\n\n**Berry, Carol Pott, and John A. Berry, eds.** _Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory_. Howard University Press, 1999.\n\n**Briggs, Philip.** _Rwanda: Bradt Guide, 5th Edition_. Bradt, 2012.\n\n**Carr, Rosamond Halsey, with Ann Howard Halsey.** _Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda_. Plume, 2000.\n\n**Chu, Sandra Ka Hon, and Anne-Marie de Brouwer, eds.** _The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence_. Douglas & McIntyre, 2009.\n\n**Crisafulli, Patricia, and Andrea Redmond.** _Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World_. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.\n\n**Dallaire, Rom\u00e9o, with Brent Beardsley.** _Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda_. Vintage, 2004.\n\n**Des Forges, Alison.** _Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda_. Human Rights Watch, 1999.\n\n**Dugard, Martin.** _Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone_. Broadway, 2003.\n\n**Feil, Scott R.** _Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might Have Succeeded in Rwanda_. Carnegie Commission, 1998.\n\n**Fossey, Dian.** _Gorillas in the Mist_. Houghton Mifflin, 1983.\n\n**French, Howard** W. _China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa_. Knopf, 2014.\n\n**Gourevitch, Philip.** _We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda_. Picador, 1998.\n\n**Grant, Richard.** _Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa_. Free Press, 2011.\n\n**Hatzfeld, Jean.** _Into the Quick of Life: The Rwandan Genocide: The Survivors Speak_. Serpent's Tail, 2005.\n\n____. _The Strategy of Antelopes: Rwanda After the Genocide_. Serpent's Tail, 2009.\n\n____. _A Time for Machetes: The Rwandan Genocide: The Killers Speak_. Serpent's Tail, 2005.\n\n**Hochschild, Adam.** _King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa_. Houghton Mifflin, 1998.\n\n**Jennings, Christian.** _Across the Red River: Rwanda, Burundi and the Heart of Darkness_. Phoenix, 2001.\n\n**Kapuscinski, Ryszard.** _The Shadow of the Sun_. Vintage, 2002.\n\n**Kinzer, Stephen.** _A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It_. Wiley, 2008.\n\n**Mamdani, Mahmood.** _When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda_. Princeton University Press, 2001.\n\n**McCullum, Hugh.** _The Angels Have Left Us: The Rwandan Tragedy and the Churches_. WCC, 1995.\n\n**Melvern, Linda.** _Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide_. Verso, 2004.\n\n____. _A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide_ , new updated edition. Zed Books, 2009.\n\n**Peterson, Scott.** _Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda_. Routledge, 2000.\n\n**Prunier, G\u00e9rard.** _The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide_. Columbia University Press, 1995, 1997.\n\n**Rittner, Carol, John K. Roth, and Wendy Whitworth, eds.** _Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches?_ Paragon, 2004.\n\n**Rusagara, Frank K.** _Resilience of a Nation: A History of the Military in Rwanda_. Fountain, 2009.\n\n**Sebarenzi, Joseph, with Laura Ann Mullane.** _God Sleeps in Rwanda: A Journey of Transformation_. Atria, 2009.\n\n**Severino, Jean-Michel, and Oliver Ray.** _Africa's Moment_. Polity, 2011.\n\n**Shaw, Martin.** _War and Genocide_. Polity, 2003.\n\n**Stearns, Jason K.** _Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa_. PublicAffairs, 2011.\n\n**Thompson, Allan, ed.** _The Media and the Rwanda Genocide_. Fountain, 2007.\n\n**Wallis, Andrew.** _Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of the Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide_. I. B. Tauris, 2014.\n**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nI WOULD FIRST like to thank Jean-Claude Munyezamu. Without Jean-Claude, _Road Trip Rwanda_ would not exist. His friendship, good cheer, help, and encouragement\u2014to say nothing of his steady hand behind the wheel\u2014were instrumental in bringing this book to life. I would also like to thank our respective spouses, Christine and Terumi, for allowing their wayward husbands to go toodling about central Africa while they stayed back and managed the households.\n\nSupport from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts made this project possible, and I thank the Foundation for this.\n\nI would like to thank Publishing Director Andrea Magyar, Publicity Manager Trish Bunnett, Senior Production Editor Sandra Tooze, copy editor Karen Alliston, and everyone at Penguin Canada for their enthusiasm and support for this project, and editor Barbara Pulling for her fine work, as always. It's been an absolute pleasure.\n\nIn Rwanda, Jean-Claude and I relied on the kindness and assistance of many people, from the staff and students at Nyange Secondary School to the ever-patient trail guides we encountered along the way. We would especially like to thank Rica Rwigamba and Vivian Kayitesi at the Rwanda Development Board; Yvette Rugasaguhunga at the Rwandan Embassy in Washington; Jean de Dieu Mucyo at the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide; Jean Gakwandi at the Solace Guest House in Kigali; Urooj Saifi, Deo Ntirenganya, and Clementine Kayirangwa at the UNHCR camp in Kigeme; Alice Kampire and Jerry Were at Nyungwe Forest Lodge; Duncan Lewa at the Lake Kivu Serena; and Manzi Kayihura at Thousand Hills Expeditions, who also hosted Jean-Claude and me at his home in Kigali. Thank you!\n\nA big thank you as well to Brian Carnduff and the entire Calgary Foothills Soccer Club for the uniforms and gear that Jean-Claude brought with him to Rwanda, and to my next-door neighbour Jacqueline Ford for once again transcribing endless reams of notes for me. I would also like to thank my son, Alex Ferguson, for creating the templates for the maps that the designers used.\n\nIn Canada, several people shared with me their stories and experiences\u2014and even personal contacts\u2014from their own travels in Rwanda, and I would like to thank Margaret McQuiston, Alina Freedman, Christine Magill, and Lynn Gran. I would also like to thank Kirsten Olson for connecting me with Lynn. (Sadly, Lynn passed away while I was writing this book, and I wasn't able to thank her properly for her help.)\n\nThe Rwandan community of Calgary has been very kind to me, and I thank them for their support, in particular Andy Amour, President of the Rwandan Canadian Society of Calgary, and Melchior Cyusa, the Secretary General. Andy and Melchior were in Rwanda while we were there, and it was a pleasure to meet up with friends from back home while we were travelling. (Melchior was getting married as well!) I have warm memories of the laughter and food we shared with Andy at Chez Lando\u2014the liveliest eatery in Kigali.\n\n_Murakoze!_\nNotes\n\nPart One\n\n. The number of people who died during the Rwandan genocide is often given, incorrectly, as 800,000. This was an initial estimate made by Human Rights Watch. The International Red Cross and the UN Rwanda Emergency Office put the number at a million, as did Oxfam U.K. A census, taken six years after the genocide, was able to establish the names of 951,018 victims. Of these, 94 percent were identified as Tutsi, which still leaves more than 50,000 Hutus dead, a staggering number in its own right and one worth remembering. A later census placed the number killed at 937,000. Given that in the more remote regions of Rwanda entire villages were exterminated and all records destroyed, the final number is almost certainly higher. It may well have been more than a million. No one can say for sure.\n\n. The number of Tutsis in Rwanda prior to the genocide is sometimes given, incorrectly, as 9 percent of the population, based on a dubious government census by Hutu nationalists that was then used to limit the quota of Tutsis in schools and public employment.\n\n. By the end of Belgian rule, 549 out of 559 subchiefs were Tutsi, a massive social shift.\n\n. The president's plane was shot down at approximately 8:30 p.m. By 9:15 p.m., UN staff in Kigali were reporting that roadblocks had gone up across the city. There was nothing spontaneous about it.\n\n. Some sources put that number even higher, at 30,000.\n\n. Uganda would eventually rescind its anti-gay laws in the face of international pressure and European aid embargoes.\n\n. After the genocide, Father Wenceslas fled to France, where he continued to work in the clergy. Tried and convicted in absentia by a Rwandan court, he was eventually arrested in France under a warrant issued by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha and charged with crimes against humanity, including rape and murder. Released on a technicality, he was re-arrested and then just as quickly re-released. He has yet to go to trial. As of this writing, he is still enjoying his freedom and still ministering at a parish in Gisors, Normandy. The Catholic Church continues to cover his legal costs.\n\n. Christine tells a different version. \"He was following me around everywhere!\" she says.\n\n. Not sure what \"kind of dating\" means.\n\nPart Two\n\n. This is the anglicized spelling of his name, commonly used. A more correct rendering would be \"Kigeli.\" The rules for when to change _r_ to _l_ in Kinyarwanda were explained to me several times by Jean-Claude, none of which I retained.\n\n. His successor and younger brother, Kigeli V, last king of Rwanda, was deposed by the Hutu Social Revolution and now lives in the United States, where he still refers to himself as His Majesty. He has his own website and everything.\n\n. For an in-depth look at France's role in the Rwandan genocide, see _Silent Accomplice_ by Andrew Wallis.\n\n. To put that into context, imagine for a moment that the Nazi party hadn't been eradicated, but instead had retreated and regrouped _just across the border_ from Germany.\n\n. Kidding! Germans are lovely people.\n\n. Turns out, yes. There is. _Aquila spilogaster_ , the African hawk-eagle.\n\n. As I write this chapter, Burundi is caught up in another failed military coup, and thousands of Burundian refugees are fleeing into Rwanda to escape the violence. It's also worth noting that while Rwanda adopted a strict \"one country, one culture\" model, Burundi chose instead to entrench political and ethnic quotas, giving Hutus and Tutsis mandated proportional representation in their legislature. In Burundi, the Hutu\u2013Tutsi divide is alive and well.\n\n. For a look at the scope and impact of the Chinese presence in Africa, see _China's Second Continent_ by Howard W. French.\n\n. Jean-Claude also speaks Kinyarwanda, Swahili, and French. Four languages in all.\n\n. For Kagame's own journey, from a refugee camp in Uganda to leader of the RPF and president of Rwanda, see Stephen Kinzer's biography _A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It_.\n\n. Habyarimana managed similar electoral feats. In the 1988 presidential election, he received 99.98 percent of the vote. Not a full 100 percent? No. Because that would have been suspicious.\n\nPart Three\n\n. I just checked. You can't.\n\n. Some estimates put it as high as 40,000.\n\n. The collapse of the Congo and the Great War that followed is beyond the scope of this book, but for a gripping account of this conflict, and the role that Rwanda has played in it, see Jason K. Stearns's _Dancing in the Glory of Monsters_. For a look at Belgium's own brutal history in the Congo, see Adam Hochschild's equally epic _King Leopold's Ghost_. Anyone seeking an understanding of this region of Africa would do well to start with those two books.\n\n. I later discovered that what I'd purchased was a _children's_ apron, which was waaaay too small. I didn't even know there was such a thing. My wife did like the patterns, though.\n\n. On the Congo side, poaching remains a serious problem. An entire family of mountain gorillas was killed in 2007 in an attempt to capture a single baby. To what end was not clear. No reputable zoo today would accept a mountain gorilla taken from the wild.\n\n. Um, it was, actually. According to journalist Christian Jennings, Primus\u2014like most bottled beer companies in central Africa\u2014adds a derivative of formaldehyde to its product to act as a preservative. Lasts longer on shelves that way. Which means that when archaeologists dig me up a thousand years from now, they'll find me well-maintained indeed. At least on the inside. No wonder Primus gave me such a zip.\n\n. The RDB has since made it easier to visit the caves, with permits provided at the local tourist office.\n\n. For testimonies from the women who suffered through this, see _The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence_. But be prepared; it is a harrowing and gut-wrenching read.\n\nPart Four\n\n. If there's such a thing as a \"hawk-eagle,\" I'm sure there's space in the menagerie for \"rafter snakes\" too.\n\n. I may have gone a bit overboard with the DEET; everything I ate that night tasted like insect repellent.\n\n. Let's skip ahead, shall we, and end the suspense. Our final tally for the day was leopards: zero; spotted hyenas: zero; elephants: zero\u2014dung notwithstanding; unicorns and leprechauns: ditto\u2014though minus the dung, of course.\n\n. Lions would return to Rwanda in July 2015, with a pride of seven sedated and then transported from South Africa, where they were released into the wild. I imagine the impalas of Akagera National Park will be a little more wary now.\n\n. Arrested in France, Simbikangwa was eventually sentenced to twenty-five years for crimes committed during the genocide.\nVIKING\n\nan imprint of Penguin Canada Books Inc., a Penguin Random House Company\n\nPublished by the Penguin Group\n\nPenguin Canada Books Inc., 320 Front Street West, Suite 1400,\n\nToronto, Ontario M5V 3B6, Canada\n\nPenguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nPenguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)\n\nPenguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)\n\nPenguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi \u2013 110 017, India\n\nPenguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)\n\nPenguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nFirst published 2015\n\nCopyright \u00a9 Will Ferguson, 2015\n\nPhotos copyright \u00a9 Will Ferguson, 2015, used by permission\n\nCover design: Daniel Cullen\n\nCover images: Gorilla: Mark Higgins\/Shutterstock\n\nFont: PremiumVector\/Shutterstock\n\nAuthor photograph: Alex Ferguson\n\nAll rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.\n\n_Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity_. _In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author's alone_.\n\nMaps created by Lisa Jager\n\nLIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION\n\nFerguson, Will. Author\n\nRoad trip Rwanda : a journey into the new heart of\n\nAfrica \/ Will Ferguson.\n\nIncludes bibliographical reference.\n\nISBN 978-0-670-06642-1 (bound)\n\n1. Ferguson, Will\u2014Travel\u2014Rwanda. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)\u201420th century\u2014Travel\u2014Rwanda. 3. Rwanda\u2014Social conditions\u201421st century. 4. Rwanda\u2014Description and travel.\n\nI. Title.\n\nDT450.44.F47 2015967.57104'3C2015-903919-3\n\neBook ISBN 978-0-14-319619-8\n\nVisit the Penguin Canada website at **www.penguin.ca**\n\nSpecial and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see **www.penguin.ca\/corporatesales** or call 1-800-810-3104.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nMID OCEAN\n\nby\n\nT. Rafael Cimino\n\nSmashwords Edition\n\n* * * * *\n\nPublished on Smashwords by:\n\nMid Ocean\n\nCopyright 1992-2011 by Akula Media Group, Inc.\n\nAll rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication\/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.\n\nSmashwords Edition License Notes\n\nThis ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.\n\n* * * * *\n\nFor Thomas Arnold and the other agents in the field who stood tall where others fell.\n\n* * * * *\n\n* * * * *\n\nPrologue\n\nA blanket of dry Virginia snow covered the south lawn of the Arlington National Cemetery while light flakes fell from the sky above. In the distance, rows of snow covered uniform headstones dotted the landscape where scores of America's honored filled the ground.\n\nOn November 11th, 1977 the ground opened up to accept its newest inhabitant, aided be a Cat diesel-powered backhoe that was conveniently stored far from the ceremony. A small mound of earth had been created and was covered with a forest green felt tarp. The material was sprinkled with snow and lay next to a rectangular hole that was trimmed with the severed roots of the manicured grass that separated the living from the dead.\n\nArranging a funeral at the National Cemetery was not an easy task. To do it on a National holiday, Armistice Day, was nearly impossible, but this was no ordinary burial.\n\nSurrounding the hole were scores of mourners; over two hundred and fifty friends, family, co-workers, and the Vice President of the United States, all of whom admired the man and were truly sorry to see him depart the world. This was an incredible sum for a closed, private funeral, but like a birthday party for the most popular kid in school, most of the mourners cherished their personal invitations to attend. Some were dressed in various uniforms from the armed forces and a wide variety of law enforcement agencies from around the country; others were in suits with most of the women dressed in black. Many wore dark sunglasses that concealed their heart-felt tears.\n\nFor the most part, the entire crowd made the effort to show a genuine level of respect because, after all, John Kenyon was a man of importance. He lived a life of government service as an attorney and a Federal Prosecutor. Kenyon devoted his life to the admirable fight against the rues of evil and the ravages of humanity who were staining the course of mankind, and, more specifically, the Seventh Federal District of the United States, based in Atlanta, Georgia. He had won most of his battles, conceding the rest for another day, knowing that criminals who succeeded at evading his reach would come back, slithering closer, until he had another, more viable, chance to make a claim on their freedom.\n\nKenyon had developed an indelible reputation on Capital Hill, earning himself several citations from Presidents Nixon and Ford, thus galvanizing a positive watermark on his career. After a nomination as the next U. S. Attorney General, the confirmation process was all that stood in his way when a fainting spell landed him in the John Hopkins Medical Center Neurological Intensive Care Unit. He was diagnosed with a malignant tumor that was growing at the base of his medulla, a portion of the brain responsible for vital functions. It was this battle that he would not win. It took seven months to complete the task of reducing a great man to a mere shadow. In the end, he died a painfully complete death, ending a legacy that was uniform, deliberate and forceful.\n\nKenyon left behind two dedicated children who grew up without the benefit of a mother. Eighteen years before she had abandoned them the night before her daughter's eighth birthday; a time when her diaper-clad son was teething through a set of incisors and learning to navigate his first steps. Mrs. Kenyon, left a note. She made a plea for her children to forgive her selfish action and understand that she was living a life that she was not designed for. The letter continued by saying that one day they would be re-united and until then she would keep in touch and think of them daily. For all they knew neither promise was fulfilled.\n\nEighteen years later, Joel, the youngest Kenyon, at nineteen, stood dressed in the tailored freshman uniform of the Citadel Academy. He had grown up in military preparatory schools, spending the last three years at the prestigious Lyman Ward Academy in Birmingham, Alabama. The school was an hour from the watchful eye of his father who supported him with daily phone calls and weekly letters from home. The boy's sister, Jhenna, a woman of twenty-six, was a celebrated graduate of GW Law. Unlike the other women, her five-foot eight-inch frame wore a navy blue pantsuit. Throughout the years she had grown to become every bit her father's daughter. She admired and emulated him as best she could, vowing to fill his shoes.\n\nA Navy Chaplin plowed through the formal proceedings like a judge who was dispensing a hasty death sentence. The eulogy that followed was filled with sorrow and regret. He recited a story of how he met the deceased, who, at the time, was a young cadet at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The Chaplin told the story of how the two would have serious conversations about life and justice; conversations, the depth of which, were only matched by the oceans they were sworn to occupy.\n\nThe surviving children listened intently, shuttering with the seven sets of synchronized gunfire that was aimed skyward by three immaculately dressed Marines. Despite their eminent and respective places at the ceremony, the surviving Kenyons stood, defeated, crushed and holding each other with the last bit of strength they possessed; the strength they had reserved for each other. The reality would take months to set in. They were now, truly alone.\n\n* * * * *\n\nIntersection\n\nFall 1984\n\nA slate gray wind occupied the night as steep waves crashed through a jagged coral reef. In the distance a battered steel light tower shuttered with every shock inflicted by the twelve to fifteen foot waves. The massive structure rose toward the dark sky, rusty cold iron with barnacles and crustaceans clinging to its supports and cross members. Still, it managed to send out its signal, a crimson beam of light. It marked the living reef known as the Elbow.\n\nThe Elbow ascended from the ocean floor like a mountain, its peak culminating just below the sea's surface. At its sandy threshold lay the remains of centuries of boats and ships that were lost or disabled. The mighty craft of kings, admirals, and pirates, built of ancient timbers, milled wood, polished steel and shiny Fiberglas now lay twisted, splintered, and decaying on the ocean floor. Fortunes were won and lost running gold, guns, rum and other contraband through this fragile link in America's border. This unforgiving path of the ocean was located right in the heart of the Gulf Stream, the waters occupying the territory between the Florida Keys and the western boundaries of the Bahamas.\n\nAmidst the turbulence, a lone 30-foot center console powerboat lay anchored securely to the bottom. The bullet-shaped craft was custom built for speed, dark blue and gray with a tubular, canvas-covered top mounted to its helm. Its name, Island Girl, written in script, covered both sides. Named for the captain's wife and inspired by an Elton John song, it sported three high-powered outboards that laid firmly off her transom, the back of the boat, like sleeping dogs ready for the kill.\n\nDespite the different varieties of fish all hovering nearby, swimming around the Elbow like bees about a hive, twenty-four year old Bobby Alazar felt the solace of solitude as he sat alone on the craft. His skin was moist and salty from the cold spray coming off the boat's bow. With every wave the immense vessel surged forward then aft. Its bow dropped below the frothing crests, scooping up the cold water, tossing it airborne.\n\nThe tension on the anchor line must be too tight, not enough scope, Cuban-born Alazar thought to himself. It was a situation that could wait though. His uncle was due to rendezvous within the hour. Philippe Alazar, Gordo to his friends and family, was a seasoned captain, but then again this was not an exact business. There were many variables that could affect the night's outcome. The most prevalent was the inclement weather that was starting to worsen.\n\nBobby's night work produced a compilation of emotions, mostly tedious hours of boredom interlaced with minutes of excitement. He passed the time pondering which restaurant he would visit once landfall was made. With recent family events -- a wedding, an anniversary and two birthdays -- he was tired of the standard Cuban dish of pork, black beans and rice. His favorite was fettuccini alfredo. Bobby had always maintained a delusion about being an Italian, sometimes telling friends that his family immigrated to Cuba from Sicily.\n\nAnother contraction of his stomach muscle occurred giving him a crude reminder that his appetite had not been met. There was a little Italian place just north of Homestead. It would be open for lunch and he could stop on his way back to Hialeah. The Dulc\u00e9 Capri was a local landmark and Bobby had eaten there since his early childhood. The parking lot was big enough for his truck and trailered boat. This would work, he thought to himself.\n\nNearly two hours had passed. All Bobby Alazar could do was watch the horizon with anticipation, though all that was seen was the light-dotted coast of Key Largo. In the far distance a bolt of lightning illuminated the eastern sky. A clap of thunder soon followed.\n\nUncle Gordo was coming from the Cay Sal Banks some one hundred and ten miles away. The four thousand pound cargo of Guatemalan grown marijuana would weigh down his 38-foot powerboat called the Black Duck. Normally capable of speeds in excess of seventy knots, the craft would be lucky to do forty. The storm would only impede his time. In the back of his mind he imagined his two hundred and seventy pound bearded uncle dumping their load mid ocean because they lost their race against the impending daylight. Bobby shook his head with wonder as he reached up into the boat's overhead electronics cabinet, grabbing a microphone that was connected to a private circuit band ham radio.\n\n\"Crossbow, Crossbow,\" he radioed out, waiting for a response.\n\n\"Crossbow, come in over,\" he yelled as a stillness of white noise came from the speaker.\n\nThe sky illuminated again followed by a clap of thunder and a gust of wind. As a light rain began to fall, Alazar tried to huddle below the boat's T-top, a four-foot by six-foot tarp that was wrapped over the tubular frame and affixed to the center console. The fresh rain still managed to embrace his face. Within minutes, water had saturated through his clothes.\n\n\"Crossbow, this is Slingshot,\" he yelled again into the radio's microphone before looking down at the blue-faced, gold and stainless Rolex strapped to his wrist. A brief flash of red light coming from the steel tower in the distance illuminated the dial long enough to see the time. 3:17 a.m. In another three hours the sun would be up and the reef he was anchored to would be swarming with eager, early-morning divers trying to take advantage of the crystal clear water found in the early morning chill.\n\nThe wind shifted and the Island Girl swung on its anchor one hundred and eighty degrees. Bobby could now see the breaking waves just a short distance off the back of his boat as each wave broke down into a pool of white froth as it came in contact with the coral reef just a few feet below the surface. Despite its over-built, two-inch thick Fiberglas hull, the Island Girl would render no match against the razor sharp projectiles of the coral reef now just a few hundred feet away.\n\nAs the rain continued to pour into the open boat, Bobby took a quick survey of the craft. Earlier in the day he had loaded his boat with rods, reels, hand-rigged bait, and a variety of lures and other gear. Unused, the equipment was now bunched up in a clustered pile off in the boat's port corner, just under the gunwale, the vessel's top edge. Fish blood was flowing out from the tightly wrapped, newspaper-covered bundles exposing the journalistic header El Miami Herald.\n\nAs Alazar wiped the rain from his face, a brief gleam of red flashed against his forearm. A new tattoo written in script read: Monica-Mi Linda, The World Will Be Yours. The writing was surrounded by a colorful galleon tall ship being engulfed by whitecap-covered seas and was a tribute to his daughter who had just turned three the week before.\n\nSuddenly, the radio squawked as a familiar but distant voice broke the squelch.\n\n\"Slingshot, come in Slingshot!\"\n\nBobby returned the message, squeezing the microphone, almost frantic with desperation.\n\n\"Crossbow...\"\n\nThe squelch broke again.\n\n\"Slingshot inbounds to you Crossbow.\"\n\nBobby Alazar recognized Gordo's voice. La pinga, he mumbled to himself as he brought the rain-drenched microphone again to his mouth.\n\n\"Crossbow, look for the red light,\" he told him.\n\nSilence followed as a few minutes passed. Bobby's concern peaked as he realized that Gordo should be able to see the red beam of the light tower. Their radio transmissions were fairly safe though. They were using a specially modified ham radio that operated on specific frequencies that were not easily monitored.\n\nGordo was frustrated because he was supposed to be the skilled one. His less experienced nephew had planned this trip and already things were starting to appear disorganized. Gordo, in desperation, issued a last minute request.\n\n\"Slingshot, turn on your lights!\"\n\nThe younger Alazar switched on the green and red navigation lights mounted into the bow of the Island Girl. Illuminations from the front of the boat created a green and red glow against the oncoming waves. A whitecap broke just short of the taut anchor rope sending a salty mist airborne covering the boat's deck.\n\n\"Crossbow, come to me. Come to the red light!\"\n\n\"I don't see you Slingshot. I don't see a red one only a white one - a four second white one!\"\n\nAlazar felt like a sitting target exposing his position next to the forty-foot high tower. Without hesitation, he shut off his lights.\n\n\"No red, white, white tower Slingshot,\" Gordo repeated.\n\n\"Shit!\" Bobby yelled.\n\nHe realized his uncle was at the wrong reef. Coming from the Cay Sal Banks, a course deviation of only a few degrees could put Gordo's 38-foot Cigarette miles from his designated destination. There was only one solution. He quickly jumped up on the seat mounted behind the center console and searched through the cluttered electronics cabinet for an area chart. Sunglasses, tanning lotion, some old fishing hooks, more shit, all going over the side of the boat. After minutes of searching he found the chart. It was all wadded up crammed into the back of the small box. Bobby thumbed through the drenched map and then looked down-line from his position. With the course lying before him on paper, he could get a better perspective of Gordo's location.\n\nThe Island Girl was at the Elbow located directly off Key Largo. The next light to the south was Molasses Reef, named appropriately in the 1930s when a barge of molasses from Havana bound for Miami sank over her. To the north was the Cary's Fort Reef light. Both were white and both flashed at a four second interval. He looked closer at the wrinkled chart, trying to read the fine print under the intermittent flash of red light created by the tower. Below the position on the map for the Cary's Fort light, a note indicated the tower to be almost one hundred feet high; the Molasses tower, less than half its size.\n\nGordo tried to keep his Cigarette on course while idling amidst large rolling swells. The frantic voice of Bobby Alazar could barely be heard over the boat's throbbing five hundred horsepower engines.\n\n\"Crossbow, go to the light and tell me how high it is.\"\n\n\"What do you mean how high is it - I'm not out here for a joyride Slingshot!\"\n\n\"Just do it, I'll explain later.\"\n\nGordo was still over two miles out from the tower. He needed to use caution when approaching the unknown reef. In the driving rain he would have to be right on the tower before its height could be determined. Patrol boats often sat next to the reef towers with their radars spinning and their night vision goggles tuned on the incoming maritime traffic. With their massive diesel power plants, they could easily outrun and catch the loaded down smuggler. Gordo pointed his boat toward the distant white flash. As he gunned the throttles, hot exhaust poured from the transom's stainless steel headers that cooled the pair of eight hundred horsepower motors. The engines roared with the immense sound echoing in the valleys between waves. As the tower came into sight, the heavy-set Cuban let go of the padded steering wheel, squeezed through the small teak doors to his left, and disappeared below the boat's long sleek deck. Everything became quiet for the forty-seven-year-old overweight man as he entered the plush cabin of the Cigarette. What had been a monstrous sound was now a soft moan. The boat had been designed with extra creature comforts that were now obsolete to its new owner, with the exception of keeping up appearances during an impromptu boarding or Coast Guard safety check. While the boat rolled about, Gordo tried to keep his balance but fumbled below, being thrown about from side to side. He climbed over the burlap-skinned cubes before finding a black duffel lying against the plush carpet interior. Inside the bag was a set of binoculars, some hard candy, and an Escort radar detector. Gordo removed the Escort and exited the tight confines of the cabin. After plugging it in to the boat's lighter, he wrapped it in a towel and placed it in front of an illuminated compass. Whether or not the crude device was effective in warning against sophisticated marine radar systems was irrelevant. The false sense of security calmed the paranoid Cuban. Gordo crouched behind the boat's black Lexan windshield as he continued his assault on the tower while the rain drove itself down onto the long, sleek deck. The deluge was blinding. As he got closer to the reef, the white light bounced off the deck, illuminating the surrounding spray and rain, further obstructing his visibility. He continued further and within minutes saw the outline of the ghostly tower. A magnificent steel structure, it rose nearly fifty feet into the sky.\n\n\"How tall is it Crossbow?\" Bobby radioed again.\n\n\"Thirty, forty, maybe fifty feet.\"\n\nGordo was never an exact person.\n\n\"Crossbow, you are one south, I repeat, one south. You need to come north.\"\n\nGordo panned the water surrounding the tower. His heart was pounding through his chest. An ink pen lodged in his shirt pocket seemed to jump with every pulse. There was no one in sight. Alazar took a look at the chart and with a makeshift ruler, plotted a compass heading for his lost uncle.\n\n\"Head north to thirty-four degrees northeast, Crossbow.\"\n\nGordo acknowledged and turned his boat to the heading. The mistake was all his. His nephew was right and the error could have cost them big. He gripped the boat's throttles as he braced for the ensuing burst of power. Upon command, the long, sleek craft pointed its bow up and within seconds was on plane, surging through the waves, throwing spray from both sides of the speeding powerboat's white Fiberglas hull. As it picked up speed it started to leap from wave to wave. Gordo adjusted the trim tabs controlling the boat's elevation over the oncoming water. His eyes peered through his pudgy face as he squinted trying to avoid any contact with the raindrops, which at that speed, felt like cold, steel needles against his already weather-beaten exterior. The boat's twin eight hundred horsepower engines turned at an incredible rate as the red light beam of the Elbow's tower came into his view. He was ready to meet his nephew.\n\nBobby Alazar gazed up into the sky and watched as a break in the clouds drifted overhead. Up in the deep blackness, surrounded by small flakes of glistening crystal, flew a white strobe light. Bobby watched as the flashing light seemed to float through the sky like some fictional spaceship bouncing between the stars. Commercial traffic, he thought, Customs would have turned their lights off. Then, without warning, he heard the distant murmur. He went to the bow and immediately retrieved the anchor. His clothes became saturated with salty seawater in the process. He then secured the anchor and rope in a locker located below the deck while trying to keep his balance as the boat rolled with each oncoming wave.\n\nThe craft, adrift, blew about at the mercy of the moderate gusts of wind. Behind the helm and under the protective cover of the canvas top, the young, anxious Cuban secured himself into the tight-fitting bolster seat as he took his bearings and prepared to move the vessel. Grabbing the key switch marked engine one, he turned it. He expected the engine to turn over and come to life. Instead, he heard the high-pitched spinning sound of a starter starving for voltage. A quick look at the voltage indicator confirmed his fear. The gauge registered less than ten volts. Twelve volts were necessary to start the motor. A quick try of engines two and three gave similar results. Bobby realized that the bilge pumps, having to keep up with the torrential rains and spraying seawater, must have run down the three deep-cycle batteries. As he tried to conceive a way out of his predicament, the distant thunder of the Black Duck gained intensity. The Island Girl had three batteries on board, each connected to a separate fuse block. They were located under the center console. Trying to maintain control of himself, he thought for a minute. If I could connect the three circuits, a possibility existed that there would be enough juice to start one of the motors. The charging system could then take over and hopefully start the other two. Bobby quickly dropped to his knees, peering into the small crawl space under the console. The odor of cured Fiberglas was nothing less than intoxicating. Still, he managed to locate the fuse blocks despite the rainwater dripping from his saturated hair and face. They were bolted securely inside to a structural bulkhead. There was no marking though to indicate which block went to which engine. His salt-drenched fingers picked the closest one, trying to loosen the tight brass nuts that held the thick power cables together. The dormant power in the batteries was enough to give him a shock as he joined the cumbersome wires.\n\nAfter tightening the last bolt over the connecting wire, Alazar climbed to his feet, keeping his balance as another massive wave rocked the stagnant vessel. He took his position behind the console wedging himself back into the bolster seat. He turned the key for engine two. There was no response, not even a click. When he connected all the circuits to one engine, he must have disconnected the other two. He tried engine one, still no response. Finally, in desperation, his tense fingers turned the key for engine three. The dormant outboard turned slowly at first and then gained speed. Alazar held his breath. This was his last chance. Suddenly, with a burst of fury, the sleeping dog came to life, whining with revolutions, throwing oil-drenched smoke into the dark night air.\n\nWith only one engine, the Island Girl responded sluggishly as it was maneuvered around the tower. The alternator started to charge the electrical system. The lights behind the gauges brightened as the boat's voltage indicator registered eleven volts. When the voltage got to twelve, he would have to switch back the wires on the altered fuse blocks. The Rolex strapped to his wrist read 4:52 a.m.\n\nGordo was within a thousand yards of the Elbow. He scanned the water ahead for his nephew. The Black Duck's engines were throttled back to a harmonic clapping idle, spitting steamy water out the four highly polished stainless pipes protruding from the transom. Gordo grabbed the microphone.\n\n\"Slingshot, turn on your lights!\"\n\nBobby responded by triggering a switch labeled NAV LTS giving a quick burst of light. Gordo saw the split red and green lights of the Island Girl off his port bow. It was just past the tower. With a relieved voice, the jubilant Gordo called out again.\n\n\"I see you Slingshot.\"\n\nAlazar disengaged the boat's one running engine, putting it back into neutral. The voltage indicator registered 12.4 volts. He dropped back to his knees, ducked under the console and rearranged the fuse blocks. If he were to make it to the coast of Key Largo three miles away before dawn, he would need all three engines running. He could not screw this up.\n\nGordo, concerned about the time, increased the throttles to half stick; just enough power to motivate the overloaded boat without getting it on plane. He headed toward his nephew in a bow-up position. His view was obstructed by the boat's foredeck. Bobby heard Gordo approach. The engines were revving louder than before. His fingers tingled with an increased shock of electricity as he attached the final wire to the fuse block. Sparks of blue and orange energy bounced off the two ends of wire.\n\nStill on his knees, he removed his head from under the confining center console. The vibration from Gordo's high-powered engines engulfed Bobby's cockpit sending vibrations through his wet knees and up his spine. Climbing to his feet, he turned just in time to see the tower's red light beam bouncing off the gleaming white hull of the Black Duck. Gordo had miscalculated his distance from the Island Girl.\n\nBobby Alazar watched in horror as the massive boat came over the stern of the smaller. The impact was dramatic as the Black Duck's Fiberglas bottom sliced over the top of the running outboards. It continued on its course, powering over the gunwale and into the cockpit, pinning the younger Alazar against the console before the boat came to a rest. Bobby could not move. The pressure against his chest restricted his breathing. Water started to come over the stern as he felt it lap against his legs. Then, without warning, a breaking mountain of water broke over the stern of the Black Duck pushing it further into Bobby's space. He felt his ribs splinter beneath his chest as blood replaced his warm breath. As Gordo tried in vain to reverse the massive powerboat, his nephew drifted into a state of darkness.\n\nSitting one atop the other, the larger vessel came to rest pushing the Island Girl below the waves, into the dark, cold world below. In a pool of turbulence and floating debris rose the lifeless, distorted body of Bobby Alazar. A flash of red light illuminated the tattoo of tribute embossed on his forearm. In a path of script written amidst a gallant tall ship braving the seas, it read: Monica-Mi Linda, The World Will Be Yours.\n\n* * * * *\n\nAcrophobia\n\nU. S. Attorney Pat Stephens sat nervously in the left front seat of the Bell 206 Jet Ranger as he watched the pilot proceed through his lengthy preflight check. Stephens panned the glowing Atlanta horizon of scattered lights as they sat perched high atop the thirty-two-story United States Federal Building. It was 5:15 in the morning. The drive to his office, located eleven stories below, was quiet and uneventful. His daily commute usually lasted more than thirty minutes. The purchase of his home in Buckhead meant having to cope with such inconveniences. This morning the quiet jaunt lasted less than ten. His Mercedes 300D tooled along the barren highways as he consumed a bagel doused with cream cheese, while listening to an early morning debate airing over a local NPR station.\n\nStephens was driven past mere obsession. After completing his undergraduate studies at Princeton, he applied and was accepted to Harvard Law, the first to do so with just a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism. After graduation Stephens began a career in public service. He immediately positioned himself in the limelight, putting his undergraduate experience to work for him. The public loved him, as did a few select northeastern congressmen and one senator from Atlanta. It was they who really gave the aspiring Irishman the boost he yearned for. While working as the assistant U. S. Attorney in the New York field office, Stephens aided Senior Prosecutor, John Kenyon, toward a successful grounding of the Gambino and Genovese crime families, which had plagued the New England area for decades. After Kenyon's death in 1977, Stephens found himself poised for advancement. It came a short time later in the form of a position any twenty-year veteran would have killed for. At thirty-seven, Assistant United States Attorney Pat Stephens was named Special District Prosecutor for the southeastern region of the United States. Based out of Atlanta, his office was responsible for spearheading all of the top federal cases in the fifteen state area. No more bullshit EPA cases. No more tax evasion plea-bargains. If Pat Stephens's office was on the case, one was going to either read about it in USA Today or watch the repercussions on CNN's Headline News.\n\nStephens lived in the press. His hero, next to his deceased boss Kenyon, was the fictional character Elliot Ness. Let's do some good, he would say in a corny kind of way as he entered his office of thirteen staff attorneys, eight paralegals, seventeen clerks and twenty secretarial and ancillary staff members. Stephens had the will to succeed and overcome not just minor obstacles, but everything and everyone that got in his way. Still, despite this driving ambition, his raw talent, and a near genius intellect, Stephens had one undeniable flaw: he possessed a dramatic fear of flying.\n\nAs the pilot checked the range of his controls, turning the throttle and pulling up on the collective, Stephens frantically brushed at a stain of cream cheese on his paisley tie. Giving up, he sat nervously in the ergonomically formed seat, clutching the metal buckles of the four-point harness with his sweaty palms. Although he could not see over the side of the building, the intermittent flash of the red anti-collision lights mounted at the four corners of the roof reminded him of how the complex towered into the dark sky. As the pilot stowed the preflight checklist under the right seat, he gave Stephens the thumbs up sign. Stephens reluctantly returned the gesture without letting go of the pair of restraining straps that ran down both sides of his chest. With a few adjustments and the depressing of the right switches, the powerful jet turbine helicopter came to life. First, an intermittent beep, then a high pitched whine followed by the loud clicking of ignition circuits firing across chambers of volatile jet fuel. With the blade overhead beginning to spin slowly, a second burst came from the rear of the craft sounding a lot like a large commercial vacuum cleaner. From there the blades rotated faster until they were almost invisible. Another set of switches were activated and the bright strobe light mounted in the belly of the chopper rang out splinters of double-pulsed light, illuminating the light gray rooftop with white brilliance. Faster yet, the blades spun until the surrounding patches of snow and ice blew away, exposing the painted circle which encompassed a capital letter H affixed to the roof. The pilot watched carefully as he increased the pitch of the blades and maintained the turbine's revolutions. Gradually, Stephens felt the weightlessness of the craft battling with the forces of gravity as it lifted from the rooftop pad.\n\n\"Here we go,\" the pilot said into the intercom mic that was suspended in front of his lips, connected to a set of headphones. A nonverbal nod of his head was all that Stephens could muster.\n\nAs the chopper cleared the edge of the building, Stephens looked down toward the street. It only took a second; Stephens jerked his head back up, trying to reorient himself with the horizon.\n\n\"Relax!\" the pilot said with a smooth, rumbling voice.\n\n\"I'm okay. I just don't like flying at night,\" Stephens replied, knowing his fear of flying had no prejudice for daylight hours or the lack thereof. The pilot chuckled.\n\n\"I'd like to think I fly a safe ship; you're gonna give me a complex.\"\n\n\"Oh it's not you really, you're doing great,\" Stephens said.\n\n\"Well, now I feel better. Look, by the way, if we do crash, and by some miracle we're not killed on impact, blown to smithereens by the hundred gallons of jet fuel behind that seat back there, don't exit the aircraft until I give the word. I'd hate for you to survive such a feat and then have you decapitated by these blades,\" the pilot warned, pointing up to the spinning main rotor. Stephens grabbed the four-point harness that hugged his chest and looked back at the pilot who continued to talk.\n\n\"Yeah, we very rarely lose one of these but when we do, it's a real mess. Why just last month...\"\n\n\"Look, I know you're trying to help, but shouldn't you be radioing the tower or something like that?\"\n\n\"Already done, counselor. You'll find I'm usually ahead of the game. That's why I get all the choice assignments. Just look at you. They wouldn't trust the District U.S. Attorney to just anyone now would they?\"\n\n\"I guess not, how lucky for me,\" Stephens answered sarcastically.\n\nThe pilot was not just any chopper jock. Chester Marks was a veteran pilot with over eighty-five hundred hours behind the stick, most of which were in the Bell 206 Jet Ranger. Unlike most of the pilots he worked with, the thirty-three-year-old had never spent a day in Vietnam. His lack of a military background precluded him from even flying the godfather of all jet helicopters, the Huey. Still, after listening to all the war stories of the trenches in Vietnam, he surmised that L.A. was just as bad as any war zone. Marks developed most of his experience flying air support for the Los Angeles Police Department. To him, the city was one big war zone. His only regret was that the trigger on the face of the stick was connected to the aircraft's radio system and not to a pair of nose-mounted, fifty-caliber guns. In six years with the LAPD, Marks had seven and a half documented bullet strikes including four .38s, a 9mm, two .45s, and one razor sharp ninja star which imbedded itself into the belly of a Cessna 206 in low-level flight. Marks always wanted to fire back.\n\nA near fatal crash ended his career with the LAPD and forced him to seek advancement with the Feds. Marks had a tough exterior. Years of being a beach bum on L.A.'s South Shore had taken its toll tanning his facial features over which a noticeable scar grazed his left cheek. It was the result of an injury he had received as a boy; a dog bite, a blemish which imbedded its image into his mind as much as his face.\n\nFifteen hundred feet below, the rolling tree-covered hills of middle Georgia slept in silence. The forest came to life with small animals as the chopper passed overhead. Deer, squirrels, and other small wildlife peered upward through the trees at the beating sensation above and the brilliant white flashes that accompanied it.\n\nNinety minutes into the flight, Marks descended to an elevation of less than one hundred feet. Despite the fact that this type of flying was more dangerous, Stephens somehow felt relieved with the reduction in altitude. What was before a plush forest of evergreens and abundant wildlife was now wet with clumps of saw grass - a virtual swamp. The Okefenokee. The white strobe glaring from the chopper's belly radiated from the glossy water below. To Stephens, the scene merely reminded him of a made for TV movie he had seen recently where a DC-10 jetliner had crashed into the swampy Everglades in South Florida. What a way to go. To survive a crash as catastrophic as that and then to be eaten by alligator, Stephens thought as his palms flooded with sweat again.\n\n\"Relax, we're almost there,\" Marks said, pointing at the swamp below.\n\nThe final approach was a straight shot. From the air, their destination looked like any inland military installation. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, also known as FLETC, was located next to a municipal airport. Once a naval training center, the converted installation housed hundreds of recruits, all preparing to enter careers within the different law enforcement agencies of the federal government. Simple square block buildings, parameter lights, and rows of barracks covered the two hundred acre complex.\n\nThe whine of the turbine-powered helicopter broke the early morning silence of the frost-covered ground. As the sleek aircraft hovered into an open lot, a cloud of mist formed from the surrounding grass. In the distance a sign sat perched on the lawn. With molded concrete and stamped letters, it read: United States Treasury Department, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynnco, GA.\n\nAfter landing, Stephens entered one of the adjacent buildings. In the distance behind him, the chopper's scalding turbine cooled as its rotors spun down, rotating slower with every revolution. A sight of complex coordination, the smaller tail rotor turned seven times for every revolution of the larger main rotor above. Stephens's hundred and fifty pound, five-four frame pounded his hard soled shoes against the building's highly polished terrazzo floor, making him sound a lot larger than he really was. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the veneer-covered walls as he made his way through the dimly lit halls. Along the way he passed pictures of graduated classes all lined in sequential, chronological order. Eleven by fourteen inch frames filled with smiling faces, happy to have graduated from the rigors of academy life. Stephens flowed through the hall like a burst of water through an empty pipe, winding through the building. He had been there before and knew his way well.\n\nStephens stopped in front of a group of glass doors. They were covered with steam. He stood upright, tightened his tie and proceeded inside. A gust of warm, steamy air hit his face. The room, which housed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, was empty with the exception of one. Condensation flowed off the windows surrounding the area. The pool inside stretched across the length of the room. Turquoise blue beams of light refracted from the white stucco ceiling above. Splinters of light danced around the six thousand foot expanse.\n\nJoel Kenyon swam in his own buoy-lined lane. His breaststroke sent a small swell of water rippling from the pool's tile sides. Stephens stood at the end of Joel's lane and watched him approach. He was a good swimmer, raised in the better country clubs and attended swimming lessons until high school where he swam competitively on his school's team. Joel slowed to a stop just short of the side, standing upright against the concrete bottom.\n\n\"How's the pool?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"Okay I guess; it could use a little less chlorine,\" Joel answered, clearing the water that dripped from his nose and mouth.\n\n\"You're the pool expert,\" Stephens acknowledged.\n\n\"Hardly,\" he answered again, this time banging the side of his head with an open palm in an attempt to force any water from his ear canals.\n\n\"Well, you should fit into the Keys way of life without any problem.\"\n\n\"You think so?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"You're ready to get out of here aren't you?\"\n\n\"You've got that right,\" Joel responded. \"I haven't had this much structure since the Citadel.\"\n\n\"This place is no Citadel kid,\" Stephens said. \"You've been goofing off for too long.\"\n\n\"I'll have you know that I've gained some valuable life lessons in the last few years,\" Joel replied with a sarcastic smile.\n\n\"Whatever.\"\n\n\"You did say that I wouldn't finish. Now that I proved you wrong, where do we go from here?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"You did well, now this is your ticket out but you'll have to leave tonight. Tavernier is expecting you in the morning. It can't look as though you have had any privilege. You had better be there by 9:00 a.m.\"\n\n\"Nine? Are you kidding?\" Joel protested.\n\n\"I'm not going to lie to you. This isn't going to be a milk run. You'll know what we know and I'll deliver the information myself as soon as I get it,\" Stephens said.\n\n\"Do we have any idea who we're after yet?\"\n\n\"None. You'll meet with the local group super, Jordan Cheney. I worked with him when he was in Panama. Really helped us out after we gave back the canal.\"\n\n\"Can we trust him?\"\n\n\"If there's someone to trust I would have to say it's him, but let's keep things on a need-to-know basis, just to be on the safe side.\"\n\n\"How often do you want to meet?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"We'll communicate weekly, just remember to document everything, and for God's sake, get tape whenever possible. And kid, I've told you before and I'll tell you again, you can't trust anyone.\"\n\n\"Anyone?\" Joel asked, looking up at his suited superior.\n\n\"I'm different, shithead. We're family, remember?\"\n\n\"I'd just like to develop a friendship, you know, a lifelong relationship, someone who could someday be the best man at my wedding or maybe the godfather to my kids.\"\n\n\"That will happen someday, but right now we have a real problem down there in Florida. Someone is betraying his oath to our country and I intend to find out who that is. If you crave a relationship, buy a dog. For now, you're mine.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nCurrent\n\nTessa Alazar walked through her immaculately kept sixth floor apartment as the plush carpet that stretched across the floor massaged her bare feet. The windows were open and the cool breeze from the nearby Haulover Inlet blew fresh air through the spacious flat. Tessa, with Old English furniture polish in one hand and a saturated rag in the other, kept a watchful eye on Monica who was playing contently on the balcony, blowing bubbles from a small plastic bottle of a soapy, dime-store concoction. Bubbles left a trail from the balcony through the lavishly decorated living room, leaving a filmy residue over the freshly cleaned furniture. Tessa patiently wiped the spots clean again.\n\nThree and a half months earlier, a seven-year-old fell from a balcony on the eleventh floor on the opposite side of the building. The small community of condo owners was appalled by the senseless accident, and while the child lay motionless in the intensive care unit of Jackson Memorial Hospital, the homeowners' association voted unanimously to disallow children from playing unsupervised on the condominium grounds. They also voted to refuse any new tenants or owners who had children to move in, a far cry from the sales pitch Tessa and Bobby were fed over three years earlier. She remembered the salesman who promised a \"family-like\" atmosphere, high above the crashing waves below on the breakwaters of Haulover.\n\nThe child died seven days later. A subdural hematoma, undetected by numerous CAT scans, squeezed the life from her fragile skull. The family, still in mourning, sold their three-bedroom flat. That left two children in a complex of ninety-eight apartments.\n\nThe Rosenblats on the ninth floor had a very bright twelve-year-old who by all means was a child prodigy genius like his father, a cellist in the greater Miami Philharmonic. Young Ivan practiced relentlessly. He was highly revered in his circles and the pedigree was very much appreciated by the homeowners' executive board of the Edgewater Condominium Association.\n\nAfter five years of marriage, Tessa and Bobby became restless. She made no apologies, admitting that she had married him to get back at her father. He was upfront also, openly telling people that he married to produce a grandchild for the parents he adored. While she remained faithful, he, on more than one occasion, came home with an unfamiliar scent lingering to his nightclubbing attire or a red splotch on or about his collar or crotch.\n\n\"You're so damned insecure,\" he would say. \"Mima gave me a hug before I went out. You can't blame a guy for hugging his mother can you?\"\n\n\"And your mother gives you head too I guess?\" she would ask.\n\nAnd that's how it would go. Two young adults trading barbs and occasional glancing blows as their two-year-old daughter hid in her closet until it was over.\n\nHe hit her three times during their marriage. After the first, she vowed to leave him, but after his pleas of sorrow and his begging, she took him back. After that it was just easier to make excuses for his behavior. It was a Cuban thing, she would tell herself. I married him and I have to take responsibility for that decision. Still, she would stay up at night and wonder how an independent woman could end up like this.\n\nTessa made one final sweep over the black acrylic coffee table before joining her child on the balcony. The cool air felt good against her smooth olive skin. The wind blew through her curly black hair. She looked very Latin. The gray-haired elders of the Edgewater complex simply assumed she was. Her recently deceased husband was a very flamboyant Cuban who flouted his Italian-Cuban style amongst these much older Anglos in the complex. Little did they know Tessa's mother was Greek, born on the island of Amorgos in the Aegean Sea, and her father, Irish, born in Orlando and about as Anglo as they come.\n\nThe elders saw her as part of a bigger threat: the ensuing invasion of Cubans and Haitians polluting the racial purity of their beloved home, Miami Beach, and the Edgewater Condominium. More than one Cadillac and Lincoln Mark Five in the Edgewater parking garage displayed the bumper sticker: Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag! This was comical since the elders themselves were all from somewhere else, mostly the New England area, New Jersey, and some from Connecticut and New York. The Rosenblats migrated from Massachusetts. Ivan Sr. played his cello, third row, up stage, with the Boston Pops for seventeen years.\n\nTessa pulled her baby Monica close to her as she panned out to the busy inlet in front of them. The Haulover Inlet was a man-made channel and vented a lot of tidal pressure. Tessa saw it as a mirror reflecting back at her own life. As the tide changed, the current raced by the jagged breakwater rocks at a fast pace. Water churned and frothed causing turmoil under the bridge that spanned across the two-hundred-foot waterway. She simply watched and wondered.\n\nBobby had left her financially secure, but he had also left her with some serious scars. Her feelings of trust and love had been cauterized from her soul long before his accident, one painful stab at a time. A large Hatteras Sport Fisherman blasted its way past the condo with the roaring of the twin diesels echoing from the seawall; its immense wake shuttered the pilings as it passed under the bridge. Tessa held her daughter's head tight and realized that this was her chance to make things right.\n\n* * * * *\n\nInvocation\n\nThe afternoon was overcast. A light rain fell from dark gray skies as cars lined up at the gate to the Academy. Security guards in bright orange raincoats waved the vehicles past the entrance with lighted orange batons guiding them to designated parking areas. Roped areas marked an open field of wet grass, dividing it into neatly segregated rows.\n\nOne hundred and eighty-six recruits were ready to graduate. The official count was one hundred and eighty-seven but during the exercises of the last week, one recruit made a very serious mistake. How could it have happened? the instructors had asked themselves. It was a reasonably hot day and the recruits were taking turns making forced entry in an exercise that would teach them how to serve a search warrant. A team of five men was formed and one lone agent was picked to guard the entrance while the other four bolted in through the front door. The building they were practicing in was an old Navy barracks. FLETC itself was formed from an old Navy base, with rows of vacant buildings left decaying in the weather. As part of a revitalization effort, FLETC had been awarded a grant to remodel some of the buildings for future use as classrooms and scenario sets. As the four men made their way into the structure, the fifth stood watch outside. The instructors, those who were not acting as suspects, followed the entry team as observers who would later make a critique of the scenario. The exercise took a turn for the worst though as the men inside the building heard yelling in the front.\n\n\"Hands over your head asshole! Yeah, you, motherfucker! I will blow your spick head off!\"\n\nThe instructors ran out the front of the building just in time to see the lone guarding agent kicking and yelling at a group of men who were dressed in paint-stained construction uniforms laying face down on the pavement. Workers, it turned out, who were remolding the next building over.\n\nThis guy was a week away from walking out the door and into the field, the FLETC management said amongst themselves. It was a perplexing problem as to how close the cadet had come to graduating from the Academy and no one had caught this student's inability to make rational decisions in the heat of a crisis. The next question that was invariably raised was how many others were out there that simply passed through the cracks?\n\nInside FLETC's main auditorium was an audience filled primarily with recruits' family members, loud with the rumble of impatient voices. On the stage sat a panel of men, all dressed in suits. Before them in the first six rows sat the graduating class and behind them, their families and friends.\n\nA small, balding man approached the podium. As he tapped on the microphone, the large room filled with a screech of feedback and then the noise in the room fell to a quiet hush.\n\n\"It is my distinct pleasure to announce the keynote speaker for these proceedings. Mr. Patrick Stephens has been this area's Special Federal Prosecutor for sometime now and he has flown down here to offer a few words of advice and direction for today's graduating class. Mr. Stephens...\"\n\nPat walked slowly across the stage, taking his position behind the podium. Stephens didn't need the interruption of feedback. He didn't have to ask for it. His presence merely demanded it. Attention.\n\n\"On behalf of the staff here at Glynnco, especially the director of training who was gracious enough to invite me all the way down here from Atlanta, I would like to welcome all of the families and friends attending the graduation commencement for the United States Customs Service class of October 25th, 1984. And to those of you who will walk down this stage in a few minutes, congratulations on a job well done. All of us in the U.S. Attorney's Office know training like this is not easy. It takes guts and determination to leave our loved ones and venture out on a quest for a better life, especially when it involves the safety and security of our country and the future of our children and our children's children. In my office in metro Atlanta, we are seeing generations of families destroyed by the lure of illegal drugs available on many of our street corners. The position you have been chosen to uphold is more than a job or a GS rating. It's a lifestyle of determination, long hours and many sleepless nights. Family members: it's your support and understanding that will make all the difference in the world. I thank God for my wife Jhenna. If it were not for her and the support she gives me on a daily basis, I don't think I would have made it past my first case.\n\nAs a prosecutor in the federal system, I am constantly reminded of how the backbone of our cases relies on the agents in the field. It takes more than good ole' fashioned police work these days. Agents fighting today's complex war on drugs need to anticipate the criminal's move before he makes it. They need to stay one step ahead and three steps behind. This is an intellectual war. It will not be won with bullets and brawn, but rather with computers, databases, adding machines and sophisticated electronics. Each and every one of you has been handpicked from more than twenty thousand applicants because in one way or another, you're special. You are the elite. You can be proud and confident that with the expert training gained here coupled together with the qualities you already possessed when you walked through these oak doors four months ago, you are prepared to make a difference.\n\nMy job is simple: put the bad guys behind bars for as long as legally possible. But I can't do that without a Tupperware tight case and that's where you will come in. As you depart from this center, you will receive your assignments, some taking you to remote parts of the country. Just remember that it all comes back to the training you received here at Glynnco. Good luck and Godspeed gentlemen, let's all do some good.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDischarge\n\nThe waiting room at the Eglin Federal Detention Facility in Fort Walton, Florida, resembled an ordinary room in an ordinary government building. It was lined with oddly colored plastic seats all affixed to a pair of chrome bars that spanned the twenty-foot depth of the room. Peter Delgado, called Del by his friends, sat two seats from the wall with his unshaven face held in both hands, looking at a highly polished asbestos tile floor. He was in street clothes: a faded burgundy T-shirt, jeans, the bulge of a billfold in his back pocket and white Keds with soft socks, the first set of \"real\" clothes he had worn in over eighteen months. His shoes felt better than the surplus military issue boots he had used for most of his stay at Eglin.\n\n\"I'm going to need to give you a ride to the bus station, Delgado,\" a deep voice called out from the duty desk across the room.\n\nBureau of Prisons transport agent, Percy Moore, had seen newly released prisoners wait in these chairs before. Most, sitting for hours anticipating a girlfriend or wife who never arrived. His routine was time-tested and pretty standard. He'd usually wait three or four hours before insisting they take the fifteen-minute jaunt to the Greyhound terminal in downtown Fort Walton.\n\n\"No thanks, they're coming up from Miami. My friend said he was expecting some road work around Gainesville.\"\n\n\"Very well Delgado, you've got until 3:30.\"\n\n\"Yes sir,\" he replied.\n\nPeter Delgado was loved and missed by his friends and family. He had spent the last eighteen months at the Eglin facility missing them also. He kept his mind busy completing his GED and learning the valuable trade of a machinist, all in the year and a half at the minimum security camp. Five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, he developed his skills turning lathes and working high speed drill presses in hot, sweaty shops making parts for other government agencies in need of the costly craft. When Del arrived in Key West five years earlier from Mariel, he stepped off an overcrowded shrimp boat, having just been released from the Cabotivo Calich\u00e9 Prison in Havana. He carried a black leather satchel that had belonged to his father, a simple carpenter who was killed when he was a young boy.\n\nDel entered the U.S. with over eighty thousand other prisoners who were released as a gesture of Fidel Castro's inability to house, clothe and feed them. And, while the move was probably the most humane thing the dictator had ever accomplished, it was perceived as political spring-cleaning. U. S. President Jimmy Carter gave them a new home with open arms until intelligence sources within the Immigration and Naturalization Service, known as the INS, uncovered the truth. By then it was too late and Carter was perceived as a duped fool. As a last ditch effort to control the situation, the INS created a temporary housing facility deep in the heart of the watery Everglades, south of Miami and adjacent to the highway that connects the Florida Keys and the mainland of Florida called appropriately, the eighteen-mile stretch. The conditions at the camp, made up of surplus green military tents, were worse than any Delgado had seen in Cuba. The heat and humidity were compounded severely by the hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes that fed on the prisoners like piranhas devouring a herd of cattle caught in a crossing river. In the first two weeks, thirty-eight were diagnosed with spinal meningitis, a disease infecting the lining of the brain spread primarily by mosquitoes and other waterborne insects.\n\nDel had served a seven-year sentence for thievery in Cuba. Like most criminals, his career started when he was an adolescent. He had joined a youth gang that terrorized the back streets of Havana preying on European tourists. The gang called themselves the Diablos and as part of their initiation process, each boy had to etch a crude tattoo depicting a simple pitchfork on the back of their left thumb. Using black ink and a household pin, each boy made their pledge indelible. Each tattoo was only as consistent as the bearer's artistic ability, which was usually in very short supply.\n\nThe Diablos where a tough crew made more vigilant by the tactics Castro used to control them. Death squads roamed the streets and city alleys after dark, looking for and hunting the young boys who made up the Diablos and gangs like them. Policemen by day, these hunters dressed in black fatigues and black matte army boots and spent the dark hours peering into small shelters, discarded boxes, abandoned cars, and any other place one might find the homeless residing. Armed with Russian built AK-47s, the squad was fast, efficient, and most of all, deadly. Their guns were equipped with custom-machined tubular silencers that kept the weapon's noise limited to the sliding bolt action. Swiftly, silently, and most of the time, without suitable warning, the young boys were killed in their sleep. Others were shot in the back while running down sewage-filled alleys or climbing out of glassless car doors. The Diablos were a menace to Castro's island and were unwanted by most of the population. There were no missing person reports, pictures on milk cartons or worried parents sitting at home crying over framed grammar school pictures. The boys were pure evil and the death squads kept them in a constant state of stress-filled escape with nothing left to lose. Those who survived were truly part of the criminal elite.\n\nWith the help of a public assistance attorney, Del received his green card and a place to stay. He did so in record time, leaving the prison camp in three weeks. His first job was as a cook in a small storefront Cuban restaurant owned by Philipe and Roberto Alazar. Del worked hard preparing everything from black beans and rice to fried plantains. Philipe, called Gordo because of his short, three-hundred-pound frame, immediately befriended Del and the two became inseparable. Gordo was an established member of the South Florida based Marimba, a Spanish word for a small musical instrument, and also a term used to label the growing drug trade and its tributaries that had infiltrated the economy of the Caribbean basin. The Marimba labeled the drug trade like the Mafia labeled the organized crime families of New York and Chicago. Those who participated were known in circles as Marimbettos.\n\nBesides also being a Marimbetto, Gordo was also Mishawaka and more seriously, a hardcore Santeria Mishawaka. Mishawaka was a western-based religion that worshipped the spirit of the Native American Indian. As one might wear a ring with a lucky horseshoe, the Mishawaka followers had an entire collection of Indianhead rings and necklaces. A group of boat builders named their product after the Native American motif. And, while the Marimba supported a large number of orders, civilian buyers also bought these boats known for their endurance and speed. It's not how fast you go, but how far you go fast, boasted one of the company's ads.\n\nGordo Alazar introduced Del to some of his contacts in Miami. In a relatively short period of time, Del was working the boats offshore, lugging bales for two grand a night. Gradually, he worked his way up the ladder until he made the rank of captain, navigating the dangerous crossings between the Bahamas and the Florida Keys. He was good and his superiors knew it. Del worked for several smugglers in the area but he was especially fond of his friends Gordo and Roberto Alazar. Of the marijuana smuggled through the Keys, the Alazar's ran almost sixty percent. The work was plentiful, and for the most part, safe.\n\nFor three years Del ran loads routinely. He built a home in the Redlands of Homestead, not far from the camp at Chrome Avenue where he spent his first weeks living in the U. S. after arriving. Del was building his dream, one piece at a time. He had developed a small fortune, stowed securely, and developed investments, one of which was a partnership in a small company that built the boats he was using. He had a pretty, live-in girlfriend named Marcia, an educated American girl with blond hair, blue eyes and a nicely manufactured body.\n\nIt was a load of bad fuel he took on while in Andros, the largest of the Bahamian islands, that brought his dream to an abrupt end. All four outboard engines on his custom-built, 40-foot Indian boat succumbed to the tainted gas, leaving the craft adrift in the Gulf Stream. During the ordeal, the frantic Cuban tried to offload eighty bales of Guatemalan-grown pot. Without power though, the bales never drifted far from the lifeless speedboat. At dawn, a Coast Guard reconnaissance hawker spotted the boat adrift and its load floating close behind like a patch of seaweed. As Del watched the white and orange jet pass less than a hundred feet off the water, he knew his life was about to change considerably. Within an hour, a high-speed patrol boat was bearing down with guns drawn.\n\nDel's arraignment went smoothly enough as Miami attorney Steven Weinberg pleaded a good case for ROR, release on recognizance. The judge compromised between the ROR and the million-dollar bond that Miami Assistant U. S. Attorney Sam Bittel had asked for, setting bond at three hundred and fifty thousand. The bondsman took his cut, with thirty-five thousand up front, the house in the Redlands as collateral and another five thousand under the table to keep the money's origin confidential. Peter Delgado was a free man awaiting trial.\n\nDistance was placed between Delgado and Roberto Alazar. The two met only when they absolutely had to. He was caught red-handed and facing twenty years. His only exposure to prison life in America was the camp at Chrome Avenue and if that was an example of what American prisons were like, a deal had to be made. When he was offered a plea bargain of thirty months at the Eglin work camp, Del took it.\n\nThis was where a new life began for Delgado. At thirty-five, he was back in school, learning a trade for the first time. He was to become a machinist, a trade chosen for him based on aptitude tests, personal likes and dislikes and the availability of training.\n\nThe Eglin work camp had a training facility that rivaled most vocational technical schools. It was ironic since most who were sentenced to the minimum-security facility were citizens already trained, usually in one of the professions.\n\nDoctors, lawyers, and accountants, along with a few bankers, made up almost eighty percent of the toll at Eglin and their crimes ranged from simple tax evasion to million-dollar bank fraud. This didn't seem to affect Del though, who took to his newfound profession almost immediately. He was a natural. His meticulous nature coupled with other mechanical abilities enabled him to succeed where others had failed. Before long, he was machining parts for dozens of different state and federal agencies. There wasn't anything Del couldn't make, though his specialty was designing and fabricating parts for marine engines.\n\nHis girlfriend, Marcia, visited regularly for the first six months but then moved on to someone else who could pay the bills and provide for her expensive tastes. It was no surprise to Del, who had toyed with the idea of marrying her before his incarceration started. She was not the stick-it-out type, he told himself. He knew this before they got serious making her departure that more painless.\n\nThe work camp suited the Cuban. The tasks were interesting, designing and building components for Coast Guard and Customs boats as well as a multitude of other governmental agencies. The food was plentiful. Del had gained almost twenty pounds in his first year and a full thirty by the time of his release. Del despised working out. While his co-captives spent hours pumping iron in the facility's massive gym, he simply wandered back into his machine shop, looking over projects, and fine-tuning parts he had meticulously carved out of cast iron and aluminum blocks. These pieces were like treasures to him. Like a New York Fifth Avenue jeweler, he would hold each piece up to the light, inspecting it for obvious flaws. Finely machined parts, brackets, pump housings, steering components, all cradled in steel vices, held high over mounds of metal shavings on the floor below.\n\nAs the northwest Florida sun set early in the day, a spinning ceiling fan hung from a cedar rafter blocked just enough of the sunlight to send its shadow circling the dusty room. Agent Moore looked down at his watch as he grabbed the keys to the transport van.\n\n\"Come on Delgado, I don't want to be late for dinner. The misses would have my ass,\" Percy said before noticing a shadow approach the glass entrance to the room.\n\nA tall, heavyset Latin male immediately occupied the doorway.\n\n\"Well I'm not going to wait all day, boy!\" Gordo bellowed as he came in the room.\n\nDel's head popped up from his sweaty hands to see his friend standing over him. His year and a half ordeal had come to an end. From under his seat he retrieved everything he had taken in with him, all confined in a favorite black satchel. The two embraced for a minute and headed out the door. Agent Moore, with his feet still perched up on the duty desk, reached around and hung the van keys back up on its hook.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNucleus\n\nThe Dirty Laundry was one of, if not the most popular club in downtown Brunswick. A line of over two hundred patrons wound its way around the turn of the century brick structure. It was a cold night. Hot clouds of steam poured into the damp night air, escaping from crevasses beneath the street and sidewalk. Members of the crowd rubbed their hands together. Young couples cuddled close trying to conserve body heat in an attempt to stay warm. Above them, with the backdrop of weathered red clay brick and mortar, a bright neon sign blinked repeatedly.\n\nDirty Laundry - Dirty Laundry - Dirty Laundry\n\nOld-style furnaces heated the open building that once housed a naval laundry facility. Massive tin pipes, some four feet in diameter, encompassed the seven thousand foot agora. The foyer was dimly lit but beyond was a palace of lights. Strobes, flashers, beacons and red strings of laser light bounced back and forth in a rhythmic dance that followed the heart pounding beat of the base-enriched music. A manic DJ stood in an elevated, glass-enclosed box, dancing his own rendition, which did not necessarily correspond with the gyrating, contorting crowd on the highly polished wooden dance floor below.\n\nJoel Kenyon stood alone in a corner as he watched the tall, confident frame of Jhenna Kenyon-Stephens approach. She was a very beautiful woman who knew how to capture the attention she deserved, dressed in a black spandex skirt, heels and a well thought out collection of jewelry which included an eighteen-carat gold Rolex her husband presented her for Christmas.\n\n\"What are you doing hiding over here?\"\n\n\"Oh, I wasn't planning on staying very long. I've got to drive to the Keys tonight. Just wanted to spend a few last hours with the class.\"\n\n\"How sweet, I take it we don't have a date?\"\n\n\"Nah, haven't had the time to meet anyone over here.\"\n\n\"Cathy asked about you the other day; she said you haven't called in a while,\" his sister mentioned with a mischievous smile.\n\n\"I know, I've just been so busy. They really keep you occupied here. I'll call her when I get to the Keys.\"\n\n\"You'd better; I don't want you breaking another one of my intern's hearts.\"\n\n\"Well, who do we have here? Quiet-shy Joel Kenyon seems to be doing very well for himself,\" said Bret Halpren, a fellow graduate who broke in between the two.\n\n\"Bret, this is Jhenna, my sister.\"\n\n\"Jhenna, I'm delighted,\" he said.\n\n\"So Joel, where's your assignment?\"\n\n\"Tavernier.\"\n\n\"Tavern- where?\"\n\n\"Tavernier, in the Florida Keys.\"\n\n\"Oh, the badlands of drug enforcement. Gee, whose ass did you have to kiss to get that ticket?\" Halpren asked glancing back at Mrs. Stephens.\n\n\"Yeah, it should be challenging,\" Joel replied ignoring the statement and regaining his arrogant classmate's attention. \"Where did you end up Bret?\"\n\n\"El Paso, wouldn't you know it, frisking beaners at the border. It's only temporary though, I'm gonna put in for air support after my internship is up,\" Halpren said with a sense of manufactured confidence before yelling at another graduate across the room. \"Gomez, c\u00f3mo est\u00e1s? Good luck Kenyon.\" Just as soon as he had appeared, Halpren left, and not a moment too soon for Jhenna, who was trying not to laugh.\n\n\"So where is your husband?\"\n\n\"Over there politicking,\" she replied, pointing to a group of suit-clad men standing by the bar.\n\n\"I had to fly in yesterday for a conference in Savannah. We decided to meet and make an evening of it. Some evening, huh.\"\n\n\"Yes, but things will be better after the election, regardless of the outcome. He'll slow down. Besides, imagine it, Mrs. Jhenna Stephens, the distinguished wife of a United States Senator.\"\n\n\"It sounds real nice but I don't know. I'm really a simple girl at heart and, well, we just don't spend enough time together as it is. How will it be if he gets nominated and elected? Besides, I hate Washington and we just went through all the hassle of building a new house and everything, you all just don't understand. You know Daddy would have been so proud, but I've got my happiness to think about,\" she responded. \"At least he would have been proud of you.\"\n\n\"Proud?\" Joel asked. \"I doubt that this is what he envisioned me doing with my life. If anything, I would have to say he would've been disappointed.\"\n\n\"Don't say that,\" she protested.\n\n\"No, I'm happy with what I've done, but let's face it, Dad always had much higher aspirations for me. Law, Annapolis, a junior version of him,\" Joel said.\n\n\"You are like him. I see it every day.\"\n\n\"I'm nothing like him sis, and you know it. Now that guy over there,\" Joel said pointing to his brother-in-law. \"He's like our dad.\"\n\n\"It's only because he's trying, but don't let him hear you say that. He's got a big enough head already, and besides, he's too short to resemble anything close to our father.\"\n\n\"Okay, point taken. Let's just be ourselves, if not just for tonight,\" Joel suggested.\n\n\"Deal, little brother...\" she replied, being suddenly interrupted as Pat groped her from behind.\n\n\"Ah, a little family reunion I see?\"\n\n\"Well, two out of three isn't bad,\" she said despairingly. Pat seemed to ignore her jab as he tilted the heavy tumbler in his hand backwards sending the rest of his drink down his throat.\n\n\"Shouldn't you be on the road by now?\"\n\n\"Yeah, you're right,\" Joel answered as he reached over giving Jhenna a peck on the cheek. \"I'll call Cathy tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Pleeeeease!\" she responded like a little girl begging for candy.\n\n\"I will, I promise,\" he replied as the two exchanged a parting look.\n\n* * * * *\n\nHomestead\n\nThe western end of Miami's Southwest 233rd Street looked like an oasis in a jungle of slash pines and vegetative overgrowth that made simple foot travel near impossible throughout most of the area. On the eastern edge of the Florida Everglades, this area, known as the Redlands, was as far as one could go on a westerly course without an airboat. Florida panthers, alligators and multitudes of other wildlife called this habitat home, and due to restricted building codes in the area enforced by the Metro Dade Zoning Board and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, it was more than likely going to stay that way. This was a big change from almost fifteen years ago when Roberto Alazar and his family set up their homestead here, moving from the crowded and somewhat crime-ridden city of Hialeah. At that time, the land was cheap and building prices were reasonable. Years later, the average home builder would spend at least two to three hundred thousand dollars for a site as the county required at least five acres and all new construction had to conform to the amended code restrictions for the area. With the new restrictions, Alazar found himself living next to doctors, lawyers and smugglers like himself; not the image Alazar needed since he preferred to keep a low profile.\n\nAlazar's home was a spacious three thousand square feet. Modest in comparison, it was nestled in between a three story cedar structure of seven thousand on one side and a stucco mansion of nine thousand on the other, the latter selling for just under a million dollars two months prior. Alazar's single story, ranch style home with its red brick fascia seemed out of place, but to him and his family, it was home. The seven-acre tract's perimeter was lined with a four-foot chain link fence. The portion on the street was laced with brick pillars, slightly higher than the fence. Green vines grew in between the links making it that much more secure. On the backside of the property stood a handsome wooden barn, built by Roberto and Bobby Alazar. It sheltered two purebred Arabians, Pilgrim and Apache. One hundred feet from the barn stood a series of smaller buildings. Parked in front were Alazar's long, black dual-wheeled pickup truck and three triple axle boat trailers. The buildings housed Alazar's shop equipment consisting of an industrial air compressor, a commercial grade welder and other industrial tools he used to work on his small fleet of boats.\n\nWhen there was work to be done to the home it was usually done by Alazar. His only son Bobby moved out soon after he was married but still returned to run the small diesel tractor over the grass when it got too high or to trim a few trees when they started to encroach on the house. This home was more than a house. It was a symbol, standing for security and warmth to the immediate family and beyond.\n\nThe grounds were neatly groomed this Friday afternoon, with the grass kept at an average two-inch height, trimmed accurately around the fence and all the trees. The slash pines, known for producing rust-colored pine needles, were kept in check, with the needles raked up to the base of each tree. Alazar himself did the work this time. His wife, Mima, watched that day as he quietly drove the diesel tractor in straight rows. She felt that the solace and time spent alone was good therapy. It had been a month since they learned of their only son's death. It was a long month of grieving with the situation made even worse by the bodiless funeral. The Alazars were strong though, and as Roberto informed the family at the funeral's reception, they were going to overcome. Alazar was a natural born leader. His words alone inspired people to do more than they realized they had potential for. The only one who doubted the family's ability for success was Alazar himself, but he was strong enough to not show it.\n\nMima had planned a homecoming party for Del, but after their son went missing and was presumed dead, the event changed its tone. By three in the afternoon, the lawns were covered with people. Their kids played with each other. This was going to be the first chance the family and their close friends had had to gather since the funeral. It was meant as a way for everyone to cope and move on.\n\nBrothers Gordo and Roberto tended the grill, one of the biggest in South Miami, custom-made by Roberto. It was made from two, fifty-five gallon drums that were sliced in half by his blowtorch to form four halves with a steel grate placed over the top. Lignum vitae wood and chunks of coral rock were heated beneath to give anything they cooked an authentic island flavor. Above roasted a one hundred and twenty pound pig, slow cooked over the smoldering wood and blistering rocks, the pig's head still intact, its tongue projecting two inches past its open mouth. As primitive as it seemed, the process was still not entirely orthodox. Generations before used to bury the pig in a mound of sand over a bed of hot coals for twelve hours giving the heat time to saturate the meat and cure it. This was a Latin art practiced by many Cubans in South Florida. Roberto Alazar, however, had a craving for smoked meat and the open-air method he was using didn't dry it out like the other methods. Meanwhile, the children took turns making faces at the dead pig and then running away with giggles.\n\nMima prepared two large, deep trays of white rice, saturated with black beans, garlic, and laced with ham. This had been stewing all day in the oven, steaming and seasoning the rice until it had a charcoal gray color to it. This was a Cuban tradition and just as Italians craved pasta and Jews cherished their matzahs, the Cubans immortalized black beans and rice, especially Gordo, who heaped mounds of the stuff over lengths of toasted garlic bread. Despite eight years of marriage to his wife Cecilia, Gordo could not get her to match Mima's knack for cooking, despite having all the family recipes.\n\nMima was Roberto's treasure. The two grew up together in Havana and were raised by very conservative Catholic parents. Despite the changing political climate that surrounded their families in the early fifties, Roberto and Mima lived fairly sheltered lives.\n\nDel set up a fish fryer next to a long redwood picnic table. He did not eat pork regularly and it was agreed that since he had a special recipe for deep fried battered fish, he would do the honors. He brought his own supply of dolphin and grouper. It was like old times for him to go up to his favorite fish market in Hialeah and purchase the stuff over the counter, although he still would have rather caught it himself. In time, he would soon be fishing the Gulf Stream again.\n\nAmidst the preparation of food, children played, running, chasing each other throughout the tables. The Alazar family had its share of kids, mostly bore to cousins and friends. Roberto and Mima had tried on several attempts to conceive a child, ending in three miscarriages before leaving Havana in 1956. Due to the miracles of modern American medicine however, Mima bore a son in 1960, Bobby. The process was not without complications though and she underwent an immediate hysterectomy soon after making Bobby their only child.\n\nOff in the distance playing with pinecones was a child less energetic than the others. Gordo's son was five, chunky, and dressed in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He had already developed a frame like his father. The family called him Gordito.\n\nDespite the numerous children present, Roberto and Mima had only one small child that belonged to them. Bobby's daughter, Monica, was three and she was not there, only adding to their grief. Mima watched from the kitchen window as the children scurried by, their screams of excitement, although aggravating to some, were in a way soothing to Mima who had missed the sound. She only had one son and one grandchild. She lost him and in doing so, felt she was also losing her.\n\n\"Where are Tessa and the baby?\" Cecilia asked as she was cleaning some utensils in the stainless steel sink.\n\n\"Mima!\" Cecilia asked again, trying to break Mima's trance.\n\n\"Wha!\" Mima said, without paying attention. \"Oh, I'm sorry, Cecilia, what did you say?\"\n\n\"Where is Tessa?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know, she has been very busy, you know. Maybe she will come later.\"\n\n\"Mima, have you tried calling her? This isn't like her; maybe she needs something. After all, I'm sure she needs all the support a young girl in her position can get.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, we have left many messages on her answering machine. If she needs us, she knows where we are,\" Mima replied, discouraged and heartbroken.\n\n\"Tessa always was the independent one, full of ideas and dreams,\" Cecilia said, almost envious.\n\n\"Cecilia, Tessa needs a lesson in respect, especially the respect of her husband, her dead husband!\" Mima replied, her lips quivering with the last few words.\n\nCecilia took her cue to change the subject. \"Do you have another towel? I will take this tray outside.\"\n\nCecilia and Mima each grabbed a tray of steaming hot black beans and rice. The trays, generally used for basting turkeys, bowed at the middle from the weight. If the pig roasting in the Alazar's backyard was the Thanksgiving turkey, black beans and rice were the stuffing. The only difference was that the Alazars didn't have to wait for the traditional four-day weekend in late November to indulge in this type of feast. This event occurred quite regularly.\n\nThe ladies joined the others around the long picnic table. Del retrieved the last batch of fish from the cooker and laid the steaming breaded pieces on a bed of paper towels to soak out the excess grease.\n\nRoberto took his place at the head of the long table as everyone else took their seats. Even the kids came to attention next to a series of card tables set off by themselves.\n\n\"Jesus Christ, our Lord in heaven, please bless this food to our bodies and help those hearts which are heavy with sorrow tonight. We thank you for the safe return of our brother Del. We have missed him dearly. In your name, Jesus Christ, Amen.\"\n\nEveryone sat down as Gordo reiterated, \"Amen!\"\n\nThe feast was no less than satisfying. Gordo was on his second plate in less than ten minutes and Cecilia had to remind him to slow down and save some for the kids. At one of the smaller card tables, Gordito followed suit like his father, consuming more than his share as fast as humanly possible. The paper tablecloth in front of the child was covered in spilled food, some falling off the side of his overfilled plate and some landing as projectiles from the child's mouth, which kept up at a ravenous pace like a well-oiled machine.\n\n\"Bet you haven't eaten like this in a while,\" Gordo asked Del nudging him in the side.\n\n\"Gordo!\" Cecilia snapped.\n\n\"No, you're right Gordo. This is heaven. I thought I'd never smell the garlic in Mima's beans again. Everything we ate had saltpeter in it. You could taste it. I'm so sick of that bitter taste.\"\n\n\"Saltpeter?\" Gordo asked.\n\n\"Not in front of the ladies Gordo,\" Del replied.\n\nThe meal lasted as long as their appetites would let them indulge. Like Americans on Thanksgiving, the Alazars always made more food than was customarily needed. Leftovers were the rule for at least three to four days following an Alazar feast.\n\nRoberto lit a long, wooden match on a brick that made up the foundation for the gazebo where the men had gathered to relax and let the food settle. Two, three puffs from the long Cuban cigar and smoke erupted from the end. The match was passed to Del, who followed suit. Gordo lit his own.\n\n\"So Del, what's it like in the camp?\" Gordo asked.\n\n\"Altogether different from anything I've ever experienced in my life. The emotions, I can't begin to explain. It was like Cuba. The only difference was that Fidel wore an Army uniform and drove a Plymouth sedan. I was so sick of people telling me what to do. How to eat, how to sleep, how to shit. Oh yeah, by the way Gordo, the saltpeter was put in the food so you don't get a hard dick. I guess it was their way of keeping us straight.\"\n\n\"Damn!\" Gordo replied with fascination.\n\n\"Yeah, there were fags in there but it's not like you hear. They basically kept to themselves. Mostly the people inside were doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Shit, there were a lot of accountants. My third roommate was a doctor.\"\n\n\"A doctor? How does a doctor end up in a federal prison?\" Roberto asked.\n\n\"The doctor loved to hunt. One day while chasing game in the great Okefenokee Swamp, he decided to take a pot shot at a hawk. The only thing was that it wasn't a hawk; it was a bald eagle, a big one with little chicks back at some nest in the woods. He didn't kill it. Missed the damn thing by a mile, but a ranger in a fire tower saw the whole thing and reported him to some more rangers on the ground and the rest was history. He did his time okay except for the evening of his daughter's high school graduation. His only kid and she was a salutatorian, that's second in the class, and it was a big-ass school. Well, he missed it. As long as I live, I'll never forget that grown man on his knees crying like a baby. It made me real sad man. I hate hunting.\"\n\nAll three men sat there in a pool of silence for a few seconds before Gordo asked, \"So you really didn't like the food?\"\n\n\"The food! What, are you planning a trip there Gordo?\" Roberto asked with a chuckle.\n\n\"No man, I just wondered. You know, haven't you ever wondered about what it would be like?\"\n\n\"I did,\" Del replied \"and then I found out for myself and you know what? It's an experience you really can't prepare for. You just have to pray you never have to find out. Pray and make your sacrifices. And for God's sake, don't think that just because you got some hotshot lawyer that you're going to walk. They're the ones who make the real money at this business. Fucking pigs,\" Del said, relaxing for a second before continuing. \"The guys who are the anxious types hurt the most. I watched them worry about everything. They thought their girlfriends were fucking around on them. Some worried that their wives were plotting to steal their money then spend it with someone else. God, it went on and on. Sometimes I didn't sleep for a whole week. When Marcia left me, I think she was really doing me a favor. The only thing I regretted was not being able to be with you guys.\"\n\n\"That bitch!\" Gordo said.\n\n\"What it all comes down to is family. We all have to stick together,\" Roberto emphasized.\n\n\"I am sorry I could not be here for you and Mima during your hard times. I loved Bobby like a son,\" Del said as the table became quiet. The three sat in silence for a few minutes before they were interrupted.\n\n\"Any more food for you guys?\" Mima asked, as she wrapped aluminum foil over one of the trays.\n\n\"No, no thank you, baby,\" Roberto answered.\n\nThe three grabbed their drinks and headed over to Roberto's workshop, far from the others. Roberto pulled out another cigar and lit it.\n\n\"How is my boat coming? I heard you talked to Scotty today,\" Roberto said.\n\n\"They spent the day waking the mold and are going to start laying it up in the morning,\" Del answered.\n\n\"Since you've been gone, things have been tough over there. Real slow. I can tell these things you know. I've got a good mind for business,\" Roberto declared, puffing out a proud, long puff of smoke.\n\n\"We are holding our own. Things could have been worse while I was gone. Scotty has managed to keep the doors open,\" Del responded.\n\n\"Good. I'm glad. Indian is a good boat. It has never let me down,\" Roberto said.\n\n\"So how's our business been?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Aw, kind of slow. You know how it is just before the season,\" Roberto said.\n\n\"Things will pick up soon,\" Gordo replied.\n\n\"Well, I met some people at Eglin. I met this guy, Gus Greico. He's American and very well connected. He works for this other guy named Sal Alcone. This guy Gus and I spent a lot of time together. He's got some really good ideas Roberto, and I think we can do some business,\" Del suggested.\n\n\"I don't know Del. Everyone I've ever met who's come back from doing time has met someone and most of the time it never works out.\"\n\n\"I know. I met a lot of those too, but this guy's different. He's been a lot of places. I really think he can do things for us,\" Del said, this time with enthusiasm.\n\n\"But things are good now Del. What do you want to do, be Tony Montana? Scarface!\" Roberto joked as the three laughed.\n\n\"Oh yeah, well FUCK YOU!\" Roberto cried.\n\n\"No FUCK YOU!\" Gordo replied as the three laughed again. \"Hey Del, you gotta see this movie Scarface. It's the best comedy I have ever seen.\"\n\n\"In all seriousness Del, I respect your judgment and I am not opposed to meeting with this guy Sal Alcone, but I don't want you to get upset if we decide to leave well enough alone. You understand me brother?\" Roberto asked.\n\n\"Sure Roberto. I'll call him next week.\"\n\n\"You do that and let me know how things go...and Del...watch out for Casper Gomez and the Diaz Brothers,\" Roberto said with his strongest Latin drawl, reciting another line from Scarface as the three broke into laughter again.\n\n* * * * *\n\nConception\n\nIndian Powerboats, Inc. was a struggling venture. A modest steel-framed building made up the company's sixteen thousand square foot facility on a street made famous by high performance boats, Miami's Northeast 188th Street, better known has Thunderboat Row. Huge overhead cranes hung from the twenty-five foot-high ceilings like a spider's web. Dangling below were motor driven hoists with case hardened steel chains and large hooks that held everything from Fiberglas boat molds to supercharged engines. An acrid smell of polyester resin filled the air. The local environmental agencies had a field day with shops like these. Everything from volatile emissions to hazardous waste dumping, Indian Powerboats was on the hit list, drawing weekly visits and monthly citations. The fines were staggering, choking the small company, but that was only part of the problem. Rising crude oil prices meant rising resin prices that translated into a higher material cost for the boats Indian built. Higher fuel prices also caused a significant decline in boat sales. Indians loved fuel. Each boat was built with the premise to be faster and more powerful than the one before it. While some models had only two engines, most had three. Each boat was capable of carrying an excess of fuel. Some models came with a capacity of a thousand gallons or more.\n\nThey were called plastic boats at first and consisted of blended polymers laced with woven materials and a glossy shine which repelled water and, most importantly, wood-boring organisms. The marine industry and the consumers who supported it were not immune from the phobias of change. Change they did however, and with time came even more advancements. Boats were later built with lighter and stronger composites and fibers including Kevlar, a hybrid fiber called aramid that rendered the finished product bulletproof. Graphite fibers and space age core materials were also used, sandwiched between more orthodox ones. These boats were half the weight of their predecessors twenty years before.\n\nIndian was not functionally removed from this evolution, unlike other boat builders who, practicing out of ignorance, believed that the thicker a hull was, the better. Scott Roberts believed he had to do everything possible to compete with the other guy. The building of a faster, lighter and more efficient craft came from a constant battle with the forces of physics and the ammunition was research, development and a continual search for the newest products offered on the market.\n\nBoat names were very important to an industry that relied on an element of ego. Stiletto, Cougar, Magnum, and the Native American motif brands that reflected the Indianhead Mishawaka symbol of the smuggler like Indian and Chief all competed for their share of the market.\n\nSince shops like Roberts's dotted the East Coast, he had to be sharp, cutting corners wherever practical without sacrificing quality. He had to take the business that came to him, no matter how difficult or illegal. One thing was for certain: his customers would get a good product but they would also pay a price.\n\nIn the past six years, Indian had constructed eight boats for the Alazar family including the Island Girl for Bobby, a 40-footer for Gordo, and Vibrations, a custom built 64-foot commercial boat for Roberto Sr., the largest venture ever completed in or around the Indian shop. Roberts called her \"The Monster\" and marveled at her completion.\n\nThat morning, Roberts started construction on a new boat for Alazar, another custom-built commercial vessel. The highly polished mold he was using was not one of his regulars. This mold had belonged to his father. Unlike the normal eight-foot beam of the ocean racing go-fast, this mold was thirteen feet wide and over forty-two feet long. It featured a flat planning bottom and a keel, rather than the popular deep-V. By all rights, it resembled the original wooden boats built years ago by lobstermen in the New England area. It was a commercial hull and was designed for sea farming or a large scale fishing operation.\n\nRoberto Alazar had named his new boat the Heads Up and its conception occurred at 7:00 a.m. by the Indian crew, placing a reverse imprinted hull ID number that was affixed to the rear of the mold. The night before, some of Roberts's men waxed and prepared the massive impression, also made from Fiberglas. An industrial, high temperature laminate ten times the strength of standard Fiberglas was blended to fend off repeated abuse of the dormant acidic resin. It was nothing less than a volatile release of energy that had to be monitored closely. Before they could wax the mold though, some house cleaning had to be performed. Inside the mold were scores of small pieces of fire-singed paper, remnants of a ritual that had gone on for decades. Whenever a boat was removed from the mold, one of the workers would throw several packs of firecrackers into the void, making a loud, deafening sound.\n\nThey applied twelve coats of the mold release wax, making sure not to miss a single square centimeter, then wiped each coat clean and applied another and then yet another until the entire mold glistened under the fluorescent shop lights. The three men worked the large shell and, despite the heat generated by the waxing and continual buffing of the surface, each man was resigned to wearing cotton gloves while in contact with the pristine mold surface. A slight fingerprint of oil could very well cause the new boat to adhere, or \"marry\" as those who knew better called it, to the mold, its womb. The layers of wax would repel Fiberglas resin from the mold's surface, much like greasing a cake pan before pouring the sweet batter.\n\nAt 7:00 that morning, when the air was light and cool, Roberts donned a plastic-coated paper jumpsuit and sprayed the mold with a pigmented resin called gelcoat that would make up the outer most skin of the vessel. The gelcoat gave the boat its glossy finish and, because it was on the outer surface, determined its color.\n\nBy 7:30, Roberts's crew started to stagger in through the open bay door at the front of the building. They had been there only eight hours before as this was a rush job. This customer couldn't wait. If the crew did their job and did it well, Roberts would see that there were bonuses in store for all.\n\nThe crew consisted of Roberts's head laminator, Julio Martinez, and two other laborers. As they assembled in the back of the shop, each one watched as the mold, which was a bright orange just last night, was now turning white, one square yard at a time. Julio jumped in keeping up the technique, touching up spots his boss had missed on the first pass. The molds were usually finished with a color like bright orange or lime green. These colors were used for the lining of the molds because it was almost certain a boat would never be gelcoated with these colors. Spraying white gelcoat on a white mold would be almost impossible. The person spraying would never be able to tell which part was covered and which part was not.\n\nJulio again surveyed the rough texture of the freshly sprayed white film for its thickness and coverage. He was, for the most part, happy with what he saw, correcting minor imperfections with a quick spurt from his high-pressure spray gun.\n\nWhile Julio finished his work, the crew prepared rolls of matted dry Fiberglas and pails of soupy resin. The dry patches of cloth looked like oversized snowflakes while the liquid resin resembled maple syrup. Mixed together, they would make a structure that was almost impenetrable, even to high-powered bullets.\n\n\"Hey! Take this and mix it with that acetone. Flush it out real good,\" Roberts instructed one of the laborers, handing him the gun that was dripping with white gelcoat.\n\n\"How did it go? I see there are no rough spots. Alazar should be happy,\" Julio suggested.\n\n\"You worry about rolling out resin and I'll worry about Roberto Alazar,\" Roberts answered, irritated by his worker's statement.\n\nJulio turned and gathered the pails of resin, the odor of which alone made the toughest men tear. Roberts ran his hand over the dry gelcoat in the mold. It had hardened just in time; any sooner and it would have clogged his gun. If it were slow to set up, it would run down the sides of the slick mold. What he had done was perfect.\n\nWith the gelcoat ready to accept real Fiberglas, Roberts calculated the amount of resin in a series of pails lined up next to the mold and then looked at the wall-mounted thermometer, drawing the appropriate amount of catalyst from a plastic container he kept refrigerated, just as he had done earlier when mixing the gelcoat. The catalyst would make the resin hard and it was the ratio that would determine how fast it would do so. Once the substance started to warm up, the laminating crew knew their time was starting to expire. If a resin solution contained too much catalyst, the heat generated could prove to be catastrophic and was known to spontaneously catch fire. For this reason, Roberts played the part of the chemist, calculating the volumes of the resin, taking into consideration the temperature and the factor of the chilled catalyst, all to produce a solution that would dry harder than concrete. He trusted his crew to be right behind him, ready to apply the materials to the fresh gelcoat. If they waited too long, the gelcoat would dry out and become brittle. If they applied the resin-saturated cloth too soon, it would make the gelcoat shrivel up causing the boat's surface to look like the rough skin of an alligator, making unsightly ripples on the surface of the finished product.\n\nRoberts felt the white surface one more time before giving the word for the crew to start with the next phase. When he did, they were ready. Julio started with a specially designed roller saturated with resin, applying the maple-colored liquid to the white gelcoat. His helper was behind him with the two others, applying the rolled cloth. Together, the two materials bonded and absorbed each other, clinging to the white surface. The procedure continued for several hours, covering one entire side of the hull. The mold, which hung on its side from the ceiling, was then rolled over and the process was repeated on the other side. Sixteen laminations made up the shell of the hull. The Indian crew could manage two laminations in a nine-hour day. After the shell was completed, the stringers and cross members, which made up the grid work of the boat's structure, were cut from plywood and Fiberglased into place. It would take three weeks, twenty-one drums of resin, four thousand pounds of cloth fiber, and sixty-two sheets of marine grade plywood to complete the hull. On the other side of the shop, a mold for the boat's deck was prepared and treated the same way. After a few weeks to cure in the molds, the finished parts would then be removed and the edges trimmed of excess, dry Fiberglas. The hull and deck would then be bonded and the vessel would be ready for rigging.\n\nToday was like most, but with one exception. One of the owners of Indian was coming home for the first time in a few years and he couldn't have come at a better time. Scott Roberts had the company surviving on a week-to-week basis. The country was in a recession and fuel prices were starting to rise again. The return of his partner meant fresh ideas and a new stream of cash to keep the doors open.\n\n\"Del, man it's been a long time...you've gained some weight my friend,\" Roberts said to his partner Peter Delgado, as he stretched out his arms for a tight embrace.\n\n\"That smell...you never miss that smell,\" Del replied, looking around the plant.\n\n\"I'm glad you're back. The Miami Boat Show is coming up and we need all the help we can get. With your talent, we'll knock 'em dead,\" Roberts declared.\n\n\"Well I'm back, but I don't know how much help I'll be. It's been a while,\" Del said.\n\nIf Del was anything, he was a salesman. His ways of persuasion and convincing attitude left people spellbound. Roberts remembered when Del had first bought into Indian and worked their first boat show together. The Cuban sold a record six boats at the show and another four from leads he had cultivated less than a month later. For Del, it was the perfect cover and the business made for a legitimate venue for the income he derived from his other ventures.\n\n\"Now that you're back, we can start talking about tooling up a few new models. This stuff is starting to look dated,\" Roberts said, putting his hand on the deck of an unfinished 41-footer.\n\n\"What do you have in mind?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Something with rounded edges maybe...something more modern. Look at the new Stilettos. They just introduced a new 35-footer. Everyone's talking about it, and word is that now that Donaldson has sold the company, these new Texas people are re-tooling and modernizing the whole company,\" Roberts said.\n\nStiletto was the icon of offshore powerboats. For years, if someone looked at an ocean speedboat, regardless of the brand, they would call it a Stiletto. The long, sleek lines and bold foredeck made them an object of obsession for some. The boat's rough-water handling ability and rugged rigging made her desirable to the clandestine markets as well. Aaron Donaldson was the creator of the Stiletto and he was to these boats what Elvis was to rock and roll.\n\nDonaldson was a wealthy real estate developer who made his money converting vacant North Miami parcels into lavish townhomes and towering condominiums. When he decided to enter the powerboat business, Donaldson built his first shop on a canal-front property making him the envy of the competition who were sticking it out in smaller shops far inland. When Aaron Donaldson tested a new boat, he simply backed it out of his shop and into the water, cruising down a canal to the open ocean. The boating magazines ate this up. Donaldson was featured in more cover articles in a five-year period than all the other builders put together. He amassed an incredible career out of a simple hobby and now it had all come to an end...almost. A wealthy Dallas oil executive had bought Stiletto from Donaldson, now calling it quits after constructing over three hundred of the world's fastest boats, winning numerous powerboat racing championships, and amassing a hefty profit along the way. A binding five year no-compete clause in the sales contract ensured Stiletto's new owners that the company's charismatic creator would not simply open up shop down the street, stealing the thunder they had just purchased.\n\nScott Roberts was a good friend of Aaron Donaldson. Roberts's first boat building job was at the Stiletto factory and Donaldson served as his close mentor. Roberts was always welcome in the upscale facility and he often wandered across the street to watch what new design Donaldson was tooling for the market he had created and kept captive. On many occasions, Roberts was available for sea trials that would start down their North Miami canal and end up pounding the surf off Haulover Beach. Donaldson believed in running his boats hard. The thick Fiberglas hulls slammed into the waves, sending white spray in all directions. This was the builder's way of ensuring quality control. If a new Stiletto could survive an afternoon with Aaron Donaldson, it would certainly perform for the waiting customer.\n\nDonaldson was a player and was always eager to make a deal, especially one that netted him a sizeable profit. The building that housed the Indian shop was one such example. Donaldson had owned the property where the Indian factory sat and when Roberts needed a place, he went straight to his old boss. The deal was simple. Del put up the money, mostly cash, and Roberts infused the talent. The only problem was that huge amounts of cash had to be camouflaged. Donaldson found a way to make the deal work. He took the cash, neatly stacked in paper grocery bags, and signed the deed over to Roberts at the closing table, thus maintaining Del's position as a silent partner. Since Roberts had never filed tax returns to justify such a hefty purchase, Donaldson took back a mortgage for most of the purchase price, and, at closing, simultaneously gave Roberts a mortgage satisfaction, his own private get-out-of-debt card that he quickly stowed away in a safe deposit box. The only people who knew about this arrangement were Peter Delgado, Scott Roberts and Aaron Donaldson.\n\n* * * * *\n\nReversion\n\nThe dreams came to him in black, white and shades of gray and were always the same. They were Owen Sands's door to the past, a past his conscious mind wouldn't allow him to visit.\n\nThrough a blurry mist, a vision of Leslie Sands beamed like a portrait hanging in the back of his deepest thoughts. She was a beautiful woman and so was the house she kept. Between patients at a mental health clinic gnawing at her for eight to ten hours a day and raising two kids, she still had time to keep her family's home spotless.\n\nOwen could feel the warmth in the room as he watched his wife, perched atop a four-foot stepladder, hanging a length of wallpaper in the kitchen. The paper had a country pattern on it much like the rest of the house. Leslie craved a country setting. It went with her upbringing in the cool hills of North Carolina. With one more pass of a wide brush, the blue sheet of colored vinyl wallpaper was in place. She stepped down and stood back, admiring her handiwork. Owen joined her side, putting his arm around her neck and drawing her close.\n\n\"What do you think honey?\" she asked.\n\n\"I think, well, I think, ducks, lots of ducks.\"\n\n\"Yeah, lots of ducks silly. Is it straight?\"\n\n\"You're asking me if it's straight?\" he asked sarcastically.\n\n\"Right I forgot. Gee this house is really starting to shape up.\"\n\nFLASH\n\nEveryone in the room wore green scrubs, all with the matching black imprints: Hospital Property. Everyone, even Owen, who stood next to Leslie's sweating forehead.\n\n\"Breathe, two, three, four. Breathe!\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she said, panting.\n\nOwen looked up at the large clock mounted on the wall. They had been at it for seven hours, another thirty minutes and Dr. Joan Gerstein, their obstetrician, was going to have to perform a C-section.\n\n\"Okay Mrs. Sands, push and hold-hold-hold! Okay let's go!\" Dr. Gerstein said with confidence. Leslie obeyed without hesitation.\n\n\"Okay, let's try again. Push! Now come on sweetie! Okay, I can't seem to rotate...here...we have a foot! Prepare for a breach delivery.\"\n\nMore green scrub-clad people entered the room. Others that were already there scurried about grabbing sterile trays and draping blue towels about.\n\n\"Anna, call anesthesia, I want them here stat.\"\n\n\"Yes ma'am,\" answered one of the nurses as she reached for a phone mounted next to her on the wall. \"457 to OB 3 STAT, 457 to OB 3 STAT.\"\n\nOwen heard the nurse's voice echo down the halls outside the crowded delivery room. Now he was starting to sweat as much as Leslie. Perspiration was dripping down his face despite the temperature in the room that was kept at a constant fifty-five degrees so as to ward off germs. Owen braced himself. This was not going to be easy.\n\n\"If you want to leave, Mr. Sands, we would understand.\"\n\n\"You leave this room Owen Sands and I'll hunt you down!\" Leslie said in a groggy, muffled voice from under the blue towels.\n\n\"I think I'd better stay.\"\n\n\"As you wish, sir. Just stand over here and try not to touch any of the trays with instruments on them.\"\n\nOwen acknowledged with a nod. He wasn't going to leave regardless of his wife's plea. As a kid, he had been deathly afraid of blood and doctors. The smell of alcohol made him queasy, but somehow all those fears were buried far away at this moment. He was willing to face whatever was going to happen. Nothing ever came easy for Owen Sands and he could see that this was going to be no exception.\n\n\"Okay, we're to the superior thorax and she's not crying. Anna give me an airway please while I squeeze the head out. LESLIE, PUSH!\"\n\nOwen ran back to his wife's head, struggling for a minute to find her panting face under the blue towels.\n\n\"Push honey, this is it,\" Owen whispered as he held Leslie's hand tight.\n\n\"Here it comes...Fantastic!\" Dr. Gerstein exclaimed.\n\nOwen joined the doctor at the foot of the short table. His eyes were fixated on a sight that would never leave his mind as long as he would live. She was a crude shape, oblong with a pointed head and brown paste all over her chest. Her tiny face was purple and wrinkled, almost beyond recognition; still, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was nothing like the babies he had seen on TV. Doctor Gerstein handed him a scalpel.\n\n\"Would you like to do the honors?\"\n\nOwen took the scalpel and held it for a second in his trembling hand. Still fascinated by the baby, he just stood there, almost in a trance.\n\n\"The cord, Mr. Sands?\" Dr. Gerstein repeated.\n\nThe patient nurse placed two forceps at seven and ten inches from the baby's belly.\n\n\"Between the clamps, sir,\" the nurse instructed.\n\nWith one fell swoop, the cord was cut and the baby was detached from her mother. Owen immediately took possession of the baby and handed her to Leslie who had by now cleared away all the towels.\n\n\"Do we have a name yet?\" Dr. Gerstein asked the beaming couple holding their new baby. Anna stood by with an aluminum clipboard, ready to write so she could submit the information to Vital Statistics for the production of a birth certificate.\n\nAnd it was here, always at this very moment in every dream that all Owen could hear was static noise. This was his first-born. He remembered having two kids, raising them to a certain point. The name of his second was Jade Marie, now fifteen and a handful. But his first, why was there such an emotional wall? He struggled, but all he could hear was muffled noise. Sometimes it was rushing water, others just a baby crying. He could see his wife's lips moving, but was unable to read them or hear them. The key to this door remained locked.\n\nFLASH\n\nOwen and Leslie followed the brightly dressed real estate agent into the small, dingy-looking home. Their kids followed closely behind.\n\n\"It's a real fixer-upper, you kids are young and full of energy though,\" the agent said, \"right?\"\n\n\"We've been waiting to take on a project - I just don't know if this is going to be more than we can handle. What do you think honey?\" Leslie asked.\n\n\"Look, you two seem like a nice couple and you have such beautiful kids. Let me tell you, if you make a good faith offer to the bank and back it up in writing with a deposit, I can almost guarantee they will take it. We'll even hit them up for a new roof and carpet!\"\n\n\"A new roof and carpet are almost guaranteed, it's the bank's way of securing the equity to their favor. You're not doing us any favors. Now let's talk price,\" Owen said, exhausted after viewing houses all day. The sun was beginning to set and he could feel the heat penetrating through the water-stained curtains hanging over the windows.\n\nFLASH\n\n\"Your daughter is incorrigible!\" Leslie screamed.\n\n\"My daughter? Why is it when she does something wrong she becomes my daughter?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"I'm having another migraine; it's a killer. Will you please handle this?\" Leslie replied as she sat on the side of the bed holding her head in her hands.\n\nFLASH\n\nFrom the living room, the front lawn looked like a disaster zone. An ambulance and a fire truck were parked next to a deputy sheriff's cruiser in the driveway. Red, white, and blue lights bounced off the surrounding houses as neighbors dressed in pajamas and robes watched through their windows.\n\n\"Sir, what type of medical history does she have?\"\n\n\"None, I mean she has bad headaches, but that's it.\"\n\n\"Her BP is 210 over 140, she's starting to seize again!\" the second paramedic yelled.\n\n\"Mommy!\" Jade screamed from the kitchen being held back by her sister who stood in silence, trembling at the sight of her seizing mother.\n\nOwen watched in horror as they loaded Leslie into the back of the ambulance. Blood continued to flow from her nose.\n\nFLASH\n\nOwen Sands felt himself falling deeper into a cauldron of wind and flying ice. The air was blue and he looked down at his hands that had now turned gray. He was dressed in shorts. His thighs, too, were a pale gray and his bare feet were molten with ice. Then, with a flash of light, he felt himself in a familiar place, standing on top of the bridge, the Bahia Honda Bridge. He was warm now. The sun was shining and the pavement on top of the bridge was starting to burn the soles of his feet. Next to him was his Leslie. Both were wet from previous jumps.\n\nThe Bahia Honda Bridge was made up of two levels. During the historical era that contained Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad, Bahia Honda carried both automotive and rail traffic over its span. The cars went over the top while the trains rolled over tracks built into the structure of the underside. Rust-covered steel girders were spaced evenly every four feet, coated with graffiti in different colors.\n\nThe excitement of the jump from the first level was obvious. The plunge was nearly thirty feet, but the next level was another thing entirely. The raw exhilaration came from the clarity of the water below. The channel was at least ten feet deep but the mind, at that height, focused on one thing only: the channel bottom. Seeing the seabed as clearly as one could through the pure, crystal-clear water flowing below made the act appear suicidal, almost like flying an airplane headlong into a cloud. Intellect tells the rational mind that what appears solid is not, but the instinctual side sees the white mist as a danger and the side effects can be easily noticed, from sweaty palms to an outright avoidance of clouds altogether. The jump from Bahia Honda affected the mind in much the same way. Just looking down at the rocks and sand on the seabed below made most think twice about the plunge. The fact that there was ten feet of water in between to cushion the fall was irrelevant. He had done this before though, and it was now time for Leslie to experience it with him.\n\nHe stood at the top with Leslie at his side. Both were clad in swimsuits, dripping wet from previous jumps at the lower level. Leslie looked down at the rocks and coral crustaceans on the bottom. He could see her heart pounding beneath her chest, exaggerated by her thin frame. He felt responsible for her act of bravery, knowing she would probably have descended back down to the lower level already if not for the jousting he would undoubtedly give if she backed out. She was committed and he knew it.\n\n\"Come on Mom!\" eight-year-old Jade yelled from an adjacent embankment. \"It's great!\"\n\nShe looked up at the blaring July sun. It was a scorcher. She looked over her left shoulder. Heat boils rose off the pavement from the top of the bridge forming an oasis of water, another trick of the mind. There was nothing down that bridge but hot, steamy blacktop.\n\n\"Come on, it'll be over in a second,\" he said, trying to reassure her.\n\n\"Yeah, what if I break my neck?\"\n\n\"Close your eyes,\" he instructed. \"Ready, one, two, THREE!\"\n\nThey felt the wind rush through their bodies as the bridge's guardrail rose behind them. For a second, leaving the hot blacktop felt good as the cool wind rushed against his feet. Then it got colder. As he looked below, what was bright and sunny had turned gray and blue. Ice and snow blew under the bridge as the two fell and what was a flowing current below started to slow down as the water chilled considerably. Thirty feet from the bottom, the current stopped as Owen watched the water freeze before him. The plummet continued. He looked over at his Leslie who smiled as she kept her eyes closed. What had he done? Jade screamed for her mommy as chunks of ice hit him in the head.\n\nSMACK SMACK SMACK\n\nOwen felt it again as a dry, rotted stick hit him in the forehead for the fourth time, pulling him the rest of the way from his sleep into a world that was crisp, clear and in full color.\n\n\"Justin!\" a woman yelled. \"You leave the homeless man alone!\"\n\nOwen opened his eyes all the way, just in time to see a young boy, stick in hand, running over to a neighboring picnic table. He sat straight up, realizing he was lying on top of another picnic table. He was in the Harris Recreation Area, an oceanfront park not far from his house. A mixture of sweat and rainwater covered his chest and face. Next to him was an empty bottle of bourbon, his drug of choice. Now, he was fully awake.\n\n* * * * *\n\nSunrise\n\nJoel Kenyon's BMW 320i sliced through the crisp morning air as it hugged the damp roadway, winding through the wetlands of North Key Largo. The car was his father's and he cherished it as he held his stature through every turn, gripping the wheel with both hands. The lone road stretched out across open bodies of water. A string of telephone poles followed the road, erect in the water with attached steel guide wires securing the poles to the grassy bay bottom. Joel hit the scan button on the stereo. It raced up the frequency range pausing for a second on 99.9. Country. Twanging guitars, dogs, diesels, and doublewide mobile homes: this wouldn't do. He hit the button again. It scanned higher resting on 103.5. The deep, raspy voice of a DJ identified the station...\n\n\"SHE-103, WSHE, Miami-Fort Lauderdale.\"\n\nLed Zeppelin's \"All My Love\" started to play. With the windows down and the sunroof open, a cool wind embraced his face, cutting around a pair of black Ray-Ban aviators.\n\nCard Sound Road was one of two access routes to and from the Florida Keys. The other, more heavily traveled route was a simple eighteen-mile stretch of straight road that spanned through the southeastern border of the Everglades. Card Sound was the scenic route. Its two lanes wound through clumps of mangroves and over hammocks filled with wildlife. Portions of the road were less than three feet from the lapping water of southern Biscayne Bay and the adjoining Card Sound.\n\nJoel, approaching the tollbooth at the base of the Card Sound Bridge, lowered his radio and listened as the brakes on his 320i squeaked to a stop just short of a wooden gate stretching across the single lane. The brakes should have been checked before the trip, he thought to himself. But how could he have, with the rigors of the academy and his immediate assignment? It was a given that certain facets of his personal life were going to have to be neglected.\n\nFour quarters went from his hand to the palm of the waiting attendant, an older man dressed in faded blue jeans and a worn Grateful Dead T-shirt. He was not the typical toll taker Joel remembered from traveling along the turnpikes of the Northeast with his dad. All of the memories were the same, representing a world of order and divine structure. He sat back in the seat for a second, gripped the wheel and imagined what it was like for his father to drive this car.\n\nThe BMW left the booth with a jolt of power as he approached the bridge's threshold. Like a rocket, the car ascended the twenty-degree grade, climbing three feet for every ten forward. In no time he reached the top of the hundred and ten foot high structure. The time was ten minutes to eight. Most of Key Largo's residents who commuted to the mainland everyday traveled the Everglades stretch. Card Sound Road was vacant.\n\nJoel looked north as he stood, leaning against the concrete buffer, then panned to the south, taking in the view of the rising sun. Its orange glow gleamed over the waves breaking into the reef on the horizon and as the light became more intense, he could see the islands below filled with mazes of tributaries connecting larger waterways that were surrounding him. Brilliant turquoise water covered the horizon with Biscayne Bay to the north, Florida Bay to the west and Card Sound to the south. With a pair of German binoculars that had belonged to his father, he panned the interior coastline that started at the base of the bridge and continued south. The small islands were filled with all different varieties of wild birds. During the North Georgia autumn seasons he had seen the flocks of birds, ducks and geese headed south for the colder months. So this is where they go, he thought to himself with a childish grin. The beauty captivated him and he forgot about his sleepless night of driving.\n\nLike the calm before the storm, his attention was interrupted. The panning view of his binoculars caught the sight of the road ahead as it twisted through the trees. The weathered gray asphalt, worn like an old sea captain's face, filled with small potholes and eroding shoulders, continued on to the south where it disappeared into the green vegetation.\n\nJoel contorted his body as he panned the landscape through the binoculars, scanning every inch of the island below. That's when he noticed it. A bright red Nissan 300ZX was sitting on the side of the road with its hood opened and a small trail of steam rising skyward from the radiator. His body froze as he stared at the car, so out of place in this landscape that time forgot. A smile came to his face as he watched a woman circle the car in a frantic tantrum, kicking the side of it as she took a large bottle of sparkling water from the passenger seat and headed for the open hood. She was quite pretty, he realized, as he adjusted the focus and zoomed in closer to see her features. She was well-tanned which accentuated her curvy figure. Her short sundress was accented with a white baseball cap that had her dark brown hair tied in a ponytail pulled through an open breach in the back. And then without warning:\n\nBEEEEP\n\nThe sharp sound startled Joel who almost dropped the binoculars over the side of the bridge. A silver, metallic Cadillac had pulled up behind his parked BMW and was waiting to pass.\n\n\"Sorry, just a second,\" Joel said as he jumped into the driver's seat and drove down the other side of the bridge. As soon as both cars reached the base, the Cadillac accelerated passed him with a frustrated look of impatience that Joel had seen before but never quite understood. He continued south in the direction of the car, and the girl. He watched carefully around every curve expecting to see the red sports car with its raised hood and the girl in dire need of his assistance, but as he continued south, and then off the winding road and onto a larger highway, he realized that she was gone. She did not need him after all.\n\nTwenty-five miles later, Joel pulled into the parking lot matching the address on his yellow legal pad. The building sat back off the main road and was built behind an aquamarine-colored bar and grill called Harry's Conch Caf\u00e9, a structure unto itself, complete with a thatched palm leaf roofline and old, salty rope around the windows.\n\nHe was surprised by the office's appearance. Mismatched arches gave it an outdated Spanish look. Behind them was a line of recessed windows. Joel peered through the closest pane of glass, rubbing it clean with his jacket sleeve. He noticed what appeared to be surplus desks, chairs and other office equipment. Checking his pocket, he pulled a yellow piece of paper containing the directions and address. A crudely drawn map confirmed his wildest fears. This god-forsaken place was going to be home for a while.\n\nJoel walked around the building and approached the front door. The only identifying mark was a modest ten-inch round U.S. Customs decal affixed over the glass with a small list of emergency contact numbers and the special agent in charge's business card. As Joel grabbed the tarnished door handle, the glass door shuttered as the locked deadbolt struck the interior of the steel door jam. With his hands cupped around his eyes, he looked into the dimly lit office. Not much could be seen past the foyer. Joel panned the small parking lot realizing his metallic, charcoal import was the only car in the area. After returning to his car, he sat back behind the wheel. Dismayed, confused, and tired from his sleepless night, Joel closed his eyes to avoid the morning sun that was shining directly at his forehead.\n\nFour hours later, Joel awoke to the harsh tapping of something metallic striking his passenger side window. Startled, he sat up and tried to realign his bearings. A short, pudgy man with a red beard stood next to his car holding a five-cell flashlight. He had faded blue jeans and an old blue work shirt with the name HOLMES printed over the right breast pocket and U. S. Customs over the left.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" Joel asked as he activated the passenger side electric window control. The parking lot was now full and the digital clock on the car radio said 11:32 a.m. He was surprised and embarrassed.\n\n\"I didn't mean to wake you, but you looked like you could use some help. You must be the attorney representing Gomara,\" Holmes assumed.\n\n\"No, I'm Kenyon, Special Agent Joel Kenyon,\" he replied, invoking a laugh from the other man.\n\n\"I'm Holmes, special peon Buddy Holmes. Come on; you look like you could use some coffee.\"\n\n\"Actually I need to see Jordan Cheney,\" Joel said.\n\n\"You'd better get the coffee first,\" Holmes insisted.\n\n\"You're the man,\" Joel said as the two walked inside the office. Holmes fixed some coffee while Joel looked around.\n\n\"How was the trip?\" Holmes asked.\n\n\"Bearable,\" Joel answered.\n\n\"I hate that damned I-95 myself,\" Holmes stated.\n\nThis was like no other governmental building Joel had ever seen. The complex had been built with drug money and its construction was shut down when the owners were caught in a larger money-laundering scheme. As part of a plea bargain, the government ended up with the property. Since the complex's construction had been stopped, fifty percent of the building remained unfinished. Built of brick and concrete and utilizing traditional Spanish architecture, the archways and Spanish-style stucco finish gave the building a nice South American look. Past the fascia though, the building was a totally different story with exposed cinderblocks, cement slabs and rusty metal bars protruding from the ground, surrounded by overgrown weeds and wild brush.\n\nThe government had no intentions of being in the landlord business, but with over ninety commercial properties in South Florida alone, it had no choice. The current recession made selling the properties nearly impossible and small business worries had few wanting to rent the empty spaces. The end result was several nearly empty buildings.\n\nJordan Cheney had the only enclosed office in the building. Just outside his space, huge cork bulletin boards hung on the walls with numerous pictures pinned to them depicting different busts. Most of the pictures had stacks of burlap-skinned marijuana bales, duffel bags of brick cocaine, or boats. The boats were all shapes and sizes. Some were on trailers, others beached on the shore, and others cut to pieces to reveal hidden compartments where their contraband was stowed. All of the pictures did have one thing in common though. All the field agents from the Tavernier office were posing in tight groups, like frat boys standing in front of a Fort Lauderdale strip club on spring break.\n\n\"I'm Jordan Cheney. How was the trip?\" a voice beamed from behind him.\n\n\"Fine. Long, but fine,\" Joel answered as he shook his new supervisor's hand.\n\n\"I hate the damned I-95 myself,\" the man said repeating, almost word for word, what Holmes had just told him.\n\nSpecial Agent in Charge Jordan Cheney led Joel through a winding maze of cubicles that made up the Tavernier field office. He was a charismatic man, one who took charge and gave everyone he met the respect he expected in return. Jordan was fifty pounds overweight though he carried the extra pounds well for a man of six-foot-four.\n\n\"I'm pairing you up with my group logistics officer. He's a little antiquated but he'll show you the ropes and get you up to speed,\" Jordan said.\n\nAll around him Joel could see the agents of the Tavernier office typing, writing and busy in their own cubicles. Each one was dressed in a similar fashion, all with shorts, color-coordinated polo shirts, and Top-Sider boat shoes. No one wore socks.\n\nOwen Sands sat behind his desk, seemingly perplexed. In his hands was a set of instructions to a programmable police scanner. He was an older man with a weathered face and stout wrinkles about his eyes and mouth. His hair was a sandy blond and receded off his brow, still combed back, probably the way he did it in school. He appeared meticulous but near a level of frustration. He was obviously a man who enjoyed a challenge and was too stubborn to admit when he was outmatched.\n\n\"Why don't you let West do that?\" Jordan asked.\n\n\"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself,\" Owen answered.\n\n\"But you won't do it right. You hate that kind of stuff. Hell, the waypoints on the Hatteras are still ten miles off,\" Jordan said, becoming more irritated. \"Owen, you need to delegate. It's a concept I would like you to try.\"\n\n\"Leave me alone, I'm almost finished,\" he mumbled without raising his head.\n\n\"It'll have to wait. I have a new recruit I want you to break in.\"\n\n\"Wonderful,\" Sands replied as he looked up to see Joel standing before his desk.\n\n\"I'll leave you two to get acquainted,\" Jordan said as he backed out of the cubicle. Owen watched his boss with crossed eyes as he walked away.\n\n\"Joel, Joel Kenyon,\" he said, extending his outstretched hand.\n\n\"Outstanding,\" Owen replied, still staring at the scanner on his desk.\n\n\"Mind if I give it a try?\"\n\nOwen looked up. \"You know anything about computers?\"\n\n\"Minored in 'em,\" Kenyon answered.\n\nOwen turned the digital display toward Joel who was now seated at the face of the desk.\n\n\"Impress me,\" he said as he left the cubicle.\n\nOwen made his way back up to Jordan's office.\n\n\"What kind of bullshit is this?\" he asked.\n\n\"It's not bullshit, amigo. West's got his hands full with a Blue Lightning Task Force detail this month and I need you to fill in as FTO for a while.\"\n\n\"I don't like it,\" Owen barked.\n\n\"You don't have to like it; you just have to do it.\"\n\n\"I'm going out tonight then,\" Owen replied, almost pouting.\n\"Great, take the Stinger. It hasn't been run in a while,\" Jordan answered.\n\n\"Nah, I think we'll take the Whaler.\"\n\n\"I really wish you'd use a real boat, something with some size. For the kid's sake, you know?\"\n\n\"Na, we'll start out small and work our way up,\" Owen said as he turned and headed toward his cube.\n\n\"As you wish.\"\n\nAs Owen Sands approached his cube, he heard something that sounded like a phone conversation. A woman was talking to another. Apparently, one suspected the other of sleeping with her husband and was quite irate. As he entered the cube they were screaming.\n\n\"What in the hell are you listening to?\" Sands asked.\n\n\"Cellular 880 megahertz. Interesting, huh,\" Joel answered.\n\n\"Great, since you figured it out, program that list on my desk. Then we'll go over your duty gear.\"\n\nJoel looked at the crudely etched list on Sands's desk. It contained working frequencies for the local sheriff, highway patrol, Coast Guard, and a dozen other law enforcement agencies in the area. He looked up for a second to watch a frustrated Owen fumble with the office's coffee machine across the room.\n\n* * * * *\n\nStructure\n\nAt 7:00 a.m., Marion County Florida was enjoying another of its many famous sunrises. In a community that revolved itself around the equestrian industry, many were awake to see the blades of sunlight glisten over dew covered green hills. The sky was a rich blue, and from one end of the horizon to the other, ribbons of white clouds lingered without posing a threat to the peacefulness of the morning.\n\nFrom any of the main roads, Interstate 75 or U.S. Highway 27, simple white wooden fences divided property lines. All were constructed with the architecture of some of the great Kentucky horse parks in mind. This was truly a unique community, one that combined age-old professions with the modern advancements of the twentieth century.\n\nFor Ron Jeffries and his partner Hal Keller, the twenty-four-hour shift had begun like the many before it. They had enjoyed the forty-eight hours off and were anxious to get back to work. Both were seasoned firefighter-paramedics. Both had distinguished careers with the Ocala Fire Department. In the past fifteen years they had seen it all, from five-car pile-ups to warehouse fires involving killer hazardous materials. Both men had taken their share of risks.\n\nThe station they were in was smaller now. It provided enough room for the two men who occupied it to move around in comfort. Each had a private room with a bed, nightstand, vanity and desk. There was a small kitchen complete with a microwave oven, side-by-side refrigerator and a Jenn-Air range. The cable TV, necessary to combat the long, uneventful hours, included every basic and premium channel available. TV consumption was a required task.\n\nThe bay area housed two vehicles. One, a super-duty rescue unit with the latest in firefighting equipment and the other, a three-quarter-ton pickup with a small skid unit pump and two hundred gallon water tank capable of fighting small brush fires.\n\nTheir new employer was a very generous entity. The International Farms Corporation believed that their people were their best assets and taking care of them was a top priority. In keeping with that philosophy, IFC provided the best continuing education available. The men were adapted to the science of high-tech farming and the special needs that subsequently arose, besides the three years of standard firefighting and paramedical courses each had partaken. Unlike Florida's state fire college, Central Florida Fire Academy conveniently located less than five miles away, this training was held at the University of Florida in Gainesville, thirty minutes to the north. Every day for four months, the six full time men commuted back and forth. They had been initially chosen under strict criteria, one that included the stipulation that each man would possess a natural love for animals.\n\nThey studied the veterinary sciences. At the end of the course, the students were prepared to combat a wide variety of horticultural medical emergencies that involved livestock rather than human patients. The primary emphasis focused on emergency birthing procedures; however, basic tasks such as intravenous access, emergency airway management and bleeding control were also covered. It was a long four months, but well worth it. The International Farms staff played a big role in aiding the men with their studies. This was a new and experimental program, paid for by a grant from the farm. The emphasis, they said, was simple: Treat your patients as good as gold, because you see, they are.\n\nAt the front of the complex, Salvador Alcone drove his white Range Rover past the black wrought iron gate that separated the four hundred acre International Farms complex from the rest of Marion County. The ornate iron was mounted to two opposing pillars of carved slate rock imported from North Carolina and intricately rooted in place. Beaming from the structures were two cast monolithic bronze plates; one depicting a mighty bull, perching itself on its fore legs, tall, stout and strong; the other an Arabian, which lacked the strength of the bull but made up for it with its subtle sophistication. Both plates were mortared in place, set for life into the blued mountain rock. The driveway wound through towering oaks that created a canopy over the road. Suspended overhead were layers of gray Spanish moss, like clouds floating in a blue sky. Through the trees and in the distance, rolling hills of green grass absorbed the early morning sun as a light blanket of dew began to evaporate. Multicolored horses galloped through the fields, enticing one another in a morning dance. White fencing stretched for miles in each direction. This was not the typical cattle farm variety but expensive white fences, the type only seen in the finest stables, only with a twist. Polycarbonate plastic made up the posts that were driven three feet into the rich, black soil and vinyl planks made up the cross members, four slates to a length of fence ten feet long.\n\nFor Alcone, the drive was as much a stress reliever as a constant reminder of the years of hard work he had put into building a company that was dedicated to the science of raising healthy cattle. This was a science that benefited not only the United States but also the rest of the Western Hemisphere. In many countries poorer than his own, scores of men, women and children went to bed happier, healthier, and better nourished because of the developments made by Sal and his staff of eighty-five scientists, genealogists and assorted livestock experts. Business Week magazine rated IFC 3,178th among their list of the top five thousand U.S. companies, primarily because the company was debt free, did most of its business internationally and held gross amounts of cash reserves.\n\nAlcone was hailed as the ultimate entrepreneur, but he shunned the media exposure as best he could, guarding his privacy at every turn. This would have been nearly impossible for other businesses since IFC was a privately held company with a net worth of over one hundred and twenty million U.S. dollars and a projected five year growth of almost three times that, but it was the sprawling landscape that was his plantation. A plantation was, after all, a farm with painted fences instead of the bare, pine type, or more crudely stretched barbed wire, God forbid. For Sal Alcone, the spread afforded him distance from the outside world, a barrier that insulated him like a cocoon.\n\n\"Mr. Alcone, sir?\" came a voice from an opening door.\n\n\"Delgado,\" Sal answered.\n\n\"Sir, it's nice to meet you,\" Del said.\n\n\"And here too,\" Sal replied, holding out his hand, shaking Del's.\n\n\"I understand you have just gotten out of Eglin. My associate, Gus Greico, speaks highly of you. He says you're a man of many talents.\"\n\n\"Gus is a good man. I'm glad all of that is over... for both of us,\" Del said.\n\n\"You are a very loyal man Gus says.\"\n\n\"Sal Alcone, that's an interesting name. It sounds Italian, but you have a distinct Spanish accent,\" Del inquired.\n\n\"Actually, my given name is Salvador Alcone, but I changed it when I came to the U.S. in '77.\"\n\n\"Cuban?\"\n\n\"Italian and Cuban.\"\n\n\"Why do I have the feeling we've met somewhere before?\"\n\n\"Maybe we have, Cuba is a small island,\" Sal responded as he turned and walked back to his desk.\n\nDel felt perplexed. He had been out of the Eglin work camp for less than a week and he was having a consuming conversation with a man who was undoubtedly one of the most powerful in his industry. And that's when he saw it: the Diablo tattoo on Sal's right hand.\n\n\"How did you get that?\" Del asked, almost insisting.\n\n\"What, this?\" he replied calmly, lifting his hand higher.\n\n\"Yes, that. How did you get that?\" Del repeated, putting his hand next to Sal's.\n\n\"Okay, I have a confession. When Greico told me that you had the mark of the Diablo on you, I got curious so I asked him to watch you for a while. That is how we confirmed it. You and I are from the same slums in Havana my friend.\"\n\n\"But that was such a long time ago,\" Del said.\n\n\"Yes it was Del, but I had a young friend named Peter, an orphan like me. I remember the night I held him down and the rest of our gang gave him a tattoo just like that.\"\n\n\"That damned thing hurt more than anything I can remember...Sal?\"\n\n\"It's me my little brother. After all these years, who would have figured?\" Sal said as the two hugged.\n\n\"You saved my life man...\"\n\n\"Sal, you saved my fucking life. I thought you were dead. Those thugs, cops, whatever they were...I heard the shots,\" Del reflected as tears formed at the base of his eyes.\n\n\"They shot towards me but not at me. I was lucky, but since I was older than the rest of you they locked me up. I escaped three years before Mariel and hitched a ride to Miami.\"\n\n\"Now look at you,\" Del said, pointing to the elaborate finishing in his office.\n\nThe two walked out onto the front lawn and boarded a golf cart. The whine of the electric motor kicked in as the two glided down a gravel path towards a group of stables housing rows of fierce bulls.\n\n\"We have a successful business here Del, representing many years of hard work and lots of money,\" Sal boasted.\n\n\"What is it actually that you do?\" Del asked.\n\n\"We harvest semen.\"\n\n\"See what?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Semen, Del. Bull sperm for cows so they can make bigger, stronger cows. We have the best here. It's all in the genes,\" Sal explained. \"It's an international commodity; some of our clients pay as much as twenty thousand dollars an ounce for the stuff. We also provide training in some of the latest artificial insemination techniques known in the world today...a world we are trying to help feed.\"\n\n\"Incredible...\" a wide-eyed Del said, thinking of the possibilities.\n\n\"What about the poor countries that can't afford twenty thousand dollars an ounce?\" Del asked.\n\n\"You always were the smart one. That's where we make our largest profits. Think of it my friend: Columbia, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and Turkey. Many of the cattle farmers don't have the money to compete on such a level, but what they do have we are willing to take on as a trade at a sizeable margin in our favor. The net effect is that we are paying under a grand a kilo for coke and just twice that for a kilo of heroin. Heroin is at eighty-nine thousand a kilo on the streets in New York,\" Sal announced with a confident smile.\n\n\"I'm impressed,\" Del said, still caught off-guard by the sheer magnitude of what he was seeing.\n\n\"I need help Del. We own so much product but we can't get half of it into the U. S.\"\n\n\"I won't lie to you Sal. We are a grass shop...always have been. It's going to be hard to convince my partners to change gears and start moving coke,\" Del explained.\n\n\"I understand. Think of it this way: An owner pays you eighty to a hundred dollars a pound to get his huge bales into the country. The stuff is messy, it smells, and the dogs can detect it a mile away. It also practically takes a freighter to get a decent sized load across the Gulf Stream. My product, on the other hand, is paying eighteen hundred dollars a kilo, just 2.2 pounds, is smaller, comes with waterproof packaging, is a clean load, and comes with handles.\"\n\n\"Handles?\" Del asked.\n\n\"We use military type duffel bags made of a tough canvas, cheap and easy to handle. We import them to South America, directly from Taiwan.\"\n\n\"Eighteen hundred?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Eighteen hundred,\" Sal said.\n\n\"Let me see what I can do.\"\n\n\"Do me a favor Del. Take Gus Greico with you. Let him see your operation and then we can talk some more.\"\n\n\"I can do that,\" Del replied as the golf cart stopped in front of an old deserted brick warehouse.\n\n\"Hey, I have something special I want to show you,\" Sal offered.\n\n\"Like I haven't seen enough already,\" Del said sarcastically.\n\n\"This will let you know how much I trust you.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Del acknowledged.\n\nSal Alcone switched on the lights and simultaneously, a hundred fluorescent lights surged with energy, illuminating the acre-sized room and exposing the remnants of an old porcelain factory. Pallets of new sinks, toilets and other bathroom fixtures cluttered the large space. The two walked through the building to another door that led to a smaller warehouse, the building that housed his secret hobby. Parked neatly in rows, like a museum, were police cars from one end of the huge room to the other. Each one was different from the next. A state trooper car from Connecticut sat next to a patrol car from Chicago and next to that, a black and white LAPD cruiser.\n\n\"You collect police cars?\" Del asked, perplexed by the idea.\n\n\"Yep,\" Sal answered simply.\n\n\"Why? What do you do, buy them at auctions?\"\n\n\"I don't buy them Del. I steal them.\"\n\n\"No...\" Del said, understanding the genius in his friend's hobby.\n\n\"Look around. Most still have the keys in them, just like we took them. Hell, if you're ever hungry, I'm sure you can find more than a few half-eaten donuts and plenty of cold coffee.\"\n\n\"You're insane,\" Del added smiling.\n\n\"Insanity is a relative commodity my friend.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nProceedings\n\nFrom the street, Del's home appeared humble. The house was dressed in southern style stucco, painted white, blending in with the other houses on this stretch of Hialeah's Ninth Avenue where the rusty metal bars that covered the numerous windows were a common sight. In the driveway sat a Toyota Corolla, a Ford pickup, and an older green Ford Torino station wagon. Perched in the front yard was a molded plastic playhouse, the type seen erected in the middle of a Toys \"R\" Us store.\n\nInside, Alberto Mendez, one of the Cho Cho Brothers, sat alone on a mauve-colored leather couch. The occasional chirp of a caged exotic bird in the corner of the room and the constant moan of a water fountain echoed from the twelve-foot-high vaulted ceilings that housed a slow turning fan spinning over Mendez's head. At 10:00 a.m., all was quiet in the house. He hadn't been in Del's house since its last redecoration. Del's sister, Risa, spent almost a month planning the d\u00e9cor, causing her brother to spend more cash on this than he originally paid for the house three years earlier. Each of the bathrooms was gutted and everything down to the cabinets and fixtures were changed and updated. The carpets were torn out and replaced with handcrafted Mexican tiles in the halls and living room and oak hardwoods in the bedrooms. The home was completed just before Del was to start his sentence at Eglin. At that time, he was living with Marsha Bouie in the Redlands, close to his partners Roberto and Gordo. The house was a labor of love for his sister whose husband had left her four years prior with two small children, Raina, age five, and the baby, Petito, who was two. Besides making a nice place for her brother to come home to after prison, it was also important that Risa had a comfortable house for her two children.\n\nDel's sister was very religious. Like Gordo, she followed the Mishawaka and Santeria faiths, also called \"La Regla Lucumi,\" a sect that merged Native American, Caribbean and Roman Catholic beliefs into one. Her religious artifacts were everywhere, including a large ceramic eye that was mounted to the top of the wall in a remote corner of the room so that it could be seen from all four corners. Below it, placed on the floor, a shrine of sorts made up of the flowing fountain, kept alive with a small water pump salvaged from an old aquarium. Flowers, rice, dried beans, and chicken feathers surrounded the basin. Inside, immersed in the cool, clear, flowing water was a pair of rusty handcuffs. She believed this would protect her brother from prosecution and another prison sentence. In the opposite corner next to the bird was a wooded Indian warrior standing almost six feet tall, complete with a carved feather headdress and war paint. Alberto always thought it was funny that Risa insisted on putting her bird next to a carving with so many feathers.\n\n\"Hey man, what's up?\" asked Del as he entered the room, pulling his friend into a tight embrace. He was wearing jogging shorts, no shoes or socks, and a pullover sweatshirt, not the button-up physician's shirt and matching polyester pants he was usually seen in. Alberto stood to his feet hugging his much taller friend.\n\n\"Well, are you ready this time?\" Del asked as the two stepped back.\n\n\"I got the parts for the other motor and she is running great. I did the work myself so I know it's done right,\" said Alberto.\n\n\"You can't let me down this time. This is my first load since I got out and I want it to go right. The load is coming from Andros and they will start to cross at about eight or as soon as it gets dark.\"\n\n\"What reef do you want me at?\"\n\n\"Go to Molasses. Anchor out a bit and monitor CB Channel Four. Roberto and I will be out there in the big boat, Vibrations, and there will be a second boat to bring in half the load. I think you remember Red and Stump. As soon as you make contact, switch to Channel Seven. You will be meeting with Philipe.\"\n\n\"Gordo?\"\n\n\"Yeah, listen. He will be in a 36-foot Mirage called the Cigarette. His Stiletto, the Black Duck, is in the shop. The boat has outboards so you probably won't be able to hear it until he's right on you. He's bringing four thousand pounds of which you will take two. The clavo is at Taylor Creek.\"\n\nDel tried to convey confidence to the less experienced Alberto. Two years prior, Alberto lost a three thousand pound load. The barrowed boat he was using caught fire and they had to dump the product mid ocean. Del could tolerate the menace of law enforcement; it was a price of doing business. If someone got hurt, he would abandon the load in a heartbeat. But avoidable mechanical problems had no place in such a risky operation.\n\n\"Alberto, remember that guy, the one on the TV show about stunt men? You used to be so impressed with him.\"\n\n\"Ivan the Great, the motorcycle guy?\"\n\n\"Yeah, well you see, he is in the type of business where you can't afford to have a bad day; one goof and you're red meat on the hood of a car in front of thousands of people. Our business is much the same way. You need to invest a little more time and money into this venture. After this one is over, I expect you to buy a new fucking boat.\"\n\n\"I will, I promise. I got laid off at Aquasport Boats. Business is slow and they had to cut thirty people. I need this real bad man.\"\n\n\"I hear you. You still rigging boats?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Hell yes, the best rigger in Miami bro.\"\n\n\"Let me talk to Scott Roberts over at Indian Powerboats. I think he's looking for some fresh faces. In the meantime, let's do this thing right, okay?\"\n\nAlberto needed a break. He had been laid off and had spent his family's savings on the La Pinta, a 24-foot, twin-engine boat that needed more than it offered.\n\n\"Oh, by the way...I can only pay five points.\"\n\nAlberto stopped for a second looking down at the floor. Despite the fact he knew the going rate was seven to ten dollars per pound, he realized he was not in a position to bargain. He nodded his head and walked out the door.\n\nDel picked up a portable phone resting in its battery charger next to the couch.\n\n\"It's taken care of. I can handle two thousand additional shares of that stock. So there's no confusion, my commission is eighty-five points...right? Okay.\" The beep of the phone disconnecting echoed from the high ceilings. Del walked over to the fountain, pulled out a rusty spark plug, and dropped it in.\n\n\"Good luck my Cho Chos.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nHostel\n\nAs Joel opened the front door to his new apartment, the air hitting him in the face smelled of stale bread. The two-bedroom flat was spacious and he hadn't been assigned a roommate, which gave him the privacy he desired. The place was fully stocked with linens, dishes, pots, pans, and enough garbage bags to last a year. On a scale of one to ten, judging the eleven places Joel had called home over the last six years, this apartment in the Plantation Key Colony Condominium ranked a solid eight. Only his sister's house in Atlanta, a ten and the dormitory at the Glynnco Academy, a nine because of the food, ranked higher.\n\nAt the bottom of the scale was a pup tent he occupied while waiting for a crew spot on one of the fishing boats out of Sitka, Alaska. Of the things Joel's father left him after his death, his most cherished were the BMW he had to temporarily leave in Seattle and a thick wool sleeping bag that proved to be very valuable during the cold Alaskan nights. After three months, a spot opened up on Sunshine, a 110-foot steel-hulled crab boat on its way to Anchorage. His bunk on the ship was clearly a two on the scale and, due to the bunk's short length, Joel got to fold over the end of his sleeping bag at the head to bolster his pillow. Other than the tight quarters, he enjoyed his time at sea earning the respect of the crew, an incredible feat since he was fundamentally different from everyone else on the boat. Besides being disciplined, punctual, educated, and possessing more teeth than the rest of the crew combined, he was searching for that thing the rest of the boat had already found, a search that was still not complete by the end of the voyage. The crew and captain were sorry to see him go after their four-month trip as he did his job well and helped them land a record catch that was profitable for everyone.\n\nHis next stop was a wildfire in Southern California, the largest the state had ever seen. His home for two months was a base camp at the foot of a mountain that was a three on the scale and was comprised of a large warehouse with seventy bunk beds. Joel fought the flames every day, coming back to the bunkhouse each evening covered in red fire retardant. The work was a diversion though, and despite the total exhaustion, he felt like he was accomplishing something important at the end of the day. It was this experience that reinforced the notion that he had to finish his degree. He had dropped out of the Citadel in the middle of his second year against the wishes of his sister Jhenna, who pleaded for him to finish.\n\nAfter a month living in his tent on the beach in Baja, he enrolled in classes at UC Berkeley where he completed his bachelor's degree majoring in political science. He rented a room in a four-bedroom townhouse with five other students, a home that was always loud with parties, alcohol, young coeds, and music. Being the eldest in the house was both a blessing and a curse. Whenever the police were called to calm things down, he was the one who was summoned by his roommates, primarily because of his ability to reason with the officers and negotiate an amicable outcome. He put in his time though and two and a half years later, he graduated, leaving the townhouse, which was, with all things considered, a five on the scale.\n\nAn ad in the \"Alternative Help Wanted\" section of the Los Angeles Times prompted him to drive to Montana where a horse farm was willing to trade room, board and two hundred dollars a week for what the ad said would be \"an unforgettable experience.\" Joel quickly learned that horses were not his forte, developing a new respect for farmhands and the suspicions of Buck, the farm's manager who caught Joel with his twenty-year-old daughter in one of the barn lofts during what could only be described as a poorly planned rendezvous. The cabins were adequate though and earned a solid five on the scale mainly because of the view of the surrounding snow-covered mountains.\n\nHis last stop before retreating to his sister's was a ski lodge on the top of North Carolina's Beach Mountain where he landed a job as a ski instructor. His chateau cabin was clearly a ten, less four points because he couldn't afford to pay for the heat. After three broken legs, a broken arm, six dislocated shoulders and a major head injury, Joel's bosses decided they couldn't afford to visit another student in the hospital.\n\nIt was fate, or something like it, when his BMW rolled into Jhenna's driveway in Buckhead, a trendy suburb of Atlanta. Jhenna had always been an independent woman which was why Joel was so surprised when she dated and then married Pat Stephens, a man who was their father's lead prosecutor eight years before. Pat was fourteen years older, a career government service employee, and represented all of the things that were completely opposite of her. To Jhenna, true security came from within, not any institution. At a young age, her life unraveled when her mother left and then again with the death of her father. Joel never got to know his mother but for Jhenna, that separation was devastating and molded her into what she had become.\n\nJoel figured that Pat reminded his sister of their father though to him, Pat was no John Kenyon. Pat was at least an inch shorter than his sister, a stark contrast to their father who stood six-foot-four.\n\nThis home would be different, mainly because it represented a milestone in his life. He had something to build upon: a stable job and a future with serious benefits, something his father always preached about but he could never understand. But wasn't that the way it always was between sons and fathers, he thought to himself. It took the real world to teach some of our most valuable lessons.\n\n\"Joel?\" a woman yelled through the partially opened front door.\n\n\"Yes, can I help you?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm Betty Sands, Owen's mother,\" she explained.\n\n\"Well, it's very nice to meet you Mrs. Sands.\"\n\n\"I live just across the hall. We share the same washer and dryer.\"\n\n\"That's good to know ma'am, thanks for coming by.\"\n\n\"Don't let me bother you though son, I'm sure you have a lot of unpacking to do.\"\n\n\"You're no bother Mrs. Sands. Thanks for coming by,\" he said as she closed the door behind her.\n\n* * * * *\n\nComplicit\n\nIn a foggy mist, Gordo panted as he dumped the forty-seven burlap-skinned bales off the side of the Black Duck, his 38-foot Stiletto. He never had a good back and this exertion was proving to be more than he or his failing spine could take. But he was desperate. He was amazed at how calm the ocean was as he watched each bale hit the water. The surface was as smooth as a pane of glass. With the last bale over the side, the Stiletto, now almost three thousand pounds lighter, slid off the top of the Island Girl just as his nephew's body floated to the surface, lingering by the floating bales. With a boat hook in hand, Gordo pulled the lifeless body closer to his boat. Silence was all around him. The only sound he could detect was his own heartbeat, something his nephew Bobby no longer possessed. As the body floated closer to the side of his boat, he reached over to pull him in and that's when his back rebelled with a series of spasms that brought the three hundred and twenty pound man to his knees in a surge of unbearable pain. He grabbed Bobby's wrist, feeling for a pulse, the water still thick with blood. It was limp and lifeless.\n\nIn a moment of desperation, looking at his nephew's gold and stainless Rolex, he did what he believed was right.\n\n\u2022\n\nGordo awoke with a jolt as their car hit a pothole. Del, who was driving with one hand and holding a cup of coffee with the other, cursed as some of the scalding liquid dripped down his forearm.\n\n\"Shit!\"\n\n\"What is it?\" Gordo asked, rubbing his eyes.\n\n\"These roads suck. Did you enjoy your nap?\"\n\n\"Man, I keep having these dreams.\"\n\n\"You can say that again. You were yelling something. I was going to wake you but you know what people say.\"\n\n\"No, what do people say, Del?\"\n\n\"Not to wake someone if they are dreaming.\"\n\n\"No man, that's sleepwalking. Don't wake anyone who is sleepwalking. You can wake me anytime you want from one of those dreams,\" Gordo insisted.\n\nThe two were making their rounds, getting everything ready for the next night. It was a reunion for Del who had not seen the regular crew in almost two years and an opportunity to get acquainted with the new men Gordo had enlisted in the meantime. The rounds began in North Key Largo with a visit to Kevin Pinder, the owner of the clavo, the safehouse, or in this case, the mobile home where the merchandise would be stored and weighed before being moved to Miami. Pinder was happy to see the two. He said he needed the money. Pinder always needed the money. He did have job security though. His trailer was conveniently located close to Key Largo's Taylor Creek, a secluded pathway to and from the ocean-bound routes. Pinder would receive five points, or ten thousand dollars for every ton of merchandise received. Pinder's only other job was as a line apprentice with the Florida Keys Electric Co-op, so his lifestyle ranged from feast to famine. Parties and non-stop noise could be expected mere days after the successful delivery of a load, lasting for as long as the money did. Kevin Pinder and his friends looked forward to it. The experience was exciting and the rewards were bountiful.\n\n\"So what do you think about us taking on business from Gus Greico?\" Del asked.\n\n\"I don't know. It sure would help things out when the season is down,\" Gordo answered.\n\n\"Well, between you and me, what we would be moving doesn't have seasons.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about Del. Guns?\"\n\n\"No idiot, coke!\"\n\n\"Shit, don't let Roberto hear you say that. You know how he hates that shit,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"I know, and Gordo, I hope this conversation is between us.\"\n\n\"Always man. No, you don't have to worry about that man, but Roberto won't like any idea of working with coke.\"\n\n\"Give me one good reason why we shouldn't think about expanding our horizons.\"\n\n\"Expanding our horizons? Man, this Greico guy has you snowed.\"\n\n\"Greico has very little to do with it. I'm the one who solicited him.\"\n\n\"Solicited? You been soliciting in jail, Del?\" Gordo asked with a smile.\n\n\"Maric\u00f3n.\"\n\n\"Del, when was the last time you heard of someone getting busted for pot, unless of course it was some dumbshit who got lost or something. But everyday you hear of the coke. The murders...the big time corruption...Roberto doesn't want any part of it and personally, I don't blame him,\" Gordo explained.\n\n\"Greico does a lot of business with pot,\" Del replied.\n\n\"Bring it on. I'm a reefer hauling fool man.\"\n\n\"You are that, you crazy son of a bitch.\"\n\n\"Hey, don't take it personally. It's just that we're down-home type people. I would hate to think that Gordito got hooked on some of the coke that I brought in,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"You never know, the stuff would make him lose a few pounds.\"\n\n\"Hey! Don't start that shit.\"\n\n\"Yeah, you're right. Let him smoke the reefer.\"\n\n\"I'm telling you mother fucker!\" Gordo warned with a half smile. \"Could you imagine Gordito with the munchies, ay mi madre?!\"\n\n\"And you with a contact high. Shit, Cecilia would be working around the clock to feed the two of you.\"\n\n\"Shit, that would be a sight,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"Is Gordito alright, I mean he doesn't have a pituitary problem or anything like that, does he?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Shit no. He's just got big bones and baby fat, you know.\"\n\nThe next stop was at the insurance office of Carson Plimpton. Located in a top floor office was Carson's youngest son of four, Jimmy. An avid angler, Jim Plimpton had won the respect of the Upper Keys fishing community and through a connection with Bobby Alazar had, in the process, assumed the responsibility for the senior Alazar's counter-surveillance activities.\n\nThe last stop on the list was to the home of Red and Stump Albritton. The brothers, whose names resembled more of a cartoon comic strip than a family legacy, were experienced boat runners. Gordo had recruited them from another operation, meeting the two during a crossing at Gordo's island retreat on North Andros in the Bahamas. They would be responsible for piloting \"Old Faithful,\" as Roberto called it, a 26-foot Chris-Craft open sports fisherman. The boat was old and in dire need of cosmetic repairs but with her twin 454 power plants and new Volvo outdrives, the Chris never missed a beat and always delivered her load.\n\nAfter leaving the Keys, the two drove to Gordo's house where Del left in his car. Gordo spent the next four hours preparing his 36-foot Mirage powerboat for the Gulf Stream crossing. He checked the lube in the lower units of each of the four outboards and then recharged the hydraulic steering system. At a local gas station, he took on three hundred gallons of 93-octane fuel. Later he shopped at a grocery store, stocking up on enough food to keep himself and the crew of the plane he was soon to be aboard happy for a week if the need arose.\n\nDel returned later in the day and drove Gordo's dually truck with the boat to the Bayfront Park in Homestead. There, they launched the boat and Gordo, his boat fueled and full of provisions, left for North Andros, Bahamas.\n\n* * * * *\n\nYo Yos\n\nThe Yellow Baithouse was a small, modest convenience store and bait shop that was nestled between two large dogwood trees along Key Largo's main highway, U.S. 1. The store was a landmark for fishermen and boaters who needed a wide variety of angling equipment as well as both live and frozen baits, from hand-rigged ballyhoo to iced-down shrimp.\n\nThe fall afternoon was like many in South Florida. A typical northeastern breeze blew across an open field behind the shop, blowing cool air into an opened back door. An older green Ford Torino station wagon parked in front of the main entrance. As the driver killed the ignition, it sputtered and spat with engine run-on, the type of condition commonly seen in vehicles produced in the late '70s when primitive catalytic converters converged with newer unleaded fuels making a sound resembling a steel ball bouncing around in a tin can. The car ran on as the Cho Chos, Chino and Alberto Mendez, exited the car and entered the small store. Self-proclaimed twins, the brothers had a six-year age difference. Alberto, the younger and more aggressive of the two, led the way.\n\nInside, the store was cluttered with Styrofoam coolers, fishing poles, lures and other gear that covered the walls. On the wall next to the front door was a framed picture of a man standing next to a string of twenty or so hanging red snappers. The angler had red, curly hair and at the bottom of the photo, written with a black magic marker it said, To the Yellow Baithouse - Thanks a bunch guys - Jim Plimpton, The Redfisher.\n\nThe stench of bait filled the tiny building. In the back were tanks filled with live shrimp, ballyhoo, and mullet. Loud air pumps ran continuously aerating the saltwater in the tanks.\n\nAlberto went for food while Chino surveyed the bait.\n\n\"What's running?\" Chino asked the American behind the counter.\n\n\"Everyone is coming back with dolphin and amberjack.\"\n\n\"In that case, I had better go with the frozen.\"\n\nThe short, pudgy man reached into a cold box mounted under the counter. Frosty air escaped the cooler, dissipating into the air. He pulled out three frozen packages, placing the rock-hard squares on the Formica-covered countertop next to an old metal cased cash register, bumping a point of purchase display containing the current edition of Newsweek magazine. The cover read \"The War On Drugs: Are We Really Winning?\" The American behind the counter punched the figures into the register, making it ring with every entry.\n\n\"One pound of ballyhoo, two pounds of mullet. Will that be all?\"\n\n\"Just a second. Hey! Berto...\"\n\n\"Yeah, wait a second,\" his brother shouted from the back of the store.\n\nThe smaller Alberto, barely one hundred and ten pounds, hurried up to the counter, speaking in a high-pitched, wired voice.\n\n\"I hope this is enough stuff. I get really hungry when it gets cold,\" he said, tossing items next to the frozen bait before returning to the back of the store. Again, he approached the counter, this time with his arms full. Two bottles of Clorox, a can of Comet cleanser, two Yo-Yos, and a Butterfinger.\n\nA few minutes later the tired Torino wagon eased onto the paved apron of the public boat ramp at the Caribbean Club in Key Largo. The Caribbean Club had been a local hot spot for over fifty years and had been made famous because it was used as a primary location for the classic Humphrey Bogart film Key Largo. Using the car's mirrors, Chino guided the faded white boat down the concrete incline, gradually immersing the hull into the water. From being stiff and ridged on the steel trailer, the boat bobbed free with flotation, secured to the bow with a stainless cord connected to the trailer's power winch. Alberto quickly took a braided rope off the boat's bow while he unsnapped the stainless cord and pulled the boat to a wooden finger pier that extended from the ramp. From there, he jumped onto the planked platform as it creaked under his feet, trying to make it to the end without stepping in one of the many bird droppings. He walked the boat to the end of the dock while Chino parked the car and trailer.\n\nAlberto continued to hold the line while his brother jumped into the cockpit. The next few minutes were spent trying to find the keys to the twin-engine boat before starting the one functional motor. The other engine had been frozen tight since its purchase four months before. After pumping the lever-activated accelerator, the tired engine sprang to life. As Chino revved it a few times, thick gray smoke filled the air around the transom and water bubbled up around the outdrive.\n\nThe boat cruised along at a slow but steady pace making its way through the hundred foot wide passage known as the Key Largo Cut. The Cut was a man-made channel like the Panama Canal, a gorge sliced through the land. In this case though, the land was almost a mile of solid coral rock, at one time a living creature, growing from what was a reef several million years before. Now it was just a big rock, as hard as concrete, and the perfect foundation for the world's largest carved sculpture. The channel connected the Atlantic Ocean to the east with Florida Bay to the west.\n\nBecause of the great tidal difference, three to five feet in the ocean and one to two feet in the bay, powerful currents flowed in either direction. At 4:00 p.m., the current was flowing against the La Pinta such that, at one point, she appeared to sit motionless with respect to the land while in the middle of the channel, barely keeping up with the rushing water. Eventually it made its way to the Pennekamp Park's South Creek and a short time after that, the two were cruising out a heavily marked channel eastward towards the Molasses Reef light at a slow pace under the power of the one running engine.\n\nFour miles later, Chino and Alberto dropped their steel anchor into the rolling sea. It sliced through the cold water striking the sandy bottom fifteen feet below, clinging to a mound of coral, holding the boat tight against the passing current. All was quiet as the small boat rolled with the passing waves. The two men walked about, trying all the time to keep their balance, setting up fishing lines and baiting hooks.\n\nUnlike most who fished with conventional rods and reels, Chino and Alberto used the traditional Cuban yo-yo. Shaped like a small tire rim and usually made of plastic, the yo-yo was a simple device which one could wind monofilament line around. There was no casting involved which made the yo-yo easy to use. If the user could catch the current with the bait, the line would just fall off the rim, sending fifty to a hundred feet of line into the water within seconds. Reeling in was just as simple. There was no complicated tension or drag controls to adjust. Simple wrist action determined how much pressure was placed against the line when making a catch. It was an art, seasoned by time and experience; one that depended more on the abilities of the user than the design of the device itself.\n\nBoth Chino and Alberto, having used the primitive devices since early childhood, had the process down to a science. Within minutes, four lines were dragging the current. Weighted down by three-ounce leads, the baits glided, suspended in the flow beneath the boat.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDescent\n\nThe Captain's Cabin was a favorite hangout for local fishermen, boat mechanics, and the agents of the Tavernier field office. Burly, bearded men sat against a long cypress bar trimmed in weathered two-inch dock line.\n\nGrouper filets, oysters and other sundry raw bar items were prepared behind on a recessed open flame grill. The beer came fresh from the tap, always served in frosted glass mugs. The rest of the room was filled with vinyl-backed upholstered booths and a regulation pool table that was always in use. Smaller tables made from old lobster traps filled the room while ceiling fans turned constantly, circulating warm, smoke-filled air. As the saloon door swung open, the smell of belched beer and burnt popcorn hit Joel in the face.\n\n\"Joel! Amigo, how's it going young man?\" Holmes yelled as he approached the bar.\n\n\"Hey Holmes. I thought I'd get something to eat before I went out tonight,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Great, try the dolphin sandwich. It's to die for and it goes great with a nice cold beer...or two,\" Holmes replied, slurring the last part of the sentence.\n\nJoel watched over Holmes's shoulder through a large bay window as one of the agents, Mark West, pulled into the large parking lot. He was in Jordan Cheney's silver dually pickup and was towing the service's 38-foot Stiletto. The sun gleamed from the bright white Fiberglas and cold stainless steel trim. Now that's a boat, Joel thought to himself.\n\n\"Bet he sleeps with that thing...What do you think Joel?\" Holmes said, patting Joel on the back.\n\n\"Huh? Yeah, right,\" Joel replied, partially distracted.\n\nWest completed his circle of the parking lot and backed the rig into the mouth of an adjacent boat ramp that fronted the canal. West was tall and thin, had dark hair and a dark sun-cured complexion. His dark aviator sunglasses completed the picture. He seemed more like a pilot than a boat captain. After exiting the truck he checked over the craft, much like an aircraft preflight check, examining the boat from bow to stern. If he was anything, Agent Mark West was meticulous.\n\nJoel left the crowd and walked toward the trailered boat. As he approached, West was down on his knees inserting a brass drain plug into the transom.\n\n\"Hey kid. The crowd a little noisy for you?\" West asked.\n\n\"Well you know, just not my kind of scene.\"\n\n\"Well if you don't mind, maybe you can give me a hand. I need you to back me down the ramp.\"\n\n\"Sure, no problem,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Remember, when I tell you to stop, put on the emergency brake and give me a hand tying up,\" West instructed.\n\nWest climbed up the side of the boat and waited. As Joel backed down the steep decline toward the water, he felt the weight of the boat pull against the screeching brake pads. Foot by foot, the boat's outdrives, trailer, and wheels became submerged. As the boat became buoyant, West gave the order to stop. Joel put the truck in park and applied the parking brake as requested. As he did though, the transmission popped back out of park and into reverse. Joel looked at the indicator over the steering column. The illuminated R puzzled him as he jammed the shift lever back towards park. It seemed to stay this time and he went back to tie up the boat.\n\nThe Stiletto had floated back, away from the ramp and towards a finger pier. Joel walked over to the pier and took a dock line from the captain. As soon as he bent over to secure the line to the dock cleat, a loud SNAP came from under the truck. Instantly, the whole rig started to roll backwards down the ramp. Joel's heart stopped as he watched the trailer disappear under the surface of the water. He couldn't move. He couldn't bear to look as water splashed against the moving tailgate. Then suddenly, the discarded winch cable from the trailer caught a small dock cleat. The rig stopped with only part of the rear bumper underwater. Joel let out a sigh of relief. West stood motionless, still staring in disbelief.\n\n\"Well don't just stand there kid!\" he said.\n\nInstantly, the saloon patrons, headed up by Holmes, exited the building. Most were laughing. Two approached the seawall and analyzed the truck's exhaust pipe that was now bubbling under the cold water, illuminated by the truck's red taillights.\n\nHolmes and a small crowd from the bar approached Joel with drunken waves of laughter.\n\n\"You're one of the luckiest men alive Joel. If anything would have happened to Cheney's truck, you would have been fucked,\" Holmes blurted out, red-faced and exuberant.\n\nJoel wiped his brow as he looked down at the truck. But before he could even think of how to remedy the situation, the loose dock cleat at his feet broke away under the massive stress and the truck shot backwards, deeper into the water. The heavy truck floated for a minute, teasing Joel in the process.\n\nInstantly, the surrounding laughter was silenced as Joel again tried to catch his breath. Holmes ran over to the side of the seawall and peered over at the hood of the running truck. It bubbled and gurgled as the cold liquid overcame it. The water became a churning mess of bubbling white froth, fuel and oil debris as the truck sank to the bottom of the deep canal.\n\n\"Holy shit Joel! You're fucked!\" Holmes exclaimed in a burst of stunned amazement.\n\nIn the crowd of silence, one person, Agent West, managed to stand out. \"There are easier ways to get a box of cereal kid,\" he said, patting Joel on the back before re-boarding the Stiletto.\n\nCereal? Joel thought to himself.\n\nWest chuckled as he started the boat's engines that fired without hesitation.\n\n\"Are you coming Holmes?\" West yelled out.\n\nAs Holmes pushed the boat off the dock, West jockeyed it from the ramp opening and powered her around, heading out the canal toward the open ocean.\n\n\u2022\n\nThirty minutes later, Joel was surprised to find out that tow trucks in the Florida Keys were equipped with diving gear and scuba certified drivers. Joel watched as the man, wearing a wetsuit that had Keys Towing and Salvage stenciled on the back, surfaced through the cold water, guiding himself up by the steel wire he had attached to the front bumper of Cheney's downed truck.\n\n\"It's not going to be pretty. The trailer is tangled up with the truck,\" the diver said as his voice echoed from the steep walls of the canal.\n\n\"Just get the damned thing out of there, okay?\" Joel said.\n\nSeconds later, the diver was back to being the tow truck operator and after stowing the dive gear, positioned himself at the rear of the large truck. Then he activated some levers and, as the large truck's engine started to increase in revolutions, the center-mounted boom winch wound up, drawing in its catch like a well-oiled rod and reel. Inch by inch, the truck creaked and moaned as it strained to draw up the sunken dually and trailer. It was ten minutes before the front bumper and grill pierced the water's surface. Ten minutes after that, the boom was raised and was pulling the sunken truck up and onto the incline of the boat ramp. Joel watched as the driver opened the driver's side door. Seawater, small fish and a lobster emptied out onto the ramp. He had seen enough.\n\nAs Joel walked back to his car, he looked down at his watch. 6:17 p.m. He was supposed to meet Owen Sands at the Tavernier office at 6:30. He shook his head. This was not going to be his day. And to top it off, he still had to face Cheney in the morning.\n\n* * * * *\n\nPartition\n\nRoberto Alazar turned the switch igniting the sixteen diesel pistons below the hard Fiberglas deck at his feet. Black smoke erupted from the transom exhaust as the massive engine roared to life. Over the freshly painted decks, Roberto and Gordo's younger cousin, Mongi Alazar, scurried fore and aft securing the loose lines and stowing shore power cables and water supply hoses under the deck. Mongi was an agent of sorts. He represented the owners of the load, businessmen who usually invested cash into a seasonal crop and took calculated risks upon its return. Mongi's job was simple. He made the arrangements and looked over the handling of the load. He also operated the clavo in Miami. Although Roberto ran the crew, Mongi owned the load.\n\nAlazar shifted the engine's transmission into reverse as he spun the oversized, wood-spoked wheel to the port and increased the throttle. The immense 64-foot Vibrations moved slightly at first and then gaining momentum, it maneuvered out of the tight slip etching backwards into the larger, more versatile canal. Alazar jammed the black lever forward. The deck shuttered below as the two thousand horsepower engine diverted the rotation of the spinning propeller. The wooden wheel was spun back to starboard as even more power was requested from the red lever controlling the throttle. Black smoke ascended from the transom's waterline and was blown over the aft deck by the cool breeze. The boat inched forward as it gained speed and momentum. A drafty wake followed, crashing against the algae-covered breakwater rocks that lined both sides of the canal. Alazar adjusted the friction control on the large steering wheel that measured almost four feet in diameter. He then began turning knobs and switches mounted on the console overhead. Instantly, lime and amber colored electronics came to life as the open radar array mounted above the wheelhouse began to sweep in slow revolutions.\n\nAs the Vibrations cleared the end of the breakwater, Alazar took a heading of 090, due East, pointing the craft out to the open ocean. Del's guest, Gus Greico, joined Alazar in the wheelhouse.\n\n\"What time does the tide go out?\" he asked.\n\n\"We are at the top of a six hour cycle. It is 7:00 now, so by 10:00 it will be at its lowest.\"\n\n\"But can we make it back in at low tide?\"\n\nAlazar responded confidently. \"Vibrations draws six feet. Probably not, but by the time we're ready to return, the tide should be at three-quarters if not all the way up.\"\n\nGreico looked concerned, \"What if we go over our time? We might have to stay out here all night. We couldn't return until 7:00 a.m. in broad daylight.\"\n\n\"Gus, my father taught me to never get emotional about things I couldn't change.\"\n\nForty-five minutes later, as Vibrations approached the Molasses tower, Mongi climbed out onto the bow, making a roaring racket as he pulled a twenty-foot length of chain and some one-inch thick rope from a deck-mounted hawser that led to a locker below. The chain was secured to an anchor that hung suspended from the bow pulpit. Then he lowered it, letting it dangle freely above the passing waves.\n\nAs Alazar slowed the boat, Mongi looked back watching him until the captain's signal was given. He released the anchor and with it, the scope of line he had drawn from the rope locker below. It shot through the water, gliding by its flukes to the bottom like a paper airplane slicing through the air. As the anchor came to rest in the sand, Mongi signaled back to Alazar who quickly put the engine into reverse. In a pool of churning water, Vibrations slid backwards pulling the line taut until the anchor set itself deep into the bottom. Alazar shut down the engine and all was silent except the sound of waves lapping against the bow.\n\nAs the boat laid against the moor, everyone on board congregated on the aft deck. The cool breeze blew in from the northeast and the four watched as the sun set in the west, leaving the eastern sky in a shadow of darkness.\n\n\"So what is the game plan from here?\" Greico asked.\n\n\"We wait, Gus,\" Alazar said.\n\n\"Yeah, but where is this great crew I've been hearing so much about?\"\n\n\"They're all around you. That's the beauty of our operation. We live, work and play here. My men and their boats blend into the surroundings. See that hole in the water over there?\" Alazar asked, pointing to the Cho Chos in the La Pinta, anchored two hundred yards to the north.\n\n\"That piece of shit?\"\n\n\"You would never suspect it. These Marimbettos who come in with their go-fasts and loud engines don't have a chance against the cops with faster boats, much less the neighborhood watches and citizen groups. Hell, even the Coast Guard Auxiliary is in the picture. And thanks to this new TV show Miami Vice, they're all looking for the same thing: the Indians, Mirages, Scarabs and Stilettos. Don't get me wrong. Those boats are great for crossing, but from the reef to the Key, we prefer these small pleasure boats. The uglier, the better.\"\n\n\"This makes sense. But what about speed?\"\n\n\"That's where the chase boat comes in. If the Feds are watching us on radar, they will automatically go after the faster boat. It's a proven fact.\"\n\n\"Like Smoky and the Bandit.\"\n\n\"Exactly. Except we don't get a Sally Field,\" Alazar answered as the others chuckled.\n\n\"Look, Gus, there are no guarantees here, but I think if you look at other operations you'll see ours is by far the safest,\" Del said.\n\n\"Del is right, Gus. We've lost some loads...shit who hasn't...but that's the risk you take in this business. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it and that would drive the price down. That's no good. Who wants to work for peanuts?\"\n\n\"Tell me about Gordo,\" Greico asked.\n\n\"Gordo is Roberto's brother. He is a good man,\" Del replied.\n\n\"And he is in charge of the crossing?\"\n\n\"He is the crossing,\" Alazar said. \"My brother insists on doing everything himself. He maintains the camp and airstrip on Andros. He takes care of his own boats. He has never let any of us down.\"\n\n\"Gordo sounds like a valuable asset. As a brother though, what was it like growing up with him?\"\n\n\"Interesting. You always kept your eyes on your food!\" Alazar said.\n\n\"I guess with a name like Gordo, he likes to eat?\"\n\n\"Shit, that's an understatement. When that plane drops its load they had better have a snack on board. It's kind of a tradition.\"\n\n\"And his son is just like him. A perfect clone,\" Del laughed.\n\n\"Poor Gordito. I keep thinking I'm going to see him floating along, aloft, held to the ground by a crew of eight holding lines in some Thanksgiving Day parade someday,\" Alazar added as the other three laughed.\n\nThen suddenly, Del noticed movement one hundred yards off the stern of Vibrations.\n\n\"It's just Red and Stump,\" Alazar said.\n\n\u2022\n\nRed Moran and his cousin, Able Smith, called \"Stump\" because of his blunt, muscular build, sat aboard the blue-hulled 26-foot Chris-Craft, dark and hidden in the shadow of the Molasses Reef light. In view just a hundred yards away, lay Vibrations, fully lit, with the three-second pulse of the reef's warning light shining over her bow. The Chris-Craft, too, was anchored but on the much rougher side of the reef, just before the drop-off of the shelf below. Red disliked mooring on this side. On one trip, months ago, he got the boat's anchor snagged on the twisted coral structures below and ended up having to cut the anchor rope to set them free. The boat rolled and swayed with each oncoming wave. Despite the obvious liabilities, they were in the perfect position, that of complete stealth. They were close enough to the light that the Fiberglas boat would never appear on even the most sophisticated radar, and if a patrol boat did happen along, the bright lights of Vibrations coupled with the lights of the Molasses tower, would almost guarantee them invisible to the naked eye. Even sophisticated night vision, like that of the U.S. Customs and Alazar's own counter-surveillance, could not pierce their veil as there was too much light to render them effective.\n\nRed watched as the 64-foot Vibrations was affected by the waves, even after being buffered by the reef. He felt secure watching the boat's large six-foot radar antenna spin over the wheelhouse, casting a constantly moving shadow into the rigging above.\n\n\"It sure is rough tonight,\" Stump said, trying to break the silence.\n\n\"Yeah, and it's going to get rougher. Did you bring the shit?\"\n\n\"Yeah man, but my sister wouldn't let me use her player so we have to settle for this piece of shit player,\" Stump answered, pointing to a crudely mounted AM\/FM cassette player installed on the boat.\n\n\"Somehow, I knew this was going to happen. Go look in my bag,\" Red instructed, opening the teak louvered door to the forward cabin.\n\nStump made his way below the deck, excited at what new toy his cousin had brought with them to help pass the time. Stump was easily entertained. Despite his bold, muscular look, Stump wasn't very smart. He was tested in the sixth grade and was found to possess an IQ of sixty-four, just high enough to keep him out of the special education classes but lacking in other respects, making his school years difficult and frustrating. After spending two years in the seventh grade and two more in the eighth, Stump walked out of his junior high school, the only student old enough to drive himself home.\n\n\"Holy shit man,\" Stump said as he removed a new Walkman player from the black canvas bag. \"When did you get it?\"\n\n\"Last weekend. I took it off this cokehead dude who needed the money.\"\n\n\"You dog! This is awesome!\"\n\n\"Go ahead, set it up,\" Red suggested as he climbed up on the boat's padded engine hatch before lying out on the foam-filled cushion. He looked up at the stars that seemed brighter offshore. He lay there, feeling the boat rock from side to side, listening to the waves crashing on the jagged coral rocks less than a hundred feet away.\n\n\"Here it is, GTR,\" Stump declared as he slipped the cassette into its mechanized door.\n\nAs the music queued up, the two started jerking and quivering to the beat as Red began to sing in chorus with the lead singer.\n\n\"Mother protect me, protect me from myself. Lately I can't tell, who really are my friends. Burning the candle, the candle at both ends. Through crowds, across floors. Each night I just pretend... When the heart rules the mind...\"\n\nRed had a talent for singing the newer, heavy metal songs. His raspy, high-pitched voice mimicked vocalists like Axl Rose and Steven Tyler. He had let his bright, orange-red hair grow down his back. The color had remained constant for most of his life, thus his namesake given him at birth when he emerged into the world with a small patch of the fiery color on the top of his head. Unlike Stump, Red was his real name given him by his parents. Both his mom and dad were hardcore bikers who believed that the true test of a man rested in his ability to drive his Harley as fast and as hard as possible.\n\nAs the boat rolled and pitched, Red dreamed of the big stage, flinging his red curls in wild circles as the massive sound churned from ten-foot-high speakers.\n\n\"Sunkist, Sunkist, what are you doing?\" squawked out the loud voice of Roberto Alazar over the low powered CB radio.\n\n\"Pepsi, this is Sunkist, sorry I guess we got a little loud,\" Red spoke into to the mic as Stump raced to turn down the volume.\n\n\"They will be able to hear you all the way to Key Largo my friend.\"\n\n\"Yes sir, sorry sir.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nThree miles to the west, Jim Plimpton applied some cherry ChapStick to his cold, dry lips. The crisp wind flowed through and around the mangrove trees, slicing over the top of the salty water. Plimpton sat alone on his 18-foot backcountry flats boat. Tied to an extended mangrove root, he had an excellent vantage point of both the North and Taylor Creeks.\n\nAs the son of a prominent Upper Keys insurance broker, Plimpton was raised in a fine home sparing no indulgence. It was now at the age of twenty-four that the silver spoon was starting to tarnish. His appetite for the finer things in life would require more than that which his father paid him to manage the menial accounts of the family business. At the age of nineteen and against his father's objections, he had opted to withdraw from his second term at Miami-Dade Community College. His grades were mediocre at best and he was not at all appreciative of the things that college life had to offer. It was his father who said he would work, go to school, or move out of the family's half-million dollar mansion in prestigious Port Largo. Thus began his career as a policy pusher. He dealt with all the menial accounts, the clients no one else in the office of twenty-three wanted to handle. There were the drunks who were turned down for their state required SR-22 because of too many DUIs and people like the eighty-seven-year-old widow who had been dropped by another agency because of her failing eyesight. Plimpton closed more of the deals no one else was willing to touch. He had a knack for bending the rules and, despite the fact that his father was not particularly overjoyed, even he looked the other way when it was financially beneficial to do so. Plimpton's ambitions rose, despite the fact he was paid half as much for work that took twice as long. He was driven by the will of showing his overbearing father that he was in control of his life and his success was not to be determined by the amount of sheepskin that hung on the wall of his cubicle.\n\nTime had passed and Plimpton needed bigger challenges, greater adventures, and most of all, more money. He met Bobby Alazar at a backcountry fishing tournament in Islamorada. After a six-month friendship, the younger Alazar brought Plimpton into his family's business. Plimpton's job would be counter-surveillance. As he soon found out, this was the best job of all in the drug trade. He anchored close to the routes of the incoming boats and reported what he saw. He didn't have to touch anything and the closest he got was twenty yards. When he was paid, it was done so in a handsome fashion.\n\nAt first, Plimpton was rusty. He talked too much on the radio and he was always anchored in the wrong place at the wrong time. On one occasion, an incoming boat almost swamped his sleek, low profile boat, anchored in the middle of the channel. A quick turn by the captain averted a near-collision, and Plimpton was wiser for it the next time.\n\nHe began to enroll in more flats fishing tournaments and won so many contests he was renamed by his colleagues \"The Redfisher\" for all the red snapper that seemed to be drawn to him like mice to the Pied Piper. Redfisher was painted on the sides of his boat in a swirling, crimson script. This tag accompanied him into the local newspapers that featured articles and a weekly column depicting the week's fishing exploits. Even the Upper Keys Inquirer, better known as the \"Mullet Wrapper,\" carried a weekly column called \"The Redfisher's Snapper Spots.\" The articles featured Plimpton's pick of the week for attractive fishing holes and other sundry information about local fishing.\n\nPlimpton had handcrafted his talent into a new species, even drawing the admiration of his father on several occasions. Within a year of purchasing his boat, it was paid for. He was well on his way towards making a living as a sport fisherman and as a clandestine, counter-surveillance expert who would never be questioned, even by the greenest of agents, as to his intentions anchored in the North Creek at 3:00 a.m.\n\nAs he put the cherry flavored ChapStick back under the boat's console, the whine of his Zebco Model 318 reel rang out, startling a small flock of egrets roosting in a nearby hammock of mangroves. Another red. That made six sloshing about in his Fiberglas live well and it wasn't even 10:30. Now it was time to do some real work.\n\nThe sonic charge whined as the infrared optic cylinder charged to a state of readiness. Within seconds, Plimpton's eyes filled with a bright, lime-green light. The device was held tight against his face with a headband type harness that gave him the option of holding the glasses as regular binoculars or wearing them to aid in piloting his boat at night. The cat's eyes, as they were called, had the ability to magnify objects in a wide field of view, ten to fifteen times greater than normal and were gyro stabilized for use in rough water. The cat's eyes emitted no light other than the green glow from the bilateral viewfinders that could be seen if they were not held directly against the user's face. They did not replace daylight but gave the effect that the world was one well-lit parking lot.\n\nPlimpton purchased the cat's eyes from Gene Latrell, the owner of L & L Electronics, a spy shop in Miami. Latrell assured Plimpton that they were the same model used by U. S. Customs agents in the field. This impressed Plimpton who didn't give a second thought to paying the price of seventy-seven hundred dollars. He considered it an investment.\n\nRoberto liked the fact that his man in the creek was so aptly equipped. Besides the cat's eyes, Plimpton possessed a multi-band scanner, capable of storing four hundred different frequencies. Frequencies were like gold to the Marimbetto. Local electronics shops like Radio Shack maintained lists of current frequencies and were usually updated on a weekly basis. Plimpton took this one step further. His home was equipped with two large base station scanners, both of which stayed on twenty-four hours a day. They were connected to a large antenna that towered thirty feet over his house. The scanners continually searched the VHF and twelve-meter bands. From 150 megahertz to 350 megahertz, the devices would search, not scan, starting at a given frequency and climbing five to fifteen hertz at a time, ascending up to the desired range and then repeating the task until it received a usable transmission. In Plimpton's spare time, he could listen to the scanner and rate the transmissions as relevant and then match them to the frequency.\n\nThe creek was clear, flowing at a slow, steady pace under his anchored boat. Small fish occasionally skipped out of the water, splashing in the coolness, leaving ripples across the nearly flat pane of glass. Plimpton laid the cat's eyes on the seat next to him and picked up his idle rod and reel, cranking the stainless handle, click-click-click.\n\nThe line sprang taut as the twenty-pound test monofilament line pulled a mullet-baited hook from the creek's sandy bottom. Plimpton reeled in a few feet and then let the bait fall to the bottom.\n\n\u2022\n\nFive hundred yards from Plimpton's position was Kevin Pinder who sat with his partner, Gil Lindback, inside the clavo. This spot was convenient for it was adjacent to the winding channels and tributaries of the North Creek and its spin-off, Taylor Creek, all of which fed fresh seawater from the Atlantic into the inner sanctum of the John Pennekamp State Park.\n\nThe trailer was set off the street, a dark street to begin with. The nearest light pole was over four hundred feet away. The trailer was seventy feet long and fourteen feet wide, longer and wider than the other trailers on the street. It was built after the Reagan administration deregulated the interstate trucking industry. Mobile home manufacturers had started to cash-in by offering the larger, more comfortable mobile mansions.\n\nThe street was long and narrow, much like the homes installed on it. Its name, Grouper Lane, was sometimes referred to as \"Square Grouper Lane.\" At the end of the street, the pavement ended and the water began.\n\nOut the large bay window, Pinder watched up one side toward Taylor Creek, occasionally glancing back to the left to watch the adjacent smaller canals that ran parallel to his corner lot. He kept a lookout for anyone who might notice their operation: nocturnal fishermen, restless neighbors who needed fast relief from midnight heartburn, and busybodies with nothing better to do. All it took was some retired military officer, a model citizen who was observant and the block captain for his area's neighborhood watch to maybe see a boat cruise go by sitting heavy in the water and return, lighter and higher. He could jot down the address, possibly the vessel registration numbers posted near the boat's bow and then call 1-800-BE-ALERT, the national U.S. Customs hotline. He could secure up to a twenty-five hundred dollar reward for the right tip. It wasn't the money he was after, though. He was doing his duty. Just like the one he bestowed upon himself by raising the Stars and Stripes up his homemade flagpole, anchored to the steel tongue of his mobile home, or the duty of igniting his four-way flashers on his 1974 Ford Pinto while driving through a school zone. Forget the fact that Grouper Lane was called Square Grouper Lane and not crack alley. Pot, crack, or heroin, it was all the same to him. A retired military officer, he was at war again, the war against drugs, and, as the 10:00 news reported, the government had declared zero tolerance.\n\nAll was quiet and dark, so dark Pinder could see the glowing embers of a barbecue fifty yards away. A family reunion had taken place down the street earlier in the afternoon. They were all drunk and probably asleep, he thought to himself. Pinder was starting to feel comfortable and thus confident. He looked down at the seawater flowing through the mangrove roots, lapping against the concrete dock constructed at the base of the mobile house. How much was Roberto bringing in? Where would they put it? he thought to himself. Two thousand pounds usually went into the trailer's eight-foot-by-ten-foot bedroom with space to spare. One night though, they were surprised. Four different boats delivered over twelve thousand pounds. They stacked it in the halls and the bathrooms. They had to go outside to pee. To get from one end of the trailer to the other meant crawling on one's hands and knees and rubbing their back against the ceiling, trying to stay clear of the trailer's cheap light fixtures. Roberto rewarded them well.\n\nThose days seemed to be over, though, and Kevin Pinder's expenses were starting to take control of his life. He had a hunger for high-maintenance girlfriends that had an even greater hunger for cocaine. The two were taking a toll on his finances. Tonight was going to be different.\n\nIn the corner of the kitchen at the base of the refrigerator was a common floor scale with a bright red digital dial for reading in the dark. The bales were weighed as they came in the front door. They were then marked and listed on a crudely sketched inventory sheet. This one was a child's notebook folio adorning a group of popular cartoon figures on the front cover. It was the only thing Kevin could find at the last minute at the Seven Eleven store on the corner.\n\nThe weights were very important. This was what Roberto Alazar used to bill the product's owner, who usually paid him up to eighty-five dollars a pound for the ride. A wet crossing, making some of the bales saturated and heavier, could easily add five to ten thousand dollars to the bill. It was justice, though. The toll the rough seas took on the crew made it a surcharge worth pursuing.\n\nHaving worked many times for Roberto, Pinder knew he was in a very lucrative position. Before the load crossed the threshold of his trailer, there was only a rough count of the number of bales. The crews knew approximately how much the load weighed, but it could vary as much as a hundred pounds either way. It was up to the clavo to get an exact weight of the load and produce the final figure.\n\nMost of the time the bales came over hand-packed in burlap sacks with duct tape securing any loose openings. Pinder had watched many of these pieces come in. His back had strained unloading them from an unstable, rocking boat to the dock, then into the trailer and off to one of the rooms. The job built muscles but it also built ideas. Along with Kevin's purchase of a cartoon notebook folio, he also purchased three rolls of duct tape.\n\n* * * * *\n\nFacade\n\nWith the exception of the unscheduled nap that morning, Joel hadn't slept in thirty-two hours and lunch was nothing more than a drive-by at a Burger King in Key Largo. He was used to sacrificing meals and sleep for the common objective but this was starting to seem a bit excessive.\n\nJoel and his new partner had driven down what seemed to be every dead end street from North Key Largo to the south end of Long Key, taking up most of the daylight hours. It was the senior agent's way of communicating a different perspective to him since they would be patrolling the same area by water that night. The two bounced around in Owen Sands's one-ton pickup truck for the better part of nine hours until Joel had felt every pothole and bump through the truck's stiff suspension.\n\nDuring their tour, Sands had detailed all the \"hot spots.\" These were small, out of the way homes, all seasonal rentals, and all on dark, overgrown lots with concealed carports or garages. Sands seemed to know them all, pointing out the sights of past busts. Sixty-five bales here, five hundred kilos there, Owen would run on, almost redundantly as Joel tried to absorb all the information. There were too many homes to remember them all, but he got the idea of what they were looking for.\n\nAs the sun began to set over Florida Bay and the backcountry, their day was just beginning as Owen's pickup pulled into the parking lot of the Tavernier Creek Marina parking next to the docks. The two agents exited the truck and walked toward the floating docks with Sands taking the lead. They proceeded down an incline to a fixed platform where several boats were moored. For the first time, Joel had a chance to view the small fleet of boats assigned to his new office. He had trained on boats similar to these at Glynnco and remembered what a rush it was to pilot the expensive powerboats with their supercharged engines at eighty miles per hour over the rough terrain of the ocean.\n\nAll the boats were lined in a row with their sterns against the dock and all with lettered brand names etched in the sides like Indian, Scarab and Stiletto. Each boat was in its own way distinctive and yet all resembled the same look. Their carefully designed lines made them look as though they were breaking fifty knots while resting at the dock. At the end of the pier was the most impressive boat of the fleet, one he had only heard about at the academy. The Don-Cat, 39-feet long, painted blue and white and called Blue Thunder, she was the flagship of the Blue Lightning Anti-drug Task Force. Her bow resembled the pitchfork of a devil as her hull was split down the middle to allow massive amounts of air into and under the bottom of the boat when she was running at full speed. This feature enabled the boat to go faster with less power. Since she was also wider than the other boats by some four feet, she was also more stable in the rolling seas where agents had to make their dangerous boardings.\n\nShe was the brainchild of Aaron Donaldson who had created the Stiletto powerboat line among others, and had parlayed a simple idea into a multimillion-dollar government contract. The brainchild came in the form of one of his earlier creations, a 39-foot deep-V hull that he had saved for himself. Skillfully, Donaldson cut the boat in two, separated the halves, and took a molded impression of the design. The end result was basically the same boat he had built for years but with a catch: a four-foot-wide air tunnel that ran down the center of the craft.\n\nJoel looked down the side of the boat. The words UNITED STATES CUSTOMS, written in large, white block letters embossed both of her sides. Mounted to the deck near the stern was a tubular arch stretching across the boat's beam. A disk-type radar dome, remote spotlights and a mirage of antennas were affixed in a row. His heart rate increased with anticipation as he speculated on which boat was to be theirs for the night. This was going to be like no other experience he had lived though before. After a day of monotonous details, he finally felt as though this assignment was going to reveal its perks.\n\nJoel walked up to the stern of the Blue Thunder. On its deck was a raised hatch, exposing the mechanical workings of the boat's oversized engine compartment. A small man dressed in a mechanic's jumpsuit stood in the bilge, bent over one of the chrome-covered engines. After making some adjustments to the carburetor, he grabbed a remote switch and triggered the starter. With a burst of power, the engine came to life, startling Joel as water spat from the transom's exhaust and shot across the surface of the wooden pier, dousing his new Sperry Top-Sider shoes in the process. The mechanic revved the engine as it spewed more wet percussion into the air making the dock below Joel's feet vibrate as the engine settled down to a rumbling idle.\n\n\"Come on hotshot, this one's ours,\" Sands said, pointing to a rundown performance boat moored at the end of the dock. \"Load our bags and I'll make the call,\" Sands continued as he headed back up the ramp towards a pay phone that was mounted to a nearby power pole.\n\nJoel looked down at the boat they would be using. It was obviously a confiscated vessel that had been put into service. The boat was mostly white with Renegade written in small black letters on the side. Towards the stern of the boat was a decal of a multicolored Indian chief with a bright, feather-filled headdress and the words Indian 41. It was obvious that the boat had been abused. The poorly applied paint job had gouges the entire length of the boat, something the instructors at Glynnco called freighter burn. This was an abrasion that boats would endure from bumping against the rusty steel-hulled mother ships with their glossy Fiberglas hulls in rolling seas while loads were transferred.\n\nThe call to the operations center in Miami was made before any tour of duty and was the high command's way of tracking its agents in the field. Sands gave the dispatcher some basic information including the boat's ID number, who was assisting him (Joel in this case), and the area they would be patrolling.\n\nEvery organization had to have a home base, some place to report to. For the U. S. Customs Service this was Sector. The military term was C3I, which stood for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence and was the backbone of the Blue Lightning Task Force's operations center. C3I was divided into two divisions. Centers East and West were each responsible for their corresponding section of the country. Sector West had a distinct advantage as it was located in the same building as EPIC, the El Paso Intelligence Center in El Paso, Texas. EPIC was a clearinghouse for agents of all branches who desired information on individuals, bank accounts, corporations and any other entity that was involved in any ongoing criminal enterprise. Sector East was located in Miami at Southwest 152nd Street in Dade County's Metro Zoo Complex and occupied twenty-two acres and a sixteen thousand square foot building. The communications center took up almost fifteen hundred feet of the main building and was comprised of large electronic consoles and radar screens, making it look more like an aircraft control tower than a law enforcement communications hub. Behind the lit consoles sat attentive observers peering at video displays, sweeping radar screens and other digital imaging equipment. Others sat quietly listening through padded headphones to modified high frequency and short-wave radios for covert transmissions. The lighting was dim. Single shaft fluorescent tubes lined the corners of the room giving it a look of white neon that gave off just enough light to prevent them from tripping over their feet when activities in the center escalated and became dicey. Illuminations of orange, red and lime from the display screens lit the rest of the room. Mounted on the wall was a sixty-inch projection monitor displaying the northwestern quadrant of the Caribbean basin, from Cuba northward to Freeport, and west to Naples, Florida. Inbound targets were tracked and their courses were plotted by computer showing their projected landfall, making this room seem like it should be embedded into the side of a mountain in Colorado rather than the grounds of a public zoo. Altogether, Sector worked as a team and a support arm to the agents in the field.\n\nIn a glass partitioned cubical sat the only uniformed person in the room. Usually a woman, her job was to coordinate the agents in the field toward the incoming targets and to promote interception. She was \"Sector\" tonight and her voice, sometimes stern, sometimes sensual, left a wide variety of visions in the minds of many agents working the late night hours in the field. When it was cold and dark and there seemed to be no other soul on earth, it was worth calling in a bogus registration check just to hear a voice, her voice. She worked a standard shift, Monday through Friday, 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. and she was a regular on the midnight airwaves.\n\nNext to a paper can of Ultra Slim-Fast sat a steaming cup of coffee. She motivated her two hundred and eighty pound frame in her chair, taking a sip as the squelch broke on the primary Customs frequency, 165.235 megahertz.\n\n\"Papa 1903 to Sector.\"\n\n\"Sector, go ahead,\" she said into the desk-mounted mic.\n\n\"1903 and 1925 are ten-eight, on patrol in Zone 32L - Lima.\"\n\nZone 32L stretched from Port Largo at the south to La Potana and Garden Cove in the north. Tonight, this area was Zone 32L. Yesterday it was 68M, tomorrow it would be 21Q or something else entirely; the playbook came weekly. A copy was posted in Sector and distributed to every agent and supervisor in the field.\n\n\"Thirty-two Lima, 10-4 1903,\" she replied.\n\nShe then authenticated the information by entering the transmission code next to the dot on the radar screen and then alerted her terminal with a few keystrokes. A computerized message was then directed to the \"heads-up\" operator who was watching a bright orange screen in the dimmed out room. The operator then walked over to a transparent partition of Plexiglas, the type seen in complex war rooms and the situation centers of combat aircraft carriers. It was a flat, upright sheet of clear plastic with a map etched in black. He picked up a red china grease marker and drew a series of diagonal lines covering Zone 32L. Next to that, with a green marker, he noted P-1903 and P-1925 Channel One.\n\nThe two boarded the boat as Joel took a position in a standing passenger bolster seat.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"What did I forget?\"\n\n\"You're driving kid,\" Owen said.\n\nFive minutes later, with Joel at the helm, the two idled out the small basin and into the channel. From there they cruised slowly through the winding mangrove-lined waterway of Tavernier Creek. The Creek was just one of the many waterways that flowed from the ocean to the bay. The oversized, white 41-footer moved slowly through the No Wake section, past several waterfront homes. The boat's twin six hundred and forty horsepower engines spit hot exhaust through the polished stainless pipes protruding from the boat's transom. The noise echoed from the quiet shores, bouncing off the numerous concrete seawalls.\n\nThe boat sat low to the water in the aft. From the deck, an arch was erected, stretching to the aft at a forty-five-degree angle, spanning across a padded rear deck that doubled as an engine hatch. On top of the arch, a radar silo sat perched like an eagle. The flat, disk-shaped object gave the boat a look of stature. Surrounding the silo were four antennas of various shapes and sizes, all pointing skyward. In between the antennas sat a blue strobe beacon and a stainless steel siren horn.\n\nThe craft glided over the glassy water as it proceeded under the Tavernier Creek Bridge. The bridge carried the traffic of the Overseas Highway, U.S. 1, the link between the Keys and the real world above. From there, the channel became wider, opening up to the ocean. The serene surface soon turned into a coarse chop with the lapping waves thrashing against the boat's hull. Joel, firmly positioned behind the helm, pushed the throttles forward, demanding a steady increase of revolutions. The boat's bow raised off the water as streams of white churning water flowed from the stern. As the boat planed across the water gaining speed, Joel felt the loose skin on his face form against his cheekbones. He glanced down at the instrument panel where the calibrated speedometer registered seventy-four knots, not very fast in a car but exhilarating in a 41-foot boat that started to leap over the three-foot-high waves. The two men were firmly nestled in a pair of stand up type bolsters. These seats were cup-shaped and were designed to hold the occupants securely in place despite the roughest of seas. Tears started to form from the corners of Kenyon's eyes, pushed out by the oncoming wind.\n\nOwen reached over and made some adjustments to the boat's trim tabs controlling the boat's elevation over the oncoming water. He pushed more buttons. Suddenly, a small screen lit up in front of Joel. On it, the sweeping band of the radar started to turn in a clockwise rotation. A distinct pattern could be seen with every revolution of the screen. Like an electronic map, the radar sent high frequency radio waves to islands, navigational markers, and other boats, bouncing back an image that appeared on the screen. Below that, the boat's updated longitude and latitude appeared at the bottom of the screen from a patch between the radar and the boat's onboard global positioning system. The same system sent updated position reports to the onboard transponder that relayed them via repeater to C3I East in Miami.\n\nAs they headed toward the Gulf Stream, the setting sun behind them lit the sky on fire with a pink and orange glow. Owen hit one more switch activating the boat's stereo system. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones' \"Give Me Shelter\" began to play. As Joel began to feel more comfortable in his new surroundings, he turned the wheel and the white missile banked to the north and disappeared into the night.\n\nThe radar surveillance training Joel encountered while in Glynnco prepared him well. The first contact appeared as a small, two-millimeter dot moving south, reappearing with every sweep of the imaginary clock-like hand that circumnavigated the green screen sixty times a minute.\n\n\"I've got something here. Moving south. He's making close to sixty knots with a two knot closure,\" Joel yelled over to his partner.\n\n\"What's our intercept heading?\" Owen asked, not expecting an answer for at least a few seconds from the rookie.\n\n\"At this speed we should assume 078 and maintain.\"\n\n\"Good work Joel, you're learning,\" Owen answered with the trace of a smile on his face.\n\nThe white missile banked to its right at almost a forty-five degree angle. Owen held fast to the grab rails as Joel gripped the tightly padded wheel. The boat turned until the dash-mounted compass read a heading of 078 degrees.\n\n\"We should make contact in about three minutes,\" Joel said, watching the screen again. He then attached his night vision goggles. They were a small and compact model and looked more like a small pair of binoculars one would take to a day of horse racing.\n\nThe seas off the Alligator Reef light were relatively flat. Joel could hold the goggles with one hand and the wheel with the other as the Indian sliced through the light chop, occasionally looking down to view the lime green screen of the radar. With a quick switch of the range, the screen changed from a three-mile view to that of less than a mile. The millimeter dot tripled in size, appearing more prominent, moving faster now and fleeing. It maintained its course to the degree making a straight line down Hawks Channel, the navigable route that ran between the Keys and the barrier reef line. They were within a half-mile of the target and closing fast. Sands activated the exhaust silencers. A vacuum pump mounted in the engine compartment produced negative pressure suction that, through a series of rubber hoses and baffles, created a muffle effect, cutting the noise emissions by two-thirds. The straight pipe headers now acted more like something one would get from a muffler shop. This had its drawbacks, including a loss in power. The boat slowed a little, realizing its drain of over forty horsepower from each engine. The craft still maintained its closure on the target with power to spare.\n\nJoel continued to peer through the night vision goggles. All was a light green haze. The waves were visible, as was the momentous foredeck of their own boat and in the distance, a small speck of light moving across the water. It was too far away to associate any type of scope with the light. It could have been a boat or a low flying airplane for all Joel could tell. It was too dim to be a running light and too bright to be coming from the dash gauges. Nevertheless, it matched the position of the target and Kenyon followed it very carefully. With all the devices he was using, Joel was amazed that Owen used nothing. He knew exactly where he was at all times. It was as though he had been given a pair of feline eyes at birth that enabled him to see impeccably at night. This man was incredible, Joel thought to himself.\n\nOwen watched closely as Joel brought the Indian in behind the target as their boat bounced in its white wake. They followed like a stock car racer drafting the laps at Daytona. For the first time, Joel got a chance to view the boat they were chasing, a go-fast Stiletto type. Its operator was a large man wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans. The speck of light came from the man's lit cigarette in his mouth. Besides that, the craft was running dark. Not a light to be seen onboard.\n\n\"Do you think he can see us?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"All he has to do is turn around,\" Owen shouted back.\n\nJoel put the goggles back onto his face. The bright green haze from the lit cigarette obscured his view of the operator's face. Then, without warning, the goggles lost their definition and both eyepieces burst in a blaze of brilliant green light. Joel removed the glasses just as the halogen spotlights warmed up to full capacity. The halogens were mounted to movable bases. Each one could rotate three hundred and sixty degrees independently of each other. Small remote control panels were mounted on either side of the Stinger's helm. The lights were the brainchild of ACR electronics, a Fort Lauderdale company that prized its reputation on inventing the energy-saving personal flashlights credited for saving the lives of NASA's Apollo 13 crew.\n\nBoth spotlights were pointed forward and were brilliant with penetrating light. Between the lights, next to the radar array, a small blue beacon sent out its signal. A blue sweep of light pulsed across the Indian's bow and the transom of the target.\n\nIt took a fraction of a second for the target to realize he had been caught. The captain banked his vessel to the right, heading for the dark waters of the Gulf Stream.\n\n\"He's trying to make it back to the islands,\" Joel yelled over the seventy mile per hour wind blowing between the two.\n\nJoel put the Indian into an equally tight starboard bank, maintaining his distance of thirty yards.\n\n\"Papa 1925 Sector,\" Joel said, radioing C3I.\n\n\"Not yet!\" Owen barked, putting his hand in front of his partner.\n\n\"Papa 1925 Sector. Standby.\"\n\nAnother abrupt starboard turn took place. This time Joel cut the wheel even tighter, laying the Indian on its side, beating the radius of the target's turn by twenty yards. The Indian now rode alongside the equally long Stiletto. Blue flashes of light splashed the white hull as it bounced through the four-foot chop. Owen rotated the port halogen spot, moving it ninety degrees and illuminating the side of the Stiletto.\n\nIt was clear now that Joel had been made a fool of. They were alongside Mark West's 38-footer, the boat he had helped launch just hours before. Mark West gave the two a wave as he pulled back on the throttles.\n\n\"You knew all along didn't you?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Hey, look, you needed the practice...Okay?\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, I really thought we had something there.\"\n\n\"When it's real, kid, you'll be glad we did this.\"\n\n\"Shit! I thought that Owen was driving!\" Holmes yelled.\n\n\"Hey Porky! I had you dead cold man,\" Joel boasted, feeling proud of himself.\n\n\"Okay...well on that note, my hydraulic steering is low on fluid. You're lucky I didn't smear you in the side on that last pass,\" West said.\n\n\"Promises, promises,\" Joel yelled back sarcastically.\n\n\"Oh yeah, Kenyon...Jordan Cheney has put out a BOLO on you, something about destruction of federal property,\" Holmes laughed. \"Well, I've got to make a court appearance in the morning, I'd love to stay and chat, but...\"\n\n\"We're not far behind you,\" Owen answered.\n\n\"Hey Owen, before you go, check out Molasses Reef. I saw our friend on the Vibrations heading that way. I'd sit it out but I really don't have the time. Besides, I'm heading back to Tavernier Creek. Wrong direction.\"\n\nOwen acknowledged with a nod. Both captains started their engines. In seconds, West's white-hulled Stiletto shot into the air over a series of waves and was off into the dark night.\n\n\"You did pretty good Kenyon,\" Owen said. \"Be careful of those tight turns. If you get too much air into the props, they will lose traction like street tires on a gravel road and the boat will lose speed. And don't get so attached to the night vision. Did you see what happened when I flipped on the overhead lights? It's a total green-out. Oh and Joel, one more thing. We don't actually call Holmes Porky to his face.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nAblaze\n\nAt an altitude of forty-five hundred feet and an accompanying air speed of one hundred and forty knots, two Air Force E-2s stood perplexed, gazing out the rear of their C-130's open bay door. As the cold wind rushed below their feet, the plane followed its flight path over the reef line of the Upper Florida Keys. The view was nearly unobstructed with the exception of a few lingering clouds. From their vantage point, the reef line looked serene and peaceful. Small flashing dots of white and red light blinked on and off periodically. Long trails of phosphorescent phytoplankton stretched behind three different boats crossing from the Bahamas toward Miami and the Keys. Green embers stayed alit hours after the boats passed, like the tails that follow a comet. Miles above the C-130, special C3I satellites monitored the green trails with tuned focal lenses trained on the incoming boats.\n\nBehind the men, stacked in twelve rows of three, thirty-six H-57 starburst flares stood atop their stacking crates, ready for the drop. As the plane approached Alligator Reef in Islamorada, a red light accompanied by a loud shriek sounded within the plane's intercom system alerting the crew that they were nearing the drop zone.\n\nThe DZ was to extend from Pickles Reef off Tavernier to a non-descript point three miles north of Molasses.\n\nMinutes later, the fifteen pound flares were falling from the platform, one every five seconds. The flares manufacturer, Olin Ordinance of St. Marks, Florida, had originally designed the starburst H-57 for the Vietnam conflict for which the devices were used to illuminate the dark jungles during routine confrontations with the North Vietnamese. They were compact, easy to handle and came equipped with an eight second delay igniter and a small ballistic charged parachute. The entire drop took three minutes, the exact time it took the C-130 to fly from Pickles off Tavernier to Molasses Reef. After leaving the plane, the flares burst into a blazing ball of brilliant light, illuminating the water below up to a mile away. From the island of Key Largo, it looked like an oversized string of Christmas lights being strewn across the reefs by some five-thousand-foot-high benevolent giant. The flares stayed suspended by the small parachutes, keeping the starbursts aloft for over ten minutes.\n\nWhat was once a dark, concealed ocean became an area of confined artificial sunlight. The mission was a success. Not that this was a priority action; it wasn't, just a show of force and more political propaganda for the taxpayers on the shores of Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada. Soon the cool waters of the Gulf Stream would douse the flares and their mission would be complete as their fiery signals would be snuffed out and the reef line would return to its previous state of darkness.\n\nBy the time the Customs' 41-foot white Indian arrived over Molasses Reef, Roberto Alazar and his crew knew to expect company. Alazar tracked the bullet-shaped craft over ten miles as it headed north, making its way up the Hawks Channel then heading out to the reef line some two miles parallel to the original course. Everyone on the boat assumed their position as most simply maintained a wet fishing line while sipping on a cold beer. Del cleaned a small grouper he caught earlier, filleting the white meat clean from its long thin bones.\n\nOwen knew his way around the barrier reefs of the Keys. He was an experienced diver and had spent enough time both under and on top of the water to know the sub-oceanic terrain. One of the boats Owen Sands usually piloted through these waters was a 53-foot U. S. Customs Hatteras called Frankly Scarlet. It drew significantly more water than the Indian go-fast, ensuring the courses he took would be more than adequate for the sleeker, shallow-drafted 41-footer. Still, the Fiberglas hull of the Indian, as tough as it might have been, was no match for the razor sharp projections of the barrier coral reefs. The wet rocks were like barbs waiting to split open such a passing boat.\n\nThanks to the falling flares, Owen could see the entourage arranged at the reef. The brightly lit aft deck of the Vibrations was the first to draw his attention as he slowed the boat to an idle. As the boat came into view, he could see a man standing on the aft deck with a full beard and plump belly. Roberto Alazar hadn't changed a bit, Owen thought to himself. Joel circled once. As the Indian passed the transom by twenty yards, Alazar caught Owen's stare and the two stood in a trance, their eyes fixed on each other. Joel watched, seeing there was more going on here than he was ready to understand. No one spoke. The only noise that was present was the harmonic rapping of the boat's engines. Joel observed as Owen's whole mood changed. He seemed less confident, even the boat moved differently. Something had changed. Owen stepped over, pushing Joel away from the wheel and then steered the boat away from the Vibrations, heading towards the shore.\n\n\"What are we doing?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"We're going in. I want to check the Cross Key Cut and then switch to a different boat.\"\n\n\"What about these guys?\"\n\n\"They're not going to let us catch them. They'll drop their load mid ocean before we would even get close. Trust me,\" Owen answered.\n\n\"I disagree, I think we should wait it out...Go inland and watch the radar,\" he said pleading his case.\n\n\"It'll never happen; they're too smart for that.\"\n\n\"Yeah but...\"\n\n\"Not gonna happen Joel, now hold on,\" Sands said as he powered up the Indian. The boat climbed over the waves as it left the reef line.\n\n* * * * *\n\nApparition\n\nRandal Albury stood watch behind the console of his 25-foot open powerboat. Rigged with two high-powered outboards, it was fast and dependable, giving Albury the acceleration he needed in unruly times of crisis. He ran the chase boat and his job was to maintain a stealthy anonymity until the transfer was made when his mission would then became creating a simple distraction. He usually did so by attaching a hexagonally-shaped radar reflector to the boat's VHF antenna mast. This technique would draw most of the \"brilliant\" attention of the radar screens in Miami and those afloat on patrol boats in the area. This in turn handed the ball of stealth to the boats laden with their heavy loads. Albury would make an obvious high-speed course for the mainland, and distract all those watching in the process.\n\nAlbury was proud of his boat. He bought it at a Florida Marine Patrol surplus auction held periodically at the Port Everglades shipping terminal in Fort Lauderdale. It was there that the general public had the opportunity to purchase surplus boats, trailers and other marine equipment.\n\nAlbury saw the 25-footer for the first time propped up on cinderblocks, sitting on dry land. It was colored in a drab gray finish. Its former name, Florida Marine Patrol, was painted over with a can of household spray paint and the interior and engines were stripped. Gaping holes remained where instrument panels were once attached. The only thing that even resembled a civilian craft was the boat manufacturer's nameplate on the aft side, Mako, with a small silhouette of a shark swimming about the letters. The Mako had a good reputation for being a sea boat. Built in Miami, the craft was a legend in the fishing industry. Albury purchased the hull at a fair price, twenty-seven hundred dollars, and brought it back to the Keys where he completely overhauled her. With new engines, paint and rigging, the boat was one of the finest around. Her color remained the drab gray, painted new with a glossy polyurethane. This time, DuPont Imron, the type of paint used to coat commercial jet liners, was used instead of the original faded Fiberglas gelcoat. From a distance, the craft still looked like Florida Marine Patrol property. Her gray silhouette with a black welded aluminum and canvas top along with the standard equipment of a Raytheon sixteen-mile radar, VHF marine transceiver, CB, and two-meter radios, made her aptly equipped. A parabolic listening hailer completed the package giving Albury listening capabilities of approaching craft. The radar and side-mounted speakers for the hailer only added to its appearance, giving her even more of an official impression.\n\nBy the time Albury had arrived at the reef, Chino and Alberto had already anchored the La Pinta and had four fishing lines out, trolling through the awkward current. To the south, the Vibrations rolled back and forth in the incoming swells. Albury made sure not to come too close. A triple \"click\" on the radio acknowledged his presence. Both boats responded with similar transmissions, as they would operate on CB Channel Seven tonight.\n\nAlbury had watched as Red and Stump's blue-hulled 26-foot Chris-Craft arrived thirty minutes after the Cho Chos and were firmly anchored in position. The broad-beamed Chris took the waves with the stability of boats twice its size.\n\nThe crew of the Chris-Craft was notorious. Red and Stump were two local boys who went to high school with Albury. That was all they had in common though. Albury was extremely studious during his teenage years, unlike Red and Stump who ran with a dangerous crowd of kids who always got caught smoking pot in the bathroom or defying the law by riding their motorcycles without helmets. They were labeled as heavy metal headbangers who lived life with half the brain cells they were granted at birth. Albury figured they did their job though, and that was all that mattered. Besides, they had grown up hating cops, politicians, and all other figures of authority. They were the type of people who wouldn't make a deal with the Feds if they were ever caught.\n\n\"Slingshot this is Crossbow over,\" Gordo said over the specially rigged Icom 28 radio transceiver.\n\nThe Icom 28 was manufactured by Icom Electronics Corporation of Japan and was imported through Gene Latrell's spy shop in Miami. The device was not only the most powerful two-meter transceiver on the market but also the most versatile. With the removal of one single diode, the radio increased its transmit and received ranges by almost two hundred percent. Simply put, the frequency ranges designated for two-meter amateurs were 138 megahertz to 148 megahertz. By eliminating diode twenty-one, the radio could then transmit and receive on an expanded frequency range of 138 to 172 megahertz. The U.S. Customs Service operated on a frequency range of 162 to 166 megahertz.\n\nThe Customs Service utilized transmissions that were encrypted and \"private line\" coded, meaning that the two stations communicating back and forth could only decipher their own encrypted transmissions. Anyone who would listen in on the traffic would only hear gibberish. The PL coded transmissions were more public and basically enabled two stations to communicate on a given frequency, without being interrupted by other stations and distant interference. Therefore, without the proper PL codes, one could transmit on the same frequency as the U. S. Customs Service without them knowing. This, of course, did not preclude people listening in on normal household police scanners because they heard everything that came across the frequency. For this reason, Alazar and his men operated on the Icoms using the same numbers and terminology as the Customs Service. Nicknames like Slingshot, Crossbow, Bow and Arrow, and Striking Arrow were common code words on the Customs' channels.\n\n\"Crossbow this is Slingshot, go ahead.\"\n\n\"I'm about ten miles out from your position, do you copy?\" Gordo replied.\n\n\"10-4, Crossbow, proceed as planned,\" Del replied.\n\nTo those who listened on their scanners from Radio Shack and Sears, it sounded like a simple transmission on 165.235 megahertz, the government's official general working frequency. To the Customs Service who actually used the channel, it registered as static because their radios were set up to transmit and receive only their transmissions, blocking out all stray noises and other interference called skip. Since this was their own channel, the Customs Service didn't include it in the menu of frequencies they routinely scanned while on patrol. It was an ingenious way for the Alazars to communicate long distances without detection.\n\nFor short-range communications, the crew used simple, automotive low power CB radios. The sets were tuned down so the wattage was only transmitting one or two watts, enough to communicate up to a mile over water without the entire mainland community listening in. This jargon sounded quite a bit different.\n\n\"Dr. Pepper,\" Alazar said, speaking into the mic of the CB this time.\n\n\"Go ahead Pepsi,\" Albury replied.\n\n\"Wash your hands, it's time for dinner.\"\n\n\"Roger that,\" Albury responded, this time with more enthusiasm.\n\nIt was these names that gave the Alazar crew their unofficial name: The Soda Pop Gang.\n\nAlbury tuned in his hailer, listening carefully to the noises of the ocean ahead. He was adrift now, having retrieved the anchor from the coral bottom. In the distance he could hear the synchronized rhyme of Gordo's outboard engines turning through the waves. Albury powered the boat forward, keeping a keen eye over the reef into the blue water ahead. Blue water in the daylight, it now appeared as black and bottomless as any dark caldron.\n\nGordo approached the reef, cutting the Stiletto's engines back to an idle. Hot steaming water and exhaust vapors spat out the four outboard motors bolted to the boat's transom. Gordo jockeyed the boat with its bow into the wind and oncoming waves. Alberto and Chino were the first to lie on the side of the much larger vessel, tucking fenders in between the boats to prevent \"freighter burn.\" These deep abrasions to the boat's hull were telltale signs that the boat had been involved in something illicit, not to mention the fact that Gordo took a lot of pride in his small fleet of boats. Scratching them was completely out of the question.\n\n\"One, two, three...\" Gordo counted as he passed the seventy-pound burlap cubes over to the other boat. Chino received, maintaining a count on his own, while Alberto placed the bales strategically around the boat, distributing the weight evenly.\n\n\"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty,\" Gordo declared.\n\n\"Thirty,\" Chino acknowledged with a push. The smaller vessel drifted away from the Stiletto. Alberto finished placing the rest of the load while Chino powered up the one running engine. The La Pinta departed and headed northwest.\n\nAlazar, Del and Gus Greico watched from the aft deck of the Vibrations some two hundred yards away. All was going smoothly as a light rain started to fall. The inclement weather posed some significant advantages and some disadvantages. The line-of-sight vision of the patrol crews coupled with the decrease in radar acuity due to rain clutter were present, but this also held true for Alazar who was now peering through the hood of Vibrations' radar screen.\n\nAlbury continued to listen and look. As the crew was at their most vulnerable point, the six-foot-four-inch seaman's eyes adjusted to a sight just off his starboard bow, some one hundred yards away. It was like nothing he had ever seen. The night air was cool and wet. His boat sat perched, floating on the black, bottomless sea. Hell could have resided below these depths for all he knew. His close friend, Bobby Alazar, had been killed not far from there, just a few months before. Albury did not consider himself to be a superstitious man, until now.\n\nThe vision appeared as a ghost dancing on the water, an apparition of flapping white sheets that he could hear fluttering over the hailer. Albury was but for a minute, stunned. Then, without giving it a second thought, he did what his aggressive, alpha male intuitions told him to do. He jammed the boat's two throttle levers forward and charged the vision. The two outboards roared like dogs fighting over a piece of meat as the razor sharp propellers slipped through the air and water, trying to grab a bite.\n\n\"Dr. Pepper, what's happening?\" Del asked over the radio, hearing the noise of the roaring engines.\n\n\"Pepsi, do you have a contact on your radar? It should be about three hundred yards off your starboard bow,\" Albury said, holding the mic with one hand and the wheel with the other.\n\nDel looked over at Roberto who popped his head up from the radar hood, nodding in the affirmative. How could we have missed this? he thought.\n\n\"Yes, Dr. Pepper! You should be bearing down on him any minute now.\"\n\nAs a large, rolling swell lifted the charging Mako up twelve feet over the other swells, Albury could see the vision with full clarity. The hull and mast came into view as he came to within fifty feet of the vessel. She was a trimaran, about fifty feet in length and in the midst of coming about in the wind with the sails ruffling about. The captain had just brought his boat up from Marathon and was changing course to head west toward Key Largo. Albury stopped the Mako and waited as the craft sailed by.\n\n\"Everyone hold your position,\" he instructed into the mic.\n\nThe rain picked up its intensity and as hard as they tried, the crew of the Vibrations could not see what Albury had found. Alazar continued to peer into the hood of the radar while Del stood on the bow in the rain staring through a pair of field glasses.\n\nThe captain of the sailboat sat in the cockpit holding the tiller arm, completely oblivious to what he had stumbled upon. He watched Albury stare at him as he passed. The look gave him even more goose bumps than the cold night air had delivered already. The exchanging stares lasted for what seemed like minutes. Albury's first instinct was to charge the boat again, only this time ramming her. The trimaran was obviously a home-built plywood craft. She would sink with the first blow within the span of a few seconds. Albury developed a pity for the man, a fellow captain at sea and with who knew what else on board. Children? A wife? The trimaran was not close enough to either the Cho Chos or Gordo. It was obvious he could not see what was going on. Albury followed the crudely shaped craft past the reef line into the much calmer water until the man and his boat disappeared, sailing off into the night.\n\n\"All clear, just a lost sailboat,\" Albury announced over the radio.\n\n\"Thank you Dr. Pepper, good work,\" Del answered with a sigh of relief.\n\n* * * * *\n\nAttrition\n\nDespite the numerous complaints from the homeowners who lived along the Key Largo Cut, Owen Sands made no apologies about running any of the noisy high-powered patrol boats through the man-made canyon during the midnight hours. To get there though, they first had to navigate the winding South Creek of the John Pennekamp State Park.\n\n\u2022\n\nAt the same time, the La Pinta cruised into the mouth of the North Creek under the power of her one running engine. Chino watched the gauges nervously as the oil pressure started to drop down to eight pounds. The 454-powerplant required at least fifteen to maintain adequate lubrication of all the bearings and other moving parts within the motor. With the drop in oil pressure came an increase in engine temperature that was approaching two hundred and eighty degrees.\n\nAlberto counted the tributaries along the banks of the North Creek. Taylor Creek was the third on the right.\n\n\"There it is,\" Alberto called out.\n\n\"Thank God, I don't think this thing will make it much longer.\"\n\n\"Take it easy man, just a little longer.\"\n\nAs Chino turned the boat into the mouth of the smaller tributary, both were shocked by what they saw.\n\n\"A fucking fork. I don't remember a fork Alberto.\"\n\n\"Shit man. What do we do now?\"\n\n\"Call Del?\" Chino suggested.\n\n\"Fuck that. No way. I'm not calling him.\"\n\n\"Then let's flip for it.\"\n\n\"Do you have a coin, man? I don't got a coin Chino.\"\n\n\"Alberto, you are totally useless,\" Chino said, digging into his right pocket and then his left.\n\n\"You don't got a coin either.\"\n\n\"Shut up. I don't want to hear it. We'll go left.\"\n\nChino powered up the tired motor as smoke eased from the vents in the engine box. The engine temperature had dropped as did the oil pressure, hovering at four pounds.\n\nThe two idled through the winding creek as mangrove trees brushed both sides of the boat. The boat was extremely hard to maneuver with only one engine although the power-steering pump was mounted to the one running engine. Chino realized it could have been worse.\n\nInstead of culminating at the end of Grouper Lane, the creek the Cho Chos had chosen opened up into Lake Largo, close to the mouth of the Cross Key Cut.\n\n\"Shit, we should have gone right!\" Chino said.\n\n\"I was thinking right, but I didn't want to say anything,\" Alberto added.\n\n\"I probably wouldn't have listened to you anyway,\" Chino replied, conceding his mistake.\n\n\"What are we going to do? This engine isn't going to last five more minutes.\"\n\n\"Let's make it to the Cut. I have an idea,\" Chino said.\n\nThe La Pinta made it to the mouth of the Cut before the engine stopped in a flurry of racket and smoke. Luckily the tide was high, forcing water away from the ocean and toward the bay. Like a household vacuum cleaner, the current sucked the 24-foot boat into the mouth of the Cut toward the bay. The Cho Chos fended the boat from both sides as it traveled from side to side, riding the fast paced flow of water. Lining both sides of the Cut were steep walls, twenty feet high in some places of carved coral rock, a cross-section of the island cut down to its core. Cast into the walls were petrified fossils, some dating back millions of years.\n\n\"Once we make it past the bridge, we'll have to beach it on the starboard side,\" Chino said.\n\n\"What do we do then?\"\n\n\"There are some trees and a retaining wall. We'll have to dump this stuff there for now.\"\n\n\"Roberto's not going to like that,\" Alberto warned.\n\"Roberto doesn't have much of a choice now, does he?\" Chino answered, straining as he pushed the heavy boat off the wall.\n\nAs the bridge approached, the two climbed up onto the bow. The current was moving along at a brisk pace, close to ten knots. The Cut now resembled a river amongst a flash flood rather than a navigable waterway. Both men prepared for the bridge that had concrete stanchions supporting the span in the middle. Each one had flashing spray coming from the leading edge with a wake trailing behind. The idea was to guide the boat under the bridge without hitting any of the stanchions. The Cho Chos failed miserably. The last push from the coral-faced wall sent the boat into a sideways attitude that it maintained until striking the first stanchion broadside. With a crash, the boat spun around, throwing Alberto from the bow into the cold, flowing water. Chino managed to cast a bowline to his brother and hold him close.\n\n\"Oye, are you alright? Maric\u00f3n, I think we cracked the boat!\" Chino yelled.\n\n\"I'm gonna swim the boat over to these rocks,\" Alberto said as his loud voice echoed within the tall walls.\n\n\"Just beach the damn thing.\"\n\nAlberto, while not very smart, was strong and was born with the gift of endurance. As the Cut opened up to Florida Bay, the walls descended to the water's edge, made up of a rock-lined shore. Alberto managed to climb over the rocks and maintain a footing where he pulled the boat against the current toward the shore. Once past the spoil of the Cut, the La Pinta laid into the rocks, resting with little effort.\n\nChino climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the gorge that was the Cross Key Cut. Less than a hundred feet away was a public storage complex. There were two hundred mini-warehouse storage units contained in seven separate buildings. Each unit had its own rollup entrance, about half the size of a regular single car garage door. All were accessible via a series of driveways that wound throughout the complex. This particular complex maintained an average occupancy rate of seventy percent and on this night, Chino was lucky to find an unused stall within the southwestern quadrant of the complex, the area closest to the beached boat.\n\nThe rollup doors had built into the bottom frame a hasp that tenants would attach a padlock to secure their belongings. The unused stalls were left unlocked. Chino chose a unit that measured eight-by-ten feet and within minutes, the two were lugging their load up the embankment towards the complex.\n\nDuring their ordeal, two very prominent things went wrong with the La Pinta. First, the gasket around the running engine's oil pan had developed a threatening leak that accounted for the smoke and falling oil pressure. Second, the boat had a slow leak in the rubber tube that housed the series of flexible U joints that drove the propulsion end of the outdrive. The hose was a shield between the bilge and the seawater on the other side. The problem went virtually unnoticed for months. Gradually, small amounts of water seeped into the hole that had started out small, but due to the fact that the hose was corrugated, old and dried out, it began to crack, allowing more water to enter. The flexible hose was implemented because the outdrive was designed to tilt up and down and also turn from right to left which was why, after getting lost in the small tributary and making many unnecessary turns, the hose was leaking to the point where the bilge pump could not keep up.\n\nChino had made it to the top of the hill with the last bale when he heard the noise of two high-powered marine engines pacing through Lake Largo, the body of water that sat at the mouth of the Cut. Both men looked at each other before shuffling the last few bales to the storage unit. Chino shut the roll-up door while Alberto made a run for the boat. Both men were starting to panic. Their boat was still laden with residue and if confronted, they would surely be detained and lose their boat, not to mention the possibility of the authorities finding the load stashed within the storage complex. Chino watched as Alberto stopped at the edge of the hill. He looked down at the Cut while holding his forehead in his hands. Shit! Chino thought, where did it go?\n\nBy the time Chino joined his brother's side it was gone. The current within the Cut had taken the 24-foot boat to the bottom of the murky water. The next action was done out of pure fear as the sound of throbbing engines came, echoing from the walls of the Cut.\n\n\"Look! Polic\u00eda!\" Alberto whispered, pointing to the approaching boat. The two made a duck-walk back toward the storage unit. Once there, Chino rolled the door up high enough for the two to enter and then closed it behind them seconds before a stray spotlight shown down the corridor containing their bay.\n\n\u2022\n\nJoel watched as the waterfront homes along the Cut became illuminated as they passed. Owen continued to drive as jeers from the residents, some of whom were standing on their porches in nightclothes, were directed at them.\n\nThe Indian, with its blasting exhaust headers, six hundred horsepower engines and blazing spotlights was despised and Jordan Cheney would have more than one angry phone call to deal with in the morning.\n\n\"What's that?\" Joel asked, pointing to some oily bubbles at the base of the bridge.\n\n\"Nothing. Probably just some shrimp. They run through this cut when the water gets cold,\" Owen said.\n\nTen minutes later they were docking at the Deep Six Marina, a large dry storage facility on Key Largo's bayside.\n\n\"Sector to 1903,\" the radio squawked.\n\n\"1903 here; go Sector,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"We have an inbound target approaching the North Creek. Are you available to intercept?\"\n\n\"10-4 Sector. We are transferring to a different unit but will be en route in five.\"\n\n\"Roger that 1903. Sector out.\"\n\nJoel looked over the 17-foot Boston Whaler, the much smaller open-utility boat they were docked behind. This was going to be a great transition from what he had just driven.\n\n\"Boats like these are how we get the job done,\" Owen said. \"Everything else is just propaganda for the public's benefit.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDepot\n\nThe Chris-Craft called Old Faithful glided into the dock space in front of Kevin Pinder's Taylor Creek trailer for the second time of the busy night. Kevin's partner, Gil Lindback, sat on the edge of the wooden dock with his feet outstretched to fend off the boat as it approached. Red shut down the engines, making the docking that much quieter.\n\n\"This is it boys,\" Red said.\n\n\"I thought we were getting three loads?\" Lindback questioned.\n\n\"The Cho Chos haven't gotten here yet?\"\n\n\"Unless I slept through it, and that's not very likely.\"\n\n\"Shit. They got their load long before us!\"\n\n\"That was at least two hours ago,\" Lindback said.\n\n\"We didn't pass them on the way in,\" Red added.\n\n\"On the way out, stop by and check with Plimpton. Maybe he knows something.\"\n\n\"That's a no-no,\" Stump said.\n\n\"I think you'd better reconsider,\" Lindback suggested.\n\n\"When I get out into the open water, I'll try to call Roberto. He'll know what to do.\"\n\nWinding out through the channel was easy. Red jockeyed the wheel like he was driving a bright red Ferrari through the paces at the Miami Grand Prix. The feeling was great. Both his loads were delivered, and since it was raining, there was no need to bathe the deck with the cleaning solutions.\n\nSeveral clouds moved in which made the seascape darker and more clandestine than it was before. On nights like this, the area in front of Key Largo stayed bright from the street light on the shore, but past the mangrove point and south for two miles, there was nothing. Desolate mangroves covered the shore. These were wetlands and there were no signs of civilization for miles.\n\nTo make up time, Red augmented the boat's power to almost full throttle, increasing the boat's speed by ten knots. Red looked down at the illuminated compass showing 210 degrees. The heading was perfect. They would arrive back at their home dock in twenty minutes.\n\n\u2022\n\nLess than a mile away, Alvin Hipshire slept alone on his home-built trimaran. The three-hulled sailboat constructed entirely of plywood and Fiberglas took every bit of four years to construct. The boat was basically self-sufficient, drawing electric from the sun through solar collectors crudely mounted on the aft deck. A small windmill affixed to the cabin's hardtop provided limited twelve volt service and also aided in recharging his battery cells.\n\nHipshire despised civilization. His neighbors jeered him for building his sailboat in the backyard of his home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was thought of as a crazy old dreamer who didn't amount to much, but when he quit his job as an environmental consultant, sold his home and moved aboard the Dream, all were proven wrong.\n\nThe dark side of John Pennekamp State Park and Lake Largo was the only place he could find where it was quiet. He imagined this was the way it looked ten thousand years before and going back in time ten thousand or ten million years for that matter, was just fine with him.\n\nThe custom-designed bunk was warm and comfortable. A large wool blanket kept it that way. The garment had been quilted by his aunt and given to him as a going-away present. It was bright red with baby blue panels. Patterns were sewn in depicting different seascapes and lighthouses. Not quite his style, but it was warm. It served a purpose and Hipshire was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.\n\nHe lay there, half asleep. Tomorrow he would do some much-needed maintenance on his boat. Even Dreams succumbed to time and corrosion. This area was heaven, he thought to himself. The night air was cool and clear. There wasn't a sound for miles. Earlier, Hipshire turned off his anchor light so he could see a more unobstructed view of the stars. With a sextant in his hand he could plot 'til his heart desire. No LORAN-C or fancy video screens. It was by the seat of his pants, or nothing at all.\n\n\u2022\n\nThe 26-foot Old Faithful forged ahead. A quick look at the gauges; oil temperature right and left, okay, compass heading of 210 degrees, still on course. Even the voltmeters were showing considerable improvement despite earlier trouble he noticed with one of the batteries. Red looked up from the illuminated gauges. He hated how his eyes had to adjust back to the darkness ahead. There were no markers or anything else for that matter to hit on the dark side of Key Largo...or was there...\n\nSMASH!\n\nRed and Stump felt the craft lurch upward toward the sky. Both held on for their lives fearing the worst.\n\nHipshire felt the massive surge of energy hit the side of his boat. The craft sank to the port, and then to starboard, bouncing back up again, throwing Hipshire to the deck. While on his back, he looked up as the entire cabin top, one he had milled and constructed himself by hand, disappeared, leaving the bright stars shining through the scattered clouds overhead.\n\nOld Faithful landed twenty or so feet beyond the tri-hulled craft in a spray of wood splinters and saltwater. Red chopped the throttles and the boat glided to a halt. Both men looked back at the damage they had caused. The entire cabin top of the sailboat had been removed above the deck and the mast, which fell like a tall timber cut and ready for the mill, came to rest, half on the bow and half floating in the choppy water.\n\n\"Do you think they're okay?\" Red asked in a panicked voice.\n\n\"Who cares,\" replied Stump, who worried more about getting caught.\n\n\"Hey, is anyone there?!\" Red yelled back to the devastated boat.\n\n\"Come on man, let's get the fuck outta here!\" Stump cried.\n\n\"Hey, are you okay?\" Red repeated.\n\n\"What are you waiting for man, let's haul ass!\"\n\nRed gave the gas to both engines.\n\n\u2022\n\nTHUG-THUG-THUG\n\n\"Shit, we broke something,\" Stump exclaimed, even more panicked than before.\n\n\"Look over the transom and check the drives. We may have bent one of the props,\" Red suggested.\n\nStump climbed over the engine compartment and peered over the transom. \"Hey look at this!\" he said, pointing down to the water.\n\nRed joined him lying prone over the engine box. Laced between the propellers and the drives was a red and blue quilt blanket.\n\n\"Shit Red, we must have killed the guy.\"\n\n\"You poor fuck, why didn't you have any lights on,\" Red said, speaking directly to the blanket.\n\n\"Watch here, I'm going to see if I can clear the props.\"\n\nStump listened but wasn't sure if he was mentally prepared to watch an arm or maybe a gnawed-up leg come floating out of the twisted blanket. Red climbed behind the helm and put both engines into reverse. As the backwash flowed through the props, the blanket unraveled and floated off to the side of the boat.\n\n\"Yeah, you got it man!\" Stump yelled.\n\nRed could feel the power return to the outdrives. All around the boat there were floating pieces of plywood and Fiberglas. Red took one last look back at the sailboat before powering up. The Chris-Craft planed immediately, resuming its course toward the home marina.\n\nAlvin Hipshire popped his head above the boat's gunwale just in time to see the spray of the boat as it left. Along the horizon, the dropping flares lit up the sky. A quick glance around him and he could see his dream had been dissolved in one fell swoop. Was this a war zone? he thought to himself before reaching for his VHF radio.\n\nLess than a mile away, Jim Plimpton heard chatter on two separate radios.\n\n\"Seven-Up, Seven-Up, this is Sunkist. Do you copy?\" came from the CB.\n\n\"This is Seven-Up, what's going on?\" Jim answered.\n\n\"We hit a deer with Mom's car. The deer is dead.\"\n\nHoly shit, Plimpton thought to himself.\n\n\"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is the sailing yacht Dream, Mayday!\" the VHF marine radio squawked.\n\nPlimpton jetted out across Largo Sound toward South Creek in the hopes of drawing attention away from his friends in Taylor Creek. Within minutes, he had wound his way to the open ocean and was headed back north along the dark side. Before taking off, Plimpton had strapped the cat's eyes to his forehead. Despite the absence of any light, he maintained a perfect view of the water ahead of him.\n\nThe wreckage of the yacht Dream had spread out over the space of an acre by the time Plimpton spotted what was left of her and her captain, Alvin Hipshire, who stood waist deep in cluttered water amongst the wreckage, waving his arms in the air.\n\n\"Skipper, are you okay?\" he cried out.\n\n\"Please help me. I've been run over by some God-awful powerboat. I think it was a Hatteras or maybe a Bertram. I didn't get a very good look at it, but I'm sure it was at least fifty feet long,\" Hipshire said, shivering as he spoke.\n\nPlimpton looked around at the wreckage. What was once a large, sea-going vessel was now a shattered mess of floating debris. I hope this guy was insured and if so, I hope I wasn't the one who wrote the policy, he thought to himself.\n\n\"Look, can I get you to shore?\" Plimpton yelled.\n\n\"I would appreciate that,\" Hipshire replied.\n\nPlimpton motored the boat closer to the desperate man who continued to thank him.\n\n\"Listen, I can't go very fast, but I'll take you directly to the Coast Guard station in Islamorada,\" Plimpton said, knowing he had at least an hour to burn before his friends were finished.\n\n\"Thank you again. You know, they should license those damned powerboat operators. No offense.\"\n\n\"None taken.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nSeizure\n\nJoel stood patiently next to his partner who piloted the small Boston Whaler through the winding mangroves of the North Creek. The sleepless night before combined with the stress of his first day was starting to take its toll. He reached down over the side of the boat and splashed some cold water on his face giving him a temporary reprieve. It was all he could do to keep from falling asleep, even while standing next to the boat's console.\n\nOwen continued through the confining channel, navigating around small mangrove islands and through the twisting channels. He seems to know this area well, Joel thought to himself. The boat made a final turn before entering the main channel where Owen turned off the motor, letting the boat drift against the tree-lined bank. All that could be heard was the stream of hot water draining from the outboard motor's exhaust. Joel reached out his hand, grabbing a leafy branch and pulling the docile boat closer to the bank. The boat sat quietly for a few minutes as Owen tied a rope around the branch and Joel moved to the other side of the boat, sitting on a padded cushion in front of the console. As he put his head against the Plexiglas faring of the windscreen, he felt his eyes grow heavy and was soon asleep.\n\n\u2022\n\nFifty miles away at the C3I communications center, a supervisor entered the dispatch cube. It was part of his regular rounds, making sure things were running smoothly while ensuring a proper need for his position, knowing that his presence probably didn't make a difference as to how the center was run. After all, with the advents of modern government and the changes their president, the actor, had made, it took an act of Congress for him to exact his authority. He learned though to be patient and practice the art of diplomacy when any conflicts arose. He ran a quiet post, sometimes at the cost of efficiency, but it was quiet and this meant, on a public level, undiscovered. Things could be worse, he thought. The President had just fired most of the air traffic controllers across the country, replacing them with under-trained rookies in order to break PATCO, the controllers union. I will forego any air travel for a while, he thought to himself.\n\nThe dispatcher was on her sixth cup of coffee for the night, this one accompanied by a cinnamon sticky bun from the vending machine in the staff lounge.\n\n\"Anything I should be aware of?\" he asked.\n\n\"I lost another two and a half pounds this week,\" she answered.\n\n\"Great!\" he said aloud. Another one-fifty to go, he thought to himself.\n\n\"We have a 38-foot Stinger off Marathon and Blue Thunder 5 just returned from a run down Government Cut...something about Agent Cuttyworth's bachelor party. Besides that it's pretty quiet.\"\n\n\"What about the inbounds?\" he asked.\n\n\"It must be a bad night. Radar's got a few planes and some large commercial traffic in the stream,\" she answered.\n\n\"That's it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, I almost forgot, I've got one target inbound to Key Largo. I've got an FTA and a fresh one from Glynnco out of Tavernier in a 17-foot Whaler off Key Largo.\"\n\n\"Owen Sands,\" he stated.\n\n\"1903?\" she asked.\n\n\"That's him,\" he answered.\n\n\"What are they doing in a 17-foot boat?\" she asked.\n\n\"It's not what they're doing; it's where they're doing it. The channels aren't big enough for the big boats. If I were you, I'd watch. My money's on Owen,\" he said with a smile.\n\n\u2022\n\nBack on the Boston Whaler, Joel felt a soft blow to the side of his head as he realized he had fallen asleep.\n\n\"Wake up kid,\" Owen said.\n\nHe stood straight up as the two looked at each other.\n\n\"What!\" he replied defensively. \"I haven't slept much in the last few days.\"\n\n\"Shush!\" Owen responded. He seemed to have a concerned look on his face which puzzled Joel. Then he felt it. The vibration came first. Then the muffled sound of two large motors idling, purring, and coming their way.\n\n\"They must be lost and unable to maneuver in these tight channels,\" Owen said quietly as he looked at his watch: 1:19 a.m. He started the motor and motivated the boat forward again. The sound and vibrations were easily detectable now, even over the sound of the running outboard motor. The two watched very carefully as they came to an S curve in the channel. Owen spotted it first: a 38-footer, barely visible through the patches of mangroves. Their tiny 17-footer was still undetected as Owen began to act quickly.\n\n\"Here, take this,\" he said, giving the helm to Joel who reluctantly took it, steering around the curve and closer to the approaching boat. Owen then grabbed a portable blue revolving beacon and a spotlight. He climbed on top of the small Fiberglas console, peering over the top of the six-foot-high mangroves. The small boat started to list to one side as the offset weight caused it to be out of balance.\n\n\"As soon as we round the corner, hit the switch at the bottom of the panel,\" Owen whispered.\n\nJoel guided the boat slowly toward the curve in the channel and then, as the boat began to turn, he hit the switch as his partner had requested. The beacon sent a bright blue beam of light sweeping over the top of the larger boat and the handheld spotlight put out a brilliant beam with the intensity of daylight directly on the two occupants in the cockpit of their 38-footer. From their vantage point, the lights appeared to be coming from a stalking Coast Guard gunboat.\n\nAs Joel maneuvered the small utility boat closer to the larger powerboat, Owen maintained the beam of white light directly into the eyes of the two men who shut down their engines and stood with their hands raised high over their heads.\n\n\"Papa 1925 to Sector. We're stopping a vessel in Zone 32L, two POB, repeat, two persons on board,\" he announced into the mic.\n\n\"10-4 1925 at 1:34 hours.\"\n\nJoel pulled alongside as Owen climbed down from the console. The boat was a 38-foot Midnight Express, an off-brand Stiletto manufactured in Hialeah almost exclusively for the smuggling trade. She was gray and black and had a faded paint finish that further diminished its appearance. The cockpit was weathered and the seats had gaping holes in the upholstery.\n\n\"What are you doing out so late?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"We no habla ingl\u00e9s,\" responded one of the men.\n\n\"Polic\u00eda, Federales muchachos. \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 el registro de la barca?\" Owen said, asking them for the boat's registration.\n\n\"I no have. No my boat,\" the driver said.\n\n\"Mira por favor,\" Owen continued to say.\n\n\"No problema aqu\u00ed. We have done nothing,\" the other man added impatiently.\n\n\"Then you have nothing to worry about,\" Owen replied as he brought the first man into the cockpit of the Whaler.\n\n\"This is just temporary,\" he said as he applied a nylon flex cuff, binding the man's wrists behind his back. \"If everything checks out, I'll let you two be on your way...Comprende?\" Owen asked.\n\nThe lead agent then climbed aboard the larger boat and repeated the process on the second man before starting his search. These guys were definitely not on a pleasure cruise, Owen thought to himself as he viewed the duffel bags filled with dirty clothes and unused MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, the military's version of a bagged TV dinner.\n\n\"Watch them closely,\" Owen asked as he disappeared past the cabin door, down below the boat's foredeck.\n\nJoel looked at the two men. Both hadn't shaved in a while and wore clothes that looked like they were from a Goodwill store. They were visually shaken up but complying with the orders Owen had issued to them. Seconds later he emerged from under the cabin. \"Where's the clavo? \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 el clavo?\"\n\nBoth men sat silent.\n\n\"Look, you're both looking at fifteen years apiece. I suggest you cooperate. Where are you headed?\" Owen asked again.\n\n\"We got our presidential rights, man,\" one of them barked, making Joel laugh to himself.\n\nOwen reached for the mic. \"Papa 1903 to Sector.\"\n\n\"Go ahead 1903,\" the female voice responded.\n\n\"We are in custody of two Latin males and one 38-foot vessel. We will need ground units to cover 32 Lima for this target's destination.\"\n\n\"10-4. Am I authorized to alert local agencies?\" she asked.\n\n\"Go ahead Sector, and advise them that we are looking for a destination to accommodate approximately four thousand pounds of burlap,\" Owen said, as Joel raised his eyebrows. \"Also Sector, the dock has to accommodate a 38-footer.\" Burlap was the code for marijuana, usually transported in burlap sacks. Duct tape meant the hard stuff, cocaine.\n\n\"Copy that 1903, good work. I'll alert your office. Will you need assistance with transportation?\" she asked.\n\n\"10-4, have Sector call and wake up Keys Truck Rentals.\"\n\n\"10-4 1925 at 1:54 hours.\"\n\nSector jumped into high gear. During the night, various radar operators and technicians had been monitoring a wide variety of inbound air and sea targets. A seizure had just been confirmed in North Key Largo and now it was their turn to try and find the source for the contraband.\n\nSix targets had been labeled for further investigation. Four of them were airborne and sending transponder signals. Within seconds, the crew at the command center had dispatched field agents to intercept the planes once they had landed. The two remaining targets were waterborne and required a different approach.\n\nAt half past two in the morning, a Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk departed the Opa-Locka Coast Guard Air Station bound for aerial reconnaissance over the Gulf Stream. Mounted firmly into her belly was a FLIR unit, a computerized system that could enable the viewer to literally see in the dark without detection.\n\nOwen Sands drove the 38-footer into Garden Cove less than half a mile away as Joel followed in the Boston Whaler. As the two boats entered the basin of Garden Cove, a red and yellow Ryder truck parked under an overhead streetlight came into view. A portly man dressed in jeans and a soiled white T-shirt stood leaning against the van, smoking a cigarette.\n\n\"Not bad for a first day, Special Agent Kenyon,\" Holmes yelled as the two boats bumped to a stop against the dock. \"How much did we get?\" he asked.\n\n\"Looks like around four thousand, give or take,\" Owen said.\n\n\"Well, I guess I'm waking up with another backache tomorrow,\" Holmes replied.\n\n\"You mean we have to unload this stuff?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Who did you think was going to do it?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"I don't know... maybe them,\" Joel said, pointing to the two prisoners.\n\n\"Gee, never thought of that before. What do you think boss?\" Holmes asked.\n\n\"Aw hell, they'd probably say it was cruel and unusual punishment,\" Owen answered.\n\nThe three agents unloaded sixty bales of cannabis into the yellow cube van, each piece weighing an average of seventy-five pounds. The Whaler was secured for the night and the prisoners were transported to the Monroe County Sheriff's Department jail for holding until the morning. Sands put the finishing touches on the mission by affixing several bright red ten-by-eight-inch stickers on the boat's deck and windshield that read:\n\nSEIZED PROPERTY  \nU.S. Customs Service  \nDO NOT TAMPER  \nFor More Information Contact:  \nSpecial Agent Joel Kenyon  \nCase # 84-19250001  \nCall 1-800-Be Alert\n\n* * * * *\n\nResidue\n\nThe home of Owen Sands was quiet with the exception of a soft ticking from a large grandfather clock that stood tall in the home's cedar-lined den. Outside, the rising sun beamed into the windows while bright light engulfed the kitchen. Blue spotted wallpaper with ducks and pigs covered the walls and brass pots and other cookware hung from the ceiling over a traditional cutting board topped center island. The room felt warm but very much unused. The large wall clock mounted above an eat-in kitchen table read 7:45 a.m.\n\nThe silence was interrupted by the sound of bare feet hitting the crafted tile floor. Dressed in a long T-shirt, fifteen-year-old Jade Sands entered the kitchen. She passed through and cautiously opened an adjacent pantry, exposing the home's washer and dryer.\n\nShe was not an exceptionally pretty girl, considered plain by most standards. Her face, like many girls her age, was covered with adolescent acne and stainless steel braces filled her mouth. Her shoulder length dirty blond hair was unbrushed. In school, her grades were slightly less than average although she didn't really struggle. The teachers who watched over Jade said she was not meeting her potential. Still, she managed to get by. On a small chart affixed to her bathroom mirror she had calculated the exact number of days she could miss during the school year without getting kicked out. The days were distributed on a sliding scale so as to guarantee an equal amount of time off throughout the year.\n\nJade didn't have many friends but the few she did associate with were close. There was Lisa Sikes, who had a ring pierced into her nose, and Lisa's brother, Darren, who preferred the traditional, standard earring that was pierced into a portion of the ear. The three spent a lot of time together, usually doing much of nothing, listening to music or sneaking a cigarette or two.\n\nWhile most teenagers complained about their parents, Jade was smart enough to see the positive side of everything, including her father. Most kids couldn't have cared less about their dad's comings and goings. She was different, always maintaining a watchful eye on him. At a young age, she had a reasonable amount of freedom. Her dad was gone at nights. That meant she could do whatever she pleased and, at times like these, she could pursue her secret benefit.\n\nWhile trying not to make a sound, Jade put her hands through the bundle of dirty clothes. She scattered the loose pieces on the top of the dryer next to her, sifting through the pile until coming to her father's soiled jeans, shirt and socks, clothes he wore during the big bust the night before. Then she reached into a cabinet overhead, in between bottles of detergent, bleach and fabric softener, and removed a large white garbage bag, spreading it over the floor below, shaking the worn garments over the plastic. Pieces of cannabis fell from the creases, crevasses and pockets, raining down on the white surface. She shook until there were no more remnants left. Jade then went to the living room, gathered his tennis shoes and repeated the process. With the skill of a chemist, she emptied the remnants into a smaller clear plastic bag, an ounce of weed in all, being careful to return the clothes and pair of shoes back to their original places. She returned quietly to her room where she started to shower and get dressed for school.\n\nRAP RAP RAP\n\nThere it was again, Owen Sands thought to himself as he climbed out of bed and staggered through the house. Joel stood patiently in front of the large door. As it opened, he was surprised to see Owen standing there, half slumped over, dressed in a muscle shirt and jockey shorts.\n\n\"I didn't mean to wake you,\" Joel said.\n\n\"It's okay, I had to get up sometime today,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"Porky says we need to pick up the Whaler.\"\n\n\"You've been to the office?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"Yeah, I wanted to get started on the paperwork from last night.\"\n\n\"Well I guess you'd better come in. I'll need some time to get ready.\"\n\nJoel entered the home and sat on the couch while Owen disappeared into the back room.\n\n\"How did you know where I live?\" Owen yelled back from his room.\n\n\"Porky told me. He drew a map.\"\n\n\"I'll have to remember to thank him,\" Owen said sarcastically.\n\nWhile he took his time in the back, Joel looked around the living room. The interior resembled a North Carolina hunting lodge with cedar planks covering the walls and a stone fireplace built into the center of the wall, constructed entirely out of gray slate. In the opposite corner sat a sixty-inch projection TV and below his feet, a thick bear-skinned rug. From the back room Sands yelled again.\n\n\"I met your mother,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Really? Don't get too attached,\" Owen warned.\n\n\"Why? She seems like a sweet lady.\"\n\n\"She is, but we are seeing early stages of dementia. She will probably forget your name by the end of the week.\"\n\n\"And she lives alone?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Her choice, for now. She has a visiting nurse who comes in twice a week. I'm sure she will have to be put into a home soon.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear it man.\"\n\n\"Hey, if you want something to drink help yourself.\"\n\nDistracted, Joel did not answer. He picked up the framed photo. It looked like a prom picture of a girl dressed in a white sequined dress that complemented her perfectly tanned shoulders. Another picture contained Owen, a woman and two young girls, all of whom were dressed in ski clothes with the backdrop of snow-covered mountains behind them.\n\n\"Hey, listen,\" Owen began, coming back into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist. \"I'm probably going to be awhile. Why don't you drive up and get the boat yourself. There's a chart under the console. You'll be okay if you stay on the bay side.\"\n\n\"You've got a lot of confidence in me,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Well, if the truth were known, I've got a meeting with my daughter's guidance counselor at the high school and I really don't have a choice.\"\n\n\"It's okay, I'll figure it out,\" Joel said.\n\n\"You'll do fine. If you get into trouble, pull into the closest marina and call me.\"\n\n\"The chart is under the console?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Under the console,\" Owen replied. \"Take the Key Largo Cut over to the bay side and follow the markers.\"\n\nFollow the markers, Kenyon thought to himself.\n\nOwen finished getting dressed as Jade slipped out the back door unnoticed.\n\n\u2022\n\nIt was an hour later and Owen walked through the double doors of the Coral Shores High School, the only public high school in the Upper Florida Keys. For the most part, he was happy with the school. His older daughter had graduated from there and now Jade was two years away from doing the same. The school housed enough classroom space and ancillary facilities for a student body of twelve hundred, although the rolls reflected a count closer to a thousand. The fact that most of the faculty and staff were alumni of the University of Miami was especially evident in the school's athletic department, regionally known for producing excellent ball players, players who, like their mentoring university, were known as the Hurricanes and wore similar uniforms only adorned in green and gold. The idea caught on and while the state was looking at the real Miami Hurricanes, the miniature Hurricanes at times caught equal billing, especially when the scores and stats corresponded between games.\n\nThe hallway was long and quiet. Owen reminisced of his days in high school growing up in Hialeah. Before entering the office he took one last look down at his watch. 9:12 a.m. He was over ten minutes late.\n\n\"Mr. Sands, please come in,\" said a perky woman standing next to a copy machine.\n\n\"I'm sorry; I'm running a little late...\" Owen apologized.\n\n\"Well, at least now we know where Jade gets her punctuality.\"\n\n\"Jade was late?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why don't you follow me back to my office and we'll talk about it in private.\"\n\nThe two walked down a short hallway to another door and entered. It was a modest-sized room. The centerpiece, a large oak desk, took up most of the space. Behind it, hung conspicuously, were several degrees and certificates, most from the Florida State University. At the top of the collection, which was arranged in the shape of a pyramid, was a doctoral degree from Duke.\n\n\"Have a seat. Coffee?\" she asked.\n\n\"No, no thanks,\" Sands answered.\n\n\"Well, we will get right down to it.\"\n\n\"Please do,\" he said.\n\n\"Jade, while a very bright girl, is not performing to her capacity. She is making a low C at best and we all know she is capable of producing better grades than that. I believe the problem stems from the home,\" she suggested, nervously dropping a pencil on the desk.\n\n\"I know I haven't provided the ideal home environment for her, but between myself and her grandmother, I think we give Jade everything she needs to grow and go to school,\" he said confidently.\n\n\"Where is Jade's mother?\" she asked.\n\n\"Homestead,\" Owen responded quietly.\n\n\"Oh, great, maybe we can have her join us at the next meeting.\"\n\n\"I don't think so. My wife passed away several years ago. She resides at the Birchwood Memorial Gardens in Homestead.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, I didn't know,\" she faltered.\n\n\"You should have,\" Owen replied with an irritated tone.\n\n\"Yes, you're right. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't get me wrong. We don't use Leslie's death as an excuse by any means, but you are her guidance counselor. Something as basic as the death of a parent should be in her file or something. Shouldn't it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes it should. Look Mr. Sands, I've only been with this school for less than a year and most of the cases I've had to inherit from someone else.\"\n\n\"Understood. Look, I'll do what I can to encourage and promote some ambition in my daughter and if you could keep me informed as to any new developments, I would appreciate it,\" he said.\n\n\"Would you have any objections to me moving Jade from her free period to a study aid class?\" she asked.\n\n\"It sounds like a good move to me,\" he agreed.\n\n* * * * *\n\nSculpture\n\nHank Pearson sat patiently in the padded, wood-lined pew that had been assigned to him and the other jurors on his row. He had been called to serve his duty. The day started early with free coffee and donuts in the call room. Pearson spent most of the morning sitting amidst two hundred other people. The process was slow and tedious. Attorneys from the Second Federal Judicial District milled over prospective jurors until a group of non-partisan objective listeners could be compiled.\n\nHis boss, with all the right techniques to get disqualified, had coached Pearson. It was either \"hate Columbians\" or \"feel the federal government has no right peering into people's lives.\" Whatever the reason, he was compelled to ignore them all, despite his boss's objections. His employer, Ajac Restaurant Supply, Inc. of greater Atlanta, was in the middle of a stock reduction program, which left Pearson pulling twelve-hour days, six days a week. At thirty-seven, Pearson was responsible for sales to the northwestern corner of the city. His territory contained some fifteen hundred restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops, all begging for the innovative and exclusive products he sold. His boss was under the gun to increase sales and lower the downtime of his brokers. Ajac owned several warehouses in Norcross, a small industrial area on Atlanta's Eastside, all filled with stainless sinks, fryers, toasters, pizza ovens and the daily consumables which alone accounted for over sixteen million in gross sales. Some were new, some were used, but all were priced to sell.\n\nPearson's newfound commitment as a grand juror would occupy his life from 6:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. every Friday for the next twenty-six weeks. He was proud to serve in this fashion as he was always intrigued by federal crimes. He wondered what he would be exposed to: counterfeit, drugs, tax evasion, bank robbery? He watched syndicated reruns of Perry Mason and the Andy Griffith Show religiously. The thought of being part of the federal process made his palms sweat. What he would encounter would change his opinion forever.\n\nPat Stephens stood up from an adjacent chair. His off-the-rack suit had been recently pressed and what was left of his hair was parted neatly to the right. The gray streak was only overshadowed by his piercing blue eyes. At forty-two, if he was anything, he was a confident man.\n\nAs Stephens spoke, his voice echoed from the walnut-coated walls trimmed in cherry and garnished oak stanchions. He commanded attention from Pearson and the other twenty-two jurors.\n\n\"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Patrick Stephens and I am a special prosecutor with the United States Justice Department. Normally, as jurors, you are exposed to anywhere from three to five ongoing federal cases involving as many as twenty different defendants. Over the next six months, you will, through me, hear about several targets involved in different cases. One in particular though, has our attention. No, it's not a famous mass murderer,\" Stephens said, evoking laughter from the jurors.\n\n\"We will focus all of our limited time and energy toward seeking justice and wisdom from our Lord God to find out the truth. Whether or not to indict this man, simply expose him to the closer scrutiny of a trial, or to ignore the evidence presented and hand down a no bill, setting him free of this judicial process. Let us pray...\"\n\nPearson, like the others, bowed his head with reserve. Stephens made this not just a mission for the United States, but also a mission from God. Pearson, who had attended the Norcross First Baptist Church for over eleven years, was hooked.\n\n\"Our Father who watches over us...\"\n\nStephens paused as he squinted up to view his captive audience.\n\n\"Please direct our paths as we look forward, with the assistance of your light, into a very dark room, one that holds in it the sins of many others. We ask for your direction and guidance in deciding which path to take. We ask for the courage to make those decisions that we might find difficult. Let us do some good. In your name, we pray, Amen.\"\n\nStephens paused for a minute as the jurors opened their eyes and reoriented themselves with the room. \"The man you will learn about later is a drug dealer. But not just any drug dealer. This man is more dangerous than that. He is a cop, a federal agent actually, still on the job as we speak. He works in one of the busiest sectors of the U.S., the Florida Keys. Because of its proximity to the Bahamas and South America, the Keys have become the busiest conduit for drug traffic in the country. It is estimated that more than seventy percent of all illegal drugs enter the U.S. through this chain of islands. The man you will be investigating has been entrusted by our country, by you the taxpayers and by me personally, to uphold and enforce the law. In the next few months, ladies and gentlemen, we will peer into the life of this man and see how he has betrayed that trust for the purpose of promoting his own personal gain.\"\n\nAt the end of Stephens's introduction, Pearson found himself sitting upright in the hard pew. He hung on every word preached to him by the exuberant Stephens. A slightly chunky girl entered the room serving ice water and fruit. The jurors took in the brief concessions as Stephens fumbled through his notes.\n\n\"Welcome to the 'People's Panel.' That's what it is you know. A chance for ordinary people like you to extract justice from a system cluttered with bureaucracy and red tape. The process itself is a guaranteed right granted to you, the people, by the Fifth Amendment. Yes, I said the Fifth Amendment. The same piece of legislation we hear quoted so often in this very room. The amendment which protects a witness or defendant from self-incrimination also provides for the grand jury process and all that it entails.\"\n\n\"Since we will not have a judge presiding over us, Judge Terry Lewis is in his chambers downstairs and at our disposal should any problems arise. No judge, no attorneys, and no gallery. It's just you all, the witnesses, and me. And, I almost forgot, the young lady with the goodies is my assistant Marcy. If you need anything, she will be glad to get it for you,\" Stephens informed before drinking from a glass of ice water.\n\n\"In the year 1919, an interesting case erupted, that of the United States versus Blair. The specifics of the case aren't important but the fact that a newly revised grand jury system made its first indictment ever sets it apart as a landmark event. This transposed earlier attempts which were nothing more than rumor shops with the bulk of evidence coming from the testimony of the jurors themselves who testified to personal accounts, gossip and hearsay. Today's grand jury is an official inquisition and the United States Federal Court System sees to it that we are afforded a tremendous amount of leeway. Our proceedings are stenographed and videotaped for later examination. And like other court proceedings, anyone who violates their oath to the truth is guilty of perjury and I prosecute those personally,\" Stephens said, pausing for a moment while examining his notes.\n\n\"Your attendance is very important. Out of the twenty-three of you, I will need a quorum of sixteen to proceed. In the end, it will take a mere twelve to indict. The number twenty-three by the way, has been traced back to the ancient Jewish twenty-three member tribunal known as the Lesser Sanhedrin, which served for a number of years as an ecclesiastical and secular court until the destruction of the second temple in the year 70 A.D. So folks, this process has been around for awhile in one form or another.\"\n\n\"Why so many of you? Well some states like Indiana and South Dakota have only seven jurors on a panel. The state of Virginia utilizes five. The federal government uses twenty-three because we want the largest spectrum of the community to be represented and the interjection of a broad opinion base. Different ideas from different walks of life. Different races, cultures, well, you get the idea.\"\n\nStephens paused again, this time retrieving two enlarged pictures that were placed on a display easel. They were pictures, mug shots, of two men. Both appeared to be in their thirties. Both were Latin. Both were grubby and hadn't shaved in probably a week. Underneath them, from their necks, hung a booking pallet, a board suspended by a chain bearing the date of arrest, arresting agency - in this case the Metro Dade Police Department of Miami - and the booking number.\n\n\"These, ladies and gentlemen, are the Aryo Brothers, suspected of narcotics distribution, money laundering, extortion, and the murder of a federal informant. They bring me to my next topic and that is anonymity. Secrecy. What you see here and hear here stays here. Because of a leak in the system, these dangerous criminals got word of a secret indictment and before our agents had a chance to raid their home and take them into custody, they fled jurisdiction - a blatant flight to avoid prosecution. Something we don't want to have happen. Ever!\"\n\nStephens continued. \"Your job is simple. Hear the evidence presented and decide: A, if a crime has been committed and B, is there probable cause to indict the person, the target, suspected of perpetrating the said crime? The conflict that you may be considering is whether to vote in favor of an indictment or not to. I want you to remember that an indictment is not a conviction. Like most court cases, a jury is present, and they have to vote on a defendant's guilt or innocence, a vote that, I must stress, has to be unanimous. This is not what you will be deciding today. You are simply deciding whether to charge someone we, the government, feel is breaking the law. Over the next six months you will be charged with this responsibility and you will hear a lot of testimony about a wide variety of potential defendants. Today, I am going to give you an easy case. Let's call it our case with training wheels, something to get your feet wet,\" he said, pausing for a minute to drink from a glass of water.\n\n\"Are there any questions?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"Where are the bathrooms?\" one of the jurors replied.\n\n\"How insensitive of me. They are out that door,\" he answered, pointing to the back of the hearing room, \"and to the left. We also have fresh coffee, donuts, sodas and bottled water. If there is anything that can make your service here more comfortable, don't hesitate to ask.\"\n\nFor the first time, Pearson didn't regret the turn of luck that had landed him there. His only task was explaining to his boss at Ajac that he was going to miss every Friday morning for the next six months.\n\n\"Our first case is the culmination of a two year intensive investigation. For time's sake, this is the way we are going to conduct this hearing. I am going to present a batch of evidence and then we will vote for a true bill. If we elect to indict, we will stop there and call it a day. If we have no bill, then we will present more evidence. This may sound like an attempt to manipulate you into a hasty decision, but it's more complicated than that. The truth is this tactic is for your protection and the protection of the eventual case that will hopefully end up in federal court. Information in a case like this is fragile and, as much as I want to tell you everything, remember that we need to keep things on a need to know basis. Having told you this, please consider that what you hear in the jury room is probably just the tip of the iceberg.\"\n\nStephens had Pearson's complete and unobstructed attention. In his regular job he dealt with a lot of people who were less than reliable. His customers were either restaurateurs or those wanting to be in the restaurant business. Stephens was different. A real straight shooter, Pearson thought to himself.\n\n\"Remember the Aryo Brothers I mentioned? Well, they have been caught and they are talking, which has led us to our next target and your first case. Guillermo Morales is a businessman, a community figure, a father, a devoted husband, an upstanding member of his church, a world champion powerboat racer, and what we call, a kingpin. He's forty-seven, claims three hundred and fifty thousand a year on his taxes as a painting contractor and, at our last estimate, is worth just over twenty-three million dollars.\"\n\nPearson, along with the rest of the jurors, was hooked. This was the stuff headlines were made of. Now they were going be a part of those headlines.\n\nIt was a shotgun approach, one made famous by the late John Kenyon eleven years before during the Watergate indictments. Overwhelm a fresh panel as soon as you can.\n\nAfter six witnesses, seventeen exhibits and a thirty-one minute wiretapped phone call, Stephens was ready to take his handpicked jury for a test drive by sending them to deliberate amongst themselves.\n\n\"I am going to leave this in your hands,\" he told them. \"This is a serious crime, and I know how you feel. You want some form of immediate justice and the thought of waiting for a long, drawn out trial frustrates you. So I'll make you guys a deal. You give me indictments for racketeering and murder of a federal witness, and I will have Mr. Morales in custody before our next meeting.\"\n\nTen minutes later, Stephens was sitting in the judge's chambers side study with his feet on the desk and a smoldering cigar perched between his lips, talking to his wife on the phone.\n\n\"It was beautiful, babe. A unanimous bill on the first run.\"\n\n\"I'm so proud of you.\"\n\n\"I'm on a roll and I'm going to pull this wagon until the wheels come off. You know this means I'm going to have to do that boat race thing in Key West this next week.\"\n\n\"Joel is coming home for a few days.\"\n\n\"I know. It won't conflict. I need to spend some time with him anyway.\"\n\n\"I know that mind of yours. What are you up to with my baby brother?\"\n\n\"I just need to debrief him. Find out how everything's going. I've stuck my neck out you know, getting him this assignment. I just want to make sure he's not, you know, fucking things up.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nExtrication\n\nMoving a load this size had to be done in stages. The first step was to get the product to an offshore island, like Gordo's favorite, Andros. From there, go-fasts, like the Black Duck and the Cigarette would take the stuff to the waiting boats at the reef line. The reefs were located beyond the three-mile limit that restricted the jurisdictions of the state and local law enforcement agencies, leaving the sole authority to the Customs Service and the Coast Guard. Smaller vessels like the Chris-Craft and the Cho Chos' La Pinta had a better chance of getting through from there. They were quieter and could fit in the tight channels and creeks that led to the secluded clavos on dry land. Another advantage was that by using more than one boat, it broke the load up. Should the worst happen, they would not lose everything. It was hard for the authorities to track the multiple incoming targets, even on radar.\n\nFor the crew of the clavo, the day after presented a conflict of feelings. On one hand, most of the load had been delivered without incident. In this case nearly three thousand pounds crossed the threshold of the singlewide mobile home on Grouper Lane. On the other, there was still a lot of work to be done and one of the boats was still missing. There was still no word from the Cho Chos and word was already on the streets that Customs agents had made a big bust a few hours before.\n\nWith the load weighed and numbered, each bale recorded on a notebook with a corresponding weight measured to the nearest quarter-pound with the bathroom scale, the load still had to make its way to Miami. Kevin surveyed the bales stacked neatly throughout the 70-foot trailer. Sunlight was just beginning to shine through the windows across the piles of burlap and dark eight mil plastic.\n\nThe first mule's cars would arrive any minute. Each one was an oversized Lincoln, Cadillac or Chevy Impala, and all with large motors, four hundred cubic inches plus, and large trunks, large enough to hold six or seven bales. All the cars were equipped with air shocks and CB radios. During the day, the mule would have to adjust the air pressure both up and down to compensate for the weight differential the rear of the car would encounter. A small air compressor was stored in the trailer's secluded carport just for this purpose.\n\nIt was 9:10 a.m. Their success depended on them getting the load out by noon. Gordo had arranged five mules with cars and, as Kevin started to massage his sore muscles from last night, the first one arrived, backing into the tiny carport. Its large engine vibrated the flimsy walls of the trailer as the car's tailpipe rattled under its rusty frame. Kevin walked out the side door into the enclosure. The first mule was a Latin man, one he had never seen before, probably an illegal alien, maybe Cuban, but he looked more Mexican. Gordo had in the past recruited from the migrant camps in Homestead during the picking seasons. This guy was neatly dressed, a matching navy blue polo shirt and khaki shorts. He spoke no English. He was humble and very polite. Kevin would probably see this guy two or three times today. He would be paid per trip, usually at least twelve hundred dollars a load.\n\nThe job was simple. First, act like their namesake and get the product to the safehouse. Second, be anonymous, drive like everyone else on the road. Stay with the flow of traffic. If cars were going forty-five in a fifty-five miles per hour zone, slow down, don't pass. If sixty-five in the same zone, speed up, don't be overtaken. Do as the chameleon does and blend. Third, and most importantly, listen to the radio. Gordo would be out in his station wagon scouting the roads, especially a strip of highway called the Danger Zone. Named appropriately after the release of the movie Top Gun, this mile and a half strip of pavement represented the entire length of the highway's passage through a town called Florida City. The cops there were known to set up impromptu roadblocks and stop everything and anything that came out of the Keys. This was tolerated at first because at its inception, South Florida was being inundated with refugees, Cubans from Muriel and Haitians fleeing the oppression left behind by the failed dictatorship. The roadblocks were instituted by the Border Patrol, a division of the U. S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization, a very powerful agency and one, despite the objections, which set an era of precedence. If you are leaving the Keys, be prepared to be stopped.\n\nThe Florida City Police Department, with less than twelve full-time uniformed officers and four marked patrol cars, had seized more cars and confiscated, pound for pound, more illegal contraband consisting of coke, weed, and one carload of imitation Rolexes, than the entire statewide agency of the Florida Highway Patrol. City Hall, a small, one-story concrete block structure, looked more like a sales office for a junkyard with its location directly next to the city's seven acre holding and impound yard. Here, cars, trucks, trailered boats, and motor homes were stored, awaiting trial or actual forfeiture and then eventual sale at one of many such auctions held in the area, a process that routinely took between three to five years.\n\nThe Alazars were lucky. In their many years of moving contraband, they had only lost one car. It was before Gordo had started taking such extensive counter-surveillance measures and in a span of five minutes, the time it took for the lead car to pass the Danger Zone to the next in line, a roadblock went up. There was no escaping. Fortunately, the mule radioed out a message and all the other cars behind him were turned back. His car was searched and the load discovered without much trouble. The mule was resourceful and after four hours of incarceration, he escaped the tiny confines of the Florida City jail through a loose set of bars covering an inmate bathroom, avoiding prosecution and fleeing back to Mexico.\n\nKevin surveyed the thick mangroves across the canal for suspicious visitors or anyone else that might be able to see into the back of the carport. The signal was then given and one by one, the sixty-pound blocks came out the side door and were deposited neatly into the trunk. The spare tire had to be removed. Kevin's carport was usually filled with different sized spare tires during the course of the day after. A spare tire put in the backseat was a dead giveaway. Kevin plugged in the tiny air compressor and watched as the lights in the poorly wired mobile home dimmed slightly. He folded back the license plate and exposed an air fitting, one much like the stem of a tire, and injected the high-pressure air. The back of the car rose slowly until the car appeared level and not so strained with the new four hundred pound load in the trunk. The driver got in, turned his CB radio to Channel Eleven, and within seconds, he was on the road. Kevin liked to run his little operation like a pit crew would in an Indy race. The quicker they worked, the less time any of his suspicious neighbors had to see what was happening. This was a weekday. As it was planned, the day after always fell on a weekday. Most of Kevin's neighbors had jobs and at this hour, they were preoccupied with getting ready for a day of work. This type of operation could never be attempted on the weekend. He picked up his handheld CB radio and signaled the next car to approach the clavo, this one, a Chevy Impala and the process was repeated.\n\n* * * * *\n\nConfidence\n\nJoel looked at the chart and felt confident in his ability to navigate the small craft back to Tavernier. The Intracoastal Waterway, which lined the Florida Bay side of the Keys, was well marked. He eased the boat out of the basin, taking it slow at first. After he cleared the open pier he gradually increased the power until the boat was on plane and heading south toward his destination. The water was remarkably clear, so much so that Joel found himself intimidated being able to see the bottom and traveling so fast. After the first fifteen minutes he learned to ignore his gut instinct and opened the throttle all the way. The boat skimmed across the water leaving a small sliver of a wake in its trail. The cool wind blowing in his face felt exhilarating.\n\nThe Intracoastal Waterway wound itself through several picturesque spots along the way. One such area called the Cowpens, was a group of small mangrove islands divided in half by the channel that passed through the middle. Joel watched as several different varieties of birds roosted in the branches of the water-lined trees, some flying aloft upon his presence. Ahead of his boat, large schools of fish darted in either direction trying to evade his direct path. I could get used to this, he thought to himself.\n\nAfter clearing the Cowpens, the waterway's red and green channel markers took it closer to the main island of Tavernier. He noticed a series of telephone poles standing alone in the water, each one being held erect by a steel guide wire anchored into the bay bottom. Feeling more confident than before, he decided to get closer to the poles. The traffic on U.S. 1 was running parallel to him. He rounded the first pole, speeding even with passing cars. \"This is too easy,\" Joel said aloud, starting to drive the boat in a serpentine motion. In and out of the poles he went, like cones in a driver's education obstacle course. He increased the speed back to full throttle as the outboard whined at over six thousand revolutions per minute. Then, without warning, the engine made a THUD. The bow pitched down toward the water as grass-filled mud shot from the spinning propeller. Joel tried to turn the boat but was unsuccessful. He cut the power by pulling the throttle back but it seemed to have no effect. The boat simply slid across the muddy bottom, now only six inches below the water's surface, striking one of the steel guide wires head on. The boat accepted the quarter-inch diameter cord into the bow just left of the centerline. It continued to cut as the boat still went forward, slicing through the Fiberglas, cutting the boat down the middle. As the cord came straight for its terrified operator it was all he could do to hold on to the grab bar that was bolted to the center console. Finally, after slicing through half the length of the boat, the cord came in contact with the front of the console and the Boston Whaler stopped with a jerk. The momentum built up by the boat's speed shot Joel straight forward, over the bow and into the muddy water ahead. He slid for approximately thirty feet, coming to rest just short of the rock-lined bank. Passing cars stopped immediately. He made an attempt to walk out of the water but found his legs sinking knee deep into the muddy bottom. Within five minutes, a small crowd had developed on the shore less than twenty feet away, half of whom were armed with cameras and taking their share of embarrassing pictures.\n\n\u2022\n\nLess than a mile to the north, Owen Sands thought of himself as a patient man, but the southbound lane of traffic was backed up as far as he could see and there was no relief in sight. Then, like a pack of screeching, howling cats, a fire truck, ambulance and two sheriff's cars passed in the opposite lane, headed south to whatever it was that was blocking the lanes. It was then that Owen interjected some compassion into his stale attitude as he pictured some poor soul trapped in a car, maybe bleeding to death from injuries sustained in a car accident. Owen checked his own seatbelt. It was fastened and secure.\n\nWithin minutes of seeing the emergency vehicles, the standstill traffic started to move again, slowly at first and then gaining speed. Owen could now see a crowd gathered at the water's edge. And then he saw it.\n\nHe couldn't believe his eyes. The Boston Whaler was perched half in and half out of the water, held suspended by the guide wire that was attached to the erect telephone pole, like someone had shot a picture of the boat bouncing from wave to wave, freezing it in time and motion. His new trainee sat amidst a group of people including a uniformed paramedic who was down on her knees tending to his minor cuts and bruises. Joel was covered with algae, mud and bottom grass. Owen swerved the car off the road, parking on the shoulder just short of the crowd.\n\nBy now the muddy concentration had been removed by the current in the water, exposing the trench made into the bay's bottom by the boat's propeller. Pieces of polyurethane foam were scattered over the water's surface. Chunks of Fiberglas lined the bank.\n\n\"Are you hurt?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" Joel replied.\n\n\"He's very lucky,\" said the paramedic at his side.\n\n\"Oh yeah, he's lucky alright.\"\n\n\"Owen, I'm sorry...\"\n\n\"What were you doing way over here? The closest marker is over a hundred yards away.\"\n\n\"I thought it was deep enough, I'm sorry,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Shit Kenyon, we have the clearest water in the world. It's not like you can't see the fucking bottom.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nRoadblock\n\nLike two diamonds alit in the distant sky, the landing lights of a blue and white Cessna 210 cut through the boils of heat coming off a section of road called the Eighteen Mile Stretch, the highway that connects the Keys with the southern tip of mainland Florida. The plane grazed the terrain, flying one hundred and fifty feet over the four lanes of traffic below. Resembling a parking lot more than a major highway, the northbound lanes of traffic were backed up for eleven miles.\n\nThe Florida City checkpoint was up and running, a daily event that had put the small town of two thousand on the map, making statewide news stories and a few national stories on the cable network CNN. For fifty feet, armed agents donning black flack vests and automatic weapons lined both sides of the roadway. Two German Shepherds sat patiently in the backseat of a heavily tinted, air-conditioned Jeep Cherokee.\n\nThe operation was made up mostly of Blue Lightning agents, County Sheriff's Deputies, and members of the small but potent Florida City Police Department. The FCPD was out for blood. An auction held a week earlier had cleared out almost two hundred cars, trucks and motor homes from their confiscation lot and they, like a boy with a depleted baseball card collection, were ready to fill it back up.\n\nAs a result of the roadblock, a group in Key West calling itself the Conch Republic made an argument for secession, stating that for the first time in U.S. history the government had established a border, excluding part of its own territory. Local merchants were furious. The roadblock caused an average three-hour delay for those trying to exit the Keys, causing an even greater problem. The local economy, which depended heavily on a daily tourist influx from the mainland, was starting to wither.\n\nJordan Cheney, Mark West, and Buddy Holmes represented the Tavernier office, standing in a tight click off the side of the road.\n\n\"I hate this weather,\" Holmes said. \"One day it's cold as shit, and then like today, it's hot and humid.\"\n\n\"Holmes, you bitch too much,\" West replied.\n\n\"Will you two pay attention,\" Jordan barked.\n\n\"To what boss? I mean it's not like we have a BOLO or anything.\"\n\n\"Well...just keep an eye out just the same.\"\n\n\"Isn't this something? Some tourist sees something he thinks is suspicious, calls 1-800-BE-ALERT and we get a suntan...Incredible!\" Holmes exclaimed, this time using the full motion of his arms to illustrate his statement.\n\n\"If you've got a better idea, I'd like to hear it,\" West said.\n\n\"Yeah, actually I do. It's called 1-800-GET-A-FUCKING-LIFE...\"\n\n\"Will you shut up!\" Jordan yelled, this time with a handheld radio to his ear. \"I can't think through all your static.\"\n\n\"Sorry boss, we're just not used to this heat,\" West said.\n\n\"Papa 1901 direct to Slingshot,\" Jordan spoke into the radio.\n\n\"Slingshot - 1901.\"\n\n\"Go ahead and loop back one more time and then we'll call it a day.\"\n\n\"10-4, 1901.\"\n\nThe 210 ascended to three hundred feet before making a one hundred and eighty degree turn to head south, against the flow of traffic.\n\n\"You guys really need a shit detail to show you how good you have it,\" Jordan said as he packed a pair of binoculars and some other equipment into his duffel bag.\n\n\"An exciting day like this really makes a guy hungry,\" Holmes announced.\n\n\"Effective immediately - you're on a diet,\" Jordan answered.\n\nSlingshot spotted it first. A light brown Nissan pickup had attempted to make a U-turn and return to the Keys. The small truck headed south at a high rate of speed. The 210 pilot lowered its flaps and slowed the craft to seventy knots staying just behind the truck and just above the plane's crucial stall speed.\n\n\"Slingshot - Papa 1901.\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" Jordan answered.\n\n\"We're behind a profile vehicle - a small tan pickup. Foreign. They made a U-turn and headed south at a high rate of speed.\"\n\n\"10-4 Slingshot, we will alert Monroe County Sheriff's Dispatch from here.\"\n\n\"Roger that 1901. The subject vehicle is equipped with a black tonneau cover. We are going to stay on him for the duration.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nStatic\n\nThe Alazar home on 232nd Street in the Redlands was a hotbed of tension as Roberto and Del sat at the home's eat-in bar, nervously awaiting word on the Cho Chos' apparent demise.\n\n\"Oye, mira, the gringo!\" Mima said, pointing to a dark blue Ford Crown Victoria that was coming down the driveway.\n\nBoth men stood and went to greet Gil Lindback. It was out of character for any of the workers to come by the Alazar home unless invited but this visit was welcomed.\n\n\"Hey Gil, what's the news?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Not a word. I drove the last bit of Red and Stump's stuff out myself, but even if we find them and they still have their load to deal with, we now have a new problem,\" Lindback answered.\n\n\"Ay, Jes\u00fas Cristo! What now?\" Alazar said softly.\n\n\"The cops have put up the checkpoint in Florida City. I had to drive through the fucking thing with six bales in the trunk!\"\n\n\"Good work!\" Roberto said, sensing Lindback's tense frustration.\n\n\"How's everything over at Mongi's house? Are they asking questions yet?\"\n\n\"No, I told them that we would have to suspend trips for awhile because of the roadblock.\"\n\n\"Good thinking,\" Roberto said.\n\nThe three men stood in silence for a moment before being interrupted.\n\n\"Popito! El tel\u00e9fono,\" Mima announced, coming out the front door with the ringing brick-sized cellular phone.\n\n\"Shit!\" Roberto said, running over to her.\n\n\"Hello!\"\n\n\"Roberto?\"\n\n\"Chino, where in the fuck have you been?\"\n\n\"Everything's okay but I need to see you and explain.\"\n\n\"Explain! Explain what?\"\n\n\"You'll see when you get here.\"\n\n\"This doesn't sound good Chino.\"\n\n\"No man, everything's okay. We just need some help getting our kids picked up at daycare today.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Meet me at the Dairy Buster, next to the Cut,\" Chino suggested, and with a beep the circuit was disconnected.\n\n\"Gil, I have a job for you.\"\n\n\"What is it Del?\"\n\n\"That was Chino,\" he replied, as their eyes lit up. \"Meet him at the Dairy Buster next to the Cut. Call me as soon as you know something.\"\n\n\"Okay, before I go though, there's something we need to talk about,\" Lindback said, hesitating for a minute.\n\n\"What is it Gil?\" Roberto asked.\n\n\"It's about Kevin.\"\n\n\"Can it wait?\" Roberto asked.\n\n\"I guess so,\" Lindback answered.\n\n\"We'll talk when you get back. Be careful.\"\n\nThe two men watched as the sedan pulled out onto 232nd Street from the Alazar's driveway. The Crown Victoria was an official looking car, dark blue in color. Gil Lindback, besides working at an auto parts store during the day, was a volunteer emergency medical technician with the Tavernier Ambulance and Rescue Corps. He enjoyed helping people in need and the status the position gave him within the community was uplifting. His car was outfitted with a two-way radio capable of communicating with the ambulances and the rescue dispatcher. Mounted across the car's trunk were a series of antennas making the vehicle look more like an undercover police car than a mule for illegal drugs.\n\n\u2022\n\nAn hour later, Chino sat alone next to a side door sipping on a chocolate milkshake. It was his third in two hours. He considered himself a connoisseur of milkshakes and in his opinion, the Dairy Buster made the best. He was still dressed in the residue-stained clothes he wore the night before and his face was in desperate need of a shave.\n\nGil Lindback entered the small ice cream shop from the front entrance and immediately ordered from the counter. Minutes later, the two were both sipping milkshakes and looking behind themselves and around at their surroundings for anyone who looked suspicious.\n\n\"So what happened?\" Lindback asked.\n\n\"Our boat broke down. I think we got some bad gas or something. Both engines quit at the same time,\" Chino said.\n\n\"Where's the shit?\"\n\n\"Wait, I'm getting there. We drifted through the North Creek and into the Cut. Both of us used every muscle in our bodies to fend the boat off the coral sides. When we got to the bridge we unloaded and hid the stuff in those mini-warehouses over there,\" he explained, pointing to the storage complex across the street.\n\n\"Where's the boat?\"\n\n\"Alberto had to sink it. That big white Customs boat started to come down the Cut, so he sank the boat right there. You think Roberto will buy us a new one?\"\n\n\"I don't know; you'll have to ask him.\"\n\n\"We had to do it to save the load man,\" Chino said.\n\n\"Where's Alberto?\"\n\n\"With the shit in the mini-warehouse.\"\n\n\"The roadblock is up and running in Florida City,\" Lindback stated.\n\n\"Shit, what are we going to do? We are sitting ducks!\"\n\n\"Have you tried to rent the unit you are in?\"\n\n\"I thought of that, but I think it's too risky. Too many questions and what if he doesn't want to give us that particular one?\"\n\n\"Wait here, I'll be back in about twenty minutes,\" Lindback said, tossing a crumpled dollar bill onto the table. \"Here have another shake.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDynamic\n\n\"You fucking piece of shit!\" a motorist yelled to Jordan Cheney from a passing car. \"Why don't you get a real job, you pussy!\"\n\n\"I feel so loved here,\" Holmes said sarcastically.\n\n\"In a way, I can't blame these people. Card Sound and U.S. 1 are the only two roads in and out of the Keys and when we set up out here these people face a two to three hour delay. But, we don't have a choice. It's our job,\" Jordan declared.\n\n\"Slingshot to 1901,\" squawked the handheld radio.\n\n\"1901, go ahead.\"\n\n\"Heads up, we've got an ambulance rolling your way at a high rate of speed. Hold up all southbound traffic.\"\n\n\"10-4 Slingshot,\" Jordan replied into the mic.\n\nMinutes later, the blaring siren of the ambulance came into range. The agents from the Tavernier field office could see its flashing lights through the afternoon haze. Red and white strobes and rotating beacons glistened like rubies and diamonds. Jordan and his men made sure the traffic was stopped so the emergency vehicle could pass through a relatively unobstructed path. Jordan feared the political nightmare that would be created if harm were to come to an ambulance, or anyone needing help for that matter, as a result of the already unpopular roadblock. The ambulance screamed by with the driver focused intently on the traffic ahead.\n\n\"What do ya think boss? A heart attack? Or maybe a stroke?\" Holmes asked.\n\n\"Should we start a pool?\" West asked.\n\n\"My bet - it's a car wreck. A bloody one for sure,\" Holmes suggested.\n\n\"What a way to go, rocking back and forth in that thing. The sound of the siren alone would tell you you're half dead,\" Jordan said.\n\n\u2022\n\nGil Lindback switched the siren back and forth from a long wale to the sharper repetitive yelp, hitting the ambulance's high-pressure air horns. Like a train approaching a crossing gate, the loud horns echoed from the surrounding buildings as the traffic came to a complete stop, making an open path for the orange and white truck. In the back, Chino and Alberto Mendez held on to a grab rail, bracing themselves as Lindback swerved through the heavy traffic. Chino watched as the curtains in the back dangled from side to side, making sure they covered the dark, tinted windows concealing the twenty-three bales that were stacked neatly like crates in a warehouse.\n\n\u2022\n\nMongi watched from the window of his two-story South Miami clavo as an ambulance pulled into the secluded alley to a detached garage. Panic struck his spine as he wondered what god-awful fiasco was unfolding before his eyes. As the white and orange truck neared the home he could see the driver, Gil Lindback. With a sigh of relief, he met the rig by the rear garage, opening the ambulance's back door to find Chino and Alberto sitting atop thirty bales packed tightly amidst the stretcher and bench seats.\n\n\"This has got to be a first,\" Mongi said to Lindback, who had met him at the back.\n\n\"My chief said the truck had to go to Flamingo Ford in Homestead for service. I just thought we'd take a small detour along the way,\" Lindback replied.\n\n\"You got it here without getting caught. Now let's unload before my neighbors see this thing and get curious.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nCaptain Crunch\n\nJoel Kenyon treaded lightly as he walked into the Tavernier office, this time taking a moment to look around. He was amazed at the overall decay of the building. Despite the fresh carpet throughout and the freshly painted walls, the office was one of the worst government facilities he had ever seen. This was more of a hideout than an official building, he thought to himself. The windows were heavily draped, for the most part to cover the dirt buildup on the exterior. The most impressive feature of the room was the four-by-eight-foot bulletin board he had seen the first day he reported for duty. It contained pictures of recent busts and scores of boats that had been seized. At the top of the board, a bumper sticker was affixed. So many Columbians...So little time - Operation Greenback, U.S. Treasury Dept. He recognized the title. Operation Greenback was a high-level Treasury sting operation focused on Columbian businessmen wanting to invest in U.S. companies. Most turned out to be legitimate investors. However, on three separate occasions, the foreign nationals tried to entice undercover federal agents into taking large sums of money and laundering it through their businesses. The operation title drew flack from liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill who remarked the name \"greenback\" was similar to the name \"wetback\" given to illegal Mexican immigrants. To the agents of USCS Tavernier, the bumper sticker was a collector's item, a souvenir from a vacation to nowhere.\n\n\"Kenyon!\" Jordan Cheney called as he came out from his office. \"Close call you had today, sorry about that steering problem. Our repair contractors aren't what they used to be. But it's no great loss. I hated that little boat anyway. Look, I left an incident report on your desk; fill it out after the meeting.\"\n\n\"My desk?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Yeah, I put you in the cube next to Sands.\"\n\n\"Thank you sir,\" he answered.\n\n\"Don't mention it,\" he said, patting Joel on the back.\n\n\"Okay, could I get everyone over here please,\" Jordan yelled, commanding immediate attention from everyone in the office. It was time for their weekly office meeting; a way for the group supervisors to keep tabs on what their agents were working on and for them to disseminate information to the ranks.\n\n\"Jennie, get the video please. Okay, the white Stinger is back from Brunswick. They tell me it has been completely refitted. There are supposed to be new engines, so whoever spends the next twenty hours in her, Brunswick tells me she's still in kind of a break-in mode, understood? I want these engines to last longer than the last pair. Blue Thunder is down again, it's supposed to be a fuel pump, so don't just jump in it and go, you won't get very far,\" Jordan said, pausing, as he looked over at the office receptionist who was busy setting up a rollaway video monitor and player. \"Jen, are we ready yet?\" She nodded yes. \"Okay, what you are about to see is some old footage, the Cordera Brothers. Take note of the new boats, Indians I believe. Let's put some pressure on these boys. Go ahead Jen, start the tape,\" he instructed looking around the room. \"Wait! Where's Sands? Aw fuck it, he hates these things anyway,\" he said, sitting down on the corner of one of the desks with the others. Agent Kenyon watched a crudely made videotape containing various scenes and places. The first was a boat being launched by a highly polished dually loaded with every aftermarket option available: chrome roll bar, fog lights, and a wing-type TV antenna mounted on the roof. The sides of the truck were painted with custom airbrush scenes.\n\n\"Whatever happened to inconspicuous?\" one of the agents offered as the tape showed two plump Latin males offloading a 30-foot offshore boat down the concrete boat ramp.\n\n\"Those are our boys, Frankie and George Cordera,\" Jordan said.\n\nThe next scene showed the go-fast in the previous scene, this time moored to a concrete dock with a two-story house in the background.\n\n\"342 Bougainvillea Drive. It has access from South Creek. This is definitely the clavo,\" Jordan stated as the frame zoomed in on the dock area. There were several potted plants arranged to conceal the pathway from the dock to the house. \"The notes I have here say the front of the residence has a well-concealed carport also,\" Jordan added.\n\nThe screen went black for a second before showing a doublewide mobile home on a canal. The frame was shot at night when the photographer was obviously hiding in some trees. He zoomed in on a picture glass window behind which a large man, dressed in shorts, followed a bikini-clad woman leading a class in sensual aerobics. The room erupted in laughter. \"You go Gordo!\" one of the agents yelled while the others continued to laugh. The plump man in the window was dancing the moves of the aerobics instructor, following her every move on a big screen TV in front of him. This continued for another minute before the tape ended. A second later, the office's fluorescent fixtures came back on as the agent's eyes adjusted to the burst of light. Jordan continued.\n\n\"Okay, one more item we need to discuss. Our office has been blessed with a new agent fresh from Glynnco. Some of you have already met him. Agent Kenyon will be working with Owen,\" Jordan said.\n\n\"Poor Guy,\" Holmes added.\n\n\"Kenyon has also earned a prestigious award...and on his second day,\" the group supervisor announced with a smile while holding an empty box of Captain Crunch cereal.\n\nCRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!\n\nThe room started yelling. Jennie sat quietly, smiling and shaking her head. The yells grew in intensity. Agent Joel Kenyon stood looking around wondering what kind of ceremony was occurring.\n\nCRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!\n\n\"Yeah, you guessed it, Agent Kenyon, on his first day in the beautiful Florida Keys, sank my truck and today wrecked our tiny Boston Whaler, destroyed, and I mean totaled it beyond recognition. So it gives me great pleasure to present the prestigious Captain Crunch Award to you, Special Agent Joel Kenyon. Display it with pride son,\" Jordan said, handing the box to Joel who was shaking his head as the room clapped and jeered.\n\n\"Okay, everyone get back to work. Joel, don't forget that accident report.\"\n\n\"Yes sir, and thank you sir,\" he replied, holding up the box, walking back to his cubical. The incident report his boss spoke of was neatly on the desktop. Joel looked around the cubical and like most who are awarded a new office, he felt the need to check out the drawers and feel the seat. The side drawers were empty as expected. Then, almost instinctively, he opened the flat lap drawer, the one normally reserved for pens, pencils, and other miscellaneous desk utensils. It was filled to capacity with the missing Captain Crunch cereal. Joel felt honored by the gesture as he closed the drawer.\n\n\"They have a funny way of showing affection,\" Owen said, surprising his partner as he stood at the cubicle's opening.\n\n\"Hey, I thought you weren't coming in,\" Joel asked.\n\n\"I thought I'd get a head start on the paperwork from last night, and, well, maybe walk you through it in the process.\"\n\n\"Thanks, this paperwork can be a little ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Says a man holding an empty cereal box...\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nCollide\n\nAfter hearing Holmes rave about the food at the Italian Fisherman, Joel figured the place deserved a chance. He was skeptical when it came to restaurants but, after all, he was in Key Largo and not the south of France.\n\nWhen he walked into the fishnet-lined foyer, it was obvious that the place was filled to capacity. With the exception of a few empty stools at the bar, every table and chair was occupied with mostly obvious tourists who were in the place for the first time; people who didn't care about the wait or the service. They were loud and usually well intoxicated by the time their main course hit the table.\n\nAs Joel approached the hostess podium, he couldn't help but notice the view of the bay through the crowded room. The Italian Fisherman was a waterfront restaurant that featured an ample dock to complement its bay front deck. Most of the patrons, however, used the parking lot.\n\n\"How many in your party sir?\" the perky hostess asked, interrupting his gaze at the setting sun.\n\n\"Just myself.\"\n\n\"Okay. It'll be about a fifteen to twenty minute wait. Feel free to wait at the bar. Your name?\"\n\n\"Joel.\"\n\n\"Okay, Joel.\"\n\nThe wait wasn't a problem. Joel had waited three times that to get into certain restaurants in San Francisco. Besides, the view projected by the sunset eased his frayed nerves. He could see what Holmes saw in this place.\n\nBy the time he walked up to the bar Joel felt lucky, as there was only one barstool left.\n\n\"Excuse me, is this seat taken?\" he asked the girl who occupied the next stool.\n\n\"No it's not, I'm by myself,\" she replied in an almost depressed tone.\n\nA stoke of luck, Joel thought to himself as he looked over at the girl. And then it hit him. She was the girl he spotted from the top of the bridge the day before, broken down on Card Sound Road with the red 300ZX. Up close, she appeared to be about twenty-five and very attractive. Her sundress was a complement to the olive skin it covered, revealing her long legs that were crossed and dangling down the side of the stool. Her auburn hair was naturally curly and she didn't wear a lot of makeup. She had a natural beauty despite being down about something. Her eyes were the most striking feature. They were almost turquoise in color. They had to be contacts, Joel thought. He took another look but she seemed to be in another world, playing with a cocktail napkin between her fingers.\n\n\"Blind date?\"\n\n\"What? Oh, no. I'm waiting for my father. He doesn't know I'm here though.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute. You're waiting for your father, but he doesn't know you're waiting for him?\"\n\n\"Well, I know it sounds weird but...\"\n\n\"Oh, no. Not at all.\"\n\n\"No, I know it sounds weird, but I haven't seen him in a long time and the last time I did see him, well we didn't exactly part on good terms. This is a place we used to go as a family and I heard he still came here often. I wanted to see him again in a place that was sort of a neutral ground.\"\n\n\"This guy, your father, he sounds like the real intimidating type.\"\n\n\"He used to be, until he started drinking though. It really changed him.\"\n\n\"That's funny, it's usually the other way around.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well my father's kind of backwards.\"\n\n\"My name is Joel by the way.\"\n\n\"I'm Tessa,\" she said, extending her left hand.\n\nJoel noticed the white band of skin around her tanned ring finger.\n\n\"When was the last time you ate here?\" he asked.\n\n\"About six months ago. We used to come here quite often actually, at least until my husband passed away.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Joel said in a softer, more compassionate voice.\n\n\"Don't be. He probably had it coming to him. He was killed in a boating accident.\"\n\nHow ironic, a boating accident, Joel thought, rubbing the bruise on his right thigh.\n\n\"Any kids?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yeah, one, a little girl.\"\n\n\"I bet you've got a picture.\"\n\n\"It's six months old, but real cute,\" she said, already digging into her purse. \"Her name is Monica. This was taken at her third birthday party, a month before her father was killed.\"\n\n\"How is she taking it?\"\n\n\"Not very well, I'm afraid. Bobby loved her very much. She notices he's gone but I don't think she understands. She drops everything when there's a knock at the door.\"\n\n\"Where is she now?\"\n\n\"With a friend of mine who babysits occasionally,\" she said with another depressed smile. \"How about you, any kids?\"\n\n\"Who me? No, I'm not that lucky. Too devoted to my career I guess.\"\n\n\"Career-minded, that's a lousy excuse. What do you do?\"\n\n\"I'm an accountant.\"\n\n\"Oh really,\" boring she thought. \"Here in town?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes, it's a local firm.\"\n\n\"Alazar?\" the hostess called.\n\nTessa stood from the cushioned stool. Without thinking, Joel also stood as he continued to explain.\n\n\"Well, this is my table,\" she said, unsure what to do or say next.\n\n\"Oh, I'm sorry. I usually don't push myself on...\"\n\n\"It's okay. If my father hasn't shown up by now he probably won't.\"\n\n\"Well if you don't mind...\" Joel said pulling out her chair.\n\nJoel sat facing her with the backdrop of the mangrove-clad Florida Bay engulfed in the orange and purple sunset behind him.\n\n\"How did you meet your husband, if you don't mind me asking?\"\n\n\"After high school, I went to Miami-Dade South in Kendall. We took world literature together, at least for the first five or six weeks. I finished, he didn't.\"\n\n\"It doesn't seem like you were very well matched with this guy, I mean with all respect.\"\n\n\"Yeah, believe me, he doesn't deserve all due respect. Look, I don't know you very well, and I'm sorry if I seem to be dumping on you but...\"\n\n\"Hey, no problem, it's okay. I just hope...\"\n\n\"It's just nice to talk to someone who is not connected to my situation. My grandmother always said she wished there were strangers available to do nothing but listen so they could tell you what you are trying to say. You know what I mean?\"\n\n\"Yeah, they're called shrinks.\"\n\n\"No silly, I mean someone who really is detached from the situation. They have no vested interest, not financial or emotional. And these people are only good for one visit. After that, they're involved, ya know?\"\n\n\"Exactly, but does that mean I'm only good for one visit?\"\n\n\"We'll see if you have any other useful qualities.\"\n\nJoel was turned on by her smile although he didn't know how to handle her forwardness.\n\n\"Let's get back to your husband - I mean if it doesn't bother you.\"\n\n\"Well the truth of the matter is that three days before Bobby disappeared, I mean, was killed, I went to see an attorney with the intention of getting a divorce. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I just knew I had to. I would have done it sooner if it hadn't have been for Monica. She loved her dad.\"\n\n\"So now you feel guilty and relieved at the same time. Kind of the ultimate conflict.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but worse. My in-laws. They think they will have a tie on me forever. Especially Bobby's father. He almost takes it personally. They have sheltered me from everything. His dad, Roberto, is a very powerful man.\"\n\n\"Do you think they are afraid of losing their granddaughter?\"\n\n\"I'm sure that's part of it but for Roberto, it's deeper than that. It's like he is trying to preserve Bobby's honor or something. It's a Cuban thing.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're not Cuban?\" he asked.\n\n\"Well I look it. My father's Irish and my mother, Greek. With the dark skin and the last name, people just assume I'm Cuban,\" Tessa explained.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" a slender waitress said as she approached the table.\n\n\"Are you guys ready to order?\"\n\n\"Are you ready?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Yeah. I'll have the lobster, with a wedge of lemon please and another white wine spritzer.\"\n\n\"And you sir?\"\n\n\"Ummm,\" Joel mumbled as he quickly milled over the menu.\n\n\"I'll have the same.\"\n\n\"Good choice. I'll have that right out.\"\n\n\"Look, it's not like I don't want Monica to know her grandparents. I just think she needs other influences to balance her out.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nRoberto Alazar, Gordo, Del and Gus Greico were escorted to a table on the outside patio deck next to the boat dock. After a ten-minute wait, the men were thirsty and quickly ordered a round of drinks.\n\n\"You live in a beautiful place,\" Greico complimented, reaching for a packet of sugar to put into his already sweetened drink.\n\n\"Thank you. We like it,\" Roberto answered.\n\n\"At night, the sky is very clear. A stargazer's dream,\" Greico added.\n\n\"All the better to navigate by, right Gordo?\" Del asked.\n\n\"I never learned how to do that. I'm used to my LORAN-C,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"I will have to agree with you on that. A sextant would be hard to use in one of those small boats. My father taught me how to read the stars when I was a boy. We were usually on dry land though,\" Greico said, pondering the past. \"He was an engineer and well-versed with the precision line-of-sight equipment.\"\n\n\"That is very interesting,\" Del replied. \"I am fascinated by the stars and their relation to us.\"\n\n\"They are very fascinating Del and I have learned a lot from them. When I was a boy, we didn't have the MTV and video games. I spent many nights lying on my back on the hillside with my father just watching the stars,\" Greico said with a sad tone. \"So what's the recommendation for the evening?\" he asked, changing the subject.\n\n\"Everything,\" Gordo answered with his face buried in his menu.\n\n\"Don't mind him, he's hypnotized,\" Roberto said with a laugh. \"I like the dolphin myself. It's usually very fresh.\"\n\n\"That sounds like an excellent choice,\" Greico replied, patronizing his new associate. He hated fish.\n\nEveryone's getting dolphin, Greico predicted silently to himself with a smile.\n\n\"Oh shit!\" Tessa said as she looked down at the table.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"I've got to go!\"\n\n\"What? We just ordered.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry!\"\n\nTessa got up immediately and at a brisk pace, walked off the other end of the deck toward the parking lot. Joel couldn't believe his sudden turn of luck. He threw down his napkin and stood to follow her. That's when he noticed the four men seated at a table about twenty feet away. They were all staring at him. Three Latinos and an American. It was probably his imagination. They were probably taken by this crazy woman who bolted out of the restaurant without warning.\n\nJoel caught up to her despite her brisk pace.\n\n\"Hey, wait a minute, what was that all about? It was your father wasn't it? Hey look, you're gonna have to face him. It's just that simple. Will you slow down?\"\n\n\"Look, I'm sorry, it's not what you think. My father-in-law, you know the possessive one, just made a surprise appearance.\"\n\nThe four at the table, Joel thought to himself.\n\n\"Hey, relax, look this is still a free country. It's not Cuba.\"\n\n\"Joel, it's very sweet of you but...\"\n\n\"Let's get out of here,\" Joel suggested.\n\nThe two got into her Nissan 300ZX. She couldn't risk the senior Alazar finding it in the parking lot.\n\n\"You just don't understand. It is bad enough that he tries to control my life. Could you imagine what would happen if he found me having drinks with someone other than his Bobby?\"\n\n\"But Bobby's dead.\"\n\n\"Right, and that's just as much my loss as it is his and he wants to make sure of it.\"\n\nJoel didn't say very much. What she was saying was starting to make sense and he was beginning to wonder if he should have stayed at the bar waiting for his own table, especially now as he was fearing for his life as the traffic in the slower lane was being passed a lot faster than he would have considered safe.\n\nTessa pulled the car off the main highway and headed down a dirt road that led to the waterfront. The car stopped just short of the concrete retaining wall that descended into the water. The cloud of dust that followed them down the dirt road overcame them and drifted past, floating over the water before disappearing into the night air. All was quiet.\n\n\"This was a special place to me. When I was in high school, we used to come here a lot.\"\n\n\"I can see why. It's very scenic.\"\n\n\"Scenic my ass, we came here because we could get stoned and before the cops could get down that bumpy road, we'd have more than enough warning,\" she said bluntly.\n\n\"That's nice.\"\n\nTessa was the first to open her car door. She got out and walked to the water's edge. Joel followed suit, sitting on the passenger side wheel fender.\n\n\"The air feels good, but I bet that water's cold as ice,\" Joel said, watching her gaze at the dark water. Joel walked up behind her. \"So tell me about your father,\" he suggested, putting his hand on her shoulder.\n\n\"Well there's not much to tell. He's a small man who loves to drink. But he's my father. And when I left him, it broke his heart. My mother passed away when I was seventeen, and well, things were never quite the same.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said, removing his hand.\n\n\"It's okay, time heals all wounds,\" she replied, picking up her head to look Joel in the eye. \"You're sweet. So tell me again how come you're not married, settled down, you know with some kids and a dog.\"\n\n\"Well I was engaged once, to a girl from Atlanta, but, well I guess she wasn't ready. She called it off. I wasn't home enough. She needed more attention.\"\n\n\"Ah, she fucked around on ya.\"\n\n\"God, you're blunt,\" and right, he thought. \"Let's just say the feelings were mutual.\"\n\nWith that, Tessa pulled off her sundress, exposing a blue bikini she was wearing underneath while kicking off her sandals. \"Come on! The water's great this time of year.\"\n\nJoel watched in disbelief as she dove from the retaining wall into the dark water below wearing a tenth of what she had on a few seconds before.\n\n\"Shit!\" Joel said as he fumbled to the ground trying to pry off his pair of high-top tennis shoes.\n\n\"God, it's great!\" she yelled from the surface of the cool liquid; her voice echoing from the coral rock that surrounded the lagoon.\n\nJoel wasn't far behind. His body contorted and started to shiver immediately as his head broke the surface of the water, taking his breath away. He panicked for a second, not being able to breathe. Tessa watched him cough and shiver as she rolled over on her back and stroked across the water's surface. She was amused more with the view of this man in his bright red Fruit of the Loom jockeys than his ability to bear the cold water.\n\n\"Shit it's cold!\"\n\n\"You'll get used to it.\"\n\n\"God, I hope so, what is this place?\"\n\n\"It's called Planter's Point. It used to be part of a small pineapple plantation. Recently they used it for training dolphins. You know, for movies and TV; that kind of stuff.\"\n\n\"What about...well you know, sharks and barracudas? Don't they feed at night?\"\n\n\"You can't be serious,\" Tessa laughed.\n\n\"No, really, I'm not.\"\n\n\"They only attack things that are red,\" she proclaimed in a more serious tone.\n\n\"You're kidding, right?\" he asked, protecting his crotch with both hands.\n\n\"This is nice. Thank you for coming with me,\" she said.\n\n\"No, thank you. This is a pleasant surprise,\" he replied. \"When was the last time you were here?\"\n\n\"In college. My late husband and I came with twenty of our friends from Miami-Dade. He proposed to me that weekend,\" she said with a short smile.\n\n\"That's cool,\" Joel said.\n\n\"I'm sorry. I guess this makes you feel uncomfortable.\"\n\n\"No, not at all. Why would it? Look, reality is that even the worst relationships have their good times. That's why we enter them in the first place...right?\"\n\n\"Thank you for saying that. You're quite an amazing person Joel. So tell me, as an accountant, why did you decide to move to the Keys? I mean, accountants are pretty conservative by nature and this place is pretty crazy.\"\n\n\"Well I do wear red jockeys.\"\n\n\"That you do.\"\n\n\"Well actually, I have a confession. I didn't want to say anything at the restaurant, but since we are alone and you have been so open with me...I'm not an accountant,\" he admitted.\n\n\"Thank God,\" she said, relieved. \"You didn't actually get points for that one you know.\"\n\n\"I'm a Customs agent,\" he added as her face went flat.\n\n\"You're kidding, right?\"\n\n\"No, this is my second day,\" he said. \"Why, what is it?\"\n\nTessa went silent for a minute.\n\n\"Joel, I've got to go.\"\n\n\"What is it this time?\"\n\nShe was caught completely off guard by what she had just heard. She had let her feelings get the best of her. How could I say the things I did to this total stranger? I didn't know him and now he was...God...he was...the thought was frightening. Bobby was a smuggler. Worse than that, his father Roberto Alazar was the king of smuggling in the Upper Keys, Tessa tried not to appear panicked.\n\n\"Really Joel I've gotta go!\" she said, removing his hand from the back of her neck.\n\n\"Yeah...but...\" Joel stammered while she exited the cold water and headed for the car.\n\n\"My clothes are on the backseat,\" he said quietly to himself, feeling rather deserted as the car spun out on the dirt road headed for the highway.\n\n* * * * *\n\nTrophy\n\nWith the pull lines in place attached to three overhead electric cranes, Julio Martinez gave the word. Simultaneously, all three winches turned slowly, gathering up the chain that was connected to the pull lines. Slowly, with every revolution, the 42-foot hull creaked and moaned as it was pulled upright. It was a tight fit. The Indian crew knew this. Unlike a pyramid-type shape that would release easily from a Fiberglas mold, the boat's sides were more perpendicular, causing the surfaces to bind and create static friction. Some parts even required additional help in the release process. At the bottom of all the Indian molds, small high-pressure air fittings were embedded into the Fiberglas. If a new piece, such as the hull, were to get stuck in the mold, Julio or one of his crew could inject compressed air and free the tight grip. Water was also used on occasion to \"float\" the hull out of the mold. However, this was rare and usually resulted from poor waxing and preparation of the mold itself.\n\nNearly a foot of line and chain had been drawn before the ten-inch steel castors at the bottom of the mold levitated off the ground. For a second they hung there, hovering just inches over the resin-covered floor. And then, almost immediately, starting from the bow and working its way aft, the hull started crackling as it separated from the mold. Then with a loud snap, the mold dropped to the ground. The boat was free. Julio, lighter in hand, was the first to drop a pack of Black Cat firecrackers in between the loose hull and the corresponding mold.\n\nPOP POP POP POP POP\n\nSmall fragments of paper shot in every direction accompanied by a series of sparks and flashes as the small explosions echoed inside the metal building. Roberts knew the practice wasn't the safest, especially with the numerous steel drums of polyester resin and acetone stacked in the back of the shop, but this was after all, a tradition and on 188th Street, traditions had their place with everything else.\n\n\"Roberto's going to like this,\" Felix, one of the Indian's laborers, said.\n\n\"I think you're right,\" Julio replied as he felt the glossy side of the hull.\n\nFor some, the birth of a boat came at its christening, or launching. But for Julio Martinez, the spraying of the gelcoat was its conception and this was the birth. After a week and thirty-two laminations of Fiberglas, the Indian crew stood and simply looked at the suspended hull for a few minutes admiring their work.\n\nScott Roberts spent the rest of the day planning the next stages of the boat's construction. Since this wasn't a standard boat for the Indian shop, there were no templates or patterns for the numerous parts and wooden components that had to be fabricated. While Fiberglas boats were made of soupy polyester resin and rolls of fabric threads, the stringers and cross members that made up the boat's frame were almost always made up of wood. Sheets of marine grade plywood were used over standard, cheaper household plywood primarily because the marine type had none of the pinesap found in the regular type. The sap was known to repel the Fiberglas causing it to come loose from the wood after it had been applied. The sheets of wood were cut one piece at a time and shaped to fit snuggly into the spaces of the hull, following the complex lines of the Fiberglas, which now looked like an empty swimming pool. Layers of wet Fiberglas cloth would then be rolled over the wood, attaching it to the Fiberglas hull. The process would be repeated until the wood was completely encapsulated in glass and part of the hull structure, making a grid on which the rest of the boat could be built. Before any of this could be built though, the hull had to be lowered back into the mold which would then act like a jig, keeping the flexible shell in form while the frame was being installed. For this, the shredded paper from the spent firecrackers actually served a purpose. As the boat hull came back in contact with the mold, the paper served as a cushion protecting the glossy surfaces of both the hull and the corresponding mold from the in-and-out scratching that could occur.\n\nRoberts sat in his comfortably decorated office enjoying the air conditioning. Miami's weather was fickle, with temperatures ranging from fifty degrees to over ninety. Today was on the high end of the scale.\n\nIndian had several serious obstacles it had to overcome every month: the payroll, the rising cost of materials, and the marketing that included full-color spreads in the major boating magazines. His stress was increased by the fact that sales were down as the entire country was facing a recession. Having seen them before, Roberts knew that the boating public preferred to restore the boats they already had before buying new ones. Roberts had already booked a couple of rehabs, refurbishing the paint, upholstery and rigging. This kept his workers busy and brought cash into the strapped business. He also, on occasion, purchased old performance boats and reworked them. Still, with all of this, he struggled, and to top things off, what little profit he made had to be split with his partner, Peter Delgado. For the last two years, he managed to skim a small amount off the top for himself while his partner was in Eglin, but now that he was out, Del's watchful eye was in the shop every other day.\n\nRoberts closed his accounting books, grabbed a duffel bag filled with a days worth of clothes and headed out the front door. Eight hours later he was pulling into the parking lot of the Brunswick, Georgia, Holiday Inn.\n\n\u2022\n\nThe next morning Roberts was standing with a hundred others who had the same goal in mind, to buy surplus government boats and equipment. The process was a routine that the lead auctioneer had come to accept long before the sales started to take place in Brunswick. The U.S. Customs East Coast Marine Support Unit was stationed there and it was time to clean house. The facility consisted of repair and paint shops, dedicated to maintaining the aging fleet of Treasury Enforcement boats. The staff rivaled any large marine dealership and held some of the top engine and outdrive mechanics in the region. Behind the warehouses, in a securely fenced lot overgrown with wild weeds and brush, sat the bone yard. This was the place where retired vessels were put to rest in a dismantled state; their engines and equipment stripped out with gaping holes left in the transoms where the powerful outdrives were once installed.\n\nThe outdrive, the brainchild of German engineer, Karl Kiekhaefer, was half inboard and half outboard. It was the perfect solution for boaters who wanted the versatility of a steerable, shallow-water drive without sacrificing the power of a big block Chevy engine. The Customs Service owned their share of outdrives, now relics, lying on greasy wooden pallets inside the facility warehouse, listed as separate lots for the highest bidder.\n\nThe game was like that of putting together a complex puzzle. After buying a stripped hull and deck from the bone yard offered strategically at the start of the auction, a successful bidder would have to chance his skill and try to secure a pair of suitable engines, transmissions and two matching outdrives.\n\nIt was a mystery to most why the government dismantled their boats the way they did. The philosophy was simple though. The forces that were figured that the greatest return lie in the separate or breakup value of the boats. The same principle applies if one were to buy an automobile, one part at a time. They would spend three to four times as much. It was this practice that frustrated the buyers, though it didn't seem to hamper the rolls of attendance that increased with every quarterly sale.\n\nThe bottom line was clear to the government. By breaking up the lots, they increased their return by almost seventy percent. A newly purchased, hundred thousand dollar boat depreciated down to thirty thousand after ten years. It brought in fifty thousand if sold in separate parts, its breakup value. It was a concept the government adhered to and used regularly.\n\nRoberts didn't care what engines or hardware came with the boat he was trying to buy. The 27-foot Stiletto was a classic hull all by itself. He needed it to copy the sleek Fiberglas impression into a mold for a new midsize line of boats he was trying to develop. For this, he needed a proven hull like the Stiletto he was after.\n\nRoberts was only doing what had been done many times in the past. The procedure was called splashing and, although technically a civil infraction, it was almost impossible to prove and thereby litigate. Most of the other Indians were copies of other hulls. The S-41, Roberts's largest go-fast, was a splash of a 38-foot Stiletto and his S-32 was a stretched version of a 30-foot Mirage built by another small manufacturer. If he was successful, he could take a mold impression from the boat, rebuild it, and sell it for a profit. The auction list also had two of his 41-foot Indians on it. If he were to buy them back, he could rebuild them and, as the original manufacturer, re-title the boats with newer year model numbers, erasing the original hull number and secret hidden numbers that only he and the Coast Guard knew about, making them much more valuable in the process. Either way, his hopes for coming home with a project were high.\n\nThe head auctioneer for the GSA, the Government Services Administration, had already moved twenty-three boats in the three hours of fierce bidding that started at eight sharp. The bone yard was filled to capacity like a sold out concert.\n\nRoberts watched as the skilled auctioneer stood atop a dry-docked and dismantled 41-foot Indian deck, a boat that had been confiscated five years before and turned over to government service. With a clipboard in one hand and a portable microphone in the other, he played the numerous bidders against each other. The two main players were a Latin man from Palm Beach with a neatly cut mustache, greased back hair and a ponytail of two-inches and an Anglo yacht broker from Fort Pierce who sported a beard and smoked a pipe with cherry-laced tobacco.\n\n\"Thirteen thousand,\" the broker said, filling the air with smoke.\n\n\"Thirteen thousand, do I hear fourteen?\"\n\n\"Fourteen,\" replied the Latin.\n\n\"Fourteen-five,\" added the broker.\n\n\"Fifteen.\"\n\n\"Fifty thousand dollars,\" yelled the broker.\n\n\"I have fifty thousand dollars,\" said the auctioneer as silence fell over the crowd.\n\n\"Do I hear fifty-one?\"\n\n\"Fifty-one,\" the Latin man yelled as he spoke into a handset connected to a portable cellular phone bag. \"Fifty-one is it? He can't see this boat, man! Come on tell him, he's really missing out.\"\n\n\"Fifty-two,\" said the broker.\n\n\"Fifty-three,\" yelled the Latin, this time with his phone resting in his hand at waist height.\n\nThis was not for Scott Roberts. A dog and pony show. He was not there to be amused. He was on a quest. The auction bulletin he had received a week before had detailed the 27-foot Stiletto he was after.\n\n#342 \u2013 27-foot Stiletto Starfire, 1972, scrap salvage. Vessel previously submerged.\n\nAs Roberts walked away from the crowd, the auctioneer's voice was still ringing out.\n\n\"Fifty-three; do I hear fifty-three-five? Fifty-three-five? Fifty-three for this 41-foot Indian. Come on people I'm not going to give it away!\"\n\nFifty-three fucking grand, Roberts thought to himself. I built that boat for Omar Valasquez seven years ago and only got one twenty for the damn thing, turnkey! Now it's a seven year old, bare hull and deck, and had the piss run out of it. Fifty-three grand! No warranty...no sea trial...as is! Why can't I find buyers like these people?\n\nAs Roberts rounded the fantail of a large sloop, he saw it. She wasn't with the other go-fasts and sat on a set of concrete blocks shoved between two much larger express cruisers. As he walked closer, his heart started to pound faster and harder. This was his dreamboat, a virtual classic in Miami boating circles. Like a 1957 Chevy or a 1962 Vet, this 27-foot Stiletto had character. Aaron Donaldson probably laid up the hull himself, he thought. Ten years ago, he used to watch the 27s cruise the Intracoastal. Back then there weren't any of those pesky No Wake zones. No sound restrictions. It was open headers and balls to the wall. Roberts ran his hand over the weathered blue gelcoat. This boat was special. He could tell as he saw the sun-blocked, darker blue outline of the removed letters spelling something. He could barely make it out. U period, S period. Oh Shit...U. S. CUSTOMS! This was Customs private stock; one of their own. Donaldson built this boat for the government. It will be heavier than the rest. All the better, and stiffer for splashing a mold, he thought. He had to own it.\n\nAs Roberts took one last thorough look at the boat, he turned to see the crowd by the Stiletto.\n\n\"Fifty-nine-five, going once, going twice. Sold to the man with the cellular phone! Margaret, list lot number twenty-three to bidder six for fifty-nine thousand five hundred. Sir, please present your funds or letter of credit at the registration desk. You have forty-eight hours to remove the vessel. Next on the roster is lot twenty-four, a 27-foot Stiletto Starfire. Please follow me to the rear of the yard.\"\n\nAs the crowd got closer, Roberts could feel the bulge of the sixty-six one hundred dollar bills growing restless in his right pocket. As the auctioneer got closer, he looked at his clipboard.\n\n\"Lot number twenty-four, a 27-foot Maltese Stiletto Starfire, 1972. This boat comes with a warning folks. It is being offered as scrap salvage. Do I have a starting bid?\"\n\nThe auctioneer's enthusiasm was chaired for this one. His audience was now looking over the hulls and running gear of a larger Hatteras next to the rundown Stiletto. He wanted to dump this one and move to better game.\n\n\"Do I hear three thousand?\"\n\nA small, portly man who arrived earlier in an old beat up tow truck raised his hand with two fingers extended.\n\n\"Two thousand, I have two thousand, do I hear three?\"\n\nRoberts tried to play it cool.\n\n\"Twenty-five hundred,\" he yelled.\n\n\"I have twenty-five hundred,\" the auctioneer blared, resorting to denominations of hundreds rather than thousands.\n\n\"Do I hear twenty-seven?\"\n\n\"Twenty-six.\"\n\n\"Three-thousand,\" Roberts answered.\n\nAll was quiet as a man from the back of the lot was panicking, searching through his pockets, holding the bundle of thirty C-notes in his teeth. Quarters and dimes fell through his fingers.\n\n\"Three thousand going once.\"\n\n\"Three thousand, one.\"\n\nThe crowd exploded with laughter. The man knew he had been beaten.\n\n\"Three thousand and two dollars,\" Roberts yelled.\n\nThe auctioneer, who was also laughing, threw up his hands, clipboard, megaphone and all.\n\n\"Three thousand and two dollars, do I hear three thousand, two dollars and fifty cents?\"\n\nThe crowd returned with more laughter.\n\n\"Three thousand and two dollars going once, twice, and SOLD! to number, hold up your card sir, number forty-five. Margaret, lot twenty-four to bidder forty-five for three thousand and TWO dollars.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nThe next morning, Julio and Felix blocked the traffic on 188th Street as Scott Roberts backed the trailered Stiletto into the front of the Indian warehouse. The two workers guided him in as he watched using the dually's side-mounted mirrors. Roberts was always adept at backing the trailers. It came with the practice he gained from wet launching the Indians at the numerous Miami public ramps. Having to dodge the countless weekend warrior boaters gave him a unique quality. Maneuvering the king cab dual-wheeled pickup through the roughest of obstacles had become second nature.\n\nJulio watched as the chaffed blue and white hull backed under the shade of the warehouse. He thought of how he would take his time doing what he enjoyed most while on the job at Indian, renovating and restoring boats. As soon as Roberts had gotten back from the auction he had the crew clear out an area of one side of the shop. Felix stood next to him and in the back of his mind wondered why, in the midst of so much mayhem, his boss would want to take on this additional task.\n\n\"That is some boat, hey?\" Felix said.\n\n\"It used to be,\" Roberts replied.\n\n\"I bet you got a real cheery deal on it, those auctions I hear practically give those things away,\" Felix said.\n\n\"Yeah, right Felix. Nothing's free son.\"\n\n\"Why are we taking this boat? Don't we have enough work already?\" Felix asked.\n\n\"Yes we do have quite a bit of work. As for the Stiletto, it is different. A man gets tired of the same old grind every day, especially when you've been doing this as long as I have. I build the Indians because I used to dream of the Stilettos. Every now and then you need a reminder of where you came from in order to figure out where you're going,\" Roberts explained.\n\n\"Yeah, okay, I think I understand,\" Felix said.\n\n\"Felix, that would be incredible. Now what are you supposed to be doing? Didn't I ask you to wax the thirty-two mold?\"\n\n\"Yeah but Julio forgot to get more mold release so I had to put it on the backburner.\"\n\n\"Okay, I want you to go help them unload the Stiletto onto that cradle over there, then you get some boxes and start to strip it down from bow to stern. I want every nut, bolt, the rub rail, everything.\"\n\nAfter the boat was unloaded, Felix began to work. It was a change of pace for him, one he appreciated. He didn't consider himself a lazy man but he was getting tired of the day-in, day-out monotonous waxing of the molds. It was hot, tedious work. He turned up the boom box on the workbench next to him and started unscrewing the many fasteners that held the external fixtures on the boat. The radio was tuned to WQBA, a local Latin radio station that bounced Latin sounds from the hardened steel walls of the warehouse. The rub rail that was designed to fend a boat from pilings and docks was the most time consuming. There were two screws secured into the rigid Fiberglas hull every six inches. Felix made good time, though, with a cordless screw gun in one hand and a can of penetrating lubricant in the other. Julio had helped him get started by preparing three labeled boxes: engine parts, hull fixtures and gauges. Roberts wanted all the stripped parts segregated and available for inspection. Felix guzzled the quart bottle of ice water as fast as he could. The heat inside the warehouse was immense and Felix was not used to working this hard. He was interested though, kind of a new beginning for this old boat. Maybe his boss buying this Stiletto wasn't such a bad idea. He had been at it for a little over four hours. The foredeck was stripped. Cleats, chalks, rub rails, and even a small polished horn came off with little persuasion. Felix had worked his way into the cockpit. There was collectively more hardware here than the rest of the boat combined. The dashboard looked like a suitable place to start. It was mainly a Fiberglas extension of the deck that originated just behind the Plexiglas windshield. It was mounted at an angle so the operator could have an adequate view of all the running gauges. On the face of this Fiberglas box was a laminate panel of plastic. The gauges and switches, including the keyed ignition switches, were all mounted on this panel. Felix took great care in unscrewing the eight number ten stainless screws that held the delicate piece in place. At the top of the dash, an original Maltese Stiletto Starfire insignia was etched. If he were to damage it in any way, Roberts would have his ass. Plastic, being what it is, after many years of being in the sun loses its flexibility. It becomes brittle, less pliable. He had to be careful.\n\nAll but the last screw was out. Felix stopped for a second to wipe his brow. The sweat was starting to drip down and make the Phillips-head screwdriver he was using slippery. He had refrained from using the screw gun on such a precarious task. The last screw was in tight but with a little effort, it backed out of its twelve-year nest of Fiberglas. With the last few revolutions, Felix removed the remaining fastener with his fingers. He then took a flat-head screwdriver and pried one end of the panel up from the console. Years of dirt and salt were built up around its edges. The panel came up without much resistance for the first few inches, and then it stopped. It appeared to Felix to be hung up on something internal. At the risk of breaking it, the timid laborer simply put the panel back in its place.\n\nHe stopped for a second to think about what he was doing, something he was not accustomed to doing during his two-year tenure as the official Indian mold waxer. Underneath the console was a piece of teak, ten- by-twelve-inches with four screws securing it. Felix got down on his back and began removing them. They all came out with very little effort, but as the piece of wood came loose, more salt and debris fell from the seam directly into Felix's lap. He removed what he could with his hands and then peeked under the console. It was obvious now why the instrument panel was tied up. The large amount of wires going to the gauges, switches and other fused circuits were wrapped up with more wires originating from a black box mounted on the bulkhead. Pissed off, Felix took the largest flat-head screwdriver he had and pried the box from the wall. It immediately dropped down, hanging by the many wires that connected it to the rest of the boat. Felix took a pair of electrical dykes and snipped the wires clean as the box dropped to the deck. The more he looked into the hole, the more he could not believe all the tangled mess of circuits and multicolored wires. He followed the wires he had just cut and saw mounted, not six inches away from the first one, another identical black box; this one with a set of switches and a key lock. Again, Felix took his large screwdriver and pried it clean from the bulkhead. It, too, dropped to the deck. He then, out of frustration, threw both of them out of the cockpit listening to them hit the hard concrete surface below. The panel was now free and he continued to remove it slowly but surely, making sure not to chip any of the edges or crack the delicate plastic\n\n* * * * *\n\nThanksgiving\n\nJoel sat comfortably in his assigned airline seat 16-C, a window seat midway along the length of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80. The ride was soothing. He laid back and enjoyed the ride with the bright glow of a Florida sunset on his left and an empty aisle seat to his right. He could stretch out and relax. Joel hated planes that were filled to capacity. He usually ended up sitting next to a smoker who, despite the fact that all flights were designated as nonsmoking, still had the stench of the cigarette residue on his clothes.\n\nWith a long and stressful first week behind him, Joel could now sit back and relax. The whine of the twin turbo fans mounted to the plane's tail made the ride that much more comfortable.\n\nSeated across from him on the opposite side of the plane was a young family of three. Mom and Dad, both fifty pounds overweight, both munching on blue packages of salted airline peanuts, sat taking intermittent sips from plastic cups of beer. Seated between them was their child, a small boy who appeared to be about two. He was dressed in a pair of bright blue overalls and wore a blue and white pinstriped Atlanta Braves baseball cap over the blond curls on his head. Pinned to the front of his overalls was a plastic pair of \"wings\" with the airline's logo embossed in the middle. The boy munched on his own bag of peanuts and can of cola.\n\nJoel looked over at the boy who was occasionally returning glances. He winked at the blond-headed boy who in turn repaid the gesture, squinting the entire left side of his face in the process. In a matter of a few seconds, the two had connected only adding to Joel's feeling of peacefulness.\n\nThe ride continued as the plane descended into the Atlanta area. The pressure against his eardrums disrupted a brief nap he had managed to catch. He immediately readjusted his tray table and put away the magazine he had been looking at. To his left, his new \"friend\" had become agitated and was starting to cry. The boy's parents became frantic with intolerance.\n\n\"Shut up boy, will you!\" the mother insisted, poking him in the ribs, further agitating the boy who continued to cry, now only louder.\n\n\"Your momma said to shut up boy!\" the father added, grabbing the boy's small head in his large hand.\n\n\"What's the boy's name?\" Joel asked, reaching over the unoccupied aisle seat next to him.\n\n\"Oh! I'm sorry. Did our boy wake you?\" the mother asked, apologizing.\n\n\"Oh no, he's not a problem. What's his name?\" Joel asked, this time with a more insistent tone.\n\n\"Justin,\" she said.\n\n\"Justin. Hey buddy, are your ears hurting you?\" Joel asked.\n\nThe boy stopped crying as he turned to look toward the unfamiliar voice.\n\n\"Do they hurt?\" Joel asked again.\n\nThe boy nodded yes as he put his small hands over the sides of his head.\n\n\"Drink some soda and swallow a lot,\" he instructed.\n\n\"Don't spill now, boy!\" the mother blurted out.\n\nJustin tipped the can of cola back, holding it with both hands. The bubbly fluid rushed down the back of his throat as he swallowed frantically. He then put the can down and continued to swallow, sticking his chin forward with each contraction of his throat.\n\n\"Now, doesn't that feel better?\" Joel asked as the boy smiled and nodded yes.\n\n\"Thank you mister. Justin can get real ornery when he wants to. You got a real way with youngins,\" she replied.\n\n\"It was nothing. Glad to help,\" Joel said.\n\nThe plane landed soon after and Joel took his time exiting through the crowd of people, some hurrying to catch a connecting flight, others content to be back on the ground. He was just happy to be back home.\n\n\u2022\n\nTwo hours later, the red, white and blue logo of the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, better known as C-SPAN, appeared in the left hand corner of the console-mounted TV screen in Pat Stephens's den. The channel carried presidential speeches, Senate and House Committee meetings and other public issue talks, both domestic and foreign. Today's presentation was of the House Ways and Means Committee debates over the new anti-drug bill that was in front of Congress for a final vote. The session was an extended one and Congress was under significant pressure to wrap up their business and go on to bigger and better things. The proponents of the bill, mostly Democrats, saw the solution in education and long term rejuvenation of the American intellect, thereby giving young people more options and choices in life, and, in turn, less drug use. Reduce the demand, and the supply will therefore also dwindle. Funding, according to the proponents, should go to public education programs. Government supported education to the second year of public college, drug abuse centers, along with detoxification facilities were all part of the plan.\n\nOpponents of the bill were against spending any more money on domestic programs altogether. They felt the budgets of the Justice Department, Customs and DEA were all over-funded. Stephens characterized them as religious zealots who wanted to go to Peru and Columbia and decimate the populous, thus reducing the supply. The opponents were right-wing conservatives who believed the military could solve all the world's wrongs and for whom the budget was a priority. At the sake of his conscience and his career, Stephens supported the crime bill.\n\nJhenna rubbed her husband's tired shoulders while Joel sat on an opposite couch. Behind them a brisk fire crackled in the hearth. A fresh snow had fallen two hours before and Stephens's den, which was at the extreme end of their large house, warmed at a slower rate than the rest of the home. It was a flaw in the design and one Stephens contemplated civil action over but the three-year statute of limitations ran out and the couple had no choice but to accept the flaw.\n\nCongressman Bing Maxwell of Kansas was speaking. An opponent, he was the leader of the opposition mainly because of his charismatic nature in dealing with people. Stephens often thought the plump congressman was a TV evangelist in another life.\n\n\"We must agree that this poison must be taken out at the root. It is a travesty that we should let the influence of drugs continue with all the smugglers and cheap street dealers making their profits. I know it sounds corny, but as Sheriff Andy Griffith used to say, nip it in the bud. We have experienced soldiers. Men and now, God help us, women trained to fight and protect our nation's interest. They are in a stand down mode and are ready to intervene in a moment's notice.\"\n\n\"This guy's insane,\" Stephens said aloud as the congressman continued.\n\n\"We must turn these dedicated professionals loose and remake havoc among the various drug communities presently in control of Central and South America.\"\n\nThe House Chambers filled with a mild but steady applause as the congressman from Kansas collected the notes and left the podium. The camera switched to that of the Speaker, the Honorable Stu Abrams from New Hampshire.\n\n\"Thank you Congressman Maxwell. We are planning on breaking for lunch at around 11:45. Congressman Sikes, I don't want to cut you short, so if you need more time, you can start after the recess,\" the lead congressman said, directing his voice to a small, suit-clad man who was now standing at the threshold of the bench.\n\n\"I think I'll have enough time. My dad used to say, keep it short and simple.\"\n\n\"A new standard for us all I hope,\" the Speaker replied as Sikes assumed his place behind the podium.\n\n\"The flow of drugs affects no other state in a more devastating fashion than my state of Florida. We are amidst a battleground being fought off our many diverse coasts, a losing battle at that. The anti-drug crime bill is not just a good idea - it's a great one. We, as responsible Americans, need to attack the drug problem at the grassroots level: the desire, the want, the need, and the addiction. As responsible Americans, we need to give our young people the options they need to make a better life. Our children need to know they have a potential in life and that the decisions they make will affect them directly. At the same time, we need to draw tight the purse strings surrounding our borders and fortify the forces offshore and in the air channels. We need to maintain these federal forces. The DEA, U.S. Customs and Coast Guard have been doing a bang up job. Let's not leave them out in the cold now. Thank you Mr. Speaker.\"\n\nThe chambers were a grumble of voices and shuffling paper as those who were seated rose to exercise the lunch recess.\n\nRAP RAP RAP\n\nThe wooden gavel summoned attention as the Speaker peered over the chamber floor.\n\n\"We'll recess for ninety minutes and resume at 1:15.\"\n\nA C-SPAN commentator interrupted detailing and summarizing the congressmen's opposing views. After that, the schedule of the day's programming was displayed and Pat Stephens clicked the set off with his remote. Jhenna held him tight from behind as he sat quietly in the leather office chair.\n\n\"I've been asked to speak to the committee next week. Sikes called yesterday. He's really pushing hard for this,\" he said.\n\n\"Honey, that's great!\" she answered.\n\n\"I really think this is the progressive thinking we need to solve these complex problems. These damn zealots like Maxwell. They should be thumping Bibles down in Mississippi somewhere. This is what I need to increase my visibility.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you'll do the right thing,\" she said, rubbing her hand over his chest.\n\n\"What we don't need right now is anything to mar the public's opinion of the federal forces abroad,\" he declared, tensing up at the last minute before turning the TV back on and changing the channel to CNN. They were running a story about a Florida treasure salver who had found a long lost Spanish galleon; a ship that was transporting gold to Mother Spain back in the early 1600s. The vessel had been caught in a storm off the coast of the Florida Keys and sank, killing all on board.\n\nThe salver had spent twenty years and over three million dollars of his own money looking for this treasure. Everyone around him was inspired by his spirit that started each morning at 5:30 when he would say: \"Today is going to be the day.\"\n\nHe kept up the fight, even when it took the life of his beloved wife in a tragic diving accident. He never gave up. Then one day, his funds depleted and his heart broken, he did what he had come to do. In ninety feet of water, on a reef called the Elbow, he found the remains of the ship and its sixty million dollars of gold, silver and other jewels, the largest treasure find in American history. And that's when his real troubles began. The State of Florida made an immediate claim on the treasure, threatening to jail the salver if he didn't immediately turn it over. They had offered to give him ten percent of the value of the find based on its museum value (which the state calculated at ninety thousand dollars), giving the salver a finder's fee of nine grand for his troubles. The story went on to tell more of the life and death struggle of the man, a struggle that had started in the ocean and ended up in the courts.\n\n\"I know that place,\" Joel said.\n\n\"What place?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"The Elbow. It's a reef off Key Largo.\"\n\n\"Find any treasure, hotshot?\"\n\n\"Like I've got the time to look for treasure or anything else for that matter,\" he said before the three moved to the living room while Jhenna got their dinner ready.\n\nJoel couldn't get enough of his sister's cooking. He had consumed two plates and was still planning on dessert. \"So tell us about the Keys,\" Pat said.\n\n\"They're okay. The poor man's Hawaii and all that.\"\n\n\"What's the office like?\" Jhenna asked.\n\n\"Good bunch of guys. My FTO is a little strange though, but, well maybe it's me,\" he said.\n\n\"Strange? How do you mean strange, Joel?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"On some nights the guy is like a superhero or something. Really eager,\" Joel replied, pausing to bite a biscuit, his fourth. \"Others, he just ignores obvious targets. The other night we were out over the reef and this smuggler, Alazar, who everyone says is dirty, was there with an obvious crew waiting for a load and this guy turns the other way and heads for shore. The look the two of them gave each other was real spooky. I felt like a third wheel. What's up? I kept asking myself.\"\n\n\"Jordan Cheney told me a little about what and how you're doing.\"\n\n\"Oh, he did, did he?\" Joel said, looking cross-eyed over at Jhenna who had a smile on her face.\n\n\"You sank a boat?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"A truck too,\" Joel responded.\n\n\"I heard it was a boat.\"\n\n\"I did that too.\"\n\n\"You sank a boat and God help us, a truck?\"\n\n\"It's all very explainable.\"\n\n\"Don't bother. Cheney filled me in already.\"\n\n\"Oh, great,\" Joel uttered with concern.\n\n\"He said the boat had a faulty steering cable and the truck popped out of park and rolled down a boat ramp - all very explainable. No need to get so defensive,\" Pat said with half a smile on his face.\n\n\"That was his personal truck. He's gonna hold it over me forever,\" Joel said.\n\n\"He sounded relieved to me. Something about wanting a new one anyway.\"\n\n\"That's a load off my shoulders. He's really not mad?\"\n\n\"But, Captain Crunch, just the same, let's not destroy any more of the government's equipment, okay?\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"Are you guys ready for pie?\" Jhenna asked as she went into the kitchen.\n\n\"Our sources tell us there is a network of agents who are protecting a group of major organized traffickers.\"\n\n\"I'll keep my eyes open,\" Joel promised.\n\n\"Would anyone like ice cream with their apple pie?\" Jhenna asked as she returned with dessert.\n\n\"None for me,\" Joel replied.\n\n\"Me neither, babe,\" Pat said.\n\n\"So Joel, when are you going to call Cathy?\" Jhenna asked as she gently placed a slice of warm pie onto Joel's plate.\n\n\"As your attorney, I advise you not to answer that Joel!\" Pat interrupted abruptly. \"He doesn't want to go out with your fat friend...Do you Joel,\" Pat continued.\n\n\"I, I don't really know,\" he answered in his best nonpartisan tone.\n\n\"She's a very nice girl and I want nothing but the best for my little brother,\" she said, dumping Pat's pie on his plate, splashing it in a heap upside-down.\n\n* * * * *\n\nSkim\n\nGil Lindback felt uncomfortable talking about his friend the way he did but he felt he had an obligation to Roberto. Jobs like the one Alazar had given him were not easily gotten and he wasn't going to chance a thing.\n\n\"I just want to say, Gil, that you used your head and got us all out of a big jam,\" Roberto said to his subordinate, who was sitting in a couch across from him.\n\n\"Mongi couldn't believe it when a damn ambulance rolled into his backyard,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"Now, what was it you wanted to talk to us about?\" Roberto asked.\n\n\"First, I need to say that Kevin has a lot of problems. Ever since he got mixed up with this guy Kal Boggas, he has been saying crazy things, like he's not getting paid enough, and you guys are ripping him off. He parties too much and I think he's been taking a lot of drugs so you have to promise me that after I tell you, he won't, like die or anything,\" Lindback made sure of, as both men laughed.\n\n\"What do you think, we're killers Gil?\" Alazar asked.\n\n\"Just please promise me because I'm having a real hard time with this, okay?\"\n\n\"No problem Gil. We will not kill Kevin. Now tell us what is going on,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"He has been skimming the bales. Just a little from each one, but enough to make a difference,\" Lindback uneasily stated, still unsure of himself.\n\n\"How much?\" Alazar asked.\n\n\"About twenty pounds,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, well, that's not good. Something will have to be done,\" Gordo declared in an intimidating tone.\n\n\"Stop scaring the kid!\" Alazar commanded.\n\n\"Look, Gil, I'm human and with that it means I am not beyond making mistakes. Kevin is also human and the same applies to him. He has been a valuable worker and he can continue to be a valuable worker,\" Alazar said looking Lindback in the eyes. \"Will you help us teach Kevin a lesson? God forbid he does this to someone who is not so understanding.\"\n\n\"Anything. What can I do?\"\n\n\u2022\n\nOn a lone stretch of road between Long Key and Marathon, two men stood next to a large ten-wheel utility truck, the type with a hydraulic boom mounted to the top. This boom could elevate a worker as high as thirty feet with the truck's steel outriggers fully extended. Kevin Pinder helped his chubby partner into the swiveling Fiberglas bucket. After the man secured his tools and strapped himself in, Kevin walked over to the control panel mounted on the side of the truck. The electric pump whined as it moved hot hydraulic oil through a series of rubber pressure hoses to a chrome-plated ram piston mounted on the boom. The bucket rose skyward inching its way to the wires above. Kevin watched his partner overhead as he carefully shifted the levers at his waist. Up, then over, he moved the bucket to a cylindrical transformer mounted on the pole. The bucket stopped and Kevin set the lock, securing the rig until it was ready to be moved again. His partner began to work as Kevin sat on the rear bumper.\n\nIn the distance, a blue Oldsmobile appeared traveling on the Overseas Highway towards them. The man in the bucket noticed it first but paid no attention until it slowed and approached the truck. Kevin stood to his feet recognizing the car. It was Gordo and he was not alone. The man in the bucket stopped his work for a moment as he watched the car pull up to the rear of the truck below, disappearing for a second in a cloud of dry dirt.\n\n\"Gordo, my man! \u00bfC\u00f3mo Est\u00e9e Lauder dude?!\"\n\n\"Kevinito, how are you doing?\"\n\n\"Hey did we get paid man? My rent is due and I'm broke again.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Gordo said, \"can you take it now?\"\n\n\"Eight grand? Right here? I bet it's in fives and tens again. But if I'll have to, I'll hide it on the truck.\"\n\n\"Sure Kevinito, hide it on the truck. Here follow me, it's in the trunk.\"\n\nAs the two walked around the side of the car, Del grabbed the keys from the ignition and joined them at the back. As Gordo turned the key, the trunk lid sprang open exposing the terrified face of Kal Boggas, Kevin's companion at the clavo the night before. Boggas's eyes were wide open like dishes, staring at the three in a desperate panic. Kevin froze in place and then turned away from Gordo, only to come face to face with the meaner Del. A blade of sunlight gleamed from the highly polished nine-millimeter Beretta he held, aimed at Kevin's abdomen.\n\n\"Where's my shit asshole?\"\n\n\"Kevinito, you know Del. That stuff you stole last night belongs to him and I think he wants it back.\"\n\n\"What stuff? What are you talking about man?\"\n\nDel began to grow more aggravated.\n\n\"Look you skinny fuck, I'll do you without a second thought. That shit you stole was mine. Where the fuck is it?\"\n\nDel's beady eyes pierced through Kevin's panicked smile.\n\n\"Look, I thought if I had some of the stuff I could spread it around, you know, sell some for Roberto.\"\n\n\"Well, Roberto doesn't remember making you an authorized agent of the product, so how about you return the sample and we'll be friends again. Okay?\"\n\n\"It's at my house.\"\n\nDel looked at Gordo who instantly nodded.\n\n\"Now get in.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You heard me, get in, and don't forget to buckle up.\"\n\nKevin crawled into the tight trunk with Kal as Del slammed the lid over the two. The smell of Kal's shit-drenched pants quickly engulfed the air in the tight space. The lineman, now stuck elevated in the bucket, began to yell at the car as it drove off spinning loose gravel at the parked truck. Del waved politely as they made their way north.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDementia\n\nThe return flight from Atlanta was smooth and relaxing, a pleasant reward for a hectic, first week of duty. The time he spent with his sister was refreshing. Jhenna had been a supporting part in his life and he always looked forward to the time they spent together. The food was also something he had missed while in the Keys. Her home cooking was the best he had ever tasted and he wondered what it would be like to have someone in his life who could cook like his sister, who paid close attention to the smallest details and tried to make every meal a special occasion.\n\nThe Plantation Key Colony apartment was quiet as he lay in a half slumber. He had the uncomfortable feeling that there was another presence in the room. He was half asleep though, and maybe he was dreaming. Still, he detected another respiratory cycle besides his own, one with a faster rate and a slight wheeze to it. Then it hit him. He was back in the Keys. His two days in Atlanta were over. His assignment did contain a moderate amount of danger. With that, he sat straight up in bed and found himself face to face with an old, gray-haired woman. Behind her stood an elderly man, bald and dressed in a white muscle shirt and Bermuda shorts.\n\nJoel shook his head a few times before wiping the sleep from his eyes. She stood without making a sound or moving a muscle. The woman's face was weathered and her body hung on her bones like a tired suit on a wire coat hanger. The opposite could have been said of the man behind her who looked as though he didn't miss many meals.\n\n\"Hello,\" she said. \"The door was partially open.\"\n\n\"Is he dead?\" the man asked loudly as though he suffered from a hearing deficit.\n\n\"It was?\" Joel asked, pulling the sheets up over his underwear-clad body.\n\n\"You must be Owen's new partner.\"\n\n\"Yeah, we met a few days ago. You're Betty Sands, Owen's mother,\" he reminded her.\n\n\"I'm Betty Sands. I'm Owen's mother. And this is Mr. Phipps, my next-door neighbor and special friend. He came and got me when he found your door open. Mr. Phipps is the complex's unofficial security guard, if you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"False alarm I guess. I thought he was dead,\" Mr. Phipps said loudly.\n\n\"This is great!\" Joel answered sarcastically.\n\n\"I hope you don't mind me coming in but I thought you might be in trouble, what with the door open and all.\"\n\n\"No ma'am, everything's okay. I must not have shut it all the way when I came in last night.\"\n\n\"You did get in kind of late,\" she added.\n\n\"Yea, well, my plane was delayed and then there was the drive from Miami.\"\n\n\"Well, don't let us bother you anymore. Go back to sleep, and I'll let myself out,\" she concluded as she backed out of the room, pushing Mr. Phipps ahead of her.\n\nHoly shit! he thought, as he laid his head back on the pillow.\n\n* * * * *\n\nCatalyst\n\nRoberto Alazar, with Del and Gordo at his side, walked into the open bay door at the Indian warehouse on 188th Street. Immediately, Alazar's eyes started to water, irritated by the airborne residue of resin. Alazar tried to keep his meetings with Scott Roberts short and sweet. Even the shop's air-conditioned offices did not provide shelter from the toxic fumes.\n\n\"Scotty, how are you doing my friend?\"\n\n\"Roberto, I guess you got my message. I have something to show you.\"\n\n\"I hope it's a finished hull. I'm starting to get anxious.\"\n\nThe three walked between several unfinished boats and upright sets of molds toward the back of the shop where Julio had the new 42-footer propped up on an oversized boat cradle. The side of the hull reflected like a mirror. The highly polished mold made for a perfect impression.\n\nAlazar was visibly impressed as he ran his hand across the freshly released hull.\n\n\"Scott, you've outdone yourself. This is magnificent. What is next? When can we put the deck on? I really want to see her lines.\"\n\n\"The next thing we have to do is install the power. It's much easier that way. Then we can do most of the hull and string bound wiring, install the fuel tanks, sewage and water holds. After that we will be able to glass-in the cap and deck.\"\n\n\"Well great. What are we waiting for?\"\n\n\"The engines are at the terminal. I'm going to need some more money. They'll need a check and I need some time to put it into my account so we don't have to fill out any tax forms. I can only put in ninety-five hundred at a time.\"\n\n\"Gordo...\" Alazar said, taking a brown paper sack from his right hand.\n\n\"I brought forty. This should keep things going for a while. I should be back before you need any more.\"\n\nAs Roberts took the bag, he surveyed its weight to be about six or seven pounds. Forty grand, it had to be fives and tens again, he thought to himself.\n\n\"Before you go, there's something else I want to show you.\"\n\nAlazar and Gordo turned to follow Roberts who walked ahead at a proud pace.\n\n\"I picked this up at the Customs auction in Brunswick, Georgia.\"\n\nAs they approached the other side of the warehouse, Alazar could see the reason for his friend's excitement. Although the boat was beat up, Alazar walked over to it, briefly touching his fingers on the spot where the letters U.S. CUSTOMS used to be.\n\n\"I know this boat and Gordo really knows this boat don't you, brother?\" Alazar said as the three laughed.\n\nRoberts began to explain, pointing to the large cardboard boxes overflowing with the parts that Felix had removed earlier.\n\n\"I'm just in the stages of separating what's original and what's not.\"\n\nAlazar walked around the boat taking a good look. He was definitely not the aficionado of vintage offshore craft that Roberts was but his interest in the boat was as a captured tool of the enemy. Alazar remembered the Cuban MiG that was flown to Key West by a defecting pilot in 1962. The aircraft and its onboard systems were under the microscope of U.S. officials for several weeks after. They covered the aircraft with a fine-toothed comb before shipping it to the U.S. Navy's Airfield in Miramar, California, for dismantling.\n\nAs Alazar walked around the transom, he noticed something that caught his eye. It was the two black boxes, each one not more than eight-inches-square by three-inches-deep. They were connected by a gang of multicolored wire and, by the looks of them, had been beaten up. Judging from the scratches, which exposed the metal case under the paint, the damage occurred when they were removed from the boat. Somewhere in his travels, Alazar had seen a similar device. Gordo joined him at the face of the workbench picking up half of the device and looking his cousin in the eye. The two became very quiet.\n\n\"What is it?\" Roberts asked.\n\n\"Did this come out of this boat?\"\n\n\"I guess so, I was getting ready to throw it away. What the hell is it?\"\n\nAlazar looked very carefully at their find.\n\nJudging from the Motocom decal on one of the boxes, it had to be something dealing with electronics, probably the boat's communications system.\n\n\"Scott, would you mind if I took this with me. You know just to have a look-see?\"\n\n\"Sure! Shit yeah, no problem man,\" Roberts said, holding the grocery bag with forty thousand dollars of the man's money.\n\n* * * * *\n\nEntourage\n\nIt was estimated that over sixty thousand people lined the shores of Key West's Harbor Pier, a long seawall that embraced the emerald water of America's southernmost port. On its opposite ends scaffolding was erected, supporting TV cameras that were pointed toward the ensuing action that would pass before them as over forty world-class offshore powerboats raced though the chute. Banners featuring the familiar logos of ABC Sports, the new cable sports news channel SPORTSNET, beer distributors like Budweiser and Michelob, and boat companies like Mercury Outboards were draped on the neighboring seawalls. The crowd was in a frenzy. The three-race series, which had started the preceding Tuesday and continued on Thursday, was now culminating on this day. The points were well distributed between several of the leading teams. Michelob Light, Benihana Restaurants and Damn Stiletto all held equal points for third place but the first place slot was a draw between Guerillmo Morales's Miss Miami Coatings and England's Prince Henry in his Don-Cat named Foolish Pleasure.\n\nAs the pace boat climbed up on plane flying a yellow pennant, the starting line of racers jockeyed for position, each next to one another speeding up and slowing down, trying to stay as far up front as possible without passing the pace boat. Like other motor sports, offshore racing utilized a running start. The pace boat was usually a stock version of the racers themselves and was usually provided by one of the manufacturers who wanted to promote their product line. Chris-Craft boats, a newcomer to the high performance side of the industry, supplied the official pace boat for the competition, lending one of the boats used in the new television series Miami Vice.\n\nThe competition director, seeing that all of the boats were on plane and ready to race, fired a bright green flare from the pace boat's cockpit. Simultaneously, one of the crewmembers replaced the flying yellow pennant with a corresponding green one. Like a switch had been thrown, the forty boats powered up and roared past the pace boat, heading down the chute that was Key West Harbor. Offshore powerboat racing was best seen from the air. Thirty-seven helicopters, each one filming their own version of the race, followed the pack of boats like a swarm of bees. The SPORTSNET chopper led the aircrafts, getting the best shot by flying sideways so its cameraman had an unobstructed pan of the action. In the background was the descending bright green bolt of light of the start flare, leaving behind a trail of smoke. This national coverage would boost ratings and help promote a sport that was in need of public attention. Unlike other motor sports, offshore racing was not a spectator sport. It had grown from the friendly competition between rumrunners in Florida and Michigan, smugglers who competed with the same boats they ran their rum and cigars in. The courses traveled through open water in seas that would send anyone else back to the dock.\n\nThe crowd, which had waited patiently, was now on its feet as the boats passed both SPORTSNET land-based cameras. They focused in on the pack of hulls that were trying to outdo the other. Bullet-shaped hulls extended from the sheets of white spray that formed from each boat. The thunder of the engines shook the pier and the ground below the bleachers. In their wake, a filmy mist covered the white patches of water that remained. Overhead, the rhythmic beat of helicopter blades circulated the smell of exhausted racing fuel lingering in the air.\n\nThe first boats to pass the breakwater on their way to the open sea were, as expected, Guerillmo Morales and Prince Henry, each one running nose-to-nose with the other. As they headed into the deeper, rougher water, Morales's deep-V hull sliced through the rough water maintaining its speed while Henry's Don-Cat had to slow, putting him in a distant second place. The proud prince pushed his craft to the limit trying to catch up to his Columbian nemesis. Throughout his hometown in the United Kingdom, the tabloids had touted him as an irresponsible child because of his racing exploits. Public opinion was fifty-fifty on whether the successor of the throne should be racing around the world like a gallivanting playboy, especially when things were not all that well at home. Henry prayed for a victory; one that would identify him as a true professional in the sport and would make his people stand up and take notice. He had ordered his Don-Cat with the biggest motors available and to give him an edge, he hired Aaron Donaldson himself to race in the boat with him. Unlike many other motor sports, offshore racing utilized crews of two or three to man the racing craft. The primary member would drive, the secondary would throttle, which is to control the engines while the boat is leaping in and out of the water, and the third, if any, would navigate. As a former world champion driver, Donaldson knew his way around a race boat and preferred to throttle.\n\nDespite the fact that this was only their third race together, tension was already erupting. Henry was very abusive during the first two qualifying races on Tuesday and Thursday. Donaldson wrote it off as pre-race jitters, something he had seen many times before. Henry looked over at his throttle man. He wished they'd go faster but Donaldson knew better. The seas were too rough and this was a Cat. If Henry wanted the championship that bad he should have bought a matching deep-V like the big teams, Donaldson thought to himself. A deep-V could have cut through the seas they were encountering. The Cat had a tunnel that filled with water every time they hit a large wave, crashing against the flat ceiling of the tunnel and slowing the craft down, not to mention the damage it did to the Fiberglas hull. Cats were made for flat water, the type of race seen on the west coast of Florida or Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. Key West was a different venue, one of the roughest of the season, which is why it was saved for the year's culmination, the World Championships. Key West was a true ocean race like Bacardi Rum's Miami to Bimini Run or Benihana's Point Pleasant Race along the New Jersey coast. Most large offshore teams owned two boats, one deep-V for the rough water and a Cat for everything else. Politically, Prince Henry could not afford such luxuries. Sure he had enough money, but the press would have crucified him even more so than they were doing already. While praying for a victory, Henry pleaded to God for Cat water.\n\nThe seas approaching the light at Sand Key were a steep five to seven feet high. They were common for this area. Because of the clarity of the water below, Morales's 46-foot deep-V looked like it was running right over the coral. It was an optical illusion. The water surrounding the light was really an average of twenty-five-feet-deep and made for more great national coverage.\n\nPrince Henry's throttle man trimmed the engine drives and the trim tabs inward. This changed the angle of the prop, pushing the bow of the boat closer to the water. Donaldson was not comfortable doing this but at the speed they were going, the twenty-foot leaps into the air were starting to get tiresome on the hull and the twin drive trains below the rattling deck. The threat was obvious and Donaldson knew it. The lower the bow was running to the water, the greater the chance it could penetrate an oncoming wave and submarine under the water instead of over it.\n\nEvenly placed sheets of jagged water erupted from both sides of the boat. Her speed was a constant eighty-six miles per hour and Morales was still in sight. Henry felt there was still hope yet, if he could just get his speed up. As they rounded the light, Donaldson pulled back on the throttles to compensate for the sharp turn. Henry though, put his gloved hand over that of his throttle man, pushing forward on the throttles. Donaldson pulled his hand from the aluminum sticks and turned away from the anxious prince, looking toward the ocean with his arms folded at his chest in an angry fury. Henry simply took over driving with one hand and throttling with the other. The end result was that there was no throttling to it. He had the boat at eighty percent power and was running over ninety miles per hour. The helicopter above, having to head into the wind, had to increase its collective pitch to keep up. Donaldson had achieved seven national championships, four world titles and countless other victories in his career as an offshore racer. Never before had he seen such a conflict in the cockpit. Win or not, as soon as they reached the dock, Donaldson was resigning from the prince's team.\n\nThe pilot of the helicopter above reduced the craft's altitude, lowering it closer to the water. This came at the request of the cameraman who notified him that Prince Henry was really starting to look good. That's when it happened.\n\nAs the 39-foot catamaran submerged under the oncoming waves, a wall of white, frothing water rolled up the long deck towards the crew. Prince Henry watched as microseconds passed in what appeared like slow motion. Instinctively, Donaldson bent his torso towards his knees, down below the rise of the deck, letting the wave pass overhead. Panic turned to sheer terror for the prince who took the full brunt of the water into his face, neck and chest. He was one-tenth of a second too late as the wash pulled his head up and over the padded bolster seat, instantly breaking his neck. As the boat rapidly de-accelerated, the cameraman in the helicopter above strained to focus in on the dead body of the prince.\n\nA mile ahead on the course, a whirlwind of turbulent air followed the Bell 206 JetRanger occupied by Pat Stephens and Chester Marks. The airspace in and around Key West was a flurry of activity with a multitude of aircraft filing flight plans to track the offshore race through the harbor and out to sea.\n\nThe JetRanger followed several boats but spent most of its time behind one in particular, the Miss Miami Coatings. Stephens didn't care much for the sport although Marks was a fan of boats in general. The chopper maintained a close pursuit on the one hundred miles per hour boat maintaining an altitude of fifty feet. The only time Marks backed off was when the boat started to turn up a large amount of spray, at times saturating the chopper's windshield.\n\nStephens watched and waited as the boat below them leaped over the waves. Marks watched his airspeed indicator. It was reading one ten. Minus the six-knot headwind, that meant the 46-foot deep-V hull was traveling over one hundred and four miles per hour.\n\n\"He's really moving,\" Marks said into the intercom.\n\n\"That's nice. Do we really have to be so low, Chester?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"Pilot discretion, sir.\"\n\n\"I was afraid you'd say that.\"\n\n\"Watch him when he rounds this checkpoint, the seas are really rough on this stretch.\"\n\nThe JetRanger continued to follow, having to slow so as to not overtake the boat. Marks's airspeed now registered ninety and they were flying with the wind.\n\n\"This is some boat boss!\"\n\n\"Yeah, this guy only buys the best,\" Stephens answered.\n\n\"What do you think that thing set him back?\"\n\n\"Our sources tell us over one point two mil.\"\n\n\"Jesus, you've got to be kidding!\"\n\n\"No, I'm not and the absurd thing is he'll probably replace most of the expensive stuff after every race, or at least he's planning to.\"\n\n\"You gonna rain on his parade, boss?\"\n\n\"Rain? It'll be a fucking deluge,\" Stephens answered.\n\n\u2022\n\nSmall waves splashed upon the concrete seawall at Harbor Pier. SPORTSNET reports confirmed the crowd had grown to over seventy thousand spectators who since had grouped, trying to view the commotion around the winner's circle. The long, sleek 46-foot Miss Miami Coatings lay tied to the pier. Her white deck was glistening in the sun, magnified by the small drops of crystal clear seawater that sparkled in the light.\n\nMorales stood like the victor he was, dressed in a white Nomex jumpsuit and a cherry red bandana wrapped around his neck. Standing next to him were the race officials from the American Powerboat Racing Association. Facing the group of men were reporters and television field correspondents who eagerly awaited an impromptu statement and possibly an interview. SPORTSNET had bought the broadcast rights for the World Championship Race and had several privileges that some of the other networks didn't. Their crews were in full force, with cameras poised at all major points along the course and several mounted airborne, riding some of the many helicopters swarming the area like frenzied dragonflies. Sports World magazine, having neglected the sport for many years, sent one of their top writers and a skilled photographer. This was the largest world championship series ever held and, combined with the participation of Prince Henry, international attention was drawn to the tiny island city. The prince's death would only compound the attention, although by the time of the winner's circle ceremonies, the press was largely unaware of what had actually happened.\n\n\"Guerillmo Morales,\" came a strong, projected voice in the crowd.\n\n\"Yes Mr. Roller,\" he answered.\n\n\"This is your third World Championship. The United States has not seen such a victor since the days of Betty Cook. Do you have any comments? How was it out there?\" the commentator asked, his face barely visible behind the bright camera lights.\n\n\"Well Stu,\" he said, trying to display his best English, \"it was rough!\" The crowd erupted with laughter. \"But seriously, I hope and pray as my family does that the Prince Henry gets, how you say, recovered. I wish we did see him so we could have stopped to help. I pray berry much.\"\n\n\"Any comments on the crash? Was this course just too rough?\" Stu Roller asked.\n\n\"A crash is berry bad, but we take a many risks to race like this in the ocean, it is never too rough for offshore racing. If you take a shower with you clothes on and at the same time beat yourself with a baseball bat why you tear up thousand dollar bills, that is offshore racing, it is berry rough.\"\n\n\"Very interesting analogy, Guerillmo Morales, World Champion offshore open class. Back to you, Vince,\" Roller said, putting the mic down to his side as the camera-mounted lights went dim. \"That's a wrap, thanks Guerillmo,\" Roller concluded with a handshake.\n\n\"Sure anytime,\" Morales answered.\n\n\"Mr. Morales,\" cried another voice from the crowd. \"Hank Vincent, Sports World.\"\n\n\"Yes sir,\" Morales answered.\n\n\"Do you feel the sport of offshore racing will have to adopt stricter guidelines to prevent what happened here today?\"\n\n\"Definitely not sir, I believe we all take risks because we want to. No one holds a gun to my head to go racing, now maybe I hold a gun to my throttle man's head, but that's a different story.\"\n\nThe crowd erupted again with laughter.\n\n\"If a man goes too far and stuffs his boat, I'm sorry. I know limits. I got my limits and my boat got its limits. I want to win, but I also want to go home and see my babies. Es simple.\"\n\n\"Can I quote you on this?\"\n\n\"I said it didn't I?\"\n\n\"Mr. Morales,\" came another voice from the crowd.\n\n\"Pat Stephens,\" the man answered.\n\n\"Yes sir, and who are you with?\"\n\n\"The United States Attorney's Office,\" Stephens declared with authority.\n\nMorales froze. Was this some kind of joke? he thought to himself. Who would play such a rude trick on this, my greatest day?\n\n\"Mr. Morales, I am here with twelve U.S. Marshalls. We have a warrant for your arrest,\" Stephens said, coming face-to-face with the terrified man. Morales turned pale. Stephens made a special point to stand in and be cuffed to his prisoner with all the cameras in view and strobe flashes from a dozen different cameras exploding. Stephens took his time reading the classic Miranda warning in both English and Spanish, knowing that it would make a great soundbite for the evening news. The world watched as Stephens and a few from his entourage walked away from the winner's circle. Morales, ashamed, held his once proud head low, a three-time world champion now fallen from grace.\n\n\u2022\n\nFive hours later, swatches of red and blue light danced back and forth between the shoulders of the Keys Overseas Highway. In a line that stretched nearly a mile, thirty-two green and white Metro-Dade police cruisers along with four U.S. Marshall's Suburbans formed an impenetrable convoy. Tucked away amidst the flashing lights and blaring sirens drove a white three-quarter-ton Dodge Maxi van. Its windows were made of Lexan and reinforced with wire mesh. The inside of the body panels were lined with yellow aramid Kevlar, making the entire vehicle bulletproof.\n\nThe time was 9:39 p.m. Guerillmo Morales sat quietly handcuffed to a pole welded to the van's frame. He sat prophetically amazed by the attention he had summoned. Along the route to South Miami, intersections were blocked by more flashing lights. It seemed like every agency in South Florida had a stake in the confinement and safety of Morales who was to be arraigned the next day.\n\nMorales had traveled this route many times before, usually in one of his Mercedes sedans, wearing a tailored suit or designer outfit, something loose and comfortable. Now he wore a bright orange jumpsuit with the bold white initials BOP-MCC, which stood for the Bureau of Prisons, Metro Correctional Center.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDoubloon\n\nThe white and blue hull of the 53-foot Hatteras yacht Frankly Scarlett rolled softly as it endured the gentle four-foot swells. Moored to the bottom some ninety feet below, the massive craft exerted tension on its one-inch-thick anchor rope, making it taut with every wave. On board, Owen Sands cracked a stainless valve on a bright yellow aluminum dive tank. The burst of air hissed as it escaped the intense pressure.\n\n\"This'll do,\" he said, slipping the cylinder into a matched backpack.\n\nDressed in a professional wetsuit, Owen fit the part. His over-tanned legs extended up from his dive fins rising to the matte black wetsuit that started at his knees. It covered the rest of his body stopping short of his throat. He strapped a weight belt to his waist. From it hung a mirage of equipment contained in a mesh net bag. Joel watched, trying to remember the finer points of diving he had learned two years ago at a scuba class he attended while at Berkeley. He was concerned and apprehensive. The only practical experience he had was in the university swimming pool with the exception of one open water dive off of Catalina. Joel looked like an amateur. He was clad in a pair of jogging shorts and a T-shirt that read If It Feels Good, Do It. He used Owen's spare tank, mask, and fins. Despite his inexperience, he still recalled the basics. He knew that a depth of thirty feet of water exerted as much pressure on the body as an eighty thousand foot high atmosphere of air and it increased an atmosphere every thirty feet thereafter. He remembered words like the bends, nitrogen narcoses, and cerebral embolism as he milled over the set of dive tables he picked up at a local dive shop earlier.\n\nOwen mounted his tank and fell backwards over the teak-lined side of the boat creating a large splash in the process. As he entered the water, a cold chill surged through his porous wetsuit engulfing his body in the cool liquid. At the same time, he felt the seawater flow into his ear canal making everything silent. Stunned at first, Owen quickly took a breath from the regulator. As he bit down on the mouthpiece, the taste of rubber coursed his pallet. The first breath of pressurized air filled his lungs as he exhaled bubbles that surrounded him, rushing to the surface. Looking up at the Frankly Scarlett, he remembered just how immense the boat was. A few feet away, two four-bladed propellers, almost four-feet in diameter, sat motionless. Joel watched as Owen stayed just a few feet under the water. Bubbles surfaced every few seconds. Then he stood atop the teak-lined gunwale and jumped in feet first. He wanted to see where he was going but was not used to the clarity of the water. Being able to see the bottom ninety feet below reminded him of a time when he had jumped from the family garage as a kid. He had shattered his right knee and was acrophobic ever since. Jumping into this water was more like jumping off a nine-story building. Joel landed, suspended in a cloud of aerated bubbles, next to Owen. The two headed for the bottom at a gradual decline. They headed straight for a dark pattern situated between two patches of coral. The pattern was about one hundred feet long and eighty feet wide.\n\nThe sixty-foot wood shell they found was, a few years before, a Haitian fishing trawler that was now sitting securely on the bottom at the base of the huge coral mountain that was the Elbow Reef. Ninety-four lives had been lost the year before when the crudely built boat capsized in heavy seas, just four miles from its intended destination, the Florida coast.\n\nKneeling on the sand of the ocean floor, Joel looked up at the towering bow that extended over his head. It reminded him of the time his father had taken him to the boat show in Annapolis, Maryland. He was only seven at the time, but Joel remembered standing below the bow of a brand new large yacht with its glossy hull and brightly polished fixtures. The yacht was propped up in the middle of the show grounds, like a ship in dry-dock surrounded by smaller boats flying banners and booths displaying a wide variety of marine accessories. For a second, the memory made him feel warm despite the cold temperature of the flowing current he was fighting to stay in position.\n\nThe Haitian boat was about sixty percent intact, with its mast snapped into three pieces, and other pieces of rigging strewn around the hull, littering the bottom.\n\nJoel felt Owen grab his arm to get his attention, pointing in the opposite direction from where he was looking. The two made their way several hundred feet from the Haitian trawler to a patch of sand that was marked by a painted green brick and a buoyant fishing bobber that was tied to it. Owen pulled an underwater metal detector from a canvas bag on his weight belt, turned it on and started to graze the sand back and forth. Suddenly the red LED light on top of the box lit up. Owen stopped and ran his gloved hand through the debris. Sand and pieces of rotted wood swirled about making a small cloud until a steel bolt appeared in Owen's hand. He put it in his waist bag and then scanned the area again with the detector. It lit again. Maybe he was going to be lucky, finding another cannonball to match the one sitting on the mantle in his living room. Again he sifted through the cloud but to no avail. Then he noticed something metallic. He sifted through more sand exposing a tubular object made of aluminum. The modern alloy seemed out of place amidst the decaying century old timbers. Owen was exhausted as he dug deeper. Joel joined him. Between the two, a cloud of sand covered the area. As they worked, a canvas-covered top emerged along with a wooden plaque affixed to the side of the electronics box that read Island Girl. Owen sat motionless for a second. Puzzled, Joel watched as his partner moved slowly to the half buried object, wiping his hand over the plaque, almost caressing it. Then like someone turned a switch, he snapped out of his trance. Owen, perched on his knees with sand covering his fins, looked around the landscape of the ocean floor around him.\n\nLaying some fifty yards away was the anchor belonging to the Frankly Scarlett. From it, ascending to the surface was the one-inch-thick anchor line surging with tension after each wave above. Owen swam over to the seventy pound steel fork. He waited for the line to fall limp and then crouched down, pulling the anchor from the sand. As he did, another wave struck the bow of the large yacht, pulling the rope taut. It pulled the anchor and Owen across the sandy terrain like a toy. Owen tried to hold on, losing the grip of one hand. The other squeezed as the anchor bounced across the bottom, headed for Joel and the submerged wreckage of the Island Girl. Joel looked on with ambivalence, not knowing what to expect. Just as Owen felt the grip of his hand give way, the anchor latched onto a stanchion of the T-top making a loud clink sound throughout the silent world. Owen sat motionless as he tried to catch his breath. A constant stream of exhaled air exiting his regulator made a white trail of bubbles that headed for the surface. Joel, his eyes wide open, watched as the anchor held tight. All was still until the next set of rolling swells pushed the boat above, even further back. The stationary wreckage became mobile. It ripped from the sand and drug across the bottom, leaving debris scattered everywhere. The twisted tubes and canvas pieces traveled farther away until getting caught in some coral. The boat was again secured firmly to the bottom. In the wreckage was the detached electronics box. Owen reached into it and pulled out a two-way radio, sticking it in an empty net diving bag. As he turned back to Joel, he noticed an amber sparkle coming from the sand. Owen twisted his body, swimming back, sifting through more debris. From the sand came a gold doubloon, shining in the sunlight that pierced through the water above. The doubloon was a form of currency used by the Spanish during the 17th Century and a rare collector's item.\n\nOwen looked at his tank pressure. It was down to 400 PSI. Owen immediately looked deeper in the area. He dug deeper into the sand and mud. The underwater cloud he created engulfed his entire head and torso. He then scanned the area one more time with the detector. The red LED remained unlit this time. It was time to go back up. After disconnecting the anchor from the T-top, the two followed the one-inch line, rising slower than the bubbles they were exhaling from their regulators. This was a safety precaution to allow the expanding air in the lungs to escape without putting excessive pressure on their internal organs. Joel was the first to break through the ocean's surface as he spit out the rubber regulator from his mouth.\n\n\"That was great!\" Joel exclaimed.\n\n\"This is what the Keys are all about kid,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"Well, looks like you got a coin for your collection.\"\n\n\"This one's yours. You earned it,\" Owen said, handing the gold coin to his partner.\n\n* * * * *\n\nTarget\n\nRalph Linez taxied the Beechcraft 18D down the crudely marked grass strip. Rolling along at a modest pace he checked his gauges as part of the preflight run up. The orange glow from the instruments illuminated the small cockpit. As he switched on the navigation lights, a swell of red light swept back and forth against the trees lining both sides of the runway.\n\nHe spun the trim tab wheel mounted overhead to the foremost position. His payload would affect the plane's center of gravity. As he came to the end of the strip, he passed a hand-painted sign that read Thank you for visiting The Dominican Republic. Linez applied the brakes. He felt the heavy plane mush down into the wet grass. As he pushed forward on the throttles, a quick burst of power came from each engine mounted on the wings. The plane responded by spinning about, pointing due North. Linez pushed the brakes, arching his ankles, feeling the power against the asbestos brake shoes. He held tight until the engines reached their maximum revolutions. Then he released the pedals. The plane surged forward rolling down the runway. Sluggish at first, it gained speed with every twenty feet until, with the end of the tiny strip approaching, it was aloft. The plane ascended gracefully, banking over the moonlit cresting waves that beat against the nearby shore.\n\nLinez was a seasoned pilot. He learned to fly in Castro's Air Force and was in command of one of the state's MiG-15s. In 1977, he tried to make an unauthorized exit from Cuba to Key West. It was a tempting jaunt, just ninety miles to the north. Fearing defection, his squadron mates shot him down. He managed to survive after being plucked from the water by a passing state fishing vessel. He was immediately jailed where he remained until his release to Mariel Harbor in 1980. The civilian boatlift carried him to Miami. Castro figured his talents would best be served flying drugs into the United States corrupting an already overindulged American youth. While en route to Mariel, a secret policeman slipped him a piece of paper with the name Gus Greico etched on it.\n\nLinez finished trimming the plane's elevator controls as he adjusted the two throttles. The twin five hundred horsepower Pratt and Whitney power plants hummed in a harmonic balance as they reached their synchronized state. Linez looked at his altitude: sixty-five hundred feet. He could see the lights off the eastern tip of Cuba. He was flying over an area known to Cuban pilots as El Lugar Reservado, the quiet place. It was a flat stretch of sea known for its lack of wind, shallow water and light seas, an area of the ocean that was easy for the Castro regime to anchor bombing targets to. Linez had made many runs over the stretch below.\n\nLinez was within a hundred miles of Key West. To the north of the southernmost American city was Cudjoe Key, the location of Fat Albert, the Aerostat B-94 tethered weather balloon, a suspended radar silo thirty thousand feet in the air. This installation afforded stability and the convenience of a direct path to the U.S. Customs control center in South Miami, enabling authorities to have an entire view of the passive Caribbean Basin, from the eastern Bahamas to the eastern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The blimp was also used to beam the American propaganda, Radio Mart\u00ed, to Castro's island. Linez feared the balloon for two reasons. If he hit the wire, it would most certainly bring down his plane and, if he were high enough, it would be easy for the agents at USCS Sector to spot him on radar. The trick was to stay as close to the base of Cudjoe without coming in contact with the cable. The tethered radar was designed to look at a distant angle from its position. Because of this, the radar view of anything directly below it was almost nonexistent.\n\nLinez put pressure on the port ailerons. The white and green three-ton plane fell on its side, making a peel-off even the legendary Pappy Boyington would have been proud of. As the domestic aircraft neared a hundred and twenty knots, Linez pulled back on the yoke. The stress of the gravity forces lowered his cerebral blood pressure. A welcomed rush of euphoria made him feel he was home again.\n\nAt five hundred feet Linez could still see the light-dotted coast of Cuba now less than twenty miles away. He banked his ship toward the El Lugar Reservado flats. As he approached the area, the moonlight reflected from the floating targets as he felt the adrenaline fill his brain, imagining he was again strafing the wooden targets. His imaginary rockets exploded on impact, sending water skyward as the plane cleared overhead. Linez pulled up as the plane's engines charged and the spinning props labored in the rapid climb. The plane rolled over on its side and fell back to the earth. Then he increased the power, this time coming even closer to the vulnerable targets.\n\nGotcha, he said to himself.\n\nIn the distance Linez saw strobe lights enhancing the horizon. A quick glance at his avionic radar screen confirmed his fear: approaching aircraft. Probably MiGs. His weighted down Beechcraft was no match against these high-speed rocket equipped jets. If he was caught in this Cuban territory, Linez faced a certain prison cell.\n\nLinez trimmed the props and leveled off flying fifty feet over the flat sea. He maintained his power increasing his velocity to one hundred and forty knots. The MiGs closed at over six hundred knots while he made a heading for the Cay Sal Banks.\n\nAs the MiGs got closer, they slowed, with one hanging off each wing tip. Linez looked over at the pilot to his left who was concealed under a flight helmet with a black face shield. The roar of the outdated jet engines were louder now as they got even closer, flying twenty feet from each of his wing tips. Linez could feel the sweat drip down his neck as they watched him, surely radioing back to Havana for instructions. He was far into Bahamian waters having left the territory of Cuba thirty miles behind, but none of that mattered now. They were in a virtual no-man's land. No maps, no witnesses, and no problem being shot down, if for nothing else, practice. The MiGs continued on their course, surrounding the scared pilot but letting him fly free. Cay Sal quickly appeared on the horizon and was soon under the Beech-18 as it passed below. Then, without warning, the MiGs powered up. All Linez saw was blue and orange flames as the two jets ascended, banking off and heading back to Cuba. The Beechcraft rocked back and forth combating the waves of turbulence created by the jets.\n\nLinez wiped his face and neck, drenching a small towel in the process. He was not out of the woods yet though. He still had to fly ninety miles to Islamorada, cross the Keys and head for the backcountry where, deep in Florida Bay, a shallow draft flats boat would be waiting, floating in the shallow, foot-deep waters between the Keys and Florida Gulf Coast. He would dump his fourteen duffel bags out the rear cargo hatch, watch them splash down and then fly to Homestead and land.\n\nHe activated the plane's ailerons: left down and right up. The plane responded, banked to the northwest and leveled off. The wind hit the Beechcraft head on and Linez felt his speed compromised. To add to his concerns, he was getting light on fuel. Then he saw it, the first light of Florida, a small twinkle on the horizon. Linez leveled off, bringing the heavy plane to just fifty feet over the dark water below.\n\n\u2022\n\nOne hundred feet above and behind his tail, an American UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter followed Linez, unaware of his pursuer. Inside the dark cockpit of the heavy chopper, a crew of five monitored every move he made. The Beechcraft was spotted leaving Cay Sal and the Blackhawk was able to tuck in behind him, maintaining a stealthy trail. The two aircraft then passed under the Cudjoe balloon, avoiding the tether cable by less than a mile.\n\n\"Sector, Bow and Arrow,\" the Blackhawk radioed.\n\n\"Bow and Arrow, Sector, go ahead,\" Miami C3I answered.\n\n\"Target has crossed just south of Big Pine Key and is headed north into Florida Bay.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nLinez tapped his finger on the plane's main fuel gauges as his supply was getting dangerously low. He continued to follow the Keys, cruising just above the Intracoastal Waterway which curved northeast as it headed towards Miami. Then it happened. A red fuel warning light came on telling him that he only had five minutes of run-time remaining. He knew he was not going to make it so in an attempt to salvage his load, he banked the heavy Beechcraft to the east and crossed back over the Keys, this time just north of Islamorada. As the plane turned, the small amount of fuel shifted in the main tanks causing the left engine to suck a fuel line full of air, causing it to spit, sputter and shut down.\n\n\"Sector, Bow and Arrow, target has crossed back to the oceanside. We have been detected. Target is headed for open water, possibly the Bahamas.\"\n\n\"Roger Bow and Arrow, Slingshot is en route to assist.\"\n\nLinez headed for Dove Key, a small island off the coast of Tavernier where he could stash his load if he survived the emergency landing.\n\n\u2022\n\nOn board the Blackhawk, the crew became concerned with their own fuel supply. If the Beechcraft headed across the Gulf Stream, they would have to abandon their chase.\n\n\"I don't want to lose this guy,\" the team commander said.\n\n\"Do you want him down?\" the pilot asked.\n\n\"Do what you've got to do.\"\n\nThe Blackhawk pulled closer to the Beechcraft that was at an altitude of twenty feet and running on one engine. Then, with the manipulation of his cyclic control, the stick forward, the pilot maneuvered over the top of the Beechcraft, holding the course steady for a second before applying full collective pitch. The four 27-foot blades responded by angling down and giving the maximum amount of lift possible, drawing the full amount of power from the twin T-700 General Electric engines. The Blackhawk shot straight up to an altitude of five hundred feet.\n\nLinez didn't know what hit him. The remaining twenty feet of altitude that separated his limping plane from the water below disappeared suddenly as the aircraft's belly slammed into the ocean, sending explosions of white seawater two hundred feet in each direction.\n\n* * * * *\n\nSerial\n\nOwen Sands's breakfast at the Key's Diner was less than satisfying. The short order cook had overdone the toast and his eggs were fried past recognition. He finished his meal, not saying anything, while Joel Kenyon ate a bagel and browsed through the morning edition of the Miami Herald. From behind the counter, a police scanner, running through most of the law enforcement and fire department frequencies, squawked continuously.\n\n\"Plantation to 310, see the woman at 347 Matacumbe Trace, reference to her neighbor parking on her front lawn.\"\n\n\"Don't you ever get tired of that thing?\" Owen asked the waitress.\n\n\"Sure, stuff like that is lame, but every now and then you hear something good. Early this morning you guys were busy,\" she said.\n\nNot me, Owen thought to himself, having enjoyed the first night of good sleep he had in a long time.\n\n\"Bow and Arrow chased a plane all over the Upper Keys.\"\n\n\"And this excites you because...\" Owen asked sarcastically.\n\n\"Watch it, Owen. Don't forget who makes your breakfast.\"\n\n\"Don't worry, the heartburn will remind me all day. I just think it's funny that I get my smuggling briefings here at your diner.\"\n\n\"That's enough funny guy. You realize I know everything that goes on in this town, don't you?\" she said smiling and looking over at Joel. \"More coffee, hon?\"\n\nFortunately for both of them, Owen's beeper cut the meal short. A quick phone call to Sector told them that they would be investigating a downed aircraft two miles off Tavernier.\n\nThirty minutes later, both men were donned in foul weather gear as the 41-foot Indian raced out of Tavernier Creek towards the open ocean through a drizzling rain. The boat cruised for a few miles before coming upon an anchored white and orange Coast Guard utility cutter. It was tied to the downed plane that was grounded on a coral shoal. Water lapped up against its partially submerged tail number that read 735-K. Owen took a minute to jot down the number and then rolled up his pants legs, kicking off his Top-Siders and jumping down to the wing. In no time he was climbing into the open door at the end of the fuselage, moving through the aircraft's interior. There wasn't much room to move; the impact of the crash had mangled the underbelly and the decking was buckling from the pressure of the coral hitting the bottom, made worse with every wave that rolled through. He could hardly stand the sound of the scraping of the plane against the coral rock bottom that sounded like fingernails scratching on a schoolhouse blackboard. Owen looked around as he made his way up to the cockpit, noticing that there was a small amount of blood on the inside of the windshield. Below that, seawater had saturated the delicate avionics and instruments in the dash. In the main compartment, several duffel bags were strapped to the loose floor. Next to them he spotted an empty life raft case.\n\nOwen grabbed the case, lifting the Velcro covered strap. Inside the top flap was a white identification panel showing the raft's manufacturing date and serial number. Then he took out his pocketknife and cut the panel from the case. The rest was easy. With the help of two Coast Guardsmen in the plane and Joel on the Indian, the men unloaded fourteen duffel bags into the cockpit of the Customs boat. As Owen climbed back onto his boat, he went straight for the helm, igniting both motors and then putting them in reverse, backing away from the downed plane. Then he took a quick reading of the wind direction and headed towards shore. Joel watched intently and was intrigued by his partner's actions.\n\nWith the duffel bags stowed in the bow, the Indian raced over the flowing sea with the wind towards shore. Riding with the waves was a smoother ride, even with the added seven hundred pounds in the front. What was once an endless series of hard oncoming waves were now soft pillows that made the boat ride higher and faster. They continued for less than a mile before spotting an orange raft bobbing in the water ahead.\n\nA single man sat alone, perched in a floating raft. Before Joel could alert Owen, the trained eye behind the wheel was already making adjustments, changing his course to circle to the raft.\n\nAs they came alongside the raft, Joel surveyed the drenched craft for any weapons or contraband. The occupant was Latin, in his mid-forties and looked as if he had been beaten over by a street gang.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Owen asked as he shut the loud motors down.\n\n\"Hey, I need your help,\" the man said, trying to conceal his Spanish accent. \"My fishing boat sank about twenty miles offshore. I've been adrift since last night,\" he pleaded.\n\n\"What kind of boat sank sir?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"It was a 32-foot Trojan sport fisher. My starboard shaft broke off and slid through the stuffing box. Before I realized what had happened, water was over the engines, filling the bilge. She went down fast man.\"\n\n\"At what time did this occur, sir?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"Oh, about 7:30 last night.\"\n\nOwen thought to himself. This guy was good. Figuring in the rate his raft would drift the position of twenty miles, 7:30 was just about right.\n\n\"Get that boat hook and pull him closer,\" Owen instructed as Joel pulled the rod from under the gunwale and latched it onto the side of the raft. The occupant approached the stern of the Indian, steadying himself on the side of the boat as Owen then stretched out his hand to the battered man, pulling him up into the larger vessel. Then, Joel pulled the raft from the water and secured it over the aft engine hatch.\n\n\"\u00bfC\u00f3mo te llamas?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"What is your name?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Linez, Ralph Linez.\"\n\n\"Ralph, we are with the United States Customs Services, la polic\u00eda. Do you have any identification on you sir? A driver's license, passport or maybe pilot's rating?\"\n\n\"Yes sir,\" Linez said, reaching into his wet pocket pulling out a soggy passport. A Visa corporate credit card slipped out from within the pages and fell to the deck as Joel bent over and picked it up. The name on the card was Ralph G. Linez, Miami Aerotek Corporation.\n\nOwen took the passport and opened it to the front page. The laminated section sealed the page from the wet ordeal and was easily legible.\n\n\"Sector, Papa 1903...\"\n\n\"Go ahead Papa 1903.\"\n\n\"10-4, we are 10-38 on a life raft, possible signal thirty-one traffic. Our P.O.B subject name Ralph Linez, common spelling. Run an FCIC and NCIC. Also check FAA files for flight ratings.\"\n\n\"How did you get so beat up from a boat sinking?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"I tried to climb onto the Crocker light. A wave washed me off and the barnacles scraped me pretty bad.\"\n\n\"Papa 1903, Sector...\"\n\n\"1903 here, go ahead Sector.\"\n\n\"Negative warrants. No file found with the FAA. Negative EPIC file.\"\n\nLinez looked relieved as Joel thought. He was sure this was their man. How could it be just a coincidence? Owen looked at his suspect and smiled as he removed the raft case identification panel from his pocket. Linez's eyes grew larger as he watched in disbelief. Then Owen walked to the back of the boat where Joel had secured the raft, comparing the serial number sewn into the case panel to the one embossed onto the raft. AVN 6238-83P was a perfect match.\n\n\"Arrest Mr. Linez, please,\" Owen instructed as he smiled at the now confirmed pilot.\n\nLinez slumped into the seat at the back of the Indian's cockpit as Joel applied a pair of stainless handcuffs.\n\n\"Do you require any medical attention sir?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"No, I'm okay. Where's the stuff?\" Linez asked.\n\n\"Right here,\" Owen said, pointing to the front cabin.\n\n\"What do I have to do to get it back?\" Linez asked.\n\n\"Well, I guess you could kill us and take our boat.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nRange\n\nAn electronic buzzer sounded as the two entered the front door of the L and L Electronics store in Miami.\n\n\"I'm coming,\" yelled a voice from a back room.\n\nOwen and Joel waited patiently at the front counter as Gene Latrell, the store's owner, finished zipping his pants.\n\n\"Damn prostate. What's up Owen?\" he asked.\n\n\"I got a message that the Gen 2 night vision was fixed and needed to be picked up.\"\n\n\"Sure is chief. These things are so new, we don't know how to service them yet. I had to send it off to the factory in Oshkosh.\"\n\n\"No big deal, just as long as it works,\" Owen said.\n\n\"It should be fine this time. I don't think it will act up anymore.\"\n\n\"Hey, I salvaged this radio. Do you know anything about these?\" Owen asked, pulling the radio that he had salvaged from the Island Girl out of a paper bag.\n\n\"That, my friend, is an Icom 28, the Cadillac of two-meter rigs. Very versatile.\"\n\n\"Versatile? How?\"\n\n\"Give me a second and I'll show you,\" Latrell said, removing a Phillips-head screwdriver from underneath the counter.\n\n\"It was underwater for a while,\" Owen explained as Latrell removed the radio's protective case exposing diode-covered circuit boards and a multitude of wires.\n\n\"I see that. Not very long though,\" he said. \"You see this diode? Number twenty-one? Cut it and this radio has no limits.\"\n\n\"No limits? What does that mean?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"The radio was designed as a two-meter ham radio for amateur buffs like myself who are into this kind of thing.\"\n\n\"What type of thing is that?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Talking a lot on a radio,\" Owen answered sarcastically.\n\n\"Alright, smartass,\" Latrell said with half a smile. \"Do you want my help or not?\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Two-meter ham operates on the frequencies 144 to 148 megahertz in the same way the FM radio in your car receives 88 to 108 megahertz. You following me?\"\n\n\"Yeah, but the two-meter receives and transmits.\"\n\n\"Right kid, both transmit and receive. By cutting diode twenty-one, this radio is capable of full operation from 138 to 172 megahertz.\"\n\n\"Okay, you lost me.\"\n\n\"Our working frequency is 165.235 Joel,\" Owen interjected.\n\n\"Right, Customs is 165, DEA is 166, FBI, 171.\"\n\n\"Okay, so they can talk to us. What's the big deal?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"We spend countless hours listening to marine VHF, CB, two-meter, and shortwave radios, trying to intercept the transmissions between the crossing boats and the locals. This is how we know something is going down. With this radio, they can talk to each other on our own frequency.\"\n\n\"But don't we obviously listen to our own frequency?\"\n\n\"You do and you don't,\" Latrell said. \"The stuff you hear on that radio attached to your hip is filtered.\"\n\n\"Filtered?\" Joel asked, looking down to the walky-talky clipped to his belt next to his Beretta nine-millimeter service weapon.\n\n\"These sophisticated radios use, what we call in the business, PL tones, or private lines. Every time you key that mic, a microburst of sound, a code, opens a receiver on the other radios in your network. Without the PL tones, the other radios in your network won't hear a thing.\"\n\n\"What's the benefit?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"With all the radios operating, especially here in South Florida, there is a lot of chatter on these frequencies. We are figuratively, running out of room. People are talking on top of people and messages run together. The results can be disastrous.\"\n\n\"So this is a way for us to talk amongst ourselves without all the interference,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Where did you find this one?\" Latrell asked, pointing at Joel.\n\n\"He's a stray,\" Owen answered.\n\n\"The only way you would be able to hear these guys is with a simple police scanner and therein lies the rub. The runners would have to use similar jargon, sounding like, well, you guys. Kinda ironic, isn't it?\" Latrell explained. \"These guys have probably been heard by every tow truck driver, volunteer fireman...\"\n\n\"Diner waitresses,\" Owen interjected.\n\n\"Half the civilians out there have these scanners these days and most of them don't have a clue as to what they are listening to.\"\n\n\"This sounds pretty sophisticated. Are these runners really that smart?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"Son, with all the drugs that come into the country, it's estimated that you guys, with the power of the entire government behind you, are getting a mere ten percent. What do you think?\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nArraignment\n\nWith twenty-one days left until Christmas, the staff of the Nineteenth District Federal Court was anxious to get started. The sooner Judge Franklin Rubis's docket commenced, the sooner his staff would be free to do their much-needed shopping. Because of this, they went as far as foregoing the standard one hour lunch break, cutting it back to fifteen minutes. The shopping lines in the malls were unbearable by six and if all went well, they would be done by three.\n\n\"In the Seventeenth District Federal Court, the Honorable Judge Franklin D. Rubis presiding, all stand,\" said a suit-clad U.S. Marshall from the corner of the bench. With gray hair and a matching beard, a flowing black robe and an armful of manila file folders, Rubis entered the courtroom taking his seat behind the bench. Following his lead, everyone else in the courtroom took their seats.\n\nRubis was well admired in the federal system, and, in turn, he had an uncanny respect for the court and those who worked hard to uphold its authority. While he tried to follow the letter of the law, Judge Rubis was known to read between the lines on occasion. This stemmed from the fact that he had little tolerance for bureaucracy and even less for the manipulations that many in the federal court system were known to inflict. He was quick to call his court to order and had been known to reprimand his share of defense lawyers.\n\nRap-Rap-Rap\n\n\"All come to order please. For God's sake, let's see if we can get out of here at a decent hour. My secretary has a desperate appointment to keep with Toys-R-Us and if she misses it, I'll never hear the end of it,\" he announced as the courtroom erupted with laughter and he thumbed through the docket.\n\n\"Marlene,\" Rubis said, directing his beaming voice to a small petite woman who sat off the side of the bench.\n\n\"Yes Judge, USA v. Linez, it's a drug trafficking arraignment and we have witnesses standing by,\" she replied.\n\n\"Okay we'll handle this one first,\" Rubis said, receiving the court file.\n\n\"USA v. Ralph Linez, will parties approach the bench please.\"\n\nOn one side stood Andrea Manardi, a junior U. S. Attorney with just six months on the job and no trial experience to speak of. This was her third arraignment this week. Standing opposite to her was the defendant, Ralph Linez, and next to him, Stephen Portman, a Coral Gables attorney who specialized in pricey criminal cases.\n\n\"Stephen Portman for the defense, Your Honor.\"\n\n\"Andrea Manardi for the U.S. Government, sir.\"\n\n\"So noted,\" Rubis acknowledged.  \nOwen Sands and Joel Kenyon sat quietly in the gallery. Manardi's office had called them to standby in case the defense posed any significant argument to the bail set. The serial numbers matching the raft to the case in the downed plane made this an open and shut case for sufficient probable cause. Despite the impeccable case record of Stephen Portman, a mounting defense was unlikely. For now, he was simply to intercede with damage control. All involved expected a plea bargain. Ralph Linez would admit to a lesser charge and spend a fraction of the time he already faced or he would be sentenced to an alternate diversion program.\n\n\"Ms. Manardi, I seem to be missing the complaint,\" Rubis said holding the file before him.\n\n\"I apologize Your Honor, we had to amend the complaint. I think I have a copy here someplace...\"\n\n\"Pssssst,\" Owen made the motion attracting Manardi's attention and handing her a copy of the amended complaint from his own case file.\n\n\"Here you go sir,\" she responded, handing the stapled pages up to the elevated bench.\n\nRubis thumbed through the pages before putting them into the file.  \n\"Mr. Linez, sir, you're charged with trafficking in a controlled substance, over fifty grams. How do you plead sir?\" Rubis asked.  \nPortman stepped up to the bench, but not before straightening a small wrinkle from his pinstriped suit.\n\n\"Mr. Linez pleads not guilty your honor.\"\n\n\"Very well Mr. Portman, do we want to set a separate bail hearing or are we ready to do it here and now.\"\n\n\"The government has no objection Your Honor.\"\n\n\"No objection, Your Honor,\" Portman added.\n\n\"Very well, opening remarks please, Ms. Manardi.\"\n\n\"Your Honor, Mr. Linez is suspected of attempting to smuggle a large amount of a controlled substance, cocaine, into this country. The aircraft he was flying was modified for such purposes. It was equipped with extra fuel tanks and a special side cargo door that could be opened in-flight, making the ejection of its load possible. Mr. Linez has no substantial ties to this community and he is a pilot with international connections, mainly in Central and South America. We have also learned that Mr. Linez was a former pilot with the Cuban Air Force. We categorize him as a major flight risk. The people request bail be set at three million dollars,\" Manardi said.\n\nIn the back of the room, five rows behind Owen and Joel, sat Gus Greico. He remained quiet and unnoticed by anyone around him. A conservative pair of tinted bifocals and a long gray overcoat aided his stealthy appearance.\n\n\"Your Honor this is preposterous. Mr. Linez has no record, and certainly no history of ever being involved with illegal drugs. He owns a house in North Miami and is prepared to face the charges brought against him. The evidence is merely circumstantial. My client was operating a fishing boat when the vessel was overcome by a large wave. He floated towards shore in a life raft until our friends at the U. S. Customs Service retrieved him. It is merely a coincidence that my client was in the same general area as the downed drug plane.\"\n\n\"And what about the corresponding serial numbers?\" Manardi added.\n\n\"Another coincidence, the possibility exists that the life raft case could have floated into the open plane. There is no case here. We plead the court for R and R,\" Portman concluded, stepping back to Linez's side.\n\n\"Coincidence or not, it's the only thing that ties the defendant to the plane. The guy who thought of that deserves an atta-boy. Bail is set at two hundred thousand dollars,\" Rubis announced, pounding his wooden mallet to the bench. Stephen Portman met with the clerk of the court to assure the payment. A courier from the attorney's Coral Gables office delivered a cashier's check drawn through the Pan American Bank of Miami for the bail amount of two hundred thousand dollars. The remitter was Portman himself. The two walked from the courthouse past several sidewalk hot dog venders and to the curb where a string of taxis waited. Portman's instructions to Linez were clear. Take a cab to the Topless Donut Shop in Fort Lauderdale where a ride would be waiting. In less than a minute, Linez was gone, leaving Stephen Portman to ponder the chain of events that had just transpired.\n\nThe funds to secure Linez's provisional release were wired from a Cayman bank that received its funds from a shelter corporation based in Reno, Nevada. The cashier's check from Pan American drew the money directly out of the Portman Law Firm's escrow account. There was no cash deposited stateside, therefore no IRS cash disclosure was filed.\n\nLinez rode in the backseat of his cab, stuffing the remainder of a kosher frank into his mouth.\n\n\"Topless Donut Shop, Fort Lauderdale, Seventeenth and Federal,\" he said, still swallowing.\n\n\"It'll cost ya,\" the Haitian cabbie warned.\n\n\"Here,\" Linez answered, placing a hundred dollar bill through the metal and Plexiglas partition separating the two. \"This ought to hold you over for awhile.\"\n\nThey sped out into the passing traffic and soon were heading north on Interstate 95 away from Miami. The Topless Donut Shop had become an institution to the regulars of Fort Lauderdale. Half naked women served two dollar donuts and croissants to crowds of mostly men, keeping hours that corresponded to the multitude of fast food places across the street. The shop, despite the objections of the city fathers, had become a landmark appearing in Playboy, Penthouse and other men's magazines.\n\nOnce inside, Linez admired the youthful young breasts bouncing around the small restaurant, most of which belonged to college-aged girls who supplemented their incomes with the lucrative tips they earned. There would be nothing like this where he was going. After a quick walk through the shop, Linez exited a side door on the opposite side where a forest green Jeep Cherokee was waiting, its engine running with Gus Greico behind the wheel.\n\n\"Get in,\" he said, rolling the window down just far enough to let himself be heard.\n\nLinez climbed into the backseat attaching his seatbelt. A habit he acquired as a pilot.\n\n\"Did anyone follow you?\" Greico asked.\n\n\"Not that I could tell.\"\n\n\"We're gonna take the long way around. Sal wants to see you before you go,\" Greico said as Linez nodded. After traveling west almost ten miles to Sunrise Boulevard, the two looped back east then north to Commercial Boulevard and the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. After parking the Cherokee, Greico led his passenger into the building to a large conference room. Sal Alcone sat at the end of an oversized oak table browsing through some papers.\n\n\"Ralphy, I was starting to worry, I mean two hundred grand. It's not that you're not worth it but...\" Sal joked as the three started to laugh. \"You have done a good job my friend, and for that you will be rewarded. But from here, there is no turning back. I want you to understand this,\" he continued with a more serious tone.\n\n\"Yes sir, I can't risk going back to prison, not again.\"\n\n\"Just so we're on the same page, so they say in this town.\"\n\n\"We are, Sal,\" the pilot answered.\n\n\"I have set up a condo for you in downtown Belize City. There are plenty of young tourist women to keep you busy. You have two weeks to get settled then we can talk over plans for the future.\"\n\n\"Yes sir, thank you sir.\"\n\n\"No Ralph, thank you. Now let's get you out of here before anyone realizes what's going on. There is a new Turbo Commander out on the tarmac. I bought it ten minutes ago. It needs to go to Rio to receive an avionics package. There's only one problem. We can't find a...\"\n\n\"Pilot?\" Linez interrupted. \"I'm on it boss.\"\n\n\"That's the spirit, my friend,\" Sal said standing, patting the pilot on the back. \"Get used to her. She will be issued to you after the trip to Rio. It should be a big improvement over that piece of shit you lost in the Keys,\" Sal said, leaving the room.\n\n\"Before you go, you'll need this,\" Greico said, handing him a manila envelope with five thousand dollars in hundreds. \"That should hold you over until we can make more permanent arrangements.\"\n\nLinez walked through a brisk breeze over the tarmac to the nose of the fresh airplane before him. The Turbo Commander was an Israeli-built plane and it differed from the others because of its high wing design. Its twin turbine power plants were fast, smooth and fuel-efficient. Sal must have parted with a pretty penny for this one, he thought to himself. The craft was white with conservative gold and burgundy executive stripes running the length of the plane. She had already been prepped and fueled. Customarily, Linez made his own preflight, a task he trusted to no one. Ten minutes later the whining turbines were blowing moist air past the Executive Airport offices as the plane made its way down the taxi path.\n\n\u2022\n\nGreico joined Sal out by the Cherokee.\n\n\"Do you think he'll fit in down there?\" Greico asked.\n\n\"I don't know, but we can't take any chances. Linez spent the better part of his life in a Cuban dungeon. A man like that will do anything to keep out of jail.\"\n\n\"I'm already on it,\" Greico answered.\n\n\"Keep a close eye on him Gus, and let me know if anything develops.\"  \nLinez ran the engines up while the plane sat with its brakes locking the tires to the black asphalt runway. It took a few minutes but eventually all systems on the nearly new plane checked out. After a brief request to the tower, the plane proceeded down the seven thousand foot strip gaining speed with every yard it traveled until it lifted off the pavement, its nose high, aiming skyward.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGenius\n\n\"How has business been?\" Gordo asked Gene Latrell who was standing behind the glass-encased counter at the L and L Electronics shop.\n\n\"It could be better. What's this you have brought me?\"\n\n\"That's it, I really don't know. It came off a Customs boat. I guess it has something to do with the communications system. It has this coaxial hookup on the back of it. Roberto wanted you to look at it if you don't mind.\"\n\n\"Gordo, your brother has been very good to me. You two know that if there is anything I can ever do, all you have to do is ask.\"\n\n\"You're a good man, Gene.\"\n\nLatrell knew that Gordo was probably right since the black box also had a blue and white Motocom label affixed on its bottom side. The metal backed decal had the unit's serial number etched into the face for easy identification. Motocom was one of the oldest electronics companies in America manufacturing commercial and governmental communications systems. Unlike their numerous competitors, Motocom had never diversified into computers or other telemetric equipment. They believed in doing one thing and doing it right. Latrell himself had applied for a Motocom distributorship but was denied approval because of his decreasing sales volume.\n\n\"These things look like they've been to hell and back. Were they securely mounted in the boat?\"\n\n\"You got me, man. They were already removed when we found them.\"\n\n\"I'll need to keep them for a couple of days. It will take some digging but I think I can figure it out.\"\n\n\"You have my beeper number, call me.\"\n\n\"Sounds good. Hey look before you go I have something to show you. Some divers found it off Key Largo.\"\n\nGordo was puzzled as he followed him to the store's back workshop. Latrell put the box containing the Motocom system on the bench and pulled a rusty, salt-filled radio from the top shelf. Gordo recognized it immediately because he had one just like it mounted on the 38-foot Stiletto Black Duck.\n\n\"Where did you say these divers found it?\"\n\n\"Off Key Largo, by the Elbow,\" he answered. \"I was curious. I'm the only dealer for Icom in the area so I looked up the serial numbers. This one was bought here my friend. It was your nephew Bobby's.\"\n\n\"I knew it! When that fucking Customs boat hit him shit went everywhere. That Blue Thunder boat really hauls ass. He must have been doing seventy. Bobby didn't have a chance. The Island Girl went down like a rock.\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ! Did they even stop to help?\"\n\n\"Fuck no, they saw that there wasn't anyone around. They couldn't see me so they hauled ass. That Blue Thunder is built like a tank. Hitting Bobby's boat did very little damage.\"\n\n\"Those bastards!\"\n\n\"Yeah, listen, let's leave what the divers found between us. If Roberto finds out it will really upset him.\"\n\n\"Sure man. Whatever you say.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nSeveral hours later, Latrell's back ached as he slumped over the elevated electronics bench. His work area was well organized with all of the most modern diagnostic and mechanical equipment at his disposal like oscilloscopes and high-tech electronic soldering irons. He was very meticulous, like a coroner performing an autopsy.\n\nThe local weatherman had predicted a massive thunderstorm in the Miami area and his prediction was correct. It could have been a scene out of an early Frankenstein movie, the diabolical mad man restructuring his creation with flashes of lightning blazing through the rain-spotted windows, illuminating the overstocked shelves of L and L Electronics. This was something so complicated that his twenty year career as an electrical engineer did not prepare him for what he was exploring. The storm brewed outside with another flash of lightning and more thunder as Latrell worried that he might have to reboot his new computer if the power surged again.\n\nThe first step was simple. He had to access the inside workings of the device without harming any of the circuits. Considering the failsafe devices commonly installed on government devices, he could easily damage the inner workings by not taking the proper precautions. After identifying the internal components, he could cross-reference them against his sources. His reference library in the shop had been limited at best. Since his unsuccessful attempt at becoming a Motocom dealer eighteen months before, he didn't have access to their shop reference manuals until he came across a microfiche machine at a competitor's bankruptcy auction. Inside the box was the entire Motocom product line on microfiche in six three-by-five card boxes. The small sheets of transparent plastic contained every circuit board schematic, parts inventory and wiring diagram for every product the company had made in the last twenty years.\n\nThe first black radio box fit nicely into the vice below the shop's drill press. Latrell pulled on the handle, extending a spinning high-speed carbide drill down against the keyed lock on the side of the case. Then he applied a drop of penetrating oil and some carbon graphite dust to the lock chamber as he watched the sharp drill bite into the stainless steel mechanism. Tiny shavings of metal formed at the base of the hole that had been created as he kept applying gentle, gradual pressure to the handle at the side of the press. In a few seconds, the task was completed and the chamber cracked, spinning around with the bit as he released the lever and the drill retracted from the new hole.\n\nA few minutes later, the smell of solder filled the tiny room as Latrell worked under the light from a tiny desk-style florescent lamp. This project intrigued him, revitalizing his desire for a challenge like the ones he faced as a University of Florida electrical engineering student in Gainesville. He remembered the nights he would stay up until 3:00 a.m. experimenting with complex algorithmic theories. While others were simply trying to make the grade, Gene Latrell was developing ideas that came to him in his sleep.\n\nHis most significant project was a device designed for emergency vehicles like those used by police and fire departments. He developed it after reading about an accident involving an ambulance and a passenger car. The ambulance was rushing a woman in labor to the hospital with an imminent breach birth. A cesarean section was needed and time was the only thing that separated the soon-to-be infant from birth. In minutes the fetus would expire from a lack of oxygen. The ambulance raced through his home city of Gainesville, en route to the Shands teaching hospital, one of the more renowned birthing centers in the country. While crossing an intersection, a second year university student ran a red light and impacted the side of the speeding ambulance, killing all on board. A Florida Highway Patrol homicide investigation revealed that the student was going for a test ride after installing a new high wattage stereo system in his custom 1974 Camaro. The loud, blaring music distracted him and filled the car's passenger compartment with so much noise that he didn't hear the sounds of the approaching sirens or the blaring air horns.\n\nLatrell sat in his dorm room, touched by the story and perplexed with a possible solution. Weeks later, he ventured into a project that would last him four months. The result was a new type of emergency vehicle warning device, one that did not use any speakers and ran in conjunction with a conventional siren that did. It was a sophisticated FM transmitter that was designed for installation on the front grills of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. It broadcasted a close range FM signal from 88 to 108 megahertz, covering the entire FM broadcast band, sending the shrill of a siren over the airwaves to be received by every base-busting, tweeter-popping stereo in a fifty-yard radius, masking over the regular programming. The device also broke into the car's equalizer and power amplifier so it could also interrupt those playing cassettes and the traditional eight-track tape players. The project was a success and stood to make Latrell a very wealthy man and put the University of Florida's electrical engineering department on the national map. He received the University President's Award for science development that year and a favorable write-up in the new age Omni Magazine, a publication dedicated to intellectual futurists. A patent was issued and everything looked good for Latrell's future until the Federal Communications Commission ruled in a unanimous vote by its science and technology committee that this device was an infringement on the nation's Clear Transmission Doctrine and while a very good idea, left a potential door open for abuse. Stunned and dismantled, Latrell changed his major to business administration and three years later graduated with an MBA from the university.\n\nLatrell fluxed his solder tip again as he loosened the diodes that completed a series of circuits which amplified the receiver portion of the device. The Motocom T-1010, also called Ten-Ten, was a sophisticated device. It had to be because it was the frontline communications system for the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, Border Patrol, IRS, Secret Service, and U. S. Customs. The device gave agents a multitude of abilities, more so than just communications. Each radio was embedded with a user-specific code, or patch word, that was assigned to each individual agent. When someone spoke, legibly or not, the receiving station knew who it was. When hooked into the boat's main system, the radio automatically transmitted information from the vessel's LORAN-C system giving an exact location of the agent at all times. Even agents who worked inland had the newer global positioning systems installed in their vehicles. These systems relayed radio signals back to local repeaters that, in turn, relayed the signal regionally for everyone to hear. Globally, the same transmissions were fed to a French satellite that eventually made their way to Sector, also known as C3I. Sector, using the same French satellite, received data beamed up from numerous radar installations like the airborne balloon that was tethered to Cudjoe Key. Information to and from EPIC, the El Paso Information Center, that housed the narcotics portion of NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, used the same routes and the same French satellite. All this information fed through one fragile link, spinning in a geosynchronous orbit, twenty-four miles above the earth.\n\nIt didn't take Latrell long to identify the circuits and their corresponding duties within the device. With a pad of graph paper and a mechanical pencil, he began to draw the design for his next electronic masterpiece.\n\n* * * * *\n\nFury\n\nState Trooper Lester Mander sat behind the wheel of his intimidating black and tan Florida Highway Patrol cruiser. While parked at the Snapper Creek service plaza, the twelve-year veteran needed to use the gas station's air pump to even out the tire pressure on his car. Mander took a lot of pride in the upkeep of his state-issued car. Two years in a row, he won the vehicle maintenance award for the cruiser with the least amount of downtime. At the end of every shift he meticulously checked the oil and other fluid levels, surveyed the car for other conditions that might warrant attention and gave it a quick wash, being sure the paint was protected by at least one coat of wax.\n\nBack in his car, Mander watched as an older lady walked around the minivan in front of him. The boxy vehicle had simulated wood-paneling sides, a large chrome luggage rack and a custom spare tire holder mounted on the back door. The lady, he judged to be about sixty, bent over each wheel fender, checking the tire pressure with the station's commercial gauge. The timid, fragile woman used both hands to grasp the device as she pressed it against the rubber valve projecting from the wheel's hubcap. Air escaped as she took the reading and added some more that came from the hose lying at her feet. It was a cool night, the type of weather he was used to seeing before a large storm came through. On the horizon to the north, the impending storm shook the landscape with ballads of thunder and brilliant lightning. It was quiet here though, the quiet before the storm. The glow of a bright blue bug light caught Mander's attention.\n\nZAP!\n\nAnother one bites the dust, he thought to himself as he contemplated getting out of his comfortable cruiser to help the old woman with her tire pressure. Na, she was almost finished, besides it had been a long day, he justified. Besides, his cruiser, when it was on the road, had been buffeting at around eighty miles an hour and had been pulling to the right earlier in the day. He needed to go over to the service station and have them check the steering tie bar. He had seen many different styles and models issued to him and his peers by the Highway Patrol, from the compact, high-speed Ford Mustang that he despised, to the oversized earlier Plymouths that he thought resembled something found floating on a lake. Still, despite their obvious differences, all of them had one distinction: the all-black body and tan roof and trunk with the accompanying blue lights, no red. His Plymouth Fury was just right, not too big and not too small. Its four hundred and forty cubic inch motor, something that had been discontinued, gave him plenty of speed and acceleration, elements that were needed on his beat, the lone highways of the Florida Turnpike.\n\nZAP!\n\nThere were a lot of bugs out for this time of year, Mander thought to himself. The old lady was to the last tire on her minivan, thank God. He looked at his watch, 7:47 p.m. and was off duty in thirteen minutes. His wife was making shepherd's pie, his favorite. His plan was simple; check out the steering and then head home.\n\nMander pulled around towards the service bay of the gas station. By doing so, the parked patrol car formed a different angle, pointing the dash-mounted radar cone towards the flow of traffic passing by on the four lane turnpike. Instantly, the amber digital display started recording the velocities of the passing cars. The alarm limit had been set earlier for sixty-five miles per hour. The national speed limit was fifty-five plus the ten extra he gave his motorists. Then without warning, the alarm sounded as ninety-two appeared on the amber display which started to blink.\n\n92-92-92-92.\n\nThe six-foot-three-inch trooper looked over at the passing traffic just in time to see a red IROC Camaro, one of the confiscated cars that were in use by the agents of the Tavernier office. Joel, unaware of the trooper, passed traffic at a high rate of speed, heading up the overpass towards the extreme southern portion of the turnpike, the Homestead Extension. Mander pushed the gas pedal to the floor as the radar continued to blink its reading.\n\n92-92-92-92.\n\nA day of dealing with school buses and frivolous infractions made him miss a good high-speed pursuit. The Plymouth sped over the grass median leaving a pair of dirt tracks that led up to the turnpike roadside where the cruiser gripped the pavement with a squeal and a patch of smoke. He was off. The alignment buffet Mander had noticed chasing tourists at eighty was now more evident at a hundred and ten. He knew better than to test the response of the loose steering at this speed. He would most surely lose control. The red IROC was almost in sight. The driver was still maintaining a speed in excess of ninety miles per hour. As he got closer, Mander let off the gas. The wind resistance alone slowed the car almost immediately as he approached the tail end of the speeding Camaro. He closed his gap to a tight fifteen feet from the car's bumper. They don't even know I'm back here, he thought to himself.\n\n\"Turnpike, 642...\"\n\n\"642.\"\n\n\"642, attempting to stop a vehicle, southbound, TPK on the Homestead Extension just south of mile marker nine. Unable to get a tag number Turnpike. He's running in excess of ninety.\"\n\n\"642, do you need pursuit protocol?\"\n\n\"Not yet Turnpike, he hasn't seen me yet.\"\n\nWith one hand holding the microphone and the other one gripping the wheel, Mander watched as the speeding car changed lanes to avoid a slower car, the elderly woman and her wood-paneled minivan that was maintaining a steady forty miles per hour. Mander watched in horror as the front of his patrol car rapidly approached the rear end of the slower vehicle. Mander dropped the microphone as he gripped the wheel with both hands, swerving the car to the right, onto the embankment, and around the van. The locked brakes did nothing to assist the ninety miles per hour sidespin Mander had created. The car continued down the embankment toward a hole filled with water and mud. He braced himself as the muddy banks of the small roadside pond absorbed the car's velocity.\n\n* * * * *\n\nReunion\n\nWhy was it so hard to confront my father? Tessa Alazar thought. A massive storm had moved south through Miami and was now blistering the Upper Keys. She sat in front of her family's home parked in her Datsun 300ZX next to her father's dually pickup truck and a red IROC Camaro, listening to the rain pelt the roof. In the backseat, Monica sat strapped in her car seat, awake and emotionless, watching her mother who stared out the window.\n\n\"Mommy?\"\n\n\"What baby?\"\n\n\"Can I go potty now?\"\n\n\"Sure baby, in a minute.\"\n\nWhy was it so hard? The thought hit her again. The home they were in front of was lit up and a steady stream of smoke oozed from the chimney like a scene from a Norman Rockwell print. Marrying Bobby Alazar was an act of rebellion more than it was an act of love; an excuse to escape her life, her one indulgence that had been reaping repercussions ever since.\n\nWhy was it?\n\n\"Let's go baby. The rain is slowing down,\" she said, reaching around unstrapping Monica.\n\n\"I'm holding my potty Mommy.\"\n\n\"I know baby, you're a good holder. Mommy's proud of you.\"\n\nWhy?\n\nHolding Monica, the two stood under the roof's overhang as she pressed the doorbell.\n\n\"I'll get it. It's probably Brian,\" Jade announced from inside the house.\n\n\"Brian? Who's Brian?\" Owen asked, standing up and walking to the door. \"Stop! I'll get it.\"\n\nAs the door opened, Owen looked up and froze.\n\n\"Don't let him intimidate you Brian,\" Jade yelled from inside the living room.\n\nTessa stood speechless.\n\n\"Can I go potty now Mommy?\"\n\n\"Your granddaughter,\" Tessa said.\n\n\"What's her name?\" Owen asked in a soft voice.\n\n\"Monica Jade.\"\n\n\"Daaad! Just let him in!\" Jade yelled.\n\n\"I think it's time to shock your sister...and let someone use the potty,\" Owen whispered as Monica's tiny face broke into a big smile.\n\n\u2022\n\nJoel Kenyon sat on the toilet with his pants around his ankles. He felt uncomfortable about having to use the bathroom while at his partner's house, but Owen had made a batch of his famous chili and he had consumed three bowls. To make matters worse, he had trouble locking the door, a door that was now opening as he came face-to-face with a three-year-old who stood before him, both of her hands firmly grasping the creases of her dress.\n\n\"I have to go potty,\" she said.\n\n\"I'm sorry, I'll be done in a minute,\" Joel blubbered, quickly covering himself with the length of his T-shirt.\n\n\"I have to go potty now.\"\n\n\"I heard you, but I have to finish. Can you go out for a second and then you can have it...the potty...all to yourself. Okay?\" Joel pleaded.\n\n\"Mommy!\" Monica yelled.\n\n\"What is it baby?\" Tessa asked, walking into the small bathroom. \"Oh my God!\"\n\n\"Shit! What the...where did you come from...?\" Joel muttered in disbelief.\n\n\"This isn't happening. Okay Joel, we will talk as soon as you're done,\" Tessa said, grabbing her daughter's hand. \"Let's go to the other bathroom and leave this nice man alone.\"\n\n\"Okay Mommy. But my potty won't smell like that, I promise.\"\n\n\"That's good baby,\" Tessa said, trying not to laugh.\n\nJoel was very confused. What was she doing there? Was Owen the father she had been talking about?\n\nJoel finished and came into the living room. Tessa, Jade and Owen were sitting on the couch, wrapped in a tight embrace with their eyes shut, trying to hold in the tears that flooded down their faces. This was an important time for them and the last thing he wanted was to be in the way. Quietly, he slipped out the front door.\n\n\"What's the matter? Why is everyone crying?\" Monica asked as she walked back into the living room.\n\n\"Honey, this is your Aunt Jade.\"\n\n\"Jade? That's my name. Monica Jade Alazar.\"\n\n\"That's right baby girl.\"\n\n\"Do you want to come back and see my room?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Monica said, taking Jade's hand. \"You're not an ant. Ants are small. They walk on the ground and eat cheese.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nOwen had made many mistakes over the years. His feelings for his oldest daughter had ranged from personal guilt to periods of anger. But today, with years of experience behind him, he executed his wisest decision to date: to forgive the wrongs, forget the things that would hold them back, and love her with all his heart, rebuilding everything they had lost over the years.\n\n\"So here we are,\" Owen said nervously.\n\n\"I'm sorry to drop in on you like this,\" she explained. \"I picked up the phone a million times, even before the accident.\"\n\n\"Accident! What accident?\"\n\n\"Bobby was killed a few weeks ago.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I didn't know,\" he said, realizing that the boat they had found earlier that week on the Elbow had to be his.\n\n\"I had already talked to an attorney long before that. It's just hard looking into Monica's eyes. How could I have ever taken her father away like that?\"\n\n\"Do you need money?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, Daddy, that's not what this is...\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said cutting her off. \"I just wanted to offer.\"\n\n\"No, thank you, it's appreciated and refreshing, but that's the one good thing about being married to him. He was a good provider and he left us very secure. We have a condo on Miami Beach that is mortgage-free and all of our other stuff, cars, furniture and junk like that is all free and clear. I also managed to save up a substantial amount of cash and I'm looking for a job.\"\n\n\"Well, take as long as you like. Your room is just like you left it.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"More so than I can ever remember.\"\n\n\"Thank you Daddy.\"\n\n\"Look, I'm really sorry about Bobby. I have to say though, that it's one more thing we have in common, since we are so much alike to begin with.\"\n\n\"We're both widows,\" she said, realizing it for the first time.\n\n* * * * *\n\nConsecration\n\nDel and Gordo stood among a line of slash pines in Gordo's spacious backyard. Despite his crowded Homestead neighborhood made up of smaller tract homes, Gordo's home was more mature, built in an era when pride was more than an advertisement's subtitle in a real estate magazine. Homes were institutions when his house was constructed. Built on a complete acre, the house measured over three thousand square feet and was lofted with ten-foot-high ceilings. The expense to cool and heat the house was noticeable but worth the price as Gordo liked his space.\n\n\"Look, I'm not trying to do anything underhanded or behind anyone's back. I just think we should think this offer over.\"\n\n\"Del! Roberto is my brother. Maybe we don't always agree but I could never do anything to hurt him or the family. He has helped me and my wife more than you could ever imagine...and there's something else...\"\n\n\"What, what is it Gordo?\" Del asked, noticing a more solemn expression on the man's face.\n\n\"Del, you are my friend, what I am going to tell you must never be repeated. I promised myself I would tell no one, but I just can't keep it to myself. I've been holding it inside and it's tearing me up.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" Del asked again, becoming increasingly curious.\n\n\"Come with me,\" Gordo said, walking toward the rear of the lot.\n\nThe two walked through a small grove of lime trees to a modest workshop erected at the rear of the property. Gordo unlocked the door and entered a room that was dark and musty. It measured nearly twenty feet squared but seemed smaller. Gordo had equipped the building with several woodworking implements including a band saw, table saw, and drill press. Other assorted tools like wooden hammers, clamps, chisels, spades and scores of others filled the room, hanging from the pegboard-lined walls. A strange smell of sawdust combined with a scent that Del couldn't quite make out filled the air. It was bitter and acrid and one Gordo was obviously used to as he moved about the shop, making no mention of it. Glue or some varnish, Del thought to himself. He knew that Gordo was an avid wood craftsman but he had no idea to the extent of the man's collection of tools.\n\nDel continued to survey the room as Gordo moved some boxes. Underneath the shop's table saw was a canister type industrial sized wet and dry vacuum. It was attached directly to the table saw with the express purpose of collecting exhausted sawdust, sparing him a timely cleanup after every use. The contraption also reduced the threat of fire often caused by too much debris in such an environment. Gordo rolled the vacuum out as three tiny castors affixed to the bottom squeaked like mice fighting over cheese. Del continued to look around, still mystified by what his obese friend was about to show him.\n\n\"This is a holy place Del, no one must know of this for fear of its desecration. I am making amends,\" Gordo said, removing the vacuum lid and exposing the large canister below it. Del looked deep into the metal drum and became shocked by what he saw. The canister was bedded with fresh fruit and white eggs. They were arranged in a meticulous pattern. Perched atop it all was a human skull, clean and white, void of any flesh or blood. It appeared to Del that it had been cleaned, as one would do in the islands with certain sacrificial fish bones and shark jaws. Lying on top of the skull were seven feathers, all from a rooster, again clean and snow white, signifying purity and worthy of a sacrifice. Del looked up in shock at Gordo who was sobbing miserably.\n\n\"I'm so sorry, I didn't see him. It was raining so hard. I went to the wrong light, so I was coming from the south. The light was in my eyes. I didn't see him, I swear!\" Gordo sobbed.\n\n\"Bobby? Is this what you're saying. Is this Bobby?\" Del asked, almost frantic, leaning himself against the corner of one of the workbenches. \"Does Roberto know?\"\n\n\"No, Del, promise me you'll never tell him. He would kill me. Please Del!\" Gordo cried.\n\n\"My God Gordo, what were you thinking? Where is the rest of the body?\" he asked.\n\n\"On Andros. I gave Bobby a special place. One I thought he would like,\" Gordo answered.\n\n\"I just can't believe...\"\n\n\"The gods must be appeased, I had to do it this way. I had no choice!\"\n\n\"Gordo, you and that black magic Santeria shit. It makes me sick. You cut off your nephew's head, probably boiled it like some fish gumbo, and then constructed this ridiculous thing. I don't know what to say.\"\n\n\"Say you'll try to understand?\" Gordo asked, rolling the vacuum back under the table saw.\n\nThe two walked outside. Del leaned against the building while Gordo locked the door behind them.\n\n\"Gordo, I guess I do understand, and by no means am I trying to pass judgment. You did what you thought was right. God knows I couldn't have done what you did. This is why I don't understand why you don't start living your own life. Stop riding on Roberto's coattails. He would want you to stand up for yourself. Make your own mark,\" Del said.\n\n\"It just sounds so deceitful. I could never hurt Roberto, especially now.\"\n\n\"And I could? Look Gordo, your brother's been like a father to me. I don't want to hurt him. I want to help him. This is the only way to keep our friends in Ocala on ice until he comes around. It's for Roberto's own good that we do this. What we do, we do well my friend, but in order to live the way we do, we must run what, fifteen, sixteen loads a year? Pot is, as you know, very bulky. It's just a matter of time before one of our captains get caught and then they'll turn us all in, you and me included.\"\n\n\"I never considered this,\" Gordo thought aloud.\n\n\"Gordo, in light of what you've told me about, you know, what's in there,\" Del said, pointing to the door of the shop. \"This is your way to repay the family for a wrong you may or may not have committed. Your contribution will be invaluable. It's up to you,\" Del finished, pulling a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lighting it.\n\n\"How would this work, I mean, do we have to get up a special crew or what?\" Gordo asked.\n\n\"No, this is the beauty of it all. Roberto wants us to run Mongi's load in the new Indian. We will take a Fiberglas man with us, someone we can trust. When we get to Andros, this guy can hide Greico's stuff. We'll do two loads at once. After the pot makes it home safely and things quiet down, we can go and retrieve the hidden load. It's that simple,\" Del finished, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.\n\n\"It sounds too simple,\" Gordo rationalized, sounding more skeptical.\n\n\"It doesn't sound simple, it is simple. That's the nature of coke Gordo, one-tenth the weight and ten times the money. No crew. No counter-surveillance. No expenses. When Roberto finds out, and by the way, I plan to tell him myself, he will be pleased. He really wants to do this, he's just scared,\" Del argued, throwing the used butt to the ground.\n\n\"And if things don't work out?\" Gordo asked.\n\n\"If things don't work out, it's our secret and we go back to doing business as usual. This is going to work Gordo, and you will be a big part of making it happen.\"\n\n\"Okay, count me in,\" Gordo sighed.\n\n\"Good, now you see we all have our little secrets,\" Del said.\n\n* * * * *\n\nToll\n\nClyde Harris, Esquire, sat sternly behind his massive desk. An attorney for thirteen of his thirty-nine years, Harris sat behind many different types of desks. In his early days, he was an assistant state attorney in the Miami-Dade County prosecutor's office. His desk was built with a steel frame and had an imitation wood-grain Formica top that had been used so much that the printed grain had worn off in spots. It was very hollow and very loud, especially when the rusty drawers slid in and out, but it was functional. Harris spent his time in a cubical then and his clients were the people of the state of Florida. During this period of his life he maintained a fundamental dislike for a system that wanted to compromise the values of the law, refusing to plea-bargain most of his cases. It was this fighting spirit that got him inside the courtroom more than any other ASA. He developed his skill as a newly seasoned trial lawyer, something he considered a dying art.\n\nThere were two kinds of prosecutors in Dade County, those who got going-away parties and those who didn't. Three years after achieving an impeccable run, Harris set a record for the largest farewell bash sending him off to join the firm of Jacoby and Myers. The boutique firm on its building's eighth story specialized in state and federal tax law. Soon after, Harris enrolled in an accounting program at the University of Miami.\n\nHis next desk was the cherry wood centerpiece of his first private office, one with a view of the neighboring building's roof. Between brief reviews during the day at the law firm and ledger sheets at night, he managed to achieve his degree in thirty long, agonizing months. The firm, ecstatic with his new qualifications, sponsored his internship and in a relatively short period of time, Harris reached the dual-qualification making him one of the most desired and sought out professionals in Miami. A formidable feat for a full-time student, Harris maintained a 3.7 GPA and still turned over fifty billable hours per week. The aged senior partner, Jerold Jacoby, was pleased with his new rising star that had a devoted passion for the work. The Internal Revenue Service code, despite its ambiguity and constant changes, was his first conquest, being able to quote sections and paragraphs like a seasoned minister reciting verses of the Bible. When clients faced fear and intimidation, Harris broke things down into easily understood stages, preaching that understanding the process was just another science, an in-depth study of a system that could be understood and manipulated.\n\nAt thirty-seven, Harris realized he had gone as far as he could in the small law firm of Jacoby and Myers. His six-year tenure had netted the firm just under four million dollars. Harris had become discontent with the small office and it was when he was writing his resignation letter that the senior Jacoby entered his office and offered him a full partnership and senior status within the firm. As the much older lawyer spoke, Harris looked on as he crumpled the hastily drawn letter from the yellow legal pad, disposing it in the receptacle next to his desk.\n\nWithin eight months he increased the client load and billable hours by over thirty percent. Two months later, Jerold Jacoby died of a sudden coronary and the remaining partner, Harold Myers, decided to retire. Harris was now in full control and his first step was to move the firm to the plush Lansky Building on Brickell Avenue in Downtown Miami. Clyde Harris's formula for the firm's success was simple. Build a one-stop shop for drug dealers, smugglers, cartel members and anyone else affording his five hundred dollar per hour fee. He was expensive, but that was okay. His clients respected the high price. It was, after all, the price of doing business. It was a cost that let them sleep at night without the fear of being dragged out of bed at sunrise by black garbed ninja federal agents, handcuffed and underwear-clad in front of the wife, kids and neighbors. By now, Harris knew his way around the state and federal court systems. He also knew that if he could beat a drug case, they were eventually going to go after his client for taxes. He had all the bases covered: drugs, corruption, racketeering and tax evasion, all things Jerold Jacoby would never have stood for. Things were different now.\n\n\u2022\n\nThe waiting room was fancier than Roberto Alazar was used to. From the imported leather couches to the antique wood furniture, only the gold inlaid lamps that set atop all the matching end tables matched the quality of the interior decorating. Hanging from the far top corner of the ceiling was a nineteen-inch television monitor tuned to CNN, with a blue tickertape band slicing across the lower fifth of the picture. The stock market didn't faze Alazar, as it probably didn't matter to most of Harris's clients. It was a prop that made those who cheated the system feel as though they were a functioning part of it. This was part of the game.\n\nAlazar was right on time for his 2:15 p.m. appointment, but, as always, Harris made him wait. Alazar was patient though. He liked to read. While Gordo browsed the underwear ads in a fleshy Cosmopolitan, Roberto preferred the boating publications. An article on the cover had caught his eye. It was a picture of the Vice President of the United States driving one of the new Don-Cats through its paces on a sea-trail with Aaron Donaldson at his side. Both were wearing U.S. Customs jackets as the boat they were riding in cut through a series of blue water waves with white spray dashing in all directions. The article went on to describe the long friendship the two had and how that relationship had turned into a multimillion-dollar deal with Donaldson providing thirty-five of the high-tech boats for the Customs Service.\n\nSitting at a desk in the corner of the room, a well-dressed receptionist, blond and in her early twenties, sat at an early 19th Century oak desk.\n\n\"Mr. Harris, Roberto Alazar to see you,\" she said in a smooth voice over the telephone's intercom.\n\n\"Send him in, Brittany,\" Harris replied confidently without lifting his head from the back of the chair.\n\n\"Roberto! \u00bfC\u00f3mo est\u00e1s? Y Gordo!\" Harris said as he rose to greet his valued clients, trying to put forth his best gringo-tuned Spanish.\n\n\"How are you doing Clyde?\"\n\n\"Not bad, and you? How's that beautiful granddaughter of yours?\"\n\n\"Getting bigger, and wiser.\"\n\n\"I bet she is,\" Harris responded, interjecting a redundant chuckle.\n\n\"What brings you here? You sounded worried on the phone?\"\n\n\"Well it's probably nothing, just some typical harassment. But three of the people I do business with have been questioned and subpoenaed to testify at a grand jury. I don't understand what's going on,\" Alazar said, his tone growing softer and more troubled as he handed his lawyer two stapled pages, each with the familiar Department of Justice letterhead.\n\n\"These were given to the people after they eluded the investigators' questions.\"\n\n\"I see, what type of business are we doing with these people?\" Harris asked as he examined the papers.\n\n\"Just regular business, you know, the pool man, the people who supply the restaurant I bought my cousin, shit even the guy who tiled my house last month.\"\n\n\"They must have been watching you for awhile Roberto. What we have here are several subpoenas for people to testify at a grand jury, one that has probably already been sequestered. Wait a minute...this is strange...why are they flying these people to Atlanta?\"\n\n\"Gee Clyde, I don't know. Why are they flying these people to Atlanta?\" Roberto asked naively, not expecting his savior Clyde Harris to be perplexed by anything.\n\n\"This is going to take some digging,\" Harris said as he looked at the second page of the subpoena. \"Roberto, subpoenas are cut on two different government forms. The first details the witness's name, address and other pertinent information. The second contains a listing of individuals, corporations or entities in which the government needs information in making its case.\"\n\nHarris recognized some of the names listed on the second page. The instructions preceding them were crystal clear.\n\n\u2022\n\nUnited States District Court\n\nWitness Summons\n\nYou are hereby directed by the government of the United States to testify with full truthfulness to the events, transactions and persons involved with the case or cases pending before the Justice Department.\n\nRoberto Anthony Alazar\n\nRoberto Anthony Alazar, Jr., aka \"Bobby\" Alazar\n\nMorema Eniquez Alazar\n\nMonica Jade Alazar\n\nTessa Sands Alazar\n\nPhilipe Jesus Alazar, aka \"Gordo\" Alazar\n\nCaf\u00e9 Con Leche Restaurant, Inc.\n\nPeter Delgado\n\nScott Roberts\n\nRedland Ventures, Inc.\n\nIndian Powerboats, Inc.\n\n\u2022\n\n\"By the way Roberto, who is Tessa again?\" Harris asked, pointing halfway down the second page.\n\n\"Probably the biggest part of the problem. She is Bobby's wife.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry Roberto. What part does she play in all of this?\"\n\n\"Bobby and Tessa married while they attended Miami-Dade Community College, despite Mima and my objections. Bobby was immature and I know he treated her bad. They were probably ready to separate before he was killed. Now she has disappeared, her and our baby Monica. Mima is still at home worried sick about this.\"\n\n\"Besides the obvious pain she is inflicting by preventing you from seeing Monica, and let me add, we can probably do something about that, is there anything else I should know about her, or should I ask, how well does she know you and Bobby's business transactions?\"\n\n\"Well Clyde, you knew Bobby. He was a dreamer. Always fantasizing about the mafia and this new show, Miami Vice. Well this girl he married, her father is a special agent with the Customs Service. This is probably where she is right now.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute Roberto, this is starting to get complicated. You mean to tell me that Bobby, your deceased son, married the daughter of a Customs Special Agent?\"\n\n\"Yes sir, he did,\" Alazar said, holding up his right hand as though to add credence to his statement.\n\n\"What we need to do, Roberto, is think clearly. We need to be prepared before anything happens.\"\n\n\"Okay, now we're talking. Where do we start?\"\n\n\"Well first we need to get a PI, a good one. These fucking agents from the Department of Justice can be real intimidating. Our guy needs to be able to tell them it's okay, they can still keep their mouths shut and remain safe.\"\n\n\"Is that legal?\" Gordo asked.\n\n\"It's just,\" Harris replied with an affirmative nod from Alazar.\n\n\"Second, you need to, and I don't want to know about it, stop anything you are doing or are planning to do. One arrest, even a petty charge, could get this whole thing blown way out of proportion. That could give the prosecutor the right to get writs of disclosure out the ass. No, now is the time to play things cool.\"\n\n\"That sounds real good but what you're asking me to do is shut down my whole operation. The people who depend on my crews and me will go elsewhere, soon they will forget about me. You know me, I'm not one to run rabbit. Is this that serious that everything must stop?\"\n\n\"Yes it is,\" Harris answered directly.\n\nRoberto Alazar sat back into the deeply padded chair. All of his anger was now focused in one direction: the system. The government of which he had battled since he left Cuba, the system that killed his father working as a peasant for the aristocrats in Miami.\n\n\"Okay Clyde, you've got a deal. I just don't know what I'm going to do with all this time,\" he said. \"I'll have to find something.\"\n\n\"That's the attitude I like to see,\" Harris replied in an anal-retentive sort of way.\n\n\"You're the boss, Clyde.\"\n\n\"This is what I'm gonna do,\" Harris explained, ignoring Roberto's last comment. \"First, like I said, we need to hire a private investigator. I have a man - he's expensive, but good. He'll need to talk to anyone who has had contact with these agents. While we're at it, I'll have him locate Tessa and keep an eye on her. That situation concerns me. Next I'll need to file an FOIA...\"\n\n\"Wait a minute Clyde, slow down.\"\n\n\"FOIA, Freedom of Information Act. I'll file it through DOJ, Department of Justice, and they, by the way, have to disclose the details of their investigation.\"\n\n\"How long will all this take?\"\n\n\"It shouldn't take too long. I'll file it in the morning.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Roberto said with a breathing sigh of relief.\n\n\"I'm gonna need some money to get things started.\"\n\n\"I brought fifteen,\" Roberto answered as Gordo reached into his gym bag.\n\n\"This should hold us over until we meet again,\" Harris answered as he watched the pile of twenties and fifties grow on his desk.\n\n\"Listen, one more thing, as per the Omnibus Crime Control Act, when asked, I am supposed to report how much, and where your legal fees came from. As far as I'm concerned, we didn't see this transaction.\"\n\n\"Whatever Clyde, you know what you're doing my friend. When you find something out, beep us. We'll be waiting.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nFive minutes later, Clyde Harris was on the phone.\n\n\"United States Attorney's Office, Second District, how can I help you?\"\n\n\"Hello, Pat Stephens please.\"\n\n\"May I ask who's calling?\"\n\n\"Clyde Harris, representing Roberto Alazar,\" Harris said, sucking on a bitter lozenge, swirling it around in his mouth with his tongue. With his feet propped up on the solid oak desk, he punched the speakerphone button on his new multi-line black phone system console. Harris always got a kick out of hearing the radio stations broadcasted over the hold system, especially when it was some city far from Miami.\n\n\"WATL Atlanta! The weather today will be in the low to mid twenties with expected snow flurries by sundown. The forecast for North Georgia\/South Tennessee looks like snow, snow, snow for the next three days! Now back to some music on Atlanta's hot FM WA...\"\n\n\"Clyde, how's things in Miami?\"\n\n\"Busy, thanks to you guys.\"\n\n\"Oh, you're breaking my heart. Just doing my job, you know, perking up the old per diem.\"\n\n\"Yeah, look I've been retained to represent someone your office has had a lot of interest in. A potential target.\"\n\n\"Potential?\" Stephens questioned.\n\n\"Roberto Alazar, Senior.\"\n\n\"Not potential, he's a target. Confirmed, the real deal.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, that's not why I called...\"\n\n\"I'm glad to see Mr. Alazar can afford the best, you being an accountant and all, but if your client thinks this is just about taxes, well...\" Stephens said as he chuckled into the mouthpiece, \"Roberto's got bigger problems than that.\"\n\n\"Would you like to expound?\"\n\n\"In time, Clyde, in time.\"\n\n\"Well then tell me this my old friend - why is such an important political figure like yourself handling such a typical case, you being in Atlanta and all?\"\n\n\"Can't comment on that ole pal,\" Stephens replied without acknowledging the compliment.\n\n\"Come on! You know...\"\n\n\"Yeah, yeah, I know, bet you told him you'd file an FOIA. By the time the six months have passed, your client will have already pled this case out. Tell Roberto not to worry, I hear they are refinishing the pool and tennis courts at Eglin.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nSummons\n\nTessa was getting used to staying at the family home and Owen and Jade were getting used to her being around again. Monica thrived with all the attention she received from her new family and Owen was a changed man. He hadn't had a drink since the night they appeared on his doorstep and he was, as Jade described him, happier. Doing housework made her feel comfortable, especially in this house. It was something she did as a young girl working alongside her mother, dusting, cleaning the kitchen, and running the vacuum. Every task brought back countless memories of her mom who would have been wearing an apron working next to her, glancing over occasionally with a smile. She took a second to wipe the small tears from the corners of her eyes and check on Monica who was trying to push a large Kirby vacuum around the living room with one of her tiny hands while holding a half-eaten Pop-Tart with the other. It made her smile that her daughter was trying to follow in her footsteps and that she was occupied in the process, leaving her to deal with the laundry. The washing machine was acting up and she was going to have to pack up all the dirty clothes and run over to her grandmother's apartment to use the machines at her complex. This was a welcome opportunity for Tessa to spend some time with her and let Monica meet her great grandmother.\n\nIn the last few weeks, Tessa had a chance to spend some time with Joel and talk, a luxury she never got to experience in her own marriage. She apologized for leaving him at the swim basin, for taking off with his clothes, and interrupting him in the bathroom. She loved how he shook it all off and was willing to clean the slate without a second thought. Joel was easy to share her ideas and emotions with and this was what she had been looking for her whole life. During their conversations, her words outnumbered his five to one. She had a lot inside. When her mom died, her dad shut down, and Jade was too young to understand what was going on. Some of the counselors at the guidance clinic where her mom worked offered to help but she felt uncomfortable sharing her feelings with them. When she married Bobby, he was inattentive, displaying the attention span of a hyperactive child on a sugar high. Joel was different and she praised his patience as he listened and asked the right questions, letting her know that he was truly interested in her and the things that were important in her life.\n\nTessa started stacking the baskets of clothes by the backdoor when, without warning, the doorbell rang and with it, a hard rasp that shook through the entire house. Before she could answer it, her three-year-old had already opened the front door. Tessa looked across the living room to see her tiny daughter overshadowed by the silhouette of two suit-clad men, the sun at their backs, standing in the entryway.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" Tessa asked, pulling Monica free from the door.\n\n\"FBI ma'am, we would like to ask you a few questions. Would you mind if we came in?\" asked the taller of the two. Both had reached into their breast pockets and revealed their credentials, a bi-fold leather wallet containing a picture ID and the gold shield of the Justice Department.\n\n\"I'd really rather you didn't. What's this all about?\"\n\n\"We'd be just a minute ma'am.\"\n\nTessa watched as the two men found a place to sit on the sectional couch. They were clean-cut men, both dressed in suits, one blue, the other black. Both had matching haircuts and both carried similar leather-bound writing pads. As dramatic as it was, Tessa found it humorous that both men resembled a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses who were canvassing the neighborhood just days before.\n\nMonica stood in the middle of the living room staring up at the shorter agent, still nibbling on a broken piece of her Pop-Tart.\n\n\"Ma'am, I take it you're Tessa Alazar?\"\n\n\"Yes I am, what is the...\"\n\n\"Ma'am, please, if you could please verify your social security number.\"\n\nAs Tessa recited the nine-digit number, the shorter agent read, tracing with a pen along a corresponding column of numbers. Monica reached over to grab a file that contained something which was very familiar to her. In doing so, the entire bundle of papers fell to the floor at her feet.\n\n\"Baby, no!\" Tessa yelled as she stood and walked over to retrieve her child. In the process, she couldn't help but notice a color picture of her and Bobby, taken anonymously. She looked up at the agent. His eyes met hers as he closed the file hastily.\n\n\"Come on baby, sit over here,\" she said, regaining her seat on the couch.\n\n\"What we need to know Mrs. Alazar is...\"\n\n\"Let me save you the trouble. Mrs. Alazar will not be speaking without the presence of an attorney. I trust you can respect her right to fair counsel,\" Owen Sands said, walking in from the kitchen.\n\nMonica picked up on the tone of her grandfather's statement, throwing the remainder of her Pop-Tart into the lap of the shorter agent.\n\n\"Why don't you let the lady answer for herself?\" the taller agent asked.\n\n\"Gentlemen, I am a cop too and I carry a gun. Leave my house, now!\" Owen commanded, this time taking steps toward the two agents who began to stand from the couch.\n\n\"You're making a big mistake, both of you,\" the shorter agent said.\n\n\"Yeah, they keep telling me that. I guess I've got a hard head,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"We understand. Mrs. Alazar, this is a federal subpoena to appear before a grand jury later this month,\" the taller agent said as both exited the front door.\n\nTessa took the packet of papers, two in all, stapled together.\n\n\"Here is my card. You may have your attorney contact us at his convenience if you wish to proceed with an interview. Have a nice day Mrs. Alazar,\" the taller agent stated as Tessa closed the door behind them.\n\nTessa thumbed through the papers while her father went into the kitchen to make some coffee.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm so sorry. I didn't want you to get involved in all of this.\"\n\n\"The day your mother gave birth to you I became involved in all of this, sweetheart. I only wish I had come in here sooner. I was in the shower.\"\n\n\"I told them I didn't want them to come in but they just came in anyway,\" she cried with tears starting to run down her face and down to the subpoena, the last page of which contained a list that included the names of her, Monica and Bobby. Owen picked up the papers.\n\n\"Atlanta?\" he asked surprised. \"Why are they convening a grand jury in Atlanta? This doesn't make any sense.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDelivery\n\nGordo, Del and Indian Powerboats' chief Fiberglas man, Julio Martinez, walked down a concrete pier that extended through the center of the Miami Marina. The three walked through an extensive construction site. The area had been designated as a revitalization zone and a new two hundred and thirty thousand square foot mall called the Bayside Mall was to be built around the large boat basin. Since it was located downtown, the Miami Marina was the perfect location for urban art deco types who enjoyed browsing through shops and dining on the waterfront.\n\nAfter a month of sixteen-hour days, Indian set a series of new records by finishing Roberto Alazar's new 42-foot commercial fishing boat he named Heads Up that sat berthed halfway down the pier. The sun glistened off her newly finished decks. Each of the men made their way down the dock carrying overfilled bags of groceries. Standing at the transom overlooking the craft was a small man, the dockmaster, a Cuban who spoke no English.\n\n\"Muy bien, el barco, es nuevo?\" the man asked.\n\n\"S\u00ed amigo, it's new,\" Gordo answered.\n\nIt had been a long day. Starting at 6:00 a.m., Florida State Troopers met the crew at the Indian shop to escort the boat to the Jones Boatyard where she was launched just before noon. The slow trip down I-95 to Miami's South River Drive required all the patience the men could muster. The troopers were helpful, moving most of the traffic from around the large boat that took up two lanes of highway. It was a resource Scott Roberts and Julio enjoyed using. For twenty-two dollars an hour they owned a living, breathing cop and his patrol car. Once in the confines of the yacht yard, a specially built hoist called a travel lift encompassed the craft. Like a spider encroaching over its prey, the travel lift lowered its straps under the boat, then carefully lifted the thirty-ton vessel from its trailer. From there, the lift rolled at a snail's pace to an enclave cut into the side of the river. Its banks were carved precisely, just wide enough for the four legs of the lift to span from side to side. Once in place it could lower the boat into the awaiting water. It was a slow descent, just three feet per minute. Each of the men, along with two of the state troopers, watched as the deepest part of the keel touched the glassy water sending a small ripple to the sides of the slip. Inch by inch the hull became engrossed by the water, consuming the freshly painted black bottom coat, a copper enriched blend of paint designed to retard growth and any other fouling of the running bottom.\n\n\"So where you guys takin' her?\" one of the troopers asked, his right cheek full of chewing tobacco.\n\n\"We're going fishing in the Keys,\" Del answered.\n\n\"Man it must be nice. I've got me a Ranger bass boat myself. I've never thought about taking it to the Keys though.\"\n\n\"That's nice,\" Del patronized.\n\nJulio was the first aboard. As the boat's builder, he thought it was his responsibility to check the mechanical systems. Everything checked out and with the turn of a single switch the twelve-cylinder diesel under her deck came to life for the first time. A cloud of gray smoke filled the slip as Julio watched the gauges to make sure the engine was maintaining its oil pressure and the cooling systems were keeping up with the massive amount of generating heat. At 1:23 p.m. the Heads Up was seen idling down the Miami River bound for the open water and her berth at the Miami Marina.\n\nGordo stepped onto the gunwale, balancing his weight with the filled bags of groceries in each hand. His rubber soled Top-Siders squeaked on the clean deck as he stowed the bags under the hard top. Gordo was sure to check the newly installed refrigerator-freezer, his ten boxes of microwavable pizzas and egg rolls consumed most of the frozen space.\n\nThe cabin on Andros was equipped with the bare essentials. All of the cooking would be done aboard the boat which could be docked conveniently in a snug cove that abutted the front yard of the cabin. Baths were taken in the enclave, a ritual that survived from the days of pirates and explorers. Fresh water was a commodity cherished by many in the islands. Gordo's cabin was equipped with a cistern that was connected to a series of gutters that wrapped around the perimeter of the roof. Fresh rainwater was collected and funneled into the concrete holding tank. From there it went through a sand filtration system and then a more sophisticated charcoal one. Gordo thought it tasted better than Miami's water though the water was mostly used for the single toilet and cleaning. Gordo was proud of his home away from home. He had spent many nights on this end of the island. Locked in a tin shack behind the cabin was a rusty Honda 250cc motorcycle. Gordo tried to make as few trips to town as possible but if he had to make the three-hour jaunt, it was usually to necessitate parts for one of his boats or to get an emergency ration of food. Fresh Creek was the closest town and was more than sixty miles away, but the roads were so treacherous and laden with sand, most of the trip was made at twenty miles per hour. On the western side of the island, the U.S. Navy had positioned one of its torpedo testing facilities. AUTEC stood for the Atlantic Underwater Testing and Evaluation Center, a base that housed almost two hundred men and women, mostly contract engineers, who worked and lived on the base developing underwater demolition systems for some of the most advanced nuclear submarines in the world. Despite its importance, the base was isolated from the rest of the island. Fresh Creek catered to the Americans who occasionally passed through, but most of the personnel simply flew in on Monday and flew out on Friday. Most maintained homes on the mainland some hundred miles away. Despite the few that liked to explore the island, the north side was considered off-limits. Gordo's camp was one of only twenty such outposts manned year round. Most of the other camps concealed operations more lethal than the Alazars'. AUTEC policy precluded anyone from venturing to this side of the island. Navy pilots flying in and out of the installation even avoided the north side airspace for fear of a mid-air collision with an unlit smuggler.\n\nWith the lines cast and the boat underway, the three plotted their course for the tiny island cabin. With Gordo at the helm, Julio climbed through the engine room, checking all of the fittings for leaks. As planned, the Heads Up cruised at an impressive pace of seventeen knots.\n\n\"What's our temperature looking like?\" Julio asked.\n\n\"140 degrees and holding strong,\" Gordo replied.\n\n\"Let me check on our cargo,\" Julio said.\n\n\"I'll give you a hand,\" Del offered.\n\nThe two went below to the cabin portion of the boat. Unlike the finer luxury yachts, the Heads Up had a commercial utility finish. In the bow area, Julio had loaded some Fiberglas resin, a roll of cloth fiber, hardener, some acetone, and a gallon of white gelcoat for finishing the job. When on the island, Julio had two tasks. The first was to fix the damage to the bow of Gordo's 38-foot Stiletto Black Duck. The next would be to conceal the secondary load of Gus Greico's located deep in the hull of the new Heads Up.\n\n* * * * *\n\nIntrinsic\n\nThe Plantation Key Colony Villas were an enormously popular place for singles and older retired couples to live, mainly because of the affordable purchase prices, reasonable rents for those who couldn't buy, and the close proximity to the local hospital that was next door. The complex's tenants were made up of senior citizens who had moved south from the northeast in search of warmer weather and they represented almost all walks of life.\n\nJoel Kenyon walked out of his apartment and across the hall to the small laundry room that was assigned to his apartment and his immediate neighbors on the second floor. In his left hand was a pillowcase that was filled with soiled clothes, the other, a box of detergent laced with bleach. Joel was not used to doing his laundry the way most did. He didn't separate colors and everything was washed with scalding hot water and dried as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Tessa had been on his mind since he awoke and he was certain his feelings for her were a lot deeper than he wanted to admit. It was even more of a shock to him as he rounded the corner entrance to the stuffy laundry room to find her there, folding clothes.\n\n\"Hey you...\" she said.\n\n\"Tessa, what are you doing here?\" he asked.\n\n\"I had to help my grandmother with some housework, and the washing machine at my dad's is acting up.\"\n\n\"Where's Monica?\"\n\n\"In there with grandma, they are baking cookies. You ought to see her - she's got flour everywhere, including Gram.\"\n\nJoel stood next to her for a second and then, without thinking, bent over and gave her a kiss. Her lips were smooth and she returned the kiss with just as much affection.\n\n\"I missed you,\" she said.\n\nWithout answering, Joel looked down at the laundry she was folding noticing a pair of lacy black panties that were at the top of the pile. He picked them up, crumpled them into his hands, and then held the black cloth to his face. The smell of scented laundry detergent filled his nose as he looked down at Tessa.\n\n\"Stop that you idiot,\" she laughed.\n\nHe dropped the panties on the table with a smile.\n\n\"Joel, I really wish you'd act like yourself. You really do not have to impress me. Besides, I don't think my grandmother would appreciate you manhandling her underwear,\" she said with a serious face, enjoying Kenyon's grin that turned straight.\n\nTessa did his laundry while they talked. She had noticed most of his clothes were made up of bright colors and thought it a shame to wash them all together.\n\n\"It occurred to me that the last few times we've talked, I did most of the talking. So tell me about your parents,\" she inquired.\n\n\"Well, my mother left us when I was pretty young and I lived with my dad until I left to go to college.\"\n\n\"What's he like?\" she asked.\n\n\"He was a great dad - someone who always took the time to let you know how important you were. It didn't matter how busy he was...\"\n\n\"What's he do?\"\n\n\"He was a lawyer, a prosecutor actually, and I loved everything he stood for. He was a real Elliot Ness type. He died during my first year at the Citadel,\" he said in a more solemn tone.\n\n\"Now I feel like a real prude. We have had some deep conversations and this is the first time I find out that you lost your father.\"\n\n\"It's okay. We were talking about some painful stuff. I didn't want to drag you down any further.\"\n\n\"You don't have to explain, I lost my mother too, remember? My father, as good as he was, couldn't handle it, his heart was broken and the only thing he knew to do was make the pain go away. I forgive him in a way for drinking the way he did, but sometimes it's hard. There are a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget.\"\n\n\"I was away at school when my father died. My sister Jhenna and brother-in-law Pat were with him. I don't know if I was more upset about not being there for him, or not being there for her. She was devastated.\"\n\n\"So do you see your sister much?\"\n\n\"When I can. She's in Atlanta.\"\n\n\"Atlanta? That's strange.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Oh nothing.\"\n\n\"No, what?\" he asked with a smile.\n\n\"Really, it's nothing. You were saying?\"\n\n\"Right...Atlanta. They live in a small suburb called Buckhead.\"\n\n\"What does she do?\" Tessa asked.\n\n\"She's a lawyer. Works in a private firm, mostly corporate litigation, that kind of stuff.\"\n\n\"It must be nice to have someone looking over you. When I left my family, that was it buddy. It was me against the world and then I married Bobby. It wasn't very different from being alone. He really wasn't around much and when he was, well, we had our good times but they were outweighed by the bad ones. He could be so hateful when he wanted to be, like someone threw a switch. I was planning for a divorce just before he died,\" she explained.\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear it,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Don't be, I'm a big girl.\"\n\n\"And that you are.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nFeather\n\nThe small dirt strip hidden on the north side of Andros didn't appear on any FAA chart. There was no aeronautical Unicom frequency assigned to it for ascents or departures, no ground crew and no landing lights. For those approaching, the greatest hazard was that of loose animals crossing the paths of landing planes. From the air it hardly looked like an airstrip at all. It was nearly twenty-three hundred feet long, short by most opinions. The land was leased and the strip ran from one end of the property to the other, and, as Gordo would often say, it was what it was. DEA, Customs and the Coast Guard were familiar with most of the clandestine runways in the area. Surveillance flights were common, though this strip was unique. The property on which it sat once belonged to a pineapple grower who heavily fertilized the area with raw fish and livestock manure from a small head of cattle that once grazed on the land. Fifty years later the property was overgrown with trees, mostly hardwoods, oaks and pines that were once seedlings, imported by the previous owner to spice up his end of an otherwise flat, barren island. The tall trees that concealed the strip, or most of it, created a partial canopy over two-thirds of the runway. This provided a suitable amount of privacy for the smugglers flying into the property but also presented some challenges. Only the best attempted.\n\nRalph Linez made his approach with full flaps, guaranteeing him the maximum amount of lift with the least amount of speed. The plane's gear was down as the twin-engine turbo prop descended just feet over the tops of the swaying trees that guarded the strip's threshold. Linez, despite his years of experience, was taken aback by this challenge. There were no second chances here. He would have to land in the window of the canopy and hope the strip was long enough to slow him down. If it wasn't, there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it. The canopy prevented him from retaking to the air. He would simply run headlong into the hard-woods at the end of the strip. Sweat dripped down the twin throttle levers from his wrists as Linez adjusted the engine's power. Then he feathered the props into a position so they could be reversed quickly. The key was to not rely on the brakes but to reverse the thrust of the turbo props as soon as possible.\n\nThis plane was responsive, he thought to himself. Not like the heavy Beechcraft he lost in the Keys. The wreckage of a plane on the beach below, left strewn around the north side of the island, reminded him of the night he crashed into the shallow water off the Upper Keys; a night that changed his life and his upgraded status as a fugitive after jumping his bail on the trafficking charges.\n\nGordo, Del, and Julio waited by the cabin as the high-pitched whisper of the high-winged Turbo Commander blew over their heads. Gordo kept his fingers crossed. This was a new pilot to his strip and, despite the wreckage on the beach, the Alazars had a perfect safety record. The only aircraft that had crashed did so before they obtained the property. The incidents usually occurred after leaving the strip, usually striking the tips of the tall hardwoods after becoming airborne. No one had actually crashed on the strip itself though, and Gordo was happy of that, being the one who would have to clean it up if they did. Within a three-mile radius Gordo had counted twelve planes or piece of planes, not all from his strip, but most a casualty of poor planning combined with an overloaded aircraft. All the crashes were in various stages of decomposition with twisted metal, some pieces no bigger than a common Frisbee. Some had barnacles affixed to the fuselage while others were pitted and rusting. All were a constant reminder of the dangers of clandestine aviation.\n\nThe Turbo Commander dropped into the threshold, descending just past the first line of trees and coming down close to the grassy surface. Linez, just before touching down, reversed the pitch of the dueling three-bladed propellers, shifting the thrust ahead of the plane instead of toward the aft. The stall warning alarm activated immediately sending a shrieking tone throughout the cabin before the plane fell the remaining few feet coming down hard on the grass strip with pieces of debris and sand flying up and behind the plane. The craft rolled to a stop just three hundred feet short of the wall of trees at the end of the runway. Linez braked the rear main gear and throttled up the left engine, this time with the prop pitch aiming aft. The plane turned a sharp one hundred and eighty degree turn and headed for the waiting men at the cabin.\n\n* * * * *\n\nRainbow\n\nWhen Tessa had asked Joel for a favor, he didn't know what to expect, although he knew he would have done just about anything she asked. The request was simple. Drive her to the apartment on Miami Beach to get some more of her things before putting the place on the market. Since she drove a small sports car, the room of Joel's larger BMW was an added benefit.\n\nWhat was happening? he asked himself. This felt good to him, especially at Owen's when he would sit on the couch and Monica would climb into his lap and rest her tiny head on his chest, a first for a man who didn't spend a lot of time around small children. The next day he went to a drugstore to buy her a toy and presented a small stuffed rabbit to her in front of Tessa.\n\n\"Joel, I know you meant well, but you bought my kid a dog toy,\" she said, squeezing the thing until it squeaked.\n\n\"It was in the toy section...\" he defended, as Monica snatched the toy out of her mother's hand.\n\n\"Safe for puppies of all ages,\" Tessa read from the toy's packaging.\n\nThen the two of them looked down at Monica who didn't care. She owned it. Still, it felt right, and as Tessa noticed, that despite his clumsy learning curve, Joel Kenyon was a natural who operated from the heart. Not a replacement, she continually told herself, but an evolution in her life and the product of some good decision making and a little bit of luck.\n\nKenyon's feelings for Tessa surprised him. He hadn't expected to find love on this assignment but it was his sister Jhenna who used to say: \"Love is where you find it.\" Still, Tessa Sands Alazar was not the safest person to fall in love with. She was the widow of one of the biggest smuggling families in the Keys, but then, she was also the daughter of his partner. The collateral damage to his career alone could prove devastating setting him back ten years. But this, for some reason, didn't seem too important. Growing up, his life had been ruled by so many others. He had subscribed to the ideals and goals of so many others, so much so that Joel had neglected the needs of his own soul. Tessa was a radiant vision that greeted him every morning in his mind as he awoke. The mere whisper of her voice over the phone made him melt, an emotion he had never experienced before. The political climate in South Florida and the Second Federal District, as enforced by Patrick Stephens, didn't seem to matter anymore.\n\nJoel's BMW continued north on the eighteen mile stretch with their destination being the Alazar condo at Haulover, Miami Beach. Tessa continued to caress the back of his hand that rested on the car's console-mounted shifter. The condo had been her home for the last three years. Although it represented more than that, it stood for everything she wanted corrected in her life. For days, she imagined the blackness she would encounter when she finally returned to open the front door and view everything Bobby Alazar had provided for her. That life was in the past and for the benefit of the elder Alazars, the marriage had not ended in the disgrace and failure of a messy divorce.\n\nThe day was hot and humid. Boils of hot air rose from the black pavement ascending skyward. Joel felt the car's air conditioning system trying to keep up with the tepid air outside the car. Despite the allure of his imported car, the air conditioning system was less than desired.\n\nWhile driving through Homestead, a small farming community, Joel pulled down a paved road that was adjacent to a thirty-acre field of cultivating green beans. Scores of Mexican migrant workers labored, bent over wooden baskets, picking the crop clean from the vine-like bushes that stood a foot above the rich black soil. The BMW stopped just short of a white deluge of water that was being projected from an agricultural irrigation truck, a machine that looked more like an oversized lawn sprinkler but produced ten times the water flow of a standard fire hose. The stream, which shot over a hundred feet into the air, formed a rainbow as rays of sunlight pierced it.\n\nThe car's brakes squeaked to a stop as Joel and Tessa grabbed each other in what was a passionate high watermark for both.\n\n\"Ah, Joel? I think we've got an audience,\" Tessa said, pointing to the migrant workers who were now standing tall in the field, staring at them.\n\n\"Hold on. I've got an idea,\" he offered, shifting the car back into gear and rolling slowly under the deluge. As the car disappeared into the wall of falling water, Tessa smiled as she watched the pounding stream hit the car's clear sunroof. As the sun set, the orange rays that illuminated the spray filled the car with warm light that flickered with the different colors of the rainbow, looking more like the Northern Lights of Alaska than a South Florida evening.\n\n\"This is amazing,\" she said. \"How did you know to do this?\"\n\n\"Well, you know...\"\n\n\"You didn't have a clue, did you?\"\n\n\"Nope, none whatsoever...\" he replied as the two giggled like school kids in love.\n\n* * * * *\n\nBlue\n\nWith the nine hundred and twenty kilo load of cocaine transferred from Linez's plane to the Heads Up, Julio spent the better part of the day fiber-glassing the stash into the inner hull, making a compartment that was segregated from the rest of the boat with a plywood and Fiberglas bulkhead. After that, he did some much-needed post-collision repair work to Gordo's 38-foot Stiletto Black Duck. While he was completing that, Del and Gordo loaded eighty bales of sensimilla marijuana into the large holds below the main deck.\n\nThe plan was simple. Julio would run the Heads Up to the Keys. A few hours later, Del and Gordo would catch up in the Stiletto. When both boats hit the reef line, Gordo would speed up the faster boat and head into Tavernier Creek where he would draw the attention of anyone who had been tracking them, leaving the Heads Up to cruise north to Rock Harbor, a popular anchorage where he would lay until some of the crew's smaller inflatable boats could take the load to shore. From there, Julio would head to the Miami River where they would cut out the second secret load belonging to Gus Greico.\n\nJulio took his position behind the helm of the new Indian. With a turn of the key the single twelve-cylinder diesel came to life, rumbling beneath the insulated deck. He loved the feel of a new boat, from the smell of fresh Fiberglas that lingered in every compartment to the sawdust that lingered in the cracks and crevasses. This boat was fresh in every respect. A commercial hull by design, it hadn't yet been christened with a load of fish that would have surely marked it as a worker.\n\nThe only residue the Heads Up would be bathed in was that of the sensimilla marijuana, laden with THC-rich tar, a potent mixture for a drug that would bring over thirteen hundred dollars a pound on the streets of Gainesville, Tallahassee, or Pensacola. For this, Julio made sure to pack a case of bleach to wash the decks down after the first load was gone. The bleach, along with several buckets of seawater, would do the trick, leaving the decks clean and odor free.\n\nAlazar's take was sixty points to cross from Andros to the reef and another seventy-five to go from the reef to the clavo. By using the Heads Up, they could reap one hundred and thirty-five thousand per pound and only have to pay one captain. After expenses, Alazar's take was going to be close to five hundred and forty thousand dollars. After paying the captain and setting aside a sizable amount for the new boat's maintenance fund, his net was closer to three hundred and eighty-five thousand, of which Gordo and Del each received twenty-five percent. The load belonging to Gus Greico was a different story. Sal Alcone was paying eighteen hundred per kilo to get his load from Andros to the safehouse in Miami. The only expense they had to pay out was to Julio who, spellbound by the amount, agreed to do everything for twenty thousand. There was no counter-surveillance, no chase boats, no clavo and the best part - only a tight group of people who even knew the plan was in motion. If everything went as planned, both would split the lion's share of over 1.5 million dollars.\n\nJulio eased the boat out of the small cove and headed through a series of crude wooden channel markers that led the boat into deeper water. Like the first time, he checked the boat's gauges and all the other functions to make sure that they were performing according to the vessel's specifications. He was using extreme caution since the boat was still undergoing the break-in phase and the engine's oil pressure and temperature readings along with the transmission's drive pressure needed to be constantly checked. The depth sounder started sending radio signals to the sandy bottom below. The amount of time necessary to receive the signal back would be interpolated into a reading which would flash on the liquid crystal display showing the depth. Julio was cautious. He didn't want to take any chances with his precious cargo.\n\n\u2022\n\nSix hours later the Heads Up was sitting at Crocker Reef. Julio had a yo-yo in his hand and was bringing in a small fish when the boat's Icom 28 radio blared.\n\n\"Slingshot to Bow and Arrow, come in over,\" Gordo said.\n\n\"Bow and Arrow here. All clear,\" Julio answered.\n\nJulio retrieved the large steel anchor, restarted the diesel engine, and headed towards Tavernier Creek. Behind him followed Del and Gordo in the all-white Black Duck. Halfway to shore, Gordo hit the throttles as the boat bucked like a wild horse over the larger boat's wake. Julio watched as the faster boat passed his transom, crossing the final wave of his wake as it jumped completely out of the water.\n\n\u2022\n\nFlorida Marine Patrol Officer David Fisher was ready to call it a day. The seventeen-year veteran had been on the water since 8:00 a.m. Fisher and his 24-foot boat were feeling the fatigue after the long day. What was this place coming to? he thought. He had patrolled these waters for most of his career, cherishing the isolated beauty that was the Florida Keys, better known by some as \"the wild life and reef life.\" The Keys were changing though and there was nothing neither he nor the FMP could do to change it. The tiny string of islands at the south end of the United States was no longer a secret, gaining popularity on their own thanks to an active public relations campaign put on by the Monroe County Chamber of Commerce and the Tourist Development Council. The Keys rapidly became the poor man's Hawaii. What once resembled a quiet seascape lingering over a living reef now looked like a scene from Walt Disney's The Boatniks, a comical spoof about boating portraying it as a national free-for-all, a fiasco on the high seas. With the holidays approaching there were more tourists, all vying for their bid to dive, snorkel or fish the reef. The FMP office in Marathon had mandated five twelve-hour days a week to its already overworked patrolmen who had to put all their duties aside and concentrate on the most frustrating task of their job: controlling the homegrown makeshift captains who had little regard for their safety and even less for the safety of the other boaters on the water with them.\n\nFisher took a second to wipe the buildup of salty grime from his forehead. He was so tired that when he saw the breaking white water of an unfamiliar 42-foot commercial hull headed for Tavernier Creek, his first instinct was to ignore it and wrap up his day with a few jots in his logbook and a quick signoff over the radio. Something about the boat was different to him though. It was clean and new for one thing. Did one of the commercial guys get a new ride and not tell me? he thought. Something else was wrong; the way the boat rode through the water. It almost seemed like it was bow heavy, but having seen what looked like a Customs intercept boat pass by it, he ruled the large craft out as a smuggler. But then he saw it. The commercial boat was not displaying its required state fishing permit numbers. Besides boating safety and marine law enforcement, the FMP regulated saltwater fishing and conservation. This was a new boat and as it came closer he could see that the captain did not look familiar either. Fisher prided himself on knowing all the commercial operators in the area on a first name basis. They even socialized together on occasion. This guy wasn't from around here and it wasn't fair to the honest hard-working fishermen of the Upper Keys for an outsider to come in, unlicensed, and fish their grounds, he thought.\n\n\u2022\n\nJulio passed the flock of boats anchored at the Middle Grounds, an area just off the coast of Tavernier. The Heads Up didn't miss a beat and was making great time. Two dive boats had already pulled up anchor and were headed for the docks. Julio followed suit, pulling back on the throttle and decreasing the boat's speed so he wouldn't overtake the others. He never saw the gray 24-footer with the prominent black bow stripe until a blue flash from its forward mounted beacon caressed the interior of the Heads Up wheelhouse. Julio's heart started to beat rapidly as he was starting to realize his worst nightmare. Then he rationalized that he had two options. One, stop and risk that the officer would board his boat and find the load, a probability since all the cop would have to do is open the deck hatch. Or, he could run for it and save his own ass, thinking he could dump enough of the load to make the cop lose him and then head back to Andros.\n\nMore black smoke poured from the exhaust as Julio gave the twelve-cylinder diesel every bit of fuel its injectors could handle. Despite the marine patrolman's faster and more maneuverable boat, the Heads Up had a distinct advantage. The choppy seas made the smaller boat have to drop back.\n\n\"FMP 126 Marathon, I have a vessel I'm trying to stop. Request Coast Guard Islamorada assist,\" Fisher said into the radio's microphone.\n\nWith the marine patrolman slipping into his own wake and making much better speed, Julio started to panic. He opened the door and started to pitch the load overboard, one bale at a time. After twelve it was evident that there was no way he was going to get the other seventy-seven pieces off without the officer noticing. To make matters worse, the last bale he grabbed slipped out of his trembling hands and fell to the deck, breaking into pieces. The boat was now tainted with an indelible residue. There was no turning back. Julio realized that his entire fantasy about smuggling and bringing home the big bacon, like a rock star, within his own family were just that - a fantasy. During his short life, reality was a cruel partner for Julio Martinez. His only option was to ditch the boat and run. He headed for the closest group of lights he could see which were on the shore and to the south. Another blue flashing beacon appeared moving rapidly towards his position.\n\n\"FMP 126 Marathon, we have contraband in the water. He's dumping...he's dumping...Please notify air support and U. S. Customs.\"\n\nJulio entered the channel to Tavernier Creek wide open as the twelve-cylinder diesel pounded beneath the deck. White frothing water spewed from the transom, culminating into a five-foot-high wake. The town of Tavernier was densely populated enough that if he made it to the beach, he could hide without much of a problem. With the approach to the land, the seas calmed down considerably. As Julio neared the mouth of the creek, red and blue flashing lights caught his eye as two speeding sheriff's cruisers topped the bridge headed south. He wouldn't have much time. The 24-foot marine patrol boat was joined with another boat, a smaller Boston Whaler utility boat from the Coast Guard. Julio swayed the massive craft back and forth using the boat's immense wake to bounce his pursuers off the stern. The tactic worked as each of the smaller boats took a position nearly one hundred yards back. As he went under the bridge, the roar of the diesel engine, amplified by the tunnel of the bridge, was interrupted by the crunching noise of the three Fiberglas whip antennas that splintered to pieces as they struck the relatively low bridge overhead. The fuel dock of the Tavernier Creek Marina lay just beyond the bridge and Julio watched as his five-foot wake engulfed the small concrete pier and immersed it and the fuel pumps in saltwater. Julio continued down the creek, looking for a place to ditch the boat. As he made the first turn he noticed a tributary to his left. With a quick spin of the tall, vertically mounted wheel, the boat banked sharply entering the small notch in the mangroves. Julio maintained his speed, wondering when the bottom would become too shallow to support the boat's massive draft. Then suddenly, the bow buried into a clump of trees and the keel nestled against the muddy bottom. The boat stopped immediately. Julio was thrown against the stainless wheel with his torso flying over the top, his head smashing the compass and instruments, cutting a gash over his left eye. Blood immediately flowed down the side of his face filling his eye, further hampering his escape. With the two patrol boats closing in, the terrified Cuban climbed onto the bow and jumped forward to dry ground where he fled on foot. He could hear the outboard motors power down as they reached the stern. They were close. Unbeknownst to him, he had landed in an area called Tavern-Aero, an aviation community that was built on a two thousand foot runway. Most of the homes built on the Tavern-Aero strip were weekend getaways. Executives from Miami would fly down for the weekend and then return Monday morning. The development was a virtual ghost town during the week and Julio had no problem disappearing into the woods.\n\n* * * * *\n\nIncentive\n\nSal Alcone sat silently in his office at International Farms while Del and Gus Greico sat across from him in an oversized couch.\n\n\"Get it back,\" Sal said.\n\n\"You know the risks Sal,\" Del reasoned.\n\n\"Get it back.\"\n\n\"I don't think it's that easy,\" Greico added.\n\n\"Look, you assured me that these people were good. This is going to be two loads in a row that are gone. Poof! Into thin air! Do you know how much goes into an operation like this? Get it back!\"\n\n\"Let me work on it Sal. I have some ideas but it's going to take a few days,\" Del said.\n\n\"Sal - Del's got something else he thinks you should know.\"\n\n\"What else could go wrong?\" Sal asked.\n\n\"How much have you done with Aaron Donaldson?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Not a lot. We were friends. Over the years, he's built a lot of boats for us,\" Sal answered.\n\n\"Well you know Scott Roberts?\"\n\n\"Yeah, he left Stiletto to form Indian Powerboats. You got a piece of that, I hear.\"\n\n\"Yeah, Indian. Scott says that with this big government contract, Aaron has been getting cozy with the Feds. Word is he's turning everyone in to save his ass,\" Del explained.\n\n\"Great,\" Sal said sarcastically.\n\n\"When I bought into Indian, I paid for the land on 188th Street and the building. We got the land from Aaron. We paid that motherfucker two hundred grand in cash. Because we couldn't report it, he set it up as a fake mortgage to Scott.\"\n\n\"But Del, Aaron would be stupid to roll over on you for that. He's just as guilty,\" Greico rationalized.\n\n\"Unless they found out already and offered him a deal. Shit man, the guy is worth millions. He could lose everything, his government contract, and he could go to jail,\" Del said.\n\n\"You're paranoid Del. You're a little fish. Relax and get my stuff back and I'll see what I can find out on this end,\" Sal counseled.\n\nAfter Del and Greico left the office, Sal had some time to think. This new situation was a potential problem. Aaron Donaldson was a dabbler. He had his hand in everything, including a small bit of International Farms. Several years before, Donaldson had been the architect for a deal between the firm and the Guatemalan Beef Consortium. Donaldson was paid a commission and knew every detail of the deal. Over the years, Donaldson made a lot of money with International Farms. This coincided with rumors that he had heard that a special grand jury had been convened, the same grand jury that indicted Guerillmo Morales and were targeting unnamed, high-level drug targets.\n\nIt was time to act. Sal thought as he spun his chair to face an opened bay window. He looked over the courtyard just in time to see a Ford pickup truck pull down the long driveway towing a tarp-covered car on a tandem axle trailer. A new addition to my secret collection, he thought to himself as the rig passed by his window, headed to the warehouse. \"Hartford Connecticut Police Department,\" he said aloud, like a kid thumbing through a stack of baseball cards.\n\n* * * * *\n\nScavenger\n\nThe Monroe County Sheriff's Department was always the first to know when the mosquito commission's main asset, an old DC-3 cargo plane, was out doing its job, ridding the Keys of unwanted bugs. The process was unorthodox with the oversized plane flying at tree level spewing a liquid larvicide and diesel fuel mixture from its two large exhaust pipes mounted on each wing. The sight looked more like a WWII bomber going down in flames than a simple insect eradication, which is why most tourists who had not seen the spectacle before were alarmed, many to the point of calling 9-1-1.\n\nDid you actually see the plane hit the ground? was the standard reply, keeping the door open for the eventual possibility that the aircraft could actually crash one day.\n\nThe mission was going as planned with one exception, the guest in the left hand seat of the plane's complex cockpit. There was an arrangement though between the guest and the pilot who usually flew alone. The guest would pay one gold doubloon for each trip and in exchange, the pilot would fly in the areas the guest requested, low and close to the water, repeating patterns as necessary, and he would exercise extreme discretion. If they found a smuggler's discarded load floating adrift, a casualty of a boat chase the night before, the guest would radio his waiting crew below to go and retrieve the load for themselves. On moonlit nights, when the bales of marijuana looked like ice floating in a glass of Coca-Cola, the guest would discard a phosphorescent glow stick, the kind used by night divers and found at every scuba shop in South Florida, to aid the ground crew in their recovery.\n\nThe pilot had no worries. The doubloons were valuable and if he held on to them, they would only increase in value. Since the county paid for the plane's fuel, it was a deal that netted a pure profit for him. The only people who could arrest him for the crime of aiding and abetting were sitting right next to him in the copilot's seat.\n\nThe sun was an hour from rising as he banked the plane over Dove Key and leveled off over the water at an altitude of fifty feet. The night before was busy with a boat chase that netted the Coast Guard a large commercial workboat and a sizeable tonnage of weed, but not before the captain had a chance to ditch part of the load in an attempt to rid himself of the evidence. Nine hundred yards of low-level flight later, the pilot was the first to see it: a group of bales floating in the shallows, about half a mile offshore.\n\n\"You see me?\" the guest called into an official radio.\n\n\"We got you,\" came a reply.\n\n\"I'm right over it. She's lit up boys,\" he said, tossing the light sticks out of the cockpit window.\n\n\"We're on our way.\"\n\n\"Be careful, it's pretty shallow and hurry up. The sun is almost up and you won't be able to see the sticks.\"\n\n\"Will do boss.\"\n\nAlmost immediately, two U. S. Customs interceptors roared out of Tavernier Creek towards the nightsticks. Ten minutes later, the loose bales were retrieved and headed back to shore.\n\n* * * * *\n\nRestitution\n\nKevin Pinder mounted his overbuilt four-by-four pickup and headed south towards co-operative substation six at exactly 9:00 p.m. The rain was driving down harder than he had seen in a long time. In South Florida, the rains were common but short and to the point. This storm had lasted for two hours and looked as though it would continue all night. As fast as the wipers could flash, they were still not fast enough. Kevin kept his speed at forty-five miles per hour. The drone of his 40-inch mud tires was louder than any other noise on the road that night. These rubber giants were great for navigating a mud hole in the Everglades, but not very valuable on the slick, paved blacktop. One good patch of water and he could easily lose control of the truck.\n\nHis mission was simple: kill the power to Plantation and Windley Key just long enough for Gordo to do whatever it was he needed to do. Kevin knew he did not deserve the privileged information. His main concern was getting back into Gordo and Del's good graces. He needed to work again. He was out of cash.\n\nThe power substation was well lit. The Florida Keys Electric Co-operative spared no expense in making the otherwise dreary structure look acceptable and attractive from the roadside. Kevin pulled into the small parking lot and made a dash for the front door of the office.\n\nBehind the brick-faced office was a grid work of transformers and switching units measuring almost one hundred and fifty feet square and seventy-three feet high. Despite its beautiful facade, the cage-like structure had an ominous appearance once inside.\n\nKevin grabbed a flashlight from a wall charger and proceeded into the compound. A shriek of lightning illuminated the grid work reminding him just how dangerous this was. His heart was beating thirty times faster than normal.\n\nStation number six handled power, breaking down the high voltage lines coming in from Miami and diverted it to the smaller grids. Station six had twenty-four units (or grids) of power. Units A, B, and C supplied North Key Largo; D, E, F, and so on supplied points further south. Areas of denser population were designated more switching units. Plantation Key occupied units T, U, V, and W. Windley Key was X. This was easy for the linemen to remember because back in the 1700s, Windley Key was used more than once as a depository for pirate's treasure, some of which was still speculated lost on the small island. X marks the spot was a familiar pirate phrase when referring to the legendary maps.\n\nHe would have to go into the cage and throw the circuits by hand and then he would have to wait there in case anyone showed up to check, which was very unlikely since it was his night to take call.\n\nKevin pulled his vinyl raincoat tight around his head as he left the office's rear door. He was immediately inundated with small bead-like pellets of falling water. He wanted to make this as fast as possible. The Mr. Coffee machine was just starting to get hot and the smell was already luring him back inside.\n\nThe flashlight was helpful in illuminating the panel placards mounted in front of each of the switching units. A, B, and C were all very easily accessible. The walk was as long as the cage itself with one hundred and fifty feet of switching units mounted side by side. Kevin counted aloud as he neared the rear of the cage. J, K, L, M, shit! Couldn't they have done this the other way around? he thought to himself. P, Q, shit! That's it? This can't be R, and S handled South Tavernier and T started Plantation Key...Where the fuck are they? Kevin mumbled to himself, continuing to look through the grid work. He was new to working in the cage. Most of his seven months with the co-op had been spent working on the line. Kevin considered himself smart though, and he felt confident in his ability to figure this small dilemma out.\n\nThe sturdy beam of light reflected on something through the maze of electrical boxes and wire terminals. S, T, U...Thank God! Kevin blurted out. SMACK! Another shriek of lightning exploded as Kevin jumped back for a second. He was already frightened enough walking the cage on the concrete pathway, especially on this wet night. Water made for a perfect conductor, he remembered from his lineman's safety class. The constant hum above his head was another reminder of the more than five million volts of electricity around him. There was no use in putting it off. He had to do what was necessary in pleasing his fat Cuban friend who was probably waiting right around now. He managed to squeeze between two of the switching units before coming face to face with the set of terminals he needed to access. Unit T was the first to go. Kevin imagined the sectors of lighted homes and streets being knocked out by one fell chop of the hammer-like lever. Like a gallous falling, the sudden CRACK at the bottom signaled the opening of the circuit. Behind it was five million watts of power, stopped, with nowhere else to go. All the remaining units shut down without incident until X. X marks the spot...the spot for trouble, Kevin thought to himself. The men who routinely worked the cage used to complain endlessly about unit X. It was alleged to be haunted by the spirits living on Windley Key. The switching unit had already been replaced three times. The problem was always the same. When it rained several days in a row the shields on the transformers overhead dumped their runoff of storm water into the lever mechanism, thus causing it to freeze in place. Kevin put all of his weight on the rubber-lined lever. It wouldn't budge. I could go and get a pry bar. No, I'll try something else first. The higher he got the more leverage he would be able to exert. It was worth a try. As he climbed onto a steel support bar, his better judgment told him not to. The other side of his brain, the one that told him to get it over with, convinced him differently. The first five circuits opened without any problem; this one was just being a little difficult. He continued to scale the beam until he was above unit X. He took a hold of the lever. He could feel the rubber squeezing between his strong fingers. Kevin grunted as he exerted all the force he could muster. As he looked down he could see that he had actually done it. The lever had moved almost two inches. The loud shrill of Kevin's beeper sounded next, almost scaring him off the beam. People must have already started to call the main dispatch center complaining of the recent outage. Unfortunately, none of those calls were from Windley Key...not yet at least. Ten or twelve more inches to go as he grunted again. This time he could feel the lever moving. He continued the pressure, almost screaming with a frenzy of strength.\n\nWith eyes closed and his senses dulled from the rush of adrenaline, Kevin never saw the final shriek of lightning.\n\nSMACK!\n\nThe knife-like bolt of energy struck the top of the cage. The transformer above his head absorbed most of the rogue beam of light sucking it in and taking it to the ground. The initial blast caused Kevin to contract and curl up into the circuit in front of him. The bones in his fingers snapped under the intense burst of pressure. His chest was drawn to the X placard like a magnet, burning the letter through his skin directly into his sternum. The milliseconds of time that elapsed were enough to melt his eyes and brain matter that immediately flowed from every orifice in his skull. The final surge blew him back to the ground where he laid motionless.\n\nLike a spontaneous reaction, switching units S through A were knocked out by the strike. Four more pages were dispatched to Kevin Pinder over the next few minutes. His beeper, now a molten puddle of plastic and electrodes, failed to respond.\n\n* * * * *\n\nBreath\n\nThe wind-blown palms swayed with every gust, throwing monstrous shadows against the bare white walls of the Islamorada Coast Guard Station. Across Snake Creek, Gordo, Del and Julio sat perched in a dark gray Zodiac inflatable boat, floating under a wooden pier. Raindrops fell between the slats of the aged timbers filling the small rubber raft. Gordo could barely see the station house less than a hundred yards away through the drizzle.\n\nWhile Snake Creek did wind through the mangroves, it was hardly a creek. Because it connected the ocean to Florida Bay, the creek also had a current. It flowed out to sea when the tide was low and in towards the bay when it was up. At this moment, the tide was lower than normal.\n\nGordo looked down at his watch. It was 9:17 p.m. Earlier that day, he had made arrangements with Kevin Pinder to cut the power to Windley Key and the surrounding areas. It was part of their restitution deal, and while Kevin wasn't happy about it, he didn't have a choice but to comply. However, there was a catch. Kevin was responsible for repairing all outages occurring between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. If the power was not restored within an hour, his supervisor would undoubtedly come to investigate.\n\nHe was starting to wonder if Kevin was going to come through as he looked over at the two-story station. The rain was heavy enough. Maybe we could do it with the lights on, he thought to himself. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder sounded. Everything north of the bridge fell into a state of darkness. The only lights came from passing cars on the bridge overhead. Del pushed as hard as he could against the barnacle-covered piling. Gordo grabbed an oar and began to paddle alternating from side to side.\n\nSmall patches of white, frothy seawater and seaweed drifted by as Julio fended them off the oncoming concrete pillars, fighting the current by holding to the bridge's cross members. Razor sharp barnacles scratched along the side of the rubber raft. The tiniest prick in the side of the fragile craft could threaten its flotation. They positioned themselves, preparing for the channel span located at the middle of the bridge. The passage was about seventy-five feet wide and had no supports or pillars to hold onto. It was the widest and highest gap under the bridge and was where boats would pass when navigating down the twisted waterway. To make matters worse, stationed above their heads was the bridge tender, a civil servant whose job was to open and close the massive drawbridge that spanned over the channel. Gordo knew he had to paddle as fast as possible to reach the other side before the current caught them, washing the raft past their first pillar and on out to the open water. Fortunately, the blinding rain continued to drive down upon them. They knew it would take a miracle for them to find the other side of the span, but these were desperate times.\n\nThe wind howled as it blew under the bridge, slicing through the complex grid work of concrete and steel. Gordo pushed away from the pillar. The raft surged forward and headlong into a moving rusty steel wall. Gordo watched in horror as the object consumed his immediate field of vision. Startled for a minute, he realized they had caught a passing barge making its way through the creek. Just then, the surging swell created by the massive craft's blunt bow captured Gordo, throwing him into the dark water below. His oar was immediately sucked under the passing barge. Gordo suddenly realized that the barge was being pushed, not pulled, and that the worst was yet to come. He grabbed a hold of the raft and began to push it back towards the pillar, away from their direction of travel.\n\nGordo grabbed on to the pillar, a solid shaft of concrete four feet in diameter. The barnacles cut his arms and hands. Del and Julio remained in the raft and watched as the stern of the barge approached. Behind it, pushing with all its might, was a flat-nosed tugboat. The two could see the captain sitting in the heated wheelhouse, sipping a cup of coffee. Past the tug's transom was a five-foot-high mound of white churning water generated by the spinning propeller that sucked as much as it pulled. Gordo held on tight. Any contact with the tug's transom and they would undoubtedly be sucked under and fed through the turning propeller. As the tug's aft came closer, Gordo gripped the barnacles on the pillar, momentarily losing his grip, slipping lower in the flowing water and then regaining it. He began to feel the surge of water rush by his legs, sucking one of his loose Topsider shoes from his left foot. As the wall of water approached, Gordo felt his grip weaken. He looked into Del's eyes and wondered if this was some kind of natural retribution from the gods for his crash with Bobby at the Elbow. Gordo could let go and take his chances or he could try to climb back onto the raft. Either way he felt like he was watching his life come to an end. Before he had a chance to make a decision, the churning water threw everything in its path against the pillars. Gordo held his breath as the water rushed over his head. The wash pulled him free from the four-foot pillar and deep under the water's surface. His hands, still clutching loose barnacles, scratched free from the concrete's surface. Gordo felt the pounding lumps of water thrusts poking at every spot of his body, pulling and pushing at his contorted body. As he went deeper, the pressure pushed against his sinuses and made his ears pop. Churned up sand and mud from the bottom rushed inside his clothes, filling his pockets. He waited for the final bit of trauma, almost tired of the anxiety, wanting it to all end; the slice of the propeller blade cutting him into neatly diced pieces, chum in the digestive tract of some scavenger who was used to eating tin cans and fish feces. Then, as soon as the pressure mounted, it declined and the water grew warmer. Gordo's body began to regain buoyancy. His head and torso popped through the surface of the white frothing aftermath. He was stunned and surprised to be alive. On the opposite side, Del and Julio looked on from the raft, relieved that he had made it.\n\nThe three continued, paddling the raft the rest of the way across the channel. As they entered the cove next to the station, Gordo looked up at the Heads Up moored behind a 41-foot Coast Guard patrol boat. The sight was very intimidating. Gordo gave a final push from the bridge's embankment as Julio and Del laid out the equipment, with the raft drifting over to the side of the seized boat. Grabbing onto the gunwales, Gordo ran his hand over the bright red sticker that marked the Heads Up.\n\nSeized Property  \nNO TRESPASSING  \nU.S. Coast Guard  \nDepartment of Transportation  \nWashington, DC.\n\nJulio opened a long black bag sitting on the soft rubber floor. Inside was a brand new Makita cordless saw and several unused batteries, all still wrapped in the plastic they were purchased in. Gordo looked up at the dark Coast Guard station house as they slid the raft in between the boat and the rigid concrete pier. Without any power, the men occupying the station could not see the dock, not even out of the radio room that was perched twenty feet away. The wind howled as Julio made the first cut through the side of the Fiberglas hull of the Heads Up. Splinters of Fiberglas showered down on the sides and floor of the raft. The carbide blade was an effective cutting tool, slicing the boat's hull like butter, but the drain on the battery was noticeable. As the saw gradually winded down, Julio discharged the seven-inch-long cell letting it fall into the dark water and immediately popped in another one in its place and resumed the cutting. Gordo watched the surroundings. The blackout was hopefully going to give them enough time. He looked at his watch that read 9:31 p.m. The power had been off for fourteen minutes. Kevin Pinder agreed to give us thirty, but anything could happen, especially if his supervisor showed up at the transfer station to intervene, Gordo worried.\n\nThe rain had subsided but the wind continued to howl, muffling the sound of the churning saw. Gordo took one more look around the grounds next to the station. An upright shadow appeared in the distance about fifty feet away. Gordo popped his head back below the side of the seawall before inching it back up. He watched as the figure stood stationary.\n\n\"Wait,\" he whispered to Julio.\n\n\"What is it?\" Del asked.\n\n\"I don't know. It's a shadow.\"\n\nDel joined Gordo, peering just above the lip of the concrete slab.\n\n\"It's a fucking tree man! You're so paranoid, maric\u00f3n. You almost gave me a heart attack,\" Del whispered as he sat back down in the raft. Gordo stayed silent and continued to watch.\n\n\"Wait,\" Gordo said, this time grabbing Julio's arm.\n\n\"The tree just lit a cigarette.\"\n\nThe three resumed their crouched stance as they watched the amber dot move down the dock toward their position. Julio sat deep into the bottom of the raft hiding himself in the equipment, like an ostrich with its head in the sand. Despite the fact that Gordo was out of shape and required at least twenty to thirty breaths per minute, he was holding what little air he had left in his lungs trying to stay as quiet as possible. He watched as the shape moved closer.\n\nJulio and Del sat silent covered in gear and Fiberglas dust. They could hear the person's footsteps approach as hard-soled shoes embracing the wet concrete echoed off the Fiberglas boat next to them.\n\nGordo watched as the figure stopped right over their heads. His mind was racing. Did he see the cut in the side of the boat? Was there any Fiberglas dust on the dock? What in the fuck was this guy's problem? Gordo grabbed a hold of the seawall and prepared to push off. He figured that the few seconds he could gain would be very valuable because it was very obvious that they were about to be discovered. The wind started to blow again pushing the Heads Up against the dock, squeezing the raft in between the boat and the concrete seawall. Then as suddenly as it stopped, the rain started to fall again. Gordo looked up as the figure took one last drag from his cigarette and discarded it over the side of the dock as the smoldering butt landed in the middle of the raft.\n\nThe time was 9:39 p.m. Julio had cut three of the four sides of the new hole. Gordo was hoping for overtime. Maybe the men at the station wouldn't be able to see them from the window above when the lights came back on, Gordo wondered but doubted. The lights could come on any second and they would be in broad daylight, exposed for everyone to see.\n\nThe saw blade started to dull from the course Fiberglas. Julio was on battery eleven and he had only purchased twelve. More blades would have been a good idea, the experienced Fiberglas man thought. What at first seemed like butter now resembled a charred, overdone steak and the motor on the saw was starting to turn slower with the increased resistance. Julio popped out the spent battery and popped in the last charged one. The saw came back to life as dust filled the air around the cut and covered all three men. The saw started to wind back down just six inches from the end of the cut. Julio watched as a light gray acrid smoke filled the air and the power tool seized tight. Its life was over. Julio sighed in disbelief as he sat down back in the bottom of the boat.\n\n\"We killed it,\" Julio said.\n\nGordo looked at the partially completed square etched in the side of the boat. How could we come so far and fail...The story of my life, Gordo thought to himself. Then, out of mere frustration, the cumbersome hulk kicked the boat's side. The flat panel surged forward. Julio and Del looked up with excitement as Gordo pushed the loose hull piece away from the main structure, discarding it to the side. The two sat motionless for a second as they peered into the three-by three-foot hole they had created. Julio looked down as water started to lap into the unprotected hull. Gordo immediately reached in pulling out the first duffel bag containing exactly forty-six kilos, then the second, and the third until twenty of the heavy bags had been retrieved. Nine hundred and twenty kilos were piled into the small 14-foot raft weighing down the center. Julio discarded the saw and other tools over the side before all three men climbed into the dark cold water. Gordo gave a push and the three swam vigorously, using their cupped hands to quietly propel the small craft out of the cove and back across the channel.\n\n\u2022\n\nCoast Guardsman Daniel Phillips watched the latest episode of Unsolved Mysteries on his battery-powered two-inch television as the radio room filled with fluorescent light. After checking the radios and other electronic equipment, he peered out the large bay window before him. Large mercury vapor floodlights mounted on tall poles overhead came to life, warming up and flooding the neatly manicured grounds with fresh white light that bounced off the partially submerged deck of the Heads Up as turquoise water lapped over top of it. Phillips watched in disbelief as the mooring lines snapped under the immense pressure letting the craft roll over and sink to the bottom of the cove.\n\n* * * * *\n\nPact\n\nJoel and Tessa had gone out for the night. The Sands home had lost power an hour before and Owen lit some candles while he watched Monica. It was the first time he had been alone with his granddaughter and the time had brought back many good memories of the early days with his own kids; the early days when Leslie was alive and they were a functional family.\n\nOwen sat on the floor of Tessa's childhood room with Monica who was playing her own rendition of hospital nursery with some of her mother's old dolls.\n\n\"These are the new babies and these are the sick ones,\" she said, pointing to the two rows of ten dolls and her favorite, a rabbit puppy toy that was also lying on the floor around them.\n\n\"New babies?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"They were just delivered,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, right, by the stork.\"\n\n\"No silly, by the truck.\"\n\n\"The truck?\"\n\n\"The baby truck. One for baby boys and one for baby girls because they come from different places.\"\n\n\"You're telling me,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"Grandpa...we need blankets because they are getting cold.\"\n\n\"How about this one?\" he suggested, pulling a knit shawl from his daughter's queen-sized bed.\n\n\"I think that's perfect, but we have to pretend it's...it's...no germs,\" she said, trying to choose her words carefully. \"This is a baby hospital you know.\"\n\n\"I agree. It looks pretty clean to me,\" Owen declared, as Monica looked over all the dolls secure under the makeshift blanket. Then she walked over and sat in Owen's lap, resting her tiny head against his chest.\n\n\"Grandpa...\"\n\n\"Yes, sweet girl.\"\n\n\"Where's my daddy?\"\n\nNow it was his turn to choose his words carefully.\n\n\"Well, honey,\" he said, pausing, \"you know how those babies came here by the baby truck?\"\n\n\"Yes...\"\n\n\"Well, sometimes people go back to the place where the babies come from.\"\n\n\"Heaven?\"\n\n\"Yes baby, heaven.\"\n\nOr not in this case, he thought quietly to himself.\n\n\"When can they come back?\"\n\n\"They can't honey. They get a new job - an important one taking care of all the babies who are in heaven waiting for their turn to come here to Earth.\"\n\n\"My daddy's taking care of babies in heaven?\"\n\n\"Yep, and I bet he's got a bunch of them right now who need his help. It's important work you know, taking care of all these babies, just like we are taking care of these babies here.\"\n\n\"Are the lights out in heaven too?\"\n\n\"I don't think they need lights up there because they have all those twinkling stars to brighten things up.\"\n\n\"I bet it's pretty bright.\"\n\n\"Yeah, and they have the moon too.\"\n\n\"They have the stars and the moon?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Grandpa...?\"\n\n\"Yes baby?\"\n\n\"Are you going to go help the babies one day?\"\n\n\"Someday honey.\"\n\n\"Not too soon because I need help with these babies,\" Monica said, pointing to the dolls under the shawl.\n\n\"That's a deal,\" he promised, holding her tight.\n\n\"Grandpa...?\"\n\n\"Yes baby?\"\n\n\"Not too soon...\" she said as her eyes closed shut.\n\nOwen didn't answer. Her breathing had changed and he felt that old familiar feeling of a toddler asleep in his arms.\n\n* * * * *\n\n188th Street\n\nA man known as \"Marko\" cruised up and down Miami's Northeast 188th Street in a green Mercury Cougar as the scores of Fiberglas men, mechanics, upholsters, and painters applied their respective talents to the sleek performance boats that were built on this street. The driver had spent most of the morning hanging around the waterfront industrial community and was starting to feel queasy from the smell of Fiberglas resin in the air. Then he saw it. At the end of this street that made performance boats famous was Aaron Donaldson, its founding father, dodging a puddle created by a light rain that had been falling since sunrise.\n\nDonaldson opened the door to his dark blue Mercedes 450 SL and started the engine, giving Marko a few fleeting seconds to prepare. As the SL pulled forward, a young blond woman ran out into the street with a manila file folder in her hand. Marko clinched a Ruger .22 long barrel pistol as he bent down onto the front seat. He was not exceptionally experienced at this, unlike the Hollywood hit men who had closets full of equipment and sent perfect shots in the dark, completing their fantasy missions with skill and precision. He was just a guy who knew a guy. This act was supposed to be a repayment for a favor that had been granted to other men Marko had never met or would ever meet.\n\nWhat Marko did know was that it was smart to steal a rental car because it would go unnoticed for several days. He knew that small caliber weapons were good because the noise they made didn't travel very far. The use of the Hollywood silencers was another part of the hit man urban legend. Fast, accurate bullets broke the sound barrier and that was a shot no silencer would muffle. And he knew that he had to strike his target's head in one of five vulnerable areas: either of the two eyes, the two ears, or at the base of the neck because getting a low caliber bullet to pierce the human skull was almost impossible.\n\nAs Donaldson pulled forward, Marko put the rental car in gear and followed. 188th Street wasn't terribly long. Like a bush pilot running out of runway, he had a small window of opportunity to complete his task.\n\nMarko followed for a few hundred feet, watching his target answer the handset of his car phone. That's when he made his move.\n\nThe Cougar lunged forward, passing the Mercedes as Marko pulled alongside Donaldson who was deep in a conversation.\n\nPOP POP POP\n\nThe gun rattled off. Marko watched with disappointment as only one of his shots hit his target, bouncing off of his forehead. Donaldson, with blood gushing down his face, veered away from the gunman, steering the car off the road and into the front of the Indian shop, hitting the corner of the metal building. Marko jumped out of his car, leaving it in the middle of the street with the driver's side door open and walked directly towards Donaldson who fumbled for the handset of the Mercedes car phone. With his arm outstretched and the gun's sights pointed at the target's head, he fired again.\n\nPOP POP POP POP\n\nDonaldson's head rocked forward and then back. A stream of spurting blood shot from behind his left ear. The other shots hit him in the shoulder, face and back of the head.\n\nMarko ran back to the car he left running in the street and sped off, leaving a dual set of black rubber marks in the process.\n\nInside the Indian shop, Scott Roberts and his boat crew heard the noise outside. Most in the crew wrote it off thinking one of the busy shops on the street was pulling a new boat out of one of their molds. It was customary, almost religious to throw packages of common firecrackers in between the hull and mold as a ritual signifying the birth of a new boat.\n\nRoberts knew better. He ran out the front door of the Indian shop just in time to find his old friend bleeding to death.\n\n\"Aaron, can you hear me?\"\n\n\"Hello...?\" came a voice from the car phone's hand piece.\n\n\"Aaron's been shot!\" he screamed, pressing the end call key and dialing 9-1-1.\n\nRoberts's heart was beating through his chest. Blood was already covering his own clothes and that's when he saw it: Aaron Donaldson's all gold, diamond-studded Rolex watch. Instinct took over as he slipped the watch off his friend's wrist and into his pocket.\n\n\"Hello? Police now! Northeast 188th Street in front of my shop,\" he yelled into the hand piece.\n\n\"Sir, what's your emergency?\" the 9-1-1 dispatcher asked.\n\n\"A man's been shot,\" he yelled, almost out of breath.\n\nAs Roberts spoke, he looked down at Donaldson who was still spitting a small amount of blood from behind his left ear. The spurts corresponded with his fainting heart that was beating rapidly and with less force. Then, as though he just gave up, the spurting turned to a steady ooze as he felt Donaldson cease his shallow breathing.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDuty\n\nVeterinary paramedics Hal Keller and Ron Jeffries started their shift like any other. Unit 152, a prize-winning bull in barracks C, had required a supplemental dose of antibiotics to fight a persistent upper respiratory infection. Soon after, the two men ate breakfast at the International Farms Corporation commissary and returned to the station where they started on some much-needed housecleaning before the alarm came in.\n\n\"Rescue one, Rescue one. Peripheral patrol has called in a small brush fire next to the abandoned porcelain plant.\"\n\n\"Rescue one copy, we're en route.\"\n\nAfter a quick jaunt across the complex, their red, pickup-sized fire-rescue truck pulled into the parking lot of the dormant plant. The blacktop was faded and overrun with weeds that had grown through the cracks in the pavement over the many years of neglect. As the brakes screeched to a halt, Jeffries positioned the truck about fifty feet from a burning patch of brush.\n\n\"Rescue one to control, we have a small containable brush fire. We will be out extinguishing.\"\n\n\"10-4 Rescue one. Control out.\"\n\nThis was routine duty, unlike the massive structure fires the duo had fought while employed by the City of Ocala Fire Department. Regardless, the work had to be done and Jeffries pulled the hard rubber booster hose while Keller manned the small pump mounted into the side of the truck. In a matter of minutes, clear, cold water was flowing from the high-pressure nozzle towards the burning brush.\n\nSWOOOOSH\n\nA flume of steam rose into the air as the fire died out, leaving a patch of black smoldering embers where the fire once was.\n\n\"Rescue one, fire out,\" Keller said after reaching inside the truck's cab and grabbing the radio's microphone.\n\n\"10-4 Rescue one, return to quarters.\"\n\nThe abandoned plant was off limits to most of the IFC staff after a memo was issued warning of high levels of asbestos, an insulation ingredient that had just been included on the growing list of cancer-causing agents. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had warned companies like IFC that they would be liable for any long-term illnesses associated with an employee's contact with the substance and that was all it took. Like a witch with a wand, the spell had been cast and asbestos soon became the new lead.\n\n\u2022\n\nAcross the complex and in the office of Sal Alcone, Gus Greico was pouring rum from a fresh bottle of Puerto Rico's finest.\n\n\"I am so proud of you Del. Words cannot describe how I feel right now. You did it my friend,\" Sal said.\n\n\"Where's Gordo?\" Greico asked.\n\n\"I think that is going to be it for our chubby friend,\" Del added.\n\n\"He's quitting? We just got him started,\" Greico said.\n\n\"When we went after the stuff he...\" Del explained, choosing his words. \"Well let's just say he had a life changing experience. He's gone on a diet and is retiring from our...\"\n\n\"Look at this!\" Greico interrupted, pointing to the television in the corner of the room.\n\n\"Oh my God!\" Del exclaimed, standing to his feet.\n\n\"CNN reports that famed Miami boat designer Aaron Donaldson has been shot and killed in the trendy South Florida suburb of Aventura this morning,\" the television broadcasted, showing live video of Donaldson's dark blue Mercedes with a sheet draped body behind the wheel. \"Details are still coming in but one witness says he heard numerous rounds of high-powered automatic gun fire. Another says he saw a brown custom van flee the area. Metro Dade police have sealed off the entrance to Northeast 188th Street and will be questioning everyone who works there. And now to our Washington desk,\" an announcer said as the video stream shifted from Donaldson's car to a still picture of an older suited man.\n\n\"Miami boat builder and international world champion boat racer, Aaron Donaldson, ran with the jet set, developing a lifelong friendship with none other than the Vice President of the United States,\" CNN then rolled video of the same man pictured in the still, but he was now walking out of an office building surrounded by Secret Service agents in black suits. \"Aaron Donaldson was a good friend of mine and of this country. His contribution to America's war on drugs is immeasurable. I will make it a priority of this administration to seek out and find all who are responsible for this selfish and heinous act.\"\n\nSal shut the set off with a remote control he kept in his desk drawer.\n\n\"Well, I guess your problems are over Del,\" Sal said.\n\n\"I haven't had time to think about it actually,\" he responded.\n\n\"He was going to turn you in. Hell, he was going to turn us all in. It had to be done. Consider it a bonus for a job well done.\"\n\nDel and Greico looked down at Sal who was sitting back in his chair, staring out the window.\n\n\"We have some other stuff to discuss,\" Greico announced, changing the subject.\n\n\"I hear that,\" Del replied, retrieving his tumbler of rum.\n\n\"Turnbush,\" Sal said.\n\n\"Turnbush? The private club?\" Del asked. \"You want me to join?\"\n\n\"You know the place, right?\" Greico asked.\n\n\"Sure, I've never been there before.\"\n\n\"We are going to change up our plan a little. I purchased a 96-footer yesterday.\"\n\n\"I guess so. Wow. I don't know what to say,\" Del replied.\n\n\"The dockmaster over there has been working for us for quite a while now. He's got quite a safe setup down there.\"\n\n\"I had no idea.\"\n\n\"That's why we like him. He's a real pro and underneath everyone's radar. Yours included.\"\n\n\"What's the plan?\"\n\n\"I need you to go get this large yacht. I'm paying you over a million and a half dollars so you should be able to handle that without any problem. Get a crew and a classy couple to take with you. They need to look the part. I want uniforms, gourmet food, the whole bit. You will depart from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala and return to Turnbush. Fred Gold, the dockmaster, has the place locked down tight. It seems some presidential hopeful got caught with his pants down banging some supermodel a few months ago and now security is real heavy,\" Sal said.\n\n\"Heavy? How can that be good?\" Del asked.\n\n\"No, it's a good thing. Trust me. If you've got anyone watching, Gold's people will know,\" Sal replied. \"He's got the boat set up for you. She's a classy rig Del. The best part is that there is a dormant fuel tank in the fantail that's good for at least thirty-four hundred kilos.\"\n\n\"Same rate?\" Del asked, smiling.\n\n\"Eighteen hundred a kilo,\" Greico answered.\n\n* * * * *\n\nFahrenheit\n\nPat Stephens adjusted his tie as he walked into the jury room.\n\n\"Okay, let's get started,\" he announced, depositing some files in front of the court reporter.\n\nHis prize jury had met religiously every Friday morning for over a month and had heard evidence on a wide variety of drug cases, all of which were different but connected.\n\n\"Today is going to be filled with some of the most riveting testimony you will hear to date. But first, let's make sure we are all on the same page. All of us are getting together at Jones Deli for lunch, right?\" Stephens asked as some of the jurors laughed.\n\n\"Only if you're buying,\" a portly woman from the back of the row announced.\n\n\"Jones Deli it is,\" Hank Pearson confirmed from his front row seat.\n\n\"Okay then, now that the important stuff is out of the way, let me introduce our first witness. Before he comes out though, I do need to explain that the indictments, if any today, will be sealed for up to a month. This basically means that we will have the right to arrest the defendant or defendants at will. What we will probably do is wait until we have all the key players and go after them all at one time. We call this a sweep.\"\n\nHank Pearson made some notes on a canary yellow legal pad. He had a big quote for a new restaurant chain that was due on Monday. As Stephens talked, he made his list, trying to pay attention to the proceedings that were now starting to dig into his livelihood.\n\nJordan Cheney, dressed in a suit with a gold badge attached to his left pocket, walked into the jury room.\n\n\"Please identify yourself for the jury,\" Stephens instructed.\n\n\"Special Agent in Charge, Jordan Frances Cheney.\"\n\n\"And your duties as they relate to the matters at hand are?\"\n\n\"I supervise thirty-eight agents and field officers who patrol and enforce the sovereign Customs laws of the United States in the Florida Keys, a group of islands off the southern coast of Florida.\"\n\n\"As we have been discussing in past jury sessions, it has been suspected that one or more of your agents has sold his country out to one of the smuggling groups down there. Special Agent Cheney, have you looked into these allegations and do you have a report for us?\"\n\n\"I have sir. My closest agents and I coordinated an internal investigation and concluded that a member of my senior staff has the opportunity, the means, and the motive to commit such a crime. And now we have corresponding proof,\" Cheney said, pausing to drink some water from a glass that was sitting next to him.\n\n\"And may we have this agent's name?\"\n\n\"Yes sir, or course, it's Senior Special Agent Owen Sands.\"\n\n\"I see. Please continue.\"\n\n\"Agent Sands has a daughter named Tessa Sands. Tessa is married to Bobby Alazar.\"\n\n\"Excuse me Agent Cheney. Jury, please reference the last batch of witness subpoenas that have been issued. Tessa Sands Alazar is a frequent player and has her hand in a number of continuing criminal concerns,\" Stephens added. \"Bobby Alazar is the son of Roberto Alazar who is, we estimate, the biggest smuggler we are watching right now.\"\n\nHe turned back to Cheney. \"And where does this smuggling occur, Agent Cheney?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"In the Upper Florida Keys,\" Jordan answered.\n\n\"Agent Cheney, please detail the residual evidence that you have discovered.\"\n\n\"Sure. The smoking gun in a case like this is cash, plain and simple. We have tracked over seven thousand in excess cash to Agent Sands. Keep in mind that this is cash we can find,\" Cheney further explained. \"During a six month period, we infused eleven thousand worth of marked bills through a series of DEA confidential informants who then purchased controlled substances from Agent Sands.\"\n\n\"And what type of controlled substances are we talking about?\"\n\n\"Specifically cannabis and cocaine.\"\n\n\"And, Agent Cheney, did the cash resurface?\"\n\n\"It did. We were able to trace seventy-eight hundred in transactions.\"\n\n\"What type of transactions?\"\n\n\"Mostly construction supplies.\"\n\n\"Let me present copies of the tracer certifications from The Islamorada Bank, The Keys State Bank, American Bank, and Marathon Mutual Savings and Loan. The tracers correspond with invoices made out to Agent Sands. Several have his signature on them. Please admit this as jury exhibit 32-B.\"\n\nStephens took a minute while the members of the jury thumbed through their copies of the documents, several of which looked up at Stephens as if to say this guy works for us?\n\n\"Jury, I would also like to take a minute to present some photographs taken of a home that is being built on the same street where Agent Sands's home is located. While the home is in his mother's name, Ms. Betty Sands, the construction materials correspond with materials used on this project,\" Stephens pointed out.\n\n\"Mr. Stephens?\" called out one of the jurors.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Pearson,\" Stephens said to juror Hank Pearson who had been paying close attention to the copies he had been given.\n\n\"Let me get this straight. We gave money to some undercover informants, who, in turn, bought drugs from this agent. The agent used the money to buy construction stuff for a house he is building. My questions are: How did this agent get these drugs and second, how did we know the money was the same money that we gave the snitches...Sorry, I mean, informants. Do we put marks on them and if we do, how do we know they are the correct marks? Shouldn't we be looking at the bills themselves because that would be evidence, right?\"\n\nStephens took a minute to look at his jury roster. Hank Pearson, Restaurant Supply Sales, Norcross, Georgia. This guy is asking some pretty pointed questions for a man who sells forks and knives, he thought to himself.\n\n\"Can I answer that?\" Cheney asked.\n\n\"Sure, be my guest,\" Stephens interjected, surprised by the candor of his witness.\n\n\"Owen has had some severe financial problems. Every day he comes in contact with large amounts of these drugs. To make matters worse, the guys we chase oftentimes dump their loads overboard creating what we call floaters. When we find these floaters, they are treated just like any other contraband that we confiscate. It's seized, tagged and stored for disposal. As far as the money goes, the term marked money makes it sound like we do something to the bills. On the contrary, every bank in the United States runs its fifties and hundreds through a money counter that simultaneously records the bill's serial number. A marked bill is simply one that we have a record of.\"\n\n\"So you recorded the bills that were given to the DEA guys and then waited for them to reappear in the banks?\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" Cheney replied.\n\n\"Just one more question, if I may. Why would a government agent who deals with this stuff all the time take anything over a twenty dollar bill?\"\n\n\"I...I don't know. You would have to ask him I guess,\" Cheney said hesitating.\n\n\"In your professional opinion, Agent Cheney,\" Stephens interjected, changing the subject, \"would Agent Sands have the opportunity to secure the drugs, these floaters as you call them, for his own personal gain?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"Most certainly. Agent Sands is my second in command. The other agents attached to our office work with partners or they participate with other agencies, like the local sheriff's department or the Florida Marine Patrol.\"\n\n\"I'm confused Agent Cheney. Are you saying that Agent Sands is the only one in your office who works alone?\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I'm saying, unless...\" Cheney said, hesitating for a second.\n\n\"Unless what?\" Stephens asked.\n\n\"He's training a rookie. He's our FTO.\"\n\n\"FTO?\"\n\n\"Field Training Officer,\" Cheney explained.\n\nAs Jordan Cheney left the room, a jury steward entered and presented the panel with snacks, coffee and a fresh batch of cookies. With a concerned look on his face, Pat Stephens followed Cheney back into the jury room's side chambers.\n\n\"Am I to understand that you have my brother-in-law paired up with a target?\"\n\n\"Relax Pat, he's harmless. Besides, if Joel's picked anything up from you, he's an asset. The funny part is that the boat we suspect Owen has been using to go into the mangroves and retrieve these floaters, the small Boston Whaler, well, someone took care of that one,\" Cheney said laughing.\n\n\"And it didn't occur to you to inform me of this? How many conversations have we had about this kid and how you could do me a favor by setting him up down there? Do you understand? I am responsible here. I took an oath to his father and, more importantly, to my wife.\"\n\n\"Relax, I'll get him reassigned.\"\n\n\"No, it's too late now. But, I'm briefing the kid.\"\n\n\"That's not a good idea.\"\n\n\"And why?\"\n\n\"Word is he's dating Owen's daughter.\"\n\n\"Tessa? Tessa Alazar?\" Stephens asked, almost shouting.\n\n\"It doesn't look good.\"\n\n\"Ya think?\" Stephens responded sarcastically.\n\nStephens reentered the jury room just in time to see his panel consumed with food and idle conversation.\n\n\"Okay, we need to cut our break short. We have one more witness before we adjourn for the day. We will have to do lunch at Jones Deli another day. I'm sorry but something's come up.\"\n\nAs the witness approached the appropriate desk, he sat down, adjusting the microphone in front of him as Stephens stood above.\n\n\"You have been subpoenaed by this grand jury to testify in matters of interest to the court. Could you please give your name, occupation and place of employment for the court?\"\n\n\"Yes sir, Scott Roberts, boat builder, Indian Performance Boats, Inc., Miami, Florida.\"\n\n\"And do you agree to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?\"\n\n\"I do, sir.\"\n\n\"As a builder of performance boats, do you come in contact with a wide variety of customers?\"\n\n\"Yes, I do.\"\n\n\"Jury, let me take a minute to fill you in on our witness. Scott Roberts has been building boats all of his life. He was an integral part of the Stiletto Powerboat Company before starting Indian Performance Boats. Mr. Roberts has raced these boats all over the world and has several championships to show for it. And, before you ask, I'm sure he's available for autographs,\" Stephens said as a few of the jurors laughed.\n\n\"Thank you, I'm flattered,\" Roberts responded, laughing to himself.\n\n\"Is that an accurate appraisal of your qualifications, Mr. Roberts?\"\n\n\"Everything except the autographs,\" Roberts said as everyone on the jury laughed.\n\n\"Touch\u00e9. On a more serious note, can you describe your relationship with an Aaron Donaldson?\" Stephens instructed as a few of the jurors sat up in their seats, recognizing the name.\n\n\"Yes sir. Aaron gave me my first job in boat building. When I decided to branch out and start my own company, he gave me a good deal on some molds.\"\n\n\"He sold you molds for what? A performance boat?\"\n\n\"Yes. They were a more advanced version of the 38-foot Stiletto that had been stretched to 41-feet.\"\n\n\"Okay, now you're losing me.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. Stiletto produces a 38-foot powerboat. It's their most popular. Aaron built a mold...\"\n\n\"The mold being the thing that you guys use to make these boats... like a Jell-O mold,\" Stephens said, looking directly at the women on the panel who were already confused.\n\n\"Yeah, something like that. Anyway, Aaron sold me the mold to the 41-foot Stiletto.\"\n\n\"Why would he do that? Wouldn't it help you, his competition?\"\n\n\"No, he had a solid deal to sell Stiletto to some guys out of Texas and the inventory didn't include the 41-foot set of molds.\"\n\n\"Okay. Is there anything else that Mr. Donaldson did to help you start your business?\"\n\n\"Yes, he sold me the waterfront land on which I built my factory.\"\n\n\"And he held a mortgage for you also, didn't he?\"\n\n\"Yes, he did.\"\n\n\"Mr. Roberts, where is Mr. Donaldson today?\"\n\n\"He's dead.\"\n\n\"Killed in front of your factory, isn't that correct?\"\n\n\"Yes sir.\"\n\n\"Let's shift gears for a minute. Do you know a gentleman by the name of Peter Delgado?\"\n\n\"Peter Delgado has been a customer of mine for some time.\"\n\n\"How long, Mr. Roberts?\"\n\n\"Four years, give or take. We call him Del.\"\n\n\"Okay, and has Mr. Delgado ever made any comments regarding Mr. Aaron Donaldson?\"\n\n\"Yes. About ten days ago Del was running his mouth about Aaron saying that he was concerned that Aaron was going to turn him in to the Feds now that Aaron was building patrol boats for the government.\"\n\n\"And why would Mr. Donaldson do that?\"\n\n\"Del said that over the years, Aaron had built several boats for him. He paid with cash and several of the boats had since been seized for running drugs.\"\n\n\"Tell us about the boats that you built for Mr. Delgado, and let me remind you that you have been given limited-use immunity which means that you cannot plead the Fifth Amendment as nothing you say here can be used against you, provided it's relevant to the case at hand.\"\n\n\"He asked me to build a 41-foot Indian for him.\"\n\n\"I bet it had a lot of amenities.\"\n\n\"No, it was to be stripped down. The forward cabin was completely open like our race boats. He specifically requested an eight hundred gallon fuel capacity.\"\n\n\"And how did he pay for this boat? Did you take a cashier's check or wire transfer?\"\n\n\"Cash.\"\n\n\"Cash?\"\n\n\"Tens and twenties mostly.\"\n\n\"I think I see where this is going. Where is the boat now, Mr. Roberts?\"\n\n\"You guys have it.\"\n\n\"What do you mean we have it?\"\n\n\"Customs seized it a while ago for running pot through the Keys. The boat is stationed at your Tavernier Customs station.\"\n\n\"Okay, back to the subject of Aaron Donaldson. Did Mr. Delgado make any threats regarding Mr. Donaldson?\"\n\n\"The day after he told me he was concerned about Aaron, he said to stay clear of him because he was a marked man. When I asked him what was going on, he got real mad and said that he was the only real man in Miami and that he wasn't going to take this betrayal sitting down. He was going to deal with Aaron in his own way is what he said.\"\n\n\"And did you believe him?\"\n\n\"He was real pissed.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Roberts. I think that will be all, you are excused.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" Roberts replied as he stood and exited the jury room.\n\nStephens paused for a minute taking a long drink of ice water.\n\n\"I would like to table a vote of these two targets until next week when we will hear testimony from Tessa Sands Alazar. I promise it will be worth the wait,\" Stephens said as he wiped the sweat from his brow.\n\n\u2022\n\nHe drove straight home and arrived an hour and ten minutes earlier than normal. Pat Stephens had developed a habit for times like these, times when he wanted to lose control and yell at the world and yell at Jhenna. The ritual was simple and far too common, but for him it worked. He would sit in his car, stop, breathe, count to ten, and think about how the Kenyons had made his life so much better just by being a part of it. After fifteen minutes, he didn't feel any better this time though.\n\n\"Jhenna, we have to talk.\"\n\n\"Honey, what are you doing home so early?\"\n\n\"It's Joel.\"\n\n\"What's wrong, is he okay?\" she asked with one hand to her mouth.\n\n\"The fucker's fine!\" he blurted out.\n\n\"Hey!\" she responded.\n\n\"I'm sorry. There's a situation. He's involved with a girl and it's serious.\"\n\n\"He's got a girlfriend? When did this happen?\" she asked with a smile.\n\n\"Not so fast. She's trouble for him.\"\n\n\"How bad could it be? My baby brother's got a girlfriend,\" she announced, almost singing with an even bigger smile.\n\n\"You don't understand. I need you to be serious here. He could be in a lot of trouble.\"\n\n\"What kind of trouble? Is she pregnant, because while we're on the subject...\"\n\"Okay, I'm going back outside and coming back in so I can start over! Will you please listen to me!\"\n\n\"You're yelling at me...\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. Look, there's been a real fuckup down there and his new partner...well let's just say he's probably going to be indicted this week, not to mention the girl your brother's so cozy with is his daughter. And if that's not enough, she's the widow of what was the biggest smuggler in Florida.\"\n\n\"Something's wrong. This can't be right. Not Joel,\" she said, picking up the phone and dialing his number in the Keys.\n\n\"I'm glad you're that calm about this,\" he replied.\n\n\"Look, my brother may have lacked direction for awhile, but he's done more living in the last five years than both of us will do in the next twenty. And he's no dummy,\" she explained with a face that turned sharper with every word. \"When it comes to women, Joel is the most particular man I know. If there's two things he's serious about it's this job and protecting himself from making the same mistakes our father did with our mother. Why do you think he guards his feelings so closely when it comes to women? He grew up without a mother and that made a terrible impact on him. He is bound and determined to succeed where our father failed.\"\n\nJhenna waited, listening to the phone ring without an answer before hanging it up.\n\n\"I think this was a bad idea,\" Pat said. \"We had doubts about some of the agents in the Upper Keys. Nothing solid mind you, just some chatter about some guys who were abusing their positions by scavenging the discarded drug loads from the boats they were chasing. They take the stuff, floaters they call them, and resell the drugs on the open market.\"\n\n\"You don't think that Joel might be involved do you?\"\n\n\"Of course not. What I am worried about is that his judgment might become skewed because of this woman. A woman who, by the way, has a very colorful past.\"\n\n\"Joel is a smart one. He was just like Dad.\"\n\n\"Only different right?\" he added.\n\n\"In a good way.\"\n\n\"I thought I had this guy Sands figured out. It seemed like an open and shut case presented to me on a silver platter by the group supervisor down there. It all looked so simple, but then this damn juror, a fucking restaurant supply salesman for Christ's sake, said something that put a wrench in the whole scenario.\"\n\n\"I'm sure the truth will make itself known. You just have to be ready to accept it.\"\n\n\"That sounds great...as long as I don't ruin an innocent man's career and reputation in the process.\"\n\n\"Look, I do have something I need to talk to you about honey, but maybe now's not the best time.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry Jhen. It's okay, what is it?\"\n\n\"We're pregnant, Pat.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nInvasive\n\nWith the tragic death of Prince Henry, the agents of the Tavernier office were in an uproar fueled by gossip, conjecture and an overall fear of something they didn't understand. To make matters worse, the builder of the boat, Aaron Donaldson, was killed in an unexplained shooting and not available to rebut the allegations against his design. More industry criticism came after it was learned that Donaldson had taken a simple skill saw and cut one of his former 38-foot Stilettos in half, inserted a four-foot wide tunnel and made a mold from the simple hybrid of catamaran and deep-V. The Miami Herald was quick to report that the government was grounding all of its Blue Thunder fleet with a headline that read:\n\nBlue Thunder or Blue Blunder\n\n\"Now look, I know you've all seen this and by now most of you are probably afraid of this boat. I know I would be too if I had just read this article and I knew nothing about the boat on my own, but I, as I hope most of you, know better. The boat that killed this prince was capable of speeds in excess of a hundred miles an hour. Everyone here has been on that blue pig we've got and if you could get it over sixty, you were doing good,\" Cheney said to the agents who had circled around him for their morning briefing.\n\n\"That's not the point,\" West interjected. \"Everything the manufacturer has stated about this boat has turned out to be false. The damn thing doesn't run the way they say it should. They promised us, in writing mind you, that this boat couldn't be stuffed. It was hydro-dynamically impossible were the words they used. Well, they were wrong again. What are we to believe Jordan?\"\n\n\"You guys know better,\" Cheney said.\n\n\"Do we?\" Holmes asked. \"What about our wives who read this shit. Christ, this job is dangerous enough without having to dodge flying dishes when I get home. And then to think I could get killed or seriously injured just by riding in a damn boat...It's not worth it, you need to ground the fucking boat Jordan.\"\n\n\"Okay, well I was given an ultimatum by C3I. They said that if we ground the Blue Thunders, we've got to ground everything until the investigation is over. I hope this makes everyone happy. Maybe a hug would be in order, you bunch of pussies,\" Jordan said.\n\nThe crowd broke up and the men returned to their cubicles and desks. As they did, Owen and Joel entered the office.\n\n\"What's up?\" Joel asked Holmes who had the phone up to his left ear.\n\n\"I'm explaining things to my wife. We're grounded for the next few weeks it looks like. The guys are afraid of the Blue Thunder boat. I guess you can't blame them after what happened to that racer in Key West over the weekend.\"\n\n\"So, no big deal. I've never been in the damn thing,\" Joel said.\n\n\"No Kenyon, Jordan has grounded the whole fleet. We're all on dry land for awhile.\"\n\n\"Kenyon, Owen, come in here for a minute,\" Jordan yelled from the partially opened door to his office.\n\n\"What is it boss?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"Owen, I need a favor.\"\n\n\"Oh shit here it comes,\" Owen said.\n\n\"We've got a real problem with the Blue Thunder boat.\"\n\n\"I've heard.\"\n\n\"You, being the next in charge, need to secure all the boats until this whole thing blows over and these guys get tired of driving around the rock.\"\n\n\"That damn boat is more trouble than it's worth. The only reason we got the thing is because the builder is...was good friends with the Vice President,\" Owen explained, frustrated at his superior's order.\n\n\"It'll only be for a little while,\" Jordan said.\n\n\"Okay. Me and the kid are on it as soon as we grab a bite to eat.\"\n\n\"Alright, just get it done.\"\n\n\"Hey Jordan, does your guy in Miami need any more of those doubloons?\"\n\n\"I thought you were going to save the last batch. How many more do you have? Maybe, if the price is right.\"\n\n\"I've got nineteen left,\" he said. \"I need to get eight hundred a piece. I need the cash, Jordan. Something's come up.\"\n\n\"Alright man. Let me see what I can do. We just need to be careful. You see what the state is doing to that salver from Key West. A few pieces are one thing, but, if my numbers are right, you've sold around sixty grand worth. We could get in big shit if anyone found out.\"\n\n\"It's gold Jordan. My gold that I found.\"\n\n\"I'll see what I can do.\"\n\n\"What's up?\" Joel asked, walking into Cheney's office.\n\n\"You see? That's what I'm talking about, right there,\" Cheney said, pointing at the chained gold doubloon that was hanging around Joel's neck.\n\n* * * * *\n\nTan Lines\n\nLynn Kinser was an attractive girl and as much as she strived to revolve her life around the world of wealth and fame, she always found herself falling short and living the part of the very middle class. She was reminded of that every day she opened her small bathing suit shop, Tan Lines, located in the heart of the Turnbush Yacht and Country Club. She made a good living; her store grossed over three hundred thousand the year before and the year's fall quarter was even better. She managed to clear sixty thousand a year, just enough to afford her cozy duplex on the beach and a leased red Porsche 928. She was still no match for the seven, eight, and nine figure jetsetters she spent her days pandering to, the Rolex-clad, Euro wannabes who waltzed through her store handling the merchandise to death, then bickering over the price as though the store sold secondhand consignments rather than her three hundred dollar European and South American originals. It was a frustrating business but fairly lucrative. Lynn always held her ground with diligence and humor, a redeeming combination that equated to more sales. She had two full time sales girls, busty models who were shopping for someone to pay the bills. Lynn saw them for what they were, classic gold-diggers who were on the fast track to the great American gravy train. They were in the right place.\n\nUnlike its Miami rival the Jockey Club, Turnbush catered to a younger, faster crowd, one that was flashier and more pretentious. The Jockey Club stood for everything that was traditional and conservative smelling of old stale money. When the Jockey was holding its annual sailing regatta, one of the largest in the country, Turnbush was busy promoting its Puerto Rican Rum 200, a grueling offshore powerboat race that ran from Miami to Bimini, Bahamas, northwest to Fort Lauderdale, and then back to Miami. Every year the race was christened by a poolside bikini contest in which all the sponsored contestants wore suits provided by Tan Lines.\n\nSome members liked it both ways, patronizing the Jockey Club with their wife at their side on the weekend, and then slipping away on Monday to Turnbush to see their twenty-something mistress who was waiting in a fully furnished, million dollar condo overlooking the two hundred slip marina.\n\nLynn reached her tired body to hang some freshly delivered merchandise on an elevated rack. Her strained muscles didn't stretch like they used to back in her college days as a fashion student at the Florida State University School of Fashion Merchandising where she met her husband Biff Halpren, a law student. They dated religiously and were married soon after. Lynn enjoyed living the American dream. They decided against kids and enjoyed a life of self-indulgence instead. Summers were spent in Hawaii, winters in Vail, and every other Easter in Europe.\n\nBiff was moving up the corporate ladder with his firm and she had a flourishing career with a small but growing chain of maternity shops. They lived the ideal young urban professional lifestyle: a vigorous day of productive work, followed by an afternoon at the gym, finishing the day with a perfectly planned meal. The American dream though, soon turned into the great American nightmare. Three weeks after the couple's seventh anniversary, Lynn found a lump in her right breast, a tumor that was later diagnosed as a cancerous mass requiring surgery. Quick action saved her life, but it wasn't fast enough to save the life. Her perfect breasts were never quite the same and the chemotherapy severely affected her face and hair. In the course of five months, the tender thirty-two-year-old looked all the part of forty.\n\nDuring the ordeal, her husband had adopted a longer than usual work schedule. After her last round of intensive therapy and after being released from Shands Medical Center in Gainesville, a friend drove her home to Jacksonville to find an empty house. Biff had moved out and they were divorced within six months. At that point she knew she had to move. A change was necessary in preserving what sanity she had left. A fresh start in South Florida seemed the only logical spot. Her parents had moved to Palm Beach in 1976 but that area was too expensive. She had learned some very valuable business lessons from Biff and she wanted to start her own business.\n\nHer two hundred and fifty thousand dollar settlement and twenty-two hundred per month lifetime alimony was only going to get her so far. North Miami Beach and Turnbush seemed like the logical solution at the time.\n\nTan Lines opened in 1980 and was strategically located at the base of the club's main hotel complex making it visible to the guests checking in on one side and the yachts docking in the marina on the other. The dockmaster's office was directly adjacent on one side, and on the other the trendy Turnbush Raw Bar and Grill.\n\nHer duplex on Ocean Boulevard was within walking distance to the beach. She purchased it in 1981 on the courthouse steps at a foreclosure sale, immediately renovating the two units, renting one side out to make the monthly mortgage payments and living in the other. Her business sense was starting to sharpen with time and experience. She was determined to never pay lifetime dividends to a man again. On a warm summer morning in August of 1982, Lynn awoke to find Biff's picture on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. A federal indictment had implicated him and twelve others in a wide-reaching savings and loan scandal. His life was going to be put on hold for at least five years and yet she still couldn't picture him in prison. His assets were frozen and Lynn realized what it was really like to be self-sufficient forgoing her monthly alimony. She immediately adapted a positive attitude, telling herself it was better this way. Besides, it was almost worth it to see Biff suffer just a fraction as much as she had. Just in case though, she called her attorney to file a quick judgment should his estate recapitulate. To her, it would be poetic justice for Biff to survive the rigors of prison life and then have a two hundred thousand dollar bill waiting on his doorstep.\n\nLynn had a sideline. It had started as a referral service for wealthy club members that desired a beautiful dinner date or a few young girls to share a boat ride with; what it developed into was something totally different. In two years, she had doubled the store's gross income and secured some new friends. One of them was Maryland Senator Gary Smart who was a rising star in the Democratic Party. Their friendship flourished as his appetite for her bathing suit models increased. It wasn't until he started running for his party's presidential nomination that he acquired the national spotlight, and with it, scores of roving reporters, each of whom were eager to find the next groundbreaking story. It wasn't until a young Washington Post journalist went out on his own, bought a year's membership to the Turnbush Club and spent a week at the posh resort where he caught Smart in several compromising positions with women half his age, and half the age of his wife who was home waiting for him with their three young children.\n\nThe headline read GET SMART and the story and pictures that followed gave several firsthand accounts of the forty-two-year-old politician frolicking in Miami with a variety of bikini-clad women, with some wearing even less. The article also mentioned Lynn, her shop, the friendship they had developed and the circumstantial fact that all of the women Smart had been photographed with had also appeared in her Tan Lines bathing suit catalog.\n\nShe was devastated and kept a low profile for several months. The problem was that she had grown accustomed to the extra income her sideline provided and was now having trouble making ends meet.\n\n* * * * *\n\nGold\n\nDel was impressed with the Turnbush Country Club as he stopped his Ford Bronco at the guardhouse situated at the massive main entrance.\n\n\"Peter Delgado to see Mr. Fred Gold,\" he said to the armed officer at the window.\n\n\"Just a minute.\"\n\nIn the distance, Del could see the many yachts moored in the club's huge marina complex.\n\n\"Mr. Gold is waiting. Take this road past the marina and turn right. His office is on the left next to the retail center.\"\n\n\"Thanks man,\" Del said as the guard nodded back, flicking a switch that opened the entrance gate.\n\nThis is the life, Del thought to himself as he passed the rows of million dollar yachts that were lined up like cars in an airport parking lot. At the end of the road, just as the guard described, was an office with gold leaf letters that read DOCKMASTER.\n\n\"Mr. Delgado,\" Fred Gold announced, holding out his hand as Del handed the Bronco's keys to a waiting valet.\n\n\"You can call me Del.\"\n\n\"And I'm Fred to my friends,\" he responded, squeezing Del's hand a bit harder.\n\nFred Gold was custom-made for the position of dockmaster for the Turnbush Club. He had spent most of his life working as a captain on a wide variety of yachts including the U.S.S. Sequoia, the U. S. presidential yacht. He was the Sequoia's only civilian staff member and served for ten years before an incident involving twenty-eight marines and eighteen sailors implicated him in a marijuana use and possession case in 1973. He reluctantly resigned as the Sequoia's top officer, taking the head Turnbush spot. As long as the position involved the sea, Gold had the look with his white hair and full sea captain's beard. He was the son of Auschwitz Jews who taught him how to be tough and that \"persistence was omnipotence.\" Gold had a simple sign behind his desk: Tell a man once, tell him twice, and then tell someone else. And that summed up how he commanded the staff of thirty-two men and women of the Turnbush Marina and earned their respect.\n\nAs the two walked inside the glass-encased office, a blond bikini-clad woman caught Del's eye as she slipped into the Tan Lines Bikini Shop next to Gold's office.\n\n\"It's hard to keep your eye on the ball around here,\" Gold said, noting Del's distraction.\n\n\"How do you do it?\"\n\n\"It's not easy,\" Gold replied shaking his head. \"So did you find the place alright?\"\n\n\"It's kind of hard to miss Fred.\"\n\n\"Inconspicuous was not in the developer's vocabulary I can assure you,\" Gold joked with a short laugh.\n\n\"So where do we start?\" Del asked.\n\n\"That's what I like, a man who gets to the point. My documentation officer in Fort Lauderdale received the wire from Gus Greico a few days ago. The Jolene Marie is all yours.\"\n\n\"Jolene Marie?\"\n\n\"She's a 96-foot Broward Yacht, aluminum hull with a composite Fiberglas superstructure. We sent her south to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, for a re-fit and now she's ready to come home.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess that's where I come in.\"\n\n\"I've got a skeleton crew already set up. Guys we've worked with before. The type that can be trusted and will keep their mouths shut. Regis...\" he said, pointing to a picture of a uniformed man standing on the bow of a mega yacht, \"is the crew leader. You'll meet the others in time. You will fly to Guatemala City and Greico's got you covered from there. You and your partner will fly first class.\"\n\n\"Partner?\"\n\n\"Do you have a girlfriend? I don't recommend wives for this kind of thing.\"\n\n\"Neither,\" Del admitted reluctantly.\n\n\"Let me work on that. I've got an idea that might kill two birds with one stone,\" Gold replied, looking over at Tan Lines.\n\n\"What about passports? I'm on federal probation, I don't think I can get one, and certainly not in such a short period of time.\"\n\n\"Got you covered my friend. You will have to leave here and head straight to the Miami Airport Zone. See my friend,\" Gold said, handing Del a scrap piece of paper with an address on it. \"Hector Aroyo. He's the man when it comes to stuff like this. From now on, you are known around here and everywhere that's connected with this thing as Dr. Peter Gray. Here is your new Turnbush Yacht and Country Club membership card.\"\n\n\"Wow, does this mean I can start playing tennis over here?\" Del asked, taking the laminated ID.\n\n\"I wish buddy, but we had better keep a low profile for right now. Only come and go as you absolutely have to. We don't want you to be a fixture. Got it?\" Gold said, with a sterner tone.\n\n* * * * *\n\nAnnex\n\nFred Gold was her confidant, her shoulder to cry on, and, most importantly, the father figure she never had. Because of this, she followed his lead without hesitation or second thought.\n\nLynn walked through Hector Aroyo's small, dingy office that looked like all the other travel agencies in the Pan American Annex of Miami International Airport. With the walls in dire need of paint and the bulky computer screens with glowing green text filling the room with distracting blades of light, Aroyo sat behind his desk going over some papers with a customer who had his back to her.\n\n\"I'll be with you in a second,\" he said, diverting his attention away from his customer who was turning to look at the attractive blond. \"Wait...what's your name, hon?\"\n\n\"Lynn. Fred sent me,\" she answered.\n\n\"Oh, I'm sorry, here, have a seat,\" Aroyo offered, pointing to the empty chair next to the customer. \"I guess you don't know each other,\" he said with a smile.\n\n\"No, we don't,\" she responded.\n\n\"Lynn, this is Del. Del, this is Lynn. I now pronounce you man and wife,\" he declared as the two men laughed. Lynn just smiled and shook her head.\n\n\"Fred Gold, what have you gotten me into?\" she said softly.\n\n\"Sorry about the introduction,\" Del said, holding his hand out to hers. \"Fred told me he was going to arrange a traveling companion, but I never imagined he would do such an outstanding job.\"\n\n\"Thank you Del. Please bear with me - I'm a little new at this.\"\n\n\"Everything is going to be fine. My main concern is that you feel comfortable throughout this entire trip. If you're not at ease, like someone on vacation, you'll stand out like a sore thumb. So, I want you to relax and enjoy yourself. We're going to have a great time,\" Del assured her.\n\n\"That's sweet.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry - I don't want to interrupt you lovebirds, but my officemates have gone to lunch and I need to get the passport stuff done before they get back. So if we could...\" Aroyo said.\n\n\"Of course,\" Del answered as the three stood and walked through a curtain that led to a single, square office where a camera, backdrop, and a set of studio lights were set up.\n\n\"Lynn, ladies first,\" Del suggested.\n\n\"That's not fair,\" she said, fumbling through her purse for a small hairbrush.\n\n\"I guess I could go first then,\" Del offered.\n\n\"No, give me a second,\" she replied, studying her hair and blotting some powder on her nose and face. \"I can't be reflecting,\" she said as the two men watched her primp.\n\n\"Okay, ready,\" she announced.\n\nDel watched as she took her position behind the camera. She was beautiful, he thought to himself. With all the events since his release from Eglin, he hadn't had the time to devote to meeting a woman much less date one. While this was supposed to be strictly business, he couldn't help but think, what if?\n\nCLICK-FLASH\n\n\"Okay, next,\" Aroyo said.\n\n\"Wait, can't I proof the shot?\" she asked.\n\n\"I'm sure it'll be fine,\" Aroyo answered.\n\n\"But...\"\n\n\"It's a passport photo sweetheart, not the cover of Vogue,\" Aroyo answered insistently. \"Del...are you ready? Need some powder, makeup?\"\n\n\"Wait!\" Lynn exclaimed, walking over to Del with the hairbrush in her hand. \"Here, let's make you handsome,\" she said, brushing his black hair to the side.\n\nCLICK-FLASH.\n\nThirty minutes later the two were in Del's Bronco headed towards 36th Street and the Palmetto Expressway in West Miami.\n\n\"Dr. and Mrs. Peter Gray,\" she read, looking over the manufactured documents. \"Wait!\" she said, startling Del who was trying to keep his eyes on the heavy traffic.\n\n\"Where's the rock?\" she asked.\n\n\"The rock?\" Del replied.\n\n\"Wedding rings, and I need to start wearing a bridal set again.\"\n\n\"Okay, now you're starting to scare me.\"\n\n\"No, we have to look the part. I have my old rings from my first marriage.\"\n\n\"First?\"\n\n\"Well, my only marriage, not counting this one.\"\n\n\"This one?\"\n\n\"We have to go check out some pawn shops for you when we're done here, okay?\"\n\nDel nodded as he pulled the Bronco into the parking lot of M and M Distributors, a wholesale warehouse set up for retailers who were looking to increase their inventory with a wide variety of items. Del and Lynn entered the large open bay door of a warehouse. Fred Gold had told him that M and M would be able to help by getting some of the luggage they would need at a cut rate price and avoid the inquisitive eyes and questions of a department store salesperson. Luggage was an important part of the plan. In a location like Turnbush, it was commonplace to see several pieces of designer luggage being unloaded from the boats after the extended trips. The clients who chartered the forty thousand dollars a week yachts had large amounts of the best luggage money could buy. As a cash buyer, Del wanted to avoid going into Saks or Macys and walking out with six eight-piece sets. As they walked in, Lynn noticed the boxed items lined up around the two, all sitting on wooden crates. She looked over the classic cherry wood furniture while Del's eyes immediately fixated on a Mitsubishi rear projection TV, the same one he had seen at Video Concepts in the mall the week before. He was excited to think that he could buy one at a reduced price.\n\n\"They don't come any bigger than that, and the price is right too. What brand are you looking for?\" asked a man who was short and about a hundred pounds overweight. Gold chains were slung around his neck and white discolorations of salty sweat stained both of his armpits.\n\n\"Yes, I do, but first I need to look at some of your wholesale merchandise. Fred Gold sent me over. He says you have some good deals on luggage.\"\n\n\"Why yes we do. Did you have any particular style you would prefer?\"\n\n\"Well actually,\" Del improvised, \"it's not for me personally. We are sponsoring some foreign businessmen who are interested in investing in a Bahamian development. We will take them on a two week charter of the area and the luggage is a token of our appreciation.\"\n\n\"How innovative,\" the fat man answered, finishing a bite of a sandwich he had been working on.\n\n\"Six sets should do and I need for all of them to be nested.\"\n\n\"Nested? Okay, you need the small ones to fit into the bigger ones, right? An eight-piece set can be stored in the one largest bag. I got it. You need some of my better stock...Polo, Gucci, Pierre Cardin maybe?\"\n\n\"Exactly, you read my mind. Variety will be very important, I do not want one set to match another.\"\n\n\"This I understand. Will you need the luggage delivered or will you be picking it up yourself?\"\n\n\"We will send a truck,\" Del answered.\n\n\"I see, and how will you be paying for this?\"\n\n\"Do you take cash?\" Del asked.\n\n\"Hey, like they say in that Cheech and Chong movie: Does Howdie Doodie got wooden balls?\"\n\n\"Then I can expect the standard cash discount?\" Del asked, this time with a more serious tone.\n\nThe fat man's chuckle turned into a monotone one.\n\n\"You guys are always busting my balls, but since Fred sent you...well, here follow me. This should make you happy.\"\n\nThe three walked to the back of the warehouse where, hidden by stacks of tires and other crates of merchandise, was a twenty-foot container. Posted on both rear doors of the steel box were a series of U.S. Customs red seizure tags.\n\n\"I bought this at a Customs auction. They said buyer beware, sold sight unseen, so I took a chance.\"\n\nHe opened the door and inside were stacks of luxurious luggage, just the type Fred Gold had asked for.\n\n\"If my manufacturers knew about this I could lose my distributorship license. You can't tell the difference from the real stuff. This shit was smuggled in through Port Everglades from Mexico. The Feds were looking for drugs and found this counterfeit luggage. This is some kind of world we live in, isn't it? Those idiots must have fumbled their storage documents because they sold the shit outright. Why, if I had the mind to, I could cause one hell of a stink in Washington, I'm sure. The idiot that let this stuff go to the street will cost the trademark owners a small fortune.\"\n\n\"All this sounds great, but will the stuff hold up, especially on a boat around the water? My investors can't have all of their belongings spilling out all over the airport.\"\n\n\"The quality is very good \\- I think that your people will be very satisfied and unable to tell the difference. These copies are very durable and at the price I am going to give it to you for, you will save at least sixty percent off the wholesale price. In the end, everyone will be happy.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nRehab\n\nThe motor yacht M\/V Jolene Marie sat moored to the end of a solid concrete pier that also acted as a breakwater buffer for the seaport of Puerto Barrios. The decks were clean and the teak oiled. Her sixteen-cylinder power plants had been rebuilt, tuned, lubricated, and were running flawlessly. Ninety-six feet of white aluminum and Fiberglas glistened in the sunlight from the highly polished, stainless steel bow-mounted anchor to the bright waving American flag flying from the transom. She was a real yacht again, looking completely different from the day six months prior when she cruised into the small Guatemalan harbor.\n\nThe Jolene Marie was a pathetic sight when Fred Gold had bought the boat from a bank in West Palm Beach after the previous owner defaulted on the vessel's mortgage. When she was first delivered to Turnbush, he made sure she stayed at the back end of the marina, close to the other boats needing repair, far from the view of club members who would complain about her appearance. Despite its neglect, the small ship was not in any major disrepair. She just needed some attention, attention the Turnbush dockmaster didn't have to give her. One of the drawbacks of Turnbush was that the club sat below a frequently used final approach path for the nearby Opa-Locka Airport. Nothing stained a boat's finish worse than putrid jet fuel and the detailers at Turnbush were always busy keeping the glossy white finishes of the scores of yachts in the marina clean and waxed.\n\nGold hired marine contractor Tony Milner and his favorite captain, Regis Sprigs, to tackle the revitalization of the 96-footer. A small utility cart was filled with industrial cleaners, two one-gallon jugs of teak oil, three lengths of white non-marring water hose, and a case of elk skin shammies. After a week of work, Milner announced that the boat needed more extensive care and would need to be dry-docked to address some serious electrolysis that had corroded most of the underwater running gear.\n\nThe two made the voyage south to the Clearwater Boat Works shop in a record three days. A crew of fourteen Guatemalan men attacked the boat with vigor. The runoff of soiled water was evidence that the layer of built-up soot was slowly being removed. A rainbow formed in the water around the boat created by the residue of jet fuel from above. The industrial cleaners Milner had brought with them for the cleaning portion of the job seemed to be working. Four days into the rebirth, Milner stood at the bow and looked back. From under a blanket of dirt, an ordinary, rundown boat was being transformed into a yacht again. The white paint began to glisten in the bright sunlight as Regis hosed off the superstructure with one of the non-marring water hoses designed especially for yachts so it would not scratch or mar the deck's surface. On the fifth day, the last of the gray-tinted jet fuel had been washed away. The boat was then hauled out of the water in a large set of railways that extended deep into the harbor. The brass and stainless underwater gear were fixed, black anti-fouling bottom paint was applied, and the upper hull was painted with a polyurethane aircraft finish that would do a better job of warding off the elements, including any future exposure to jet fuel. A diesel mechanic from Fort Lauderdale was flown down, accompanied by two crates of engine parts. His part of the job took five weeks, transforming the older power plants into rebuilt versions with modernizing kits installed that gave more horsepower and used less fuel.\n\nRegis, being the cook he was, would prepare a wide variety of meals, oftentimes treating the whole Guatemalan team to a variety of creative American cuisine. Over the six-month term, a bond had emerged between the Clearwater crew and the Americans.\n\nIn the end, Fred Gold had invested just over three hundred thousand of his own money into the yacht. Combined with the one hundred and eighty thousand dollar purchase price, Gold stood to triple his investment with the Jolene Marie's sale to Morada Boat Leasing for 1.5 million. This is why Gold was so motivated to make this deal work. For him, everything was on the line. He had made some significant promises to his contacts at IFC and to Gus Greico himself. The Jolene Marie had a foolproof compartment, he preached during numerous meetings, not to mention his secure destination, the Turnbush Club. If this trip paid off, there would be many more.\n\n* * * * *\n\nHoneymoon\n\nThe TACA Air flight from Miami to Guatemala City was filled to capacity. Del and Lynn took their first class seats as the stewardess provided them with pillows and blankets to keep them comfortable during the two-hour flight. As the Boeing 727 taxied towards the main runway, Lynn made a confession.\n\n\"Del, I hate to fly.\"\n\n\"What? I thought you were part of the jetset,\" he said, raising his eyebrows with skepticism. \"Whoever heard of a jetsetter who hated flying?\"\n\n\"I always have. Ever since I was a little girl.\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" he comforted, patting her hand with his.\n\nShe was getting used to the comfortable way he was making her feel. As the plane turned onto the main runway, it gunned its three tail-mounted engines, pinning all the passengers into their seatbacks.\n\n\"Del...\" she whispered, grabbing his hand in a tight grasp.\n\n\u2022\n\nTwo hours later, the amber light of a setting sun blasted through the jet's cabin, entering the portholes on the right side and waking Lynn who had fallen asleep. The plane was on its final approach to Guatemala City, a Central American metropolis that was perched atop a five thousand foot high mountain. Del watched out his window, looking down into the deep ravines that separated the tall mountaintops that were covered with tropical vegetation.\n\nDel looked down at Lynn's hand that was tightly grasped to his. The two had been locked together since they left Miami and her grip squeezed even harder as the plane dropped altitude, rotated back and touched down on the heavily patched blacktop strip.\n\nAfter retrieving their bags and clearing customs, the two took a quick taxi ride to the La Fiesta Hotel, the city's only four star lodging. Fred Gold had made the reservation himself and the two were equally apprehensive about where their faux marriage ended, and the reality of two attractive people enjoying a Caribbean vacation began. Del was the first to look inside the room as the bellboy unlocked the door revealing a single queen-sized bed covered in rose pedals and a chilled bottle of champagne resting in a bucket of ice on the bedside table.\n\n\"El honeymoon suite, se\u00f1or,\" the bellboy declared, like a magician revealing a new act for the first time.\n\n\"Gracias muchacho,\" Del answered, giving him two U. S. dollars. \"I can sleep on the floor,\" he offered after the young boy left the room.\n\n\"Or not...\" she said, pulling him into a tight embrace that preceded the softest kiss Del had ever felt.\n\n\"You don't have to do this, you know,\" he said.\n\n\"I know,\" she answered with her forehead against his chin. \"I hardly know you, but this just feels right,\" she admitted.\n\n\u2022\n\nThe next morning Del was wide awake as the sun rose over the mountains to the east. The bright rays of light illuminated Lynn's blond hair as she slept. With his head propped up on his hand he looked over at her, perplexed that he was in bed with such a beautiful woman. At the same time he was concerned that he was repeating some of his earlier life mistakes. His first love was a model and a student of fashion design at the Bauder College in Fort Lauderdale. Marcia was, to him, the typical high-maintenance trophy wife that his friends warned him of, but she was irresistibly beautiful. Lynn, on the other hand, had more sense, was independent, and significantly more attractive. With that thought he smiled and stood to make some coffee with a small two-cup machine. As he fumbled with the paper filter and the water, Lynn awoke feeling his warm, empty side of the bed.\n\n\"How do you like your coffee?\"\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Making coffee, how do you like it?\"\n\n\"Strong...please.\"\n\n\"We've got to be at the airport in ninety minutes.\"\n\n\"Okay, slave driver.\"\n\n\"Hey...you okay?\" he asked tenderly.\n\n\"I'm fine, better than fine actually. You?\"\n\n\"I'm good. Just stressed about today,\" Del said.\n\n\"It was the best night I've had in a long time.\"\n\n\"Wow, you're going to give me a big head,\" he replied.\n\n\"I didn't mean, you know, like that. It was just...nice,\" she admitted.\n\n\"Yes it was very nice. Now we have to go to work.\"\n\n\"Ugh...you're impossible!\" she said, sitting up in the bed with a crooked smile.\n\nRalph Linez pulled back on the yoke belonging to the twin engine Turbo Commander that was screaming down the main runway at La Aurora International Airport. After rotating, the ascending plane climbed like an eagle caught in an updraft, pointing to the sky, piercing through a thick layer of clouds. From an aft window, Del watched the morning skyline of Guatemala City disappear in the early morning dusk of gray while Lynn sat in the seat across from him, grasping his hand that was dark red and numb from a lack of circulation. The sharp, leading edges of the high-mounted wings cut through the white patches of gentle cotton that hung suspended for as far as his eyes could see.\n\nWithin minutes the plane leveled off and headed east towards Puerto Barrios. Below the steep ridges of mountains peaked around them were foliage-covered hills with palm trees and other tropical growth. The scarcely placed valley was covered with rows of pineapple and banana crops, most of which belonged to the Dole Corporation. Off the port side, the blinding sun shown through the plane's window illuminating Lynn's blond curls. She watched the haze glow as it became partially obstructed by a pair of dark, fast moving objects. Two MiG 18s surpassed the relatively slower turbo propped aircraft. She continued to watch as they flew on and out of sight.\n\nThe flight was slightly over eighty minutes. Linez brought the plane down low over the harbor as they made a sharp sixty-degree bank and headed towards the airport. The once rabid craft now lurched under the strain of the lowered landing gear and deflected wing flaps. The sound of the air rushing past the multitude of parts was now louder than the slowly turning turbine engines. Once on final approach Del took a last look at the landscape below. The sight of a white, turn of the century battleship was only outdone by the spread of the Puerto Barrios Federal Prison. Made from an old British fort, the stone, castle-like structure was still in use housing over seventy inmates. With no air conditioning, the stone fort was a temped pit of torture for those who had to endure its confinement.\n\nThe main gear squealed as a burst of tire smoke formed from each wheel that was now spinning to keep up with the passing runway. They rotated down and in no time were taxiing to the small terminal.\n\nThe two MiGs that had passed them earlier were staged on the tarmac with boils of heat emanating from their respective exhaust ports. Linez taxied the turbo prop up to the ramp area as the whine of the twin engines whistled down. He cut the power and went through the post-landing checklist and cool down. In the distance, an old Citron station wagon waited at the edge of the tarmac.\n\nOn the edge of the blacktop runway, Lynn affixed her sunglasses while Del assisted one of the local stewards with their bags.\n\n\"Del, I'm Tony Milner,\" the man from the Citron said, holding out his hand.\n\n\"Hey Tony. I've heard a lot about you. I'm glad we finally get to meet. This is Lynn,\" Del replied, putting a hand behind her back.\n\n\"Hi Tony, I'm glad to meet you,\" she said.\n\n\"We should get out of here as soon as possible,\" Tony insisted.\n\nThe port was a three-minute car ride from the airport. As the three passed a building with a large sign that read Clearwater Boat Works, Del saw her. The Jolene Marie sat moored to the concrete pier that extended out from the main building. It was a lot bigger than he had imagined.\n\n\"That's her,\" Lynn announced, recognizing the boat from when she had been docked at Turnbush. \"What a difference! She's like a new boat!\"\n\n\"It's been a long haul but we turned her around. Whoever let her get in the shape she was in before should have been shot,\" Tony commented.\n\nMost of the day was spent getting familiar with the boat and its operating systems. After that, Del and Lynn made themselves comfortable in the master stateroom at the aft end of the yacht followed by a nap because they knew it was going to be a long night.\n\nSix hours later and just after sunset, some bad weather had started to enter the harbor.\n\n\"It's time,\" Tony announced as he watched five small boats coming across the bay from the uninhabited north portion of the harbor.\n\nTony and Lynn walked down and back into the aft stateroom. The bed was still undone from Del and her nap earlier. He opened a small closet locker on one side of the stateroom while Lynn stood behind him. He handed her the various contents: the couple's shoes, empty luggage and a clay pot Lynn had picked up in the hotel's gift shop in Guatemala City. One by one, she set the items over the unmade comforter. Then, from his back pocket, he pulled a Phillips-head screwdriver and, getting down on his knees, proceeded to dismantle the elevated shelf that was installed about twenty-four inches from the carpeted floor of the locker. The brass screws squeaked as they backed out of their snug holes that were drilled into the golden mahogany. One by one Tony passed the screws over his shoulder to Lynn who deposited them into a small paper cup.\n\n\"Don't lose these,\" he warned, \"a missing or out of place screw is a dead giveaway that something has been tampered with.\"\n\nLynn looked down at the cup of screws while he, with a quick pound from underneath the shelf, forced it free from its tight footing. Tony then pulled another screwdriver from the same back pocket; this one was slotted, and was used to pry the carpet from the wooden floor. It came up in one three-by-three-foot piece. The carpet had hidden an access panel that was a piece of wood slightly smaller than the bottom of the closet. It was recessed and had several countersunk Phillips-head screws around its borders. Tony took the Phillips screwdriver and carefully removed more brass fasteners from the wood. The panel had a dual purpose. As he lifted it from its frame, the dingy odor of the bilge filled the stateroom.\n\n\"Hand me that flashlight,\" Tony instructed, motioning across Lynn's bent knees.\n\nHe was not one to enjoy confining spaces. The small swells that were common in the Puerto Barrios basin made the Jolene Marie rock back and forth. Tony gritted his teeth and disappeared into the small hole. Directly below the hole were the boat's four aft-mounted bilge pumps. He had to step carefully to avoid any contact with their delicate plastic shrouds. The beam of light was weak at best but was enough to illuminate his path through the cramped companionway. The below-deck space was relatively clean. Unlike the mold-filled, timber-lined scenes in the movies, this bilge was made up of aluminum stringers and precisely spaced ribs. The only wood on the boat was that which made up the cabin floor and was done for insulation, reducing the sounds that occurred in the inner spaces of such a vessel. The rest was made up of the lightweight alloy. The dull flashlight beam reflected off the shining welds at every joint. Tony continued to climb through the cramped bilge heading further aft towards the stern-mounted fuel tank.\n\nEncased in low-density polyurethane foam and welded to the yacht's frame, the nineteen hundred gallon fuel tank sat directly over the aft section of the keel and against the transom. Bolted to the side of the large hold was an access plate about eighteen inches in diameter. Stainless steel bolts held the plate in place. Tony pulled the third tool from his back pocket, a nine-sixteenth's inch ratchet and socket. The clicking of the ratchet echoed inside the aluminum hull. The process was time consuming and, given the cramped conditions, very uncomfortable for the claustrophobic captain. Above deck kneeling on the carpet, Lynn watched from the hatchway as Tony dropped each bolt into the small puddle of water that accumulated at the lower apex of the bilge, the product of a slow but persistent leak from one of the prop shaft seals.\n\nTime was starting to become an issue. Earlier, Ralph Linez had set up a tentative delivery time for the product of 9:00 p.m. A light rain pattered on the deck above and filled the bilge with a soft iridescent sound. The mood created by the sounds below deck was soothing, almost hypnotizing to the point of relaxing his claustrophobia. It was too bad I couldn't climb into the bilge when I had trouble sleeping, Tony thought to himself.\n\nBUMP!\n\nA heavy percussive sound echoed from inside the hull.\n\n\"Shit!\" Tony yelled to himself as Del ran up to the main salon.\n\nLynn rose up from her knees and climbed over the unmade bed to peer out the aft porthole. Tony had already motivated his contorted body through the twisted path of the bilge heading for the hatchway. Lynn could see a large wooden canoe tied up to their stern. Inside, canvas duffel bags lined the homemade craft to the gunnels.\n\n\"It's them!\" she yelled down to Tony who was now sitting below the hatchway.\n\n\"Okay, get Regis and Del to the deck. Make sure that asshole doesn't bump into us again!\" Tony was already conjuring mental images of the gash torn into the paint on the stern by the last impact.\n\nLynn quietly turned and headed up the companionway toward the others while Tony finished removing the last bolts from the access plate. The new sounds of feet pounding topside replaced the once entrancing sounds of the bilge with havoc. The blitz of activity carried its way through the yacht's foyer, into the main salon, down the circular stairway and through the companionway ending up in the master stateroom. The thud of the first duffel hitting the carpet caught Tony's attention from under the deck.\n\n\"Hey! Be careful up there!\" Tony yelled as he pounded on the bottom side of the deck.\n\n\"Ay, conyo! D\u00f3nde est\u00e1!\" yelled the muffled reply from above. More undetectable gibberish, Tony thought to himself.\n\nHe was concerned about the duffels. If they were like the ones he had seen before, they would be equipped with brass rivets on the bottoms, securing the strap-like handles. If they were slid across the yacht's inlaid teak deck, they would most likely leave marks, and judging from the way things were sounding above, there would be a trail of dings and scratches all the way to the closet door.\n\nLynn reappeared at the hatchway. \"How do you want to do this?\" she asked.\n\n\"Hold on a minute,\" Tony said, panting out of breath.\n\nWith the slotted screwdriver he managed to pry the access plate free from the rubber gasket affixed to the side of the tank. The eighteen-inch plate dropped to the inner side of the aluminum hull below, splashing a minute amount of bilge water against his khaki shorts and shirt.\n\n\"Tell Regis to get down here, and for Christ's sake, tell him to watch his step.\"\n\nSeconds later Regis's bare feet were climbing over the sharp aluminum ribs, ducking his head under the deck above. He positioned himself strategically between the hatchway and Tony who had a stretch of about four feet or so.\n\nBUMP!\n\n\"Damn it! Will you guys please slow down and take it easy on the hardware!\" Tony yelled as his voice echoed in the bilge.\n\n\"It's okay Tony, I've got it under control up here,\" Del said with a reassuring voice.\n\nAs he came topside, Del couldn't believe his eyes. With all the sophisticated craft he was exposed to in South Florida, the largest and most expensive load he had ever handled was being delivered to them in five homemade dugout canoes. Each boat had a small black-haired native who steadied the boats that were loaded to the gunwales with duffel bags. Each boat was powered with a small outboard motor and Del thought to himself that it was a wonder they all made it across the harbor without capsizing.\n\nThe first bags were small enough to fit through the eighteen-inch hole in the side of the fuel tank. Tony managed to shove them all toward the back of the hold, making room for the rest of the load. Linez had said they could expect at least thirty-six hundred kilo-sized pieces. This would require all the space the relatively small tank had to offer. Each bag held twenty to thirty pieces, which meant that at least a hundred and fifty bags would come down the path towards their hidden compartment.\n\nTwo hours had passed and before Tony knew it, all of the smaller bags had been loaded into the tank. There were a few larger, bulkier bags that had to be emptied and loaded one key a time. This worked out perfectly as the single pieces fit snuggly between the bags, securing the load firmly into the tank. With sweat dripping off his face, Tony sat back against the cold hull catching his breath. As fast as it had started it had ended, and the manic confusion was over until a commotion started on the aft deck.\n\nThe leader of the natives who delivered the load re-boarded the aft of the Jolene Marie.\n\n\"You pay me!\" he insisted. \"You pay me now!\"\n\n\"Just a minute,\" Del replied.\n\n\"No. You pay me now!\" he said, putting a hand on the machete that was strapped to his waist.\n\n\"I don't think we have that kind of money with us?\" Del inquired, looking at Regis.\n\n\"It's only a hundred dollars,\" Regis replied, looking down at the deck like a dinner guest at a restaurant just after the check arrives.\n\n\"Oh. They do all of this for a hundred dollars apiece?\"\n\n\"No. It's supposed to be a hundred dollars for all five.\"\n\n\"Here,\" Del offered. \"Handing over five twenty dollar bills.\"\n\n\"Me thank you,\" the leader said with his best English and an outstretched hand.\n\nWith the load secured in the aft fuel tank, Tony made preparations to cover their tracks. This started at the tank and continued forward. He surveyed the bilge floor for fabric strands from the duffel bags. Being dragged across the sharp aluminum cross-members lining the hull, the soft canvas bags could easily tare and leave fragments of fabric behind. When he got to the hatchway, he was confident that it was left exactly as it was found. He climbed up, bracing his weight on the frame of the hatchway. The wooden panel began to fit snuggly into place.\n\n\"Oh shit!\" Tony said aloud.\n\n\"What is it?\" Lynn asked as she came down the companionway toward the master stateroom.\n\n\"Someone cracked one of the aft bilge pumps,\" Tony replied as he reached down and picked up part of the plastic case that shrouded the electric water pump.\n\n\"Looks like it took a direct hit,\" Del stated, coming in behind Lynn.\n\n\"What does this mean?\" Lynn asked with a touch of anxiety in her voice.\n\n\"Well, each of these pumps is responsible for pumping out a certain section of the boat's bilge. If we experience any unexpected flooding below deck we could list to one side or worse - appear tail heavy. If we come into port with our stern dragging low, we'll get boarded for sure.\"\n\n\"And that's right where they'll start their search?\"\n\n\"You got it,\" Tony replied.\n\n\"Nothing like making it easy for them,\" Regis said, standing at the back of the stateroom.\n\n\"We can always flood one of the forward compartments to compensate,\" Del suggested.\n\n\"Yeah, and put a hell of a lot of stress on the mid-sections.\"\n\nThe floor piece for the closet went into place a lot easier than it came out. Tony took great patience in making sure none of the screws appeared worn. As a last minute precaution he dipped the heads in varnish to give them a look of being unbothered. Then he took the yacht's Hoover vacuum cleaner from the companionway closet and reversed the flow of air back through the dusty hose, blowing soiled air into the locker. Dust immediately caked on the edges and corners of the closet. When he was done, the bare floor looked as though it had not been touched since the yacht was built. After the carpet was put back into place, Lynn replaced the articles they had removed previously and then she made the bed.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDisclosure\n\nThe Key Largo campground was a Mecca for recreational vehicle owners who enjoyed the serenity of the Florida Keys and the freedom that owning an RV provided. The inhabitants included everything from expensive hundred thousand dollar mobile mansions to old converted school buses and everything in between, like the inconspicuous aluminum-sided Winnebago situated on waterfront lot thirty-two. The camper was owned by the Customs Service, the result of a drug seizure, and had been converted for covert surveillance work or, as the agents of the Tavernier office called it, \"the hideout.\"\n\n\"I think we should use this downtime for its best advantage. We can't use the boats - that's fine. I've got a lead on something bigger and better,\" Owen said.\n\n\"I still think the idea of grounding all of the boats because someone died on a race boat that is barely similar to one of ours is ludicrous. What's your idea?\"\n\n\"This stays between us. I have had my suspicions that an agent or agents in our office have been going into business for themselves.\"\n\n\"Who? Why didn't you say something sooner?\"\n\n\"Joel, it's not something you speculate on without definitive proof. I don't know who, but I have my suspicions and I will keep them to myself for right now.\"\n\n\"What's the lead?\"\n\n\"Remember the credit card that we got off of our buddy Ralph Linez?\"\n\n\"The pilot? Yeah, the Miami Aerotek corporate card.\"\n\n\"It was in Linez's name and he's an authorized user, so it's not stolen. Miami Aerotek uses a boutique lawyer named Irving Marshall.\"\n\n\"I don't get it,\" Joel stated.\n\n\"Boutique lawyers like Marshall take only one client, usually a big doper. The client gives the lawyer so much business that he doesn't need other clients. This is good for the client because it helps keep their affairs under the radar.\"\n\n\"How? I would think it works the other way.\"\n\n\"Focus Joel. If an attorney has a dozen different unrelated clients and one of them gets popped, that brings peering eyes upon the other eleven...especially now that we can subpoena client payment records, law firm bank accounts, wire transfers...the works.\"\n\n\"So this guy Marshall has one client?\"\n\n\"Yes, so to speak. He started nine Florida corporations in the last five years. It's diversified including everything from The Capital Moon rock club in Tallahassee to Morada Boat Leasing in Key West.\"\n\n\"And Aerotek?\"\n\n\"Yes, Aerotek along with the pot of gold - a cattle research firm called The International Farms Corporation based out of Ocala.\"\n\n\"That's it? One lost credit card from a pilot who was probably moonlighting as a smuggler to score some extra cash?\"\n\n\"Joel, remember the 38-foot Stiletto we busted during your first night out?\"\n\n\"How could I forget it?\"\n\n\"Well, it was owned by Morada Boat Leasing.\"\n\n\"Now we're getting someplace,\" Joel said with satisfaction.\n\n\"It gets better. I searched both within the Florida and the National Crime Information Center. They came up cold. Even the El Paso Information Center was a dead end. But when I cross-referenced the names with the Coast Guard's National Vessel Documentation Center I got a hit. Morada Boat Leasing just purchased a 96-foot yacht, the Jolene Marie out of South America. Four days later they filed with us to bring it into the U. S.\"\n\n\"But we don't know where...do we?\"\n\n\"My guess is Miami or Fort Lauderdale. A yacht like that would stand out down here.\"\n\n\"That doesn't exactly narrow it down Owen,\" Joel reasoned before hearing a sharp banging sound that came from the side of the large motor home. \"What the...\" he asked, opening the side drapes that obscured the windows.\n\n\"Right or left?\" Owen asked with his eyes partially closed, relaxing in the oversized easy chair.\n\n\"Right or left? Some guy is trying to steal our fuel. He's putting a garden hose into the tank.\"\n\n\"Right or left kid?\" Owen repeated, opening his eyes.\n\n\"Right!\" Joel whispered as loud as he could, putting a hand on his holstered gun.\n\n\"This is the Keys. Everybody's a pirate. If he's on the right, it's no problem, sit back down.\"\n\n\"Owen, he's got the hose in his mouth and he's trying to start a siphon.\"\n\n\"Joel, the fuel tank is on the left, along with the water and the electric.\"\n\n\"Then what...?\"\n\n\"Sewage holding,\" Owen announced with a smile. \"The Jolene Marie will have to call in to our inspection division upon their entry.\"\n\n\"Phone it in? Can they do that?\"\n\n\"Yep, and we don't have the personnel to check every one, so chances are they will arrive and never see a Customs inspector,\" Owen said as Joel watched the fuel thief try to start a siphon, sucking in the first shot of toxic sewage to his mouth.\n\n\"Holy shit!\" Joel exclaimed. \"You were right, he's giving up!\"\n\n\"Focus Joel. They will call and we will have half an hour at best to reach their location, assume a vantage point, and wait for them to offload.\"\n\n\"That doesn't give us a lot of time,\" Joel remarked.\n\n\"No it doesn't, but it can be done,\" Owen said, pointing out the RV's side window towards the red IROC. \"So, how are things going between you and Tessa?\" he continued.\n\n\"Great, why do you ask?\"\n\n\"We need to talk Joel.\"\n\n\"This doesn't sound good.\"\n\n\"No son, it's not like that. Look, you are different and I'm smart enough to see that. You won the heart of my daughter and that's no easy task. I guess that makes us connected.\"\n\n\"Thanks Owen. You don't really talk about personal things so I didn't know how you really felt about our...situation.\"\n\n\"It's okay. Having said that, I want you to be careful. I can protect you while you're with me but should your assignment change...well, let's just say there are a lot of dangerous influences in our office...\"\n\n\"Influences? What kind of influences?\"\n\n\"I haven't been the father or the agent that I should have been over the last few years and a lot of people have taken advantage of that. They think I don't notice, but I do.\"\n\n\"What are we talking about here Owen?\"\n\n\"Floaters. You have yet to participate in a real chase, but when we go after these guys, they dump their loads into the ocean. When I first got here from Panama, there was stuff everywhere. It was commonplace to see bales and duffel bags piled up on the waterfront.\"\n\n\"I haven't seen anything like that.\"\n\n\"My point exactly. Soon after Leslie's death, it was like someone flicked a switch. Not that I was paying much attention at the time...\"\n\n\"What do you think happened?\"\n\n\"Someone, perhaps on the inside, is scooping the stuff up.\"\n\n\"Coast Guard...Marine Patrol?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. We would see the money, and these guys are as poor as they come.\"\n\n\"Since you mention it, how much are you bringing in a year?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"What? Why would you ask that?\"\n\n\"I'm just saying Owen. I would never think that you were into anything illegal but if anyone else looks around...well...you have a lot of extra cash.\"\n\n\"I've made some mistakes but I've never taken a payoff or stolen a dumped load.\"\n\n\"Mistakes? Look, you put up your mother and pay for her care. Tessa says your house is paid off and you're building another one down the street. I'm on your side man, but sooner or later, someone's gonna ask.\"\n\n\"You see that coin hanging on your neck?\"\n\n\"What, this doubloon we found on the Elbow?\" Joel asked, touching the gold piece below his chin.\n\n\"I have a lot more where that one came from. I guess you could say I hit the mother load.\"\n\n\"Shit Owen! How much?\"\n\n\"A lot! Jordan helped me sell some of the stuff but we had to be careful.\"\n\n\"Careful? Why?\"\n\n\"It's a Florida state thing. For some unholy reason they think the state is entitled to ninety percent of any treasure that's found in their waters. Shit man, ninety percent! I can't afford that.\"\n\n\"I get it, but that still doesn't solve the problem that you've got a ton of unexplained cash and there's a volatile network operating right under your nose. Did you forget? You're second in command down here.\"\n\n\"You're preaching to the choir kid.\"\n\n\"This case - the Jolene Marie. We've got to make this work for you. With a big bust under your belt, they won't be able to touch you.\"\n\n\"I think you're being naive, but it's worth a try.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDeployment\n\nGene Latrell proceeded down the dusty dirt road toward his destination just south of the Tamiami Trail, deep in the heart of the Everglades. At twenty-four-feet wide, the road he was taking was larger than most. It had to be since most of the vehicles that used it were large off-road dump trucks, the majority of which were twenty-feet-high, sixteen-feet-wide and weighed three hundred tons. The road was an artery connecting a large natural sandstone deposit and a series of canal-front barge docks that were closer to the main road. At the source was the dragline called the pit-monster, a hundred foot tall crane capable of swiveling three hundred and sixty degrees. The crane manhandled a large bucket the size of two city buses put side by side. Each scoop filled one of the oversized dumps to capacity before returning to the muddy water for more stone. The material was used for roadbeds and commercial landfills, over garbage dumps and wetlands. It was desired by Florida contractors because it was dense and therefore heavy and packed well, making a tight foundation for whatever was to be built over it. The recession of the early 1980s though, made work at the pit sporadic at best and this week's work had stopped altogether.\n\nLatrell had visited the pit a month earlier to install a new radio system linking the home base, security shack, the dragline, and the four oversized dump trucks. It was here that Latrell gathered his thoughts to produce the power for his havoc.\n\nThe pit-monster was diesel-powered, or at least that's where the raw energy originated. Like locomotives, diesel-powered submarines, and conventional cruise ships, the actual engines were electric, drawing their power source from diesel generators. The power was in three phases, which by residential standards was the size of a twenty-story condominium. This was the power Latrell needed to carry out his task.\n\nHe drove his large white paneled van through the gate at the pit, past the security guards who knew him well, talking back and forth on radios he had supplied, and onto the base of the pit-monster. The day was bright and clear. The fresh air was rejuvenating and Latrell took in more than his share as his wind increased climbing the vertical span of ladders that got him to the power plant of the dragline. With the tools stowed in his belt pouch, he removed the access panels to the power grid and started to connect the extra wires he would need.\n\nIt took four hours but in the end he had accomplished the bulk of his tasks. When he was finished, the power grid of the dragline had been tapped into, drawing from it eight hundred volts of power. On top of the engine deck he mounted a sixty-inch satellite transmitting antennae with reinforced transmitting capabilities. Every connection was double checked and secured with a heat-shrink sheath of insulation. All the wires were bundled and tie wrapped together, making this the pinnacle installation of his enduring career.\n\nA few hours later at noon, a simple bedside digital clock set off a quiet audible alarm followed by a transmission of electrical current to a high capacity solenoid. This triggered an even bigger solenoid that started the diesel generating motors. Ten minutes later another digital clock alarmed, this one sending an identical surge of current to yet another set of solenoids and it was this power that amassed to form a surge, violent and combustible, captured and directed, leaving the earth in a form too large for any satellite to handle; a surge so powerful that all radio transmissions within a thirty-mile radius were temporarily interrupted with a shrieking whine of noise.\n\nSatcom-Seven received the untoward transmission at exactly 12:11 p.m. From one end of the fragile craft, the receiving wings, some forty-eight-feet long, absorbed the raw energy, and like the Christmas tree in Times Square being lit in November, Satcom-Seven sparked and fizzled, starting at the base and working its way to the top of the craft until the massive ship was irrevocably dead.\n\n\u2022\n\nThe radio operator at C3I felt a strange buzz come from the console followed by an ear-shattering shrieking tone that startled everyone in the command center. All of the meters with needles dancing about indicating healthy transmission and audible voice levels dropped to zero. The system was down.\n\n\"Sector East to Sector West,\" she called. \"Sector East to Sector West,\" she tried again in vain.\n\n\"I need the watch supervisor please!\" she yelled from her Plexiglas cubicle.\n\nSatcom-Seven floated lifeless thirty miles in space. Every circuit had been violated in such a way as to make the craft temporarily useless and obsolete. It was up to the ship's earth counterparts to re-task its operations, but this would take some time. The ship was responsible for communications for the Treasury Department. Besides Sector and C3I, the vital communications for the Secret Service's security details including that of the President and Vice President of the United States, was completely interrupted.\n\nCommercial concerns were also affected. Like an office building, Satcom-Seven leased its vital space to several different communications firms. A company called MUZAC that provided perpetual elevator music to offices and shopping malls across the globe was knocked out as well as the newly-installed Playboy Channel, disappointing thousands of faithful subscribers who were now looking at television screens filled with random static.\n\n\"I just got a priority call from Justice. We are to try to locate two of our agents from the Tavernier office. Papa 1903 and 1925, ASAP,\" said the pacing supervisor.\n\n\"No-can-do sir. This system is down,\" she replied.\n\n\"Try again,\" he said frantically. \"This is top priority.\"\n\n\"Yes sir,\" she answered.\n\n* * * * *\n\nInterdiction\n\nThe sharp bow of the 210-foot United States Coast Guard cutter Dauntless sliced through the rolling twelve-foot seas as it tried to catch up to its next target. From a distance, the ship had a distinctive look with its all white hull and superstructure to the bold orange stripe that rose from the water line marking the forward quarter. The ship's motto was Sin Miedo, which in Spanish meant \"without fear.\" This was evidenced by the forty-one marijuana leaf decals that adorned the vessel's tall smoke stack. Each leaf represented a drug bust, like red Japanese flags on the side of a World War II fighter signifying an enemy kill.\n\nBased out of Galveston, Texas, the Dauntless was manned with young men and women who were from all over the U.S., mostly kids who desired travel, adventure, and a college scholarship.\n\n\"Bridge to radar station one, bearing update.\"\n\n\"Bearing North 015 degrees, moving at twenty-one knots. Two knot closure.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\"\n\n\"Bridge to Intercept Alpha-three.\"\n\n\"Alpha-three, Bridge, go ahead.\"\n\n\"Alpha-three, standby to engage target. Two knot closure, making contact in thirty.\"\n\n\"Alpha-three, team assembled and ready to launch.\"\n\n\"Bridge to forward watch.\"\n\n\"Forward watch here, go Bridge.\"\n\n\"Do we have a clear shot of the transom?\"\n\n\"Roger that. She's the Jolene Marie, flying a U. S. flag.\"\n\n\"Bridge to position report.\"\n\n\"Position report, sixty-seven miles due East of Cozumel Island. Confirmed international jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"Bridge to all stations, commencing a case.\"\n\n\"C-624 Sector...\"\n\n\"Sector on HF, go ahead. Be advised our sat systems are down. Remain on HF for now please.\"\n\n\"C-624 at position report six-seven miles due East of Cozumel Island initiating a case on U. S. vessel Jolene Marie.\"\n\n\"WMEC-624, be advised, doc center advises 96-foot Broward Yacht, year of build, 1978, Jolene Marie newly registered to Morada Boat Leasing, 611 White Street, Key West, Florida. No warrants or holds.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nA tropical storm named Oliver had passed through the area, leaving in its wake bands of thunderstorms and seas that were approaching twenty feet. The Jolene Marie plowed through the waves, taking massive amounts of spray over her bow. Regis manned the helm while Tony and Del grasped a hold of the handcrafted grab rails that ran around the yacht's wheelhouse. With each wave, the 96-foot vessel pitched and pulled back and forth, each time straining her overbuilt hull while the twin sixteen-cylinder diesels pounded under the deck.\n\nTony had tried to find a contact that was in their vicinity on his radar. The spinning bar above though needed a stable plane in order to project a readable image. The seas, estimated at twenty to thirty feet, were throwing the vessel everywhere. One minute the radar would show straight ahead, then it would be bombarded with clutter as its pattern shot straight down the side of the boat into the rolling waves. The radar itself, a hybrid from the Mitsubishi and Raytheon corporations, was the best of its kind. However, it was no match for these seas.\n\nThe flat space in front of the instruments and under the windshield was under half an inch of seawater that sloshed back and forth with every wave. Most of the boat's supply of towels and spare linens were packed around the base of the hardened Lexan panels. The seas however, were more than the yacht's superstructure could handle. The aluminum hull was designed and built to twist with the different forces that played against it and for the most part, so was the superstructure. It was the finer materials of the boat's interior that turned this ship into a yacht and breached the most valuable barrier of all, that which penetrated the border separating the living space and the mighty sea. The wood trim and tinted Lexan-paneled glass windshield twisted and stretched differently than the marine grade aluminum it was bonded to. This caused a spontaneous breakdown in the superstructure's ability to make a watertight seal between an otherwise dry cabin and the violent sea outside. Every joint became a gaping conduit of seawater.\n\nYachts weren't supposed to be in these heavy foot seas. They were usually found at anchor, weathering out the storm in some honeymoon harbor with the crew and the guests sipping frozen cocktails while gentle rain pattered on the deck above. That was the passage of a charter affording forty thousand dollar a week fees. The actions of the Jolene Marie were not that of a pleasure cruise and Tony knew it.\n\nDel went to the aft cabin to check on Lynn who had gone to sleep earlier suffering from severe motion sickness. As he staggered in to the master stateroom, Lynn was on her knees perched on the queen-sized bed, looking out the transom portholes.\n\n\"We have a small problem,\" she said.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"There's a smoke trail behind us on the horizon. Since we are not in the main shipping channels it can only be the Coast Guard. It's getting closer.\"\n\nDel's head filled with the clutter resembling the pattern he'd been watching on the radar all afternoon. He kneeled over the unmade bed and peered through the aft porthole. As he did, the yacht's bow dropped into the trough of an oncoming wave, elevating the boat's stern high above the waves. Tony could see the flume of smoke and what appeared to be a tall, white masthead.\n\nThe Jolene Marie was making way at twelve knots; the heavy seas had impeded her normal speed of seventeen. The ship behind them was a frontline cutter. Its sharp bow could easily slice through an oncoming sea and not break its stride. Soon the pearl white hull with its orange stripe would be bearing down on them. Del sat back on the bed. If challenged, they would have to follow the larger vessel to port and then probably be stripped down. What was the perfect cover now met all the basic interdiction profiles. Del and Lynn no longer felt like the mega rich they had been portraying for the past few days. In a matter of minutes they had gone from Turnbush elites to Miami Marimbettos.\n\nDel ran forward to the helm, first looking into the rubber hood of the radar. The image was still distorted. He immediately turned the unit off. The rotating bar mounted over the fly bridge stopped in place.\n\n\"We can be nervous, we just won't look like we are,\" Del said.\n\n\"What is it?\" Regis asked.\n\n\"Has anyone looked aft lately? There's a cutter about half a mile off our stern.\"\n\nRegis exploded, \"Fuck, fuck, fuck! God damn it! Fuck me! This is fucked!\"\n\n\"Look, I know this doesn't look very good but appearances aren't everything. Del, you and Lynn have just received word that your aunt just died and you need to be in Palm Beach by Sunday. We were making our best effort to get you to Miami where you could meet your plane when we got caught in this damn storm,\" Tony said.\n\nLynn appeared in the wheelhouse looking very uptight.\n\n\"Look, Regis I can hear you all the way back there. If you don't settle down you're going to blow it for all of us,\" Lynn shouted as Regis stared down at the carpet, shaking his head like a kid who had just been rebuked.\n\n\"Regis is going to do just fine. Look, we all have our parts to play,\" Tony said.\n\n\"Regis, make sure the VHF is on Channel 16, they may be trying to hail us. I don't want anything to look out of the ordinary. If they call us, the sooner we respond the better. Also, switch the AM to 2182 in case they try that route first. I want all bases covered. The rest of you need to get this boat straightened up. This boat looks like it belongs in a fucking trailer park. We're expecting company,\" Del charged.\n\n\u2022\n\nThirty minutes later, a 25-foot, solid orange, rigid-bottom inflatable with two powerful outboards came alongside the Jolene Marie. Regis backed down the throttles before shifting the transmissions into neutral as one of the Coast Guardsmen called into his radio microphone over marine Channel 16, the standard working and distress frequency. His transmission echoed inside the yacht's wheelhouse.\n\n\"Alpha-three to Dauntless. Target is DIW, Dead in the Water. We have at least four persons on board.\"\n\nAs the captain of record, Tony ran to the aft to meet the boarding party.\n\n\"Skipper, I'm Boarding Agent Ortega, United States Coast Guard. Is everything okay?\"\n\n\"Yes, we just got caught in this crazy storm. We are trying to get to Miami for a funeral,\" Tony answered.\n\n\"I understand sir. We will need to make a routine inspection and then we will let you go.\"\n\n\"Please, let us be on our way. This charter is a very important man.\"\n\n\"Believe me I understand, but I have orders and my directions come from equally important men,\" the boarding officer replied.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Tony answered.\n\nRegis looked down at the teak-trimmed circuit panel. On the second row, six switches down, he saw a breaker marked stabilizers. The stabilizers were a series of fin-shaped projectiles that ran the length of the boat, deep below the waterline. They were set up in pairs, one on either corresponding side of the boat. The Jolene Marie had two sets of stabilizers, four fins in all. These projectiles were hooked to large hydraulic pistons which in turn were hooked to a complex array of circuits all focused to one computer brain located in the boat's exact core, the intersection of the center of gravity and the linier centerline. The computer, a virtual gyroscope, acted like a person's inner ear sensing the slightest movements of the yacht. Each sway and roll the computer responded by sending activating signals to the hydraulic pistons that in turn moved the underwater fins. The fins moved the boat in a way to counteract the natural movements of the sea and give the boat a smoother ride. The stabilizers were to a yacht what shock absorbers were to a smooth-riding Cadillac.\n\nAs Tony and the boarding crew came into the wheelhouse, their captain noticed a more dramatic effect from the waves against the boat.\n\n\"What's with the stabilizers?\" Tony asked.\n\n\"They must have shut down again,\" Regis replied.\n\nAgain was the key word. There might have been problems with any other piece of equipment on the boat, but the stabilizers were fairly new, and Tony knew it. Then, without warning, the huge yacht pitched into a deep oncoming wave, one that sent her stern into the air pulling the bow of the inflatable, which was tied tightly, up with it.\n\nBack in the main salon, one of the boarding crew, a young man who couldn't have been over twenty with the Juan Chavez style mustache, fell towards Lynn. Trying not to land on the seemingly fragile woman, he grabbed for a loose lamp on the end table, which fell to the carpeted deck. His reacting arms, in a desperate gesture to grab onto something stable, squeezed tightly around the stock of his AR-15, inadvertently squeezing the trigger. Within a fraction of a second, a powerful round discharged from the black metal tube and shot toward the ceiling. The salon was instantly filled with a blue tinge of gun smoke and the acrid smell of burning Fiberglas. Lynn watched in horror as the still smoking gun fell with him, its muzzle aimed straight at her forehead. Instinctively, she dropped to the deck, hitting her head on the corner of the teak and cherry coffee table while Del, who had been sitting on the couch, grabbed the end of the gun.\n\n\"Nobody move!\" the boarding chief yelled as he entered the aft salon with his .45 Colt drawn up to his shoulder. Tony and the third member of the boarding party came up from the aft stairs.\n\n\"What's going on?\" Tony asked, just before looking at the small cut over Lynn's left eye. \"My God! What happened?\"\n\n\"It's all my fault,\" the young Coast Guardsman said. \"I lost my balance when the stern surged up and the boat rolled.\"\n\n\"Do you have a first aid kit on board?\" the chief asked, rolling a handkerchief and applying pressure to Lynn's bleeding forehead.\n\nRegis, hearing the request, grabbed the first aid kit from the wheelhouse head and went aft. As he entered the salon, his heart pounded faster as he saw Lynn on the floor bleeding with Del, Tony, and the chief all at her side.\n\n\"It's okay,\" she said. \"Just a minor flesh wound.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but a few inches more and it could have blown her head off!\" Del shouted rather aggressively to the now defensive chief.\n\n\"The gun misfired long before the muzzle hit her in the forehead. Sir, I am so sorry, please forgive me,\" the younger Coasty said.\n\nRegis reached to a spot in the ceiling, sticking his finger through the mesh-type material that was exposed by the new hole.\n\n\"Here's where your bullet went boys,\" he pointed out.\n\n\"Holy shit!\" Tony yelled, rising to his feet.\n\nRegis immediately went out the aft doorway and climbed up the aft deck ladder to the overhead deck and into the salon. All those inside the salon could here his feet scurrying about on the topside as the rainwater squeaked between his deck shoes and the slick Fiberglas deck. The chief continued to aid Lynn with the help of Del, who held a handful of gauze over her wound. Then the chief wrapped more rolled gauze around her head to keep it in place.\n\nRegis jumped down to the lower deck with a look of frustration in his face.\n\n\"Just as I thought! The slug went through the overhead and penetrated clean through the hull of our Boston Whaler strapped on top. There goes our lifeboat.\"\n\n\"Sir, the United States Government will pay...\"\n\nBAMMMMM!\n\nEveryone in the salon looked aft to see the Coast Guard inflatable bounce off the yacht's transom.\n\n\"Look, that's all fine and good. Why don't you nice Coast Guard people leave before we really need that lifeboat with a hole in it,\" Lynn said, looking aft with one hand on her forehead.\n\n\"Yes ma'am. On behalf of the Coast Guard, I apologize. I will write a complete incident report and fax it to the Miami group. They will contact you in a few days to arrange for repairs. But before I leave...\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Tony asked, hoping there wasn't a catch.\n\n\"Ma'am, are you sure you're alright? I mean, we have a very capable paramedic on board the ship. I would be more than willing to have him come over and take a look at that cut for you.\"\n\n\"That won't be necessary. I used to be a nurse - it's just a surface cut. The scalp usually bleeds worse than other cuts of the body. It looks a lot worse than it really is, but thanks for the concern. I'll be sure and have it checked once we hit Miami.\"\n\n\"As you wish. Ma'am...\" the chief said.\n\nAs soon as the boarding party had appeared, they departed and headed back to the Dauntless.\n\n\"Jesus, can you believe this shit?\"\n\n\"Good thinking Regis,\" Tony replied, patting him on the back. \"Now go back and turn those damn stabilizers back on before we all get sick.\"\n\nAs the Coast Guard inflatable made its way back to the Dauntless, the chief looked back, now from a distance, looking over his shoulder at the departing Jolene Marie.\n\nWho would have guessed that the boarding would have gone so poorly, he thought to himself as he watched a flume of smoke rise to the sky from the aft-vented exhaust. Still, something wasn't right. Their float plan, the ports of call, they were going to all the wrong places. It just didn't make sense. Any other charter would be moored in the Yucatan at some safe harbor sipping up the cocktails. His fax to the Miami group would be more detailed than he had previously intended.\n\n* * * * *\n\nFlight\n\nThe pavement that made up one of the taxiways was wet with the early morning dew, a byproduct of the humidity that hung in the air like a wet rag. A lone Bell-47 helicopter sat on the tarmac as Sven Jorgenson performed his daily preflight check. Two weeks earlier the student pilot pulled into the parking lot of Tam-Flight Limited, a private flight school, towing the Bell helicopter on a custom trailer with his Ford dually pickup. He gained a lot of attention during his thirty-two hundred mile journey from Seattle to the training facility that was located on the grounds of the Tamiami Regional Airport in southwest Miami.\n\nJorgenson had already gotten his pilot's license but his rating was limited to the simplest of planes, the Cessna-152. In the past year he had managed to amass one hundred and twenty hours in the small, fixed-wing aircraft and he now had his sights on something more complex. He bought the Bell at an estate sale for thirty-five thousand and upgraded the avionics for another eight thousand. He loved the design of the small two-seater that, with its large glass bubble, resembled a large insect that reminded him of his childhood, having watched them bring in the wounded on the television show MASH as a kid. Still, Jorgenson was not a professional though his reputation as an experienced aviator grew each time someone in the chain told the story. He was just a guy, who knew a guy, who was related to a woman, who was married to a mechanic with a Miami powerboat racing team.\n\nDuring his two weeks of training he had mastered many of the primary tasks required to fly the Bell. He was diligent, spending everyday with his instructor going through checklists, preparing for emergencies, and building his skills for this day when he would take his first solo helicopter flight.\n\n\u2022\n\nSix-tenths of a mile to the southeast, supervising U. S. Attorney Pat Stephens and Miami Assistant U. S. Attorney Sam Bittel sat side-by-side at a long metal table within the confines of the prisoner interrogation room at the Federal Metro Correctional Institution. On the other side of the table was a prominent Coral Gables attorney and his client, the defendant, Guillermo Morales.\n\n\"Counselor, for the record, do you have the discovery package containing the evidence we have compiled against your client?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"And yet, at last week's arraignment, your client pled not guilty.\"\n\n\"We did.\"\n\n\"I have some new evidence I would like to submit to you verbally, first, of course.\"\n\n\"Go ahead.\"\n\n\"As I'm sure you're aware, an associate of your clients was murdered last week - one Mr. Aaron Donaldson. Ring any bells?\"\n\n\"I am aware of the murder. We are not, at this point, acknowledging or denying an association with the deceased.\"\n\n\"Well, when my jury hears this new evidence that I am prepared to present next week, I'm sure they will hand down an additional count of murder in the first degree,\" Pat announced confidently.\n\n\"Mr. Stephens, are you saying that you plan to charge my client with the murder of Aaron Donaldson? A murder, I might add, that occurred while you had my client locked up, right here at MCI, in federal custody?\"\n\n\"As you know, it wouldn't be up to me counselor. The jury of twenty-three of your client's peers would have to decide that.\"\n\n\"And you are putting this on the table because?\"\n\n\"Because your client is facing a certain life sentence and now the possibility of the death penalty.\"\n\n\"I think it's obvious Mr. Stephens.\"\n\n\"What's obvious?\"\n\n\"Why you're still working for the government when competent lawyers like myself are in private practice with billable hours worth over eight million dollars last year.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"You heard me. What do you take me for you cheap fuck! Look at you in your pressed suit from Sears and Roebuck. Shit counselor, my watch cost more than your car.\"\n\n\"It's not about the money, and you know it.\"\n\n\"What is it about then? Let's do some good and all of that crap? What you stand for is typical government mediocrity and I wouldn't forget that if I were you. You go ahead and indict. We both know you could charge a suckling pig with grand theft auto with these ridiculous juries.\"\n\n\"I think we are through here,\" Pat said, feeling put down.\n\n\"I'll be waiting for that discovery.\"\n\nWithout answering, Pat limply looked his adversary in the eye as the three lawyers stood and left the room while the defendant was escorted to the yard for his daily one hour outdoor time.\n\n\u2022\n\nSix-tenths of a mile back to the northwest, Jorgensen finished his preflight check and ignited the Bell-47's gas piston engine. It fired without hesitation as the new pilot increased the throttle control. As he did, the 40-foot main rotor overhead started to turn slowly, gaining speed with every revolution, throwing a repeating shadow over the glass bubble below. As the blades spun faster, Jorgensen turned more switches activating the red and white anti-collision beacons. After that he checked his gauges while he waited for the engine and transmission temperatures to rise to their normal operating levels. Patiently, his instructor stood at the edge of the tarmac, watching as his newest student took the Bell to a controlled hover.\n\n\"Whiskey Lima 500 to Tamiami tower.\"\n\n\"Go Whisky Lima 500.\"\n\n\"Permission to taxi hover to runway nine left for departure.\"\n\n\"Negative Whisky Lima 500, clear traffic, you can depart from the tarmac.\"\n\n\"Roger that Tamiami. I'm going to make a few passes around the field and return to the tarmac.\"\n\nJorgensen increased his collective pitch and with a cloud of dust the Bell was off.\n\n\u2022\n\nWhat did it matter? Pat thought to himself. These high dollar defense lawyers were assholes anyway and besides, Jhenna was going to have a baby, his baby, and what could be better than that?\n\nPat hated going to this detention center. It was designed with numerous redundancies, one of which included a maze of hallways that led him through three security checkpoints. His preferred route of departure was to cut across the inmate yard and exit directly at the facility's departing-receiving unit where his car was parked. This broke every Bureau of Prisons protocol in the book, but since the yard had an adequate amount of guards, he felt safe and the jaunt would save him at least ten minutes.\n\n\"I'm cutting through,\" Pat said to the guard at the door that led to the yard.\n\n\"I don't see anything,\" the guard replied.\n\n\"It's our secret, thanks,\" Pat answered with a smile.\n\nThe fresh air felt good on his face. He hated the stuffiness of the federal facilities, the piped-in warm air that was mixed with the odor of sweat. And then he saw him, Guillermo Morales, standing with a group of Latin men. For a second, the hairs on the back of Pat's neck stood on end, like a tourist who was lost in a dark alley with a pocketful of cash. Morales saw him also and motioned to one of his buddies who looked over at Pat who was wearing a dark blue suit in a sea of orange jumpsuits.\n\nThen without warning, the loud beating of Jorgensen and his Bell-47 helicopter cleared the main building's roof next to the yard and made a wide, poorly coordinated turn to hover over the group of prisoners. Then as Pat watched in disbelief, he decreased the aircraft's collective pitch and the Bell sank deeper into the yard, holding a position just a few feet from the ground. Then Morales made his break, running at full speed towards the hovering chopper. At the same time, a uniformed guard gave chase yelling into a handheld radio. Instinctively, Pat headed towards the commotion. As Morales started to climb onto the Bell's skid, the chasing officer approached from the rear. Jorgensen pushed the left pedal, spinning the tail boom towards the guard, using the spinning rear rotor blade as a weapon. The guard dove for the ground as Morales fell from the skid, immediately climbing back to his feet. Disoriented, Jorgensen climbed a few feet as Morales grabbed a hold of the metal skid. Another guard came from the opposite direction and Jorgensen pushed on the right pedal making a sweep at him with his pending passenger hanging on a few feet from the ground, still holding strong to the skid. Pat was now running at full speed as the second guard hit the ground to avoid being hit by the swinging tail boom. As Morales started to pull himself up onto the skid, Pat got closer. Forty feet, thirty, twenty, ten and then with a dive an NFL wide receiver would have been proud of, five-foot-eight-inch Pat Stephens made impact with the left flank of six-foot-one-inch Guillermo Morales, knocking the plump Cuban from the skid. The two fell to the ground just as the first guard got to his feet. Seeing that he had lost his passenger, Jorgensen reversed his slow spin, pushing back on the left pedal, making a wide swing for the approaching first guard. Jorgensen didn't see what was behind him as the spinning tail rotor struck the twelve-foot-high galvanized chain link fence that separated the yard from the free world on the other side. Losing complete control, the Bell-47 turned up, end to end, flipping on its side as the massive main rotor blade took deep bites into the grassy yard.\n\nPat pinned Morales to the ground as six other officers ran into the yard, securing the other inmates and handcuffing Morales who was led off to the solitary holding unit. Sam Bittel ran across the yard where Pat stood, brushing dirt and grass cuttings from his suit.\n\n\"I can't believe what just happened!\" Bittel yelled over the commotion. \"You okay?\"\n\n\"I think so. Someone needs to check on that pilot,\" Pat said, pointing over to the mass of twisted metal and broken Plexiglas.\n\n\"That blade just missed your head, Pat. Jesus!\"\n\n\"I really don't want to think about it. Let's get the hell out of here.\"\n\n\"Okay. Guess you're going to have to go to Sears and get a new suit,\" Bittel said with a crooked smile.\n\n\"Why Mr. Bittel, I shop exclusively at J.C. Penney I'll have you know,\" Pat joked as the two laughed.\n\n* * * * *\n\nLand\n\nThe first sight of land occurred at around 1:30 in the afternoon. Del had the helm and was making good time. Both engines were running smoothly and the hull was beating down the four-foot chop that was in its way. On the horizon, Key West revealed its radio towers and a pair of smoke stacks that ventilated the island's desalination plant, a system that provided freshwater to its inhabitants by removing salt and other minerals from the surrounding seawater. The process used a considerable amount of heat and flumes of rising, smoke-filled air could be seen for twenty miles in either direction. The sun was coming into view to the east and the small ascending particles of burning matter reflected the rays of light, giving off a glow that looked more like a sunset than a sunrise. A new day was born and as the Jolene Marie entered Hawks Channel, Del could see the lobster fishermen checking and setting their traps as well as the charter boats catching fresh schools of mullet and ballyhoo for bait. It was the start of a pleasant day and one Del would take calmly as they continued their trek north.\n\nHawks Channel would carry them up the outside of the Keys, past Biscayne Bay, Government Cut, South Beach and most of Miami Beach to the Haulover Inlet where they would cut into the Intracoastal Waterway and continue north another three miles to Turnbush. If everything went as planned, the Jolene Marie would land at around nine that evening, giving the crew ample time to unload and clean the boat before sunrise the next day.\n\n\"Want some coffee?\" asked a soft voice from the galley below. Lynn was up and the smell of fresh coffee filled the wheelhouse as well as the rest of the boat.\n\n\"Sure, is Tony up yet?\" he asked.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" she answered.\n\n\"It's okay, let him sleep. It's going to be a late night,\" Del said. \"I know Regis is probably going to sleep until twelve or so. I relieved him at three and he looked bushed.\"\n\n\"How's she running?\" Lynn asked, sipping on a steaming cup and snuggling next to Del.\n\n\"Great, like a clock,\" he answered. \"Make that a Swiss clock.\"\n\nDuring the night, Tony had performed some routine maintenance on some of the boat's systems. The batteries had been used regularly, running the cluster of electronics and lighting as well as the sanitation systems and freshwater maker. While in mid ocean he set the autopilot and went below to check the levels of water in each battery cell, filling them to the prescribed level with distilled water. The boat's fuel supply was at one-quarter and he noticed the bow was running higher than he liked, primarily because of the weight they had added to the aft fuel tank. Tony tried to adjust for this by increasing the output of the water maker and filling the forward thousand-gallon reserve water tank. Everything was going well. Almost too well, he thought to himself as he retired back behind the large wooden wheel.\n\n* * * * *\n\nInterception\n\nHave I done the right thing? Joel thought to himself. The day before, an overnight delivery had arrived from his brother-in-law Pat Stephens containing the pending indictment of his partner Owen Sands. Twelve hours later, he handed it over to him. Now they were speeding north after receiving an alert that their target boat, the Jolene Marie had called in and was due to dock in the posh North Miami yacht club, Turnbush.\n\nJoel drove the red Camaro IROC north on U.S.1 out of Plantation Key as Owen thumbed through the grand jury transcripts. He was stunned by what he saw but in a way, relieved. Previously, the basis for his fears was the unknown. His paranoia was the product of his own speculation and, as Leslie used to say, \"just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.\" His imagination had run wild. Owen knew enough about the law to know that what he was up against was filled with holes. He also knew however, that a case against one or more federal agents always took priority. At least now he could see in black and white what the opposition thought and by what suspicions they were acting upon. He knew he had a fighting chance.\n\nWhere did Joel fit into this though? Could he be trusted? Owen thought to himself. Joel had already done the unheard of in government service, put the concerns of someone else above that of their own. How was this disclosure of classified evidence going to affect him, a new and impressionable agent who, by the way, was very involved with Tessa, the widow of a former smuggler? The way he saw it, they were both in the same boat, and for the first time in months they were going to do the real job they were empowered to do.\n\nThe traffic on the eighteen-mile stretch wasn't terribly bad. Joel jockeyed around the slower cars at an average speed of ninety while Owen read on through the documents, occasionally cracking a smile and a chuckle. The more he read, the more amused he became. Then the reality hit him. As a government agent, he was trained to act guilty, to always be on the defensive, and to always watch his back. At least you can be prepared when someone puts a knife in it, he would rationalize. However, the prime idea hit him rather hard. I've done nothing wrong! he thought to himself. Pat Stephens's case was based solely on conjecture. There was no foundation, no basis of fact, just informants who made general accusations and circumstantial evidence. Confidential informants who had an axe to grind or people with twisted intentions. The grand jury machine had been assembled though and the only question was who it was going to devourer. There was someone in his office who was working both sides, that was a given. It was no mystery that most offices had one or two agents who could have been \"on the take\" but the Tavernier office, that could have been a real franchise of graft. The agent who betrayed his post down there could reap millions and do so in a fairly short period of time. The government tried to rotate agents through its field offices at a regular pace. It wasn't a good practice to have federal law enforcement officials on close terms with the locals, especially in the Keys. One could easily get caught up in the Keys' \"attitude of the latitude.\" Owen had been in the Tavernier office for eight years, a long time by most agents' standards. Stephens probably figured that he had nestled into the local way of life. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. There was only one agent who had been there longer though, and now Owen knew what that agent, his friend of twenty years, was saying about him.\n\nAfter their assignment together as agents in the Panama Canal Zone, Jordan Cheney took a lateral transfer to Customs and the top spot at the Tavernier field office. Owen Sands was a natural candidate for his assistant and with coaxing, Cheney got his old partner transferred to him in a short period of time.\n\nAs the IROC entered the Florida City roadblock, an awaiting cop flagged them through. Joel darted around the waiting cars, waving briefly as he passed. They hit the Florida Turnpike in less than a minute leaving them exactly half an hour to make it to the Turnbush Marina in North Miami Beach. In their haste, they missed the two black Chevy Suburbans that were waiting at the roadblock, parked next to the idling Florida City cruisers. They blended in with all the other stopped traffic waiting patiently.\n\n\u2022\n\nFlorida State Trooper Lester Mander had his spot picked out. The new Ford Mustang blended in under the swaying palms located on the highway's median just south of the Snapper Creek Turnpike Plaza. Trooper Mander was just getting used to the new car after spending the last eight years with the same Plymouth Fury that he loved more than his firstborn son. His new car didn't have the acceleration or top-end speed the Fury had and to make matters worse, the car had been equipped with an experimental device, a crude appendage to the front of his steering wheel that was supposed to be there for his safety. While in development for the last ten years, automotive airbags were now starting to go into the mass-testing phase before being approved and made mandatory in all domestic passenger vehicles. State troopers all over the U.S. had their newer cars equipped with the devices that while bulky and cumbersome, were supposed to be fail-proof and a life saving edge one could be thankful for in the event of a catastrophic collision.\n\n\u2022\n\nJoel didn't notice the state trooper hiding under the group of trees ahead. His mind was on other things, mainly Tessa. He was in love and he didn't quite know how to react. It wasn't a feeling he had embraced before. The red Camaro sped over the four-lane blacktop like a bullet train following steel rails on a course for North Miami Beach. The alarm on the radar was the first to sound.\n\n94-94-94-94\n\nThe amber display blinked, locked in on the illegal speeder. Mander popped a form-fitting plastic top over the Styrofoam cup of coffee he was sipping, put the car in gear and bolted up the embankment, squealing the tires as the accelerating car grabbed the pavement.\n\n\"642 Turnpike,\" he called into the radio's microphone.\n\n\"642,\" squawked the radio.\n\n\"10-4, I am attempting a traffic stop on a red Camaro northbound at the Snapper Creek Plaza. This guy's going ninety-four in a fifty-five. Go ahead and send me some backup, please. Also, this is probably the no-contact hit and run suspect from a previous incident involving an FHP vehicle.\"\n\n\"642, do you have the car stopped yet?\"\n\n\"Negative Turnpike, I'm trying to catch up to him now.\"\n\n\"10-4, 642. Be advised I just received a BOLO from U.S. Customs. A red Camaro IROC Z-28 occupied by two white male subjects is wanted in connection with a federal drug indictment. These subjects are both known to impersonate law enforcement officials. The subjects are considered armed and dangerous. Use extreme caution. Detain and hold for U.S. Customs. This is per Special Agent in Charge Jordan Cheney.\"\n\n\"10-4 Turnpike, where's my closest backup?\"\n\n\"I show 1134 in Florida City working a minor signal four traffic accident.\"\n\n\"1134 Turnpike,\" the second trooper interrupted.\n\n\"Go ahead 1134,\" the dispatcher squawked.\n\n\"This is 1134 - Show me en route to backup 642 on his 10-50 traffic stop.\"\n\n\"10-4, 1134, did you copy direct 642?\"\n\n\"10-4, I'm on them now, they've slowed down to seventy.\"\n\n\u2022\n\n\"Shit!\" Joel exclaimed looking into his rearview mirror as he pulled the car to the side of the busy roadway.\n\n\"What is it?\" Owen asked looking behind him.\n\n\"Let me ID this guy, we're running out of time,\" Kenyon said, putting the car in park before reaching for his wallet.\n\n\"Occupants, put your hands against the windshield!\" shouted an authoritative voice over the trooper's overhead PA system. \"Driver, with your left hand, turn off the ignition and throw the keys out the window.\"\n\nJoel looked back at the trooper still seated behind the wheel, concealed in his patrol car. This guy meant business, he thought to himself as he started to reach for the keys. Something wasn't right; this guy is doing a serious felony stop.\n\n\"Wait,\" Owen said.\n\nThe two looked at each other for a second and then, as though they had rehearsed a dozen times, Joel took his opposite hand and jammed the center-mounted gear shift into reverse, stepping on the gas and sending them backwards towards the trooper's black and tan Mustang. The impact wasn't especially great but it caught Trooper Mander completely by surprise. His first instinct was to reach down for his holstered gun, which was not an easy thing to do since he was seated. A bright flash of white light, which dulled his senses for a second, interrupted him. What was happening? he thought to himself. One of the subjects must have fired his gun, he feared. Where was it? Why can't I see? Am I dead?\n\nThe sound that accompanied the flash left a ringing in his ears. It must have been a gunshot. Where is 1134? Am I dying? He smelled something burning. These guys aren't close enough. My God! I shot myself. Slowly he blinked his eyes. A trace of white powder lingered in the air as he noticed a cloud-like pillow assembled in front of him. The car's airbag had exploded upon impact catching him off guard. Unable to see past the white balloon, he grabbed for his radio microphone but grabbed his hot cup of coffee instead. Steaming mud scorched his hand and ran down his right leg. Joel shifted the car back into drive and accelerated forward, regaining his trek northward.\n\nAs Mander yelled for backup, the two black Suburbans blasted by his disabled patrol car.\n\n\u2022\n\nTwenty minutes later, with a countywide bulletin being broadcasted on every police frequency in a hundred mile radius, Joel exited the turnpike. As he made his way down North Miami's 163rd Street, he could feel the traffic starting to get heavier. Ten car lengths behind, the two Suburbans that had been following the Camaro since Florida City maintained their distance. The stop and go traffic was more than Joel's patience could bear.\n\n\"Shit!\" he said to himself, hitting the soft center of the steering wheel.\n\n\"Relax. We're less than fifteen minutes away,\" Owen comforted.\n\nThen without warning, a loud voice blurted out, \"red Camaro!\"\n\nJoel looked back to see the blue and red flashing lights of a Metro Dade police car directly behind them.\n\n\"Pull to the next side street!\" ordered a voice amplified by the car's PA system.\n\n\"There's no way out of this,\" Joel said. \"If we run, we could lead them to Turnbush.\"\n\n\"Relax, let me handle this,\" Owen replied.\n\nAs the red Camaro pulled into a nearly abandoned side street, the green and white Metro cruiser followed in behind, maintaining a safe distance. Officers Cabrera and Evans had been on duty for less than half an hour before the BOLO came over their radio. New to Metro, both had visions of making a name for themselves and this was to be their first stepping stone. Both men exited the cruiser with guns drawn. Cabrera, a large Cuban with dark skin and combed back jet-black hair yelled, not needing the assistance of the PA.\n\n\"Turn off the car and place your hands against the windshield!\"\n\nEvans held his gun tightly as he aimed at the Camaro's passenger, ready to unload his automatic Smith and Wesson with a split seconds notice.\n\n\"Federal agent!\" Joel yelled out of the window. \"You can holster your weapons!\"\n\n\"These are our guys,\" Cabrera said, remembering the BOLO's instructions.\n\n\"I'm scared,\" Evans confided to his partner. \"Maybe we should wait for some backup.\"\n\n\"Shut up, you pussy!\" Cabrera replied. \"If they move, shoot them. Don't hesitate.\"\n\nJoel sat still for a second before reaching for his wallet that was tucked between the seat and the center console.\n\n\"Cabrera?\" Evans asked sheepishly.\n\n\"I said freeze asshole!\" Cabrera shouted with a loud commanding voice.\n\n\u2022\n\n\"Are we ready?\" asked the driver of the lead Suburban to an agent clad in black tactical gear that was seated behind him.\n\n\"As ready as we'll ever be,\" he replied, checking the clip on his AR-15 assault rifle.\n\n\u2022\n\nJoel looked into the rearview mirror as he quickly returned his hands to the windshield. And then he noticed them, a black Suburban speeding in their direction followed by another. Both pulled up on either side of the Metro cruiser. Before the officers could see what was going on, all the doors on both vehicles opened at once as a dozen men, all clad in black and donning Kevlar jackets and AR-15s, spilled into the quiet street. Cabrera and Evans, trying to keep an eye on the car ahead, turned back in disbelief.\n\n\"Freeze! FBI!\" said the lead man.\n\nBoth officers resumed their stance, straightening their aim against the Camaro, relieved that some assistance had arrived.\n\n\"I said freeze!\" the lead man repeated, touching the tip of his AR-15 against Cabrera's perfectly groomed jet-black hair.\n\n\"FBI! Put down your weapons and keep your hands in my view at all times. This will be over in a few seconds if you do exactly as I say,\" he said in a direct but calm voice.\n\nBoth officers laid their weapons on the ground as two agents from the back took the men to the rear of the cruiser. Then, the lead agent approached the Camaro without fear, walking up to the open driver's side window.\n\n\"Agent Kenyon?\" he said to Joel.\n\n\"Yeah, what's going on?\" he asked.\n\n\"Just clearing the way sir. We've been ordered to make contact with you at any cost,\" the lead agent responded as Joel and Owen exited the Camaro.\n\n\"Our radios are down,\" Joel said.\n\n\"I know. There's been a major system failure affecting the entire East Coast. We have Mr. Stephens on the phone. He wants to talk to you,\" the agent stated as another placed a cellular bag phone on the IROC's trunk lid.\n\n\"Joel!\" Pat shouted, relieved. \"Where the hell have you been?\"\n\n\"We've had some communication problems.\"\n\n\"Where is Owen Sands?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"He's with me. Pat, this indictment is bullshit. None of it is accurate.\"\n\n\"We'll sort all of that out later. I'm in Miami and it's been a hell of a day. When can we meet?\"\n\n\"We don't have time for that now. We are in the middle of a major case that's ready to break. Please Pat, Owen needs this right now.\"\n\n\"This goes against my better judgment.\"\n\n\"Trust me on this one.\"\n\n\"Take the FBI's bag phone with you and report directly to me. Cease any more contact with the Tavernier office,\" Pat ordered.\n\n\"Why? What's going on?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"We'll go over it later, just do as I say. And for God's sake, be careful, both of you.\"\n\n\"We've got to go Pat,\" Joel said, pushing the red end button of the phone.\n\n\"Do you need any assistance?\" the agent asked.\n\n\"No thanks. You guys kinda stand out,\" Joel said, looking back at the dozen men who were equipped with tactical gear, Kevlar vests, loaded automatic weapons, and looked more like a small army than FBI agents. \"No offense.\"\n\n\"None taken,\" the agent responded with a smile.\n\nAs the two got back in the car, Owen looked over at Joel who maintained a forward stare.\n\n\"When were you going to tell me?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"What? That the guy who's been after you all this time is my brother-in-law? How do you think I got a hold of the indictment?\"\n\n\"So, you've been sent down here to bust me. I've got to tell you, it's a big surprise.\"\n\n\"It's a surprise to both of us man. I had no idea you were the guy they were after.\"\n\n\"And Tessa? How does she figure into all of this?\"\n\n\"That's not fair. You know my feelings for her are real.\"\n\n\"Real. What's that?\"\n\n\"Look, Owen, if I was in on this do you think I would have told you about the indictment, gotten this close to Tessa, or let you drive away from a dozen armed FBI agents. Like it or not, right now, I'm the best asset you've got. So, can you stop, take a moment and trust me?\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nDisconnected\n\nFat Albert, the name locals gave to the 175-foot tethered balloon at Cudjoe Key, bounced violently on its concrete pad as the remnants of Tropical Storm Oliver blew over the small island. The large white object that was drawn down with its guide wire was stressing the structural components to their limits.\n\nThe crew had plenty of warning before the storm rolled in. The massive front showed up like a solid white marshmallow on CNN's weather report. The balloon had to come down for two reasons. First, a tethered balloon rising up into the inversion layer of a major weather front posed the risk of a lightning strike that, at the very least, could harm the delicate magnets of the radar system. Lightning could also cause an explosion by igniting one of the many gases that keep the zeppelin aloft. The Hindenburg disaster was a crude reminder of what hydrogen did when it burned. Second, Fat Albert, because it used hydrogen and helium to float, was sensitive to the temperature changes. The colder it got, the more sluggish and heavy the balloon became. Small amounts of the buoyant gases were sometimes removed on hot summer days to prevent the ship from pulling its anchor out of the ground. The outer surface of the craft was insulated to prevent sudden changes in the temperature from affecting the balloon without suitable warning to the crew on the ground. Special solar energy-absorbing panels were also sewn into the topside of the craft to help warm it when it was used at extremely high altitudes. The balloon required a relative ambient temperature of at least forty degrees Fahrenheit in order to stay aloft. The cable, capable of letting it fly as high as fifteen thousand feet like a kite on a windy day, on occasion weighed in excess of three tons. The onboard computer system interfaced with the ship's radar and satellite uplink that sent its signal directly to C3I, weighed another eleven hundred pounds. The payload requirements for this balloon were demanding. The EH-07 hybrid helium and hydrogen gases were the perfect solution, achieving maximum lift with minimal displacement.\n\nKeeping this ship in the air was a monumental task. Special equipment was fabricated to minimize down time and afford the best in reliability. The stainless turnbuckle that connected the main harness to the rest of the ascendable wire was manufactured by Altech Aviation of Cedar Rapids, Michigan. It was a very simple piece of rigging, allowing the balloon to rotate without causing undue stress on the lead wire. The one precaution that needed to be adhered to once the balloon was grounded was that the Altech turnbuckle had to be wrapped in a foam sleeve, also supplied by the manufacturer. The precaution was implemented in order to prevent the piece from being banged around. On this windy night though, with forty miles per hour gusts ripping over the concrete pad, the foam pad sat in its locker unused.\n\nThe balloon had only been down for six hours, but the stainless piece had already been struck repeatedly against the wet concrete pad. At 8:27 p.m., the stainless Altech turnbuckle holding the Cudjoe zeppelin to the pad absorbed the final shock of its shortened life. Pieces of battered stainless steel were scattered over the wet concrete as the huge balloon ascended skyward at a northwestern heading. Because of the latent energy stored in the insulated skin of the ship, the craft climbed to a height of one hundred feet over Florida Bay. The balloon then leveled off and continued on its course being driven by the fierce wind.\n\nIt took over three hours before the balloon reached its resting spot. The temperature had dropped to a record twenty-two degrees, made even colder by the wind chill factor. Fat Albert set down into the cold water, skating over the choppy waves until its harness snagged on some mangrove branches that rose from a small island hammock just west of Key Largo.\n\n* * * * *\n\nDelegate\n\nFred Gold watched from the twenty-third story of Turnbush's north tower as the Jolene Marie approached the entrance to the yacht basin. A soft rain, the beginning of an approaching storm front that had been falling all day, soothed out the rippling waves that usually were atop the flowing waters of the Intracoastal Waterway. The only thing that upset the windowpane-like surface was the bead of water that extended from the bow and stern of the returning yacht as she turned slowly, easing down the tributary that led to the backside of the Turnbush complex.\n\nGold took his starched white captains hat from the room's oak dresser and made way for the elevator.\n\n\u2022\n\nAcross the Turnbush basin was an empty lot that had been used as a storage facility for a nearby construction site. The red IROC fit in with the five other muscle cars that were parked on the cluttered property. Most were kids who were trying to get away from their parents to drink some beer or smoke a joint. Others had different intentions with their car windows fogged over with steam, a byproduct of the heat that was generated by their adolescent passions.\n\nJoel and Owen watched as the Jolene Marie made a one hundred and eighty degree turn in front of them to dock nose out towards the Intracoastal, with the starboard side of the yacht against the fuel dock next to the dockmaster's office.\n\n\"This is almost too good to be true,\" Joel said.\n\n\"We'll see about that,\" Owen replied.\n\n\u2022\n\nGold exited the north tower's elevator on the ground level and went directly to the yacht lockers next to his office. These storage closets were convenient for large yacht owners who needed extra space to house everything from spare parts to cases of beer and liquor. The aged dockmaster unlocked unit B-10 that held the six sets of nested designer luggage that Del had purchased days before. With a rolling utility cart, Gold loaded the bags, each of the six containing its smaller, corresponding seven matching pieces packed inside each of the larger. There were forty-eight bags going on the yacht as six pieces of luggage.\n\n\u2022\n\nRegis stood on the wet bow with a gold braided spring line coiled in his hand. He wore a bright yellow foul weather jacket that came to his waist. Below that he had on his yacht crew uniform that was made up of a set of khaki crew shorts and Topsiders that were completely saturated with the fresh rainwater. From the wheelhouse, Tony Milner could see the goose bumps formed on his first mate's legs.\n\nTony worked the controls, pivoting the yacht one hundred and eighty degrees to moor her against the main fuel dock. The dock boy that was on duty stood on the wet concrete pier wearing a full length raincoat and a plastic rain protector over his official looking hat to ward off the cold. As Tony reversed the twin diesel power plants, Regis prepared to secure their lines to the approaching pilings that would eventually lay off the boat's bow. Once the bow was secure, Regis ran the length of the boat and repeated the proces with the stern lines, throwing the rope to the boy on the dock like a cowboy securing a head of cattle.\n\nAs the gangplank went down, Gold was there waiting with the six pieces of luggage that went on board before Tony could shut off the engines.\n\n\u2022\n\nEight hours after they had arrived and all the other cars had left the property, the red IROC sat idling alone in the dark. An hour before, Joel had taken the car to a nearby convenience store where he filled the empty Camaro with gas and stocked up on hot coffee and cold chocolate milk. Owen had stayed behind to keep an eye on the yacht.\n\nThe two were back in the warm car waiting for something to break across the basin. As they sat, scores of anxious amateur fishermen started to assemble with gear and bagged lunches by the sport fishing boats that were docked on the other side of the small harbor. And then they saw it: three matching white airport limousine passenger vans had pulled into the circular drive by the dockmaster's office. Then, without warning, the crew from the Jolene Marie started to offload the luggage.\n\n\"They look pretty heavy,\" Joel said, jugging down his third carton of chocolate milk.\n\n\"I'm willing to bet that's not designer fashions in those bags,\" Owen said, looking through a pair of standard binoculars. \"By the way, what do you have against coffee anyway?\"\n\n\"This stuff keeps me from...you know...having to go,\" Joel answered.\n\n\"Whatever works kid.\"\n\nThe sun had started to rise and the entire complex was filled with a grayish blue light that was getting brighter by the minute. Joel and Owen had been awake for twenty-four hours and their day was just beginning.\n\n\u2022\n\nWith the last bag of luggage unloaded, Del leaned over and gave Lynn a long kiss.\n\n\"When will you be back?\" she asked with a sad tone.\n\n\"As soon as this stuff is safe, I'll rent a car and come home - probably sometime tomorrow. Go home and get some sleep and keep the bed warm for me, okay?\" he said, giving her a final kiss.\n\n* * * * *\n\nMarriage\n\nBackcountry fishing pro Jim Plimpton, The Redfisher, was on the water early this morning. He slept very well the night before. He usually did when it stormed. The front had passed and all that remained was the cold air that pushed it here. Plimpton's 18-foot backcountry boat skimmed across the water that was like a glossy mirror as far as the eye could see, a perfect surface of liquid making the ride the smoothest he could remember.\n\nPlimpton was out early to catch shrimp. They ran in the cold water, usually darting through the small channels of water between the mangrove islands out west. The spot where he wanted to fish was easy enough to find. He had been there many times before. Other boats would have had to use caution in approaching the outward-bound Keys. The water depth in the surrounding vicinity ranged from twelve feet to under twelve inches. Underwater banks of sand were common. Plimpton's boat, however, was used to making this trip, drawing less than eight inches of water while on plane.\n\nAs he neared the small islands, something looked out of place. A distinctive white glow lingered over it like a huge storm cloud that rose up from the horizon. What was it? he thought to himself. For a minute, it almost looked like the moon low at the horizon, but the brightly lit moon was already overhead shining through the clear sky. The white object seemed to absorb all the light from the sky above. The moon and the stars all made it glow. This was easy to see despite the fact that it was over a quarter mile away. Plimpton put the boat back on plane and headed west towards the backcountry.\n\nIt took less than a minute for the overpowered craft to reach the snagged 175-foot long balloon. Once he was next to it, Plimpton recognized it immediately. It was Fat Albert, with all of its antennas and sophisticated electronics mounted in its belly. Whoever lost the thing probably wanted it back, he thought. The idea of a sizable reward filled his head. The running shrimp would have to wait.\n\nPlimpton, while in good shape, was not a big man. He never weighed more than one hundred and forty pounds his whole life and with his six-foot-one frame, he always appeared to be thin as a rail. Plimpton climbed from the bow of the Mako to the clumsy branches of the mangrove trees. The harness was pretty wrapped up into the limbs and twigs but with some manipulation, the oversized pillow shifted around and Plimpton jumped back onto the boat with the broken turnbuckle in hand. The balloon was lifeless and floated about with what seemed to be the perfect balance of weightlessness. It was obvious that the gases inside that gave the craft its lift were paralyzed by the cold.\n\nPlimpton knew the only way to get this thing back to Key Largo was to tow it with his backcountry boat. He wasted no time in preparing a towing bridle out of the three-quarter-inch anchor rope. A Y piece was quickly manufactured and secured with the two ends tied through the stainless eye rings in the transom of the boat. The third leg of the bridal went to the loop on the balloon harness where the remainder of the turnbuckle was. Plimpton then powered up the six-cylinder outboard as gray exhaust and steam rose into the chilled air while the motor strained against the Fiberglas transom, pulling the huge, weightless balloon from the trees. He had the throttle open all the way but it wasn't until he changed the angle at which the boat was pulling did the airship slide from its cozy nest and plop into the cold water. Plimpton felt accomplished. Almost like freeing a beached whale, he thought. He looked back for a second. This was big, real big! he thought to himself. It was long and tubular, had wings and a tail section so when aloft it pointed into the wind and was stable. His mind ran wild: How much would I get? Five thousand? Ten? God, maybe twenty? What a night!\n\nThe boat and balloon moved along at a steady pace of three knots. Plimpton left the throttle at a third so as to not strain the highly torqued outboard motor. He watched the exhaust for its constant spray of water. The bay was shallow here and it was easy to pick up debris from the bottom; debris that could easily clog the small intake of the outboard's water pump, the heart of its cooling system.\n\nHe had a temperature gauge installed on the console of the boat several years prior. It proved useful in varied fishing situations being able to give the water and air temperatures. With the sun starting to rise in the east, the gauge read the air to be a brisk forty-four degrees. Plimpton noticed his boat to be moving a bit faster when he first started his journey back to Key Largo. The balloon had lifted from the bay and was trailing the boat at an elevation of about thirty feet. This was some sight, Plimpton thought.\n\nWhat at first made the 18-foot vessel go faster was now straining it, making it steer poorly. Plimpton noticed the rope pulling the balloon was growing more taut, pulling the transom higher in the water. The bow was starting to grope head-on into the small, choppy waves that had developed in the meantime. Much more of this and the engine would be completely out of the water, he thought. He sat as far astern as he could to maximize the weight in the back of the boat. The oversized pillow was now a cloud that loomed directly overhead.\n\nPlimpton made the decision to cut the lines as soon as the spinning prop on the outboard was lifted completely from the water. He was frightened, however, to go to the bow where in his tackle box was a freshly sharpened filleting knife. He knew he just had to do it. Water was starting to lap over the bow of the now motionless boat. He made a dash toward the front of the boat but it was the wrong move. As he shifted his weight forward of the center of gravity, Fat Albert also shifted, pulling the stern of the boat higher still and making a vertical angle where the boat hung steeper. The momentum of the shift threw Plimpton over the submerged bow and into the cold water. Stunned by the chilled liquid, he was further horrified to see the bow of the Mako leave the water as it ascended skyward at a rate of two feet per second. Plimpton grabbed a hold of a loose bowline, trying to stop his departing boat. It was too late. His frail body didn't make a difference anymore. He watched as the boat's anchor, fuel tank, tackle box and other loose items fell into the water below. Hatches dropped open dumping more items into the bay. Plimpton swam to a floating life vest that had landed a few feet away. He couldn't believe his eyes. His life was now in peril and the regret of his greed was just starting to set in.\n\n* * * * *\n\nRubicon\n\nOwen turned south on U.S. 1 and maintained a tail on the last van seven cars deep while Joel called Pat on the bag phone.\n\n\"Hey, just checking in,\" Joel said.\n\n\"Where the fuck are you?\"\n\n\"North Miami, headed south. Everything's cool. I forgot to ask yesterday, why are you in Miami?\"\n\n\"Tried to work out a plea deal with Morales.\"\n\n\"Guillermo Morales? What kind of plea deal?\"\n\n\"It's all moot anyway. The asshole tried to escape.\"\n\n\"What? Escape! What the hell happened?\"\n\n\"You wouldn't believe me if I told you.\"\n\n\"Hey, hold on Pat. Owen, watch where you're going. He's turning right onto 163rd Street. I bet they're headed to the interstate.\"\n\n\"Let me know if you guys need backup. What are you guys working on anyway?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"It's nothing. A guy is trying to move a few kilos. We've got it under control.\"\n\n\"Joel...\" Pat said as Joel hit the red end button with a disconnecting beep.\n\n\"Was that him?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"He's married to your sister?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"So what's that like?\"\n\n\"What, having Pat as a brother-in-law? It's okay. He rides my ass a lot, but lately that's been a good thing.\"\n\n\"They are passing the interstate,\" Owen said as they drove under the ten-lane overpass. \"Where the hell are these guys...\"\n\n\"Left! 441!\" Joel yelled as he watched the white van through his binoculars.\n\n\"Look, I'm sorry for giving you a hard time earlier, you know, about him.\"\n\n\"I'm the one who should be sorry. I should have told you, it's just not what I wanted the other guys in the office to know. I guess I was afraid everyone would think I got the assignment because, well, you know...\"\n\n\"I get it,\" Owen replied.\n\n\"Right on 119th Street.\"\n\n\"Shit. I think I know where they're going. And you might want to get your brother-in-law back on the phone.\"\n\n\"Shit, where is it?\"\n\nMiami's Northwest 119th Street was a straight shot to the Hialeah train yards. Joel and Owen watched as the last of the three vans pulled into a concealed commercial depot that was adjacent to a set of tracks that were occupied by a hundred-car freight train.\n\n\"There is only one way we are going to be able to stay with this load.\"\n\n\"You're not suggesting...\"\n\n\"Ever fantasize about being a hobo Joel?\"\n\n\"Shit. I was afraid you were going to say that.\"\n\n\"We are going to have to ditch the car behind this building,\" Owen said, pointing to an abandoned warehouse on the other side of the tracks.\n\nThe two agents emptied the car's trunk of their duty gear that consisted of two duffel bags, their Kevlar vests and two fully automatic assault rifles. They took cover and watched as forty-eight designer suitcases were unloaded from the white airport limousine passenger vans into a boxcar that was identified with the number 359.\n\n\u2022\n\nDel exited the first van and walked over to the train's engineer who greeted him warmly.\n\n\"How was the trip?\" he asked.\n\n\"It was long. I'm glad to be on dry land. That damn tropical storm almost killed us.\"\n\n\"Okay, well this is how we do this. You're going to ride up front with me. We have a small cab with a bunk, a TV, a small fridge and a coffee maker. In the old days, all the creature comforts were in the caboose. Our newer, more modern engines combine the two.\"\n\n\"When do you think we will hit Ocala?\" Del asked.\n\n\"We have one stop in Orlando where we have to top-off our fuel tanks.\"\n\n\"I thought these trains were electric?\"\n\n\"They are, but the generators that provide the electric power are run by diesel engines and they burn a lot of fuel. All things considered, we should make our destination by 4:00 p.m.\"\n\nAs the train started to inch its way out of the yard, Joel and Owen nestled into their boxcar that was fifteen cars behind unit 359.\n\n\"This thing is almost dead,\" Joel announced, looking at the red blinking light on the bag phone.\n\n\"International Farms Corp. is the parent of Morada Boat Leasing. My guess is that's where we're headed.\"\n\n\"It's ringing, but I'm only getting Pat's answering service,\" Joel said with frustration. \"I need for you to get a message to U.S. Attorney Pat Stephens. This is Special Agent Joel Kenyon, it's an emergency. Notify him that we are departing on a train...Yes ma'am, a train. We are leaving Hialeah and headed north. We have confirmed forty-eight suitcases full of contraband, cocaine suspected, I'm guessing two to three thousand kilos on board. We suspect that the load is headed to Ocala, Florida. Target location is Inter... BEEEEEP,\" the phone sounded as it shutdown with its battery completely exhausted.\n\n\"Is that it?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"I'm afraid so. We can leave it alone for awhile and see if the battery will resurge enough to make another call, but I'm not making any bets.\"\n\n\"Well, I guess it's just you and me kid,\" Owen announced, looking for a piece of gum in the back pocket of his worn blue jeans. \"What the...?\" he said, pulling out a small child's pink sock. It was Monica's and, as the household laundry had oftentimes mixed their clothes together, this was a classic example of how it was hard for him to leave his family behind on assignments like these.\n\n\"Even if you can get by the color, I don't think it'll fit partner,\" Joel said.\n\n* * * * *\n\nAction\n\nPat Stephens sat in a crowded conference room with agents from the FBI and the U.S. Customs Office of Internal Affairs.\n\n\"All we have is a partial message. We think they are going to Ocala and that they are sitting on a major quantity of coke. The phone cut off in the middle of what sounded like International,\" Pat's assistant said over the speakerphone for all to hear.\n\n\"I don't care if I'm making a final summation. If Joel calls me back, you find me,\" Pat yelled.\n\n\"Yes sir.\"\n\n\"Ma'am, this is Special Agent Robinson with OIA. Did they give any specifics as to how much product they were tracking?\"\n\n\"All the message said was that they were tracking forty-eight suitcases and Joel estimated it to be between two and three thousand kilos.\"\n\n\"Oh my god! They are headed into a gauntlet!\" another agent shouted.\n\n\"I need a TAC team and will someone please find Chester Marks. I want to be airborne in less than ten minutes.\"\n\n\"Hold on Pat. We can't just rush up there. We don't know where they are headed.\"\n\n\"Get Florida Secretary of State on the phone and ask for the Division of Corporations. I need all listings for corporations with the name International and a home office of Ocala,\" Pat ordered.\n\n\"Chester Marks is on his way up Pat,\" an agent said from the back of the room while talking into a phone.\n\n\"How are we handling the Owen Sands situation?\" OIA agent Robinson asked.\n\n\"As of now, there isn't an Owen Sands situation. We have some investigating to do over the next few months, but the indictment is dead. Let's hope for his sake that this bust goes down in his favor. It would certainly look good on his record,\" Pat concluded.\n\n\"What are we doing in Tavernier?\" Robinson asked.\n\n\"I want all access to EPIC, NCIC, FCIC and any other criminal databases blocked to all the agents of the Tavernier office until further notice and I want OIA to prepare a contingency staff to go down immediately and take over field operations.\"\n\n\"What is it Pat?\" Chester Marks asked, barging into the conference room.\n\n\"Are we ready to fly?\"\n\n\"No. Weather is too rough for the 206. We are socked in for another twelve hours,\" Marks explained.\n\n\"We've got a heavy Huey UH-1 you can use,\" Robinson offered.\n\n\"I can fly left seat, but I need someone who's rated,\" Marks replied.\n\n\"Not a problem. I'll put them on standby,\" Robinson said, picking up the phone.\n\n* * * * *\n\nApproach\n\nThe rust-stained boxcar rolled across the steel rails as the flexible joints below clicked under its weight. The train's speed decreased with every mile until it barely crept along the tracks. The late afternoon hours left the air wet with a light rain, typical for Florida, and a pungent odor of sulfur indicating that they were close to a paper mill. The rain seemed to make the stench more unbearable as it saturated everything in sight, including the interior of the already damp boxcar. Owen peered through a cracked opening in the boxcar's side-mounted sliding door. A private train depot was in sight just ahead. An old, abandoned factory constructed of red brick and steel and several towering silos made up the dimly lit yard they were approaching.\n\nWhile passing through the fenced entrance to the compound, Joel caught a glimpse of something familiar. There was a sign in the distance that read:\n\nNO TRESPASSING  \nInternational Farms Corporation  \nCattle Management Division  \nOcala, Florida\n\nThe vantage point only lasted a fraction of a second as the train passed by some stacked shipping containers that obstructed his view. Another hundred feet passed and both could see the end of the line, the place they had come over three hundred miles to encounter. Could it really be this easy? Owen thought to himself. Parked next to a dingy warehouse, the steamy mist from an exhaust pipe ascended skyward. A late model Land Rover sat by the entrance of the large brick building. Preoccupied by this, Owen let his head extend past the door's opening. As the train progressed further, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, another person dangerously close. Instinctively, he jerked his head back into the car just in time as he watched them pass a Cuban man in his early thirties standing next to a fire burning in a discarded fifty-five gallon oil drum only ten feet away. The man was relieving himself and seemed to be mesmerized by the steam he created as the urine hit the side of the rusty drum.\n\nThe train slowed to a crawl and then came to a sudden halt. A sharp crash sounded as the momentum of the cars bundled up against each other and then again. Another shock was heard, this time in the opposite direction as the momentum was reversed. Owen peered past the opening to see the cars ahead. The tracks curved, giving him a good view of the entire train. The engineer jumped out of the engine with Del behind him and walked halfway down the line of cars, disappearing between two of them for a brief moment and then emerged, returning to the engine. The roar of the massive diesel motors broke the rain-drenched silence as black smoke erupted from the exhaust ports. The engineer increased the power as the engine and the first thirty cars inched forward. They gained speed as the train and the noise disappeared down the tracks leaving Owen, Joel, Del and twenty cars sitting motionless amidst the cluttered yard.\n\nDel walked over to the Land Rover and got in. Ten minutes passed before any more movement was noticed. Then Del and Gus Greico embarked and walked over to the burning barrel. At the same time, a large sliding door located on the face of the warehouse slid open exposing the interior of the structure. At its base pushing as hard as humanly possible was the muscular frame of another worker wearing overalls and tall cowboy boots. The building was unlit with the exception of a series of skylights. Toilets, sinks and other porcelain fixtures were stacked in rows along the walls. Parked amongst them was a diesel tractor-trailer. The massive flat-nosed cab with an aerodynamic windscreen affixed to the roof towered almost fifteen feet high. Gold in color, the truck shined as though it had been taken care of. The trailer was a refrigerated type with a diesel-powered compressor attached to the front.\n\nDel helped by pushing the door the rest of the way open and joined the other two standing by the drum. Gus Greico spoke with a brisk, arrogant tone.\n\n\"I went by Ocala Peterbilt to raise hell about that fucking starter.\"\n\n\"Be careful - they are the only shop who will work on this thing with such short notice,\" said the man in the overalls.\n\n\"Yeah, but twelve hundred dollars for a starter? Come on.\"\n\n\"Word is, Gus, twelve hundred isn't so bad. Besides, they detailed the cab for free.\"\n\n\"Okay, but I want the old one. I'll keep it for posterity.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nOwen sat back against the wall inside the car. He then took his hand and wiped it against the moist metal doorframe embracing his tense face. He looked over at Joel who was looking through the binoculars.\n\n\"What are they doing?\" Owen asked.\n\n\"Standing around talking. I think they are ready to offload,\" he paused. \"Wait. All three men are walking towards 359.\"\n\nOwen tensed up as he secured the Velcro straps that held his Kevlar vest in place while Joel pulled the slide on his Beretta, loading a round into the chamber.\n\n\"I want you to wait until they get at least twenty bags out and in the warehouse. This way we can file a forfeiture motion against the property instead of just the train. Besides, after they manhandle those bags, they will be pretty worn out and that will give a tactical advantage,\" Owen explained.\n\n\"Wait. What the fuck is this?\" Joel said, pointing to the open warehouse door where a fifth man was driving a small forklift towards the other four by car 359.\n\n\"At least they're efficient,\" Owen replied sarcastically.\n\nAs the men unloaded the suitcases from the boxcar to the forklift, the agents squatted down and prepared to make their move.\n\n\"Hey, what the...?\" the forklift driver yelled, pointing in Joel's direction.\n\n\"Shit! We've been made!\" Owen shouted as he bolted out the open boxcar door. \"FREEZE! FEDERAL AGENT!\" he yelled.\n\nJoel followed with a Ruger mini-14 automatic rifle drawn to his shoulder and pointed at car 359. The four men who were standing by the forklift scattered like ants while the Land Rover sped off, spinning loose gravel in all directions.\n\nDel was the first inside the warehouse, finding security in the cab of the large Peterbilt truck cab. Gus Greico took a position behind some crated toilets. The other two scattered to the back of the large building. The rain started to fall again. Owen felt relieved thinking it would help conceal their position. But what had started as an afternoon shower turned into a downpour. Joel tried to keep his eye on the fleeing men but had trouble seeing through the sheets of water flowing from the top of the boxcars. The rain saturated his clothes, vest and weapons immediately. In the meantime, Gus Greico had moved over next to the open warehouse door, standing under the generous overhang trying to keep from getting wet. Joel approached from his blind side, keeping the mini-14 pointed at the man's head.\n\n\"Freeze,\" he said calmly.\n\nGreico put his hands in the air while Joel walked him to a large closed bay door, handcuffing him to the door's handle.\n\n\"Follow me,\" Owen whispered as the he entered the warehouse.\n\nThe two darted around stacked pallets as a burst of gunfire rang out from behind them, striking a stack of sinks at the base. The entire load came crashing down with one striking Joel on his knee. He dropped to a seated position in a great deal of pain. Owen grabbed him underneath his armpit and brought him back to his feet.\n\nDel started to panic as he turned the key and pushed the starter button for the large tractor-trailer. The sound of the diesel truck starting engulfed the brick building but, much to his dismay, the truck had no air pressure as it hadn't been started in days. All Del could do was sit there and wait. More gunfire rang out from the back of the building as the two agents broke away from the safety of the crates to confront it.\n\nJoel held a tense stance with his gun pointed at the forklift driver who made a sudden move to spin towards him, armed with an automatic handgun. Then he fired a round hitting him in the chest. The lead slug penetrated just above his left shirt pocket, the force of which put him back against the wall as he slid down to the cold concrete floor. Joel's eyes stayed fixed on him and he was surprised to see that there was no blood coming from the chest. Did I miss? he thought to himself. There was a hole in the shirt. Did he have a vest? The man just sat on the floor in a seated position with his head and torso falling between his outstretched legs.\n\nJoel looked with disbelief, still seeing no blood. He relaxed his stance dropping the tip of the automatic rifle a few inches. He watched the motionless body slump over itself. Suddenly, without warning, the man twitched and his arms moved slightly. Startled, Joel discharged his weapon again, this time striking him in the forehead. Three more shots then rang out and filled the acoustic structure with thunder, striking the man randomly in the shoulder, leg and abdomen. Blood flowed in all directions. The body was live with movement, jerking around to a lying position on its side like a snake that had just been beheaded. Massive convulsions started as blood-red brain matter was mopped over the gray concrete floor and the man's drenched hair until the movement stopped.\n\nThe man with the overalls and cowboy boots dove from behind a pallet of steel drums, knocking Owen to the ground with his automatic rifle flying from his grip and sliding under another pallet filled with crates. Owen immediately rolled over pulling his Colt .45 sidearm. The man grabbed Owen in an embrace with the nickel-plated gun caught between them. Owen held his grip as he tried to wrestle the gun away from him. And then, while Joel stood staring at the man he had just killed, a partially muffled shot rang out.\n\nOwen froze as the sounds around him were replaced with a high-pitched tone. Joel ran through the building towards the shot with his gun pointed ahead of him.\n\n\"Down on the ground,\" he yelled as the younger agent rounded the crate.\n\nThe man let go of Owen and turned to face Joel who was directing him at gunpoint.\n\n\"Down, motherfucker!\" Joel yelled, squeezing the gun tighter against his shoulder.\n\nThe man with overalls and cowboy boots dropped to his knees, exposing Owen who stood staring at Joel, as Joel looked back at him in shock. A bullet had ripped through the front part of Owen's throat, through the bottom of his right jaw, taking with it half of his ear. The bright red blood was sharply contrasted against his face that was white like a stripped beach towel on Florida sand. Owen fell back against the stack of crates while Joel cuffed the prisoner's hands behind his back.\n\nOwen peered from between two crates just in time to see Del inch the truck cab forward. The trailer stayed stationary though as it dropped off the rear of the Peterbilt tractor. With a loud crash, the forty-foot-long box struck the hard floor. Del gunned the accelerator as black smoke rose to the ceiling. All eight tires on the rear of the truck seemed to spin simultaneously on the slick concrete as the rig spun in a complete circle. It then took a heading straight for Joel and Owen.\n\nStill over a hundred feet away, Joel knew they only had seconds to move. He grabbed Owen and headed for a standard six-foot-high entry door that was built into a larger twenty-foot-wide bay door. It was locked but the metal sheeting around it was bent and loose around the doorframe. Joel pushed the panel as far as he could and managed to create a twelve-inch gap. Owen was the first to squeeze through the small opening, limping from the pending shock of his body's blood loss. The noise of the revving diesel engine got louder as the massive, angry truck approached. Del was driving through crates filled with plumbing supplies as he gained on the two. The sound of the approaching truck was almost deafening. The truck, in a blind rage, rolled over Joel's cuffed prisoner, tearing his prone body in two.\n\nIn the driving rain, the two managed to get back on their feet and started to run from the building toward some shipping containers that were fifty yards away. Owen's adrenaline level had masked the pain he was feeling as the two hobbled away as fast as they could.\n\nJoel looked back at the building as the entire bay door became mobile, being torn from its mammoth frame structure as the speeding truck pushed it. As it proceeded forward, beams and panels of corrugated steel fell by the side exposing the demon-like machine. Blinded by the obstacles, Del ran the truck right into the rear of a shipping container, ripping a seventy-gallon fuel tank in half, spewing its contents of diesel fuel that immediately ignited.\n\n\u2022\n\n\"What the fuck was that?\" Pat Stephens yelled over the helicopter's intercom system.\n\n\"91 Lima Fox, Ocala Tower, we have an explosion and are responding to vector 090,\" Chester Marks said into his mic.\n\nThe black and gold Bell Huey banked to the east after the long flight from Miami while Pat peered through his binoculars.\n\n* * * * *\n\nCode\n\nThe two IFC firemen, Ron Jeffries and his partner, Hal Keller, arrived after a call had been made to their station reporting an explosion. As they rounded the curve and entered the parking lot of the abandoned plant, both looked on in disbelief. The area that had been an abandoned eyesore for all these years was now transformed into a war zone. To the right was the burning Peterbilt truck. The building had a twenty-foot square hole in the side of it. Oh my god, what is going on? Keller thought to himself.\n\n\"Rescue One to base. We need the sheriff out here at once!\" Jeffries yelled into the truck's microphone.\n\n\"What's going on out there?\" replied the farm's dispatcher.\n\n\"I don't know, but it seems like some kids have taken vandalism to the next level. This may be gang related.\"\n\n\"10-4 Rescue One,\" she responded.\n\n\"Look, over there!\" Keller yelled, pointing to Joel who was tending to Owen lying on the ground, bleeding from his throat and head.\n\nThey weren't prepared for this. Still, the need to tend to a patient overrode their need to stay in a safe environment. Keller was the first out of the truck. Jeffries went to the rear and grabbed some equipment, taking an EKG monitor, trauma bag, a spine-board and a blanket. Keller reached Owen first.\n\n\"Who are you and what the hell is going on!?\" Keller yelled.\n\n\"Special Agent Joel Kenyon, U. S. Customs. I need to use your radio!\" he demanded.\n\n\"We've already got the sheriff's department on the way,\" Jeffries replied.\n\n\"Hey, speaking of radios, let's get a Shandscare MedEvac en route,\" Keller said.\n\n\"Rescue One to base.\"\n\n\"Go ahead Rescue One.\"\n\n\"Call Shands Hospital and get a chopper here to the old porcelain plant ASAP. And, we need some backup from EMS \u2013 we're about to work a code here...and where are those damn sheriffs?\" Jeffries yelled into his portable radio.\n\n\"Shands is on the phone, Rescue One. They advise that air rescue is tied up on a traffic accident over on the interstate. Our main office is requesting that all IFC security forces guard the front gate. My hands are tied up here Ron.\"\n\n\"Base, we have a critically injured federal agent here. Get us a Marion County ambulance ASAP!\"\n\nHis training taught him to check for life threatening problems first. Owen's airway was open but he was breathing at eight times per minute with gurgling blood being exhaled with each breath. His carotid pulse was one hundred and forty, very weak, and completely undetectable in the radial arteries in his wrists. His skin was cool to the touch and his face looked like a starched bed sheet. His pupils were dilated and he was totally unresponsive. There was a lot of blood. After removing Owen's Kevlar vest, Keller took out his trauma scissors and cut a nice straight slit in his shirt exposing his chest. A large caliber entry wound had lacerated the front of his throat, nicking his right carotid artery before entering the bottom of his jaw. From there, the bullet cut into his temporal artery before blowing half of his right ear off the side of his head. If he makes it, he is going to take a whole lot of plastic surgery to fix, Jeffries thought to himself.\n\nJeffries cracked open the drug box, a converted fishing tackle box filled to the top with lifesaving medications and IV fluids.\n\n\"His breathing is at eight, get ready to incubate as soon as he hits six!\" Keller said grabbing the emergency airway kit.\n\n\"Where are the cops man!?\" Jeffries yelled, looking back at the burning truck.\n\n\"Hold this,\" Keller instructed Joel, placing a six-inch square gauze pad on Sands's bleeding wound.\n\nImmediately, the white pad turned crimson red absorbing the blood that oozed through Joel's fingers. Keller then grabbed two-liter bags of lactated ringers from the drug box while Jeffries took a fourteen-gauge needle and immediately found a vein in the left arm.\n\n\"I'm getting a central line. At his age, we don't have much time before this turns cardiac,\" Keller said, grabbing a twelve-gauge needle connected to a syringe. Then he slid the stainless steel barb into the left side of Owen's neck, penetrating his external jugular vein, attaching the plastic portion of the catheter to the second bag of IV lactated ringers.\n\n\u2022\n\n\"I've got an LZ over there, upwind from the burning truck,\" pilot Chester Marks said over his intercom microphone.\n\nThe Bell Huey circled, churning some of the black smoke from the burning truck into a small cyclone as it landed. Pat was the first one out of the sliding side door, jumping to his feet and running toward Joel.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Pat yelled over the spinning chopper's turbine.\n\n\"He's been hit!\" Joel answered with a trembling voice.\n\n\"Is this Owen Sands?\" Pat asked.\n\n\"What's the holdup with the ambulance?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"I don't know. What about your chopper?\" Keller asked, pointing to the Huey as the last of the FBI tactical team was exiting.\n\n\"Let's do it!\" Pat yelled.\n\n\"Here, hold onto this bag,\" Keller instructed, handing the plastic bag of fluid to Pat as he finished taping down the IV catheter into the side of Owen's neck, opening the ball valve in the IV line and letting the lifesaving fluid run into his veins.\n\n\"You, grab that oxygen bottle,\" Keller said, \"I'm going to incubate him in the chopper. His breathing has slowed to six.\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\" Joel asked.\n\n\"It's either a late stage of shock or the bullet hit a lung,\" Keller replied.\n\n\"On my three,\" Keller ordered as the four men each took one of Owen's extremities, picking him up and moving him over to the plywood spine-board. Then, they made a duck walk for the chopper.\n\n\"What are we doing?\" Marks asked, looking back from his pilot's seat.\n\n\"We are going to fly directly to the trauma pad at Shands in Gainesville. Do you have a chart for that?\" Keller asked.\n\n\"Not in front of me, but I will in a second,\" Marks answered. \"Pat, who is this? We can't transport the public.\"\n\n\"He's one of us. Just get us there and quick,\" Pat ordered as he slid the large door shut.\n\nFLASH\n\nDespite the chaos around him, everything was calm inside Owen Sands's head. He dreamt soft, peaceful scenes of his life, in better times and in black and white.\n\nFLASH\n\nThe day he met Leslie, he was so nervous and she was so confident. All he could say was his name.\n\n\"Owen. My name, I mean, is Owen,\" he told her as she blushed, feeling complimented by his effort.\n\nFLASH\n\nThe day they got married, standing barefoot in the pure, white sand of the beach in Destin.\n\n\"I promise to do all the things that I can't even dream I would be able to do - the things that will be inspired by my love for you,\" he said, reciting his final vow of the ceremony.\n\nFLASH\n\nThe day Tessa was born in the delivery room of Miami's Baptist Hospital.\n\n\"Push Leslie,\" the nurse instructed.\n\n\"Push honey!\" Owen repeated.\n\n\"I got it the first time honey!\" Leslie said.\n\nFLASH\n\nThe day Leslie told him she was pregnant with their second baby. \"Owen, remember how great it was when Tessa was born? Well my love, we're going to do it again!\"\n\n\u2022\n\nJeffries handed his partner a stainless steel blade with an attached light and a small plastic tube. Keller then propped Owen's head back and inserted the tube into his bloodstained mouth, down his throat and into his windpipe, making a direct source for oxygen rich air to get into his lungs. He then took his stethoscope and listened attentively to both sides of his patient's lungs. \"The tube is placed but the sounds are diminished on the left. I don't think it's in too far. I think his lung is collapsing, or it could just be filling with blood,\" Keller said.\n\n\"Jesus!\" Joel yelled out of frustration. \"What can I do?\"\n\n\"See that clear plastic bag over there...the one that looks like a football?\" Jeffries said.\n\n\"Yeah, this one?\" Kenyon asked, grabbing the long, tubular breathing assist device.\n\n\"That's it. Hook some of the clear tubing to the end of that bag, and then hook it up to the oxygen cylinder and turn it on...as high as it will go,\" Jeffries ordered.\n\nAs Joel complied, Keller grabbed the bag and started to assist Sands's breathing by squeezing air into his lungs.\n\n\"Here, take this,\" Keller asked his partner. \"I'm going to decompress this left lung.\"\n\nTaking another twelve-gauge needle and syringe, Keller found a spot in between Sands's ribs below his armpit and inserted the needle. As soon as he advanced the needle halfway, a surge of air came followed by a stream of blood.\n\n\"It's a hemo! He's bleeding inside next to his lung!\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\" Joel asked frantically.\n\n\"He needs surgery...and fast,\" Jeffries said.\n\n\"Ron, get him on a monitor and take a BP real quick,\" Keller asked as Jeffries hooked up three wires that were connected to three matching adhesive electrodes. They were placed on Owen's chest as the machine was turned on. The green screen displayed a constant wave that corresponded with a beep for each time his burdened heart cycled a beat.\n\nBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP\n\nFLASH\n\nThe black and white scenes continued. The beeping, to Owen, sounded more like the day his doorbell rang and Tessa had come home, standing on the front porch, holding her daughter.\n\n\"Daddy...\"\n\nFLASH\n\nThe day he sat in his daughter's room with the lights off, playing with his granddaughter Monica by candlelight. This scene was different than the rest though. Everything was black and white, except for her socks, her brightly colored pink socks.\n\n\"Grandpa...?\"\n\n\"Yes baby.\"\n\n\"Are you going to go help the babies one day?\"\n\n\"Someday honey.\"\n\n\"Not too soon because I need help with these babies,\" Monica said, pointing to the dolls under the shawl.\n\n\"That's a deal,\" he promised, holding her tight.\n\n\"Grandpa...?\"\n\n\"Yes baby.\"\n\n\"Not too soon...\" she said, as her eyes closed shut.\n\nBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP the monitor chimed with a constant tone.\n\n\"He's in a systole!\" Jeffries yelled as Keller started to pound on Owen's chest.\n\nOwen continued to ascend through the clouds as the chopper and his lifeless body leveled off, taking a course toward the trauma center. The horrid, shrieking tone of the cardiac monitor that was indicating a flat line continued to fill the chopper's cockpit. Keller looked down at the spent man, torn and tattered. He was covered in blood. As he lay motionless on his back, Owen's muscles relaxed for the last time letting his arm fall to the side. As the medic reached for his patient's arm, a peculiar sight caught his attention. Falling from his left hand was a small child's pink sock.\n\n* * * * *\n\nAdvance\n\nIntense heat boiled up from runway Four-Left at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base as two F-16 fighters idled at the end of the five thousand foot strip.\n\n\"Tango six Ringleader, tango four Circus Act.\"\n\n\"Circus Act, systems check complete.\"\n\n\"Ringleader is go-no-go, initiate mission.\"\n\n\"Circus Act is go-no-go.\"\n\nWith simultaneous bursts of power, the two jets screamed down the runway until rotating, pointing their noses skyward and in an instant they were gone, surfing in the clouds above.\n\nAfter assuming a heading of two hundred and thirty degrees, the jets leveled off at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet and continued southwest. Seven minutes into the flight, they found it. The aerostat balloon Fat Albert floated at an altitude of 14,740 feet, with Jim Plimpton's 18-foot backcountry boat Redfisher hanging from a towline with its bow pointed towards the earth below.\n\n\"Circus Act to Ringleader, target identified at two hundred sixty-five degrees, going to missile lock.\"\n\n\"Ringleader to Circus Act, watch your lookdown screen for marine traffic.\"\n\n\"Circus Act has a clear LZ.\"\n\n\"Ringleader to Circus Act, fire at will.\"\n\nOne of the jets banked to the left, breaking its tight formation with the other and took a direct course aiming straight for the balloon. As his wings leveled horizontally, the green heads-up display showed a set of computer generated cross hairs that lit red with an accompanying audible alarm as the missile guidance system locked on the target.\n\n\"Circus Act, missile away.\"\n\nAn orange burst of fire and smoke exploded around the deploying jet's right wing as an Exercet missile assumed independent flight. Three seconds later it collided with the solid aluminum turnbuckle mounted on the nose of the target. The missile exploded on impact, engulfing the white balloon in a ball of fire and smoke. The boat almost seemed to stand still for a second before starting its plummet to the water below, gaining speed with every hundred feet of free fall. The Redfisher, having not been designed for air travel, flopped about in the accelerating wind like a leaf falling from a tree for the first time. As the descent increased, the boat started to spin at a fast rate, ejecting equipment in all directions until the spinning mass struck the water, which at the boat's speed, acted more like concrete, breaking it into multiple pieces.\n\n\"Circus Act to Ringleader, missile strike, high order detonation, target destroyed. Returning to base.\"\n\n* * * * *\n\nComposure\n\nA soft snow fell over Arlington National Cemetery as a small group of family gathered to say one final goodbye to their father, grandfather, friend and partner. The memory of Owen Sands was treated to a full dress ceremony the day before and now it was time for everyone to return home. It had taken some political manipulating to get the facility to accept him into the ranks of military heroes and the political hierarchy but in the end, Pat Stephens drew on some favors that were owed to him and a spot that had been reserved decades before for John Kenyon's spouse, a person who never materialized, was made available.\n\nJoel and Jhenna Kenyon remembered the day they stood at the same set of plots eight years before to bury their father; now they were there again with a lot less fanfare. The two men would share the same piece of land and honor, having served their country to the end and with sacrifice. Next to Joel's side were Tessa, tiny Monica, Jade Sands, and Jhenna Kenyon-Stephens, all holding hands and looking at the patch of snow where Owen was laid to rest.\n\nBefore Pat Stephens's sweep was over, Joel Kenyon was a key agent in the indictment of thirty-one defendants, seven of whom were agents in the Tavernier office. Joel stayed on with the restructured Tavernier office that was later moved south to Plantation Key, across the basin from the local Coast Guard station, making his temporary position a permanent one. He and Tessa moved in together, taking over the Sands home next to Coral Shores High School where they stayed busy raising Monica and Tessa's sister Jade, who turned out to be a big help around the house, always volunteering for laundry duty. A bond developed between Tessa and Joel's sister Jhenna. Both women, it turned out, were with child, almost simultaneously, and a strong friendship was born. The following year, Pat Stephens was nominated and confirmed as the youngest United States Attorney in American history.\n\n* * * * *\n\nEpilogue\n\nThe Remote Viewer program was originally developed by the U. S. Army but after numerous successes, it was handed over to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Despite a large amount of skepticism, Congress continued to fund the unit that basically contracted services to over a hundred self-proclaimed psychics. Loose information was fed to the group and the results were vetted for relevant matches. The members who consistently supplied what was termed wild card data were eliminated and replaced with new candidates who would apply their craft to new scenarios.\n\nAfter a year of conventional searches that included placing the fugitive at the top of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and a segment on the nationally syndicated crime-watch show, American Fugitive, the Justice Department contacted the Remote Viewer unit which, until that point, had only focused on targets of military interest. With a loose dossier, each of the gifted contractors used their skills to produce mental data that could be used like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Ninety-nine percent of the results were typical, placing the location of the wanted man everywhere from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to the Bahamas, to the Baja Peninsula. A Russian albino named Dmitri Burshirov was the one dissenting view, placing the target thousands of miles from the rest.\n\nDeep in the Wyoming countryside, towering pines occupied the sides of the two-lane blacktop that carried a convoy of six dark blue Chevy Suburbans cruising along in a tight, single file line like a pack of stock cars drafting on a greasy racetrack. At ninety miles per hour, the line slowed meeting eight more dark colored vans and sedans, converging as they turned into the entrance of a small campground. Like a horde of mice being let out of a cage, the vehicles swarmed throughout the park as each one took an assigned position.\n\nIn the lead Suburban, Joel Kenyon and Pat Stephens exited, each one dressed in black duty fatigues and matching flack vests. Nestled in site forty-two was a Coleman pop-up camper, a small recreational vehicle with a metal body and a canvas superstructure that had its screen windows obscured with bolts of similar canvas. Inside, a baby cried as sixty-seven agents with their guns drawn surrounded the small trailer, hiding behind cars and other campers. They watched as a small woman dressed in cutoff jean shorts exited and walked over to a brick building that housed the park's laundry facility. Kenyon and Stephens made a duck walk towards the small aluminum and canvas door with their arms locked and guns pointed towards the shelter's main entry.\n\n\"Jordan Frances Cheney!\" Kenyon called out.\n\n\"Just...just a minute,\" cried a man's stuttering voice as a shuffle ensued.\n\n\"Jordan Cheney, this is the United States Treasury Department. We have a warrant for your arrest,\" Stephens called out as the agents tensed up, preparing for a fight. And then the door opened.\n\n\"I'm unarmed,\" Jordan announced, stepping out of the camper with his hands in the air.\n\nJoel kept his gun aimed at Jordan's face as another agent wearing a blue windbreaker with the embroidered letters FBI on the back secured the fugitive's hands behind his back with a set of nickel-plated handcuffs.\n\n\"I always knew it would be you,\" Jordan said, looking Joel in the eye.\n\n\"You probably better not say anything Jordan,\" Joel solemnly replied as the other agents escorted Jordan to the back of the closest Suburban.\n\nAs Pat holstered the composite Glock handgun in his right hand, an agent holding a shotgun approached him from behind.\n\n\"Mr. Stephens, sir?\" he said to his superior.\n\n\"Yes, Agent Simpson?\"\n\n\"Sir...I need to get my weapon back sir.\"\n\n\"Of course, sure, here you go,\" Pat replied, handing the gun and its holster over to the appreciative subordinate.\n\n\"God, that was fun,\" Pat said to Joel who just looked at him with half a smile. \"Come on bro, if we catch the next flight out of Cheyenne we can make it home for dinner.\"\n\n\u2022\n\nThe End\n\n* * * * *\n\nAbout the Author\n\nT. Rafael Cimino was born in Wayne New Jersey on June 4th, 1963 and grew up in the Florida Keys. He is the youngest of the Cimino family of film producers. He is best known for his written contributions to the film and television industries. (Miami Vice, Lost in Translation, A Love Song for Bobby Long, The Other Boleyn Girl and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) In 2009 Cimino released Mid Ocean, a previously completed screenplay, as a novel and received critical acclaim. As a native of south Florida, he is able to give a rare account of a lifestyle; experienced by few - idolized by many. Cimino has also authored Appropriate, Delta-Echo-Alpha, Table 21 and Rivertown. He lives in North Carolina with his family.\n\n\u2022\n\nVisit the Author on the web at http:\/\/www.TRCimino.com and join the Mid Ocean fan group on Facebook at:  http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Mid-Ocean\/207834942743?ref=ts\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# Skulking Permit\n\n# The Galaxy Project\n\n# Robert Sheckley\n\nSeries Editor Barry N. Malzberg\n\n## Copyright\n\nSkulking Permit  \nCopyright \u00a9 1954 by Robert Sheckley, renewed 1982\n\neForeword  \nCopyright \u00a9 2011 by John Lutz\n\nJacket illustration copyright \u00a9 1954 by the Estate of Ed Emshwiller  \nCover art to the electronic edition copyright \u00a9 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC\n\nSpecial materials copyright \u00a9 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.\n\nElectronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.  \nISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795321740\n\n# Contents\n\nAbout _Galaxy_ Magazine\n\nAbout Science Fiction Novelettes and Novellas\n\nAbout the Author\n\nAbout the Author of the eForeword\n\nAbout the Jacket\n\neForeword\n\nSkulking Permit\n\n# ABOUT _GALAXY_ MAGAZINE\n\nThe first issue of _Galaxy_ , dated October 1950, already heralded to the highest standards of the field. The authors it published regularly contributed to the leading magazine _Astounding_ , writing a kind of elegant and humanistic science fiction which although not previously unknown had always been anomalous. Its founding editor, H. L. Gold (1914\u20131996), was a science fiction writer of some prominence whose editorial background had been in pulp magazines and comic books; however, his ambitions were distinctly literary, and he was deliberately searching for an audience much wider and more eclectic than the perceived audience of science fiction. His goal, he stated, was a magazine whose fiction \"Would read like the table of contents of a literary magazine or _The Saturday Evening Post_ of the 21st century, dealing with extrapolation as if it were contemporary.\" The magazine, although plagued by distribution difficulties and an Italian-based publisher (World Editions), was an immediate artistic success, and when its ownership was transferred with the issue of August 1951 to its printer Robert M. Guinn, it achieved financial stability for the remainder of the decade.\n\n_Galaxy_ published every notable science fiction writer of its first decade and found in many writers who would become central figures: Robert Sheckley, James E. Gunn, Wyman Guin, and F. L. Wallace, among others. _Galaxy_ revivified older writers such as Frederik Pohl and Alfred Bester (whose first novel, _The Demolished Man_ , was commissioned and directed page by page by Gold). John Campbell fought with _Astounding_ and remained an important editor, and _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ (inaugurated a year before _Galaxy_ ) held to high standards of literary quality while spreading its contents over two fields, but _Galaxy_ was incontestably the 1950s' flagship magazine for the acidly satiric, sometimes profoundly comic aspect of its best contributions. _Galaxy_ had a lasting effect not only upon science fiction but upon literature itself. J.G. Ballard stated that he had been deeply affected by _Galaxy_. Alan Arkin, an actor who became a star after 1960 and won an Oscar in the new millennium, contributed two stories in the mid-fifties.\n\nAt this point Gold was succumbing to agoraphobia, physical ills, and overall exhaustion (some of this perhaps attributable to his active service during WWII) against which he had struggled from the outset. (There is creditable evidence that Frederik Pohl was the de facto editor during Gold's last years.) Gold would return some submissions with notes like: \"Garbage,\" \"Absolute Crap.\" Isaac Asimov noted in his memoir \"Anthony Boucher wrote rejection slips which read like acceptances. And Horace wrote notes of acceptance which felt like rejections.\" Despite this, the magazine retained most of its high standard and also some of its regular contributors (William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, Pohl himself). Others could no longer bear Gold's imperiousness and abusiveness.\n\n# ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION NOVELETTES AND NOVELLAS\n\nIn the view of James E. Gunn, science fiction as a genre finds its peak in the novella (17,500\u201340,000 words) and novelette (7,500\u201317,500 words). Both forms have the length to develop ideas and characters fully but do not suffer from padding or the hortatory aspect present in most modern science fiction novels. The longer story-form has existed since science fictions inception with the April 1926 issue of _Amazing Stories_ , but _Galaxy_ developed the form to a consistent level of sophistication and efficiency and published more notable stories of sub-novel length than any other magazine during the 50s...and probably in any decade.\n\nThe novella and novelette as forms make technical and conceptual demands greater, perhaps even greater than the novel, and _Galaxy_ writers, under founding editor H. L. Gold's direction, consistently excelled in these lengths. Gold's most memorable story, \"A Matter of Form\" (1938) was a long novelette, and he brought practical as well as theoretical lessons to his writers, who he unleashed to develop these ideas. (John Campbell of course, had also done this in the 40s and continued in the 50s to be a directive editor.) It is not inconceivable that many or even most of the contents of the 1950's _Galaxy_ were based on ideas originated by Gold: golden technology becomes brass and jails its human victims when it runs amok\u2014is certainly one of his most characteristic.\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nRobert Sheckley (1928\u20132005) first appeared in the October 1952 issue of _Imagination_. His first two stories for _Galaxy_ (\"The Leech\" and \"Cost of Living\") appeared in December 1952, and he became almost immediately Gold's dominant and exemplary author, selling more stories at all lengths to the magazine in its signal decade than any other writer. His first novel, _Time Killer_ , appeared in the magazine at the end of the decade. Sheckley's deft, profoundly satiric and darkly humorous fiction set a tone for the magazine that Gold urged his writers to duplicate. An early _Galaxy_ story, \"The Seventh Victim,\" was the basis of the Ursula Andress film _The Tenth Victim_. Sheckley graduated in the late 50s to _Playboy_ where he was, along with Henry Slesar, probably the magazine's most prolific contributor over a ten year period. He had five wives and four children, lived variously in New York City, Ibiza, and Oregon, and in his last years traveled often to the Eastern Bloc states where he was probably the most esteemed of all science fiction writers. His 1968 novel, _Dimension of Miracles_ , is a picaresque satiric novel modeled upon Voltaire and easily equivalent as both literature and commentary to _Candide_. Sheckley, a heavy smoker, died of systemic breakdown in December 2005. A posthumous short story collection, selected and introduced by Jonathan Lethem, will be published by The New York Review of Books Press in 2012.\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE eFOREWORD\n\nJohn Lutz is the author of _SWF Seeks Same_ (1992), which was adapted for the famous film _Single White Female_ , directed by Barbet Schroder and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Brigitte Fonda. He is the author of more than sixty other mystery and suspense novels; his current bestselling series of \"Night\" novels set in New York City are published by Kensington. He is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and in 1986 won an Edgar for his short story \"Ride The Lightning,\" expanded the next year to novel length under the same title. He lives in St. Louis and Sarasota. His superb science fiction story\u2014\"Booth 13,\" his only contribution to the genre\u2014was published in _Galaxy_ in 1968.\n\n# ABOUT THE JACKET\n\nCOVER IMAGE: \"Merry Christmas to Our Readers\" by Ed Emshwiller\n\nEd Emshwiller (1925\u20131990) was _Galaxy_ 's dominant artist through the 1950s. His quirky images, perspective, and off-center humor provide perhaps the best realization of the magazine's iconoclastic, satirical vision. Emshwiller was\u2014matched with Kelly Freas\u2014science fiction's signature artist through the decade and a half initiated by this color illustration. He and Carol Emshwiller, the celebrated science fiction writer, lived in Long Island during the period of his prominence in science fiction. (Nonstop Press published _Emshwiller: Infinity X Two: The Art & Life of Ed and Carol Emshwiller_, a joint biography and collection of their work in visual and literary medium, in 2007.) In the early 70s, Emshwiller became passionately interested in avant-garde filmmaking, and that passion led him to California, where he spent his last decades deeply involved in the medium of independent film and its community. He abandoned illustration: in Carol's words \"When Ed was through with something he was really through with it.\" He died of cancer in 1990. His son, Peter Emshwiller, published a fair amount of science fiction in the 80s and 90s.\n\n# eForeword\n\nRobert Sheckley was many things, but more than anything else, he was an original. He was Brooklyn born in 1928 and raised in Maplewood, New Jersey, after his family moved there in 1931. After graduating from high school in 1946, he hitchhiked west and worked odd jobs in California for a while. Tiring of that, he joined the Army and served in Korea. In 1951, he received an undergraduate degree from New York University.\n\nHe held various jobs before beginning to publish in magazines such as _Galaxy_ , _Imagination_ , as well as some of the other science fiction magazines in the fifties. His style was unique and sharp, his stories clever and laced with an intelligent wit. He was also versatile. He wrote novels, short stories, episodic TV (\"Captain Video and his Video Rangers\"), film adaptations, and a series of mystery novels. Sheckley's skill wasn't lost on critics; some considered him the best short story writer of the fifties and sixties\u2014working in any genre.\n\nIn the sixties especially, his work found a broader audience. He was a brilliant satirist in a serious Cold War time that needed all the humor it could get. He is regarded as a seminal science fiction humorist.\n\nThrough most of the seventies, Sheckley lived and wrote on Ibiza, an island off the coast of Spain. It was a place known for easy living, though like anywhere else on the globe after World War II, it wasn't free from Cold War anxiety. Imminent possible incineration or a slow death by radiation were specters that haunted, directly or indirectly, much of the fiction of the era. Even, maybe especially, futuristic fiction, and Sheckley's was no exception.\n\nAdd to that, science was getting uppity. Robotics and computers were beginning to raise the possibility that technical devices we didn't really understand might turn out to be smarter than their creators. The grimmer it got, the more grist for the satirist's mill. Sheckley's fiction was soon being published in the slick magazines, most notably _Playboy_.\n\nIt didn't take long for Sheckley and the movies to discover each other. His 1953 _Galaxy_ short story \"The Seventh Victim\" was the basis for the Italian film _La decima vittima_ , starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. There was also an English film version, _The Tenth Victim_.\n\nA prolific author, Sheckley. So much so that he wrote under various pen names to avoid being published more than once in the same magazine. He wrote more than fifteen novels and is thought to have published more than 400 short stories.\n\nNominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.\n\nHe traveled extensively, mostly in Europe, which informs much of his work. Separated from his fifth wife, Gail, he finally settled in Dutchess County, New York. In 2005, while attending an international conference in the Ukraine, Sheckley became ill and was hospitalized in Kiev. He seemed for a while to be improving, and returned home, but he died in a Poughkeepsie hospital in Dutchess County, December 9, 2005. He was 77 years old.\n\n\"Skulking Permit\" first appeared in _Galaxy_ in 1954. This was the year the Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in public schools; the hydrogen bomb was tested on the Bikini Atoll, paving the way for the most famous bathing suit of all time; in Vietnam, French forces at Dien Bein Phu fell to the Viet Minh Army; Hitchcock's _Rear Window_ was released; Russia was rattling sabers and ranting about intercontinental ballistic missiles; and Rosa Parks sat where she chose to on the bus. Times were tense. And ripe for a superb young satirist and absurdist to ply his trade.\n\nThis is considered to be among the best of Sheckley's stories. Its fluid prose, pace, and deftness, and from time to time covert\u2014and not-so-covert\u2014wit, demonstrate the skills that earned him such acclaim and ensured that he'd have a place in the pantheon of science fiction greats. The story opens on a pleasant morning in the village of New Delaware, on the planet of New Delaware, the Outer Colonies. The citizens of New Delaware have a problem, personified by the village's frantic, peripatetic mayor. Unexpectedly, amazingly, a rusty and dusty radio has sprung to life, and a voice informs the mayor that the village is any day going to be visited by a resident inspector from Imperial Earth. This to make sure that the colony is conforming to the customs, institutions, and traditions of Earth. The mayor is informed that there is \"no room for aliens,\" nor for \"deviant human cultures which, by definition, are alien.\"\n\nThe thing is, in New Delaware, the most isolated of the colonies from Mother Earth, things have changed. And in their own way. The planet hasn't had contact with Earth for over 200 years, when Earth and its colonies were called the United Democracies. There was the plague 200 years ago that claimed the lives of three-fourths of the village's occupants. New Delaware reconstituted itself and has been on its own for two centuries, made itself anew, set its own rules and developed its own customs, institutions, and traditions.\n\nThat could be a problem.\n\nSheckley deals with it brilliantly. You'll read this story with a smile, and a thoughtful expression afterward.\n\nWhat's Sheckley up to here? Is this story simply a clever entertainment? You could read it that way. It might be about crime and the relationship of the criminal and society. Do societies for some reason _need_ criminals? Is there something in the human heart or brain that disdains an Eden without a serpent? In the absence of serpents, might we create them? Or we could apply a broader interpretation. Could \"Skulking Permit\" be about the innate goodness of humankind? Or about our innate imperfections? It might even be read as a not-very-thinly disguised socialist manifesto.\n\nBut then there are those final paragraphs. That last sentence.\n\nA wonderful writer has given us a lot to think about in \"Skulking Permit.\" But, as with the villagers in New Delaware, only if we choose to expend the effort. Actively thinking takes energy, and might lead to someplace unpleasant.\n\nMaybe better to take a nap.\n\nBut then we'd miss reading a prime example of craftsmanship and artistry created by one of science fiction's masters. Either way, \"Skulking Permit\" is a deft and fascinating accomplishment. Your permit to enjoy.\n\n\u2014John Lutz\n\n# Skulking Permit\n\n**T** om Fisher had no idea he was about to begin a criminal career. It was morning. The big red sun was just above the horizon, trailing its small yellow companion. The village, tiny and precise, a unique white dot on the planet's green expanse, glistened under its two midsummer suns.\n\nTom was just waking up inside his cottage. He was a tall, tanned young man, with his father's oval eyes and his mother's easygoing attitude toward exertion. He was in no hurry; there could be no fishing until the fall rains, and therefore no real work for a Fisher. Until fall, he was going to loaf and mend his fishing poles.\n\n\"It's supposed to have a red roof!\" he heard Billy Painter shouting outside.\n\n\"Churches _never_ have red roofs!\" Ed Weaver shouted back.\n\nTom frowned. Not being involved, he had forgotten the changes that had come over the village in the last two weeks. He slipped on a pair of pants and sauntered out to the village square.\n\nThe first thing he saw when he entered the square was a large new sign, reading: NO ALIENS ALLOWED WITHIN CITY LIMITS. There were no aliens on the entire planet of New Delaware. There was nothing but forest, and this one village. The sign was purely a statement of policy.\n\nThe square itself contained a Church, a Jail and a Post Office, all constructed in the last two frantic weeks and set in a neat row facing the market. No one knew what to do with these buildings; the village had gone along nicely without them for over two hundred years. But now, of course, they had to be built.\n\n**E** d Weaver was standing in front of the new Church, squinting upward. Billy Painter was balanced precariously on the Church's steep roof, his blond mustache bristling indignantly. A small crowd had gathered.\n\n\"Damn it, man,\" Billy Painter was saying, \"I tell you I was reading about it just last week. White roof, okay. Red roof, never.\"\n\n\"You're mixing it up with something else,\" Weaver said. \"How about it, Tom?\"\n\nTom shrugged, having no opinion to offer. Just then, the Mayor bustled up, perspiring freely, his shirt flapping over his large paunch.\n\n\"Come down,\" he called to Billy. \"I just looked it up. It's the Little Red _Schoolhouse_ , not Churchhouse.\"\n\nBilly looked angry. He had always been moody; all Painters were. But since the Mayor made him Chief of Police last week, he had become downright temperamental.\n\n\"We don't have no Little Schoolhouse,\" Billy argued, halfway down the ladder.\n\n\"We'll just have to build one,\" the Mayor said. \"We'll have to hurry, too.\" He glanced at the sky. Involuntarily, everyone in the crowd glanced upward. But there was still nothing in sight.\n\n\"Where are the Carpenter boys?\" the Mayor asked. \"Sid, Sam, Marv\u2014where are you?\"\n\nSid Carpenter's head appeared through the crowd. He was still on crutches from last month when he had fallen out of a tree looking for threstle's eggs; no Carpenter was worth a damn at tree climbing.\n\n\"The other boys are at Ed Beer's Tavern,\" Sid said.\n\n\"Where else would they be?\" Mary Waterman called from the crowd.\n\n\"Well, you gather them up,\" the Mayor said. \"They gotta build us a Little Schoolhouse, and quick. Tell them to put it up beside the Jail.\" He turned to Billy Painter, who was back on the ground. \"Billy, you paint that Schoolhouse a good bright red, inside and out. It's very important.\"\n\n\"When do I get a Police Chief badge?\" Billy demanded. \"I read that Police Chiefs always get badges.\"\n\n\"Make yourself one,\" the Mayor said. He mopped his face with his shirt-tail. \"Sure hot. Don't know why that Inspector couldn't have come in winter... Tom! Tom Fisher! Got an important job for you. Come on, I'll tell you all about it.\"\n\nHe put an arm around Tom's shoulders and they walked to the Mayor's cottage past the empty market, along the village's single paved road. In the old days, that road had been of packed dirt. But the old days had ended two weeks ago and now the road was paved with crushed rock. It made barefoot walking so uncomfortable that the villagers simply cut across each other's lawns. The Mayor, though, walked on it out of principle.\n\n\"Now look, Mayor,\" Tom protested, \"I'm on my vacation\u2014\"\n\n\"Can't have any vacations now,\" the Mayor said. \"Not _now_. He's due any day.\" He ushered Tom inside his cottage and sat down in the big armchair, which had been pushed as close to the Interstellar Radio as possible.\n\n\"Tom,\" the Mayor said directly, \"how would you like to be a criminal?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Tom. \"What's a Criminal?\"\n\n**S** quirming uncomfortably in his chair, the Mayor rested a hand on the Radio for authority. \"It's this way,\" he said, and began to explain.\n\nTom listened, but the more he heard, the less he liked. It was all the fault of that Interstellar Radio, he decided. Why hadn't it really been broken?\n\nNo one had believed it could work. It had gathered dust in the office of one Mayor after another, for generations, the last silent link with Mother Earth. Two hundred years ago, Earth talked with New Delaware, and with Ford IV, Alpha Centauri, Nueva Espa\u00f1a, and the other colonies that made up the United Democracies of Earth. Then all conversations stopped.\n\nThere seemed to be a war on Earth. New Delaware, with its one village, was too small and too distant to take part. They waited for news, but no news came. And then plague struck the village, wiping out three-quarters of the inhabitants.\n\nSlowly the village healed. The villagers adopted their own ways of doing things. They forgot Earth.\n\nTwo hundred years passed.\n\nAnd then, two weeks ago, the ancient Radio had coughed itself into life. For hours, it growled and spat static, while the inhabitants of the village gathered around the Mayor's cottage.\n\nFinally words came out: \"... hear me, New Delaware? Do you hear me?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, we hear you,\" the Mayor said.\n\n\"The colony is still there?\"\n\n\"It certainly is,\" the Mayor said proudly.\n\nThe voice became stern and official. \"There has been no contact with the Outer Colonies for some time, due to unsettled conditions here. But that's over, except for a little mopping up. You of New Delaware are still a colony of Imperial Earth and subject to her laws. Do you acknowledge the status?\"\n\nThe Mayor hesitated. All the books referred to Earth as the United Democracies. Well, in two centuries, names could change.\n\n\"We are still loyal to Earth,\" the Mayor said with dignity.\n\n\"Excellent. That saves us the trouble of sending an expeditionary force. A Resident Inspector will be dispatched to you from the nearest point, to ascertain whether you conform to the customs, institutions and traditions of Earth.\"\n\n\"What?\" the Mayor asked, worried.\n\n**T** he stern voice became higher-pitched. \"You realize, of course, that there is room for only one intelligent species in the Universe\u2014Man! All others must be suppressed, wiped out, annihilated. We can tolerate no aliens sneaking around us. I'm sure you understand, General.\"\n\n\"I'm not a General. I'm a Mayor.\"\n\n\"You're in charge, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Then you are a General. Permit me to continue. In this galaxy, there is no room for aliens. None! Nor is there room for deviant human cultures, which, by definition, are alien. It is impossible to administer an empire when everyone does as he pleases. There must be order, _no matter what the cost_.\"\n\nThe Mayor gulped hard and stared at the radio.\n\n\"Be sure you're running an Earth colony, General, with no radical departures from the norm, such as free will, free love, free elections, or anything else on the proscribed list Those things are _alien_ , and we're pretty rough on aliens. Get your colony in order, General. The Inspector will call in about two weeks. That is all.\"\n\nThe village held an immediate meeting, to determine how best to conform with the Earth mandate. All they could do was hastily model themselves upon the Earth pattern as shown in their ancient books.\n\n\"I don't see why there has to be a Criminal,\" Tom said.\n\n\"That's a very important part of Earth society,\" the Mayor explained. \"All the books agree on it. The Criminal is as important as the Postman, say, or the Police Chief. Unlike them, the Criminal is engaged in anti-social work. He works _against_ society, Tom. If you don't have people working _against_ society, how can you have people working _for_ it? There'd be no jobs for them to do.\"\n\nTom shook his head. \"I just don't see it.\"\n\n\"Be reasonable, Tom. We have to have Earthly things. Like Paved Roads. All the books mention that. And Churches, and Schoolhouses, and Jails. And all the books mention Crime.\"\n\n\"I won't do it,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Put yourself in my position,\" the Mayor begged. \"This Inspector comes and meets Billy Painter, our Police Chief. He asks to see the jail. Then he says, 'No Prisoners?' I answer, 'Of course not. We don't have any Crime here.' 'No Crime?' he says. 'But Earth colonies always have Crime. You know that.' 'We don't,' I answer. 'Didn't even know what it was until we looked up the word last week.' 'Then why did you build a Jail?' he asks me. 'Why did you appoint a Police Chief?\"'\n\n**T** he Mayor paused for breath. \"You see? The whole thing falls through. He sees at once that we're not truly Earthlike. We're faking it. We're _aliens!_ \"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Tom said, impressed in spite of himself.\n\n\"This way,\" the Mayor went on quickly, \"I can say, 'Certainly we've got Crime here, just like on Earth. We've got a combination Thief and Murderer. Poor fellow had a bad upbringing and he's maladjusted. Our Police Chief has some clues, though. We expect an arrest within 24 hours. We'll lock him in the Jail, then Rehabilitate him.\"\n\n\"What's Rehabilitate?\" Tom asked.\n\n\"I'm not sure. I'll worry about that when I come to it. But now do you see how necessary crime is?\"\n\n\"I suppose so. But why me?\"\n\n\"Can't spare anyone else. And you've got narrow eyes. Criminals always have narrow eyes.\"\n\n\"They aren't _that_ narrow. They're no narrower than Ed Weaver's\u2014\"\n\n\"Tom, please,\" the Mayor said. \"We're all doing our part. You want to help, don't you?\"\n\n\"I suppose so,\" Tom repeated wearily.\n\n\"Fine. You're our Criminal. Here, this makes it legal.\"\n\nHe handed Tom a document. It read: SKULKING PERMIT. _Know all Men by these Presents that Tom Fisher is a Duly Authorized Thief and Murderer. He is hereby required to Skulk in Dismal Alleys, Haunt Places of Low Repute, and Break the Law_.\n\nTom read it through twice, then asked, \"What Law?\"\n\n\"I'll let you know as fast as I make them up,\" the Mayor said. \"All Earth colonies have Laws.\"\n\n\"But what do I _do_?\"\n\n\"You Steal. And Kill. That should be easy enough.\" The Mayor walked to his bookcase and took down ancient volumes entitled _The Criminal and his Environment, Psychology of the Slayer_ , and _Studies in Theft Motivation_.\n\n\"These'll give you everything you need to know. Steal as much as you like. One Murder should be enough, though. No sense overdoing it.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Tom nodded. \"I guess I'll catch on.\"\n\nHe picked up the books and returned to his cottage.\n\n**I** t was very hot and all the talk about Crime had puzzled and wearied him. He lay down on his bed and began to go through the ancient books.\n\nThere was a knock on his door.\n\n\"Come in,\" Tom called, rubbing his tired eyes.\n\nMarv Carpenter, oldest and tallest of the red-headed Carpenter boys, came in, followed by old Jed Farmer. They were carrying a small sack.\n\n\"You the town Criminal, Tom?\" Marv asked.\n\n\"Looks like it.\"\n\n\"Then this is for you.\" They put the sack on the floor and took from it a hatchet, two knives, a short spear, a club and a blackjack.\n\n\"What's all that?\" Tom asked, sitting upright.\n\n\"Weapons, of course,\" Jed Farmer said testily. \"You can't be a real Criminal without weapons.\"\n\nTom scratched his head. \"Is that a fact?\"\n\n\"You'd better start figuring these things out for yourself,\" Farmer went on in his impatient voice. \"Can't expect us to do everything for you.\"\n\nMarv Carpenter winked at Tom. \"Jed's sore because the Mayor made him our Postman.\"\n\n\"I'll do my part,\" Jed said. \"I just don't like having to write all those letters.\"\n\n\"Can't be too hard,\" Marv Carpenter said, grinning. \"The Postmen do it on Earth and they got a lot more people there. Good luck, Tom.\"\n\nThey left.\n\nTom bent down and examined the weapons. He knew what they were; the old books were full of them. But no one had ever actually used a weapon on New Delaware. The only native animals on the planet were small, furry, and confirmed eaters of grass. As for turning a weapon on a fellow villager\u2014why would anybody want to do that?\n\nHe picked up one of the knives. It was cold. He touched the point. It was sharp.\n\nTom began to pace the floor, staring at the weapons. They gave him a queer sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He decided he had been hasty in accepting the job.\n\nBut there was no sense worrying about it yet. He still had those books to read. After that, perhaps he could make some sense out of the whole thing.\n\n**H** e read for several hours, stopping only to eat a light lunch. The books were understandable enough; the various Criminal methods were clearly explained, sometimes with diagrams. But the whole thing was unreasonable. What was the purpose of Crime? Whom did it benefit? What did people get out of it?\n\nThe books didn't explain that. He leafed through them, looking at the photographed faces of Criminals. They looked very serious and dedicated, extremely conscious of the significance of their work to society.\n\nTom wished he could find out what that significance was. It would probably make things much easier.\n\n\"Tom?\" he heard the Mayor call from outside.\n\n\"I'm in here, Mayor,\" Tom said.\n\nThe door opened and the Mayor peered in. Behind him were Jane Farmer, Mary Waterman and Alice Cook.\n\n\"How about it, Tom?\" the Mayor asked.\n\n\"How about what?\"\n\n\"How about getting to work?\"\n\nTom grinned self-consciously. \"I was going to,\" he said. \"I was reading these books, trying to figure out\u2014\"\n\nThe three middle-aged ladies glared at him, and Tom stopped in embarrassment.\n\n\"You're certainly taking your time reading,\" Alice Cook said.\n\n\"Everyone else is outside working,\" said Jane Farmer.\n\n\"What's so hard about Stealing?\" Mary Waterman challenged.\n\n\"It's true,\" the Mayor told him. \"That Inspector might be here any day now and we don't have a Crime to show him.\"\n\n\"All right, all right,\" Tom said.\n\nHe stuck a knife and a black-jack in his belt, put the sack in his pocket\u2014for Loot\u2014and stalked out.\n\nBut where was he going? It was mid-afternoon. The market, which was the most logical place to rob, would be empty until evening. Besides, he didn't want to commit a Robbery in daylight. It seemed unprofessional.\n\nHe opened his Skulking Permit and read it through. _Required to Haunt Places of Low Repute_...\n\nThat was it! He'd haunt a Low Repute Place. He could form some plans there, get into the mood of the thing. But unfortunately, the village didn't have much to choose from. There was the Tiny Restaurant, run by the widowed Ames sisters, there was Jeff Hern's Lounging Spot, and finally there was Ed Beer's Tavern.\n\nEd's place would have to do.\n\n**T** he Tavern was a cottage much like the other cottages in the village. It had one big room for guests, a kitchen, and family sleeping quarters. Ed's wife did the cooking and kept the place as clean as she could, considering her ailing back. Ed served the drinks. He was a pale, sleepy-eyed man with a talent for worrying.\n\n\"Hello, Tom,\" Ed said. \"Hear. you're our Criminal.\"\n\n\"That's right,\" said Tom. \"I'll take a perricola.\"\n\nEd Beer served him the nonalcoholic root extract and stood anxiously in front of Tom's table. \"How come you ain't out Thieving, Tom?\"\n\n\"I'm planning,\" Tom said. \"My Permit says I have to Haunt Places of Low Repute. That's why I'm here.\"\n\n\"Is that nice?\" Ed Beer asked sadly. \"This is no Place of Low Repute, Tom.\"\n\n\"You serve the worst meals in town,\" Tom pointed out.\n\n\"I know. My wife can't cook. But there's a friendly atmosphere here. Folks like it.\"\n\n\"That's all changed, Ed. I'm making this tavern my headquarters.\"\n\nEd Beer's shoulders drooped. \"Try to keep a nice place,\" he muttered. \"A lot of thanks you get.\" He returned to the bar.\n\nTom proceeded to think. He found it amazingly difficult. The more he tried, the less came out. But he stuck grimly to it.\n\nAn hour passed. Richie Farmer, Jed's youngest son, stuck his head in the door. \"You Steal anything yet, Tom?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Tom told him, hunched over his table, still thinking.\n\nThe scorching afternoon drifted slowly by. Patches of evening became visible through the Tavern's small, not too clean windows. A cricket began to chirp outside, and the first whisper of night wind stirred the surrounding forest.\n\nBig George Waterman and Max Weaver came in for a glass of glava. They sat down beside Tom.\n\n\"How's it going?\" George Waterman asked.\n\n\"Not so good,\" Tom said. \"Can't seem to get the hang of this Stealing.\"\n\n\"You'll catch on,\" Waterman said in his slow, ponderous, earnest fashion. \"If anyone in this village could learn it, you can.\"\n\n\"We've got confidence in you, Tom,\" Weaver assured him.\n\nTom thanked them. They drank and left. He continued thinking, staring into his empty perricola glass.\n\nAn hour later, Ed Beer cleared his throat apologetically. \"It's none of my business, Tom, but when _are_ you going to Steal something?\"\n\n\"Right now,\" Tom said.\n\nHe stood up, made sure his weapons were securely in place, and strode out the door.\n\n**N** ightly bartering had begun in the market. Goods were piled carelessly on benches, or spread over the grass on straw mats. There was no currency, no rate of exchange. Ten hand-wrought nails were worth a pail of milk or two fish, or vice versa, depending on what you had to barter and needed at the moment. No one ever bothered keeping accounts. That was one Earth custom the Mayor was having difficulty introducing.\n\nAs Tom Fisher walked down the square, everyone greeted him.\n\n\"Stealing now, huh, Tom?\"\n\n\"Go to it, boy!\"\n\n\"You can do it!\"\n\nNo one in the village had ever witnessed an actual theft. They considered it an exotic custom of distant Earth and they wanted to see how it worked. They left their goods and followed Tom through the market, watching avidly.\n\nTom found that his hands were trembling. He didn't like having so many people watch him Steal. He decided he'd better work fast, while he still had the nerve.\n\nHe stopped abruptly in front of Mrs. Miller's fruit-laden bench. \"Tasty-looking geefers,\" he said casually.\n\n\"They're fresh,\" Mrs. Miller told him. She was a small and bright-eyed old woman. Tom could remember long conversations she had had with his mother, back when his parents were alive.\n\n\"They look very tasty,\" he said, wishing he had stopped somewhere else instead.\n\n\"Oh, they are,\" said Mrs. Miller. \"I picked them just this afternoon.\"\n\nIs he going to Steal now?\" someone whispered.\n\n\"Sure he is. Watch him,\" someone whispered back.\n\nTom picked up a bright green geefer and inspected it. The crowd became suddenly silent.\n\n\"Certainly looks very tasty,\" Tom said, carefully replacing the geefer.\n\nThe crowd released a long-drawn sigh.\n\nMax Weaver and his wife and five children were at the next bench. Tonight they were displaying two blankets and a shirt. They all smiled shyly when Tom came over, followed by the crowd.\n\n\"That shirt's about your size,\" Weaver informed him. He wished the people would go away and let Tom work.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Tom said, picking up the shirt.\n\nThe crowd stirred expectantly. A girl began to giggle hysterically. Tom gripped the shirt tightly and opened his Loot bag.\n\n**J** ust a moment!\" Billy Painter pushed his way through. He was wearing a badge now, an old Earth coin he had polished and pinned to his belt. The expression on his face was unmistakably official.\n\n\"What were you doing with that shirt, Tom?\" Billy asked.\n\n\"Why... I was just looking at it.\"\n\n\"Just looking at it, huh?\" Billy turned away, his hands clasped behind his back. Suddenly he whirled and extended a rigid forefinger. \"I don't think you were just looking at it, Tom. I think you were planning on _Stealing_ it!\"\n\nTom didn't answer. The tell-tale sack hung limply from one hand, the shirt from the other.\n\n\"As Police Chief,\" Billy went on, \"I've got a duty to protect these people. You're a Suspicious Character. I think I'd better lock you up for further questioning.\"\n\nTom hung his head. He hadn't expected this, but it was just as well.\n\nOnce he was in Jail, it would be all over. And when Billy released him, he could get back to fishing.\n\nSuddenly the Mayor bounded through the crowd, his shirt flapping wildly around his waist.\n\n\"Billy, what are you doing?\"\n\n\"Doing my duty, Mayor. Tom here is acting plenty suspicious. The book says\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what the book says,\" the Mayor told him. \"I gave you the book. You can't go arresting Tom. Not yet.\"\n\n\"But there's no other Criminal in the village,\" Billy complained.\n\n\"I can't help that,\" the Mayor said.\n\nBilly's lips tightened. \"The book talks about Preventive Police Work. I'm supposed to stop Crime before it happens.\"\n\nThe Mayor raised his hands and dropped them wearily. \"Billy, don't you understand? This village _needs_ a Criminal record. You have to help, too.\"\n\nBilly shrugged his shoulders. \"All right, Mayor. I was just trying to do my job.\" He turned to go. Then he whirled again on Tom. \"I'll still get you. Remember\u2014Crime Does Not Pay.\" He stalked off.\n\n\"He's overambitious, Tom,\" the Mayor explained. \"Forget it. Go ahead and Steal something. Let's get this job over with.\"\n\n**T** om started to edge away toward the green forest outside the village.\n\n\"What's wrong, Tom?\" the Mayor asked worriedly.\n\n\"I'm not in the mood any more,\" Tom said. \"Maybe tomorrow night\u2014\"\n\n\"No, right now,\" the Mayor insisted. \"You can't go on putting it off. Come on, we'll all help you.\"\n\n\"Sure we will.\" Max Weaver said. \"Steal the shirt, Tom. It's your size anyhow.\"\n\n\"How about a nice water jug, Tom?\"\n\n\"Look at these skeegee nuts over here.\"\n\nTom looked from bench to bench. As he reached for Weaver's shirt, a knife slipped from his belt and dropped to the ground. The crowd clucked sympathetically.\n\nTom replaced it, perspiring, knowing he looked like a butter-fingers. He reached out, took the shirt and stuffed it into the Loot Bag. The crowd cheered.\n\nTom smiled faintly, feeling a bit better. \"I think I'm getting the hang of it.\"\n\n\"Sure you are.\"\n\n\"We knew you could do it.\"\n\n\"Take something else, boy.\"\n\nTom walked down the market and helped himself to a length of rope, a handful of skeegee nuts and a grass hat.\n\n\"I guess that's enough,\" he told the Mayor.\n\n\"Enough for now,\" the Mayor agreed. \"This doesn't really count, you know. This was the same as people giving it to you. Practice, you might say.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Tom said, disappointed.\n\n\"But you know what you're doing. The next time it'll be just as easy.\"\n\n\"I suppose it will.\"\n\n\"And don't forget that Murder.\"\n\n\"Is it really necessary?\" Tom asked.\n\n\"I wish it weren't,\" the Mayor said. \"But this colony has been here for over two hundred years and we haven't had a single Murder. Not one! According to the records, all the other colonies had lots.\"\n\n\"I suppose we should have one,\" Tom admitted. \"I'll take care of it.\" He headed for his cottage. The crowd gave a rousing cheer as he departed.\n\n**A** t home, Tom lighted a rush lamp and fixed himself supper. After eating, he sat for a long time in his big armchair. He was dissatisfied with himself. He had not really handled the Stealing well. All day he had worried and hesitated. People had practically had to put things in his hands before he could take them.\n\nA fine Thief he was!\n\nAnd there was no excuse for it. Stealing and Murdering were like any other necessary jobs. Just because he had never done them before, just because he could see no sense to them, that was no reason to bungle them.\n\nHe walked to the door. It was a fine night, illuminated by a dozen nearby giant stars. The market was deserted again and the village lights were winking out.\n\nThis was the time to Steal!\n\nA thrill ran through him at the thought. He was proud of himself. That was how Criminals planned and this was how Stealing should be\u2014skulking, late at night.\n\nQuickly Tom checked his weapons, emptied his Loot Sack and walked out.\n\nThe last rush lights were extinguished. Tom moved noiselessly through the village. He came to Roger Waterman's house. Big Roger had left his spade propped against a wall. Tom picked it up. Down the block, Mrs. Weaver's water jug was in its usual place beside the front door. Tom took it. On his way home, he found a little wooden horse that some child had forgotten. It went with the rest.\n\nHe was pleasantly exhilarated, once the goods were safely home. He decided to make another haul.\n\nThis time he returned with a bronze plaque from the Mayor's house, Marv Carpenter's best saw, and Jed Farmer's sickle.\n\n\"Not bad,\" he told himself. He _was_ catching on. One more load would constitute a good night's work.\n\nThis time he found a hammer and chisel in Ron Stone's shed, and a reed basket at Alice Cook's house. He was about to take Jeff Hern's rake when he heard a faint noise. He flattened himself against a wall.\n\nBilly Painter came prowling quietly along, his badge gleaming in the starlight. In one hand, he carried a short, heavy club; in the other, a pair of homemade handcuffs. In the dim light, his face was ominous. It was the face of a man who had pledged himself against Crime, even though he wasn't really sure what it was.\n\nTom held his breath as Billy Painter passed within ten feet of him. Slowly Tom backed away.\n\nThe Loot Sack jingled.\n\n\"Who's there?\" Billy yelled. When no one answered, he turned a slow circle, peering into the shadows. Tom was flattened against a wall again. He was fairly sure Billy wouldn't see him. Billy had weak eyes because of the fumes of the paint he mixed. All Painters had weak eyes. It was one of the reasons they were moody.\n\n\"Is that you, Tom?\" Billy asked, in a friendly tone. Tom was about to answer, when he noticed that Billy's club was raised in a striking position. He kept quiet.\n\n\"I'll get you yet!\" Billy shouted.\n\n\"Well, get him in the morning!\" Jeff Hern shouted from his bedroom window. \"Some of us are trying to sleep.\"\n\nBilly moved away. When he was gone, Tom hurried home and dumped his pile of Loot on the floor with the rest. He surveyed his haul proudly. It gave him the sense of a job well done.\n\nAfter a cool drink of glava, Tom went to bed, falling at once into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.\n\n**N** ext morning, Tom sauntered out to see how the Little Red Schoolhouse was progressing. The Carpenter boys were hard at work on it, helped by several villagers.\n\n\"How's it coming?\" Tom called out cheerfully.\n\n\"Fair,\" Marv Carpenter said. \"It'd come along better if I had my saw.\"\n\n\"Your saw?\" Tom repeated blankly.\n\nAfter a moment, he remembered that _he_ had stolen it last night. It hadn't seemed to belong to anyone then. The saw and all the rest had been objects to be stolen. He had never given a thought to the fact that they might be used or needed.\n\nMarv Carpenter asked, \"Do you suppose I could use the saw for a while? Just for an hour or so?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Tom said, frowning, \"It's legally Stolen, you know.\"\n\n\"Of course it is. But if I could just borrow it\u2014\"\n\n\"You'd have to give it back.\"\n\n\"Well, naturally I'd give it back,\" Marv said indignantly. \"I wouldn't keep anything that was legally stolen.\"\n\n\"It's in the house with the rest of the Loot.\"\n\nMarv thanked him and hurried after it.\n\nTom began to stroll through the village. He reached the Mayor's house. The Mayor was standing outside, staring at the sky.\n\n\"Tom, did you take my bronze plaque?\" he asked.\n\n\"I certainly did,\" Tom said belligerently.\n\n\"Oh. Just wondering.\" The Mayor pointed upward. \"See it?\"\n\nTom looked. \"What?\"\n\n\"Black dot near the rim of the small sun.\"\n\n\"Yes. What is it?\"\n\n\"I'll bet it's the Inspector's ship. How's your work coming?\"\n\n\"Fine,\" Tom said, a trifle uncomfortably.\n\n\"Got your Murder planned?\"\n\n\"I've been having a little trouble with that,\" Tom confessed. \"To tell the truth, I haven't made any progress on it at all.\"\n\n\"Come on in, Tom. I want to talk to you.\"\n\n**I** nside the cool, shuttered living room, the Mayor poured two glasses of glava and motioned Tom to a chair.\n\n\"Our time is running short,\" the Mayor said gloomily. \"The Inspector may land any hour now. And my hands are full.\" He motioned at the Interstellar Radio. \" _That_ has been talking again. Something about a revolt on Deng IV and all loyal Earth colonies are to prepare for conscription, whatever that is. I never even heard of Deng IV, but I have to start worrying about it, in addition to everything else.\"\n\nHe fixed Tom with a stern stare. \"Criminals on Earth commit dozens of Murders a day and never even think about it. All your village wants of you is one little Killing. Is that too much to ask?\"\n\nTom spread his hands nervously. \"Do you really think it's necessary?\"\n\n\"You know it is,\" the Mayor said. \"If we're going Earthly, we have to go all the way. This is the only thing holding us back. All the other projects are right on schedule.\"\n\nBilly Painter entered, wearing a new official-blue shirt with bright metal buttons. He sank into a chair.\n\n\"Kill anyone yet, Tom?\"\n\nThe Mayor said, \"He wants to know if it's _necessary_.\"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" the Police Chief said. \"Read any of the books. You're not much of a Criminal if you don't Commit a Murder.\"\n\n\"Who'll it be, Tom?\" the Mayor asked.\n\nTom squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He rubbed his fingers together nervously.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll kill Jeff Hern,\" Tom blurted.\n\nBilly Painter leaned forward quickly. \"Why?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why? Why _not?_ \"\n\n\"What's your Motive?\"\n\n\"I thought you just wanted a Murder,\" Tom retorted. \"Who said anything about Motive?\"\n\n\"We can't have a fake Murder,\" the Police Chief explained. \"It has to be done right. And that means you have to have a proper Motive.\"\n\nTom thought for a moment. \"Well, I don't know Jeff well. Is that a good enough motive?\"\n\nThe Mayor shook his head. \"No, Tom, that won't do. Better pick someone else.\"\n\n\"Let's see,\" Tom said. \"How about George Waterman?\"\n\n\"What's the Motive?\" Billy asked immediately.\n\n\"Oh... um... Well, I don't like the way George walks. Never did. And he's noisy sometimes.\"\n\nThe Mayor nodded approvingly. \"Sounds good to me. What do you say, Billy?\"\n\n\"How am I supposed to deduce a Motive like that?\" Billy asked angrily. \"No, that might be good enough for a Crime of Passion. But you're a legal Criminal, Tom. By definition, you're Cold-blooded. Ruthless and Cunning. You can't Kill someone just because you don't like the way he walks. That's _silly_.\"\n\n\"I'd better think this whole thing over,\" Tom said, standing up.\n\n\"Don't take too long,\" the Mayor told him. \"The sooner it's done, the better.\"\n\nTom nodded and started out the door.\n\n\"Oh, Tom!\" Billy called. \"Don't forget to leave Clues. They're very important.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Tom said, and left.\n\n**O** utside, most of the villagers were watching the sky. The black dot had grown immensely larger. It covered most of the smaller sun.\n\nTom went to his Place of Low Repute to think things out. Ed Beer had apparently changed his mind about the desirability of Criminal elements. The Tavern was redecorated. There was a large sign, reading: CRIMINAL'S LAIR. Inside, there were new, carefully soiled curtains on the windows, blocking the daylight and making the Tavern truly a Dismal Retreat. Weapons, hastily carved out of soft wood, hung on one wall. On another wall was a large red splotch, an ominous-looking thing, even though Tom knew it was only Billy Painter's rootberry red paint.\n\n\"Come right in, Tom,\" Ed Beer said, and led him to the darkest corner in the room. Tom noticed that the Tavern was unusually filled for the time of day. People seemed to like the idea of being in a genuine Criminal's Lair.\n\nTom sipped a perricola and began to think.\n\nHe had to Commit a Murder.\n\nHe took out his Skulking Permit and looked it over. Unpleasant, unpalatable, something he wouldn't normally do, but he did have the legal obligation.\n\nTom drank his perricola and concentrated on Murder. He told himself he was going to _kill_ someone. He had to _snuff out a life_. He would make someone _cease to exist_.\n\nBut the phrases didn't contain the essence of the act. They were just words. To clarify his thoughts, he took big, red-headed Marv Carpenter as an example. Today, Marv was working on the Schoolhouse with his borrowed saw. If Tom killed Marv\u2014well, Marv wouldn't work any more.\n\nTom shook his head impatiently. He still wasn't grasping it.\n\nAll right, here was Marv Carpenter, biggest and, many thought, the pleasantest of the Carpenter boys. He'd be planing down a piece of wood, grasping the plane firmly in his large freckled hands, squinting down the line he had drawn. Thirsty, undoubtedly, and with a small pain in his left shoulder that Jan Druggist was unsuccessfully treating.\n\nThat was Marv Carpenter.\n\nThen\u2014\n\nMarv Carpenter sprawled on the ground, his eyes glaring open, limbs stiff, mouth twisted, no air going in or out his nostrils, no beat to his heart. Never again to hold a piece of wood in his large, freckled hands. Never again to feel the small and really unimportant pain in his shoulder that Jan Druggist was\u2014\n\nFor just a moment, Tom glimpsed what Murder really was. The vision passed, but enough of a memory remained to make him feel sick.\n\nHe could live with the Thieving. But Murder, even in the best interests of the village...\n\nWhat would people think, after they saw what he had just imagined? How could he live with them? How could he live with himself afterward?\n\nAnd yet he had to kill. Everybody in the village had a job and that was his.\n\nBut whom could he Murder?\n\n**T** he excitement started later in the day when the Interstellar Radio was filled with angry voices.\n\n\"Call _that_ a colony? Where's the capital?\"\n\n\"This is it,\" the Mayor replied.\n\n\"Where's your landing field?\"\n\n\"I think it's being used as a pasture,\" the Mayor said. \"I could look up where it was. No ship has landed here in over\u2014\"\n\n\"The main ship will stay aloft then. Assemble your officials. I am coming down immediately.\"\n\nThe entire village gathered around an open field that the Inspector designated. Tom strapped on his weapons and Skulked behind a tree, watching.\n\nA small ship detached itself from the big one and dropped swiftly down. It plummeted toward the field while the villagers held their breaths, certain it would crash. At the last moment, jets flared, scorching the grass, and the ship settled gently to the ground.\n\nThe Mayor edged forward, followed by Billy Painter. A door in the ship opened, and four men marched out. They held shining metallic instruments that Tom knew were weapons. After them came a large, red-faced man dressed in black, wearing four bright medals. He was followed by a little man with a wrinkled face, also dressed in black. Four more uniformed men followed him.\n\n\"Welcome to New Delaware,\" the Mayor said.\n\n\"Thank you, General,\" the big man said, shaking the Mayor's hand firmly. \"I am Inspector Delumaine. This is Mr. Grent, my Political Adviser.\"\n\nGrent nodded to the Mayor, ignoring his outstretched hand. He was looking at the villagers with an expression of mild disgust.\n\n\"We will survey the village,\" the Inspector said, glancing at Grent out of the corner of his eye. Grent nodded. The uniformed guards closed around them.\n\nTom followed at a safe distance, Skulking in true Criminal fashion. In the village, he hid behind a house to watch the Inspection.\n\nThe Mayor pointed out, with pardonable pride, the Jail, the Post Office, the Church and the Little Red Schoolhouse. The Inspector seemed bewildered. Mr. Grent smiled unpleasantly and rubbed his jaw.\n\n\"As I thought,\" he told the Inspector. \"A waste of time, fuel and a battle cruiser. This place has nothing of value.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure,\" the Inspector said. He turned to the Mayor. \"But what did you build them for, General?\"\n\n\"Why, to be Earthly,\" the Mayor said. \"We're doing our best, as you can see.\"\n\n**M** r. Grent whispered something in the Inspector's ear. \"Tell me,\" the Inspector asked the Mayor, \"how many young men are there in the village?\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\" The Mayor said in polite bewilderment.\n\n\"Young men between the ages of fifteen and sixty,\" Mr. Grent explained.\n\n\"You see, General, Imperial Mother Earth is engaged in a war. The colonists on Deng IV and some other colonies have turned against their birthright. They are revolting against the absolute authority of Mother Earth.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to hear that,\" the Mayor said sympathetically.\n\n\"We need men for the Space Fleet,\" the Inspector told him. \"Good healthy fighting men. Our reserves are depleted\u2014\"\n\n\"We wish,\" Mr. Grent broke in smoothly, \"to give all loyal Earth colonists a chance to fight for Imperial Mother Earth. We are sure you won't refuse.\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" the Mayor said. \"Certainly not. I'm sure our young men will be glad\u2014I mean they don't know much about it, but they're all bright boys. They can learn, I guess.\"\n\n\"You see?\" the Inspector said to Mr. Grent. \"Sixty, seventy, perhaps a hundred recruits. Not such a waste after all.\"\n\nMr. Grent still looked dubious.\n\nThe Inspector and his Adviser went to the Mayor's house for refreshment. Four soldiers accompanied them. The other four walked around the village, helping themselves to anything they found.\n\nTom hid in the woods nearby to think things over. In the early evening, Mrs. Ed Beer came furtively out of the village. She was a gaunt, grayish-blonde middle-aged woman, but she moved quite rapidly in spite of her case of housemaid's knee. She had a basket with her, covered with a red checkered napkin.\n\n\"Here's your dinner,\" she said, as soon as she found Tom.\n\n\"Why... thanks,\" said Tom, taken by surprise, \"You didn't have to do that.\"\n\n\"I certainly did. Our Tavern is your Place of Low Repute, isn't it? We're responsible for your well-being. And the Mayor sent you a message.\"\n\nTom looked up, his mouth full of food. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"He said to hurry up with the Murder. He's been stalling the Inspector and that nasty little Grent man. But they're going to ask him. He's sure of it.\"\n\nTom nodded.\n\n\"When are you going to do it?\" Mrs. Beer asked, cocking her head to one side.\n\n\"I mustn't tell you,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Of course you must. I'm a Criminal's Accomplice.\" Mrs. Beer leaned closer.\n\n\"That's true,\" Tom admitted thoughtfully. \"Well, I'm going to do it tonight. After dark. Tell Billy Painter I'll leave all the fingerprints I can, and any other clues I think of.\"\n\n\"All right, Tom,\" Mrs. Beer said. \"Good luck.\"\n\n**T** om waited for dark, meanwhile watching the village. He noticed that most of the soldiers had been drinking. They swaggered around as though the villagers didn't exist One of them fired his weapon into the air, frightening all the small, furry grass-eaters for miles around.\n\nThe Inspector and Mr. Grent were still in the Mayor's house.\n\nNight came. Tom slipped into the village and stationed himself in an alley between two houses. He drew his knife and waited.\n\nSomeone was approaching! He tried to remember his Criminal Methods, but nothing came. He knew he would just have to do the Murder as best he could, and fast.\n\nThe person came up, his figure indistinct in the darkness.\n\n\"Why, hello, Tom.\" It was the Mayor. He looked at the knife. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"You said there had to be a Murder, so\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't mean _me_ ,\" the Mayor said, backing away. \"It can't be me.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Tom asked.\n\n\"Well, for one thing, somebody has to talk to the Inspector. He's waiting for me. Someone has to show him\u2014\"\n\n\"Billy Painter can do that,\" said Tom. He grasped the Mayor by the shirt front, raised the knife and aimed for the throat. \"Nothing personal, of course,\" he added.\n\n\"Wait!\" the Mayor cried. \"If there's nothing personal, then you have no Motive!\"\n\nTom lowered the knife, but kept his grasp on the Mayor's shirt. \"I guess I can think of one. I've been pretty sore about you appointing me Criminal.\"\n\n\"It was the Mayor who appointed you, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Well, sure\u2014\"\n\nThe Mayor pulled Tom out of the shadows, into the bright starlight. \"Look!\"\n\nTom gaped. The Mayor was dressed in long, sharply creased pants and a tunic resplendent with medals. On each shoulder was a double row of ten stars. His hat was thickly crusted with gold braid in the shape of comets.\n\n\"You see, Tom? I'm not the Mayor any more. I'm a _General!_ \"\n\n\"What's that got to do with it? You're the same person, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Not officially. You missed the ceremony this afternoon. The Inspector said that since I was officially a General, I had to wear a General's uniform. It was a very friendly ceremony. All the Earthmen were grinning and winking at me and each other.\"\n\n**R** aising the knife again, Tom held it as he would to gut a fish. \"Congratulations,\" he said sincerely, \"but you were the Mayor when you appointed me Criminal, so my Motive still holds.\"\n\n\"But you wouldn't be Killing the Mayor! You'd be Killing a General! And that's not Murder!\"\n\n\"It isn't?\" Tom asked. \"What is it then?\"\n\n\"Why, Killing a General is Mutiny!\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Tom put down the knife. He released the Mayor. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Quite all right,\" the Mayor said. \"Natural error. I've read up on it and you haven't, of course\u2014no need to.\" He took a deep breath. \"I'd better get back. The Inspector wants a list of the men he can Draft.\"\n\nTom called out, \"Are you sure this Murder is necessary?\"\n\n\"Yes, absolutely,\" the Mayor said, hurrying away. \"Just not _me_.\n\nTom put the knife back in his belt.\n\n_Not me, not me_. Everyone would feel that way. Yet somebody had to be Murdered. Who? He couldn't Kill himself. That would be Suicide, which wouldn't count.\n\nHe began to shiver, trying not to think of the glimpse he'd had of the reality of Murder. The job had to be done.\n\nSomeone else was coming!\n\nThe person came nearer. Tom hunched down, his muscles tightening for the leap.\n\nIt was Mrs. Miller, returning home with a bag of vegetables.\n\nTom told himself that it didn't matter whether it was Mrs. Miller or anybody else. But he couldn't help remembering those conversations with his mother. They left him without a Motive for Killing Mrs. Miller.\n\nShe passed by without seeing him.\n\nHe waited for half an hour. Another person walked through the dark alley between the houses. Tom recognized him as Max Weaver.\n\nTom had always liked him. But that didn't mean there couldn't be a Motive. All he could come up with, though, was that Max had a wife and five children who loved him and would miss him. Tom didn't want Billy Painter to tell him that that was no Motive. He drew deeper into the shadow and let Max go safely by.\n\nThe three Carpenter boys came along. Tom had painfully been through that already. He let them pass. Then Roger Waterman approached.\n\nHe had no real Motive for Killing Roger, but he had never been especially friendly with him. Besides, Roger had no children and his wife wasn't fond of him. Would that be enough for Billy Painter to work on?\n\nHe knew it wouldn't be... and the same was true of all the villagers. He had grown up with these people, shared food and work and fun and grief with them. How could he possibly have a Motive for Killing any of them?\n\nBut he had to Commit a Murder. His Skulking Permit required it. He couldn't let the village down. But neither could he Kill the people he had known all his life.\n\nWait, he told himself in sudden excitement. He could Kill the Inspector!\n\n**M** otive? Why, it would be an even more Heinous Crime than Murdering the Mayor\u2014except that the Mayor was a General now, of course, and that would only be Mutiny. But even if the Mayor were still Mayor, the Inspector would be a far more important Victim. Tom would be Killing for Glory, for Fame, for Notoriety. And the Murder would show Earth how Earthly the colony really was. They would say, \"Crime is so bad on New Delaware that it's hardly safe to land there. A Criminal actually Killed our Inspector on the very first day! Worst Criminal we've come across in all space.\"\n\nIt would be the most spectacular Crime he could Commit, Tom realized, just the sort of thing a Master Criminal would do.\n\nFeeling proud of himself for the first time in a long while, Tom hurried out of the alley and over to the Mayor's house. He could hear conversation going on inside.\n\n\"... sufficiently passive population,\" Mr. Grent was saying. \"Sheeplike, in fact.\"\n\n\"Makes it rather boring,\" the Inspector answered. \"For the soldiers especially.\"\n\n\"Well, what do you expect from backward agrarians? At least we're getting some recruits out of it.\" Mr. Grent yawned audibly. \"On your feet, guards. We're going back to the ship.\"\n\n_Guards!_ Tom had forgotten about them. He looked doubtfully at his knife. Even if he sprang at the Inspector, the guards would probably stop him before the Murder could be Committed. They must have been trained for just that sort of thing.\n\nBut if he had one of their own weapons...\n\nHe heard the shuffling of feet inside. Tom hurried back into the village.\n\nNear the market, he saw a soldier sitting on a doorstep, singing drunkenly to himself. Two empty bottles lay at his feet and his weapon was slung sloppily over his shoulder.\n\nTom crept up, drew his blackjack and took aim.\n\nThe soldier must have glimpsed his shadow. He leaped to his feet, ducking the stroke of the blackjack. In the same motion, he jabbed with his slung rifle, catching Tom in the ribs, tore the rifle from his shoulder and aimed. Tom closed his eyes and lashed out with both feet.\n\nHe caught the soldier on the knee, knocking him over. Before he could get up, Tom swung the blackjack.\n\nTom felt the soldier's pulse\u2014no sense Killing the wrong man\u2014and found it satisfactory. He took the weapon, checked to make sure he knew which button to push, and hastened after the Inspector.\n\n**H** alfway to the ship, he caught up with them. The Inspector and Grent were walking ahead, the soldiers straggling behind.\n\nTom moved into the underbrush. He trotted silently along until he was opposite Grent and the Inspector. He took aim and his finger tightened on the trigger...\n\nHe didn't want to Kill Grent, though. He was supposed to Commit only one Murder.\n\nHe ran on, past the Inspector's party, and came out on the road in front of them. His weapon was poised as the party reached him.\n\n\"What's this?\" the Inspector demanded.\n\n\"Stand still,\" Tom said. \"The rest of you drop your weapons and move out of the way.\"\n\nThe soldiers moved like men in shock. One by one they dropped their weapons and retreated to the underbrush. Grent held his ground.\n\n\"What are you doing, boy?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm the town Criminal,\" Tom stated proudly. \"I'm going to Kill the Inspector. Please move out of the way.\"\n\nGrent stared at him. \"Criminal? So that's what the Mayor was prattling about.\"\n\n\"I know we haven't had any Murder in two hundred years,\" Tom explained, \"but I'm changing that right now. _Move out of the way!_ \"\n\nGrent leaped out of the line of fire. The Inspector stood alone, swaying slightly.\n\nTom took aim, trying to think about the spectacular nature of his Crime and its social value. But he saw the Inspector on the ground, eyes glaring open, limbs stiff, mouth twisted, no air going in or out the nostrils, no beat to the heart.\n\nHe tried to force his finger to close on the trigger. His mind could talk all it wished about the desirability of Crime; his hand knew better.\n\n\"I can't!\" Tom shouted.\n\nHe threw down the gun and sprinted into the underbrush.\n\n**T** he Inspector wanted to send a search party out for Tom and hang him on the spot. Mr. Grent didn't agree. New Delaware was all forest. Ten thousand men couldn't have caught a fugitive in the forest, if he didn't want to be caught.\n\nThe Mayor and several villagers came out, to find out about the commotion. The soldiers formed a hollow square around the Inspector and Mr. Grent. They stood with weapons ready, their faces set and serious.\n\nAnd the Mayor explained everything. The village's uncivilized lack of Crime. The job that Tom had been given. How ashamed they were that he had been unable to handle it.\n\n\"Why did you give the assignment to that particular man?\" Mr. Grent asked.\n\n\"Well,\" the Mayor said, \"I figured if anyone could Kill, Tom could. He's a Fisher, you know. Pretty gory work.\"\n\n\"Then the rest of you would be equally unable to kill?\"\n\n\"We wouldn't even get as far as Tom did,\" the Mayor admitted sadly.\n\nMr. Grent and the Inspector looked at each other, then at the soldiers. The soldiers were staring at the villagers with wonder and respect. They started to whisper among themselves.\n\n\"Attention!\" the Inspector bellowed. He turned to Grent and said in a low voice, \"We'd better get away from here. Men in our armies who can't kill...\"\n\n\"The morale,\" Mr. Grent said. He shuddered. \"The possibility of infection. One man in a key position endangering a ship\u2014perhaps a fleet\u2014because he can't fire a weapon. It isn't worth the risk.\"\n\nThey ordered the soldiers back to the ship. The soldiers seemed to march more slowly than usual, and they looked back at the village. They whispered together, even though the Inspector was bellowing orders.\n\nThe small ship took off in a flurry of jets. Soon it was swallowed in the large ship. And then the large ship was gone.\n\nThe edge of the enormous watery red sun was just above the horizon.\n\n\"You can come out now,\" the Mayor called. Tom emerged from the underbrush, where he had been hiding, watching everything.\n\n\"I bungled it,\" he said miserably.\n\n\"Don't feel bad about it,\" Billy Painter told him. \"It was an impossible job.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it was,\" the Mayor said, as they walked back to the village. \"I thought that just possibly you could swing it. But you can't be blamed. There's not another man in the village who could have done the job even as well.\"\n\n\"What'll we do with these buildings?\" Billy Painter asked, motioning at the Jail, the Post Office, the Church, and the Little Red Schoolhouse.\n\nThe Mayor thought deeply for a moment. \"I know,\" he said. \"We'll build a playground for the kids. Swings and slides and sandboxes and things.\"\n\n\" _Another_ playground?\" Tom asked.\n\n\"Sure. Why not?\"\n\nThere was no reason, of course, why not.\n\n\"I won't be needing this any more, I guess,\" Tom said, handing the Skulking Permit to the Mayor.\n\n\"No, I guess not,\" said the Mayor. They watched him sorrowfully as he tore it up. \"Well, we did our best. It just wasn't good enough.\"\n\n\"I had the chance,\" Tom muttered, \"and then I let you all down.\"\n\nBilly Painter put a comforting hand on his shoulder. \"It's not your fault, Tom. It's not the fault of any of us. It's just what comes of not being civilized for two hundred years. Look how long it took Earth to get civilized. Thousands of years. And we were trying to do it in two weeks.\"\n\n\"Well, we'll just have to go back to being uncivilized,\" the Mayor said with a hollow attempt at cheerfulness.\n\nTom yawned, waved, went home to catch up on lost sleep. Before entering, he glanced at the sky.\n\nThick, swollen clouds had gathered overhead and every one of them had a black lining. The fall rains were almost here. Soon he could start fishing again.\n\nNow why couldn't he have thought of the Inspector as a fish? He was too tired to examine that as a Motive. In any case, it was too late. Earth was gone from them and civilization had fled for no one knew how many centuries more.\n\nHe slept very badly.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\nGreat Basin - Contents\n\nIntroduction | Essential Information | When to Go | Transportation & Airports | Directions | Great Basin National Park Map | Camping | Driving | Hiking | Backpacking | Cave Tours | Other Activities | Did you know? | Visitor Centers | For Kids | Ranger Programs | Flora & Fauna | Pets | Accessibility | Weather | Vacation Planner | What's Nearby\nGreat Basin - Introduction\n\nBristlecone pine \u00a9 Loren Reinhold\/NPS\n\nIn east-central Nevada near the Utah border, a 13,000 foot mountain hides a brilliantly decorated cave; both are protected by Great Basin National Park. The park itself is just a small portion of a much larger Great Basin region extending from the Sierra Nevada in California to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. In between, mountains and valleys form dozens of smaller basins where rivers and streams are unable to drain into an ocean. All water flows inland, eventually collecting in shallow salt lakes, marshes, and mud flats where it evaporates. The region's aridity is well known, but beautiful and unique landscapes and life forms adapt and evolve to this harsh environment. Alpine lakes fed by snowmelt from the rocky slopes accent the high mountains, where groves of bristlecone pine have been defying the odds for thousands of years. Many of these twisted elders had already celebrated their 2,000th birthday by the time Christopher Columbus discovered America.\n\nAmericans would make an indelible mark on Great Basin. In 1855, Ezra Williams claimed to be the first white man to summit the tallest mountain in the central Great Basin, naming it Williams Peak. Shortly after, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Steptoe named the same mountain Jeff Davis Peak in honor of his superior, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. When Jefferson Davis became President of the Confederate States of America, some cartographers began to regret the name. \"Union Peak\" was suggested as an alternative because a ridge united the mountain's twin summits, but it was an obvious jab at Jefferson Davis' secessionist leanings. Fortunately, map publication was postponed and in 1869 a military mapping expedition resulted in George Montague Wheeler climbing the mountain and naming its summit, definitively, \"Wheeler Peak.\"\n\nEight years earlier, Absalom \"Ab\" Lehman moved to Snake Valley. Having experienced the highs and lows of mining in California and Australia, he decided to try his hand at ranching. By the time George Wheeler hiked to the top of Wheeler Peak, Lehman's ranch had 25 \u2013 30 cows and an orchard. Prosperity and the loneliness of Ab's second wife, Olive Smith, prompted several family members to move into the area, and a community began to develop around Lehman Ranch. A butcher shop, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop, and milk house were established, and Absalom's orchard was regarded as the best in the region. Success allowed Ab to focus his attention on his ranch's latest addition, Lehman Caves. Exploring the cave he reached a point where stalactites and stalagmites prevented passage to its interior chamber. Ab returned to \"develop\" the cave with a little sweat and a sledgehammer. A path was cleared and the cave was open for tourism. After 1885, the cave received hundreds of visitors each year, nearly all of them guided by Ab.\n\nThe push to preserve the park came much later. In 1964 a graduate student searching for the world's oldest tree came to the grove of bristlecone pines at Wheeler Peak. After taking core samples the researcher wanted to obtain a more accurate count by cutting down a tree. The Forest Service granted his request and he proceeded to fell a tree known today as Prometheus. Counting the rings proved his assumption correct. Prometheus was at least 4,862 years old; he had just cut down the oldest living organism in the world. A cross-section of the tree resides in Great Basin Visitor Center where you can count the rings for yourself. But all was not lost. The tragedy of Prometheus helped galvanize support for the creation of Great Basin National Park, and the young graduate student was one of the cause's leading advocates.\nEssential Information (GRBA)\n\n100 Great Basin National Park | Baker, NV 89311 | (775) 234-7331 | www.nps.gov\/grba\n\nEstablished: October 27, 1986 | January 24, 1922 (National Monument) | Size: 77,180 Acres | Annual Visitors: 89,000 | Peak Season: Summer\n\nHiking Trails: 65 Miles\n\nActivities: Hiking, Backpacking, Camping, Stargazing, Horseback Riding, and Cave Tours ($8 \u2013 10)\n\nCampgrounds ($12\/night): Upper and Lower Lehman Creek, Wheeler Peak, and Baker Creek | Free Primitive Camping along Snake Creek and Strawberry Creek Roads (4WD, high-clearance required) | Backcountry Camping: Permitted\n\nPark Hours: All day, every day (except Wheeler Peak and Lexington Arch Day-use Areas)\n\nEntrance Fee: None\nWhen to Go (GRBA)\n\nGreat Basin is open year-round. Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive to Lehman Creek Campground is open all year, but the final 10 miles is generally closed from November to May, depending on the weather. Cave tours are offered at Lehman Caves Visitor Center all year round with the exception of New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Great Basin Visitor Center is open from April until October (see the Visitor Centers section for hours and locations). The park is busiest during holidays and summer weekends, when campgrounds can fill before the afternoon, but crowds are rarely unmanageable.\nTransportation & Airports (GRBA)\n\nPublic transportation does not provide service to or around the park. The closest large commercial airports are Salt Lake City International (SLC), located 238 miles to the northeast, and McCarran International (LAS) in Las Vegas, NV, located 307 miles south of the park. Car rental is available at each destination.\nDirections (GRBA)\n\nGreat Basin is located at the center of one of the most remote regions of the continental United States.\n\nFrom the West: You can arrive from the west via US-50 or US-6. These highways converge at Ely, NV where you continue south\/east on US-50\/US-93\/US-6\/Great Basin Blvd for more than 55 miles to NV-487. Turn right at NV-487 and travel 5 miles to Baker. At Baker turn right onto Lehman Caves Road, which leads into the park.\n\nFrom the North: I-80 picks up US-93 at Wells (Exit 352) and West Wendover, NV (Exit 410). Heading South on US-93 leads to Ely, NV (follow directions above from Ely).\n\nFrom the East: From Delta, UT head west on US-50\/US-6 across the Utah \u2013 Nevada border to NV-487. Turn left onto NV-487 and continue for 5 miles to Baker. Turn right onto Lehman Caves Road, which leads into the park.\n\nFrom the South: Heading north on US-93, turn right at US-50\/US-6. Continue east for almost 30 miles to NV-487. Turn right onto NV-487 and after 5 miles turn right at Lehman Caves Road.\nGreat Basin Nationl Park Map\n\nDownload the Great Basin National Park map here.\nCamping (GRBA)\n\nThere are four developed campgrounds. Lower Lehman Creek, Upper Lehman Creek, and Wheeler Peak are located along Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive. Baker Creek Campground is located at the end of unpaved Baker Creek Road. Lower Lehman Creek is open year-round. Upper Lehman and Baker Creek are open from May to October. Wheeler Peak is open between June and September. The largest campground is Wheeler Peak (37 sites). It is not uncommon for campgrounds to fill, especially during summer weekends and holidays. Pit toilets are located at each campground, but water is only available during summer. (In winter, water is available at the visitor centers.) There are no hook-ups or showers. A dump station ($5 fee) is available near Lehman Caves Visitor Center during the summer. All sites cost $12 per night. Non-group sites are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Group camping is available at Grey Cliffs on Baker Creek Road by reservation only (775.234.7331 ext. 213). Free primitive campsites are available along Snake Creek and Strawberry Creek Roads.\nDriving (GRBA)\n\nMost Great Basin visitors arrive via NV-488\/Lehman Caves Road, which travels west from Baker, NV directly into the park and ultimately to Lehman Caves Visitor Center. The 12-mile Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive, which intersects Lehman Caves Road just beyond the park boundary, provides access to some of the most scenic viewpoints, climbing more than 3,000 feet to Wheeler Peak Campground. Vehicles longer than 24 feet are not allowed beyond Upper Lehman Creek Campground due to its steep (8% grade) and winding nature. Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive is open year-round to Upper Lehman Creek Campground, but usually closes beyond this point from November to May, depending on weather conditions. Baker Creek Road also intersects Lehman Caves Road. It's an unpaved but well-maintained road providing access to Baker Creek Campground and Grey Cliffs Group Camping Area, as well as some of the park's better backcountry hiking trails. Baker Creek Road is typically closed from December through April. Further south, running parallel to Lehman Caves Road, is the unpaved Snake Creek Road, which not surprisingly follows Snake Creek into the park. A high-clearance 4WD vehicle is recommended, but not required. A handful of primitive campsites are available along the way. Strawberry and Lexington Arch Roads should only be accessed by high-clearance 4WD vehicles. Snake Creek, Strawberry, and Lexington Arch Roads are open year -round, but may be impassable due to snow or mud.\nBest of Great Basin\n\nActivity: Hike to Wheeler Peak\n\nRunner-up: Grand Palace Tour\nHiking (GRBA)\n\nStella Lake \u00a9 Chris Wonderly\/NPS\n\nGreat Basin is a relatively small area, and all the maintained trails beginning along Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive can be completed in a day. The most interesting hike is Bristlecone Trail, a 2.8-mile (roundtrip) waltz through a forest of bristlecone pine trees, many of which were growing long before the Phoenician Alphabet was created in 2,000 BC. From the end of the Bristlecone Trail you can continue 1.8 miles (roundtrip) on Glacier Trail to the base of Nevada's only glacier.\n\nFor views of the Great Basin, there's no better vantage point than the summit of Wheeler Peak. The 8.2-mile trail begins at Summit Parking Area on Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive and steadily climbs more than 3,000 feet across rocky mountain slopes. Be sure to pack water and a jacket for this heart-pounding romp. The climb up will make you sweat, but it cools down quickly once you're soaking in the views from the completely exposed mountaintop.\n\nAnother visitor favorite is Alpine Lakes Loop. In just 2.7 miles of fairly easy hiking you visit two beautiful alpine lakes. Stella Lake is larger and more enchanting, but Teresa Lake is also nice and particularly pretty when snowpack remains on the surrounding slopes.\n\nWheeler Peak Scenic Drive\n\nTrail Name | Trailhead (# on map) | Length (Roundtrip distances) | Notes\n\nMountain View | Rhodes Cabin (1) | 0.3 mile | Trail guide available at Lehman Caves Visitor Center\n\nLehman Creek | Upper Lehman Creek Camp (2) | 6.8 miles | Connects Upper Lehman Creek and Wheeler Peak Campgrounds\n\nOsceola Ditch | Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive (3) | 9.6 miles | Trail follows an old ditch built by gold miners\n\nWheeler Peak (favorite) | Summit Trail Parking Area (4) | 8.2 miles | Strenuous hike with 3,000+ feet elevation gain\n\nAlpine Lakes Loop (favorite) | Bristlecone Parking Area (4) | 2.7 miles | Views of Wheeler Peak and scenic Stella and Teresa Lakes\n\nBristlecone | Bristlecone Parking Area (4) | 2.8 miles | Interpretive trail among some of the world's oldest trees\n\nGlacier & Bristlecone | Bristlecone Parking Area (4) | 4.6 miles | Continues from Bristlecone Trail to Nevada's only glacier\n\nSky Islands Forest | Bristlecone Parking Area (4) | 0.4 mile | Paved and accessible interpretive trail of alpine forest\n\nOther Areas\n\nPole Canyon | Grey Cliffs Campground (5) | 4.0 miles | Easy hike along an old road \u2022 Can connect to Timber Creek Tr\n\nBaker Lake | Baker Creek Road (6) | 12.0 miles | Leads to a beautiful alpine lake\n\nBaker Creek Loop | Baker Creek Road (6) | 3.1 miles | Take connector trail to South Fork Baker Creek Trail\n\nSouth Fork Baker Creek\/Johnson Lake | Baker Creek Road (6) | 11.2 miles | Cuts back before reaching Johnson Lake \u2022 Passes historic Johnson Lake Mine structures\n\nBaker\/Johnson Lakes Loop | Baker Creek Road (6) | 13.1 miles | Combines Baker Lake and Johnson Lake Trails\n\nJohnson Lake | Snake Creek Road (7) | 7.4 miles | Shorter and steeper route to Johnson Lake\n\nLexington Arch | Outside park, south of Baker (8) | 3.4 miles | Day-use area \u2022 Trail leads to a six-story limestone arch\nBackpacking (GRBA)\n\nThere are more than 60 miles of hiking trails at Great Basin. Backpackers are not allowed to camp within 0.25-mile of developed areas (roads, buildings, campgrounds, etc.), within the Wheeler Peak or Lexington Arch Day Use Areas, or in bristlecone pine groves. You must set up camp a minimum of 100 feet away from all sources of water and at least 500 feet away from any obvious archeological site. Camping in the backcountry does not require a permit, but it is recommended you sign in at trailhead registers.\n\nThe park's best backpacking route is to take Baker Lake Trail, which begins at the end of Baker Creek Road, all the way to Baker Lake. From here you can follow an unmaintained trail to Johnson Lake and return to Baker Road via Timber Creek Trail or South Fork Baker Creek Trail. The entire loop is slightly more than 13 miles. Backpackers should always carry a good topographical map. For information on trail conditions and routes stop in at a visitor center or call (775) 234-7331 ext. 212.\nCave Tours (GRBA)\n\nParachute Shield \u00a9 Bowersox\/NPS\n\nEver since Absalom Lehman discovered the cave in the 1880s, tourists have marveled at its intricate and fragile formations. The National Park Service continues the tradition by offering daily tours. The cave is only 0.25-mile deep, which makes for tours heavy on information and light on walking. Lodge Room Tour ($8, 60 minutes, 20 people) covers the first 0.2 miles of cave including Gothic Palace, Music Room, and Lodge Room. Grand Palace Tour ($10, 90 minutes, 20 people) travels 0.6 miles while visiting all the rooms of the Lodge Room Tour as well as Inscription Room and the Grand Palace where you will be able to see the famous \"Parachute Shield\" formation. Tickets are required and can be purchased in advance by calling (775) 234-7331 ext. 242 between 9am and 4pm, Monday through Friday. Tickets can also be purchased at Lehman Caves Visitor Center upon arrival. Advance tickets must be picked up at Lehman Caves Visitor Center at least 15 minutes before the tour or they will go on sale to walk-in customers. The cave is a constant 50\u00b0F with 90% humidity, so dress appropriately.\nOther Activities (GRBA)\n\nWheeler Peak at night \u00a9 Night Sky Team\/NPS\n\nStargazing: There are few places in the continental United States better for stargazing than Great Basin National Park. Clear skies, high altitude, and 200 miles of distance from cities' light and noise provide the perfect atmosphere for gazing into the heavens. Park Rangers hold astronomy programs every Wednesday and Saturday evening between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The park also holds an annual Astronomy Festival in late July. Additionally, \"star parties\" are held on various holidays. Telescopes are provided by the park to be shared among guests. If you'd like to view the stars on your own, Wheeler Peak Parking Area is a great place to camp out with a blanket and a set of binoculars.\n\nBiking: Cyclists are only allowed on park roads. The ride up to Wheeler Peak is a nice short workout with a fun descent back down to Lehman Caves Visitor Center or Baker.\n\nSpelunking: Lehman Caves is only one of more than 40 caves in the park, eight of which are accessible with a cave permit. Spelunkers must show adequate horizontal and vertical caving techniques to be issued a permit. The park website (www.nps.gov\/grba\/planyourvisit\/caving.htm) has information on caves, closures, permit procurement.\n\nFishing is allowed in all creeks and lakes. A Nevada state fishing license is required.\n\nHorseback Riding: Horses are allowed in the backcountry, but there are no nearby outfitters offering trail rides. You will have to provide your own horse(s) and follow park regulations regarding horseback riding in the backcountry.\nDid you know? (GRBA)\n\n  * Bristlecone pines live longer (4,000+ years) than any known organism. Their needles alone can live 25 \u2013 40 years.\n\nVisitor Centers (GRBA)\n\nGreat Basin Visitor Center is located outside the park just north of the town of Baker on the west side of NV-487. Here you'll find an information desk, exhibits, and a small theater playing an orientation film. It is open daily, April to October, from 8am to 5:30pm, with summer hours extended to 5:30pm between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Lehman Caves Visitor Center (775.234.7331 ext. 212) is located 5.5 miles from Baker, just inside the park on NV-488\/Lehman Caves Road. You can purchase cave tour tickets, browse exhibits, and view the orientation film here. It also houses a bookstore, cafe, and gift shop. Lehman Caves Visitor Center is open every day of the year, except New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. Hours of operation are 8am to 5pm.\nFor Kids (GRBA)\n\nChildren who visit Great Basin have the opportunity to become Junior Rangers. To receive an official certificate and badge, your child must attend one of the following programs: Lehman Caves Tour, Campground Evening Program, Night Sky Program, or a Ranger Talk. Children must also complete an age appropriate number of activities in the park's Junior Ranger booklet: three activities for kids 5 and under, five activities for children between the ages of 6 and 9, and seven activities for everyone else. Booklets are available free of charge at either visitor center. Family Adventure Packs are also available at the visitor centers.\nRanger Programs (GRBA)\n\nIn addition to Cave Tours and Stargazing Programs, the park provides evening campfire programs, children's programs, and full-moon hikes between Memorial Day and Labor Day. For a current schedule of events, visit the park website, call the park at (775) 234-7331 ext. 212, or stop in at a visitor center to pick-up a copy of the park's publication, The Bristlecone.\nFlora & Fauna (GRBA)\n\nGreat Basin is home to 73 species of mammals, 18 species of reptiles, 2 species of amphibians, and 8 species of fish. At least 238 species of birds reside in or visit the park, which makes for excellent bird watching. Mammals you're most likely to see include mule deer and squirrels, but fortunate visitors may spot a mountain lion, badger, or coyote. More than 800 species of plants, including 11 species of conifer trees, reside within park boundaries. Bristlecone pine are the elder statesmen of the bunch. At least one known tree, Prometheus, lived to the ripe old age of 4,862. Singleleaf pinyon trees are fruit bearers, with pine nuts that can be gathered and eaten by visitors. You'll find them in areas between 6,000 and 9,000 feet elevation.\nPets (GRBA)\n\nPets are allowed in the park, but must be kept on a leash no more than six feet in length at all times. They are not allowed on trails, in the backcountry, in Lehman Caves, or at evening programs. Basically, pets are allowed wherever you can get with your car: along roads, in campgrounds, and in parking areas.\nAccessibility (GRBA)\n\nBoth of the park's visitor centers are fully accessible to individuals with mobility impairments. Accessible campsites are available at Upper Lehman Creek, Wheeler Peak, and Baker Creek Campgrounds. Island Forest Trail is paved, but may require assistance for the second half, as the grade increases to about 8%. Cave tours are accessible with assistance. Wheelchair users can also enjoy evening programs at Upper Lehman Creek and Wheeler Peak Campgrounds.\nWeather (GRBA)\n\nWith nearly 8,000 feet in elevation difference between Wheeler Peak (13,063 feet) and the valley floor, temperature varies greatly depending on where you are in the park as well as what season it is. Summer average high temperatures at Lehman Caves Visitor Center (6,825 feet) reach the low to mid-80s\u00b0F. Overnight summertime lows average in the mid to high 50s\u00b0F. Between December and February the average highs are in the low 40s\u00b0F and average lows are right around 20\u00b0F. Even if it's 80\u00b0F at Lehman Cave Visitor Center you should bring a jacket if you plan on hiking to Wheeler Peak or touring the cave. The temperature is usually 20 degrees cooler and it's often windy along the mountain's ridgeline. The cave is a constant 50\u00b0F all year. The region is arid, receiving about 20 inches of annual precipitation, but afternoon thunderstorms are common in summer and snow can fall in the high elevations any time of year. The majority of precipitation comes in the form of snow between November and March.\n\nVacation Planner (GRBA)\n\nLehman Caves \u00a9 Frank Kovalchek\n\nIf you only want to catch the main attractions at Great Basin, a single day should suffice. Lehman Caves and the most popular hiking trails\/viewpoints are all located in the same general area. With that said, Great Basin is a relief from bumper-to-bumper traffic and shoulder-to-shoulder hiking experienced at more popular parks of the West. So, you may want to pack a cooler and your tent and spend a few nights under the stars. Nearby dining, grocery stores, lodging, festivals, and attractions are listed in the What's Nearby (link) section.\n\nDay 1: Skip Great Basin Visitor Center (unless you want to see the cross-section of Prometheus, the 4,862 year old tree). Stop at Lehman Caves Visitor Center to pick up or purchase cave tour tickets. Reservations are a good idea, but if your group is relatively small and you aren't traveling on a summer holiday weekend, you should be able to get tickets upon arrival. Plus, tours are offered several times a day during the summer. Fill in the blanks around your cave tour(s) by taking Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive, stopping at pull-outs of your choosing, to Summit Trail Parking Area. Hike the 8.2-mile Wheeler Peak Trail. Allow at least 4 hours for this mountain trek. If it's a beautiful day, bring a lunch and picnic at the peak. Stella Lake is another great location for a picnic. If you aren't interested in Wheeler Peak or are looking for another hike, Alpine Lakes Loop and Bristlecone\/Glacier Trail are excellent. Both trails begin at Bristlecone Parking Area. With an early enough start it is possible to hike Wheeler Peak, Alpine Lakes Loop, and Bristlecone Trail in one day, but you'll be exhausted. Cap the day off with an evening ranger program (check the park newspaper, The Bristlecone) or stargazing from your campsite.\nArches to Great Basin - What's Nearby\n\nDownload the What's Nearby maps here.\n\nDining\n\nArches\/Canyonlands Area\n\nMoab Brewery | (435) 259-6333 | 686 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Burgers: $7+ | www.themoabbrewery.com\n\nMoab Diner | (435) 259-4006 | 189 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Burgers: $6.50+ | www.moabdiner.com\n\nMilt's Stop & Eat (favorite) | (435) 259-7424 | 356 Mill Creek Dr; Moab, UT 84532 | Burgers: $3.50+ | www.miltsstopandeat.com\n\nBar-M Chuckwagon (favorite) | (435) 259-2276 | 7000 N US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Admission: $28\/Adult | www.barmchuckwagon.com\n\nMiguel's Baja Grill | (435) 259-6546 | 51 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Entr\u00e9e: $12 \u2013 22 | www.miguelsbajagrill.com\n\nSunset Grill (favorite) | (435) 259-7146 | 900 N US-191; Moab, UT 84532\n\nDesert Bistro (favorite) | (435) 259-0756 | 1266 N US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Entr\u00e9e: $20 \u2013 45 | www.desertbistro.com\n\nLa Hacienda | (435) 259-6319 | 574 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nParadox Pizza | (435) 259-9999 | 702 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Pizza: $10+ | www.paradoxpizza.com\n\nWake & Bake Cafe | (435) 259-0101 | Ste 6, 59 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.wakeandbakecafe.com\n\nPeace Tree Juice Cafe | (435) 259-8503 | 20 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Breakfast: $8 \u2013 9 | www.peacetreecafe.com\n\nEklecticafe | (435) 259-6896 | 352 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nLove Muffin Cafe (favorite) | (435) 259-6833 | 139 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.lovemuffincafe.com\n\nK&A Chuckwagon (favorite) | (435) 587-3468 | 496 N Main St; Monticello, UT 84535\n\nWagon Wheel Pizza (favorite) | (435) 587-2766 | 164 S Main St; Monticello, UT 84535\n\nSubway | (435) 587-2757 | 481 N Main St; Monticello, UT 84535\n\nPeace Tree Juice Cafe (favorite) | (435) 587-5063 | 516 N Main St; Monticello, UT 84535\n\nShake Shack | (435) 587-2966 | 380 N Main St; Monticello, UT 84535\n\nChow Hound | (435) 564-3563 | 30 E Main St; Green River, UT 84525\n\nCathy's Pizza & Deli | (435) 564-8122 | 185 W Main St; Green River, UT 84525\n\nRay's Tavern (favorite) | (435) 564-3511 | 25 S Broadway; Green River, UT 84525\n\nGreen River Coffee | (435) 564-3411 | 25 E Main St; Green River, UT 84525\n\nCapitol Reef\/Bryce Canyon Area\n\nRim Rock Restaurant | (435) 425-3388 | 2523 UT-24 E; Torrey, UT 84775 | www.therimrock.net\n\nSlacker's Burger Joint (favorite) | (435) 425-3710 | 165 E Main St; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nChilizz | (435) 425-2600 | 155 E Main St; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nLuna Mesa Oasis | (435) 456-9122 | 2000 E 925 N UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nSubway | (435) 425-3302 | 675 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nCafe Diablo (favorite) | (435) 425-3070 | 599 W Main St; Torrey, UT 84775 | Entr\u00e9e: $22 \u2013 30 | www.cafediablo.net\n\nLa Cueva (favorite) | (435) 425-2000 | 875 N UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | Entr\u00e9e: $9 \u2013 15 | www.cafelacueva.com\n\nCastlerock Coffee & Candy | (435) 425-2100 | 875 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | www.castlerockcoffee.com\n\nHell's Backbone Grill | (435) 335-7464 | 20 N UT-12; Boulder, UT 84716 | Entr\u00e9e: $17 \u2013 26 | www.hellsbackbonegrill.com\n\nBoulder Mesa Restaurant (favorite) | (435) 335-7447 | 155 E Burr Trail; Boulder, UT 84716\n\nSunglow Family Restaurant | (435) 425-3701 | 91 E Main St; Bicknell, UT 84715\n\nRed Cliffs Restaurant | (435) 425-3797 | 2600 E UT-24; Bicknell, UT 84715\n\nBurr Trail Grill | (435) 335-7503 | UT-12; Boulder, UT 84716 | www.burrtrailgrill.com\n\nBlondie's Eatery | (435) 542-3255 | 300 N UT-95; Hanksville, UT 84734\n\nClarke's Restaurant | (435) 679-8383 | 141 N Main St; Tropic, UT 84776\n\nRubys Cowboy Buffet | (435) 834-8027 | 26 S Main St; Bryce Canyon City, UT 84764\n\nPizza Place | (435) 679-8888 | 21 S Main St; Tropic, UT 84776\n\nSubway | (435) 834-5888 | 139 W UT-12; Bryce, UT 84764\n\nZion & Grand Canyon Area\n\nParallel Eighty Eight (favorite) | (435) 772-3588 | 1515 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84532 | Entr\u00e9e: $16 \u2013 32 | www.paralleleighty-eightrestaurant.com\n\nWhiptail Grill (favorite) | (435) 772-0283 | 445 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84737\n\nSwitchback Grille | (435) 772-3700 | 1149 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Entr\u00e9e: $14 \u2013 38 | www.switchbacktrading.com\n\nBit & Spur | (435) 772-3498 | 1212 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Entr\u00e9e: $13 \u2013 25 | www.bitandspur.com\n\nZion Pizza & Noodle Co | (435) 772-3815 | 868 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | www.zionpizzanoodle.com\n\nFlying Monkey (favorite) | 971 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | www.flyingmonkeyzion.com\n\nCafe Oscars (favorite) | (435) 772-3232 | 948 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | www.cafeoscars.com\n\nSpotted Dog | (435) 772-0700 | 428 Zion Landing; Springdale, UT 84767 | www.flanigans.com\n\nCafe Soleil | (435) 772-0505 | 205 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767\n\nTsunami Juice & Java | (435) 772-3818 | 180 Zion Landing; Springdale, UT 84767\n\nMean Bean Coffee House (favorite) | (435) 772-0654 | 932 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767\n\nR P's Stage Stop (favorite) | (928) 638-3115 | 114A AZ-64; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023\n\nWendys and McDonalds are available near the Grand Canyon's South Entrance on AZ-64\n\nRed Raven (favorite) | (928) 635-4980 | 135 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Entr\u00e9e: $15 \u2013 27 | www.redravenrestaurant.com\n\nThe Singing Pig BBQ (favorite) | (928) 635-2904 | 437 W. Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Sandwich: $8+ | www.thesingingpigroute66.com\n\nOld Smokey's Restaurant | (928) 635-1915 | 624 W Route 66 (near 7th Ave); Williams, AZ 86046 | www.sideeffectsllc.com\n\nPine Country | (928) 635-9718 | 107 N Grand Canyon Blvd; Williams, AZ 86046 | Entr\u00e9e: $9 \u2013 22 | www.pinecountryrestaurant.com\n\nDara Thai Cafe (favorite) | (623) 551-6676 | 3655 W Anthem Way, # B127; Anthem, AZ 85086\n\nRolando's Mexican & Seafood (favorite) | (928) 635-1990 | 401 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046\n\nBrown Bag Sandwich Shoppe | (928) 635-5204 | 112 S 1st St; Williams, AZ 86046 | Sandwiches: $7+ | www.bbsandwichshop.com\n\nGrand Canyon Coffee & Cafe (favorite) | (928) 635-4907 | 125 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | www.grandcanyoncoffeeandcafe.com\n\nJ D's Espresso | (928) 635-2770 | 219 E Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | www.jdsespresso.com\n\nGreat Basin Area\n\nSilver State Restaurant | (775) 289-8866 | 1204 Aultman St; Ely, Nevada 89301\n\nTwin Wok Restaurant | (775) 289-3699 | 700 Park Ave; Ely, NV 89301\n\nEvah's | (775) 289-4271 | 701 Avenue I; Ely, NV 89301\n\nMargarita's (favorite) | (775) 289-6296 | 945 N Mcgill Hwy; Ely, NV 89301 | Entr\u00e9e: $10+ | www.margaritasely.com\n\nLa Fiesta | (775) 289-4114 | 700 Avenue H; Ely, NV 89301\n\nRed Apple (favorite) | (775) 289-8585 | 2160 Aultman St; Ely, NV 89301\n\nMany chain restaurants can be found in Moab, Richfield, Kanab, and Hurricane, UT; Page, and Williams, AZ; Ely, NV, and along I-70 and I-15.\n\nGrocery Stores\n\nArches\/Canyonlands Area\n\nCity Market Food | (435) 259-5182 | 425 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nVillage Market | (435) 259-3111 | 702 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nDave's Corner Market | (435) 259-6999 | 401 Mill Creek Dr; Moab, UT 84532\n\nWalmart | (435) 637-6974 | UT-125; Green River, UT 84501\n\nCapitol Reef\/Bryce Canyon Area\n\nChuck Wagon General Store | (435) 425-3288 | 12 W Main St; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nClarke's Country Market | (435) 679-8633 | 141 North Main St; Tropic, UT 84776\n\nRuby's General Store | (435) 834-5341 | 26 S Main St; Bryce Canyon City, UT 84764\n\nZion & Grand Canyon Area\n\nSol Foods | (435) 772-0277 | 95 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84737\n\nWalmart Supercenter | (435) 635-6945 | 180 N 3400 W; Hurricane, UT 84737\n\nFarmers Market | (435) 635-0774 | 495 N State St; La Verkin, UT 84745\n\nSimpson's Market | (928) 679-2281 | US-89 & AZ-64; Cameron, AZ 86020\n\nGreat Basin Area\n\nRidley's Family Markets | (775) 289-3444 | 1689 Great Basin Blvd; Ely, NV 89301\n\nLodging\n\nArches\/Canyonlands Area\n\nRed Stone Inn | (435) 259-3500 | 535 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $70+\/night | www.moabredstone.com\n\nBig Horn Lodge | (435) 259-6171 | 550 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $80+ | www.moabbighorn.com\n\nRiver Canyon Lodge | (435) 259-8838 | 71 W 200 N; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $90+ | www.rivercanyonlodge.com\n\nApache Motel | (435) 259-5727 | 166 S 4th East St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nGonzo Inn (favorite) | (435) 259-2515 | 100 W 200 S; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $129+ | www.gonzoinn.com\n\nAarchway Inn (favorite) | (435) 259-2599 | 1551 US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $130+ | www.aarchwayinn.com\n\nBowen Motel | (435) 259-7132 | 169 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $90+ | www.bowenmotel.com\n\nKokopelli Lodge (favorite) | (435) 259-7615 | 72 S 100 E; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $70+ | www.kokopellilodge.com\n\nAdventure Inn (favorite) | (435) 259-6122 | 512 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.adventureinnmoab.com\n\nRiverside Inn (favorite) | (435) 259-8848 | 988 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532\n\nInca Inn | (435) 259-7261 | 570 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $60+ | www.incainn.com\n\nRed Cliffs Lodge (favorite) | (435) 259-2002 | Mile Post 14, UT-128; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $120+ | www.redcliffslodge.com\n\nSorrel River Ranch | (435) 259-4642 | UT-128; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $399+ | www.sorrelriver.com\n\nDesert Hills B&B (favorite) | (435) 259-3568 | 1989 Desert Hills Dr; Moab, UT 84532 | www.deserthillsbnb.com\n\nMayor's House B&B | (435) 259-3019 | 505 Rosetree Ln; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $100+ | www.mayorshouse.com\n\nCali-Cochitta B&B | (435) 259-4961 | 110 S 2nd East St; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $95+ | www.moabdreaminn.com\n\nCastle Valley Inn B&B (favorite) | (435) 259-6012 | 424 E Amber Ln; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $105+ | www.castlevalleyinn.com\n\nSunflower Hill B&B | (435) 259-2974 | 185 N 300 E; Moab, UT 84532 | Rates: $165+ | www.sunflowerhill.com\n\nLazy Lizard Hostel | (435) 259-6057 | 1213 S US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Dorm: $9 | www.lazylizardhostel.com\n\nArchview Resort | (435) 259-7854 | US-191 and UT-313; Moab, UT 84532 | RV Sites: $35+ | www.archviewresort.com\n\nCanyonlands Campground | (435) 259-6848 | 555 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | RV Sites: $35+ | www.canyonlandsrv.com\n\nKane Springs Campground | (435) 259-8844 | 1705 Kane Creek Blvd; Moab, UT | RV Sites: $27.50+ | www.kanesprings.com\n\nRiverside Oasis Campground | (435) 259-3424 | 1871 N US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | RV Sites: $35+ | www.riversideoasis.com\n\nKOA | (435) 259-6682 | 3225 US-191; Moab, Utah 84532\n\nThere are a dozen small BLM campgrounds located along Hwy 128, three each along Hwy 279, Hwy 313, and Kane Creek Road, one at Ken's Lake, another on Sand Flats Road, and two more on Canyon Rims Recreation Area Road.\n\nInn at the Canyons (favorite) | (435) 587-2458 | 533 N Main St; Monticello, UT 84535 | Rates: $75+ | www.monticellocanyonlandsinn.com\n\nMonticello Inn (favorite) | (435) 587-2274 | 164 E Central St; Monticello, UT 84535 | Rates: $71+ | www.themonticelloinn.org\n\nRiver Terrace (favorite) | (435) 564-3401 | 1740 E Main St; Green River, UT 84525 | Rates: $100+ | www.river-terrace.com\n\nRunnin' Iron Inn | (435) 220-1050 | 6780 N US-191; Monticello, UT 84535 | Rates: $59 | www.canyonlandsbestkeptsecret.com\n\nGrist Mill Inn B&B | (435) 587-2597 | 64 S 300 E; Monticello, UT 84535 | Rates: $89+ | www.oldgristmillinn.com\n\nRobbers Roost Motel | (435) 564-3452 | 325 W Main St; Green River, UT 84525 | Rates: $40+ | www.rrmotel.com\n\nShady Acres Campground | (435) 564-8290 | 350 E Main; Green River, UT 84525 | www.shadyacresrv.com\n\nAOK RV Park | (435) 564-8372 | 610 S Green River Blvd; Green River, UT 84525\n\nGreen River KOA | (435) 564-8195 | 235 S 1780 E; Green River, UT 84525\n\nCapitol Reef\/Bryce Canyon Area\n\nAustin's Chuckwagon (favorite) | (435) 425-3344 | 12 W Main St; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $75+ | www.austinschuckwagonmotel.com\n\nSandstone Inn (favorite) | (435) 425-3775 | 955 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $68+ | www.sandstonecapitolreef.com\n\nBest Western Capitol Reef Resort (favorite) | (435) 425-3761 | 2600 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775\n\nRed Sands Hotel (favorite) | (435) 425-3688 | 670 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $75+ | www.redsandshotel.com\n\nBoulder View Inn | (435) 425-3800 | 385 W Main St; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $40 \u2013 75 | www.boulderviewinn.com\n\nCowboy Homestead | (435) 425-3414 | 2280 S UT-12; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $69 \u2013 79 | www.cowboyhomesteadcabins.com\n\nTorrey School House B&B (favorite) | (435) 633-4643 | 150 N Center Street; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $110+ | www.torreyschoolhouse.com\n\nSky Ridge B&B | (435) 425-3222 | 950 UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $109+ | www.skyridgeinn.com\n\nThousand Lakes RV Park | (435) 425-3500 | 1110 W UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | Rates: $27.50+ | www.thousandlakesrvpark.com\n\nBest Western Grand Hotel (favorite) | (435) 834-5700 | 30 N 100 E; Bryce Canyon City, UT 84764 | $135+ | www.bestwesternbrycecanyongrandhotel.com\n\nBest Western Rubys Inn | (435) 834-5341 | 26 S Main St; Bryce Canyon City, UT 84764 | Rates: $80+ | www.rubysinn.com\n\nBryce Canyon Pines | (800) 892-7923 | Milepost 10, UT-12; Bryce, UT 84764 | Rates: $65+ | www.brycecanyonmotel.com\n\nStone Canyon Inn (favorite) | (435) 679-8611 | 1220 W 50 S; Tropic, UT 84776 | Rates: $145+ | www.stonecanyoninn.com\n\nBryce Canyon Inn (favorite) | (435) 679-8502 | 21 N Main St; Tropic, UT 84776 | Rates: $70+ | www.brycecanyoninn.com\n\nBryce Country Cabins | (435) 679-8643 | 320 N Main St; Tropic, UT 84776 | Rates: $85+ | www.brycecountrycabins.com\n\nBryce Trails B&B (favorite) | (435) 679-8700 | 1001 W Bryce Way; Tropic, UT 84776 | Rates: $135+ | www.brycetrails.com\n\nBuffalo Sage B&B | (435) 679-8443 | 980 N UT-12; Tropic, UT 84776 | www.buffalosage.com\n\nRiverside Resort & RV Park | (800) 824-5651 | 594 N US-89; Hatch, UT 84735 | www.riversideresort-utah.com\n\nGrand Staircase Inn | (435) 679-8400 | 105 N Kodachrome Dr; Cannonville, UT 84718 | Rates: $49+ | www.grandstaircaseinn.com\n\nBryce Valley KOA | (435) 679-8988 | 215 Red Rock Dr; Cannonville, UT 84718\n\nZion & Grand Canyon Area\n\nDriftwood Lodge | (435) 772-3262 | 1515 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $79+ | www.driftwoodlodge.net\n\nPioneer Lodge | (435) 772-3233 | 838 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $149+ | www.pioneerlodge.com\n\nBest Western Zion Park Inn (favorite) | (435) 772-3200 | 1215 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767\n\nDesert Pearl Inn (favorite) | (435) 772-8888 | 707 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $138+ | www.desertpearl.com\n\nCliffrose Lodge & Gardens (favorite) | (435) 772-3234 | 281 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $169+ | www.cliffroselodge.com\n\nBumbleberry Inn | (435) 772-3224 | 97 Bumbleberry Ln; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $58+ | www.bumbleberry-inn.com\n\nCable Mountain Lodge (favorite) | (435) 772-3366 | 145 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737\n\nCanyon Ranch Motel (favorite) | (435) 772-3357 | 668 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Rates: $99+ | www.canyonranchmotel.com\n\nMajestic View Lodge | (435) 772-0665 | 2400 Zion Park Blvd; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Rates: $79+ | www.majesticviewlodge.com\n\nZion Ponderosa Ranch Resort | (435) 648-2700 | Twin Knolls Rd; Mt Carmel, Utah, UT 84755 | Rates: $64+ | www.zionponderosa.com\n\nRed Rock Inn | (435) 772-3139 | 998 Zion Landing; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $122+ | www.redrockinn.com\n\nZion Canyon B&B (favorite) | (435) 772-9466 | 101 Kokopelli Cir; Springdale, Utah 84767 | Rates: $135+ | www.zioncanyonbandb.com\n\nCanyon Vista Lodge, B&B | (435) 772-3801 | 2175 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $139+ | www.canyonvistabandb.com\n\nHarvest House B&B | (435) 772-3880 | 29 Canyon View Dr; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $120+ | www.harvesthouse.net\n\nUnder the Eaves | (435) 772-3457 | 980 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $95+ | www.undertheeaves.com\n\nNovel House Inn | (800) 711-8400 | 73 Paradise Rd; Springdale, UT 84767 | www.novelhouse.com\n\nFlanigan's Villas | (435) 632-0798 | 425 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rates: $259-359 | www.flanigansvillas.com\n\nAmber Inn B&B | (435) 772-0289 | 244 W Main St; Rockville, UT 84763 | Rates: $100+ | www.amber-inn.com\n\nDesert Thistle | (435) 772-0251 | 37 W Main St; Rockville, UT 84763 | Rates: $110+ | www.thedesertthistle.com\n\nBest Western Squire Inn | (800) 622-6966 | 74 AZ-64; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023\n\nCanyon Plaza Resort | (928) 638-2673 | 116 AZ-64; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023 | Rates: $100+ | www.grandcanyonplaza.com\n\nGrand Canyon Hotel (favorite) | (928) 635-1419 | 145 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $40+ | www.thegrandcanyonhotel.com\n\nRed Feather Lodge | (928) 638-2414 | 106 AZ-64; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023 | Rates: $80+ | www.redfeatherlodge.com\n\nHoliday Inn Express | (928) 638-3000 | AZ-64; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023\n\nThe Lodge on Route 66 (favorite) | (928) 635-4534 | 200 E Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $90+ | www.thelodgeonroute66.com\n\nCanyon Country Inn | (928) 635-2349 | 442 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $66+ | www.thecanyoncountryinn.com\n\nThe Red Garter Inn (favorite) | (800) 328-1484 | 137 W Railroad Ave; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $120+ | www.redgarter.com\n\nDumplin Patch B&B | (928) 635-1924 | 625 E Linger Ln; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $155+ | www.dumplinpatch.net\n\nCanyon Motel & RV Park | (800) 482-3955 | 1900 E Rodeo Rd Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $70+ | www.thecanyonmotel.com\n\nKaibab Lodge | (928) 638-2389 | 18 miles north of North Rim | Rates: $95+ | www.kaibablodge.com\n\nJacob Lake Inn | (928) 643-7232 | 45 miles north of North Rim, Jacob Lake, AZ | Rates: $89+ | www.jacoblake.com\n\nLodging and dining are extremely limited at the North Rim. See page 450 for in-park accommodations.\n\nGreat Basin Area\n\nHotel Nevada (favorite) | (775) 289-6665 | 501 Aultman St; Ely, NV 89301 | Rates: $35 \u2013 125 | www.hotelnevada.com\n\nProspector Hotel & Casino | (775) 289-8900 | 1501 Aultman St; Ely, NV 89301 | Rates: $79+ | www.prospectorhotelandcasino.com\n\nBristlecone Motel | (800) 497-7404 | 700 Avenue I; Ely, NV 89301 | Rates: $60+ | www.bristleconemotelelynv.com\n\nJail House Motel & Casino | (775) 289-3033 | 211 5th St; Ely, NV 89301-1581 | www.jailhousecasino.com\n\nFour Sevens Motel | (775) 289-4747 | 500 High St; Ely, NV 89301\n\nChain hotels can be found in Moab, Richfield, Kanab, and Hurricane, UT; Page, and Williams, AZ; Ely, NV, and along I-70 and I-15.\n\nFestivals\n\nSundance Film Festival | January | Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, UT | www.sundance.org\n\nWinter Birds Festival | January | St. George, UT | www.sgcity.org\/birdfestival\n\nWestern Stars Cowboy Poetry | February | Moab | www.moabwesternstars.com\n\nBryce Canyon Winter Festival | February | Bryce Canyon City | (800) 468-8660\n\nSkinny Tire Festival | March | Moab | www.skinnytireevents.com\n\nDixie-Escalante Kite Festival | April | Sun River Golf Course | www.dixiekitefestival.com\n\nMoab Arts Festival | May | Moab | www.moabartsfestival.org\n\nCanyonlands PRCA Rodeo | June | Moab | www.canyonlandsrodeo.com\n\nUtah Shakespeare Festival | June | Cedar City, UT | www.bard.org\n\nGrand Canyon Music Festival | August | South Rim | www.grandcanyonmusicfest.org\n\nMoab Music Festival | September | Moab | www.moabmusicfest.org\n\nEverett Ruess Days | September | Escalante, UT | www.everettruessdays.org\n\nWorld of Speed | September | Bonneville Salt Flats, UT | www.saltflats.com\n\nPumpkin Chuckin' Festival | October | Moab | www.youthgardenproject.org\n\nRed Rock Film Festival | November | St. George, UT | www.daysofcamelot.com\n\nMoab Folk Festival | November | Moab | www.moabfolkfestival.com\n\nDickens' Christmas Festival | December | St. George | www.dickenschristmasfestival.com\n\nAttractions\n\nArches\/Canyonlands Area\n\nCastle Valley Ridge Trail (favorite) | Advanced, 19 mile MTB loop, trailhead located on FR-110 (up Nuck Woodward Canyon from UT-31) | Manti-La Sal National Forest\n\nCorona Arch (favorite) | 3 miles (roundtrip) | Trailhead is located on UT-279, 10 miles west of the UT-279\/US-191 junction\n\nNegro Bill Canyon | 4 miles (roundtrip) | Trailhead is located on UT-128, 3 miles east of UT-128\/US-191 junction | Creek crossing is required (wear appropriate footwear)\n\nFisher Towers | 4.4 miles (roundtrip) | Trailhead located off a 2.2 mile dirt road accessed via UT-128, 21 miles east of the UT-128\/US-191 junction\n\nDead Horse Point State Park (favorite) | (435) 259-2614 | US-313; Moab, UT 84532 | Day-use: $10\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nSkydive Moab | (435) 259-5867 | US-191 N; Moab, UT 84532 | www.skydivemoab.com\n\nChile Pepper Bike Shop (favorite) | Rentals | (435) 259-4688 | 702 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.chilebikes.com\n\nRim Cyclery | Rentals | (435) 259-5333 | 94 W 100 N; Moab, UT 84532 | www.rimcyclery.com\n\nMoab Cyclery | Tours (Road & MTB) | (800) 559-1978 | 391 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.moabcyclery.com\n\nWestern Spirit Cycling (favorite) | Tours (Road & MTB) | (435) 259-8732 | 478 Mill Creek Dr; Moab, UT 84532 | www.westernspirit.com\n\nSolfun Mountain Bike Tours (favorite) | (435) 259-9861 | PO Box 1269; Moab, UT 84532 | Tours: $100+ | www.solfun.com\n\nRim Mountain Bike Tours | (435) 259-5223 | 1233 S US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Tours ($85+) | www.rimtours.com\n\nMoab Adventure Center | Climbing, rafting, hot air ballooning, and more | (435) 259-7019 | 225 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.moabadventurecenter.com\n\nMoab Desert Adventures | Guided rock climbing and canyoneering trips | (435) 260-2404 | 415 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.moabdesertadventures.com\n\nTag-A-Long Expeditions | Land & Water Adventures | (435) 259-8946 | 452 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.tagalong.com\n\nCoyote Land Tours | (435) 259-6649 | 397 N Main St, # 2; Moab, UT 84532 | Tours: $59\/Adult | www.coyotelandtours.com\n\nHigh Point Hummer & ATV | Rentals & Tours | (435) 259-2972 | 281 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.highpointhummer.com\n\nFarabee Jeep Rentals | (435) 259-7494 | 1125 S US-191; Moab, UT | Rates: $150+\/day | www.farabeesjeeprentals.com\n\nCanyonlands By Night | Land, Air, and Water Tours | (435) 259-5261 | 1861 US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | www.canyonlandsbynight.com\n\nNavtec Expeditions | River & Jeep Tours | (435) 259-7983 | 321 N Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.navtec.com\n\nRed River Adventures | Multi-sport Tours | (877) 259-4046 | 1140 S Main St; Moab, UT 84532 | www.redriveradventures.com\n\nTex's Riverways | Rentals & Shuttles | (435) 259-5101 | 691 N 500 W; Moab, UT 84532 | www.texsriverways.com\n\nMuseum of Moab | (435) 259-7985 | 118 E Center St; Moab, UT 84532 | Suggested Donation: $5 | www.moabmuseum.org\n\nCastle Creek Winery | (435) 259-3332 | Milepost 14, UT-128; Moab, UT 84532 | www.castlecreekwinery.com\n\nSlickrock Cinemas 3 | (435) 259-4441 | 580 Kane Creek Blvd; Moab, UT 84532\n\nGravel Pit Lanes | (435) 259-4748 | 1078 Mill Creek Dr; Moab, UT 84532\n\nHole N' the Rock | (435) 686-2250 | 11037 S US-191; Moab, UT 84532 | Admission: $5\/Adult | www.theholeintherock.com\n\nJohn Wesley Powell River History Museum | 1765 E Main; Green River, UT | (435) 564-3427 | Admission: $6\/Adult | www.johnwesleypowell.com\n\nGreen River State Park | (435) 564-3633 | 450 Green River Blvd; Green River, UT 84525 | Day-use: $6\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nColorado River & Trail Exp. | (435) 564-8170 | 1117 E 1000 N; Green River, UT 84525 | Rafting: $74+ | www.crateinc.com\n\nGoblin Valley State Park (favorite) | (435) 275-4584 | Goblin Valley Rd; Green River, UT 84525 | Day-use: $7\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nCapitol Reef\/Bryce Canyon Area\n\nHondoo Rivers & Trails | Horseback & Vehicle Tours | (435) 425-3519 | 90 E Main St; Torrey, UT 84775 | www.hondoo.com\n\nBackcountry Outfitters | Multi-sport Adventures | (866) 747-3972 | 677 E UT-24; Torrey, UT 84775 | www.ridethereef.com\n\nAnasazi State Park | (435) 335-7308 | 460 N UT-12; Boulder, UT 84716 | Fee: $5\/Person | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nWayne Theater | (435) 425-3123 | 11 E Main St; Bicknell, UT 84715\n\nGrand Staircase Escalante National Monument (favorite) | (435) 679-8980 | 10 W Center St; Tropic, UT 84776 | www.ut.blm.gov\/monument\n\nEscalante Canyon Outfitters (favorite) | Multi-day Hiking Tours | (888) 326-4453 | PO Box 1330; Boulder, UT 84716 | www.ecohike.com\n\nUtah Canyons | Hiking & Shuttle Service | (435) 826-4967 | 325 W Main St; Escalante, UT 84726 | www.utahcanyons.com\n\nKodachrome Basin State Park (favorite) | (435) 679-8562 | PO Box 180069; Cannonville, UT 84718 | Day-use: $6\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nEscalante Petrified Forest | (435) 826-4466 | 710 N Reservoir; Escalante, UT 84726 | Day-use: $6\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nBryce Canyon ATV Adventures | (435) 834-5200 | 139 E UT-12; Bryce Canyon City, UT 84764 | Rides: $35+ | www.brycecanyonatvadventures.com\n\nMoqui Cave | (435) 644-8525 | Admission: $10\/Adult | 4518 N US-89; Kanab, UT\n\nFrontier Movie Town | (435) 644-5337 | 297 W Center St; Kanab, UT 84741 | www.frontiermovietown.com\n\nCedar Breaks National Monument | (435) 586-0787 | 2390 W UT-56, Suite 11; Cedar City, UT 84720 | Entrance Fee: $4\/Person | www.nps.gov\/cebr\n\nZion & Grand Canyon Area\n\nZion Adventure Co. (favorite) | Tons of tours, shuttle service for Zion Narrows, gear rental, courses, and tubing | (435) 772-1001 | 36 Lion Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Narrows Tour: $150+ | www.zionadventures.com\n\nMild To Wild Rhino Tours | (435) 216-8298 | 839 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84737 | www.mildtowildrhinotours.com\n\nZion Rock & Mountain Guides | Shuttle Service to Zion Narrows Trailhead (Chamberlain Ranch), Tours, & Rental | (435) 772-3303 | 1458 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84737 | www.zionrockguides.com\n\nZion Cycles | (435) 772-0400 | 868 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | Rentals ($15+\/hr) & Tours | www.zioncycles.com\n\nSouthern Utah Adventure Center | Rentals (boat, jeep, ATV, etc.) and Tours | (435) 635-0907 | 138 W State St; Hurricane, UT 84737 | www.southernutahadventurecenter.com\n\nPioneer Corner Museum | (435) 635-7153 | 95 S Main St; Hurricane, UT 84737\n\nZion Canyon Theatre | (435) 772-2400 | 145 Zion Park Blvd; Springdale, UT 84767 | www.zioncanyontheatre.com\n\nThe Wave (favorite) | Coyote Buttes North | To prevent overuse, only 20 hikers are allowed to hike here each day. All permits ($7) must be purchased in advance. Ten permits can be obtained via an online lottery. Ten walk-in permits are available 24 hours in advance via lottery at Paria Contact Station (Kanab Field Office in winter). Successful applicants will be given detailed instructions & maps to reach the Wave. Additional information on the permit process is available at the following web address: | www.blm.gov\/az\/st\/en\/arolrsmain\/paria\/coyote_buttes\/permits.html\n\nWire Pass (favorite) | Coyote Buttes North | Don't forget to take a stroll down Wire Pass (1.7 miles, one-way) when visiting the Wave. It's the most scenic entry point to Buckskin Gulch. Wire Pass Trailhead is located 8.3 miles down House Rock Valley Road (washboard, dirt, inaccessible after rain). House Rock Valley Road is accessed from US-89 (between mile markers 25 and 26). A permit is required ($6).\n\nBuckskin Gulch (favorite) | One of the longest (13+ miles, one-way) and deepest slot canyons in the world is also one of the best hiking trails in the United States. Wire Pass is the most popular (and beautiful) access point. Buckskin Gulch continues into Paria Canyon. A permit is required ($6).\n\nParia Canyon | Paria Canyon can be accessed via Buckskin Gulch or from White House Trailhead (near Paria Contact Station). The trail follows the canyon and Paria River to Lee's Ferry Trailhead at the Colorado River just southwest of Page, AZ and Lake Powell. A permit is required ($6).\n\nThese hikes are fantastic, but not without danger. Using a shuttle or two cars is a good idea (if not necessary). Pack plenty of water. Wear water shoes. Check the weather forecast (flash floods are a significant problem\u2014in 2010 the area experienced multiple floods that removed high water campsites, added obstructions, and changed the river bed). Most importantly talk to a ranger about trail conditions when you obtain your permit ($6).\n\nDay hike permits for Buckskin Gulch, Paria Canyon, and Wire Pass can be purchased at self-pay stations at each trailhead.\n\nKanab Field Office | (435) 644-4600 | 318 N 100 E; Kanab, UT 84741 | www.blm.gov\/ut\/st\/en\/fo\/kanab.html\n\nParia Contact Station | (435) 644-4628 | Located on US-89, about half-way between Kanab, UT and Page, AZ\n\nCoral Pink Sand Dunes | (435) 648-2800 | Accessed via US-89 north of Kanab, UT | Day-use: $6\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nDinosaur Discovery Site (favorite) | (435) 574-3466 | 2180 E Riverside Dr; St. George, UT 84790 | Admission: $6\/Adult | www.utahdinosaurs.com\n\nSt. George Temple | (435) 673-3533 | 250 E 400 S; St. George, UT 84770\n\nTuacahn Ampitheatre | (435) 652-3200 | 1100 Tuacahn; Ivins, UT 84738 | Tickets: $17.50+ | www.tuacahn.org\n\nSnow Canyon State Park | (435) 628-2255 | 1002 Snow Canyon Dr; Ivins, UT 84738 | Day-use: $6\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nSand Hollow State Park | (435) 680-0715 | 4405 W 3600 S; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Day-use: $10\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nQuail Creek State Park | (435) 879-2378 | 472 N 5300 W; Hurricane, UT 84737 | Day-use: $10\/Vehicle | www.stateparks.utah.gov\n\nCoral Cliffs Cinema 8 | (435) 635-1484 | 835 W State St; Hurricane, UT 84737 | www.coralcliffscinema8.com\n\nVermilion Cliffs National Monument | (435) 688-3200 | Marble Canyon, AZ 86036 | www.blm.gov\n\nAntelope Canyon | The most-visited and most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest. A guide is required for both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon. | www.navajonationparks.org\n\nOverland Canyon Tours (favorite) | (928) 608-4072 | 48 N Lake Powell Blvd; Page, AZ 86040 | Tours: $32+\/Adult | www.overlandcanyontours.com\n\nAntelope Slot Canyon Tours by Chief Tsosi | (928) 645-5594 | 55 S Lake Powell Blvd; Page, AZ 86040 | www.antelopeslotcanyon.com\n\nNavajo Tours | (928) 698-3384 | PO Box 4586; Page, AZ | Tours: $25 \u2013 40\/Person | www.navajotours.com\n\nGlen Canyon National Recreation Area | (928) 608-6200 | US-89; Page, AZ 86040\n\nLake Powell Vacations | House Boat Rentals | (928) 608-0800 | 620 Industrial Rd; Page, AZ 86040 | www.lakepowellvacations.com\n\nGrand Canyon Field Institute | (928) 638-2485 | 4 Tonto St; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023 | Day & multi-day classes | www.grandcanyon.org\n\nMarvelous Marv's (favorite) | (928) 707-0291 | 200 W Bill Williams Ave; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $85\/Person | www.marvelousmarv.com\n\nPygmy Guides | Overnight & Day Tours | (928) 527-1601 | www.pygmyguides.com\n\nCeiba Adventures | Food\/Shuttle Service & gear rental for river Trips | (928) 527-0171 | 7165 Slayton Ranch Rd; Flagstaff, AZ 86004 | www.ceibaadventures.com\n\nJeep Tours & Safaris | (800) 320-5337 | 106 AZ-64; Tusayan, AZ 86023 | Tours: $64\/Adult | www.grandcanyonjeeptours.com\n\nFountain Outdoor Rec. | Snow Tubing & Skiing | (928) 635-2434 | 2467 County Rd 73; Williams, AZ 86046 | www.elkridgeski.com\n\nBearizona Wildlife Park (favorite) | (928) 635-2289 | 1500 E Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | Rates: $16\/Adult | www.bearizona.com\n\nGrand Canyon Deer Farm | (928) 635-4073 | 6769 E Deer Farm Rd; Williams, AZ 86046-8419 | Rates: $9.95\/Adult | www.deerfarm.com\n\nGrand Canyon Brewery | (928) 635-2168 | 233 W Route 66; Williams, AZ 86046 | www.grandcanyonbrewery.com\n\nImax Theater | (928) 638-2203 | AZ-64 & US-180; Grand Canyon, AZ 86023 | Tickets: $12.50\/Adult | www.explorethecanyon.com\n\nPipe Spring National Monument | (928) 643-7105 | HC 65 Box 5; Fredonia, AZ 86022 | Entrance Fee: $5\/Person | www.nps.gov\/pisp\n\nGreat Basin Area\n\nWard Charcoal Ovens State Hist. Park | PO Box 151761; Ely, NV | (775) 289-1693 | Entrance Fee: $7\/Vehicle | www.parks.nv.gov\n\nNV Northern Railway Museum | (775) 289-2085 | 1100 Avenue A; East Ely, NV 89301 | Museum ($4\/Adult) & Train Excursions ($24+) ww.nevadanorthernrailway.net\n\nSunset Lanes | (775) 289-8811 | 1240 E Aultman St, # B; Ely, NV 89301\n\nLas Vegas Area\n\nHoover Dam | (702) 494-2517 | Located 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas on US-93 | Parking: $7, Visitor Center Admission: $8, Powerplant Tour: $11, Hoover Dam Tour: $30 (Tours include Visitor Center admission) | www.usbr.gov\/lc\/hooverdam\n\nRed Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (favorite) | 1000 Scenic Dr; Las Vegas, NV | (702) 515-5350 | Day-use: $7\/Vehicle | www.blm.gov\n\nDig This (favorite) | (702) 222-4344 | 3012 S Rancho Dr; Las Vegas, NV 89102 | Rates: $400\/3 hr | www.digthisvegas.com\n\nBellagio Hotel | Stop to see the famous fountains | (888) 987-6667 | 3600 Las Vegas Blvd S; Las Vegas, NV 89158 | www.bellagio.com\n\nVegas Indoor Skydiving | (702) 731-4768 | 200 Convention Center Dr; Las Vegas, NV 89109 | Rates: $85 | www.vegasindoorskydiving.com\n\nPinball Hall of Fame | (702) 597-2627 | 1610 E Tropicana Ave; Las Vegas, NV 89119 | Free | www.pinballmuseum.org\n\nThe Atomic Testing Museum | (702) 794-5161 | 755 E Flamingo Rd; Las Vegas, NV 89119 | Admission: $14\/Adult | www.atomictestingmuseum.org\n\nExotics Racing | (702) 405-7223 | 6925 Speedway Blvd, Suite C105; Las Vegas, NV 89115 | Rides starting at $99 | www.exoticsracing.com\nYour Guide to Great Basin National Park, First Edition (electronic)\n\nISBN: 978-1-62128-034-7\n\nPublished by: Stone Road Press\n\nAuthor\/Cartographer\/Photographer\/Designer: Michael Joseph Oswald\n\nEditor: Derek Pankratz\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012 Stone Road Press, LLC, Whitelaw, Wisconsin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without written permission of the Publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Stone Road Press; c\/o Michael Oswald; 4927 Stone Road; Whitelaw, WI 54247.\n\nThe entire work, Your Guide to the National Parks is available in paperback and electronic versions. Content that appears in print may not be available electronically.\n\nPaperback ISBN: 978-1-62128-000-2\n\nLibrary of Congress Control Number (LCCN): 2012934277\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\nE-Book ISBN: 978-1-62128-065-1\n\nCorrections\/Contact\n\nThis guide book has been researched and written with the greatest attention to detail in order to provide you with the most accurate and pertinent information. Unfortunately, travel information\u2014especially pricing\u2014is subject to change and inadvertent errors and omissions do occur. Should you encounter a change, error, or omission while using this guide book, we'd like to hear about it. (If you found a wonderful place, trail, or activity not mentioned, we'd love to hear about that too.) Please contact us by sending an e-mail to corrections@stoneroadpress.com. Your contributions will help make future editions better than the last.\n\nYou can contact us online at www.StoneRoadPress.com or follow us on\n\nFacebook: www.facebook.com\/thestoneroadpress\n\nTwitter: www.twitter.com\/stoneroadpress (@stoneroadpress)\n\nFlickr: www.flickr.com\/photos\/stoneroadpress\n\nFAQs\n\nThe world of electronic media is not cut and dry like print. Devices handle files differently. Users have a variety of expectations. These e-books are image- and map-intensive, requiring fairly powerful hardware. All books were tested for use on the Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and iPad. You can expect to have the best user experience on one of these devices, or a similar tablet, laptop, or desktop. In the event you have issues please peruse our Frequently Asked Questions (www.stoneroadpress.com\/faq). If you still can't find the solution, do not hesitate to contact us at faq@stoneroadpress.com.\n\nMaps\n\nNumerous map layouts were explored while developing this e-book, but in the end it was decided that the most useful map is a complete one. Unfortunately, due to file size concerns and e-reader hardware limitations, some maps included in this guide book are below our usual high standards of quality (even using zoom features). As a workaround all of this books maps are available in pdf format by clicking the link below each map or visiting www.stoneroadpress.com\/national-parks\/maps.\n\nDisclaimer\n\nYour safety is important to us. If any activity is beyond your ability or threatened by forces outside your control, do not attempt it. The maps in this book, although accurate and to scale, are not intended for hiking. Serious hikers should purchase a detailed, waterproof, topographical map. It is also suggested that you write or call in advance to confirm information when it matters most.\n\nThe primary purpose of this guide book is to enhance our readers' national park experiences, but the author, editor, and publisher cannot be held responsible for any experiences while traveling.\n\nPhoto Credits\n\nFront cover: View from Wheeler Peak Summit \u00a9 Loren Reinhold\/NPS\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
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+{"text":"\nNom de Plume\n\nA (Secret) History of Pseudonyms\n\nCarmela Ciuraru\n\nDedication\n\nFor Sarah, everything\n\n(and for Oscar)\nEpigraphs\n\nWorld is crazier and more of it than we think.\n\nIncorrigibly plural. I peel and portion\n\nA tangerine and spit the pips and feel\n\nThe drunkenness of things being various.\n\n\u2014LOUIS MACNEICE, \"Snow\"\n\nOn whom, then, my God, am I the onlooker? How many am I? Who is me? What then is this gap between myself and me?\n\n\u2014FERNANDO PESSOA\n\n\"Must a name mean something?\" Alice asked doubtfully.\n\n\"Of course it must,\" Humpty Dumpty said, with a short laugh. \"My name means the shape I am and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape.\"\n\n\u2014LEWIS CARROLL, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland\n\nThe self is like a bug. Every time you smack it, it moves to another place.\n\n\u2014PAT STEIR\nContents\n\nCover\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nEpigraphs\n\nIntroduction\n\nChapter 1\n\nAnne, Charlotte, and Emily Bront\u00eb & Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell (1816\u20131855)\n\n\"Once there were five sisters. . . .\"\n\nChapter 2\n\nGeorge Sand & Aurore Dupin (1804\u20131876)\n\n\"It began with an ankle-length gray military coat, matching trousers, a cravat, and a waistcoat. . . .\"\n\nChapter 3\n\nGeorge Eliot & Marian Evans (1819\u20131880)\n\n\"Charles Dickens was suspicious. . . .\"\n\nChapter 4\n\nLewis Carroll & Charles Dodgson (1832\u20131898)\n\n\"A show of hands if you've never heard of Alice in Wonderland. . . .\"\n\nChapter 5\n\nMark Twain & Samuel Clemens (1835\u20131910)\n\n\"How the protean Samuel Clemens became the world's most famous literary alias will never be known for sure. . . .\"\n\nChapter 6\n\nO. Henry & William Sydney Porter (1862\u20131910)\n\n\"If you are now reading or have recently read a short story by O. Henry, you are most likely a middle-school student. . . .\"\n\nChapter 7\n\nFernando Pessoa & His Heteronyms (1888\u20131935)\n\n\"You will never get to the bottom of Fernando Pessoa. . . .\"\n\nChapter 8\n\nGeorge Orwell & Eric Blair (1903\u20131950)\n\n\"Had Eric Arthur Blair been a working-class bloke from Birmingham instead of an Old Etonian . . .\"\n\nChapter 9\n\nIsak Dinesen & Karen Blixen (1885\u20131962)\n\n\"She was descended from Danish royalty, but her childhood was filled with the traditional privileges of an aristocratic upbringing. . . .\"\n\nChapter 10\n\nSylvia Plath & Victoria Lucas (1932\u20131963)\n\n\"She was a good girl who loved her mother. . . .\"\n\nChapter 11\n\nHenry Green & Henry Yorke (1905\u20131973)\n\n\"He's the best writer you've never heard of. . . .\"\n\nChapter 12\n\nRomain Gary & \u00c9mile Ajar (1914\u20131980)\n\n\"He was a war hero, a Ping-Pong champion, a film director, a diplomat, and an author who wrote the best-selling French novel of the twentieth century. . . .\"\n\nChapter 13\n\nJames Tiptree, Jr. & Alice Sheldon (1915\u20131987)\n\n\"On May 19, 1987, a seventy-one-year-old woman and her eighty-four-year-old husband were found lying in bed together, hand in hand, dead of gunshot wounds. . . .\"\n\nChapter 14\n\nGeorges Simenon & Christian Brulls et al. (1903\u20131989)\n\n\"He claimed to have had sex with ten thousand women. . . .\"\n\nChapter 15\n\nPatricia Highsmith & Claire Morgan (1921\u20131995)\n\n\"She was one of the most wretched people you could ever meet, with mood shifts that swung as wildly as the stock market. . . .\"\n\nChapter 16\n\nPauline R\u00e9age & Dominique Aury (1907\u20131998)\n\n\"Not many authors can boast of having written a best-selling pornographic novel. . . .\"\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nTime Line\n\nBibliography\n\nEpigraph\n\nAbout the Author\n\nCredits\n\nCopyright\n\nAbout the Publisher\nIntroduction\n\nAt its most basic level, a pseudonym is a prank. Yet the motives that lead writers to assume an alias are infinitely complex, sometimes mysterious even to them. Names are loaded, full of pitfalls and possibilities, and can prove obstacles to writing. Virginia Woolf, who never adopted a nom de plume herself, once expressed the fundamental and maddening condition of authorship: \"Never to be yourself and yet always\u2014that is the problem.\" She was describing the predicament of the personal essayist, but identity can seem crippling to any writer. A change of name, much like a change of scenery, provides a chance to start again.\n\nTo a certain extent, all writing involves impersonation\u2014the act of summoning an authorial \"I\" to create the speaker of a poem or the characters in a novel. For the audacious poet Walt Whitman, it was possible to explore other voices simply as himself. He embraced his multitudes. (\"Do I contradict myself? \/ Very well then, I contradict myself.\") But some writers are unable to engage in such alchemy, or don't want to, without relying on an alter ego. If the authorial persona is a construct, never wholly authentic (no matter how autobiographical the material), then the pseudonymous writer takes this notion to yet another level, inventing a construct of a construct. \"[T]he cultivation of a pseudonym might be interpreted as not so very different from the cultivation in vivo of the narrative voice that sustains any work of words, making it unique and inimitable,\" wrote Joyce Carol Oates in a 1987 New York Times essay. \"Choosing a pseudonym by which to identify the completed product simply takes the mysterious process a step or two further, officially erasing the author's (social) identity and supplanting it with the (pseudonymous) identity.\" Elide your own name, and imaginative beckoning can truly begin. As the French journalist and writer Fran\u00e7ois Nourissier once noted (in a piece entitled \"Faut-il \u00e9crire masqu\u00e9?\"), a nom de plume provides a space in which \"obstacles fall away, and one's reserve dissipates.\"\n\nThe merging of an author and an alter ego is an unpredictable thing. It can become a marriage, like a faithful and sturdy partnership, or it can prove a swift, intoxicating affair. A clandestine literary self can be tried on temporarily, to produce a single work, then dropped like a robe; or the guise might exist as something to be guarded at all costs. The attraction is obvious and undeniable. Entering another body (figuratively, ecstatically) is almost an erotic impulse. Historically, many writers have been lonely outsiders, which is why inhabiting another self offers an intimacy that seems otherwise unobtainable. In the absence of real-life companionship, the pseudonymous entity can serve as confidant, keeper of secrets, and protective shield.\n\nThe term \"alter ego\" is taken from Latin, meaning \"other I.\" This suggests the writer is not so much wearing a mask as becoming another person entirely. Have the two selves met? Maybe not, and it's probably better that way. Sometimes there's no reason to explore how or why the other half lives. Knowing that it does is enough.\n\nIn his influential 1974 book The Inner Game of Tennis, author Timothy Gallwey applied the notion of doubleness to the tennis player, describing how each self hinders or enhances performance. With almost no technical advice, he provides a prescriptive guide to mastery. He focuses on what he describes as two arenas of engagement: Self 1 and Self 2. When his book was first published, Gallwey's ideas were so radical that thousands of readers wrote to express their gratitude, saying that they'd successfully applied his principles to pursuits other than tennis, including writing.\n\nGallwey, who majored in English literature at Harvard University, portrays Self 1 as \"the talker, critic, controlling voice,\" and notes its \"persistence and inventiveness in finding opportunities to get in the way.\" Self 1 berates you, calls you an incorrigible failure. But the nonjudgmental Self 2 represents liberation in its purest form. As Gallwey writes, Self 2 is \"much more than a doer. It is capable of a range of feelings that are the most uniquely human aspect of life. These feelings can be explored in sports, the arts . . . and countless other activities. Self 2 is like an acorn that, when first discovered, seems quite small yet turns out to have the uncanny ability not only to become a magnificent tree but, if it has the right conditions, can generate an entire forest.\" In the context of authorship, the freeing of an alternate identity (Self 2) can reveal not just a forest but new worlds, boundless and transgressive, thrilling beyond one's wildest dreams.\n\nA pseudonym may give a writer the necessary distance to speak honestly, but it can just as easily provide a license to lie. Anything is possible. It allows a writer to produce a work of \"serious\" literature, or one that is simply a guilty pleasure. It can inspire unprecedented bursts of creativity and prove an antidote to boredom. For that rare bird known as the commercially successful author, there is typically less at stake in toying with a pen name. If the book produced by an ephemeral self fails, it will be viewed as a silly misstep. All is forgiven when an author retires a pen name and returns to giving critics and fans exactly what they want: the familiar. Lesson learned, let's move on. If you're writing the equivalent of high-fructose corn syrup, perhaps it's unwise to serve up organic spelt, even under a different brand name.\n\nFor best-selling authors like Nora Roberts (a truncated version of her actual name, Eleanor Robertson)\u2014who has written more than two hundred novels, including under the pen name J. D. Robb\u2014having a transparent or \"open\" pseudonym is a savvy marketing strategy, a way to keep up her busy production line and show off her versatility. Roberts had initially resisted writing as someone else, but her agent had talked her into it by explaining, \"There's Diet Pepsi, there's regular Pepsi, and there's Caffeine-Free Pepsi.\" It's all about brand extension.\n\nA new work by Stephen King, whose books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, is a reassuring promise of success to his publisher. It's also critic-proof. Yet in the late 1970s, feeling hemmed in by his phenomenally prolific output, King introduced the pen name Richard Bachman. As he later said, it was easy to add someone to his interior staff:\n\nThe name Richard Bachman actually came from when they called me and said we're ready to go to press with this novel, what name shall we put on it? And I hadn't really thought about that. Well, I had, but the original name\u2014Gus Pillsbury\u2014had gotten out on the grapevine and I really didn't like it that much anyway, so they said they needed it right away and there was a novel by Richard Stark on my desk, so I used the name Richard, and that's kind of funny because Richard Stark is in itself a pen name for Donald Westlake, and what was playing on the record player was \"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet\" by Bachman Turner Overdrive, so I put the two of them together and came up with Richard Bachman.\n\nKing's practical measure to avoid saturating the market (and avoid openly competing with himself for sales) was a success. But in 1985, a bookstore clerk in Washington, D.C., did some detective work and exposed King's secret. The author subsequently issued a press release announcing Bachman's death from \"cancer of the pseudonym.\" King dedicated his 1989 novel The Dark Half (about a pen name that assumes a sinister life of its own) to \"the late Richard Bachman.\"\n\nProminent writers such as Robert Ludlum, Joyce Carol Oates, Anthony Burgess, Anne Rice, Michael Crichton, John Banville, Ruth Rendell, and Julian Barnes are also known to have indulged in pseudonymous publication. The Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, who tested out a nom de plume in the early 1980s, learned that she was better off sticking with her own identity. One of her aims had been a respite from the public's perception of her work; she sought to upend preconceptions of what it meant to read a \"Doris Lessing novel.\"\n\nShe also had something to prove. Lessing wanted to see how her books would be received if no one knew they were by the author of The Golden Notebook (a novel that had sold nearly a million copies), as well as more than twenty other books. \"I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success,'\" she said later in an interview. \"If the books had come out in my name, they would have sold a lot of copies and reviewers would have said, 'Oh, Doris Lessing, how wonderful.'\"\n\nThat's debatable, but on another level, Lessing had revenge in mind: the ruse was a way to strike back at critics who she felt had \"hated\" her then-recent Canopus novels, a five-volume science-fiction series of which she was extremely proud. (She considered the series her most important work.) So Lessing became \"Jane Somers\" and wrote the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbour, which her longtime UK publisher, Jonathan Cape, rejected, insisting that it was not commercially viable. The novel traced the friendship between two women: a middle-aged magazine editor and an octogenarian. After Lessing found a publisher, Michael Joseph, the book was released in the UK in 1983. (The coy jacket copy indicated, falsely, that Somers was the pen name of \"a well-known English woman journalist.\") It sold only a few thousand copies, and the American edition fared poorly, too.\n\nWas its failure due to people's fixation on famous authors, or was it a bad book? Lessing blamed the former. Was her test nothing but an egotistical publicity stunt? A critic from the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley, seemed to think so. He argued that it was not at all the \"success syndrome\" that had troubled Lessing, but rather that \"reviewers refused to be seduced by her name on the 'Canopus' novels and picked them to pieces.\"\n\nRegardless, Lessing followed up a year later with a Somers sequel, If the Old Could, and soon after its publication she confessed that she had written both books. \"The reviews were more or less what I expected,\" she said of her experiment. \"It was interesting to be a beginning writer again because I found how patronizing reviewers can be.\"\n\nOf course, authorial charlatanism isn't always provoked by malice, fear, guilt, or any other dark motive. The best-selling author Tom Huff, who died in 1990, was a Texan who published gothic novels, but he rechristened himself Jennifer Wilde to venture convincingly into bodice-ripping historical romance. He did so with the 1976 novel Love's Tender Fury, and although he had used other female pseudonyms, none earned him the kind of success he experienced as Wilde.\n\nTerry Harknett, the prolific author of nearly two hundred books, wrote westerns\u2014as in gun slinging and tobacco chewing\u2014using rancher-sounding names like George G. Gilman. Harknett once described himself as a frustrated suspense writer: \"For fifteen long years, I wrote mystery novels that were published twice yearly\u2014and sank without trace at the same rate.\" In a rather unlikely way, he had stumbled into the genre of westerns, and his Gilman novels went on to sell millions of copies. Not bad for a British man from Essex with a decidedly unmasculine name.\n\nSometimes, however, literary fakery crosses the line from being a harmless alias, employed for the author's private, benign purpose. It is perceived as mendacity, as an appalling betrayal of trust. The consequences of this exploitation can tarnish the poseur's reputation irrevocably. And when not only does the supposed background of an author prove fraudulent, but the material presented as autobiographical is itself a lie, the backlash is especially dreadful.\n\nIn early 2008, a writer named Margaret B. Jones published Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival. This was a harrowing story of the author's experiences as a foster child and a Bloods gang member in South Central Los Angeles. She recalled one of the crucial lessons she had learned in her former life: \"Trust no one. Even your own momma will sell you out for the right price or if she gets scared enough.\"\n\nWriting in the New York Times, in a review accompanied by the headline \"However Mean the Streets, Have an Exit Strategy,\" the critic Michiko Kakutani called the book \"humane and deeply affecting\" and praised the author for writing \"with a novelist's eye for the psychological detail and an anthropologist's eye for social rituals and routines.\"\n\nThe book was a fabrication, and \"Margaret B. Jones\" did not exist. (The author's duplicity was exposed by her own sister.) \"Jones,\" it turned out, was the persona of Margaret Seltzer, a thirty-three-year-old white woman living with her daughter in a four-bedroom 1940s bungalow in Eugene, Oregon. Seltzer had grown up with her biological parents in affluent Sherman Oaks, California, and had attended a private Episcopal day school. She did not have a black foster mother whom she called \"Big Mom,\" nor foster siblings named Terrell, Taye, Nishia, and NeeCee. She was neither a Blood nor a Crip. And she had not, at fourteen years old, received a gun as a birthday gift.\n\nRiverhead Books, the publisher of Love and Consequences, promptly canceled the author's publicity tour, recalled copies of the book, and offered refunds to those who had purchased it. For her part, Seltzer claimed that her intentions had been honorable. \"I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don't listen to,\" she said in an interview. \"I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us, because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it's an ego thing\u2014I don't know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.\" Seltzer had written much of the book at a Starbucks in Los Angeles.\n\nThe morbidly shy young writer JT LeRoy, a teenage drifter and recovering drug addict from West Virginia, courted (mostly by phone, mail, and fax) the sympathetic attention of Hollywood celebrities such as Winona Ryder and Drew Barrymore, and prominent authors including Mary Karr and Dennis Cooper. Another fan of his work, Madonna, once sent LeRoy some books on kabbalah as a gift. No one actually met him.\n\nHe maintained an enigmatic allure, and it wasn't long before rumors circulated that there was no JT LeRoy. (Chlo\u00eb Sevigny said that he was definitely real because \"he's left several messages on my answering machine.\") When the writer Mary Gaitskill wanted to meet him in person, the \"real\" LeRoy\u2014Laura Albert, a former phone-sex operator from Brooklyn\u2014paid a nineteen-year-old boy she'd met on the street (\"You want to make fifty bucks, no sex?\") to meet Gaitskill quickly at a San Francisco caf\u00e9, \"get freaked out,\" and leave. Later, other \"stunt doubles\"\u2014always wearing sunglasses and a blond wig\u2014were hired to embody LeRoy for public appearances.\n\nFollowing publication of the cult favorites Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, LeRoy was praised as a wunderkind and his work described as a \"revelation.\" Although both books were works of fiction, LeRoy's marketability (and his many celebrity friendships) depended on his image as a wounded kid with a hardscrabble background. The director Gus Van Sant spoke to LeRoy by phone for hours every day, and gave him an associate-producer credit on the 2003 film Elephant. Dave Eggers edited (and wrote the foreword to) LeRoy's 2005 novella, Harold's End, which appeared first in McSweeney's. Eggers wrote that LeRoy's books would prove to be \"among the most influential American books in the last ten years.\"\n\nSeveral months later, a journalist revealed LeRoy's true identity, and the fallout was immediate and severe. A company that had optioned the film rights to Sarah successfully sued Albert for fraud. Still, in the wake of the ignominious scandal, the middle-aged author was unapologetic: \"I went through a minefield,\" she said, \"and I put on camouflage in order to tell the truth.\" Albert felt victimized by the media and insisted that she could not have written LeRoy's works under her own name. She denied that she had perpetrated a hoax. \"It really felt like he was another human being,\" she told the Paris Review in a 2006 interview. \"He'd tell the story and I was the secretary who would take it down and say, OK, thank you, now I'm going to try to turn it into craft. But while I wouldn't sit there and think of myself as JT, as long as I was writing I didn't have to be Laura either.\"\n\nWhat's in a name? Everything. Nothing. Some writers find that crafting prose under the name they were born with is too restrictive. It can seem oddly false, or perhaps not grand enough to accompany their literary peregrinations. A name carries so much baggage; it can seem tired and dull. Too ethnic. Too stultifying. Too old. Too young. In such instances, an author may be unable to proceed if he is, say, Samuel Clemens, but feels capable of achieving impressive feats if he is Mark Twain. Imagination blooms. Assume an alias, and the depths of the mind can be plumbed at last, without fear of retribution, mockery, or\u2014worst of all\u2014irrelevance. The erasure of a primary name can reveal what appears to be a truer, better, more authentic self. Or it can attain the opposite, by allowing a writer to take flight from a self that is \"true\" yet shameful or despised.\n\nA nom de plume can also provide a divine sense of control. No writer can determine the fate of a book\u2014how the poems or novels are interpreted, whether they are loved or grossly misunderstood. By assuming a pen name, though, an author can claim territory, seize possession of a work before the reader or critic inevitably distorts it. In this way, the author gets the last laugh: despise my book as much as you like; you don't even know who wrote it. However petty, such trickery yields infinite pleasure. Obfuscation is fun!\n\n\"Every writer\u2014after a certain point, when one's labors have resulted in a body of work\u2014experiences himself or herself as both Dr. Frankenstein and the monster,\" Susan Sontag once lamented. Authorial identity can become a trap that causes creative fatigue or even halts literary output altogether. As many writers know firsthand, the literary world is tough: one minute you're the toast of the town; the next minute you're just toast. The desire to emancipate oneself from the shackles of familiarity and start anew, under an altogether different name, makes perfect sense. In fact, why not more pseudonyms?\n\nIn the nineteenth century, the curious phenomenon of pseudonymity reached its height, and as early as the mid-sixteenth century, it was customary for a work to be published without any author's name. It is interesting that the decline of pseudonyms in the twentieth century coincided with the rise of television and film. As people gained more access to the lives of others, it became harder to maintain privacy\u2014and perhaps less desirable. In today's culture, no information seems too personal to be shared (or appropriated). Reality television has increased our hunger to \"know\" celebrities, and even authors are not immune to the pressures of self-promotion and self-revelation; we are in an era in which, as the biographer Nigel Hamilton has written, \"individual human identity has become the focus of so much discussion.\" This is not entirely new, but with the explosion of digital technology, things seem to have spiraled out of control. Fans clamor to interact, online and in person, with their favorite writers, who in turn are expected to blog, sign autographs, and happily pose for photographs at publicity events. Along with their books, authors themselves are sold as products. Even though the practice of pseudonymity is still going strong, it has lost the allure it once had, and for the most part it is applied perfunctorily in genres such as crime fiction or erotica. Today, using a pen name is less often a creative or playful endeavor than a commercial one. Reticence is not what it used to be.\n\nFor each of the authors in this book, hiding behind a nom de plume was essential. However varied their literary styles and their reasons for going undercover, all of them longed to escape the burdens of selfhood\u2014whether permanently or for a brief period in their lives. To publish their work, many risked their reputations, their means of subsistence, and even the relationships they held most dear. Three of the authors committed suicide (Sylvia Plath, Romain Gary, and Alice Sheldon); others had contemplated killing themselves or attempted it; at least one author (Alice Sheldon) was bipolar; and several\u2014including the Bront\u00eb sisters, George Eliot, Isak Dinesen, and George Orwell\u2014suffered from chronic health issues. Many succumbed to strange compulsions, addictions, and self-destructive habits. Almost all were lonely, and few were adept at friendship, marriage, or parenthood. One was a convicted criminal. A number of them, including Henry Green, Georges Simenon, and Patricia Highsmith, were alcoholics. Some achieved literary success in their twenties, while others were late bloomers who found recognition in midlife. But the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, who channeled more than seventy different identities, lived in obscurity and never achieved acclaim. At the time of his death, he left behind more than thirty thousand fragments of his unpublished writings in a trunk. For Romain Gary, the best-selling French author of the twentieth century, pseudonymity became a cage, much like fame.\n\nMost of these authors had endured childhoods with domineering, neglectful, or cruel parents. They suffered profound trauma early on, such as the death of a parent (in the case of Dinesen's father, by hanging himself) or of one or more siblings. Mark Twain outlived his spouse and all but one of his children; Georges Simenon's daughter killed herself. For these troubled authors whose lives seemed to bring impediments without surcease, an alter ego served as a kind of buffer, protecting them (at least up to a point) from the painful aspects of their lives.\n\nThis book is a selective chronicle of pseudonymity over a hundred-year period, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending in the mid-twentieth century. To explore this peculiar tradition is to tap into, among other themes, the complex psychological machinery of authorial identity; the perils of literary fame; the struggles of the artist within a society generally hostile to such a vocation; courage and faith; and the nature of creativity itself. In certain respects, delving into pseudonymity is a frustrating endeavor. No pithy or singular conclusions can be made. It's a puzzle. By definition, this is a history riddled with lacunae: there are thousands of recorded noms de plume, but many more that we will never know.\n\nIn reflecting on the tumultuous lives of the authors in this book, it's hard not to consider the literary deprivation we might have suffered had they not found the protective cover they needed to write. But that would mean contemplating a world without, say, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, or Alice in Wonderland. Instead, let us celebrate the sense of liberation, however short-lived, that these writers found through pseudonymity. In carving out their secret identities, they went to astonishing lengths. Each of these authors possessed extraordinary determination and resilience.\n\nHere are their stories.\nThey were dead by the age of forty\n\nChapter 1\n\nAnne, Charlotte, and Emily Bront\u00eb & ACTON, CURRER, AND ELLIS BELL\n\nOnce there were five sisters. In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth Bront\u00eb, the two eldest, died of tuberculosis. That left Charlotte (born in 1816), Emily (born in 1818), and Anne (born in 1820), as well as a brother, Branwell, born in 1817. Their mother, Maria Branwell Bront\u00eb, died of cancer a year after Anne's birth. Their Irish minister father, Patrick, would outlive them all, dying in 1861 at the age of eighty-four.\n\nThe Bront\u00eb children grew up in a manufacturing village at the edge of the Pennine moors in West Yorkshire, England, and would spend, almost without exception, their entire lives at their father's parsonage at Haworth. The plain, two-story early Georgian building where they once lived is now a museum. Eventually, Haworth would be known as Bront\u00eb country. It might have been known as Brunty country, had their father not changed his family surname while studying at Oxford. (\"Bront\u00eb\" means \"thunder\" in Greek.)\n\nLiving with their father and an aunt, Elizabeth, who helped raise them (and whom they did not love), the children lacked playmates but had one another. Precocious and bookish, they retreated into their own private world. They roamed the moors, and, as Charlotte later wrote, Emily especially loved doing so. \"They were far more to her than a mere spectacle; they were what she lived in and by, as much as the wild birds, their tenants, or the heather, their produce. . . . She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was\u2014liberty.\"\n\nThe children kept dogs, cats, and birds as pets, made drawings, and invented stories, creating elaborate fantasy worlds in which they could lose themselves. Lonely in the absence of their mother, the children developed rich sagas of imaginary cities and kingdoms. Their grand creation was \"Great Glass Town Confederacy,\" presided over by the \"Four Genii,\" named Tallii, Brannii, Emmii, and Annii. They conceived histories of Glass Town and even composed Glass Town songs. Later came the kingdoms of Angria, invented by Charlotte and Branwell, and Gondal, as dreamed up by Emily and Anne. There were kings, queens, pirates, heroes, romances, armies, schools, and struggles between good and evil. These apparently silly children's games gave rise to a flurry of literary activity, proving to be exercises in developing their craft. By their late teens, the Bront\u00ebs had a command of plot, characterization, and pacing.\n\nAnother significant detail from their childhood was the rather unorthodox pedagogical method their father applied with them: the children would put on masks, and Patrick would question them intensively, one by one, about various subjects to test their knowledge. He believed that by wearing masks the children would feel unself-conscious and learn to speak with confidence and candor.\n\nWhen Branwell created the Young Men's Magazine at the age of twelve, the siblings (most of all Charlotte) contributed essays, plays, and illustrations. Like Charlotte, Branwell was ambitious about his writing and desired a readership beyond the family. He believed he was destined for greatness. At twenty, he wrote a sycophantic letter about his literary efforts to William Wordsworth, enclosing samples of his own work, but the poet never replied. (Wordsworth reported to others that he was \"disgusted\" by Branwell's letter.)\n\nAt twenty-one, Charlotte also took the bold step of writing to a famous author, the poet laureate Robert Southey, asking for his opinion of her work. She shyly confessed to him that she longed \"to be forever known\" as a poet. Southey was a poor choice for a potential mentor; cranky, elderly, and in poor health, he had no interest in a young woman's literary aspirations. (She wrote to him using her own name.) Three months later, he replied by acknowledging her obvious talent and then putting her in her place. He issued a stern admonition that young poets hoping to get published \"ought to be prepared for disappointment,\" and that, above all, \"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.\" Surely he did not expect or even want a response to his missive, but he got one anyway: a letter from Charlotte that was almost comical in its expression of meek obedience. \"In the evenings, I do confess, I do think,\" she wrote, \"but I never trouble any one else with my thoughts. I carefully avoid any appearance of preoccupation and eccentricity, which might lead those I live amongst to suspect the nature of my pursuits. . . . Sometimes when I'm teaching or sewing I would rather be reading or writing; but I try to deny myself.\" She closed her letter by thanking him again \"with sincere gratitude\" for essentially crushing her dreams. If her misguided literary ambition should arise again, Charlotte told him, she would simply reread his letter \"and suppress it.\"\n\nThe vast trove of Bront\u00eb juvenilia is larger than all their published works put together. Most of the material was recorded in nearly microscopic handwriting, on tiny folded sheets of paper\u2014some only 2 inches by 1\u00bd inches. These were stitched and bundled together, complete with title pages and back covers made from scraps of wrapping paper and bags of sugar. For her part, Charlotte was already documenting her own literary accomplishments\u2014all twenty-two volumes\u2014with a detailed record titled \"Catalogue of My Books, With the Period of Their Completion Up to August 3, 1830,\" when she was just fourteen years old. Three years later she wrote a novella, The Green Dwarf, under the name \"Wellesley.\"\n\nThe sisters wrote constantly, but had it not been for Charlotte, their efforts might have remained private. She dreamed of making writing her vocation and was unafraid to pursue it. Her foray into publishing was inspired not by her own work, however, but by Emily's.\n\nCharlotte later described how she came across one of her sister's small notebooks and, although this was a violation of privacy, read what Emily had written: \"One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me\u2014a deep conviction that these were not common effusions nor at all like the poetry women generally write. . . . To my ear, they had also a peculiar music\u2014wild, melancholy and elevating.\" Emily was furious when she found out what Charlotte had done. It was only after breaking down her sister's resistance that Charlotte \"at last wrung out a reluctant consent to have the 'rhymes' as they were contemptuously termed, published.\"\n\nLeft to her own devices, Emily probably would have kept her work private, much like another nineteenth-century Emily\u2014Dickinson, the \"belle of Amherst\"\u2014with whom she had a certain temperamental kinship. (Bront\u00eb's poem \"Last Lines\" would be read at Dickinson's funeral in 1886.)\n\nUnlike Anne or Charlotte, Emily was by nature reclusive and always the least inclined to speak. She felt no need to reach the world beyond Haworth. As Charlotte later explained, her sister tended toward seclusion, and \"except to go to church, or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home.\"\n\nAnne, too, Charlotte noted, had \"a constitutional reserve and taciturnity,\" but she was also ambitious. Finally, at Charlotte's urging, the sisters decided to publish, under assumed (and gender indeterminate) names, a volume of poems by all three of them: twenty-one poems by Emily, nineteen by Charlotte, and twenty-one by Anne. Branwell was excluded from this endeavor. His life\u2014and his tremendous artistic potential\u2014would be curtailed by alcoholism, opium addiction, and the often reckless behavior that embarrassed his family. He understood his predicament but felt helpless to fix it. \"I have lain during nine long weeks utterly shattered in body and broken down in mind,\" he wrote during one of his typical bad stretches. Branwell was too much of a mess to be let in on his sisters' secret identities; they had to shut him out. He was a loudmouth drunk who would, they were sure, inevitably spill the news of their pseudonyms.\n\n\"My hopes ebb low indeed about Branwell,\" Charlotte wrote of the brother she had once idolized. \"I sometimes fear he will never be fit for much.\" He was dead at thirty-one.\n\nCharlotte took the initiative with regard to publication by sending query letters to publishers, but she had trouble even getting a response. Presenting herself as an \"agent\" writing on behalf of the authors, she sent a letter to the firm Aylott & Jones in January 1846:\n\nGentlemen\u2014May I request to be informed whether you would undertake the publication of a Collection of short poems in I vol. oct.\n\nIf you object to publishing the work at your own risk, would you undertake it on the Author's account\u2014I am gentlemen,\n\nYour obdt. Hmble. Servt.\n\nC. Bront\u00eb\n\nThey agreed to accept the book for publication, provided it was at the authors' own expense. Charlotte had very specific ideas about how the book should be presented: \"I should like it to be printed in 1 octavo volume of the same quality of paper and size of type as Moxon's last edition of Wordsworth,\" she wrote. \"The poems will occupy\u2014I should think from 200 to 250 pages.\" She also expressed herself emphatically on the printing: \"clear type\u2014not too small\u2014and good paper.\"\n\nHaving reached an agreement, Charlotte sent the manuscript (as \"C. Bront\u00eb Esq\") to Aylott & Jones. \"You will perceive that the Poems are the work of three persons\u2014relatives\u2014their separate pieces are distinguished by their separate signatures,\" she explained.\n\nWhen Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell came out in the summer of 1846, the savvy Charlotte oversaw advertising and promotion. She had directed the design, and now she suggested how the book should be released to the public and which publications ought to review it. She was gratified by the positive critical reception that Poems received. \"It is long since we have enjoyed a volume of such genuine poetry as this,\" one reviewer wrote, expressing curiosity regarding \"the triumvirate\" and wondering whether the Bells might be pseudonymous authors. Another contemplated the possibility that the trio might be \"one master spirit . . . that has been pleased to project itself into three imaginary poets.\" Charlotte was more than happy to feed public curiosity: writing a letter to one magazine editor (under her pseudonym), she thanked him for his very kind review and referred to \"my brothers, Ellis and Acton.\"\n\nFour years later, in the posthumous editions of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, Charlotte would explain fully the motive behind their pseudonyms:\n\nAverse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because\u2014without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called \"feminine\"\u2014we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.\n\nDespite the positive reviews of the book, it was a failure financially. Only two copies were sold. (The initial print run was around a thousand.) Charlotte was not the least bit discouraged. \"The mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence,\" she wrote. \"It must be pursued.\"\n\nA year later, seeing that nothing had come of their poetic debut, Charlotte, tenacious as ever, sent copies of the slim green volume to various celebrated authors, including Tennyson, Wordsworth, and De Quincey, with an imploring letter to each:\n\nSir,\n\nMy relatives, Ellis and Acton Bell, and myself, heedless of the repeated warnings of various respectable publishers, have committed the rash act of printing a volume of poems.\n\nThe consequences predicted have, of course, overtaken us; our book is found to be a drug; no man needs or heeds it. In the space of a year our publisher has disposed but of two copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two, himself only knows.\n\nBefore transferring the edition to the trunk-makers, we have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what we cannot sell\u2014We beg to offer you one in acknowledgement of the pleasure and profit we have often and long derived from your works.\n\nI am, sir, yours very respectfully,\n\nCurrer Bell.\n\nUndeterred by the Bells' lackluster debut, Charlotte wrote a follow-up letter to Aylott & Jones, advising them that \"C. E. & A. Bell are now preparing for the Press a work of fiction\u2014consisting of three distinct and unconnected tales which may be published together as a work of 3 vols. of ordinary novel-size, or separately as single vols\u2014as shall be deemed most advisable.\" And she brashly advised them to respond soon, as other publishers might be interested as well. They declined the solicitation.\n\nWhat they foolishly turned down, of course, were novels that would become part of the canon of English literature: Anne was writing Agnes Grey. Emily had begun Wuthering Heights (whose ferocity of emotion Charlotte found rather off-putting). And Charlotte had collected all the material she needed for her novel Jane Eyre, having worked, quite miserably, as a governess\u2014but the novel she'd written first was The Professor, with its male narrator, Charles Grimsworth, who teaches at a girls' school in Brussels. The story, which she'd completed in June 1846, was based on her own formative time at a Brussels girls' school, where she fell in love (unrequited) with her headmaster before homesickness set in and she returned, deeply depressed, to the refuge of Haworth.\n\nThough she tried submitting their works for consideration elsewhere, she had no luck. Finally, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted by a minor publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, but he didn't want The Professor. Charlotte sent it to other publishers, and it was repeatedly rejected. In fact, she would not see the novel published in her lifetime. It came out in 1857, two years after her death.\n\nAmazingly, the year 1847 would bring publication for all three sisters, almost at once. Charlotte completed Jane Eyre, which she'd written in small square books. As she wrote, she suffered from an almost unbearably painful toothache and gum disease that would linger for years. (By 1851, Charlotte had very few teeth left.) But she persevered, and Jane Eyre was accepted with enthusiasm by the obscure publishing house Smith, Elder and Company in London.\n\nIt wouldn't remain unknown for long; in the latter half of the century, Smith, Elder became known as the distinguished publisher of Elizabeth Gaskell, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Thackeray, Browning, and Ruskin. The firm's eventual success could be traced to having taken a chance on an unknown writer named Currer Bell.\n\nCharlotte submitted the manuscript to her publisher in August 1847, with a note indicating casually that \"[i]t is better in future to address Mr Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Bront\u00eb, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at present.\" Later, George Smith, the head of the firm, recalled his suspicions about Currer Bell: \"For my own part I never had much doubt on the subject of the writer's sex; but then I had the advantage over the general public of having the handwriting of the author before me.\"\n\nPublished just six weeks later on October 16, Jane Eyre, with its declarative opening line\u2014\"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day\"\u2014proved shocking to many Victorians, and even an assault against decorum. Yet it was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, and could count among its admirers Queen Victoria, who read it aloud to her \"dear Albert.\" Thackeray, who'd received an early review copy, wrote to Charlotte's publisher:\n\nI wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it. . . . Who the author can be I can't guess, if a woman she knows her language better than most ladies do, or has had a \"classical\" education. . . . Some of the love passages made me cry. . . . I don't know why I tell you this but that I have been exceedingly moved and pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a woman's writing, but whose?\n\nElizabeth Barrett Browning thought it a fine novel (and superior to the subsequent Shirley and Villette) but wrote to a friend, \"I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and half freethinking, expressed in Jane Eyre are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress.\" Although she found these \"qualities\" repugnant and expressed her disapproval, she was excited by the mystery of the authorship\u2014particularly the scandalous gossip that \"Currer Bell\" was actually a young governess. Another critic declared that the novel was \"[w]orth fifty Trollopes and Martineaus rolled into one counterpane, with fifty Dickenses and Bulwers to keep them company,\" but added that the author of Jane Eyre was \"rather a brazen Miss.\"\n\nCompared with her sisters' novels, Charlotte's debut achieved by far the greatest commercial and critical success. Sales exceeded all expectations, and within six months Jane Eyre went into a third printing. Charlotte\u2014or, rather, her nom de plume\u2014became the most celebrated author in England. Deepening the mystery was the book's curious title page: \"Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell.\" It had been George Smith's idea to add the provocative subtitle. The novel was very autobiographical indeed\u2014for Charlotte, that is. Some critics believed that Bell was a woman, but to others it seemed obvious that the novel was simply too good to have been written by a female author. \"It is no woman's writing,\" wrote one reviewer confidently. \"Although ladies have written histories, and travels, and warlike novels, to say nothing of books upon the different arts and sciences, no woman could have penned the 'Autobiography of Jane Eyre.' It is all that one of the other sex might invent, and much more.\" The critic George Henry Lewes wrote that the novel was perhaps not autobiographical \"in the naked facts and circumstances,\" but it certainly appeared to be \"in the actual suffering and experience.\"\n\nSome speculated that perhaps Acton and Currer Bell were the same person. A baffled critic surmised that the author's identity was divided, \"if we are not misinformed, with a brother and sister. The work bears the marks of more than one mind and more than one sex.\" One writer argued that the novel's \"mistakes\" about \"preparing game and dessert dishes\" proved beyond a doubt that the author was a man, because no female author would have been so clueless. But another claimed that \"only a woman or an upholsterer\" could have written the section about sewing on brass rings. Yet another reviewer was convinced that the name was a pseudonym, perhaps an anagram, and that the book was definitely by a woman from the north of England. \"Who, indeed, but a woman could have ventured, with the smallest prospect of success, to fill three octavo volumes with the history of a woman's heart?\"\n\nAs Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in her biography of Charlotte, following the publication of Jane Eyre Charlotte's life became \"divided into two parallel currents,\" that of Bell and Bront\u00eb, and \"there were separate duties belonging to each character\u2014not opposing each other; not impossible, but difficult to be reconciled.\" Gaskell noted ruefully that when a man becomes an author, \"it is probably merely a change of employment to him,\" but for a woman to take on the same role, especially in secret, the burdens seem too great to overcome. \"[N]o other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother,\" Gaskell wrote. Sequestered at the parsonage, where the most exciting part of her day was the postman's call, Charlotte was somewhat protected from the pressures of her fame\u2014but not entirely.\n\nLiterary London was buzzing about Currer Bell. Most agreed that whoever the author was, he or she had extraordinary talent. \"This is not merely a work of great promise,\" one critic said, \"it is one of absolute performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which has been published for many years.\" There came an inevitable backlash\u2014among other things, the novel was said to be coarse and immoral\u2014but those reviews were drowned out by the praise. (Some critics wanted it both ways: The Economist declared the novel a triumph if written by a man, \"odious\" if written by a woman.)\n\nCharlotte could not resist sharing a copy of the book (along with some laudatory reviews) with her gruff father, who had no idea that she'd been published. All of Patrick's support, interest, and hope for the future had been lost with his son. But he read the novel one afternoon, summoned his daughters to tea, declared the book \"a better one than I expected,\" and did not mention it again for the next few years.\n\nAlthough Charlotte found refuge in her anonymity, her happiness about the novel's triumphant reception was tempered by the drubbing that Emily took for Wuthering Heights. Agnes Grey (like poor Anne) did not stir a strong reaction in anyone. Their novels were published together in December 1847, just as Charlotte was preparing for the second edition of Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, Emily and Anne found their publisher to have done a shamefully shoddy job; their books were riddled with mortifying mistakes of spelling and punctuation that they'd corrected on proof sheets, and new errors had been introduced. Most of the reviews of Wuthering Heights were unkind. Although critics recognized the power of Ellis Bell's writing, one reviewer deemed the characters \"grotesque, so entirely without art, that they strike us as proceeding from a mind of limited experience.\" And readers were warned that they would be \"disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity and the most diabolical hate and vengeance\" in Wuthering Heights. Emily, always reclusive, did not speak of her pain at reading the negative reviews; nor did she admit how hurtful it was to see Charlotte's work bask in adulation at the same time. But after her death it was discovered that tucked inside her desk, Emily had saved the clippings of the reviews comparing her novel unfavorably with Jane Eyre.\n\nMeanwhile, Charlotte clutched the protective umbrella of Currer Bell as the storm of publicity raged around her. In a letter to her editor, she wondered \"what author would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible?\"\n\nFor the third edition of Jane Eyre, she wrote a brief author's note \"to explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due. This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already have been made, and to prevent future errors.\" Dated April 13, 1848, it was signed \"Currer Bell.\" She'd written it as an irked response to Emily's and Anne's disreputable publisher, who had led readers to believe that one \"Mr. Bell\" was responsible for the works by all three sisters. The Bell brothers were thus accused of \"trickery.\" This misrepresentation had brought trouble for Charlotte on a number of levels, including a need to assure her own publisher, George Smith, that his author was not working for a competitor behind his back.\n\nThat year, Jane Eyre was sold in the United States, also to great acclaim, and the New York publisher Harper & Brothers had eagerly submitted a high bid to acquire the rights to Currer Bell's next novel.\n\nAt home, people were clamoring to know who the elusive Bell was. Charlotte could not contain her secret much longer; nevertheless, she wrote to her publisher insisting that the author's identity remain protected at all costs. \" 'Currer Bell' only I am and will be to the Public; if accident or design should deprive me of that name,\" she wrote, \"I should deem it a misfortune\u2014a very great one. Mental tranquility would then be gone; it would be a task to write, a task which I doubt whether I could continue.\"\n\nIn July 1848, Charlotte made a dramatic decision: without giving notice, she traveled to London to introduce herself\u2014her real self\u2014to Smith and to her editor, W. S. Williams. Deeply grateful for everything the firm had done for her, she felt obliged to be forthright and to prove that one author was not responsible for the novels of all three. Originally she'd planned to surprise Smith at his office accompanied by both Anne and Emily, but Emily refused to go. She was upset about the turn of events and viewed the confession as a betrayal. Charlotte felt terribly guilty. Following her visit to the office she wrote to Williams, asking him to pretend that their meeting had never happened, at least as far as Emily was concerned.\n\n\"Permit me to caution you not to speak of my sisters when you write to me,\" Charlotte advised. \"I mean, do not use the word in the plural. Ellis Bell will not endure to be alluded to under any other appellation than the nom de plume. I committed a grand error in betraying his identity to you and Mr. Smith. It was inadvertent\u2014the words 'we are three sisters' escaped me before I was aware. I regretted the avowal the moment I had made it; I regret it bitterly now, for I find it is against every feeling and intention of Ellis Bell.\" Even after her sisters died, she maintained \"Currer Bell\" as her authorial identity.\n\nApart from Emily's agitation about the trip, it had been wonderful in every way. Charlotte and Anne had stayed in Paternoster Row, in the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral, at the Chapter Coffee House, which had once been a meeting place for luminaries such as Dr. Johnson\u2014\"the resort of all the booksellers and publishers; and where the literary hacks, the critics, and even the wits, used to go in search of ideas or employment,\" as Elizabeth Gaskell would describe it in her biography of Charlotte.\n\nThe sisters' arrival at the publisher's office was priceless: when Charlotte showed up, along with Anne, Smith was confused by the sudden appearance of two \"rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking.\" (He wasn't joking about the \"little\" part\u2014at five feet three, Emily was the tallest of the sisters; Charlotte was a mere four feet nine.) He was also annoyed because the two strangers\u2014women, at that\u2014had shown up uninvited on a busy workday demanding to see him. They declined to give their names. \"One of them came forward and presented me with a letter\u2014addressed in my own handwriting to 'Currer Bell, Esq.,'\" he recalled. \"I noticed that the letter had been opened, and said with some sharpness: 'Where did you get this from?' 'From the post office,' was the reply. 'It was addressed to me. We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us.'\"\n\nHowever much Smith had suspected Currer Bell to be a woman, at first he could not put two and two together in the presence of Charlotte Bront\u00eb. Utterly stunned, he looked at the letter and at his author and back again at the letter. It took him a few moments to recover from his shock; Charlotte tried to suppress a laugh. As the truth dawned on Smith, he received them graciously\u2014insisting that the sisters extend their London visit and entertaining them with trips to the opera, art museums, and more. Charlotte cautioned him that although they had disclosed the truth about their identities, the revelation should go no further: \"To all the rest of the world we must remain 'gentlemen' as heretofore.\"\n\nBecause Smith could not tell anyone who his companions really were, his family and friends were perplexed as to why he had brought \"a couple of odd-looking countrywomen,\" as Charlotte wryly recalled, to dine with them one evening. They were introduced as \"the Misses Brown.\" What the urbane young Londoner was doing socializing with \"these insignificant spinsters\" was anyone's guess, but in typical British fashion, no one spoke of it. Charlotte and Anne were amused at the awkwardness and dazzled by the grandeur of Smith's family residence.\n\nHe later described Anne as \"a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance.\" Though he was fascinated by Charlotte and awestruck by her intellect, his appraisal of her appearance confirmed there was no danger of falling in love with his unmasked author (though her feelings for him were far more complex). For one thing, he took note of her missing teeth and her ruddy complexion. Also, \"Her head seemed too large for her body. . . . There was but little feminine charm about her; and of this fact she was herself uneasily and perpetually conscious.\" Charlotte once lamented her \"almost repulsive\" plainness to her dear friend Elizabeth Gaskell, but understood that her power lay elsewhere. \"Though I knew I looked a poor creature,\" she wrote, \"and in many respects actually was so, nature had given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement or deepened by emotion.\"\n\nShe returned home from her London trip tired but giddy at having unburdened herself. The future seemed full of promise.\n\nInstead, the next year of her life would bring extraordinary suffering. The dissolute lost soul, Branwell, died in September of tuberculosis. His sisters never told him about the novels they'd published. In a letter to W. S. Williams a month after Branwell's death, Charlotte admitted, \"I do not weep from a sense of bereavement\u2014there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost\u2014but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light.\"\n\nThe worst was still to come. Emily caught a severe cold at Branwell's funeral and had difficulty breathing. Her health deteriorated steadily from then on, and she did not leave the house again. She developed consumption but refused medical treatment, and her behavior became increasingly erratic; she would not rest or eat and bristled at familial displays of sympathy. (Charlotte described witnessing her sister's abrupt decline as causing \"pain no words can render.\") Just thirty years old, Emily died on December 19, 1848, at two o'clock in the afternoon. Three days later a memorial service was held, and her beloved bulldog, Keeper, accompanied the family to the church. (After her death, he had howled outside her door.) Emily was buried in the vault of the same church where her mother and brother now lay. Her coffin was only seventeen inches wide.\n\n\"For my part I am free to walk on the moors,\" Charlotte wrote later, \"but when I go out there alone\u2014everything reminds me of the times when others were with me and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening\u2014My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet but reminds me of her.\" Charlotte did not think she could go on as a writer: \"Worse than useless did it seem to attempt to write what there no longer lived an 'Ellis Bell' to read,\" she informed her publisher.\n\nBecause Anne had shared a bedroom with Emily, it was not entirely shocking that in January 1849 Anne was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She had managed to publish another novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the year before, but it would be her last. As if she'd had a presentiment of her death, in the sharply worded preface to the novel's second edition she boldly defended the need for authorial privacy. The essay reads almost as a manifesto:\n\nRespecting the author's identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered. I take the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.\n\nJuly 22nd, 1848.\n\nAnne died on the afternoon of May 28, 1849, at the age of twenty-nine. A lifelong friend of Charlotte later recalled the last words Anne had uttered to her sister: \"Take courage, Charlotte.\"\n\n\"When my thoughts turn to Anne,\" Charlotte said of her sister, \"they always see her as a patient, persecuted stranger,\u2014more lonely, less gifted with the power of making friends even than I am.\" She wrote a poem in Anne's memory that began, \"There's little joy in life for me, \/ And little terror in the grave; \/ I've lived the parting hour to see \/ Of one I would have died to save.\"\n\nIn life, Anne had been overshadowed by her sisters (and her legacy remains so), yet her preface is a deeply captivating personal document, remarkable for its forcefulness of expression and eloquence. Her argument is also impossible to refute.\n\nAs the only survivor of her siblings, Charlotte was inconsolable. \"Why life is so blank, brief and bitter I do not know,\" she wrote. Her faith sustained her: \"God has upheld me. From my heart I thank Him.\" She proceeded with her next novel, Shirley, which she completed in August 1849. \"[T]hough I earnestly wish to preserve my incognito,\" she wrote to her editor, \"I live under no slavish fear of discovery\u2014I am ashamed of nothing I have written\u2014not a line.\" Still, she thanked him for preserving her secret.\n\nThat Shirley is considered her weakest novel can be forgiven, considering the circumstances under which it was written. Regardless, it had been a balm for the author, who admitted to her editor that in the aftermath of enormous losses, work was her favorite companion: \"[H]ereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give.\"\n\nIt was published in October to mostly respectable reviews, and Charlotte said that she would have to be a \"conceited ape\" to be dissatisfied with them. But the best thing to come of the book's publication was a warm letter from Elizabeth Gaskell. In response, Charlotte explained, \"Currer Bell will avow to Mrs. Gaskell that her chief reason for maintaining an incognito is the fear that if she relinquished it, strength and courage would leave her, and she should ever after shrink from writing the plain truth.\" Aside from keeping up the nom de plume, the sentiments expressed in Charlotte's letter were completely honest.\n\nGaskell was delighted at having extracted some small bit of biographical information from the mysterious author. She excitedly wrote to a friend: \"Currer Bell (aha! What will you give me for a secret?) She's a she\u2014that I will tell you.\"\n\nIn 1850, Charlotte's social circle began to widen, and she met Mrs. Gaskell in person during a visit to the Lake District. \"She is a woman of the most genuine talent,\" Charlotte said, \"of cheerful, pleasing and cordial manners and\u2014I believe\u2014of a kind and good heart.\" They became close, and Gaskell's loving and sympathetic (if flawed) biography, The Life of Charlotte Bront\u00eb (published in 1857), is still considered one of the great works of Victorian literature. Gaskell's book was significant for being the first full-length biography of a woman novelist written by another woman. The legend, long upheld by scholars and readers alike, of Charlotte as the saintly sister\u2014dutiful, modest, almost mouselike, and above reproach\u2014can be traced to Gaskell, who created it.\n\nAfter the deaths of her sisters, Charlotte made regular visits to London, where she had the privilege of meeting writers she admired, including Thackeray. She attended lectures, saw plays, and visited museums. She even sat for a portrait by the popular artist George Richmond\u2014a gift from George Smith to Charlotte's father that now resides in London's National Portrait Gallery, along with Branwell's iconic painting of Emily, Anne, and Charlotte, circa 1835, with his own image inexplicably blurred out of the portrait.\n\nEven as she extended herself beyond Haworth, Charlotte remained discreet about her alter ego. She railed against \"vulgar notoriety,\" yet speculation was rampant. She was even openly confronted, though she tried to brush such incidents aside. One evening, at a dinner party at Thackeray's home, the author called Charlotte \"Currer Bell\" in front of the other guests. She was not amused. \"I believe there are books being published by a person named Currer Bell,\" she said curtly, \"but the person you address is Miss Bront\u00eb\u2014and I see no connection between the two.\" (Thackeray had himself used various noms de plume in his early works, including Michael Angelo Titmarsh, George Savage Fitz-Boodle, and Charles James Yellowplush.)\n\nCharlotte was also on the defensive with George Lewes, who had initially praised her work, offering advice and encouragement, but who began lecturing \"Bell\" sternly in his letters and then maligning the author in reviews. She entered reluctantly into what became a rather contentious correspondence. It seems bizarre that the man who would become George Eliot's most passionate supporter just a few years later would engage in reductive criticism on grounds of gender, but he did. \"I wish you did not think me a woman,\" she wrote to him in 1849. \"I wish all reviewers believed 'Currer Bell' to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me.\" She went on: \"I cannot when I write think always of myself\u2014and of what is elegant and charming in femininity\u2014it is not on those terms or with such ideas I ever took pen in hand; and if it is only on such terms my writing will be tolerated\u2014I shall pass away from the public and trouble it no more. Out of obscurity I came\u2014to obscurity I can easily return.\"\n\nLewes ignored her response, reviewing Shirley in the Edinburgh Review and finding fault with the work based on the author's gender. (The headlines of the article's first two pages read, \"Mental Equality of the Sexes?\" and \"Female Literature.\") Charlotte was outraged and hurt by what she viewed as his cruelty toward her, and at having her fiction judged by a double standard. The note she subsequently addressed to \"G. H. Lewes, Esq.\" was damning and brief: \"I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends.\" It was signed \"Currer Bell.\" (About a year later, after Charlotte met him in person, she said, \"I cannot hate him.\")\n\nAt home as well, her secret had begun to unravel. Her father had started telling neighbors who his daughter was. Excited fans made pilgrimages to the village, hoping to come upon the genius in person. And on February 28, 1850, a local newspaper announced, in a burst of pride, that Charlotte Bront\u00eb, the reverend's daughter, was \"the authoress of Jane Eyre and Shirley, two of the most popular novels of the day, which have appeared under the name of 'Currer Bell.'\" The charade was officially over.\n\nIn 1851, thirty-five-year-old Charlotte received the third marriage proposal of her life and the third she would decline. (When the latest suitor approached her to propose, Charlotte admitted, \"my veins ran ice.\") Caring for her aging father, and suffering from health problems of her own, including a liver infection, she was lonely\u2014but she didn't want a husband.\n\nDiscouraging her further was the news that despite all her success, Smith, Elder still declined to publish The Professor. The firm suggested that she instead begin work on a new novel, and she did\u2014often in a state of despair. Two years later, Villette was published. The title page read, \"VILLETTE. BY CURRER BELL, AUTHOR OF 'JANE EYRE,' 'SHIRLEY,' ETC.\" Feeling burned after having her pseudonymous cover unmasked, Charlotte longed to become invisible again. She had asked George Smith if he might consider publishing Villette under yet another pen name: \"I should be much thankful for the sheltering shadow of an incognito,\" she implored. But \"Currer Bell\" was now an enviable brand in Victorian society; \"he\" was a towering figure whose name on a book almost guaranteed sales. The publisher reluctantly denied her request.\n\nVillette, which Virginia Woolf would later deem to be Bront\u00eb's \"finest novel,\" drew on Charlotte's own breakdowns and was her most overt exploration to date of the struggle between a woman's will and the constraints of society. Even though it made demands on the reader and lacked a happy ending, it proved a great success. George Eliot, then still known as Mary Ann Evans, read it three times. \"I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette, a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre,\" she wrote to a friend. \"There is something almost preternatural about its power.\" She would later praise Charlotte to George Lewes, who had met Charlotte and saw her as a plain \"old maid.\" Eliot, however, recognized the beauty of Charlotte's inner life: \"What passion, what fire in her!\" she said. \"Quite as much as in George Sand, only the clothing is less voluptuous.\" Charlotte happened to have great respect for Sand, whom she considered \"sagacious and profound\"; this favorable view was in contrast to her opinion of Jane Austen's work, which she found uninteresting, with its \"ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.\"\n\nIn 1853, Charlotte was just two years from her death. She'd begun writing yet another novel, but abandoned it after reluctantly marrying her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who had pursued her for years. (The sisters' pseudonymous surname was taken from his middle name.) She consented to marry Nicholls in June 1854, only a short time after George Smith had married. (That event was quite painful for Charlotte to digest.) She married Nicholls accepting that there was only companionship, not passion, between them. At least she would no longer be alone. \"Doubtless then it is the best for me,\" she wrote to a friend. Soon after marrying, she offered a sober assessment of her new role: \"It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife. . . . My time is not my own now.\"\n\nIn the early hours of March 31, 1855, Charlotte died at the age of thirty-eight. She is believed to have been pregnant at the time.\n\nThe defiant opening stanza of Emily Bront\u00eb's most famous poem conveys the inspiring resilience and fierce spirit of Emily, Anne, and Charlotte:\n\nNo coward soul is mine,\n\nNo trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:\n\nI see Heaven's glories shine,\n\nAnd faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.\n\nThe Bront\u00eb sisters had aggressively offended, challenged, and violated Victorian morals with their revolutionary works, which were profoundly disturbing for their era. In concealing their true identities, the Bront\u00ebs could speak the truth without facing judgment. By overturning rigid societal notions of a distinctly \"male\" or \"female\" imagination, they raised provocative questions about the nature of creativity.\n\n\"If men could see us as we really are,\" Charlotte once wrote, \"they would be amazed.\"\nShe was a bisexual, cigar-smoking cross-dresser\n\nChapter 2\n\nGeorge Sand & AURORE DUPIN\n\nIt began with an ankle-length gray military coat, matching trousers, a cravat, and a waistcoat. Clothes may make the man, as Mark Twain famously noted, but in this instance, they made the woman the man.\n\nShe was born Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin in Paris in the summer of 1804, shortly before Napoleon became emperor of France. She was known as Aurore. \"My father was playing the violin and my mother wore a pretty pink dress,\" she would report of her birth in her epic, two-volume memoir, Histoire de ma vie. \"It took but a minute.\" Her parents had married secretly weeks before, making their daughter legitimate. In later years Aurore claimed to have walked at ten months, and to have been an adept reader by age four. \"My looks gave promise of great beauty, a promise unkept,\" she recalled, with no trace of regret. \"This was perhaps my own fault, because at the age when beauty blossoms, I was already spending my nights reading and writing.\"\n\nEven in childhood Aurore was unconventional, finding delight and power in her own precociousness. She was an explorer, constantly testing boundaries in her behavior and pushing back at authority figures. Though her mother valued beauty above all, Aurore deplored the notion of \"living under a bell jar so as to avoid being weather-beaten, chapped, or faded before your time.\" She shunned hats and gloves and lessons in becoming a proper young lady. Gestures of reticence and grace were of no interest. She didn't rebel for the sake of rebellion, but \"I could not be coerced.\" She daydreamed endlessly, befriended boys and girls alike, and cultivated a certain wildness of intellect and character. Already she displayed hints of the adult she would become, magnanimous and brave.\n\nAurore's identity evolved largely in opposition to her mother's character. Yet in one regard, her mother unwittingly exerted a profound influence. A former stage actress and prostitute, Antoinette Sophie-Victoire Delaborde Dupin had a lifelong tendency toward melodrama and instability\u2014thus teaching Aurore that selves could be cycled through and discarded at will. Aurore's mother was raised in poverty, the daughter of a bird seller; her husband was descended from a family of aristocrats. (Both had illegitimate children from previous relationships\u2014he had a son, Hippolyte; she had a daughter, Caroline.) The class schism was a source of tension in their relationship, and would become a recurring theme in Aurore's fiction. Antoinette's mother-in-law came to accept, and even adore, Aurore but could not endorse her son's marriage, which she deemed \"disproportionate,\" and she considered his wife contemptible. The best state the two women would ever settle into was a kind of benign antipathy.\n\nOver the years the mercurial Antoinette preferred to be called Victoire, and then, after her marriage, Sophie. At times she had only a tenuous grip on reality, and this condition worsened as she aged. She was impulsive and manipulative. Roles and selves were interchanged to suit her circumstances. \"When she was in good spirits,\" Aurore recalled of her mother, \"she was truly charming, and it was impossible not to be swept up in her buoyant gaiety and vivid witticisms. Unfortunately, it would never last an entire day; lightning would strike from some remote corner of heaven.\"\n\nAt least one thing kept the mother-daughter relationship close: the art of storytelling. As a girl, Aurore delighted in hearing her mother read stories and sing lullabies to her. She loved the sounds of words, developed a rich imagination, and became a compulsive storyteller herself. \"I used to compose out loud interminably long tales which my mother used to call my novels,\" she later recalled.\n\nShe had a knack for embellishment, or perhaps a dubious memory (though she once dismissed forgetfulness as unintelligence or inattention). In her autobiography, Aurore shared what she claimed was the first memory of her life, an incident that occurred when she was two years old and that she recalled in remarkable detail:\n\nA servant let me fall out of her arms onto the corner of the fireplace; I was frightened, and I hurt my forehead. All the commotion, the shock to the nervous system opened me to self-awareness, and I saw clearly\u2014I still see\u2014the reddish marble of the mantelpiece, my blood running, the distraught face of my nursemaid. I distinctly remember the doctor who came, the leeches which were put behind my ears, my mother's anxiety, and the servant dismissed for drunkenness.\n\nWas this recollection accurate in every, or even any, aspect? Did the incident happen at all? No matter. Aurore cast her younger self at the center of a drama vividly told. She was both subject and object. She also claimed to remember perfectly the apartment her family lived in a year later, on Rue Grange-Batali\u00e8re, and she said that from then on, \"my memories are precise and nearly without interruption.\" It's an astonishing claim, regardless of how attentive young Aurore must have been to the world around her.\n\nSince her mother was often unavailable physically and emotionally, Aurore spent countless hours in solitude. She craved touch. When she wasn't telling stories to her rapt listener, a pet rabbit, she was beginning to discover the thrills of playing with different personae. The first time she called out into the empty flat and heard her own voice call back the same words, she recalled thinking, \"I was double and somewhere nearby was another 'me' whom I could not see but who always saw me since it always answered me.\" She didn't realize that it was only the echo of her own voice calling back until her mother later told her this, but the idea of \"doubleness\" had been planted, and it delighted her. She gave the voice a name and would call out, \"Echo, are you there? Do you hear me? Hello, echo!\"\n\nAlthough Sophie's husband, Maurice Dupin, a military officer, was rarely present, his letters home showed how much he loved his family: \"How dear is our Aurore!\" he wrote in September 1805, two days before the Battle of Austerlitz. \"How impatient you make me to come back and take both of you into my arms! . . . Tell me about your love, our child. Know that you'd destroy my life if you should cease to love me. Know that you're my wife, that I adore you, that I love life only because of you, and that I've dedicated my life to you.\" Elsewhere he implored, \"May you always feel gloomy in my absence. Yes, beloved wife, that is how I love you. Let no one see you, think only of taking care of our daughter, and I'll be happy as I can be far from you.\"\n\nSophie seemed to take his words to heart. In her husband's absence, the Dupin house, with only mother and daughter, was lonely and listless. (The illegitimate children mostly lived elsewhere, though Hippolyte would become quite close to his half sister Aurore.) Maurice's periodic returns invigorated their lives, at least temporarily. \"[My parents] found themselves happy only in their little household,\" Aurore would later recall. \"Everywhere else they suffocated from melancholy yawning, and they left me with this legacy of secret savagery, which has always made society intolerable for me and 'the home' a necessity.\"\n\nIn the autumn of 1808, Maurice was thrown from his horse, Leopardo, and instantly killed. He was thirty. Just eight days earlier, he and Sophie had suffered the devastating loss of their infant son, Louis. After Maurice died, Aurore saw her mother crying one day and shyly approached her. \"But when my daddy is through being dead,\" she said, \"he'll come back to see you, won't he?\"\n\nShe recalled that the house was \"plunged into melancholy.\" Sophie's fragile, shifting self may have been a means of resilience against the hardships she suffered. But whatever the cause, her condition worsened after the deaths of Maurice and Louis, and her perpetual instability provided a template for Aurore's own ideas about identity: \"It seems to me that we change from day to day and that after some years we are a new being,\" she reflected late in life. This notion was liberating\u2014Aurore was a fearless risk-taker, rushing headlong into new experiences\u2014but it also had a grievous effect, leaving her with a lifelong pining for love and intimacy that, occasional salves aside, would never be filled.\n\nFollowing the losses of her brother and father, Aurore's love of daydreaming and storytelling became obsessive; imagination was no longer merely a retreat from boredom and solitude but a life raft, a need. \"She's not trying to be difficult; it's her nature,\" her mother would explain. \"You may be sure that she's always meditating on something. She used to chatter when she daydreamed.\" Aurore never relinquished her belief in the virtues of clinging to the imagination: \"To cut short the fantasy life of a child is to go against the very laws of nature,\" she wrote.\n\nHer grandmother was increasingly troubled by her peculiar behavior, and in 1817 Madame Dupin decided to rectify it by sending the thirteen-year-old to a convent, Couvent des Anglaises, in Paris. Aurore later recounted her grandmother's harsh assessment of her at the time: \"You have inherited an excellent intelligence from your father and grandparents, but you do all in your power to appear an idiot. You could be attractive, but you take pride in looking unkempt. . . . You have no bearing, no grace, no tact. Your mind is becoming as deformed as your body. Sometimes you hardly reply when spoken to, and you assume the air of a bold animal that scorns human contact. . . . It is time to change all this.\"\n\nAt the convent, Aurore alternated between subversive behavior (\"Let me say in passing that the great fault of monastic education is the attempt to exaggerate chastity,\" she later wrote), and austere withdrawal. Despite the excessive instruction, she admitted, \"I still slouched, moved too abruptly, walked too naturally, and could not bear the thought of gloves or deep curtsies.\" Aurore said that when her grandmother would scold her for these \"vices,\" \"it took great self-control for me to hide the annoyance and irritation these eternal little critiques caused me. I would so like to have pleased her! I was never able to.\" Aurore could not (and had no wish to) shake off her propensity for daydreaming\u2014\"my mind, sluggish and wrapped up in itself, was still that of a child.\" She wrote poems at the convent, and even completed two novels; the second was \"a pastoral one, which I judged worse than my first and with which I lit the stove one winter's day.\"\n\nDuring this period, her grandmother exerted tremendous control over Aurore's education and development. (She accomplished this by threatening to disinherit Aurore.) Dying, Madame Dupin was concerned, as ever, about what she saw as the toxic effects of Sophie's influence on her granddaughter. She was determined to instill in Aurore moral and intellectual development; a socially acceptable degree of independence; a permanent distrust of Sophie and her family; and to remove Aurore from a \"lower-class environment\" into established society\u2014which also meant finding a proper husband.\n\nAs a result, Sophie gave up custody of Aurore for a time. \"It seemed as though she was ready to accept for herself a future in which I was no longer an essential party,\" Aurore wrote of her mother. Resigned to Madame Dupin's authority and dominance, Sophie would not engage in a contest of wills with her mother-in-law. The distance between mother and daughter was painful. \"My mother seemed to have abandoned me to my silent and miserable struggle,\" Aurore recalled. \"I was desolate over her apparent abandonment of me after the passion she had showered on me in my childhood.\" Maternal nurturing was provided instead by a nun, Sister Alicia, the first woman for whom Aurore had powerful feelings of love. In later years, with other women, Aurore would find physical intimacy, great passion, and much torment.\n\nShe left the convent in 1820, at age sixteen; within two years, she was married. It was the result of an extensive contractual agreement, following lengthy negotiations and financial haggling between the families. Her husband, Casimir Dudevant, the son of a baron, was a handsome twenty-seven-year-old sublieutenant in the French army. Sophie never warmed to him, explaining her dislike by saying that his nose didn't please her. But Aurore found him an agreeable and reasonable companion, if not an ideal romantic suitor: \"He never spoke to me of love, he admitted to being little disposed to sudden passion, or enthusiasm, and in any case, was incapable of expressing these sentiments in a seductive manner,\" she recalled.\n\nNonetheless, by the spring of 1823 her first child was on the way: a son, Maurice, named for her father. And she already had stirrings of doubt about her marriage. Self-abnegation did not suit Aurore, who recognized it as an essential but unpleasant aspect of her union. \"In marrying, one of the two must renounce himself or herself completely,\" she noted. \"All that remains to be asked, then, is whether it should be for the husband or the wife to recast his or her being according to the mould of the other.\" On a family trip to the Pyrenees on her twenty-first birthday, she wrote in her diary: \"I have to get used to smiling though my soul feels dead.\"\n\nDespite periods of depression, she delighted in motherhood and gave birth to a daughter, Solange, in the fall of 1828. Aurore was dissatisfied with her marriage intellectually, emotionally, and sexually. It was a functioning partnership, nothing more. She was slowly recasting herself, but hardly as the dutiful wife\u2014though she had genuinely tried: \"I made enormous efforts to see things through my husband's eyes and think and do as he wished,\" she later wrote. \"But the minute I had come to agree with him, I would fall into dreadful sadness, because I no longer felt in agreement with my own instincts.\"\n\nThe headstrong young woman was keenly interested in exploring other, more flamboyant and expansive roles. Just a year before she married, Aurore had made her first public appearance in a male disguise. She'd been riding her horse, Colette, one day, dressed in equestrian clothes, and was mistaken for a man. In a nearby village, she'd been addressed as \"monsieur\" by a woman, who had blushed and narrowed her eyes in \"his\" presence. Aurore was thrilled about her cross-dressing experiment and delighted by her own power. The illicit erotic charge wasn't bad, either.\n\nAlthough she was certainly adjusting to the mold of another, her new form did not belong to the dull Casimir but to George Sand, her literary persona, who would become France's best-selling writer and would be among its most prolific authors. In considering what Sand accomplished, and the inspiring way she went about it, a dictum from the inimitable artist Louise Bourgeois comes to mind: \"A woman has no place in the art world unless she proves over and over again she won't be eliminated.\"\n\nBoth Aurore and Casimir had casual affairs during their marriage, but at twenty-six, Aurore met a young Parisian who would play an important role in her life. When they fell in love, Jules Sandeau was nineteen and, like her, a writer. The first syllable of his surname (Sand) would become the surname of her pseudonym. Though their love affair didn't last long, Sandeau proved enormously influential and helped her find her path toward a wholly independent life. \"Inspiration can pass through the soul just as easily in the midst of an orgy as in the silence of the woods,\" she wrote in her autobiography, \"but when it is a question of giving form to your thoughts, whether you are secluded in your study or performing on the planks of a stage, you must be in total possession of yourself.\" By 1830, she was well on her way.\n\nThe following year, she decided to assert her will rather forcefully. She told Casimir that she would live in Paris for half the year with Solange, returning in the other months to care for Maurice. Yet she went through many periods of replicating her own mother's treatment of her\u2014abandoning both children for long (and damaging) stretches to caretakers and tutors, in the single-minded pursuit of her own desires and ambitions. She wrestled with this but did not always remedy the situation to her children's liking.\n\nAurore's loneliness in Paris, at first, was \"profound and complete.\" She felt useless. There was no doubt in her mind that literature alone \"offered me the most chance of success as a profession.\" The few people she confided in about it were skeptical that writing and monetary concerns could successfully coexist\u2014at least for a woman.\n\nShe dabbled in other, more pragmatic attempts at work. Feeling despair over not being able to help the poor in any meaningful way, she became \"a bit of a pharmacist,\" preparing ointments and syrups for her clients gratis. She tried translation work, but because she was meticulous and conscientious with the words of others, it took too long. In attempting pencil and watercolor portraits done at sittings, she said, \"I caught the likenesses very well, my little heads were not drawn badly, but the m\u00e9tier lacked distinction.\" She tried sewing, and was quick at it, but it didn't bring in much money and she couldn't see well enough close up. In another profitless venture, she sold tea chests and cigar boxes she'd varnished and painted with ornamental birds and flowers. \"For four years, I went along groping, or slaving at nothing worthwhile, in order to discover within me any capability whatsoever,\" she recalled. \"In spite of myself, I felt that I was an artist, without ever having dreamed I could be one.\"\n\nJules Sandeau would play an integral role in her becoming a \"public\" writer, as she had already written prolifically in private. He was part of a bohemian circle that Aurore eagerly joined, one that provided stimulating political, artistic, and intellectual discourse. These were people she felt an affinity with (as she most certainly did not with her husband), and they would become her close friends. It was an exciting time, and she took full advantage, throwing herself passionately into the affair with Sandeau.\n\nThe tricky issue of financial independence lingered. In the winter of 1831, Aurore reluctantly arranged an interview, through an acquaintance, with the publisher of Le Figaro, Henri de Latouche. She cringed at the thought of newspaper work, but recognized it as a useful entry point to literary endeavors. Also, she appreciated Latouche's intensity and fervent antibourgeois sensibility. He offered Aurore a job as columnist\u2014making her the only woman on the staff and paying her seven francs per column. She was more than willing to prove herself. \"I don't believe in all the sorrows that people predict for me in the literary career on which I'm trying to embark,\" she wrote in a letter to a friend. But when she called on an author to seek advice about the Parisian publishing world, the meeting was a disaster: \"I shall be very brief, and I shall tell you frankly\u2014a woman shouldn't write,\" he said before showing her the door. She recalled in her autobiography that because she left quietly, \"prone more to laughter than anger,\" he ended his harangue on the inferiority of women with \"a Napoleonic stroke that was intended to crush me: 'Take my word for it,' he said gravely, as I was opening the outer door to his sanctum, 'don't make books, make babies!'\"\n\nNever mind: Aurore was more determined than ever. As she once wrote, in another context, \"I was not a coward, and I could not have been if I tried.\"\n\nShe continued to immerse herself in her social circle, and she and Sandeau collaborated on their writing. They received enthusiastic support from Balzac, who would drop by Aurore's flat from time to time. She later described him fondly as \"childlike and great; always envious of trifles and never jealous of true glory; sincere to the point of modesty, proud to the point of braggadocio; trusting himself and others; very generous, very kind, and very crazy.\" Other notable men she called her friends included Baudelaire, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Zola, Henry James, and Dumas. (John Ruskin, William Thackeray, and Thomas Carlyle, however, disliked her work intensely.) Later, Flaubert became a lifelong friend and confidant. Their letters were beautiful and mutually consoling. \"There you are feeling sad and lonely, you say, and here I am feeling the same way,\" Flaubert wrote to her in 1866. \"Where do they come from, do you think, these black moods that engulf us like this? They rise like a tide, you feel as if you are drowning and you have to escape somehow. What I do is lie, floating, letting it all wash over me.\" In 1876, a few months before she died, Flaubert wrote: \"[Y]ou've never done me anything but good and I love you most tenderly.\"\n\nAt the end of the summer of 1831, Aurore and Jules began work on the bawdy Rose et Blanche, a planned five-volume novel for which they'd secured a publishing contract, and which they'd signed with the joint pseudonym \"J. Sand.\" (Latouche, who had become a devoted mentor to Aurore, invented the name.) But Aurore ended up doing the bulk of the writing.\n\nThe novel was released to mixed reviews, yet it had moderate success and gave Aurore the confidence to publish entirely on her own. The following year, she published Indiana\u2014a semi-autobiographical novel, and an unapologetic denunciation of marriage that she expected \"to please very few people.\" Instead, it won international acclaim and became a best seller. An envious Victor Hugo (her rival for the status of France's best-selling author) called it \"the finest novel of manners that has been published in French for twenty years.\" The author of this lauded novel was \"George Sand,\" a name that would not only endure as her nom de plume but serve as her identity for the rest of her life. After completing Indiana, \"I was baptized,\" she explained. \"The [name] I was given, I earned myself, after the event, by my own toil. . . . I do not think anyone has anything to reproach me for.\"\n\nShe was amused by the number of reviewers who spoke enthusiastically of \"Mr. G. Sand,\" but insisted that a woman must have had a hand in refining some of the novel's more emotional aspects. They were stumped because \"the style and discrimination were too virile to be anything but a man's.\"\n\nIn 1832, her romantic relationship with Sandeau collapsed, and just as she was beginning to achieve professional success, she felt increasingly isolated. But in January 1833, she met Marie Dorval, a famous stage actress in her mid-thirties whose presence toppled and intoxicated Sand, and who would become\u2014as she later described it\u2014the one true love of her life. Both women were married (and had other lovers) at the time, but Sand legally separated from her husband in 1835. She pursued Dorval\u2014initially, in the name of \"friendship\": \"For my part I feel I love you with a heart brought back to life and rejuvenated by you,\" Sand wrote to her early on. \"If it is a dream, like everything else I have wished for in life, do not steal it from me too quickly. It does me so much good.\" Meanwhile, Dorval's lover at the time, Alfred de Vigny, gave a detailed assessment of his rival: \"Her hair is dark and curly and falls freely over her collar, rather like one of Raphael's angels,\" he wrote of Sand. \"She has large black eyes, shaped like those of mystics whom one sees in paintings, or in those magnificent Italian portraits. Her face is severe and gives little away, the lower half is unattractive, the mouth ill-shaped. She has no grace of bearing, and her speech is coarse. In her manner of dress, her language, her tone of voice and the audacity of her conversation, she is like a man.\" Vigny had good cause to be concerned.\n\nSand played a male role in public because doing so offered her a much broader range of experience, and she loved freedom. Elizabeth Barrett Browning affectionately called her \"thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.\" She wrote a sonnet, \"To George Sand: A Recognition,\" in 1844:\n\nTrue genius, but true woman! dost deny\n\nThy woman's nature with a manly scorn,\n\nAnd break away the gauds and armlets worn\n\nBy weaker women in captivity?\n\nAh, vain denial! that revolted cry\n\nIs sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn!\u2014\n\nThy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn\n\nFloats back disheveled strength in agony,\n\nDisproving thy man's name: and while before\n\nThe world thou burnest in a poet-fire,\n\nWe see thy woman-heart beat evermore\n\nThrough the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,\n\nTill God unsex thee on the heavenly shore\n\nWhere unincarnate spirits purely aspire!\n\nSand was a cigar-chomping rebel who had brazen affairs as she wished, and with whomever she desired. She could practically roll a cigarette with her eyes closed, and she loved to smoke a hookah. She reveled in her own mischief. In one of her novels, Sand boldly suggested that monogamous marriage was an abnormal, unnatural state that deprived men and women of experiencing true sexual pleasure. Her significant lovers included Alfred de Musset, Franz Liszt, and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin, who reported to his family, \"Something about her repels me.\" Her decade-long relationship with Chopin ended badly in 1847, when Sand suspected that he had fallen in love with her daughter.\n\nEven after it became an open secret in literary circles (and a source of malicious gossip) that Aurore Dupin was the notorious George Sand, she continued her transgressive style of dress and behavior, simply because she enjoyed it. She loved the idea of being in disguise. With her trousers, vest, military coat, hat, and tie, \"I was the perfect little first-year student,\" she recalled in her autobiography. \"My clothing made me fearless.\" And walking in her solid, sturdy boots was far preferable to the fussy discomfort of women's shoes: \"With those little iron heels, I felt secure on the sidewalks. I flew from one end of Paris to the other.\" In her male attire, she was a voyeur, seeing without being seen. \"No one knew me, no one looked at me, no one gave me a second thought; I was an atom lost in the immense crowd.\"\n\nAt theaters, she sat in the pit, where only men were permitted, and she always pulled off the ruse with ease\u2014\"the absence of coquettishness in costume and facial expression warded off any suspicion,\" she explained. \"I was too poorly dressed and looked too simple\u2014my usual vacant, verging on dumb, look\u2014to attract or compel attention. . . . There is a way of stealing about, everywhere, without turning a head, and of speaking in a low and muted pitch which does not resound like a flute in the ears of those who may hear you. Furthermore, to avoid being noticed as a man, you must already have not been noticed as a woman.\"\n\nIn her autobiography, Sand recalled that one of her friends, who was privy to her sartorial secret, began calling her \"monsieur\" in public. But just as he would get used to addressing her this way, she would appear the following day dressed as a woman, and he couldn't keep up with the relentless change of costume. Confused by her various corrections, he took to addressing her only as \"monsieur\" from then on.\n\nThere was a less amusing aspect to dabbling in androgyny: having to deal with the fallout from her marriage. Casimir meticulously kept a log of his (soon to be former) wife's crimes and misdemeanors\u2014among them, \"She writes novels.\" Even worse, \"Mme D. affecting the manners of a young man, smoking, swearing, dressed as a man and having lost all the feminine graces, has no understanding of money.\" Once tolerant and blithe about their marital arrangement, which allowed her to veer off on an independent path, Casimir came to detest the liberty she'd achieved and was disgusted by her \"bohemian\" lifestyle. She had to enter a nasty and protracted legal battle to end the marriage, and in the end had to divide her fortune with him.\n\nNo matter how messy her personal life became at any given time, she held steady with her writing, producing a staggering number of novels, plays, essays, and other works. She also painted, and she was an astonishingly prolific letter writer; her published correspondence includes more than fifteen thousand letters. Yet she also happily engaged in so-called women's work\u2014making jam, doing needlework, and immersing herself in her beloved garden. Although she would periodically take stock of \"the irregularity of my essentially feminine constitution,\" she was never shaken by what she viewed as the mutability of the self. Given the choice between conforming to prevailing customs and doing as she wished, she simply alternated between the two. It was not always easy, yet she was constitutionally incapable of remaining in a fixed state:\n\nI was not a woman completely like those whom some moralists censure and mock; I had in my soul an enthusiasm for the beautiful, a thirst for the true; and yet I was a woman like others\u2014dependent, nervous, prey to my imagination, childishly susceptible to the emotionalism and anxieties of motherhood. But did these traits have to relegate me to secondary standing in artistic and family life? That being society's rule, it was still within my power to submit patiently or cheerfully.\n\nAs Sand's biographer Belinda Jack noted, \"[H]er modernity lies less in her feminism or her socialism, and more in her acceptance of loose, even freewheeling ideas about the self. . . . She had strong intuitions about the subconscious and the need to be aware of our inner unthinking, but acutely responsive, selves.\"\n\nTo Sand, this was a natural, normal idea. It was far ahead of her time; she worked tirelessly so that others might embrace it. In her autobiography, Sand expressed a desire to achieve societal acceptance not for herself only, but for other women. \"I was going along nourishing a dream of male virtue to which women could aspire,\" she wrote, \"and was constantly examining my soul with a na\u00efve curiosity to find out whether it had the power of such aspirations, and whether uprightness, unselfishness, discretion, perseverance in work\u2014all the strengths, in short, that man attributes exclusively to himself\u2014were actually unavailable to a heart which accepted the concept of them so ardently. . . . I wondered why Montaigne would not have liked and respected me as much as a brother.\"\n\nNo less than George Eliot's future partner, the critic George Henry Lewes, declared in 1842 that Sand was the most remarkable writer of the century. Dostoevsky considered her \"one of the most brilliant, the most indomitable, and the most perfect champions.\"\n\nThe last years of her life were often filled with sadness, as by then many of her friends and former lovers were dead. But she was one of the most influential and famous women in France, and possessed remarkable serenity after all that she'd endured. Unfortunately, her reputation did not hold up well after her death. Her prodigious output was eclipsed by the shocking, scandalous details of her life. Compared with her contemporaries, she is hardly read today. \"The world will know and understand me someday,\" Sand once wrote. \"But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.\" In that regard, she succeeded beyond measure.\n\n\"What a brave man she was,\" Turgenev recalled of Sand, \"and what a good woman.\"\n\nHer old friend Flaubert, a notorious misanthrope and recluse, outlived her by four years. Of her funeral in 1876, he said: \"I cried like an ass.\"\nShe had a big nose and the face of a withered cabbage\n\nChapter 3\n\nGeorge Eliot & MARIAN EVANS\n\nCharles Dickens was suspicious. \"I have observed what seem to me to be such womanly touches, in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me, even now,\" he wrote to George Eliot in January 1858. The candid letter was written a year after the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, a collection of three stories first serialized, anonymously, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Dickens praised their \"exquisite truth and delicacy\" but was convinced that the writer was a woman. Elizabeth Gaskell, however, insisted that the author was a man named Joseph Liggins of Nuneaton. The Saturday Review, meanwhile, harbored its own suspicions, noting that George Eliot was rumored to be \"an assumed name, screening that of some studious clergyman . . . who is the father of a family, of High Church tendencies, and exceedingly fond of children, Greek dramatists and dogs.\"\n\nNot quite: George Eliot was a thirty-eight-year-old woman named Mary Anne (Marian) Evans, a politically progressive atheist raised in a stern, religious household, unmarried, childless, and living openly with a married man. She was a formidable intellectual who had begun educating herself after her mother's death in 1836 and would publish seven astonishing novels in her lifetime, including The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. How Evans became one of the great Victorian novelists is the story of an eccentric young woman from the Midlands region of England who broke just about every taboo of her time. \"She was never content with what was safely known and could be taken for granted,\" one critic wrote of her extraordinarily restless life.\n\nBorn on November 22, 1819, in Warwickshire, she was her parents' third child, following the birth of a daughter and a son. (Her father, Robert, also had two children from a previous marriage; his first wife died.) The birth of a second daughter was terribly disappointing. Sons were valued and valuable; girls, until married off, were a financial drain and nothing but a burden on the family. Mary Anne was no great prize. Twin boys arrived fourteen months later, but they died soon after birth, and Mary Anne's mother, Christiana, never recovered from the loss. She made no effort to hide that fact from her daughter.\n\nMary Anne eventually dropped the \"e\" from \"Anne\" and later changed her name to Marian, but at the end of her life, she reverted to \"Mary Ann.\" (That's why, in biographies, you'll find her first name spelled with confusing variation: what to call her?) Since she lived with a mother who never doted on her, her childhood was marked by isolation and sadness. Luckily, her father was kinder, and gave her a copy of her very first book: The Linnet's Life. But whatever bond she shared with him, it was never enough to replace the maternal affection she was denied.\n\nUnkempt, frequently melancholy, and extremely sensitive, she was an unsightly irritant to Christiana, who may have blamed her own poor health and depression on having given birth to Mary Anne. The Evanses' youngest child was obstinate, fearful, and given to emotional outbursts. At the age of five, in 1824, she was sent to a boarding school. A few years later, her parents would move her to another boarding school, where Mary Anne became close to a teacher named Maria Lewis. Even for the Victorian era, five was quite young to be shipped away for one's education, though she did come home on weekends. A timid and socially awkward student, Mary Anne would eventually find academic success and earn the admiration of her peers, but her insecurity lingered and she was always harshly critical of her own achievements.\n\nAt seven, Mary Anne began reading Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. This event marked the first hint of her future vocation: when the book was returned to a neighbor before she'd had a chance to finish reading it, she was terribly upset. She did the next best thing by writing out an ending herself.\n\nWhen she was twelve, Mary Anne attended a girls' school in the Midlands run by evangelical sisters. She excelled there, impressing her teachers with her mastery of every subject, especially literature. She received a novel in the mail from her beloved former teacher Maria Lewis, and sent a thank-you letter back, describing the sustaining role that books had played in her life. \"When I was quite a little child I could not be satisfied with the things around me,\" she wrote. \"I was constantly living in a world of my own creation, and was quite contented to have no companions that I might be left to my own musings and imagine scenes in which I was chief actress.\" It was Lewis, in 1839, who encouraged Mary Anne to submit her work for publication. The poem, her print debut, was signed \"M.A.E.\" and appeared in the Christian Observer. It began:\n\nAs o'er the fields by evening's light I stray,\n\nI hear a still small whisper\u2014come away;\n\nThou must to this bright, lovely world soon say\n\nFarewell!\n\nThe effects of her feeling of estrangement from those around her\u2014and dealing with her mother's death, when she was seventeen years old\u2014would lead her to be perpetually in search of mother figures and to form fierce attachments to the people she loved\u2014including her brother Isaac. (Their close yet complex bond informed the sibling relationship of Maggie and Tom Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss.) She was desperate for intimacy, a longing that never left her. \"Before I had your kind letter,\" she wrote to a friend in 1842, \"one of the ravens that hovered over me in my Saul-like visitations was the idea that you did not love me well enough to bestow any time on me more than what I had already robbed you of, but that same letter was a David's harp that quite charmed away this naughty imagination.\" (By this time, too, she had begun spelling her name Mary Ann.)\n\nAfter her mother died, she became more withdrawn. While caring for her widowed sixty-three-year-old father, she dutifully\u2014though not happily\u2014took over running the household, and felt like little more than a maid. But she used the seclusion to further her education. In what spare time she had, she read (and reread) widely: history, literature, poetry, philosophy, science, and music (she became an accomplished pianist), and studied Latin, Greek, German, French, and Italian. With her capacity for deeply felt emotion, she could not ignore the fact that daily life was constricting and pallid. Still, her emotional deprivation was offset by the riches of learning, of cultivating a powerful and capacious intellect. The hunger of the heart was sublimated into the hunger of the mind.\n\nAlways a thoughtful, contemplative girl, Mary Ann grew increasingly analytical and developed a keen interest in ideas concerning morality, modesty, and character. She was also intrigued by the conflict between individual will and the stifling demands of convention. \"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful,\" Evans, as Eliot, would write in Middlemarch, widely regarded as her greatest work. \"They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.\" As a novelist, Eliot would prove to be an astute social observer, a historian, and a philosopher. Yet she also captured the despair of insatiable yearning, a condition she understood all too well.\n\nThe fervent desire to love and be loved, which had driven her back upon herself throughout her childhood, stayed constant even after it had been fulfilled. Despite her reputation as an author whose novels reflected her vast intellect, she was very much invested in matters of the heart.\n\nThe English poet William Ernest Henley, best known for his 1875 poem \"Invictus,\" once dismissed Eliot as \"George Sand plus Science minus Sex.\" Yet the heart, if not sex, was more present in Eliot's work than is generally recognized. In Middlemarch she wrote (in the voice of her heroine, Dorothea Brooke) that \"surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him\u2014which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analysis of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and work, the life and death struggles of separate human beings.\"\n\nEven in her personal correspondence, such matters weighed on her mind, as in a letter to Lady Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby, the wife of Queen Victoria's Private Secretary, with whom Mary Ann corresponded until Ponsonby's death: \"Consider what the human mind en masse would have been if there had been no such combination of elements in it as has produced poets. All the philosophers and savants would not have sufficed to supply that deficiency. And how can the life of nations be understood without the inward life of poetry\u2014that is, of emotion blending with thought?\"\n\nThat Mary Ann had such a propensity stemmed from the extreme loneliness of her growing-up years. \"I have of late felt a depression that has disordered my mind's eye and made me alive to what is certainly a fact (though my imagination when I am in health is an adept at concealing it), that I am alone in the world,\" she wrote to a friend at the age of twenty-one. \"I do not mean to be so sinful as to say that I have not friends most unreservedly kind and tender, and disposed to form a far too favourable estimate of me, but I mean that I have no one who enters into my pleasures or my griefs, no one with whom I can pour out my soul, no one with the same yearnings, the same temptations, the same delights as myself.\" Four years later, in another letter, she reflected on her years of suffering: \"Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.\" She was absolutely convinced that \"the bliss of reciprocated affection\" was something she would never know.\n\nMary Ann had been marked early on as an ugly duckling, a characterization that would take on an even crueler edge for her as an adult. Someone once told her that she was, in fact, too ugly to love. Henry James called her the \"great horse-faced bluestocking.\" And her publisher, upon learning her identity, described her to his wife as \"a most intelligent pleasant woman, with a face like a man.\" Many went so far as to regard her as Medusa-like\u2014not merely plain but hideous. She had a large head, a big nose, and unflattering physical proportions. She dressed badly. And she was rather humorless, a trait that added severity and heaviness to her face. She was the first to acknowledge her ungainly appearance, once describing herself as \"a withered cabbage in a flower garden.\" Still, she had kind eyes, and Henry James wrote of this \"magnificently ugly, deliciously hideous\" woman that \"in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her.\" Even her obituary in the Times, though praising her as \"a great and noble woman,\" could not refrain from mentioning her \"irradiated features that were too strongly marked for feminine beauty.\"\n\nShe had been raised in an intolerant family, which rejected those who didn't readily fit in. Aside from her \"ugly\" appearance, she held, from an early age, provocative views that distanced her from her family, particularly her father. Although she'd read theology texts passionately and had gone through a lengthy period of religious fervor, she became disenchanted. Eventually, her love of science and her passion for rational thought took over; a love of Wordsworth began to steer her into Romanticism and away from God. Moreover, when she and her father moved to Coventry, in 1841, she happily came into contact with agnostics, atheists, and freethinking intellectuals. She became especially close to her neighbors Cara and Charles Bray, both of whom openly enjoyed affairs outside their marriage.\n\nSoon afterward, Mary Ann renounced her faith and stopped going to church. Rather than give up her newfound principles, she told her outraged father that she would leave home and make her own way in the world. He made no effort to stop her. She eventually returned to care for him, and even attended church again, but their last years together, until his death in 1849, were difficult. \"My life is a perpetual nightmare,\" she confided to a friend, \"and always haunted by something to be done, which I have never the time, or rather the energy, to do.\" While serving as her father's nurse, she did read aloud to him a recently published novel, Jane Eyre, by a writer called Currer Bell. And in his final months, she managed the frivolous task of translating Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.\n\nThis period was yet another that led her to ruminate on notions of obligation versus independence, fulfilling duty versus chasing desires. In Romola, her historical novel set in fifteenth-century Florence, she would explore the question of where \"the duty of obedience ends and the duty of resistance begins.\"\n\nHow Mary Anne, Mary Ann, or Marian Evans\u2014full of secret ambition but lonely, prim, and lacking confidence\u2014transformed herself into George Eliot is a remarkable story. She often felt that she'd been given the mind of a man but not his opportunities. At thirty-one, she was numb, still grieving after her father's death, revealing in a letter that \"the only ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given to me some woman's duty\u2014some possibility of devoting myself where I may see a daily result of pure calm blessedness in the life of another.\" Around this time, she became Marian, another in a line of appellation shifts. And somewhere, \"George Eliot\" was patiently waiting to meet her.\n\nCharles and Cara Bray had introduced Marian to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who commented on her \"calm and serious soul.\" Her provincial world had expanded considerably. And with the support of Charles, she began writing book reviews (anonymously) for the newspaper he owned. She was still about a decade away from publishing her first novel. But one friend was wise enough to observe of Marian at thirty-two that \"[l]arge angels take a long time unfolding their wings; but when they do, soar out of sight. Miss Evans either has no wings or, which I think is the case, they are coming, budding.\" She was right.\n\nCharles also took a great interest in Marian's head\u2014or, to be more specific, her skull. As a keen believer in phrenology, Bray introduced Marian to one of its leading proponents in London. \"Miss Evans' head is a very large one,\" the expert astutely concluded. He added in his assessment that \"the Intellect greatly predominates\" (true), and that \"in the Feelings, the Animal and Moral regions are about equal; the moral being quite sufficient to keep the animal in order.\" That sounded about right, too. Most promising of all, he said, \"She was not fitted to stand alone.\"\n\nCompanionship would come later. For now, Marian was writing and editing for London's Westminster Review. However, there was one small snag in her newfound work. As Eliot's biographer Brenda Maddox has noted in her lively account, \"A female editor was as unheard of as a female surgeon; to be known to have one would have done no service to the review.\" While, in her own way, Marian was becoming entrenched in London's intellectual circles (the rare woman to have done so), she had to keep quiet about it. She was there, she was known socially, but her name could not be attached to the work she produced. Still, for the first time in her life, she experienced a real sense of popularity and demand for her presence. Young women she encountered, dazzled by her supple mind, developed crushes on her.\n\nConsidering her privileged position, Marian was more than happy to comply with the discretion demanded of her, and was even helpful in suggesting how to manage the situation. She told her boss that it might be best if \"you are regarded as the responsible person, but that you employ an Editor in whose literary and general ability you confide.\"\n\nThis rush of good fortune was cold comfort, however. She still lacked a husband, and she wanted one. But meeting a man named George Lewes would prove transformative. She could never legally marry him, but their relationship would become the most significant of her life. He was a prolific author, two years older than she, and they'd gotten to know each other better through a friend. She didn't know much about Lewes's personal life, but her first impression of him was that he talked too much. Soon she admitted, \"He has quite won my liking, in spite of myself.\" She found out that he was unhappily married, the father of four sons, and that he had a well-earned reputation for promiscuity. It was public knowledge that his wife, Agnes, had been having an affair with a friend of his, too. Lewes was even \"uglier\" than Marian, with a pockmarked face, an unkempt mustache, and unfashionable clothing, all of which she found off-putting. Even his friends called him \"Ape\" and declared him the ugliest man in London. (Charlotte Bront\u00eb, however, once remarked that she saw something of her sister Emily in him.) Henry James found him \"personally repulsive.\"\n\nLewes was cosmopolitan and Evans was provincial; his family, with its background in theater, was as flamboyant as hers was listless and austere. But by March 1853, she was already telling a friend that she found Lewes \"genial and amusing,\" and that he had \"won my liking, in spite of myself.\"\n\nWithin a year, they were living together\u2014and she started calling herself Marian Evans Lewes. Though he was still married to Agnes, Evans was able to confide to a friend, \"I begin this year more happily than I have done most years of my life.\" Divorce was out of the question for Lewes, but both he and Marian, despite their trepidation about whisperings of their supposed immorality, charged forward in their relationship\u2014living together \"in sin\" and hoping that her reputation in particular would not suffer irrevocably. They were prepared to lose friends to preserve their love, and did. \"I have counted the cost of the step I have taken and am prepared to bear, without irritation or bitterness, renunciation of all my friends,\" she wrote. \"I am not mistaken in the person to whom I have attached myself.\"\n\nBoth she and Lewes had already experienced their own forms of social persecution and were familiar with its toll. Yet they lost family, too: Marian had waited a few years to reveal her relationship to her siblings, and when she did, her brother Isaac (whom she adored) cut her off and encouraged his sisters to ostracize her. Defiant, she referred to Lewes as \"my husband.\"\n\n\"We are leading no life of self-indulgence,\" she wrote, \"except indeed that, being happy in each other, we find everything easy.\" Further, she insisted that she wasn't prepared to settle into someone else's notion of a virtuous life. She could be only herself. \"Women who are satisfied with light and easily broken ties do not act as I have done,\" she wrote. \"They obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner.\" She paid the penalty without complaint or regret.\n\nIt is fair to say that without this passionate, supportive partnership, which would last until Lewes's death in 1878, George Eliot would not have been born. Lewes offered Evans a kind of love she had never known, unquestioning and absolute. (Despite rumors of his infidelity, there is no known evidence.) He wasn't an entirely enlightened man\u2014after all, he had once claimed condescendingly that even the best women writers were \"second only to the first-rate men of their day\"\u2014but he did heartily encourage her to write a novel. Journalistic work provided money but little satisfaction. \"It is worth while for you to try the experiment,\" he urged her\u2014and finally, in 1856, she confided in her journal: \"I am anxious to begin my fiction writing.\"\n\nShe embarked on this phase of her writing career by sending stories to John Blackwood, editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; the first was published in January 1857 under the name \"George Eliot.\" She didn't send the pieces directly to Blackwood\u2014she submitted them via Lewes, who was already a regular contributor to the journal, as an added buffer. A month later, she wrote to Blackwood's brother and colleague, William: \"Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito, having observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation.\"\n\nEliot was, of course, not the first woman to adopt a male pseudonym: the Bront\u00ebs had done it, and so had the French writer George Sand, who was much admired by Eliot. But she felt that her controversial subject matter\u2014depicting the lives of clergymen in her own native county of Warwickshire, and invoking autobiographical ideas about religion, faith, and unrequited love\u2014demanded secrecy. Not only that, but her social position was shaky enough because of her unconventional living situation. She was already infamous.\n\nIt turned out to be a good thing that she'd kept her identity hidden, as Blackwood wrote to Lewes (in a letter whose subtext was none too subtle): \"I am glad to hear that your friend is, as I supposed, a clergyman. Such a subject is best in clerical hands.\"\n\nIn 1858, Scenes of Clerical Life, which contained the stories serialized in Blackwood's magazine, was published in two volumes, under the name George Eliot. She was now a real author, and asked her publisher to send review copies to contemporaries she admired, including Dickens, Ruskin, and Tennyson.\n\nThe first part of her new pen name was inspired by her devoted partner (and was also the name of her uncle); the surname \"Eliot\" was chosen simply because she thought it was a \"good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.\" \"Under what name could she have published her fiction?\" wrote a critic in 1999, referring to her various names. \"It is clear that neither 'Evans' nor 'Lewes' would have done. Her invented title became the only fixed point in a shifting world of reference.\"\n\nWhen John Blackwood showed up at Lewes's flat one day, hoping to meet the esteemed Mr. Eliot in person, the couple broke the news to him in a rather playful way. \"Do you wish to see him?\" Lewes asked. He and Marian left the room, then walked right back in\u2014and Blackwood was introduced to the man (woman) himself.\n\nHe was more than gracious about it, and happy to keep their secret safe. In 1859, with the publication of Adam Bede (a masterful depiction of rural domestic life, whose title character was based on her father), Marian kept her gender and name private\u2014though not for long. For one thing, too much of the story was recognizable, with identifiable characters; her brother Isaac read it and said that no one but his sister could possibly be the author. But the greater issue, as had been true for Charlotte Bront\u00eb with Jane Eyre, was the book's success: Queen Victoria was a fan. Dickens raved, \"I cannot praise it enough,\" even though Adam Bede had outsold A Tale of Two Cities. Alexandre Dumas called it \"the masterpiece of the century.\" And the Times declared that the mysterious author ranked \"at once among masters of the art.\" Critics loved Adam Bede, and so did the public\u2014a rare feat. The novel was a huge best seller. People wanted to know who George Eliot was, and false \"authors\" came forward to claim the glory. One man from Warwickshire insisted that he had written Adam Bede and Scenes of Clerical Life, and that he'd been cheated out of royalty payments.\n\nMarian's efforts to hide her identity were increasingly in vain. It did not escape the notice of the Leweses' friends that their purchase of a large house, filled with new furniture and staffed by servants, happened to coincide with the launch of George Eliot. One friend wrote to Marian saying that she would \"go to the stake\" if Marian was not George Eliot. She received a warm, open, but stern reply from the author: \"Keep the secret solemnly till I give you leave to tell it, and give way to no impulses of triumphant affection.\" Lewes added to the letter that \"you mustn't call her Marian Evans again; that individual is extinct, rolled up, quashed, absorbed in the Lewesian magnificence!\" From those who did realize the truth, the author pleaded for discretion. \"Talking about my books,\" she explained, \"has the same malign effect on me as talking of my feelings or my religion.\"\n\nWhen The Mill on the Floss came out in 1860, she was by then one of the most acclaimed authors of her day, and it became well known that George Eliot was a woman living with a married man. (Why she clung to her pseudonym even after her true identity was revealed is unclear.) People loved her books but judged her as immoral for her unorthodox relationship. Lewes's wife was cast as the victim in this drama, and Marian Evans as the predator. Never mind that Agnes had given birth to not one but another four sons outside her marriage. Although Lewes had forgiven her, he had ceased to think of her as his wife. He went on with his life in a discreet and dignified manner\u2014and did not embarrass Agnes as she had embarrassed him. He continued to support his family financially, yet his loyalty to Marian was unwavering. And she did not live with him until she knew that he would never again live under the same roof with Agnes.\n\nIn response to the flurry of scandal, \"George Eliot\" took full ownership of her new self, replying to letters addressed to \"Miss Evans\" with a chilly correction, informing one friend, \"I request that any one who has a regard for me will cease to speak of me by my maiden name.\" Marian Evans represented a lonely, ugly country girl whom the author no longer knew and now deemed \"extinct.\" George Eliot, her \"real\" self, was famous and influential (however immoral). She produced Silas Marner in 1861, and Romola two years later. Set in Renaissance Florence, Romola was a poorly received departure from her earlier works. She was not dissuaded by disappointment, and kept writing: Felix Holt the Radical came out in 1866\u2014and four years later came her masterpiece, Middlemarch. (Emily Dickinson wrote to a cousin: \"What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?\")\n\nBy 1876, when Eliot published Daniel Deronda, another breathtaking accomplishment (notable for its sympathetic portrait of Jews), she was forgiven. She was the pride of her country and was proclaimed the greatest living English novelist. Her work, finally, spoke for itself, and a judgmental public had listened and fallen silent. She was adored and admired, a literary giant\u2014and a very wealthy woman. Whereas she and Lewes had once been exiles in London society, now they were celebrated, visited by Emerson, Turgenev, and other eminent intellectuals. A handsome American banker, John Cross, whom they affectionately called \"dear nephew,\" managed their business affairs. All was well.\n\nBut on November 30, 1878, Lewes was dead by evening. Eliot had reported months earlier to a friend that Lewes was \"racked with cramps from suppressed gout and feeling his inward economy all wrong.\" The sixty-one-year-old had succumbed to cancer, though he had never received the diagnosis.\n\nThey'd been together for more than two decades, and although Eliot was melancholic by nature, these had been the best years of her life. In a sense, Lewes had made everything possible. And when Eliot had received a manuscript of Adam Bede, bound in red leather, from her publisher, she had inscribed it to Lewes: \"To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this M.S. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life. Marian Lewes, March 23, 1859.\"\n\nIn her grief-stricken stupor, she felt unable to attend his funeral. Each new day without him represented \"a new acquaintance with grief.\" Her old friend Turgenev sent a letter of condolence assuring her that the whole of \"learned Europe\" mourned with her. When she responded to such letters, she signed herself \"Your loving but half dead Marian.\" She was severely depressed and weighed just over a hundred pounds. She found a sense of purpose by establishing a \u00a35,000 grant in Lewes's name at Cambridge University, and by devoting her waking hours to editing his final work. Eliot never wrote another novel. She would be dead within two years.\n\nHer fans demanded her attention more than ever; it seemed that her fame had grown after her loss, which she found deeply unsettling. Requests for photographs of the famous George Eliot were politely declined, as the author explained that she treasured her privacy and did not wish to be stared at in public. One particularly aggressive autograph hunter was finally silenced with a form letter, a reply that the author had dictated: \"Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot), whom he has mistakenly addressed as Miss Marian Evans, has no photograph of herself and systematically abstains from giving her autograph.\"\n\nOne might expect that at this late stage of life\u2014she was sixty\u2014her knack for courting scandal would have been a distant memory. But she provoked rebuke once again, in May 1880, by marrying John Cross, who was twenty years her junior. He'd proposed to her three times before she accepted. Now she would have the legal marriage she'd always longed for; in this regard, she was rather old-fashioned, and had suffered from being unable to legitimize an otherwise blissful longtime union. At last, she could marry, if not the love of her life, a man she loved.\n\nFor their honeymoon, John and Marian traveled to Venice, where a strange mishap occurred. One morning, suffering from a depressive episode, Cross jumped from the balcony of their suite at the Hotel Europa (where luminaries such as Proust and Verdi had stayed) and landed in the Grand Canal. He was perhaps embarrassed, but physically unharmed. Venetian newspapers reported the incident, and the local police recorded it as a suicide attempt. Eliot alerted John's brother by telegram, and he joined them for the rest of their honeymoon. They blamed the heat for John's bizarre leap, and the trio traveled on to Munich.\n\nUpon their return home, the couple attended a dinner party in their honor, after which a guest wrote a petty and unkind missive to her sister: \"George Eliot, old as she is, and ugly, really looked very sweet and winning in spite of both. She was dressed in a short soft satin walking dress with a lace wrap half shading the body, a costume most artistically designed to show her slenderness, yet hiding the squareness of age.\" She added that there was not a single person in the room (including Eliot's husband) \"whose mother she might not have been. . . . She adores her husband, and it seemed to me it hurt her a little to have him talk so much to me. It made her, in her pain, slightly irritated and snappish. . . . He may forget the twenty years difference between them, but she never can.\"\n\nEvans changed her name yet again, to Mary Anne Cross, but the marriage lasted less than a year. She died unexpectedly on December 22, 1880, at sixty-one\u2014the same age at which Lewes died. Only a few days earlier, she and John had attended a concert and seen a performance of Agamemnon. In what is believed to be her final utterance, she complained of \"great pain in the left side.\" Then she was gone.\n\nLeft to tend to the legacy of this towering figure, Cross had his own minor identity crisis; he was referred to as \"George Eliot's widow.\" He only bolstered his image as \"Mr. Eliot\" when he published a biography of his late wife in 1885. It would be a stretch to assume that his marriage to Eliot had been consummated, but he is said to have truly loved and revered her. \"I am left alone in this new House we meant to be so happy in,\" he wrote to a friend. He never remarried.\n\nEven in death, Eliot paid a steep price for her unconventional life: in her will, she asked to be buried at Westminster Abbey, but the request was denied. She was dismissed as \"a person whose life and opinions were in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma.\" (This was certainly true.) Further, the church noted that despite the author's wish for a funeral in the Abbey, \"[o]ne cannot eat one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, if they are to be so called, which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters.\"\n\nIt was not until the centenary of her death that she would receive a memorial stone in Poet's Corner. (She was in good company in that regard: Lord Byron, whose life was shockingly scandalous, died in 1824 and wasn't given a stone until 1969.) The eminent scholar Gordon Haight had the honor of delivering the speech for the unveiling of her stone at Westminster Abbey on June 21, 1980, five years before his own death. \"The novels of George Eliot provide the most varied and truthful picture we have of English religious life in the nineteenth century,\" he said. Whereas the novel had often previously served as a trivial pastime, he noted, Eliot elevated it into \"a compelling moral force.\"\n\nAfter Eliot died, Henry James paid her a glorious tribute: \"What is remarkable, extraordinary\u2014and the process remains inscrutable and mysterious\u2014is that this quiet, anxious, sedentary, serious, invalidical English lady, without animal spirits, without adventures, without extravagance, assumption, or bravado, should have made us believe that nothing in the world was alien to her; should have produced such rich, deep, masterly pictures of the multifold life of man.\"\n\nToday we take for granted how much Eliot sacrificed to become one of the greatest authors in the history of Western literature. She is simply George Eliot, literary master, staid historical figure, required college reading, admired by generations of authors. Her iconic Victorian visage now adorns posters, calendars, coffee mugs, stationery. But this pioneer could never forget the toll of her fame.\n\nReflecting on her story, it is tempting to interpret one of the concluding passages of The Mill on the Floss as the author's weary assessment of her own life:\n\nNature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.\nHe was obsessive-compulsive and collected books about fairies\n\nChapter 4\n\nLewis Carroll & CHARLES DODGSON\n\nA show of hands if you've never heard of Alice in Wonderland. That's what I thought. You'd have to have fallen down a rabbit hole to be unfamiliar with Lewis Carroll's 1865 masterpiece, which in the past hundred years has been adapted for television and film numerous times, including three silent films, a British musical, a pornographic movie, an animated Disney version, a Japanese anime TV series (Fushigi no Kuni no Alice), and in 2010, a 3-D blockbuster directed by Tim Burton. It has been turned into graphic novels, plays, and operas, and it was even appropriated as the title of an execrable album by Jewel (Goodbye Alice in Wonderland). It has been translated into 125 languages, including Yiddish, Swahili, and Pitjantjatjara, an Aboriginal language of Australia. It has influenced James Joyce and Jefferson Airplane. There have been Alice theme parks, mugs, teapots, soap dishes, chess sets, T-shirts, and tea towels. Aside from Shakespeare, and the Bible, it's the most widely translated and quoted book of all time. Following the first edition illustrated by John Tenniel, subsequent versions have been accompanied by drawings from artists such as Arthur Rackham, Mervyn Peake, Ralph Steadman, and Salvador Dal\u00ed. Many woefully misguided authors have attempted sequels to Alice. Parodies have been published\u2014some brilliant, some without merit. Vladimir Nabokov translated a Russian edition when he was just twenty-four years old. And through all its iterations, Alice has never been out of print.\n\nThis classic story, perhaps the most-read children's book in the world, has also been banned on at least a few occasions. In the early twentieth century, a high school in New Hampshire censored Alice in Wonderland owing to its \"expletives, references to masturbation and sexual fantasies, and derogatory characterizations of teachers and of religious ceremonies.\" (Fair enough.) And in 1931, China deemed it forbidden material because \"animals should not use human language.\"\n\nThe author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (its original title) was Lewis Carroll, but that name was a hiding place. The eccentric Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy, eminent Oxford mathematician and lecturer, had created the nom de plume as a means of shelter from which he could let his imagination run wild. He wanted his \"day job\" to remain undisturbed and private. Reflecting his obsession with wordplay since childhood, the pseudonym was a clever transposition of his real name: \"Lewis\" was the anglicized form of Ludovicus (Latin for \"Lutwidge\"), and \"Carroll\" was an Irish surname similar to the Latin Carolus, from which the name \"Charles\" is derived.\n\nHe was so mortified by publicity that he refused to acknowledge his alter ego. Whenever he was a guest in someone's home, if the name \"Lewis Carroll\" arose in conversation, he would leave. Autograph hunters were turned away without exception.\n\nHer Majesty Queen Victoria loved Alice and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, so much that she wrote a letter to Lewis Carroll, asking if he would send her the rest of his books. Unable to decline a request from the Queen, the humble author obliged as best he could, sending her numerous volumes\u2014all by Charles Dodgson, and all mathematical texts, including the popular beach read Condensation of Determinants, Being a New and Brief Method for Computing Their Arithmetical Values.\n\nUntil the end of his life, this reticent polymath maintained a strict divide between himself and the fanciful Lewis Carroll. \"For 30 years I have managed to keep the 2 personalities distinct,\" he boasted in a letter written three years before his death, \"and to avoid all communication, in propria persona, with the outer world, about my books.\"\n\nFastidious in everything he did\u2014today, we might apply the clinical term \"obsessive-compulsive,\" a mental disorder\u2014Dodgson went so far as to conceal his own handwriting. When he had to handle official correspondence for Lewis Carroll, he'd ask someone to copy out his response so that no one would have a sample of his writing. In 1883, he wrote to the divinity school at Oxford, begging the staff never to release anything he had handwritten. \"It is a thing I often have to do\u2014people seeming to assume that everybody likes notoriety,\" he explained, \"and scarcely believing me when I say I dislike it particularly. My constant aim is to remain, personally, unknown to the world.\"\n\nMore than a hundred years after his death, it is still hard to believe that the same man who wrote whimsical, exuberant classics of Victorian literature also produced arcane texts such as Notes on the First Two Books of Euclid, Designed for Candidates for Responsions; and An Elementary Treatise on Determinants with Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Geometry. No wonder he needed a pen name.\n\nTo recount, even broadly, the achievements of Dodgson's life is the equivalent of tracing the lives of ten extraordinary men. The sheer vastness and absurd variety of his accomplishments, beyond his literary success, is exhausting to contemplate. He defies comprehension; only speculation is possible.\n\nHis beginnings were unremarkable. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire, on January 27, 1832, the third child (and first son) of eleven children\u2014there would be five more sisters and three brothers. His father, Charles Dodgson, and mother, Frances Jean Lutwidge, were first cousins. This genetic intermix might be to blame for the severe stammer that afflicted their son throughout his life, as well as most of his siblings. In childhood, he suffered a high fever making him permanently deaf in his right ear.\n\nThe young Dodgson had a fantastic imagination. He devised elaborate games with lists of rules, performed magic tricks to entertain his family, and created a puppet theater, writing plays and handling the troupe of marionettes himself. He wrote stories and poems (including acrostics), drew sketches, and wrote, edited, and illustrated magazines for his family. This was a common activity for many Victorians; what was unusual was for a young boy to lead the creative efforts and make all the booklets almost entirely alone. He was educated at home in his early years and proved a precocious reader, supposedly tackling The Pilgrim's Progress at age seven. Frances, who doted on her son, kept a record of his endeavors\u2014\"Religious Reading: Private,\" \"Religious Reading with Mama,\" and \"Daily Reading: Useful\u2014Private.\" In an 1898 biography of Dodgson, his nephew Stuart Dodgson Collingwood wrote that \"the boy invented the strangest diversions for himself . . . [and] numbered certain snails and toads among his intimate friends. . . . [He] lived in that charming 'Wonderland' which he afterwards described so vividly; but for all that he was a thorough boy, and loved to climb the trees and to scramble about in the marl-pits.\" It was an idyllic childhood.\n\nHe may have been a \"thorough boy,\" but he was wary of other boys. \"I am fond of children (except boys),\" he famously wrote, and admitted once that \"little girls I can now and then get along with . . . but with little boys I'm out of my element altogether.\" His negative sentiment might be traced to his time at Richmond Grammar School, where he was sent at the age of twelve. In a letter home, he recounted his unhappy initiation: \"The boys have played two tricks upon me which were these\u2014they first proposed to play at 'King of the cobblers' and asked me if I would be king, to which I agreed, then they made me sit down . . . and immediately began kicking me and knocking on all sides.\" He was bitten by another student, too. Although this was a rude awakening from his early years at the parsonage at Daresbury, where his father was a vicar (eventually rising to archdeacon), the boy quickly adapted to his new life. The headmaster sent an enthusiastic report to Dodgson's father, saying that \"he possesses, along with other and excellent natural endowments, a very uncommon share of genius.\"\n\nHe switched schools after a year and a half, but left feeling confident, intellectually superior to his peers, and, toughened by experience, unafraid to challenge would-be bullies. For the next four years he attended the public school Rugby; founded in 1567, it was one of Britain's most prestigious boarding schools (and the source of the sport). At the time Dodgson enrolled, Rugby was considered the best public school in England. Here, however, the hazing and cruelty proved far more brutal than had been the case at Richmond.\n\nIn 1849, he returned home, where he would stay before heading off to Christ Church, Oxford, two years later, following in his father's footsteps. His university education got off to a bittersweet start, as his mother died at forty-seven, just two days after he'd arrived at Oxford. He had been especially close to her, and this loss marked the definitive end of his childhood.\n\nAt twenty-one, he wrote a poem called \"Solitude\" that revealed, despite his love of jokes, puzzles, and riddles, a pensive side, glum and highly sensitive. It also revealed what would become a lifelong craving for a return to innocence, manifested in his preference for close friendships with children rather than adults. The final stanzas of the poem read:\n\nFor what to man the gift of breath,\n\nIf sorrow be his lot below;\n\nIf all the day that ends in death\n\nBe dark with clouds of woe?\n\nShall the poor transport of an hour\n\nRepay long years of sore distress\u2014\n\nThe fragrance of a lonely flower\n\nMake glad the wilderness?\n\nYe golden hours of Life's young spring,\n\nOf innocence, of love and truth!\n\nBright, beyond all imagining,\n\nThou fairy-dream of youth!\n\nI'd give all wealth that years have piled,\n\nThe slow result of Life's decay,\n\nTo be once more a little child\n\nFor one bright summer-day.\n\nEven as he earned a degree in mathematics at Christ Church, Dodgson wrote poems and stories on the side. In 1855, he submitted \"Solitude\" for publication in a literary journal called The Train. This is the earliest recorded appearance of \"Lewis Carroll.\" Two years earlier, he'd placed a poem and a short story in another literary journal, signing both with the alias \"B. B.\"\n\nHe was tall (six feet), slim, and handsome, yet he often showed considerable discomfort in social situations. Then there was the matter of his being ordained, which further isolated him from a wider community. However, as the bishop of Oxford recalled years after Dodgson's death, he did not pursue his religious studies as far as he might have done. \"He was ordained,\" the bishop wrote, \"but he never proceeded to priest's orders. Why he stopped at the Diaconate I do not know, but I think his stammer in speech may have had something to do with it. He was rather sensitive about this and it made him shy of taking clerical duty in church.\" Although Dodgson was not prepared to devote himself wholly to parochial life, as his father had, the bishop wrote, \"No one who knew him could doubt that he took his position as an ordained man seriously, or that his religion was a great reality to him, controlling his thoughts and actions in a variety of ways.\" It may have not only controlled but crippled him. Dodgson never married or had children; many scholars have asserted that the relationship with his young muse, Alice Liddell, was the single great romance of his life.\n\nDodgson found a home at Christ Church, partly by winning a distinguished \"studentship\" honor, given to only the best undergraduates. This appointment offered him lodgings and a small stipend for the rest of his life, along with permanent affiliation with Christ Church\u2014and access to its astounding resources with no obligation to teach or publish academic papers. There was a catch, of course; he could keep the fellowship as long as he never violated its restrictions. As a fellow, he was required to remain celibate and unmarried, and to progress to holy orders as an ordained priest. It's unclear why he never got further than deacon; instead, he appealed to the dean, Reverend Henry George Liddell, for permission not to advance. For reasons also unknown, Liddell allowed him to retain his position as Christ Church fellow, even though this was a violation of the rules and unprecedented. Despite deciding against entering the priesthood, Dodgson was by all accounts devout and pious, obsessed throughout his life by notions of sin and guilt. He was extremely conservative in his political and personal beliefs. This is yet another reason why he seems inscrutable, and so unlikely as the creator of Lewis Carroll.\n\nThe transition from stellar undergraduate to undergraduate tutor was not enough for him. As one writer commented of Dodgson's living quarters at the college, \"the very intensity of his tidiness indicates what forces were pent up within this environment.\" To the extent that he could, he satisfied his creative yearnings by slyly infusing his mathematical lessons with puzzles and riddles. One former student recalled, \"I always hated mathematics at school, but when I went up to Oxford I learnt from Mr. Dodgson to look upon my mathematics as the most delightful of all my studies.\" But something larger and more urgent stirred in his blood, and could not stay pent up for long.\n\nAt the age of twenty-three, Dodgson now had a secure position as a scholar and lecturer, and a regular income. His life changed profoundly when he was introduced to Dean Liddell's children.\n\nAmong his many skills and hobbies, Dodgson took an early interest in photography when it was still a wondrous new invention. Like Mark Twain, Dodgson was a gadget freak\u2014whatever the nineteenth-century equivalents of iPhones and iPods, he couldn't wait to try the next big thing. The camera was no exception, and with his eye for composition, his artistic sensibility, and his desire to tinker with new toys, Dodgson loved taking pictures. It was a cumbersome process, the very opposite of today's point-and-shoot, but he enjoyed it all, including the preparation of the plates. He constantly sought out subjects for his photographs, especially children.\n\nAs Liddell, a photography enthusiast himself, became better acquainted with Dodgson, he invited the young man to take pictures of his family. Dodgson began spending time with Liddell's little girls, Lorina (known as Ina), Alice, and Edith, and their brother, Harry, taking them on picnics and boating trips.\n\nThe \"golden afternoon\" of July 4, 1862, would prove transformative for them all. Years later, Alice Liddell recalled the day: \"The sun was so hot we landed in meadows down the river, deserting the boat to take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a newly made hayrick. Here from all three of us, my sisters and myself, came the old petition, 'Tell us a story,' and Mr. Dodgson (that is Lewis Carroll) began it.\" He made it up as he went along.\n\nIn the presence of children, particularly the Liddells, there was no awkwardness: Dodgson was at his most charming. That July afternoon, as he later remembered it, \"in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards.\" Ten-year-old Alice begged him to write down for her the story that he'd told. He sat up the entire night, working on a draft, and eventually made it into a green leather booklet called Alice's Adventures Under Ground, which he illustrated himself and gave to her as a Christmas gift.\n\nDodgson shared his story with a select few, including his friend Henry Kingsley, a novelist, who urged him to consider publishing it. He expanded and revised the manuscript, commissioned John Tenniel (already celebrated for his political cartoons for Punch) to do the illustrations, and submitted it to Macmillan, which agreed to publish Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The first chapter, \"Down the Rabbit Hole,\" began:\n\nAlice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'\n\nSo she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.\n\nThe book was initially released in 1865, but only fifty copies of a planned edition of two thousand were issued. Publication ceased when an unhappy Tenniel insisted on suppressing it because of imperfections in the printing process, which had affected his illustrations. Those who had purchased early copies were asked to return them to the publisher, and Macmillan donated the rejected books to children's hospitals.\n\nAfter the necessary corrections were made and a new printer was found, Alice was published, in 1866, in an edition of four thousand that Dodgson proudly declared to be a \"perfect piece of artistic printing.\" (Only twenty-three copies of the withdrawn 1865 version are known to survive, and in 1998 an anonymous buyer paid $1.54 million at auction for one of those precious books.)\n\nAlice was an instant success and sold out right away. Dodgson was thrilled at the reviews proclaiming his book \"a glorious artistic treasure.\" Like Charlotte Bront\u00eb, Dodgson requested that his publisher send him clippings of every review that came out, and he kept records of them in his diary.\n\nThe sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, which made no reference to its predecessor, was published in time for Christmas 1871, with a first printing of nine thousand copies bound in gilt-stamped red cloth. Today, the original manuscript is in the British Museum.\n\nA section called \"The Wasp in a Wig\" had been omitted from the second book at Tenniel's suggestion, partly because he didn't think it could be drawn. He dismissed it with no small amount of condescension, informing the author that \"the 'wasp' chapter doesn't interest me in the least . . . a wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art.\" Tenniel was apparently something of a diva\u2014he'd initially refused to sign on as the illustrator for Looking-Glass, and only after more than two years of nudging was Dodgson able to persuade him to say yes. Tenniel agreed, but noted that he would draw the pictures only if he could find the time.\n\nAlthough Looking-Glass was not as universally praised as Alice had been, it was a best seller. Immediately after the first printing sold out, Macmillan went back to press for six thousand more. It's no wonder that the critical reaction to the book, while favorable, was not entirely rapturous. The sequel, though brilliant, was more of an acquired taste than its predecessor (those coded chess moves!), if no less enchanting.\n\nAs the novelist Zadie Smith commented in her introduction to the 2001 Bloomsbury edition, Looking-Glass is \"a more tenebrous animal than its sister, both in style and quality of its fame. When I came to pick it up once more after an absence of years, I found I couldn't quite remember it other than as the repository where missing stories you thought were in Wonderland turn out to be\u2014like a second, darker, larder.\"\n\nLooking-Glass introduced what many consider to be the greatest piece of nonsense verse ever written, \"Jabberwocky.\" It ranked in the top ten in a poll of Britain's favorite children's poems, along with Edward Lear's \"The Owl and the Pussycat\" and T. S. Eliot's \"Macavity the Mystery Cat.\" \"Jabberwocky\" begins:\n\n'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves\n\nDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;\n\nAll mimsy were the borogoves,\n\nAnd the mome raths outgrabe.\n\n\"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!\n\nThe jaws that bite, the claws that catch!\n\nBeware the Jubjub bird, and shun\n\nThe frumious Bandersnatch!\"\n\nCarroll went on to write other books, including, in 1876, the mock-heroic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark (141 rhymed four-line stanzas) and important texts on mathematics and logic, but the Alice books remained his crowning achievements. His writing career had reached its apogee. As Robert McCrum wrote in the Guardian on the occasion of Tim Burton's \"charmless mash-up\" of a movie adaptation, the Alice books \"continue to exert an indestructible spell: teasing, phantasmagorical, narcotic, existential and profoundly English.\"\n\nThat he knew fame (not to mention great wealth) in his lifetime was a decidedly mixed blessing for C. L. Dodgson, as he was often known. Managing it filled him with terrible anxiety. On the rare occasions when he admitted that Dodgson and Carroll were the same man, he was either speaking openly with friends or corresponding with children and encouraging their letters. Otherwise, he said once, \"I use the name of 'Lewis Carroll' in order to avoid all personal publicity.\" Over and over, he lamented the unrelenting pressure to become a \"public figure,\" since he'd chosen a pseudonym precisely to protect himself from the burdens of celebrity. Dodgson hated the idea of strangers knowing anything about his personal life or what he looked like. Even those close to him could not resist feeding the myth of his enigmatic nature. He was \"not exactly an ordinary human being of flesh and blood,\" one friend reported, but rather \"some delicate, ethereal spirit, enveloped for the moment in a semblance of common humanity.\"\n\nTo that end, when he received letters for \"Lewis Carroll,\" he marked most of them \"Return to sender.\" Requests for photographs, even from relatives, were routinely denied. (He gave out photographs of himself only to children, usually young girls.) He begged friends to keep his real name private. When a bookshop catalog cited him as the author of Through the Looking-Glass, he wrote a letter demanding that Charles Dodgson's name no longer be printed \"in connection with any books except what he has put his name to.\"\n\nDesperate to keep his pseudonym private, he implored the Bodleian Library at Oxford to delete all cross-references between his names. The request was refused. Even though his identity as Carroll was an open secret, he was distressed by his inability to control its distribution.\n\nHe achieved a minor triumph when an editor contacted him for the Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain. \"I use a name, not my own, for writing under, for the one sole object, of avoiding personal publicity,\" he wrote, \"that I may be able to come and go, unnoticed, to all public places.\" He added that \"it would be a real unhappiness to me to feel myself liable to be noticed, or pointed out, by strangers.\" And he begged for respect in not \"breaking through a disguise which it is my most earnest wish to maintain.\"\n\nThe Dictionary editor, surprisingly, agreed to omit his name\u2014and so the book was published in 1882 with a glaring omission: this very famous pseudonym was nowhere to be found.\n\nDodgson remained a vigilant sentry of his privacy. In 1890, exasperated by the barrage of mail he received, he printed a circular to be enclosed with all replies to letters addressed to \"Lewis Carroll.\" The statement declared that Mr. Dodgson \"neither claims nor acknowledges any connection with any pseudonym, or with any book that is not published under his own name.\" (He might as well have added, \"So please bugger off.\")\n\nThere's a passage from Alice in Wonderland that invites interpretation as a commentary on the double-edged sword of fame, with its demands, expectations, and vicissitudes\u2014and as an expression of Dodgson's ambivalence toward his legacy:\n\n\"It was much pleasanter at home,\" thought poor Alice, \"when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole\u2014and yet\u2014and yet\u2014it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought!\"\n\n(The meaning is heightened, too, if you buy into the notion that the heroine is a stand-in for the author.) By all accounts, what Dodgson desired most was the power of invisibility. Though he was a fanatic about photography and loved taking pictures of people, he treasured his own privacy, and struggled to reconcile this requisite to his well-being with the fame he'd achieved. \"I don't want to be known by sight!\" he once said in despair.\n\nHe may have been paranoid about fame, but he was pragmatic. In 1879, he wrote to his publisher: \"I cannot of course help there being many people who know the connection between my real name and my 'alias,' but the fewer there are who are able to connect my face with the name 'Lewis Carroll' the happier for me.\" After all, he'd never intended to make Alice in Wonderland public; it had been created as a gift for Alice Liddell, and only at the urging of friends had he considered publishing it. He had hardly conceived it as a commercial product. Another reason for his strict separation of church (Dodgson) and state (Carroll) was purely professional: he wanted his mathematical books to be regarded seriously, and feared that if scholars connected him with Carroll, those works would be dismissed.\n\nAlthough Dodgson could accept that at a certain point his real name was not exactly a secret, there was the matter of preserving his privacy. He bristled at what he considered even the slightest invasion of his personal life\u2014such as being accosted in public to receive compliments about his work. It was exhausting. (\"But it's no use now,\" says Alice after falling down the rabbit hole, \"to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!\")\n\nHis encounters with eager fans left him uncomfortable, and he confessed that among the things he hated most were \"having a tooth drawn\" and listening to a stranger talk about his books. The notion of being gracious to admiring fans was lost on him. In 1891, he reported to a friend an anecdote he'd read about a pompous author who greeted someone with the line, \"Have you read my book?\" It left him mortified. \"If ever I ask such a question of a stranger,\" he wrote, \"it will be due to 'temporary insanity!'\"\n\nEven though some biographical accounts of Dodgson portray him as a cloistered academic, he wasn't that, exactly. Between the age of twenty-nine and his death at sixty-five, he wrote a staggering number of letters\u2014nearly a hundred thousand in all\u2014proving that although he was shy with his public, he was not a recluse. That most of his letters were addressed to children shows his frequent unease in the world of adults; for the children he adored, he kept records of their birthdays and sent them letters with jokes, puns, puzzles, acrostics, and drawings. He toyed with inventive forms for his correspondence, including looking-glass letters that the recipient had to hold up to a mirror to read; rebus letters to be decoded; pinwheel-shaped letters; and delightful letters composed in such tiny script, on paper the size of a postage stamp, that a magnifying glass was needed to read them.\n\nBecause Carroll was a writer of the highest achievement who was also widely popular, it's understandable that his interactions with adults were sometimes marked by wariness and formality, rather than the broad affection he showed children. For them, he was whatever they wanted him to be. There is no evidence, in his diaries or elsewhere, of any long-term romantic relationships with women, which surely contributed to suggestions (however indirectly, even in his lifetime) of pedophilia. There was his affinity for taking photos of nude girls, of course. However, in the Victorian era, child nudes were not an uncommon artistic subject; it was perhaps Dodgson's excessive ardor for little girls, and his compulsive pursuit of their friendship, that called his behavior into question. (One might regard him as a Victorian-era Michael Jackson, but that is a topic for another time.)\n\nConsidering Dodgson's conscientious temperament, his openheartedness, and his religious fervor, it seems likely that his sexual urges, however inappropriate, remained repressed and were never acted on. Still, adding to the intrigue are four volumes missing from Dodgson's diaries of various periods dating from 1853 to 1863. (Nine volumes in all have survived.) What happened? Did he have something to hide? Was he chaste or deviant? Did a relative remove the diary pages after his death, to protect the family's reputation or the author's own? A record by the Lewis Carroll Society on Dodgson's \"Journal 8\" (from the period of his burgeoning acquaintance with Alice Liddell and her siblings) comments:\n\nA noticeable feature of this journal is the use Dodgson makes of these pages for recording prayers and supplications to help him lead a better life. Although prayers occurred in earlier volumes, the frequency and earnestness began to take on greater proportions in this journal. There has been much speculation about the reasons and purposes of the prayers. Reading them in the context of his unfolding life, there is no clear and obvious reason which can account for them. They do show that he experienced moments of great self-doubt and guilt. Some prayers indicate that feelings of slothfulness and lack of attention to his duties as mathematical lecturer gave rise to regret. However, there are some prayers which are more personal and poignant. One gets a deep sense of Dodgson's inability to come to terms with the troubles in his mind, and a feeling that he was unable to control these feelings which caused him such anguish and concern, whatever the cause may have been.\n\nIn 1863, a falling-out occurred with the Liddell family, and even though the mysterious rift was mended, the relationship was sporadic from then on. Was Dodgson a man with ignominious secrets? Did this partly explain his extreme need to protect himself from the scrutiny surrounding \"Lewis Carroll\"? Was the shame he carried regarding his fixation on prepubescent girls the reason he never progressed from deacon to priest? Why were his diaries filled with angst-ridden contemplations of guilt, temptation, and self-rebuke?\n\nTaken together, these questions are no more answerable today than they have been over the past century, but Alice's refrain throughout her journey in Wonderland\u2014\"Who in the world am I?\"\u2014resonates further when one considers the author's complex history. For unknown reasons, Dodgson often felt tormented by his own thoughts: he once wrote of having been \"haunted by some worrying subject of thought, which no effort of will is able to banish.\"\n\nThe man who loved puzzles was himself a deep mystery. Photography, which had once captivated him, was abandoned in the summer of 1880. Over more than two decades, he'd become an excellent photographer and had even considered earning a living with his hobby. He'd taken thousands of pictures, yet that year stopped the activity that had given him so much pleasure. As far as anyone knows, Dodgson never took another photograph for the rest of his life. One reason may be the unpleasant rumors that circulated about his penchant for photographing nude children. He was quite aware of how it might be perceived, telling one mother that her children's \"innocent unconsciousness is very beautiful, and gives one a feeling of reverence,\" and expressing remorse if he had overstepped any bounds with them. Though he discussed plans for future portraits, they were dropped. Another, more mundane, explanation for this may have been his extreme disdain for the latest, more advanced photographic processes, which he regarded as inferior.\n\nIn no way did this curious mathematician add up. He was a distinguished member of society, though he wore his hair longer than was considered proper for a Victorian gentleman. His letters alone were often works of genius, as exhilarating and imaginative as his Alice books, yet many who knew Dodgson found him stodgy and dull. \"He held himself stiffly,\" a relative recalled, \"one shoulder slightly higher than the other; in his almost overemphasized erectness there was an old-fashioned seriousness, an air of punctiliousness.\" Even Alice Liddell remembered him as having \"carried himself upright, as if he had swallowed a poker.\" In the company of adults, if he knew someone well and felt at ease, he appeared handsome, charming, funny, and confident; yet one colleague called him \"peculiar and paradoxical, and the topics on which he loved to dwell were such as would bore many persons.\"\n\nDodgson was quite odd. He wrote most of his books, including Alice, while standing up. (He calculated that he could work standing at his desk for up to ten hours.) His contradictions, eccentricities, and obsessive routines were truly astonishing\u2014apart from standing to write, he would map out entire journey routes well in advance, determining the precise time required to complete each leg of the trip. He also tallied the amount of money he would need at each stop, for each potential activity, and planned accordingly. Even his tea-brewing was a fanatical ritual: it must be steeped for exactly ten minutes, not a second more or less, or he would consider it undrinkable. And as it brewed, he would walk up and down his sitting room, swinging the teapot gently back and forth\u2014always for precisely ten minutes. When he entertained dinner guests, he prepared a seating chart and kept records of their dining preferences for future events. (\"By keeping the cards,\" he wrote, \"one gets materials for making up other dinner-parties, by observing what people harmonise well together.\") As a mathematician, he was fascinated by theories of randomness, but in life he was indefatigably controlling.\n\nHe loved taking long walks\u2014sometimes for twenty miles\u2014as an aid to problem solving, composing verse, and reflection. During his treks, he liked to time himself, record his average speed, then compare the numbers with those from previous walks. It makes sense that his mathematician's mind would have found satisfaction in this self-tracking; it's harder to understand why he took extensive notes on the condition of his feet after each walk.\n\nSteeped as he was in logic and science, Dodgson believed that Tuesday was his lucky day and forty-two his lucky number. He was a charter member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Ghost Society. He collected books about fairies and the occult.\n\nCharles Dodgson would have been a fascinating subject of study had he done nothing but produce the Alice books. One could spend years dissecting them and attempting to \"know\" the man whose phenomenal imagination made them possible. For those accomplishments alone, his name\u2014or, rather, Lewis Carroll's\u2014would have been embedded in the popular psyche for generations to come. But he spent his lifetime bursting with acts of invention, none of which adds up to a cohesive whole.\n\nWhere to begin? Dodgson can be credited with the idea of printing the title of a book on the spine of its dust jacket, which he conceived for The Hunting of the Snark. (That innovation proved fairly influential, to say the least.) He also developed, in his late forties, a system to correct flawed voting procedures that resulted in unjust outcomes; elements of his \"Parliamentary and Proportional Representation\" theory are still used in elections today. He also applied it to lawn tennis tournaments in which superior players were unfairly eliminated in early rounds, and in 1883 he published the treatise Lawn Tennis Tournaments: The True Method of Assigning Prizes. (This from the guy who wrote \"Jabberwocky\"?) Then there was his role as Common Room Curator at Christ Church, which was not curatorial in any artistic sense; Dodgson spent an inordinate amount of time organizing the wine cellars, creating accounting systems, conducting audits, and doing other tedious but important administrative tasks.\n\nBut wait, there's more: Dodgson lobbied for government support to relocate to Australia or the Cape the residents of Tristan da Cunha, an archipelago off the coast of South Africa considered the most remote inhabited locale in the world. (He'd adopted this as a political cause after his youngest brother, Edwin, had served as an Anglican missionary there in the 1880s.) He wrote both \"serious\" poems and comic verse. He spoke out on the benefits of vaccinations. He invented a portable chessboard. He was a passionate theatergoer and had corresponded with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan\u2014as in Gilbert and Sullivan\u2014about a collaboration to set his poems to music and produce a musical Alice. (It never happened.) He created sketches to improve a kind of three-wheeled cycle known as the velociman, making it easier to steer. Shunning celebrity himself, he enjoyed meeting famous people of his time such as Trollope, Tennyson, and Ruskin. Portmanteau words such as \"chortle\" and \"galumph\" originated with Dodgson. He invented a new kind of postal money order, double-sided adhesive strips, a method for right-margin justification on a typewriter, an Alice in Wonderland postage-stamp case, a variation on conventional backgammon, a mnemonic system known as Memoria Technica for recalling dates and events, a writing tablet called a Nyctograph that could be used for taking notes in darkness (take that, iPad!), brainteasers, and word games, including an early version of what endures today as Scrabble.\n\nDespite all that he accomplished in his life, he was always modest. Dodgson wanted his work, regardless of context, to stand alone. When a friend once inquired about what The Hunting of the Snark \"means,\" he replied in a letter, \"I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.\" (Humpty Dumpty was just as cagey in explaining the meaning of his utterances. As he told Alice, \"When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean\u2014neither more nor less.\")\n\nIn his final years, Dodgson continued lecturing, sketching, writing letters, juggling work projects, and making time for the friends he cherished. He suffered increasingly from bronchial trouble, and he died on January 14, 1898, two weeks before his sixty-sixth birthday. He left instructions that his funeral be \"simple and inexpensive, avoiding all things which are merely done for show,\" and that there be \"no expensive monument. I should prefer a small plain head-stone.\"\n\nAs someone who had always drawn gossip with what might gently be called an unconventional lifestyle, Dodgson did little to dispel the rumors that swirled around him. Despite ugly whispers about his relations with children, he gave widely to charities that advocated on their behalf\u2014and kept all his donations private. He supported more than two dozen child-welfare organizations, and was so generous in giving away money that he incurred debt; a bank manager had to set limits on his overdrafts. As Morton N. Cohen noted in his excellent 1995 biography, Lewis Carroll, Dodgson never judged himself based on the opinions of others:\n\nCharles recognized earlier than one might suppose that his inner springs differed from most men's, that his heart beat to a different drum, that in order to be true to himself he would be compelled to lead a life that was not only outside the norm but would come under particular scrutiny and raise suspicions, one not generally condoned and subject to severe reprimand, sneers, lampoons, and ridicule. Be that as it may, he determined to follow his own star in spite of raised eyebrows and possible social censure. \"Let them talk\" was his answer; his own conscience would be his only judge.\n\n\"People want Carroll to be some sort of mad hatter,\" the chairman of the UK Lewis Carroll Society said in a 2010 interview. \"They find it difficult that somebody who could write something as crazy as Alice in Wonderland could still be a jolly decent chap.\"\nHe was a profligate spender who smoked forty cigars a day\n\nChapter 5\n\nMark Twain & SAMUEL CLEMENS\n\nHow the protean Samuel Clemens became the world's most famous literary alias will never be known for sure. Sly and droll, never one to shy away from the making of his own myth, Clemens claimed that his pen name derived from the years he spent working on riverboats, where water at a depth of two fathoms, or twelve feet, was considered safe for the boat to pass over. This distance was measured on a sounding line, a length of rope with lead on the end. The crew would call out, \"Mark twain!\" (meaning the mark on the line was at two fathoms) to indicate clear passage.\n\nLook up the archaic word \"twain\" in the Oxford English Dictionary and you will find an interesting entry. The adjective is defined as \"[o]ne more than one, two; forming a pair, twin.\" \"Consisting of two parts or elements; double, twofold.\" \"Separate, apart; estranged, at variance.\" As in the eighteenth-century hymnal by the priest and Oxford tutor John Keble: \"Five loaves had he, \/ And fishes twain.\" Or, from the Shakespearean sonnet, \"We two must be twain, \/ Although our undivided loves are one.\" The noun is defined as \"[t]wo persons or things identified contextually.\" In a nautical context, \"[t]wo fathoms. Esp. in mark twain, the two fathom mark on a sounding-line.\"\n\nClemens liked to explain that his appellation had been swiped from a man named Captain Isaiah Sellers\u2014a well-known steamboat man and sometime river correspondent for New Orleans newspapers. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain wrote that the captain \"was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable. . . . At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands\u2014a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.\"\n\nThere are other stories and legends as to how \"Twain\" came to be. Perhaps to varying degrees all versions are true, perhaps none. Some have ascribed to Clemens a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature; some have remarked on pseudonymity as a conventional choice for Victorian humorists, especially those tilted sharply toward satire. Perhaps both are true. One thing is beyond dispute: Twain is the best-known author in America's history, and his work is taught in every high school and college. With his pitch-perfect ear for the American vernacular, he is unrivaled (or, at least, secure among the all-time greats). \"I am not an American,\" he wrote in his notebook in 1897. \"I am the American.\"\n\nAdopting a pseudonym was for Clemens an exercise in playfulness, in fooling the public simply because he could. \"Some people lie when they tell the truth,\" Clemens once said in an interview. \"I tell the truth lying.\" (The poet, philosopher, and critic George Santayana once described truth as \"a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light\"\u2014an aphorism that Twain would surely have endorsed.) And because he was someone who occasionally made enemies with his writing, having the pseudonymous cloak gave him a small measure of protective cover.\n\nThe jocular master of obfuscation was savvy about his own brand, eventually registering his alias as a trademark. He was his own best publicist and marketing director. He even incorporated himself under his nom de plume, so he officially became Mark Twain, Inc. He also trademarked the slogan on a box of \"Mark Twain\"\u2013branded cigars that read \"MARK TWAIN: KNOWN BY EVERYONE\u2014LIKED BY ALL.\" Although this pen name was the one that stuck, it was not his first: he'd previously experimented with other names, including \"W. Epaminondas Adrastrus Blab,\" \"Rambler,\" \"Josh,\" \"Sergeant Fathom,\" and \"Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.\"\n\nAmong his contemporaries, the use of pseudonyms was not only common practice but considered a fashionable accessory. Humorists in particular adopted pen names: Charles Farrar Browne was a famous writer and lecturer who signed his writing as \"Artemus Ward\"; he was greatly admired by Abraham Lincoln and known for his delightfully awful puns. Other popular humorists included David Ross Locke, who wrote as \"Petroleum V. Nasby\"; and Robert Newell, whose pen name \"Orpheus C. Kerr\" was a pun on \"office seeker.\"\n\n\"Mark Twain\" was born in 1863, but Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, in a two-room rented cabin. The red-haired infant's arrival was two months premature and he narrowly survived his birth. He spent his first four years frail and bedridden. Even his mother later admitted, \"I could see no promise in him.\"\n\nHe was one of seven children, three of whom would die young, and was raised in the nearby riverside town of Hannibal. \"If you are born in my state, you pronounce it Missourah,\" he once said. \"If you are not born in my state, you pronounce it Missouree. But if you are born in my state, and you have to live your entire life in my state, you pronounce it misery.\"\n\nHe adored his mother, Jane, and avoided his stern, aloof father, John, whom he could not remember ever having laughed. (John died of pneumonia when Clemens was eleven years old.) He was a high-strung child, a sleepwalker, and he suffered from nightmares. Yet he was as exuberant, magnetic, and funny as his father was austere. It's no wonder that Clemens struggled to escape the provincial, restrictive milieu of his boyhood and went in search of a more expansive world. Despite being a poor student, he displayed an early knack for language and mimicry and a great love of storytelling. If he found little enchantment in his own house, he cultivated it endlessly through his fertile imagination. At sixteen, he was already working for a small newspaper, the Hannibal Western Union, and writing humorous sketches. And the first in a lifelong series of get-rich-quick schemes hooked him at the age of eighteen\u2014he had a quixotic plan to sail the Amazon, where he would make a vast fortune in \"a vegetable product of miraculous powers\" that he'd read about. It was said to be \"so nourishing and so strengthening that the natives of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and down all day on a pinch of the powdered coca and require no other substance.\" This claim about being able to tramp up and down hills all day was undoubtedly true. \"Coca\" is better known today as cocaine.\n\nClemens was detoured from his grand plan, however, and went to work as an apprentice steamboat pilot, eventually getting his license. It was a job he loved. The stint ended with the advent of the Civil War, and it had been marked by tragedy. Clemens had convinced his younger brother Henry to join him in steamboat work, and Henry died in 1858 when the steamboat he was working on exploded. Clemens never forgave himself for his brother's death. Adding to his horror and guilt, he'd had a dream, not long before Henry died, in which he saw his brother lying in a metal casket.\n\nIn the summer of 1861, at his brother Orion's insistence, Clemens had headed west by stagecoach, hoping to strike it rich in Nevada's silver rush. He failed as a prospector. A job as a mill laborer didn't work out, either. One day Clemens asked his boss for a raise, naming the figure of $400,000 a month in his request. He was promptly fired.\n\nHis next move brought better luck, if modest pay: he was hired as a reporter, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, by the Territorial Enterprise, a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada. Well liked and clearly talented, Clemens soon upped his wages to six dollars a day. \"Everybody knows me,\" he boasted in a letter to his mother, \"& I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of the mountains or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most conceited ass in the Territory.\"\n\n\"Mark Twain\" made his debut on February 3, 1863, launched in an Enterprise column with the line, \"I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep.\" It was signed, \"Yours, dreamily, Mark Twain.\" Two years later, while living in San Francisco, Twain became an official success: his short story \"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog\" was published in the Saturday Press in New York. It was reprinted all over the country (later retitled as \"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County\") and won him nationwide acclaim. \"The foremost among the merry gentlemen of the California press, as far as we have been able to judge,\" wrote one New York critic, \"is one who signs himself 'Mark Twain.' He is, we believe, quite a young man, and has not written a great deal. Perhaps, if he will husband his resources and not kill with overwork the mental goose that has given us these golden eggs, he may one day rank among the brightest of our wits.\"\n\nIt was obvious from the start, even in his slightest pieces, that down to his marrow Twain was a writer: \"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter\u2014it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning,\" he once noted.\n\nAs Clemens's career as a newspaper reporter took off, he used his Twain pseudonym irregularly, but eventually it supplanted his real name. He slipped into Twain as if into an elegant new pair of shoes. Some of his friends began calling him \"Mark,\" and his letters home were signed that way, too. As Twain's biographer Ron Powers has noted, even early correspondence displayed the young man's knack for embellishment: \"His indifference to the boundary between fact and fantasy became a hallmark of his literature, and later, of his consciousness.\" At the age of twenty-eight, the transformation was complete: Clemens was a buried man. The sobriquet stuck, and everything published subsequently would appear under this alter ego. \"Mark Twain\" gave Clemens a kind of solid self-confidence he had never known as a boy. At one point he even joked that an \"independent Double\" was going around causing the kind of mischief that Sam Clemens wouldn't dream of attempting: \"It gets intoxicated\u2014I do not. It steals horses\u2014I do not. It imposes on theatre managers\u2014I never do. It lies\u2014I never do.\" He was a restless lover of reinvention, and his new name allowed him to step into a role that he had conjured, and that he alone controlled.\n\nWhen his book The Innocents Abroad was published in 1869, it was an instant hit. But his 1867 story collection, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches, had been a huge flop, and Twain said he hoped that every remaining copy would be burned. Even so, his public lectures had already made him a much-adored entertainer, with packed houses, and audiences hanging on his every word and rewarding his droll performances with roaring applause and standing ovations. (Powers has described Twain as \"the nation's first rock star.\") He charmed everyone he met. For the most part, he was able to repress his darker side and the grudges he held against those perceived to be his enemies. Yet he was gripped by bouts of depression and suicidal impulses, and often craved public validation as a means of steadying himself again. Periods of idleness threatened his equilibrium. Even in good times, though, he could be unpredictable, acting like a petulant prima donna: yelling at hotel employees in cities he visited; canceling lectures at the last minute; smashing a window shutter with his fists over a scheduling glitch; angrily throwing his shirts out a window.\n\nHe became a husband at thirty-five, marrying Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Elmira, New York. Her skeptical father asked his future son-in-law for references, one of whom reported, \"I would rather bury a daughter of mine than have her marry such a fellow.\" However difficult Clemens could be (which was very), and however frequent his absences from home, he and his wife were utterly devoted to each other until her death left him a widower.\n\nThe couple met on New Year's Eve 1867, through her family, and spent the evening in Manhattan attending a reading by Charles Dickens. Their courtship lasted seventeen months. Marrying into money left Clemens conflicted\u2014after all, he had humble beginnings and claimed to hate the rich. (He would mock the nation's culture of materialism and greed in 1874's The Gilded Age.) Yet Mark Twain had boundless ambition and extravagant tastes. It seems fair to assume that even as he commissioned the ostentatious Gothic Revival mansion in Hartford, Connecticut, where he would settle with Olivia (known as Livy), some part of him must have burned with self-loathing. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Company designed part of the interior, which included custom stained-glass windows, polished marble floors, ornate brasswork, a carved oak Venetian bed, a mantelpiece from a Scottish castle, a billiards room, and modern conveniences such as central heating and flush toilets. In all, there were nineteen rooms and seven bathrooms. Although Twain would experience his greatest literary success while in that residence, it was also where he would experience ravaging losses. (Eventually, beset by financial ruin, he would be forced to sell the house.) In Buffalo, New York, he and Livy had already suffered the death of their first child, who died of diphtheria at eighteen months old. In Hartford, where the couple would spend the next twenty years, they raised three girls\u2014Susy, Clara, and Jean\u2014who venerated and feared their mercurial father. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the family's next-door neighbor, though she lived in a much more modest brick house.\n\nTwain's admirers included Charles Darwin, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Eugene O'Neill, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Bernard Shaw. Twain would rarely admit to reading other writers, but he liked Shaw, whom he praised as \"quite destitute of affectation.\" Shaw wrote a letter to Twain in 1907, mentioning that he'd met William Morris, an \"incurable Huckfinomaniac.\" He addressed the letter to \"My dear Mark Twain\u2014not to say Dr Clemens (though I have always regarded Clemens as mere raw material\u2014might have been your brother or your uncle).\" A year later, Thomas Edison remarked, \"An American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.\" Nietzsche recommended The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to friends.\n\nAt the height of his fame, Twain was bombarded by fan mail, including manuscripts from aspiring writers who wanted his opinion of their work and assistance with publication. Letters poured in from around the world, some addressed simply to \"Mark Twain, Hartford, Connecticut.\" Some asked for money. He filed away many letters under the heading, \"From an ass.\" He wrote to his mother, \"I have a badgered, harassed feeling, a good part of the time.\" Yet he was paradoxical as ever: even though he often checked into hotels incognito, using a variety of aliases including \"S. L. Samuel\" and \"C. L. Samuel,\" he was always thrilled to be recognized. Sometimes he would actually strut up and down busy streets in Manhattan, just as church services were ending and crowds were pouring out, so that he could bask in the sight of heads excitedly turning toward the great celebrity in their midst.\n\nOnce Twain was asked why the fame of many other humorists had been so ephemeral. \"Because they were merely humorists,\" he replied. \"Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration. Often it is merely an odd trick of speech or of spelling . . . and presently the fashion passes and the fame along with it.\" Restless and ambitious all his life, Twain knew that to secure his legacy, his output had to transcend \"mere\" comic sketches and journalism. His reputation would ultimately rest on two masterpieces: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876 when the author was forty-one; and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published nearly a decade later. Ernest Hemingway claimed that all of American literature was derived from from the latter novel, calling it \"the best book we've ever had. There was nothing before. There's been nothing as good since.\" The playwright Arthur Miller once said of Twain in an interview, \"He wrote as though there had been no literature before him.\"\n\nTwain, a popular writer, was also one hell of a trickster. As the scholar John Seelye notes of Tom Sawyer in his introduction to the Penguin edition of Huckleberry Finn, Tom is \"a prankster from the start,\" not unlike the author himself, who adored practical jokes. \"Where Huck Finn seems to be a projection of something mysterious deeply hidden in Mark Twain's psyche, Tom Sawyer is clearly an active agent of the author,\" Seelye writes.\n\nSwindler, con man, histrionic showman: Tom represents, at least on the surface, the essential Twain. Huck goes deeper; he evinces both halves of the author's troubled psyche (Clemens\/Twain), with all its contradictions, anxieties, and follies. But as Twain grew older, his private, Clemensesque qualities floated disruptively to the surface, threatening the impish, rambunctious public man he had become. The blithe, witty charmer was far more mercurial than his admiring public ever knew, and struggled (often painfully) to manage the two worlds and selves he inhabited. When he was drunk, however, his carefully constructed mask came undone. As one friend observed, \"He was always afraid of dying in the poorhouse. The burden of his woe was that he would grow old and lose the power of interesting an audience, and become unable to write, and then what would become of him?\" The more Clemens drank, the worse it got; there was no Twainian joviality or playful wit to accompany his alcohol consumption. Instead, his friend said, he would \"grow more and more gloomy and blue until he fairly wept at the misery of his own future.\"\n\nIn April 1894, the world's most famous author declared bankruptcy. The wealth he'd amassed could not match his debts, and he'd had to embark upon a grueling round-the-world tour to repay creditors and become solvent again. Like his late father, Clemens had an almost manic relationship to money and had invested his considerable earnings dreadfully. He'd backed failed gadgets and fraudulent schemes, founded a money-losing publishing company, and patented a few unsuccessful inventions of his own, at great expense. Among them was an adjustable elastic waist strap for men that could be buttoned onto the back of a pair of trousers to keep them from falling down.\n\nFoolishly, even though he was among the first Americans to have a telephone at home, he had declined to invest in Alexander Graham Bell's invention. He wasn't convinced that the telephone had much of a future. Twain himself acknowledged his gift for squandering his fortune. \"Now here is a queer fact,\" he wrote, \"I am one of the wealthiest grandees in America\u2014one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact\u2014and yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask you to take my note instead.\" Even he must have appreciated the perverse irony of having succumbed to the Gilded Age\u2014a lifestyle that he so despised.\n\nHaving brought his family to the brink of ruin, Clemens would endure greater tragedies in subsequent years. He lost several friends and relatives. His daughter Susy died in 1896; Livy died of heart failure in 1904, at the age of fifty-eight; and his daughter Jean died in 1909.\n\nThese catastrophic events left him lonely, bitter, brokenhearted, vindictive, and paranoid. Sam Clemens depended on Mark Twain to keep going, but the gentle, irreverent humor in his work gave way to a more cynical, dyspeptic edge. (He took to calling his famous white uniform his \"don'tcareadam suits,\" and boasted that they made him the most conspicuous man alive.) Although he'd always abhorred critics, he had previously displayed tolerance toward what he regarded as a necessary evil. \"I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value,\" he wrote. \"However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.\" Now, however, he was inclined to be far more bilious. If it's true that Clemens and Twain were polar opposites within the same deeply divided man, then it seems there was little actual Twain left in him at the end.\n\nHis insecurity often overwhelmed him, and his corrosive obsessions\u2014success, wealth, fame\u2014revealed a volatility that baffled even him. The \"periodical and sudden changes of mood in me,\" he once wrote, \"from deep melancholy to half-insane tempests and cyclones of humor, are among the curiosities of my life.\" He loved playing billiards, which provided yet another excuse for his explosive temper to manifest itself. \"When his game was going badly,\" Albert Bigelow Paine wrote in his 1912 Twain biography, \"his language sometimes became violent and he was likely to become critical of his opponent. Then reaction would set in, and remorse.\"\n\nToday, Mark Twain is still viewed as the mythic \"Colonel Sanders without the chicken, the avuncular man who told stories,\" as Ron Powers has described him. \"He's been scrubbed and sanitized.\" Yet a more comprehensive version of Twain emerged in 2010 with the publication of the first installment of his rambling three-volume autobiography. It presents Twain raw and uncensored; he instructed that his unedited recollections be withheld from the public for one hundred years after his death. (As ever, what a brilliant marketing ploy.) He dictated most of the 500,000-word manuscript to a stenographer during the four years before he died, then postponed its publication for a century to preserve his genial reputation and legacy. The strategy worked. Among towering American literary figures, Twain remains essentially unknowable. As one contemporary journalist aptly put it, he's \"still a mystery, a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in a white suit.\"\n\nThe biographer Justin Kaplan\u2014whose 1966 account of Twain won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award\u2014has spoken of the author's dark moods, which are more fully revealed in the new Autobiography. The private Twain evinced a side filled with \"rage and resentment . . . where he wants to get even, to settle scores with people whom he really despises. He loved invective,\" Kaplan noted in an interview. For instance, after having stayed in 1904 with his family in Florence, Italy (where Livy would die), Twain unleashed his fury against the rather unaccommodating countess who owned the villa they'd rented. He characterized her as \"excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward.\" A lawyer and fellow investor who betrayed him was attacked as having \"the pride of a tramp, the courage of a rabbit, the moral sense of a wax figure, the sex of a tapeworm.\" And Twain's secretary and household manager, Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, with whom he had a close, tempestuous relationship for the last several years of his life, was in the end an object of obsessive condemnation. In a letter to his daughter Clara, Twain fumed that Isabel was \"a liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded & salacious slut pining for seduction & always getting disappointed, poor child.\"\n\nIn the years before his death in Redding, Connecticut, on April 21, 1910, Twain was at his most miserable, full of malice and sadness and vitriol. His health was terrible, too, no doubt owing to his having smoked forty cigars a day for most of his life. Toward the end, he spent much of his time in bed.\n\nFacing his own mortality, he hoped for reconciliation. \"I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead,\" he once wrote, \"and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.\" Not long before drifting off to sleep for the last time, he mumbled something about \"dual personalities.\" He died in his carved oak bed, with his daughter Clara at his side. Two days later, a letter appeared in the New York Times.\n\nTo the Editor:\n\nI wish to draw your attention to a peculiar coincidence.\n\nMark Twain, born Nov. 30, 1835.\n\nLast perihelion of Halley's comet, Nov. 10, 1835.\n\nMark Twain died, April 21, 1910.\n\nPerihelion of Halley's comet, April 20, 1910.\n\nIt so appears that the lifetime of the great humorist was nearly identical (the difference being exactly fifteen days) with the last long \"year\" of the great comet.\n\nR. FRIDERICI.\n\nWestchester, N. Y., April 22, 1910\n\nMark Twain would have loved that coincidence. In fact, he had once predicted it himself: \"The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'\" The comet was visible from Earth when he died, the final triumph of an inimitable showman.\nHe was Federal Prisoner 30664\n\nChapter 6\n\nO. Henry & WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER\n\nIf you are now reading or have recently read a short story by O. Henry, you are most likely a middle-school student. He was the greatest short story writer of his generation, but O. Henry\u2014who died at forty-seven with twenty-three cents in his pocket\u2014isn't read much these days, except as homework.\n\nHis stories are known for their irony, aphorisms, plot twists, and moral lessons, and the surprise endings he called \"snappers.\" They were formulaic, but the formula worked. \"[H]e never told his story in the first paragraph but invariably began with patter and palaver; like a conjurer at a fair, it was the art of the anecdote that hooked the public,\" wrote the critic Francis Hackett. \"He planned, first of all, to make his theme straight and clear, as a preacher does who gives the text. Then he established his people with bold, brilliant strokes, like a great cartoonist. But the barb was always a surprise, adroitly prepared, craftily planted, and to catch him at it is an exercise for a detective.\"\n\nWilliam Sydney Porter was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on September 11, 1862. His middle name was originally spelled \"Sidney,\" but he changed it; later in life he would drop \"William\" and be known as Sydney Porter.\n\nBy the time he was three years old, his mother was dead of tuberculosis. Along with his father, Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, William moved into a boardinghouse run by his grandmother. Algernon\u2014a heavy drinker, just as William would become\u2014was also an aspiring inventor with plans for a flying machine and a horseless carriage driven by steam.\n\nThe year 1865 brought the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. William began attending a one-room schoolhouse run by his aunt, who served as a surrogate mother and whom he later credited with inspiring his love of art and literature. As a boy he had a talent for drawing, thanks to his aunt's attentive instruction; and he devoured Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and others. \"I did more reading between my thirteenth and my nineteenth years than I have done in all the years since, and my taste was much better then,\" he once told a reporter.\n\nAlthough he loved learning, college was for the rich, which meant that for him it was out of the question. At fifteen, William was sent to work in his uncle's pharmacy, and at nineteen he became a licensed pharmacist. \"The grind in the drugstore was an agony to me,\" he later admitted. Had he not received an invitation in 1882 to join a family friend in Texas, doing ranch work, William Porter might have lived and died a pharmacist rather than become the prolific writer O. Henry.\n\nLa Salle County, Texas, was not destined to be his last stop, but it was at least an escape from his tedious life at home. He was always reading poetry, especially Tennyson, and while herding sheep, he carried around a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. He wrote stories, too, but after reading them aloud to a family friend, he'd rip them up and throw them away.\n\nNext he made his way to Austin, where, supposedly, he first used his future pen name: he had a habit of calling \"Oh, Henry!\" to a girlfriend's cat, said to respond only to that greeting. (True or not, the phrase has no connection to the candy bar of that name, launched in 1924.) He signed his girlfriend's autograph album as \"O. Henry,\" and composed a poem, \"A Soliloquy by the Cat,\" using this name. When he proposed marriage to his girlfriend, she rejected him; she came from a wealthy family, and he was a nobody with a dead-end job. Although he lost the girl, he'd found his pen name. Or so one version of the story goes; there are many. Porter was a good liar who enjoyed spinning fabrications about himself.\n\nHe had a series of drab jobs, finally working as a draftsman at the Texas Land Office, where he earned a hundred dollars a month. He wasn't thrilled by the work, but had no trouble finding friends. He played cards, charmed rapt listeners with his storytelling, and joined local singing and theater groups. He became a popular local figure and was known for always being impeccably dressed.\n\nIn 1888, following a speedy courtship, Porter eloped with seventeen-year-old Athol Estes. They had a son who died the day he was born. A year later, the couple had a daughter, Margaret. Porter, feeling settled and happy, was ready to pursue his true ambition: writing. After sending a journalism piece to the Detroit Free Press, he received an encouraging reply: \"Am sorry it is not longer,\" the editor wrote. \"Check will be sent in a few days. Can you not send more matter\u2014a good big installment every week?\" Porter began selling freelance articles, mostly humor pieces, to newspapers and journals around the country.\n\nIn 1891, he took a job as a teller at the First National Bank of Austin, a position that seemed ideal at first\u2014it was mindless, and would allow him to write in the evenings\u2014but would later turn out to have damaging and long-lasting consequences. After working at the bank for three years, he resigned when an audit revealed shortages in his till. Though he was charged with embezzlement, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. Porter decided to focus on his writing, and he turned entrepreneurial, buying a used printing press and publishing an eight-page weekly satirical magazine called The Rolling Stone, for which he served as writer, illustrator, typesetter, and printer. \"It rolled on for about a year,\" he said later, \"and then showed unmistakable signs of getting mossy.\" He shut it down but had no regrets; the experience had boosted his confidence. His family moved to Houston, where he worked as a reporter, cartoonist, and columnist for the Houston Post, a job he loved.\n\nUnfortunately, his falling-out with the Austin bank came back to haunt him just six months later. The embezzlement case had been reopened by federal auditors, and he was arrested. Although he insisted that bank executives regularly \"borrowed\" money without keeping records of their transactions (and that they rarely repaid what they'd withdrawn), he had no proof. Whether Porter was a fall guy or a criminal, no one will ever know, but he couldn't face the thought of imprisonment. After being released on a $2,000 bond posted by his wealthy father-in-law, Porter hopped on a night train to New Orleans, and, a few weeks later, boarded a freighter bound for Honduras. It was a frightening experience at the time, but would prove excellent fodder for fiction. (Life as a South American fugitive was chronicled in his 1904 debut story collection, Cabbages and Kings.) When asked once why he did not read more fiction written by others, he replied, \"It is all tame, as compared with the romance of my own life.\"\n\nPorter regretted his evasion of justice, but he argued until the end of his life that he was an innocent man who had no choice other than to flee. \"I am like [Conrad's] Lord Jim,\" he told a friend, \"because we both made one fateful mistake at the supreme crisis of our lives, a mistake from which we could not recover.\" Honduras was a smart choice\u2014it had no extradition treaty with the United States\u2014and he had some vague plan for his wife and daughter to join him in exile. It never happened. When Porter found out that Athol was dying of tuberculosis, he rushed back home.\n\nA year later, after a three-day trial in Austin, Porter\u2014now a grieving widower with a ten-year-old daughter\u2014pleaded not guilty. He was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in a Columbus, Ohio, penitentiary. \"I care not so much for the opinion of the general public,\" he wrote in a letter to his mother-in-law, \"but I would have a few of my friends still believe that there is some good in me.\"\n\nBecoming Federal Prisoner 30664 would launch his writing career and complete his transformation into O. Henry. Despite a painful separation from Margaret, with whom he was close, prison was the ultimate writing colony. The three years he spent there proved to be his MFA program, his refuge from the demands of the outside world.\n\nHe wrote stories during his night shifts in the prison infirmary, a plum job he had obtained because of his background as a licensed pharmacist. After saving the life of a warden who'd overdosed on arsenic, Porter gained additional privileges with minimal supervision, including sleeping at the infirmary and being able to roam the grounds more freely than other prisoners. Still, the inhumane conditions were difficult to witness, and the experience of being in prison left him shattered. Even after his early release for \"good behavior,\" he was never quite the same. Imprisonment left him ashamed, ended relationships, exacerbated his mercurial temper, and turned a gregarious, easygoing man into a solitary hard drinker (often consuming two quarts of whiskey a day)\u2014a habit that would kill him in the end.\n\nBut in prison, Porter was disciplined and productive in his writing, making the best of grim circumstances. A guard recalled his routine: \"After most of his work was finished and we had eaten our midnight supper, he would begin to write. . . . He seemed oblivious to the world of sleeping convicts about him, hearing not even the occasional sigh or groan from the beds which were stretched before him in the hospital ward, or the tramp of the passing guards. After he had written for perhaps two hours he would rise, make a round of the hospital, and then come back to his work again.\"\n\nHe was already a published author; his first short story, \"Miracle of Lava Canyon,\" appeared the year his wife died. He didn't use a pseudonym, exactly, but he did sign the story as the eminent-sounding \"W. S. Porter.\" For other stories, he'd toyed with various pen names: Sydney Porter, James L. Bliss, T. B. Dowd, Howard Clark, S. H. Peters, and Olivier Henry. Even in his personal correspondence, he sampled all sorts of names, signing letters as Panhandle Pete, S. P., Hiram Q. Smith, and so on. Later, working with the young editor Witter Bynner (who would become a poet and scholar), Porter almost never called him by his actual name. Instead, he addressed Bynner affectionately as Honored Sir, Doubleyou B, Mr. Man, Pal, My Dear Person, Willie, Witt, B. Binny, and Mr. Bitterwinter, among other appellations.\n\nFrom prison, Porter published more than a dozen stories, signing them \"O. Henry,\" the name with which he became the most widely read author of his time. He kept a small notebook in which he recorded the names of his stories and where they had been submitted. The first story he published as O. Henry was \"Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking,\" which appeared in McClure's Magazine in 1899. Because he used an intermediary in New Orleans to submit his stories to editors, no one knew they were written by a convicted felon. His friend would place each story in a different envelope and then mail them from his own address.\n\nIn 1901, Porter was a free man. He'd made sure that Margaret had no idea where her father had been during his absence; she knew only that he was away on \"business.\" He'd written letters to her regularly from prison:\n\nJuly 8, 1898. MY DEAR MARGARET: You don't know how glad I was to get your nice little letter to-day. I am so sorry I couldn't come to tell you good-bye when I left Austin. You know I would have done so if I could have. Well, I think it's a shame some men folks have to go away from home to work and stay away so long don't you? But I tell you what's a fact. When I come home next time I'm going to stay there. . . . Now, Margaret, don't you worry any about me, for I'm well and fat as a pig and I'll have to be away from home a while yet and while I'm away you can just run up to Nashville and see the folks there. And not long after you come back home I'll be ready to come. And I won't ever have to leave again. . . . Look out pretty soon for another letter from me. I think about you every day and wonder what you are doing. Well, I will see you again before very long. Your loving PAPA.\n\nPorter was a changed man. He'd cut off several friendships rather than reveal the fact of his imprisonment. He had no wish to explain himself, and he hoped that no one would ever learn how he'd spent the past thirty-nine months of his life. He was determined to keep his secret and start anew.\n\nThe first step toward reinvention was no surprise: he shut down the name William Sydney Porter. Having adopted O. Henry in prison (and with no one able to trace it to an actual person), he made the transition easily. As William Porter, he was merely a journalist; as O. Henry, he was an author.\n\nIn 1902 he moved to New York City. The geographic change brought him closer to the center of the publishing industry and provided distance from his former self. In New York, where he had no friends or acquaintances, he was more prolific than ever, writing and publishing hundreds of stories. His popularity soared.\n\nFrom 1903 to 1907, Porter lived in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood, which had been created in 1831 by the developer Samuel Ruggles. The area was just as Ruggles had envisioned it: \"a bastion of civility and serenity.\" Over the years, Gramercy Park became known for its literary figures\u2014among them, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and the impoverished Stephen Crane, who lived with three aspiring artists in a tiny studio apartment. Melville, a customs inspector by day, was a resident for nearly thirty years, suffering there through the tepid reception of each of his novels, including Moby-Dick. Yet Porter\u2014or O. Henry\u2014is perhaps the author most closely identified with the neighborhood. He lived at 55 Irving Place in a first-floor brownstone apartment, and for the first time in his life, he was financially comfortable, having been given a contract by the New York World to write a weekly story, at the rate of a hundred dollars each.\n\nDespite the financial incentive, he often missed deadlines\u2014perhaps owing to his drunkenness. His editor refused to pay him until they arranged a compromise. For the first half of the story he delivered, he'd receive an advance; after submitting the other half, he'd be paid the remainder of his fee. Critics have noted that some of the beginnings and endings of O. Henry's stories seem disconnected, almost like Mad Libs. His quirky payment system might have had something to do with that.\n\nLater, as his fame grew, various stories were released about the origins of his pen name. Porter told the New York Times that he came across the surname \"Henry\" in the society pages of a New Orleans newspaper, and that he wanted something short for a first name. A friend suggested using a plain initial. \"O is about the easiest letter written,\" Porter decided, \"and O it is.\"\n\nThere was yet another version. After having dabbled in a number of pseudonyms, Porter took his name from Orrin Henry, a guard at the Columbus prison. Some said that the pseudonym came from the French pharmacist Etienne-Ossian Henry. Others said that the author had used \"O. Henry\" as an expletive so often that someone suggested it as his pen name.\n\nThe scholar Guy Davenport had his own rather dubious theory about the name, arguing that it was an assemblage from the first two letters of \"Ohio\" and the second and last two of \"penitentiary.\"\n\nSo, take your pick.\n\nIn 1904, Porter got a shock when he was asked to meet with an editor at the Critic, a monthly literary magazine. The editor said, \"You are O. Henry, are you not?\" Caught off-guard, Porter didn't deny it, but he did claim that there was no real mystery about writing under a different name. He hoped that a mundane story would defuse any desire by the editor to publish an expos\u00e9, and to dig into his past. He spoke as if confiding in the editor, saying that he was simply shy and averse to publicity, and that his lack of confidence had led him to use pen name. He then changed the subject, and hoped that the matter would go no further.\n\nBut a few weeks later, he picked up the new issue of the Critic and saw that the editor had proceeded with his scoop anyway. The article noted that the public was delighted by \"certain fantastic and ingenious tales\" bearing \"the strange device O. Henry as a signature.\" It went on: \"No one seemed to know the author's real name, and immediately vague and weird rumors began to be afloat and the nom de guerre was soon invested with as much curiosity as surrounds an author after his decease.\" Fortunately for Porter, the editor had simply published what he'd been told\u2014so now it would be known, at least to some, that Porter was O. Henry, but no one had connected him back to the bank teller who'd been arrested and convicted. \"[L]ike most mysteries, when it was probed there was no mystery,\" the article said of the unmasking. \"O. Henry's real name is Mr. Sydney Porter, a gentleman from Texas, who, having seen a great deal of the world with the naked eye, happened to find himself in New York.\" Porter's real secrets remained safe. Still, he fretted over how the Critic had found the story in the first place, who had tipped off the editor, and how the magazine had gotten hold of an old photograph of him to accompany the story. Luckily, the fact of Porter's pseudonym did not spread to the rest of the country right away. He could relax for a while, though he lived in fear that at any time he'd be found out and ruined. He decided that even if some people knew that he was O. Henry, he would at least minimize how much information was known about William Porter.\n\nAfter the publication of O. Henry's well-received Cabbages and Kings came The Four Million, in 1906, spreading his fame even further. The book included what would become his most celebrated story, \"The Gift of the Magi,\" with its famous opening:\n\nOne dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.\n\nThere was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.\n\nThe much-anthologized story is required reading for most students, but the story behind it is not well known. The night that the piece was due, his editor, in desperation, sent an illustrator out to track down O. Henry and extract it in person. When the illustrator arrived at the writer's apartment, he found that O. Henry had not even started. Supposedly, O. Henry then handed him a roughly drawn sketch and said, \"Just draw a picture of a poorly furnished room. . . . On the bed, a man and a girl are sitting side by side. They are talking about Christmas. The man has a watch fob in his hand. . . . The girl's principal feature is the long beautiful hair that is hanging down her back. That's all I can think of now, but the story is coming.\" Then he finished a few hours later.\n\nAs usual, the details of anything to do with William Porter are sketchy at best. According to another story about \"The Gift of the Magi,\" O. Henry wrote the entire story in a booth at Pete's Tavern, near Gramercy Park\u2014a bar established in 1864 whose tagline is \"The Tavern That O. Henry Made Famous.\" He is said to have gone to Pete's every morning. When he was in the midst of writing, though, he would order a bottle of Scotch to be delivered to him.\n\nGilman Hall was the magazine editor who'd given Porter his first writing contract, and they became friends. \"I was sure that he had a past,\" he once recalled, \"though he did not tell me of it and I did not inquire into it. It was not till after his death that I learned of the years spent in Columbus. I used to notice, however, that whenever we entered a restaurant or other public place together he would glance quickly around him as if expecting an attack.\"\n\nPorter did a fine job of keeping the most painful parts of his past a secret. In a wide-ranging interview he gave to the New York Times in the spring of 1909, the reporter George MacAdam commented that \"so far as the public is concerned, all he will do is to materialize between the covers of magazine and book . . . while he himself remains invisible behind the pen name.\"\n\nNoting that \"for the past six or seven years O. Henry has been one of the most popular short-story writers in America,\" MacAdam mentioned that even though \"he has kept himself under a bushel,\" his real name was now well known, having \"leaked from a hundred and one different sources.\"\n\nThe Times was clearly proud of having obtained unprecedented access to its elusive subject. MacAdam showed a dash of smugness in pointing out, \"Many are the interviewers who have sought him, but he has turned a deaf ear to their siren song.\"\n\nNow Porter was talking, but he wasn't necessarily telling the truth. \"Let me see: I was born in 1867,\" he told the reporter. (He wasn't.) Taking out a pencil and a scrap of paper to calculate his age, he added, \"That makes me 42, almost 43 years old, but put down 42.\"\n\nHe was asked what he had done after The Rolling Stone had ceased publication.\n\n\"A friend of mine who had a little money . . . suggested that I join him on a trip to Central America,\" he said, \"whither he was going with the intention of going into the fruit business.\" (Or, more accurately, whither Porter was going to avoid being sent to prison.) After that, instead of mentioning where he'd actually spent the next three years, he said that he moved to New Orleans and \"took up literary work in earnest.\" If by \"New Orleans,\" he meant \"Columbus, Ohio,\" then yes, he was telling the truth. There was no mention of his years in Austin, his years in prison, or even his marriage and daughter.\n\nHis few straightforward responses in the interview came when he was asked to talk about his writing. On his advice to young writers: \"I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing,\" he said. \"Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.\" And on the virtues of his work, he said, \"People say I know New York well. Just change Twenty-Third Street in one of my New York stories to Main Street, rub out the Flatiron Building, and put in the Town Hall and the story will fit just as truly in any upstate town. At least, I hope this can be said of my stories. So long as a story is true to human nature all you need do is change the local color to make it fit in any town.\"\n\nA woman who knew Porter socially in New York once spoke of how difficult it was to engage him in conversation, except superficially, because \"he protected himself from the crude and rude touch of the world in a triple-plated armor of mirth and formality.\" He bristled at personal questions (though he didn't mind reminiscing about his early years in North Carolina), and felt most at ease in the role of raconteur. \"His wit was urbane, sophisticated, individual; entirely free from tricks and the desire to secure effects,\" the woman recalled. \"It was never mordant nor corrosive; it did not eat or fester; it struck clean and swift and sure as a stroke of lightning.\"\n\nIt must have flattered him when, in his early days in New York, as his fame was growing and people began to speculate about his true identity, at least one impostor emerged. Gilman Hall recalled that only a few editors knew who O. Henry was and where he lived. An editor from a competing magazine boasted to Hall one day that he'd just learned that \"the real O. Henry\" was a college undergraduate who'd \"admitted\" that he was the author. Hearing this, Hall laughed and informed the editor that the real \"real O. Henry\" had in fact just left his office. When Hall related the amusing anecdote to Porter, he replied that so long as the paychecks were sent to the right man, he didn't care how many other aspiring O. Henrys there were.\n\nHaving established himself as an important writer was all the more reason to guard his privacy\u2014particularly any unsavory aspects of his past that didn't conform to his image as a man of letters. His rise to prominence was remarkable: one critic argued that O. Henry \"took the place of Kipling as a literary master,\" and said that on \"the shelf of my prized American classics\" were Poe, Thoreau, Whitman, Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett, W. D. Howells\u2014and O. Henry.\n\nAnother critic insisted that O. Henry should be considered a source of national pride: \"More than any author who ever wrote in the United States, O. Henry is an American writer. And the time is coming, let us hope, when the whole English-speaking world will recognize in him one of the great masters of modern literature.\"\n\nPorter's personal life, too, had finally brought a measure of happiness\u2014if short-lived, yet again. In 1905, after reading one of O. Henry's short stories, a childhood friend from Greensboro, Sara Lindsey Coleman, wrote a letter to the author inviting him to visit her. She'd gained her own impressive reputation as a short story writer, albeit locally, in North Carolina. Her family was prominent, as her father had served as a colonel in the Confederate army. She was witty and gracious, and Porter corresponded with her for a while before inviting her to come visit him in New York. (A diehard southerner, she admitted to him that she loathed the city.) Upon seeing her again, on his forty-fifth birthday, Porter fell in love and proposed. He confessed the entire (true) story of what he said was his wrongful imprisonment, and his journey to becoming a writer. They were married on November 27, 1907, in Asheville, and Gilman Hall served as best man. But within two years, owing mostly to Porter's alcoholism, the marriage deteriorated. They never divorced, however. His wife lived until the age of ninety-one; she died in North Carolina in 1959. She outlived even her husband's daughter: Margaret died in California at the age of thirty-seven.\n\nBut 1907 was a good year for the author: he was married and at the height of his fame. The third O. Henry story collection, The Heart of the West, was published, as well as a fourth, The Trimmed Lamp. He repeated the same feat for the next few years, issuing two story collections annually\u2014but these were his final years. (He would die at the age of forty-seven.) Porter had begun to resent his success and admitted that he felt constrained by it. Everyone by now knew what an \"O. Henry story\" was, and even he had tired of his predictable story structure. He boasted that he would write a novel, but he never did.\n\nAlthough his fame was accompanied by a very comfortable income, Porter was perpetually in debt. He used his earnings to buy Scotch, wine, and beer; tipped waiters at restaurants in amounts that matched the check for his meal; gave money freely to panhandlers; and generously treated his friends. He was compulsive in his giving, always ending up flat broke himself. Some of his debt, apparently, could be traced to silencing blackmailers. One woman from Austin was prepared to reveal to the press that he was a convicted embezzler. For her silence she requested a thousand dollars, an astronomical sum at the time, and he caved in to her demands. Perhaps fearing that she could be arrested for blackmail, she left Porter alone and never approached the media with her story.\n\nDespite the agony he had suffered over his past and the memories that haunted him, he received adulation from the public. Fans wrote to him asking for autographs, inscribed books, and photographs (which he usually declined to provide).\n\nBy 1909, his wife was living in North Carolina with her mother while Porter remained in New York. When he saw a doctor that summer, he was told that he had an enlarged heart, bad kidneys, and a severely compromised liver. During periods of relative recovery, he smoked and drank heavily, in denial that he was killing himself, and was more deeply in debt than ever.\n\nOn June 3, 1910, his kidneys failed. He called for help, then passed out. When he arrived by taxi (at his insistence) at New York Polyclinic Hospital on East Thirty-fourth Street, he wanted to protect his privacy. He requested permission to register under an assumed name, and as if casually checking into a hotel, he signed in as \"Will S. Parker.\" Following an emergency operation, his condition stabilized, and his wife began to make her way up to New York by train from North Carolina. She arrived too late to see him alive again.\n\nAt around midnight on June 5, Porter told a hospital nurse: \"Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.\" He was dead before seven o'clock in the morning.\n\nHis career had been brief\u2014just under a decade\u2014but in that time he'd won international acclaim and his work was translated into a dozen languages. Two years after he died, Doubleday published a deluxe, limited edition of his collected stories, which included an original manuscript page with each copy. Only twelve were printed. Priced at $125, they sold out right away.\n\nIn the obituary that ran in the New York Times, Porter was called \"one of the best short story writers in America.\" The article also noted that a year before his death, \"O. Henry did something he was not in the habit of doing. He gave to the New York Times a story of his life, and it was the real story and not the invented narrative that went the rounds.\" (He died having fooled the Times.)\n\nThe \"real\" story came out only in 1916, in the first biography of O. Henry, which fully exposed the imprisonment of William Porter and the launching of O. Henry's writing career. Additional volumes of O. Henry's short stories were released posthumously, and continued to sell millions of copies. In 1918, the O. Henry Memorial Award Prizes were established, given each year to the best short stories published in the United States and Canada, and intended to \"strengthen the art of the short story and to stimulate younger authors.\" Doubleday published the first collection of prizewinning stories in 1919. Today, Porter is best known for this award, rather than his own work, but at the time it proved that his name, above all others, was synonymous with the short story.\n\nO. Henry was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina. In honor of those famous first six words of \"The Gift of the Magi,\" visitors have made a tradition of leaving $1.87 at his grave\u2014money he would no doubt have spent if he could.\nHe died a virgin\n\nChapter 7\n\nFernando Pessoa & HIS HETERONYMS\n\nYou will never get to the bottom of Fernando Pessoa. There are too many of him.\n\n\"After looking for him in the poems, we look for him in the prose,\" wrote the scholar and translator Edwin Honig. Yet we find him nowhere. This was, after all, a poet whose maxim was, \"To pretend is to know oneself.\" Cyril Connolly noted that Pessoa \"hived off separate personalities like swarms of bees.\" He pretended relentlessly, employing more than seventy personae in his self-searching circus. They were not so much disguises as extensions and iterations of himself. \"How idyllic life would be,\" he once wrote, \"if it were lived by another person.\" When he looked in the mirror, he saw a crowd.\n\nFor some authors, the task of writing is a descent into the self. Pessoa ventured in the opposite direction, using his heteronyms as a means of departure and claiming that within his mini-populace, he was the least \"real\" and compelling of the bunch. The others were constellations swirling around him. In the context of psychoanalysis, a split identity is seen as a wound that needs healing. But in Pessoa's mind(s), there was nothing disorienting about it. \"I've divided all my humanness among the various authors whom I've served as literary executor,\" he explained. \"I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I'm less real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced by them all.\"\n\nAlthough the basic facts of his life are now known, attempting to create a \"biography\" of Pessoa is a slippery task indeed. \"There never was a good biography of a good novelist,\" F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his journals. \"There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he's any good.\"\n\nFernando Ant\u00f3nio Nogueira Pessoa was very, very good.\n\nSome things about him can be said for sure. He was born on June 13, 1888, in Lisbon, Portugal, and spent his first seven years there. His surname, ironically, means \"person\" in Portuguese. He was five when his father, the music critic Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa, died of tuberculosis. Six months later, Fernando's infant brother, Jorge, died. His paternal grandmother suffered from episodes of insanity and was in and out of mental hospitals for the last twelve years of her life. After his father died, his mother, Maria Madalena Nogueria Pessoa, remarried, and the family moved to South Africa, where the boy's stepfather, Jo\u00e3o Miguel Rosa, served as the Portuguese consul of Durban, a British-governed town. By that time, the precocious Pessoa could read and write, thanks partly to his cultured, nurturing mother. He produced what is believed to be his first poem in the summer of 1895, when he was seven years old, in response to learning that the family would be moving to South Africa. The poem was called \"To My Dear Mother\":\n\nHere I am in Portugal,\n\nIn the lands where I was born.\n\nHowever much I love them,\n\nI love you even more.\n\nHe attended a primary school run by French and Irish nuns and became fluent in French and English. Later, at Durban High School, he was a brilliant student. He won awards and shunned sports. A former classmate, Clifford Geerdts, recalled a boy who was morbid, as well as \"meek and inoffensive and inclined to avoid association with his schoolfellows.\"\n\nPessoa gained three younger half siblings from his mother's second marriage: Henriqueta (with whom he was closest), Lu\u00eds, and Jo\u00e3o. He read and loved Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, and Byron. He began using false names to write: Charles Robert Anon, also known as C. R. Anon, and Alexander Search, for whom he printed calling cards. (Search once wrote a short story called \"A Very Original Dinner,\" in which the guests feast on human flesh.) Then there was Jean Seul, who wrote only in French. The shy boy created poems and stories, and even \"edited\" fake newspapers\u2014not unlike an early-twentieth-century version of The Onion\u2014with news, spoofs, editorials, riddles, and poems, all written by a staff of \"journalists\" who'd sprung from his imagination and whose biographies he'd made up. Later, in recalling his childhood, Pessoa wrote that \"[a]ny nostalgia I feel is literary. I remember my childhood with tears, but they're rhythmic tears, in which prose is already being formed.\" Nothing really mattered to him apart from his writing. Real life was beside the point. \"I've always belonged to what isn't where I am and to what I could never be,\" he once wrote, conceding his fixation on dreaming and escape. \"All I asked of life is that it go on by without my feeling it.\"\n\nIn 1905, at the age of seventeen, Pessoa returned to Lisbon to attend university. (He would never again leave the city.) Though he dropped out after two years, he got a fine education on his own by sequestering himself in the National Library to read literature, history, religion, and philosophy. He began writing short stories, some of them under the name \"David Merrick,\" as well as poems and essays, occasionally in Portuguese but more often in French and English.\n\nPessoa, who had very poor vision and wore glasses, lived with relatives or in rented rooms, chain-smoking, reading, writing, and earning a modest salary as a translator for companies that conducted business abroad. Later he worked as a bookkeeper. He had few friends. \"Since childhood I had the tendency to create around me a fictitious world, surrounding myself with friends and acquaintances that never existed,\" he wrote later. (As a boy, he'd invented the Chevalier de Pas, a faithful \"playmate\" who sent letters to him.) In 1910, the twenty-two-year-old admitted that \"[t]he whole constitution of my spirit is one of hesitancy and doubt. Nothing is or can be positive to me; all things oscillate round me, and I with them, an uncertainty unto myself.\" That his identity seemed so unstable was both distressing and consoling: \"Am I happy or sad?\" he asked in one poem. \"My sadness consists in not knowing much about myself. But then my happiness consists in that too.\"\n\nHis heteronyms, too, were filled with contradictions. \"In each of us there is a differingness and a manyness and a profusion of ourselves,\" wrote one of his mental offspring. This notion of endless expansiveness offered tremendous freedom. \"I suffer the delicacy of my feelings with disdainful attention,\" Pessoa explained, \"but the essential thing about my life, as about my soul, is never to be a protagonist. I've no idea of myself, not even one that consists of a nonidea of myself. I am a nomadic wanderer through my consciousness.\" Put it like that, and you can't help but envy him.\n\nIt is crucial to make the distinction that Pessoa's \"others\" were heteronyms rather than pseudonyms. He insisted that they were separate from him. \"I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays,\" he once wrote. In Pessoa country, unification was not possible or even desired. He was a breeder of beings, and always in pursuit of another. \"I break my soul into pieces,\" he wrote, \"and into different persons.\" He explained:\n\nA pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama of his would be.\n\nAlthough Pessoa was timid and introspective and lived accordingly, he was no hermit. Nor did he attempt to hide his heteronyms\u2014he was quite transparent about the fact of their existence. Unlike many pseudonymous authors, Pessoa was not secretive but the opposite: utterly guileless, psychologically honest, earnest rather than serving up ironic posturing. His heteronymic conceit didn't spring from a desire to fool anyone or attract attention. This was a private matter.\n\nIn his writings, Pessoa went so far as to explain the genesis of his heteronyms; he understood that readers would be curious. Suggesting that the identities derived from \"an aspect of hysteria that exists within me,\" he diagnosed himself as either \"simply a hysteric\" or a \"neurasthenic hysteric,\" but leaned toward the latter. Also, he noted, \"The self-division of the I is a common phenomenon in cases of masturbation.\"\n\nHe claimed that the various people he had \"procreated\" often sent him greetings, and that he could hear and see them, even if no one else could. (\"Imaginary figures have more depth and truth than real ones,\" he once wrote.) Was this the result of talent or sickness? He stopped short of calling himself crazy. Throughout his life Pessoa grappled with the possibility of his insanity\u2014an anxiety undoubtedly fueled by his grandmother's illness\u2014but he was never able to draw conclusions about himself one way or the other. Perhaps he recognized that what mattered was being sound enough to produce his work. That he was so obsessively drawn to Shakespeare's Hamlet was more telling than he may have realized.\n\nHe argued that just as a novelist becomes annoyed when readers assume that a character's feelings and experiences are mere stand-ins for the author's own, so too should people accept that Pessoa's heteronyms were utterly separate from him. If the heteronyms occasionally happened to express his ideas, so be it; but this was not by calculation on his part, only chance. Although he acknowledged the strangeness of all this, he felt it was not for him to judge whether the heteronyms actually did or did not exist. Besides, he noted, he wasn't even sure which one, Hamlet or Shakespeare, was more real\u2014or \"real in truth.\" (He added that he had no proof that Lisbon existed, either.) Further, he said that he agreed with some of the theories expressed by his heteronyms but disagreed with others. All their work was dictated to him, yet they weren't seeking his advice or consent. He was not artist but amanuensis, nothing more.\n\nPessoa kept tight control over his social interactions, meeting acquaintances in coffeehouses and restaurants. One scholar noted that people who knew Pessoa described him as cordial, if inscrutable: \"He could be a delightful man, full of charm and good humor, a humor that was very British, though with none of the traditional grossness in it. But this role was also that of a heteronym, which saved him from intimacy with anyone while allowing him to take a modest part in the normal feast of daily life.\" A man who knew Pessoa in later years recalled, \"Never, when I bade him goodbye, did I dare to turn back and look at him; I was afraid I would see him vanish, dissolved in air.\"\n\nThere is no evidence that Pessoa yearned for more than his \"modest part\" in daily life, or that, in any case, he was willing to exert much effort. He once wrote that he wanted to be loved, but never to love: \"Passivity pleased me. I was only content with activity just enough to stimulate me, not to let myself be forgotten.\"\n\nHe was a lifelong outsider, but in 1910 he founded the magazine A \u00c1guia, and eventually he became part of the nascent Portuguese avant-garde, a group of intellectuals in Lisbon who founded a journal, Orpheu, introducing modernist literature to the country. Initially, it was ridiculed, but soon the publication won respect, and the criticism that appeared in Orpheu became highly influential. Only a few issues were released before it folded\u2014but within this group of intellectuals, Pessoa found a strong sense of kinship. He went on to work with other literary journals (both as editor and writer), publish chapbooks, issue a political manifesto called O Interregno, and start a press called Olisipo, which failed. For a London editor, he translated into English three hundred Portuguese proverbs. The years leading up to 1920 were most productive for this young bohemian.\n\nLiterary activity constituted his \"real\" life, but Pessoa paid the bills with his dreary day job, working as a clerk. (He had this dull occupation in common with fellow toiling authors Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and Constantine Cavafy.)\n\nHe wrote and wrote\u2014in the daytime when he could, or else at night, and usually while standing up. On March 18, 1914, he had a kind of breakthrough: \"I wrote some thirty-odd poems, one after another, in a sort of ecstasy, the nature of which I am unable to define,\" he recalled. \"It was the triumphant day of my life. . . . What followed was the appearance of someone in me to whom I immediately gave the name Alberto Caeiro. Forgive the absurdity of the sentence: In me there appeared my master.\"\n\nCaeiro, the first of Pessoa's major heteronyms, had been \"born\" in 1889, lived with an elderly aunt in the country, and would die in 1915. He had \"no profession or any sort of education,\" was of medium height, pale, with blue eyes, and died consumptive. Once, Caeiro spoke in an \"interview\" of his humble accomplishments: \"I don't pretend to be anything more than the greatest poet in the world,\" he said. \"I noticed the Universe. The Greeks, with all their visual acuity, didn't do as much.\" He was joined by another heteronym, \u00c1lvaro de Campos, born in Tavira on October 15, 1890 (\"at 1:30 pm\"). Campos was a bisexual, unemployed naval engineer who'd studied in Glasgow and was now living in Lisbon. He was tall, Pessoa noted\u2014\"1.75 meters tall, two centimeters taller than I\"\u2014and \"slender with a slight tendency to stoop.\" He was \"fair and swarthy, a vaguely Jewish-Portuguese type, hair therefore smooth and normally parted on the side, monocled.\" And he was a dandy who smoked opium and drank absinthe. In him, Pessoa invested \"all the emotion that I allow neither in myself nor in my living.\" Ricardo Reis was a classicist and physician born in 1887 (\"not that I remember the day and the month, though I have them somewhere,\" Pessoa wrote) and living in Brazil. Pessoa explained that Reis \"is a Latinist by virtue of school training and a semi-Hellenist by virtue of his own efforts.\"\n\nThen there was the \"semi-heteronym\" Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper living in downtown Lisbon who \"seems always to be tired or sleepy.\" He was the closest to Pessoa's own voice, experience, and sensibility, and therefore the closest identity to a pseudonym. These men formed Pessoa's \"dramatic ensemble,\" and Campos even claimed that Pessoa did not exist.\n\nBecause he never had children of his own, Pessoa was father to his heteronyms, and they were quite a handful. There was the suicidal Baron of Teive, who produced just one manuscript, The Education of the Stoic, having allegedly destroyed everything else he had written. Raphael Baldaya was an astrologer. Maria Jos\u00e9 was a nineteen-year-old hunchback consumptive suffering madly from unrequited love. And Thomas Crosse was an ardent advocate of Alberto Caeiro's work. Yes, Pessoa's heteronyms actually critiqued\u2014sometimes savagely, sometimes kindly\u2014one another's writings. They also collaborated on projects (Crosse worked with his brother, I. I. Crosse) and translated one another's work. These diverse personae\u2014or, Pessoae, you might say\u2014wrote thousands and thousands of pages, and most of those texts were left behind as fragments to be transcribed and translated after Pessoa's death. It's a vast archive, much of it untouched even to this day.\n\nAside from Pessoa's almost spiritual devotion to his work, his life in Lisbon was uneventful and his routine predictable. He was a strange and lonely man. He smoked eighty cigarettes daily and drank a lot. He hated having his photograph taken. He never arrived on time for an appointment, always showing up too early or too late. He had terrible posture. He was very interested in the occult. He dressed formally, with a bow tie and homburg hat. Obsessed with horoscopes, he considered making his living as an astrologer. He produced horoscopes for himself, his acquaintances, and even his heteronyms. He lost some of the few friends he had to suicide.\n\nHe is known to have had only one significant love affair\u2014with a young woman named Of\u00e9lia de Queir\u00f3s. (She eventually married, and died in 1991.) When they met, the aptly named Of\u00e9lia was nineteen and working as a secretary at the same firm where the thirty-one-year-old Pessoa worked. He declared his love for her one day with lines taken from Hamlet, and then kissed her, she recalled, \"like a madman.\"\n\nAfter the failure of the relationship, Pessoa decided that love was a false notion, anyway. \"It's our own concept\u2014our own selves\u2014that we love,\" he wrote, arguing that \"the repression of love sheds much more light on its nature than does the actual experience of it.\" Yet Of\u00e9lia claimed that Pessoa was entirely to blame for their breakup. \"Little by little, he withdrew until we stopped seeing each other altogether,\" she recalled. \"And this was done without any concrete reason whatsoever. He did not appear or write for several days because, as he said, there was something wrong with his head and he wanted to go to the insane asylum.\" He had written her more than fifty letters\u2014some affectionate, drunk with love, others bitter and accusatory: \"Why can't you be frank with me?\" he demanded in March 1920. \"Why must you torment a man who never did any harm to you (or to anybody else) and whose sad and solitary life is already a heavy enough burden to bear, without someone adding to it by giving him false hopes and declaring feigned affections? What do you get out of it besides the dubious pleasure of making fun of me?\"\n\nElsewhere, he expressed moments of insecurity and alienation: \"I'm all alone\u2014I really am. . . . I'm going crazy from this sense of isolation and have no one to soothe me, just by being near, as I try to go to sleep.\" Yet he was just as quick to assume control and withdraw. \"By the way,\" he wrote a few weeks later, \"although I'm writing you, I'm not thinking about you. I'm thinking about how much I miss the days when I used to hunt pigeons.\" Pessoa also had Alvaro de Campos (\"Naval Engineer\") write to Of\u00e9lia on his behalf, explaining that his friend's \"mental state prevents him from communicating anything, even to a split pea.\"\n\nSome scholars contend that Pessoa was a latent homosexual who sublimated his sexual impulses.\n\nUltimately, the author remains, like his work, \"vastly unfinished, hopelessly unstructured, and practically unknown,\" as the Pessoa scholar and translator Richard Zenith has written. It is no accident that one volume of verse Zenith translated is titled Pessoa & Co. The Portuguese writer formed a Corporation of One, of which he was CEO and every employee from the top of the ladder to the bottom rung. Pessoa's dozens of constructed alternate selves, Zenith noted, \"were instruments of exorcism and redemption. They were born to save him from this life that he felt ill-equipped to live, or that offended his aesthetic and moral sensibilities, or that simply bored him.\" Although alter egos had become fashionable accessories for European writers in the early twentieth century, no one took the device as far as Pessoa did\u2014and certainly no one has done so since. As the scholar Jorge de Sena said in 1977, at the first international symposium on Pessoa's work (held at Brown University), Pessoa was hardly the first to eradicate any trace of autobiography from his writing. Yet de Sena noted that even though the alter egos of modernists such as Gide, Joyce, and Eliot produced masterpieces, they never went to the extremes that Pessoa did. He annihilated himself in the name of artistic creation. \"Unceasingly I feel that I was an other, that I felt other, that I thought other,\" Pessoa wrote. \"I am a spectator of myself. . . . I created myself, crevasse and echo, by thinking. I multiplied myself, by introspection. . . . I am other even in my way of being.\"\n\n\"Poets don't have biographies,\" Octavio Paz wrote in his introduction to A Centenary Pessoa. \"Their work is their biography.\" Who could make a stronger claim to this than Pessoa? \"I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write,\" he confessed. \"I unroll myself in periods and paragraphs, I make myself punctuation marks. . . . I've made myself into the character of a book, a life one reads.\"\n\nGeorge Steiner called Pessoa \"one of the evident giants in modern literature.\" John Hollander declared that if Pessoa had never existed, Jorge Luis Borges would have had to invent him. C. K. Williams praised Pessoa's \"amazing audacities, his brilliance and his shyness.\" Harold Bloom included Pessoa on a list of twenty-six writers he considered essential to the Western canon, including Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, and argued that Pessoa was not a madman but a reborn Walt Whitman, \"who gives separate names to 'my self,' 'the real me,' or 'me myself,' and 'my soul,' and writes wonderful books of poetry for all of them.\"\n\nPessoa was the loving ringmaster, director, and traffic cop of his literary crew. He tended to each of their biographies with meticulous specificity, and attentively varied their styles, idioms, techniques, genres, ideologies, and interests. He killed some off and let others live. Whereas the work of poets is typically fed by outside stimuli, Pessoa's creativity seems to have fed off itself\u2014like one of the contemporary artist Dana Schutz's famous \"Self-Eater\" paintings. One persona stirred another and another, and perhaps that apparently arbitrary transmission of energy explains why so much of the work by Pessoa & Co. took shape in unfinished fragments. The ideas born of this collective were too much for one man to set down on paper. \"My character of mind is such that I hate the beginnings and the ends of things, for they are definite points,\" he explained.\n\nWhat was Pessoa aiming for with his menagerie? What drove him to it? Because \"true\" biographical information about him is so limited, it is difficult to say. All we have are his written accounts of his motives and the speculations of others. It seems that Pessoa was in pursuit of self-abdication. He wanted to escape both body and mind. \"Pessoa sought to expel not only his sexual desires,\" Zenith wrote, \"but his friendly affections, his religious tendencies, his aggressive feelings, his humanitarian urges, his longing for adventure, his dreams, and his regrets.\" Anyone attempting to define Pessoa reductively as a cluster of pathologies should think again. As Zenith noted, \"Psychoanalysis is too poor a science to explain the case of Pessoa, who seems to have been simply, mysteriously, possessed by a demon\u2014that of detachment.\"\n\nIn a 1977 interview, Edwin Honig echoed the notion of Pessoa's essential unknowability: \"Being both complex and simple, he is always hovering over some piece of mysterious ground, like moonscapes with mile-deep craters\u2014terribly attractive but also very forbidding.\" It's understandable that Pessoa has been compared to T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, both masters of the elusive. \"Reading [Pessoa's] best poems,\" Honig said, \"you never know if you're plumbing the depths or if you're dangling there above without even touching ground. There's always that paradox in his secret, something unanswerable. Though he invites you to share it, he resists your advance the moment you accept the invitation.\" (This was not unlike his personal life. In work and in his social dealings, he always preferred a bit of distance.)\n\nBy taking leave of himself, becoming invisible to the extent that he could, he was free to roam in contradiction, paradox, and complexity without being labeled as this or that kind of writer. He could hold up mirrors, play with them, and then smash them to bits. As Borges wrote in his \"Ultra Manifesto,\" the true artist does not reflect himself, but razes himself and creates from there. \"Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms,\" he wrote. \"Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges\u2014beyond spatial and temporal prisons\u2014a personal vision.\"\n\nIn private life, Pessoa was a demure and awkward man. But his \"personal vision\" as a writer was startling and brave, anything but ordinary.\n\nMuch more than mere pseudonyms, Pessoa's heteronyms were so wildly different from one another that they allowed him to explore his imagination endlessly, without paying any price. Well, up to a point: that very messiness, the refusal to be defined as just one man, explains why he is not more widely known today. (Pessoa once described his oeuvre as \"a drama divided into people instead of into acts.\")\n\nCertainly to literary types he is a significant figure (the blessing of Harold Bloom is no small thing), but his books are not easily found. It's true that more of his work has been translated into English over the past decade, but Pessoa hardly helped the matter of his legacy: he left behind a trunk full of journalism, cultural criticism, philosophy, plays, poems, political essays, and horoscopes, much of the work illegible and unfinished. The trunk was discovered, after his death, in his rented room in Lisbon.\n\nThe material\u2014nearly thirty thousand manuscript pages\u2014is daunting for even the most intrepid scholar to sift through. Some have begun, then abandoned, their Pessoa projects. The task of deciphering, organizing, and translating his work is still in progress, and perhaps will never be finished. Pessoa wrote haphazardly in different languages, on loose scraps of paper, in journals and notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, and on the official stationery of the firms for which he worked. As Richard Zenith has written, the work stands \"like variously sized building blocks\u2014some rough, others exquisitely fashioned\u2014of an impossible but marvelous monument.\" Pessoa didn't care for cohesiveness in any area of his life. Yet the quality of much of these thousands of texts, however fragmented or arbitrary, is generally exceptional; these are much more than the ramblings of a crazy person.\n\nIn his lifetime, he wasn't quite the Emily Dickinson of Lisbon\u2014except for having apparently died a virgin. Mostly he kept to himself, to be sure, but he also published hundreds of poems, journalistic pieces, and essays. He became a respected intellectual figure, if not quite a celebrity, yet his literary genius was not widely recognized until after he died. In his home country he is now considered the greatest Portuguese poet since Lu\u00eds de Cam\u00f5es, the sixteenth-century author of the epic Os Lus\u00edadas (which Pessoa is said not to have cared much about). He is also regarded as one of the greatest modernists in any language and is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of literature.\n\nOn November 29, 1935, the forty-seven-year-old Pessoa suffered from abdominal pain and developed a high fever. He was taken to the Hospital de S\u00e3o Lu\u00eds in Lisbon, where he wrote, in English, his last words: \"I know not what tomorrow will bring.\" The next day he died from cirrhosis of the liver.\n\nA statue of Pessoa now stands near one of the coffeehouses he used to frequent. At the time of his death, those who knew his work understood that the country had lost an important man. \"Fernando Pessoa is dead,\" a young doctor (later to become a distinguished literary figure) named Miguel Torga wrote in his journal. \"As soon as I heard the news in the paper, I closed my surgery and plunged into the mountains. There, with the pines and the rocks, I wept for the death of the greatest poet of our times, whom Portugal watched pass by in his coffin, on his way to immortality, without even asking who he was.\"\n\nIn the opening lines of what is perhaps his best-known poem, \"The Tobacco Shop,\" Pessoa declares:\n\nI'm nothing.\n\nI'll always be nothing.\n\nI can't want to be something.\n\nBut I have in me all the dreams of the world.\n\nHe was someone who felt like \"nothing\" to such an extent that he strove for self-expulsion, yet like Whitman, he contained everything that he needed, desiring nothing from the universe beyond his imagination. His statement presents the speaker as both meek and grandiose: I have nothing, I am nothing, but don't you wish you had what I have? Don't you wish to be what I am? Pessoa's self-abnegation is the source of his power and vitality. In his free-floating way, he implicates us, his readers, in the telling and interpretation of his story. As he wrote in his posthumously published masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet:\n\nI am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.\n\nPessoa has been dead for decades. We haven't even begun to finish him off.\nHe slept with prostitutes, hated bad smells, and dressed like a tramp\n\nChapter 8\n\nGeorge Orwell & ERIC BLAIR\n\nHad Eric Arthur Blair been a working-class bloke from Birmingham instead of an Old Etonian, George Orwell might never have existed. By the age of six, Blair aspired to become a writer, and as a young man he knew that he wanted to explore the lowest stratum of society in his work. Given his genteel family background, this kind of subject matter might have been problematic. If he wanted to write, he would have to conceal himself.\n\nBlair was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, a village in colonial India near the Nepalese border. His parents were stationed there while his father, Richard, held a minor post with the Indian Civil Service. They were not wealthy\u2014Eric would later describe his family as \"lower-upper-middle-class\"\u2014but both his parents came from prominent families in decline. Richard was descended from West Indian slave owners (his great-grandfather was rich and had married the daughter of an earl), and was instilled with a strong sense of public service; Blair's mother, Ida, grew up in Burma, the daughter of a French timber merchant who himself came from a distinguished family of artisans.\n\nIda was working at a boys' school in India when she met Richard, who was thirty-nine, unmarried, and in a dead-end job that paid poorly. He was eighteen years older than Ida. They married in 1897, and she gave birth to a daughter, Marjorie, the following year. (Another daughter, Avril, was born five years after Eric, in 1908.) Without being affluent, they enjoyed the usual perks of colonial life, including servants and access to a whites-only club. Soon after Eric was born, Ida took the children back to England; she wanted them to enjoy a comfortable middle-class existence (and education) in Oxfordshire. In the town where they settled, which dated to the fourteenth century, Ida found an active social life, something she'd missed terribly.\n\nGrowing up, Blair was keenly aware of his family history and of the divisions of caste and class systems. He would later reject organized religion and declare himself an atheist, but he had a strong sense of moral duty (even when he didn't live up to his own code, which was often). He was a stubborn, sensitive, and studious boy who loved reading Dickens, Swift, Defoe, and especially Kipling, whom he called a \"household god\" and whose work would greatly influence his own. His mother recorded his first word, uttered when he was eighteen months old: \"beastly.\"\n\nIn temperament, Blair was more like his soft-spoken, introverted father than his outgoing, chatty mother, and he found unbearable the frivolous tea parties he was forced to attend. \"As a child I was taught to say 'Thank you for having me' after a party, and it seemed to me such an awful phrase,\" he recalled later. Ida loved being part of a well-to-do social set, playing croquet, shopping, going to theater and music events in London, attending a local regatta, and watching tennis at Wimbledon. Yet she was an attentive, loving mother, and Blair is said to have inherited his vicious wit from her. \"I barely saw my father before I was eight,\" he recalled in the opening of his 1946 essay, \"Why I Write.\" \"For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays.\"\n\nComing of age in Edwardian England, when \"the sheer vulgar fatness of wealth\" was everywhere, and \"without any kind of aristocratic elegance to redeem it,\" Blair assumed the stance of a critical outsider. \"[T]he social status of nearly everyone in England could be determined from his appearance, even at two hundred yards' distance.\" Social order was not an abstract notion; it was present in his everyday life, and he was made to understand its significance both at home and at school. \"I was forbidden to play with the plumber's children; they were 'common' and I was told to keep away from them,\" he wrote in his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier. \"This was snobbish, if you like, but it was also necessary, for middle-class people cannot afford to let their children grow up with vulgar accents. So, very early, the working class ceased to be a race of friendly and wonderful beings and became a race of enemies.\"\n\nIt was partly because of his chronic ill health that Blair was highly attuned to disparities in social conditions. (He had defective bronchial tubes and a lesion in one lung, which was not diagnosed until later in his life.) He knew what it was to feel helpless, to feel apart from one's own community, to be judged as weak and inferior. He was not yet two years old when he endured a bout of bronchitis, the first of many (along with influenza) to recur throughout his life. A decade after failing an army medical exam in 1940, Blair would be dead of tuberculosis at the age of forty-six. His entire life was spent with a sense of urgency regarding his work, with the constant knowledge that he was running out of time. \"Until I was about thirty I always planned my life not only on the assumption that any major undertaking was bound to fail, but that I could only expect to live a few years longer,\" he once wrote.\n\nPerhaps because he was confined to bed so often as a child, in enforced solitude, he developed a rich imagination. He believed in ghosts and was enchanted by ghost stories. He also believed that his dreams had symbolic meaning and were sometimes prescient. And he was highly superstitious, a believer in black magic. When his father died in 1939, he placed pennies on Richard's eyes and threw the pennies into the sea.\n\nIn fact, years later, Blair is said to have thought that assuming a pseudonym meant no one could use his real name against him for evil purposes. The notion of peeling off identities appealed to him, anyway. \"I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons,\" he later recalled, \"and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued.\"\n\nBlair produced his first poem at the age of four, dictated to his mother. Seven years later, in 1914, he published an exuberantly patriotic poem in a local newspaper, with the opening stanza:\n\nOh! Give me the strength of the lion,\n\nThe wisdom of Reynard the fox,\n\nAnd then I'll hurl troops at the Germans,\n\nAnd give them the hardest knocks.\n\nHe also produced what he later described as \"bad and unfinished 'nature poems' in the Georgian style,\" a rhyming play, and short fiction\u2014most of which he regarded as embarrassing. But he recognized his facility with language and his love for it. \"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer,\" he later recalled. \"Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.\"\n\nEven in childhood he was cultivating \"the making up of a continuous 'story' about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. . . . As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my 'story' ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw.\" (That storytelling self would later be manifested as George Orwell.) He always felt a need to describe things, events, and people, and his early stories were, if nothing else, impressive in their descriptive quality.\n\nIn 1911, a fateful event occurred: Ida decided to send her son away to St. Cyprian's, a fashionable preparatory school in Sussex for boys aged eight to thirteen. The five years he spent there traumatized him and filled him with contempt, yet the school's \"values\" did shape his socialist views\u2014and proved formative in the making of George Orwell, whom V. S. Pritchett called \"the conscience of his generation.\"\n\nHe set down an account of his sufferings at the \"expensive and snobbish school\" in the ironically titled, fifteen-thousand-word essay, \"Such, Such Were the Joys,\" which took him years to write. (It was not published in the UK until 1968, after the widow of the cruel headmaster died.) Soon after his arrival at St. Cyprian's, he recalled, \"I began wetting my bed. I was now aged eight, so that this was a reversion to a habit which I must have grown out of at least four years earlier.\" The guilt and self-mortification he'd acquired from a Catholic school education was exacerbated by his time at St. Cyprian's. \"[I]t was looked on as a disgusting crime which the child committed on purpose and for which the proper cure was a beating,\" he wrote. \"Night after night I prayed, with a fervour never previously attained in my prayers, 'Please God, do not let me wet my bed! Oh, please God, do not let me wet my bed!' but it made remarkably little difference.\"\n\nFor such an elite institution, \"the standard of comfort was in every way far lower than in my own home,\" Blair recalled bitterly, \"or, indeed, than it would have been in a prosperous working-class home.\" He found that there was never enough food, and what was available tasted awful\u2014including porridge containing unidentifiable black lumps. (He resorted to stealing stale bread from the pantry in the middle of the night.) The boys were allowed a hot bath only once a week, and the towels were damp, with a foul smell. \"Whoever writes of his childhood must beware exaggeration and self-pity,\" Blair admitted. \"But I should be falsifying my own memories if I did not record that they are largely memories of disgust.\"\n\nHe was surrounded by boys boasting about \"my father's yacht,\" \"my pony,\" \"my pater's touring car,\" and the like. \"How much a year has your pater got?\" \"What part of London do you live in?\" \"Is that Knightsbridge or Kensington?\" \"Have you got a butler?\" and \"How many bathrooms has your house got?\" were the kinds of interrogations intrinsic to the school's culture. The boys were constantly keeping score and ranking themselves socially above or below their peers; Blair was always below. He was well aware that aside from money or a title, he lacked every other virtue that might bolster his standing\u2014athleticism, good looks, confidence, and charm.\n\nOne of his few friends at St. Cyprian's was the future literary critic Cyril Connolly, who later recalled Blair's appearance as grotesque: \"Tall, pale, with his flaccid cheeks, large spatulate fingers, and supercilious voice, he was one of those boys who seem born old.\"\n\nBlair was bullied as well as beaten at school, and he found no comfort in his holidays at home. His father, now fifty-five, had retired with a modest pension and returned to the family. Ida, having been left alone to raise three children, was chilly and remote to Richard. He was a stranger to Eric and did nothing to cultivate closeness between them. Eric felt no love for his father, and was mortified by Richard's habit of removing his false teeth and setting them on the table at mealtime. \"Most of the good memories of my childhood, and up to the age of about twenty, are in some way connected with animals,\" he wrote in \"Such, Such Were the Joys.\"\n\nEven then, as a morose and timid boy, haunted by \"a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness,\" as he once recalled of his younger self, Blair aspired to greatness. He knew he would become an author someday\u2014and not just any, but a famous one. He announced that his writing name would be the distinguished-sounding \"E. A. Blair,\" rather than \"Eric Blair,\" which he deemed too plain.\n\nHis education at St. Cyprian's prepared him for a spot at the Mount Olympus of English public schools, Eton, where he was awarded a scholarship in 1916. (His parents could never have afforded the full boarding and tuition fees.) But Blair had already been worn down by his unhappy experience at St. Cyprian's, and he hated Eton. He felt more miserable than ever, and even more alone. One of his classmates once described him in even more unflattering terms than did Cyril Connolly (who also attended Eton with Blair), as having had \"a large, rather fat face, with big jowls, a bit like a hamster.\" Another said that Blair was \"pretty awful\" and \"a bit of a bastard.\" One boy Blair particularly disliked was Philip Yorke\u2014the oldest brother of Henry Yorke, who would assume the authorial name Henry Green.\n\nAt Eton, Blair cranked out stories and plays in his notebooks, all of which he signed \"Eric the FAMOUS AUTHOR.\" He savored a few aspects of his time there, including having been taught French by Aldous Huxley. And his reading experiences were extraordinary: Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, Twain, and Milton were among his favorites. He also took up smoking and cultivated a rebellious streak, which won him the admiration of his peers.\n\nAt St. Cyprian's, Blair had at least soared academically, but at Eton his grades were poor. His tutor found him lazy and impudent. Upon graduation, for reasons he never explained, Blair took a commission with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, where he spent five monotonous years feeling exiled. (Among his few pleasures were frequent visits to Burmese brothels, which, as a sexual late bloomer, he found addictive.) Perhaps his decision to enter government service was an easy way to deal with his confusion about what to do next, and to figure out what kind of man he should become. The experience would buy him time. Cambridge and Oxford\u2014the two universities of destiny for Eton's finest\u2014held no interest for him, and in any case he was considered by Eton to be \"unsuitable\" for either. That was upper-class code for \"an embarrassment.\"\n\nIn 1927, Blair returned to England a heavy smoker, gaunt (having suffered his usual bronchial problems, along with dengue fever), and, as one of his parents' neighbors noted, someone who \"looks as though he never washes.\" His classmates from Eton had already started to publish and even achieve renown. Although Blair would eventually exorcise the bad memories from his time in Burma, which represented wasted years (and lost innocence), in his 1934 novel Burmese Days, for the time being he was still six years away from his publishing debut, Down and Out in Paris and London.\n\nHe rented a cheap room in Notting Hill for a while to fashion himself into a \"FAMOUS AUTHOR,\" but it wasn't until he set off for Paris that things seemed to click into place. Like so many other literary expatriates, Blair felt that in Paris life would truly begin. He arrived in 1928 in search of culture, education, writing material, and undoubtedly romance. (Brothels were legal at the time, so sex could be obtained one way or another.) The city had a buzz that dour London seemed to lack. Henry Miller was there, as were Joyce, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, among other famous writers.\n\nBlair soon managed to complete his first novel, but when it was rejected for publication he burned it. At that time his heart was still set on fiction\u2014he had no intention of becoming a celebrated essayist, even though he was deeply political (while refusing to join any one party) and interested in provocative reportage. He wasn't sure how he intended to use the sketches he wrote about the beggars and tramps he encountered on the city's streets, but \"common people\"\u2014the kind he'd been raised to ignore, like a good and proper snob\u2014interested him most. The self-declared socialist was drawn to down-and-out types much more than to writers or artists, and least of all to anyone with the odor of affluence.\n\nWith political unrest brewing in Europe, Blair eased up on his single-minded focus on fiction; he needed money. Even though he also wrote poetry, he realized that no earnings would come of it. He started writing for a left-wing weekly publication and other newspapers, with an eye toward stories with sociological and political issues\u2014in particular the implications of censorship (exploring ideas that would incubate and later shape his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-four), and the homeless. He started signing these pieces \"E. A. Blair.\"\n\nUnfortunately, he was hardly getting by in Paris; he would learn firsthand what it felt like to be impoverished. His experiences there felt desultory. He was reduced to fishing (without success) in the Seine, rationing his food supply, and even pawning some of his possessions. \"I underwent poverty and the sense of failure,\" he recalled of his time in Paris. \"This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes.\"\n\nAfter doing menial work and finding it wretched, he was pleased that a publication in London had accepted one of the essays he'd submitted. He decided that moving back to London would not signify failure but offer greater potential for becoming a professional writer. In December 1929 he left Paris and returned to his parents' house. \"England is a very good country when you are not poor,\" he wrote a few years later. Still, it was better to struggle in his own country than in France.\n\nIn no way embarrassed by having to work as a babysitter and take occasional odd jobs, Blair (who looked like a bum) started writing a nonfiction book about beggars and outcasts, based on his own experiences, which would evolve into Down and Out in Paris and London. He also began publishing criticism. It didn't earn him much money, but he established himself as a respected reviewer, or at least the beginnings of one.\n\nThough slowly finding his way toward his vocation, Blair didn't fit neatly into any single category: he came from a snobbish family that was not wealthy; he'd been given the most prestigious public school education a student could hope for\u2014yet unlike many of his contemporaries, who had already achieved fame and wealth, he had little to show for it. He disowned Eton but wore it as a badge of honor. He spoke in a posh accent but dressed in ill-fitting, rumpled clothing. And having immersed himself in Shakespeare, Chaucer, Twain, Poe, Ibsen, Dickens, and Thackeray, among others, he was well read and intellectual, but he had rejected a university education. Although he was bitter about not having gone to Oxford or Cambridge, it was also a point of pride that he had not. He was austere, but he enjoyed comfort. He was stridently political and deplored politics. He was unlucky in love and perpetually unable to sustain relationships with women. (Prostitutes, however, he did fine with.) He appeared to love women and despise them; even some of his friends described him as a misogynist. He sought out tramps and beggars, yet he was an intellectual snob and ill at ease in the presence of those who did not share his interests. He relished immersing himself in vagrant life, but had a pathological aversion to bad smells and dirt, and was oblivious to the foul stench of his own smoking habit. He was happy only when writing, but no matter how hard he worked, he couldn't earn a living doing it. He was frustrated by his frequent illnesses, which kept him from writing, yet he did not take responsibility for his health\u2014he smoked heavily even while coughing up blood. All the intriguing contradictions of Eric Blair would find their way into the work of George Orwell. Blair might be judged by others as mentally unstable, paranoid, troubled, sadistic, and aberrant\u2014but George Orwell? He was a noble and brilliant author.\n\nRegardless of his quirks, and there were many, it was almost unnerving to see how little Blair cared about others' opinions of him. Still, he kept his writing ambition largely private. Slowly, Blair was developing a pioneering, novelistic style that blended reportage and memoir. His work was investigative yet highly personal, driven by a sense of moral outrage at social injustices. (The genre might be called Proletarian Lit\u2014not exactly sexy stuff.) He had also taken to hanging out with vagrants in London and sometimes dressing like a tramp, sleeping in Trafalgar Square covered in newspapers. \"He didn't look in the least like a poor man,\" a friend recalled of Blair decades later. \"God knows he was poor, but the formidable look didn't go with the rags.\"\n\nNor did the rags go with the name Eric Arthur Blair. It was time to invent George Orwell. Blair had always been secretive in every respect; adopting a pseudonym would allow him to release the various facets of his personality. Doing so was not without some degree of shame: he wrote in A Clergyman's Daughter (in which a character uses a pseudonym) that \"[i]t seemed a queer thing to have to do, to use a false name; dishonest\u2014criminal, almost.\"\n\nAs Eric Blair, he accepted a teaching job at a boys' school\u2014hardly a posh one\u2014which would make the twenty-nine-year-old seem somewhat respectable in the eyes of his parents. (Even though he had no university degree, his Eton schooling was impressive enough to win him the job.) He was bored by the work, and described the school as \"foul.\"\n\nThat summer, he received the best news he'd heard in a long time: he'd found a publisher for Down and Out in Paris and London. Under a different title, the manuscript had been rejected by Jonathan Cape, and also by T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber\u2014Eliot's elitist sensibility did not exactly savor tales of the malodorous downtrodden. In refusing the book, he wrote to Blair that it was \"too loosely constructed.\"\n\nThe final version of the manuscript was a semiautobiographical story narrated by an anonymous, penniless English writer\u2014or, rather, it was a collection of essays about Blair's own experiences, recounted in fictionalized form. Most of the events in the book had occurred, but some fabrications were thrown in. It was startling for its up-close exploration of street people and others left behind by society. It was also a shocking expos\u00e9 of harsh, filthy, inhumane conditions in the restaurant kitchens of Paris, where Blair had toiled as a lowly dishwasher.\n\n\"I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up,\" the narrator reflects in the book's final paragraph. \"I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.\"\n\nThe publisher Victor Gollancz had accepted the work and paid Blair an advance of forty pounds. After some discussion about the title and potential libel issues, there was one significant matter to settle: the name of the author. Blair had informed his agent that he wished to use a pseudonym. \"If by any chance you do get it accepted,\" he wrote, \"will you please see that it is published pseudonymously, as I am not proud of it.\" (Perhaps he was ashamed by the rejections he'd received, and certain that his execrable book was doomed to failure.) Then there was the matter of his family: he did not want to embarrass them with sordid (if thinly disguised) tales of his adventures. He also wrote to Gollancz that \"if the book has any kind of success I can always use the same pseudonym again.\" The editor suggested simply signing the book with the letter \"X,\" but Blair wished to find a suitable name, perhaps thinking about his future career. He had trouble settling on a nom de plume, so he sent Gollancz four suggestions: H. Lewis Allways, P. S. Burton, Kenneth Miles\u2014and George Orwell, which was his favorite.\n\nHis anxiety about concealing his authorship from his parents may have been genuine, but he didn't try very hard. Portions of the book had already appeared in literary periodicals under his own name; he confessed to his sister Avril that he was publishing his first book using a pseudonym; and he allowed his mother to read the book. Still, the pen name at least shielded the family from public scrutiny. It seems that another compelling reason for using an alter ego was the fact of his background. How credible was it for an Eton graduate to go undercover by living on the margins of society, rejecting respectability, and plunging himself into the lives of outcasts? It could also be perceived as highly offensive that such a genteel young man would \"slum it\" for the sake of creating a literary masterpiece. For him, vagrancy was a choice: if his situation became too dire, he could always borrow money from his mother; and he could find a place to sleep whenever he wished. He was certainly in a bad way, yet he could afford to be a part-time tramp; it was a role to play more than anything else.\n\nWriting about poverty demanded authorial authenticity, and that meant erasing all traces of Eric Arthur Blair. He had to \"pass\" as a man living on the margins, and Eric Blair was not that man. Changing his name was also appealing because he claimed to detest his birth name. Perhaps it had to do with the strained relationship he'd had with his father.\n\nDown and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell was published in January 1933, with an initial print run of 1,500 copies. The author was relieved to have some validation of his efforts. \"Isn't it a grand feeling when you see your thoughts taking shape at last in a solid lump?\" he wrote to a friend.\n\nThere are a few reasons why Blair had settled on \"George Orwell\" as his literary persona. Some have speculated that the first name came from his admiration for the late-nineteenth-century writer George Gissing, who influenced his work. The surname seemed to have derived from the River Orwell in Suffolk, which Blair is said to have loved\u2014Defoe had written of it\u2014or from the village of Orwell in Bedfordshire, which Blair had once passed through.\n\nIn any case, it seemed perfect, and \"George Orwell\" became the most famous English pseudonym of the twentieth century. As well, thanks to his novel Nineteen Eighty-four, the adjective \"Orwellian\" became part of the lexicon. (It has a much better ring than, say, Milesian or Allwaysian, had he settled on his other choices.)\n\nAnthony Powell once asked his friend if he'd ever considered adopting \"George Orwell\" as his legal name. \"Well, I have,\" he told Powell, \"but then, of course, I'd have to write under another name if I did.\" Why he felt such a profound need to separate himself in private life from his \"writing self\" is a mystery. But duality is present throughout his work: in A Clergyman's Daughter, for instance, and elsewhere Orwell's characters lead double lives and harbor hidden selves. \"He was as secretive about his private life as any man I ever knew,\" a friend recalled of him.\n\nThe book was well received in England and, upon its international publication, by critics abroad. \"George Orwell is but trembling on the age of 30 this year, but he appears to have had about as much experience so far as the seamy side of life is concerned as a man of 50,\" wrote a reviewer in the New York Times in 1933, adding that Orwell's chilling account \"is apt to put an American with a ticklish stomach off filets mignon in the higher-priced hotel restaurants for ever. It is Mr. Orwell's argument bolstered by numerous horrible examples, that the more you pay for food in Paris, the less clean it is.\"\n\nWith the modest success of Down and Out, Blair's metamorphosis into George Orwell was complete. He'd received fan letters addressed to Orwell, and had, for the first time, even signed a book review as Orwell. The persona endured. His family, friends, publisher, and agent knew him as Eric Blair, but to the public he was firmly established as George Orwell. He'd accepted that neither Eric Arthur Blair nor even \"E. A. Blair\" had ever found success as a writer, and that only Orwell would be taken seriously. Eric Blair was a loser.\n\nHis books came in rapid succession: Burmese Days (1934), A Clergyman's Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938), and in the last few years of his life, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four, published a year before his death. Even when he was highly productive, his usual reaction was to be dismissive of his output. \"I have never been able to get away from this neurotic feeling that I was wasting time,\" he wrote in his diary. \"As soon as a book is finished, I begin, actually from the next day, worrying because the next one is not begun, & am haunted with the fear that there never will be a next one.\" Nevertheless, despite having exasperated so many people with his polemics, he had by then endeared himself, more or less, to the literary establishment. \"He writes in a lucid conversational style which wakens one up suddenly like cold water dashed in the face,\" V. S. Pritchett wrote of Orwell's work.\n\nAlthough he instructed later that A Clergyman's Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying not be republished once they had fallen out of print\u2014he dismissed them as \"silly potboilers\"\u2014they were crucial building blocks in what would prove a highly successful and even lucrative career.\n\nA friend once commented on Orwell's obsessive writing process. He walked in one day to find Orwell sitting at a table with books by W. Somerset Maugham and Jonathan Swift, reading passages from both, closing them, then copying out sections from memory. \"I'm trying to find a style which eliminates the adjective,\" Orwell explained. It was not unusual for Orwell to write for ten hours a day, to rewrite entire book drafts three times, or to revise individual passages five or ten times, until he was satisfied.\n\nHis fussiness also extended to his personal life. In an entry written in 1940 for an American directory of authors, he revealed, \"I dislike big towns, noise, motor cars, the radio, tinned food, central heating and 'modern' furniture.\" His list of approved things included English beer, French red wine, Indian tea, strong tobacco, vegetable gardening, and comfortable chairs. He added: \"My health is wretched, but it has never prevented me from doing anything that I wanted to. . . . I ought perhaps to mention that though this account that I have given of myself is true, George Orwell is not my real name.\"\n\nIn 1941, a critic (and former Eton classmate) named Christopher Hollis wrote a withering review of Orwell's book The Lion and the Unicorn, attacking the author as a coward: \"Many things interest me about Mr. Orwell,\" he wrote, \"and not the least among them the question why he prefers to confront the world with that peculiar name rather than with the very respectable one under which I have had the honour of knowing him for the last quarter of a century.\" This must have come as a shock to those acquaintances who knew Orwell only as Orwell. By that time, he was signing his work correspondence \"George Orwell,\" and sometimes signing personal letters \"E. A. B. (George Orwell).\" Most of his old friends still called him Eric. Despite the confusion, he refused to have his name legally changed. He may have taken some pleasure in being able to flit at will between one self and the other, as suited the occasion.\n\nThe 1930s had been a kind of golden age for the author, apart from his occasional hospitalizations and periods of convalescence. He established himself as a famous writer and he found love, or at any rate an acceptable version of it. After meeting an Oxford graduate named Eileen O'Shaughnessy at a party, he decided that she was \"the type of girl I'd like to marry.\" In 1936, they did, but like so many other things in his life, the marriage would prove ephemeral. In 1944, they adopted an infant son, whom they named Richard Horatio, but Eileen died a year later during an emergency operation. Because Orwell had been unfaithful to her, his grief was mingled with guilt. \"It wasn't an ideal marriage,\" he admitted to his housekeeper. \"I don't think I treated her very well.\" Her absence left him lonely and depressed, and with his recurrent bouts of flu and bronchitis, reminded him that he was probably running out of time himself.\n\nHe was eager to find another wife, and at the age of forty-six his wish was fulfilled. On October 14, 1949, the Associated Press issued a brief announcement: \"George Orwell, novelist, married yesterday Miss Sonia Brownell, an editor, in University College Hospital, where the author, who is suffering from tuberculosis, is confined.\" Orwell remarked on their travel plans. \"I don't know when I shall be allowed to get up,\" he said, \"but if I am able to move, we shall go abroad for the worst part of the winter, probably for January and February.\"\n\nHe was dead by the end of January.\n\nV. S. Pritchett paid tribute to Orwell, calling him \"sharp as a sniper\" and praising him as \"a writer of extraordinary honesty, if reckless in attack; to the day he died, nearly three weeks ago, he had never committed an act of political hypocrisy or casuistry.\" Six decades after his death, Orwell was named by fifty Penguin authors as the publisher's most popular author ever. Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four are still required reading in schools. He influenced scores of writers, including Kingsley Amis, Norman Mailer, and Anthony Burgess. And he is considered one of the twentieth century's finest essayists. \"If you want to learn how to write non-fiction, Orwell is your man,\" wrote Jeremy Paxman in the Daily Telegraph in 2009. \"The impeccable style is one thing. But if I had to sum up what makes Orwell's essays so remarkable is that they always surprise you.\"\n\nAfter Orwell's death, his friends remembered him fondly while acknowledging that he was often difficult. One spoke of him, aptly, as having been \"easier to love than to like.\" Stephen Spender offered a more generous assessment: although he found Orwell disingenuous in earnestly aligning himself with the working class, Spender recognized his essential decency and the purity of his motives. \"Even his phoniness was perfectly acceptable,\" he recalled. \"Orwell had something about him like a character in a Charlie Chaplin movie, if not like Charlie Chaplin himself. He was a person who was always playing a role, but with great pathos and great sincerity.\"\nShe weighed seventy pounds when she died\n\nChapter 9\n\nIsak Dinesen & KAREN BLIXEN\n\nShe may not have been descended from Danish royalty, but her childhood was filled with the traditional privileges of an aristocratic upbringing. Karen Cristenze Dinesen was born on April 17, 1885, and over the course of her life would be known alternately as Tanne, Tanya, and Tania by her family and close friends. \"Tanne\" was a nickname that originated from her youthful mispronunciation of her own name (and was one she was said to dislike), but it stuck nonetheless. She grew up on her family's estate in Rungstedlund, on the Danish coast midway between Copenhagen and Elsinore. Her father bought the house, a former inn, in 1879, and Dinesen would spend her final years there in relative seclusion.\n\nKaren's great-grandfather on the side of her mother, Ingeborg, was a ship baron and one of the wealthiest men in Copenhagen. Her father, Wilhelm, came from a family of major landowners. After the Franco-Prussian War, he traveled to America, where he spent time among Indians who gave him the name \"Boganis,\" meaning hazelnut. He later published a book, Letters from the Hunt, using Boganis as a pseudonym, which was Karen's first encounter with a nom de plume. She was the second of five children, raised in a puritanical household, and easily her father's favorite; they had a close, confiding relationship that seemed to exist in its own private, obsessive realm, outside the rest of the family. But in 1895, a month before Karen's tenth birthday, Wilhelm hanged himself at the age of fifty. She never forgave him for abandoning her. She was left, as she would later say, with an abiding terror \"of putting one's life into, and abandoning one's soul to something that one might come to lose again.\"\n\nEven at a young age, Karen knew the depths of sadness. She struggled to find a secure place within her competitive family and used her rich fantasy life as a frequent means of escape. She wrote thoughtful, world-weary plays, essays, stories, and poems and kept a diary. Her mother was strict, forbidding the children to enter certain rooms of the house without permission and refusing to intervene in sibling squabbles. \"Whoever is angry must absent himself from the public spaces, and from the stairs and corridors, so long as the anger lasts,\" she decreed. (Crying aroused neither Ingeborg's sympathy nor any gestures of maternal comfort.)\n\nAt fourteen, Karen fell in love with Shakespeare, marveling at the epic scale of his romances and tragedies. She read widely: Stendahl, Chekhov, Voltaire, Conrad, Turgenev, Hans Christian Andersen, and poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was passionate about art and at eighteen was accepted at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. The following year, in 1904, Karen began to write what she called \"Likely Stories,\" which revealed even then her predilection for the gothic and fantastical. Her favorite poet was Heinrich Heine, and she often recited these lines from his Buch der Lieder: \"You haughty heart, you wanted it like this! \/ You wanted to be happy, infinitely, \/ Or infinitely wretched, haughty heart, \/ And now you are wretched.\"\n\nAt the Royal Academy, she met someone who would become her first reader (apart from her family) and literary mentor: Mario Krohn, a young intellectual whose father was a museum curator. She spent a lot of time with Krohn, though her affection for him seems to have been largely platonic. (He died of tuberculosis in 1922.) With his encouragement, she sent her stories to the editor of Denmark's most prestigious literary journal, who responded to one piece by calling it \"too broad and a little too artistically contrived, and the whole tone too hearty and simpleminded. It is also too long.\" Yet he recognized her talent and decided to accept one of the stories, \"The Hermits.\" She would publish two more stories in the journal, all under the pseudonym \"Osceola.\" This she'd borrowed from an unlikely source: her father's German shepherd. It was a name that Wilhelm had borrowed from a leader of the Seminole Indians in Florida. Osceola had led his tribe's resistance when the American government tried to remove the Seminoles from their land, and he died in prison a few months after being captured.\n\nBefore giving birth to Isak Dinesen, Karen Dinesen would have to meet the man who would become her husband: her Swedish second cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, a distant cousin of King Christian of Denmark. (Bror had a twin brother, Hans, whom Karen was in love with, but he was not interested in her.) Bror, who pursued her assiduously until she relented, was handsome and gregarious. Karen did not find him compelling or even intelligent. Her family was not impressed, either. Bror was inept with money, a fact that would have disastrous consequences for the couple later on. Still, their early years together were fairly happy, and when Bror's uncle suggested, \"Go to Kenya, you two,\" they did.\n\nIn 1913, the Blixens set off for what was then British East Africa, setting up a 4,500-acre coffee plantation called the Swedo-African Coffee Company, twelve miles from Nairobi. (Eventually they would own 6,000 acres.) Bror was giddy at the financial potential of the business. Never mind that he knew nothing about growing coffee. Nor did he consider fluctuating coffee prices or realize that locusts, droughts, acidic soil, and the elevation of the land made it inhospitable for his ambitious endeavor, and destined it to fail. \"The land was in itself a little too high for coffee,\" Karen recalled with typical understatement in Out of Africa, \"and it was hard work to keep it going; we were never rich on the farm. But a coffee-plantation is a thing that gets hold of you and does not let go, and there is always something to do on it: you are generally just a little behind with your work. . . . Coffee-growing is a long job.\" But in Africa she had found a spiritual home, and she described the thought of ever leaving as \"Armageddon. After that\u2014nothing.\"\n\nIn addition to her own elegiac memoir\u2014with its famous opening line (\"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills\") and notable omissions (not much mention of her husband, and only a platonic rendering of her lover, the hunter Denys Finch Hatton)\u2014many accounts of her years in Africa have been written elsewhere: the decline of the plantation; the pileup of financial debt; her contracting of syphilis (from which she never recovered) from her philandering husband in the first year they were married; the breakdown of her marriage; her relationship with Finch Hatton; and so on. Those years, by turns enchanting and filled with frightening adversity, had a profound impact. \"When I was a young girl,\" she recalled later, \"it was very far from my thoughts to go to Africa, nor did I dream then that an African farm should be the place in which I should be perfectly happy. That goes to prove that God has a greater and finer power of imagination than we have.\"\n\nEven after her marriage ended, she continued to manage the farm on her own. At the time, this was certainly an odd way for a woman of her class to live, but it was a testament to her attachment to the land and its people. \"Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams,\" she said.\n\nPartly because of the collapse of the coffee market, she was eventually forced to sell the plantation and return to Denmark. The decision broke her heart. \"I was driven out of my house by the fear of losing it,\" she wrote. \"When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.\"\n\nThe painful losses she endured\u2014of her farm, of her beloved horses and dogs, of Finch Hatton (who died in a plane crash in May 1931)\u2014drove her back to Denmark and to writing.\n\n\"I really began writing before I went to Africa,\" she told the Paris Review in an interview six years before her death. \"But I never once wanted to be a writer.\" (That single-minded devotion to process\u2014the ardor for writing itself, rather than the vanity of having written\u2014is, of course, the mark of a true writer.) She had done some writing in Africa as well; two of the stories in Gothic Tales, believed to be \"The Dreamers\" and \"The Old Chevalier,\" were written there. She wrote them while trying to distract herself from the distressing problems of the farm. \"One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue,\" she said years later. In Africa she refined her skills as a storyteller: \"I had the perfect audience,\" she told the Paris Review. \"White people can no longer listen to a tale recited. They fidget or become drowsy. But the natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds. And all kinds of nonsense. I'd say, 'Once there was a man who had an elephant with two heads' . . . and at once they were eager to hear more. 'Oh? Yes, but Memsahib, how did he find it, and how did he manage to feed it?' or whatever. They loved such invention.\" In a 1957 interview with the New York Times, she insisted, \"I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller.\" Some would dispute that assessment. When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954, he said that he would have been \"happy\u2014happier\u2014today\" if it had gone instead to \"that beautiful writer, Isak Dinesen.\"\n\nWhen she returned to Denmark from Africa, in 1931, she was a lost soul. Even her identity was in tatters; she'd lost her title as baroness after Bror remarried in 1929 and found a new Baroness Blixen. Though Karen was often accused, perhaps unfairly, of being a vain snob, she did cherish her title and was angry and indignant when she was stripped of it. People continued to call her the Baroness in later years, which surely pleased her. But at that point, she didn't know what to call herself. And at forty-six years old, she was destitute, forced to move back to her mother's home. (In a 1986 essay, John Updike, an admirer of Dinesen's work, described her return at that time as \"ignominious,\" noting that she was received into the household as \"a prodigal daughter, a middle-aged adolescent.\") In a letter that year, Karen told her brother Thomas, \"I have wondered whether I could learn to cook in Paris for a year or two, and then perhaps get a post in a restaurant or a hotel.\" She also suggested that she could take care of \"mad people.\" Fortunately, she set her ambitions elsewhere, confiding to Thomas, \"I have begun to do what we brothers and sisters do when we don't know what else to resort to\u2014I have started to write a book.\" She decided to write in English because it had been her primary language in British East Africa, and she was comfortable with it; and because she believed that potentially, an English-language book would reach a larger audience and be more profitable. (She was right.)\n\nThe book she was writing became Seven Gothic Tales. She said later that she used the word tale after Shakespeare, or \"in the na\u00efve view of a child or primitive who sees a story as neither tragic nor comic but marvelous.\"\n\nOf course, Karen needed to support herself as she wrote, so she asked Thomas to finance her for two years, promising that by the end of this time she would become independent. Writing from her family's estate, Karen felt the presence of her father once again. After all, he had gone to America and lived with the Plains Indians, then returned to Denmark to write his books. \"So you see, it was natural for me, his daughter, to go off to Africa and live with the natives and after return home to write about it,\" she explained to the Paris Review.\n\nBiographical events intersected in other ways. Not long after the farm was sold to a Nairobi real estate developer, Karen had attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. And shortly before her father's suicide, Wilhelm was told by a doctor that he had a disease \"which could only conclude in a dark, helpless future.\" (It was most likely syphilis.) \"My father's destiny has, curiously enough, to a great extent, been repeated in my own,\" she said.\n\nThree years after the scaffolding of her life collapsed beneath her, Karen would become a published author in England and the United States. She would evolve into Isak Dinesen. The transformation was a struggle, however. (\"No one came into literature more bloody than I,\" she once said.) In those days\u2014as is true in today's publishing climate\u2014a short story collection, especially by an unknown author, was not a desirable commodity. Publishing is a profit-driven business, like any other, and story collections aren't known for being lucrative. Karen's manuscript was rejected by at least two publishers, including the London house of Faber and Faber, which was then a relatively new (founded in 1929) but prestigious firm.\n\nKaren had been preparing the material that would form Seven Gothic Tales, on and off, for a decade. She later described her process as beginning with a \"tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.\" She said that she began only with the \"flavor\" of a tale, and that her characters led her toward their fates\u2014\"I simply permit them their liberty,\" she explained. (In his 1976 Paris Review interview, John Cheever\u2014speaking not of Dinesen specifically, but of the notion that fictional characters take on identities of their own\u2014dismissed the romantic idea of the author as a passive creative vessel. \"The legend that characters run away from their authors\u2014taking up drugs, having sex operations, and becoming president\u2014implies that the writer is a fool with no knowledge or mastery of his craft,\" he said.)\n\nIn any case, Karen would devote herself fully to writing, well aware of the radical nature of her task. Two decades later, she admitted in a speech that if she had been a man, \"it would be out of the question for me to fall in love with a woman writer.\" Working away in her father's old office\u2014which was also the same room where, in the late eighteenth century, Denmark's greatest lyrical poet of the era, Johannes Ewald, was said to have written\u2014she sat at the Corona typewriter she'd brought home from Kenya, allowing few intrusions into her time and space. She was openly resentful of social interruptions, whether from family or friends; as a result, some visitors who came to the house were put off by her foul mood and deemed her behavior selfish (not an adjective one might have ascribed to a male writer). Her seclusion provided a kind of freedom, psychological if not physical: the permission for her imagination to roam at will, exploring and reaching beyond the bounds of self, mining the material of both her dreaming and her waking life.\n\nShe later explained that her decision to publish under a pseudonym was not unlike how her father \"hid behind the pseudonym Boganis. . . . [It was to] express himself freely, give his imagination a free rein. He didn't want people to ask, 'Do you really mean that?' Or, 'Have you, yourself, experienced that?'\" She decided to use her maiden name, Dinesen, and chose the first name Isak, meaning \"laughter\" in Hebrew. (In the Old Testament, Isaac was born to Sarah when she was quite old; his birth seemed almost like a miraculous prank by God.) The name reflected Karen's comic spirit and her love of humor, particularly irony. It was an element in her work, even in the \"tragic\" stories, that was never given its proper due by most critics. Also, as an author who \"gave birth\" to her first book at the age of forty-nine, she was a late bloomer herself; the name was apt.\n\nWhen she completed her manuscript in 1933, she took it first to London, where a family friend arranged a luncheon for her. Karen was introduced to an American-born publisher, Constant Huntington of the British firm Putnam's. She charmed him and asked if he would be willing to read her work. When she mentioned that it was a collection of short stories, he threw up his hands and refused even to look at it. \"A book of short stories by an unknown writer? No hope!\" he said. She returned home angry and despondent, almost ready to give up. But one of her mottoes in life was: \"Often in difficulties, never afraid.\"\n\nShe made use of a contact from her brother Thomas\u2014an American author, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who lived in Vermont. She mailed her the manuscript, hoping something might come of it. Fisher immediately recognized its value and passed it along to her neighbor, the publisher Robert Haas, who accepted it, taking a big chance on an unknown European writer. (When Random House bought the firm owned by Haas and his partner, Harrison Smith, the company acquired not only Isak Dinesen but other prominent authors, including Jean de Brunhoff and William Faulkner.) Haas considered the deal a labor of love, and imposed two conditions before publication: that the book include a foreword by Fisher, a distinguished figure whose name might generate some good publicity; and that he not pay an advance until at least a few thousand copies had been sold. Dinesen agreed to his terms, but wrote to Fisher to express concern regarding authorship. \"I don't want the book to come out under my own name,\" she wrote, \"and at the same time I don't want people to know that it is myself who has written it, even though that is not a serious problem in America!\u2014I'm going to have to find a name to publish it under.\"\n\nWhen Seven Gothic Tales was published in January 1934, it was a critical and commercial success. (Dinesen's first check from Haas, for $8,000, arrived that Christmas.) Upon seeing that the book had met with such great acclaim, Constant Huntington wrote a letter to Haas, praising the book, pleading for the author's address, and\u2014oh, the audacity\u2014insisting that he (and Putnam's) publish the British edition. Dinesen was amused. \"He had met me as Baroness Blixen,\" she recalled later, \"while Mr. Haas and I had never seen one another. Huntington never connected me with Isak Dinesen.\" Putnam's released the work in England in September 1934.\n\nThe persona \"Isak Dinesen\" made the author a figure of mystery in the literary world. Rumors swirled about the true identity of this \"slender, pale, large-eyed, middle-aged Danish woman,\" as a critic would later describe her. They said she was really a man, or \"Isak\" was a woman, or argued that the author was a collaboration between a brother and sister. He or she was a recluse. A nun. Actually French, not Danish. And so on.\n\nIn \"The Dreamers\" (the penultimate story in Seven Gothic Tales), the character Pellegrina Leoni, an alter ego of sorts for Dinesen, implores another character to lose himself: \"Be many people,\" she says. \"Give up this game of being one. . . . You must, from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of. I feel, Marcus\u2014I am sure\u2014that all people in the world ought to be, each of them, more than one, and they would all, yes, all of them, be more easy at heart.\" This reflected the author's desire to escape her own self. For her, the willful expanse of identity was a path that led away from suffering, from the daily sorrows that trapped her.\n\nA passage in the story \"The Old Chevalier\" seemed to express Dinesen's need, after so much loss, to overturn the circumstances of her life and start anew: \"Reality had met me, such a short time ago, in such an ugly shape, that I had no wish to come into contact with it again,\" she wrote. \"Somewhere in me a dark fear was still crouching, and I took refuge within the fantastic like a distressed child in his book of fairy tales. I did not want to look ahead, and not at all to look back.\"\n\nThemes of truth and deceit are everywhere in Dinesen's fiction. In \"The Deluge at Noderney,\" the opening story of Gothic Tales, a cardinal explains the virtues (and power) of masquerade: \"The witty woman, Madame, chooses for her carnival costume one which ingeniously reveals something in her spirit or heart which the conventions of her everyday life conceal; and when she puts on the hideous long-nosed Venetian mask, she tells us, not only that she has a classic nose behind it, but that she has much more, and may well be adored for things other than her mere beauty. So speaketh the Arbiter of the masquerade: 'By thy mask I shall know thee.'\"\n\nIsak Dinesen's lauded debut was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, with a print run of fifty thousand copies\u2014an astonishing number at the time. The BOMC newsletter ran an announcement, along with a simple notice: \"No clue is available as to the pseudonymic author.\" On March 3, 1934, the New York Times posted the selection in its \"Book Notes\" column: \"Seven Gothic Tales, by a European writer who uses the pen name of Isak Dinesen, is to be the Book-of-the-Month Club choice for April. Smith & Haas will publish it, with an enthusiastic introduction by Dorothy Canfield.\" Five weeks later, John Chamberlain, a columnist for the newspaper's \"Books of the Times,\" wrote that he was unimpressed by the selection: \"[W]e found it impossible to get interested in Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. . . . We are willing to grant the eerie light in the book, and the slanting beauty of phrase, but the predicaments of the characters leave us cold. If you prick Mr. Dinesen's people, they do not bleed.\"\n\nRegardless, it was a hit, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher's introduction to Seven Gothic Tales encouraged a sense of intrigue about the author's identity. She proved a great advocate for the book, writing, \"I am so much under its spell (it feels exactly like a spell),\" and also letting the reader know that the material did not fit easily into any familiar genre or literary movement. \"The person who has set his teeth into a kind of fruit new to him,\" Fisher wrote, \"is usually as eager as he is unable to tell you how it tastes. It is not enough for him to be munching away on it with relish. No, he must twist his tongue trying to get its strange new flavor into words, which never yet had any power to capture colors or tastes.\"\n\nDevour the book, she urged, but claimed she could offer no insight into who had written it: \"I can't even tell you the first fact about it which everybody wants to know about a book\u2014who is the author.\" Fisher continued, cryptically: \"In this case, all that we are told is that the author is a Continental European, writing in English although that is not native to his pen, who wishes his-or-her identity not to be known, although between us be it said, it is safe from the setting of the tales to guess that he is not a Sicilian.\"\n\nBut Isak Dinesen was perhaps the shortest-lived pseudonym in literary history. The book had created such a stir that the Danish press immediately set out to learn the author's real identity, and, following a tip that \"he\" was in fact a \"Danish lady,\" reporters from the newspaper Politiken found her. At the end of April, Smith and Haas announced formally that Isak Dinesen was Baroness Blixen of Rungstedlund. A week later, the competition began among Danish publishers to acquire translation rights to her book. She decided to undertake the job of translation herself, a practice she would follow from then on\u2014writing most of her stories first in English, then in Danish. But these were never direct translations; she would rewrite as well, even changing the endings to create original stories for a different audience.\n\nSeven Gothic Tales (or Syv Fantastiske Fortaellinger) was published in Denmark in September 1935, when Dinesen was fifty (the same age at which her father committed suicide). The critical reception was decidedly harsh. Her work was dismissed as too artificial, too perverse, too shallow, too elitist, and too foreign. One young reviewer criticized the book on many counts, noting that \"[t]he erotic life which unfolds in the tales is of the most peculiar kind.\" In the end, he wrote, \"There is nothing . . . behind [the author's] veil, once it is lifted.\"\n\nSome critics were annoyed by Dinesen's decision to write first in English\u2014an apparent breach of etiquette\u2014and by the fact that her breakthrough had occurred in the United States rather than her homeland. To avoid offending them again, subsequent books were issued simultaneously in Danish and English\u2014or first in Danish. Also, she reserved her pseudonym only for books that came out in North America; in Denmark she reverted to Karen Blixen\u2014perhaps in an attempt to prove her \"authenticity\" and appeal to national pride. Still, she never felt that she achieved enough popularity in Denmark, certainly not compared with the adulation she received abroad. In the United States, she had an impressive roster of admirers. Truman Capote yearned for a movie adaptation of \"The Dreamers,\" with Greta Garbo in the lead role. Ralph Ellison, Pearl Buck, and Marianne Moore loved her work. Orson Welles said that he considered Dinesen superior to Shakespeare. William Maxwell praised Dinesen as \"the most original, the most perceptive, and perhaps the best living prose writer.\" Eudora Welty called her \"a great lady, an inspired teller of her own tales, a traveler, possessed of a learned and seraphic mind.\" Carson McCullers was also a fan. \"When I was ill or out of sorts with the world,\" she said, \"I would turn to Out of Africa, which never failed to comfort and support me.\" In 1957, Dinesen was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; other member inductees that year included John Dos Passos, Flannery O'Connor, Mary McCarthy, and W. S. Merwin. Meanwhile, at home, Dinesen confided to a friend, \"Lately, I have had the feeling in Denmark of being under suspicion, almost as if I were on parole.\"\n\nWhen Out of Africa was published in 1937, it, too, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. With its lovely, straightforward prose, not the least bit baroque or decadent, and with no questionable subject matter, the memoir elicited a positive critical response in her homeland. Grounded in the story of a land and its people, it was \"realistic\" rather than fantastical. In Denmark she called the book Den afrikanske Farm (The African Farm); for the American edition, she'd chosen the title Ex Africa, but Robert Haas persuaded her to use Out of Africa instead. Dinesen insisted that it be published on the same day in the United States, Scandinavia, and England, rather than releasing first to Danish readers and then elsewhere\u2014a request her publisher resisted because of the logistics. \"America took me in when I could not even make the publishers in Europe have a look at my book,\" she explained, \"and the American reading public received me with such generosity and open-mindedness as I shall never forget. I was delighted with the reviews of the American critics. I feel the deepest gratitude toward you all.\" She worried (however irrationally) that delaying American publication might convey the impression that she had lost interest in her fans there or no longer valued them. Despite the case she'd made, her request was denied, thus preserving a schism in her literary identity that could not be made whole: living as one persona abroad and another at home.\n\nOut of Africa was praised by Time magazine as \"a restrained, formalized book, which has little in common with her first book.\" She captured the African landscape, its people and animals \"with the eye of a painter and a novelist.\" The New York Times called the book \"rare and lovely,\" and praised its \"penetration, restraint, simplicity and precision which, together, mark the highly civilized mind, and that compassion, courage and dignity which mark civilization, in the best sense, in the human heart.\"\n\nIt must have annoyed Dinesen that a book by her former husband came out at the same time\u2014also a memoir of Africa, published by Knopf. Time magazine was scathing in its review: \"By comparison with his former wife's volume, 50-year-old Baron von Blixen-Finecke's African Hunter is little more than a handbook for big-game hunters. . . . Baron Blixen-Finecke does not care much for natives. Now married to an adventurous, pretty, 29-year-old Englishwoman, he remembers his first wife (Isak Dinesen) for one incident, when she flew unarmed at two lions that had attacked an ox, lashed them into the jungle with a stock whip.\" (Bror would marry a third time and die in a car crash in Sweden in 1946.)\n\nOn May 10, 1943, Dinesen's third book, Winter's Tales, was published in the United States. (It had come out in Denmark a year earlier.) This, too, was sold to the Book-of-the-Month Club and was a huge success. Despite having been unmasked seven years earlier, Dinesen still had a seductive aura of intrigue, one that cast her as imperious and remote. William Maxwell noted that although \"Isak Dinesen\" was \"now generally known to be the pen-name of a Danish woman . . . the Baroness herself is still something of a mystery. The facts concerning Baroness Blixen supplied by her publishers are definite enough; there just aren't many of them.\" And when the New York Times columnist Orville Prescott reported the publication of Winter's Tales, his piece, with its dramatic opening, read more as if he were writing about a witch than an author: \"In Denmark lives a baroness, a strange and grandly gifted woman who by some odd chance has strayed into the twentieth century from distant regions beyond time and space. . . . A serene and frosty genius, she is an artist of pr\u00e9cieux and impeccable talent who scorns the conventional, the direct and the clearly understandable. A writer, she forsook her native Danish tongue and has written her books in an English of such coldly glittering beauty she has hardly a living rival as a literary stylist. Her books are signed Isak Dinesen.\" Prescott proclaimed the arrival of another book from this enchantress as \"rather like a nightingale singing in a boiler factory, like a phoenix materializing in Union Square on May Day.\" He may as well have been referring to the author herself when he said that Winter's Tales was \"aloof and separate from every world that ever was.\"\n\nWinter's Tales\u2014which was Dinesen's own favorite of her books\u2014had a rather unlikely path to publication. This collection came out of Denmark in the midst of World War II, by secret diplomatic mails, to America. First Dinesen had traveled with the manuscript to Stockholm, where she visited the American embassy with an odd request: would someone there be willing to carry the manuscript on one of the planes headed for the United States? She was told that only political or other official papers could be transported. Then she went to the British embassy to make the same request. After she provided a few references in high places (including Winston Churchill), the favor was granted and the manuscript was sent to America on her behalf. Along with her stories, Dinesen had enclosed a note to her publisher, indicating that she was unable to communicate further: \"I can sign no contract and read no proofs,\" she wrote. \"I leave the fate of my book in your hands.\"\n\nShe would have no idea how things turned out until the war ended. \"I suddenly received dozens of charming letters from American soldiers and sailors all over the world,\" she said later. \"The book had been put into Armed Forces Editions\u2014little paper books to fit a soldier's pocket. I was very touched. They gave me two copies of it; I gave one to the King of Denmark and he was pleased to see that, after all, some voice had spoken from his silent country during that dark time.\"\n\nThe book was critically well received, though without making the same splash as Seven Gothic Tales. \"Many people, I feel sure, will read all eleven Winter's Tales as I did\u2014as fast as possible in order to have as soon as possible the pleasure of reading them for the second, the third, and, inevitably, the fourth time,\" William Maxwell wrote. Still, Dinesen was feeling bored, restless, and frustrated\u2014partly because of the monotony of daily life brought on by the war\u2014and suffered through periods of poor health, due to the syphilis she'd contracted years earlier. She was convinced that she would never produce a novel, but held out hope that she might.\n\nA Frenchman named Pierre Andr\u00e9zel would do it for her.\n\nHere was yet another persona for Dinesen, at the age of fifty-nine, during the German occupation of Denmark. She had created Andr\u00e9zel out of boredom, because she felt caged in as herself and wished to toy with a new disguise. The novel, The Angelic Avengers, was (as its title suggests) a thriller. Years later, Dinesen would laugh it off as \"my illegitimate child.\" She had done it, she insisted, simply to amuse herself. She asked her Danish publisher in Copenhagen for an advance, and for a stenographer to whom she could dictate the novel. Unsure of the story before she began, she wrote by improvising, dictating a little each day. \"It was very baffling to the poor stenographer,\" she said. It was also problematic: she would begin a session by announcing that a certain character would enter a room, only to be reminded by the stenographer, \"Oh dear, he can't! He died yesterday in Chapter Seventeen.\"\n\nWhen the book came out, Dinesen denied that she had anything to do with it (or with Andr\u00e9zel), despite a surge of rumors fueled by her own publisher. She said that even if she were the author, she would never admit it. When a friend wrote to say that he'd read the novel and found it \"a profound joke,\" she replied that she knew who the author was, but refused to reveal his identity until others discovered it for themselves (just as she knew, inevitably, they would).\n\nThe novel, which some readers interpreted as an allegory of the fall of Nazism, was published as Ways of Retribution in Copenhagen, in 1944. Although Dinesen refused to claim authorship, it wasn't long before she was unmasked, again by the pesky press. Dinesen was upset that journalists would not respect her desire to go incognito, a privilege lost to her long ago. The book became a best seller in Denmark (it was reviled by critics) and was published in the United States a few years later. The Book-of-the-Month Club chose it as half of the dual selection for January 1946 (along with Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, by Eric Hodgins). In its announcement, the BOMC remarked that The Angelic Avengers\u2014\"a fascinating story of mystery, adventure, and pure young love\"\u2014was written in wartime, and that \"Pierre Andr\u00e9zel\" was surely a pseudonym, but: \"Of whom? There were shrewd guesses, but nobody ever really knew. The author, whoever it is, continues to guard this anonymity. All that has been divulged by him (or her) is a plainly fictitious autobiographical note sent to the American publisher.\"\n\nDespite the author's contention that her latest novel was a bit of an embarrassment, something she had written to have \"a little fun,\" The Angelic Avengers marked another grand success, selling ninety thousand copies in America. One reviewer wrote that Dinesen was dealing with \"somewhat coarser material than in the best of her tales, but dealing with it in such a way that this novel will certainly widen the circle of her readers.\"\n\nAfter the publication of Winter's Tales and The Angelic Avengers, Dinesen didn't publish again for more than a decade. In the final years of her life came Last Tales (1958), which she dictated to her assistant and said was written \"with a leg and a half in the grave\"; two years later came Shadows on the Grass and Anecdotes of Destiny. Her health had steadily worsened, owing to the syphilis. There were periods in which she would rally, but once her decline had begun she was never quite the same. A frail, gaunt figure, weighing less than eighty pounds, Karen was in and out of the hospital. In the morning she took amphetamines, stimulants that caused her to talk compulsively, in an odd, almost trancelike state. At night she swallowed barbiturates to fall asleep. Because of the wasting away of her spine, she was sometimes unable to stand or walk. In those last years she led a fairly isolated life, and in periods of illness she was especially ill tempered, sarcastic, depressed, and paranoid. Her moods, she admitted, were \"coal black.\"\n\nDinesen was well aware that she could be as difficult as she was charming. \"As long as I live it will be bothersome for you to have to deal with me,\" she once told a dear friend. She was a leading contender for the Nobel Prize until her death but never won, a fact that proved an ongoing disappointment. Yet by the time she died, in 1962, she was an international celebrity and her books had been published in twelve languages. When Sydney Pollack's Academy Award\u2013winning film adaptation of Out of Africa was released in 1985, a new audience was drawn to Dinesen's work, and there was a resurgence of interest in the author as well. To the end, whether inhabiting Tanne, Karen, Isak, or any of her other selves, she believed absolutely that it was her right to assume a pseudonym, and that readers were obliged to respect it. Although her aliases had been promptly uncovered, a friend once wrote of his unknowable, inscrutable friend that \"Karen Blixen as a person was always pseudonymous in varying degrees, [and] that she always wanted to be suspected behind her texts but under no circumstances caught.\"\n\nIn her final months, she grew weaker still, her weight down to seventy pounds. She subsisted on glasses of vegetable and fruit juice, oysters, and biscuits\u2014the few things she could keep down. She could no longer stand without losing her balance, and admitted in a letter to a friend that a doctor had said \"that I have all the symptoms of a concentration camp prisoner, one of them being that my legs swell so that they look like thick poles and feel like cannon balls. This last thing is terribly unbecoming and for some reason very vulgar. Altogether I look like the most horrid old witch, a real Memento Mori.\" On September 7, 1962, she spent the evening listening to Brahms. That night she fell into a coma and died in her narrow wooden bed. She was buried on the family property under a beech tree.\n\nFive years before her death, an interviewer asked Dinesen whether she had led a happy life. \"Yes, and with all my heart,\" she replied. \"At times I have been so happy that it has struck me as overwhelming, almost as supernatural.\" She was asked what, exactly, had made her so happy. \"In a way I believe that the only true, sure happiness one can talk about here is the pure joy of living, a sort of triumph simply because one exists.\"\nShe found sexual satisfaction in picking her nose\n\nChapter 10\n\nSylvia Plath & VICTORIA LUCAS\n\nShe was a good girl who loved her mother. That, at least, was the benign impression Sylvia Plath gave the outside world\u2014a smiling fa\u00e7ade of conformity; feminine, pure of heart; accommodating, polite, bright-eyed, and pretty. She admired her mother, Aurelia, and was desperate for her approval. There were no secrets between them. Aurelia was nurturing and boundlessly devoted; Sylvia was her dutiful, adoring daughter. Such was the seamless porcelain exterior of their relationship, and both players were invested in protecting it. Meanwhile, writing in her journals, Plath recorded the brutal truth. \"I lay in my bed when I thought my mind was going blank forever and thought what a luxury it would be to kill her, to strangle her skinny veined throat which could never be big enough to protect me from the world,\" she wrote on December 12, 1958, following a session with her therapist. \"But I was too nice for murder. I tried to murder myself: to keep from being an embarrassment to the ones I loved and from living myself in a mindless hell.\" She resigned herself to the ineluctable role she'd been cast in: \"I could pass her on the street and not say a word, she depresses me so. But she is my mother.\" Sylvia was adept at dealing with Aurelia. Before speaking to her, it was as if Sylvia had trained herself to neatly tuck in her fury and put it to bed, permitting it to stir again only in her mother's absence.\n\nPlath's biography is familiar to just about every English literature major, reader of contemporary poetry, and suicidal teenager. She was toxic because she was so seductive, and seductive because she was so toxic. Her fame is immeasurable. Even many nonliterary types know that Sylvia Plath was the mercurial poet who gassed herself in an oven.\n\nShe was born at 2:10 p.m. on October 27, 1932, in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath, was a biology professor at Boston University, a well-regarded etymologist, and twenty-one years older than his wife. \"At the end of my first year of marriage,\" Aurelia later wrote, \"I realized that if I wanted a peaceful home\u2014and I did\u2014I would simply have to become more submissive, although it was not my nature to be so.\"\n\nBy the time she was three years old, Sylvia proved quite brilliant. Once, while her mother was baking in the kitchen, she played alone on the living room floor. She was unusually quiet. Otto went to check on her, and, as Aurelia recalled, both parents were stunned to see what their daughter had done. Using a set of mosaic tiles she'd received as a gift, she reproduced \"unmistakably the simplified outline of the Taj Mahal, the picture of which was woven into a mat in our bathroom.\"\n\nWhen Sylvia was eight years old, her father died of an embolism brought on by complications of diabetes. We know how well she came to terms with that loss; those who don't should read her notorious poem \"Daddy,\" which says it all.\n\nShe had a younger brother, Warren, born in 1935, with whom she felt competitive for her parents' affection, especially her mother's. Sylvia was always driven to be the best, and often was. The siblings' relationship did not become markedly closer until she attended Smith College (on a scholarship) and Warren was at Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard. Years later, their mother described the family with her typical fondness for nostalgia (steeped in denial). This false portrait presented a family close and uncomplicated in its affections: \"We three loved walking by the sea, in the woods, huddling close by the fire and talking, talking, talking\u2014or sharing a companionable silence,\" she said.\n\nPlath always knew that she stood apart from others. Because she was viewed as \"dangerously brainy,\" she felt it was in her interest to mask her sharp intellect and turbulent emotions. Not only did she embody the role of a perfect, straight-A student, but she was determined to become popular. She also pursued the approval of adults, both at school and at home. Other students might merely work hard, but she burned with determination. Before her first short story appeared in Seventeen (in the August 1950 issue), Plath had submitted forty-five pieces to the magazine. At eighteen, she berated herself in her journal: \"What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.\"\n\nOne of her early poems, written when she was in tenth grade, was called \"I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt.\" A teacher who read it expressed amazement that \"one so young could have experienced anything so devastating.\" In this instance, the source of suffering was her unwitting grandmother, who had accidentally smudged one of Plath's pastel drawings. The final stanza read,\n\n(How frail the human heart must be\u2014\n\na mirrored pool of thought. So deep\n\nand tremulous an instrument\n\nof glass that it can either sing,\n\nor weep.)\n\nSuch intensity of feeling would never leave her, despite her efforts to conceal and tame it. Aurelia added to this unbearable pressure by making Sylvia feel responsible for the well-being of both mother and daughter. Yet Aurelia might also be credited for Sylvia's supreme sense of confidence, her innate belief that she was \"special\" and destined for greatness. \"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,\" Plath once wrote, but when it did creep in, she pounded it like a Whac-A-Mole until her achieving self could surface once again. Then all was right with the world. And she was at least able to find consolation in what she once described as the \"minute joys\" in life: she admitted in her journals that she loved the \"illicit sensuous delight\" she felt when picking her nose. \"God what a sexual satisfaction!\" she wrote.\n\nEarly on, Plath was a baffling mix: highly empathetic but also self-obsessed. She absorbed everything and everyone around her. By the age of seventeen, she was investigating the bounds of the self and how to manage her troubled psyche. \"Sometimes I try to put myself in another's place, and I am frightened when I find I am succeeding,\" she wrote in her diary in 1949. \"How awful to be anyone but I. I have a terrible egotism. I love my flesh, my face, my limbs with an overwhelming devotion. . . . I want, I think, to be omniscient. . . . I think I would like to call myself 'The girl who wanted to be God.' Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be? . . . But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I\u2014I am powerful, but to what extent? I am I.\"\n\nThe struggle between selves would torment her for her entire life\u2014in poems such as \"An Appearance,\" \"Tulips,\" and \"In Plaster,\" among others\u2014and it served as a frequent subject of her journals. At Smith, she wrote a long paper on the theme of double personality in Dostoevsky's novels. Even when she was relatively happy, or at least emotionally stable, her inner turmoil never abated. It must have been exhausting. Often her fixation on duality and falseness reached a crisis pitch. \"Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it,\" she wrote in a lacerating note to herself in a 1953 diary, referring to a recent photograph. \"It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again.\" That year, she attempted to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills.\n\nDespite her recurring depressions, treatments with electroshock therapy, and flirtations with suicide, she was not entirely obsessed with death. As much as she was preoccupied with it, she was also seeking to end her ego self, with its oppressive, needy demands that were impossible to fulfill. Perhaps it wasn't her whole life she wanted to stop, but a \"shameful\" part of herself. Over and over she expressed frustration at not measuring up to other poets and for feeling stalled in her work. \"I, sitting here as if brainless wanting both a baby and a career,\" she wrote in her journal in 1959. \"What inner decision, what inner murder or prison-break must I commit if I want to speak from my true deep voice in writing . . . and not feel this jam up of feeling behind a glass-dam fancy-fa\u00e7ade of numb dumb wordage.\"\n\nWhat she seems to have craved most, in fact, was a chance at rebirth, at resurrection. Even though she was sometimes able to produce (or recover) what she deemed an \"authentic\" self, the success did not prove sustainable. Plath's obsession with split selves\u2014the pretty, superficial good girl who does everything easily and well, versus the raging, violent demon lurking within\u2014left her perpetually confused: Which one was real? Which one should be shed? Which one should she kill off? In the end, the demon won.\n\nIn 1961 Plath won the Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Fellowship, a writing grant of $8,000. She had by then graduated summa cum laude from Smith, published poems and stories, and won a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge University. There she met the dashing British poet Ted Hughes, whom she married on June 16, 1956. (That date is Bloomsday.) After winning the Saxton, she was especially excited because she had applied previously, for poetry, but had been rejected. This time, she'd gone for it with a different project in mind. Although she had in fact completed her first novel, The Bell Jar, and even signed a contract for the manuscript with the British publisher Heinemann, this award would give her time to make revisions before the book's publication and provide monthly living expenses as well. Money was extremely tight. That fall, Plath wrote one of her usual cheery letters home to her mother, assuring her that all was well. (Many of Plath's missives to Aurelia opened with the effusive \"Dearest-Mother-whom-I-love-better-than-anybody.\")\n\nShe mentioned that the New Yorker had just accepted her poem \"Blackberrying\" and shared the news about the Saxton. \"Well, I applied for a grant for prose this time and got the amount I asked for,\" she wrote. \"They pay in quarterly installments as parts of a project are completed, so I should get my first lot in a week or two!\" She continued: \"Life in town has been more and more fun.\" The letter began and ended with her standard loving greeting (\"Dear Mother\") and sign-off (\"x x x Sivvy\").\n\nLess than two weeks later, she sent Aurelia another chatty letter, referring again to the grant but neglecting to explain what, exactly, her writing project was about. \"I finished a batch of stuff this last year, tied it up in four parcels and have it ready to report on bit by bit as required,\" she reported vaguely. \"Thus I don't need to write a word if I don't feel like it. Of course, the grant is supposed to help you do writing and is not for writing you've done, but I will do what I can and feel like doing, while my conscience is perfectly free in knowing my assignments are done.\"\n\nWhat \"Sivvy\" failed to mention was that the \"batch of stuff\" was an autobiographical novel that would have killed her mother, or at least broken her heart. The narrator's voice, as in Plath's poetry, was icy and lucid. It was about the \"crackup\" of a well-behaved young woman named Esther Greenwood, described in the flap copy of the 1971 Harper & Row hardcover edition as \"brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful\u2014but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time.\" The story was also, to put it mildly, an exploration of Esther's strained relationship with her mother, and how her repressed anguish leads to madness. There was only one way this devastating novel could be published by a \"good girl\" such as Plath, and that was to hide behind a pseudonym. She chose \"Victoria Lucas\": \"Victoria\" was a favorite cousin of Ted Hughes; \"Lucas\" was the name of Hughes's good friend Lucas Myers. Heinemann published The Bell Jar in London on January 14, 1963. Twenty-eight days later she killed herself.\n\nPlath lived long enough to read the reviews of her novel, and they didn't please her. The reception in Britain was tepid and condescending. \"There are criticisms of America that the neurotic can make as well as anyone, perhaps better, and Miss Lucas makes them brilliantly,\" Laurence Lerner wrote in the Listener. A critic in the Times Literary Supplement wrote that \"if [Lucas] can learn to shape as well as she imagines, she may write an extremely good book.\" Worse, Plath had hoped for publication in the United States, too, but that didn't seem forthcoming. Just after Christmas, she'd received a jarring letter of rejection from Alfred A. Knopf in New York, which had published her poetry book The Colossus the year before. A second rejection came from Harper & Row (\"The experience remains a private one,\" the editor wrote of the narrative, which seemed more a \"case history\" than a novel.) In the letter from Knopf, the editor expressed her regret: \"We didn't feel that you had managed to use your materials successfully in a novelistic way. . . . Up to the point of her breakdown the attitude of your young girl had seemed a perfectly normal combination of brashness and disgust with the world, but I was not at all prepared as a reader to accept the extent of her illness.\" The same could be said of Plath. No one\u2014not even those closest to her, who were well acquainted with her despair\u2014could fully comprehend its sheer velocity, its manic and unstoppable force.\n\nThe 1989 Plath biography Bitter Fame, by the poet and critic Anne Stevenson, opens with an apt epigraph from Dostoevsky's The Devils:\n\nThere was a tremendous power in the burning look of her dark eyes; she came \"conquering and to conquer.\" She seemed proud and occasionally even arrogant; I don't know if she ever succeeded in being kind, but I do know that she badly wanted to and that she went through agonies to force herself to be a little kind. There were, of course, many fine impulses and a most commendable initiative in her nature; but everything in her seemed to be perpetually seeking its equilibrium and not finding it; everything was in chaos, in a state of agitation and restlessness. Perhaps the demands she made upon herself were too severe and she was unable to find in herself the necessary strength to satisfy them.\n\nPlath, volatile to say the least, was once described by the poet W. S. Merwin as \"a cat suspended over water.\" Like many others who knew her, he found her a \"determined, insistent, obsessive person who snapped if things did not go her way, and flew into sudden rages.\"\n\nThe manuscript of The Bell Jar is another interesting manifestation of Plath's fragmented selves. Here she had produced the most shocking work of her young life, filled with harrowing insights into her own psyche\u2014yet she typed these words on dainty pink Smith College memo paper. \"Got a queer and most overpowering urge today to write, or typewrite, my whole novel on the pink, stiff, lovely-textured Smith memorandum pads of 100 sheets each,\" Plath wrote in her journal on March 3, 1958, while she was back at Smith, working as an instructor in the English department. She proudly noted that she'd helped herself to plenty of school stationery: \"Bought a rose bulb for the bedroom light today & have already robbed enough notebooks from the supply closet for one & 1\/2 drafts of a 350 page novel.\"\n\nWell before the novel came out, the phrase \"bell jar\" had popped up in Plath's writings. At Smith, she described feeling overwhelmed by her own mind, by the demands made on her, socially and otherwise\u2014and admitted that she found things especially hard without a prescribed routine to follow. She could never give herself a break:\n\nWorking, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing\u2014singing, laughing, learning. The responsibility, the awful responsibility . . . is rather overwhelming when there is nothing, no one, to insert an exact routine into the large unfenced acres of time\u2014which is so easy to let drift by in soporific idling and luxurious relaxing. It is like lifting a bell jar off a securely clockworklike functioning community, and seeing all the little busy people stop, gasp, blow up, and float in the inrush (or rather outrush) of the rarefied scheduled atmosphere\u2014poor little frightened people, flailing impotent arms in the aimless air. . . . What to do? Where to turn?\n\nElsewhere, she wrote that \"it's quite amazing how I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar.\" And a 1959 journal entry recorded feelings of frustration and gloom: \"The day is an accusation. Pure and clear and ready to be the day of creation, snow white on all the roof tops and the sun on it and the sky a high clear blue bell jar.\"\n\nThe few years leading up to the publication of The Bell Jar had brimmed with creativity. That period provided an argosy of material, but it may have ultimately contributed to her death. In the spring of 1959, she was writing the searing poems of The Colossus. Those took a toll, and the book's themes would inform her novel as well. She also had an appendectomy, and in 1960 she gave birth to a daughter, Frieda. After suffering a miscarriage, she became pregnant again, and in January 1962 gave birth to her son, Nicholas. (He would have his own lifelong battle with depression; he died in 2009 by hanging himself.) By the fall, her marriage had fallen apart: Hughes left her for another woman. This time, recovery was not possible.\n\nThe following January, as an overwhelmed, exhausted, and isolated young mother, Plath numbly witnessed her novel's debut. She was living in a dreary London flat (where W. B. Yeats had once lived) at 23 Fitzroy Road in St. Pancras. There was no telephone and electricity was intermittent. That winter in England, following a \"bone cold\" autumn, was bleak, snowy, and icy, one of the worst on record. Plath and her children had the flu, and she was terribly anxious about money.\n\nAt night, she could not fall asleep without medication. She was waking at four o'clock each morning to crank out the poems of Ariel. (Several drafts had already been handwritten on the reverse of the \"lovely-textured\" pink Smith College stationery on which she had typed her Bell Jar manuscript.) On February 11, 1963, as her children lay sleeping, she sealed off the door to their bedroom with wet towels and opened their window wide. She left them milk and bread. Then she put her head inside that infamous gas oven and ended it all.\n\nAs she'd immersed herself in the early stages of her novel, Plath had been understandably secretive with her mother about writing The Bell Jar, but she had openly shared her fiction-writing ambition with a friend: \"I have been wanting to do this for ten years but had a terrible block about Writing a Novel. Then suddenly . . . the dykes broke and I stayed awake all night seized by fearsome excitement, saw how it should be done, started the next day & go every morning to my borrowed study as to an office & belt out more of it.\" This was a real breakthrough, considering Plath constantly berated herself for not having accomplished enough. \"Prose writing has become a phobia to me: my mind shuts & I clench,\" she wrote in her diary in 1957. \"I can't, or won't, come clear with a plot.\" Her self-flagellation is present throughout her journals. \"Why can't I throw myself into writing?\" she wrote. \"Because I am afraid of failure before I begin.\"\n\nIn an entry dated December 12, 1958, Plath wondered, \"Why don't I write a novel?\" Following that question, she'd gone back a mere three years later and giddily amended the entry: \"I have! August 22, 1961: THE BELL JAR.\"\n\nTo describe the writing of it as cathartic is an understatement. Plath called The Bell Jar \"an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past.\" She had found a safe alter ego in Esther Greenwood\u2014rendered even more secure by the mask of Victoria Lucas\u2014through which the author could exorcise, among other things, her electroshock therapy, mental breakdowns, repressed sexual desires, and hatred of her mother. In one scene, Esther expresses revulsion at watching her mother awaken: \"My mother turned from a foggy log into a slumbering, middle-aged woman, her mouth slightly open and a snore raveling from her throat. The piggish noise irritated me, and for a while it seemed to me that the only way to stop it would be to take the column of skin and sinew from which it rose and twist it to silence between my hands.\" With such cruelly drawn characters, Plath could malign anyone who'd ever caused her pain or failed to give her what she craved\u2014and her mother above all would be punished.\n\nYears after Plath's death, Aurelia refused to accept her daughter's dark feelings toward her, attributing the lapse to mental anguish. \"My mother was always my best friend and I'd hoped that my daughter would be too,\" she said. \"She became ashamed of our friendship during her breakdown. I don't want to accuse anybody. I don't want to blame anybody, but . . . somebody had to be the scapegoat.\"\n\nThe American edition of The Bell Jar wasn't published until April 1971, and it would remain on the New York Times best-seller list for six months (fueled no doubt by the author's posthumous fame). Finally, the novel also achieved critical acclaim. When the paperback was issued a year later, three editions sold out within a month.\n\nAurelia had done her best to stop publication. The year before, she implored Plath's editor at Harper & Row to reconsider. \"I realize that no explanation of the why of personal suffering that this publication here will create in the lives of several people nor any appeal on any other grounds is going to stop this, so I shall waste neither my time nor yours in pointing out the inevitable repercussions,\" she wrote. Nearly every character in The Bell Jar, she claimed, \"represents someone\u2014often in caricature\u2014whom Sylvia loved; each person had given freely of time, thought, affection, and, in one case, financial help during those agonizing six months of breakdown in 1953 [the year in which the novel is set] . . . as this book stands by itself, it represents the basest ingratitude.\"\n\nTo Aurelia, the novel also gave the world a gross distortion of her daughter's supposedly true self, undone by mental illness. \"Sylvia never wanted it to be published here,\" she told a New York Times reporter in a 1979 interview, which took place in the white frame suburban house where Sylvia and Warren grew up. \"She'd had two babies and an appendectomy and needed money. 'I have to write a best-seller,' she told me. 'I want to write a potboiler. What would you suggest for a subject that wouldn't fail?' I suggested a child-parent conflict. I little knew what shape it would take.\" As usual, Aurelia made everything all about her, and she came across as self-absorbed and self-pitying. She spoke repeatedly of her vulnerability and painted herself as a victim. \"When The Bell Jar came out in 1971, it became a very hard time for me,\" she said. \"It was accepted as an autobiography, which it wasn't. Sylvia manipulated it very skillfully. She invented, fused, imagined. She made an artistic whole that read as truth itself.\"\n\nJust a few days before Plath died, she had written optimistic letters about her future\u2014including horseback riding again, an activity she loved. When she committed suicide, the first rumor in the United States was that she had died of pneumonia, a rather sunnier cause of death that Aurelia Plath, always in willful denial of monstrous truths, wanted to believe. (The official cause was deliberate carbon monoxide poisoning.) Ted Hughes handled the grim task of identifying his wife's body and confirming her name, age, occupation, and address. Their children did not attend the funeral. Plath's tombstone inscription read, EVEN AMIDST FIERCE FLAMES THE GOLDEN LOTUS CAN BE PLANTED.\n\nSixteen years after her daughter's death, Aurelia continued to reckon with the grotesque portrait of herself that was presented in The Bell Jar. \"Can you imagine what it is like to relive it over and over and over again?\" she said of her daughter's crippling legacy. \"It is only because I've been compelled to. It is because I have the name Plath. Anytime I meet anyone, the same thing happens. It happens to my daughter-in-law, their two girls, my son, of course. I was on Nantucket recently having a joyous time with a dear friend. She introduced me at a party and the other woman said: 'Oh . . . you are, aren't you?' I just can't escape it. The warm greeting until the name strikes them and they think of The Bell Jar, and of Mrs. Greenwood, the uncaring mother. 'Oh so you are Mrs. Greenwood,' they say.\"\n\nAurelia once wrote to the scholar and poet Judith Kroll, who had published the first full-scale critical study of Plath's poetry, Chapters in a Mythology. It was evident in her letter that Aurelia's trauma would never heal. (She died at the age of eighty-seven in 1994.) \"[Sylvia] made use of everything and often transmuted gold into lead,\" she explained. \"These emotions in another person would dissipate with time, but with Sylvia they were written at the moment of intensity to become ineradicable as an epitaph engraved on a tombstone. . . . She has posthumous fame\u2014at what price to her children, to those of us who loved her so dearly and whom she has trapped into her past. The love remains\u2014and the hurt. There is no escape for us.\"\nHe was a stinky drunkard with brown teeth and dirty hair\n\nChapter 11\n\nHenry Green & HENRY YORKE\n\nHe's the best writer you've never heard of. If you have read any or all of Henry Green's nine novels, you know that you're in on a too-well-kept secret. You probably wish that everyone with fine literary taste (such as yours) could experience the intense pleasure of reading him for the first time. That's no easy feat, since most of his books are out of print and the few that aren't are nearly impossible to find. Quiz a bunch of people who consider themselves well read, and a surprising number will admit that they have never read Green's books and are not even familiar with his name. Depending on your temperament, this response will leave you feeling disappointed or smug.\n\nHenry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke, an Englishman born on October 29, 1905, in Gloucestershire. He grew up in a fourteenth-century manor, called Forthampton Court, on a 2,500-acre estate. Henry came from fancy stock: his handsome, athletic father, Vincent, had attended Eton and Cambridge and was a former archaeologist and explorer turned businessman; his mother, Maud, was the daughter of a baron who owned one of the grandest houses in England, a man who was among the richest British aristocrats of his era. One of her uncles was prime minister. Her great-grandfather was an earl and a well-known patron of the arts, one of the first supporters of J. M. W. Turner. Although Maud was an affectionate mother to her three sons\u2014Henry and his older brothers Philip, who would die at sixteen of lymphatic leukemia, and Gerald\u2014she preferred spending time with her beloved dogs and horses and indulging in her great love, reading. She was born with a curvature of the spine, yet had been quite athletic in her youth\u2014shooting pheasants, hunting avidly, and breeding racehorses. (She'd continued riding horses well into the sixth month of her pregnancy with Henry; he later insisted this had undermined his health and been the source of his neurotic temperament.) Maud, who spoke in a clipped military diction, was a witty, intelligent woman who loved to gossip. She was an eccentric character, said to have instructed her gardener to bowl turnips down a grass slope so that she could shoot at them. Maud almost always wore black or navy blue, and because she was a chain-smoker (of Turkish cigarettes), she was left in old age with only one brown-stained tooth. She refused to wear dentures.\n\nIn childhood, the Yorke boys were left largely in the care of nannies and servants who taught them proper manners and reined them in when necessary. Their father was an aloof presence in their lives. \"We were well brought up and saw our parents twice a day,\" Henry later wrote, \"that is to say my father worked in London and we only saw him at weekends.\" When he was there, Vincent was taciturn to the point of hostility. Unlike Maud, he lacked a sense of humor, and he envied her social ease. Most often, Vincent behaved toward his family like an irascible bully. Affection played no part in his emotional repertoire.\n\nPhilip and Gerald appeared somewhat more in the mold of their father\u2014brash, confident, excellent athletes and hunters\u2014but their younger brother was timid, awkward, lonely, and plump. He had no knack for academics or sports. (Henry described gym class as \"harrowing.\") He took his family's wealth for granted, yet he also felt estranged from it, identifying with servants, butlers, and working-class men far more than with his fellow aristocrats, whose company he found boring. Opulence was lost on him, which partly explained why Vincent found Henry such an awful disappointment.\n\nNicknamed \"Goosy\" at home, Henry was educated at Eton and Oxford but was not able to match the impressive academic records of his brothers. His time at Eton was unremarkable. Philip in particular had been a star there, and after his death in 1917, Henry felt even more inadequate. \"I needed praise badly,\" he wrote later, \"and if I had had it might be even less of a person now, but from the lack of it at that time found everything pointless, so blind that no effort at work or play ever seemed worth while.\"\n\nBut he and some friends did form a Society of Arts, a creative outlet that gave him a sense of belonging, and he began writing short stories. \"This point is a watershed, after this there was no turning back,\" he later wrote. \"I determined to be a writer . . . and a nom de plume was chosen, of all names Henry Michaels.\" He published a few pieces in College Days, the school literary magazine, an accomplishment his parents regarded with suspicion and disdain. One of his stories, \"Bees,\" which appeared in 1923, follows a clergyman from \"a slum parish in Liverpool\" who suffers from malaise in a \"sleepy, unenthusiastic\" village. Though brief and spare, it is well written and reveals a certain psychological acuity; one wouldn't necessarily guess that the story had sprung from the mind of an eighteen-year-old:\n\nAll day long he thought of how he was to stand the blow of his daughter's death, and, although it was eighteen months since she had died, he was still composing answers in his mind to the letters of condolence that never came. In the busy buzz of his bees he detected the sympathy he could not discover in the world outside. His wife, whom he always regarded as a drone, could do nothing with him. He was sure that every man's hand was against him. He detected an insult in the butcher boy's whistling as he delivered the meat. So he turned to his bees, who always sympathized, and were so practical, and who were not useless like his family.\n\nWithout telling Henry, his mother sent his stories to a friend, the Scottish writer John Buchan (most famous for The Thirty-nine Steps, adapted into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock). Buchan offered encouraging words about Henry's work. \"Whatever your boy's stories are, they are not a waste of time,\" he wrote. \"They are curious stories, rather like the kind of thing that Hans Christian Andersen wrote in his youth. They show great powers of observation, great sensitivity to scenery, and the nuances of temperament, and a strangely mature sense of the irony of life.\" He added, however, that one ought to use writing as a hobby rather than a profession, and that Henry \"seems to have literary gifts of a high order, but he wants the discipline of more normal subjects. It would be exceedingly good for him to try his hand at concrete objective narrative for a change.\" Concreteness, as readers would later discover, was perhaps the quality most absent in Henry's writing\u2014and perhaps most abhorred by him.\n\nHenry became close to one of his Eton classmates, Anthony Powell, who would become an author as well. The boys shared their enjoyment of storytelling and even began (but abandoned) collaborating on a novel. Years later, Powell recalled his friend as \"always interested in words, repeating unfamiliar ones (e.g., hirsute) over to himself, laughing at them, discussing them.\" Another close friend, Robert Byron, admired Henry's peculiarity and shared his irreverent humor. Byron later said of him, \"He can talk like no other person I've ever met.\"\n\nIn 1924, Henry began writing a draft of what would become his impressionistic first novel, Blindness, published when he was just twenty-one. The original typescript was signed \"Henry Browne.\" Eventually he would settle on the bland pseudonym \"Henry Green\"\u2014never publishing a book under his real name. That choice may have had to do with his aristocratic upbringing, which frowned upon such a self-centered vocation. His friend and classmate Harold Acton did not approve of his pseudonym. \"There are Greens of so many shades writing novels that one wishes he had selected another colour,\" he said. (Henry \"Green\" later befriended the novelist Graham Greene, whose full name was Henry Graham Greene.) Henry was forever caught between the desire for revelation, for confession, and the reticence expected of someone of his class. He wanted to remain enigmatic and private while at the same time fully exploring human emotion and experience. Anonymity seemed to offer a comfortable compromise. \"Names distract, nicknames are too easy, and if leaving both out . . . makes a book look blind then that to my mind is no disadvantage.\" Perhaps he meant that in making a book \"blind,\" cloaking it cleverly enough, more distance would be placed between reader and writer; keeping the reader slightly \"in the dark\" was not a bad idea. The author himself could not be examined too closely\u2014only his work. Res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself.\n\nAt Oxford, Henry's tutor was C. S. Lewis, who had no respect for Henry's literary interests, especially for his appreciation of \"experimental\" writers. Henry regarded Lewis as \"rude and incompetent.\" Studying was not Henry's priority, anyway. He estimated that he put in no more than six hours of academic work a week. Most nights he was drunk. He played billiards, stayed up late, and slept until around noon. His first meal of the day, accompanied by a brandy and soda, was always fried sole and sausages because \"I thought that by not varying my food I was giving my stomach less to do.\" He had another routine: going to the cinema every afternoon, sometimes twice a day, and returning to his room to write; he admitted that \"it became the last foothold to write just one more page a day, the last line of defence because I was miserable in fits and starts and felt insane.\"\n\nHenry's debut novel, which he characterized three decades later as \"mostly autobiographical,\" follows the callow sixteen-year-old John Haye (\"It sounds an awful thing to write, but I seldom meet anyone who interests me more than myself,\" he admits). Like the author, John enjoys reading Carlyle, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. On his way home from a repressive boarding school called Noat (a thinly disguised Eton, which was \"Note\" in earlier drafts), John is blinded. The account of his accident is clinical: a boy throws a rock at a train; the window smashes; John, sitting behind it, loses his sight. His stepmother (who is obviously Maud) spends her time hunting and horseback riding. She tries to marry him off to any girl of the \"right\" social class, so she won't have to spend the rest of her life caring for him. The story is told from multiple points of view, including those of a young girl and a drunken clergyman. Henry dedicated the novel to his mother.\n\nA review appeared in the New York Times on November 14, 1926, shortly after the book was released in the United States: \"It is reported to be the first novel of a very young man. In spite of certain defects of workmanship, of prolonged episodes, meandering dialogue and confusion of method, it does convey a sense of character under stress. It is a creditable performance.\"\n\nBlindness doesn't have much of a plot\u2014Green, like modernists such as Woolf and Joyce, was far more interested in the interior life, memory, emotion, language, and metaphor than in creating tidy, linear, plot-driven stories. \"I write for about six people (including myself) whom I respect and for no one else,\" he once said. In Green's work, there was no authorial guidance as to how a reader should \"feel\" about any character. Ambivalence reigned. Henry was already an eccentric and sophisticated thinker. He understood that less is more, and that sometimes, nothing is even more.\n\nThe gaps and flaws in Blindness, including its too-abrupt ending, could be attributed to the immaturity of the author (of which he was well aware), yet even in later novels he favored an oblique approach that did not fill in many narrative blanks. Of his nine novels, not one is like another. Motifs change from book to book. Likable characters are not considered crucial. There are no feel-good endings. And no character learns a moral lesson or is transformed by experience. Life simply goes on. In a sense, you might say that Green was the Jerry Seinfeld of his day. Calling to mind the comedian's approach to humor, with his \"show about nothing,\" Green believed that \"the novel should be concerned with the everyday mishaps of ordinary life,\" as he told an interviewer in 1950. (John Updike once proclaimed Green \"a saint of the mundane.\")\n\nWith its knotty diction and odd syntax, his fiction, he knew, was not for everyone. Fortunately, Henry found a sympathetic ear in Nevill Coghill, an Irish don at Oxford who became a close friend; Coghill believed absolutely in the young writer's talent and proved a steady source of support and advice. In a 1925 letter, written while on holiday, Coghill was filled with regret as he reported that his brother and a cousin had picked up Henry's manuscript and were not so taken with it: \"Alas they think it difficult, depressing, ungrammatical (!!!) carelessly written!!! This so infuriates me that I shout at them, telling them it is a work of undying genius and that they are too crapulous to understand it. To which they reply 'Ah, but I like a good story.' Poor Henry. I am so sorry. But I am sure that your way of writing is a very good way and is right for you.\"\n\nAt the time, Henry may not have been aware of Emily Dickinson's \"Tell all the truth but tell it slant\u2014 \/ Success in Circuit lies,\" but he certainly practiced it in his writing. He was keenly interested in playing with different stylistic techniques, and in applying Chekhov's notion of significant irrelevance, in which details were teased out through indirect means. \"Irrelevancy means so much,\" he wrote to Coghill, \"it shows you what a person is & how he thinks, & conveys atmosphere in a way that is inconceivable if you have not seen Tchekov's Cherry Orchard.\" He finished his novel on May 30, 1925, a few months before his twentieth birthday, noting the precise time and date of completion on the last page of the manuscript. He promptly (and rather boldly) sent it to Chatto & Windus, the distinguished London publishing house of authors such as Wilkie Collins and Samuel Beckett, and the first English translation of Marcel Proust's novel \u00c0 la recherche du temps perdu. (Henry was a great admirer of Proust.) The editor who received Henry's novel was not impressed. \"I do not make much of this MS., which depressed me at the start (by the boringness of the schoolboy mind) and went on depressing me (by the boringness of everything) to the end,\" he wrote in a memo. \"Nevertheless,\" he added, \"the author should not be lightly condemned, because he evidently is very fluent, and his talent may develop.\"\n\nHe mailed the manuscript back to the author with a standard letter of rejection. Henry was furious and told Coghill that Chatto was a \"despicable firm.\" His friend suggested that he send his work to the publisher J. M. Dent, who accepted it after requesting some revisions. An editor there asked Henry, \"How did you ever come to write anything so good?\"\n\nDent was known for creating the Everyman's Library\u2014handsome limited editions of classic literature, offered at an affordable price (one shilling). Because Henry was still legally a minor when his book was accepted, his father had to sign his publishing contract. Gerald Yorke later described their parents' response to the novel as \"not quite horror but complete misunderstanding and great doubt.\" They did nothing to assuage Henry's anxiety about disappointing or upsetting them. One of Henry's aunts interpreted Blindness as a cry \"for sympathy which he doesn't find at home.\"\n\nAt Oxford in the fall of 1926, Henry was very lonely. Many of his friends had graduated and moved on, and he fell into a depression. He wanted out. \"Everyone is rich and vapid or poor and vapid & one & all talk about Oxford day & night,\" he complained in a letter to his mother. He wanted to go to work \"in a factory with my wet podgy hands\" for the Birmingham branch of H. Pontifex and Sons, his family's coppersmithing company. Vincent Yorke had several enterprises, including positions in banking, insurance, and railways\u2014all secured for him by his father, John Reginald Yorke, who had purchased Pontifex for him as well. The company, which was then failing, had once made plate engravings for William Blake. Vincent proved a savvy businessman, making Pontifex profitable again by moving the factory to a cheaper site (Birmingham instead of London) and by expanding the manufacturing business into bathroom plumbing and brewery equipment.\n\nHenry decided that he was finished with Oxford's academic pressures. He resented being forced to spend his time studying, he said, \"when I have my own work always running in my mind.\" In December, shortly after the publication of Blindness, he dropped out of Oxford without earning a degree. His friend Evelyn Waugh, at work on his own first novel at the time, was enthusiastic about Henry's literary debut: \"It is extraordinary to me that anyone of our generation could have written so fine a book.\"\n\nHenry was eager to trade his stuffy university environment for the factory floor, partly because he sensed that the rhythms and sounds of proletarian idioms could provide material for his next novel, and partly because he longed to experience what he called \"the deep, the real satisfaction\" of manual labor. (His interest in the working class was not unlike that of his contemporary, and fellow pseudonymous writer, George Orwell.)\n\nIn January 1927, Henry reported at the Midlands iron foundry, where he would quickly build up his muscles moving heavy machinery for eight hours a day, earning twenty shillings a week. Although coworkers assumed that he'd been assigned the job as some kind of shameful punishment, it was at Henry's insistence that he started as an apprentice, working his way up from the bottom and living in a Victorian boardinghouse.\n\nThe setting was as unrefined as he'd hoped for, and he toiled away at Pontifex quite happily for the next two years. \"I had been an idler who had at last found something to occupy his mind and hands,\" he later wrote. A hundred and fifty people worked at the factory that he would one day control. There was no lack of colorful characters to keep him entertained. Henry proudly reported to his mother that he had met a man who \"bites the heads off mice to kill them when the trap hasn't.\" Despite working harder physically than he ever had, he still found time to indulge in one of his favorite hobbies\u2014his addiction to the cinema\u2014and to write a few hours each day. \"Going home it would be dark again and I would be tired,\" he later recalled. \"But after no more than thirty minutes in a chair I was ready for hard work again.\" His moviegoing and his writing were not unrelated; Henry aptly described the draft of what would become his second novel, Living, as \"a kind of very disconnected film.\" The novel, tentatively titled \"Works,\" was set in a Birmingham iron foundry and captured the monotony of the workers' lives. Written with extraordinary sensitivity and empathy, without a trace of condescension or sentimentality, it was a reflection of the author's lifelong affection for the working class, and of his ambivalence about his own pedigree. He once told his mother bluntly that she should accept the fact that \"by nature I am not the sort of person who dresses for dinner every night, in fact I am not what is generally known as a gentleman.\"\n\nHe led two lives. By day, he was Henry Yorke, laborer and aspiring businessman; in his private writing time, he was Henry Green. He preferred that the two personae would never meet. For one thing, as he later explained, \"I write books but I am not proud of this any more than anyone is of their nails growing.\" And for another, as he explained in a 1958 Paris Review interview with a close friend, the American novelist Terry Southern, \"I didn't want my business associates to know I wrote novels.\" The role of artist seemed pretentious and ill fitting. While contemporaries such as George Orwell (Eric Blair) were engaged in polemical writings and political activism, Green was quietly crafting his strange fiction. He shied away from publicity, avoided being photographed in public, and had deliberately chosen a pseudonym that was unremarkable and did not call attention to itself. He explained that \"if you are trying to write something which has a life of its own, which is alive, of course the author must keep completely out of the picture.\" As Sebastian Yorke (Henry's son) later noted, Henry's own father regarded his son's books \"with silent contempt because they did not make money,\" which only reinforced the notion that Henry Yorke ought to remain as invisible as he could.\n\nIn 1949, upon the U.S. publication of Green's fifth novel, an American critic asked:\n\nWho is Henry Green? Well, there's an elaborately built-up mystery about that, though you could probably soon find out in England. Particularly if you could inspect British income-tax records. He is [according to his publisher] a fellow with a passion for anonymity, a Birmingham manufacturer, an Etonian, an Oxonian, possibly a Bolognian, too, no less. . . . It may be that he is really Graham Greene. It may be that he is Ivy Compton-Burnett's great-grandfather.\n\nBy 1958, most of his colleagues at Pontifex, at least, were well aware that Henry Yorke had an alter ego called Henry Green, and he admitted in his interview with Southern that the revelation had affected his relationships with them. \"Yes, yes, oh yes\u2014why, some years ago a group at our Birmingham works put in a penny each and bought a copy of a book of mine, Living,\" he said. \"And as I was going round the iron foundry one day, a loam molder said to me, 'I read your book, Henry.' 'And did you like it?\" I asked, rightly apprehensive. He replied, 'I didn't think much of it, Henry.'\"\n\nIt was no wonder: aside from the brilliant music of common speech, which Green captured beautifully (\"I got you fixed in me mind's eye tucking away lamb with mint sauce\"), his prose style was scrambled and demanding. There were sentences with loose grammar, absent nouns, cryptic references, and articles dropped at will: \"Hundreds went along road outside, men and girls.\" \"Range made kitchen hotter.\" \"Baby howled till mother lifted him from bed to breast and sighed most parts asleep in darkness.\"\n\nAlthough Green's admirers placed him alongside authors such as Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, Kafka, and Sterne, he claimed no influences himself. \"As far as I'm consciously aware,\" he said, \"I forget everything I read at once, including my own stuff.\" He explained, too, that \"Joyce and Kafka have said the last word on each of the two forms they developed. There's no one to follow them. They're like cats which have licked the plate clean. You've got to dream up another dish if you're to be a writer.\"\n\nBy the time Green was twenty-four, he'd already written two boldly experimental novels. Yet in the memoir\u2014if you can call it that\u2014that he published in 1940, Pack My Bag, he hardly mentions the publication of either book, or his third novel, Party Going, which came out the year before; or any sense of pride in his accomplishments. He names almost none of the people in his life, not even his wife and young son; he does not reveal that the main schools he attended were Eton and Oxford; and in no way does he describe the effect that Philip's death had on him. He entirely skips the decade of his life prior to 1938 (his story stops when he is twenty-four). And he does not even bother to explain why Henry Yorke had become Henry Green. The book's subtitle, \"A Self-Portrait,\" seems a kind of joke. It is a work of great originality, but one in which the author, as usual, omits the most basic details and presents the rest mostly through a blurry viewfinder. (Kingsley Amis said of the book that it seemed \"the author was drunk whilst writing it.\") There is a willful perversity in the way Green hoards and obfuscates information. Evelyn Waugh wrote to him at the time that \"it was a book no-one else could have written and it makes me feel I know [you] far less well than I did before which, in a way, I take to be its purpose.\"\n\nDespite its baffling omissions, Pack My Bag was deeply important to the author. Written when Green was thirty-three, his \"interim autobiography\" was the result of his terror that he would die in the impending war. He published his book hastily because \"we who may not have time to write anything else must do what we now can.\"\n\nThe memoir finished as enigmatically as it began, and abruptly, too\u2014though on a somewhat tender note, alluding at the very end to his epistolary courtship of the woman he would marry: \"It was not hunting when it was no fun, not having to go shooting, it was not having to be polite to masters who were fools, it was to lose convictions, at a blow it was life itself at last in loneliness certainly at first, but, in that long exchange of letters then beginning and for the ten years now we have not had to write because we are man and wife, there was love.\"\n\nGreen delivered his tersely titled novels in efficient succession: Party Going (1939), Caught (1943), Loving (1945), Back (1946), Concluding (1948), Nothing (1950), and Doting (1952). Then came silence, a literary purgatory that lasted until Green's death in 1973.\n\nIn 1929, the year that Henry Green published Living, Henry Yorke married an upper-class Englishwoman, Mary Adelaide Biddulph, known as Dig. Waugh affectionately called the couple \"Mr H. Yorke the lavatory king and his pretty wife.\" Henry, along with his parents, had decided that once he'd completed his latest novel, he would move to London and assume a new role at the family firm: managing director. He knew that the structure of an office job would keep him stable, yet he was also \"violently depressed\" at the time. \"My fucking novel is so absolutely mediocre,\" he told Anthony Powell. His editor, too, had commented that Green's elliptical prose style was \"difficult, & a trifle affected.\" When it was released, the book was neglected critically, perhaps owing to the crowded, exceedingly impressive publishing field that year: Ernest Hemingway, Italo Svevo, Rebecca West, V. S. Pritchett, and Robert Graves all brought out new works. But Green's prominent literary friends helped boost his spirits, providing a welcome antidote to reviews such as one from the Times Literary Supplement, which asserted that the author \"does not seem to care in the least whether the reader is thrilled, bored, delighted, or irritated.\" Waugh considered Living a masterpiece and compared Green's dazzling technical feats to those of T. S. Eliot. He also emphasized that the author's radically ambitious aims made it \"necessary to take language one step further than its grammatical limitations allow. The more I read it the more I appreciate the structural necessity of all the features which at first disconcerted me.\" Regardless of its originality, the novel failed to sell many copies.\n\nThe decade-long interval between the publication of Green's second and third novels was the result of frustrations and distractions, bouts of depression and paranoia; the demands of business, of upper-class society, of fatherhood (his son was born in 1934); and the onset of the war. As one critic later wrote of Green, the neglect of his literary legacy came about partly because he \"lived several lives not sequentially but in parallel.\" He never fully inhabited one identity or the other. The ambivalence evident in his work was also reflected in his personal attitudes. As Anthony Powell noted of his friend, \"[I]f one side of Yorke found the silver spoon a handicap to respiration, another accepted it as understandably welcome; and coming to terms with opposed inner feelings about his family circumstances, his writing, his business, his social life, was something he never quite managed to achieve to his own satisfaction.\"\n\nDuring the London Blitz, Green volunteered for the Auxiliary Fire Service, an experience that would provide material for Caught. His preceding novel, Party Going, comically followed a group of aimless young rich people stranded in London's Victoria Station during a heavy fog. Not much happens, and the characters aren't particularly likable. (Seinfeld again comes to mind.) The novel's startling, bizarre opening line set the tone for the disorientation that lay ahead: \"Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet.\"\n\nAfter the war, Henry assumed his position as managing director at Pontifex, and the novels he continued to write were greatly admired by W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Elizabeth Bowen, Roald Dahl, and other prominent literary figures. He also kept busy as a serial philanderer who was as cruel as he was charming. \"Hurting\u2014that should be the title of your next novel,\" one of his girlfriends suggested bitterly.\n\nThat Henry Green published nothing after 1952 is explained by the sad decline of Henry Yorke. His lifelong despair started to overtake him and never loosened its grip, eventually leaving him adrift even from himself. Although he was mostly deaf (a condition that worsened during the war), he refused to wear a hearing aid, which isolated him still further from others. He drank and drank. Half his days were spent in pubs, and sometimes he'd return to a pub after dinner and stay until closing time. \"To the regulars he was simply Henry who always sat at the same table wearing his raincoat and hat with a glass of gin and water beside him,\" Sebastian recalled of his father.\n\nHenry had not lost sight of the mission of writing fiction, but he could no longer fulfill it. \"Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night,\" he believed, \"and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations which go further than names however shared can ever go. Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of stone.\"\n\nHe once claimed that he could \"only get myself right by writing.\" He insisted that writing alone had given him happiness, and that he relied upon it to stay sane. Yet, for some reason, he could no longer gain access to the part of himself that yielded such pleasure.\n\nHenry continued to oversee Pontifex, which had experienced a brief postwar boom, but the company too began to decline. With his stubborn inattention to detail, his pessimism and pathological indecisiveness, and his increasingly erratic behavior, he proved a poor chairman, and the company suffered. In 1958, it was discovered during a board meeting that Henry's water glass contained neat gin. He was forced to retire a year later.\n\nAfter 1960, the man whom Terry Southern had called a \"writer's writer's writer\" rarely left his house. He dictated the beginning of an intended sequel of sorts to his memoir, called \"Pack My Bag Repacked,\" a project that, like many others, he soon abandoned. In one draft, he refers to himself in the third person: \"Green lives with his wife in Belgravia. He has now become a hermit. . . . Green can write novels, but his present difficulty is to know quite how to do it.\" He spent much of his time watching TV, especially sports. He often wandered around the house in a shabby state, littered with cigarette ash and wearing mittens because he said that his hands were always cold. Sebastian recalled that his father's hearing grew steadily worse. He once phoned home and asked to speak to \"Mummy,\" to which Henry replied, \"So sorry, I have absolutely no money.\"\n\nIn 1962, a BBC interviewer asked Green, \"Are you going to write any more books?\" He replied wearily: \"No\u2014never\u2014never. . . . It's too exhausting, I can't do it.\" He'd lost his drive and was convinced that no one wanted him to find it again. \"I'm absolutely finished as far as the public's concerned,\" he said. \"I mean, I'm out, I don't sell books any more, and the critics despair of me. No, I don't exist any more.\"\n\nIn spite of his black moods, he wasn't entirely gone. He loved reading books (but hated talking about them), and consumed about eight a week\u2014always novels, no poetry or nonfiction. Contemporary British and American fiction appealed to him; he had catholic tastes and read widely, but he refused to read Georges Simenon or C. P. Snow. Like Simenon, Henry idolized Faulkner, and meeting him in 1950 was one of the highlights of Henry's life. He told an interviewer that he wanted Faulkner, more than anyone else, to read his books. (It isn't known whether Faulkner did.)\n\nOver the years, Henry alienated many of his friends with his drunken, maudlin, self-destructive behavior, and they stopped calling on him. He'd become a charmless embarrassment. One friend recalled observing his rare presence at a dinner party, \"talking away as if driven by a demon, looking very much the worse for wear.\" Another compared him to F. Scott Fitzgerald: \"He drank because he couldn't write and he couldn't write because he drank.\" This was perhaps the most succinct diagnosis of Henry's predicament. And in a letter to Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, who could be quite vicious about Henry's diminished state, described him with sheer disgust: \"He looked GHASTLY. Very long black dirty hair, one brown tooth, pallid puffy face, trembling hands, stone deaf, smoking continuously throughout meals, picking up books in the middle of conversation & falling into maniac giggles, drinking a lot of raw spirits, hating the country & everything good. . . . I really think Henry will be locked up soon.\" In 1968, after much coaxing, Sebastian convinced his father to accompany him to an event at London's Albert Hall, to which Henry came unshaven and wearing bedroom slippers.\n\nWhat had become of the promise of Henry Green, a writer who, as the author and translator Tim Parks put it, \"must be the most highly praised, certainly the most accomplished, of twentieth-century novelists not to have made it into the canon, not to be regularly taught in universities, not to be considered 'required reading'\"? One critic astutely described Green as having shown \"more subtlety and virtuosity than any other novelist of his generation in England. And yet Green's very mastery of his medium has kept him from the recognition he deserves.\" Eudora Welty, who'd met Green once and adored him, lavished praise on his underappreciated work in a 1961 essay: \"The intelligence, the blazing gifts of imagery, dialogue, construction, and form, the power to feel both what can and what never can be said, give Henry Green's work an intensity greater, this reader believes, than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today.\" And the critic James Wood has written that after D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, Green was the greatest English modern novelist.\n\nThe fact remained that despite occasional success (Loving had appeared briefly on best-seller lists in the United States), no single book of his had sold more than ten thousand copies in England. His novels had slipped in and out of print even in his lifetime. Of course, Green had sabotaged himself through bizarre financial and marketing decisions: declining offers for paperback sales because of paranoia about income tax debt, and refusing to provide photographs or biographical information to his publishers. Though he reluctantly agreed to come to New York to help launch Loving, he registered at his hotel under another pseudonym, H. V. Yonge, whose initials at least matched those of his real name. But he didn't mask his hatred of publicity and made it as difficult as possible for admirers to meet him. Considering how disinclined he seemed to achieve a wider readership, it is no surprise that his publishers were unable to earn a profit from his work. They promoted him as best they could under rather challenging circumstances, undoubtedly out of absolute belief in his prodigious talent. As with everything else to do with him, nothing was straightforward or even rational.\n\nAfter he'd stopped publishing, Green succumbed to sporadic bouts of inconsolable weeping, telling anyone who would listen that he suffered from a lack of recognition and believed he was a failure. Once, while visiting his brother and sister-in-law, he cried as he complained, \"I've never won any of the good prizes.\" If Green was misunderstood or neglected, he seemed oblivious that any of this was his own doing.\n\nOf the relatively few people who were aware of Green's novels, perhaps too many shared the view of the New York Times critic who found his work baffling to the point of irritation, and who dismissed Green as another case of Emperor's New Clothes. Green was blasted by the critic for writing \"peculiar, artificially mannered novels of limited appeal which are extravagantly overpraised by a few critics whose pride it is to admire books which lesser mortals don't appreciate.\" This naysayer, however, later revised his opinion, admitting, \"I didn't like green olives the first few times, either. Maybe Mr. Green is an acquired taste.\"\n\nHenry Yorke died at the age of sixty-eight on December 13, 1973, from bronchial pneumonia, after being bedridden for quite some time. Henry Green had been dead for years. \"He was a very very complicated and tricky person,\" Anthony Powell recalled of his old friend. \"And although we knew each other so well, of all the people I've ever known I really never got to the bottom of him.\"\nHe could fool some of the people all of the time\n\nChapter 12\n\nRomain Gary & \u00c9MILE AJAR\n\nHe was a war hero, a Ping-Pong champion, a film director, a diplomat, and an author who wrote the best-selling French novel of the twentieth century. Being famous made him tired. He wanted to be someone else, but one invented persona was not enough.\n\nRoman Kacew was born on May 8, 1914, in Vilna, Russia, and raised by a Jewish single mother, Nina Owczinski, a former stage actress. By the age of thirteen, he believed that he was destined to become a great writer. At this age, too, he took up smoking, a habit encouraged by his mother. (She would smoke three or four cigarettes when she woke each morning, and happily shared her Gauloises with her son.) Nina was a devout Francophile, and emigrated with her son in 1928 to Nice, where she instructed Roman to change his name so he could become famous. \"You must choose a pseudonym,\" she said. \"A great French writer who is going to astonish the world can't possibly have a Russian name.\"\n\nHe began experimenting with pen names\u2014spending hours each day hunched over his exercise book and testing out \"noble-sounding\" noms de plume in red ink. He toyed with \"Hubert de la Vall\u00e9e\" and \"Romain de Roncevaux,\" among many others. \"The obvious trouble with pen names,\" he discovered, \"even with the most inspired and impressive ones, was that they somehow failed to convey truly the full extent of one's literary genius.\"\n\nSuch healthy self-regard was inspired in no small part by his mother, who considered her son the center of the universe. Anyone who failed to recognize that fact was an idiot. Neighbors who were annoyed by Nina's constant proclamations of his glory were denounced as \"dirty little bourgeois bedbugs.\" If her son scored poor marks at school, it was everyone else's fault. In his fictionalized 1960 memoir Promise at Dawn, he recalled an exchange that occurred one day when his mother asked how things were going at school:\n\n\"I got another zero in math.\"\n\nMy mother thought this over for a moment.\n\n\"Your teachers don't understand you,\" she said firmly.\n\nI was inclined to agree. The persistence with which my teachers kept giving me zeros in science subjects seemed to indicate some truly crass ignorance on their part.\n\n\"They'll be sorry one day,\" my mother assured me. \"The time will come when your name will be inscribed in letters of gold on the wall of their wretched school. I'll go and tell them so tomorrow.\"\n\nRoman found his mother's relentless adoration both awe-inspiring and paralyzing. She encouraged him to become a \"giant of French literature\" only after suffering disappointment that he was not a violin prodigy, a budding Jascha Heifetz. She'd pointed out that if he were to become a famous violinist, \"our real name, Kacew, or even better, my stage name, Borisovski, would be excellent.\" But it was not to be. After Nina bought Roman a secondhand violin when he was seven years old, she'd signed him up for private lessons, but the instructor dismissed him after three weeks. \"A great dream had left us,\" Roman recalled.\n\nHe and his mother led an itinerant life, dependent mostly on the latest way she'd devised to reinvent herself. He would grow up in Russia and Poland and on the French Riviera. \"My mother was always waiting for the intrusion of the magical and marvelous into her life,\" he wrote, \"for some deus ex machina that would suddenly come to her rescue, confound the doubters and the mockers, take the side of the dreamer and see to it that justice was done.\" She earned a living making hats, running a hotel, selling furs and antiques, and other occupations, but perhaps her most memorable venture was in \"second-hand teeth\"\u2014buying teeth containing gold or platinum, then reselling them at a highly marked-up price.\n\nThough Nina eventually achieved financial security, her dream of being a famous actress never left her. This larger-than-life woman was the consummate stage mother, pushing her son to succeed as the artist she would never become. Roman was instilled with ambition, fear, frustration, and dread, but he was always determined to please her, to lay the world at her feet. In search of the vocation that would bring them acclaim and fortune, they exhausted various possibilities\u2014such as painting, acting, and singing\u2014before settling on literature, which he later noted \"has always been the last refuge, in this world, for those who do not know where to lay their dreaming heads.\" Not only did Nina expect her son to become an artist of renown, but she dreamed that someday he would become an ambassador of France and wear bespoke suits made in London. (Both came to be true.)\n\nAs mother and son plotted his future, Roman applied himself to crafting the pseudonym that would inspire literary masterpieces to flow like water. It was, he later recalled, no easy task to discover a name \"grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.\" Despite Roman's intensive brainstorming, nothing seemed right\u2014and both he and Nina were chagrined that names such as \"Shakespeare\" and \"Goethe\" were already spoken for. \"We were both getting terribly impatient to know, at last, under what name we were to become famous,\" he recalled. Fifteen years later, when he heard the name \"Charles de Gaulle\" for the first time, he felt it would have been the perfect pseudonym. None of the names he came up with satisfied him or his mother: \"Alexandre Natal,\" \"Armand de la Torre,\" \"Romain de Mysore\"\u2014these just weren't good enough.\n\nNina suffocated her son in a more significant way: she believed that no other woman should ever have him. He belonged to her alone. Worse, she refused to give herself to another man, and took great offense at the suggestion that she ought to try. Any attempts by the teenage Roman to explore his sexual appetite with beautiful young women were invariably crushed by his mother. \"I am not saying that mothers should be prevented from loving their young,\" he wrote later. \"I am only saying that they should have someone else to love as well. If my mother had had a husband or a lover I would not have spent my days dying of thirst beside so many fountains.\"\n\nThe grievous effect of such vast and forceful love was that for the rest of his life, Roman would seek, in vain, to recapture it. His craving for companionship was best fulfilled by a succession of devoted friends\u2014notably, Mortimer, Nicholas, Humphrey, and Gaucho, all of them cats\u2014and a dog named Gaston.\n\nAs he and his mother steeped themselves in French culture, Roman became \"Romain.\" Whenever Nina was harassed in France as an outsider, mocked as a \"dirty foreigner,\" she would retort by coolly informing the moronic offender that her son \"is an officer of the French Air Force and he tells you merde!\" Romain noted his mother's inability to distinguish between \"is\" and \"will be.\" (Her ardent idealism and willful denial were part of her charm.)\n\nMeanwhile, Romain felt desperate to somehow make his mark. He discovered that despite his failure at sports such as swimming, running, and tennis, he had a real knack for Ping-Pong. One of the engraved medals he later won at a tournament sat on Nina's bedside table until the day she died.\n\nIn his late teens, he also grew more serious about writing. \"Attacked by reality on every front, forced back on every side and constantly coming up against my own limitations, I developed the habit of seeking refuge in an imaginary world where, by proxy, through the medium of invented characters, I could find a life in which there was meaning, justice and compassion,\" he recalled. But because Romain had inherited that marvelous flair for self-mythologizing, he could not simply sit down and write. Under the watchful eye of his mother, as ever, he took a Method-acting approach to his craft. That was the only way he could become, as he hoped, \"the youngest Tolstoy of all time,\" and thus reward his mother for all the sacrifices she had made on his behalf.\n\nRomain flung himself headlong into his task. His dramatic first step was to assemble a pile of three thousand sheets of paper, which he estimated to be equivalent to the manuscript of War and Peace. Then, he recalled,\n\nMy mother gave me a dressing gown of ample proportions, modeled on the one which had already made a great literary reputation for Balzac. Five times a day she opened the door, set a plate of food on the table and tiptoed out again. I was, just then, using Fran\u00e7ois Mermonts as a pen name. Since, however, my works were regularly returned to me by the publishers, we decided that it was a bad choice, and substituted for it, on my next effort, that of Lucien Bulard.\n\nStill no luck. But in 1933, at the age of nineteen, Romain finally won a respite from his mother's overwhelming expectations. He enrolled, as a practical consideration, in law school at the University of Aix-en-Provence. He described the experience of bidding good-bye to Nina as \"heartrending.\" It was a healthy and much-needed separation. He spent his free time lingering at caf\u00e9s, and managed to write a novel. He promptly sent the manuscript to various publishers, and one responded by including a report from an acquaintance\u2014a well-known psychoanalyst to whom he had shown the novel. She indicated in her report that the author of this demented book suffered from a castration complex, a fecal complex, necrophilic tendencies, and other pathologies. In any case, the manuscript was politely declined. Undaunted, Romain took pride in being told that he had a fecal complex, which he felt marked him indisputably as a tormented soul\u2014and a genuine artist. He completed law school in Paris, neglecting his studies to spend several hours a day on his writing. Eventually, he published a few of his stories, and was thrilled to learn that one had even been translated and published in the United States. His early work, signed as \"Romain Kacew,\" was marked by a maturity and economy of prose that was impressive in someone not yet twenty-two years old. In 1935, he became a naturalized French citizen.\n\nDuring the Nazi occupation, Romain was admitted to what was regarded as the oldest and \"most glorious\" bomber squadron, the Lorraine, serving under de Gaulle in the Free French forces. Around this time he had begun using the surname \"Gari,\" anglicized as \"Gary.\" For some reason he never explained this rather crucial fact in Promise at Dawn. The name was not a random choice; it was yet another tribute to his mother, who had used \"Gari\" as one of her stage names.\n\nDuring World War II he had various postings throughout Europe and North Africa. Despite the physical and emotional battering he suffered, he was nonetheless chastised from afar by his ever-looming mother, who insisted that he ought to keep up with his writing. He knew that it would be futile to defend his inactivity by reminding her that there was a war on. So the obedient son set himself to work.\n\nNoting that it was hard to unleash his creative genius \"on a ship's deck or in a tiny cabin shared by two others,\" he persisted, attempting to cobble together stories that might turn into a coherent whole. Part of what would become his first novel, \u00c9ducation europ\u00e9enne (A European Education), was written on a steamer ship that carried him into battle. The latter half was composed at night, in a shared corrugated-iron hut. Every night, Romain\u2014wearing his flying jacket and fur-lined boots\u2014would write until three or four in the morning, \"with numbed fingers, my breath rising in visible vapor in the freezing air.\" He completed the novel in 1943, in Surrey, England.\n\nLater, Romain recalled his harrowing wartime experiences, the aftermath of which left him in a state of alienation unlike any he had ever known\u2014and one he would never quite shake. \"After four years of fighting with a squadron of which only five members are still alive, emptiness has become for me a densely populated place,\" he recalled. \"All the new friendships I have attempted since the war have made me only more conscious of that absence which dwells beside me.\" He also shared an insight about himself that would acquire an eerie and profoundly tragic meaning after he died. \"A fool I shall always be, when it is a matter of . . . smiling in the face of nothingness,\" he admitted. \"There is no despair in me and my idiocy is of the kind that death itself cannot defeat.\"\n\nHis combat service transformed him in many ways. He had survived dangerous missions, typhoid fever, and a plane crash that killed everyone aboard but himself. He was decorated with some of France's highest honors, including the Cross of the Liberation, the Legion of Honor, and the Croix de Guerre. Upon his return to Paris, he married Lesley Blanch, a British writer and former features editor at Vogue. He also entered the diplomatic corps, serving first with the French embassy in Bulgaria, then Moscow, then Switzerland. Later, he became first secretary of the French delegation to the United Nations, as well as the French Consul General in Los Angeles. The postwar years were an exciting time and would launch the amazing Romain Gary in earnest. (In 1951, it became his legal name.) He would satisfy his mother's great expectations after all.\n\nOnly one essential source of happiness was missing: his mother. Romain had returned home from the war to learn that she had been dead for more than three years. How was that possible? He had received a steady flow of letters from her all along. That's because just a few days before she died, Nina had written more than two hundred short, undated letters to her son and sent them to a friend in Switzerland, with instructions to forward them to Romain at regular intervals. And so, as far as he'd known during combat, his mother had been there for him, sending constant words of love and support. The last letter he'd received ended, \"Be tough, be strong. Mama.\"\n\nIn 1945, the year after he was married, A European Education appeared in print to great acclaim and won the Prix des Critiques. The author and journalist Joseph Kessel raved, \"In the last ten years, ever since we heard the names of Malraux and Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, there has not been a novel in French fed by a talent as deep, new, and brilliant as this one.\" Raymond Queneau declared Gary's debut a triumph, with \"such a particular and original tone.\" Jean-Paul Sartre considered it possibly the finest novel about the Resistance. Gary received an admiring letter from Albert Camus. And in reviewing the American edition, published in 1960, the New York Times noted, \"He can forge a great conception with all the incandescence of a romance novelist\u2014then give it final definition by tempering it in sad irony.\"\n\nThis new toast of the literary world, thirty-one years old in 1945, was on his way to becoming what he'd always wanted: rich and famous, and one of France's most prominent authors. Ultimately, his success would kill him.\n\nThe year 1956 brought the publication of his fifth novel, the 443-page Les racines du ciel (The Roots of Heaven), along with France's premier literary award, the Prix Goncourt. (The eleven-member jury included Maurice Blanchot and Jean Paulhan.) In truth, the prize was a mixed blessing. For Gary, winning meant a surge in sales, of the kind that only the imprimatur of Oprah Winfrey's book club can inspire today. Along with that, however, came the need to address the demands of promotion and celebrity, while also managing a confused identity and increased self-doubt. He and other winners over the years found themselves derailed by what they had most coveted. One winner of the prize referred to the \"GP\" as his \"General Paralysis.\" Another, Jean Carri\u00e8re (who won in 1972), expressed a similar sentiment. \"After having believed that one was writing for a couple hundred or thousand readers, one finds oneself in front of an arena packed with spectators who gasp every time they spot a sign of failure\u2014or the renewal of the artist's exploit,\" he wrote. \"It is enough to paralyze your pen and call into doubt the slightest word traced by your hand.\" Following his award, Carri\u00e8re expressed a sense of resigned duty toward the writing that had once been his passion, saying he felt as though his identity had been hijacked and \"a puppet was bearing it in my place.\" His disillusion worsened over time, to the point, he said, that \"names strike me as fraudulent.\" Still, Carri\u00e8re would survive his plunge into depression and feelings of profound alienation. Romain Gary would not.\n\nBetween his celebrated debut and his fifth novel, a strange thing had happened: the adored Romain Gary had been neglected by his public. The novels published after A European Education were not well received, and Gary found his career stalled. He sent a despairing letter to his publisher. \"I know full well that the public has forgotten me,\" he complained. \"I will have passed like a dream. It's horrible. Sometimes when I look back and see my brilliant beginning and what I am today, a knot forms in my throat.\"\n\nThe Roots of Heaven marked a triumphant comeback. The author whom everyone had once celebrated was again relevant. Gary was no fool; he knew that he had to capitalize on his resurgence. He committed to hundreds of media appearances, and in interviews, he enjoyed inventing amusing and outlandish anecdotes about himself (including a story about his seduction of Clark Gable's girlfriend in a London bar). He treated the \"truth\" behind his authorial persona like a piece of taffy, something to be stretched and pulled.\n\nOne writer noted that \"[Gary's] legend as a charmer is not overblown.\" It worked in his private life, too. In 1959, he met the Iowa-born film actress Jean Seberg. She was twenty-one; he was forty-five. Nine months later, Seberg divorced her husband, Fran\u00e7ois Moreuil. Gary divorced Lesley Blanch in 1961. (She lived to the age of 102, dying shortly before her birthday in 2007.)\n\nIn 1962, Gary and Seberg had a son, Alexandre Diego (known as Diego), and they subsequently married, but Gary would lie about the order in which these events occurred, transposing them so that marriage came first, and even falsifying his son's birth certificate.\n\nFollowing the publication of his memoir, S. ou l'esp\u00e9rance de vie, in 2009, Diego recalled his father in an interview. \"Even when he was present,\" he told Paris Match, \"my father was not there. Obsessed by his work, he greeted me, but he was elsewhere.\" Today, Diego maintains his father's literary estate and tends to his legacy.\n\nSeberg and Gary were a glamorous couple whose social whirl included dining with the Kennedys and spending time with famous actors. But the marriage collapsed in 1970. Its failure could be attributed in part to an affair Seberg is said to have had with Clint Eastwood, and another with a college student (while she and Gary were separated). That relationship resulted in a daughter. Seberg and Gary were divorced by the end of the year, yet they remained extremely close. They jointly filed a lawsuit against Newsweek, which, along with other publications, had alleged that the father of Seberg's daughter was a Black Panther, a cousin of Malcolm X. The stress from this gossip led Seberg to attempt suicide and to give birth prematurely. The baby died two days later.\n\nThroughout the 1960s, Gary published a number of books, but he also acquired new credentials as a director and screenwriter. (Both of the films he directed starred Seberg.) Others adapted Gary's books for the screen as well, and these productions involved some big names. John Huston directed The Roots of Heaven, starring Errol Flynn, Trevor Howard, and Orson Welles. The film The Man Who Understood Women starred Henry Fonda and Leslie Caron. Peter Ustinov directed Paul Newman, Sophia Loren, and David Niven in Lady L. Charlotte Rampling appeared in an adaptation of The Ski Bum.\n\nGary's amazing feat of self-invention now seemed complete. This Russian Jew turned Frenchman was a war hero, a diplomat, a renowned and widely translated author, and a film director, and for eight years he had been the husband of a young and beautiful Hollywood actress. He owned residences in Paris, Majorca, and Switzerland, and on the French Riviera. He was fluent in Russian, Polish, French, and English, and knew some German, Bulgarian, Arabic, and Hebrew. He was a legend of his own making, and against all odds, he had pulled it off. Even though his reputation as a writer had waned somewhat in the 1960s, he still seemed to lead a rather enviable life. His story should end there, it seems, but instead it starts anew. This is where things get really interesting, and deeply sad.\n\nWith all the gaps in biographical information\u2014and all the misinformation\u2014concerning Romain Gary, it is difficult to assemble a comprehensive narrative of his entire life, though biographers in recent years have tried. One fact, however, is well established: at a certain point, Roman Kacew no longer wished to be Romain Gary. Feeling as though he'd been typecast, he reached an impasse. So he became someone else.\n\nIn January 1974, the French publisher \u00c9ditions Gallimard received a manuscript called La solitude du python \u00e0 Paris. It arrived in an envelope that appeared to have been sent from Brazil, by a French businessman on behalf of his friend. Eventually the publisher passed on it, but sent it along to Mercure de France, a division of Gallimard. The novel, later called Gros-C\u00e2lin (also known as Cuddles) was published that year. It told the story of a lonely IBM employee who lived in a Paris apartment with his pet python. The author was \u00c9mile Ajar. It was an immediate best seller.\n\nOnly a select group knew that Ajar was Gary: his typist, his son, Seberg, his attorneys in Geneva and New York, and a longtime friend. They carefully protected his secret. Once, when he was young, Diego watched a show on television in which a critic mercilessly trashed the work of Romain Gary. She then exclaimed, \"Ah! Ajar\u2014now there's a talent of a quite different order!\" The boy glanced toward his father and slyly winked at him.\n\nIt's unclear how Gary arrived at his nom de plume, but some speculate that \"\u00c9mile\" was derived from the bastard child of Gauguin, whom Gary had fictionalized in a novel. \"Ajar\" is Russian for \"glowing embers\" and was also the acronym for a Jewish veterans group.\n\nWhen Gros-C\u00e2lin was short-listed for the Renaudot Prize, Gary found himself in an ethical quandary. The prize was intended for the first novel by a new, undiscovered talent. Not wanting to deprive a young writer of a significant prize, Ajar withdrew his work from consideration. This honorable act merely fed the flame of public interest, and Gary quickly enlisted a cousin, Paul Pavlowitch, to play the \"real-life\" role of Ajar. Now people could put a face to the mysterious author (or so they thought). \"Ajar\" had his photograph taken and even gave interviews. \"It was a new birth,\" Gary admitted later. \"I was renewing myself. Everything was being given me one more time.\"\n\nBefore the birth of Ajar, Gary had already begun planning a second act. Initially he'd considered a kind of performance art ruse, in which an old friend named Sacha Kardo-Sesso\u00ebf would sign his name to detective fiction that Gary had written. His friend declined, as did another, so the role-playing idea was tossed. Instead, Gary produced a trial run for Ajar, under a different guise. In the spring of 1974, a spy novel called Les t\u00eates de St\u00e9phanie, by Shatan Bogat, was published. This unknown author was praised by critics for writing \"with the stroke of a master.\" The press release featured a detailed (and peculiar) biography: \"Thirty-nine years old, son of a Turkish immigrant, Shatan Bogat was born in Oregon. He directs a fishing and shipping business in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. The black market arms trade inspired one of his novels. He won the Dakkan Prize in 1970 for his coverage of international gold and weapons traffickers.\" The prize did not actually exist, nor any earlier novels, but no one had bothered to verify the information.\n\nThe critics loved Bogat. One reviewer said that the author's style was \"100% American, both explosive and relaxed, but with an appreciation of the Persian Gulf's local color that is not from the eye of a tourist.\"\n\nUnfortunately, sales were sluggish. The publisher, Robert Gallimard, decided to out the author in a radio interview, hoping the news might provide a much-needed sales boost. He revealed that \"Bogat\" was actually Romain Gary. In a later edition of the novel, Gary explained his use of a pseudonym in that instance: \"I did it because I sometimes feel the need to change identities, to break free of myself, if only for the duration of a book.\"\n\nIf Gallimard had not exposed the hoax, would anyone have discovered the author's identity? Perhaps not. Journalists can be a lazy bunch.\n\nIn any case, now Gary was ready to become Ajar.\n\nHis alter ego was an Algerian immigrant, born in 1940, and a former medical student who, after performing an illegal abortion, had fled to Brazil, where he now lived. Some critics were suspicious about Ajar's identity, wondering whether an eminent figure such as Raymond Queneau or Jean Paulhan might have taken a pseudonym. Yet as the scholar Ralph Schoolcraft notes in his fascinating 2002 study, Romain Gary: The Man Who Sold His Shadow (the first major examination in English of Gary's life and work), the author had left plenty of clues that Ajar was a mask. Anyone who poked around enough would have found evidence linking Ajar's work to Gary's own novels. (Gary later admitted that Ajar's books \"often contained the same sentences, the same turns of phrase, the same human beings.\") Yet no one picked up on the trail of crumbs. With Ajar, Gary was trying to shed the influence of the literary establishment of which he was now a familiar member. \"I was an author who was classified, catalogued, taken for granted,\" he later complained. Ajar opened the door to experimentation and novelty, and to another new start for his career. Critics would have to approach the work from a fresh perspective because Ajar was an unknown quantity, free of baggage.\n\nFollowing the success of Gros-C\u00e2lin, in 1975 Ajar published a second novel, La vie devant soi (also known as Madame Rosa). A reviewer in Le Monde proclaimed it \"a Les Mis\u00e9rables for the twentieth century.\" The novel explored the relationship between an orphaned Arab boy named Momo and Madame Rosa, a heavyset sixty-eight-year-old Auschwitz survivor who was once a \"lady of the night.\" (A film adaptation was released in 1968.) With this work, Ajar's reputation was assured. The first printing of fifty thousand copies sold out quickly and the book became a best seller. The author could count Marlene Dietrich among his fans. Today, the novel remains the top-selling French novel of the twentieth century, with more than a million copies sold.\n\nAlthough some suspected that Ajar was a pseudonym, no one associated it with Gary. In news accounts, Gary's name had been mentioned, but simply as another example of a pseudonymous author. Some were convinced that Ajar was a Lebanese terrorist; others believed that the eccentric author was an American; still others said that the work was the product of a clandestine collective. And once, Gary met a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Ajar. \"He was a terrific fucker,\" she said.\n\nEventually, this mystery would prove to be the most scandalous event in the French literary world since the publication of Pauline R\u00e9age's Histoire d'O. One half-joking theory was that the savvy culprit behind Ajar was R\u00e9age's illegitimate son.\n\nAll was mere fun and games until La vie devant soi won the 1975 Goncourt. Because Paul Pavlowitch had done such a fine job selling himself as Ajar, the jury members had all they needed to see that the author was real, that they were not being played for fools. Satisfied that Ajar really did exist, they awarded the deserving young author his prize.\n\nThis event was no happy accident. Gary had worked tirelessly behind the scenes, managing his accommodating cousin like a puppet. Pavlowitch eventually gave in-person interviews, but first he had to trick Ajar's own publishing house, Mercure de France, into believing, beyond any doubt, that Ajar was flesh and blood. It was an absolutely brilliant scheme. As Ralph Schoolcraft recounts in his book:\n\nGary then prepared a couple meetings, plotting out Pavlowitch's role in minute detail. The impersonation would be something of a high-wire act, for Pavlowitch had to improvise his demeanor and remarks within the boundaries of Gary's prearranged script. Pavlowitch began by sending Mercure de France a blurry photograph of himself for promotional use (the photo, taken years earlier in Guadeloupe, had the advantage of showing him prior to the growth of the bushy, long hair and extravagant moustache that he was sporting in 1975).\n\nPavlowitch-as-Ajar even signed the publishing contracts and collected a check in person. He went so far as to enlist his wife, Annie, to play the role of Ajar's girlfriend. When the head of his publishing house wanted to spend more time with Ajar, a weekend together in Copenhagen was arranged, which went off without a hitch. During that weekend, Pavlowitch autographed a stack of \"his\" books as a favor to the publisher. He dutifully personalized his inscriptions, just as she requested, addressing them to members of various prize juries, including the Goncourt.\n\nAs Gary himself would explain later, the politics behind the Goncourt were rather heated, and authors had to make nice to become literary darlings. It was a highly rarefied and incestuous world. \"I am not the only person to have spoken of the 'literary terror,' of the coteries, of the cliques with their claques, of cronyism, of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours,' of debts repaid and accounts settled,\" he wrote. \"Outside Paris there is no trace of that pathetic little will to power.\" The back-scratching was exhausting and humiliating, and after a while Gary had come to detest his critics and the phoniness of his milieu: \"I developed a profound disgust of publishing anything.\"\n\nPleased with the success of the encounters he'd concocted for Ajar, Gary upped the demands on his cousin, who complied with each new directive. Personal information was given to the press, but not too much; and with his unkempt appearance and slouchy demeanor, Pavlowitch had no trouble passing as a bohemian writer in exile. His performance wasn't always flawless (he occasionally got minor details wrong), but the public was so eager to embrace \"Ajar\" that discrepancies went unnoticed. After a while, he and Gary could simply sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Journalists did all the rest. \"As soon as it became public,\" Pavlowitch later revealed, \"it no longer depended on us.\" When a reporter once suggested to Gary the similarities between his and Ajar's work, Gary replied that he was flattered, and that perhaps Ajar was guilty of plagiarism.\n\nFor some factions in the literary world, the selection of Ajar for the Goncourt was highly controversial, and the usual protests took an especially ugly turn that year. There were bomb threats. Gary, growing nervous, attempted to heed the advice of one of his lawyers, who'd urged him to have \"Ajar\" decline the prize as a magnanimous gesture. Recusing himself, it turned out, was not Gary's choice to make. The Goncourt jury issued a terse, huffy, unambiguous statement, announcing that \"the Academy votes for a book, not a candidate. The Goncourt Prize cannot be accepted or refused any more than birth or death. Mr. Ajar remains the laureate.\" And that was that.\n\nThe problem? An author can be awarded the Goncourt only once. Romain Gary had already won. That he could (secretly) win again gave his ego a significant boost and confirmed that, at sixty-one, he was still an important cultural figure\u2014even if under the cloak of someone else. He'd shown that his talent was still intact. To throw people off the scent, Gary provided a friendly but neutral comment in support of Ajar. \"I liked Gross-C\u00e2lin,\" he said, \"but I haven't read Madame Rosa yet. I don't think the author will stay in hiding much longer.\"\n\nHe was right. Events took another bizarre twist, though, when more than one reporter tracked \"Ajar\" to Pavlowitch's home, and even uncovered Pavlowitch's relation to Gary. But instead of recognizing that Pavlowitch was a proxy for Gary, who was the real man behind Ajar, the press assumed that the bold Pavlowitch had acted alone\u2014and that the has-been Gary must have envied his relative's turn in the spotlight. Rather than attempt to seize control of this narrative, Gary and his cousin embraced it. Pavlowitch took the hit, crafting a story about how he'd adopted the Ajar pseudonym to launch his own career independently, so as not to exploit Gary's celebrity. This story made Pavlowitch a sympathetic figure and drew attention away from Gary. Meanwhile, Gary cheered on his cousin from the sidelines, joking to the media that there was no way he could have found the time to write Pavlowitch's books as well as his own\u2014and encouraging the literary world to accept the talented Pavlowitch into its fold. He responded angrily to a journalist who persisted in suggesting that Gary himself, not Pavlowitch, was Ajar. \"Your maneuver consists of cutting the balls off a newcomer by attributing his work to me,\" he said, \"all the while protecting yourself with a 'maybe.' Even by Parisian standards, this is truly low.\"\n\nGary was beginning to come undone, increasingly unable to deal with the pressure of keeping up his fabricated self. Determined to put a definitive end to lingering guessing games, he sat down to write. In a state of almost manic fury\u2014just two weeks after the (false) revelation that Pavlowitch was Ajar\u2014in his \"Geneva hideout,\" Gary finished another manuscript.\n\nEntitled Pseudo and published in December 1976, the book purported to be a complete, uncensored confession of the entire Ajar affair. It sold modestly. Written as a novel, it was nonetheless meant to be interpreted as autobiography. The narrator was a madman telling his story from a psychiatric ward, but many of the events and motivations he described were true. (They were, however, told in a highly distorted form, and ascribed to the wrong person.) To the world, it seemed that the story of Ajar had at last been unraveled by the man himself. This should be the end of the story, but it isn't. Not quite.\n\nThere was one glitch: Pseudo was presented as the confession of Paul Pavlowitch, not Romain Gary. This is a confusing twist, but Gary had largely told the truth about his own story, providing many accurate details\u2014he had simply attached the wrong name to it. Some of the issues he \"revealed\" as belonging to Pavlowitch\/Ajar were invented, but others were actually his own. (There's mention of a doctor telling the author that he masturbates too much, a colorful anecdote that may or may not have been true.) In this way, Gary was able to seek redemption and at the same time deny his identity. He'd told a story that was at once fictional and true. He even inserted himself into the novel as a character called Uncle Bogey. The Princeton University scholar David Bellos, who translated Pseudo for the 2010 American edition (as Hocus Bogus), called the book \"one of the most alarmingly effective mystifications in all literature. . . . Almost every sentence of the book is a double take.\"\n\nIn Pseudo, Ajar-as-Pavlowitch describes being pressured to adopt a pseudonym:\n\nPublish! It'll be good for you. Use a nom de plume. And don't worry! Nobody will guess you could do it. If it's any good, they'll say it's got art and technique and that it can't have been done by a beginner. That it's the work of a real pro. They'll leave you alone. They'll say you're just a straw man or a ghost. Or a whore.\n\nBecause Gary was unable or unwilling to speak as himself, he hid yet again, like a coward, behind his cousin. (He phoned Pavlowitch to tell him what he'd done only after it was completed.) At his cousin's expense, Gary had cleared his own name for good, and presto! Mystery solved. Ajar was Pavlowitch, who was a lunatic.\n\nBut this time Pavlowitch was not a willing accomplice. He'd loved his cousin dearly\u2014and felt grateful that Gary had paid for his education at Harvard\u2014but now his devotion reached a breaking point. He felt used and discarded. The neurotic, paranoid, delusional \"narrator\" of Pseudo had been presented under Pavlowitch's actual name, and this was unforgivable. He worried that his reputation might be harmed beyond repair, and he had his wife to consider as well. To Pavlowitch, this book seemed an aggressive and repugnant act. The rift between the men did not heal, as Gary showed little remorse toward his cousin, no gratitude for all that Pavlowitch had done on his behalf, and no real grasp of the perilous implications of Pseudo.\n\nNor does the story end there. Gary wrote yet another confession, but this one he gave only to friends, with the assumption that it should be released posthumously. (It was.) Titled Vie et mort d'\u00c9mile Ajar (The Life and Death of \u00c9mile Ajar), the piece explained his motivations and frustrations. \"The truth is that I was profoundly affected by the oldest protean temptation of man: that of multiplicity,\" he wrote. \"A craving for life in all its forms and possibilities, which every flavor tasted merely deepened. . . . As I was simultaneously publishing other novels under the name of Romain Gary, the duality was perfect.\"\n\nHe signed off the piece, dated March 21, 1979: \"I've had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.\"\n\nUpon the release of this text, the French literary establishment was outraged. They perceived Gary's doubleness as mockery directed at them, an attack on the very institutions that had crowned him, and they retaliated as they saw fit. Indeed, Gary's posthumous reputation would suffer as a result. Most of his books are out of print in the United States, some have never been translated into English, and those that are available are not easy to find. (In France, however, his books have never gone out of print.)\n\nA few months after the author had written the true confession of his Ajar pseudonym, he was shattered by devastating news: Jean Seberg was dead. On August 30, 1979, having gone missing for eleven days, she was found on the backseat of her car. Her death at age forty was an apparent suicide\u2014a verdict some still consider questionable\u2014caused by an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates. Gary was inconsolable.\n\nOn December 2, 1980, in the Paris apartment where he lived alone, he shot himself in the head. He left behind a suicide note in ninety-six words.\n\nFor the press\u2014\n\nNothing to do with Jean Seberg. Devotees of the broken heart are requested to look elsewhere. Obviously it could be blamed on a nervous depression. But if so it would be one which I've had since I became a man and which enabled me to succeed in my literary work. But why, then? Perhaps you should look for the answer in the title of my autobiographical book The Night Will Be Calm and in the last words of my last novel: \"There's no better way to say it, I have expressed myself completely.\"\nShe was bipolar and sexually confused\n\nChapter 13\n\nJames Tiptree, Jr. & ALICE SHELDON\n\nOn May 19, 1987, a seventy-one-year-old woman and her eighty-four-year-old husband were found lying in bed together, hand in hand, dead of gunshot wounds, at their home in McLean, Virginia.\n\nJust before midnight, the woman had phoned a family attorney to warn him that she planned to kill her husband and herself. She calmly asked that he notify the police. When the officers arrived at the house, they found the couple alive, concluded that the situation was under control, and left. Two hours later, the woman phoned the lawyer to tell him that she had killed her husband. Again she asked him to summon the police. Then she called her husband's son and said that she had shot his father. Although she claimed that she and her husband had agreed in advance upon a suicide pact, she had waited until he fell asleep to kill him. At about 3:30 in the morning, she shot herself in the head.\n\nThis event marked the tragic and dramatic end to the lives of Huntington Sheldon and his wife, Alice Bradley Sheldon. It was sick and scandalous, like something out of a gothic novel. In fact, Alice had been a wildly imaginative writer, intensely driven, producing science fiction for more than a decade using a male pseudonym. She kept her alter ego a secret even from those closest to her. (\"At last I have what every child wants, a real secret life . . . nobody else's damn secret but MINE,\" she wrote in her diary in 1970.) Assuming this guise gave her the confidence to write and allowed her to become the \"son\" she believed her father had always wished he'd had. It also freed her to explore another deeply buried self\u2014one that harbored a shameful yet undeniable sexual desire for women.\n\nAside from becoming famous\u2014and considered among the most important science-fiction authors of the twentieth century, along with writers such as Philip K. Dick\u2014Alice Sheldon led many extraordinary lives. She was an exceptional painter, a brilliant storyteller, and passionately interested in science; she had eloped at age nineteen, become pregnant, and had an abortion in her first year of marriage; divorced, enlisted in the army, and worked for the CIA; she had become a poultry farmer; and she had earned an undergraduate degree at age forty-three, followed by a Ph.D. in experimental psychology. Literary success came later still.\n\nBorn in Chicago in 1915, Alice Hastings Bradley (later known as Alli) was the only child of charismatic, wealthy, glamorous, and eccentric parents. Her formidable mother, Mary, was a prolific travel and fiction author and a popular lecturer; her attorney father, Herbert, was also an explorer and hunter who led expeditions into unmapped regions of central Africa. Those trips into the Congo provided Mary with material for two children's books. Yet Mary did not just accompany her husband on African hunting expeditions; she carried her own rifle and killed lions and tigers herself, proudly bringing back the skins as souvenirs. The Bradleys, both Republicans, were often featured in the society and gossip pages of local newspapers. They had a large circle of friends; loved to give parties; and employed nannies, a chauffeur, and a cook. Alice was pampered and spoiled, but she was also lonely and never felt comfortable in her affluent surroundings. \"I was unpopular,\" she once complained, \"except with dull adults.\"\n\nWhen Alice was four, her mother gave birth to another daughter, Rosemary, who lived for only a day. Mary never recovered from her grief. \"She didn't provide a model for me,\" Alice wrote later of her mother. \"She provided an impossibility.\" The barrier was, among other things, vocational, but above all, Mary's idealization of femininity left Alice anguished, her identity a blur. As Alice struggled throughout her life to achieve a sense of wholeness, to feel at peace with her gender, Mary projected confidence, accomplishment, and uncomplicated, effortless sensuality.\n\nAlice's artistic inclinations were encouraged\u2014but only so far. Mary's needs and her desire for attention (especially from male admirers) always came first. \"She had emotion enough for 10,\" Alli wrote of her mother, \"but I got it all, and was always\u2014perhaps wrongly\u2014aware that had the others existed she wouldn't have cared much for me.\" Later she would recall that having a mother who seemed to do everything well was \"bad for a daughter because you identify with her. And without meaning to, you compete. And to be in competition with Mary was devastation, because anything I could do she could do ten times as well.\" Alice's father was cool and distant, a welcome contrast to her mother's dependent, possessive behavior.\n\nMary's emotional neediness was too much pressure for a child to bear. Alice felt compelled to be a compliant \"good girl,\" managing her own anxieties, anger, and unhappiness so as not to upset her mother. Although Alice suspected that \"everybody wants to wipe the world out a couple of times a day,\" she kept such notions to herself. Decades later she admitted that she'd lived with \"a silent inner terror\" of not succeeding enough to warrant her parents' praise. \"[A]ll my early life was lanced with that fear; if I wasn't somehow Somebody, it would represent such a failure I'd have to kill myself to keep my parents from knowing how I'd betrayed their hopes.\"\n\nShe also had to suppress her intense dislike of her own name, which carried \"joyless connotations of 'Alice, eat your spinach.' 'Alice, go to bed.'\" As she discovered early on, there was power, and a thrilling sense of escape, in naming yourself, in reclaiming your identity. She fled the unpleasantness of daily life through books. Alice was an avid reader and especially loved Kipling. Later she insisted that everything she knew about writing stories and plotting \"came from Kipling, and will probably end there.\" Eventually (following the unmasking of her pseudonym), Alice gave an interview in which she pointedly quoted the end of his poem \"The Appeal\":\n\nAnd for the little, little span\n\nThe dead are borne in mind,\n\nSeek not to question other than\n\nThe books I leave behind.\n\nAs a child, Alice also enjoyed reading science fiction, including H. P. Lovecraft and a pulp magazine called Weird Tales. It was exactly the kind of literary material that her mother would have found vulgar and unseemly, and this made her love it even more.\n\nAlice was sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where she did her best to fit in, but she was socially awkward, moody, and a poor student. She made her first suicide attempt there, cutting herself with razor blades. Lonely and struggling with what would be a lifelong battle with depression\u2014fifty years later, Alice was diagnosed as bipolar\u2014she was desperate to return home. But her father wrote to her that \"it would not be fair to your school, nor to us, nor to you to come home in the middle of the year.\" Convinced that the challenge of an academic experience abroad would build character, Herbert urged her not to give up. In any case, he gave her no choice. \"I'll trust you to be a good sport and see it through like a little lady,\" he wrote in another letter. Mary, who deplored candid displays of emotion as much as her husband did, wrote to Alice cheerily, \"You are taking life the right way, darling, if you keep jolly and keep going\u2014that's all any of us can do.\" Eventually Alice attended a small boarding school in New York, and even though she felt happier there, the headmistress observed astutely that \"[t]he task of adjusting herself to her contemporaries is not an easy one.\"\n\nAs her sexuality developed, Alice felt ambivalent toward other girls. In some ways she preferred the company of boys, who seemed much more straightforward emotionally. Her relations with them were flirty, easy, and fun. In the presence of girls, Alice often felt annoyed by their frivolous, superficial behavior and their hierarchical approach to friendship, yet she felt strongly attracted to them as well. Girls turned her on. They excited her in ways she found deeply unsettling, but she did not pursue her feelings beyond a few fumbling encounters. The passion she felt was unrequited, anyway, and remained so: her desire for women would never be fulfilled (at least, not as far as anyone knows; it has never been confirmed that Alice had any affairs with women). Sexual love provoked frustration and torment, but nothing more. The only coming out Alice experienced was as a debutante, in 1934, when she was nineteen years old.\n\nThat was the year she met a wealthy twenty-one-year-old Princeton student, Bill Davey, who was a guest at her debutante party. Alice was still an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. They eloped almost immediately\u2014the wedding was front-page news in the Chicago Tribune\u2014and Mary coldly informed Alice that she had broken her father's heart. The marriage lasted just six years. \"He was beautiful, he was charming, he was a poet, he had references from the deans at Princeton,\" Alice would recall years later, \"but they forgot to mention that he was an alcoholic and supporting half the whores in Trenton.\"\n\nInitially, getting married seemed to promise Alice a chance to liberate herself from her parents, and from her sense of inertia and sexual confusion. It would prove that she was a \"normal\" heterosexual woman fulfilling what was expected of her. But this marriage was hell. Bill was as mercurial as his wife, who also drank too much. Both of them slept with other people. Their fights were often physically violent, and their reconciliations were short-lived. The sex was mutually unsatisfying. (Alice described it in her journal as \"a mechanical farce.\") She was uncomfortable with her own body, and quite miserable having sex with a man. \"Oh god pity me I am born damned they say it is ego in me I know it is man all I want is man's life,\" she wrote in a notebook five years before her death, \"my damned oh my damned body how can I escape it. . . . I am going crazy, thank god for liquor.\" It was not surprising that Alice's gender dysphoria would lead her to inhabit a male self so that she could feel in control as an author. Even after her second marriage, to Huntington Sheldon, her struggles with sex and sexuality continued. \"I am (was) notoriously fucked up about sex,\" she once admitted in a letter to a friend.\n\nMeanwhile, during her tempestuous first marriage Alice was beginning to find her way as an artist, though as a painter, not as a writer. She started to show her work and was included in a group exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. For the next five years, she toiled away at her paintings while struggling through her moribund marriage. \"Happy is the person who has never loved another,\" she wrote in her journal in 1941. Alice became convinced that she was constitutionally incapable of intimacy, and realized that she had to end her marriage. That summer, she left Bill. He promptly filed for divorce and remarried within a few months.\n\nThe collapse of this relationship ended her ambitions as a painter, too. Although she knew that she was talented, Alice felt certain that her true vocation lay elsewhere. She offered a harsh self-assessment of her potential as a visual artist: \"I was a good grade B, no more, only with a quickness at new tricks which made ignorant souls call me an A.\" She decided to invest her intellect and energy in writing instead. Her parents helped her get a job as an art critic for the recently launched Chicago Sun, where she earned sixty dollars a week. She didn't especially like journalism, but she knew she had to start somewhere.\n\nIn 1942, when the controversial Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women's Army Corps) was created by Congress, Alice decided to join. She wanted to serve her country, move toward a different kind of career, and feel useful and accomplished. She also wanted to put more distance between herself and her failed marriage, and to cultivate more structure and discipline in her life. The pretty twenty-seven-year-old arrived at the recruiting office in \"three-inch heels and my little chartreuse crepe-de-chine designer thing by Claire somebody, and my pale fox fur jacket.\" When she showed up for basic training in Des Moines, Iowa, she marveled at the sight of women \"seen for the first time at ease, unselfconscious, swaggering or thoughtful, sizing everything up openly, businesslike, all personalities all unbending and unafraid.\" At the time, it was the most exciting experience of her life to be surrounded by twelve thousand women. \"What a range!\" she later marveled.\n\nEventually she went to the Pentagon, where she did intelligence work during World War II, and spent the next few years having affairs with men. She seemed to have resigned herself to the fact that her romantic future, however imperfect, inauthentic, or unsatisfying, would be with a man. And she spent her spare time writing fiction. Her efforts, filled with autobiographical elements, fell flat. (\"'Ouch' simply is not a story,\" she wrote years later, in a letter to a friend.) It would take the authority and secrecy of a male pseudonym, and the genre of science fiction, to transform her pain, anguish, and desire into compelling material.\n\nStationed in London in 1945, Alice met the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life: Huntington \"Ting\" Sheldon, a forty-two-year-old army colonel who had been a Wall Street banker. He fell in love with her\u2014hard. Ting came from the \"right\" social class; like Alice, he'd found a sense of purpose during wartime and had used military service to escape the confines of his past. He was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, to a family that had earned a fortune in banking and lost it in the Great Depression. He attended boarding school at Eton and university at Yale. Though Ting was a calm, steady, dependable presence, he was not without baggage\u2014he'd already been married and divorced twice and had three children.\n\nBut now Ting wanted to marry her, and as a thirty-year-old woman, Alice felt she was in no position to refuse. She wanted children; she wanted to feel cared for and secure. For the most part, Ting proved a supportive, easygoing partner who gave her space when she needed it. He also put up with her mood swings. But there were problems. Like her first husband, Ting drank a lot. He was emotionally distant and did not share her love of reading. And their sex life was terrible. A year later, Alice's literary agent, Harold Ober, submitted a short story she'd written to the New Yorker, and it appeared in the magazine on November 16, 1946. \"The Lucky Ones\" was the first and last piece she would publish under her own name. Nor would she ever submit another story to the New Yorker. She had been unhappy with the intensive editing process, complaining that \"it was astounding how they edited me into New Yorkerese,\" and she found the magazine as a whole too polished and genteel.\n\nDespite her family pedigree, Alice was anything but polished and genteel. Among the multitudes within her were, she said, \"a female wolf who howls, and a gross-bodied workman who moves things and sweats, and a thin rat-jawed person who is afraid and snaps . . . [and] a disastrous comedian who every so often comes roaring out of the wings and collapses the show. Now it seems clear that while one might get one or two of these characters to write for a living, most of them won't go along, and the comedian's opinion is unprintable.\"\n\nHer impressive publishing accomplishment at such a young age notwithstanding, the next several years hardly indicated that Alice was on her way to becoming a famous writer\u2014one who, in the words of Isaac Asimov decades later, \"has produced works of the first magnitude and has won the wild adulation of innumerable readers.\" In fact she seemed about as far away as possible from a literary life. She felt lost. Depressed by her lack of sexual chemistry with Ting and her ambivalence toward their marriage, she tried to leave him at one point. \"What shall I do?\" she wrote in a letter to her husband, announcing her departure. \"Lie and deceive, put on a bold face and knock the bottom out of everything? Drift in this void and try to work? I cannot hold the beast that is me in check much longer.\" But she didn't leave, and apparently never even gave him the letter. (Eventually, the couple agreed on an open marriage.) Alice abandoned her attempts at journalism, having experienced little success at selling pieces as a freelancer. Ting, too, was adrift in his work, unable to secure a new job on Wall Street.\n\nAfter seeing an ad in the New York Times offering a chicken hatchery for sale in New Jersey\u2014with promises of high income and working only half the year\u2014the Sheldons impulsively decided to buy the business, which they ran for nearly five years. The work was hard and the routine dull, but at first the rigid structure of their days was good for Alice. When she realized, however, that she could not conceive a child, she was devastated and began spending the little free time she had writing both poetry and prose, including the beginning of a mystery novel and some science fiction. In knowing that she would never become a mother, she felt betrayed by her own body. She decided to confront this issue in an essay, asserting that a woman's body was an \"unpredictable, volcanic, treacherous, merry, rather overpowering thing to live with.\" She likened her body to \"a large and only partly tamed animal, day and night the damn thing is being itself, with its own semi-inscrutable operations.\"\n\nThe characteristics of her gender\u2014punishing and restrictive, yet wildly untamable\u2014left her feeling repeatedly \"derailed\" in life, and she described being a woman as an almost debilitating condition, and certainly a steep disadvantage. She argued (rather reductively, even for the era) that if she had been born male, she might have been more aggressive and could have become \"a rather prosy young engineer or research scientist,\" married with children. \"Instead of which, I was born a girl,\" she wrote, \"and my life has been quite different. . . . I have had about four different and disparate careers. I have been married twice. I have seriously upset a great many of the people who came close to me. . . . I have been called brilliant, beautiful, neurotic, suicidal, restless, amoral, anarchic, dangerous, diffuse, weak, strong, perverse, and just plain nuts.\" It seemed to Alice that the impossible fact of living as a woman was enough to make anyone despondent or crazy. She devised no solutions to her profound quandary, but she did extol the virtues of \"a great deal more homosexual activity on the part of women.\" Rather than adhering to binary notions of gender, Alice proposed five: men, women, children, mothers, and \"human beings.\" Unsure of where or how she fit into her own odd schema, she concluded wearily that it was perhaps best \"in most of the waking hours of a non-pregnant woman to consider her a kind of man.\"\n\nIn 1952, when Alice was thirty-seven, she and Ting turned to their former military and government contacts, sold the (woefully unprofitable) hatchery business, and moved to Washington, D.C., to work as analysts for the CIA. Ting worked in high-level intelligence positions for the next seventeen years, whereas Alice's career was low-ranking, much to her frustration, and lasted only a few years. As a woman in a male-dominated agency, she stood no chance of having a powerful or well-paying job, but as someone who placed a high value on secrecy and privacy, she felt entirely comfortable in an environment that promoted covertness as policy. \"I always had a feeling there were big things going on in her life that she would share with nobody,\" one friend recalled of Alice. \"She could have been living three or four lives at once.\"\n\nAlice was by nature flirtatious, but at the CIA she remained sartorially gender-neutral, a look she found appealing. \"Boyish clothes look younger, or healthier,\" she noted in an unfinished memoir in 1957, \"because they contrast a woman's features with a man's, rather than with a girl's. In a clean white shirt I still look like a perverse young boy, and this is about my best effect, from the standpoint of attraction.\"\n\nIn 1955, Alice was in her third year at the CIA, on the verge of turning forty and deeply unhappy. Her mood swings were even more pronounced. She became addicted to prescription pills and at times felt suicidally depressed. Like many women, she felt conflicted about the gap between society's demands on women and her own desires. Which should she reject, and at what cost? She felt that as a writer, she had nothing important to say\u2014or at least nothing that would be heard. She was expected to be a devoted wife and a faithful, hardworking CIA operative; with whatever energy was left, she could attempt to write. The most obvious effects of such strong pressure were her increased hostility toward Ting and her general sense of inertia. \"O, how I want to be loved, me myself\u2014\" she confided in a letter that year, \"\u2014and how I fear it\u2014and what bliss it might be\u2014brrr!\u2014and how easy to shelve this whole thing.\" That summer, she quit her job, left Ting, rented an apartment, and \"really destroyed all traces of my former personality.\"\n\nSelf-creation and reinvention are deeply and quintessentially American notions (e.g., The Great Gatsby), and their appeal was not lost on Alice. A full decade before she would assume her pseudonym and launch her literary career, she felt the lure of inhabiting another identity. Alice was trapped in her nondescript life, and simply wanted to be someone else. For a start, she wanted the freedom of divorce and solitude. \"I figure I have enough sub-personalities so I can build one up to where it is quite companionable,\" she wrote. She was convinced that \"[t]here is no way I can be peacefully happy in this society and in this skin. I am committed to Uneasy Street.\"\n\nAfter a year of aimless soul-searching, she returned to her husband, having resolved nothing. \"So ensued a period of more milling (I'm a slow type) including some dabblings in academe,\" she later recalled.\n\nBecause she was unable to commit herself wholly to one enterprise, she accepted Ting as an essential and permanent part of her life and struggled to find fulfillment elsewhere. Her inability to give herself full time to writing was partly due to her profound ambivalence toward the task itself. She questioned its value and believed that writing was \"an act of aggression.\" It was a betrayal, selfish, an act of exploitation. As Joan Didion famously noted, \"Writers are always selling somebody out.\" Janet Malcolm, too, has described even journalism as \"morally indefensible,\" and has characterized the journalist as \"a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.\"\n\nAlice decided to go to back to school to complete her undergraduate degree, which she earned, summa cum laude, at the age of forty-three. A friend and mentor at the time advised her that \"the greatest favor you can do to others is being yourself as much as you can,\" but Alice was still grappling with what that meant. \"Being, I imagine, must be very simple,\" she wrote back. \"It is Becoming which is so messy and which I am all for.\"\n\nIn 1959, Ting and Alice moved to McLean, Virginia. Eight years later, Alice earned her doctoral degree in psychology at George Washington University. Her mother's physical health had severely declined\u2014perhaps freeing Alice creatively\u2014and she herself had survived another long period of depression. \"Too much motor for the chassis,\" she noted of her emotional and mental vulnerability. She was burned out in every sense and on the verge of physical collapse. Amphetamines, cigarettes, and coffee were her sustenance. Just as she was completing her dissertation (and perhaps realizing that academia was too confining for her ambitions, and too boring), Alice began writing fiction again. Sci-fi authors such as Samuel R. Delaney, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J. G. Ballard were gaining prominence. Soon she would take her place among them.\n\nMidlife is often said to be a period of reinvention, and Alice, with typical intensity, accomplished this to an extreme degree. At the age of fifty-two, she abandoned her role as a research scientist and scholar and began submitting her stories to science-fiction magazines. These were hardly highbrow literary publications, but she wasn't aiming for her work to appear in the New Yorker again. \"I have a modest view of my talent. I haven't the ear for rhythm or the feel for style to encourage me to compete in the serious mainstream,\" she later admitted. \"And I certainly haven't the stomach to write 'mainstream' schlock, like Jaws or Gone with the Wind. Science fiction suits me just right. SF is the literature of ideas, and I am, I think, an idea writer.\"\n\nStarting out, Alice wasn't fearless enough to submit her writings under her own name. Anonymity seemed best. \"I am a reclusive type, afraid of meeting people, except on paper,\" she once admitted. A fateful trip to the supermarket with her husband in 1967 provided inspiration. Spotting a jar of Wilkin & Sons marmalade, she was struck by the label: \"Tiptree,\" in a distinctive cursive print. (The name came from the English village near which Wilkin & Sons owned farmland and orchards.) For the impulsive Alice, it held the key to her new identity. \"James Tiptree,\" she said to Ting. \"Junior,\" he replied, without missing a beat. They laughed, but the name stuck and an author was born. Alice had intended to use a different pseudonym for each short story she submitted to magazines, but as it happened, Tiptree had such a rapid rise to success that she kept him.\n\nIn a biographical sketch written more than a decade later for Contemporary Authors, Alice offered a cursory description of her bold postdoctoral transformation: \"At this point a heart problem forced temporary retirement at semester's end. Meanwhile, some SF stories written as a hobby were all selling, to the author's immense surprise. As health returned, the temptation to write more won out. The author rationalized this activity as a claim for a broader concept of 'science' than rocketry and engineering, and the aim of showing SF readers that there are sciences other than physics, that bio-ethology or behavioral psychology, for instance, could be exploited to enrich the SF field.\"\n\nShe continued: \"But this writing had to be kept secret; the news that a new PhD with offbeat ideas was writing science fiction would have wakened prejudice enough to imperil any grant and destroy my credibility. . . . Luckily, the challenge of writing exerted its spell; retirement from university work became permanent without any great traumas, and the author found herself with a new line of effort ready-made for somewhat erratic health. . . . The first SF stories were naturally not expected to sell, so a pseudonym was selected at random (from a jam pot).\"\n\nBy the time of that entry, her secret identity had been exposed for three years and \"James Tiptree, Jr.\" was already buried.\n\nShe had enjoyed enviable success as Tiptree, however. On some level, the experience must have been bittersweet: only after she inhabited the role of a male author did she achieve fame. As herself, just another woman writer, no one had paid much attention. \"I have this childish fascination with brute power,\" she admitted in an essay, written in her post-Tiptree years. \"And since I have none, I am nothing.\" As only herself, Alice felt oppressed by a sense of powerlessness and believed that her \"authentic\" self lay elsewhere. \" 'I' am not a writer,\" she wrote in her diary. \" 'I' am what is left over from J.T. Jr., a mindless human female who 'lives' from day to day.\" Interestingly, in the late 1960s, women writers in increasing numbers had taken up science fiction and fantasy, and although this was a male-dominated field by any measure, it was not impossible for a woman to become successful in the genre. Alice did not see herself among them, but there were women she admired who did just that, such as Le Guin, a contented housewife and mother living a \"conventional\" life in Portland, Oregon; and Joanna Russ, an outspoken feminist best known for her award-winning, stylistically inventive novel The Female Man. Russ was also a lesbian, and this was not without its complications for her writing career\u2014yet somehow it gave her permission to work freely, beyond the standard definitions of gender. Neither of those models would prove a comfortable fit for Alice, but Le Guin and Russ became two of Tiptree's favorite correspondents.\n\n\"Becoming\" a man had seduced Alice partly because she believed it gave her access to power\u2014and the possibilities that accompany power. \"Alli Sheldon has no such choice,\" she lamented, and imagined what life might have been like if she had been born a boy. No matter how accomplished she was as a woman\u2014and she was extraordinarily so, however hard on herself she was\u2014Alice never felt relief from what she viewed as the constraints of her gender. \"Always draining us is the reality of our inescapable commitment,\" she wrote, arguing that it is only women who \"feel always the tug toward empathy, toward caring, cherishing, building-up\u2014the dull interminable mission of creating, nourishing, protecting, civilizing\u2014maintaining the very race. At bottom is always the bitter knowledge that all else is boys' play\u2014and that this boys' play rules the world.\" Of course, for a woman of her generation, the prospect of being a writer hardly carried the same stigmas and constraints as it had for nineteenth-century iconoclasts such as the Bront\u00ebs, George Sand, and George Eliot. But the \"giants\" of literature were men. And to become a major sci-fi writer, a woman within a cloistered subculture, she might as well have been living in the previous century. To her, this realm truly seemed an impenetrable boys' club. Things aren't nearly so dire now, but it remains a male-dominated field (less so as a result of her pioneering efforts).\n\nAlice was airing her concerns about gender imbalance in an era of so-called second-wave feminism, but rather than accept herself as a passive victim, she never stopped pushing back. She never gave up. \"Maybe all one can do is to say the hell with it,\" she wrote. \"But\u2014life is to use. Only, how? How? How? How?\"\n\nWriting under the cloak of Tiptree, she soon achieved success. She described once how \"this letter from Cond\u00e9 Nast (who the hell was Cond\u00e9 Nast?) turns up in a carton. Being a compulsive, I opened it. Check.\" Her story \"Birth of a Salesman\" had been sold to the sci-fi magazine Analog; the story \"Fault\" was bought by another editor for twenty-five dollars. Within a few weeks, a third sold. Letters and checks were addressed to \"James Tiptree, Jr.,\" so her alter ego began to seem like a real person, separate from her. He became a card-carrying member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). He even had a nickname\u2014he insisted on being called \"Tip.\" And he enjoyed flirting in his correspondence with women. (Tip complimented one editor's assistant by calling her a \"superdoll.\") Some women developed crushes on him in return. One editor invited Tip to his wedding; of course, Tip had no choice but to decline. He mentored aspiring sci-fi writers\u2014by mail, of course\u2014and wrote fan letters to fellow authors he admired or envied, including Italo Calvino, Anthony Burgess, and Philip K. Dick. He was generous with praise for his fellow writers. \"Who do I admire in SF?\" he once wrote. \"You and you and you as far as eye and memory reach, sir and madam. Some for this, some for that. All different. But more than that\u2014I love the SF world. And I don't love easy.\"\n\nWhen editors asked to meet Tiptree in person, they were given lame excuses. (One editor tried to call him, only to find that Tiptree was not listed in the phone book.) In retrospect, it seems incredible that the ruse was so easy to pull off. But it worked, so Alice simply kept going. Even though she regarded her early sci-fi stories as \"mechanical and banal,\" they were selling, and the act of writing proved a pleasant diversion from the episodes of crushing depression that came on without warning. Yet her two selves were at odds: the charming Tiptree longed to connect, to find acceptance and kinship, to establish a sense of community in the sci-fi realm. He was witty, generous, and kind, a great raconteur, and always supportive of the endeavors and ambitions of his peers. But Alice was forced to act as his vigilant sentry, rejecting intimacy, withholding information, keeping outsiders at arm's length to protect her colossal secret. This internal clash between concealment and revelation was confusing and often painful to bear. \"I've lived so deep under masks, my interior was built to satisfy me alone,\" she wrote in a letter five years before her death. \"I have lived 60 years almost totally alone, mentally, and quite content to have it so. I'm fond of a hundred people who no more know 'me' than they know the landscape of Antarctica.\"\n\nAlthough other science-fiction writers were secretive, they rarely hid from both editors and readers. Tiptree was especially reclusive and protective of his privacy, which only encouraged rumors about his motivation. Once, a group of curious fans, attending a local sci-fi convention, staked out Tiptree's P.O. box in McLean. Luckily Alice was in Canada at the time.\n\nReaders wondered whether Tiptree was very young, Native American, secretly gay, or working undercover for the CIA. One editor wrote, \"It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing. I don't think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.\"\n\nAnyone who attempted to extract biographical information met with resistance, aside from learning broad, generic facts. To Le Guin, with whom Tiptree's epistolary friendship endured even after his pseudonymous cover was blown, he once described himself as \"an old battered Airedale, one-eyed and droop-eared, whose scarred paws have travelled a lifetime of lava plains.\" That's about as descriptive as he got about his appearance. He did, however, once venture so far as to send a \"baby picture\" to one of his correspondents\u2014actually a photograph of Alice Sheldon at age one, in which she might easily have been mistaken for a boy.\n\nIn her extensive correspondence, Alice carelessly offered many of her own life experiences as Tip's, rather than making them up entirely\u2014a misstep that would lead to the downfall of her alias. For instance, Tip told people that he was born in the \"Chicago area,\" had traveled around colonial India and Africa as a child, joined the army, and had \"some dabblings in academe.\" When Alice's elderly mother was ill, Tip described the burden of caretaking as his own. \"At the moment I'm in and around the Chicago area, partly attending to family matters in the shape of an aged and ornery mother,\" he revealed in correspondence.\n\nPerhaps Alice's inability or unwillingness to create an entirely fictional background\u2014familial or professional\u2014for Tiptree indicated that on some level she hoped someone would discover her secret and that she would be made whole\u2014freed from the burdens of duality. But for a while, no one did. And because Tiptree had no voice or body for others to know, people gave free rein to their fantasies about him. One person imagined him as Ichabod Crane\u2013like. Another believed him to be exceptionally handsome. One fanzine publisher wrote to Tiptree with his take on the author's physicality: \"You like wild shirts and ties. You smoke a pipe. You type fast and grin a lot.\"\n\nWhenever pressed about personal matters, Tiptree either ignored the queries or pushed back. \"Does a writer ever stop telling you who he is?\" he wrote in an interview conducted by mail with the editor Jeffrey Smith, arguing that an author's work should speak for itself and that it told readers everything they needed to know. \"[M]aybe I believe . . . that the story is the realest part of the storyteller. Who cares about the color of Coleridge's socks? (Answer, Mrs. C.) Of course, I enjoy reading a writer's autobiography\u2014or rather, some writers! A few. By far the most of them make me nervous, like watching a stoned friend driving a crowded expressway. For Chrissakes, stop!\" He also insisted that \"my mundane life is so uninteresting that it would discredit my stories.\" (Well, that was not exactly true.) Tiptree did reveal that \"part of my secretiveness is nothing more than childish glee.\"\n\nHe suggested that one way to inhabit authorial identity was to use the \"self as an experience laboratory, no sacred wall around the sealed black box of Me.\" In other words, it was merely a play space. Regardless, he believed (or claimed to believe) that an author's \"real\" self \"leaks at every sentence,\" so that attempts to shield biographical details from the public were futile, anyway. Justifying his motives a dozen different ways, Tiptree remained defiant. \"You know as well as I do we all go around in disguise,\" he wrote, describing each person as a \"roomful\" of human beings. Beneath our everyday decorum, he argued, were layers of ugly and messy emotions, including terror, rage, obsession, love, and shame. \"So who the fuck cares whether the mask is one or two millimeters thick?\"\n\nTip did a good job most of the time at maintaining his own mask\u2014a little macho posturing here, a little raunchy joking there\u2014but it wasn't always a flawless performance. \"Do you know, there's a good deal about you that seems to me more like women I know than like men I know in the way you handle your feelings?\" Joanna Russ wrote to him.\n\nHe kept people intrigued by his brilliant talent as well as his demand for absolute privacy. Some claimed that his reticence was a put-on, a \"publicity trick,\" as Alice later wrote. Curiosity about him continued to grow along with his reputation, perhaps because he defied categorizing in every sense. As Jeffrey Smith (who would become Tiptree's literary executor) noted, \"What I was most interested in was the fact that in 1970, when there was a virtual war declared between the Old Wave and the New Wave in science fiction, Tiptree was being claimed by both camps.\"\n\n\"It's futile to ask as new a writer as me where he's tending or what his style might become,\" Tiptree wrote in response to a question from Smith. \"Does a kid whose voice is changing know what's going to come out of his mouth?\"\n\nFor whatever reason, Tiptree was rather expansive in his correspondence with Smith, and developed an unusual closeness and trust with him. Smith, who was respectful without being sycophantic, seems to have impressed Tiptree with astute interpretations of his work. \"I'm beginning to feel like this was my last will and personal Time Capsule and it contains more on Tiptree than anybody including me will ever likely see or want to again,\" Tiptree confided to Smith in the final letter of their interview by mail, which went back and forth from December 3, 1970, until the end of January 1971.\n\nThe following year, having inhabited Tiptree for half a decade, Alice Sheldon began to feel constrained by writing as a man. She wanted to express her \"feminine\" voice, yet she wasn't willing to unmask herself entirely. She did the next best thing: Alice introduced Raccoona Sheldon, another alter ego. What a perfect name: raccoons, after all, are mask-wearing bandits, stealthy and clever.\n\nIt was actually Tiptree who announced the arrival of Raccoona\u2014an old friend of his from Wisconsin\u2014to Smith, mentioning that she was a gifted writer. Alice took just as much care of her female pseudonym as she had taken of the enigmatic Tiptree, buying Raccoona her own Olivetti typewriter\u2014this one with a black ribbon to distinguish it from Tiptree's blue ribbon. Raccoona was given a distinct handwriting and signature, and a mailbox in her name at the post office.\n\nYet just as Alice would slip up in covering Tiptree's tracks, here, too, she was somewhat sloppy. For one thing, she'd given Raccoona her own surname. And supposedly Raccoona had also been published in the New Yorker. She was a talented illustrator, had dabbled in academia, and she'd had an abortion. She described herself as a former East Coast resident and a retired schoolteacher, but insisted that \"really the less said the better\" when it came to talking about her personal life. She had in common with Tiptree the requisite elusiveness, existing entirely on the page. (Raccoona's stories didn't pack the same wallop as Tiptree's work, however; he was by far the better writer.) Tiptree emphasized her shroud of mystery to Smith, warning him that his friend \"is even more recessive than me and hard to talk to.\" When another editor accepted one of Raccoona's stories for publication, he was puzzled to receive no reply from the author. Eventually, she wrote apologetically to explain that her mother \"had a heart attack down South.\" Soon afterward, an \"embarrassed\" Tiptree dashed off a letter about his friend as well: \"I can't imagine what happened to Sheldon (Raccoona), unless she's been abducted by aliens . . . [It's possible] some of her multitudinous parasitic family has her tied up.\"\n\nRaccoona had mixed success in getting her stories published, and better luck only when her pal Tiptree wrote cover letters of recommendation on her behalf. It is amusing to note that Raccoona felt exasperated and jealous that Tiptree\u2014a man, of course\u2014was getting his stories published by the same editors who were rejecting her work\u2014with Alice being the dutiful midwife to them both. By this point, Alice wished, in a sense, that Tiptree were dead, but killing him off wasn't an option. The strain of maintaining relationships solely by mail was getting to her. \"They're real,\" she wrote privately of the friendships she'd cultivated in the science-fiction world, \"yet unreal insofar as they're carried on under an assumed name and gender. A lot of genuine relation comes through, but it's tainted to an unknown degree by falsity. Here I seem to have contrived another odd trap for myself.\" Why she set these traps is impossible to say, but surely the destructive messages lingering from her childhood had a lot to do with submerging herself in other selves.\n\nIn 1974, at least one of Tiptree's friends rightly sensed something amiss in his letters, though it was hard to know how to respond. \"Is my friend whom I know and do not know troubled beyond all touch or reassurance?\" wrote a worried Le Guin. \"Is he in trouble? Is there nothing his friends whom he knows and does not know can do, or say, or be? Nothing that would help?\"\n\nAlice's ambivalence toward her male alter ego had started to affect her ability to play the role. She was tired and lonely. She asked Ting to lock her prescription pills in the medicine cabinet because she feared she would overdose. And at her lowest depths, she fantasized about killing Ting and then herself, but she wasn't yet able to go through with it.\n\nTiptree strained her nerves more than ever. He seemed pointless, this man named after a jar of jam at the supermarket. The following year, Alice described herself as descending into a \"black pit\" and admitted, \"I personally am dying.\" As if to force Tiptree to fade away, Raccoona pointedly downplayed her relationship with him in a letter to Smith: \"There seems to be some confusion about me and Tip Tiptree,\" she wrote. \"Several people have written me as though I were an authority on him. I did know him when we were in the local 4th and 5th grades together, but I have not seen him in person for a couple of years.\" She continued: \"We correspond in fits and starts. I take care of his mail when he comes through here to see his mother.\"\n\nIn November 1976, Tiptree sent Smith a letter as intimate and confessional as a diary entry: \"Mother died last week,\" he wrote, \"leaving me with a new dark strange place in the heart, and flashes of a lively, beautiful, intelligent, adventurous red haired young woman whom I had once known.\" The subsequent biographical details about Tiptree's mother, unfortunately, were too specific\u2014they included where Tip's parents had lived for sixty-four years (\"Father built the building and they took the whole top and made the first roof garden in Chicago\")\u2014and too similar to the newspaper obituaries of Alice's mother. It was already well known that Tiptree's mother (like Mary) had been an African explorer, hardly a typical biographical detail. Tip seemed to recognize that he'd spilled too much personal information. He ended by saying, \"Well, this is a weird letter.\" It was. Yet he mailed it anyway.\n\nThe author had (inadvertently? deliberately?) laid out all the clues that would link Tiptree to Alice. It's no wonder: she was exhausted, anxious, and in very bad shape, despite Ting's efforts at managing her moods. She was hooked on prescription pills, including Percodan, Dexedrine, Valium, and Demerol. As for Tiptree, he'd become like one of the distorted figures in Francis Bacon's paintings\u2014tortured and grotesque. The charade had run its course.\n\nThe outpouring of fact and emotion in Tiptree's letter was not lost on Smith. Nonetheless, he felt highly protective of the dear friend he'd never met or even spoken with on the phone. He didn't want Tip's cover blown, and didn't want to pry, but he couldn't resist investigating whether Tip's revealing missive was indeed a \"road map to a newspaper obituary,\" as he recalled later. His research didn't take long: the first Chicago newspaper he found at the library, a copy of the Tribune, led him to the death notice of ninety-four-year-old Mary Hastings Bradley, who was survived by one child, a daughter. The obituary, aside from a minor element or two, matched the details of Tiptree's letter. How to reconcile \"Uncle Tip\" with the posh Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon?\n\nIn her 1980 biographical sketch for Contemporary Authors, in a section she titled \"The Pseudonym That Got Away,\" Alice wrote that when \"the author's mother died after a long illness . . . Tiptree\u2014who wrote only the truth in all letters\u2014had imparted so many of the details of Mary Bradley's unusual life that when her obituary was read by certain sharp-eyed young friends, James Tiptree, Jr., was blown for good\u2014leaving an elderly lady in McLean, VA, as his only astral contact.\"\n\nTo ease the aftermath of Alice's broken secret, Smith opened up to Tiptree first. In a gently honest letter, ever respectful of his friend's privacy, he wrote that he was not making \"a demand for information,\" but warned, \"I am going to be getting questions, and whatever you choose to disclose or withhold from me, please pass along the Party Line that I'm supposed to tell others.\"\n\nHe received a response\u2014not from Tiptree, but from Alice Sheldon, who introduced herself. She asked that Smith keep her secret for a bit longer. He agreed. \"How great,\" Alice wrote, but she was relieved beyond measure that the consuming role was no more. Her reply was casual: \"Yeah. Alice Sheldon. Five ft 8, 61 yrs, remains of a good-looking girl vaguely visible, grins a lot in a depressed way, very active in spurts. Also,\" she added, \"Raccoona.\"\n\nTo the very end, however, Alice insisted that there was no such thing as \"male\" or \"female\" writing. Instead, she believed there were only separate and varying styles of bad writing, and whether a weak voice belonged to a man or a woman was beside the point. She allowed that men perhaps had the edge when it came to black humor, and women had a knack for \"heart-wringing,\" which was an odd statement of gender stereotyping by someone whose writing career had defied such notions.\n\nIt is intriguing that as Tip, she displayed a certain swagger, while Raccoona was more diffident and a less compelling writer. Alice admitted in an essay (\"A Woman Writing Science Fiction,\" written six months before her suicide) that she didn't feel proud of using a male pseudonym to get ahead. She happened to choose a man's name as a lark, and stuck with it only because it worked so seamlessly. Frankly, she kept exploiting it because of the superior treatment she received as a man: her work was taken seriously, she was well regarded by the women with whom she corresponded as their \"understanding\" and empathetic male friend, and she occupied a place of power and influence among her peers\u2014allowing her to challenge editors to publish more women writers. Alice said that she was ashamed of using a male guise to earn her place, while other women writers had languished or succeeded entirely on their own terms. \"I had taken the easy path,\" she admitted.\n\nAs she began to make amends for her ruse, the responses she received were almost entirely supportive. \"Dear Jim or Tip or Alice or Allie,\" one friend addressed her in a letter, reassuring her, \"You are still the same person and I am still the same person and here we are.\" Ursula Le Guin was similarly kind: \"And it is absolutely a delight, a joy, for some reason, to be truly absolutely flatfootedly surprised\u2014it's like a Christmas present!\" Joanna Russ, upon learning that Tip was a woman, didn't suppress her delight at the news, admitting that she liked \"old women,\" expressing hope that they could meet \"in the flesh\"\u2014they never would\u2014and telling Alice bluntly that she should consider herself \"well and truly propositioned. I was in love with you when you were 'James Tiptree Jr.' and have been able to transfer the infatuation to Allie Sheldon.\" Eventually, Alice declared that she was a lesbian in a letter to Russ, but she took things no further with Russ or any other woman.\n\nAlice was crushed to find that some of the male writers she'd considered true friends\u2014those who had ostensibly admired her work as Tiptree\u2014turned their backs on her. (\"Oh, how well we know and love that pretentiously amiable tone, beneath which hides the furtive nastiness!\" she wrote.) She was heartbroken that some men were suddenly patronizing and condescending toward her, or that they abandoned her altogether. \"If that is how I would have been received from the start,\" she wrote, \"my hat is off to those brave women writing as women.\"\n\nIn her \"Woman Writing Science Fiction\" essay, she couldn't resist a dig at her erstwhile \"friends.\" Noting that some of the male writers who'd been \"a touch snotty\" to her were perfectly nice to other women writers, she went straight to the core of the problem: \"People dislike being fooled, and, quite innocently, I did fool them for ten years. Moreover, it seems to be very important, especially to men, to know the sex of the person they are dealing with. What's the use of being Number One in a field of two\u2014i.e., male\u2014if people can't tell the difference? I had not only fooled them, I had robbed them of relative status.\" Apparently, they felt emasculated, something they didn't find funny or even forgivable.\n\nAfter the initial dizzying rush of revealing her true identity, Alice became severely depressed again. (Rightly so: being exposed meant that a part of her was now dead.) It was something like the shattering remorse that sets in after a breakup. Alice had gotten rid of this troublesome character, and now she wanted him back. Like an ex-lover, Alice could remember only the good that Tip had brought into her life; he had made her a celebrated science-fiction author and given her a supportive community, the likes of which she had never known. Without him, she felt crazy and unable to write.\n\nIn her journals, Alice detailed her sense of deprivation. The language she used was like that of someone wanting a sex change: \"I do not 'match' my exterior.\" She wrote of feeling as if she inhabited her body like an alien and even yearned explicitly to become a man. Within her, too, remained a fervent desire to someday love a woman erotically as a woman: not to resort to sublimation, as she always had done, but to satisfy raw urges. This pull was profoundly disorienting, and the sudden limbo\u2014for both her professional and her personal identity\u2014intensified her self-hatred.\n\n\"Some inner gate is shut,\" she wrote. The revelation was terrifying. She was left with nowhere to go, no way out. As Tiptree, she'd immersed herself in his unbridled imagination; as Alice B. Sheldon, she noted ruefully that she had no discernible prose style other than \"Enclosed please find payment.\" She was convinced that no one wanted to know her simply as Alice, and she called herself a \"poor substitute\" for Tip. Although she toyed with the idea of another pseudonym, Sylvester Mule, nothing came of it.\n\nIn an interview for Contemporary Authors (which would accompany her biographical sketch), Alice expressed her attitude toward separating a writer's work and life, and the damage that results when the latter overshadows the former. She felt this problem was especially acute in science fiction\u2014a genre \"that carries some sense of wonder\"\u2014and said that when \"the camera suddenly pans and picks up the writer himself, he's slouched in a haze of smoke over his typewriter, and it's all come out of his little head. . . . Magic gone.\" She insisted that most writers were obnoxious or dull (never mind that she was neither), and spoke of fa\u00e7ades not in her writing persona, but in daily life. The interview offered plenty of fascinating material. Alice revealed that since she suffered from paralyzing shyness, \"Tiptree's elusiveness was no pose.\" She said that even though she was capable of chatting with people at the grocery store, she had to put on a kind of polite veneer to do it, and \"what no one sees is the cost of the fa\u00e7ade.\" (They would after she killed herself.) She spoke of having done two interviews with \"pleasant strangers\" the previous week, for which she \"couldn't help impersonating Miss Vitality\" (yet another reference to impersonation), but that the moment those interviews had ended, \"I collapsed for the rest of the day in a dark room with a cold rag on my head.\" She wasn't exaggerating. No one but Ting knew the toll that social interaction exacted from her. This was why he often asked friends to keep their visits short or, better yet, not to come at all.\n\nHer contradictory feelings about the loss of Tiptree were unrelenting and painful. In a passage from the original transcript of her Contemporary Authors interview (which she decided to omit in the final version), Alice said that in regard to Tiptree, she would do nothing differently if she had to do it over. Yet she was still shaken by his absence:\n\nI think that Tiptree's death was long overdue. I had considered taking him out and drowning him in the Caribbean, but I knew I couldn't get away with that. It's a little frightening to find oneself almost being possessed by this personality that one isn't or that only one part of one is. It was an extraordinary experience. He had a life of his own. He would do things and he would not do other things, and I didn't have much control over him.\n\nAs Alice felt increasingly dejected after having been outed, she talked openly about wanting to die, telling friends that if Ting's health continued to deteriorate she had no intention of outliving him. She also said that if life got too bad, she'd kill them both. She started seeing a psychiatrist and was taking several antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help. She complained that \"so far nobody will give me what I deepest crave, a lead-nose .38 bullet in the parietal lobe. I dream about oblivion the way other people dream of good sex.\" She would also describe herself with an eerie metaphor to an interviewer in 1982: \"I'm a loaded gun, an achingly loaded gun wholly unable to get a shot at those who are my enemies.\" (Years after her death, one of Alice's editors remembered her as having been \"notable for her jocular and ironic determination to survive in spite of her admitted desire to die.\")\n\nAlice didn't actively attempt suicide, but she took terrible care of herself. She had \"accidents\" that caused injuries, health issues (including open-heart surgery), and for a while she lived on nothing but vanilla custard with frozen raspberries. Although she continued to correspond with some of Tip's friends and kept up with people by telephone, her interactions were undeniably awkward. She knew that and withdrew even further. After starting to write fiction again under her own name, she never achieved Tiptree's magic or even came close. She knew that, too. Maybe her enormous talent would have eventually returned, but Alice didn't live long enough to find out.\n\nToward the end, Ting had a stroke and was partially blind and deaf; Alice's most serious illness was mental. Her suffering had become intolerable. She'd written a suicide pact for them years ago, but at eighty-four years old, despite his frail health, Ting still wanted to live. Alice had been heading toward oblivion for so long that it was impossible to trace the starting point of her fateful decline. She'd anticipated her premature death, hungrily waited for it.\n\nOn May 18, 1987, Alice sent a brief note to Ursula Le Guin, along with a magazine article she thought her friend would find amusing. She signed off, as usual, \"Tip\/Alli.\" There was no hint of the gruesome scene to come in the middle of the night: Ting fell asleep; Alice shot him in the head. Then she wrapped her own head in a towel, held Ting's hand, and shot herself. Proving this event had been a long time coming, she left behind a suicide note dated September 13, 1979. Their bodies were donated to George Washington University's medical school.\n\n\"She had enormous critical success and was very highly thought of by intellectuals,\" Alice's literary agent, Virginia Kidd, told the New York Times after her death. \"But she never made the numbers.\"\nHis mother didn't love him but he was in love with himself\n\nChapter 14\n\nGeorges Simenon & CHRISTIAN BRULLS ET AL.\n\nHe claimed to have had sex with ten thousand women, so it is surprising to learn that communication posed a problem. Clearly, he was able to fulfill his needs. But the challenges of verbal intercourse obsessed him throughout his life, as he revealed in an interview with the Paris Review in 1955. The Belgian author Georges Simenon was asked about the most significant issues he'd dealt with in his fiction, and which themes he expected to contend with in the future. He replied:\n\nOne of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other, is the problem of communication. I mean communication between two people. The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world. When I was a young boy I was afraid of it. I would almost scream because of it. It gave me such a sensation of solitude, of loneliness. That is a theme I have taken I don't know how many times. But I know it will come again. Certainly it will come again.\n\nFor someone so acutely aware of the efforts and failures of everyday speech, Simenon seemed to embody a phenomenal will to express himself to the world. How else to explain his voluminous literary output\u2014hundreds of novels, translated into nearly fifty languages? Many of his novels were best sellers; he sold more than 500 million books worldwide. Preposterously prolific, he was capable of producing eighty pages of prose a day, six books a year; somehow he found time to publish more than a thousand articles and short stories as well. He makes Joyce Carol Oates look like Harper Lee.\n\nSimenon, who died in 1989 at the age of eighty-six, was often more famous for his louche ways than for his work. He brought it on himself. Simenon was \"larger than life,\" known for his hubris, self-infatuation, and a capacity for excess that reached astonishing proportions. He never had an agent, choosing instead to oversee all his own publishing contracts, which he did very shrewdly. His kindness and magnanimity, when he cared to display them, were stupendous in equal measure. He began using pseudonyms at age sixteen and published more than two hundred novels using more than two dozen noms des plume. Nearly two hundred other novels were written under his own name, and twenty-one volumes of memoirs. He was itinerant, moving house dozens of times in his life, including a decade-long stretch in the United States, when he lived in Arizona, California, Florida, and Connecticut. He owned a gold watch that a reporter described as \"the size and shape of a brioche.\" He was an international celebrity and the subject of countless flattering magazine and newspaper profiles. \"He Writes a Book in 33 Hours,\" proclaimed one typically hyperbolic headline. \"World's Most Prolific Novelist\" was another.\n\nMost of the anecdotes he told about his life were false\u2014they were fantasies he spun to amuse himself and impress (or confuse) others. He was a legend in his own mind. This was a man as intoxicated by himself as others are by fine wine. But he liked wine, too\u2014also, champagne, whiskey, and beer, even while he wrote. On the advice of his doctor, he restricted himself to two bottles of red Bordeaux daily. (He did go through periods of renouncing alcohol for Coca-Cola.) One friend recalled a common sight: Simenon throwing up a bottle's worth of cognac in the garden, \"two fingers down his throat, after he finished a chapter.\"\n\nHe told an interviewer that he had become \"hungry for all women\" at age thirteen. That was apparent in the vast number of his sexual conquests\u2014ten thousand was perhaps a conservative estimate\u2014most of whom were paid. (He was more often a customer than someone's lover.) Allegedly, Simenon liked to make love several times a day, which would put his stamina right up there with that of Warren Beatty, Wilt Chamberlain, and other reputedly record-breaking sex fiends. He once said that he suffered physical pain at the thought of so many women in the world with whom he would never get to have sex. \"I would have liked to have known all females,\" he said. Simenon married and divorced twice\u2014the first time, at age twenty; the second time, a day after the dissolution of his first marriage\u2014and was an incorrigible philanderer. He was never boring.\n\nGeorges Joseph Christian Simenon was born in Li\u00e8ge, Belgium, on Friday, February 13, 1903. Even his birth involved an act of deceit: his superstitious mother insisted that the date be recorded, falsely, as February 12. When his grandmother saw him for the first time, she is said to have exclaimed to her daughter-in-law, \"My God, Henriette, what an ugly baby!\"\n\nAlthough Georges worshipped his father, D\u00e9sir\u00e9, an insurance clerk, he regarded his domineering, high-strung mother with contempt, and in his later writings, he savaged her mercilessly. Their relationship wasn't helped by her obvious and unabashed preference for his younger brother, Christian, and her blatant disdain for Georges. She adored Christian and always referred to him as \"my son\"; Georges, however, was \"le fils de D\u00e9sir\u00e9.\" Henriette exacerbated Georges's resentment of his younger brother and his bitterness toward the mother he perceived as rejecting him. He acted out in a number of ways, which had the effect not of gaining Henriette's sympathy, as he desperately wished, but of provoking her ire; she found him annoying and peculiar. His parents' marriage was unhappy, too. D\u00e9sir\u00e9 died at age forty-four of a heart attack in 1921, when Georges was eighteen years old. Just as his mother's withholding behavior would mark him for life\u2014and surely influence his dysfunctional relationships with women, as well as his writing\u2014so would the loss of his father. \"The most important day in a man's life is the day of his father's death,\" he wrote some thirty-five years later. When Henriette remarried in 1929, Georges considered it an act of treachery. Even more galling was that she kept the name Simenon; he was quite famous by that time and resented her exploitation of his celebrity.\n\nAs a child, Georges excelled at school to show his mother that he was no failure, that he was worthy of her love. She was oblivious. He supposedly learned to read at age five, and as a student at a local Catholic school, he was industrious, conscientious, and exceptionally gifted. At age eight, he won a student prize for French composition, earning the praise his mother denied him. By the age of thirteen, the precocious boy was signing his homework using the pseudonym \"Georges Sim,\" just for fun.\n\nYet by 1918, he'd shed his \"good boy\" persona, and his grades suffered as a result. \"I rebelled more or less against the taboos that imprisoned me and also against the mediocrity that surrounded me,\" he told a reporter for Paris Match in 1967.\n\nThanks to his brilliance, he got away with a lot. He mocked authority figures, skipped school, rejected any thought of entering the priesthood\u2014the vocation his mother had pressured him toward\u2014and, finally, dropped out of school. \"I wanted to get laid, and the Church told me I'd be damned for it,\" he once said. \"So I left.\" Had he stuck with it, he might have been expelled. Georges didn't care. He felt he could no longer continue being a mindless slave to any institution, least of all school or religion, and for the rest of his life he would devote himself wholly to two compulsions: sex and writing (not necessarily in that order).\n\nLike nearly every other biographical detail about Simenon, there are multiple versions of the story of how, as a teenager, he landed a newspaper job. Any or all of them may be apocryphal. But it seems that he walked into the offices of the Gazette de Li\u00e8ge and talked his way into a position as a reporter, earning forty-five francs a month to start. His debut was an article about the city's first horse fair since the Armistice, and he managed to impress his editors. Although he'd had no burning ambition to become a journalist, he was getting plenty of practice writing. He loved it. Even better, the deadline-driven, high-pressure environment turned him into a writer who could crank out copy quickly, a habit that would help him become the famous author of hundreds of novels.\n\nAt the Gazette, he resurrected the pseudonym he'd used at school, \"Georges Sim,\" whose byline first appeared in print on January 24, 1919. He happily took on the reporting assignments that no one else at the newspaper wanted, and proved himself a quick study, ambitious, full of energy, and enthusiastic about each new assignment. Soon his editor gave him the crime beat, furnishing him with a paid education that would later serve his detective fiction. In addition to the access he gained to police and criminal matters, he learned a great deal about forensic science.\n\nWithin a few months Georges was also given his own daily column, \"Hors du Poulailler\" (\"From Outside the Hen Coop\"). He signed it with the pseudonym \"M. Le Coq\" (\"Mr. Rooster\"). Whereas Sim was a straight news reporter, Le Coq's tone was funny, cavalier, and snarky. Writing about a criminal trial in 1921, Le Coq described the gathering of journalists in the courtroom: \"They form a small, closed circle which lives very much at its ease. There they sit, sharpening their pencils, munching chocolate, swapping jokes, until suddenly the trial takes an interesting direction and they start to scribble furiously. . . . They frequently break off between sentences to swig from bottles which they have brought into court, right under the judge's nose.\" And at the ripe old age of eighteen, Georges defined a journalist as \"a man who can stay awake at political meetings\" and \"a man who writes a column or two on a subject he knows absolutely nothing about.\"\n\nHe found the world of journalism fascinating, every aspect of it, and perhaps some part of him knew even then that his experiences would prove useful for his fiction writing. As his newspaper articles garnered more attention (a fact that thrilled him), his confidence grew. He knew that he was a real writer and that his ambition and talent extended beyond journalism. He proved it by writing his first book, Au pont des Arches, subtitled \"A short humorous novel of Li\u00e8geois mores.\" The author was Georges Sim. He followed this a few months later with a second novel, which he later admitted had been written while he was quite drunk. Within a year he cowrote a third novel with a friend\u2014a parody of a detective novel.\n\nIn December 1922, Georges resigned from his newspaper job. He was engaged to be married to a painter, R\u00e9gine Renchon; he decided that he disliked her name and rechristened her \"Tigy,\" which stuck. She was no great beauty, but she was strong-willed and intellectual and three years older than he\u2014and the first woman he'd been attracted to who was not a prostitute. They moved to Paris, as Georges knew he must leave Belgium to truly achieve success. Later, Simenon would confess that when he married Tigy he was in love with her sister, but the marriage got off to a promising start anyway. They had a son, whom they named Marc.\n\nThe Simenons felt at home in Paris, where Georges began to submit stories to literary journals and magazines. In 1923, he sent his work to the fiction editor of the daily newspaper Le Matin, who happened to be Colette, already famous for her novel Ch\u00e9ri. She rejected his work again and again, but one day, she encouraged him by saying that he was close to being published, just not quite there. And she offered some unforgettable advice: \"You're too literary. No literature! Get rid of all the literature, and you've got it.\" He finally did; he was published in Le Matin, and felt eternally grateful to Colette for transforming his approach to writing. (He went on to become a regular contributor.) His less-is-more style limited the use of adverbs and adjectives and favored short, clear sentences and brief paragraphs:\n\nThere is not a single light on Quai de l'Aiguillon. Everything is closed. Everyone is asleep. Only the three windows of the Admiral Hotel, on the square where it meets the quay, are still lighted.\n\nOver the next several years, Simenon obsessively honed his craft, trying out different themes and developing his voice. He churned out an absurd number of novels and more than a thousand short stories\u2014all pseudonymously, all pulp fiction\u2014with astonishing economy and efficiency. He would watch movies at night, sleep for a few hours, drink wine, and write and write. Any fear of being \"too literary\" was gone. These short novels were messy, even incoherent, but they were still good stories\u2014lowbrow page-turners intended for popular consumption. (He was thinking in \"chick lit\" terms long before that genre ever existed, describing his early works as \"novels for secretaries.\") They were not works of art, but he had no illusions about that.\n\nIn an interview Simenon gave to the New Yorker in 1945, he described the rigorous routine of his early career: \"Every day was like a prizefight,\" he said. \"My schedule was two hours of work, typing at high speed, followed by an hour of rest or physical exercise. Often my wife would give me a rubdown. Then I would return for another two hours of writing. When evening came, I was depleted.\"\n\nHe admitted that by 1924 he was engaged in \"the careful manufacture of semi-luxurious literary products. I became successful. I had a yellow Chrysler Imperial sedan and a chauffeur who delivered my manuscripts to the publishers and collected my checks. Also, I had a servant to fill my pipes for me. Every morning she would place forty filled pipes on my desk, enough to last me for two hours. I did not have to stop to fill my pipes myself and lose valuable time. After a while I worked more slowly, spending as much as two weeks on a single book.\" Another luxury he enjoyed was what he claimed to be the first private bar in Paris, in his own apartment. He later recalled that after one of his frequent raucous parties, with friends passed out on the floor, \"dawn would find me stepping over the cadavers and making my way to the typewriter.\"\n\nSimenon often boasted about the ease with which he produced books. If he was not ashamed of what he'd written, why had he chosen to write them using multiple pseudonyms? The roster included his old friend Georges Sim; Christian Brulls, a combination of his younger brother's name and his mother's maiden surname; Georges-Martin Georges; Gom Gut; Jean du Perry; Georges d'Isly; Bobette; Plick et Plock; Jacques Dersonne; Germain d'Antibes; and Poum et Zette.\n\nHe may have been a pulp fiction factory, but he didn't necessarily want everyone to know. (As in The Wizard of Oz, the idea was to \"pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.\") Perhaps using so many names allowed him to skip from crime novels to steamy romance novels to adventure novels, and so on, employing as many clich\u00e9s and hackneyed plots as he wished, freely and often hilariously, with no fear of criticism to slow him down. He could write eighty pages a day without breaking a sweat. Because he was in disguise, nothing (nor any dismissive critic) could stop him from exploring his imagination in whatever form or direction he wished. And even here, in what would not unreasonably be called dreck, there were seeds of the glorious Simenon novels to come\u2014including the acclaimed Maigret detective series, which made him one of the best-selling writers in the world\u2014and hints of the author whom Andr\u00e9 Gide called \"the greatest French novelist of our times.\"\n\nIf his writing life was orderly and productive, his personal life was a mess. In 1925, he and Tigy vacationed in Normandy, where he met Henriette Liberge, a local fisherman's daughter whom the Simenons hired as their maid. Just as he'd renamed his wife, Georges started calling Henriette \"Boule.\" His wealth grew along with his writing output, and although he remained as disciplined as ever in his work\u2014Boule woke him at four o'clock each morning with a cup of coffee, and he immediately went to work at his typewriter\u2014his libido was about to wreak havoc.\n\nBoule became Simenon's mistress. But that same year, he saw a nineteen-year-old African-American singer and dancer, Josephine Baker, perform in the show La revue n\u00e8gre. He fell in love. Baker was the toast of Paris, and Simenon was but one of her many lovers and admirers. He was so preoccupied with her that in 1927, his typically manic productivity nearly ceased. His wife seems to have had no inkling of his affair with Baker, even though it consumed his attention. (He and Baker remained lifelong friends.) The following year, he was able to break away from his obsession, at least enough to resume almost his usual output\u2014forty-four novels in 1928. A sense of frustration was beginning to set in; he wanted something more than journalism and pulp novels written under pseudonyms. He had plenty of money now, enough to buy a boat, and then an even larger boat that he had custom-built. Still, he was dissatisfied, maybe because his greatest creation, Inspector Jules Maigret, had yet to be born.\n\nAlways self-mythologizing, Simenon claimed that Maigret came to him a fully formed character one day as he sat in a caf\u00e9. \"I began to picture the powerful, impassive bulk of a gentleman I thought would make a passable inspector,\" he told an interviewer decades later. \"I added various accessories as the day wore on: a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat with a velvet collar.\" Maigret made his first appearance in 1929's Une ombre dans la nuit (A Shadow in the Night), written under the pseudonym Georges-Martin Georges. In this novel, Maigret is a doctor, and he has only a minor role. It is interesting that Simenon gave the early Maigret a medical profession, as the author frequently mentioned that he might have become a doctor if his writing career had failed.\n\nSimenon published other pulp novels (under different names) that year, some of which featured police inspectors who were essentially composites of the author himself.\n\nThe Maigret character was fleshed out over the course of four novels. It was almost as if Simenon was getting to know his signature character, experimenting with his creation before committing an entire novel to the hard-drinking, pipe-smoking detective. Simenon was starting to realize that he could produce higher-quality fiction, but the slow emergence of Maigret was caused by stubborn resistance from publishers, who weren't sold on the character. They viewed Simenon as a reliable cash cow\u2014and if it ain't broke, why fix it? They didn't want to tamper with a successful formula and had little regard for the author's wish to take his career in a different direction. Nor did they see any need for him to publish under his own name, which he was keen to do. It wasn't enough to be a lucrative and prolific author. Simenon yearned to be admired\u2014and moreover, to take credit for his work.\n\nEven several editors he worked with didn't know his real name. In fact, some believed that \"Georges Simenon\" was Georges Sim's pseudonym. Frustrated by the confusion for which he was responsible, Simenon announced dramatically to a journalist that his days of alter egos were about to end: \"From now on I'm going back to my real name, and I'll sign my books as Georges Simenon.\"\n\nHe was taking a huge risk by exposing his true name and attempting a more ambitious, nuanced writing style\u2014placing greater emphasis on character development and shedding the hackneyed plots of his pulp novels. His Maigret series would tweak the detective genre so that the answer to \"Whodunit?\" was not always wholly resolved, and the unorthodox detective could be counted on for his eccentric, highly unscientific investigative methods and empathy toward criminals. There were no obvious heroes or villains.\n\nEver fond of excess, Simenon decided that he needed a proper party to introduce his new, improved, more literary self. For someone who had worked pseudonymously for so long, he knew how to win publicity when he needed it. \"It's not enough to have talent,\" he told a friend. \"You have to make it known.\" He was hardly shy. In February 1931, he hosted a decadent society ball in his own honor at a Montparnasse nightclub. The savvy Simenon even hired a company to film his guests as they arrived, just like a Hollywood red-carpet premiere. He invited the most glamorous people in Paris\u2014a mix of high-society types, celebrities, journalists, and artists\u2014ensuring that it would be a much-talked-about event. Nearly a thousand people came. The party lasted all night and, like most other things Simenon attempted, it was a smashing success. Although some critics dismissed him as a publicity whore, he now had all the validation he needed to write under his own name. (He did continue publishing other novels under his nom de plume Christian Brulls for the next few years, but then he retired his alter egos.)\n\nWriting as himself did not slow his output; Simenon could easily complete a book a month, or even every few weeks. A New York Times piece once noted that Simenon was a man who \"can write a good novel in the time it takes a fallible human to turn out a passable book review.\" And a Life magazine article by Henry Grunwald pointed out that \"Simenon turns out a book in about the time the average writer needs to draft a single chapter.\"\n\n\"I write fast, because I haven't the brains to write slow,\" Simenon once said.\n\nFor him, writing provided an equilibrium that kept a darker side under control. He couldn't stand being between books. He took long walks, sometimes for hours on end, as ideas percolated in his mind.\n\nHis second wife, Denyse, described the difficulty of living with him during the gestation of each new work: \"Normally a happy person, full of vitality and strength, [he] would suddenly look and act strange, become short-tempered and even morose,\" she said. \"I used to think that I had done something to hurt him. The answer usually came three or four days later, when he would announce to me, 'I am going to start a new book!\"\n\nSimenon did not seek approval from his fellow writers, which was lucky, since he had offended so many by behaving like a pompous ass in his interviews. After all, he was only twenty-nine years old in 1932, and he displayed an arrogance that people felt he had not earned. He boasted about never creating outlines for his manuscripts but simply sitting down at his typewriter and essentially allowing the entire story and all its characters to unfold before him. His muse, it seemed, never took a vacation day or called in sick. Further, he didn't hesitate to reveal that all his novels were written \"in one take,\" with no revisions and \"no touchups or modifications.\"\n\nOne journalist recounted an irritating interview with Simenon. \"I wish I could be anonymous again, walk around unrecognized,\" he told her, rather disingenuously. \"It's terrible, you know, not to be able to go into a bar or restaurant without people elbowing each other and whispering, 'Look! It's Georges Simenon!' They read my books all over the world, you know.\" He also insisted that he had no taste for the great wealth he'd worked so hard to accumulate, even suggesting that he found money tedious. \"If I spend half a million francs a year,\" he said, \"it's only because I have to see the world. I have to know how it feels to lose a fortune in Monte Carlo, or to own a yacht and have a chauffeur. But as soon as I've amassed the material I need, it'll be over with, and I'll go back to a quiet, peaceful, life.\" Never mind that Simenon enjoyed Savile Row suits, custom-made silk shirts, and expensive wines.\n\nHis self-regard was insufferable. \"Provide me with a typewriter and this very instant I would be able to get started on a new book,\" he once boasted, displaying an ego the size of a small nation. \"I am fortunate in that I can write anywhere and under any conditions. I do not need to wait for inspiration. I am always inspired.\"\n\nSimenon argued that he had written his pseudonymous pulp novels to make enough money for writing more \"serious\" books. Yet he didn't want to limit his literary efforts to an elite readership. He said that his goal was \"to write a novel capable of capturing the interest of all audiences.\" Yet he admitted, \"This is not as easy as it sounds: not to repulse the learned while remaining comprehensible to simple folk.\"\n\nBy 1933, Simenon had written nineteen Maigret novels. He felt that he had entered what he called his \"literary period,\" but he was not satisfied with his status. \"When I am 40 I will publish my first real novel,\" he announced in 1937, at the age of thirty-four, \"and by the time I am 45 I will have won the Nobel Prize.\"\n\nIt is amazing that Simenon found time for writing at all: because Tigy supposedly had little need for sex, he cheated on her several times a week, with Boule and other women. Sometimes he was unfaithful several times a day. Most years, he was able to maintain the frenzied pace of his writing; when his life was consumed with additional distractions, his average output was still four novels a year (more than some writers produce in a lifetime).\n\nLong after Simenon resolved to publish books openly as himself, the intensity of his writing process caused him to inhabit other selves, in a manner of speaking. Although he was no longer using other names, he adopted the mannerisms, facial expressions, and gaits of his characters, and used sense memory (such as smells, colors, and sounds) to create settings. \"[While writing my novels] I shall not be myself,\" he once said. \"Of course, I will eat with my family, but I will not be Simenon but someone else.\"\n\nEntering into a trancelike state, diving into his subconscious\u2014these were necessary triggers for the act of creation. He was not inventing stories from his imagination, or from an intellectual place. Essentially, he still had to become someone else to write\u2014if not by using a pseudonym, then by allowing a character's \"self\" to take shape fully, without the author's control or intervention. \"I'm not an intelligent man and I don't have an analytical mind,\" he told a reporter in 1971. \"My books are therefore written by intuition alone. . . . The intuition just comes\u2014on condition that I am, in a sense, completely empty.\"\n\nHe would achieve a neutral mind-set in which his subconscious took over, temporarily abandoning Georges Simenon to discover characters that were waiting to rise to the surface. \"I actually live the part of my characters,\" he said. \"It's no longer I who write, but they.\" At one point in the process, the author would pose a question to yield more information, as he revealed in a 1955 interview: \"Given this man, where he is, his profession, his family, what can happen which will push him to his limit?\"\n\nThe first procedure he used to \"empty\" himself before writing was cleaning his desk, a perfunctory but necessary ritual. \"It's the character who commands, not me,\" he said. His method may have been pretentious (or invented for the sake of a good anecdote), but he claimed that it was the only way his books could be written.\n\n\"All the day I am one of my characters,\" he once said. \"I feel what he feels. The other characters are always seen by him. So it is in this character's skin I have to be. And it's almost unbearable after five or six days. That is one of the reasons my novels are so short; after eleven days I can't\u2014it's impossible. I have to\u2014it's physical. I am too tired.\"\n\nBy 1945, Simenon was still married to his first wife, but the marriage wouldn't last. (Still, he managed to stay close to Tigy for the rest of his life.) Within weeks of moving his family to the United States, he began an affair with a twenty-five-year-old French-Canadian woman, Denyse Ouimet. His fixation on name changing continued, as he promptly changed the spelling of hers to \"Denise.\" Because her former lover's name was Georges, he wanted to be renamed as well, and asked her to call him Jo.\n\nFour years later, she was pregnant with the first of their three children: Jean, Pierre, and Marie-Jo. He divorced Tigy in 1950 and immediately married Denyse. They lived for a time in California, where he met and became friends with Charlie Chaplin.\n\nIn the same random fashion in which he did most things, Simenon moved his family to Lakeville, Connecticut, where he bought an eighteenth-century home on fifty acres. He woke at six each morning and went to work in a soundproofed office, the curtains drawn. Denyse would prepare everything for him before he sat down at his IBM typewriter. He placed a \"Do Not Disturb\" sign\u2014stolen from New York's Plaza Hotel\u2014on the doorknob. His favorite pipes were filled and ready to be smoked, and his stacks of paper, maps, and dictionaries were by his side, as well as the telephone directories from all over the world that he used for naming his characters. In moments of solitary contemplation, he toyed with a monogrammed solid gold ball that Denyse had ordered from Cartier. His dozens of pencils were pre-sharpened daily, and he would switch on a hot plate to keep coffee brewing. He always began by drafting, on the back of a manila envelope, a list of his characters, their addresses and phone numbers, their ages, and other basic information\u2014including places to which they might travel, and possible medical ailments. If his writing \"spell\" was ever broken by some interruption from the outside world, he immediately shut down and discarded whatever he had written until that point. (Interruptions were rare.)\n\nSupposedly he wore the same outfit while writing each novel. For a normal writer, that might seem eccentric, but for Simenon, who could produce a book in a matter of days or a week, wearing the same clothes for the duration wasn't so odd. And he weighed himself before and after completing each new book, so as to measure how much sweat the project had cost him.\n\nSimenon submerged himself completely while writing at his feverish pace, refusing to see anyone or speak on the phone. It was the only way he could work. There is a well-known story (perhaps a joke?) that goes like this:\n\nAlfred Hitchcock once called to speak with the author. Simenon's secretary apologized, explaining that her boss couldn't come to the telephone because he had just started writing a new novel. \"That's all right,\" Hitchcock replied. \"I'll wait.\"\n\nBetween books, Simenon was fully engaged with the people around him. \"I'm a bit like a sponge,\" he once said. \"When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little\u2014and out it comes, not water but ink.\"\n\nHe would produce twenty-six novels during his five years in Lakeville.\n\nIt was there, in 1955, that a reporter from the Paris Review came to interview Simenon. The subject was described as \"cheerful, efficient, hospitable, controlled,\" which seemed to be Simenon's manner at all times, unless he was in bed with a woman. In the interview, Simenon provided insight into his revision process, which was brutally efficient and, he claimed, never involved changing the plot in any way. Asked what kinds of cuts he made to his work, he replied, \"Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence\u2014cut it.\"\n\nHe was just as unsentimental about word choice in general. \"[M]ost of the time I use concrete words,\" he said. \"I try to avoid abstract words, or poetical words, you know, like 'crepuscule,' for example. It is very nice, but it gives nothing.\"\n\nSimenon never had any interest in participating in the \"literary life,\" or even reading the work of his contemporaries. His own masters were dead. \"I should tell any young man who wanted to follow in my footsteps to read the novels of Dickens, Stevenson, Dostoevsky, Balzac, and Daniel Defoe,\" Simenon once told an English journalist. \"Then\u2014forget them. He must stop reading and start living. He mustn't be like Zola, who cross-examined a carpenter in his workshop about the tricks of his trade, then sat down to hammer out a book on the life of a carpenter.\"\n\nYet he did admire a few of his contemporaries, including John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, and especially William Faulkner. He once said in an interview that he wished he could have been Faulkner, because \"he was able to contain the whole of humanity in a small county in the south of the United States.\" Faulkner was also greatly admired by Simenon's contemporary Henry Green. They may have had this in common, but Green couldn't stand Simenon's work.\n\nSimenon regarded Ian Fleming's James Bond novels as insipid, but Fleming was a huge fan of Simenon. So was T. S. Eliot. The film directors Federico Fellini and Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut were admirers, too.\n\nHe met Dashiell Hammett and James Thurber, and formed friendships with Thornton Wilder and Henry Miller, both of whom he corresponded with. \"For us Americans who have just discovered you in translation,\" Miller wrote to him in 1954, \"it is like a new star rising on the horizon.\" And in his longtime friendship with Andr\u00e9 Gide, Simenon opened up about aspects of his personal life that he shared with no one else. But when it came to his writing he was like a magician; he knew better than to reveal too much about how his tricks worked. So when Gide, always awestruck by his friend's extraordinary output, once pressed him in a letter about his creative process, Simenon replied, \"It's a form of self-deception, nothing more.\"\n\nSimenon was flattered by Gide's attention, but he admitted later that he found Gide's work unreadable.\n\nOne fan of Simenon (whom he never met) was the British author John Cowper Powys, who described Simenon as \"my new favorite writer\" and considered him superior to Arthur Conan Doyle. \"I never thought I'd live to see the day that I'd be reading detective stories,\" Powys wrote to a friend, \"but the detective element of Simenon's books is their weakest aspect, generally rather unconvincing. All the rest\u2014atmosphere, composition, narration, and characters\u2014is wonderful, at least for me. It's been years since I've come upon an author who has so pleased me, with so many books, all equally charming.\"\n\nThe novelist, critic, and Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller (who was married to the author Shirley Hazzard) was an occasional user of pseudonyms in his own novels. Steegmuller wrote that when Simenon was at his best, he\n\nis an all-round master craftsman\u2014ironic, disciplined, highly intelligent, with fine descriptive power. His themes are timeless in their preoccupation with the interrelation of evil, guilt and good; contemporary in their fidelity to the modern context and Gallic in precision, logic and a certain emanation of pain or disquiet. His fluency is of course astonishing. His life is itself a work by Simenon.\n\nSimenon might have acted nonchalant about how others perceived him, but he soaked up the glory. To his credit, he harbored a degree of humility that lingered from childhood. \"I like plain people,\" he explained in a 1953 interview with Look magazine, \"people who are not all the time thinking about the impression they make and taking notes on themselves. The best thing is for the writer to know the garbage collector.\"\n\nEven after conquering the world with his Maigret novels, he could not succeed in shaking his mother's critical attitude. When Henriette was well into her seventies, her disapproval had not diminished. \"Why don't you ever write a book about nice people and good Catholics,\" she said to her son, \"instead of all these criminals?\"\n\nIn 1961 Simenon's career was still going strong. His work had been (lucratively) adapted for television and film, and he was deep into another affair, with Teresa Sburelin, the family's Italian housekeeper, who was twenty-three years younger than he. Years later, Denyse offered her opinion of her husband's incorrigible ways. \"We made love three times a day every day, before breakfast, after an afternoon nap, and before going to sleep,\" she said. \"Sometimes I wondered whether he didn't think of me as a prostitute. . . . He had contempt for women, but I'm the only one he respected while still showing that contempt. You want to know why he felt the need to cheat on me when he was getting what he needed at home? Definitely to reassure himself. He overdid everything: speaking, writing, publishing, and making love. This was a reflection of his temperament.\"\n\nSupposedly, one afternoon Simenon enjoyed a marathon session of sex with four women in a row while Denyse packed their suitcases in the adjoining room.\n\nHe once said that he viewed sex as \"the only possible form of communication with women.\" Because he had no memory of tenderness from his mother\u2014he claimed that she had never even held him in her lap\u2014his attitude is not surprising. He spent a lifetime trying to move beyond that early abandonment.\n\n\"I have no sexual vices,\" he told Fellini, \"just a need to communicate.\"\n\nAlthough the author's name was worth a fortune\u2014he was a one-man celebrity brand\u2014his personal life fell apart in middle age. For a man who never met a brothel he didn't like, his sexual fervor remained strong as ever, but it started to take its toll. He went through bouts of depression, and even he recognized that his life was in disarray.\n\nHis malaise did not go unnoticed by a French journalist who visited him in 1963, surprised by how grouchy and anxious his interview subject seemed. (Simenon had abruptly moved his family to Switzerland, having enjoyed his time in America but unable to resist his nomadic impulse.) Recalling the interview later, the journalist said he had not come away with a favorable impression. He took a jab at Simenon, describing him as \"an industrialist of literature. He produced, and he sold what he produced.\" Even more damning were his observations of the author's paranoia:\n\nSimenon dreaded a world war or some other catastrophe; hence the enormous laundry and operating room at his home, driven by a generator ready to go at a moment's notice. The house was replete with microphones, supposedly installed so that Simenon would know if one of his children was calling or crying, but I think he also used them to eavesdrop on what others besides his children might be saying about him. And finally, he detested wood, in which any number of undesirable beasts might find shelter. The furniture was of glass, leather, and metal. A curious impression: I listened to Georges Simenon for hours but never really got to know him.\n\nWhether Simenon's decline had to do with his desperately unhappy marriage is unclear, but it is likely. There were violent incidents between him and Denyse. \"He's afraid of her,\" one of his editors said of the couple's relationship. \"She's mad.\"\n\nPerhaps in denial about how bad things were, Simenon made the reckless decision to custom-build a grand home in Epalinges. In the beginning, Simenon claimed that the house was so immense he did not know the exact number of rooms. It was a fortress designed to accommodate his large staff of servants, nannies, and secretaries, and his paintings by Matisse and Picasso. It provided ample space to park his fleet of luxury cars\u2014including a Mercedes, a Jaguar, and a Bentley. Dollar signs were built into the front gates of the grounds. The house had (depending on the source) either eleven or twenty-one telephones; a vast library of his own works, translated into several languages; a service elevator installed specifically to deliver Simenon's meals; and a pool, among other extravagances. Charlie Chaplin and his family were frequent guests.\n\nUnfathomably rich and famous, Simenon became jaded about his career. In 1969, despite being the world's best-selling author, he had grown tired of his beloved detective. \"When I first began Maigret I was 26 and he was 45,\" he told a reporter that year. \"I was his son, he was my father. Now I am 66 and he is only 52, and he is my son and I am his father.\"\n\nA few years later, having written more than eighty Maigret novels, and thousands of pages in multiple genres under various names, he published the final volume and announced that he would never again write fiction in any genre, under any name. His children and friends refused to believe him\u2014they were convinced that he had another surprise in store\u2014but this time he did not. People magazine ran a profile of him accompanied by the headline, \"After 500 Novels and 10,000 Women, Georges Simenon Has Earned His Retirement.\"\n\nUnable to let go of storytelling entirely, he spent years dictating twenty-one volumes of his memoirs into a tape recorder. He addressed the public's immense curiosity about his prolific writing career: \"People will speak of a gift. Why not a malediction?\" He'd once said that whenever he went to his doctor while suffering from a mysterious illness, his doctor would offer the same prescription: \"Write a book.\" He always did, and noticed that he felt better instantly. Writing was his affliction and his cure. \"I'm happy when I've finished,\" he told a reporter five years before his death. \"But during the time I'm writing, it's something awful.\"\n\nAt seventy, he'd endured years of trauma and heartbreak: the collapse of his marriage to the manic-depressive, alcoholic Denyse; the death of his mother, which left him with complicated feelings of grief and anger. And in 1978, his daughter, Marie-Jo, committed suicide at age twenty-five in her apartment in Paris. She shot herself in the chest with a pistol, and a heartbroken Simenon could not recover from the loss. Less than two months earlier, Denyse had published a spiteful, extensively detailed account of their marriage, Un oiseau pour le chat (A Bird for the Cat). Simenon never forgave her for this betrayal, and refused to say her name aloud.\n\nIn his professional life, too, strains became apparent. He felt that he still hadn't received the acclaim he deserved, even though he'd flooded the world with hundreds of millions of copies of his books. The self-described \"imbecile of genius\" could not overcome his spite at being passed over for the Nobel Prize. It had been bad enough when his friend Gide won in 1947, but Simenon felt even more bruised when Albert Camus became the Nobel laureate in 1957. (There had been international rumors that perhaps Simenon would win that year.) The choice of Camus made him furious. \"Can you believe that asshole got it and not me?\" he had complained to Denyse.\n\nHaving abandoned fiction, he also gave up the house at Epalinges. He and Teresa, now his companion, moved first into a high-rise apartment, then into a small, cramped house in Lausanne. (After his death, his ashes would be scattered under an old cedar tree in their garden.) He placed most of his possessions in storage. He changed the \"Occupation\" line of his passport from \"homme de lettres\" to \"sans profession.\" He took a daily nap after lunch. It was a simple life. He and Teresa were devoted to each other.\n\nThe profile in People magazine described a blissful couple: \"[L]ife with Teresa appears serene. They are inseparable. They take a daily promenade together and eat their meals on a precise schedule.\"\n\nAs his health declined and he was confined to a wheelchair, he was philosophical about dying: \"I don't fear death, but I fear causing trouble by my death to those who survive me. I would like to die as discreetly as possible.\"\n\nPerhaps because Simenon had so effortlessly inhabited his many pseudonyms and had experienced such huge success, even writing as himself, he was never unduly preoccupied with how others regarded him. \"I have a very, very strong will about my writing,\" he once said, \"and I will go my way. For instance, all the critics for twenty years have said the same thing: 'It is time for Simenon to give us a big novel, a novel with twenty or thirty characters.' They do not understand. I will never write a big novel. My big novel is the mosaic of all my small novels. You understand?\"\n\nHe had always drawn attention because of his gargantuan appetites, including his sexual escapades, yet in private he was an ordinary man who followed a rigid routine\u2014as cited in a 1969 New York Times profile, just a few years before his final novel was published: \"Mr. Simenon lives by order and discipline. Not only does he rise at 6 on the dot, but he also goes to bed at the first stroke of 10, whether he is in the middle of the sentence or watching a drama on one of his seven TV sets. He falls asleep immediately.\"\n\nHe had the luxury of adhering, without interference, to the simple routine he had designed\u2014never having to do a single thing, for work or pleasure, that he did not schedule himself. And on September 4, 1989, he didn't feel like waking again. With nothing left to say, the great Simenon died serenely in his slumber at 3:30 in the morning.\n\nHe could not have written a better ending.\nShe kept snails as pets\n\nChapter 15\n\nPatricia Highsmith & CLAIRE MORGAN\n\nShe was one of the most wretched people you could ever meet, with mood shifts that swung as wildly as the stock market. Patricia Highsmith was born eleven years before Sylvia Plath, and the two women had a similar temperament. Like Plath, Highsmith possessed a legendary cruel streak and harbored feelings of murderous rage that were directed at family members, lovers, and innocent bystanders alike. One friend said that although she appreciated Highsmith's startlingly direct manner, unaccompanied by tact, she did not care for \"the ranting and raving, the nastiness, the hatred which would overflow.\" When a biographer of Highsmith was asked why she'd become interested in her subject, she replied, \"I have always been interested in women who go too far\u2014and Highsmith went further than anyone.\"\n\nThat point is hard to dispute. Highsmith was a heavy smoker (Gauloises), an alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous. She had affairs with both men and women\u2014almost all of these relationships were intense and unhappy\u2014and she compulsively recorded her sexual encounters. She revised her work by retyping her manuscripts in their entirety \"two-and-a-half times\" on a manual typewriter. She was living proof that not all women have a maternal instinct. She was secretive, misanthropic, gruff, cheap, rude, and generally mean. She had wanderlust. She collected maps. She had an eating disorder and described food as her \"b\u00eate noire.\" She felt disgusted by feminists. She was openly and relentlessly anti-Semitic, and felt that the Holocaust didn't go far enough. She wrote hateful letters, critical of Israel, to politicians and newspapers, using more than forty pseudonyms (including \"Phyllis Cutler\" and \"Edgar S. Sallich\") and disguised signatures. She saved, in her edition of the Holy Bible, an old article with the headline \"Archaeologist Finds the Tomb of Caiphus, the Jewish High Priest Who Handed Jesus Christ Over to the Jews.\" She said that she refused to sell Israel the rights to publish any of her books, and when the ham sandwiches she liked were no longer served in first class on airline flights, she blamed \"the yids\" for it. Yet she had Jewish lovers and friends. She had huge hands. She loved cats and owned many books about cats. She was a racist who believed that if black men didn't have sex many times a month, they became ill. She simultaneously cursed her fame and courted it. She was a compulsive liar. She had a febrile imagination and boasted that she had ideas \"as often as rats have orgasms.\" One of her editors described her as being like a \"child of 10 or 11.\" On her left wrist, she had a tattoo of her initials in Greek letters. She enjoyed watching violent scenes in movies, but shielded her eyes during sex scenes, which repelled her. She always wanted to play the harpsichord. She did play the recorder. She kept snails as pets because she enjoyed watching them copulate, liked their indeterminate gender and self-sufficiency, and said they provided a sense of tranquillity\u2014this from someone almost incapable of relaxation. Her fondness for snails was such that she kept three hundred of them in her garden in Suffolk and insisted on traveling with them. When she moved to France in 1967, she smuggled snails into the country by hiding them under her breasts\u2014and she made several trips back and forth to smuggle them all. Her favorite snails were named Hortense and Edgar. Her favorite flower was the carnation. She liked her Scotch neat. She had bad teeth. She was lonely and anxious, ambidextrous, and physically clumsy. She was sensitive to noise and despised it. She was obsessed by routine and repetition in all areas of her life. She believed that her phone was being wiretapped by people who wanted to steal her money. She liked to read the dictionary every evening before dinner. She was known to start drinking screwdrivers at seven o'clock in the morning. She made furniture. She felt that her best quality was perseverance. She was a gifted visual artist and admired the work of Francis Bacon because \"he sees mankind throwing up into a toilet.\" She was tall, dark, and handsome. She slept with many women named Virginia. She was paranoid and controlling. She contemplated suicide, but rejected the act as too selfish.\n\nPatricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, and grew up in New York City. She never felt at home in the United States and left permanently for Europe in 1963. Expatriate life suited her well. \"My most persistent obsession\u2014that America is fatally . . . off the mark of the true reality, that the Europeans have it precisely,\" she wrote in her notebook at age twenty-seven. Her childhood could hardly be described as happy; she despised her equally vicious mother, Mary. Highsmith said that she \"learned to live with a grievous and murderous hatred early on.\"\n\nAfter falling out with Mary in 1974, Highsmith did not see her for the last seventeen years of Mary's life. (It rankled her that her mother lived to the age of ninety-five.) Among what she considered countless slights and misdeeds, Highsmith deeply resented Mary's refusal to accept responsibility for her daughter's character, \"or to put it bluntly queerness.\" When she was fourteen years old her mother asked, \"Are you a les? You are beginning to make noises like one.\" This belittling remark served to alienate Highsmith further from everyone around her.\n\nWhen she was nearly sixty years old, Highsmith was asked by a reporter why she did not love her mother. \"First, because she made my childhood a little hell,\" she said. \"Second, because she herself never loved anyone, neither my father, my stepfather, nor me.\" One of Highsmith's former lovers once commented that Mary was \"high-strung, jealous, and possessive,\" and that mother and daughter \"enjoyed a certain folie \u00e0 deux.\" Although Highsmith dedicated a few books to her mother, she said that she did it only to impress the woman who found fault with everything she did.\n\nIn her diary, Highsmith described herself as feeling \"like a glacier or like stone\" until the age of thirty, but that sense of remove would never leave her. She had a lifelong aversion to being touched, and she bristled when someone shook her hand. (Many acquaintances learned never to do this with her.) Highsmith was perpetually anxious about maintaining boundaries with people. She viewed living with a romantic partner as \"catastrophic.\" Being alone was her preferred state: \"My imagination functions better when I don't have to speak to people,\" she said.\n\nShe was well aware that her taut, self-protective carapace had been caused partly by her upbringing and that it was \"certainly tied up with the fact I had to conceal the most important emotional drives of myself completely.\" Those yearnings were directed toward other women, a fact that drew baffled contempt from her mother.\n\nHighsmith's parents divorced a few days before she was born, and five months before the birth, Mary had tried to abort the fetus by ingesting turpentine. \"Highsmith\" was actually the name of Patricia's stepfather, who the girl believed was her biological father until she was ten years old. (Her initial surname, Plangman, belonged to her father, but she never used it.) When she learned the truth about her stepfather, she wasn't terribly shocked, because she'd suspected for a while that he wasn't her real father. Still, the revelation added another confounding element to her already fragmented sense of identity. The experience of shifting and shedding selves would prove a recurring theme in her work. It was a conundrum she was never able to solve and one that never ceased to fascinate her.\n\nAs a child, Highsmith was reticent, hypersensitive, and self-conscious; she had difficulty forming attachments. By age six, she was aware of an inchoate longing for other girls, which she tried to suppress. An itinerant childhood added to her struggle with (and ambivalence toward) making new friends. But she was a sophisticated and voracious reader, which provided solace. She immersed herself in Dostoevsky, Kafka, Poe, Woolf, and Proust, among others.\n\nWhen she was just eight years old, she discovered The Human Mind, the first book by the influential American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. \"He writes about pyromaniacs, kleptomaniacs, schizos and so on; their case histories, whether they're cured or not,\" she later recalled. \"I found this very interesting, and it was only much later that I realized that it had had such an effect on my imagination, because I started writing these weirdo stories when I was fifteen or sixteen.\" The opening sentence of the first story she wrote was, \"He prepared to go to sleep, removed his shoes and set them parallel, toe outward, beside his bed.\" (Even when she was a teenager, her obsessive-compulsive tendencies were set. These were efforts at control\u2014a coping mechanism in response to the tumult of her early years.)\n\nShe was a lifelong diarist and a relentless maker of charts, sketches, and lists that included ratings of lovers by character trait and category. At her death, she left behind about eight thousand pages from her diaries and \"cahiers,\" as she called her notebooks. (The diaries were for chronicling personal experiences; the \"cahiers\" recorded ideas for stories, poems, and other creative endeavors.) These writings were searching, anguished, and intimate. \"Every move I make on earth is in some way for women,\" she wrote. \"I adore them! I need them as I need music, as I need drawings.\"\n\nShe struggled with the gap between who she was and who she longed to become: \"What and why am I? There is an ever more acute difference . . . between my inner self which I know is the real me, and various faces of the outside world.\" Her identity seemed in perpetual flux, and it was quite a lot to manage. \"Dostoevsky is criticized for ambivalence, for illogic, contradictions\u2014worst of all, ambivalences in his philosophy,\" she once wrote in her diary. \"But there are always two. Perhaps this wonderful, magical, creative, public & private number is the mystic secret of the universe. One can love two people, the sexes are within all of us, emotions directly contrary do exist side by side. This is the way I see the world too.\"\n\nOn December 31, 1947, she wrote a private \"New Year's Toast\": \"[T]o all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envys, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle\u2014may they never give me peace.\" Her own happiness, whatever that meant, was not relevant. Nor did anyone else's well-being matter to her, and in that sense she was a bit like the sociopathic characters in her stories.\n\nIn 1942, Highsmith graduated from Barnard College. Thus began a series of failed job interviews with various magazines. This was (and remains) a common entry-level field for literary college graduates in Manhattan. But no one would have her. Time, Fortune, Good Housekeeping, and Mademoiselle were among the publications that turned her down. Her interview with Vogue was comically disastrous, even though she did have a flair for clothing and usually displayed a distinctive, androgynous style. She was also meticulous about ironing, a domestic task she'd mastered at a young age and found satisfying. Yet for some reason, Highsmith showed up for her much-coveted interview looking like a mess. She appeared at the offices of the world's most glamorous and prestigious fashion magazine \"with a stained and wrinkled blouse, bad hair, and, in the formal 1940s, a head unadorned by a hat,\" as her biographer Joan Schenkar noted. She appeared to have rolled out of bed and gone straight to her interview. In her diary, Highsmith was angry about the rejection (which was clearly her fault). \"Well, I did wash my hair just before going in,\" she wrote. \"There'll come a time when I shall be bigger than Vogue and I can thank my lucky star I escaped their corruptive influences.\" Unlikely as it was, she would prove to be right.\n\nAfter Barnard, she had a secret life: writing comic strips (story lines and dialogue) for at least seven years. Later, as Schenkar discovered, Highsmith attempted to remove, without explanation, all traces of this extensive work from her archives. Still, she seemed oddly suited to writing comics if you consider that she specialized in superheroes with alter egos\u2014secret lives and clandestine identities that shifted from day to night. One of her few pleasures in life was fiercely guarding secrets about herself, down to the most banal details.\n\nIn 1950, she would publish her first novel, Strangers on a Train. It promptly launched her career. The story\u2014which follows two men, Guy and Bruno, who meet on a train and form a murder pact, as well as a twisted, homoerotic bond\u2014had been rejected by six publishers. Yet upon publication it was an immediate success, and Alfred Hitchcock adapted it into a well-received film. (Highsmith was unhappy that the director had paid only about $7,000 to secure the rights. She never got over it.) The process of getting the script written proved challenging; writers such as Dashiell Hammett and John Steinbeck turned down the project. Raymond Chandler wrote an early draft but was fired by Hitchcock. That was probably for the best, as Chandler admitted that he had struggled with the material. \"It's darn near impossible to write, because consider what you have to put over: a perfectly decent young man (Guy) agrees to murder a man he doesn't know, has never seen, in order to keep a maniac from giving himself away and from tormenting the nice young man,\" Chandler wrote. \"We are flirting with the ludicrous. If it is not written and played exactly right, it will be absurd.\"\n\nOther film adaptations of Highsmith's work over the years included Ren\u00e9 Cl\u00e9ment's Purple Noon and Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley. In the 1980s, a smart, talented young film director named Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct the Academy Award\u2013winning film The Hurt Locker, wrote a script on spec for a Highsmith novel she loved. The project never went anywhere, but Highsmith liked Bigelow very much.\n\nTruman Capote was responsible for helping the author complete her draft of Strangers on a Train. In the summer of 1948, thanks to his endorsement, Highsmith was awarded a residency at Yaddo, the prestigious writers' and artists' colony in upstate New York. Also there that summer were Chester Himes and Flannery O'Connor. Highsmith finally got the space and time she needed to finish the manuscript, despite her two-day hangovers. She was thrilled: \"If I cannot give birth in the supreme hospital of Yaddo, where can I ever?\" Fifty years later, in a rare magnanimous gesture, Highsmith would show her gratitude to Yaddo by naming it the sole beneficiary of her estate, along with a $3 million bequest.\n\nShe recalled being instantly taken with the spritelike Capote, if not his writing, and particularly appreciated his openness about being gay. He was entirely unacquainted with the hang-ups that froze Highsmith and left her struggling with her sexuality. Once he told her that at the age of fourteen, he came out to his parents with a simple, jubilant declaration: \"Everybody is interested in girls, only I, T.C., am interested in boys!\"\n\nHighsmith's second novel, as far as anyone knew at the time, was The Blunderer, in 1954; it would be followed a year later by The Talented Mr. Ripley, the book that would ensure her reputation and fame. With that accomplishment she established herself as a master of crime fiction\u2014even though she disliked being typecast in a particular genre\u2014and a creator of psychologically complex characters who, beneath their mannered fa\u00e7ades, were misfits, deviants, and sometimes psychopaths. The British novelist Graham Greene, a great fan of Highsmith's work, described her as a \"writer who has created a world of her own\u2014a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger. Nothing is certain when we have crossed this frontier.\" It was a world that often reflected her interior state and her own disturbing obsessions. Perhaps most troubling of all, Susannah Clapp wrote in a 1999 piece in the New Yorker, was that \"her narratives suggest a seamlessness between bumbling normality and horrific acts. You never hear the gears shift when the terrible moment arrives.\"\n\nIn truth, Highsmith had published her second novel two years before The Blunderer\u2014yet it was not a work she wished to claim credit for. This one was a secret.\n\nThe Price of Salt came out in 1952 under the name of Claire Morgan, who did not exist. Although Highsmith would never again use a pseudonym for any of her novels or stories, this radical narrative demanded a furtive identity. \"Oh god,\" she said, \"how this story emerges from my own bones!\" Homoeroticism was pervasive in her fiction, but always obliquely and within the context of troubled, amoral characters. In a scene from The Talented Mr. Ripley, relations between Tom Ripley and the object of his fixation, Dickie Greenleaf, begin to take an ugly turn when Dickie walks in on Tom dressed in his clothes:\n\n\"Marge and I are fine,\" Dickie snapped in a way that shut Tom out from them. \"Another thing I want to say, but clearly,\" he said, looking at Tom, \"I'm not queer. I don't know if you have the idea that I am or not.\"\n\n\"Queer?\" Tom smiled faintly. \"I never thought you were queer.\"\n\nDickie started to say something else, and didn't. He straightened up, the ribs showing in his dark chest. \"Well, Marge thinks you are.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Tom felt the blood go out of his face. He kicked off Dickie's second shoe feebly, and set the pair in the closet. \"Why should she? What've I ever done?\" He felt faint. Nobody had ever said it outright to him, not in this way.\n\n\"It's just the way you act,\" Dickie said in a growling tone, and went out of the door.\n\nThe Price of Salt, however, depicted consensual (and satisfying) romantic love between two women. It was Highsmith's most autobiographical novel, and it laid bare the emotional drives she had worked hard to keep hidden for so long. Moreover, it was the first gay or lesbian novel with a happy ending. This was not pulp fiction. No one went insane, committed suicide, or was murdered. No one \"converted\" to heterosexuality or found God. This was a breakthrough for the era in which it was written, and surprisingly, the novel was well received by critics. The paperback edition, issued by Bantam a year later, sold more than a million copies. Grateful letters trickled in for years afterward, from both men and women, addressed to Claire Morgan in care of her publishing house. \"We don't all commit suicide and lots of us are doing fine,\" wrote one fan.\n\nIf it was true, as Highsmith wrote in her diary in 1942, that \"[a]ll my life's work will be an undedicated monument to a woman,\" then The Price of Salt was the culmination of that ambition. No wonder it demanded concealment.\n\nThe idea for the novel had arisen from a single but transformative moment. In December 1948, in need of cash and feeling depressed, she took a temporary job during the pre-Christmas rush in the toy department of Bloomingdale's in Manhattan. Though she was hired for a month, she lasted only two and half weeks there. She'd gotten the job partly to pay for her psychoanalytic treatment, which she'd begun in a halfhearted effort to \"cure\" herself of the homosexual urges that alternately tormented her and left her in a manic state of bliss. \"When you're in love it's a state of madness,\" she said.\n\nOne morning, a few days after Highsmith started the job, a beautiful blond woman in a mink coat walked into the toy department, purchased a doll for her daughter, then left the store. Highsmith never saw her again. Yet that brief transaction captivated Highsmith, who had a habit of projecting her fantasies and yearnings onto unsuspecting women she barely knew. \"She could be called the balladeer of stalking,\" Susannah Clapp noted of Highsmith in her New Yorker piece. \"The fixation of one person on another\u2014oscillating between attraction and antagonism\u2014figures prominently in almost every Highsmith tale.\"\n\nTo Highsmith, the woman she'd met \"seemed to give off light.\" And though it had been a routine encounter in which no flirtation had occurred, she was left feeling \"odd and swimmy in the head, near to fainting, yet at the same time uplifted, as if I had seen a vision.\" That night, she went home to the apartment where she lived alone and wrote eight pages in longhand, a broad version of the novel's plot. \"It flowed from my pen as if from nowhere\u2014beginning, middle and end,\" she recalled. \"It took me about two hours, perhaps less.\" Then she fell ill with chicken pox.\n\nBecause this bewitching customer had paid by credit card and asked for the purchase to be sent to her home, Highsmith had the woman's name and address: Mrs. E. R. Senn of Ridgewood, New Jersey. In Highsmith's imaginative retelling, Senn was cast as the seductive older woman, Carol, and Highsmith as the na\u00efve nineteen-year-old shopgirl, Therese. The department store was fictionalized as Frankenberg's. When Carol invites Therese out for lunch, the young protagonist, despite having a boyfriend, feels the first stirrings of love. \"An indefinite longing, that she had been only vaguely conscious of at times before, became now a recognizable wish,\" Highsmith wrote. \"It was so absurd, so embarrassing a desire, that Therese thrust it from her mind.\" Some passages in the novel were taken verbatim from the author's own notebooks and diaries. Although the initial writing of the novel came easily to her, the revision stage brought out dark emotions. As the publication date grew closer, Highsmith suddenly crashed, hitting one of the lowest points of her life. She became self-destructive to a terrifying extent, going on drinking binges and feeling more miserable than ever. At the very moment she should have been celebrating a work that she felt proud of, she experienced an agonizing case of writer's remorse. She wanted to withdraw the novel from publication: it was so deeply personal that she feared it would destroy her, both personally and professionally. The use of an invented name was only a mild anodyne for her anxiety. Mostly, she felt sick with worry and shame: \"These days are on the brink again. The least thing depresses me to the point of suicide.\"\n\nIn fact, suicide was the fate of Mrs. E. R. Senn\u2014a grim twist worthy of a Highsmith tale. Married to a rich businessman, the beautiful woman who had aroused Highsmith's ardor was an alcoholic who had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. She had absolutely no idea that she'd inspired a lesbian love story. In the fall of 1951, Kathleen Wiggins Senn killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of her lavish home in Bergen County.\n\nIt wasn't until the 1990 British edition of The Price of Salt was released that Highsmith explained in an afterword why she'd decided to publish under a pseudonym. Both her publisher and agent seemed determined to have her keep writing the same books over and over, confining her to so-called crime fiction. After the publication of Strangers on a Train, she'd been tagged instantly as a certain kind of writer, even though in her mind it was \"simply a novel with an interesting story.\" (The reductive business of branding and marketing is unchanged even today.) She found this rather frustrating, and in objecting to being labeled she had her share of supporters.\n\n\"Patricia Highsmith is often called a mystery or crime writer,\" a newspaper critic noted, \"which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman.\" To Gore Vidal, who shared her expatriate anti-American views, she was simply one of the greatest modernist writers. And the playwright David Hare admired her work because \"behind it lies the claim that, once you set your mind to it, any one human being can destroy any other.\"\n\nHighsmith knew that her literary genius transcended any single genre, and she detested any kind of categorization. She considered herself a neglected master. \"If I were to write a novel about a lesbian relationship,\" she wrote in the afterword, \"would I then be labeled a lesbian book-writer? That was a possibility, even though I might never be inspired to write another such book in my life. So I decided to offer the book under another name.\" She also must have wanted to protect her reputation and nascent career, although she never admitted this outright. (Nor did she wish to upset her eighty-four-year-old grandmother, Willie Mae.)\n\nAfter all, she noted, those were the days when homosexuals were widely viewed as perverts, when \"gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual.\"\n\nThe pseudonym gave her the safety she craved. Because the story of her two characters ends on a sweet, hopeful note, this novel seemed an exercise in wish fulfillment for the author. In her own life, Highsmith almost always experienced thwarted love, painfully brief relationships, and bitter rejections.\n\nIn 1959, she began an on-and-off relationship with the author Marijane Meaker, who would also publish under pseudonyms, including Vin Packer, Ann Aldrich, and most famously M. E. Kerr. They met at L's, a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village, and in her memoir Meaker later recalled Highsmith wearing a trench coat, drinking gin neat, and looking like \"a combination of Prince Valiant and Rudolph [sic] Nureyev.\" She admired Highsmith's resistance to societal attitudes toward homosexuality: \"I don't care for acceptance,\" Highsmith told Meaker, who was in her early thirties at the time and foolishly believed that she had found her life partner. (The relationship would last two years.) They lived together for a time, but Meaker later confessed that if they hadn't had \"such good horizontal rapport,\" the affair would have ended much sooner.\n\nAfter breaking up, they stayed in touch\u2014which meant that Meaker had to deal with Highsmith's narcissism by mail instead. \"Did I tell you that Bloomsbury liked my latest Ripley so much they gave me an advance that in American money comes to about $115,000?\" Highsmith wrote in one letter. \"I never got that much for a book. You know, in the U.S. no one really recognizes me, but in Europe I'm often recognized and treated like a celebrity.\" In other letters she railed against Jews, adding in one postscript that \"USA could save 11 million per day if they would cut the dough to Israel.\"\n\nThat wasn't all. Immediately after their breakup, Highsmith wrote a novel called The Cry of the Owl, in which an \"unsuccessful artist\" was a thinly disguised version of Meaker. The character was viciously knifed to death for several pages at the end.\n\nBy 1983, many people suspected that Highsmith had been the author of The Price of Salt; although she refused to address the truth in any way, it had become a poorly kept secret. When contacted by Barnard's alumni magazine for an article about her, and asked directly whether she had written the novel, Highsmith replied that the less said about the subject, the better, and left it at that. In the same year, Naiad Press bought the rights to reissue the book, but Highsmith declined to publish it under her own name. Naiad tried to tempt her by offering a $5,000 advance for publishing with full disclosure, or $2,000 for publishing under a pseudonym. She refused to take the bait.\n\nFor the 1990 UK edition, Highsmith finally came around to coming out. She had stubbornly resisted even then, but she did consent to putting her real name to the work. The novel was also released with a new title, Carol. Although Highsmith had no wish to analyze her decision for the press or the public, the book spoke for itself. Writing it had been an act of courage, even if the author wanted no part in acknowledging that fact. Today, it remains one of her best works, a novel worth reading and revisiting.\n\nHighsmith spent her last thirteen years alone in a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in southern Switzerland. She died of cancer in 1995, at the age of seventy-four, and her body was cremated. Of the author's final weeks, a neighbor recalled, \"There was a tranquillity about her. She seemed to be quite peaceful, and as lucid as could be.\"\nShe liked whips and chains\n\nChapter 16\n\nPauline R\u00e9age & DOMINIQUE AURY\n\nNot many authors can boast of having written a best-selling pornographic novel, much less one regarded as an erotica classic\u2014but Pauline R\u00e9age could. Make that Dominique Aury. No: Anne Desclos.\n\nAll three were the same woman, but for years the real name behind the incendiary work was among the best-kept secrets in the literary world. Forty years after the publication of the French novel Histoire d'O, the full truth was finally made public. Even then, some still considered it the most shocking book ever written. When the book came out, its purported author was \"Pauline R\u00e9age,\" widely believed to be a pseudonym. Although shocking for its graphic depictions of sadomasochism, the novel was admired for its reticent, even austere literary style. It went on to achieve worldwide success, selling millions of copies, and has never been out of print. This was no cheap potboiler. There was nothing clumsy, sloppy, or crude about it. Histoire d'O was awarded the distinguished Prix des Deux Magots, was adapted for film, and was translated into more than twenty languages.\n\nDesclos (or, rather, Aury, as she became known in her early thirties) was obsessed with her married lover, Jean Paulhan. She wrote the book to entice him, claim him, and keep him\u2014and she wrote it exclusively for him. It was the ultimate love letter.\n\nWhips and chains and masks! Oh, my. When Histoire d'O appeared in France in the summer of 1954, it was so scandalous that obscenity charges (later dropped) were brought against its mysterious author. Even in the mid-twentieth century, in a European country decidedly less prudish than the United States, the book struck like a meteor. That the writer had evidently used a pen name provoked endless gossip in Parisian society. Speculation about the author's identity became a favorite sport among the literati: was the author prominent, obscure, male, female, perverted, crazy? The authorial voice was too direct, too cool, to be that of a woman, some argued; others insisted that no man could have offered such a nuanced exploration of a woman's psyche. One thing was certain: the person who wrote this novel had no shame.\n\nStory of O, the title of the English edition, is an account of a French fashion photographer, known only as O, who descends into debasement, torment, humiliation, violence, and bondage, all in the name of devotion to her lover, Ren\u00e9. Over the course of the novel she is blindfolded, chained, flogged, pierced, branded, and more. As the story opens, O is a passive figure who does precisely what she's told:\n\nHer lover one day takes O for a walk in a section of the city where they never go\u2014the Montsouris Park, the Monceau Park. After they have taken a stroll in the park and have sat together side by side on the edge of a lawn, they notice, at one corner of the park, at an intersection where there are never any taxis, a car which, because of its meter, resembles a taxi.\n\n\"Get in,\" he says.\n\nShe gets in.\n\nThe book is like an erotic version of those childhood tales in which a character steps accidentally into an alternate reality and is induced into a hallucinatory state. (Paulhan once insisted that \"fairy tales are erotic novels for children.\") Think of Alice falling down the rabbit hole, or the magic wardrobe leading to Narnia. That was Story of O, albeit with a much darker vision. By the novel's eleventh page, O has been abandoned by her lover at a ch\u00e2teau outside Paris. Alone, she is subdued, quietly following instructions without resistance. She undresses and is fitted with a locked collar and bracelets and a long red cape. Blindfolded, she cries out as a stranger's hand \"penetrated her in both places at once.\" Thus begins her odyssey as a sexual slave to the mostly anonymous men and women who have their way with her. \"O thought she recognized one of the men from his voice,\" R\u00e9age writes, \"one of those who had forced her the previous evening, the one who had asked that her rear be made more easily accessible.\" Willing to do anything with anyone, she reveals an existential longing for release. Aury once observed that \"O is looking for deliverance, to thrust off this mortal coil, as Shakespeare says.\"\n\nYears after the book was published, Aury offered insight into her protagonist's apparent fa\u00e7ade of passive acceptance. \"I think that submissiveness can [be] and is a formidable weapon, which women will use as long as it isn't taken from them,\" she said. \"Is O used by Ren\u00e9 and Sir Stephen, or does she in fact use them, and . . . all those irons and chains and obligatory debauchery, to fulfill her own dream\u2014that is, her own destruction and death? And, in some surreptitious way, isn't she in charge of them? Doesn't she bend them to her will?\"\n\nThe novel also featured scenes of women seducing women. Those encounters seemed genuine rather than forced, contrary to accusations that the author had written such scenes to satisfy the \"male gaze.\" Aury considered herself bisexual and admitted her preference for the female body. Describing her first real-life exposure to male anatomy, she said, \"I found that stiffly saluting member, of which he was so proud, rather frightening, and to tell the truth I found his pride slightly comical. I thought that that must be embarrassing for him, and thought how much more pleasant it was to be a girl. That, by the way, is an opinion I still hold today.\"\n\nThroughout the story, O readily offers herself. She responds to pain and suffering with acceptance or gratitude. The narrative culminates in an all-night party in which she is led along on a dog leash, naked, wearing an owl mask. After she has had a depilatory, to please her master, a chain is attached to rings inserted into her labia. (Her journey seemed to confirm the French writer Georges Bataille's dictum: \"Man goes constantly in fear of himself. His erotic urges terrify him.\") O's response to such terror is absolute surrender, allowing her experiences to lead her into a realm of no pathology, analysis, or consequence. As just about every self-help book advises, opening yourself to the unknown can feel very good. It can transform you. Then again, it can also make you insane.\n\nDepending on your erotic wishes and habits, Story of O will disturb you, frighten you, make you angry, make you upset, confuse you, disgust you, or turn you on. Maybe everything at once. Decades after its publication, the novel has not lost its shock value. In 2009, a commentary in the Guardian following a Radio 4 program, \"The Story of O\u2014The Vice Fran\u00e7aise,\" explained that the late-night timing of the program was apt, because the material was \"strong stuff\" and might have made people queasy. One listener had remarked, on the air, that hearing excerpts from the book provoked \"a rush of blood to the non-thinking parts.\"\n\nAs the author once revealed, the character O actually began as Odile, the name of a close friend who'd once been deeply in love with Albert Camus. \"She knew all about the name and was enchanted,\" Aury said. \"But after a few pages I decided that I couldn't do all those things to poor Odile, so I just kept the first letter.\" Contrary to speculation over the years by feminists, academics, psychoanalysts, and general readers obsessed with the book, the name O, she said, \"has nothing to do with erotic symbolism or the shape of the female sex.\"\n\nHowever depraved her novel seemed, Aury had set out to create a profoundly personal work of art, not cheap porn. (\"That Pauline R\u00e9age is a more dangerous writer than the Marquis de Sade follows from the fact that art is more persuasive than propaganda,\" declared an essayist in the New York Review of Books.) Aury was making something new, working with conventions as no one had attempted in quite the same way. \"Debauchery conceived of as a kind of ascetic experience is not new, either for men or for women,\" she explained, \"but until Story of O no woman to my knowledge had said it.\"\n\nAury seemed an unlikely candidate to produce a book showcasing violent penetration. From childhood she'd been a serious reader, immersing herself in Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, and the Bible. She once boasted of a period in which she'd read and reread the whole of Proust each year for five years. It seemed inconceivable that a woman with such a drab exterior could explore a sexual compulsion that drove her protagonist toward oblivion. Also distinguishing the novel from what one critic called \"volumes sold under the counter\" were its intricate ideas about human behavior\u2014that \"we are all jailers, and all in prison, in that there is always someone within us whom we enchain, whom we imprison, whom we silence,\" as she later explained. Story of O is about power, the pleasure of having it, and finally the pleasure of letting it go. For her part, the author admitted her comfort with the notion of obedience, at least in certain contexts. \"I think I have a repressed bent for the military,\" she said. \"I like discipline without question, specific schedules and duties.\"\n\nPaulhan, the impetus for Aury's cri de coeur, was one of France's leading intellectuals and the publisher of the preeminent literary journal Nouvelle Revue Fran\u00e7aise. His affair with Aury lasted thirty years, until his death in 1968. Throughout their relationship, Paulhan remained married to his second wife, Germaine, who had Parkinson's disease. She was well aware of her husband's philandering, which he expected her to tolerate without protest. And Aury was not his only mistress. After his death, his daughter-in-law remembered him as \"quite the ladies' man.\" (It's interesting that Aury used precisely the same phrase in recalling her own father.)\n\nWhen she met Paulhan, Aury was in her early thirties and he was in his fifties. (She was born in 1907; he was born in 1884.) She'd been married briefly and had a son, Philippe. Her father, an acquaintance of Paulhan, had introduced them. At the time, she was hoping to publish a collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French religious poetry, and Paulhan was an editor at the distinguished publishing house Gallimard. She did not describe their meeting as love at first sight. \"It was slow, but it went very\u2014efficiently,\" she said, recalling her initial impression of him as handsome, charming, and funny. They bonded through shared intellectual passion; during the Nazi occupation of France, while doing work for the Resistance, they became lovers. \"Dominique Aury was fascinated by intelligence,\" a friend recalled. \"The intelligence of Paulhan was obvious. And for her it became a kind of obsession.\"\n\nUntil her fateful meeting with Paulhan, Aury hadn't yet found the love of her life, and her sexual history was hardly remarkable. \"By my makeup and temperament I wasn't really prey to physical desires,\" she once said. \"Everything happened in my head.\" That would explain the electricity between her and Paulhan, which would exert a hold on her for the rest of her life. Although she could talk extensively about sex, her personal life was fairly tame. She did once joke, however, that she'd considered prostitution as a potential vocation: \"I told myself that had to be absolutely terrific: to be constantly wanted, and to get paid besides, how could you go wrong?\" she said. \"And what happens? At the first opportunity, what do I do but turn into a stupid prude!\" Yet she had also wondered what it might be like to become a nun\u2014drawn to it, no doubt, by the stern uniform.\n\nOf course, Aury was destined not for prostitution but to live, work, and breathe intellectual society. She toyed with her identity well before Histoire d'O was published. At some point during the war, while working as a journalist and translator, she discarded her original name, Anne Desclos, erasing it entirely from her professional and personal life. Almost no one knew that Aury was not actually her own name; she kept that fact a secret. She had chosen \"Dominique\" for its gender neutrality, and \"Aury\" was derived from her mother's maiden name, \"Auricoste.\"\n\nAlthough it's true that Story of O was inspired by Paulhan's offhand remark to Aury that no woman could ever write a \"truly\" erotic novel, a more compelling motive was her fear, however irrational, that their relationship might end. \"I wasn't young, I wasn't pretty, it was necessary to find other weapons,\" she later revealed. \"The physical side wasn't enough. The weapons, alas, were in the head.\" She plunged into the task: writing through the night, in pencil, in school exercise books, while lying in bed, and she produced\u2014three months later\u2014her intimate masterpiece. The first sixty pages, she said, flowed \"automatically\" and appeared in the book exactly as they had come to her.\n\nThe novel was written as a challenge to Paulhan's dare (or assignment, if you want to call it that). \"I wrote it alone, for him, to interest him, to please him, to occupy him,\" she told the documentary filmmaker Pola Rapaport shortly before her death. Aury never intended the novel to be made public, but Paulhan insisted on it. For her, the manuscript was simply a long letter that had to be written. She hoped this gift would ensure the permanence of their relationship. \"You're always looking for ways to make it go on,\" she said. \"The story of Scheherazade, more or less.\"\n\nThe content of the novel was graphic, but the author's prose was highly controlled, disciplined, and spare. Her \"voice\" was at odds with the erotic material, making it hard to dismiss as pornography. For Paulhan, the book was \"the most ardent love letter that any man has ever received.\" He did not abandon her.\n\nThe author said later that Story of O, written when she was forty-seven, was based on her own fantasies. She was influenced, too, by her lover's admiration for the Marquis de Sade. Later she described her feverish writing process as \"writing the way you speak in the dark to the person you love when you've held back the words of love for too long and they flow at last . . . without hesitation, without stopping, rewriting, discarding . . . the way one breathes, the way one dreams.\"\n\nPaulhan was awestruck. When he excitedly asked if he could find a publisher for her work, she agreed on the condition that her authorship remain hidden, known only to a select few. She gave herself the pen name \"Pauline R\u00e9age\": \"Pauline\" after Pauline (Bonaparte) Borghese, elder sister of Napoleon, who was famous for her sensual, decadent pursuits; as well as Pauline Roland, the late-nineteenth-century French women's rights activist. Despite the apparent blur between \"Pauline\" and \"Paulhan,\" Aury said later that her appellation had nothing to do with him. (Some insisted, wrongly, that she chose the name because it sounded like the French for \"Reacting to Paulhan.\") As for \"R\u00e9age,\" she'd supposedly stumbled upon it in a real estate registry.\n\nPeople assumed that aspects of Story of O were highly autobiographical, yet Aury wasn't so sure. Some twenty years after the book came out, she admitted that her own joys and sorrows had informed it, but she had no idea just how much, and did not care to analyze anything. \"Story of O is a fairy tale for another world,\" she said, \"a world where some part of me lived for a long time, a world that no longer exists except between the covers of a book.\"\n\nShe characterized \"Pauline R\u00e9age\" in vague terms as well\u2014someone who \"is not me entirely and yet in some obscure way is: when I move from one me to the other the fragments scatter, then come back together again in a pattern that I'm sure is ever-changing. I find it harder and harder to tell them apart anymore, or at least not with sufficient clarity.\" Like many pseudonymous authors, Aury saw identity as unstable and felt perfectly at ease inhabiting a self that refused to remain a fixed star.\n\nShe knew that finding a publisher for her novel (whether or not she took a pen name) would not be easy. It was Paulhan who demanded that the book reach the public, and he fought for it. In this instance, however, his prestige within the literary world carried no clout. Gallimard promptly refused the work, not wanting to deal with the inevitable (and expensive) hassle of a court case. \"We can't publish books like this,\" Gaston Gallimard told her. This was especially disappointing because Aury had worked for him. A few years before her death, Aury said that she had never forgiven Gallimard's rejection of her novel, since he'd already published Jean Genet, whose work was \"much nastier.\"\n\nPaulhan persuaded Jean-Jacques Pauvert\u2014an ambitious twenty-seven-year-old publisher who'd issued Sade's complete works, and who was already a veteran of obscenity trials\u2014to accept Story of O. \"It's marvelous, it'll spark a revolution,\" Pauvert said to Paulhan after reading it overnight. \"So when do we sign the contract?\"\n\nIn 1954, Pauvert published a gorgeously designed first edition of two thousand copies. It had a laudatory preface by Paulhan, \"Happiness in Slavery,\" in which he argued that women in their truest nature crave domination; that O is empowered by confessing her desire; and that, in truth, slaves love their masters, would suffer in their absence, and have no wish to achieve independence. Indeed, as one reviewer noted, the more O is brutalized, the more \"perfectly feminine\" she becomes. This is one of the elements that makes the novel more disturbing than arousing.\n\nPaulhan conceded that there was \"no dearth of abominations in Story of O. But it sometimes seems to me that it is an idea, or a complex of ideas, an opinion rather than a young woman we see being subjected to these tortures.\"\n\nThe book was a sensation, but hardly a blockbuster. Although it was a topic of titillating gossip among the cognoscenti, a year after publication, the initial printing had not sold out. Aury was not hopeful about the book's prospects; she believed it was doomed to be relegated to the \"reserved\" section of libraries, if it was ordered at all.\n\nIts status as a best seller was achieved slowly, as the mystique around it continued to build and as other international editions were issued. Initially, because many French booksellers assumed that the novel had been banned, they tended to conceal it under the counter\u2014thus ensuring that sales would be poor. \"Everyone talked about it in private,\" the author recalled, \"but the press acted as though the book had never been published.\"\n\nWhatever attention Histoire d'O did receive focused on the author's identity, not on the text itself as something worthy of consideration and analysis. Susan Sontag was the first major writer to recognize the novel's merit and to defend it as a significant literary work.\n\nIn her 1969 essay \"The Pornographic Imagination,\" Sontag insisted that Story of O could be correctly defined as \"authentic\" literature. She compared the ratio of first-rate pornography to trashy books within the genre to \"another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.\" She also maintained that like science fiction, pornography was aimed at \"disorientation, at psychic dislocation.\"\n\nIf so, that aim is far more interesting than what most generic \"mainstream\" novels set out to do. No one could describe O as predictable or sentimental. Its vision was dark and unrelenting; everything about it was extreme. Sontag also compared sexual obsession (as expressed by R\u00e9age) with religious obsession: two sides of the same coin. \"Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds,\" she wrote. In her disciplined effort toward transcendence, O is not unlike a zealot giving herself to God. O's devotion to the task at hand takes the form of what might be described as spiritual fervor. She loses herself entirely\u2014and, after all, the loss of self is a goal of prayer.\n\nIf O is willing to sustain her devotion all the way through to her own destruction, so be it. She wants to be \"possessed, utterly possessed, to the point of death,\" to the point that her body and mind are no longer her responsibility. \"What does a Christian seek but to lose himself in God,\" Aury, a devout atheist, once said. \"To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of ecstasy.\"\n\nSontag's essay was notable for refusing to conflate all porn as bad or to dismiss it all as \"dirty books.\" It was a thoughtful, rational piece on the aesthetic virtues of pornography at its best. In arguing that some so-called pornographic books were legitimate works of art, she acknowledged that staking such a claim was a daunting task: \"Pornography is a malady to be diagnosed and an occasion for judgment. It's something to be for or against . . . quite a bit like being for or against legalized abortion or federal aid to parochial schools.\"\n\nHer case for the literary value of Story of O was compelling and highly specific: \"Though the novel is clearly obscene by the usual standards,\" she wrote, \"and more effective than many in arousing a reader sexually, sexual arousal doesn't appear to be the sole function of the situations portrayed. The narrative does have a definite beginning, middle, and end. The elegance of the writing hardly gives the impression that its author considered language a bothersome necessity. Further, the characters do possess emotions of a very intense kind, although obsessional and indeed wholly asocial ones; characters do have motives, though they are not psychiatrically or socially 'normal' motives.\" All R\u00e9age did was bring into the open the kinds of impulses many people harbor in their bedrooms, alone, late at night. And, from Sontag's perspective, Story of O was not really pornography but \"meta-pornography, a brilliant parody.\"\n\nWho would suspect that Dominique Aury was Pauline R\u00e9age? In midlife, Aury was a respected figure: an influential editor, a writer, and a jury member for various literary prizes. She'd earned the L\u00e9gion d'Honneur; she had translated into French works by authors such as T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Virginia Woolf; and she had been the only woman to serve on Gallimard's esteemed reading committee. Her demure appearance gave no hint of owl masks or dog collars. She was polite, refined, elegant, shy. She could not be described as beautiful. A friend remembered Aury as \"very self-effacing,\" and as having worn \"soft, muted colors which really matched her personality.\" She dressed quite plainly and wore almost no makeup. At least on the surface, nothing about her was subversive. (She said that dressing in a kind of basic uniform made life simpler.) If anything, Aury seemed conservative, even severe\u2014and to look at her, you might assume that her sexual fantasies would be as stimulating as staring at a dusty library shelf.\n\nThe glaring incongruity between her work and her personal life was not lost on Aury. That was why the pen name was so crucial. She insisted that \"it would have been wrong to mix what was for so long a time secret with something that was always banal and devoid of interest.\" Aury never felt a need to justify the distinction to anyone; it was what she wanted, and it was nobody's business. She was not \"living a lie,\" because Dominique Aury was not \"Pauline R\u00e9age,\" who had produced the scandalous work. \"For a long time I've lived two parallel lives,\" Aury explained. \"I have meticulously kept those two lives quite separate, so separate in fact that the invisible wall between them seems to me normal and natural.\"\n\nUpon the publication of Story of O, guessing games were rampant about the author's identity. Contenders included Raymond Queneau, Andr\u00e9 Malraux, and the most unlikely of all, George Plimpton, founding editor of the Paris Review. \"It wasn't me,\" Plimpton told a reporter in the early 1990s, \"but it's a rumor I prefer not to scotch.\" Paulhan, too, was a possibility, suspected at the very least of knowing the enigmatic author's identity. As Sontag noted, the theory that Paulhan was the author seemed credible partly because of his introductory essay for the novel. It called to mind the mask of Georges Bataille, who, having written his Madame Edwarda under the pseudonym \"Pierre Angelique,\" also contributed its preface under his own name.\n\nFor a while, Paulhan was under intense scrutiny, and his longtime, already volatile friendship with the writer Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac was threatened by the novel's publication. Mauriac, a devoted if somewhat conflicted Catholic, acknowledged that he hadn't read O, but nonetheless publicly attacked the book. He was convinced that Paulhan had written it, and Paulhan responded by lashing out, accusing Mauriac of being the real author.\n\nSome readers believed that Paulhan had heavily edited the kinky text. He denied doing so, and Aury, too, insisted later that he hadn't altered so much as a comma. She said the extent of his editing consisted of omitting a single adjective: \"sacrificiel.\" Pauvert, who'd known Aury for more than a decade (and knew of her nom de plume), had no doubt that the novel was Aury's alone. \"I recognized her style immediately when I first saw the manuscript,\" he said. \"She is a great writer and absolutely uncopyable. Paulhan said that he could not write like that\u2014that his own style was quite different, very dry, ironic, and he could not change it.\"\n\nA hastily released English translation came within weeks, issued by Maurice Girodas of the Olympia Press. This edition \"horrified\" Aury; she found it \"vulgar\" and said that \"it cheapens the character of the book.\" (She did approve, however, of the translation published by Barney Rosset's Grove Press in 1965.) Fan mail and hate mail poured in. Such a fuss was made that Pauvert and Girodas were interrogated by French police after the novel won the Deux Magots prize. Both men refused to reveal the whereabouts of Pauline R\u00e9age, and despite an investigation, no legal action came of it.\n\nAs a prime suspect in the making of this scandalous text, Paulhan paid a price. When he was nominated for membership in the elite Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise\u2014which consists of forty members known as \"immortals\"\u2014the opponents of his candidacy are said to have placed a copy of Histoire d'O on every Academy member's chair in protest. (He was elected anyway.) He was also forced to provide a deposition to the vice squad in 1955 as it held hearings to determine whether legal action should be taken against the book. Of course he lied in his testimony. He declared that \"Mme. Pauline R\u00e9age (a pseudonym) paid me a visit in my office . . . and submitted to me a thick manuscript.\" There was some truth in Paulhan's deposition\u2014his feelings about the manuscript and why he had championed it. He revealed that he was struck by the book's literary quality \"and, if I may say, in the context of an absolutely scabrous subject, by its restraint and modesty.\" He said nothing about being in love with the author, but he was completely honest in recalling his first response to it. \"I had in my hands a work that was very important in both its content and its style,\" he said, \"a work that derived much more from the mystical than from the erotic and that might well be for our own time what Letters to a Portuguese Nun or Les Liaisons Dangereuses were for theirs.\"\n\nHe concluded his statement by reiterating that R\u00e9age did not wish to reveal her true identity, and that he intended to protect her desire for privacy. \"Nonetheless,\" he added, \"since I do see her fairly regularly, I shall inform her of the statement I have just made, and in case she should change her mind I shall ask that she get in touch with you.\"\n\nAury had her own dealings with the police: They showed up at her house one day to interrogate her about the book, and she feigned ignorance. Inexplicably, they chose not to pursue the matter\u2014a courtesy for which she was grateful. But she did feel terribly guilty that the vice squad had focused so intently on her lover and her publisher.\n\nStill, she suffered her share of awkward encounters, snubs, insults, scorn, and ignorant and rude remarks. Because of her anonymity, people felt free to express their opinions about the book. If anyone asked her directly whether she was R\u00e9age, she'd simply reply, \"That is a question to which I never respond.\" (It was a clever response, neither an admission nor a denial.) She was startled to read a characterization of her book as \"violently and willfully immoral\"; such commentary served to confirm that the pseudonym had been the best way to go. Aury was not na\u00efve, and understood that the novel was quite racy, but she didn't think it was offensive. To her, one's sense of morality was assaulted daily by reading the newspaper. \"Concentration camps offend decency,\" she said, \"as does the atomic bomb, and torture; in fact, life itself offends public morals every minute of the day, in my opinion, and not specifically through the various and sundry methods of making love.\"\n\nOnce, at a dinner party, she was amused to hear a friend confidently announce that people who wrote books such as Histoire d'O were very sick. Another time, in the presence of her mother, a family friend abruptly turned to Aury and said he believed that she'd written Histoire d'O. She panicked, but said nothing. There was an awkward silence. Then her mother said, \"She never mentioned it to us.\" After their guest left, Aury's mother offered her more tea and never spoke of it again. \"My freedom lay in silence, as my mother's lay in hers,\" Aury later recalled. \"Hers was the refusal to know; mine, the refusal to say.\"\n\nAlthough her father had an extensive erotica collection and had spoken frankly to her early on about sex, Aury's mother was another matter. \"She didn't like men,\" Aury said. \"She didn't like women, either. She hated flesh.\"\n\nSome of the vitriol directed against Aury's book was quite shocking. People described it as trash. (How many had actually read the book?) The author was accused of being antifeminist and of dishonoring all women. Never mind that no man who had written pornography was ever blamed for debasing his gender. Aury received plenty of nasty letters addressed to her alter ego: one writer called her a \"damned bitch\" who catered to the lowest common denominator for money. Another cursed the womb that bore her. Perhaps one of the most perplexing letters was from a man who told her that although the fantasy S&M world she wrote about did exist, it was only between men and boys. He claimed that it was much easier to dominate young boys than women.\n\nAs for Aury's son, Philippe, who was in his twenties when O appeared, he told a journalist after his mother's death that he'd had no clue what she had been up to. \"I didn't know she was the author,\" he said. \"She never told me, really. I only found out in 1974, when there was talk of making a film and people came round to discuss it.\" The film, made in 1975, is universally acknowledged to be dreadful. However, he added, \"It is a very good book.\"\n\nJean-Jacques Pauvert once told an amusing anecdote about being on holiday with his wife in 1957 or 1958 and overhearing a conversation at a restaurant. A group of people were seated at a table behind them\u2014\"well dressed, in their late forties or fifties, probably notables of the town, quite cultivated people, talking about books.\" Suddenly, Pauvert recalled:\n\nOne of the men said, \"You must understand that since Paulette wrote Histoire d'O she has had a very difficult time\u2014isn't that right, Paulette?\" His wife, a good-looking woman, about forty-five years old, wearing a fine pearl necklace, replied, \"Yes, you know, it's been terrible for me. If I had only known what it would turn into, what with my husband's position. . . . It's absolutely terrible.\" This seemed to be going on all over France. There were literally hundreds of people claiming to be the author of O.\n\nEach of the three introductory notes in the novel expresses bafflement as to the author's real identity. The translator Sabine d'Estr\u00e9e\u2014and more on that pseudonym later\u2014pointed out that Pauline R\u00e9age was \"a name completely unknown in French literary circles, where everyone knows everyone.\" Aside from corresponding with the author about the translation, d'Estr\u00e9e admitted, \"I have never met Pauline R\u00e9age.\" The shock of the book itself paled in comparison with the public's curiosity about the name of the person who wrote it. \"Until her identity was bared,\" d'Estr\u00e9e wrote, \"people found it difficult to assume a reasonable stance vis-\u00e0-vis the work; if Pauline R\u00e9age was the pseudonym of some eminent writer, they would feel compelled to react one way; if she were a complete unknown, another; and if indeed she were a literary hack merely seeking notoriety, then still another.\"\n\nThe quality of R\u00e9age's prose made it clear that the last alternative was highly unlikely, if not impossible. \"To this day,\" the translator wrote, \"no one knows who Pauline R\u00e9age is.\"\n\nFor his part, Paulhan offered no clues. \"Who is Pauline R\u00e9age?\" he wrote in his preface, describing the novel as \"one of those books which marks the reader, which leaves him not quite, or not at all, the same as he was before he read it.\" He proclaimed it a \"brilliant feat\" from beginning to end, one that read more like someone's private letter than a diary. \"But to whom is the letter addressed?\" he asked, disingenuously. \"Whom is the speech trying to convince? Whom can we ask? I don't even know who you are.\"\n\nNothing about the novel was straightforward, as the New York Review of Books noted in 1966 about the Grove Press edition: \"[O]ne is struck by an atmosphere of prestidigitation, of double and triple meanings that suggest an elaborate literary joke or riddle which extends even to the question of O's authorship. Pauline R\u00e9age, except as author of the present book and of the preface to another, seems not otherwise to exist: None of her admirers claims to have met her, she has not been seen in Parisian literary circles, and it has been said that she is actually a committee of literary farceurs, sworn to guard their separate identities, like the pseudonymous authors of a revolutionary manifesto.\"\n\nThe NYRB had a mixed response to the novel but conceded that it was too coolly executed not to be taken seriously: \"If it is not a joke then it is madness, though not without brilliance and not without pathos.\" The reviewer seemed convinced that it was the work of Paulhan, noting (wrongly) that Paulhan's preface was in a style \"not unlike that of the novel itself.\" But this reviewer added, more tenably, that \"Pauline (Paulhan?) R\u00e9age, whoever she, he, or they may be, is surely perverse and may indeed be mad, but she or he is no fool and is as far as can be from vulgarity.\"\n\nThe Columbia University professor Albert Goldman, reviewing Story of O for the New York Times, was effusive in his praise, calling it \"a rare instance of pornography sublimed to purest art\" and describing its \"evidently pseudonymous author\" as \"a more dangerous writer than the Marquis de Sade.\" Rather than issuing propaganda or a \"call to arms,\" R\u00e9age, with her simple, direct style, aims, he argued, \"to clarify, to make real to the reader those dark and repulsive practices and emotions that his better self rejects as improbable or evil.\" Yet the critic Eliot Fremont-Smith, also writing in the Times, described the book in more ambivalent terms as \"revolting, haunting, somewhat erotic, rather more emetic, ludicrous, boring, unbelievable and quite unsettling.\" He added that it was of \"undeniable artistic interest.\"\n\nIn any case, Pauline R\u00e9age stayed silent, and Dominique Aury continued her respectable life as a cultural \u00e9minence grise. For years there were rumors, hints, and speculation connecting the two, and at some point the connection had become an open secret in literary circles\u2014yet her privacy was respected.\n\nPaulhan's daughter-in-law, Jacqueline, later claimed that she had learned the truth only at Paulhan's funeral in 1968. \"There was a very big bouquet of flowers with no name attached,\" she told a journalist. \"I was standing next to Dominique Aury, whom of course I knew well, and I remarked, 'I suppose they must be from Pauline R\u00e9age.' Dominique turned to me and said, 'Mais, Jacqueline, Pauline R\u00e9age, c'est moi.'\"\n\nDecades later, Aury offered a full and public confession. Her lover had been dead a long time. Her parents were dead. She felt she was reaching the end of her own life. There was nothing to lose, nothing at stake now.\n\nThe August 1, 1994, issue of the New Yorker printed an excerpt from a forthcoming book by the British writer John de St. Jorre, The Good Ship Venus (Venus Bound in the United States), about the infamous novels published by the Olympia Press\u2014including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch, and Pauline R\u00e9age's Story of O. When the author interviewed Aury for his book, he was treated to \"a double surprise\": he learned definitively that she was R\u00e9age; and he learned that the name Dominique Aury \"was itself a disguise.\" Although she asked that he not publish her actual name, the now elderly lady was otherwise ready to confess at last.\n\nSt. Jorre landed a fascinating interview with Aury, whom he described as a \"calm, clearheaded woman who answered my questions easily and with dry humor.\" She dismissed the scandal that had erupted over her novel all those years ago as \"much ado about nothing.\"\n\nIn 1975, Aury had given a long, wide-ranging interview to R\u00e9gine Deforges, an author whom Aury admired. She was interviewed as \"Pauline R\u00e9age,\" and she provided honest answers about her life and work, and her philosophical views on art, sex, war, feminism, and so on, without disclosing her true name or getting too specific in her personal anecdotes. She could open up while remaining anonymous. The interview was published in book-length form as Confessions of O, first by Pauvert in France, and then, four years later, by Viking Press in the United States. (No photo of R\u00e9age appeared in the book.) The jacket copy noted, \"In these pages one senses clearly a presence, a person, where once there had been only a pseudonym. The face may still be shrouded in mystery, but now, at last, the voice is clear, authoritative, and of a rare intelligence.\"\n\nAury never intended to give another interview after that one, so the New Yorker's profile was a coup for the reporter. It was the first time Aury admitted in public that she had written Story of O.\n\nAlthough she had led a quiet, comfortable life in the years following the publication of O, she did not entirely relinquish Pauline R\u00e9age. In 1969, she'd published a sequel of sorts, Retour \u00e0 Roissy, which included the first novel's original (unpublished) final chapter, and a third-person account (titled \"Une Fille Amoureuse,\" or \"A Girl in Love\") about the genesis of O, signed by R\u00e9age. She'd worked on it as Paulhan lay dying in a hospital room in a Paris suburb. Aury slept in his room each night for four months, until his death at eighty-three in October 1968. Later, she recalled Paulhan's extraordinary passion for life. \"Existence filled him with wonder,\" she said. \"Both the admirable and the horrible aspects of existence, equally so. The atrocious fascinated him. The enchanting enchanted him.\" One friend of Aury said that after Paulhan died, \"She pulled back from the world and lost her short-term memory.\"\n\nIt's clear from St. Jorre's profile in the New Yorker that this \"small, neat, handsome woman with gray hair and gray-blue eyes\" never recovered from the loss of Paulhan and led a fairly solitary life afterward. \"Their relationship underscored the centrality of love to life,\" St. Jorre wrote, \"the creative and destructive forces that passion can unleash, and the ease with which a human heart can be broken.\" He concluded the piece by observing that Aury had no regrets \"as her days and nights gather speed, taking her toward what she calls 'a great silence.'\" She died in 1998, at the age of ninety.\n\nAside from its major revelation, the article delved into a subplot of the saga: the pseudonymous translator of the English edition of Story of O. There was no evidence of deception, aside from the translator's suspiciously florid name, \"Sabine d'Estr\u00e9e.\" Yet no one seemed to know the mysterious woman. The Grove edition included no biographical note on her, and she mentioned in her \"Translator's Note\" that she'd never met R\u00e9age but had been \"in indirect communication (via the French publisher, Jean-Jacques Pauvert) and received the author's comments.\" Aury, in her interview with St. Jorre, told him that she had no memory of any contact with d'Estr\u00e9e, nor any idea who she (or he) might be. St. Jorre had a theory, however: the New York editor, translator, and publisher Richard Seaver.\n\nIn the early 1950s, Seaver had lived in Paris as a Fulbright scholar studying at the Sorbonne. He cofounded a literary journal that published early pieces by Jean Genet and Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco in English. He was an early champion of the then-unknown Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, and had been instrumental in arranging a book deal for Beckett with Barney Rosset (who hired Seaver). Eventually, Seaver worked his way up to editor in chief at Grove, where he was celebrated for advocating challenging and censored books. He stayed at Grove for twelve years before moving to Viking and then to Holt, Rinehart; along with his French wife, Jeannette, he founded Arcade Publishing in 1988. Jeannette's middle name is Sabine.\n\nSt. Jorre's attempt to extract information from Seaver himself went nowhere. Seaver insisted that he'd been sworn to secrecy about d'Estr\u00e9e's identity but told St. Jorre that he would seek permission from d'Estr\u00e9e\u2014whom he called a \"very shy, secretive person\"\u2014and get back to him. He never did.\n\nSo the journalist did his own research, carefully going through the Grove Press correspondence archive at Syracuse University Library's Special Collections Department. He found it curious that there were variant spellings of \"d'Estr\u00e9e,\" and that one letter purporting to be from d'Estr\u00e9e herself requested that all payments be addressed to an attorney in Manhattan, Seymour Litvinoff. After St. Jorre tracked down the lawyer, Litvinoff said that had represented both Seaver and d'Estr\u00e9e, but \"I cannot say who Sabine is. I don't know who she is.\"\n\nSt. Jorre also discovered that d'Estr\u00e9e had continued to translate French erotica\u2014at least four other books\u2014in collaboration with Seaver, who kept \"hiring\" her even after changing publishing jobs. She did translation work for no one else. Seaver was long believed to be d'Estr\u00e9e, but he kept quiet about it. The mystery was solved in January 2009, when he died of a heart attack at the age of eighty-two. His wife finally confessed. \"He wanted people to guess,\" Jeannette told a reporter. \"But yes, he did it.\"\n\nSeaver's stint as d'Estr\u00e9e has been largely forgotten, but the novel still resonates around the world, affecting readers in ways that are deeply personal. \"Ever since I remember,\" an anonymous American woman admitted on an online message board, \"I have always used some form of power exchange fantasy in masturbation. I had no words for it, no framework, and O was the first book to provide that.\"\n\nStory of O also influenced writers of erotica for decades after its release, though it set a standard that few, if any, could meet. The person who could perhaps claim the closest literary kinship with R\u00e9age is the contemporary author and art critic Catherine Millet, whose \"autobiography,\" Sexual Life of Catherine M., was published in 2002. Edmund White went so far as to call it \"the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman.\" The book detailed the author's early experiences with masturbation and her abiding fondness for orgies (in which she began to dabble at the age of eighteen), sex in public places, and so on. She said that of her countless lovers, mostly men, she would be able to recognize at best only fifty faces or names. The book was cast as a memoir, but J. G. Ballard wondered if it was \"the most original novel of the year.\"\n\nAlthough Millet's sexual proclivities hardly mirrored those of R\u00e9age\u2014Millet did admit to enjoying having her nipples pinched, along with more aggressive forms of sex\u2014their profiles were strikingly alike. Both women published confessional, shockingly graphic books in midlife. Millet is French, and by day she, too, is a bourgeois intellectual who appears respectable enough. Her book, like O, was well written and even literary. As Jenny Diski noted in the London Review of Books, Millet \"anatomises her sexual experiences and responses as a Cubist might the visual field.\" That Millet's project was both intellectual and sexual (and possibly even spiritual) calls R\u00e9age to mind yet again. \"[Millet] takes her radical philosophy from Bataille, and admires Pauline R\u00e9age's \u00fcber-underling O for her perpetual readiness for sex, her propensity for being sodomised and her reclusiveness,\" Diski wrote. Millet, like R\u00e9age, feels no guilt about her sexual life, and similarly writes about sex \"as plainly as if she were a housewife describing her domestic round.\"\n\nHad R\u00e9age not published Story of O, perhaps Millet could not have published Sexual Life, at least not under her own name. Aury had endured stigma and shame and had emerged a success. That legacy gave Millet license to tell her story. And it explains why Jane Juska, for example, could celebrate, in A Round Heeled Woman, the pleasures of promiscuous geriatric sex via the NYRB classified ads. It also freed a young woman, Melissa Panarello (known as \"Melissa P.\"), to publish an erotic autobiographical novel in 2004. Called One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, it chronicled, in diary form, group sex, S&M, and other experiences. This book was an immediate best seller in the author's native Italy, and was hailed as \"a Story of O for our times.\"\n\nO's enduring significance was evident on the fiftieth anniversary of its debut, when the French government proudly announced that Histoire d'O would be included on a list of \"national triumphs\" to be celebrated that year.\n\nTwo years later, in 2006, R\u00e9age's works were part of an auction at Christie's in Paris, featuring the \"Biblioth\u00e8que Erotique\" of G\u00e9rard Nordmann, a businessman in Geneva who had assembled a library of almost two thousand erotic manuscripts and rare books. An edition of O from its limited first run of six hundred copies was cited as \"First edition of the most important erotic novel of the postwar period.\" Another lot by R\u00e9age was described as \"[the] complete holograph working manuscript in pencil and ballpoint of what is arguably the finest erotic novel (1954) of the post-war period and its sequel (1969), which describe unconditional love as total sexual submission carried to its ultimate consequence.\" The manuscripts of Histoire d'O and Retour \u00e0 Roissy sold for $127,000.\n\nIn assessing the life and work of Dominique Aury, it is striking how brave she was to risk everything for the man she loved. The pseudonym could have been exposed early on, destroying her reputation and wrecking friendships. \"If you care enough about something, you have to pay the price,\" Aury once said. Hers was a life without compromise, highly moral, and one lived without regret.\n\nAfter Aury's death in a suburb south of Paris, a longtime friend declared it unremarkable that the author had hoarded a nom de plume for so long. \"Everyone is double, or triple, or quadruple,\" she said. \"Every character has its hidden sides. One doesn't reveal one's secrets to all.\"\nAcknowledgments\n\nAbove all, I cannot thank enough the amazing Tina Bennett. Without her, there would be no book, or it would exist only in my head. I'm endlessly grateful for her wisdom, kindness, patience, and enthusiasm, and for always laughing at my jokes. I feel very lucky.\n\nThanks to Gillian Blake for acquiring this book, then nudging and nurturing it along.\n\nTo all at HarperCollins\u2014the wonderful Rakesh Satyal, Katie Salisbury, David Koral, Heather Drucker, and Leah Wasielewski\u2014thank you for everything.\n\nAlso at Janklow & Nesbit, I'm grateful to Stephanie Koven and to Svetlana Katz (a real-life superhero). Dorothy Irwin provided expertise at crucial moments. And I did nothing to earn such generosity from Amy Grace Loyd, but there it was, anyway. The phenomenal Nicholas Latimer is busy enough with his many responsibilities at Knopf, yet he gave freely of his time, his brilliant advice, and more. Whenever I tell people that I know Gretchen Koss, they usually respond by saying, \"She's the best.\" It's true, and having her help has been a great gift.\n\nLove and gratitude also to Alice Quinn and Laurie Kerr; Michelle Williams; Devon Hodges, Eric Swanson, Tristan Swanson, and Cecily Swanson; the Rosabals; my dear friends at 37 Montgomery Place; and above all, Sarah (and her parents, Rosalind and Colin) and Oscar and Freddy Fitzharding.\nTime Line\n\nGeorge Sand born | 1804\n\n|   \n---|---|---\n\nCharlotte Bront\u00eb born | 1816\n\n|\n\nEmily Bront\u00eb born | 1818\n\n|\n\nGeorge Eliot born | 1819\n\n|\n\nAnne Bront\u00eb born | 1820\n\n|\n\nLewis Carroll born | 1832\n\n|\n\nMark Twain born | 1835\n\n|   \n|\n\n1848 | Emily Bront\u00eb dies\n\n|\n\n1849 | Anne Bront\u00eb dies\n\n|\n\n1855 | Charlotte Bront\u00eb dies\n\nO. Henry born | 1862\n\n|   \n|\n\n1876 | George Sand dies\n\n|\n\n1880 | George Eliot dies\n\nIsak Dinesen born | 1885\n\n|\n\nFernando Pessoa born | 1888\n\n|   \n|\n\n1898 | Lewis Carroll dies\n\nGeorges Simenon born | 1903\n\n|\n\nGeorge Orwell born | 1903\n\n|\n\nHenry Green born | 1905\n\n|\n\nPauline R\u00e9age born | 1907\n\n|   \n|\n\n1910 | Mark Twain dies\n\n|\n\n1916 | O. Henry dies\n\nRomain Gary born | 1914\n\n|\n\nAlice Sheldon born | 1915\n\n|\n\nPatricia Highsmith born | 1921\n\n|\n\nSylvia Plath born | 1932\n\n|   \n|\n\n1935 | Fernando Pessoa dies\n\n|\n\n1950 | George Orwell dies\n\n|\n\n1962 | Isak Dinesen dies\n\n|\n\n1963 | Sylvia Plath dies\n\n|\n\n1973 | Henry Green dies\n\n|\n\n1980 | Romain Gary dies\n\n|\n\n1987 | Alice Sheldon dies\n\n|\n\n1989 | Georges Simenon dies\n\n|\n\n1995 | Patricia Highsmith dies\n\n|\n\n1998 | Pauline R\u00e9age dies\nBibliography\n\nThe sources below were invaluable to me in researching and writing this book. 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Sculley Bradley et al. New York: Norton, 1977.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York, Penguin, 1986.\n\nWard, Geoffrey C., and Dayton Duncan. Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography. New York: Knopf, 2001.\n\nO. Henry & William Sydney Porter\n\nHenry, O. The Complete Works. New York: Doubleday, 1928.\n\nLangford, Gerald. Alias O. Henry. New York: Macmillan, 1957.\n\nO'Connor, Richard. O. Henry: The Legendary Life of William S. Porter. New York: Doubleday, 1970.\n\nSmith, C. Alphonso. O. Henry, Biography. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1916.\n\nStuart, David. O. Henry: A Biography of William Sydney Porter. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1990.\n\nFernando Pessoa & His Heteronyms\n\nBorges, Jorge Luis. On Writing. New York: Penguin, 2010.\n\nMonteiro, George, ed. The Man Who Never Was: Essays on Fernando Pessoa. Providence, RI: G\u00e1vea-Brown, 1981.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014, ed. The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and Southern African Literary Responses. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.\n\nPessoa, Fernando. Always Astonished: Selected Prose, ed. and trans. Edwin Honig. San Francisco: City Lights, 1988.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Book of Disquiet: A Selection, trans. Iain Watson. London: Quartet, 1991.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Book of Disquiet, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Penguin, 2003.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. Cambridge: Exact Change, 2005.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Fernando Pessoa: A Centenary Pessoa, ed. Eug\u00e9nio Lisboa and L. C. Taylor. Carcanet, 2003.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Grove, 1998.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Penguin, 2006.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith. New York: Grove, 2001.\n\nGeorge Orwell & Eric Blair\n\nBowker, Gordon. George Orwell. London: Abacus, 2003.\n\nCrick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life. New York: Penguin, 1982.\n\nCrick, Bernard, and Audrey Coppard. Orwell Remembered. New York: Facts on File, 1984.\n\nDavison, Peter. George Orwell: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1998.\n\nOrwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Plume, 2003.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Down and Out in Paris and London. New York: Harcourt, 1961.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Essays. New York: Everyman's Library, 2002.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays, ed. George Packer. New York: Mariner, 2009.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Why I Write. New York: Penguin, 2004.\n\nIsak Dinesen & Karen Blixen\n\nDinesen, Isak. Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard. New York: Vintage, 1993.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Last Tales. New York: Vintage, 1991.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Letters from Africa 1914\u20131931, ed. Frans Lasson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass. New York: Vintage, 1989.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Seven Gothic Tales. New York: Modern Library, 1934.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Winter's Tales. New York: Vintage, 1993.\n\nHenriksen, Aage. Isak Dinesen\/Karen Blixen: The Work and the Life. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.\n\nThurman, Judith. Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller. New York: St. Martin's, 1982.\n\nSylvia Plath & Victoria Lucas\n\nKendall, Tim. Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.\n\nPlath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Bell Jar. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Letters Home by Sylvia Plath: Correspondence 1950\u20131963, ed. Aurelia Schober Plath. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed. Karen V. Kukil. New York: Anchor, 2000.\n\nRose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.\n\nStevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. London: Viking, 1989.\n\nWagner, Erica. Ariel's Gift. New York: Norton, 2001.\n\nHenry Green & Henry Yorke\n\nGreen, Henry. Loving; Living; Party Going. New York: Penguin, 1993.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Nothing. New York: Dalkey Archive, 2000.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Nothing; Doting; Blindness. New York: Penguin, 1993.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait. New York: New Directions, 2004.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Party Going. London: Vintage, 2000.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Surviving: The Uncollected Writings of Henry Green, ed. Matthew Yorke. New York: Viking, 1993.\n\nRussell, John. Henry Green: Nine Novels and an Unpacked Bag. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1960.\n\nTreglown, Jeremy. Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green. New York: Random House, 2001.\n\nRomain Gary & \u00c9mile Ajar\n\nBellos, David. Romain Gary: A Tall Story. London: Harvill Secker, 2010.\n\nGary, Romain (\u00c9mile Ajar). Hocus Bogus, trans. David Bellos. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.\n\nGary, Romain. The Life Before Us (Madame Rosa), trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: New Directions, 1977, 1978.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Promise at Dawn: A Memoir, trans. John Markham Beach. New York: New Directions, 1961.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. White Dog. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.\n\nSchoolcraft, Ralph. Romain Gary: The Man Who Sold His Shadow. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.\n\nJames Tiptree, Jr. & Alice Sheldon\n\nPhillips, Julie. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. New York: St. Martin's, 2006.\n\nTiptree, James, Jr., Meet Me at Infinity. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2000.\n\nGeorges Simenon & Christian Brulls et al.\n\nAssouline, Pierre. Simenon: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1997.\n\nCarter, David. The Pocket Essential Georges Simenon. Chicago: Trafalgar Square, 2003.\n\nMarnham, Patrick. The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon. Harvest, 1992.\n\nSimenon, Georges. Pedigree. New York: New York Review Books, 2010.\n\nPatricia Highsmith & Claire Morgan\n\nHighsmith, Patricia. Carol. London: Bloomsbury, 1990.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith. New York: Norton, 2001.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Strangers on a Train. New York: Norton, 2001.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game. New York: Knopf\/Everyman's Library, 1999.\n\nMeaker, Marijane. Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s. San Francisco: Cleis, 2003.\n\nSchenkar, Joan. The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith. New York: St. Martin's, 2009.\n\nWilson, Andrew. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.\n\nPauline R\u00e9age & Dominique Aury\n\nDeforges, R\u00e9gine. Confessions of O: Conversations with Pauline R\u00e9age. New York: Viking, 1979.\n\nR\u00e9age, Pauline. Return to the Ch\u00e2teau. New York: Ballantine, 1995.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. Story of O. New York: Ballantine, 1973.\n\nSontag, Susan. Styles of Radical Will. New York: Picador, 2002.\n\nBond, Jenny, and Chris Sheedy. Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-loved Books. New York: Penguin, 2008.\n\nGross, John, ed. The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.\n\nHalpern, Daniel, ed. Who's Writing This? New York: Ecco, 1995.\n\nHamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.\n\nJones, Emma. The Literary Companion. London: Think, 2004.\n\nMar\u00edas, Javier. Written Lives, trans. Margaret Jull Costa. New York: New Directions, 2007.\n\nMotion, Andrew, ed. Interrupted Lives. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2004.\n\nMullan, John. Anonymity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.\n\nProse, Francine. The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.\n\nRose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. New York: Vintage, 1983.\n\nSchnakenberg, Robert. Secret Lives of Great Authors. Philadelphia: Quirk, 2008.\n\nShowalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bront\u00eb to Lessing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.\n\nWoolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, 1989.\nEpigraph\n\nWho is it that can tell me who I am?\n\n\u2014KING LEAR\nAbout the Author\n\nCARMELA CIURARU is not a pseudonym. Her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them and Solitude Poems. She is a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Elle Decor, ARTNews, O, The Oprah Magazine, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.\n\nwww.carmelaciuraru.com\n\nVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.\nCredits\n\nCover design by Jarrod Taylor\nCopyright\n\nNOM DE PLUME. Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Carmela Ciuraru. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.\n\nEPub Edition \u00a9 JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780062109569\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nCiuraru, Carmela.\n\nNom de plume: a (secret) history of pseudonyms \/ Carmela Ciuraru.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes bibliographical references.\n\nISBN: 978-0-06-173526-4\n\n1. Anonyms and pseudonyms\u2014History. I. Title.\n\nZ1041.C55 2011\n\n929.4\u2014dc22\n\n2010053603\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\nAbout the Publisher\n\nAustralia\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.\n\n25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)\n\nPymble, NSW 2073, Australia\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.com.au\/ebooks>\n\nCanada\n\nHarperCollins Canada\n\n2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor\n\nToronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.ca>\n\nNew Zealand\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited\n\nP.O. Box 1\n\nAuckland, New Zealand\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.nz>\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.\n\n77-85 Fulham Palace Road\n\nLondon, W6 8JB, UK\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.uk>\n\nUnited States\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Inc.\n\n10 East 53rd Street\n\nNew York, NY 10022\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.com>\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n**ON**\n\n**SEXUALITY**\n\n**AND**\n\n**POWER**\n\nBetween Men \u223c Between Women\n**On**\n\n**Sexuality**\n\n**and**\n\n**Power**\n\nALAN SINFIELD\n\nColumbia University Press New York\n\n**COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS**\n\n_Publishers Since 1893_\n\nNew York Chichester, West Sussex\n\ncup.columbia.edu\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2004 Columbia University Press\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nE-ISBN 978-0-231-50866-7\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nSinfield, Alan.\n\nOn sexuality and power \/ Alan Sinfield.\n\np. cm\u2014(Between men\u2014between women)\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 0\u2013231\u201313408\u20138 (cloth : alk. paper)\n\nISBN 0\u2013231\u201313409\u20136 (pbk. : alk. paper)\n\n1. Homosexuality, Male\u2014Psychological aspects.\n\n2. Power (Social sciences) 3. Sex (Psychology)\n\n4. Gays in literature. 5. Homosexuality and literature.\n\nI Title. II. Series.\n\nHQ76.S545 2004\n\n306.76\u20326\u2014dc22\n\n2004052773\n\nA Columbia University Press E-book.\n\nCUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.\n\n_Designed by Lisa Hamm_\n**BETWEEN MEN \u223c BETWEEN WOMEN**\n\n_Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Studies_\n\nTerry Castle and Larry Gross, Editors\n\nAdvisory Board of Editors\n\nClaudia Card\n\nJohn D'Emilio\n\nEsther Newton\n\nAnne Peplau\n\nEugene Rice\n\nKendall Thomas\n\nJeffrey Weeks\n\nBetween Men \u223c Between Women is a forum for current lesbian and gay scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. The series includes both books that rest within specific traditional disciplines and are substantially about gay men, bisexuals, or lesbians and books that are interdisciplinary in ways that reveal new insights into gay, bisexual, or lesbian experience, transform traditional disciplinary methods in consequence of the perspectives that experience provides, or begin to establish lesbian and gay studies as a freestanding inquiry. Established to contribute to an increased understanding of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men, the series also aims to provide through that understanding a wider comprehension of culture in general.\n**CONTENTS**\n\n_Acknowledgments_\n\n**1**\n\nIntroduction\n\n**2**\n\nTaxonomies\n\n**3**\n\nFantasy\n\n**4**\n\nPower\n\n**5**\n\nGender\n\n**6**\n\nAge\n\n**7**\n\nClass\n\n**8**\n\nRace\n\n**9**\n\nFiction\n\n_Notes_\n\n_Index_\n**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nI am grateful for books, comments, and conversations to Peter Burton, Alex Evans, John Fletcher, Gowan Hewlett, Ann Rosalind Jones, Vicky Lebeau, Linda Logie, David Marriott, Vincent Quinn, Nick Rees-Roberts, David Rogers, Lynne Segal, Mark Sinfield, Peter Stallybrass, Chris West; students on the Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change program at the University of Sussex. They are not responsible for the ideas.\n\nParts of this book have appeared in other forms in _Critical Inquiry_ and _GLQ (Gay and Lesbian Quarterly)_ ; Richard Phillips, Diane Watt, and David Shuttleton, eds., _De-centering Sexualities_ (London: Routledge, 2000); and David Alderson and Linda Anderson, eds., _Territories of Desire in Queer Culture_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).\n\nGregory Woods's poem, \"Under where Catullus toyed,\" is quoted with permission from the Carcanet Press. John Minton's painting \"Painter and Model\" is used on the cover with permission from the Royal College of Art and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, England.\n**1**\n\n**INTRODUCTION**\n\nReginald Shepherd is, he says, the person no one wants to know about: a black (African American) gay man with an unappeasable attraction to white men. \"I am in love with the image and idea of white manhood, which is everything I am not and want to be.\" Why is this such a fearful condition? Because of the historic oppression of blacks by whites. Shepherd is under no illusion about the role of power in his attraction: \"I think many gay men worship the power that oppresses them; I think too that all sexual relations in our society are about power over another or the submission to the power of another.\"\n\nShepherd's sexual desire is hinged on to racial difference, the most fraught political, economic, social, and cultural issue in the United States and Britain, and in many other countries. At this juncture, unavoidably, the psychic meets the social, fantasy meets history, desire meets politics. No wonder our societies find the subject hot to handle. We experience a marked unease about all hierarchical liaisons\u2014not only of race but also of age, gender, and class. In metropolitan contexts today, it is often said, gay people favor egalitarian relations. Shepherd himself seeks commonality in everything but racial difference: his dream lover is \"some beautiful cultured blond named Troy with whom I'd have everything in common, everything but that\" (56).\n\nYet power differentials are remarkably persistent, in gay fantasies and in the stories about gayness that circulate. I discern three reasons for this. One is that, while we may like to think of fantasy as free-ranging, in fact it often shows astonishing fixity. Shepherd's desire is by no means comfortable, but it appears ineluctable. \"So I hate him and desire him, fearing him and myself, too often despising both. So I continue to want him\" (56). Second, our desires are not ours alone; they are embedded in the power structures that organize our social being. Shepherd would like to step out of his personal history, but that would be \"to step out of the history of the nation.\" It would be to say: \"This is not America.\" The entire social system is tending to maintain his fantasy. And, anyway, who would he then be? \"The catch is that 'myself' is a product of that history both general and very particular.... What and who would I be without the burden of the past?\" (57; my elision).\n\nA third reason for the persistence of hierarchy in relationships, I will argue, is that _it is sexy_. Racial difference is not just a major influence on or component in Shepherd's sexuality, it is intricately implicated with what turns him on. \"I am in love with the image and idea of white manhood, which is everything I am not and want to be, and if I cannot be that at least I can have that, if only for the night, if only for the week or the month\" (54\u201355). For Shepherd, whiteness is sexy, despite or because of its bond with oppression.\n\nIt would be absurdly presumptuous to suppose that a (white) commentator might begin to unravel Shepherd's intimate experience. However, he has placed it, boldly, in the public domain, and I can record that it is there. A project of this book is to reexamine the implication of sexuality and power. I propose a framework for this in chapter 4, and continue with chapters that explore binary relations founded in gender, age, class, and race. These formations, as Jonathan Dollimore says, quoting Jacques Derrida, are \"violent hierarchies\": \"one of the two terms forcefully governs the other.\" They structure our societies; they constitute our psyches also.\n\nThe late and still-lamented Allon White, a keen Freudian, and I were talking about the unconscious. I was attempting to substantiate a materialist position which I associated with Jean-Paul Sartre, namely that human behavior may be explained without resort to the idea of a reservoir of unconscious repressed experience which could only be reached through the ministrations of the analyst. In order that traumatic experiences may be repressed into the unconscious, they have first to reach the threshold of the conscious, which is where they are censored as unacceptable. The images which Freud dredged up in his hysterical patients were not unavailable: rather, the patients did not want to admit to them. So there is no reason to posit an unconscious as such. \"That's right,\" cried Allon, puckishly. \"Some people have no unconscious. And you're one of them.\" I felt that at some not very subtle level I had lost the debate. Even a materialist needs a theory of psychic life. Chapters 2 and  of this book make a start on sketching what the terms for that might be.\n\nMy approach is broadly _cultural materialist_. It seeks to raise questions about cultural production, addressing typically the relations between dominant and subordinate cultures; the scope for dissidence; how far male dominance might be able to accommodate feminism and dissident sexualities; how culture is negotiated through institutions, including those which govern the definition and circulation of art and literature; how subcultural groups constitute themselves in and through culture. Cultural materialism is a kind of Marxism, and does not pretend to political neutrality. It looks for the transformation of an exploitative social order.\n\nCultural materialists believe that historic forces and the power structures that they sustain determine the direction, not just of our societies, but ultimately of our selfhood. Yet there is little agreement on how to describe the links between the psyche and the social order. Raymond Williams, who announced the main themes of cultural materialism in the 1970s and 1980s, placed his understanding of personal attachments in his novels, rather than his theory. Louis Althusser seeks to explain how the human subject is persuaded to recognize him- or herself as hailed (interpellated) by the norms of society, while experiencing him- or herself as a free individual. This sounds like the beginnings of a theory of subjectivity and psychic life. However, Althusser is ready to cede the individual psyche to Freud and his followers. He accepts that the unconscious and its effects are the specific object of psychoanalysis. \"History, 'sociology' or anthropology have no business here.\" Nevertheless, questions remain, for Althusser, about how historical origins and socioeconomic conditions affect psychoanalytical theory and technique.\n\nThe most ambitious theory has sought to combine Freudian and Marxian principles. Herbert Marcuse in _Eros and Civilization_ (1955) sought to reverse what was usually taken as a central Freudian principle\u2014that repression of natural instincts is a necessary condition for the development of civilization. Marcuse argued that while some repression is inevitable, modern societies experience _surplus repression_ , that is, repression in the service of domination. Further, what is specially repressed is sexuality, and especially insofar as it is restricted to genital organs and reproductive purposes. Marcuse wants us to retrieve the _polymorphous perversity_ that we experienced as infants: this, he holds, will threaten the overthrow of the order of procreation and the institutions that guarantee it. This was a theory for the exuberant and optimistic 1960s. Writing a little later, in 1976, Michel Foucault is more aware of the \"polymorphous techniques of power.\" A Marcusean \"great Refusal\" of the system supposes power to be unitary and solely oppressive. Rather, the opposite has come about: \"there is a plurality of resistances.\"\n\nAnyway, rather than repressing sex, Foucault points out, we have talked of almost nothing else, since Victorian times. This \"veritable discursive explosion\" (96) has been the cause and effect of diverse taxonomies of sexual and gender dissidence, especially in the traditions of anthropology and psychoanalysis; I mean to draw upon both. Anthropologists have observed structural correlations in diverse societies: same-sex passions, they find, are organized through age difference (commonly, an older partner initiating a younger partner) and gender difference (one partner takes the role of a man, the other of a woman). I have added race and class to age and gender.\n\nFor feminists, and lesbian and gay activists, psychoanalytic texts are fraught with problems. My emphasis on age, class, and race, as well as gender, has to resist a Freudian propensity to suppose that proper analysis of any sexual relation is likely to disclose a version of the ultimate drama through which the castrating father (allegedly) installs gender hierarchy. Consider Joan Riviere's much-cited essay, \"Womanliness as a Masquerade.\" An analysand who grew up in the American South reports a dream in which she is threatened by a black man, and resists him with the secret intention of attracting him. Riviere comments: \"The meaning was that she had killed father and mother and obtained everything for herself (alone in the house), [and] became terrified of their retribution.\" Although she mentions the American South, Riviere's interpretation involves no thought of the horrific violence that was enacted against black men accused of violating white women. One allegedly hostile man is pretty much like another, and it all comes back to your father.\n\nOther commentators have made a similar point. Michael Warner demands: \"Why is gender assumed to be our only access to alterity? It is not even the only line of sameness and difference that structures erotic images. Race, age, and class are capable of doing that as well.\" Lynne Segal traces a difficulty in articulating class to Lacanian psychoanalysis and points out that some feminists \"have addressed the significance of differences other than those of gender, noting that class, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, for example, have no place in psychoanalytic formulations of subjectivity.\"\n\nMy aim is not to attack or defend psychoanalysis; there is little point, at this date, in doing either. A hundred years after the principles were enunciated, it is still difficult to imagine what a rival theory would look like. Getting beyond this point is going to require a paradigm shift, a wholesale reconception from a new stance. In the meantime, the omnipresence of Freud's ideas makes him the inevitable reference point. My approach here is pragmatic, perhaps appropriative. While setting aside theories which seem to me unfounded and unhelpful, I mean to make positive use of some Freudian concepts, including the distinction between desire-for and desire-to-be, the demarcation between gender identity and sexual object-choice, and the role of narcissism in structuring gay desire.\n\nIn this book elucidations and qualifications of theorists will be balanced and tested by more nuanced, complex, and perhaps vulnerable insights, quarried from works of fiction (novels, stories, and films) and autobiography. (I say little about theater because I have written about it elsewhere, albeit from other points of view.) Some of my references to fiction are quite brief, designed to support claims that such-and-such an attitude is commonly held. They are synoptic and symptomatic, borrowing purposefully from disparate sources in order to indicate that it is not just Hollywood writers, or just writers concerned with AIDS, or just male writers, who hold this-or-that position. Other discussions are larger, and are designed to show the complexity and subtlety of engagement that occur in certain writings, and, by inference, in human lives.\n\nI am not trying to write literary history, which seems to me impoverished in its defining assumption\u2014that literature is sufficiently self-contained to constitute, ultimately, a self-sustaining system. Nor am I interested in establishing literary value. I am captivated by some contemporary and recent fiction not because it tells us transcendent truths, but because it offers sophisticated narratives for exploration, reflection, and action. The literary is often seen as opposed to action, but I remain loyal to the cultural materialist idea that any writing of ambition might be more important than that. As Bertolt Brecht wrote of theater, \"it sets out society's experiences, past and present alike, in such a manner that the audience can 'appreciate' the feelings, insights and impulses which are distilled by the wisest, most active and most passionate among us from the events of the day or the century.\"\n\nReports of gay experience indicate repeatedly that fiction enlarges our sense of our potential. American novelist Jim Grimsley is typical:\n\nThe very first book I read in which gay men appeared was Mary Renault's _Fire from Heaven_ , in which Alexander and Hephaistion become lovers in the second half of the book. I was still in high school, probably 1970 or 1971. The fact that I could find some kind of affirmation that there were\u2014or had been\u2014other men like me was enthralling and I read the book over and over again. One of the ironies of that era was that the best books about gay men were all by women. Soon after that I would find John Rechy's _City of Night_ , which was extraordinary and powerful and which shook me deeply with its portrait of a gay man's narcissistic sexuality and indifference to commitment.\n\nI have argued elsewhere that the narratives which we revisit compulsively (in literary writing and many other forms) are those which in our cultures are unresolved: I call them _faultline stories_. When a part of our worldview threatens disruption by manifestly failing to cohere with the rest, then we reorganize and retell its story, trying to get it into shape\u2014back into the old shape if we are conservative-minded, or into a new shape if we are more adventurous. Faultline stories address the awkward, unresolved issues; they find their way, willy-nilly, into texts. There is nothing mysterious about this. Authors and readers want writing to be interesting, and these unresolved issues are the most promising for that. This is true in the culture at large, and in subcultural formations also. I deploy some of the techniques of poststructuralist literary criticism, but my aim is to explore how gay experiences have fed into books, films, plays, and cultural commentary, and how we, in turn, have read and pondered them, and reframed ourselves through them. In recognizing the plausibility of a story (Yes, I would act like that in those circumstances; or No, if he takes that line he's asking for trouble), we recognize ourselves, both individually and, implicitly at least, as part of a subcultural formation. We don't have to agree; the point is to have the conversation.\n\nTo be sure, I am exploiting different kinds of texts\u2014different genres, different media. A romance is likely to mobilize different impressions of gayness from a thriller. Yet each exerts a claim for plausibility within its own criteria, and readers learn to read accordingly. My main interest is in writing of the last thirty years, but contemporary writing is not necessarily the most influential. I discuss Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, Radclyffe Hall, E. M. Forster, and Jean Genet because they still bulk large in our collective imaginations. The aim is not to deduce facts from fiction, but to explore ideas and images; the kinds of representations that have been circulating. These texts display what people (gay and otherwise) have been saying about lesbians and gay men; or rather\u2014for writing must be seen as an intervention in a contested space\u2014what they have wanted readers to believe. In my concluding chapter I ponder whether there may be some use in the idea of a lesbian and gay canon.\n\nIt will be sensible to clarify a few other aspects of my approach. Much of what I have to say may easily be applied to heterosexuality. I have framed my thoughts and study in terms of gay subcultures because I know them better and am personally engaged there; because they offer a substantial and up-to-date body of work to build upon; and because there are plenty of books about sex from a straight point of view. It may be that a queer stance will be of wider relevance. Centers, after all, are defined by margins; dissident sexuality, being not the default position, is by definition always already problematized.\n\nI cannot envisage an effective study of gay men that will not be aware of what lies at the most immediate boundaries, those with lesbians and transgender people. I have drawn upon these neighboring discourses when it has seemed instructive to do so. I refer to both _gay_ and _queer_ , tending to use the former in modern and subcultural contexts, the latter in cases with more of a casual, provocative, and inclusive slant. _Sexual dissidence_ is at once vaguer, more purposeful, and more inclusive. _Same-sex_ aspires to neutrality. _Female_ and _male_ are always to be understood as the prevailing normative concepts, as are the notions of _masculinity_ and _femininity_ that conventionally accompany them.\n\nI have tried elsewhere to write about the interface between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan constructions of same-sex passion. The idea was not to find a universal model, still less to legislate for other peoples, but to gain a critical perspective on metropolitan assumptions, revealing them as a local and temporal creation\u2014one that tends to disavow, repudiate, or repress large areas of actual sexual opportunity. In this book my concern is mainly with gay subcultures that have arisen in the cities of North America and northwestern Europe, and to some extent with local versions of them as they have been distributed through other parts of the world by global interaction.\n\nIn practice, as it transpires, although this book was largely conceived and written in Britain, many of my texts are from the United States. As I have observed elsewhere, most of the metropolitan imagery of gayness is \"American\"; blue-jeans and T-shirts, short hair and mustaches, have been adopted into British gay subculture; so have candlelit vigils, quilting, buddying, and photo-obituaries. Because it is located in a more violent and fractured society, and because the AIDS emergency struck more precisely in more clearly demarcated communities, writing from the United States often seems to present the dilemmas of gayness with a special intensity. When I refer to \"our cultures\" I mean those of the United States and northwestern Europe.\n**2**\n\n**TAXONOMIES**\n\n**POSSIBLE AND PLAUSIBLE**\n\nIn a recent essay designed to kick-start gay history, David Halperin proposes a new categorization of same-sex relations. He distinguishes the _modern_ concept of homosexuality, and four _prehomosexual traditions_. These latter are found in specific European contexts\u2014from ancient Greece through early-modern Italy and France, and the molly houses of the eighteenth century, on into the emergence of the concept of \"sexual inversion\" in the writings of late-nineteenth-century sexologists. They are: (1) effeminacy, (2) pederasty or \"active\" sodomy, (3) friendship or male love, (4) passivity or inversion. The key factor linking these prehomosexual traditions, Halperin says, is the privileging of gender over sexual identity (defined by object-choice).\n\nIn \"modern\" homosexuality, which develops in the mid-twentieth century, it is the other way around. Both partners in a same-sex scenario are regarded as gay and neither need be positioned as feminine. Today, Halperin says, \"Homosexual relations cease to be compulsorily structured by a polarization of identities and roles (active\/passive, insertive\/receptive, masculine\/feminine, or man\/boy). Exclusive, lifelong, companionate, romantic, and mutual homosexual love becomes possible for both partners.\" However, traces of earlier patterns linger, and hence the confusions in some current ideas of gayness. Conversely, we may read modern egalitarian expectations back into earlier periods. Astutely, Halperin observes an inconsistency in Jamie O'Neill's acclaimed novel, _At Swim, Two Boys_ : while the Irish situation is presented with careful historical responsibility, the relationships between the gay boys are presented in the modern manner.\n\nHalperin's model is relatively local\u2014it charts particular social and historican contexts within Western European and classical tradition. He concedes that his \"categories are heuristic, tentative, and ad hoc,\" that his patterns \"do not reduce to a single coherent scheme.\" Bruce Smith's analysis of early-modern England and George Rousseau's account of Enlightenment Europe are in similar vein: they chart same-sex liaisons more or less in the terms in which they were regarded contemporaneously. In fact, their models may be regarded as local elaborations of the more general model advanced by anthropologists such as David Greenberg, Stephen Murray, and Gilbert Herdt. From a wide survey, they discover two main patterns of male same-sex relations: gender difference (one party is \"masculine,\" the other \"feminine\") and age difference. Like Halperin, they find that a new type\u2014egalitarian partnerships founded in similarity\u2014has been developing lately in metropolitan settings. More elaborate homosexual taxonomies, Jeffrey Weeks notes, have been generated by psychologists, such as Clifford Allen's twelve types (including the compulsive, the neurotic, and the alcoholic) and Richard Harvey's forty-six types (including the religious, the bodybuilder, and the ship's queen).\n\nAnthropological approaches have afforded a valuable way of reminding post-Stonewall gays that their way of doing things is not universal. I mean to take another route, trying to assemble a more abstract model\u2014one that will seek to map the range of _possible_ sex and gender positions, aspiring to coherence and even completeness. The _plausible_ positions, at any time and place, will be a particular selection and development from the possible positions. For instance, Halperin believes that while it was plausible in earlier centuries to have a close male friend, and to cross-dress, to combine the two in one person was almost inconceivable. However, it is always possible, and nowadays a drag queen may have close friends of all kinds.\n\nIt should not be supposed that the plausible modes delimit the totality of current behaviors. At present, for instance, there is no extant moral or legal ratification for the serial killer. Even psychologically, it is quite hard to envisage what gratification he or she might be obtaining. Nonetheless such people exist. Plausibility locates what can be said and done within normal parameters but, necessarily, it supposes the coexistence of varying degrees of implausibility, threatening always to infiltrate or shatter the normative. A more abstract taxonomy may remind us that the immediate evidence will not anticipate all possibilities.\n\nI do not intend this as an antihistorical, nor an ahistorical work. My aim is to explore frameworks within which historical differences may be better comprehended (especially, in the present study, the relations between the present and the recent past). The detecting of taxonomies is not a trivial matter. Eve Sedgwick suggests that it may contribute to \"the making and unmaking and _re_ making and redissolution of hundreds of old and new categorical imaginings concerning all the kinds it may take to make up a world.\"\n\n**THREE PROBLEMS WITH FREUD**\n\nThe other established taxonomies are in the Freudian tradition. Kenneth Lewes derives four \"explanations\" of male homosexuality from Freud's work; C. A. Tripp eight; Kaja Silverman three (one of them in two variants). As Silverman remarks, \"the various theories Freud proposes to account for the etiology of homosexuality are far from consistent, and it is often difficult to determine whether one is supposed to extend, supplement, or supersede those that came before\" (362). My intention is not to rehearse these theories, nor to attack or defend Freud, but to reconsider problems and opportunities for a materialist elucidation of dissident sexualities.\n\nFreud makes a number of gay-friendly utterances: most famously, that \"all human beings are capable of making a homosexual object-choice and have in fact made one in their unconscious.\" However, some of his ideas about homosexuality occur in the course of surprisingly flimsy essays (such as the one on Leonardo da Vinci). Lesbians and gay men have found three tendencies in Freudian theory particularly hard to deal with. One is the implication that gay men are in some fundamental way feminine, and lesbians correspondingly masculine. For many sexual dissidents, it should be said at once, this implication is not at all unsatisfactory. They are happy to think of themselves as embodying a significant element of the \"other\" sex. However, many are not. Gay men in particular have often appealed to David and Jonathan, the Theban Band, and Walt Whitman in order to establish that, so far from being effeminate, same-sex love may be quintessentially manly. Maurice, in E. M. Forster's novel, believed he had \"brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec's turn to bring out the hero in him.\" Notwithstanding, Silverman, expounding the Freudian corpus, warns that the gay man may have to accept that \"an identification with 'woman' constitutes the very basis of his identity, and\/or the position from which he desires.\"\n\nAs one might expect, many lesbians object to the idea that they might be \"really\" male. Sheila Jeffreys opposes bitterly the ascription of masculine roles to women. Teresa de Lauretis makes an elaborate case, broadly from within psychoanalysis, for freeing lesbians from the imputation that they are castrated and yearning for phallic maleness. The infant, she says, experiences a castrating loss (such as Freud posits), but it is the loss of the female\u2014of the mother\u2014not of the phallus. De Lauretis instances _The Well of Loneliness_ (1928), where Stephen's mother finds her daughter's body repulsive. This maternal withholding, which Stephen cannot address directly, is displaced onto a fetish: manliness. Her masculine bearing, therefore, signifies not phallic pretension but \"Stephen's desire for the (lost) female body.\" The difference from traditional Freudian versions is that Stephen's cultivation of male identity is linked only incidentally to the phallus. It is the adjustment that the sex\/gender system makes available: \"The popularity of _visible_ masculine signifiers as lesbian fetish in Western cultures is directly proportionate to the latter's enduringly hegemonic representation of lesbianism as phallic pretension of male identification\" (308).\n\nProbably Elizabeth Grosz is right to say that this attempt to render psychoanalysis lesbian-friendly still carries too much Freudian baggage. Nonetheless, de Lauretis' separation of gender from heterosexuality sets off reverberations that may be heard through the present study. My aim at this point is not to evaluate such theories but to note the firmness with which some lesbians repudiate Freudian arguments that would position them as second-class men. Molly in Rita Mae Brown's _Rubyfruit Jungle_ , encountering a butch\/femme bar, exclaims: \"That's the craziest dumbass thing I ever heard tell of. What's the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an _imitation man_? Hell, if I want a man, I'll get _the real thing_ , not one of these chippies.\" This is perhaps the kind of incident Judith Butler has in mind when she insists that homosexuality is not a _copy_ of heterosexuality. \"As a young person,\" she confesses, \"I suffered for a long time, and I suspect many people have, from being told, explicitly or implicitly, that what I 'am' is a copy, an imitation, a derivative example, a shadow of the real.\"\n\nA second problematic tendency in Freudian theory concerns \"arrested development.\" As Freud elaborates his idea of an Oedipus complex and adapts to it his experiences of homosexuality, the congenital claims of Havelock Ellis and the inversionists are largely replaced by a developmental model. In his famous letter to a mother about her son's homosexuality, Freud assured her that it was \"nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation.\" Nonetheless, he felt bound to say, it was \"produced by a certain arrest of sexual development.\" \"How does it come to be taken as self-evident that homo-erotics is really an arrested form of interest in oneself?\" Michael Warner demands.\n\nWhat is so revealing is the point at which the arrest is supposed to occur: it is at that moment in the Oedipal process at which the individual is caught in the \"wrong\" gender identity. In a note added to the _Three Essays_ in 1910, Freud declares:\n\nIn all the cases we have examined we have established the fact that the future [male] inverts, in the earliest years of their childhood, pass through a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation to a woman (usually their mother), and that, after leaving this behind, they identify themselves with a woman and take _themselves_ as their sexual object. That is to say, proceeding from a basis of narcissism, they look for a young man who resembles themselves and whom _they_ may love as their mother loved _them_. (56)\n\nIn other words, the homosexual behaves as his mother did (or as he wanted her to). Carole-Anne Tyler glosses: \"if a man desires another man, he must do so as a woman.\"\n\nFor women the Oedipal sequence is more complicated, but the outcome is similar. In his essay on \"Female Sexuality\" (1931), Freud sketches three lines of development for the girl as she \"acknowledges the fact of her castration.... Only if her development follows the third, very circuitous, path does she reach the final normal female attitude.\" Otherwise she may arrive at \"a general revulsion from sexuality,\" or she may \"cling with defiant self-assertiveness to her threatened masculinity,\" perhaps resulting in \"a manifest homosexual choice of object.\" In a footnote Freud grants cheerfully that \"men analysts with feminist views, as well as our women analysts, will disagree.\"\n\nA third problematic tendency, for many lesbians and gay men, is located around the term _narcissism_. The mythical Narcissus is a beautiful youth who refuses to be wooed, embracing only himself; gazing at his own reflection, he starves to death. Not the kind of guy you want as a role model.\n\nIn his essay \"On Narcissism: An Introduction\" (1914), Freud distinguishes _anaclitic_ (other directed) and _narcissistic_ love. According to the anaclitic type a man may love the woman who feeds him, and the man who protects him. According to the narcissistic type a man may love versions of himself\u2014what he is, what he was, what he would like to be, someone who was once part of himself. Freud straightaway mentions, but does not develop, \"the significance of narcissistic object-choice for homosexuality in men.\"\n\nOn Freud's own account, narcissistic love is far less limited than the name suggests. Like anaclitic love, it requires two people, and only in one variant are they supposed to be _the same_ ; otherwise there is a significant difference. In practice, a relationship with an individual who represents the person you have been, or might become, is likely to involve ceaseless negotiation. You are faced continually with both the distinctiveness of the other person (the extent to which s\/he does not embody your ideal self) and the contradictions and failures in your own yearning (your ideal self is not as likable, coherent, or attainable as you might wish to suppose). In fact \"anaclitic\" doesn't mean independent, but _attached_ ; specifically, \"leaning-on,\" Freud's editor explains, \"by analogy with the grammatical term 'enclitic,' used of particles which cannot be the first word in a sentence, but must be appended to, or must lean up against, a more important one.\" Narcissism, then, may operate in an anaclitic way. Freud does not offer them as opposed types: \"We have, however, not concluded that human beings are divided into two sharply differentiated groups.\" Nor, according to Freud, is narcissistic love distinctively gay. It characterizes many women, who, \"especially if they grow up with good looks, develop a certain self-contentment which compensates them for the social restrictions that are imposed on them in their choice of object.... Such women have the greatest fascination for men.\" Freud instances also the narcissism of parents and children.\n\nNotwithstanding, followers of Freud have tended to conclude that homosexual love is narcissistic and therefore at best immature, at worst pathological. It seems likely to involve age and status difference (a man loves what he was, what he would like to be), and hence to violate the modern egalitarian ethos. The common inference, as Kenneth Lewes puts it, is that homosexuality is \"not truly object-related, that it involves impoverished object relations and consequently operates through a primitive and defective superego, and that its mental organization is basically preoedipal.\" It is not surprising that lesbians and gay men have been uneasy at being labeled \"narcissistic.\" The only relation of difference that is validated is gender, and then only when a male and a female are involved.\n\nEven so, in my view Freud's four variants of narcissistic love do offer an intuitively relevant model for some kinds of lesbian and gay passion. Elements of hero worship and idealization, in or of a younger partner, abound in the histories we have created for ourselves, from Socrates and Sappho to Shakespeare, and on to Wilde and Forster. This is not just a male thing. Sarah Ponsonby was thirteen and Eleanor Butler nearly thirty when they made the commitment that was to become the Ladies of Llangollen. Stephen is thirty-one and Mary twenty-one when they fall in love in _The Well of Loneliness_. Audre Lorde in _Zami_ tells how she passed for thirty-five when she was actually twenty so as to take the protective role in her relationship with Muriel.\n\n**DESIRE-FOR AND DESIRE-TO-BE**\n\nIn pursuit of a more effective and more materialist taxonomy, I mean to resort to another Freudian construct\u2014one which is, I hope, less ideologically loaded than those I have discussed so far. In the essay _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_ (1921), Freud draws a distinction between _desire-for_ and _desire-to-be_. Typically, he says, the boy develops an anaclitic attachment to (desire-for) the mother. At the same time, also, he experiences an identification toward (desire-to-be) his father. These are \"two psychologically distinct ties: a straightforward sexual object-cathexis toward his mother and an identification with his father which takes him as his model.\" Propelled by \"the irresistible advance toward a unification of mental life, they come together at last; and the normal Oedipus complex originates from their confluence.\"\n\nFor Freud it is crucial, if your Oedipus complex is to work out properly, to get desire-to-be and desire-for the right way round:\n\nA little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he would like to grow like him and be like him, and take his place everywhere. We may say simply that he takes his father as his ideal. This behaviour has nothing to do with a passive or feminine attitude towards his father (and towards males in general); it is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the way.\n\nHowever, it may not work out so conveniently. The father may be taken as the object of a feminine attitude, or the boy may develop an identification with his mother. The process, Freud admits, is precarious and hard to understand:\n\nIt is easy to state in a formula the distinction between an identification with the father and the choice of the father as an object. In the first case one's father is what one would like to _be_ , and in the second he is what one would like to _have_. The distinction, that is, depends upon whether the tie attaches to the subject or to the object of the ego. The former kind of tie is therefore already possible before any sexual object-choice has been made. It is much more difficult to give a clear metapsychological representation of the distinction. (135)\n\nWhat does seem clear is: (1) desire-to-be must be kept apart from desire-for, (2) this quarantine is unreliable, and (3) the consequence is sexual and gender dissidence. This insistence upon a precarious separation is Eve Sedgwick's theme in _Epistomology of the Closet_ where, she says, the idea was \"to demonstrate that modern, homophobic constructions of male heterosexuality have a conceptual dependence on a distinction between men's _identification_ (with men) and their _desire_ (for women), a distinction whose factitiousness is latent where not patent.\" Judith Butler also addresses the topic: \"The heterosexual logic that requires that identification and desire be mutually exclusive is one of the most reductive of heterosexism's psychological instruments: if one identifies _as_ a given gender, one must desire a different gender.\"\n\nSo how does passion cross the barrier between desire-to-be and desire-for? The answer: very easily! Wayne Koestenbaum observes: \"I spent much of my childhood trying to distinguish identification from desire, asking myself, 'Am I in love with Julie Andrews, or do I think I _am_ Julie Andrews?' I knew that to love Julie Andrews placed me, however vaguely, in heterosexuality's domain; but to identify with Julie Andrews, to want to be the star of _Star!_ , placed me under suspicion.\" John Fletcher declares: \"There can be no clear cut distinction between identification and desire, being and having, in the early stages\" of infant development; it is only a presumed Oedipal polarity that requires it. Noncompliance with this heteronormative demand is presented by Fletcher as a positive opportunity for gay relations:\n\nWhat is refused [in male homosexuality] is not masculinity or the phallic in itself, but the polarity at the heart of the Oedipal injunction: \"You cannot _be_ what you desire, you cannot _desire_ what you wish to be.\" The \"narcissism\" that characterizes certain gay male erotic scenarios, turning on images and terms of traditional masculinity and phallic positioning, often can be seen to have a reparative function, restoring an _alliance_ between being and having, identification and desire. (114; Fletcher's emphasis)\n\nLike de Lauretis in her argument for gender identity as fetish, Fletcher cleverly reorients the Oedipal calamity so that it becomes a gay advantage.\n\nNow, it is not necessary to tangle with psychoanalytic intricacies and purported explanations of gender and sexuality in order to find illumination in the distinction between desire-to-be and desire-for. The pattern has a formal aptness; it will admit, at least in the abstract, all the models I have discussed so far. It reorganizes, in relatively neutral terms, the gendered and narcissistic models of homosexuality which have troubled lesbians and gay men in psychoanalysis. It may be mapped onto, though not contained by, the schema posed so precisely by Sedgwick in _Epistemology of the Closet_ , of inversion (women's souls in men's bodies and vice versa) and gender separatism (same-sex bonding). It offers to connect up Halperin's four prehomosexual traditions. For instance, the effeminate man may be seen as cultivating desire-to-be of the feminine gender, while experiencing desire-for either women or men. Or, again, an \"active\" sodomite cultivates a desire-to-be male while experiencing desire-for a boy or man.\n\nFor the conventional model of heterosexuality you need a man who has desire-to-be male and desire-for a female, and a woman who has desire-to-be female and desire-for a male:\n\nA man has:\n\n| desire-to-be M| desire-for F  \n---|---|---\n\nA woman has:\n\n| desire-to-be F| desire-for M\n\nThe structure appears complementary at every point\u2014as it should do, for the terms are designed to ratify heteronormativity. You desire-to-be yourself (i.e., your own gender), which seems only right. You have desire-for-another, who is indeed other (another gender). Changing any of the positions disrupts the model. Such disruptions may be experienced, variously, as shameful weakness, moral dilemma, nervous strain, exhilarating kinkiness; some of them will produce gender identifications and object-choices which our cultures call homosexual.\n\nIt may be that the dichotomies I am invoking will strike you as a blunt instrument; so they do me. Their usefulness, it will emerge, resides largely in what we can learn from their inadequacies. My goal is not to fit the range of our relations into them, but to use them to disclose salient features of that range. For a start, the terms \"M\" and \"F\" must be problematized. They are to be understood as the prevailing normative concepts of male and female, together with the norms of masculinity and femininity that commonly accompany them. It is not my assumption that they are the positions that we have to occupy, but they are the positions we have to negotiate. In the initial, simple version of the model, it is supposed that gender identity will correspond to anatomical sex; however, this may not be so. In practice, little is uncontested in these matters. Some people referred to Margaret Thatcher as \"that bloody woman,\" others said she wasn't really a woman at all; interestingly, I don't remember anyone calling her a lesbian. Again: is it manly or cowardly for a man to assault his wife? Our cultures are not agreed on that.\n\n**MODEL (g)**\n\nTwo main dissident models initially appear. For the sake of simplicity, and because I feel more confident there, I am writing them as they apply to men. However, I believe they may admit lesbian experience as well; I indicate this from time to time, drawing upon instances and scholarship from lesbian traditions. In an attempt to evade preconceived historical and geographical notions, I call the two initial dissident models (c) and (g).\n\nThe former, model (c), is often associated with the ancient Greeks and endorsed by many gay men today. It shows males, without relinquishing their masculine gender identities, desiring other males:\n\n(c) A man has:\n\n| desire-to-be M| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nThis model flies in the face of a (Freudian) inclination to impose a cross-sex pattern upon same-sex relations by distributing a same-sex couple as one pseudo-male and one pseudo-female. However, it may be authenticated (for Freudians) by Freud's recognition of desire-for the same gender in his account of narcissism. If the two men are more or less equal, they fit the modern egalitarian ethos. I return in a while to some of the complications in model (c).\n\nThe second dissident model, model (g), looks like this:\n\n(g) A man has:\n\n| desire-to-be F| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nThis is the classic inversion model of the \"passive\" male homosexual: he wants to be female, and his desire, like that conventionally expected in a woman, is for a man. He may be said to have a woman's soul in a man's body, or a negative Oedipus complex. In the popular imagination, still, effeminacy is the badge of gayness. For instance, in Ned Cresswell's romance of small town to stardom via sexual intrigue, _A Hollywood Conscience_ , neither Brik nor Ryder has shown any sign of effeminacy. However, once Brik's gayness is recognized, camp becomes the inevitable marker of this knowledge. If Ryder is getting married he will want a matron of honor, Brik suggests. \"'Guess you'll have to wax your legs,'\" Ryder responds. The topic is not pursued by the boys; it is too risky, they pull back to their customary protocol. I trace some of the history of dissident gendering in chapter 5. Model (g) is about sexual dissidence organized around gender; we may call it the _gender_ model.\n\nMany gay men and lesbians, I have suggested, are uncomfortable with this model; it often appears in context with some element of disavowal or, at least, unease. In James Robert Baker's novel _Tim and Pete_ , Pete is a garage mechanic, performs heavy metal, and passes for straight. Tim is a film archivist. He likes Pete because he is not simply gendered\u2014not \"just a mechanic or a rock musician or a cute, butch guy.... It could be a long time before I met someone else with Pete's sensibility and humor.\" Meanwhile Tim risks being too effeminate, Pete accuses: \"'The day we went to Monte Carlo you looked like a fruit.'\" \"'Only in your mind. I was wearing a totally masculine, faded green tennis shirt and a sloppy straight guy's khaki shorts,'\" Tim retorts. \"'With your collar turned up like a queen,'\" Pete insists; two German guys made antigay remarks (73). However, neither of them is as feminine as Victor, who is British, lives with his mother, and likes Barry Manilow and Liza Minnelli.\n\nFurther, model (g) proves significantly inexact, in ways that indicate just how tangled and resistant to categorization gender is in our sex\/gender system. Consider: the obvious _partner_ for the man in model (g), who desires that he himself should be feminine and that his partner should be masculine, is:\n\nA man who has:\n\n| desire-to-be M| desire-for F  \n---|---|---\n\nOf course, this image is familiar: it represents the \"normal\" heterosexual man! Actually, that is not so strange. In the mid-twentieth century, men such as Quentin Crisp believed that effeminate homosexuals sought \"to win the love of a 'real' man.\" So the ultimate ideal partner was indeed a straight-identified man who desired the feminine. Unfortunately, desiring the feminine in the masculine form called the straightness of this man into question: \"A man who 'goes with' other men is not what they would call a real man.\" So the maneuver is bound to fail. In Latin cultures, however, this seems less of a problem: a masculine-identified man may manifest desire-for both women and effeminate men.\n\nIf, in one aspect, model (g) discloses a congruency with heterosexual desire, in another it fails to distinguish between the \"effeminate\" male homosexual and the transsexual anatomical male who feels that he really is female. Each manifests desire-to-be F, and may well experience desire-for M. This confusion is paradoxical, because one advantage of separating desire-to-be from desire-for is that it becomes easier to see the specificity of transgender. The ultimate distinction is that whereas the male homosexual priority is to get a man (desire-for), the transgender priority is to establish a dissident identity (desire-to-be). In Leslie Feinberg's _Stone Butch Blues_ , Jess has a dream which \"wasn't about being gay. It was about being a man or a woman.\" Judith Halberstam reports the case of Danny, a pre-operative female-to-male transsexual: Danny finds sexual satisfaction with men, but only so long as it is understood to be \"gay\" sex\u2014so long as s\/he is \"recognized\" as a man. Don Kulick has observed a comparable attitude among male-to-female _travestis_ in Brazil. They choose their macho boyfriends not for sexual fulfillment but because having such a man in the house reassures the _travesti_ that s\/he is female. In fact, transsexuals are not necessarily homosexual, and their model has to be written:\n\n(g) A man has:\n\n| desire-to-be F| desire-for M\/F  \n---|---|---\n\nThe transsexual also problematizes the initial term in the diagram, \"a man\" (or \"a woman\"), for s\/he may regard hirself as a male, a female, a mixture of the two, or neither. Notice that when we speak of the transsexual as a man who has desire-to-be a woman, that this is a loaded way of putting it\u2014a way that prioritizes anatomical gender. We might instead term this person a woman who has been born into the wrong body, prioritizing psychological gender.\n\nAs Jay Prosser observes, some transsexuals are refusing absolute gender categories. Kate Bornstein remarks: \"I identify as neither male nor female, and now that my lover is going through his gender change, it turns out I'm neither straight nor gay.\" This is not new. Theresa, Jess's lover in _Stone Butch Blues_ , calls herself a lesbian and urges Jess to join the women's movement\u2014\"'You're a woman!'\" she exclaims. But Jess denies this: \"'No I'm not,' I yelled back at her. 'I'm a he-she. That's different.'\" The transsexual is complicated also as a partner: is desire-for about hir masculinity, hir femininity, or both? Such relationships may be straight or gay, depending how you look at it.\n\nApplication of the categories \"M\" and \"F\" has been thrown into further disarray by recent academic and political attention to \"intersexuality\"\u2014approximately, what has been called hermaphroditism\u2014bearing anatomical indications of both genders. The Intersex Society of North America is objecting to the practice of surgeons who, coming upon infants whose sex appears mixed or indeterminate, intervene to construct what they regard as more satisfactory gender characteristics. The society urges that medically unnecessary surgery be deferred until the child can make an informed decision from within a supportive environment. Intersex people may feel themselves to be \"F,\" \"M,\" neither, or both. Clifford Geertz presents attitudes toward intersexuality in different cultures as an instance of the constructedness of common sense. The fact that transgender resists my diagrams is not surprising; it is an index of the difficulty our societies have in conceptualizing it.\n\nOne consequence of constructing a model that prompts a serious recognition of transgender is that the situation of the more typical lesbian or gay man comes more clearly into focus by comparison. Many such people experience a degree of dissident gender identification. However, they do not behave or regard themselves as thereby _not-male_ (for men), or _not-female_ (for women). Rather, they see themselves as embodying an element of the alternate gender. So camp men generally have more in common with other men than they do with women (women know this). Correspondingly, contributors to Sally Munt's collection _Butch\/Femme_ insist that while butches allude to masculinity, and even masquerade as men, their purpose is to pursue their particular ways of being women. Judith Butler writes:\n\nWithin lesbian contexts, the \"identification\" with masculinity that appears as butch identity is not a simple assimilation of lesbianism back into the terms of heterosexuality. As one lesbian femme explained, she likes her boys to be girls, meaning that \"being a girl\" contextualizes and resignifies \"masculinity\" in a butch identity. As a result, that masculinity, if that it can be called, is always brought into relief against a culturally intelligible \"female body.\"\n\nHalberstam cites Butler's argument, but reasserts that there are other positions: \"While some girls are content with boys who retain genetically female bodies, others desire the transgendered or cosmetically altered body.\"\n\nI am minded to conclude, from these complexities, that the difference between lesbian or gay and transgender variants of model (g) is one of degree. They all point toward a dissident gender identity, but they range, in a person of predominantly male anatomy, from sensitivity, through the screaming queen, to the person who seeks gender reassignment surgery. In the diagram\n\n(g) A man has:\n\n| desire-to-be F,  \n---|---\n\ntherefore, the terms comprise variable intensities in a continuum. If this argument feels wrong\u2014threatening to situate you close to something that you feel is not-you\u2014bear in mind that it is the proximate that demands most assiduous policing. Stephen Maddison, in _Fags, Hags, and Queer Sisters_ , suggests that we regard (some kinds of) homosexuality and transgender as \"alternative responses to similar conditions,\" adding: \"The two movements share a heritage.\" That is right: the diaries of Anne Lister and _The Well of Loneliness_ figure in both lesbian and transgender discourses (I develop this argument in chapter 5).\n\nWhat has made it difficult to unravel the diversity of the gender model is Freudian absolutism, which is committed to a distribution of psychic life between two poles: father\/mother, male\/female. For instance, in \"A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman\" (1920), Freud's analysand had \"entirely repudiated her wish for a child, her love of men, and the feminine role in general.\" The outcome was \"extreme\": \"She changed into a man and took her mother in place of her father as the object of her love.\" But the extremism is Freud's: not wanting a child, a male partner, or a feminine role does not turn a woman into a man! Again: finding at the end of puberty that the time has come for \"exchanging his mother for some other sexual object,\" a young man \"identifies himself with her; he transforms himself into her, and now looks about for objects which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother.\" Such language (\"he transforms himself into her\") encourages the inference that the homosexual who develops a dissident gender identity _really has_ , at some level, changed gender.\n\nIn fact most gender-dissident individuals in the gender model, transsexuals apart, should be apprehended as aspiring, quite informally, to some kind of _mixing_ of gender identities, whereby a person may appropriate \"other\" gender attributes, without seeking to abandon his or her initially ascribed gender. I had thought to call this \"androgyny,\" meaning not a semimystical transcendence of gender and the body, but simply a strategic appropriation. However, Halberstam critiques Martha Vicinus' usage on this: \"The androgyne represents some version of gender mixing, but this rarely adds up to total ambiguity; when a woman is mistaken consistently for a man, I think it is safe to say that what marks her gender presentation is not androgyny but masculinity.\" So androgyny and female masculinity are distinct.\n\nThe wider point here is that a range of degrees and types of commitment may occur within the gender model, and only the most extreme should be understood as amounting to gender transformation. Desire-to-be is a relative matter, then, not an absolute difference. Perhaps the idea, as Maddison suggests, is not to be a woman but to disaffiliate from dominant heterosexual modes of manhood. For many or most gay men, desire-to-be in the gender model should be represented not by \"F\" but by \"RF,\" _relatively feminine_ :\n\nA man has:\n\n| desire-to-be RF| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nWhile \"RF\" does embrace the carefully fashioned appropriation of the drag queen or king and the punk gender-bender, for the most part it entails the ordinary, day-to-day effects of an uneven gender identification. Indeed, it may have little to do with object-choice, and be compatible with a heterosexual desire-for. Desire-to-be \"RF\" is available for diverse disaffections of males from heavily masculine commitments: leisure-class men affecting a dandified style; schoolboys wanting to be aesthetes rather than athletes; artists, priests, and dons choosing to signal unworldliness; the present-day \"New Man.\" Halberstam points out that rural women may be considered masculine by urban standards, but merely practical in their own community.\n\nIn most cases I have written the dissident models as they locate individuals, but identities are interactive and the partner (long or short-term, actual or fantasized) is important because s\/he is the person who, above all, is expected to confirm one's own identity. In conventional heterosexual couples this may work contrastively: the man may feel more masculine in contrast with the woman, and vice versa. Plainly a lot of normative masculinity depends on that process; indeed, while it is conventionally supposed that a man has to be masculine in order to impress a woman, it may be the other way around\u2014the woman is called upon to ratify his masculinity. This is a point made by feminists. Today in metropolitan contexts the obvious partner for a man who has desire-to-be \"RF\" is _a man who has desire-for \"RF.\"_ In fact _both partners_ may experience desire-to-be \"RF\" _and_ desire-for \"RF.\" This does not mean that such couples will be symmetrical. The \"RF\" element may be distributed unevenly, producing complementarity at some points, conflict at others. Further, \"M,\" \"F,\" and \"RF\" are likely to be relative between the partners. In a butch\/femme couple, for instance, the partners may be gender-marked mainly as measured against each other, not in absolute terms of masculinity and femininity.\n\nThe relative nature of many gender-dissident identities points toward the diversity of innumerable actual lesbian and gay relationships. I think its occurrence is sufficiently pronounced to justify terming it the _relative-gender_ model, or model (rg). Insofar as it posits a weaker element of gender dissidence than has often been supposed, it begins to converge on model (c)\u2014to which I now return.\n\n**MODEL (c)**\n\nA man has:\n\n| desire-to-be M| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nIn the most obvious version of (c), each man is attracted to someone who is very like himself. They may admire and inspire one another's masculinity, perhaps emulously, as between Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Aufidius, or in the gym. (When Aufidius calls Coriolanus \"boy,\" at the climax of the play, he ejects him from manly equivalence.) Somewhere around this point, many accounts of (c) and (g) seek to justify one and condemn the other. Adherents of (c) are accused of doubling phallic maleness, colluding with heteronormativity, and despising women; adherents of (g) are accused of being effeminate, colluding with heteronormativity, and (secretly) despising women. A taxonomist is not obliged to evaluate\u2014though in fact the terms I have been using are replete, inevitably, with premature evaluations; there is no neutral language.\n\nAs with model (g), for some men the positions in (c) might better be apprehended as \"RF\" or \"RM\" (relatively feminine or masculine). However, this does not affect the viability of the model. The main structural inadequacy in (c) is that diverse relations are incorporated together. If this model may be labeled narcissistic, that does not mean that a monochromatic sameness prevails. For very many gay men, it is crucial that the desired object in model (c) should be _male and different_ \u2014different, above all, in class, and\/or age, and\/or race. Let's take examples.\n\nAt the start of the film about David Hockney and his friends and lovers, _A Bigger Splash_ (Jack Hazan, 1974), we see a good-looking young man, hands behind his head, face composed. The camera swings between him and Hockney; they look pleased with themselves. Hockney speaks partly toward Joe, partly to camera:\n\nHow could I describe Joe? He's, erm, erm, he's tall; he's about my size [ _Hockney smirks and Joe giggles_ ], erm, he's handsome. He's got a complexion similar to mine. He's [ _they laugh_ ] witty, erm, he's, erm, sexy. And\u2014what else? He's artistic: I've decided you're artistic, Joe.\n\n\"When did you decide that?\" Joe asks\u2014\"When I said I liked your work?\" Joe suggests.\n\nHockney emphasizes the physical similarity of the two men; their complicit laughter allows the viewer to suppose that they are talking partly about genital equipment. However, everything else in the exchange speaks status difference. We don't need to have Hockney described because we know who he is and, anyway, the entire film is about him. He has the authority to decide who is to be called artistic; they have been to Paris with some of his pictures. Joe, we may gather, is stirred by Hockney's fame. At the end of the film we are in the same scene; Joe is talking about Hockney's paintings: \"They were so beautiful. And I said, 'My God, I know the painter that did that.' And I knew the person thought I was lying.\" Joe's admiration is flattering for Hockney who, though I deem nice-looking, is not a pinup boy; age is not mentioned, but Joe is clearly younger. The difference in status, I think for both men, is part of the attraction.\n\nClass difference was very common in mid-twentieth-century queer relationships, where it was often associated with (middle-class) effeminacy and (working-class) masculinity; I have written about this in various places. Some women cultivated it as well. Stephen in _The Well of Loneliness_ begins by falling in love with Collins, the maid. Ominously, in respect of her later sacrifice of Mary, Stephen prays to be allowed to take Collins's housemaid's knee, Christlike, upon herself; when praying doesn't work she tries kneeling for long periods. Disillusionment sets in when she comes upon Collins necking with the footman; she handles it by transferring her affections to her new pony, which she names \"Collins.\" As Prosser points out, Stephen is of a higher class than her lovers, Angela and Mary. Consider also Virginia Woolf's romance with aristocracy, as well as with Vita Sackville-West, for instance as displayed in _Orlando_. I am taking \"class\" approximately, as comprising hierarchies of wealth, status, and cultural sophistication, and their markers in attire, decor, and general lifestyle; it is in my view quite wrong to suppose that we have grown out of all that.\n\nClass hierarchy is disavowed and then acknowledged in _Tim and Pete_. Both men are into movies, but whereas Tim is an archival researcher and, as I have remarked, at risk of appearing effeminate because of his college-educated manner, Pete is an automobile mechanic, fronts an aggressively political band, and is passing as straight in his rough (lower-class) apartment building. Pete has misled Tim about his \"'middle-class background'\": \"the neighborhood was more lower-middle class or blue collar.\" Pete implied that he studied at Yale, when actually he'd only lived in New Haven with a history professor (class and age hierarchy there). Tim realizes that Pete had \"exaggerated so that we'd seem more equal.\" But does Tim really want Pete to be more equal? \"Once I'd sucked Pete's cock while he was only wearing his Yale T-shirt. Afterward he'd said, 'So do you like me better as a brilliant student or a dumb mechanic?'\" Tim had replied: \"'I like _you_ '\"\u2014the correct response for the modern, egalitarian gay man. But now he wonders whether it was true (37). When they saw the film of _Maurice_ they went home and acted joke variations on the roles (\"'Oh, Scudder. You're stretching me. My word'\"). Their parody effected a \"homoerotic catharsis... a genuine guilty pleasure\" (39; my elision). The endurance of class mobility as a theme is evident in _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ (Anthony Minghella, 1999) and _AKA_ (Duncan Roy, 2002), films in which desire-for and desire-to-be cross over to intriguing effect.\n\nIf model (c) sexualities may be regarded as narcissistic, and hence as involving what one was, would like to have been, or would like to be, then age difference is a likely component (it is a factor in _A Bigger Splash_ and _Tim and Pete_ ). In Felice Picano's novel _Like People in History_ , a young ACT UP activist is surprised to find Wally and the older narrator together: \"'I could never figure out why a great-looking guy like Wally would get involved in a transgen thing.'\" \"Read trans-generational,\" the narrator says to himself. \"Read I'm old enough to be his father but neither look it nor act like it. Read eternal Peter Pan.\" The age model flourishes notwithstanding. It figures in many of the most influential texts of our time\u2014 _The Immoralist_ (Andr\u00e9 Gide), _Death in Venice_ (Thomas Mann), _Maurice_ (E. M. Forster), _Funeral Rites_ (Jean Genet), _Hemlock and After_ (Angus Wilson), _Variation on a Theme_ (Terence Rattigan), _Sweet Bird of Youth_ (Tennessee Williams), _Entertaining Mr. Sloane_ (Joe Orton), _A Single Man_ (Christopher Isherwood), _The Swimming-Pool Library_ (Alan Hollinghurst), _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_ (Neil Bartlett), _Frisk_ (Dennis Cooper), _The Night Listener_ (Armistead Maupin). Its ordinariness is manifest in innumerable contact ads. In _The Beautiful Room Is Empty_ by Edmund White, the narrator has a substantial relationship with Lou, but it doesn't work out: Edmund is \"too big and educated to be the boy, and too much younger to be the man.\"\n\nDe Lauretis' founding of lesbianism in the loss of the mother seems likely to produce relationships characterized by age difference. She reports how the Milan Women's Bookshop Collective found disparities (social, educational, economic) among their reading group: some women \"were seen as authoritarian 'mothers' prevaricating over the preferences and interpretations of the others, who thus felt cast in the role of daughters.\" The collective decided not to outlaw this element of hierarchy, but to validate relations of _entrustment_ ,\n\nin which one woman gives her trust or entrusts herself symbolically to another woman, who thus becomes her guide, mentor, or point of reference.... Both women engage in the relationship\u2014and here is the novelty, and the most controversial aspect of this feminist theory of practice\u2014not in spite, but rather because of and in full recognition of the disparity that may exist between them in class or social position, age, level of education, professional status, income, etc. (21\u201322; my elision)\n\nAnd this, de Lauretis observes, is \"contrary to the egalitarian feminist belief that women's mutual trust is incompatible with unequal power\" (24). Working with disparities enables a proper recognition of the diversity of women.\n\nAn interesting corollary of the age version of model (c) is that it offers a way for lesbians and gay men to reproduce their kind: some girls and boys may pass through, serially, to the woman's or man's position, and so on from generation to generation. This is anticipated by Freud in his comments on the Greeks: \"As soon as the boy became a man he ceased to be a sexual object for men and himself, perhaps, became a lover of boys.\" Jean Genet is a notable individual who was involved in such a sequence. People hostile to homosexuality become especially distressed at the prospect that we might have our own, same-sex way of breeding.\n\nIn my discussion of the gender model (g), it was possible to recognize a range of desires by horizontal substitution\u2014complicating rather than changing the received terms of the model (\"M\" and \"F\"), and then adding \"RF\" and (rg). In model (c) vertical substitution is required. For instance:\n\n(c) A man has:\n\n| desire-to-be M| desire-for M  \n---|---|---  \n| who is old| who is old  \n| young| young  \n| old| young  \n| young| old\n\nThe asymmetry between the two models occurs because (g) is about gender, whereas in (c) gender tends to obscure other factors. I propose calling model (c) the _complementarity_ model, taking this to include both the sense of lack in narcissism and the potential affinity in difference; it may be particularized as _race complementary_ , _class complementary_ , and _age complementary_.\n\nAs with the gender model, the mapping of such elaborations discloses further complications. With the complementarity model there is no convenient starting assumption as to who does what. A boy in the age version, for instance, might be rough and \"active\" or docile (tractable, agreeable) and \"passive\"; indeed, he might be rough and \"passive\" or docile and \"active.\" Nor are these matters stable: a relationship may start in one vein and modulate into another. Delving further into the intimate potential of both fantasy and practice would produce more elaborate systems.\n\n**BISEXUALITY**\n\nA blatant disturber of neatly gendered models is bisexuality. Traditionally, lesbians and gay men have been suspicious of bisexuality, regarding it as a way of evading the stigma of gayness. This may have been partly true. It is plain, however, that very many people entertain, simultaneously or successively, divergent desires, both for and to-be. In _Gay and After_ I argue that in the 1970s and 1980s, to declare yourself gay or lesbian was such a strenuous project that to blur the effect by adding that sometimes you were a bit straight after all seemed just too complicated, and scarcely plausible. The notion that there are two distinct populations suited straights because it helped them to avoid contamination, and gays because it facilitated political and economic organization. However, since the mid-1990s, some young people are less daunted by such pressures. Meanwhile some noted lesbian and gay activists, who can hardly be accused of running scared, have been venturing beyond customary identities.\n\nTaxonomical thinking discloses an interesting symmetry: compare the position of the bisexual with that of the transsexual. Both are in-between\u2014irregular combinations of \"M\" and \"F.\" However, one is structured in desire-for, the other in desire-to-be.\n\nThe scope for entertaining, more or less together, formally incompatible desires is represented positively in Aiden Shaw's self-consciously contemporary novel, _Wasted_. At the beginning David and Joe are together, though David was with Flora before. David also loves his nephew, Ryan (age sixteen). Ryan is with Leila, but experiments in going to bed with David. Flora takes up with Don, who is straight but nonetheless drawn to Joe. David dies, and Joe connects with Flora as an artistic collaborator. Flora falls for Josie. Joe finds an immediate sexual rapport with Dylan, a student friend of Ryan. \"'Yeah. Meet the family,' said Flora.\" These are families of choice. Scarcely an eyelid is batted at these diverse developments. David is worried that his feelings for his young nephew are sexual (50); however, for Ryan it's cool: \"'You sound like an old queer from the Fifties.' He held out his arms to hug David. 'Why should it bother me?'\" (52). Flora doesn't hesitate with Josie: \"It felt so right in Josie's arms. Complete. Already it felt like the next phase in life\" (200); \"'What! Flora a dyke?'\" Ryan exclaims. \"'Fuck! That one's full of surprises'\" (218). Joe and Dylan feel obliged to defend the age difference between them (fifteen years), but it's no big deal. Among the younger generation more or less anything goes. Indeed, Ryan finds that in fantasy he can fill in the blank of David's former lover with diverse interchangeable images, including himself, like morphing in a pop video. In Ryan's drugged dream the characters of the book merge into each other: \"Leila was David. David was Leila, now both just one person. Sexual. Passionate. Loving. Breasts turned into arse cheeks, their dicks into syringes. Dylan also became a part of them. He merged with David and Leila. Ryan loved them, physically and mentally\" (257).\n\nHowever, free-ranging is not the only game in town. As a counterpart to the equable families of choice, _Wasted_ displays a preoccupation with involuntary sexual experience. David tells Ryan how he has been obsessed with him\u2014\"'hundreds of times I have jerked off about you... nine years of jerking off, and the different images I've had of you in my head during that time'\" (142; my elision). There is one rape in the novel, probably two. Also, as well as the usual array of clubbing drugs, the characters experiment with a sleeping tablet through which one person subjects himself to an oblivion in which anything can be done to him. \"'But he could have done anything.' 'Exactly. Sexy, huh?'\" (9). It is a mechanism of trust, but also of exploitation. More ominously, the closing episode of the book indicates that not everyone in the city is cool. The amiable, freewheeling milieu has no resources to match obsessional sexual violence.\n\nThe outcome is merely frustrating in a rueful instance offered by Sarah Schulman in her novel _Empathy_. Anna, a woman, and a man have been drinking and decide to play a game: \"each one would say their fantasy and the other two would fulfill it.\" The man goes first, and wants the two women to suck his dick, so they do. The woman wants Anna to be fucked by the man, so she is. However, when Anna wants the man to leave the room so she can make love to the woman, the woman says no.\n\nMy goal in this chapter has been to generate models of gender and sexual experience quite abstractly, so as to afford a possible frame within which the more local, empirical categories of Halperin, Smith, Rousseau, and anthropological scholars may be comprehended. I have derived desire-for and desire-to-be from Freudian writings, while trying to avoid the Freudian tendency to essentialize and absolutize gender. The dominant categories that emerge in my analysis are gender difference and gender complementarity. _Gender difference_ comprises heterosexuality, together with a range of intricate same-sex relations of identity and desire, in which a person with at least some biological male characteristics is apprehended, either by himself or his male partner, as feminine (and the other way about for women); gender difference turns out, often, to be _relative_. _Gender complementarity_ delineates relations where two men or two women have both desire-for the same gender and desire-to-be the same gender; while it may be addressed as a kind of narcissism, it emerges as preoccupied with hierarchies of class, age, and race, within ostensible sameness.\n\nArguably, I have myself colluded with heteronormativity by retaining versions of \"F\" and \"M\" as starting points in my models. Perhaps we should be taking more seriously a desire-to-be wealthy, taller, a doctor, or Barbra Streisand. Or this:\n\nA man has:\n\n| desire-to-be not-M| desire-for God  \n---|---|---\n\nIdentity might not be about gender, sexuality might not be genital. Many erotic practices are relatively diffuse\u2014involving pleasures of touch and smell. Some sadomasochists, fetishists, and pedophiles may be able to find satisfaction with either male or female partners. Concepts such as beauty, intelligence, sense of humor, and even virtue may be stimulating; they are not altogether in thrall to ideology. The point of my taxonomy, I have said, is not to limit identity or desire but, rather, to offer a base from which the specificity and multiplicity of the potential combinations and interactions may coherently emerge.\n\nEven with these provisos, I suspect that for many readers my brisk modeling feels too regulated, too standardized. It goes against the general postmodern-poststructuralist truism, that _any_ identity is, and should be, provisional, unstable, fuzzy around the edges, occupied only through processes of anxious iteration. Taxonomy refuses the ideology which asserts that we are all individuals, and that our sex lives belong to a private, personal, individual realm into which it is better not to inquire. At least (it may be averred) Freud produces an air of mystery. I have to say that I have never found individualism a very appealing or reassuring idea. As David Evans observes, capitalism invites us to see ourselves as \"unique individuals with needs, identities and lifestyles which we express through our purchase of appropriate commodities.\" In fact, advertisers and other cultural producers know how to corral us into niche markets where we can be conveniently targeted; individual choice is disturbingly congruent with the idea that the right designer label will enable us to complete our happiness. At the same time, it is only by combining that ordinary people gain any potential for political action\u2014for understanding, even. Insistence upon individuality amounts to a naive reluctance to acknowledge that oneself is actually quite like a lot of other people.\n\nThe presumption behind my models is that our behavior falls into patterns, and that they are not unconnected with those disclosed by surveys and focus groups. Sexuality is social. However, I do believe that those patterns are immensely complex. In _Stone Butch Blues_ Theresa protests when Jess decides to begin taking male hormones in order to pass as a man. \"'I'm a woman, Jess. I love you because you're a woman, too,'\" Theresa avers. \"'I just don't want to be some man's wife, even if that man's a woman.'\" This is not just a matter of object-choice. Theresa experiences her identity as interdependent with that of her partner: \"'I'm a femme, Jess. I want to be with a butch.'\" Otherwise her lesbian character is at stake: \"'If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian'\" (151).\n**3**\n\n**FANTASY**\n\n**DISSIDENT IDENTITIES**\n\nAfter decades of collaboration and occasional sexual experimentation together, Esther Newton and Shirley Walton realized that the reason they had never really got off was that, despite appearances, they both were tops. What is needed, they argue, is \"a more precise vocabulary to take us out of Victorian romanticism in sexual matters and toward a new understanding of women's sexual diversity and possibility.\" The categories Newton and Walton discover are:\n\nsexual preference (from which gender you usually select your partners)\n\nerotic identity (how you image yourself)\n\nerotic role (who you want to be in bed)\n\nand erotic acts (what you like to do in bed)\n\nWhat you prefer to do in bed cannot be inferred from whether you appear to be cultivating a masculine or a feminine image, or whether you are the older or the younger partner. My investigation of taxonomies entailed an admittedly schematic tendency; this chapter will involve a corrective assessment of the disorderly operations of fantasy, which challenge, solidify, and divert established identities and orthodox desires.\n\nYour fantasies may run quite counter to your self-presentation; they may be indelible, or fairly flexible; they may be conventional or, at least to others, radically inventive. There is, writes Vicky Lebeau, \"no limit to the reach of fantasy, its role in our attempts to contain the trauma, as well as the banality, of our lives.\" Fantasies are not, as I use the term, typically unconscious, though they may be. Leo Bersani declares their practical importance: \"What positions, what activities, what identifications excite us? What imagined object best helps the masturbatory process along? What do we prefer the other to be doing\u2014to us, for us, alone, with someone else?\"\n\nBy fantasy I mean the scenarios that we cultivate in our imaginings, typically of empowerment and humiliation (I seek to justify this emphasis on power in the next chapter). Fantasies are not necessarily sexual in form or origins; as I have indicated, a scenario of class or racial identification or domination is not necessarily to be _reduced to_ the sexual. Their most intense expression _may be_ sexual, however; that is where they enter the most vivid sites of pleasure and control. Fantasies are not necessarily solitary, secret, manipulated, or frustrated; the term includes attempted and successful realization in action, perhaps in collaboration with another. Getting someone to share your scenario is not only fun, it may help to make it plausible to you. Perhaps, as Aristophanes suggests in Plato's _Symposium_ , the desire to find one's lost other half is fundamental not just to love and desire, but to humanity. Fortunately, a consensual partner may be found for most practices. Conversely, Jean-Paul Sartre's vision of hell, in his play _Huis Clos_ ( _No Exit_ ; 1944), is three people trapped together and prevented by their incompatible psychic needs from confirming each other.\n\nRegrettably, that is not all. You can be at ease with yourself and with your partners, but if the social and political system is stigmatizing and criminalizing you, then you still have a problem. Consider the men in the British \"Operation Spanner\" case, who were found guilty of consensual S\/M practices about which they felt personally very happy.\n\nSophisticated analysis of these topics often begins at the intersection of psychoanalysis and film studies, with \"the gaze.\" A comparison may be broached between the way the subject locates him- or herself in the reading of a film (or other) narrative, and in a fantasy scenario. Laura Mulvey inaugurated much of this work by arguing that in Hollywood cinema male viewers are invited to identify with a male protagonist in looking at and desiring women as objects, while women are to identify with the female figures passively looked at. Such an analysis answers well to an intuitive sense of Hollywood as a monstrous dream machine for the industrialization of culture, dedicated to the preservation of conventional male and female roles. However, it seems to make women passive, not to say stupid, in their reading of film. Also, it makes the system appear more monolithic than is plausible.\n\nSubsequent work\u2014including by Mulvey herself\u2014has consisted of theorizing a way past the implications of the gaze, involving three main points. First, Hollywood does seem to offer more diverse possibilities. An instance that has delighted many gay men is the chorus, \"June Is Bustin' Out All Over,\" in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's _Carousel_ (Henry King, 1956). In the film's choreography, the girls dance with the fishermen and the sailors, but then the boys dance with each other, in pairs, and for each other as complementary groups; the girls watch the boys, the boys watch each other. Diverse spectatorial positions are available here for women and gay men. Unfortunately, _Carousel_ strives ultimately to contain such gender exuberance: the plot is resolutely heterosexual, and even comradely relations between men are shown as dishonest, violent, criminal, and fatal. Such a contradiction is not unusual in the Hollywood musical. But audiences do not have to respect closures; they may dwell imaginatively on the episodes that excite them. June may bust out.\n\nSecond, as Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis observe in a key formulation, fantasy \"is not the object of desire, but its setting.\" This means that the subject may locate him- or herself at more than one point in a scenario. A seduction fantasy, for instance, \"is a scenario with multiple entries, in which nothing shows whether the subject will be immediately located as _daughter_ ; it can as well be fixed as _father_ , or even in the term _seduces_.\" Desire-for alternates, overlaps, and tangles with desire-to-be. Freud is often credited with noticing this potential mobility of identification and desire in his essay \"'A Child Is Being Beaten.'\" There is a nice instance of it in James Robert Baker's novel, _Boy Wonder_ , where a leading theme is obsessional fantasy investments. \"As the film [ _Rebel Without a Cause_ ] reached its climax, and Sal Mineo died on the observatory steps, Shark wept. 'I felt as I _were_ Sal Mineo,' he said, 'but also Dean. In the end more Dean, the survivor, than Mineo, the martyr. But a _part_ of me died on those observatory steps.'\"\n\nChris Straayer considers how a Mulveyan viewing regime may be adapted to accommodate a lesbian spectator and her partner. In films such as _Entre Nous_ (Diane Kurys, 1983) and _Voyage en Douce_ (Michel Deville, 1979), the male in a triangular relationship with two women may be regarded as an \"intermediary\" for the feeling between the two women. Through hints such as the exchange of significant glances, a space for \"female bonding\" may be discovered. Again: Dorothy Allison notes that the clippings pinned above her desk include a young woman in a black lace dress and feathered hat, and a samurai woman sweeping her long sword. \"Some days I want to become one or the other of them. Some days I want to write the story of how they become lovers. Other days I can't stand to look at them at all.\"\n\nThird, any assumption that people want to identify with the nearest equivalent to their ostensible selves is unsatisfactory. On the contrary, fantasy is likely to be the place where we try out alternative identities and desires. Constance Penley has observed how women contributors to _Star Trek_ fanzines invest their libidinal energies in heroic, romantic, and sometimes sexy stories about Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock, rather than in women characters. Penley takes this as evidence \"that one can, no matter what one's gender, identify with either the man or the woman, or the entire scene itself, or the fictional place of the one who looks on to the scene.\" The motives of these women seem to be mixed. They are witty and self-parodic; fooling about, experimenting, conducting their own enterprising voyage into the unknown; they are also in earnest. They are claiming male freedoms in their imaginations, while refusing to announce themselves as feminists and rejecting the female body; they are happy to see men as erotically involved but reluctant to contemplate gayness. The main point, however, is perhaps that very many people are far more inventive and adaptable than has often been supposed.\n\nCross-gender identification is an obvious instance of unruly fantasy. In some aspects at least, it seems to be more disturbing to heteronormativity than dissident object-choice. The notorious version is the traditional gay male devotion to female stars such as Judy Garland and Maria Callas. The death of Garland is usually reckoned to be one of the direct stimuli for the 1969 Stonewall Riots. According to Richard Dyer, Garland \"could be seen as in some sense androgynous, as a gender in-between.\" Further, \"she sings of desire for men and of relationships with men going wrong. Male singers could not (still largely do not) sing of these things.\" Stephen Maddison posits two explanations. The gay man adopts the position of the woman\u2014perhaps, we might confess, elbowing her aside\u2014so as to commandeer her desire for the man. Also, a broadly \"feminine\" emotional stance is desired and the entire scenario is embraced. Lately many gay men have admired women such as Barbra Streisand and Madonna, who appear to have more control over their destinies.\n\nAt this point it seems appropriate to recall my argument in the previous chapter, that individuals who cultivate an element of gender dissidence, stopping short of a transsexual adjustment, do not want to be a different gender; they should be apprehended as aspiring, quite informally, to an amalgamation of gender attributes. Gay men who gain pleasure and strength from a vivid engagement with Streisand don't believe that they _are_ her. They are pirating aspects of the image for their own purposes. For gender is a negotiation, not a possession; there are innumerable reasons for trying to feel definite about it, but any such attainment is provisional. Fantasy should be understood, not as an absolute demand, nor as a unified core, but as a sequential, piecemeal, strategic adaptation. David Wojnarowicz remarks: \"Fantasized images are actually made up of millions of disjointed observations collected and collated into the forms and textures of thought.\"\n\nIf a mood of feminine emotional indulgence and sexual attraction has appeal for some men, the freedoms associated with masculinity have an obvious appeal for women. Lynne Segal describes how her path to a heterosexual and feminist identification passed through gay fiction: \"The lustfully desirous fantasies of my own youth were\u2014as they remain\u2014most easily aroused and fed by the words and images of male homosexual authors.\" Segal was drawn particularly to the black, and hence doubly forbidden, author James Baldwin. His gay characters afforded a more attractive route to desire for the male than many of the available images of women. Cora Kaplan describes a comparable youthful investment in Baldwin's writing. She appreciated\n\nthe lowered threshold he provided for fantasies that were not about the fixing of gender or sexual orientation but about their mobility and fluidity. Women could take up shifting and multiple fantasy positions within his fictional narratives: that possibility, itself wonderfully if terrifyingly liberating, allowed an identification not just with specific characters but with the scenarios of desire themselves.\n\nImages of gay men offered a way to gain a more flexible foothold among the extant sex and gender scenarios, evading a premature consolidation of fantasmatic desires and identifications within the limits of Cold War gender ideology.\n\nSome lesbians report a youthful, transitional reliance on male gay scenarios. They signaled, in the context of a relative sparsity of lesbian images, at least that not everyone is straight. For Cheryl Clarke, an African American, Baldwin figured the prospect of queer, black authorship. _Another Country_ , despite having nothing positive to say about lesbianism, \"made me imagine freedom from traditional monogamous heterosexuality and set me to thinking about the possibility of a 'variant' life.\" As a prominent dissident intellectual\u2014one who preferred not to live in the land of the free\u2014Baldwin represented broader prospects of alternative thought. Bia Lowe describes a double displacement, whereby she invested in actors who were admired for their virility while implicitly embodying an element of gayness. Lowe got from her mother the idea that actors such as Laurence Olivier and Rock Hudson\n\nwere men with enormous sex appeal and, now I realize, not without that certain je ne sais quoi [ _sic_ ]. Was I unknowingly drawn to gay men because of the model of my mother? Or because, as a budding Miss H, I was protected by them from the failure of heterosexual contact? Because gay men reminded me more of brothers than of fathers? Until I came out, I might as well have been a gay man, for male was the only gender I would spot in the \"pathology\" of same-sex love. I read _Giovanni's Room_ , saw _The Boys in the Band_. I eyed my mother's string of interior decorators. I listened for clues to my own stirrings in the swells and swirl of Tchaikovsky's music.\n\nAs well as race, class identifications may tangle with sexuality and gender. Sue-Ellen Case says she became queer through an adolescent identification with Arthur Rimbaud. Valerie Walkerdine remarks how, watching _Rocky II_ , she found that her identification was taking an unexpected path. She had not expected to enjoy its \"macho sexism,\" but she found herself identifying with the class feeling that informs it. \"The film brought me up against such memories of pain and struggle and class that it made me cry.... I too wanted Rocky to win. Indeed, I _was_ Rocky\u2014struggling, fighting, crying to get out.\" Class feeling overwhelmed gender principles\u2014or, rather, enabled a more complex experience of them.\n\nThere may be downsides to these irregular identifications. As always with appropriations, one gets more than one had bargained for. For Kaplan, to read Baldwin in the context of the limited ideology of femininity that prevailed in the late 1950s meant engaging \"not only in an empathetic, even desiring, identification with the figures of masculinity in his texts, but also (if only subliminally) in a repudiation of the feminine, if not exactly of women.\" Segal pursued her interest in gay men to the extent of becoming pregnant by and marrying one; it didn't work out.\n\n**SUBSTITUTIONS, CONFLATIONS, REVERSALS, LOOPS**\n\nAnthropologists have held that some societies organize same-sex passion around age, others around gender. In chapter 2, correspondingly, a complementarity model and a relative-gender model emerged. But these models are not always discrete. In Pai Hsien-yung's Taiwanese novel _Crystal Boys_ , the prostitutes are all boys and the punters are older men; the informing imagery, in this militaristic society, is of fathers and sons. This seems to be a same-sex community structured primarily around age. Nonetheless, the boys are called \"fairies,\" even the ones who might seem masculine: one who is \"husky as an ox\" is called \"Little Fairy,\" and one with \"a wonderful physique\"\u2014\"broad shoulders, and a muscular chest\"\u2014is called \"the Butch Queen.\"\n\nWhat seems to be happening here is a _conflation_ or _substitution_ of roles: since both boys and women figure subordination, they may be blurred together, or the one may stand for the other. It is beyond the scope of this book to track the range and intricacy of fantasy. In this section I mean to unravel some exemplary instances of fantasmatic maneuvering and explicit role-play, discovering a nexus of complications that seem especially prominent as ways of elaborating gay psychic experience. I distinguish substitutions, conflations, reversals, and loops.\n\nSometimes roles are substituted for (allegedly) tactical reasons. In single-sex institutions one male may fuck another without losing status, so long as he takes the \"active\" part and the other is regarded as a stand-in woman. In 1922, Alec Waugh invoked the substitutability of boys and women as an explanation for homosexuality in boarding schools:\n\nIn this environment there is nothing unnatural about the attraction exercised by a small boy over an elder one. A small boy is the nearest approach possible to the feminine ideal. Indeed a small boy at a Public School has many of the characteristics that a man would hope and expect to find in a woman. He is small, weak, and stands in need of protection.\n\nThat is a heteronormative way of putting it, of course; we might say that the attraction of women resides in their \"boyish\" characteristics. Boy-love as a substitute for girl-love is widely displayed in prison dramas, including _Little Ol' Boy_ by Albert Bein, _\"Now Barabbas...\"_ [ _sic_ ] by William Douglas Home, _Deathwatch_ by Jean Genet, and _Fortune and Men's Eyes_ by John Herbert.\n\nFreud's comment on same-sex passion among the Greeks finds that love of boys is really about love of women. \"What excited a man's love was not the _masculine_ character of a boy, but his physical resemblance to a woman as well as his feminine mental qualities\u2014his shyness, his modesty and his need for instruction and assistance.\" So gender hierarchy is maintained after all\u2014so long as you go along with the Victorian notion of what \"a woman\" is like. Foucault believes the opposite of the Greeks:\n\nit was the juvenile body with its peculiar charm that was regularly suggested as the \"right object\" of pleasure. And it would be a mistake to think that its traits were valued because of what they shared with feminine beauty. They were appreciated in themselves or in their juxtaposition with the signs and guarantees of a developing virility.\n\nCommenting on an earlier version of some of the ideas in the current study, David Halperin insists that not all systems conflate all subordinations, or in the same way. This is indeed my point; the conflations I observe are particular strategic adjustments, not instances of an essential process.\n\nIt is noticeable that substitution and conflation of roles are more commonly posited of subordinate figures. The masculine, together with the adult, the established, and the white, appears simply as itself, and claims the authority to reposition its others. Pai Hsien-yung's crystal boys, having run away from home, are lower class as well as young and feminine. Arthur, in Alan Hollinghurst's _Swimming-Pool Library_ , is black, and also younger and considerably poorer. Such conflations illustrate the malleability of fantasy, but also the ruthlessness of its appropriations, and its disregard for the stability of the subordinated person. If relative femininity and youth are regarded as metonymic, or perhaps even the same, then the conflation of roles may enable a more elaborate fantasmatic discourse; alternatively, it may lead to a confused identity.\n\nEdmund White reports: everyone on the New York scene was doing it: \"We were all obsessed with fantasies back then, which we kept exploring until they became absurd. One boy even said to me: 'I do father-son, sailor-slut, older brother\u2013younger brother, black rapist\u2013white secretary, trucker-hitchhiker, and a virgin couple on their wedding night.'\" You can slot into one or the other; it's all the same kind of thing; hierarchy is the point, as much as the particular terms in which it is framed. Perhaps it is a mistake to suppose an original menu of discrete dominations and subordinations, wherein everything was simply itself. In fact, an attraction of same-sex relations may reside in their potential to invoke, simultaneously, several social hierarchies in complicated combinations.\n\nThe fantasy identifications discussed so far seem to involve fairly simple substitutions; a person is able to cultivate feelings, typically of empowerment or submission, that would be hard to access through his or her regular identity. Of course, fantasy is not always so conveniently labeled or so comfortably experienced. Often in psychic life there is a tendency for roles to be _reversed_ \u2014such that one fantasizes oneself as the other. As Jacqueline Rose puts it, with case histories of Jewish Holocaust survivors in view, \"being a victim does not stop you from identifying with the aggressor; being an aggressor does not stop you from identifying with the victim.\" Role reversal was common in the cross-class liaison of the mid-twentieth century, where the bit of rough trade might be called upon to fuck his social superior.\n\nI remarked at the start of this book how Reginald Shepherd's desire for men is entangled with his experience of racial hierarchy. Shepherd both desires white men and has himself always wanted to be white. He asks, \"How much of wanting another man is the desire to be that man?\" The connection works quite literally: by being seen with a white lover, Shepherd becomes \"an honorary white man.\" He believes that sex is about dominance and submission: \"For a gay man both roles are simultaneously available.\" Gary Fisher, with similar issues in mind, ponders _Billy Budd_ : Melville might have been \"a bit more generous; he might have asked us to feel instead of to just watch, feel what it is to be victim and victimizer; white victim and then black victim; white victimizer and black victimizer; asked us to feel, to study and enjoy all the permutations, all the variations on a theme in this text.\"\n\nSuch reversals may be facilitated in gay relations. In the previous chapter I followed John Fletcher's argument about the breaking of the fragile barrier between identification and desire, to show that such confounding of the distinction between desire-to-be and desire-for is endemic in same-sex passion. Earl Jackson Jr. frames this factor in a revision of Mulveyan, cinematic terms: whereas the viewing pleasures of the heterosexual male may most easily entail identification with the man and objectification of the woman, the gay viewer \"regularly identifies with the figure he sexually objectifies. In other words, he experiences a coalescence of drives that are radically dichotomized in his heterosexual male counterpart.\" This is specially true in pornography. In my view Jackson may underestimate the perversity (to use the normative term) in much heterosexual passion; in horror films men may identify with the female victim. But we should take Jackson's point, that gay people may more readily cross the heavily policed line between identity and desire, making it relatively convenient to cultivate complex scenarios. In Robert Chesney's play _Jerker, or the Helping Hand_ , J. R. declares his engagement with both the prince and the princess: \"I was always more interested in _him_ than in the fairy tale princesses\u2014Snow White, Cinderella, whatever. _I_ identified with the Sleeping _Beauty_ : _I_ wanted that kiss.\" J. R. is committed to both characters: he wants to be both the prince who kisses and the princess who gets kissed\u2014and awakened into sexual response, such that the prince gets kissed in return.\n\nFinally, we may observe instances in which passion takes a _loop_ through one kind of identification or desire, in order to gain a role in relation to another. This was a resource for the young Edmund White, as he struggled with adolescent passion. In _A Boy's Own Story_ he falls for the gym teacher, Mr. Pouchet, and imagines himself to be Pouchet's girlfriend. White was prepared to be \"Julie or Helen or whoever else, just so long as I was in his mind somehow.\" His desire loops through the desire of the teacher and the person of the girlfriend.\n\nJonathan Dollimore describes a threesome in which a bisexual male (I call him \"the protagonist\") watches a man fucking with a woman:\n\nHis identifications here are multiple: he identifies with the man (he wants to be in his position, having sex with the woman) but he also wants to be her. And I mean _be_ her: he doesn't just want to be in her position and have the man fuck him as himself (though he wants that too); no, he wants to be fucked by the man with himself in the position of, which is to say, as, the woman.\n\nThe protagonist has desire-to-be the man, but this is for a purpose: \"he wants to be in [the man's] position, having sex with the woman.\" He wants to fuck the woman, and imagines doing it through the agency of the man. His masculine activity is routed through another. Elsewhere, we have found desire-for and desire-to-be to be autonomous, in the sense that nothing about the one can reliably be inferred from the other (drag artistes may be straight). In this case, one facilitates the other:\n\ndesire-to-be the man   desire-for the woman\n\nBoth these desires seem to secure the masculinity of the man. This, however, is not the protagonist's goal, Dollimore insists: \"he also wants to be her. And I mean _be_ her.\"\n\ndesire-for the man   desire-to-be the woman\n\nBisexuality is usually glossed, quite simply, as a static split: desire-for both genders. This is not an adequate account of the positionings of Dollimore's protagonist: he is performing an elaborate psychic loop through the possible permutations. He knows the pleasure of being fucked by a man, he adds, but in this scenario \"he also wants to be the woman; he wants to be fucked by the man in a way he imagines\u2014fantasizes\u2014only a woman can be.\" This way of putting it implies another variant:\n\ndesire-to-be the woman   desire-for the man\n\n\"Maybe he desires the man through her.\"\n\nIs this the goal, then? For the bisexual protagonist, Dollimore admits, \"the sexual attractiveness of the male is heightened by the fact that the latter is apparently desired by the woman; he excites the more because he is desired by her\" (529). Should we declare the protagonist in bad faith, then? His desire-for and desire-to-be take him in a loop through the woman, but his true goal is to share the identity and desire of the man (Dollimore is aware that the woman might be the most objectified figure in the scenario as he presents it; indeed, she might be in effect extinguished). However, I believe that would be a false inference. The care with which the sequence is elaborated indicates that the pleasure is in the entire process, not in any singular end product. Indeed, having reached the point of desiring the man, the protagonist may well go back to the beginning and, from the position of the man, desire the woman.\n\nGuy Willard's novel _Mirrors of Narcissus_ offers a complex sequence of the desires and identities that one young man might experience. We first see Guy looking at his reflection after working out, and enjoying the thought that women in the dorm opposite can see him through the window. His desire-to-be appears suitably masculine, and adequately depends on heterosexual validation. However, desire-to-be crosses into desire-for when he masturbates over a picture of a bodybuilder. He likes the thought of other men fancying his girlfriend, Christine. \"It was as if she were my doll and I was dressing her up to please the guys. And my pleasure in it was ignited by a process of reflection: the other boys' excitement excited me.\" So far so good, though the other boys seem rather prominent in the fantasy. Then identification turns to desire: \"I imagined that all the male attention she drew to her stuck to the surface of her skin, so that when I caressed her, I was caressing those male glances.... This was the only way I could get close to a boy.\" Guy contrives the positions of Christine and himself in lovemaking so that she appears like a boy: \"I lay on my back and she sat atop me straddling my thighs, the better to stroke my erection. From the way she was sitting it looked as if my upthrusting penis were hers, completing the illusion that she was a boy\" (26). The consequent orgasm may be credited to all three of them. Christine sees that Guy is turned on; she is open-minded, but he conceals the extent of his gay interest.\n\nThus far, Guy's desires may be represented like this:\n\ndesire-to-be M   desire-for F   desire-for M\n\nGuy manages to lever the woman out of the loop when he is invited to model as Narcissus by a gay artist, Peter. Guy is excited by the thought that Peter desires him. When the painting is finished, Guy finds himself aroused by the image of himself (mirroring again the Narcissus in the painting, of course).\n\nGuy falls for his straight roommate, Scott, who, in the manner we have seen elsewhere, is slightly feminine\u2014though not, of course, effeminate: \"The eyes were what held my attention. They were large and soulful, and hinted of artistic sensibilities. As if to confirm this, his skin was very fair, a shade too delicate for a boy, though it didn't make him effeminate in any way\" (63). Guy seeks to approach Scott by suggesting to Christine that they help him to lose his virginity. She refuses to do this; instead, she and Scott sleep together and discover their love for one another. For Guy, though only in imagination, this completes a loop: \"Through the channel of Christine's body, Scott and I were now one, linked by the most basic bonds vouchsafed to unrelated strangers. My skin, in nakedness, had touched Christine's, and her skin, in nakedness had touched his\" (169).\n\ndesire-for F   desire-for M\n\nThe implication in the novel is that Guy was really gay all along, and using loop strategies, exploitatively, to sort himself out. Thus any playful or adventurous potential in his fantasies is set aside. Christine's refusal to collaborate is wise, according to the narrative; Scott, despite his responsiveness to Guy's advances on one occasion, is \"Perfectly normal\" (187). The simplest models are adequate after all. _Mirrors of Narcissus_ finally offers a traditional view of dissident fantasy.\n\n**THE SUBJECT IN POSTSTRUCTURALISM**\n\nAs film theory has repudiated the deterministic notion of spectatorship found initially in Mulvey, it has sometimes imagined a free play of identities. Penley declares: \"An important emphasis has been placed on the subject's ability to assume, successively, all the available positions in the fantasmatic scenario.\" The mobility and intricacies of fantasy tend to undermine expectations of stability, thereby facilitating an elaborate range of libidinal investments. This account is too voluntaristic for Teresa de Lauretis. She objects to\n\nthe optimistically silly notion of an unbounded mobility of identities for the spectator-subject; that is to say, any spectator would be able to assume and shift between a variety of identificatory positions, would be able to pick and choose any or all of the subject-positions inscribed in the film regardless of gender or sexual difference, to say nothing of other kinds of difference.\n\nEven in these postmodern times, identity has to have some kind of structure, however provisional. I have shown readers investing in diverse aspects of scenarios, but that does not mean there are no constraints; indeed, movement within a scenario may help to keep it in place. This issue is the theme of this section.\n\nThe potential for mobility in psychic identifications has been a persistent motif in queer and poststructuralist thought (queer theory is best understood as a kind of poststructuralism). Judith Butler concludes _Gender Trouble_ with the prospect that we might evade the oppressions of difference by elaborating a multiplicity of fantasies and practices: \"Cultural configurations of sex and gender might then proliferate or, rather, their present proliferation might then become articulable within the discourses that establish intelligible cultural life, confounding the very binarism of sex, and exposing its fundamental unnaturalness.\" If we recognized innumerable sexualities, norms and stigma would collapse. Henning Bech reaches a compatible conclusion in his book _When Men Meet_. He argues that the admiration of gay men for masculinity has now become a harmless style choice:\n\nthe more the surfaces are detached and become autonomous, the more the roles are severed from nature, the more accessible they become for staging and pleasure, the more they can be treated _as_ surfaces, _as_ roles, _as_ images.... We can finally reach the point at which the dangerous in masculinity is maintained all the while it's suspended, the violence, the domination, the power display; it can stop when it isn't fun any more.\n\nThe more we experiment with masculinity, in other words, the less significance it has. Bech foresees the demise of the masculine\/feminine hierarchy.\n\nI am struck more by the repetition and fixity of fantasy, in the experience of very many people. I conceded in chapter 2 that my juggling of \"M\" and \"F\" might impress the reader as too standardized. It goes against the general postmodern\/poststructuralist truism that _any_ identity is, and should be, provisional, unstable. I do believe that psychic life is manufactured out of the typical building blocks of gender, age, class, race, and sexual orientation. These are the structures in which we live, and ongoing psychic life is an attempt to cope with the attendant triumphs and humiliations. I envisage our selfhoods as constructed through a kind of _bricolage_ \u2014the term proposed by Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss to describe the development of cultures in anthropology. In John Clarke's account this means a piecemeal, appropriative process: \"the re-ordering and re-contextualisation of objects to communicate fresh meanings, within a total system of significances, which already includes prior and sedimented meanings attached to the objects used.\" As I have said, it is because the permutations are so numerous and so intricate that the outcome is experienced by many as implying the uniqueness of the individual, and, often, his or her ultimate freedom from the constraints of history and ideology.\n\nWhat is difficult to articulate, in the models I have been using, is the fourth dimension: time. In the formation of an individual subject, there will be moments of crystallization, in which a specific set of identifications and object-choices will become established, while others are repudiated. Fantasies attempt to manage those traumatic moments, often in tangled form; the individual subject, at any point of time, is the product of a sequence of pioneering and entrenched selves. Through these successive engagements, the subject is constituted.\n\nThe postmodern notion that one might manage better without some kind of working identity is intensely romantic. R. D. Laing, the 1960s theorist of damaged identity, remarks: \"It is difficult to imagine many who would choose unlimited freedom within a nexus of personal relations, if anything they did had no significance for anyone else. Would anyone choose freedom if nothing he did mattered to anyone?\" Would a boundless indeterminacy be sexy? Dollimore invokes the German film _Taxi zum Klo_ ( _Taxi to the Toilet_ : Frank Ripploh, 1981), where Frank passes a note through to the next cubicle asking, \"What are you into?\" The reply is, \"Everything. Anything.\" Frank walks out in disgust. No opposition, no substance, no turn-on. It is one of Foucault's key insights: power always entails\u2014is experienced only through\u2014resistance.\n\nIdentity, according to Laing, is neither essential, nor something you adopt and proclaim, like a political slogan. More fundamentally, it is \"that whereby one feels one is _the same_ , in this place, this time as at that time and at that place, past or future; it is that whereby one is identified. I have the impression that most people tend to come to feel that they are the same continuous beings through womb, to tomb. And that this 'identity,' the more it is phantasy, is the more intensely defended\" (86; Laing's emphasis). Because gay people may be out of touch with their birth families and closeted at work, they may appear to be unconstrained. A potential for anomie in gay culture is the theme of Andrew Holleran's _Dancer from the Dance_. \"We are free to do anything, live anywhere, it doesn't matter. We're completely free and that's the horror,\" Malone opines. \"'Perhaps you would like a Valium,\" Sutherland responds.\n\nThe extent to which one might be bound to an identity, and the consequences of abandoning it, are explored in Kevin Smith's film _Chasing Amy_ (1997). Placing his friendship and artistic collaboration with Banky in jeopardy, Holden falls in love with Alyssa, although he knows she is a lesbian. His feelings become unbearably intense, so he tells her of them. Alyssa's response is to climb out of the car and start hitchhiking. Has she no comment? Yes: \"Fuck you!\" It is unfair of Holden to unburden his soul to her, because by ignoring her declared lesbianism he is refusing to take her seriously: \"Do you remember for one fucking second who I am?\" \"People change,\" Holden replies. \"Oh, it's that simple. You fall in love with me and want a romantic relationship. Nothing changes for you.... I can't just get into a relationship with you without throwing my whole fucking world into upheaval\" (my elision). There's bound to be a period of adjustment, Holden replies. \"There's no period of adjustment, Holden, I am fucking gay. That's who I am, and you assume that I can just turn all that around because you've got a fucking crush!\" She follows him back to the car, however; they embrace heavily; next thing it's morning and they're sleeping on the couch together.\n\nAlyssa does seem able to abandon her declared identity after all. The outcome is notably uneven, however, as Holden falls into complacent assumptions. He is devastated to learn that Alyssa's adaptable identity includes a history of experimentation with boys at school. Also, he presumes that he can reengineer his relations with Banky, who is evidently jealous, by inviting him to explore his (alleged) latent homosexuality. In some circumstances some people may be able to change some parts of their identities in some directions, but they will still be carrying all kinds of debris, and indeed esteem, from their former selves, and the outcome may be uncomfortable.\n\nGenerally, erotic imagery proves amazingly stubborn, as people who have tried to change through psychotherapy and religious devotion know. In a memorable formulation, Lynne Segal presents intrepid fantasmatic adventuring as characteristic of psychic life: \"We insert ourselves, whatever our sex, at one and the same moment as both active and passive, powerful and powerless, giving and receiving: desire flows through binaries in all directions at once, all of the time.\" Yet I can also envisage a case for the opposite extreme: the fixation. The obsessional fetishist may be living more intensely than people who gain an easy, moderate pleasure, either from unconsidered custom, or from almost anything.\n\nJeanette Winterson's protagonist in _The PowerBook_ supposes that the idiom of the computer adds a new impetus to the idea of freedom to be who you will, if only for one night. This prospect is emblematic of our ability to rewrite the stories in which we figure: \"there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story.\" We assume that the screen we have open at the moment represents our lives, but there is another, less familiar window behind that, and yet another beyond that. \"We think of ourselves as close and finite, when we are multiple and infinite\" (103). However, _The PowerBook_ does not actually exemplify such freedom. Ali (as the narrator is most often called) engages in a sultry affair with a married woman, who is reluctant to leave her husband. This passion governs Ali's electronic explorations: \"That's why I trawl my screen like a beachcomber\u2014looking for you, looking for me, trying to see through the disguise. I guess I've been looking for us both all my life\" (64). This is hardly freedom, and hardly the sign of a new electronic age. It is a quest as purposeful and traditional as those pursued by the heroic knights of epic and romance\u2014whose stories are intercut with Ali's affair. The challenge to forsake everything, follow your heart, and live for the magical twosome is hardly a new narrative motif.\n\nThe invocation of freedom sits oddly with the air of obsession in _The PowerBook_. Indeed, links with other novels by Winterson suggest that she herself (like very many authors) is working out some compulsive stories of her own. The angry invocation of narrow childhood circumstances is reminiscent of _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ , and her lover's flaming red hair and autocratic husband recall Louise in _Written on the Body_. Indeed, the latter novel and _The PowerBook_ suggest a dynamic, whereby the narrator is a masculinized figure (in _Written on the Body_ it is unclear whether s\/he is a woman or a man) who feels impelled to compete with the husband. The narrator in _The PowerBook_ identifies herself with male heroes, permitting little sense of herself as a woman; she doesn't allow that any particular pressures might attend a lesbian affair. In _The Passion_ , Henri venerates Napoleon, while Villanelle makes love to another woman in the guise of a man, and has to endure the sight through a window of the domestic affection of her lover and her husband. The patterns in Winterson's writing mark the extent to which we do not control our own stories.\n\nIt may be observed also that _The PowerBook_ affords an instance of the thesis I develop in the next chapter, concerning the effacement and ineluctability of power in our relationships. Ali insists that there is no legitimate overlap between power and love. However, the main narrative shows her seeking to control her lover by imposing her idea of how they should proceed. She complains specifically when she feels herself unable to exclude her lover's husband. \"The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal.... A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave\" (187; my elision). Of course, this would explain Ali's male identification: men have power. While fantasy may prove transformative, it may also trap the subject in fruitless and perhaps dangerous compulsions.\n\n**THE FRONTIERS OF FANTASY**\n\nThe psychic investments discussed thus far in the present chapter are in fact less about freedom than the discovery of a flexible, but apparently suitable, identity. In other contexts, the scope of the fantasy scenario is a problem: it harbors rapists, stalkers, habitual familial abusers, serial killers. Not all roles can be legitimated, even within the superpermissive regime of Queer. There is a persisting problem with individuals who want to force their practices upon others. This should not surprise us. While the hierarchies of gender, age, class, and race often appear benign, and may afford opportunities for rewarding sexual adventures, it is evident that the social and political system, which sponsors such fantasies, can operate in intimidating and brutal ways when a serious threat is perceived. As these hierarchies are internalized by individuals and groups, often as competing psychic and social demands, they are bound to produce strenuous techniques of psychic management and vehement attempts to gain control of self and others. Violent mental disturbance, in other words, is what you would expect in societies like ours.\n\nMark Ravenhill's play _Shopping and Fucking_ represents the _m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois_ of Robbie, Lulu, and Mark as unexceptional but foundering because of Mark's substance abuse. He decides, as part of his cure, to avoid dependency of any kind, but young Gary's story of abuse by his stepfather draws Mark in after all. Gary, however, doesn't want to be loved and protected, he wants to be owned and hurt. So why not gratify him? \"When someone's paying, someone wants something and they're paying, then you do it. Nothing right. Nothing wrong. It's a deal,\" Gary says. Is this right? For Robbie in particular, more or less anything goes. Like him, many of us are learning to acknowledge and accommodate a range of \"perverse\" practices that previously would have been thought embarrassing, if not disgusting. But does that mean we can have any experience that we can afford to pay for? When they operate a telephone chat line, Lulu is eventually sickened when a scenario comes too close to life. The question, then, is this: How far is fantasy liberating, how far constraining?\n\nThe protagonist in _Frisk_ by Dennis Cooper is drawn \"uncontrollably\" to a particular \"physical type.\" Ever since the age of thirteen, when he saw photos of an apparently murdered model, the desires of the narrator, Dennis, have been fixed on such a boy and such a scene (\"It looked as if someone had set off a bomb in his rectum\"; 27). The photos, he says, \"went on to completely direct or destroy my life\" (30). Five years later Dennis meets Henry, who claims to have been the model: the photos were fakes. But that doesn't dispel the fantasy.\n\nThe novel takes place at this interface between actuality and fantasy. Samson is Dennis's ideal type, so he maintains his fantasy scenario in his imagination during conventional lovemaking: \"In reality I was caressing him. In my head I'd be grabbing objects off the night table, crashing his skull, then mutilating his body, especially his ass, while he tried to dissuade me from murdering him in a brain-damaged voice\" (34). One night Dennis loses it with Samson and punches him repeatedly. Samson isn't upset: \"'I was _so_ out of it. And you were _so_ weird'\" (35; Cooper's emphases). However, Dennis is afraid, and for a few years avoids\n\nserious, ongoing relationships as a precaution. It wasn't that I didn't fantasize murdering hustlers. It's just that I tend to be too scared or shy the first few times I sleep with someone to do what I actually want. The worst that could, and did, happen was I'd get a little too rough. But the hustler would stop me, or I'd stop myself, before things became more than conventionally kinky, as far as he knew. (36)\n\nWhat is inhibiting Dennis from acting out his fantasies? He seems to have no trouble getting boys to go with him, especially when they are on drugs; he has money (his parents send it to him). He writes a story, in which Joe's wish to be hurt has placed him in the power of Gary, who fantasizes about murdering people. \"'But something usually stops me. I think it's beauty. But whatever it is, it's not there with you. I really want to kill you,'\" Gary says (63). He is not impressed by the conventional S\/M notion that the bottom is in charge. \"'Well, um, you shouldn't do it, because I don't want you to, and I'm half of this,'\" Joe protests. \"'If I don't do it,' Gary said, 'that'll be why. But it's the only reason, which is strange, because there should be others, right?'\" (64).\n\nWe live in a world, _Frisk_ is showing, in which it is not easy to supply better reasons. This is not a new dilemma (\"'I mean, I know there's no God'\"\u2014Dennis; 69). Compare Dorian Gray's exclamation when Lord Henry is executing his initial seduction: \"'Stop!' faltered Dorian Gray, 'Stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it.'\" Dennis's old friend Julian says he understands the appeal of murder, but is shocked by the idea of doing it. \"'I'm not being moralistic. I'm talking fairness, which is not a particularly bad rule to live by, as rules go'\" (112). This seems right, but it scarcely measures up to the intensity of Dennis's compulsion.\n\nUltimately he is inhibited, more simply, by the very extremity of the gap between ordinary life and his fantasy. Henry wants details of the photos in which he appeared, but they seem preposterous in real-life conversation: \"Spoken aloud, the descriptions seemed much more pretentious, ridiculous, amoral... something, than they'd ever been in the secret, uncritical world of my fantasies\" (30; Cooper's pause). This gap between what you can imagine and what you can actually, plausibly, say or do is neatly illustrated when Dennis fantasizes about sacrificing a boy called Finn on the top of an Aztec pyramid. \"Part of me wanted to kill and dismember him, which I probably could have done without getting arrested,\" Dennis reports; \"but most of me gave him a towel, then humored him until he left\" (38).\n\nDennis writes letters to his old friend Julian, describing how he has been killing boys in Amsterdam. The murders become more violent and disgusting (at least to me). Julian and his younger brother Kevin, who's always had a thing for Dennis, come to rescue him. Kevin lights on the idea of restaging the photos, and hence Dennis's original trauma. \"I'd wind up cured or exorcised or something\" (121). It appears to work; Julian goes home to his partner, while Kevin and Dennis stay together. But is Dennis cured? It all depends, as Claudia Card says of S\/M generally, on whether the cathartic or the addiction model is correct. The former means that occasional controlled indulgence may enable painful psychic material to be disposed of safely; the latter that enactment may produce a need for more intensity or more frequency. The closure of _Frisk_ depends on the cathartic model (Dennis's need to act out his desires diminishes), but elsewhere in the novel Dennis's obsessions feed on themselves and the addiction model appears to reign; certainly it seems to claim intense imaginative energy. Nor is mere indulgence in fantasy without eventual consequence. Dennis explains why he was unfazed by the first (pretended) murder: \"I guess I'd fantasized killing a boy for so long that all the truth did was fill in details. The feeling was already planned and decided for ten years at least\" (92). _Frisk_ does not flinch from the thought that fantasmatic desires may prove overwhelmingly addictive, no matter how repulsive they are.\n\nIn fact, although he has not actually murdered anyone, Dennis's motives in writing the letters were not therapeutic: \"I realized at some point that I couldn't and wouldn't kill anyone, no matter how persuasive the fantasy is.\" He was trying to attract an accomplice\u2014someone to \"come here, and give me the courage or amorality or whatever to actually kill somebody in league with them\" (123). Notice also the ambivalence in Dennis's key statement, that the snuff photos \"went on to completely direct or destroy my life\" (30). \"Destroy\" speaks Dennis's revulsion, but \"direct\" is more complacent.\n\nDennis's unrepentant streak nourishes and is nourished by a disturbing cross-current in the novel: the idea that the boys he approaches are neither uninterested nor unwilling. Henry is still eager to please, eager to be appreciated; Joe at the last moment appears to consent to his own murder; Pierre's partner predicts that a boy who has escaped from a \"kiddie porn ring\" will be terrified, but he blows a kiss to media reporters (86). One might argue, anyway, that consent is often no more than _internalized ideology_. For instance, when in the marriage service the partners say \"I will,\" this is perhaps because they are taking it for granted that matrimony is their natural destiny. It would be open to the sexual dissident to interrupt with an impediment, namely that marriage colludes with the wish of the state to control reproduction by fixing gendered and sexual roles. The bride and groom believe they are choosing freely, but they have been systematically conditioned. Where we consent, therefore, we may be most deluded. Not much can be done about this, but it undermines any straightforward reliance upon consent as an ethical and political principle.\n\nNonetheless, many readers may reflect that the ascription of readiness to the boys is all too convenient for Dennis. A novel is a kind of fantasy scenario, in which the characters may be arranged to suit an imaginative contrivance. The novel says, \"this is how people are,\" but readers may declare the outcome implausible or immoral\u2014merely (we may say) a fantasy. _Frisk_ actually draws attention to the contrivance of fiction. The narrative slips repeatedly between invention and (pretended) reportage, first and third person. Dennis presents himself continually as if he were in a film. \"I should include some reaction shots here,\" he says, meaning some indication of how he reacted to his own manic assault on Samson. \"But I doubt I had many. I felt numb, blank, so my face probably followed suit\" (34). He watches slasher movies avidly; his most substantial conversation is with Pierre, a porn star and hustler whom he has hired. He admits that writing down his fantasies \"'was and still is exciting in a pornographic way'\" (123). Such an explicit preference for fantasy over reality does not encourage the reader to trust Dennis's perceptions of other people. It is, however, a logical outcome to the indulgence in fantasy that some theorists are encouraging; _Frisk_ is about how you police fantasy when experimentation is offered as a good in itself.\n\nIn his next novel, _Try_ , Cooper presents similarly violent scenarios, but largely from the viewpoint of the teenager. Ziggy is used sexually by his adoptive fathers, Brice and Roger:\n\nZiggy's happy. It's drug-induced, no doubt. Still, for whatever reason, he suddenly knows, like, for sure, that a huge part of... sexual abuse, at least for him, is how he loves being a target for such intense feelings, especially from someone who knows him and isn't just stupidly thinking he's cute or whatever. That's why he hasn't killed Brice, or hired a hit man like other abused-type teens do.\n\nWe may grant that Ziggy's contentment is an interesting and important phenomenon, but it doesn't justify the exploitation. Indeed, the passage quoted acknowledges the extreme distress which \"abused-type teens\" may experience. Apart from the power (age and wealth) difference, the use of drugs negates any prospect of informed consent. Ziggy is talked into a threesome he doesn't really want; he is suddenly depressed and bursts into tears, but Roger is oblivious: \"'If you loved me...'\u2014Ziggy slugs\u2014'... you wouldn't _rim_ me while I'm _crying_.' This time he hits Roger's head so violently it's knocked loose. 'That's the _truth_ , you... _scum_!'\" (149; Cooper's pauses and emphases).\n\nThe quest for accomplices in Cooper's books discloses a frightening world of desperate, undernourished youngsters, lacking any evident parental or school guidance, oblivious to the risk of AIDS, taking without hesitation any drug they are offered, absurdly possessed by heavy metal bands, and making themselves available to far more powerful men in return for the most meager emotional consolations. Henry, for instance, has commodified himself to the point where he asks everyone he has sex with, \"'If you could change one thing about the way I was acting a minute ago, what would that be?'\" \"'You talk too much,' the guy said\" ( _Frisk_ , 8\u20139).\n\n_Frisk_ constitutes a limit case for any progressive, poststructuralist, or queer wish, that all fantasies might be exhilarating and all sexualities viable. If my contention (which I pursue in the next chapter) about the social and political constitution of desire is right, then it means, on the one hand, that we have to accept as inevitable and only realistic the lineaments of power relations in our sexualities. On the other hand, it means also that gross psychic deformations will appear, even as capitalism and patriarchy produce horrific exploitations. While in the first perspective it is vain to expect that the overwhelming run of our desire can be redirected, in the second perspective there will be perilous consequences to some fantasy scenarios, and it will be necessary to intervene. These consequences will not always be at the gruesome level displayed in Cooper's writings; there are other, meaner, and narrower kinds of fixation, which produce barely tolerable bullying, bigotry, and disconfirmation. _Frisk_ and _Try_ are valuable books because they take some readers at least into the world of abuse without abandoning them there, but also without harboring impractical prospects for reconciliation of aberrant desire.\n\nA later novel, _Guide_ , displays Dennis in a more realistic setting. Alongside murderous fantasies, the narrator exhibits a rather subdued, lovelorn stance. Contrary to the earlier novels, he doesn't get the boys he desires. Luke moves in to his apartment, to the alarm of Andy who has seen the novels: \"'Have you read them? They're all about serial murderers. And all the victims are boys. And all the boys look like you.'\" Luke doesn't feel threatened: \"'I think Dennis is more sort of someone who lives in his head,'\" he opines (170). Let's hope so.\n**4**\n\n**POWER**\n\nMen come to the brothel in Jean Genet's _The Balcony_ to act out scenarios of power. There is the Bishop and the Penitent, the General and his horse, the Ma\u00eetresse and the Beggar, and the Judge, the Executioner, and the Thief.\n\nThere are two kings of France with coronation ceremonies and different rituals, an admiral at the stern of his sinking destroyer, a dey of Algiers surrendering, a fireman putting out a fire, a goat attached to a stake, a housewife returning from market, a pickpocket, a robbed man who's bound and beaten up, a Saint Sebastian, a farmer in his barn... a missionary dying on the cross, and Christ in person.\n\nThere is no chief of police, as the actual incumbent ruefully observes. However, after he has put down the rebellion, the traditional authority figures wilt and men queue up to enter his scenario. The meaning of this fable is that, traditionally, the imagery of the chief of police is insufficiently charismatic; he is not recognized as part of the establishment, he is too functional. He has not figured in the fantasies of citizens. Now the fascist state has arrived, and the policeman bulks large in the psyches of citizens. His symbol is a man-sized phallus, his counterpart a slave, and his setting a mausoleum. Genet is showing that our sexual fantasies depend on the power arrangements in our societies. This chapter aims to appraise, in outline, the relations between sexual practice and fantasy, social organization, and hierarchies of gender, class, age, and race.\n\n**TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING**\n\nAs a boy, Paul Monette sees his incipient queerness as a failure of manhood. He conceives an attachment to Elizabeth Taylor, he says in his autobiography _Becoming a Man_ : \"I'm not quite sure what I'd identified with, but it seemed to amount to a kind of _emotional_ drag\u2014trying on those steamy, gaudy feelings.\" He and two friends discover all this for themselves; \"If someone had told me I was exhibiting a sensibility, I probably would've frozen in horror, terrified my wrists were going limp.\" A teacher sees them camping around, and notes: \"'Paul spends too much time acting silly with his day student play-mates. It's not healthy. He's got a lot of growing up to do if he wants to be a man.'\"\n\nPaul is not happy with his relatively feminine stance. He \"hated the soft androgyny of [his] body, which somehow managed to be both scrawny and plump at once\" (70). When he gets fucked he hates himself \"for acceding to the _woman's_ role, when what I had been so desperate for was to prove I was a man\" (144; Monette's emphasis). Class difference is also at issue. Paul's hitherto virtuous life is turned into a more exciting path at the age of nine by his attachment to a lower-class boy, Kite. The \"turn-on\" was \"the twist of his dirty mouth, the punk veneer, the boot-camp father, like an urchin in _Oliver Twist_.\" The Lawrence who wrote of Lady Chatterley would have understood, and Forster too: \"this first fire in my loins was all about class. _Paul is perfect_ was slumming.\" Monette adds: \"Maybe Kite was a way of getting out from under the weight of gentility. I've always had a thing for men from unpaved places, not too polished, definitely not English\" (22\u201324; Monette's emphasis). Until his late twenties, Monette's attempts to do something with his unwanted gay sexuality involve class difference. \"The laughing man I was looking for was older than I and working-class, certainly no preppie\" (194). So there is age difference too, complicated by teaching in private schools, where he is seduced by the boys' flattering attentions and his own loneliness: \"I had become the thing the heteros secretly believe about everyone gay\u2014a predator, a recruiter, an indoctrinator of boys into acts of darkness. Sullying my mission as teacher and guide\" (197).\n\nBeing the seduced boy may be satisfying. Paul enjoys going around with Harold, who is older and wealthier:\n\nHe put on the carnival of events for my sake, treating me like a prince, and even as I raced about laughing on his arm I was thinking how it would be if this were a permanent thing. To be kept by Harold\u2014no more teaching meat-brain kids, no obligations except to be a poet. Wherever we went, running into Harold's friends, I'd see the flush of pride in his face as he showed me off. No, that's not right. I did all the showing off. (268)\n\nYet age difference takes Paul only so far: \"I needed the seventeen years' difference between us in order to put my trust in his sagacity and worldliness. But I also wanted a man my own age, to discover the world along with me\" (269). Paul is uncomfortable with these hierarchies of gender, class, and age. The resolution is his meeting with Roger: they remain together for seventeen years, until Roger's death.\n\nIn the continuation of Monette's autobiography, _Borrowed Time_ , the emphasis shifts to similarity, even sameness. Roger is a successful lawyer, of compatible professional stature and affluence. They are the same size, and hold shirts, underwear, and socks in common. Neither is relatively feminine; though marriage is invoked, roles are not differentiated. \"'But we're the same person,'\" Roger exclaims shortly before death, \"in a sort of bewildered delight. 'When did that happen?'\" The answer, according to a friend, is that Paul had anticipated the idea: \"'But that's what _you_ always used to say in Boston. Roger and you were just two names for the same person.'\"\n\nIn fact there are significant differences (this will be a recurring pattern). Roger is four years older\u2014thirty-two and twenty-eight when they meet. Paul is frenzied while Roger is calm; Paul is more dependent, Roger more stable and self-contained. \"I am the weather, Roger is the climate\" (65). Further: \"Over the years, relations between us had evolved to a place where he was the grown-up and I the child\" (194). Now Roger is sick and Paul cares for him \"like a mother\" (341). Notwithstanding, Paul insists that these differences are transcended. \"Between us we covered the night and the morning watch\"; \"Being as we were the same person, happily it all balanced out\"; \"How was it even physically possible to separate us now, with the two of us so interchangeably one?\" (29, 41, 315). Some people, Paul acknowledges, regard him as \"just a love junkie. What I experience as being known to the core, appetite and aspiration fused, some queers think of as confinement. Doomed to resemble a bourgeois marriage, straight-identified to boot.\" But Paul learned to love himself, \"because someone else finally loved me.\"\n\nThe more serious problem for the love junkie is living up to it all. In _Borrowed Time_ this is magnified by Roger's sickness with AIDS.\n\nI ran around the bed and clutched Roger's hand. \"We'll fight it, darling, we'll beat it, I promise. I won't let you die.\" The sentiments merged as they tumbled out. This is the liturgy of bonding. Mostly we clung together, as if time still had the decency to stop when we were entwined. After all, the whole world was right here in this room. (77)\n\nThe quality of love must ensure survival. We might notice the echo of John Donne's poem \"The Good-Morrow\": love \"makes one little room, an everywhere.\" \"Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally,\" the poem continues: Roger's life appears to depend on their equivalence and togetherness. Walt Whitman is there as well:\n\nWe two boys together clinging,\n\nOne the other never leaving.\n\nPoetry and gay tradition may help sustain them.\n\nNone of Monette's experiences is uncommon among gay men, though his awareness may be. They amount to a series of anxious negotiations of disjunctions and convergences, positioned around binary differences of gender, class, and age. Positively and negatively, as Monette presents them, these hierarchies constitute the available options; despite aspirations to transcend them in the name of equality, they structure the terms on which intense human interactions become available. Monette prefers to deny, or move beyond, hierarchy, and toward an idealized, egalitarian relationship; yet differentials are still apparent. My case is that hierarchies of gender, age, and class, and race also, are hard to expel from our personal lives because they constitute the principal hierarchies that structure our societies. Differences of masculine and feminine, old and young, upper and lower class, and white and black are not incidental or neutral alternatives. They flow through the power relations that we encounter daily in the world, and through our psyches also; we experience them, ultimately, as empowerment and abjection. Monette's negotiation of hierarchy and equality manifests a persistent strain in gay imaginings.\n\nThis proposition facilitates a materialist interpretation of gender and sexuality. Because these elements are so complex, their institutional apparatuses so contradictory, and the permutations so many and so intricate, we experience ourselves as unique individuals; probably that is what we are. Nonetheless, the hierarchies in fantasy and practice derive not from the individual psyche, but from the social relations that define our being. They are continuous with the stories that construct our psychic reality: social being determines consciousness. Egalitarian aspirations also are socially encoded; they are as exciting and difficult to sustain in personal relations as they are in the social order (I return to this in a while). But often, I will show, there is more hierarchy in the frame than is immediately admitted. Such an account of fantasy and power is cultural materialist on three counts: (1) it recognizes the priority of economic, social, and political structures in the constitution of consciousness; (2) it emphasizes the role of ideology; (3) it maintains an awareness of domination and exploitation.\n\nAs Foucault argues, power is to be envisaged as pervading the entire social order, in positive as well as negative aspects. It \"penetrates and controls everyday pleasure\u2014all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the 'polymorphous techniques of power.'\" To say this is not to overlook the specific and massive apparatuses of government, law, business, and education in our societies. Power is, at once, both intimate and institutional. In _Discipline and Punish_ , Foucault seems to repudiate the idea that power relations are \"localized in the relations between the state and its citizens or on the frontier between classes.\" He denies that power may \"merely reproduce, at the level of individuals, bodies, gestures and behaviour, the general form of the law or government.\" This seems to position class, gender, race, and age as superficial modes, whereas power relations are more fundamental, reaching \"right down into the depths of society.\" Yet Foucault does grant \"continuity\" between the multiple modes of power\u2014not in any predictable analogy or homology, but through \"a specificity of mechanism and modality.\"\n\nIf, then, social structures may be said to inform what we experience as our individual sex\/gender formations, this is not to imagine some simple transmission of the world into the psyche. Teresa de Lauretis portrays the relations of representation, action, and fantasy as \"intimate... in the realm of the senses and in that of the law, in sexual practices as well as in the juridical-legislative domain.\" However, no easy transference should be supposed. We need to observe \"the different relations of production.\" As I remarked in the previous chapter, the erotic deployment of fantasies of power is inevitably tangled into substitutions, conflations, reversals, and loops.\n\nFantasies of dominance and subjection should be regarded as unsurprising transmutations of prevailing social relations of domination and subordination. Hierarchy is neither an aberration nor a misfortune in desire, but integral with it. Indeed, it may well be that power difference is the ground of the erotic; that it is sexy. That is the insight of Genet's _Balcony_.\n\n**THE EGALITARIAN IDEOLOGY**\n\nThe dominant metropolitan ideology suggests that the most suitable partner, gay or straight, will be of similar age, class, and race to oneself. Gender is the difference that is prized\u2014though only when it figures heterosexually. This ideology of similarity and equality informs the companionate marriage, as it has evolved from the 1920s' endorsement of reciprocity in sexual pleasure, through the 1950s' pram-pushing hubby, to the 1980s' \"New Man.\" Already in 1971, Geoffrey Gorer, reporting on a survey of attitudes toward sex and marriage, was remarking that twenty years previously the dominant model of marriage had been \"complementary,\" resting on a clear division of responsibilities. However, among younger people this was being displaced by a \"symmetrical\" model, which stresses \"comradeship, doing things together, and articulateness.\" The survey was conducted in England but, Gorer noted, key terms in the new model\u2014\"togetherness\" and \"communication\"\u2014were coming from the United States.\n\nAnthropologists and social historians have tracked this development among lesbians and gay men, looking for the emergence of egalitarian relations as a sign of progress. Romantic friendship, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seems to promise modernity and maturity, even though the equality may be more notional than actual, and the eroticism uncertain. Walt Whitman is celebrated for the dear love of comrades, though his own relationships seem to have been characterized by differences of class and age. The key to David Halperin's sense of modern homosexuality is the opportunity to transcend hierarchy. \"Homosexual relations cease to be compulsorily structured by a polarization of identities and roles (active\/passive, insertive\/receptive, masculine\/feminine, or man\/boy). Exclusive, lifelong, companionate, romantic, and mutual homosexual love becomes possible for both partners.\"\n\nA change in expectations along these lines has been confirmed lately among lesbians and gay men by Jeffrey Weeks, Brian Heaphy, and Catherine Donovan. They believe that there was once \"a prevalent stereotype about the inegalitarian nature of many homosexual sexual and emotional involvements, defined or fractured by generational, class, racial or domestic inequalities.\" But now, they find in interviews, \"The dominant ethos among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals is of egalitarian relationships.\" Even so, \"The reality, inevitably, is more complex: non-heterosexuals strive to achieve equality in terms of intimacy, sexual relations and the division of labour in the household against all the inequalities that continue to structure our societies\" (109). Actually, around 60 percent of the respondents did not describe their relationships as \"equal\" (114). Whether they were finding any positive advantage in power differentials is hard to know, since Weeks, Heaphy, and Donovan evidently share the egalitarian ideology, and their interview questions take it for granted that valuable factors, such as \"communication, closeness, and intimacy,\" are scarcely to be found outside equal relationships (110).\n\nTo be sure, few people suppose that it is possible to have a totally egalitarian relationship. Notwithstanding, the dominant ideology says that power differentials are unfortunate and should be either avoided or overcome. Indeed, so strong is the ideology of equality that some S\/Mers are insisting that their routines are not just \"safe, sane, and consensual,\" but actually egalitarian. Lynda Hart and Joshua Dale note that in some quarters S\/M \"has become less a polarized expression of a master's power over a slave than a mutual exchange of power.\" Already in the 1970s, some practitioners began to refer to S\/M as \"sensuality and mutuality\"; by the early 1980s the \"mutualists,\" as Geoff Mains calls them, had become a prime element in the leather community.\n\nSimilarity and mutuality correlate with monogamy, respectability, and assimilation in _The Lost Language of Cranes_ by David Leavitt. The project of this novel is to sort out the good gays from the unfortunate approximations. The older generation finds it hard to benefit from recent developments in gay selfhood. Owen, who is married to Rose, is unable to talk to anyone about his yearning for gay sex; even at a pornographic cinema, which he visits regularly, he is too ashamed and frightened to speak to anyone or to follow up potential contacts. Two less prominent characters, Derek and Geoffrey, are old-style queens reminiscent of Oscar Wilde; they cultivate British accents, speak of men as \"girls,\" prepare a dinner in which all the food is blue, and include in their circle cultured Europeans who go to Tangiers where it is easy to buy young boys.\n\nAll this is regarded with a mixture of distaste and disbelief by the younger generation, represented centrally by Philip, the gay son of Owen and Rose. He had difficulty as an adolescent coming to terms with himself but, the narration suggests, he's doing it more or less right now. He postpones coming out to his parents until he believes he has achieved a gayness he can be proud of: \"I wanted to wait until I could show you that a homosexual life could be a good thing.\" This involves, above all, having a presentable partner: \"he had counted on Eliot's presence in their living room to justify all he had said to them, to justify his life\" (198). The alternative is cruising and porn movies, but Philip finds little satisfaction there; he meets partners socially, among friends at dinner parties. He has a favorite gay bar, but there is no back room. It is \"a friendly place, very social, a place where people go who really are comfortable with being gay, and know it's a lot more than a matter of who you sleep with\" (155).\n\nEliot, Philip's prized partner, proves unreliable. Probably he has been damaged by an overcasual upbringing, and spoiled by superior wealth and connections. However, the resolution, for Philip, is already to hand. Brad, an old school friend, is white, and of the same age, class, and educational attainment; they enjoy spending time together. In due course they find that sex is a natural part of that. When they first kiss, \"long and lovingly,\" it is \"spontaneous, without thought\" (311). So no sticky, sexually explicit, bathhouse, pickup scene is required; they appear to be a natural couple. They are innocent of gendered roles: there is nothing \"frilly or feminine\" about Brad (249), and nothing in Philip's appearance \"betrayed his homosexuality\" (33). Yet when he was at school\u2014although \"he hardly fit the stereotype of the sensitive, silent, 'different' boy who knows how to sew, is friends with the teacher and subject to colds\"\u2014the other boys \"routinely called him 'faggot' or 'fairy'\" (74). Plainly Philip was giving some kind of queer signal, but Leavitt cannot say what it was without admitting a demeaning hint of effeminacy. It is easy for the queer reader today to dismiss Philip and Brad as in thrall to a bourgeois, heteronormative lifestyle concept, but twenty years ago it was not easy for young people to accomplish such a thing, in the absence of role models, and even discussion.\n\nThe disqualification of hierarchy is confirmed in the stories of the other characters. Owen, prompted by Philip's coming out, does his best to catch up. He makes a suitable choice when he takes up with another married man of similar age and class. Philip's friend Jerene is African American; her adoptive parents\u2014black, middle-class Republicans\u2014reject her when she tells them she is a lesbian. She remains nonetheless nice, good, and wise. However, her new partner is perceived by Philip and Brad as rather a pain, in the manner of characters in Tennessee Williams' _The Glass Menagerie_ : \"If Laura's looks were Laura Wingfield\u2014fragile and transparent as a tiny glass animal\u2014her temperament was pure Amanda: loud and brash and indiscreet; full of hype and bombast; good-natured, loving, easy to hurt\" (251). So Laura is the dominating mother posing as the needful daughter; Jerene is subdued and silenced. These women are still involved in power games; they have not yet arrived at an adequately reciprocal partnership.\n\nSuch restagings of difference and similarity as manipulation and maturity are found in many other texts. In the film _An Early Frost_ (John Erman, 1985), Michael and Peter form a compatible couple, with just a touch of gender hierarchy: Michael is a lawyer, whereas Peter is artistic, sells collectibles, cooks, wears looser, noncorporate clothes. There are differences, then, but they appear not to signify. It is as if hierarchy is needed to make the relationship plausible, but nothing can be done with it for fear of compromising the image of the good gay. _Hollow Reed_ (Angela Pope, 1995) is similar. The issue in this film is Martyn's suspicion that his son is being assaulted by his ex-wife's partner. Meanwhile Martyn and his partner Tom constitute a \"good\" couple, sharing problems and being sympathetic and sexy for each other; they are a lot nicer than the heterosexuals in the film. There are differences: Martyn is a doctor, he wears a sport's jacket and a tie; Tom keeps a music shop, dresses in jeans, T-shirt, and denim jacket, appears younger and slighter; Martyn drives a car, Tom rides a bike. However, these do not affect the story.\n\nThe notoriously sanitized view of gay life in the film _Philadelphia_ (Jonathan Demme, 1993) includes a careful negotiation of sameness and difference. Andy and Miguel look about the same age and professional status, and have been together for more than nine years. Miguel appears comfortable with Andy's family; at ease and smart in the courtroom; at home he administers sophisticated medical treatment and is articulate; at a gay fancy dress ball (the opportunity for fantasy to burst forth), they dress the same\u2014as naval officers. The difference is that Miguel looks and sounds Spanish (and is played by the actor Antonio Banderas). However, at no point is this difference registered by anyone.\n\n_Jack_ , a novel by A. M. Homes, rewrites _Catcher in the Rye_. Holden Caulfield was harassed by nauseating perverts; Jack freaks out when he finds that the reason his father left home is that he's gay and lives with Bob. However, there is no need to worry because Bob is entirely presentable: he is a lawyer, Jack's dad is an accountant; they were acquainted socially before they got together, and they are sufficiently respectable to host a party to support a woman who is running for Congress. Meanwhile the apparently normal family of Jack's friend Max turns out to be far from ideal. My account makes it sound worthy, but this is a droll book. For a British instance see Anthony McDonald's romance, _Adam_. Adam (sixteen) falls intensely in love with a young Frenchman (twenty-two). Sylvain is a bit simple\u2014from inbred peasant stock, a child of the woodlands; he can't be introduced to middle-class family and friends. His devotion to Adam proves morbid and dangerous. After all, Adam finds that he has a more mature kind of sexual love with his long-standing school-friend\u2014same age, same class and education, same nationality.\n\nMichael Cunningham's novel _Flesh and Blood_ is one that does not take the superiority of sameness for granted. Will, at thirty-five, is \"tired of pretty boys\" from out of town. His new relationship is with the older Harry:\n\nhe'd be the beauty and Harry the one who paid cool, humorous tribute. Will loved and hated the idea. It surprised him. Here in this expensive but haphazardly furnished apartment, he was the one with the body and no cash. It wasn't where he'd expected to go.... It occurred to Will that he could be to Harry what he'd always wanted pretty men to be to him.\n\nThe sex is different: \"Ordinarily [Will] felt concealed by sex; he disappeared into the beauty of the other man. With Harry he was more visible. Sometimes he liked the sensation. Sometimes he thought he'd get up and leave\" (307). They come together initially on a friendly rather than a lustful basis, but they do meet in a gay bar and sex is central.\n\nAt the same time, Will and Harry are compatible in every other respect. No racial difference is remarked. Will teaches fifth grade (but went to Harvard); Harry is a doctor (but plays the saxophone). They are both clever; they talk all the time about everything. They both love _Anna Karenina_ and _Middlemarch_ , and have rebelled against oppressive fathers. They go to movies, eat in restaurants, drive to Provincetown. \"Will and he made no declarations; it just unfolded\" (307). Alongside Will's turning on to difference, then, Cunningham asserts a natural couple (in the manner of _The Lost Language of Cranes_ and _Borrowed Time_ ). Indeed, they become so compatible as to be interchangeable: Will \"lived as himself and he lived as the younger man who was loved by Harry and he lived, obscurely, as Harry, too\" (310). However, as in the complementarity (narcissistic) model of gay relations, these convergences are predicated on discrepancy; they secure sameness and difference at the same time.\n\n**IMAGE OF AN UNLIMITED EMBRACE**\n\nThe project of constituting gay respectability around the equal, if pressured, couple is, of course, contested. _The Lost Language of Cranes_ , _An Early Frost_ , and _Philadelphia_ are promoting one position in a cardinal, ongoing dispute. The contrary position values multiple and anonymous partners. Currently the dispute is often framed as one about \"gay marriage.\" I will argue that the two positions actually share a preference for sameness, and a persisting unease about hierarchy.\n\nPositive accounts of multiple and anonymous relations are not so easy to find as one might suppose. Notoriously, such gay classics as _Dancer from the Dance_ by Andrew Holleran and _Faggots_ by Larry Kramer represent gay subculture as promiscuous and hence necessarily frustrating and anguished. To be sure, pornography often promotes the idea of multiple and anonymous partners. However, it does so from a less prestigious sector of the gay cultural apparatus. Pornography is widely spoken of, by radicals as well as conservatives, as if it were an essential concept (often it is suggested that its images are distinctively objectified). Rather, we should ask what is the history and structure of such a categorization, and what interests it is tending to serve. It is not that this or that practice is bad and therefore pornographic, but that labeling a practice pornographic reflects a decision to regard it as bad. Pornography is not the opposite of worthwhile sexuality, but a way of asserting which sexualities are worthwhile and which are not. Because it is where we put illicit sexuality, pornography cannot confer legitimacy on its images. This outlaw status is reproduced in its irregular modes of circulation. Leavitt, on the other hand, can present the ideas that inform _The Lost Language of Cranes_ widely through authoritative media: Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Books, and the BBC (who filmed the book for television).\n\nIn _The Farewell Symphony_ , Edmund White makes the important point that the pursuit of multiple and anonymous partners was not a new factor in the 1970s. Cruising was a gay tradition\u2014there was no break with the past. It was the same in England: bear in mind the extensive routines of men such as Tom Driberg, Michael Davidson, and Joe Orton. Nonetheless, White posits a distinctive post-Stonewall ethos: \"We saw gay men as a vanguard that society would inevitably follow. I thought that the couple would disappear and be replaced by new, polyvalent molecules of affection or Whitmanesque adhesiveness.\" \"Guys just sort of fell in with each other, buddies rubbing shoulders. We wanted sexual friends, loving comrades, multiple husbands in a whole polyandry of desire.\"\n\nSamuel R. Delany in _The Motion of Light in Water_ recalls the bar, tearoom (public toilet), and truck scenes of the 1950s, but a post-Stonewall orgy at the baths was qualitatively different:\n\nwhat _this_ experience said was that there was a population\u2014not of individual homosexuals, some of whom now and then encountered, or that those encounters could be human and fulfilling in their way\u2014not of hundreds, not of thousands, but rather of millions of gay men, and that history had, actively and already, created for us whole galleries of institutions, good and bad, to accommodate our sex.\n\nCasual sex might be a vehicle for noble, egalitarian aspirations. David Wojnarowicz finds peace, companionship, and empowerment in a one-off encounter: \"In loving him, I saw men encouraging each other to lay down their arms.... In loving him, I saw great houses being erected that would soon slide into the waiting and stirring seas. I saw him freeing me from the silences of the interior life.\" As Ben Gove observes, Wojnarowicz, like Genet, repositions romance by levering it away from its customary link with monogamy.\n\nTwo factors tend to complicate such visions. One is that hierarchy is not so easily expelled. Dennis Altman declares: \"The willingness to have sex immediately, promiscuously, with people about whom one knows nothing and from whom one demands only physical contact, can be seen as a sort of Whitmanesque democracy, a desire to know and trust other men in a type of brotherhood.\" However, as Leo Bersani points out, Altman admits that \"age and physical beauty set up their own hierarchies and barriers.\"\n\nHolleran insists on democracy in _Dancer from the Dance_. He sees in the disco \"a strange democracy whose only ticket of admission was physical beauty\u2014and not even that sometimes. All else was strictly classless.\" On the dance floor, he adds, even beauty might not matter: \"all of them mixed together on that square of blond wood and danced, without looking at anyone else, for one another.\" \"What a carnival of people.\" The abundance of anonymous contacts overwhelms the particularity of this or that partner. There may be plenty of difference, but it doesn't make any difference. Interestingly, effeminate boys are not excluded from Holleran's scene. For White too, \"Whitmanesque adhesiveness\" does not preclude gendered roles. He writes of polyandry (having more than one husband), and of a partner who referred to himself as a \"hubby,\" and of how he felt like a girl alongside him. These accounts are set in the mid-1970s. The development of the clone image (short hair, moustache, denim or leather) tended to produce a repudiation or an effacement of gendered roles.\n\nWhat is striking is that, insofar as they tend to erase hierarchies which reinsert themselves, these legitimations of casual sex converge, strangely, on _The Lost Language of Cranes_. Defenders of casual sex are evoking the very bars and cruising grounds that Philip eschewed, but they share nonetheless a suspicion of hierarchy. What have appeared to be the two poles of gay experience are united in their anxious and inconclusive treatment of power in relationships.\n\nNeil Bartlett presents the late 1970s moment of the clone as euphorically inclusive: \"It was a style that explicitly proposed a single culture. It offered to embrace everybody, to erase all differences in a generous, homogeneous, successful style. Commercially promoted on a mass scale, it seemed to absorb all the other, older styles.\" Not for nothing, Bartlett adds, was the biggest London discotheque opened under the name of \"Heaven.\" Even Kramer, despite his commitment to personal values in relationships and the generally caustic stance of _Faggots_ , finally concedes and celebrates, for once, the indifference of the scene on Fire Island:\n\nThe dancing's over for this night. Haven't we shared a night of nights! A night of fellowship. We have danced and partied and drugged and Meat Racked, and we have survived no sleep. Together. Together. Yes, we have braved and passaged all these rites together. Though we may not know each other's names nor will we necessarily speak when next we meet. The beach is filled with my friends.\n\nSharing, fellowship, togetherness, friends\u2014these terms are not far from Leavitt's, though they are adapted to Kramer's moment of self-abandonment, rather than a personal relationship.\n\nOf course, the status of casual sex has been transformed by HIV and AIDS. Oscar Moore's _A Matter of Life and Sex_ is one of many texts which accept a correlation between the delights of multiple and anonymous partners and the fate, as it appears in the novel, of infection and death. William M. Hoffman in his play and film _As Is_ makes Saul and Rich agree on the pleasures of \"promiscuous sex\"; they redefine it as \"nondirective, noncommitted, non-authoritarian\u2014\/ Free, wild, rampant\u2014.\" But now sex even with your lover is too dangerous to attempt. The most impressive antimonogamy texts attempt principled reassertions of multiple and anonymous partners in the face of AIDS. Thom Gunn in his poem \"The Missing,\" in _The Man with Night Sweats_ , reasserts a vision of unfettered sexual congress:\n\nContact of friend led to another friend,\n\nSupple entwinement through the living mass\n\nWhich for all that I knew might have no end,\n\nImage of an unlimited embrace.\n\nAgain, difference evaporates into immeasurable multiplicity.\n\nBersani is the theorist of anonymous sexual relations (antirelational relations). He is sharply critical of commentators who domesticate sex by reinventing it as _redemptive_ \u2014as \"less disturbing, less socially abrasive, less violent, more respectful of 'personhood' than it has been in a male-dominated, phallocentric culture.\" The broad indictment of male ascendancy, and of pornography in particular, by feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine A. MacKinnon, has in Bersani's view \"had the immensely desirable effect of publicizing, of lucidly laying out for us, the inestimable value of sex as\u2014at least in certain of its ineradicable aspects\u2014anticommunal, antiegalitarian, antinurturing, antiloving.\" Their expos\u00e9 of the untamable nature of sex affords a reason not for banning pornography, but for encouraging it.\n\nYet, as Bersani pushes these ideas along, a familiar theme emerges. In an essay on Genet (which I discuss elsewhere), \"an anti-monumental, antiredemptive aesthetic\" is discovered; it is endemic in homosexuality, Bersani believes. Within its orbit \"an _identity_ between the penetrator and the penetrated\" occurs; \"a fundamental sameness.\" Bersani has driven his repudiation of authentic personhood in sex to the point where it makes everyone the same\u2014identical in their anonymity and unrelatedness. Lately Bersani has theorized further his argument for the irrelevance of difference, through a reinterpretation of Aristophanes' fable of the divided creatures in Plato's _Symposium_. The missing portion, Bersani urges, is not the other, but a part of oneself. This is claimed for heterosexuals equally. What the lover lacks is not _the other_ , as followers of Jacques Lacan in particular have supposed, but \" _more of what he is_.\" This lack is based not on difference, therefore, \"but rather on the _extensibility of sameness_.\"\n\nAcross a wide spectrum of texts, and in diverse and ingenious ways, sameness is valorized and hierarchy is disallowed. Yet even, or especially, when the repudiation of hierarchy is associated with the highest aspirations, it is not easily banished. In later chapters I will explore the erotics of power in specific lived experience of gender, age, class, and race.\n\n**SEDUCTION AND IMPLANTATION**\n\nAn argument about sexuality and power has to engage eventually with the psychoanalytic tradition. What has often troubled cultural materialists and other social constructionists is Freud's intermittent reliance on what he presents as universal factors\u2014biological, phylogenetic (in the evolution of a race), primordial. In the wake of Darwin, such concepts tend to incorporate a murky, conservative view of human potential, in which sex is envisaged as designed for reproduction and gender roles are confined accordingly. For example, in Freud's \"Wolfman\" analysis we are told of a breakthrough at the point where the boy \"discovered the vagina and the biological significance of masculine and feminine. He understood now that active was the same as masculine, while passive was the same as feminine.\"\n\nAs I observe below, my argument that power difference informs sexuality consorts easily with sadomasochistic fantasies. But Freud, at least from time to time, prizes reproduction over perversion. He writes in _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ : \"The normal sexual aim is regarded as being the union of the genitals in the act known as copulation.\" Other practices, including fetishism, sadism, and masochism, are \"the perversions\"\u2014that is, \"sexual activities which either (a) _extend_ , in an anatomical sense, beyond the regions of the body that are designed for sexual union, or (b) _linger_ over the intermediate relations to the sexual object which should normally be traversed rapidly on the path towards the final sexual aim.\" The \"biological significance\" of an element of male aggressiveness may \"lie in the need for overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by means other than the process of wooing\"; it becomes sadistic\u2014perverse\u2014when it is \"independent and exaggerated\" (71). However, this approach will not easily account for male masochism. Perhaps it is an instance of a principle: \"Every active perversion is thus accompanied by its passive counterpart\" (81). So \"masochism is not the manifestation of a primary instinct, but originates from sadism which has been turned round upon the self.\"\n\nIn \"'A Child Is Being Beaten,'\" Freud holds that male masochists occupy a feminine position: \"they invariably transfer themselves into the part of a woman; that is to say, their masochistic attitude coincides with a _feminine_ one.\" This statement perhaps gestures toward the binary gendering that is associated with reproduction; Freud insists: \"It makes no difference if in a fanciful embellishment of the masochistic scene they keep up the fiction that a mischievous boy, or page, or apprentice is going to be punished.\" But then, \"confusingly enough,\" the chastiser also is a woman; Freud moves to another topic. At other points Freud connects masochism to \"the death drive,\" and \"a fixation in childhood.\" The last suggestion seems most plausible. To be sure, Freud offers other frameworks for thinking about masochism at other points in his writing. I have focused on his subsuming of power into reproduction because it occurs in major texts (the _Three Essays_ were reprinted twenty-one times in ten languages between 1910 and 1938), and because it works against my sense that power differentials are intrinsic to sundry sexual identities and interactions, and not dependent on heteronormative interpretation. The priority of reproduction is still asserted by reputable thinkers. Luce Irigaray, for example, declares: \"The human species is divided into _two genders_ which ensure its production and reproduction. To wish to get rid of sexual difference is to call for a genocide more radical than any form of destruction there has ever been in History.\" It is a mistake, therefore, \"to demand equality as women.\"\n\nMainly since the publication of Jean Laplanche's _New Foundations for Psychoanalysis_ , via a battery of conferences, translations, introductions, interpretations, and collections of essays, instigated and undertaken principally by John Fletcher, new theories have effected decisive revisions of Freud, and Lacan also, offering a new route beyond biologism. Freud, along with Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche, has often been credited with a _decentering_ of man. Copernicus demonstrated that \"man\" is not at the center of the universe; these later thinkers have argued that he is not in charge of his own biology, history, and psychology. Laplanche declares this Freudian-Copernican revolution unfinished, and our dependence upon the other unacknowledged, so long as the infant is said to bring with him into the world fundamental drives:\n\nFor if the individual is henceforth governed, in classical psychoanalytic theory, by the unknown drives of the unconscious, this \"id\"\u2014however strange it is supposed to be\u2014is nonetheless not an alien. It is supposed to dwell _at the center_ of the individual, whom it governs in its own way, even if it has dethroned the ego. One sovereign in place of another, but well and truly installed in the keep of the castle.\n\nTo address this problem, Laplanche reviews the \"seduction theory,\" which Freud abandoned in 1897; this had understood neurotic symptoms as consequent upon the seduction or abuse which his patients reported from their childhood. Upon this abandonment, Freud posited the phases (oral\u2013anal\u2013phallic) of endogenous (growing from within) infantile sexuality, with its apparently biological sequencing.\n\nLaplanche believes that passivity and seduction do constitute the individual's originary moment. The mother (or other primary caregiver) _does seduce the child into erotic pleasure_ \u2014not at all, however, in any sinister way, but as part of the routine parental ministrations without which the child would die. The feeding and handling of the infant exposes him or her to the caregiver's fantasy life, inviting cooperation, through strategies of translation and repression. Fletcher explicates:\n\nWe are not talking here of abusive events. In Laplanche's sense seduction is ordinary. This leads him to talk of an _implantation_ of stimulating, arousing and traumatizing non-verbal signifiers with their unconscious, enigmatic significations: an implantation on the surface of the primitive body image or skin-ego of the infant. These are anchored or inscribed particularly in the erogenous zones as folds and openings in the body surface\u2014mouth, anus, genitals.\n\nThus is effected \"the primary mapping and zoning of the sexual body, indeed the very sexing of the body.\" Martin Stanton asks: \"Is there no input from the infant at all?\" Laplanche replies that feeding\u2014the initial demand\u2014is interactive, but the sexual message that accompanies it is \"a one-way action.\"\n\nFrom the beginning, one is active and the other is passive. But very quickly, the little human tries to turn this passivity into activity, that is, to make something of this message from the other. Still, there is this dissymmetry. This comes from the fact that the active one has more \"knowledge,\" more unconscious fantasies than the passive infant.\n\nThis way of explaining the development of individual psychic formations is notably compatible with my arguments about sexuality and power, in two main ways. First, the organization of fantasy in which the infant is involved is that of the mother (or other caregiver), and consequently already steeped in her tangle of scenarios. She, necessarily, has already her own personal take on the prevailing system of representation, fantasy, and unconscious desire, and this intrudes, also necessarily, upon the infant. Second, the infant's initial experience is of power imbalance. \"The primary situation that gives rise to the sexual drive in the human being,\" Fletcher writes, \"is one of a primary passivity and penetration by the other. It involves a breaking in that is characteristic of pain.\" For what is undeniable in Laplanche's \"situation of primal seduction\" is both\n\nthe wealth of its innate mechanisms of reciprocal communication between mother and child, and the profound _asymmetry_ between the adult with an already formed unconscious, the bearer of unconsciously determined enigmatic signifiers or messages, and the new-born infant assigned a gender on the basis of adult perceptions of its anatomy but [as yet] without sexual fantasies.\n\nIf, as I believe, Laplanche has evolved an important theory through which the power arrangements in our societies may be implanted in the infant, becoming the building blocks in the _bricolage_ of our psychic life, this should not be envisaged as an elementary mechanism of social conditioning, producing automata incapable of independent agency. The infant is subjected to extremely powerful inputs, but they are complex\u2014and it is the simplicity of a message that stifles agency, not its strength. The transmissions in Laplanche's theory are fraught with untranslated, resistant, and troubling remainders. Fletcher takes up Dominique Scarfone's argument that it is negation, repression, and enigma on the part of the adult and her messages that provoke the infant \"to translate, to reprise and rework the enigmatic and exciting messages, to substitute its own signifying sequences, fantasies, 'infantile sexual theories,' to interpret the blanks in the parental discourse, to sublimate by symbolising otherwise.\"\n\nFurther, the encounter may go wrong, implanting materials that resist adequate symbolization. There is a \"violent variant\" of implantation, according to Laplanche: _intromission_. This is a blocking process which \"short-circuits the differentiation of the agencies in the process of their formation, and puts into the interior an element resistant to all metabolism,\" creating the conditions for both the superego and psychosis. Perhaps it is the gaps and enigmas in the parental messages that create the space for the child to interpret, translate, and fantasize, whereas when parental fantasies are imposed, full on, translation is paralyzed\u2014which may be why sexual abuse in childhood is so destructive, impairing, and repetitive, from generation to generation.\n\nOf course, I am not equipped to evaluate theories of infant subjectivity. In any event, Laplanche's insistence on the primacy of the caregiver issues a reminder of the infant's experience of initial power disparity, while allowing space in which human beings might develop diverse and novel ways of relating.\n\n**ARGUMENTS AND VISIONS**\n\nIf hierarchies of sex and gender are both embedded in our psyches and a sexual turn-on, attempts to thwart them must be both futile and austerely abstemious. To be sure, power may be distributed irregularly between two people, such that A is powerful in respect of p, whereas B is powerful in respect of q. However, this does not mean that hierarchy evens out and becomes irrelevant. More likely, quite intricate and engrossing negotiations will be required to maintain the diverse claims; there will be more engagement with hierarchy, not less.\n\nThis is not to say that oppressions of gender, class, age, and race are either necessary or justified. We may campaign for radical transformations. Nor is it to say that it is acceptable to knock your partner around, or to manipulate him or her psychologically, or to use his or her relative poverty or general neediness to exert control. Nor is it to say that you should stay with a partner who abuses you in those ways. I write, I should say, as a relatively empowered person. I am white, male, salaried, and have published some books; I have some advantages of middle age (stability, security) and some of its disadvantages (likely to fall ill and die before long). It is perhaps easy for me to insist that power difference is sexy; my potential partner, if he is located on the more vulnerable side of those hierarchies, may be more exposed, psychologically, in his engagements.\n\nThe terms on which women might collude in hierarchies which derive from male-dominated ideologies have been effectively disputed in lesbian feminism. Sheila Jeffreys sets out from somewhere near the start of the present analysis: \"Since the concept of difference or 'male-female polarity' is the organising principle of the heteropatriarchy it is not surprising that it should so profoundly have shaped the consciousness even of many lesbians.\" However, Jeffreys contests any idea that lesbians should collaborate with it. She disagrees with women such as Amber Hollibaugh and Cherr\u00ede Moraga, who protest that feminist rejection of male dominance in heterosexuality has led to an ill-considered rejection of hierarchical relations between women. Hollibaugh opines: \"what feminism did, in its fear of heterosexual control of fantasy, was to say that there was almost no fantasy safe to have, where you weren't going to have to give up power or take it. There's no sexual fantasy I can think of that doesn't include some aspect of that.\" This is to say, Jeffreys replies,\n\nthat we cannot build a sexuality which is about equality and mutuality.... The refusal to see any kind of sex without dominance and submission as possible, rules out the feminist adventure in the total transformation of sexuality with the object of eliminating sexual violence and the objectification of women, almost before it's begun.\n\nMoraga responds with her personal experience. She grew up with \"the fantasy of capture, taking a woman\"; her \"identification was with the man, taking\": that is how her sexuality works.\n\nIn _Loving in the War Years_ , Moraga relates these arguments to class and race:\n\nWhat the white women's movement tried to convince me of is that lesbian sexuality was _naturally_ different than heterosexual sexuality. That the desire to penetrate and be penetrated, to fill and be filled, would vanish. That retaining such desires was \"reactionary,\" not \"politically correct,\" \"male identified.\" And somehow reaching sexual ecstasy with a woman lover would never involve any kind of power struggle.\n\nJudith Halberstam comments: \"Chicana lesbians cannot suddenly be expected to cast off these sex roles in favour of a lesbian feminist egalitarianism.\" Esther Newton and Shirley Walton are similarly skeptical. \"Do away with masculinity and femininity and the residuum is egalitarian sexuality: open, honest, caring, and non-oppressive\": that is the theory. However, \"Power and sexual desire are deeply, perhaps intrinsically connected in ways we do not fully understand and just can't abolish,\" Newton and Walton contend. \"It is true that men have more power than women in the sexual domain. But one cannot proceed directly from this fact to explain how sexuality works, any more than male domination of the art world, for example, explains aesthetic experience.\"\n\nIt will be evident where the present study stands in relation to these arguments. Our sexual imaginaries probably are informed by hierarchies that are ultimately oppressive, but we have to negotiate within, through, and beyond that insight. It cannot be realistic to suppose that we might simply, through good intentions, sidestep the hierarchies of capitalism and male dominance. They inform our daily interactions, the language through which we come to consciousness, our psychic formations. Islands of individual serenity are a strategic aspiration for therapy, but finally we must be talking about damage limitation. Socialism in a single psyche must be a chimera.\n\nWhat, then, of aspirations toward sex and gender liberation, and what prospects for the mutuality and harmony that have often been attached to sexual love in our cultures? Egalitarian impulses are not to be regarded as false, deluded, or partial. They too are produced within the system; where else could they come from? Often they are couched in terms afforded by the dominant, but this does not invalidate them. If the opportunities for containment of liberatory aspirations are large, so is the potential for idealism. For the cultural materialist, as well as critique, there is always the prospect of transformation. All the books discussed in this chapter witness to the vitality of reciprocity as an idea, even where they are marking the impediments that strew its path. Perhaps the most extreme instance of an unequal love relationship is between the commandant of a Nazi work camp and a boy inmate. Ursula Zilinsky makes this plausible in her novel _Middle Ground_. The commandant declares, even in this context, \"I don't believe love is possible except between equals.\"\n\nCollaborative impulses certainly do figure in our sexual imaginaries. They have been important in heroic and romantic friendship; in some forms of romantic love; in partnerships founded in complementarity; in the element of interchangeability in some S\/M relations. They have inspired our love poems. I have quoted Monette quoting Donne and Whitman. Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_ (1580) features cross-dressing and same-sex passion. The singer of this song is a young man who says he overheard it sung by a young maid, so the effect is of a male addressing a male:\n\nMy true love hath my heart, and I have his,\n\nBy just exchange, one for the other given.\n\nYet this sonnet continues in a surprisingly violent manner:\n\nHis heart his wound received from my sight:\n\nMy heart was wounded, with his wounded heart,\n\nFor as from me on him his hurt did light,\n\nSo still methought in me his hurt did smart:\n\nBoth equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:\n\nMy true love hath my heart, and I have his.\n\nThe poem circles back to its initial declaration, reinstating reciprocity, but there's a lot of wounding and hurting in between, suggesting not just the convention of Cupid's arrows but also a social order where violent death might be the consequence of inappropriate loving.\n\nAlfred Tennyson in _In Memoriam_ (1850) sometimes celebrates the equality and reciprocity of the deceased Arthur and himself:\n\nI know that this was Life,\u2014the track\n\nWhereon with equal feet we fared;\n\nAnd then, as now, the day prepared\n\nThe daily burden for the back.\n\nNor could I weary, heart or limb,\n\nWhen mighty Love would cleave in twain\n\nThe lading of a single pain,\n\nAnd part it, giving half to him.\n\nHowever, the poet more often dwells upon Arthur's superiority and inaccessibility:\n\nI vex my heart with fancies dim:\n\nHe still outstript me in the race;\n\nIt was but unity of place\n\nThat made me dream I ranked with him.\n\nNow Alfred is left behind again, as the confident, privileged, and accomplished Arthur ascends into a more spacious life among the souls of the departed.\n\nW. H. Auden allows that sexual passion may prompt an ideal vision in \"Lay your sleeping head, my love\" (1937). To lovers, \"Soul and body have no bounds\";\n\nGrave the vision Venus sends\n\nOf supernatural sympathy,\n\nUniversal love and hope.\n\nYet for the boy with him he wishes that the \"mortal world\" will be enough, with all its mundane unevenness. In another poem, \"The More Loving One\" (1955), Auden remarks that, while the language of love celebrates mutuality, it is unusual for two people's loves to match precisely:\n\nIf equal affection cannot be,\n\nLet the more loving one be me. (282)\n\nEvocations of ideal harmony may not be entirely unalloyed, then; they may smack of wishful thinking, tactics, and ideology; they may not sit easily with actual power differentials. Yet they do not have to be unalloyed to be important.\n\nAlthough we tend to think of lesbians and gay men as subject to distinctively complex psychic, ethical, and political demands, the idea of egalitarian sex is far more problematic for heterosexuals. While same-sex partners may choose to engage with hierarchical imagery, the copresence of a man and a woman has to start from it (though other hierarchies of class, age, and race may undermine or counteract it, and perhaps put the woman in the dominant position). The most sustained quest for a viable feminist heterosexuality, from within current progressive thought, has been mounted by Lynne Segal, particularly in _Straight Sex_. She draws from Naomi Segal the five elements of pleasure that may be said to characterize women's sexual desire:\n\npurposeless playfulness;\n\na recovery of childhood feelings (or whatever consciousness can tolerate of their original polymorphous perversity);\n\na connection with nurturance;\n\ngames with power (especially the pleasure of feeling power over the powerful);\n\na narcissistic sense of completion through access to the body of another.\n\nWhile appreciating the elements of sharing, reassurance, and play in this sequence, we may notice also that it seems designed to accommodate and subdue hierarchy. The play has to be purposeless; only so much perversity must be recovered as consciousness can tolerate; the narcissism must not be merely self-regarding. \"The pleasure of feeling power\" is allowed only if you are generally the powerless one, and only by way of \"games.\"\n\nLynne Segal's goal is an egalitarian containment which will both license and control the pleasures and dangers of hierarchy. It is a fine balance, though. For once you venture beyond mutual reassurance and a bit of playful slap-and-tickle, you get back into dominance and subordination. And unfortunately, Segal admits, men seem less amenable to routing their sense of male power through play. In fact, when Segal wants to assert the scope and vigor of fantasy against the puritanical antipornography stance of Dworkin and MacKinnon, she appeals not to heterosexual theorists but to the raunchy stance of Hollibaugh's and Pat Califia's lesbian feminist S\/M genre (251). It is not easy to get companionate marriage and vigorous sexuality into the same frame.\n\nAn argument about dominance and subordination must finally confront the particular anxieties that cluster around the formalized role-play which we call \"S\/M,\" particularly when it entails the cultivation of scenarios from fascism and slavery. In my view it is a mistake to infer that power play necessarily involves distinctive gear, dedicated bars, and playrooms, and that in other contexts, conversely, the rest of us are egalitarian. Rather, S\/M is continuous with other, less specific, hierarchical formations, such as I have been discussing. Consider John Rechy's attempt at quarantining S\/M in _The Sexual Outlaw_ : \"I do cultivate a certain tough appearance because it attracts people sexually, and I do equate sex with power. But I know the difference between that and the most negative aspect within the gay world\u2014S & M.... Pain and humiliation have nothing to do with love.\" Rechy's distinction sounds less than secure.\n\nBersani discusses Foucault's attempt in an interview to distinguish the master-slave relation in S\/M from actual power structures. S\/M, Foucault said, is not \"a reproduction, within the erotic relationship, of the structure of power. It is an acting out of power structures by a strategic game that is able to give sexual pleasure or bodily pleasure.\" To be sure, there can be no simple \"reproduction\"; the S\/M representation will indeed be \"a strategic game.\" It will be oblique, displaced, allusive\u2014even, perhaps, parodic. However, Bersani asks, \"what is the game without the power structure that constitutes its strategies?\" Would erotic pleasure survive the evaporation of its ultimate allusion to a real-world model? Does the attraction of leather, say, stem from its texture and derivation from cattle, or would it not become less interesting if policemen and men with heavy manual jobs stopped wearing it? For a time, its residual associations would persist, but eventually it would become quaint.\n\nInsofar as he regards sexuality as necessarily, in the circumstances in which we currently live, about power, Bersani's argument is congruent with that offered in the present study. His refusal to accept a consolatory story about the innocence of S\/M also seems right. However, he derives this from Freudian principles and actively disputes Jeffrey Weeks's materialist suggestion that \"the erotic acts as a crossover point for a number of tensions whose origins are elsewhere: of class, gender and racial location, of intergenerational conflict, moral acceptability and medical definition.\"\n\nMy goal here is not to justify or dismiss S\/M, but to observe its continuities with fantasies of dominance and subordination that are inevitable in our kinds of societies, and also with the everyday routines of sexual and interpersonal power, as they present themselves through the prevailing structures. The task, then, is to find ways of making hierarchy, in our sexual and personal relations, productive of pleasure and the other rewards of intimacy, and productive also of insights into the psychic economies through which we handle the triumphs and humiliations that the system bestows\u2014while maintaining also the credibility and integrity of our political engagements. This is the project proposed by Claudia Card, who observes the influence of\n\nroles of dominance and subordinance that characterize not only authoritarian adult-child relationships within the family or authoritarian religious relationships but, more generally, the norms of a patriarchal, misogynist society that is also riddled with homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of oppression. On this understanding, sadomasochistic desires have roots not simply in individual psychologies but in society at large; they are not mysterious givens but social constructions.\n\nCard's answer is to approach the issue on different levels. Interpersonally, we have to work with the idea of informed consent, despite its awkwardnesses. Politically, we have to oppose oppressive societal structures.\n\n**INSURRECTION**\n\nJames Robert Baker's novel, _Tim and Pete_ , explores the overlap between interpersonal hierarchies and those which sustain the state. The eponymous heroes believe in love and monogamy, at least in the time of AIDS. Spontaneous sex can be rewarding, Tim allows, but not the 1970s bathhouses:\n\n\"it wasn't joyful. It seemed to bring out the worst in people. It wasn't sex as catharsis or redemption, but sex as a drug. A crazed, compulsive abuse of what sex can provide. Cynical and loveless. Sex as ego gratification, as ephemeral validation. Sex as a product, something you need to feel better about yourself for a while. A new shirt, a new car, a new fuck. Capitalism. I didn't like the music either.\"\n\n\"Sleaze\" is their term for cruising and occasional partners; however, they accuse each other of it continually, and it transpires that at least one of them has fucked at some time with almost everyone they meet.\n\nTheir quest for a renewal of their love takes them across Los Angeles, desolate and threatening after the riots of 1991, looking as if it were a sequence of film sets. \"In fact, it was so deserted it almost felt like a set. The battered 1920s storefronts, the deep dusk blue of the sky, even the burned-out ruins, had a weird _designed_ look, like a soundstage street for a Janet Jackson video. Or a 'gritty' background for a black-and-white Guess? ad\" (92; Baker's emphasis). They view their situation through a filter of film and fantasy, as they reprise recent gay history. They love to improvise pornographic scenarios out of famous Hollywood films and clean-cut surf movies. However, there is a persistent political edge to their invention. \"So we'd imagine, in the most extreme and lurid cinematic terms, the obliteration by gunfire of different right-wing people we disliked.... we could machine-gun George Will, for example, in Washington, and suck each other off in Mexico in the same sentence\" (179; my elision). Pete heads up a post-punk rock band, and does a song called \"What This Country Needs (Is a Baader-Meinhof Gang).\" Tim has reservations: \"I'd seen his point, that anything in art was permissible, that to depict something was not the same as to advocate it, let alone do it, and I felt that our fantasies, besides being fun, were a kind of harmless way of blowing off steam\" (179). But suppose some people experience such a song as a rallying cry?\n\nPete's young friend Joey is involved with Glenn, who is forty-two; they have what Pete considers \"'an extremely fucked-up dynamic,'\" a \"'possessive, obsessive dance-of-death thing'\"\u2014not formally S\/M, but emotionally; deriving from Joey's childhood abuse. Tim calls it \"'a dad-and-lad scene'\" (166). \"'I love Joey. We're both extremely fucked up and bad for each other, but I love him,'\" Glenn says (226). It transpires that Glenn is leading a group plotting to assassinate ex-president Reagan. Initially, Glenn's interest in political terror was \"on a kind of camp, ironic level\" (199); this is familiar enough to poststructural critics, who have imagined that a purposeful gender-bending might seriously discomfort the system. Already in their paintings Glenn and Joey have drawn upon Tim and Pete's inventions, trying to break out of the customary boundaries of art; these paintings \"were very much like some of the fantasies we used to spin\" (179). Glenn tells Pete: \"'You've shaken us out of our catatonic grief with your inflammatory call to violence'\" (221). Fantasies, and their expression, cannot be corralled into a safe world of art.\n\nIt may gradually dawn on the reader that there is a continuity rather than a contrast between Tim and Pete, as a couple, and Glenn and Joey. As I note in chapter 2, Tim and Pete present their relationship to themselves as free from hierarchies of class, age, and gender, but in practice these power differences afford them a guilty pleasure. A lesbian who gives them a lift advises that they might enjoy experimenting with dominance and submission (however, her vehemence destabilizes her own relationship). When Pete gives in and agrees to get back together with Tim, he signals this by singing \"I Wanna Be Your Dog\" (135\u201337). Having captured Tim and Pete, Glenn readily intuits the link between their current situation in a real political drama and the fantasies they have cultivated informally: \"'I'll bet my entire Colt pornography collection _you've_ fantasized being stripped and restrained by a gang of rowdy outlaws'\" (217). In fact Tim has admitted to this fantasy: \"'I thought about tying you up once. Like a western thing. But serial killers always tie up their victims. What if I snapped?'\" (93). Power is everywhere in the system\u2014in the nice guys as well as in the assassins and the president.\n\nThe most developed theory of countercultural art and the dramatic insurrectionary gesture derives from Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, and the Situationist International group in the 1960s. It was influential in the May 1968 _\u00e9v\u00e9nementes_ in Paris, and the bombings of financial and governmental targets by the Angry Brigade in London in 1969\u20131971. The initial idea was to create the _situation_ that would disrupt the rhythms of everyday life and the spectacle constructed by the state; it was insurrection at the level of representation. Because the state depends upon the spectacle of the commodified image, the revolutionary event may operate by reorienting those images. These ideas informed the underground press and counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and the work of prominent British dramatists such as Howard Brenton and David Edgar. For if power was theatrical, theater might be powerful. Leading artistic and musical figures in the punk movement professed familiarity with situationist thought.\n\nThis is what Tim and Pete have been doing in their ad hoc appropriations of movies, Pete also in his music, and Glenn and Joey in their artwork. (It is interesting that people around the Angry Brigade, some of whom were Gay Liberation Front activists, called themselves \"The Wild Bunch\" and \"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.\") ACT UP and Queer Nation are in this line of political thought but, according to Pete, they \"don't go nearly far enough.... They should go into the Vatican, remove the fag art, and dynamite the place. Douse the pope with gasoline, set him on fire\" (143; my elision). Glenn and Joey have made their pictures as transgressive as they can. The next step, as for the Situationists, is a counter-theater of momentous violence, intended not (as in traditional revolutions) to seize the apparatus of the state, but to undermine its spectacular facade by the radiant symbolism of the intervention. The most plausible instance of a positive effect from political violence in a modern state is perhaps the Black Panthers, who changed the self-awareness of African American people. \"'I miss the Black Panthers,'\" Pete says. \"'At least they knew who the real enemy was.'\" \"'Which is why they got wiped out,'\" Tim replies (80).\n\n_Tim and Pete_ ends before the culminating act of violence which Glenn and Joey intend. Attention is switched to the fact that Pete's mother is there and would be killed. Of course, once she is factored in, the case for political violence is hard to sustain: nearly half the world is potentially somebody's mother. Finally Tim envisions the slaughter at the convention, translating it immediately into cinematic terms ( _The Godfather_ ), and then imagining that he's \"looking at a painting of Pete and me, as we were right now, the way Joey would have painted it\" (256). You can't quarantine fantasy from political action. The question, still, is whether they can work productively together.\n\nActually I think _Tim and Pete_ is about something else as well. One senses a less focused, more gestural sense of apocalyptic violence\u2014for instance, in the references to Charles Manson. A strain in U.S. culture\u2014both on the right and the left\u2014has always been ready for apocalypse now; the conjunction of AIDS and the end of the millennium made it unavoidable.\n\nWhat is at work is less a political analysis than a community that is anguished and desperate. _Tim and Pete_ is strewn with harrowing stories of official and personal disdain for people with AIDS. However, this is not just about the loss of lovers and friends and the threat of sickness and death: it is about social exclusion. There is one strategy running through Tim and Pete's numerous, impertinent appropriations of movie scenarios: at every point gay men are being inserted into recognized images of \"America.\" (Pedro Almod\u00f3var, conversely, is mentioned simply with respect; only American scenarios are appropriated.) Already these gay men have been rejected by their families. Now they are mourning \"America.\" The president, once elected, is supposed to stand for all citizens. But George Bush the elder is quoted as admitting in 1987 that there was still a \"giggle factor\" in the government's approach to AIDS (9). Gay Americans find that their condition has excluded them from the nation. Centrally \"American\" images can be occupied by them only in a parodic or violent way.\n\nThey are, in one of David Wojnarowicz's titles, in the shadow of the American Dream. A leitmotiv in Wojnarowicz's _Close to the Knives_ is that if only the president would pay attention to AIDS, we would begin to get somewhere with it. I find here a strange vein of surprise that gay rights have not been acknowledged; Wojnarowicz is shocked to read of a Supreme Court ruling that \"only people who are heterosexual or married or who have families can expect these constitutional rights.\" Lamenting the suicide of a friend, he asks: \"Man, why did you do it? Why didn't you wait for the possibilities to reveal themselves in this shit country, on this planet?\" (241). \"America,\" surely, will come good in the end. I have remarked elsewhere this wish to believe in America, noting its role in the thought of Randy Shilts, Larry Kramer, Bruce Bawer, and Andrew Holleran.\n\nAndrew Sullivan is so keen to believe in \"America\" that he claims that it has actually discovered its true humanity by taking gay men to its bosom: \"AIDS compelled a form of social integration that might have never taken place without its onslaught. Forced to choose between complete abandonment of the homosexual subculture and an awkward first encounter, America, for the most part, chose the latter.\" This optimistic opinion can be corroborated only in the most fantastic and playful of texts. Social exclusion threatens the drag queens who stop off at a small town in _To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_ (Beeban Kidron, 1995). \"Look at 'em. Perverts!\" exclaims the corrupt and homophobic sheriff. \"When the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and what have you, bringing in justice for all, they didn't mean them.\" He is proved wrong: the people in the film value the impact of drag queens on their society.\n\nIt is the epidemic that has released Glenn, Joey, and their friends. Like the men in the film _The Living End_ (Gregg Araki, 1992), they are free because they believe they will die shortly anyway. \"And there was a terrifying but profoundly seductive freedom in that. They could do anything now, anything they wanted to, anything at all\" ( _Tim and Pete_ , 187). Glenn and Joey are free to engage in a range of sexual activities about which Tim and Pete are reluctant even to fantasize. Also, they are free for kamikaze sacrifices (180). So they enact what for other dissidents can only be fantasy. While gay men have not proved an insurrectionary force in the United States, others have. Mikey's idea of seizing a plane and crashing it into the building where the president will be is \"'a fantasy,'\" Joey pronounces. \"' _So what?_ ' Mikey said. 'Everything _starts_ as a fantasy!'\" (240; Baker's emphases).\n\nIn arguing that hierarchy is sexy, I am not saying that we should be abandoning politics, morality, and responsibility and plunging into reactionary and complacent relations which exploit oppressions of class, age, race, and gender. Thinking even for a moment about the reality of those oppressions should restore our commitment to fight them. Bersani, famously, evokes the anguish that may be triggered by the image of a man with his legs in the air. But you would have to be truly perverted to find this more distressing than the image of a starving child.\n\nIf lesbians and gay men had in fact succeeded in wiping out power in relationships, all we would have to do is enjoy our egalitarian practice and let everyone else in on the secret. But that is far from the case. The prevailing sex\/gender system, we have every reason to know, is geared to the production of hierarchy and, as part of that, to the production of anxious, unhappy, and violent people. It produces us and our psychic lives\u2014straights and gays\u2014and it is not going to leave us alone. Arguably, fantasy becomes specific at the points where it is most at odds, superficially at least, with reality. It is a liberal-bourgeois delusion to suppose that \"private\" space can be somehow innocent of and protected from the real world. The task is to find ways of engaging fantasy without hurting and disempowering other people.\n\nWe have to accept that crucial political commitments may fall out of alignment with our fantasies. As Judith Halberstam puts it, \"while people may well invest in values like equality and reciprocity in their political lives, they may not want those same values dominating their sexual lives.\" Bersani discovers a positive virtue in such misalignments: \"Our fantasy investments are often countered by more consciously and more rationally elaborate modes of reaching out to others, such as liking or admiring people we don't desire. In that tension lies an important moral dimension of our political engagement.\" A politics asserted over libidinal investments may be more considered, more authoritative.\n\nIf we don't acknowledge power differentials in our fantasies and our relationships, we don't begin to get a hold on exploitation\u2014including that which we perpetrate ourselves. While the political priority of resisting actual oppressions must be maintained, power imbalances in lesbian and gay personal relations may be refigured as potentially rewarding, though inevitably troubling. We should be exploring ways to assess and recombine power, sexiness, responsibility, and love.\n**5**\n\n**GENDER**\n\nThus far I have tried to sketch a materialist theory of psychic life, drawing attention to the power hierarchies that dominate our relationships. While I have isolated gender, age, class, and race as the principal vectors of power, special confusions envelop the idea of gender.\n\n**HISTORY AND THEORY**\n\nThe most disputed question in our historiography is whether there have always been lesbians and gay men, or whether we are a recent development\u2014since the nineteenth century, according to Foucault, or, in some versions, since the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The former, universalizing position is taken by Rictor Norton and Terry Castle, who discover in the molly-house subculture and masquerading women of the eighteenth century a gay and lesbian history that is continuous with the present. Note, however, that these evidences of continuity depend upon gender identities.\n\nConsider the mollies of the early eighteenth century, who set up clubs, cross-dressed, and took women's names. One contemporary account describes them as \"so far degenerated from all masculine deportment, or manly exercises, that they rather fancy themselves women, imitating all the little vanities that custom has reconciled to the female sex, affecting to speak, walk, tattle, cur[t]sy, cry, scold, and mimic all manner of effeminacy.\" This, surely, evokes a subculture organized around gender, not sexuality. According to Alan Bray, what \"most scandalised contemporary journalists writing about the molly houses was the extravagant effeminacy and transvestism they could involve.\" The focus was on people who felt themselves, or behaved as if they felt themselves, to be the \"wrong\" gender\u2014not on people having, or desiring, same-sex relations. Nonetheless, Bray reads the mollies as \"homosexual\": \"There was now a continuing culture to be fixed on and an extension of the area in which homosexuality could be expressed and therefore recognised; clothes, gestures, language, particular buildings and particular public places\u2014all could be identified as having specifically homosexual connotations.\" Norton makes the same elision.\n\nMy argument is that most cultures give primacy either to gender identity or to object-choice. One of these terms tends to serve as the primary interpretive instrument; the other is incorporated as a subordinate, and consequently incoherent, subcategory. Of course, this does not mean that the subordinate discourse will be entirely untenable; social systems are always complex, comprising residual and emergent elements. But it will be more difficult to hold, for the individual and for others.\n\nTerry Castle adduces the diaries of Anne Lister, composed between 1817 and 1824, in pursuit of her contention that the lesbian is not a recent invention. Lister and her partners refer to her repeatedly as masculine, a man, gentleman-like and having manly feelings, and to her female partners as Lister's wives or subject to her adulterous approaches. Lister fantasizes herself in men's clothes and as having a penis, and models herself on Lord Byron. For Castle, and Norton also, this is evidence that the lesbian identity existed before 1869. However, as Judith Halberstam points out, it makes better sense to regard Lister as transgendered; she even rejected the label \"sapphic,\" the contemporary term for sexual relations between women, insisting on her own masculinity. The many eighteenth-century instances surveyed in Emma Donoghue's _Passions Between Women_ indicate that women who desired other women were persistently discovered to be of irregular gender\u2014hermaphrodite, male-identified, or cross-dressed. Even romantic friendships might be structured as husband and wife, or involve cross-dressing. Donoghue wonders \"why a woman who loved women would want to pass as a husband.\" The reason is that she was male-identified; her object-choice was a consequence of that. Castle, indeed, introducing her collection of lesbian writing, remarks how, from the eighteenth century to Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, \"the wish to associate female homosexuality with physiological oddities such as distended genitalia or supposedly masculine features... seems inevitably part of a 'naive' or reflexive response to the lesbian idea.\" She supposes that the lesbian idea is prior, and then misrepresented; I think (alleged) masculine features dominated thought and action in this period. Generally, on through the nineteenth century, George Chauncey Jr. has shown, gender was the prior category. \"Investigators classified a woman as an invert because of her aggressive, 'masculine' sexual and social behavior, and the fact that her sexual object was homosexual was only the logical corollary of this inversion.\"\n\nTwo distinct aspects of the sex\/gender system are in play, then. One is structured in gender identity, and tends to look for signs of femininity in men and masculinity in women. The other is structured in object-choice, and depends upon sexual and\/or emotional commitment to another person of the same gender. To be sure, they are bound to become tangled together; nonetheless, they are analytically separate, and by no means necessarily either homologous or in a permanent relation. Gayle Rubin, coming from feminism, reaches the same position; so does Eve Sedgwick. John Fletcher declares:\n\nI want provisionally to hold apart, to separate at least analytically gender, sexuality and sexual difference, in order to interrupt the too easy assimilation of sexuality and the sexual into the question of sexual difference, male and female on the one hand, and the equally common and too ready assimilation of that sexual difference into the question of gender on the other.\n\nYet opinion is not settled. Tamsin Wilton remarks: \"The interlocutions between discourses of gender and the erotic manifest a complexity that I suggest indicates that they may not usefully be distinguished one from the other.\" William J. Spurlin makes a thorough case for this. In his essay \"How to Do the History of Male Homosexuality,\" the four premodern male traditions adduced by David Halperin (effeminacy; pederasty or \"active\" sodomy; friendship or male love; passivity or inversion) are derived empirically from particular times and places; they do not admit a primary distinction between gender identity and object-choice.\n\nThe question with which I began, about continuity and rupture in lesbian and gay histories, is awkwardly posed, therefore: it runs together gender dysphoria and dissident object-choice. The confusion in these discussions may be traced to a reluctance to distinguish between desire-to-be and desire-for. Gender identity is a kind of desire-to-be, whereas object-choice is about desire-for. As I elaborated these categories in chapter 2, they involve two quite different kinds of dissidence. In model (rg), the relative gender model, the man constitutes a double affront to convention:\n\n(rg) A man has:| desire-to-be F| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nThe man has a \"wrong\" gender identity and his object-choice is \"wrong\" as well, insofar as it is homosexual. Yet insofar as there is an \"F\" and an \"M\" in the model, he may be assimilated into a conventional binary formation. In model (c), the complementarity model, the dissidence is again in the object-choice (one male desires another), but without the offense of dissident gender identity and the consolation (as it is conventionally perceived) of a shadow of heterosexual desire:\n\n(c) A man has:| desire-to-be M| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\n**ORIGINS AND SPECIES**\n\nWhen these matters began to attract scientific inquiry, in the nineteenth century, the reigning theoretical construct was _degeneracy_. This was a product of Darwinism\u2014a kind of reverse evolution; it was a vehicle for anxieties about class, imperialism, and European racial superiority. So far from differentiating gender identity and object-choice, degeneracy subsumed both of them, along with perversion generally, into a very broad concept of weakness, debauchery, madness, and criminality, resulting from an alleged hereditary corruption.\n\nIt was in reaction against the crudeness of degeneracy as a construct that more patient and sympathetic theorists, now often called \"sexologists,\" isolated _inversion_. They encountered self-confessed inverts who seemed admirable, and therefore attributed the condition to a congenital, but not necessarily pathological, abnormality. Both Havelock Ellis and Freud explicitly reject degeneracy as an explanation. Ellis supposed that upon conception everyone might have 50 percent of male \"germs\" and 50 percent of female ones, and that in \"the homosexual person\" and \"the psychosexual hermaphrodite\" something interfered with the business of sorting out which were to predominate; this is an elementary anticipation of Freud's idea of a universal original bisexuality. Whatever else psychoanalysis did, Foucault remarks, at least it opposed \"the political and institutional effects of the perversion-heredity-degenerescence system.\" Martin Scherzinger and Neville Hoad remark that development correlates with evolution in Freud's thought, and arrested development with degeneration.\n\nThe sexologists' investigations generally started from the most conspicuous form of dissidence: \"wrong\" gender identity. They tended to suppose that \"wrong\" object-choice would correlate, but quickly ran into instances where this seemed not to be the case. One response, as Chauncey says, was to be more careful with one's terminology. \"While 'sexual inversion' referred to an inversion in the full range of gender characteristics, 'homosexuality', precisely understood, referred only to the narrower issue of homosexual object-choice, and did not necessarily imply gender or sexual role inversion.\" Halperin, in this vein, credits Ellis and Freud with the crucial discrimination: \"That sexual object-choice might be wholly independent of such 'secondary' characteristics as masculinity or femininity.\" Ellis and Freud do make this distinction. Notwithstanding, their accounts of object-choice reinstall gender identity as a typical component.\n\nEllis was aware of the potential for confusion. In _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), he notes that Albert Moll has tidied up the terminology and recognizes only two terms: \"psychosexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality.\" This, broadly, is the discrimination that I have been broaching: between gender dissidence and \"an inclination [in a man] toward men.\" In the second edition of _Sexual Inversion_ (1901), Ellis clarifies his account of Moll's argument and remarks in a note that Moll now wants to reserve the term \"inversion\" for gender disturbance\u2014for \"those cases in which there is a complete turning around of the sexual instinct, the man feeling in every respect as a woman, the woman in every respect as a man.\" Ellis concedes that there is something to be said for Moll's distinction, but he prefers another. The term \"homosexuality\" he applies \"to the phenomena generally,\" reserving \"inversion\" for \"those cases in which the sexual attraction to the same sex seems to be deep-rooted and organic.\" This is more than terminology: Moll proposed two discrete conditions, whereas Ellis is positing two levels of intensity.\n\nSo if inversion is a \"deep-rooted and organic\" condition, as opposed to \"the phenomena generally,\" what are the signs of it? In practice, Ellis allows it to correspond to the presence of \"wrong\" gender characteristics. To be sure, he insists, the male invert need not be effeminate, he may just make a same-sex object-choice. Nonetheless,\n\nit must be said that there is a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to approach the feminine type.... Although the invert himself may stoutly affirm his masculinity, and although this femininity may not be very obvious, its wide prevalence may be asserted with considerable assurance, and by no means only among the small minority of inverts who take an exclusively passive _role_.\n\nIn other words, the gender invert is the most complete type of homosexual. Object-choice is in a continuum with the model of \"wrong\" gender identity. So with women: \"In inverted women a certain subtle masculinity or boyishness is equally prevalent.\"\n\nThe key Freudian text here, _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ (1905), is far closer to Ellis than is often recognized. Freud places same-sex object-choice at the forefront of his analysis. But, so far from maintaining a differentiation, he continues: \"People of this kind are described as having 'contrary sexual feelings,' or better, as being 'inverts,' and the fact is described as 'inversion.'\"\n\nLike Ellis, Freud dismisses fanciful theories of innate inversion, and refutes the anatomical basis claimed in such theories. However, also like Ellis, Freud cannot forsake the thought that gender identity and object-choice might line up after all. He maintains this especially, though not only, in the case of women. \"The position in the case of women is less ambiguous; for among them the active inverts exhibit masculine characteristics, both physical and mental, with peculiar frequency and look for femininity in their sexual objects\u2014though here again a closer knowledge of the facts might reveal a greater variety\" (57).\n\nThis indeterminacy persists in a note added to Freud's _Three Essays_ in 1915: \"Finally, it may be insisted that the concept of inversion in respect of the sexual object should be sharply distinguished from that of the occurrence in the subject of a mixture of sexual characters.\" Yet the ensuing sentence is equivocal once more: \"In the relation between these two factors, too, a certain degree of reciprocal independence is unmistakably present\" (57\u201358). So sexual object and gender identity are to be sharply distinguished; yet there is a residual, unspecified interaction. In a further note, added to the _Three Essays_ in 1920, Freud tries a new tack. Following Sandor Ferenczi, he posits two types of male homosexual: \"'subject homoerotics,' who feel and behave like women, and 'object homo-erotics,' who are completely masculine and who have merely exchanged a female for a male object\" (58). Only object homo-erotics, Ferenczi says, may be \"influenced psychologically,\" whereas for subject homo-erotics there can be no question of \"struggling against their inclination\" (58). Once again, the real homosexual, the one who cannot be reached through analysis, is the one who wants to identify across the gender divide. Freud, while accepting Ferenczi's distinction, notes also that many people combine elements of both.\n\nC. A. Tripp in his comprehensive survey of homosexuality, first published in 1975, dismisses psychoanalysis and declares, \"Only in popular thinking are homosexuality and inversion synonymous.\" However, prominent commentators of our own time have allowed confusion to persist. As Sedgwick confirms, Foucault's invocation of \"a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood\" is often invoked as charting the full emergence of a modern concept of sexuality. However, Foucault says he is presenting \"the nineteenth-century homosexual\"\u2014in fact, the invert. He specifies as the founding text Karl Westphal's article of 1870 on \"contrary sexual sensations,\" in which the examples are a lesbian who dreamed she was a man, and an apparently heterosexual cross-dressing male prostitute. Indeed, \"wrong\" gender identity is central to the historical change registered by Foucault: \"Homosexuality [ _L'homosexualit\u00e9_ ] appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul.\" This change is characterized \" _less by a type of sexual relations_ [that is, less by object-choice] than by a quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of _inverting_ [ _d'intervertir_ ] the masculine and the feminine in oneself.\" Foucault is saying, in other words, that the modern homosexual is a blurred, composite figure, conceived in a confusion between object-choice and gender identity. Unfortunately, he does not explicate that confusion.\n\nGert Hekma, writing from the anthropological tradition, reviews the arguments of the classical inversion theorists (not including Freud), showing that their emphasis on inversion obscured object-choice, thus causing \"additional problems and hesitations in coming out as homosexuals\" for \"more masculine boys.\" Nowadays, however, \"the spectrum of gender possibilities has broadened to include different options\" and \"feminine styles\" are \"part of the diversity of the gay world.\" Descriptively this is fair, though perhaps a bit eager to free the post-Liberation gay man from the stigma of effeminacy. But Hekma's judicious empiricism forgoes any attempt at a theory, either of gender or sexuality. There used to be a theory\u2014inversion\u2014but it was wrong; now we just have all kinds of people doing all kinds of things.\n\nAt the other extreme, Kaja Silverman's determination to retheorize these topics within psychoanalysis plunges her back into Oedipal conjecture and an assumption that gender identity is the key to homosexuality. After all, she avers, \"human culture has to date shown itself to be stubbornly resistant to conceptualizing sexual positionality\u2014and, more recently, object-choice\u2014apart from the binary logic of gender.\" Indeed it has. Silverman is not interested in separating out gender identity and object-choice; she believes that the gay man has to accept that \"an identification with 'woman' constitutes the very basis of his identity, and\/or the position from which he desires\" (344). Lately, Silverman notes, some gay men have tended to appear masculine, but she isn't impressed: \"It is by no means clear, anyway, that even the most committed practitioner of macho homosexuality can ever succeed in entirely extirpating the 'woman' within\" (346). Even while abjuring \"global pretensions,\" and acknowledging that her theory may account only for \"certain kinds of male homosexuality,\" Silverman launches into her own reworking of the Oedipus complex as a mechanism for the acquisition of gender identity (346\u201347).\n\nThe most ambitious investigation of the thesis that the modern homosexual derives from the late nineteenth century is offered in Neil Bartlett's creative documentary, _Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde_. Once, Bartlett says, he experienced his gayness \"in complete isolation\"; now he is \"connected with other men's lives, men living in London with me. _Or with other dead Londoners_.\" To establish this linkage, he ransacks nineteenth-century documents, especially around the Wilde scandal. An awkwardness, however, is that most of the available instances appear to involve effeminate men. This places them in specific discontinuity with contemporary gay subculture, the achievement of which, as Bartlett sees it, is to make us \"handsome, _masculine_ , demanding and unafraid of our pleasures\" (219; my emphasis). The signals for gayness are historically variable, then: in the nineteenth century they centered upon effeminacy; today they are said to involve a relatively unremarkable masculinity.\n\nBartlett was writing in that period\u2014which developed from the mid-1970s and held the field through the 1980s\u2014when it was most difficult to appreciate gay femininity: in the heyday of the \"clone\" gay image. It was the time when Gregg Blachford and Jamie Gough could write, almost without reservation, of the masculinization of the gay world. Dennis Altman observed: \"The long-haired androgynous look of the early seventies was now found among straights, and the super-macho image of the Village People disco group seemed to typify the new style perfectly.\" Richard Dyer, in an essay first published in 1981, confirms \"the current 'masculinization' of the gay male style.\" However, he saw something else in the Village People: \"all the stereotypes of ultramasculinity in a camped-up flauntingly gay way.\" Even at this point, gay effeminacy has not gone away.\n\nIn fact by no means all Bartlett's contemporary gay Londoners were macho, but in _Who Was That Man?_ he accepts the image. He himself wears Doctor Martins, 501 jeans, a check shirt, and a moustache: \"I look like, or rather hope that I look like, a lot of other gay men\" (205). Again, at the start of a section mainly transcribing nineteenth-century notions of effeminacy, he remarks how in his masculine gear he may pass as straight, while still being visible to other gay men (63). This is the image he presents on the BBC2 television program _The Late Show_ (1993). There he urges upon gay men eclectic subcultural appropriation: the system scarcely acknowledges us, but we are piecing together our own lives. He offers his own outfit as an instance. Some might say that he is not entitled to wear it\u2014he is not one of those \"regular guys.\" But he has \"earned the right,\" he says, through the (manly) confidence with which he carries it off.\n\n_Who Was That Man?_ makes much of the famous transvestites, Fanny Park and Stella Boulton, who often passed as young women until they were arrested in 1870. Bartlett sees them as demonstrating \"the existence of our culture in London,\" though the charge was \"being men and dressed in female attire\" (143, 132). Significantly, he stops short of actually identifying with them: \"I would applaud the men who wore them in their determined efforts to use their frocks to create public space for themselves,\" he says (137\u201338). Such a combination of affiliation and distance occurs again when Bartlett remarks: \"I always enjoy asking a friend, in all drunken seriousness, _how's the wife?_ We both know that there is no useful comparison between heterosexual marriage and the relationship being referred to.\" There is a point, though: \"in using the word, I recall the house at 46 Fitzroy Street\" where the police arrested a group of transvestites on August 12, 1894 (85; Bartlett's emphasis). The connection is awkward, but Bartlett believes it encodes a historical affirmation that is worth making.\n\nSuch strategic effeminacy has partly informed Bartlett's extravagant deployment of camp and drag in the theater, particularly in plays from that time, _A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_ and _Sarrasine_. In an interview, Simon Fraser questions him: \"But this is 1991. Is drag really important to gay men?\" Bartlett's reply is not that lots of gay men are feminine really, but that drag is an emblematic part of the culture of British gay men: \"Almost all the things that are now traditionally gay are very important for that fact alone, and they represent gay space. They are a cultural space which we can inhabit.\" The value lies in \"seeing a gay entertainer in a room full of gay people, speaking a language that no one else could understand.\" We do drag, then, not because we are really feminine, but because it's been one of our things; it is a matter of subcultural affiliation and respect.\n\nIn my view this is a fair proposition, but insofar as it subsumes gender dissonance into gayness it tends to marginalize men for whom femininity is the primary factor. In fact Bartlett's work, despite his apparent privileging of the macho image, has contributed significantly to the recovery of subcultures of effeminacy. As regards camp and drag in his stage work, he evidently has been intrigued by their theatrical potential. In Bartlett's novel _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_ , Mother gets Boy into drag, but at an intense moment \"his white-powdered female face and livid red lips were suddenly split open by a masculine grin of triumph.\" This grotesque juxtaposition may remind us that drag is not about women, it is about gender boundaries; theater is not about display, but appearance and reality. Boy's triumph consists partly in the quality of his masquerade, partly in his maintenance of maleness. An ideology does not require the suppression of its other, but its productive management.\n\nThe Bar in _Ready to Catch Him_ rehearses these issues. Boy is introduced as conspicuously masculine: \"Keep him strong, keep him young, and, whatever his colouring, keep him gorgeous.\" The narrator invokes an allegorical figure of \"Strength\" (14\u201315). The Bar regulars appear to belong to another generation. Their culture is insistently feminine and centered upon gender identity. They have girls' names, camp talk, and a penchant for cross-dressing. Boy is not like them. At one point he is said to imagine leaving The Bar with a husband, but the narrator checks himself: \"(Of course, Boy would never have used that word, _Husband_ , that's my word. But then, I'm old-fashioned, I mean, we used to talk like that all the time. What word do you use, then?)\" (49; Bartlett's emphasis). When Boy is being prepared to celebrate his union with O, he is dressed in drag, as a smalltown queen, and as a woman by Madame and Stella. However, he is also attired as a schoolboy, a soldier, and a black man. For the wedding Boy is not in drag; there is \"no priest and no frock, this being an actual ceremony and not some party or parody\" (207).\n\nYet, in practice, few of us want unremitting machismo. Bartlett remarks in _Who Was That Man?_ : \"I too often require of myself and my partners a female nature\u2014sexually available, domestic, a surprisingly good cook and at all times attractively dressed\u2014inhabiting a male exterior\u2014sexually aggressive, potent, financially successful, socially acceptable\" (63\u201364). In his attempt to reconcile the contradictory concurrence of (what he takes as) masculine and feminine norms, Bartlett comes unexpectedly close to the idea of Ulrichs and the sexologists: our souls may be partly female, but the male body is crucial.\n\nOf course, not all gay men became clones; camp and drag continued to thrive; clone got described as a kind of drag. The position was not coherent, but it seemed to suffice, until the mid-1990s when transgender people, by declaring themselves, made the illogicality blatant. Lately, under the regime of Queer (regarded either as a political intervention or as a capitulation to capitalism), almost all styles are welcome. Augmenting the standard menu to \"LGBTT\" prompts a recognition that we still haven't sorted out the relations between sexual orientation and gender identity.\n\n**WHAT HAPPENED AT STONEWALL**\n\nGiven the persistence of confusion over object-choice and gender identity in the thought of the most prestigious theorists of dissident sexuality, it is hardly surprising that gay men and lesbians have not readily clarified these matters. In the late nineteenth century some men, appealing to Walt Whitman, David and Jonathan, and the Theban Band, sought to establish that, so far from being effeminate, same-sex love might be quintessentially masculine. In Germany in the early twentieth century manly homosexuality was celebrated by the group around the journal _Der Eigene_. They abjured the notion that homosexuals were feminine in disposition, reasserting sexuality in chivalric love and the love of friends. In terms of the models I have proposed, they posit males desiring other males, without relinquishing their masculine gender identities:\n\n(c) A man has:| desire-to-be M| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nThey manifest a conventional gender identity alongside a dissident object-choice.\n\nHowever, this was not the dominant ideology. In _Gay New York_ , Chauncey has shown that until the 1930s men were not divided by object-choice, into \"homosexuals\" and \"heterosexuals\": this was not the primary axis of identification. A man displaying a committed feminine manner got called a fairy, but \"the 'man' who responded to his solicitations\u2014no matter how often\u2014was not considered abnormal, a 'homosexual,' so long as he abided by the masculine gender conventions.\" Donald Webster Cory, writing in 1951, cited a report from a U.S. sailor who believed that \"the stranger who performed fellatio\" was \"homosexual,\" but not the man on whom it was performed. \"The performer was a 'fairy.' The compliant sailor, not.\" Still, between 1930 and 1960, gender dissidence is found by David K. Johnson and Allen Drexel to be the organizing principle of gay subculture in Chicago. A similar story is told by Edmund White's friend Lou in _The Beautiful Room Is Empty_ : homosexuals divide into boys, men, and vicious old queens. \"The boy felt a natural affinity to girls, with whom he was always exchanging makeup tips. The man had once fucked girls but now had no further use for them.\" Tragically, \"whoever succumbed to homosexual desire became immediately undesirable.\" In Britain, John Marshall has shown, gender inversion remained the dominant paradigm on into the 1970s; it \"effectively eliminated the need for a homosexual concept.\"\n\nThis analysis has consequences for the mythology of Stonewall. Who, when we liberated ourselves, came out? Not the man who presented himself as inverted, effeminate; he was always visible. The ultimate instance is Quentin Crisp. He says in _The Naked Civil Servant_ (1968) that people such as he \"must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine.\" Crisp was never _not-out_ : continually he is propositioned, harassed, and beaten, on sight and by total strangers; employers and the army reject him out of hand. The distinction between manifest and closeted gay men is urged by Peter Wildeblood, writing with unprecedented boldness after his trial and conviction in 1954: \"Everyone has seen the pathetically flamboyant pansy with the flapping wrists, the common butt of music-hall jokes and public-house stories.\" Such people, evidently, were not hiding. However, Wildeblood adds, \"Most of us are not like that. We do our best to look like everyone else, and we usually succeed.\" The object-choice men strive to distance themselves from the pansies. It is to these men, the ones who managed to look \"like everyone else,\" that the 1970s offered a new identity.\n\nThe United States produces equivalent instances. Michael Bronski observes: while \"most homosexuals could choose to 'pass,' the majority of homosexuals who formed this visible subculture were effeminate men, butch women, obvious queens, and the drags.\" Kenneth Marlowe in a popular book of 1968, _The Male Homosexual_ , distinguishes the \"effeminate\" and the \"masculine\" homosexual. The former, \"because of his physical appearance, is sometimes labelled 'queer' from the start of his life\"\u2014everyone can see at once that he's different. Meanwhile, \"the masculine homosexual,\" according to Marlowe, \"is usually referred to as the latent homosexual, the closet queen.\" Either way, he's not visible; hardly queer at all. Todd Butler, recalling New York in 1960, conjoins out-ness and effeminacy: \"It was unusual for somebody to be fully 'out' and leading a gay lifestyle to be that butch. Usually, if you met somebody who was gay and butch, they were very uptight, closety types and very, very neurotic.\" That sounds like Michael, Donald, and most of the men in Mart Crowley's _Boys in the Band_. Alan can hardly tell that he's crashed a gay party. But he knows about Emory: \"Faggot, Fairy, pansy... queer, cocksucker! I'll kill you, you goddam little mincing, swish! You goddam freak! FREAK! FREAK!\" Emory admits: \"I've known what I was since I was four years old.\" \"Everybody's always known it about _you_ , Emory,\" Michael quips, unhelpfully.\n\nIt is the straight-acting types who had a new opportunity: to come out. The 1970s are often presented as the birth of the modern gay man, his (self-)definition founded purposefully in object-choice, as a consequence of (partial) decriminalization in Britain, the Stonewall Riots, the founding of the Gay Liberation Front and other activist movements, and the burgeoning of a purposefully sexualized gay subcultural economy. The larger outcome was a reversal in the organization of the sex\/gender system. _Homosexual_ , _lesbian_ , and _gay_ got defined in terms of object-choice, and gender identity was subsumed, more or less uneasily, into that. Thus, for instance, we know that drag artistes are not invariably gay, but in practice tend to assume that they are; in _The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_ (Stephan Elliott, 1994), everyone is shocked that Tick (Mitzi) is planning to return to his wife and child.\n\nLesbian awareness was complicated by other priorities in the women's movement; yet, here too, the attack on butch\/femme styles and identities tended to validate object-choice rather than gender dissidence.\n\nThis has made better sense for many people, personally and politically. But, by the same token, people whose primary sense of themselves is strongly founded in gender dissidence\u2014effeminate men, butch women, transvestites, transsexuals\u2014have been marginalized. They have endured the dominance of a sex\/gender model in which they hardly figure, or only as incidental, unintelligible, out of date, embarrassing. Leslie Feinberg in hir novel _Stone Butch Blues_ shows butches being excluded by lesbians in the gay liberation movement.\n\nFor many gay men, the post-Stonewall reliance on object-choice has afforded opportunity for a denial that effeminacy is a necessary part of gayness. Andrew Sullivan is notorious for his insistence that gays are \"virtually normal\"; for him this actually means _not effeminate_. Sullivan denies that he has ever experienced insecurity about this, though he recalls that when he avoided team sports at school a girl did ask him, \"Are you sure you're not really a girl under there?\" Sissy boys are the problem, according to Sullivan. It is they who vindicate right-wingers, suffer identity conflict, and provoke explanations from psychologists. He is excited by the masculine tone of a gay party:\n\nWhile the slim and effeminate hovered at the margins, the center of the dance floor and the stage areas were dedicated to the most male archetypes, their muscles and arrogance like a magnet of self-contempt for the rest. But at the same time, it was hard also not to be struck, as I was the first time I saw it, by a genuine, brazen act of cultural defiance, a spectacle designed not only to exclude but to reclaim a gender, the ultimate response to a heterosexual order that denies gay men the masculinity that is also their own.\n\nThis craven yearning to appease the sex\/gender system that has marginalized us leads Sullivan to boost his manhood with injections of actual testosterone. Apparently this bestows a Nietzschean, Superman buzz: \"What our increasing knowledge of testosterone suggests is a core understanding of what it is to be a man, for better and worse. It is about the ability to risk for good and bad; to act, to strut, to dare, to seize.\" Somewhat defensively, Sullivan puts down gays who can't or won't normalize as \"prone to adult dysfunction and pathology,\" and as \"insecure gay adults\" who \"will always cling, to a greater or lesser extent, to the protections of gender mannerisms.\"\n\nPaul Monette takes a more thoughtful approach in _Halfway Home_. Tom has been assaulted as a child by his father and brother (Brian), both of whom see him as a sissy and a wimp. Still, in his mid-thirties, he is \"a terrible sissy when it comes to crawling things.\" He has internalized this view of himself; indeed, he has made it productive by leaving his hostile, smalltown, Irish\/Italian-Catholic origins and becoming a performance artist in California (outside Malibu). His star turn has been his camp version of Christ on the cross, \"Miss Jesus.\" As he faces death from AIDS, Tom's memories are reactivated when Brian appears, under pressure in a racketeering inquiry, with his wife (Susan) and son (Daniel).\n\nThis turns out to be the opportunity for Tom to revise his relations with manliness. This is accomplished initially through a bond with Daniel (who is seven), founded in Tom's awareness that his own childhood traumas are being reenacted in Daniel by the damaged Brian. Daniel evidently likes being with Tom\u2014a man who is not going to become violent. As they walk together Daniel falls into step; Tom is gratified to be a model of manhood. He comes to realize that manliness is a precarious masquerade: \"there was no special dispensation\" in \"the secret to being a man.\" It was not a natural gift, possessed by his father and brother and withheld from himself, but something continuously improvised and mimicked, \"a waltz on the lip of the void\" (199). This (relative) demystification of manliness frees up Tom's anxieties. He finds he is imitating Brian's \"unconscious swagger,\" and thinks:\n\nThis was how straight boys learnt to be men, mimicking and preening, stimulating the butch gene. As I trotted down in Brian's wake, I thought about Daniel following him and following me. Somewhere there had been a trade-off, gentling my brother and toughening me. Brian stopped at the bottom of the stairs while I hovered a step above him, four inches taller now. And I prayed to the nothing I didn't believe in: _Let the kid have it both ways_. (238; Monette's emphasis)\n\nPerhaps the next generation of men will be able to incorporate something of the sissy.\n\nFor this reader, the determination in _Halfway Home_ to negotiate an acceptable form of manliness betrays a persisting anxiety. Brian doesn't give much ground; excessive hopes appear to be placed in alternative counseling sessions as a way of dealing with his violence toward Daniel. The brothers admit their youthful sexual activities together, though in Brian's case it appears to have been circumstantial and temporary (he was between girlfriends), whereas for Tom it was formative and continuing. \"'You know what I used to think?'\" Brian asks. \"'That I made you gay. Like it was all my fault.' He spilled out a soft self-mocking laugh, and his fingers rustled my hair. 'Like I tempted you'\" (177). This somewhat arrogant thought is not repudiated. The idea seems to be that the men, between them, engender, or anyway foster, the gay boy; he is a by-product of their manly maneuvering, and hence not to be unfairly despised and condemned. There is little room in this for Susan, the wife and mother. As a nonmasculine influence she is barely effective; her protectiveness toward her son leads Tom to compare her to Medea (121). Tom does have a supportive lesbian and gay family of choice, but they are edged to one side while patriarchal business is transacted (compare the emphasis on the brother in Larry Kramer's play _The Normal Heart_ ).\n\nA feeling that Monette is protesting too much is strengthened when Tom manages to prove himself in more traditional fictive manner by disarming a gangster. So the gay sissy is allowed to run with the men, at least up to a point; and, correspondingly, the heteronormative system can be humanized, such that the gay man can love his birth family (as it seems he must), as well as his family of choice. The trouble is that reconciling elements of the sissy with elements of the macho still leaves the true sissy exposed\u2014and, for that matter, the true macho.\n\nWhat _Halfway Home_ does show is that manliness is learned. Again, in Joseph Hansen's novel, _Steps Going Down_ , Cutler meets a young man. \"The boy shakes hands limply, awkwardly, like a little kid who hasn't learned the knack. Or like a girl. Cutler's handshake is strong, manly. His mother made him practice. _A good, firm handshake makes people respect you_.\" Cutler's manly stance projects dominance; the young man may be correspondingly boyish, or even girlish. Masculinity is something boys acquire, if they are lucky. Hence a central dictum in queer theory, as enunciated especially by Judith Butler: _all_ gender is performative. \"Everyone is passing; some have an easier job of it than others,\" Kate Bornstein observes. Again: \"Arnold Schwarzenegger does male drag perfectly, only he doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor about it yet.\"\n\n**THE RETURN OF THE SISSY**\n\nThe triumphant revelation that the gruff-looking man in the hard hat speaks with a high-pitched voice, loves Bette Midler, and wants to be dominated in bed is repeated again and again in gay stories, as though it encapsulated a fatal truth. The persistence of gay male femininity, in the face of such discouragement, indicates that it is fulfilling some important functions in sexual dissidence. My larger thought here is that gender hierarchy is not something that gay men and lesbians have arbitrarily got stuck on: it involves one of the basic structuring ideologies in our societies and, like class and race, it is not going to go away.\n\nWhat makes this topic so complex is the mobility, fluidity, ubiquity, and inexorability of gender typing. Historically, as I tried to show in _The Wilde Century_ , effeminacy didn't always correlate with queerness; in the time of Shakespeare and Milton it meant paying too much attention to women. In the nineteenth century anarchists were termed effeminate, and Jews. Still, today, all kinds of sensitivity, consideration, colorfulness, and exuberance may be stigmatized as failures in masculinity. Writers have often struggled to articulate sensitivity while denying effeminacy. In _A Streetcar Named Desire_ , Blanche says her young husband had \"a softness and tenderness which wasn't like a man's, although he wasn't the least bit effeminate-looking.\" Probably many boys and men who exhibit femininity are mainly concerned to disaffiliate from the grosser aspects of conventional masculinity; they may simply be registering that a real man is not a very nice person.\n\nThese uncertainties about gender may be tracked in John Rechy's writing. In _City of Night_ (1963), the narrator is a male hustler who self-consciously asserts his own macho performance, in contrast to the adoring johns and queens, without admitting his own gayness. This is a precarious stance; one of the narrator's clients rejects him when he leafs through a book: \"'really masculine men don't read!'\" However, the queens come into their own in the later, Mardi Gras chapters. Twenty years later, in _Bodies and Souls_ , Rechy is looking for more positive potential in a reconciliation of masculine and feminine qualities. Billy and Stud are hustlers and presumptively not gay, but an affair develops between them. Stud's manliness is not at issue; he's not even gay, he says. Nor is Billy \"effeminate\"; he objects to being referred to as \"she.\" Notwithstanding, Billy is said to be \"beautiful,\" and Stud \"couldn't think of anyone being that beautiful and not a girl.\" The narrator interprets: \"Billy _was_ beautiful. He had a slender blond body that turned golden instead of tan, eyes so misty at times they looked painted with water colors, and long eyelashes. It was true he was not effeminate\u2014he was gracefully boyish, looking radiantly younger than his eighteen years.\" As Stud begins to fall for Billy, he finds that \"Billy's body was not softly formed; where had he got that idea? It was slim, yes\u2014but very solid looking\" (318). In fact, \"he was becoming more masculine all the time\" (323). So they are worthy of each other. Billy is represented as retaining, miraculously, both the feminine attributes that make him initially attractive, and the masculine attributes that make him an acceptable partner. Still Rechy is unable to get masculinity, femininity, and sexual attraction into the same frame without anxiety and contradiction.\n\nIn the purportedly documentary book _The Sexual Outlaw_ (1977), Rechy's narrative voice assumes a purposeful gay liberationist stance. He asks whether gays are appreciating \"their particular _and varied_ beauty? From that of the transvestite to that of the bodybuilder? The young to the old? The effeminate to the masculine? The athletic to the intellectual?\" He praises queens as \"true hero-heroines of our time, exhibiting more courage for walking one single block in drag than a straight-looking gay to 'come out' on a comfy campus.\" However, Ben Gove points out, the effeminate queens don't get much sex in _The Sexual Outlaw_ ; they are excluded from the masculine world of promiscuous cruising. They appear what they are\u2014left over in the post-Stonewall era which they helped to inaugurate.\n\nWhether it is true that effeminate gays don't get much sex is unclear. Edmund White's writings do not support the idea that the destiny of the effeminate gay man is inevitably lonely. In _The Farewell Symphony_ , he presents his desires as feminine\u2014\"I was so besotted by Kevin. I wanted to be his wife in the most straitlaced of marriages. I wanted to cook his breakfast and bear his babies. I wanted him to be my boy-husband, my baby-master.\" However, Kevin is in love with the handsome Dennis. Nonetheless, White gets plenty of fun, friendship, and sex in diverse roles; _The Farewell Symphony_ has been criticized for excessive reporting of tricks turned. The predicament of and opportunities for the feminine boy are displayed in Joseph Mills's Glasgow story, \"Dreaming, Drag.\" We first see David with his best friend, Joan, a lesbian: he has orange hair, and is wearing a \"working class housewife's coat.\" He doesn't want to be a transsexual: he loves inhabiting the male body, and the male orgasm. On the other hand, he disidentifies with \"the men in macho drag\u2014gay or straight\u2014who were in love with the male physique and all that went with it.\" He is uncomfortable when he realizes that, between these positions, there seems to be \"no place for himself\" (151).\n\nDavid's manner had quite pleased Walter, now his ex-boyfriend: \"He thought being with a camp guy made him more masculine, less gay. He was easing himself into a hetero relationship\" (88). Walter can't stand the stigma of gayness. David gets into a fight and decides that his cuts and bruises suit better with a masculine style, so he attires himself in denim, with a leather jacket and studded belt. \"Clothes make the man,\" he remarks (90). He falls heavily for Billy, who doesn't see him as camp; not that he's against camp, he thinks it very funny: \"'But I don't find it sexually attractive. I mean I like a man\u2014otherwise why be here?'\" (106). David deals with the mismatch by dressing himself in exactly the same clothes and dying his hair the same color as Billy. He finds himself elaborating contradictory fantasies about Billy and taking the \"active\" role in bed. However, Billy doesn't want a twin either. David goes back to feminine styles, abandoning \"'all that macho stuff.... Yes, we need to _complement_ each other'\" (117\u201318; my elision, Mills's emphasis). However, Billy is not convinced. He takes up with a man who has \"'the sort of Clark Kent, well-groomed executive look'\" (123). David is left railing against \"'your little hierarchy of homosexuals... with the just-like-everyone-else-Walter type on top and the deviants like me on the bottom'\" (130; my elision). He exclaims:\n\n\"God what a freak. Billy's right. I would never go with someone as effeminate looking as me.\"... Handsome, masculine gay guys don't fall in love with camp gay guys. _Camp_ gay guys don't fall in love with their own kind.... David had tried and tried again to be \"normal,\" but he resigned himself to the fact that camp was normal for him most of the time, whatever the consequences. (138; my elisions)\n\nHowever, it is not true that David doesn't attract men, and it is doubtful whether Billy's Clark Kent can turn into Superman. David remains irrepressible, like the divas he admires, and lives to fight another day.\n\nIn Leo Bersani's view, the matter is structural: as Quentin Crisp said, gay men are attracted sexually by machismo, not camp. Bersani does admit that not all gays are the same, but he is committed to a Freudian supposition that sexuality must be reducible to a binary gender structure. This leaves gay men desiring from the position of the woman, while entertaining a simultaneous and contradictory wish to imitate \"those desiring subjects with whom we have been officially identified: other men.\" With heterosexual women, therefore, we have (reluctant) identity; with men only (respectful) imitation. As Patrick Paul Garlinger suggests, Bersani's celebration of the subversive impetus of the man with his legs in the air may be designed to manage the stigma of effeminacy. While Bersani's organic model leads him ultimately to the idea of gay men as feminine and desiring the masculine, mine anticipates also a symmetry. If\n\nA man has:| desire-to-be F| desire-for M  \n---|---|---\n\nthen it is at least plausible that there is a corresponding figure:\n\nA man has:| desire-to-be M| desire-for F  \n---|---|---\n\nIn theory at least, there is a matching partner for almost all positions.\n\nSocial surveys indicate that there certainly are men who experience desire-for camp and cross-dressing men; Tim Bergling in his book _Sissyphobia_ finds some; the \"sissy boys\" interviewed by Richard Green report sexual partners. Gove concurs in respect of Miss Destiny in Rechy's _City of Night_ , and mentions the films _Stonewall_ (Nigel Finch, 1995) and _The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_. Bernadette in the latter had a boyfriend who recently died (the boyfriend had a thing about transsexuals\u2014\"a sort of bent status symbol\"); at the end Bernadette teams up with Bob. Divine and Our Lady of the Flowers attract masculine types in Genet's novel. In the film comedy _To Die For_ (Peter Mackenzie Litten, 1994), Simon loves and desires his camp partner Mark, in life and in death, but is blocked in the expression of his feelings by his relationship with his father. We are given to understand that Albin in _La Cage aux Folles_ (Edouard Molinaro, 1978) and Albert in _The Birdcage_ (Mike Nichols, 1996) have been beauties in their time.\n\nEddie is young, innocent, dreamy, and effeminate in _The Fruit Machine_ (scripted by Frank Clarke, released on video in North America as _Wonderland_ ; Philip Saville, 1988). He watches musicals and romances on video with his mother, is given to what she calls \"girly mannerisms,\" and is victimized by his father. He is plainly in love with his streetwise friend and protector, Michael, who regards himself as a straight rent boy and Eddie as a \"best mate.\" They are both sixteen. When Eddie approaches the point of a declaration, Michael is embarrassed and shuts him up. Eddie claims them for femininity: they're \"just a pair of little queenettes,\" he says. But Michael counters: \"No we're not, we're lads, we're young men.\" Gove remarks the division between \"gushy queen and defensive lad,\" and that the film assumes the latter to be the more sexy. However, the viewer's sense of Eddie's erotic potential is probably enhanced when, after appearing somewhat awkward hitherto, he swims gracefully among dolphins. Michael finally admits his love when Eddie is dying.\n\nIn some of these instances, femininity may be attractive because of a conflation with boyishness. A choice of an older man between his wife and a camp boyfriend figures in John Hopkins's play _Find Your Way Home_. However, this is not always so. An older feminine person may be protective (motherly), to either a masculine or a feminine boy. This happens in the film _Stonewall_ , where Matty Dean, the new boy in town, is drawn both to the masculine, assimilationist Ethan, and the established drag queen, La Miranda. In Harvey Fierstein's _Torch Song Trilogy_ , camp drag-artiste Arnold is attractive both to Ed, who is older and so straight-acting that he insists on cultivating his affair with Laurel, and to Alan, who is a young model and hustler. Arnold is obscurely diffident about the relationship with Alan, and the text evades its outcome through the boy's violent death; we may conclude that fate is against such a liaison. Arnold goes on to foster and adopt a teenage gay boy, and the return of Ed, finally unable to resist Arnold, constitutes an explicit family of choice with Ed as father and Arnold as wife and mother. This secures an upbeat ending, though Arnold has to fight off his own homophobic mother, who assumes that his interest in the boy must be predatory (these homosexuals will stop at nothing). From a queer viewpoint, it is perhaps disappointing that Arnold's integrity depends on the implication that sexual love between a man of thirty and a boy of sixteen (now the age of consent in England) must, _by definition_ , be out of the question.\n\nIt would hardly be surprising if the attractions of male femininity were understated in our cultures. Richard Goldstein may, in many cases, be right: \"butch is the face many gay men show to each other, but not the one they reveal to their lovers.\" Gays may be reluctant to admit the attractions of being the feminine man, and the rewards of desiring him, but he is not without his admirers. Fergus vomits in _The Crying Game_ (Neil Jordan, 1992) when he sees Dil's penis\u2014the sign that the femininity that had attracted him is attached to a male body. Notwithstanding, Fergus is drawn to Dil. To keep him safe Fergus makes him look like a boy and hides him away; he says it's their honeymoon night, and surely a sexual act takes place (nothing less would placate Dil, and in the ensuing scene it is morning, Dil is asleep, and Fergus looks decidedly pensive). At the end, Dil visits Fergus in prison, along with the other wives and girlfriends though in more exuberant style. Dil's idea, for one, is that they are an ongoing couple: \"I'm counting the days.\" \"Stand By Your Man,\" the music comes up. To take care of Dil is in his nature, Fergus says.\n\nIn summary, if our dominant story encodes male femininity as misfortune, we have also a counter discourse, in which the feminine man may be a turn-on. The problem, I suspect, is not that he is unattractive, but that he has difficulty in establishing a belief in his own worth, in the face of the gross stigma that attaches in our societies to effeminacy. In _A Boy's Own Story_ , Edmund observes that it is his own dislike of himself, endorsed by the prevailing ideology, that impedes his love life. \"I see now that what I wanted was to be loved by men and to love them back but not to be a homosexual.\" The narrator in White's later work, _The Farewell Symphony_ , observes: \"what the Stonewall uprising changed was not love so much as self-esteem, upon which mutual love depends.\" In White's _The Married Man_ , Austin attracts a partner who is masterful to the point of sustaining a conventionally sexual marriage.\n\nWhile there may be a symmetry, whereby a man with desire-to-be F is matched by a man with desire-for F, the person in the subordinate position is likely to be the more vulnerable. He puts himself at the greater risk, psychologically, when he offers himself in a relationship. The problem\u2014men with an element of dissident gender identity getting to feel good about themselves\u2014still has a long way to go. James Kenneth Melson, informing his mother of his positive AIDS diagnosis, reassures her: \"'Mom, to me my sexual preference is only that. I'm not a fag, sissy or queen.'\" AIDS we can cope with, effeminacy is beyond the pale.\n\n**TRANSGENDER**\n\nThe prospect of rewarding sexual encounters may not be the priority for gender-dissident people. Todd, age seventeen: \"That's the basic problem. I want to be a woman _before_ I want to have sexual relations with a man.\" Trans people have good reason to distinguish desire-to-be and desire-for. \"Gender identity for me answers the question of who I am. Sexual preference answers the question who do I want to be romantically or sexually involved with,\" Kate Bornstein declares.\n\nIn other societies there are conventional roles for transgender people. The _fa'affines_ of Samoa are apparently biological men who dress and largely live as women; they are recognized and reared as girls and appreciated as domestics and entertainers. Their sexual partners, they claim, are 99 percent of Samoan men. Some use them casually, some are ready for relationships. Young, articulate fa'affines have visited Australia and know that in other countries gay men sleep together. However, fa'affines don't have sex with each other; they are sisters; that would be two queens. They classify themselves as \"women,\" and don't accept that the terms _gay_ , _transvestite_ , and _transsexual_ fit them. Again: _skesana_ boys, in the single-sex context of mine-labor in South Africa, glory in their femininity and assume that their roles will be confirmed by their masculine partners:\n\nMARTIN: I think in a relationship the woman must attend to her man. Like a woman she must clean the house, and he must be treated like a man.\n\nTHAMI: There must be a \"man\" and a \"woman\" in a relationship. A man must act mannish in his behaviour and his talks and walks. But a female must be queenish in every way.\n\nThe _skesana_ (like a wife) gains protection and favors in a violent and uncertain system; also, Hugh McLean and the late Linda Ngcobo add, he \"attains pleasure by flirting with power.\"\n\nThere is no comparable framework for men in Britain and the United States for men who want to be women, but there is the amazing possibility, through medicine and psychiatry, of gender reassignment. In the face of the priority accorded to object-choice in our cultures, activists have put transgender on the agenda. Leslie Feinberg in _Stone Butch Blues_ and Kate Bornstein in _Gender Outlaw_ have published powerful and successful books based on their experience. Fiction on this theme includes _Trumpet_ by Jackie Kay, _The Danish Girl_ by David Ebershoff, and _James Miranda Barry_ by Patricia Duncker. Barry is the subject also of Rachel Holmes's study, _Scanty Particulars_. We have the disconcerting photographs of Del LaGrace Volcano. Films in general release include: _To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_ (Beeban Kidron, 1995), _Different for Girls_ (Richard Spence, 1996), and _Ma vie en rose_ (Alain Berliner, 1997). I've already mentioned _The Crying Game_ , and _The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_. Typically, these films depict transvestites and transsexuals enduring hostility and winning over ordinary, decent folk.\n\nAcademic studies have appeared, and the popular media are close behind. By early 1999, Polly Toynbee was writing in _Radio Times_ (February 13\u201319) that \"programme after programme seems to be obsessed with people of confused, indeterminate or wrong sex.\" She mentions a transsexual prostitute in the BBC1 series _Paddington Green_ , a transsexual in Granada's soap opera _Coronation Street_ , and a program in the BBC1 science series, _QED_. \"There is a questioning and a redefining of sex roles going on and these cases are just the most extreme manifestations of a more general and diverse debate,\" Toynbee avers. Subsequently, Channel Four has presented a very positive, two-hour view of four female-to-male trans people in different circumstances ( _Make Me a Man_ : Katie Buchanan, 2002), and in 2003 broadcast an American documentary, _Sex Change_ , showing the details of gender-reassignment surgery. Halberstam reports the interest of American talk shows in drag kings, but is disappointed by the sensational treatment. To be sure, visibility is not necessarily power\u2014otherwise, scantily clad young women draped across automobiles would be ruling the world.\n\nThe trans phenomenon challenges customary ideas about how gender and sexuality may interact. It is not just that a male-to-female transsexual may desire either a man or a woman, or both. When a person who has been assigned at birth a male gender experiences desire-for a male, _while declaring hirself to have desire-to-be a female_ , it is impossible to say, definitively, whether that person has made a same-sex or a cross-sex object-choice. It depends on whether hir story about hirself is credited.\n\nTransgender invites a reconsideration of _The Well of Loneliness_ , which has traditionally been regarded as a classic account of \"the mannish lesbian.\" Stephen does have desire-for other women, but her main anguish and affirmation resides in her desire-to-be male. \"'Do you think that I _could_ be a man, supposing I thought very hard\u2014or prayed?'\" she asks her father. Radclyffe Hall is drawing on ideas from the sexologists\u2014she persuaded Ellis to write a preface. Jay Prosser suggests that Hall prefers Ellis, Ulrichs, and Krafft-Ebing to psychoanalysis, and also to the kinds of lesbian self-concept being developed by Natalie Barney and Ren\u00e9e Vivienne, because they focus more on the invert and thereby fit better with her own project. Stephen's father has been reading the sexologists, and it produces in him the humane sympathy that Hall wanted in her own readers. However, it remains unclear how far Stephen's desire-to-be male is due to her upbringing (her father treats her like a boy and her mother rejects her), or congenital (in her physique, \"her nature\"; 29\u201330, 165). Both versions can be supported from the text.\n\nWhile Stephen's condition is entirely mysterious to her mother and herself, all the neighbors can see it: \"they feared her; it was fear that aroused their antagonism. In her they instinctively sensed an outlaw, and theirs was the task of policing nature\" (123). What they see is aberrant gender. A hotel porter can discuss it with his wife: \"'Have you noticed her, Alice? A queer-looking girl, very tall, wears a collar and tie\u2014you know, mannish. And she seems just to change her suit of an evening\u2014puts on a dark one\u2014never wears evening dress.... I dunno, there's something about her\u2014anyhow I'm surprised she's got a young man.'\" (181; my elision). This last inference is derived from the fact that Stephen is watching out for a special letter; it doesn't occur to the porter that she might be homosexual and looking for a letter from a woman. Stephen's condition is, at once, utterly opaque and devastatingly obvious, virtually inconceivable and cruelly policed. While she has to be ignorant in order to emphasize her bewilderment and perhaps her innocence, her transgression has to be communicated as the basis for her social rejection.\n\nThis rejection is grounded in her masculine appearance; her sex life is scarcely inferred. It is her body and clothes that are the offense, not her choice of partner; even the dog recognizes Stephen's maleness and longs for \"that queer, intangible something about her that appealed to the canine manhood in him\" (382). As Laura Doan has demonstrated, this failure to register sexual dissidence is plausible historically since, before _The Well_ , boyish and mannish garb did not register any one, stable effect; if anything, they signified modernity. It was Hall's accomplishment to change this.\n\nMary, on the other hand, is all right because she looks feminine. A fashionable hostess takes a great fancy to her, but sees in Stephen \"only an unsexed creature of pose, whose cropped head and whose dress were pure affectation; a creature who aping the prerogatives of men, had lost all the charm and grace of a woman\" (465). The fact that Stephen and Mary are both lesbians hardly figures. Halberstam remarks that _The Well_ manifests an epistemology not of the closet (for Hall, like Crisp, was never not-out) but of the wardrobe: male clothing is fetishized as the badge of gender. The tragedy is that Stephen is not allowed fully to inhabit that desire-to-be by becoming the master of Morton Hall and protector of hir partner.\n\nSo with the culminating affair with Mary. Stephen's initial doubt concerns whether she should respond to the innocent love of a younger woman who is not herself aware of inversion. (This dilemma recurs in Mary Renault's novel, _The Charioteer_.) The ensuing predicament, however, is that having accepted Mary's love Stephen declines to take her seriously. Stephen manages their joint affairs and gains success as a writer, but Mary has nothing to do. She has no work; she cannot go into Society, or to Stephen's family home; Stephen doesn't share her anxieties with her\u2014hardly trusts her to go out by herself. In short, Stephen envisions herself and Mary on a husband-and-wife model, and hence their downfall. It is because they cannot play that game convincingly that Stephen pushes Mary into an opportune marriage. This was not the inevitable outcome for the invert: Hall herself seduced two women away from wedlock.\n\nThe confusions that invest _The Well_ , we may suppose, were needed and desired. We should not be looking for the right reading, but observing how this protean text has been deployed for diverse purposes by diverse constituencies. Esther Newton highlights its importance in the mid-twentieth century to women who valued the overt sexuality of the mannish lesbian as pointing beyond the Victorian romantic friendship. The dominant ideology, meanwhile, was ready to deploy gender dissidence to stigmatize object-choice, and vice versa. Today _The Well_ is still available to new constituencies. While Prosser discovers there a depiction of transsexuality, Halberstam finds a portrait of the \"masculine woman.\" Comparable arguments may be developed in respect of Gertrude Stein: \"Though she's been widely regarded as a lesbian, the fact is that she saw herself, in essence, as a man,\" Jean E. Mills observes.\n\n\"'Is that a boy or a girl?'\" people keep asking about young Jess in Leslie Feinberg's _Stone Butch Blues_. Like Neil Bartlett's Boy in _Ready to Catch Him_ , Jess finds hirself in a bar, where s\/he is supported and appreciated as a baby butch. The downside is vulnerability to raids and gross assaults by the police. Jess, like other he-shes, works in a factory, but takes up with Theresa, who has a clerical job in a university and knows about the Daughters of Bilitis, the _Ladder_ , Stonewall, and lesbian and gay pride. However, butches and femmes are not welcome among liberationist lesbians, and Jess doesn't feel there is a place for her in the women's movement. It is no simpler for Edna, a femme: \"'I know I'm not a straight woman, and lesbians won't accept me as one of them. I don't know where to go to find the butches I love or the other femmes. I feel completely misunderstood. I feel like a ghost, too, Jess'\" (214\u201315).\n\nThese new difficulties for the he-she are reverberations from the major shift I have been discussing in this chapter\u2014the moment when gender identity is decisively superseded by object-choice as the key category for understanding sexual dissidence. Like Crisp, these women appear to be left over from the old conceptual regime, where gender dissidence was the main factor. Jess in fact seems not to get much sex; everyone is too exhausted just keeping going, and stone butches hate to be touched.\n\nTo resolve the indeterminacy Jess decides to begin hormone treatments with a view to passing as a guy. Theresa cannot tolerate this: \"'I'm a femme, Jess. I want to be with a butch.... I don't want to be with a man, Jess. I won't do it'\" (151; my elision). With the treatments, Jess passes as a man quite effectively. Hir problem is that s\/he now has no social context: intimacy threatens personal exposure and lovemaking seems meretricious. S\/he has to leave a job when hir gender history is revealed. S\/he stops the hormone treatment; \"Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes\" (224). Prosser is disappointed at Jess's turning back. It shows two things: that Jess is not at home in any version of hir body\u2014radical indeterminacy is hir fate; and that society has difficulty accommodating a transsexual even when s\/he is trying to regularize hir gender.\n\nTransgender promises to unsettle established items on the agenda of queer theory and activism. The dialectic of passing versus coming out works differently for trans people, who confirm that they are indeed the person whom they believe themselves to be when they pass undetected in public. Drawing attention to their special gender characteristics defeats the purpose. However, it is difficult to build a movement when its members keep vanishing into the crowd. Sandy Stone has urged transsexuals, instead, to come out _as transsexual_ , foregrounding thereby the constructedness of all gender categories. Stone actually has two main arguments. One is that passing forecloses \"the possibility of authentic relationships.\" This was Jess's problem: she felt unable to present hirself to other people\u2014until she wrote the book, that is. The other is that by aspiring to be essentially a woman or essentially a man, the trans person colludes with the gender system that has oppressed hir in the first place; whereas refusing to pass calls into visibility and mistrust the criteria that delimit the binary sex\/gender system.\n\nThat camp and drag may have potential to subvert the sex\/gender system has often been proposed, most famously by Judith Butler, who seemed to suggest in _Gender Trouble_ that \"drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity.\" Butler's insistence that gender can never afford stable identities is surely right. However, there are two main problems with arguments that conceptual instability leads to insight.\n\nFirst, such theory, which is a kind of poststructuralism, has supposed too readily that to demonstrate indeterminacy in a dominant construct is to expose its weakness and its vulnerability to subversion. In practice, gay pastiche and its excesses may be all too easily pigeonholed as illustrating that lesbians and gay men can only mimic true manliness and womanliness. Dominant ideologies are able to turn almost anything to their advantage; that is the sign of their dominance. Whether an instance is subversive or incorporative has to be assessed in its particular contexts. The Stonewall queens instigated gay liberation not because they were camp or wore drag\u2014there was nothing new about that\u2014but because they fought the police.\n\nSecond, many individuals are already having a difficult time with their gender identity, and don't want their mannerisms co-opted into a political argument. This point is made by Prosser, who emphasizes that many trans people experience their gender \"precisely as a disorder, a physically embodied dis-ease or dysphoria that dis-locates the self from bodily home and to which sex reassignment _does_ make all the difference.\" Transsexual passing is like gay coming out in one respect: it is not a once-and-for-all accomplishment: it may have to be renewed many times each day. Prosser calls for a \"politics of home\" which \"would not disavow the value of belonging as the basis for livable identity.\"\n\nBelonging in the gender system is not the resolution that is offered in _Stone Butch Blues_. Jess reaches a stance of peace and productivity not by changing her body or her attire, but by finding other sex and gender dissidents in New York's West Village in the queer 1980s. Despite continuing horrific street violence, s\/he finds acceptance and purpose in a new world of bookshops, drag queens, farmers' markets, Christmas, other ethnicities, AIDS campaigning, people who can talk about how they hurt and need, a gay rally where s\/he feels able to speak about gender, and a future as a political activist. In a final dream Jess envisages a new world in which innumerable people of indeterminate gender are happy together. However, the message for the present seems to be: if you want to be different, find an alternative scene. Don't try to make your home in Middle America. The dangers are grimly confirmed in _The Brandon Teena Story_ (Susan Musca and Greta Olafsdottir, 1998), and _Boys Don't Cry_ (Kimberly Peirce, 1999).\n\n**BOYS WILL BE BOYS**\n\nEve Sedgwick has warned against uncoupling homosexuality and effeminacy\u2014\"effeminophobia,\" she calls it. \"After all, 'everyone already knows' that cross-dressing usually at least alludes to homosexuality\": culturally they belong together. Further, the persecuted \"effeminate boy\" is left without the support of adult gays, who perhaps eschew him as an embarrassing remnant of their own childhood trauma. Sedgwick is right to mistrust the motives of gay men who would jettison effeminacy, but the logical and experiential impetus of transgender has surely justified the isolating of gender identity as a category. A task now is to avoid any consequent marginalizing of yet other groups. Some butch\/femme women have said to me that they experience, in the current emphasis on transsexuality, a de-legitimization\u2014an imputation that butches are settling for a halfway position, as if they lacked the courage of their convictions.\n\nMeanwhile, straight cultures today make their own stories out of our lives. A recent study of sexual bullying in an English secondary school finds that boys regarded as insufficiently masculine are called \"gay\" and \"poof.\" However, they are _not_ thereby supposed to be homosexual; the idea that real homosexuals might actually exist in the school is greeted with incredulity. \"Nearly all the boys had knowledge of the existence of homosexuality but could not relate this knowledge to their school experience or people whom they might one day meet.\" In this setting, \"gay\" signals only gender anomaly; the boys are using it to support their concern with male bonding.\n\nThe same case is put by the misogynist, homophobic, and popular white rapper, Eminem:\n\n\"Faggot\" to me doesn't necessarily mean \"gay person.\" \"Faggot\" to me means \"pussy,\" \"cissy.\" If you're a man, be a man, know what I'm saying? That's the worst thing you can say to a man. It's like calling him a girl, whether he's gay or not. Growing up, me and my friends, \"faggot\" was a common word, like \"you're being a fucking fag, man.\" Nobody really thought \"gay person.\" I don't give a shit about gay men. If they wanna be gay, then that's their fucking business.\n\nIn both these accounts, actual gay boys are invisible. The boy who suspects that he _is_ gay is not just stigmatized; the compensations of gay belonging and subcultural resources are withheld from him. Wendy Wallace confirms that _gay_ has become a general term of bullying abuse for any outsider in schools, while retaining the link with its homophobic roots. Ten-year-old Damilola Taylor was repeatedly taunted at school with the word \"gay\" before being killed in a knife attack. In _The Laramie Project_ , Mois\u00e9s Kaufman's play about the death of Matthew Shepard, the murderer says Matthew looked \"like a queer. Such a queer dude.... Yeah, like a fag, you know?\" We know.\n\nIn propounding a primary distinction between gender identity and object-choice, my goal is not to interfere in the lived experience of people; this is not a call to individuals to sort out who they want to be. Rather, I am hoping to contribute to a better analysis of what we have been doing. The case for retheorizing the extant combinations of gender identity and same-sex passion rests not on an attempt to tidy up desire, but on enabling diverse peoples to respect themselves and each other. If there have been tensions among sexual dissidents\u2014caricatures, appropriations, repudiations\u2014that is because we are accustomed to constructing sex\/gender identities contradistinctively. Reassessing these processes may help us to rebuild a more elaborate dissident coalition, beyond binary organizations of difference. The rest of this book is about ways of reading sexuality that are not organized primarily around gender difference. Yet gender, we will see, proves remarkably persistent.\n**6**\n\n**AGE**\n\n**BOYS AND EMBARRASSMENT**\n\nIn Armistead Maupin's novel _The Night Listener_ , Gabriel is embarrassed about the age disparity between himself and his partner, Jess. Fifteen years is \"not that big a difference,\" Gabriel says and, anyway, because they came out at roughly the same time they are \"the same gay age.\" This idea offers to release them from the taint of age hierarchy and narcissism: \"This meant we'd reached the same level in our personal growth... which was far more pertinent to our compatibility than our chronological difference.\" Gabriel calls it \"my marriage\" (4).\n\nHowever, hierarchy has not in fact been irrelevant; it has informed their sexual practice. Gabriel remarks that it was a big turn-on when Jess would gaze up at him \"with slavish devotion. Or he'd work my nipples like a ravenous baby, murmuring, 'Sir, yessir, yessir,' until I came with a fury\" (50). Actually Gabriel is too nice and cuddly for too much of that; an earlier relationship foundered because he was unable to play \"The Great Dark Man\" (80). Now Jess has left Gabriel, partly because he is not going to die soon of AIDS after all, partly because he has been getting into a rough, more manly, leather scene\u2014shaving off his \"baby-chick hair,\" growing a beard. Gabriel feels \"old and disconnected\" (51). Suddenly he sees Jess as \"closer to middle age than to the soft-featured boy I'd fallen in love with\" (211). A pattern emerges: previously Gabriel had a relationship with Wayne, who was at least ten years younger: \"the grownup boy who had brought me childhood again.\" Gabriel confesses to \"youthful longing\": his ultimate pain is that he'll \"never be strong enough, never be handsome enough, never be young enough, to really be a man among men\" (132).\n\nThe age hierarchy of Gabriel and Jess correlates with class hierarchy, for Gabriel was already a celebrated gay broadcaster. Here too Gabriel has indulged in an element of disavowal. \"Until now our friends had been largely mutual; we had cultivated them together as couples often do,\" he says; \"Jess, after all, had been my satellite for ten years without complaint\" (51). The unremarked discrepancy between \"mutual\" and \"satellite\" marks Gabriel's reluctance to acknowledge that his \"marriage\" has been founded in inequality.\n\nThis scenario is close to Maupin's own experience, as may be seen in a television interview in which he and Terry Anderson present themselves as the ideal couple, devoted to coping with Terry's anticipated death from AIDS. Will and Jamie constitute a comparably symmetrical couple in Maupin's story, \"Coming Home\": they say the same things, laugh the same way, sound the same on the phone, speak of themselves as married. The age disparity is put at just five years, and Jamie has an independent occupation (coppersmith), whereas Jess manages Gabriel's affairs. (Will and Jamie stories are claimed in _The Night Listener_ as disguised autobiographical writing by Gabriel; 18). If, in retrospect at least, these versions of himself and his partners appear a tad manipulative and self-deceiving, in the novel Maupin confronts this thought, allowing us to see that the relationship had not really been equal and, indeed, had been experienced as lopsided and limiting by Terry\/Jamie\/Jess.\n\nGabriel's other main relationship in _The Night Listener_ provokes another anxiety about age hierarchy. Pete, a thirteen-year-old who has been intensively abused and has AIDS, strikes up a phone dialogue, founded in his admiration for Gabriel's broadcasts. \"'I guess he sort of has a thing about me,'\" Gabriel admits (39). Gabriel becomes equally involved; they get to use the terms \"Son\" and \"Dad\" (uppercase). Other people are suspicious, especially his reactionary father: \"'Well... you're a middle-aged man, and he's... well, people could get the wrong idea, that's all.'\" This facilitates Gabriel's spirited defense: \"'The boy needs love. You don't have to be straight to do that'\" (70\u201371; Maupin's pauses). Surely this is right, but its location in _The Night Listener_ suggests Maupin's determination to establish that, even if he has to concede that his partnerships have been organized around hierarchies of age and class, this doesn't make him a pedophile. Yet he is prepared to acknowledge \"a distinct resemblance\" in his way of relating to Jess (lover) and Pete (quasi son; 182). As it transpires, he is protected by another doubt, as to whether there could actually be such a boy; perhaps he is an invention\u2014the novel doesn't resolve this. These are awkward topics\u2014the age of consent in several European countries is fourteen. _The Night Listener_ discloses two embarrassments around age hierarchy: that it is immature and can't last, and that it is ultimately pedophilic. Gabriel, left alone at the end, questions the assumption that one must get a long-term relationship to lead a dignified and contented life. Perhaps the kind of partnership he can envisage will necessarily be immature; he might live better by himself.\n\nI distinguished _gender difference_ and _gender complementarity_ in chapter 2. The former is founded in (relative) difference of gender; the latter is founded in similarity of gender, but characterized by difference within that. The gender complementarity model is founded in similarity of gender, but characterized by difference within that. In chapter 3, on fantasy, I showed how the two models may be substituted and conflated. Age constitutes one of the key hierarchies in the sex\/gender system as it is lived in our societies. It is an inevitable factor in the first power structure that all of us experience: a child with adult caregivers. Without it the infant cannot survive and grow as a human creature. Age difference affords a hierarchy that may be used protectively. We should expect it to figure intensely in our psychic lives, and not to be confined to particular circumstances, such as same-sex communities or the coming-out process. The power distribution in the age\/youth binary structure may seem less obvious than the others: notoriously, an older man can make a fool of himself over a young man, or a young woman. Notwithstanding, class for class and race for race, older people control far more wealth and institutional power than younger people. It is because this pattern may be disrupted in our societies by a premium upon youthful beauty that it gets so much attention.\n\nEve Sedgwick observes, shrewdly, that Wilde, who acquired after the trials the representative role of aesthetical, dandified, and effeminate queer, seems not to have thought of himself or his partners as inverted in gender:\n\nWilde's own eros was most closely tuned to the note of the pederastic love in process of being superseded\u2014and, we may as well therefore say, radically misrepresented\u2014by the homo\/hetero imposition.... his desires seem to have been structured intensely by the crossing of definitional lines\u2014of age, milieu, initiatedness, and physique, most notably.\n\nWhat is surprising here is Sedgwick's rather sudden assertion that such \"pederastic love [was] in process of being superseded.\" David Halperin not only takes this alleged supersession for granted, he sees little reason to regret it:\n\nAlthough love, emotional intimacy, and tenderness are not necessarily absent from the [age-structured] relationship, the distribution of erotic passion and sexual pleasure is assumed to be more or less lopsided, with the older, \"active\" partner being the _subject_ of desire and the recipient of the greater share of pleasure from a younger partner who figures as a sexual _object_ , feels no comparable desire, and derives no comparable pleasure from the contact (unless he is an invert or pathic...). The junior partner's reward must therefore be measured out in currencies other than pleasure, such as praise, assistance, gifts, or money.\n\nThis sounds to me at each point unnecessarily disapproving: in the marginalizing of intimacy in such a liaison, in the discrediting of the boy's desire, and in the assumption that genuine sexual pleasure is independent of factors such as praise and assistance. Halperin's emphases place him firmly within the dominant ideology, which prizes (purportedly) egalitarian relations. If, however, as I have suggested, age-disparate relationships are about loving versions of oneself\u2014who one is, who one was, who one would like to be\u2014they surely afford far-reaching potential for rewarding, interpersonal development.\n\nGiven their debt to Foucault, it is possible that Sedgwick and Halperin have been encouraged by a certain strand in his work to expect that models of sexuality will define, and be defined by, an epoch, characterized by distinct modes of thought, with change occurring through a sequence of large-scale epistemological shifts. Cultural materialists, drawing upon Raymond Williams, are more likely to stress uneven development, setting subordinate, residual, and emergent formations alongside dominant ones. These concepts allow that diverse models may be in play at any given time; we may identify one as dominant and another as subordinate or emergent.\n\nAge hierarchy must be profoundly embarrassing if even queer theorists want to distance themselves from it. Indeed, in today's metropolitan sex\/gender system, it is freighted with implications of immaturity, narcissism, effeminacy, pedophilia, exploitation, and humiliation. These disturbing factors are founded in relations between age and youth in society at large, where younger people are more often credited with sexual attractiveness, whereas older people often have more economic, political, and social resources. Age hierarchy therefore invites stigmatization as merely instrumental on both sides, in contrast to the reciprocity attributed to age-matched relations. The disrespect accorded age-disparate relations is evident, Simon LeVay and Elisabeth Nonas remark, in the freedom other gay men feel to court the younger partner, while age-matched couples are accorded respectful space, and a hint of the sanctity of marriage.\n\nIndeed, such is the dominance of the egalitarian model that age disparity may actually appear more defensible when it is instrumental. By this I mean that it is more acceptable (slightly) for a youngster to allow it to be supposed that he is using an older man to find his way around the scene, or because he gets taken to the opera, than it is for him to declare that he is attracted and devoted to an older person. Correspondingly, it may be more suitable for the older man to be perceived as exploitative\u2014on to a good thing\u2014than for him to appear to take the boy seriously as a partner. It can work, Edmund White's narrator avers in _The Married Man_ , if you get the chemistry right. Austin, unfortunately, \"was incapable of picking out the talented tenth, the blessed exception, that nearly unique boy who admired experience and accomplishment more than an uncreased face and a tympanum-tight tummy. Nor could he spot that one guy in a hundred who was age-blind and didn't judge another man as a commodity.\"\n\nThis chapter dwells upon the impediments in age difference; my habitual mode is critical, and inclined to discover difficulties. Notwithstanding, we have many invocations of the joys of age-disparate liaisons. Some of the deceptively diffident poems of Gregory Woods celebrate such liaisons, appealing sometimes to the gay tradition\u2014Orpheus, Alexander, Whitman, Wilde, Rimbaud, Henry James. This untitled, twelve-line poem finds the poet on the island of Sirmio (I deduce), where the ancient Roman lyricist had a villa:\n\nUnder where Catullus\n\ntoyed with reality\n\nin his cushioned saloons\n\na decorum of very\n\nreasonable cabins\n\noversees the bathers.\n\nBut we beyond the rocks,\n\na slippery broker\n\nof boyhood and I\n\nwith water up trunks down\n\nto our knees, negotiate\n\nthe space between our ages.\n\nCatullus's ancient, luxurious villa was above; the modern, decent cabins are below, as if policing the beach scene. But the poet and his boy have located a third place, beyond the rocks. The imagery has a financial edge; perhaps money is being discussed. Yet the scenario is not primarily about money; the boy is slippery because of his wet skin, not dishonesty, and their trunks are down, not their futures. It is age disparity and sexual attraction that are being negotiated, as they once were by Catullus and his boys. One way or another, we will find a space.\n\n**ADJUSTMENTS**\n\nI discussed Paul Monette's novel _Halfway Home_ in chapter 5. Tom, the narrator, forges a great relationship with his nephew, Daniel, a classic desire-to-be: \"I noticed how he set his pace to mine as we walked across to the store. I would have done anything for him just then, for he made me feel like I was a fellow to be emulated, as he studied his way to becoming a man\" (139). Monette makes the boy as young as he can, given the kind of sensitivity and awareness that he wants him to have, and thus unavailable for sexual advances (he is seven). Nonetheless, Tom is fearful that he will be perceived as corrupting Daniel. He comes upon him doing a jigsaw puzzle he has found in the house: the picture is of Michelangelo's statue of David. Tom is terrified that Daniel's parents might enter and suppose that it was his idea. (Indeed, Susan is very suspicious and aggressive.) \"Instantly I knew, sitting like a giant beside this little boy, what I was really afraid of. That Daniel would turn out gay, and they would blame me and curse my infected ghost.\" And this was \"the old self-hatred\": \"Because what I really meant was that I didn't _want_ him to be gay, to run that gauntlet of misery and solitude. Where the hell was all my pride that had marched in a hundred parades?\" Meanwhile Tom, against his expectations, reorients his own age allegiance. He falls in love with Gray, the older man who has been quietly protecting him. \"His being fifty had no downside; he was simply a full-grown man. And lying there lazily under the comforter, I took the most wanton joy in being the younger one\" (156).\n\nIn Jack Dickson's Glasgow thriller, _Oddfellows_ , Joe (aged thirty-one) is in turn the younger and the older partner. He feels indebted to Billy, who gave him a job and a place to live when he was thrown out of the army. Billy is a club owner, engaged in endless negotiations with other entrepreneurs, and with the police (over drugs and murder). He demands brutal sexual episodes, but this power play suits Joe, whose fantasy investments center upon being humiliated and beaten in the army. He is less happy when Billy behaves as if he owns him. He gives him an expensive watch, and insists that he give up work, and hence his financial independence; \"The gold strap on his wrist suddenly felt very tight.\" Billy orders Joe around and strikes him in public. Even more distressing is a growing awareness that Billy is violently abusing youngsters. Joe leaves, but Billy doesn't like being thwarted and the outcome is violent.\n\nJoe is specially sensitive to the treatment of boys because of his strong feeling for his nephew, Sean, who is fifteen\u2014even as Joe was drawn to Sean's father (now dead). It becomes clear that Sean is gay and devoted to Joe, while Joe finds himself moved sexually by Sean's boyish body. Eventually, in the final episode of the book, they declare their love. However, they cannot pursue the relationship, Joe insists. They are too close; Sean has to sort things out for himself; he needs another kid to explore himself with; Joe would be holding him back. The combination of brother, father, and lover all rolled into one is \"An ideal, a fantasy... not made for the real world, a world in which Sean had to learn to function\" (301; Dickson's pause).\n\nJoe tells himself that Sean deserves the truth, but he lies when he tells him that he doesn't want to be the boy's lover: \"'Ah'll be here fur ye, but ah'll no' be part o' yer life... ah don't want tae be.' Amongst all the lies he'd ever told himself, that was the hardest\" (Dickson's pause). We understand that Joe is disguising his feelings and putting Sean off for his own good. \"From somewhere deep inside Joe found the strength to say what he knew he had to\" (302). Why does he have to? Because of normative assumptions about youth, maturity, and their proper development; whether these matters might be different for gay boys is not considered. Joe accedes to conventional notions of equality and manhood. He is going to move in with Andy, who is of a similar age and background: \"'maybe mates ur the maist important thing. Maybe ah'll love him as a mate, maybe as somewan ah want tae spend the resta ma life wi' '\" (302). Also, Joe confirms his rejection of Sean by an appeal to manliness: he asks him whether he is a wee boy with a crush on his uncle, or a man? \"As one pair of blue eyes stared deep into another, silent agreement passed between two men. Men. Not a kid and a man\" (302\u2013303). Despite this sudden maturation, Sean remains off limits for sexual love.\n\nWith Sean as well as with Billy, Joe has to reject the hierarchical option\u2014the one because it is too close, the other because it betrays any possibility of closeness\u2014despite passionate involvement. Or perhaps because of it. There is, after all, a tradition of gay renunciation. In _The Well of Loneliness_ (1928), Stephen introduces Mary to lesbian experience and subculture, but finally pushes her out into marriage. In Mary Renault's _The Charioteer_ (1953), Laurie has to reject the innocent Andrew in order to allow him the opportunity to grow out of his queerness.\n\nThe dangers of age-disparate liaisons are stressed again in Simon Lovat's psychological thriller, _Disorder and Chaos_. Here gays generally have a hard time, except the couple, Derek and Bob. They wear each other's clothes, or identical denim outfits; Keith calls them \"The Bookends.\" He \"notices how similar they look now. Twin haircuts, twin mustaches, twin forced jollity in their glinting eyes. Or is it simply that he's forgotten how much they operate as a two-cylinder machine, now that he sees so much less of them?\" \"'We don't take the clone thing seriously,' says Bob\" (25). The Bookends admonish Keith about his liking for youngsters: \"'These age gaps are a disaster area.... What you need is someone who has finished growing up. Someone who threw away their L plates years ago'\" (15; my elision). Keith does come to accept that his liaisons follow a doomed pattern, as his dependence upon Nick, a disturbed, devious, and dishonest sixteen-year-old, degenerates. Buying clothes, for instance: \"'I'm not a doll, or a kid,' Nick had said, flying into an instant rage. 'It'd make me feel under control, under your thumb'\" (133). Keith's infatuation leads him to prison. Upon release, he appears to forsake any sex life, as he generates a new obsession, with the infant whom he believes to be his son (he has donated sperm to a lesbian couple). He decides to abduct the boy; he will be very gentle with him, \"take care of him, spoil him, love him\" (225). As in the treatments of Monette and Maupin, there is an ominous though unspecified overlap between sexual and filial emotions.\n\nMeanwhile Lenny, who is married, has been suppressing his gayness. He is helped along by an experienced man, though he remains cowed by his senior partner in dentistry. He uses contact advertisements; most of the replies are from married men, and Lenny is inclined to reject them; but he too is married, so what can he expect? Like Owen in _The Lost Language of Cranes_ , he sensibly looks for someone like himself. Lenny is suddenly freed from conventional obligations by the strange behavior of his daughter, Monica. She proves highly tolerant of his gayness, but this is perhaps part of her general weirdness. She is into black magic and, it transpires, has a fatal fixation upon serial killer Myra Hindley. Lenny's concluding reflections apparently point the moral: \"subterfuge, half-truths, and lies\" create \"disorder and chaos\" (249)\u2014referring to the title of the book. On this criterion, only Derek and Bob match up. It's a dangerous world, Lovat seems to be saying, and other kinds of liaison are asking for trouble.\n\n**MENTORING**\n\nThe social system wants its young people socialized, so that they can contribute to the workforce and the rearing of the next generation. For the most part, though, it does not want them socialized into gay subculture. Even for the ancient Greeks, Foucault points out, this was a tricky matter. \"Because if there were no problem, they would speak of this kind of love in the same terms as love between men and women. The problem was that they couldn't accept that a young boy who was supposed to become a free citizen could be dominated and used as an object for someone's pleasure.\" The interface between these two desiderata, which are often located in the same individuals and institutions, is probably more heavily policed since gay liberation than it was before.\n\nA gay man may justify to himself and others his sexual attentions to boys by dwelling upon the emotional and practical support he is providing. David Leeming in his biography of James Baldwin writes of him as obliged by a \"puritanical streak\" to \"deny the merely carnal\" by placing himself as \"a father figure, financial sponsor, and teacher for a much younger individual.\" So with a North African \"street boy\" Baldwin insisted almost immediately on \"formalizing the relationship on somewhat paternalistic grounds, by meeting the boy's family.\" Compare _The Swimming-Pool Library_ , where Charles maintains a paternalist idea of his role as colonial administrator. Will is less convinced: \"I wanted to save Arthur. At least, I think that's what I wanted to do to him. It was a strange conviction I had, that I could somehow make these boys' lives better, as by a kind of patronage\u2014especially as it never worked out that way.\" Keith in Lovat's _Disorder and Chaos_ tells himself that he is helping Nick to get himself together. \"He knows it's a delusion but it holds up, providing he does not scrutinize it too much.\"\n\nUncles and nephews, I notice, are a recurring feature. Here the man has mentoring status already, perhaps along with some incestuous thrill. They occur in _Halfway Home_ , _Oddfellows_ , and _Wasted_ by Aiden Shaw; Edmund in _The Farewell Symphony_ gets to look after his attractive nephew, though he's not gay. In Larry Kramer's _Faggots_ , Richard has an anxiety attack when he is accosted in a club by his nephew, Wyatt. They compare sizes\u2014Wyatt is well-endowed\u2014they hasten \"to join each other in family togetherness.\" Wyatt should be \"'overcome with Jewish guilt,'\" Richard objects. But Wyatt thinks Richard \"'really should get some help.'\" Again: when Luke leaves home and comes to London to be gay, he naturally calls on his gay uncle Martin\u2014so _This Island's Mine_ by Philip Osment. However, in this virtuous Gay Sweatshop theater company play there is no embarrassing familial romance: it is assumed that uncle and nephew will each find a partner of his own age.\n\nA gay man may be confident enough to combine his official and his subcultural mentoring. George in Christopher Isherwood's novel _A Single Man_ is coming to terms with the death of his partner, Jim, in a traffic accident. The emphasis is on their equal partnership, but we may deduce that Jim was the younger, as Isherwood's lovers always were (\"he treats his exclusive interest in very young men as entirely natural,\" Paul Robinson remarks). Now George is feeling old. In Tennyson's poem \"Tithonus,\" which he expounds to his students, he is both Eos, the lover of boys, and Tithonus, the repulsively aging former boy.\n\nNonetheless, George is looking around for a new partner. Kenny, one of his students, seems to have conceived a special interest in him. In a bar George experiences with Kenny something like a Platonic dialogue, a \"symbolic encounter\"; Kenny appears \"beautiful. _Radiant with rapport_.\" Kenny likes authority; he thinks respect and friendship are most likely between males of different ages; it pleases him to call George \"Sir\" (133). They swim in the ocean and the rapport becomes physical. Moving indoors, to George's home, calls forth a return of responsibility: he refuses Kenny's invitation to shower together. However, the conversation becomes\n\npositively flirty, on both sides. Kenny's blanket, under the relaxing influence of the talk and beer, has slipped, baring an arm and a shoulder and turning itself into a classical Greek garment, the chlamys worn by a young disciple\u2014the favourite, surely\u2014of some philosopher. At this moment he is utterly, dangerously charming. (143)\n\nInveighing against a society which prefers \"flirtation instead of fucking,\" George finds himself uttering a sexual proposition. Kenny \"grins, dazzlingly,\" but George passes out (150). We will never know what the enigmatic Kenny might have done.\n\nThe Platonic dialogues which George invokes are a characteristic focus for the official and sexual roles of the mentor. Socrates' strategy is to tease the boy with talk of love, while maintaining the idea that the teacher is on a higher plane, above physical expression. Even if the boy is keen, as Alcibiades is in the _Symposium_ , it may be beneath the Socratic teacher's dignity to respond. Plato has been a conduit for same-sex passion and, simultaneously, a way of disavowing any such concern. Platonic ideas of intense friendship were made available in the Renaissance by Marsilio Ficino, revived in the eighteenth century by Johann Winckelmann, and deployed in the formative stages of modern gay self-construction by Walter Pater. These are the terms for Wilde's famous speech from the dock on the love that dare not speak its name: it is David and Jonathan, Plato, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare; \"It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.... It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection.\" Unfortunately for Wilde, this exalted vision seemed not to embrace the casual sexual and financial liaisons of which he was accused.\n\nIn _Death in Venice_ , Aschenbach's growing infatuation with Tadzio is accompanied by quotations from the _Phaedrus_ , which keep floating into Aschenbach's head. As Jonathan Dollimore shows, Mann is on Freudian territory: the ambivalent innocence of the Socratic dialogue is exposed as sublimation. At a key moment in Mary Renault's novel _The Charioteer_ , Laurie approaches and then evades self-disclosure when he shows the innocent Andrew his copy of Plato's _Phaedrus_. \"'I haven't read this one,'\" Andrew says. \"'I thought it was the _Phaedo_ for a minute, we did that at school.'\" The _Phaedo_ was a safe text, the _Phaedrus_ not. \"'What's it about?'\" Andrew asks, allowing Laurie a second chance to reveal or conceal himself: \"'Well, primarily, it's about the laws of rhetoric.'\" There were acceptable and unacceptable Platonic texts, and acceptable and unacceptable ways of addressing them.\n\nA striking deployment of the ambiguity of Plato is effected by Allan Bloom, whose best-selling book _The Closing of the American Mind_ chimed in with a reactionary turn in literary and cultural education in the United States in the late 1980s. Bloom's distinctive pitch is a yearning for a relationship between the teacher and student such as he believes Socrates shared with the young male aristocrats of Athens. Since the 1960s, he believes, sexual relations have been routinized and corrupted by Freudianism, the decline of the leisure class, and the women's and gay liberation movements. Socrates had the right idea: \"The longing for his conversations with which he infected his companions, and which was intensified after his death and has endured throughout the centuries, proved him to have been both the neediest and most grasping of lovers, and the richest and most giving of beloveds.\" Such relationships work best, in Bloom's account, with upper-class students\u2014\"they have money and hence leisure and can appreciate the beautiful and useless\" (279).\n\nSurprisingly (it is the surprising part of the book), Bloom allows the sexual teasing to become manifest. The survival of Socratic relations is most likely with students who\n\nhave not settled the sexual problem, who are still young, even look young for their age.... A youngster whose sexual longings consciously or unconsciously inform his studies has a very different set of experiences from one in whom such motives are not active. A trip to Florence or to Athens is one thing for a young man who hopes to meet his Beatrice on the Ponte Santa Trinit\u00e0 or his Socrates in the Agora, and quite another for one who goes without such aching need. (134; my elision)\n\nIn other words, the unformed young man is likely to fall either for a nice young lady from Smith, or for his male professor in the classroom. Bloom again courts sexual interpretation when he writes that his students \"wanted to find out what happened to Glaucon during his wonderful night with Socrates\" (332). Perhaps we should go back to sublimation, a \"naive and good-natured\" freshman suggests; \"I was charmed by the lad's candor but could not regard him as a serious candidate for culture\" (234). Bloom cannot get sexuality properly into, or out of, his classes.\n\nFurther light is thrown upon Bloom's stance in the novel which his old friend Saul Bellow based on his life and ideas, _Ravelstein_. The narrator is a journalist, straight; he has known Abe for a good while and Abe wants him to write his biography. The novel recalls meetings at which they discuss this, Abe's death from AIDS-related illness, and the narrator's own sickness and difficulty in writing. In the course of these lucubrations the narrator has in effect written the biography.\n\nAbe \"was considered, to use a term from the past, an invert. Not a 'gay.' He despised campy homosexuality and took a very low view of 'gay pride.'\" His apartment scarcely hints at his sexual preference: \"One had no reason, in any respect, to suspect him of irregularities of the commoner sort\u2014the outlandish seductive behaviors of old-fashioned gay men. He couldn't bear the fluttering of effeminate men\" (99). He is upset when a nurse may be overheard saying that it's time for his AZT. Nonetheless, \"He was doomed to die because of his irregular sexual ways,\" the narrator declares. \"About these he was entirely frank with me, with all his close friends\" (160). Not much of the sexuality gets into the novel, though; \"There were times when I simply didn't know what to make of his confidences,\" the narrator confesses (160).\n\nLike Bloom in _The Closing of the American Mind_ , Abe depends heavily on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's _Symposium_ , about how each of us pines for his or her other half, to restore an original complete whole (24). Whether Abe's maneuverings sometimes led to a sexual liaison is not indicated. His sexual feelings have increased, he tells the narrator, and \"'some of these kids have a singular sympathy with you'\" (143). The stronger impression, in Bellow's novel, is that Abe has romantic-paternal relations with his students while cultivating less exalted sexual relations in other quarters. When he needs a check made out to cash so that his companion will not know of it, the narrator supposes that this is a payoff for some sexual indiscretion (143).\n\nThere is a further force in Abe's life, one not avowed in _The Closing of the American Mind_ : Nikki, his \"companion\" (5). \"He would sometimes lower his voice in speaking of Nikki, to say that there was no intimacy between them. 'More father and son'\" (69); presumably this was not so initially. Nikki is from Singapore, in his early thirties and \"boyish still\" (5). The narrator is notably ill at ease around him.\n\nNobody questioned the strength of Nikki's attachment to Abe. Nikki was perfectly direct\u2014direct, by nature, a handsome, smooth-skinned, black-haired, Oriental, graceful, boyish man. He had an exotic conception of himself. I don't mean that he put on airs. He was never anything but natural. This prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Abe's, I thought\u2014or used to think\u2014was somewhat spoiled. I was wrong, there, too. Brought up like a prince, yes. Even before the famous book that sold a million copies was written, Nikki was better dressed than the Prince of Wales. (68)\n\nNikki was attached, direct, and natural; but he did like to spend money. A suspicion is floated, that he is on the scrounge and Abe is something of a dupe. The narrator carefully distances himself from Abe's high opinion of Nikki's talents: \"in Nikki, Abe saw a brilliant young man who had every right to assert himself.\" As well as clothes, Nikki gets a BMW car: \"'He feels he should have something outstanding and entirely his own,'\" Abe explains; \"'It's only natural'\" (71, 74).\n\nThe gay reader need not share the narrator's prejudice against Nikki. The narrator's wife is also much younger\u2014one of Abe's former students, in fact\u2014but her credentials and her motives are not interrogated, and nor are the narrator's. Nikki returns from Geneva when Abe is ill, and abandons his studies to look after him. His devotion when Abe is in hospital is exemplary. We might recognize here a successful mentoring partnership, beyond the artificial teasing with the students.\n\nOf course, this is a notable example of the conflation of roles: Nikki's position is as much to do with his race as his age. \"He had his own kind of princely Asiatic mildness, but if you were to offend him Nikki would tear your head off,\" the narrator remarks (145). Damn'd inscrutable, these orientals; never know where you are with them. There is an arrogance and condescension in the attitude of the older men:\n\nNikki was training in a Swiss hotel school. I can't say more than that because I'm not the ideal person to recall the minute particulars but Nikki was an accredited ma\u00eetre d.' He was ready to go into fits of laughter when he modeled the cutaway coat of his trade for Abe and me, and put on his professional dignities. (18\u201319)\n\nNikki is expected to mock his own ambitions for the amusement of his backers; I suppose the cutaway coat allowed him to display his bottom. I don't know whether to be angry at this debasing of Nikki, or to rejoice in his resourcefulness. Yet perhaps his display is no more demeaning than Bloom cavorting intellectually for his upper-class students, who know that their father and the military-industrial complex are paying for all this.\n\nEve Sedgwick studied with Bloom, though there is no indication that he gave special attention even to such an exceptional woman. What Bloom has produced, Sedgwick says, is \"an ingenuously faithful and candid representation of... the stimulation and glamorization of the energies of male-male desire\" in teaching the humanities. It is an eloquent analysis of \"the prestige, magnetism, vulnerability, self-alienation, co-optability, and perhaps ultimately the potential for a certain defiance that adhere in the canonical culture of the closet.\" That is well put. However, we don't need to assume that the erotics of teaching can thrive only in the closet. The fully-out teacher is relegitimated with the fully-out student; everyone knows the score. Now the teacher may exchange glances with a grown-up boy or girl, without fearing or hoping that they are going to be seduced in ignorance, or against their will.\n\nAn air of desperation often lurks around mentoring in modern times, starting with Wilde and Bosie. Disappointment may be avoided at the price of death. Thomas Mann's _Death in Venice_ is retraced in Gilbert Adair's novel _Love and Death on Long Island_ (filmed by Richard Kwietniowski in 1997): the established author Giles De'Ath, a reclusive widower, becomes obsessed with a young actor in a trashy film. He tells his agent he is developing a new theme: the discovery of beauty where no one ever thought of looking for it. He dies. Lecturer Ivo is, in effect, killed twice when his affair with a student collapses in Barbara Vine's psychosexual thriller _No Night Is Too Long_ (adapted for BBC television with a screenplay by Kevin Elyot in 2002). In Isherwood's _A Single Man_ , mortality disrupts a potential relationship before its enigmatic promise can be explored. Patricia Duncker in _Hallucinating Foucault_ makes the charismatic great author die before the continuance of his liaison with a student can be tested. Edmund White in _The Married Man_ shows Austin's care for Julien, who is half his age, cut off by AIDS. The love affair between Tonio, a dancer, and Jack, a therapist, is tormented and energized by Tonio's impending death in the film _Alive and Kicking_ (Jim Sharman, 1996; screenplay by Martin Sherman).\n\n**THE MEN AND THE BOYS**\n\nThe strong presence of the coming-out story in gay fiction is very understandable: gay people are born into largely hostile social contexts, and finding their way to an alternative home base is rarely easy. Guides and initiators tend to be important. However, the structure of narcissistic complementarity especially invites a crossover between desire-for and desire-to-be. The boy's desire-for the man may well be involved with a desire-to-be the man, leading him to wish to _graduate out_ of boyhood. Eric in Baldwin's _Another Country_ is disconcerted when Yves says he wants to make his future in New York. \"'I can find my way. Do you really think that I want to be protected by you for ever?... it cannot go on for ever, I also am a _man_... my youth. It cannot last forever.'\" Eric \"knew what Yves meant and he knew that what Yves said was true.\" In many coming-out stories age hierarchy is presented as a tactical convenience. A satisfactory outcome usually implies the boy's release from such artificial supports, and his readiness for rewarding sexual relations on the egalitarian model. The mentor must, by definition, be cast off. One classic instance is Baldwin's _Giovanni's Room_ (1956): David finds himself at the expense of Giovanni's life. Another is Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell.\n\nIn Kenneth Martin's 1950s novel _Aubade_ , Paul, who has just finished high school, is pleased when he is taken up by Gary, who is a graduate from medical school, securely middle class, with a car. Paul's desire-for Gary is tied up with desire-to-be him: \"He's exactly the way I'd like to be when I'm his age, thought Paul.\" Nonetheless, when Gary declares his love and tries to kiss him Paul flees in terror. Eventually Paul acknowledges his own passion, but the summer is over and the guide must be discarded. Paul puts it all down to experience: \"'It was part of growing up, wasn't it?'\" (155). Gary has a definition of the homosexual which excludes Paul and himself:\n\n\"Do you know what homosexuality is? It's wanting to fiddle with every little boy you see. It's standing on the pier waiting for the next boatload of sailors to come in. It's giving women an inferiority complex. It's standing taking peeks in a man's toilet. I'm not like that, Paul. I love you, I love you.\" (128)\n\nSo no nasty queers need apply. The typical coming-out novel is strewn with repudiations not only of the mentor but of other \"bad\" types whom the boy brushes with but fortunately evades\u2014effeminate bitchy queens, fearful closet types, disgusting (tearoom) cottagers, often any organized gay scene at all. The emergence of Laurie in Renault's _The Charioteer_ depends on such exclusions. I showed in chapter 4 how Philip in _The Lost Language of Cranes_ rejects the closeted secrecy of his father, the old-style Wildean mannerisms of Derek and Geoffrey, pornographic movies, cruising, and bars with back rooms. Eventually he settles down with Brad, an old school friend who is of the same age, class, race, and educational background.\n\nSuch repudiations are sanctioned as necessary to the process of self-discovery, as the young man sheds the accretions of an oppressed history and steps out into the bright sunshine of an accomplished gay freedom. Charles, a minor character in Timothy Ireland's novel _Who Lies Inside_ , wears makeup and dresses flamboyantly in the local pub; he gets beaten up. This enables the emergent young Martin to feel revulsion and pity: \"He always gave me the creeps somehow,\" says our young hero. Charles fails Martin when he turns to him for help. Eventually Martin finds love with Richard, an attractive boy from his own class at school whom he has been enticing and rejecting since the start. Martin is still anxious about being \"homosexual,\" but Richard (who has himself benefited from experience with an older man) reassures him that there is no need for labels, since they are all persons.\n\nIn _Coming Out_ , an East German film directed by Heiner Carow (1988), Philipp, a schoolteacher, allows himself to be drawn into a relationship with Tanja, a colleague, and marries her when she becomes pregnant. However, he is in denial about an earlier queer episode, and has found his way to a gay bar (he was just wanting to buy cigarettes, he says). Pretending that he is unattached, Philipp allows a romantic gay boy, Matthias, to fall in love with him. Tanja and Matthias find out about each other and Philipp loses both of them. He is left to cruise an alienated scene. Asked by his mother why he must be this way, Philipp declares that it is nature, and he would be wrong to pretend and lie to himself. This thought is tardy, however, the harm to Matthias is already done. The film tends to suggest that gays must be lonely and unhappy, but it shows also that people should take more care with each other.\n\nThe selfishness of the neophyte is sharply analyzed again in Guy Willard's novel _Mirrors of Narcissus_ (discussed also in chapter 3). Guy has been dismissive of middle-aged men who pursue boys, but eventually he responds when propositioned by a well-preserved professor, Harry Golden:\n\nHe was old enough to be my father, yet I found him strangely attractive. Occasionally, when I thought about him, my feelings for him were distinctly sexual\u2014perhaps inevitable, given his intelligence and strong character. I'd always been drawn to dominant types. Though he was past his prime as far as looks were concerned, his personality almost made physical attractiveness seem unimportant. And there was the seductive thought of his power\u2014he was a full professor while I was just a freshman boy.\n\nThe disparity in their ages has advantages, Guy finds. It frees him from competitive impulses and shame, and from \"the need to adopt a tough, masculine facade. Instinctively I knew he wouldn't see my desire as a sign of weakness\" (160). In a typical conflation of roles, Guy reads his submission as feminine: \"Within the protective clasp of his big strong arms, pressed chest-to-chest in an intimate hug, I felt the stirrings of a tender submission. The secret little girl inside of me came alive and blossomed, gloriously\" (162). He feels \"exalted,\" but Golden is now redundant; he appears \"helpless and weak\" without his glasses, and has no further part in Guy's story (164). Thus fortified, Guy feels able to embrace his homosexuality, to abandon his girlfriend, and to force his attentions upon his friend.\n\nWhile the situations of lesbians are quite distinct\u2014for instance, there seems to be less of a premium on youth\u2014the thrills and spills of the coming-out process may be similar. In Jill Posener's classic Gay Sweatshop play, _Any Woman Can_ , predatory and stereotyped older lesbians are the problem for the bright and determined Ginny, rather than straight society. Rising from the ashes of her former selves, she discards the nervous and the exploitative and, through her own dramatic coming out, becomes an effective model for other women. Jeanette, in Jeanette Winterson's _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ , is supported by several women in her contorted Christian community and responds with affection and respect. However, Miss Jewsbury, who has seduced her, is rejected. \"I don't know why I didn't thank her, or even say goodbye.\"\n\nIf boys ultimately have time on their side, men generally have control of representation. From Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ through J. R. Ackerley's _We Think the World of You_ (1960) to _The Swimming-Pool Library_ , we get the story predominantly from the viewpoint of the older man. This replicates the situation of the male suitor and the idealized female object of his attentions, in the classic heterosexual love lyric from Dante and Petrarch through to the present. A prime reason why we don't get the boy's story is that by the time he is in a position to write it, certainly publish it, he has become a man. The story he then writes, even if it is presented as if through the eyes of the youngster, is likely to manifest the viewpoint of experience.\n\nEven in fiction written ostensibly out of the perceptions of the younger person, we may in fact be getting an adult's fantasy. In P-P Hartnett's _I Want to Fuck You_ , Handa San (PE teacher) and Takeo (schoolboy, thirteen) are drawn sexually to each other. In one chapter Handa San's thoughts are indicated:\n\nHanda San wasn't the only teacher in the school who didn't want to think of himself as a _paedophile_ or _ephebophile_. He hoped the shivering attention he paid Takeo was just a phase he was going through. After all, he consoled himself, he didn't actually want to fuck the boy, get the boy on his knees or anything like that. He liked his students, was genuinely interested in their variety of character and outlook.\n\nThat is a plausible representation of Handa San's thought. Compare this passage, from a chapter focusing on young Takeo:\n\nTakeo dragged shirt and vest over his ears together and folded them as a complex on the back of his homework chair. These warm clothes gave off a fragrance many would buy if bottled. Over that same chair Takeo layered his socks, smoothed flat into two-dimensional neatness. Finally, he undid the belt of his trousers, wriggling out of them with extravagant movements of hips and behind. He slithered out of his pants exposing his total, subtle naked body to the paired full length mirrors on the inside of the wardrobe door. (54\u201355)\n\nThe first sentence there could be Takeo's account of himself; so could the third. But the sentence in between\u2014\"These warm clothes gave off a fragrance many would buy if bottled\"\u2014is the perception of experience, not innocence. The narrator invites a voyeuristic interest in how Takeo takes off his trousers; it is not only the mirrors that have Takeo under surveillance. In short, the narrator is close to Handa San.\n\nThe anonymously published novel _The Scarlet Pansy_ offers other examples. Again, it may appear at first sight that the viewpoint of the novice is represented, but actually the appeal is to the experienced reader. The young protagonist is revolted by the approaches of older homosexual men: \"Randall turned this episode over in his mind. Was he always to be pursued by some man? Then the only hope of escape was the cultivation of the utmost reserve.\" The narrator seems to have entered Randall's viewpoint. However, the passage continues: \"Quite unconsciously he was laying the foundation for one of the greatest charms of any person. He suppressed himself; a faint smile took the place of laughter, and thus he forever escaped that prevalent bane, the society grin.\" The author has the experienced view, and invites the reader to share it.\n\nThe appropriative power of these narrators mimics the personal advantage of the experienced man. If the boy's desire-for the man is destabilized by his desire-to-be the man, the feeling of the man for the boy may be complicated by a desire-to-be him. We may suspect, indeed, that interest in coming-out stories has less to do with succoring oppressed youth and asserting gay rights, than with the fantasies of older writers and readers, who may be moved by an unstable conflation of desire-for and desire-to-be such a boy. Edmund White has recognized this. In the preface to _A Boy's Own Story_ , he positions his present, writing self against his younger self: \"If I'd hated myself as a boy and adolescent, I now felt an affection for the miserable kid I'd once been, a retrospective kindliness one might call 'the pederasty of autobiography.'\" Again, in the novel, White's narrator finds he has come to like the fifteen-year-old he once was, \"even desire him\"; it is a \"retrospection three parts sentimental and one part erotic\" (158).\n\nIn _The Folding Star_ , Alan Hollinghurst makes a narrative virtue out of the young man's silence and distance. Edward, aged thirty-two, experiences a sexual infatuation with a mysterious youngster whom he is supposed to be teaching\u2014Luc, age seventeen. He spies upon Luc and his young friends; he systematically steals his underwear. \"'He thinks of me as a friend,'\" Edward avers. \"'How on earth would you know what he thinks. You haven't got a clue what goes on inside his head,'\" Luc's young friend Sibylle retorts (370). The reader is no better informed; Luc's behavior is surprising at every turn, and not fully explained even at the end of the book. The folding star of the title evokes Milton's \"Lycidas\": \"'It's when you know you've got to put the sheep all safely in the fold'\" (247). However (as in _The Swimming-Pool Library_ ), this pastoral impulse is accompanied, for Edward, by sexual pursuit: he is the wolf as much as the shepherd.\n\nThe local saint is Narcissus, though Edward says he doesn't \"' believe in the narcissist theory of gay attraction; I've always loved it with people who are different from me'\" (156). However, as I argued in chapter 2, in narcissistic desire a man loves not so much himself as an idealized displacement of himself\u2014what he is, what he was, what he would like to be, someone who was once part of himself. Edward acknowledges such an impulse when he wonders whether in placing no-longer-fashionable poems before Luc he is betraying an \"impulse to keep him back with me in a shared childhood\" (115). His determination to script Luc as having gay interests positions Luc as replicating Edward's own youthful sex life.\n\nThe central theme appears to be the fatal power of sexual fascination. As Edward's quest for the boy moves to a conclusion, so does the story of Paul, the museum curator. He recalls how as a boy during the German Occupation he had a liaison with a young man, not realizing that he was in the fascist militia. Thinking of Jewish children hidden away during the war years, Paul ruminates: \"'Personally I wouldn't want to place so much trust in a frightened or bereaved teenager\u2014but what could they do when it was their only chance?'\" (386). Again: a youngster \"'picks up an older person's life and then\u2014he is distracted, self-absorbed, over-zealous, or perhaps quite unreflecting, he's no idea what he's doing\u2014lets it drop'\" (414). Perilous creatures, these boys.\n\n**VISIONS AND ACCOMMODATIONS**\n\nI choose to close this chapter with positive views of its themes. In _A Fairly Honourable Defeat_ , published in 1970, Iris Murdoch explores some of the pitfalls that beset age hierarchy. Rupert and Hilda are married. Simon, Rupert's young brother, after sowing some wild oats, has settled into coupledom with Axel, Rupert's old friend. Simon is twenty-nine, Axel forty-two. In an initial, notably complacent conversation, Hilda displays casual liberal prejudices. Perhaps Simon is not really homosexual, queers are always a bit sly, they don't like being reminded of normal relationships or happy marriages, queer friendships are so unstable, Simon is so much younger. Rupert disputes such generalizations. Axel bullies Simon, Hilda thinks; \"'Some people like to be bullied,'\" Rupert responds; the novel is a study in the abuse of and retrieval of dominance and subordination. \"'Thank heavens our relationship is democratic,'\" Hilda declares\u2014complacently, as it transpires (15\u201318).\n\nSimon does look queer, he cheerfully acknowledges (198); he is in charge of interior decoration at their flat. It is out of character, friends agree, for him not to like opera because he's such a feminine person, as may be observed in his decor. Rupert and Hilda's son, Peter, jeers at Simon for being more female than Shakespeare's fairies. (Peter is very insecure.)\n\nAxel is straight-acting to the point of total inscrutability, even to Simon in their early meetings. He complains at Simon's aftershave lotion\u2014\"'Try to remember you're male, not female, will you?'\" Axel won't have any \"camp\" (in quotation marks) or _risqu\u00e9_ jokes (36). When they first drew together, Axel hesitated because he believed himself to be naturally monogamous, whereas Simon \"was by nature frivolous, inconstant, evasive, impulsive, irrational, shallow\" (202). Actually, Simon is seeking someone to give his heart to; \"Yet he enjoyed some of his adventures and liked the jokey parochial atmosphere of the gay bars which he had been used to frequent\" (37). Sometimes Simon himself fears he may be too trivial a person for Axel. His declarative outbursts only provoke Axel to withdraw. For Simon, \"There was at every moment total vulnerability. There was a dangerous thrilling trembling inner circuit of the soul\" (39). He suggests that they are like Apollo and Marsyas.\n\nIn fact Axel is chronically jealous and insecure; it is surprising that Simon doesn't quite realize this, and lose respect for him. He won't let Simon learn to drive, tries to stop him drinking and becoming exuberant at parties. He accuses Simon of being irrational, but enjoys putting him through the drama of accusation, reproach, and separation. Then he commands him to be independent. \"'You mustn't let me influence you so much, dear boy'\" (87).\n\nEnter Julius, another old friend of Rupert. He worked on biological warfare for the United States, but gave it up because he became bored. (Eventually it emerges that he was in Belsen; he considers himself an instrument of justice.) He denies that goodness is important: \"'we know what moves people, dear Rupert. Fears, passions of all kinds. The desire for power, for instance. Few questions are more important than: who is the boss?'\" \"'Though of course some people prefer to be bossed!'\" \"'Yes, yes. It's all a question of choosing one's technique'\" (225).\n\nJulius is a dedicated controller: he experiments with people and it gives him the pleasure of confirming his amoral principles. The other disturber of the peace is Morgan, Hilda's sister, who is even more dangerous because out of control. Julius makes a wager with Morgan that he can get Simon away from Axel. The \"fairly honourable defeat\" of the title is Julius's failure to part Axel and Simon while managing to maneuver Rupert and Morgan into an affair, with purloined letters and Iago-like insinuations.\n\nJulius traps Simon into moments of complicity and small lapses in total candor; he plays on Simon's fear that Axel will see him through Julius's eyes: \"Axel would suddenly see how flimsy Simon was, how unsophisticated, how lacking in cleverness and wit, how hopelessly ignorant about important things such as Mozart and truth functions and the balance of payments\" (77). Julius, alternately flirting and commanding, exploits Simon's tendency to be dominated\u2014effortlessly because, unlike Axel, he has little at stake. Simon is frightened by his attraction to Julius. \"But then, thought Simon, I have never really been able to distinguish between fear and sexual desire\" (160).\n\nJulius predicts a sorry end for Simon's partnership with Axel:\n\n\"You choose at present to give in. But every time you give in you notice it. Later perhaps you will make Axel's life a misery. Then gradually the balance will tilt. You will get tired of being Axel's lapdog. You are not at all monogamous really, my dear Simon. You miss your adventures, you know you do. And you will find out one day that you want to play Axel to some little Simon. The passage of time brings about these shifts automatically, especially in relationships of your kind.\" (269\u201370)\n\nThese are perhaps characteristic pitfalls of age hierarchy. However, the narration suggests that they need not be fatal.\n\nSimon eventually tells Axel all about Julius. Axel confesses that he was miserable when he thought he would have to end their affair; he admits that his reserve has kept Simon insecure, that he is guilty of a failure of love and trust. Simon appreciates that Axel does love and need him. \"'A little bullying between lovers needn't matter. But I've always withheld a bit of myself,'\" Axel admits (434). The important distinction, in Murdoch's view, is between fumbling good will and the destructiveness of Julius and Morgan. The pattern remains, but it is interpreted with trust. At the end Simon seems justified in feeling \"the warm anticipation of a new happiness\" (437).\n\nMurdoch's account is surprisingly modern; clones, AIDS, queer, and lifestyle lie between us and _A Fairly Honourable Defeat_ , but she comes through with a valuable analysis. Perhaps this is because she is not troubled by the age-disparate liaison as such: she takes its potential for granted, and is thus free to pursue wider and deeper psychological and ethical dimensions. Compare other mid-century fictions\u2014Stephen Spender's _The Temple_ , Angus Wilson's _Hemlock and After_ , Barbara Pym's _A Glass of Blessings_ , the film _Victim_ (Basil Dearden, 1961). In _We Think the World of You_ , Ackerley's protagonist does his best to keep things going with his boyfriend, but finds he gets on better with the dog.\n\nThe most striking affirmation of age-disparity occurs in Neil Bartlett's _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_. Bartlett doesn't shrink from awkward aspects of the theme. He invites readers to occupy the position of the man, and to share in the constitution of the ideal boy. Perhaps the narrator's description is wrong for some readers: \"do go back, and amend my description of Boy so that he is, is some way, if you see what I mean, your type. Make him fit the bill; imagine for him the attributes that you require.\" At the same time, the image will derive from and belong to the subculture. Boy is destined to discover himself in a historic gay identity, self-consciously bestowed by Madame, who owns The Bar, and her clientele. He needs \"application, study, repetition, diligent imitation and sincere admiration of his peers\" (33). He is the figure we (men) all hold in our imaginations. He is in a line with Chance Wayne played by Paul Newman, Alec Scudder in _Maurice_ , Boy Barrett in _Victim_ , Bosie Douglas\u2014drawn purposefully by Bartlett from several generations. The idea of Boy is a ratification of gay history, and hence of gay existence.\n\nThere is no question that Boy, in assuming this identity, is doing what he wants to do, though he is only nineteen (at the time of publication the gay age of consent was twenty-one in England). He is already exhausted with questing for The Bar; already imagining sexual practices that men might pursue together. He only ever goes home with older men. \"One thing Boy never said, the line of Paul] Newman's he would never have used, was _don't call me Boy_. He loved to be called Boy\" (13). It is a position of honor, not of inferiority. He wants one thing more than to be one of the men in The Bar: \"to be reassured that he might somehow remain a boy for ever\" (38). (I discuss the gendering of Boy and The Bar in [chapter 5.)\n\nO is The Older Man\u2014forty-five at least. No celibate, but very self-contained; \"you never saw him following anyone, gazing after someone or persuading them to come home with him. Asked exactly how O took people home, you'd have to say that O just summoned his men to him somehow\" (68). O's stance toward Boy is protective (hence the title of the novel), but sex between them is violent\u2014though Boy does bruise easily. \"I should say here that Boy never once wanted O to stop, and that he was used to sometimes being frightened by what O wanted to do, and by what he made Boy himself feel that he wanted to do, things he hadn't ever known that he wanted to do\" (141\u201342). As in other novels we have considered, and especially in Paul Russell's _Boys of Life_ (discussed in chapter 7) and Duncker's _Hallucinating Foucault_ , innovative and fierce power play in bed is prized by the boy as evidence of the man's general commitment to life and particular appreciation of the boy.\n\nWhat follows this intense courtship is less remarkable. Boy and O affirm their relationship in a version of the conventional marriage ceremony. Some of The Bar people are offended by this; it is the one point in the novel at which there is any subcultural dissent. Boy and O form \"The model couple in the model flat, Boy at home all day with the appliances and O out to work\" (225). For Murdoch, the key question is about how men adapt their fantasy desires and personae to the business of getting along together. This is admitted in _Ready to Catch Him_ : \"what really matters is what happens when two people try to hold things together\" (309). Boy \"spends the evening or night with a younger man sometimes now, a man younger than himself, a boy really\" (309). We are not told quite how this is managed. Is Boy's desire-to-be O translating into a desire-for a boy of his own? Will O meet a new Boy? Are the differences between O and Boy fading away, leaving an egalitarian couple?\n\nReviewing _Ready to Catch Him_ , Adam Mars-Jones criticized its endorsement of The Bar and its insistence on the special, poetic quality of gay sex; they correlate, Mars-Jones says, with a separatist as opposed to an assimilationist aesthetic. He contests the idea that \"it is by exhaustively exploring their fantasies that gay people best prepare themselves to take their place in the world.\" This is surely somewhat abrupt; it is hard to imagine a commentator writing in the _Independent_ that black people should not investigate and value their histories. Bartlett has justified the introspective stance of the novel as an attempt to consolidate gay subculture in a context where AIDS was taking the lives of friends and legitimating homophobic assaults. \"You couldn't walk down the street or open a newspaper without flinching, because there would be some new graffito about AIDS\u2014on the wall or as a headline in the best selling newspaper.\" This is not all, however. Although we prefer to regard our fantasies as private, the public iconography of art, advertising, and pornography demonstrates conclusively that they are acquired through a collaborative process. The Bar is a metaphor for the communal mechanisms through which we negotiate desire-for and desire-to-be. \"I apologize,\" says the narrator, \"if this description of Boy sounds to you like some fantasy and not a real person\" (15). Bartlett's aesthetic is all about peak experiences, moments at which fantasy miraculously catches up with actuality. Boy is indeed a fantasy, a luminous evocation of all the boys who have been loved since Antinous enchanted the Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 120.\n**7**\n\n**CLASS**\n\nDifference in disposable assets is happily acknowledged in the Pet Shop Boys' \"Rent.\" The song is offered from the point of view of a kept boy. Financial status is not effaced: \"You bring me food, I need it, you give me love, I feed it.\" To the contrary, it is claimed as integral with love:\n\nNow look at the two of us, in sympathy with everything we see\n\nI never want anything, it's easy, you buy whatever I need\n\nLook at my hopes, look at my dreams, the currency we've spent\n\nI love you, you pay my rent. I love you, you pay my rent.\n\nTheir sympathy is founded in shared consumption, rendered the more passionate and pleasurable by the fact that there is no hesitation about commitment. \"I love you. \/ You pay the rent\": no syntax. It is not \"I love you, therefore you pay the rent.\" Nor is it \"I love you because you pay the rent.\" The personal feeling and the provision of security occur together. The currency they have spent is both money and psychic investment. The liaison works; as well as sympathy there is \"sometimes ecstasy.\"\n\nOne of Eve Sedgwick's pregnant remarks is that many dimensions of sexual choice appear not to have a \"distinctive, explicit definitional connection with gender; indeed, some dimensions of sexuality might be tied, not to gender, but _instead_ to differences or similarities of class or race.\" Sex, in other words, may be organized around hierarchies other than gender; \"to assume the distinctiveness of the _intimacy_ between sexuality and gender might well risk assuming too much about the definitional _separability_ of either of them from determinations of, say, class or race.\" In earlier chapters I located the cross-class liaison as a version of the complementarity model, in which sameness of gender is complicated by other differences. Our experience of class evokes intense idealizations and enduring humiliations. I am taking \"class\" approximately, as comprising hierarchies of wealth, income, status, educational attainment, and cultural sophistication, along with their markers in attire, decor, and general lifestyle. While I disagree with Trotskyists, who proclaim the ineluctable priority of class struggle, I believe that class difference is everywhere in our psychic lives, as it is in our social system.\n\n**TURNING ON TO CLASS**\n\nThe Wilde trials, I and others have suggested, were crucial in establishing the stereotype of the queer man which dominated until gay liberation in the 1970s. At the trials, the entire, vaguely disconcerting nexus of effeminacy, leisure, idleness, immorality, luxury, insouciance, decadence, and aestheticism, which Wilde was perceived, variously, as instantiating, was transformed into a brilliantly precise image. The principal twentieth-century stereotype entered our cultures: not just the homosexual, as the lawyers and medics would have it, but the queer. A comparable effect was produced for lesbianism by the prosecution of Radclyffe Hall's _Well of Loneliness_ in 1929.\n\nWilde's effeminate manner was linked as much to class as to gender. Already by the end of the eighteenth century, the aristocracy was positioned as feminized. The newly dominant middle class justified itself through an ideology of work, manly purity, purpose, and responsibility. The leisure-class male was identified, correspondingly, with effeminate idleness and immorality; his options were to repudiate this identification, or to embrace it. Wilde affected a feminine stance in order to claim a class position, while exercising the male authority of accomplishment in public life; the combination of these strategies evidently made him impressive to the boys whose acquaintance he cultivated.\n\nThe Wildean, cultured gent and his bit of rough trade became the dominant image of the queer for the twentieth century, up until the 1970s. It was less an individual experience than a subcultural myth. As Foucault puts it, \"it was in the 'bourgeois' or 'aristocratic' family\" that sexuality was \"first problematized,\" whereas \"the working classes managed for a long time to escape the deployment of 'sexuality.'\" He disputes the idea that the surveillance of sexuality was inflicted upon the lower orders by the ruling classes: \"Rather it appears to me that they first tried it on themselves.\" The lower-class partner might be presented as a secretary or manservant; John Addington Symonds did this, so did Somerset Maugham and N\u00f6el Coward. Otherwise, it was difficult for two men to live together; Terence Rattigan installed his lovers in nearby apartments. (Of course, that cost money.) When she lectured in the United States, Gertrude Stein presented Alice B. Toklas as her secretary.\n\nIn the United States also, it was upper-class men who first got the idea of \"being a homosexual.\" George Chauncey Jr. shows that working-class men, particularly those linked to \"masculine\" milieux\u2014sailors, laborers, hoboes, and other transient workers\u2014might engage in same-sex activity across class without having to categorize themselves as \"queer.\" After all, they might be, or might appear to be, motivated largely by social deference and financial advantage; probably they were married. As Murray Healy observes, this is not to say that there were no working-class pubs, cruising grounds, or gay identity; rather that these resources were rare, and other options more available, more visible, more attractive.\n\nThis way of regarding cross-class relations was not confined to homosexuals: to a striking extent it replicated wider class and sex\/gender patterns. It was in practice almost acceptable for an upper-class man to have as a mistress, or to have casual sex with, a female of a lower class (typically a servant, a shopgirl, or a secretary), or to employ a sex-worker; it was almost expected. What he was not supposed to do was foul up his own social stratum by forming extramarital liaisons with women whom he might meet there. Freud actually imagined this as a universal trait. In an essay \"On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,\" he posits that a man\u2014any man\u2014has difficulty in combining \"the _affectionate_ and the _sensual_ current.\" He can't satisfy his desires with a woman he respects; hence \"his need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is ethically inferior, to whom he need attribute no aesthetic scruples, who does not know him in his other social relations and cannot judge him in them\" (254).\n\nThe cross-class queer liaison worked similarly. It is often remarked that some of the objection to Wilde's behavior was that he had crossed class barriers. For example, he was questioned about Alphonse Conway: did Wilde buy him a suit \"In order that he might look more like an equal?\" The furor over _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ was similarly framed. Famously, prosecuting counsel asked the jury whether they would want their wives or servants to read the book. Actually, the offense was not that Wilde had cultivated cross-class liaisons, but that he had openly paraded them\u2014as Lawrence did in fiction. The more disgraceful connection was between Wilde and Douglas; this was too sensitive to be addressed in court. The crucial opposition was not between heterosexuality and homosexuality, then, but between legitimate and illegitimate relations, defined in terms of class.\n\nIt is clear that, for many people who expressed their sexualities in this way, the cross-class liaison was not just a convenience: it was a turn-on. For many middle- and upper-class men, lower-class people were sexy _as such_. For most middle-class men, after all, servants had tendered the principal physical, affective, and intimate support in infancy. In the 1850s, Arthur Munby, a lawyer and civil servant, established a liaison with Hannah Cullwick, a servant; the impetus for each of them is clear in their diaries. They developed his lustful overseeing of her, scrubbing the floor on her knees, into a scenario in which she got herself dirty and undertook rough, slavish tasks and manners for his pleasure. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White comment: \"The opposition of working-class maid and upper-class male, then, depended upon a physical and social separation which was constitutive of desire.\" As they note, Freud's \"Wolfman\" retrieves an intense early experience involving a maid in a scrubbing posture. Hannah was not just a figure of \"lowness,\" however: she was also a figure of comfort and power. Her diaries indicate clearly that she is entirely happy with her subordinate position. She is both glad and sorry when Munby says that he almost tells a friend about them: \"glad' cause it show'd that M. does love me, & sorry' cause I don't want to disgrace him & I canna bear for anyone to think I want to be anything but what I am to him. And so I want no one to know.\" She is not aspiring to change class; she likes her work and is proud of it: \"But tho' I'm never so happy as when I'm with him or working for _him_ , yet I want to be still a servant & working so as to be independent & get my own living.\" At Munby's behest they do marry, but Hannah feels it has \"little to do with our _love_ & our union\" (252; Cullwick's emphases).\n\nThe mysteries of lower-class life may hold a fascination for the middle-class man. Crime thrillers, from _The Heart in Exile_ by Rodney Garland (1953) through _Skinflick_ by Joseph Hansen (1979) to _Doing Business_ by Jeremy Beadle (1990), have depended on the middle-class man being sucked into a mysterious underworld of rent boys, hustlers, and beach bums. He mediates the lower orders to presumptively middle-class readers.\n\nThe happy ending to Garland's _Heart in Exile_ is secured when the protagonist, a psychiatrist, finds after a period of loneliness and gloomy exploration of queer subculture that he is drawn to his manservant.\n\nI confess that the attraction was much stronger when I saw him doing the sort of work I would never had dreamed of asking him to do. When my charwoman left, he insisted on scrubbing the kitchen floor, kneeling on the rubber mat, bending over the mop in his singlet. One saw the servant's humility in the attitude. But one also saw the broad shoulders, the arched back with the freckled skin under the rebellious hair, and he would look up as I entered and give me a beautiful smile of his brown dog eyes and white teeth.\n\nThe excitement here appears to arise from a coalescence of subordination and strength. On the one hand, Jeffrey Weeks comments, we are seeing \"a form of sexual colonialism, a view of the lower classes as a source of 'trade.' On the other we may have a sentimental rejection of one's own class values and a belief in reconciliation through sexual contact.\"\n\nStephen Spender tells in his autobiography how in the mid-1930s he took up with a young man whom he calls Jimmy Younger: \"I asked him to live in my flat and work for me.\" The contrast in their background, Spender more or less admits, was not just an inconvenience; it was exciting:\n\nFor the differences of class and interest between Jimmy and me certainly did provide some element of mystery which corresponded almost to a difference of sex. I was in love, as it were, with his background, his soldiering, his working-class home. Nothing moved me more than to hear him tell stories of the Cardiff streets, of Tiger Bay.... At such moments, too, I was very close to certain emotions awakened in childhood by the workers, who to us seemed at the same time coarse, unclean, and yet with something about them of forbidden fruit, and also of warm-heartedness which suddenly flashed across the cold gulf of class, secret and unspoken. (158\u201359; my elision)\n\nThere were tensions, however. Jimmy \"was accustomed to be treated rough, and he expected that I would behave like his past employers. When I did not do so he was disconcerted and felt that in some way I was gaining power over him as no one had done before.\" He said, \"'You are very nice to me, but I feel that I am becoming your property'\" (151).\n\nAs in the Pet Shop Boys' \"Rent,\" it seems plain that the lower-class person may gain more than a meal ticket: there is a romance about the affluent, an aura about the powerful, that may make them sexy. However, indignation and resentment are equally likely: a role reversal (such as I discussed in chapter 3) might place the lower-class man in control. That is the theme of Robin Maugham's novella, _The Servant_ , filmed by Joseph Losey in 1963.\n\nContemporary viewers are invited to recognize a liaison from the 1960s in John Maybury's film about the painter Francis Bacon, _Love Is the Devil_ (1998). George (Daniel Craig) arrives in Francis's studio through the skylight, as a burglar, looking notably proletarian in a donkey jacket. \"Come to bed, and you can have whatever you want,\" says Francis (Derek Jacobi). George's first question when we see them in bed is: \"You actually make money out of painting?\" He's pleased when Francis says he may use him as a subject; he allows Francis to buy him new clothes. George is ill at ease among Francis's posh-bohemian friends, however. They have common ground in boxing, but George's old East End friends despise his new connections. They warn him that he will be used and dropped. Sexually, Francis likes to be submissive, to relinquish control; in the relationship he holds all the cards (this is a typical reversal of class roles).\n\nFrancis gets bored with George, who, having no occupation or space of his own, becomes importunate, obstreperous, maudlin, suicidal. Francis tells himself that his work leaves him no room for relationships; that he is powerless to protect George from his dreams. He apologizes for him to his friends. His impatience and unkindness are defended as the artist's necessary response to his demons. Francis takes George as subject; the pictures in which he figures are especially admired, but Francis can't tolerate him in the studio. Friends warn him that George needs help, but he can't be bothered. George takes pills and alcohol while Francis is feted. George's body seems to grow and fade, miasmically, in and out of the artworks (now famous and immensely valuable) that he has made possible.\n\n**THE PERSISTENCE OF CLASS**\n\nIt is a pleasant trope of conservatives that class is no longer significant in our societies. At the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever in Britain and the United States.\n\nIt might be thought that the idealized relationship between two boys of the same age, who live in adjacent flats on a working-class estate, in a play designed explicitly to contribute to the campaign for an equal age of consent, would be free of class hierarchy. However, Jonathan Harvey in his play _Beautiful Thing_ makes Jamie's mother upwardly mobile (she is promoted to manage a pub) whereas Ste's father is definitely rough (drunken and violent). Jamie's care matches Ste's endurance. Further, in familiar ways, class correlates with gender: Ste is good at football, whereas Jamie reads about soap stars in his mother's magazine. (Note, however, that, unlike earlier coming-out narratives, _Beautiful Thing_ does give a positive role to gay institutions\u2014such as the magazine _Gay Times_ , and a gay pub.)\n\nWhile it seems appropriate to elaborate the concept of class so as to register social, educational, economic, and political inequalities, this need not entail any abandonment of a more traditional Marxist sense of class as about economic, political, and social control. In the last analysis, all power is about command over the means to life. If we have neglected that thought in metropolitan contexts, it is because we have been immensely fortunate in the second half of the twentieth century, to the point where many of us have stopped worrying about food and shelter, and centered our anxieties upon the attainment of a new update of our sound system. Nonetheless, the intense commitments that we call \"love\" may, ultimately, be intricately mediated versions of a will to survive, ontologically as well as materially. This may lead us into interpersonal opportunities which seem to afford a reassuring exercise of our own power. Equally, it may draw us into the orbit of people who appear to be powerful and may protect us.\n\nThe importance of class is indicated in an abiding image in gay pornography and popular fiction: the maintenance man who comes into your house to fix the plumbing and ends up in the shower with you. A thoughtful version of this scenario\u2014told from the viewpoint of the working man\u2014is offered by Jay Quinn in his story, \"The Kitchen Table.\" Phil regards himself as straight, and has been in prison; he is employed by Trace to work with him on his house. As they share their exertions, Phil finds he is increasingly drawn into sexual fantasies about Trace (they are the same age and both presumptively white). \"He noticed how his upper arms and thighs hardened from an office worker's slack fullness to the firmness suited to their new function.\" Hitherto, Phil has been hostile to gays who have approached him, but generally he takes things as they come; he is scarcely troubled by his attraction to Trace. They develop a physical rapport. Unusually for an American story, class difference is made explicit. When a building inspector is not satisfied with Phil's work, he nonetheless defends Phil against Trace. When it comes down to it, Trace observes, \"'A working man'll side with one of his own kind over somebody in a three-piece suit every time'\" (188). Despite his business habits of decision and command, a photograph of Trace and his deceased lover shows Trace as the one who is held, supportively, from behind: \"Trace was relaxed into the man's broad chest, held lovingly by his large hand on his bare stomach\" (199). This is evidently the role demarcation Trace and Phil will now assume. They have a relationship of mutual respect, in which Trace's bourgeois introversion is matched by Phil's work-a-day steadiness.\n\nTo be sure, class difference may be only relative. The English novel that seems designed to set aside traditional hierarchies, representing a partnership between two ordinary blokes, is Tom Wakefield's _Mates_. Cyril and Len meet up in the army in 1954 and stay together for a lifetime. Cyril is pleased that their fellow soldiers don't regard them as conventional queers. He is afraid they will somehow intuit his sexuality.\n\nThey nodded to him as they usually did, and he nodded back. It was a relief to find out that he didn't look any different. He turned to look at Len. His friend Len didn't lisp, wear scent or make-up. That's what he was supposed to do, according to all the newspapers of the day. So what if he did? Sod them, sod them all. No, not all of them. The tea-lady was all right.\n\nCyril doesn't envisage that he might himself wear scent; Len may be relatively feminine, but neither of them cultivates an upper-class, Wildean manner.\n\nYet even this relationship is framed in terms of class. The six weeks of basic training make them appear equal, but hierarchy reappears when they receive different postings because Cyril has good examination results whereas Len, though bookish, is unambitious. Cyril is more confident socially and sexually; he takes up with a local group of artistic and professional men; becomes a head teacher. Len remains a conscientious clerk and does the cooking and the shopping. Finally, Len is unable to assert himself when Cyril dies, and gets pushed out of their home by Cyril's businessman brother.\n\nClass may figure largely a matter of cultural capital. Austin in Edmund White's _The Married Man_ is a successful American writer living in Paris; as such he has both money (earned) and prestige. He is taken with Julien partly because of his status and aura as minor aristocracy. Austin writes about the furniture of upper-class families and as a boy daydreamed of finding that his mother or father was descended from Huguenot nobility. Apparently it is in such elevated circles that Austin can best be himself: \"Only in upper-class French life had Austin found the exact shade of inclusion he had craved for. Perhaps it was natural in a society where a king had been surrounded by cute boys, his _mignons_ , and in which the brother of Louis XIV, ' _Monsieur_ ,' had maintained an all-male shadow court.\" Julien entertains Austin with fantastic tales of his eccentric family; when he doesn't want to talk about something he will \"smile and turn his head slightly to one side with a sort of royal unreachability\" (129). Austin is charmed. After Julien's death, at the end of the book, Austin and the reader learn that all this was fantasy and bluff: Julien comes from a peasant family. Whether French people were deceived by him, or cared very much, is not disclosed.\n\nThe history, albeit dimly perceived in recent years, of preliberation liaisons as typically cross-class and exploitative, has led lesbian and gay people to repudiate or understate the influence of class in our affairs. Gender, race, and sexuality have seemed the more promising banners under which to unite. Sally Munt describes how commitment to lesbian feminism made her feel that talking about class \"was to be labelled a spoiler, a guilt-tripper, a Manichean thinker, a fifth columnist.\" As Munt adds, the occlusion of class has been more powerful in the United States, where Marxism has become hard to think about. A collection of essays reasserting the value of Marxism to Shakespeare studies begins by repudiating any supposed priority of class, as opposed to race and gender; the collection makes almost no further mention of class at all. The same thing happens in Ken Plummer's collection, _Modern Homosexualities_ , Leslie J. Moran points out.\n\nAn intriguing interaction between different kinds of capital is described by Carol M. Ward in her account of a two-year relationship between Rita Mae Brown and Martina Navratilova in 1979\u20131981. It might be thought that the tennis player possessed considerable financial and cultural capital. However, Brown was strongly aware of her own status as a successful novelist and intellectual. She saw Navratilova as \"a nice young girl in a limiting profession; where you can make a lot of money but know very little.\" Correspondingly, Navratilova felt that her career as a sportswoman was being held in low esteem. She wanted to learn from Brown\u2014to read books, visit museums, and talk about politics\u2014but not at the price of her own self-valuation. According to Navratilova, the relationship broke up because Brown's attitude undermined her ambitions in tennis: she became ambivalent about her own aims. Brown believes that the relationship foundered when Navratilova took up with basketball star Nancy Lieberman; Navratilova says Lieberman was only coaching her\u2014helping her to recover her will to win. After a violent breakup, the two women became friends.\n\nDorothy Allison's experience leads her to believe that class is highly active among Americans, in the constitution of both sexualities and political attitudes. She relates her masochistic desires, and her use of dildos and leather, to abuse by her stepfather, and to the white trash culture in which she grew up; she tells a fictionalized version of the story in _Bastard Out of Carolina_. \"What I know for sure is that class, gender, sexual preference, and prejudice\u2014racial, ethnic, and religious\u2014form an intricate lattice that restricts and shapes our lives, and that resistance to hatred is not a simple act,\" she says. Hence the hostility of middle-class feminists and lesbians toward her practices. They are uncomfortable with her butch, working-class partners: \"The kind of woman I am attracted to is invariably the kind of woman who embarrasses respectably middle-class, politically aware lesbian feminists.\" The task, Allison says, is \"to understand how we internalize the myths of our society even as we resist them.\"\n\nIn fact, probably because of general pressures toward embourgeoisement in personal relationships and the particular effects of the targeting of the pink economy, we have scarcely sought to imagine a subculture in which class would be truly a matter of indifference. Instead, we have complacently supposed that gay people will become, almost by definition, middle class\u2014in lifestyle and aspirations, if not in background and income.\n\nClass hierarchy may be obscured through processes of substitution and conflation which make it easy to read class as gender or age difference. Texts which I discuss in other chapters as structured by gender, age, and race usually include a significant element of class difference\u2014so Maupin, _The Night Listener_ ; Dickson, _Oddfellows_ ; Hall, _The Well of Loneliness_ ; Baker, _Tim and Pete_ ; Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ ; Monette, _Halfway Home_ ; Hollinghurst, _The Swimming-Pool Library_. When Malone in Andrew Holleran's _Dancer from the Dance_ is living with Frankie, they begin to look like each other (they dress similarly), \"like all homosexual lovers\"\u2014except for \"that unmistakable difference\": race. (They are from Irish and Italian families.) \"When they lay tangled in each other's limbs by day or night, the pale, golden form, and the swarthy, dark-eyed, one, the northern and southern race joined at last. In fact what is clear, but unmarked, is that their class and educational backgrounds are entirely dissimilar\u2014Malone went to Yale Law School whereas Frankie labors, maintaining the subway system. This is far more relevant than race as such; when the romance wears off they have little to talk about, so they quarrel and part.\n\nClass is not secondary. If a gay man gets off on wearing the gear of a construction worker, or desiring someone else who does that, it is not helpful to read this as a gender phenomenon and translate it into his relations with his father. It is more reasonable to recognize that there is a historical figure\u2014the construction worker. If he appears sexy and dominant\u2014tough, highly skilled, and inured to danger\u2014it is because behind the fantasy lies an actuality in which there is hard, difficult, and perilous labor, probably worsened by stressful working conditions and management resistance to unionization. If he appears sexy and ready to serve, it is because he cannot afford to risk dismissal. It is in such a world that the middle-class gay man invests, financially and psychologically, in real estate and decor.\n\nThe corollary of the centrality of class in gay affairs has been intense evocations of man-to-man equality. The apostle of the liaison that transcends class, in the United States especially, has been Walt Whitman. David Bergman shows how the gay critic F. O. Matthiessen, drawing partly on Edward Carpenter, established Whitman as a poet of organic unity who believed that personal fulfillment might be continuous with social unity. Whitman's reputation as the model for an ideology of opportunity, democracy, and rights, crosses, perhaps too easily, into gay culture as an ideal of comradely, manly, sexual democracy. A memoir of Mark Bingham, for instance, presents him as a regular guy, a rugby player and business executive; a former lover recalls how, when Bingham was coming out, he would read him Whitman. The reason for the memoir is that Bingham died on the hijacked 9\/11 plane that missed its target. Surely he must have been one of the passengers who rushed the hijackers; attention to Whitman certifies his heroic potential. In fact, Whitman's adhesive partners were lower class and younger, and his life and work may be seen as displaying damaging hints of effeminacy.\n\nIn practice, democracy and freedom have immense difficulty evading the demands of wealth and beauty. Money was never absent from the elaborate cruising opportunities of the 1970s. The idea that a kind of democracy flourished on Fire Island is evoked but then given further twists in Ethan Mordden's story, \"And Eric Said He'd Come\":\n\nFor here we find gay stripped to its essentials. The beautiful are more fully exposed here, the trolls more cast out than anywhere else\u2014thus their pride and passion. The beguiling but often irrelevant data of talent and intelligence that can seem enticing in the city are internal contradictions in a place without an opera house or a library. Only money and charm count. Professional advantages are worthless, for, in a bathing suit, all men have the same vocation. Yet there are distinctions of rank. Those who rent are the proletariat, those who own houses are the bourgeoisie, and houseboys form the aristocracy.\n\nAt first it appears that only sex appeal counts; then we learn that money matters after all; indeed, the island has its own version of the class system.\n\nJames Kenneth Melson had a mixed experience of the prestigious Studio 54 disco, he says in his autobiography. He proved that a boy from Ohio could gain entrance just by looking good. Once inside, there was no problem: \"the atmosphere was devoid of the pretenses, the 'attitude,' that prevailed among those left standing outside. Everyone could let his hair down; royalty would dance with rock stars, Eurotrash with debutantes, and pro athletes with the likes of Disco Sally and Rollerena, two of the notables of the 'outrageous' category.\" Better still, this democratic atmosphere seemed to facilitate Melson's quest to seek out the most wealthy and influential men. However, they expected him to comply with their sexual demands, and attempts to pursue upper-class acquaintances beyond the club scene and the bedroom left him rapidly and comprehensively snubbed. He found qualifications and a job on Wall Street a better route to success.\n\nThe implicit underpinning for the Whitmanesque, gay egalitarian ideology is supplied by the concept of \"America.\" As Steven Epstein observes, the appeal is to \"the rules of the modern American pluralist myth, which portrays a harmonious competition among distinct social groups.\" On this basis, lesbians and gay men have constituted themselves as something like an ethnic group claiming rights. How far that pluralistic myth is to be trusted is a question far wider than queer politics: it is about how much we should expect from the institutions through which capitalism and heteropatriarchy are reproduced.\n\nPete in Baker's _Tim and Pete_ offers an explanation for and reaffirmation of the general idealism and the aspiration to transcend class that gay men have associated with a \"Whitmanic\" feeling. Pete relates it to \"'a lot of people feeling good about themselves for the first time in their lives. That was the best time, really, the early gay lib days. There was a bohemian spirit, you know. In a sense it was still the sixties.'\" The image may still be potent. Whitman would have been at home in the semimystical gatherings of the Radical Faeries in 1990, Paul Monette avers.\n\n**WHO SPEAKS?**\n\nPhil in \"The Kitchen Table\" and Melson in his autobiography tell their stories from the viewpoint of the relatively lower-class man. Generally, as we see elsewhere in this book, the feelings of the partner in the subordinate position are less well documented. For instance, we can only speculate about the subsequent sex lives of the boys who featured in Wilde's trials. The unusual factor in Munby's household is that we have Hannah Cullwick's diaries.\n\nNeal Drinnan's _Glove Puppet_ ingeniously refocuses the perils of the cross-class liaison. The novel is written from the viewpoint of Johnny, also called Vaslav, who is now twenty; he interprets his early life, promising the reader some lurid details. Johnny comes from a classically deprived background: he has never known his father, his mother is a sex worker and a drug addict. When she dies suddenly on a railway station he is scooped up by Shamash, a gay ballet dancer whose son has recently died, and taken to Australia. There, at the age of seven, he is named Vaslav and passed off as Shamash's son. He lives happily and luxuriously, and adopts the concepts and values of an artistic, bohemian community. From the age of eleven he finds that his feelings of filial affection for Shamash are complicated by an intense sexual awareness. Shamash tries to damp this down, but at age fourteen Vaslav encourages Ashley, Shamash's partner, to seduce him. When Vaslav is sixteen, he and Shamash become lovers.\n\nAs we saw with age hierarchy, purported accounts of sexual experience from the subordinate viewpoint may offer to titillate the reader, even while inviting condemnation on the ground of exploitation. This process is actually incorporated into _Glove Puppet_ , for Johnny\/Vaslav indicates that he expects to make a lot of money from his book. \"People love sex freaks, trash fucks, dirty young beauty; fresh filth-statutory rape-date rape, boy pussy surprise.\" The reader has been warned\u2014or is it enticed?\n\nAn adult having sex with a boy of fourteen is presented as the moral issue of _Glove Puppet_. Although it is clear that Vaslav was hell-bent on gaining sexual experience, he maintains consistently that Ashley was wrong to exploit him. However, another vein of thought in the book suggests that, in one way or another, Johnny was always bound to be bad, sooner or later and whoever he was with, because of his class origins. Hence his relatively early development: \"hormonally I developed early in that white trashy way that really was my genetic inheritance\" (72). His enjoyment of Shamash's lifestyle is complicated by his assumption that really he is Johnny, the rough boy on the make, bad by definition.\n\nHe [Johnny] was winking at me from where he slouched by the garbage dump in the council estate. In my mind's eye he was making lewd gestures just like those trashy boys in the porn movies, his hand outlining the erection in his torn jeans, his other hand fingering his mouth for saliva, for lube. He was mustering his strength, weighing his sex because that's all he had to sell, that was his only ticket out of the council estate and at that stage his only ambition. (115)\n\nThis enticing but threatening creature has only one object in view: a ticket out. Any signs of untainted love and trust are merely deceptive. Johnny \"could never be tamed or cultured. He was like his mother, hardly a person at all, just someone to do stuff to, something to fuck,\" like a boy in a pornographic magazine (80).\n\nWhen the narration of the novel catches up with present time, Vaslav is entrenched in sauna, pornographic, drug, and sex-worker scenes; he is depressed and has tried to take his own life; yet he is surviving. Shamash has confessed to sodomizing his own son and is in prison. This is on the supposition that Shamash is Vaslav's father; the reader knows better. The issue is not incest, nor even underage sex (in most metropolitan countries sex at sixteen is legal), but the destructive intrusion of the lower-class boy. The reader may or may not choose to accept Vaslav's repeated claims that the truth of gay life is revealed in his corrupt but thrilling story: \"We might frighten ourselves, us fags, but we are what we are and we do experience some extraordinary sensations in our endless pursuit of whatever it is we are looking for\u2014momentary oblivion or eternal rest\" (173).\n\nA powerful novel which takes seriously the potential and the predicament of being the lower-class and younger lover is Paul Russell's _Boys of Life_. Tony is seduced as a sixteen-year-old in Owen, Kentucky, by Carlos, a bohemian, avant-garde filmmaker who is passing through. Carlos is charismatic, worldly wise, and very good at sex; he gives Tony the whiskey he craves, and promises him a role in a film. Despite or because of his rural innocence, Tony already has same-sex experience. His initial response to Carlos is a combination of fascination and trepidation. Thereafter, all the sex is marvelous. Writing about the first fuck still breaks Tony up, ten years later: \"suddenly I was so upset about everything, I couldn't stand it. I started crying, sobbing like some crazy drunk to think how that's all gone, nothing like that's ever going to happen again and the only thing I can do is try and remember it.\" The sexual absorption appears reciprocal, though Carlos is not interested in being fucked. \"I guess you could say he was greedy with me, but I didn't care one bit once he started in on me\" (72). Carlos's exercise of power is sexy.\n\nSo, according to the narration, offered as Tony's retrospective account, it could not fairly be alleged that Tony was seduced into sexual experience which he did not want. In fact, the problem is the other way around: Tony is totally infatuated. In New York he spends the days waiting for Carlos to come home\u2014\"I'd hear him tramping up the stairs. He never knew how happy I was to see him come in that door\" (62). Nor has Carlos detained Tony from heterosexual experience. He doesn't think of himself initially as queer or gay, and he does look at girls in the street\u2014though they tend to be of boyish appearance. \"Maybe it was knowing somewhere inside me I really was a queer that made me look at those women the way I did; maybe I was saying good-bye to something, even though I didn't know that's what I was doing\" (64\u201365).\n\nWhen he is abandoned by Carlos, and bored with making movies and cruising the bars, Tony allows Monica (who is somewhat boyish) to fall in love with him, take him down to Tennessee, and marry him. So eventually he picks up where he might have been if he'd just stayed among his own class in Owen\u2014\"finally back on track\" (219). However, he doesn't find Monica or Tennessee sexy or interesting.\n\nAfter two months in New York, Tony intuits that Carlos has no real interest in his personal development. \"I grew up on Carlos right then\u2014not that I ever thought he was going to get me through stuff, but I do think I hooked up with him back in Owen because I could see I needed some kind of help. And now that fell apart\" (91). He accuses Carlos of using him. It is at this point that Carlos cements Tony's attachment by starting work on the movie with him as star. What hurts Tony crucially is the discovery that he is neither the first nor the last of Carlos's boys. Tony's dawning realization that he has been displaced and he and Carlos will never fuck together again is very painful to read. Carlos claims later that he intended to set Tony free: \"'I wanted you to learn that you wanted to go away.... I sent you away, I let you grow up'\" (295; my elision). However, it sounds like special pleading. Carlos does this with everyone, we learn; it is how he works as an artist. He needs to break his performers to get them to realize their potential for the camera.\n\nTony, when he is angry, accuses Carlos of being manipulative and exploitative. However, a thought running through the narration is that people generally do what they want to do; if it had not been Carlos for Tony, it would have been somebody else. This thought governs Carlos's film technique, which relies upon improvisation to the point where the performers' fantasies emerge. Tony is adamant that the sexual practices in the films were the decisions of the actors, not under compulsion or hypnosis (177, 179). This is perhaps all very well, but if each person is responsible for his own actions, consent must be informed. When Seth tells Tony about Carlos's other boys he adds: \"'I just think people have got a right to know certain things. So they can make their own decisions, if you know what I mean. But to do that they've got to know what's what'\" (150).\n\nThese questions are sharpened toward the end of the novel, as Carlos pushes his experiments with sex and power to new limits. It is disclosed that Carlos has seduced also Tony's younger brother, Ted, and that they pursued the reality of art and the freedom of the actor into increasingly violent and finally fatal courses. Carlos repeats the libertarian motif of the book: people do what they want to do, it takes two to fuck. Now Tony challenges this. \"I hated this man. I hated how he stepped into my life and ruined everything he touched and then just walked out without ever looking back\" (301).\n\nA recurring topic, on the other hand, is where Tony might have been otherwise. Mainly through people he meets around Carlos, he becomes politically aware and personally sensitive, in ways that, he says, could not have developed in Owen, Kentucky. \"'Carlos lifted me out of all that'\" (117). Intellectually, imaginatively, and morally, Tony becomes superior to the system that is going to incarcerate him indefinitely. His defense lawyer argued that Carlos was a monster; Tony is writing to set the record straight. The problem, according to _Boys of Life_ , is not class or age hierarchy, and certainly not the sex that goes along with them. It is Carlos's insatiable appetite for new partners, and his fluency in devising theories to justify it.\n\n**HUSTLING**\n\nRichard von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_ , case number 146: \"I felt myself drawn exclusively towards powerful, youthful and entirely masculine individuals.... Since my desires are limited to persons of the lower social order, I could always find someone who could be had for money.\"\n\nIn _Bruiser_ by Richard House, Paul, an anxious Englishman, is attracted by the readiness of Adrian, a young waiter, to gratify him sexually while he pays the bills. \"Despite moments of tenderness between us, it's my money that keeps him with me,\" he admits to himself. However, this arrangement is satisfactory for Paul: it gives him a new confidence to express himself sexually. He forsakes his bourgeois caution and sets out to drive from Chicago to Mexico, without proper papers, banking arrangements, or travel information, and terrified by the thought that Adrian is HIV-positive. The boy, removed from his accustomed context and subject to Paul's priorities, becomes bored and captious. His erratic and enigmatic behavior initially intrigues Paul, but then increasingly undermines his sense of prudence, order, and purpose. If initially Paul was exploiting Adrian's dependency, he becomes his caregiver, trapped by the boy's insufficiency and his own middle-class sense of responsibility. \"He looks like an old man, his face puffy, cheeks and jawline swollen; it is hard to understand how it all came to this\" (170). Surprisingly, the novel ends with them together, escaping other commitments as they had wanted.\n\nThe outcome is less fortunate in _Steps Going Down_ by Joseph Hansen. Darryl Cutler has always lived off older men, and now is waiting for the death of his lover\/employer. When he falls for a casual pickup, Chick Pelletier, he meets his match in vanity, selfishness, and brutality. Chick is already being kept by an older partner, and has a girlfriend as well. He demands that Cutler get him a starring part in a film, and spends his money copiously as a way of compensating for his dependence. He abuses Cutler verbally and physically. But Cutler is infatuated, and is drawn further into fraud and murder. When Chick leaves him Cutler attracts the devotion of Eduardo, a Mexican delivery boy, but Chick tips off the immigration service. \"Find some nice guy with a job and a bank account, someone your own age\" (74), an acquaintance warns him. That seems to be the moral.\n\nThe hustler is sometimes a romanticized figure in gay writing. Mike (River Phoenix), blessed with beauty but not quite able to function by himself, spends time in a supportive group of street boys in _My Own Private Idaho_ (Gus Van Sant, 1991). This is a consolation also in Pai Hsienyung's novel, _Crystal Boys_. Phil Andros meets all kinds of interesting people as he peddles himself around Chicago and San Francisco; indeed, he finds that he is himself already a legendary figure. The clients are respectful, given to swapping literary quotes, and many are so sexy themselves that it is unclear why they need a hustler's services. The cops are sexy as well in their uniforms, and happy to join in. Unsurprisingly, such celebration of the hustler occurs toward the pornographic end of the spectrum of writing. As I argued in chapter 4, the function of pornography is to present images of sexual relations that are otherwise impermissible, or barely permissible. Phil Andros's adventures propose a liberty and a success that most of us can only fantasize about. To be sure, if hustling were truly so rewarding we would all be doing it; but we may like to imagine that it may be so.\n\nHustlers are likely exponents of the value of multiple and anonymous relations, and may well be explicit about the overwhelming of difference that they enact. Phil Andros's collection _Below the Belt and Other Stories_ is dedicated to \"Twelve Johns, eleven Dons, four Kennys, nine Jims, two Ikes, three Sams, two Scotts, four Garys, four Roberts, one Dean, and lots of other good guys too numerous to mention\" (v). Porn star Scott O'Hara writes in his memoir, _Autopornography_ , of a particular sexual encounter:\n\nI can't say much about that night, except that it was the most perfect night in my memory. What makes one particular night stand out so, from among the hundreds of nights of good sex that I've had? Cynically, I have to say that it's largely due to the fact that I never saw Colm again. We never had a chance to become familiarly contemptible (or is that contemptibly familiar?) toward each other.\n\nWhat made Colm special was his anonymity.\n\nJohn Rechy's narrator in _City of Night_ presents a more acerbic view of the scores (clients), hustlers, and queens. He finds his way from Texas to Times Square: \"like a possessive lover\u2014or like a powerful drug\u2014it lured me. FASCINATION! I stopped working.... And I returned, dazzled, to this street. The giant sign winked its welcome: FASCINATION!\" He resists attempts to settle him, either as a lover or as an employee. The seductions of the scene are continuous with the dangers: \"Life is lived on the brink of panic on the streets\" (150)\u2014panic generated by the vice squad, and by the prospect of finding that you are no longer young and desirable. The narrator's relation to all this is ambivalent. The others are presented as trapped in the scene, whereas the narrator, even while working it, is an observer. Which we are to take as the dominant image is unclear.\n\nEventually the narrator is almost persuaded by a client, Jeremy, to admit that really he wants to be loved, and has been using the passing of money as a repeated, because unsatisfactory, reassurance that he is wanted. Money will not be irrelevant, of course: Jeremy is offering full support in New York. However, this would require the narrator not just to trust himself in someone else's hands, but to admit that his response to gay sex is personal and not merely professional\u2014that he is gay. He decides that love is a myth to which he should not surrender (after all, Jeremy has not found it himself); he prefers the reality of the \"grinding streets\" (370). There is no suggestion that he has been damaged, any more than anyone else in a godless world.\n\nHugo in Oscar Moore's _A Matter of Life and Sex_ is attracted by the romance of hustling:\n\nHe wanted to be let into the game, to join in the tawdry spectacle, dressed up with tinsel and a smile, sinister and all-knowing, feigning naivety, feigning experience, battered by fate and by pimps, teetering on the brink of the gutter and drugs, living in a nightlife world of sex, violence and cash in the hand.\n\nHe is from a suburban background and goes to university, but exploiting his sexual attractions seems more fun. However, the streets have changed and there is no \"fraternity of hustlers\" such as he has read of in fiction. The scene is managed through an agency and is in hotel bedrooms. Initially, Hugo enjoys being attractive and skillful, but constant faking destroys his spontaneity. He makes no friends, and fails to find a sugar daddy or to meet a celebrity. Part of the lore of hustling is that you insist on your limits, what you will and will not do, and avoid dangerous situations. However, Hugo is forced. This happens also in _Close to the Knives_ , David Wojnarowicz's novel. Both protagonists tell their stories with their deaths from AIDS in view.\n\nAIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases apart, it is not obvious that the employment of sex workers is doing much _distinctive_ harm to anyone\u2014by this, I mean much harm that is not already endemic in the lower-paid, unregulated regions of market capitalism. The exploitation and humiliation is hardly less if you are working in a manufacturing sweatshop, and there may be a better prospect of the occasional thrill. Donald J. West in his study, _Male Prostitution_ , finds a pattern of social malaise among the boys, but concludes that \"they would have been problem personalities in any event and that involvement in street work was incidental to the disaster-laden course of their lives.\" The exchange of sexual favors for money is, perhaps, less a perversion of egalitarian, companionable relations, than a counterpart of them.\n\nNotwithstanding, sex that is paid for is firmly signaled as second-rate in much of our fiction. In Michael Arditti's much admired novel _Easter_ , readers learn to dislike the Archdeacon; he is hostile to the sincere, conscientious, and troubled vicar and curate. So when we find that on Good Friday he conducts a masochistic scenario centered upon himself as Christ and artfully elaborating the biblical narrative, we are hardly surprised. The corruption that we intuited is exposed. Ronan, the young man who is paid to flog and humiliate the Archdeacon, is supplied by Harry, a typically sinister professional, who was corrupted when a church server; Ronan is black, inexperienced, and has no money. \"'Do you think I want [to] do this? I'm telling you I'm skint, man. I'm going mad stuck in three rooms with my mum and sisters.'\" He embodies a normative perspective upon the Archdeacon's doings. \"Ronan no longer knows what to think. Nothing Harry said has prepared him for such perversity.\" To the Archdeacon, he's one of Pilate's thugs. \"'You see the broken, bruised, bloody body in front of you; so what do you want to do to it?'\" \"'Cover it up?'\" Ronan suggests, artlessly. \"'No, you fool: flog it! Don't you know the gospel story?'\" When the Archdeacon ejaculates with a cry of \"'It is finished,'\" Ronan rebels: \"'You're completely round the twist.... I'm not staying here'\" (339; my elision). It is left to the Archdeacon's mother, in an unscripted conflation of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus, to get him down from the cross.\n\nYet is this all so contemptible? If it is not your thing then it will appear weird, but other people's fixations are always like that. Of course, it is hypocritical of the Archdeacon to use the imagery of religion, in the face of its traditional doctrines of abstinence, for sexual excitement. But if fantasy is dependent on a supply of provocative materials from the power structures in which we live, as I have been arguing, it will feature substitutions and reversals of authoritative imagery (such as that of Christianity). Must it be that fantasies featuring heterosexuals in the missionary position and trying for a baby are authentic, while more adventurous scenarios are ridiculous or evil? To whose advantage is that? Should we not, in fact, be wary of satire as a form (on the cover of my edition, Muriel Spark says, \"Arditti writes about Western Christianity with pungency and satirical frankness\")? Does satire not, often, insinuate a taken-for-granted set of normative assumptions?\n\n**HOUSE PARTIES**\n\nA versatile location for the cross-class liaison is the weekend house party. Here the upper-class man will feel at home, and probably keen to show off the sexy man he has captured. The lower-class partner will feel like an outsider and ill at ease, so their relationship will be tested. At the same time, the outsider may offer a challenge to the other occupants, drawing attention to their own deceptions and insecurities. The class intruder is a wild card; he doesn't know the rules, you don't know what he might do (the plays of Harold Pinter are ultimately about this). The outcome, typically, finds some couples fading in commitment and others growing. Most often the outsider is cast off\u2014illustrating the dominance of intraclass pressure over sheer sexiness.\n\nIn _Love! Valour! Compassion!_ , Terrence McNally's play (filmed by Joe Mantello in 1997), everyone in the house responds to the attractions of Ramon, a young dancer of Puerto Rican origin and little education, whom John has brought with him to a gathering of old friends involved in the making of stage musicals. His strangeness is immediately registered: \"A Third World boyfriend. So John Jeckyll has gone PC.\" They discuss funding for the arts, and the need for a Diaghilev; but he would expect sexual favors. The only thing an artist should do for free is make love, Ramon declares. John, who is not a happy man, feels sidelined, and tries clumsily to assert his proprietary rights. \"Can we go upstairs and fuck?\" he demands. \"I didn't appreciate that fucking remark in front of your friends,\" Ramon complains later (29). The situation is delicate, he reminds John: \"Look, I'm sort of out of my element this weekend.... You're all old friends. You work together. You have a company. I'm just somebody you brought with you\" (33; my elision). Notwithstanding, John corrects Ramon's vocabulary and calls him \"Chiquita\" in front of the others. We learn later that John's sexuality is fixated upon a master-and-servant scenario, deriving from an early experience with an Irish boy who worked for his father.\n\nHowever, Ramon is already asserting his independence by setting out to seduce Bobby, who is blind and the partner of Gregory who owns the house. This leads to the breakup of John and Ramon, and eventually of Gregory and Bobby. However, it is when he accepts that it is Ramon who must dance the work that he can write but no longer perform that Gregory is released from his work block. Not all affairs are doomed to fail. Arthur and Perry reaffirm their fourteen-year relationship; but they are class-matched\u2014an accountant and a lawyer. Buzz and James, both of whom are living with AIDS, fall in love. The action is finally overshadowed by AIDS, which is said to be a genocide, destroying gay life. Actually, _Love! Valour! Compassion!_ displays the subculture as disconcertingly resilient.\n\nLyle takes Robert to meet his old friends John and Marian, in Peter Cameron's novel _The Weekend_. Lyle lives in a Brownstone house he has inherited from Tony (who was a travel writer), and has written a successful book on painting. Lyle was a visiting speaker and Robert was employed to drive him to the airport: that is how they met. Robert is a struggling young artist and a waiter in an Indian restaurant (he doesn't get on with his father, who is Indian, lives in Delhi, and makes money manufacturing counterfeit sportswear). Lyle is able to offer Robert a studio; he is attracted by his malleability\u2014\"'He listens to people; he really listens.'\" Robert listens mainly to Lyle:\n\nHe found almost everything about Lyle sexy: his body, his mind, his talk, the way he climbed stairs, the way his fingers gripped a fork, blushing with tension, the way he smelled and tasted, the impossibly soft way his back and neck and shoulders congregated, the spot there, the crux of him, naked and lickable. (127)\n\nRobert perceives Lyle as powerful, not in this or that respect, but generally, through his entire person; even his points of softness and vulnerability are powerful. Unfortunately, Lyle doesn't have much wisdom.\n\nJohn and Marian (not \"Mary-Anne,\" she insists) are too wealthy to have to work. They are old friends of Lyle, Tony was John's half brother, and he died of AIDS; so a lot is at stake when Lyle brings Robert to visit on the anniversary of Tony's death. John does his best to absent himself; under Marian's scrutiny, Robert appears not to belong. When he says \"'We've just lay about all afternoon,'\" Marian wants to correct him. \" _Lain_ about,\" she wants to say (103); when Lyle has a black eye from walking into a tree, John asks if Robert has hit him; his white shirt is presumed to be one he wears as a waiter. The symptomatic incident is at dinner, when Robert pulls a grape from the bunch, unaware that there are special scissors for grapes (they had belonged to Marian's grandmother). Laura, who is Italian and raunchy, takes Robert's part: \"'Oh, don't tame him!' Laura suddenly cried. 'Let him eat grapes with his fingers if he wants! Let us all be free of these stupid affectations!'\" (180). Robert, who has overheard Marian saying that she doesn't like him, feels that Lyle is siding against him and leaves abruptly for the city.\n\nNeither Cameron nor his characters quite say that class is the issue. \"'He's all wrong for Lyle,'\" Marian declares (156); \"'we are not well suited,'\" Lyle accepts (235). On the defensive, Lyle denies that the feeling between Robert and himself can properly be called love: \"'If you loved me\u2014if what you feel is love\u2014love would be a very cheap and common thing'\" (189). However determined the effacement, these are class terms. My sense is that Robert offered a challenge which the others failed to meet. It is unclear, at the end, whether Lyle and he can rescue anything.\n\nThe stranger is already within the gates in Alan Hollinghurst's novel _The Spell_. Justin used to be with Alex but is now with Robin; he invites Alex down to Robin's house in the country. Alex is a civil servant and Robin is an architect who tidies up country houses; both have a lot more money and status, and are far more established in the world than the somewhat younger men to whom they are attracted. These are principally Justin, who wants to be an actor; Danny, who is Robin's son but works as gallery attendant; and Terry, the local factotum with an eye for the main chance (a cross between Alec Scudder in Forster's _Maurice_ and Ron Wrigley in Angus Wilson's _Hemlock and After_ ). In a sequence of episodes alternating between London and weekends at Robin's house, Alex becomes accustomed to Justin's defection and falls for Danny, who becomes bored and leaves him.\n\nJustin has a starkly instrumental idea of relationships. \"'You're like me, darling, you need someone older to look after you,'\" he tells Danny. \"'I know Alex is rather shy and sensitive, but he's got plenty of money and a comfortable house and a sports car\u2014and in bed... well\u2014.'\" Actually, it emerges, being kept is not very good for Justin. He is bored all day, and finds himself unable to get interested in housework (which, of course, would confirm his subservient status). At one point Robin's approach affects him \"like a secretary briefly disarranged by an importunate boss\" (124). Danny maintains his own flat and gets a job so as not to be \"a kept boy\"; however, it is only casual work (141). Both Justin and Danny feel justified in undertaking flings with other, similarly placed young men. Justin tells himself \"how outrageous it was of Robin to leave him locked up here, like a slave, a mistress with no life of her own\" (93). Terry is available: \"'I can slip in through the back gate,'\" he says (48).\n\nThe answer, it appears, is to avoid relations of manifest, one-way dependence. Robin and Justin get onto a better footing eventually: the trigger is Justin's inheriting money of his own, so that he is no longer beholden. Alex takes up with Nick, who is of similar background and interests to himself and slightly older. The (relatively) egalitarian liaison wins out, then, though Alex finds that the spell of Danny lingers.\n**8**\n\n**RACE**\n\n**HUMILIATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS**\n\nHierarchies of gender, age, and class afford a range of attractive scenarios for sexual power play. Age difference, for instance, may plug into fathers and sons, and teachers and pupils; these may be entirely amiable relations, though they may also afford scope for the enactment of violent and exploitative fantasies. The scenarios that race sustains are centrally and indelibly embedded in slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and servitude; they reference actual practices of torture and ill-treatment of such extremity that they have been outlawed in many countries. Historically, even benevolent relations between white people and people of color have characteristically involved condescension and stereotyping. It is still hard to think of intimate relations between black and white men without invoking a heritage of dominance and subordination.\n\nIn an encyclopedia article on \"Black Gay Americans,\" Ward Houser posits a range of responses to this heritage, often involving role substitutions, reversals, and loops. For some it seems appropriate for a white male to take a \"female\" role in a mixed-race liaison, because this may compensate for the historic dominance of white men. Others, \"being more comfortable in the submissive role, generalize from their experience of whites as holding the major power positions of American society to perceive white males as particularly sexually powerful, and so are attracted to them.\" Correspondingly, some whites may \"feel more comfortable dominating\" effeminate black gays, whereas others are drawn to more \"macho\" black men because they are supposed to be more virile. (We might hesitate there at the expression \"feel more comfortable.\" A good deal of the published evidence suggests that such preferences may be passionately driven; as I observe in chapter 3, fantasy is as likely to involve compulsion as freedom.) Even those who are not much affected by those hierarchical factors, Houser says, are likely to be involved in \"the attractiveness of the 'different,' curiosity, class differences, rebellion against social custom, or a belief that race should not be a factor in discriminating between potential sexual partners.\"\n\nThere is no reason to suppose that gay men and lesbians will be unusually progressive about other disadvantaged groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Ricans seem to have been regarded in a notably functional light on the New York gay scene. In _The Farewell Symphony_ Edmund White remarks casually, of a man he sleeps with: \"he was himself bewitched by Puerto Ricans, as who was not\"; the question is so rhetorical that it doesn't get a question mark. Midwestern boys, in particular, are said to find Puerto Ricans exotic. In Andrew Holleran's _Dancer from the Dance_ , Puerto Rican boys are ubiquitous, beautiful, and said to have \"big cocks.\" They unload boxes at a store, exterminate roaches, and carry messages; they play handball in empty lots; they are never within the social orbit of the narrator and his friends. Malone \"loved those boys, as did I, to be among them was enough; he was in thrall to them, he was in the thrall of Puerto Ricans\" (188). Again: \"My dick would straighten out like a divining rod, forcing me to follow more than twenty blocks in fruitless pursuit\" when a Puerto Rican passes, we are told in David B. Feinberg's _Eighty-Sixed_. There is no sense that these enthusiasms might be personally and politically problematic; no concern about how it might feel to be the object of such casual attentions.\n\nTo be sure, sexual attraction frequently involves objectification. But race supplies the most ready-made, and hence the most crude, repertoire\u2014and all no more than _skin deep_. In Lyle Glazier's story, \"Chester,\" the narrator, who prefers black men, remarks of a partner: \"I thought he had no formal education, no book learning, no academic interest in literature, music, the fine arts. I erased our difference. I was engulfed by his brown warmth. He was pure sexuality\u2014gentle, placid, as open to love as the earth is open to the sun. I loved his brown against my white.\" The narrator tries to make his partner a blank, erasing every attribute but two: sex and skin color\u2014and finally just skin color. Further, racial differences are usually permanent. As Rhonda Cobham remarks, the youth in ancient Greece was expected to accept homosexual advances while a boy, on the assumption that this was an interim stage before he became himself a citizen. But you don't grow out of racial subordination, even if you change class (in the language of race, you remain a \"boy\"). Indeed, the white mentor may feel threatened at the prospect of his black prot\u00e9g\u00e9 rising in the social scale. In Paul Thomas Cahill's story, \"The Reunion,\" Rodger (white) has left Julius (black) because he couldn't cope with his being successful: \"'I couldn't be in charge, couldn't take care of you as I thought I was expected to, not when we were... equals.'\"\n\nJames Baldwin in _Another Country_ depicts Rufus as driven to violence, despair, and suicide by his inability to handle the racial milieu in which he is trapped. Rufus's sister Ida is tougher, at the cost of total separation: \"'If any _one_ white person gets through to you, it kind of destroys your\u2014single-mindedess. They say that love and hate are very close together. Well, that's a fact.'\" Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, in his notorious attack on Baldwin in _Soul on Ice_ , alleged that _Another Country_ displays \"the most grueling, agonizing, total hatred of the blacks, particularly of [Baldwin] himself, and the most shameful, fanatical, fawning, sycophantic love of the whites.\" In Cleaver's view, \"many Negro homosexuals, acquiescing in this racial death wish, are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by the white man.\" Actually, _Another Country_ is not incompatible with Cleaver's hostile analysis: it amounts to an extended demonstration that cross-racial affairs are irretrievably doomed, because of hang-ups such as Cleaver posits\u2014and, anyway, are scarcely tolerated by people in New York (let alone the South). The good sex, in Baldwin's novel, is between white men. Notwithstanding, Huey Newton, another Panther, envisaged an alliance between the black, feminist, and gay movements, and labeled Cleaver himself a repressed homosexual. These concerns are still politically active in the United States around Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.\n\nThere may be scarcely less objectification when the conjuncture of sexuality and race is offered as the ground of spectacular harmony. In the films _My Beautiful Laundrette_ (Stephen Frears, 1985) and _The Wedding Banquet_ (Ang Lee, 1993), a miraculously egalitarian, racially blind gay relationship is presented as a magical opportunity for the overthrow of (merely) cultural misunderstanding. The boys in _My Beautiful Laundrette_ inhabit a world in which \"Asian\" and \"skinhead\" are the most antipathetic terms, but between the two of them race is unremarkable. In _The Wedding Banquet_ , Wai-Tung's Taiwanese family produces intense cultural disruption in the relationship of Wai-Tung and Simon, but the two principals appear ideally harmonious in every other respect, and totally unaware of any complication in the conjunction of sexuality and racial difference. Racial blindness appears comparably in Marshall Moore's story \"Everybody Loves the Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay.\" In this instance a Sino\/American couple are living happily in Malaysia, when the American mother and the demands of family intrude clumsily upon them. Again, race itself appears to be merely incidental for the two men. _The Crying Game_ (Neil Jordan, 1992) presents transvestism as the big shock, while making racial difference of little account between Fergus and Dil. This instance is complicated by the fact that the white man, Fergus, is Irish\u2014of a subjugated people\u2014whereas Jodi, who is black and from Antigua (formally independent) has signed up to fight for the imperial power. The simply English person is Dil, who is of mixed race.\n\n**IMPERIAL RESIDUES**\n\nThe alleged inadequacies of colonial subjects position them as the inferiors that witness to European superiority. Fiction indicates that colonial Europeans spent a good part of their time producing anxious, self-justifying stories about the relationship between the natives and themselves. If colonial fiction \"can demonstrate that the barbarism of the native is irrevocable, or at least very deeply ingrained, then the European's attempt to civilize him can continue indefinitely, the exploitation of his resources can proceed without hindrance, and the European can persist in enjoying a position of moral superiority,\" Abdul JanMohamed observes.\n\nIn the midst of apartheid, South Africa produced stories exploring the rewards and difficulties of black-white liaisons. David's initial defining experience, at the start of John Sandys's novel _Against the Tide_ , is on the beach, with \"a golden-brown gypsy boy with dark, curly hair.\" David is in his late twenties and can't settle in England after World War II, personally or to an occupation; there are said to be more opportunities in South Africa. On arrival there he immediately gets invited to a party of same-sex \"Coloureds.\" They have \"dark-skinned shining bodies, beautiful to behold, muscular, deep-chested, narrow-hipped, long-legged\" (58); they are \"young, virile, gentle and uninhibited, with music in their souls and laughter in their hearts\" (61). However, David is quickly told that mixing is not tolerated. He despises the local white men he sees at gay parties, and the married couple who take him in and try to seduce him.\n\nDavid becomes a commercial traveler; it is love at first sight when he is assigned a Zulu driver. \"Ugi was the golden-brown gypsy boy and he was in love. He asked God to bless them both\" (82). Ugi, we learn, fell in love immediately with David. Their meetings are dangerous and desperate. David is distraught when he learns that Ugi has a wife and children. However, Ugi introduces him to Guy, another white man with a black lover, who explains that marriage is required by local custom. Guy draws David into a circle of clandestine black-white couples, but even here he dislikes the whites.\n\n\"'Why do they refer to a grown man\u2014a husband and a father as 'boy'?'\" David demands (126). Nonetheless, his relationship with Ugi depends on difference. \"Ugi gave a wide smile. 'Me happy to be David's boy,' he said proudly'\" (126\u201327). Ugi uses the name given to him by white employers; David himself thinks of him as \"this beautiful child\" (87). Ugi apparently has a preference for male lovers: he thinks of himself, in the idiom of his people, as a \"woman-man\" (140).\n\nHowever, Ugi has educated himself and gives David the best advice on how to establish himself financially. He sees a market opportunity, making and selling lampshades; he becomes the creative force in the business. Compare Alice Walker's _The Color Purple_ , where Shug and Celie secure their future by setting up a business making pants: it appears that small-scale capitalist development is the key to security, advancement, and affluence. David and Ugi pay no attention to the political situation, and consequently are taken by surprise when business confidence is destroyed by the Sharpeville Massacre. Eventually they are driven from South Africa, but their love survives and they will start again in England.\n\nIn _Against the Tide_ , the South African political situation figures mainly as threatening David's personal and business affairs. In Stephen Gray's _Time of Our Darkness_ , the personal bears a political message. This novel is set in South Africa during the school boycott which led eventually to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of white rule. Pete has a fading gay relationship with Andr\u00e9, who is Afrikaans and an airline pilot. Pete is a teacher at a private school and well aware of the rule, \"never to lay a hand in amorous expectation on a pupil.\" Disley, the token scholarship black student in the class, age thirteen, arrives at his house, evidently in need of support. The boy seduces Pete, and they become lovers. Like Ugi, Disley has an independent understanding of sex between men\u2014he knows already about single-sex hostels, mine compounds, Andr\u00e9 (Pete's partner), and Andr\u00e9's pickup.\n\nIn the metropolitan, egalitarian mode, _Time of Our Darkness_ is inclined to play down the sexual significance of hierarchy between Pete and Disley. \"We were more than equal in the dark,\" Pete declares, referring, I suppose, to genital endowment (78). He does not admit to any special thrill from age and class difference, and appears not to have entertained any prior idea of sex with black Africans.\n\nI was brought up not to touch black skin. Black skin was unhealthy, scaly like a reptile's, gave you TB. A whole country has been divided on that prejudice. When I was a child my mother pulled me out of the reach of the nanny, feeding me herself, bathing me. When I was at primary school we'd run down the corridor, make a circle around the cleaner on her hands and knees, reassemble, not having touched black flesh. (138).\n\nFor Pete, skin color is a revelation rather than an abiding fascination. \"Do I need to describe the sensation that I experienced as the blackness went out of Disley's skin for me and I felt the person beneath. [Again, there is no question mark.] All of him\" (138). In this passage Disley's skin is sexy not because it is black, but because, for Pete, it is no longer that. In a typically egalitarian gesture, Pete erases the blackness of Disley's skin and finds \"the person beneath. All of him.\" Even in such an extreme situation, difference is said to be unimportant.\n\nYet, contradictorily, Pete does proceed to find positive value in Disley's skin. He imagines a visit from the police:\n\nLet the man in the raincoat come. I had a few things to tell him: about black skin, about how it felt, the texture, the grain. And about loss. And about deprivation and humiliation. I was sick with it, as my white, police-supporting countrymen were, but they were sick with their aversion for black skin. (138)\n\nNow we have positive qualities of texture and grain; Disley's skin is relevant after all, it does contribute to an erotics of difference.\n\nAccording to Gray, in an interview, the age difference in his novel is symbolic. His idea was that \"the entire impetus of the uprising in South Africa in the mid-1980s, during which children assumed the role of adults and adults became, to say the least, vindictively childish, should be acted out literally.\" The message is that the country has been plunged into turmoil by a pointless phobia, and that children, by refusing to learn Afrikaans in schools, are leading the revolt. Actually, black skin has its own attractions and the children are wise. For the time being\u2014the time of darkness\u2014the system wins: Disley achieves not a gay relationship but martyrdom in the cause of his people.\n\nEvidently, South Africans have not finished with this scenario. A more gloomy version appears in \"A Son's Story\" by Tony Peake. Paul (white) is having a loving sexual relationship with young Memphis (black), who looks after the garden, and whom Paul is coaching in English literature. The relationship is destroyed when a grossly violent dispute between ANC and Inkatha factions draws Memphis back to his family home. In his distress, and perhaps resentment, Memphis tears up all the literary books. Unfortunately, we learn nothing more precise about his feelings, since he is given almost nothing to say. This is partly because the action is seen from the viewpoint of an English visitor, a born-again Christian\u2014a rather easy target.\n\nA traditional skill of the fiction writer is entering into unfamiliar consciousnesses. Yet Sandys in _Against the Tide_ makes little attempt to explain Ugi's thoughts to the reader. We don't know what the two men talk about when they are together, except business and how beautiful and sexy each finds the other. When David (upset by Ugi's visit to his wife and child) is unfaithful, we are told Ugi's response: \"Ugi had been badly hurt, and his first impulse was to leave David, to live only for his wife and children, to give up being a woman-man. But he loved David deeply, and when he surfaced after the initial shock he sensed that with time and patience the memory of that awful day would blur, and he would be able to forgive\" (140). This is helpful, but perfunctory compared to the central narrative role of David's thoughts. After twelve years they go to Europe together, and David ponders Ugi's difference:\n\nDavid lay, thinking about Ugi's early days and the way he had changed. \"I wish I knew what he thinks\u2014how he thinks. To be taken out of a tribal society and thrust into this strange way of life is a challenge which has needed a superhuman adjustment, yet he seems to succeed without effort. I am so proud of him...\" (150)\n\nDavid allows Ugi to see that he is thinking along these lines. Ugi objects, forcibly: \"'I see David is still conscious that I am black.... I am no novelty. I am not different.' He stared hard at David. 'I have the same emotions, the same feelings, I have the same red blood.'\" \"David was hurt, and ashamed into silence\" (151; my elisions). This is perhaps the only point at which a distance is allowed between David and the narration. Still, David feels able to pronounce that Ugi \"'now has a well-developed mind and a personality'\" (165), as though he had previously lacked these attributes.\n\nSimilarly, in _Against the Tide_ , it would be marvelous to know what Disley thinks about it all. We may infer, with Pete, that Disley is impressed with his lifestyle; he has thrown in his lot with education (while the rest of his township is rioting); Pete can take him forward. Pete's worry is that Disley will underestimate the gap between their social positions, and will imagine that by imitating Pete's amiable manner he can progress to a comparable state of affluence and self-determination. The predicament is manifest when Disley is returning to his township: there is no point in Pete giving him a hair drier because they have no electricity. However, Disley's self-possession, boosted by his success at school, enables him to inspire his people. If the narrator in _Time of Darkness_ does not presume to take us into Disley's consciousness, the reader is encouraged to share a respect for the other dimensions in his life, in the township and in a rural area that they visit.\n\nPerhaps it is not possible, still, for a white South African to presume to interpret the thoughts of a black person. J. M. Coetzee, in his prize-winning novel _Disgrace_ , doesn't attempt this; we get only the viewpoint of the white, male protagonist. A black African has a large influence on the outcome of the action, but his thoughts and feelings remain mysterious and ominous. Perhaps such reticence is ultimately a sign of respect: what white people have done to black people in South Africa makes it impossible for one to speak for, or through, the other. Yet it must also undermine any humanistic or paternal argument, that all peoples are, or can become, one. Actually, as Patricia Duncker points out, Coetzee has another character of restricted representation, a white lesbian. She also has no independent consciousness. She does have a lot of conversation with the protagonist, but, being traumatized, she is unable or unwilling to explain how she feels. This is not just a matter of fair shares, so to speak. If Coetzee were to assay the consciousness of these others, he would have to consider more carefully the claims these people might reasonably make upon each other and upon South Africa.\n\nHomosexuality is shown as enhancing the opportunity for exploitation and humiliation in V. S. Naipaul's novella, _In a Free State_. Bobby, who is white, works as some kind of civil servant in an independent East African country, in which the president and the military are in the process of overthrowing the more traditional rule of the king. Bobby does this work not because it allows him to lord it over black African people, but because it enables him to abase himself before them in ways that are actually patronizing and condescending, and calculated to shore up his fragile emotional stability. He had a nervous breakdown; \"'Africa saved my life.'\" Bobby tells himself that he is recognizing the humanity of the African, but becomes crazily enraged when confronted with irrefutable indifference or hostility toward himself. He seeks to ingratiate himself with Africans by wearing what is called a native-style shirt; this annoys an army officer and he is severely beaten up.\n\nBobby acknowledges an effeminate side to his nature. For him Africa is empty spaces, long drives on open roads. \"'You want lift? You big boy, you no go school? No, no, you no frighten. Look, I give you shilling. You hold my hand. Look, my colour, your colour. I give you shilling buy schoolbooks. Buy books, learn read, get big job. When I born again I want your colour'\" (109). The key moment is the color juxtaposition, the touching of the black and white skin. Unfortunately for Bobby it doesn't always work. He chats up a South African in a hotel bar: \"'If I come into the world again I want to come with your colour.' His voice was low... his fingers moved until they were over one of the Zulu's.... Then, without moving his hand or changing his expression, the Zulu spat in Bobby's face\" (107; my elisions).\n\nAlthough Naipaul dwells upon the inadequacies of African regimes, he appears to share the opinion of President Sam Nujoma of Namibia and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, that homosexuality is a corrupt European import. His main theme, in this offensive and tremendously written book, is that relations with Africans are impossible. When they are not threatening or actually brutal, they are ridiculous: \"The frightened boy brought in the soup plate by plate, pressing his thumbs on the rims. He walked with a stoop, raising his knees high; his big feet, loosely hinged at the ankles, flapped up and down\" (134). Above all, for Naipaul, these people are black; the narrative returns obsessively to their blackness. The only man more objectionable than the black African is the white man who takes him seriously, and no one but a pathetic, damaged queer is going to do that. Naipaul's story shows, in effect, what happens when you allow the native to get the whip hand.\n\nAngus Wilson takes third world peoples more seriously, though his novel _As If by Magic_ is not free of suggestions that they may be amusing, irrational, mysterious, and dangerous. However, it does offer a significant challenge, from within a gay framework, to the complacency of empire. Hamo Langmuir, a famous plant geneticist, tall and clumsy, has such exacting fantasy requirements that he has driven away Leslie, his devoted partner, because at twenty-five he is too old and has to shave. Hamo has found a network of rent boys, but is unable to cope with any sexual relation that might become personal. His sexual opportunities are transformed when he is sent on a world tour to observe the success of \"Magic,\" the new rice which he has bred, and which is transforming the agro-economy of the developing world. He passes in a haze through Japan, Indonesia, and South Asia, becoming increasingly bold in pursuit of the Fairest Youth, and grossly disrespectful toward his courteous and kind hosts, whose folly consists merely of embeddedness in a social milieu in which there are manners, decencies, and ongoing expectations. \"'Mr Langford, we are here a _small_ community. You have come among us without respect.'\"\n\nAbove all, it is difficult for the boys whom Hamo has accosted to carry on as before in their communities; he imagines he can make it all right by writing checks. His remark, that if a Singhalese serving boy, Muthu, gets into trouble he will take him to England, leads the boy to run away from a family where he has been well treated. \"'What can you do with the boy in England? He is a good boy. But he is ignorant. What will he do there?'\" his mistress, Mrs. Dissawardene asks (282). This is a pertinent question\u2014we know that Hamo's attraction to Muthu will last only while he is young. He catches fleeting glimpses of Muthu everywhere he goes (to him, one beautiful youth is much like another), and makes desperate attempts to find him. People die; the forces in play are entirely beyond Hamo's control.\n\nThese interferences in local mores are continuous with the intrusion effected by Magic rice, which is so productive that small farms on poor land are no longer viable. Muthu, for instance, might have returned to his village, but their land is marginal and Magic means that they wouldn't be able to feed him. A homophobic official accuses:\n\nI suggest that instead of insulting your host by buggering his servants, you look for your leavings in the slums of the cities of Asia. Luckily your very valuable scientific rationalisation of our local agriculture has made sure that the bazaars and public places are filled with the scum overflowing from the waters of hopeless paddy fields. If anyone has such low tastes, they are always ready to oblige for the price of a bowl of rice. (176)\n\nHamo submits a report calling for social conditions to be taken into account in agrarian innovation, but his employers ignore it. I admire _As If by Magic_ for the sharp light it throws upon metropolitan gay mores, from within a gay perspective that may still endorse the quest for the Fairest Youth and his potential to respond. Also, it illuminates the continuity between psychosexual and sociopolitical hierarchies: Hamo's private quest is implicated in his professional practice.\n\nOn the opening page of Alan Hollinghurst's novel, _The Swimming-Pool Library_ , Will Beckwith, the protagonist, admires a black maintenance worker on the Underground: \"The black was looking at his loosely cupped hands: he was very aloof, composed, with an air of massive, scarcely conscious competence\u2014I felt more than respect, a kind of tenderness for him.\" There is a similar moment in the closing pages of the novel.\n\nWill's new boyfriend, we learn at once, is black, seventeen, and from Stratford East (Will is twenty-five). Will is besotted: \"Oh, the ever-open softness of black lips; and the strange dryness of the knots of his pigtails, which crackled as I rolled them between my fingers, and seemed both dead and half-erect\" (3). Apparently the enthusiasm is reciprocated: \"Then he would give up and fall recklessly on top of me on the sofa, panting in my face, kissing me, full of clumsy humour and longing\" (13). Will is in charge. The relationship takes place entirely on his territory, and he expresses his passion with playful spankings.\n\nWill admits to his friend James that his world and Arthur's are too far apart for a love relationship; \"'It must be just an infatuation'\" (20). Nonetheless, he does think of himself as \"in love\" with Arthur\u2014the more so because of his (alleged) limitations:\n\nEven when he spoke, in his basic, unimaginative way, I felt almost sick with desire and compassion for him. Indeed, the fact that he had not mastered speech, that he laboured towards saying the simplest things, that his vocal expressions were prompted only by the strength of his feelings, unlike the camp, exploitative, ironical control of my own speech, made me want him more.... But in sex he lost his awkwardness.... It was a kind of gift for giving. (64; my elisions)\n\nThe dichotomy Will produces here is not ungenerous\u2014his own mode of speech is not more attractive. Yet his is the language privileged in the book's narration. An antiracist will surely wonder whether Will might not have found more various qualities in Arthur if he had not been so ready to stereotype him.\n\nIn fact, Arthur is not quite as dumb as Will likes to believe. He finds Will's speech strange and funny: \"Odd words seemed to amuse or offend him, and he gave urchin imitations of my speech. 'Arse-hale,' he would drawl. 'Get orf my arse-hale'\" (presumably we should be hearing the entire narration in this upper-class accent). Will is quite disconcerted by such role reversals: \"Sometimes I laughed graciously too, and did even posher imitations of his mimicry, knowing no one was listening. Sometimes I caught him and gave him what he was asking for\" (14). Will is unnerved until he has reasserted his mastery.\n\nWhen Arthur becomes trapped in the flat by some obscure, drug-related gangsterism in his family, their incompatibility becomes overwhelming for Will. They fall into a fluctuation between hostility, sexual violence, and sentimentality: \"Now it became a murky business, a coupling in which we both exploited each other, my role as protector mined by the morbid emotion of protectiveness. I saw him becoming more and more my slave and my toy, in a barely conscious abasement which excited me even as it pulled me down\" (31). It is unclear whether this is to be seen as an inevitable, natural corruption, or the consequence of Arthur's artificial confinement.\n\nWhat, we may ponder, should Will and Arthur have been doing? They might have avoided each other, on the axiom that mixed-race couples are inevitably exploitative. They might each have retained their racial interest while looking out for someone of their own class and age, reasoning that taking on several hierarchies at once is too ambitious. They might have gone into therapy together, so that Will might learn to outgrow his domineering impulses and Arthur might receive assertiveness training. But would that have helped? Will positions Arthur as a simple and primitive counterpart because that is what turns him on. As James notes in his diary, \"'yet again he had picked on someone vastly poorer & dimmer than himself\u2014younger too. I don't think he's ever made it with anyone with a degree'\" (218). Is it wrong, or a mistake, to try to relate to someone of a different educational background? I like to think that they might have proceeded in something like the way they do in the novel, but with Will taking as much trouble to understand, engage, and please Arthur as Arthur is probably taking over him.\n\nA partly comparable pattern is disclosed by Charles, who is eighty-three. His diaries of interwar life record an alternation between idealization of young black men and casual cottaging (sex in public toilets); the love of his life was a Sudanese boy, Taha, whom he brought back to London as his servant. Charles has regarded this as a noble commitment, but Will suggests that it is paternalistic, seeing adults as children (this is rich, coming from Will). Charles reasserts that there was in the colonial service \"'this absolute adoration of black people.... I've always had to be among them, you know, negroes'\" (242; my elision). Whether Charles's mode is preferable, personally, politically, and ethically, is hard to say. Anyway, it appears to have degenerated in modern conditions: he now uses his hold over his retinue of beneficiaries to involve them in pornographic movies.\n\nRacial hierarchy is not just Will's and Arthur's thing. It is the outcome of historic imperial relations. Will sees Abdul, the chef, \"abstractly sharpening his knife on the steel and gazing at me as if I were a meal\" (42). Eventually, Abdul is to have Will across a chopping table in the kitchen, tenderized with hard slaps and lubricated with corn oil. This is the only time Will is the insertee; Abdul is Taha's son; the empire fucks back. Again, Britain may retain the Falkland\/Malvinas Islands, but imperial corruption is suggested by the exchange with Gabriel, a wealthy Argentinian, who is visiting London to buy pornography which he can't get in his own, less decadent country.\n\nDavid Alderson rejects the idea that _The Swimming-Pool Library_ is \"an attempt to lay bare the roots of present-day sexual projections in historically grounded power relations.\" I agree that the novel cannot be enlisted for an anticolonial agenda; it does not sustain a coherent critique of imperial relations. Rather, as Alderson shows, it tends nostalgically to set an imperialist and preliberation past against a degraded present, now (at the time of narration) menaced additionally by AIDS. Nonetheless, the novel does disclose structural relations between imperialism and racism, in the formative mid-twentieth century and on into the present. Also, it exposes Will's delusion that he can be free of history. His self-centered personal life is of a piece with his general discovery that he has been arrogant in supposing that he is free, autonomous, and without responsibility. Hollinghurst does not condemn imperialism, together with its interpersonal outgrowths; he explores the seductive and distasteful erotic opportunities for people living in its wake, and locates the sexual energies which they may still release.\n\nWhat the protagonists find in _As If by Magic_ and _The Swimming-Pool Library_ is that they are less in control of their destinies than they had thought. This theme is to be expected when the decline of empire is at stake: western Europeans do not rule the world any more. It is also continuous with the argument of this book, that our psychic life is organized along the lines of the main hierarchies that determine our economic, social, and political lives at large. Hamo and Will make their personal choices, but they are structured by the imperial scenarios within which they operate. Hamo's fantasies are those of the European intruder upon South Asia, from the eighteenth century to the sexual tourism of today. Will's desires are continuous with those which Charles exercised in the Sudan.\n\n**SISTERS AND BROTHERS**\n\nFor many lesbians and gay men of color, cross-racial relations such as I have been describing spell bad news. The endemic complications and hesitations emerge in a candid and courageous late-night television discussion among three lesbians of color and three gay men of color, _Doing It with You Is Taboo_ (SOI for Channel 4, 1993). Some of the contributors are in or ready to contemplate relationships with whites, some not. Either way, two main alternative propositions emerge: (1) black\/white couples are to be avoided because between such people race is bound to be important, and destructive; (2) a black\/white couple is fine because, for the speaker and his or her partner at least, race is insignificant. A third proposition, that black\/white difference might be both central and rewarding, is not entertained.\n\nThis pattern has occurred elsewhere in this book: difference is all right so long as it doesn't make any difference. It appears again in the British compilation, _Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves_ (1993). Relationships with white women are vastly problematic because, with the best will in the world, hegemonic white racism is so insidious. Some of the women canvassed eschew them altogether. Yet such relations may be \"healthy,\" the editors say. One woman concurs: \"I don't think making love to a White woman is any different from making love to a Black woman. All my life in this country I've had four beautiful relationships. Three were with White women and the fourth was with a Black woman.\" For another, conversely, \"the issue of racism was always there. You cannot escape from racism.\" The tendency of my argument, I realize, has been to endorse any kind of sexual agenda that promises to work. However, at certain points the psychological and political risks may be too great; these troubled accounts of cross-race liaisons reveal an intensity that bespeaks not only decades of personal discrimination but the histories of peoples.\n\nFictional and autobiographical treatments rehearse the problems. In Steven Corbin's novel _Fragments That Remain_ , Skylar (black) and Evan (white) are probably breaking up, mainly because of continuous bickering about race. \"I think Evan likes black people for all the wrong reasons,\" Skylar observes. So what reasons are these? Judging from Evan, they appear to be taking the opportunity to be patronizing and self-congratulatory about one's liberalism, while maintaining a subdued but persistent level of racist sniping. Skylar declares, in anger, that Evan's attraction to blacks is like \"the master leering at the slave\" (173\u201374).\n\nProgress between the two men occurs when Evan sees that Skylar has a point: \"'I do love black people, their passion, their exoticism, their colorfulness, but maybe I don't look beyond that'\" (235). What would one see \"beyond\"? It might be the fullness of the individual, but Corbin encourages his reader to think rather of the lived realities of racial prejudice, at large and in the relationship. The main point, Corbin is perhaps saying, is not whether people's sexual fantasies follow racial divisions, but that each person should give adequate recognition to the situation of the other. This means the white man attempting to get some distance from an almost inevitable white viewpoint.\n\nThat is surely possible at a rational level. But what about the underlying fantasies? For if, after all, racial difference is the basis of the attraction, that difference is manifest, in our societies, as inequality. Unfortunately, Corbin gives little indication of what Skylar and Evan fantasize about or do in bed, so it is hard to envisage how far and in what ways their interaction depends on hierarchy. Corbin protects Skylar from the sissy-stigma by having him tell his brother \"a million times, all gay men don't get fucked. He's said it so much, I believe he's one of them\" (260). In fact it is not easy to see what Skylar, who is unusually self-possessed about both gayness and race, gets from the relationship with Evan. While all the characters, including Skylar and Evan, make moral progress during the action of the novel, it remains unlikely, at the end, that Skylar and Evan can live together again.\n\nIn Larry Duplechan's novel _Eight Days a Week_ , Johnnie Ray Rousseau is a singer, taking after his mother, in the shadow of his handsome brother. He experiences himself as unattractive and takes Barbra Streisand as his \"hero\" (note that Streisand's main film romances show Jews connecting with gentiles). Johnnie's desire-to-be produces a corresponding desire-for: he fantasizes that he might attract a blond hulk\u2014\"a lover. A husband. Some impossible combination of Tab Hunter, Rick Nelson and Steve Reeves.\" At school Johnnie attaches himself to sporty white boys, abhorring his own \"flat nose and (to me) overlarge lips\" (25). A friend tells him that he has become \"'the all-too-willing victim of America's white-supremacist, master-race plantation mentality.'\" Whatever the reason, Johnnie replies, he still likes blonds (28).\n\nHe seems to have found what he wants in Keith Keller. Johnnie's adulation of whites tends to place him in the \"sissy\" role, but he takes up bodybuilding and is delighted when Keith likes to be fucked in turn. It transpires nonetheless that Keith really wants Johnnie in the role of housewife. He starts calling Johnnie \"K. T.,\" because he looks like Tutankhamen (\"King Tut,\" but also \"Katie,\" I think; 186). Keith is unable to cope with Johnnie's musician's lifestyle, and his possessiveness breaks up the relationship. However, Keith is not altogether in the wrong. Johnnie admits that his response to the standard message in the contact ads\u2014\"'No fats, fems or blacks, please'\"\u2014coming on top of his own initial lack of confidence, is to welcome, flirtatiously, every available instance of white sexual interest in him; he regards it as a triumph over the prevailing racist disconfirmation. \"The prettier, the blonder, the more Aryan the man, the bigger (if not more permanent) the sense of victory at the sight of the man's fair head bobbing between my thighs. I suppose I truly am, as Snookie often tells me, a sick, sick woman\" (197\u201398). Even at the moment of his proclaimed victory Johnnie types himself, self-deprecatingly, as female: race and gender line up in a classic conflation of subordinate roles. He cannot extract himself from disconfirmation and stigma while he stays within the hierarchical framework. Nonetheless, Johnnie moves on to a valuable relationship with another white man, so it appears that cross-racial affairs are not doomed.\n\nIf feelings of racial inferiority and superiority may disturb cross-racial liaisons, they may also interfere with black-on-black relations. Audre Lorde's inspirational commitment to black women, as she presents it in _Zami_ , does not occur spontaneously. Among school friends she \"never mentioned how enticing and frightening I found their strange blonde- and red- and chestnut-colored secrets that peeked out from beneath their pulled-up half-slips.\" Lorde's early affairs are with white women. Even in Mexico, where she feels suddenly at home, her main relationship is with a white woman. \"'How beautiful and brown you are,'\" Eudora says (144). Back in New York in the 1950s, there appears to be little choice; the only organized scene is white. \"It seemed that loving women was something that other Black women just didn't do\" (155). The few that did found themselves \"sleeping with the same white women. We recognized ourselves as exotic sister-outsiders who might gain little from banding together\" (153). \"[W]e seldom looked into each other's Black eyes lest we see our own aloneness and our own blunted power mirrored in the pursuit of darkness\" (197\u201398). Lorde and her friends colluded in this scene, though they resented the racist admission policies of the bars, because it was the only one they could find. Muriel, her lover, admired by Lorde for her \"paleness\" (159), believed that lesbians were all equal in their outsiderhood: \"'We're all niggers,' she used to say, and I hated to hear her say it\" (177).\n\nLorde makes progress as a lesbian and a black woman through a culminating affair with Afrekete (Kitty): \"her chocolate skin and deep, sculptured mouth reminded me of a Benin bronze\" (214). She evokes a Caribbean island in Harlem:\n\n_And I remember Afrekete, who came out of a dream to me always being hard and real as the fire hairs along the underedge of my navel. She brought me live things from the bush, and from her farm set out in cocoyams and cassava_ \u2014those magical fruit which Kitty bought in the West Indian markets along Lenox Avenue in the 140s or in the Puerto Rican _bodegas_ within the bustling market over on Park Avenue. (218; Lorde's emphasis)\n\nThis is both impressive and limiting. Some black women may find such determined cultivation of the exotic a high price for a color-affirmative relationship. In the early 1970s, Lorde \"began to live together permanently\" with her daughter, her son, and her white lover, Frances.\n\nLorde's achievement is to write positively of black-on-black lovers without suppressing the complications. She enlists her mother as an honorary dyke, on the ground that she was a \"powerful woman\" (6), but is this enough? She seems a monstrous abuser to me. Despite Lorde's famous skepticism about dismantling the house with the master's tools, the two projects she declares at the start of _Zami_ \u2014to be both male and female, and to replace the mother-father-child triad with grandmother-mother-daughter\u2014aspire to co-opt the power system of the heterosexual family. Anna Wilson finds here \"a crucial lack of alternative conceptualisations through which to imagine community.\" In fact, Katie King notes, despite her lack of comment on butch\/femme roles, Lorde characteristically assumes the dominant and protective role of a \"top.\" In her relationship with Muriel she adds fifteen years to her age in order to secure this role ( _Zami_ , 160, 165).\n\nLesbians of color continue to confront these questions. Ekua Omosupe ponders:\n\nwhen my white lover sees my Black face, does she read in it that I am the mythological, strong Black woman who is more stick than flesh? Am I the dark exotic? Am I the testimony to herself and others that she is not racist, but quite liberal? Does she see the face of her family's maid who was paid to love her and to take care of her because mother and father were too busy to be bothered?\n\nMy argument is that we have to entertain the prospect that the answer to at least some of these questions is Yes; that such residues are inevitable; and that they may not always be unfortunate. Jackie Goldsby tells how she and her partner have carefully examined their motives to make sure that neither of them is \"succumbing to internalized racism. We say this, even to ourselves, even though we know differently: where, in the context of lesbian political discourse on race, can we acknowledge that our knowingly crossing boundaries of race and class _is_ part of our desire for each other?\"\n\nFor many African American gay men, the most significant pressures come from their own black communities. William G. Hawkeswood reports that gay black men in Harlem generally live there \"because they prefer black men as friends and lovers and because they prefer to live closer to family and other relatives. Thus they avoid prolonged contact with whites,\" and rarely experience racism. They enjoy a generally supportive environment, despite occasional instances of verbal abuse, mostly from youths. \"Generally they feel that gays are more tolerated and better accepted in Harlem than they are in mainstream America,\" partly because there are more pressing issues (poverty, unemployment, poor education, teenage pregnancies, drugs, AIDS). This may be true. However, many of the contributors to major anthologies of African American gay experience\u2014 _In the Life_ , edited by Joseph Beam, and _Brother to Brother_ , edited by Essex Hemphill\u2014record anguish, alienation, and damage in their childhood and youth, as they suffered catcalls of sissy and faggot from within the black community. Indeed, they reveal a culture engrossed with the precariousness of male gendering. Reginald T. Jackson remarks that the taunt, \"faggot,\" preceded any knowledge of homosexuality: had he known that this might involve \"the love of a man. A black man,\" then he would gladly have endured the name-calling. In the terms broached earlier in this book, gender identification precedes object-choice; the stigma attaches to effeminacy.\n\nMarlon Riggs in his film _Tongues Untied_ (1989), written around Riggs's poem of the same name, expounds a personal negotiation of sexuality and racial difference. Riggs experienced oppression in his own community as a sissy, more immediately than oppression as a black man. The solution was part of the problem:\n\nA whiteboy came to my rescue.\n\nBeckoned with gray\/green eyes, a soft Tennessee drawl.\n\nSeduced me out of my adolescent silence.\n\nRiggs found his way to San Francisco\u2014the Castro, the gay district:\n\nI learned the touch and taste of snow.\n\nCruising whiteboys, I played out\n\nadolescent dreams deferred.\n\nPatterns of black upon white upon black upon white\n\nmesmerized me. I focused hard, concentrated deep.\n\nRiggs was playing out racial relations as sexual relations. But it dawned upon him that this was not making him the person he sought to be: in the Castro he was \"an invisible man\"; the proffered black images were racist stereotypes. \"I was a nigga, still.\" So he \"went in search of something better,\" he says, listening to \"Rhythms of blood, culture, \/ history, and race\": black men must love one other (203\u2013204). A concluding section of the film links civil rights marches with a black gay demonstration. The slogan on a banner is from an essay by Joseph Beam: \"Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act of the eighties.\"\n\nHowever, Riggs admits, the \"absence of black images\" occurred not only in the books, posters, and films dominated by white people, but in his \"own fantasies\" ( _Tongues Untied_ , 202\u2013203). The film became controversial within black and gay communities when commentators noted that Riggs's personal life appeared to contradict his argument: his own partner was white. B. Ruby Rich objects: \"In a film full of the courage of coming out of the closet on the subject of queerness, it looked as though Riggs had stayed in the closet on the subject of race (as object of affection, not identity).\" In the credits Jack Vincent, the controversial partner, is thanked for his loving support; far less is at stake for the white man\u2014he can afford to be sympathetic.\n\nQuestions have been raised also about the gendering of gay men in _Tongues Untied_. Goldsby remarks that drag queens are depicted as pathetic, lonely figures, to be displaced by more macho images. Evidently, Riggs is under pressure from \"Afrocentric\" commentators who despise effeminacy:\n\nBecause of my sexuality, I cannot be black. A strong, proud, \"Afrocentric\" black man is resolutely heterosexual, not _even_ bisexual. Hence I remain a Negro. My sexual difference is considered of no value; indeed, it is a testament to weakness, passivity, the absence of real guts\u2014balls. Hence I remain a sissy, punk, faggot. I cannot be a black gay man because by the tenets of black macho, black gay man is a triple negation. I am consigned, by these tenets, to remain a Negro faggot.\n\nThe energy in this passage derives perhaps from an unstable combination of resistance to the way black manhood has been defined, and resentment at exclusion from that manhood. Is it that Riggs wants Afrocentrism to incorporate the sissy, or that he objects to being labeled a sissy? Gay-oriented commentators insist that emphasizing manliness is not the answer. Kobena Mercer calls it \"another turn of the screw of oppression... when black men subjectively internalise and incorporate aspects of the dominant definitions of masculinity in order to contest the conditions of dependency and powerlessness which racism and racial oppression enforce.\" Phillip Brian Harper, in comparable vein, rejects the \"imagined solution\": \"a proper affirmation of black male authority.\"\n\nFinally I note that Riggs's appeal to sameness as the resolution of the dilemmas of racism converges upon a leading theme of this book. He has rediscovered and reaffirmed, in his case for black men loving black men, not a distinctive African American way of relating, but a purer, sharper version of the egalitarian ideology, which asserts that the most productive relations will be founded in sameness. The Castro, Riggs sees, proclaims the community of gayness and the unity of gay experience, while actually reinscribing the racist assumptions of American society generally; the task proposed in the film, then, is to make the egalitarian ideology succeed among black men. Yet Riggs's work is more important for the struggle it exposes, than for the watchword with which it ends.\n\n**SLAVES AND MASTERS**\n\nAs I have said, S\/M is best regarded, not as a speciality, but as continuous with the hierarchies that we all experience. Invocation of cross-racial masters and slaves does, however, raise the odds. In \"Beneath the Veneer,\" in a recent collection of gay African American writing, Kheven L. LaGrone records his shock upon seeing at a party a white man leading a black man by a leash. Have black people forgotten the role of white supremacists in history? LaGrone demands. No they haven't: that is what the leash is about.\n\nIsaac Julien has made diverse approaches to these topics. His film _Looking for Langston_ (1988) suggests that sexual relations between blacks and whites were regarded quite positively in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. This interpretation has been supported by Kevin J. Mumford, who finds that there was \"a kind of affinity between homosexuals, black\/white sex districts, and African-American culture more generally.\" In a poem from around the same time as _Looking for Langston_ , \"Gary's Tale,\" Julien observes that race has infiltrated the psyche and infects every relationship:\n\nBecause the last fight, the last battle, territory, will be with one's self, the most important terrain, the psyche.\n\nThe mind will be the last neo-colonialised space to be decolonialised, this I know because I have been there, backwards and forwards.\n\nFor Julien, this is not a reason to avoid cross-racial contact, or to give up hopes of positive change. In _Young Soul Rebels_ (1991), the killer is a white boy who can't handle his attraction to black males. However, the film ends in utopian style, with a sexual liaison between Caz (black male) and Billibud (white male), another between Chris (black male) and Tracy (black female), a main-man comradeship between Caz and Chris, a special friendship between Tracy and Jill (white female), and everybody learning to funk.\n\nJulien's short film _The Attendant_ (1991) is set in an art gallery. The Attendant (Thomas Baptiste) is black; a visitor is white and wearing leather gear; they are drawn to each other. The gallery closes; the Attendant reimagines the paintings, replacing the original figures with men such as himself and the visitor, wearing contemporary leather gear. He focuses especially on an admired nineteenth-century painting by F. A. Biard, \"Scene on the African Coast,\" showing episodes in the slave trade. Two of the paintings become erotic cartoons by Tom of Finland. Other tableaux are composed of camp go-go boys. The Attendant whips the visitor. The Attendant sings in a theater\u2014\"Dido's Lament\" from Purcell's _Dido and Aeneas_ (Dido was abandoned on an African coast by an imperial visitor).\n\nJulien has been criticized for depicting a black man with his psyche organized around imagery of historic humiliation. He has replied that images cannot be trapped in one meaning: the implements of slavery have been transformed into \"sexualised, stylized fetish clothing for the queer body. The imperialist slave iconography is appropriated and repositioned.\" Gay subculture, including black gay subculture, makes its own use of the imagery. Furthermore, Julien adds, there are diverse ways of reading the film: it might be a parody, or transgressive; or it might be \"moralistically read into the cheap sociology of a pathological, black\/self-hating discourse.\" The sickness resides in puritanical rejection, not in gay sex.\n\nThe problem with Julien's argument is that he wants to assert an open plurality of readings while disallowing some readings. He is on stronger ground when he asserts that morbidity resides with those who would deny \"the psychic reality of black\/white desire.\" These desires exist, and they may be more appealing than the restricted and restricting vision of puritans. \"The out black snow queen draws attention to the fact of black desire for the white subject and contests pathological racial identities, the products of Afrocentric readings,\" Julien adds (125). He regrets what he regards as Riggs's retreat into Afrocentrism.\n\nHowever, Riggs in fact bears witness on both sides of the argument. We may perhaps envisage a dynamic process; one in which Afrocentrism might be an appropriate stage on the route to self-affirmation, while investment in cross-racial imagery might be productive of political insights, but not destructive of the relations that promote them. The goal might be a point, not where one or the other is the right answer, but where they can inform each other. Of course, as we have seen in Corbin's _Fragments That Remain_ and in Duplechan's _Eight Days a Week_ , this depends as much on the white partner as the black. However, it is likely to be the latter who places himself most at risk.\n\nThese issues echo powerfully in the journals of Gary Fisher, published at the instigation of Eve Sedgwick after his death in 1994. Fisher tells of his fantasies and his encounters, and of the link between them and race relations in the United States. He writes a letter to a sexual partner, Master Park ( _Slavery Defended_ is a classic collection of \"Views of the Old South\"): \"Here's that letter you wanted. I'm laying here sideways in the bed with _Slavery Defended_ opened to about midway, sampling the arguments and thinking about how good it felt to serve. Not that it matters, but I enjoyed Thursday immensely, particularly the sleaze and humiliation of some of it\" (extended pain he likes less). \"The racial humiliation is a huge turn-on. I enjoy being your nigger, your property and worshipping not just you, but your whiteness.\"\n\nThis is not a generalized masochism, nor just an individual thrill; it is about race, slavery, history, and skin color. In an earlier journal entry Fisher asks himself:\n\nHave I tried to oppress myself\u2014as a black man and as a (passive) homosexual man\u2014purely for the pleasure of it, or does that oppression go right to the point of my perceived weaknesses[?]... Can I divorce sexuality from power in the real world or do I want to[?]... I want to, in effect, give in to a system that wants to (has to) oppress me. (187; my question marks and elisions)\n\nIs his submission to whiteness a personal pleasure, he asks, or does it bespeak a personal weakness? Is it not, rather, systemic?\u2014the operations of real-world ideology in the psyche? Fisher is playing the part that is written for him in the racial script of the United States. Again: \"Blackness is a state of frustration. There's no way out of this racial depression (I don't feel the frustration personally, but as part of a people I know that I'm being fucked, abused)\" (199). Fisher experiences humiliating scenarios not just personally, but as the structural, racial exploitation which he knows to be their origin. In a manner of speaking, therefore, the fantasy is _not him_ : \"What is this fantasy that cuts across all of me, racial, intellectual, moral, spiritual, sexual...?\" (213; Fisher's hesitation).\n\nAs Sedgwick remarks in her Afterword to _Gary in Your Pocket_ , it has seemed necessary in our time to handle S\/M as a stigmatized minority practice, emphasizing the _dis_ linkages between sexual fantasy and activity, on the one hand, and \"the social realities of power and violence\" on the other. We are only playing, S\/Mers are expected to say, our games are entirely separate from real-world violence. A theme of this book is that such a dislinkage is impossible to maintain and ultimately misleading. Yet, as elsewhere, we reach a point at which a violent disjunction becomes so inflammatory that we have to revert to the domains of ethical and political responsibility. Fisher is troubled: \"Crandall calls me his nigger. He's much rougher with me than Ed and talks so genuinely I wonder if he doesn't believe what he's saying to me. It disturbs me to write what he says about carving 'White Power' into my flesh\" (217\u201318). In fact it is a question, how far abuse is what Fisher wants: \"I love snuggling up to him. We're on our sides. He has one arm beneath me and another round me. It's so warm.... I feel so safe next to him\" (157; my elision). Again: \"I want a loving master\/daddy\" (217). The desire for love and protection from a version of the abuser seems the key to this; the risk\u2014the thrill\u2014is in placing your trust in a person who might damage you. \"So, particularly (especially or primarily) a white man, when he holds and protects me from others like him, brings me an excitement which strangely and uniquely parallels that which he causes me when he threatens or frightens me\" (237).\n\nThis scenario seems to correlate with a persistent trope in black and white American gay writing: the violent and abusive father who gains excitement from punishing his son. Everyone he knows suffered some element of abuse in childhood, David Wojnarowicz says. He describes how his own father systematically beat all his family, and ordered David to play with his penis. He derives from this an abiding sexual preference: \"I have always been attracted to dangerous men, men whose gestures intimated the possibilities of violence, and I have always seduced them into states of gentle grace with my hands and lips.\" Rechy's narrator reports similarly in _City of Night_. Tom in Monette's _Halfway Home_ was tormented by his father and his brother, Brian, at the same time as being sexually drawn to the latter. This childhood experience has inhibited his love life, Tom believes: \"I admit I have mixed them up, Brian and the man I never had.\" Now, as he makes a new relationship with Gray, a calm, caring, older man, he revises his model of manliness: \" _This is what a brother is_.\" The eponymous heroes in _Tim and Pete_ both had hostile fathers; Joey's father was \"a monster.\" Gary Fisher reports a violent and abusive father. If his preferred mode of sexual expression mimics the relationship with his father, it also repudiates it. \"The ultimate slap was to let it loose that I'd let some other man, not my dad, have me.\" He does \"finally meet a white man not twisted by the color thing,\" but their prospects are spoiled when Fisher declares his HIV status ( _Gary in Your Pocket_ , 245\u201346).\n\n**PHOBIA**\n\nI have tried elsewhere to distinguish phobic and structural racism. For only some individuals is racism phobic; for the rest of us, it gets structured into the language, into the prevailing stories through which the society seeks to understand itself. It becomes \"common sense.\" Structural racism is certainly not innocent; it affords a sympathetic milieu into which phobic racism may expand, and in some cases the two virtually merge. However, in other circumstances it is at least ameliorable: when pointed out it may be worked upon and changed.\n\nPhobic racism, on the other hand, seeks to secure not just the economic, political, and general psychic well-being of the white man; the racial other is invoked as a way of handling profound personal inadequacy. The phobic racist cannot leave the topic\u2014he or she looks for people of other races in order to exercise phobic feelings. Probably there is a more or less permanent phobic minority, the recruiting ground for fascist movements. At a certain point, enthrallment becomes obsessive, grotesque, violent, intolerable. I may seem in danger here of exonerating the system, by making it responsible for habitual structures, while phobic intensity is ascribed to individuals. However, it seems to me that phobia is usually dysfunctional, not actually sustaining the system. Its irrationalism is too unpredictable, too loose, too dangerous.\n\nHomophobia, similarly, is a term that should not be used casually, for general anxiety and prejudice. It is best reserved for implacable, hostile fascination. Of course, racial and sexual phobias may occur together. The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was so drawn to his male victims, nearly all of whom were black or Asian, that he ate parts of their bodies. This certainly attests to a consuming desire-for; we might regard it as a monstrous parody of desire-to-be (the ingested person).\n\nThe gay tradition includes powerful and equivocal evocations of phobia. In Tennessee Williams' story, \"Desire and the Black Masseur,\" Anthony Burns, a nebulous and ineffective clerk (white) has been waiting, obscurely, for something to swallow him up. He finds it in the rough treatment of a black masseur (who isn't given a name).\n\nThe knowledge grew quickly between them of what Burns wanted, that he was in search of atonement, and the black masseur was the natural instrument of it. He hated white-skinned bodies because they abused his pride. He loved to have their white skin prone beneath him, to bring his fist or the palm of his hand down on its passive surface. He had barely been able to hold this love in restraint, to control the wish that he felt to pound more fiercely and use the full of his power. But now at long last the suitable person had entered his orbit of passion. In the white-collar clerk he had located all that he longed for.\n\nThis might be a mutually rewarding project\u2014\"The giant loved Burns, and Burns adored the giant\" (221)\u2014but the violence of the massage increases. While a preacher across the street invokes the atonement of Jesus, the masseur devours the body of Burns; he moves to another town and new customers.\n\nAll this, we are told, illustrates something about \"the earth's whole population\" as it \"twisted and writhed beneath the manipulation of night's black fingers and the white ones of day\" (223). The referent seems to be both color and humanity; guilt at historic racial exploitation is made to coincide with the Christian notion that everyone needs atonement. David Bergman emphasizes the racial implications: \"Like Melville, Williams believes that an egalitarian relation between so-called civilized men and their primitive brothers can be achieved only through an act of cannibalism in which the civilized will be consumed.\" Unfortunately, this is at the expense of reconfirming the black primitive. \"'What do you think this is? A jungle?'\" the masseur's boss demands, not altogether unreasonably, when Burns's leg is fractured (221).\n\nGetting eaten is the fate also of Sebastian in Williams' play _Suddenly Last Summer_ (1958, filmed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1959), where the agon of homosexuality again seems to coalesce with the supposed human condition. In a mythic Latin country, Sebastian is consumed by the native boys whom he has courted\u2014\"a flock of featherless little black sparrows,\" with gobbling birds on the Galapagos Islands, that prey upon the newly hatched turtles as they try to reach the sea, making \"the sky almost as black as the beach.\" How far Williams is in control of this scenario is in my view a question. It seems to me that he is making a melodramatic projection of queer guilt onto the universe, and positioning black males as angels of death.\n\nJames Robert Baker's novel _Testosterone_ is, like _Tim and Pete_ , a quest which takes the reader back and forth on the L.A. freeways. Whereas Tim and Pete mean well, Dean's mission is partly to get back together with Pablo Ortega so that they can share an ideal future\u2014but mainly to kill him. This is because Pablo abruptly terminated their relationship. Dean doesn't consider whether he might have turned Pablo off in some way (Dean emerges as very strange), but interprets Pablo as an emotional serial killer. He tracks down Pablo's other lovers and finds ample confirmation of his malevolence. How much of this is true the reader cannot tell, since we have only Dean's word for it and he is evidently obsessive. He believes Pablo burned his house down, and took his dog for medical experiments or black magic. Anne, who says she had an affair with Pablo, claims he was a notorious doctor who tortured political prisoners in Chile in 1987, and Dean believes this, although Pablo would have been about twenty at the time. Anne retracts this story, but Dean goes on believing it. Then he credits another story, that Pablo was part of a notorious drug gang in Mexico, also in 1987. He becomes out of control and violent with people who frustrate him in any way. He attacks a man who looks rather like Pablo (he's not wearing his glasses). With increasing abandon, he imagines what Pablo might be saying or thinking.\n\nWhat gradually becomes apparent is that Dean is preoccupied with Pablo's Latino race. Initially he reassures his friends that Pablo is not stereotypical: \"He's Latino, but he doesn't have an accent (like your typical dumb beaner).\" Indeed, the stereotypes are reversed: Pablo is cool and dispassionate, Dean is spontaneous, expressive. This becomes an accusation: \"I think his brown skin fooled me at first, so I didn't realize how much he was really like my father\" (16). A sense of Dean as phobic develops when he laments the old days, when Southern California was a white boy's utopia, before \"the killers of color shot you in the head and took your T-bird away.\" He has been noting contact ads in which Latinos offer to mistreat white boys, whereas the other way around would not be allowed because of \"PC.\" \"But I've made an effort through all this not to get racist. And I haven't. I really don't think I have\" (51\u201352). This is a love\/hate thing: Pablo's \"skin was really amazing. So smooth and warm\" (58); Dean imagines himself having a \"faithful, young, smooth, brown-skinned fellow lifeguard\/slave\" (28).\n\nThe idea that Pablo has killed Dean's dog, either for scientific experiment or for Palo Mayombe black-magic rituals, depends on superstitious, racist notions of what Latino people are like: \"Latino's do have this different feeling about cruelty to animals. I know that's a blanket statement.... Call me a racist if you want to, but it fucking happens. That's why it's taking a great effort on my part not to think all Latinos are sick\" (94; my elision). Pablo becomes the dog: \"He's like a mad cornered South American dog\" (84). Dean believes a hairdresser who says that killing Pablo would not be enough to remove his curse; he takes the fact that the Sam Peckinpah horror movie _Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia_ is showing on TV as a sign that he must behead Pablo. He steals a machete and an ice chest to store the head. It is Dean, the white man from a Presbyterian background, who turns out to be the superstitious killer. The last sentence of the book shows Dean fixed in his obsession: \"The smooth warmth of his brown skin\" (200).\n\n**SHAME**\n\nEve Sedgwick put the concept of _shame_ into gay circulation in 1993, in an article heading up the new journal _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ). Her title, \"Queer Performativity: Henry James's _The Art of the Novel_ ,\" announced a recognition of Judith Butler's work (performativity had been Butler's key contribution at that date), while moving, via James, toward a more inward, literary, intimate, and intense register. Sedgwick presents shaming as a condition of queer sexuality, and as constitutive of queer identity. Butler, in response, acknowledged an element of shame in performing queerness, while drawing the argument into collective and practical aspects of identity management and activism.\n\nI had not seen much potential for the development of shame; as Sedgwick remarks, it seems negative to dwell on the terms of our stigma. Then I noticed a line in Tennessee Williams' play, _Sweet Bird of Youth_ , and its quotation in Neil Bartlett's novel, _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_. The Princess (an aging movie star) has been fencing verbally with Chance (a still-youthful hustler). In the last line of the scene she appeals to him: \"Now get a little sweet music on the radio and come here to me and make me almost believe that we're a pair of young lovers _without any shame_.\" Good lovemaking retrieves youth and confers emancipation from shame\u2014 _almost_. As I conclude this chapter on race\u2014the most sensitive, threatening, and exciting hierarchy\u2014it seems to me that, while shame is indeed loaded upon us by our societies, that does not altogether account for the cultural energy that attends it. In a parallel movement (for social structures, once more, are continuous with psychic structures) we generate shame among ourselves.\n\nAs I have said, people on the downside of the binary model are under the greater pressure. They put more at risk. Yet to exercise dominance also is to expose oneself; even the relatively powerful place themselves in jeopardy\u2014of rejection, humiliation, and the sudden inundation of unwelcome self-knowledge. Shame, I suggest, derives from _awareness of exploitation_ \u2014both for the boy who turns over, and for the man who takes advantage of his willingness. It is a product of the hierarchies I have been discussing; it is integral with sexual passion, therefore; it is sexy. If this view is correct, the shame of exploiting and being exploited will be hard to exclude or evade. Maybe there are magical remedies\u2014youth and beauty, according to Williams and Bartlett. And something for the older and less beautiful person to contribute\u2014perhaps strength, accomplishment, style, generosity, validation, trust.\n**9**\n\n**FICTION**\n\nI started out on this book with some ideas about desire and power. However, the great pleasure in the work has been encountering so many marvelous lesbian- and gay-themed novels and films. I have been delighted with the seriousness and humor, the inventiveness and responsibility, the imagination and abundance that have been revealed. As I say in chapter 1, my use of such resources is not designed to deduce facts from fiction, but to investigate the kinds of representations that have been circulating. My aim has been to explore how our experiences have fed into books, films, and cultural commentary, and how we, in turn, have read and pondered them, recognized and reframed ourselves through them. The pleasure in reading has derived partly from artistic achievement, but mainly it has been about registering the kinds of people that we have become, or aspired to become. If you read Leavitt or Monette differently from me, this will almost certainly be, not just a literary judgment, but a way of thinking about sexuality and power. We may have our most ambitious conversations and contests through fiction.\n\nI am scarcely concerned, therefore, with whether a book is likely to become part of a literary canon. At the same time, if it transpires that the processes of subcultural exploration and self-recognition are effective, in part at least, and other readers and commentators frame their ideas through some of these texts, the outcome will _in practice_ be something rather like a _lesbian and gay canon_. Now, insofar as canon means \"law, rule, edict,\" that is not what I have in mind. However, \"canonical\" also means books that are accepted as \"genuine and inspired,\" and those we have.\n\nIn effect, this is what gay people have always done. There was little lesbian fiction around when Alison Hennegan was young, but she cultivated her own investment in the classics. A passionate identification with Achilles, distraught at the death of Patroclus, helped \"by offering me a world free from the assumption that human completeness exists solely in the fusion of male and female.\" Hennegan went on to Petronius, Horace, and Virgil, and subsequently to Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, gay poets of the Great War. \"I did as most young gay and lesbian readers of the time\u2014older ones, too, for that matter\u2014had to do. I created my own 'popular fiction,' developed my own much cherished canon.\"\n\nMy ambition to make the discussion of texts subculturally effective has been challenged by Stanley Fish, who takes me as exemplifying the approach of \"The Cultural Critic.\" This arises out of my book _Faultlines_ , where I agree with Fish that it is the academic profession that determines which readings will pass as plausible, but accuse him of wanting to head off such political potential as English literature may have. Fish responds by reiterating his assertion, that it must be futile for people working with literature to aspire to political influence:\n\nChanging the mode of literary analysis or changing the object of literary analysis or changing the name of literary analysis will not change the material effectiveness of literary analysis and make it into an instrument of political action. That kind of change, if it is ever to occur, will require wholesale _structural_ changes of which literary analysts might take advantage, but which they could never initiate.\n\nAt one level this is plainly correct. Literary criticism is designed, precisely, to head off any real-world engagement that literary intellectuals might seek. The application of the categories \"art\" and \"literature\" amounts to a way of distracting us from contemporary issues (which we might do something about), by asserting that the important writing will be \"universal\" (and hence probably beyond remedy). The overthrow of such deep-set ideas would indeed require a notable structural change. However, feminists, for instance, have succeeded in writing novels and criticism that both create and respond to urgent political issues. I discern in Fish's pronouncement a typical conservative strategy, whereby the terms for significant action are set at such a demanding level that they will never occur. Revolution appears unlikely, so it is not worth trying to change anything. In my view, writing of all kinds may change the boundaries of the plausible, and hence of the effective scope for action, and it may be especially valuable in subcultural formations.\n\nThe most considered discussion from a radical perspective of minority reading has been made by John Guillory in _Cultural Capital_. He believes that the goal of minority groups must be to place a sample of their culture in mainstream venues\u2014\"opening out the canon.\" Such a process, Guillory says, falls within the American tradition of liberal pluralism: through _representation_ , groups who have been excluded from full citizenship expect to make their presence felt. Insofar as this has the implicit aim of redressing the inadequacies of public political process, and of universities in particular, Guillory argues, it can be only an imaginary politics. Installing minority groups in canonical venues gestures toward a national oppression which it cannot affect.\n\nPartly for this reason, Guillory adds, the valorization of noncanonical texts tends to depend upon theoretically unsophisticated notions, such as the identity and authentic experience of the author, and reading is imagined, naively, as a transparent process. It is not inevitable, however, that the purposive invocation of texts by and about marginalized groups will succumb to these theoretical pitfalls. Compare the situation of racial minorities. Commentators such as Stuart Hall, bell hooks, and Paul Gilroy have pointed out that there can be no essential grounding for racial and ethnic identities. In an initial stage, Hall notes, black people sought to make their own images, challenging hegemonic versions of themselves; but today it is understood that representation is formative\u2014active, constitutive\u2014rather than mimetic. \"Black,\" according to Hall, \"is essentially a politically and culturally _constructed_ category, which cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore has no guarantees in Nature.\" It is the same with lesbian, gay, and bisexual. There was a time for positive images\u2014indeed, for visibility of any kind. Today a developed theory of ideology, the human subject, and cultural production affords opportunities for new engagements with textuality, and with the anxieties and hopes of a subcultural constituency.\n\nIndeed, it is awareness of identity as constituted that affords opportunities for intervention. One inference from antiessentialist theory should be that we cannot simply throw off our current constructions. We are consequences of our histories\u2014those that have been forced upon us and those that we have made ourselves. At the same time, it is because we believe that culture constructs the scope for our identities that we may believe those identities to be contingent and provisional, and therefore may strive to revise our own self-understanding and representation. If gay subculture is effective for its constituency, it is not because it evades poststructuralist insights, but because it responds to them.\n\nThe concept of \"cultural capital\" from which Guillory begins (in my view a very useful concept) leads him to present a static impression of how a group inhabits a culture. While it is true that mainstream cultures are under pressure to incorporate their treasures into authoritative state and national monoliths, subordinated groups have more urgent and particular concerns. For lesbians and gay men, though some ground may be gained by remarking how traditionally canonical authors have displayed a significant streak of homoeroticism, it is not important simply to possess this or that statusful icon.\n\nThe reply to Guillory is that the success of subcultural intervention may not reside primarily, or even at all, in infiltrating the mainstream. Indeed, insofar as that occurs, a consequence is usually distortion or appropriation; we are used to coping with hostile and patronizing images. The quality of our canon is not to be measured by the extent to which it impresses the mainstream, but in terms of its contribution to shared self-understanding. The point is to mark out a space in which to compare stories, for consolation, insight, and new imaginative awareness.\n**NOTES**\n\n**1. INTRODUCTION**\n\n. Reginald Shepherd, \"On Not Being White,\" in Joseph Beam, ed., _In the Life_ (Boston: Alyson, 1986), 53\u201354. Subsequent references are in the text. On white-on-black fixation, see Christopher Cutrone, \"The Child with a Lion: The Utopia of Interracial Intimacy,\" _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ) 6 (2000): 249\u201385.\n\n. Jonathan Dollimore, _Sexual Dissidence_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 65.\n\n. See R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper, _Reason and Violence_ (New York: Pantheon, 1971), 22\u201325.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Cultural Politics\u2014Queer Reading_ (1994), 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 2005), chs. 1 and 2.\n\n. Louis Althusser, _Lenin and Philosophy_ , trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left, 1997), 160\u201365.\n\n. Althusser, _Lenin and Philosophy_ , 190\u201391, 200.\n\n. Herbert Marcuse, _Eros and Civilization_ (New York: Random House, 1955).\n\n. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality_ , vol. 1: _An Introduction_ , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), 11. I return to Foucault and power in chapter 4.\n\n. Joan Riviere, \"Womanliness as a Masquerade\" (1929), in Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, eds., _Formations of Fantasy_ (London: Methuen, 1986), 37\u201338. See Vicky Lebeau, _Psychoanalysis and Cinema_ (London: Wallflower, 2001), 101\u201315.\n\n. Michael Warner, \"Homo-Narcissism; Or, Heterosexuality,\" in Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden, eds., _Engendering Men_ (New York: Routledge, 1990), 200.\n\n. Lynne Segal, _Straight Sex_ (London: Virago, 1994), 135.\n\n. For a defense and referencing of recent work, see Christopher Lane, \"Psychoanalysis and Sexual Identity,\" in Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ (London: Cassell, 1997).\n\n. Alan Sinfield, _Out on Stage_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999).\n\n. Bertolt Brecht, \"A Short Organum for the Theatre,\" in John Willett, ed. and trans., _Brecht on Theatre_ (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978), 186.\n\n. Jim Grimsley, interview in _Gay Times_ 288 (September 2002): 77.\n\n. Alan Sinfield, _Faultlines_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), ch. 2.\n\n. The terms _erotic dissidence_ , _dissident sexuality_ , and _sexual dissidence_ are used for forbidden and\/or stigmatized sex by Gayle S. Rubin in 1982. See Rubin, \"Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,\" in Henry Abelove, Mich\u00e8le Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds., _The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 18, 22, 23. _Sexual Dissidence_ is, of course, the title of Jonathan Dollimore's book.\n\n. Alan Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), ch. 3; Sinfield, \"The Production of Gay and the Return of Power,\" in Richard Phillips, Diane Watt, and David Shuttleton, eds., _De-centring Sexualities_ (London: Routledge, 2000); Sinfield, \"Transgender and Les\/bi\/gay Identities,\" in David Alderson and Linda Anderson, eds., _Territories of Desire in Queer Culture_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).\n\n. Sinfield, _Gay and After_ , 91, 103.\n\n**2. TAXONOMIES**\n\n. David M. Halperin, _How to Do the History of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 109\u2013110.\n\n. Halperin, _How to Do the History_ , 133\u201334.\n\n. David Halperin, \"Pal o' Me Heart,\" _London Review of Books_ , May 22, 2003, 32\u201333. See Jamie O'Neill, _At Swim, Two Boys_ (London: Scribner, 2001).\n\n. Halperin, _How to Do the History_ , 110, 134.\n\n. Bruce R. Smith, _Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); G. S. Rousseau, _Perilous Enlightenment_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 9\u201313.\n\n. See David F. Greenberg, _The Construction of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Stephen O. Murray, \"The 'Underdevelopment' of Modern\/Gay Homosexuality in MesoAmerica,\" in Kenneth Plummer, ed., _Modern Homosexualities_ (London: Routledge, 1992); Gilbert Herdt, _Same Sex, Different Cultures_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westfield, 1997).\n\n. Jeffrey Weeks, _Sexuality and Its Discontents_ (London: Routledge, 1985), 90.\n\n. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 23 (Sedgwick's emphasis).\n\n. Kenneth Lewes, _The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality_ (London: Quartet, 1989), 35\u201342; C. A. Tripp, _The Homosexual Matrix_ (1975) 2d ed. (New York: Meridian, 1987), 72\u201373; Kaja Silverman, _Male Subjectivity at the Margins_ (New York: Routledge, 1992), ch. 8 (Silverman's third category has two subdivisions).\n\n. Sigmund Freud, _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ (1905), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7: _On Sexuality_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 56.\n\n. Sigmund Freud, _Leonardo da Vinci_ (1910), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 14: _Art and Literature_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985). For a critique of this essay, see Earl Jackson Jr., _Strategies of Deviance_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 53\u201373.\n\n. E. M. Forster, _Maurice_ (1971) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 208.\n\n. Silverman, _Male Subjectivity at the Margins_ , 344. However, Silverman also gestures toward the importance of class, age, and nationality, remarking: \"Because their object-choice defies the libidinal logic of conventional masculinity, gay men are frequently viewed through the alternative screen of femininity\" (353).\n\n. Sheila Jeffreys, \"Butch and Femme: Now and Then,\" in Lesbian History Group, _Not a Passing Phase_ (London: Women's Press, 1993).\n\n. Teresa de Lauretis, _The Practice of Love_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 240.\n\n. Elizabeth Grosz, _Space, Time, and Perversion_ (New York: Routledge, 1995), ch. 10.\n\n. Rita Mae Brown, _Rubyfruit Jungle_ (1973) (London: Corgi, 1978), 147. See Jonathan Dollimore, _Sexual Dissidence_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 52\u201355.\n\n. Judith Butler, \"Imitation and Gender Insubordination,\" in Diana Fuss, ed., _Inside\/Out_ (New York: Routledge, 1991), 20.\n\n. Freud's letter is quoted in Lewes, _The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality_ , 32.\n\n. Michael Warner, \"Homo-Narcissism; Or, Heterosexuality,\" in Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden, eds., _Engendering Men_ (New York: Routledge, 1990), 192.\n\n. Carole-Anne Tyler, \"Boys Will Be Girls: The Politics of Gay Drag,\" in Diana Fuss, ed., _Inside\/Out_ , 34.\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"Female Sexuality\" (1931), in Freud, _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7, _On Sexuality_ , 376\u201377 (my elision).\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"On Narcissism: An Introduction\" (1914), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 11: _On Metapsychology_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 84. An editor's note directs readers to Freud's essay on Leonardo.\n\n. Freud, \"On Narcissism,\" 81\u201382 (my elision). Tim Dean argues that narcissism need not exclude otherness: Dean, \"Homosexuality and the Problem of Otherness,\" in Tim Dean and Christopher Lane, eds., _Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).\n\n. Lewes, _The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality_ , 72.\n\n. Audre Lorde, _Zami: A New Spelling of My Name_ (1982) (London: Pandora, 1996), 160, 165.\n\n. Freud, \"Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,\" in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 12: _Civilization, Society, and Religion_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 134.\n\n. Freud, \"Group Psychology,\" 134.\n\n. Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ , 62.\n\n. Judith Butler, _Bodies That Matter_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 239.\n\n. Wayne Koestenbaum, _The Queen's Throat_ (New York: Poseidon, 1993), 18.\n\n. John Fletcher, \"Freud and His Uses: Psychoanalysis and Gay Theory,\" in Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis, eds., _Coming On Strong_ (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 99. See Warner, \"Homo-Narcissism; Or, Heterosexuality,\" in Boone and Cadden, eds., _Engendering Men_ , 197\u201398.\n\n. Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ , 86\u201390.\n\n. Ned Cresswell, _A Hollywood Conscience_ (Brighton: Millivres, n.d.), 202.\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Tim and Pete_ (1995) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 38 (my elision). Further on this novel, see below and ch. 4.\n\n. Quentin Crisp, _The Naked Civil Servant_ (1968) (New York: Plume, 1977), 56.\n\n. Alan Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), ch. 3.\n\n. Jay Prosser explains that \"transgender\" was used initially to denote a stronger commitment to living as a woman than \"transvestite\" or \"cross-dresser,\" and without the implications for sexuality in \"transsexual.\" However, the tendency now is to use \"transgender\" in a coalitionary politics, to include all those subjects. In this essay I do the latter while retaining an emphasis from the former. See Jay Prosser, \"Transgender,\" in Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ (London: Cassell, 1997); Prosser, _Second Skins_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 176.\n\n. Leslie Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1993), 143.\n\n. Judith Halberstam, \"F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity,\" in Laura Doan, ed., _The Lesbian Postmodern_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 212.\n\n. Don Kulick, \"A Man in the House: The Boyfriends of Brazilian _Travesti_ Prostitutes,\" _Social Text_ 52\u201353 (1997): 133\u201360.\n\n. Prosser, _Second Skins_ , ch. 5; Kate Bornstein, _Gender Outlaw_ (New York: Routledge, 1994), 4. See Alan Sinfield, \"Transgender and Les\/bi\/gay Identities,\" in David Alderson and Linda Anderson, eds., _Territories of Desire in Queer Culture_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).\n\n. Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ , 147.\n\n. See David Valentine and Riki Anne Wilchins, \"One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude,\" _Social Text_ 52\u201353 (1997): 215\u201322; Anne Fausto-Sterling, \"How to Build a Man,\" in Vernon A. Rosario, ed., _Science and Homosexualities_ (New York: Routledge, 1997); Cheryl Chase, \"Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism,\" _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ) 4 (1998): 189\u2013211; Iain Morland, \"Is Intersexuality Real?\" _Textual Practice_ 15 (2001): 527\u201347.\n\n. Clifford Geertz, _Local Knowledge_ (New York: Basic Books, 1983).\n\n. See Sally R. Munt, ed., _Butch\/Femme_ (London: Cassell, 1998), 1, 41, 105, 143, 154, 159.\n\n. Judith Butler, _Gender Trouble_ (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 123.\n\n. Halberstam, \"F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity,\" 220.\n\n. Stephen Maddison, _Fags, Hags, and Queer Sisters_ (London: Macmillan, 2000), 191\u201392. This topic is much disputed; see Zachary I. Nataf, _Lesbians Talk Transgender_ (London: Scarlet Press, 1996), 35\u201354.\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman\" (1920), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 9: _Case Histories II_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 383\u201384.\n\n. Freud, \"Group Psychology,\" 138.\n\n. Judith Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 57.\n\n. Maddison, _Fags, Hags, and Queer Sisters_ , 12.\n\n. Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ , 57\u201358.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), ch. 6; Sinfield, _Out on Stage_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 154\u201377.\n\n. Prosser, _Second Skins_ , 165.\n\n. Baker, _Tim and Pete_ , 35, 37.\n\n. Felice Picano, _Like People in History_ (1995) (London: Abacus, 1996), 50.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Beautiful Room Is Empty_ (London: Picador, 1988), 104.\n\n. Teresa de Lauretis, \"The Essence of the Triangle; Or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the U.S., and Britain,\" in Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed, eds., _The Essential Difference_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 24.\n\n. Freud, _Three Essays_ , 56.\n\n. See Arlene Stein, _Sex and Sensibility_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Lisa Power, \"Forbidden Fruit,\" in Mark Simpson, ed., _Anti-Gay_ (London: Cassell, 1996).\n\n. Aiden Shaw, _Wasted_ (London: Gay Men's Press, 2001), 240.\n\n. Sarah Schulman, _Empathy_ (1992) (London: Sheba Feminist Press, 1993), 4.\n\n. David T. Evans, _Sexual Citizenship_ (London: Routledge, 1993), 45. See Donald Morton, \"Queerity and Ludic Sado-Masochism: Compulsory Consumption and the Emerging Post-al Queer,\" in Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Terese L. Ebert, and Donald Morton, eds., _Post-ality: Marxism and Postmodernism_ (Washington, D.C.: Maisonneuve Press, 1995), 189\u2013215; Sinfield, _Gay and After_ , ch. 9.\n\n. Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ , 148.\n\n**3. FANTASY**\n\n. Esther Newton and Shirley Walton, \"The Misunderstanding: Toward a More Precise Sexual Vocabulary,\" in Carole S. Vance, ed., _Pleasure and Danger_ (London: Routledge, 1984), 250.\n\n. Vicky Lebeau, _Psychoanalysis and Cinema_ (London: Wallflower, 2001), 29.\n\n. Leo Bersani, _Homos_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 103\u2013104.\n\n. See Leslie J. Moran, _The Homosexual(ity) of the Law_ (London: Routledge, 1996), 180\u201391.\n\n. Laura Mulvey, \"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\" in Antony Easthope, ed., _Contemporary Film Theory_ (London: Longman, 1993).\n\n. For Mulvey's later comments and a full debate, see Easthope, ed., _Contemporary Film Theory_. For an independent-minded assessment, see Brett Farmer, _Spectacular Passions_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). Teresa de Lauretis points out that there are important differences between film and fantasy: de Lauretis, _The Practice of Love_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 148.\n\n. Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, \"Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,\" in Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, eds., _Formations of Fantasy_ (London: Methuen, 1986), 26, 22\u201323 (their emphases).\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"'A Child Is Being Beaten'\" (1919), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 10: _On Psychopathology_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Boy Wonder_ (1988) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 40 (Baker's emphases).\n\n. Chris Straayer, _Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 18\u201322.\n\n. Dorothy Allison, _Skin_ (London: Pandora, 1995), 109\u201310.\n\n. Constance Penley, \"Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture,\" in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds., _Cultural Studies_ (New York: Routledge, 1992), 489. _Star Trek_ is discussed also in Joanna Russ, _Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans, and Perverts_ (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press: 1985), and in Allison, _Skin_ , 95\u201397.\n\n. Richard Dyer, _Heavenly Bodies_ (London: Macmillan, 1987), 168, 155\u201356.\n\n. Stephen Maddison, _Fags, Hags, and Queer Sisters_ (London: Macmillan, 2000), 6.\n\n. David Wojnarowicz, _Close to the Knives_ (1991) (London: Serpent's Tail, 1992), 26.\n\n. Lynne Segal, _Straight Sex_ (London: Virago, 1994), 233; see 233\u201345.\n\n. Cora Kaplan, \"'A Cavern Opened in My Mind': The Poetics of Homosexuality and the Politics of Masculinity in James Baldwin,\" in Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham, eds., _Representing Black Men_ (London: Routledge, 1996), 32.\n\n. Cheryl Clarke, \"Living the Texts _Out_ : Lesbians and the Uses of Black Women's Traditions,\" in Stanlie M. James and Abena P. A. Busia, eds., _Theorizing Black Feminisms_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 214.\n\n. Bia Lowe, \"Mothers and Others, But Also Brothers,\" in Joan Nestle and John Preston, eds., _Sister and Brother_ (London: Cassell, 1994), 127\u201328.\n\n. Sue-Ellen Case, \"Tracking the Vampire,\" _Differences_ 3.2 (Summer 1991): 1\u201320 (quote at 1).\n\n. Valerie Walkerdine, \"Video Replay: Families, Films, and Fantasy,\" in Burgin, Donald, and Kaplan, eds., _Formations of Fantasy_ , 169 (Walkerdine's emphasis; my elision).\n\n. Kaplan, \"'A Cavern Opened in My Mind,'\" 30.\n\n. Segal, _Straight Sex_ , 234.\n\n. Pai Hsien-yung, _Crystal Boys_ (1990), trans. Howard Goldblatt (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1995), 27, 100. See Alan Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), 59\u201368.\n\n. Alec Waugh, _Public School Life_ (London: Collins, 1922), 137\u201338.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Out on Stage_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 124\u201325.\n\n. Freud, _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ (1905), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7: _On Sexuality_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 56.\n\n. Michel Foucault, _The Uses of Pleasure_ , trans. Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986), 200.\n\n. See David M. Halperin, _How to Do the History of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), 188\u201389.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Farewell Symphony_ (London: Chatto, 1997), 402.\n\n. Jacqueline Rose, _The Haunting of Sylvia Plath_ (London: Virago, 1991), 210.\n\n. Reginald Shepherd, \"On Not Being White,\" in Joseph Beam, ed., _In the Life_ (Boston: Alyson, 1986), 53\u201354.\n\n. Gary Fisher, _Gary in Your Pocket_ , ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996), 203.\n\n. Earl Jackson Jr., _Strategies of Deviance_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 173, 132.\n\n. See Segal, _Straight Sex_ , 282\u201397.\n\n. Robert Chesley, _Jerker, or the Helping Hand_ (1986), in Chesley, _Hard Plays \/ Stiff Parts_ (San Francisco: Alamo Square, 1990), 112 (Chesney's emphases [ _sic_ ]).\n\n. Edmund White, _A Boy's Own Story_ (1982) (London: Picador, 1983), 162.\n\n. Jonathan Dollimore, \"Bisexuality, Heterosexuality, and Wishful Theory,\" _Textual Practice_ 10 (1996): 523\u201339 (quote at 529; Dollimore's emphasis). For a slightly different version, see Dollimore, _Sex, Literature, and Censorship_ (Cambridge, Eng.: Polity, 2001), 28-9.\n\n. Guy Willard, _Mirrors of Narcissus_ (London: Millivres, 2000), 20\u201321, 25 (my elision).\n\n. Constance Penley, \"Time Travel, Primal Scene, and the Critical Dystopia,\" in James Donald, ed., _Fantasy and the Cinema_ (London: British Film Institute, 1989), 202.\n\n. De Lauretis, _The Practice of Love_ , 140.\n\n. Judith Butler, _Gender Trouble_ (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 149.\n\n. Henning Bech, _When Men Meet_ , trans. Teresa Mesquit and Tim Davies (Cambridge, Eng.: Polity, 1997), 217 (Bech's emphases; my elision).\n\n. John Clarke, \"Style,\" in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., _Resistance Through Rituals_ (London and Birmingham: Hutchinson\/Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1976), 177.\n\n. R. D. Laing, _Self and Others_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 136.\n\n. Dollimore, _Sex, Literature, and Censorship_ , 56.\n\n. Andrew Holleran, _Dancer from the Dance_ (1978) (London: Cape, 1979), 146.\n\n. Segal, _Straight Sex_ , 161.\n\n. Jeanette Winterson, _The PowerBook_ (2000) (London: Vintage, 2001), 4\u20135.\n\n. Mark Ravenhill, _Shopping and Fucking_ (London: Methuen, 1996), 83.\n\n. Dennis Cooper, _Frisk_ (1991) (London: Serpent's Tail, 1992), 44.\n\n. Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ (1891) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 18.\n\n. Claudia Card, _Lesbian Choices_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 231\u201335.\n\n. Dennis Cooper, _Try_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1994), 185 (Cooper's pause).\n\n. Dennis Cooper, _Guide_ (1997) (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), 155.\n\n**4. POWER**\n\n. Jean Genet, _The Balcony_ (1957), trans. Bernard Frechtman (London: Faber, 1966), 47 (my elision).\n\n. Paul Monette, _Becoming a Man_ (1992) (London: Abacus, 1994), 66\u201368 (Monette's emphasis).\n\n. Paul Monette, _Borrowed Time_ (New York: Avon, 1988), 13 (Monette's emphasis).\n\n. _Becoming a Man_ , 175.\n\n. Theodore Redpath, ed., _The Songs and Sonets of John Donne_ (London: Methuen, 1967), 2. Donne is usually thought of as a heterosexual poet, but see George Klawitter, \"Verse Letters to T. W. from John Donne: 'By You My Love Is Sent,'\" in Claude J. Summers, ed., _Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England_ (New York: Harrington Park, 1992).\n\n. Walt Whitman, _The Complete Poems_ , ed. Francis Murphy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 162.\n\n. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality_ , vol. 1: _An Introduction_ , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), 11; and 92\u201398.\n\n. Michel Foucault, _Discipline and Punish_ , trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 27. See Gail Mason, _The Spectacle of Violence_ (New York: Routledge, 2002), ch. 6; Judith Butler, _Gender Trouble_ (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 91\u2013106.\n\n. Teresa de Lauretis, _The Practice of Love_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 146 (my elision).\n\n. Geoffrey Gorer, _Sex and Marriage in England Today_ (London: Nelson, 1971), 62, 65.\n\n. See Lillian Faderman, _Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers_ (New York: Penguin, 1992); George E. Haggerty, _Men in Love_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).\n\n. David M. Halperin, _How to Do the History of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 133\u201334.\n\n. Jeffrey Weeks, Brian Heaphy, and Catherine Donovan, _Same Sex Intimacies_ (London: Routledge, 2001), 105.\n\n. Lynda Hart and Joshua Dale, \"Sadomasochism,\" in Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ (London: Cassell, 1997), 345\u201346.\n\n. David Leavitt, _The Lost Language of Cranes_ (1986) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), 169.\n\n. See Larry Gross, _Up from Invisibility_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 146\u201347.\n\n. A. M. Homes, _Jack_ (1989) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991).\n\n. Anthony McDonald, _Adam_ (London: Gay Men's Press, 2003).\n\n. Michael Cunningham, _Flesh and Blood_ (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995), 302, 303, 305 (my elision).\n\n. Edmund White, _The Farewell Symphony_ (London: Chatto, 1997), 414\u201315, 298.\n\n. Samuel R. Delany, _The Motion of Light in Water_ (1988) (London: Paladin, 1990), 267 (Delany's emphasis).\n\n. David Wojnarowicz, _Close to the Knives_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1992), 17 (my elision).\n\n. Ben Gove, _Cruising Culture_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 156\u201359.\n\n. Dennis Altman, _The Homosexualization of America_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 79\u201380; Leo Bersani, \"Is the Rectum a Grave?\" in Douglas Crimp, ed., _AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 206.\n\n. Andrew Holleran, _Dancer from the Dance_ (1978) (London: Cape, 1979), 40\u201343.\n\n. White, _The Farewell Symphony_ , 298, 416.\n\n. Neil Bartlett, _Who Was That Man?_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1988), 220.\n\n. Larry Kramer, _Faggots_ (1978) (London: Minerva, 1990), 382.\n\n. Oscar Moore, _A Matter of Life and Sex_ (1991) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992).\n\n. William M. Hoffman, _As Is_ (1985), in Michael Feingold, ed., _The Way We Live Now_ (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1990), 25. The film was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1986.\n\n. Thom Gunn, _The Man with Night Sweats_ (London: Faber, 1992), 80.\n\n. Bersani, \"Is the Rectum a Grave?\" in Crimp, ed., _AIDS: Cultural Analysis_ , 215.\n\n. Leo Bersani, _Homos_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 162, 170\u201371 (Bersani's emphases). Cf. Alan Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), ch. 7.\n\n. Leo Bersani, \"Genital Chastity,\" in Tim Dean and Christopher Lane, eds., _Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 365 (Bersani's emphasis).\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"From the History of an Infantile Neurosis\" (1918 [1914]), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 9: _Case Histories II_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 280.\n\n. Freud, _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ (1905), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7: _On Sexuality_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 61\u201362 (Freud's emphases).\n\n. Freud, \"'A Child Is Being Beaten,'\" (1919) in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 10: _On Psychopathology_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 180.\n\n. Ibid., 184\u201385 (Freud's emphasis).\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"The Economic Problem of Masochism\" (1924), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 11: _On Metapsychology_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 419; \"'A Child Is Being Beaten,'\" 166.\n\n. Luce Irigaray, _Je, Tu, Nous_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 12 (Irigaray's emphasis).\n\n. Jean Laplanche, _New Foundations for Psychoanalysis_ , trans. David Macey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); for Fletcher, see below. For some of the take-up of Laplanche's concept of implantation, see Elizabeth Cowie, \"The Seductive Theories of Jean Laplanche: A New View of the Drive, Passivity, and Femininity,\" in John Fletcher and Martin Stanton, eds., _Jean Laplanche_ (London: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1992); Catherine Belsey, _Desire: Love Stories in Western Culture_ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 51\u201352; Lynne Segal, _Why Feminism?_ (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), 184\u201385.\n\n. Jean Laplanche, \"Implantation, Intromission,\" in Laplanche, _Essays on Otherness_ , ed. John Fletcher (London: Routledge, 1999), 135 (Laplanche's emphasis).\n\n. John Fletcher, \"Gender, Sexuality, and the Theory of Seduction,\" _Women: A Cultural Review_ 11 (2000): 102, 104 (Fletcher's emphasis).\n\n. \"Interview: Jean Laplanche Talks to Martin Stanton,\" in John Fletcher and Martin Stanton, eds., _Jean Laplanche_ , 10.\n\n. Fletcher, \"Gender, Sexuality,\" 104.\n\n. Ibid., 106 (Fletcher's emphasis).\n\n. John Fletcher, \"Recent Developments in the General Theory of Primal Seduction,\" _New Formations_ 48 (2002\u20132003): 5\u201325 (quote at 9). See Dominique Scarfone, \"'It was _not_ my mother': From Seduction to Negation,\" _New Formations_ 48 (2002\u20132003): 69\u201376.\n\n. Laplanche, \"Implantation, Intromission,\" 136.\n\n. Sheila Jeffreys, \"Butch and Femme: Now and Then,\" in Lesbian History Group, _Not a Passing Phase_ (London: Women's Press, 1993), 178.\n\n. Amber Hollibaugh and Cherr\u00ede Moraga, \"What We're Rollin' Around in Bed With: Sexual Silences in Feminism,\" in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds., _Desire: The Politics of Sexuality_ (London: Virago, 1984), 410\u201311.\n\n. Jeffreys, \"Butch and Femme,\" 184 (my elision).\n\n. Hollibaugh and Moraga, \"What We're Rollin' Around in Bed With,\" 406.\n\n. Cherri\u00e9 Moraga, _Loving in the War Years_ (Boston: South End Press, 1983), 125\u201326 (Moraga's emphasis).\n\n. Judith Halberstam, \"Sex Debates,\" in Medhurst and Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ , 335.\n\n. Esther Newton and Shirley Walton, \"The Misunderstanding: Toward a More Precise Sexual Vocabulary,\" in Carole S. Vance, ed., _Pleasure and Danger_ (London: Routledge, 1984), 247.\n\n. Ursula Zilinsky, _Middle Ground_ (1968) (London: Gay Men's Press, 1987), 146.\n\n. Sir Philip Sidney, _The Old Arcadia_ , ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 167.\n\n. Christopher Ricks, ed., _The Poems of Tennyson_ (London: Longmans, 1969): _In Memoriam_ , sec. 25 and 42.\n\n. W. H. Auden, _Collected Shorter Poems, 1927\u20131957_ (London: Faber, 1969), 107\u2013108.\n\n. Lynne Segal, _Straight Sex_ (London: Virago, 1994), 248.\n\n. John Rechy, _The Sexual Outlaw_ (1977) (London: W. H. Allen, 1978), 68 (my elision).\n\n. \"Michel Foucault: Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity,\" interview with Bob Gallagher and Alexander Wilson, _The Advocate_ 400 (August 7, 1984): 30; quoted in Bersani, _Homos_ , 88.\n\n. Bersani, _Homos_ , 88.\n\n. Jeffrey Weeks, _Sexuality and Its Discontents_ (London: Routledge, 1985), 44; Bersani, \"Is the Rectum a Grave?\" in Crimp, ed., _AIDS: Cultural Analysis_ , 220\u201321.\n\n. Claudia Card, _Lesbian Choices_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 221.\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Tim and Pete_ (1995) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 150.\n\n. See Sadie Plant, _The Most Radical Gesture_ (London: Routledge, 1992), 143\u201347.\n\n. See Graham White, \"Direct Action, Dramatic Action: Theatre and Situationist Theory,\" _New Theatre Quarterly_ 9.36 (November 1993): 329\u201340 (see 337).\n\n. See Peter Dickinson, \"'Go-go Dancing on the Brink of the Apocalypse': Representing AIDS,\" in Richard Dellamora, ed., _Postmodern Apocalypse_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).\n\n. Wojnarowicz, _Close to the Knives_ , 81.\n\n. Sinfield, _Gay and After_ , ch. 2 and 6. See Dennis Altman, _AIDS and the New Puritanism_ (London: Pluto, 1986), ch. 8: \"A Very American Epidemic?\"\n\n. Andrew Sullivan, _Love Undetectable_ (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998), 18.\n\n. Bersani, \"Is the Rectum a Grave?\" in Crimp, ed., _AIDS: Cultural Analysis_ , 212.\n\n. Halberstam, \"Sex Debates,\" in Medhurst and Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ , 333.\n\n. Bersani, _Homos_ , 64.\n\n**5. GENDER**\n\n. From Ned Ward, _The History of the London Clubs_ (1709), printed in Ian McCormick, ed., _Secret Sexualities_ (London: Routledge, 1977), 131.\n\n. Alan Bray, _Homosexuality in Renaissance England_ , 2d ed. (London: Gay Men's Press, 1988), 86.\n\n. Ibid., 92.\n\n. Rictor Norton, _Mother Clap's Molly House_ (London: Gay Men's Press, 1992).\n\n. Terry Castle, _The Apparitional Lesbian_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), ch. 5; Rictor Norton, _The Myth of the Modern Homosexual_ (London: Cassell, 1997), 196\u2013202.\n\n. Judith Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 65\u201373.\n\n. Emma Donoghue, _Passions Between Women_ (London: Scarlet Press, 1993), 61.\n\n. Terry Castle, ed., _The Literature of Lesbianism_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 20.\n\n. George Chauncey Jr., \"From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance,\" _Salmagundi_ 58\u201359 (1982\u201383): 114\u201346 (quote at 123).\n\n. Gayle S. Rubin, \"Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,\" in Henry Abelove, Mich\u00e8le Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, eds., _The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 33; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 27\u201335.\n\n. John Fletcher, \"Gender, Sexuality, and the Theory of Seduction,\" _Women: A Cultural Review_ 11 (2000): 95\u2013108, 95\u201396.\n\n. Tamsin Wilton, \"Which One's the Man?\" in Diane Richardson, ed., _Theorising Heterosexuality_ (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996), 137; William J. Spurlin, \"Sissies and Sisters: Gender, Sexuality, and the Possibilities of Coalition,\" in Mandy Merck, Naomi Segal, and Elizabeth Wright, eds., _Coming Out of Feminism?_ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).\n\n. David M. Halperin, _How to Do the History of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), ch. 4.\n\n. See Jennifer Terry, _An American Obsession_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Alan Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 93\u201397.\n\n. Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, _Sexual Inversion_ (London: Wilson and Macmillan, 1897; New York: Ayer, 1994), 136\u201337; Sigmund Freud, _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ (1905), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7: _On Sexuality_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 48\u201349. Only the suppressed first edition of _Sexual Inversion_ bore Symonds' name, so in my text I follow the convention of referring to Ellis as the author.\n\n. Ellis and Symonds, _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), 133.\n\n. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality_ , vol. 1: _An Introduction_ , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), 119.\n\n. Martin Scherzinger and Neville Hoad, \"A\/Symmetrical Reading of _Inversion_ in Fin-de-Si\u00e8cle Music, Musicology, and Sexology,\" in C. Lorey and J. Plews, eds., _Queering the Canon_ (New York: Camden House, 1998).\n\n. Chauncey, \"From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality,\" 124. See Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ , 75\u201383.\n\n. David M. Halperin, _One Hundred Years of Homosexuality_ (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 16. A similar claim is made by Arnold Davidson, \"How to Do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud's _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_ ,\" in Fran\u00e7ois Meltzer, ed., _The Trial(s) of Psychoanalysis_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), and by Jeffrey Weeks, _Sexuality and Its Discontents_ (London: Routledge, 1985), 153\u201354.\n\n. Ellis and Symonds, _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), 32.\n\n. Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_ , vol. 2: _Sexual Inversion_ (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1901); quoted from Aron Krich, ed., _The Sexual Revolution: Pioneer Writings on Sex: Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, Freud_ (New York: Delta, 1964), 152, 156. These passages are revised and elaborated in Ellis's third edition of 1915: see Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_ , vol. 2, part 2 (New York: Random House, 1936), 2\u20134.\n\n. Ellis and Symonds, _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), 119 (my elision; Ellis and Symonds' emphasis).\n\n. Ellis and Symonds, _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), 120. Krafft-Ebing actually lists four stages or degrees: attraction to the same sex without effect on the manliness of a man; change of character, the man feeling himself to be a woman; sensation of physical transformation; delusion of sexual change. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_ (1886; 12th ed., 1903), trans. Franklin S. Klaf (New York: Scarborough, 1978), 190, 195, 200, 216.\n\n. Freud, _Three Essays_ , 46. Freud's persistence in a gendered model of homosexuality is demonstrated by Christopher Craft, _Another Kind of Love_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 36\u201343. See also Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ , ch. 7.\n\n. C. A. Tripp, _The Homosexual Matrix_ (1975), 2d ed. (New York: Meridian, 1987), 20, 71\u201374.\n\n. Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ , 45\u201347, 157\u201359.\n\n. Foucault, _The History of Sexuality_ 1:43 (my emphases).\n\n. Gert Hekma, ' \"A Female Soul in a Male Body': Sexual Inversion as Gender Inversion in Nineteenth-Century Sexology,\" in Gilbert Herdt, ed., _Third Sex, Third Gender_ (New York: Zone, 1994), 236, 238.\n\n. Kaja Silverman, _Male Subjectivity at the Margins_ (New York: Routledge, 1992), 342.\n\n. Neil Bartlett, _Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr. Oscar Wilde_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1988), xx (Bartlett's emphasis).\n\n. Gregg Blachford, \"Male Dominance and the Gay World,\" in Kenneth Plummer, ed., _The Making of the Modern Homosexual_ (London: Hutchinson, 1981); Jamie Gough, \"Theories of Sexual Identity and the Masculinization of the Gay Man,\" in Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis, eds., _Coming on Strong_ (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).\n\n. Dennis Altman, _The Homosexualization of America_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 1.\n\n. Richard Dyer, _Only Entertainment_ (London: Routledge, 1992), 165\u201366.\n\n. Simon Fraser, \"Visions of Love,\" interview with Neil Bartlett, _Rouge_ 8 (October-December 1991): 20\u201322 (quote at 21). See Alan Sinfield, \"'The Moment of Submission': Neil Bartlett in Conversation,\" _Modern Drama_ 39 (1996): Special Issue on Lesbian\/Gay\/Queer Drama, ed. Hersh Zeifman, 211\u201321 (see 215).\n\n. Neil Bartlett, _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1990), 162.\n\n. See Harry Oosterhuis and Hubert Kennedy, eds., _Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany_ (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1991).\n\n. George Chauncey, _Gay New York_ (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 13.\n\n. Quoted in Donald Webster Cory, _The Homosexual in America_ (1951), with a retrospective foreword (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 188.\n\n. David K. Johnson, \"The Kids of Fairytown: Gay Male Culture on Chicago's Near North Side in the 1930s,\" and Allen Drexel, \"Before Paris Burned: Race, Class, and Male Homosexuality on the Chicago South Side, 1935\u20131960,\" both in Brett Beemyn, ed., _Creating a Place for Ourselves_ (New York: Routledge, 1997).\n\n. Edmund White, _The Beautiful Room is Empty_ (London: Picador, 1988), 102-3, 33. The latter thought recurs: see 36 and 71.\n\n. John Marshall, \"Pansies, Perverts, and Macho Men: Changing Conceptions of Homosexuality,\" in Plummer, ed., _The Making of the Modern Homosexual_ , 135. See also Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ , ch. 6.\n\n. Quentin Crisp, _The Naked Civil Servant_ (1968) (New York: Plume, 1977), 21.\n\n. Peter Wildeblood, _Against the Law_ (London: Weidenfeld, 1955), 7.\n\n. Michael Bronski, _Culture Clash_ (Boston: South End Press, 1984), 79\u201380.\n\n. Kenneth Marlowe, _The Male Homosexual_ (Los Angeles: Medco, 1968), 12\u201313, 18.\n\n. Hall Carpenter Archives and Gay Men's Oral History Group, _Walking After Midnight_ (London: Routledge, 1989), 87.\n\n. Mart Crowley, _The Boys in the Band_ (New York: French, 1968), 45, 87 (Crowley's emphasis; my elision).\n\n. Leslie Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1993), 11, 135\u201336.\n\n. Andrew Sullivan, _Virtually Normal_ , 2d ed. (London: Picador, 1996), 4.\n\n. Andrew Sullivan, _Love Undetectable_ (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998), 12\u201313.\n\n. Andrew Sullivan, \"Mainlining Manhood,\" _Guardian Saturday Review_ , April 8, 2000, 1\u20133.\n\n. Sullivan, _Love Undetectable_ , 153.\n\n. Paul Monette, _Halfway Home_ (New York: Crown, 1991), 246.\n\n. Joseph Hansen, _Steps Going Down_ (1985) (London: Arlington, 1986), 24 (Hansen's emphasis).\n\n. Judith Butler, _Gender Trouble_ (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 25; Kate Bornstein, _Gender Outlaw_ (New York: Routledge, 1994), 125, 138.\n\n. Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ , 75\u201378.\n\n. Tennessee Williams, _A Streetcar Named Desire_ (1947), in Williams, _\"Sweet Bird of Youth,\" \"A Streetcar Named Desire,\" \"The Glass Menagerie,\"_ ed. E. Martin Browne (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 182\u201383.\n\n. John Rechy, _City of Night_ (1963) (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964), 34.\n\n. John Rechy, _Bodies and Souls_ (1983) (London: Star Books, 1985), 302\u2013305 (Rechy's emphasis).\n\n. John Rechy, _The Sexual Outlaw_ (1977) (London: W. H. Allen, 1978), 243 (Rechy's emphasis).\n\n. Ben Gove, _Cruising Culture_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 43\u201346.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Farewell Symphony_ (London: Chatto, 1997), 301.\n\n. Joseph Mills, \"Dreaming, Drag,\" in Mills, _Obsessions_ (Brighton: Millivres, 1998), 74.\n\n. Leo Bersani, \"Is the Rectum a Grave?\" in Douglas Crimp, ed., _AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 208\u2013209.\n\n. Leo Bersani, _Homos_ (Cambridge.: Harvard University Press, (1995), 60\u201361.\n\n. See Patrick Paul Garlinger, \"'Homo-ness' and the Fear of Femininity,\" _Diacritics_ 29 (1999): 57\u201371.\n\n. Tim Bergling, _Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior_ (New York: Harrington Park, 2001), 9; Richard Green, _The \"Sissy Boy Syndrome\" and the Development of Homosexuality_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 141\u201343, 159\u201360, 169, 191.\n\n. Gove, _Cruising Culture_ , 64\u201372 (at 50).\n\n. Jean Genet, _Our Lady of the Flowers_ (1943), trans. Bernard Frechtman (London: Panther, 1966).\n\n. Ben Gove, \"Framing Gay Youth,\" _Screen_ 37 (1996): 174\u201392 (at 186\u201387).\n\n. John Hopkins, _Find Your Way Home_ (1970) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971).\n\n. See Stephen Maddison, _Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters_ (London: Macmillan, 2000), 1\u20136.\n\n. Harvey Fierstein, _Torch Song Trilogy_ (1979) (London: Methuen, 1984).\n\n. Richard Goldstein, _The Attack Queers_ (London: Verso, 2002), 78.\n\n. Edmund White, _A Boy's Own Story_ (1982) (London: Picador, 1983), 169.\n\n. White, _The Farewell Symphony_ , 34.\n\n. James Kenneth Melson, _The Golden Boy_ (New York: Harrington Park, 1992), 191.\n\n. Richard Green, _The \"Sissy Boy Syndrome\" and the Development of Homosexuality_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 124; Todd's emphasis.\n\n. Bornstein, _Gender Outlaw_ , 191.\n\n. See _Paradise Bent_ , a documentary film produced and directed by Heather Croall (ReAngle Pictures, 1999).\n\n. Hugh McLean and Linda Ngcobo, \"Abangibhamayo bathi ngimnandi (Those who fuck me say I'm tasty): Gay Sexuality in Reef Townships,\" in Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron, eds., _Defiant Desire_ (London: Routledge, 1995), 164\u201365.\n\n. See Del LaGrace Volcano and Judith \"Jack\" Halberstam, _The Drag King Book_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1999).\n\n. Judith Halberstam, \"What's That Smell? Queer Temporalities and Subcultural Lives,\" _International Journal of Cultural Studies_ 6 (2003): 313\u201333.\n\n. Radclyffe Hall, _The Well of Loneliness_ (London: Falcon Press, 1949), 29 (Hall's emphasis).\n\n. Jay Prosser, _Second Skins_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 155\u201356.\n\n. For substantial evidence of the confused and formative reception of _The Well_ , see Laura Doan, _Fashioning Sapphism_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), and Laura Doan and Jay Prosser, eds., _Palatable Poison_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).\n\n. Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ , 98.\n\n. Esther Newton, \"The Mythic Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman,\" in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey Jr., eds., _Hidden from History_ (New York: Meridian, 1990).\n\n. Prosser, _Second Skins_ , ch. 4; Halberstam, _Female Masculinity_ , 110.\n\n. Jean E. Mills, \"Gertrude Stein Took the War Like a Man,\" _The Gay and Lesbian Review_ 10.2 (March-April 2003): 16\u201317.\n\n. Feinberg, _Stone Butch Blues_ , 13.\n\n. Sandy Stone, \"The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,\" in Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, eds., _Bodyguards_ (New York: Routledge, 1991), 298.\n\n. Butler, _Gender Trouble_ , 137. Butler revises this argument in her book _Bodies That Matter_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 125. See further Moe Meyer, _The Politics and Poetics of Camp_ (London: Routledge, 1994), and Fabio Cleto, _Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).\n\n. Prosser, _Second Skins_ , 204\u2013205 (Prosser's emphasis).\n\n. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Tendencies_ (London: Routledge, 1994), 221, 157\u201358.\n\n. Neil Duncan, _Sexual Bullying_ (London: Routledge, 1999), 107\u2013108. Girls in this school were more tolerant of male and female homosexuality, and tended to support each other in the face of accusations of lesbianism from boys (121\u201324).\n\n. Richard Smith, \"Pretty Hate Machine,\" _Gay Times_ 263 (August 2000): 19\u201320.\n\n. Wendy Wallace, \"Is This Table Gay?\" _Times Educational Supplement_ , January 19, 2001, 9\u201310.\n\n. Mois\u00e9s Kaufman, _The Laramie Project_ (New York: Vintage, 2001), 90 (my elision).\n\n**6. AGE**\n\n. Armistead Maupin, _The Night Listener_ (London: Bantam, 2000), 42\u201343 (my elision).\n\n. _The Long Goodbye_ , featuring Maupin and his partner Terry Anderson, BBC television, June 1, 1995. The series is about bereavement, in anticipation of Anderson's death.\n\n. Armistead Maupin, \"Coming Home,\" in Edmund White, ed., _The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction_ (London: Faber, 1991), 355\u201356.\n\n. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Tendencies_ (London: Routledge, 1994), 57\u201358 (my elision).\n\n. David M. Halperin, _How to Do the History of Homosexuality_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 115\u201316 (Halperin's emphases; my elision). Halperin, commenting on a draft from the present work, says that he means in this passage only \"a largely lop-sided or non-reciprocal pattern of desire and pleasure\" (ibid., 190). However, this strikes me as tautologous: when he writes of anomic relations, he only means anomic relations. This is the only place in his essay where Halperin addresses age difference.\n\n. Raymond Williams, _Problems in Materialism and Culture_ (London: New Left Books, 1980), 38-42.\n\n. Simon LeVay and Elisabeth Nonas, _City of Friends_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 30\u201331. See Barry D. Adam, \"Age Preferences Among Gay and Bisexual Men,\" _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ) 6 (2000): 423\u201333.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Married Man_ (London: Chatto, 2000), 11.\n\n. Gregory Woods, _We Have the Melon_ (Manchester: Carcanet, 1992), 60. See also Woods's Carcanet volumes, _May I Say Nothing_ (1998) and _The District Commissioner's Dreams_ (2002).\n\n. Paul Monette, _Halfway Home_ (New York: Crown, 1991), 108 (Monette's emphasis).\n\n. Jack Dickson, _Oddfellows_ (Brighton: Millivres, 1997), 50.\n\n. Simon Lovat, _Disorder and Chaos_ (Brighton: Millivres, 1996), 159.\n\n. Paul Rabinow, ed., _The Foucault Reader_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 344\u201345.\n\n. David Leeming, _James Baldwin_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), 286\u201387.\n\n. Alan Hollinghurst, _The Swimming-Pool Library_ (New York: Random House, 1988), 284.\n\n. Lovat, _Disorder and Chaos_ , 132.\n\n. Larry Kramer, _Faggots_ (1978) (London: Minerva, 1990), 238\u201343.\n\n. Philip Osment, _This Island's Mine_ , in Osment, ed., _Gay Sweatshop: Four Plays and a Company_ (London: Methuen, 1989).\n\n. Paul Robinson, _Gay Lives_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 100.\n\n. Christopher Isherwood, _A Single Man_ (1964) (London: Minerva, 1991) 130\u201331 (Isherwood's emphasis).\n\n. H. Montgomery Hyde, ed., _The Trials of Oscar Wilde_ (London: Hodge, 1948), 236 (my elision).\n\n. See Jonathan Dollimore, _Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture_ (London: Routledge, 1998), ch. 19.\n\n. Mary Renault, _The Charioteer_ (1953) (London: New English Library, 1990), 114. See Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 143\u201345.\n\n. Allan Bloom, _The Closing of the American Mind_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 132\u201333.\n\n. Saul Bellow, _Ravelstein_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), 160.\n\n. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 56\u201357 (my elision).\n\n. Patricia Duncker, _Hallucinating Foucault_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1996).\n\n. James Baldwin, _Another Country_ (London: Michael Joseph, 1963), 181\u201382 (my elision, Baldwin's emphasis).\n\n. Kenneth Martin, _Aubade_ (1957) (London: Gay Men's Press, 1989), 104.\n\n. Timothy Ireland, _Who Lies Inside_ (London: Gay Men's Press, 1984), 17.\n\n. Guy Willard, _Mirrors of Narcissus_ (London: Millivres, 2000), 121.\n\n. Jill Posener, _Any Woman Can_ (1975), in Jill Davis, ed., _Lesbian Plays_ (London: Methuen, 1987).\n\n. Jeanette Winterson, _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ (1985) (New York: Vintage, 1996), 153.\n\n. P-P Hartnett, _I Want to Fuck You_ (London: Pulp Faction, 1998), 25.\n\n. Anonymous, _The Scarlet Pansy_ (New York: Badboy, 1992), 42).\n\n. Edmund White, _A Boy's Own Story_ (1982) (London: Picador, 1983), preface. See Ben Gove, \"Framing Gay Youth,\" _Screen_ 37 (1996): 174\u201392.\n\n. Iris Murdoch, _A Fairly Honourable Defeat_ (1970) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).\n\n. Neil Bartlett, _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1990), 14.\n\n. Adam Mars-Jones, \"Camp for Internal Exiles,\" _The Independent on Sunday_ , October 14, 1990, Sunday Review 32. For this reference, and many rewarding exchanges about Bartlett, I am indebted to Linda Logie.\n\n. Alan Sinfield, \"'The Moment of Submission': Neil Bartlett in Conversation,\" _Modern Drama_ 39 (1996): Special Issue on Lesbian\/Gay\/Queer Drama, ed. Hersh Zeifman, 211\u201321 (quote at 212\u201313).\n\n**7. CLASS**\n\n. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, _Epistemology of the Closet_ (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 31 (Sedgwick's emphases).\n\n. On Trotskyism, see Simon Edge, _With Friends Like These_ (London: Cassell, 1995).\n\n. See Jeffrey Weeks, _Coming Out_ (London: Quartet, 1977), 21; Ed Cohen, _Talk on the Wilde Side_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 145\u201348; Alan Sinfield, _The Wilde Century_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Literature, Politics, and Culture in Postwar Britain_ , 2d ed. (London: Athlone, 1997), ch. 5; Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), 95\u201399.\n\n. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality_ , vol. 1: _An Introduction_ , trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), 120\u201321.\n\n. George Chauncey, _Gay New York_ (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 118\u201321. See chapter 5, this volume.\n\n. Murray Healy, _Gay Skins_ (London: Cassell, 1996), 16\u201336.\n\n. Sigmund Freud, \"On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love\" (1912), in _The Penguin Freud Library_ , vol. 7: _On Sexuality_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 248 (Freud's emphases).\n\n. H. Montgomery Hyde, ed., _The Trials of Oscar Wilde_ (London: Hodge, 1948), 138.\n\n. C. H. Rolph, ed., _The Trial of Lady Chatterley_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), 17.\n\n. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, _The Politics and Poetics of Transgression_ (London: Methuen, 1986), 156, 153. See Leonore Davidoff, \"Class and Gender in Victorian England: The Diaries of Arthur J. Munby and Hannah Cullwick,\" _Feminist Studies_ 5 (1979): 87\u2013141.\n\n. Liz Stanley, ed., _The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant_ (London: Virago, 1984), 193.\n\n. Rodney Garland, _The Heart in Exile_ (1953) (Brighton: Millivres, 1995), 179.\n\n. Jeffrey Weeks, \"Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes: Male Prostitution and the Regulation of Homosexuality in England in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,\" in Salvatore J. Licata and Robert P. Petersen, eds., _Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality_ (New York: Haworth Press, 1985), 121.\n\n. Stephen Spender, _World within World_ (London: Readers Union, 1953), 151.\n\n. Jonathan Harvey, _Beautiful Thing_ (1993), in Michael Wilcox, ed., _Gay Plays 5_ (London: Methuen, 1994); filmed by Hettie Macdonald (1995).\n\n. Jay Quinn, \"The Kitchen Table,\" in Quinn, ed., _Rebel Yell 2_ (New York: Harrington Park, 2002), 189.\n\n. Tom Wakefield, _Mates_ (London: Gay Men's Press, 1983), 18.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Married Man_ (London: Chatto, 2000), 88.\n\n. Sally R. Munt, \"Introduction,\" in Munt, ed., _Cultural Studies and the Working Class_ (London: Cassell, 2000), 9. See Mary McIntosh, \"Class,\" in Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ (London: Cassell, 1997).\n\n. Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow, \"Introduction: Marxism Now, Shakespeare Now,\" in Howard and Shershow, eds., _Marxist Shakespeares_ (London: Routledge, 2001), 7\u20138. See also, in the same collection, Richard Halpern, \"An Impure History of Ghosts: Derrida, Marx, Shakespeare,\" 43.\n\n. Leslie J. Moran, \"Homophobic Violence: The Hidden Injuries of Class,\" in Munt, ed., _Cultural Studies and the Working Class_ , 211\u201312, with reference to Ken Plummer, ed., _Modern Homosexualities_ (London: Routledge, 1992), 22.\n\n. Carol M. Ward, _Rita Mae Brown_ (New York: Twayne, 1993), 6. Ward's account is based on published interviews.\n\n. Dorothy Allison, _Bastard Out of Carolina_ (London: Flamingo, 1993).\n\n. Dorothy Allison, _Skin_ (London: Pandora, 1995), 23\u201324. Compare the arguments of Cherr\u00ede Moraga, discussed in chapter 4 above.\n\n. Andrew Holleran, _Dancer from the Dance_ (1978) (London: Cape, 1979), 83.\n\n. David Bergman, _Gaiety Transfigured_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 96\u2013102. Other gay critics who have contributed to Whitman's importance, include Thomas Yingling, \"Homosexuality and Utopian Discourse in American Poetry,\" in Betsy Erkkila and Jay Grossman, eds., _Breaking Bounds_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Gregory Woods, _A History of Gay Literature_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 154\u201359, 176\u201380.\n\n. Jon Barrett, _Mark Bingham_ (Los Angeles: Advocate, 2002), 71.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Cultural Politics\u2014Queer Reading_ (1994), 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 2005), 35\u201336.\n\n. Ethan Mordden, _I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore_ (1983) (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), 105.\n\n. James Kenneth Melson, _The Golden Boy_ (New York: Harrington Park, 1992), 58.\n\n. Steven Epstein, \"Gay Politics, Ethnic Identity,\" in Edward Stein, ed., _Forms of Desire_ (New York: Routledge, 1992), 282. See Sinfield, _Gay and After_ , ch. 2.\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Tim and Pete_ (1995) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 142.\n\n. Paul Monette, _Becoming a Man_ (1992) (London: Abacus, 1994), 19.\n\n. Neal Drinnan, _Glove Puppet_ (Camberwell, Victoria, Australia: Penguin, 1998), 158.\n\n. Paul Russell, _Boys of Life_ (1991) (New York: Plume, 1992), 52.\n\n. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_ (1886; 12th ed., 1903), trans. Franklin S. Klaf (New York: Scarborough, 1978), 250 (my elision).\n\n. Richard House, _Bruiser_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1997), 77.\n\n. Joseph Hansen, _Steps Going Down_ (1985) (London: Arlington, 1986), 74.\n\n. Phil Andros, _Below the Belt and Other Stories_ (1982) (Boston, Mass.: Perinium Press, 1992). These stories were written by Samuel M. Steward.\n\n. Scott O'Hara, _Autopornography_ (New York: Harrington Park, 1997), 151.\n\n. John Rechy, _City of Night_ (1963) (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964), 32 (Rechy's elision).\n\n. Oscar Moore, _A Matter of Life and Sex_ (1991) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 162.\n\n. Donald J. West in association with Buz de Villiers, _Male Prostitution_ (New York: Harrington Park, 1993), 162.\n\n. Michael Arditti, _Easter_ (London: Arcadia, 2000), 335.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Out on Stage_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 180\u201385.\n\n. Terrence McNally, _Love! Valour! Compassion!_ (1994) (New York: Plume, 1995), 35.\n\n. Peter Cameron, _The Weekend_ (1994) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 112.\n\n. Alan Hollinghurst, _The Spell_ (London: Chatto, 1998), 47 (Hollinghurst's pause).\n\n**8. RACE**\n\n. Ward Houser, \"Black Gay Americans,\" in Wayne R. Dynes, ed., _The Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality_ (Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1990), 149\u201350.\n\n. Edmund White, _The Farewell Symphony_ (London: Chatto, 1997), 25, 90.\n\n. Andrew Holleran, _Dancer from the Dance_ (1978) (London: Cape, 1979), 54.\n\n. David B. Feinberg, _Eighty-Sixed_ (1989) (London: Gay Men's Press, 1991), 4.\n\n. Lyle Glazier, \"Chester,\" in Michael J. Smith, ed., _Black Men\u2014White Men_ (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1983), 101.\n\n. Rhonda Cobham, \"Jekyll and Claude: The Erotics of Patronage in Claude McKay's _Banana Bottom_ ,\" in Cindy Patton and Benigno S\u00e1nchez-Eppler, eds., _Queer Diasporas_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).\n\n. Paul Thomas Cahill, \"The Reunion,\" in Smith, ed., _Black Men\u2014White Men_ , 183 (Cahill's pause).\n\n. James Baldwin, _Another Country_ (London: Michael Joseph, 1963), 337.\n\n. Eldridge Cleaver, _Soul on Ice_ (London: Panther, 1970), 97, 100. See David Bergman, _Gaiety Transfigured_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), ch. 9; Lee Edelman, _Homographesis_ (New York: Routledge, 1994), ch. 3.\n\n. Georges-Michel Sarotte, _Like a Brother, Like a Lover_ , trans. Richard Miller (New York: Anchor\/Doubleday, 1978), 97.\n\n. Marshall Moore, \"Everybody Loves the Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay,\" in Jay Quinn, ed., _Rebel Yell 2_ (New York: Harrington Park, 2002).\n\n. See bell hooks, _Outlaw Culture_ (New York: Routledge, 1994); Lola Young, \"'Nothing Is As It Seems': Re-viewing _The Crying Game_ ,\" in Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin, eds., _Me Jane: Masculinity, Movies, and Women_ (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995).\n\n. Abdul JanMohamed, \"The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature,\" _Critical Inquiry_ 12 (1985): 59\u201387 (quote at 62).\n\n. John Sandys, _Against the Tide_ (Penzance, Cornwall: United Writers Publications, 1984), 7.\n\n. Stephen Gray, _Time of Our Darkness_ (London: Frederick Muller, 1988), 76.\n\n. Quoted in Shaun de Waal, \"A Thousand Forms of Love: Representations of Homosexuality in South African Literature,\" in Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron, eds., _Defiant Desire_ (London: Routledge, 1995), 240.\n\n. Tony Peake, \"A Son's Story,\" in Peter Burton, ed., _The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories_ (London: Robinson, 1997).\n\n. Patricia Duncker, _Writing on the Wall_ (London: Pandora, 2002), 167\u201371. See J. M. Coetzee, _Disgrace_ (London: Secker and Warburg, 1999).\n\n. V. S. Naipaul, _In a Free State_ (1971) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 106.\n\n. Angus Wilson, _As If by Magic_ (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973), 283 (Wilson's emphasis).\n\n. Alan Hollinghurst, _The Swimming-Pool Library_ (New York: Random House, 1988), 1. For a discussion of other aspects, see Alan Sinfield, \"Culture, Consensus, and Difference: Angus Wilson to Alan Hollinghurst,\" in Alistair Davies and Alan Sinfield, eds., _British Culture of the Postwar_ (London: Routledge, 2000).\n\n. David Alderson, \"Desire as Nostalgia: The Novels of Alan Hollinghurst,\" in Alderson and Linda Anderson, eds., _Territories of Desire in Queer Culture_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 33.\n\n. Valerie Mason-John and Ann Khambatta, eds., _Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves_ (London: Scarlet Press, 1993), 30. See further B. Ruby Rich, \"When Difference Is (More Than) Skin Deep,\" in Martha Gever, John Greyson, and Pratibha Parmar, eds., _Queer Looks_ (New York: Routledge, 1993), 319\u201320; Biddy Martin, \"Sexualities Without Gender and Other Queer Utopias,\" _Diacritics_ 24.2\u20133 (1994): 104\u201321; see 114\u201315.\n\n. Steven Corbin, _Fragments That Remain_ (1985) (London: Gay Men's Press, 1993), 69.\n\n. Chris Straayer regrets a similar lack of explicitness in Marlon Riggs's _Tongues Untied_ (on which see below): Straayer, _Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 171.\n\n. Larry Duplechan, _Eight Days a Week_ (Boston: Alyson, 1985), 17.\n\n. See further Wei-cheng Raymond Chu, \"Some Ethnic Gays Are Coming Home; Or, the Trouble with Interraciality,\" _Textual Practice_ 11 (1997): 219\u201336; Darieck Scott, \"Jungle Fever? Black Gay Identity Politics, White Dick, and the Utopian Bedroom,\" _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ) 1 (1994): 299\u2013321.\n\n. Audre Lorde, _Zami: A New Spelling of My Name_ (1982) (London: Pandora, 1996), 100.\n\n. See Audre Lorde, _Sister Outsider_ (Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1984), 74\u201377.\n\n. Anna Wilson, \"Audre Lorde and the African-American Tradition: When the Family Is Not Enough,\" in Sally Munt, ed., _New Lesbian Criticism_ (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 87.\n\n. Katie King, \"Audre Lorde's Lacquered Layerings: The Lesbian Bar as a Site of Literary Production,\" in Munt, ed., _New Lesbian Criticism_ , 71.\n\n. Ekua Omosupe, \"Black\/Lesbian\/Bulldagger,\" _Differences_ 3.2 (Summer 1991): 101\u201311 (quote at 104).\n\n. Jackie Goldsby, \"What It Means to Be Colored Me,\" _Outlook: National Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ 9 (Summer 1990): 11; quoted in Rich, \"When Difference Is (More Than) Skin Deep,\" in Gever, Greyson, and Parmar, eds., _Queer Looks_ , 327 (Goldsby's emphasis)\n\n. William G. Hawkeswood, _One of the Children_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 155\u201357.\n\n. Joseph Beam, ed., _In the Life_ (Boston: Alyson, 1986); Essex Hemphill, ed., _Brother to Brother_ (Boston: Alyson, 1991).\n\n. Reginald T. Jackson, \"The Absence of Fear,\" in Hemphill, ed., _Brother to Brother_ , 207.\n\n. Quoted from Marlon Riggs's poem, \"Tongues Untied,\" in Hemphill, ed., _Brother to Brother_ , 202. The poem affords the backbone to the film.\n\n. Joseph Beam, \"Brother to Brother: Words from the Heart,\" in Beam, ed., _In the Life_ , 240.\n\n. See Ron Simmons, \" _Tongues Untied_ : An Interview with Marlon Riggs,\" in Hemphill, ed., _Brother to Brother_.\n\n. Rich, \"When Difference Is (More Than) Skin Deep,\" in Gever, Greyson, and Parmar, eds., _Queer Looks_ , 333.\n\n. Jackie Goldsby, \"Queens of Language: _Paris Is Burning_ ,\" in Gever et al., eds, _Queer Looks_ , 114.\n\n. Marlon Riggs, \"Black Macho Revisited,\" in Hemphill, ed., _Brother to Brother_ , 254 (Riggs's emphasis).\n\n. Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien, \"Race, Sexual Politics, and Black Masculinity: A Dossier,\" in Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford, eds., _Male Order_ (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 112 (my elision). See Lynne Segal, _Slow Motion_ (London: Virago, 1990), ch. 7.\n\n. Phillip Brian Harper, _Are We Not Men?_ (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), x.\n\n. Kheven L. LaGrone, \"Beneath the Veneer,\" in Charles Michael Smith, ed., _Fighting Words_ (New York: Avon, 1999). On continuities in images of slavery, see David Marriott, _On Black Men_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). The issue is flagged in Lynda Hart and Joshua Dale, \"Sadomasochism,\" in Andy Medhurst and Sally R. Munt, eds., _Lesbian and Gay Studies_ (London: Cassell, 1997), 351.\n\n. Kevin J. Mumford, _Interzones: Black\/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 73.\n\n. Mercer and Julien, \"Race, Sexual Politics, and Black Masculinity,\" in Chapman and Rutherford, eds., _Male Order_ , 128. This Gary has no connection with Gary Fisher (on whom see below).\n\n. See Marcus Wood, _Blind Memory_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43\u201346.\n\n. Isaac Julien, \"Confessions of a Snow Queen: Notes on the Making of _The Attendant_ ,\" _Critical Quarterly_ 36.1 (Spring 1994): 120\u201326 (quotes at 123).\n\n. Gary Fisher, _Gary in Your Pocket_ , ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996), 230\u201331. See Eric L. McKitrick, _Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South_ (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).\n\n. Fisher, _Gary in Your Pocket_ , 282.\n\n. David Wojnarowicz, _Close to the Knives_ (1991) (London: Serpent's Tail, 1992), 255, 266, 271.\n\n. John Rechy, _City of Night_ (1963) (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964), 15\u201321.\n\n. Paul Monette, _Halfway Home_ (New York: Crown, 1991), 32, 41 (Monette's emphasis).\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Tim and Pete_ (1995) (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), 35\u201336, 166.\n\n. From a letter from Fisher to his sister, quoted in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, \"Gary Fisher in Your Pocket,\" in Joshua Oppenheimer and Helena Reckitt, eds., _Acting on AIDS_ (London: Serpent's Tail and ICA, 1997), 414.\n\n. See Alan Sinfield, _Literature, Politics, and Culture in Postwar Britain_ , 2d ed. (London: Athlone, 1997), 121\u201324; Erroll Lawrence, \"Just Plain Common Sense: The 'Roots' of Racism,\" in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, _The Empire Strikes Back_ (London: Hutchinson, 1982).\n\n. See Marriott, _On Black Men_ , 34\u201341.\n\n. Tennessee Williams, \"Desire and the Black Masseur,\" in Williams, _Collected Short Stories_ (New York: Ballantine, 1985), 220.\n\n. Bergman, _Gaiety Transfigured_ , 156\u201357. Bergman finds cannibalism linked with homosexuality also by Yukio Mishima, Herman Melville, Freud, and Tobias Schneebaum.\n\n. Tennessee Williams, _Suddenly Last Summer_ (1958), in Williams, _\"Orpheus Descending,\" \"Something Unspoken,\" \"Suddenly Last Summer\"_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), 188, 142.\n\n. James Robert Baker, _Testosterone_ (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 2000), 7.\n\n. Eve Kosofsy Sedgwick, \"Queer Performativity: Henry James's _The Art of the Novel_ ,\" _GLQ_ ( _Gay and Lesbian Quarterly_ ) 1 (1993): 1\u201316; Judith Butler, \"Critically Queer,\" ibid., 17\u201332. See further Sally R. Munt, _Heroic Desire_ (London: Cassell, 1998), ch. 4; Michael Warner, _The Trouble with Normal_ (New York: Free Press, 1999), ch. 1; Douglas Crimp, \"Mario Montez, For Shame,\" in Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark, eds., _Regarding Sedgwick_ (New York: Routledge, 2002).\n\n. Tennessee Williams, _Sweet Bird of Youth_ (1959), in Williams, _\"Sweet Bird of Youth,\" \"A Streetcar Named Desire,\" \"The Glass Menagerie\"_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), 42 (my emphasis). See Neil Bartlett, _Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1990), 13.\n\n**9. FICTION**\n\n. _The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_ , 3d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964). The rules and books specified in the dictionary are those of the Christian churches. See Reed Woodhouse, _Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945\u20131995_ (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).\n\n. Alison Hennegan, \"On Becoming a Lesbian Reader,\" in Susannah Radstone, ed., _Sweet Dreams_ (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 169\u201371.\n\n. Stanley Fish, _Professional Correctness_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 2; Alan Sinfield, _Faultlines_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 288\u201390.\n\n. Fish, _Professional Correctness_ , 44\u201345 (his emphasis).\n\n. John Guillory, _Cultural Capital_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 1\u201314.\n\n. Stuart Hall, \"New Ethnicities,\" in James Donald and Ali Rattansi, eds., _\"Race,\" Culture, and Difference_ (London: Sage, 1992), 254 (Hall's emphasis). See Alan Sinfield, _Gay and After_ (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), chs. 1 and 2; Carrie Tirado Bramen, \"Why the Academic Left Hates Identity Politics,\" _Textual Practice_ 16 (2002): 1\u201311.\n**INDEX**\n\nabuse\n\nAckerley, J.R.\n\nACT UP\n\nAdair, G.\n\n_Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The_\n\nAfrican Americans\n\nage\n\nAIDS\n\n_AKA_\n\nAlderson, D.\n\n_Alive and Kicking_\n\nAllen, C.\n\nAllison, D.\n\nAlthusser, L.\n\nAltman, D\n\nAndros, P.\n\nanthropology\n\nArditti, M.\n\narrested development\n\n_Attendant, The_\n\nAuden, W. H.\n\nBacon, F.\n\nBaker, J. R.\n\nBaldwin, J.\n\nBarney, N.\n\nBartlett, N.\n\nBawer, B.\n\nBeadle, J.\n\nBeam, J.\n\n_Beautiful Thing_\n\nBech, H.\n\nBellow, S.\n\nBergling, T.\n\nBergman, D.\n\nBersani, L.\n\n_Bigger Splash, A_\n\n_Birdcage, The_\n\nbisexuals\n\nBlack Panthers\n\nBloom, A.\n\nBornstein, K.\n\nBoulton, S.\n\n_Boys Don't Cry_\n\n_Brandon Teena Story, The_\n\nBray, A.\n\nBrecht, B.\n\nBritain\n\nBronski, M.\n\nBrown, R. M.\n\nbullying\n\nBush, G.\n\nbutch\/femme\n\nButler, J.\n\nButler, T.\n\nCahill, P. T.\n\nCalifia, P.\n\nCameron, P.\n\ncamp\n\ncanon\n\ncapitalism\n\nCard, C.\n\n_Carousel_\n\nCase, S.-E.\n\nCastle, T.\n\nCatullus\n\n_Chasing Amy_\n\nChauncey, G. Jr.\n\nChesney, R.\n\nClarke, C.\n\nClarke, F.\n\nClarke, J.\n\nclass\n\nCleaver, E.\n\nCobham, R.\n\nCoetzee, J. M.\n\ncoming out\n\n_Coming Out_\n\nconflation of roles\n\nCooper, D.\n\nCorbin, S.\n\nCory, D. W.\n\nCoward, N.\n\nCresswell, N.\n\nCrisp, Q.\n\nCrowley, M.\n\n_Crying Game, The_\n\nCullwick, H.\n\ncultural materialism\n\ncultural capital\n\nCunningham, M.\n\nDahmer, J.\n\nDale, J.\n\nde Lauretis, T.\n\nDebord, G.\n\nDelany, S. R.\n\nDerrida, J.\n\ndesire-for\/desire-to-be\n\nDickson, J.\n\n_Different for Girls_\n\nDoan, L.\n\n_Doing It with You Is Taboo_\n\nDollimore, J.\n\nDonne, J.\n\nDonoghue, E.\n\nDonovan, C.\n\ndrag\n\nDrexel, A.\n\nDrinnan, N.\n\nDuncker, P.\n\nDuplechan, L.\n\nDworkin, A.\n\nDyer, R.\n\n_Early Frost, An_\n\nEbershoff, D.\n\negalitarian ideology\n\nEllis, H.\n\nEminem\n\n_Entre Nous_\n\n_fa'affines_\n\nfantasy\n\nFarrakhan, L.\n\nFeinberg, D. B.\n\nFeinberg, L.\n\nfemininity\n\nFerenczi, S.\n\nFicino, M.\n\nFierstein, H.\n\nFish, S.\n\nFisher, G.\n\nFletcher, J.\n\nForster, E. M.\n\nFoucault, M.\n\nFraser, S.\n\nFreud, S.\n\n_Fruit Machine, The_\n\nGarland, J.\n\nGarland, R.\n\nGarlinger, P. P.\n\ngaze, the\n\nGeertz, C.\n\ngender identity\n\nGenet, J.\n\nGide, A.\n\nGilroy, P.\n\nGlazier, L.\n\nGoldsby, J.\n\nGorer, G.\n\nGove, B.\n\nGray, S.\n\nGreeks\n\nGreen, R.\n\nGreenberg, D.\n\nGrimsley, J.\n\nGrosz, E.\n\nGuillory, J.\n\nGunn, T.\n\nHalberstam, J.\n\nHall, R.\n\nHalperin, D.\n\nHammerstein, O.\n\nHansen, J.\n\nHarper, P. B.\n\nHart, L.\n\nHartnett, P-P.\n\nHarvey, J.\n\nHawkeswood, W. G.\n\nHazan, J.\n\nHealy, M.\n\nHeaphy, B.\n\nHekma, G.\n\nHemphill, E.\n\nHennegan, A.\n\nHerdt, G.\n\nhierarchies\n\nHoad, N.\n\nHockney, D.\n\nHoffman, W. F.\n\nHolleran, A.\n\nHollibaugh, A.\n\nHollinghurst, A.\n\n_Hollow Reed_\n\nHolmes, R.\n\nHomes, A. M.\n\nhomophobia\n\nhooks, b.\n\nHopkins, J.\n\nHouse, R.\n\nHouser, W.\n\nHsien-yung, P.\n\nhustling\n\nidentity\n\nimperialism\n\nintersex\n\ninversion\n\nIreland, T.\n\nIrigaray, L.\n\nIsherwood, C.\n\nJackson, E., Jr.\n\nJackson, R. T.\n\nJanMohamed, A.\n\nJeffreys, S.\n\nJohnson, D. K.\n\nJulien, I.\n\nKaplan, C.\n\nKaufman, M.\n\nKay, J.\n\nKhambatta, A.\n\nKoestenbaum, W.\n\nKrafft-Ebing, R. von\n\nKramer, L.\n\nKulick, D.\n\n_La Cage aux Folles_\n\nLaGrone, K. L.\n\nLaing, R. D.\n\nLaplanche, J.\n\nLatin Americans\n\nLawrence, D. H.\n\nLeavitt, D.\n\nLeeming, D.\n\nlesbians\n\nLeVay, S.\n\nL\u00e9vi-Strauss, C.\n\nLewes, K.\n\nLister, A.\n\nliterary criticism\n\n_Living End, The_\n\nLlangollen, Ladies of\n\n_Looking for Langston_\n\nLorde, A.\n\nLovat, S.\n\n_Love and Death on Long Island_\n\n_Love Is the Devil_\n\n_Love! Valour! Compassion!_\n\nLowe, B.\n\n_Ma vie en rose_\n\nMacKinnon, C. A.\n\nMaddison, S.\n\nMains, G.\n\n_Make Me a Man_\n\nMann, T.\n\nMarcuse, H.\n\nMarlowe, K.\n\nMarshall, J.\n\nMars-Jones, A.\n\nMartin, K.\n\nmasculinity\n\nmasochism\n\nmentoring\n\nMason-John, V.\n\nMaugham, R.\n\nMaugham, S.\n\nMaupin, A.\n\nMcLean, H.\n\nMcNally, T.\n\nMelson J. K.\n\nMercer, K.\n\nMills, J.\n\nMills, J. E.\n\nMoll, A.\n\nmollies\n\nMonette, P.\n\nMoore, M.\n\nMoore, O.\n\nMoraga, C.\n\nMoran, L. J.\n\nMulvey, L.\n\nMumford, K. J.\n\nMunby, A.\n\nMunt, S.\n\nMurdoch, I.\n\nMurray, S. O.\n\n_My Beautiful Laundrette_\n\n_My Own Private Idaho_\n\nNaipaul, V. S.\n\nnarcissism\n\nnarrative\n\nNavratilova, M.\n\nNewton, E.\n\nNewton, H.\n\nNgcobo, L.\n\n_No Night Is Too Long_\n\nNonas, E.\n\nNorton, R.\n\nobject-choice\n\nOedipus complex\n\nO'Hara, S.\n\nO'Neill, J.\n\nOmosupe, E.\n\nOrton, J.\n\nOsment, P.\n\n_Paradise Bent_\n\nPark, F.\n\nPater, W.\n\nPeake, T.\n\npedophilia\n\nPenley, C.\n\nPet Shop Boys\n\n_Philadelphia_\n\nphobia\n\nPicano, F.\n\nPlato\n\nPlummer, K.\n\nPontalis, J. B.\n\npornography\n\nPosener, J.\n\npoststructuralism\n\npromiscuity\n\nProsser, J.\n\nPym, B.\n\nQuinn, J.\n\nrace\n\nracism\n\nRattigan, T.\n\nRavenhill, M.\n\n_Rebel Without a Cause_\n\nRechy, J.\n\nRenault, M.\n\nreproduction\n\nRich, B. R.\n\nRiggs, M.\n\nRiviere, J.\n\n_Rocky II_\n\nRodgers, R.\n\nroles\n\nRousseau, G.\n\nRussell, P.\n\nSandys, J.\n\nSartre, J.-P.\n\n_Scarlet Pansy, The_\n\nScherzinger, M.\n\nSchulman, S.\n\nSedgwick, E. K.\n\nseduction\n\nSegal, L.\n\nSegal, N.\n\nserial killers\n\n_Servant, The_\n\nsexiness\n\nShakespeare, W.\n\nshame\n\nShaw, A.\n\nShepard, M.\n\nShepherd, R.\n\nShilts, R.\n\nSidney, P.\n\nSilverman, K.\n\nSituationism\n\n_skesana_ boys\n\nSmith, B. R.\n\nSouth Africa\n\nSpark, M.\n\nSpender, S.\n\nSpurlin, W. K.\n\nStallybrass, P.\n\nStanton, M.\n\n_Star Trek_\n\nStein, G.\n\nStone, S.\n\n_Stonewall_\n\nStonewall Riots\n\nStraayer, C.\n\nStreisand, B.\n\nsubculture\n\n_Suddenly Last Summer_\n\nSullivan, A.\n\nSymonds, J. A.\n\nS\/M\n\n_Talented Mr. Ripley, The_\n\n_Taxi zum Klo_\n\nTaylor, D.\n\nTennyson, A.\n\n_To Die For_\n\ntoilets\n\n_Tongues Untied_\n\n_To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_\n\nToynbee, P.\n\ntransgender, transsexuals\n\nTripp, C. A.\n\nTyler, C.-A.\n\nUnited States of America\n\nVaneigem, R.\n\nVicinus, M.\n\n_Victim_\n\nVivienne, R.\n\nVolcano, Del LaGrace\n\n_Voyage en Douce_\n\nWakefield, T.\n\nWalker, A.\n\nWalkerdine, V.\n\nWallace, W.\n\nWalton, S.\n\nWard, C. M.\n\nWarner, M.\n\nWaugh, A.\n\n_Wedding Banquet, The_\n\nWeeks, J.\n\nWest, D. J.\n\nWhite, A.\n\nWhite, E.\n\nWhitman, W.\n\nWilde, O.\n\nWildeblood, P.\n\nWillard, G.\n\nWilliams, R.\n\nWilliams, T.\n\nWilson, Angus\n\nWilson, Anna\n\nWilton, T.\n\nWinckelmann, J.\n\nWinterson, J.\n\nWojnarowicz, D.\n\n_Wonderland_\n\nWoods, G.\n\nWoolf, V.\n\nZilinsky, U.\n**BETWEEN MEN \u223c BETWEEN WOMEN**   **LESBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL STUDIES**\n\nTerry Castle and Larry Gross, Editors\n\nRichard D. Mohr, _Gays\/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law_\n\nGary David Comstock, _Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men_\n\nKath Weston, _Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship_\n\nLillian Faderman, _Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America_\n\nJudith Roof, _A Lure of Knowledge: Lesbian Sexuality and Theory_\n\nJohn Clum, _Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama_\n\nAllen Ellenzweig, _The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu\/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe_\n\nSally Munt, editor, _New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings_\n\nTimothy F. Murphy and Suzanne Poirier, editors, _Writing AIDS: Gay Literature, Language, and Analysis_\n\nLinda D. Garnets and Douglas C. Kimmel, editors, _Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Male Experiences_ (2nd edition)\n\nLaura Doan, editor, _The Lesbian Postmodern_\n\nNoreen O'Connor and Joanna Ryan, _Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis_\n\nAlan Sinfield, _The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment_\n\nClaudia Card, _Lesbian Choices_\n\nCarter Wilson, _Hidden in the Blood: A Personal Investigation of AIDS in the Yucat\u00e1n_\n\nAlan Bray, _Homosexuality in Renaissance England_\n\nJoseph Carrier, _De Los Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality Among Mexican Men_\n\nJoseph Bristow, _Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing After 1885_\n\nCorinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith, editors, _En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera_\n\nDon Paulson with Roger Simpson, _An Evening at The Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle_\n\nClaudia Schoppmann, _Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians During the Third Reich_\n\nChris Straayer, _Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-Orientation in Film and Video_\n\nEdward Alwood, _Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media_\n\nThomas Waugh, _Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall_\n\nJudith Roof, _Come As You Are: Sexuality and Narrative_\n\nTerry Castle, _Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits_\n\nKath Weston, _Render Me, Gender Me: Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nation, Studmuffins..._\n\nRuth Vanita, _Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination_\n\nren\u00e9e c. hoogland, _Lesbian Configurations_\n\nBeverly Burch, _Other Women: Lesbian Experience and Psychoanalytic Theory of Women_\n\nJane McIntosh Snyder, _Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho_\n\nRebecca Alpert, _Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition_\n\nEmma Donoghue, editor, _Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire_\n\nJames T. Sears and Walter L. Williams, editors, _Overcoming Heterosexism and Homophobia: Strategies That Work_\n\nPatricia Juliana Smith, _Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women's Fiction_\n\nDwayne C. Turner, _Risky Sex: Gay Men and HIV Prevention_\n\nTimothy F. Murphy, _Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research_\n\nCameron McFarlane, _The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, 1660\u20131750_\n\nLynda Hart, _Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism_\n\nByrne R. S. Fone, editor, _The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature: Readings from Western Antiquity to the Present Day_\n\nEllen Lewin, _Recognizing Ourselves: Ceremonies of Lesbian and Gay Commitment_\n\nRuthann Robson, _Sappho Goes to Law School: Fragments in Lesbian Legal Theory_\n\nJacquelyn Zita, _Body Talk: Philosophical Reflections on Sex and Gender_\n\nEvelyn Blackwood and Saskia Wieringa, _Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures_\n\nWilliam L. Leap, ed., _Public Sex\/Gay Space_\n\nLarry Gross and James D. Woods, eds., _The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics_\n\nMarilee Lindemann, _Willa Cather: Queering America_\n\nGeorge E. Haggerty, _Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century_\n\nAndrew Elfenbein, _Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role_\n\nGilbert Herdt and Bruce Koff, _Something to Tell You: The Road Families Travel When a Child Is Gay_\n\nRichard Canning, _Gay Fiction Speaks: Conversations with Gay Novelists_\n\nLaura Doan, _Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture_\n\nMary Bernstein and Renate Reimann, eds., _Queer Families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State_\n\nRichard R. Bozorth, _Auden's Games of Knowledge: Poetry and the Meanings of Homosexuality_\n\nLarry Gross, _Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America_\n\nLinda Garber, _Identity Poetics: Race, Class, and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory_\n\nRichard Canning, _Hear Us Out: Conversations with Gay Novelists_\n\nDavid Bergman, _The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture_\n\nKatherine Sender, _Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market_\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n**Machine Learning with Swift\n\n**\n\nArtificial Intelligence for iOS\n\nAlexander Sosnovshchenko\n\n****BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI****\n\n# Machine Learning with Swift\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2018 Packt Publishing\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.\n\nEvery effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.\n\nPackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.\n\n**Commissioning Editor:** Veena Pagare  \n**Acquisition Editor:** Vinay Argekar  \n**Content Development Editor:** Mayur Pawanikar  \n**Technical Editor:** Dinesh Pawar  \n**Copy Editor:** Vikrant Phadkay, Safis Editing  \n**Project Coordinator:** Nidhi Joshi  \n**Proofreader:** Safis Editing  \n**Indexer:** Pratik Shirodkar  \n**Graphics:** Tania Dutta  \n**Production Coordinator:** Arvindkumar Gupta\n\nFirst published: February 2018\n\nProduction reference: 1270218\n\nPublished by Packt Publishing Ltd.  \nLivery Place  \n35 Livery Street  \nBirmingham  \nB3 2PB, UK.\n\nISBN 978-1-78712-151-5\n\nwww.packtpub.com\n\nmapt.io\n\nMapt is an online digital library that gives you full access to over 5,000 books and videos, as well as industry leading tools to help you plan your personal development and advance your career. For more information, please visit our website.\n\n# Why subscribe?\n\n  * Spend less time learning and more time coding with practical eBooks and Videos from over 4,000 industry professionals\n\n  * Improve your learning with Skill Plans built especially for you\n\n  * Get a free eBook or video every month\n\n  * Mapt is fully searchable\n\n  * Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content\n\n# PacktPub.com\n\nDid you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at `service@packtpub.com` for more details.\n\nAt www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters, and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.\n\n# Contributors\n# About the author\n\n**Alexander Sosnovshchenko** has been working as an iOS software engineer since 2012. Later he made his foray into data science, from the first experiments with mobile machine learning in 2014, to complex deep learning solutions for detecting anomalies in video surveillance data. He lives in Lviv, Ukraine, and has a wife and a daughter.\n\nThanks to Dmitrii Vorona for moral support, invaluable advice, and code reviews; Nikolay Sosnovshchenko and Oksana Matskovich for the help with pictures of creatures and androids; David Kopec and Matthijs Hollemans for their open source projects; Mr. Jojo Moolayil for his efforts and expertise as a contributing author and reviewer; and my family for being supportive and patient.\n\n# About the reviewers\n\n**Jojo Moolayil** is an artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning professional with over 5 years of experience and is the author of _Smarter Decisions \u2013 The Intersection of Internet of Things and Decision Science_. He works with GE and lives in Bengaluru, India. He has also been a technical reviewer about various books in machine learning, deep learning, and business analytics with Apress and Packt.\n\nI would like to thank my family, friends, and mentors.\n\n**Cecil Costa** , also known as Eduardo Campos in Latin American countries, is a Euro-Brazilian freelance developer who has been learning about computers since he got his first PC in 1990. Learning is his passion, and so is teaching; this is why he works as a trainer. He has organized both on-site and online courses for companies. He is also the author of a few Swift books.\n\nI'd like to thank Maximilian Ambergis for creating the delete key; it has been very useful for me!\n\n# Packt is searching for authors like you\n\nIf you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit authors.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked with thousands of developers and tech professionals, just like you, to help them share their insight with the global tech community. You can make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic that we are recruiting an author for, or submit your own idea.\n\n# Table of Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright and Credits\n    1. Machine Learning with Swift\n  3. Packt Upsell\n    1. Why subscribe?\n    2. PacktPub.com\n  4. Contributors\n    1. About the author\n    2. About the reviewers\n    3. Packt is searching for authors like you\n  5. Preface\n    1. Who this book is for\n    2. What this book covers\n    3. To get the most out of this book\n      1. Download the example code files\n      2. Download the color images\n      3. Conventions used\n    4. Get in touch\n      1. Reviews\n  6. Getting Started with Machine Learning\n    1. What is AI?\n    2. The motivation behind ML\n    3. What is ML ?\n    4. Applications of ML\n      1. Digital signal processing (DSP)\n      2. Computer vision\n      3. Natural language processing (NLP)\n      4. Other applications of ML\n    5. Using ML to build smarter iOS applications\n    6. Getting to know your data\n      1. Features\n        1. Types of features\n        2. Choosing a good set of features\n      2. Getting the dataset\n      3. Data preprocessing\n    7. Choosing a model\n      1. Types of ML algorithms\n      2. Supervised learning\n      3. Unsupervised learning\n      4. Reinforcement learning\n      5. Mathematical optimization\u00a0\u2013 how learning works\n      6. Mobile versus server-side ML\n      7. Understanding mobile platform limitations\n    8. Summary\n    9. Bibliography\n  7. Classification \u2013 Decision Tree Learning\n    1. Machine learning toolbox\n    2. Prototyping the first machine learning app\n      1. Tools\n      2. Setting up a machine learning environment\n    3. IPython notebook crash course\n    4. Time to practice\n    5. Machine learning for extra-terrestrial life explorers\n    6. Loading the dataset\n    7. Exploratory data analysis\n    8. Data preprocessing\n      1. Converting categorical variables\n      2. Separating features from labels\n      3. One-hot encoding\n      4. Splitting the data\n    9. Decision trees everywhere\n    10. Training the decision tree classifier\n      1. Tree visualization\n      2. Making predictions\n      3. Evaluating accuracy\n      4. Tuning hyperparameters\n      5. Understanding model capacity trade-offs\n    11. How decision tree learning works\n      1. Building a tree automatically from data\n      2. Combinatorial entropy\n      3. Evaluating performance of the model with data\n        1. Precision, recall, and F1-score\n        2. K-fold cross-validation\n        3. Confusion matrix\n    12. Implementing first machine learning app in Swift\n    13. Introducing Core ML\n      1. Core ML features\n      2. Exporting the model for iOS\n      3. Ensemble learning random forest\n      4. Training the random forest\n      5. Random forest accuracy evaluation\n      6. Importing the Core ML model into an iOS project\n      7. Evaluating performance of the model on iOS\n        1. Calculating the confusion matrix\n      8. Decision tree learning pros and cons\n    14. Summary\n  8. K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier\n    1. Calculating the distance\n      1. DTW\n      2. Implementing DTW in Swift\n    2. Using instance-based models for classification and clustering\n    3. People motion recognition using inertial sensors\n    4. Understanding the KNN algorithm\n      1. Implementing KNN in Swift\n    5. Recognizing human motion using KNN\n      1. Cold start problem\n      2. Balanced dataset\n      3. Choosing a good k\n    6. Reasoning in high-dimensional spaces\n    7. KNN pros\n    8. KNN cons\n    9. Improving our solution\n      1. Probabilistic interpretation\n      2. More data sources\n      3. Smarter time series chunking\n      4. Hardware acceleration\n      5. Trees to speed up the inference\n      6. Utilizing state transitions\n    10. Summary\n    11. Bibliography\n  9. K-Means Clustering\n    1. Unsupervised learning\n    2. K-means clustering\n    3. Implementing k-means in Swift\n      1. Update step\n      2. Assignment step\n    4. Clustering objects on a map\n    5. Choosing the number of clusters\n    6. K-means clustering\u00a0\u2013 problems\n    7. K-means++\n    8. Image segmentation using k-means\n    9. Summary\n  10. Association Rule Learning\n    1. Seeing association rules\n    2. Defining data structures\n    3. Using association measures to assess rules\n      1. Supporting association measures\n      2. Confidence association measures\n      3. Lift association measures\n      4. Conviction association measures\n    4. Decomposing the problem\n    5. Generating all possible rules\n    6. Finding frequent item sets\n    7. The Apriori algorithm\n    8. Implementing Apriori in Swift\n    9. Running Apriori\n    10. Running Apriori on real-world data\n    11. The pros and cons of Apriori\n    12. Building an adaptable user experience\n    13. Summary\n    14. Bibliography\n  11. Linear Regression and Gradient Descent\n    1. Understanding the regression task\n    2. Introducing simple linear regression\n      1. Fitting a regression line using the least squares method\n        1. Where to use GD and normal equation\n        2. Using gradient descent for function minimization\n      2. Forecasting the future with simple linear regression\n    3. Feature scaling\n    4. Feature standardization\n      1. Multiple linear regression\n    5. Implementing multiple linear regression in Swift\n      1. Gradient descent for multiple linear regression\n        1. Training multiple regression\n        2. Linear algebra operations\n      2. Feature-wise standardization\n        1. Normal equation for multiple linear regression\n      3. Understanding and overcoming the limitations of linear regression\n    6. Fixing linear regression problems with regularization\n      1. Ridge regression and Tikhonov regularization\n        1. LASSO regression\n      2. ElasticNet regression\n    7. Summary\n    8. Bibliography\n  12. Linear Classifier and Logistic Regression\n    1. Revisiting the classification task\n      1. Linear classifier\n      2. Logistic regression\n    2. Implementing logistic regression in Swift\n      1. The prediction part of logistic regression\n      2. Training the logistic regression\n      3. Cost function\n    3. Predicting user intents\n      1. Handling dates\n    4. Choosing the regression model for your problem\n    5. Bias-variance trade-off\n    6. Summary\n  13. Neural Networks\n    1. What are artificial NNs anyway?\n    2. Building the neuron\n      1. Non-linearity function\n        1. Step-like activation functions\n        2. Rectifier-like activation functions\n    3. Building the network\n    4. Building a neural layer in Swift\n    5. Using neurons to build logical functions\n    6. Implementing layers in Swift\n    7. Training the network\n      1. Vanishing gradient problem\n      2. Seeing biological analogies\n    8. Basic neural\u00a0network subroutines (BNNS)\n      1. BNNS example\n    9. Summary\n  14. Convolutional Neural Networks\n    1. Understanding users emotions\n    2. Introducing computer vision problems\n    3. Introducing convolutional neural networks\n    4. Pooling operation\n    5. Convolution operation\n      1. Convolutions in CNNs\n    6. Building the network\n      1. Input layer\n      2. Convolutional layer\n      3. Fully-connected layers\n      4. Nonlinearity layers\n      5. Pooling layer\n      6. Regularization layers\n        1. Dropout\n        2. Batch normalization\n    7. Loss functions\n    8. Training the network\n    9. Training the CNN for facial expression recognition\n    10. Environment setup\n    11. Deep learning frameworks\n      1. Keras\n    12. Loading the data\n    13. Splitting the data\n    14. Data augmentation\n    15. Creating the network\n    16. Plotting the network structure\n    17. Training the network\n    18. Plotting loss\n    19. Making predictions\n    20. Saving the model in HDF5 format\n    21. Converting to Core ML format\n    22. Visualizing convolution filters\n    23. Deploying CNN to iOS\n    24. Summary\n    25. Bibliography\n  15. Natural Language Processing\n    1. NLP in the mobile development world\n    2. Word Association game\n    3. Python NLP libraries\n    4. Textual corpuses\n    5. Common NLP approaches and subtasks\n      1. Tokenization\n      2. Stemming\n      3. Lemmatization\n      4. Part-of-speech (POS) tagging\n      5. Named entity recognition (NER)\n      6. Removing stop words and punctuation\n    6. Distributional semantics hypothesis\n    7. Word vector representations\n    8. Autoencoder neural networks\n    9. Word2Vec\n    10. Word2Vec in Gensim\n    11. Vector space properties\n    12. iOS application\n      1. Chatbot anatomy\n      2. Voice input\n      3. NSLinguisticTagger and friends\n      4. Word2Vec on iOS\n      5. Text-to-speech output\n      6. UIReferenceLibraryViewController\n      7. Putting it all together\n    13. Word2Vec friends and relatives\n    14. Where to go from here?\n    15. Summary\n  16. Machine Learning Libraries\n    1. Machine learning and AI APIs\n    2. Libraries\n    3. General-purpose machine learning libraries\n      1. AIToolbox\n      2. BrainCore\n      3. Caffe\n      4. Caffe2\n      5. dlib\n      6. FANN\n      7. LearnKit\n      8. MLKit\n      9. Multilinear-math\n      10. MXNet\n      11. Shark\n      12. TensorFlow\n      13. tiny-dnn\n      14. Torch\n      15. YCML\n    4. Inference-only libraries\n      1. Keras\n      2. LibSVM\n      3. Scikit-learn\n      4. XGBoost\n    5. NLP libraries\n      1. Word2Vec\n      2. Twitter text\n    6. Speech recognition\n      1. TLSphinx\n      2. OpenEars\n    7. Computer vision\n      1. OpenCV\n      2. ccv\n      3. OpenFace\n      4. Tesseract\n    8. Low-level subroutine libraries\n      1. Eigen\n      2. fmincg-c\n      3. IntuneFeatures\n      4. SigmaSwiftStatistics\n      5. STEM\n      6. Swix\n      7. LibXtract\n      8. libLBFGS\n      9. NNPACK\n      10. Upsurge\n      11. YCMatrix\n    9. Choosing a deep learning framework\n    10. Summary\n  17. Optimizing Neural Networks for Mobile Devices\n    1. Delivering perfect user experience\n    2. Calculating the size of a convolutional neural network\n    3. Lossless compression\n    4. Compact CNN architectures\n      1. SqueezeNet\n      2. MobileNets\n      3. ShuffleNet\n      4. CondenseNet\n    5. Preventing a neural network from growing big\n    6. Lossy compression\n      1. Optimizing for inference\n        1. Network pruning\n        2. Weights quantization\n        3. Reducing precision\n        4. Other approaches\n          1. Facebook's approach in Caffe2\n      2. Knowledge distillation\n      3. Tools\n    7. An example of the network compression\n    8. Summary\n    9. Bibliography\n  18. Best Practices\n    1. Mobile machine learning project life cycle\n      1. Preparatory stage\n        1. Formulate the problem\n        2. Define the constraints\n        3. Research the existing approaches\n        4. Research the data\n        5. Make design choices\n      2. Prototype creation\n        1. Data preprocessing\n        2. Model training, evaluation, and selection\n        3. Field testing\n      3. Porting or deployment for a mobile platform\n      4. Production\n    2. Best practices\n      1. Benchmarking\n      2. Privacy and differential privacy\n      3. Debugging and visualization\n      4. Documentation\n    3. Machine learning gremlins\n      1. Data kobolds\n        1. Tough data\n        2. Biased data\n        3. Batch effects\n      2. Goblins of training\n      3. Product design ogres\n        1. Magical thinking\n        2. Cargo cult\n        3. Feedback loops\n        4. Uncanny valley effect\n    4. Recommended learning resources\n      1. Mathematical background\n        1. Machine learning\n        2. Computer vision\n        3. NLP\n    5. Summary\n\n# Preface\n\nMachine learning, as a field, promises to bring increasing intelligence to software by helping us learn and analyze information efficiently and discover certain things that humans cannot. We'll start by developing lasting intuition about the fundamental machine learning concepts in the first section. We'll explore various supervised and unsupervised learning techniques in the second section. Then, the third section, will walk you through deep learning techniques with the help of common real-world cases.  \nIn the last section, we'll dive into hardcore topics such as model compression and GPU acceleration, and provide some recommendations to avoid common mistakes during machine learning application development. By the end of the book, you'll be able to develop intelligent applications written in Swift that can learn for themselves.\n\n# Who this book is for\n\nThis book is for iOS developers who wish to create intelligent iOS applications, and data science professionals who are interested in performing machine learning using Swift. Familiarity with some basic Swift programming is all you need to get started with this book.\n\n# What this book covers\n\nChapter 1, _Getting Started with Machine Learning_ , teaches the main concepts of machine learning.\n\nChapter 2, _Classification \u2013 Decision Tree Learning_ , builds our first machine learning application.\n\nChapter 3, _K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier_ , continues exploring classification algorithms, and we learn about instance-based learning algorithms.\n\nChapter 4, _K-Means Clustering_ , continues with instance-based algorithms, this time focusing on an unsupervised clustering task.\n\nChapter 5, _Association Rule Learning_ , explores unsupervised learning more deeply.\n\nChapter 6, _Linear Regression and Gradient Descent_ , returns to supervised learning, but this time we switch our attention from non-parametric models, such as KNN and k-means, to parametric linear models.\n\nChapter 7, _Linear Classifier and Logistic Regression_ , continues by building different, more complex models on top of linear regression: polynomial regression, regularized regression, and logistic regression.\n\nChapter 8, _Neural Networks_ , implements our first neural network.\n\nChapter 9, _Convolutional Neural Networks_ , continues NNs, but this time we focus on convolutional NNs, which are especially popular in the computer vision domain.\n\nChapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_ , explores the amazing world of human natural language. We're also going to use neural networks to build several chatbots with different personalities.\n\nChapter 11, _Machine Learning Libraries_ , overviews existing iOS-compatible libraries for machine learning.\n\nChapter 12, _Optimizing Neural Networks for Mobile Devices_ , talks about deep neural network deployment on mobile platforms.\n\nChapter 13, _Best Practices_ , discusses a machine learning app's life cycle, common problems in AI projects, and how to solve them. \n\n# To get the most out of this book\n\nYou will need the following software to be able to smoothly sail through this book:\n\n  * Homebrew 1.3.8 +\n  * Python 2.7.x\n  * pip 9.0.1+\n  * Virtualenv 15.1.0+\n  * IPython 5.4.1+\n  * Jupyter 1.0.0+\n  * SciPy 0.19.1+\n  * NumPy 1.13.3+\n  * Pandas 0.20.2+\n  * Matplotlib 2.0.2+\n  * Graphviz 0.8.2+\n  * pydotplus 2.0.2+\n  * scikit-learn 0.18.1+\n  * coremltools 0.6.3+\n  * Ruby (default macOS version)\n  * Xcode 9.2+\n  * Keras 2.0.6+ with TensorFlow 1.1.0+ backend\n  * keras-vis 0.4.1+\n  * NumPy 1.13.3+\n  * NLTK 3.2.4+\n  * Gensim 2.1.0+\n\nOS required:\n\n  * macOS High Sierra 10.13.3+\n  * iOS 11+ or simulator\n\n# Download the example code files\n\nYou can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com\/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.\n\nYou can download the code files by following these steps:\n\n  1. Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.\n  2. Select the SUPPORT tab.\n  3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.\n  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.\n\nOnce the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:\n\n  * WinRAR\/7-Zip for Windows\n  * Zipeg\/iZip\/UnRarX for Mac\n  * 7-Zip\/PeaZip for Linux\n\nThe code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at <https:\/\/github.com\/PacktPublishing\/Machine-Learning-with-Swift>. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository. The author has also hosted the code bundle on his GitHub repository at: <https:\/\/github.com\/alexsosn\/SwiftMLBook>.\n\nWe also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at **<https:\/\/github.com\/PacktPublishing\/>**. Check them out!\n\n# Download the color images\n\nWe also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots\/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: <https:\/\/www.packtpub.com\/sites\/default\/files\/downloads\/MachineLearningwithSwift_ColorImages.pdf>.\n\n# Conventions used\n\nThere are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.\n\n`CodeInText`: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: \"The library we are using for datasets loading and manipulation is `pandas`.\"\n\nA block of code is set as follows:\n\n    let bundle = Bundle.main \n    let assetPath = bundle.url(forResource: \"DecisionTree\", withExtension:\"mlmodelc\")\n\nWhen we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:\n\n    let metricsSKLRandomForest = evaluateAccuracy(yVecTest: **groundTruth** , predictions: predictionsSKLRandomForest) \n    print(metricsSKLRandomForest)\n\nAny command-line input or output is written as follows:\n\n    **> pip install -U numpy scipy matplotlib ipython jupyter scikit-learn pydotplus coremltools**\n\n**Bold** : Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: \"In the interface, the user selects the type of motion he wants to record, and presses the Record button.\"\n\nWarnings or important notes appear like this.\n\nTips and tricks appear like this.\n\n# Get in touch\n\nFeedback from our readers is always welcome.\n\n**General feedback** : Email `feedback@packtpub.com` and mention the book title in the subject of your message. If you have questions about any aspect of this book, please email us at `questions@packtpub.com`.\n\n**Errata** : Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com\/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details.\n\n**Piracy** : If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at `copyright@packtpub.com` with a link to the material.\n\n**If you are interested in becoming an author** : If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com.\n\n# Reviews\n\nPlease leave a review. Once you have read and used this book, why not leave a review on the site that you purchased it from? Potential readers can then see and use your unbiased opinion to make purchase decisions, we at Packt can understand what you think about our products, and our authors can see your feedback on their book. Thank you!\n\nFor more information about Packt, please visit packtpub.com.\n\n# Getting Started with Machine Learning\n\nWe live in exciting times. **Artificial intelligence** ( **AI** ) and **Machine Learning** ( **ML** ) went from obscure mathematical and science fiction topics to become a part of mass culture. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others competed to become the first to give the world general AI. In November 2015, Google open sourced its ML framework with TensorFlow, which is suitable for running on supercomputers as well as smartphones, and since then has won a broad community. Shortly afterwards, other big companies followed the example. The best iOS app of 2016 (Apple Choice), viral photo editor Prisma owes its success entirely to a particular kind of ML algorithm: **convolutional neural network** ( **CNN** ). These systems were invented back in the nineties but became popular only in the noughties. Mobile devices only gained enough computational power to run them in 2014\/2015. In fact, artificial neural networks became so important for practical applications that in iOS 10 Apple added native support for them in the metal and accelerate frameworks. Apple also opened Siri to third-party developers and introduced GameplayKit, a framework to add AI capabilities to your computer games. In iOS 11, Apple introduced Core ML, a framework for running pre-trained models on vendors' devices, and Vision framework for common computer vision tasks.\n\nThe best time to start learning about ML was 10 years ago. The next best time is right now.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * Understanding what AI and ML is\n  * Fundamental concepts of ML : model, dataset, and learning\n  * Types of ML tasks\n  * ML project life cycle\n  * General purpose ML versus mobile ML\n\n# What is AI?\n\n\"What I cannot create, I do not understand.\"\n\n\u2013 _Richard Feynman_\n\nAI is a field of knowledge about building intelligent machines, whatever meaning you assign to the word _intelligence_. There are two different AI notions among researchers: strong AI and weak AI.\n\nStrong AI, or **artificial general intelligence** ( **AGI** ), is a machine that is fully capable of imitating human-level intelligence, including consciousness, feelings, and mind. Presumably, it should be able to apply successfully its intelligence to any tasks. This type of AI is like a horizon\u2014we always see it as a goal but we are still not there, despite all our struggles. The significant role here plays the **AI effect** : the things that were yesterday considered a feature of strong AI are today accepted as granted and trivial. In the sixties, people believed that playing board games like chess was a characteristic of strong AI. Today, we have programs that outperform the best human chess players, but we are still far from strong AI. Our iPhones are probably an AI from the eighties perspective: you can talk to them, and they can answer your questions and deliver information on any topic in just seconds. So, keeping strong AI as a distant goal, researchers focused on things at hand and called them **weak AI** : systems that have some features of intelligence, and can be applied to some narrow tasks. Among those tasks are automated reasoning, planning, creativity, communication with humans, a perception of its surrounding world, robotics, and emotions simulation. We will touch some of these tasks in this book, but mostly we will focus on ML because this domain of AI has found a lot of practical applications on mobile platforms in the recent years.\n\n# The motivation behind ML\n\nLet's start with an analogy. There are two ways of learning an unfamiliar language:\n\n  * Learning the language rules by heart, using textbooks, dictionaries, and so on. That's how college students usually do it.\n  * Observing live language: by communicating with native speakers, reading books, and watching movies. That's how children do it.\n\nIn both cases, you build in your mind the language model, or, as some prefer to say, develop a sense of language.\n\nIn the first case, you are trying to build a logical system based on rules. In this case, you will encounter many problems: the exceptions to the rule, different dialects, borrowing from other languages, idioms, and lots more. Someone else, not you, derived and described for you the rules and structure of the language.\n\nIn the second case, you derive the same rules from the available data. You may not even be aware of the existence of these rules, but gradually adjust yourself to the hidden structure and understand the laws. You use your special brain cells called **mirror neurons** , trying to mimic native speakers. This ability is honed by millions of years of evolution. After some time, when facing the wrong word usage, you just feel that something is wrong but you can't tell immediately what exactly.\n\nIn any case, the next step is to apply the resulting language model in the real world. Results may differ. In the first case, you will experience difficulty every time you find the missing hyphen or comma, but may be able to get a job as a proofreader at a publishing house. In the second case, everything will depend on the quality, diversity, and amount of the data on which you were trained. Just imagine a person in the center of New York who studied English through Shakespeare. Would he be able to have a normal conversation with people around him?\n\nNow we'll put the computer in place of the person in our example. Two approaches, in this case, represent the two programming techniques. The first one corresponds to writing ad hoc algorithms consisting of conditions, cycles, and so on, by which a programmer expresses rules and structures. The second one represents ML , in which case the computer itself identifies the underlying structure and rules based on the available data.\n\nThe analogy is deeper than it seems at first glance. For many tasks, building the algorithms directly is impossibly hard because of the variability in the real world. It may require the work of experts in the domain, who must describe all rules and edge cases explicitly. Resulting models can be fragile and rigid. On the other hand, this same task can be solved by allowing computers to figure out the rules on their own from a reasonable amount of data. An example of such a task is face recognition. It's virtually impossible to formalize face recognition in terms of conventional imperative algorithms and data structures. Only recently, the task was successfully solved with the help of ML .\n\n# What is ML ?\n\nML is a subdomain of AI that has demonstrated significant progress over the last decade, and remains a hot research topic. It is a branch of knowledge concerned with building algorithms that can learn from data and improve themselves with regards to the tasks they perform. ML allows computers to deduce the algorithm for some task or to extract hidden patterns from data. ML is known by several different names in different research communities: predictive analytics, data mining, statistical learning, pattern recognition, and so on. One can argue that these terms have some subtle differences, but essentially, they all overlap to the extent that you can use the terminology interchangeably.\n\nAbbreviation ML may refer to many things outside of the AI domain; for example, there is a functional programming language of this name. Nevertheless, the abbreviation is widely used in the names of libraries and conferences as referring to ML . Throughout this book, we also use it in this way.\n\nML is already everywhere around us. Search engines, targeted ads, face and voice recognition, recommender systems, spam filtration, self-driven cars, fraud detection in bank systems, credit scoring, automated video captioning, and machine translation\u2014all these things are impossible to imagine without ML these days.\n\nOver recent years, ML has owed its success to several factors:\n\n  * The abundance of data in different forms (big data)\n  * Accessible computational power and specialized hardware (clouds and GPUs)\n  * The rise of open source and open access\n  * Algorithmic advances\n\nAny ML system includes three essential components: data, model, and task. The data is something you provide as an input to your model. A model is a type of mathematical function or computer program that performs the task. For instance, your emails are data, the spam filter is a model, and telling spam apart from non-spam is a task. The _learning_ in ML stands for a process of adjusting your model to the data so that the model becomes better at its task. The obvious consequences of this setup is expressed in the piece of wisdom well-known among statisticians, \"\"Your model is only as good as your data\"\".\n\n# Applications of ML\n\nThere are many domains where ML is an indispensable ingredient, some of them are robotics, bioinformatics, and recommender systems. While nothing prevents you from writing bioinformatic software in Swift for macOS or Linux, we will restrict our practical examples in this book to more mobile-friendly domains. The apparent reason for this is that currently, iOS remains the primary target platform for most of the programmers who use Swift on a day-to-day basis.\n\nFor the sake of convenience, we'll roughly divide all ML applications of interest for mobile developers into three plus one areas, according to the datatypes they deal with most commonly:\n\n  * Digital signal processing (sensor data, audio)\n  * Computer vision (images, video)\n  * Natural language processing (texts, speech)\n  * Other applications and datatypes\n\n# Digital signal processing (DSP)\n\nThis category includes tasks where input data types are signals, time series, and audio. The sources of the data are sensors, HealthKit, microphone, wearable devices (for example, Apple Watch, or brain-computer interfaces), and IoT devices. Examples of ML problems here include:\n\n  * Motion sensor data classification for activity recognition\n  * Speech recognition and synthesis\n  * Music recognition and synthesis\n  * Biological signals (ECG, EEG, and hand tremor) analysis\n\nWe will build a motion recognition app in Chapter 3, _K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier_.\n\nStrictly speaking, image processing is also a subdomain of DSP but let's not be too meticulous here.\n\n# Computer vision\n\nEverything related to images and videos falls into this category. We will develop some computer vision apps in Chapter 9, _Convolutional Neural Networks_. Examples of computer vision tasks are:\n\n  * **Optical character recognition** ( **OCR** ) and handwritten input\n  * Face detection and recognition\n  * Image and video captioning\n  * Image segmentation\n  * 3D-scene reconstruction\n  * Generative art (artistic style transfer, Deep Dream, and so on)\n\n# Natural language processing (NLP)\n\nNLP is a branch of knowledge at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and statistics. We'll talk about most common NLP techniques in Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_. Applications of NLP include the following:\n\n  * Automated translation, spelling, grammar, and style correction\n  * Sentiment analysis\n  * Spam detection\/filtering\n  * Document categorization\n  * Chatbots and question answering systems\n\n# Other applications of ML\n\nYou can come up with many more applications that are hard to categorize. ML can be done on virtually any data if you have enough of it. Some peculiar data types are:\n\n  * Spatial data: GPS location (Chapter 4, _K-Means_ _Clustering_ ), coordinates of UI objects and touches\n  * Tree-like structures: hierarchy of folders and files\n  * Network-like data: occurrences of people together in your photos, or hyperlinks between web pages\n  * Application logs and user in-app activity data (Chapter 5, _Association Rule Learning_ )\n  * System data: free space disk, battery level, and similar\n  * Survey results\n\n# Using ML to build smarter iOS applications\n\nAs we know from press reports, Apple uses ML for fraud detection, and to mine useful data from beta testing reports; however, these are not examples visible on our mobile devices. Your iPhone itself has a handful of ML models built into its operating system, and some native apps helping to perform a wide range of tasks. Some use cases are well known and prominent while others are inconspicuous. The most obvious examples are Siri speech recognition, natural language understanding, and voice generation. Camera app uses face detection for focusing and Photos app uses face recognition to group photos with the same person into one album. Presenting the new iOS 10 in June 2016, Craig Federighi mentioned its predictive keyboard, which uses an LSTM algorithm (a type of recurrent neural network) to suggest the next word from the context, and also how Photos uses deep learning to recognize objects and classify scenes. iOS itself uses ML to extend battery life, provide contextual suggestions, match profiles from social networks and mail with the records in Contacts, and to choose between internet connection options. On Apple Watch, ML models are employed to recognize user motion activity types and handwritten input.\n\nPrior to iOS 10, Apple provided some ML APIs like speech or movement recognition, but only as black boxes, without the possibility to tune the models or to reuse them for other purposes. If you wanted to do something slightly different, like detect the type of motion (which is not predefined by Apple), you had to build your own models from scratch. In iOS 10, CNN building blocks were added in the two frameworks at once: as a part of Metal API, and as a sublibrary of an Accelerate framework. Also, the first actual ML algorithm was introduced to iOS SDK: the decision tree learner in the GameplayKit.\n\nML capabilities continued to expand with the release of iOS 11. At the WWDC 2017, Apple presented the Core ML framework. It includes API for running pre-trained models and is accompanied by tools for converting models trained with some popular ML frameworks to Apple's own format. Still, for now it doesn't provide the possibility of training models on a device, so your models can't be changed or updated in runtime.\n\nLooking in the App Store for the terms _artificial intelligence_ , _deep learning_ , _ML_ , and similar, you'll find a lot of applications, some of them quite successful. Here are several examples:\n\n  * Google Translate is doing speech recognition and synthesis, OCR, handwriting recognition, and automated translation; some of this is done offline, and some online.\n  * Duolingo validates pronunciation, recommends optimal study materials, and employs Chatbots for language study.\n  * Prisma, Artisto, and others turn photos into paintings using a neural artistic style transfer algorithm. Snapchat and Fabby use image segmentation, object tracking, and other computer vision techniques to enhance selfies. There are also applications for coloring black and white photos automatically.\n  * Snapchat's video selfie filters use ML for real-time face tracking and modification.\n  * Aipoly Vision helps blind people, saying aloud what it sees through the camera.\n  * Several calorie counter apps recognize food through a camera. There are also similar apps to identify dog breeds, trees and trademarks.\n  * Tens of AI personal assistants and Chatbots, with different capabilities from cow disease diagnostics, to matchmaking and stock trading.\n  * Predictive keyboards, spellcheckers, and auto correction, for instance, SwiftKey.\n  * Games that learn from their users and games with evolving characters\/units.\n  * There are also news, mail, and other apps that adapt to users' habits and preferences using ML .\n  * Brain-computer interfaces and fitness wearables with the help of ML recognize different user conditions like concentration, sleep phases, and so on. At least some of their supplementary mobile apps do ML .\n  * Medical diagnostic and monitoring through mobile health applications. For example, OneRing monitors Parkinson's disease using the data from a wearable device.\n\nAll these applications are built upon the extensive data collection and processing. Even if the application itself is not collecting the data, the model it uses was trained on some usually big dataset. In the following section, we will discuss all things related to data in ML applications.\n\n# Getting to know your data\n\nFor many years, researchers argued about what is more important: data or algorithms. But now, it looks like the importance of data over algorithms is generally accepted among ML specialists. In most cases, we can assume that the one who has better data usually beats those with more advanced algorithms. Garbage in, garbage out\u2014this rule holds true in ML more than anywhere else. To succeed in this domain, one need not only have data, but also needs to know his data and know what to do with it.\n\nML datasets are usually composed from individual observations, called samples, cases, or data points. In the simplest case, each sample has several features.\n\n# Features\n\nWhen we are talking about features in the context of ML , what we mean is some characteristic property of the object or phenomenon we are investigating.\n\nOther names for the same concept you'll see in some publications are explanatory variable, independent variable, and predictor.\n\nFeatures are used to distinguish objects from each other and to measure the similarity between them.\n\nFor instance:\n\n  * If the objects of our interest are books, features could be a title, page count, author's name, a year of publication, genre, and so on\n  * If the objects of interest are images, features could be intensities of each pixel\n  * If the objects are blog posts, features could be language, length, or presence of some terms\n\nIt's useful to imagine your data as a spreadsheet table. In this case, each sample (data point) would be a row, and each feature would be a column. For example, Table 1.1 shows a tiny dataset of books consisting of four samples where each has eight features.\n\nTable 1.1: an example of a ML dataset (dummy books):\n\n**Title** | **Author's name** | **Pages** | **Year** | **Genre** | **Average readers review score** | **Publisher** | **In stock**\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\nLearn ML in 21 Days | Machine Learner | 354 | 2018 | Sci-Fi | 3.9 | Untitled United | False\n\n101 Tips to Survive an Asteroid Impact | Enrique Drills | 124 | 2021 | Self-help | 4.7 | Vacuum Books | True\n\nSleeping on the Keyboard | Jessica's Cat | 458 | 2014 | Non-fiction | 3.5 | JhGJgh Inc. | True\n\nQuantum Screwdriver: Heritage | Yessenia Purnima | 1550 | 2018 | Sci-Fi | 4.2 | Vacuum Books | True\n\n# Types of features\n\nIn the books example, you can see several types of features:\n\n  * **Categorical or unordered** : Title, author, genre, publisher. They are similar to enumeration without raw values in Swift, but with one difference: they have levels instead of cases. Important: you can't order them or say that one is bigger than another.\n  * **Binary** : The presence or absence of something, just true or false. In our case, the _In stock_ feature.\n  * **Real numbers** : Page count, year, average reader's review score. These can be represented as float or double.\n\nThere are others, but these are by far the most common.\n\nThe most common ML algorithms require the dataset to consist of a number of samples, where each sample is represented by a vector of real numbers (feature vector), and all samples have the same number of features. The simplest (but not the best) way of translating categorical features into real numbers is by replacing them with numerical codes (Table 1.2).\n\nTable 1.2: dummy books dataset after simple preprocessing:\n\n**Title** | **Author's name** | **Pages** | **Year** | **Genre** | **Average readers review score** | **Publisher** | **In stock**\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\n0.0 | 0.0 | 354.0 | 2018.0 | 0.0 | 3.9 | 0.0 | 0.0\n\n1.0 | 1.0 | 124.0 | 2021.0 | 1.0 | 4.7 | 1.0 | 1.0\n\n2.0 | 2.0 | 458.0 | 2014.0 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 1.0\n\n3.0 | 3.0 | 1550.0 | 2018.0 | 0.0 | 4.2 | 1.0 | 1.0\n\nThis is an example of how your dataset may look before you feed it into your ML algorithm. Later, we will discuss the nuts and bolts of data preprocessing for specific applications.\n\n# Choosing a good set of features\n\nFor ML purposes, it's necessary to choose a reasonable set of features, not too many and not too few:\n\n  * If you have too few features, this information may be not sufficient for your model to achieve the required quality. In this case, you want to construct new ones from existing features, or extract more features from the raw data.\n  * If you have too many features you want to select only the most informative and discriminative, because the more features you have the more complex your computations become.\n\nHow do you tell which features are most important? Sometimes common sense helps. For example, if you are building a model that recommends books for you, the genre and average rating of the book are perhaps more important features than the number of pages and year of publication. But what if your features are just pixels of a picture and you're building a face recognition system? For a black and white image of size 1024 x 768, we'd get 786,432 features. Which pixels are most important? In this case, you have to apply some algorithms to extract meaningful features. For example, in computer vision, edges, corners, and blobs are more informative features then raw pixels, so there are plenty of algorithms to extract them ( _Figure 1.1_ ). By passing your image through some filters, you can get rid of unimportant information and reduce the number of features significantly; from hundreds of thousands to hundreds, or even tens. The techniques that helps to select the most important subset of features is known as **feature selection** , while the **feature extraction** techniques result in the creation of new features:\n\nFigure 1.1: Edge detection is a common feature extraction technique in computer vision. You can still recognize the object on the right image, despite it containing significantly less information than the left one.\n\nFeature extraction, selection, and combining is a kind of the art which is known as **feature engineering**. This requires not only hacking and statistical skills but also domain knowledge. We will see some feature engineering techniques while working on practical applications in the following chapters. We also will step into the exciting world of **deep learning** : a technique that gives a computer the ability to extract high-level abstract features from the low-level features.\n\nThe number of features you have for each sample (or length of feature vector) is usually referred to as the **dimensionality** of the problem. Many problems are high-dimensional, with hundreds or even thousands of features. Even worse, some of those problems are sparse; that is, for each data point, most of the features are zero or missed. This is a common situation in recommender systems. For instance, imagine yourself building the dataset of movie ratings: the rows are movies and columns are users, and in each cell, you have a rating given by the user of the movie. The majority of the cells in the table will remain empty, as most of the users will never have watched most of the movies. The opposite situation is called **dense,** which is when most values are in place. Many problems in natural language processing and bioinformatics are high-dimensional, sparse, or both.\n\nFeature selection and extraction help to decrease the number of features without significant loss of information, so we also call them **dimensionality reduction algorithms**.\n\n# Getting the dataset\n\nDatasets can be obtained from different sources. The ones important for us are:\n\n  * Classical datasets such as Iris (botanical measurements of flowers composed by R. Fisher in 1936), MNIST (60,000 handwritten digits published in 1998), Titanic (personal information of Titanic passengers from Encyclopedia Titanica and other sources), and others. Many classical datasets are available as part of Python and R ML packages. They represent some classical types of ML tasks and are useful for demonstrations of algorithms. Meanwhile, there is no similar library for Swift. Implementation of such a library would be straightforward and is a low-hanging fruit for anyone who wants to get some stars on GitHub.\n  * Open and commercial dataset repositories. Many institutions release their data for everyone's needs under different licenses. You can use such data for training production models or while collecting your own dataset.\n\nSome public dataset repositories include:\n\n  *     * The UCI ML repository: https:\/\/archive.ics.uci.edu\/ml\/datasets.html\n\n    * Kaggle datasets: <https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/datasets>\n\n    * data.world, a social network for dataset sharing: https:\/\/data.world\n\nTo find more, visit the list of repositories at KDnuggets: <http:\/\/www.kdnuggets.com\/datasets\/index.html>. Alternatively, you'll find a list of datasets at Wikipedia: <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_datasets_for_machine_learning_research>.\n\n  * **Data collection (acquisition)** is required if no existing data can help you to solve your problem. This approach can be costly both in resources and time if you have to collect the data ad hoc; however, in many cases, you have data as a byproduct of some other process, and you can compose your dataset by extracting useful information from the data. For example, text corpuses can be composed by crawling Wikipedia or news sites. iOS automatically collects some useful data. HealthKit is a unified database of users' health measurements. Core Motion allows getting historical data on user's motion activities. The ResearchKit framework provides standardized routines to assess the user's health conditions. The CareKit framework standardizes the polls. Also, in some cases, useful information can be obtained from app log mining. \n    * In many cases, to collect data is not enough, as raw data doesn't suit many ML tasks well. So, the next step after data collection is data labeling. For example, you have collected dataset of images, so now you have to attach a label to each of them: to which category does this image belong? This can be done manually (often at expense), automatically (sometimes impossible), or semi-automatically. Manual labeling can be scaled by means of crowdsourcing platforms, like Amazon Mechanical Turk.\n  * Random **data generation** can be useful for a quick check of your ideas or in combination with the TDD approach. Also, sometimes adding some controlled randomness to your real data can improve the results of learning. This approach is known as **data augmentation**. For instance, this approach was taken to build an optical character recognition feature in the Google Translate mobile app. To train their model, they needed a lot of real-world photos with letters in different languages, which they didn't have. The engineering team bypassed this problem by creating a large dataset of letters with artificial reflections, smudges, and all kinds of corruptions on them. This improved the recognition quality significantly.\n  * **Real-time data sources** , such as inertial sensors, GPS, camera, microphone, elevation sensor, proximity sensor, touch screen, force touch, and Apple Watch sensors can be used to collect a standalone dataset or to train a model on the fly.\n\nReal-time data sources are especially important for the special class of ML models called **online ML** , which allows models to embed new data. A good example of such a situation is spam filtering, where the model should dynamically adapt to the new data. It's the opposite of batch learning, when the whole training dataset should be available from the very beginning.\n\n# Data preprocessing\n\nThe useful information in the data is usually referred to as a **signal**. On the other hand, the pieces of data that represent errors of different kinds and irrelevant data are known as **noise**. Errors can occur in the data during measurements, information transmission, or due to human errors. The goal of data cleansing procedures is to increase the signal\/noise ratio. During this stage, you will usually transform all data to one format, delete entries with missed values, and check suspicious outliers (they can be both noise and signal). It is widely believed among ML engineers, that the data preprocessing stage usually consumes 90% of the time allocated for the ML project. Then, algorithm tweaking consumes another 90% of time. This statement is a joke only partially (about 10% of it). In Chapter 13, _Best Practices_ , we are going to discuss common problems with the data and how to fix them.\n\n# Choosing a model\n\nLet's say you've defined a task and you have a dataset. What's next? Now you need to choose a model and train it on the dataset to perform that task.\n\nThe model is the central concept in ML . ML is basically a science of building models of the real world using data. The term _model_ refers to the phenomenon being modeled, while _map_ refers to the real territory. Depending on the situation, it can play a role of good approximation, an outdated description (in a swiftly changing environment), or even self-fulfilled prophecy (if the model affects the modeled object). \"\"All models are wrong, but some are useful\"\" is a well-known proverb in statistics.\n\n# Types of ML algorithms\n\nML models\/algorithms are often divided into three groups depending on the type of input:\n\n  * Supervised learning\n  * Unsupervised learning\n  * Reinforcement learning\n\nThis division is rather vague because some algorithms fall into two of these groups while others do not fall into any. There are also some middle states, such as semi-supervised learning.\n\nAlgorithms in these three groups can perform different tasks, and hence can be divided into subgroups according to the output of the model. _Table 1.3_ shows the most common ML tasks and their classification.\n\n# Supervised learning\n\nSupervised learning is arguably the most common and easy-to-understand type of ML . All supervised learning algorithms have one prerequisite in common: you should have a labeled dataset to train them. Here, a dataset is a set of samples, plus an expected output (label) for each sample. These labels play the role of supervisor during the training.\n\nIn different publications, you'll see different synonyms for labels, including dependent variable, predicted variable, and explained variable.\n\nThe goal of supervised learning is to get a function that for every given input returns a desired output. In the most simplified version, a supervised learning process consists of two phases: training and inference. During the first phase, you train the model using your labeled dataset. On the second phase, you use your model to do something useful, like make predictions. For instance, given a set of labeled images (dataset), a neural network (model) can be trained to predict (inference) correct labels for previously unseen images.\n\nUsing supervised learning, you will usually solve one of two problems: classification or regression. The difference is in the type of labels: categorical in the first case and real numbers in the second.\n\nTo classify means simply to assign one of the labels from a predefined set. Binary classification is a special kind of classification, when you have only two labels (positive and negative). An example of a classification task is to assign _spam_ \/ _not-spam_ labels to letters. We will train our first classifier in the next chapter, and throughout this book we will apply different classifiers for many real-world tasks.\n\nRegression is the task of assigning a real number to a given case. For example, predicting a salary given employee characteristics. We will discuss regression in Chapter 6, _Linear Regression and Gradient Descent_ and Chapter 7, _Linear Classifier and Logistic Regression_ , in more detail.\n\nIf the task is to sort objects in some order (output a permutation, speaking combinatorial), and labels are not really real numbers but rather an order of objects, ranking learning is at hand. You see ranking algorithms in action when you open the Siri suggestions menu on iOS. Each app placed in the list there is done so according to its relevance for you.\n\nIf labels are complicated objects, like graphs or trees, neither classification nor regression will be of use. Structured prediction algorithms are the type of algorithms to tackle those problems. Parsing English sentences into syntactic trees is an example of this kind of task.\n\nRanking and structured learning are beyond the scope of this book because their use cases are not as common as classification or regression, but at least now you know what to Google search for when you need to.\n\n# Unsupervised learning\n\nIn unsupervised learning, you don't have the labels for the cases in your dataset. Types of tasks to solve with unsupervised learning are: clustering, anomaly detection, dimensionality reduction, and association rule learning.\n\nSometimes you don't have the labels for your data points but you still want to group them in some meaningful way. You may or may not know the exact number of groups. This is the setting where clustering algorithms are used. The most obvious example is clustering users into some groups, like students, parents, gamers, and so on. The important detail here is that a group's meaning is not predefined from the very beginning; you name it only after you've finished grouping your samples. Clustering also can be useful to extract additional features from the data as a preliminary step for supervised learning. We will discuss clustering in Chapter 4, _K-Means Clustering_.\n\n**Outlier** \/ **anomaly detection** algorithms are used when the goal is to find some anomalous patterns in the data, weird data points. This can be especially useful for automated fraud or intrusion detection. Outlier analysis is also an important detail of data cleansing.\n\n**Dimensionality reduction** is a way to distill data to the most informative and, at the same time, compact representation of it. The goal is to reduce a number of features without losing important information. It can be used as a preprocessing step before supervised learning or data visualization.\n\n**Association rule learning** looks for repeated patterns of user behavior and peculiar co-occurrences of items. An example from retail practice: if a customer buys milk, isn't it more probable that he will also buy cereal? If yes, then perhaps it's better to move shelves, with the cereals closer to the shelf with the milk. Having rules like this, owners of businesses can make informed decisions and adapt their services to customers' needs. In the context of software development, this can empower anticipatory design\u2014when the app seemingly knows what you want to do next and provides suggestions accordingly. In Chapter 5, _Association Rule Learning_ we will implement a priori one of the most well-known rule learning algorithms:\n\nFigure 1.2: Datasets for three types of learning: supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised\n\nLabeling data manually is usually a costly thing, especially if special qualification is required. Semi-supervised learning can help when only some of your samples are labeled and others are not (see the following diagram). It is a hybrid of supervised and unsupervised learning. At first, it looks for unlabeled instances, similar to the labeled ones in an unsupervised manner, and includes them in the training dataset. After this, the algorithm can be trained on this expanded dataset in a typical supervised manner.\n\n# Reinforcement learning\n\nReinforcement learning is special in the sense that it doesn't require a dataset (see the following diagram). Instead, it involves an agent who takes actions, changing the state of the environment. After each step, it gets a reward or punishment, depending on the state and previous actions. The goal is to obtain a maximum cumulative reward. It can be used to teach the computer to play video games or drive a car. If you think about it, reinforcement learning is the way our pets train us humans: by rewarding our actions with tail-wagging, or punishing with scratched furniture.\n\nOne of the central topics in reinforcement learning is the exploration-exploitation dilemma\u2014how to find a good balance between exploring new options and using what is already known:\n\nFigure 1.3: Reinforcement learning process\n\nTable 1.3: ML tasks:\n\n**Task** | **Output type** | **Problem example** | **Algorithms**  \n---|---|---|---  \n**Supervised learning**  \nRegression | Real numbers | Predict house prices, given its characteristics | Linear regression and polynomial regression  \nClassification | Categorical | Spam\/not-spam classification | KNN, Na\u00efve Bayes, logistic regression, decision trees, random forest, and SVM  \nRanking | Natural number (ordinal variable) | Sort search results per relevance | Ordinal regression  \nStructured prediction | Structures: trees, graphs, and so on | Part-of-speech tagging | Recurrent neural networks, and conditional random field  \n**Unsupervised learning**  \nClustering | Groups of objects | Build a tree of living organisms | Hierarchical clustering, _k_ -means, and GMM  \nDimensionality reduction | Compact representation of given features | Find most important components in brain activity | PCA, t-SNE, and LDA  \nOutlier\/anomaly detection | Objects that are out of pattern | Fraud detection | Local outlier factor  \nAssociation rule learning | Set of rules | Smart house intrusion detection | A priori  \n**Reinforcement learning**  \nControl learning | Policy with maximum expected return | Learn to play a video game | Q-learning\n\n# Mathematical optimization \u2013 how learning works\n\nThe magic behind the learning process is delivered by the branch of mathematics called **mathematical optimization**. Sometimes it's also somewhat misleading being referred to as mathematical programming; the term coined long before widespread computer programming and is not directly related to it. Optimization is the science of choosing the best option among available alternatives; for example, choosing the best ML model.\n\nMathematically speaking, ML models are functions. You as an engineer chose the function family depending on your preferences: linear models, trees, neural networks, support vector machines, and so on. Learning is a process of picking from the family the function which serves your goals the best. This notion of the best model is often defined by another function, the **loss function**. It estimates a goodness of the model according to some criteria; for instance, how good the model fits the data, how complex it is, and so on. You can think of the loss function as a judge at a competition whose role is to assess the models. The objective of the learning is to find such a model that delivers a minimum to the loss function (minimize the loss), so the whole learning process is formalized in mathematical terms as a task of function minimization.\n\nFunction minimum can be found in two ways: analytically (calculus) or numerically (iterative methods). In ML , we often go for the numerical optimization because the loss functions get too complex for analytical solutions.\n\nA nice interactive tutorial on numerical optimization can be found here: <http:\/\/www.benfrederickson.com\/numerical-optimization\/>.\n\nFrom the programmer's point of view, learning is an iterative process of adjusting model parameters until the optimal solution is found. In practice, after a number of iterations, the algorithm stops improving because it is stuck in a local optimum or has reached the global optimum (see the following diagram). If the algorithm always finds the local or global optimum, we say that it _converges_. On the other hand, if you see your algorithm oscillating more and more and never approaching a useful result, it diverges:\n\nFigure 1.4: Learner represented as a ball on a complex surface: it's possible for him to fall in a local minimum and never reach the global one\n\n# Mobile versus server-side ML\n\nMost Swift developers are writing their applications for iOS. Those among us who develop their Swift applications for macOS or server-side are in a lucky position regarding ML . They can use whatever libraries and tools they want, reckoning on powerful hardware and compatibility with interpretable languages. Most of the ML libraries and frameworks are developed with server-side (or at least powerful desktops) in mind. In this book, we talk mostly about iOS applications, and therefore most practical examples consider limitations of handheld devices.\n\nBut if mobile devices have limited capabilities, we can do all ML on the server-side, can't we? Why would anyone bother to do ML locally on mobile devices at all? There are at least three issues with client-server architecture:\n\n  * The client app will be fully functional only when it has an internet connection. This may not be a big problem in developed countries but this can limit your target audience significantly. Just imagine your translator app being non-functional during travel abroad.\n  * Additional time delay introduced by sending data to the server and getting a response. Who enjoys watching progress bars or, even worse, infinite spinners while your data is being uploaded, processed, and downloaded back again? What if you need those results immediately and without consuming your internet traffic? Client-server architecture makes it almost impossible for such applications of ML as real-time video and audio processing.\n  * Privacy concerns: any data you've uploaded to the internet is not yours anymore. In the age of total surveillance, how do you know that those funny selfies you've uploaded today to the cloud will not be used tomorrow to train face recognition, or for target-tracking algorithms for some interesting purposes, like killer drones? Many users don't like their personal information to be uploaded to some servers and possibly shared\/sold\/leaked to some third parties. Apple also argues for reducing data collection as much as possible.\n\nSome of the applications can be OK (can't be great, though) with those limitations, but most developers want their apps to be responsive, secure, and useful all the time. This is something only on-device ML can deliver.\n\nFor me, the most important argument is that we _can_ do ML without server-side. Hardware capabilities are increasing with each year and ML on mobile devices is a hot research field. Modern mobile devices are already powerful enough for many ML algorithms. Smartphones are the most personal and arguably the most important devices nowadays just because they are everywhere. Coding ML is fun and cool, so why should server-side developers have all the fun?\n\nAdditional bonuses that you get when implement ML on the mobile side are the free computation power (you are not paying for the electricity) and the unique marketing points (our app puts the power of AI inside of your pocket).\n\n# Understanding mobile platform limitations\n\nNow, if I have persuaded you to use ML on mobile devices, you should be aware of some limitations:\n\n  * Computation complexity restriction. The more you load your CPU, the faster your battery will die. It's easy to transform your iPhone into a compact heater with the help of some ML algorithms.\n  * Some models take a long time to train. On the server, you can let your neural networks train for weeks; but on a mobile device, even minutes are too long. iOS applications can run and process some data in background mode if they have some good reasons, like playing music. Unfortunately, ML is not on the list of good reasons, so most probably, you will not be able to run it in background mode.\n  * Some models take a long time to run. You should think in terms of frames per second and good user experience.\n  * Memory restrictions. Some models grow during the training process, while others remain a fixed size.\n  * Model size restrictions. Some trained models can take hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes. But who wants to download your application from the App Store if it is so huge?\n  * Locally stored data is mostly restricted to different types of users' personal data, meaning that you will not be able to aggregate the data of different users and perform large-scale ML on mobile devices.\n  * Many open source ML libraries are built on top of interpretable languages, like Python, R, and MATLAB, or on top of the JVM, which makes them incompatible with iOS.\n\nThose are only the most obvious challenges. You'll see more as we start to develop real ML apps. But don't worry, there is a way to eat this elephant piece by piece. Efforts spent on it are paid off by a great user experience and users' love. Platform restrictions are not unique to mobile devices. Developers of autonomous devices (like drones), IoT developers, wearable device developers, and many others face the same problems and deal with them successfully.\n\nMany of these problems can be addressed by training the models on powerful hardware, and then deploying them to mobile devices. You can also choose a compromise with two models: a smaller one on a device for offline work, and a large one on the server. For offline work you can choose models with fast inference, then compress and optimize them for parallel execution; for instance, on GPU. We'll talk more about this in Chapter 12, _Optimizing Neural Networks for Mobile Devices_.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we learned about the main concepts in ML .\n\nWe discussed different definitions and subdomains of artificial intelligence, including ML . ML is the science and practice of extracting knowledge from data. We also explained the motivation behind ML . We had a brief overview of its application domains: digital signal processing, computer vision, and natural language processing.\n\nWe learned about the two core concepts in ML : the data, and the model. Your model is only as good as your data. A typical ML dataset consists of samples; each sample consists of features. There are many types of features and many techniques to extract useful information from the features. These techniques are known as feature engineering. For supervised learning tasks, dataset also includes label for each of the samples. We provided an overview of data collection and preprocessing.\n\nFinally, we learned about three types of common ML tasks: supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning. In the next chapter, we're going to build our first ML application.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. Good O. (July 29, 2015), _How Google Translate squeezes deep learning onto a phone_ , retrieved from Google Research Blog: <https:\/\/research.googleblog.com\/2015\/07\/how-google-translate-squeezes-deep.html>\n\n# Classification \u2013 Decision Tree Learning\n\nIn the previous chapter, we discussed different types of machine learning, including supervised classification tasks; in this chapter, we will build our first Swift application for this. We will discuss main components of machine learning development stack, and will also exercise in data generation, exploratory analysis, preprocessing, and models training and evaluation in Python. After this, we will transfer our model to Swift. We will also discuss a specific class of supervised learning algorithms\u2014decision tree learning and its extension: random forest.\n\nThe following topics are waiting for us in this chapter:\n\n  * Machine learning software development stack\n  * Python toolbox for machine learning: IPython, SciPy, scikit-learn\n  * Dataset generation and exploratory analysis\n  * Data preprocessing\n  * Decision tree learning and random forest\n  * Assessing the model performance using different performance metrics\n  * Underfitting and overfitting\n  * Exporting scikit-learn models to Core ML format\n  * Deploying trained models to iOS\n\n# Machine learning toolbox\n\nFor many years, the programming language of choice for machine learning was one of the following: Python, R, MATLAB, C++. This is not due to some specific language features, but because of the infrastructure around it: libraries and tools. Swift is a relatively young programming language, and anyone who chooses it as a primary tool for machine learning development should start from the very basic building blocks, and build his own tools and libraries. Recently, Apple became more open to third-party Python machine learning tools: Core ML can work with some of them.\n\nHere is a list of components that are needed for the successful machine learning research and development, and examples of popular libraries and tools of the type:\n\n  * **Linear algebra** : Machine learning developer needs data structures like vectors, matrices, and tensors with compact syntax and hardware-accelerated operations on them. Examples in other languages: NumPy, MATLAB, and R standard libraries, Torch.\n  * **Probability theory** : All kinds of random data generation: random numbers and collections of them; probability distributions; permutations; shuffling of collections, weighted sampling, and so on. Examples: NumPy, and R standard library.\n  * **Data input-output** : In machine learning, we are usually most interested in the parsing and saving data in the following formats: plain text, tabular files like CSV, databases like SQL, internet formats JSON, XML, HTML, and web scraping. There are also a lot of domain-specific formats.\n  * **Data wrangling** : Table-like data structures, data engineering tools: dataset cleaning, querying, splitting, merging, shuffling, and so on. Pandas, dplyr.\n  * **Data analysis\/statistic** : Descriptive statistic, hypotheses testing and all kinds of statistical stuff. R standard library, and a lot of CRAN packages.\n  * **Visualization** : Statistical data visualization (not pie charts): graph visualization, histograms, mosaic plots, heat maps, dendrograms, 3D-surfaces, spatial and multidimensional data visualization, interactive visualization, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Bokeh, ggplot2, ggmap, Graphviz, D3.js.\n  * **Symbolic computations** : Automatic differentiation: SymPy, Theano, Autograd.\n  * **Machine learning packages** : Machine learning algorithms and solvers. Scikit-learn, Keras, XGBoost, E1071, and caret.\n  * **Interactive prototyping environment** : Jupyter, R studio, MATLAB, and iTorch.\n\nThis is not referring to domain-specific tools, like NLP, or computer vision libraries.\n\nAs for summer 2017, I'm not aware of Swift alternatives of comparable quality and functionality to any of the mentioned tools. Also, none of these popular libraries are directly compatible with Swift, meaning you can't call Keras from your iOS Swift code. All this means that Swift cannot be the primary tool for machine learning research and development. Killing Python is not on Swift's agenda so far; however, to a different degree, there are some compatible libraries and tools, which using a wide scope of machine learning problems can be addressed in your Swift applications. In the following chapters, we're building our own tools, or introducing third-party tools as we need them. We are talking about machine learning libraries specifically in Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_. Still, for anyone who wants to work with machine learning, it's more than advisable to know well at least one from this list: Python, R, and MATLAB.\n\n# Prototyping the first machine learning app\n\nUsually, before implementing a machine learning application for mobile devices, you want to do a quick and dirty prototype just to check your ideas. This allows to save a lot of time when you realize that the model you initially thought works perfectly for your problem, in reality doesn't. The quickest way to do a prototype is to use Python or R tools listed in the previous section.\n\nPython is a general-purpose programming language with rich infrastructure and vibrant community. Its syntax is similar in many ways to Swift's one. Throughout this book, we'll use it for prototyping, and Swift for actual development.\n\nWhen you have tested your ideas and a model prototype works as you expect, you can start thinking about how to port it to an iOS. You have several options here:\n\nInference-only options:\n\n  * Check the Core ML, and a list of the Python libraries it supports. Maybe, you will be able to export your model in Core ML format, and run it on a device.\n  * Write the custom converter for your model if it is not supported by the Core ML.\n\nTraining and inference options:\n\n  * Write the algorithms from scratch. In this book, we are implementing a bunch of machine learning algorithms, so you'll see that it's not that hard. Still, this is the most time-consuming option, and the model's results may differ significantly.\n  * Check available iOS-compatible libraries (see chapter on Chapter 11, _Machine Learning Libraries_ ).\n\n# Tools\n\nHere is a list of tools that we're using in the following tutorial:\n\n  * **Homebrew** : This is a package manager for macOS. Official site: https:\/\/brew.sh\/.\n  * **Python** : This is a general-purpose programming language popular for machine learning and data science. Official site: https:\/\/www.python.org\/.\n  * pip: This is a Python package manager. Unlike CocoaPods, it installs libraries globally, and not in a per-project manner.\n  * **Virtualenv** : This is a tool for creating separate Python environments with different Python versions and library sets.\n  * **IPython** : This is an interactive Python REPL for scientific computations.\n  * **Jupyter** : This is a web-GUI for IPython. Official site: http:\/\/jupyter.org\/.\n  * **Graphviz** : This is an open source tool for graphs visualization. We're using it in this chapter to draw models' inner structures. Official site: http:\/\/www.graphviz.org\/.\n\nAnd, the Python packages are as follows:\n\n  * `scipy`: This is a Python-based ecosystem of open source software for mathematics, science, and engineering. Official site: https:\/\/www.scipy.org\/.\n  * `numpy`: This is a numerical library.\n  * `matplotlib`: This is a popular plotting library.\n  * `pydotplus`: This is a library for tree visualization, a counterpart of Graphviz.\n  * `scikit-learn`: This is a popular machine learning library. Official site: http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/.\n  * `coremltools`: is an Apple package for saving scikit-learn models into Core ML format. Official site: <https:\/\/pypi.python.org\/pypi\/coremltools>.\n\n# Setting up a machine learning environment\n\nThere is a significant segmentation in the Python community due to an issue of back-compatibility between Python 2 and Python 3\u2014many active projects still use Python 2.7 (released in 2010), while many new tools are not backward-compatible with it, because they are based on the Python 3.x. Some tools have both versions. macOS is shipped with legacy Python 2.7.10 (released in 2015) pre-installed, while an up-to-date version at the moment of writing this book is Python 3.6.1. We will use the system's default Python throughout this book, if the opposite is not mentioned explicitly. The primary reason for this is that Core ML tools are compatible only with Python 2.7.x.\n\nThe following steps assume that you don't have other Python versions installed (like Anaconda, or through a Homebrew), except the system's default one. If you have other Python distributions installed, you likely know how to install required packages and create virtual environments.\n\nFirst, in the Terminal, go to the user's root:\n\n    **> cd ~**\n\nOn a Mac system, the user you use to log in by default has limited privileges by design for enhanced security measures. Using the `sudo` command allows you to perform tasks with additional privileges on a case-by-case basis. This process aids in simplifying the security features by avoiding accidentals actions.\n\npip is a Python package manager. Unlike the up-to-date version of Python, the system's one doesn't have it by default. Instead, it should have the old legacy package manager `easy_install`. Don't use it for anything except for pip installation; it will likely mess up your system. It requires sudo privileges to install things:\n\n    **> sudo easy_install pip**\n\nIf you have some version of pip preinstalled, you can upgrade it to the latest one with the following command:\n\n    **> pip install --upgrade pip**\n\nMany third-party programs are using the system's Python version, so to not interfere with them, it's safer to create the separate Python environment and install all dependencies that we need into it. The Virtualenv is a tool for isolated Python environment creation. It is also missing from the macOS Python, while present by default in all recent distributions starting with Python 3.3 and later. After successful installation of pip, we can use it to install `virtualenv`:\n\n    **> pip install -U virtualenv**\n\nThe `-U` option tells pip to install the package for the current user only.\n\nNever run `pip` with the `sudo`. Whenever you need the `sudo` to run it, you know that you're doing something wrong.\n\nTo create a virtual environment for the book, run:\n\n    **> cd ~**\n    **> virtualenv swift-ml-book**\n\nThis will create the `swift-ml-book` folder, and a separate copy of Python, pip, and other tools in it. To switch to this environment (activate the environment), run the following command:\n\n    **> source swift-ml-book\/bin\/activate**\n\nNow `swift-ml-book` prepends all your commands in the Terminal, so you know on which environment you are now. When you want to deactivate the Python 3 environment, run:\n\n    **> deactivate**\n\nFinally, we can install libraries; be sure that you've activated the environment:\n\n    **> pip install -U numpy scipy matplotlib ipython jupyter scikit-learn pydotplus coremltools**\n\nYou should see a long output to the command line; downloading and installing all dependencies may take a while. Eventually, you should see the message `Successfully installed ...`, and a list of installed packages. It will be much longer than the one that we've provided pip with, because it includes a bunch of transient dependencies.\n\nMost importantly, now you should have two new commands in your Terminal: `ipython`, and `jupyter notebook`. The first one runs interactive IPython REPL, and the second one runs a web-based GUI for IPython, where you can create notebooks\u2014interactive documents, similar to Swift playgrounds.\n\nAdditionally, we should install Graphviz\u2014an open source tool for graphs visualization. It can be downloaded from the official site, or installed using Homebrew:\n\n    **> brew install graphviz**\n\nIf you don't have Homebrew, install it. Installation instructions should look like the following, but you'd better check the official site (https:\/\/brew.sh\/) for the exact command:\n\n    **> ruby -e \"$(curl -fsSL https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/Homebrew\/install\/master\/install)\"**\n\n# IPython notebook crash course\n\nFeel free to skip this section if you're familiar with the Python and Jupyter notebooks.\n\nIPython notebook and its web-based GUI Jupyter are standard tools for data-driven machine learning development. Jupyter is also a handy tool for learning Python and its libraries. You can combine pieces of code with comments in markdown format. You can also execute pieces of code in place, chaining them one after another, and immediately seeing the results of computations. It also allows to embed interactive charts, tables, videos, and other multimedia objects inside the notebook. We will use Jupyter notebooks for writing quick prototypes of our models.\n\nTo create a new notebook, run in the Terminal:\n\n    **> jupyter notebook**\n\nYou will see output similar to this:\n\n    **[I 10:51:23.269 NotebookApp] Serving notebooks from local directory: ...**\n    **[I 10:51:23.269 NotebookApp] 0 active kernels**\n    **[I 10:51:23.270 NotebookApp] The Jupyter Notebook is running at: http:\/\/localhost:8888\/?token=3c073db5636e366fd750e661cc597652025fdbf41162c125**\n    **[I 10:51:23.270 NotebookApp] Use Control-C to stop this server and shut down all kernels (twice to skip confirmation).**\n\nNote those long URLs in the output: `http:\/\/localhost:8888\/token=3c073db5636e366fd750e661cc597652025fdbf41162c125`.\n\nCopy and paste this address to your browser to open Jupyter.\n\nWith Python 3, Jupyter automatically opens a new tab in your default browser's window, with the address `http:\/\/localhost:8888\/tree`.\n\nPress the New button, and choose Python 2 in a drop-down menu. This will open a new notebook in a new browser tab.\n\nTo stop IPython, you'll need to press _Ctrl_ \\+ _C_ in the Terminal, and enter `y` when prompted. Don't forget to save your changes in the notebook before quitting.\n\nLet's try something just to get the idea on how it works. In the top cell of the notebook, print `import this` and press _Shift_ \\+ _Enter_. You'll see `The Zen of Python`\u2014a short list of rules every Python programmer should conform to. We will also try to conform to them. The extended version of Python-style guidelines is known as **PEP 8** , and can be found here: python.org\/dev\/peps\/pep-0008\/.\n\nType into the new cell:\n\n    a = 2**32 \n    b = 64**(1\/2.) \n    a = a+b \n    a\n\nThen, press _Shift_ + _Enter_. This calculates 232 \\+ \u221a64, and stores the results into variable `a`. Unfamiliar operator `**` is a power, `a` and `b` are variables (no `let` or `var`). Typecasting between integer `1` and float `2` happens implicitly. Python is weak-typed, so you can assign float value of variable `b` to an integer variable `a`. Jupyter outputs the value of a last line in the cell. Also, note that variables `a` and `b` are available now in the next cells.\n\nIf you don't know Python, no worries\u2014it's a relatively simple language. For a crash course on Python, please visit: <https:\/\/learnxinyminutes.com\/docs\/python\/>.\n\nTo see how to add and format comments, place your cursor in the new cell, choose from the drop-down menu in the Instruments panel cell, type `Markdown`, and put some markdown snippet into the cell; for example, the following snippet is a simple text with MathJax-formatted formula and a picture:\n\n    # This is a sample text: \n    $$Formula = {Numerator over Denominator}$$ \n    ![]( https:\/\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/conditional_risk.png) \n    > Sample text to demonstrate the few markdown feature available to easily create documents. [Packt Hyperlink](http:\/\/packtpub.com\/)\n\nYou'll get a nicely formatted MathJax formula, an image, and some formatted text. If you want to know more about markdown format, just Google for a markdown tutorial, or a cheat sheet.\n\nYou can also execute bash commands from the notebook; just prepend an exclamation mark to them:\n\n    In []: \n    ! ls\n\n    Out[]: \n    The content of your work folder goes here... \n\n# Time to practice\n\nIn the following sections, we'll dive into machine learning practice, to get a feeling of what it looks like. Just like in a theater play, in machine learning you have a list of characters and a list of acts.\n\nTwo main characters are:\n\n  * Dataset\n  * Model\n\nThree main acts are:\n\n  * Dataset preparation\n  * Model training\n  * Model evaluation\n\nWe'll go through all these acts, and by the end of the chapter we'll have our first trained model. First, we need to define a problem, and then we can start coding a prototype in Python. Our destination point is a working model in Swift. Don't take the problem itself too seriously, though, because as the first exercise, we're going to solve a fictional problem.\n\n# Machine learning for extra-terrestrial life explorers\n\nSwift is undoubtedly the programming language of the future. In the nearest years, we're expecting to see Swift being employed to program-intelligent scout robots that will explore alien planets and life forms on them. These robots should be able to recognize and classify aliens they will encounter. Let's build a model to distinguish between two alien species using their characteristic features.\n\nThe biosphere of the distant planet consists mainly of two species: night predators rabbosauruses, and peaceful, herbivorous platyhogs (see the following diagram). Roboscouts are equipped with sensors to measure only three features of each individual: length (in meters), color, and fluffiness.\n\nFigure 2.1: Objects of interest in our first machine learning task. Picture by Mykola Sosnovshchenko.\n\nThe full code of the Python part of this chapter can be found here: `ML_Intro.ipynb`.\n\n# Loading the dataset\n\nCreate and open a new IPython notebook. In the chapter's supplementary materials, you can see the file `extraterrestrials.csv`. Copy it to the same folder where you created your notebook. In the first cell of your notebook, execute the magical command:\n\n    In []: \n    %matplotlib inline\n\nThis is needed to see inline plots right in the notebook in the future.\n\nThe library we are using for datasets loading and manipulation is `pandas`. Let's import it, and load the `.csv` file:\n\n    In []: \n    import pandas as pd \n    df = pd.read_csv('extraterrestrials.csv', sep='t', encoding='utf-8', index_col=0)\n\nObject `df` is a data frame. This is a table-like data structured for efficient manipulations over the different data types. To see what's inside, execute:\n\n    In []: \n    df.head() \n    Out[]:  | **Length** | **Color** | **Fluffy** | **Label**\n\n---|---|---|---|---\n\n**0** | 27.545139 | Pink gold | True | Rabbosaurus\n\n**1** | 12.147357 | Pink gold | False | Platyhog\n\n**2** | 23.454173 | Light black | True | Rabbosaurus\n\n**3** | 29.956698 | Pink gold | True | Rabbosaurus\n\n**4** | 34.884065 | Light black | True | Rabbosaurus\n\nThis prints the first five rows of the table. The first three columns (length, color, and fluffy) are features, and the last one is the class label.\n\nHow many samples do we have in total? Run this code to find out:\n\n    In []: \n    len(df) \n    Out[]: \n    1000\n\nLooks like the most samples in the beginning are rabbosauruses. Let's fetch five samples at random to see if it holds true in other parts of the dataset:\n\n    In []: \n    df.sample(5) \n    Out[]:  | **Length** | **Color** | **Fluffy** | **Label**\n\n---|---|---|---|---\n\n**565** | 17.776481 | Purple polka dot | False | Platyhog\n\n**491** | 19.475358 | Light black | True | Rabbosaurus\n\n**230** | 15.453365 | Purple polka dot | False | Platyhog\n\n**511** | 17.408234 | Purple polka dot | True | Platyhog\n\n**875** | 24.105315 | Light black | True | Rabbosaurus\n\nWell, this isn't helpful, as it would be too tedious to analyze the table content in this way. We need some more advanced tools to perform descriptive statistics computations and data visualization.\n\n# Exploratory data analysis\n\nFirst, we want to see how many individuals of each class we have. This is important, because if the class distribution is very imbalanced (like 1 to 100, for example), we will have problems training our classification models. You can get data frame columns via the dot notation. For example, `df.label` will return you the label column as a new data frame. The data frame class has all kinds of useful methods for calculating the summary statistics. The `value_counts()` method returns the counts of each element type in the data frame:\n\n    In []: \n    df.label.value_counts() \n    Out[]: \n    platyhog       520 \n    rabbosaurus    480 \n    Name: label, dtype: int64\n\nThe class distribution looks okay for our purposes. Now let's explore the features.\n\nWe need to group our data by classes, and calculate feature statistics separately to see the difference between the creature classes. This can be done using the `groupby()` method. It takes the label of the column by which you want to group your data:\n\n    In []: \n    grouped = df.groupby('label')\n\nThe grouped data frame has all the same methods and column labels as the original data frame. Let's see the descriptive statistics of a length feature:\n\n    In []: \n    grouped.length.describe() \n    Out[]:\n\n**Label** | **Count** | **Mean** | **Std.** | **Min.** | **25%** | **50%** | **75%** | **Max.**\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\n**Platyhog** | 520.0 | 19.894876 | 4.653044 | 4.164723 | 16.646311 | 20.168655 | 22.850191 | 32.779472\n\n**Rabbosaurus** | 480.0 | 29.984387 | 5.072308 | 16.027639 | 26.721621 | 29.956092 | 33.826660 | 47.857896\n\nWhat can we learn from this table? Platyhogs have a length with the mean of about 20 meters, and standard deviation of about 5. Rabbosauruses on average are 30 meters long, with a standard deviation of 5. The smallest platyhog is about 4 meters long, and the largest rabbosaurus is about 48 meters long. That's a lot, but less than the biggest Earth life forms (see Amphicoelias fragillimus, for example).\n\nColor distribution can be viewed using the familiar `value_counts()` method:\n\n    In []: \n    grouped.color.value_counts() \n    Out[]: \n    label        color            \n    platyhog     light black         195 \n                 purple polka-dot    174 \n                 pink gold           151 \n    rabbosaurus  light black         168 \n                 pink gold           156 \n                 space gray          156 \n    Name: color, dtype: int64\n\nWe can represent this in a more appealing form, using `unstack()` and `plot()` methods:\n\n    In []: \n    plot = grouped.color.value_counts().unstack().plot(kind='barh', stacked=True, figsize=[16,6], colormap='autumn') \n    Out[]:\n\n** **\n\nFigure 2.2: Color distribution\n\nLooks like purple polka dot is a strong predictor of a `platyhog` class. But if we see a space-gray individual, we can be sure we should run quickly.\n\nIn a similar manner, fluffiness distribution can be visualized using:\n\n    In []: \n    plot = grouped.fluffy.value_counts().unstack().plot(kind='barh', stacked=True, figsize=[16,6], colormap='winter') \n    Out[]:\n\nFigure 2.3: Fluffiness distribution\n\nRabbosauruses go in three colors: light black, pink gold, and space gray. 90% of them are fluffy (the remaining 10% are probably old and bald). Platyhogs, on the other hand, can be light black, pink gold, or purple polka dot. 30% of them are fluffy (mutants, maybe?).\n\nFor more complex data visualization, we need the `matplotlib` plotting library:\n\n    In []: \n    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n\nDrawing the histogram of length distribution:\n\n    In []: \n    plt.figure() \n    plt.hist(df[df.label == 'rabbosaurus'].length, bins=15, normed=True) \n    plt.hist(df[df.label == 'platyhog'].length, bins=15, normed=True) \n    plt.title(\"Length Distribution Histogram\") \n    plt.xlabel(\"Length\") \n    plt.ylabel(\"Frequency\") \n    fig = plt.gcf() \n    plt.show() \n    Out[]:\n\nFigure 2.4: Length distribution\n\nIn general, one can say that the platyhogs are smaller, but there is significant range of overlap approximately between 20 and 30 meters, where the length alone is not enough to discriminate between two classes.\n\n# Data preprocessing\n\nIn the following sections we will take a look at the different data processing techniques.\n\n# Converting categorical variables\n\nAs you already have noticed, a data frame can contain columns with the data of different types. To see which type has each column, we can check the `dtypes` attribute of the data frame. You can think about Python attributes as being similar to Swift properties:\n\n    In []: \n    df.dtypes \n    Out[]: \n    length    float64 \n    color      object \n    fluffy       bool \n    label      object \n    dtype: object\n\nWhile `length` and `fluffy` columns contain the expected datatypes, the types of `color` and `label` are less transparent. What are those objects? This means those columns can contain any type of the object. At the moment, we have strings in them, but what we really want them to be are categorical variables. In case you don't remember from the previous chapter, categorical variables are like Swift enums. Fortunately for us, data frame has handy methods for converting columns from one type to another:\n\n    In []: \n    df.color = df.color.astype('category') \n    df.label = df.label.astype('category')\n\nThat's it. Let's check:\n\n    In []: \n    df.dtypes \n    Out []: \n    length     float64 \n    color     category \n    fluffy        bool \n    label     category \n    dtype: object\n\n`color` and `label` are categories now. To see all colors in those categories, execute:\n\n    In []: \n    colors = df.color.cat.categories.get_values().astype('string') \n    colors \n    Out[]: \n    array(['light black', 'pink gold', 'purple polka-dot', 'space gray'], dtype='|S16')\n\nAs expected, we have four colors. `'|S16'` stands for strings of 16 characters in length.\n\n# Separating features from labels\n\nLet's separate our features from the labels, as we will feed them into the model separately:\n\n    In []: \n    features = df.loc[:,:'fluffy'] \n    labels = df.label\n\nThis horrible construction `df.loc[:,:'fluffy']` tells the data frame that we want all the rows (the first column), and the columns starting from the first, finishing with `'fluffy'`.\n\n# One-hot encoding\n\nMost of the machine learning algorithms can't work with the categorical variables, so usually we want to convert them to the one-hot vectors (statisticians prefer to call them **dummy variables** ). Let's convert first, and then I will explain what this is:\n\n    In []: \n    features = pd.get_dummies(features, columns = ['color']) \n    features.head() \n    Out[]:  | `length` | `fluffy` | `color_light black` | `color_pink gold` | `color_purple polka-dot` | `color_space gray`\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\n0 | 27.545139 | True | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0\n\n1 | 12.147357 | False | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0\n\n2 | 23.454173 | True | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0\n\n3 | 29.956698 | True | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0\n\n4 | 34.884065 | True | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0\n\nSo now, instead of one column, `color`, we have four columns: `color_light black`, `color_pink gold`, `color_purple polka dot`, and `color_space gray`. The color of each sample is encoded as 1 in the corresponding column. Why do we need this if we could simply replace colors with the numbers from 1 to 4? Well, this is the problem: why to prefer 1 to 4 over the 4 to 1, or powers of 2, or prime numbers? These colors on their own don't carry any quantitative information associated to them. They can't be sorted from the largest to the smallest. If we introduce this information artificially, the machine learning algorithm may attempt to utilize that meaningless information, and we will end up with the classifier that sees regularities where there are none.\n\n# Splitting the data\n\nFinally, we want to split our data into training and test sets. We will train our classifier only on the training set, so it will never see the test set until we want to evaluate its performance. This is a very important step, because as we will see in the future, the quality of predictions on the test set can differ dramatically from the quality measured on the training set. Data splitting is an operation specific to machine learning tasks, so we will import scikit-learn (a machine learning package) and use some functions from it:\n\n    In []: \n    from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split \n    X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(features, labels, test_size=0.3, random_state=42) \n    X_train.shape, y_train.shape, X_test.shape, y_test.shape \n    Out[]: \n     ((700, 6), (700,), (300, 6), (300,))\n\nNow we have 700 training samples with 6 features each, and 300 test samples with the same number of features.\n\n# Decision trees everywhere\n\nThe algorithm that we're going to use for our first machine learning exercise is called a **decision tree classifier**. A decision tree is a set of rules that describe the process of decision making (see _figure 2.5_ for example).\n\nDecision trees are widely used outside the machine learning in different domains; for example, in business analysis. The popularity of decision trees is understandable: they are easy to interpret, and nice to visualize. For many years, they were built manually using the domain expert knowledge. Fortunately, now we have machine learning algorithms that can easily turn almost any labeled dataset into a decision tree.\n\n# Training the decision tree classifier\n\nLet's learn how to train the decision tree classifier as shown in the following code snippet:\n\n    In []: \n    from sklearn import tree \n    tree_model = tree.DecisionTreeClassifier(criterion='entropy', random_state=42) \n    tree_model = tree_model.fit(X_train, y_train) \n    tree_model \n    Out[]: \n    DecisionTreeClassifier(class_weight=None,  \n                criterion='entropy', max_depth=None, \n                max_features=None, max_leaf_nodes=None, \n                min_impurity_split=1e-07, min_samples_leaf=1, \n                min_samples_split=2, min_weight_fraction_leaf=0.0, \n                presort=False, random_state=42, splitter='best')\n\nThe most interesting for us are the class attributes of `DecisionTreeClassifier`:\n\n  * `criterion`: The way to estimate the best partition (see the _How decision tree learning works_ section).\n  * `max_depth`: Maximum tree depth.\n  * `max_features`: The maximum number of attributes to account in one split.\n  * `min_samples_leaf`: The minimum number of objects in the leaf; for example, if it is equal to `3`, then the tree will generate only those classification rules that are true for at least three objects.\n\nThese attributes are known as **hyperparameters**. They are different from model parameters: the former is something that users can tweak, and the latter is something that machine learning algorithm learns. In a decision tree, parameters are specific rules in its nodes. The tree hyperparameters must be adjusted depending on the input data, and this is usually done using cross-validation (stay tuned).\n\nDecision tree classifier documentation: http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/stable\/modules\/tree.html.\n\nThe properties of the model, which are not adjusted (learned) by the model itself, but are available for the user's adjustments, are known as hyperparameters. In the case of the decision tree model, these hyperparameters are `class_weight`, `criterion`, `max_depth`, `max_features`, and so on. They are like knobs you can turn to adjust the model to your specific needs.\n\n# Tree visualization\n\nLet us take a look at the code to visualize a tree as follows:\n\n    In []: \n    labels = df.label.astype('category').cat.categories \n    labels = list(labels) \n    labels \n    Out[]: \n    [u'platyhog', u'rabbosaurus']\n\nDefine a variable to store all the names for the features:\n\n    In []: \n    feature_names = map(lambda x: x.encode('utf-8'), features.columns.get_values()) \n    feature_names \n    Out[]: \n    ['length', \n     'fluffy', \n     'color_light black', \n     'color_pink gold', \n     'color_purple polka-dot', \n     'color_space gray']\n\nThen, create the `graph` object using the `export_graphviz` function:\n\n    In []: \n    import pydotplus  \n    dot_data = tree.export_graphviz(tree_model, out_file=None,  \n                                    feature_names=feature_names,   \n                                     class_names=labels,   \n                                     filled=True, rounded=True,   \n                                     special_characters=True) \n    dot_data \n    Out[]: \n    u'digraph Tree {nnode [shape=box, style=\"filled, rounded\", color=\"black\", fontname=helvetica] ;nedge [fontname=helvetica] ;n0 [label=<length &le; 26.6917<br\/>entropy = 0.9971<br\/>samples = 700<br\/>value = [372, ... \n    In []: \n    graph = pydotplus.graph_from_dot_data(dot_data.encode('utf-8')) \n    graph.write_png('tree1.png') \n    Out[]: \n    True\n\nPut a markdown to the next cell to see the newly-created file as follows:\n\n    ![](tree1.png)\n\nFigure 2.5: Decision tree structure and a close-up of its fragment\n\nThe preceding diagram shows what our decision tree looks like. During the training, it grows upside-down. Data (features) travels through it from its root (top) to the leaves (bottom). To predict the label for a sample from our dataset using this classifier, we should start from the root, and move until we reach the leaf. In each node, one feature is compared to some value; for example, in the root node, the tree checks if the length is < 26.0261. If the condition is met, we move along the left branch; if not, along the right.\n\nLet's look closer at a part of the tree. In addition to the condition in each node, we have some useful information:\n\n  * Entropy value\n  * Number of samples in the training set which supports this node\n  * How many samples support each outcome\n  * The most likely outcome at this stage\n\n# Making predictions\n\nWe use the `predict` function to get outcome labels for two samples. The first one is light-black, fluffy creature, 24 meters long. The second one is purple polka dot, non-fluffy, and 34 meters long. If you already don't remember the meaning of each feature, consult the `feature_names` variable:\n\n    In []: \n    samples = [[24,1,0,1,0,0], [34,0,0,0,1,0]] \n    tree_model.predict(samples) \n    Out[]: \n    array([u'platyhog', u'rabbosaurus'], dtype=object)\n\nOur model predicted `platyhog` for the first sample, and `rabbosaurus` for the second one. A decision tree can also provide probabilistic output (how sure it is about the prediction):\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model.predict_proba(samples) \n    Out[]: \n    array([[ 1.,  0.], \n           [ 0.,  1.]])\n\nThe array contains two nested arrays, one for every prediction. Elements in the nested arrays are probabilities of the sample belonging to the corresponding class. This means that our model is 100% sure that the first sample belongs to the first class, and 100% sure that the second sample belongs to the second class.\n\nBut how sure can we be about these predictions? We have a whole set of different tools to evaluate the model's accuracy, and the simplest one is the built-in scoring functions.\n\n# Evaluating accuracy\n\nScore function calculates accuracy of the model using the data. Let's calculate the accuracy of our model on the training set:\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model.score(X_train, y_train) \n    Out[]: \n    1.0\n\nWow, looks like our model is 100% accurate. Isn't it a great result? Let's not hurry and check our model on held-out data. Evaluation on the test set is the golden standard of success in machine learning:\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model.score(X_test, y_test) \n    Out[]: \n    0.87666666666666671\n\nWorse now. What's just happened? Here, the first time we were faced with the problem of overfitting, when the model is trying to fit itself to every quirk in the data. Our model adjusted itself to the training data so much, that on the previously unseen data, it lacks the ability to generalize. As any real-world data contains noise and signal, we want our models to fit to the signal and to ignore the noise component. Overfitting is the most common problem in machine learning. It's common when datasets are too small, or models are too flexible. The opposite situation is called underfitting\u2014when the model is not able to fit the complex data well enough:\n\nFigure 2.6: Underfitting (right column) versus good fit (central column) versus overfitting (right column). Top row shows classification problem, bottom row shows regression problem.\n\nAn overfitting problem is familiar to anyone who looked at some item at the online store, and then was presented with targeted advertisement of the same item everywhere on the internet. This item most likely is not relevant anymore, but the machine learning algorithm already overfitted to the limited dataset, and now you have trinket rabbits (or whatever you've looked at on the e-store) on every page you open.\n\nIn any case, we must fight overfitting somehow. So, what can we do? The simplest solution is to make the model simpler and less flexible (or, speaking machine learning, to reduce model capacity).\n\n# Tuning hyperparameters\n\nThe simplest way to simplify the decision tree is to limit its depth. How deep is it now? You can see 20 splits, or 21 layers, in _Figure 2.5_. At the same time, we have only three features. There are six of them actually, if we are taking into account one-hot encoded categorical color. Let's limit the maximum depth of the tree aggressively to be comparable with the number of features. `tree_model` object has a `max_depth` property, and so we're setting it to be less than the number of features:\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model.max_depth = 4\n\nAfter these manipulations, we can retrain our model and reevaluate its accuracy:\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model = tree_model.fit(X_train, y_train) \n    tree_model.score(X_train, y_train) \n    Out[]: \n    0.90571428571428569\n\nNote that accuracy on training is now set less by about 6%. How about test set?\n\n    In []: \n    tree_model.score(X_test, y_test) \n    Out[]: \n    0.92000000000000004\n\nAccuracy on previously unseen data is now higher, by about 4%. This doesn't look like a great achievement, until you realize that it's an additional 40 correctly classified creatures from our initial set of 1,000. In modern machine learning contests, the final difference between 1st and 100th place can easily be about 1%.\n\nLet's draw a tree structure after pruning. Code for this visualization is the same as before:\n\nFigure 2.7: Tree structure after limiting its depth\n\n# Understanding model capacity trade-offs\n\nLet's train trees with different depths: starting from 1 split, and to maximal 23 splits:\n\n    In []: \n    train_losses = [] \n    test_losses = [] \n    for depth in xrange(1, 23): \n        tree_model.max_depth = depth \n        tree_model = tree_model.fit(X_train, y_train) \n        train_losses.append(1 - tree_model.score(X_train, y_train)) \n        test_losses.append(1 - tree_model.score(X_test, y_test)) \n    figure = plt.figure()  \n    plt.plot(train_losses, label=\"training loss\", linestyle='--') \n    plt.plot(test_losses, label=\"test loss\") \n    plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(0., 1.02, 1., .102), loc=3, ncol=2, mode=\"expand\", borderaxespad=0.) \n    Out[]:\n\nFigure 2.8: Training loss versus test loss, depending on the maximum tree depth\n\nOn the _x_ axis, we've plotted the tree depth, and on the _y_ axis, we've plotted the model's error. An interesting phenomenon that we're observing here is well familiar to any machine learning practitioner: as the model gets more complex, it gets more prone to overfitting. At first, as the model's capacity grows, both training and test loss (error) decreases, but then something strange happens: while error on the training set continues to go down, test error starts growing. This means that the model fits itself to the training examples so well, that it is not able to generalize well on unseen data anymore. That's why it's so important to have a held-out dataset, and perform your model validation on it. From the above plot, we can see that our more-or-less random choice of `max_depth=4` was lucky: test error at this point became even less than training error.\n\n# How decision tree learning works\n\nDecision tree learning is a supervised, non-parametric algorithm used for classification and regression.\n\n# Building a tree automatically from data\n\nThe _Twenty Questions_ game is a traditional game where one of the players is the answerer who chooses an object (or a famous person in some variants), not revealing what it is to the other participants. All the other players are trying to guess what the object is by asking questions like _Can I eat this?_ or I _s it a human?_ where answers can only be _yes_ or _no_.\n\nIf you have never heard about this game, refer to Wikipedia: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Twenty_Questions.\n\nThis is essentially a tree learning algorithm. To win in a game, you should pose such questions that discriminate the most; for example, the question, _Is it alive?_ in the beginning of the game is clearly better than _Is it a cucumber?_. This ability to dissect the hypothesis space in an optimal way is formalized in the notion of information gain criterion.\n\n# Combinatorial entropy\n\nInformation gain criterion is based on the Shannon entropy notion. The Shannon entropy is a very important topic in the information theory, physics, and other domains. Mathematically, it is expressed as:\n\nWhere _i_ is a state of a system, _N_ is a total number of possible states, and _p i_ is a probability of the system being in the state _i_. Entropy describes the amount of uncertainty in the system. The more order you have in the system, the less entropy there is.\n\nFor the visual introduction to the information theory, check _Visual Information Theory_ by Christopher Olah at: http:\/\/colah.github.io\/posts\/2015-09-Visual-Information\/.\n\nIf you want to learn more about entropy, check the nice, interactive blog _Entropy Explained, With Sheep_ by Aatish Bhatia at: https:\/\/aatishb.com\/entropy\/.\n\nLet's show a simple example of how entropy can be useful for decision tree construction. For this, we'll simplify a task of alien creature classification, assuming that we can measure only one feature: body length. We have 10 individuals ( = platyhog and  = rabbosaurus) with the following body lengths:\n\n**True label** |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\n**Body length, meters** | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10\n\nIf we take one random individual from the group, it can be a platyhog with the probability of 0.6, or a rabbosaurus with the probability of 0.4. We have two states in this system for two outcomes. Let's calculate the entropy of it:\n\nSo, the amount of uncertainty in this dataset is 0.97. Is it a lot, or a little? We don't have anything yet to compare it with, so let's divide the set at the middle (> 5 meters), and calculate the entropy for both subsets:\n\n**True label** |   |   |   |   |\n\n|  |\n\n  |   |   |   |\n\n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---\n\n**Body length** | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5\n\n|  |\n\n6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10\n\n_H_ and _H_ are now less than the original _H_. This demonstrates how you can reduce the entropy by splitting the dataset in the right place. This idea lies in the fundamentals of decision tree learning algorithms.\n\nWe can calculate how effectively we reduced the entropy by splitting the set using the **Information Gain** ( **IG** ) criterion:\n\n_Information Gain = Entropy(parent) - Weighted Sum of Entropy (Children)_ , or:\n\n_q_ is a number of groups after splitting, _N i_ is a count of elements in the i-th group, _N_ \u2014is the total count of elements before split. In our example, _q = 2_ , _N = 10_ , and _N 1 = N2 = 5_:\n\nThis means that asking the question _Is the body length greater than 5?_ gives us an information gain of _0.61_. Is it a lot, or a little? Let's compare it to the information loss of the split around length > 7:\n\nApparently, the choice of the middle point was lucky, because all other splits don't look promising. But you are free to check them if you want.\n\nThere is no sense to split the left part further, but we can continue splitting the right subset until entropy of each of its children will not be equal to zero (see _Figure 2.9_ ).\n\nSo, this is our decision tree, and a recursive algorithm for its building. But now comes an interesting question: how to know which split yields the maximal information gain? The simplest way is a greedy search: just check all possible variants.\n\nInformation gain is only one of the heuristics, there are more of them; for instance, in our scikit-learn decision tree learner, we used Gini impurity as a heuristic. According to the Michigan State University (<http:\/\/www.cse.msu.edu\/~cse802\/DecisionTrees.pdf>):\n\n\"Gini impurity is the expected error rate at node N if the category label is selected randomly from the class distribution present at N.\"\n\nCheck the documentation on the `criterion` property of `DecisionTreeClassifier` for more information about different heuristics available for tree learning in scikit-learn. In practice, Gini works very similarly to the information gain. A historical fact to dilute the theoretical exposition: Corrado Gini was an Italian statistician and the author of _The Scientific Basis of Fascism_ (1927):\n\nFigure 2.9: Building a decision tree. _H_ stands for entropy in each group. Picture by Mykola Sosnovshchenko.\n\n# Evaluating performance of the model with data\n\nThe ways to assess the quality of a model's predictions quantitatively are known as **metrics**. The simplest metric in classification is accuracy, a proportion of correctly classified cases. Accuracy metric can be misleading. Imagine that you have a training set with 1000 samples. 999 of them are of class A, and 1 of class B. Such a kind of dataset is called **imbalanced**. The baseline (the simplest) solution in this case would be to always predict class A. Accuracy of such a model would then be 0.999, which can be pretty impressive, but only if you don't know about the ratio of classes in the training set. Now imagine that class A corresponds to an outcome of healthy, and class B to cancer, in the medical diagnostic system. It's clear now that 0.999 accuracy is worth nothing, and totally misleading. Another thing to consider is that the cost of different errors can be different. What's worse: to diagnose a healthy person as ill, or an ill person as healthy? This leads to the notion of two types of error ( _Figure 2.10_ ):\n\n  * Type I error, also known as **false positive** : algorithm predicts **cancer** , while there is no cancer\n  * Type II error, also known as, **false negative** : algorithm predicts **no cancer** , while there is.\n\nFigure 2.9: Two types of errors represented as a Venn diagram\n\n# Precision, recall, and F1-score\n\nTo assess the quality of the algorithm considering the two types of error, accuracy metric is useless. That's why different metrics were proposed.\n\n**Precision** and **recall** are metrics used to evaluate a prediction's quality in information retrieval and binary classification. Precision is a proportion of true positives among all predicted positives. It shows how relevant results are. Recall, also known as **sensitivity** , is a proportion of true positives among all truly positive samples. For example, if the task is to distinguish cat photos from non-cat photos, precision is a fraction of correctly predicted cats to all predicted cats. Recall is a fraction of predicted cats to the total number of true cats.\n\nIf we denote the number of true positive cases as _T p_, and number of false positive cases as _F p_, then precision _P_ is calculated as:\n\nRecall _R_ is calculated as:\n\n ,\n\nWhere _F n_ is a number of false negative cases.\n\n_F1_ measure is calculated as:\n\nNow the same in Python:\n\n    In []: \n    import numpy as np \n    predictions = tree_model.predict(X_test) \n    predictions = np.array(map(lambda x: x == 'rabbosaurus', predictions), dtype='int') \n    true_labels = np.array(map(lambda x: x == 'rabbosaurus', y_test), dtype='int') \n    from sklearn.metrics import precision_score, recall_score, f1_score \n    precision_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.87096774193548387 \n    In []: \n    recall_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.88815789473684215 \n    In []: \n    f1_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.87947882736156346 \n\n# K-fold cross-validation\n\nThis method was invented and gained popularity in those days when the big date was not yet a problem, everyone had little data, but still needed to build reliable models. First thing we do is shuffle our dataset well, and then divide it randomly into several equal parts, say 10 (this is the _k_ in k-fold). We hold out the first part as a test set, and on the remaining nine parts we train the model. The trained model is then assessed on the test set that did not participate in the training as usual. Next, we hold out the second of 10 parts, and train the model on the remaining nine (including those previously served as a test set). We validate the new model again on the part that did not participate in the training. We continue this process until each of the 10 parts is in the role of the test set. The final quality metrics are determined by the averaging metrics from each of the 10 tests:\n\n    In []: \n    from sklearn.model_selection import cross_val_score \n    scores = cross_val_score(tree_model, features, df.label, cv=10) \n    np.mean(scores) \n    Out[]: \n    0.88300000000000001 \n    In []: \n    plot = plt.bar(range(1,11), scores) \n    Out[]:\n\nFigure 2.10: Cross-validation results\n\nFrom the preceding graph, you can see that the model's accuracy depends on how you split the data, but not much. By taking the average and variance of the cross-validation results, you can make a sense of how well your model can generalize on different data, and how stable it is.\n\n# Confusion matrix\n\nConfusion matrix helps to see what types of errors occur more often:\n\n    In []: \n    from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix \n    confusion_matrix(y_test, tree_model.predict(X_test)) \n    Out[]: \n    array([[128,  20], \n           [ 17, 135]])\n\nThis is how to read and interpret such matrices:\n\n| **Predicted labels**  \n---|---  \n**True labels** |  | **Platyhog** | **Rabbosaurus**  \n**Platyhog** | 128 | 20  \n**Rabbosaurus** | 17 | 135\n\nThe bigger the numbers on the matrix diagonally, the better.\n\n# Implementing first machine learning app in Swift\n\nYou can transfer your model from Python to Swift in two ways: transfer a trained model, or train a model from the ground up in Swift. The first option is easy in the case of decision trees, as a trained model can be expressed as a set of if-else conditions, which is trivial to code manually. Training the model from the ground up is required only in the situation where you want your app to learn in runtime. We will stick to the first approach in this example, but instead of coding rules manually, we will export the scikit-learn model for iOS using Core ML tools.\n\n# Introducing Core ML\n\nCore ML was first presented at Apple WWDC 2017. Defining Core ML as machine learning framework is not fair, because it lacks learning capabilities; it's rather a set of conversion scripts to plug the pre-trained model into your Apple applications. Still, it is an easy way for newcomers to start running their first models on iOS.\n\n# Core ML features\n\nHere is a list of Core ML features:\n\n  * `coremltools` Python package includes several converters for popular machine learning frameworks: scikit-learn, Keras, Caffe, LIBSVM, and XGBoost.\n  * Core ML framework allows running inference (making predictions) on a device. Scikit-learn converter also supports some data transformation and model pipelining.\n  * Hardware acceleration (Accelerate framework and Metal under the hood).\n  * Supports iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.\n  * Automatic code generation for OOP-style interoperability with Swift.\n\nThe biggest Core ML limitation is that it doesn't support models training.\n\n# Exporting the model for iOS\n\nIn our Jupyter notebook, execute the following code to export the model:\n\n    In []: \n    import coremltools as coreml \n    coreml_model = coreml.converters.sklearn.convert(tree_model, feature_names, 'label') \n    coreml_model.author = \"Author name goes here...\" \n    coreml_model.license = \"License type goes here ...\" \n    coreml_model.short_description = \"Decision tree classifier for extraterrestrials.\" \n    coreml_model.input_description['data'] = \"Extraterrestrials features\" \n    coreml_model.output_description['prob'] =  \"Probability of belonging to class.\" \n    coreml_model.save('DecisionTree.mlmodel')\n\nScikit-learn converter documentation: http:\/\/pythonhosted.org\/coremltools\/generated\/coremltools.converters.sklearn.convert.html#coremltools.converters.sklearn.convert\n\nThe code creates the `tree.mlmodel` file next to the Jupyter notebook file. This file can contain a single model, a model pipeline (several models chained one after another), or a list of scikit-learn models. According to the documentation, the scikit-learn converter supports the following types of machine learning models:\n\n  * Decision tree learning\n  * Tree ensembles\n  * Random forests\n  * Gradient boosting\n  * Linear and logistic regression (see Chapter 5, _Association Rule Learning_ )\n  * Support vector machines (several types)\n\nIt also supports the following data transformations:\n\n  * Normalizer\n  * Imputer\n  * Standard scaler\n  * DictVectorizer\n  * One-hot encoder\n\nNote that you can embed one-hot encoding as a part of pipeline, so you don't need to do it yourself in your Swift code. This is handy, because you don't need to keep track of the proper order of categorical variable levels.\n\nThe `.mlmodel` file can be one of three types: classifier, regressor, or a transformer, depending on the last model in the list, or a pipeline. It is important to understand that there is no direct correspondence between scikit-learn models (or other source framework) and Core ML models that run on a device. Because Core ML sources are closed, we don't know how it operates under the hood, and can't be sure that the model before and after the conversion will produce identical results. This means you need to validate the model after device deployment, to measure its performance and accuracy.\n\n# Ensemble learning random forest\n\nOne-sentence explanation for LOTR fans: if decision trees were Ents, the random forest would be an Entmoot. For everyone else, random forest algorithm works like this:\n\n  * Split data into random subsets of equal size, maybe with replacement\n  * On each of those subsets, build a decision tree, choosing for every split a random feature subset of fixed size\n  * To perform inference, perform a voting among the trees (classification), or average their predictions (regression)\n\nSuch tree ensembles are very popular in certain domains, because their prediction quality beats most other models.\n\nMost likely, this is not the model you want to train on a mobile device, due to the memory and time limitations, but you can still use it for inference thanks to Core ML. The workflow looks like this:\n\n  * Pre-train random forest in scikit-learn\n  * Export the model in the scikit-learn format\n  * Convert it to the Apple `mlmodel` format with the help of the `coremltool` Python package\n  * Import it in your iOS project using Core ML framework\n\nBy the way, if you look at the inner structure of the GameplayKit's tree learner in a debugger or playground, you'll see that it also uses random forest under the hood.\n\n# Training the random forest\n\nTraining the random forest model is not very different from training the decision tree:\n\n    In []: \n    from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier \n    rf_model = RandomForestClassifier(criterion = 'entropy', random_state=42) \n    rf_model = rf_model.fit(X_train, y_train) \n    print(rf_model) \n    Out[]: \n    RandomForestClassifier(bootstrap=True, class_weight=None, criterion='entropy', \n                max_depth=None, max_features='auto', max_leaf_nodes=None, \n                min_impurity_split=1e-07, min_samples_leaf=1, \n                min_samples_split=2, min_weight_fraction_leaf=0.0, \n                n_estimators=10, n_jobs=1, oob_score=False, random_state=42, \n                verbose=0, warm_start=False)\n\nDocumentation at: <http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/stable\/modules\/generated\/sklearn.ensemble.RandomForestClassifier.html>.\n\n# Random forest accuracy evaluation\n\nLoss on training data:\n\n    In []: \n    rf_model.score(X_train, y_train) \n    Out[]: \n    0.98999999999999999\n\nLoss on test data:\n\n    In []: \n    rf_model.score(X_test, y_test) \n    Out[]: \n    0.90333333333333332\n\nCross-validation:\n\n    In []:  \n    scores = cross_val_score(rf_model, features, df.label, cv=10) \n    np.mean(scores) \n    Out[]: \n    0.89700000000000002 \n    In []: \n    print(\"Accuracy: %0.2f (+\/- %0.2f)\" % (scores.mean(), scores.std() * 2)) \n    Accuracy: 0.90 (+\/- 0.06)\n\nPrecision and recall:\n\n    In []: \n    predictions = rf_model.predict(X_test) \n    predictions = np.array(map(lambda x: x == 'rabbosaurus', predictions), dtype='int') \n    true_labels = np.array(map(lambda x: x == 'rabbosaurus', y_test), dtype='int') \n    precision_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.9072847682119205 \n    In []: \n    recall_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.90131578947368418\n\n_F1-_ score:\n\n    In []: \n    f1_score(true_labels, predictions) \n    Out[]: \n    0.90429042904290435\n\nConfusion matrix:\n\n    In []: \n    confusion_matrix(y_test, rf_model.predict(X_test)) \n    Out[]: \n    array([[134,  14], \n           [ 15, 137]])\n\nYou export a random forest for the iOS in the same way you do for a decision tree.\n\n# Importing the Core ML model into an iOS project\n\nCreate a new iOS project and drag and drop the `DecisionTree.mlmodel` into a project tree in Xcode. Click on it to see a machine learning model navigator screen:\n\nFigure 2.11: Machine learning navigator screen\n\nOn this screen, you can find a familiar model description, model type (pipeline by some reason, in this case), the name of the Swift class that represents the model in the app, and lists of inputs and outputs. If you click on the small arrow next to the class name in the Model Class section, the autogenerated file `DecisionTree.swift` is opened. This reminds a Core Data framework, where you have autogenerated files for `NSMangedObject` subclasses. `DecisionTree.swift` contains three classes:\n\n  * `DecisionTreeInput`: `MLFeatureProvider`, contains the input features (six of them, all Double).\n  * `DecisionTreeOutput`: `MLFeatureProvider`, contains class label and class probability.\n  * `DecisionTree`: `NSObject`, the class of the model itself. It contains methods for initialization and making predictions.\n\nThe method `init(contentsOf: url)` allows to replace the model in runtime, but only if you preserve the input and output structure. For example, this is how the model is loaded from the file in the bundle:\n\n    let bundle = Bundle.main \n    let assetPath = bundle.url(forResource: \"DecisionTree\", withExtension:\"mlmodelc\") \n    let sklDecisionTree = DecisionTree(contentsOf: assetPath!)\n\nIn a same way, you can create a model with the content of a remote URL.\n\nDrag and drop the `RandomForest.ml` model to the project to also compare accuracy of the models on the iOS.\n\n# Evaluating performance of the model on iOS\n\nI'm not describing here a `.csv` parsing in Swift; if you are interested in the details, please see the supplementary materials. Assuming that you've successfully loaded the test data in the form of two arrays, `[Double]` for features and `[String]` for labels, have a go at the following code:\n\n    let (xMat, yVec) = loadCSVData()\n\nTo create a decision tree and evaluate it, try this:\n\n    let sklDecisionTree = DecisionTree()\n\n    let xSKLDecisionTree = xMat.map { (x: [Double]) -> DecisionTreeInput in \n        return DecisionTreeInput(length: x[0], \n                                 fluffy: x[1], \n                                 color_light_black: x[2], \n                                 color_pink_gold: x[3], \n                                 color_purple_polka_dot: x[4], \n                                 color_space_gray: x[5]) \n    }\n\n    let predictionsSKLTree = try! xSKLDecisionTree \n        .map(sklDecisionTree.prediction) \n        .map{ prediction in \n            return prediction.label == \"rabbosaurus\" ? 0 : 1 \n    }\n\n    let groundTruth = yVec.map{ $0 == \"rabbosaurus\" ? 0 : 1 }\n\n    let metricsSKLDecisionTree = evaluateAccuracy(yVecTest: groundTruth, predictions: predictionsSKLTree) \n    print(metricsSKLDecisionTree)\n\nTo create a random forest and evaluate it, trying using the following code:\n\n    let sklRandomForest = RandomForest()\n\n    let xSKLRandomForest = xMat.map { (x: [Double]) -> RandomForestInput in \n        return RandomForestInput(length: x[0], \n                                 fluffy: x[1], \n                                 color_light_black: x[2], \n                                 color_pink_gold: x[3], \n                                 color_purple_polka_dot: x[4], \n                                 color_space_gray: x[5]) \n    }\n\n    let predictionsSKLRandomForest = try! xSKLRandomForest.map(sklRandomForest.prediction).map{$0.label == \"rabbosaurus\" ? 0 : 1}\n\n    let metricsSKLRandomForest = evaluateAccuracy(yVecTest: groundTruth, predictions: predictionsSKLRandomForest) \n    print(metricsSKLRandomForest)\n\nThis is an example of how you can evaluate your model's prediction quality in the Swift application. The structure, that contains the results of evaluation is as follows:\n\n    struct Metrics: CustomStringConvertible { \n    let confusionMatrix: [[Int]] \n    let normalizedConfusionMatrix: [[Double]] \n    let accuracy: Double \n    let precision: Double \n    let recall: Double \n    let f1Score: Double\n\n    var description: String { \n        return \"\"\" \n        Confusion Matrix: \n        (confusionMatrix)\n\n        Normalized Confusion Matrix: \n        (normalizedConfusionMatrix)\n\n        Accuracy: (accuracy) \n        Precision: (precision) \n        Recall: (recall) \n        F1-score: (f1Score) \n        \"\"\" \n    } \n    }\n\nFor the function for quality assessment, here's the code:\n\n    func evaluateAccuracy(yVecTest: [Int], predictions: [Int]) -> Metrics { \n\n# Calculating the confusion matrix\n\nWe'll use a straightforward approach here to calculate the confusion matrix; however, this would not work for multiclass classification. Here, `p` stands for predicted value, and `t` is for ground truth:\n\n    let pairs: [(Int, Int)] = zip(predictions, yVecTest).map{ ($0.0, $0.1) } \n    var confusionMatrix = [[0,0], [0,0]] \n    for (p, t) in pairs { \n        switch (p, t) { \n        case (0, 0): \n            confusionMatrix[0][0] += 1 \n        case (0, _): \n            confusionMatrix[1][0] += 1 \n        case (_, 0): \n            confusionMatrix[0][1] += 1 \n        case (_, _): \n            confusionMatrix[1][1] += 1 \n        } \n    }\n\n    let totalCount = Double(yVecTest.count)\n\nNormalize the matrix by total count:\n\n    let normalizedConfusionMatrix = confusionMatrix.map{$0.map{Double($0)\/totalCount}}\n\nAs we already know, accuracy is a number of true predictions divided by the total number of cases.\n\nTo calculate accuracy, try using the following code:\n\n    let truePredictionsCount = pairs.filter{ $0.0 == $0.1 }.count \n    let accuracy = Double(truePredictionsCount) \/ totalCoun\n\nTo calculate true positive, false positive, and false negative counts, you can use the numbers from the confusion matrix, but let's do it the proper way:\n\n    let truePositive = Double(pairs.filter{ $0.0 == $0.1 && $0.0 == 0 }.count) \n    let falsePositive = Double(pairs.filter{ $0.0 != $0.1 && $0.0 == 0 }.count) \n    let falseNegative = Double(pairs.filter{ $0.0 != $0.1 && $0.0 == 1 }.count)\n\nTo calculate precision:\n\n    let precision = truePositive \/ (truePositive + falsePositive)\n\nTo calculate recall:\n\n    let recall = truePositive \/ (truePositive + falseNegative)\n\nTo calculate _F 1-_score:\n\n    let f1Score = 2 * precision * recall \/ (precision + recall)\n\n    return Metrics(confusionMatrix: confusionMatrix, normalizedConfusionMatrix: normalizedConfusionMatrix, accuracy: accuracy, precision: precision, recall: recall, f1Score: f1Score) \n    }\n\nHere is my result for the decision tree on iOS:\n\n    Confusion Matrix: \n    [[135, 17],  \n    [20, 128]]\n\n    Normalized Confusion Matrix: \n    [[0.45000000000000001, 0.056666666666666664],  \n    [0.066666666666666666, 0.42666666666666669]]\n\n    Accuracy: 0.876666666666667 \n    Precision: 0.870967741935484 \n    Recall: 0.888157894736842 \n    F1-score: 0.879478827361563\n\nAnd for the random forest:\n\n    Confusion Matrix: \n    [[138, 14],  \n    [18, 130]]\n\n    Normalized Confusion Matrix: \n    [[0.46000000000000002, 0.046666666666666669],  \n    [0.059999999999999998, 0.43333333333333335]]\n\n    Accuracy: 0.893333333333333 \n    Precision: 0.884615384615385 \n    Recall: 0.907894736842105 \n    F1-score: 0.896103896103896\n\nCongratulations! We've trained two machine learning algorithms, deployed them to the iOS, and evaluated their accuracy. Interesting that while decision tree metrics match perfectly, the random forest performance is slightly worse on Core ML. Don't forget to always validate your model after any type of conversion.\n\n# Decision tree learning pros and cons\n\nAdvantages:\n\n  * Easy to understand and interpret, perfect for visual representation. This is an example of a white box model, which closely mimics the human decision-making process.\n  * Can work with numerical and categorical features.\n  * Requires little data preprocessing: no need for one-hot encoding, dummy variables, and so on.\n  * Non-parametric model: no assumptions about the shape of data.\n  * Fast for inference.\n  * Feature selection happens automatically: unimportant features will not influence the result. The presence of features that depend on each other (multicollinearity) also doesn't affect the quality.\n\nDisadvantages:\n\n  * It tends to overfit. This usually can be mitigated in one of three ways: \n    * Limiting tree depth\n    * Setting the minimal number of objects in leaves\n    * Tree pruning by deleting unimportant splits moving from the leaves to the root\n  * It is unstable\u2014small changes in data can dramatically affect the structure of the tree and the final prediction.\n  * The problem with finding the globally optimal decision tree is NP-complete. That's why we use different heuristics and greedy search. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't guarantee learning the globally best tree, only locally optimal ones.\n  * Inflexible, in the sense that you can't incorporate a new data into them easily. If you obtained new labeled data, you should retrain the tree from scratch on the whole dataset. This makes decision trees a poor choice for any applications that require dynamic model adjustment.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we had our first experience of building a machine learning application, starting from the data and all the way over to the working iOS application. We went through several phases in this chapter:\n\n  * Exploratory data analysis using Jupyter, pandas, and Matplotlib\n  * Data preparation\u2014splitting, and handling categorical variables\n  * Model prototyping using scikit-learn\n  * Model tuning and evaluation\n  * Porting prototype for the mobile platform using Core ML\n  * Model validation on a mobile device\n\nThere are several machine learning topics that we've learned about in this chapter: model parameters vs. hyperparameters, overfitting vs. underfitting, evaluation metrics: cross-validation, accuracy, precision, recall, and _F_ _1-_ score. These are the basic things that will be recurring topics throughout this book.\n\nWe've become acquainted with two machine learning algorithms, namely decision trees and random forest, a type of model ensemble.\n\nIn the next chapter, we're going to continue exploring classification algorithms, and will learn about instance-based learning algorithms. We will also build an iOS app that can learn right on the device, this time not for alien classification, but for some real-world problem, I promise.\n\n# K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier\n\nThis chapter is devoted to an important class of machine learning algorithms, known as instance-based models. The name comes from the fact that they are built around the notion of similarity between instances (distance) and the geometrical intuition behind it. As a practical application of our newly learned skills, we will build an app that recognizes types of user movements based on the data from motion sensors and learns completely on device (no Python this time).\n\nThe algorithms that we are discussing and implementing in this chapter are **k-nearest neighbors** ( **KNN** ) and **dynamic time warping** ( **DTW** ).\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * Choosing a distance metric\u2014Euclidean, edit distance, taxicab, and DTW\n  * Building a KNN multiclass classifier\n  * Geometrical intuition behind machine learning models\n  * Reasoning in high-dimensional spaces\n  * Choosing hyperparameters\n\n# Calculating the distance\n\nHow do we calculate a distance? Well, that depends on the kind of problem. In two-dimensional space, we used to calculate the distance between two points, ( _x_ 1, _y_ 1) and ( _x_ 2, _y_ 2), as  \u2014the **Euclidean distance**. But this is not how taxi drivers calculate distance because in the city you can't cut corners and go straight to your goal. So, they use (knowing it or not) another distance metric: **Manhattan distance** or **taxicab distance** , also known as _l_ 1-norm:  . This is the distance if we're only allowed to move along coordinate axes:\n\nFigure 3.1: The blue line represents the Euclidean distance, the red line represents the Manhattan distance. Map of Manhattan by OpenStreetMap\n\nJewish German mathematician Hermann Minkowski proposed a generalization of both Euclidean and Manhattan distances. Here is the formula for the Minkowski distance:\n\nwhere _p_ and _q_ are _n_ -dimensional vectors (or coordinates of points in _n_ -dimensional space if you wish). But what does _c_ stand for? It is an order of the Minkowsi distance: under the _c = 1_ , it gives an equation of Manhattan distance, and under _c = 2_ it gives Euclidean distance.\n\nVector operations, including the calculation of Manhattan and Euclidean distances, can be parallelized for efficiency. Apple's Accelerate framework provides APIs for fast vector and matrix computations.\n\nIn machine learning, we generalize the notion of distance to any kind of objects for which we can calculate how similar they are, using a function: distance metric. In this way, we can define the distance between two pieces of text, two pictures, or two audio signals. Let's take a look at two examples.\n\nWhen you deal with two pieces of text of equal length, you use **edit distance** ; for example, **Hamming distance** \u2014the minimum number of substitutions needed to transform one string into another. To calculate the edit distance, we use dynamic programming, an iterative approach where the problem is broken into small subproblems, and the result of each step is remembered for future computations. Edit distance is an important measure in applications that deal with text revisions; for example, in bioinformatics (see the following diagram):\n\nFigure 3.2: Four pieces of DNA from different species aligned together: modern human, neanderthal, gorilla, and cat. The Hamming edit distance from modern human to others is 1, 5, and 11 respectively.\n\nOften, we store different signals (audio, motion data, and so on) as arrays of numbers. How do we measure the similarity of such two arrays? We use the combination of Euclidean distance and edit distance, called DTW.\n\n# DTW\n\nDespite its Sci-Fi name, DTW has little to do with time travel, except for the fact that this technique was popular for speech recognition back in the 1980s. Imagine two signals as two springs oriented along the time axis. We place them next to each other on the table, and want to measure how similar (or how different... what's the same?) they are. One of them will serve as a template. And we start stretching and compressing another one, piece by piece, until it looks exactly as the first one (or the most similar). Then we account for how much effort we put into align two springs\u2014we sum up all tensions and stretches together, and get the DTW distance.\n\nDTW distance between two sound signals tells us how similar to each other they are. For example, having the record of an unknown voice command, we can compare it to voice commands in the database, and find the most similar one. DTW can be used not only with audio, but with many other types of signals. We will use it to calculate distance between signals from motion sensors:\n\nFigure 3.3: DTW alignment of two accelerometer signals. On the left: walking sample against another walking sample. On the right: brushing teeth against walking. The shorter the alignment is, the closer the two signals are to one another. Plots created using [1] and [2].\n\nLet's demonstrate this with a simple example. Say we have two arrays: _[5, 2, 1, 3]_ and _[10, 2, 4, 3]_. How do we calculate the distance between two arrays of length one: _[5]_ and [10]? You can use squared difference as a measure; for example, _(5 - 10) 2 = 25_. Okay, now let's extend one of them: _[5, 2]_ and _[10],_ and calculate the cumulative difference: | **[5]** | **[2]**\n\n---|---|---\n\n**[10]** | _25_ | _25 + (2-10) 2 = 89_\n\nLet's extend another array to have _[5, 2]_ and _[10, 2]_. Now, how to calculate the cumulative difference is not as clear as it was before, but let's assume that we are interested in the simplest way to transform one array into another (minimal distance, in other words): | **[5]** | **[2]**\n\n---|---|---\n\n**[10]** | _25_ | _89_\n\n**[2]** | _25 + (5-2) 2 = 34_ | _min (25, 89, 34) + (2-2) 2 = 25_\n\nBy extending arrays in such a way further, eventually we will get the following table: | **[5]** | **[2]** | **[1]** | **[3]**\n\n---|---|---|---|---\n\n**[10]** | _25_ | _89_ | _89 + (1-10) 2 = 170_ | _170 + (3-10) 2 = 219_\n\n**[2]** | _34_ | _25_ | _min (89, 170, 25)_\n\n_\\+ (1-2) 2 = 26_ | _min (170, 219, 26)_\n\n_\\+ (3-2) 2 = 27_\n\n**[4]** | _34+(5-4) 2=35_ | _min (34, 25, 35)_\n\n_\\+ (2-4) 2 = 29_ | _min (25, 26, 29)_\n\n_\\+ (1-4) 2 = 34_ | _min (26, 27, 34)_\n\n_\\+ (3-4) 2 = 27_\n\n**[3]** | _35+(5-3) 2=39_ | _min (35, 29, 39)_\n\n_\\+ (2-3) 2 = 30_ | _min (29, 34, 30)_\n\n_\\+ (1-3) 2 = 33_ | _min (34, 27, 33)_\n\n_\\+ (3-3) 2 = 27_\n\nThe bottom-right cell of the table contains the quantity we're interested in: DTW distance between two arrays, the measure of how hard it is to transform one array into another. We've just checked all the possible ways to transform arrays, and found the easiest of them (marked with a gray shading in the table). Movement along the diagonal of the table indicates the perfect match between arrays, while horizontal direction stands for deletion of the elements from the first array, and vertical movement indicates insertion into it (compare with _Figure 3.3_ ). The final array alignment looks like this:\n\n_[5, 2, 1, 3, -]_\n\n_[10, 2, -, 4, 3]_\n\nBy the way, DTW can be applied not only to arrays of single numbers. Replace squared difference with Euclidean or Manhattan distance, and you can compare trajectories in a three-dimensional space or taxi routes.\n\n# Implementing DTW in Swift\n\nThere are two versions of the algorithm (with locality constraint, and without it). We'll implement both.\n\nThe full source code for the application we are developing in this chapter can be found in the `MotionClassification` folder of supplementary materials.\n\nLet's define a DTW structure, and create a static function `distance` in it:\n\n    func distance(sVec: [Double], tVec: [Double]) -> Double {\n\nFirst, we're creating a distance matrix of size _(n+1_ x _m+1)_ _,_ and populating it with some values: the first cell of the matrix should be equal to zero, and the first row and the first column should be equal to a maximum double value. This is needed to handle border conditions in a proper way later. The first cell plays a role of initial value: initially, the distance is zero. All other cells are unimportant for now, as we'll overwrite their values later:\n\n    let n = sVec.count \n    let m = tVec.count \n    var dtwMat = [[Double]](repeating: [Double](repeating: Double.greatestFiniteMagnitude, count: m+1), count: n+1) \n    dtwMat[0][0] = 0\n\nAfter this, we iterate through both arrays from _1_ to _n_ and _1_ to _m_ , filling the distance matrix. At each position _[i, j]_ , we calculate the cost for the previous position _(i-1, j-1)_ as the squared difference between corresponding positions in the arrays: _(s i-1 \\- tj-1)2_:\n\n    for i in 1...n { \n      for j in 1...m { \n        let cost = pow(sVec[i-1] - tVec[j-1], 2) \n        let insertion = dtwMat[i-1][j] \n        let deletion = dtwMat[i][j-1] \n        let match = dtwMat[i-1][j-1] \n        let prevMin = min(insertion, deletion, match) \n        dtwMat[i][j] = cost + prevMin \n      } \n    }\n\nThe value we are now looking for is in the last cell of the matrix: _dtw[n, m]_. To make the result comparable between series with different lengths, we normalize it by the length of the longest series:\n\n        return dtwMat[n][m]\/Double(max(n, m))  \n    }\n\nThis gives us an average distance between two series.\n\nTo avoid warping the whole sequence to the small segment of its counterpart, locality constraint was introduced. It sets the upper limit to how many deletions\/insertions can be found in a row.\n\nAnd a version of the algorithm with locality constraint `w`:\n\n    func distance(sVec: [Double], tVec: [Double], w: Int) -> Double { \n        let n = sVec.count \n        let m = tVec.count \n        var dtwMat = [[Double]](repeating: [Double](repeating: Double.greatestFiniteMagnitude, count: m+1), count: n+1) \n        dtwMat[0][0] = 0 \n        let constraint = max(w, abs(n-m))\n\n        for i in 1...n { \n            for j in max(1, i-constraint)...min(m, i+constraint) { \n                let cost = pow(sVec[i-1] - tVec[j-1], 2) \n                let insertion = dtwMat[i-1][j] \n                let deletion = dtwMat[i][j-1] \n                let match = dtwMat[i-1][j-1] \n                dtwMat[i][j] = cost + min(insertion, deletion, match) \n            } \n        } \n        return dtwMat[n][m]\/Double(max(n, m)) \n    }\n\nLet's test our algorithm. The first two vectors are similar :\n\n    let aVec: [Double] = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,6,5,4,3,2,1] \n    let bVec: [Double] = [2,3,4,5,7,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0,-2]\n\n    let distance1 = DTW.distance(sVec: aVec, tVec: bVec) \n    let distance2 = DTW.distance(sVec: aVec, tVec: bVec, w: 3)\n\nThe result is about 0.857 in both cases.\n\nNow we have two very different vectors:\n\n    let cVec: [Double] = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0] \n    let dVec: [Double] = [30,2,2,0,1,1,1,14,44]\n\n    let distance3 = DTW.distance(sVec: cVec, tVec: dVec) \n    let distance4 = DTW.distance(sVec: cVec, tVec: dVec, w: 3)\n\nThe results are 216.571 and 218.286 correspondingly. Note that the distance with locality constraint is even bigger than without it.\n\nOur implementation of DTW is na\u00efve, and can be accelerated using parallel computing. To calculate the new row\/column in a distance matrix, you don't need to wait until the previous one is finished; you only need it to be filled one cell ahead of your row\/column. DTW can be effectively parallelized using GPU. See _Accelerating Dynamic Time Warping Subsequence Search with GPUs and FPGAs_ for more details [3].\n\n# Using instance-based models for classification and clustering\n\nInstance-based machine learning algorithms are usually easy to understand as they have some geometrical intuition behind them. They can be used to perform different kinds of tasks, including classification, regression, clustering, and anomaly detection.\n\nIt's easy to confuse classification and clustering at first. Just to remind you, classification is one of the many types of supervised learning. The task is to predict some discrete label from the set of features ( _Figure 3.4_ , left pane). Technically, classification goes in two types: binary (check _yes_ or _no_ ), and multiclass ( _yes_ \/ _no_ \/ _maybe_ \/ _I don't know_ \/ _can you repeat the question?_ ). But in practice, you can always build a multiclass classifier from several binary classifiers.\n\nOn the other hand, clustering is the task of unsupervised learning. This means that, unlike classification, it knows nothing about data labels, and works out clusters of similar samples in your data on its own. In the next chapter, we are going to discuss an instance-based clustering algorithm called _k_ -means (KNN), and in this chapter, we focus on applications of instance-based algorithm KNN to multiclass classification:\n\nFigure 3.4: Classification process (on the left) and clustering (on the right). Classification consists of two steps: training with the labelled data and inference with unlabeled data. Clustering groups samples according to their similarity.\n\n# People motion recognition using inertial sensors\n\nWouldn't it be awesome at the end of every day to see the statistics of it: how much time have you spent doing things you like, and how much time you've wasted? With this kind of report, you could make your time management decisions based on real data, not just a gut feeling. Wait, but there are a lot of time trackers out there on the App Store, right? Sure, but there is one problem with most of them: you have to fill them in manually, because they can't detect what are you doing at every moment. You can't teach them to recognize types of your activities. Fortunately, we can fix this using machine learning; specifically, **time series classification**.\n\nTime series is a special kind of dataset in which samples are arranged according to the time. Usually, time series are generated when samples are taken repeatedly after equal time intervals (sampling interval). In other words, the time series is a sequence of values measured at successive moments in time, after regular intervals, and describing a process unrolling in a time dimension.\n\nTime series data type is common in iOS applications: among examples are signals from inertial sensors, measurements from HealthKit, and any other data that has a clear time correspondence and sampled regularly. Some other types of data, such as application logs or records of user activity, can be reduced to a special type of time series: categorical time series, where categories are in place of numbers.\n\nThe motion recognition task is important in health monitoring and fitness applications, but can also have some unusual use cases. For example, the _Walk Me Up! Alarm Clock_ app makes you get out of your bed, because it doesn't allow you to snooze your alarm until you take a number of steps. It distinguishes real steps from attempts to cheat by shaking the device.\n\nThe Core Motion framework provides APIs to get a history of a user's movements or a real-time stream of data from motion sensors. It can also distinguish a limited set of movement types, but we're going to teach our app to recognize more types than the Core Motion can. With the growth in popularity of wearable accessories, the motion sensor became a very common source of data; however, the method described in this chapter is not specific to sensor data, so you can apply these algorithms to many other practical problems. That's the good thing about general-purpose machine learning algorithms: you can apply them to any kind of data, you only need to find an appropriate representation for the data.\n\n# Understanding the KNN algorithm\n\nTo recognize different types of motion activities, we will train the KNN classifier. The idea of the method is to find _k_ training samples closest to the sample with an unknown label, and predict the label as a most frequent class among those _k_. That's it:\n\nFigure 3.5: KNN classification algorithm. The new data point marked with ? gets classified based on the classes of its neighbors.\n\nNote how the choice of neighbor number affects the result of classification.\n\nIn fact, the algorithm is so simple, that it's tempting to formulate it in more complicated terms. Let's do it. The secret sauce of a KNN is a distance metric: function, which defines how close to each other two samples are. We have discussed several of them already: Euclidean, Manhattan, Minkowski, edit distance, and DTW. Following the terminology, samples are points in some _n_ -dimensional space, where _n_ equals to the number of features in each sample. This space is called **feature space** , and samples are distributed in it as clouds of points. Classification of an unknown data point happens in three steps:\n\n  1. Calculate distances from the point to all points in a training set\n  2. Choose the _k-_ closest neighbors to the unknown point\n  3. Perform a majority vote among them\n\nThe surface that separates one class of points from another class is known as a **decision boundary**. The KNN algorithm creates piecewise linear decision boundaries that can approximate a decision boundary of any complexity by adding more and more training samples:\n\nFigure 3.6: Voronoi cells graph shows the closest neighbor at each point with a color. Depending on the distance metric you choose, the graph looks quite different. From the left to the right: Manhattan ( _c = 1_ ), Euclidean ( _c = 2_ ), and Minkowski ( _c = 3_ ) distance metrics.\n\nAlgorithms similar to KNN are also known as **non-generalizing machine learning**. In Chapter 6, _Linear Regression and Gradient Descent_ , we will discuss a linear regression, an algorithm that constructs general representation of all data points\u2014a straight line, because it assumes that all data points lie along the line. Unlike linear regression, KNN makes no assumption about the underlying structure of the data, it just stores all the training samples. Both approaches have their advantages and downsides.\n\nYou may think that this algorithm is too simple to be used for anything but some toy tasks. But over the years, KNN has demonstrated to be successfully employed for a wide range of problems, such as handwriting recognition, and satellite photo classification. It's also worth noting that it's easy to turn this classification algorithm into regression\u2014you just need to replace categorical labels with the real numbers, and add an interpolation function.\n\nParametric versus non-parametric models  \nMany restrictions of the linear regressions come from the fact that it assumes that data is normally distributed. The class of statistical models which makes explicit assumptions about the statistical distribution underlying data is called **parametric models**.\n\nUnlike linear regression, KNN makes no assumptions about the distribution from which samples are generated. That's why we call them **non-parametric**. This is the right tool to choose in situations where data has unusual distribution, and the decision boundary is irregular.\n\n# Implementing KNN in Swift\n\nFast implementations of KNN and DTW can be found in many machine learning and DSP libraries, for example `lbimproved` and `matchbox` C++ libraries:\n\n  * github.com\/lemire\/lbimproved\n  * github.com\/hfink\/matchbox\n\nThe KNN classifier works with virtually any type of data since you define distance metric for your data points. That's why we define it as a generic structure parameterized with types for features and labels. Labels should conform to a `Hashable` protocol, as we're going to use them for dictionary keys:\n\n    struct kNN<X, Y> where Y: Hashable { ... }\n\nKNN has two hyperparameters: _k_ \u2014the number of neighbors `var k: Int`, and distance metric. We'll define it elsewhere, and pass during the initialization. Metric is a function, returning double distance for any two samples `x1` and `x2`:\n\n    var distanceMetric: (_ x1: X, _ x2: X) -> Double\n\nDuring the initialization, we just record the hyperparameters inside our structure. The definition of `init` looks like this:\n\n    init (k: Int, distanceMetric: @escaping (_ x1: X, _ x2: X) -> Double) { \n        self.k = k \n        self.distanceMetric = distanceMetric \n    }\n\nKNN stores all its training data points. We are using the array of pairs _(features, label)_ for this purposes:\n\n    private var data: [(X, Y)] = []\n\nAs usual with supervised learning models, we'll stick to the interface with two methods, `train` and `predict`, which reflect the two phases of a supervised algorithm's life. The `train` method in the case of KNN just saves the data points to use them later in the `predict` method:\n\n    mutating func train(X: [X], y: [Y]) { \n        data.append(contentsOf: zip(X, y)) \n    }\n\nThe `predict` method takes the data point and predicts the label for it:\n\n    func predict(x: X) -> Y? {  \n        assert(data.count > 0, \"Please, use method train() at first to provide training data.\") \n        assert(k > 0, \"Error, k must be greater then 0.\")\n\nFor this, we iterate through all samples in the training dataset, and compare them with the input sample `x`. We use _(distance, label)_ tuples to keep track of distances to each of the training samples. After this, we sort all the samples descending by distances, and take the (`prefix`) first `k` elements:\n\n        let tuples = data \n            .map { (distanceMetric(x, $0.0), $0.1) }  \n            .sorted { $0.0 < $1.0 }  \n            .prefix(upTo: k)\n\nThis implementation is not optimal, and can be improved by keeping track of only the best `k` samples at each step, but the goal of it is to demonstrate the simplest machine learning algorithm without diving into the complex data structures, and show that even such na\u00efve versions of it can perform well on complex tasks.\n\nNow we arrange majority voting among top `k` samples. We count the frequency of each label, and sort them from descending:\n\n    let countedSet = NSCountedSet(array: tuples.map{$0.1}) \n    let result = countedSet.allObjects.sorted { \n        countedSet.count(for: $0) > countedSet.count(for: $1) \n        }.first \n    return result as? Y \n    }\n\nThe `result` variable holds a predicted class label.\n\n# Recognizing human motion using KNN\n\nCore Motion is an iOS framework that provides an API for inertial sensors of mobile devices. It also recognizes some user motion types, and stores them to the HealthKit database.\n\nIf you are not familiar with Core Motion API, please check the framework reference: <https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/reference\/coremotion>.\n\nThe code for this example can be found in the `Code\/02DistanceBased\/ MotionClassification` folder of supplementary materials.\n\nAs per iOS 11 beta 2, the `CMMotionActivity` class includes the following types of motion:\n\n  * Stationary\n  * Walking\n  * Running\n  * Automotive\n  * Cycling\n\nEverything else falls into an unknown category or is recognized as one of the preceding. Core Motion doesn't provide a way to recognize custom motion types so we'll train our own classifier for this purpose. Unlike decision trees from the previous chapter, KNN will be trained on device end-to-end. It will also not be frozen inside Core ML because as we keep all the control on it, we'll be able to update it in the application runtime.\n\niOS devices have three types of motion sensors:\n\n  * **Gyroscope** : This measures device orientation in space\n  * **Accelerometer** : This measures device acceleration\n  * **Magnetometer or compass** : This measures magnetism\n\nThey also have a barometer to detect elevation and some other sensors, but they are less relevant for our purposes. We will use an accelerometer data stream to train our KNN classifier and predict different motion types, like shaking a phone or squatting.\n\nThe following listing shows how to get updates from the accelerometer:\n\n    let manager = CMMotionManager() \n    manager.accelerometerUpdateInterval = 0.1 \n    manager.startAccelerometerUpdates(to: OperationQueue.main) { (data: CMAccelerometerData?, error: Error?) in \n        if let acceleration = data?.acceleration { \n            print(acceleration.x, acceleration.y, acceleration.z) \n        } \n    }\n\nThe accelerometer APIs in Core Motion provide a time series of three-dimensional vectors, as shown in the following diagram:\n\nFigure 3.7: Core Motion coordinate system for accelerometer and gyroscope\n\nTo train our classifier, we need some labeled data. As we don't have a ready dataset and motion signals can be very different from person to person, we are going to allow the user to add new samples and improve the model. In the interface, the user selects the type of motion he wants to record, and presses the Record button, as shown in the next screenshot. The application samples 25 acceleration vectors, takes the magnitude of each vector, and feeds them with the label of the selected motion type into the KNN classifier. The user records as many samples as he wants.\n\n# Cold start problem\n\nA very common situation is when a machine learning system starts functioning in a new environment, where no information to pre-train is available. The situation is known as a **cold start**. Such a system requires a certain amount of time to collect enough training data, and start producing meaningful predictions. The problem often arises in the context of personalization and recommender systems.\n\nOne solution for this it is so-called **active learning** , where the system can actively seek new data that could improve its performance. Usually, this means that the system queries a user to label some data. For instance, the user can be asked to provide some labeled examples before the start of the system, or the system can ping him when it stumbles upon especially hard cases asking to label them manually. Active learning is a special case of semi-supervised learning.\n\nThe second component of active learning is estimating which samples are the most useful by associating weights to them. In the case of KNN, these can be the samples that the model is less confident about, for example, the samples for whom their neighbors' classes are divided almost equally or the samples that are far from all others (outliers).\n\nHowever, some researchers point out that active learning is built on flawed assumptions: the user is always available and willing to answer questions and he is always right in his\/her answers. This is also something worth keeping in mind when building an active learning solution.\n\nI guess when the Twitter app pings you at 4 AM with push notifications like _Take a look at this and 13 other Highlights_ , it just wants to update its small personalized binary classifier of _interesting_ \/ _not interesting_ content using active learning.\n\nFigure 3.8: App interface\n\nIn the classification phase, we feed unlabeled chunks of the same size into the classifier and get predictions which display to the user. We use DTW as a distance measure with locality constraint `3`. In my experiments, `k` as `1` gave the best results but you can experiment with other number of neighbors. I will show here only the machine learning part, without the data collection part and user interface.\n\nCreating the classifier:\n\n    classifier = kNN(k: 1, distanceMetric: DTW.distance(w: 3))\n\nTraining the classifier:\n\n    self.classifier.train(X: [magnitude(series3D: series)], y: [motionType])\n\nThe `magnitude()` function converts three-dimensional series into one-dimensional by calculating vector magnitude   to simplify the computations.\n\nMaking the predictions:\n\n    let motionType = self.classifier.predict(x: magnitude(series3D: series)) \n\n# Balanced dataset\n\nThe application allows you to record samples of different motion types. As you train the model, you may notice one interesting effect: to get accurate predictions, you need not only enough samples, but you also need the proportion of different classes in your dataset to be roughly equal. Think about it: if you have 100 samples of two classes (`walk` and `run`), and 99 of them belong to one class (`walk`), the classifier that delivers 99% accuracy may look like this:\n\n    func predict(x: [Double]) -> MotionType { \n       return .walk \n    }\n\nBut this is not what we want, obviously.\n\nThis observation lead us to the notion of the balanced data set; for most machine learning algorithms, you want the data set in which samples of different classes are represented equally frequently.\n\n# Choosing a good k\n\nIt is important to pick a proper value of hyperparameter _k_ , since it can improve a model's performance as well as degrade it when chosen incorrectly. One popular rule of thumb is to take a square root of the number of training samples. Many popular software packages use this heuristic as a default _k_ value. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work well, because of the differences in the data and distance metrics.\n\nThere is no mathematically-grounded way to come up with the optimal number of neighbors from the very beginning. The only option is to scan through a range of _k_ s, and choose the best one according to some performance metric. You can use any performance metric that we've already described in the previous chapter: accuracy, _F1_ , and so on. The cross-validation is especially useful when the data is scarce.\n\nIn fact, there is a variation of KNN, which doesn't require _k_ at all. The idea is to make the algorithm take the radius of a ball to search the neighbors within. The _k_ will be different for each point then, depending on the local density of points. This variation of the algorithm is known as **radius-based neighbor learning**. It suffers from the _n_ -ball volume problem (see next section), because the more features you have, the bigger the radius should be to catch at least one neighbor.\n\n# Reasoning in high-dimensional spaces\n\nWorking with feature spaces of high dimensions requires special mental precautions, since our intuition used to deal with three-dimensional space starts to fail. For example, let's look at one peculiar property of _n_ -dimensional spaces, known as an _n_ -ball volume problem. _N_ -ball is just a ball in _n_ -dimensional Euclidean space. If we plot the volume of such _n_ -ball ( _y_ axis) as a function of a number of dimensions ( _x_ axis), we'll see the following graph:\n\nFigure 3.9: Volume of _n_ -ball in _n_ -dimensional space\n\nNote that at the beginning the volume rises, until it reaches its peak in five-dimensional space, and then starts decreasing. What does it mean for our models? Specifically, for KNN, it means that starting from five features, the more features you have the greater should be the radius of the sphere centered on the point you're trying to classify to cover KNN.\n\nThe counter-intuitive phenomena that arise in a high-dimensional space are colloquially known as the **curse of dimensionality**. This includes a wide range of phenomena that can't be observed in the three-dimensional space we used to deal with. Pedro Domingos, in his _A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning_ , provides some examples:\n\n\"In high dimensions, most of the mass of a multivariate Gaussian distribution is not near the mean, but in an increasingly distant shell around it; and most of the volume of a high-dimensional orange is in the skin, not the pulp. If a constant number of examples is distributed uniformly in a high-dimensional hypercube, beyond some dimensionality most examples are closer to a face of the hypercube than to their nearest neighbor. And if we approximate a hypersphere by inscribing it in a hypercube, in high dimensions almost all the volume of the hypercube is outside the hypersphere. This is bad news for machine learning, where shapes of one type are often approximated by shapes of another.\"\n\nSpeaking specifically of KNN, it treats all dimensions as equally important. This creates problems when some of the features are irrelevant, especially in high dimensions, because the noise introduced by these irrelevant features suppresses the signal comprised in the good features. In our example, we bypassed multidimensional problems by taking into account only the magnitude of each three-dimensional vector in our motion signals.\n\n# KNN pros\n\n  * It's simple to implement if you are not going for optimized versions which use advanced data structures.\n  * It's easy to understand and interpret. The algorithm is well studied theoretically, and much known about its mathematical properties in different settings.\n  * You can plug in any distance metric. This allows working with complex objects, like time series, graphs, geographical coordinates, and basically anything you can define distance metric for.\n  * Algorithms can be used for classification, ranking, regression (using neighbors average or weighted average), recommendations, and can even provide (a kind of) probabilistic output\u2014what proportion of neighbors voted for this class.\n  * It's easy to incorporate new data in the model or remove outdated data from it. This makes KNN a good choice for online learning (see Chapter 1, _Getting Started with Machine Learning_ ) systems.\n\n# KNN cons\n\n  * The algorithm is fast for training but slow for inference.\n  * You need to choose the best _k_ somehow (see _Choosing a good k_ section).\n  * With the small values of _k_ , the model can be badly affected by outliers; in other words, it's prone to overfitting.\n  * You need to choose a distance metric. For usual real value features, one can choose among many available options (see _Calculating the distance_ section) resulting in different closest neighbors. The metric used by default in many machine learning packages is the Euclidean distance; however, this choice is nothing more than a tradition and for many applications is not the optimal.\n  * Model size grows with the new data incorporated.\n  * What should we do if there are several identical samples with different labels? In this case, the result can be different depending on the order in which samples are stored.\n  * The model suffers from the curse of dimensionality.\n\n# Improving our solution\n\nThere are several directions in which we can proceed to improve our algorithm for motion recognition.\n\n# Probabilistic interpretation\n\nThe `CMMotionActivity` class provides a confidence level for each predicted motion type. We can also add this feature to our algorithm. Instead of returning one label, we can return the proportion of labels among neighbors.\n\n# More data sources\n\nWe've used only accelerometer, but we could use gyroscope and magnetometer also. This can be done in several ways: you can just merge three time series into one three-dimensional time series or you can train an ensemble of three independent classifiers.\n\nWe've also merged _x_ , _y_ , and _z_ of accelerometer into one magnitude value, but you can try to use them as separate time series. In this case, for three motion sensors, you'd have nine time series.\n\n# Smarter time series chunking\n\nWe split our time series into chunks of 25 elements length. This introduces delay when the motion type changes from one to another. This can also be fixed relatively easily by introducing sliding windows instead of chunks. With this approach, we don't need to wait for the new chunk to be delivered; we just record a frame or predict a new label every time when we get a new value from the motion sensor.\n\n# Hardware acceleration\n\nThe KNN algorithm is inherently parallel because to calculate the distance between two data points you don't need to know anything about other data points. This makes it a perfect candidate for GPU acceleration. DTW, as we've mentioned, can also be optimized for parallel execution.\n\n# Trees to speed up the inference\n\nAn array is not the only possible candidate for KNN's memory implementation. To make neighbors search faster, many implementations use special data structures such as a KD tree or a ball tree.\n\nCheck scikit-learn documentation if you're interested in more details: <http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/stable\/modules\/neighbors.html#nearest-neighbor-algorithms>.\n\n# Utilizing state transitions\n\nTransitions between some motion types are more likely than between others: it's easy to imagine how a user can start walking after being still, but it's much harder to imagine how he could start running immediately after squatting. The popular way of modelling such probabilistic state changes is **hidden Markov model** ( **HMM** ), but that's a long story for some other time.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we implemented a working machine learning solution for motion data classification and trained it end-to-end on a device. The simplest of the instance-based models is the nearest neighbors classifier. You can use it to classify any type of data, the only tricky thing is to choose a suitable distance metric. For feature vectors (points in _n_ -dimensional space), many metrics have been invented, such as the Euclidean and Manhattan distances. For strings, editing distances are popular. For time series, we applied DTW.\n\nThe nearest neighbors method is a non-parametric model, which means that we can apply it without regard to statistical data distributions. Another advantage is that it is well suited for online learning and is easy to parallelize. Among the shortcomings is the curse of dimensionality and the algorithmic complexity of predictions (lazy learning).\n\nIn the next chapter, we're going to proceed with instance-based algorithms, this time focusing on the unsupervised clustering task.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. Lichman, M. (2013), UCI Machine Learning Repository (<http:\/\/archive.ics.uci.edu\/ml>), Irvine, CA: University of California, School of Information and Computer Science, _Dataset for ADL Recognition with Wrist-worn Accelerometer Data Set_\n  2. Toni Giorgino (2009), _Computing and Visualizing Dynamic Time Warping Alignments in R: The dtw Package,_ Journal of Statistical Software, 31(7), 1-24, doi:10.18637\/jss.v031.i07\n\n  3. _Accelerating Dynamic Time Warping Subsequence Search with GPUs and FPGAs_ , Doruk Sart, Abdullah Mueen, Walid Najjar, Vit Niennattrakul, Eamonn Keogh, in the Proceedings of IEEE ICDM 2010. pp. 1001-1006 at: <http:\/\/alumni.cs.ucr.edu\/~mueen\/pdf\/icdm2010.pdf>\n  4. Domingos P. 2012, _A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning_ , Communications of the ACM, October, 55(10), pp. 78-87\n\n# K-Means Clustering\n\nIn this chapter, we're going to switch our attention from supervised learning to unsupervised learning. The algorithms that we'll discuss and implement in this chapter are k-means and k-means++ clustering.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * Instance-based algorithm of k-means clustering\n  * The shortcomings of the k-means and how to fix them with the k-means++\n  * Where you can use k-means and where you shouldn't use it\n  * Application of clustering for signal quantization\n  * How to choose the number of clusters\n\n# Unsupervised learning\n\nUnsupervised learning is a way of making hidden patterns in data visible:\n\n  * Clustering finds groups or hierarchy of similar objects\n  * Unsupervised anomaly detection finds outliers (weird samples)\n  * Dimensionality reduction finds which details of data are the most important\n  * Factor analysis reveals the latent variables that influence the behavior of the observed variables\n  * Rule mining finds associations between different entities in the data\n\nAs usually, these tasks overlap pretty often, and many practical problems inhabit the neutral territory between supervised and unsupervised learning.\n\nWe will focus on clustering in this chapter and on rule mining in the next chapter. Others will remain mostly beyond the scope of this book, but in Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_ , we will nevertheless briefly discuss autoencoders; they can be used for both dimensionality reduction and anomaly detection.\n\nHere are some examples of real-world tasks where clustering would be your tool of choice:\n\n  * Cluster face photos by identity of a person depicted\n  * Find groups of customers for a targeted advertisement using the database of their transactions (market segmentation)\n  * Having a set of text documents, sort them into a folder according to the personal style (stylometry) of their author (authorship attribution) or according to their topics (topic modelling)\n  * Having DNA markers of relatives, build a phylogenetic or family tree (hierarchical clustering; clusters are nested in this case)\n\nNote, that these are clustering tasks only as long as groups\/categories\/clusters are not predefined in advance. As soon as you have predefined classes of objects, you would be better off with the classification algorithms.\n\nWhere might clustering be needed in the context of mobile development? Clustering pins on a map may look like the most natural idea. Having clusters of a user's locations, you can guess the location of his important locations, like house and workplace, for example. We will start from this and later discuss more complex applications of clustering. For now, we will concentrate on the classical clustering algorithm: _k_ -means.\n\n# K-means clustering\n\nThe name of this algorithm comes from the _k_ clusters into which the samples are divided, and the fact that each cluster is grouped around some mean value, a **centroid** of a cluster. This centroid serves as a prototype of a class. Each data point belongs to the cluster which centroid is the closest.\n\nThe algorithm was invented in 1957 at Bell Labs.\n\nIn this algorithm, each data point belongs to only one cluster. As a result of this algorithm, we get the feature space partitioned into Voronoi cells.\n\nBecause of the _k_ in its name, this algorithm is often confused with the KNN algorithm, but as we already have seen with _k_ -fold cross-validation, not all _k_ s are the same. You may wonder why machine learning people are so obsessed with this letter that they put it in every algorithm's name. I don't _k_ -now.\n\nFigure 4.1: Four different ways to cluster the same data using _k_ -means algorithm. Bald black dots are centroids of clusters. The samples are from the classical Iris dataset, plotted petals length against petal width.\n\nLet's define the algorithm's aim more formally. If _n_ is the number of your data points (samples, represented as real vectors of length _d_ ), then k-means algorithm splits them into _k_ sets (clusters, _k_ < _n_ ), such that within each cluster sum of distances from the points to the center (mean) is minimal. In other words, the objective of the algorithm is to find a set of clusters with the minimal WCSS:\n\nWhere:\n\n  * _k_ is a number of clusters\n  * _S_ _i_ clusters, _i_ =1, 2, ..., _k_ ,\n  * _x j_ is a sample (vector),\n  * _\u03bc i_ is a mean of samples in the cluster , in other words\u2014centroid of the cluster.\n\nFor the beginning we usually initialize centroids at random or with the values of some random samples from the dataset. Algorithm is iterative and each iteration consists of two steps:\n\n  1. Calculate the centroids for each cluster\n  2. Rreassign samples to clusters, according to the closest centroids\n\nAlgorithm ends, when after some iteration the coordinates of centroids haven't changed (convergence achieved) or after some predefined number of steps.\n\n# Implementing k-means in Swift\n\nSimilar to the KNN from the previous chapter, we'll have a structure to represent an algorithm and keep all its hyperparameters:\n\n    struct KMeans { \n      public let k: Int\n\nThe standard k-means algorithm was designed to be used only with Euclidean distance:\n\n    internal let distanceMetric = Euclidean.distance\n\nWe need several arrays to store different kinds of data during the clustering.\n\nStorage for samples:\n\n    internal var data: [[Double]] = []\n\nCoordinates of centroids:\n\n    public var centroids: [[Double]] = []\n\nAn array that matches each sample to its cluster. It should be of the same length as the data, and for every sample, it stores an index of centroid in the `centroids` array:\n\n    private(set) var clusters: [Int] = []\n\n**Within-cluster sum of squares** is a measure that we'll use later to assess the quality of the result:\n\n    internal var WCSS: Double = 0.0\n\nFor now, the only parameter that we pass on the initialization is the number of clusters:\n\n    public init (k: Int) { \n      self.k = k \n    }  \n    }\n\nUnlike KNN, k-means has only one method in its interface: `train(data:)`, which returns the results of clustering, the index of cluster each sample belongs to:\n\n    public mutating func train(data: [[Double]]) -> [Int] {\n\nBefore starting actual calculations, there are several inevitable ceremonies to perform.\n\nThe count of data points should be greater or equal to `k`, and the number of samples (`n`) should be greater than zero:\n\n    let n = data.count     \n    precondition(k <= n) \n    precondition(n > 0)\n\nCalculate the dimensionality of samples (number of features in each sample) and check that it is greater than zero:\n\n    let d = data.first!.count \n    precondition(d > 0)\n\nIf everything is fine, store the data:\n\n    self.data = data\n\nIf the number of clusters is equal to the number of data points, then we can just create a cluster for each data point and return the result:\n\n    if k == n { \n      centroids = data \n      clusters = Array<Int>(0..<k) \n      return clusters \n    }\n\nPopulating the `clusters` array with zeros:\n\n    clusters = [Int](repeating: 0, count: n)\n\nThe important detail of the k-means is an initial choice of centroids. The result of the algorithm may be significantly different, depending on the initialization step. Let's not overthink it for now, and go on with the random initialization:\n\n    chooseCentroidsAtRandom() \/\/ The function body will be described later.\n\nThe main part of the algorithm is a while loop, which breaks when the convergence conditions are met:\n\n    while true {\n\nInside those loops, the algorithm consists of two steps: update step, and assignment step.\n\n**Within-cluster sum of squares** ( **WCSS)** is an important performance measure for k-means. We set it to be zero on every iteration start and as it changes every time, we update the cluster centroids:\n\n    WCSS = 0.0 \n\n# Update step\n\nAfter the initial choice of centroids, we need to iterate over data points and update information about cluster assignment according to the distance to the closest centroid:\n\n    for (pointIndex, point) in data.enumerated() { \n      var minDistance = Double.infinity \n      for (clusterID, centroid) in centroids.enumerated() { \n        let distance = pow(distanceMetric(point, centroid), 2)\n\nRemember the newly calculated distance if it is less than the previously saved minimum distance for the corresponding data point:\n\n        if minDistance > distance { \n          clusters[pointIndex] = clusterID \n          minDistance = distance \n        } \n      }\n\nSave information about WCSS for the future:\n\n      WCSS += minDistance \n    } \n\n# Assignment step\n\nCalculate new centroids of clusters:\n\n    var centroidsCount = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: k) \n    let rowStub = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: d) \n    var centroidsCumulative = [[Double]](repeating: rowStub, count: k)\n\n    for (point, clusterID) in zip(data, clusters) { \n      centroidsCount[clusterID] += 1 \n      centroidsCumulative[clusterID] = vecAdd(centroidsCumulative[clusterID], point) \n    }\n\n    var newCentroids = centroidsCumulative \n    for (j, row) in centroidsCumulative.enumerated() { \n      for (i, element) in row.enumerated() { \n        let new = element\/centroidsCount[j] \n        assert(!new.isNaN) \n        newCentroids[j][i] = new \n      } \n    }\n\nAfter this, we have to check whether the new centroids are different from those previously calculated. If they are different, we perform another iteration of optimization, if not, we've reached the convergence and can break the loop:\n\n    var convergence = false \n    convergence = zip(centroids, newCentroids).map{$0.0 == $0.1}.reduce(true, and)  \n    \/\/ and(_: Bool, _:Bool) was added for convenience \n    if convergence { break } \n    centroids = newCentroids \n    }\n\n    return clusters \n    }\n\nDo you remember, we've skipped the cluster centroid's initialization implementation? So, here it goes:\n\n    internal mutating func chooseCentroidsAtRandom() { \n      let uniformWeights = [Double](repeating: 1.0, count: data.count) \n      let randomIndexesNoReplacement = Random.Weighted.indicesNoReplace(weights:uniformWeights, count: k)\n\n      var centroidID = 0 \n      for index in randomIndexesNoReplacement { \n        centroids.append(data[index]) \n        clusters[index] = centroidID \n        centroidID += 1 \n      } \n    }\n\nThis `Random.Weighted.indicesNoReplace(weights:uniformWeights, count: k)` looks mysterious, but it's just a utility function for random sampling with predefined weights from an array. It samples without replacement and returns an array of indices. In this case, all weights are equal so the probability of each element to be sampled is equal. Later, we'll change this to improve the quality of clustering and speed of convergence. I ported this function from the R standard library.\n\n# Clustering objects on a map\n\nWhere can we apply k-means in the context of mobile development? Clustering pins on a map may look like the most natural idea. Having the clusters of user locations, you can guess the location of the user's important locations like home and workplace, for example. We will implement pin clustering to visualize k-means, some of its unfortunate properties, and show why such an application of it may be not the best idea.\n\nYou can find a demo application under the `4_kmeans\/MapKMeans` folder of supplementary code. Everything interesting happens in the `ViewController.swift`. Clustering happens in the `clusterize()` method:\n\n    func clusterize() { \n      let k = Settings.k \n      colors = (0..<k).map{_ in Random.Uniform.randomColor()} \n      let data = savedAnnotations.map{ [Double]($0.coordinate) } \n      var kMeans = KMeans(k: k) \n      clusters = kMeans.train(data: data) \n      centroidAnnotations = kMeans.centroids \n        .map { CLLocationCoordinate2D(latitude: $0[0], longitude: $0[1]) } \n        .map { coordinate in \n          let annotation = MKPointAnnotation() \n          annotation.coordinate = coordinate \n          annotation.title = \"(coordinate)\" \n          return annotation \n        } \n    }\n\n`CLLocationCoordinate2D` gets converted to the `Double` in the following way:\n\n    extension Array where Element == Double { \n      init(_ coordinates: CLLocationCoordinate2D) { \n        self.init(arrayLiteral: Double(coordinates.latitude), Double(coordinates.longitude)) \n      } \n    }\n\nThe app shows the map and you can put in as many pins as you wish by tapping on it. Try to form several clusters and run the algorithm by pressing the circular arrow button several times. Note that the results of the algorithm are usually unstable: it can give different results every time. Check how the result differs when you chose another number of clusters.\n\nFigure 4.2: The results of the demo app work. Combine this with locations from the photo library metadata and you can guess where the user lives, works and spends his\/her free time.\n\nNow to the problems with using k-means with geospatial data. You may notice that it looks like algorithm treats horizontal and vertical space unequally important. That's because one degree of longitude is always about 111 km, but one degree of latitude has a different length depending on how far from the equator you are. Basically, you should not use geographical coordinates as features for Euclidean distance. More to the point, if you put some points on the border between Alaska and Russia, you would observe that KNN treats points in Russia as very different from points close to Alaska. This is due to the 180\u00b0 Meridian. Basically, we can say that using k-means for pin clustering was a mistake. It could work on some relatively small scale. for example, it could work fine on a city scale. Just don't use it on the world map scale. Maps are just ideal for vanilla k-means problem demonstrations.\n\nBut wait. Cut can't we replace the Euclidean distance with some other distance metric, like we did with KNN in the previous chapter? No, unfortunately not this time. Strictly speaking, k-means is not a distance-based algorithm. The objective of the algorithm is to minimize the within-cluster variance (or squared error). The formula of a variance happened to be identical to the formula of Euclidean distance. This makes it impossible to plug in to your custom distance metrics because the algorithm can stop converge. For pin clustering, it's better to choose some other algorithm, and for k-means it's better to choose some other application, and indeed we will. But first, let's discuss some problems that became apparent after our first experiment:\n\n  * <https:\/\/datascience.stackexchange.com\/questions\/761\/clustering-geo-location-coordinates-lat-long-pairs>\n  * <https:\/\/stats.stackexchange.com\/questions\/81481\/why-does-k-means-clustering-algorithm-use-only-euclidean-distance-metric>\n\n# Choosing the number of clusters\n\nIf you don't know in advance how many clusters you have, then how do you choose the optimal _k_? This is essentially an egg-and-chicken problem. Several approaches are popular and we'll discuss one of them: the elbow method.\n\nDo you remember those mysterious WCSS that we calculated on every iteration of k-means? This measure tells us how much points in every cluster are different from their centroid. We can calculate it for several different _k_ values and plot the result. It usually looks somewhat similar to the plot on the following graph:\n\nFigure 4.3: WCSS plotted against the number of clusters\n\nThis plot should remind you about the similar plots of loss functions from Chapter 3, _K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier_. It shows how well our model fits the data. The idea of the elbow method is to choose the _k_ value after which the result is not going to improve sharply anymore. The name comes from the similarity of the plot to an arm. We choose the point at the elbow, marked with the red line on the graph.\n\nFor more information refer to the following links:\n\n  * <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Determining_the_number_of_clusters_in_a_data_set>\n  * <http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/18042290\/implementing-the-elbow-method-for-finding-the-optimum-number-of-clusters-for-k-m>\n\n# K-means clustering \u2013 problems\n\nRefer to the following for more information about k-means and k-means++:\n\n  * <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/K-means_clustering>\n  * <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/K-means%2B%2B>\n\nK-means algorithm suffers from at least two shortcomings:\n\n  * The worst-case time complexity of the algorithm is super polynomial in the input size, meaning that it is not bounded above by any polynomial\n  * Standard algorithm can perform arbitrarily poor in comparison to the optimal clustering because it finds only an approximation of the real optimum\n\nTry it out yourself: put four pins on a map, as shown in the following image. After running clustering several times, you may notice that the algorithm often converges to the suboptimal solution:\n\nFigure 4.4: Optimal and non-optimal clustering results on the same dataset\n\n# K-means++\n\nAn improved algorithm was proposed in 2007. K-means++ addresses the problem of suboptimal clustering by introducing an additional step for a good centroids initialization.\n\nAn improved algorithm of initial centers selection looks like this:\n\n  1. Select randomly any data point to be the first center\n  2. For all other data points, calculate the distance to the first center _d_ ( _x_ )\n  3. Sample the next center from the weighted probability distribution, where the probability of each data point to become a next center is proportional to the square of distance _d_ ( _x_ )2\n  4. Until _k_ centers are chosen, repeat step 2 and step 3\n  5. Proceed with the standard k-means algorithm\n\nIn Swift, it looks like this:\n\n    internal mutating func chooseCentroids() { \n      let n = data.count\n\n      var minDistances = [Double](repeating: Double.infinity, count: n) \n      var centerIndices = [Int]()\n\n`clusterID` is an integer identifier of a cluster: the first cluster has identifier zero, the second has one, and so on:\n\n    for clusterID in 0 ..< k { \n      var pointIndex: Int \n      if clusterID == 0 {\n\nChoose the first centroid randomly from data points:\n\n    pointIndex = Random.Uniform.int(n) \n    } else {\n\nIn all other cases, choose center from the weighted distribution, proportionally to the squared distance to the closest centroid:\n\n    if let nextCenter = Random.Weighted.indicesNoReplace(weights: minDistances, count: 1).first { \n      pointIndex = nextCenter \n    } else { \n      fatalError() \n    } \n    } \n    centerIndices.append(pointIndex) \n    let center = data[pointIndex] \n    centroids.append(center)\n\nThe distance to the closest center is zero. Hence, the probability of sampling once again is also zero:\n\n    minDistances[pointIndex] = 0.0 \n    clusters[pointIndex] = clusterID\n\nAfter this, we have to perform one iteration of the assign step so that all points are assigned to the corresponding clusters when we proceed with the usual k-means algorithm.\n\nCalculate the distance from each of the data points to the centroid:\n\n    var nextI = (0, centerIndices.first ?? Int.max) \n    for (pointIndex, point) in data.enumerated() {\n\nSkip the data point if it was selected as a center already:\n\n    if pointIndex == nextI.1 {\n\nCheck if all centroids were attended:\n\n    if nextI.0 < clusterID { \n      let nextIndex = nextI.0+1 \n      nextI = (nextIndex, centerIndices[nextIndex]) \n    } \n    continue \n    }\n\nIf the data point is not selected as a center yet, calculate the distance from it to the last selected center:\n\n    let distance = pow(distanceMetric(point, center), 2)\n\nRemember the newly calculated distance if it is less than the minimum distance saved for the corresponding data point previously:\n\n    let currentMin = minDistances[pointIndex] \n    if currentMin > distance { \n      minDistances[pointIndex] = distance \n      clusters[pointIndex] = clusterID \n    } \n    } \n    } \n    }\n\nThat's it. Now don't forget to update the rest of the code to work with the ++ part:\n\n    public struct KMeans { \n      public enum InitializationMethod { \n        case random \n        case plusplus \n      } \n      ... \n      public var initialization: InitializationMethod = .plusplus \n      ... \n    }\n\n    public mutating func train(data: [[Double]]) -> [Int] { \n      ... \n      switch initialization { \n        case .random: \n        chooseCentroidsAtRandom() \n        case .plusplus: \n        chooseCentroids() \n      } \n      ... \n    } \n\n# Image segmentation using k-means\n\nThe k-means algorithm was invented in the field of digital signal processing and is still in common use in that field for signal quantization. For this task, it performs much better than for pin clustering. Let's look at an example on the following diagram. The picture can be segmented into meaningful parts using color space quantization. We choose the number of clusters, then run k-means on every pixel's RGB values, and find the cluster's centroids. Then we replace each pixel with the color of its corresponding centroid. This can be used in image editing for separating objects from the background or for lossy image compression. In Chapter 12, _Optimizing Neural Networks for Mobile Devices_ , we're going to use this approach for deep learning neural network compression:\n\nFigure 4.5: Image segmentation using k-means\n\nHere is a code sample in Objective-C++ using fast OpenCV implementation of k-means. You can find the whole iOS application in the folder `4_kmeans\/ImageSegmentation`:\n\n    - (cv::Mat)kMeansClustering:(cv::Mat)input withK:(int)k { \n      cv::cvtColor(input, input, CV_RGBA2RGB); \n      cv::Mat samples(input.rows * input.cols, 3, CV_32F);\n\n      for (int y = 0; y < input.rows; y++){ \n        for (int x = 0; x < input.cols; x++){ \n          for (int z = 0; z < 3; z++){ \n            samples.at<float>(y + x*input.rows, z) = input.at<cv::Vec3b>(y,x)[z]; \n          } \n        } \n      }\n\n      int clusterCount = k; \n      cv::Mat labels; \n      int attempts = 5; \n      cv::Mat centers; \n      kmeans(samples, clusterCount, labels, cv::TermCriteria(CV_TERMCRIT_ITER|CV_TERMCRIT_EPS, 100, 0.01), attempts, cv::KMEANS_PP_CENTERS, centers);\n\n      cv::Mat outputMatrix( input.rows, input.cols, input.type());\n\n      for (int y = 0; y < input.rows; y++) { \n        for (int x = 0; x < input.cols; x++) { \n          int cluster_idx = labels.at<int>(y + x*input.rows,0); \n          outputMatrix.at<cv::Vec3b>(y,x)[0] = centers.at<float>(cluster_idx, 0); \n          outputMatrix.at<cv::Vec3b>(y,x)[1] = centers.at<float>(cluster_idx, 1); \n          outputMatrix.at<cv::Vec3b>(y,x)[2] = centers.at<float>(cluster_idx, 2); \n        } \n      }\n\n      return outputMatrix; \n    } \n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we've discussed an important unsupervised learning task: clustering. The simplest clustering algorithm is k-means. It doesn't provide stable results and is computationally complex, but this can be improved using k-means++. The algorithm can be applied to any data for which Euclidean distance is a meaningful measure, but the best area to apply it is a signal quantization. For instance, we've used it for image segmentation. Many more clustering algorithms exist for different types of tasks.\n\nIn the next chapter, we're going to explore unsupervised learning more deeply. Specifically, we're going to talk about algorithms for finding association rules in data: association learning.\n\n# Association Rule Learning\n\nIn many practical applications data comes in the form of lists (ordered or unordered): grocery lists, playlists, visited locations or URLs, app logs, and so on. Sometimes those lists are generated as a byproduct of business processes, but they still contain potentially useful information and insights for process improvement. To extract some of that hidden knowledge, one can use a special kind of unsupervised learning algorithm\u2014association rule mining. In this chapter, we are going to build an app that can analyze your shopping lists to find out your preferences in the form of rules such as \" _If you've bought oatmeal and cornflakes, you also want to buy milk_.\" This can be used to create an adaptable user experience, for instance, contextual suggestions or reminders.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * Association rules\n  * Association measures\n  * Association rule mining algorithms\n  * Building an adaptable user experience\n\n# Seeing association rules\n\nThere are many situations where we're interested in patterns demonstrating the co-occurrence of some items. For example, marketers want to know which goods are often bought together, clinical personnel need to know symptoms associated with certain medical conditions, and in information security we want to know which activity patterns are associated with intrusion or fraud. All of these problems have a common structure: there are items (goods, symptoms, records in logs) organized in transactions (shopping list, medical case, user activity transaction). With this type of data, we can then analyze it to find association rules, such as _If the client bought a lemon and_ _some cookies, he is also likely to buy tea,_ or in more formal notation: (cookies, lemon \u2192 tea).\n\nWe will use pictograms throughout this chapter to facilitate the visual notation of item sets and rules: {    \u2192  }.\n\nThese rules allow us to make informed decisions, such as putting associated items on the same shelf, providing patients with the appropriate care, and alerting security staff if suspicious activity is suspected in a system. The unsupervised learning algorithms that find these rules are known as **association rule mining** or **association rule learning** algorithms. These are considered a type of unsupervised learning, as you do not need labeled data to generate a rule.\n\nAssociation rule learning is not the type of algorithm that one typically sees in an introductory-level book about machine learning. This is perhaps due to their relatively narrow use case. However, in the following sections, we will see how rule learning can become the engine of an adaptable user interface, and used in other important applications. After this, we hope you will agree that the power of these methods has been underestimated.\n\n# Defining data structures\n\nWhat we want to have by the end of this chapter is a rule learning algorithm called Apriori. We will learn about the algorithm details later; for now, we only want to define the data structures that we will work with throughout the chapter, along with some utility functions.\n\nThe generic structure for the algorithm is as follows:\n\n    public struct Apriori<Item: Hashable & Equatable> {\n\nIn the simplest case, the ordering of the items in the transaction doesn't matter, and neither does their number nor the associated timestamps. This means that we consider our item sets and transactions as mathematical or Swift sets:\n\n    public typealias ItemSet = Set<Item>\n\nThe parameter `I` is a type of item in your transactions. Next, we have to implement some structures for subsets and rules:\n\n    class Subsets: Sequence {  \n      var subsets: [ItemSet]  \n      init(_ set: ItemSet) {  \n        self.subsets = Array(set).combinations().map(Set.init)  \n      }  \n      func makeIterator() -> AnyIterator<ItemSet> {  \n        return AnyIterator { [weak self] in  \n        guard let `self` = self else {  \n          return nil  \n        }  \n        return self.subsets.popLast()  \n      }  \n    }  \n    public struct Rule {  \n      let ifPart: Set<I>  \n      let thenPart: Set<I>  \n    }\n\nApriori's structure variables are as follows:\n\n    public var elements: Set<Int> \n    public let transactions: ContiguousArray<ItemSet> \n    public let map: [I: Int] \n    public let invertedMap: [Int: I]\n\nSupports are stored here to prevent multiple computations:\n\n    public convenience init(transactions: [[I]]) { \n        self.init(transactions: transactions.map(Set<I>.init)) \n    }\n\n    public init(transactions: [Set<I>]) { \n        \/\/ delete\n\n        var indexedTransactions = [ItemSet]() \n        var counter = 0 \n        var map = [I: Int]() \n        var invertedMap = [Int: I]()\n\n        for transaction in transactions { \n            var indexedTransaction = ItemSet() \n            for item in transaction { \n                if let stored = map[item] { \n                    indexedTransaction.insert(stored) \n                } else { \n                    map[item] = counter \n                    invertedMap[counter] = item \n                    indexedTransaction.insert(counter) \n                    counter += 1 \n                } \n            } \n            indexedTransactions.append(indexedTransaction) \n        }\n\n        self.transactions = ContiguousArray(indexedTransactions) \n        self.elements = self.transactions.reduce(Set<Int>()) {$0.union($1)} \n        self.map = map \n        self.invertedMap = invertedMap\n\n        self.total = Double(self.transactions.count) \n    } \n\n# Using association measures to assess rules\n\nLook at these two rules:\n\n  * {Oatmeal, corn flakes \u2192 Milk}\n  * {Dog food, paperclips \u2192 Washing powder}\n\nIntuitively, the second rule looks more unlikely than the first one, doesn't it? How can we tell that for sure, though? In this case, we need some quantitative measures that will show us how likely each rule is. What we are looking for here are association measures, as we call them in machine learning and data mining. Rule mining algorithms revolve around this notion in a similar manner to how distance-based algorithms revolve around distance metrics. In this chapter, we're going to use four association measures: support, confidence, lift, and conviction (see _Table 5.1_ ).\n\nNote that these measures tell us nothing about how useful or interesting the rules are, but only quantify their probabilistic characteristics. A rule's usefulness and practicality can be hard to grasp mathematically and often requires human judgment in each case. As usual in statistics, interpreting analysis results is something left to the discretion of a domain expert or developer.\n\n# Supporting association measures\n\nLet's say that we have the following six shopping lists (six transactions) composed of only four items: a hot dog, tomatoes, tea, and cookies. This is our database:\n\n{    }\n\n{   }\n\n{   }\n\n{  }\n\n{  }\n\n{ }\n\nWe say that the item set {  } covers the transactions 1, 3, and 5, because the item set is a subset of each of those transactions. There are _2 n = 24 = 16_ possible item sets in our example, including the empty item set.\n\nThe support of the item set shows how often this set occurs as part of a transaction; in other words, what proportion of transactions is covered in this item set. For example:\n\nSupport for an empty item set is assumed to be equal to the number of transactions in the dataset ( _supp({}) = 6_ , in our case). If you represent all the item sets as a graph (see _Figure 5.1_ ), you may notice that support always decreases as the length of item sets grows. When mining for association rules, we are usually interested in the larger item sets that have support greater than a given threshold; for instance, for the support threshold 0.5, such item sets are {  }, { }, and { }. In other words, this means that each of the item sets cover at least half of all transactions.\n\nHere, we are extracting association measures to the separate structure extension for convenience:\n\n    public extension Apriori { \n      public mutating func support(_ set: ItemSet) -> Double {\n\nWe store support values that we've already calculated because they don't change during algorithm running, and we will be able to prevent the repetition of a costly operation. On the other hand, however, this solution increases the memory footprint:\n\n    if let stored = supports[set] { \n      return stored \n    }\n\n    let support = transactions.filter{set.isSubset(of: $0)}.count \n    let total = transactions.count\n\n    let result = Double(support)\/Double(total) \n    supports[set] = result\n\n    return result \n    }\n\nFigure 5.1: The graph of item sets for the transactions depicted in the top-left corner. The number of bold sides for each item set depicts the support value (for instance, a triangle means that support = 3). The width of the incoming edges for each node is proportional to its support. Note how the support monotonically decreases from the top (6) to the bottom (1) as the item set size grows\n\n# Confidence association measures\n\nThe confidence association measures shows how likely it is for an item to occur in a transaction including other items:\n\nNote that confidence can't be greater than _1_. The problem with this measure is that it doesn't take into account the general support of the item; if { } is common in the dataset, then it's likely that it will occur in the transaction independently of any associations.\n\nNote that:\n\nIn Swift:\n\n    public mutating func confidence(_ rule: Rule) -> Double { \n        return support(rule.ifPart.union(rule.thenPart))\/support(rule.ifPart) \n    } \n\n# Lift association measures\n\nLift is confidence normalized by the support of the item of interest, shown as follows:\n\nLift takes into consideration the support of both sets {  } and { }. The _lift_ > _1_ shows that items are associated positively, meaning that items after the arrow are likely to be bought if items before the arrow are present. The _lift_ < _1_ implies a negative association; in our case, this means that if the customer has taken already bought a hot dog and tomatoes it's unlikely he will add tea to the basket. _Lift_ = _1_ means no association at all.\n\nUnlike confidence:\n\nIn Swift:\n\n    public mutating func lift(_ rule: Rule) -> Double { \n        return support(rule.ifPart.union(rule.thenPart))\/support(rule.ifPart)\/support(rule.thenPart) \n    } \n\n# Conviction association measures\n\nConviction is a measure that helps to judge if the rule happened to be there by chance or not. It was introduced by Sergey Brin and coauthors in 1997 [1] as a replacement for confidence, which can't capture the direction of an association. Conviction is a comparison of the probability of _if_ appearing without _then,_ if they were dependent on the actual frequency of _if_ without _then:_\n\nIn the nominator, we have the expected frequency of item sets without { }. (In other words, how often the rule doesn't hold true.) In the denominator, we have an observed frequency of false predictions. In our example, it shows that the rule {  \u2192  } holds true approximately 67% more often ( _1.667_ as often) if the association between { } and { } was by chance.\n\n**Association measure** | **Formula** | **Range** | **Notes**\n\n---|---|---|---\n\nSupport | _supp(X) = P(X +)_\n\n_supp (X \u222a Y) = P(X + \u2229 Y+)_ | [0, 1] | How often does _X_ occur in the dataset? How often do _X_ and _Y_ occur in the dataset together?\n\nConfidence |\n\n  | [0, 1] | Given the presence of _X_ , what is the probability that _Y_ is also present?\n\nLift |   | [0, \u221e] | _1_ means independence between _X_ and _Y_ , because for independent events _P(A \u2229 B) = P(A)P(B)_.\n\nConviction |   | [0, \u221e] | _1_ means independence, \u221e means always true.\n\nTable 5.1: Common association measures\n\n_X_ and _Y_ stand for the item sets themselves, and they stand for the events of their presence in a transaction, so _P(X \\+ \u2229 Y+)_ denotes the probability that both _X_ and _Y_ are present in a transaction.\n\nFor the comprehensive list of association measures used in rule learning with explanations, formulas, and references, see _A Probabilistic Comparison of Commonly Used Interest Measures for Association Rules_ by Michael Hahsler at http:\/\/michael.hahsler.net\/research\/association_rules\/measures.html.\n\n# Decomposing the problem\n\nThe task of extracting all association rules with the given confidence and support from the dataset is non-trivial. Let's approach it by decomposing it into smaller subtasks:\n\n  * Find all item sets with the support above the given threshold\n  * Generate all possible rules from the item sets that have confidence above the given threshold\n\n# Generating all possible rules\n\nWe need a method to generate all possible combinations of elements of this array. Combinations are found via the binary representation of subsets, as shown in the following snippet:\n\n    public extension Array { \n    public func combinations() -> [[Element]] { \n            if isEmpty { return [] } \n            let numberOfSubsets = Int(pow(2, Double(count))) \n            var result = [[Element]]() \n            for i in 0..<numberOfSubsets { \n                var remainder = i \n                var index = 0 \n                var combination = [Element]() \n                while remainder > 0 { \n                    if remainder % 2 == 1 { \n                        combination.append(self[index]) \n                    } \n                    index += 1 \n                    remainder \/= 2 \n                } \n                result.append(combination) \n            } \n            return result \n        } \n    }\n\nThe following usage example:\n\n    let array = [1,2,3] \n    print(array.combinations())\n\nProduces:\n\n    **[[], [1], [2], [1, 2], [3], [1, 3], [2, 3], [1, 2, 3]]** \n\n# Finding frequent item sets\n\nThe first step of the algorithm that we implement is based on the support measure. This function returns a set of all item sets with support larger than `minSupport`:\n\n    func frequentItemSets(minSupport: Double) -> Set<ItemSet> {\n\n        var itemSets = Set<ItemSet>()\n\n        let emptyItemSet: ItemSet = ItemSet()\n\n        supporters[emptyItemSet] = Array(0 ..< transactions.count)\n\nHere we use the priority queue data structure to keep track of possible extensions.\n\nThere is no priority queue implementation in the Foundation or Swift standard libraries, and standard data structures are out of the scope of this book. We are using the open source implementation by David Kopec (MIT license): <https:\/\/github.com\/davecom\/SwiftPriorityQueue>.\n\nTo make it work with item sets we had to change the code a bit\u2014instead of being parameterized with the comparable types, it is now parameterized with types conforming to the equatable protocol:\n\n        var queue = PriorityQueue<ItemSet>(order: { (lh, rh) -> Bool in \n            lh.count > rh.count \n        }, startingValues: [emptyItemSet])\n\n        while let itemset = queue.pop() { \n            var isMax = true\n\n            for anExtension in allExtensions(itemset) { \n                if isAboveSupportThreshold(anExtension, extending: itemset, threshold: minSupport) { \n                    isMax = false \n                    queue.push(anExtension) \n                } \n            } \n            if isMax == true { \n                itemSets.insert(itemset) \n            } \n        }\n\n        return itemSets \n    }\n\nNote that this algorithm has one bad characteristic: it generates the same item sets multiple times. We'll return to this later.\n\n# The Apriori algorithm\n\nThe most famous algorithm for association rule learning is Apriori. It was proposed by Agrawal and Srikant in 1994. The input of the algorithm is a dataset of transactions where each transaction is a set of items. The output is a collection of association rules for which support and confidence are greater than some specified threshold. The name comes from the Latin phrase _a priori_ (literally, \"from what is before\") because of one smart observation behind the algorithm: _if the item set is infrequent, then we can be sure in advance that all its subsets are also infrequent._\n\nYou can implement Apriori with the following steps:\n\n  1. Count the support of all item sets of length 1, or calculate the frequency of every item in the dataset.\n  2. Drop the item sets that have support lower than the threshold.\n  3. Store all the remaining item sets.\n  4. Extend each stored item set by one element with all possible extensions. This step is known as candidate generation.\n  5. Calculate the support value of each candidate.\n  6. Drop all candidates below the threshold.\n  7. Drop all stored items from step 3 that have the same support as their extensions.\n  8. Add all the remaining candidates to storage.\n  9. Repeat steps 4 to step 8 until there are no more extensions with support greater than the threshold.\n\nThis is not a very efficient algorithm if you have a lot of data, but mobile applications are not recommended for use with big data anyway. This algorithm was influential in its time, and is also elegant and easy to understand today.\n\nIf you want to extract rules from your data as part of your server-side data processing pipeline, you may want to check Apriori's implementation in the `mlxtend` Python library: <http:\/\/rasbt.github.io\/mlxtend\/user_guide\/frequent_patterns\/apriori\/>.\n\nFigure 5.2: By excluding only one node we can reduce the number of possible rules twice. By excluding two nodes, we reduce the hypothesis space four times\n\n# Implementing Apriori in Swift\n\nWhat will follow is a simplified version of a code that can be found in supplementary materials. We will skip some of the less important parts here.\n\nThe main method, which returns association rules with the given support and confidence, is as follows:\n\n    public func associationRules(minSupport: Double, minConfidence: Double) -> [Rule] { \n        var rules = [Rule]() \n        let frequent = frequentItemSets(minSupport: minSupport)\n\n        for itemSet in frequent { \n            for (ifPart, thenPart) in nonOverlappingSubsetPairs(itemSet) { \n                if confidence(ifPart, thenPart) >= minConfidence { \n                    let rule = Rule(ifPart: convertIndexesToItems(ifPart), thenPart: convertIndexesToItems(thenPart)) \n                    rules.append(rule) \n                } \n            } \n        }\n\n        return rules \n    } \n    func nonOverlappingSubsetPairs(_ itemSet: ItemSet) -> [(ItemSet, ItemSet)] { \n        var result = [(ItemSet, ItemSet)]() \n        let ifParts = Subsets(itemSet) \n        for ifPart in ifParts { \n            let nonOverlapping = itemSet.subtracting(ifPart) \n            let thenParts = Subsets(nonOverlapping) \n            for thenPart in thenParts { \n                result.append((ifPart, thenPart)) \n            } \n        } \n        return result \n    } \n\n# Running Apriori\n\nAnd finally, this is how we use the algorithm with our toy example:\n\n    let transactions = [[\"![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)\", \"![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png)\", \"![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png)\", \"![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)\", \"![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png)\", \"![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)\", \"![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png)\", \"![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)\", \"![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png)\", \"![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png)\", \"![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png)\"], \n                        [\"![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)\"] \n    ]\n\n    let apriori = Apriori<String>(transactions: transactions) \n    let rules = apriori.associationRules(minSupport: 0.3, minConfidence: 0.5) \n    for rule in rules { \n        print(rule) \n        print(\"Confidence: \", apriori.confidence(rule), \"Lift: \", apriori.lift(rule), \"Conviction: \", apriori.conviction(rule)) \n    }\n\nIt produces the following:\n\n    { ![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png) \u2192 ![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png)} \n    Confidence:  0.8 Lift:  1.4 Conviction:  2.14285714285714 \n    { ![](assets\/03daed71-d8e7-478a-9bdf-08b84cb517a7.png) \u2192 ![](assets\/0c8a58ea-7c29-4474-adf0-1e07d1976d70.png)} \n    Confidence:  1.0 Lift:  1.4 Conviction:  inf \n    { ![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png) \u2192 ![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png)} \n    Confidence:  0.75 Lift:  1.3125 Conviction:  1.71428571428571 \n    { ![](assets\/2705c197-5814-4394-add9-50d4c19f03ae.png) \u2192 ![](assets\/051951f4-7bc3-4fdf-884b-db711923f62a.png)} \n    Confidence:  0.75 Lift:  1.3125 Conviction:  1.71428571428571\n\nLet's analyze what's going on here. The second rule has the maximum confidence as well as conviction.\n\n# Running Apriori on real-world data\n\nIn this example, we collected real-world shopping lists from an apartment and composed a small, but nevertheless realistic, dataset. Let's see if we'll be able to extract any meaningful rules from it using our algorithm. Please note that this dataset is extremely small. For any production application of Apriori, you will need much larger datasets:\n\n    let transactions =  \n    [[\"Grapes\", \"Cheese\"], \n    [\"Cheese\", \"Milk\"], \n    [\"Apples\", \"Oranges\", \"Cheese\", \"Gingerbread\", \"Marshmallows\", \"Eggs\", \"Canned vegetables\"], \n    [\"Tea\", \"Apples\", \"Bagels\", \"Marshmallows\", \"Icecream\", \"Canned vegetables\"], \n    [\"Cheese\", \"Buckwheat\", \"Cookies\", \"Oatmeal\", \"Banana\", \"Butter\", \"Bread\", \"Apples\", \"Baby puree\"], \n    [\"Baby puree\", \"Cookies\"], \n    [\"Cookies\"], \n    [\"Chicken\", \"Grapes\", \"Pizza\", \"Cheese\", \"Marshmallows\", \"Cream\"], \n    [\"Potatoes\"], \n    [\"Chicken\"], \n    [\"\u0421ornflakes\", \"Cookies\", \"Oatmeal\"], \n    [\"Tea\"], \n    [\"Chicken\"], \n    [\"Chicken\", \"Eggs\", \"Cheese\", \"Oatmeal\", \"Bell pepper\", \"Bread\", \"Chocolate butter\", \"Buckwheat\", \"Tea\", \"Rice\", \"Corn\", \"\u0421ornflakes\", \"Juice\", \"Sugar\"], \n    [\"Bread\", \"Canned vegetables\"], \n    [\"Carrot\", \"Beetroot\", \"Apples\", \"Sugar\", \"Buckwheat\", \"Rice\", \"Pasta\", \"Salt\", \"Rice flour\", \"Dates\", \"Tea\", \"Butter\", \"Beef\", \"Cheese\", \"Eggs\", \"Bread\", \"Cookies\"] \n    ]\n\nAfter some experimentation with the threshold values, you can see that we ended up with 0.15 for support and 0.75 for confidence. This gives the 15 rules you can see in the following table:\n\n    let apriori = Apriori<String>(transactions: transactions) \n    let rules = apriori.associationRules(minSupport: 0.15, minConfidence: 0.75)\n\nThe resulting rules are sorted according to their lift:\n\n**Rules** | **Confidence** | **Lift** | **Conviction**\n\n---|---|---|---\n\n{Cheese, bread \u2192 Buckwheat} | 1 | 5.333333333 | \u221e\n\n{Buckwheat \u2192 Cheese, bread} | 1 | 5.333333333 | \u221e\n\n{Cheese, buckwheat \u2192 Bread} | 1 | 4 | \u221e\n\n{Buckwheat \u2192 Bread} | 1 | 4 | \u221e\n\n{Bread \u2192 Cheese, buckwheat} | 0.75 | 4 | 3.25\n\n{Bread \u2192 Buckwheat} | 0.75 | 4 | 3.25\n\n{Eggs \u2192 Cheese} | 1 | 2.285714286 | \u221e\n\n{Buckwheat, bread \u2192 Cheese} | 1 | 2.285714286 | \u221e\n\n{Buckwheat \u2192 Cheese} | 1 | 2.285714286 | \u221e\n\n{Bread \u2192 Cheese} | 0.75 | 1.714285714 | 2.25\n\n{Apples \u2192 Cheese} | 0.75 | 1.714285714 | 2.25\n\nTable 5.2: 15 rules\n\nBuckwheat is a type of cereal popular in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and elsewhere. People usually eat buckwheat porridge with butter and bread (but not in Poland). In our case, however, it looks as though we prefer it with cheese rather than butter, which is not completely true. Seven out of the 11 rules recommend that we buy cheese, which is not surprising as it's the most common item across all transactions. The remaining four rules point at an association between bread and buckwheat, which is not a fluke because here in Ukraine many people consume these products together, and so the rules are valid. What is important here is that the algorithm is able to extract patterns that correspond to real-world phenomena: user preferences, cultural traditions, and so on.\n\n# The pros and cons of Apriori\n\nThe pros of Apriori are as follows:\n\n  * This is the most simple and easy-to-understand algorithm among association rule learning algorithms\n  * The resulting rules are intuitive and easy to communicate to an end user\n  * It doesn't require labeled data as it is fully unsupervised; as a result, you can use it in many different situations because unlabeled data is often more accessible\n  * Many extensions were proposed for different use cases based on this implementation\u2014for example, there are association learning algorithms that take into account the ordering of items, their number, and associated timestamps\n  * The algorithm is exhaustive, so it finds all the rules with the specified support and confidence\n\nThe cons of Apriori are as follows:\n\n  * If the dataset is small, the algorithm can find many false associations that happened simply by chance. You can address this issue by evaluating obtained rules on the held-out test data for the support, confidence, lift, and conviction values.\n  * As Agrawal and Srikant note at the end of their original paper, the algorithm doesn't take into account hierarchies of products or quantities of the items bought in a transaction. This additional information, while useful for market basket analysis, may be irrelevant in other rule mining domains and is out of the scope of this particular machine learning approach.\n  * The algorithm is computationally expensive, but there are many variants of Apriori that improve its algorithmic complexity.\n\n# Building an adaptable user experience\n\nHuman-computer interaction is never easy. Computers don't understand speech, sentiments, or body language. However, we are all used to communicating with our smart devices using not-so-smart buttons, drop downs, pickers, switches, checkboxes, sliders, and hundreds of other controls. They comply with a new kind of language that is commonly referred to as UI. Slowly but unavoidably, machine learning has made its way into all areas where computers interact directly with humans: voice input, handwriting input, lip reading, gesture recognition, body pose estimation, face emotion recognition, sentiment analysis, and so on. This may not be immediately obvious, but machine learning is the future of both UI and UX. Today, machine learning is already changing the way users interact with their devices. Machine learning-based solutions are likely to become widely-adopted in UIs because of their convenience. Furthermore, ranking, contextual suggestions, automatic translation, and personalization are also elements that most internet users have got used to. A nice example of how machine learning may fuel the UI is with the Facebook app, which runs on-device machine learning (even offline) to automatically sort posts in your timeline.\n\nIn the design community, such patterns of user interactions are commonly referred to as **anticipatory** or **algorithmic design** and are often described as **new trends** or **black magic**. Essentially, all the examples of anticipatory design that you may see in blogs or in presentations are cases of machine learning (just don't tell the design folks that). Machine learning can not only fuel big data analytics, but also small UI tweaks such as moving buttons on a screen or guessing what a user wants to do next and helping them with that. Such things when properly designed and tested can make your apps more enjoyable and easy to use. The main goal of such design patterns is to free the user from cognitive load when he or she uses the app. When you start using a new app, it's often like being in a new environment: you learn where different objects are placed, where to go to find whatever you want, and where short paths and pitfalls are located. By allowing the computer to also learn from the user, we can adjust the UX to make the user's learning curve steeper.\n\nLaura Busche explains this concept in her blog _What You Need To Know About Anticipatory Design_ at Smashing magazine particularly well:\n\n\"In psychology, we use the term cognitive load to describe the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory at any given moment in time. For everyone involved in user experience design, cognitive load is a crucial consideration. Are we doing everything in our power to relieve the strain caused by learning something new to use our product? How can we reduce the number of elements that our users need to worry about at any given time? Reducing cognitive load is one of the cornerstones of anticipatory design, as it helps create a more pleasurable experience by foreseeing our users' needs.\"\n\nThe main idea behind anticipatory design is the principle of having fewer choices \u2014 in other words, we reduce the number of options for the user in an intelligent way.\n\nIn practice, you can do this in plenty of different ways depending on your app; you can filter out irrelevant results, push the most likely options to the top of the list or increase their size, and so on.\n\nGoing back to the topic of this chapter, you can use association rule learning to analyze user activity in your app and narrow the space of possibilities for them. For example, in a photo editing app, a user applies a set of filters to their photo. When a user has chosen the first filter, rules can be used to predict which filter (or even which set of filters) are most likely to be applied next. Here, you can sort the candidates according to one of the association measures. In Chapter 7, _Linear Classifier and Logistic Regression_ , you will see another example of anticipatory design that will be based on supervised learning.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we explored association rule learning, which is a branch of unsupervised learning. We implemented the Apriori algorithm, which can be used to find patterns in the form of rules in different transactional datasets. Apriori's classical use case is market basket analysis. However, it is also important conceptually, because rule learning algorithms bridge the gap between classical artificial intelligence approaches (logical programming, concept learning, searching graphs, and so on) and logic-based machine learning (decision trees).\n\nIn the following chapter, we're going to return to supervised learning, but this time we will switch our attention from non-parametric models, such as KNN and k-means, to parametric linear models. We will also discuss linear regression and the gradient descent optimization method.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. Sergey Brin, Rajeev Motwani, Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Shalom Tsur, _Dynamic itemset counting and implication rules for market basket data_ , in SIGMOD 1997, Proceedings ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, pages 255-264, Tucson, Arizona, USA, May 1997\n  2. Rakesh Agrawal and Ramakrishnan Srikant, _Fast Algorithms for Mining Association Rules_ , Proceedings of the 20th international conference on very large databases, VLDB, pages 487-499, Santiago, Chile, September 1994 at: <http:\/\/www.vldb.org\/conf\/1994\/P487.PDF>\n\n# Linear Regression and Gradient Descent\n\nIn the previous chapters, we've implemented non-parametric models including kNN and _k_ -means and their applications to supervised classification and unsupervised clustering. In this chapter, we will proceed with the supervised learning by discussing algorithms for regression, this time focusing on the parametric models. **Linear regression** is the simple yet powerful tool for this kind of task. Linear regression was historically the first machine learning algorithm, so the math behind it is well developed, and you can find many books dedicated to this one topic exclusively. We will see when to use linear regression and when not to, how to analyze its errors, and how to interpret its results. As for the Swift part, we will get our feet wet with Apple's numerical libraries\u2014the **Accelerate framework**.\n\nLinear regression will serve as an example to explain an important mathematical optimization technique, **gradient descent**. This iterative algorithm will haunt us until the book's very end, because it is heavily used for training artificial neural networks.\n\nThe algorithms to be discussed and implemented in this chapter are:\n\n  * Simple linear regression for datasets with one feature\n  * Multiple linear regression for datasets with more than one feature\n  * Gradient descent algorithm\n  * Data normalization\n\n# Understanding the regression task\n\nRecall that the regression task is of a particular case of supervised learning, where real numbers take the place of labels. It is the primary difference from the classification, where all labels are categories. You can use regression analysis to study the interactions between two or more variables; for example, the way personal computer price depends on the computer's characteristics, such as a number of CPU cores and the type, memory size, video card characteristics, and storage type and size. In the context of regression, we usually call features _independent variables_ and labels _dependent variables_. In our example, independent variables are the computer's characteristics and the dependent variable is its price. Having a regression model, we can predict which machine is better to buy. Moreover, regression allows you to make educated guesses about the contribution of each feature to the final price. Could be an idea for the next viral app.\n\nRegression analysis is a subfield of statistics that investigates how dependent variable changes depend on changes of an independent variable. It also can be used for determining which independent variables are essential and which are not. In some cases, regression analysis can even be used to infer a causal relationship between variables.\n\nDifferent regression algorithms are implemented in several Swift libraries: AIToolbox, MLKit, multilinear-math, and YCML.\n\n# Introducing simple linear regression\n\nLinear regression is a kind of steampunk machine learning. It was invented in the time of Sherlock Holmes, long before the first electronic computer was invented and the term _machine learning_ was coined. The term _regression_ and its calculation algorithm was introduced by the English polymath Sir Francis Galton in 1886, in the publication named _Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature_. Galton proposed the concept while performing research on how to create the perfect breed of people. The task of regression emerged from the need to predict the child's body parameters given the parent's body measurements. So nowadays, Sir Galton is mostly remembered as the father of eugenics rather than as an inventor of the first machine learning algorithm. Later in this chapter, we will follow the footsteps of Galton (but not too far), and employ the linear regression to predict some biological data. Linear regression often is the best choice of machine learning algorithm for fitness apps. You can model all kinds of simple dependencies using it: muscle growth depending on drills; weight loss depending on calorie intake; and so on:\n\nFigure 6.1: Linear regression terminology\n\nFrom the preceding diagram, you can find the following:\n\n  * **x** : Independent variable or feature\n  * **y** : Dependent variable or targets\n  *  : Predicted values of dependent variable\n  * **yi** : True value of dependent variable for a given data point\n  * ** i** : Predicted value of dependent variable for a given data point\n  * **a** : Slope\u2014rate of predicted changes for **y** scores for each unit increase in **x**\n  * **b** : **y** -intercept\u2014predicted value of **y** , when **x** is zero\n  * **\u03b5 1**: Residual (error) for a given data point\n\nThe idea of linear regression is quite simple. As we remember from the previous chapter, the model in the supervised learning is a mathematical function _f_ ( _x_ ), which predicts output label _y_ (height of sons, in Galton's research) for the input feature _x_ (height of parents). Perhaps, every reader keeps fond school memories about a simple formula for a straight line: _y = ax + b_ , where coefficient _a_ regulates the slope of a line, and the b term is a _y_ -intercept. Given that dependency between _x_ and _y_ is linear, we can suppose that the function underlying our dataset is _y i = axi \\+ b + \u03b5i_, where \u03b5 stands for errors (in measurements or of any other kind). The straight line plays the role of a model (or hypothesis function, _h_ ( _x_ )) in task. For now, let's focus on the situation when _y_ is determined by only one feature _x_. This kind of regression is called **simple linear regression**. To start predicting something, we need the parameters _a_ and _b_. In fact, the goal of the learning process is to choose the best parameters for our model, such that the line fits the dataset in the best possible way. In other words, the best parameters allow making the most accurate predictions. To tell accurate predictions apart from inaccurate, we use another function: loss (or what's the same, cost) function. Sir Francis Galton used the least squares method to estimate the model parameters.\n\nThe linear regression algorithm greatly relies on linear algebra. To implement it in Swift, we are using Accelerate framework. Don't forget to import it:\n\n    **import Accelerate**\n\nAccelerate framework **  \n**Accelerate contains low-level functions optimized for maximum performance on Apple hardware. vDSP sublibrary contains functions for vector operations and digital signal processing. We will go into the details of the Accelerate and other low-level numerical libraries inChapter 11, _Machine Learning Libraries_ , For now, all you need to know is that it's fast and it's low-level.\n\nFirst, let's create a class `SimpleLinearRegression`. It contains two double variables: model parameters `slope` ( _a_ ) and `intercept` ( _b_ ):\n\n    class SimpleLinearRegression { \n    var slope = 1.0 \n    var intercept = 0.0 \n    }\n\nThe main functionality of this class is to train the model and then make predictions using it. For this, we need to add the following methods:\n\n  * `predict()`, which goes in two forms: for one sample (takes feature value _x_ and returns prediction _h_ ( _x_ )) and for an array of samples (takes `Double` array of samples and returns `Double` array of predictions)\n  * `train()`, which takes the sample vector `xVec` and label vector `yVec` of equal length, and updates the parameters `slope` and `intercept`\n\nBoth `predict()` functions just call corresponding hypothesis functions, as shown in the following code. Later, we will add more functionality to them:\n\n    func predict(x: Double) -> Double { \n        return hypothesis(x: x) \n    }\n\nAnd for several samples:\n\n    func predict(xVec: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        return hypothesis(xVec: xVec) \n    }\n\nNow let's add the hypothesis function   as follows:\n\n    func hypothesis(x: Double) -> Double { \n        return slope*x + intercept \n    }\n\nIn vectorized form, for several samples at once:\n\n    func hypothesis(xVec: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let count = UInt(xVec.count) \n        var scaledVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: Int(count)) \n        vDSP_vsmulD(UnsafePointer(xVec), 1, &slope, &scaledVec, 1, count) \n        var resultVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: Int(count)) \n        vDSP_vsaddD(UnsafePointer(scaledVec), 1, &intercept, &resultVec, 1, count) \n        return resultVec \n    }\n\nThe model can be trained as follows:\n\n    func train(xVec: [Double], yVec: [Double], learningRate: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n            precondition(xVec.count == yVec.count) \n            precondition(maxSteps > 0)  \n    \/\/ The goal of training is to minimize cost function. \n    }\n\nLoss function **  \n**We've already given the loss function definition in,Chapter 1, _Getting Started with Machine Learning_ (see the _Mathematical optimization_ section), but here is the first time we actually implement real-value loss function in our code, so let's refresh what we know already.  \nIn machine learning, loss function (or cost function) maps model parameters onto a real-valued cost.\n\n# Fitting a regression line using the least squares method\n\nAs you remember from Chapter 1, _Getting Started with Machine Learning_ , for supervised learning we need two functions: the model and the loss function. We will use the least squares loss function to assess the quality of the model. The method was proposed by Carl Friedrich Gauss at the end of the 17th century. The essence of it is to minimize the distance between data points to the regression line. The difference (deviation) between the true value _y i_ and the predicted value _h_ ( _x i_) is called **residual** and denoted as _\u03b5 i_. Our loss function _J_ will be a **residual** **sum of squares** ( **RSS** ), modified just a bit. If there are _n_ samples of feature _x i_ and label _y i_, then the RSS can be calculated as:\n\nNote that all residuals are squared before summation to prevent residuals with the opposite sign from cancelling out each other. To make it independent of the size of dataset, we will divide the _RSS_ by _n_. Also, to make some future calculations simpler, we divide those by two.\n\nThe final loss function written in Swift is as follows:\n\n    func cost(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n        let count = UInt(trueVec.count)\n\nLet's now calculate the squared Euclidean distance as follows:\n\n        var result = 0.0 \n        vDSP_distancesqD(UnsafePointer(trueVec), 1, UnsafePointer(predictedVec), 1, &result, 1)\n\nYou can normalize by vector length, as shown in the following code:\n\n        result \/= (2*Double(count)) \n        return result \n    }\n\nIt shows how well our hypothesis fits our data. Our goal is to minimize this function: changing the parameters _a_ and b finds the minimum of loss function:  . Using a bit of calculus (or looking at Wikipedia), one can show that _a_ and _b_ , which yield minimum value of loss function, can be calculated using the following formulas:\n\nIn these formulas, \u03c1 is a correlation coefficient, \u03c3\u2014a standard deviation, and \u03bc\u2014the mean.\n\n# Where to use GD and normal equation\n\nIf the goal is just to add linear regression to your app, at this point you are done; however, there is another more interesting way to obtain the same coefficients\u2014an optimization technique known as **gradient descent**. The gradient descent algorithm and its multiple descendants are used to find loss function minimums in many machine learning algorithms, including deep neural networks, where a direct analytical solution, like with linear regression is not possible. So, we'd better try it on a simple example like linear regression, so we're already familiar with it when we discuss more complex algorithms.\n\n# Using gradient descent for function minimization\n\nIf the machine learning algorithm is a car, then the optimization algorithm is its engine. For more information, refer to <http:\/\/www.pyimagesearch.com\/2016\/10\/10\/gradient-descent-with-python\/>.\n\nFrom your math classes, you should remember that geometrical interpretation is a derivative   of a function _f(x)_ is a slope at any given point ( _x)_ of the function. Now, if we have a function of two parameters _f(x, y)_ , we can't calculate just derivative as we did previously. Nevertheless, we can calculate partial derivatives:  . The vector composed of these partial derivatives is known as a gradient, and the corresponding operator is denoted by the Nabla symbol \u2207.\n\nThe gradient of a regression loss function _J(a, b)_ is a vector  . In a similar manner as a derivative is a slope of the curve at each point, the gradient is a map of heights with the vectors showing the steepest direction at each point of the map.\n\nThe loss function of the linear regression has the shape of a bowl (see _Figure 6.2_ ). Imagine a snail sitting on the edge of the bowl. It doesn't have good sight, it only can sense the direction of the surface slope. How can it reach the bottom of the bowl? The snail just needs to take small steps in the steepest direction, which is exactly against the direction that the gradient shows at each given point of the path.\n\nThe gradient descent algorithm for linear regression works in the following way:\n\n  1. Initialize _a_ and _b_ at random (or with some predefined values)\n  2. Take an _\u03b1_ (alpha) step in the direction opposite to where the gradient points\n  3. The coordinates of the point where you ended up are your new _a_ and _b_\n  4. Repeat from step 2 until convergence\n\nIn mathematical notation, it can be expressed as follows:\n\nFigure 6.2: Gradient descent trajectories for some hypothetical functions of two variables. This is a heights map depicted on the left and 3D-surface on the right\n\nNow let's implement the same algorithm in Swift. The gradient descent is an iterative algorithm, so we will utilize a loop and some stopping conditions: `maxSteps` (the maximum number of algorithm iterations), which will be checked for the convergence condition. The function explicitly takes input vectors _x_ and _y_ , a learning rate _\u03b1_ , and modifies the weights _a_ and _b_ implicitly:\n\n    func gradientDescent(xVec: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n        for _ in 0 ..< maxSteps { \n            let (newSlope, newIntercept) = gradientDescentStep(xVec: xVec, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: \u03b1) \n            if (newSlope==slope && newIntercept==intercept) { break } \/\/ convergence \n            slope = newSlope \n            intercept = newIntercept \n        } \n    }\n\nNote that _a_ and _b_ (`slope` and `intercept`) should be updated simultaneously.\n\nFollowing is one step of the gradient descent:\n\n    \/\/ alpha is a learning rate \n    func gradientDescentStep(xVec: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double) -> (Double, Double) { \n        \/\/ Calculate hypothesis predictions. \n        let hVec = hypothesis(xVec: xVec) \n        \/\/ Calculate gradient with respect to parameters. \n        let slopeGradient = costGradient(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: hVec, xVec: xVec) \n        let newSlope = slope + \u03b1*slopeGradient\n\n        let dummyVec = [Double](repeating: 1.0, count: xVec.count) \n        let interceptGradient = costGradient(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: hVec, xVec: dummyVec) \n        let newIntercept = intercept + \u03b1*interceptGradient\n\n        return (newSlope, newIntercept) \n    }\n\nThe derivative of a cost function here is something that we simply derive using a pencil and paper:\n\n    \/\/ derivative of a cost function \n    func costGradient(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double], xVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n        let count = UInt(trueVec.count)\n\n        var diffVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: Int(count)) \n        vDSP_vsubD(UnsafePointer(predictedVec), 1, UnsafePointer(trueVec), 1, &diffVec, 1, count)\n\n        var result = 0.0 \n        vDSP_dotprD(UnsafePointer(diffVec), 1, UnsafePointer(xVec), 1, &result, count)\n\n        \/\/ Normalize by vector length. \n        return result\/Double(count) \n    } \n    func gradientDescentStep(x: Vector<Double>,  \n    y: Vector<Double>, \u03b1: Double) -> (Double, Double) { \n        let new = Vector([b, a]) - \u03b1*cost_d(x: x, y: y)     \n        return (new[1], new[0]) \n    }\n\nDon't forget to update the `train` function:\n\n    func train(xVec: [Double], yVec: [Double], learningRate: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n        gradientDescent(xVec: xVec, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n    }\n\nFigure 6.3: The plot shows the graph of some loss function versus parameter w. The learning rate \u03b1: on the left it is too large and causes overshooting; on the right it is too small and leads to slow convergence and trapping in local minimum\n\n# Forecasting the future with simple linear regression\n\nWhile writing this book, I was using simple linear regression to estimate the approximate finish date. From time to time, I recorded the total number of pages I had written up to that moment, and then incorporated the data into linear regression. The number of pages here is a feature and the date is a label.\n\nLinear trend is a useful feature for any application that deals with some gradually progressing processes or tasks, especially in the combination with charts. Later in this chapter, we will learn how to build non-linear trend lines, namely polynomial.\n\nLet's make some forecasts:\n\n    let xVec: [Double] = [2,3,4,5] \n    let yVec: [Double] = [10,20,30,40]\n\n    let regression = SimpleLinearRegression() \n    regression.train(xVec: xVec, yVec: yVec, learningRate: 0.1, maxSteps: 31)\n\n    regression.slope \n    regression.intercept\n\n    regression.predict(x: 7) \n    regression.cost(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: regression.predict(xVec: xVec)) \n\n# Feature scaling\n\nIf you have several features and their ranges differ significantly, many machine learning algorithms may have taught times with your data: the large feature may overwhelm the features with small absolute values. A standard way to deal with this obstacle is **feature scaling** (also known as **feature\/data normalization)**. There are several methods to perform it, but the two most common are rescaling and standardization. This is something you want to do as a preprocessing step before feeding your data into the learner.\n\nThe least squares method is almost the same as the Euclidean distance between two points. If we want to calculate how close two points are, we want each dimension to make an equal contribution to the result. In the case of the linear regression features, contributions depend on absolute values of each feature. That's why feature scaling is a must before linear regression. Later, we will meet similar technique batch normalization when we talk about deep learning neural networks.\n\nFeatures in the input data can have different ranges. For example: user age 0 to 120 years, user height 0 to 5 meters. Many loss functions would have a problem dealing with such data. Under the Euclidean distance feature with the large absolute values will suppress feature with the small absolute values. That's why usually, before passing the data into a machine learning algorithm, we want to normalize them. This is how we do it:\n\nFor scikit-learn, follow this link: <http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/stable\/modules\/preprocessing.html>.\n\n# Feature standardization\n\nAn alternative approach is feature standardization:\n\nWhich of the two to use in your app is up to you, but be sure to use at least one of them.\n\nAs usual, we have an accelerate function for that:\n\n    func normalize(vec: [Double]) -> (normalizedVec: [Double], mean: Double, std: Double) { \n        let count = vec.count \n        var mean = 0.0 \n        var std = 0.0 \n        var normalizedVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        vDSP_normalizeD(UnsafePointer(vec), 1, &normalizedVec, 1, &mean, &std, UInt(count)) \n        return (normalizedVec, mean, std) \n    }\n\nNow we need to update the `train` method:\n\n    func train(xVec: [Double], yVec: [Double], learningRate: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n        precondition(xVec.count == yVec.count) \n        precondition(maxSteps > 0) \n        if normalization { \n            let (normalizedXVec, xMean, xStd) = normalize(vec: xVec) \n            let (normalizedYVec, yMean, yStd) = normalize(vec: yVec)\n\n            \/\/ Save means and std-s for prediction phase. \n            self.xMean = xMean \n            self.xStd = xStd \n            self.yMean = yMean \n            self.yStd = yStd\n\n            gradientDescent(xVec: normalizedXVec, yVec: normalizedYVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n        } else { \n            gradientDescent(xVec: xVec, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n        } \n    }\n\nYou also have to update `predict` methods:\n\n    func predictOne(x: Double) -> Double { \n        if normalization { \n            return hypothesis(x: (x-xMean)\/xStd) * yStd + yMean \n        } else { \n            return hypothesis(x: x) \n        } \n    }\n\nFor a vectorized case it looks a bit more complicated, but essentially it does the same thing: shift-scale, unscale-unshift:\n\n    func predict(xVec: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        if normalization { \n            let count = xVec.count \n            \/\/ Normalize \n            var centeredVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n            var negMean = -xMean \n            vDSP_vsaddD(UnsafePointer(xVec), 1, &(negMean), &centeredVec, 1, UInt(count))\n\n            var scaledVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n            vDSP_vsdivD(UnsafePointer(centeredVec), 1, &xStd, &scaledVec, 1, UInt(count))\n\n            \/\/ Predict \n            let hVec = hypothesis(xVec: scaledVec)\n\n            \/\/ Denormalize \n            var unScaledVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n            vDSP_vsmulD(UnsafePointer(hVec), 1, &yStd, &unScaledVec, 1, UInt(count)) \n            var resultVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n            vDSP_vsaddD(UnsafePointer(unScaledVec), 1, &yMean, &resultVec, 1, UInt(count)) \n            return resultVec \n        } else { \n            return hypothesis(xVec: xVec) \n        } \n    }\n\nLet's make some forecasts:\n\n    let xVec: [Double] = [2,3,4,5] \n    let yVec: [Double] = [10,20,30,40]\n\n    let regression = SimpleLinearRegression() \n    regression.normalization = true \n    regression.train(xVec: xVec, yVec: yVec, learningRate: 0.1, maxSteps: 31)\n\n    regression.slope \n    1.0 \n    regression.intercept \n    -1.970.... \n    regression.xMean \n    3.5 \n    regression.xStd \n    1.1180... \n    regression.yMean \n    25.0 \n    regression.yStd \n    11.18033987... \n    regression.predict(x: 7) \n    60.0 \n    regression.cost(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: regression.predict(xVec: xVec)) \n    1.5777218... \n\n# Multiple linear regression\n\nIf we have a regression task on the dataset with multiple features, we can't use simple linear regression but we can apply its generalization: **multiple linear regression**. The formula to make a prediction now looks like this:\n\nIn this formula, _x i_ _T_ is a sample (feature vector) with _m_ features, and _w_ is a weights row vector of length _m_. The dependent variable yi is a scalar.\n\nThe task of loss minimization changes to be:\n\nIn this formula,   is the Euclidean norm (length of a vector):  . Note that this is the same as the Euclidean distance between vectors _wx_ and _y_.\n\nOne can also see multiple linear regression fitting as a solution of a system of linear equations, where each coefficient is a feature value, and each variable is a corresponding weight value:\n\nOr:\n\nThe problem here is that such a system may not have the exact solution, so we want to get a solution that, if not exact, nevertheless is optimal in some way.\n\n# Implementing multiple linear regression in Swift\n\nThe `MultipleLinearRegression` class contains a vector of weights, and staff for data normalization:\n\n    class MultipleLinearRegression { \n    public var weights: [Double]! \n    public init() {} \n    public var normalization = false \n    public var xMeanVec = [Double]() \n    public var xStdVec = [Double]() \n    public var yMean = 0.0 \n    public var yStd = 0.0 \n    ... \n    }\n\nHypothesis and prediction:\n\n    public func predict(xVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n    if normalization { \n        let input = xVec \n        let differenceVec = vecSubtract([1.0]+input, xMeanVec) \n        let normalizedInputVec = vecDivide(differenceVec, xStdVec)\n\n        let h = hypothesis(xVec: normalizedInputVec)\n\n        return h * yStd + yMean \n    } else { \n        return hypothesis(xVec: [1.0]+xVec) \n    } \n    }\n\n    private func hypothesis(xVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n    var result = 0.0 \n    vDSP_dotprD(xVec, 1, weights, 1, &result, vDSP_Length(xVec.count)) \n    return result \n    }\n\n    public func predict(xMat: [[Double]]) -> [Double] { \n    let rows = xMat.count \n    precondition(rows > 0) \n    let columns = xMat.first!.count \n    precondition(columns > 0)\n\n    if normalization { \n        let flattenedNormalizedX = xMat.map{ \n            return vecDivide(vecSubtract($0, xMeanVec), xStdVec) \n            }.reduce([], +)\n\n        \/\/ Add a column of ones in front of the matrix. \n        let basisExpanded = prepentColumnOfOnes(matrix: flattenedNormalizedX, rows: rows, columns: columns)\n\n        let hVec = hypothesis(xMatFlattened: basisExpanded) \n        let outputSize = hVec.count \n        let productVec = vecMultiply(hVec, [Double](repeating: yStd, count: outputSize)) \n        let outputVec = vecAdd(productVec, [Double](repeating: yMean, count: outputSize))\n\n        return outputVec \n    } else { \n        \/\/ Flatten and prepend a column of ones. \n        let flattened = xMat.map{[1.0]+$0}.reduce([], +) \n        return hypothesis(xMatFlattened: flattened) \n    } \n    }\n\n    private func hypothesis(xMatFlattened: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n    let matCount = xMatFlattened.count \n    let featureCount = weights.count \n    precondition(matCount > 0) \n    let sampleCount = matCount\/featureCount \n    precondition(sampleCount*featureCount == matCount) \n    let labelSize = 1 \n    let result = gemm(aMat: xMatFlattened, bMat: weights, rowsAC: sampleCount, colsBC: labelSize, colsA_rowsB: featureCount) \n    return result \n    }\n\nLeast squares cost function, almost the same as for simple regression:\n\n    public func cost(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n    let count = trueVec.count \n    \/\/ Calculate squared Euclidean distance. \n    var result = 0.0 \n    vDSP_distancesqD(trueVec, 1, predictedVec, 1, &result, 1) \n    \/\/ Normalize by vector length. \n    result\/=(2*Double(count)) \n    return result \n    }  \n\n# Gradient descent for multiple linear regression\n\nThe gradient descent for multiple linear regression can be calculated as follows:\n\n     \/\/ derivative of a cost function \n        private func costGradient(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double], xMatFlattened: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n            let matCount = xMatFlattened.count \n            let featureCount = weights.count \n            precondition(matCount > 0) \n            precondition(Double(matCount).truncatingRemainder(dividingBy: Double(featureCount)) == 0) \n            let sampleCount = trueVec.count \n            precondition(sampleCount > 0) \n            precondition(sampleCount*featureCount == matCount) \n            let labelSize = 1\n\n            let diffVec = vecSubtract(predictedVec, trueVec)\n\n            \/\/ Normalize by vector length. \n            let scaleBy = 1\/Double(sampleCount) \n            let result = gemm(aMat: xMatFlattened, bMat: diffVec, rowsAC: featureCount, colsBC: labelSize, colsA_rowsB: sampleCount, transposeA: true, \u03b1: scaleBy)\n\n            return result \n        }\n\n        \/\/ alpha is a learning rate \n        private func gradientDescentStep(xMatFlattened: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double) -> [Double] {\n\n            \/\/ Calculate hypothesis predictions. \n            let hVec = hypothesis(xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened) \n            \/\/ Calculate gradient with respect to parameters. \n            let gradient = costGradient(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: hVec, xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened) \n            let featureCount = gradient.count\n\n            \/\/ newWeights = weights - \u03b1*gradient \n            var alpha = \u03b1 \n            var scaledGradient = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: featureCount) \n            vDSP_vsmulD(gradient, 1, &alpha, &scaledGradient, 1, vDSP_Length(featureCount))\n\n            let newWeights = vecSubtract(weights, scaledGradient)\n\n            return newWeights \n        }\n\n        private func gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n            for _ in 0 ..< maxSteps { \n                let newWeights = gradientDescentStep(xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: \u03b1) \n                if newWeights==weights { \n                    print(\"convergence\") \n                    break \n                } \/\/ convergence \n                weights = newWeights \n            } \n        } \n\n# Training multiple regression\n\nLet's now see how to train the multiple regression:\n\n     private func prepentColumnOfOnes(matrix: [Double], rows: Int, columns: Int) -> [Double] { \n    let weightsCount = columns+1\n\n    var withFirstDummyColumn = [Double](repeating: 1.0, count: rows * (columns+1)) \n    for row in 0..<rows { \n        for column in 1..<weightsCount { \n            withFirstDummyColumn[row*weightsCount + column] = matrix[row*columns + column-1] \n        } \n    } \n    return withFirstDummyColumn \n    }\n\n    public func train(xMat: [[Double]], yVec: [Double], learningRate: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n    precondition(maxSteps > 0, \"The number of learning iterations should be grater then 0.\") \n    let sampleCount = xMat.count \n    precondition(sampleCount == yVec.count, \"The number of samples in xMat should be equal to the number of labels in yVec.\") \n    precondition(sampleCount > 0, \"xMat should contain at least one sample.\") \n    precondition(xMat.first!.count > 0, \"Samples should have at least one feature.\") \n    let featureCount = xMat.first!.count \n    let weightsCount = featureCount+1\n\n    weights = [Double](repeating: 1.0, count: weightsCount) \n    \/\/ Flatten and prepend a column of ones. \n    let flattenedXMat = xMat.reduce([], +)\n\n    if normalization { \n        let (normalizedXMat, xMeanVec, xStdVec) = matNormalize(matrix: flattenedXMat, rows: sampleCount, columns: featureCount) \n        let (normalizedYVec, yMean, yStd) = vecNormalize(vec: yVec)\n\n        \/\/ Save means and std-s for prediction phase. \n        self.xMeanVec = xMeanVec \n        self.xStdVec = xStdVec \n        self.yMean = yMean \n        self.yStd = yStd\n\n        \/\/ Add first column of ones to matrix \n        let designMatrix = prepentColumnOfOnes(matrix: normalizedXMat, rows: sampleCount, columns: featureCount)\n\n        gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: designMatrix, yVec: normalizedYVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n    } else { \n        gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: flattenedXMat, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n    } \n    } \n\n# Linear algebra operations\n\nNow we will take a look at how linear algebraic operations can be performed:\n\n     \/\/ Add two vectors. Equivalent to zip(a, b).map(+) \n    func vecAdd(_ a: [Double], _ b: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let count = a.count \n        assert(count == b.count, \"Vectors must be of equal length.\") \n        var c = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        vDSP_vaddD(a, 1, b, 1, &c, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n        return c \n    }\n\n    \/\/ Subtract vector b from vector a. Equivalent to zip(a, b).map(-) \n    func vecSubtract(_ a: [Double], _ b: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let count = a.count \n        assert(count == b.count, \"Vectors must be of equal length.\") \n        var c = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        vDSP_vsubD(b, 1, a, 1, &c, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n        return c \n    }\n\n    \/\/ Multiply two vectors elementwise. Equivalent to zip(a, b).map(*) \n    func vecMultiply(_ a: [Double], _ b: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let count = a.count \n        assert(count == b.count, \"Vectors must be of equal length.\") \n        var c = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        vDSP_vmulD(a, 1, b, 1, &c, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n        return c \n    }\n\n    \/\/ Divide vector a by vector b elementwise. Equivalent to zip(a, b).map(\/) \n    func vecDivide(_ a: [Double], _ b: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let count = a.count \n        assert(count == b.count, \"Vectors must be of equal length.\") \n        var c = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        \/\/ Note that parameters a and b are swapped. \n        vDSP_vdivD(b, 1, a, 1, &c, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n        return c \n    }\n\n    func vecNormalize(vec: [Double]) -> (normalizedVec: [Double], mean: Double, std: Double) { \n        let count = vec.count \n        var mean = 0.0 \n        var std = 0.0 \n        var normalizedVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n        vDSP_normalizeD(vec, 1, &normalizedVec, 1, &mean, &std, vDSP_Length(count)) \n        return (normalizedVec, mean, std) \n    } \n    \/\/ C\u2190\u03b1AB + \u03b2C \n    \/\/ Pass flattened matrices in row-major order. \n    \/\/ rowsAC, colsBC, colsA_rowsB - Count of rows\/columns AFTER transpose. \n    func gemm(aMat: [Double], bMat: [Double], cMat: [Double]? = nil, \n              rowsAC: Int, colsBC: Int, colsA_rowsB: Int, \n              transposeA: Bool = false, transposeB: Bool = false, \n              \u03b1: Double = 1, \u03b2: Double = 0) -> [Double] { \n        var result = cMat ?? [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: rowsAC*colsBC)\n\n        \/\/ C\u2190\u03b1AB + \u03b2C \n        cblas_dgemm(CblasRowMajor, \/\/ Specifies row-major (C) or column-major (Fortran) data ordering. \n            transposeA ? CblasTrans : CblasNoTrans, \/\/ Specifies whether to transpose matrix A. \n            transposeB ? CblasTrans : CblasNoTrans, \/\/ Specifies whether to transpose matrix B. \n            Int32(rowsAC), \/\/ Number of rows in matrices A and C. \n            Int32(colsBC), \/\/ Number of columns in matrices B and C. \n            Int32(colsA_rowsB), \/\/ Number of columns in matrix A; number of rows in matrix B. \n            \u03b1, \/\/ \u03b1. \n            aMat, \/\/ Matrix A. \n            transposeA ? Int32(rowsAC) : Int32(colsA_rowsB), \/\/ The size of the first dimention of matrix A; if you are passing a matrix A[m][n], the value should be m. \n            bMat, \/\/ Matrix B. \n            transposeB ? Int32(colsA_rowsB) : Int32(colsBC), \/\/ The size of the first dimention of matrix B; if you are passing a matrix B[m][n], the value should be m. \n            \u03b2, \/\/ \u03b2. \n            &result, \/\/ Matrix C. \n            Int32(colsBC) \/\/ The size of the first dimention of matrix C; if you are passing a matrix C[m][n], the value should be m. \n        ) \n        return result \n    } \n\n# Feature-wise standardization\n\nFeature-wise standardization can be calculated as follows:\n\n    \/\/ Calculates mean for every matrix column. \n    func meanColumns(matrix: [Double], rows: Int, columns: Int) -> [Double] { \n        assert(matrix.count == rows*columns)\n\n        var resultVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: columns)\n\n        matrix.withUnsafeBufferPointer{ inputBuffer in \n            resultVec.withUnsafeMutableBufferPointer{ outputBuffer in \n                let inputPointer = inputBuffer.baseAddress! \n                let outputPointer = outputBuffer.baseAddress! \n                for i in 0 ..< columns { \n                    vDSP_meanvD(inputPointer.advanced(by: i), columns, outputPointer.advanced(by: i), vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                } \n            } \n        } \n        return resultVec \n    }\n\n    \/\/ Calculates standard deviation for every matrix column. \n    func stdColumns(matrix: [Double], rows: Int, columns: Int) -> [Double] { \n        assert(matrix.count == rows*columns)\n\n        let meanVec = meanColumns(matrix: matrix, rows: rows, columns: columns)\n\n        var varianceVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: columns) \n        var deviationsMat = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: rows*columns)\n\n        \/\/ Calculating the variance for each column. \n        matrix.withUnsafeBufferPointer{ inputBuffer in \n            deviationsMat.withUnsafeMutableBufferPointer{ deviationsBuffer in \n                varianceVec.withUnsafeMutableBufferPointer{ outputBuffer in \n                    for i in 0 ..< columns { \n                        let inputPointer = inputBuffer.baseAddress!.advanced(by: i) \n                        let devPointer = deviationsBuffer.baseAddress!.advanced(by: i) \n                        let outputPointer = outputBuffer.baseAddress!.advanced(by: i)\n\n                        var mean = -meanVec[i] \n                        \/\/ Deviations of each column from its mean. \n                        vDSP_vsaddD(inputPointer, columns, &mean, devPointer, columns, vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                        \/\/ Squared deviations. \n                        vDSP_vsqD(devPointer, columns, devPointer, columns, vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                        \/\/ Sum for every column. Note, that parameters should be passed in a reverse order. \n                        vDSP_sveD(devPointer, columns, outputPointer, vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                    } \n                } \n            } \n        }\n\n        \/\/ -1 for Bessel's correction. \n        var devideBy = Double(rows) - 1 \n        vDSP_vsdivD(varianceVec, 1, &devideBy, &varianceVec, 1, vDSP_Length(columns))\n\n        \/\/ Calculating the standard deviation. \n        var length = Int32(columns) \n        var stdVec = varianceVec \n        vvsqrt(&stdVec, &varianceVec, &length)\n\n        return stdVec \n    }   \n    \/\/(x-\u03bc)\/\u03c3  \n    func matNormalize(matrix: [Double], rows: Int, columns: Int) -> (normalizedMat: [Double], meanVec: [Double], stdVec: [Double]) { \n        var meanVec = meanColumns(matrix: matrix, rows: rows, columns: columns) \n        var stdVec = stdColumns(matrix: matrix, rows: rows, columns: columns)\n\n        var result = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: rows*columns)\n\n        matrix.withUnsafeBufferPointer{ inputBuffer in \n            result.withUnsafeMutableBufferPointer{ resultBuffer in \n                for i in 0 ..< columns { \n                    let inputPointer = inputBuffer.baseAddress!.advanced(by: i) \n                    let resultPointer = resultBuffer.baseAddress!.advanced(by: i)\n\n                    var mean = -meanVec[i] \n                    var std = stdVec[i] \n                    \/\/ Substract standard deviation. \n                    vDSP_vsaddD(inputPointer, columns, &mean, resultPointer, columns, vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                    \/\/ Devide by mean. \n                    vDSP_vsdivD(resultPointer, columns, &std, resultPointer, columns, vDSP_Length(rows)) \n                } \n            } \n        }\n\n        return (result, meanVec, stdVec) \n    }\n\n# Normal equation for multiple linear regression\n\nIf you want to implement regression in a production code, don't use matrix inversion operation explicitly. The problem with it is that it is very numerically inefficient. Instead, you can use one of the functions for solving a system of linear equations, which is essentially the same as finding regression coefficients. The good fit from the LAPACK package (part of the Accelerate framework) is the QR-decomposition function.\n\n# Understanding and overcoming the limitations of linear regression\n\nBefore building the predictive model, you should always perform an exploratory analysis. It will help you to select the right model by identifying the relationship and impact of features and samples. Linear regression has a whole bunch of preconditions and hidden assumptions. To get accurate results, you need to be sure that all those conditions are met and all assumptions are true:\n\n  * Linear regression assumes all features to be numerical variables. If you have categorical features, you cannot use linear regression. You need to be careful here, because often categorical variables are represented by numbers; for example, country code or E numbers of food additives (found on all food labels in the EU, for example E260 stands for acetic acid). In other words, linear regression can only be applied to quantities (the amount of something) and not to categories, ordered lists, scales, or numerical codes.\n  * Linear regression models linear relationships; that means that features should be linearly related to labels. Build a scatterplot to be sure that the data you have can be modeled using the line. My favorite quote in this context is Randall Munroe's famous quote from <https:\/\/xkcd.com\/1725\/>:\n\n\"I don't trust linear regressions when it's harder to guess the direction of the correlation from the scatter plot than to find new constellations on it.\"\n\nFigure 6.4: Datasaurus Dozen [1] shows how very different datasets can have very similar descriptive statistics. Note how linear regression parameters ( _a_ and _b_ ) vary insignificantly among these datasets. Linear regression is a bad model for non-linear data\n\n  * Linear regression is **s** ensitive to outliers (see _Figure 6.5_ ); in other words, it is an unstable algorithm\u2014it gives a bad result on a noisy data. How many outliers do you need to completely spoil the model? One outlier is enough. If you have outliers, be sure to check how they affect your model by building two regressions: one with outliers, and one without them. There are regression algorithms that were developed specifically for the use with the noisy data, such as robust regression, RANSAC, and its modifications:\n\nFigure 6.5: Anscombe's quartet [2] is commonly used to demonstrate linear regression limitations. The first graph shows the dataset, which can be modeled by linear regression. The second one shows nonlinearity in the data. The third and fourth show the instability of the algorithm: one outlier is enough to break the model completely\n\n  * Linear regression also has some requirements for the errors. Errors should be independent, homoscedastic, and normally distributed around the regression line (see _Figure 6.6_ ). The homoscedasticity requirement means that variance of errors remains the same over the entire dataset:\n\nFigure 6.6: Error distribution\n\nThere are three spells that break linear regression: multicollinearity (correlation between features), autocorrelation (correlation between samples), heteroscedasticity (error variance changes). Countermeasures are regularization, selecting the most important features by stepwise regression, forward selection, and backward elimination.\n\n# Fixing linear regression problems with regularization\n\nAs we've seen, one outlier is enough to break the least-squares regression. Such instability is a manifestation of overfitting problems. Methods that help prevent models from overfitting are generally referred to as **regularization** techniques. Usually, regularization is achieved by imposing additional constraints on the model. This can be an additional term in a loss function, noise injection, or something else. We've already implemented one such technique previously, in Chapter 3, _K-Nearest Neighbors Classifier_. Locality constraint _w_ in the DTW algorithm is essentially a way to regularize the result. In the case of linear regression, regularization imposes constraints on the weights vector values.\n\n# Ridge regression and Tikhonov regularization\n\nUnder the standard least squares method, the obtained regression coefficients can vary wildly. We can formulate the least squares regression as an optimization problem:\n\nWhat we have on the right here is just an RSS in a form of a scalar product. Tikhonov regularized least squares regression adds an additional penalty term\u2014squared _L_ 2 norm of weights vector:\n\nwhere _L_ 2 norm  and \u03bb is a scalar shrinkage parameter. It allows to control weights variance and keep it low. Similar to other hyperparameters, \u03bb needs to be defined separately, usually using held-out data or cross-validation. The larger it is, the smaller the regression coefficients (weights) will be.\n\nSuch an optimization problem has a closed-form solution, similar to the normal equation:\n\n_I_ is an identity matrix, where main diagonal elements are equal to _1_ , and all others equal to _0_.\n\nLinear regression regularized in such a way is known as **ridge regression**. One of its advantages is that it can be used even if features in a training data are highly correlated (multicollinearity). Unlike usual linear regression, ridge regression doesn't assume the normal distribution of errors. It reduces the absolute values of features but they don't reach zero, which means that this regression also performs badly if there are irrelevant features.\n\n# LASSO regression\n\nTo fix the problem with irrelevant features, one can replace the _L_ 2 norm with the _L_ 1 norm in a penalty term, and instead of penalizing squares of regression coefficients, penalize their absolute values:\n\nwhere _L_ 1 norm  . This is so-called **Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator** ( **LASSO** ) regression. Some of the weight coefficients under such a penalty can become exactly zero, which you can think of as a feature selection. If there are several highly correlated features in your dataset, LASSO picks one of them and sets all others to zero. This also means that LASSO often results in sparse weight vectors.\n\nThis type of regression also doesn't assume the normality of error distribution.\n\n# ElasticNet regression\n\nElasticNet regression is a combination of ridge and LASSO methods: add both penalty terms to the usual least squares loss function and you will get the ElasticNet regression. It also has two shrinkage parameters:\n\nIt is especially helpful when you have multiple correlated features. When two features are correlated, LASSO tends to choose one of them randomly, while ElasticNet keeps both. Similar to the ridge regression, ElasticNet is also more stable in many cases:\n\nFigure 6.7: Penalty terms in the space of the model parameters.\n\nRegularized linear regression is available in multiple machine learning packages, including Scikit-learn for integration with Core ML and AIToolbox for on-device training.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we've explored linear regression and gradient descent. Linear regression is a simple parametric model. It makes a certain assumption about data shape and error distribution. We were also acquainted with the Accelerate framework, a powerful hardware-accelerated framework from Apple for numerical computations.\n\nIn the next chapter, we'll continue by building different, more complex models on top of linear regression: polynomial regression, regularized regression, and logistic regression.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. Justin Matejka, George Fitzmaurice (2017), _Same Stats, Different Graphs: Generating Datasets with Varied Appearance and Identical Statistics through Simulated Annealing_ , CHI 2017 Conference Proceedings: ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems\n  2. F. J. Anscombe, _Graphs in Statistical Analysis_ , The American Statistician, V-27 (1): 17-21 (1973), JSTOR 2682899\n\n# Linear Classifier and Logistic Regression\n\nIn the previous chapter, we added several useful supervised learning algorithms for regression tasks to our toolbox. Continuing with building on top of linear regression, in this chapter, we are going to build two classification algorithms: **linear classifier** and **logistic regression**. Both of them take familiar feature vectors as input, similar to multiple linear regression. The difference is in their output. The linear classifier will output true or false (binary classification) and logistic regression will provide the probability of some event happening.\n\nThe topics to discuss in this chapter are:\n\n  * Bias and variance\n  * Linear classifier\n  * Logistic regression\n\n# Revisiting the classification task\n\nWe already used and implemented some classification algorithms in the previous chapters: decision tree learning, random forest, and KNN are all well suited for solving this task. However, as Boromir used to say, \"\"One cannot simply walk into neural networks without knowing about logistic regression\"\". So, to remind you, classification is almost the same as regression, except that response variable _y_ is not a continuous (`float`) but takes values from some set of discrete values (`enum`). In this chapter, we're primarily concerned with the binary classification, where _y_ can be either true or false, one or zero, and belong to a positive or negative class.\n\nAlthough, if you think about this for a moment, it's not too hard to build a multiclass classifier from several binary classifiers by chaining them one after the other. In the classification domain, response variable _y_ is usually called a **label**.\n\n# Linear classifier\n\nLinear regression can be trivially adapted for binary classification: just predict a positive class for all regression outputs above some threshold and a negative class for everything below it. For example, in the following diagram, the threshold is 0.5. Everything with _x_ < 0.5 gets classified as a negative class and everything with _x_ > 0.5 as positive. The line that separates feature values of one class from another is called a **decision boundary**. With more than one feature, the decision boundary will not be a line but a hyperplane:\n\nFigure 7.1: Linear classifier\n\n# Logistic regression\n\nYou can come up with a lot of problems a linear classifier has. One of them is that many datasets just cannot be separated properly by a straight line:\n\nFigure 7.2: Linear separable (on the left) and nonlinear separable (on the right) data. The decision boundary as shown in the dashed line. Source: Mykola Sosnovshchenko.\n\nAnother problem is that a linear regression line can predict negative values or values greater than one for some samples even though we know for sure _y_ should be either zero or one. To fix it, we need some function that takes values from [-\u221e, +\u221e] and output values in the range from zero to one. One such function is a logistic function. Please refer to the following formula and graph:\n\nFigure 7.3: Logistic function\n\nRemember that in linear regression, we had our hypothesis function defined as a linear transformation (dot product of vectors):\n\nIn a logistic regression, we add a nonlinear logistic transformation like this:\n\nLogistic regression is used to estimate the probability of some event happening or not happening. In other words, it is a binary classification algorithm that outputs the probability of the sample belonging to one or another class. The typical example of logistic regression output looks like this: _There's a 0.95 chance the letter is spam, and 0.05 chance it's not_.\n\nThe output of the logistic regression is always in a range (0, 1). We still call this algorithm _regression_ , despite using it for classification, because it produces a continuous output; however, this is the closest we can get to a discrete output using differential functions. Why do we want them to be differential? Because we want to use our good friend gradient descent to learn the parameter vector _w_.\n\n# Implementing logistic regression in Swift\n\nThe most important differences of this implementation from multiple linear regression are the following:\n\n  * Normalization is required only for feature matrix _x_ , and not for the target vector _y_ , because the output has range (0, 1)\n  * The hypothesis is different\n  * The cost function looks different, but the cost gradient remains the same\n\nAgain, we'll need some accelerate functions:\n\n    import Accelerate\n\nThe logistic regression class definition looks similar to multiple linear regression:\n\n    public class LogisticRegression { \n    public var weights: [Double]!\n\n    public init(normalization: Bool) { \n        self.normalization = normalization \n    }\n\n    private(set) var normalization: Bool \n    private(set) var xMeanVec = [Double]() \n    private(set) var xStdVec = [Double]() \n\n# The prediction part of logistic regression\n\nThis is the code that implements hypotheses for one sample input and for a matrix of inputs:\n\n    public func predict(xVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n        if normalization { \n            let input = xVec \n            let differenceVec = vecSubtract(input, xMeanVec) \n            let normalizedInputVec = vecDivide(differenceVec, xStdVec)\n\n            let h = hypothesis(xVec: [1.0]+normalizedInputVec)\n\n            return h \n        } else { \n            return hypothesis(xVec: [1.0]+xVec) \n        } \n    }\n\n    private func hypothesis(xVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n        var result = 0.0 \n        vDSP_dotprD(xVec, 1, weights, 1, &result, vDSP_Length(xVec.count)) \n        return 1.0 \/ (1.0 + exp(-result)) \n    }\n\n    public func predict(xMat: [[Double]]) -> [Double] { \n        let rows = xMat.count \n        precondition(rows > 0) \n        let columns = xMat.first!.count \n        precondition(columns > 0)\n\n        if normalization { \n            let flattenedNormalizedX = xMat.map{ \n                return vecDivide(vecSubtract($0, xMeanVec), xStdVec) \n                }.reduce([], +)\n\n            \/\/ Add a column of ones in front of the matrix. \n            let basisExpanded = prependColumnOfOnes(matrix: flattenedNormalizedX, rows: rows, columns: columns) \n            let hVec = hypothesis(xMatFlattened: basisExpanded)\n\n            return hVec \n        } else { \n            \/\/ Flatten and prepend a column of ones. \n            let flattened = xMat.map{[1.0]+$0}.reduce([], +) \n            return hypothesis(xMatFlattened: flattened) \n        } \n    }\n\n    private func hypothesis(xMatFlattened: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n        let matCount = xMatFlattened.count \n        let featureCount = weights.count \n        precondition(matCount > 0) \n        let sampleCount = matCount\/featureCount \n        precondition(sampleCount*featureCount == matCount) \n        let labelSize = 1 \n        var result = gemm(aMat: xMatFlattened, bMat: weights, rowsAC: sampleCount, colsBC: labelSize, colsA_rowsB: featureCount)\n\n        \/\/ -h \n        vDSP_vnegD(result, 1, &result, 1, vDSP_Length(sampleCount))\n\n        \/\/ exp(-h) \n        \/\/ vForce function for double-precision exponent. \n        var outputLength = Int32(sampleCount) \n        vvexp(&result, result, &outputLength)\n\n        \/\/ 1.0 + exp(-h) \n        var one = 1.0 \n        vDSP_vsaddD(result, 1, &one, &result, 1, vDSP_Length(sampleCount))\n\n        \/\/ 1.0 \/ (1.0 + exp(-h)) \n        vDSP_svdivD(&one, result, 1, &result, 1, vDSP_Length(sampleCount))\n\n        return result \n    } \n\n# Training the logistic regression\n\nThe training part is also very similar to linear regression:\n\n    public func train(xMat: [[Double]], yVec: [Double], learningRate: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n      precondition(maxSteps > 0, \"The number of learning iterations should be grater then 0.\") \n      let sampleCount = xMat.count \n      precondition(sampleCount == yVec.count, \"The number of samples in xMat should be equal to the number of labels in yVec.\") \n      precondition(sampleCount > 0, \"xMat should contain at least one sample.\") \n      precondition(xMat.first!.count > 0, \"Samples should have at least one feature.\") \n      let featureCount = xMat.first!.count \n      let weightsCount = featureCount+1\n\n      weights = [Double](repeating: 1.0, count: weightsCount)\n\n      if normalization {   \n       **\/\/ Flatten**  \n        let flattenedXMat = xMat.reduce([], +) \n        let (normalizedXMat, xMeanVec, xStdVec) = matNormalize(matrix: flattenedXMat, rows: sampleCount, columns: featureCount) \n        **\/\/ Save means and std-s for prediction phase**  \n        self.xMeanVec = xMeanVec \n        self.xStdVec = xStdVec \n        **\/\/ Add first column of ones to matrix**  \n        let designMatrix = prependColumnOfOnes(matrix: normalizedXMat, rows: sampleCount, columns: featureCount)\n\n        gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: designMatrix, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n      } else {   \n       **\/\/ Flatten and prepend a column of ones**  \n        let flattenedXMat = xMat.map{[1.0]+$0}.reduce([], +) \n        gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: flattenedXMat, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: learningRate, maxSteps: maxSteps) \n      } \n    } \n\n# Cost function\n\nThe `cost` function is something we can use to assess the prediction quality:\n\n    \/\/ cost(y, h) = -sum(y.*log(h)+(1-y).*log(1-h))\/m \n    public func cost(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double]) -> Double { \n      let count = trueVec.count \n      \/\/ Calculate squared Euclidean distance. \n      var result = 0.0\n\n      var left = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n      var right = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count)\n\n      \/\/ log(h) \n      var outputLength = Int32(count) \n      vvlog(&left, predictedVec, &outputLength)\n\n      \/\/ -y.*log(h) \n      left = vecMultiply(trueVec, left)\n\n      \/\/ 1-y \n      var minusOne = -1.0 \n      var oneMinusTrueVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n      vDSP_vsaddD(trueVec, 1, &minusOne, &oneMinusTrueVec, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n      vDSP_vnegD(oneMinusTrueVec, 1, &oneMinusTrueVec, 1, vDSP_Length(count))\n\n      \/\/ 1-h \n      var oneMinusPredictedVec = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: count) \n      vDSP_vsaddD(predictedVec, 1, &minusOne, &oneMinusPredictedVec, 1, vDSP_Length(count)) \n      vDSP_vnegD(oneMinusPredictedVec, 1, &oneMinusPredictedVec, 1, vDSP_Length(count))\n\n      \/\/ log(1-h) \n      vvlog(&right, oneMinusPredictedVec, &outputLength)\n\n      \/\/ (1-y).*log(1-h) \n      right = vecMultiply(oneMinusTrueVec, right)\n\n      \/\/ left+right \n      let sum = vecAdd(left, right)\n\n      \/\/ sum() \n      vDSP_sveD(sum, 1, &result, vDSP_Length(count))\n\n      \/\/ Normalize by vector length. \n      result\/=(Double(count)) \n      return -result \n    }\n\nThe derivative of a `cost` function is something we use to adjust weights to minimize the `cost` function itself:\n\n    \/\/ x'*sum(h-y) \n    private func costGradient(trueVec: [Double], predictedVec: [Double], xMatFlattened: [Double]) -> [Double] { \n      let matCount = xMatFlattened.count \n      let featureCount = weights.count \n      precondition(matCount > 0) \n      precondition(Double(matCount).truncatingRemainder(dividingBy: Double(featureCount)) == 0) \n      let sampleCount = trueVec.count \n      precondition(sampleCount > 0) \n      precondition(sampleCount*featureCount == matCount) \n      let labelSize = 1\n\n      let diffVec = vecSubtract(predictedVec, trueVec)\n\n      \/\/ Normalize by vector length. \n      let scaleBy = 1\/Double(sampleCount) \n      let result = gemm(aMat: xMatFlattened, bMat: diffVec, rowsAC: featureCount, colsBC: labelSize, colsA_rowsB: sampleCount, transposeA: true, \u03b1: scaleBy)\n\n      return result \n    }\n\n    \/\/ alpha is a learning rate \n    private func gradientDescentStep(xMatFlattened: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double) -> [Double] {\n\n      \/\/ Calculate hypothesis predictions. \n      let hVec = hypothesis(xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened) \n      \/\/ Calculate gradient with respect to parameters. \n      let gradient = costGradient(trueVec: yVec, predictedVec: hVec, xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened) \n      let featureCount = gradient.count\n\n      \/\/ newWeights = weights - \u03b1*gradient \n      var alpha = \u03b1 \n      var scaledGradient = [Double](repeating: 0.0, count: featureCount) \n      vDSP_vsmulD(gradient, 1, &alpha, &scaledGradient, 1, vDSP_Length(featureCount))\n\n      let newWeights = vecSubtract(weights, scaledGradient)\n\n      return newWeights \n    }\n\n    private func gradientDescent(xMatFlattened: [Double], yVec: [Double], \u03b1: Double, maxSteps: Int) { \n      for _ in 0 ..< maxSteps { \n        let newWeights = gradientDescentStep(xMatFlattened: xMatFlattened, yVec: yVec, \u03b1: \u03b1) \n        if newWeights==weights { \n          print(\"convergence\") \n          break \n        } \/\/ convergence \n        weights = newWeights \n      } \n    }  \n\n# Predicting user intents\n\nThe problem: Apple's default Clock app, if opened from the app switcher menu (the one you see when swiping from the bottom of the screen upward), always shows the Timer tab. I personally use this app mostly for one reason every day\u2014to set an alarm clock, which is in a different tab. By knowing the day of the week and time of the day, it's easy to make the app smarter (and less annoying) by opening the proper Alarm tab when needed and default tab otherwise. For this, we will need to collect historical records on what time we usually set an alarm on different days.\n\nLet's formulate the task more precisely:\n\n  * Input data: The day, hour, and minute when the user had opened the application\n  * Expected output: The probability that the user wants to set up an alarm\n\nThe task is of binary classification, which makes logistic regression a perfect candidate for the solution.\n\n# Handling dates\n\nThe straightforward way to transform dates and time into numerical features is by replacing them with integers. For example, days of the week (assuming that Sunday is the first day) can be encoded as numbers from 0 to 6, and hours as integers from 0 to 23:\n\n    Monday, 11:45 pm, alarm tab \u2192 [1, 23, 45, 1]  \n    Thursday, 1:15 am, alarm tab \u2192 [4, 1, 15, 1]  \n    Saturday, 10:55 am, timer tab \u2192 [6, 10, 55, 0]  \n    Tuesday, 5:30 pm, timer tab \u2192 [2, 17, 30, 0]\n\nTo explain why this is a bad approach, take a look at the following diagram. The samples 11:45 pm and 1:15 am are close to each other, but this will not be obvious to our model if we encode them in a straightforward way. We can fix this situation by projecting the day of the week ( _d_ ) together with the hour ( _h_ ) and minute ( _m_ ) on the circle:\n\n**Parameter** | **Formula**  \n---|---  \n`dow_sin` | ** **  \n`dow_cos` |    \n`time_sin` |    \n`time_cos` |\n\nThe result of this transformation can be seen in the following diagram:\n\nAfter the transformation, each sample in the dataset will contain four new features:\n\n**dow_sin** | **dow_cos** | **time_sin** | **time_cos** | **label**  \n---|---|---|---|---  \n`0.781831482` | `0.623489802` | `-0.065403129` | `0.997858` | `alert`  \n`-0.433883739` | `-0.900968868` | `0.321439465` | `0.946930129` | `alert`  \n`-0.781831482` | `0.623489802` | `0.279829014` | `-0.960049854` | `timer`  \n`0.974927912` | `-0.222520934` | `-0.991444861` | `-0.130526192` | `timer`\n\nNow these data points can be successfully separated by either the linear classifier or logistic regression.\n\n# Choosing the regression model for your problem\n\nBy now, you may feel overwhelmed by the number of models, regularization, and preprocessing techniques. No worries, there is a simple algorithm for choosing the model:\n\n  1. If your label is continuous\u2014linear regression\n  2. If your label is binary\u2014logistic regression\n  3. High dimensionality and multicollinearity\u2014regularization methods (lasso, ridge, and ElasticNet)\n\n# Bias-variance trade-off\n\nErrors in machine learning can be decomposed into two components: bias and variance. The difference between them is commonly explained using the shooting metaphor, as demonstrated in the following diagram. If you train a high-variance model on 10 different datasets, the results would be very different. If you train a high-bias model on 10 different datasets, you would get very similar results. In other words, high-bias models tend to underfit and high-variance models tend to overfit. Usually, the more parameters the model has the more it is prone to overfitting, but there are also differences between model classes: parametric models like linear and logistic regressions tend to be biased, while nonparametric models like KNN usually have a high variance:\n\nFigure 7.4: Two components of errors: bias and variance\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we discussed how to turn linear regression into a classification algorithm. We also implemented logistic regression, an important classification algorithm.\n\nHaving gained an understanding of this will be of great use for us in the next chapter, where we will implement our first neural network.\n\n# Neural Networks\n\nJust a decade ago, artificial neural networks ( **NNs** ) were considered by most researchers as an unpromising branch of computer science. But as computational power grew, and efficient algorithms to train NNs on GPUs were found, the situation changed dramatically. The latest discoveries in the field have achieved unprecedented results, such as tracking objects in video; synthesizing realistic speech, paintings, and music, automatic translation from one language to another; and extracting meaning from text, images, and video. NNs were rebranded as _deep learning_ and they've set all kinds of records in computer vision and natural language processing, beating almost all other ML approaches over the last few years (2014-2018). Deep NNs caused a new machine learning boom, raising a wave of discussions and predictions about the artificial general intelligence forthcoming.\n\nNow, there are already so many NN types that it's hard to keep track of them: convolutional, recurrent, recursive, autoencoders, generative adversarial, binary, with memory, with attention, and so on. New architectures and applications continue to appear almost every week, thanks to the growing community of enthusiasts all around the world who experiment with NNs, applying them to all possible kinds of tasks.\n\nHere is a short list of what NNs are now doing more or less successfully:\n\n  * Coloring black and white photographs\n  * Drawing new Pokemon\n  * Writing scripts for advertisements\n  * Diagnosing cancer cells\n\nThanks to the breakthroughs in deep learning, we have come close to saying (though not yet loudly) that our computers can now fantasize, dream, and hallucinate. Today, researchers are working on NNs that can, on their own, design and train other NNs, write computer programs, help understand intracellular processes, and decipher forgotten scripts and the language of dolphins. Starting with this chapter, we will begin to plunge into deep learning.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * What are NNs, neurons, layers, and activation functions?\n  * What types of activation functions are there?\n  * How to train NNs: backpropagation, stochastic gradient descent\n  * What is deep learning?\n  * Which deep learning frameworks are best suited for iOS applications?\n  * Implementing a multilayer perceptron, and how to train it.\n\n# What are artificial NNs anyway?\n\nThe group of models that we call artificial NNs are universal approximation machines; in other words, the functions that can imitate the behavior of any other function of interest. Here, I mean functions in a more mathematical meaning, as opposed to computer science: functions that take a real-valued input vector and return a real-valued output vector. This definition holds true for feed-forward NNs, which we will be discussing in this chapter. In the following chapters, we'll see networks that map an input tensor (multidimensional array) to an output tensor, and also networks that take their own outputs as an input.\n\nWe can think of a NN as a graph and the neuron as a node in a directed acyclic graph. Each such node takes some input and produces some output. Modern NNs are only loosely inspired by the biological brain. If you want to know more about the biological prototype and its relation to NNs, check the _Seeing biological analogies_ section.\n\n# Building the neuron\n\nConsidering that a biological neuron has an astonishingly complex structure (see _Figure 8.1_ ), how do we approach modeling it in our programs? Actually, most of this complexity is, so to say, at the hardware level. We can abstract it out and think of the neuron as a node in a graph, which takes one or more inputs and produces some output (sometimes called _activation_ ).\n\nWait, but doesn't that sound like something familiar? Yes, you are right: an artificial neuron is just a mathematical function.\n\nThe most common way to model the neuron is by using the weighted sum of inputs with the non-linearity function _f_ :\n\nWhere _w_ is a weights vector, _x_ is an input vector, and _b_ is a bias term. The _y_ is a neuron's scalar output.\n\nFigure 8.1: A typical motor neuron of a vertebrate. Public domain diagram from Wikimedia Commons\n\nFigure 8.2: Artificial neuron diagram\n\nA typical artificial neuron processes input in the following three steps, as demonstrated in the preceding diagram ( _Figure 8.2_ ):\n\n  1. Take a weighted sum of inputs. Each neuron has a vector of weights of the same length as the number of inputs. Sometimes, one more weight is introduced as for bias term (always equal to one). The weighted sum of inputs is a dot product of the input vector and weight vector.\n  2. Pass the result through a non-linear function (synonyms: activation function, transfer function).\n  3. Pass the result of computations downstream to the next neurons.\n\nThe first step is a very familiar linear regression. If activation is a step function, this makes an individual neuron mathematically identical to a binary linear classifier. If you replace the step function with a logistic function, what you will get is a logistic regression. But now we call them neurons, and can assemble them into a network.\n\nThe learning of a neuron occurs when its input weight adjusts in such a way that the whole neuron produces better output. Again, this is the same as with a linear regression. To train a NN, we usually use a backpropagation algorithm, which is built on top of the familiar gradient descent.\n\n# Non-linearity function\n\nAn activation function maps the weighted input of a neuron into a real value to produce the neuron's output. Many of the NN's properties depend on the choice of activation function, including its ability to generalize, and the speed of the training process convergence. Usually, we want it to be differentiable, so we can optimize the whole network using the gradient descent. Most commonly used activation functions are non-linear: piecewise linear, or s-shaped (see _Table 8.1_ ). Nonlinear activation functions allow NNs to outperform other algorithms in many nontrivial tasks using only a few neurons. Oversimplifying, activation functions can be divided into two groups: step-like and rectifier-like (see _Figure 8.3_ ). Let's take a closer look at some examples:\n\n**Name** | **Formula** | **Derivative**\n\n---|---|---\n\nStep function |   |\n\nLogistic |   |\n\nHyperbolic tangent |   |\n\nReLU |   |\n\nLeaky ReLU |   |\n\nSoftplus |   |\n\nMaxout |   |\n\nTable 8.1: Commonly used activation functions\n\nFigure 8.3: Plots of the common activation functions: step-like in the left column, and rectifier-like in the right column\n\n# Step-like activation functions\n\nThe heaviside step function (also known as **unit step function** or **threshold function** ) outputs _0_ for all values less than _zero_ , and _1_ for everything else. This is a natural choice to model a biological neuron, which produces an electrical impulse, _1_ , or stays silent: _0_. Unfortunately, the function is not differentiable because of the discontinuity at _0_ , which makes it impossible to train such networks using gradient descent algorithm. Each individual neuron in such a network is a mathematical equivalent of a binary linear classifier, hence such networks are unable to perform well on nonlinear tasks.\n\nA **logistic (sigmoid) function** is a continuous approximation of a step function. The function squashes the input from range (-\u221e, +\u221e) to the range ( _0_ , _1_ ). It allows NNs to be trained using gradient descent, but it also has two problems:\n\n  * Because of the sigmoid's shape, NNs that use it are prone to a **vanishing gradient problem** , which will be explained later (see the _Vanishing gradient problem_ section).\n  * The output of the sigmoid is not zero-centered. This introduces undesirable zig-zagging behavior of the weights values during training, and the networks generally train slower.\n\nWith the sigmoid activation function, each neuron essentially performs the logistic regression.\n\n**Hyperbolic tangent** ( **tanh** ) is a scaled logistic function, so the shape of the function is very similar but the range of its output is ( _-1_ , _1_ ). This means that the tanh still suffers from the vanishing gradient, but at least its output is now zero-centered.\n\n# Rectifier-like activation functions\n\nA rectifier is a piecewise linear function, which you hardly ever meet outside of the NNs context. This class of function was designed specifically to mitigate the problems and limitations of traditional step-like activation functions. A rectifier applies a simple thresholding: `max(0, x)`. A neuron uses a rectifier is known as a **rectified linear unit** ( **ReLU** ).\n\nUnlike sigmoids, a rectifier doesn't saturate at the upper end. This helps the neuron to tell apart a poor prediction from a very poor prediction, and update weights accordingly even in such a difficult situation. ReLU is also very cheap computationally: unlike sigmoids, which require exponentials, ReLU can be implemented as a thresholding operation. It also has been shown that a network of ReLUs can converge up to six times faster than one using sigmoids, so ReLU quickly gained popularity in the deep learning community after its invention.\n\nReLU has its own drawbacks, so several modifications were proposed to fix them:\n\n  * **Leaky ReLU** : Instead of _0_ for all values, less than _0_ and this activation returns a tiny fraction of an input ( _0.01_ , for example). The size of the fraction is determined by the constant \u03b1. Presumably, this should prevent ReLU from saturation at the bottom end, but in practice it usually doesn't help much.\n  * **Randomized ReLU** : \u03b1 is random in some bounds. Randomization is a common way of NN regularization, which we will see later in this chapter.\n  * **Parametric ReLU (PReLU)** : \u03b1 is a trainable parameter, which is adjusted through a gradient descent.\n  * **Softplus** : An approximation of a ReLU using exponentials. A derivative of this function is a sigmoid.\n  * **Maxout unit** : Combines both ReLU and leaky ReLU in one expression. In this way, it allows the maxout unit to have all ReLU benefits, namely linearity, with no saturation, but doesn't have the dying ReLU problem. The downside here is that the maxout unit has double the number of parameters in comparison to ReLU, so it's computationally more expensive.\n\n# Building the network\n\nIndividual neurons can be organized in a network (see _Figure 8.4_ ), usually by joining several neurons in parallel in a layer and then stacking layers on top of each other. Such a network is known as a **feed-forward NN** or a **multilayer perceptron (MLP)**. The first layer is an input layer, the last layer is an output layer, and all inner layers are known as _hidden layers_. If each neuron of one layer is connected to the all neurons in the next layer, such a network is called a **fully-connected NN**.\n\nA fully-connected feed-forward multilayer perceptron with one type of activation (usually sigmoid) is a traditional (canonical) type of NN. It is mostly used for classification purposes. In the following chapters, we will discuss other types of NNs, but in this chapter we will stick to the MLP:\n\nFigure 8.4: Fully-connected feed-forward NN with five layers\n\n# Building a neural layer in Swift\n\nA fully-connected layer is easy to implement, because it can be expressed as two operations:\n\n  * A matrix multiplication between weights matrix _W_ and input vector _x._\n  * A point wise application of activation function _f_ :\n\nFigure 8.5: One layer in detail\n\nIn many frameworks, the two operations are separated so that matrix multiplication happens in the fully-connected layer and activation happens in the next nonlinearity layer. This is handy because in this way we can easily replace the weighted sum with convolution. In the next chapter, we will discuss convolutional NNs.\n\nBut for now, let's see how NNs can perform logical operations. One neuron is enough to model any logical gate, except XOR. This finding caused the first AI winter in the 1960s; however, XOR is trivial to a model having a network with two layers.\n\n# Using neurons to build logical functions\n\nAmong other obscured parts of iOS and macOS SDK, there is one interesting library called SIMD. It is an interface for direct access to vector instructions and vector types, which are mapped directly to the vector unit in the CPU, without the need to write an assembly code. You can reference vector and matrix types as well as linear algebra operators defined in this header right from your Swift code, starting from 2.0 version.\n\nThe **universal approximation** theorem states that a simple NN with one hidden layer can approximate a wide variety of continuous functions if proper weights are found. This is also commonly rephrased as NNs as universal function approximators. However, the theorem doesn't tell if it's possible to find such proper weights.\n\nTo get access to those goodies, you need to `import simd` in Swift files, or `#include <simd\/simd.h>` in C\/C++\/Objective-C files. GPU also has SIMD units in it, so you can import SIMD into your metal shader code as well.\n\nAs per iOS 10.3\/Xcode 8.2.1, some parts of C SIMD functionality are not available in the Swift version of it; for instance, logical and trigonometric operations. To see them, create Objective-C file, `#import <simd\/simd.h>` and click _command_ , click on the `simd.h` to go to the header files.\n\nThe part I like the most about the SIMD is that all vectors and matrices in it have size explicitly mentioned as a part of their type. For example, function `float 4()` returns the matrix of size 4 x 4. But it also makes SIMD inflexible because only matrices of sizes from 2 up to 4 are available.\n\nTake a look at the SIMD playground for some examples of SIMD usage:\n\n    let firstVector = float4(1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0) \n    let secondVector = firstVector \n    let dotProduct = dot(firstVector, secondVector)\n\nThe result is as follows:\n\nFigure 8.6: A NN implementing XOR function\n\nTo illustrate that SIMD can be used for ML algorithms, let's implement a simple XOR NN in SIMD:\n\n    func xor(_ a: Bool, _ b: Bool) -> Bool { \n        let input = float2(Float(a), Float(b))\n\n        let weights1 = float2(1.0, 1.0) \n        let weights2 = float2(-1.0, -1.0)\n\n        let matrixOfWeights1 = float2x2([weights1, weights2]) \n        let weightedSums = input * matrixOfWeights1\n\n        let stepLayer = float2(0.5, -1.5)\n\n        let secondLayerOutput = step(weightedSums, edge: stepLayer)\n\n        let weights3 = float2(1.0, 1.0) \n        let outputStep: Float = 1.5\n\n        let weightedSum3 = reduce_add(secondLayerOutput * weights3)\n\n        let result = weightedSum3 > outputStep \n        return result \n    }\n\nThe good thing about SIMD is that it explicitly says to the CPU to calculate the dot product in one step, without looping over the vector but rather utilizing SIMD instructions.\n\n# Implementing layers in Swift\n\nThere are at least three options to consider when you want to implement a NN in Swift:\n\n  * Implement it in pure Swift (which may be useful mostly for the study purposes). A lot of implementations of different complexity and functionality can be found on the GitHub. It looks like every programmer at some stage of her\/his life starts to write a NN library in her\/his favourite programming language.\n  * Implement it using low-level acceleration libraries\u2014Metal Performance Shaders, or BNNS.\n  * Implement it using some general-purpose NN framework\u2014Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and so on\u2014and then convert it to Core ML format.\n\nThe Metal Performance Shader library includes three types of activations for NNs: ReLU, sigmoid, and TanH (`MPSCNNNeuronReLU`, `MPSCNNNeuronSigmoid`, `MPSCNNNeuronTanH`). For more information refer to: https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/reference\/metalperformanceshaders.\n\n# Training the network\n\nThe most common way to train NNs these days is with a backward propagation of errors algorithm, or backpropagation (often _backprop_ for short). As we have seen already, individual neurons remind us of linear or logistic regression a lot, so it should not come as a surprise that backpropagation usually comes together with our old friend the gradient descent algorithm. NN training works in the following way:\n\n  * Forward pass\u2014input is presented to the layer and the transformations are applied to it layer by layer until the prediction is outputted on the last layer.\n  * Loss computation\u2014the prediction is compared to the ground truth, and an error value is calculated for each neuron of the output layer using the loss function _J_.\n  * The errors are then propagated backward (backpropagation), such that each neuron has an error associated to it, proportional to its contribution to the output.\n  * Weights ( _w)_ are updated using one step of gradient descent. The gradient of the loss function   is calculated for each neuron, with respect to its weights using the error value. Then the usual gradient descent step happens as in linear regression.\n\nBackpropagation is possible only if all the transformations in the forward propagation are differentiable (in the simplest case, dot products and activation functions) because it is essentially an application of a chain rule from calculus.\n\nFor further reading, go to https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/back propagation.\n\n# Vanishing gradient problem\n\nThe sigmoid asymptotically approaches zero on the one end, and the _1_ on another end. On those tails, the derivative of a function is very small. This is bad news for the backpropagation algorithm because these almost-zero values are killing the signal when it propagates through the network back to update weights.\n\nThe problem with dead neurons: if you initialize network weights at random, sigmoidal neurons with large weights would be dead (almost not transmitting the signal) from the very beginning.\n\n# Seeing biological analogies\n\nEveryone has heard that artificial NNs mimic the way the brain works. This is actually far from the truth. What is true is that NNs as a field grew out of attempts to simulate how the brain works. The elementary unit of a brain is a neuron (a nerve cell). The human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons. Neurons can generate electric potential (action potential) in its body. The neuron has branched projections of two types. One being short projections, known as dendrites (from Greek _\u03b4\u03b5v\u03b5\u03b4pov_ , tree). Usually, their function is to receive electrical impulses from other neurons. The other type is longer projections, known as axons (from Greek \u03b1\u03be\u03c9v, axis). Some neurons don't have axons, but no neurons have more than one. The function of the axon is to carry electrical impulses away from the neuron body to other cells.\n\nBy its axon, the neuron connects to the bodies (or to the dendrites) of other neurons and transmits electrical signals to them. Not all neurons transmit signals to other neurons; some of them excite muscles and glands.\n\nAxons on their ends have structures called synapses\u2014a connection to the cell body, or dendrite. To transmit a signal to the next neuron, the synapse emits chemical neuromediators (or rarely, electrical signals). There are about 1,014-1,015 synapses in the human brain. You can calculate yourself how much disk space is required to store such enormous amount of information. In our artificial brains, we have much fewer artificial neurons. Even the largest among the modern NNs are comparable rather to the brain of a jellyfish or a snail. However, number of neurons or synapses is not the whole story, as there are some animals whose brain contains more neurons than a human's. If you're interested in the topic, visit the Wikipedia page: <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons>.\n\nEven though the concept of NNs was borrowed from biology, one should have a powerful imagination to see how a biological prototype is similar to modern artificial NNs. That's why some researchers believe that some other names, like _computational graphs_ , are more appropriate. Biological terminology was once more popular in this domain, but now literally the only biological term that is widely used is _neuron_.\n\n# Basic neural network subroutines (BNNS)\n\nBNNS is a submodule of Accelerate, containing convolution NN primitives optimized for running inference on CPU. It was introduced in iOS 10 and macOS 10.12. Note that it contains only functions for inference, not for training.\n\nThe motivation behind this library was to provide unified API for common routines, such that app developers wouldn't need to re-implement convolutions and other primitives from scratch every time (which is hard, as we have seen already in the chapter on CNNs). In a typical CNN, most energy is spent in the convolution layers. Fully connected layers are more expensive computationally, but usually CNNs contain one or a few of them at the very end so convolutions still consume about 70% of energy. That's why it's important to have highly-optimized convolution layers. Unlike MPS, CNN is available on iOS, macOS, tvOS, and even watchOS. So, if you want to run deep learning on a TV set or your watch (just because you can), this is your tool of choice.\n\nSpeaking more seriously, BNNS is useful when you're implementing NNs for devices without Metal Performance Shaders support (older iOS devices and all macOS devices for now). In all other cases, you still want to use MPS CNNs to harness GPU massive parallelism.\n\nTo check availability of Metal features, look through <https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/metal\/availability\/>.\n\nBNNS contains three types of layers: convolution, pooling, and fully-connected layers, and several activations: identity, rectified linear, leaky rectified linear, sigmoid, tanh, scaled tanh, and abs.\n\n# BNNS example\n\nIn the following example, input images are of size 224 x 224 x 64 and output images are of size 222 x 222 x 96. The dimensionality of convolution weights is 3 x 3 x 64 x 96. That's 5.45 billion floating-point operations (gigaFloPS). In a whole MNIST recognition network, it's about 1-2 trillion operations per forward pass.\n\nBNNS is a part of Accelerate, so you need to import Accelerate to access the neural networks building blocks. The first thing you do is describing the input stack:\n\n    var inputStack = BNNSImageStackDescriptor(  \n      width: 224, height: 224, channels: 64,  \n      row_stride: 224, image_stride: 224*224,  \n      data_type: BNNSDataTypeFloat32,  \n      data_scale: 1.0, data_bias: 0.0)\n\nMost of the parameters are self-evident; `row_stride` is an increment to the next row in pixels, `image_stride` is similarly increment to the next channel in pixels, and `data_type` is a type of storage.\n\nThe output stack should look similar:\n\n    var outputStack = BNNSImageStackDescriptor(  \n      width: 1, height: 10, channels: 1,  \n      row_stride: 1, image_stride: 10,  \n      data_type: BNNSDataTypeFloat32,  \n      data_scale: 1.0, data_bias: 0.0)\n\nNow let's create a convolution layer. `BNNSConvolutionLayerParameters` contains the description of the convolution layer:\n\n    let activation = BNNSActivation(function: BNNSActivationFunctionIdentity, alpha: 0, beta: 0)\n\n    var convolutionParameters = BNNSConvolutionLayerParameters(  \n      x_stride: 1, y_stride: 1,  \n      x_padding: 0, y_padding: 0,  \n      k_width: 3, k_height: 3,  \n      in_channels: 64, out_channels: 96,  \n      weights: convolutionWeights,  \n      bias: convolutionBias,  \n      activation: activation)\n\n`k_width` and `k_height` are kernel width and height respectively.\n\nCreating the layer itself:\n\n    let convolutionLayer = BNNSFilterCreateConvolutionLayer(&inputStack, &outputStack, &convolutionParameters, nil)\n\n`nil` is for default `BNNSFilterParameters`.\n\nNow you can use the filter and destroy it when it's not needed anymore by calling `BNNSFilterDestroy(convolutionLayer)`.\n\nPooling layer:\n\n    \/\/ Describe pooling layer  \n    BNNSPoolingLayerParameters pool = {  \n        .k_width = 3,  \n    \/\/ kernel height  \n    \/\/ kernel width  \n    \/\/ X padding  \n    \/\/ Y padding  \n        .k_height = 3,  \n        .x_padding = 1,  \n        .y_padding = 1,  \n        .x_stride = 2,  \n        .y_stride = 2,  \n        .in_channels = 64,  \n        .out_channels = 64,  \n        .pooling_function = BNNSPoolingFunctionMax  \/\/ pooling function  \n    };  \n    \/\/ Create pooling layer filter  \n    BNNSFilter filter = BNNSFilterCreatePoolingLayer(  \n        &in_stack,     \/\/ BNNSImageStackDescriptor for input stack  \n        &out_stack,    \/\/ BNNSImageStackDescriptor for output stack  \n        &pool,         \/\/ BNNSPoolingLayerParameters  \n        NULL);         \/\/ BNNSFilterParameters (NULL = defaults)  \n    \/\/ Use the filter ...  \n    \/\/ Destroy filter  \n    BNNSFilterDestroy(filter);\n\n    \/\/ Describe input vector  \n    BNNSVectorDescriptor in_vec = {  \n        .size = 3000,  \n    \/\/ size  \n    \/\/ storage type  \n    };  \n    \/\/ Describe fully connected layer  \n    BNNSFullyConnectedLayerParameters full = {  \n        .in_size = 3000,  \n        .out_size = 20000,  \n        .weights = {  \n            .data_type = BNNSDataTypeFloat16,  \n            .data = weights  \n    \/\/ input vector size  \n    \/\/ output vector size  \n    \/\/ weights storage type  \n    \/\/ pointer to weights data  \n    } };  \n    \/\/ Create fully connected layer filter  \n    BNNSFilter filter = BNNSFilterCreateFullyConnectedLayer(  \n        &in_vec,       \/\/ BNNSVectorDescriptor for input vector  \n        &out_vec,      \/\/ BNNSVectorDescriptor for output vector  \n        &full,         \/\/ BNNSFullyConnectedLayerParameters  \n        NULL);         \/\/ BNNSFilterParameters (NULL = defaults)\/\/ Use the filter ...  \n    \/\/ Destroy filter  \n    BNNSFilterDestroy(filter);  \n    \/\/ Apply filter to one pair of (in,out)  \n    int status = BNNSFilterApply(filter,  \n                                 in,  \n    out);  \n    \/\/ BNNSFilter  \n    \/\/ pointer to input data  \n    \/\/ pointer to output data  \n    \/\/ Apply filter to N pairs of (in,out)  \n    int status = BNNSFilterApplyBatch(filter,  \n                                      20,  \n                                      in,  \n                                      3000,  \n                                      out,  \n                                      20000);  \n    \/\/ BNNSFilter  \n    \/\/ batch size (N)  \n    \/\/ pointer to input data  \n    \/\/ input stride (values)  \n    \/\/ pointer to output data  \n    \/\/ output stride (values)\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we've become acquainted with artificial NNs and their main components. NNs are built from neurons that are usually organized in layers. A typical neuron performs a weighted sum of inputs and then applies a non-linear activation function on it to calculate its output. There are many different activation functions, but the most popular these days is ReLU and its modifications, due to their computational properties.\n\nNNs are usually trained using the backpropagation algorithm, built on top of stochastic gradient descent. Feed-forward NNs with several layers are also known as multilayer perceptrons. MLPs can be used for classification tasks.\n\nIn the next chapter, we'll continue to discuss NNs, but this time we'll focus on convolution NNs, which are especially popular in the computer vision domain.\n\n# Convolutional Neural Networks\n\nIn this chapter, we are discussing the **convolutional neural networks** ( **CNNs** ). At first we are going to discuss all components with examples in Swift just to develop an intuition about the algorithm and what is going on under the hood. However, in the real life you most likely will not develop CNN from scratch, because you will use some ready available and battle-tested deep learning framework.\n\nSo, in the second part of the chapter we will show a full development cycle of deep learning mobile application. We are going to take the photos of people's faces labeled with their emotions, train a CNN on a GPU workstation, and then integrate it into an iOS application using Keras, Vision, and Core ML frameworks.\n\nTo the end of this chapter you will have learned about:\n\n  * Affective computing\n  * Computer vision, its tasks, and its methods\n  * CNNs, their anatomy, and core concepts behind them\n  * Applications of CNNs in computer vision\n  * How to train CNNs using a GPU workstation and Keras\n  * Deep learning tricks: Regularization, data augmentation, and early stopping\n  * CNNs architectures\n  * How to convert a trained model to Core ML format for use in an iOS application\n  * How to detect faces and facial expressions in photos using CNNs and Vision framework\n\n# Understanding users emotions\n\nWhile voice input is undoubtedly a useful feature, we all well know how the actual meaning of the sentence can be opposite to the literal one, depending on the speaker's intonation, facial expression, and context. Try this simple sentence: _Oh, really?_ Depending on the conditions, this can mean: _I doubt_ , _I didn't know_ , _I'm impressed_ , _I don't care_ , _This is obvious_ , and so on. The problem is that speech is not the only mode of conversation for human beings, and that's why much research is focused these days on _teaching_ computers to understand (and also simulate) gestures, facial expressions, sentiments in a text, eye movements, sarcasm, and other affect manifestations. An interdisciplinary field that emerges around the question of emotional and compassionate AI is known as **affective computing**. It integrates knowledge from the computer and cognitive sciences, as well as psychology and robotics. The aim is the creation of computer systems that will adapt themselves to the user's emotional state, understand their mood, and simulate empathy. Back in 1995, in pre-smartphone epoch, the name of the field was coined by Rosalind Picard. In her technical report titled _Affective Computing_ [2], she predicts that it will be especially relevant in the context of wearable devices. Using facial expression recognition in this chapter, we're going to introduce elements of affective intelligence into our mobile app. This can be used in a context of language understanding, or in a multitude of other ways from emoji recommendations to smart photo sorting.\n\nPlease note that affective computing is similar to the sentiment analysis, but is a more broad term: the former is interested in all kind of affects, their detection and simulation, and the latter is mostly concerned with the polarity of the text piece (positive\/negative).\n\n# Introducing computer vision problems\n\nIn this book, we mentioned computer vision several times, but since this chapter is focused on this particular domain, we will look at it in more detail now. There are several practical tasks related to image and video processing, which are referred to as **computer vision domain**. While working on some computer vision task, it's important to know these names, to be able to find what you need in the vast ocean of computer vision publications:\n\n  * **Object recognition** : The same as classification. Assigning labels to the images. _This is a cat_. Age estimation. Facial expression recognition.\n  * **Object localization** : Finding frame of object in the image. _The cat is in this frame_.\n  * **Object detection** : Finding frames of objects in the image. _The cat is in this frame_.\n  * **Semantic segmentation** : Each point in the picture is assigned to one class. If the picture contains several cats, each cat's pixel would be assigned to the _cat_ class.\n  * **Instance segmentation** : Each point in the picture is assigned to one instance of class. If the picture contains several cats, each cat's pixel would be assigned to the separate segment of _cat_ class.\n  * **Pose estimation** : Determining the orientation of the object in the space.\n  * **Object tracking** : Analyzing the video to find the trajectory of the moving object.\n  * **Image segmentation** : Finding borders between different objects into an image. Background subtraction.\n  * 3D-scene restoration and depth estimation.\n  * Image search and retrieval.\n\nSome common computer vision tasks, like **optical character recognition** ( **OCR** ), consist of several steps; for example, _image segmentation \u2192 image recognition_ :\n\nFigure 9.1: Popular computer vision tasks. Top row: recognition, localization. Middle row: object detection, pose estimation. Bottom row: semantic segmentation and instance segmentation\n\nThese tasks are recognized as hard problems, because of the variable factors: different camera position, lighting, object's occlusion, intra-class variability, changes in object shape, and so on. Many familiar machine learning algorithms found their unexpected applications in computer vision. For example, we have already seen that _k_ -means can be used for image segmentation, and the extension of linear regression RANSAC for stitching photos into a panorama.\n\nCNNs\u2014historical background: **  \n**For many years, the progress in computer vision has been slow, arduous and involved a lot of domain expert knowledge, manual feature picking and model parameters tuning. Significant changes crept up unnoticed: In 2012, Alex Krizhevsky won the annual ImageNet image recognition competition, leaving the rest of the competitors far behind. For his classifier, he used then little known CNN (AlexNet architecture). What was even more surprising is the fact that CNNs were proposed at least as early as 1994, when Yan LeCunn published his LeNet5 architecture description for handwritten numbers recognition. But they were recognized impractical for most real-world tasks, because required almost eternity and tons of data to learn anything useful. The novelty was that Krizhevsky trained his network using graphics accelerators (GPUs) and not a CPU. Harnessing massive parallelism of these devices he reduced training time from weeks to hours. The result was sensational, and therefore the convolutional networks gained popularity very quickly in the community of researchers and practitioners.\n\nLet's take a closer look at this type of neural network.\n\n# Introducing convolutional neural networks\n\nCNNs, or ConvNets have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, mainly due to their major successes in the domain of computer vision. They are at the core of most computer vision systems nowadays, including self-driving cars and large-scale photo classification systems.\n\nIn some sense, CNNs are very similar to multilayer perceptron, which we have discussed in the previous chapter. These networks also build from the layers, but unlike MLP, which usually has all layers similar to each other, CNNs usually include many layers of different types. And the most important type of the layer is (surprise, surprise) the convolutional layer. Modern CNNs can be really deep\u2014hundreds of different layers. Nevertheless, you can still see the whole network as one differentiable function that takes some input (usually raw values of image pixels), and produces some output (for example, class probabilities: 0.8 cat, 0.2 dog).\n\n# Pooling operation\n\nPooling or subsampling is a simple operation of input size decreasing ( _Figure 9.2_ ). If you have a black and white image, and you want to decrease its size, you can do it in the following way: chose a sliding window of size _n_ \u00d7 _m_ and stride _s_. Go through the image, applying sliding window and shifting on the _s_ pixels every time you want to move your window. At each position calculate an average (for average pooling) or maximum (for max pooling) and record this value into the destination matrix. Now, there are two common ways to handle borders of the image:\n\nFigure 9.2. Pooling operation. Grey window in the source image corresponds to the grey cell in the destination image\n\nThe pooling is used in the CNNs to reduce the size of the data, as it travels down the network.\n\n# Convolution operation\n\nConvolution is one of the most important operations in the image processing. Blurring, sharpening, edge detection, denoising, embossing and many other familiar operations in image editors are actually convolutions. It is similar to the pooling operation in some way, because it is also a sliding window operation, but instead of taking the average over the window, it performs element-wise multiplication by the kernel \u2013 matrix of size n \u00d7 n and sums the result. The result of the operation depends on the kernel (also known as **convolution filter** ) \u2013 a matrix, which is usually square, but not necessarily, see _Figure 9.3_. The notions of the stride and padding are the same as in the pooling case:\n\nFigure 9.3: Different convolution filters have different effects on the picture\n\nConvolution operation works in the following way (see the following diagram):\n\n  * The convolution kernel (filter) slides over the image from left to right, and from top to bottom\n  * At each position, we calculate an element-wise product of filter and the patch of the image, which is covered by a filter on this step\n  * The elements of the resulting matrix are summed up\n  * The result of the convolution is a matrix composed of the sums at each position of the filter:\n\nFigure 9.4: Convolution operation with 3 x 3 kernel, stride 1 and valid padding: : the source image is getting split into windows; each window is multiplied by filter elementwise; sum of the values into each of the windows\n\nThe algorithm looks simple at first glance, so you probably can come up with a Swift implementation similar to this one:\n\n    let input = ... \/\/source image, 2D array  \n    var output = ... \/\/destination image, 2D array  \n    for i in 0..<imageHeight {  \n         for j in 0..<imageWidth {  \n             var accumulator = 0;  \n             for ik in 0..<kernelHeight {  \n                 for jk in 0..<kernelWidth {  \n                     accumulator += kernel[ik][jk] *  \n                     input[i+ik-kernelHeight\/2][j+jk-kernelWidth\/2]  \n                 }   \n             }  \n             output[i][j] = accumulator;  \n         }  \n    }\n\nHowever, you really shouldn't implement your own convolution operation in production code. Here is a non-exhaustive list of problems that you'd have to deal with:\n\n  * Handle the edges of the image properly (see the following diagram)\n  * Handle stride\u2014how much the kernel shifts after each step\n  * Handle integer overflow properly\n  * Optimize for speed\n\nA good convolution implementation may require hundreds of lines of code (and even more). iOS SDK provides developers with several APIs that they can choose from, depending on their needs and goals:\n\n  * For image filtering: \n    * `CIImageFilter` from Core Image framework\n    * `vImage convolution` functions from accelerate framework, for instance `vImageConvolve_ARGB8888()`\n  * For running CNNs: \n    * **For CPU execution** : BNNS convolution layer: `BNNSFilterCreateConvolutionLayer`\n    * **For GPU execution** : `MPSCNNConvolution` class from Metal Performance Shaders framework\n\n`vImage functions` is a recommended way for the processing of large images, or for repeating the operation many times in a row. To filter middle-sized images, it's more efficient to stick with CoreImage. When you implement CNNs, you usually want to use either the Metal or accelerate framework. This is something we will discuss in much detail in the Chapter 11, _Machine Learning Libraries_.\n\nCheck `Convolution.playground` in the supplementary code to see how different convolution filters produce different effects. Try your own filters, and see what happens. We are using the `vImageConvolve_ARGB8888()` function from the accelerate framework to apply filters.\n\nThe following is an example:\n\n    import Accelerate\n\n    let error = vImageConvolve_ARGB8888(&input, &output, nil, 0, 0, kernel, kernelHeight, kernelWidth, Int32(divisor), nil, flags)\n\nFigure 9.5: Multichannel convolution\n\n# Convolutions in CNNs\n\nThe first layer applies the filters to the input image, and sends the resulting feature matrices downstream. The next layers apply their filters to the input they get, extracting features from a higher and higher level (see _Figure 9.6 - 9.8_ ). In the task of image classification (or _object recognition_ ), CNNs gradually adjust the filters during the training to extract useful features from the picture. In this case, useful features are different patterns, like eyes, beaks, wheels, and so on:\n\nFigure 9.6: Each CNN layer learns a set of convolutional kernels. Here you see outputs of the different filters from the 2nd convolutional layer in the 2nd block of VGG 16\n\nThe interesting thing is that convolution neural networks are used extensively outside of the computer vision domain; for instance, in natural language modeling and speech recognition. This is because of their capability to extract meaningful features from the raw data. There is no fundamental difference between extracting edges and corners from images, and syntactic features from texts.\n\n# Building the network\n\nWhen you first encounter a variety of architectures of CNNs, you feel overwhelmed by the abundance of new terms, different layers, and their hyperparameters. In fact, at the moment, only a few architectures have found broad application, and the number of designs suitable for mobile development is even smaller.\n\nThere are five basic types of layers plus an input layer, which usually does nothing except passing data forward:\n\n  * **Input layer** : The first layer in the neural network. It does nothing, only takes the input and passes it downstream.\n  * **Convolution layers** : Where convolutions happen\n  * **Fully** : Connected or dense layers\n  * **Nonlinearity layers** : These are layers which apply activation functions to the output of the previous layer: sigmoid, ReLU, tanh, softmax and so on.\n  * **Pooling layers** : Downsample their input.\n  * **Regularization layers** : layers to fight an overfitting.\n\nModern deep learning frameworks contain much more different types of layers for all needs, but these are the most commonly used. In the following sections, we will discuss each type of layer in details. As CNNs are normally not trained on the mobile devices, but used for predictions only, we do not go into the details of the backpropagation in CNNs here. However, if you are interested in knowing more details, the `NN Demo.playground` in the supplementary materials of this chapter contains pure Swift implementation of CNN and all its classical layers. It also contains an implementation of stochastic gradient descent algorithm and several of its variants. Please refer to this playground for more technical details on the layer's gears and training algorithm. The playground is a Swift port of `ConvNetJS` library by Andrej Karpathy. It was developed solely for the study purposes, to demonstrate how CNNs work inside, not for the use in the real applications, and it does not utilize GPU or CPU acceleration. The original JS library can be found here: <https:\/\/cs.stanford.edu\/people\/karpathy\/convnetjs\/>\n\n# Input layer\n\nThis is a dummy layer; it does nothing in both forward and backward passes. We only use it to define the input tensor size.\n\n# Convolutional layer\n\nIn CNNs convolutions happen in the special layers, called **convolutional layers**. Each layer has an array of convolutional filters, which also can be seen as one 3D convolutional filter with width, height, and number of channels (or depth). In the first convolutional layer, we usually want to have 3 channels corresponding to the RGB channels of the input images:\n\nFigure 9.7: The first convolutional layer takes a batch of images as its input and outputs a batch of feature maps. The results of each of the 16 red, green and blue filters are being summed up to obtain the final feature map\n\nThe output of a convolution layer is called a **feature map** , because it shows where specific features are located in the input image. Note, that only the first convolutional layer takes an image as its input, all subsequent layers take outputs of their predecessors (feature maps) as their inputs. Those feature maps are stored as tensors.\n\nTensor in the context of deep learning is a multidimensional array. Neural network parameters, for example convolutional filters, stored as tensors and all data travels through a deep neural network in the form of tensors. 0-dimensional tensor is a scalar, 1D is a vector, 2D is a matrix, 3D sometimes called **volume**.\n\nFigure 9.8: Each next layer in CNN extracts more abstract features, then the previous one. Example taken from the VGG-16 network.\n\nNote, that for your production apps, you usually don't want to write your own convolutional layers in Swift, because you want to utilize the power of the GPU, so you normally use the existing deep learning libraries (see Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_ ) or implement custom layers in Metal or Accelerate (see Chapter 11, _Machine Learning Libraries_ ).\n\n# Fully-connected layers\n\nFully-collected layer is like one layer of a multilayer perceptron from the previous chapter, but without activation function. You can imagine it as a matrix of weights multiplied by an input or as a layer of artificial neurons ( _Figure 9.9_ ):\n\nFigure 9.9: Two ways to represent a fully-connected layer: in a form of matrix-vector multiplication and in a form of a graph.\n\n# Nonlinearity layers\n\nThis are all kind of nonlinearities, that we've already discussed in the previous chapter: tanh, sigmoid, ReLU, and so on. You usually want to put them after a convolutional or a fully-connected layer.\n\nSoftmax is a generalization of a logistic function to vectors: while the logistic function `squashes` scalar values to be between 0 and 1, softmax squashes vectors so that its elements adds up to 1. In the statistics, probability of outcomes in discrete random distribution adds up to 1, so this function is really useful for the classification, where target variable is discrete.\n\n# Pooling layer\n\nPooling layer performs pooling operation. Put it after a convolutional layer, when you want to reduce the size of the tensor which will be passed to the next layer.\n\n# Regularization layers\n\nRegularization layers intended to fight overfitting and increase the speed of training. Among popular regularization layers are dropout and batch normalization layers, because both techniques were shown to be very useful in practice.\n\n# Dropout\n\nDropout is a common way of regularization for deep neural networks. The idea is to turn off random neurons in the previous layer with some predefined probability on each step of the training. The neurons which were turned off are not trained during this step, but will be restored on the next one with the original weights. This technique prevents overfitting because it does not allow to train all the neurons on all the data.\n\n# Batch normalization\n\nSmall changes in the layer parameters affects all the following layer inputs, and the effect gets amplified with each next layer. This is especially problematic for the deep networks.  \nThe distribution of inputs to each layer changes during training, because parameters of the previous layer are being adjusted. This problem is known as **internal covariate shift**.  \nBatch normalization technique was proposed in 2015 by Sergey Ioffe and Christian Szegedy from Google [1] to fix the problem. It allows normalizing layer inputs for each mini-batch as part of the network architecture. Batch normalization layer is usually inserted between the dot product and nonlinearity.\n\nThe benefits are as follows:\n\n  * You can use higher learning rate\n  * You can be less careful about weights initialization\n  * Works as regularization - no need for dropout\n  * Same model trains 14 times faster\n\nCovariate shift:\n\nThe common problem in machine learning systems formally known as **covariate shift** : when the model is being deployed to the production environment, it appears, that the data distribution in it is different from the distribution of the training data. The name comes from the covariates, which are basically the same as features. By analogy, the notion of internal covariate shift was introduced: when in the neural network the distribution of input data to each layer is not stable, but changes significantly after each step of the SGD.\n\nIf both input and output distributions changes, this is known as **dataset shift**.\n\n# Loss functions\n\nLoss function is a necessary part, because it is what we want to minimize during the training. You can find a few popular loss functions in the table:\n\n**Name** | **Formula** | **Usually used for**  \n---|---|---  \nMean squared error or L2-loss |   | Regression  \nMean absolute error or L1-loss |   | Regression  \nCategorical cross entropy |   |\n\nSoftmax multiclass classification\n\nWhere _y_ is a ground-truth vector and _\u0177_ is a vector of predictions of length _n_.\n\n# Training the network\n\n**Stochastic gradient descent** ( **SGD** ) is an effective way of training deep neural networks. SGD seeks such parameters _\u0398_ of the network, which minimize the loss function _\u2112_.\n\nWhere   is a training dataset.\n\nTraining happens in steps. At every step, we choose a subset of our training set of size m (mini-batch) and use it to approximate loss function gradient with respect to parameters _\u0398_ :\n\nMini-batch training advantages are as follows:\n\n  * Gradient of the loss function over a mini-batch is a better approximation of the gradient over the whole training set then calculated over only one sample\n  * Thanks to the GPU you can perform computations in parallel on every sample in the batch, which is faster, then processing them one-by-one\n\n# Training the CNN for facial expression recognition\n\nFor the demonstration of the CNNs we will implement a simple neural network for emotion recognition. We will use the dataset of face expressions `fer2013` from the ICML 2013 contest _Facial Expression Recognition Challenge_ [1].\n\nThe dataset can be downloaded from the kaggle site:\n\n<https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/c\/challenges-in-representation-learning-facial-expression-recognition-challenge\/data>\n\nYou will be asked to register and accept the terms and conditions.\n\nThe archive `fer2013.tar.gz` contains `fer2013.csv` with the dataset itself and some supplementary information files. The `.csv` file contains 35,887 samples, of which 28,709 marked as training set, 3,589 as public test, and 3,589 private test. There are three columns in the table: emotion, pixels and usage. Every sample is a grayscale 48 \u00d7 48 pixels face photo in a form of pixel array. The faces were cropped in an automatic way, so there are some false-positives in the dataset (non-faces and cartoon faces). Each face is labeled as belonging to one of the 7 classes. The distribution of emotions in the dataset is as follows:\n\n**Class id** | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6  \n---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  \n**Emotion** | Angry | Disgust | Fear | Happy  | Sad | Surprise | Neutral  \n**Count** | 4953 | 547 | 5121 | 8989 | 6077 | 4002 | 6198\n\n# Environment setup\n\nTo train the deep CNN, you will need a computer with a CUDA-compatible GPU. I used an Ubuntu 16.x machine with NVidia GTX980 GPU for model training, and a macOS machine to convert the model to Core ML format. If you don't have CUDA-compatible GPU, you can try to train the model on CPU; but be aware that this will take a lot of time. Also, the trained model for this chapter is available in the supplementary materials, so if you prefer not to contribute to the global warming by retraining the model from scratch, it's also possible.\n\nHere's a list of what should be installed on your system to train the network:\n\n  * Latest NVIDIA drivers\n  * CUDA 8.0\n  * cuDNN 5.1\n  * Python 2.7\n  * `tensorflow-gpu` (or TensorFlow for CPU-only mode)\n  * Keras\n  * Keras-viz\n  * Matplotlib, Pandas\n\nPlease, refer to the official sites for the installation instructions.\n\n# Deep learning frameworks\n\nThere are a plenty of deep learning toolkits and libraries for different kinds of platforms. For a long time, the three most popular of them were Theano (Python), Torch (Lua), and Caffe (C++). Somehow, Caffe became an industrial standard, while Theano and Torch were mostly used among researchers. I call these three libraries the first generation of deep learning frameworks. Most of the pre-trained neural networks that are available on the internet are still in Caffe format. They had their own problems, so the next generation of frameworks followed in several years. If the first generation was created mainly by efforts of individual researchers, the second generation was pushed by big IT companies. Today, apart from Apple, every internet giant has its own open source deep learning framework: Google has TensorFlow and Keras, Microsoft has CNTK, Facebook released Caffe 2, and Torch was reborn as PyTorch, thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Amazon has chosen MXNet as its deep learning framework of choice at AWS. Which one should you choose for your deep learning projects? At the moment, the best iOS support is provided by Caffe 2 and TensorFlow frameworks. With the release of Core ML we've also got an easy way to convert models trained in Caffe and Keras to Apple in `ml` model format. In this chapter, we're using Keras for our CNNs.\n\nA side note: Apple's Metal 2 also contains many primitives for building deep learning neural networks, but it's hard to call it a deep learning framework, most importantly because it doesn't support training neural networks.\n\n# Keras\n\nKeras is a popular Python package for building the deep learning neural networks. It has a user-friendly syntax. It's easy and fast to prototype and build your deep models in it. It started as a facade for the Theano symbolic computation library, but over time, it has also developed a TensorFlow backend, and so finally became a part of TensorFlow. So now, TensorFlow is a default backend, but you still have an option to switch back to Theano. There are also work-in-progress projects of MXNet and CNTK backends.\n\nKeras contains functions for pre-processing of most common data types: images, texts, and time series.\n\nCore ML supports convolution and recurrent neural networks built in Keras.\n\nOfficial website of Keras: <https:\/\/keras.io\/>\n\n# Loading the data\n\nAs usual, first we add some magic to display images inline in the Jupyter:\n\n    %matplotlib inline\n\nWe're using Pandas to handle our data:\n\n    import pandas\n\nPlease, visit the Kaggle site and download the dataset: <https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/c\/challenges-in-representation-learning-facial-expression-recognition-challenge>\n\nLoad the dataset into the memory:\n\n    data = pandas.read_csv(\"fer2013\/fer2013.csv\")\n\nDataset consists of gray scale face photos encoded as pixel intensities. 48 x 48 gives 2304 pixels for each. Every image is marked according to the emotion on the face.\n\n    data.head() \n    emotion  pixels   Usage \n    0  0  70 80 82 72 58 58 60 63 54 58 60 48 89 115 121...  Training \n    1  0  151 150 147 155 148 133 111 140 170 174 182 15...  Training \n    2  2  231 212 156 164 174 138 161 173 182 200 106 38...  Training \n    3  4  24 32 36 30 32 23 19 20 30 41 21 22 32 34 21 1...  Training \n    4  6  4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 15 23 28 48 50 58 84...  Training \n    How many faces of each class do we have?\n\n    data.emotion.value_counts() \n    3    8989 \n    6    6198 \n    4    6077 \n    2    5121 \n    0    4953 \n    5    4002 \n    1     547 \n    Name: emotion, dtype: int64\n\nHere 0=Angry, 1=Disgust, 2=Fear, 3=Happy, 4=Sad, 5=Surprise, and 6=Neutral.\n\nLet's remove `Disgust`, as we have too little samples for it:\n\n    data = data[data.emotion != 1] \n    data.loc[data.emotion > 1, \"emotion\"] -= 1 \n    data.emotion.value_counts() \n    2    8989 \n    5    6198 \n    3    6077 \n    1    5121 \n    0    4953 \n    4    4002 \n    Name: emotion, dtype: int64 \n    emotion_labels = [\"Angry\", \"Fear\", \"Happy\", \"Sad\", \"Surprise\", \"Neutral\"] \n    num_classes = 6\n\nThis is how samples are distributed among training and test. We'll be using training to train the model and everything else will go to test set:\n\n    data.Usage.value_counts() \n    Training       28273 \n    PrivateTest     3534 \n    PublicTest      3533 \n    Name: Usage, dtype: int64\n\nThe size of images and the number of channels (depth):\n\n    from math import sqrt \n    depth = 1 \n    height = int(sqrt(len(data.pixels[0].split()))) \n    width = int(height) \n    height \n    48\n\nLet's see some faces:\n\n    import numpy as np \n    import scipy.misc \n    from IPython.display import display \n    for i in xrange(0, 5): \n        array = np.mat(data.pixels[i]).reshape(48, 48) \n        image = scipy.misc.toimage(array, cmin=0.0) \n        display(image) \n        print(emotion_labels[data.emotion[i]])\n\n    \/\/Images are being shown in the notebook\n\nMany faces have ambiguous expressions, so our neural network will have a hard time classifying them. For example, the first face looks surprised or sad, rather than angry, and the second face doesn't look angry at all. Nevertheless, this is the dataset we have. For the real application, I would recommend collecting more samples of higher resolution, and then annotating them such that every photo is annotated several times by different independent annotators. Then, remove all photos that were annotated ambiguously.\n\n# Splitting the data\n\nDo not forget to split your data into training and test sets before training the model as shown in the following:\n\n    train_set = data[(data.Usage == 'Training')] \n    test_set = data[(data.Usage != 'Training')] \n    X_train = np.array(map(str.split, train_set.pixels), np.float32) \n    X_test = np.array(map(str.split, test_set.pixels), np.float32) \n    (X_train.shape, X_test.shape) \n    ((28273, 2304), (7067, 2304)) \n    48*48 \n    2304 \n    X_train = X_train.reshape(28273, 48, 48, 1) \n    X_test = X_test.reshape(7067, 48, 48, 1) \n    (X_train.shape, X_test.shape) \n    ((28273, 48, 48, 1), (7067, 48, 48, 1)) \n    num_train = X_train.shape[0] \n    num_test = X_test.shape[0] \n    (num_train, num_test) \n    (28273, 7067)\n\nConverting labels to categorical:\n\n    from keras.utils import np_utils # utilities for one-hot encoding of ground truth values \n    Using TensorFlow backend. \n    y_train = train_set.emotion \n    y_train = np_utils.to_categorical(y_train, num_classes) \n    y_test = test_set.emotion \n    y_test = np_utils.to_categorical(y_test, num_classes) \n\n# Data augmentation\n\nIn the deep learning applications, generally, the more data you have, the better. Deep neural networks usually have a lot of parameters, so on the small datasets they overfit easily. We can generate more training samples from the samples we already have by using the technique called **data augmentation**. The idea is to change samples at random. With the face photos, we could, for example, flip faces horizontally, shift them a bit, or add some rotations:\n\n    from keras.preprocessing.image import ImageDataGenerator  \n    datagen = ImageDataGenerator( \n        rotation_range=25, \n        width_shift_range=0.2, \n        height_shift_range=0.2, \n        horizontal_flip=True)\n\nCompute quantities required for featurewise normalization (std, mean, and principal components, if ZCA whitening is applied):\n\n     datagen.fit(X_train)  \n     batch_size = 32\n\nAt each iteration, we will consider 32 training examples at once, in other words, our batch size is 32. Let's see our images after augmentation:\n\n    from matplotlib import pyplot \n    for X_batch, y_batch in datagen.flow(X_train, y_train, batch_size=9):\n\nCreating a grid of 3 x 3 images:\n\n        for i in range(0, 9): \n            pyplot.axis('off') \n            pyplot.subplot(330 + 1 + i) \n            pyplot.imshow(X_batch[i].reshape(48, 48), cmap=pyplot.get_cmap('gray'))\n\nShowing the plot with images:\n\n        pyplot.axis('off') \n        pyplot.show() \n        break\n\n    <Images>\n\nGenerators that provide samples during training:\n\n    train_flow = datagen.flow(X_train, y_train, batch_size=batch_size) \n    test_flow = datagen.flow(X_test, y_test) \n\n# Creating the network\n\nKeras allows building the deep neural networks by adding new layers one by one. Note, that all layers should be familiar to you to this moment.\n\n    from keras.models import Sequential \n    from keras.layers import Activation, Dropout, Flatten, Dense, BatchNormalization, Conv2D, MaxPool2D \n    model = Sequential()\n\n    model.add(Conv2D(16, (3, 3), padding='same', activation='relu', input_shape=(height, width, depth))) \n    model.add(Conv2D(16, (3, 3), padding='same')) \n    model.add(BatchNormalization()) \n    model.add(Activation('relu')) \n    model.add(MaxPool2D((2,2)))\n\n    model.add(Conv2D(32, (3, 3), padding='same', activation='relu')) \n    model.add(Conv2D(32, (3, 3), padding='same')) \n    model.add(BatchNormalization()) \n    model.add(Activation('relu')) \n    model.add(MaxPool2D((2,2)))\n\n    model.add(Conv2D(64, (3, 3), padding='same', activation='relu')) \n    model.add(Conv2D(64, (3, 3), padding='same')) \n    model.add(BatchNormalization()) \n    model.add(Activation('relu')) \n    model.add(MaxPool2D((2,2)))\n\n    model.add(Flatten()) \n    model.add(Dense(128)) \n    model.add(BatchNormalization()) \n    model.add(Activation('relu')) \n    model.add(Dense(num_classes, activation='softmax')) \n    model.compile(loss='categorical_crossentropy',  \n                  optimizer='rmsprop', \n                  metrics=['accuracy'])\n\nThe list of layers can be accessed via the `layers` property of the `model` object:\n\n    model.layers \n    [<keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5d12fd0>, \n     <keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5ca2090>, \n     <keras.layers.normalization.BatchNormalization at 0x7f53b5ca2a10>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Activation at 0x7f53b5cbbe50>, \n     <keras.layers.pooling.MaxPooling2D at 0x7f53b5c68ed0>, \n     <keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5c68bd0>, \n     <keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5c8b310>, \n     <keras.layers.normalization.BatchNormalization at 0x7f53b5c3ad10>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Activation at 0x7f53b5c0e790>, \n     <keras.layers.pooling.MaxPooling2D at 0x7f53b5bd7c50>, \n     <keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5bbf990>, \n     <keras.layers.convolutional.Conv2D at 0x7f53b5bb1950>, \n     <keras.layers.normalization.BatchNormalization at 0x7f53b5b845d0>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Activation at 0x7f53b5b3f950>, \n     <keras.layers.pooling.MaxPooling2D at 0x7f53b5b05610>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Flatten at 0x7f53b5ae31d0>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Dense at 0x7f53b5af35d0>, \n     <keras.layers.normalization.BatchNormalization at 0x7f53b5ac6690>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Activation at 0x7f53b5a85750>, \n     <keras.layers.core.Dense at 0x7f53b5a2e910>] \n    model.summary() \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    Layer (type)                 Output Shape              Param #    \n    ================================================================= \n    conv2d_1 (Conv2D)            (None, 48, 48, 16)        160        \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    conv2d_2 (Conv2D)            (None, 48, 48, 16)        2320       \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    batch_normalization_1 (Batch (None, 48, 48, 16)        64         \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    activation_1 (Activation)    (None, 48, 48, 16)        0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    max_pooling2d_1 (MaxPooling2 (None, 24, 24, 16)        0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    conv2d_3 (Conv2D)            (None, 24, 24, 32)        4640       \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    conv2d_4 (Conv2D)            (None, 24, 24, 32)        9248       \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    batch_normalization_2 (Batch (None, 24, 24, 32)        128        \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    activation_2 (Activation)    (None, 24, 24, 32)        0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    max_pooling2d_2 (MaxPooling2 (None, 12, 12, 32)        0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    conv2d_5 (Conv2D)            (None, 12, 12, 64)        18496      \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    conv2d_6 (Conv2D)            (None, 12, 12, 64)        36928      \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    batch_normalization_3 (Batch (None, 12, 12, 64)        256        \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    activation_3 (Activation)    (None, 12, 12, 64)        0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    max_pooling2d_3 (MaxPooling2 (None, 6, 6, 64)          0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    flatten_1 (Flatten)          (None, 2304)              0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    dense_1 (Dense)              (None, 128)               295040     \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    batch_normalization_4 (Batch (None, 128)               512        \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    activation_4 (Activation)    (None, 128)               0          \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n    dense_2 (Dense)              (None, 6)                 774        \n    ================================================================= \n    Total params: 368,566 \n    Trainable params: 368,086 \n    Non-trainable params: 480 \n    _________________________________________________________________ \n\n# Plotting the network structure\n\nPerhaps, the more convenient way to explore the structure of the network is to draw a picture. Let's do that:\n\n    from IPython.display import SVG \n    from keras.utils.vis_utils import model_to_dot\n\n    SVG(model_to_dot(model, show_shapes=True).create(prog='dot', format='svg'))\n\n    from IPython.display import Image \n    from keras.utils import plot_model \n    plot_model(model, show_shapes=True, show_layer_names=True, to_file='model.png')\n\nSee the _Figure 9.10_ for the result.\n\n# Training the network\n\nFirst, we have to define how long we want to train out network. One `epoch` is one full pass over the training set. The number of steps in the epoch depends on the batch size and the number of samples in the training set. Let's say we want to pass over the training set 100 times:\n\n    num_epochs = 100\n\nFit the model on batches with real-time data augmentation:\n\n    num_epochs = 100 # we iterate 200 times over the entire training set \n    history = model.fit_generator(train_flow, \n                        steps_per_epoch=len(X_train) \/ batch_size, \n                        epochs=num_epochs,  \n                        verbose=1,  \n                        validation_data=test_flow,  \n                        validation_steps=len(X_test) \/ batch_size) \n    Epoch 1\/100 \n    883\/883 [==============================] - 15s - loss: 1.7065 - acc: 0.2836 - val_loss: 1.8536 - val_acc: 0.1822 \n    Epoch 2\/100 \n    883\/883 [==============================] - 14s - loss: 1.4980 - acc: 0.4008 - val_loss: 1.5688 - val_acc: 0.3891 \n    ... \n    883\/883 [==============================] - 13s - loss: 0.9292 - acc: 0.6497 - val_loss: 1.1499 - val_acc: 0.5819 \n    Epoch 100\/100 \n    883\/883 [==============================] - 13s - loss: 0.9225 - acc: 0.6487 - val_loss: 1.0829 - val_acc: 0.6122\n\nIf the training goes fine, the loss values should decrease over the time as shown in the following image:\n\nFigure 9.10: Neural network structure\n\n# Plotting loss\n\nLoss values on training and validation sets allows to see, how our model improves over the time and decide when to stop training:\n\n    from matplotlib import pyplot as plt \n    history.history.keys() \n    ['acc', 'loss', 'val_acc', 'val_loss'] plt.plot(history.history['loss']) \n    plt.plot(history.history['val_loss']) \n    plt.title('model loss') \n    plt.ylabel('loss') \n    plt.xlabel('epoch') \n    plt.legend(['train', 'test'], loc='upper left') \n    plt.show()\n\nFigure 9.11: Loss on training and test sets over the training epochs\n\n# Making predictions\n\nFirst, let's prepare data to make predictions about the images:\n\n    array = np.mat(data.pixels[1]).reshape(48, 48) \n    image = scipy.misc.toimage(array, cmin=0.0) \n    display(image) \n    print(emotion_labels[data.emotion[1]])\n\n    <Image>\n\nLet us input an angry emotion image:\n\n    input_img = np.array(array).reshape(1,48,48,1)\n\nOkay, we have an angry face. Now let's make prediction and check if the network can recognize it correctly:\n\n    prediction = model.predict(input_img) \n    print(prediction) \n    [[ 0.05708674  0.35863262  0.03299783  0.17862292  0.00069717  0.37196276]] \n    emotion_labels[prediction.argmax()] \n    'Neutral'\n\nNote those array of 6 float numbers. These are probabilities of belonging to each class. In other words, the model predicts, that this face can be of an angry person only with the probability of 5%. The full table would look like this:\n\n**Angry** | **Fear** | **Happy** | **Sad** | **Surprise** | **Neutral**  \n---|---|---|---|---|---  \n0.05708674  | 0.35863262 | 0.03299783 | 0.17862292 | 0.00069717 | 0.37196276\n\n    for i in xrange(1, 100): \n        array = np.mat(data.pixels[i]).reshape(48, 48) \n        image = scipy.misc.toimage(array, cmin=0.0) \n        display(image) \n        print(emotion_labels[data.emotion[i]]) \n        input_img = np.array(array).reshape(1,48,48,1) \n        prediction = model.predict(input_img) \n        print(emotion_labels[prediction.argmax()])\n\nYou will obtain the following result:\n\n    Angry \n    Neutral\n\n    Fear \n    Sad\n\n    Sad \n    Sad\n\n    Neutral \n    Neutral\n\n    Fear \n    Sad\n\n    Sad \n    Sad\n\n    Happy \n    Happy\n\n    Happy \n    Happy\n\n    Fear \n    Fear\n\nEvaluating the trained model on the test set. The function reports the loss value and an accuracy as follows:\n\n    model.evaluate_generator(test_flow, steps=len(X_test) \/ batch_size) \n    [1.1285726155553546, 0.60696517426491459]\n\nSo, the final accuracy of our model is about 60%. Which is not that bad, considering how noisy is the dataset.\n\n# Saving the model in HDF5 format\n\nSaving the model is really easy as shown in the following:\n\n    model.save('Emotions.h5') \n\n# Converting to Core ML format\n\nThe easiest way to use pre-trained CNN on iOS is by converting it to the Core ML format:\n\n    from keras.models import load_model  \n    model = load_model('Emotions.h5')  \n    coreml_model = convert(model,   \n                           image_input_names = 'image',   \n                           class_labels = emotion_labels)  \n    ...  \n    coreml_model.save('Emotions.mlmodel')\n\n# Visualizing convolution filters\n\nDebugging CNNs is notoriously difficult. One of the ways to check if the convolutional layers learned anything meaningful is to visualize their outputs using `Keras-vis` package:\n\n    from vis.utils import utils \n    from vis.visualization import visualize_class_activation, get_num_filters\n\nWe have to convert grayscale images to `rgb` to use them with `keras-vis`:\n\n    def to_rgb(im): \n        # I think this will be slow \n        w, h = im.shape \n        ret = np.empty((w, h, 3), dtype=np.uint8) \n        ret[:, :, 0] = im \n        ret[:, :, 1] = im \n        ret[:, :, 2] = im \n        return ret\n\nNames of the layers we want to visualize (consult model structure for exact layer names):\n\n    layer_names = ['conv2d_1', 'conv2d_2',  \n                   'conv2d_3', 'conv2d_4',  \n                   'conv2d_5', 'conv2d_6']\n\n    layer_sizes = [(80, 20), (80, 20),  \n                   (80, 40), (80, 40),  \n                   (80, 80), (80, 80)]\n\n    stitched_figs = []\n\n    for (layer_name, layer_size) in zip(layer_names, layer_sizes): \n        layer_idx = [idx for idx, layer in enumerate(model.layers) if layer.name == layer_name][0]\n\nVisualizing all filters in this layer:\n\n    filters = np.arange(get_num_filters(model.layers[layer_idx]))\n\nGenerating input image for each filter as shown in the following. Here `text` field is used to overlay `filter_value` on top of the image:\n\n        vis_images = [] \n        for idx in filters: \n            img = visualize_class_activation(model, layer_idx, filter_indices=idx)  \n            vis_images.append(to_rgb(img.reshape(48,48)))\n\nGenerate stitched image palette with 8 cols as follows:\n\n        stitched = utils.stitch_images(vis_images, cols=8) \n        stitched_figs.append(stitched)\n\n        plt.figure(figsize = layer_size) \n        plt.axis('off') \n        plt.imshow(stitched, interpolation='nearest', aspect='auto') \n        plt.title(layer_name) \n        plt.savefig(layer_name+\"_filters.png\", bbox_inches='tight') \n        plt.show()\n\nFigure 9.12: Convolution filters in the last convolution layer of our network\n\n# Deploying CNN to iOS\n\nYou need to drag-and-drop the Core ML file generated in the previous section into your project to start working with the model.\n\nImports:\n\n    import Foundation  \n    import Vision  \n    import AVFoundation  \n    import UIKit\n\nAt first, let's define some data structures. An enumeration for possible classification results:\n\n    enum FaceExpressions: String {  \n     case angry = \"angry\"  \n     case anxious = \"anxious\"  \n     case neutral = \"neutral\"  \n     case happy = \"happy\"  \n     case sad = \"sad\"  \n    }\n\nAn enum for errors of the classifier:\n\n    enum ClassifierError: Error {  \n     case unableToResizeBuffer  \n     case noResults  \n    }\n\n`Classifier` is a wrapper singleton for Core ML model:\n\n    class Classifier {  \n     public static let shared = Classifier()\n\n     private let visionModel: VNCoreMLModel  \n     var visionRequests = [VNRequest]()  \n     var completion: ((_ label: [(FaceExpressions, Double)], _ error: Error?)->())?\n\n    private init() {  \n     guard let visionModel = try? VNCoreMLModel(for: Emotions().model) else {  \n     fatalError(\"Could not load model\")  \n     }\n\n     self.visionModel = visionModel\n\n     let classificationRequest = VNCoreMLRequest(model: visionModel, completionHandler: classificationResultHandler)  \n     classificationRequest.imageCropAndScaleOption = .centerCrop  \n     visionRequests = [classificationRequest]  \n     }\n\nFunction to run the network on inference:\n\n     public func classifyFace(image: CGImage, completion: @escaping (_ labels: [(FaceExpressions, Double)], _ error: Error?)->()) {  \n     self.completion = completion  \n     let imageRequestHandler = VNImageRequestHandler(cgImage: image, orientation: .up)  \n     do {  \n     try imageRequestHandler.perform(visionRequests)  \n     } catch {  \n     print(error)  \n     completion([], error)  \n     }  \n     }\n\nThis method will be called when the new classification result comes:\n\n    private func classificationResultHandler(request: VNRequest, error: Error?) {  \n     if let error = error {  \n     print(error.localizedDescription)  \n     self.completion?([], error)  \n     return  \n     }  \n     guard let results = request.results as? [VNClassificationObservation] else {  \n     print(\"No results\")  \n     self.completion?([], ClassifierError.noResults)  \n     return  \n     }\n\n     let sortedResults = results  \n     .sorted { $0.confidence > $1.confidence }  \n     .map{(FaceExpressions(rawValue:$0.identifier)!, Double($0.confidence))}\n\n    self.completion?(sortedResults, nil)  \n     print(sortedResults)  \n     }  \n    }\n\nWe omit the UI part of the application here, please refer to the demo app for the full code.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we built a deep learning CNN, and trained it using Keras to recognize facial expressions on photos. Then we ported it for the mobile application using Core ML. The model can work in real time. We've also become acquainted with the Apple Vision framework.\n\nCNNs are powerful tools that can be applied for many computer vision tasks, as well as for time-series prediction, natural language processing, and others. They are built around the concept of convolution\u2014a mathematical operation that can be used for defining many types of image transformations. CNNs learn convolution filters in the similar manner as usual neural networks learn weights using the same stochastic gradient descent. Convolution requires less computations than usual matrix multiplications, which is why they can be effectively used on mobile devices. Apart from convolutional layers, CNNs usually include other types of layers like pooling, fully-connected, nonlinearity, regularization, and so on. Over the years, researchers proposed many CNN architectures for different purposes. Some of them were designed specifically to run on mobile devices; for example, SquizeNet, and MobileNets.\n\nIn the next chapter, we're going to explore the amazing world of human natural language. We're also going to use neural networks to build several chatbots with different personalities.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. _Challenges in Representation Learning: A report on three machine learning_ _contests_ , I Goodfellow, D Erhan, PL Carrier, A Courville, M Mirza, B Hamner, W Cukierski, Y Tang, DH Lee, Y Zhou, C Ramaiah, F Feng, R Li, X Wang, D Athanasakis, J Shawe-Taylor, M Milakov, J Park, R Ionescu, M Popescu, C Grozea, J Bergstra, J Xie, L Romaszko, B Xu, Z Chuang, and Y. Bengio. arXiv 2013. Site of the competition <http:\/\/deeplearning.net\/icml2013-workshop-competition>.\n  2. _Affective Computing_ , Rosalind Picard. MIT Technical Report #32, 1995 <http:\/\/affect.media.mit.edu\/pdfs\/95.picard.pdf>.\n  3. Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift. Sergey Ioffe, Christian Szegedy, 2015.\n\n# Natural Language Processing\n\nLanguage is an integral part of our daily life and a natural way of conveying ideas from person to person. But as easy it is for us to understand our native language, it is just as difficult for computers to process it. The internet changed the science of language forever because it allowed collecting huge volumes of text and audio records. The field of knowledge that arose at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and machine learning was called **natural language processing** ( **NLP** ).\n\nIn this chapter, we will get acquainted with the basic concepts and applications of NLP, relevant in the context of mobile development. We will talk about the powerful tools provided by iOS and the macOS SDK for language processing. We also will learn about the theory of distributional semantics and vector representations of words as its embodiment. They will allow us to express the meaning of sentences in the computer's favorite format\u2014in the form of numbers. Based on vector representations, we will build a chatbot from scratch to play a _Word Association_ game.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * What is NLP?\n  * Python libraries\u2014NLTK and Gensim\n  * iOS NLP tools\u2014NSRegularExpression, NSDataDetector, NSLinguisticTagger, the Speech framework, and UIReferenceLibraryViewController\n  * macOS NLP tools\u2014LatentSemanticMapping\n  * How to use tokenizers, lemmatization, and part-of-speech tagging\n  * What are vector word representations?\n  * How to generate word embeddings\n  * How to use the Word2Vec model on iOS\n  * How to build a chatbot from scratch\n\n# NLP in the mobile development world\n\nUsually, NLP specialists deal with big amounts of raw text organized in **linguistics corpuses**. The algorithms in this domain are resource-consuming and often contain many hand-crafted heuristics. All this doesn't look like a good match for mobile applications, where each megabyte or frame per second is important. Despite these obstacles, NLP is widely used on mobile platforms, usually in tight integration with the server-side backend for heavy computations. Here is a list of some common NLP features that can be found in many mobile applications:\n\n  * Chatbots\n  * Spam filtering\n  * Automated translation\n  * Sentiment analysis\n  * Speech-to-text and text-to-speech\n  * Automatic spelling and grammar correction\n  * Automatic completion\n  * Keyboard suggestions\n\nUntil recently, all but the last two tasks were done on the server side, but as mobile computational power grows, more apps tend to do processing (at least partially) locally on the client. When we talk about NLP on a mobile device, in most cases, it is about processing private user information: messages, letters, notes, and similar texts. So the security issue here is particularly acute. By eliminating the server from our schema, we significantly reduce the risk of leaking user data. In this chapter, in addition to discussing common tricks and popular NLP tools, we will look at the solutions Apple provides in iOS SDK. Further, continuing our conversation on neural networks, we will teach six chatbots to play a _Word Association_ game. Each chatbot will have its individuality and will run on the device. Each of the models on average will not exceed 3 MB.\n\nFigure 10.1: Every chatbot in our application will have its own individuality\n\n# Word Association game\n\nMany of us may have played this game as kids. The rules are very simple:\n\n  * You say the word:\n\n    do while(true) {\n\n  * I say the first association to your word that came to my mind\n  * You give an association to my association:\n\n    }\n\nFor example, Dog \u2192 Cat \u2192 Pet \u2192 Toy \u2192 Baby \u2192 Girl \u2192 Wedding \u2192 Funeral. In the game, people reveal their life experience and way of thinking to each other; maybe that's why we could play it for hours as kids. Different people have different associations with the same word, and associations often head towards a completely unexpected direction. Psychologists have been studying associative series for more than a century, hoping to find in them the key to the mysteries of consciousness and the subconscious. Can you code a game AI to play like that? Perhaps you think you will need a manually composed database of associations. But what if you want your AI to have several personalities? Thanks to machine learning, this is definitely possible and you even don't need to compose the database manually. In the following screenshot, you can see the results of two games with two characters, Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin:\n\nFigure 10.2: Playing a Word Association game with historical personalities\n\nIf you haven't got the idea of the game, visit Wikipedia to get a more thorough explanation of the game there: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Word_Association.\n\n# Python NLP libraries\n\nThe two Python libraries that we're going to use in this chapter are **natural language toolkit** ( **NLTK** ) and Gensim. We will use the first one for text preprocessing and the second one for training or machine learning models. To install them, activate your Python virtual environment:\n\n    **> cd ~**\n    **> virtualenv swift-ml-book**\n\nAnd run `pip install`:\n\n    **> pip install -U nltk ****gensim**\n\nOfficial sites:\n\n  * NLTK, <http:\/\/www.nltk.org\/>\n\n  * Gensim, https:\/\/radimrehurek.com\/gensim\/\n\nOther popular libraries for NLP in Python:\n\n  * TextBlob, https:\/\/textblob.readthedocs.io\/en\/dev\/\n  * Stanford's CoreNLP, <https:\/\/stanfordnlp.github.io\/CoreNLP\/>\n  * SpaCy, https:\/\/spacy.io\/\n\n# Textual corpuses\n\nFor our NLP experiments, we need some reasonably big texts. I used the complete works of classical writers and statesmen from the Gutenberg project because they are in the public domain, but you can find your own texts and train models on them. If you want to use the same texts as I did, I included them in the supplementary material for this chapter under the `Corpuses` folder. There should be five of them: Benjamin Franklin, John Galsworthy, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and Winston Churchill. Create a new Jupyter notebook and load Mark Twain's corpus as one long string:\n\n    import zipfile \n    zip_ref = zipfile.ZipFile('Corpuses.zip', 'r') \n    zip_ref.extractall('') \n    zip_ref.close() \n    In [1]: \n    import codecs \n    In [2]: \n    one_long_string = \"\" \n    with codecs.open('Corpuses\/MarkTwain.txt', 'r', 'utf-8-sig') as text_file: \n        one_long_string = text_file.read() \n    In [3]: \n    one_long_string[99000:99900] \n    Out[3]: \n    u\"size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fancifulrncostumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told usrnif he could have risen. But he didn't.rnrnAs we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeysrnready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.rnThey consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, andrnthis furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups,rnbut really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was thernnext thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out tornone's knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded aroundrnus, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour--more rascality to\" \n\n# Common NLP approaches and subtasks\n\nMost programmers are familiar with the simplest way of processing natural language: regular expressions. There are many regular expression implementations for different programming languages \u200b\u200bthat differ in small details. Because of these details, the same regular expression on various platforms can produce different results or not work at all. The two most popular standards are POSIX and Perl. The Foundation framework, however, contains its own version of regular expressions, based on the ICU C++ library. It is an extension of the POSIX standard for Unicode strings.\n\nWhy are we even talking about regular expressions here? Regular expressions are a great example of what NLP specialists call heuristics\u2014manually written rules, ad hoc solutions, and describing a complex structure in such a way that all exceptions and variations are taken into account. Sophisticated heuristics require deep domain expertise to build. Only when we are not able to capture all the complexity using heuristics will we go for machine learning. Heuristics are fragile and costly to build, but not necessarily something wrong; unlike machine learning, they are deterministic and easy to test.\n\nHeuristics and machine learning are the two arms that wield NLP. Big NLP tasks usually consist of smaller ones. To perform a grammar correction, you must split your text into sentences, split sentences into words, determine the parts of speech in those sentences, and so on. In our text corpus preprocessing, we will go through several such tasks: sentence tokenization, word tokenization, lemmatization, and stop words removal.\n\n# Tokenization\n\nTokens in linguistics are different from the authorization tokens were used to. They are linguistic units: words are tokens, numbers and punctuation marks are tokens, and sentences are tokens. In other words, they are discrete pieces of information or meaning. Tokenization is a process of splitting text into **lexical tokens**. Sentence tokenizers split texts into sentences, and word tokenizers split them further into separate words, punctuation marks, and so on. This task may seem simple ( **there is a regexp for that!** ), but this impression is deceptive. Here are a few problems to consider:\n\n  * How to tokenize words with a hyphen or an apostrophe, for example, _New York-based_ or _you're_?\n  * How to tokenize web addresses and emails, for example, `My_mail@examplewebsite.com`?\n  * What to do with emoji and kaomoji?  !\n  * What to do with languages \u200b\u200bin which gluing several words into one long word is the norm? An example is the German _siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig_. This is the number 777,777 by the way.\n  * What to do with languages \u200b\u200bthat do not use spaces at all (Chinese and Thai)?\n\nFortunately, there are many tokenizer implementations for different languages, including the NLTK Python library and Apple `NSLinguisticTagger`:\n\n    In [4]: \n    from nltk import word_tokenize, sent_tokenize \n    In [5]: \n    sentences = sent_tokenize(one_long_string) \n    del(one_long_string) \n    In [6]: \n    sentences[200:205] \n    Out[6]: \n    [u'Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and thatrnhis mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting ofrnseeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogsrnfor that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the SmithsonianrnInstitute, I would have felt so much relieved.', \n     u'During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for oncernin my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement.', \n     u'Everybodyrnwas going to Europe--I, too, was going to Europe.', \n     u'Everybody was going tornthe famous Paris Exposition--I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition.', \n     u'The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various ports ofrnthe country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the aggregate.'] \n    In [7]: \n    tokenized_sentences = map(word_tokenize, sentences) \n    del(sentences) \n    In [8]: \n    print(tokenized_sentences[200:205]) \n    [[u'Ah', u',', u'if', u'I', u'had', u'only', u'known', u'then', u'that', u'he', u'was', u'only', u'a', u'common', u'mortal', u',', u'and', u'that', u'his', u'mission', u'had', u'nothing', u'more', u'overpowering', u'about', u'it', u'than', u'the', u'collecting', u'of', u'seeds', u'and', u'uncommon', u'yams', u'and', u'extraordinary', u'cabbages', u'and', u'peculiar', u'bullfrogs', u'for', u'that', u'poor', u',', u'useless', u',', u'innocent', u',', u'mildewed', u'old', u'fossil', u'the', u'Smithsonian', u'Institute', u',', u'I', u'would', u'have', u'felt', u'so', u'much', u'relieved', u'.'], [u'During', u'that', u'memorable', u'month', u'I', u'basked', u'in', u'the', u'happiness', u'of', u'being', u'for', u'once', u'in', u'my', u'life', u'drifting', u'with', u'the', u'tide', u'of', u'a', u'great', u'popular', u'movement', u'.'], [u'Everybody', u'was', u'going', u'to', u'Europe', u'--', u'I', u',', u'too', u',', u'was', u'going', u'to', u'Europe', u'.'], [u'Everybody', u'was', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'famous', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'--', u'I', u',', u'too', u',', u'was', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'.'], [u'The', u'steamship', u'lines', u'were', u'carrying', u'Americans', u'out', u'of', u'the', u'various', u'ports', u'of', u'the', u'country', u'at', u'the', u'rate', u'of', u'four', u'or', u'five', u'thousand', u'a', u'week', u'in', u'the', u'aggregate', u'.']] \n    In [9]: \n    from nltk import download \n    In [10]: \n    download('stopwords') \n    [nltk_data] Downloading package stopwords to \n    [nltk_data]     \/Users\/Oleksandr\/nltk_data... \n    [nltk_data]   Package stopwords is already up-to-date! \n    Out[10]: \n    True \n    In [11]: \n    from nltk.stem import WordNetLemmatizer \n    In [12]: \n    wordnet_lemmatizer = WordNetLemmatizer() \n    In [13]: \n    lemmatized_sentences = map(lambda sentence: map(wordnet_lemmatizer.lemmatize, sentence), tokenized_sentences) \n    In [14]: \n    print(lemmatized_sentences[200:205]) \n    [[u'Ah', u',', u'if', u'I', u'had', u'only', u'known', u'then', u'that', u'he', u'wa', u'only', u'a', u'common', u'mortal', u',', u'and', u'that', u'his', u'mission', u'had', u'nothing', u'more', u'overpowering', u'about', u'it', u'than', u'the', u'collecting', u'of', u'seed', u'and', u'uncommon', u'yam', u'and', u'extraordinary', u'cabbage', u'and', u'peculiar', u'bullfrog', u'for', u'that', u'poor', u',', u'useless', u',', u'innocent', u',', u'mildewed', u'old', u'fossil', u'the', u'Smithsonian', u'Institute', u',', u'I', u'would', u'have', u'felt', u'so', u'much', u'relieved', u'.'], [u'During', u'that', u'memorable', u'month', u'I', u'basked', u'in', u'the', u'happiness', u'of', u'being', u'for', u'once', u'in', u'my', u'life', u'drifting', u'with', u'the', u'tide', u'of', u'a', u'great', u'popular', u'movement', u'.'], [u'Everybody', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'Europe', u'--', u'I', u',', u'too', u',', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'Europe', u'.'], [u'Everybody', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'famous', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'--', u'I', u',', u'too', u',', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'.'], [u'The', u'steamship', u'line', u'were', u'carrying', u'Americans', u'out', u'of', u'the', u'various', u'port', u'of', u'the', u'country', u'at', u'the', u'rate', u'of', u'four', u'or', u'five', u'thousand', u'a', u'week', u'in', u'the', u'aggregate', u'.']] \n    In [15]: \n    del(tokenized_sentences) \n\n# Stemming\n\nStemming is the process of reducing words to their stems. The idea here is that related words can usually be reduced to a common stem.\n\nFor example: ( **whit** e, **whit** ening, **whit** ish, **whit** er) \u2192 **whit**.\n\nThis can be used, for instance, to expand user queries. But some cases can be tricky, consider the English _man_ and _men_ , the Irish _bhean_ = _woman_ and _mn\u00e0_ = _women_ , or the even more extreme English _am_ , _is_ , _are_ , _was_ , _were_ , and _been_. There are several popular stemmers for English.\n\n# Lemmatization\n\nThis is a more advanced approach than stemming. Instead of reducing words to stems, lemmatizers match every word to its _lemma_ , the form in a dictionary. This is especially useful for languages such as Polish, where one verb can easily have 220 different grammatical forms, mostly with different spellings: http:\/\/wsjp.pl\/do_druku.php?id_hasla=34745&id_znaczenia=0.\n\nThe problem here is homonyms.\n\n# Part-of-speech (POS) tagging\n\nNLTK uses a pre-trained machine learning model (averaged perceptron) for POS tagging. The task is especially hard for English because, unlike many other languages, the same word can play the role of different parts of speech depending on the context:\n\n    In [16]: \n    from nltk import download \n    In [17]: \n    download('averaged_perceptron_tagger') \n    [nltk_data] Downloading package averaged_perceptron_tagger to \n    [nltk_data]     \/Users\/Oleksandr\/nltk_data... \n    [nltk_data]   Package averaged_perceptron_tagger is already up-to- \n    [nltk_data]       date! \n    Out[17]: \n    True \n    In [18]: \n    from nltk import pos_tag, pos_tag_sents \n    In [19]: \n    pos_tag(word_tokenize('Cats, cat, Cat, and \"The Cats\"')) \n    Out[19]: \n    [('Cats', 'NNS'), \n     (',', ','), \n     ('cat', 'NN'), \n     (',', ','), \n     ('Cat', 'NNP'), \n     (',', ','), \n     ('and', 'CC'), \n     ('``', '``'), \n     ('The', 'DT'), \n     ('Cats', 'NNP'), \n     (\"''\", \"''\")] \n    In [20]: \n    pos_sentences = pos_tag_sents(lemmatized_sentences) \n    del(lemmatized_sentences) \n    In [21]: \n    print(pos_sentences[200:205]) \n    [[(u'Ah', 'NNP'), (u',', ','), (u'if', 'IN'), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u'had', 'VBD'), (u'only', 'RB'), (u'known', 'VBN'), (u'then', 'RB'), (u'that', 'IN'), (u'he', 'PRP'), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'only', 'RB'), (u'a', 'DT'), (u'common', 'JJ'), (u'mortal', 'NN'), (u',', ','), (u'and', 'CC'), (u'that', 'IN'), (u'his', 'PRP$'), (u'mission', 'NN'), (u'had', 'VBD'), (u'nothing', 'NN'), (u'more', 'RBR'), (u'overpowering', 'VBG'), (u'about', 'IN'), (u'it', 'PRP'), (u'than', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'collecting', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'seed', 'NN'), (u'and', 'CC'), (u'uncommon', 'JJ'), (u'yam', 'NN'), (u'and', 'CC'), (u'extraordinary', 'JJ'), (u'cabbage', 'NN'), (u'and', 'CC'), (u'peculiar', 'JJ'), (u'bullfrog', 'NN'), (u'for', 'IN'), (u'that', 'DT'), (u'poor', 'JJ'), (u',', ','), (u'useless', 'JJ'), (u',', ','), (u'innocent', 'JJ'), (u',', ','), (u'mildewed', 'VBD'), (u'old', 'JJ'), (u'fossil', 'NN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'Smithsonian', 'NNP'), (u'Institute', 'NNP'), (u',', ','), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u'would', 'MD'), (u'have', 'VB'), (u'felt', 'VBN'), (u'so', 'RB'), (u'much', 'JJ'), (u'relieved', 'NN'), (u'.', '.')], [(u'During', 'IN'), (u'that', 'DT'), (u'memorable', 'JJ'), (u'month', 'NN'), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u'basked', 'VBD'), (u'in', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'happiness', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'being', 'VBG'), (u'for', 'IN'), (u'once', 'RB'), (u'in', 'IN'), (u'my', 'PRP$'), (u'life', 'NN'), (u'drifting', 'VBG'), (u'with', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'tide', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'a', 'DT'), (u'great', 'JJ'), (u'popular', 'JJ'), (u'movement', 'NN'), (u'.', '.')], [(u'Everybody', 'NN'), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'Europe', 'NNP'), (u'--', ':'), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u',', ','), (u'too', 'RB'), (u',', ','), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'Europe', 'NNP'), (u'.', '.')], [(u'Everybody', 'NN'), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'famous', 'JJ'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'--', ':'), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u',', ','), (u'too', 'RB'), (u',', ','), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'.', '.')], [(u'The', 'DT'), (u'steamship', 'NN'), (u'line', 'NN'), (u'were', 'VBD'), (u'carrying', 'VBG'), (u'Americans', 'NNPS'), (u'out', 'IN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'various', 'JJ'), (u'port', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'country', 'NN'), (u'at', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'rate', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'four', 'CD'), (u'or', 'CC'), (u'five', 'CD'), (u'thousand', 'NNS'), (u'a', 'DT'), (u'week', 'NN'), (u'in', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'aggregate', 'NN'), (u'.', '.')]] \n    In [22]: \n    download('tagsets') \n    [nltk_data] Downloading package tagsets to \n    [nltk_data]     \/Users\/Oleksandr\/nltk_data... \n    [nltk_data]   Package tagsets is already up-to-date! \n    Out[22]: \n    True \n    In [23]: \n    from nltk.help import upenn_tagset \n    In [24]: \n    upenn_tagset()\n\nYou can find the full list of tags in the notebook or in the NLTK documentation: <https:\/\/www.ling.upenn.edu\/courses\/Fall_2003\/ling001\/penn_treebank_pos.html>. Here I'm only recounting the POS important for our goal with some examples.\n\nAdjectives:\n\n    JJ: adjective or numeral, ordinal \n    third ill-mannered pre-war regrettable oiled calamitous first  \n    JJR: adjective, comparative \n    JJS: adjective, superlative\n\nNouns:\n\n    NN: noun, common, singular or mass \n    common-carrier cabbage knuckle-duster Casino afghan shed \n    NNP: noun, proper, singular \n    Conchita Escobar Kreisler Sawyer CTCA Shannon A.K.C. Liverpool \n    NNPS: noun, proper, plural \n    Americans Americas Anarcho-Syndicalists Andalusians Andes \n    NNS: noun, common, plural\n\nAdverbs:\n\n    RB: adverb \n    occasionally unabatingly maddeningly adventurously swiftly \n    RBR: adverb, comparative \n    RBS: adverb, superlative\n\nInterjections:\n\n    UH: interjection \n    Goodbye Wow Hey Oops amen huh uh anyways honey man baby hush\n\nVerbs:\n\n    VB: verb, base form \n    ask assemble assess assign assume avoid bake balkanize begin \n    VBD: verb, past tense \n    VBG: verb, present participle or gerund \n    VBN: verb, past participle \n    VBP: verb, present tense, not 3rd person singular \n    VBZ: verb, present tense, 3rd person singular \n\n# Named entity recognition (NER)\n\nNote the (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'Americans, NNPS). NNP stands for proper noun, NNPS proper noun plural. We need to get rid of all capital letters from non-proper nouns and from all punctuation marks and numbers:\n\n    In [25]: \n    # tags_to_delete = ['$', \"''\", \"(\", \")\", \",\", \"--\", \".\", \":\", \"CC\"] \n    tags_to_not_lowercase = set(['NNP', 'NNPS']) \n    tags_to_preserve = set(['JJ', 'JJR', 'JJS', 'NN', 'NNP', 'NNPS', 'NNS', 'RB', 'RBR', 'RBS','UH', 'VB', 'VBD', 'VBG', 'VBN', 'VBP', 'VBZ']) \n    In [26]: \n    print(pos_sentences[203]) \n    [(u'Everybody', 'NN'), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'famous', 'JJ'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'--', ':'), (u'I', 'PRP'), (u',', ','), (u'too', 'RB'), (u',', ','), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'.', '.')] \n    In [27]: \n    def carefully_lowercase(words): \n        return [(word.lower(), pos) if pos not in tags_to_not_lowercase else (word, pos) \n                for (word, pos) in words] \n    In [28]: \n    def filter_meaningful(words): \n        return [word for (word, pos) in words if pos in tags_to_preserve] \n    In [29]: \n    res = map(carefully_lowercase, pos_sentences[203:205]) \n    print(res) \n    [[(u'everybody', 'NN'), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'famous', 'JJ'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'--', ':'), (u'i', 'PRP'), (u',', ','), (u'too', 'RB'), (u',', ','), (u'wa', 'VBZ'), (u'going', 'VBG'), (u'to', 'TO'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'Paris', 'NNP'), (u'Exposition', 'NNP'), (u'.', '.')], [(u'the', 'DT'), (u'steamship', 'NN'), (u'line', 'NN'), (u'were', 'VBD'), (u'carrying', 'VBG'), (u'Americans', 'NNPS'), (u'out', 'IN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'various', 'JJ'), (u'port', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'country', 'NN'), (u'at', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'rate', 'NN'), (u'of', 'IN'), (u'four', 'CD'), (u'or', 'CC'), (u'five', 'CD'), (u'thousand', 'NNS'), (u'a', 'DT'), (u'week', 'NN'), (u'in', 'IN'), (u'the', 'DT'), (u'aggregate', 'NN'), (u'.', '.')]] \n    In [30]: \n    filtered = map(filter_meaningful, res) \n    del(res) \n    print(filtered) \n    [[u'everybody', u'wa', u'going', u'famous', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'too', u'wa', u'going', u'Paris', u'Exposition'], [u'steamship', u'line', u'were', u'carrying', u'Americans', u'various', u'port', u'country', u'rate', u'thousand', u'week', u'aggregate']] \n    In [31]: \n    lowercased_pos_sentences = map(carefully_lowercase,  pos_sentences) \n    del(pos_sentences) \n\n# Removing stop words and punctuation\n\nStop words are all those words that don't add much information to the sentence. For example, the last sentence can be shortened to: _stop words don't add useful information sentence_. And despite the fact that it doesn't look like a proper English sentence, you'd likely understand the meaning if you heard it somewhere. That's why in many cases we can make our models simpler by simply ignoring these words. Stop words are usually the most common words in natural texts. For English, a list of them can be found in `nltk.corpus.stopwords`:\n\n    In [32]: \n    sentences_to_train_on = map(lambda words: [word for (word, pos) in words], lowercased_pos_sentences) \n    In [33]: \n    print(sentences_to_train_on[203:205]) \n    [[u'everybody', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'famous', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'--', u'i', u',', u'too', u',', u'wa', u'going', u'to', u'the', u'Paris', u'Exposition', u'.'], [u'the', u'steamship', u'line', u'were', u'carrying', u'Americans', u'out', u'of', u'the', u'various', u'port', u'of', u'the', u'country', u'at', u'the', u'rate', u'of', u'four', u'or', u'five', u'thousand', u'a', u'week', u'in', u'the', u'aggregate', u'.']] \n    In [34]: \n    import itertools \n    In [35]: \n    filtered = map(filter_meaningful, lowercased_pos_sentences) \n    flatten = list(itertools.chain(*filtered)) \n    words_to_keep = set(flatten) \n    In [36]: \n    del(filtered, flatten, lowercased_pos_sentences) \n    In [37]: \n    from nltk.corpus import stopwords \n    import string \n    In [38]: \n    stop_words = set(stopwords.words('english') + list(string.punctuation) + ['wa']) \n\n# Distributional semantics hypothesis\n\nIt's difficult to say what it means \"to understand meaning of a text\", but everyone will say that people can do this, and computers do not. Natural language understanding is one of the tough problems in Artificial Intelligence. How to capture the semantics of the sentence\n\nTraditionally there were two opposite approaches to the problem. The first one goes like this: start from the definitions of separate words, hard-code the relations between them, and write down the sentence structures. If you are persistent enough, hopefully you will end up with a complex model that will incorporate enough expert knowledge to parse some natural questions and produce meaningful answers. And then, you'll find out that for a new language, you need to start everything over.\n\nThat's why many researchers turned to the opposite approach: statistical methods. Here, we start from a big amount of textual data and allow the computer to figure out the meaning of the text. The hypothesis of **distributional semantics** assumes that the meaning of a specific word in a sentence is not defined by the word itself but rather by all contexts in which that word appears. Wikipedia gives a more formal wording:\n\n\"Linguistic items with similar distributions have similar meanings.\"\n\nNow hold on tight! In the following sections, we're going to discuss an algorithm that can blow your mind. When I first came across it, I spent nights experimenting with it. I was feeding different texts into it, starting from the movie reviews dataset and finishing with the New Testament in ancient Greek and the undeciphered Voynich manuscript. It felt just like some craze or magic. The algorithm was able to capture the meanings of the words and whole sentences from raw texts, even in long-dead languages. This was the first time for me that computers seemingly crossed the line between _crunching megabytes of texts_ and _understanding the meaning of text written by humans and for humans_.\n\n# Word vector representations\n\nDistributional semantics represents words as vectors in the space of senses. The vectors corresponding to the words with similar meanings should be close to each other in this space. How to build such vectors is not a simple question, however. The simplest approach to take is to start from one-hot vectors for the words, but then the vectors will be both sparse and giant, each one of the same length as the number of words in the vocabulary. That's why we use dimensionality reduction with autoencoder-like architecture.\n\n# Autoencoder neural networks\n\n**Autoencoder** is a neural network whose goal is to produce an output identical to an input. For example, if you pass a picture into it, it should return the same picture on the other end. This seems... not complicated! But the trick is the special architecture\u2014its inner layers have fewer neurons than input and output layers, usually with some extreme bottleneck in the middle. The layer before the bottleneck is called encoder and the layer after it is called **decoder network**. The encoder converts the input into some inner representation and the decoder then restores the data to its original form. During training, the network must figure out how to compress the input data most effectively and then un-compress it with the least possible information loss. This architecture can also be employed to train neural networks, which change input data in a way we want them to. For example, autoencoders have been successfully used to remove noise from images.\n\nAutoencoder neural networks are an example of so-called **representation learning**. It is something between supervised and unsupervised learning.\n\nFigure 10.3: Autoencoder architecture\n\nThe blue layers are the encoder part, the **yellow layer** in the middle is a bottleneck, and the **green layers** are the decoder. The network in the picture is a fully connected network (every neuron of one layer is connected to every neuron in the next layer); however, this is not the only option for autoencoders.\n\n# Word2Vec\n\nWord2Vec is an efficient algorithm for word embeddings generation based on neural networks. It was originally described by Mikolov et al. in _Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality_ (2013). The original C implementation in the form of a command-line application is available at <https:\/\/code.google.com\/archive\/p\/word2vec\/>.\n\nFigure 10.4: Architecture of Word2Vec\n\nWord2Vec is often referred to as an instance of deep learning, but the architecture is actually quite shallow: only three layers in depth. This misconception is likely related to its wide adoption for enhancing productivity of deep networks in NLP. The Word2Vec architecture is similar to an autoencoder. The input of the neural network is a sufficiently big text corpus, and the output is a list of vectors (arrays of numbers), one vector for each word in the corpus. The algorithm uses the context of each word to encode in those vectors information about co-occurrences of words. As a result, the vectors have some peculiar properties; the vectors of words with similar meaning are also close to each other. While we can't mathematically calculate the precise distance between word meanings, we can calculate the similarity of two vectors without any problems. That's why algorithms that turn words into vectors are so important. For example, using the cosine similarity metric, we can find the words closest to cat:\n\n  * Bird: 0.760521\n  * Cow: 0.766533\n  * Dog: 0.831517\n  * Rat: 0.748557\n  * Blonde: 0.763721\n  * Pig: 0.751001\n  * Goat: 0.798104\n  * Hamster: 0.768635\n  * Bee: 0.774112\n  * Llama: 0.747295\n\nFigure 10.5: Examples of relationships between words that can be captured using Word2Vec\n\nYou can add, substract, and project vectors. Interestingly, these operations have some quite meaningful results, for example, _king-men+woman=queen_ , _dog-men+woman=cat_ and so on. By the way, as you can see from the last example, an algorithm captures all our stereotypes quite precisely.\n\nFigure 10.6: The distribution of words into vector spaces is similar among different languages\n\nWord2Vec can be used not only with natural text but also with any sequence of discrete states, where context matters: playlists, DNA, source codes, and so on.\n\n# Word2Vec in Gensim\n\nThere is no point in running Word2Vec on an iOS device: in the app, we need only the vectors it generates. For running Word2Vec, we will use the Python NLP package gensim. This library is popular for topic modeling and contains a fast Word2Vec implementation with a nice API. We don't want to load large corpuses of text on a mobile phone and don't want to train Word2vec on the iOS device, so we will learn a vector representation using the Gensim Python library. Then, we will do some preprocessing (remove everything except nouns) and plug this database into our iOS application:\n\n    In [39]: \n    import gensim \n    In [40]: \n    def trim_rule(word, count, min_count): \n        if word not in words_to_keep or word in stop_words: \n            return gensim.utils.RULE_DISCARD \n        else: \n            return gensim.utils.RULE_DEFAULT \n    In [41]: \n    model = gensim.models.Word2Vec(sentences_to_train_on, min_count=15, trim_rule=trim_rule) \n\n# Vector space properties\n\n\"The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'  \n'Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. - I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.  \n'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.\"\n\n\u2013 _Lewis Carroll_ , _Alice in a Wonderland_\n\n_Why is a raven like a writing desk?_ With the help of distributive semantic and vector word representations, finally we can help Alice to solve Hatter's riddle (in a mathematically precise way):\n\n    In [42]: \n    model.most_similar('house', topn=5) \n    Out[42]: \n    [(u'camp', 0.8188982009887695), \n     (u'cabin', 0.8176383972167969), \n     (u'town', 0.7998955845832825), \n     (u'room', 0.7963996529579163), \n     (u'street', 0.7951667308807373)] \n    In [43]: \n    model.most_similar('America', topn=5) \n    Out[43]: \n    [(u'India', 0.8678370714187622), \n     (u'Europe', 0.8501001596450806), \n     (u'number', 0.8464810848236084), \n     (u'member', 0.8352445363998413), \n     (u'date', 0.8332008123397827)] \n    In [44]: \n    model.most_similar('water', topn=5) \n    Out[44]: \n    [(u'bottom', 0.9041773676872253), \n     (u'sand', 0.9032160639762878), \n     (u'mud', 0.8798269033432007), \n     (u'level', 0.8781479597091675), \n     (u'rock', 0.8766734600067139)] \n    In [45]: \n    model.most_similar('money', topn=5) \n    Out[45]: \n    [(u'pay', 0.8744806051254272), \n     (u'sell', 0.8554744720458984), \n     (u'stock', 0.8477637767791748), \n     (u'bill', 0.8445131182670593), \n     (u'buy', 0.8271161913871765)] \n    In [46]: \n    model.most_similar('cat', topn=5) \n    Out[46]: \n    [(u'dog', 0.836624026298523), \n     (u'wear', 0.8159085512161255), \n     (u'cow', 0.7607206106185913), \n     (u'like', 0.7499277591705322), \n     (u'bird', 0.7386394739151001)] \n\n# iOS application\n\nTo use vectors in an iOS application, we must export them in a binary format:\n\n    In [47]: \n    model.wv.save_word2vec_format(fname='MarkTwain.bin', binary=True)\n\nThis binary contains words and their embedding vectors, all of the same length. The original implementation of Word2Vec was written in C, so I took it and adapted the code for our purpose\u2014to parse the binary file and find closest words to the one that we specify.\n\n# Chatbot anatomy\n\nMost chatbots look like reincarnations of console applications: you have a predefined set of commands and the bot produces an output for every command of yours. Someone even joked that Linux includes an awesome chatbot called **console**. But they don't always have to be that way. Let's see how we can make them more interesting. A typical chatbot consists of one or several input streams, a brain, and output streams. Inputs can be a keyboard, voice recognition, or set of predefined phrases. The brain is a sort of algorithm for transforming input into output. In our example, the brain will be based on word embeddings. Output streams also may be different, such as text, speech, search results (like Siri does), and so on.\n\n# Voice input\n\nThe code is as follows:\n\n    SFSpeechRecognizer \n    class func requestAuthorization(_ handler: @escaping (SFSpeechRecognizerAuthorizationStatus) -> Swift.Void)\n\n    import Speech\n\n    class VoiceRecognizer: NSObject, SFSpeechRecognizerDelegate { \n    static var shared = VoiceRecognizer()\n\n    private let speechRecognizer = SFSpeechRecognizer(locale: Locale(identifier: \"en-US\"))! \n    private var recognitionRequest: SFSpeechAudioBufferRecognitionRequest? \n    private var recognitionTask: SFSpeechRecognitionTask? \n    private let audioEngine = AVAudioEngine()\n\n    public var isListening: Bool { \n        return audioEngine.isRunning \n    }\n\n    public func stopListening() { \n        self.audioEngine.stop() \n        self.recognitionRequest?.endAudio() \n    }\n\n    public func startListening(gotResult: @escaping (String)->(), end: @escaping ()->()) { \n        speechRecognizer.delegate = self\n\nCancel the previous task if it's running:\n\n        if let recognitionTask = recognitionTask { \n            recognitionTask.cancel() \n            self.recognitionTask = nil \n        } \n        do { \n            let audioSession = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance() \n            try audioSession.setCategory(AVAudioSessionCategoryRecord) \n            try audioSession.setMode(AVAudioSessionModeMeasurement) \n            try audioSession.setActive(true, with: .notifyOthersOnDeactivation) \n        } catch { \n            print(error) \n        }\n\n        recognitionRequest = SFSpeechAudioBufferRecognitionRequest()\n\n        let inputNode = audioEngine.inputNode \n        guard let recognitionRequest = recognitionRequest else { fatalError(\"Unable to created a SFSpeechAudioBufferRecognitionRequest object\") }\n\nConfigure the request so that the results are returned before audio recording is finished:\n\n    recognitionRequest.shouldReportPartialResults = false\n\nCreate a recognition task. Store the recognition task as a property, to be able to cancel it if needed:\n\n        recognitionTask = speechRecognizer.recognitionTask(with: recognitionRequest) { [weak self] result, error in \n            guard let `self` = self else { return } \n            var isFinal = false\n\n            if let result = result { \n                let string = result.bestTranscription.formattedString \n                gotResult(string) \n                isFinal = result.isFinal \n            }\n\n            if error != nil || isFinal { \n                self.audioEngine.stop() \n                inputNode.removeTap(onBus: 0)\n\n                self.recognitionRequest = nil \n                self.recognitionTask = nil \n                end() \n            } \n        }\n\n        let recordingFormat = inputNode.outputFormat(forBus: 0) \n        inputNode.installTap(onBus: 0, bufferSize: 1024, format: recordingFormat) { (buffer: AVAudioPCMBuffer, when: AVAudioTime) in \n            self.recognitionRequest?.append(buffer) \n        }\n\n        audioEngine.prepare() \n        do { \n            try audioEngine.start() \n        } catch { \n            print(error) \n        } \n    } \n    } \n\n# NSLinguisticTagger and friends\n\n`NSLinguisticTagger` is an all-in-one class for language detection, tokenization, lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition and so on. The API is in the traditions of Objective-C: You have to create an instance of the class with some options, then assign it with a string to analyze, and then iterate through tags that it had found using `enumerateTags()` method. For each tag, it returns `NSRange` object which is somewhat inconvenient to use in Swift, so we have to add some utility functions to convert them to Swift ranges:\n\n    extension String { \n    func range(from nsRange: NSRange) -> Range<String.Index>? { \n        guard \n            let from16 = utf16.index(utf16.startIndex, offsetBy: nsRange.location, limitedBy: utf16.endIndex), \n            let to16 = utf16.index(utf16.startIndex, offsetBy: nsRange.location + nsRange.length, limitedBy: utf16.endIndex), \n            let from = from16.samePosition(in: self), \n            let to = to16.samePosition(in: self) \n            else { return nil } \n        return from ..< to \n    } \n    }\n\n    struct NLPPreprocessor {\n\n    static func preprocess(inputString: String, errorCallback: (NLPPreprocessorError)->()) -> [String] {\n\n        let languageDetector = NSLinguisticTagger(tagSchemes: [.language], options: 0) \n        languageDetector.string = inputString \n        let language = languageDetector.dominantLanguage\n\n        if language != \"en\" { \n            errorCallback(.nonEnglishLanguage) \n            return [] \n        }\n\nThis is a workaround to make NSLinguisticTagger's lemmatizer work with short sentences:\n\n        let string = inputString + \". Hello, world!\"\n\n        let tagSchemes: [NSLinguisticTagScheme] = [.tokenType, .lemma, .lexicalClass]\n\n        let options = NSLinguisticTagger.Options.omitPunctuation.rawValue | NSLinguisticTagger.Options.omitWhitespace.rawValue \n        let tagger = NSLinguisticTagger(tagSchemes: NSLinguisticTagger.availableTagSchemes(forLanguage: \"en\"), options: Int(options)) \n        tagger.string = string \n        let range = NSRange(location: 0, length: string.utf16.count)\n\n        var resultTokens = [String?]() \n        let queryOptions = NSLinguisticTagger.Options(rawValue: options)\n\nUsing POS tagger to remove all word types that are not playable:\n\n        let posToPreserve: Set<NSLinguisticTag> = Set([.noun, .verb, .adjective, .adverb, .interjection, .idiom, .otherWord])\n\n        for scheme in tagSchemes { \n            var i = 0 \n            tagger.enumerateTags(in: range, scheme: scheme, options: queryOptions) \n            { (tag, range1, _, _) in \n                defer { i+=1 }\n\n                guard let tag = tag else { \n                    \/\/ Preserve total count of tokens. \n                    if scheme == .tokenType { resultTokens.append(nil) } \n                    return \n                }\n\n                switch scheme { \n                case .tokenType:\n\nSave only words while keeping the total count of tokens:\n\n                    let token = string.substring(with: string.range(from: range1)!)\n\n                    if tag == .word { \n                        resultTokens.append(token) \n                    } else { \n                        resultTokens.append(nil) \n                    } \n                case .lemma:\n\nIf a word has a lemma, save it:\n\n                    resultTokens[i] = tag.rawValue \n                case .lexicalClass: \n                    \/\/ Using POS tagger to remove all word types that are not playable. \n                    if !posToPreserve.contains(tag) { \n                        resultTokens[i] = nil \n                    } \n                default: \n                    break \n                } \n            } \n        }\n\nThis is again a workaround to make NSLinguisticTagger's lemmatizer work with short sentences:\n\n        var result = resultTokens.flatMap{$0} \n        print(result) \n        result.removeLast() \n        result.removeLast() \n        return result \n    } \n    } \n\n# Word2Vec on iOS\n\nThe original implementation is written in C, so I added a simple Objective-C wrapper:\n\n    @interface W2VDistance : NSObject\n\n    - (void)loadBinaryVectorFile:(NSURL * _Nonnull) fileURL \n                           error:(NSError *_Nullable* _Nullable) error;\n\n    - (NSDictionary <NSString *, NSNumber *>  * _Nullable)closestToWord:(NSString * _Nonnull) word \n                                                        numberOfClosest:(NSNumber * _Nullable) numberOfClosest;\n\n    - (NSDictionary <NSString *, NSNumber *>  * _Nullable)analogyToPhrase:(NSString * _Nonnull) phrase \n                                                          numberOfClosest:(NSNumber * _Nullable) numberOfClosest;\n\n    @end \n    private func getW2VAnalogy(sentence: String) -> String? { \n    guard let words = word2VecProvider?.analogy(toPhrase: sentence, numberOfClosest: 1)?.keys else { \n        return nil \n    } \n    return Array(words).last \n    }\n\n    private func getW2VWord(word: String) -> String? { \n    guard let words = word2VecProvider?.closest(toWord: word, numberOfClosest: 1)?.keys else { \n        return nil \n    } \n    return Array(words).last \n    } \n\n# Text-to-speech output\n\nThe code is as follows:\n\n    import Speech\n\n    class SpeechSynthesizer: NSObject, AVSpeechSynthesizerDelegate { \n    static var shared = SpeechSynthesizer()\n\n    private var synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer() \n    var voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: \"en-US\")\n\n    public func prepare() { \n        let dummyUtterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: \" \") \n        dummyUtterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: \"en-US\")\n\n        synthesizer.speak(dummyUtterance) \n    }\n\n    public func speakAloud(word: String) { \n        if synthesizer.isSpeaking { \n            synthesizer.stopSpeaking(at: .immediate) \n        }\n\n        let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: word) \n        utterance.rate = 0.4 \n        utterance.preUtteranceDelay = 0.1; \n        utterance.postUtteranceDelay = 0.1; \n        utterance.voice = self.voice\n\n        synthesizer.speak(utterance) \n    }\n\n    public func speechSynthesizer(_ synthesizer: AVSpeechSynthesizer, didStart utterance: AVSpeechUtterance) {\n\n    }\n\n    public func speechSynthesizer(_ synthesizer: AVSpeechSynthesizer, didFinish utterance: AVSpeechUtterance) {\n\n    }\n\n    public func speechSynthesizer(_ synthesizer: AVSpeechSynthesizer, didCancel utterance: AVSpeechUtterance) {\n\n    } \n    } \n\n# UIReferenceLibraryViewController\n\nThe code is as follows:\n\n     let hasDefinition = UIReferenceLibraryViewController.dictionaryHasDefinition(forTerm: term) \n    if hasDefinition { \n         let referenceController = UIReferenceLibraryViewController(term: term) \n    navigationController?.pushViewController(referenceController, animated: true) \n    }\n\nFigure 10.7: Reference library view controller user interface\n\n# Putting it all together\n\nThe code is as follows:\n\n    private func recognitionEnded() { \n    recordButton.isEnabled = true \n    recordButton.setTitle(\"Listen\", for: []) \n    let result = self.recognitionResult\n\n    let words: [String] \n    if allLowercase { \n        words = result.split(separator: \" \").map(String.init).map{$0.lowercased()} \n    } else { \n        words = NLPPreprocessor.preprocess(inputString: result) { error in \n            messages.append(result) \n            messages.append(\"This doesn't look like English.\") \n            reloadTable() \n        } \n    }\n\n    let wordCount = words.count\n\n    var stringToPassToW2V: String \n    var stringToShowInUI: String \n    switch wordCount { \n    case 1: \n        stringToPassToW2V = String(words.last!) \n        stringToShowInUI = String(words.last!) \n    case 2: \n        let wordPair = Array(words.suffix(2)) \n        stringToPassToW2V = \"(wordPair[0]) (wordPair[1])\" \n        stringToShowInUI = \"(wordPair[0]) - (wordPair[1])\" \n    case 3...: \n        let wordTriplet = Array(words.suffix(3)) \n        stringToPassToW2V = \"(wordTriplet[0]) (wordTriplet[1]) (wordTriplet[2])\" \n        stringToShowInUI = \"(wordTriplet[0]) - (wordTriplet[1]) + (wordTriplet[2])\" \n    default: \n        print(\"Warning: wrong number of input words.\") \n        return \n    } \n    print(stringToPassToW2V) \n    messages.append(stringToShowInUI) \n    reloadTable()\n\n    DispatchQueue.main.async() { [weak self] in \n        guard let `self` = self else { return } \n        var response: String? \n        if wordCount > 1 { \n            response = self.getW2VAnalogy(sentence: stringToPassToW2V)?.capitalized \n        } else { \n            response = self.getW2VWord(word: stringToPassToW2V)?.capitalized \n        }\n\n        if response?.isEmpty ?? true || response == \"``\" { \n            response = \"I don't know this word.\" \n        }\n\n    \/\/            SpeechSynthesizer.shared.speakAloud(word: response!) \n        self.messages.append(response!) \n        self.reloadTable()\n\n        print(response!) \n    } \n    }\n\n    private func gotNewWord(string: String) { \n    recognitionResult = string \n    } \n\n# Word2Vec friends and relatives\n\nGloVE, Lexvec FastText.\n\nOne popular alternative to word2vec is GloVe (Global Vectors).\n\nDoc2Vec - Efficient Vector Representation for Documents Through Corruption.\n\n<https:\/\/openreview.net\/pdf?id=B1Igu2ogg>\n\n<https:\/\/github.com\/mchen24\/iclr2017>\n\nBoth models learn geometrical encodings (vectors) of words from their co-occurrence information (how frequently they appear together in large text corpora). They differ in that word2vec is a \"predictive\" model, whereas GloVe is a \"count-based\" model. See this paper for more on the distinctions between these two approaches: <http:\/\/clic.cimec.unitn.it\/marco>\n\nPredictive models learn their vectors in order to improve their predictive ability of Loss(target word | context words; Vectors), that is, the loss of predicting the target words from the context words given the vector representations. In Word2Vec, this is cast as a feed-forward neural network and optimized as such using SGD, and so on.\n\nCount-based models learn their vectors by essentially doing dimensionality reduction on the co-occurrence counts matrix. They first construct a large matrix of (words x context) co-occurrence information, that is, for each \"word\" (the rows), you count how frequently we see this word in some \"context\" (the columns) in a large corpus. The number of \"contexts\" is of course large, since it is essentially combinatorial in size. So then they factorize this matrix to yield a lower-dimensional (word x features) matrix, where each row now yields a vector representation for each word. In general, this is done by minimizing a \"reconstruction loss\" which tries to find the lower-dimensional representations which can explain most of the variance in the high-dimensional data. In the specific case of GloVe, the counts matrix is preprocessed by normalizing the counts and log-smoothing them. This turns out to be A Good Thing in terms of the quality of the learned representations.\n\nHowever, as pointed out, when we control for all the training hyper-parameters, the embeddings generated using the two methods tend to perform very similarly in downstream NLP tasks. The additional benefits of GloVe over word2vec is that it is easier to parallelize the implementation which means it's easier to train over more data, which, with these models, is always A Good Thing.\n\nAnother related technique is latent semantic analysis. macOS SDK includes its implementation as Latent Semantic Mapping framework. LSM algorithm takes text documents (a lot of them), calculates term frequency vectors, and reduces the dimensionality of the obtained vector space. Having such space, you can then determine the topic of previously unseen documents, or calculate, how similar two documents are. Latent semantic mapping powers Junk Mail Filter, Parental Controls, Kanji Text Input, and Help in macOS. You can use it to improve such features as document search, sorting, filtering, classification and retrieval.\n\nmacOS includes command line tool lsm:\n\n<https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/legacy\/library\/documentation\/Darwin\/Reference\/ManPages\/man1\/lsm.1.html>\n\n<http:\/\/www.extinguishedscholar.com\/wpglob\/?p=297>\n\n<https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Latent_semantic_analysis>\n\nWatch WWDC 2011 session _Latent Semantic Mapping: Exposing the Meaning behind Words and Documents_ for more details of the API and algorithm as well as for general useful advices on doing machine learning:\n\n<https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/videos\/play\/wwdc2011\/136\/>\n\n# Where to go from here?\n\nWord embeddings are such an elegant idea that they immediately became an indispensable part of many applications in NLP and other domains. Here are several possible directions for your further exploration:\n\n  * You can easily transform the _Word Association_ game into a question-answer system by replacing vectors of words with vectors of sentences. The simplest way to get the sentence vectors is by adding all the word vectors together. Interestingly, such sentence vectors still keep the semantics, so you can use them to find similar sentences.\n  * Using clustering on embedding vectors, you can separate words, sentences, and documents into groups by similarity.\n  * As we have mentioned, Word2Vec vectors are popular as parts of the more complex NLP pipelines. For example, you can feed them into a neural network or some other machine learning algorithm. In this way, you can train a classifier for pieces of text, for example, to recognize text sentiments or topics.\n  * Word2Vec itself is just a compression algorithm; it doesn't know anything about languages or people. You can run it on anything similar to natural text and get equally good results: Code2Vec, Logs2Vec, Playlist2Vec, and so on.\n\n# Summary\n\nFor developing applications that can understand voice or text input, we use techniques from the natural language processing domain. We have just seen several widely used ways to preprocess texts: tokenization, stop words removal, stemming, lemmatization, POS tagging, and named entity recognition.\n\nWord embedding algorithms, and mainly Word2Vec, draw inspiration from the distributive semantics hypothesis, which states that the meaning of the word is defined by its context. Using an autoencoder-like neural network, we learn fixed-size vectors for each word in a text corpus. Effectively, this neural network captures the context of the word and encodes it in the corresponding vector. Then, using linear algebra operations with those vectors, we can discover different interesting relationships between words. For example, it allows us to find semantically close words (cosine similarity between vectors).\n\nIn the next section of the book, we are going to dig deeper into some practical questions of machine learning. We will start with an overview of existing iOS-compatible machine learning libraries.\n\n# Machine Learning Libraries\n\nThis chapter is an overview of existing iOS-compatible libraries for machine learning. We will look at important general-purpose machine learning libraries, frameworks, and APIs, as well as some domain-specific libraries.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * What third-party ML libraries and APIs are available for iOS developers\n  * Overview of some existing Swift-compatible ML libraries and their features\n  * How to use non-Swift libraries in Swift iOS project\n  * What low-level acceleration libraries are available for iOS\n\n# Machine learning and AI APIs\n\nWhen adding artificial intelligence to your application, it's not always necessary to write something from scratch, or even use a library. Many cloud providers offer data processing and analysis as a service. Almost all internet giants provide machine learning in the cloud in some form. In addition, plenty of smaller players are present in the market, and they often provide services of comparable quality at a similar cost. The greatest drawback of such small companies is that they tend to be rapidly acquired by major players. After that, their services are being merged with the services of the big companies (at best), or just being closed (at worst).\n\nThe range of such services is constantly growing and changing, so I do not see much point in a detailed consideration of these services in this book. I provide a list of services here that have not disappeared during the last year, and are unlikely to vanish in the coming year:\n\n  * **Amazon Machine Learning** provides general-purpose machine learning. Go to: <https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/documentation\/machine-learning\/>.\n  * **Google Cloud Platform** provides general-purpose machine learning, computer vision, NLP, speech recognition, text translation, and so on. Go to: <https:\/\/cloud.google.com\/products\/machine-learning\/>.\n  * **IBM Watson** services include NLP, text to speech, speech to text, computer vision, and data analytics. Go to: http:\/\/www.ibm.com\/watson\/developercloud\/.\n  * **Microsoft Cognitive Services** include computer vision, speech recognition, NLP, search, bot framework, and others. Go to: https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/cognitive-services\/en-us\/apis.\n  * **Microsoft Azure Machine Learning** is a cloud-based engine for training and deploying your own models. Go to: https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/services\/machine-learning\/.\n  * **Wit.ai** (acquired by Facebook) provides speech recognition and intents understanding. Go to: https:\/\/wit.ai\/.\n\n# Libraries\n\nAs iOS developers, we are primarily interested in compatible high-performance libraries with a low memory footprint. Swift is a relatively young programming language, so the libraries for machine learning written in it are mostly amateur attempts. However, several more professional and actively growing Swift machine learning packages already exist.\n\nStill, it would be unwise to neglect libraries written in other iOS-compatible languages \u200b\u200bsuch as Objective-C, C, C ++, Lua, and JavaScript, because often they are much more mature and have a broad community. Several reliable cross-platform libraries are worth mentioning in this context.\n\nImporting C libraries into your Swift code is straightforward: you can read about C-Swift interoperability at Apple's Developer portal. Technically, C++ libraries are not compatible with Swift, but you can bridge them via Objective-C so that no C++ or Objective-C++ headers are visible to Swift. Fortunately, Objective C integrates with C++ smoothly.\n\nLua can be compiled as a standalone C library and can be included in the project. You can use JavaScript libraries with the help of the `CoreJavaScript` framework from iOS SDK.\n\n# General-purpose machine learning libraries\n\nIn the following comparison tables, I have included around twenty libraries for machine learning. I considered such characteristics as the language of implementation and interface, the availability and type of acceleration, license type, ongoing development status, and compatibility with popular package managers. Later in this chapter, we will look at the unique features of each library in more detail.\n\nTable 2.1: Comparison of general-purpose machine learning libraries for iOS (part 1):\n\n**Library** | **Language** | **Algorithms**\n\n---|---|---\n\nAIToolbox | Swift | LinReg, LogReg, GMM, MDP, SVM, NN, PCA, k-means, genetic algorithms, DL: LSTM, CNN.\n\nBrainCore | Swift | DL: FF, LSTM.\n\nCaffe, Caffe2, MXNet, TensorFlow, tiny-dnn | C++ | DL.\n\ndlib | C++ | Bayesian networks, SVMs, regressions, structured prediction, DL, clustering and other unsupervised, semi-supervised, reinforcement learning, feature selection.\n\nFANN | C | NNs.\n\nLearnKit | ObjC | Anomaly detection, collaborative filtering, decision trees, random forest, k-means, kNN, regressions, naive Bayes, NNs, PCA, SVMs.\n\nMLKit | Swift | Regressions, genetic algorithms, k-means, NN.\n\nmultilinear-math | Swift | Multilinear PCA, multilinear subspace learning, LinReg, LogReg, FF NN.\n\nOpenCV (`ml` module) | C++ | Normal Bayes, kNN, SVM, decision trees, boosting, gradient boosted trees, random trees, extremely randomized trees, expectation-maximization, NN, hierarchical clustering.\n\nShark | C++ | Supervised: Linear discriminant analysis, LinReg, SVMs, FF and recurrent NNs, radial basis function networks, regularization networks, Gaussian processes, kNN, decision trees, random forests.\n\nUnsupervised: PCA, RBM, hierarchical clustering, evolutionary algorithms.\n\nSwix | Swift | SVM, kNN, PCA.\n\nTorch | Lua | DL.\n\nYCML | ObjC | LinReg, SVM, extreme learning machines, forward selection, kernel process regression, binary RBM, feature learning, ranking, and others.\n\nTable 2.2: Comparison of general-purpose machine learning libraries for iOS (part 2):\n\n**Library** | **Acceleration** | **License** | **Development** | **Package Manager**\n\n---|---|---|---|---\n\nAIToolbox | Accelerate, Metal | Apache-2.0 | Active | -\n\nBrainCore | Metal | MIT | Inactive | CocoaPods, Carthage\n\nCaffe | -\/CUDA | BSD-2-Clause | Active | hunter\n\nCaffe2 | Metal\/NNPack | Custom, BSD-like | Active | CocoaPods\n\ndlib | - | Boost | Active | hunter\n\nFANN | - | LGPL | Inactive | CocoaPods\n\nLearnKit | Accelerate | MIT | Active | -\n\nMLKit | - | MIT | Active | Carthage\n\nmultilinear-math | Metal | Apache | Active | Swift Package Manager\n\nMXNet | -\/ CUDA, OpenMP, | Apache-2.0 | Active | -\n\nOpenCV (`ml` module) | Accelerate\/ CUDA, OpenCL, and others | BSD-3-Clause | Active | CocoaPods, hunter\n\nShark | - | GPL-3.0 | Inactive | CocoaPods\n\nSwix | Accelerate, OpenCV | MIT | Inactive | -\n\nTensorFlow | ?\/ CUDA | Apache-2.0 | Active | -\n\ntiny-dnn | -\/CUDA, OpenCL, OpenMP, and others | BSD-3-Clause | Active | hunter\n\nTorch | -\/ CUDA, OpenCL | BSD-3-Clause | Active | -\n\nYCML | Accelerate | GPL-3.0 | Active | -\n\nThe following is the list of abbreviations:\n\n  * **Convolution neural networks** ( **CNN** ) \n  * **Deep learning** ( **DL** ) \n  * **Feed-forward** ( **FF** ) \n  * **Gaussian mixture model** ( **GMM** ) \n  * **K-nearest neighbors** ( **KNN** ) \n  * **Linear regression** ( **LinReg** ) \n  * **Logistic regression** ( **LogReg** ) \n  * **Long short-term memory** ( **LSTM** ) \n  * **Markov decision process** ( **MDP** ) \n  * **Neural network** ( **NN** ) \n  * **Principal components analysis** ( **PCA** ) \n  * **Support vector machine** ( **SVM** )\n\nPackage managers\n\n  * Carthage: <https:\/\/github.com\/Carthage\/Carthage>\n  * CocoaPods: <https:\/\/cocoapods.org\/>\n  * Hunter: <https:\/\/github.com\/ruslo\/hunter>\n  * Swift Package Manager: https:\/\/swift.org\/package-manager\/\n\n# AIToolbox\n\nThe Swift library contains multiple machine learning models. They are compatible with both iOS and macOS. All models are implemented as separate classes with unified interfaces, so you can replace one model with another in your code with minimal effort. Some models support saving to `plist` files and loading from such files. The Accelerate framework is used throughout the library to boost the speed of calculations.\n\nFor regression tasks, you can choose between linear, nonlinear, and SVM regression. Linear regression supports regularization. The SVM model here is a port of the `libSVM` library initially written in C and can also be used for classification. Other classification algorithms include logistic regression and neural networks. Several types of nonlinearities for neural network layers are present (including convolutions). Your network can be a simple feedforward or recurrent (including LSTM) network, or can combine both types of layers. The Metal framework is used to accelerate neural networks. You can train your networks online or in batch mode.\n\nUnsupervised learning algorithms implemented in the AIToolbox are PCA, K-means, and Gaussian mixture model. MDP can be used for reinforcement learning. Other AI primitives and algorithms present in the library include graphs and trees, alpha-beta algorithms, genetic algorithms, and constraint propagation.\n\nThe library also provides handy classes for plotting descendants from UIView and NSView. There are several modes of plotting such as those to represent functions, classification or regression data, and classification areas. There are also classes for model validation or hyperparameter tuning, like k-fold validation.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/KevinCoble\/AIToolbox\n\n# BrainCore\n\nThis Swift library provides feedforward and recurrent neural networks. Several types of layers are present, including the inner product layer, the linear rectifier (ReLU) layer, the sigmoid layer, the RNN and LSTM layer and the L2 loss layer. BrainCore uses Metal acceleration for both training and inference stages. The definition of a new neural network looks very clear because of some pleasant syntactic sugar:\n\n    let net = Net.build { \n        [dataLayer1, dataLayer2] => lstmLayer  \n        lstmLayer =>> ipLayer1 => reluLayer1 => sinkLayer1 \n        lstmLayer =>> ipLayer2 => reluLayer2 => sinkLayer2  \n    }\n\nThe library can be used on both iOS and macOS. It uses the Upsurge mathematical library as a dependency. It is available via CocoaPods or Carthage.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/aleph7\/BrainCore\n\n# Caffe\n\nCaffe is one of the most popular deep learning frameworks. It is written in C++.\n\nFrom the official site:\n\n\"Caffe is a deep learning framework made with expression, speed, and modularity in mind. It is developed by the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center (BVLC) and by community contributors.\"\n\nThe library is primarily targeted at Linux and macOS X but unofficial Android, iOS, and Windows ports are also compatible. Caffe supports CUDA acceleration but can also be executed on the CPU alone. On iOS, it uses only CPU. The interfaces include C++, command line, Python, and MATLAB. Caffe provides recurrent and convolutional neural networks. To define a network, you need to describe its structure in a `config` file in a special format.\n\nModelZoo contains many pre-trained Caffe models. Unlike MXNet, Torch, and TensorFlow, it doesn't have automatic differentiation features.\n\nOfficial site: [http:\/\/caffe.berkeleyvision.org  \n](http:\/\/caffe.berkeleyvision.org)iOS port from the BrainCore author: https:\/\/github.com\/aleph7\/caffe\n\n# Caffe2\n\nCaffe2 is a mobile-first deep learning library from Facebook, and started as an attempt to refactor the original Caffe framework. It uses Metal for computation acceleration on the iOS and provides more flexibility than Caffe. For example, it includes recurrent neural networks.\n\nOfficial site: https:\/\/caffe2.ai\/\n\n# dlib\n\n`dlib` is a mature C++ machine learning library with a big community. It includes many advanced ML algorithms that are not present in any other iOS-compatible libraries. It also contains different useful additions, like metaprogramming, compression algorithms, and functions for digital signal and image processing. Porting `dlib` to iOS is relatively straightforward\u2014you need to delete UI and HTTP-related files and then you'll be able to compile it for iOS.\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/dlib.net\/\n\n# FANN\n\nThe **FANN** (Fast Artificial Neural Network) library is a C implementation of multilayer neural networks. It includes different types of training (backpropagation, evolving topology) and different activation functions. Trained networks can be saved and loaded from file. It is well documented and has bindings to many programming languages. To connect it to your iOS project, use CocoaPods.\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/leenissen.dk\/fann\/wp\/\n\n# LearnKit\n\nLearnKit is a Cocoa framework written in Objective-C for machine learning. It currently runs on top of the Accelerate framework on iOS and OS X. It supports a big variety of algorithms.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/mattrajca\/LearnKit\n\n# MLKit\n\nMLKit provides several regression algorithms: linear, polynomial and ridge regression (+ L2 regularization), lasso regression, k-means, genetic algorithms, and simple neural networks. It also includes classes for data splitting and k-fold model validation. MLKit uses the Upsurge mathematical library as a dependency.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/Somnibyte\/MLKit\n\n# Multilinear-math\n\nThe name refers to the tensor operations that this library provides. It also contains a set of machine learning and AI primitives. Its algorithms include principal component analysis, multilinear subspace learning algorithms for dimensionality reduction, linear and logistic regression, stochastic gradient descent, feedforward neural networks, sigmoid, ReLU, Softplus activation functions, and regularizations.\n\nIt also provides a Swift interface to the Accelerate framework and LAPACK, including vector and matrix operations, eigen decomposition, and SVD. On top of that, it implements the `MultidimensionData` protocol to work with multidimensional data.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/vincentherrmann\/multilinear-math\n\n# MXNet\n\nQuote from the official site:\n\n\"MXNet is a deep learning framework designed for both efficiency and flexibility.\"\n\nMXNet is compatible with Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and JavaScript. Its interfaces include C++, Python, Julia, Matlab, JavaScript, Go, R, and Scala. MXNet supports automatic differentiation and acceleration using OpenMP and CUDA. MXNet is well documented and has a long list of tutorials and examples at its official site. The official site hosts its own Model Zoo with pre-trained neural networks. You can also convert pre-trained Caffe models using the `caffe_converter` tool.\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/mxnet.readthedocs.org\/en\/latest\/\n\n# Shark\n\nShark is written in C++. It provides methods for linear and nonlinear optimization (evolutionary and gradient-based algorithms), SVMs and neural networks, regression algorithms, decision trees, random forests, and a wide range of unsupervised learning algorithms. An older version of Shark is available on CocoaPod.\n\nOfficial site: [http:\/\/image.diku.dk\/shark\/sphinx_pages\/build\/html\/index.html  \n](http:\/\/image.diku.dk\/shark\/sphinx_pages\/build\/html\/index.html)CocoaPods: https:\/\/cocoapods.org\/pods\/Shark-SDK\n\n# TensorFlow\n\nTensorFlow is a library for numerical computation from Google. It is widely used for deep learning and more traditional statistical learning. The library architecture is built around data flow graphs. The TensorFlow website states that:\n\n\"Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows you to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device with a single API.\"\n\nThe library is so well documented that you can learn ML from scratch using only TensorFlow. The official site includes tons of tutorials, video courses, example apps for different platforms (including iOS), and pre-trained models. Two officially supported APIs are in Python and C++ (limited). It supports acceleration on CUDA GPUs and automatic differentiation. You can convert pre-trained Caffe models using the `caffe-tensorflow` tool.\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/www.tensorflow.org\/\n\n# tiny-dnn\n\ntiny-dnn is a header-only convolutional neural network framework written in C++.\n\nThe following is an example of neural network creation from the official documentation:\n\n    network<sequential> net; \n    \/\/ add layers \n    net << conv<tan_h>(32, 32, 5, 1, 6)  \/\/ in:32x32x1, 5x5conv, 6fmaps \n        << ave_pool<tan_h>(28, 28, 6, 2) \/\/ in:28x28x6, 2x2pooling \n        << fc<tan_h>(14 * 14 * 6, 120)   \/\/ in:14x14x6, out:120 \n        << fc<identity>(120, 10);        \/\/ in:120,     out:10\n\nYou can train your models or you can convert pre-trained Caffe models using the `caffe_converter` tool. It supports a handful of acceleration types. OpenCV is a dependency for iOS. You can find an iOS example on tiny-dnn's GitHub repository.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/tiny-dnn\/tiny-dnn\n\n# Torch\n\nTorch is a framework for scientific computations with wide support for machine learning written in Lua. It is one of the most popular deep learning frameworks. Its supported platforms are Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS, and it also supports acceleration with CUDA and OpenCL (partially). There are numerous third-party packages that introduce additional capabilities to Torch. Autograd introduces automatic differentiation, `nn` package allows construct neural networks from simple building blocks, the `rnn` package provides recurrent neural networks, and iTorch provides interoperability with IPython Notebook. The Caffe model can be loaded using the `loadcaffe` package. Its library is well documented and easy to install.\n\nThe main problem for Swift developers will be the Lua language itself, because its paradigm is quite different from Swift's one; however, there are libraries that introduce strong typing and functional capabilities to Lua to make life less painful.\n\nOfficial site: [http:\/\/torch.ch\/  \n](http:\/\/torch.ch\/)Unofficial iOS port: https:\/\/github.com\/clementfarabet\/torch-ios\n\n# YCML\n\nYCML is a machine learning framework for Objective-C and Swift (macOS and iOS).\n\nFrom the documentation at official site: http:\/\/yconst.com\/software\/ycml\/:\n\n\"The following algorithms are currently available: Gradient Descent Backpropagation, Resilient Backpropagation (RProp), Extreme Learning Machines (ELM), Forward Selection using Orthogonal Least Squares (for RBF Net), also with the PRESS statistic, Binary Restricted Boltzmann Machines (CD & PCD, Untested!). YCML also contains some optimization algorithms as support for deriving predictive models, although they can be used for any kind of problem: Gradient Descent (Single-Objective, Unconstrained), RProp Gradient Descent (Single-Objective, Unconstrained), NSGA-II (Multi-Objective, Constrained).\"\n\n# Inference-only libraries\n\nWith the release of iOS 11, several popular machine learning frameworks became compatible with it on the model level. You can build and train your models with these frameworks, then export them in a framework-specific format and convert them to the CoreML format for future integration with your app. Such models have fixed parameters and can be used only for inference. As Xcode generates a separate Swift class for each of those models, there is no way to replace or update them in the runtime. The main usage area for such models are different pattern-recognizing applications, like _count your calories by taking a photo_. At the time of writing this book (iOS 11 Beta), CoreML is compatible with the following libraries and models:\n\n  * **Caffe 1.0** : Neural networks\n  * **Keras 1.2.2** : Neural networks\n  * **libSVM 3.22** : SVM\n  * **scikit-learn 0.18.1** : Tree ensembles, generalized linear models, SVM, feature engineering, and pipelines\n  * **XGBoost 0.6** : Gradient-boosted trees\n\nAll these libraries are long-standing industrial standards.\n\nCheck the official package documentation for the latest information: http:\/\/pythonhosted.org\/coremltools\/\n\nThere were also several attempts to implement deep inference on top of the Metal framework prior to Core ML's release:\n\n  * DeepLearningKit\n  * Espresso\n  * Forge\n  * Bender\n\nForge and Bender are still active, because they provide more flexible and clean API than MPS CNN Graph. They will likely become obsolete in the near future, as Apple keeps adding more and more features to Metal Performance Shaders.\n\n# Keras\n\nKeras is a popular Python package for building deep learning neural networks. It has a user-friendly syntax. It's easy and fast to prototype and build your deep models in. It started as a facade for the Theano symbolic computation library, but with time, it also got a TensorFlow backend and finally became a part of TensorFlow. So now, TensorFlow is a default backend, but you still have an option to switch back to Theano. There are also work-in-progress projects on MXNet and CNTK backends.\n\nKeras contains functions for pre-processing most common data types, which include images, texts, and time series.\n\nCoreML supports convolution and recurrent neural networks built in Keras.\n\nWebsite: <https:\/\/keras.io\/>\n\n# LibSVM\n\nClassification, regression, distribution estimation, and anomaly detection, for more information refer to: <https:\/\/www.csie.ntu.edu.tw\/~cjlin\/libsvm\/>.\n\n# Scikit-learn\n\nYou'll be familiar with this library if you have read the previous chapters. It contains a large set of general-purpose learners and data preprocessing methods. Its documentation is awesome.\n\nCoreML supports random forests, generalized linear models, and data built in scikit-learn. For more information refer to: <http:\/\/scikit-learn.org\/>.\n\n# XGBoost\n\nWhen I started writing this book, I didn't expect to write about this tool. Why? Because this is a heavy artillery of machine learning contests. XGBoost is a production standard in many areas, but it is very resource consuming during the training phase: all your gigabytes will be consumed in the blink of an eye. That's why it is mainly used on servers and clusters of servers for web-ranking and other heavy-lifting tasks. It is also a tool that's considered to be a silver bullet for winning a Kaggle machine learning competition (if it's not about computer vision). CoreML supports gradient-boosting decision trees trained in XGBoost. For more information refer to: <https:\/\/xgboost.readthedocs.io\/en\/latest\/>.\n\n# NLP libraries\n\nIn this section we will discuss the various NLP libraries:\n\n# Word2Vec\n\nThis is the original C implementation of the Word2Vec algorithm. It works on iOS, but consumes a significant amount of memory. It was released under the Apache 2.0 license.\n\nGoogle repository: https:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/word2vec\/\n\n# Twitter text\n\nParsing tweets is a common task in NLP. Tweets usually contain some unusual language (like usernames), they mention headers, hashtags, cashtags, and so on. Twitter provides an Objective-C API for tweet processing. This has nothing to do with machine learning per se, but it is still a useful tool for data preprocessing.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/twitter\/twitter-text\n\n# Speech recognition\n\nIn this section, we will discuss the frequently used libraries for speech recognition.\n\n# TLSphinx\n\nFrom the documentation:\n\n\"TLSphinx is a Swift wrapper around Pocketsphinx, a portable library, that allow an application to perform speech recognition without the audio ever leaving the device.\"\n\nIt was released under the MIT license.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/tryolabs\/TLSphinx\n\n# OpenEars\n\nThis free iOS library provides speech recognition and text-to-speech for Chinese, French, Spanish, English, Dutch, Italian, and German languages. The models were released under different licenses, with some of them being commercially-friendly. It has an Objective-C and Swift APIs. Paid plugins are available.\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/www.politepix.com\/openears\/\n\n# Computer vision\n\nUnder this section let us look at few computer vision libraries in detail:\n\n# OpenCV\n\nOpenCV is a library of computer vision algorithms, image processing, and general-purpose numerical algorithms. It is implemented in C\/C++ but has interfaces for Python, Java, Ruby, Matlab, Lua, and other languages. It can be freely used for academic and commercial purposes because it is distributed under the BSD license.\n\nSince OpenCV 3.1, there is a DNN module and in OpenCV 3.3, the module has been promoted to `opencv_contrib`.\n\nOfficial site: <http:\/\/opencv.org>  \nAdditional OpenCV modules: <https:\/\/github.com\/opencv\/opencv_contrib>  \nDemo Swift app using OpenCV: https:\/\/github.com\/foundry\/OpenCVSwiftStitch\n\n# ccv\n\nccv is another C++ computer vision library for iOS, macOS, Android, Linux FreeBSD, and Windows. It is distributed under the BSD three-clause license.\n\nFrom the official site:\n\n\"One core concept of ccv development is application driven. Thus, ccv ends up implementing a handful state-of-art algorithms. It includes a close to state-of-the-art image classifier, a state-of-the-art frontal face detector, reasonable collection of object detectors for pedestrians and cars, a useful text detection algorithm, a long-term general object tracking algorithm, and the long-standing feature point extraction algorithm.\"\n\nOfficial site: http:\/\/libccv.org\/\n\n# OpenFace\n\nOpenFace is a state-of-the-art open source library that deals with faces. It includes algorithms for facial landmark detection, eye gaze estimation, head pose estimation, and facial action unit recognition.\n\nGitHub repository: [https:\/\/github.com\/TadasBaltrusaitis\/OpenFace  \n](https:\/\/github.com\/TadasBaltrusaitis\/OpenFace)Unofficial iOS port: https:\/\/github.com\/FaceAR\/OpenFaceIOS\n\n# Tesseract\n\nTesseract is an open source tool for **optical character recognition** ( **OCR** ) written in C++. It has bindings to many programming languages, including two for Objective-C. You can use it to train your own model or you can use one of the community-trained models (including Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Farsi, and Polish). The latest version of Tesseract uses the LSTM neural network for character recognition. The library is available under the Apache-2.0 license.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/tesseract-ocr\/tesseract\n\n# Low-level subroutine libraries\n\nSome libraries are not doing machine learning on their own, but provide important low-level primitives for it. An example of such a library is Apple BNNS. It is a part of the Accelerate framework which provides highly optimized subroutines for convolutional neural networks. We'll discuss it in much detail in Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_. In the following section, we'll list some third-party libraries of its kind.\n\n# Eigen\n\nEigen is a C++ template library implementing linear algebra primitives and related algorithms. It is under the LGPL3+ license. Many popular computationally-heavy projects (TensorFlow, for instance) rely on it for matrix and vector operations.\n\nOfficial site: eigen.tuxfamily.org\n\n# fmincg-c\n\nfmincg-c conjugates gradient implementation in C. It uses OpenCL to process algorithms faster. There are some examples written in Python.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/gautambhatrcb\/fmincg-c\n\n# IntuneFeatures\n\nAudio feature extraction. The IntuneFeatures framework contains code to generate features from audio files and feature labels from the respective MIDI files. It currently supports these features: Log-scale spectrum power estimate by bands, spectrum power flux, peak power, peak power flux, and peak locations.\n\nThe `CompileFeatures` command line app takes audio and MIDI files as input and generates HDF5 databases with the features and the labels. These HDF5 files can then be used to train a neural network for transcription or related tasks.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/venturemedia\/intune-features\n\n# SigmaSwiftStatistics\n\nThis library is a collection of functions that perform statistical calculations in Swift. It can be used in Swift apps for Apple devices and in open source Swift programs on other platforms.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/evgenyneu\/SigmaSwiftStatistics\n\n# STEM\n\nSTEM is a Swift Tensor library for machine learning in some way similar to Torch. It provides tensors, operations on them, random tensors generation, computational graphs, and optimization.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/abeschneider\/stem\n\n# Swix\n\nSwix is an attempt to implement the NumPy mathematical library in Swift. It wraps OpenCV for some machine learning algorithms and provides Swift API with the Accelerate framework.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/scottsievert\/swix\n\n# LibXtract\n\nLibXtract is a simple, portable, lightweight library of audio feature extraction functions. The purpose of the library is to provide a relatively exhaustive set of feature extraction primitives that are designed to be 'cascaded' to create extraction hierarchies.\n\nFor example, `variance`, `average deviation`, `skewness`, and `kurtosis` all require the `mean` of the input vector to be precomputed. However, rather than compute the `mean` and `inside` of each function, it is expected that the `mean` will be passed in as an argument. This means that if the user wishes to use all of these features, the mean is calculated only once, and then passed to any functions that require it.\n\nThis philosophy of **cascading** features is followed throughout the library; for example, with features that operate on the magnitude spectrum of a signal vector (for example, irregularity). The magnitude spectrum is not calculated `inside` the respective function; instead, a pointer to the first element in an array containing the magnitude spectrum is passed in as an argument.\n\nHopefully this not only makes the library more efficient when computing a large number of features, but also makes it more flexible because extraction functions can be combined arbitrarily (one can take the irregularity of the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, for example).\n\nA complete list of features can be found by viewing the header files, or reading the doxygen documentation, available with this package.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/jamiebullock\/LibXtract.\n\n# libLBFGS\n\nGitHub repository: <https:\/\/github.com\/chokkan\/liblbfgs>\n\nL-BFGS method of numerical optimization.\n\n# NNPACK\n\nNNPACK is an Acceleration package for neural networks on multi-core CPUs. Caffe2, tiny-dnn, and MXNet support NNPACK acceleration. Prisma uses this library in the mobile app to boost performance.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/Maratyszcza\/NNPACK.\n\n# Upsurge\n\nUpsurge is a SIMD-accelerated Swift library. It is a math utility for matrices, tensors, operators, and functions from the Accelerate framework, much like convolution. Matrix operations are its strength.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/aleph7\/Upsurge.\n\n# YCMatrix\n\nYCMatrix is a Matrix operations Objective-C library. It is essentially a wrapper around the Accelerate framework. YCML uses it for all computation accelerations.\n\nGitHub repository: https:\/\/github.com\/yconst\/YCMatrix.\n\n# Choosing a deep learning framework\n\nChoosing the correct deep learning framework is important to get the optimal speed and model size you desire. There are several things to consider\u2014overhead, added by the library, GPU acceleration, do you need training or inference only?, in which framework existing solutions were implemented.\n\nYou should understand that you don't always need GPU acceleration. Sometimes, SIMD\/Accelerate is more than enough to implement neural networks that do inference in real-time.\n\nSometimes, you have to consider whether the calculations are going to be done on the client side, on the server side, or if they will be balanced between both. Try to do benchmarks with an extreme number of records, and test them with different devices.\n\n# Summary\n\nIn this chapter, we learned about iOS compatible machine learning libraries and their features. We discussed five major deep learning frameworks: Caffe, TensorFlow, MXNet, and Torch, and so on. We also mentioned several smaller deep learning libraries and tools to convert deep learning models from one format to another. Among general purpose machine learning libraries, the most feature-rich and mature are AIToolbox, dlib, Shark, and YCML. NLP libraries for iOS are rare and restricted in their capabilities.\n\nIn addition to native iOS speech recognition and text-to-speech, there are several free and commercial libraries that provide the same functionality.\n\nIf you have some common computer vision tasks, you can find the appropriate algorithms in OpenCV or ccv libraries. OCR and all kinds of face-related tasks can also be performed using the open source toolchain. There are also several low-level libraries for linear algebra operations, tensors, and optimization that you can use to accelerate your ML algorithms.\n\n# Optimizing Neural Networks for Mobile Devices\n\nModern convolutional neural networks can be huge. For example, the pre-trained ResNet family network can be from 100 to 1,000 layers deep, and take from 138 MB to 0.5 GB in Torch data format. To deploy them to mobile or embedded devices can be problematic, especially if your app requires several models for different tasks. Also, CNNs are computationally heavy, and in some settings (for example, real-time video analysis) can drain device battery in no time. Actually, much faster than it took to write this chapter's intro. But why are they so big, and why do they consume so much energy? And how do we fix it without sacrificing accuracy?\n\nAs we've already discussed the speed optimization in the previous chapter, we are concentrating on the memory consumption in this chapter. We specifically focus on the deep learning neural networks, but we also give several general recommendations applicable to other kinds of machine learning models.\n\nIn this chapter, we will cover the following topics:\n\n  * Why compress the models?\n  * General recommendations for machine learning models compression\n  * Why deep neural networks are big\n  * What factors influence the size of a neural network?\n  * What parts of a neural network are the heaviest?\n  * Methods for model size reduction\u2014parameter number reduction, pruning, trained quantization, and Huffman coding\n  * Compact CNN architectures\n\n# Delivering perfect user experience\n\nAccording to the iTunes Connect Developer Guide, the total uncompressed size of the app should be less than 4 GB (as of December 15, 2017); however, this applies only to the binary itself, while asset files can take as much space as the disk capacity allows. There is also a limit on app size for the cellular download, as stated on the Apple Developer site (<https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=09192017b>):\n\n\"We've increased the cellular download limit from 100 MB to 150 MB, letting customers download more apps from the App Store over their cellular network.\"\n\nThe simple conclusion is that you'd better store you model parameters as on-demand resources, or download them from your server after the app is already installed; but this is only one half of the problem. The other half is that you really don't want your app to take a lot of space and consume tons of traffic, because this is a bad user experience.\n\nWe can attack the problem from several directions (from the easiest to the most complex):\n\n  * Use standard lossless compression algorithms\n  * Choose the compact architectures\n  * Prevent models from growing too big\n  * Use lossy compression techniques\u2014remove unimportant model parts\n\nThe first approach is only a half-measure, because you will still have to decompress your model in runtime. In the last case, we usually talk about reducing the number of the model's parameters, effectively reducing its capacity, and subsequently, accuracy.\n\n# Calculating the size of a convolutional neural network\n\nLet's take some well-known CNN, say VGG16, and see in detail how exactly the memory is being spent. You can print the summary of it using Keras:\n\n    from keras.applications import VGG16  \n    model = VGG16()  \n    print(model.summary())\n\nThe network consists of 13 2D-convolutional layers (with 3\u00d73 filters, stride 1 and pad 1) and 3 fully connected layers (\"Dense\"). Plus, there are an input layer, 5 max-pooling layers and a flatten layer, which do not hold parameters.\n\n**Layer** | **Output shape** | **Data memory** | **Parameters** | **Number of p** arameters\n\n---|---|---|---|---\n\nInputLayer | 224\u00d7224\u00d73 | 150528 | 0 | 0\n\nConv2D | 224\u00d7224\u00d764 | 3211264 | 3\u00d73\u00d73\u00d764+64 | 1792\n\nConv2D | 224\u00d7224\u00d764 | 3211264 | 3\u00d73\u00d764\u00d764+64 | 36928\n\nMaxPool2D | 112\u00d7112\u00d764 | 802816 | 0 | 0\n\nConv2D | 112\u00d7112\u00d7128 | 1605632 | 3\u00d73\u00d764\u00d7128+128 | 73856\n\nConv2D | 112\u00d7112\u00d7128 | 1605632 | 3\u00d73\u00d7128\u00d7128+128 | 147584\n\nMaxPool2D | 56\u00d756\u00d7128 | 401408 | 0 | 0\n\nConv2D | 56\u00d756\u00d7256 | 802816 | 3\u00d73\u00d7128\u00d7256+256 | 295168\n\nConv2D | 56\u00d756\u00d7256 | 802816 | 3\u00d73\u00d7256\u00d7256+256 | 590080\n\nConv2D | 56\u00d756\u00d7256 | 802816 | 3\u00d73\u00d7256\u00d7256+256 | 590080\n\nMaxPool2D | 28\u00d728\u00d7256 | 200704 | 0 | 0\n\nConv2D | 28\u00d728\u00d7512 | 401408 | 3\u00d73\u00d7256\u00d7512+512 | 1180160\n\nConv2D | 28\u00d728\u00d7512 | 401408 | 3\u00d73\u00d7512\u00d7512+512 | 2359808\n\nConv2D | 28\u00d728\u00d7512 | 401408 | 3\u00d73\u00d7512\u00d7512+512 | 2359808\n\nMaxPool2D | 14\u00d714\u00d7512 | 100352 | 0 | 0\n\nConv2D | 14\u00d714\u00d7512 | 100352 | 3\u00d73\u00d7512\u00d7512+512 | 2359808\n\nConv2D | 14\u00d714\u00d7512 | 100352 | 3\u00d73\u00d7512\u00d7512+512 | 2359808\n\nConv2D | 14\u00d714\u00d7512 | 100352 | 3\u00d73\u00d7512\u00d7512+512 | 2359808\n\nMaxPool2D | 7\u00d77\u00d7512 | 25088 | 0 | 0\n\nFlatten | 25088 | 0 | 0 | 0\n\nDense | 4096 | 4096 | 7\u00d77\u00d7512\u00d74096+4096 | 102764544\n\nDense | 4096 | 4096 | 4097\u00d74096 | 16781312\n\nDense | 1000 | 1000 | 4097\u00d71000 | 4097000\n\nTotal memory for data: Batch_size \u00d7 15,237,608 \u2248 15 M\n\n???Total memory: Batch_size \u00d7 24M 5; 4 bytes \u2248 93 MB\n\nReference:\n\n<http:\/\/cs231n.github.io\/convolutional-networks\/#case>  \n<https:\/\/datascience.stackexchange.com\/questions\/17286\/cnn-memory-consumption>\n\nTotal parameters: 138,357,544\u2248138M\n\n# Lossless compression\n\nA typical neural network contains a significant amount of redundant information. This enables us to apply both lossless and lossy compression to them, and often achieve fairly good results.\n\nHuffman encoding is a type of compression that is commonly referred to in research papers concerning CNN compression. You can also use Apple compression or Facebook `zstd` libraries, which deliver state-of-the-art compression. Apple compression contains four compression algorithms (three common and one Apple-specific):\n\n  * LZ4 is the fastest of the four.\n  * ZLIB is standard zip archiving.\n  * LZMA is slower but delivers the best compression.\n  * LZFSE is a bit faster and delivers slightly better compression than ZLIB. It is optimized for the Apple hardware to be energy efficient.\n\nHere is a code snippet for you to compress data using the LZFSE algorithm from the compression library, and decompress it back. You can find the full code in the `Compression.playground`:\n\n    import Compression \n    let data = ...\n\n`sourceSize` holds the size of the data before compression:\n\n    let sourceSize = data.count\n\nAllocating the buffer for the results of compression... we allocate it with the original (non-compressed) size:\n\n    let compressedBuffer = UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt8>.allocate(capacity: sourceSize)\n\n`compression_encode_buffer()` is the function used to compress your data. It takes the input and output buffers, their sizes, and the type of compression algorithm (`COMPRESSION_LZFSE`) and returns the size of compressed data:\n\n    var compressedSize: Int = 0 \n    data.withUnsafeBytes { (sourceBuffer: UnsafePointer<UInt8>) in \n    compressedSize = compression_encode_buffer(compressedBuffer, sourceSize, sourceBuffer, sourceSize, nil, COMPRESSION_LZFSE) \n    }\n\nThe `compressedSize` variable holds the size after compression.\n\nNow, to the decompression. Here's how to allocate a buffer of appropriate size for un-compressed data:\n\n    var uncompressedBuffer = UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt8>.allocate(capacity: sourceSize)\n\nAgain, the `compression_decode_buffer()` function returns the true size of the uncompressed data:\n\n    let uncompressedSize = compression_decode_buffer(uncompressedBuffer, sourceSize, compressedBuffer, compressedSize, nil, COMPRESSION_LZFSE)\n\nConverting the buffer to a normal data object:\n\n    let uncompressedData = Data(bytes: uncompressedBuffer, count: uncompressedSize)\n\n`uncompressedData.count` should be equal to the initial `sourceSize`.\n\nFor lossless compression to be effective, your network needs to have a lot of repetitive elements in its structure. This can be achieved using weights quantization of precision reduction (see the next section).\n\nApple lzfse compression library:\n\n  * https:\/\/github.com\/lzfse\/lzfse\n  * https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/reference\/compression\/data_compression\n\nFacebook zstd compression library:\n\n  * https:\/\/github.com\/facebook\/zstd\n  * https:\/\/github.com\/omniprog\/SwiftZSTD\n\n# Compact CNN architectures\n\nDuring the inference, the whole neural network should be loaded into the memory, so as mobile developers we are especially interested in the small architectures, which consume as little memory as possible. Small neural networks also allow to reduce the bandwidth consumption when downloaded from the network.\n\nSeveral architectures designed to reduce the size of convolutional neural networks have been proposed recently. We will discuss in brief several most known of them.\n\n# SqueezeNet\n\nThe architecture was proposed by Iandola et al. in 2017 for use in autonomous cars. As the baseline, researchers took the AlexNet architecture. This network takes 240 MB of memory, which is pretty much the equivalent of mobile devices. SqueezeNet has 50x fewer parameters, and achieves the same level of accuracy on the ImageNet dataset. Using additional compression, its size can be reduced to about 0.5 MB.\n\nSqueezeNet is built from the fire modules. The objective was to create a neural network with a small number of parameters, but preserving the competitive level of accuracy. It was done with the following approaches:\n\n  * Reduce the network size by replacing the 3 x 3 filters with 1 x 1 filters.  \nHere, by replacing the 3 x 3 filter with a 1 x 1 filter, we have an instant reduction in the number of parameters by 9x.\n  * Reduce the number of inputs for the remaining 3 x 3 filters. Here, the number of parameters are reduced by merely reducing the number of filters.\n  * Downsample late in the architecture for the convolution layers to have a larger activation map. To improve the classification accuracy, the authors of SqueezeNet decreased the stride with later convolution layers, and therefore created a larger activation\/feature map.\n\nThe original paper can be found here: https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1602.07360.\n\n# MobileNets\n\n**MobileNets** is a class of efficient CNNs targeted to mobile and embedded applications. It was proposed by the Google research team in _MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications_ , 2017. In comparison to the traditional CNN, it has much less parameters, and requires much less computation of the learning and prediction process. This makes it faster and lighter, preserving the predictions accuracy at the same time. The main innovation was the introduction of depth-wise separable convolutions: <http:\/\/machinethink.net\/blog\/googles-mobile-net-architecture-on-iphone\/>.\n\nThe original paper can be found here: <https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1704.04861>.\n\n# ShuffleNet\n\nShuffleNet architecture was proposed in 2017 by the research team from Face++ (Megvii Inc.). It is targeted on mobile devices with limited computation power (for example, 10 - 150 MFLOPs). In comparison to the classical CNN, ShuffleNet has less parameters and performs less computations, because it uses pointwise group convolution and channel shuffle; for instance, it works 13x faster than AlexNet. The accuracy remains the same: on ImageNet, it even performs slightly better (top-1 error metric) than MobileNet.\n\nThe original paper can be found here: <https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1707.01083>.\n\n# CondenseNet\n\nCondenseNet was proposed by Gao Huang, Shichen Liu, Laurens van der Maaten, and Kilian Q. Weinberger. It reaches unprecedented levels of efficiency by combining dense connectivity between layers with a mechanism to remove unused connections, and therefore enables reuse of features within the network. CondenseNet is believed to be much more efficient than the state-of-the-art compact convolutional networks, such as MobileNets and ShuffleNets.\n\nRefer to this: _CondenseNet: An Efficient DenseNet using Learned Group Convolutions_ , Gao Huang, Shichen Liu, Laurens van der Maaten, Kilian Q. Weinberger, November 25, 2017: <https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1711.09224>.\n\n# Preventing a neural network from growing big\n\nTo leverage cutting-edge deep learning networks on mobile platforms, it becomes extremely important to effectively tune the learning of a network such that we can do the most with the least resources. The implementation of the neural network for OCR by the Google Translate team is an interesting one to understand the few thumb rules to circumvent the network from growing too big.\n\nFollowing are excerpts from the press release from Google, found at: <https:\/\/translate.googleblog.com\/2015\/07\/how-google-translate-squeezes-deep.html>:\n\n\"We needed to develop a very small neural net, and put severe limits on how much we tried to teach it-in essence, put an upper bound on the density of information it handles. The challenge here was in creating the most effective training data. Since we're generating our own training data, we put a lot of effort into including just the right data and nothing more. For instance, we want to be able to recognize a letter with a small amount of rotation, but not too much. If we overdo the rotation, the neural network will use too much of its information density on unimportant things. So we put effort into making tools that would give us a fast iteration time and good visualizations. Inside of a few minutes, we can change the algorithms for generating training data, generate it, retrain, and visualize. From there we can look at what kind of letters are failing and why. At one point, we were warping our training data too much, and '$' started to be recognized as 'S'. We were able to quickly identify that and adjust the warping parameters to fix the problem. (Good, 2015)\"\n\nHere are the key takeaways from the above notes:\n\n  * Limit the learning capacity by limiting the variations within the training data.\n  * Effective training data can be created by augmenting only a small rotation in the images. Larger rotations would result in increased learning, and therefore increased size.\n  * Extensively leverage visualization to quickly fix incorrect results from the network.\n\nWhat general rules can we derive from these revelations?\n\n  * Put an upper bound for the model size. This will limit the capacity of your model.\n  * Create the most effective training data and make the task of you network as simple as possible. For example, if neural network is recognizing the characters in the photo, add to the dataset letters rotated just a bit, but don't make it to learn characters flipped upside-down or mirrored. If you are creating your dataset by data augmentation, put efforts in keeping the dataset clean, so the network is not learning anything except things it needs to know.\n  * Which characters you can neglect? For example, you can let the network recognize \"5\" and \"S\" as the same character and handle the problem on the level of the dictionary.\n  * Be sure to visualize, what is going on inside of your network, and in which places it has problems. What characters it confuses the most often?\n\n# Lossy compression\n\nAll lossy methods of compression involve a potential problem: when you lose part of the information from your model, you should check how it performs after this. Retraining on the compressed model will help to adapt the network to the new constraints.\n\nNetwork optimization techniques include:\n\n  * **Weight quantization** : Change computation precision. For example, the model can be trained in full precision (float32) and then compressed to int8. This improves the performance significantly.\n  * Weight pruning\n  * Weight decomposition\n  * Low rank approximation. Good approach for CPU.\n  * **Knowledge distillation** : Train a smaller model to predict an output of the bigger one.\n  * Dynamic memory allocation\n  * Layer and tensor fusion. The idea is to combine successive layers into one. This reduces the memory needed to store intermediate results.\n\nAt the moment, each of them has its own pros and cons, but no doubts, that more perfect techniques will be proposed in the closest future.\n\n  * **Kernel auto-tuning** : Optimizes execution time by choosing the best data layer and best parallel algorithms for the target Jetson, Tesla, or DrivePX GPU platform\n  * **Dynamic tensor memory** : Reduces memory footprint and improves memory re-use by allocating memory for each tensor only for the duration of its usage\n  * **Multi-stream execution** : Scales to multiple input streams, by processing them in parallel using the same model and weights\n\n# Optimizing for inference\n\nGet rid of elements of a graph that are only used for back propagation, and are useless for inference.\n\nFor example, batch normalization layers can be merged with the preceding convolution layers into one layer, because both convolution and batch normalization are linear operations.\n\n# Network pruning\n\nThe general idea behind this method is that not all weights in the neural network are equally important. So, we can reduce the size of the network by throwing out unimportant weights. Technically, this can be done in the following way:\n\n  1. Train a large network: \n    * Leverage any previously trained network, say, VGG16, and retrain only the fully connected layers\n  2. Rank the filters, or create a sparse network based on a criteria: \n    * We could rank each filter by using any feasible criteria (say, Taylor Criteria), and pruning the lowest-ranking filters, or alternatively, replace all the values less than a certain threshold, with zeros resulting in a sparse network\n  3. Fine tune and repeat: \n    * Perform several iterations of training on the sparse network\n\nThe tricky question here is how to decide which networks are not important enough. This can be solved in the same way as we usually choose our hyperparameters: check several thresholds, and compare the quality metrics of the resulting networks.\n\nBe sure to perform several rounds of training on the pruned model to allow it to fix the damage you caused.\n\n# Weights quantization\n\nTo 8 bits or less.\n\nWeights quantization allows to decrease the size of the model, but at expense of prediction accuracy. In any case, it requires the same amount of memory during the runtime. For quantization any general purpose clustering algorithm can be used, for example, k-means.\n\nStandard clustering algorithms applied to the weights. By this we replace all this floating-points numbers with a few bits, representing its cluster. 1 floating point per cluster. Retrain again.\n\n<https:\/\/petewarden.com\/2016\/05\/03\/how-to-quantize-neural-networks-with-tensorflow\/>\n\n<https:\/\/github.com\/tensorflow\/tensorflow\/tree\/master\/tensorflow\/contrib\/quantization>\n\n# Reducing precision\n\nAnother simple approach to reduce the size of the network is to directly convert weights from double\/float data type to another with lower memory size, or to a fixed precision. This (almost) doesn't affect quality of predictions, but allows to reduce the size of the model up to four times.\n\nReducing precision of the network is exclusively focused only after the training is complete. Previously, attempts to train a network with lower precision data types have been experimented, and the results indicated difficulties in handling the back propagation and gradients.\n\nOnce the network is trained, we could right away replace double by float, or even better, by fixed precision. For example, in the trained neural network, you have double weights like this:\n\n    0.954929658551372\n\nIt's highly unlikely that the neural network encodes something meaningful in all those numbers after the point. So, if you drop most of them, converting to float, nothing changes: 0.9549297. The neural networks are stable enough to deal with that kind of insignificant change. But even now, it looks like precision is too big. So, we can round it even more; for example, to 0.9550000. This will not decrease the size of a model in the memory, because weights are still float numbers; but it does reduce the size of your IPA binaries, because archiving can be more efficient. Also, compressed models will take less space on the disk.\n\n# Other approaches\n\nAnother popular approach to reduce the size of a neural network is via SVD. SVD is applied to pre-adjusted neural networks, and therefore reduces the number of parameters in the network. After reducing the number of parameters, an unconventional **backpropagation** algorithm is used to train the models restructured by SVD, which has lower time complexity than the conventional BP algorithm. Experimental results have shown almost 2x improved speed with zero loss in accuracy, and around 4x improvement with minor loss in accuracy.\n\nAdditional reading: you can explore several other approaches adopted by tech giants for the mobile platform:\n\n  * <https:\/\/handong1587.github.io\/deep_learning\/2015\/10\/09\/acceleration-model-compression.html>\n  * <https:\/\/research.googleblog.com\/2017\/02\/on-device-machine-intelligence.html>\n  * <https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/embeddedvision\/tensorflow-enabling-mobile-and-embedded-machine-intelligence-a-presentation-from-google>\n\n# Facebook's approach in Caffe2\n\nDuring the developer conference, Facebook had recently announced their approach to render cutting-edge art work on images and videos on the phone, while effectively leveraging the computing resources with a highly mobile-optimized deep neural network. The overall approach can be studied using the following visual (<https:\/\/developers.facebook.com\/videos\/f8-2017\/delivering-real-time-ai-in-the-palm-of-your-hand\/>):\n\nFigure 12.1: Facebook pipeline for compressing neural networks\n\nFacebook used the following pipeline in their applications to achieve 50x size reduction, preserving the accuracy:\n\n  * Pruning\n  * Quantization\n  * Huffmann encoding, or standard general-purpose compression algorithms\n\n# Knowledge distillation\n\nKnowledge distillation\u2014you train your model to predict the logits of a more complex model. Use the large model's output as the ground truth to train the small model.\n\nAdditional reading:\n\n  * <https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1503.02531>\n  * <https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/AlexanderKorbonits\/distilling-dark-knowledge-from-neural-networks>\n  * <https:\/\/github.com\/chengshengchan\/model_compression\/blob\/master\/teacher-student.py>\n\n# Tools\n\nThe following are the tool is used for lossy compression:\n\nTensorFlow compression tools\n\n# An example of the network compression\n\nYou can find suitable examples of the network compression at the following address:\n\n<https:\/\/github.com\/caffe2\/caffe2\/issues\/472>\n\n# Summary\n\nThere are several ways in which we can achieve appropriate size for deep neural network deployment on mobile platforms. So far, the most popular are choosing the compact architecture, and lossy compression: quantization, pruning, and others. Make sure to check your network's accuracy hasn't degraded after the compression was applied.\n\n# Bibliography\n\n  1. O. Good, _How Google Translate squeezes deep learning onto a phone_ , July 29, 2015: <https:\/\/research.googleblog.com\/2015\/07\/how-google-translate-squeezes-deep.html>\n  2. Y. LeCun, J. S. Denker, S. A. Solla, R. E. Howard, and L. D. Jackel. _Optimal Brain Damage_. In NIPS, volume 2, pages 598\u2013605, 1989\n\n# Best Practices\n\n\"The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.\"\n\n\u2013 _Brandon Sanderson_ , _The Way of Kings_\n\nImagine the field of AI as a huge national park. In previous chapters, we guided you along several exciting trails and showed you the most interesting sights for mobile developers. But there is still so much more that is unexplored. So, in this chapter, we want to provide you with a map of the common paths, from idea to production. We've outlined dangerous zones and left notes on solo hiking best practices! We also want to point out several interesting directions for your future exploration.\n\nIn this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:\n\n  * The path from idea to production\n  * Common pitfalls in machine learning projects also known as machine learning gremlins\n  * Machine learning best practices\n  * Recommended study resources\n\n# Mobile machine learning project life cycle\n\nWhen developing a mobile machine learning product, you typically go through several stages:\n\n  * Preparatory stage\n  * Prototype creation\n  * Porting to a mobile platform or deployment of the trained model\n  * Production\n\nDepending on your situation, your route may be shorter or longer; but usually, if you have skipped some stage, it just means that someone else did it for you. In the following explanation, we are omitting all the steps that are common to all kinds of mobile app projects and focusing only on the steps specific to machine learning.\n\n# Preparatory stage\n\nThis is the stage where you basically decide what you will do. There can be two possible outcomes for this stage: you have a plan on how to proceed, or you decide that you will not proceed:\n\nFigure 13.1: Preparatory stage map\n\n# Formulate the problem\n\nIf you can solve your problem without machine learning, don't use it. If the task can be solved with traditional programming techniques, congratulations! You don't need machine learning! Furthermore if your problem is of the kind where you can't allow errors, do not use machine learning.\n\nFor the start of your machine learning project, it is necessary to reduce a real-world problem to a machine learning task. Machine learning algorithms were developed by mathematicians and mostly tested on neat data in a controlled environment. You are fine if you can define your problem in terms of some existing machine learning approach: classification, regression, clustering, and so on. But to date, there are many problems that can't be easily adapted to the common machine learning blueprints. Among them are problems that require common sense reasoning and context understanding.\n\n# Define the constraints\n\nIt is easy to get lost in the variety of AI approaches. There is a set of constraints that will help you to focus and identify the optimal path to the solution. By answering the following questions to yourself, you will narrow the scope of your exploration significantly; or maybe, in some cases, you will conclude that the task is impossible (which is better to figure out at an earlier stage than a later one):\n\n  * What data can you use?\n  * What data should you not use?\n  * What should be the input and the output of your model?\n  * What is your desired accuracy or other measure of success? Remember that a machine learning algorithm will not be 100% accurate.\n  * Should the model be able to train on the target platform?\n  * How interpretable should your model be? Is it okay if your model is a black box?\n  * How much disk space and memory can your model consume in the training and inference stages? For example, the model shouldn't take more than 15 MB of disk space and more than 30 MB of RAM during inference.\n  * How fast should (or rather how slow can) the training and the inference be?\n  * What is your programming language and target platform?\n\n# Research the existing approaches\n\nThe key question here is, _how do other people solve similar problems?_\n\nCan you use native iOS SDK to solve your problem? For example, if you want to detect people's faces in photos, you don't need to train your own neural network or Haar cascade. Just use the Vision framework instead. In other words, do not reinvent the wheel. Look for ready solutions that can work on the device or server side. For the most common daily tasks, you will find something appropriate.\n\nExpanding the range of searches, perform a literature review. Even if you've not found ready solutions, you at least will get useful insights into the approaches and the domain specifics. The sites that will be handy at this stage are arXiv, Google Scholar, and GitHub. When you are done, you will have a clear understanding of classical and state-of-the-art approaches to the problem.\n\nEven if you do not find a good enough solution, you will probably find a baseline solution to compare your future models with.\n\n# Research the data\n\nIf you have not found an existing solution and want to train your own algorithm, you will need a dataset.\n\nHere, several scenarios are possible:\n\n  * You are feeling lucky, and you have found an existing dataset. The potential problem is that you may not be the only lucky person and your approach can be copied by others. There can also be licensing issues or other related problems.\n  * You collect or generate your own dataset.\n  * In the case of supervised learning, your dataset should be labeled. Hand-labeling is a laborious task, so it is often outsourced to some third-party services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk.\n\nCalculate how much will it cost to label your data in terms of time and money.\n\nAnother important thing to mention is that you should have a clear understanding of how the data was collected. This is important because the way of collecting data for model training can be significantly different from the way the same data will be collected in your app, and this will influence the results of your model's work. For example, if all the faces in the dataset were collected using a professional camera with perfect lighting conditions on a white background, do not expect your face recognition model to perform equally well on a mobile phone when the user has a bright window behind his\/her back.\n\nThe question you should ask yourself is, \"If I were a machine learning algorithm, would I be able to perform well, having this data?\" If the data is insufficient, no algorithm will save the day. Remember that more data beats the better algorithm.\n\n# Make design choices\n\nWhen you have a clear understanding of the goals, constraints, competing solutions, and your data, you can start with defining the technical specifics for your future model. The following questions should be answered before you implement your model:\n\n  * Is this a supervised or unsupervised learning problem? Classification or clustering? Discriminative or generative model?\n  * What is the measurement of success? What is your baseline solution and what are your benchmarks? How do you select the best model? In other words, what is the set of metrics that defines the best model?\n  * What is your strategy of model quality evaluation? Accuracy, precision-recall, cross-validation, or something else? This depends mostly on what costs more in your application domain: false positives or false negatives. Choose the quality metrics and set clear goals; for instance, precision shouldn't be less than 80%.\n  * Can the model be trained once and then do inference on all the devices or do you need to train a separate model for each client?\n  * Is data from one user enough for your model to operate or do you need to aggregate data from many users? This question will help you realize whether you need to put your model on server side.\n  * What is more important for you: accuracy or interpretability? For a classification problem, in the first case, you may want to go with neural networks or ensembles; in the second, you may want to go with decision trees or Naive Bayes.\n  * Do you need a probabilistic estimate? And just yes\/no or 42% chance of yes and 58% chance of no?\n  * How do you clean your data? How do you choose good features?\n  * How do you split your data into training and test sets? 50\/50? 90\/10?\n  * Do you want your model to incorporate new data incrementally (online learning) or retrain the model on a whole bunch of data from time to time (batch learning)? Can your training data become outdated? How often does the environment in which your model operates change? Should it adapt or not?\n\n# Prototype creation\n\nIt is important to understand the difference between tools for prototyping and production, because very different requirements are imposed on the instruments during these two stages. Choosing the right tools for the right tasks will save you a lot of time.\n\nDuring the prototyping phase, you want to be able to test your hypotheses and conduct experiments quickly. That is why it is reasonable to choose a flexible programming language within the reach of the environment, such as Python or R. You also want to have tools for data visualization and model debugging. This is something that the Swift ecosystem is still weak at. The matters of model size, speed, and stability may be secondary during prototyping (which doesn't mean that you should put them at the back of your mind). But when you are preparing your solution for production, you see those problems face to face, and in most cases, you have to rely on native, highly optimized libraries. In the search for a universal solution, you risk ending up with tools that work equally badly for both prototyping and production.\n\nImplementing machine learning algorithms from scratch is a non-trivial task. Therefore, if it is possible, choose portable libraries (TensorFlow or OpenCV) or algorithms you know are already implemented for iOS. Otherwise, you will have to spend additional resources to reproduce algorithms written in Python on iOS:\n\nFigure 13.2: Prototype creation map\n\n# Data preprocessing\n\nStart from simple data preprocessing. Be aware that usually data preparation takes 80% of a project's time. Maintain a clean repository with your data and tidy your data up. Remember, **garbage in, garbage out** ( **GIGO** )!\n\nSplit the work into more or less independent chunks. Let's say you are writing an app for reading medical device indications via a phone camera to simplify nurses' work.\n\nWrite down separate chunks of work, their inputs, and outputs. In this way, you'll see which of them depend on each other and this also helps understand how to test each step. Table shows examples:\n\n**Serial number** |\n\n**Step** | **Input** | **Output**\n\n---|---|---|---\n\n1 | Device type recognition | Image | Device type\n\n2 | Device screen detection | Image | Vertices of a screen quadrilateral (points)\n\n3 | Perspective correction | Vertices of a quadrilateral, screen image | Screen image with the corrected perspective\n\n4 | Screen layout segmentation | Screen image, device type | Several images containing different elements of layout\n\n5 | Image preprocessing for OCR | Noisy images | Clean images\n\n6 | OCR | Images | Noisy text\n\n7 | Validation | Noisy text | Clean text\n\nThe data preprocessing pipeline should be documented. For example, if you are subtracting the mean and dividing your data by the standard deviation, when training your model, don't forget to write down exact values of the mean and standard deviation. This is a common problem with pre-trained neural networks on the internet. When authors forget to mention the preprocessing steps, the models became effectively useless.\n\nFor a classification task, dataset preprocessing usually includes engineering of informative features, class balancing, and missed values imputation. In the case of supervised learning, do not forget to split your dataset into three parts for the next stage: training set (most of your samples), test set, and validation set.\n\n# Model training, evaluation, and selection\n\nUsually, it is better to start from simple and classical models because sometimes the simplest model performs the best. But this is just a rule of thumb, not a law of nature.\n\nEvery machine learning algorithm embodies some assumptions or prior knowledge about the data: KNN assumes that similar examples are of the same class, linear regression assumes linear dependencies and normally distributed errors, many models assume independence or limited dependencies between features or samples, and so on. This helps them to generalize behind the training data successfully. All these assumptions work only because the samples are not distributed uniformly across the space of all possible inputs, and there is something we can call pattern in the data. The task of the machine learner engineer\/researcher is to know his data well enough to be able to make grounded assumptions about it. He chooses the algorithms based on those assumptions. What helps in practice is to ask yourself, \"If I were in the place of my algorithm, would I be able to generalize well with such features, number of samples, and assumptions?\" Think! What kind of knowledge do you have about the data? If you understand what precondition should be fulfilled for the sample to fall in one or another class (such as \"if it has four paws, then this is a cat, but if it has...\" then decision tree is your choice. If the similarity between instances is something that is quite well understood, then go for distance-based algorithms. If there is a lot of information about probabilistic dependencies in your data, try probabilistic graphical models.\n\nThe typical procedure for choosing the best model is as follows:\n\n  * Choose a set of models that look appropriate for your task. For example, for classification, this can be: KNN, logistic regression, decision tree, neural network, and so on.\n  * Use the training set to train your models and test set to validate their accuracy; adjust their hyperparameters (number of neighbors for KNN, number of decision tree splits, and number and types of layers for NN).\n  * When you have a set of trained models, choose the best among them using the validation set.\n\nOnce again, from the dataset perspective:\n\n  * **Training set** : To train all your models.\n  * **Test set** : To evaluate your models during the training phase, while you're still adjusting different hyperparameters.\n  * **Validation set** : To measure the ultimate accuracy. This one should be kept separate from the other two until the final choice between the set of models has been made.\n\nThe last one is important because you can overfit to both training and test sets by adjusting hyperparameters multiple times.\n\nWe do not recommend using ensembles of models on mobile devices as they usually take a lot of resources. Before you decide to go with one, check whether the same performance can or can't be reached if you put the same amount of effort in data collection, cleansing, and feature engineering.\n\nWork iteratively; try one set of algorithms and features, then another. Keep records about the results of each iteration. Set seeds for random number generators in order to be able to reproduce your own results later.\n\nAll your business problem formulation ultimately converges to one question, \"What loss function you are optimizing?\" It is important to remember that learning is the process of adjusting the model to the data in a way that minimizes the loss function. So, if the loss function was chosen carelessly, the results can be far from what your real goals are.\n\n# Field testing\n\nThis is an important stage because it reveals the biases you have in your training data, the user's perception of your product, and other potential pain points. Try to check the model in the most realistic scenarios and conditions. Suppose you are developing a voice assistant. How will it work:\n\n  * On a noisy street when the wind is blowing?\n  * When a child is crying in the background?\n  * When some music is playing?\n  * When the user is not a native speaker or is getting emotional or drunk? Well, those may be the users who need your assistance the most!\n  * In all of these cases together?\n\nIf your solution is security-related, how good is it in the event of an active attack by an adversary? How easy is it to unlock your touch ID with the help of an orange, or cheat your face recognition by presenting it with a photo?\n\nHaving all those observations, you then go back and update your dataset and models accordingly.\n\n# Porting or deployment for a mobile platform\n\nThe next logical step is deploying your solution on a mobile platform (or platforms). Here, you have several considerations:\n\n  * Model memory consumption\n  * Data memory consumption\n  * Training speed (if you need on-device training)\n  * Inference speed\n  * Disk space consumption\n  * Battery consumption\n\nYou can profile all of this using Xcode instruments.\n\nFor information on Swift code speed optimization check out this guide: _Writing High-Performance Swift Code_ , at: <https:\/\/github.com\/apple\/swift\/blob\/master\/docs\/OptimizationTips.rst>.\n\nIf your application includes several pre-trained models, for example, neural artistic style filters, you can use on-demand resources to store those models on the App Store and download them only when they are needed, not in the process of app installation. The On-Demand Resources Guide explains:\n\n\"On-demand resources are app contents that are hosted on the App Store and are separate from the related app bundle that you download. They enable smaller app bundles, faster downloads, and richer app content. The app requests sets of on-demand resources, and the operating system manages downloading and storage. ...  \nThe resources can be of any type supported by bundles except for executable code.\"\n\nAs of spring 2017, App Store allows you to store up to 20 GB of on-demand resources. You also can define which resources will be purged when the OS hits the limit of disk space.\n\nYou can find more details about this technology and how to adopt it in your application here: <https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/library\/content\/documentation\/FileManagement\/Conceptual\/On_Demand_Resources_Guide\/index.html>.\n\nIn the previous two chapters, we discussed questions of model acceleration and compression in more detail.\n\nIt is good to make sure in advance that your model is easily portable for mobile platforms. For example, suppose you've decided to train a model with one of the frameworks and convert it to a Core ML format for iOS deployment. Before training a complex neural network for a week on a GPU server, verify that untrained network with this architecture can be converted by `coremltools`. In this way, you will avoid disappointment later when you figure out that `coremltools` doesn't support one of the layers in your super-cool architecture. Actually, Core ML now supports custom layers, but do you really want to write one if you can replace it with something more traditional? You can call your solution portable only if porting costs much less than rewriting from scratch.\n\n# Production\n\nSome machine learning models require regular updates due to the changing nature of their environment; others do not. For example, language changes faster than human appearance, but fashions change even faster. In fraud detection systems, a constant arms race between defenders and attackers goes on, and both sides try to be creative. The problem of a changing environment is known as concept drift. The wrong word problem of the model getting irrelevant over time is known as model decay.\n\nHow can you tackle these problems? There are several possible ways:\n\n  * Periodically retrain your model\n  * Use online learning algorithms to incorporate new data and drop the old one: an example algorithm is KNN\n  * Use algorithms that allow you to weigh the importance of your data and assign highest importance to recent data\n\n# Best practices\n\nIn this section, we've collected some general ideas worth keeping in mind during the whole development process.\n\nIt's impossible to collect all important thoughts in one place, so here is a list of some really insightful guides from seasoned machine learning engineers on the best practices they recommend:\n\n  * _A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning_ by Pedro Domingos, at: https:\/\/homes.cs.washington.edu\/~pedrod\/papers\/cacm12.pdf\n  * _Best Practices for Applying Deep Learning to Novel Applications_ by Leslie N. Smith, at: https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1704.01568\n  * _Rules of Machine Learning: Best Practices for ML Engineering_ by Martin Zinkevich, at: http:\/\/martin.zinkevich.org\/rules_of_ml\/rules_of_ml.pdf\n  * _Best Practices for Machine Learning Applications_ by Brett Wujek, Patrick Hall, and Funda G\u00fcne\u0219, at: https:\/\/support.sas.com\/resources\/papers\/proceedings16\/SAS2360-2016.pdf\n\n# Benchmarking\n\nWhen you are creating a model for solving a popular machine learning task, how do you know it is any better than anything else that has been invented by your predecessors? The answer is one word: benchmarks.\n\nThere are some well-known datasets that serve to compare accuracy across different models. For instance, for the task of large-scale visual object classification, a benchmark is the ImageNet dataset.\n\n# Privacy and differential privacy\n\nSurprisingly, in the last few years, most scientific papers where mobile devices and machine learning were mentioned together were not about computer vision or natural language processing. The topics discussed the most were information security and privacy. These two fields intersect in several scenarios:\n\n  * The attacker employs offensive machine learning as a part of his\/her toolkit. It can be used for discovery and analysis of vulnerabilities or for the attack itself. Examples are face or voice recognition for surveillance and finding data leaks in an improperly anonymized data.\n  * Defensive machine learning is used to protect against cyber attacks. It can be utilized for both threat detection and analysis. An example is fraud detection algorithms in banks and antivirus software.\n  * Adversarial machine learning is a setting when algorithm itself is under attack. Examples are search engine optimization (SEO) \u2013 tricking search engines and conversion rate optimization (CRO) \u2013 tricking spam filters.\n\nNow, if machine learning is used to maximize the spam emails open rate, it is clearly an adversarial setting; but both the offender and defender are armed with machine learning, so all three scenarios meet in one place.\n\nIn the context of mobile security, machine learning has been used for:\n\n  * User authentication based on different features: voice, face, gait, signature, and so on\n  * Side-channel attacks: speech recognition, key logging, and stealing passwords using only motion sensor data\n  * Manipulating with voice assistants using noises unintelligible for humans\n  * Tricking image classification algorithms into mislabeling one object as another\n  * Extracting all kinds of personal information from a user's photo library: documents, bar codes, NSFW photos, credit card info, and so on\n\nThe last example is especially troubling because in iOS, any app that has access to the photo library has an access to all of the user's photos, including those in the hidden folder. They can analyze it in any way without limitations. All this leads to the conclusion that at the moment, offensive machine learning on mobile devices prevails over defensive learning and it is restricted only by the attacker's imagination and battery consumption.\n\nOutside of the mobile development domain, machine learning is routinely used for surveillance, obtrusive targeted advertising, mining social media for personal information, and other ethically questionable practices. This is a problem that doesn't have technical solution. Like almost any other powerful tool, machine learning comes with responsibility. The computer can only optimize the objective function; the human is the one who chooses the function to optimize. Are you optimizing the revenue and number of items sold, or the quality of your products and well-being of your users?\n\nAt WWDC 2016, Apple officials brought up the topic of differential privacy in the context of machine learning. According to them, differential privacy is a major research topic and Apple is in the process of introducing differential privacy throughout the company's services. The idea here is to collect users' data but to add noise to it and aggregate it in such a way that information about any individual cannot be extracted.\n\nFor more information on Apple's approach, check out the differential privacy overview document at: <https:\/\/images.apple.com\/privacy\/docs\/Differential_Privacy_Overview.pdf> and the WWDC presentation at: <http:\/\/devstreaming.apple.com\/videos\/wwdc\/2016\/709tvxadw201avg5v7n\/709\/709_engineering_privacy_for_your_users.pdf>.\n\nAccording to Apple, iOS has a 200 MB dynamic cache of personal information to train models right on the iPhone. That personal information includes app usage data, interactions with other people, and keyboard and speech input; it never leaves the device. Because the data does not have to travel over the network in this case, this is a good example of how mobile machine learning can decrease the potential cyber attack surface area and improve a user's security.\n\nResearchers from Google also proposed a secure data aggregation protocol for machine learning. This was needed to implement the decentralized learning system\u2014small local models are being trained on mobile devices and then they send an update to the big central model, which aggregates the experience of all the small models.\n\nThis approach is known as federated learning. To learn more about it, check out the paper _Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data_. H. Brendan McMahan et al, at: <https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1602.05629>.  \nAlso visit the Google research blog: <https:\/\/research.googleblog.com\/2017\/04\/federated-learning-collaborative.html>.\n\n# Debugging and visualization\n\nWhen our usual code has a bug, it either doesn't work or works in the wrong way. When ML code has a bug, it often continues working but just degrades in quality. Because machine learning algorithms can be extremely complex, good debugging and visualization tools are of extreme value. For TensorFlow for example, such a tool is TensorBoard, which allows exploring model graphs, weight distributions, loss charts, and so on.\n\nFor now, humanity has not invented a better way to understand data than to visualize it. Often, 10 minutes of writing code for visualization lead to more insights than hours of debugging on a console. As Prof. Ben Shneiderman from the University of Maryland once noted in his talk:\n\n\"Statistics without visualization should be illegal.\"\n\n# Documentation\n\nSurely, it's better when your tool is so simple; it doesn't require a manual. And we all know the deeply rooted tradition of self-documenting code in the Objective-C community. But in the machine learning domain, code without documentation is often useless. Even when there is a documentation, results often cannot be easily reproduced because some exact values of hyperparameters or other seemingly small details are not known.\n\nSo, what exactly should be documented in your machine learning-related code? Most importantly:\n\n  * Data sources\n  * Preprocessing steps\n  * Combinations of features\n  * Model hyperparameters\n  * All tricks of the trade\n  * Error messages\n  * Loss functions\n  * Experiments\n  * Model checkpoints\n  * Random number seeds\n  * Quality metrics\n\nDo not forget to put references to original research papers wherever appropriate. Try to avoid calling variables _a_ , _b_ , _c_ , _x_ , _y_ , _z_ , _w_ , \u03b1, \u03b2, \u03c1, \u03b8 and so on in your code if those names come only from some formula that is directly referenced in the comments nearby.\n\n# Machine learning gremlins\n\nBen Hamner, a data scientist at Kaggle, referred to common machine learning gotchas as ML gremlins.\n\nYou can watch Ben's original talk at: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tleeC-KlsKA.\n\nI like the metaphor because it makes my brain think about evil characters rather than some vague, abstract concepts. In addition to the original gremlins presented by Ben, I want to add several of my own and also present a taxonomy of gremlins (see the following diagram). I employed this metaphor throughout this chapter to avoid boring issues and problems when discussing how to identify and neutralize those pests:\n\nFigure 13.3: The simplified taxonomy of machine learning problems\n\n# Data kobolds\n\nDealing with data is hard; that's why we call it data science and data mining! Many different things can go wrong at different stages. Ben mentions data insufficiency, data leakage, non-stationary distributions, poor data sampling and splitting, data quality, and poorly anonymized data. Let's add a few more.\n\n# Tough data\n\nYour data can be tough in a lot of ways: it can be sparse (in features or in target variable), it can contain outliers or missed values, or it can be high-dimensional or high-cardinal (for categorical features). Numerical features can be (and usually are) of different magnitude or suffer from multicollinearity. There is no bulletproof solution. Use force. Tidy your data up. The common techniques here are dimensionality reduction, missing values imputation, outlier detection, and statistical data normalization. Textbooks on statistics and data science will help you learn more on this topic.\n\n# Biased data\n\nThe Word2Vec algorithm (discussed in, Chapter 10, _Natural Language Processing_ ) is a good example of how easily cultural stereotypes and prejudices leak into machine learning models. For instance, vectors trained on the Google news corpus tell us that:\n\n_USA - Pizza + Russia = Vodka_\n\nWhile this may sound very funny for some people, this sounds equally offensive for many more. Is the algorithm biased? No, it is all in the dataset.\n\nAnother example of badly biased data was a web service based on a neural network that assessed a face's beauty by the photo. Apparently, all of the training data contained white faces, so the model was giving the lowest scores to all non-white faces. I truly believe that the developers had no bad intentions in training their model. They just did not pay enough attention to the variety of input data.\n\n# Batch effects\n\nUsually, if you have to label a big dataset manually, you split it into manageable batches. Several people can then work in parallel on different portions. The problem here is that each of those people will introduce a different amount of variability in his\/her batch. This is especially the case when subjective opinions are involved, such as \"Is this movie review slightly positive or rather neutral?\"\n\nBatch effect is also a common problem for datasets that were compiled from several different sources. In many cases, batch effects become apparent when you plot the data obtained from different sources separately.\n\n# Goblins of training\n\nIn addition to overfitting, in this category fall problems with resource consumption, model interpretability, hyperparameter tuning, and so on. Most of them we have already discussed elsewhere in this chapter and other chapters.\n\n# Product design ogres\n\nIn his talk, Ben mentions only one of this kind: solving the wrong business problem. But there are so many more!\n\n# Magical thinking\n\nI want to tell a story to illustrate the point. A friend of mine asked me to build a machine learning system for his startup because he believed it would solve some problem in his mobile app. I asked what data he has and he answered that they are planning to collect a lot of data from their users. They wanted to make highly personalized predictions for each of their users and right in time (precision, within minutes). \"Okay,\" I said, \"Imagine you have this kind of data about yourself, your wife, and your dog. Will it be useful to make correct predictions about me?\" \"No,\" he shook his head. \"Now imagine you've just started collecting information about me. How much time would it take to start making reasonable predictions?\" He looked disappointed. \"So is it just a statistic? I thought it would figure out somehow on its own.\" Fortunately or not, machine learning has nothing supernatural in it. It will not create a solution for you in a miraculous way out of nothing. What it can do for you is to get more value from less data. These basic facts are sometimes not obvious to non-technical people.\n\n# Cargo cult\n\nSomehow, it has happened that we live in a culture where technologies are a matter of fashion and objects of almost religious worship (think about tech evangelism, \"changing the world,\" and tabs versus space wars). AI is on the peak of its popularity now. We often say, \"Everybody does machine learning, so let us also build a neural network into our product and advertise it as artificial intelligence!\" Undoubtedly, machine learning is an excellent hammer, but not all things around are nails. As you probably know, any product gets better if you add Bluetooth to it. However, this rule does not hold true for machine learning. The author of this book believes that there were too many great services that became inconvenient and unpredictable when machine learning was added to them. Rephrasing the famous quote by Jamie Zawinski about regular expressions:\n\n\"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think \"I know, I'll use AI\". Now they have two problems.\"\n\n# Feedback loops\n\nAt a conference, a speaker talked about a new product that his company was developing. Airline sites, explained the speaker, change their ticket prices in a hardly predictable way depending on various indicators and using models known only to them. So the speaker and his colleagues collected the data on price trends from some airline sites and built a regression model. This would predict changes in ticket prices and provide users with advice on whether to buy a ticket for a flight at that time or wait to save money. One of the listeners (it wasn't me) raised a hand and asked: \"What will happen when the airlines learn about your site and update their models to take into account your forecast?\" The question took the speaker by surprise because this scenario was completely unforeseen by him. Setting aside the question of whether the airlines would actually take into account such a site, this is a good example of what is known in machine learning as a feedback loop. When your model's prediction affects the actual outcome, this can lead to one of two unwanted scenarios: self-fulfilling prophecy or self-negating prophecy.\n\nA simple example: your system predicts what news will be of interest to the user. The user reads them, and the system remembers that the user is interested in such information. In fact, the user opened it not so much because he is engaged but because you showed it to him (self-fulfilling prophecy). So he had no other choice except to read what was presented or to close an app. As a result, after a few cycles, the recommendations become monotonous and so dull that the user stops using your application. The problem here is that the training data gets polluted by the model's predictions and the model gradually degrades.\n\nHow to deal with feedback loops? There's no way. Just do not create them.\n\n# Uncanny valley effect\n\nThe term uncanny valley initially appeared in the context of robotics and described the feelings people experience from interacting with humanoid robots. Starting from 1970, Japanese and Korean companies have been producing androids, copying an appearance of a person up to the slightest detail. The androids usually were the copies of some visually attractive models. However, it was observed that such robots seem to cause rejection because they induce associations with corpses or mentally-impaired people. At the same time, robots that did not try to imitate a person's appearance evoked sympathy from observers. Later the concept was extended to the area of \u200b\u200b3D animation and video games, where uncanny valley was successfully employed to create scary characters:\n\nFigure 13.4: Uncanny valley effect. Picture by Mykola Sosnovshchenko.\n\nSome authors apply the concept of uncanny valley in the context of AI systems, such as recommender systems and voice assistants. Systems simulating human behavior that are not believable enough can induce emotional rejection by users. Why? Let's try to figure it out.\n\nInteractions between people are based on the ability to understand and predict each other's behavior. There are even specialized neurons in the brain (mirror neurons) that are responsible for this. You are greeting a person and hear the greetings in response, or you are telling a joke expecting that the listener will smile. If your companion does not respond to your greetings or reacts strangely to your jokes, you feel that something is wrong. Machine learning systems often behave insufficiently in this way. They are not predictable enough for human observers, which can cause a feeling of wrongness. For example, a news feed that is sorted by date or topic is similar to a room in which you know precisely where things are located. But if your news feed is sorted according to an unknown AI algorithm, it becomes similar to a mirage in the desert. There was a piece of news you were interested in, but now it has disappeared somewhere and you cannot find it, however hard you try.\n\nPredictability is the basis of good user experience. There can be predictable randomness and then users are aware that something happens by pure chance. But even then, our brain is trying to find some patterns in those random events. If you call it AI, the creepy concurrences become even creepier: \"Facebook AI algorithms recommend me the community \"Books on shamanism,\" because I am in the AI community.\" My favorite example of uncanny NLP in action is a blog named _Weird Duolingo Phrases_ that collects weird things that the app asks its user to translate.\n\nAlong the same lines, make sure that your personalized models do not produce a spooky user experience. If your app knows too much about the user, that may be a good reason to uninstall it.\n\n# Recommended learning resources\n\nIn this book, we've only scratched the surface of the immense body of knowledge behind the term machine learning. If you want to learn more, we highly recommend the following resources.\n\nThe main criteria for choosing the courses and books were clarity of presentation and a CS-oriented approach. Other criteria for the books were free online availability and open source code samples. All courses mentioned in this list are free (as of May 2017) and of introductory level.\n\n# Mathematical background\n\nThe handwritten comic-style lectures on Calculus by Robert Ghrist from the University of Pennsylvania can be found on YouTube or Coursera. This teaches single-variable calculus: Taylor series, Newton method. This should be your choice if you don't know how to take a derivative of a sigmoid function or which functions are differentiable. For more information refer to: https:\/\/www.math.upenn.edu\/~ghrist\/.\n\n_Coding The Matrix: Linear Algebra Through Computer Science Applications_ course and book by Philip N. Klein. Teaches linear algebra via Python examples and assignments: eigenvectors, eigenvalues, SVD, convolution, wavelet, and Fourier transform. For more information refer to: <http:\/\/codingthematrix.com\/>.\n\n_Immersive Linear Algebra_ by J. Str\u00f6m, K. \u00c5str\u00f6m, and T. Akenine-M\u00f6ller is an interactive online textbook found at: <http:\/\/immersivemath.com\/ila\/index.html>.\n\nOpen source textbooks, video lectures, and exercises on probability and statistics from OpenIntro. Also available as a Coursera course by Mine \u00c7etinkaya-Rundel. Probability, Bayesian statistics, probability distributions, conditional probability, inference, confidence level, chi-square, ANOVA, regression, coding assignments in R. For more information refer to: <https:\/\/www.openintro.org\/stat\/>.\n\n# Machine learning\n\n_The Analytics Edge_ course from MIT at edX. Teaches applied data analysis in the R programming language, including classification, clustering, and data visualization through a set of real-world cases. Model quality evaluation, sentiment analysis. For more information refer to: <https:\/\/www.edx.org\/course\/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-3>.\n\nNeural networks class\u2014Universit\u00e9 de Sherbrooke by Hugo Larochelle. Everything you want and don't want to know about neural networks. For more information refer to: <http:\/\/info.usherbrooke.ca\/hlarochelle\/neural_networks\/content.html>.\n\n_Deep Learning_ by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville: This is a deep learning book. Available online for free at the book's site at <http:\/\/www.deeplearningbook.org\/>.\n\n_Programming Collective Intelligence_ by Toby Segaran. Code samples: <https:\/\/github.com\/ferronrsmith\/programming-collective-intelligence-code>.\n\n# Computer vision\n\nCS 6476: _Introduction to Computer Vision_ by Georgia Institute of Technology. Mathematically-light intro to computer vision with the coding assignment in MATLAB\/Octave. For more information refer to: <https:\/\/www.udacity.com\/course\/introduction-to-computer-vision--ud810>.\n\nCAP 5415: _Computer Vision_ course by University of Central Florida. For more information refer to: ><http:\/\/crcv.ucf.edu\/courses\/CAP5415\/Fall2014\/index.php>.\n\nA classic textbook by Richard Szeliski, _Computer Vision: Algorithms and Application_ , is freely available online: <http:\/\/szeliski.org\/Book\/drafts\/SzeliskiBook_20100903_draft.pdf>.\n\n_CS231n: Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition_ course from Stanford University. Introductory course on convolutional neural networks with coding assignments in Python. For more information refer to: <http:\/\/cs231n.stanford.edu\/index.html>.\n\n# NLP\n\nCS224n: _Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning_. Coding assignments in TensorFlow. Word vector representations, LSTM, GRU, neural machine translation. For more information refer to: <http:\/\/web.stanford.edu\/class\/cs224n\/>.\n\n# Summary\n\nThis was the final chapter of the book; so we discussed a machine learning app's life cycle, and common problems in AI projects and how to solve them. We also provided a list of good study material for further progress of our readers. We hope that you were not disappointed and wish you many successes in your own AI experiments!\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nLiterature, Life, and Modernity\n\nCOLUMBIA THEMES IN PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND THE ARTS\nCOLUMBIA THEMES IN PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND THE ARTS\n\nLydia Goehr and Gregg M. Horowitz, Editors\n\nADVISORY BOARD\n\nJ. M. Bernstein | Eileen Gillooly  \n---|---  \nNo\u00ebl Carroll | Thomas S. Grey  \nT. J. Clark | Miriam Bratu Hansen  \nArthur C. Danto | Robert Hullot-Kentor  \nMartin Donougho | Michael Kelly  \nDavid Frisby | Richard Leppert  \nBoris Gasparov | Janet Wolff\n\nColumbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts presents monographs, essay collections, and short books on philosophy and aesthetic theory. It aims to publish books that show the ability of the arts to stimulate critical reflection on modern and contemporary social, political, and cultural life. Art is not now, if it ever was, a realm of human activity independent of the complex realities of social organization and change, political authority and antagonism, cultural domination and resistance. The possibilities of critical thought embedded in the arts are most fruitfully expressed when addressed to readers across the various fields of social and humanistic inquiry. The idea of philosophy in the series' title ought to be understood, therefore, to embrace forms of discussion that begin where mere academic expertise exhausts itself, where the rules of social, political, and cultural practice are both affirmed and challenged, and where new thinking takes place. The series does not privilege any particular art, nor does it ask for the arts to be mutually isolated. The series encourages writing from the many fields of thoughtful and critical inquiry.\n\nLYDIA GOEHR AND DANIEL HERWITZ, eds.,\n\n_The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera_\n\nROBERT HULLOT-KENTOR,\n\n_Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno_\n\nGIANNI VATTIMO,\n\n_Art's Claim to Truth_ , edited by Santiago Zabala, translated by Luca D'Isanto\n\nJOHN T. HAMILTON,\n\n_Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language_\n\nSTEFAN JONSSON,\n\n_A Brief History of the Masses: Three Revolutions_\nLITERATURE, LIFE, AND MODERNITY\n\nRichard Eldridge\n\nCOLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS   NEW YORK\nColumbia university Press\n\n_Publishers Since 1893_\n\nNew York Chichester, West Sussex\n\ncup.columbia.edu\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2008 Columbia University Press\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nE-ISBN 978-0-231-51552-8\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nEldridge, Richard Thomas, 1953\u2013\n\nLiterature, life, and modernity \/ Richard Eldridge.\n\np. cm.\u2014(Columbia themes in philosophy, social criticism, and the arts)\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 978-0-231-14454-4 (cloth: acid-free paper)\u2014\n\nISBN 978-0-231-51552-8 (e-book)\n\n1. Literature\u2014Philosophy. 2. European literature\u2014History and criticism.\n\n3. Literature and society. I. Title. II. Series.\n\nPN49.E43 2008\n\n801.3\u2014dc22 2008001172\n\nA Columbia University Press E-book.\n\nCUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.\nNot for these I raise\n\nThe song of thanks and praise;\n\nBut for those obstinate questionings\n\nOf sense and outward things,\n\nFallings from us, vanishings;\n\nBlank misgivings of a Creature\n\nMoving about in worlds not realized,\n\nHigh instincts before which our mortal Nature\n\nDid tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:\n\n\u2014WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, \"Ode: Intimations of Immortality\n\nfrom Recollections of Early Childhood\" (1807)\n\nAh! As I listened with a heart forlorn,\n\nThe pulses of my being beat anew:\n\nAnd even as Life returns upon the drowned,\n\nLife's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains\u2014\n\n\u2014SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, \"To William Wordsworth:\n\nComposed on the Night After His Recitation of a Poem\n\non the Growth of an Individual Mind\" (1807)\n\nThe poem of the mind in the act of finding\n\nWhat will suffice. It has not always had\n\nTo find: the scene was set; it repeated what\n\nWas in the script.\n\nThen the theatre was changed\n\nTo something else. Its past was a souvenir.\n\nIt has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.\n\nIt has to face the men of the time and to meet\n\nThe women of the time. It has to think about war\n\nAnd it has to find what will suffice.\n\n\u2014WALLACE STEVENS, \"Of Modern Poetry\" (1940)\nContents\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\n1. Introduction: Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Uses of Literature\n\n2. Romanticism, Cartesianism, Humeanism, Byronism: Stoppard's _Arcadia_\n\n3. Romantic Subjectivity in Goethe and Wittgenstein\n\n4. Attention, Expressive Power, and Interest in Life: Wordsworth's \"Tintern Abbey\"\n\n5. The Ends of Literary Narrative: Rilke's \"Archaic Torso of Apollo\"\n\n6. \"New Centers of Reflection Are Continually Forming\": Benjamin, Sebald, and Modern Human Life in Time\n\nAppendix: William Wordsworth: \"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey\"\n\nNOTES\n\nINDEX\nAcknowledgments\n\nThis book has been fortunate in the many circumstances that occasioned it and in the comments and conversations that contributed to its development. I am grateful to many friends, readers, and interlocutors for their good will, insights, and friendship.\n\nIn conversations beginning around their editing of _The Literary Wittgenstein_ , Wolfgang Huemer and John Gibson prompted me to begin thinking and writing more directly about the nature of distinctively literary achievement than I had done in the past. On one or another occasion, either in Philadelphia or in Erfurt, Germany, I talked with John, Wolfgang, or both about almost everything written in the analytic philosophy of literature in the last ten or so years. These conversations were invaluable for the direction of my work. Wolfgang then invited me to spend a semester at the University of Erfurt, where I taught a seminar on the philosophy of literature with Wolfgang present. Wolfgang visited Swarthmore nine months later, where we taught the philosophy of literature together for six weeks and I had the pleasure of hearing his lectures. In both settings, we talked several times a week about recent professional philosophical work on cognition, morality, and the uses of literature, and reflections of these conversations run continuously through this book. I also found in Erfurt extraordinarily congenial colleagues in Alex Burri, Carsten Held, Christian Beyer, Winfried Franzen, and Jan-Hendrik Heinrichs, in addition to Wolfgang Huemer. I cannot imagine a happier and more supportive environment in which to do philosophical work. In addition, Wolfgang Huemer and Alex Burri organized a conference on literature and cognition in Erfurt during my visit. I was able there to present an early version of part of chapter 4 and to enjoy the presentations of and discussions with Bernard Harrison, John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, Luca Pocci, Catherine Elgin, Christiane Schildknecht, Alex Burri, Gottfried Gabriel, Peter Lamarque, and Joachim Schulte.\n\nThanks to Bettina Menke, I was able to present an early version of chapter 6 to the Faculty for General and Comparative Literature. Comments from Bettina Menke and Holt Meyer about the singularity of the exemplary work of literature and the nature of the literary experience have been much on my mind in subsequent writing and rewriting, and Bettina Menke helpfully corrected some points about Sebald. Reading Christoph Menke's account in _Die Souver\u00e4nit\u00e4t der Kunst_ of Kafka's literary achievement together with a subsequent conversation with him in Erfurt about this account also substantially shaped my thinking.\n\nA yet earlier version of chapter 6 was presented at a seminar on Philosophy and Literature, sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Finland and organized by Martha Nussbaum. There I was also fortunate to be able to talk about subject development with Jonathan Lear and about romanticism and modernity with Josef Fr\u00fcchtl. This earlier version subsequently appeared in _Visions of Value and Truth: Understanding Philosophy and Literature_ , ed. Floora Ruokonen and Laura Werner (Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland, 2006), 13\u201329.\n\nA somewhat later version was then presented as a lecture to the philosophy department of Purchase College of the State University of New York, where during both a wonderful general discussion and dinner I learned from and was encouraged by Casey Haskins, Morris Kaplan, Jennie Uleman, and Frank Ferrell.\n\nNikolas Kompridis invited chapter 3 for his volume _Philosophical Romanticism_ (London: Routledge, 2006), 97\u2013112, and I was able to present an early draft of this chapter at a meeting of the International Conference on Romanticism, where I profited from conversations with Larry Peer, Diane Hoeveler, William Davis, Eugene Stelzig, and Joshua Wilner.\n\nFred Rush invited me to deliver a lecture on \"Romanticism and Tom Stoppard\" in a symposium for the inauguration of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame. This lecture subsequently became chapter 2, improved by the comments at Notre Dame of Fred Rush, Charles Larmore, and Neil Delaney. A slightly later version of this chapter was delivered as a lecture to the German Society for Aesthetics, to which I was invited by Josef Fr\u00fcchtl and where I received useful comments from Georg Bertram, David Lauer, and Ian Kaplow, in addition to Josef Fr\u00fcchtl. A portion of this chapter will be forthcoming in _Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft_ , vol. 1, 2008.\n\nRoss Wilson invited what became chapter 4 for a forthcoming volume on romantic conceptions of life. He provided acute comments on an early draft.\n\nA version of chapter 5 was presented as a Faculty Lecture at Swarthmore College, where I am grateful to Alfred Bloom, Peter Schmidt, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici for encouraging and useful remarks. Philip M. Weinstein subsequently read this chapter and provided written comments that not only improved it but also substantially prompted and contributed to some points in the introduction. A version of it has been published in _A Sense of the World_ , ed. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci (London: Routledge, 2007), and in German in _Kunst denken_ , ed. Wolfgang Huemer and Alex Burri (Paderborn: Mentis, 2007).\n\nDuring the last year or so of the writing and revising of this manuscript, I was fortunate to have been editing _The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature_. Essays from contributors would arrive every three weeks or so for my comments. As a result, I was continually thinking about the arguments put forward by these contributors and comparing them with my own lines of thinking. Without exception, I was stimulated and encouraged by essay after essay. I am aware of specific turns of thought on my part being prompted by essays by Charles Altieri, J. M. Bernstein, Simona Bertacco, Anthony J. Cascardi, Ted Cohen, John Gibson, Bernard Harrison, Toril Moi, Kirk Pillow, Fred Rush, Susan Stewart, and Philip Weinstein.\n\nHannah Eldridge and Sarah Eldridge both attended the Erfurt conference on literature and cognition, and they have each talked regularly with me about Sebald, Rilke, Benjamin, Hegel, and romanticism, among many other topics. Each of them read drafts of sections of various chapters, and their responses were important to increasing my confidence in the coherence and direction of my argument.\n\nAdam Haslett read a demipenultimate and then a penultimate version of the introduction. His acute comments prompted a significant structural revision and helped me to tighten the development of the argument and to make it more accessible to more readers than it might otherwise have been.\n\nLydia Goehr and Gregg Horowitz each read a complete, penultimate draft of the book. They offered detailed and insightful comments, criticisms, and suggestions, all of which prompted significant revisions and additions, particularly to the introduction and to chapter 6, but also throughout the manuscript as a whole. Acute comments from readers for Columbia University Press led to further productive final revisions.\n\nJoan Vandegrift likewise read a complete, penultimate draft, and her comments led to some significant rearrangement of materials from chapter 5 to the introduction. In this, as in everything else, her ear and sense of development proved vital to the whole.\n1.\n\nIntroduction\n\n_Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Uses of Literature_\n\nThe term \"literature\" has a fairly wide range of reasonable uses. One can talk of the literature on _x_ \u2014ladybugs or chess or cello varnishes, as may be\u2014and mean only all or much of what has been written about a particular subject. In German-language scholarship, one often begins an essay with a _Literaturverzeichnis_ , a review of the most important prior work on a topic, whatever the topic might be. _Children's literature_ refers to books specially written for children to enjoy. These uses, however, are surely not what the Nobel or Booker Prize committees have in mind in awarding prizes for literature, nor are they what is suggested by the commendatory adjective \"literary,\" as in \"a literary person\" or \"of literary merit\"; nor do they figure in the senses of _English literature_ or _Francophone literature_ as names for disciplines of study within a university curriculum.\n\nEven where what is in view under the heading of the literary is some sort of value, there are nonetheless many different valuable experiences that literature affords. These include, among others, entertainment, consolation, the pleasures of archaic regression (reminiscent of being read to as a child), the acquisition of historical knowledge, the sharpening of personal or political hope, and absorption in and admiration of verbal virtuosity. It would be a mistake either to overlook or to underrate the considerable variety of uses that works rightly classed as literary can and do invite and support.\n\nDespite this variety of uses, however, there persists for many people a sense that literature, at least sometimes, has a central and distinctive way of mattering for human life. Such a sense supports the existence of special curricula of literary study, including the cultivation of habits of close reading, as these habits have developed with increasing, multiple specificities from the late eighteenth century to the present. Both literary scholars and many ordinary people now read novels, short stories, films, lyrics, plays, television programs, and advertising, among other things, with habits of attention to form, diction, imagery, ideology, materiality, use, and much more. Yet it is not always clear exactly what close reading discerns, nor is it clear why one should bother to read certain works closely, rather than doing the many other things there are to do in life. Somehow\u2014or so many people think\u2014a life would be less rich or less informed by sympathetic understanding without engagement with a specifically literary curriculum or with habits of close reading. But exactly how might this be so, if it is so at all? The undoubted existence of some persons of refined literary experience and sensibility but with little moral discernment or responsiveness shows that reading literature is not by itself sufficient to produce moral understanding. Conversations with actual people\u2014parents, friends, neighbors, and so on\u2014is in most cases far more important than reading in the shaping of character. Could reading some literary works nonetheless help to shape character in valuable ways? Perhaps, but then many literary works are fictions, so that there is no actual person with whom one can immediately sympathize, and some people who read literature intensively may use it mostly as a compensation for the pains of life or as a distraction from them. Might it not be easier and more reliable to learn sympathy by talking at length with wide varieties of people? Is reading literature only a shortcut for that? And if it is, then why not read memoirs, history, and journalism instead? Why all that fiction? And if sympathizing with actual persons is the aim ultimately in view, then what is the significance of the specific verbal densities and formal structures of exemplary literary texts? Why are many of them so difficult, and why, if at all, does that matter?\n\nIf there is any hope of articulating plausible and useful answers to these questions, then the hard question of what a human life as such is all about will have to be faced. If human lives have no common structure and directions of achievement but instead aim at only whatever individuals, in interaction with possibilities afforded by their cultural settings, arbitrarily undertake to pursue, then literature and literary curricula will have no distinctive places in the cultivation of human life as such, for there will be nothing significantly shared to cultivate.\n\nDuring the past two hundred to four hundred years in Europe and the Americas, common projects and senses of purpose were largely sufficiently established by common national language, culture, and material situation to make national literatures matter to many, at least within certain educated circles. However, in an era of increasingly global commodity markets, national and linguistic barriers become more permeable, competitive individualism and reactive fundamentalism increase, and the salience of national literatures as forms of reflection on common cultural life diminishes, as cultural life spreads out and diversifies. Common and overlapping projects give way to various forms of getting, spending, enjoying, and entertaining, supported by technological advancements, unless those should turn out to be self-defeating or subjectively undesirable. As a result, factionalism increasingly displaces any sense of a political commonwealth, and culture becomes often a matter more of multiple fluid and commodified styles than a stable source of significance. Yet there is little chance of simply returning to older sureties. In a modern social world with a highly complex division of labor and with the distinctive satisfactions that attach to different social roles, religious commitments of any kind may seem either pale, abstract, and empty (churches open to all shoppers) or tyrannical and self-consciously sectarian (closing the doors to all but the pure). Either competitive individualism or competitive factionalism comes to the fore, and chances of learning to live out a common humanity with more depth become increasingly attenuated. And yet it can seem in some moments of reading that certain literary works offer us some access to increased reflective depth without dogma or tyranny. How might this be so? Can this sense in any way be trusted? And might literature help to open up some senses of possible common purpose and some routes of possible mutual engagement, hesitantly and nondogmatically, without either denying or undertaking to rule over the complexities of modern social life?\n\nIn his valuable recent study _Why Does Literature Matter?_ , Frank Farrell takes up these questions, arguing that literary works function for human subjects as vehicles of partial and provisional recoveries of meaningfulness. Modern subjects, Farrell argues, suffer various kinds of loss in the courses of their developments. Thick, premodern social rituals are displaced in social space by economic transactions according to mysterious equivalences. The magical and metaphorical languages and ways of thinking that figure significantly in childhood experiences and in premodern cultures are displaced by analytical, grammatical, and scientific casts of mind and thought. Engagements with significances that are widely felt according to \"the way things are done\" are supplanted by individuals going opaquely about their mysterious \"private\" businesses. For these various losses of felt significances, \"the space of writing,\" Farrell argues, \"offers us a modest compensation.\"\n\nThe compensations that literature affords occur, according to Farrell, in various registers. Phenomenologically, experience itself, for example, of a landscape or of the face and bearing of another person, is recorded in and recovered through the literary text as meaningful, rather than being left either as a source of mere \"sensations\" or data or being submitted to automatic, preformed categorizations. Metaphors and other devices of figuration are used to achieve and express psychic investment in and attention to what is being presented. Metaphysically, mood as an overall style or color of engagement with a natural and social world is registered, and some engagements and moods are registered as more truthful than others. Psychologically, a childhood sense of self as being caught up, fuguelike, in mysterious, larger processes of development is posed against a too assured, too rounded sense of accomplished mastery of discourses and social roles. Archaic but not quite lost rituals and senses of place are recovered or refigured. And there are the compensations of \"style...as a staging of the psyche,\" with richer and more satisfying investments than are ready to hand in daily life. Overall, \"we seem to have the language of literature as a necessarily repeated, even obsessive, reworking of that transitional space\" between the prelinguistic and the linguistic, childhood and maturity, the premodern and the modern, the metaphorical and the literal. Its modest compensations for loss challenge punctual, individual hubris and open up routes of richer attention and engagement.\n\nFarrell has here located the function of literature against a compelling background story of how subject development is marked by the loss of various kinds of richness and intensity (experiential, premodern, ritual-archaic, fuguelike repetitive, etc.). His idea that literature works to recuperate these losses has much to recommend it. At the same time, however, it is possible to wonder how stable and assertational about human life the recuperations that literature offers finally are. Farrell himself calls them modest, as though to mark their difference from stable discovery of standing sources of sharable felt significance in life. When the recuperative and instructive powers of literature are emphasized, then both its powers to disrupt and its failures to arrive at conclusive doctrinal closure are underplayed.\n\nDavid Wellbery usefully registers literature's disruptive force and formal distinctiveness as he describes the \"problematic and uncertain representational, or perhaps epistemological status\" of certain poems and, by implication, of exemplary literature in general. Wellbery develops his conception of the literary as a site of formed disruption through commenting on Goethe's lyric \"Maifest\"\u2014a lyric that on a narrative-thematic level describes the achievement of bliss. The concluding couplet of \"Maifest\" represents and summarizes an outburst of bliss that is grounded in an experience of the gaze of the beloved. \"Und doch, welch Gl\u00fcck! Geliebt zu werden. \/ Und lieben, G\u00f6tter, welch ein Gl\u00fcck [And yet, what bliss!, to be loved, \/ And to love, you gods! What bliss!].\" Within the very structure of its formulation, however, this outburst reveals itself as artfully and rhetorically achieved, not simply the spontaneous, na\u00efve, and accessibly inimitable product of immediate passion. As Wellbery puts it, \"the chiastic structure 'Gl\u00fcck...-lieb \/\/ lieb-Gl\u00fcck' and the passive-active reversal of the verb... _constitute a structural emblem for the entire poem_.\" That is, the concluding lines (\"lieb-Gl\u00fcck\") embody an inversion, both thematic-semantic and phonological-formal, of material that has been used earlier in the poem, so that this \"closing formulation proves to be in many respects a recapitulation within a reduced format of the essential features of lines 25\u201330.\" Through this use of semantic and formal figuration, repetition, and condensation, the poem is marked as literary and achieves its end. It achieves aesthetic closure in historically specific ways, and it disrupts simpler communicative assertion of independent facts. It invites absorption in its artifices as much or more than proposing any recommendations for individual or social recuperation. Disruption and absorption in formal achievement significantly displace any moment of theoretical-instrumental instruction, individual or social. On the larger historical-thematic level, moreover, \"Maifest\" figures the gaze of an individual beloved rather than, say, either the presence of God or involvement in ritual as the source of bliss. Thus the poem is marked as a more or less modern work that, in using its theme, carries \"inadvertent traces and remainders of cultural production.\" Once upon a time, that is, things were otherwise: bliss was either figured as having other sources or was not so intensively pursued by subjects who were less inward and more clan-immersed and either epic-heroic or immiserated than the modern, individual speaking persona of \"Maifest.\"\n\nSo it is, always, with exemplary literature. The most successful writers use both thematic materials and devices of figuration that are in some measure historically specific. They use these materials and devices self-consciously to register and attend to a moment of crisis or loss in an individual, within a culture, or between cultures. They manage to represent this crisis fully, avoiding repression and clich\u00e9, and avoiding also resolution according to the terms of any philosophical or religious doctrine of value. Yet they manage to achieve, in and through the interaction of thematic materials with formal devices that mark the work as literary, densities and closures that compel their readers\u2014or those among their readers who share enough of their losses and crises\u2014to become absorbed in them, to follow their self-sustaining work, without taking away any formulable-assertible message about reality outside the work. Hence the terms of the modest compensations that literature offers are simultaneously thematic in relation to specific historical materials and formal-aesthetic-disruptive-autonomous. There is no single path, smooth and bright, for either the achievement of literary value or its transportation into the rest of life. The occasions of crisis and loss that provoke literary attention are too various for that, ungoverned by any superintending historical logic, and the use of figures as devices of attention is likewise both historically marked and bound to specific thematic historical materials. Yet somehow, nonetheless, exemplary writers come to terms in exemplary ways with a kind of permanent human immigrancy or fracturedness, with what Eric Santner has characterized as \"the _signifying stress_ at the core of creaturely life.\" Human beings in their courses of development are able sometimes to give voice to the situations of crisis and loss that mark their lives as subjects of and within culture, capable of awareness of their situations. They can attend to and work through the stresses, both individual and cultural, that mark their lives. But the work they accomplish is less the work of arriving at a doctrine than it is, in Heideggerian terms, the working of the work itself: its having its way of bringing together its thematic materials and figural-rhetorical devices to embody a fullness of attention coupled with a satisfaction in the forming of the work in which its readers may share (or may not).\n\nWithin modernity, the stresses that force themselves into consciousness\u2014stresses to which the work of art then responds\u2014come increasingly from the late eighteenth century on to involve conflict between the claims of the sensible (what we discern and attach ourselves to through embodied feeling) and the intelligible (what we discern and attach ourselves to via distantiation and the controlled measurement of what there is). Claims of intimacy, solidarity, and cathexis to daily routine jostle against claims to knowledge, objectivity, and clear-sightedness about what there \"at bottom\" \"really\" is. Feeling is itself internalized, by being cast as something \"subjective\" with measurable intensities and durations, and its claims to being a mode of responsive knowledge are challenged. Whatever any individual happens to like or dislike becomes a matter only of more or less measurable fact (perhaps as a revealed preference, perhaps something one can report about oneself); what emotion, feeling, and mood discern as worth responding to or being involved with fades in cognitive power. Our work, our intimate relations, and our political citizenship, among other things, become matters, at best, of private satisfactions, troubled by the fact or threat that the private satisfactions of tomorrow may displace them, as either the menus of options or one's own whims change. Stability, depth, and lived meaningfulness founder. As J. M. Bernstein puts it: \"The most profound challenge to the unity and unifying work of [modern] culture is the separation, diremption, gap, or abyss separating the sensible world we aspire to live in every day, the world of things known through sight and sound and touch and feel, from the exactitudes of scientific explanation.\" Unsupported by a sense that they are rooted in any accurate discernment of how things are, \"our moods do not believe in each other,\" and we drift, perhaps seeking medication to dull anxiety and depression.\n\nOne way to begin to address the problems of drift and of the disruption of cathexis is to see the modern work of art as occupying \"a strange place at the intersection of the axes of the actual and eternal,\" as J\u00fcrgen Habermas usefully characterizes Baudelaire's conception of the artwork. According to this conception, the authentic modern work of art \"is radically bound to the moment of its emergence; precisely because it consumes itself in actuality, it can bring the steady flow of trivialities to a standstill, break through normality, and satisfy for a moment the immortal longing for beauty\u2014a moment in which the eternal comes into fleeting contact with the actual.\"\n\nIt is, however, not so easy to say what the eternal's coming into fleeting contact with the actual amounts to. Baudelaire himself speaks of \"eternal and invariable...Beauty\" taking on an \"amusing, teasing, appetite-whetting coating\" from circumstantial actuality. Whatever the \"shining forth\" of the eternal within the coating of the actual may involve, however, it evidently does not involve accession on the part of the audience to any guiding doctrine or articulated sense of where beyond the work meaningfulness is to be found. Aesthetic absorption in the work overwhelms any moment of instruction. Where, as in the novel, more generalized reflections on meaningfulness sometimes appear, writers are continually forced to exercise powers of construction and of the making of meaning against the grain of an actuality that significantly involves the merely happenstantial. Fates experienced as meaningful\u2014certain exemplary marriages or deaths, say\u2014are as much the inventions of modern writers as they are found ready-made in modern life. As long as it avoids clich\u00e9 and sustains attention to life, the modern novel, along with modern art in general, suffers from what Georg Luk\u00e1cs calls a characteristic \"normative incompleteness\": it cannot say what is to be done. In Bernstein's similar perception, \"at its highest reach, [modern] art turns cultural melancholy into form.\" The work invites and sustains absorption in it, in the face of the pains of modern life, and within the work complexities and unresolved resistances come increasingly to displace meaningful closures.\n\nHistorically, modern and modernist literary texts present dramas of heroic individual resistance against decayed or opaque social formations. The forms of resistance may range from Quixote's comic fancies to Hamlet's tragic uncertainties to the compressed intensities of the lyrics of Goethe or Keats, among many others. Trauma and failure of fully stable and meaningful subject formation are registered in tragic losses, comic flights, or asides of lyric ecstasy. Sometimes a good enough resolution is found for a few, against the grain of the prevailing social order, though in chastened awareness of its presence, as in Jane Austen. Good enough resolutions become, perhaps, less available in more characteristically modernist as opposed to modern texts. More \"postmodern\" texts use devices of collage, juxtaposition, and intertextuality (satire and allusion, especially across genres and between popular and \"high\" culture) in order to emphasize the inabilities of cultures or individuals to settle on specific, clear, final narrative arcs. Positions, ideologies, cultures, and points of view collide with one another all but endlessly. It is impossible, however, to distinguish in sharp and absolute terms modern-modernist dramas of individual crisis (partially resolved or not) from postmodernist anarchic collage and juxtaposition. Where, for example, would one place _Tristram Shandy_? Is _Gravity's Rainbow_ not in part a drama of individual crisis? When they achieve exemplarity, literary texts present both dramas of crisis and moments of sheer contingency. Hence in either form\u2014relatively modern-modernist or relatively postmodern\u2014what modern literature knows is that no comprehensive resolution of crises within individual or social development is possible: some satisfaction must be found within the working of the work itself, as a kind of placeholder for what is never finally achieved. Human beings, at least within the orbit of a modern individualism that remains powerfully with us, persist as caught up in signifying stresses arising out of a sense of slippage of \"inner,\" passionate, embodied, archaic selfhood away from \"outer,\" articulated, social role and agency. In modernity, such slippage is inevitable, and the task of literature is more to figure its forms than to propose standing resolutions.\n\nThere are, in all likelihood, deep reasons for this kind of literary practice, deep reasons that suggest that literature's registerings of human finitude and the impossibility of specifically legislative moral knowledge are apt to human life as such. Human consciousness is marked by intentionality. That is, human beings not only represent their environments to themselves through perception, they are also aware of their own representings. They can \"intend\" objects that are not materially present (golden mountains, centaurs, time-travel machines, and the like) and they can imagine themselves perceiving and acting in counterfactual situations with much greater range, depth, and flexibility than can other animals.\n\nHence for human beings questions of correctness in judgment can arise explicitly. \"Am I,\" we are capable of asking, \"correct to judge that this is a stick or a weapon or a digging implement or firewood (or all four)? Or am I rather imagining a context of use that is either not ready to hand or not shared by others? Just what am I doing when I am judging that things are thus-and-so, and am I here and now right or not?\" Other sensate and conscious creatures do not display this kind of plasticity of attention, self-awareness, and engagement with questions of correctness.\n\nAs philosophers as different from one another as Aristotle, Hegel, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Adorno have argued, this combination of plasticity of attention, self-awareness, and involvement with normativity is not a purely material phenomenon, even though it has a necessary material basis. This thought is further supported by the detailed ethnographic observations of childhood language learning carried out by Michael Tomasello. Instead of being wholly determined by biological-material processes alone, conceptual consciousness begins in training and mimicry, in learning within contexts of joint attention to see _this_ (this stick, this wooden object, this whatever it is) _as this or that_ (as a stick, a weapon, a digging implement, firewood, etc.) The emergence of self-awareness and the emergence of involvement with normativity are coeval with the emergence of conceptual consciousness. (\"Am I right to see this as that? How do others see it? Am I doing what is wanted of me in picking up this stick, this ball, this penny [as the child learns later to call them]?\") Is there a proof from contact with ultimate givens that conceptual consciousness, self-awareness, and involvement with normativity thus emerge? No. But try to explain its emergence either metaphysically or purely materially: all the familiar problems of the ineliminability of normativity and responsibility arise. (Do we live in order to represent or represent in order to live?)\n\nBecause, however, human beings are capable of plastic attention and face widely divergent and ever-changing problem situations, multiple patterns of engagement with objects under concepts are always available, and these patterns of engagement (conceptual repertoires) change and are contested. The dream of rooting perfect and unchallengeable conceptual consciousness, freed of all critical engagement with normativity, in ecstatic, intuitive contact with ultimate givens (Platonic forms, sempiternal atoms) is haunting but idle. Training in contexts of mutual attention that are open to contestation cannot be overleaped. Meaning\u2014what things are for in relation to contexts of use, what courses of action are fulfilling in what ways\u2014is not to be discovered in anything simply given in the absence of circuits of training and imitation. \"There will not be books in the running brooks until the dawn of hydro-semantics\"\u2014and hydro-semantics shows no sign of dawning.\n\nThe idea that we bear a continuing responsibility for and continuing anxieties about our lives as conceptually conscious subjects who are caught up in patterns of attention that are subject to contestation is originally and most powerfully formulated by Kant. Kant's philosophical anthropology is rooted in a sense of human life as having two aspects or dimensions. (Human reason has this peculiar, divided fate.) First, we are beings who possess apperceptive awareness or self-consciousness; that is, we are beings who are at least implicitly and potentially aware of our judgments and actions as our own. We further possess the power to become more explicitly aware of our judgments and actions as our own and to raise questions about their correctness: to submit them to critical reflection in the pursuit of greater reasonableness, fluency, stability of character, and human command. Second, we are finite beings who exist within nature and culture and who are unable to refer that existence to any ultimate grounding. Within both nature and culture, there is the possibility always of surprise, of a discovery of one's own itinerancy, and of being at this moment out of attunement with nature, culture, and oneself.\n\nThe fact that we possess both these senses of ourselves is brought powerfully into awareness by the experience of modernity. That Kant expresses both senses is what makes him, along with Descartes, a modern, even modernist, philosopher. Descartes proposes that \"a good man has no need to have read every book, nor to have carefully learned all that which is taught in the schools; it would even be a defect in his education were he to have devoted too much time to the study of letters.\" Thus he sets his face as a freethinking individual against the authority of culture as it stands, seeking a new form of the purely rational expression of purely individual rational powers in the practice of modern mathematical-experimental science. We must, as Kant will later put it, \"dare to know,\" against the grain of the culturally given.\n\nDescartes' confidence in the availability and value of this new form of practice is underwritten officially by his initial certainty of his own existence, coupled with his subsequent a priori arguments for the existence of God and for God's having made physical nature such that we can know it by doing the right kind of science. But one can also, if one listens closely, hear an undercurrent of anxiety in Descartes' formulations. \"'I am, I exist' is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.\" But what if I fail to do this, fail to pronounce my own existence, perhaps out of timidity in the exercise of my rational powers, or perhaps because I am more caught up than I suppose in the culture that does not embody fully human, rational life, or perhaps because nature in the end will not fully support the exercise of rational powers? Do I then fail to exist necessarily? \"I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist.\" Coupled with the thoughts that the mass of humanity has more or less continuously failed to think fully or clearly and that nature is not intuitively or immediately knowable, this form of self-certainty is not exactly a recipe for confidence in life, even if the practices of modern science turn out to be comparatively fruitful and cognitively satisfying. The power to reflect on one's judgments and actions has here established a certain distance from ultimate grounding in either metaphysical givens or mere naturalness, no matter what assurances follow and no matter what the successes of modern science are. And is it clear that we either can or should forego wide-ranging reflectiveness? There is, in Stanley Cavell's terms, a kind of standing \"nextness of the self to the self.\" As Thoreau puts it, \"I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.\" Hence, in Cavell's gloss, the self bears, always, two attitudes toward itself, as it finds \"that it is the watchman or guardian of itself, and hence demands of itself transparence, settling, clearing, consistency; and that it is the workman, whose eye cannot see to the end of its labors, but whose answerability is endless for the constructions in which it houses itself.\" (If one can hear an inflection of class in the distinction between superintending watchman and laboring workman, one should also remember that, as in Hegel, it is the workman to whom any future belongs.) Our freely formed commitments are entangled in and yet outrun reflectiveness\u2014a sense of self that while perhaps always existentially given also becomes especially prominent in modernity, as possible directions of commitment multiply and sheer immersion in necessities of survival diminishes somewhat.\n\nKant then widens, sharpens, and literalizes a modern, Cartesian sense of the possibility and value of awakening through reflectiveness into new and better commitments, coupled with a sense of lingering anxieties and uncertainties. We have, always, according to Kant, apperceptive awareness of the possibility of noting and reflecting on our commitments as our own. While we are bound by the categorical imperative as a law of pure practical reason or reflective deliberation in abstraction from inclinations and desires (and what is that?), we know neither how or why this is so nor what the proper specific directions of response to our being so bound must be (even if certain prohibitions are clear). Nature \"reveals little, but very little\" of a path toward a kingdom of ends. \"Man must give [the] autocracy of the soul its full scope; otherwise he becomes a mere plaything of other forces and impressions which withstand his will, and a prey to the caprice of accident and circumstance.\" But how? And, especially, how over time, continuously, in relation to others and to the changing affordances of culture? We seem to bear, always, and especially in modernity, senses of ourselves as both capable of reflection and cast in courses of life we cannot wholly survey.\n\nTo the extent, then, that these senses of ourselves can be reconciled, that reconciliation will take the form of the expression in judgment and action of an increased (but not perfect) sense of reasonableness, fluency, character, and command mixed with a sense of finitude, apartness, and contingency. This reconciliation will always be partial and provisional. It is not circumscribable according to any fixed policy or order of conceptualization. (Claims to such a circumscription would transgress standing human finitude.) Instead, it is best conceived of as a kind of temporarily displayed power, roughly what Kant calls _M\u00fcndigkeit_ , or maturity. (\"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage [ _Unm\u00fcndigkeit_ ].\") The implied metaphor in _M\u00fcndigkeit_ ( _Mund_ = mouth) of coming to speech or voice is apt. We are able to achieve, and we are to achieve, not final moral knowledge but rather a certain kind of more fluent, clearer, more formed, more focused, and more articulate stance or address to or in life. As Thomas Pfau remarks in commenting on the use of \"voice\" ( _Stimme_ ) and associated terms such as mood, attunement, determination, and agreement ( _Stimmung_ , _Bestimmung_ , _\u00dcbereinstimmung_ ) in the _Critique of Judgment_ , Kant's conception of voice is understandable as \"aiming to reconcile, however provisionally, the experience of a deeply significant interiority with an articulation of its social significance\" in a way that \"manifests a unique form of desire\"\u2014a desire for fluently expressive, reasonable self-command in judgment and action within social space: a desire for recognition, which desire does not admit of perfect satisfaction.\n\nOur efforts to move toward increased fluency, clarity, and command begin not simply in a grasp of abstract universals, not simply in the law-governed motions of physical particles, and not simply in our psychological hardwiring but also in and through following, imitating, and reacting to the subjectivities of others, as manifested in directions of gaze and interest. Aristotle captures this point in remarking that human beings, in contrast with other animals, are \"thoroughly mimetic and through mimesis take [their] first steps in understanding.\" Others use words of some generality and potential for use on further occasions; in doing so they manifest certain directions of gaze and interest. They manage their uses in virtue of having mastered prevailing routines well enough. But their masteries and the uses that flow from them remain ungrounded in any ultimate realities. Hence at least some uses are liable and likely to shift over time as routes of interest and feeling shift. To come to conceptualization through the mimesis of specific routes of usage, gaze, and interest is to be caught up in a stable enough but also pluralized and partially contested life of subjectivity in the world. There may be good reason to regard certain kinds as \"really instanced\" in nature. There is no good reason to suppose that water or tigers, say, are arbitrary human constructs, and this situation is unlikely to change. But this stable situation does not root the life of concepts \"in\" nature alone, independently of mimetic circuits.\n\nMastery and fluency within a life with concepts are hence to be understood not simply as a grasp of fixed archetypes, patterns, or _Bedeutungsk\u00f6rper_ that lie \"behind\" usage in a standing way, but rather as matters of a grasp of patterns together with an ability both to imitate and to redirect gaze and interest\u2014to respond anew to life. Only when we see that conceptualization involves all this can we arrive at a form of philosophical understanding that is not blind to the life of human subjectivity in its life with words. Adorno makes this point eloquently in recommending \"extinguishing the autarky of the concept,\" that is, recommending that we see both the possession and the very nature of concepts as bound up with stable enough but also sometimes contestable mimetic circuits rather than rooted in \"contact\" with absolute givens.\n\nA philosophy that... extinguishes the autarky of the concept strips the blindfold from our eyes.... Insight into the constitutive character of the nonconceptual [i.e., the deictic, sensuous, and mimetic] in the concept would end the compulsive identification which the concept brings unless halted by such reflection. Reflection upon its own meaning is the way out of the concept's seeming being-in-itself as a unit of meaning.\n\nOnly this recognition of the nature of the concept\u2014the beginning and partial continuance of the life of concepts in mimesis, where there are always residues, remainders, and other possibilities\u2014blocks philosophy from dehistoricized, potentially smug policymongering and permits a grasp of life. \"Disenchantment of the concept is the antidote of philosophy. It keeps it from growing rampant and becoming an absolute to itself.\"\n\nHere \"disenchantment of the concept\" and \"the antidote of philosophy\" might well be taken as significations for literature and its work. Literature foregrounds reconfigurative responsiveness to incidents and actions that take place in time over static depiction of the physically objectual, and it foregrounds figuration and the expression of attitude and emotion toward what is depicted over measurement and neutral classification. But literature is also a form of thinking that uses concepts in order to seek orientation in life under forms of emplotment and in order to work through perplexity. Conceptual identity thinking and mimesis, thought and emotion, recognition and pleasure in form, philosophy and literature\u2014the members of these pairs are all essentially interrelated, as human beings take their first steps in understanding (toward conceptualization) through mimetic responsiveness in practice and then continue to seek more fluent, stable orientation in their lives in time. Working against conceptual ossification and taking seriously perplexities and failures of orientation that demand address, literature undertakes to reconfigure patterns of mimesis so as to embody freer and fuller responsiveness, in order to form more whole and stable individuals, forms of culture, and conceptual repertoires. \"The trace of memory in mimesis, which every artwork seeks, is simultaneously always the anticipation of a condition beyond the diremption of the individual and the collective.\" \"Always the anticipation\"\u2014diremption, within individuals and between individual and collective, is never wholly overcome. There is no arrival at complete, detailed, specific understanding of shared, coherent institutions and practices and at satisfaction within them, no coming to fulfillment of any Hegelian idea of freedom. But greater fullness of orientation, resolution of perplexity, and clarity and adequacy of feeling remain possible, and literature remains, always (along with other forms of art, but with its own special verbal achievements and sense of temporality), a central form of the pursuit of these possibilities.\n\nPut somewhat more domestically, the thought is that literature helps us to engage anew\u2014more reasonably, with more wholeheartedness and fullness of attention and less incoherence\u2014with life. As Catherine Wilson puts it,\n\nA person may learn from a novel [or other work of literature]... if he is forced to revise or modify, e.g. his concept of \"reasonable action\" through recognition of an alternative as presented in the novel [or other work].... The term learning applies [here] primarily to a modification of a person's concepts, which is in turn capable of altering his thought or conduct, and not primarily to an increased disposition to utter factually correct statements or to display technical prowess.... The ability to go beyond what has actually been fed in in the teaching process stems... from a more fundamental\u2014and perhaps even radical\u2014alteration in the way in which he perceives [certain phenomena of life].\n\nTo these claims it needs to be added only that the occasion for literary writing and for responsive literary reading is typically perplexity in life or something not making emotional or narratable sense; that the modification of concepts involves also the modification of emotion, stance, and action; that the aim is increased fluency, clarity, coherence, and felt aptness of orientation within life in culture; and that the occasions for modification are endless.\n\nPressure is placed on our concepts, stances, and attitudes as they stand by perplexities\u2014in large cases by traumas\u2014that those concepts, stances, and attitudes do not readily accommodate. By taking up literary work as either a writer or a reader, one may respond fruitfully to such pressure in a variety of ways. Sometimes one may successfully work through a perplexity or trauma so as to arrive at a fuller, more emotionally and attitudinally apt stance and story about what is going on. Perplexities of emotional entanglement and of stance can sometimes be resolved in the achievement of a kind of more stable and apt calm, in a way that Spinoza describes in his _Ethics_. Or sometimes one can (also) become more actively engaged in and satisfied within the sheer activity of either making or following a literary form as an expression of alert and masterful subjectivity, as Charles Altieri has suggested, in tracking what he calls the particulars of rapture that writers sometimes achieve and in which readers sometimes share. Or sometimes one can (also) modify one's courses of action in life, so as to embody more fully both more resolved stances and more accomplished energies of form-making. Always the work of the formation and enactment of subjecthood and culture remains unfinished, remains to be done anew.\n\nIf that work remains always unfinished, one might nonetheless hope to elucidate it (rather than to master and explain it by reference to fixed externalities) by setting various exemplary pieces of that work in comparison and contrast with each other. Instead of subsuming all cases of the work of literature under a master universal or Platonic form, one might see some cases as forming what Wittgenstein calls a perspicuous representation ( _\u00fcbersichtliche Darstellung_ ), an arrangement of cases that enables \"just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connexions.'\" One can, or at least one can hope that one can, come to see how subjectivity begins its life within intersubjective, mimetic relations and thence seeks orientation within that life in a variety of ways via literary attention, with different achievements of composure, focus of attention, and deployment of energy. A particular arrangement of such cases will be, at least when it is successful, a \" _Darstellung der Darstellungen_ \"\u2014a figured, materially specific presentation of various figured, materially specific presentations of the life and work of subjectivity. Here, in the chapters that follow, a play, a novella (coupled with a philosophical self-interrogation), an extended lyric poem, an unconventional sonnet, and a long story are set in juxtaposition, together with various more generalizing materials, in the hope of constructing an elucidation of the workings of literature in relation to the lives of modern subjects.\n\nThis presentation of cases will neither erase all differences among them nor spare readers the critical work of comparing differences as well as similarities. Stoppard's recovery of the patterned ritual of dancing, for a viewing audience outside the action, is not the same as Goethe's letting go of Werther in order to continue his own life of writing. Wordsworth's ending in modest prayer and chastened hope is not the same as either Rilke's call for a turn or Sebald's witness and wonder. Notably, Stoppard and Sebald as contemporary writers seem less committed to hope and resolution, or are less able to give them articulate expression, than are Goethe and Wordsworth, as though the times were bleaker than they were one hundred or two hundred years ago. (Do our moods believe in each other less than they did around 1800? For what reasons? Are we to conclude that they are unable to believe in each other at all?) Yet there are also affinities among these cases. Relative calm and aesthetic closure are achieved, and life is seen through the work more steadily and whole, without denying complexity and conflict.\n\nSeeing that the reading and writing of literature cultivate a kind of reflective depth, a kind of complex seeing that is achieved through figure and form, may help us then to avoid reducing literature to \"anything that is written.\" It may further help us to find a way between the Scylla of didacticism and the Charybdis of formalism. Surely literature must \"say something\" about life. But surely, too, the way in which what is said matters, and literature produces less \"moral news\" than didacticism supposes. The suggestion, then, is that literature is a sort of formally significant attention to life, where what _shows_ in literary forms of attention and arrangement of materials is a continuing aspiration for expressive freedom and fulfillment, typically both shaped and frustrated, in part, in specific ways in specific cultural settings. We see ourselves as pursuers of expressive freedom in situ, under difficult conditions, and we so see ourselves in the protagonists and authorial personae whom we encounter (or create). By thus recognizing ourselves, we can become somewhat more reflectively deep about the contours of human life in time.\n\nIn a recent book on the philosophy of art, I claim that \"works of art [literary and otherwise] present a subject matter as a focus for thought and emotional attitude, distinctively fused to the imaginative exploration of material.\" This definition of art\u2014if that is the right word\u2014specifies criteria in Wittgenstein's sense for the use of the word \"art.\" It undertakes \"to elucidate and organize our linguistic and conceptual practice, in a situation in which we are confused by the varieties of artistic practice, by the varieties of things people say about them, and by the powerful but obscure character of our own responses,\" and yet where, still, something can be said about what we do.\n\nIn relation to literature, what this means is that literature as an art, when it is successful, has representational-thematic, expressive-attitudinal, and formal-material dimensions, all in interaction with one another. This thought is in the spirit of Aristotle's claim in the _Poetics_ that a successful tragic drama will be a presentation (mimesis) of an action with all of plot, character, thought, melody, diction, and spectacle. According to Aristotle, each of these parts of a successful tragic drama must be properly coordinated with the others. Too much spectacle and too little plot, for example, will yield in one way the episodic and in another way what are perhaps the excesses of Euripedean stagecraft or the special-effects movie. Too much plot and too little thought will yield a dramatic structure that lacks general thematic significance or that will fail to satisfy the requirement of presenting the universal in the particular. Too little melody, diction, and spectacle\u2014that is, too little concern for the embodiment of the presentation in just a certain set of words and stagings, both crafted and felt\u2014will likewise fail in presentational power or illumination, presenting instead only what is already known and distinctively clarifying nothing.\n\nMore abstractly, content and form both matter, and they matter in their specific ways of relating to one another. As Wolfgang Huemer has recently remarked, \"If we try to define what is particular about literary texts, we find that they put an emphasis not on _what_ is said, but on _how_ it is said; literary language makes itself manifest.... At least to some extent in literary texts language itself becomes the topic.\" An emphasis on _how_ what is said is said is especially prominent in the so-called L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E poets, such as Charles Bernstein and Clark Coolidge, with their radicalization of both the voice of lyric poetry and the symbolistic-imagism of objectivism. Yet even they, while foregrounding the sheer look, sound, and feel of words and assonances, produce texts that admit of some paraphrasability and readability. One can\u2014just barely\u2014say what they are about. Hence one should say instead that literary texts put emphasis not _only_ on what is said (represented and expressed) but _also_ on how it is said.\n\nSuch emphases are also often in play in so-called ordinary speech and writing, in contexts from journalism to conversation to criticism to history. But this just shows that, as Huemer goes on to remark, \"Literature... is not a niche phenomenon; it must not be viewed as an unnecessary but entertaining ornament, but rather as a practice central to our language without which we might not even be able to master a language as complex as ours in the first place.\" The special intensities literature achieves are not sideways to life, with their own special domains of objects known such as possible worlds or fictional objects; they are rather part of specially apt attention\u2014all at once representational-thematic, emotional-attitudinal, and craftlike-sensuous\u2014to ordinary life. These intensities are achieved through the controlled and aptly original use of devices that structure perception, thought, and feeling, including emplotment, metaphor, allegory, irony, hyperbole, understatement, and assonance, among many, many others.\n\nThrough the apt use of such literary devices, fullness of attention (ideational, emotional, and sensuous) is achieved rather than shirked. Clich\u00e9, or unthinking repetition of what is merely rote and stock, is the enemy of literary art. The satisfaction sought in literary art involves what Spinoza called the transformation of an inadequate idea of an affection into a more adequate idea. Through literary art one gains a better understanding of what is worth feeling and caring about in what ways, where this better understanding is grounded in what one does in fact feel and care about when one pays the fullest possible attention to the objects and quality of one's experience. By following the work of literary art, one may move into a structure of care, reflection, and investment in activity that is more stable and appropriate to the objects and events of human life. Such moves may also include involvement in the work itself, in its specifically formed patterns of attending, partly (but only partly) beyond the objects of attention. Literary art has its disruptive powers as well as its powers of focusing on phenomena of human life.\n\nTo be interested in literary art thus means being attentive to what William Rothman and Marian Keane have called \"the astonishing capacities for meaningfulness that [works of art] have discovered within the singular conditions of their medi[a].\" These capacities of meaningfulness involve in literature the achievement of fullness of attention to phenomena of life through the use of literary devices. Through such fullness of attention, a structure of care, reflection, and investment in activity is achieved, so that we lead more freely and fully the lives of persons or selves who take an interest in their worlds, rather than being buffeted about by experience received only passively and inchoately. Apart from the kinds of noticings, expressings, and respondings that art and literature can embody and support, our lives can become pale, conventionalized, anonymous, or, one might say, not deep, not so fully the lives of subjects. And beyond the attention to life it affords, there is also the astonishment of the work itself, that it has found a way to mean once again or anew.\n\nA significant corollary of this view about literature, attention, and fuller personhood is that writing and reading are understood as neighboring modes of activity, both of which involve the cultivation of attention. What we do when we read well is follow and identify with achievements of fuller attention as they are managed in situ by both writers, on the one hand, and protagonists in literary works, on the other. What I am suggesting is that the life of persons inherently involves the pursuit of a fuller and more stable structure of care, reflection, and investment in activity (despite or across tragic inhibitions) in densely textured ways in specific cultural settings.\n\nIn describing the various individual cases that I take up, I am sometimes led to formulate claims about how we respond to a particular line or image, or even more broadly about what we are like. I am aware that this usage of \"we\" is far from common in literary studies and that there are significant reasons for being suspicious of it. Perhaps, therefore, it will be of some help to say something explicitly about exactly what kind of enterprise is implied by this usage.\n\n\"We\" as I use it (and as it is typically used by philosophers of certain kinds) is meant to be improvisatory and invitational: to invite others to share in and test a thought for themselves. It is not meant to be a report on the results of research into what countable individuals have in fact said or thought or felt. Claims about how we respond, what we feel, and what we are like are, therefore, in a distinctive way vulnerable, naked, and exposed. This invitational (philosophical) usage of \"we\" traces back at least to Socrates, when he remarks in the _Republic_ that we can be (must be) \"ourselves both jury and advocates at once\" in considering what will count as more fulfilling conditions of human life. We may try, that is, to be clearer and more articulate about fundamental interests, in such a way that others may also share in both the process and the articulation of results\u2014a very tentative and vulnerable enterprise indeed, and not at all declamatory. This same usage of \"we\" appears in ordinary language philosophy when what we say is investigated. Astonishingly, such claims about what we say can sometimes command assent of some circumference, and they can do so for those within that circumference with an air of overwhelming naturalness, reasonableness, and rightness to the ear. (J. L. Austin was a master at articulating such claims.) When this happens, a community of articulate understanding and commitment discovers itself in and through the common acceptance of such claims.\n\nOnce upon a time, perhaps in the heyday of New Criticism, poetry was read in something like this spirit, that is, with attention to \"how we are moved\" by the poem, how \"we\" follow its sense, etc. Since the end of that heyday, it has been \"discovered\" that not everyone either interprets or responds to a given poem (to any poem) in the same way. This is certainly true. Even the claims about what we feel or say or respond to that achieve the widest circumference will fall short of universality. There is no perfect route for the mimetic enactment of subjecthood; there are too many contending ambitions and senses of self housed within persistent cultural antagonisms for everyone to respond alike. The energy would be drained out of cultural life were that uniformity of response _per impossible_ to come about. Difference neither should be nor can be so easily overleaped. As a result, however, of the \"discovery\" of diversity of response, the study of literature has become an increasingly sociologized enterprise. Cultural studies as a field arises out of the thought that we should study in a systematic, empirical, nondoctrinaire way who in actual fact says (and feels) what when. (Bourdieu is a paradigm of this study, and his empirical investigations of differences in cultural reception have been taken up in literary studies by figures such as John Barrell, Marjorie Levinson, Jerome McGann, and Edward Said, among many others.) That is, of course, something that can be done, and it can yield interesting and important results. It would by no means be an obvious advance to go back to the smugness and staleness of certain forms of New Criticism without having these other kinds of critical, cultural investigation also going on.\n\nIn the face of all this, why then might anyone still bother with the vain effort to articulate what we say, feel, or respond to, knowing that any such effort is doomed to partiality and so to a form of failure? The worry is that without such efforts we abandon ourselves to a modern, materialist, competitive, value-denigrating individualism that destroys all circuits of the mimesis of response and so destroys the very life of subjectivity as such. What is left without this effort is a culture of the competitively individualist seeking of the satisfaction of subjective preferences, without any sources of a commonwealth and without stability or depth of individual identity over time, but instead only pervasive cultural crassness, economic and political exploitation, and individual anomie. Hence it may be worthwhile, at least sometimes, to persist in the vain effort to form both communities of interpretation and evaluation and a more stable and fully invested life for individual subjectivity in and through the common acceptance of what we say. The effort to do this is a defining ambition for philosophy, literature, and criticism that it would be impoverishing to forego, however impossible it is to complete it. _Ich kann nicht anders_.\n\nIf we cannot productively engage in this work of the formation of deeper, subjectively fuller senses of self and of shared commitment, then we are, as subjects, lost, dead. But out of a fear of loss of culture and subjecthood in culture as it stands, one can sometimes do something. One can pay attention to what is perplexing in life (and in art) in the hope both of resolving one's emotional and attitudinal stance into something calmer and more stable and of mobilizing greater energies of commitment. One can write about one's perplexities, and one can read one's way through others' ways of encountering perplexity that are more articulate and more persuasive than one's own. And then one can, and must, wait, unable either to control the response of any audience or to form an audience of universal circumference. This is what certain writers (and other artists) have always somehow known how to do for us in detail, endlessly, with power, grace, and responsiveness to life, and in the furtherance of life.\n2.\n\nRomanticism, Cartesianism, Humeanism, Byronism\n\n_Stoppard's_ Arcadia\n\nWhat philosophy knows as the mind-body problem is also and perhaps more deeply a problem in our practical, cultural lives and in the self-images that are woven through them. It is hard to avoid thinking of ourselves as \"free subjectivities,\" capable of choice and responsiveness to reasons, who stand \"over against\" a physical nature in which objects are composed and events occur according to laws that make no reference to choices or reasons. But this makes it difficult to see how choice and responsiveness to reasons can be expressed within a \"mere\" nature that somehow \"houses\" our lives and practices. How, if at all, is free life according to reason and within the framework of the natural world possible? We shall scarcely be able to make progress on this question until we confront the cultural practices that embody and shape our images of nature and of ourselves.\n\nJohn Dewey makes the practical, cultural dimensions of the mind-body problem wonderfully clear in a long passage from _Art as Experience_ :\n\nWe inherit much from the cultures of the past. The influence of Greek science and philosophy, of Roman law, of religion having a Jewish source, upon our present institutions, beliefs and ways of thinking and feeling is too familiar to need more than mention. Into the operation of these factors two forces have been injected that are distinctly late in origin and that constitute the \"modern\" in the present epoch. These two forces are natural science and its application in industry and commerce through machinery and the use of non-human modes of energy....\n\nScience has brought with it a radically novel conception of physical nature and of our relation to it. This new conception stands as yet side by side with the conception of the world and man that is a heritage from the past, especially from that Christian tradition through which the typically European social imagination has been formed. The things of the physical world and the moral realm have fallen apart, while the Greek tradition and that of the medieval age held them in intimate union\u2014although a union accomplished by different means in the two periods. The opposition that now exists between the spiritual and ideal elements of our historic heritage and the structure of physical nature that is disclosed by science, is the ultimate source of the dualisms formulated by philosophy since Descartes and Locke. These formulations in turn reflect a conflict that is everywhere active in modern civilization. From one point of view the problem of recovering an organic place for art in civilization is like the problem of reorganizing our heritage from the past and the insights of our present knowledge into a coherent and integrated imaginative union.\n\nThe problem is so acute and widely influential that any solution that can be proposed is an anticipation that can at best be realized only by the course of events.... It is true that physical science strips its objects of the qualities that give the objects and scenes of ordinary experience all their poignancy and preciousness, leaving the world, as far as the scientific rendering of it is concerned, without the traits that have always constituted its immediate value. But the world of ordinary experience in which art operates, remains just what it was.\n\nAccording to this passage, there is, on the one hand, stuff or material itself indifferent to us and our aspirations, disenchanted (in Weber's famous phrase), and with its motions having no natural ends or purposes. This is the \"radically novel conception of physical nature\" that Dewey has in mind. At the very least, and metaphysics and epistemology to one side, it has served us well in many respects to think of nature in this way. Once we so conceive of nature, and then further carry out the appropriate investigations of the lawlike but nonpurposive behaviors of mere material things, then we can, sometimes, manipulate those things in order to satisfy desires, needs, and interests that we experience ourselves as just having. The modern scientific understanding of material nature lays the cognitive groundwork for practices and systems of, for example, medicine, transportation, communication, and industrial production that it would be difficult and undesirable to abandon.\n\nAnd there is, on the other hand, us, we with our purposes\u2014purposes that seem, in light of the disenchantment of things, ineluctably subjective, inner matters of groundless preference alone. If we should happen to be able to make use of material things to satisfy our preferences, great\u2014and likewise great if two or more people should happen to have overlapping preferences. Finally, just as a matter of political compromise to avoid violence that threatens to inhibit all preference satisfaction, it is very often best not to enforce preferences: let individuals with their preferences be who they are and let them trade with one another in free markets as they wish. For most of us, at least in the developed worlds, life without modern technologies and modern market systems of production and exchange would be both unthinkable and undesirable.\n\nYet, as Dewey suggests, this picture, however ineluctably built into our culture, of an inner, subjective mental life, with only subjective purposes, facing off against an outer, material, objective but meaningless nature is also not an entirely happy one. For one thing, this picture affords no basis for objective assessment of pursuits of subjective interest, that is, no basis for appeals to justice or fairness that might constrain rapacious or exploitative behavior. It may be that a free market works efficiently to maximize preference satisfaction among traders with relatively equal holdings and stocks of information but different preferences, and there is therefore good reason at least sometimes to think of free markets as fair. But if imbalances in holdings, power, or information grow too great, or military might intervenes, or free riding is possible, then this institutional arrangement is likely to prove unstable. Then the guns or lawsuits start. And what then? If there are only individuals who are competing with one another for the material resources to satisfy subjective desires, then it is likely in the end to be guns rather than lawsuits. Lawsuits and court verdicts may be construed as themselves covert forms of violence. Family life and citizenship are all too likely to decay into what Hegel calls \"particularity by itself, given free rein in every direction to satisfy its needs, accidental caprices, and subjective desires, [so that it] destroys itself and its substantive concept in this process of gratification.\" Anarchy, both social and personal, is loosed upon the world. Plato predicts explicitly that this will happen in a pluralist, subjective democracy that lacks any metaphysically founded conception of justice. There seems no longer to be any metaphysical standard for checking on what we do, and without one we seem likely to do just about anything, including a lot of fighting. Underlying this fighting, there is at least the risk that no one will really believe in the worth of a way of life. My preferences may seem to me to be just given and not to be of any worth to me or to anyone else. Why should I care about anything, I may worry? Subjective anomie, or what is generally now called depression, threatens us, and it is more or less endemic in modern industrial societies. And yet it would, again, be both difficult and undesirable to give up the benefits of modern science and its culture in order to revert to a more closed, traditionalist, metaphysically or religiously circumscribed way of life.\n\nHow, then, might we best think of ourselves and our place in nature so that we might both accept the benefits of modern science and democratic culture and yet avoid or at least curb their harms? This question has been raised for us by thinkers as various as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Dewey, and John Paul II, albeit that they each have quite different answers in view.\n\nOne particularly interesting suggestion for thinking about this problem comes from the eminent literary critic Northrop Frye. The suggestion arises out of a very broad sketch Frye offers of the history of Western thought and language. According to Frye, there are three successive historical stages of basic styles of thought and language. The first stage is the metaphorical-mythological stage, as people tell stories simultaneously about what we now call physical events and about the meanings of things. Science and religion, natural cosmology and creation theory, historical reporting and primeval storytelling are all not yet sharply distinguished from one another. One sees the dawn or the spring as the coming of a beneficent divine presence, or one sees a storm as the divine wrath of the sea itself, understood as both a physical something and a personality. Frye identifies this stage of thought and culture with pastoral and nomadic life generally and with roughly Homeric Greece and the early Hebrew tradition in particular.\n\nThe metaphorical-mythological stage is then superseded by a metonymic-intellectual stage. Allegory becomes a dominant form, as signs are taken to indicate a deeper order of reality in relation to which our ordinary experience is only a surface. Access to this reality is claimed by educated elites, who consequently lay further claim to the administration of daily life and general culture. Justifications for how things are to be done are propounded by these elites, on the basis of their expert knowledge of the deeper and fuller reality. According to Frye, one can see something of this stage of thought and language as early as the pre-Platonic Protagorean tradition in Greece. It figures in Plato's dialogues, and then in Christianity, which Nietzsche famously described as Platonism for the masses. In Christianity from at least the Augustinian period onward, the liturgies and sacraments are administered by expert priests, and the regulation of daily life is referred to the reality described in the Bible, read aright in Latin by an educated minority. Late-medieval Everyman plays participate in this form of language and thought, as the ordinary person's life is seen as an allegory of the sufferings and possibilities of resurrection that were disclosed by Jesus and that inform the lives of all of us.\n\nIn the early modern period, progressively from roughly 1550 or 1600 and into the present, this metonymic-intellectual system is succeeded by a demotic-scientific-manipulative system. Modern scientific knowledge is available to anyone who takes the trouble to educate himself. As Descartes once remarked, \"There are many things to do in life, and [a good man] has to direct that life in such a manner that the greater part of it shall remain to him for the performance of good actions, which his own reason ought to teach him, even supposing that he were to receive his lessons from it alone.\" The very idea that there are many things to do in life\u2014including at least discoveries to be made and technological devices to ameliorate our material situation to be invented\u2014as opposed to one central thing that is to be done, namely living according to the will of God, is itself revolutionary. The further idea that we can use our reason to figure out how to do the many things we might do is equally far-reaching. As these ideas are worked out in modern scientific culture, enormous benefits accrue, while at the same time our modern political and moral lives become pluralized and, potentially, evacuated of meaning, in being no longer referred to a larger reality that is either metaphorically or metonymically accessible.\n\nLike Kant and Hegel and Dewey, Frye, while accepting the benefits of modern scientific and technological culture, worries about this. He worries in particular that there is nothing any longer to hold us together within the terms of a common project. Without the ability to discern either metaphorically or metonymically possibilities and necessities of personal and cultural development that are latent within a larger reality itself, chaos threatens. We may fall into \"the subordination of everything creative to the expediencies and superstitions of authority... [or we may] fly apart into a chaos of mutually unintelligible elites, of which those nearest the center of society would soon take control. So atavistic a regression, in the present stage of technological development, might well wipe the human race off the planet.\" This passage is perhaps somewhat purple and apocalyptic, but the problem is clear. What, if anything, can any longer bring us together under a shared sense of common, objective possibilities of life and value? The old dispensations are dead, and for good reason, but a life lived without any objective dispensations threatens to be bleak, chaotic, and violent, or perhaps nasty, brutish, and short. The constructed institutions of the democratic state and the free market may, once again, intervene to moderate the problem. Social order and open trading are by no means insignificant institutional goods. But what is to prevent free riding and the domination of state and market institutions by the powerful?\n\nThis sense of a need for a new dispensation is the central _point de d\u00e9part_ for romantic thought and writing and for the thought of Kant, as he seeks to found a critical and constructive philosophy that avoids both traditionalist but baseless dogmatism and skeptical nomadism in life and in thought. Frye's own response to this need, building on Blake and on Blake's reading of the Bible, is to suggest that we can and should learn from the great poets and from the Bible to uncover and reactivate the myth of all mythologies: the tentative availability of a reconciled, pastoral, resurrected life. The idea is that we can, as it were, bypass the metonymic-intellectual stage of thought and regain contact with the metaphorical-mythological stage that remains present as a dim, underlying stratum of our lives. This is, Frye suggests, exactly what great poets and the writers of the great sacred texts, preeminently the Bible, do. Donald Marshall has elegantly summarized this strategy of recovery as it was pursued by Wordsworth:\n\nIn Wordsworth the synthetic, creative, and sympathetic power of imagination, nourished on a popular tradition of ballad and romance with roots in the great poetry pre-dating the Enlightenment, asserted itself against an instrumentalist reason, which in poetry took the form of a masquerade in the form of conscious and merely willed classicism. Wordsworth found the true source of imagination: in nature and particularly in the poet's experience of nature during childhood, when he was most open to its varied and spirited influence. The language in which this recollected experience was transformed into the guide of later life and feeling derived from the ordinary language of men, particularly rural men, whose lives preserved the great rhythms of pastoral and agricultural life, recorded in and mediated by the Bible, anonymous folk poetry, and related literary forms.\n\nIn _The Romantic Legacy_ , Charles Larmore has similarly argued that the romantic imagination functions to express and recover senses of community and of belonging to place, though he aptly notes also a contending sense of romantic irony, as the poet simultaneously feels apart from others in the possession of distinctive education and creative power.\n\nThis romantic sense of a recovery through imagination of a suppressed stratum of thought, language, and experience, so that we might once again feel ourselves to have a common situation and objective purposiveness, is a wonderful idea. But, as the careers and receptions of Blake and Wordsworth show, it will not be so easy to carry it out in a way that significantly influences public life. Those who pursue this strategy are all too likely to be dismissed as dreamers or balkanized as objects of mostly private, merely religioaesthetic reverence and reverie, at least in relation to serious questions of social policy that require fully worked out schemes for institutions. Can imagination, poetry, myth, and metaphor make high cognitive claims on us? On many or most of us? And what institutions will then serve? As Hegel noted in criticizing romanticism, a sense of subjective inwardness informs a good deal of romantic writing, as poets despite their best intentions for social effect withdraw into rehearsals of the progress of their own imaginations, as in Wordsworth ever withdrawing from work on _The Recluse_ to write _The Prelude_ instead. The thought that romantics withdraw from the world in order to find solace in nature has informed much of the reception of romanticism, in the sense in which Jerome McGann has criticized romantic _ism_ \u2014that is, the dominant teaching of romantic poetry within departments of literature up until, say, 1980\u2014for its subjectively cultic character. (McGann distinguishes between institutionalized romanticism and a tougher, stranger, more self-critical romantic writing.) When one then further takes into account a sense, inherited from Freud, of the anarchistic pressures placed by our sexual lives on both individual development and imaginative production, then the prospects for cultural restoration via romantic imagining grow even bleaker. And then there are the categories that are reinforced every day by an increasingly global commodity culture: subjective preference, taste, and want, which stand against objective production costs and processes. How is imaginative art to make a public claim on us in the midst of the domination of social life by these categories of thought and experience?\n\nThe address to our cultural situation that is offered us by romantic imagining has considerable pertinence and power. Given, however, the evident difficulties that attach to carrying out a romantic renovation of culture, it is worthwhile considering what other possibilities of general address to our cultural circumstances are on the books. Three further stances, each significantly different from romanticism, can be usefully distinguished.\n\nThe first is \"Relaxed Naturalism\" or \"Just Coping\" or, to give it a proper name, Humeanism, alluding to Hume's remark that we should acknowledge \"the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though they are not able, by their most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections, which may be raised against them.\" One might, that is, think that there are properly or realistically no such things as an objective plight or an objective destiny to be recovered. There are, rather, just many people who want many different things, in a situation in which material resources for satisfying wants are simply moderately scarce but not altogether lacking. This is perhaps generally the situation in the North Atlantic democracies. Richard Rorty had the habit of claiming that these democracies offer us, as a merely contingent possibility that we have somehow invented or stumbled upon, a comparatively good enough way of life. Talk of achieving our destiny is to be rejected as pretty much amounting to the nostalgia of the priests. This Rortian view has considerable currency, at least for public life, against the more religious visions of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. Assignments and enforcements of human rights can be defended as matters of pragmatic compromise, given the practical necessities of at least some social cooperation. In Quine's elegant phrase, morality becomes a matter of \"birch rod and sugar plum.\" That is, there are certain behaviors that we more or less decide to reward and to punish, because rewarding and punishing these behaviors works well enough to keep us going and to enable us to satisfy some of our wants. We can drop all talk of renovation, destiny, and objective purpose. In political life, elbow room or negative liberty is good enough. Privately, a bit of Millian experimentalism in lifestyles is not really a bad thing. This is, perhaps, the dominant view of life in northern Europe and the \"Blue States\" of the United States nowadays. It is unlikely that it will pass away any time soon, and it is not at all clear that its passing would be desirable. It offers us a fair amount of independence from authoritarian comprehensive enforcements of social visions. This view urges us and even enables us one by one, or affinity group by affinity group, or as citizens who share at least some bits of history, just to do the best we can. There is at least a hint of this view in even John Dewey, alongside the strains of moral and cultural perfectionism in his work.\n\nThe difficulty of this view, already suggested, is that it leaves public life open to manipulation by powerful elites. It encourages free riding and an insidiously creeping social chaos and decline, as Plato and MacIntyre have argued. It makes it difficult to believe in one's way of life, so that social anomie and depression threaten. It has trouble figuring out what to do in real crisis situations, where there are not many relevant experiences and not many rules of thumb on which to draw.\n\nThe second view is Cartesianism. The cognitive and technological benefits of the Cartesian conception of disenchanted, material nature are manifest. But in addition to these cognitive and technological benefits, there is also an attractive moral, spiritual stance associated with this conception of nature and with the relation of mind to it. As Charles Taylor notes, Descartes furthers an\n\nethic of rational control that find[s] its sources in a sense of dignity and self-esteem [by] transpos[ing] _inward_ something of the spirit of the honour ethic.... Strength, firmness, resolution, control, these are the crucial qualities, a subset of the warrior-aristocratic virtues, but now internalized. They are not deployed in great deeds of military valor in public space, but rather in the inner domination of passion by thought.... Descartes constantly enjoins efficacious action for what we want [so that we may become \"masters and possessors of nature\"], alongside detachment from the outcome.\n\nAs Descartes puts it in the _Discourse_ ,\n\nMy third maxim was always to try especially to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the order of the world; and generally to become accustomed to believing that there is nothing that is utterly within our power, except for our thoughts, so that, after having done our best regarding things external to us, everything that fails to bring us success, from our point of view, is absolutely impossible.\n\nBut satisfaction in correct thinking is virtually infinite. Thus Descartes argues that if we learn to follow correctly the proper principles for scientific investigation, then we can comport ourselves both with pride in our cognitive achievements and with humility, in acknowledgment of the limits of our finite understanding. Pride where knowledge and, sometimes, consequent technology are achievable, coupled with stoicism about our limits, leading to ataraxia or blessedness, is an available stance that has genuine charms. Descartes himself writes that we may, if we take up this stance, \"rival the gods in their happiness\" and experience \"intense satisfaction\" than which there is nothing \"sweeter or more innocent... in this life.\"\n\nIt would be folly to underestimate either the practical-technological or the moral-spiritual benefits of this stance. But it too faces problems. This stance does not point to any practices or styles of expressive action in politics, family life, or interpersonal relations generally. It is expressed directly only in cognitive practice, leaving everything else either to be ignored, to be coped with as a matter of convenience, or to be sorted out via the practical, ultimately market-structured adjustment of preferences. There is no distinctive worth or dignity attaching to any particular mode of interpersonal, familial, social, or political life. Thus Descartes remarks that, apart from the practice of natural science, \"the most useful course of action was to rule myself in accordance with those with whom I had to live,\" whether Persians, Chinese, or Frenchman. This policy kept Descartes free from the Inquisition, and it supports considerable broad-minded tolerance of what are ultimately the follies of one or another human group in interpersonal matters, where no well-founded rules are available. But it does not support the achievement of intimacy. It is hard to see how Descartes could tell the difference between getting along with a wife and getting along with the Chinese. It is, therefore, no accident that he never married, and the philosophical problem of other minds that arises in his work is itself perhaps a reflection of a pervasive sense of alienation from other human beings.\n\nThe third stance is Byronism. Byron's own literary and theoretical writings are less interesting systematically than those of any of Blakean-Wordsworthian romanticism, Humeanism, or Cartesianism. But there can nonetheless be little doubt that Byron both summed up and stands for a certain cultural stance, the stance that Bertrand Russell called Byronism as \"Titanic cosmic self-assertion,\" especially in matters sexual. Byron's own (let us call it) passionate and exuberant personal life expresses this stance, at least in part. And there has always been a well-motivated temptation to identify Byron with certain of his characters. Childe Harold, for example, is introduced to us as follows, in terms that seem to apply as well to Byron himself.\n\nWhileome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,\n\nWho ne in virtue's ways did take delight;\n\nBut spend his days in riot most uncouth,\n\nAnd vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.\n\nAh, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,\n\nSore given to revel and ungodly glee;\n\nFew earthly things found favor in his sight\n\nSave concubines and carnal companie,\n\nAnd flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.\n\nFour stanzas later, we learn that he is not much given to repentance.\n\nFor he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,\n\nNor made atonement when he did amiss.\n\nThe reasons for taking up a stance of passionate self-assertion, if reasons are in view, is that it is better to feel something, and in particular to feel one's own powers of command, than to feel nothing at all, albeit that the rate or variety or artistic imaginativeness of conquest may have to be increased in order to get the same effect in feeling, addiction being what it is. This is the stance that we can also see in Don Giovanni and in the seducer Johannes of Kierkegaard's _Either\/Or_. This is largely the popular conception of romanticism. As one fairly simple commentary for students puts it, \"In essence, Romanticism was, for a time, the triumph of feeling over thinking, the head over the heart.\" Romanticism so construed or, better, Byronism, does help to remind us of the felt character of our own inner lives. We can, and often do, feel intensely, without much prior reasoning or policy formation but nonetheless with a kind of imaginative involvement, blending anticipation, recollection, and fantasy, in a manner not present in the lives of other creatures. The power thus to feel with imaginative involvement is one, it seems, that we wish not to repudiate, even if we could. We give it free rein in adolescence, perhaps, or on Halloween, or for Carnival, or for Las Vegas weekends. The liability, of course, is that it is hard to see how to build a stable life out of the cultivation of the pursuit of this kind of intensity of feeling, as Faust is brought in the end to realize.\n\nSo we have these three stances\u2014Humeanism, Cartesianism, and Byronism, against which I have posed a more genuine romanticism, associated with Blake and Wordsworth. All three of these stances are lived\u2014Cartesianism for science and planning, Humeanism for buying and selling and for semistable social relations, Byronism for holidays. When they are thus lived together, in uneasy pragmatic compromise with each other, then what we have is the pragmatic liberalism that Gary Gutting has eloquently defended. This pragmatic compromise solution has a good claim to being our form of life, at least in the more or less well-off North Atlantic democracies and in the Blue States: naturalist rejection of comprehensive religious enforcements, Cartesianism for science, and Byronism on the side, all adopted because they seem to be what works best, pragmatically, in their particular spheres.\n\nThe question, then, is how stable this pragmatic compromise is. Or does it rather suffer from the liabilities of each stance taken individually, plus the added problem that each stance places pressure on the others? For example, Cartesianism may point toward the management of culture by so-called technical experts, rather than compromise, thus undermining democracy. Or Humeanism may undermine commitment to science as a vocation. Or Byronism may threaten to undermine just about anything. Just who are we, and where are we going?\n\nIn this situation, we might conjecture that the Wordsworthian romanticism first sketched offers us something of a middle way, since it accepts elements of Cartesianism, Humeanism, and Byronism but, unlike pragmatism, thinks of maintaining this acceptance as a continuing task. The characteristic Wordsworthian romantic writer\u2014Wordsworth\u2014unlike the Byronic romantic writer, is a continual scrutinizer of the terms of our current mixed settlement. Wordsworth is worried about the rise of a modern scientific culture in which a sense of value and meaning is lost. But, like Hume, he is unwilling, at least in his major writings, to accept comprehensive political enforcements of religious stances. He is too much of an individualist for that. He has a Byronic sense of the power and importance of his own imagination and his imaginative responses to events, but he seeks also to keep his imagination apt to the persons and events he encounters, where the marker of accuracy is that others can be brought to share in his imaginative responses, thus confirming them. Thus his poetic imagination courts not only excess and poetic glory but also depth of common response to common predicaments and possibilities of life. In the _Prelude_ , he undertakes to \"speak \/ A lasting inspiration,\" as he retraces his own fostering \"alike by beauty and by fear.\" The point of this rehearsal is not simply the particularities of his own life but further that within these particularities one can \"trace \/ Our Being's earthly progress,\" thus showing, as it were, the universal, or what is possible and valuable for us all, in the particular, that is, in the details of growing up in the Lake District, studying (or mostly partying) at Cambridge, traveling in France, and so on. The moral of this rehearsal is that \"these objects\"\u2014that is, the beautiful and the sublime\u2014should \"everlastingly affect the mind.\" The experience of the sublime awakens in us a felt sense of our own rational and expressive powers and dignity, so that we do not settle for Humean coping or trying to get what we already take ourselves to want, but instead seek to deploy and express our human powers originally. The experience of the beautiful connects us to the common, so that both Byronic excessiveness and Cartesian alienation are avoided. Throughout these rehearsals, Wordsworth continually questions his own progress in writing and avoids conclusive dogmatism. He wonders whether his tracing of his progress is really as exemplary as he hopes and whether his audience will receive him or repudiate him\u2014indeed, whether his audience exists at all. Since the poet has \"the task of _creating_ the taste by which he is to be enjoyed,\" it may not. In rehearsing his own history, Wordsworth has trouble finding the plot and its moral. We have in the _Prelude_ , he writes to Coleridge, \"Turned and returned with intricate delay.\" Yet the very ongoing effort to find the plot and to establish the importance of the experiences of both the sublime and the beautiful is itself the self-modifying way to balance Humeanism, Cartesianism, and Byronism against one another. This Wordsworthian practice of seeking expressive power in connection with the common is always crossed with self-questioning rather than dominated by a preformulated plan or conclusion. Engaging in this practice is what the best artists and literary writers, in particular situations, do.\n\nOne consequence of this conception of the seriousness of Wordsworthian romanticism is that there is no great romantic drama. The reason for this is that Wordsworthian romanticism lingers in the activity of accepting and working through conflicting commitments, as it accepts the attractiveness within consciousness of all of Humeanism, Cartesianism, and Byronism. It seeks to bring these stances into fuller and more coherent communication with one another within consciousness, so that more human, more expressive action can be achieved. It is no accident that Harold Bloom once described romantic poetry as the internalization of quest romance. The action of romantic drama is internal to consciousness itself. But this internalization of action then cuts against the possibility of presenting important dramatic conflicts between different characters, if these characters are themselves to be complex enough to participate in the movement of romantic consciousness. The only real candidates for great romantic dramas are Goethe's _Faust_ and Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies, so far as one finds confrontation between emergent, modern individualism and valuable, stable commitments to be central to them. But these dramas work so magnificently precisely because the claims on the individual of an existing external culture of honor, religion, nation, or clan as they stand are taken seriously against modern individualism, even if individualism turns out to be an irrepudiable force. Once its irrepudiability is fully accepted, then the drama is internalized, as individuals must sort out ever anew their standing conflicting commitments. (Hamlet is poised on the edge of accepting this irrepudiability, without yet being crassly individualistic.) Modern and modernist lyric and the modern novel can survive and flourish because they are able to focus on the interior life of protagonists in a way that modern drama, with its rejection of the artificiality of the extended soliloquy, cannot. The drama of modern life is largely that of individuals coming to terms\u2014or, increasingly, bleakly failing to come to terms, as in Beckett\u2014within their own consciousness or within restricted spheres of conversation, with how they are to stand in relation to the conflicting attractive possibilities afforded by, or latent within, a culture.\n\nBut what if one were to undertake to write a drama about the fact that modern life offers no ready way to blend naturalness (either Byronic-spontaneous or Humean-customary) with originality (either Cartesian-intellectual or Byronic-spontaneous)? (Beckett rejects ready blending, but by reducing his characters to the barely discursively percipient and his cultures to completely desiccated routines. He thus undervalues complexity, energy, and adaptive responsiveness in both individuals and cultures.) Could one _show_ Byronic types, Cartesian types, and Humean types somehow in interaction with one another, as types, while also intimating that these types represent aspects of us all, in our own divided commitments? What work could such a showing do? Could it point toward any kind of fuller acknowledgment of our complexities?\n\nThese are the questions that Tom Stoppard takes up in _Arcadia_. Stoppard accepts the structural necessity for drama of presenting conflict between characters, and he also rejects the extended Shakespearean soliloquy. We see his characters doing what they do, but we do not hear or overhear them in their internal movements of mind as they are pulled now toward Humeanism, now toward Cartesianism, now toward Byronism. Stoppard also refuses the great marriage plot, as in Jane Austen, within which plot two characters work out the possibility of a good enough life together, as they find their commitments and talents complemented in each other.\n\nThe action in _Arcadia_ takes place, instead, in a kind of public space that we witness from a privileged standpoint, able to watch without being ourselves watched. Stoppard's method of dramatic construction is juxtaposition. The characters are largely types, with Thomasina as a Cartesian figure (with a bit of Byronism struggling to get out); Septimus as a Byronic figure (overlaid with the surface Cartesianism of a Cambridge education); Hannah as a cooler mixture of Cartesian scholarship with modern Humean, tolerant whimsy at the follies of mankind; and Valentine as a contemporary Cartesian. Other characters are even closer to pure types in a way that makes for farce, as they are dominated by particular varieties of ambition and vanity. They think of themselves as something they are not: Bernard takes himself to be a scholar; Ezra takes himself to be a poet. The remaining characters are largely incidental to the action taking place between the principal, more rounded four (Thomasina, Septimus, Hannah, and Valentine) and the two figures of farce (Ezra and Bernard). Stoppard sets his characters as types within a space that we can witness, and he waits to see what happens. To some extent, his method of juxtaposition deliberately shirks the internal development of character and the working through of conflicting commitments in favor of the charms of farce.\n\nStoppard himself is quite aware of how his dramatic method of the juxtaposition of types works. As he remarked in an interview, \"I don't think _Arcadia_ says very much about these two sides of the human personality or temperament [that is, the Cartesian and the Byronic].... And yet it's firing all around the target, making a pattern around the target.\" He reports that his favorite line in modern English drama is \"I'm a man of no convictions\u2014at least I _think_ I am,\" from Christopher Hampton's _The Philanthropist_. He observes that he \"writes plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself.\" He describes his objective as \"to perform a marriage between a play of ideas and a farce.... [This objective] represents two sides of my own personality, which can be described as seriousness compromised by my frivolity, or... frivolity redeemed by my seriousness.\" \"Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight,\" he remarks in his own voice, quoting his character Henry from _The Real Thing_. What all these remarks indicate is a shying\u2014perhaps as a result of the necessities of dramatic presentation, perhaps from overwhelming shyness expressed as wit, perhaps because of the sheer complexities of modern life\u2014from working through, from thinking. Juxtaposition, pattern, contradiction, equilibrium\u2014these trump internalization and the working through of thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and emotions.\n\nAnd yet, as J. L. Austin once wrote, \"there's the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back.\" When _Arcadia_ opened in 1993 in London and in 1995 in New York, it was widely (though not without exception) praised as a breakthrough in character development and emotional expressiveness and as a move, in particular, beyond the consistently arch and dryly intellectual quality of his earlier work. As Tim Appelo put the point in his review in _The Nation_ , \"Unlike the spy-jive mac-guffins he juggles in _Hapgood_ , the mystery addressed in _Arcadia_ is one to which Stoppard is fully emotionally committed.\" There is something to this point, and it has mostly to do with the concluding scene, where the two worlds\u2014those of 1809 and of the present\u2014as it were overlap. Here is where, at last, we see not farce and wordplay and juxtaposition but development in character, consciousness, and relationship. First Thomasina and Septimus, and then Hannah and Gus, waltz. These parallel waltzes have the feel of a dream. They are surprising\u2014especially so in that, like dreams, they contravene time in occurring together. This gives them the feel of being somehow mythical or eternally recurring, something that ever haunts us. The waltzing together of these pairs, across time, has the fuguelike feeling of something half occurrent and half remembered.\n\nThe absence of dialogue during this waltzing is prepared by Valentine's earlier remark that he's given up on his analysis of the rise and fall of the grouse population on the Coverly estate because there's \"Too much noise. There's just too much bloody noise.\" (Too many unpredictable external factors induce deviations in the population that prevent any natural pattern from being evident.) This remark alerts us that we may, at least sometimes, find sense in silence rather than in speech. In this final waltzing, and in the overlapping of the two time periods, we find \"patterns making themselves out of nothing.\" We are left with a sense that the problems of human subjects struggling to express their emotional and intellectual subjectivities fully, originally, and with each other within settings of thermodynamically decaying nature and stale culture persist, making us above all interesting animals. But despite their persistence, a significant response to these problems may be, for a time, possible. Thomasina remarks to Septimus, \"there is another geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and error.\" Stoppard's juxtapositions work similarly, allowing a geometry or a set of shapes of human life, intelligence, and desire to show themselves.\n\nThe dreamlike, fuguelike feeling of the final waltzing is further reinforced by the fact that it is these pairs of characters who waltz, in particular by the fact that these waltzes are for each of them a kind of breakthrough. Septimus acknowledges Thomasina's just-about-adult sexuality, which has now come to expression along with her intelligence. In doing so, he further acknowledges his own depth of attraction to her as a person, to her embodied intelligence, thus overcoming his earlier libertinism in favor of something more like love. Hannah acknowledges Gus's pain and neediness and intelligence in his silence, thus lending depth of responsiveness to her own typical professional scholarly scrupulousness. Although she has earlier stuck to detachment, insisting to Chloe that \"I don't want a dancing partner, least of all Mr. Nightingale. I don't dance,\" she too is now able to dance, a bit awkwardly, when the right partner comes along at the right time. In inviting her to dance, Gus acknowledges her intelligence and passion together, in taking her as fit for dancing, thus acknowledging, too, that words and feelings can coexist in a single character: depth of feeling need not always engender muteness, and cleverness need not always suppress feeling. It is as though the two parts of the soul\u2014analytical intelligence and depth of feeling, Cartesianism and Byronism\u2014have at last been put together, at least for a moment, according to the logic of a dream, across time, and surrounded by music rather than parsed out in words. Is this final scene, blending disjoint times and moving to music, without words, an escape from actuality into form or a registering of human need and possibility? It is inescapable to ask this question, but it is not clear that it is necessary to answer it one way or the other.\n\nAccording to this scene and the logic that prepares it, the Wordsworthian practice of bringing the parts of the soul together, in pursuit of expressive fluency in thought and feeling and action, in relation to others and to what is common, both informs and haunts human life. But the work of this practice remains always in part unfinished. As Hannah remarks, \"It's wanting to know that makes us matter.... Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.\" We will remain interesting animals, in pursuit of fullness of fluency and at-homeness as subjects that we will never quite achieve. The dancing of these pairs\u2014their real physical movement and intimacy, yet somehow outside historical time and \"for us\" as observing audience\u2014offers a clarifying catharsis of what is possible for us. But, in Marcuse's words, \"the reconciliation which the catharsis offers also preserves the irreconcileable.\" The space of dramatic art is not joined to the space we occupy as viewers and then as agents. The marking of this magical, dramatic space where some provisional reconciliation takes place as outside of time and as other to us testifies to what Adorno called our continuing \"suffering in an existence alien to the subject\"; the dancing that these pairs are able to achieve as human agents testifies \"to love for it as well.\" We both recognize ourselves in these characters and remain aware of their occupying a space of art that we can, would, and yet cannot occupy wholly in daily life. _Arcadia_ itself closes with this dancing and so is silent\u2014bleakly, pregnantly, undecidably\u2014about the rest of life.\n\nSerious writing must find some way to show that moments, perhaps even ones of considerable scope and duration, of good enough fluency and at-homeness are possible, if it is not to reduce us to ignorant and empty sites of mere coping with life. Yet it must also accept that such moments do not last forever, especially in light of modern complexities of desire and social life, and that there is no formula for either achieving or sustaining them. It must accept a constitutive incompleteness\u2014accept, that is, its own failure to track the achievement of any final happiness, if it is to be faithful to the lack of final happiness in human life. It must somehow avoid denying human finitude and temporality in complacent dogmatism while also succeeding in showing sometime achievements of expressive, embodied intelligence and the satisfaction of desire, as in dancing. This astonishing concluding scene in _Arcadia_ manages to blend skepticism and acknowledgment of finitude with the presentation of apt, fluent feeling and of gratitude for life. \"In the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.\"\n3.\n\nRomantic Subjectivity in Goethe and Wittgenstein\n\nAs a result of the fine work of Mark Rowe, Joachim Schulte, and Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker, it has now been evident for some time that there are deep affinities\u2014affinities in style and textual organization, in conceptions of elucidatory explanation via comparisons, and in a sense of subjectivity housed within nature\u2014between the Goethe of the _Farbenlehre_ and the Wittgenstein of _Philosophical Investigations_. Among the very deepest of these affinities is their shared sense of the limits of metaphysical explanation. The identification of simple elements is always relative to purposes and circumstances, never ultimate. Hence there is no single kind of ultimate explanation running from the nature and behavior of ultimate simples to the nature and behavior of complexes composed out of them. There are often useful explanations to be found of how the behaviors of complexes are determined by the behaviors of their parts, but this kind of explanation is one among many. Comparative descriptions of complexes\u2014whether of organisms, human practices, works of art, or chemical and physical structures\u2014are not to be supplanted in favor of ultimate metaphysical explanation.\n\nValuable and sound though these ideas are, they are, however, not the theme here. Instead, a different form of affinity between Goethe and Wittgenstein is more in view\u2014a substantive affinity in their senses of what it is to be a human subject. Methodological and general metaphysical affinities are taken for granted; beyond or behind them lie affinities of substance in their conceptions of human life.\n\nThomas Mann's remarks on _Die Leiden des jungen Werthers_ provide a useful starting point. \"It would,\" Mann observes,\n\nnot be a simple task to analyze the psychic state that determined the underpinning of European civilization at that time [1774, the date of publication of _Werther_ ].... A discontent with civilization, an emancipation of emotions, a gnawing yearning for a return to the natural and elemental, a shaking at the shackles of ossified culture, a revolt against convention and bourgeois confinement: everything converged to create a spirit that came up against the limitations of individuation itself, that allowed an effusive, boundless affirmation of life to take on the form of a death wish. Melancholy and discontent with the rhythmical monotony of life was the norm.\n\nIt is likewise not a simple task to say what may have made such melancholy and discontent the norm, at least in certain circles. Secularization, bringing with it a sense of lost meaningfulness as religious ritual became a smaller part of daily life, and modernization, bringing with it a market economy and new but very uncertain life chances, are surely part of the story. But secularization and modernization are themselves interwoven with deep, largely tacit self-understandings about what is worth doing, in ways that are difficult to disentangle. Charles Taylor, in his monumental survey of the making of the modern identity, describes what he calls \"three major facets of this identity: first, modern inwardness, the sense of ourselves as beings with inner depths; second, the affirmation of ordinary life which develops from the early modern period; third, the expressivist notion of nature as an inner moral source.\" These facets of identity that come to the fore in modernity are as much a part of a widely available human repertoire of identity as they are byproducts of something else. They are, according to Taylor, an inescapable part of our moral framework, a set of commitments that we cannot help but have, even where they also sit uneasily against one another, as the claims of the ordinary pull against the pursuit of original expressive power.\n\nOne important result of these commitments is an undecomposable intermingling of moral discovery with moral invention. We no longer think of ourselves as simply living out in one way or another basic human tendencies that are simply given. Rather, drawing on our reflective inwardness, on ordinary life, and on natural energies, we partly make ourselves what we are. As Taylor puts it, \"We find the sense of life through articulating it. And moderns have become acutely aware of how much sense being there for us depends on our own powers of expression. Discovering here depends on, is interwoven with, inventing.\" Finding is inseparable from founding.\n\nBut why should this occasion what Mann noted: discontent, yearning, shaking, revolt, melancholy, and a death wish? It is easy enough to see why a certain improvisatoriness and independence of mind might be valued. But how and why did our moral improvisations come to be freighted with all that? Here the answer has to do with a certain lack of both ground and closure to our moral efforts. Without fixed tendencies and _tele_ as starting points and endpoints, it becomes uncertain what moral progress and human achievement might look like\u2014even uncertain whether they are possible at all. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy note the uncertainties that attach to our moral efforts in the wake of the felt absence of any fixed presentation of the self and its powers, as they describe the conception of the subject in Kant's moral theory.\n\nWithout oversimplifying or hardening the contours of a question that merits extended analysis, we cannot fail to note that this \"subject\" of morality can be defined only negatively, as a subject that is not the subject of knowledge (this knowledge suppressed \"to make room for belief\"), as a subject without _mathesis_ , even of itself. It is indeed posited as freedom, and freedom is the locus of \"self-consciousness.\" But this does not imply that there is any cognition\u2014or even consciousness\u2014of freedom.... [T]he question of [the moral subject's] unity, and thus of its very \"being subject,\" is brought to a pitch of high tension.\n\nLacking a fixed ground and definite _telos_ , efforts at articulating and enacting \"a sense of life\" come to be marked by a desperate intensity. Different subjects become variously lost within different ongoing projects of articulation, each maintaining its sense of its place and progress not through ratification by an audience, which is all too caught up in its own projects, but rather through a hysterical lingering in process. Articulation \"sets out to penetrate the essence of poiesy [poetic making], in which the [articulation] produces the truth of production itself... the truth of production _of itself_ , of autopoiesy.\" The manifold modern _Bildungsromanen_ and personal epics of coming to self-consciousness and assured social vocation, but specifically _Bildungsromanen_ and epics that have difficulty in reaching their own conclusions (other, perhaps, than by taking the artistic making of the very work in hand as the achieved _telos_ ), are evidence of the dominance of the project of autopoiesis in the modern moral imagination. Human moral self-imagination and achievement become a \"question of the _becoming_ present of the highest,\" not of its _being_ present.\n\nThe three inescapable parts of our moral framework that Taylor identifies\u2014inwardness, ordinary life, and nature as an expressive resource\u2014conspire in our experience with and against one another to inhibit the achievement of a stable sense of life. Either nature in the aspect of the sublime conspires with inwardness to resist the sways of ordinary life and conventionality, thus setting up the image of the chthonic genius as the exemplar of moral achievement, as in Nietzsche, or nature in the aspect of the beautiful conspires with ordinary life and conventionality, thus setting up an image of pastoralized domesticity as the exemplar of moral achievement, as in certain moments in Rousseau. Each image then stands in immediate criticism of the other, and no stable image of moral achievement persists.\n\nUnder such uncertainties and instabilities, it is all too plausible that one might not only become melancholic but come to wish for nothing more than surcease, even to regard the taking of one's own life as the only possible creative act with a fixed endpoint, as the only meaningful act. Or of course, more modestly, one might forego efforts to live according to a sense of life or to what is highest and assume instead an instrumentalist stance toward the things of life, seeking only modest satisfactions. This strategy is common in modernity, and it is surely honorable. But does it quite escape the silent melancholies, quiet desperations, and covert nihilisms about which Emerson and Thoreau and Nietzsche variously warned us?\n\nTo come now specifically to _Werther_ : Werther's own character is torn between the idealized images of chthonic originality, represented for him by the wild excesses of his own inner emotional life, and pastoralized domesticity, represented for him by the figure of Lotte, maternally feeding bread to her younger brothers and sisters. There are interesting historical specificities that surround the split in Werther's character\u2014and in Goethe's\u2014between these two ideals. In his monumental study of Goethe's development, Nicholas Boyle suggests that these ideals are posed, and posed as irresolvable, for Werther and for Goethe, by certain strains in eighteenth-century German culture. \"Werther's innermost life,\" he writes,\n\nis determined by a public mood; he lives out to the last, and inflicts on those around him, the loyalties which\u2014because they are literary, intellectual, in a sense imaginary loyalties, generated within the current media of communication\u2014most of his contemporaries take only half-seriously. His obsessions are not gratuitously idiosyncratic\u2014they belong to his real and socially determined character, not just to a pathologically self-absorbed consciousness.\n\nSpecifically, Boyle suggests that Leibnizianism, pietism, and sentimentalism offered images to Goethe of \"the self thirsting for its perfectly adequate object.\" This thirsting of the self for a confirming object took an especially inwardized turn in Germany, since it could not plausibly be welded to a project of political nation building. Autonomy or achieved selfhood had to be found within, and its principal marks were inner intensities of imagination, feeling, and devotion. Goethe's subjectivity, like Werther's, is dominated by \"his belief in binding moments of insight\" to be achieved fitfully against the sway of official and conventional culture. At the same time, however, Goethe also absorbed a certain political realism and social consciousness from the Storm and Stress movement. He had an awareness of individual character types, including his own, as specific social roles\u2014a novelist's sense (unlike anything in Werther himself) of social reality as narratable from multiple points of view. In _Werther_ , as Boyle characterizes it, \"the Sentimentalist content of the novel is in perfect but momentary balance with a Storm and Stress aesthetic which determines the manner of its presentation.\" Like Werther, Goethe in writing _Werther_ \"endeavored to find roles for himself to act out which both had some general moral or historical significance and could be filled by him with a sense of selfhood: roles which fused both a [social] character and [an intensely individual] consciousness.\" Inwardness and the pursuit of chthonic originality alone lead to empty solipsism; acceptance of oneself as a social type and conformity to convention alone lead to derivativeness and imaginative death. The task is to combine the pursuit of originality with acceptance of oneself as a social type. Unlike Werther, Goethe himself carried out this task through the act of writing about his innermost emotions and self-imaginations in a social setting. This act of writing gave him the opportunity both to cultivate his inner life and to achieve a certain realistic distance from it. For Werther, faced with the same task and torn between his hyperbolic idealizations of originality on the one hand and domesticity on the other, things do not go so well. The \"very impetus to self-destruction is being imposed on him by the German public mind\"\u2014itself faced with the problem of cultivating both autonomous selfhood and continuing sociality\u2014\"commerce with which he cannot avoid, or wish to avoid, if he is to express himself at all.\" The task of blending selfhood with social identity is unique neither to Werther, nor to Goethe, nor to the German public mind of the late eighteenth century. It is the fate of modern subjectivity as such either to face or to evade it. A sense of this problem as pressing and not to be evaded then arises with special intensity in late eighteenth-century Germany, in the wake of sentimentalism (itself a response to modernization and secularization) and in a hyperfractured political actuality.\n\nLike Boyle, Mann too characterizes Werther as \"the overrefined final product of the Christian-Pietist cult of the soul and of the emotions.\" What this means, above all, is a desire for singularity, specifically a desire to desire, intensely and infinitely. As Mann puts it, \"the desire to exchange that which is confining and conditional for that which is infinite and limitless is the fundamental character of Werther's nature, as it is of Faust's.... He is in love even before his love has an object.\" Even Lotte asks Werther, \"Why must you love me, me only, who belongs to another? I fear, I fear, that it is only the impossibility of possessing me that makes your desire for me so strong.\" Only a desire for the impossible can certify itself as genuinely singular and original, capable of confirming selfhood against the grain of conventionality.\n\nIn the grip of such a desire, impossibly seeking original selfhood both against the grain of all conventionality and yet blended with social identity, no one knows what to do. Our desires are original if and only if impossible, unrecognizable\u2014and they are recognizable and satisfiable if and only if they are mimes of the conventionalized desires of others. No wonder Werther observes that \"all learned teachers and tutors agree that children do not understand the cause of their desires; but no one likes to think that adults too wander about this earth like children, not knowing where they come from or where they are going, not acting in accord with genuine motives, but ruled like children by biscuits, sugarplums, and the rod\u2014and yet it seems to me so obvious\" (9). Werther cannot anywhere recognize, act on, and satisfy his own desire as his own.\n\nAs he then himself wanders the earth, impossibly seeking fully original selfhood blended with social identity, Werther alternates in his moments of attachment and identification between surrender to beautiful scenes of sociality, composure, convention, and pastoralized domesticity, on the one hand, and ecstatic abandonment to sublime scenes of wild creative energy, on the other. In neither moment is the attachment or abandonment either ordinary or in fact achieved; in both cases it is hyperbolized in Werther's imagination into something exceptional, and his hyperbolizing imagination blocks his actually doing anything.\n\nThe emblem in nature of the beautiful, of pastoralized domesticity, and of attachment, in Werther's imaginative perception, is the cozy valley of Wahlheim\u2014home's choice. \"It is,\" Werther writes early on,\n\ninterestingly situated on a hill, and by following one of the footpaths out of the village, you can have a view of the whole valley below you. A kindly woman keeps a small inn there, selling wine, beer, and coffee; and she is extremely cheerful and pleasant in spite of her age. The chief charm of this spot consists in two linden trees, spreading their enormous branches over the little green before the church, which is entirely surrounded by peasants' cottages, barns, and homesteads. Seldom have I seen a place so intimate and comfortable.\n\n(10)\n\nThe force and direction of Werther's idealization is evident in his litany of adjectives: \"kindly,\" \"small,\" \"cheerful,\" \"pleasant,\" \"little,\" \"intimate,\" and \"comfortable.\" Here he would\u2014originally and creatively\u2014surrender himself to a domesticated, given, human life in nature. But to desire to do this originally and creatively is to make one unable to do it, and Werther simply gazes on the scene until, as he thinks of himself, he reverts in thought to the idea of nature as also a source of iconoclastic creative energy.\n\nThe counterpart scene in which Werther imagines ecstatically abandoning himself to the sublime comes late in his correspondence, as things are not going well. On December 12, he writes:\n\nSometimes I am oppressed, not by apprehension or fear, but by an inexpressible inner fury which seems to tear up my heart and choke me. It's awful, awful. And then I wander about amid the horrors of the night, at this dreadful time of the year.\n\nYesterday evening it drove me outside. A rapid thaw had suddenly set in: I had been told that the river had risen, that the brooks had all overflowed their banks, and that the whole valley of Wahlheim was under water! I rushed out after eleven o'clock. A terrible sight. The furious torrents rolled from the mountains in the moonlight\u2014fields, trees, and hedges torn up, and the entire valley one deep lake agitated by the roaring wind! And when the moon shone forth, and tinged the black clouds, and the wild torrent at my feet foamed and resounded in this grand and frightening light, I was overcome by feelings of terror, and at the same time yearning. With arms extended, I looked down into the yawning abyss, and cried, \"Down! Down!\" For a moment I was lost in the intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a plunge into that gulf! But then I felt rooted to the earth and incapable of ending my woes!\n\n(69\u201370)\n\nIf only he could give himself over to this energy in sublime nature, to this wild torrent, the problem of the satisfaction of impossible desire would at least be ended, if not solved. Werther's itinerary lets itself be read as a move from sometime attachment to the beautiful to complete domination by the sublime, ending in the realization that only this end is possible. In some earlier scenes of the perception of nature, Werther's awareness shifts abruptly and jarringly back and forth between a sense of the \"overflowing fullness\" of nature, before which he feels \"as if a god myself,\" and a sense of nature as \"an all-consuming, devouring monster\" (36\u201337). At this late moment in December, he remains in the condition he had earlier ascribed to humanity in general: \"we are as poor and limited as ever, and our soul still languishes for unattainable happiness\" (20). His death looms, but he does yet quite grasp it: \"My hour is not yet come: I feel it\" (70).\n\nWerther's relations to Lotte directly mirror his relations to nature. Both are dominated by his hyperbolizing imagination, as he sees her now as beautiful, now as sublime. When he first sees her, he finds\n\nsix children, from eleven to two years old... running about the room, surrounding a lovely girl of medium height, dressed in a simple white frock with pink ribbons. She was holding a loaf of dark bread in her hands, and was cutting slices for the little ones all round, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task with such affection, and each child awaited his turn with outstretched hands and artlessly shouted his thanks.\n\n(15)\n\nEverything here is simple, cozy, natural, and artless, in forming a scene of mildness with which Werther would like to identify. But then he also dreams that \"I pressed her to me and covered with countless kisses those dear lips of hers which murmured words of love in response. Our eyes were one in the bliss of ecstasy\" (70). There is scarcely a better case than this of a fantasized, impossible specular moment.\n\nIn each case, Lotte is more a posited object of Werther's fevered imagination of himself in relation to her than she is seen by him as a being in her own right. She is an occasion for him to fantasize himself complete, both original and at home. Lotte here plays the same role as was played by the earlier object of his affections, whom Werther describes wholly in terms of her effect on him: \"I have felt that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be. God! Was there a single power in my soul that remained unused? And in her presence could I not develop fully that intense feeling with which my heart embraces Nature?\" (8). Here, as ever, the real object of Werther's consciousness is _my soul_ , _my heart_ , _my seeming to be more than I really was_. No wonder, then, that when he imagines that she loves him, Werther rhapsodizes in the same egocentric terms: \"That she loves me! How the idea exalts me in my own eyes! And... how I worship myself since she loves me!\" (27).\n\nWerther's self-claimed exceptionalism, his sense that, unlike in ordinary people, \"there lie dormant within me so many other qualities which wither unused, and which I must carefully conceal\" (8), leads him consistently to scorn ordinary life and the achievements of reciprocity, decency, and human relationship that are possible in it. In particular, he scorns, while also envying, Albert's staid conventionalism and decency. But he here finds Albert only to be typical of what most people are like. \"Most people,\" he writes, \"work the greater part of their time just for a living; and the little freedom which remains to them frightens them, so that they use every means of getting rid of it. Such is man's high calling!\" (8). In contrast, Werther seeks for himself a genuine high calling and exemplary, commanding achievement outside the framework of the ordinary. Not for him \"the gilded wretchedness, the boredom among the silly people who parade about in society here\" (44) at court, a world in which he stands as if \"before a puppet show and see[s] the little puppets move... completely occupied with etiquette and ceremony\" (45). Unable to mix with them, he argues that real love, constancy, and passion \"exists in its greatest purity among that class of people whom we call rude, uneducated\" (55), as he again hyperbolically idealizes a pastoralized ordinary life. Yet he is unable, with his dormant qualities he must carefully conceal lest he subject them to the risks of public scrutiny, to mix with ordinary people either.\n\nWork, too, is treated by Werther as something either stalely conventional and meaningless or idealized as salvific. On the one hand, \"the man who, purely for the sake of others, and without any passion or inner compulsion of his own, toils after wealth or dignity, or any other phantom, is simply a fool\" (28). On the other hand, \"Many a time I wish I were a common laborer, so that when I awake in the morning I might at least have one clear prospect, one pursuit, one hope, for the day which has dawned\" (37). In both cases, his attention is on the work as the vehicle of the exalted expression of his personality, not on the work itself and those who do it. Even when he imagines doing a small bit of work in first arriving at the court of Count C., his thoughts remain on himself and his superiority to others. \"But when, in spite of weakness and disappointments, we do our daily work in earnest, we shall find that with all false starts and compromises we make better headway than others who have wind and tide with them; and it gives one a real feeling of self to keep pace with others or outstrip them in the race\" (42).\n\nWerther's God is similarly exceptional\u2014a being whom he assumes either specifically listens to his pleas or specifically avoids them, without any mediating institutions or any involvements in the lives of others. On November 30, as he approaches his end, he addresses God directly and intimately, presuming to be his particular and special son.\n\nFather, Whom I know not\u2014Who were once wont to fill my soul, but Who now hidest Thy face from me\u2014call me back to Thee; be silent no longer! Thy silence cannot sustain a soul which thirsts after Thee. What man, what father, could be angry with a son for returning to him unexpectedly, for embracing him and exclaiming, \"Here I am again, my father! Forgive me if I have shortened my journey to return before the appointed time. The world is everywhere the same\u2014for labor and pain, pleasure and reward, but what does it all avail? I am happy only where thou art, and in thy presence I am content to suffer or enjoy.\" And Thou, Heavenly Father, wouldst Thou turn such a child from Thee?\n\n(64)\n\nHis address here is strikingly reminiscent of his earlier thoughts about Lotte, whom he similarly regards as his unique savior. \"I cannot pray except to her. My imagination sees nothing but her; nothing matters except what has to do with her\" (38).\n\nWhat does it all avail? Seeking absolute and perfect ratification of his exceptional personality and talents and perfect, autonomous selfhood joined to continuing sociality in a life of daily self-affirming divinity but finding only ordinary people and his own tortured thoughts and fantasies, Werther can in the end hit only on the strategy of giving it all up. The only freedom from continuing failure is death. \"We desire to surrender our whole being\" (20), and if partial, egocentric surrender to Lotte, to art, to nature, or to work is received and ratified by no one, ordinary as they all are, then genuine surrender must be complete, an escape from life itself. \"I have heard of a noble race of horses that instinctively bite open a vein when they are hot and exhausted by a long run, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to gain everlasting liberty for myself\" (50). As he recalls almost kissing Lotte, \"And yet I want\u2014but it stands like a barrier before my soul\u2014this bliss\u2014and then die to expiate the sin! Is it sin?\" (62). In the end, \"The body was carried by workmen. No clergymen attended\" (87).\n\nGoethe himself, of course, did not commit suicide, despite the autobiographical character of the novel. Mann suggests that Goethe's willingness to go on living had to do with his sense of his identity as a writer. \"Goethe did not kill himself,\" Mann writes, \"because he had _Werther_ \u2014and quite a few other things\u2014to write. Werther has no other calling on this earth except his existential suffering, the tragic perspicacity for his imperfections, the Hamlet-like loathing of knowledge that suffocates him: thus he must perish.\" How did Goethe then come to have and to be aware of having another calling, one that made life for him worth living? As Mann suggests, the answer has to do with the very act of writing _Werther_ , as well as with the ongoing activity of writing for a public already begun with _Goetz von Berlichingen_. For Goethe, the act of writing in general, and of writing _Werther_ in particular, combined a kind of catharsis\u2014both a clarification and an unburdening\u2014of his emotional life with the achievement of a kind of distance or perspective on himself. He came through writing to achieve a sense of himself as having a social identity as a writer, so that the problem of wedding autonomous selfhood to continuing sociality did not for him go fully unsolved. It would be addressed again and again in the act of writing, from _Faust_ to the lyric poetry to _Elective Affinities_ , though with more maturity and never quite perhaps with the immediate cathartic intensity of address of _Werther_. Yet even in his maturity Goethe retained an intense subjectivity capable of responding to others as though they were vehicles of salvation for him. Mann notes that at the age of seventy-two he fell in love with the seventeen-year-old Ulrike Sophie von Levetzow. Though address and partial solution to the problem of subjectivity are possible, full solution is not.\n\nLudwig Wittgenstein's character strongly resembles those of Goethe and Werther. Both his personal and philosophical writings combine an intense wish for attachment to others and to activities as vehicles for the expression of the higher self he felt himself to have with an equally intense critical scrutiny of that wish. The subtitle of Ray Monk's biography, _The Duty of Genius_ , captures this feature of his character well. For the young Wittgenstein in particular, the realization and confirmation of genius was, in Monk's words, \"a Categorical Imperative,\" and the only alternative to failing to follow it was death: genius or suicide. \"Wittgenstein's recurring thoughts of suicide between 1903 and 1912, and the fact that these thoughts abated only after Russell's recognition of his genius, suggest that he accepted this imperative in all its terrifying severity.\"\n\nMonk traces Wittgenstein's submission to this imperative to his reading of Otto Weininger's _Sex and Character_ , published in 1903, the year of Weininger's own suicide. Brian McGuinness accepts this connection but goes further to read this imperative into the composition of the _Tractatus_ and to situate it in the context of Wittgenstein's family life and surrounding culture. McGuinness characterizes what he calls \"the final message of the _Tractatus_ \" as \"perhaps a clearer, a more concentrated view... would enable him to see the world aright. At any rate, if there was no real prospect of this: if he could not reach this insight, and if he could not get rid of his troubles by reconciling himself to the world, then his life was pointless.\" What made this question\u2014genius or suicide\u2014arise with special force in Wittgenstein's case, McGuinness argues, was not only the example and influence of Weininger or the general sickness of prewar Austrian culture but also and more deeply the influence on him of his father. The Wittgenstein family\n\nformed a sort of enclave, fortified against the corruption and inadequacy that surrounded it by severe and private moral standards, which, it seemed, some of them had not the temperament to match or meet. Ludwig's case... seems to have been that of a phenomenally strong assent and attachment to these standards, often at war not only with the normal human failings that became glaring in their light, but also with a particularly soft and affectionate nature.\n\nYet McGuinness immediately goes on to add that Wittgenstein himself \"was not one to see his problem as that of being unable to do what his father required,\" and he further comments that \"what we are describing here is no disease. As Tolstoy says: 'These questions are the simplest in the world. From the stupid child to the wisest old man, they are in the soul of every human being.'\" With the example of _Werther_ before us, we can see the problem of genius or suicide as forming a strong theme in German culture in its response to the yet more general problem in modernity of wedding autonomous selfhood to continuing sociality.\n\nWittgenstein's preoccupation with autonomy and with the realization and confirmation of genius against the grain of culture is pronounced in the remarks in his own voice published as _Vermischte Bemerkungen_ ( _Culture and Value_ ). \"It's a good thing,\" he writes, \"I don't allow myself to be influenced.\" As is typical in the post-Kantian, post-Goethean German tradition, the realization of genius is conceived of as a matter of letting something natural and divine come to the fore in one's thought and life, often under the prompting of nature itself. \"Just let nature speak and acknowledge only _one_ thing as higher than nature, but not what others may think\" (1e). \"Don't take the example of others as your guide, but nature!\" (41e).\n\nWhen one is thus guided, one's thinking and acting happen with significance, in and through one, rather than under one's personal control. \"One might say: art _shows_ us the miracles of nature. It is based on the _concept of the miracles of nature_. (The blossom, just opening out. What is _marvellous_ about it?) We say: 'Just look at it opening out!'\" (56e). It is just this kind of natural yet significant opening out of his own features of character that Wittgenstein anxiously hoped might inform his own thinking and writing.\n\nSchiller writes of a \"poetic mood.\" I think I know what he means, I believe I am familiar with it myself. It is a mood of receptivity to nature in which one's thought seems as vivid as nature itself.... I am not entirely convinced that what _I_ produce in such a mood is really worth anything. It may be that what gives my thoughts their lustre on these occasions is a light shining on them from behind. That they do not _themselves_ glow.\n\n(65e\u201366e)\n\nSomething hidden, powerful, and natural within oneself is to come to the fore, in a way that is not under one's egocentric control. One is to be swept along by one's genius into a natural-supernatural movement of thinking.\n\nYet talent can also be betrayed or misused, and so fail to confirm itself in its products. \"Talent is a spring from which fresh water is constantly flowing. But this spring loses its value if it is not used in the right way\" (10e). As a result, the most important thing is to come to think and write naturally, in faithfulness to one's talent and against the grain of culture. But the effort to do so takes place within the conventionalized space of personally controlled and discursive reflection, so that it is crossed by an anxious self-scrutiny. \"Am I thinking and writing as it were beyond myself, out of the depths of the natural?\" one egocentrically and discursively wonders, or Wittgenstein wonders, in just the sort of tragic obsessiveness about his own imperfections that Mann saw in Werther. \"Working in philosophy... is really more a working on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.)\" (16e). \"No one _can_ speak the truth; if he has still not mastered himself. He _cannot_ speak it;\u2014but not because he is not clever enough yet. The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already _at home_ in it; not by someone who still lives in falsehood and reaches out from falsehood towards truth on just one occasion\" (35e). All or nothing; natural-supernatural, nonconventionalized, poetic truth and expressiveness or imitative, derivative, nonexistence; genius or suicide.\n\nDomination by this imperative produces the same complex of attitudes toward work and toward religion that we find in Werther. On the one hand, Wittgenstein idealizes ordinary manual work as something beautiful and honest, more honest than intellectual chatter: \"what is ordinary is here filled with significance\" (52e), if the manual work is done with respect and integrity. It is no accident, but rather deeply part of his anxious self-scrutiny and his attitudes toward culture and value, that Wittgenstein so often urged others to take up this kind of work. On the other hand, \"Genius is what makes us forget skill\" (43e). It is beyond the ordinary. So how can one express genius within the framework of the ordinary? How can one write poetically\u2014originally and yet in a way that draws on the common and is accessible to others? How can one wed autonomous selfhood to continuing sociality? \"I think I summed up my attitude toward philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a _poetic composition_.... I was thereby revealing myself as someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to do\" (24e).\n\nReligious faithfulness offers a paradigm of significant expressiveness, but it is a paradigm that in its traditional, institutionalized form is dead for us, shot through with the conventionality that expressiveness is to overcome. \"What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural\" (3e). What is needed is \"a light from above\" that comes to the individual soul, not religious institutions and ordinary religious training. \"Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.... And if the light from above is lacking, I can't in any case be more than clever\" (57e\u201358e). Religious belief cannot be something that is simply given and shared. It must rather be achieved through the dormant qualities of one's soul coming actively to take religious life as the vehicle of their expression, as providing the terms of deep significance. \"It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's a _belief_ , it's really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It's passionately seizing hold of _this_ interpretation\" (64e).\n\nAbove all, what Wittgenstein wants from religion, from work, from the guidance of nature, from his genius, but can never quite find, is full-blooded and continuing significance in the face of mere conventionality and cleverness: a new life. \"A confession has to be part of your new life\" (183). And if not a new life, then death: genius or suicide, or suicide as the creative act of voluntarily removing oneself from a cycle of unending self-defeat. In 1946, in the middle of remarks about music, thought, Shakespeare, God, heroism, and the difficulty of philosophy, there occurs in _Culture and Value_ , in quotation marks, the very last words of Werther to his correspondent Wilhelm: \"Lebt wohl!\"\n\nThe intensities of Wittgenstein's character have been well documented in the biographical literature. Yet one might argue that these intensities have little to do with his actual philosophical thinking and writing, or at least with what he chose to have published. After all, as he also wrote in _Culture and Value_ , \"My ideal is a certain coolness. A temple providing a setting for the passions without meddling with them\" (2e). Yet it would be striking were his official philosophical writing to be wholly uninformed by the otherwise deepest preoccupations of his character. Even in this remark, he presents _a certain coolness_ as an ideal, not as something that he has actually achieved, and he did note that he was \"someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to do\" (24e). Is _Philosophical Investigations_ in any sense _about_ the problem of the realization of talent against the grain of but always in relation to the affordances of culture and the ordinary, _about_ the problem of wedding autonomous selfhood to continuing sociality? That _Philosophical Investigations_ is about this, in detail, line by line, as well as being about the nature of meaning, understanding, the will, and so on, and about this _by_ being about these latter topics, is a main line of argument of my _Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism_. I cannot recapitulate the whole of that argument here. But I will offer a few brief pointers to it.\n\nIn section 125 of _Philosophical Investigations_ , we find that \"das philosophische Problem... ist... die b\u00fcrgerliche Stellung des Widerspruchs, oder seine Stellung in der b\u00fcrgerlichen Welt\"; in English, and appropriately, that \"the philosophical problem... is... the civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life.\" \"Our entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand\" (\u00a7125). This entanglement \"throws light on our concept of _meaning_ something\" (\u00a7125). What is it to be entangled in rules in civil life, in ordinary life, in the ordinary, civil _b\u00fcrgerlichen_ world? Not to \"know one's way about\" (\u00a7123) is not to know how to engage with this world, not to know how to bring one's talents and selfhood to authentic, nonderivative, and yet ratifiable expression within it. To ask \"what does this knowledge [of how to go on in applying a rule] consist in?\" (\u00a7148) is to ask what there is in me\u2014what talent, what locus of understanding, what source of mastery\u2014that enables me to go on and _how_ to bring this talent, locus, or source to apt expression. Something must be there in me. I can do something, and we are not in using language either machines or other animals. But what is it? And do I bring whatever it is to expression aptly? How? I seem caught between an anxiety that the only routes of expression are those already laid down in surrounding practice, that I contribute nothing, that I am ordinary, and hence nonexistent: call this the anxiety of expressibility, and an anxiety that I cannot express that whatever-it-is in the ordinary, that I am alone, and mad: call this the anxiety of inexpressibility. To be able to mean something, to understand something: these are the results of the mysterious engagement of spontaneity in me, the source of originality, with the routes of expression that are given in practice, as though a seed in me\u2014but one I can never identify or cultivate deliberately\u2014grew in relation to its environment. \"Each morning you have to break through the dead rubble afresh so as to reach the living warm seed. A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion\" (2e). It may well be that there is for the language user \"a special experience\" of understanding, but this special experience cannot be grasped and deliberately deployed independently of engagement with the affordances of culture. \"For us it is the _circumstances_ under which he had such an experience that justify him in saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on\" (\u00a7155). The always mysterious interaction of circumstances, that is, of the affordances of culture in providing routes of expression, with the powers of selfhood is something to be accepted, not explained in either a scientific or intellectualistic theory.\n\nWittgenstein too, like Goethe but unlike Werther, did not commit suicide. His last words, famously, were \"Tell them I've had a wonderful life.\" Like Goethe, he achieved through the act of writing, repeatedly and day to day, a kind of catharsis, _some_ distance or perspective on his anxieties as a subject and some sense of himself as having a social identity as a writer. Hence there is some point to thinking that the second voice of the _Investigations_ (if there are only two)\u2014the voice that rebukes the tendency to seek scientific or intellectualist explanations of our cognitive abilities and that recalls us instead to the ways of the ordinary\u2014 _is_ Wittgenstein's more mature voice. At the same time, however, the first voice\u2014the voice of temptation and of intensities of perfect explanation and attunement\u2014is his too, a voice he cannot quite give up, much as Goethe in his maturity would not give up intensities of infatuation and would still also identify himself with such intensities in Edward in _Elective Affinities_. The mature voice of the ordinary, the voice of survival, comes to the fore and is allowed the last word within a section, but always in continuing critical engagement with the voice of perfectly grounded and explained attunement, the voice of temptation.\n\nWittgenstein knew all this about himself. In 1931, in one of the remarks of _Culture and Value_ , he wrote: \"The delight I take in my thoughts is delight in my own strange life. Is this joy of living?\" (22e). It is hard to tell. There is, once again, an all too present threat of narcissism in self-delight in thinking, in 1931 as in 1774. But it is also self-defeating simply to accommodate to the ordinary as it stands, eschewing thinking about better possibilities of life. By 1931, the idea that joy might be found in the activity of thinking one's own thoughts appears more a modernist or late romantic question in the face of increasing social fractures than as a first-generation romantic prayer and conjecture. If human being is the kind of being that can call its own being into question, that can think about life otherwise, exactly how it is to do this and with what prospects of fuller common life are, in the twentieth century, far from clear. To ask this question, and to write out this asking, again and again, is one powerful, anxious modernist face of the continued courting of responsiveness and responsibility, of the continued courting of the life of a subject.\n4.\n\nAttention, Expressive Power, and Interest in Life\n\n_Wordsworth's \"Tintern Abbey\"_\n\nI\n\nIn the first sentence of section 1 of _The Birth of Tragedy_ , Nietzsche urges us to think about art in relation to life in a new way: \"We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics, once we perceive not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of vision, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the _Apollinian_ and _Dionysian_ duality\u2014just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations.\" This claim forces us to ask two sets of questions.\n\n(1) What is the vision of the development of art as bound up with this duality opposed to? That is, what other way of looking at art in relation to life are we being asked to give up? And how is what we are to see anew\u2014the continuous development of art\u2014like the development of humanity through procreation? The answers to these questions must involve the thought that the development of art does not come to an end just as the development of the human species does not come to an end: both developments are continuing and embodied in essentially varying particulars. This fact makes otiose, then, the idea that the nature of art could be adequately and usefully described in a definition that specifies necessary and sufficient conditions to which the ideal work fully conforms, for no ideal, perfect work is possible, any more than a single ideal human being is. If no ideal work is possible, then there will always be imperfections in any particular work and questions about exactly how and how well it approximates the ideal. An ideal definition will be insufficient to settle such questions, and judgment and discernment will be called for. Just as women and men with their differences and peculiarities\u2014and not any perfect single human being\u2014produce further women and men with their differences and peculiarities, so works of art are produced by temporary couplings of two forces in us\u2014the Apollinian and the Dionysian\u2014that are never fully integrated and balanced to form a single perfect whole. To _see_ this fate\u2014a continuing failure to achieve the ideal and to overcome all difference, peculiarity, and opposition\u2014 _in_ every work of art is then to be weaned from the pursuit of a standing philosophical _logos_ or definition: _that_ pursuit functions only to deny the movement of life. When Plato, for example, assigned poetry \"the rank of _ancilla_ \" in relation to philosophy and its definitions, favoring only the \"enhanced Aesopian fable\" with a moral amenable to rational justification, he thereby shied away from both the genuine complex and disturbing powers of art and the genuine turbulence of life. With Plato, Nietzsche tells us, \"the Apollinian tendency has withdrawn into the cocoon of logical schematism\" and so given up on life, transformation, and development. Nietzsche, in contrast, is asking us to look the ongoing turbulence of life full in the face: to _see_ it _at work in_ every work of art and every human life.\n\n(2) But then how is a genuinely successful work of art possible at all? It must involve a creative coupling of the Apollinian and Dionysian forces or tendencies in us that figure in artistic making, yet success in this coupling is not assessable according to any fixed ideal or conceptual measuring stick. The various products and values that are, according to Nietzsche, typical of each of these tendencies can be roughly set out as follows:\n\nAPOLLINIAN | DIONYSIAN\n\n---|---\n\nDreams | Intoxications\n\nCreated supplement to life | Chaotic essence of life\n\nSculpture | Music\n\nForm-order | Passion, drive, content\n\nEnjoyable illusions | Fusion in \"feeling-with\"\n\nComposure-trance-absorption | _Ekstasis_\n\nCulture, civilization | Nature\n\nUpholding of _principium individuationis_ | Collapse of _principium individuationis_\n\nIn _The Will to Power_ , Nietzsche describes these tendencies further and repeats the analogy between artistic production and sexual reproduction.\n\nThe word \"Dionysian\" means: an urge to unity, a reaching out beyond personality, the everyday, society, reality, across the abyss of transitoriness: a passionate overflowing into darker, fuller, more floating states...\n\nThe word \"Apollinian\" means: the urge to perfect self-sufficiency, to the typical \"individual,\" to all that simplifies, distinguishes, makes strong, clear, unambiguous, typical: freedom under law.\n\nThe further development of art is necessarily tied to these two natural artistic powers as the further development of man is to that between the sexes. Plenitude of power and moderation.\n\nThese powers must then be jointly expressed in the successful work. This expression must involve something other than either simple fusion, which would leave these powers unrecognizable in their individuality and hence unexpressed, and simple juxtaposition, in which there would be no coupling, no productive interrelation. But then how is success in the joint expression of these powers possible at all?\n\nNietzsche offers an answer not in the form of a definition or principle but in the invocation of an example\u2014an example that remains central for him throughout his subsequent career\u2014at the end of the first paragraph of _The Birth of Tragedy_ : \"this coupling ultimately generated an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art\u2014Attic tragedy.\" So how, then, did Attic tragedy succeed in expressing these forces in an exemplary way, albeit one that is not successfully imitable according to a rule? The key to answering this question lies in seeing that the Attic Greeks courageously accepted the chaotic onwardness of meaningless, self-proliferating biohistorical life and then formed coherent, recognizable, individual lives anyway. \"The profound Hellene\"\u2014both certain central figures in Greek tragedies and the members of chorus and audience who see and respond to their actions\u2014\"uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering, comforts himself, having looked boldly right into the terrible destructiveness of so-called world history as well as the cruelty of nature.\"\n\nIn accepting clearly the destructiveness and cruelty of human life in nature and history, the Hellene resembles Hamlet and, in turn, us\u2014we for whom the consolations of a superintending logos or Providence story are gone.\n\nThe Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, and they have _gained knowledge_ , and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint.... An insight into the horrible truth outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and the Dionysian man.\n\nFor one who bears such an insight, it is unclear what, if anything, is to be done, in any way that matters. \"Now no comfort avails any more; longing transcends a world after death, even the gods; existence is negated along with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond. Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence.\"\n\nAnd yet, somehow, the Hellene nonetheless \"comforts himself.\" This comfort is achieved in two distinct ways. \"The comic\" enables \"the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity.\" That is, there is a kind of purging of nausea in the Dionysian self-abandonment of laughter. And, second, there is \"the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible.\" This artistic taming happens through the setting up of a fiction within which it is possible for a life within the chaos of nature nonetheless to take on coherent form. \"The Greek built up the scaffolding of a fictitious _natural state_ and on it placed fictitious _natural beings_.\" The sublimity that attaches to these fictitious natural beings\u2014the protagonists of tragic drama\u2014is that they stand out in their coherence of personality, diction, thought, and action against the chaos of nature. Their lives have form. The imposition of artificial emplotment on and for these fictitious natural beings in this fictitious natural state requires the dramatist to \"dispense from the beginning with a painstaking portrayal of reality,\" with all its meaningless incidents. What is presented is rather an account of how a protagonist intelligibly moves toward his fate in his circumstances, with \"probability or necessity,\" as Aristotle says. The _hexis_ , or character, of the protagonist, with its one-sidedness ( _hamartia_ ) or excess of virtue that is ill-fit to the circumstances of action, intelligibly brings it about that a reversal ( _peripeteia_ ) occurs, accompanied with recognition ( _anagnoresis_ ) by the protagonist, the chorus, and the spectators of the intelligibility of the action. Yet though it is a fiction, this world in which protagonists coherently have characters and reach their fates intelligibly \"is no arbitrary world placed by whim between heaven and earth; rather it is a world with the same reality and credibility that Olympus with its inhabitants possessed for the believing Hellene.\" This world is set up \"for [the] chorus\" and for the audience whose responses it shapes and models. In this world, chorus and audience see that a character\u2014a protagonist with a _hexis_ or unified ensemble of powers of thought, reasoning, expression, and action\u2014can impress that _hexis_ on the world by expressing it in intelligible action, however ill-starred the outcome. In this way, the protagonist \"lives anyway\" for the chorus and audience, despite the meaningless of life \"in itself\" in nature and history \"in themselves.\" Antigone and Oedipus, and Hamlet and Lear, are figures of sublime accomplishment, Nietzsche is arguing, in standing out for us intelligibly from the chaos of life in the coherence and power of their thought, diction, and action. They have lived as subjects of their lives, experiences, and actions rather than as mere things, in a way that is both exemplary and comforting for us.\n\nII\n\nOn the surface, Wordsworth's tone is far more optimistic than Nietzsche's. The universe itself, he writes, \"moves with light and life informed, \/ Actual, divine, and true,\" and we may find Paradise to be \"A simple produce of the common day.\" Yet such displays of felt metaphysical confidence are never either self-standing or stable. They are surrounded by narratives that describe recurrent movements through despair and recovery, and they are strongly qualified by being cast in the subjunctive mood or as expressions of hopes about future reception. Wordsworth typically _conjectures at a moment_ both that he has so experienced nature and the human world in it and that others _may_ experience them similarly, thus sanctifying his prophetic authority in matters of culture and value. His major works conclude more typically with an expression of a hard won, prayerful hope that his vision will or may be taken up than with a confident pronouncement that that vision is true and proven. Put otherwise, his major poems are more records of experiences of thinking and feeling through which poetic identity and authority are _temporarily_ achieved than they are pieces of straight metaphysical philosophy.\n\nThe underlying problem that motivates Wordsworth's continual swervings among expression of feeling, metaphysical pronouncement, conjectures about reception, and recurrent hesitancy and doubt is that of achieving life as a fully responsive and responsible human subject. Wordsworth seeks both to become a locus of feeling coupled with apt understanding and to find that achievement of fullness of subjectivity certified by others. Absent such certification, the achievement itself is open to doubt. For Wordsworth, the very idea that he has lived or can live _as a subject_ is always threatening to falter, most memorably in the image of himself as one \"Unprofitably traveling toward the grave, \/ Like a false steward who hath much received \/ And renders nothing back\" that launches the _Prelude_ on its course of self-interrogation. When Wordsworth does at certain moments achieve a measure of confidence in his life and powers as a subject, he does so much more in the manner of the protagonists of tragic drama as Nietzsche understood them than in the manner of a theoretical philosopher. He manages, that is, recovery of himself _in time_ through achieving a stably and powerfully enough formed manner of thought, expression, and (writerly) action, at least for a moment, in the face of the chaos of life, rather than simply reverting to metaphysical pantheism or any other epistemically well-founded doctrine or doxa. Fullness of responsiveness and responsibility are won, essentially at a moment, plausibly and in an exemplary way, thus overcoming passivity, drift, and despair for a time.\n\nThat there is a threat to the existence of life as a subject\u2014a threat that dominates a great deal of contemporary life, but a threat that may be answered by the powers of poetry (not theoretical philosophy)\u2014is the chief argument of the \"Preface\" to _Lyrical Ballads_. This argument is inaugurated as Wordsworth announces that \"the principal object... proposed in these poems\" is \"above all, to make these incidents [and situations from common life] interesting,\" thus implying that common life is not interesting as it stands: we are dead to it and it to us. This implication is unpacked in the further thought that \"a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor\" (449). Without the exercise of discriminating powers issuing in voluntary exertion\u2014without fullness of responsiveness and responsibility\u2014there is only more or less animal passivity in life, as one is buffeted about by circumstance, often compelled addictively to try to stop the pain of life by succumbing to a \"degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation\" (449). One fails to lead the life of an active subject moved by genuine interest.\n\nYet there is no hope that pure reasoning can save us. Wordsworth specifically eschews \"the selfish and foolish hope of _reasoning_ [the Reader] into approbation of these particular poems\" insofar as it is not possible \"to give a full account of the present state of public taste in this country, and to determine how far this taste is healthy or depraved\" (445). That is to say, there is no account vouchsafed to us by reason or by anything else that determines what any ideal human life must be like, which account could serve as a standing measure of present life and taste. For that, we would need to know \"in what manner language and the human mind act and re-act on each other\" (446) in general and how \"society\" in its \"revolutions\" might play out these interactions well or badly. Such knowledge of standing conditions that would determine what counts as an ideal human life, fitly expressing distinctively human powers, is unavailable. We are too finite for that, with our reflections on our condition too shaped by our specific, sectarian particulars of personal and social history and place. Embodiment and the exercise of intelligence within it has, always, its localities.\n\nTo undertake to make the scenes and incidents of common life interesting but without any external measure of interest is then to aim to do the work of animation from within the having of ordinary experience. As Stanley Cavell puts it,\n\nWhat the words \"make interesting\" say is that poetry is to make something happen\u2014in a certain way\u2014to the one to whom it speaks; something inside, if you like. That what is to happen to that one is that he or she is to become interested in something [is]... to perceive us as [at present] uninterested, in a condition of boredom, which [is regarded as], among other things, a sign of intellectual suicide.\n\nOne must begin _from_ the experience of common scenes and incidents, together with attendant thoughts and feelings. Then _within_ courses of thoughts and feelings that are often clich\u00e9d, inattentive, or unanimated, one must _discover_ or _uncover_ those that are aptly attentive to the subject matter, so that one becomes animated as a subject in dwelling in just these aptly attentive thoughts and feelings. In this way one might hope, without an external standard, to \"discover what is really important to men\" so that \"the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified\" (448). The poet here acts as a kind of bootstrapping device for the achievement of animation from within ordinary experience that is otherwise dead, unattended to, and insignificant for us. It is for this reason that \"the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling\" (448). The proper work of poetry is not simply the depictive presentation of a subject matter but rather the working through of feeling in relation to a subject, so that genuineness of feeling is achieved. The poet here arrives at the aptness and fullness of response that must animate the life of a subject, if the subject is to find anything interesting at all. The poet \"considers [man] as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding every where objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment\" (455). Here the enjoyment is no simple wash of sensory pleasure; it is rather a lingering in feeling as apt to the object of attention. Even when the scene attended to is horrible, one may have the sense that here, apart from the ordinary rush of hectic and inattentive life in which we are mostly caught up, one is feeling and responding fully and aptly, as an active subject, not a thing.\n\nIn this work of the animation of the life of a subject, the use of the self is crucial. Wordsworth notes that the poet's \"own feelings are his stay and support; and, if he set them aside in one instance, he may be induced to repeat this act till his mind shall lose all confidence in itself and become utterly debilitated\" (461\u2013462). There is nothing to go on in beginning to aim at genuineness of feeling other than feeling as it already stands; nothing to go on to aim at fullness of life as a subject other than that life as it already exists, debilitated as it may be. One must find confidence in one's feelings from within them, even if they are at first cloudy and confused. Wordsworth tells us that he has \"at all times endeavoured to look steadily at [his] subject\" (450), where this effort at steadiness of looking includes a focus not only on the scene or incident at hand but also on himself as either debilitated or apt in his own course of feeling. The poet must ask himself: do my feeling and attention wander off into unsteadiness, absentmindedness, or unresponsive clich\u00e9, in relation either to the scene that initiates reflection or to the work of reflection on it? Am I, the poet asks, genuinely paying attention to the scene and to the work of reflection, in aptness of both thought and feeling? If, as may sometimes happen, the answer is yes, then the poet will be \"a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him\" (453).\n\nThere is a considerable inherent risk of narcissism or of excessive self-satisfaction in taking upon oneself the role of the poet as a figure of exemplarity in thought and feeling. One might become _too_ pleased too quickly in one's aptness of thought and feeling. This inherent risk is an aspect of the internalization of quest romance, of finding oneself to bear a problem of having to find routes of significant action from within one's own resources rather than from culture as it stands. This problem becomes increasingly pressing and difficult throughout the development of modernity, as diversity increases and fewer feelings and commitments are shared, absent willed fundamentalism.\n\nFor Wordsworth, awareness of the risk of narcissism continually haunts the work of the stabilization of attention and the work of writing. Doubts about whether one is genuinely thinking and feeling _as a subject_ are inherent to the activity of seeking exemplarity in thought, feeling, and their expression. But if this risk is overcome and exemplarity is achieved, then the poet may arrive at \"truth... carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal\" (454). No other tribunal of aptness of feeling will serve. Instinct, tradition, fixities of form and craft, and proofs constructed by reason\u2014these are all either unavailable or impotent to sanction the work of the achievement of aptness and genuineness of feeling and its expression.\n\nWithout this work\u2014if we shy from it in anxiety, or under the conditions of modern economic life, or in simple distractedness of mind, or in reversion to what is comfortable enough as we all mostly do much of the time\u2014subjects do not exist _as subjects_ , as those who take _an interest in_ their own experiences. They fail to live according to \"the grand elementary principle of pleasure [in apt, genuine, and stable feeling], by which [man] knows, and feels, and lives, and moves\" (455). As Wordsworth notes, no advances in science will make this work irrelevant. \"If the labours of Men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present\" (456). The work of the animation of life for us as subjects, the work of finding felt significance in scenes and incidents of common life, will continue to be necessary, no matter how the scenes and incidents of life themselves may change.\n\nIn this conception then, \"the calling of poetry,\" as Cavell puts it, \"is to give the world back, to bring it back, as to life.\" The perception of the continuing need for this calling can be set out in a rough argument schema as follows:\n\n(1) A person lives as a subject in a world of significance if and only if that person lives with attentive wholeheartedness, felt interest, and commitment in relation to objects of common experience.\n\n(2) Mostly we do not live with attentive wholeheartedness, felt interest, and commitment in relation to objects of common experience.\n\nTherefore\n\n(3) Mostly we do not live as subjects in a world of significance.\n\nOne can of course reject the first premise. One might, in particular, wonder what sense can be made of the phrase \"lives as a subject.\" Isn't it enough for that just to live\u2014to be biologically alive\u2014and simply to be a subject, that is, simply, say, to speak a language and to be aware of oneself as speaking it? Why should attentive wholeheartedness, felt interest, and commitment in relation to objects of common experience matter ontologically, as it were?\n\nWhen, however, one is in the grip of the truth of the second premise, then the first premise seems all but inescapable, or at least Wordsworth in his thoughts about poetry registers a sense that it is for him inescapable. The issue is less naturalistically ontological than it is ethically ontological. We fail to exercise, or to exercise fully, defining powers that we possess and that we ought to exercise. Something is wrong with our present life, and that is just what premise 2 says in a specific way. When the thought that something in life is wrong is present for us, coupled with the thought that we can and should do better\u2014should do something to remedy that wrong\u2014then we are very close to accepting premise 1 as the expression of an ethical demand that (according to premise 2) we are failing to meet. The conclusion that we have arrived at a kind of ethical death-in-life is then itself all but inescapable. Mostly we do not live as subjects in a world of significance.\n\nPoetry then seeks to overcome this conclusion by undertaking to reanimate our wholeheartedness, interest, and commitment in our lives and world from within the broken, half-hearted feelings we already have. No acquisition simply of information about the world will serve, for what is sought is significance in feeling, not an addition to a collection of facts. Nor will any life-denying escape from the world, say to a heaven of Platonic forms, avail us in coming to terms with this life. Instead, what Cavell more or less terms getting the hang of a posture\u2014perhaps from reflection on feeling as it stands, perhaps also from picking up a precursor's routes of interest and expression\u2014is what is called for. \"You never know when someone will learn the posture, as for themselves, that will make sense of a field of movement, it may be writing, or dancing, or passing a ball, or sitting at a keyboard, or free associating. [A] sense of paradox expresses our not understanding how such learning happens.\"\n\nWhat is needed, then, is what Wordsworth cryptically calls the ability, possessed most typically by rural men, to \"communicate with the best objects\" (447). To communicate _with_ objects (including persons and events) is not to communicate _about_ them to others. It is rather to arrive at a communion or intimacy with them, or a finding in feeling that one shares with them a life of significance. Only through such communion in meaningfulness is the life of a subject stabilized in the exercise of human powers.\n\nDavid Wellbery has characterized this arrival at stabilization of the life of a subject as \"the specular moment\": \"a perfect (and wordless) reciprocity between two selves\" or between a subject and a scene, object, or incident experienced as self-like. Such a wordless reciprocity is required to lift one out of circuits of decayed conventionality, exemplified in uses of language that are thoughtless, inattentive, or unfelt. Despite their saving graces, such specular moments are, Wellbery suggests, both sociohistorically contingent and ultimately uncapturable. The need for and reversion to such moments arises typically or at least with special intensity in modernity, when other sources of stabilization are lacking, and typically or with special intensity for male subjects, caught up in routines of conventionalized work that they find meaningless and sealed off from an intimacy with nature that is stereotypically coded as feminine. Both women and nature are hence frequently forced to function as props for the male pursuit of the specular moment that is to stabilize anxious male selfhood. Even more troubling is the fact that specular moments themselves are transitory and subject to dispersion as soon as they become objects of explicit discursive awareness. To attend _to_ them and to try to articulate their significance is to destroy them. As Wellbery puts it, \"to render the specular moment in language is to submit it to an articulatory dismemberment and temporal deferral that fracture its essential unity.\"\n\nAs a result, there is no possibility of arriving at a specular moment that is lasting, that possesses explicit, articulated significance, and that is innocent of a self-centered use of its object. But then there is no stabilization of the life of a subject without such moments either. The best, therefore, that one can do in seeking to certify that one is a (more) fully human subject as a locus of apt feeling, attention, and reflective-discursive awareness is to move through or in and out of such moments. A narrative of such movements will trace, always, an itinerary of both achievement and loss. The subject is undermined by temporality, discursiveness, and self-centeredness in the very moment of arrival at an evanescent stability and power. Any teachings that may be derived from such a moment will be conjectural and subject to immediate doubt. Yet there is, again, no other route to the perfection and stabilization of felt responsiveness to life out of conditions of empty materiality and ossified conventionality in which distinctively human powers are mostly betrayed.\n\nWordsworth, somehow, knows all this. His moments of strongest self-stabilization as a distinctive and exemplary human subject, apt in responsiveness to life and in thus achieving the life of a subject, are at the same time immediately subjected to doubt, and his itinerary of self-constitution fails to reach a fully stable end. One can hear a distinctive, honest, Wordsworthian hesitation even in the moments of most forceful conclusion. In the _Prelude_ , Wordsworth announces that he and Coleridge will be\n\nRich in true happiness if allowed to be\n\nFaithful alike in forwarding a day\n\nOf firmer trust, joint labourers in the work\n\n(Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe)\n\nOf their deliverance, surely yet to come.\n\n\" _If_ allowed to be faithful... _should_ Providence such grace to us vouchsafe\"\u2014it may not happen; the ways of the world as they stand may be too strong. Though the deliverance of humanity is \"surely yet to come,\" the \"surely\" hints at an effort here too at self-reassurance. It may not come: Wordsworth did not write \"Of their happy deliverance yet to come,\" which would scan about as well. In the \"Preface,\" Wordsworth tells us that when he thinks about the ability of his and Coleridge's poetic writing to have any significant effect under the present degraded conditions of life,\n\nI should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy, had I not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible powers of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it, which are equally inherent and indestructible; and were there not added to this impression a belief, that the time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed, by men of greater powers, and with far more distinguished success.\n\n(449)\n\nFor all the confidence that it expresses, this passage also says that melancholy may not be dishonorable. The only blocks against it are certain impressions, but where are they to be found, how lasting can they be, and what joint work will they support, under present conditions? What if the work of attention and feeling that these poems invite is not in fact taken up by others?\n\nYet Wordsworth does not embrace melancholy, nor does he simply acquiesce in present conditions. Instead he goes on in the endless and endlessly self-scrutinizing work of pursuing life-enabling specular moments, articulating them (and thus betraying them), and coming to terms with human life in time, with all its movements of both self-stabilization and self-undoing.\n\nDavid Miall has usefully called attention to the difference between typical locodescriptive poetry of the picturesque and Wordsworth's writing about his experience of nature. Where locodescriptive poetry focuses on what is seen, Wordsworth in contrast distinctively describes not so much what he sees as himself in the process of seeing. Miall develops this point by commenting on a fragment from Wordsworth's Alfoxden Notebook.\n\nTo gaze\n\nOn that green hill and on those scattered trees\n\nAnd feel a pleasant consciousness of life\n\nIn the [?impression] of that loveliness\n\nUntill the sweet sensation called the mind\n\nInto itself by image from without\n\nUnvisited: and all her reflex powers\n\nWrapp'd in a still dream forgetfulness\n\nI lived without the knowledge that I lived\n\nThen by those beauteous forms brought back again\n\nTo lose myself again as if my life\n\nDid ebb & flow with a strange mystery.\n\nAs Miall notes, traditional readings of Wordsworth would focus here only on the moment of restoration, on how \"the sweet sensation\" of the natural scene \"called the mind into itself.\" More recent New Historicist readings would argue that \"the vision of unmediated benefit from Nature that the poem famously provides is, in this view, only a screen on which Wordsworth projects his anxieties.\" But Miall calls our attention instead to the process, jointly of attention and of composition (of the poem and of the human subject), on display here. Wordsworth knows, and says, that his life \"did ebb & flow with a strange mystery.\" Moments of (recuperative) self-loss are crossed with moments of (discursive) self-awareness; the movement between these moments is all.\n\nPerhaps Stanley Cavell had something like this fact about Wordsworth (and Coleridge and Emerson and Thoreau) in mind when he remarked that \"Romantics are brave in noting the possibility... of what you might call death-in-life. My favorite romantics are the ones (I think the bravest ones) who do not attempt to escape these conditions by taking revenge on existence. But this means willing to continue to be born, to be natal, hence mortal.\" \"To continue to be born\" means here to eschew fundamentalisms involving the submission of the self to something apart from earthly life (Platonic forms or sacred texts, as may be) but also to eschew mere acquiescence and accommodation to a life of conventionalized getting and spending. Instead, movement both into and out of (Apollinian) moments of articulation and (Dionysian) moments of recuperative self-undoing is what is proper to the life of subject.\n\nIII\n\nNo matter what their theoretical desirability as both conditions of and contributions to life, whether such movements are possible\u2014whether romantic bravery is possible\u2014and what sort of closure or conclusiveness (without denying temporality) such movements might achieve are no small questions. That such movements are possible, and that measures of human closure and composure are available, within time and without denying life, are, I suggest, the central showings of \"Tintern Abbey.\" Rather than either a document that (only, merely) traces the saving influence of nature or that (only, merely) shows a consciousness always in anxiety about its reception and unable to compose itself, \"Tintern Abbey\" shows a consciousness achieving a measure of composure in time, without intellectual certainties. It points to and exemplifies a path between dogmatism and nomadism, intellectual and moral alike. It can help us to hear \"Tintern Abbey\"'s showings if we divide its progress into eight rough stages of subject matter (thought) and attitude.\n\n(1) \"Five years have past; five summers, with the length \/ Of five long winters!\" (1\u20132) [lines 1\u201322]. With these opening lines, the question of the meaning of life in time is raised. The apposition of the more subjective \"five summers, with the length of five long winters!\" (with subjectivity registered in both the felt succession of the seasons and in the sense that the winters have been long) to the more objective \"five years\" asks, already, what has the passing of these years meant in the life of a subject, in my life? The \"and again I hear\" that immediately follows introduces explicitly the I who is the subject of these reflections, an I that is wondering what its experience has meant. It has been suggested that the underlying subject and cause of this experience of questioning the meaning of some times of one's life are Wordsworth's guilt and anxiety over his evasion of the English military draft and over his affair and child with Annette Vallon. There may be some truth in this suggestion. The complex act of writing \"Tintern Abbey\" may well have occasioning circumstances that are rooted in the poet's past and that lie well outside the present scene alone. But whatever the occasioning circumstances may be, there is for us a question about whether the poem does any productive work in questioning the meaning of life in time. Any life will contain enough missteps and occasions for guilt and regret to prompt the raising of this question at some point. When one is in the grip of the thought that one is mostly living in half-heartedness and so failing to live as a full subject, then the question will be both natural and forward looking. What might I, or we, do in order to live with more wholeheartedness? Given the naturalness of this question at some point in any human life, it may repay our efforts if we attend to the work of the poem in its attempts to come to terms with it, without reversion to fundamentalism and without escapism. Perhaps these attempts are not even wholly successful. But we shall scarcely be able to see that before we engage with the work that the poem undertakes.\n\nIt has also been suggested that the move into the register of subjectivity, into the questioning of the meaning of a single subject's experience, more generally enacts a flight from the political. This suggestion too may well bear some truth. But whether it does depends in large measure on what sort of politics we have in mind. Here we should not shrink from engaging with \"Tintern Abbey\"'s effort to find or found its own politics, that is, its own vision of a fuller, more human life in practice and in time. That vision does not have the shape of urging us toward either electoral politics or class struggle. But it is surely in part a vision of a better, more human polis. The topic, after all, is what it would be to lead the life of a subject, with others, under present conditions and in time.\n\nTo say \"and again I hear these waters\" after \"five summers, with the length \/ Of five long winters\" is to raise the question of repetition. Are we fated to it? And what does it mean that one finds oneself again stopped or halted in a place, in a moment of reflection? That death is all but explicitly on the poet's mind as he raises the question of the significance of life is suggested in the thought that \"The day is come when I again repose \/ Here, under this dark sycamore\" (9\u201310). \"Repose\" is stronger, more suggestive of permanence, than \"recline,\" and \"dark\" suggests that one is in an enduring shade. To repose under this dark sycamore is almost to be under the ground. Though the poet goes on immediately to note that he views the present scene (and so is not dead, or not yet), nonetheless the thought that the day of a final repose will come is somewhere active in his consciousness of his place in relation to the scene before him. The thought of death is further echoed in the line \"The Hermit sits alone\" that, set apart by a line break, concludes this subject. With this Hermit, already a creature of the poet's imagination, not of perception alone, and with his isolation\u2014with his lack of audience and companions, and so perhaps his insignificance\u2014the poet may be taken to feel more than a little identification. With such apartness, what life? What doth life in time avail?\n\nConsciousness of temporality is then further registered, both semantically and in internal citation, in the two instances of \"Once again\" (4, 14) that introduce the sentences surrounding the thought about repose. What has happened in the five years before these once agains, and what, if anything, does what has happened mean? What has filled and what should fill the passing of time? In raising this question, the poet does not turn for either knowledge or salvation to any exterior entities. Instead, as Miall cannily argues, he observes himself observing, and he invites us into his own jointly perceptive and apperceptive processes of consciousness of the present scene. In particular, in commenting on the phrase \"hedgerows, hardly hedgerows\" (15), Miall notes that\n\nin the order of his phrases he recreates the _process_ of observation: conventional, or schematic expectation would first look for hedgerows and find them; yet, a second glance\u2014\"hardly hedgerows\"\u2014would show the hedges in fact to be running wild. These lines thus invite the reader to replicate Wordsworth's own process of observation, a feature of several other elements in the opening paragraph. An object (\"plots of cottage ground\"; \"pastoral farms\") is first named, as an objective component of the scene, or what is to be expected in such a location (perhaps what was remembered from 1793); but it is then qualified in ways that suggest a second more careful focus on the actual details before him.\n\nThe focus then is on how apperceptive awareness\u2014awareness of oneself as observing and thinking in relation to this scene\u2014may develop itself and on what assurances of possibilities of meaningfulness it may discover. This is, as Miall further notes, in strong contrast to typical locodescriptive poetry that takes as its central subject the scene itself rather than the poet's awareness of his processes of awareness of the scene.\n\n(2) \"Such, perhaps, \/ As have no slight or trivial influence...\" (31\u20132) [22\u201349]. Lines 22\u201349 have seemed to many readers to be one of two grand metaphysical centers of the poem. (The other is lines 85\u2013111.) Within these lines the poet all but asserts that he has seen \"into the life of things\" (49) in such a way that \"the heavy and the weary weight \/ Of all this unintelligible world, \/ Is lightened\" (39\u201341). Yet it is crucial that the poet does not in fact simply assert these claims. The passage begins with the claim that he has in the past at times remembered these forms, first experienced five years ago. His characterization of the feelings he has had as a result of these rememberings is strongly qualified. Some of them may be \"unremembered\" (31)\u2014an acknowledgment that the report of feelings had in the past may be as much present construction (perhaps driven by need and anxiety) as recovery of an actual past. Such feelings \"perhaps\" have \"no slight or trivial influence\" on our lives, but then perhaps their influence is only slight and trivial. To what \"little, nameless, unremembered acts \/ Of kindness and of love\" (34\u201335) have they led, and in what way? The poet arrives at no definite account in answer to this question, and his formulation concedes its relevance\u2014to him and to us. How can and should a life be constructed on the basis of feelings that may be unremembered and perhaps of slight influence? While there is a move _toward_ the redemption of life in time in the mention of these feelings and their influences, that move is considerably less than definite and conclusive. The gift of insight \"into the life of things\" provided by these feelings is also conjectural. \"Nor less, I trust, \/ To them I may have owed another gift, \/ Of aspect more sublime\" (35\u201337)\u2014\"trust\" not \"say,\" \"may\" not \"thus.\" Has this gift actually come, and if so, through what processes? With such gifts of such a provenance, what salvation? The very movement toward saving certainties remains a lingering in uncertainties. Apperceptive awareness of oneself as thinking and feeling (rather than full immersion in sense-experience without reflection) includes, always, the thought that one is in part constructing the experience, not simply taking in any salvific given. And with awareness of constructedness comes present doubt. Or, at any rate, all this\u2014perception plus conjecture plus intimately present doubt, in sharp contrast to simple intake and assertion\u2014lies within the process of this poetic subject's attendings.\n\n(3) \"If this \/ Be but a vain belief...\" (49\u201350) [lines 49\u201365]. Given the nature of the doubts expressed in the second section, \"vain\" has here the force of both \"empty\" and \"ego-centered\": perhaps the beliefs about the gifts presented by past feeling are empty _because_ merely constructed in fantasy by a needy subject. \"The fretful stir \/ Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, \/ Have hung upon the beatings of my heart\" (52\u201354). The feelings that result may be compensatory but vain reactions to this stir and fever; they may be empty, because untrustworthy to others, and so to oneself, in the face of the ways of the world. That there is a risk of escapism in turning to them is part of the poet's own movement of thought. Human powers are not exercised amid the stir unprofitable of the world\u2014mostly we do not lead the lives of subjects in a world of significance\u2014and if not there, then where might they be? The twice pronounced \"How oft(en)\" (50, 57) \"have I turned to thee, \/ O sylvan Wye\" (55\u201356) is _both_ an exclamation of gratitude to the Wye for being restoratively there to turn to _and_ a genuine question: how often have I forgotten the Wye? How often have I been myself caught up in the ways of the world? There is, after all, not much chance of a life with people apart from these ways. A life wholly apart would itself be the life of a Hermit, itself too a life of all but death, without reciprocity, intimacy, or recognition, though perhaps with some rough ontological power of persistence and survival, whatever the ways of the world may be. If \"the picture of the mind revives again\" (61) \"with pleasing thoughts \/ That in this moment there is life and food \/ For future years\" (63\u201365), there remains nonetheless a question about how much this food will be genuinely present and available. It has not, not always, been present in the past, as the world has had its ways, and the deliverances of feeling may, again, be vain. So \"here I stand\" (62). Is my life justified: before myself, before others, or before God? What is the meaning of life in time? What exercises of what human powers might lend significance to a life in time? There is survival, to be sure: \"here I stand\" again, after \"five years have passed,\" so that whatever death-in-life I have succumbed to, that succumbing has not been complete. There remain in me, at least latently, human powers of feeling and reflection that might issue in expressive action, and those powers are to some extent activated by the present scene: hence the thought that life and food for future years are to be found in them. Animation of and within the life of a subject is felt to be possible. But whither doth it point? A specular moment of recovery, submitted to apperceptive reflection and to expression in language, is immediately undone by these submissions. And they are unavoidable. Wordsworth at his strongest characteristically mixes a sense of survival and restoration with doubt and uncertainty, and this standing here with pleasing thoughts that may yet be vain and evanescent (\"how oft?\") shows Wordsworth at his strongest.\n\n(4) \"And so I dare to hope...\" (65) [lines 65\u201385]. Given his unresolved uncertainties, the poet's \"dare to hope\" is more apt than \"claim to know.\" Daring and hope indicate willed resolution backed by nothing more than the fact of survival as a subject who does _not_ know the best exercises of his human powers but has survived anyway. The object of the infinitive \"hope\" is not specified, unless we read the \"so\" as \"in this manner\" or \"thusly\" (rather than \"therefore\"), so that it refers back to the \"there is life and food \/ For future years\" of lines 64\u201365. \"To dare to hope\" is, again, far from a confident assertion of a truth. The poet dares to hope, uncertainly, that he stands, in a moment and with pleasing thoughts, but these deliverances of apperception are themselves less than apodictic. In this resolution to hope there may be some survival of a subject, but a subject whose substantial nature remains unknown to him as any kind of stable thing. Nor does he know what is commanded of him by his nature as a subject, what a fit life for a human subject would be. At best, the stance is that of book 2 of the _Prelude_ : \"I was left alone \/ Seeking the visible world, nor knowing why. \/ The props of my affections were removed, \/ And yet the building stood, as if sustained \/ By its own spirit!\" Neither parent nor nature nor the visible world is present to provide props or reassuring grounds for affections. Hence the affections\u2014the commitments and passions that motivate action\u2014may be called into question. Their source and their value remain mysterious. And the subject stands only \"as if sustained \/ By its own spirit!\" Given the predominant effort to find or found a better standing for the subject, one may well wonder how much sustenance, how much food for future years, is really to be found in this survival.\n\nEven the survival itself is immediately called into question. In the very moment of standing and daring to hope, the poet acknowledges that he is \"changed, no doubt, from what I was\" (66). There is no persistent substantial something to which the willed survival of the subject is referred. The subject has emerged within time through a fall or procession into discursive consciousness and apperceptive awareness. Somehow\u2014he knows not how\u2014he has come to be aware of himself as thinking, feeling, and judging, with less naturalness and automatism than attach to the life of a prereflective subject. He is no longer \"like a roe \/ [Who] bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides \/ Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams \/ Wherever nature led\" (67\u201370).\n\nWith the fall out of naturalness in affection and activity comes a pressing need for reassurance or grounding. The mysterious joint onsets of discursive consciousness and apperceptive awareness bring a sense of distance from activity and of consequent anxiety. Before these onsets, one does not even seek \"the thing [one] loves\" (72), for there is only immediate activity without reflection and without seeking. After these onsets, one lives with desires ( _d\u00e9sir_ , _Begierde_ ), where the object of desire is explicitly conceptualized by and present to reflection, in contrast with the earlier, lost, more animal life of appetite or need ( _besoin_ , _Bed\u00fcrfnis_ ). (Compare the transition in book 2 of the _Republic_ from the first pastoral, natural, innocent but inhuman city of pigs to the second human city of luxuries and feverishness and competition.) Self-consciousness is desire in general. Before its emergence, the poet in his movements through the natural world \"had no need of a remoter charm, \/ By thought supplied, nor any interest \/ Unborrowed from the eye\" (81\u201383). But \"that time is past\" (83); once somehow fallen into discursive consciousness, apperceptive awareness, and desire, there is no possibility of any return to any more innocent state. The earlier condition of prereflective awareness that is prior to the emergence of self-consciousness and desire cannot even be described: \"I cannot paint \/ What then I was\" (75\u201376). The origins of discursive thought cannot be established: \"Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind, \/ If each most obvious and particular thought, \/ Not in a mystical and idle sense, \/ But in the words of Reason deeply weighed, \/ Hath no beginning.\" Yet the poet also immediately undertakes to say something about what it was like to live in appetite alone, immersed in naturalness and without any need for or access to the remoter charms supplied by thought. The only relevance of this admitted fiction, perhaps like the fiction in political theory of a state of nature, must be to provide some sense of a dim possibility of wholeness and healthy activity for a subject who remains caught up in partiality and the feverish ways of the world. As David Bromwich has noted, the odd description of the innocent, animal activities of boyhood as those of one who is \"more like a man \/ Flying from something that he dreads, than one \/ Who sought the thing he loved\" (69\u201371) makes most sense if it is taken to refer to Wordsworth's life from 1793 (five years past) until the present moment in 1798. Whatever occasioning circumstances we may suppose to lie behind these dreads and flights, it remains the case that this description suggests a life of a self-conscious being (of a man rather than boy) that is a life of dreads and flights and not at all a life of assurance in activity or of attentive wholeheartedness, felt interest, and commitment in relation to the objects of common experience. In this circumstance, without a recovery of a decipherable origin and without guiding assurances drawn from knowledge of the ultimate substance of the world and life, to dare to hope\u2014across changes and in the wake of dreads and flights\u2014must be at best an _act_ of resolution that remains haunted by internal uncertainties and instabilities.\n\n(5) \"For such loss, I would believe...\" (87) [lines 85\u2013111]. In this section of second resolution or standing, the subject again makes an effort to gather himself, to resolve his uncertainties about life through the use of his own powers, without appealing to exterior things. This effort is again simultaneously successful _en m\u00e9sure_ and haunted by uncertainties. \"I would believe\" registers both: \"I will believe (so far as I can)\" and \"I would like to believe (but can not, not quite wholly).\" In either case, this formulation is substantially weaker, less assertational, than \"I do believe.\" Verbs of agency that would express this belief are implied but not stated. The poet will not faint, mourn, or murmur, that is, will not give way to these at least partly passive and induced responses to life. He will or would in contrast more actively do something, but exactly what he would do is not specified. He has learned to adopt an attitude\u2014\"to look on nature\" in a certain way\u2014that should support a certain course of wholehearted interest, commitment, and activity. But what that course is remains unspecified, and learning to look on nature is itself not stabilized or grounded in learning theoretically _that_ nature is (really, ultimately) thus and so. The adoption of an attitude is not grounded in theoretical knowledge, nor can it be. This adoption must remain in the register of resolution, in the register of what one \"would believe.\"\n\nThe adoption of this attitude is supported, we are told, by the fact that \"I have felt \/ A presence that disturbs me with the joy \/ Of elevated thoughts\" (93\u201395). There is, however, no explanation of either the source of this feeling in ultimate things or its aptness to them. It is responsive to \"something far more deeply infused \/ Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, \/ And the round ocean, and the living air, \/ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man\" (96\u201399). But this something is not named as an object of theoretical knowledge. At best it can be called an impelling \"motion and a spirit\" (100). Whatever joy felt responsiveness to this motion and spirit brings, it also brings disturbance, in the thought that one has not, not yet, lived fully in resonance with this spirit and its motions; perhaps one cannot so live. Metaphysical confidence is implied\u2014but only implied, not stated, and disturbance yielding to doubt is not banished.\n\nThe resolution that concludes this section is now explicitly in the mode of will, not knowledge. \"Therefore am I still\" (102) expresses a determined effort at self-stabilization, at lingering as a whole subject within the specular moment of meaningfulness. For at least this moment of feeling, the subject is stabilized enough in its responsive resoluteness to be a subject in resonance with a significant order and so capable of wholehearted interest, commitment, and activity. But it cannot last. The announcement that the subject is \"well pleased to recognize \/ In nature and the language of the sense, \/ The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, \/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul \/ Of all my moral being\" (107\u2013111) is honest to the moment of feeling and of self-resolution. But this announcement undoes itself in the very moment of its articulation. To say that one is \"well pleased\" is to hint that there is at least a danger that one is pleasing oneself by constructing this experience and its felt significance, where this construction may be driven by the needs of the subject rather than by how things are. Hence this construction may be both ego centered and empty. Wordsworth's special courage in the explorations of his movements of consciousness is to register this possibility and all the uncertainty it entails, rather than to deny it in reversion to dogma.\n\n(6) \"Nor perchance \/ If I were not thus taught\" (111\u2013112) [lines 111\u2013134]. And so the poet accepts the possibility of error. It may be that he has not been thus taught by nature, that his depth of feeling and his resolution to be a coherent, expressive, responsive subject may be vain constructions. The poet's response to this possibility again takes the form of a resolution crossed with an imperative. \"Nor... should I the more \/ Suffer my genial spirits to decay\" (111, 112\u2013113) were this the case. I will not suffer this, and it is best for me not to suffer this. Things would not go well (standing melancholy would be my lot) were I to do so. So I will not do so. I would not that it be so.\n\nThat Dorothy (\"thou my dearest Friend\" [115]) is present with him in this spot to confirm his feeling and to stabilize his resolution suggests to the poet some help with his plight. I should not suffer my genial spirits to decay because thou art with me. But exactly how does her presence help? It does not cancel the registers of resolution and imperative, does not transform these registers into confident assertion. Quite the contrary, it moves the poet's consciousness explicitly into the mode of prayer. \"Oh! Yet a little while \/ May I behold in thee what I was once, \/ My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make...\" 119\u2013121). \"May I behold,\" not \"shall I behold\"; let it be so _Deo volente_ , not I know that it is so. Nor is contact with an originary naturalness, putatively exemplified by Dorothy, so easily established. It is not clear that the poet in fact beholds that naturalness now: \"may I behold,\" not \"do I behold\" \"in thee what I was once.\" As John Barrell has argued, Wordsworth's desperate effort to achieve self-composure without turning to anything external to his experience\n\nrequires Dorothy to perform a double function in the ratification of his achievement of a transcendent subjectivity. First, he needs to believe that Dorothy will grow up and sober up, for by doing so she will naturalise and legitimate his own loss of immediate pleasure in nature. The transition she makes, from the language of the sense to that of intellect, will be an observable process, one which will recapitulate and historicise the transition Wordsworth has already made. But in the second place, the language of the sense, as presently employed by Dorothy, stands as a present and audible guarantee of the meanings of his own language of the intellect; it assures him of the secure foundation of his language in the language of the sense.\n\nBarrell goes on to argue, quite cogently, that the double function assigned to Dorothy is incoherent. She cannot both grow up into discursive consciousness and apperceptive awareness and remain immersed in naturalness. \"Dorothy can perform these two functions [repetition of growth into self-consciousness plus an anchoring persistence in naturalness], only if her potential for intellectual growth is acknowledged, but only if, also, that potential is never actualized.\" It makes no sense, however, to assign her a potential that is both actualized and never actualized.\n\nIn all this Barrell is quite correct. But the problem goes even deeper than the use of Dorothy, and the problem is, moreover, registered in the poem itself. The problem is that no transition from naturalness (appetite) to discursive subjectivity (desire) can be both historically accomplished _and_ naturalized, in such a way that the transition takes place (there is a fall into discursivity and into exteriority to nature) while a continuing saving resonance to pure naturalness is maintained. This is no more possible for William than it is for Dorothy. This fact accounts for the persistence until the end of the poem of the now explicit mode of prayer. What may happen, _Deo volente_ , and what would save one as a subject by bringing one continuously into a life of full meaningfulness, is something that can never be known to happen, something that cannot even be coherently imagined by us to happen. \"This prayer I make\" (121)\u2014that Dorothy fulfill this incoherent requirement, and that the poet himself has blended transcendent natural meaningfulness with finite subjectivity\u2014must remain a prayer, not an announcement of an accomplishment. When the poet makes this prayer \"Knowing that Nature never did betray \/ The heart that loves her\" (122\u2013123), the syntax undermines the claim to knowledge. \"Never did\" suggests an event of doubt, a fall into discursivity, apperceptive awareness, and exteriority to nature, a fall out of mere naturalness.\n\nIt is no accident then that the knowledge that is claimed modulates very quickly into the claim that nature \"can so inform \/ The mind that is within us\" (125\u2013126) that our cheerful faith in life is undisturbed. That this can or might be so is no guarantee that it will be so. Just what potentiality for informing our lives so as to produce cheerfulness is in fact actualized? When and how does this actualization of this potentiality take place? Exactly by what, when, and how might \"all \/ The dreary intercourse of daily life\" (130\u2013131) be transformed? These questions have no answers, at least not within this poet's movements of consciousness. Hence \"Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold \/ Is full of blessings\" (133\u2013134) remains a faith, perhaps all too vainly willed, rather than an article of knowledge.\n\n(7) \"Therefore let.... Thy memory be as a dwelling place\" (134, 141) [lines 134\u2013146]. The \"therefore let...\" of line 134 explicitly begins the prayer announced in line 121 (\"this prayer I make\"). It asks for Dorothy both now to persist in her naturalness or natural connection to nature and \"in after years\" (137) for her memory to be \"as a dwelling-place \/ For all sweet sounds and harmonies\" (141\u2013142). The prayer is that she should at least preserve in her maturer consciousness a sense of past connection to nature and its beneficent influences. Yet this prayer for Dorothy quickly modulates for the poet into thoughts about himself. In a question to himself that is not marked as a question but rather as a declarative interjection within his own consciousness, Wordsworth asks \"with what healing thoughts \/ Of tender joy wilt thou then remember me, \/ And these my exhortations\" (144\u2013146). The anxieties and doubts that haunt him are made explicit in this interrogative movement of his own consciousness. Will Dorothy, or anyone else for that matter, remember him, and if so, how (\"with what healing thoughts\") and why? What have his life in time and his just now occurring course of experience and reflection meant? Has he been a subject who has lived, fully and memorably, or not? No doctrine is available to ground any certainty of the achievement of the life of a subject. Only exhortations are possible; no declarations and no proofs can either ground the significance of a life or control the responses of any audience, even an audience as intimately present as Dorothy is in the scene. Prayer, not declaration, is the appropriate mode of acknowledgment of the ungroundedness of any claims to fullness of value on behalf of a human life in time.\n\n(8) \"Nor, perchance... wilt thou then forget\" (146, 149) [lines 146\u2013159]. Within the concluding prayer, the topic of death, and so of the significance of a life that is bounded by death, is raised explicitly. \"Nor, perchance\u2014\/ If I should be where I no more can hear thy voice\" (146\u2013148) implies, given Dorothy's role as instance of a saving audience in general, \"if I should be where no saving voice, no answering glance, neither Dorothy's nor anyone else's, is to be found.\" Within the awareness of death and the finite subjectivity bounded by it, one can declare very little, can say only \"nor perchance wilt thou then forget,\" not \"you will not forget.\" And yet a standing together, here and now, is possible, and that this standing together may be remembered is, at least here and now, enough to afford the poet some sense of stability and continuing selfhood. It is possible that the feeling or attitude borne by a subject so standing in this spot, the feeling or attitude of \"deeper zeal\" (154), may be appropriate to the life of a subject as such in this spot, and so it too may stand in another's memory. The poet confesses feelings (\"deeper zeal\" [154], \"to me... dear\" [158\u2013159]) and claims aptness and exemplarity both for them and for his confession of them. This claim and confession cannot be grounded in any argument. Perhaps either the feeling or the confession of feeling has been vainly constructed. Yet they may stand. Time will tell.\n\nIV\n\n\"Each individual that comes into the world is a new beginning; the universe itself is, as it were, taking a fresh start in him and trying to do something, even if on a small scale, that it has never done before.\" If John Dewey is right about this, then there is in the particularity of each person also a standing exteriority to the pure manifestation of the essence of human subjectivity in time and nature. Geoffrey Hartman has characterized Wordsworth as a poet as \"a ' limitour,' licensed to haunt only the borders of the country from which imagination comes and to which it seeks to return.\" The discursive subjectivity that is constructed through the work of the imagination in arriving at a point of view and that is bound up with apperceptive awareness and awareness of variously attentive others stands apart from the full, meaningful naturalness of subjectivity that it would wish to achieve by establishing an absolute, value- and stance-affording connection to nature and culture as such. \"The terror of discontinuity or separation enters... as soon as the imagination truly enters.\" As a result, Wordsworth's effort to find in nature a fully saving genius loci or natural source of transcendent meaningfulness founders. He can only wander from one moment to another of what is felt, almost, to be an accession to meaningfulness, but an accession that remains internally fragmented. Wordsworth's \"quest to localize his Idea of [A Saving] Nature in Nature fails.\" And so the pursuit of such moments goes on. Apart from such moments, there is the conventionalized, less meaningful life of ordinary subjectivity, caught up in circuits of antagonism (\"evil tongues, \/ Rash judgments, [and] the sneers of selfish men, \/ [And] greetings where no kindness is\" [128\u2013130]), a life that motivates, always, a wish for a fuller, more meaningful life of an exemplary, stabilized subject as such. The voice that arises out of the moments of almost accession to meaningfulness, almost achievement of exemplarity, \"is the voice of a man who has been separated from the hope he affirms.\" Hartman has characterized the progress of _The Prelude_ as \"no argument, but a vacillation between doubt and faith,\" and this halted progress is evident, too, in the waverings of prayerful hope and recurrent uncertainty in \"Tintern Abbey.\" Wordsworth's \"curious and never fully clarified restlessness\" is, Hartman suggests, \"the ultimate confession of his poetry.\"\n\nThough they afford no doctrine to guide us, perhaps such vacillations and confessions show us something (though only something) of the lives of human subjects as such. Wordsworth's expression of his internalized quest romance, showing arrival at a fuller assurance crossed with doubt, enacts a romance of subject and world that is both strongly subjectivized and aimed at increased life in the world. If the modality of aiming is that of reflection, rehearsal, and conjecture more than specific, actual worldly political praxis, that is perhaps in part because the world of England in 1798 does not yet readily admit specific, sustained practices of wholeheartedness in daily life. Hence Wordsworth's poetry of reflection, rehearsal, and conjecture functions in relation to that world as disturbance, provocation, and placeholder, not only or simply as a source of reassurance. Our world may differ from Wordsworth's politically, culturally, cognitively, and technologically in manifold ways, but it stands no less in need of the kind of reassurance mixed with disturbance that Wordsworth's poetry affords. Promises of things not seen that remain unfulfilled arise within the lives of discursive human subjects, and they function, sometimes, critically and productively in relation to those lives, for those who have ears to hear.\n5.\n\nThe Ends of Literary Narrative\n\n_Rilke's \"Archaic Torso of Apollo\"_\n\nThe claim of works of literature to represent truths about the world is, at best, peculiar. Most literary works are fictional. Authors spend their time and energies in thematizing, in developing attitudes toward subject matters, and in seeking formal power and coherence. There are no procedures in view that can arrive at results about matters independent of human subjects and attitudes. In contrast, a proof in mathematics ends by reaching its final line, where each line that is not an axiom is generated in explicit accord with a rule of inference that in principle anyone might follow. Reports of experimental results generated in a lab specify procedures that were followed in setting up equipment and carrying out tests. While they often also offer conjectural interpretations of results and suggestions for further work, they describe minimally a procedure that anyone might follow in order to achieve a like-enough result. Hence we can speak readily of objective evidence that a certain state of affairs can be produced thus and so. In statistical social science, one finds reports of results from questionnaires or other data about populations expressed in numerical terms. Under the assumption that a larger population will not be too different from a sample, one can draw conclusions about distributions of traits and tendencies of development. History undertakes to tell us what happened, and the claims of professional historians are supported with reference to primary sources, indicated in footnotes. In economics, one often finds abstract mathematical models that describe processes of income distribution or GNP growth, for example, that are supposed to occur underneath a confusing surface of extra variables that induce deviations from the model. Among these cognitive practices, literature is perhaps most like economics in giving a model of certain processes in the world. This is scant comfort, however, since whether the processes described by economic models really do occur, on the one hand, or are rather fairy tales invented by clever calculators, on the other, is itself a subject of more than a little dispute. Literary models, moreover, if that is what literary texts offer us, are in even worse shape, since they focus only on very small numbers of mostly made-up cases, and they lack even the potential of refinement through the incorporation of further data.\n\nInstead of focusing on literature as a form of cognitive work, then, we might think of works of literature as aiming at producing a certain sort of pleasure. If we further suppose that all pleasures are subjective and rankable only in terms of duration and intensity, then the point of literary works would be exhausted in their consumption, and there is not much more to be said than this. As Bentham notoriously remarked, all other things being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.\n\nThis view is unsatisfying, however, in that the experience of reading a powerful literary work is not really much like the experience of eating an ice cream cone or wallowing in a warm bath. It takes some work to pay attention. It is not exactly fun at every instant. The pleasure, if that is the right word, seems not to have much to do with sensory processes but more with the work that the reader is doing. And surely writers are trying to do something that is both cognitively available to their audiences and cognitively significant. But then, again, works of literature do not offer us results that are much like those of mathematics, laboratory science, history, or statistical social science. So we are faced with a puzzle. We seem to learn something from reading literature, but we have trouble explaining exactly how or what we learn\u2014at least when we are in the grip of a certain picture of knowledge as the methodologically correct achievement of a fact-stating result.\n\nIt is easy to suggest that there must be a third way\u2014between the forms of knowledge that are available in other disciplines and mere, predominantly sensible pleasure\u2014in which literature is significant. We can see that this suggestion makes sense when we contrast art in general with scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and decoration and entertainment, on the other. Art is somehow in the middle here. If we are offered too many \"flat\" facts by a particular work, we are likely to find it merely journalistic and to want more pleasure. If we are offered too much pleasure, we are likely to find the work either decorative or an escapist guilty pleasure, like the novels of Ian Fleming or Dan Brown, say. We want, at least sometimes, to work harder and to learn more than that. But just how can we do this? The mere postulation of a third way does not yet answer this question.\n\nIn their valuable comprehensive survey _Truth, Fiction, and Literature_ , Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen explore a number of ways of thinking about literature as a source of knowledge. Centrally, they consider the following three suggestions: (1) Literary works might help us to know \"what it is like\" to be (or to be in the situation of) a certain character, in the sense of \"subjective knowledge\" characterized by Thomas Nagel and worked out with regard to literature by Dorothy Walsh. Against this, Lamarque and Olsen object first that while we have experiences while reading, we mostly have our own experiences, not the experiences of Leda or Leopold Bloom, Yeats or Joyce. In particular, we mostly observe or imagine characters having experiences. And while we take an interest in this observation, we are not learning the felt qualia of, say, fried kidney for Leopold Bloom. Second, even if we did get some sense of what things are like for characters from reading literary fiction, it is strained, Lamarque and Olsen suggest, to describe what we get as learning something. There are no methods in view for accrediting or testing any knowledge claims, such as there are in the sciences, and much of what we might think we learn we must in fact already have known in order to understand what is going on: for example, that rape is a violent, terrifying, and world-altering experience. Or (2) literary works might enable us to enrich our store of concepts, or they might modify our sense of the application conditions of concepts we already possess, as Catherine Wilson and D. Z. Phillips have suggested. Against this suggestion, Lamarque and Olsen object that while some literary works might help us to deploy new concepts or to refigure the conditions of their application, this is by no means necessary for a work to have literary value. Second, and more sharply, they suggest that some authors sometimes explore the same concepts and conditions of application in different works, so that when one reads a second work, for example, a later play by Ibsen, one may not learn anything new. But the later work nonetheless has literary value; hence learning about concepts and their application conditions is not necessary for literary value (378\u2013386). Or (3) it might be that literary works help us to become better perceivers of the moral lives of persons and so better reasoners about what it is good or right to do when, as Martha Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam have suggested. Against this suggestion, Lamarque and Olsen object first that improvement in moral reasoning is by no means brought about by all successful literary works, and, second, that having or furthering the correct valuational stance is not a necessary condition for literary value: we can and do value as successful works with whose stances and points of view we disagree (386\u2013394).\n\nOne might suspect that there is something wrong here with Lamarque and Olsen's \"divide and dismiss\" strategy. Perhaps what we get from reading literature is some mixture of subjective knowledge, improvement of our conceptual capacities, and moral insight. Lamarque and Olsen themselves offer the positive suggestion that literature \"develops themes that are only vaguely felt or formulated in daily life and gives them a ' local habitation and a name'\" (452). \"Giving a name\" at least hints that some sort of cognitive achievement is on offer. Literary appreciation, they further remark, \"constitutes its own form of insight, its own kind of interpretation of thematic concepts\" (409). But this form of insight, they argue, is better construed as the cultivation of _understanding_ than as the acquisition of knowledge of true propositions. \"Literary works can contribute to the development and understanding of the deepest, most revered of a culture's conceptions without advancing propositions, statements, or hypotheses about them\" (22). \"We can imagine, ponder, entertain thoughts, or speculate about something without any commitment to the truth of our ruminations\" (11). Literary practice is best understood as an imaginative exploration of themes that is guided by the literary work, which undertakes \"to develop in depth, through subject and form, a theme which is in some sense central to human concerns\" (450).\n\nBut while this talk of understanding is a good start, it leaves us not so far beyond where we were before. Exactly what do we understand when we understand the theme of a literary work? How is this understanding related to, but different from, propositional knowledge either that the world is thus and so or that the author thought thus and so (itself just another fact about the world)? How is this understanding cultivated by the experience of the work itself? What does it mean to \"develop a theme _in depth_ \"? What, if anything, makes such development valuable in human life?\n\nJohn Gibson suggests that the important cognitive work of literature consists in \"bringing into full view our standards of representation [and] our linguistic criteria for what the world is.\" A literary work may show some phenomenon \"just as it is\" (61); for example, we may see the essence of racism in the figure of Iago (61\u201362). Shakespeare's presentation of Iago \"draws together at... a level of clarity and order everything we call racism\" (63), thus making the shape of our concept available to us for acknowledgment. This suggestion too is a useful start. But what it fails so far to explain is how we can fail to know the criteria of some of our concepts and, hence, why we need to explore and acknowledge them. Surely we need already to have some pretty clear command of the concept of racism in order to understand Iago's actions at all. What further dimensions of our concept, then, are subject to repression or forgetting, and how do the details of the presentation of Iago as a literary character activate these dimensions? What, exactly, is the cognitive import of having our concepts activated and somehow \"filled in\"?\n\nGibson further suggests that a general reason why we turn to works of literature is that we are able there to \"read the story of our shared form of life\" (50). This is the suggestion we must pursue if we are to have any hope of unpacking the jointly cognitive and emotional work of acknowledging and working through that reading literature makes available to us. So what is the story of our form of life? This enormous question is one that will have to be faced if we are to make any progress here.\n\nPart of that story is the playing out of a biologically engendered imperative to survive. We need to eat, sleep, protect ourselves, and procreate in order to survive as a species, and we are, so far, wired well enough for success in these endeavors. In the absence of extraordinary strength or speed, we have managed cope with our environments mostly through superior cunning. We are better at recognizing and manipulating more features of our environments than are members of other species. In particular, as concept-mongering creatures, we are able not only to see objects brutely, as it were, as members of kinds; we are also able to see them from a point of view, as this or that. For example, a stone may be recognized by us as a weapon, a piece of building material, or an implement for scratching or shaping. A fundamental part of learning language is developing this repertoire of seeing an object as something. We manage this achievement not simply through picking up on the individuals-just-sorted-into-natural-kinds that are present in our environment. Other animals do this as well, but they lack our conceptual repertoire. My dog responds to the sounds of squirrels but does not think of them as mammals or rodents or nut gatherers. We, however, manage feats like this by picking up not only on our environments brutely, but also by picking up on how other human subjects are interacting with our shared environment, by picking up on their points of view on things. Our having of a wide repertoire of concepts and application criteria, enabling manifold different responses to our environment, is not a matter only of matching inner idea or Platonic archetype or brain state with object. It is a matter of learning to see things within multiple and shifting contexts of engagement and use, a matter of catching on to a large number of things that are done or might be done, by others and by oneself, at once with objects and with words, within practical engagements. In coming to be masters of words that encode objects and events seen in one way or another, in relation to multiple contexts of engagement and possible response, we are neither machines nor the quasi-automatons of Wittgenstein's language game (2) in _Philosophical Investigations_. Rather we are creatures who have become capable of a life of plastic attention\u2014capable, that is, of culture.\n\nThe fact that we develop conceptual consciousness not only in relation to problems of biological survival but also in relation to cultural contexts of flexible attention and engagement brings with it certain distinctive burdens and possibilities. Not only is one trying to survive; one is also trying to play the game of attending according to concepts both with others and in competition with others to have one's own point of view and way of playing the game recognized. Concepts and words, for all that they register features of our environments there to be registered, are also, in their lives within cultural contexts of shifting attention and engagement, both stable enough to permit communication and sharing of a point of view on things and tolerant of new uses as new contexts of attention and interest develop. Hence coming to language and conceptual consciousness brings with it uncertainties about how to go on from where we are or where one is. Am I playing the game in the right way? Is my conceptual performance such that it can and should be taken up by others? Do I really know what I'm doing? What are evident and exemplary fluency and command in making moves with words? Just who do I think I am, and am I right about that?\n\nThese questions are such that they cannot and do not arise at every moment; comprehensive skepticism is not a genuinely available stance in life. But they are also such that they can always arise at some point, at least in modernity, where manifestly different ways of life develop and make themselves present in awareness. As the Kantian tradition emphasizes, a life with concepts is a life in which questions of judgment are always potentially in view, and the fact of continuing responsibility in and for conceptual performance is unavoidable. (It would be a mistake to see our concepts as self-standing representational \"entities\" existing outside of circuits of mimesis and training.) R. G. Collingwood tells the following wonderful story about what it is like to come to conceptual consciousness and language, thus becoming a subject of and in culture:\n\nA child throws its bonnet off its head and into the road with the exclamation \"Hattiaw.\" By comparison with the self-conscious cry discussed earlier in the present section, this represents a highly developed and sophisticated use of language. To begin with, consider the emotion involved. The child might remove its bonnet because it felt physically uncomfortable in it, hot or tickled or the like; but the satisfaction expressed by the cry of \"Hattiaw\" is not a merely psycho-physical pleasure like that of rubbing a fly off the nose. What is expressed is a sense of triumph, an emotion arising out of the possession of self-consciousness. The child is proving itself as good a man as its mother, who has previously taken its bonnet off with the words it is now imitating; better than its mother, because now she has put the bonnet on and wants it to stay on, so there is a conflict of wills in which the child feels himself victor.\n\nAs this example shows, even very early on in our life as possessors of conceptual consciousness and self-consciousness, we bear distinctive emotions and attitudes toward our situations. We are capable of accepting, working through, and expressing these emotions, with a resulting sense of a certain kind of triumph, when our point of view is recognized by others through our performances. We are capable also of sullenly shirking our emotions, avoiding them, or otherwise failing to express them, with a consequent sense of disappointment, frustration, and failure, and, sometimes, with a further wish to escape or reject the burdens of the responsibility for expression. When this happens, we then suffer or merely undergo our emotions, as we remain stuck in the state of having what Spinoza calls an inadequate idea of an affection: we don't know what is worth caring about; we take no delight in the investment of our energies in our performances, and confused, unexpressed feelings wash over us. Our actions are as much reactions as expressions of our selfhood. Philosophical skepticism and its intimate antagonist epistemological realism are both at bottom misbegotten intellectualized efforts to repudiate the situation and expressive possibilities of conceptual consciousness and self-consciousness by describing them away. (What Stanley Cavell calls the truth of skepticism is the fact that the skeptic, at least, registers a certain failure and disappointment that attach to these efforts.) More happily, however, there are also what Charles Altieri calls \"the kinds of satisfactions that are available for agents simply because of the qualities of consciousness they bring to what they are feeling.\" We can do something with these qualities of consciousness. As Wordsworth argues in the \"Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ ,\" the poet, through thinking \"long and deeply\" in relation to our feelings, may uncover \"what is really important to men,\" with the result that, when this course of discovery is taken up and followed, \"the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.\" Friedrich H\u00f6lderlin on infinite satisfaction and John Dewey on consummatory experience describe in quite similar terms the distinctive sorts of satisfactions open to us as human subjects. The achievement of further understanding coupled with strengthened and purified affections, with both understanding and affections then discharged in a dense, medium-specific performance of working through, in which a point of view is made manifest and recognition and like-mindedness are successfully solicited, is what I have elsewhere called the achievement of expressive freedom. It has, I think, some claim to be regarded as an immanent telos of human life, made both possible, partially, and valuable for us by our mysterious possession of conceptual consciousness and self-consciousness, developed and worked out in relation to public media of expression.\n\nIt is impossible to prove the correctness of this view according to the standards of proof that are held in place in the Cartesian tradition. (Those standards were specifically developed in order to block talk of the purposes of things.) But it remains nonetheless an articulation of what is going on in human life that may be unavoidable and illuminating. If it has any chance of being right, then Lamarque and Olsen are wrong when they remark that \"mostly, we simply do not meet the grand themes in trivial daily life\" (455). Yes and no. Yes, we do not meet them clearly formulated and perspicuously manifested there; there is too much muddle for that, and there are too many different circumstances in which lives are led for it to be just obvious that we are in pursuit of expressive freedom. But no, we do meet these themes there latently, to be acknowledged, as we come to see our lives as in part caught up in situ in the pursuit of expressive freedom, involving articulate clarity and wholeheartedness of interest in life.\n\nGreat writers, then, manage to achieve expressiveness: that is, to face up to and work through the emotions and attitudes that come with being a human subject, as those emotions and attitudes are given specific contours in specific situations. They make it manifest for themselves and for us how a specifically shaped emotion, mood, or feeling has been brought about in or by a situation and how, further, that emotion, mood, or feeling can be accepted as appropriate. As a result, the emotion, mood, or feeling is actively accepted, not passively suffered. Barbara Herrnstein Smith describes the achievement of poetic closure from the reader's point of view in just these terms:\n\nClosure occurs when the concluding portion of a poem creates in the reader a sense of appropriate cessation. It announces and justifies the absence of further development; it reinforces the feeling of finality, completion, and composure which we value in all works of art; and it gives ultimate unity and coherence to the reader's experience of the poem, by providing a point from which all the preceding elements may be received comprehensively and their relations grasped as part of a significant design.\n\nFor the reader, that is to say, the poem itself is experienced as coherent, closed, and designed, as its parts form a self-completing whole. This experience is a function of form, but not of form alone. It occurs in part because the poet has succeeded in making sense of experience and emotion, has succeeded in working them through to achieve acceptance and composure. As Herrnstein Smith notes, \"the experience of closure is the complex product of both formal and thematic elements\" (40). This means that the poet has found, formally, words and structures to thematize, connect, and accept experiences and emotions that were initially burdensome, troubling, exhilarating, or provocative. She goes on to note that many contemporary poems, beginning with Eliot and reaching a high point in Robert Lowell, exhibit increasingly \"dialectical-associative\" thematic structure. \"In much modern poetry,\" she remarks, \"the occasion for a poem is... likely to be the existence of an ultimately unresolvable process\" (247). There is what she calls a \"poetry of non-statement\" (254) that takes both subjective-lyrical stream-of-consciousness guises and objectivist-imagist-language play guises. The reason for this development is that we have grown, appropriately, skeptical of the availability and livability of \"they lived happily ever after.\" Nineteenth-century novels, as both Henry James and David Lodge have mordantly remarked, seem to end only with marriage, death, or an inheritance. In contrast, we have grown suspicious of the availability and value of these kinds of closure in life, which seems to us to be more complicated than that. But even in the contemporary poetry of antistatement, the shape and feeling of a particular instance of perplexity are expressively worked through, at least when things go well. The writer and the reader afterward come to know and accept exactly how there are complexities of situation and feeling. As Herrnstein Smith puts it, \"a poem allows us to know what we know, including our illusions and desires, by giving us the language in which to acknowledge it\" (154). Such an achievement of acknowledgment is available and important for us just insofar as we are human subjects who attempt to lead lives actively, with senses of meaning and of appropriate responsiveness to events, unlike Nietzsche's cows, who do little besides undergo their lives. Unlike other animals, we remember and anticipate incidents quite widely, together with an awareness of how incidents and things are seen by others from multiple points of view. And so we wonder: Who am I to see, remember, and anticipate things like this? To what extent are my point of view and emotions toward things apt and appropriate? Am I genuinely acting as a reasonable subject in seeing things and feeling as I do?\n\nIn the grip of a healthy empiricism, it is of course possible to find this talk of expressive freedom and of leading a life actively to be quite misplaced in relation to what is after all also a sheerly material situation. There is, again, nothing like a proof by Cartesian standards that expressive freedom is the immanent telos of human life. But what does it look like, according to this conception, when someone rejects it and denies that expressive freedom matters for us and that it is partially, but only partially, available to us through different actions in different settings? (It is possible to say anything.) The Humean-skeptical, Darwininan-naturalist insistence that we are nothing but natural beings who must simply cope with things and the Cartesian-Platonist insistence that absolute knowledge of our place in nature can guide us if we but somehow think aright both appear as hysteria-driven denials of what it is to be a finite, active being in time. \"You ask me,\" Nietzsche once wrote, \"which of the philosophers' traits are really idiosyncrasies? For example, their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that they show their _respect_ for a subject when they de-historicize it, _sub specie aeterni_ \u2014when they turn it into a mummy.\" To deny that our lives are caught up in becoming and in possibilities of the achievement of expressive freedom in part, but only in part, in relation to it can look like an attempt to deny or kill human life because it is too painful.\n\nYet as Nietzsche also remarked, it can also sometimes happen\u2014if and when we manage ourselves to work through and express our emotions in a dense, commanding performance, or if and when as readers if we follow and participate in the workings-through of others\u2014that we are left with the sense, at least for a time, \"that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.\" In a late notebook entry, Nietzsche describes the authentic state, a state that may either occur in life or be \"set up\" in art, as the state\n\nin which we put a _transfiguration and plenitude_ into things and work at shaping them until they reflect back to us our own plenitude and lust for life.... Art reminds us of states of animal vigour; it's on the one hand a surplus and overflow of flourishing corporeality into the world of images and wishes; on the other a rousing of the animal function through images and wishes of intensified life\u2014a heightening of the feeling of life, stimulus for it.\n\nWithin experience, a pattern can sometimes be discerned, partially and dimly, in our relations as subjects to things and events, and emotions, feelings, attitudes, and moods can be experienced and worked through as appropriate to that pattern. Discovery and exhilaration are mixed with a sense also of mystery and complexity in the face of a becoming, a life in time, that is not wholly masterable. For this reason, great endings, as Steven Winn remarks, \"define and disappoint, frustrate and gratify. They confer meaning and confirm the structure of what's come before\u2014in a movie, a sonata, a work of fiction. But they also kill off pleasure, snap us out of the dream, and clamp down order on experience that we, as citizens of the modern world, believe to be open-ended, ambiguous, and unresolved.\"\n\nThis experience of an ending is like what Aristotle describes as the catharsis\u2014at once the clarification and unburdening\u2014of an emotion in relation to a situation. But, as Frank Kermode notes, whereas \"for Aristotle the literary plot was analogous to the plot of the world in that both were eductions from the potency of matter,\" which eductions are presided over purposively by divine intelligence, for us the sense of plot in life proceeds at least in part from our own \"store of contrivances\" (40), as we are driven by \"a need to live by [a] pattern\" (109). We half believe in these patterns, as we experience our lives within them and experience possibilities of clarification of our situation. And yet we remain also aware of our own role as contrivers, aware of the lack of a presiding pattern that is everywhere evident in human life and aware also of our own failures to live in perfect freedom and infinite satisfaction, in the face of the mysterious complexities of becoming. And so we tell stories and attempt to work through our emotions in relation to the particulars of changing situations, so that we can, as Kermode puts it, both \"avoid the regress into [a] myth\" of presiding purposiveness and yet preserve the sense that \"the scene [of human significance] has not yet been finally and totally struck\" (43). Fictions that find plots, so as to work through emotions in relation to situations and experiences, remain for us both \"deeply distrusted,\" since they are only our contrivances, and \"humanly indispensable,\" since only these contrivances can give us the sense of leading a life meaningfully and actively. They offer us a way, even the way, to cope with both anxiety at a sense of the pervasive contingency of things and bad faith in fixed, master supernatural plots we can no longer trust (151). They are our means of coping with \"the tension or dissonance between paradigmatic form and contingent reality\" (133), between the sense that every life is a parable of each, with meaning to be found, and the sense that there are only material happenstance and subjective \"preference having.\"\n\nThat we may through producing and effectively receiving exemplary works of art come to a fuller, more animated, more ensouled life, beyond mere preference having, yet also as individuals free from submission to alien authority, is a major subject of Rainer Maria Rilke's _Neue Gedichte_ ( _New Poems_ , 1907; second part, 1908). The new poems in general and the Thing-poems in particular result significantly from Rilke's responses to the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rilke worked as Rodin's secretary in 1905 and 1906, he wrote a 1903 monograph and a 1907 lecture on Rodin, and the first volume of _Neue Gedichte_ is dedicated to him. Rodin's influence is evident in the _Neue Gedichte_ in two distinct ways. His sculptures provided for Rilke a model of an animated, all but living work of art. As Judith Ryan puts it, \"In Rodin's sculpture, the interplay of light between the various surfaces creates for Rilke the sense of something that continues to shape itself before the eye of the beholder,\" as though the sculpture were alive. Second, \"Rodin's ideal of persistent workmanship,\" his sense of the importance of patience and craft, makes itself felt in the tightly controlled formal structure of the poems. The effect of animation in the poems then arises from the way in which inspiration and living energy, ideals Rilke associated with Theodore de Banville, are submitted to formal control, in order to construct a living whole.\n\nIn a famous sonnet appearing as the first poem of _New Poems: Second Part_ , Rilke describes what it is like to come suddenly, from within one's middle situation, between dead, foreign materiality and perfect transcendence, to a sense of possibilities of fuller animation.\n\nARCHA\u00cfSCHER TORSO APOLLOS\n\nWir kannten nicht sein unerh\u00f6rtes Haupt,\n\ndarin die Augen\u00e4pfel reiften. Aber\n\nsein Torso gl\u00fcht noch wie ein Kandelaber,\n\nin dem sein Schauen, nur zur\u00fcckgeschraubt,\n\nsich h\u00e4lt und gl\u00e4nzt. Sonst k\u00f6nnte nicht der Bug\n\nder Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen\n\nder Lenden k\u00f6nnte nicht ein L\u00e4cheln gehen\n\nzu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.\n\nSonst st\u00fcnde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz\n\nunter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz\n\nund flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;\n\nund br\u00e4chte nicht aus allen seinen R\u00e4ndern\n\naus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,\n\ndie dich nicht sieht. Du mu\u00dft dein Leben \u00e4ndern.\n\nARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO\n\nWe cannot know his legendary head\n\nwith eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso\n\nis still suffused with brilliance from inside,\n\nlike a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,\n\ngleams in all its power. Otherwise\n\nthe curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could\n\na smile run through the placid hips and thighs\n\nto that dark center where procreation flared.\n\nOtherwise this stone would seem defaced\n\nbeneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders\n\nand would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:\n\nwould not, from all the borders of itself,\n\nburst like a star: for here there is no place\n\nthat does not see you. You must change your life.\n\nThis poem describes not simply an object but preeminently an experience of an object, an experience had by or available to a \"we.\" The poem embodies an effort to formulate and to work through an experience of perplexity, both for the speaker and for other subject-viewers, to whom and for whom the poet may speak. The statue fragment is characterized above all in terms of its effect on the speaker-viewer, in its overwhelming presence to a viewing consciousness. Within that experience, the fragment presents itself as having an inside, felt as a source of expressive and sexual power that is brought to fullness of presence in its outer surface. The formed surface glows ( _gl\u00fcht_ ), gleams ( _gl\u00e4nzt_ ), blinds the viewer ( _dich blenden_ ), and bears a smile ( _ein L\u00e4cheln_ ) as a promise of responsive sexuality. Its parts are not detached or misplaced ( _entstellt_ ); instead the stone glistens ( _flimmerte_ ) in its translucent falling ( _durchsichtigem Sturz_ ), as though everywhere breaking out of its borders ( _br\u00e4chte aus allen seinen R\u00e4ndern_ ), as if seeing us from every part of itself. These verbs describe the presence of what is inner in what is outer, in a way that is typical in Rilke's mature work. As Ryan puts it, \"the exploration of the relation between inner and outer realities, an attempt to transfigure loss, and an understanding of the aesthetic as a phenomenon of displacement are all characteristic features... of Rilke's later writing.\" The speaker's gaze moves from (absent) head down the front of the torso, following the arc of the glowing surface from prowlike breast to curving loins to genitals. The image of a smile in the turn of the loins is drawn, Ryan notes, \"from an essay by Mallarm\u00e9 on Th\u00e9odore de Banville, whom Mallarm\u00e9 regards as the supreme lyric poet of his time.\" The image of the turned-back ( _zur\u00fcckgeschraubt_ , as in a gas jet turned back from flickering in order to provide steady illumination) candelabra is, Ryan suggests, \"a recollection of Mallarm\u00e9's sonnet 'Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire.'\" Together, these two images emphasize the presence of controlled, animating, procreative power showing itself in the statue's surface. The statue fragment is intensely expressively present, so that it serves as a standing rebuke to us, who fail to bring our own personality, intelligence, and expressive and sexual powers to full embodied expression but instead live at second hand, palely under conventions that lack full life for us. Hence the fragment rebukes us for failing to be what we dimly feel we might be and ought to be as possessors of unexpressed inner intelligence and power: more fully animate, more fitly ensouled.\n\nAnd yet the poem is itself a classical sonnet, with an octave rhyming abba cddc followed by a sestet rhyming eef gfg. In place of a classical turn or volta after the octave, however, there are two turns: in line 5, with a move into the subjunctive in order to clarify and deepen the initial sense of the fragment's glowing, and then in line 14, with the sudden and brutal ascription of quasi-agentive sight to the fragment, issuing in a rebuke to the viewer-subject, who falls under its gaze and judgment. This rebuke, felt by the viewer-subject and addressed first to himself and thence to us, his readers, is startling. But the eef gfg scheme of the sestet houses this rebuke in a structure of strong formal coherence, giving a sense of appropriateness and closure to the experience. Through the tightly controlled form and images, the rebuke is earned by the experience as it is registered in the poem itself. The poem itself, that is to say, strikes us, through its form and images, as a composed, animated, ensouled whole. As Ryan notes, in the first poem, \"Early Apollo,\" of _New Poems: First Part_ , Rilke himself equates the overwhelming effect of an Apollo statue with the overwhelming effect of poetry in general. \"There is nothing in the head, the speaker says, ' _was verhindern k\u00f6nnte, da\u00df der Glanz aller Gedichte uns fast t\u00f6dlich tr\u00e4fe_ ' (which could prevent us from being almost fatally wounded by the radiance of the poems).\" The poem both rebukes us, its readers, in the way that the fragment has rebuked the viewer-subject, and shows us concretely that the housing of expressive power in controlled surface is still possible and commanding for us, even after the loss of the older dispensations.\n\nFor the poet, and for us who follow and share in the poet's experience, first of the fragment and then of the poem itself as constructed yet as it were living object, it thus remains possible for experience to mean something, possible to have an adequate idea of an affection, with full investment in one's responses to things, at least in principle. The trouble is that we are mostly too half-hearted to take this possibility seriously, perhaps half-hearted because the late modern world is so thoroughgoingly complex and opaque. Forms of technological and social expertise multiply and diverge, so that it becomes harder to sustain a sense of how they do or might form a meaningful whole. They seem detached or misplaced ( _entstellt_ ), and coping and compromise seem inevitably to displace the pursuit of wholeheartedness. It may be a part of wisdom simply to accept much of this, much of the time. And yet: formal coherence blended with original power is possible and compelling. This poem exists, and its force can be felt, perhaps at some time by many and often by some: you must change your life.\n\nTo be sure, this poem is in a way a fiction. It does not report a material reality that is independent of subjectivity and discerned through practices of measurement. Rather it tells a story about an experience and its significance, where the terms of significance involve a sense of emplotment and possibility in human life that are not simply given in tradition or simple sense experience. That sense of emplotment and possibility is itself felt, both by the poet initially and subsequently by us who follow the poet's feeling and thinking, as shaped or contrived in human time, just as first the fragment and then the poem have been shaped or contrived: we, like the poet, must construct it. Yet this sense is also felt as inevitable, present, and altogether other than arbitrarily invented: it is commanded of us in our contrivings by something that makes itself manifest in the formal and thematic working through of experience. In this working through, both the emplotment of this experience and the relation of this particular emplotment to a larger emplotment of human life are both constructed and accepted as given, by the poet and by us. This half-constructed, half-given experience of emplotment does not, however, admit of being fully unpacked and generalized into a master plot of human life as such. Perhaps either the unanticipatedly other and new will inevitably disrupt any settled life policy; perhaps nature and passion are the always present unruly birthplaces of any civil order. No recipe for how one is to change one's life so as to achieve expressive power is on offer. Instead the speaker (by the statue) and we (first by the statue, insofar as we share the we-position of the speaker, and then by the poem) are stopped and reminded that something better, we know not what, at least not in specific detail, haunts and draws us. The initial we-position of the speaker is both reinforced, insofar as anyone may take the statue and the poem as admonishment and provocation, and suspended, as the force of any injunction is felt by an individual viewer or reader bereft of any directions about how to follow it objectively and with others. A \"we\" is posed but also suspended as expressive intensity is urged on us as individuals, and modern life remains a scene of both banality and unparameterized possibility.\n\nPerhaps we should not call what we get from deeply absorbing, cathartic, yet contingency-acknowledging workings through of experience knowledge. Even framing the issue about the role of literature in our lives in terms of knowledge as it is construed paradigmatically in the natural sciences expresses the theoretical philosopher's characteristic bad faith in wanting everything circumscribed and life guided by rationally obligatory rules. Yet we cannot live as human persons without this literature; what we get from it is a sense of life in a human reality that is, if marked by brute contingency, not everywhere dominated by it. Achievement of the free, powerful, and coherent ordering of the materials of one's life is possible\u2014if not wholly and continuously, nonetheless occasionally and exemplarily. A form of life that needs a highly charged modernist reminder of this possibility is a form of life whose energies are in danger of flagging and whose preoccupations are less than fulfilling as they stand. A form of life that contains such reminders and contains readers capable of responding to them is a form of life in which hope remains alive as hope. Rilke may be taken to have known that his concluding injunction would be experienced as brutal, as difficult and all but unreceivable, and hence to have known that it is a wager that his writing can find or forge its audience. Against Rilke, perhaps it is right that, often, we should refuse the wager, as complexity, compromise, and common decency make cowards of us all. The brutalities of art's claims on us in the modern world should not be flattened into comfortable niceties. Yet it is not clear either that they always are or should be refused. The rest is silence: I cannot live to hear the news from England.\n6.\n\n\"New Centers of Reflection Are Continually Forming\"\n\n_Benjamin, Sebald, and Modern Human Life in Time_\n\nI\n\nIn a poignant passage in the introduction to his _Lectures on Fine Art_ (1820), Hegel describes how, in his view, human subjects express themselves in the world through practical activity in order to recognize themselves.\n\nMan brings himself before himself by _practical_ activity, since he has the impulse, in whatever is directly given to him, in what is present to him externally, to produce himself and therein equally to recognize himself. This aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself. Even a child's first impulse involves this practical alteration of external things; a boy throws stones into a river and marvels at the circles drawn in the water as an effect in which he gains an intuition of something that is his own doing.\n\nPoignant though this passage is, one may nonetheless wonder at its claims. Is it the first impulse of human subjects, as subjects, to seek recognition of themselves and of the reasonableness of their doings in relation to external things? How dominant is this impulse in comparison with other impulses? (Many problems of survival, of coping with life, and of satisfying one's wants seem to have little on the face of it to do with seeking self-recognition.) Worse yet, how far is it genuinely possible to win self-recognition or to gain \"an intuition of something that is [one's own] doing\"? Perhaps such intuitions are only relatively fleeting in the face of the chaos and press of life, and perhaps they are available also only to the few who have \"enough\"\u2014enough means, time, and training\u2014and who live in good enough societies in which to carry out their efforts at self-expression and self-recognition. Perhaps there are other things that many people care about more fundamentally than they care about gaining a stable intuition of something that is one's own free and reasonable doing.\n\nHegel concedes that the life of Spirit, which includes at least the lives of human subjects in historical time, is marked by \"tarrying with the negative\" and by \"death and devastation.\" Establishing or expressing anything requires negation and its working through, always; the life of Spirit is continually reforming itself in historical time. As Stephen Houlgate notes, \"Hegel's philosophy... contains within itself a principle of aesthetic and religious _resistance_ to its own 'totalizing claims.'\" Whatever their capacities for conceptually structured self-regulation and satisfaction within meaningful social roles, human beings remain also sensuous beings who stand in some need of feeling imaginatively that life makes (enough) sense. Moreover, as Terry Pinkard remarks, the shapes of our lives are not simply given, according to Hegel. Rather, \"we _come to be_ the kinds of agents we are,\" and so bear, at least potentially, at each moment \"a 'negative' stance toward ourselves\": we could become something we are, so far, not. This negative stance or open stance toward future possibility then \"inflicts a kind of 'wound,' a _Zerissenheit_ , a manner of being internally torn apart that demands healing,\" as we seek greater self-unity and more meaningful satisfaction. Or as Hegel himself puts it, \"in the spiritual nature of man duality and inner conflict burgeon, and in their contradiction he is tossed about.\"\n\nAnd yet, according to Hegel, philosophy, together with the life of the Spirit\u2014human life in time\u2014with which it is interwoven, \"proceeds to the cancellation\" of this opposition.\" Hegel argues that we are historically on the cusp of a time in which \" _basically everyone_ \" will be able \"to satisfy [his or her] knowledge and volition... within the actuality of the state,\" that is, within the framework of the modern democratic nation-state and its institutions of right. Basically all subjects will be able to see reflections of themselves in their doings, in ways that are simultaneously individual and yet stable and reasonable under modern institutions. Structural social revolution is and should be a thing of the past, and we may reasonably claim to live in large measure in reconciliation with actuality.\n\nAfter the horrors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, and with awareness of the persistence of problems of poverty and radical inequality, it scarcely requires much perceptiveness to wonder whether this is really possible. When one then considers further the insights of Marx and Althusser and of Nietzsche and Freud into social life and into standing pressures on individual psyches, then the prospects for a shared life of right\u2014a community of reciprocal respect and recognition among free subjects who freely lead lives that are meaningful and reasonable under shared social institutions\u2014seem dimmer yet. Even if a system of liberal civil rights is a relatively good idea for maintaining a degree of social peace and affording subjects a measure of liberty, no routes of direct political action promise to lead to a life of full freedom and right. Nor does theoretical-representational knowing as it is rigorously pursued in the experimental and mathematical sciences much point to solving problems of self-recognition and reciprocal recognition in worldly practice. We might then conclude that human subjects either do not or should not much care about the pursuit of recognition\u2014the pursuit, that is, of stable senses, maintained by others and by themselves, of their own doings as individually chosen, free, reasonable, and satisfying. Yet that conclusion then makes it hard to see how human subjects engage in either self-cultivation or the cultivation of their social relations at all. These forms of cultivation\u2014the sheer existences of cultures\u2014do seem to embody the pursuit of some sort of expressive power, coherence, and means for the development and recognition of stable, reasonable, and satisfying identity. And yet such pursuits seem always to founder, perhaps inevitably to founder to some extent.\n\nWalter Benjamin's writings on language, history, and culture offer us one way to think about how human beings live with the all but impossible task of the pursuit of recognition. Unlike Hegel, Benjamin begins from the thought that fullness of recognition\u2014what would amount to a paradise of free and meaningful life on earth\u2014is unavailable either on the basis of history as we have inherited it or through any particular specifiable efforts, political, cultural, or theoretical. In an essay written in 1916 but unpublished in his lifetime, Benjamin formulates the unavailability of utopia through or from present courses of culture by contrasting the fullness of the meaning of things to and for God with the standing failure to engage with things (and with each other) in fully meaningful ways that characterizes all human culture. He contrasts God's meaningful naming of things, bound up with understanding them in their proper places and interrelations, with what he calls the human overnaming of things, bound up with our taking them specifically this way or that, as objects of particular use, say, without living in full \"resonance\" with them. \"Things have no proper names except in God. For in his creative word God called them into being, calling them by their proper names. In the language of men, however, they are overnamed.... The naming word in the knowledge of man must fall short of the creative word of God.\" God, who made things freely and in accordance with fullness of understanding, knows and engages with things according to their proper natures and significances. The ways of knowing and engaging with things that is characteristic of human beings are contrasted with the way of God. No matter, then, what one thinks about the existence of God, the point must be that the ways of knowing and engaging with things that are characteristic of human beings are, all of them, one-sided and reflective of conflicts over what things are and how they are to be used. Culture\u2014which is the embodiment of ways of conceiving of things and of making use of them\u2014as it is made by human beings perpetuates one-sidedness and conflict rather than resolving them. Overnaming or living within particular mimetic circuits of conception and use is a form of overspecification that does not let things be in their full significance and prevents human beings from engaging with either materiality or with one another in ways that embody fullness of meaning. Overnaming is, therefore, \"the deepest reason for all melancholy and (from the point of view of the thing) for all deliberate muteness. Overnaming as the linguistic being of melancholy points to another curious relation of language: the overprecision that obtains in the tragic relationship between the languages of human speakers.\"\n\nTo say that relations between languages are tragic and characterized by overprecision is to say that some dimension of what is meant in a given language is somehow missed in its rendering in a second language, with tragic consequences. And that in turn must be because, to some extent, the ways of conceiving of and engaging with things opened up within a given language are not fully available for expression in a second language. All actual languages are marked by overprecise falling away from the fullness of meaning and attention embodied in the divine language. Given, further, that the boundaries of language identity may be as narrow as those of an individual speaker's idiolect, Benjamin's picture is of human subjects generally failing to some degree to understand how other human subjects \"take\" things and engage with them, hence failing to some degree to understand what other human subjects are doing, what might be reasonable and sensible.\n\nThis picture need by no means be taken as a Whorfian picture of subjects as somehow wholly sealed off from one another by boundaries of language and culture that are impermeable to translation. There is some good reason to think that some considerable success in translation and in understanding what others are up to is always possible in relation to any being whom we can recognize as a language-deploying and thinking subject at all. But conflict nonetheless remains. There are standing practical difficulties among subjects in undertaking fully to understand how other subjects \"take\" things, what they are up to in engaging with them, and, so, what a free, meaningful, and reasonable life together under common \"takings\" might be like. There is, for us, no standpoint available outside the partiality that attaches to any point of view that any of us might occupy as finite subjects, no way to see things \"whole\" and untainted by overnaming within the always partly particularized mimetic circuits that one has inherited and developed. Practical problems of human relationship persist. That is the thought captured in Benjamin's contrast between God's calling things by their proper names and human overnaming.\n\nOur ways of taking things conceptually and of engaging with them\u2014no matter how widely shared, pragmatically useful, and historically sensible they may be\u2014are not grounded on any grasp of ultimate, sempiternal reality. Something, some fullness of significance, is somehow missed in any way of taking and engaging with things (or with one another). And so, \"within all linguistic formation [and within all repertoires of culture] a conflict is waged between what is expressed and expressible and what is inexpressible and unexpressed.\" We are, always, failing to mean fully and transparently to others and to ourselves everything that might reasonably be meant in engaging with things and so failing also to live fully and transparently and meaningfully with others according to reason. Our languages and cultural practices ultimately express these facts, at least in certain moments in certain pockets of use. Experience is, therefore, not a matter only of simple classification of objects under concepts, without remainder, and it is not a matter of human subjects each fully knowing what they and each other are up to, according to articulated good reasons. Experience is rather a form of human life in which, sometimes, things happen unpredictably, coincidentally, and yet in such a way that unarticulated significances are displayed and felt. From within the repressed history of a language, something can make itself felt, and present overprecision can be disturbed. Such disturbances can also appear when one undertakes (but in some measure fails at) literary translation or through dislocations of one's ordinary habits of perception, as in travel.\n\nMichael Rosen usefully characterizes Benjamin's understanding of experience as including a sense of the existence of \"unseen affinities\": relations among things or significances of things that are somehow missed within our ordinary articulations of what we are up to (within our ordinary \"overnamings\") but that nonetheless sometimes make themselves manifest. As Rosen puts it, \"'unseen affinities' [such as the 'passion for roulette' in relation to 'the vogue for panoramas'], referring, as they do, to a subterranean level of awareness, are not such as, immediately and unambiguously, to strike the uninstructed observer; and yet it is their existence that provides Benjamin's concept of experience with its only possible verification.\" There are, that is to say, within experience, ways of taking things and ways of engaging with things that seem to disrupt ordinary, articulated, planned ways of thinking, living, and working, and that in disrupting them seem to show exactly how specifically partial those ordinary ways are, just insofar as they are bound up with specific mimetic circuits of overnaming. Attention to these moments of surprise and disruption functions, then, not only as a verification of Benjamin's concept of experience as always partial and fallen but also as a reminder of our finitude and of what we have failed to achieve in the way of fullness of significance within the predominant parts of daily cultural life. Since such moments are always possible\u2014since some surprises and disruptions always remain unrecuperated to transparent and reasonable social life, no matter how it develops\u2014there can be no Hegelian recipe in the face of their permanent presence within life for achieving full human freedom in cultural life according to reason. For this reason, Benjamin characterizes his own method as that of evidencing the disruptive rather than that of prescribing the normative, as that of showing rather than saying. \"Method of this work: literary montage. I have nothing to say\u2014only to show.\"\n\nII\n\nEarly reviewers and critics of W. G. Sebald's books have not been slow to notice the burden of sadness carried by his form of literary attention to life. Something in human life is not going well. Disruption, distraction, threat, and anxiety\u2014all modes of failing easily to settle in routines of given cultural life\u2014are all but omnipresent. Anthony Lane calls attention to Sebald's focusing on the happenstantial, on whatever disrupts smoothness of emplotment, in remarking that Sebald \"raised modesty to the brink of metaphysics.\" Susan Sontag finds in Sebald \"a mind in mourning\" somehow on behalf of us all, for experience failing to become fully and transparently meaningful. This mind expresses itself in a \"laconically evoked mental distress\" that embodies \"a mysterious surplus of pathos\" that is \"never solipsistic.\" Franz Loquai notes that Sebald's writing is marked by a sense that \"the actuality of experience is apparently not to be trusted\"; that is, things that actually and effectively happen or are to happen according to life plans that a traditional plot might track are continuously being disrupted by the unplanned, the surprising, and the sheerly contingent.\n\nFrank Farrell explains the existence of disruptions in part as a result of the fact that Sebald's narrator figure (a character sometimes called W. G. Sebald) is an emigrant, as are both many of the living figures whom he encounters and many of the historical figures upon whom he reflects. In addition to geographic emigration, both the narrator figure and many of those whom he encounters seem to suffer from a kind of developmental or psychic emigration. Childhood, with its parental figures superintending a round of daily rituals, has somehow been left behind, and adulthood seems to offer no relations and routines of comparable stability and sureness of significance. Sebald's world, as Farrell puts it, \"is unable to incarnate the present meanings of an ongoing life because of the need for a ritualized return of what can no longer come back.\"\n\nOne might be tempted to find either the Sebald figure or the characters whose wanderings are narrated uninteresting, on the ground that their senses of loss and their mournings are somehow pathological in being determined by a failure to form stable adult attachments into which most people need not and do not fall. But exactly how clear is it that we genuinely do better in a world dominated by getting and spending, commodity exchange, cultural slippage, and the fragmentation of work? Sebald's figures occupy \"a world of ruins and absences, with no features immanent to it that suggest any possibility of renewal.\" If we reject the relevance to us of this world and the figures within it, then we shall have somehow to sustain a sense of the existence immanently within our world of features that do suggest renewal, and that is not obviously so easy to do.\n\nMark R. McCulloh focuses similarly on Sebald's sense of outsiderliness in the face of cultural habits that seem to lack significance. \"What Sebald does is display openly, from the perspective of a wandering outsider who happens to have certain literary leanings, the very oddness of people, of history and its calamities, of the very predicament of being alive. Sebald's subject... is in the last analysis the unsettling strangeness of the familiar.\" In the face of this unsettling strangeness, the best that one can do, Sebald suggests, is to bear witness to it and to the traumas that somehow lie behind it. This witness, however, includes a sense, as in Benjamin, that traumas are intrinsic to historical life as such; no overcoming of trauma through either political revolution or cognition is available. Sebald himself as a critic characterized the work of the early twentieth-century German novelist Alfred D\u00f6blin as offering \"an exact illustration of the new concept of history, which is not based on the idea of progress, as the old bourgeois concept was, but on the notion of self-perpetuating catastrophe.\"\n\nEric L. Santner describes a \"'poetics of exposure' that would become the signature style and method of Sebald's fiction.\" Human subjects are exposed to damage, trauma, loss, and in general to failures to form stable and fulfilling attachments. The lives of human subjects hence seem to have something in common with certain other \"privileged materials and objects\" that recur in Sebald's fiction: \"dust, ash, moth, bones, flayed skin, silk.\" Disintegration, fragility, and decay are substantially more prominent than integration, construction, and progress, both for human subjects and for material things.\n\nSantner traces Sebald's poetics of exposure, sense of the fragility of human life, and feeling for the pervasiveness of trauma in history both to the conditions of subject or ego formation in general and to the specific shape of those conditions in late commodity society. He suggests that Sebald shares Benjamin's sense of our \"irreducible exposure to the violence of history.\" This exposure makes allegory (or at least the kind of deliberately overstylized, ritualized, \"bald,\" antieschatological, unparsable allegory characteristic of the seventeenth-century German Trauerspiel as Benjamin understood it) \"the symbolic mode proper to\" our experience, and it makes melancholy\u2014lingering in a persistent sense of damage, trauma, and loss\u2014the appropriate tonality for serious writing that would register the deepest tenor of human experience.\n\nSantner argues that the continuing presence of trauma in human life in such a way that only damaged, outsiderly, less than wholehearted subjects are formed is due initially to the basis of civilization in the renunciation of parricide, as Freud described that basis in _Totemism and Taboo_. There is originally, at least for adolescent male subjects, a primordial impulse to parricide, so that they may displace the primal father in the tribe and come to enjoy a position of unrivaled possession and enjoyment of its women. At some point, however, this parricidal impulse is renounced for the sake of social peace but therein also displaced and continued in a distorted form. \"The _renunciation_ of the parricidal impulse (along with the fantasy of absolute jouissance entailed by the yearned-for position of the primal father) can be fully sustained only by a _compulsion to enjoy_ that same impulse, though at the significant symbolic remove of ritual performance.\" Given this renunciation and remove, male subjects come to exist in a damaged state of both permanent excitation and dissatisfaction. \"The primal horde pattern [of actual slaying of the primal father] and its 'mythic violence' are in some sense both sustained and suspended _in the same stroke_ \" with the introduction of settled civilization, superego formation and the renunciations it entails, and the law. With their lives as subjects founded on renunciations overlying excitations and unsatisfied wishes for perfect enjoyment, (male) subjects are incapable of full and stable enjoyments, and they perpetuate violence and trauma through their rivalries and competitive pursuits of objects that are in the end always in some measure unsatisfying. Open murder is renounced, but rivalry is not.\n\nThe damage continually wrought on and by (male) subjects is then exacerbated by life in modern commodity society, which displays a \"paradoxical mixture of deadness and excitation, stuckness and agitation,\" a \"nihilistic vitality,\" and \"surplus excitation and agitation.\" (Compare Wordsworth on the Bartholomew Fair: a \"perpetual whirl of \/ Of trivial objects, melted and reduced \/ To one identity, by differences \/ That have no meaning, and no end\" and Hegel on Civil Society: \"particularity... indulging itself in all directions as it satisfies its needs, contingent arbitrariness, and subjective caprice [so that it] destroys itself and its substantial concept in the act of enjoyment... infinitely agitated and continually dependent on external contingency.\") Nor are nonmale subjects freed from the circuits of damage that result from surplus excitation and agitation. In a world that contains circuits of damage and in which commodity production, acquisition, and exchange have displaced stable social relations and rituals, it is difficult for anyone to grow up into accomplished subjectivity bound up in stable and meaningful commitments.\n\nIt is no accident, then, that Santner wonders, against the background of this story about the development and plights of contemporary subjectivity, whether there is any room, in either the contemporary world or in Sebald's conception of it, for \"a shift in subjective dispositions\" that might result in more meaningful life. The prospects are not on the face of it encouraging.\n\nSebald is utterly uninterested in what we might call the \"new age\" solutions to the dilemma, that is, the various therapies and techniques that proliferate throughout contemporary culture for reducing stress, enhancing well-being, and optimizing the pleasure\/reality principle\u2014in a word, for _soothing_ the agitations of creaturely life. The relevant question with respect to Sebald is whether his way of constructing our historical situation leaves open the possibility of an event, a radical shift of perspective whereby something genuinely new could emerge.\n\nSantner himself offers two interrelated suggestions in response to this question. Building on work by Jonathan Lear on the possibilities of achieving a good enough psychoanalytic cure, that is, of coming to be able, as Freud is supposed to have remarked, \"to work and to love,\" Santner proposes that it is sometimes possible \"to catch a lucky break in life,\" that is, to become able to \"appropriate the 'the possibilities for new possibilities' that are, as [Lear] puts it, ' breaking out all the time.'\" Building on late work by Jacques Lacan, Santner adds that the possibility of a lucky break in forming relations to other subjects may be significantly held open by the fact that women, though shaped in part by traumas attendant upon subject formation, are, in Lacan's term, \"Not all,\" \"not wholly determined by [the phallic function].\" As a result, there are modes of enjoyment and of investment in activity and in subject-subject relations open to women that are not so readily available to male subjects. They may have more diffuse enjoyments and investments in activity and in relationships that are not so obsessively marked by rivalry and the playing out of displaced aggression, and human subjects in general may hope that such enjoyments and investments may spread out more widely within both personal and social life.\n\nThe suggestion that the miracle of a lucky break might happen, specifically that it might happen through the agency of women in forming other modes of subject-subject relation, is by no means unimportant, and it perhaps captures well the sort of forward-looking adaptiveness in forming and maintaining relationships that figures in the personal and occupational affairs of relatively normal and happy people. When it comes to Sebald, however, this suggestion faces a number of difficulties. Though chance and coincidence abound, relatively happy, forward-looking characters capable of adaptation do not much figure in Sebald's fiction. Nor are women much present in his writings, and anything resembling a marriage plot is entirely absent. Nor does this suggestion by itself capture the work of Sebald's style and form of attention to life, which remain considerably more melancholic than celebratory of luck. Most important, this suggestion does not really address either the continuing dynamics of trauma that underlie subject formation within settled social life or the particular shape those dynamics have taken in advanced commodity society.\n\nSantner's second suggestion builds on Terry Eagleton's reading of Benjamin, who likewise addressed the problem of \"the possibility of an event.\" In response to the plights of subject development in contemporary life, we might, Eagleton proposes, either regress to an imaginary past, remain marooned in melancholia, or somehow, while remembering the traumatic, nonetheless \"re-channel desire from both past and present to the future: to detect in the decline of the aura the form of new social and libidinal relations, realizable by revolutionary practice.\" This suggestion, however, raises the questions of exactly how the rechanneling of desire is possible and whether Sebald's works present any plausible models for such a rechanneling. Just how and where are the forms of new social and libidinal relations to be detected? There is no hint of any turn toward revolutionary praxis in Sebald. Nor do any rechannelings of desire seem visibly present in the itineraries of Sebald's principal figures, unless, somehow, something like this, in a muted form, is accomplished within the consciousness of the narrator figure. This narrator figure manages somehow to go on with life, despite an omnipresent melancholy and consciousness of trauma, and it is possible that the possibility of going on is thereby somehow opened up to us as well. And here Santner suggests that there is in Sebald's writing \"the performance of acts of witnessing\" that express a \"love of neighbor\" that functions as \"the 'miraculous' opening of a social link\" first between the narrator figure and those whom he encounters and then, further, between us and like figures in our worlds. This love of neighbor in the form of witness offers us \"the resources for intervening in and supplementing the superego bind\" that haunts subject formation and that motivates the perpetuation of trauma.\n\nThe acts of witnessing Sebald carries out in and through his narrator figure are not simply a journalistic reporting of evident injury, loss, and suffering. Daily newspapers and local television news reports are already replete with such reportings, and they function within the commodity space of news reporting more to titillate, entertain, and numb their audiences than to mobilize fullness of attention. Instead, Santner argues, Sebald's attention to life takes the form of what Benjamin called \" _erstarrte Unruhe_ , petrified unrest.\" Like the figure of the halted traveler in Wordsworth, or like Rilke frozen before the commanding sculpture of Apollo's torso, the narrator figure finds himself stopped and plunged into reflection and feeling. Attention is suddenly held all but obsessively by something simultaneously strange and indecipherable yet altogether ordinary.\n\nThis combination of strangeness and indecipherability with ordinariness is the signature of the uncanny ( _das Unheimliche_ ) as Freud conceived of it. Sebald himself quotes and endorses Benjamin's remark that \"histrionic or fanatical stress on the mysterious side of the mysterious takes us no further; we penetrate the mystery only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world.\" Mark McCulloh observes that \"it is this restoration of a sense of the uncanny (as well as of the sublime) to everyday experience that accounts for much of Sebald's appeal.\" To see something\u2014something strange, indecipherable, and yet strangely familiar within the ordinary\u2014and then to dwell on this something in reflection\u2014not to explain it, but to follow and play out the sense of strangeness, familiarity, and significance\u2014is to reanimate one's sense of life as a human subject. It is to remind oneself, in detail, that one is capable of noticing and feeling and of sustaining attention to the strange phenomena of life in time. Such a reminder joins the narrator figure with those whom he encounters who have suffered traumas of which they are uncannily reminded and also with readers who are brought to their own sense of the presence of the traumatic and of the strangely familiar within their lives.\n\nThis form of attention to human life is a small thing. It is not an explicit praxis of economic or political-institutional life, it is neither the achievement of a happy marriage or partner-relation nor the story of one, and it is not therapy that immediately adjusts one to a workplace or to family life. But it is a small thing that might run through and renovate any of the politicoeconomic praxes, human relationships, or modes of work and family life one might take up. Without the reanimation of subject attention, there is only compulsive repetition, unthinking habit, surpluses of excitation and agitation, anomie, and dullness. With it there is a chance to lead a human life more actively, more expressively, and with more wholeheartedness of interest.\n\nIII\n\nIt is not easy to characterize stylistically, formally, technically, or linguistically the nature of the fullness of attention some writers achieve and in which we can participate by reading. Different works written in different historical circumstances and with different subject matters will have strikingly different ways formally to achieve fullness of attention. One way, however, to begin a characterization is to note the differences of fullness of literary attention from both theorizing or discursive-classificatory thinking that makes use of preexistent categories, on the one hand, and more or less instantaneous intuition or perception, on the other. This, in fact, is exactly how Benjamin, is his masterpiece essay \"The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,\" both explains and extends Friedrich Schlegel's conception of the achievement of literature as an art. Schlegel, Benjamin writes, found it\n\nnecessary... to seek a mediation between discursive thinking and intellectual intuition, since the one did not satisfy his imperative of intuitive comprehension, whereas the other failed to satisfy his systematic interests. He thus found himself... faced with the problem of combining the maximum systematic range of thought with the most extreme truncation of discursive thinking.... He searches for a noneidetic intuition of the system, and he finds this in language. (139\u2013140)\n\nThe system in question here is the system of achieved freedom or of a more fully human way of life, involving full and stable care, reflection, and investment in activity. To say that intellectual intuition fails to satisfy an interest in this system is to say that such a way of life is not simply there to be grasped in either an instantaneous intellectual intuition of the whole or in a moment of blinding perception of the actual. But more temporally extended discursive-theoretic characterization of such a way of life remains, for Schlegel, abstract, or something whose availability and worth we are unable to feel directly. So one needs not a theory of freedom, the right or the good, but a more intuitive yet also temporally extended comprehension, achieved in relation to feeling, of what is possible and valuable for us.\n\nSchlegel, then, described a certain use of language as a vehicle of attention in the successful literary work. The task of criticism is to follow and participate in the deployment of attention within the work. In so conceiving of criticism, Benjamin argues,\n\nSchlegel's concept of criticism achieve[d] freedom from heteronomous aesthetic doctrines, [and] it made this freedom possible in the first place by setting up for artworks a criterion other than the rule\u2014namely, the criterion of an immanent structure specific to the work itself. He did this not with the general concepts of harmony and organization which, in the case of Herder or Moritz, were incapable of establishing a criticism of art, but with a genuine theory of art... as a medium of reflection and of the work as a center of reflection. (155)\n\nThere are, that is to say, no a priori knowable forms, use of which is either necessary or sufficient for success in art. Nor is there any definite content that is required. As Benjamin remarks, \"the concept of measure is remote from Romanticism, which paid no heed to an a priori of content, something to be measured in art\" (184). Instead, \"the value of a work depends solely on whether it makes its immanent critique possible or not\" (159), that is, on whether it supports critical or readerly participation in its deployments of attention. Benjamin himself argues that this conception of the value of a work of art remains dominant for us today, even where it is contested by either staler classicisms, on the one hand, or by the vulgarizations of commodity valuation and psychobiographic cults of personality, on the other. Citing Flaubert and the Stefan George circle, Benjamin claims that \"the doctrine that art and its works are essentially neither appearances of beauty nor manifestations of immediately inspired emotions, but media of forms, resting in themselves, has not fallen into oblivion since the Romantics, at least not in the spirit of artistic development itself\" (177), where the forms in question are not those of classical rules or unities but forms of fuller attention.\n\nForm, then, does the work of reflection or of attention that blends thought with feeling.\n\nForm is the objective expression of the reflection proper to the work, the reflection that constitutes its essence. Form is the possibility of reflection in the work. It grounds the work a priori, therefore, as a principle of existence; it is through its form that the work of art is a living center of reflection. In the medium of reflection in art, new centers of reflection are continually forming.... The infinitude of art attains to reflection first of all only in such a center, as in a limiting value; that is, it attains to self-comprehension and therewith to comprehension generally. This limit-value is the form of presentation [ _Darstellungsweise_ ] of the individual work. On it rests the possibility of a relative unity and closure of the work in the medium of art, [even though] the work remains burdened with a moment of contingency. (156)\n\nThe relative unity and closure that Benjamin has in mind differ from the putatively absolute closure of a demonstrative argument, on the one hand, and the lack of closure that characterizes the merely incidental or episodic, on the other. Instead, the author's attention and interest are excited by an initiating scene or incident. In and through the act of writing, the writer imagines what might further happen, or what thoughts and feelings are in play in relation to the initiator, as well as how, exactly, to work out in words the presentation of initiator, consequents, and attendant thoughts and feelings. A material form of presentation is here achieved in relation to the initiator, as an immanent structure rather than as form imposed from without. A center of reflection is formed in the work in relation to the initiator. The relative closure and unity of the work are achieved when attention calms itself in a feeling of completeness, signaled in a sense that \"yes, it was all so.\" (Compare Herbert Marcuse's discussion of aesthetic unity, understood as culminating in the sense that \" _Es war doch so sch\u00f6n_ \"\u2014it was all so beautiful anyway; it made sense; the work has clarified the initiating scene, even in the absence of complete system of freedom, theory of value, or demonstrated moral.)\n\nCertain claims about the proper way of reading a literary work follow immediately from the conception of it as a material form of presentation of energies of attention, focused on an initiator and its consequents, in relation to further thoughts and feelings, in the face of the persistent onwardness of life. As Schlegel himself observed in his critique of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ , \"it is fine and necessary to abandon oneself utterly to the impression a poetic work makes... and perhaps only in particular cases to confirm one's feeling through reflection and to raise it to the level of thought... and complete it. But it is no less necessary to be able to abstract from all that is particular, so that\u2014hovering\u2014one grasps the universal\" (as cited in Benjamin, 153). In reading, a certain abandonment to the literary text\u2014to its energies, forms, and movements of attention\u2014will be necessary, as one follows reflection in the process of forming itself. But it will also be necessary sometimes, intermittently, to stand back in one's own reflections, so as to balance the movement of thought one has followed against life itself, as one reflects on it, and against other courses of embodied reflection. Within these two movements of reading and with the work and its writer one can then, sometimes, for a time, come to say and feel, \"yes, it was all so.\"\n\nIV\n\nIn order to track and grasp more concretely this mode of conclusion and its manner of achievement through literary form, we may turn to a particular case, W. G. Sebald's long story \"Paul Bereyter,\" the second of his four long stories published together as _The Emigrants_. Like the other stories in this collection, \"Paul Bereyter\" focuses on its single titular character, in this case as that character is considered by a first-person narrator who had once been Paul's student in grammar school. It is a kind of muted elegy or meditation, opening with the lines: \"In January 1984, the news reached me from S that on the evening of the 30th of December, a week after his seventy-fourth birthday, Paul Bereyter, who had been my teacher at primary school, had put an end to his life. A short distance from S, where the railway track curves out of a willow copse into the open fields, he had lain himself down in front of a train\" (27\/41).\n\nThis first sentence already embodies Sebald's striking personal style, somewhat more natural in German than in English. It begins with a prepositional phrase, the main verb is in the passive voice, two time indications delay the appearance of the noun subject \"Paul Bereyter\" of the main dependent clause that gives the news, and again a relative clause stands between that subject-noun phrase and its verb phrase. The second sentence continues the interrupting focus on details, as two place indications, the second in explicatory apposition to the first and offering the perceptible details of the curving track and the willow copse, precede an independent clause in the past perfect. In the German, in fact, these two sentences are one long sentence, with the dramatic \"sich... vor den Zug legte\" coming only at the very end. In addition, the clauses in German are connected by explicatory conjunctions that the English omits: \" _thus_ a week after his 74th birthday\" (\"also eine Woche nach seinem 74. Geburtstag\") and \"in that he had...\" (\" _indem_ er sich\"). The railway line leads itself out in a curve (\"in einem Bogen... herausf\u00fchrt\") and then attains the open field (\"das offene Feld gewinnt\") almost as though it, too, were a character. These two sentences are accompanied by a somewhat blurry black-and-white photograph, showing in the foreground, where it occupies about half of the picture plane at its front edge, a single rail, with to the far right edge a dark companion rail curving along with it toward the right, away from trees on the left and toward a field. It is all, already, almost unbearably evocative and melancholy. The effect of the style and the photograph is one of delay _in_ details that, we may presume, have some significance in holding the narrator's attention, though this significance is not spelled out: rather, these details are to accumulate\u2014both in the narrator's consciousness and in the consciousness of we who follow his consciousness\u2014until they form a pattern whose significance can almost, but not quite, be explicated in a moral or secret key to the story. Instead of a moral or secret key, what the narrator gets, and what we get, is a more nearly unverbalizable sense of the pattern and of the pathos, and the beauty and fragility amid the pathos, that this life (Paul Bereyter's life) and human life (both the narrator's life and our lives) all embody.\n\nFollowing this opening sentence, the narrative plays out in this style through roughly nine further scenes, as the narrator attempts to come to terms with Paul Bereyter's life, more or less as follows.\n\n(1) The narrator notes that the obituary in the local newspaper from S fails to mention \"that Paul Bereyter had died of his own freewill\" ( _aus freien St\u00fccken_ ) (27\/42) and that, besides describing his dedication to his pupils, his inventiveness as a teacher, and his love of music, it \"added, with no further explanation [ _In einer weiter nicht erl\u00e4uterten Bemerkung_ ], that during the Third Reich Paul Bereyter had been prevented from practicing his chosen profession\" (27\/42). As a result of the manner of death and of \"this curiously unconnected, inconsequential statement\" (\"Diese g\u00e4nzlich unverbundene und unverbindliche Feststellung\") (27\/42), the narrator concerns himself more and more with Paul Bereyter (\"mich... immer h\u00e4ufiger mit Paul Bereyter besch\u00e4ftige\"), resolving to \"get beyond\" his own fond memories of him in order to find out more about his secret history.\n\n(2) The narrator returns to S, where he has been only occasionally since leaving school, in order to visit Paul's apartment and to talk with the villagers. He remembers how the students, like everyone else in the village, had spoken of their teacher simply as \"Paul\" (28\/43), and he imagines Paul lying on his balcony, skating in winter, and stretched out on the track (29\/44). Or, rather, \"I saw him on the airy balcony, his face vaulted over by the host of stars\" (\"Ich sah ihn liegen auf dem geschindelten Altan, seiner sommerlichen Schlafstatt, das Gesicht \u00fcberwolbt von den Heerz\u00fcgen der Gestirne\") (29\/44). These investigations and imaginings, however, do not bring him any closer to Paul, except in a few \"emotional moments that seemed presumptuous to me\" (\"in gewissen Ausuferungen des Gef\u00fchls [overflowings of feelings], wie sie mir unzul\u00e4ssig [inadmissible, forbidden] erscheinen\") (29\/45). As a result, he has now written down \"what I know of Paul Bereyter\" (\"zu deren Vermeidung ich jetzt aufgeschrieben habe, was ich von Paul Bereyter wei\u00df und im Verlauf meiner Erkundigen \u00fcber ihn in Erfahrung bringen konnte\") (29\/45).\n\n(3) The narrator describes his family's move from W to S, \"19 kilometers away\" (32\/45), and his joining Paul Bereyter's third class. He recalls his friendship with Fritz Binswanger, a slow boy who exactly shared the narrator's \"incorrigibly sloppy handwriting\" (\"unverbesserlich schweinisch Handschrift\") (31\/47). They study cockchafer beetles together and share lunches. Once they each receive a present of \"a white butterpear\" (32\/49). Fritz later became a chef of \"international renown\" (32\/49). The narrator and Fritz later meet in London, in 1984, \"in the reading room of the British Museum, where I was researching the history of Bering's Alaska expedition and Fritz was studying eighteenth-century French cookbooks\" (32\/49).\n\n(4) The narrator describes the layout of the classroom in S, with \"twenty-six desks screwed fast to the oiled floorboards\" (33\/50\u201351). A sketch accompanies this description. Paul's bearing and teaching style are described. He often stood not at the front but \"in one of the window bays towards the head of the room half facing the class and half turned to look out, his face at a slightly upturned angle with the sunlight glinting on his glasses; and from that position he would talk across to us\" (34\/52). He spoke \"in well-structured sentences\" \"without any touch of dialect but with a slight impediment of speech or timbre, as if the sound were coming not from the larynx but from somewhere near the heart\" (34\u201335\/52). Paul's freethinking in religion and his \"aversion to hypocrisy of any description\" (\"die Abneigung Pauls gegen alles Scheinheilige\") are described (36\/55). He did not attend church. Instead of using the prescribed text, he taught from a collection of stories, \"the _Rheinische Hausfreund_ \" (37\/56) that he \"had procured, I suspect at his own expense\" (37\/56\u201357). He spoke fluent French. He emphasized natural history, and he often took the class on visits to interesting sites: a brewery, a gunsmith's, a castle, and an abandoned coal mine. He played the clarinet and was strikingly good at whistling, favoring melodies that the narrator only later recognized as by Brahms and Bellini (41\/61). He once brought to the class a young conservatory violinist, and Paul was \"far from being able to hide the emotion that [the] playing produced in him [and] had to remove his glasses because his eyes had filled with tears\" (41\/62). Often \"he might stop or sit down somewhere, alone and apart from us all, as if he, who was always in good spirits and seemed so cheerful, was in fact desolation itself\" (\"die Untr\u00f6stlichkeit selber\") (42\/62). This teaching style, and these and other incidents, are strikingly close to what we know of Wittgenstein's career as a rural schoolteacher, and Wittgenstein is mentioned later in the text.\n\n(5) The narrator describes what he has learned about Paul from Lucy Landau, who now lives in the Villa Bonlieu in Yverdon, Switzerland, and who had arranged Paul's burial in S. Since his retirement from teaching in 1971, Paul had mostly lived in Yverdon. He and Lucy had met each other at Salin-les-Bains in the French Jura, where she had been reading Nabokov's autobiography on a park bench (43\/65). Some of Lucy's own childhood in Switzerland is recounted. Paul had explained to her in Salin-les-Bains that his \"condition\" and his \"claustrophobia\" had now made him unable to teach (43\/65). His condition included now seeing \"his pupils, although he had always felt affection for them (he stressed this), as contemptible and repulsive creatures [ _ver\u00e4chtliche und hassenswerte Kreaturen_ ], the very sight of whom had prompted an utterly groundless violence in him on more than one occasion\" that he had felt break out in him (43\u201344\/65\u201366). Paul, we are told Lucy said, \"was almost consumed by the loneliness within him [ _von seiner inneren Einsamkeit nahezu aufgefressenen_ ],\" though he was \"the most considerate and entertaining companion one could wish for\" (44\/66\u201367). In conversation, Paul \"had linked the bourgeois concept of Utopia and order... with the progressive destruction of natural life\" (45\/67). She herself, when gazing with Paul at Lake Geneva from the top of Montrond, \"had for the first time in her life... a sense of the contrarieties that are in our longings\" (\"die widerspr\u00fcchlichen Dimensionen unserer Sehnsucht\") (45\/68). Lucy explains to the narrator that Paul had earlier lived in France, from 1935 to 1939, and she gives the narrator an album of photographs and notes, kept by Paul, that covers \"almost the whole of [his] life\" (45\/68).\n\n(6) The narrator reports that \"since then I have returned to [the album] time and time again, because, looking at the pictures in it, it truly seemed to me, and still does, as if the dead were coming back, or as if we were on the point of joining them\" (46\/68\u201369). Various photographs from the album are reproduced in the narrator's story we are reading. The album and the photos tell of \"a happy childhood\" (46\/69) and years \"in a country boarding school\" (46\/69). Paul had submitted to the narrow-minded and morbidly Catholic demands of a teacher training school solely in order to be able to teach children (46\u201347\/69). In the summer following a year of probationary teaching in S in 1934\u20131935, Paul spent a good deal of time with Helen Hollaender from Vienna, \"an independent-spirited, clever woman\" whose \"waters ran deep\" and in which \"Paul liked to see his own reflection\" (48\/72), at least as Mme. Landau interprets the photographs to the narrator. In autumn 1935, Paul took up a teaching post \"in the remote village of W\" but was almost immediately dismissed \"because of the new laws\" (48\/72). Meanwhile, Helen had returned with her mother to Vienna, from where \"there could be little doubt that Helen and her mother had been deported, in one of those special trains that left Vienna at dawn, probably to Theresienstadt in the first instance\" (40\u201350\/73).\n\n(7) Paul too, Mme. Landau reports to the narrator, is one-quarter Jewish, the grandson of the Jewish merchant Amschel Bereyter from Gunzenhausen in Franconia, and the son of Theodor, who had trained in a department store in Nuremberg before opening his own shop in S (50\u201351\/75). \"In his childhood,\" Mme. Landau reports Paul to have said,\n\neverything in the emporium seemed far too high up for him, doubtless because he himself was small, but also because the shelves reached all the four metres up to the ceiling. The light in the emporium, coming through the small transom windows let into the tops of the display window backboards, was dim even on the brightest of days, and it must have seemed all the murkier to him as a child, Paul had said, as he moved on his tricycle, mostly on the lowest level, through the ravines between tables, boxes and counters, amidst a variety of smells\u2014mothballs and lily-of-the-valley soap were always the most pungent, while felted wool and loden cloth assailed the nose only in wet weather, herrings and linseed oil in hot. (51\/76)\n\nPaul's father Theo died of a heart attack on Palm Sunday, 1936, but perhaps also from \"the fury and fear that had been consuming him, ever since, precisely two years before his death, the Jewish families, resident in his home town of Gunzenhausen for generations, had been the target of violent attacks\" (53\/79). Even though it \"could not be 'Aryanized'\" officially, the shop had nevertheless to be sold for \"next to nothing,\" and Paul's mother Thela \"died within a few weeks\" (53\u201354\/79\u201380).\n\n(8) After it became \"no longer tenable\" (55\/81) for him as a German to serve as a tutor in France, Paul returned to Berlin in 1939 to work at an office job in a garage. A few months later he was called up, and he spent six years in the motorized artillery, serving on all three fronts. Under one photograph of himself from this period, Paul wrote that \"day by day, hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract\" (56\/83). In 1945, \"a German to the marrow\" (\"von Grund auf\") (57\/84), Paul returned to S, \"which in fact he loathed... said Mme. Landau\" (57\/84), again to teach. He \"spent a lot of time gardening\" (57\/85). During this time, he read \"Altenberg, Trakl, Wittgenstein, Friedell, Hasenclever, Toller, Tucholsky, Klaus Mann, Ossietzky, Benjamin, Koestler, and Zweig: almost all of them writers who had taken their own lives or been close to doing so\" (58\/86). He \"copied out hundreds of pages\" into his notebooks, \"time and again... stories of suicides\" (58\/86), as though to convince himself \"that he belonged to the exiles and not to the people of S\" (59\/87\u201388). He retired in 1971 and thereafter lived principally in Yverdon, near Mme. Landau, where he devoted himself to his gardening and reading.\n\n(9) In 1982, Paul's vision once again began to deteriorate. In autumn 1983, he informed Lucy that he wished to give up his flat in S. \"Not long after Christmas\" (60\/89), they traveled to S together to settle affairs. \"No snow had fallen, there was no sign anywhere of any winter tourism.... On the third day a spell of mild _f\u00f6hn_ weather set in, quite unusual for the time of year. The pine forests were black on the mountainsides, the windows gleamed like lead, and the sky was so low and dark one expected ink to run out of it any moment\" (60\u201361\/89\u201390). While Mme. Landau was sleeping in the afternoon from a headache, Paul went out. Upon being informed of his death, she thought of the railway timetables and directories he had collected and of \"the M\u00e4rklin model railway he had laid\" (61\/91) out in his rooms. Hearing this, the narrator thinks of \"the stations, tracks, goods depots and signal boxes\" that he had as a child to copy from the blackboard in Paul's classroom (61\/91). Paul had told Mme. Landau of a summer holiday in his own childhood that he had spent watching trains pass \"from the mainland to the island and from the island to the mainland\" (62\/92). At that time, Paul's uncle had said he would \"end up on the railways\" (\"bei der Eisenbahn enden\") (63\/92). Though this struck her as \"darkly foreboding\" (\"er hatte auf mich die dunkle Wirkung eines Orakelspruchs\") (63\/93), Mme. Landau reported that \"the disquiet I experienced lasted only a very short time, and passed over me like the shadow of a bird in flight\" (\"ging \u00fcber mich hinweg wie der Schatten eines Vogels im Flug\") (63\/93).\n\nV\n\nThe action of this story, like the action of lyric, takes place entirely in memory, within the consciousness of the narrator and in the past tense. Also like lyric, the overall structural pattern of the story is out-in-out. That is, an initiating scene or incident in the world (here the news of Paul Bereyter's suicide and the subsequent newspaper account of it) prompts a course of memory, reflection, and further action, all of which are then recollected in the past tense of the narrative itself. The narrative then ends with a turn again out toward the world\u2014the image of Mme. Landau reporting the passing over her of her disquiet\u2014so as to let the world go its own way.\n\nThe recollective actions and attentions of the narrator model for us our attentions to details of our own lives, as we too seem sometimes to haunt the world, from within our reserves of loneliness, yet also seem sometimes to be bound up in things, without any clear sense of the forces or logic of loneliness and activity. As in lyric, we participate in the narrator's own recollections and attentions. In the case of the sixteen photographs and diagrams that appear within the story, we literally see what the narrator sees. The photographs and diagrams are chosen and placed by the author (who may or may not be the narrator), and it is not clear that they are in each case documentary in relation to the incidents of the story. Sometimes they seem documentary; sometimes they seem more general than that, to be deposited more for the sake of a mood or tonality that they evoke in relation to incidents than out of a documentary intention. This ambiguity heightens the sense of the uncanny and of \"unseen affinities\" between narrated events and some felt but scarcely verbalizable significances.\n\nSimilarly, the narrator himself, and we through the narrator, sometimes seem to see and feel what Paul or Lucy see and feel, especially, for example, in the long description of the details of Theo Bereyter's emporium, with its high windows, dim light, and pungent smells. It is easy for us here to recall the fuguelike actions of play (riding a tricycle down the aisles) and seemingly giant scale of objects of our own childhoods. And yet, stopped by the photographs, we seem sometimes to be thrown back on ourselves, seem to see only their mysteriously evocative black on white, detached from any narrative arc. With the narrator, and perhaps with anyone who reflects, we find ourselves left outside the plot, if there is a plot at all.\n\nA philosophical or theological theory might hope to describe the essence of the situation that we share, to some extent, with Paul, Lucy, and the narrator. A political or sexual history might hope to sort out and explain the relative influences on Paul, and on us, of Jewishness (or another religion) or of sexual longing of one or another shape, subsuming Paul and us under its generalizations. Such descriptions and generalizations might be apt. But something nonetheless would be missed in them: the intimate detail and density of consciousness and its movements in perception, as it finds itself now in this situation, now in that, struck by surprises and intensities that seem to resist full capture by either essential descriptions or subsumptive generalizations. A task of literature\u2014or at least of this kind of intensely lyrical and elegiac literature\u2014is to render some of these movements for our identification, thus enabling us, along with their narrators (and writers) to work them through, so as to be all at once ourselves, in our particular personalities, lonelinesses, and intensities of perception and recollection, and also in the world, able, in the end, to let it go its own way, with an appropriate sense of mystery and wonder at it, and at how one has been in it, but not, quite, ever altogether of it. The movement of working through is as important or more important than the events that are narrated. Sebald's literary technique heightens our awareness of this through his continual use of devices of interruption: narratively through shifts from the narrator's own investigations, to what Mme. Landau said, to what is actually in Paul's album; syntactically through the interjection of prepositional and appositional phrases, piling up details for perception, in between noun phrase subjects and verbs. These details invite reflections, both historical and philosophical; were there no such invitations, we would encounter only the incidental or episodic. But reflection is not allowed to settle into any definite metaphysical, sociohistorical, or psychoanalytic systems for interpretation. (One must, as Schlegel remarked, both abandon oneself to the poetry of the text and hover above it, seeking the universal. New centers of reflection are continually forming.) This kind of literature presents for our working through what this story has itself called \"a sense of the contrarieties that are in our longings\" (\"die widerspr\u00fcchlichen Dimensionen unserer Sehnsucht\") (45\/68), as we ourselves move through its details and in doing so reflect on them.\n\nThe story \"Paul Bereyter\" is headed by a motto, \"Manche Nebelflecken l\u00f6set kein Auge auf,\" well enough translated as \"There is mist that no eye can dispel\" (25\/39). In fact, however, this motto is a quotation from a quite special context: Jean Paul's _Vorschule der \u00c4sthetik_ , part 1, section 3, paragraph 14, entitled \"Instinct of Genius or the Matter of Genius\" (\"Instinkt des Genies oder genialer Stoff\"). The full passage runs as follows:\n\nMany godlike spirits have been impressed by destiny with a grotesque [ _unf\u00f6rmliche_ ] form, as Socrates had the body of a satyr; for time governs the form, but not the inner matter. Thus the poetic mirror with which Jakob B\u00f6hme rendered heaven and earth hung in a dark place; also in some places the glass lacks the foil. In this way the great Hamann is a deep heaven full of telescopic stars, and some nebula spots [ _Nebelflecken_ ] no eye can penetrate.\n\nThe immediate sense here is that Hamann's deep writings, writings that capture as it were the whole world and Hamann the man himself, have features that no one can understand. Discursive thought, seeking essential descriptions and subsumptive generalizations, will miss at least something of what they contain and present. These somethings can at best be looked on from a certain distance and with a certain awareness of one's own incomprehension. In the phrase \"in a dark place\" (\"in einem dunklen Orte\"), there is a further distant echo of Dante's \"in a dark wood\" in the opening lines of the _Inferno_ :\n\nMidway through this way of life we're bound upon,\n\nI woke to find myself in a dark wood,\n\nWhere the right road was wholly lost and gone.\n\nWe lead our lives in time and as finite subjects, where the relations between the form (the social shape) of a life and the internal matter (one's particular personality, feeling, and longing) remain always, to some extent, other than transparent. This lack of transparency shows itself especially in certain perplexing, initiating scenes and incidents and then in the emotionally modulating reflections that follow them, as one seeks in reflection more transparency, a better fit, or fuller attention\u2014until in the end life is allowed to go on, on its own. Literature\u2014some literature, this lyric literature of Sebald's\u2014knows this and makes it manifest for us. To see and feel this, and to see and feel it in detail, through perception and accompanying reflection, is to be, in a certain way, more fully seduced to life.\nAppendix\n\nLines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798\n\n_William Wordsworth_\n\nFive years have passed; five summers, with the length\n\n---\n\nOf five long winters! and again I hear\n\nThese waters, rolling from their mountain-springs\n\nWith a soft inland murmur.\u2014Once again\n\nDo I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,\n\n|  5\n\nThat on a wild secluded scene impress\n\nThoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect\n\nThe landscape with the quiet of the sky.\n\nThe day is come when I again repose\n\nHere, under this dark sycamore, and view\n\n|  10\n\nThese plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,\n\nWhich at this season, with their unripe fruits,\n\nAre clad in one green hue, and lose themselves\n\n'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see\n\nThese hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines\n\n|  15\n\nOf sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,\n\nGreen to the very door; and wreaths of smoke\n\nSent up, in silence, from among the trees!\n\nWith some uncertain notice, as might seem\n\nOf vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,\n\n|  20\n\nOr of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire\n\nThe Hermit sits alone.\n\nThese beauteous forms,\n\n|\n\nThrough a long absence, have not been to me\n\nAs is a landscape to a blind man's eye;\n\nBut oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din\n\n|  25\n\nOf towns and cities, I have owed to them,\n\nIn hours of weariness, sensations sweet,\n\nFelt in the blood, and felt along the heart;\n\nAnd passing even into my purer mind,\n\nWith tranquil restoration\u2014feelings too\n\n|  30\n\nOf unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,\n\nAs have no slight or trivial influence\n\nOn that best portion of a good man's life,\n\nHis little, nameless, unremembered, acts\n\nOf kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,\n\n|  35\n\nTo them I may have owed another gift,\n\nOf aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,\n\nIn which the burthen of the mystery,\n\nIn which the heavy and the weary weight\n\nOf all this unintelligible world,\n\n|  40\n\nIs lightened:\u2014that serene and blessed mood,\n\nIn which the affections gently lead us on,\u2014\n\nUntil, the breath of this corporeal frame\n\nAnd even the motion of our human blood\n\nAlmost suspended, we are laid asleep\n\n|  45\n\nIn body, and become a living soul;\n\nWhile with an eye made quiet by the power\n\nOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,\n\nWe see into the life of things.\n\nIf this\n\nBe but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft\u2014\n\n|  50\n\nIn darkness and amid the many shapes\n\nOf joyless daylight; when the fretful stir\n\nUnprofitable, and the fever of the world,\n\nHave hung upon the beatings of my heart\u2014\n\nHow oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,\n\n|  55\n\nO sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,\n\nHow often has my spirit turned to thee!\n\nAnd now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,\n\nWith many recognitions dim and faint,\n\nAnd somewhat of a sad perplexity,\n\n|  60\n\nThe picture of the mind revives again;\n\nWhile here I stand, not only with the sense\n\nOf present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts\n\nThat in this moment there is life and food\n\nFor future years. And so I dare to hope,\n\n|  65\n\nThough changed, no doubt, from what I was when first\n\nI came among these hills; when like a roe\n\nI bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides\n\nOf the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,\n\nWherever nature led: more like a man\n\n|  70\n\nFlying from something that he dreads than one\n\nWho sought the thing he loved. For nature then\n\n(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,\n\nAnd their glad animal movements all gone by)\n\nTo me was all in all.\u2014I cannot paint\n\n|  75\n\nWhat then I was. The sounding cataract\n\nHaunted me like a passion; the tall rock,\n\nThe mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,\n\nTheir colours and their forms, were then to me\n\nAn appetite; a feeling and a love,\n\n|  80\n\nThat had no need of a remoter charm,\n\nBy thought supplied, nor any interest\n\nUnborrowed from the eye.\u2014That time is past,\n\nAnd all its aching joys are now no more,\n\nAnd all its dizzy raptures. Not for this\n\n|  85\n\nFaint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts\n\nHave followed; for such loss, I would believe,\n\nAbundant recompense. For I have learned\n\nTo look on nature, not as in the hour\n\nOf thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes\n\n|  90\n\nThe still, sad music of humanity,\n\nNor harsh nor grating, though of ample power\n\nTo chasten and subdue. And I have felt\n\nA presence that disturbs me with the joy\n\nOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublime\n\n|  95\n\nOf something far more deeply interfused,\n\nWhose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n\nAnd the round ocean and the living air,\n\nAnd the blue sky, and in the mind of man:\n\nA motion and a spirit, that impels\n\n|  100\n\nAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,\n\nAnd rolls through all things. Therefore am I still\n\nA lover of the meadows and the woods,\n\nAnd mountains; and of all that we behold\n\nFrom this green earth; of all the mighty world\n\n|  105\n\nOf eye, and ear\u2014both what they half create,\n\nAnd what perceive; well pleased to recognize\n\nIn nature and the language of the sense\n\nThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,\n\nThe guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul\n\n|  110\n\nOf all my moral being.\n\nNor perchance,\n\nIf I were not thus taught, should I the more\n\nSuffer my genial spirits to decay:\n\nFor thou art with me here upon the banks\n\nOf this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,\n\n|  115\n\nMy dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch\n\nThe language of my former heart, and read\n\nMy former pleasures in the shooting lights\n\nOf thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while\n\nMay I behold in thee what I was once,\n\n|  120\n\nMy dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,\n\nKnowing that Nature never did betray\n\nThe heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,\n\nThrough all the years of this our life, to lead\n\nFrom joy to joy: for she can so inform\n\n|  125\n\nThe mind that is within us, so impress\n\nWith quietness and beauty, and so feed\n\nWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,\n\nRash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,\n\nNor greetings where no kindness is, nor all\n\n|  130\n\nThe dreary intercourse of daily life,\n\nShall e'er prevail against us, or disturb\n\nOur cheerful faith, that all which we behold\n\nIs full of blessings. Therefore let the moon\n\nShine on thee in thy solitary walk;\n\n|  135\n\nAnd let the misty mountain winds be free\n\nTo blow against thee: and, in after years,\n\nWhen these wild ecstasies shall be matured\n\nInto a sober pleasure; when thy mind\n\nShall be a mansion for all lovely forms,\n\n|  140\n\nThy memory be as a dwelling-place\n\nFor all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,\n\nIf solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief\n\nShould be thy portion, with what healing thoughts\n\nOf tender joy wilt thou remember me,\n\n|  145\n\nAnd these my exhortations! Nor, perchance\u2014\n\nIf I should be where I no more can hear\n\nThy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams\n\nOf past existence\u2014wilt thou then forget\n\nThat on the banks of this delightful stream\n\n|  150\n\nWe stood together; and that I, so long\n\nA worshipper of Nature, hither came\n\nUnwearied in that service; rather say\n\nWith warmer love\u2014oh! with far deeper zeal\n\nOf holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,\n\n|  155\n\nThat after many wanderings, many years\n\nOf absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,\n\nAnd this green pastoral landscape, were to me\n\nMore dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!\nNotes\n\n_1. Introduction: Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Uses of Literature_\n\n. If one is interested in fixing the extension of \"literature\" in such a way that all plausible cases are covered, one will end up with something like the radically disjunctive definition offered by Robert Stecker: \"A work _w_ is a work of literature if and only if _w_ is produced in a linguistic medium, and, (1) _w_ is a novel, short story, tale, drama, or poem, and the writer of _w_ intended that it possess aesthetic, cognitive or interpretation-centered value, and the work is written with sufficient technical skill for it to be possible to take that intention seriously, or (2) _w_ possesses aesthetic, cognitive, or interpretation-centered value to a significant degree, or (3) _w_ falls under a predecessor concept to our concept of literature and was written while the predecessor concept held sway, or (4) _w_ belongs to the work of a great writer\" (\"What is Literature?\" _Revue Internationale de Philosophie_ 50 [1996]: 694). This may be correct enough, but it offers little illumination about how literature achieves aesthetic, cognitive, or interpretation-centered value or about how the achievement of such values matters for human life.\n\n. This is roughly the view of Wayne Booth in _The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Books are like friends who help us to widen the range of points of view we can occupy. While this suggestion has some truth to it, it underrates the formal, cognitive, and affective intensities of literary structure and distinctively literary craft.\n\n. Bill Readings usefully surveys the rise and decline of the humanities within the modern university from Humboldt to the present as central disciplines devoted to teaching national literatures in _The University in Ruins_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).\n\n. Frank Ferrell, _Why Does Literature Matter?_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004). See 213 ff. for a summary of the \"modern\" developments listed in the remainder of this paragraph.\n\n. Ibid., 201.\n\n. Farrell summarizes the registers of recovery that literary works offer us on ibid., 9\u201319.\n\n. Ibid., 187.\n\n. Ibid., 72.\n\n. David E. Wellbery, _The Specular Moment: Goethe's Lyric and Early Romanticism_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 48.\n\n. The complete text of \"Maifest\" in German and in English translation appears on 28\u201329 of ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 49.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 3.\n\n. Eric L. Santner, _On Creaturely Life_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 33.\n\n. J. M. Bernstein, _Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 45.\n\n. Ralph Waldo Emerson, \"Circles,\" in _Emerson: Essays and Lectures_ (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 406.\n\n. J\u00fcrgen Habermas, _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_ , trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987), 8.\n\n. Ibid., 9.\n\n. Charles Baudelaire, \"The Painter of Modern Life,\" in Baudelaire, _Selected Writings on Art and Artists_ , trans. P. E. Charvet (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 392, cited in Habermas, _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity_ , 9.\n\n. Bernstein, _Against Voluptuous Bodies_ , 11.\n\n. Philip Weinstein powerfully and usefully surveys the registering of trauma and resistance to overly stable Bildungsroman plots on the parts of Kafka, Proust, and Faulkner in his _Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).\n\n. Tzachi Zamir powerfully traces various forms of this slippage as they are expressed in the careers of the protagonists of the major Shakespearean tragedies in his _Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007).\n\n. See Michael Tomasello, _The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), and _Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005). For a summary of this work that brings it into connection with Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ , see Richard Eldridge, \"Wittgenstein on Aspect-Seeing, the Nature of Discursive Consciousness, and the Experience of Agency,\" in _Seeing Wittgenstein Anew: New Essays on Aspect-Seeing_ , ed. William Day and Victor Krebs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), forthcoming.\n\n. This is the main argument, as I read it, of Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_. See Eldridge, _Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).\n\n. J. L. Austin, \"Truth,\" in Austin, _Philosophical Papers_ , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 126 n. 1.\n\n. Ren\u00e9 Descartes, _The Search After Truth by the Light of Nature_ , trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, in _The Philosophical Works of Descartes_ , ed. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 1:305.\n\n. Kant, \"What Is Enlightenment?\" trans. Lewis White Beck, in Kant, _On History_ , ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 3 n. 1.\n\n. Here I follow Stanley Cavell's reading, itself developed in response to Emerson's readings of Descartes and Kant, of Descartes' account in the _Meditations_ of his knowledge of his own existence. See Cavell, \"Being Odd, Getting Even (Descartes, Emerson, Poe)\" in Cavell, _In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 105\u2013130.\n\n. Descartes, _Meditations on First Philosophy_ , in _The Philosophical Works of Descartes_ , 1:150.\n\n. Ibid., 1:151\u2013152.\n\n. Cavell, _The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition_ (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), 107.\n\n. Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_ , ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 159.\n\n. Cavell, _The Senses of Walden_ , 107\u2013108.\n\n. Kant, \"Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,\" in Kant, _On History_ , 22.\n\n. Kant, _Lectures on Ethics_ , trans. Louis Infield (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1978), 140.\n\n. Kant, \"What Is Enlightenment?\" 3.\n\n. Thomas Pfau, \"The Voice of Critique: Aesthetic Cognition After Kant,\" part 1, in _Romantic Circles Praxis Series_ , available online at <http:\/\/www.rc.umd\/edu\/praxis\/philosophy\/pfau1\/tp1.html>.\n\n. Aristotle, _Poetics_ , trans. Stephen Halliwell (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1987), excerpted in _The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern_ , ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridly (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 490. A slightly different wording appears in Aristotle, _Poetics_ , trans. Stephen Halliwell, in Aristotle, _Poetics_ , together with Longinus, _On the Sublime_ , and Demetrius, _On Style_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 37.\n\n. Adorno, _Negative Dialectics_ , trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973), 12; emphasis and interjection added.\n\n. Ibid., 13.\n\n. Adorno, _Aesthetic Theory_ , trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 131.\n\n. Catherine Wilson, \"Literature and Knowledge,\" _Philosophy_ 58 (1983). Reprinted in _Philosophy of Literature_ , ed. Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 327.\n\n. Charles Altieri, _The Particulars of Rapture_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).\n\n. Ludwig Wittgenstein, _Philosophical Investigations_ , 2nd. ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company [1953], 1958), \u00a7122, 49e. See also Richard Eldridge, \"Hypotheses, Criterial Claims, and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein's 'Remarks on Frazer's _The Golden Bough_ ,'\" in Eldridge, _The Persistence of Romanticism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 127\u2013144.\n\n. See chapter 5, note 9.\n\n. Richard Eldridge, _An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 259 and passim.\n\n. Ibid., 260.\n\n. Wolfgang Huemer, \"Introduction: Wittgenstein, Language, Philosophy of Literature,\" in _The Literary Wittgenstein_ , ed. John Gibson and Wolfgang Huemer (London: Routledge, 2004), 5.\n\n. Ibid., 6\u20137.\n\n. See Spinoza, _Ethics_ , in Spinoza, _Selections_ , ed. John Wild (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), part 5, propositions 3\u201310, pp. 369\u2013377. Compare also both R. G. Collingwood on artistic expression, _The Principles of Art_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), 282\u2013283; and William Wordsworth, \"Preface to Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ ,\" in _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), 448, on how a poet may uncover \"what is really important to men\" through thinking \"long and deeply\" in relation to our feelings.\n\n. William Rothman and Marian Keane, _Reading Cavell's_ The World Viewed (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 19.\n\n. A wonderful essay on these parallel identifications is Ted Cohen's \"Identifying with Metaphor: Metaphors of Personal Identification,\" _The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism_ 57, no. 4 (1999): 399\u2013409, on identifying with Lily Bart, Jake Gittis, and Marlowe, as well as Shakespeare, Mozart, and Conrad.\n\n. Plato, _Republic_ , trans. G. M. A. Grube, revised C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), 348b, p. 24.\n\n_2. Romanticism, Cartesianism, Humeanism, Byronism: Stoppard's_ Arcadia\n\n. John Dewey, _Art as Experience_ (New York: Perigee, 1980 [1934]), 337\u2013338.\n\n. G. W. F. Hegel, _Philosophy of Right_ , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), \u00a7185, p. 123.\n\n. See Plato, _Republic_ , trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), book 7, 557a\u2013563e, pp. 227\u2013234.\n\n. Northrop Frye, _The Great Code: The Bible and Literature_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 5\u201314.\n\n. Rene Descartes, preface to _The Search After Truth by the Light of Nature_ , in _The Philosophical Works of Descartes_ , trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 1:305.\n\n. Frye, _The Great Code_ , 52.\n\n. Donald G. Marshall, \"Foreword: Wordsworth and Post-Enlightenment Culture,\" in Geoffrey H. Hartman, _The Unremarkable Wordsworth_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), vii.\n\n. Charles Larmore, _The Romantic Legacy_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).\n\n. See, for example, G. W. F. Hegel, _Hegel's Introduction to Aesthetics_ , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 81.\n\n. See Jerome J. McGann, _The Romantic Ideology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).\n\n. David Hume, _An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ , ed. Eric Steinberg (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977), section 12, p. 111.\n\n. W. V. O. Quine, \"On the Nature of Moral Values,\" in Quine, _Theories and Things_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 61.\n\n. Charles Taylor, _The Sources of the Self_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 151, 154.\n\n. Descartes, _Discourse on Method_ , in _Discourse on Method and Meditations_ , trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), 14.\n\n. Ibid., 14, 15.\n\n. Ibid., 13.\n\n. Bertrand Russell, _A History of Western Philosophy_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), 747.\n\n. Byron, George Gordon, Baron, \"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage\" in _Byron's Poetry_ , ed. Frank D. McConnell (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), Canto the First, II, p. 26.\n\n. Ibid., Canto the First, V, p. 26.\n\n. _Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: A Study Guide from Gale's Drama for Students_ , vol. 5, chap. 2, e-text PDF document (Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002), DOI 10.1223\/GALFSDSF0000074, p. 48.\n\n. See Gary Gutting, _Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).\n\n. William Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ [1850], in Wordsworth, _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), XIV, 446\u2013447, p. 366.\n\n. Ibid., I, 302, p. 199.\n\n. Ibid., II, 233\u2013234, p. 212.\n\n. Wordsworth, \"The Sublime and the Beautiful,\" in _The Prose Works of William Wordsworth_ , ed. W. J. B. Owen and J. W. Smyser (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 2:349\u2013360, at 2:357.\n\n. Wordsworth, \"Essay, Supplementary to The Preface\" [1815], in Wordsworth, _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , 471\u2013481, at 477.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ , IX, 8, p. 304.\n\n. Harold Bloom, \"The Internalization of Quest Romance,\" in _Romanticism and Consciousness_ , ed. H. Bloom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 3\u201324.\n\n. Tom Stoppard, in Mel Gussow, _Conversations with Tom Stoppard_ (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 91.\n\n. Stoppard, cited in _Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: A Study Guide from Gale's Drama for Students_ , 56.\n\n. Stoppard, _Conversations with Tom Stoppard_ , 3.\n\n. Ibid., 14.\n\n. Ibid., 74.\n\n. J. L. Austin, _Sense and Sensibilia_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 2.\n\n. See the unfavorable review by John Simon, cited in _Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: A Study Guide from Gale's Drama for Students_ , 54.\n\n. See the reviews cited in _Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: A Study Guide from Gale's Drama for Students_ , 34, 54\u201355, 56, 59.\n\n. Tim Appelo, \"Review of _Arcadia_ ,\" _The Nation_ , Jan. 5, 1995, reprinted in Tom _Stoppard's Arcadia: A Study Guide from Gale's Drama for Students_ , 54A.\n\n. Stoppard, _Arcadia_ (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), II, 5, p. 62.\n\n. Ibid., II, 7, p. 76.\n\n. Ibid., II, 7, p. 84.\n\n. Ibid., I, 2, p. 33.\n\n. Ibid., II, 7, pp. 75, 76.\n\n. Herbert Marcuse, _The Aesthetic Dimension_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 60.\n\n. Theodor W. Adorno, \"On Lyric Poetry and Society,\" in Adorno, _Notes to Literature_ , trans. S. W. Nicholsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 1:41.\n\n. Samuel Beckett, _The Unnamable_ , in Beckett, _Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable_ (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 414.\n\n_3. Romantic Subjectivity in Goethe and Wittgenstein_\n\n. See M. W. Rowe, \"Goethe and Wittgenstein,\" _Philosophy_ 66 (1991); Joachim Schulte, \"Chor und Gesetz: Zur 'Morphologischen Methode' bei Goethe and Wittgenstein,\" _Grazer Philosophische Studien_ 21 (1984); and G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, _Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 537\u2013540. I summarize and comment on this work in my _Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 177\u2013181.\n\n. Thomas Mann, \"On Goethe's _Werther_ ,\" trans. Elizabeth Corra, in _The Sufferings of Young Werther and Elective Affinities_ , ed. Victor Lange (New York: Continuum, 1990), 2.\n\n. Charles Taylor, _Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), x.\n\n. Ibid., 18.\n\n. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, _The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism_ , trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 31.\n\n. Ibid., 12. The subject term of Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's clauses is \"literary production,\" not \"articulation,\" but with the migration of human self-production toward the literary, in a mix of discovery and invention, the latter, more general term makes their characterizations appropriate to human moral efforts in general.\n\n. Rodolphe Gasch\u00e9, foreword to Friedrich Schlegel, _Philosophical Fragments_ , trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), xix.\n\n. Nicholas Boyle, _Goethe: The Poet and the Age_ , vol. 1.: _The Poetry of Desire_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 176.\n\n. Ibid., 124.\n\n. Ibid., 110.\n\n. Ibid., 177.\n\n. Ibid., 162.\n\n. Ibid., 176.\n\n. Mann, \"On Goethe's _Werther_ ,\" 9.\n\n. Ibid., 9, 10.\n\n. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ , in _Goethe: The Collected Works_ , ed. David E. Wellbery, trans. Victor Lange (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 11:72. Subsequent references to _Werther_ will all be to this edition and will be indicated in the text by page number.\n\n. Mann, \"On Goethe's _Werther_ ,\" 8.\n\n. Ray Monk, _Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius_ (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 25.\n\n. Brian McGuinness, _Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig 1889\u20131921_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 156.\n\n. Ibid., 50.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 156, citing Tolstoy, \"A Confession.\"\n\n. Ludwig Wittgenstein, _Culture and Value_ , trans. Peter Winch (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 1e. Subsequent references to this work will be given by page numbers in parentheses.\n\n. This remark is about \"an ordinary conventional figure\" at the end of Schubert's \"Death and the Maiden,\" but it captures well Wittgenstein's attitude toward the manual work he repeatedly urged on others.\n\n. Goethe, _Die Leiden des jungen Werther_ (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1948), 147. Werther actually adds one more line to Wilhelm: \"wir sehen uns wieder und freudiger\" (147). But \"Lebt wohl!\" alone is what lives in the memory of his readers as his valedictory to life, particularly since his last diary entry, addressed to Lotte, concludes \"Es schl\u00e4gt zw\u00f6lfe. So sei es denn!\u2014Lotte! Lotte, lebe wohl! lebe wohl!\" (150).\n\n. Wittgenstein, _Philosophical Investigations_ , 3rd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), \u00a7125, pp. 50, 50e. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the text by section number.\n\n. Wittgenstein, cited in Norman Malcolm, _Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 100.\n\n_4. Attention, Expressive Power, and Interest in Life: Wordsworth's \"Tintern Abbey\"_\n\n. Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner_ , trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), \u00a71, 33.\n\n. While some may argue that Jesus is an ideal human being, he is at best ideal as a person and personification, not as 5'2\", eyes of blue.\n\n. Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ , \u00a714, 91.\n\n. Nietzsche, _The Will to Power_ , trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1968), 1050.\n\n. Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ , \u00a71, 33.\n\n. Ibid., \u00a77, 59.\n\n. Ibid., \u00a77, 60.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., \u00a77, 58.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Aristotle, _Poetics_ , trans. Richard Janko (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 51b1, p. 12.\n\n. For a defense of this reading of Aristotle's account of the nature of the _hamartia_ or \"tragic flaw\" as an excess of virtue ill-suited to the circumstances of action, see Richard Eldridge, \"How Can Tragedy Matter for Us?\" in Eldridge, _The Persistence of Romanticism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 146\u2013164.\n\n. Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ , \u00a77, 58.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. William Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ [1850], in Wordsworth, _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), book 14, ll. 161\u2013162, p. 360.\n\n. Wordsworth, \"From _The Recluse_ \" [Prospectus], in _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , l. 808, p. 46.\n\n. On Wordsworth's conjecturalism, see Eldridge, \"Internal Transcendentalism: Wordsworth and 'A New Condition of Philosophy,'\" in Eldridge, _The Persistence of Romanticism_ , 102\u2013123.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ , 1, ll. 267\u2013269, p. 199.\n\n. Wordsworth, \"Preface to the Second Edition of _Lyrical Ballads_ ,\" in Wordsworth, _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , 446, 447. Subsequent references to the \"Preface\" will be given by page number in the text.\n\n. Stanley Cavell, \"The Philosopher in American Life,\" in Cavell, _In Quest of the Ordinary_ (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,), 7.\n\n. Cavell, \"Emerson, Coleridge, Kant,\" in Cavell, _In Quest of the Ordinary_ , 36. See also Cavell, \"Texts of Recovery,\" 52\u201353.\n\n. Cavell, \"Being Odd, Getting Even,\" in Cavell, _In Quest of the Ordinary_ , 115\u2013116.\n\n. Cavell notes the interest of the formulation \"communicate with\" and its difference from \"communicate about\" in \"Texts of Recovery,\" 71\u201372.\n\n. David E. Wellbery, _The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 39.\n\n. See ibid., 11.\n\n. Ibid., 55.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ , 14, ll. 439\u2013443, p. 366.\n\n. Wordsworth, _Alfoxden Notebook_ , 21v, in _The Ruined Cottage and the Pedlar_ , ed. James Butler (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), 125.\n\n. David S. Miall, \"Locating Wordsworth: 'Tintern Abbey' and the Community with Nature,\" _Romanticism on the Net_ 20 (November 2000), available online at <http:\/\/www.erudit.org\/revue\/ron\/2000\/v\/n20\/005949ar.html>, p. 1.\n\n. Cavell, \"Postscript B: Poe's Perversity and the Imp(ulse) of Skepticism,\" in Cavell, _In Quest of the Ordinary_ , 143.\n\n. Wordsworth, \"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798,\" in Wordsworth, _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , 108\u2013111. References to the poem will be to this edition and will be given by line number in the text.\n\n. David Bromwich, \"The French Revolution and 'Tintern Abbey,'\" _Raritan_ 10, no. 3 (Winter 1991): 1\u201323.\n\n. This suggestion is made most notably by Marjorie Levinson in \"Insight and Oversight: Reading 'Tintern Abbey,'\" in Levinson, _Wordsworth's Great Period Poems_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 14\u201357, esp. 37: \"the primary poetic action [of 'Tintern Abbey'] is the suppression of the social\" in favor of a 'fiercely private vision.'\" See also Jerome McGann, _The Romantic Ideology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 85\u201388.\n\n. Miall, \"Locating Wordsworth,\" 3.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ , 2, ll. 277\u2013281, p. 213.\n\n. For further discussion of this famous sentence from chapter 4 of Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_ , trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), para. 167, p. 105, see Eldridge, _Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 27\u201332.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ , 2, ll. 228\u2013232, p. 212.\n\n. Bromwich, \"The French Revolution and 'Tintern Abbey,'\" 8.\n\n. John Barrell, _Poetry, Language, and Politics_ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 162.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. I seem to recall having learned this interpretation of \"never did\" from reading Geoffrey Hartman, but I cannot now locate the reference.\n\n. John Dewey, \"Construction and Criticism,\" in _Later Works_ (Carbondale, Ind.: The Center for Dewey Studies, 1988), 5:125\u2013146. I thank Nikolas Kompridis for directing my attention to this remark.\n\n. Geoffrey H. Hartman, _Wordsworth's Poetry 1787\u20131814_ , 2nd. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971), xv.\n\n. Ibid., 190.\n\n. Ibid., 104.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 218.\n\n. Ibid., 38.\n\n_5. The Ends of Literary Narrative: Rilke's \"Archaic Torso of Apollo\"_\n\n. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, _Truth, Fiction, and Literature_ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1996), 369\u2013378. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the main text by page numbers in parentheses.\n\n. Lamarque and Olsen are quoting Theseus, in Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , act 5, scene 1.\n\n. John Gibson, \"Reality and the Language of Fiction,\" in _Writing the Austrian Traditions: Themes in Philosophy and Literature_ , ed. Wolfgang Huemer and Marc-Oliver Schuster (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 63. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the main text by page numbers in parentheses.\n\n. Gibson takes up these questions in much greater detail, in ways that fill in a story about human life in ways I find congenial, in his _Fiction and the Weave of Life_ (Oxford University Press, 2008) and \"Literature and Knowledge,\" in _Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature_ , ed. Richard Eldridge (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Both these pieces develop a version of the working-through conception that I am urging.\n\n. The cognitive developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello has recently developed a rich account of language learning as depending essentially on intention-reading in his _The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) and _Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). His account builds in part on Wittgenstein's work on seeing-as in part 2 of _Philosophical Investigations_ , 3rd. ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958). I survey the affinities between the views of Tomasello and Wittgenstein in \"Wittgenstein on Aspect-Seeing, the Nature of Discursive Consciousness, and the Experience of Agency,\" in _Seeing Wittgenstein Anew: New Essays on Aspect-Seeing_ , ed. William Day and Victor Krebs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). R. G. Collingwood treats language learning and concept learning in similar terms, as a matter of learning by interacting with others and how to attend to aspects, in Collingwood, _The Principles of Art_ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1938), esp. 239\u2013241.\n\n. I take the idea that language _must_ be both _stable_ in providing us with ways of thinking of things that we use internally and unhesitatingly and _tolerant_ of new usages from Stanley Cavell, _The Claim of Reason_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 185\u2013186.\n\n. I take up the essential \"immigrancy\" involved in our inheritance of language and development of conceptual consciousness in \"Cavell and H\u00f6lderlin on Human Immigrancy,\" in Eldridge, _The Persistence of Romanticism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 229\u2013245.\n\n. Collingwood, _The Principles of Art_ , 239. Collingwood is almost surely thinking here also of Freud's account of the development of the ego in and through plays of mutual attention and contestation. See Freud on the _fortda_ game in Freud, _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_ , trans. James Strachey (New York: Bantam Books, 1961).\n\n. See Spinoza, Benedict de, _Ethics_ , in Spinoza, _Selections_ , ed. John Wild (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), part 5, propositions 3\u201310, pp. 369\u2013377.\n\n. Cavell develops his account of the truth of skepticism in various major writings, including \"Knowing and Acknowledging\" (1969), _The Claim of Reason_ (1979), \"Being Odd, Getting Even\" (1986), and _Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome_ (1990). For an overview of Cavell's thoughts about skepticism, see Richard Eldridge, \"'A Continuing Task': Cavell and the Truth of Skepticism,\" in Eldridge, _The Persistence of Romanticism_ , 189\u2013204.\n\n. Charles Altieri, _The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 107.\n\n. William Wordsworth, \"Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ ,\" in _Selected Poems and Prefaces_ , ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), 448.\n\n. See Friedrich H\u00f6lderlin, \"On Religion,\" in H\u00f6lderlin, _Essays and Letters on Theory_ , trans. and ed. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 90\u201391.\n\n. John Dewey, _Art as Experience_ (New York: Penguin, 1980), esp. chapter 3, \"Having an Experience,\" and 17\u201319.\n\n. See Richard Eldridge, _Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 6\u20137; _The Persistence of Romanticism_ , 19\u201320, 55\u201357, 158\u2013163, 235; and _An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 7\u201312, 262.\n\n. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, _Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 36. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the main text by page numbers in parentheses.\n\n. See Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Use and Abuse of History_ , trans. Adrian Collins (Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1949), 5.\n\n. Friedrich Nietzsche, \"'Reason' in Philosophy,\" trans. Walter Kaufmann, in Nietzsche, _The Twilight of the Idols_ , excerpted in _The Portable Nietzsche_ , ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), 479.\n\n. Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner_ , trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), 59. In _The Aesthetic Dimension_ , Marcuse argues that \"aesthetic affirmation\" in life that is not a matter of escapist fantasizing must include a sense of the ontologically \"irreconcilable\" and that it is expressed aptly in the last words of the \"Song of the Tower Warden\" in Goethe's _Faust_ : \"Es war doch so sch\u00f6n.\" Herbert Marcuse, _The Aesthetic Dimension_ , trans. Herbert Marcuse and Erica Sherover (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 59. See also the concluding discussion of gratitude as a response to the experience of the truth of skepticism in Eldridge, _Leading a Human Life_ , 286\u2013290.\n\n. Friedrich Nietzsche, _Writings from the Late Notebook_ , ed. R\u00fcdiger Bittner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 159\u2013160.\n\n. Steven Winn, \"Endings Are a Catharsis,\" _San Francisco Chronicle_ , January 1, 2005. Available online at <http:\/\/sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2005\/01\/01\/DDG7VAJAL81.DTL>.\n\n. Frank Kermode, _The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, with a New Epilogue_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 138. Subsequent references to this work will be given in the main text by page numbers in parentheses.\n\n. Judith Ryan, _Rilke, Modernism, and Poetic Tradition_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 82.\n\n. Ibid., 89.\n\n. Ibid., 98.\n\n. Ibid., 83\u201384.\n\n. Rainer Maria Rilke, _The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke_ , ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1982), 60\u201361.\n\n. Ryan, _Rilke, Modernism, and Poetic Tradition_ , 36.\n\n. Ibid., 83.\n\n. Ibid., 84.\n\n. Ibid., 86.\n\n_6. \"New Centers of Reflection Are Continually Forming\": Benjamin, Sebald, and Modern Human Life in Time_\n\n. The quotation that forms the title of this chapter is from Walter Benjamin, \"The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,\" trans. David Lachterman, Howard Eiland, and Ian Balfour, in Benjamin, _Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913\u20131926_ , ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 156.\n\n. G. W. F. Hegel, _Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art_ , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 31.\n\n. Hegel, _Phenomenology of Spirit_ , trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), para. 32, p. 19.\n\n. An attentive reader for Columbia University Press urged this formulation on me.\n\n. Stephen Houlgate, \"Introduction: An Overview of Hegel's Aesthetics,\" in _Hegel and the Arts_ , ed. Stephen Houlgate (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007), xxv.\n\n. Terry Pinkard, \"Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art,\" in _Hegel and the Arts_ , 5.\n\n. G. W. F. Hegel, _Lectures on Fine Art_ , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975), 1:97.\n\n. Ibid., 98.\n\n. Hegel, _Elements of the Philosophy of Right_ , trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 14.\n\n. In emphasizing the \"good-enough\" reconciliation theme in Hegel, I have been influenced by Michael O. Hardimon, _Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).\n\n. Walter Benjamin, \"On Language as Such,\" trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Benjamin, _Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913\u20131926_ , 73, 70.\n\n. Ibid., 73.\n\n. See Donald Davidson's classic \"On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme\" and \"The Method of Truth in Metaphysics,\" both in Davidson, _Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), for an argument to this effect. For a commentary on the powers but also on the limits of this argument, specifically how it leaves specifically problems of practical engagement between subjects unaddressed, see Alasdair MacIntyre, \"Relativism, Power, and Philosophy,\" in _After Philosophy: End or Transformation?_ , ed. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987), and Richard Eldridge, \"Metaphysics and the Interpretation of Persons: Davidson on Thinking and Conceptual Schemes,\" _Synthese_ 66, no. 3 (March 1986): 477\u2013503.\n\n. Benjamin, \"On Language as Such,\" 66.\n\n. Michael Rosen, \"Benjamin, Adorno, and the Decline of the Aura,\" in _The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory_ , ed. Fred Rush (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 46.\n\n. Benjamin, _The Arcades Project_ , trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 460.\n\n. Anthony Lane, \"Higher Ground: Adventures in Fact and Fiction from W. G. Sebald,\" _The New Yorker_ , May 29, 2000.\n\n. Susan Sontag, _Where the Stress Falls_ (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 41.\n\n. Ibid., 46, 48, 46.\n\n. Franz Loquai, \"Vom Beinhaus der Geschichte ins wiedergefundene Paradies: Zu Werk und Poetik W. G. Sebalds,\" in _Sebald. Lekt\u00fcren_ , ed. Marcel Atze and Franz Loquai (Eggingen: Edition Isele, 2005), 244. My translation.\n\n. See Farrell, _Why Does Literature Matter?_ , 199.\n\n. Ibid., 197.\n\n. Ibid., 200.\n\n. Mark R. McCulloh, _Understanding W. G. Sebald_ (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 19.\n\n. W. G. Sebald, _Der Mythus der Zerst\u00f6rung im Werk D\u00f6blins_ (Stuttgart: Klett, 1980), 58; cited in McCulloh, _Understanding W. G. Sebald_ , 148. McCulloh's translation.\n\n. Eric L. Santner, _On Creaturely Life_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 49.\n\n. Ibid., 114, n. 20.\n\n. Ibid., 20.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 71.\n\n. Ibid., 74.\n\n. Ibid., 81, 84; in the latter passage Santner is drawing on Alenka Zupancic, _The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two_ (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003), 49.\n\n. Wordsworth, _The Prelude_ (1850), book 7, ll. 725\u2013728, p. 288.\n\n. Hegel, _Elements of the Philosophy of Right_ , para. 185, p. 222.\n\n. Santner, _On Creaturely Life_ , 134.\n\n. Ibid., 133.\n\n. Ibid., 136, citing Jonathan Lear, _Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 129.\n\n. Ibid., 203.\n\n. Terry Eagleton, _Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism_ (London: Verson, 1985), 42; cited in Santner, _On Creaturely Life_ , 134, n. 54.\n\n. Santner, _On Creaturely Life_ , 75.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid., 81.\n\n. Walter Benjamin, \"Surrealism,\" trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Benjamin, _Selected Writings: Volume 2, 1927\u20131934_ , ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 216. Sebald cites this passage in _Die Beschreibung des Ungl\u00fccks: Zur \u00f6sterreichischen Literatur von Stifter bis Handke_ (Frankfurt am Main: Fisscher, 1994), 132. McCulloh, _Understanding W. G. Sebald_ , 155, n. 11, notes this citation.\n\n. McCulloh, _Understanding W. G. Sebald_ , 3.\n\n. Walter Benjamin, \"The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,\" in Benjamin, _Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913\u20131926_ , 116\u2013200. All references to this work will be given by page number in the text.\n\n. In the opening lines of his _The Origin of German Tragic Drama_ , Benjamin remarks that \"it is characteristic of philosophical writing that at every turn it must confront the question of representation [ _Darstellung_ ] anew.\" On the significance of this remark, see Azade Seyhan, _Representation and Its Discontents: The Critical Legacy of German Romanticism_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); and Martha B. Helfer, _The Retreat of Representation: The Concept of Darstellung in German Critical Discourse_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).\n\n. Herbert Marcuse, _The Aesthetic Dimension_ , trans. Herbert Marcuse and Erica Sherover (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 59.\n\n. See also the slightly different translation in Friedrich Schlegel, \"On Goethe's _Meister_ ,\" trans. Joyce Crick, in _Classical and Romantic German Aesthetics_ , ed. J. M. Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 273.\n\n. W. G. Sebald, \"Paul Bereyter,\" in _The Emigrants_ , trans. Michael Hulse (London: Vintage, 2002), 25\u201363; W. G. Sebald, \"Paul Bereyter,\" in _Die Ausgewanderten: Vier lange Erz\u00e4hlungen_ (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994), 39\u201393. Citations to these works will be given in the text by English page number followed by German page number.\n\n. \"Manchem g\u00f6ttliche Gem\u00fcte wird vom Schicksal eine unf\u00f6rmliche Form aufgedrungen, wie dem Sokrates der Satyr-Leib; denn \u00fcber die Form, nicht \u00fcber den innern Stoff regiert die Zeit. So hing der poetische Spiegel, womit Jakob B\u00f6hme Himmel und Erde wiedergibt, in einem dunklen Orte; auch mangelt dem Glase an einigen Stellen die Folie. So ist der gro\u00dfe Hamann ein tiefer Himmel voll teleskopischer Sterne, und manche Nebelflecken l\u00f6set kein Auge auf.\" Jean Paul, _Vorschule der \u00c4sthetik_ , in _S\u00e4mtliche Werke_ , vol. 3 (Paris, 1836\u20131837); English translation in Jean Paul Richter, _Horn of Oberon_ , trans. Margaret R. Hale, (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1973), 41\u201342.\n\n. Dante, _The Divine Comedy I: Hell_ , trans. Dorothy Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949), canto 1, ll. 1\u20133, p. 71.\nIndex\n\nabsorption\n\nAdorno, T. W.\n\nAlthusser, Louis\n\nAltieri, Charles\n\nAppelo, Tim\n\nAristotle\n\nAusten, Jane\n\nAustin, J. L.\n\nautopoiesis\n\nBaker, Gordon\n\nBanville, Theodore de\n\nBarrell, John\n\nBaudelaire, Charles\n\nBeckett, Samuel\n\nBenjamin, Walter\n\nBentham, Jeremy\n\nBernstein, Charles\n\nBernstein, J. M.\n\nBlake, William\n\nBloom, Harold\n\nBooth, Wayne\n\nBourdieu, Pierre\n\nBoyle, Nicholas\n\nBromwich, David\n\nBrown, Dan\n\nByron, Lord (Baron George Gordon)\n\nByronism\n\nCartesianism\n\ncatharsis\n\nCavell, Stanley\n\nchildhood\n\nclose reading\n\nclosure, aesthetic\n\nCohen, Ted\n\nCollingwood, R. G.\n\nconsciousness, conceptual\n\nCoolidge, Clark\n\ncurricula, literary\n\nDante (Alighieri)\n\nDavidson, Donald\n\ndepression\n\nDescartes, Ren\u00e9\n\ndesire\n\nDewey, John\n\ndidacticism\n\ndisruption, aesthetic\n\nD\u00f6blin, Alfred\n\nDon Giovanni\n\nDon Quixote\n\nEagleton, Terry\n\nEldridge, Richard\n\nEliot, T. S.\n\nEmerson, R. W.\n\nfactionalism\n\nFarrell, Frank\n\nFlaubert, Gustave\n\nFleming, Ian\n\nformalism\n\nfreedom, expressive\n\nFreud, Sigmund\n\nFrye, Northrop\n\nGasch\u00e9, Rodolphe\n\ngenius\n\nGeorge, Stefan\n\nGibson, John\n\nglobalization\n\nGoethe, J. W.; \"Maifest\"; _The Sorrows of Young Werther_\n\n_Gravity's Rainbow_\n\nGutting, Gary\n\nHabermas, J\u00fcrgen\n\nHacker, Peter\n\nHamann, J. G.\n\nHamlet\n\nHampton, Christopher\n\nHardimon, Michael\n\nHartman, Geoffrey\n\nHegel, G. W. F.; on romanticism\n\nHeidegger, Martin\n\nHelfer, Martha B.\n\nH\u00f6lderlin, Friedrich\n\nHoulgate, Stephen\n\nHuemer, Wolfgang\n\nHume, David\n\nHumeanism\n\nindividualism\n\nJames, Henry\n\nJohn Paul II\n\njustice\n\nKant, I.\n\nKeane, Marian\n\nKeats, John\n\nKermode, Frank\n\nKierkegaard, S\u00f8ren\n\nLacan, Jacques\n\nLacoue-Labarthe, Philippe\n\nLamarque, Peter\n\nLane, Anthony\n\nLarmore, Charles\n\nLear, Jonathan\n\nLevinson, Marjorie\n\nLocke, John\n\nLodge, David\n\nLoquai, Franz\n\nLowell, Robert\n\nLuk\u00e1cs, Georg\n\nMacIntyre, Alasdair\n\nMallarm\u00e9, Stephane\n\nMann, Thomas\n\nMarcuse, Herbert\n\nMarshall, Donald\n\nMarx, Karl\n\nMcCulloh, Mark R.\n\nMcGann, Jerome\n\nMcGuinness, Brian\n\nMiall, David\n\nMill, J. S.\n\nmodernism\n\nmodernity\n\nMonk, Ray\n\nNagel, Thomas\n\nNancy, Jean-Luc\n\nNietzsche, Friedrich; _The Birth of Tragedy_\n\nNussbaum, Martha\n\nOlsen, Stein Haugom\n\noriginality\n\nPfau, Thomas\n\nPhillips, D. Z.\n\nPinkard, Terry\n\nPlato\n\npostmodernism\n\nPutnam, Hilary\n\nReadings, Bill\n\nrepresentation, perspicuous\n\nRichter, Jean Paul\n\nRilke, Rainer Maria\n\nRodin, Auguste\n\nromanticism\n\nRorty, Richard\n\nRosen, Michael\n\nRothman, William\n\nRousseau, Jean-Jacques\n\nRowe, Mark\n\nRyan, Judith\n\nQuine, W. V. O.\n\nSaid, Edward\n\nSantner, Eric\n\nSchlegel, Friedrich\n\nSchulte, Joachim\n\nSebald, W. G.; \"Paul Bereyter\"\n\nsentimentalism\n\nSeyhan, Azade\n\nShakespeare, William\n\nSimon, John\n\nSmith, Barbara Herrnstein\n\nSontag, Susan\n\nSpinoza, Benedict de\n\nStecker, Robert\n\nStoppard, Tom\n\nTaylor, Charles\n\nThoreau, Henry David\n\nTomasello, Michael\n\n_Tristram Shandy_\n\nvalue, literary\n\nWalsh, Dorothy\n\nWeinstein, Philip\n\nWellbery, David\n\nWhorf, Benjamin\n\nWilson, Catherine\n\nWinn, Steven\n\nWittgenstein, Ludwig\n\nWordsworth, William; \"Preface\" to _Lyrical Ballads_ ; _The Prelude_ ; \"Tintern Abbey\"\n\nworking through\n\nZamir, Tachi\n\nZupancic, Alenka\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nE-text prepared by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell, & Marc D'Hooghe\n(http:\/\/www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available\nby the Google Books Library Project (http:\/\/books.google.com\/)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of\n      this book.\n      Volume I:  See http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/36289\n      Volume II: See http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/36290\n\n\n      Images of the original pages are available through\n      the the Google Books Library Project. See\n      http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=aRgGAAAAQAAJ&oe=UTF-8\n\n\n\n\n\nORMOND;\n\nOr,\n\nThe Secret Witness.\n\nby\n\nB. C. BROWN,\n\nAuthor of Wieland, or Transformation.\n\nIn Three Volumes.\n\nVOL. III.\n\n\n\"Saepe intereunt aliis meditantes necem.\"\n\n                                  PHAEDRUS\n\n\"Those who plot the destruction of others, very often fall,\nthemselves the victims.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPhiladelphia  Printed,\nLondon, Re-Printed for Henry Colburn,\nEnglish and Foreign Public Library,\nConduit-Street, Bond-Street.\n1811\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE\n\nLADY CASTLEREAGH,\n\nTHESE VOLUMES\n\nare respectfully inscribed,\n\nby her Ladyship's\n\nmost obedient, and humble Servant,\n\nHENRY COLBURN.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n\n\"My father, in proportion as he grew old and rich, became weary of\nAleppo. His natal soil, had it been the haunt of Calmucks or Bedouins,\nhis fancy would have transformed into Paradise. No wonder that the\nequitable aristocracy and the peaceful husbandmen of Ragusa should be\nendeared to his heart by comparison with Egyptian plagues and Turkish\ntyranny. Besides, he lived for his children as well as himself. Their\neducation and future lot required him to seek a permanent home.\n\n\"He embarked, with his wife and offspring, at Scanderoon. No immediate\nconveyance to Ragusa offering, the appearance of the plague in Syria\ninduced him to hasten his departure. He entered a French vessel for\nMarseilles. After being three days at sea, one of the crew was seized by\nthe fatal disease which had depopulated all the towns upon the coast.\nThe voyage was made with more than usual despatch; but, before we\nreached our port, my mother and half the crew perished. My father died\nin the Lazaretto, more through grief than disease.\n\n\"My brother and I were children and helpless. My father's fortune was on\nboard this vessel, and was left by his death to the mercy of the\ncaptain. This man was honest, and consigned us and our property to the\nmerchant with whom he dealt. Happily for us, our protector was childless\nand of scrupulous integrity. We henceforth became his adopted children.\nMy brother's education and my own were conducted on the justest\nprinciples.\n\n\"At the end of four years, our protector found it expedient to make a\nvoyage to Cayenne. His brother was an extensive proprietor in that\ncolony, but his sudden death made way for the succession of our friend.\nTo establish his claims, his presence was necessary on the spot. He was\nlittle qualified for arduous enterprises, and his age demanded repose;\nbut, his own acquisitions having been small, and being desirous of\nleaving us in possession of competence, he cheerfully embarked.\n\n\"Meanwhile, my brother was placed at a celebrated seminary in the Pays\nde Vaud, and I was sent to a sister who resided at Verona. I was at this\ntime fourteen years old,--one year younger than my brother, whom, since\nthat period, I have neither heard of nor seen.\n\n\"I was now a woman, and qualified to judge and act for myself. The\ncharacter of my new friend was austere and devout, and there were so\nmany incongenial points between us that but little tranquillity was\nenjoyed under her control. The priest who discharged the office of her\nconfessor thought proper to entertain views with regard to me, grossly\ninconsistent with the sanctity of his profession. He was a man of\nprofound dissimulation and masterly address. His efforts, however, were\nrepelled with disdain. My security against his attempts lay in the\nuncouthness and deformity which nature had bestowed upon his person and\nvisage, rather than in the firmness of my own principles.\n\n\"The courtship of Father Bartoli, the austerities of Madame Roselli, the\ndisgustful or insipid occupations to which I was condemned, made me\nimpatiently wish for a change; but my father (so I will call him) had\ndecreed that I should remain under his sister's guardianship till his\nreturn from Guiana. When this would happen was uncertain. Events\nunforeseen might protract it for years, but it could not arrive in less\nthan a twelvemonth.\n\n\"I was incessantly preyed upon by discontent. My solitude was loathsome.\nI panted after liberty and friendship, and the want of these were not\nrecompensed by luxury and quiet, and by the instructions in useful\nscience which I received from Bartoli, who, though detested as a\nhypocrite and lover, was venerable as a scholar. He would fain have been\nan Abelard, but it was not his fate to meet with an Eloisa.\n\n\"Two years passed away in this durance. My miseries were exquisite. I am\nalmost at a loss to account for the unhappiness of that time, for,\nlooking back upon it, I perceive that an equal period could not have\nbeen spent with more benefit. For the sake of being near me, Bartoli\nimportunately offered his instructions. He had nothing to communicate\nbut metaphysics and geometry. These were little to my taste, but I could\nnot keep him at a distance. I had no other alternative than to endure\nhim as a lover or a teacher. His passion for science was at least equal\nto that which ho entertained for me, and both these passions combined to\nmake him a sedulous instructor. He was a disciple of the newest\ndoctrines respecting matter and mind. He denied the impenetrability of\nthe first, and the immateriality of the second. These he endeavoured to\ninculcate upon me, as well as to subvert my religious tenets, because he\ndelighted, like all men, in transfusing his opinions, and because he\nregarded my piety as the only obstacle to his designs. He succeeded in\ndissolving the spell of ignorance, but not in producing that kind of\nacquiescence he wished. He had, in this respect, to struggle not only\nwith my principles, but my weakness. He might have overcome every\nobstacle but my abhorrence of deformity and age. To cure me of this\naversion was beyond his power. My servitude grew daily more painful. I\ngrew tired of chasing a comet to its aphelion, and of untying the knot\nof an infinite series. A change in my condition became indispensable to\nmy very existence. Languor and sadness, and unwillingness to eat or to\nmove, were at last my perpetual attendants!\n\n\"Madame Roselli was alarmed at my condition. The sources of my\ninquietude were incomprehensible to her. The truth was, that I scarcely\nunderstood them myself, and my endeavours to explain them to my friend\nmerely instilled into her an opinion that I was either lunatic or\ndeceitful. She complained and admonished; but my disinclination to my\nusual employments would not be conquered, and my health rapidly\ndeclined. A physician, who was called, confessed that my case was beyond\nhis power to understand, but recommended, as a sort of desperate\nexpedient, a change of scene. A succession and variety of objects might\npossibly contribute to my cure.\n\n\"At this time there arrived, at Verona, Lady D'Arcy,--an Englishwoman\nof fortune and rank, and a strenuous Catholic. Her husband had lately\ndied; and, in order to divert her grief, as well as to gratify her\ncuriosity in viewing the great seat of her religion, she had come to\nItaly. Intercourse took place between her and Madame Roselli. By this\nmeans she gained a knowledge of my person and condition, and kindly\noffered to take me under her protection. She meant to traverse every\npart of Italy, and was willing that I should accompany her in all her\nwanderings.\n\n\"This offer was gratefully accepted, in spite of the artifices and\nremonstrances of Bartoli. My companion speedily contracted for me the\naffection of a mother. She was without kindred of her own religion,\nhaving acquired her faith, not by inheritance, but conversion. She\ndesired to abjure her native country, and to bind herself, by every\nsocial tie, to a people who adhered to the same faith. Me she promised\nto adopt as her daughter, provided her first impressions in my favour\nwere not belied by my future deportment.\n\n\"My principles were opposite to hers; but habit, an aversion to\ndisplease my friend, my passion for knowledge, which my new condition\nenabled me to gratify, all combined to make me a deceiver. But my\nimposture was merely of a negative kind; I deceived her rather by\nforbearance to contradict, and by acting as she acted, than by open\nassent and zealous concurrence. My new state was, on this account, not\ndevoid of inconvenience. The general deportment and sentiments of Lady\nD'Arcy testified a vigorous and pure mind. New avenues to knowledge, by\nconverse with mankind and with books, and by the survey of new scenes,\nwere open for my use. Gratitude and veneration attached me to my friend,\nand made the task of pleasing her, by a seeming conformity of\nsentiments, less irksome.\n\n\"During this interval, no tidings were received by his sister, at\nVerona, respecting the fate of Sebastian Roselli. The supposition of\nhis death was too plausible not to be adopted. What influence this\ndisaster possessed over my brother's destiny, I know not. The generosity\nof Lady D'Arcy hindered me from experiencing any disadvantage from this\ncircumstance. Fortune seemed to have decreed that I should not be\nreduced to the condition of an orphan.\n\n\"At an age and in a situation like mine, I could not remain long\nunacquainted with love. My abode at Rome introduced me to the knowledge\nof a youth from England, who had every property which I regarded as\nworthy of esteem. He was a kinsman of--Lady D'Arcy, and as such admitted\nat her house on the most familiar footing. His patrimony was extremely\nslender, but was in his own possession. He had no intention of\nincreasing it by any professional pursuit, but was contented with the\nfrugal provision it afforded. He proposed no other end of his existence\nthan the acquisition of virtue and knowledge.\n\n\"The property of Lady D'Arcy was subject to her own disposal, but, on\nthe failure of a testament, this youth was, in legal succession, the\nnext heir. He was well acquainted with her temper and views, but, in the\nmidst of urbanity and gentleness, studied none of those concealments of\nopinion which would have secured him her favour. That he was not of her\nown faith was an insuperable, but the only, obstacle to the admission of\nhis claims.\n\n\"If conformity of age and opinions, and the mutual fascination of love,\nbe a suitable basis for marriage, Wentworth and I were destined for each\nother. Mutual disclosure added sanctity to our affection; but, the\nhappiness of Lady D'Arcy being made to depend upon the dissolution of\nour compact, the heroism of Wentworth made him hasten to dissolve it. As\nsoon as she discovered our attachment, she displayed symptoms of the\ndeepest anguish. In addition to religious motives, her fondness for me\nforbade her to exist but in my society and in the belief of the purity\nof my faith. The contention, on my part, was vehement between the\nregards due to her felicity and to my own. Had Wentworth left me the\npower to decide, my decision would doubtless have evinced the frailty of\nmy fortitude and the strength of my passion; but, having informed me\nfully of the reasons of his conduct, he precipitately retired from Rome.\nHe left me no means of tracing his footsteps and of assailing his\nweakness by expostulation and entreaty.\n\n\"Lady D'Arcy was no less eager to abandon a spot where her happiness had\nbeen so imminently endangered. Our next residence was Palermo. I will\nnot dwell upon the sensations produced by this disappointment in me. I\nreview them with astonishment and self-compassion. If I thought it\npossible for me to sink again into imbecility so ignominious, I should\nbe disposed to kill myself.\n\n\"There was no end to vows of fondness and tokens of gratitude in Lady\nD'Arcy. Her future life should be devoted to compensate me for this\nsacrifice. Nothing could console her in that single state in which she\nintended to live, but the consolations of my fellowship. Her conduct\ncoincided for some time with these professions, and my anguish was\nallayed by the contemplation of the happiness conferred upon one whom I\nrevered.\n\n\"My friend could not be charged with dissimulation and artifice. Her\ncharacter had been mistaken by herself as well as by me. Devout\naffections seemed to have filled her heart, to the exclusion of any\nobject besides myself. She cherished with romantic tenderness the memory\nof her husband, and imagined that a single state was indispensably\nenjoined upon her by religious duty. This persuasion, however, was\nsubverted by the arts of a Spanish cavalier, young, opulent, and\nromantic as herself in devotion. An event like this might, indeed, have\nbeen easily predicted, by those who reflected that the lady was still in\nthe bloom of life, ardent in her temper, and bewitching in her manners.\n\n\"The fondness she had lavished upon me was now, in some degree,\ntransferred to a new object; but I still received the treatment due to a\nbeloved daughter. She was solicitous as ever to promote my\ngratification, and a diminution of kindness would not have been\nsuspected by those who had not witnessed the excesses of her former\npassion. Her marriage with the Spaniard removed the obstacle to union\nwith Wentworth. This man, however, had set himself beyond the reach of\nmy inquiries. Had there been the shadow of a clue afforded me, I should\ncertainly have sought him to the ends of the world.\n\n\"I continued to reside with my friend, and accompanied her and her\nhusband to Spain. Antonio de Leyva was a man of probity. His mind was\nenlightened by knowledge and his actions dictated by humanity. Though\nbut little older than myself, and young enough to be the son of his\nspouse, his deportment to me was a model of rectitude and delicacy. I\nspent a year in Spain, partly in the mountains of Castile and partly at\nSegovia. New manners and a new language occupied my attention for a\ntime; but these, losing their novelty, lost their power to please. I\nbetook myself to books, to beguile the tediousness and diversify the\ntenor of my life.\n\n\"This would not have long availed; but I was relieved from new\nrepinings, by the appointment of Antonio de Leyva to a diplomatic office\nat Vienna. Thither we accordingly repaired. A coincidence of\ncircumstances had led me wide from the path of ambition and study\nusually allotted to my sex and age. From the computation of eclipses, I\nnow betook myself to the study of man. My proficiency, when I allowed it\nto be seen, attracted great attention. Instead of adulation and\ngallantry, I was engaged in watching the conduct of states and revolving\nthe theories of politicians.\n\n\"Superficial observers were either incredulous with regard to my\ncharacter, or connected a stupid wonder with their belief. My\nattainments and habits they did not see to be perfectly consonant with\nthe principles of human nature. They unavoidably flowed from the illicit\nattachment of Bartoli, and the erring magnanimity of Wentworth. Aversion\nto the priest was the grand inciter of my former studies; the love of\nWentworth, whom I hoped once more to meet, made me labour to exclude the\nimportunities of others, and to qualify myself for securing his\naffections.\n\n\"Since our parting in Italy, Wentworth had traversed Syria and Egypt,\nand arrived some months after me at Vienna. He was on the point of\nleaving the city, when accident informed me of his being there. An\ninterview was effected, and, our former sentiments respecting each other\nhaving undergone no change, we were united. Madame de Leyva reluctantly\nconcurred with our wishes, and, at parting, forced upon me a\nconsiderable sum of money.\n\n\"Wentworth's was a character not frequently met with in the world. He\nwas a political enthusiast, who esteemed nothing more graceful or\nglorious than to die for the liberties of mankind. He had traversed\nGreece with an imagination full of the exploits of ancient times, and\nderived, from contemplating Thermopylae and Marathon, an enthusiasm that\nbordered upon frenzy.\n\n\"It was now the third year of the Revolutionary War in America, and,\nprevious to our meeting at Vienna, he had formed the resolution of\nrepairing thither and tendering his service to the Congress as a\nvolunteer. Our marriage made no change in his plans. My soul was\nengrossed by two passions,--a wild spirit of adventure, and a boundless\ndevotion to him. I vowed to accompany him in every danger, to vie with\nhim in military ardour, to combat and to die by his side.\n\n\"I delighted to assume the male dress, to acquire skill at the sword,\nand dexterity in every boisterous exercise. The timidity that commonly\nattends women gradually vanished. I felt as if imbued by a soul that was\na stranger to the sexual distinction. We embarked at Brest, in a frigate\ndestined for St. Domingo. A desperate conflict with an English ship in\nthe Bay of Biscay was my first introduction to a scene of tumult and\ndanger of whose true nature I had formed no previous conception. At\nfirst I was spiritless and full of dismay. Experience, however,\ngradually reconciled me to the life that I had chosen.\n\n\"A fortunate shot, by dismasting the enemy, allowed us to prosecute our\nvoyage unmolested. At Cape Francois we found a ship which transported\nus, after various perils, to Richmond, in Virginia. I will not carry you\nthrough the adventures of four years. You, sitting all your life in\npeaceful corners, can scarcely imagine that variety of hardship and\nturmoil which attends the female who lives in a camp.\n\n\"Few would sustain these hardships with better grace than I did. I could\nseldom be prevailed on to remain at a distance, and inactive, when my\nhusband was in battle, and more than once rescued him from death by the\nseasonable destruction of his adversary.\n\n\"At the repulse of the Americans at Germantown, Wentworth was wounded\nand taken prisoner. I obtained permission to attend his sick-bed and\nsupply that care without which he would assuredly have died. Being\nimperfectly recovered, he was sent to England and subjected to a\nrigorous imprisonment. Milder treatment might have permitted his\ncomplete restoration to health; but, as it was, he died.\n\n\"His kindred were noble, and rich, and powerful; but it was difficult to\nmake them acquainted with Wentworth's situation. Their assistance, when\ndemanded, was readily afforded; but it came too late to prevent his\ndeath. Me they snatched from my voluntary prison, and employed every\nfriendly art to efface from my mind the images of recent calamity.\n\n\"Wentworth's singularities of conduct and opinion had estranged him at\nan early age from his family. They felt little regret at his fate, but\nevery motive concurred to secure their affection and succour to me. My\ncharacter was known to many officers, returned from America, whose\nreport, joined with the influence of my conversation, rendered me an\nobject to be gazed at by thousands. Strange vicissitude! Now immersed in\nthe infection of a military hospital, the sport of a wayward fortune,\nstruggling with cold and hunger, with negligence and contumely. A month\nafter, passing into scenes of gayety and luxury, exhibited at operas and\nmasquerades, made the theme of inquiry and encomium at every place of\nresort, and caressed by the most illustrious among the votaries of\nscience and the advocates of the American cause.\n\n\"Here I again met Madame de Leyva. This woman was perpetually assuming\nnew forms. She was a sincere convert to the Catholic religion, but she\nwas open to every new impression. She was the dupe of every powerful\nreasoner, and assumed with equal facility the most opposite shapes. She\nhad again reverted to the Protestant religion, and, governed by a\nheadlong zeal in whatever cause she engaged, she had sacrificed her\nhusband and child to a new conviction.\n\n\"The instrument of this change was a man who passed, at that time, for a\nFrenchman. He was young, accomplished, and addressful, but was not\nsuspected of having been prompted by illicit views, or of having seduced\nthe lady from allegiance to her husband as well as to her God. De Leyva,\nhowever, who was sincere in his religion as well as his love, was hasty\nto avenge this injury, and, in a contest with the Frenchman, was killed.\nHis wife adopted at once her ancient religion and country, and was once\nmore an Englishwoman.\n\n\"At our meeting her affection for me seemed to be revived, and the most\npassionate entreaties were used to detain me in England. My previous\narrangements would not suffer it. I foresaw restraints and\ninconveniences from the violence and caprice of her passions, and\nintended henceforth to keep my liberty inviolate by any species of\nengagement, either of friendship or marriage. My habits were French, and\nI proposed henceforward to take up my abode at Paris. Since his voyage\nto Guiana, I had heard no tidings of Sebastian Roselli. This man's image\nwas cherished with filial emotions, and I conceived that the sight of\nhim would amply reward a longer journey than from London to Marseilles.\n\n\"Beyond my hopes, I found him in his ancient abode. The voyage, and a\nresidence of three years at Cayenne, had been beneficial to his\nappearance and health. He greeted me with paternal tenderness, and\nadmitted me to a full participation of his fortune, which the sale of\nhis American property had greatly enhanced. He was a stranger to the\nfate of my brother. On his return home he had gone to Switzerland, with\na view of ascertaining his destiny. The youth, a few months after his\narrival at Lausanne, had eloped with a companion, and had hitherto\neluded all Roselli's searches and inquiries. My father was easily\nprevailed upon to transfer his residence from Provence to Paris.\"\n\nHere Martinette paused, and, marking the clock, \"It is time,\" resumed\nshe, \"to begone. Are you not weary of my tale? On the day I entered\nFrance, I entered the twenty-third year of my age, so that my promise of\ndetailing my youthful adventures is fulfilled. I must away. Till we meet\nagain, farewell.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n\nSuch was the wild series of Martinette's adventures. Each incident\nfastened on the memory of Constantia, and gave birth to numberless\nreflections. Her prospect of mankind seemed to be enlarged, on a sudden,\nto double its ancient dimensions. Ormond's narratives had carried her\nbeyond the Mississippi, and into the deserts of Siberia. He had\nrecounted the perils of a Russian war, and painted the manners of\nMongols and Naudowessies. Her new friend had led her back to the\ncivilized world and portrayed the other half of the species. Men, in\ntheir two forms of savage and refined, had been scrutinized by these\nobservers; and what was wanting in the delineations of the one was\nliberally supplied by the other.\n\nEleven years in the life of Martinette was unrelated. Her conversation\nsuggested the opinion that this interval had been spent in France. It\nwas obvious to suppose that a woman thus fearless and sagacious had not\nbeen inactive at a period like the present, which called forth talents\nand courage without distinction of sex, and had been particularly\ndistinguished by female enterprise and heroism. Her name easily led to\nthe suspicion of concurrence with the subverters of monarchy, and of\nparticipation in their fall. Her flight from the merciless tribunals of\nthe faction that now reigned would explain present appearances.\n\nMartinette brought to their next interview an air of uncommon\nexultation. On this being remarked, she communicated the tidings of the\nfall of the sanguinary tyranny of Robespierre. Her eyes sparkled, and\nevery feature was pregnant with delight, while she unfolded, with her\naccustomed energy, the particulars of this tremendous revolution. The\nblood which it occasioned to flow was mentioned without any symptoms of\ndisgust or horror.\n\nConstantia ventured to ask if this incident was likely to influence her\nown condition.\n\n\"Yes. It will open the way for my return.\"\n\n\"Then you think of returning to a scene of so much danger?\"\n\n\"Danger, my girl? It is my element. I am an adorer of liberty, and\nliberty without peril can never exist.\"\n\n\"But so much bloodshed and injustice! Does not your heart shrink from\nthe view of a scene of massacre and tumult, such as Paris has lately\nexhibited and will probably continue to exhibit?\"\n\n\"Thou talkest, Constantia, in a way scarcely worthy of thy good sense.\nHave I not been three years in a camp? What are bleeding wounds and\nmangled corpses, when accustomed to the daily sight of them for years?\nAm I not a lover of liberty? and must I not exult in the fall of\ntyrants, and regret only that my hand had no share in their\ndestruction?\"\n\n\"But a woman--how can the heart of woman be inured to the shedding of\nblood?\"\n\n\"Have women, I beseech thee, no capacity to reason and infer? Are they\nless open than men to the influence of habit? My hand never faltered\nwhen liberty demanded the victim. If thou wert with me at Paris, I could\nshow thee a fusil of two barrels, which is precious beyond any other\nrelic, merely because it enabled me to kill thirteen officers at\nJemappe. Two of these were emigrant nobles, whom I knew and loved before\nthe Revolution, but the cause they had since espoused cancelled their\nclaims to mercy.\"\n\n\"What!\" said the startled Constantia; \"have you fought in the ranks?\"\n\n\"Certainly. Hundreds of my sex have done the same. Some were impelled by\nthe enthusiasm of love, and some by a mere passion for war; some by the\ncontagion of example; and some--with whom I myself must be ranked--by a\ngenerous devotion to liberty. Brunswick and Saxe-Coburg had to contend\nwith whole regiments of women,--regiments they would have formed, if\nthey had been collected into separate bodies.\n\n\"I will tell thee a secret. Thou wouldst never have seen Martinette de\nBeauvais, if Brunswick had deferred one day longer his orders for\nretreating into Germany.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"She would have died by her own hand.\"\n\n\"What could lead to such an outrage?\"\n\n\"The love of liberty.\"\n\n\"I cannot comprehend how that love should prompt you to suicide.\"\n\n\"I will tell thee. The plan was formed, and could not miscarry. A woman\nwas to play the part of a banished Royalist, was to repair to the\nPrussian camp, and to gain admission to the general. This would have\neasily been granted to a female and an ex-noble. There she was to\nassassinate the enemy of her country, and to attest her magnanimity by\nslaughtering herself. I was weak enough to regret the ignominious\nretreat of the Prussians, because it precluded the necessity of such a\nsacrifice.\"\n\nThis was related with accents and looks that sufficiently attested its\ntruth. Constantia shuddered, and drew back, to contemplate more\ndeliberately the features of her guest. Hitherto she had read in them\nnothing that bespoke the desperate courage of a martyr and the deep\ndesigning of an assassin. The image which her mind had reflected from\nthe deportment of this woman was changed. The likeness which she had,\nfeigned to herself was no longer seen. She felt that antipathy was\npreparing to displace love. These sentiments, however, she concealed,\nand suffered the conversation to proceed.\n\nTheir discourse now turned upon the exploits of several women who\nmingled in the tumults of the capital and in the armies on the\nfrontiers. Instances were mentioned of ferocity in some, and magnanimity\nin others, which almost surpassed belief. Constantia listened greedily,\nthough not with approbation, and acquired, at every sentence, new desire\nto be acquainted with the personal history of Martinette. On mentioning\nthis wish, her friend said that she endeavoured to amuse her exile by\ncomposing her own memoirs, and that, on her next visit, she would bring\nwith her the volume, which she would suffer Constantia to read.\n\nA separation of a week elapsed. She felt some impatience for the renewal\nof their intercourse, and for the perusal of the volume that had been\nmentioned. One evening Sarah Baxter, whom Constantia had placed in her\nown occasional service, entered the room with marks of great joy and\nsurprise, and informed her that she at length had discovered Miss\nMonrose. From her abrupt and prolix account, it appeared that Sarah had\novertaken Miss Monrose in the street, and, guided by her own curiosity,\nas well as by the wish to gratify her mistress, she had followed the\nstranger. To her utter astonishment, the lady had paused at Mr. Dudley's\ndoor, with a seeming resolution to enter it, but presently resumed her\nway. Instead of pursuing her steps farther, Sarah had stopped to\ncommunicate this intelligence to Constantia. Having delivered her news,\nshe hastened away, but, returning, in a moment, with a countenance of\nnew surprise, she informed her mistress that on leaving the house she\nhad met Miss Monrose at the door, on the point of entering. She added\nthat the stranger had inquired for Constantia, and was now waiting\nbelow.\n\nConstantia took no time to reflect upon an incident so unexpected and so\nstrange, but proceeded forthwith to the parlour. Martinette only was\nthere. It did not instantly occur to her that this lady and Mademoiselle\nMonrose might possibly be the same. The inquiries she made speedily\nremoved her doubts, and it now appeared that the woman about whose\ndestiny she had formed so many conjectures and fostered so much anxiety\nwas no other than the daughter of Roselli.\n\nHaving readily answered her questions, Martinette inquired, in her turn,\ninto the motives of her friend's curiosity. These were explained by a\nsuccinct account of the transactions to which the deceased Baxter had\nbeen a witness. Constantia concluded with mentioning her own reflections\non the tale, and intimating her wish to be informed how Martinette had\nextricated herself from a situation so calamitous.\n\n\"Is there any room for wonder on that head?\" replied the guest. \"It was\nabsurd to stay longer in the house. Having finished the interment of\nRoselli, (soldier-fashion,) for he was the man who suffered his foolish\nregrets to destroy him, I forsook the house. Roselli was by no means\npoor, but he could not consent to live at ease, or to live at all, while\nhis country endured such horrible oppressions, and when so many of his\nfriends had perished. I complied with his humour, because it could not\nbe changed, and I revered him too much to desert him.\"\n\n\"But whither,\" said Constantia, \"could you seek shelter at a time like\nthat? The city was desolate, and a wandering female could scarcely be\nreceived under any roof. All inhabited houses were closed at that hour,\nand the fear of infection would have shut them against you if they had\nnot been already so.\"\n\n\"Hast thou forgotten that there were at that time at least ten thousand\nFrench in this city, fugitives from Marat and from St. Domingo? That\nthey lived in utter fearlessness of the reigning disease,--sung and\nloitered in the public walks, and prattled at their doors, with all\ntheir customary unconcern? Supposest thou that there were none among\nthese who would receive a countrywoman, even if her name had not been\nMartinette de Beauvais? Thy fancy has depicted strange things; but\nbelieve me that, without a farthing and without a name, I should not\nhave incurred the slightest inconvenience. The death of Roselli I\nforesaw, because it was gradual in its approach, and was sought by him\nas a good. My grief, therefore, was exhausted before it came, and I\nrejoiced at his death, because it was the close of all his sorrows. The\nrueful pictures of my distress and weakness which were given by Baxter\nexisted only in his own fancy.\"\n\nMartinette pleaded an engagement, and took her leave, professing to have\ncome merely to leave with her the promised manuscript. This interview,\nthough short, was productive of many reflections on the deceitfulness of\nappearances, and on the variety of maxims by which the conduct of human\nbeings is regulated. She was accustomed to impart all her thoughts and\nrelate every new incident to her father. With this view she now hied to\nhis apartment. This hour it was her custom, when disengaged, always to\nspend with him.\n\nShe found Mr. Dudley busy in revolving a scheme which various\ncircumstances had suggested and gradually conducted to maturity. No\nperiod of his life had been equally delightful with that portion of his\nyouth which he had spent in Italy. The climate, the language, the\nmanners of the people, and the sources of intellectual gratification in\npainting and music, were congenial to his taste. He had reluctantly\nforsaken these enchanting seats, at the summons of his father, but, on\nhis return to his native country, had encountered nothing but ignominy\nand pain. Poverty and blindness had beset his path, and it seemed as if\nit were impossible to fly too far from the scene of his disasters. His\nmisfortunes could not be concealed from others, and every thing around\nhim seemed to renew the memory of all that he had suffered. All the\nevents of his youth served to entice him to Italy, while all the\nincidents of his subsequent life concurred to render disgustful his\npresent abode.\n\nHis daughter's happiness was not to be forgotten. This he imagined would\nbe eminently promoted by the scheme. It would open to her new avenues to\nknowledge. It would snatch her from the odious pursuit of Ormond, and,\nby a variety of objects and adventures, efface from her mind any\nimpression which his dangerous artifices might have made upon it.\n\nThis project was now communicated to Constantia. Every argument adapted\nto influence her choice was employed. He justly conceived that the only\nobstacle to her adoption of it related to Ormond. He expatiated on the\ndubious character of this man, the wildness of his schemes, and the\nmagnitude of his errors. What could be expected from a man, half of\nwhose life had been spent at the head of a band of Cossacks, spreading\ndevastation in the regions of the Danube, and supporting by flagitious\nintrigues the tyranny of Catharine, and the other half in traversing\ninhospitable countries, and extinguishing what remained of clemency and\njustice by intercourse with savages?\n\nIt was admitted that his energies were great, but misdirected, and that\nto restore them to the guidance of truth was not in itself impossible;\nbut it was so with relation to any power that she possessed. Conformity\nwould flow from their marriage, but this conformity was not to be\nexpected from him. It was not his custom to abjure any of his doctrines\nor recede from any of his claims. She knew likewise the conditions of\ntheir union. She must go with him to some corner of the world where his\nboasted system was established. What was the road to it he had carefully\nconcealed, but it was evident that it lay beyond the precincts of\ncivilized existence.\n\nWhatever were her ultimate decision, it was at least proper to delay it.\nSix years were yet wanting of that period at which only she formerly\nconsidered marriage as proper. To all the general motives for deferring\nher choice, the conduct of Ormond superadded the weightiest. Their\ncorrespondence might continue, but her residence in Europe and converse\nwith mankind might enlighten her judgement and qualify her for a more\nrational decision.\n\nConstantia was not uninfluenced by these reasonings. Instead of\nreluctantly admitting them, she somewhat wondered that they had not been\nsuggested by her own reflections. Her imagination anticipated her\nentrance on that mighty scene with emotions little less than rapturous.\nHer studies had conferred a thousand ideal charms on a theatre where\nScipio and Caesar had performed their parts. Her wishes were no less\nimportunate to gaze upon the Alps and Pyrenees, and to vivify and\nchasten the images collected from books, by comparing them with their\nreal prototypes.\n\nNo social ties existed to hold her to America. Her only kinsman and\nfriend would be the companion of her journeys. This project was likewise\nrecommended by advantages of which she only was qualified to judge.\nSophia Westwyn had embarked, four years previous to this date, for\nEngland, in company with an English lady and her husband. The\narrangements that were made forbade either of the friends to hope for a\nfuture meeting. Yet now, by virtue of this project, this meeting seemed\nno longer to be hopeless.\n\nThis burst of new ideas and now hopes on the mind of Constantia took\nplace in the course of a single hour. No change in her external\nsituation had been wrought, and yet her mind had undergone the most\nsignal revolution. Tho novelty as well as greatness of the prospect kept\nher in a state of elevation and awe, more ravishing than any she had\never experienced. Anticipations of intercourse with nature in her most\naugust forms, with men in diversified states of society, with the\nposterity of Greeks and Romans, and with the actors that were now upon\nthe stage, and, above all, with the being whom absence and the want of\nother attachments had, in some sort, contributed to deify, made this\nnight pass away upon the wings of transport.\n\nThe hesitation which existed on parting with her father speedily gave\nplace to an ardour impatient of the least delay. She saw no impediments\nto the immediate commencement of the voyage. To delay it a month, or\neven a week, seemed to be unprofitable tardiness. In this ferment of her\nthoughts, she was neither able nor willing to sleep. In arranging the\nmeans of departure and anticipating the events that would successively\narise, there was abundant food for contemplation.\n\nShe marked the first dawnings of the day, and rose. She felt reluctance\nto break upon her father's morning slumbers, but considered that her\nmotives were extremely urgent, and that the pleasure afforded him by her\nzealous approbation of his scheme would amply compensate him for this\nunseasonable intrusion on his rest. She hastened therefore to his\nchamber. She entered with blithesome steps, and softly drew aside the\ncurtain.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\n\nUnhappy Constantia! At the moment when thy dearest hopes had budded\nafresh, when the clouds of insecurity and disquiet had retired from thy\nvision, wast thou assailed by the great subverter of human schemes. Thou\nsawest nothing in futurity but an eternal variation and succession of\ndelights. Thou wast hastening to forget dangers and sorrows which thou\nfondly imaginedst were never to return. This day was to be the outset of\na new career; existence was henceforth to be embellished with enjoyments\nhitherto scarcely within the reach of hope.\n\nAlas! thy predictions of calamity seldom failed to be verified. Not so\nthy prognostics of pleasure. These, though fortified by every\ncalculation of contingencies, were edifices grounded upon nothing. Thy\nlife was a struggle with malignant destiny,--a contest for happiness in\nwhich thou wast fated to be overcome.\n\nShe stooped to kiss the venerable cheek of her father, and, by\nwhispering, to break his slumber. Her eye was no sooner fixed upon his\ncountenance, than she started back and shrieked. She had no power to\nforbear. Her outcries were piercing and vehement. They ceased only with\nthe cessation of breath. She sunk upon a chair in a state partaking more\nof death than of life, mechanically prompted to give vent to her agonies\nin shrieks, but incapable of uttering a sound.\n\nThe alarm called her servants to the spot. They beheld her dumb, wildly\ngazing, and gesticulating in a way that indicated frenzy. She made no\nresistance to their efforts, but permitted them to carry her back to her\nown chamber. Sarah called upon her to speak, and to explain the cause\nof these appearances; but the shock which she had endured seemed to have\nirretrievably destroyed her powers of utterance.\n\nThe terrors of the affectionate Sarah were increased. She kneeled by the\nbedside of her mistress, and, with streaming eyes, besought the unhappy\nlady to compose herself. Perhaps the sight of weeping in another\npossessed a sympathetic influence, or nature had made provision for this\nsalutary change. However that be, a torrent of tears now came to her\nsuccour, and rescued her from a paroxysm of insanity which its longer\ncontinuance might have set beyond the reach of cure.\n\nMeanwhile, a glance at his master's countenance made Fabian fully\nacquainted with the nature of the scene. The ghastly visage of Mr.\nDudley showed that he was dead, and that he had died in some terrific\nand mysterious manner. As soon as this faithful servant recovered from\nsurprise, the first expedient which his ingenuity suggested was to fly\nwith tidings of this event to Mr. Melbourne. That gentleman instantly\nobeyed the summons. With the power of weeping, Constantia recovered the\npower of reflection. This, for a time, served her only as a medium of\nanguish. Melbourne mingled his tears with hers, and endeavoured, by\nsuitable remonstrances, to revive her fortitude.\n\nThe filial passion is perhaps instinctive to man; but its energy is\nmodified by various circumstances. Every event in the life of Constantia\ncontributed to heighten this passion beyond customary bounds. In the\nhabit of perpetual attendance on her father, of deriving from him her\nknowledge, and sharing with him the hourly fruits of observation and\nreflection, his existence seemed blended with her own. There was no\nother whose concurrence and council she could claim, with whom a\ndomestic and uninterrupted alliance could be maintained. The only bond\nof consanguinity was loosened, the only prop of friendship was taken\naway.\n\nOthers, perhaps, would have observed that her father's existence had\nbeen merely a source of obstruction and perplexity; that she had\nhitherto acted by her own wisdom, and would find, hereafter, less\ndifficulty in her choice of schemes, and fewer impediments to the\nexecution. These reflections occurred not to her. This disaster had\nincreased, to an insupportable degree, the vacancy and dreariness of her\nexistence. The face she was habituated to behold had disappeared\nforever; the voice whose mild and affecting tones had so long been\nfamiliar to her ears was hushed into eternal silence. The felicity to\nwhich she clung was ravished away; nothing remained to hinder her from\nsinking into utter despair.\n\nThe first transports of grief having subsided, a source of consolation\nseemed to be opened in the belief that her father had only changed one\nform of being for another; that he still lived to be the guardian of her\npeace and honour, to enter the recesses of her thought, to forewarn her\nof evil and invite her to good. She grasped at these images with\neagerness, and fostered them as the only solaces of her calamity. They\nwere not adapted to inspire her with cheerfulness, but they sublimed her\nsensations, and added an inexplicable fascination to sorrow.\n\nIt was unavoidable sometimes to reflect upon the nature of that death\nwhich had occurred. Tokens were sufficiently apparent that outward\nviolence had been the cause. Who could be the performer of so black a\ndeed, by what motives he was guided, were topics of fruitless\nconjecture. She mused upon this subject, not from the thirst of\nvengeance, but from a mournful curiosity. Had the perpetrator stood\nbefore her and challenged retribution, she would not have lifted a\nfinger to accuse or to punish. The evil already endured left her no\npower to concert and execute projects for extending that evil to others.\nHer mind was unnerved, and recoiled with loathing from considerations of\nabstract justice, or political utility, when they prompted to the\nprosecution of the murderer.\n\nMelbourne was actuated by different views, but on this subject he was\npainfully bewildered. Mr. Dudley's deportment to his servants and\nneighbours was gentle and humane. He had no dealings with the\ntrafficking or labouring part of mankind. The fund which supplied his\ncravings of necessity or habit was his daughter's. His recreations and\nemployments were harmless and lonely. The evil purpose was limited to\nhis death, for his chamber was exactly in the same state in which\nnegligent security had left it. No midnight footstep or voice, no\nunbarred door or lifted window, afforded tokens of the presence or\ntraces of the entrance or flight of the assassin.\n\nThe meditations of Constantia, however, could not fail in some of their\ncircuities to encounter the image of Craig. His agency in the\nimpoverishment of her father, and in the scheme by which she had like to\nhave been loaded with the penalties of forgery, was of an impervious and\nunprecedented kind. Motives were unveiled by time, in some degree\naccounting for his treacherous proceeding; but there was room to suppose\nan inborn propensity to mischief. Was he not the author of this new\nevil? His motives and his means were equally inscrutable, but their\ninscrutability might flow from her own defects in discernment and\nknowledge, and time might supply her defects in this as in former\ninstances.\n\nThese images were casual. The causes of the evil were seldom\ncontemplated. Her mind was rarely at liberty to wander from reflection\non her irremediable loss. Frequently, when confused by distressful\nrecollections, she would detect herself going to her father's chamber.\nOften his well-known accents would ring in her ears, and the momentary\nimpulse would be to answer his calls. Her reluctance to sit down to her\nmeals without her usual companion could scarcely be surmounted.\n\nIn this state of mind, the image of the only friend who survived, or\nwhose destiny, at least, was doubtful, occurred to her. She sunk into\nfits of deeper abstraction and dissolved away in tears of more agonizing\ntenderness. A week after her father's interment, she shut herself up in\nher chamber, to torment herself with fruitless remembrances. The name of\nSophia Westwyn was pronounced, and the ditty that solemnized their\nparting was sung. Now, more than formerly, she became sensible of the\nloss of that portrait which had been deposited in the hands of M'Crea as\na pledge. As soon as her change of fortune had supplied her with the\nmeans of redeeming it, she hastened to M'Crea for that end. To her\nunspeakable disappointment, he was absent from the city; he had taken a\nlong journey, and the exact period of his return could not be\nascertained. His clerks refused to deliver the picture, or even, by\nsearching, to discover whether it was still in their master's\npossession. This application had frequently and lately been repeated,\nbut without success; M'Crea had not yet returned, and his family were\nequally in the dark as to the day on which his return might be expected.\n\nShe determined, on this occasion, to renew her visit. Her incessant\ndisappointments had almost extinguished hope, and she made inquiries at\nhis door, with a faltering accent and sinking heart. These emotions were\nchanged into surprise and delight, when answer was made that he had just\narrived. She was instantly conducted into his presence.\n\nThe countenance of M'Crea easily denoted that his visitant was by no\nmeans acceptable. There was a mixture of embarrassment and sullenness in\nhis air, which was far from being diminished when the purpose of this\nvisit was explained. Constantia reminded him of the offer and acceptance\nof this pledge, and of the conditions with which the transaction was\naccompanied.\n\nHe acknowledged, with some hesitation, that a promise had been given to\nretain the pledge until it were in her power to redeem it; but the long\ndelay, the urgency of his own wants, and particularly the ill treatment\nwhich he conceived himself to have suffered in the transaction\nrespecting the forged note, had, in his own opinion, absolved him from\nthis promise. He had therefore sold the picture to a goldsmith, for as\nmuch as the gold about it was worth.\n\nThis information produced, in the heart of Constantia, a contest between\nindignation and sorrow, that for a time debarred her from speech. She\nstifled the anger that was, at length, rising to her lips, and calmly\ninquired to whom the picture had been sold.\n\nM'Crea answered that for his part he had little dealings in gold and\nsilver, but every thing of that kind which fell to his share he\ntransacted with Mr. D----. This person was one of the most eminent of\nhis profession. His character and place of abode were universally\nknown. Tho only expedient that remained was to apply to him, and to\nascertain, forthwith, the destiny of the picture. It was too probable\nthat, when separated from its case, the portrait was thrown away or\ndestroyed, as a mere encumbrance, but the truth was too momentous to be\nmade the sport of mere probability. She left the house of M'Crea, and\nhastened to that of the goldsmith.\n\nThe circumstance was easily recalled to his remembrance. It was true\nthat such a picture had been offered for sale, and that he had purchased\nit. The workmanship was curious, and he felt unwilling to destroy it. He\ntherefore hung it up in his shop and indulged the hope that a purchaser\nwould some time be attracted by the mere beauty of the toy.\n\nConstantia's hopes were revived by these tidings, and she earnestly\ninquired if it were still in his possession.\n\n\"No. A young gentleman had entered his shop some months before: the\npicture had caught his fancy, and he had given a price which the artist\nowned he should not have demanded, had he not been encouraged by the\neagerness which the gentleman betrayed to possess it.\"\n\n\"Who was this gentleman? Had there been any previous acquaintance\nbetween them? What was his name, his profession, and where was he to be\nfound?\"\n\n\"Really,\" the goldsmith answered, \"he was ignorant respecting all those\nparticulars. Previously to this purchase, the gentleman had sometimes\nvisited his shop; but he did not recollect to have since seen him. He\nwas unacquainted with his name and his residence.\"\n\n\"What appeared to be his motives for purchasing this picture?\"\n\n\"The customer appeared highly pleased with it. Pleasure, rather than\nsurprise, seemed to be produced by the sight of it. If I were permitted\nto judge,\" continued the artist, \"I should imagine that the young man\nwas acquainted with the original. To say the truth, I hinted as much at\nthe time, and I did not see that he discouraged the supposition. Indeed,\nI cannot conceive how the picture could otherwise have gained any value\nin his eyes.\"\n\nThis only heightened the eagerness of Constantia to trace the footsteps\nof the youth. It was obvious to suppose some communication or connection\nbetween her friend and this purchaser. She repeated her inquiries, and\nthe goldsmith, after some consideration, said, \"Why, on second thoughts,\nI seem to have some notion of having seen a figure like that of my\ncustomer go into a lodging-house in Front Street, some time before I met\nwith him at my shop.\"\n\nThe situation of this house being satisfactorily described, and the\nartist being able to afford her no further information, except as to\nstature and guise, she took her leave. There were two motives impelling\nher to prosecute her search after this person,--the desire of regaining\nthis portrait and of procuring tidings of her friend. Involved as she\nwas in ignorance, it was impossible to conjecture how far this incident\nwould be subservient to these inestimable purposes. To procure an\ninterview with this stranger was the first measure which prudence\nsuggested.\n\nShe knew not his name or his person. He was once seen entering a\nlodging-house. Thither she must immediately repair; but how to introduce\nherself, how to describe the person of whom she was in search, she knew\nnot. She was beset with embarrassments and difficulties. While her\nattention was entangled by these, she proceeded unconsciously on her\nway, and stopped not until she reached the mansion that had been\ndescribed. Here she paused to collect her thoughts.\n\nShe found no relief in deliberation. Every moment added to her\nperplexity and indecision. Irresistibly impelled by her wishes, she at\nlength, in a mood that partook of desperate, advanced to the door and\nknocked. The summons was immediately obeyed by a woman of decent\nappearance. A pause ensued, which Constantia at length terminated by a\nrequest to see the mistress of the house.\n\nThe lady courteously answered that she was the person, and immediately\nushered her visitant into an apartment. Constantia being seated, the\nlady waited for the disclosure of her message. To prolong the silence\nwas only to multiply embarrassments. She reverted to the state of her\nfeelings, and saw that they flowed from inconsistency and folly. One\nvigorous effort was sufficient to restore her to composure and\nself-command.\n\nShe began with apologizing for a visit unpreceded by an introduction.\nThe object of her inquiries was a person with whom it was of the utmost\nmoment that she should procure a meeting, but whom, by an unfortunate\nconcurrence of circumstances, she was unable to describe by the usual\nincidents of name and profession. Her knowledge was confined to his\nexternal appearance, and to the probability of his being an inmate of\nthis house at the beginning of the year. She then proceeded to describe\nhis person and dress.\n\n\"It is true,\" said the lady; \"such a one as you describe has boarded in\nthis house. His name was Martynne. I have good reason to remember him,\nfor he lived with me three months, and then left the country without\npaying for his board.\"\n\n\"He has gone, then?\" said Constantia, greatly discouraged by these\ntidings.\n\n\"Yes. He was a man of specious manners and loud pretensions. He came\nfrom England, bringing with him forged recommendatory letters, and,\nafter passing from one end of the country to the other, contracting\ndebts which he never paid and making bargains which he never fulfilled,\nhe suddenly disappeared. It is likely that he has returned to Europe.\"\n\n\"Had he no kindred, no friends, no companions?\"\n\n\"He found none here. He made pretences to alliances in England, which\nbetter information has, I believe, since shown to be false.\"\n\nThis was the sum of the information procurable from this source.\nConstantia was unable to conceal her chagrin. These symptoms were\nobserved by the lady, whose curiosity was awakened in turn. Questions\nwere obliquely started, inviting Constantia to a disclosure of her\nthoughts. No advantage would arise from confidence, and the guest, after\na few minutes of abstraction and silence, rose to take her leave.\n\nDuring this conference, some one appeared to be negligently sporting\nwith the keys of a harpsichord, in the next apartment. The notes were\ntoo irregular and faint to make a forcible impression on the ear. In the\npresent state of her mind, Constantia was merely conscious of the sound,\nin the intervals of conversation. Having arisen from her seat, her\nanxiety to obtain some information that might lead to the point she\nwished made her again pause. She endeavoured to invent some new\ninterrogatory better suited to her purpose than those which had already\nbeen employed. A silence on both sides ensued.\n\nDuring this interval, the unseen musician suddenly refrained from\nrambling, and glided into notes of some refinement and complexity. The\ncadence was aerial; but a thunderbolt, falling at her feet, would not\nhave communicated a more visible shock to the senses of Constantia. A\nglance that denoted a tumult of soul bordering on distraction was now\nfixed upon the door that led into the room from whence the harmony\nproceeded. Instantly the cadence was revived, and some accompanying\nvoice was heard to warble,--\n\n     \"Ah! far beyond this world of woes\n     We meet to part,--to part no more.\"\n\nJoy and grief, in their sudden onset and their violent extremes,\napproach so nearly in their influence on human beings as scarce to be\ndistinguished. Constantia's frame was still enfeebled by her recent\ndistresses. The torrent of emotion was too abrupt and too vehement. Her\nfaculties were overwhelmed, and she sunk upon the floor motionless and\nwithout sense, but not till she had faintly articulated,--\n\n\"My God! My God! This is a joy unmerited and too great.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\n\nI must be forgiven if I now introduce myself on the stage. Sophia\nWestwyn is the friend of Constantia, and the writer of this narrative.\nSo far as my fate was connected with that of my friend, it is worthy to\nbe known. That connection has constituted the joy and misery of my\nexistence, and has prompted me to undertake this task.\n\nI assume no merit from the desire of knowledge and superiority to\ntemptation. There is little of which I can boast; but that little I\nderived, instrumentally, from Constantia. Poor as my attainments are, it\nis to her that I am indebted for them all. Life itself was the gift of\nher father, but my virtue and felicity are her gifts. That I am neither\nindigent nor profligate, flows from her bounty.\n\nI am not unaware of the divine superintendence,--of the claims upon my\ngratitude and service which pertain to my God. I know that all physical\nand moral agents are merely instrumental to the purpose that he wills;\nbut, though the great Author of being and felicity must not be\nforgotten, it is neither possible nor just to overlook the claims upon\nour love with which our fellow-beings are invested.\n\nThe supreme love does not absorb, but chastens and enforces, all\nsubordinate affections. In proportion to the rectitude of my perceptions\nand the ardour of my piety, must I clearly discern and fervently love\nthe excellence discovered in my fellow-beings, and industriously promote\ntheir improvement and felicity.\n\nFrom my infancy to my seventeenth year, I lived in the house of Mr.\nDudley. On the day of my birth I was deserted by my mother. Her temper\nwas more akin to that of tigress than woman. Yet that is unjust; for\nbeasts cherish their offspring. No natures but human are capable of that\ndepravity which makes insensible to the claims of innocence and\nhelplessness.\n\nBut let me not recall her to memory. Have I not enough of sorrow? Yet to\nomit my causes of disquiet, the unprecedented forlornness of my\ncondition, and the persecutions of an unnatural parent, would be to\nleave my character a problem, and the sources of my love of Miss Dudley\nunexplored. Yet I must not dwell upon that complication of iniquities,\nthat savage ferocity and unextinguishable hatred of me, which\ncharacterized my unhappy mother.\n\nI was not safe under the protection of Mr. Dudley, nor happy in the\ncaresses of his daughter. My mother asserted the privilege of that\nrelation: she laboured for years to obtain the control of my person and\nactions, to snatch me from a peaceful and chaste asylum, and detain me\nin her own house, where, indeed, I should not have been in want of\nraiment and food; but where--\n\nO my mother! Let me not dishonour thy name! Yet it is not in my power to\nenhance thy infamy. Thy crimes, unequalled as they were, were perhaps\nexpiated by thy penitence. Thy offences are too well known; but perhaps\nthey who witnessed thy freaks of intoxication, thy defiance of public\nshame, the enormity of thy pollutions, the infatuation that made thee\nglory in the pursuit of a loathsome and detestable trade, may be\nstrangers to the remorse and the abstinence which accompanied the close\nof thy ignominious life.\n\nFor ten years was my peace incessantly molested by the menaces or\nmachinations of my mother. The longer she meditated my destruction, the\nmore tenacious of her purpose and indefatigable in her efforts she\nbecame. That my mind was harassed with perpetual alarms was not enough.\nThe fame and tranquillity of Mr. Dudley and his daughter were hourly\nassailed. My mother resigned herself to the impulses of malignity and\nrage. Headlong passions, and a vigorous though perverted understanding,\nwere hers. Hence, her stratagems to undermine the reputation of my\nprotector, and to bereave him of domestic comfort, were subtle and\nprofound. Had she not herself been careless of that good which she\nendeavoured to wrest from others, her artifices could scarcely have been\nfrustrated.\n\nIn proportion to the hazard which accrued to my protector and friend,\nthe more ardent their zeal in my defence and their affection for my\nperson became. They watched over me with ineffable solicitude. At all\nhours and in every occupation, I was the companion of Constantia. All my\nwants were supplied in the same proportion as hers. The tenderness of\nMr. Dudley seemed equally divided between us. I partook of his\ninstructions, and the means of every intellectual and personal\ngratification were lavished upon me.\n\nThe speed of my mother's career in infamy was at length slackened. She\nleft New York, which had long been the theatre of her vices. Actuated by\na now caprice, she determined to travel through the Southern States.\nEarly indulgence was the cause of her ruin, but her parents had given\nher the embellishments of a fashionable education. She delighted to\nassume all parts, and personate the most opposite characters. She now\nresolved to carry a new name, and the mask of virtue, into scenes\nhitherto unvisited.\n\nShe journeyed as far as Charleston. Here she met an inexperienced youth,\nlately arrived from England, and in possession of an ample fortune. Her\nspeciousness and artifices seduced him into a precipitate marriage. Her\ntrue character, however, could not be long concealed by herself, and her\nvices had been too conspicuous for her long to escape recognition. Her\nhusband was infatuated by her blandishments. To abandon her, or to\ncontemplate her depravity with unconcern, were equally beyond his power.\nRomantic in his sentiments, his fortitude was unequal to his\ndisappointments, and he speedily sunk into the grave. By a similar\nrefinement in generosity, he bequeathed to her his property.\n\nWith this accession of wealth, she returned to her ancient abode. The\nmask lately worn seemed preparing to be thrown aside, and her profligate\nhabits to be resumed with more eagerness than ever; but an unexpected\nand total revolution was effected, by the exhortations of a Methodist\ndivine. Her heart seemed, on a sudden, to be remoulded, her vices and\nthe abettors of them were abjured, she shut out the intrusions of\nsociety, and prepared to expiate, by the rigours of abstinence and the\nbitterness of tears, the offences of her past life.\n\nIn this, as in her former career, she was unacquainted with restraint\nand moderation. Her remorses gained strength in proportion as she\ncherished them. She brooded over the images of her guilt, till the\npossibility of forgiveness and remission disappeared. Her treatment of\nher daughter and her husband constituted the chief source of her\ntorment. Her awakened conscience refused her a momentary respite from\nits persecutions. Her thoughts became, by rapid degrees, tempestuous and\ngloomy, and it was at length evident that her condition was maniacal.\n\nIn this state, she was to me an object, no longer of terror, but\ncompassion. She was surrounded by hirelings, devoid of personal\nattachment, and anxious only to convert her misfortunes to their own\nadvantage. This evil it was my duty to obviate. My presence, for a time,\nonly enhanced the vehemence of her malady; but at length it was only by\nmy attendance and soothing that she was diverted from the fellest\npurposes. Shocking execrations and outrages, resolutions and efforts to\ndestroy herself and those around her, were sure to take place in my\nabsence. The moment I appeared before her, her fury abated, her\ngesticulations were becalmed, and her voice exerted only in incoherent\nand pathetic lamentations.\n\nThese scenes, though so different from those which I had formerly been\ncondemned to witness, were scarcely less excruciating. The friendship of\nConstantia Dudley was my only consolation. She took up her abode with\nme, and shared with me every disgustful and perilous office which my\nmother's insanity prescribed.\n\nOf this consolation, however, it was my fate to be bereaved. My mother's\nstate was deplorable, and no remedy hitherto employed was efficacious. A\nvoyage to England was conceived likely to benefit, by change of\ntemperature and scenes, and by the opportunity it would afford of trying\nthe superior skill of English physicians. This scheme, after various\nstruggles on my part, was adopted. It was detestable to my imagination,\nbecause it severed me from that friend in whose existence mine was\ninvolved, and without whose participation knowledge lost its attractions\nand society became a torment.\n\nThe prescriptions of my duty could not be disguised or disobeyed, and we\nparted. A mutual engagement was formed to record every sentiment and\nrelate every event that happened in the life of either, and no\nopportunity of communicating information was to be omitted. This\nengagement was punctually performed on my part. I sought out every\nmethod of conveyance to my friend, and took infinite pains to procure\ntidings from her; but all were ineffectual.\n\nMy mother's malady declined, but was succeeded by a pulmonary disease,\nwhich threatened her speedy destruction. By the restoration of her\nunderstanding, the purpose of her voyage was obtained, and my impatience\nto return, which the inexplicable and ominous silence of my friend daily\nincreased, prompted me to exert all my powers of persuasion to induce\nher to revisit America.\n\nMy mother's frenzy was a salutary crisis in her moral history. She\nlooked back upon her past conduct with unspeakable loathing, but this\nretrospect only invigorated her devotion and her virtue; but the thought\nof returning to the scene of her unhappiness and infamy could not be\nendured. Besides, life, in her eyes, possessed considerable attractions,\nand her physicians flattered her with recovery from her present disease,\nif she would change the atmosphere of England for that of Languedoc and\nNaples.\n\nI followed her with murmurs and reluctance. To desert her in her present\ncritical state would have been inhuman. My mother's aversions and\nattachments, habits and views, were dissonant with my own. Conformity of\nsentiments and impressions of maternal tenderness did not exist to bind\nus to each other. My attendance was assiduous, but it was the sense of\nduty that rendered my attendance a supportable task.\n\nHer decay was eminently gradual. No time seemed to diminish her appetite\nfor novelty and change. During three years we traversed every part of\nFrance, Switzerland, and Italy. I could not but attend to surrounding\nscenes, and mark the progress of the mighty revolution, whose effects,\nlike agitation in a fluid, gradually spread from Paris, the centre, over\nthe face of the neighbouring kingdoms; but there passed not a day or an\nhour in which the image of Constantia was not recalled, in which the\nmost pungent regrets were not felt at the inexplicable silence which had\nbeen observed by her, and the most vehement longings indulged to return\nto my native country. My exertions to ascertain her condition by\nindirect means, by interrogating natives of America with whom I chanced\nto meet, were unwearied, but, for a long period, ineffectual.\n\nDuring this pilgrimage, Rome was thrice visited. My mother's\nindisposition was hastening to a crisis, and she formed the resolution\nof closing her life at the bottom of Vesuvius. We stopped, for the sake\nof a few days' repose, at Rome. On the morning after our arrival, I\naccompanied some friends to view the public edifices. Casting my eyes\nover the vast and ruinous interior of the Coliseum, my attention was\nfixed by the figure of a young man whom, after a moment's pause, I\nrecollected to have seen in the streets of New York. At a distance from\nhome, mere community of country is no inconsiderable bond of affection.\nThe social spirit prompts us to cling even to inanimate objects, when\nthey remind us of ancient fellowships and juvenile attachments.\n\nA servant was despatched to summon this stranger, who recognised a\ncountrywoman with a pleasure equal to that which I had received. On\nnearer view, this person, whose name was Courtland, did not belie my\nfavourable prepossessions. Our intercourse was soon established on a\nfooting of confidence and intimacy.\n\nThe destiny of Constantia was always uppermost in my thoughts. This\nperson's acquaintance was originally sought chiefly in the hope of\nobtaining from him some information respecting my friend. On inquiry, I\ndiscovered that he had left his native city seven months after me.\nHaving tasked his recollection and compared a number of facts, the name\nof Dudley at length recurred to him. He had casually heard the history\nof Craig's imposture and its consequences. These were now related as\ncircumstantially as a memory occupied by subsequent incidents enabled\nhim. The tale had been told to him, in a domestic circle which he was\naccustomed to frequent, by the person who purchased Mr. Dudley's lute\nand restored it to its previous owner on the conditions formerly\nmentioned.\n\nThis tale filled me with anguish and doubt. My impatience to search out\nthis unfortunate girl, and share with her her sorrows or relieve them,\nwas anew excited by this mournful intelligence. That Constantia Dudley\nwas reduced to beggary was too abhorrent to my feelings to receive\ncredit; yet the sale of her father's property, comprising even his\nfurniture and clothing, seemed to prove that she had fallen even to this\ndepth. This enabled me in some degree to account for her silence. Her\ngenerous spirit would induce her to conceal misfortunes from her friend\nwhich no communication would alleviate. It was possible that she had\nselected some new abode, and that, in consequence, the letters I had\nwritten, and which amounted to volumes, had never reached her hands.\n\nMy mother's state would not suffer me to obey the impulse of my heart.\nHer frame was verging towards dissolution. Courtland's engagements\nallowed him to accompany us to Naples, and here the long series of my\nmother's pilgrimages closed in death. Her obsequies were no sooner\nperformed, than I determined to set out on my long-projected voyage. My\nmother's property, which, in consequence of her decease, devolved upon\nme, was not inconsiderable. There is scarcely any good so dear to a\nrational being as competence. I was not unacquainted with its benefits,\nbut this acquisition was valuable to mo chiefly as it enabled me to\nreunite my fate to that of Constantia.\n\nCourtland was my countryman and friend. He was destitute of fortune, and\nhad been led to Europe partly by the spirit of adventure, and partly on\na mercantile project. He had made sale of his property on advantageous\nterms, in the ports of France, and resolved to consume the produce in\nexamining this scene of heroic exploits and memorable revolutions. His\nslender stock, though frugally and even parsimoniously administered, was\nnearly exhausted; and, at the time of our meeting at Rome, he was making\nreluctant preparations to return.\n\nSufficient opportunity was afforded us, in an unrestrained and domestic\nintercourse of three months, which succeeded our Roman interview, to\ngain a knowledge of each other. There was that conformity of tastes and\nviews between us which could scarcely fail, at an age and in a situation\nlike ours, to give birth to tenderness. My resolution to hasten to\nAmerica was peculiarly unwelcome to my friend. He had offered to be my\ncompanion, but this offer my regard to his interest obliged me to\ndecline; but I was willing to compensate him for this denial, as well as\nto gratify my own heart, by an immediate marriage.\n\nSo long a residence in England and Italy had given birth to friendships\nand connections of the dearest kind. I had no view but to spend my life\nwith Courtland, in the midst of my maternal kindred, who were English. A\nvoyage to America and reunion with Constantia were previously\nindispensable; but I hoped that my friend might be prevailed upon, and\nthat her disconnected situation would permit her to return with me to\nEurope. If this end could not be accomplished, it was my inflexible\npurpose to live and die with her. Suitably to this arrangement,\nCourtland was to repair to London, and wait patiently till I should be\nable to rejoin him there, or to summon him to meet me in America.\n\nA week after my mother's death, I became a wife, and embarked the next\nday, at Naples, in a Ragusan ship, destined for New York. The voyage was\ntempestuous and tedious. The vessel was necessitated to make a short\nstay at Toulon. The state of that city, however, then in possession of\nthe English and besieged by the revolutionary forces, was adverse to\ncommercial views. Happily, we resumed our voyage on the day previous to\nthat on which the place was evacuated by the British. Our seasonable\ndeparture rescued us from witnessing a scene of horrors of which the\nhistory of former wars furnishes us with few examples.\n\nA cold and boisterous navigation awaited us. My palpitations and\ninquietudes augmented as we approached the American coast. I shall not\nforget the sensations which I experienced on the sight of the Beacon at\nSandy Hook. It was first seen at midnight, in a stormy and beclouded\natmosphere, emerging from the waves, whose fluctuation allowed it, for\nsome time, to be visible only by fits. This token of approaching land\naffected me as much as if I had reached the threshold of my friend's\ndwelling.\n\nAt length we entered the port, and I viewed, with high-raised but\ninexplicable feelings, objects with which I had been from infancy\nfamiliar. The flagstaff erected on the Battery recalled to my\nimagination the pleasures of the evening and morning walks which I had\ntaken on that spot with the lost Constantia. The dream was fondly\ncherished, that the figure which I saw loitering along the terrace was\nhers.\n\nOn disembarking, I gazed at every female passenger, in hope that it was\nshe whom I sought. An absence of three years had obliterated from my\nmemory none of the images which attended me on my departure.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\n\nAfter a night of repose rather than of sleep, I began the search after\nmy friend. I went to the house which the Dudleys formerly inhabited, and\nwhich had been the asylum of my infancy. It was now occupied by\nstrangers, by whom no account could be given of its former tenants. I\nobtained directions to the owner of the house. He was equally unable to\nsatisfy my curiosity. The purchase had been made at a public sale, and\nterms had been settled, not with Dudley, but with the sheriff.\n\nIt is needless to say that the history of Craig's imposture and its\nconsequences were confirmed by every one who resided at that period in\nNew York. The Dudleys were well remembered, and their disappearance,\nimmediately after their fall, had been generally noticed; but whither\nthey had retired was a problem which no one was able to solve.\n\nThis evasion was strange. By what motives the Dudleys were induced to\nchange their ancient abode could be vaguely guessed. My friend's\ngrandfather was a native of the West Indies. Descendants of the same\nstock still resided in Tobago. They might be affluent, and to them it\nwas possible that Mr. Dudley, in this change of fortune, had betaken\nhimself for relief. This was a mournful expedient, since it would raise\na barrier between my friend and myself scarcely to be surmounted.\n\nConstantia's mother was stolen by Mr. Dudley from a convent at Amiens.\nThere were no affinities, therefore, to draw them to France. Her\ngrandmother was a native of Baltimore, of a family of some note, by name\nRidgeley. This family might still exist, and have either afforded an\nasylum to the Dudleys, or, at least, be apprized of their destiny. It\nwas obvious to conclude that they no longer existed within the precincts\nof New York. A journey to Baltimore was the next expedient.\n\nThis journey was made in the depth of winter, and by the speediest\nconveyance. I made no more than a day's sojourn in Philadelphia. The\nepidemic by which that city had been lately ravaged, I had not heard of\ntill my arrival in America. Its devastations were then painted to my\nfancy in the most formidable colours. A few months only had elapsed\nsince its extinction, and I expected to see numerous marks of misery and\ndepopulation.\n\nTo my no small surprise, however, no vestiges of this calamity were to\nbe discerned. All houses were open, all streets thronged, and all faces\nthoughtless or busy. The arts and the amusements of life seemed as\nsedulously cultivated as ever. Little did I then think what had been,\nand what at that moment was, the condition of my friend. I stopped for\nthe sake of respite from fatigue, and did not, therefore, pass much time\nin the streets. Perhaps, had I walked seasonably abroad, we might have\nencountered each other, and thus have saved ourselves from a thousand\nanxieties.\n\nAt Baltimore I made myself known, without the formality of introduction,\nto the Ridgeleys. They acknowledged their relationship to Mr. Dudley,\nbut professed absolute ignorance of his fate. Indirect intercourse only\nhad been maintained, formerly, by Dudley with his mother's kindred. They\nhad heard of his misfortune a twelvemonth after it happened; but what\nmeasures had been subsequently pursued, their kinsman had not thought\nproper to inform them.\n\nThe failure of this expedient almost bereft me of hope. Neither my own\nimagination nor the Ridgeleys could suggest any new mode by which my\npurpose was likely to be accomplished. To leave America without\nobtaining the end of my visit could not be thought of without agony; and\nyet the continuance of my stay promised me no relief from my\nuncertainties.\n\nOn this theme I ruminated without ceasing. I recalled every conversation\nand incident of former times, and sought in them a clue by which my\npresent conjectures might be guided. One night, immersed alone in my\nchamber, my thoughts were thus employed. My train of meditation was, on\nthis occasion, new. From the review of particulars from which no\nsatisfaction had hitherto been gained, I passed to a vague and\ncomprehensive retrospect.\n\nMr. Dudley's early life, his profession of a painter, his zeal in this\npursuit, and his reluctance to quit it, were remembered. Would he not\nrevert to this profession when other means of subsistence were gone? It\nis true, similar obstacles with those which had formerly occasioned his\nresort to a different path existed at present, and no painter of his\nname was to be found in Philadelphia, Baltimore, or New York. But would\nit not occur to him, that the patronage denied to his skill by the\nfrugal and unpolished habits of his countrymen might, with more\nprobability of success, be sought from the opulence and luxury of\nLondon? Nay, had he not once affirmed, in my hearing, that, if he ever\nwere reduced to poverty, this was the method he would pursue?\n\nThis conjecture was too bewitching to be easily dismissed. Every new\nreflection augmented its force. I was suddenly raised by it from the\ndeepest melancholy to the region of lofty and gay hopes. Happiness, of\nwhich I had begun to imagine myself irretrievably bereft, seemed once\nmore to approach within my reach. Constantia would not only be found,\nbut be met in the midst of those comforts which her father's skill could\nnot fail to procure, and on that very stage where I most desired to\nencounter her. Mr. Dudley had many friends and associates of his youth\nin London. Filial duty had repelled their importunities to fix his abode\nin Europe, when summoned home by his father. On his father's death these\nsolicitations had been renewed, but were disregarded for reasons which\nhe, afterwards, himself confessed were fallacious. That they would a\nthird time be preferred, and would regulate his conduct, seemed to me\nincontestable.\n\nI regarded with wonder and deep regret the infatuation that had\nhitherto excluded these images from my understanding and my memory. How\nmany dangers and toils had I endured since my embarkation at Naples, to\nthe present moment! How many lingering minutes had I told since my first\ninterview with Courtland! All were owing to my own stupidity. Had my\npresent thoughts been seasonably suggested, I might long since have been\nrestored to the embraces of my friend, without the necessity of an\nhour's separation from my husband.\n\nThese were evils to be repaired as far as it was possible. Nothing now\nremained but to procure a passage to Europe. For this end diligent\ninquiries were immediately set on foot. A vessel was found, which, in a\nfew weeks, would set out upon the voyage. Having bespoken a conveyance,\nit was incumbent on me to sustain with patience the unwelcome delay.\n\nMeanwhile, my mind, delivered from the dejection and perplexities that\nlately haunted it, was capable of some attention to surrounding objects.\nI marked the peculiarities of manners and language in my new abode, and\nstudied the effects which a political and religious system so opposite\nto that with which I had conversed in Italy and Switzerland had\nproduced. I found that the difference between Europe and America lay\nchiefly in this:--that, in the former, all things tended to extremes,\nwhereas, in the latter, all things tended to the same level. Genius, and\nvirtue, and happiness, on these shores, were distinguished by a sort of\nmediocrity. Conditions were less unequal, and men were strangers to the\nheights of enjoyment and the depths of misery to which the inhabitants\nof Europe are accustomed.\n\nI received friendly notice and hospitable treatment from the Ridgeleys.\nThese people were mercantile and plodding in their habits. I found in\ntheir social circle little exercise for the sympathies of my heart, and\nwillingly accepted their aid to enlarge the sphere of my observation.\n\nAbout a week before my intended embarkation, and when suitable\npreparation had been made for that event, a lady arrived in town, who\nwas cousin to my Constantia. She had frequently been mentioned in\nfavourable terms in my hearing. She had passed her life in a rural\nabode with her father, who cultivated his own domain, lying forty miles\nfrom Baltimore.\n\nOn an offer being made to introduce us to each other, I consented to\nknow one whose chief recommendation in my eyes consisted in her affinity\nto Constantia Dudley. I found an artless and attractive female,\nunpolished and undepraved by much intercourse with mankind. At first\nsight, I was powerfully struck by the resemblance of her features to\nthose of my friend, which sufficiently denoted their connection with a\ncommon stock.\n\nThe first interview afforded mutual satisfaction. On our second meeting,\ndiscourse insensibly led to the mention of Miss Dudley, and of the\ndesign which had brought me to America. She was deeply affected by the\nearnestness with which I expatiated on her cousin's merits, and by the\nproofs which my conduct had given of unlimited attachment.\n\nI dwelt immediately on the measures which I had hitherto ineffectually\npursued to trace her footsteps, and detailed the grounds of my present\nbelief that we should meet in London. During this recital, my companion\nsighed and wept. When I finished my tale, her tears, instead of ceasing,\nflowed with new vehemence. This appearance excited some surprise, and I\nventured to ask the cause of her grief.\n\n\"Alas!\" she replied, \"I am personally a stranger to my cousin, but her\ncharacter has been amply displayed to me by one who knew her well. I\nweep to think how much she has suffered. How much excellence we have\nlost!\"\n\n\"Nay,\" said I, \"all her sufferings will, I hope, be compensated, and I\nby no means consider her as lost. If my search in London be\nunsuccessful, then shall I indeed despair.\"\n\n\"Despair, then, already,\" said my sobbing companion, \"for your search\nwill be unsuccessful. How I feel for your disappointment! but it cannot\nbe known too soon. My cousin is dead!\"\n\nThese tidings were communicated with tokens of sincerity and sorrow that\nleft me no room to doubt that they were believed by the relater. My own\nemotions were suspended till interrogations had obtained a knowledge of\nher reasons for crediting this fatal event, and till she had explained\nthe time and manner of her death. A friend of Miss Ridgeley's father had\nwitnessed the devastations of the yellow fever in Philadelphia. He was\napprized of the relationship that subsisted between his friend and the\nDudleys. He gave a minute and circumstantial account of the arts of\nCraig. He mentioned the removal of my friends to Philadelphia, their\nobscure and indigent life, and, finally, their falling victims to the\npestilence.\n\nHe related the means by which he became apprized of their fate, and drew\na picture of their death, surpassing all that imagination can conceive\nof shocking and deplorable. The quarter where they lived was nearly\ndesolate. Their house was shut up, and, for a time, imagined to be\nuninhabited. Some suspicions being awakened in those who superintended\nthe burial of the dead, the house was entered, and the father and child\ndiscovered to be dead. The former was stretched upon his wretched\npallet, while the daughter was found on the floor of the lower room, in\na state that denoted the sufferance not only of disease, but of famine.\n\nThis tale was false. Subsequent discoveries proved this to be a\ndetestable artifice of Craig, who, stimulated by incurable habits, had\ninvented these disasters, for the purpose of enhancing the opinion of\nhis humanity and of furthering his views on the fortune and daughter of\nMr. Ridgeley.\n\nIts falsehood, however, I had as yet no means of ascertaining. I\nreceived it as true, and at once dismissed all my claims upon futurity.\nAll hope of happiness, in this mutable and sublunary scene, was fled.\nNothing remained but to join my friend in a world where woes are at an\nend and virtue finds recompense. \"Surely,\" said I, \"there will some time\nbe a close to calamity and discord. To those whose lives have been\nblameless, but harassed by inquietudes to which not their own but the\nerrors of others have given birth, a fortress will hereafter be\nassigned unassailable by change, impregnable to sorrow.\n\n\"O my ill-fated Constantia! I will live to cherish thy remembrance, and\nto emulate thy virtue. I will endure the privation of thy friendship and\nthe vicissitudes that shall befall me, and draw my consolation and\ncourage from the foresight of no distant close to this terrestrial\nscene, and of ultimate and everlasting union with thee.\"\n\nThis consideration, though it kept me from confusion and despair, could\nnot, but with the healing aid of time, render me tranquil or strenuous.\nMy strength was unequal to the struggle of my passions. The ship in\nwhich I engaged to embark could not wait for my restoration to health,\nand I was left behind.\n\nMary Ridgeley was artless and affectionate. She saw that her society was\ndearer to me than that of any other, and was therefore seldom willing to\nleave my chamber. Her presence, less on her own account than by reason\nof her personal resemblance and her affinity by birth to Constantia, was\na powerful solace.\n\nI had nothing to detain me longer in America. I was anxious to change my\npresent lonely state, for the communion of those friends in England, and\nthe performance of those duties, which were left to me. I was informed\nthat a British packet would shortly sail from New York. My frame was\nsunk into greater weakness than I had felt at any former period; and I\nconceived that to return to New York by water was more commodious than\nto perform the journey by land.\n\nThis arrangement was likewise destined to be disappointed. One morning I\nvisited, according to my custom, Mary Ridgeley. I found her in a temper\nsomewhat inclined to gayety. She rallied me, with great archness, on the\ncare with which I had concealed from her a tender engagement into which\nI had lately entered.\n\nI supposed myself to comprehend her allusion, and therefore answered\nthat accident, rather than design, had made me silent on the subject of\nmarriage. She had hitherto known me by no appellation but Sophia\nCourtland. I had thought it needless to inform her that I was indebted\nfor my name to my husband, Courtland being his name.\n\n\"All that,\" said my friend, \"I know already. And so you sagely think\nthat my knowledge goes no further than that? We are not bound to love\nour husbands longer than their lives. There is no crime, I believe, in\nreferring the living to the dead; and most heartily do congratulate you\non your present choice.\"\n\n\"What mean you? I confess, your discourse surpasses my comprehension.\"\n\nAt that moment the bell at the door rung a loud peal. Miss Ridgeley\nhastened down at this signal, saying, with much significance,--\n\n\"I am a poor hand at solving a riddle. Here comes one who, if I mistake\nnot, will find no difficulty in clearing up your doubts.\"\n\nPresently she came up, and said, with a smile of still greater archness,\n\"Here is a young gentleman, a friend of mine, to whom I must have the\npleasure of introducing you. He has come for the special purpose of\nsolving my riddle.\" I attended her to the parlour without hesitation.\n\nShe presented me, with great formality, to a youth, whose appearance did\nnot greatly prepossess me in favour of his judgement. He approached me\nwith an air supercilious and ceremonious; but the moment he caught a\nglance at my face, he shrunk back, visibly confounded and embarrassed. A\npause ensued, in which Miss Ridgeley had opportunity to detect the error\ninto which she had been led by the vanity of this young man.\n\n\"How now, Mr. Martynne!\" said my friend, in a tone of ridicule; \"is it\npossible you do not know the lady who is the queen of your affections,\nthe tender and indulgent fair one whose portrait you carry in your\nbosom, and whose image you daily and nightly bedew with your tears and\nkisses?\"\n\nMr. Martynne's confusion, instead of being subdued by his struggle, only\ngrew more conspicuous; and, after a few incoherent speeches and\napologies, during which he carefully avoided encountering my eyes, he\nhastily departed.\n\nI applied to my friend, with great earnestness, for an explanation of\nthis scene. It seems that, in the course of conversation with him on the\npreceding day, he had suffered a portrait which hung at his breast to\ncatch Miss Ridgeley's eye. On her betraying a desire to inspect it more\nnearly, he readily produced it. My image had been too well copied by the\nartist not to be instantly recognised.\n\nShe concealed her knowledge of the original, and, by questions well\nadapted to the purpose, easily drew from him confessions that this was\nthe portrait of his mistress. He let fall sundry innuendoes and\nsurmises, tending to impress her with a notion of the rank, fortune, and\nintellectual accomplishments of the nymph, and particularly of the\ndoting fondness and measureless confidence with which she regarded him.\n\nHer imperfect knowledge of my situation left her in some doubt as to the\ntruth of these pretensions, and she was willing to ascertain the truth\nby bringing about an interview. To guard against evasions and artifice\nin the lover, she carefully concealed from him her knowledge of the\noriginal, and merely pretended that a friend of hers was far more\nbeautiful than her whom this picture represented. She added, that she\nexpected a visit from her friend the next morning, and was willing, by\nshowing her to Mr. Martynne, to convince him how much he was mistaken in\nsupposing the perfections of his mistress unrivalled.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n\nMartynne, while ho expressed his confidence that the experiment would\nonly confirm his triumph, readily assented to the proposal, and the\ninterview above described took place, accordingly, the next morning. Had\nhe not been taken by surprise, it is likely the address of a man who\npossessed no contemptible powers would have extricated him from some of\nhis embarrassment.\n\nThat my portrait should be in the possession of one whom I had never\nbefore seen, and whose character and manners entitled him to no respect,\nwas a source of some surprise. This mode of multiplying faces is\nextremely prevalent in this age, and was eminently characteristic of\nthose with whom I had associated in different parts of Europe. The\nnature of my thoughts had modified my features into an expression which\nmy friends were pleased to consider as a model for those who desired to\npersonify the genius of suffering and resignation.\n\nHence, among those whose religion permitted their devotion to a picture\nof a female, the symbols of their chosen deity were added to features\nand shape that resembled mine. My own caprice, as well as that of\nothers, always dictated a symbolical, and, in every new instance, a\ndifferent accompaniment of this kind. Hence was offered the means of\ntracing the history of that picture which Martynne possessed.\n\nIt had been accurately examined by Miss Ridgeley, and her description of\nthe frame in which it was placed instantly informed me that it was the\nsame which, at our parting, I left in the possession of Constantia. My\nfriend and myself were desirous of employing the skill of a Saxon\npainter, by name Eckstein. Each of us were drawn by him, she with the\ncincture of Venus, and I with the crescent of Dian. This symbol was\nstill conspicuous on the brow of that image which Miss Ridgeley had\nexamined, and served to identify the original proprietor.\n\nThis circumstance tended to confirm my fears that Constantia was dead,\nsince that she would part with this picture during her life was not to\nbe believed. It was of little moment to discover how it came into the\nhands of the present possessor. Those who carried her remains to the\ngrave had probably torn it from her neck and afterwards disposed of it\nfor money.\n\nBy whatever means, honest or illicit, it had been acquired by Martynne,\nit was proper that it should be restored to me. It was valuable to me,\nbecause it had been the property of one whom I loved, and it might prove\nhighly injurious to my fame and my happiness, as the tool of this man's\nvanity and the attestor of his falsehood. I therefore wrote him a\nletter, acquainting him with my reasons for desiring the repossession of\nthis picture, and offering a price for it at least double its value as a\nmere article of traffic. Martynne accepted the terms. He transmitted the\npicture, and with it a note, apologizing for the artifice of which he\nhad been guilty, and mentioning, in order to justify his acceptance of\nthe price which I had offered, that he had lately purchased it for an\nequal sum, of a goldsmith in Philadelphia.\n\nThis information suggested a new reflection. Constantia had engaged to\npreserve, for the use of her friend, copious and accurate memorials of\nher life. Copies of these were, on suitable occasions, to be transmitted\nto me during my residence abroad. These I had never received, but it was\nhighly probable that her punctuality, in the performance of the first\npart of her engagement, had been equal to my own.\n\nWhat, I asked, had become of these precious memorials? In the wreck of\nher property were these irretrievably engulfed? It was not probable that\nthey had been wantonly destroyed. They had fallen, perhaps, into hands\ncareless or unconscious of their value, or still lay, unknown and\nneglected, at the bottom of some closet or chest. Their recovery might\nbe effected by vehement exertions, or by some miraculous accident.\nSuitable inquiries, carried on among those who were active in those\nscenes of calamity, might afford some clue by which the fate of the\nDudleys, and the disposition of their property, might come into fuller\nlight. These inquiries could be made only in Philadelphia, and thither,\nfor that purpose, I now resolved to repair. There was still an interval\nof some weeks before the departure of the packet in which I proposed to\nembark.\n\nHaving returned to the capital, I devoted all my zeal to my darling\nproject. My efforts, however, were without success. Those who\nadministered charity and succour during that memorable season, and who\nsurvived, could remove none of my doubts, nor answer any of my\ninquiries. Innumerable tales, equally disastrous with those which Miss\nRidgeley had heard, were related; but, for a considerable period, none\nof their circumstances were sufficiently accordant with the history of\nthe Dudleys.\n\nIt is worthy of remark, in how many ways, and by what complexity of\nmotives, human curiosity is awakened and knowledge obtained. By its\nconnection with my darling purpose, every event in the history of this\nmemorable pest was earnestly sought and deeply pondered. The powerful\nconsiderations which governed me made me slight those punctilious\nimpediments which, in other circumstances, would have debarred me from\nintercourse with the immediate actors and observers. I found none who\nwere unwilling to expatiate on this topic, or to communicate the\nknowledge they possessed. Their details were copious in particulars and\nvivid in minuteness. They exhibited the state of manners, the\ndiversified effects of evil or heroic passions, and the endless forms\nwhich sickness and poverty assume in the obscure recesses of a\ncommercial and populous city.\n\nSome of these details are too precious to be lost. It is above all\nthings necessary that we should be thoroughly acquainted with the\ncondition of our fellow-beings. Justice and compassion are the fruit of\nknowledge. The misery that overspreads so large a part of mankind exists\nchiefly because those who are able to relieve it do not know that it\nexists. Forcibly to paint the evil, seldom fails to excite the virtue of\nthe spectator and seduce him into wishes, at least, if not into\nexertions, of beneficence.\n\nThe circumstances in which I was placed were, perhaps, wholly singular.\nHence, the knowledge I obtained was more comprehensive and authentic\nthan was possessed by any one, even of the immediate actors or\nsufferers. This knowledge will not be useless to myself or to the world.\nThe motives which dictated the present narrative will hinder me from\nrelinquishing the pen till my fund of observation and experience be\nexhausted. Meanwhile, let me resume the thread of my tale.\n\nThe period allowed me before my departure was nearly expired, and my\npurpose seemed to be as far from its accomplishment as ever. One evening\nI visited a lady who was the widow of a physician whose disinterested\nexertions had cost him his life. She dwelt with pathetic earnestness on\nthe particulars of her own distress, and listened with deep attention to\nthe inquiries and doubts which I had laid before her.\n\nAfter a pause of consideration, she said that an incident like that\nrelated by me she had previously heard from one of her friends, whose\nname she mentioned. This person was one of those whose office consisted\nin searching out the sufferers, and affording them unsought and\nunsolicited relief. She was offering to introduce me to this person,\nwhen he entered the apartment.\n\nAfter the usual compliments, my friend led the conversation as I wished.\nBetween Mr. Thompson's tale and that related to Miss Ridgeley there was\nan obvious resemblance. The sufferers resided in an obscure alley. They\nhad shut themselves up from all intercourse with their neighbours, and\nhad died, neglected and unknown. Mr. Thompson was vested with the\nsuperintendence of this district, and had passed the house frequently\nwithout suspicion of its being tenanted.\n\nHe was at length informed, by one of those who conducted a hearse, that\nhe had seen the window in the upper story of this house lifted and a\nfemale show herself. It was night, and the hearseman chanced to be\npassing the door. He immediately supposed that the person stood in need\nof his services, and stopped.\n\nThis procedure was comprehended by the person at the window, who,\nleaning out, addressed him in a broken and feeble voice. She asked him\nwhy he had not taken a different route, and upbraided him for inhumanity\nin leading his noisy vehicle past her door. She wanted repose, but the\nceaseless rumbling of his wheels would not allow her the sweet respite\nof a moment.\n\nThis invective was singular, and uttered in a voice which united the\nutmost degree of earnestness with a feebleness that rendered it almost\ninarticulate. The man was at a loss for a suitable answer. His pause\nonly increased the impatience of the person at the window, who called\nupon him, in a still more anxious tone, to proceed, and entreated him to\navoid this alley for the future.\n\nHe answered that he must come whenever the occasion called him; that\nthree persons now lay dead in this alley, and that he must be\nexpeditious in their removal; but that he would return as seldom and\nmake as little noise as possible.\n\nHe was interrupted by new exclamations and upbraidings. These terminated\nin a burst of tears, and assertions that God and man were her\nenemies,--that they were determined to destroy her; but she trusted that\nthe time would come when their own experience would avenge her wrongs,\nand teach them some compassion for the misery of others. Saying this,\nshe shut the window with violence, and retired from it, sobbing with a\nvehemence that could be distinctly overheard by him in the street.\n\nHe paused for some time, listening when this passion should cease. The\nhabitation was slight, and he imagined that he heard her traversing the\nfloor. While he stayed, she continued to vent her anguish in\nexclamations and sighs and passionate weeping. It did not appear that\nany other person was within.\n\nMr. Thompson, being next day informed of these incidents, endeavoured to\nenter the house; but his signals, though loud and frequently repeated,\nbeing unnoticed, he was obliged to gain admission by violence. An old\nman, and a female lovely in the midst of emaciation and decay, were\ndiscovered without signs of life. The death of the latter appeared to\nhave been very recent.\n\nIn examining the house, no traces of other inhabitants were to be found.\nNothing serviceable as food was discovered, but the remnants of mouldy\nbread scattered on a table. No information could be gathered from\nneighbours respecting the condition and name of these unfortunate\npeople. They had taken possession of this house during the rage of this\nmalady, and refrained from all communication with their neighbours.\n\nThere was too much resemblance between this and the story formerly\nheard, not to produce the belief that they related to the same persons.\nAll that remained was to obtain directions to the proprietor of this\ndwelling, and exact from him all that he knew respecting his tenants.\n\nI found in him a man of worth and affability. He readily related, that a\nman applied to him for the use of this house, and that the application\nwas received. At the beginning of the pestilence, a numerous family\ninhabited this tenement, but had died in rapid succession. This new\napplicant was the first to apprize him of this circumstance, and\nappeared extremely anxious to enter on immediate possession.\n\nIt was intimated to him that danger would arise from the pestilential\ncondition of the house. Unless cleansed and purified, disease would be\nunavoidably contracted. The inconvenience and hazard this applicant was\nwilling to encounter, and, at length, hinted that no alternative was\nallowed him by his present landlord but to lie in the street or to\nprocure some other abode.\n\n\"What was the external appearance of this person?\"\n\n\"He was infirm, past the middle age, of melancholy aspect and indigent\ngarb. A year had since elapsed, and more characteristic particulars had\nnot been remarked, or were forgotten. The name had been mentioned, but,\nin the midst of more recent and momentous transactions, had vanished\nfrom remembrance. Dudley, or Dolby, or Hadley, seemed to approach more\nnearly than any other sounds.\"\n\nPermission to inspect the house was readily granted. It had remained,\nsince that period, unoccupied. The furniture and goods were scanty and\nwretched, and he did not care to endanger his safety by meddling with\nthem. He believed that they had not been removed or touched.\n\nI was insensible of any hazard which attended my visit, and, with the\nguidance of a servant, who felt as little apprehension as myself,\nhastened to the spot. I found nothing but tables and chairs. Clothing\nwas nowhere to be seen. An earthen pot, without handle, and broken,\nstood upon the kitchen-hearth. No other implement or vessel for the\npreparation of food appeared.\n\nThese forlorn appearances were accounted for by the servant, by\nsupposing the house to have been long since rifled of every thing worth\nthe trouble of removal, by the villains who occupied the neighbouring\nhouses,--this alley, it seems, being noted for the profligacy of its\ninhabitants.\n\nWhen I reflected that a wretched hovel like this had been, probably, the\nlast retreat of the Dudleys, when I painted their sufferings, of which\nthe numberless tales of distress of which I had lately been an auditor\nenabled me to form an adequate conception, I felt as if to lie down and\nexpire on the very spot where Constantia had fallen was the only\nsacrifice to friendship which time had left to me.\n\nFrom this house I wandered to the field where the dead had been,\npromiscuously and by hundreds, interred. I counted the long series of\ngraves, which were closely ranged, and, being recently levelled,\nexhibited the appearance of a harrowed field. Methought I could have\ngiven thousands to know in what spot the body of my friend lay, that I\nmight moisten the sacred earth with my tears. Boards hastily nailed\ntogether formed the best receptacle which the exigencies of the time\ncould grant to the dead. Many corpses were thrown into a single\nexcavation, and all distinctions founded on merit and rank were\nobliterated. The father and child had been placed in the same cart and\nthrown into the same hole.\n\nDespairing, by any longer stay in the city, to effect my purpose, and\nthe period of my embarkation being near, I prepared to resume my\njourney. I should have set out the next day, but, a family with whom I\nhad made acquaintance expecting to proceed to New York within a week, I\nconsented to be their companion, and, for that end, to delay my\ndeparture.\n\nMeanwhile, I shut myself up in my apartment, and pursued avocations that\nwere adapted to the melancholy tenor of my thoughts. The day preceding\nthat appointed for my journey arrived. It was necessary to complete my\narrangements with the family with whom I was to travel, and to settle\nwith the lady whose apartments I occupied.\n\nOn how slender threads does our destiny hang! Had not a momentary\nimpulse tempted me to sing my favourite ditty to the harpsichord, to\nbeguile the short interval during which my hostess was conversing with\nher visitor in the next apartment, I should have speeded to New York,\nhave embarked for Europe, and been eternally severed from my friend,\nwhom I believed to have died in frenzy and beggary, but who was alive\nand affluent, and who sought me with a diligence scarcely inferior to my\nown. We imagined ourselves severed from each other by death or by\nimpassable seas; but, at the moment when our hopes had sunk to the\nlowest ebb, a mysterious destiny conducted our footsteps to the same\nspot.\n\nI heard a murmuring exclamation; I heard my hostess call, in a voice of\nterror, for help; I rushed into the room; I saw one stretched on the\nfloor, in the attitude of death; I sprung forward and fixed my eyes upon\nher countenance; I clasped my hands and articulated, \"Constantia!\"\n\nShe speedily recovered from her swoon. Her eyes opened; she moved, she\nspoke. Still methought it was an illusion of the senses that created the\nphantom. I could not bear to withdraw my eyes from her countenance. If\nthey wandered for a moment, I fell into doubt and perplexity, and again\nfixed them upon her, to assure myself of her existence.\n\nThe succeeding three days were spent in a state of dizziness and\nintoxication. The ordinary functions of nature were disturbed. The\nappetite for sleep and for food were confounded and lost amidst the\nimpetuosities of a master-passion. To look and to talk to each other\nafforded enchanting occupation for every moment. I would not part from\nher side, but eat and slept, walked and mused and read, with my arm\nlocked in hers, and with her breath fanning my cheek.\n\nI have indeed much to learn. Sophia Courtland has never been wise. Her\naffections disdain the cold dictates of discretion, and spurn at every\nlimit that contending duties and mixed obligations prescribe.\n\nAnd yet, O precious inebriation of the heart! O pre-eminent love! what\npleasure of reason or of sense can stand in competition with those\nattendant upon thee? Whether thou hiest to the fanes of a benevolent\ndeity, or layest all thy homage at the feet of one who most visibly\nresembles the perfections of our Maker, surely thy sanction is divine,\nthy boon is happiness!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n\nThe tumults of curiosity and pleasure did not speedily subside. The\nstory of each other's wanderings was told with endless amplification and\nminuteness. Henceforth, the stream of our existence was to mix; we were\nto act and to think in common; casual witnesses and written testimony\nshould become superfluous. Eyes and ears were to be eternally employed\nupon the conduct of each other; death, when it should come, was not to\nbe deplored, because it was an unavoidable and brief privation to her\nthat should survive. Being, under any modification, is dear; but that\nstate to which death is a passage is all-desirable to virtue and\nall-compensating to grief.\n\nMeanwhile, precedent events were made the themes of endless\nconversation. Every incident and passion in the course of four years was\nrevived and exhibited. The name of Ormond was, of course, frequently\nrepeated by my friend. His features and deportment were described; her\nmeditations and resolutions, with regard to him, fully disclosed. My\ncounsel was asked, in what manner it became her to act.\n\nI could not but harbour aversion to a scheme which should tend to sever\nme from Constantia, or to give me a competitor in her affections.\nBesides this, the properties of Ormond were of too mysterious a nature\nto make him worthy of acceptance. Little more was known concerning him\nthan what he himself had disclosed to the Dudleys, but this knowledge\nwould suffice to invalidate his claims.\n\nHe had dwelt, in his conversations with Constantia, sparingly on his own\nconcerns. Yet he did not hide from her that he had been left in early\nyouth to his own guidance; that he had embraced, when almost a child,\nthe trade of arms; that he had found service and promotion in the armies\nof Potemkin and Romanzow; that he had executed secret and diplomatic\nfunctions at Constantinople and Berlin; that in the latter city he had\nmet with schemers and reasoners who aimed at the new-modelling of the\nworld, and the subversion of all that has hitherto been conceived\nelementary and fundamental in the constitution of man and of government;\nthat some of those reformers had secretly united to break down the\nmilitary and monarchical fabric of German policy; that others, more\nwisely, had devoted their secret efforts, not to overturn, but to build;\nthat, for this end, they embraced an exploring and colonizing project;\nthat he had allied himself to these, and for the promotion of their\nprojects had spent six years of his life in journeys by sea and land, in\ntracts unfrequented till then by any European.\n\nWhat were the moral or political maxims which this adventurous and\nvisionary sect had adopted, and what was the seat of their new-born\nempire,--whether on the shore of an _austral_ continent, or in the heart\nof desert America,--he carefully concealed. These were exhibited or\nhidden, or shifted, according to his purpose. Not to reveal too much,\nand not to tire curiosity or overtask belief, was his daily labour. He\ntalked of alliance with the family whose name he bore, and who had lost\ntheir honours and estates by the Hanoverian succession to the crown of\nEngland.\n\nI had seen too much of innovation and imposture, in, France and Italy,\nnot to regard a man like this with aversion and fear. The mind of my\nfriend was wavering and unsuspicious. She had lived at a distance from\nscenes where principles are hourly put to the test of experiment; where\nall extremes of fortitude and pusillanimity are accustomed to meet;\nwhere recluse virtue and speculative heroism gives place, as if by\nmagic, to the last excesses of debauchery and wickedness; where pillage\nand murder are engrafted on systems of all-embracing and self-oblivious\nbenevolence, and the good of mankind is professed to be pursued with\nbonds of association and covenants of secrecy. Hence, my friend had\ndecided without the sanction of experience, had allowed herself to\nwander into untried paths, and had hearkened to positions pregnant with\ndestruction and ignominy.\n\nIt was not difficult to exhibit in their true light the enormous errors\nof this man, and the danger of prolonging their intercourse. Her assent\nto accompany me to England was readily obtained. Too much despatch could\nnot be used; but the disposal of her property must first take place.\nThis was necessarily productive of some delay.\n\nI had been made, contrary to inclination, expert in the management of\nall affairs relative to property. My mother's lunacy, subsequent\ndisease, and death, had imposed upon me obligations and cares little\nsuitable to my sex and age. They could not be eluded or transferred to\nothers; and, by degrees, experience enlarged my knowledge and\nfamiliarized my tasks.\n\nIt was agreed that I should visit and inspect my friend's estate in\nJersey, while she remained in her present abode, to put an end to the\nviews and expectations of Ormond, and to make preparation for her\nvoyage. We were reconciled to a temporary separation by the necessity\nthat prescribed it.\n\nDuring our residence together, the mind of Constantia was kept in\nperpetual ferment. The second day after my departure, the turbulence of\nher feelings began to subside, and she found herself at leisure to\npursue those measures which her present situation prescribed.\n\nThe time prefixed by Ormond for the termination of his absence had\nnearly arrived. Her resolutions respecting this man, lately formed, now\noccurred to her. Her heart drooped as she revolved the necessity of\ndisuniting their fates; but that this disunion was proper could not\nadmit of doubt. How information of her present views might be most\nsatisfactorily imparted to him, was a question not instantly decided.\nShe reflected on the impetuosity of his character, and conceived that\nher intentions might be most conveniently unfolded in a letter. This\nletter she immediately sat down to write. Just then the door opened, and\nOrmond entered the apartment.\n\nShe was somewhat, and for a moment, startled by this abrupt and\nunlooked-for entrance. Yet she greeted him with pleasure. Her greeting\nwas received with coldness. A second glance at his countenance informed\nher that his mind was somewhat discomposed.\n\nFolding his hands on his breast, ho stalked to the window and looked up\nat the moon. Presently he withdrew his gaze from this object, and fixed\nit upon Constantia. He spoke, but his words were produced by a kind of\neffort.\n\n\"Fit emblem,\" he exclaimed, \"of human versatility! One impediment is\ngone. I hoped it was the only one. But no! the removal of that merely\nmade room for another. Let this be removed. Well, fate will interplace a\nthird. All our toils will thus be frustrated, and the ruin will finally\nredound upon our heads.\" There he stopped.\n\nThis strain could not be interpreted by Constantia. She smiled, and,\nwithout noticing his incoherences, proceeded to inquire into his\nadventures during their separation. He listened to her, but his eyes,\nfixed upon hers, and his solemnity of aspect, were immovable. When she\npaused, he seated himself close to her, and, grasping her hand with a\nvehemence that almost pained her, said,--\n\n\"Look at me; steadfastly. Can you read my thoughts? Can your discernment\nreach the bounds of my knowledge and the bottom of my purposes? Catch\nyou not a view of the monsters that are starting into birth _here_?\"\n(and he put his left hand to his forehead.) \"But you cannot. Should I\npaint them to you verbally, you would call me jester or deceiver. What\npity that you have not instruments for piercing into thoughts!\"\n\n\"I presume,\" said Constantia, affecting cheerfulness which she did not\nfeel, \"such instruments would be useless to me. You never scruple to say\nwhat you think. Your designs are no sooner conceived than they are\nexpressed. All you know, all you wish, and all you purpose, are known\nto others as soon as to yourself. No scruples of decorum, no foresight\nof consequences, are obstacles in your way.\"\n\n\"True,\" replied he; \"all obstacles are trampled under foot but one.\"\n\n\"What is the insuperable one?\"\n\n\"Incredulity in him that hears. I must not say what will not be\ncredited. I must not relate feats and avow schemes, when my hearer will\nsay, 'Those feats were never performed; these schemes are not yours.' I\ncare not if the truth of my tenets and the practicability of my purposes\nbe denied. Still, I will openly maintain them; but when my assertions\nwill themselves be disbelieved, when it is denied that I adopt the creed\nand project the plans which I affirm to be adopted and projected by me,\nit is needless to affirm.\n\n\"To-morrow I mean to ascertain the height of the lunar mountains by\ntravelling to the top of them. Then I will station myself in the track\nof the last comet, and wait till its circumvolution suffers me to leap\nupon it; then, by walking on its surface, I will ascertain whether it be\nhot enough to burn my soles. Do you believe that this can be done?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Do you believe, in consequence of my assertion, that I design to do\nthis, and that, in my apprehension, it is easy to be done?\"\n\n\"Not unless I previously believe you to be lunatic.\"\n\n\"Then why should I assert my purposes? Why speak, when the hearer will\ninfer nothing from my speech but that I am either lunatic or liar?\"\n\n\"In that predicament, silence is best.\"\n\n\"In that predicament I now stand. I am not going to unfold myself. Just\nnow, I pitied thee for want of eyes. 'Twas a foolish compassion. Thou\nart happy, because thou seest not an inch before thee or behind.\" Here\nhe was for a moment buried in thought; then, breaking from his reverie,\nhe said, \"So your father is dead?\"\n\n\"True,\" said Constantia, endeavouring to suppress her rising emotions;\n\"he is no more. It is so recent an event that I imagined you a stranger\nto it.\"\n\n\"False imagination! Thinkest thou I would refrain from knowing what so\nnearly concerns us both? Perhaps your opinion of my ignorance extends\nbeyond this. Perhaps I know not your fruitless search for a picture.\nPerhaps I neither followed you nor led you to a being called Sophia\nCourtland. I was not present at the meeting. I am unapprized of the\neffects of your romantic passion for each other. I did not witness the\nrapturous effusions and inexorable counsels of the newcomer. I know not\nthe contents of the letter which you are preparing to write.\"\n\nAs he spoke this, the accents of Ormond gradually augmented in\nvehemence. His countenance bespoke a deepening inquietude and growing\npassion. He stopped at the mention of the letter, because his voice was\noverpowered by emotion. This pause afforded room for the astonishment of\nConstantia. Her interviews and conversations with me took place at\nseasons of general repose, when all doors were fast and avenues shut, in\nthe midst of silence, and in the bosom of retirement. The theme of our\ndiscourse was, commonly, too sacred for any ears but our own;\ndisclosures were of too intimate and delicate a nature for any but a\nfemale audience; they were too injurious to the fame and peace of Ormond\nfor him to be admitted to partake of them: yet his words implied a full\nacquaintance with recent events, and with purposes and deliberations\nshrouded, as we imagined, in impenetrable secrecy.\n\nAs soon as Constantia recovered from the confusion of these thoughts,\nshe eagerly questioned him:--\"What do you know? How do you know what has\nhappened, or what is intended?\"\n\n\"Poor Constantia!\" he exclaimed, in a tone bitter and sarcastic. \"How\nhopeless is thy ignorance! To enlighten thee is past my power. What\ndo I know? Every thing. Not a tittle has escaped me. Thy letter is\nsuperfluous; I know its contents before they are written. I was\nto be told that a soldier and a traveller, a man who refused his\nfaith to dreams, and his homage to shadows, merited only scorn and\nforgetfulness. That thy affections and person were due to another; that\nintercourse between us was henceforth to cease; that preparation was\nmaking for a voyage to Britain, and that Ormond was to walk to his grave\nalone!\"\n\nIn spite of harsh tones and inflexible features, these words were\naccompanied with somewhat that betrayed a mind full of discord and\nagony. Constantia's astonishment was mingled with dejection. The\ndiscovery of a passion deeper and less curable than she suspected--the\nperception of embarrassments and difficulties in the path which she had\nchosen, that had not previously occurred to her--threw her mind into\nanxious suspense.\n\nThe measures she had previously concerted were still approved. To part\nfrom Ormond was enjoined by every dictate of discretion and duty. An\nexplanation of her motives and views could not take place more\nseasonably than at present. Every consideration of justice to herself\nand humanity to Ormond made it desirable that this interview should be\nthe last. By inexplicable means, he had gained a knowledge of her\nintentions. It was expedient, therefore, to state them with clearness\nand force. In what words this was to be done, was the subject of\nmomentary deliberation.\n\nHer thoughts were discerned, and her speech anticipated, by her\ncompanion:--\"Why droopest thou, and why thus silent, Constantia? The\nsecret of thy fate will never be detected. Till thy destiny be finished,\nit will not be the topic of a single fear. But not for thyself, but me,\nart thou concerned. Thou dreadest, yet determinest, to confirm my\npredictions of thy voyage to Europe and thy severance from me.\n\n\"Dismiss thy inquietudes on that score. What misery thy scorn and thy\nrejection are able to inflict is inflicted already. Thy decision was\nknown to me as soon as it was formed. Thy motives were known. Not an\nargument or plea of thy counsellor, not a syllable of her invective, not\na sound of her persuasive rhetoric, escaped my hearing. I know thy\ndecree to be immutable. As my doubts, so my wishes have taken their\nflight. Perhaps, in the depth of thy ignorance, it was supposed that I\nshould struggle to reverse thy purpose by menaces or supplications; that\nI should boast of the cruelty with which I should avenge an imaginary\nwrong upon myself. No. All is very well. Go. Not a whisper of objection\nor reluctance shalt thou hear from me.\"\n\n\"If I could think,\" said Constantia, with tremulous hesitation, \"that\nyou part from me without anger; that you see the rectitude of my\nproceeding--\"\n\n\"Anger! Rectitude! I pr'ythee, peace. I know thou art going.--I know\nthat all objection to thy purpose would be vain. Thinkest thou that thy\nstay, undictated by love, the mere fruit of compassion, would afford me\npleasure or crown my wishes? No. I am not so dastardly a wretch. There\nwas something in thy power to bestow, but thy will accords not with thy\npower. I merit not the boon, and thou refusest it. I am content.\"\n\nHere Ormond fixed more significant eyes upon her. \"Poor Constantia!\" he\ncontinued. \"Shall I warn thee of the danger that awaits thee? For what\nend? To elude it is impossible. It will come, and thou, perhaps, wilt be\nunhappy. Foresight that enables not to shun, only precreates, the evil.\n\n\"Come it will. Though future, it knows not the empire of contingency. An\ninexorable and immutable decree enjoins it. Perhaps it is thy nature to\nmeet with calmness what cannot be shunned. Perhaps, when it is past, thy\nreason will perceive its irrevocable nature, and restore thee to peace.\nSuch is the conduct of the wise; but such, I fear, the education of\nConstantia Dudley will debar her from pursuing.\n\n\"Fain would I regard it as the test of thy wisdom. I look upon thy past\nlife. All the forms of genuine adversity have beset thy youth. Poverty,\ndisease, servile labour, a criminal and hapless parent, have been evils\nwhich thou hast not ungracefully sustained. An absent friend and\nmurdered father were added to thy list of woes, and here thy courage was\ndeficient. Thy soul was proof against substantial misery, but sunk into\nhelpless cowardice at the sight of phantoms.\n\n\"One more disaster remains. To call it by its true name would be useless\nor pernicious. Useless, because thou wouldst pronounce its occurrence\nimpossible; pernicious, because, if its possibility were granted, the\nomen would distract thee with fear. How shall I describe it? Is it loss\nof fame? No. The deed will be unwitnessed by a human creature. Thy\nreputation will be spotless, for nothing will be done by thee unsuitable\nto the tenor of thy past life. Calumny will not be heard to whisper. All\nthat know thee will be lavish of their eulogies as ever. Their eulogies\nwill be as justly merited. Of this merit thou wilt entertain as just and\nas adequate conceptions as now.\n\n\"It is no repetition of the evils thou hast already endured; it is\nneither drudgery, nor sickness, nor privation of friends. Strange\nperverseness of human reason! It is an evil; it will be thought upon\nwith agony; it will close up all the sources of pleasurable\nrecollection; it will exterminate hope; it will endear oblivion, and\npush thee into an untimely grave. Yet to grasp it is impossible. The\nmoment we inspect it nearly, it vanishes. Thy claims to human\napprobation and divine applause will be undiminished and unaltered by\nit. The testimony of approving conscience will have lost none of its\nexplicitness and energy. Yet thou wilt feed upon sighs; thy tears will\nflow without remission; thou wilt grow enamoured of death, and perhaps\nwilt anticipate the stroke of disease.\n\n\"Yet perhaps my prediction is groundless as my knowledge. Perhaps thy\ndiscernment will avail to make thee wise and happy. Perhaps thou wilt\nperceive thy privilege of sympathetic and intellectual activity to be\nuntouched. Heaven grant the non-fulfilment of my prophecy, thy\ndisenthralment from error, and the perpetuation of thy happiness.\"\n\nSaying this, Ormond withdrew. His words were always accompanied with\ngestures and looks and tones that fastened the attention of the hearer;\nbut the terms of his present discourse afforded, independently of\ngesticulation and utterance, sufficient motives to attention and\nremembrance. He was gone, but his image was contemplated by Constantia;\nhis words still rung in her ears.\n\nThe letter she designed to compose was rendered, by this interview,\nunnecessary. Meanings of which she and her friend alone were conscious\nwere discovered by Ormond, through some other medium than words; yet\nthat was impossible. A being unendowed with preternatural attributes\ncould gain the information which this man possessed, only by the\nexertion of his senses.\n\nAll human precautions had been used to baffle the attempts of any secret\nwitness. She recalled to mind the circumstances in which conversations\nwith her friend had taken place. All had been retirement, secrecy, and\nsilence. The hours usually dedicated to sleep had been devoted to this\nbetter purpose. Much had been said, in a voice low and scarcely louder\nthan a whisper. To have overheard it at the distance of a few feet was\napparently impossible.\n\nTheir conversations had not been recorded by her. It could not be\nbelieved that this had been done by Sophia Courtland. Had Ormond and her\nfriend met during the interval that had elapsed between her separation\nfrom the latter and her meeting with the former? Human events are\nconjoined by links imperceptible to keenest eyes. Of Ormond's means of\ninformation she was wholly unapprized. Perhaps accident would some time\nunfold them. One thing was incontestable:--that her schemes and her\nreasons for adopting them were known to him.\n\nWhat unforeseen effects had that knowledge produced! In what ambiguous\nterms had he couched his prognostics of some mighty evil that awaited\nher! He had given a terrible but contradictory description of her\ndestiny. An event was to happen, akin to no calamity which she had\nalready endured, disconnected with all which the imagination of man is\naccustomed to deprecate, capable of urging her to suicide, and yet of a\nkind which left it undecided whether she would regard it with\nindifference.\n\nWhat reliance should she place upon prophetic incoherences thus wild?\nWhat precautions should she take against a danger thus inscrutable and\nimminent?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n\nThese incidents and reflections were speedily transmitted to me. I had\nalways believed the character and machinations of Ormond to be worthy of\ncaution and fear. His means of information I did not pretend, and\nthought it useless, to investigate. We cannot hide our actions and\nthoughts from one of powerful sagacity, whom the detection sufficiently\ninterests to make him use all the methods of detection in his power. The\nstudy of concealment is, in all cases, fruitless or hurtful. All that\nduty enjoins is to design and to execute nothing which may not be\napproved by a divine and omniscient Observer. Human scrutiny is neither\nto be solicited nor shunned. Human approbation or censure can never be\nexempt from injustice, because our limited perceptions debar us from a\nthorough knowledge of any actions and motives but our own.\n\nOn reviewing what had passed between Constantia and me, I recollected\nnothing incompatible with purity and rectitude. That Ormond was apprized\nof all that had passed, I by no means inferred from the tenor of his\nconversation with Constantia; nor, if this had been incontestably\nproved, should I have experienced any trepidation or anxiety on that\naccount.\n\nHis obscure and indirect menaces of evil were of more importance. His\ndiscourse on this topic seemed susceptible only of two constructions.\nEither he intended some fatal mischief, and was willing to torment her\nby fears, while he concealed from her the nature of her danger, that he\nmight hinder her from guarding her safety by suitable precautions; or,\nbeing hopeless of rendering her propitious to his wishes, his malice was\nsatisfied with leaving her a legacy of apprehension and doubt.\nConstantia's unacquaintance with the doctrines of that school in which\nOrmond was probably instructed led her to regard the conduct of this man\nwith more curiosity and wonder than fear. She saw nothing but a\ndisposition to sport with her ignorance and bewilder her with doubts.\n\nI do not believe myself destitute of courage. Rightly to estimate the\ndanger and encounter it with firmness are worthy of a rational being;\nbut to place our security in thoughtlessness and blindness is only less\nignoble than cowardice. I could not forget the proofs of violence which\naccompanied the death of Mr. Dudley. I could not overlook, in the recent\nconversation with Constantia, Ormond's allusion to her murdered father.\nIt was possible that the nature of this death had been accidentally\nimparted to him; but it was likewise possible that his was the knowledge\nof one who performed the act.\n\nThe enormity of this deed appeared by no means incongruous with the\nsentiments of Ormond. Human life is momentous or trivial in our eyes,\naccording to the course which our habits and opinions have taken.\nPassion greedily accepts, and habit readily offers, the sacrifice of\nanother's life, and reason obeys the impulse of education and desire.\n\nA youth of eighteen, a volunteer in a Russian army encamped in\nBessarabia, made prey of a Tartar girl, found in the field of a recent\nbattle. Conducting her to his quarters, he met a friend, who, on some\npretence, claimed the victim. From angry words they betook themselves to\nswords. A combat ensued, in which the first claimant ran his antagonist\nthrough the body. He then bore his prize unmolested away, and, having\nexercised brutality of one kind upon the helpless victim, stabbed her to\nthe heart, as an offering to the _manes_ of Sarsefield, the friend whom\nhe had slain. Next morning, willing more signally to expiate his guilt,\nhe rushed alone upon a troop of Turkish foragers, and brought away five\nheads, suspended, by their gory locks, to his horse's mane. These he\ncast upon the grave of Sarsefield, and conceived himself fully to have\nexpiated yesterday's offence. In reward for his prowess, the general\ngave him a commission in the Cossack troops. This youth was Ormond; and\nsuch is a specimen of his exploits during a military career of eight\nyears, in a warfare the most savage and implacable, and, at the same\ntime, the most iniquitous and wanton, which history records.\n\nWith passions and habits like these, the life of another was a trifling\nsacrifice to vengeance or impatience. How Mr. Dudley had excited the\nresentment of Ormond, by what means the assassin had accomplished his\nintention without awakening alarm or incurring suspicion, it was not for\nme to discover. The inextricability of human events, the imperviousness\nof cunning, and the obduracy of malice, I had frequent occasions to\nremark.\n\nI did not labour to vanquish the security of my friend. As to\nprecautions, they were useless. There was no fortress, guarded by\nbarriers of stone and iron and watched by sentinels that never slept, to\nwhich she might retire from his stratagems. If there were such a\nretreat, it would scarcely avail her against a foe circumspect and\nsubtle as Ormond.\n\nI pondered on the condition of my friend. I reviewed the incidents of\nher life. I compared her lot with that of others. I could not but\ndiscover a sort of incurable malignity in her fate. I felt as if it were\ndenied to her to enjoy a long life or permanent tranquillity. I asked\nmyself what she had done, entitling her to this incessant persecution.\nImpatience and murmuring took place of sorrow and fear in my heart. When\nI reflected that all human agency was merely subservient to a divine\npurpose, I fell into fits of accusation and impiety.\n\nThis injustice was transient, and soberer views convinced me that every\nscheme, comprising the whole, must be productive of partial and\ntemporary evil. The sufferings of Constantia were limited to a moment;\nthey were the unavoidable appendages of terrestrial existence; they\nformed the only avenue to wisdom, and the only claim to uninterrupted\nfruition and eternal repose in an after-scene.\n\nThe course of my reflections, and the issue to which they led, were\nunforeseen by myself. Fondly as I doted upon this woman, methought I\ncould resign her to the grave without a murmur or a tear. While my\nthoughts were calmed by resignation, and my fancy occupied with nothing\nbut the briefness of that space and evanescence of that time which\nsevers the living from the dead, I contemplated, almost with\ncomplacency, a violent or untimely close to her existence.\n\nThis loftiness of mind could not always be accomplished or constantly\nmaintained. One effect of my fears was to hasten my departure to Europe.\nThere existed no impediment but the want of a suitable conveyance. In\nthe first packet that should leave America, it was determined to secure\na passage. Mr. Melbourne consented to take charge of Constantia's\nproperty, and, after the sale of it, to transmit to her the money that\nshould thence arise.\n\nMeanwhile, I was anxious that Constantia should leave her present abode\nand join me in New York. She willingly adopted this arrangement, but\nconceived it necessary to spend a few days at her house in Jersey. She\ncould reach the latter place without much deviation from the straight\nroad, and she was desirous of resurveying a spot where many of her\ninfantile days had been spent.\n\nThis house and domain I have already mentioned to have once belonged to\nMr. Dudley. It was selected with the judgement and adorned with the taste\nof a disciple of the schools of Florence and Vicenza. In his view,\ncultivation was subservient to the picturesque, and a mansion was\nerected, eminent for nothing but chastity of ornaments and simplicity of\nstructure. The massive parts were of stone; the outer surfaces were\nsmooth, snow-white, and diversified by apertures and cornices, in which\na cement uncommonly tenacious was wrought into proportions the most\ncorrect and forms the most graceful. The floors, walls, and ceilings,\nconsisted of a still more exquisitely-tempered substance, and were\npainted by Mr. Dudley's own hand. All appendages of this building, as\nseats, tables, and cabinets, were modelled by the owner's particular\ndirection, and in a manner scrupulously classical.\n\nHe had scarcely entered on the enjoyment of this splendid possession,\nwhen it was ravished away. No privation was endured with more impatience\nthan this; but, happily, it was purchased by one who left Mr. Dudley's\narrangements unmolested, and who shortly after conveyed it entire to\nOrmond. By him it was finally appropriated to the use of Helena Cleves,\nand now, by a singular contexture of events, it had reverted to those\nhands in which the death of the original proprietor, if no other change\nhad been made in his condition, would have left it. The farm still\nremained in the tenure of a German emigrant, who held it partly on\ncondition of preserving the garden and mansion in safety and in perfect\norder.\n\nThis retreat was now revisited by Constantia, after an interval of four\nyears. Autumn had made some progress, but the aspect of nature was, so\nto speak, more significant than at any other season. She was agreeably\naccommodated under the tenant's roof, and found a nameless pleasure in\ntraversing spaces in which every object prompted an endless train of\nrecollections.\n\nHer sensations were not foreseen. They led to a state of mind\ninconsistent, in some degree, with the projects adopted in obedience to\nthe suggestions of a friend. Every thing in this scene had been created\nand modelled by the genius of her father. It was a kind of fane,\nsanctified by his imaginary presence.\n\nTo consign the fruits of his industry and invention to foreign and\nunsparing hands seemed a kind of sacrilege, for which she almost feared\nthat the dead would rise to upbraid her. Those images which bind us to\nour natal soil, to the abode of our innocent and careless youth, were\nrecalled to her fancy by the scenes which she now beheld. These were\nenforced by considerations of the dangers which attended her voyage from\nstorms and from enemies, and from the tendency to revolution and war\nwhich seemed to actuate all the nations of Europe. Her native country\nwas by no means exempt from similar tendencies, but these evils were\nless imminent, and its manners and government, in their present\nmodifications, were unspeakably more favourable to the dignity and\nimprovement of the human race than those which prevailed in any part of\nthe ancient world.\n\nMy solicitations and my obligation to repair to England overweighed her\nobjections, but her new reflections led her to form new determinations\nwith regard to this part of her property. She concluded to retain\npossession, and hoped that some future event would allow her to return\nto this favourite spot without forfeiture of my society. An abode of\nsome years in Europe would more eminently qualify her for the enjoyment\nof retirement and safety in her native country. The time that should\nelapse before her embarkation, she was desirous of passing among the\nshades of this romantic retreat.\n\nI was by no means reconciled to this proceeding. I loved my friend too\nwell to endure any needless separation without repining. In addition to\nthis, the image of Ormond haunted my thoughts, and gave birth to\nincessant but indefinable fears. I believed that her safety would very\nlittle depend upon the nature of her abode, or the number or\nwatchfulness of her companions. My nearness to her person would\nfrustrate no stratagem, nor promote any other end than my own\nentanglement in the same fold. Still, that I was not apprized each hour\nof her condition, that her state was lonely and sequestered, were\nsources of disquiet, the obvious remedy to which was her coming to New\nYork. Preparations for departure were assigned to me, and these required\nmy continuance in the city.\n\nOnce a week, Laffert, her tenant, visited, for purposes of traffic, the\ncity. He was the medium of our correspondence. To him I intrusted a\nletter, in which my dissatisfaction at her absence, and the causes which\ngave it birth, were freely confessed.\n\nThe confidence of safety seldom deserted my friend. Since her mysterious\nconversation with Ormond, he had utterly vanished. Previous to that\ninterview, his visits or his letters were incessant and punctual; but\nsince, no token was given that he existed. Two months had elapsed. He\ngave her no reason to expect a cessation of intercourse. He had parted\nfrom her with his usual abruptness and informality. She did not conceive\nit incumbent on her to search him out, but she would not have been\ndispleased with an opportunity to discuss with him more fully the\nmotives of her conduct. This opportunity had been hitherto denied.\n\nHer occupations in her present retreat were, for the most part, dictated\nby caprice or by chance. The mildness of autumn permitted her to ramble,\nduring the day, from one rock and one grove to another. There was a\nluxury in musing, and in the sensations which the scenery and silence\nproduced, which, in consequence of her long estrangement from them, were\naccompanied with all the attractions of novelty, and from which she\nwould not consent to withdraw.\n\nIn the evening she usually retired to the mansion, and shut herself up\nin that apartment which, in the original structure of the house, had\nbeen designed for study, and no part of whose furniture had been removed\nor displaced. It was a kind of closet on the second floor, illuminated\nby a spacious window, through which a landscape of uncommon amplitude\nand beauty was presented to the view. Here the pleasures of the day were\nrevived, by recalling and enumerating them in letters to her friend. She\nalways quitted this recess with reluctance, and seldom till the night\nwas half spent.\n\nOne evening she retired hither when the sun had just dipped beneath the\nhorizon. Her implements of writing were prepared; but, before the pen\nwas assumed, her eyes rested for a moment on the variegated hues which\nwere poured out upon the western sky and upon the scene of intermingled\nwaters, copses, and fields. The view comprised a part of the road which\nled to this dwelling. It was partially and distantly seen, and the\npassage of horses or men was betokened chiefly by the dust which was\nraised by their footsteps.\n\nA token of this kind now caught her attention. It fixed her eye chiefly\nby the picturesque effect produced by interposing its obscurity between\nher and the splendours which the sun had left. Presently she gained a\nfaint view of a man and horse. This circumstance laid no claim to\nattention, and she was withdrawing her eye, when the traveller's\nstopping and dismounting at the gate made her renew her scrutiny. This\nwas reinforced by something in the figure and movements of the horseman\nwhich reminded her of Ormond.\n\nShe started from her seat with some degree of palpitation. Whence this\narose, whether from fear or from joy, or from intermixed emotions, it\nwould not be easy to ascertain. Having entered the gate, the visitant,\nremounting his horse, set the animal on full speed. Every moment brought\nhim nearer, and added to her first belief. He stopped not till he\nreached the mansion. The person of Ormond was distinctly recognised.\n\nAn interview at this dusky and lonely hour, in circumstances so abrupt\nand unexpected, could not fail to surprise, and, in some degree, to\nalarm. The substance of his last conversation was recalled. The evils\nwhich were darkly and ambiguously predicted thronged to her memory. It\nseemed as if the present moment was to be, in some way, decisive of her\nfate. This visit she did not hesitate to suppose designed for her, but\nsomewhat uncommonly momentous must have prompted him to take so long a\njourney.\n\nThe rooms on the lower floor were dark, the windows and doors being\nfastened. She had entered the house by the principal door, and this was\nthe only one at present unlocked. The room in which she sat was over the\nhall, and the massive door beneath could not be opened without noisy\nsignals. The question that occurred to her, by what means Ormond would\ngain admittance to her presence, she supposed would be instantly\ndecided. She listened to hear his footsteps on the pavement, or the\ncreaking of hinges. The silence, however, continued profound as before.\n\nAfter a minute's pause, she approached the window more nearly and\nendeavoured to gain a view of the space before the house. She saw\nnothing but the horse, whose bridle was thrown over his neck, and who\nwas left at liberty to pick up what scanty herbage the lawn afforded to\nhis hunger. The rider had disappeared.\n\nIt now occurred to her that this visit had a purpose different from that\nwhich she at first conjectured. It was easily conceived that Ormond was\nunacquainted with her residence at this spot. The knowledge could only\nbe imparted to him by indirect or illicit means. That these means had\nbeen employed by him, she was by no means authorized to infer from the\nsilence and distance he had lately maintained. But if an interview with\nher were not the purpose of his coming, how should she interpret it?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\n\nWhile occupied with these reflections, the light hastily disappeared,\nand darkness, rendered, by a cloudy atmosphere, uncommonly intense,\nsucceeded. She had the means of lighting a lamp that hung against the\nwall, but had been too much immersed in thought to notice the deepening\nof the gloom. Recovering from her reverie, she looked around her with\nsome degree of trepidation, and prepared to strike a spark that would\nenable her to light her lamp.\n\nShe had hitherto indulged an habitual indifference to danger. Now the\npresence of Ormond, the unknown purpose that led him hither, and the\ndefencelessness of her condition, inspired her with apprehensions to\nwhich she had hitherto been a stranger. She had been accustomed to pass\nmany nocturnal hours in this closet. Till now, nothing had occurred that\nmade her enter it with circumspection or continue in it with reluctance.\n\nHer sensations were no longer tranquil. Each minute that she spent in\nthis recess appeared to multiply her hazards. To linger here appeared to\nher the height of culpable temerity. She hastily resolved to return to\nthe farmer's dwelling, and, on the morrow, to repair to New York. For\nthis end she was desirous to produce a light. The materials were at\nhand.\n\nShe lifted her hand to strike the flint, when her ear caught a sound\nwhich betokened the opening of the door that led into the next\napartment. Her motion was suspended, and she listened as well as a\nthrobbing heart would permit. That Ormond's was the hand that opened,\nwas the first suggestion of her fears. The motives of this unseasonable\nentrance could not be reconciled with her safety. He had given no\nwarning of his approach, and the door was opened with tardiness and\nseeming caution.\n\nSounds continued, of which no distinct conception could be obtained, or\nthe cause that produced them assigned. The floors of every apartment\nbeing composed, like the walls and ceiling, of cement, footsteps were\nrendered almost undistinguishable. It was plain, however, that some one\napproached her own door.\n\nThe panic and confusion that now invaded her was owing to surprise, and\nto the singularity of her situation. The mansion was desolate and\nlonely. It was night. She was immersed in darkness. She had not the\nmeans, and was unaccustomed to the office, of repelling personal\ninjuries. What injuries she had reason to dread, who was the agent, and\nwhat were his motives, were subjects Of vague and incoherent meditation.\n\nMeanwhile, low and imperfect sounds, that had in them more of inanimate\nthan human, assailed her ear. Presently they ceased. An inexplicable\nfear deterred her from calling. Light would have exercised a friendly\ninfluence. This it was in her power to produce, but not without motion\nand noise; and these, by occasioning the discovery of her being in the\ncloset, might possibly enhance her danger.\n\nConceptions like these were unworthy of the mind of Constantia. An\ninterval of silence succeeded, interrupted only by the whistling of the\nblast without. It was sufficient for the restoration of her courage. She\nblushed at the cowardice which had trembled at a sound. She considered\nthat Ormond might, indeed, be near, but that he was probably unconscious\nof her situation. His coming was not with the circumspection of an\nenemy. He might be acquainted with the place of her retreat, and had\ncome to obtain an interview, with no clandestine or mysterious purposes.\nThe noises she had heard had, doubtless, proceeded from the next\napartment, but might be produced by some harmless or vagrant creature.\n\nThese considerations restored her tranquillity. They enabled her,\ndeliberately, to create a light, but they did not dissuade her from\nleaving the house. Omens of evil seemed to be connected with this\nsolitary and darksome abode. Besides, Ormond had unquestionably entered\nupon this scene It could not be doubted that she was the object of his\nvisit. The farm-house was a place of meeting more suitable and safe than\nany other. Thither, therefore, she determined immediately to return.\n\nThe closet had but one door, and this led into the chamber where the\nsounds had arisen. Through this chamber, therefore, she was obliged to\npass, in order to reach the staircase, which terminated in the hall\nbelow.\n\nBearing the light in her left hand, she withdrew the bolt of the door\nand opened. In spite of courageous efforts, she opened with\nunwillingness, and shuddered to throw a glance forward or advance a step\ninto the room. This was not needed, to reveal to her the cause of her\nlate disturbance. Her eye instantly lighted on the body of a man,\nsupine, motionless, stretched on the floor, close to the door through\nwhich she was about to pass.\n\nA spectacle like this was qualified to startle her. She shrunk back, and\nfixed a more steadfast eye upon the prostrate person. There was no mark\nof blood or of wounds, but there was something in the attitude more\nsignificant of death than of sleep. His face rested on the floor, and\nhis ragged locks concealed what part of his visage was not hidden by his\nposture. His garb was characterized by fashionable elegance, but was\npolluted with dust.\n\nThe image that first occurred to her was that of Ormond. This instantly\ngave place to another, which was familiar to her apprehension. It was at\nfirst too indistinctly seen to suggest a name. She continued to gaze and\nto be lost in fearful astonishment. Was this the person whose entrance\nhad been overheard, and who had dragged himself hither to die at her\ndoor? Yet, in that case, would not groans and expiring efforts have\ntestified his condition and invoked her succour? Was he not brought\nhither in the arms of his assassin? She mused upon the possible motives\nthat induced some one thus to act, and upon the connection that might\nsubsist between her destiny and that of the dead.\n\nHer meditations, however fruitless in other respects, could not fail to\nshow her the propriety of hastening from this spot. To scrutinize the\nform or face of the dead was a task to which her courage was unequal.\nSuitably accompanied and guarded, she would not scruple to return and\nascertain, by the most sedulous examination, the cause of this ominous\nevent.\n\nShe stepped over the breathless corpse, and hurried to the staircase. It\nbecame her to maintain the command of her muscles and joints, and to\nproceed without faltering or hesitation. Scarcely had she reached the\nentrance of the hall, when, casting anxious looks forward, she beheld a\nhuman figure. No scrutiny was requisite to inform her that this was\nOrmond.\n\nShe stopped. He approached her with looks and gestures placid but\nsolemn. There was nothing in his countenance rugged or malignant. On the\ncontrary, there were tokens of compassion.\n\n\"So,\" said he, \"I expected to meet you. Alight, gleaming from the\nwindow, marked you out. This and Laffert's directions have guided me.\"\n\n\"What,\" said Constantia, with discomposure in her accent, \"was your\nmotive for seeking me?\"\n\n\"Have you forgotten,\" said Ormond, \"what passed at our last interview?\nThe evil that I then predicted is at hand. Perhaps you were incredulous;\nyou accounted me a madman or deceiver; now I am come to witness the\nfulfilment of my words and the completion of your destiny. To rescue you\nI have not come: that is not within the compass of human powers.\n\n\"Poor Constantia,\" he continued, in tones that manifested genuine\nsympathy, \"look upon thyself as lost. The toils that beset thee are\ninextricable. Summon up thy patience to endure the evil. Now will the\nlast and heaviest trial betide thy fortitude. I could weep for thee, if\nmy manly nature would permit. This is the scene of thy calamity, and\nthis the hour.\"\n\nThese words were adapted to excite curiosity mingled with terror.\nOrmond's deportment was of an unexampled tenor, as well as that evil\nwhich he had so ambiguously predicted. He offered no protection from\ndanger, and yet gave no proof of being himself an agent or auxiliary.\nAfter a minute's pause, Constantia, recovering a firm tone, said,--\n\n\"Mr. Ormond, your recent deportment but ill accords with your\nprofessions of sincerity and plain dealing. What your purpose is, or\nwhether you have any purpose, I am at a loss to conjecture. Whether you\nmost deserve censure or ridicule, is a point which you afford me not the\nmeans of deciding, and to which, unless on your own account, I am\nindifferent. If you are willing to be more explicit, or if there be any\ntopic on which you wish further to converse, I will not refuse your\ncompany to Laffert's dwelling. Longer to remain here would be indiscreet\nand absurd.\"\n\nSo saying, she motioned towards the door. Ormond was passive, and seemed\nindisposed to prevent her departure, till she laid her hand upon the\nlock. He then, without moving from his place, exclaimed,--\n\n\"Stay! Must this meeting, which fate ordains to be the last, be so\nshort? Must a time and place so suitable for what remains to be said and\ndone be neglected or misused? No. You charge me with duplicity, and deem\nmy conduct either ridiculous or criminal. I have stated my reasons for\nconcealment, but these have failed to convince you. Well, here is now an\nend to doubt. All ambiguities are preparing to vanish.\"\n\nWhen Ormond began to speak, Constantia paused to hearken to him. His\nvehemence was not of that nature which threatened to obstruct her\npassage. It was by entreaty that he apparently endeavoured to detain her\nsteps, and not by violence. Hence arose her patience to listen. He\ncontinued:--\n\n\"Constantia! thy father is dead. Art thou not desirous of detecting the\nauthor of his fate? Will it afford thee no consolation to know that the\ndeed is punished? Wilt thou suffer me to drag the murderer to thy feet?\nThy justice will be gratified by this sacrifice. Somewhat will be due to\nhim who avenged thy wrong in the blood of the perpetrator. What sayest\nthou? Grant me thy permission, and in a moment I will drag him hither.\"\n\nThese words called up the image of the person whose corpse she had\nlately seen. It was readily conceived that to him Ormond alluded; but\nthis was the assassin of her father, and his crime had been detected and\npunished by Ormond! These images had no other effect than to urge her\ndeparture: she again applied her hand to the lock, and said,--\n\n\"This scene must not be prolonged. My father's death I desire not to\nhear explained or to see revenged, but whatever information you are\nwilling or able to communicate must be deferred.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" interrupted Ormond, with augmented vehemence, \"art thou equally\ndevoid of curiosity and justice? Thinkest thou that the enmity which\nbereft thy father of life will not seek thy own? There are evils which I\ncannot prevent thee from enduring, but there are, likewise, ills which\nmy counsel will enable thee and thy friend to shun. Save me from\nwitnessing thy death. Thy father's destiny is sealed; all that remained\nwas to punish his assassin; but thou and thy Sophia still live. Why\nshould ye perish by a like stroke?\"\n\nThis intimation was sufficient to arrest the steps of Constantia. She\nwithdrew her hand from the door, and fixed eyes of the deepest anxiety\non Ormond:--\"What mean you? How am I to understand--\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Ormond, \"I see thou wilt consent to stay. Thy detention shall\nnot be long. Remain where thou art during one moment,--merely while I\ndrag hither thy enemy and show thee a visage which thou wilt not be slow\nto recognise.\" Saying this, he hastily ascended the staircase, and\nquickly passed beyond her sight.\n\nDeportment thus mysterious could not fail of bewildering her thoughts.\nThere was somewhat in the looks and accents of Ormond, different from\nformer appearances; tokens of a hidden purpose and a smothered meaning\nwere perceptible,--a mixture of the inoffensive and the lawless, which,\nadded to the loneliness and silence that encompassed her, produced a\nfaltering emotion. Her curiosity was overpowered by her fear, and the\nresolution was suddenly conceived of seizing this opportunity to escape.\n\nA third time she put her hand to the lock and attempted to open. The\neffort was ineffectual. The door that was accustomed to obey the\ngentlest touch was now immovable. She had lately unlocked and passed\nthrough it. Her eager inspection convinced her that the principal bolt\nwas still withdrawn, but a small one was now perceived, of whose\nexistence she had not been apprized, and over which her key had no\npower.\n\nNow did she first harbour a fear that was intelligible in its dictates.\nNow did she first perceive herself sinking in the toils of some lurking\nenemy. Hope whispered that this foe was not Ormond. His conduct had\nbespoken no willingness to put constraint upon her steps. He talked not\nas if he was aware of this obstruction, and yet his seeming acquiescence\nmight have flowed from a knowledge that she had no power to remove\nbeyond his reach.\n\nHe warned her of danger to her life, of which he was her self-appointed\nrescuer. His counsel was to arm her with sufficient caution; the peril\nthat awaited her was imminent; this was the time and place of its\noccurrence, and here she was compelled to remain, till the power that\nfastened would condescend to loose the door. There were other avenues to\nthe hall. These were accustomed to be locked; but Ormond had found\naccess, and, if all continued fast, it was incontestable that he was the\nauthor of this new impediment.\n\nThe other avenues were hastily examined. All were bolted and locked. The\nfirst impulse led her to call for help from without; but the mansion was\ndistant from Laffert's habitation. This spot was wholly unfrequented. No\npassenger was likely to be stationed where her call could be heard.\nBesides, this forcible detention might operate for a short time, and be\nattended with no mischievous consequences. Whatever was to come, it was\nher duty to collect her courage and encounter it.\n\nTho steps of Ormond above now gave tokens of his approach. Vigilant\nobservance of this man was all that her situation permitted. A vehement\neffort restored her to some degree of composure. Her stifled\npalpitations allowed her steadfastly to notice him as he now descended\nthe stairs, bearing a lifeless body in his arms. \"There!\" said he, as he\ncast it at her feet; \"whose countenance is that? Who would imagine that\nfeatures like those belonged to an assassin and impostor?\"\n\nClosed eyelids and fallen muscles could not hide from her lineaments so\noften seen. She shrunk back and exclaimed, \"Thomas Craig!\"\n\nA pause succeeded, in which she alternately gazed at the countenance of\nthis unfortunate wretch and at Ormond. At length, the latter\nexclaimed,--\n\n\"Well, my girl, hast thou examined him? Dost thou recognise a friend or\nan enemy?\"\n\n\"I know him well: but how came this? What purpose brought him hither?\nWho was the author of his fate?\"\n\n\"Have I not already told thee that Ormond was his own avenger and thine?\nTo thee and to me he has been a robber. To him thy father is indebted\nfor the loss not only of property but life. Did crimes like these merit\na less punishment? And what recompense is due to him whose vigilance\npursued him hither and made him pay for his offences with his blood?\nWhat benefit have I received at thy hand to authorize me, for thy sake,\nto take away his life?\"\n\n\"No benefit received from me,\" said Constantia, \"would justify such an\nact. I should have abhorred myself for annexing to my benefits so bloody\na condition. It calls for no gratitude or recompense. Its suitable\nattendant is remorse. That he is a thief, I know but too well; that my\nfather died by his hand is incredible. No motives or means--\"\n\n\"Why so?\" interrupted Ormond. \"Does not sleep seal up the senses? Cannot\nclosets be unlocked at midnight? Cannot adjoining houses communicate by\ndoors? Cannot these doors be hidden from suspicion by a sheet of\ncanvas?\"\n\nThese words were of startling and abundant import. They reminded her of\ncircumstances in her father's chamber, which sufficiently explained the\nmeans by which his life was assailed. The closet, and its canvas-covered\nwall; the adjoining house untenanted and shut up--but this house, though\nunoccupied, belonged to Ormond. From the inferences which flowed hence,\nher attention was withdrawn by her companion, who continued:--\n\n\"Do these means imply the interposal of a miracle? His motives? What\nscruples can be expected from a man inured from infancy to cunning and\npillage? Will he abstain from murder when urged by excruciating poverty,\nby menaces of persecution, by terror of expiring on the gallows?\"\n\nTumultuous suspicions were now awakened in the mind of Constantia. Her\nfaltering voice scarcely allowed her to ask, \"How know _you_ that Craig\nwas thus guilty?--that these were his incitements and means?\"\n\nOrmond's solemnity now gave place to a tone of sarcasm and looks of\nexultation:--\"Poor Constantia! Thou art still pestered with incredulity\nand doubts! My veracity is still in question! My knowledge, girl, is\ninfallible. That these were his means of access I cannot be ignorant,\nfor I pointed them out. He was urged by these motives, for they were\nstated and enforced by me. His was the deed, for I stood beside him when\nit was done.\"\n\nThese, indeed, were terms that stood in no need of further explanation.\nThe veil that shrouded this formidable being was lifted high enough to\nmake him be regarded with inexplicable horror. What his future acts\nshould be, how his omens of ill were to be solved, were still involved\nin uncertainty.\n\nIn the midst of fears for her own safety, by which Constantia was now\nassailed, the image of her father was revived; keen regret and vehement\nupbraiding were conjured up.\n\n\"Craig, then, was the instrument, and yours the instigation, that\ndestroyed my father! In what had he offended you? What cause had he\ngiven for resentment?\"\n\n\"Cause!\" replied he, with impetuous accents. \"Resentment! None. My\nmotive was benevolent; my deed conferred a benefit. I gave him sight and\ntook away his life, from motives equally wise. Know you not that Ormond\nwas fool enough to set value on the affections of a woman? These were\nsought with preposterous anxiety and endless labour. Among other\nfacilitators of his purpose, he summoned gratitude to his aid. To\nsnatch you from poverty, to restore his sight to your father, were\nexpected to operate as incentives to love.\n\n\"But here I was the dupe of error. A thousand prejudices stood in my\nway. These, provided our intercourse were not obstructed, I hoped to\nsubdue. The rage of innovation seized your father: this, blended with a\nmortal antipathy to me, made him labour to seduce you from the bosom of\nyour peaceful country; to make you enter on a boisterous sea; to visit\nlands where all is havoc and hostility; to snatch you from the influence\nof my arguments.\n\n\"This new obstacle I was bound to remove. While revolving the means,\nchance and his evil destiny threw Craig in my way. I soon convinced him\nthat his reputation and his life were in my hands. His retention of\nthese depended upon my will, on the performance of conditions which I\nprescribed.\n\n\"My happiness and yours depended on your concurrence with my wishes.\nYour father's life was an obstacle to your concurrence. For killing him,\ntherefore, I may claim your gratitude. His death was a due and\ndisinterested offering at the altar of your felicity and mine.\n\n\"My deed was not injurious to him. At his age, death, whose coming at\nsome period is inevitable, could not be distant. To make it unforeseen\nand brief, and void of pain,--to preclude the torments of a lingering\nmalady, a slow and visible descent to the grave,--was the dictate of\nbeneficence. But of what value was a continuance of his life? Either you\nwould have gone with him to Europe or have stayed at home with me. In\nthe first case, his life would have been rapidly consumed by perils and\ncares. In the second, separation from you, and union with me,--a being\nso detestable,--would equally have poisoned his existence.\n\n\"Craig's cowardice and crimes made him a pliant and commodious tool. I\npointed out the way. The unsuspected door which led into the closet of\nyour father's chamber was made, by my direction, during the life of\nHelena. By this avenue I was wont to post myself where all your\nconversations could be overheard. By this avenue an entrance and\nretreat were afforded to the agent of my newest purpose.\n\n\"Fool that I was! I solaced myself with the belief that all impediments\nwere now smoothed, when a new enemy appeared. My folly lasted as long as\nmy hope. I saw that to gain your affections, fortified by antiquated\nscruples and obsequious to the guidance of this new monitor, was\nimpossible. It is not my way to toil after that which is beyond my\nreach. If the greater good be inaccessible, I learn to be contented with\nthe less.\n\n\"I have served you with successless sedulity. I have set an engine in\nact to obliterate an obstacle to your felicity, and lay your father at\nrest. Under my guidance, this engine was productive only of good.\nGoverned by itself or by another, it will only work you harm. I have,\ntherefore, hastened to destroy it. Lo! it is now before you motionless\nand impotent.\n\n\"For this complexity of benefit I look for no reward. I am not tired of\nwell-doing. Having ceased to labour for an unattainable good, I have\ncome hither to possess myself of all that I now crave, and by the same\ndeed to afford you an illustrious opportunity to signalize your wisdom\nand your fortitude.\"\n\nDuring this speech, the mind of Constantia became more deeply pervaded\nwith dread of some overhanging but incomprehensible evil. The strongest\nimpulse was to gain a safe asylum, at a distance from this spot and from\nthe presence of this extraordinary being. This impulse was followed by\nthe recollection that her liberty was taken away, that egress from the\nhall was denied her, and that this restriction might be part of some\nconspiracy of Ormond against her life.\n\nSecurity from danger like this would be, in the first place, sought, by\none of Constantia's sex and opinions, in flight. This had been rendered,\nby some fatal chance or by the precautions of her foe, impracticable.\nStratagem or force was all that remained to elude or disarm her\nadversary. For the contrivance and execution of fraud, all the habits of\nher life and all the maxims of her education had conspired to unfit her.\nHer force of muscles would avail her nothing against the superior\nenergy of Ormond.\n\nShe remembered that to inflict death was no iniquitous exertion of\nself-defence, and that the penknife which she held in her hand was\ncapable of this service. She had used it to remove any lurking\nobstruction in the wards of her key, supposing, for a time, this to be\nthe cause of her failing to withdraw the bolt of the door. This resource\nwas, indeed, scarcely less disastrous and deplorable than any fate from\nwhich it could rescue her. Some uncertainty still involved the\nintentions of Ormond. As soon as he paused, she spoke:--\n\n\"How am I to understand this prelude? Let me know the full extent of my\ndanger,--why it is that I am hindered from leaving this house, and why\nthis interview was sought.\"\n\n\"Ah, Constantia, this, indeed, is merely a prelude to a scene that is to\nterminate my influence over thy fate. When this is past I have sworn to\npart with thee forever. Art thou still dubious of my purpose? Art thou\nnot a woman? And have I not entreated for thy love and been rejected?\n\n\"Canst thou imagine that I aim at thy life? My avowals of love were\nsincere; my passion was vehement and undisguised. It gave dignity and\nvalue to a gift in thy power, as a woman, to bestow. This has been\ndenied. That gift has lost none of its value in my eyes. What thou\nrefusest to bestow it is in my power to extort. I came for that end.\nWhen this end is accomplished, I will restore thee to liberty.\"\n\nThese words were accompanied by looks that rendered all explanation of\ntheir meaning useless. The evil reserved for her, hitherto obscured by\nhalf-disclosed and contradictory attributes, was now sufficiently\napparent. The truth in this respect unveiled itself with the rapidity\nand brightness of an electrical flash.\n\nShe was silent. She cast her eyes at the windows and doors. Escape\nthrough them was hopeless. She looked at those lineaments of Ormond\nwhich evinced his disdain of supplication and inexorable passions. She\nfelt that entreaty and argument would be vain; that all appeals to his\ncompassion and benevolence would counteract her purpose, since, in the\nunexampled conformation of this man's mind, these principles were made\nsubservient to his most flagitious designs. Considerations of justice\nand pity were made, by a fatal perverseness of reasoning, champions and\nbulwarks of his most atrocious mistakes.\n\nThe last extremes of opposition, the most violent expedients for\ndefence, would be justified by being indispensable. To find safety for\nher honour, even in the blood of an assailant, was the prescription of\nduty. Tho equity of this species of defence was not, in the present\nconfusion of her mind, a subject of momentary doubt.\n\nTo forewarn him of her desperate purpose would be to furnish him with\nmeans of counteraction. Her weapon would easily be wrested from her\nfeeble hand. Ineffectual opposition would only precipitate her evil\ndestiny. A rage, contented with nothing less than her life, might be\nawakened in his bosom. But was not this to be desired? Death, untimely\nand violent, was better than the loss of honour.\n\nThis thought led to a new series of reflections. She involuntarily\nshrunk from the act of killing: but would her efforts to destroy her\nadversary be effectual? Would not his strength and dexterity easily\nrepel or elude them? Her power in this respect was questionable, but her\npower was undeniably sufficient to a different end. The instrument which\ncould not rescue her from this injury by the destruction of another\nmight save her from it by her own destruction.\n\nThese thoughts rapidly occurred; but the resolution to which they led\nwas scarcely formed, when Ormond advanced towards her. She recoiled a\nfew steps, and, showing the knife which she held, said,--\n\n\"Ormond! Beware! Know that my unalterable resolution is to die\nuninjured. I have the means in my power. Stop where you are; one step\nmore, and I plunge this knife into my heart. I know that to contend with\nyour strength or your reason would be vain. To turn this weapon against\nyou I should not fear, if I were sure of success; but to that I will\nnot trust. To save a greater good by the sacrifice of life is in my\npower, and that sacrifice shall be made.\"\n\n\"Poor Constantia!\" replied Ormond, in a tone of contempt; \"so thou\npreferrest thy imaginary honour to life! To escape this injury without a\nname or substance, without connection with the past or future, without\ncontamination of thy purity or thraldom of thy will, thou wilt kill\nthyself; put an end to thy activity in virtue's cause; rob thy friend of\nher solace, the world of thy beneficence, thyself of being and pleasure?\n\n\"I shall be grieved for the fatal issue of my experiment; I shall mourn\nover thy martyrdom to the most opprobrious and contemptible of all\nerrors: but that thou shouldst undergo the trial is decreed. There is\nstill an interval of hope that thy cowardice is counterfeited, or that\nit will give place to wisdom and courage.\n\n\"Whatever thou intendest by way of prevention or cure, it behooves thee\nto employ with steadfastness. Die with the guilt of suicide and the\nbrand of cowardice upon thy memory, or live with thy claims to felicity\nand approbation undiminished. Choose which thou wilt. Thy decision is of\nmoment to thyself, but of none to me. Living or dead, the prize that I\nhave in view shall be mine.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\n\nIt will be requisite to withdraw your attention from this scene for a\nmoment, and fix it on myself. My impatience of my friend's delay, for\nsome days preceding this disastrous interview, became continually more\npainful. As the time of our departure approached, my dread of some\nmisfortune or impediment increased. Ormond's disappearance from the\nscene contributed but little to my consolation. To wrap his purposes in\nmystery, to place himself at seeming distance, was the usual artifice of\nsuch as he,--was necessary to the maturing of his project and the\nhopeless entanglement of his victim. I saw no means of placing the\nsafety of my friend beyond his reach. Between different methods of\nprocedure, there was, however, room for choice. Her present abode was\nmore hazardous than an abode in the city. To be alone argued a state\nmore defenceless and perilous than to be attended by me.\n\nI wrote her an urgent admonition to return. My remonstrances were\ncouched in such terms as, in my own opinion, laid her under the\nnecessity of immediate compliance. The letter was despatched by the\nusual messenger, and for some hours I solaced myself with the prospect\nof a speedy meeting.\n\nThese thoughts gave place to doubt and apprehension. I began to distrust\nthe efficacy of my arguments, and to invent a thousand reasons, inducing\nher, in defiance of my rhetoric, at least to protract her absence. These\nreasons I had not previously conceived, and had not, therefore,\nattempted, in my letter, to invalidate their force. This omission was\npossible to be supplied in a second epistle; but, meanwhile, time would\nbe lost, and my new arguments might, like the old, fail to convince\nher. At least, the tongue was a much more versatile and powerful\nadvocate than the pen; and, by hastening to her habitation, I might\neither compel her to return with me, or ward off danger by my presence,\nor share it with her. I finally resolved to join her by the speediest\nconveyance.\n\nThis resolution was suggested by the meditations of a sleepless night. I\nrose with the dawn, and sought out the means of transporting myself,\nwith most celerity, to the abode of my friend. A stage-boat, accustomed\ntwice a day to cross New York Bay to Staten Island, was prevailed upon,\nby liberal offers, to set out upon the voyage at the dawn of day. The\nsky was gloomy, and the air boisterous and unsettled. The wind, suddenly\nbecoming tempestuous and adverse, rendered the voyage at once tedious\nand full of peril. A voyage of nine miles was not effected in less than\neight hours and without imminent and hairbreadth danger of being\ndrowned.\n\nFifteen miles of the journey remained to be performed by land. A\ncarriage, with the utmost difficulty, was procured, but lank horses and\na crazy vehicle were but little in unison with my impatience. We reached\nnot Amboy ferry till some hours after nightfall. I was rowed across the\nSound, and proceeded to accomplish the remainder of my journey--about\nthree miles--on foot.\n\nI was actuated to this speed by indefinite but powerful motives. The\nbelief that my speedy arrival was essential to the rescue of my friend\nfrom some inexplicable injury haunted me with ceaseless importunity. On\nno account would I have consented to postpone this precipitate\nexpedition till the morrow.\n\nI at length arrived at Dudley's farm-house. The inhabitants were struck\nwith wonder at the sight of me. My clothes were stained by the water by\nwhich every passenger was copiously sprinkled during our boisterous\nnavigation, and soiled by dust; my frame was almost overpowered by\nfatigue and abstinence.\n\nTo my anxious inquiries respecting my friend, they told me that her\nevenings were usually spent at the mansion, where it was probable she\nwas now to be found. They were not apprized of any inconvenience or\ndanger that betided her. It was her custom sometimes to prolong her\nabsence till midnight.\n\nI could not applaud the discretion nor censure the temerity of this\nproceeding. My mind was harassed by unintelligible omens and\nself-confuted fears. To obviate the danger and to banish my inquietudes\nwas my first duty. For this end I hastened to the mansion. Having passed\nthe intervening hillocks and copses, I gained a view of the front of the\nbuilding. My heart suddenly sunk, on observing that no apartment--not\neven that in which I knew it was her custom to sit at these unseasonable\nhours--was illuminated. A gleam from the window of the study I should\nhave regarded as an argument at once of her presence and her safety.\n\nI approached the house with misgiving and faltering steps. The gate\nleading into a spacious court was open. A sound on one side attracted my\nattention. In the present state of my thoughts, any near or unexplained\nsound sufficed to startle me. Looking towards the quarter whence my\npanic was excited, I espied, through the dusk, a horse grazing, with his\nbridle thrown over his neck.\n\nThis appearance was a new source of perplexity and alarm. The inference\nwas unavoidable that a visitant was here. Who that visitant was, and how\nhe was now employed, was a subject of eager but fruitless curiosity.\nWithin and around the mansion, all was buried in the deepest repose. I\nnow approached the principal door, and, looking through the keyhole,\nperceived a lamp, standing on the lowest step of the staircase. It shed\na pale light over the lofty ceiling and marble balustrades. No face or\nmovement of a human being was perceptible.\n\nThese tokens assured me that some one was within: they also accounted\nfor the non-appearance of light at the window above. I withdrew my eye\nfrom this avenue, and was preparing to knock loudly for admission, when\nmy attention was awakened by some one who advanced to the door from the\ninside and seemed busily engaged in unlocking. I started back and waited\nwith impatience till the door should open and the person issue forth.\n\nPresently I heard a voice within exclaim, in accents of mingled terror\nand grief, \"Oh, what--what will become of me? Shall I never be released\nfrom this detested prison?\"\n\nThe voice was that of Constantia. It penetrated to my heart like an\nicebolt. I once more darted a glance through the crevice. A figure, with\ndifficulty recognised to be that of my friend, now appeared in sight.\nHer hands were clasped on her breast, her eyes wildly fixed upon the\nceiling and streaming with tears, and her hair unbound and falling\nconfusedly over her bosom and neck.\n\nMy sensations scarcely permitted me to call, \"Constantia! For Heaven's\nsake, what has happened to you? Open the door, I beseech you.\"\n\n\"What voice is that? Sophia Courtland! O my friend! I am imprisoned!\nSome demon has barred the door, beyond my power to unfasten. Ah, why\ncomest thou so late? Thy succour would have somewhat profited if sooner\ngiven; but now, the lost Constantia--\" Here her voice sunk into\nconvulsive sobs.\n\nIn the midst of my own despair, on perceiving the fulfilment of my\napprehensions, and what I regarded as the fatal execution of some\nproject of Ormond, I was not insensible to the suggestions of prudence.\nI entreated my friend to retain her courage, while I flew to Laffert's\nand returned with suitable assistance to burst open the door.\n\nThe people of the farm-house readily obeyed my summons. Accompanied by\nthree men of powerful sinews, sons and servants of the farmer, I\nreturned with the utmost expedition to the mansion. The lamp still\nremained in its former place, but our loudest calls were unanswered. The\nsilence was uninterrupted and profound.\n\nThe door yielded to strenuous and repeated efforts, and I rushed into\nthe hall. The first object that met my sight was my friend, stretched\nupon the floor, pale and motionless, supine, and with all the tokens of\ndeath.\n\nFrom this object my attention was speedily attracted by two figures,\nbreathless and supine like that of Constantia. One of them was Ormond. A\nsmile of disdain still sat upon his features. The wound by which he fell\nwas secret, and was scarcely betrayed by the effusion of a drop of\nblood. The face of the third victim was familiar to my early days. It\nwas that of the impostor whose artifice had torn from Mr. Dudley his\npeace and fortune.\n\nAn explication of this scene was hopeless. By what disastrous and\ninscrutable fate a place like this became the scene of such complicated\nhavoc, to whom Craig was indebted for his death, what evil had been\nmeditated or inflicted by Ormond, and by what means his project had\narrived at this bloody consummation, were topics of wild and fearful\nconjecture.\n\nBut my friend--the first impulse of my fears was to regard her as dead.\nHope and a closer observation outrooted, or, at least, suspended, this\nopinion. One of the men lifted her in his arms. No trace of blood or\nmark of fatal violence was discoverable, and the effusion of cold water\nrestored her, though slowly, to life.\n\nTo withdraw her from this spectacle of death was my first care. She\nsuffered herself to be led to the farm-house. She was carried to her\nchamber. For a time she appeared incapable of recollection. She grasped\nmy hand, as I sat by her bedside, but scarcely gave any other tokens of\nlife.\n\nFrom this state of inactivity she gradually recovered. I was actuated by\na thousand forebodings, but refrained from molesting her by\ninterrogation or condolence. I watched by her side in silence, but was\neager to collect from her own lips an account of this mysterious\ntransaction.\n\nAt length she opened her eyes, and appeared to recollect her present\nsituation, and the events which led to it. I inquired into her\ncondition, and asked if there were any thing in my power to procure or\nperform for her.\n\n\"Oh, my friend,\" she answered, \"what have I done, what have I suffered,\nwithin the last dreadful hour! The remembrance, though insupportable,\nwill never leave me. You can do nothing for my relief. All I claim is\nyour compassion and your sympathy.\"\n\n\"I hope,\" said I, \"that nothing has happened to load you with guilt or\nwith shame?\"\n\n\"Alas! I know not. My deed was scarcely the fruit of intention. It was\nsuggested by a momentary frenzy. I saw no other means of escaping from\nvileness and pollution. I was menaced with an evil worse than death. I\nforebore till my strength was almost subdued: the lapse of another\nmoment would have placed me beyond hope.\n\n\"My stroke was desperate and at random. It answered my purpose too well.\nHe cast at me a look of terrible upbraiding, but spoke not. His heart\nwas pierced, and he sunk, as if struck by lightning, at my feet. O much\nerring and unhappy Ormond! That thou shouldst thus untimely perish! That\nI should be thy executioner!\"\n\nThese words sufficiently explained the scene that I had witnessed. The\nviolence of Ormond had been repulsed by equal violence. His foul\nattempts had been prevented by his death. Not to deplore the necessity\nwhich had produced this act was impossible; but, since this necessity\nexisted, it was surely not a deed to be thought upon with lasting\nhorror, or to be allowed to generate remorse.\n\nIn consequence of this catastrophe, arduous duties had devolved upon me.\nThe people that surrounded me were powerless with terror. Their\nignorance and cowardice left them at a loss how to act in this\nemergency. They besought my direction, and willingly performed whatever\nI thought proper to enjoin upon them.\n\nNo deliberation was necessary to acquaint me with my duty. Laffert was\ndespatched to the nearest magistrate with a letter, in which his\nimmediate presence was entreated and these transactions were briefly\nexplained. Early the next day the formalities of justice, in the\ninspection of the bodies and the examination of witnesses, were\nexecuted. It would be needless to dwell on the particulars of this\ncatastrophe. A sufficient explanation has been given of the causes that\nled to it. They were such as exempted my friend from legal\nanimadversion. Her act was prompted by motives which every scheme of\njurisprudence known in the world not only exculpates, but applauds. To\nstate these motives before a tribunal hastily formed and exercising its\nfunctions on the spot was a task not to be avoided, though infinitely\npainful. Remonstrances the most urgent and pathetic could scarcely\nconquer her reluctance.\n\nThis task, however, was easy, in comparison with that which remained. To\nrestore health and equanimity to my friend; to repel the erroneous\naccusations of her conscience; to hinder her from musing, with eternal\nanguish, upon this catastrophe; to lay the spirit of secret upbraiding\nby which she was incessantly tormented, which bereft her of repose,\nempoisoned all her enjoyments, and menaced not only the subversion of\nher peace but the speedy destruction of her life, became my next\nemployment.\n\nMy counsels and remonstrances were not wholly inefficacious. They\nafforded me the prospect of her ultimate restoration to tranquillity.\nMeanwhile, I called to my aid the influence of time and of a change of\nscene. I hastened to embark with her for Europe. Our voyage was\ntempestuous and dangerous, but storms and perils at length gave way to\nsecurity and repose.\n\nBefore our voyage was commenced, I endeavoured to procure tidings of the\ntrue condition and designs of Ormond. My information extended no further\nthan that he had put his American property into the hands of Mr.\nMelbourne, and was preparing to embark for France. Courtland, who has\nsince been at Paris, and who, while there, became confidentially\nacquainted with Martinette de Beauvais, has communicated facts of an\nunexpected nature.\n\nAt the period of Ormond's return to Philadelphia, at which his last\ninterview with Constantia in that city took place, he visited\nMartinette. He avowed himself to be her brother, and supported his\npretensions by relating the incidents of his early life. A separation at\nthe age of fifteen, and which had lasted for the same number of years,\nmay be supposed to have considerably changed the countenance and figure\nshe had formerly known. His relationship was chiefly proved by the\nenumeration of incidents of which her brother only could be apprized.\n\nHe possessed a minute acquaintance with her own adventures, but\nconcealed from her the means by which he had procured the knowledge. He\nhad rarely and imperfectly alluded to his own opinions and projects, and\nhad maintained an invariable silence on the subject of his connection\nwith Constantia and Helena. Being informed of her intention to return to\nFrance, he readily complied with her request to accompany her in this\nvoyage. His intentions in this respect were frustrated by the dreadful\ncatastrophe that has been just related. Respecting this event,\nMartinette had collected only vague and perplexing information.\nCourtland, though able to remove her doubts, thought proper to withhold\nfrom her the knowledge he possessed.\n\nSince her arrival in England, the life of my friend has experienced\nlittle variation. Of her personal deportment and domestic habits you\nhave been a witness. These, therefore, it would be needless for me to\nexhibit. It is sufficient to have related events which the recentness of\nyour intercourse with her hindered you from knowing but by means of some\nformal narrative like the present. She and her friend only were able to\nimpart to you the knowledge which you have so anxiously sought. In\nconsideration of your merits and of your attachment to my friend, I have\nconsented to devote my leisure to this task.\n\nIt is now finished; and I have only to add my wishes that the perusal of\nthis tale may afford you as much instruction as the contemplation of the\nsufferings and vicissitudes of Constantia Dudley has afforded to me.\nFarewell.\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
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+{"text":"\n\n_John Wilson_\n\nTrained as a geologist, John Wilson is now a full-time writer. After an Honours degree from St. Andrews University in Scotland and fifteen years as a research geologist, he began freelance writing in 1989. He has published five young adult novels. His first novel for children, _Weet_ , a fantasy of time travel and dinosaurs, was published in 1995 (Napoleon). With the addition of _Weet's Quest_ (Napoleon, 1997), and _Weet Alone_ (Napoleon, 1999), it has grown into a trilogy. Drawing on a long-standing interest in history, Wilson wrote _Across Frozen Seas_ (Beach Holme, 1997), a story set during the tragic Franklin Expedition of 1845. This theme expanded into an adult work, _North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames_ (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999), a fictionalized journal of one of Franklins officers. He returned to historical fiction for young adults with a book set during the Spanish Civil War _(Lost in Spain_ , Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000). Wilson has also written a biography of Norman Bethune _(Norman Bethune: A Life of Passionate Conviction_ , XYZ Publishing, 1999), Book 1 in The Quest Library collection.\n\nWilson teaches courses at Malaspina-University College in Nanaimo, and he tours to schools and conferences giving readings and workshops. He also writes reviews of both adult and children's books for _The Globe and Mail_ and _Quill & Quire_. John Wilson lives with his family in Lantzville, British Columbia. Comments on his books may be sent to John at johnwilson-author@home.com\nTHE QUEST LIBRARY  \nis edited by  \nRhonda Bailey\n\nThe Editorial Board is composed of  \nVen Begamudr\u00e9  \nLynne Bowen  \nJanet Lunn\n\nEditorial correspondence:  \nRhonda Bailey, Editorial Director  \nXYZ Publishing  \nP.O. Box 250  \nLantzville BC  \nVOR 2HO  \nE-mail: xyzed@telus.net\n**In the same collection**\n\nVen Begamudr\u00e9, _Isaac Brock: Larger Than Life_.\n\nLynne Bowen, _Robert Dunsmuir: Laird of the Mines_.\n\nKate Braid, _Emily Carr: Rebel Artist_.\n\nWilliam Chalmers, _George Mercer Dawson: Geologist, Scientist,_\n\n_Explorer_.\n\nStephen Eaton Hume, _Frederick Banting: Hero, Healer, Artist_.\n\nBetty Keller, _Pauline Johnson: First Aboriginal Voice of Canada_.\n\nDave Margoshes, _Tommy Douglas: Building the New Society_.\n\nRaymond Plante, _Jacques Plante: Behind the Mask_.\n\nArthur Slade, _John Diefenbaker: An Appointment With Destiny_.\n\nJohn Wilson, _Norman Bethune: A Life of Passionate Conviction_.\n\nRachel Wyatt, _Agnes Macphail: Champion of the Underdog_.\nJohn Franklin\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2001 John Wilson and XYZ Publishing.\n\nAll rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher \u2013 or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency \u2013 is an infringement of the copyright law.\n\n**Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data**\n\nWilson, John, 1951-\n\nJohn Franklin: traveller on undiscovered seas\n\n(The Quest Library; 10).\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 0-9688166-1-4\n\n1. Franklin, John, Sir, 1786\u20131847. 2. Canada, Northern \u2013 Discovery and exploration. 3. Explorers \u2013 Great Britain \u2013 Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Quest library; 10.\n\nFC396l.l.F73W54 2001 917.1904'l'092 C2001-940384-4  \nF1090.5W54 2001\n\nLegal Deposit: Second quarter 2001\n\nNational Library of Canada\n\nBiblioth\u00e8que nationale du Qu\u00e9bec\n\nXYZ Publishing acknowledges the support of The Quest Library project by the Canadian Studies Program and the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Canada.\n\nThe publishers further acknowledge the financial support our publishing program receives from The Canada Council for the Arts, the minist\u00e9re de la Culture et des Communications du Qu\u00e9bec, and the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de d\u00e9veloppement des entreprises culturelles.\n\nChronology and Index: Lynne Bowen  \nLayout: \u00c9discript enr.  \nCover design: Zirval Design  \nCover illustration: Francine Auger  \nPhoto researcher: Marilyn Mattenley  \nJohn Franklin's signature: National Archives of Canada, Reel A-1026\n\nPrinted and bound in Canada\n\nXYZ Publishing| Distributed by:  \n---|---  \n1781 Saint Hubert Street| General Distribution Services  \nMontreal, Qu\u00e9bec H2L 3Z1| 325 Humber College Boulevard  \nTel: (514) 525\u20132170| Toronto, Ontario M9W 7C3  \nFax: (514) 525\u20137537| Tel: (416) 213\u20131919  \nE-mail: xyzed@mlink.net | Fax: (416) 213\u20131917  \nWeb site: www.xyzedit.qc.ca | E-mail: cservice@genpub.com\n_For my father_\nNo; there are no more sunny continents \u2013 no more islands of the blessed \u2013 hidden under the far horizon, tempting the dreamer over the undiscovered sea; nothing but those weird and tragic shores, whose cliffs of everlasting ice and mainlands of frozen snow, which have never produced anything to us but a late and sad discovery of depths of human heroism, patience, and bravery, such as imagination could scarcely dream of.\n\n_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ ,  \nNovember, 1855.  \n(Quoted in _Frozen in Time_ by Owen Beattie and John Geiger).\n_Contents_\n\nPrologue: At Fort Enterprise\n\n1 Spilsby to Copenhagen\n\n2 Around Australia\n\n3 Cape Trafalgar to New Orleans\n\n4 Towards the North Pole\n\n5 On the Route of the Voyageurs\n\n6 Along the Arctic Coast\n\n7 Romantic Explorations\n\n8 Back to the Canadian Arctic\n\n9 Russia to Greece\n\n10 VanDiemen's Land\n\n11 King William Island\n\nEpilogue: Westminster Abbey\n\nChronology of John Franklin (1786\u20131847)\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nSources Consulted\n\nIndex\n\nTrying to stay alive. Gathering _Tripe de Roche_ for supper at an encampment in the Barren Lands, 1821.\nPrologue\n\nAt Fort Enterprise\n\n\"That's the man who ate his boots!\"\n\nLieutenant John Franklin is sitting like a pathetic Buddha on the bare wooden boards of an almost-empty room in a makeshift fort thousands of miles from his home. Around him the wind howls unimpeded over a frozen eternity of ice and snow, a barren emptiness that uncaringly kills those who challenge it unprepared. The journey here has been long, but it is almost over. The days are darkening into winter, a winter Franklin cannot survive. Life has apparently fled this harsh landscape \u2013 fled to the south where there is food and warmth, or into hibernation where neither is necessary. Franklin cannot flee, he is too weak, and if he sinks into hibernation he will never arise from it.\n\nPerhaps he is dreaming of the friendly fields of his English home and regretting he did not follow his father's footsteps to become a comfortable provincial businessman. More likely he is dreaming of food, for John Franklin is starving to death. His skin is pale beneath the dirt that has not been washed off for weeks. His clothes are filthy and in tatters and they hang from his skeletal frame as if made for a much larger man. Franklin is only occasionally in touch with reality and is so weak he cannot stand without assistance. His eyes drift in and out of focus as they wander around the room. In the corner lie the bodies of two men. They have been dead for several days and are beginning to smell, but no one living has the strength to drag the dead outside. Beside Franklin lies a third man. He is not dead yet, but it is hard to tell by looking at him. His breathing is so shallow as to be unde-tectable, and the only signs of life are the occasional grunts that he emits in response to whatever fevered dream is passing through his brain. It will be only a matter of hours before he joins the two in the corner.\n\nAlthough he looks closer to sixty, John Franklin is only thirty-five. It is November 7, 1821, and this is the culmination of Franklin's first great expedition. Three-and-a-half months before, Franklin, with midshipmen Robert Hood and George Back, doctor and naturalist John Richardson, able seaman John Hepburn, and fifteen voyageurs and hunters, had set off into the unknown from the mouth of the Coppermine River on Canada's Arctic coast. Since then, they have mapped 1030 kilometres of previously unexplored coastline, but at a terrible cost. Hood has been murdered and Back is missing. One man has been executed, and nine others lie dead of starvation, their bodies scattered in the snow across the Barren Lands. Now the survivors are back where they began, at Fort Enterprise. Perhaps someone will find their records and their frozen bodies next spring.\n\nRichardson and Hepburn are with Franklin. They have managed to drag themselves outside to collect some wood. They do not have the strength to both gather wood for the fire and collect food. It is bitterly cold. The fire takes priority. At least they will die warm.\n\nThe wood collecting is painfully slow work. It is nearly impossible for the men to make their starved bodies do what they want. Their joints ache, their limbs are swollen, their gums are bleeding, and their teeth are getting loose. Their skin is covered with sores, and they are beginning to lose touch with reality. Visions of impossible banquet tables laden and groaning with rich foods float before them. They have even begun to steal hungry glances at the bodies of their dead companions. For weeks their meals have consisted of soup made from pounded, putrid deer bones, fried or boiled animal skins, and _Tripe de Roche_ , a lichen scraped off the rocks around them. The skins and bones had been discarded the previous spring and were buried in lime ash, which makes the soup from boiling them so alkaline that it rips the skin from the explorers' mouths and throats when they drink it. Without enough to sustain them, their bodies are consuming themselves.\n\nRichardson and Hepburn spend the entire day working and have only enough wood for one fire. Hepburn is bending over to pick up a piece of kindling when a faint noise penetrates his befuddled brain. Agonizingly slowly he stands up. Richardson has heard it as well. The two men look at each other, hardly daring to believe what it might mean. There it is again. This time there can be no doubt \u2013 it is a musket shot.\n\nGeorge Back has not died in the wilderness. He has completed an epic journey, found a First Nations band only two days previously, and sent three of them back to the fort with a supply of fresh meat.\n\nRichardson and Hepburn, staggering with weakness and excitement, scramble back to tell Franklin -food is on the way. They are saved in the nick of time. Ironically, the very food that saves their lives almost kills them. Unable to stop, they gorge on the rich meat the hunters bring and lie for days in agony. But they do revive, although it is the spring of the next year before they fully recover their strength.\n\nBy October 1822, Franklin is back in London, where he is considered a hero. His saga of starvation, murder, and cannibalism captures the public imagination. He is recognized on the street, promoted to Captain, and made a member of the Royal Society. His 180,000-word _Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22_ , sells briskly. In quick succession, he marries, fathers a child, and discovers that his new wife is ill with consumption.\n\nGiven the horrors he has undergone in 1821, the gratifying recognition he receives upon his return, and his initiation into family life, one would not expect Franklin to rush immediately off into the wilds once more. One experience of severe starvation is usually enough. Yet, in February of 1825, leaving his baby daughter and dying wife behind, Franklin once more sets sail for the \"shores of the polar sea.\"\n\nWhy did Franklin jump at every opportunity to risk his life? What pulled him back to the Canadian Arctic, not once but twice, and the second time to his death?\n\nOf the forty-seven years from the time he joined the navy at age fourteen until he died at age sixty-one, John Franklin spent a bare dozen years at home in England. He was a restless man, a traveller who was never content to stay in one place in comfort and security. This characteristic led him to accomplish much, made his name a household word, and, eventually, killed him.\n\nEven after his death, Franklin's life continues to fascinate writers. He has been presented as a hero, an honourable officer striving nobly against impossible odds. He has also been depicted as a fool, who doomed himself and his expedition through his inflexible, archaic attitude. More than 150 years after his men buried him in an unknown grave in the centre of the land that kept calling him back, there is no agreement on Sir John Franklin. Perhaps the restless traveller will never be laid to rest, the mystery never solved. Perhaps John Franklin's journey will never end.\n\nJohn Franklin's first adventure. The Battle of Copenhagen, 1801.\n\nSpilsby to Copenhagen\n\n\"When I arrived on the maindeck...there was not a single man standing the whole way from the mainmast forward,...I hastened down the fore ladder to the lower deck and felt really relieved to find someone alive.\"\n\nMidshipman on HMS _Monarch_  \nat the Battle of Copenhagen\n\nJohn Franklin grew up in Spilsby in Lincolnshire, the descendant of a long line of country gentlemen. His father, Willingham, was not an adventurous man, quite happy to spend his life as a respectable Spilsby merchant. Willingham married a farmer's daughter, Hanah Weekes, and most of the excitement in his life stemmed from helping to raise the couple's twelve children. John was number nine, the youngest of five boys.\n\nOne boy died in infancy, but as the others grew, it became clear to Willingham that none of the children would follow him into business. The wars against Napoleon and the expanding British Empire offered young men amazing opportunities to seek glory, wealth, and adventure in the far-flung corners of the globe. Despite the dangers of an early death from disease or violence, a merchant's life in Spilsby paled in comparison.\n\nThe oldest Franklin boy, Thomas Adam, went off to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry and became its colonel. In 1807, after a disastrous financial speculation in which he lost all his own and much of his father's money, Thomas committed suicide at the age of thirty-three. Willingham's namesake attended Oxford, became a lawyer, went to India, was knighted, and became a Supreme Court Judge in Madras. He died of cholera in 1824 when he was forty-five. James, who was only three years older than John, joined the Indian army and served with distinction in the Pindari War. He was also a surveyor, mapmaker, and author of a geology text. James lived to be fifty-one. All these were common \u2013 and with the exception of Thomas's final disgrace, respectable \u2013 occupations for the young sons of the middle class in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they influenced John.\n\nFranklin was also very close to his seven sisters, and it was from them that he derived the gentleness that marked his life. The letters where he discusses personal matters are all addressed to his sisters, not to his parents or brothers. He wrote to them all, but his favourite was Isabella. She married Thomas Cracroft, and their daughter, Sophia, was to be an element in Franklin's later life.\n\nAt ten, young John was sent to board at Louth Grammar School, twenty-four kilometres north of Spilsby. The school was typical of the educational institutes of its day. Students were given a basic classical education. Learning to read the Greek and Roman poets in their original languages and practising discipline, teamwork, and proficiency at sports were the highest goals of education \u2013 much more important than studying science and mathematics. The author Thomas de Quincy called schools like Louth, \"the peculiar glory of England,\" credited them with developing \"superior manliness, generosity, and self-control,\" and claimed they got rid of \"meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness.\"\n\nCertainly, Franklin aspired to manliness, generosity, and self-control, but whether he got these qualities from his time at Louth is unknown. In contrast to de Quincey's glowing testimonial, the poet Alfred Tennyson, who attended Louth early in the 1800s, said, \"How I did hate that school! The only good thing I ever got from it was the memory...of an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the school windows.\" Whatever John Franklin thought of Louth, it was from there that he set out on his life's journey.\n\nWhen he was eleven years old, Franklin and some school friends travelled the fourteen kilometres from Louth to the village of Saltfleet on the coast. It was the first time John had seen the sea, and the effect was electrifying. The vastness of the dark, rolling North Sea, the mystery of what lay over the flat horizon, and the apparent confidence with which the white-sailed British men-of-war tacked up and down the coast exerted a pull on Franklin that he was never to overcome.\n\nWatching his older brothers go out into the world and struggle, successfully or not, to better their social position and expand their horizons, had taught John that he did not want to settle down in his father's grocery shop. Nor, despite being a pious young man, did he want to fulfill Willingham senior's wish that he enter the clergy, but it wasn't until he saw the sea that he knew which direction he would go.\n\nAt the first school holidays, Franklin rushed home and enthusiastically informed his father that he was going to be a sailor.\n\n\"I would rather follow you to the grave than the sea,\" a horrified Willingham responded.\n\nBut John perservered. In his mind he pictured \"both the hardships and pleasures of a sailor's life\" and was so certain that it was the life for him that no other course was possible. And there was a family connection to the sea that John could cite as precedent. An aunt had married the explorer Matthew Flinders.\n\nFortunately for the youngest Franklin boy, Willingham was not an unreasonable man. He realized that outright opposition to John would alienate him and cause a family rift, so he tried a more subtle approach. When John turned thirteen, he booked him passage on a merchantman sailing from Hull to Lisbon. Since the journey would traverse the Bay of Biscay, a stretch of water notorious for its storms and rough sea conditions, Willingham reasoned that this would cure his son of any romantic longings he harboured for the nautical life. The plan backfired. John returned even more determined than ever to become a sailor.\n\nShowing remarkable wisdom and enlightenment for the times, Willingham bowed to the inevitable and obtained for John a position as first-class volunteer on HMS _Polyphemus_ , a two-decked, sixty-four-gun man-of-war under the command of Captain Lawford. John Franklin joined his first ship on March 9, 1800, a month before his fourteenth birthday. A year later and only two weeks before his fifteenth birthday, Franklin's desire for adventure was fulfilled.\n\nIn early 1801, Britain's war against Napoleon was not going well. Austria had been defeated the year before, and Russia, Sweden, and Denmark had formed the League of Armed Neutrality to challenge Britain's right to intercept and search merchant ships bound for French ports. As a response, Britain sent a fleet of eighteen battleships to attack the Danish fleet at Copenhagen.\n\nSea battles in the days of wooden ships and before explosive shells were brutal affairs. It is very difficult to sink a wooden ship by punching holes in it with round shot. A lucky shot might set off an explosion or start a fire, but these rarely happened. More commonly, ships simply pounded away at each other for hours until they were little more than floating, mastless hulks filled with horribly mutilated bodies. The aim of attacking a ship became not to sink it but to kill so many of its crew that the survivors could not continue the fight, either because they were too few or because they had had enough and gave up.\n\nWhen a solid round cannonball weighing fourteen kilograms went through a ship, it destroyed everything in its path. Ships' timbers and masts were shattered and wood splinters flew around like shrapnel. Human flesh did not even slow these projectiles down. In addition, when two ships were close enough, they fired grapeshot, clusters of small round shot designed to kill men on exposed decks, and chain shot, which had the dual purpose of destroying a ship's rigging and cutting in half any men in its way. Sharpshooters sat in the upper rigging and picked off sailors on the opposing ship's decks.\n\nOn the morning of Thursday, April 2, the British attack squadrons, under the command of Horatio Nelson, lay off Copenhagen harbour. The decks of the _Polyphemus_ were scenes of tense activity. In the deepest levels of the ship the surgeons laid out their instruments in preparation for the gruesome work to come. Since they were below the waterline, they were relatively safe from the cannon shot, yet this was where the scenes of greatest horror occurred. Many of the surgeons and their assistants were barely trained butchers who could do nothing but hack off mutilated limbs and dig inexpertly for embedded musket balls and assorted pieces of wood and metal. The floor around them would soon be running with blood and the dark, cramped space echoing with the sound of the sailors' screams as the surgeons carried out their grisly tasks without the aid of anesthetics. If you were wounded, your chances of coming out of this hellish place were slim. No wonder some of the wounded refused to be taken below.\n\nOn the gun decks above the surgeons' heads, the gun ports were being swung up and secured. Each sweating, six-man gun crew laboured to roll their immensely heavy weapon out and make sure it was ready. Hawsers as thick as a man's arm were tied around the gun so that, when it fired, the recoil would not throw the tons of iron back across the deck to crush men and punch a hole in the ship's side. The powder monkey, a boy even younger and smaller than the teenage Franklin, stood nervously to one side with nothing to do until the battle began. Then his job would be one of the most dangerous. He would have to run through the ship to the powder magazine and fetch the charges for his gun. Carrying a bag of unstable explosives, he would have to negotiate wildly tilting decks, running, screaming sailors, cannonballs, and musket shot. If he failed, not only would there be very little left of him to find, but the resulting fire could put the entire ship in danger.\n\nOn the exposed upper decks, anything loose was stowed away. Marines with primed muskets took positions behind stacks of tightly rolled hammocks. On the quarterdeck, the officers strolled around, overseeing the activity and attempting to keep the tension under control by assuming an air of nonchalance. This was where young John Franklin stood, scared and wondering if life at sea was quite as attractive as he had imagined it. On the other hand, he was thrilled by the imposing spectacle of a battle fleet sailing to war, and he was excited by the adventure of it all.\n\nAt 10:30, the ships weighed anchor and sailed towards the Danish fleet. _Polyphemus_ was second in line, and at 11:20, she and another ship, the _Isis_ , anchored beside two Danish ships \u2013 one of seventy-four and the other of sixty-four guns \u2013 and commenced firing. As the ship's log briefly described it, \"At noon a very heavy and constant fire was kept between us and the enemy, and this was continued without intermission until forty-five minutes past two, when the 74 abreast of us ceased firing.... We ceased firing and boarded both ships and took possession of them.\"\n\nThis clinical description gives no sense of the carnage wrought on board both the Danish and British vessels. _Polyphemus_ got off lightly, having just six men killed and twenty-four wounded, although one of the dead was James Bell, a midshipman and a messmate of Franklins. Other ships suffered much worse. In total the British lost 350 killed, and the Danes 6,000 killed, wounded, or prisoner.\n\nCopenhagen is famous for Nelson's response to his Commander-in-Chief's flagged signal to break off the fight. When he was informed of the order, Nelson replied, \"I have only one eye \u2013 I have a right to be blind sometimes.\" Then, putting his telescope to his blind eye, he turned towards the flagship and said, \"I really do not see the signal!\"\n\nThe story became part of Nelson's myth, but the battle turned out to have been unnecessary. On March 24, even before the battle was fought, the mad Czar Paul of Russia was assassinated. Since he was the force behind the League of Armed Neutrality, it fell apart and would have done so without the bloodshed of April 2. Copenhagen was not the last pointless battle Franklin would fight in.\n\nThe Battle of Copenhagen made a strong impression on the sensitive boy of fourteen. Young Franklin, like other young people of his time, regarded war as glorious and battle as adventurous, but watching men being dismembered around him was an experience he never forgot. In later years he vividly recalled the sight of the large number of both British and Danish dead that he viewed through the clear water of Copenhagen harbour. Such an experience would have hardened some people, but in Franklins case it left him with a desire to minimize suffering \u2013 an ironic consequence given the horrors which attended many of his later ventures.\n\nA way station on a journey to the other side of the world. A prison hulk at Portsmouth filled with convicts awaiting transport to Australia.\n\nAround Australia\n\n\"He is a very fine youth, and there is every possibility of his doing credit to the _Investigator_ and himself. In a few months he will be sufficient of an astronomer to be my right-hand man in that way.\"\n\nMatthew Flinders on John Franklin\n\nIf, in 1801, you were caught stealing a loaf of bread, or poaching a pheasant or grouse from the land belonging to the local Lord, or if the government considered you to be a political risk, you had a good chance of ending up in Australia for the rest of your life. And the chances of that life being long were remote.\n\nFirst you would be stored in a rotting hulk anchored on the Thames. You would live in the filthy dark, damp hold, often with a six-kilogram iron ball chained to your ankle. Your spirit would be gradually broken by the degrading conditions, the harsh punishments, and the hopelessness of your situation. Eventually, there would be enough convicts on the hulks to warrant a transportation. These were contracted out to private firms, some of which had gained their experience transporting human cargoes on the slave ships across the Atlantic. If you were lucky, you got a good ship where only one in twenty or thirty died. If you were unlucky and the Captain was a brutal sadist, or was cutting back on space so he could carry cargo to sell, or if typhus broke out, one in three or four of your companions might die on the voyage. Arrival at the new colony of Port Jackson, soon to change its name to Sydney, brought little relief. There you would live until your sentence was up, little more than a working slave, subject to the whims of the officers in charge of the colony and a brutal punishment regime which included flogging until your back looked like hamburger.\n\nSeveral thousand convicts, along with a similar number of free settlers, clung to the fertile strip of land around Port Jackson harbour. Inland, there was no room for expansion, it was just a wilderness of barren mountain ranges filled with bizarre animals and plants and unfriendly local inhabitants.\n\nIn your father's or your grandfather's day, you might have ended up in America, but the colonies there had revolted and were independent now. Port Jackson was the only place remote enough for Britain to dump her unwanted populace, and that unwanted populace was growing. The British government was terrified of a revolution at home similar to the one the French had undergone in 1789. There was a lot of unrest. Early socialists were agitating for improved working conditions as the Industrial Revolution took hold of British society. Better, the government thought, to get rid of these troublemakers by sending them to Port Jackson. But Port Jackson was almost full, and there was no other obvious place where a convict colony could be started. More mapping of the poorly known Australian coast was needed. The job was given to Franklin's uncle, Matthew Flinders.\n\nBefore he sailed to fight at Copenhagen, Franklin was told that Flinders was ready to sail in his ship the _Investigator_. The young man was interested and thought he had a good chance of going with his uncle. The only problem was that he would be away when the _Investigator_ sailed. Just in case he was back in time, Franklin wrote and asked his father to put in a good word for him with Flinders.\n\nAs it turned out, the Danish adventure was shorter than expected and Franklin returned to find his uncle still in England. He also found that his request to his parents had been answered and that Flinders was holding a space for him. His father had obviously resigned himself to his son's ambitions, but perhaps he felt that a voyage of exploration would be less dangerous than a battle. If he did, he was wrong.\n\nFlinders was one of the best navigators of his age. He had been with Captain Bligh on his second voyage across the Pacific and he had experience of surveying the Australian coast. Flinders was the obvious man to lead the new venture. In July 1801 he set sail from England, with John Franklin as a newly promoted midshipman.\n\nFlinders took Franklin under his wing and trained him in astronomy and navigation. It was a superb training for a young sailor with pretensions to exploration, and Franklin appreciated it. Flinders was happy with his young charge: \"It is with great pleasure that I tell you of the good conduct of John.... His attention to his duty has gained him the esteem of the first lieutenant, who scarcely knows how to talk enough in his praise.\" Even given the family connection and Flinders' natural tendency to speak well of his nephew, Franklin was making a mark.\n\nFranklin was a serious boy who took his new role to heart: \"The first thing which demands attention is the learning perfectly my duty as an officer and seaman. It would be an unpardonable shame if after serving two years I was ignorant of it.\" He read Shakespeare, Junius, Smollett, a history of Scotland, and geographical and naval textbooks. He also regretted not spending more time on his French lessons since, when he met some French officers (England and France were enjoying a brief peace), they had to resort to his second language, Latin.\n\nThat Franklin did well with Flinders is proven in the large numbers of islands that Flinders named Franklin, Spilsby, or Louth. But all was not schoolboy fun. On a barren stretch of coast, one of the officers was speared four times by aggressive natives, and one evening in Sleaford Bay, the ship's master, Mr. Thistle; a midshipman, Mr. Taylor (a messmate of Franklins); and six able seamen took the cutter and went ashore to look for fresh water. As darkness fell they began the return journey to the ships. They never arrived and no sign was ever found of the eight men. This incident was an odd little foreshadowing of Franklin's own final fate.\n\nFlinders had known before they sailed that the _Investigator_ was not in the best of condition. The navy had claimed the pressure of circumstances as a reason for not having something better available, and Flinders, keen to get going, had acquiesced. He did not realize how bad his ship was until she was beached for repairs after surveying the Gulf of Carpentaria on Australia's north coast. As the carpenters proceeded to repair the known leaks, they came upon previously unsuspected rotten timbers. They produced a report that was grim reading for men so far from home; if the _Investigator_ met a strong gale, she would founder; if she ran aground, she would break up; in twelve months, not a sound timber would remain. Nothing could be done until they reached Port Jackson on the other side of the continent. Hoping for the best, they set off to complete the circumnavigation of the continent.\n\nThe voyage was a nightmare. Sailing the ship was tense work, for it leaked thirty-four centimetres of water an hour on some days, and the crew never knew when it would fall apart beneath them. Fresh food ran low and scurvy and dysentery took hold. Five men died before they arrived at Port Jackson and four more soon after. Franklin got his first glimpse of the downside of nineteenth-century exploration.\n\nIn Port Jackson, the _Investigator_ was condemned as \"not worth repairing in any country.\" With his mapping work incomplete, Flinders now had to return home to report on the _Investigator_ and find a new ship to continue his explorations. He found passage on the _Porpoise_ and chose Franklin to be among those who would accompany him. Since the journey required passage of the treacherous Torres Strait, two merchantmen, the _Cato_ and the _Bridgewater_ , asked to accompany the _Porpoise_ , and the small convoy sailed on August 10, 1803.\n\nOn the night of August 17th, the warrant officer on lookout in the forecastle of the _Porpoise_ called out that he could see breakers ahead. He was too late. The ship ground onto a previously unmapped coral reef and heeled over. The _Cato_ followed shortly after. The _Bridgewater_ was safe, but impossible to get to. The men on the _Porpoise_ spent a worrying night constructing a makeshift raft in case their vessel broke apart. The crew of the _Cato_ could do little except cling desperately to the forecastle of their ship as the waves pounded it to pieces beneath them. At daybreak, Flinders managed to rescue the men on the _Cato_ before the ship broke up, although three sailors drowned in the attempt. Both crews and the supplies from the _Porpoise_ were transferred to a nearby sandbar.\n\nIt should have been a matter of waiting only a few hours for rescue by the _Bridgewater_ , but her commander, Captain Palmer, panicked and sailed off, deserting the shipwrecked crews. On arriving at Bombay, Palmer reported both the _Porpoise_ and _Cato_ lost with all hands. Ironically, on the next leg of its voyage home, the _Bridgewater_ went down with Palmer and all her crew.\n\nThe ninety-four abandoned men were now stuck on an uncharted sandbar measuring about 274 by 46 metres, and only 1.5 metres above the sea. They had adequate supplies, including some live sheep and pigs, but no hope of rescue. Flinders realized it was important to keep his men busy. Sweating in the tropical sun, they dug a pit, raised one of the _Cato's_ masts, and placed a flag on top. It would serve the dual purpose of signalling any passing ship and laying national claim to the island.\n\nFlinders also had his men lay out his charts of the Australian coast to dry. Unfortunately, something scared the sheep, and they stampeded across the carpet of paper. The sound of the sheep's hooves as they galloped over his invaluable papers must have horrified the explorer, but fortunately little damage was done. The charts survive to this day in the British Museum, complete with muddy hoofprints. The sheep were eaten.\n\nThe crew built tents and took inventory of their supplies. One insubordinate man was publicly flogged to reimpose discipline and Flinders' thoughts turned to the party's rescue. The only hope was a perilous small boat journey across 1207 kilometres of open ocean back to Port Jackson. On August 26, Flinders set off in the cutter, which he had renamed _Hope_. In only six weeks, he completed one of the great feats of nineteenth-century navigation and was back with help.\n\nFranklin remained behind on the sandbar, but he was not idle. The men dug a saw-pit, set up a forge, and constructed a new ship from the timbers of the wrecked _Porpoise_.\n\nAfter their rescue, the men of the shipwreck separated. Some had had enough of the sea and returned to Port Jackson to settle. Flinders continued his mapping on his way back to England. Oddly, Franklin didn't go with his uncle and instead took passage to China. This was a lucky decision because Flinders was captured by the French at Mauritius and held captive for six years. The experience was so hard that he lived for only three years after his release.\n\nThere were more adventures in store for Franklin. In January 1804, he was returning home from China as signal midshipman on the flagship of a small, heavily laden, lightly armed convoy of merchantmen under the command of Commodore Dance. One morning, a squadron of French warships appeared on the horizon. Slow and massively outgunned, the merchant ships were easy pickings for the French. But Dance was a man to be reckoned with. Instead of trying a futile escape, he decided on an extraordinary bluff. Ordering Franklin to raise his signal flags, Dance formed his ungainly fleet into a line of battle. As the French commander watched in disbelief, Dance attacked. With the merchantmen bearing down on them, the French reassessed their opponents. Surely, no one could be insane enough to attack heavily armed warships with merchant ships. This must be a trap of some sort. The French fleet turned tail and fled from its puny foe. To add insult to injury, Dance pursued the French for two hours before breaking off and resuming his voyage. Given the difference in the two fleets strengths, it is probably just as well he didn't catch them. Franklin's luck was holding.\n\nOn returning to England in August, 1804, Franklin joined the _Bellerophon_. Coincidentally, as a young man ten years previously, Matthew Flinders had served on this ship.\n\nFranklin was given six weeks leave before he joined his new ship. Although still only eighteen, Franklin had seen his fair share of adventure and hardship. He knew how abruptly life could end in those days and wrote in his first letter home: \"I trust some kind person will not fail answering this by return and mention how every member of the family is \u2013 whether any of the Spilsby friends are dead,...and how my old acquaintances in and about Spilsby are. Some of them have, I expect, paid the debt of Nature.\"\n\nFranklin's assumption that some of his young friends must have died in his three-year absence, especially since they were leading much safer lives than his, seems odd, but then, two hundred years ago, life was a much chancier proposition than it is now. Franklin's morbid preoccupation soon gave way to a cheerful dismissal of his own hardships. \"Although mishaps seem to attend every companion of the voyage \u2013 viz., a rotten ship, being wrecked, the worthy commander being detained, and the great expense of twice fitting out -yet we do cheer ourselves with the well-founded idea that we have gained some knowledge and experience, both professional and general.\"\n\nSix weeks was not much of a break for Franklin's family to reconnect with their much-changed son. His experiences had matured him, and in the quiet Lincolnshire evenings the seafaring young Franklin had many exciting tales to tell his father, who was preparing to retire from his staid life of commerce.\n\nFor Franklin the next year was a boring one spent blockading the French fleet at Brest. In the summer of 1805 the _Bellerophon_ returned to England for supplies and then continued her blockading work at Cadiz and Cartagena, with only short breaks to escort convoys in the Mediterranean. While Franklin was doing this, his old commander from Copenhagen, Nelson, was chasing the French and Spanish fleets across the Atlantic and back as they attempted to concentrate in enough strength to escort an invasion force over the English Channel. At length the combined French and Spanish fleet settled into Cadiz. On October 19, 1805, Admiral Villeneuve, stung by Napoleon's lack of confidence in him, ordered his thirty-three warships out of Cadiz harbour. Just out of sight over the horizon, Admiral Nelson, midshipman Franklin, and the twenty-seven warships of the British fleet waited. Franklin's brief spell of boredom was about to end.\n\nCape Trafalgar to New Orleans\n\n\"I was astonished at the coolness and undaunted bravery displayed by our gallant and veteran crew, when surrounded by five enemy's ships.\"\n\nOfficer on _Bellerophon_\n\nDaybreak on October 21, 1805. The sun rose in a clear blue sky and promised a fine day. The wind was light and the sea almost calm as the masts of the combined French and Spanish fleets appeared over the horizon like \"a great wood on our lee bow.\" Majestically, the two fleets drew together. This was the last great naval engagement fought under sail and, unlike Copenhagen, it was fought in the open ocean. Many of the ships had been recently painted, the British in buff and black, the French in black and white, and the Spanish in the brighter red, white, and black. The white sails billowed out and the wooden spars were varnished and gleaming in the sunlight. The masts were rich with flags, multicoloured signal flags, the personal flags of the senior officers, and the huge national ensigns: the red and gold of Spain, the tricolour of France, and the Union Jack of Britain. Very few people ever got to see such a magnificent sight, and Franklin, with his love of the navy and things nautical, was impressed.\n\nA fate that Franklin escaped. Nelson shot down in his moment of triumph on the quarterdeck of HMS _Victory_ at Trafalgar, 1805.\n\nBut he was also awed. Many of the combined fleet's ships were bigger, faster, and more heavily gunned than anything the British possessed. The biggest was the extraordinary Spanish flagship, _Santissima Trinidad_ , considered by many to be the most beautiful ship afloat. With four gundecks, she towered over Nelson's _Victory_ or Franklin's _Bellerophon_ , and her 136 cannons had the potential to wreak terrible havoc amongst enemy sailors. However, the British had one advantage: they could fire their guns faster and more accurately than the enemy could. Thus they could kill more sailors and disable more ships, and, Nelson fervently hoped, win the coming battle. For all the beauty of the scene, there was brutal work to be done.\n\nNelson's novel strategy was to break the combined fleet's line. He hoped to do this by having two lines of his own sail at right angles to the enemy line. He led one line in the _Victory_ , and his friend Collingwood led the other in the _Royal Sovereign_. The _Bellerophon_ was sixth in Collingwood's line. Franklins job that day was signals officer. He had to stand on the open deck with a telescope, read the flag signals from Nelson and Collingwood, and relay them to his own Captain Cooke. The last clear message he saw before the smoke of battle made his job difficult was Nelsons famous order, \"England expects that every man will do his duty.\"\n\nEverything was ready on _Bellerophon_ , \"Billy Ruffian\" as she was affectionately known by her crew. Her sailors had cleared the decks and thrown sand down to aid the footing of the barefoot gunners and absorb the blood of the dead and wounded. Men wrapped scarves around their heads to protect their ears from the deafening noise of the cannon, and they drew up wills. Each man fortified his spirits with a half pint of rum. Everyone was scared, but few let it show. Some sailors danced a hornpipe. The gunners primed their cannons and chalked, \"Bellerophon, Death or Glory\" on the barrels.\n\nThe battle began as the first shots were fired at the _Royal Sovereign_ around noon. Half an hour later, the _Bellerophon_ broke through the enemy line, exchanging cannon shot with the _Bahama_ and the _Montanes_. Hauling around, she closed with the French ship _L'Aigle_ , and the rigging of the two became entangled. The battle raged between the two ships. The French tried to board but were driven off. The _Bellerophon_ almost blew up when a grenade, thrown through one of the gun ports, exploded in the corridor outside the powder magazine. Fortunately, the explosion blew the magazine door closed and prevented destruction. French soldiers packed _L'Aigle_ 's rigging and raked Bellerophon's open decks with musket shot. The _Bahama_ returned to pour more cannon fire into the British ship. Others joined in, and at one point, the _Bellerophon_ , with her main and mizzen masts gone, was fighting five enemy ships at once.\n\nThrough all this, Franklin was busy. He could not see any signals to relay, but one of his other duties was to make sure the main flag was kept flying. To lower it meant surrender. Twice the flag came down from enemy fire, and twice Franklin raised it.\n\nThe French musket fire made the open decks a deadly chaos. Captain Cooke died from a musket shot as he was reloading his pistols. One particular sniper in the French rigging was making life on the deck difficult. Franklin was talking with a friend, midshipman Simmons, when they saw a sailor wounded by the sniper. Simmons moved to help, but he had only gone a few steps when he shuddered, turned back to Franklin, and tried to speak. Then he collapsed on the deck, shot through the head. Franklin and a sergeant of Marines went to help the wounded sailor. As they carried him below, he was hit again and killed. \"He'll have you next,\" Franklin told the sergeant. Grabbing a musket, the sergeant went below to try to get a sight on the sniper.\n\nFranklin scanned the enemy rigging and spotted the sniper, who was aiming directly at him. He jumped behind the mast, and the musket ball intended for him embedded itself in the deck nearby. Franklin peered out to see the sniper fall from the rigging into the sea. The sergeant returned. \"I killed him at the seventh shot,\" the man proclaimed proudly.\n\nSo badly damaged that they could barely continue to fight, the two ships drifted apart. _L'Aigle_ was captured by another British ship and _Bellerophon_ claimed the severely damage _El Monarca_ as a prize.\n\nThe Battle of Trafalgar ended at almost six in the evening with a spectacular explosion like the one that had nearly happened earlier on _Bellerophon_ when the grenade blew up near the powder magazine. Fire, burning down through the decks of the French ship _Achille_ , reached its powder magazine. \"In a moment,\" one observer wrote, \"the hull burst into a cloud of smoke and fire. A column of vivid flame shot up to an enormous height in the atmosphere and terminated by expanding into an immense globe, representing, for a few seconds, a prodigious tree in flames, speckled with many dark spots, which the pieces of timber and bodies of men occasioned while they were suspended in the clouds.\"\n\nThe battle was over. The British fleet was severely damaged, but the French and Spanish were destroyed. Nelson's imaginative strategy had worked, but at a cost. Like Cooke on the _Bellerophon_ , Nelson had been found by a sniper. A musket ball had entered his shoulder and lodged near his spine. He lived long enough to learn that the battle was won. His body was preserved in a cask of rum for the three-week journey back to England, where, amidst vast outpourings of national grief, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.\n\nThe _Bellerophon_ lost her Captain, Master, and twenty-six crew dead. One hundred and twenty-seven men were wounded. Franklin was lucky. Out of the forty-seven men on the exposed quarterdeck, he was one of only seven neither killed nor wounded. In the official report of the battle, he was singled out for displaying \"very conspicuous zeal and ability.\" However, there was a price to pay. The noise of battle left Franklin slightly deaf for the rest of his life.\n\nFranklin took great pride in his navy experiences. Twenty years after Trafalgar, he saw the _Bellerophon_ 's scarred battle flag preserved in a church in England. \"You can well conceive the delight it afforded to me,\" he wrote, \"especially as the preservation of it in the hour of battle was one of the particular parts of my duty as signals officer on that occasion.\"\n\nJohn Franklin's involvement in the Battle of Trafalgar provides one of those strange coincidences that populate the darker corners of history books. Two threads of Canadian history crossed off the coast of Spain that day. One of the ships with which the _Bellerophon_ exchanged fire was the _Bahama_. The captain of the _Bahama_ , a rising star in the Spanish Navy, was less lucky than Franklin. After he disengaged _Bellerophon_ , he was attacked by another ship, the _Colossus_. Before he could surrender his crippled ship, he was decapitated by a cannonball. That Spanish captain was Dionisio Alcala Galiano, who, with Malaspina, had mapped much of Canada's west coast in 1792 in his ship the _Sutil_. Among the few remaining Spanish names scattered through the Gulf Islands off Victoria, there is a Dionisio Point, Mount Sutil, and Galiano Island. It is slightly bizarre that two significant figures in Canadian exploration unknowingly, yet busily, tried to kill each other in one of the most famous naval battles of all time.\n\nAfter Trafalgar, Franklin returned briefly to Britain while his ship was repaired. Then, like most of the rest of the fleet, the _Bellerophon_ spent a year and a half cruising to make sure Britain's naval dominance remained and that her trade could be protected. In 1807, Franklin transferred to the _Bedford_ as master's mate, but was soon promoted to acting lieutenant. His role as lieutenant was confirmed on February 11, 1808 as he sailed with the fleet to escort the deposed Portuguese royal family to Brazil.\n\nFranklin did not like the Portuguese, and, in keeping with the outspoken nature of his times, had no qualms about saying so. He called them, \"the most ungrateful inhabitants of the earth, for whom it is impossible to feel the slightest esteem or respect.\" With no apparent sense of irony, he went on to bemoan their \"bigotry.\"\n\nOn one occasion at Madeira, Franklin went ashore to collect two deserters from the _Bedford_ who were being held by a Portuguese sergeant. The serious, religious young Franklin was not impressed to find the sergeant drunk and using the prisoners as free labourers to thatch his own home. In order to take charge of the prisoners, Franklin had to argue long and hard with the increasingly belligerent man. The man uttered violent threats and, as Franklin euphemistically recalled later, expressed himself, \"with such gestures as greatly to irritate my feelings.\" But Franklin could apparently keep his temper even under extreme provocation, and persistence paid off. He returned to the ship with the deserters, and the sergeant was left with holes in his thatch.\n\nFranklin disliked Brazil too. He found it dirty, unhealthy, and overcrowded. This was a difficult time for Franklin. His father had made some poor financial decisions and his brother, Thomas Adam, was in the middle of his financial disaster. The family was in dire economic straits and the young Franklin could expect no money from home. For an ambitious officer trying to make good on his inadequate salary, this made life very difficult.\n\nThings did not improve on Franklin's return to Britain in August, 1810. Just three months later, his mother died at the age of fifty-nine. There followed two years of tedious, depressing work blockading the remnants of the French fleet at Flushing and Texel. Despite the horrific carnage he had seen at Copenhagen and Trafalgar, Franklin was eager for the French to come out and fight. \"Let us hope for the best and wait with patience,\" he wrote in a letter home. His patience ran out in 1812 and he applied for a transfer to see \"the varieties of the service.\" His request was denied.\n\nThe years 1813 and 1814 provided some variety with cruises to the West Indies to escort merchant convoys. The second cruise supplied more variety than Franklin bargained for when the _Bedford_ was ordered on to New Orleans, where a British force was gathering to attack the city.\n\nBy late 1814, the War of 1812 was drawing to its conclusion. The attack on New Orleans was the last futile act in this fruitless war. The attack was carried out because the British Army wished to deny the Americans the storehouse of the city and because the British Navy was hungry for glory and prize money. It was futile because, two weeks before the attack began, the participants had signed a peace treaty and word of this was on its way across the Atlantic. The two thousand British soldiers who were killed or wounded in the hopeless frontal assault on the city suffered for nothing.\n\nThe navy's role consisted of securing Lake Borgne for the British so that they could approach the city itself. In forty-five rowing boats, Franklin and 1000 others attacked the five American gunboats on the lake. After a brief but violent battle, the American boats were captured. But the British losses were disproportionately high, seventeen killed, and seventy-seven, including Franklin himself, wounded. Franklin was awarded a medal for his role in the attack and Mentioned in Dispatches. His wound could not have been that bad since he was soon back in action, supervising the digging of a canal to enable the troops to approach the city.\n\nAfter the disastrous attack, the _Bedford_ returned to Britain, where she arrived on May 30, 1815. If Franklin was still looking for adventures against the French, he was disappointed. In June, Wellington finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars ended. Franklin would have to seek adventure elsewhere.\n\nTowards the North Pole\n\n\"The piece that had been disengaged at first wholly disappeared under water, and nothing was seen but a violent boiling of the sea and a shooting-up of clouds of spray.... After a short time, it raised its head full a hundred feet above the surface, with water pouring down from all parts of it, and then...after rocking about some minutes, it at length became settled.\"\n\nLieutenant Beechey  \ndescribing an iceberg calving.\n\nWith the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was left with a surplus of ships and crews. Sailors were laid off, officers sent home on half pay, and ships decommissioned. It was a waste of years of training, but there was one area where this surplus could be usefully employed \u2013 exploration.\n\nTwo of the northern dangers Franklin encountered in 1818. An iceberg and some walrus in Hudson Strait.\n\nIn 1817, a well-respected whaling master, William Scoresby, returned from Baffin Bay to announce that the summer had been one of the most ice-free on record and that large areas of the Greenland coast, which were normally icebound all year, were open. The timing was perfect. Why not send idle ships and crews to discover something of this poorly understood corner of the globe?\n\nThe High Arctic was barely imaginable to the people of Franklin's time. It was their equivalent of the moon \u2013 incredibly remote and inhospitable \u2013 and the explorers who went there were the Apollo astronauts of their day. It took determination and the latest technology to get explorers into the Arctic and keep them alive. To go there was to live life on the edge \u2013 and a narrow, slippery edge it was.\n\nThere were two incentives to send expeditions to the far North. The first was the lure of the fabled Northwest Passage, the shortcut to the riches of the Orient. Drake, Frobisher, Hudson, and Cook had all searched for it and failed. By the early nineteenth century, enough stories had been told about the North to make most merchants realize that there was no commercial route through the ice, but the magic of the myth still pulled people on.\n\nThe second incentive was scientific research: natural history in general, but, more specifically, magnetism. Terrestrial magnetism was poorly understood, yet it was essential to navigation between the territories of Britain's far-flung and growing empire. The navy needed to know about it. They also needed to know about the aurora borealis, which was thought to be electrical in nature and related to magnetism. A raging debate was underway in scientific circles on the nature of natural electricity and magnetism. Exploration close to the magnetic pole, where the aurora was strong, held out the promise of answering some very basic questions.\n\nEven in the popular imagination, electricity and magnetism loomed large. They were considered fundamental forces with a limitless potential and imbued with almost supernatural powers. After all, hadn't it been these very forces which had animated the monster's dead tissue in Mary Shelley's immensely popular story, _Frankenstein_?\n\nIn 1818, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, and John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, succeeded in persuading the government to mount two Arctic expeditions. The ambitious nature of both merely indicated how little people at that time knew about conditions in the Arctic.\n\nOne expedition was charged with sailing through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. The fact that some of the greatest explorers in history had failed abysmally to do this over the previous three hundred years did not discourage anyone. The second expedition was even more ambitious and unrealistic. It called for a ship to sail straight north, discover the North Pole, continue on through the Bering Strait, and eventually reach the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).\n\nThe Northwest Passage venture was led by John Ross and had Edward Parry as second-in-command. They mapped the west coast of Greenland and the east coast of Arctic Canada. Unfortunately, the expedition is mainly remembered for discovering a range of nonexistent mountains which Ross believed blocked Lancaster Sound. In reality, Lancaster Sound is the entrance to the Northwest Passage, a fact that Parry suspected despite his commander's opinions.\n\nThe Polar expedition was commanded by David Buchan, who had been the first European to make contact with the First Nations of Newfoundland. Second-in-command was Lieutenant John Franklin. Buchan commanded the whaler _Dorothea_ with twelve officers and forty-three crew. Franklin's first command was the _Trent_ , a smaller whaler with ten officers and twenty-eight crew.\n\nFranklin's motives in becoming an explorer were not entirely a pursuit of adventure. One way for a half-pay officer to advance his career in the inactive years after 1815 was through exploration. When Franklin applied for the job of Buchan's second-in-command, he expressed concern that he might return with his health shattered after an expedition of perhaps five or six years. Patrons and friends with influence might have moved or died and all this would hurt his chances of promotion. Therefore he asked, \"I should hope, were an offer ever made to me, it would be accompanied by a promotion.\"\n\nAn offer was made \u2013 without any guarantee of promotion. Despite that, Franklin jumped at the chance. The appeal of escaping the boredom of inactivity was too great.\n\nThe expeditions aroused considerable interest, and the number of visitors to the ships was so high that it hampered preparations. Many of the visitors were men of science, eager to discuss their pet theories of the unknown North with the ship's officers. Franklin was not much help. He thought it ridiculous that he had to talk to these experts considering \"how little I know of the matters which usually form the subject of their conversations.\"\n\nHowever, one visitor caught Franklins attention. Eleanor Ann Porden was only nineteen, yet already she was quite outspoken for a young lady of that time. She had a keen interest in science, which explains her visit, and she had some pretensions to being a poet. Despite having little in common, the pair impressed each other.\n\nFranklin's first venture into the Arctic began on April 25, 1818. Oddly, exactly thirty years later, this date would be significant to the survivors of Franklin's last visit to the North. Almost as soon as they set sail, the crews discovered that the quality of ships given to exploring parties had not improved since Flinders' voyage. The _Trent_ had several leaks. The crew patched some of these at the Orkney Islands, but the worst one eluded detection, and so the pumps had to be manned every watch.\n\nAt Spitzbergen, north of Norway, the expedition found its way blocked by heavy ice. There they met some Russian hunters who were collecting walrus skins and tusks. The walrus were so numerous and so aggressive that they attacked and almost destroyed one of the _Trent's_ longboats during a hunting expedition. The large beasts rushed the boat in a mass, hitting it with their tusks or butting it with their heads. Harpoons and axes merely slid off the animals' thick hides. It could have been a disaster, but one man managed to load his musket in the wildly swaying boat and fire it at the largest walrus, which appeared to be leading the attack. Immediately, the others stopped the assault and swam off, dragging the body of their leader with them.\n\nAs the expedition waited for the ice to break up, Franklin kept busy mapping and exploring the area. Numerous glaciers calved into Magdalena Bay where the ships were anchored. No one was really familiar with this phenomenon and they examined it closely. Unfortunately, they were also not familiar with the consequences of calving.\n\nWith Franklin in command, a group of men set out in a launch to examine the end of the bay. All at once, the men heard a report as loud as a cannon from above their heads. Looking up, Franklin watched in horror as a huge piece of ice, sixty-one metres above them, broke away from the face of the glacier and plunged down. The men frantically rowed to keep the boat pointed towards the immense wave they knew was coming, and watched as the iceberg crashed into the sea with a noise clearly heard on the _Dorothea_ , six kilometres away.\n\nAs their small boat was thrown around like a cork by the wave, Franklin knew they would be lucky to survive. When things calmed down, they approached the iceberg and measured it: it was eighteen metres high, 400 metres around, and about 426,720 tonnes in weight.\n\nBuchan attempted several times to lead his expedition north, but they were met each time by a vast impenetrable wall of ice. On one occasion, they were trapped for two weeks, on another, three weeks. While they were forced to remain idle, the crew of the _Trent_ did manage to discover the leak that had so bothered them on the voyage north \u2013 it had been caused by a bolt which a shipyard worker had forgotten to install.\n\nWhen open water appeared and leads seemed to offer a way through the ice, the two small vessels sailed in. Invariably, the leads closed and the ships became beset. Then the crews had to take to the ice, laboriously cut holes ahead of the ships, and physically pull them forward. It was gruelling work, and often the small distance they managed to drag the ships was cancelled out by the drift of the ice in the opposite direction when they were held fast.\n\nOn one occasion, the pressure of the ice was so great that it lifted the ships up and twisted the hulls. Men watched helplessly as doors flew open and the timbers cracked deafeningly around them. Another time, they were caught in a gale close to the coast of Spitzbergen. The wind was driving them onto the rocky coast and certain destruction. Buchan decided that their only hope lay in sailing directly into the loose pack ice, where huge blocks of ice were being thrown around by the wind and waves. It was terrifying, for these loose blocks of ice could easily stave in the sides of the ships. Franklin took what precautions he could. He ordered the men to hang cables and iron plates over the sides to protect the hull. He had everything movable tied down and the masts strengthened.\n\nEven so, the shock of sailing into the ice almost broke the _Trent's_ masts. Ice floes twice the size of the ship ground against her hull with a rending noise. All around the tiny vessels, the ice and waves rose and fell in a terrifying scene. Through the overwhelming noise the crew could hear the continuous mournful tolling of the ship's bell.\n\nAfter hours of this punishment, the gale abated and the expedition escaped to open water to assess the damage. Ice had so broken in the side of the _Dorothea_ that her crew wondered how she had survived. Obviously she could not continue exploring. Franklin wanted to continue with the _Trent_ , but the _Dorothea_ was so badly damaged that it was doubtful she could even make it back to England, and so the _Trent_ was forced to accompany her to render assistance if needed. Apparently, the open ice conditions that Scoresby had reported in 1817 had simply been a temporary condition. A very similar, variable weather pattern thirty years in the future would lure an overconfident Franklin and his ships to their doom.\n\nThe ships' carpenters did their best to repair the _Dorothea_ and the _Trent_ in preparation for the voyage home. The officers took magnetic observations and carefully surveyed the coast. On August 30, the expedition set sail and on October 22, 1818, arrived back in London.\n\nGeographically, Buchan's Polar expedition achieved little; certainly it came nowhere close to the optimistic expectations. However, it gave Franklin his first taste of the Arctic and a glimpse of the violence and dangers of ice and climate in the northern lands.The expedition also marked the opening of the golden age of British Arctic exploration. Over the next forty-one years, dozens of explorers would outline the map of the Canadian Arctic, unravel the mystery of the Northwest Passage, and dispel many of the myths of the North. In a sense, Franklin's journey bracketed this period. He was on the first Arctic foray, and the golden age ended when Francis Leopold McClintock returned to Britain in 1859 with conclusive news of the ultimate fate of John Franklin's last expedition.\n\nAfter Buchan and Ross returned, the navy moved rapidly to build on what meagre results the two expeditions had brought back. Attention moved away from the Pole \u2013 there was obviously no way through there \u2013 and settled firmly on the Northwest Passage. Here the British could fill in a huge blank area on the map, describe countless new species of animals and plants, and measure the mysterious magnetic phenomena.\n\nThe navy planned another dual attack. One route was obvious. Parry had come back expressing doubts about his commander's conclusion that Lancaster Sound was a dead end. That needed to be checked out, and Parry was given command this time. But what of the other expedition, now that the Pole had proved unattainable? What about an overland assault through the Canadian wilderness to the Arctic coast? That appeared to offer promise, and Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie had proved it was possible. For some unrecorded reason, the navy overlooked Buchan as leader, and offered command of the overland expedition to John Franklin.\n\nThe year 1818 marked the end of Franklin's apprenticeship. He was thirty-two years old, and he had a wealth of experience in both exploration and battle. He had proved himself calm in a crisis, and he was a popular leader. He had developed some strong navigational skills, he was a thorough observer with an interest in scientific inquiry, and he stood out from the horde of unemployed naval officers around him. He had challenged the Arctic and it was calling him back. John Franklin was ready to lead an expedition into unknown territory. He was about to begin the fabled quest for the Northwest Passage with which his name would be associated forever.\n\nThe Place Where Franklin's journey almost ended. Fort Enterprise under construction, 1820.\n\nOn the Route of the Voyageurs\n\n\"...we had the alarming view of a barren rugged shore within a few yards, towering over the mast-head. Almost instantly afterwards the ship struck violently on a point of rocks...On the outward bow was perceived a rugged and precipitous cliff, whose summit was hid in the fog...There now seemed to be no probability of escaping shipwreck...\"\n\nFranklin's _Narrative_ , August 7, 1819\n\nAfter hurried preparations, Franklin's small flotilla of three ships sailed for the unknown Canadian north on May 28, 1819. His first port of call was Yarmouth on the south coast of England. A sudden change of the wind caused them to sail at short notice, leaving behind one of the explorers, midshipman George Back. Upset at being left behind, Back made an extraordinary overland journey of nine days to rejoin the ships at Stromness in the Orkney Islands. It would not be his last remarkable journey on this expedition.\n\nFifty-three strenuous days later, on August 7, the explorers arrived at the entrance to Hudson Bay. Franklin's ship, _The Prince of Wales_ , was promptly caught in a gale and driven onto the rocks of Resolution Island. The impact knocked the rudder out of position and the vessel was blown helplessly along the shore. Everyone assumed they were doomed. Miraculously, when _The Prince of Wales_ grounded again, the rudder was knocked back into position and the crew gratefully managed to maneuvere the ship into deeper water. After two days of frantic work on the pumps, the ship's leaks were repaired and the voyage continued.\n\nThe next day, in Hudson Strait, Franklin met his first Canadian Inuit, or Esquimaux as they were called in those days. Only the previous year, in nearby Davis Strait, John Ross had described an encounter with Inuit who believed his ship to be alive because they had mistaken the sails for wings flapping in the wind. However, the members of the band Franklin encountered were used to fur trading ships passing that way. Around 150 men and women came out in a variety of boats to barter. Franklin was impressed with the quality of the walrus tusk carvings offered, the odd practice of licking trade goods to seal a deal, and by the orderly manner in which exchanges were made.\n\nAt last, on August 30, fourteen weeks after leaving London, the eventful journey was completed, and the _Prince of Wales_ arrived at York Factory on the western shores of Hudson Bay. Franklin's luck was holding, but he was still more than four thousand kilometres from the beginning of his explorations.\n\nThe goal of Franklin's expedition was to map the Arctic coast of Canada, east from the mouth of the Coppermine River, which had been reached by Samuel Hearne in 1771. That point and the mouth of the Mackenzie River to the west were the only two locations on the coast ever previously visited by Europeans. Franklin was also charged with the important tasks of studying the natural history, examining the aurora, and taking detailed readings of all aspects of magnetic force.\n\nFranklin was accompanied by a naturalist, Dr. John Richardson; two midshipmen, (the resourceful George Back and Robert Hood) to record the scientific data, conduct much of the navigation work, and draw and paint the landscape; and able seaman John Hepburn, who was assigned to be Franklin's personal servant. The British party was to be transported and supported by voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay and North West Companies and the Aboriginal Peoples living in the areas they were to explore.\n\nNineteen days before Franklin set off, Parry had sailed for Lancaster Sound to check whether Ross's assessment had been correct. The failure of the two 1818 adventures had not dulled all the optimism about Arctic travel, and the British Admiralty hoped that Franklin and Parry would meet somewhere in the wilderness. They never came within seven hundred kilometres of each other, but Parry was successful in exploring Prince Regent Inlet and reaching farther west than anyone else along the south shore of Melville Island. His became the first modern expedition to winter in the High Arctic.\n\nEager to be under way, Franklin and his party left York Factory on September 9, 1819. Their boat was too large and cumbersome for river travel and proved much slower than the lighter canoes of the voyageurs. Doggedly, Franklin pushed on, with Back and Hood mapping the route and sketching whenever they could, and Richardson collecting all manner of plant and animal life.\n\nAfter crossing an opaque, clay-rich body of water, Franklin recorded a tale of how the lake had been given its name. A mischievous deity, Weesakootchaht, was once tricked and captured by an old woman. She called all the women of the First Nations band to come and punish Weesakootchaht for his tricks, and when he managed to escape he was so dirty that it took all the waters of the lake to clean him. Ever since, the lake had been called Winnipeg, or Muddy Water.\n\nAs they progressed laboriously up the Saskatchewan River, the weather became increasingly colder. Ice formed on the oars, making them difficult to handle; snow fell, and the oarsmen, who had to frequently immerse themselves in the river to manhandle the boat over rocks, suffered horribly in permanently wet and frozen clothes. At last, on October 23, 1819, 1110 kilometres and forty-four days from York Factory, they reached Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River.\n\nRichardson saw the local Cree as liars and boasters who tended to be \"vain, fickle, improvident, and indolent,\" although he admitted that \"they strictly regard the rights of property, are susceptible of the kinder affections, capable of friendship, very hospitable, tolerably kind to their women, and withal inclined to peace.\" Despite this patronizing attitude, Richardson was fascinated by the local culture. On one occasion, dressed in his naval uniform, he crouched in a smoke-filled tent and watched a tattooing ceremony. Both men and women endured the agony of having willow-charcoal rubbed into complex puncture wounds and charcoal-laden cord drawn through holes in their skin to produce dark patterns and lines. The tent was crowded and loud singing filled the air, as much, Richardson thought, to hide the groans of the victims as for religious reasons.\n\nIn mid-January of 1820, Franklin, Back, and Hepburn set off for the North West Company's post at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca to prepare for the following summer's work. They travelled with light sleds and on snowshoes, which they found difficult to master. After a harsh and exhausting journey, in temperatures that were sometimes cold enough to freeze the Englishmen's tea before they could drink it, the party arrived at Fort Chipewyan on March 26th. They had covered 1379 kilometres, almost all on foot.\n\nAt the fort, Franklin wasted no time arranging for supplies and men for the coming season. It was not easy; voyageurs did not want to travel north to where the Esquimaux, who had recently attacked and murdered the occupants of two trading canoes, lived, and food was scarce because many of the Cree hunters had been stricken with measles and whooping cough. The situation was made worse by the outright hostility exhibited between members of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. Both had agreed to help Franklin, but they were often so absorbed in their own trading war that they could not do much. These problems concerned Franklin, but in the noble imperial spirit of the time, he decided to press on regardless and do what he had been asked to do.\n\nFranklin had a canoe made for the summer travel. It was ten metres long, almost 1.5 metres wide, and was composed of seventy-three hoops of cedar. The canoe was flimsy, but it could carry five or six men and provisions totalling 1497 kilograms. The canoe itself weighed 136 kilograms, but two voyageurs could carry it at a run over most portages.\n\nEventually Franklin collected enough men and supplies, and on July 13, Richardson and Hood rejoined the group. Five days later, they headed north for Great Slave Lake.\n\nSummer travel turned out to be no easier than winter: camps were flooded, rapids damaged the canoes and made long portages necessary, and mosquitoes nearly drove the men insane. The voyageurs entertained Franklin's men by telling them graphic stories of previous disasters at places with such picturesque names as the Portage of the Drowned.\n\nAfter ten days' travel, Franklin's party reached Fort Providence on the shores of Great Slave Lake. There, with flags flying and bedecked in their finest dress uniforms, the British officers strode forward to formally meet Akaitcho, or Big-foot, a local chief of the Copper (Yellowknife) First Nation who had agreed to help the explorers, and Frederick Wentzel, who had lived in the area for many years and was to act as a go-between. Akaitcho agreed to supply hunters and guides for Franklin and suggested a site for their winter base. Fort Providence was the most northerly trading outpost, so when the party set off on August 2, they were venturing into land previously visited by only one European, Samuel Hearne.\n\nThe party now consisted of twenty-eight persons, including the wives of three of the voyageurs and their three children. Amongst their bulky provisions, they carried gunpowder and shot, muskets, nails, cloth, blankets, and fishing nets. Their food included dried soup, flour, two cases of chocolate, tea, and two hundred dried reindeer tongues. Akaitcho's band went on ahead to hunt.\n\nThe cumbersome group travelled slowly and the shortage of provisions created some worrying moments early on. The voyageurs, who were doing all the hard work and consequently required vast amounts of food to maintain their energy levels (the fur industry standard was 3.5 kilograms of fresh meat per man per day), rebelled and refused to continue unless they were fed more. Franklin took a firm stand and threatened to blow out the brains of the first man to show any insubordination. This was treatment more usually offered to the pressed men on navy warships, and it must have come as something of a shock to the contract employees of the Canadian fur trade. Nonetheless, in the face of such a threat, the voyageurs continued, albeit with obvious bad grace.\n\nFortunately, some Yellowknife hunters arrived in the nick of time with some recently killed deer. After this, things settled down and the hunting improved. However, next fall the same problems \u2013 slow travel, inadequate supplies, and internal dissension \u2013 would resurface. Then there would be no happy ending.\n\nOn Sunday, August 20, 890 kilometres from Fort Chipewyan, the explorers arrived at their wintering site. Franklin named the place Fort Enterprise and immediately set to work building winter quarters. While his men worked, Franklin made plans to venture down the Coppermine River and prepare the way for the next season's travel. With an early winter looming, Akaitcho was reluctant to help. He told Franklin that he would supply men, but that he regarded the journey as a suicide mission and would begin mourning rituals as soon as the party left. Franklin was forced to compromise and settle for a much shorter trip, but the argument created a climate of distrust between the two men.\n\nThe party spent September hunting, fishing, preparing skins for blankets, making snowshoes, and building the two log houses in which they would live for nine months. Caribou were plentiful as they migrated south, and the men often saw as many as two thousand in a single day. They slaughtered and stored almost two hundred of the beasts. The fishing too was successful, supplying twelve hundred whitefish to the store. The Europeans were surprised to see the fish freeze as they were taken from the lake, but come back to life when they thawed, sometimes as much as thirty-six hours after they had been caught.\n\nOn October 18, Back, Wentzel and several Yellowknife warriors set off for Forts Providence and Chipewyan to hurry along the supplies which were supposed to be following the group. Most importantly, they needed to replenish their ammunition, which had been used up in the hunting, and their tobacco, without which the voyageurs would not work. Back was gone for five months. He travelled an extraordinary 1770 kilometres in deep winter, with insufficient food and in temperatures of -40 degrees. Despite the conditions, he set a winter travel record of ten days from Moose Deer Island to Fort Chipewyan. It was a remarkable achievement, but it did not help the party much. Supplies were either unavailable or in much smaller quantities than had been promised. Back returned empty-handed.\n\nThe search for supplies may not have been the only reason for sending midshipman Back to Fort Chipewyan. That fall Back and Hood both fell in love with the daughter of one of the Yellowknife guides. Called \"Greenstockings\" because of her dress, she so captivated the two young Englishmen that they developed a strong rivalry. They became so jealous of each other that they agreed to a duel to settle the matter, and Hepburn, fearing the worst, surreptitiously removed the charges from the two men's pistols. To defuse the situation, Franklin sent Back off to chase up the supplies.\n\nWith Back out of the way, Hood continued to court Greenstockings. He painted her picture and spent much time in her company. Hood died the following year, but a census taken at Fort Resolution in 1823 records the existence of, \"the orphaned daughter of Lieutenant Hood.\"\n\nThrough the winter, occasional small quantities of supplies reached Fort Enterprise, the most popular being casks of rum. Life settled into a routine, with the officers working on their journals and maps, taking scientific readings, and collecting and describing specimens of the local flora and fauna, and the men cutting wood for the fires. Even with fires burning constantly in the living quarters, the temperature dropped to -15 degrees inside and a low of -57 degrees outside.\n\nBy early spring of 1821, the fall kill of meat was all gone and Franklin was forced to break into the supplies of preserved meat he had been saving for the summer's exploration. Despite rationing, this food too was almost gone by April, and the party was forced to subsist on irregular hunting successes. Akaitcho and his band returned, but the chief's attitude to Franklin had been soured by their disagreements. Franklin had to work hard to assert what he saw as his authority and force Akaitcho to supply the promised hunters and guides.\n\nBy mid-June, despite a shortage of supplies and caches of meat destroyed by wolverines, Franklin was ready to go. Through June and July, he led his party down the Coppermine River, retracing Samuel Hearne's route. Some game was killed, but it was not enough. The voyageurs' legs swelled, a sure sign that they were not getting enough calories for their gruelling work.\n\nNear the site where Hearne had described a bloody massacre of the Inuit by the Yellowknives, Franklin also encountered Inuit. Despite repeated attempts at contact, and the presence of interpreters, they proved elusive and rapidly withdrew when Franklin's men approached. However, this contact with the Inuit scared the Yellowknife guides and hunters, and they decided to return home, seriously reducing Franklin's ability to secure sufficient food through hunting.\n\nFinally, on the evening of July 18, 1821, Franklin caught a glimpse of dark rolling waves dotted with white patches of ice. At last, after two years and two months of arduous travel, he was standing where Samuel Hearne had stood fifty years before \u2013 on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. The North had pulled Franklin back to the very limit of the known world, but his journey was not over yet. Hearne had taken a quick look and returned up the river. Franklin would go on, along the coast and into the real unknown.\n\nThe following day Wentzel and four voyageurs returned to Fort Enterprise with strict instructions to make sure adequate supplies of food were left there for the returning party. The group of twenty men who remained were tired, underfed, short of supplies, short of skilled hunters, and unsure that their line of retreat was secure. But even though Franklin was adrift in the wilderness, he felt a great sense of relief. He was on his own now, free from arguing fur traders, recalcitrant natives, or petty squabbles over love affairs \u2013 there was simply the Arctic coast, stretching ahead and waiting for John Franklin to make his mark. It was a heady moment, but the explorers had not escaped their past difficulties, which would soon resurface to claim the lives of eleven men.\n\nAlong the Arctic Coast\n\n\"...Dr. Richardson came in to communicate the joyful intelligence that relief had arrived...poor Adam was in so low a state that he could scarcely comprehend the information...But for this seasonable interposition of Providence, his existence must have terminated in a few hours, and that of the rest probably in not many days.\"\n\nFranklin's _Narrative_ , November 7, 1821\n\nFranklin's venture along the coast began inauspiciously. For one-and-a-half days he had to sit in a wind-battered tent while strong winds whipped the sea into a frenzy. Finally, at noon on July 21, the elements calmed, and with less than fifteen days supply of food and enough powder and shot for one thousand charges, John Franklin set off into the unknown.\n\nThe hazards of mapping an unknown coast. Landing in a storm, 1821.\n\nAt first the coast was smooth and the going easy, but soon it became more rugged and ice threatened to trap them against the shore. On July 24 they killed a caribou and feasted. Two days later they narrowly escaped being crushed rounding Cape Barrow. Ice, wind, and fog slowed them frustratingly and game was scarce. Slowly they ate into their meagre preserved supplies. Meticulous mapping of the tortuous coastline around Arctic Sound, Bathurst Inlet, and Melville Sound cost them days, and each time they ended up almost back where they had begun. Franklin's hope of speeding through to Hudson Bay that season vanished.\n\nOne of Franklin's problems was that he had two conflicting tasks to perform. First, he was to map the unknown coast. Second, he was to ascertain the orientation of the coast between the Coppermine River and Hudson Bay. To do one, he had to carefully map each indentation in the coastline. To do the other, he had to skip across the mouths of inlets and hurry east as fast as he could. Being the first to travel that way, he had no way of knowing, when the coast turned and began to trend south, whether this was another inlet, or the main coast. Was the blur of land in the distance an island or the mainland where it swung back? The only way to find out was to go and see, and that took time.\n\nOn August 15, with only three days' food left and no contact made with the Inuit, Franklin made a decision. They would struggle on until the coast trended eastwards or for four days, whichever came first. On August 18, Franklin, Richardson, and Back left the canoes and walked on for twenty kilometres. The coast ahead appeared to trend to the east. Franklin named the spot Point Turnagain and began his disastrous retreat to Fort Providence. They had mapped over one thousand kilometres of coastline for a gain of little more than two hundred as the crow flies.\n\nThe way back along the coast would be easier, since it was known ground and they could cut across the mouths of previously mapped inlets and bays. After being held up by gales for four days, they managed to reach the mouth of Hood River in another four, a journey that had taken them more than two weeks in the other direction. Here Franklin made another decision \u2013 one that, combined with the problems of supply and local ignorance that had been compounding almost from the beginning, sealed the fate of over half his party.\n\nFranklin knew that there was precious little game along the coast back to the Coppermine. He also knew that their hunting had been quite good at Hood River. He decided to cut across country back to Fort Enterprise. On the map, the route didn't look too bad, 240 kilometres in a straight line, but Franklin ignored one thing \u2013 the Yellowknife people avoided the barren lands as much as possible, sticking close to rivers and lakes in their travel. This local knowledge should have carried more weight with someone who was low on supplies, late in the season, and facing more than two hundred kilometres of barren lands travel.\n\nThe reason Akaitcho's people avoided the barren lands soon became apparent. The rough ground was torture on the feet of men carrying heavy loads and wearing only thin moccasins. Rivers and lakes obstructed their journey causing detours and delays and almost killing them during crossings. Nothing broke the force of the cruel, wind-driven snow as it whipped against the starving men. At a snail-like pace, the weak, overburdened men struggled through the snow, one agonizing step at a time. They could not remove their frozen clothes at night. They slept on top of their boots so the boots would not freeze and could be worn for the next day's gruelling march. During the day, they paused only to collect _Tripe de Roche_ , a lichen that grows on the bare rocks north of the tree-line. The lichen was their main source of food and, for working men, it was hopelessly inadequate. Apart from lacking nutritional value, _Tripe de Roche_ often produces violent stomach cramps. One of Franklin's party, midshipman Robert Hood, was so badly afflicted that he could eat nothing and weakened rapidly.\n\nOn September 10 one of the hunters shot a muskox. \"This success infused spirit into our starving party. To skin and cut up the animal was the work of a few minutes. The contents of its stomach were devoured upon the spot, and the raw intestines, which were next attacked, were pronounced by the most delicate amongst us to be excellent.\"\n\nEvery delay at a river crossing or detour around a lake cost the starving men precious time. Their trail became marked by discarded scientific specimens and equipment. At the end of September they reached the Coppermine River, only sixty-four kilometres from Fort Enterprise. Their canoe had long since been abandoned, so John Richardson, the expedition naturalist, attempted to swim a line through the frigid waters of the rapids. Halfway over, he lost all feeling in his arms and legs and sank from view. Hauling frantically, his companions pulled him back, more dead than alive. They stripped him, wrapped him in blankets and laid him before the fire. Richardson recovered, but it was several months before feeling returned to the left side of his body. The rapids on the Coppermine cost them nine days.\n\nMidshipman George Back and three of the strongest men went ahead to Fort Enterprise to secure supplies. The rest struggled on as best they could. The weakest fell behind and froze to death. No one was strong enough to help them. Eventually Hood became so weak he couldn't continue. Richardson and Able Seaman Hepburn set up a camp and stayed with him while Franklin pushed on. For four of Franklin's companions, the effort was too much, and they turned back to Richardson's camp. Only one of them, Michel, arrived.\n\nOn October 11, Franklin saw Fort Enterprise in the distance. It was silent. There was no activity around the fort, no smoke from the chimneys, and no sign of George Back. With a horrible sense of foreboding, Franklin stumbled on. The fort was deserted. Even worse, there were none of the promised supplies. The whole party broke down in tears.\n\nUnable to continue or to go back, Franklin and the other survivors managed as best they could. On the evening of October 29, Richardson and Hepburn staggered into the bleak camp. They had a tale of unspeakable horror to tell.\n\nMichel had arrived back alone and apparently worked hard to hunt and supply Richardson, Hood, and Hepburn with food. On one occasion he presented them with some wolf meat. But his behaviour became increasingly erratic. On Sunday, October 20, Richardson and Hepburn heard a musket shot. When they went to investigate, they found Hood dead. He had been shot at close range from behind and Michel could not explain how it had happened. Richardson and Hepburn became convinced that Michel had murdered Hood. They also began to suspect that the \"wolf meat\" was human flesh, cut from the frozen bodies of the others who had left Franklin's party and who Michel had murdered. It became obvious that Michel was planning to kill them. Richardson and Hepburn determined to act first.\n\nWorried that they were so weak that they would not be able to resist an attack by Michel, they decided that their only hope was in killing the stronger man. Hepburn volunteered to carry out the execution, but Richardson knew that, as senior officer, it was his responsibility. The two men waited for their chance. It came when Michel dropped behind to hunt. Richardson met him as he returned and \"put an end to his life by shooting him through the head with a pistol.\"\n\nAfter Richardson and Hepburn arrived at Fort Enterprise, the health of the party continued to decline. They often saw game close to the fort, but rarely had the strength to hunt. The most meagre success was greeted with rejoicing: \"Hepburn having shot a partridge, which was brought to the house, the Doctor [John Richardson] tore out the feathers, and having held it in the fire a few minutes, divided it into seven portions. Each piece was ravenously devoured by my companions, as it was the first morsel of flesh any of us had tasted for thirty-one days, unless indeed the small gristly particles which we found occasionally adhering to the pounded bones may be termed flesh.\"\n\nOn November 1, two more men died of starvation. Now only Franklin, Richardson, Hepburn, and one other man clung to a precarious flicker of life, dreaming of food and arguing pointlessly about nothing.\n\nBy November 7, Richardson and Hepburn heard the musket shot that signalled salvation. Eleven of the twenty who explored the coast were dead. Slowly the survivors headed south. On December 3 they had the \"indescribable gratification\" of changing the tattered clothes they had worn solidly since the end of August. In the spring of 1822 they boarded a ship for home.\n\nIt was an ordeal of epic proportions, and Franklin was very lucky to survive. But was he to blame? Certainly there were factors beyond his control. The British navy had no experience organizing overland expeditions. Self-contained seaborne expeditions were its forte, and the navy did not fully understand problems of travelling overland. The preparation time was too short to iron out all the problems. Franklin could have objected, but given his personality and the times, he was unlikely to. Franklin was a gentle, calm man, capable of being firm when he thought it necessary, but not one to make waves with higher authority. In addition, in 1819 there were hundreds of out-of-work junior naval officers, any one of whom would jump in eagerly if Franklin were seen as being a problem and were pushed aside.\n\nThe timing too was unfortunate. The rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company was at its height. In their attempts to control the incredibly lucrative fur trade, both companies had no qualms about supplying whisky to the native hunters, destroying the opposition's trading posts, traplines, and caches of supplies, and ambushing \u2013 sometimes even killing \u2013 opposing voyageurs. Both companies agreed to help Franklin, but the circumstances, added to the diseases sweeping the First Nations' hunting population, meant that even traders with the best will in the world could do little to help. They were having a hard enough time feeding their own men.\n\nFinally, the weather was against him. His first winter at Fort Enterprise was relatively benign. The second, which caught his party exposed on the barrens just as they were beginning their retreat from the coast, was harsh, and it set in abruptly, weeks earlier than usual. The early onset of winter drove away what game there was and seriously weakened the travelling men.\n\nAlthough Franklin's personal luck remained intact and ensured his survival, overall, his first expedition was an unlucky venture. Nevertheless, it should not have been the disaster it was. Franklin's biggest mistake was in ignoring the supply problems around him. From the beginning, things did not go as planned and there was a shortage of food. Franklin saw the problems and appreciated that they were not going to improve, putting his party at risk during the summer of exploration when margins for error were at their slimmest. Whether he naively believed things would somehow work themselves out, or whether he, like Scott at the South Pole ninety years later, was driven on past the point of rationality by a desire to accomplish great things and perform his duty, is not known. Certainly Franklin was a product of his time in that he had a high regard for authority and believed in the early nineteenth-century ideals of Honour, Courage, and Nobility. It is difficult from our more cynical perspective almost two centuries later to appreciate how strongly Franklins class felt these things. People were willing to die for Honour. In 1821, Franklin very nearly did.\n\nGiven his supply problems, Franklin had to rely very heavily on the local native population and the voyageurs. The problem here was that he was culturally incapable of understanding or appreciating their advice. Useful though these people were for carrying loads, chopping firewood, and hunting, they were lesser beings without the refined tastes or religious convictions of an upper class Englishman. This didn't mean that Franklin was a racist, he felt much the same way about a poverty-stricken millworker from Birmingham, and he had no wish to hurt anyone. More accurately, his attitude was an arrogant paternalism. Given the right circumstances and enough time, these people might one day achieve something close to the great cultural benefits Franklin himself enjoyed. The problem in the short term was that Franklin's attitude made him think less of the locals' opinions than his own or those of his fellow officers, despite the fact that British sailors could know nothing of the land in which the voyageurs and Akaitcho and his people lived and thrived.\n\nFranklin's cultural arrogance is not one of his most endearing characteristics and illustrates his great weakness, an inability to stand outside his cultural prejudices, even when circumstances obviously demanded it. In his narrative of the journey, Franklin describes his party's arrival at the Arctic coast. He ridicules the voyageurs' expressions of concern over the suitability of the canoes for sea travel, the quantity of available food, and the dangers of travel over the barren lands. Franklin wrote this months after the canoes proved unsuitable, food could not be obtained, and travel over the barren lands had killed half his party. Even when lesser mortals were dramatically and tragically proved correct, a man of Franklin's class and culture could not afford to acknowledge that they had been right. What is remarkable is not that the voyageurs let Franklin down as he asserts in his narrative, but that they stayed by him so long and helped him get as far as he did in the face of his overbearing attitude.\n\nHad Franklin somehow managed to slip the constraints of his cultural heritage, what could he have done? Short of abandoning virtually everything an Englishman of his day knew and believed in and mounting a small, rapidly moving, live-off-the-land-like-the-locals-do expedition a century ahead of its time, his only option in the circumstances he faced was to abandon the exploration goals and return home. He was not about to do that. Failure without the evidence of having nobly struggled forward to the last extremity would have spelled disaster for his career. Whispers that he was not made of the \"right stuff\" would have doomed him to retirement on half pay if not outright disgrace. The Royal Navy was John Franklins life; he would be a broken man without it. What was the risk of death for him and his companions compared to that?\n\nAfter the horrors of the barren lands, the return trip to England was easy. It was slow, as the sick men gradually recovered their strength, but largely uneventful.\n\nWhen Franklin returned to Britain in 1822 he was greeted with jubilation. The public had a hero. A rather embarrassed Franklin was held up as a cultural ideal; the noble explorer winning through incredible hardships despite the weaknesses and treachery of the savages and half-caste voyageurs around him. Of course, the fact that the \"half-caste voyageurs\" had done all the hard work, that nine of the eleven voyageurs in the exploration party had died, and that the entire expedition would have died without the food supplied by the \"savages\" was conveniently forgotten. That didn't fit with the burgeoning imperial world view.\n\nParadoxically, the fact that the expedition had relied heavily on local food sources and local manpower to supply hunting skills and workers was held up as a serious flaw. The next expedition to the Canadian North, and most subsequent ones that century, would rely on the muscles of the sturdy British sailor to supply strength, and the intelligence and skill of the plucky British officer to supply leadership and hunting skills. Unfortunately, this worked so well on Franklin's second expedition that it entrenched the idea firmly and not even the horrific disaster of his third expedition dislodged it.\n\nThe returning hero who won Eleanor Porden's heart. Portrait of John Franklin.\n\nRomantic explorations\n\n\"The question is not, my dear Sir, whether you and I can mutually esteem each other as friends, but whether we are calculated to live together in the closest domestic union.... There is yet one moment to hesitate and only one.\"\n\nEleanor Porden to John Franklin, July, 1823\n\nBack in the security of Britain, between accepting his honours, planning a new expedition, and writing up the volume of his previous exploits, Franklin found the time to resume his courtship of Eleanor Ann Porden, the young poet who had first visited his ship four-and-a-half years before as he prepared to set out for the North Pole with Buchan.\n\nAfter his return from Spitzbergen, Franklin had become a frequent visitor at the Porden home, where the young Eleanor kept house for her invalid mother and father, the famous architect, William Porden. Apparently, Franklin even considered proposing marriage, but decided against it because of the dangers of the expedition he was undertaking. Nevertheless, Eleanor was not far from his mind in the far north and he named the Porden Islands near Point Turnagain for her.\n\nFranklin was thirty-six in 1822 and Eleanor was eleven years his junior. She had a cultured upbringing and was interested in science and the arts. She surrounded herself with young, like-minded artists, who called themselves \"The Attic Chest,\" and met on Sunday afternoons after church to discuss each other's literary work. These friends undoubtedly took their literary dabbling seriously, but Eleanor had some justification for doing so. At the age of sixteen, she had written \"The Veils; or The Triumph of Constancy. A Poem in Six Books.\"\n\nThe work runs to almost three hundred pages and is a romantic treatment of scientific discovery. It was inspired by a series of lectures the young poet attended and the loss of her veil in a wind while she strolled on the beach one day. This poem seems overly romantic and very long-winded today, and it is filled with obscure literary and scientific references, but it was well received at the time.\n\nThe Knight, in prime of youthful vigour, joined  \nUndaunted courage, and a courteous mind;  \nBlack were his arms \u2013 the painting on his shield  \nThe strange occasion of their grief revealed:  \nLo ! on the foamy ocean's shingly sands,  \nReft of her Veil, a weeping damsel stands,  \nBeside a yawning gulf a Gnome appears,  \nWho waves the ravished veil and mocks her tears;  \nWhile forms ethereal lightly float in air,  \nAnd weep in pity o'er the injured fair.\n\nBecause of this poem, Eleanor was admitted to the French Institute, a remarkable honour for a teenage girl in those days. Her father encouraged her to continue to write poetry.\n\nOne of Eleanor's young friends, Jane Griffin, wrote that \"she makes all her own clothes, preserves, pickles, dances quadrilles _con amore_ , belongs to a poetical book club, pays morning visits, sees all the sights, never denies herself to anybody at any hour, and lies in bed or is not dressed till nine o'clock in the morning.\" It is difficult to tell what of the above is intended as a compliment and what is not. Certainly Jane's physical description of Eleanor could have been kinder. She wrote that her friend was a, \"plain, stout, short young woman, having a rather vulgar though very good-natured countenance.\" But then, Jane herself was a notable beauty.\n\nEleanor seems a strange choice for someone of Franklin's background. His was a life of action, with little time for cultural pursuits. They probably admired each other's achievements, but it is hard to imagine what they had in common to talk about. Whatever the reason, Franklin took the relationship seriously and proposed to Eleanor within two months of his return.\n\nEleanor had not considered marriage while she felt responsible for her father, but in 1822 he was dying and encouraged her to pick a husband. Whom this should be seems to have been a topic for debate and her literary group drew up a list of ten suitable names. The leading candidate appears to have been a Mr. Elliott, the private secretary to the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. Elliott had much in common with Eleanor and they had been friends for many years. But Eleanor was determined to wait until Franklin returned from Canada. No one knows what happened between the players of this scene. Letters hint at undercurrents of emotion and doubt. Only a month before the wedding, Eleanor felt timid about the upcoming event. She wrote to Mr. Elliott that, \"I sometimes feel as if I had in some respects made an odd choice.\" Elliott replied, \"I hope and wish to become his friend for your sake.\"\n\nPerhaps Franklins proposal of marriage, coming as it did so soon after her father's death and in the midst of Franklin's fame as a returning hero, appealed to Eleanors romantic sensibilities. Despite whatever misgivings she had, Eleanor accepted Franklin's proposal, and Mr. Elliott turned away to marry someone else.\n\nJohn Franklin and Eleanor Porden were married on August 19, 1823. Differences between the two became apparent almost immediately. Eleanor set up their home in the house in which she had been born in London. Here she could keep in touch with her literary friends and the arts scene in the city. Franklin's father had died in the spring of 1823, and John spent increased amounts of time in Spilsby.\n\nEleanor was not one to keep her opinions to herself. Franklin was deeply religious, refusing even to write letters on a Sunday. Eleanor and he had many misunderstandings and disagreements on this topic. On one occasion she told her new husband, \"I cannot agree with you respecting Sunday.... Shall I tell you the truth? I have studied you much, and have thought that on some points of this subject you seemed to be guided by an impulse foreign to your general nature. Mild as you usually are, your looks and voice have actually terrified me, and the first time left an impression from which I cannot recover.\"\n\nThis suggests a level of anger in Franklin's temperament which is not seen elsewhere. He is universally portrayed as a gentle man. Eleanor's sister even called him that and criticized Eleanor for being too overbearing in forcing her opinions on John. Certainly, Franklin did not consider himself Eleanor's intellectual equal. He regarded her mind as \"higher and more richly endowed\" than his own. In response to her accusations of religious intolerance, he replied, \"If I know my own heart I am no bigot on these points, but on the contrary am willing to permit everyone to cherish their own sentiments.\"\n\nIn June 1824, the couple had a daughter, Eleanor, a child \"so like her father, that it's like looking at Captain Franklin through the wrong end of a telescope.\"\n\nFamily life did not bring the couple closer and they still spent much time apart, Eleanor in her house in London surrounded by her literary friends, and John either in Spilsby or arranging his return to the Canadian wilderness. What the birth of little Eleanor did do, however, was exacerbate her mother's illness.\n\nEleanor Franklin had consumption. Called pulmonary tuberculosis today, consumption was a major killer in the days before antibiotics. There was no cure. Neither of the Franklins seem to have taken the disease too seriously early in their marriage. \"I am not very ill,\" Eleanor wrote in early 1824. But her condition deteriorated rapidly after her child was born, and by the end of the year she was bedridden. Even so, she tried to maintain her cheerfulness and encouraged Franklin to continue preparations for his upcoming expedition. The strain on Franklin was immense as he prepared for a major exploration while watching his wife die. He also received word that his brother, Willingham, had died of cholera in India. Jane Griffin recalled that Franklin was so preoccupied at this time that he did not reply to letters and notes or even acknowledge presents she sent him.\n\nThere was some gossip and scandal that Franklin should be preparing so assiduously to leave his dying wife, but it had always been their agreement that the marriage should not interfere with his career, and Eleanor was adamant: she wanted him to go. She stated strongly that his departure was not a factor in her worsening state. Indeed, when possible, Franklin kept vigil at his sick wife's bedside, and described her condition in one of his letters: \"The disease has continued its rapid progress, and she is now to all appearance nearly at her last extremity; but such has been her muscular strength that she has rallied frequently and it is not improbable that she may linger even through this day I seize an interval of repose to commence this letter to you in this room, where I have been watching all the night.\"\n\nAlthough at times it looked like she might not live to see her husbands departure, Eleanor did linger. She even showed some signs of improvement, and when Franklin said goodbye on February 16, 1825, he still had some faint hopes that she might recover.\n\nOn the evening of Friday, 22 April, 1825, on the shore of Lake Huron, Franklin composed a letter to Eleanor. Lightheartedly, he told her about the social circumstances at the naval station where he was staying. He described his visit to New York and wished she had been with him to see the industry of the Americans. After expressing his disappointment that there was not a letter waiting for him, he went on, \"I shall embark, however, with every hope that the Almighty has been pleased to restore you to health before this, and that you are now in the enjoyment of every comfort. I daily remember you and our dear little one in our prayers, and I have no doubt yours are offered up on my behalf. She must be growing very entertaining, and I sincerely trust she will be a source of great comfort to us, especially to you in my absence. With what heartfelt pleasure shall I embrace you both on my return!... Mr. Back and the men have arrived...\"\n\nHis letter stops here in mid-sentence. Mr. Back had brought the mail. At the bottom of the never-finished letter, Franklin scrawled in a shaky hand, \"7 p.m. The distressing intelligence of my dear wife's death has just reached me.\"\n\nEleanor had only outlived Franklin's departure by six days. All the hopeful letters he had written in the previous two months had been addressed to a dead woman.\n\nFranklin was distraught by the news and doubted if he could go on. Nevertheless, he was a pragmatist; he did continue, and the following summer he named Port Griffin at the mouth of the Mackenzie River for his dead wife's beautiful friend Jane.\n\nBack to the Canadian Arctic\n\n\"Not a murmur of discontent was heard throughout the voyage and every individual engaged with alacrity in the laborious tasks he was called up to perform....\"\n\nRichardson on his eastern explorations\n\nFranklin learned many lessons from the disasters of his first expedition. However, despite the unqualified success of his second expedition, he had, in fact, learned the wrong lessons.\n\nThe first expedition had failed largely due to the heavy reliance on uncertain local resources and on Franklins cultural blindness, which made him unable to learn from the local aboriginal people and the voyageurs who had the knowledge he needed to succeed. His response was not to change his attitude to the local experts and learn from them, but to eliminate them from the equation. This time around, Franklin would take everything he needed with him.\n\nInuit pillaging the boats in Franklin's second expedition.\n\nTo the upper-class British officer of the early nineteenth century, Franklin's decision made sense. Don't rely on locals who do not have the advantages of a classical education and cannot quote anything in Latin or Greek. Franklin's success in 1826 appeared to confirm his decision. The second expedition was a model of good management, careful planning, and almost flawless execution. Ironically, the expedition's very success in relying solely on outside resources contained the seeds of much greater tragedy.\n\nWhile Franklin had been struggling back across the barren lands, Edward Parry had also been busy. His voyage of 1819\u20131820 had been a great success. It had been followed by an attempt in 1821\u20131823 to force a passage out of Foxe Basin north of Hudson Bay. This voyage had discovered Fury and Hecla Strait and confirmed the idea that the entrance to the Northwest Passage was indeed Lancaster Sound. When Parry returned to Britain in 1823, he immediately proposed a third assault on the Passage. Franklin had been back since the end of 1822, and he enthusiastically supported the venture, proposing another overland expedition to complement Parry's nautical one.\n\nThe Admiralty was keen on both and again hoped the explorers might meet. This hope was even more wildly off than before. Parry sailed in 1824 to explore Prince Regent Inlet. After wintering there, one of his two ships, the _Fury_ , was damaged and had to be abandoned. The supplies she carried were cached ashore at Fury Beach, and the explorers returned home in October 1825. As they did so, Franklin and his party were just settling in to their winter quarters at Fort Franklin on the shores of Great Bear Lake.\n\nOn his second trip to the Canadian North, Franklin was accompanied again by Richardson and Back. He got on well with Richardson and was glad to have him along, but the brash young George Back was not his first choice. Neither Richardson nor Franklin was keen to have Back on the second expedition, and Franklin only accepted him when pressured by the Admiralty after the man who was his first choice had inconveniently died. Back was probably too outspoken and arrogant for Franklin's quiet temperament, but he was undoubtedly a superb traveller. Had he not been, Franklin and Richardson would not have survived to undertake a second expedition at all.\n\nWith the three officers went Mate E. N. Kendall as assistant surveyor, Thomas Drummond as assistant naturalist, and four Royal Marines. They were preceded by several sailors and marines who were to prepare the way for the main party. Rather than rely on birch bark canoes, which had been a problem on the open Arctic sea, Franklin had three wooden boats specially made. Each could carry twenty-two men and eight tonnes of supplies. He also commissioned a small folding craft, called the walnut-shell from its shape, so that the delays at river crossings could be avoided.\n\nInstead of a few months, Franklin had a full year to make preparations this time, and he used it to the full. Supplies and equipment, including the new boats and two carpenters, were shipped out ahead of the party and stored at Hudson's Bay Company posts along the way. By 1825, the Hudson's Bay Company had merged with the North West Company, ending the rivalry which had made things difficult in 1821. Franklin was additionally fortunate in securing the services of Peter Warren Dease, Chief Factor with the Hudson's Bay Company, to organize supplies for him in Canada and fill the role Frederick Wentzel had played on the first expedition.\n\nBy February 1825 all was ready Taking a silk flag Eleanor had made for him to unfurl on the shores of the Arctic sea, Franklin said goodbye to his dying wife and sailed for North America. The ocean voyage and the trip across Canada had none of the drama of the previous one. Everything worked like clockwork, and Franklin astonished the local company men by arriving at Fort Chipewyan in mid-July. By the beginning of August, they had reached Great Bear Lake.\n\nThis time around, there was time for Franklin to scout ahead and there was no annoying Akaitcho to say \"no.\" On August 7, Franklin, Kendall, and a boat crew set off down the Mackenzie River to have a look at the Arctic Sea. Nine days later, the party reached salt water and were excited by the sight of the sea \"in all its majesty, entirely free from ice,\" and with \"many seals and black and white whales...sporting on its waves.\" The small group pitched a tent, gave three cheers, and unfurled the flag Eleanor had made. It was an intensely emotional moment for Franklin, but he felt it was his duty to hide the way he felt so as not to minimize the joy of his companions. Optimistically leaving a note for Parry, Franklin stayed only one night before hurrying back up the river to his winter quarters.\n\nThe winter at Fort Franklin was a much more enjoyable experience than the one at Fort Enterprise. Despite the fact that there were sometimes more than fifty people around the fort, food was never a problem. By fishing and hunting the men laid in a good supply of frozen meat and they added to this stock throughout the cold months. Each officer had his own private room in a building measuring thirteen by seven metres. The men were a bit more cramped. Twenty or thirty of them lived in a building eleven by seven metres but, at least according to the officers, spirits were high. The men received schooling in reading, writing, and arithmetic and participated in games and dances to help combat boredom. Sixty people attended the Christmas party. It was a raucous occasion, with songs and speech in English, Scots Gaelic, French, Inuit, and Chipewyan, Dogrib and Hare dialects, and music provided by fiddle and bagpipes.\n\nIn the new year, Peter Dease's wife gave birth to a daughter. The explorers celebrated with a feast consisting of boiled and roasted fish, accompanied by fish soup and a bottle of preserved peppers. There was no bread since the mice had eaten the flour. The diet was undoubtedly limited, but there was always enough.\n\nAs spring progressed, they prepared for that summer's exploration. Two parties were to set out, both from the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Franklin, Back, eleven sailors and marines, two voyageurs, and one interpreter would take two boats and map the coast to the west and possibly meet up with a ship, commanded by Franklin's old companion Beechey, that was to sail along the coast from the Bering Strait. Richardson and ten men would map to the east as far as the mouth of the Coppermine River and then return to Great Bear Lake.\n\nBy July 4, the two parties were at the mouth of the Mackenzie and ready to go their separate ways. There was a world of difference between this occasion and the first expedition. Then, Franklin was in charge of an unhappy, squabbling group of tired men, with very little food and unsuitable canoes. Now he was accompanied by fit, enthusiastic sailors who would never question his orders. He had custom-designed boats, the best equipment available, a wealth of presents for the Inuit he hoped to encounter, and food enough for three months. What could go wrong?\n\nIn fact, very little did go wrong. The only time Franklin's party was in danger was just after they had begun. On July 7, Franklin spotted an Inuit encampment on shore. Approaching to trade, the Europeans' boats were soon surrounded by dozens of kayaks whose owners eagerly offered everything they had. Fearing that the situation might get out of control, Franklin ordered his boats to pull off to deeper water. Unfortunately, the falling tide stranded them high and dry. More Inuit arrived until there were 250 to 300 men, women, and children swarming the boats.\n\nOvercome by the sight of all the treasures in the boats, some of the Inuit became aggressive. They climbed in beside the sailors, waving knives and cutting buttons off jackets. One man had to tie the vital astronomical instruments to his leg to prevent them being carried away. Anything not tied down was spirited over the side of the boat and disappeared in the milling throng. With incredible patience, the sailors refrained from reacting violently to the provocation, and for several hours they struggled to keep their weapons and vital equipment.\n\nEventually, the tide returned and the sailors were able to refloat the boats. To discourage pursuit, Franklin ordered his men to level their muskets at the Inuit. The Inuit withdrew. Franklin was full of praise for the restraint shown by his sailors. It was a tense situation which, like many other European\/Native encounters, could easily have turned into a tragedy with just one wrong move. No one had been killed or wounded and the Inuit had stolen mostly trade goods in any case. They had taken some canteens, kettles, a tent, blankets, shoes, and sails, but the vital instruments had been saved. Naming the site Pillage Point, Franklin camped for the night.\n\nThe following morning, the Inuit again approached in their kayaks. The leader waved one of the kettles and shouted that he wanted to return it. Not wishing a repeat of the previous day's swarming, Franklin declined the offer, fired a musket shot across the kayak's bows to make his point, and sailed on along the coast. In succeeding days, Franklin met other Inuit groups and managed to establish friendly and mutually profitable relationships. He was even told that the Inuit close to the mouth of the Mackenzie had a bad reputation.\n\nAfter Franklin had survived his encounters with the human occupants of the Arctic coast, he had only the elements to contend with. Intermittently held up by fog, ice, and wind, he worked his way west, mapping the coast as he went. It was tedious work.\n\nOn July 27, the party crossed into Russian territory. On August 16, after being held up for a week at a depressing place Franklin christened Foggy Island, it became clear they would have to turn back. Although it was at that time only 240 kilometres away, Franklin would not meet up with Beechey's ship from the Bering Strait. The season was advanced and the men were suffering from the hard work and continued exposure to freezing water. On August 17, Franklin turned back.\n\nThe return journey was marked by severe storms and several friendly encounters with Inuit. On one occasion, Franklin recognized an Inuit man who had been present when the boats had been swarmed. He told Franklin that the intention had been to overwhelm the boats and kill all the occupants. On another occasion, two Inuit arrived with a story that a band of strangers from the mountains were close by and intended to kill the intruders as they believed them to be a threat to their trade. The Inuit urged Franklins men to leave.\n\nOn September 21, Franklins party arrived back at Fort Franklin. Richardson had returned safely on September 1 and left again to collect geological samples around Great Slave Lake. Both parties had done well. Franklin had travelled 3295 kilometres and mapped 981 kilometres of previously unexplored coast. Richardson had covered 3186 kilometres including 1633 kilometres of unexplored territory.\n\nRichardson had been favoured with better weather than Franklin had, and the only problems he had faced were with Inuit who threatened to overwhelm his small boats. Like Franklin, he had used the threat of muskets to defuse the situation. Richardson had also made an extensive collection of botanical specimens.\n\nThe explorers settled into their winter routine. In February, Franklin, five sailors, and two local guides left the fort and began the long journey home. Travelling from trading post to trading post, he reached Cumberland House on June 18. There he met Richardson, who had travelled to the west to meet with the assistant naturalist Drummond. Drummond had not gone north, but had led a solitary existence collecting specimens across the prairies towards the Rocky Mountains. Between June 1825 and April 1827, he had collected 1500 species of plants, 150 birds, 50 quadrupeds, and hundreds of insects.\n\nFranklin has often been criticized for the slow, ponderous nature of his expeditions. Light, fast parties living off the land could have accomplished more exploration in a shorter time. This is true, but they could not have collected the scientific data that Richardson and Drummond did. One-third of Franklin's two substantial books on his expeditions consist of scientific appendices. There are notes on topography, geology, and meteorology; data on magnetic variations, the aurora, the speed of sound, and solar radiation; and there are zoological descriptions and drawings and lists of animals, fishes, insects, and a staggering total of 633 plants. Franklin was slow, but he was methodical, and his explorations contributed a considerable body of information to the scientific knowledge of the day.\n\nFrom Cumberland House, Franklin and Richardson undertook a leisurely journey home, setting aside time for social visits in Montreal and New York. They arrived back in Liverpool on September 26 after an absence of slightly over two-and-a-half years. Back and the others Franklin had left on Great Bear Lake arrived home two weeks later.\n\nFranklin's second expedition was an unqualified success. The pattern was set for the future: take all necessary supplies and don't rely on uncertain local resources. Unfortunately, a possible consequence of this approach is overconfidence. The risk becomes one of blundering into a situation where technology, supplies, and expertise are of no use. That is exactly what would happen on Franklin's third expedition, but he had to wait almost two decades to find that out.\n\nBeautiful and strong-willed. Jane Franklin contemplates how best to advance her husband's career.\n\nRussia to Greece\n\n\"I should rejoice to see with you the same things for the first time, to help or be helped by you in every little difficulty, to become acquainted together with the same people, to be objects of the same hospitality and kindness.\"\n\nJane Griffin to John Franklin, summer 1828\n\nFranklin's return from his second expedition cemented his reputation. As in the first case, he was showered with recognition: a gold medal from the French Geographical Society, a knighthood, and an honorary degree from Oxford. He also found a new wife.\n\nIn November 1828, when he had been back for fourteen months, Franklin married Jane Griffin. He had met her through Eleanor and had spent a considerable time in her company before the second expedition. As his first wife sickened, Franklin was not above socializing on his own. He dined at the Griffin home on a Sunday, a day he usually reserved for religion and family. He escorted Jane and her sister Fanny to dances and parties, and the sisters took a carriage down to Woolwich docks where Franklin was preparing boats for the expedition. None of this indicates that Franklin was being unfaithful, for Eleanor too was very fond of the Griffins. On one occasion when she felt up to entertaining, she invited them round to dine and meet Franklin's fellow explorer Captain Parry. However, when Franklin was with the Griffins he appears to have monopolized Jane's company. After a dinner party she recorded in her diary that Franklin had kept her in \"continual conversation.\"\n\nFranklin was obviously attracted to Jane. She was on his mind during his two-and-a-half-year-long second expedition, and he seems to have wasted no time in paying her court upon his return.\n\nJane Griffin and John Franklin were as well matched as John and Eleanor were not. Jane had a much more practical intelligence than her predecessor. She was witty, but not in Eleanor's somewhat strained, self-conscious way, and she was not averse to teasing her John. \"Oh, what a coaxing smooth-tongued rogue you are,\" she wrote in reference to his description of a diplomatic incident he was involved in, \"Who would think, my dear, that you had lived amongst the Polar bears?\"\n\nJane had an independent mind and held strong opinions, some wrong, on a wide variety of topics. Some contemporaries felt this strength spilled over into arrogance, but Jane was fiercely loyal to Franklin, and it is mainly due to her strength of character and independence of mind that we know as much as we do about her husbands ultimate fate.\n\nIn the summer of 1828, John and Jane travelled to Russia. John wanted them to travel together but, since they were not yet married, convention demanded that they travel separately.\n\nSince Franklin, on his second expedition, had mapped part of the coast of Alaska, which was then Russian territory, the visit was something of a diplomatic mission. Franklin met the Empress and the ten-year-old heir, the future Czar Alexander II. Through the boys tutor, Franklin carefully described his journeys. It must have been a thrilling moment for the young prince, who already had an interest in geography and looked to the west as a model for the reforms he would introduce into his backward country before he was assassinated in 1881.\n\nJohn and Jane spent their honeymoon in Paris, where Franklin was treated as a celebrity. People clamoured to meet him. One woman found the meeting a disappointing experience when she was eventually faced with an obviously healthy, ninety-five kilogram man. Her reading about Franklin's first expedition had led her to expect an emaciated skeleton.\n\nAlthough he remained religious throughout his life, Franklin's puritan streak appears to have mellowed from the days of his arguments with Eleanor. While in Paris he visited all fifteen of the theatres. Given the reputation some Paris theatres had as places of ill-repute, this would have required a fairly broad mind.\n\nBack in Britain, Franklin proposed further Arctic adventures to complete his mapping of the Canadian coastline. He was supported in this by Jane, who was extremely ambitious for her husband. She appears to have actively encouraged him to seek positions in the far-flung corners of the world. It seems odd that she should encourage him to desert her, but she explained it in a letter to him, \"Your credit and reputation are dearer to me than the selfish enjoyment of your society. Nor indeed can I properly enjoy your society if you are living in inactivity when you might be in active employ.\"\n\nFranklin, who had spent his whole life in active pursuits, was not the sort of person who takes kindly to inactivity. He had no literary or cultural pretensions and found living at home with nothing to do very hard. Jane recognized this need in her husband, and having a practical turn of mind, she realized that he, and consequently they, would only be happy if Franklin were actively employed.\n\nJane had confidence in Franklin's abilities and tended to underrate, as most people in the early nineteenth century did, the harshness of the Arctic climate and the inadequacy of the technology of the time to protect explorers from it in the event that something went wrong. In a hideously ironic contrast to the horrors of Franklin's final expedition, she wrote to him in late 1833, \"a freezing climate seems to have a wonderful power in bracing your nerves and making you stronger.\"\n\nIn 1830, Franklin and his new wife had had two years of \"vanity, trifling and idleness.\" For whatever reason, the Admiralty was ignoring Franklin's proposal to complete his Arctic mapping. However, they did eventually realize that they had an able officer wasting his talents and appointed him the command of the twenty-six gun frigate _Rainbow_. Two years and six days after his wedding, Franklin sailed for the Mediterranean.\n\nGreece was newly independent from Turkey, and Britain, France, and Russia were in unusual agreement that this independence should be preserved. Unfortunately, rival factions were struggling for power, and the political instability this produced, combined with the scheming undertaken by the three major powers, required some very diplomatic maneuvering.\n\nFor two years, Franklin and the _Rainbow_ cruised the Mediterranean, stopping in Malta, Nauplia, and Corfu, where Jane \u2013 Lady Jane Franklin since her husband's knighthood \u2013 came to spend some time with him. In 1832, Franklin sailed to Patras in southern Greece at the request of the local governor, who was anticipating an attack by a local rival.\n\nThe attack did not materialize, and the governor may have regretted asking for help when Franklin took the side of some Ionian merchants, British subjects at that time, who felt they were being unfairly taxed. Soldiers had been billeted with the merchants until their taxes were paid. Franklin's problem in this confrontation was that any action he took might spark a diplomatic incident. His only strength was the visible presence of the _Rainbow's_ twenty-six guns and her crew of trained sailors and marines. He probably could not have used them, but the governor could not be sure of that. Franklin insisted that the merchants be allowed to board the _Rainbow_ for protection if they wished and arranged a meeting with the governor.\n\nFranklin took a conciliatory tone, begging the governor to consider the consequences of not treating the merchants fairly and placing the heavy responsibility for what might happen on the governor's shoulders. Franklin did not state what the consequences might be \u2013 he left that to the governor's imagination \u2013 but the threat, veiled and dubious though it was, was there. By ignoring the governor's protests and consistently repeating his theme, Franklin won. The governor allowed the merchants to board the ship, and although he never withdrew his demands, the taxes were never collected.\n\nOnly a week later, Franklin faced a second delicate crisis. Easter in Patras was traditionally a time of wild celebration and it was often accompanied by much violence. In 1834, a General named Zavellas was suspected of planning to bring his troops in and plunder the city during the celebrations. The governor, his previous argument with Franklin apparently forgotten, requested troops to keep the peace.\n\nFranklin's problem here was that he could not be seen to take sides in a local conflict in an independent country. Nevertheless, the situation appeared serious enough to intervene. A party of 140 British and French seamen went ashore. Franklin issued a proclamation that they had no political purpose and were there only to prevent disorder, and he requested the help of local soldiers and civilians. His ploy worked and Patras had one of its quietest Easters in a long time.\n\nFranklin also had to deal with the intrigues of his allies. The Russians took to circling the British and French ships in rowboats in the dead of night. They carried no lights and refused to answer when hailed. Franklin suspected they were spying. He and the French captain wrote a note to the Russian commander. \"We beg to be acquainted with the meaning of this unusual proceeding.... It is not our wish, Sir, to prevent your boats rowing about at night if you think it advisable, but we desire that they should not...present the appearance of watching our ships.\" Franklin also pointed out that the Russian boats, by not answering a hail, were putting themselves in danger of being fired upon.\n\nThe Russian commander replied that his boats were out in order to \"protect\" the allied vessels. However, he took the hint and after Franklin's note, his unorthodox protection was withdrawn.\n\nIn February 1833, the new king of Greece arrived and the _Rainbow_ was sent home. Franklin had shown himself to be flexible and diplomatic in a very complex and tense situation. He seemed to be able to judge exactly how far he could go without committing himself to an action he might regret.\n\nFranklin's time in the Mediterranean was also marked by his popularity amongst the sailors who served with him. His ship was called the \"Celestial Rainbow\" and \"Franklin's Paradise\" because of the relaxed atmosphere on board and the happy spirit. In an age when brutality was commonly regarded as necessary to control the criminal elements that were often on board Navy ships, Franklin was seen to tremble with emotion when he witnessed a man flogged. His gentle nature and subtle diplomacy are well recorded from this time in his career. On his return home he was commended on his \"calm and steady conduct\" and his \"judgment and forbearance...exhibited under circumstances of repeated opposition and provocation.\"\n\nFranklin left the _Rainbow_ on January 8, 1834. He was forty-seven years old with over thirty years experience in almost all aspects of naval life. He was interviewed by the King, who thanked him and expressed great interest in tales of his exploits. Oddly, although Franklin's talents were widely recognized, he did not immediately receive a new posting. When Franklin went to see the First Lord of the Admiralty to ask for a posting, he was brushed off with the old, empty promise that he would be kept in mind should anything turn up.\n\nPerhaps Franklin suffered from a lack of influential friends in high places, or perhaps he did not put himself forward forcefully enough. Certainly he admitted to being shy and timid and stated that he only tried as hard as he did because Jane wished him to do so.\n\nIt was not that there was no Arctic exploration going on. James and John Ross had been rescued in 1833 after spending four winters in the Arctic. During that time, James had discovered the North Magnetic Pole and visited the north shore of King William Island, a place Franklin's crew would become horribly familiar with fifteen years later. Franklin's old companion, George Back, had travelled overland down the river that was to be named after him and visited the Arctic coast, although he had failed to map the area east of Point Turnagain.\n\nIn 1834, the government was considering another expedition to the Northwest Passage. The three great Arctic explorers of their day, Edward Parry, James Ross, and John Franklin were all available to lead it, but the choice fell again to Back. In June 1836 he sailed north in HMS _Terror_. The expedition was nearly a disaster and no new ground was discovered. Meanwhile, Franklin's career was taking a different turn on the other side of the world.\n\nFranklin, possibly at the prompting of Jane, was, in 1836, considering a position in the colonies. He submitted his name and qualifications to the Colonial Office and was offered the post of governor of the tiny West Indian island of Antigua. This remote posting was a powerless one under the governor-in-chief of the Leeward Islands. Jane thought it unworthy of her husband and encouraged him to turn it down. Franklin did so, and his stand appears to have impressed the Colonial Office. Less that two weeks after his refusal, Franklin was offered the much larger and more prestigious Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) at a salary of \u00a32,500 per annum. He accepted and sailed for his new posting later that year. There would follow six years which would sorely test all the qualities of perseverance and discretion he had shown in the Mediterranean.\n\nTo escape, you first had to pass the line of vicious dogs. Eagle Hawk Neck, Van Diemen's Land.\n\nVan Diemen's Land\n\nThe very day we landed\n\nupon the fatal shore,\n\nThe planters they stood round us\n\nfull twenty score or more;\n\nThey ranked us up like horses\n\nand sold us out of hand,\n\nThey roped us to the plough, brave boys,\n\nto plough Van Diemen's Land.\n\nConvict Ballad\n\nIn the 1820s, a line of convict loggers was walking through the bush to work near the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour on the west coast of Van Diemen's Land. Without warning or provocation, one man in the middle of the line suddenly raised his axe and smashed it down on the head of the man ahead of him. He made no attempt to escape and was arrested. When asked why he had killed a man against whom he had no grudge, the killer stated simply that he had run out of tobacco. He knew that if he was to be hanged for murder it would be in Hobart and he would be given tobacco in the jail there. Such was the brutal irrationality bred in the convict hell of Van Diemen's Land.\n\nVan Diemen's Land was a new colony, not even in existence when Franklin had passed that way with Flinders. Of the 42,000 European population when Franklin took over as governor, almost half were convicts transported there for a variety of crimes from petty theft to murder. Between 1831 and 1835, 133 vessels had brought 26,731 convicts to Australia, many to Van Diemen's Land. Transport conditions had improved markedly after the Napoleonic Wars ended and the threat of starvation faced by the early colonists had faded, but often that merely meant that the individual lived longer in abject misery.\n\nIn Van Diemen's Land, the convicts were not held in prison, but were scattered through the community on assignment as employees of the free settlers. Assignment provided the essential labour for the free farmers, but it was little more than slavery, and the prisoner was at the complete mercy of the settler. Franklin's predecessor, George Arthur, even introduced rules forbidding the settlers to fraternize with, or even show kindness to, their assigned men and women. One settler lost his assignment privileges for inviting his labourers to sit down with his family for Christmas dinner.\n\nLife was harsh and punishment brutal. For even minor offenses, convicts were flogged, forced to work in chains, or placed in solitary confinement. The hardness of life made the people \u2013 convicts and free settlers alike \u2013 hard too. Gambling, drinking, and theft were all prevalent. Escaped convicts roamed the bush, hunting, or robbing travellers and isolated farms. But by far the greatest sufferers as a result of the settlement of Van Diemen's Land were the native inhabitants.\n\nThere were, perhaps, three to four thousand Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land when the first ships arrived. They had lived there for thirty thousand years. The convicts and first settlers regarded the indigenous inhabitants as animals. They saw no problem in deliberately poisoning, spreading disease, or resettling the Aborigines. They even hunted them for sport. By Franklin's day, the Aboriginal population had been reduced to a mere 150 people, living in squalor on Flinders Island in Bass Strait. In 1876, Trucanini, the last Tasmanian Aborigine, died. Her death marked the end of the only case of true genocide in British history. Remembering the fate of her husband, whose body had been dismembered and distributed to scientific institutes, Trucanini's last words were, \"Don't let them cut me, but bury me behind the mountains.\" No one listened. Trucanini's flesh was boiled off her bones and her skeleton exhibited in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. One hundred years later, in 1976, her bones were cremated and the ashes scattered at sea.\n\nWhen Franklin stepped ashore with his family in January 1837, he took over a colony that had been run with an iron fist. Governor Arthur had seen his domain as a vast experiment in social engineering, on a smaller scale, but well in advance of the experiments of Hitler and Stalin. He had created a totalitarian state, with every aspect of the convicts' and settlers' lives catalogued and recorded. In 1826 he had drawn up the three-feet-thick, \"Black Books\" in which were recorded every detail of the lives of every one of the 12,305 convicts who had arrived since the colony's founding. On arrival, convicts were interrogated to ensure that the books were kept up to date. Van Diemen's Land had the most complete record of its inhabitants of any place on earth.\n\nA prisoner was subject to seven levels of punishment between the extremes of freedom and hanging. He rose or fell through the levels depending upon his conduct. One historian has likened it to a vast game of human Snakes and Ladders.\n\nThe system was brutal, but the evangelical Arthur's aim, however misguided, was to reform the convicts. It didn't work and only increased the brutalizing effects of the harsh life in the colony. To console himself, Arthur used his power as governor to acquire a fortune. He left Van Diemen's Land a rich man, was made lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada in 1838 after William Lyon MacKenzie's rebellion, and was knighted for his role in uniting Upper and Lower Canada in 1841.\n\nArthur was roundly detested by most of the free settlers who welcomed Franklin. Unfortunately, the system Franklin inherited was run by Arthur's men, several of whose only qualifications were that they were intelligent enough to have married one of Arthur's relatives. Yet Franklin had to rely on them for what the Colonial Office back in Britain saw as the smooth running of the colony. After all, Van Diemen's Land was meant to be a convict settlement, not an earthly paradise, and the idea of prisoners' rights was virtually unknown. The settlers soon developed a healthy dislike for Franklin. This was exacerbated by a strong dislike of Jane.\n\nJane Franklin was strong-willed, intelligent, curious, and restless. The settlers interpreted these characteristics as bossy, pretentious, nosy, and interfering. She certainly felt she should have a role in the colony. Influenced by Elizabeth Fry, who was working for prison reform in Britain, Jane formed the \"Tasmanian Ladies' Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners.\" It was not welcomed and was short-lived.\n\nIn emulation of St. Patrick in Ireland, Jane also tried to rid Van Diemen's Land of snakes. Prisoners were offered a shilling for each dead snake. Unfortunately, since there were a lot more snakes on the island than there were shillings in the governor's budget, the scheme failed.\n\nJane had more luck encouraging the arts. She supported learned societies, established a botanical garden and museum of Natural History, and founded a college. She was also an avid traveller, being the first woman to travel overland from Melbourne to Sydney, to ascend Mount Wellington, and to travel overland from Hobart to Macquarie Harbour. In the parochial, uncultured society of Hobart, none of this carried any weight, and Jane was detested for what was perceived as gross interference in her husband's affairs. Her husband was also condemned for allowing her so much apparent power.\n\nFranklin's gentleness was not an advantage in Van Diemen's Land. Jane wrote that to live in the colony, \"people should have hearts of stone and frames of steel.\" Franklin, the man who had trembled when he witnessed a sailor flogged aboard ship, did not have a heart of stone. In addition, he was politically naive, even timid according to some sources. In the dog-eat-dog world of isolated colonial politics and infighting, Franklin was out of his depth. He could be astute politically, as he had proved on his Mediterranean posting, but there he had been in charge of a rigid naval structure that had obeyed him unquestioningly. In Van Diemen's Land he was powerless amidst opposing factions who felt no loyalty other than to their own narrow interests and who would use any means to achieve their ends. The local press was their vehicle. Almost every edition of the Hobart papers contained something which, if published today, would land its author in court for libel. In the broad journey of Franklin's life, the six years in Van Diemen's Land were not a happy experience. However, Franklin did manage brief journeys that were more to his liking.\n\nAfter four years of difficult and disagreeable life in Hobart, Franklin was given a sharp reminder of his previous life and, perhaps, a pang of regret at the glimpse of what might have been his had he not become stuck in this unpleasant place.\n\nIn 1839, James Ross had sailed south from London. He had two ships, the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_ , and orders to explore and circumnavigate the little-known Antarctic Continent. His second-in-command, captain of the _Terror_ , and in charge of the important magnetic work, was also an old Arctic hand, the Irishman, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.\n\nIn August 1840, the expedition arrived in Hobart. Franklin was overjoyed. He invited Ross and Crozier to stay at Government House. Ross was charged with examining magnetism as close to the South Pole as possible. Franklin supplied convict labour to build Ross's magnetic observatory on a hill outside Hobart. He attended a ball Ross threw in his honour on board the _Erebus_ , and when Ross briefly returned to Hobart in 1841, Franklin went out aboard his barge to meet the ships as soon as they were sighted. His spirits picked up and the colonists saw a different side of their governor. Jane described him as, \"bustling and frisky and merry with his new companions.\"\n\nLooking at his portraits, it is a little difficult to imagine Franklin as \"frisky,\" but he was certainly in good spirits. To have the company of people with the same interests and a broad view of the world was gratifying. There was even a romantic interlude played out in the drawing rooms of Government House. Sophia Cracroft, daughter of Franklin's favourite sister, Isabella, and companion to Jane, fell head-over-heels in love with James Ross. Ross however, remained faithful to his fiancee back in England. To complicate the situation, Crozier fell for Sophia, to the degree that he actually proposed marriage to her. She turned him down.\n\nFranklin watched sadly as Ross sailed away. Had he stayed in Britain, could that have been him leading the expedition? He yearned to sit where Ross was, in the Great Cabin of the _Erebus_. Ironically, he would get his chance in a few years' time.\n\nMeanwhile, although Franklin was stuck in this impossible and thankless job, governing the unruly population of Van Diemen's Land, perhaps there was something active he could do? There was \u2013 he could go exploring. Large tracts of Van Diemen's Land were unknown, and there was a need to open up more land for the increasing population of settlers and convicts. Franklin decided to examine the harsh landscape between Hobart and Macquarie Harbour.\n\nIn late March of 1842 he set out, accompanied by Jane, five settlers, and twenty convicts. The schooner _Breeze_ would meet them at the mouth of the Gordon River. Almost as soon as they left Hobart, the weather turned nasty. Buffeted by storms, delayed by swollen streams, and increasingly wet and miserable, the party struggled on through the almost impenetrable wilderness. On one occasion, they camped at the foot of a mountain, on the only piece of solid ground around. The rain was so violent that they could not leave their tiny island of dry security for a week. Food began to run low and Franklin introduced rationing. With his sense of fairness, Franklin insisted that the larger rations be given to the convicts who were doing all the work.\n\nEventually, the struggling party came to halt at a river in flood. To Franklin it was a echo of the horrible delay on the Coppermine River twenty years before. The _Breeze_ was due to sail in two days. She wouldn't wait, and if Franklin's party couldn't reach her before she sailed, they would starve. Two convicts volunteered to cross the river on a makeshift raft. The violent, swirling waters swept them downstream through some rapids, but they gained the other bank and reached the _Breeze_ just as she was setting sail. They persuaded the ship's Captain to wait until Franklin's slower party crossed the river and joined them. It appeared as if Franklin had been saved in the nick of time once more, but the expedition's trials were not over. Storms prevented the _Breeze_ from sailing, and the spectre of starvation raised its head again.\n\nWhen at last the storms abated, Franklin returned to Hobart to discover that the entire party was assumed dead. He was discouraged to find that, even in death he was given no leeway by the hostile press. \"Pity is out of the question,\" was the comment of one local newspaper.\n\nFranklin's explorations in Van Diemen's Land threatened him with starvation and left him at the mercy of the elements. It was an unpleasant experience, yet Franklin remembered it as one of the few times he was happy. To Franklin the man of action, starving or freezing to death appeared preferable to the political infighting of governing the colony.\n\nFranklin was unlucky in Van Diemen's Land. Through no fault of his own, the economy was in a slump and his tenure happened to coincide with a change of policy by the British government that threatened the settlers' beloved assignment system. Nevertheless, his main problem was his own Colonial Secretary, the ex-Arthur man, John Montagu. Montagu was intelligent but conniving, insidious, and totally unscrupulous. Franklin's right-hand man was a part owner of one of the local papers into which he poured insults and innuendo aimed at discrediting his boss and his wife. Such was the nature of politics in Van Diemen's Land.\n\nFranklin allowed Montagu to carry on this way for years. Perhaps Franklin believed the man capable of reform. If so he was seriously mistaken. Despite obvious kindness towards him on Franklin's part, Montagu kept up his attacks relentlessly, even going to Britain for two years to spread poisonous lies behind the governor's back. Eventually, he went too far even for Franklin's tolerance. In reply to a memorandum from Franklin, Montagu responded insultingly that while his own memory was \"remarkably accurate,\" even Franklin's officers had learned that they \"could not always place implicit confidence\" in their superior's memory. Montagu often implied Franklin was feebleminded, but now he had put it in writing. This was Franklin's opportunity. He suspended Montagu and wrote explaining his case to the Secretary for the Colonies in London.\n\nMontagu hastened back to Britain to defend himself. There he was presented with an extraordinary piece of luck. The new Secretary for the Colonies was Lord Stanley, who would become famous for being Prime Minister three times without managing to accomplish anything of any note whatsoever. Incredibly, Stanley believed every word Montagu told him, entirely discounted Franklin's letter, and refused even to give his own governor an opportunity to defend himself.\n\nStanley wrote a dispatch to Franklin defending Montagu. He then gave a copy to Montagu and delayed sending the original to Franklin. Thus, the contents of the dispatch were well known in Hobart gossip circles before Franklin heard of them. Franklin responded to Stanley, remarkably mildly given the circumstances, and was rewarded by being immediately recalled.\n\nThe recall lifted a burden from Franklin's shoulders. His spirits improved and he ironically wished his successor joy in \"what he has in store for him.\" Even the local populace appeared to have a change of heart, and a large cheering crowd turned out to see the Franklins off.\n\nThe years in Van Diemen's Land were both a trial and a career disaster for Franklin. He did not do anything wrong and was poorly served both by his subordinates and his superiors; nevertheless, he failed in the brutal arena of colonial politics. It was unlikely he would be given another posting of any significance.\n\nWhen Franklin returned to Britain in 1844, he was fifty-eight years old. He had not led an expedition for seventeen years, yet he still regarded himself as an explorer. He could have retired comfortably and been regarded as a competent man of his time who had filled in useful pieces of the map of the Canadian Arctic. But Franklin felt he had missed opportunities for true greatness. As it turned out, fate was to give him one more chance. He failed again. This time it was a failure of such monumental proportions that John Franklin's fame would eclipse that of his contemporaries and secure him a place in our cultural memory achieved by very few.\n\nKing William Island\n\n25th April 1848 HM Ships _Terror_ and _Erebus_ were deserted on the 22nd April 5 leagues NNW of this having been beset since 12th Sept. 1846. The Officers & Crews consisting of 105 souls under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier landed here.... Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers & 15 men.\n\nLast message from Franklin's doomed expedition\n\nOn April 25, 1848, three British naval officers sat composing the above message in a windblown tent on the ice-covered shores of King William Island, one of the most remote and bleakest places on earth. They had accomplished much, mapped new lands, described new animals and plants, and filled in the last one hundred kilometres of the fabled Northwest Passage. But they were close to the end. They had been in the Canadian Arctic for three years. Their vessels were still intact, but the fearful pack ice had not released them the previous summer. They still had food left, but men were dying at an alarming rate. Scurvy, the dread of all exploring parties, was widespread. They were more than a thousand kilometres from the closest help. They were doomed. They would keep on struggling to survive, some for perhaps another two years, but none of the three officers or their 102 companions would ever see home again.\n\nBefore the ice finally trapped them. The ill-fated _Erebus_ and _Terror_ at sea.\n\nBack on May 19, 1845, the day they sailed from England, it was overcast, but there was a festive mood in the air as the ships cast off from the Greenhithe dock at 10:30 that morning. For many it was an adventure they greeted with almost schoolboy enthusiasm. They expected to be gone only a year, and some even hoped for a minor delay so that they could spend more time in the mysterious Arctic. An added bonus was that, like all men on \"Exploration Service,\" they would collect double pay as long as they were at sea. As the ships cast off that May morning, a dove alighted on the masthead of one. Surely this was an omen of good fortune.\n\nHow could an expedition which began with such unbridled optimism have gone so wrong? The officers in the tent didn't know, and people are still arguing about it today, but the three men probably agreed that the turning point had been June 11 of the previous year \u2013 the day their commander, Sir John Franklin, died.\n\nJohn Franklin was not the first choice to command the new Arctic venture. The first choice had been James Ross, who had just returned from his circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent. But Ross was a new husband and father, and his young bride, with an attitude starkly in contrast to that of Jane Franklin, had asked him to remain at home and not to undertake any more long and dangerous voyages.\n\nSir John Barrow, who had been the driving force behind almost every Arctic expedition since Franklin first went north with Buchan in 1818, favoured James Fitzjames, a rising young star in the Royal Navy who had seen service in the Middle East and China. But Fitzjames had never been to the Arctic and lacked experience in ice navigation.\n\nSo, at the third go around, the choice fell to Franklin. He had all the qualifications except one. He was old. Almost fifty-nine is old to undergo the rigours of nineteenth-century Arctic travel, but who else was there? And Franklin was keen. Edward Parry was asked if he thought Franklin should be given command. He replied: \"He is a fitter man to go than any I know, and if you don't let him go, the man will die of disappointment.\"\n\nThe selection of second-in-command was no easier. Again Barrow wanted Fitzjames, but the post was offered to a Captain Stokes. When Stokes declined, it was given to Francis Crozier, Ross's second-in-command in the Antarctic and the would-be suitor to Sophia Cracroft.\n\nCrozier should have been an obvious choice for leader of the expedition. He had more ice navigation experience than any of the others and had proven himself reliable and thorough on innumerable occasions. He was also only forty-eight, but he had one huge handicap: He was not socially acceptable. He was Irish and Protestant, and not a member of the elite English aristocratic club. Thus he was suited for work but not command. With Crozier as second-in-command, Fitzjames was finally taken on as third-in-command.\n\nAlthough the expedition was organized on short notice, no expense was spared. Ross's ships, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ , were specially strengthened and had steam engines added for navigation in ice. The ships were supplied with desalinators to distill fresh water from seawater and a steam heating system. Food for three years included 61,986 kilograms of flour, 29,132 kilograms of salt beef and pork, 4,286 kilograms of chocolate, 16,747 litres of concentrated spirits, 4,218 kilograms of lemon juice, 91 kilograms of pepper, and almost 8,000 cans of meat. The ships' libraries contained 2,900 books, including technical manuals, the reports of previous explorers, and the works of Dickens. The infant art of photography was represented by an early daguerreotype apparatus, and each ship was equipped with a hand-organ capable of playing fifty different tunes. This was the ultimate expression of Franklin's idea that you should take everything with you. The 129 men who sailed into Lancaster Sound aboard the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ would live as closely as possible to the way they did at home, at least until things began to go wrong.\n\nFranklin's orders were to proceed through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait until he reached Cape Walker. Since Parry had found massive amounts of permanent ice to the west, Franklin was told to sail south and west towards the Canadian Arctic coast. He was to take the straightest line he could, given that the huge area on the map was unknown and probably contained as yet undiscovered land. If he found the southern route blocked, he was to try sailing to the north along Wellington Channel in another attempt to find the supposed open Arctic Ocean that had proved elusive in 1818.\n\nOn the way, Franklin and his officers were charged with taking magnetic, oceanographic, and meteorological readings, sampling the geology, and examining everything, \"from a flea to a whale.\" They would sail the Northwest Passage, but they were primarily a scientific expedition.\n\nIn keeping with the spirit of scientific innovation, Jane Franklin commissioned two sets of daguerreotype portraits of the officers on the _Erebus_. The daguerreotype process, a precursor of the negative photography of today, was only six years old. It required over forty kilograms of equipment to fix an image on a silvered metal plate. It also required the subject to remain immobile for several minutes. This, as much as the formality of the day, accounts for the rigid poses of the officers when they sat in the Great Cabin of the _Erebus_ for Mr. Beard, the only licensed daguerreotype practitioner in Britain.\n\nDaguerreotype plates last extraordinarily well and are as sharp today as when they were exposed. The originals, archived in Britain, have an almost ethereal silvery patina, which imparts a magical, poignant feel, considering what we know of the fate of these men. To a modern observer, only Fitzjames and Franklin look at all natural. For his second daguerreotype, Commander Fitzjames discarded his telescope prop and smiled faintly for posterity.\n\nIn both of his portraits, although he is dressed in his formal uniform, is wearing his impressive medals, and is carrying his gold baton, Sir John Franklin looks as if he would much rather be somewhere else. Two of his uniform buttons are undone, his face looks pasty, and his eyes puffy. That day, he had a bad case of the flu. He felt horribly unwell, but he had also just had an unnerving premonition.\n\nA couple of nights before the portraits were taken, Franklin was sitting at home by the fire with Jane. He was resting and trying to throw off the flu. She was busy making a silk Union Jack flag for her husband to take with him and raise at the completion of the Northwest Passage. John dropped off to sleep on the couch and, fearing he might be cold, Jane draped the unfinished flag over him. Franklin, the lifetime navy man, awoke to find himself covered in the flag. Jumping up in horror, he said, \"There's a flag thrown over me! Don't you know that they lay a Union Jack over a corpse?\"\n\nIt took Franklin some time to recover his composure, but recover he did, and the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ set off for their first stop at Stromness in the Orkney Islands, north of the Scottish mainland. Expectations ran universally high. Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, stated: \"I have the fullest confidence that everything will be done..., that human efforts can accomplish. The name of Franklin alone is, indeed, a national guarantee.\" The _Times_ newspaper of London voiced what it perceived as the, \"one wish amongst the whole of the inhabitants of this country, from the humblest individual to the highest in the realm, that the enterprise...may be attended with success, and that the brave seamen...may return with honour and health to their native land.\"\n\nAfter a stormy Atlantic crossing, on July 4 Franklin arrived off the island of Disco on the west coast of Greenland and began transferring supplies to his two ships. The process took six days. Before the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ sailed on the tide on July 12, five of the luckiest men in Arctic exploration history were sent home for illness or incompetence, and everyone took the opportunity to write letters to loved ones in Britain. In them, the officers talk of Franklin's energy, enthusiasm, and leadership.\n\nSetting off exploring once more gave John Franklin a new lease on life. Once he had recovered from his cold, he looked ten years younger and took a great interest in all the voyage's activities. He regularly dined with his officers, regaling them with tales of his previous exploits, and conducted religious services every Sunday. The young men under his command almost worshipped him. They were in awe of his experience and judgment and treasured his friendship: \"We are very happy and very fond of Sir John Franklin, who improves very much as we come to know more of him. He is anything but nervous and fidgety: in fact, I should say remarkable for energetic decision in sudden emergencies.\" The _Erebus_ was a new \"Franklin's Paradise.\"\n\nFranklin himself was happier than he had been in years. At last he was back doing what he loved most; leading a party of energetic and zealous subordinates into the unknown. He wrote to all his friends back in England to make sure they would \"comfort and assist\" Jane in his absence. He even petitioned God in his \"constant prayers\" to \"bless and support\" her. They were the last words she ever received from him.\n\nWhen nothing was heard of Franklin for three years, people began to be concerned, and one of the largest search operations in history slowly got under way. Over the next decade, thirty-two expeditions went to the Arctic seeking to discover what had happened to John Franklin. In doing so, they mapped vastly more territory than Franklin could ever have hoped to do on his own and joined the Arctic to the map of Canada. But they found precious little hard evidence of Franklin's fate.\n\nIt wasn't until 1850 that Franklin's first wintering site was discovered at Beechey Island. Here were the remains of buildings, piles of empty food cans, and three graves, but no message to say which way the expedition had gone. The searchers fanned out but discovered nothing else.\n\nIn 1854 John Rae of the Hudson's Bay Company returned to England with some relics and a story to tell. The relics, which had been obtained from the Inuit, included the medal Franklin was wearing in the daguerreotype and some officer's cutlery, but it was the Inuit stories that captured the public's attention. They told of abandoned boats, starving men, and, least acceptable to Victorian sensibilities, cannibalism. Rae was shouted down by such notables as Charles Dickens for believing the unsubstantiated ramblings of untutored savages, but it was enough evidence for the Royal Navy. They declared Franklin and all his men dead and stopped their double pay.\n\nBut the stories were not enough for the indomitable Jane Franklin. She wanted to know what had happened to the husband she had encouraged to go exploring. She badgered the navy mercilessly and, when that didn't produce the results she wanted, she financed her own expedition. It was led by Francis Leopold McClintock and, in 1859, fourteen years after Franklin had sailed with such high hopes, a sledging party from McClintock's yacht, the _Fox_ , arrived at Victory Point on King William Island. There they found piles of clothing and supplies and a solitary note, sealed in a tin can and buried beneath a cairn of stones. Along the coast they also found an abandoned ship's boat and the scattered bones of Franklin's men.\n\nIn the years since, more bones have been discovered and new scientific techniques have been used to explain what happened. The disaster has been blamed on murder, starvation, scurvy, bad food, lead poisoning, and, most recently, botulism poisoning. Some of the theories are wild, and most tell us more about our own fears than they do about Franklin, but it is now possible to piece together a rough outline of what happened.\n\nFranklin led his happy band of explorers through Lancaster Sound in August, 1845. Not being one to disobey orders, he sailed straight on to Cape Walker and tried to turn south. There he met the Beaufort Ice Stream, pouring down from the High Arctic. It was a fearful sight of vast slabs of ice grinding and crashing together \u2013 there was no way through. Retreating, Franklin tried the second option in his orders, a northern route. He sailed up Wellington Channel and reached 77 degrees north before ice again stopped him. He returned south, circumnavigated Cornwallis Island, and settled in for the winter at the protected bay beside Beechey Island.\n\nThe first winter still felt like an adventure. The men occupied themselves with the scientific work, explored the coastline, and hunted. They built a forge and storage hut on the shore and even attempted to plant a garden in the spring. Three men died \u2013 too many deaths in such a short time \u2013 but all three had been suffering from consumption, the same disease that had killed Franklin's first wife. The sick men should never have been in the Arctic in the first place. Everyone else was fit and well.\n\nIn the summer of 1846, the ice broke up and Franklin had a piece of good luck. He discovered an open channel to the south down the side of Somerset Island. He could carry out his orders after all.\n\nHurrying on in the short summer season, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ used their steam engines in close ice to work down to a position north of King William Island. James Ross had visited King William Island in 1830, and this was the farthest anyone had gone through the Northwest Passage from the east. A mere one hundred kilometres to the south was the cairn built by two Hudson's Bay Company men \u2013 Thomas Simpson and the very same Peter Warren Dease who had been such a help organizing Franklin's supplies on his second expedition. Only eight years before, they had mapped the coast along from Franklin's Point Turnagain and visited the south shore of King William Island. Franklin was poised to complete the Northwest Passage.\n\nPerhaps Franklin tried to pass down the east coast of King William Island, but it is too shallow there for the deep drafts of his ships, so he would have had to turn back. The only other choice was the west coast. This was not an inviting prospect, for down there ran the extension of the frightening Beaufort Ice Stream. There were no protected harbours on the west coast, so Franklin had to make the best of it, docking his ships for the winter in a stable ice floe in the stream. It was not ideal, but still nothing to worry about. Another winter and the Northwest Passage would be theirs. Then they could sail home along the coast of Canada and return as heroes.\n\nIn the spring of 1847, still full of hope, Franklin sent out a sledging expedition to examine the west coast of King William Island and complete the Northwest Passage. Lieutenant Graham Gore from the _Erebus_ succeeded, and for his achievement was promoted by Franklin to Commander. Gore left brief notes in cairns to mark his progress along the coast. As Gore's commander it was Fitzjames' duty to write the notes, which were all written before Gore set off and which all ended with the cheery \"All well.\" It was the last time anyone could say that.\n\nOn June 11, 1847, John Franklin died. It was unexpected. He had been fine when Fitzjames wrote \"All well\" on the 24th of May. Perhaps it was a heart attack or a stroke. Franklin was now sixty-one and, despite the expedition's good progress so far, Arctic exploration was a hard discipline for a man that age. In any case, his death was a severe blow to morale. Franklin was the leader, the figurehead, and his name was, after all, the \"national guarantee.\"\n\nDid Franklin have any warning of his end? Did he have a chance to write one last letter to Jane, his other half and the one person who had always believed in and supported him? No one knows. If he did, it was lost with all the rest of the expedition's papers.\n\nCrozier was now in charge. His first duty was to bury Franklin, either in the ice or at some undiscovered place on King William Island. It must have been a very emotional occasion. Franklin had been almost like a father to many of the young, inexperienced officers on the _Erebus_ , and without him, the whole tone of the expedition changed. Crozier was an efficient, practical man and he would do his best, but he did not have Franklin's presence. The men knew that even when the ice released them in the summer of 1847, they would sail home with a dark burden.\n\nWith Franklin's death, the expedition's good luck seemed to evaporate. The expected spring breakup of the ice didn't happen. The crews waited, keeping watch from the crow's-nest for the telltale glimpse of an open water lead, but nothing showed. All that happened was that the trapped ships drifted slowly to the south, ever deeper into the ice stream.\n\nSoon they were facing another winter with no guarantee that the summer of 1848 would be any better. Men began dying of scurvy. Lead poisoning from the poorly soldered canned food began to set in. This was a mysterious illness because lead was not known as a poison in the 1840s.\n\nIn the spring of 1848, Crozier made a desperate decision. His ships were still undamaged, but he had to find fresh food to stop the scurvy. Other explorers had talked of caribou and birds to the south. After taking their equipment and supplies ashore, Crozier had Lieutenant John Irving retrieve one of Gore's messages. In the windblown tent, while Fitzjames wrote and Irving corrected, Crozier dictated the expedition's last message around the margins of the earlier one. Gore's cheery \"All well\" appeared horribly ironic now.\n\nAfter they reburied the message, they headed south. Some men died on the way, dropping in their tracks; others died at a large camp on the south shore of King William Island; some made it onto the Canadian mainland and died beneath an upturned boat at Starvation Cove; a dozen or so died beside a boat on the way back to the ships. A few made it back to the ships and probably sailed one of them south. But scurvy, lead poisoning, starvation, and ice would not let them succeed. These men all died too.\n\nThe Inuit tell stories of meeting ragged groups of starving men, of finding camps filled with bodies and the evidence of cannibalism, and, most intriguingly, of three or four men and a dog who survived for several years and reached as far east as the Melville Peninsula. But eventually they too died. Everyone died \u2013 often very unpleasantly and after witnessing and living through almost unspeakable horrors. Franklin's final piece of luck was that he did not live to see the tragedy that his final expedition became.\n\nJourneying after death. Memorial to John Franklin, Waterloo Place, London.\nEpilogue\n\nWestminster Abbey\n\nNot here:  \nThe white North has thy bones, and thou  \nHeroic Sailor Soul  \nArt passing on thy happier voyage now  \nToward no Earthly Pole.\n\nTennyson's epitaph to Franklin, Westminster Abbey\n\nThe young Lieutenant Irving was one of those who returned to the ships in the summer of 1848. We know this because he was alive at Victory Point when the note was written in April and Crozier led his command south. In the 1870s, a skeleton in a shallow grave was found at Victory Point. Shreds of clothing indicated that it belonged to an officer. Beside the skull was a medal for mathematical achievement from the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. It had been presented in 1830 to John Irving. Even in their last extremity, the survivors took the trouble to bury their friends surrounded by their most prized possessions.\n\nIrving's skeleton was returned to Britain and, amidst widespread grief, was buried in his hometown of Edinburgh. His is the only named grave of any of the 129 men of the Franklin expedition.\n\nDespite Jane's best efforts, John Franklin's grave was never found. However, monuments to him sprang up all around the world. A statue of Franklin announcing the discovery of the Northwest Passage to his men stands to one side of Waterloo Place in London. The statue is 2.4 metres high, and the plinth on which it stands bears a bronze scene of Franklin's funeral, a map, lists of all the officers and men of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ , and the scars of a German bomb that exploded in Waterloo Place during the blitz in 1940. A marble monument in Westminster Abbey was unveiled by George Back in 1875, mere weeks after Jane Franklin died. There is a bas-relief in Greenwich, a statue, apparently a very good likeness, in the Market Place of Spilsby, stained glass windows in Gravesend, a monument in Hobart, Tasmania, and a marble tablet on Beechey Island. In addition, many points in the Canadian Arctic are named for Franklin and his companions.\n\nJohn Franklin was gentler and less arrogant than many of his contemporaries, but his cultural blinkers were just as firmly in place. In structured environments where there was a clear chain of command, he excelled. In situations where the structure was fluid and flexibility and imagination were called for, he did less well. Yet he spent much of his life actively seeking those very situations.\n\nWhy he should have sought out dangerous, unstable situations, in which it was extremely unlikely that he would excel, is a mystery. Perhaps he had a distorted view of his own talents. Perhaps he saw his own weaknesses and attempted to overcome them. If the latter, then he failed.\n\nMost likely, Franklin did not really question his situations. The early nineteenth century was not, after all, a time of great self-analysis. Franklin did what he did at each moment of his life because, at that time, there were obvious reasons for taking a specific course. He undertook exploration because Flinders had trained him well in navigation and because it was the fastest way to advance his career. He pushed the limits too far on his first expedition because not to have done so would have finished his career. He eagerly sought leadership of his third expedition because he longed for the straightforward life of an explorer after the years of political infighting in Van Diemen's Land.\n\nBut for all that, there was a part of Franklin that craved the solitude and hardship of remote places on the edge of the known world. To satisfy that craving he was perfectly prepared to risk his own and his companions' lives.\n\nMaybe Franklin would have been better off staying at home and taking over the family business in Spilsby. But that was never really possible. John was a traveller. Two of his brothers sought their fortunes in India, but even India would not have been enough for John. He went to extremes. Few ventured as far as he did both in the far north and the far south. He pushed the limits of the known.\n\nFranklin achieved much during his life. His expeditions mapped more than 12,735 kilometres of previously unknown coastline; his scientific discoveries contributed a great deal to an understanding of the ecology of the Arctic lands; and his men discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage.\n\nIronically, however, Franklin's greatest contribution to exploration and geography was his mysterious death. The navy had no shortage of keen young officers who could have led Franklin's first two expeditions as well as he. What was unique to Franklin was his death off the shores of King William Island. That event and attempts to explain it triggered one of the largest and most intense bursts of exploration the world has ever seen. What happened in the twelve years after Franklin died defined the Canadian North and set the scene for the sovereignty we now enjoy.\n\nThe North has always loomed large in the Canadian consciousness, and Franklin's tragic death has assumed the aura of a Canadian myth. The countless songs, stories, and poems written about him have extended his journey long past his own lifetime. Rudy Wiebe won the Governor General's Award for A _Discovery of Strangers_ , his novel set around Franklins first expedition. Stan Rogers' song, _Northwest Passage_ , with its haunting images of \"lonely cairns of stones\" and \"the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,\" was considered the ultimate Canadian song by CBC listeners.\n\nWe owe John Franklin a lot. He was a man of his time who failed to rise above that. He failed as much as he succeeded, but his final failure was so magnificent that it ensured him a lasting place in the history of Canada and in the minds of all Canadians.\n\nFinding Remains of Skeletons in a Boat. Reprinted from E.V Blake, _Arctic Experiences_ (1874). Two of Franklin's men after they became part of the myth.\n_Chronology of John Franklin (1786\u20131847)_\n\nCompiled by Lynne Bowen\n\n**F RANKLIN AND HIS TIMES**|  **C ANADA AND THE WORLD**  \n---|---  \n|  **1576**  \n|  English explorer Martin Frobisher leads an unsuccessful expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.  \n|  **1580**  \n|  English explorer Francis Drake embarks on a voyage around the world; one of his goals is to find the western end of the Northwest Passage.  \n|  **1610\u201311**  \n|  English explorer Henry Hudson, while searching for the Northwest Passage, sails into Hudson Bay; the crew mutinies and sets Hudson, his son and seven others adrift in an open boat; they are never seen again.  \n|  **1642**  \n|  Tasmania is discovered by Dutch mariner Abel Tasman, who names the region after the governor of the Dutch East Indies, Anton Van Diemen.  \n|  **1662**  \n|  In England, King Charles II inaugurates the Royal Society for the pursuit and advance of the physical sciences.  \n|  **1670**  \n|  King Charles II grants the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) all lands draining into Hudson Bay for the purpose of trading in furs.  \n|  **1682**  \n|  In North America, French explorer Rene-Robert La Salle claims the vast area drained by the Mississippi River (Louisiana) for France.  \n|  **1684**  \n|  HBC builds York Factory on the western shore of Hudson Bay.  \n|  **1741**  \n|  Russian explorer Vitus Bering establishes Russia's claim to northwestern North America.  \n|  **1758\u20131762**  \n|  Following French defeats during the Seven Years' War, England deports French settlers from Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) to England, France, and Louisiana.  \n|  **1763**  \n|  The Treaty of Paris that ends the Seven Years' War cedes Louisiana to Spain.  \n| 1768  \n| Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks of the Royal Society lead a British scientific expedition to the southern Pacific Ocean.  \n|  **1770**  \n|  Britain annexes the eastern seaboard of Australia and names it New South Wales.  \n|  **1771**  \n|  Canadian explorer and fur trader Samuel Hearne reaches the Coppermine River.  \n **1774**|  **1774**  \nThomas Adam Franklin (Franklin's oldest brother) is born.| Hearne selects the site for Cumberland House, the first inland fort of the HBC.  \n|  **1775**  \n|  In North America, the American War of Independence begins.  \n|  **1776**  \n|  The thirteen American colonies declare independence from Britain on July 4.  \n|  **1778**  \n|  English explorer Captain James Cook sails into Bering Strait in search of the western approach to the Northwest Passage; a wall of ice stops him.  \n **1780**|  **1780**  \nWillingham Franklin, Jr. (Franklin's second eldest brother) is born.| Highland Scots, Canadien woodsmen, and Montreal businessmen and explorers join together in the North West Company (NWC) to trade in furs and resist the inland advances of the HBC.  \n| Thomas Drummond, future botanist, is born in Scotland.  \n| Elizabeth Fry, future prison reformer, is born in England.  \n **1783**|  **1783**  \nJames Franklin (Franklin's third eldest brother) is born.| The Treaty of Paris formally recognizes the United States of America (U.S.); colonists loyal to the British Crown (Loyalists) leave the U.S. and move into the British colonies to the north.  \n|  **1784**  \n|  George Arthur, future colonial governor, is born at Plymouth, England.  \n **1786**|  **1786**  \nJohn Franklin is born on April 16 at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England, to Willingham and Hanah Weekes Franklin; John is the ninth of twelve children; eleven will survive infancy.| Because the settlement of British convicts in the U.S. is no longer possible, a plan for their transport to New South Wales is adopted.  \n|  **1787**  \n|  The first fleet carrying convicts to Australia leaves Britain in May.  \n| John Richardson, future surgeon and naturalist, is born at Dumfries, Scotland.  \n|  **1788**  \n|  The convict fleet arrives in Botany Bay; a better harbour is soon discovered to the north where Port Jackson (later Sydney) is established.  \n|  **1789**  \n|  In France, the fall of the Bastille marks the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution.  \n| Scottish-born Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Arctic Ocean overland from Lake Athabasca, affirming Hearne's finding that it was possible to traverse the Canadian Arctic over land.  \n|  **1791**  \n|  The Constitution Act divides the old Province of Qu\u00e9bec into Lower and Upper Canada along the present-day Qu\u00e9bec-Ontario border.  \n| The Spanish explorer Galiano maps much of Canada's west coast; English explorer Captain George Vancouver spends the first of three summers as leader of a maritime expedition to explore the west coast of North America from California to Alaska.  \n **1792**|   \nMatthew Flinders, Franklin's uncle, sails with William Bligh, of the mutiny on the _Bounty_ fame, on his second voyage.|   \n **1796**|   \nFranklin first attends Louth Grammar School|   \n **1797**|  **1797**  \nFranklin travels with school friends to the village of Saltfleet, where he sees the sea for the first time.| At the Battle of Tenerife, British admiral Horatio Nelson, having already lost the sight in his right eye in Corsica, loses his right arm.  \n|  **1798**  \n|  George Vancouver publishes his journals, in which he claims to have proven the existence of the Northwest Passage.  \n| Englishmen George Bass and Matthew Flinders circumnavigate Van Diemen's Land.  \n **1799**|  **1799**  \nFranklin tells his parents he wants to become a sailor; in order to discourage him, his father arranges for him to sail from Hull to Lisbon, a route that traverses the notorious Bay of Biscay.| In France, Napoleon Bonaparte becomes First Consul.  \nEleanor Ann Porden, Franklin's future wife, is born.| Britain and Russia invade the Netherlands in the hope that the Dutch will rise up against their French conquerors; the invasion is unsuccessful.  \n **1800**|  **1800**  \nFranklin joins HMS _Polyphemus_ as a first-class volunteer on March 9, a month before his fourteenth birthday.| Louisiana is returned to France in a secret treaty.  \n **1801**|  **1801**  \nFranklin gets his first taste of battle on board the _Polyphemus_ in the Battle of Copenhagen.| The British navy under Horatio Nelson destroys the Danish navy in the Battle of Copenhagen; William Bligh is among the officers taking part.  \nIn July, midshipman Franklin sails in HMS _Investigator_ under his uncle, Captain Matthew Flinders, who plans to map the Australian coast.|   \n **1802**|  **1802**  \n _Investigator_ is beached for repairs on the coast of Australia; carpenters discover rotten timbers; during the voyage back to Port Jackson the ship leaks badly and is in danger of breaking up.| France concludes a peace treaty with Britain; Napoleon is made consul for life.  \n **1803**|  **1803**  \n _Investigator_ is deemed unfit; on August 10, Flinders leaves on the _Porpoise_ for England to find another ship; Franklin is with him; the _Porpoise_ runs aground on an unmapped coral reef in Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea; ninety-four men are shipwrecked on a sandbar with little hope of rescue; when rescue comes, Franklin goes to China; Flinders continues mapping; he is captured by the French at Mauritius and held captive for six years.| War between France and Britain is rekindled; Nelson is named Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean; he patrols the south coast of France on HMS _Victory_ , Napoleon prepares to invade England.  \n| France sells Louisiana to the U.S.  \n| Britain establishes Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land; three-quarters of the first settlers are convicts.  \n **1804**|  **1804**  \nFranklin returns to England from China as signal midshipman in a convoy of merchant ships; the commander outsmarts a squadron of French warships.| In the presence of Pope Pious VII, Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French.  \nFranklin spends six weeks with his family in Lincolnshire; in August, he joins HMS _Bellerophon_ ; the ship spends a year blockading the French fleet at Brest.|   \n **1805**|  **1805**  \n _Bellerophon_ returns to England in the summer and then resumes blockade work at Cadiz and Cartagena.| Nelson chases the French and Spanish fleets across the Atlantic and back.  \nFranklin is the signals officer on the _Bellerophon_ at the Battle of Trafalgar; he interprets Nelson's famous order, \"England expects that every man will do his duty,\" for his shipmates; it is his responsibility to make sure the flag is flying; Franklin is one of the few on the ship uninjured, although he loses some of his hearing from the noise of battle; he is singled out for displaying \"very conspicuous zeal and ability.\"| In October, during the Battle of Trafalgar, twenty-seven British ships meet the combined French and Spanish fleets near the Strait of Gibraltar for the last great naval engagement fought under sail; Nelson is mortally wounded during the battle; his body is returned to England preserved in a cask of rum.  \n **1806**|  **1806**  \nFranklin begins six years of blockading work.| Having defeated Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Napoleon controls most of Europe; although he imposes a continental blockade against Britain, the British still control the seas; this enrages the U.S., which is looking for an excuse to invade Upper and Lower Canada.  \n **1807**|   \nThomas Franklin commits suicide after his financial speculation ends disastrously.|   \n **1808**|  **1808**  \nIn February, Lieutenant John Franklin sails with the fleet to escort the deposed Portuguese royal family to Brazil; without family money to enhance his income, Franklin is miserable is Brazil, which is dirty, unhealthy and overcrowded.| While looking for the mouth of the Columbia River, explorer Simon Fraser discovers the river that will be named after him.  \n **1810**|  **1810**  \nFranklin returns to England in August; his mother dies in November.| American troops take control of Baton Rouge from the Spanish.  \nCaptain Matthew Flinders is released from captivity in Mauritius.|   \n|  **1811**  \n|  Major-General Isaac Brock becomes commander of British forces in Upper Canada and provisional administrator of the government.  \n **1812**|  **1812**  \nImpatient with blockade work, Franklin applies for a transfer, but his request is denied.| The U.S. Congress declares war against Britain on June 18 and attacks Canada; Isaac Brock is killed at Queenston Heights.  \n| Future English novelist Charles Dickens is born.  \n|  **1813**  \n|  British forces defeat Napoleon in Spain.  \n| Neither British nor American forces are able to control Lake Ontario; depleted American forces leave Upper Canada.  \n **1814**|  **1814**  \nIn the second of two years spent escorting merchant convoys to the West Indies, the _Bedford_ , with Franklin on board, is ordered to sail to New Orleans, where the British fleet is gathering to attack the Americans.| A series of battles exhausts both sides in the war; the British burn Washington, D.C in August; both sides capture and lose territory; the war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on December 14; all captured territory is returned.  \nMatthew Flinders dies, never having regained his health lost when he was a captive.| Allied forces of Europe defeat Napoleon and send him into exile on the island of Elba near Corsica.  \n **1815**|  **1815**  \nNews of the end of the war has not reached the combatants at New Orleans; the British navy attacks U.S. gunboats on Lake Borgne; Franklin is wounded but is not out of action for long; he is mentioned in dispatches and receives a medal for his role in the attack; the _Bedford_ returns to Britain in May.| At the Battle of New Orleans, two thousand British soldiers are killed or wounded.  \n| Napoleon returns from exile and rules for one hundred days; in June, forces under the Duke of Wellington defeat him at Waterloo; the end of the Napoleonic Wars puts many sailors and ships out of work.  \n|  **1817**  \n|  Whaling Master William Scoresby returns from Baffin Bay in the Canadian Arctic with the news that normally icebound parts of the Greenland coast are ice free.  \n| English naval officer and explorer John Ross commands an expedition to explore Baffin Bay.  \n **1818**|  **1818**  \nHaving been on half-pay since 1815, Lieutenant Franklin welcomes the opportunity to be second-in-command of the British Polar expedition; he takes command of the _Trent_ , a small whaler; among the visitors to the ships as they prepare to sail is Eleanor Ann Porden, a young woman with an interest in science and poetry.| In England, the government mounts two Arctic expeditions: one is to sail through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the other to sail straight north, discover the North Pole, continue through the Bering Strait and on to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii); the expeditions mark the opening of the golden age of British Arctic exploration.  \nThe expedition sails on April 25; the boats leak, heavy ice blocks their way, walrus attack the longboats, icebergs calf, the boats become icebound; the expedition is finally compelled to turn for home; Franklin gets his first taste of Arctic conditions; attention now focuses exclusively on finding the Northwest Passage.| Edward Parry is given command of the expedition charged with sailing through the Northwest Passage.  \nFranklin accepts the leadership of an expedition to map the Arctic coast of Canada east from the Coppermine River, to study the natural history, examine the aurora borealis, and to take detailed readings of all aspects of magnetic force.| A treaty between Britain and the U.S. sets the northern boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase along the forty-ninth parallel.  \n| Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel _Frankenstein_ is published.  \n **1819**|  **1819**  \nOn May 28, the three ships of Franklin's first expedition set sail, almost leaving midshipman George Back behind; they reach the entrance to Hudson Bay on August 7, meet Inuit for the first time on August 8, and arrive at York Factory on August 30.| Danish physicist Hans C. Oersted discovers electromagnetism.  \nOn September 9, Franklin and a party of four, including naturalist Dr. John Richardson and midshipman Back, leave York Factory with the support of HBC and NWC voyageurs and Aboriginal People; they go inland by riverboat, across Lake Winnipeg, and up the Saskatchewan River to reach Cumberland House on October 23.| Parry sails for the Canadian Arctic on May 9; he explores Prince Regent Inlet and reaches farther west along the south shore of Melville Island than anyone has before; his will be the first modern expedition to winter in the High Arctic.  \n| A treaty between Spain and the U.S. sets the western boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase.  \n **1820**|  **1820**  \nIn mid-January, Franklin and a small party, including George Back, leave Cumberland House for Fort Chipewyan, an NWC outpost on Lake Athabasca; the party travels almost all the way on snow-shoes, which they find difficult to master; they arrive on March 26.| Edward Parry returns from a successful voyage to the Canadian Arctic.  \nReluctant voyageurs, a scarcity of food, and the hostility between the NWC and the HBC make preparation difficult, but Franklin presses on, this time by canoe; he arrives at Fort Providence on Great Slave Lake, the most northerly trading outpost, on July 28; the Copper (Yellowknife) First Nation agrees to assist him; the party arrives at the wintering site on August 20, names it Fort Enterprise and builds two log houses in preparation for winter.| Explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie dies in Britain.  \n **1821**|  **1821**  \nIn January, Franklin is promoted to Commander; in June, he and a party of nineteen travel down the Coppermine River retracing Hearne's route to the Arctic coast in July.| English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic rotation.  \nUnlike Hearne, Franklin and his party, which includes Richardson and Back, continue east along the coast. They are determined to map over one thousand kilometers between the Coppermine River and Hudson Bay, but the convoluted shoreline and a shortage of food leads Franklin to order a return to Fort Enterprise across the barren lands; winter sets in early; when they reach Fort Enterprise on October 11 they find it deserted; by the time relief arrives on November 7, eleven members of the party are dead.| The HBC absorbs the NWC.  \n| Napoleon dies on St. Helena.  \n| Edward Parry leaves England again for the Canadian Arctic.  \n **1822**|   \nHaving slowly regained their health, Franklin and his men sail for England in the spring; Franklin arrives in London in October to find himself a hero; he is promoted to captain and becomes a member of the Royal Society.|   \nFranklin's book, _Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20,21, and 22_ sells briskly; its success reinforces his mistaken idea that using aboriginals and voyageurs was a mistake.|   \n **1823**|  **1823**  \nFranklin's father dies; Franklin spends time at the family home at Spilsby, Lincolnshire.| Edward Parry returns to England having discovered Fury and Hecla Strait and confirmed Lancaster Sound as the entrance to the Northwest Passage; he proposes a third attempt to explore the Passage.  \nOn August 19, Franklin marries Eleanor Ann Porden; she is the author of a well-received book of poetry; she has TB.|   \n **1824**|  **1824**  \nFranklin's daughter, Eleanor, is born in June; her mother's condition deteriorates rapidly, but despite this and with his wife's blessing, Franklin prepares for his second expedition.| Parry sails to the Canadian Arctic to explore Prince Regent Inlet; while wintering there, one of his two ships, _Fury_ , is damaged and abandoned; her supplies are cached on Fury Beach.  \nSir Willingham Franklin, Jr., a Supreme Court judge in Madras, dies of cholera.|   \n **1825**|  **1825**  \nOn February 16, Franklin leaves England on his second expedition, accompanied again by Richardson and Back; on the shores of Lake Huron he receives the news that his wife died six days after his departure from England.| Parry returns to England.  \nCarefully planned and with supplies and equipment sent on ahead, Franklin's second expedition is going well; he reaches the Mackenzie River on August 2 well ahead of schedule, unfurls the flag that Eleanor has given him, and loses no time returning to his winter quarters at Fort Franklin.| Van Diemen's Land becomes a separate colony from New South Wales.  \n| Robert Dunsmuir, future coal magnate on Vancouver Island, is born in Scotland.  \n **1826**|   \nIn early July, two parties set out from the mouth of the Mackenzie River \u2013 Richardson's party goes east and Franklin's (with Back) goes west; Franklin's group is swarmed by aggressive Inuit who take all the trade goods; Franklin names the site Pillage Point; on July 27, the party crosses into Russian territory; having mapped 981 kilometres of unexplored coast, they turn back on August 17, encountering storms and friendlier Inuit and arriving back at Fort Franklin in September; both expedition parties have had successful summers.|   \n **1827**|  **1827**  \nFranklin, with five sailors and two guides, leaves Fort Franklin in February and reaches Cumberland House in June; the expedition has collected hundreds of samples and much scientific data; they meet Richardson, who has travelled west to meet botanist Thomas Drummond. Drummond has spent two years collecting specimens on the prairies.| Wellington is made commander-in-chief of the British army.  \nFranklin and Richardson take a leisurely journey home, visiting Montreal and New York and arriving in Liverpool on September 26.| The Parry expedition reaches 82 degrees 45 minutes north, the closest anyone will get to the North Pole for fifty years; Parry's second-in-command is James Clark Ross, an authority on magnetism and a good naturalist and taxidermist.  \nFranklin is showered with recognition: a gold medal from the French Geographical Society, a knighthood, and an honorary degree from Oxford.| Sanford Fleming, future Canadian railway surveyor, is born in Scotland.  \n **1828**|  **1828**  \nFranklin courts Jane Griffin, a woman he has met through his first wife; during the summer, they travel to Russia; Franklin meets Alexander, the ten-year-old czare-vich (heir to the throne).| Wellington becomes Prime Minister of Britain.  \nOn November 5, Franklin marries Jane and they honeymoon in Paris, where he is a celebrity.| Thomas Drummond becomes curator of the botanical garden in Belfast.  \n|  **1829**  \n|  John Ross commands a privately funded Arctic expedition into Lancaster Sound accompanied by his nephew, James Clark Ross.  \n| The Peace of Adrianople ends the Russo-Turkish War; Turkey acknowledges Greece's independence.  \n **1830**|  **1830**  \nHaving spent two years of \"vanity, trifling and idleness,\" Franklin is relieved to be given command of the frigate HMS Rainbow; in November he sails for the Mediterranean.| James Clark Ross reaches Victory Point on King William Island.  \n| John Irving, future lieutenant on the last Franklin expedition, wins a medal for mathematical achievement from the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, England.  \n|   \n **1832**|   \nHaving cruised the Mediterranean for two years with stops at Malta, Nauplia, and Corfu, where Lady Jane Franklin visits him, Franklin sails to Patras in southern Greece; in Patras he intervenes in a local dispute between British merchants and the governor using a conciliatory tone and the presence of his twenty-six-gun frigate.| One week later, Franklin's diplomatic intervention in another crisis allows Patras to experience an unusually quiet Easter.  \n **1833**|  **1833**  \nIn February the new king of Greece arrives and the _Rainbow_ goes home; Franklin is commended for his \"calm and steady conduct\" and his \"judgment and forbearance.\"| His ship, _Victory_ , having been icebound in the Canadian Arctic for four winters, John Ross and his nephew, James Clark Ross, are finally able to return to England, where John is knighted.  \n **1834**|  **1834**  \nOn January 8, Franklin leaves the _Rainbow_ ; although King William interviews him, the First Lord of the Admiralty brushes Franklin off when he asks for a new posting.| George Back is chosen over more experienced candidates to lead another Northwest Passage expedition aboard HMS _Terror_.  \nJames Franklin, soldier, surveyor, mapmaker, dies.|   \n|  **1835**  \n|  Botanist Thomas Drummond dies in Havana, Cuba.  \n **1836**|   \nFranklin applies to the Colonial Office for a position; he becomes governor of Van Diemen's Land; he sails for the south Pacific.|   \n **1837**|  **1837**  \nFranklin and his family arrive in Van Diemen's Land; he finds that his predecessor, George Arthur, has created a totalitarian state with a brutal system of dealing with convicts; Franklin is dependent on Arthur's associates to run the colony smoothly; settlers soon develop a strong dislike for Franklin and for his wife, Jane, who is seen to be interfering.| Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada  \nJane forms the \"Tasmanian Ladies' Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners,\" but it is unwelcome and short-lived; she has more success encouraging the arts and natural history; she is the first woman to travel overland from Melbourne to Sydney.| The first episode of _Oliver Twist_ , by Charles Dickens, is published.  \n| Victoria becomes Queen of Great Britain and the Empire.  \n|  **1838**  \n|  George Arthur, former governor of Van Diemen's Land, becomes lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada.  \n|  **1839**  \n|  James Clark Ross sails fro London with orders to explore and circumnavigate the Antarctic continent; he commands HMs _Erebus_ and his second-in-command, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, commands HMS _Terror_.  \n| Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, a French painter and physicist, announces the invention of the daguerrotype, an early photographic process.  \n| In the aftermath of the rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, 29 men are hanged and 141 are deported to Australia.  \n **1840**|   \nEconomic development in Van Diemen's Land reaches a peak, to be followed by a severe depression.|   \nIn August, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ arrive at Hobart; Franklin meets James Clark Ross and Francis Crozier; he supplies convict labour to build a magnetic observatory for Ross outside Hobart; Ross throws a dress ball in his honour aboard the _Erebus_.|   \n **1841**|  **1841**  \nFranklin goes out to meet Ross's ships when they return from Antarctica;| George Arthur is knighted for his role in uniting Upper and Lower Canada; he returns to England and becomes the Governor of Bombay the following year.  \nFranklin's niece and Jane's companion, Sophia Cracroft, falls in love with James Clark Ross, but he remains faithful to his fiancee; Crozier falls in love with Sophia, but she turns down his proposal of marriage.|   \n **1842**|   \nIn March, Franklin and Jane and a small party struggle through the rain-soaked wilderness between Hobart and Macquarie Harbour, where they rendezvous with a ship just as it has given up on them; starvation threatens when storms delay the ship's departure.|   \n **1844**|   \nHaving been discredited by John Montagu, his colonial secretary, Franklin is recalled to England unjustly deemed to have failed in colonial politics.|   \n **1845**|  **1845**  \nFranklin, though almost fifty-nine years old, is offered leadership of the latest Arctic expedition; his second-in-command is Francis Crozier; his well-equipped ships are _Erebus_ and _Terror_ ; his mission is to complete the Northwest Passage and conduct scientific investigation.| James Clark Ross agrees to stay at home when his wife asks him not to undertake any more long voyages.  \nIn May, a daguerreotype preserves the moment before departure in the Great Cabin of the _Erebus_ ; Franklin has the flu and has recently had a premonition about his own death; the expedition leaves amid high expectations for its success; Franklin is in high spirits; in July, from Greenland, he writes to his friends in England to ask them to \"comfort and assist\" Jane; ice stops his first two attempts to find the Passage; he circumnavigates Cornwallis Island and settles in for the winter beside Beechey Island.|   \n **1846**|   \nDuring the winter, three of Franklin's men die of TB-related illnesses; in summer, the expedition works its way down to a position north of King William Island; on September 12, Franklin is beset in the Beaufort Ice Stream; he docks his ships for winter in a stable ice floe.|   \n **1847**|  **1847**  \nFranklin sends out a sledging expedition to examine the west coast of King William Island and complete the Northwest Passage under Lieutenant Graham Gore, who leaves brief optimistic notes in cairns to mark his progress.| In reaction to British government designs to make Van Diemen's Land \"the jail of the Empire,\" a movement against the transportation of convicts is launched.  \nOn June 11, Franklin dies unexpectedly at the age of sixty-one; Crozier assumes command; the ice does not break up and the expedition faces another winter; men die of scurvy and lead poisoning from poorly soldered canned food.|   \n **1848**|  **1848**  \nIn the spring, Crozier orders the 105 survivors to head south overland in search of fresh food; they retrieve one of the messages left in a cairn and add their change of plans to the message; some men die in their tracks; some die at a large camp on the south shore of King William Island; some die beneath an upturned boat at Starvation Cove on the Canadian mainland and some beside a boat on the way back to the ships; a few make it back to the ships but scurvy, starvation, and ice prevent them from escaping the Arctic.| Britain's Royal Navy begins to change from sail to steam power.  \nIn England, nothing has been heard from the Franklin expedition for three years; a three-way search is organized: Sir James Clark Ross approaches through Lancaster Sound, Captain Henry Kellet comes from Bering Strait, and John Rae and Sir John Richardson trek overland from the Mackenzie River. No one finds any definite traces of the expedition.| Revolutions erupt in several European countries.  \n|  **1849**  \n|  George Mercer Dawson (future Canadian geologist, explorer, and mapmaker) is born in Pictou, Nova Scotia.  \n **1850**|  **1850**  \nMore search parties set out: Richard Collinson and Robert McClure search from the west, Horatio Austin and William Penny from the east; the HBC sends Sir John Ross; E.J. De Haven heads an American expedition; Lady Franklin finances an expedition under Charles Forsyth.| The first episode of _Bleak House_ , by Charles Dickens, is published.  \nFranklin's first wintering site is discovered at Beechey Island but gives no clues as to his fate.|   \n **1851**|   \nLady Franklin sends out another search expedition.|   \n **1852**|   \nThe British Admiralty sends out its last and greatest expedition under Sir Edward Belcher. This expedition also looks for McClure and Collinson, who have not been heard from.|   \n|  **1853**  \n|  Transportation of convicts officially ends.  \n **1854**|  **1854**  \nSir Edward Belcher returns from his search for Franklin having rescued McClure, who, with his crew, is awarded the Admiralty prize for completing the Northwest Passage.| Britain, France, and Turkey declare war on Russia in the Crimea; Lord Tennyson publishes the poem \"The Charge of the Light Brigade.\"  \nJohn Rae of the HBC wins 10,000 pounds for settling Franklin's fate when he returns to England with some relics obtained from the Inuit and stories told by the Inuit of abandoned boats, starving men, and cannibalism; the Royal Navy declares Franklin and all his men dead and stops their double pay; public figures like Charles Dickens denounce Rae.|   \n|  **1855**  \n|  Czar Alexander II ascends the throne of Russia.  \n| Van Diemen's Land officially becomes Tasmania.  \n|  **1857**  \n|  Ottawa is chosen capital of Canada.  \n **1859**|  **1859**  \nLeading an expedition financed by Lady Jane Franklin, Francis Leopold McClintock discovers clothing, supplies, and a note at Victory Point on King William Island; farther along the coast the men find an abandoned ship's boat and the scattered bones of Franklin's men.| Charles Darwin publishes On _the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection_.  \n|  **1861**  \n|  Emily Pauline Johnson, future Canadian aboriginal poet, is born near Brantford, Ontario.  \n| The American Civil War begins.  \n|  **1865**  \n|  Sir John Richardson dies at \"Lancrigg,\" England.  \n| American President Lincoln is assassinated; the American Civil War ends.  \n|  **1867**  \n|  Canadian Confederation unites Ontario, Qu\u00e9bec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.  \n **1869**|  **1869**  \nAmerican explorer Charles Francis Hall searches the southeast region of King William Island for the Franklin party.| Louis Riel leads the Red River Rebellion.  \n| Robert Dunsmuir discovers the Wellington coal seam on Vancouver Island.  \n|  **1870**  \n|  Manitoba joins Canadian Confederation.  \n|  **1871**  \n|  British Columbia joins Canadian Confederation.  \n| Emily Carr, future Canadian painter, is born in Victoria, B.C.  \n **1875**|   \nJane Franklin dies; weeks later, George Back unveils a marble monument to Franklin in Westminster Abbey.|   \n|  **1876**  \n|  Trucanini, the last Tasmanian Aborigine, dies; her death marks the end of the only case of true genocide in British history.  \n **1879**|   \nAmerican Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka makes the first summer search of King William Island. He finds the skeleton of Lieutenant John Irving at Victory Point in a shallow grave with his medal for mathematical achievement lying beside the skull. Searches continue into the 20th century. Thirty-two in all, they expand the knowledge of the Canadian Arctic immensely; many more discoveries and new scientific techniques lead in the direction of solving the mystery of what happened to Franklin and his party.|   \n|  **1881**  \n|  Czar Alexander II is assassinated.  \n|  **1882**  \n|  Robert Koch discovers the tubercle bacillus and demonstrates its role in causing TB.  \n| \n_Acknowledgments_\n\nThe quotations in the text are either taken from original documents in Polar Archives or from material quoted in the referenced publications. I use these sources with thanks to the authors or editors. The staff at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge; at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; and at the Royal Geographical Society in London, England were extremely helpful with the research upon which this and my other Franklin-related books are based.\n\nAn excellent source for up-to-date information on the ever-continuing struggle to solve the mystery of Franklin's third expedition as well as book reviews and links to related sites, can be found at <http:\/\/www.ric.edu\/rpotter\/index.html>\n\nMy thanks to everyone who has struggled along a bleak Arctic shore searching for a fragment of cloth or a bone which might add another piece to the puzzle. \n_Sources Consulted_\n\nBEATTIE, Owen and GEIGER, John. _Frozen in Time: Unlocking the Secrets of the Franklin Expedition_. Vancouver: Douglas & Mclntyre, 1992.\n\nCYRIAX, Richard. _Sir John Franklin's Last Arctic Expedition_. Plaistow & Sutton Coldfield, The Arctic Press, 1997.\n\nDAVIS, Richard (ed.). _Sir John Franklin's Journals and Correspondence: The First Arctic Land Expedition, 1819\u20131822_. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1995.\n\nDAVIS, Richard (ed.). _Sir John Franklin's Journals and Correspondence: The Second Arctic Land Expedition, 1825\u20131827_. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1998.\n\nFRANKLIN, John. _Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22_. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1969.\n\nHOUSTON, Stuart (ed.). _To the Arctic by Canoe 1819\u20131821: The Journal and Paintings of Robert Hood, Midshipman with Franklin_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974.\n\nHOUSTON, Stuart (ed.). _Arctic Ordeal: The Journal of John Richardson, Surgeon-Naturalist with Franklin, 1820\u20131822_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984.\n\nHOUSTON, Stuart (ed.). _Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819\u20131822_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.\n\nHUGHES, Robert. _The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding_. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.\n\nKEEGAN, John. _The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare_. New York: Viking, 1989.\n\nLAMB, G. F. _Franklin Happy Voyager: Being the Life and Death of Sir John Franklin_. London: Ernest Benn, 1956.\n\nLAMBERT, R. S. _Franklin of the Arctic: A Life of Adventure_. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949.\n\nMCCLINTOCK, Francis L. _A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and his Companions_. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1972.\n\nMORDAL, Jacques, _25 Centuries of Sea Warfare_. London: Futura, 1976.\n\nNANTON, Paul. _Arctic Breakthrough: Franklin's Expeditions, 1819\u20131847_. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1970.\n\nROSS, M. J. _Polar Pioneers John Ross and James Clark Ross_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.\n\nWOODMAN, David. _Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.\n\nWOODMAN, David. _Strangers Among Us_. Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen's University Press, 1995.\n_Index_\n\n\"The page numbers in this index refer to the print edition of this book.\"\n\nAboriginal Peoples. _See_\n\nAborigines; First Nations\n\npeople; Inuit\n\nAborigines, 107, 163\n\nAdmiralty. _See_ British navy\n\nAkaitcho (Copper chief), 55, 56,\n\n58-59, 64, 71, 87\n\nAlcohol, 30, 32, 58, 69, 146\n\nAnimals, 59, 65, 87\n\n_See also_ Walrus\n\nAntarctica, 111, 120, 157\n\nArctic. _See_ Canada's Arctic\n\nArctic coast, 61-64, 71, 89-91, 98,\n\n103, 122, 127, 149, 151, 153, 162\n\nArctic expeditions. _See_ Expeditions\n\nArctic Ocean, 59, 87, 122, 143\n\nArthur, George (colonial\n\ngovernor), 106, 108-09, 114,\n\n142, 156, 157\n\nAurora borealis, 40, 51, 149\n\nAustin, Horatio (searcher), 161\n\nAustralia, 16, 17, 18-19, 21, 106,\n\n141, 142, 145, 157\n\nBack, George (crew member), 2-3,\n\n4, 50, 52, 53, 57-58, 64, 66, 8182, 86, 89, 93, 103, 134, 150,\n\n151, 152, 153, 155, 163\n\n_Bahama,_ 30-31, 33\n\nBanks, Sir Joseph (Royal SOCiety),\n\n40, 141\n\nBarren Lands, xii, 1, 3, 18, 64-65,\n\n69, 71, 72\n\nBarrow, Sir John (Admiralty), 40,\n\n120\n\nBeaufort Ice Stream, 127, 128,\n\n130, 159\n\n_Bedford,_ HMS, 34-36, 147, 148\n\nBeechey Island, 125-26, 127, 134,\n\n159, 161\n\nBeechey, Lieutenant, 37, 89, 91\n\nBelcher, Sir Edward (searcher),\n\n161\n\n_Bellerophon,_ HMS, 25, 26, 27, 29-33, 34, 146\n\nBering Strait, 40, 89, 91, 140, 141,\n\n149, 160\n\nBligh, Captain William, 19, 144,\n\n145\n\nBoats, 36, 42, 50, 86-87, 89-90, 92,\n\n101, 126, 131, 138, 160, 161, 162\n\nBrazil, 34, 35, 147\n\nBritain, 5, 17-19, 35, 36, 37, 49, 75,\n\n98, 99, 114-15, 116,123, 125,\n\n134, 141, 143, 144, 145, 147,\n\n151, 154, 155, 160, 161\n\n_See also_ Class distinction in\n\nBritish society\n\nBritish Arctic exploration. _See_\n\nExpeditions\n\nBritish navy, 5, 11, 14, 24, 26, 29,\n\n32, 36, 37, 39, 46, 51, 68, 71, 72,\n\n73, 86, 99, 100-01, 126, 145,\n\n148, 160, 161\n\nBuchan, David (explorer), 41, 44,\n\n45, 46, 75, 120\n\nCanada, 81, 87, 128, 31, 160, 162,\n\n163\n\n_See also_ Lower Canada;\n\nRebellions in Upper and Lower\n\nCanada; Upper Canada\n\nCanada's Arctic, 2, 5, 39, 41, 46,\n\n49, 51, 125, 134, 136-37, 143,\n\n149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 164\n\n_See also_ Barren lands\n\nCannibalism, 3, 4, 67, 126, 131, 161\n\nCanoes, 54, 64, 65, 71, 86, 89, 150\n\nCape Walker, 122, 127\n\nCaribou, 57, 63, 130\n\nChina, 24, 145, 146\n\nClass distinction in British society,\n\n8, 10, 70, 71, 85, 121\n\nCollinson, Richard (searcher), 160,\n\n161\n\nColonial office, 103, 109, 156\n\nConsumption. _See_ Tuberculosis\n\nConvicts, 16, 17-19, 105-07, 108,\n\n109, 111, 112-13, 142, 143, 145,\n\n156, 157, 159, 161\n\nConvict ships, 16, 18\n\nCook, James (explorer), 39, 141\n\nCooke, Captain, 30, 31, 32\n\nCopenhagen, Battle of, 6, 11-15,\n\n19, 26, 27, 35, 145\n\nCopper First Nation (Yellowknife),\n\n55, 57-59, 64, 151\n\n_See also_ Akaitcho;\n\nGreenstockings\n\nCoppermine River, 2, 51, 56, 59,\n\n63, 65-66, 89, 113, 141, 149, 151\n\nCorfu, 99, 155\n\nCornwallis Island, 127, 159\n\nCracroft, Isabella Franklin (sister),\n\n9, 112\n\nCracroft, Sophie (niece), 9, 111-12,\n\n120, 158\n\nCree First Nation, 53, 54\n\nCrozier, Francis Rawdon Moira,\n\n111, 112, 117, 120-21, 129-30,\n\n133, 157, 158, 159, 160\n\nCumberland House, 53, 92-93,\n\n150, 153\n\nCzar Alexander II of Russia, 97,\n\n154, 162, 164\n\nDaguerreotypes, 122-23, 157, 158\n\nDease, Peter Warren (HBC Chief\n\nFactor), 87, 88, 128\n\nDeaths, 2, 5, 8, 30, 66, 67, 71, 117,\n\n125, 126, 127, 130-31, 138, 151,\n\n159, 160, 162\n\n_See also_ Poisoning; Starvation,\n\nTuberculosis\n\nDe Haven, E.J. (searcher), 161\n\nDe Quincy, Thomas (author), 9\n\nDickens, Charles (writer), 121,\n\n126, 148, 156, 160, 162\n\n_Dorothea,_ 41, 43, 45\n\nDrake, Sir Francis (explorer), 39,\n\n139\n\nDrummond, Thomas (naturalist),\n\n86, 92-93, 142, 153, 154, 156\n\nEngland. _See_ Britain; London,\n\nEngland\n\n_Erebus,_ HMS, 111, 112, 117, 118,\n\n121-25, 128-29, 130-31, 134.\n\n157, 158\n\nEsquimaux. _See_ Inuit '\n\nExpeditions, 40, 46, 50, 68, 72-73,\n\n80, 85, 92-93, 103, 112, 116, 161\n\nFranklin's first polar expedition\n\n(1819-1821), 1-4, 46, 47, 49-70,\n\n83, 85, 89, 97, 135, 149-151\n\nFranklin's second polar expedition\n\n(1825-1827), 5, 46, 80-81,\n\n83-85, 86-93, 96, 152-53\n\nFranklin's third polar expedition\n\n(1845-1848), 117-31, 135, 154,\n\n158-60\n\nNorthwest Passage venture of\n\n1818, 40-42, 46, 51, 122, 149\n\nPolar expedition of 1818, 41-45,\n\n46, 51, 75, 149\n\nSearch. _See_ Franklin, Sir John,\n\nsearch for\n\n_See also_ Food; Guns and\n\nAmmunition; Supplies\n\nFirst Nations people, 4, 41, 51, 52,\n\n69, 70, 72, 83-85, 150, 152\n\n_See also_ Copper First Nation;\n\nCree First Nation\n\nFitzjames, James (crew member),\n\n120, 121, 123, 129, 130\n\nFlinders, Matthew (uncle), 10, 17,\n\n19-24, 25, 42, 106, 135, 144,\n\n145, 147, 148\n\nFlora and fauna, study of, 46, 52,\n\n92, 122, 149\n\nFood, 3, 21, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60,\n\n63, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70-72, 88,\n\n113, 119, 121, 130, 150, 151, 160\n\nForsyth, Charles (searcher), 161\n\nForts\n\nChipewyan, 53-54, 56, 57, 87,\n\n150\n\nEnterprise, 3, 48, 56-57, 58, 59,\n\n65-68, 69, 88, 151\n\nFranklin, 86, 88, 92, 153\n\n.Providence, 55, 57, 64, 150\n\nResolution, 58\n\nFrance, 99, 140, 143, 144, 145, 161\n\n_Frankenstein,_ 40, 149\n\nFranklin, Eleanor nee Porden (first\n\nwife), 42, 74, 75-82, 87-88, 96,\n\n127, 144, 149, 152, 153\n\nFranklin, Hanah Weekes (mother),\n\n7, 35, 142, 147\n\nFranklin, James (brother), 7, 142,\n\n156\n\nFranklin, Jane nee Griffin (second\n\nwife), 77, 80, 82, 94, 95-99, 102,\n\n103, 109-10, 111-12, 114, 120,\n\n122, 123, 125, 126, 129, 134,\n\n154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161,\n\n162, 163\n\nFranklin, Sir John,\n\nas an administrator, 99-102, 103,\n\n110, 114, 115, 135, 155, 156-58\n\nas an astronomer and navigator,\n\n17, 20, 47, 135\n\nattitude toward Aboriginal\n\nPeoples, 70-71, 89-91\n\nattitude toward suffering, 15, 25\n\nin Australia, 20, 22\n\nin Brazil, 34-35, 147\n\nburial of, 129, 134\n\ncharacter of, 5, 33, 34, 47, 68-69,\n\n70-72, 79,86, 98-99, 101-02,\n\n110, 111, 125, 134-36, 155\n\nchildhood of, 7-11, 142, 144\n\ndeath of, 5, 117, 120, 126, 12930,\n\n132, 136, 158, 159, 162\n\neducation of, 9, 20\n\nexpeditions of. _See_ Expeditions\n\nand fatherhood, 4-5, 79-80, 81,\n\n152\n\nfinances of, 35, 41, 147, 149\n\nin Greece, 99-101, 110, 155\n\nhealth of, 41, 72, 97, 123, 124\n\nas hero, 4, 5, 72, 74, 97, 102,\n\n128, 151, 154, 158\n\nhonours of, 33, 95, 146, 148, 154\n\ninjuries of, 33, 36, 146\n\nas a junior naval officer, 13-15,\n\n19-26, 27-33, 34-36 ,47, 144,\n\n145, 146, 147\n\nknowledge of science of, 42, 47\n\nas a leader, 55-56, 58-59, 90,\n\n125, 129\n\nand love and marriage, 4-5, 42,\n\n74, 75-76, 77-81\n\nas a mapmaker, 43, 45, 62, 63,\n\n64, 91, 98, 99, 116, 136, 151, 153\n\nmyth of, 136-37\n\npromotions of, 4, 41, 146, 147,\n\n151\n\nas a religious person, 79, 96, 98,\n\n128\n\nand the sailor's life, 9-11\n\nsearch for, 125-27, 136, 138,\n\n160-64\n\nas shipwrecked sailor, 22-24, 49,\n\n145\n\nstarvation of. _See_ Starvation\n\nstatue of, 132, 134, 163\n\nat Trafalgar, 29-33, 146\n\nin Van Diemen's Land, 108-16\n\nvoyages of, 83, 87, 19-20, 21, 25,\n\n44, 49-50\n\nwritings of, 4, 61, 71, 75, 80-81,\n\n152\n\n_See also_ Class distinction in\n\nBritish society\n\nFranklin, Thomas Adam (brother),\n\n8, 35, 147\n\nFranklin, Willingham (father), 2, 78, 10-\n\n11, 19, 26, 35, 79, 142, 152\n\nFranklin, Willingham (brother), 7,\n\n80, 142, 152\n\nFrench navy, 24, 26, 27, 32, 35,\n\n100-01, 146\n\nFrobisher, Martin (explorer), 39,\n\n139\n\nFry, Elizabeth (prison activist),\n\n109, 142\n\nFurtrading,50, 54, 56, 69, 140\n\nFury, HMS, 86, 153\n\nFury and Hecla Strait, 85, 153\n\nGaliano, Dionisio Alcala (explorer),\n\n33, 143\n\nGore, Graham (crew member),\n\n129, 159\n\nGreat Bear Lake, 86, 87, 89, 93\n\nGreat Slave Lake, 54, 55, 150\n\nGreece. _See_ Franklin, Sir John, in\n\nGreece\n\nGreenland, 39, 41, 124, 149, 159\n\nGreenstockings, 58\n\nGuns and ammunition, 57, 63\n\nHall, Charles Francis (searcher),\n\n163\n\nHearne, Samuel (explorer), 46, 51,\n\n55, 59, 141, 143, 151\n\nHepburn, John (crew member), 2,\n\n3-4, 51, 53, 58, 66-68\n\nHobart, Van Diemen's Land, 106,\n\n110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 134,\n\n145, 157, 158\n\nHood, Robert (crew member), 2-3,\n\n51, 52, 54, 57-58, 65, 66-67\n\nHudson Bay, 50, 51, 54, 63, 139,\n\n149, 151\n\nHudson's Bay Company (HBC),\n\n51, 54, 69, 87, 128, 140, 150,\n\n151, 161\n\nHudson, Henry, 39, 139\n\nIce, 42,43, 44-45, 63, 118, 119,\n\n127, 128, 130, 142, 149, 149,\n\n159, 160\n\nnavigation in, 120-121, 122\n\n_See also_ Icebergs\n\nIcebergs, 37, 38, 43, 149\n\nInuit, 50, 54, 63, 84, 89-92, 126,\n\n131, 150, 153, 161\n\n_Investigator,_ HMS, 17, 19, 21-22,\n\n145\n\nIrving, John (crew member), 130,\n\n131-34, 154, 164\n\n_Isis,_ 14\n\nKayaks, 89-90\n\nKellet, Captain Henry (searcher),\n\n160\n\nKendall, E.N. (surveyor), 86, 87\n\nKing William, 102, 155\n\nKing William Island, 103, 117, 119,\n\n126, 128-29, 130, 136, 154, 159,\n\n160, 162, 163\n\nLake Athabasca, 53,143,150\n\nLake Huron, 81,152\n\nLake Winnipeg, 52, 150\n\nLancaster Sound, 41, 46, 51, 85,\n\n121, 122, 127, 153, 154, 160\n\nLeague of Armed Neutrality, 11,\n\n15\n\nLondon, England, 4, 45, 79, 80,\n\n157\n\nLouth Grammar School, 9,144\n\nLower Canada, 108, 143, 146, 156\n\nMackenzie, Alexander (explorer),\n\n46, 143, 150\n\nMackenzie River, 51, 82, 87-88, 89,\n\n91, 153, 160\n\nMacquarie Harbour,Van\n\nDiemen's Land, 105, 110, 112,\n\n158\n\nMcClintock, Francis Leopold\n\n(explorer), 46, 126, 162\n\nMcClure, Robert (searcher), 160,\n\n161\n\nMagnetic Pole, 102-03\n\nMagnetism, 39, 40, 45, 51, 93, 111,\n\n122, 149-50, 151, 153, 157\n\nMalta, 99, 155\n\nMapmaking, 64, 103, 125, 128, 145\n\n_See also_ Franklin, Sir John, as a\n\nmapmaker\n\nMediterranean Sea, 99, 101, 103,\n\n154, 155\n\nMelbourne, Australia, 109, 156\n\nMelville Island, 52, 150\n\nMichel (crew member), 66-67\n\nMontagu, John (secretary), 114-15,\n\n158\n\n_Montanes,_ 30\n\nMontreal, 93, 154\n\nMurchison, Sir Roderick\n\n(President Royal Geographical\n\nSociety), 124\n\nNapoleon, 8, 11, 26, 36, 144, 145,\n\n146, 148, 151\n\nNapoleonic Wars, 11-15, 25-26,\n\n35-36, 37, 106, 145, 146, 147,\n\n148\n\n_See also_ Trafalgar, Battle of\n\n_Narrative ofa Joumey to the_\n\n_Shores ofthe Polar Seas in the_\n\n_Years_ 1819, _20,_ 21, _and_ 22. _See_\n\nFranklin, Sir John, writings of\n\nNauplia, 99, 155\n\nNavigation, 39, 51\n\n_See also_ Ice, navigation in;\n\nMagnetism\n\nNelson, Admiral Horatio, 12, 14,\n\n26, 28, 29-30, 32, 144, 145, 146\n\nNew Orleans, Battle of, 35-36, 148\n\nNew York, 81, 93, 154\n\nNorth Pole, 40, 46, 149, 153, 155\n\nNorth West Company, 51, 53, 54,\n\n69, 87, 142, 150, 151\n\nNorthwest Passage, 39, 40-41, 46,\n\n47, 85, 103, 122, 123, 128, 134.\n\n136, 139, 142, 144, 149, 153,\n\n155, 158, 159, 161\n\nOrkney Islands, 42, 50, 123-24\n\nParis, France, 97-98, 154\n\nParry, Edward (explorer), 40-41,\n\n46, 51-52, 85-86, 88, 96, 103,\n\n120, 122, 149, 150, 151, 153\n\nPatras, Greece, 99-101, 155\n\nPenny, William (searcher), 161\n\nPillage Point incident, 89-91, 153 ,\n\nPoint Turnagain, 64, 76, 103, 128\n\nPoisoning, 127, 130, 131, 159\n\n_Polyphemus,_ HMS, 11, 12, 14, 145\n\n_Porpoise,_ HMS, 22, 24, 145\n\nPortages, 54-55\n\nPort Griffin, 82\n\nPort Jackson, Australia, 18-19, 21,\n\n23, 24, 143, 145,\n\n_Prince of Wales,_ 50, 51\n\nPrince Regent Inlet, 52, 86, 150,\n\n153\n\nProvisions. _See_ Food; Supplies\n\nRae, John (HBC), 126, 160, 161,\n\n162\n\n_Rainbow,_ HMS, 99-100, 101, 102,\n\n154, 155\n\nRebellions in Upper and Lower\n\nCanada, 108, 156, 157\n\nRichardson, Sir John (doctor and\n\nnaturalist), 2, 3-4, 51, 52, 53, 54,\n\n61, 64, 65-68, 83, 86, 89, 92-93,\n\n143, 150, 151, 152, 153, 160, 162\n\nRoss, Sir James Clark (explorer),\n\n102-03, 111, 112, 120, 121, 153,\n\n154, 155, 157, 158, 160\n\nRoss, Sir John (explorer and\n\nsearcher), 40-41, 46, 50, 51, 102,\n\n149, 154, 155, 161\n\nRoyal Geographical Society, 124\n\nRoyal Navy. _See_ British navy\n\nRoyal Naval College, 134, 154\n\nRoyal Society, 4, 40, 140, 141, 151\n\nRussia, 14-15, 42, 91, 97, 99, 101,\n\n140, 144, 146, 153, 154, 161\n\nSaltfleet, Lincolnshire, 9-10, 144\n\nSaskatchewan River, 52-53, 150\n\nSchwatka, Frederick (searcher),\n\n163\n\nScientific research, 40, 42, 46, 51,\n\n52, 58, 65, 76-77, 92-93, 122\n\n127, 136, 140, 141, 149, 153,\n\n158, 164\n\n_See also_ Flora and fauna, study\n\nof; Magnetism; Navigation\n\nScoresby, William (whaling master),\n\n39, 45, 149\n\nScurvy, 21, 119, 127, 130, 131, 159,\n\n160\n\nSearch for Franklin. _See_ Franklin,\n\nSir John, search for\n\nShips, 11-15, 22, 23, 29-31, 32, 33,\n\n101, 126, 160\n\n_See also Bahama, Bedford,_\n\n_Bellerophon,_ Convict ships,\n\n_Dorothea, Erebus, Fury,_\n\n_Investigator, Isis, Montanes,_\n\n_Polyphemus, Porpoise, Prince of_\n\n_Wales, Rainbow, Terror, Trent,_\n\n_Victory_\n\nSouth Pole, 70, 111\n\nSpanish navy, 26, 27, 32, 146\n\nSpilsby, Lincolnshire, England,\n\n7-8, 9, 25, 79, 80, 134, 135, 142,\n\n152\n\nSpitzbergen, Norway, 42, 44,76\n\nStarvation, 3-4, 5, 65-68, 106, 113-14,\n\n126, 127, 131, 151, 158, 160,\n\n161\n\n_See also_ Cannibalism\n\nStarvation Cove, 131, 160\n\nStorms, 11, 44, 61, 62, 91, 112-13,\n\n124, 153\n\nSupplies, 22, 23, 26, 54, 57, 59, 60,\n\n63, 64, 66, 69-70, 86-87, 93, 121,\n\n124, 126, 128, 162\n\n_See also_ Food; Guns and ammunition\n\nSydney, Australia, 109, 156\n\n_See also_ Port Jackson, Australia\n\nTasmania. _See_ Van Diemen's Land\n\nTasmanian Ladies' Society for the\n\nReformation of Female\n\nPrisoners, 109, 156\n\nTennyson, Alfred (poet), 9, 133,\n\n161\n\n_Terror,_ HMS, 103, 111, 117, 118,\n\n121, 123, 124, 128, 130-31, 134,\n\n155, 157, 158\n\nTorres Strait, 22, 145\n\nTrading. _See_ Fur trading\n\nTrafalgar, Battle of, 27-33, 35, 146\n\n_Trent,_ 41, 42-45\n\n_Tripe de Roche,_ 3, 65\n\nTrucanini (Aboriginal woman),\n\n107, 163\n\n_Traveller on Undiscovered Seas_\n\nTuberculosis (TB), 4, 80, 127, 152,\n\n159, 164\n\nUpper Canada, 108, 143, 147, 148,\n\n156\n\nVan Diemen's Land, 103, 104-16,\n\n135, 140, 145, 153, 155-58, 157,\n\n159, 162\n\n_Victory,_ HMS, 28, 29, 145, 155\n\nVictory Point, 126, 133, 154, 162,\n\n164\n\nVoyageurs, 2, 51, 52-52, 54-56, 59-60, 71-\n\n72, 89, 150, 152\n\nYellowknife First Nation. _See_\n\nCopper First Nation\n\nYork Factory, 51, 52, 53, 140, 150\n\nWalrus, 42-43, 50, 149\n\nWar of 1812, 35-36\n\nWaterloo, Battle of, 36, 148\n\nWaterloo Place, 134\n\nWentzel, Frederick (interpreter),\n\n55, 57, 59-60, 87\n\nWestminster Abbey, 133, 134, 163\n\nYellowknife First Nation. _See_\n\nCopper First Nation.\n\nYork Factory, 51, 52, 53, 140, 150\n_Printed in April 2001_\n\n_at AGMV\/Marquis_ ,\n\n_Cap-Saint-Ignace (Qu\u00e9bec)_.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nThe author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com\/piracy.\nContents\n\nTITLE PAGE\n\nCOPYRIGHT NOTICE\n\nDEDICATION\n\nECHOES\n\nAcross the Creek Is the Other Side of the River\n\nTime and the Centipedes of Night\n\nCake Walk\n\nWaterfalls\n\nThe Childhood of St. Thomas\n\nEverything Passes, but Is It Time?\n\nHomage to Samuel Beckett\n\nCrystal Declension\n\nGrace II\n\nHeaven's Eel\n\n\"I'm Going to Take a Trip in That Old Gospel Ship\"\n\nAncient of Days\n\nNext-to-Last Gasp\n\nSentences II\n\nNatura Morta\n\nShadow and Smoke\n\nRoad Warriors\n\n\"Just a Closer Walk with Thee\"\n\nHistory Is a Burning Chariot\n\nLong Ago and Far Away\n\n\"Things Have Ends and Beginnings\"\n\nLittle Elegy for an Old Friend\n\nEND PAPERS\n\nThe Last Word\n\n\"I've Been Sitting Here Thinking Back Over My Life...\"\n\n\"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted...\"\n\n\"My Old Clinch Mountain Home\"\n\nToadstools\n\nDude\n\nShadow Play\n\nFortune Cookie\n\nPack Rats\n\nLife Lines\n\nFour Dog Nights\n\nOctober, Mon Amour\n\n\"L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle\"\n\nDucks\n\nLullaby\n\nThe Children of the Plain\n\nPlain Song\n\nWhatever Happened to Al Lee?\n\n\"So Long, It's Been Good to Know You\"\n\nAPOCRYPHA\n\nDetour\n\nDrift Away\n\n\"Well, Roll On, Buddy, Don't You Roll Too Slow\"\n\nChinoiserie II\n\nChinoiserie III\n\nChinoiserie IV\n\n\"Remember Me When the Candlelight Is Gleaming\"\n\nLost Highways\n\nSolo Joe Revisited\n\nDouble-Dealing\n\nChinoiserie V\n\nChinoiserie VI\n\nAnother Night in the Purcells\n\nTranslations from a Forgotten Tongue\n\nNOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nALSO BY CHARLES WRIGHT\n\nCOPYRIGHT\nFOR HOLLY, SMB\nECHOES\nACROSS THE CREEK IS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER\n\nNo darkness steps out of the woods,\n\nno angel appears.\n\nI listen, no word, I look, no thing.\n\nEternity must be hiding back there, it's done so before.\n\nI can wait, or I can climb,\n\nLike Orpheus, through the slick organs of my body.\n\nI guess I'll wait,\n\nat least until tomorrow night, or the day after.\n\nAnd if the darkness does not appear,\n\nthat's a long time.\n\nAnd if no angel, it's longer still.\nTIME AND THE CENTIPEDES OF NIGHT\n\nLike time, the meadow narrows\n\nup to its creek-scraped end.\n\nAt sundown, trees light-tipped, mountains half-slipped into night.\n\nHow easy contentment comes,\n\nOld age at this end, time's double door at the other.\n\nThe only way out is the way in.\n\nNow we know which course the drift is,\n\nin this drifting dream of life,\n\nAs the Chinese liked to say.\n\nI like to say it too,\n\nThe thunderstorm-floating sky, lightening and lumbering gear shifts.\n\nAfterwards, Gainsboroughs to the east and to the south.\n\nHow to understand this\n\nDeep sleep,\n\ndeep sleep in the sheared, many-mouth afternoon?\n\nWhatever is written is written\n\nAfter, not before.\n\nBefore is blank and pure, and void\n\nOf all our lives depend on.\n\nPrayers rise like smoke, and are answered as smoke is.\n\nArrange your unutterable alphabet, my man,\n\nand hold tight.\n\nIt's all you've got, a naming of things, and not so beautiful.\n\nIf history is any repeat, which it isn't,\n\nThe condition of everything tends toward the condition of silence.\n\nWhen the wind stops, there's silence.\n\nWhen the waters go down on their knees and touch their heads\n\nTo the bottom, there's silence, when the stars appear\n\nface down, O Lord, then what a hush.\nCAKE WALK\n\nInvisible, inaudible things,\n\nAlways something to hanker for,\n\nsince everything's that's written\n\nHankers alongside with them,\n\nThe great blue heron immobile and neck-torqued on the fence post,\n\nA negative pull from the sun-swept upper meadow...\n\nEleven deer in a Mark Morris dance of happiness\n\nAre lighter than light, though heavier\n\nif you blink more than once.\n\nThere's light, we learn, and there's Light.\n\nTo do what you have to do\u2014unrecognized\u2014and for no one.\n\nThe language in that is small,\n\nsewn just under your skin.\n\nThe germs of stars infect us.\n\nThe heron pivots, stretches his neck.\n\nHe hears what we do not hear,\n\nhe sees what we're missing.\n\nThe deer walk out the last ledge of sunlight, one by one.\nWATERFALLS\n\nWhen is it we come to the realization\n\nthat all things are wandering away?\n\nIs it age, is it lack of adoration, is it\n\nRegret there's no ladder to the clouds?\n\nWhatever, we inhabit the quotidian, as we must,\n\nWhile somewhere behind our backs,\n\nwaterfalls tumble and keep on going\n\nInto the deep desire of distance.\nTHE CHILDHOOD OF ST. THOMAS\n\nThree-quarters now of waning moon,\n\ncold, late summer sky.\n\nOver the broken promises of the day, the nun\n\nSpreads out her wimple and starry cape.\n\nWhose childhood could hold such purity,\n\nsuch fire-blown eyelids of the dead?\n\nIt is a wound that cannot be touched.\n\nEven by either hand of St. Thomas.\n\nWish him well.\n\nHis supper was not holy, his gesture not sinless.\n\nMay ours be equal to his,\n\nwhatever sky we live under.\nEVERYTHING PASSES, BUT IS IT TIME?\n\nSunset same color as maple tree\n\nIn my neighbor's yard\u2014\n\nNature and nature head-butt,\n\nGolden persimmon.\n\nAnd if the stairs to paradise\n\nAre that color, who wouldn't put his old Reeboks down?\n\nGently, however, O so gently.\n\nThe membrane of metaphor is weak,\n\nand has no second step.\n\n\"Don't play too long, don't play too loud, and don't play the melody.\"\n\nNature's deaf to this beautiful injunction.\n\nAnd that's okay.\n\nOne should live one's life as an acolyte walking into the temple,\n\nOblivious, the heavens exploding around you,\n\nYour heart conflicted, your footfalls sure.\n\nTime is your enemy,\n\ntime and its fail-safe disgrace.\n\nOpen your arms, boys, take off your shirts.\nHOMAGE TO SAMUEL BECKETT\n\nThere is a heaviness inside the body\n\nthat leans down, but does not touch us.\n\nThere is a lassitude that licks itself, but brings no relief.\n\nThere is a self-destructiveness no memory can repeal.\n\nSuch breath in the unstopped ear,\n\nsuch sweet breath, O, along the tongue.\n\nCloud swatches brilliance the sky\n\nOver the Alleghenies,\n\nunpatterned as Heaven.\n\nAcross the street, Amoret's family picnic has ended.\n\nMemorial Day,\n\nthe dead like plastic bags in the blown trees.\n\nIn Paradise, springtime never arrives.\n\nThe seasons\n\nAre silent, and dumb, and ghost-walk outside our windows.\n\nAnd so it is down here\u2014\n\nwe grovel on our extremities\n\nAnd rise, rise up, halfway to where the new leaves begin.\n\nAnd thus, unexpectedly, a small rain commences,\n\nThen backs off.\n\nThe sunlight continues its dying fall.\n\nAnd dying, one hopes to think, will be such a slide, a mild jolt,\n\nLike shifting from formlessness to form.\nCRYSTAL DECLENSION\n\nWell, two things are certain\u2014\n\nthe sun will rise and the sun will set.\n\nMost everything else is up for grabs.\n\nIt's back on its way down now\n\nAs a mother moose and her twin calves\n\nStep lightly, lightly\n\nacross the creek through the understory\n\nAnd half-lit grasses,\n\nThen disappear in a clutch of willow bushes.\n\nIf one, anyone,\n\nCould walk through his own life as delicately, as sure,\n\nAs she did, all wreckage, all deadfall,\n\nWould stay sunlight, and ring like crystal among the trees.\nGRACE II\n\nIt's true, the aspirations of youth burn down to char strips with the years.\n\nTonight, only memories are my company and my grace.\n\nHow nice if they could outlive us.\n\nBut they can't. Or won't.\n\nNo Indian summer for us. It's rough and it's growing dark,\n\nThe sunset pulling the full moon up by its long fingernails.\n\nIt's better this way.\n\nThe unforgiven are pure, as are the unremembered.\nHEAVEN'S EEL\n\nA slight wrinkle on the pond.\n\nSmall wind.\n\nA small wind and the rumpled clouds' reflection.\n\nNo hum... What's needed is something under the pond's skin,\n\nSomething we can't see that controls all the things that we do see.\n\nSomething long and slithery,\n\nsomething we can't begin to comprehend,\n\nA future we're all engendered for, sharp teeth, Lord, such sharp teeth.\n\nHeaven's eel.\n\nHeaven's eel, long and slick,\n\nFull moon gone, with nothing in its place.\n\nA doe is nibbling away at the long stalks of the natural world\n\nAcross the creek.\n\nIt's good to be here.\n\nIt's good to be where the world's quiescent, and reminiscent.\n\nNo wind blows from the far sky.\n\nBeware of prosperity, friend, and seek affection.\n\nThe eel's world is not your world,\n\nbut will be soon enough.\n\"I'M GOING TO TAKE A TRIP IN THAT OLD GOSPEL SHIP\"\n\nDid the great ship with the bier of the Hunter Gracchus\n\nPass by this year? Or is it just late?\n\nOr did it finally find the seam,\n\nthe crack between this world and the other,\n\nAnd slip through, sails furled?\n\nAnd drifts now, as it was meant to drift,\n\non pure, unpestilent waters,\n\nStill circling the globe, and out of its cage forever?\n\nHard to know, George, hard to know,\n\nIts left-behinds still vibrant,\n\nits wake still ripply in the evening sun.\n\nSo difficult to belay the myth,\n\nso difficult to hold\n\nHard to the transmutation of narrative and imagination.\n\nThe real world has its hands and feet in the other one,\n\nThough its head's here, and its heart is here.\n\nThe clouds, as they always do, present us the option:\n\nDig down, brother, dig down deep,\n\nor keep on walking fast.\nANCIENT OF DAYS\n\nThere is a kind of sunlight, in early autumn, at sundown,\n\nThat raises cloud reflections\n\nInches above the pond water,\n\nthat sends us packing into the chill evening\n\nTo stand like Turner's blobbed figurines\n\nIn a landscape we do not understand,\n\nwhatever and everything\n\nWe know about it.\n\nUnworldly and all ours,\n\nit glides like the nineteenth century\n\nOver us, up the near hill\n\nAnd into the glistening mittens of the same clouds\n\nNow long gone from the world's pond.\n\nSo long.\n\nThis is an old man's poetry,\n\nwritten by someone who's spent his life\n\nLooking for one truth.\n\nSorry, pal, there isn't one.\n\nUnless, of course, the trees and their blow-down relatives\n\nAre part of it.\n\nUnless the late-evening armada of clouds\n\nSpanished along the horizon are part of it.\n\nUnless the diminishing pinprick of light\n\nstunned in the dark forest\n\nIs part of it.\n\nUnless, O my, whatever the eye makes out,\n\nAnd sends, on its rough-road trace,\n\nTo the heart, is part of it,\n\nthen maybe that bright vanishing might be.\nNEXT-TO-LAST GASP\n\nButterflies mass by the hundreds in the dip of the road\n\nbeside the creek bridge.\n\nSpiders crabbing across the bleached boards\n\nOf the cabin steps, no-see-ums massing in clouds\n\noutside the window.\n\nHummingbirds gone, gophers in burrows.\n\nThistles appear in shaded places,\n\nas does the lavender star plant.\n\nDry end of August. Grasshoppers fly\n\nIn bumps and starts and short hops\n\nToward the brown, long-bladed killing fields of September.\n\nI pooch them along with every step,\n\nYellow and khaki, diaphanous wings into the future.\nSENTENCES II\n\nLast chapter, last verse\u2014\n\neverything's brown now in the golden field.\n\nThe threshing floor of the past is past.\n\nThe Overmountain men of the future\n\nlie cusped in their little boxes.\n\nThe sun backs down, over the ridgeline, at 5 after 7.\n\nThe landscape puts on its black mask\n\nand settles into its sleeplessness.\n\nThe fish will transpose it,\n\nhalf for themselves, half for the water\n\nTen thousand miles away, at the end of the darkening stream.\n\nTo live a pure life, to live a true life,\n\nis to live the life of an insect.\nNATURA MORTA\n\nAll life, as someone might offer,\n\nrises out of death\n\nAnd longs to return to it.\n\nIt's in that longing that our days shine out,\n\nand glow forth,\n\nAnd are our comfort into the dark.\n\nFor instance, tonight, in the faint glare of the new moon,\n\nShadow surrounds us,\n\nThe tiny torches of the rhododendron leaf tips\n\nTrouble our eyesight,\n\nand call us into their hymnal deep underground.\n\nWell, we know those songs by heart.\n\nSing Along Suzies, we tap out their black notes with our pink nails.\n\nWe are their chorus and Mass,\n\nAnd process across the yard.\n\nWe dip our fingers into the cold font.\nSHADOW AND SMOKE\n\nLive your life as though you were already dead,\n\nChe Guevara declared.\n\nOkay, let's see how that works.\n\nNot much difference, as far as I can see,\n\nthe earth the same Paradise\n\nIt's always wanted to be,\n\nHeaven as far away as before,\n\nThe clouds the same old movable gates since time began.\n\nThere is no circle, there is no sentiment to be broken.\n\nThere are only the songs of young men,\n\nand the songs of old men,\n\nHoping for something elsewise.\n\nDisabuse them in their ignorance,\n\nLord,\n\ntell them the shadows are already gone, the smoke\n\nAlready cleared,\n\ntell them that light is never a metaphor.\nROAD WARRIORS\n\nMy traveling clothes light up the noon.\n\nI've been on my way for a long time\n\nback to the past,\n\nThat irreconcilable city.\n\nEveryone wants to join me, it seems, and I let them.\n\nRoadside flowers drive me to distraction,\n\ndragonflies\n\nHover like lapis lazuli, there, just out of reach.\n\nNarrow road, wide road, all of us on it, unhappy,\n\nUnsettled, seven yards short of immortality\n\nAnd a yard short of not long to live.\n\nBetter to sit down in the tall grass\n\nand watch the clouds,\n\nTo lift our faces up to the sky,\n\nConsidering\u2014for most of us\u2014our lives have been one constant mistake.\n\"JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE\"\n\nBut not too close, man, just not too close.\n\nBetween the divine and the divine\n\nlies a lavish shadow.\n\nDo we avoid it or stand in it?\n\nDo we gather the darkness around us,\n\nor do we let it slide by?\n\nBetter to take it into our hearts,\n\nBetter to let us have it.\n\nBetter to let us be what we should be.\n\nTonight, the sexual energy of the evergreens\n\nremoves us\n\nFrom any such attitude.\n\nAt least for a momentary intake.\n\nAnd then it's\n\nBack in its natural self,\n\nBetween the It and the It.\n\nThe fly that won't leave the corpse will end up in the grave.\nHISTORY IS A BURNING CHARIOT\n\nIt is a good-looking evening, stomped and chained.\n\nThe clouds sit like majesties in their blue chairs,\n\nas though doing their nails.\n\nThe creek, tripartite and unreserved, sniddles along\n\nUnder its bald and blown-down bridges.\n\nIt is a grace to be a watcher on such a scene.\n\nSo balance me with these words\u2014\n\nHave I said them before, I have,\n\nhave I said them the same way, I have,\n\nWill I say them again, who knows\n\nwhat darkness snips at our hearts.\n\nI've done the full moon, I've done the half moon and the quarter moon.\n\nI've even done the Patrick Spens moon\n\nAs seen by one of his drowned sailors.\n\nTonight is the full moon again, and I won't watch it.\n\nThese things have a starting place, and they have an ending.\n\nRender the balance, Lord.\n\nSend it back up to the beginning.\nLONG AGO AND FAR AWAY\n\nWater people, water upon water sound, the creek music,\n\nWho doesn't love them?\n\nOnly the deaf, I guess, or wind people,\n\nTheir strings over the desert sands, and the deep canyon blow-bys.\n\nWho among us can welcome sorrow,\n\nor the sadness of dirt?\n\nWell, empty yourself of all that, empty yourself of yourself.\n\nThere are some things that cannot be spoken of,\n\nor thought about.\n\"THINGS HAVE ENDS AND BEGINNINGS\"\n\nCloud mountains rise over mountain range.\n\nSilence and quietness,\n\nsky bright as water, sky bright as lake water.\n\nGrace is the instinct for knowing when to stop. And where.\nLITTLE ELEGY FOR AN OLD FRIEND\n\nWell, there you have it,\n\neverything fine and then the heart goes nuts.\n\nPaddles and CPR, slaps and blows.\n\nJesus, how did it come to this,\n\nbrain just vacuumed and good to go,\n\nEveryone bending over you, not one you ever knew?\n\nIn the light they say you enter,\n\nwas Via Mantovana a part of it?\n\nOr the ground-floor apartment on Via Duomo 6,\n\nIn Verona, 1959?\n\nOr was it all Le Crete,\n\nAsciano and S. Giovanni d'Asso?\n\nSorrow, come pass me from hand to hand.\n\nTime to reset eternity's clock\n\nTo the far side of midnight.\n\nTime to remember the unremembered, and the forgotten.\n\nTime to release them, and give them up.\n\nThere is no balm, my man,\n\nnot even in Gilead.\nEND PAPERS\nTHE LAST WORD\n\nI love to watch the swallows at sundown,\n\nswarming after invisible things to eat.\n\nWere we so lucky,\n\nA full gullet, and never having to look at what it is,\n\nSunshine all over our backs.\n\nThere are no words between my fingers\n\nPopulating the lost world.\n\nSomething, it now seems, has snapped them up\n\nInto its speechlessness,\n\ninto its thick aphasia.\n\nIt's got to be the Unredeemable Bird, come out\n\nFrom the weight of the unbearable.\n\nIt flaps like a torn raincoat,\n\nfirst this side, then that side.\n\nWords are its knot of breath,\n\nlanguage is what it lives on.\n\"I'VE BEEN SITTING HERE THINKING BACK OVER MY LIFE...\"\n\nWe are all going into a world of dark.\n\nAnd that's okay,\n\nGiven the wing-wrung alternative.\n\nIt's okay. That's where the secrets are,\n\nThe big ones, the ones too tall to tell.\n\nThe way in is twisty and torturous,\n\nbut easy, they say, easy.\n\nThe way out, however, is unavailable, and not to be mimed.\n\nHard to remember that when the full moon\n\noffers its efficacy\n\nDownwind through the winter weeds,\n\nUnpeeling its limitless hope.\n\nBut not, at least for tonight, for us.\n\nNot for us, bystanders back from the river of light.\n\nSo file down your fingertips, boys,\n\nand pull on your skins.\n\nIncandescence is temporary, we know, but it still shines.\n\nAnd that's it. My life has been spent\n\ntrying to leave it.\n\nAs though an invisible figure in a Schneeman landscape of Tuscany,\n\nI've always wanted to be elsewhere,\n\nHair on fire, a radiance\n\nUndeniable,\n\nMy shoes golden, my heart tucked away\n\nback under my shirtsleeve.\n\nNot now, not ever, the world in winter.\n\nAnd this is what comforts us,\n\nBare trees, bare streets, bare expectations.\n\nOur lives are spent here,\n\nour ho-hum and sweet, existential lives,\n\nStories of cirrus and cumulus.\n\nAnd why not, this world has been good to us,\n\nthe sun goes up and the sun\n\nGoes down, the stars release and disappear,\n\neverything tutta gloria wherever we turn our faces.\n\"WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKENHEARTED...\"\n\nUp where the narrow bodies lie, suffused in sundown,\n\nThe children of God are stretched out\n\nunder the mountain,\n\nHalfway up which the holy city stands, lights darkened.\n\nAbove the city, the nimbus of nowhere nods and retracts.\n\nHow is it that everyone seems to want\n\neither one or the other?\n\nDown here birds leap like little chipmunks out of the long grasses.\n\nWind piddles about, and \"God knows\" is the difficult answer.\n\nThe children of Heaven, snug in their tiny pockets,\n\nAsleep, cold,\n\nUnder the Purgatorial hill.\n\nSoon they'll awake, and find their allotted track\n\nup to the upside down.\n\nOr not. The gravetree estuaries against the winds of Paradise.\n\nUnutterable names are unpinned from its branches.\n\nA couple\n\nFloat down to this pocket, and others float down to that pocket.\n\nStar shadow settles upon them,\n\nthe starshine so far away.\n\"MY OLD CLINCH MOUNTAIN HOME\"\n\nI keep on hoping a theme will bite me,\n\nand leave its two wounds\n\nIn my upper arm and in my heart.\n\nA story line of great destiny,\n\nor fate at least.\n\nIt's got to be serious, as my poor flesh is serious.\n\nSo, dog, show me your teeth and bite me.\n\nShow me some love.\n\nSuch little consequence, our desires.\n\nBetter to be the last chronicler of twilight, and its aftermath.\n\nBetter to let your hair swing loose, and dust up the earth.\n\nI'd like to be a prophet,\n\nwith animals at my heels.\n\nI'd like to have a staff, and issue out water wherever it fell.\n\nLord, how time does alter us,\n\nit goes without saying.\n\nThere is an afterlight that follows us,\n\nand fades as clockticks fade.\n\nEventually we stand on it puddled under our shoes.\n\nThe darkness that huddles there\n\nIs like the dew that settles upon the flowers,\n\ninvisible, cold, and everywhere.\n\nWhen the wind comes, and the snow repeats us,\n\nhow like our warped lives it is,\n\nMelting objects, disappearing sounds\n\nLike lichen on gnarled rocks.\n\nFor we have lived in the wind, and loosened ourselves like ice melt.\n\nNothing can hold us, I've come to know.\n\nNothing, I say.\nTOADSTOOLS\n\nThe toadstools are starting to come up,\n\ncircular and dry.\n\nNothing will touch them,\n\nGophers or chipmunks, wasps or swallows.\n\nThey glow in the twilight like rooted will-o'-the-wisps.\n\nNothing will touch them.\n\nAs though little roundabouts from the bunched unburiable,\n\nPowers, dominions,\n\nAs though orphans rode herd in the short grass,\n\nas though they had heard the call.\n\nThey will always be with us,\n\ntranscenders of the world.\n\nSomeone will try to stick his beak into their otherworldly styrofoam.\n\nSomeone may try to taste a taste of forever.\n\nFor some it's a refuge, for some a shady place to fall down.\n\nGrief is a floating barge-boat,\n\nwho knows where it's going to moor?\nDUDE\n\nIn my mind's eye I always see\n\nThe closed door to eternity.\n\nI think I'll take it,\n\nand then I start to think I won't.\n\nAs though I had a choice in the matter.\n\nAs though the other side of it\n\nwas something inexorable, something fluxed.\n\nAs though the though would never exist.\n\nThe dog gets sick. The dog runs away.\n\nYou've got your mind on transubstantiation.\n\nThe dog\n\nRuns away. The dog gets sick, the son calls to tell you\n\nThat he's been fired.\n\nYou've got your mind on transubstantiation.\n\nThe world's a mass of cold spaghetti.\n\nThe dog runs away, your mind's still on transubstantiation.\n\nThe dog's gone missing, the dog comes back.\n\nThe same dog, but a different dog,\n\nin different weather.\n\nThe droop-bellied dark clouds loom\n\nAnd suck up their forks of light\n\nand the dog goes missing\n\nA second time, and who can blame him?\n\nIf he disappears again, your mind's back on transubstantiation.\n\nWe live beyond the metaphysician's fingertips.\n\nIt's sad, dude, so sad.\n\nThere is no metaphor, there is no simile,\n\nand there is no rhetoric\n\nTo nudge us to their caress.\n\nThe trees remain the trees, God help us.\n\nAnd memory, for all its warmth,\n\nis merely the things we forgot to forget.\n\nThat's it. The winds over Punta San Vigilio,\n\nThough welcome, are only winds.\n\nIn front of us the door tingles.\n\nBehind us, the fingertips tingle.\n\nAnd here, in the back country,\n\nJunk grass grows down to the creek, the lilacs hang their heads,\n\nAnd our only world surrounds us like stretched skin,\n\nand beats its drum.\nSHADOW PLAY\n\nIt's 8 p.m., Mountain Daylight Standard Time,\n\nwhatever that may be.\n\nAnd the lodgepole pine trees start to flex their shadowy fingers\n\nAcross the meadow to the waiting back-lean of their brothers.\n\nIt's 10 p.m. in New York, Eastern Daylight Standard Time,\n\nwhatever that is,\n\nAnd then the divisional waters,\n\nthe North Atlantic humping toward Greenwich,\n\nWhere time's a still point.\n\nOr it's not, arbitrary headwater.\n\nThe shadows don't care, they keep on inching across the meadow,\n\nUnaware they might be going backward,\n\nunaware\n\nThey might be seeping into themselves.\n\nMay the turn of the great star be with them,\n\nmay it tangle their fingers.\n\nIn his suit of lights, the Matador comes forth,\n\nLeo crouched in front of him.\n\nAries is gone, and Leo crouches in front of him.\n\nNo matter, the blade is deep\n\nOver Seville and the sere foothills of Andalusia.\n\nOut of the Lion scuttle many ignorant stars.\n\nThe Matador lifts his blade.\n\nThe heavens keep wheeling\n\nUntil the poor, stupid lion cubs\n\nAre all that is left.\n\nTime has disappeared the Matador, and rolled him into a truth.\n\nAnd the Lion as well\n\nas he rises into the dark firmament.\n\n\u2014FGL\nFORTUNE COOKIE\n\nThe stars appear every night in the sky, all is well.\n\nThe northwest wind, that rattles the skirts of paradise,\n\nComes forth from just below them.\n\nThey are a river too hard to cross,\n\nit has been said.\n\nBut the stars don't care, so snug on their blistering thrones,\n\nGiving the waters a glint here and a non-glint there.\n\nEvery so often, however, they fall down,\n\nthough all is still well,\n\nTheir crowns in a straight blaze to nowhere.\n\nThese little lights through the fall-stripped trees\n\nWould like to be stars,\n\nThese lingering rhododendron blooms\n\nand white roses\n\nWould like to be stars.\n\nBut they are just earth fodder, and programmed for rot and ruin.\n\nThe stars are otherwise,\n\nabove the wind, below the heavens.\n\nThat seems a nice fit to me, not too cold, not too hot,\n\nTime in its peregrinations a stop here and a stop there.\nPACK RATS\n\nUp to the upper place to cover the bedstead against the pack rats.\n\nThe 10th of August and already they're moving in.\n\nIndustrial plastic, waste product from logging companies.\n\nEarly winter. It won't work,\n\nthey'll burrow in and nest,\n\nLeaving their blood-colored urine and interminable excrement\n\nComing and going.\n\nThey'll leave us something shining, or bright,\n\nIn return. Bright and shining.\n\nThis gray on blue on white on gray on blue\n\nMontana August skyscape\n\nHas nothing to do with politics, or human relations, or people, in fact.\n\nIt has to do with fictions,\n\nand where we place ourselves\n\nApart from the dread apart.\n\nIt has to do with what's unidentifiable,\n\nAnd where our seat is in it.\n\nIt has to do with what the pack rat leaves, what's bright and shining.\n\nSurrounded by half-forests and half-lives,\n\nSurrounded by everything we have failed to do,\n\nIt is as though kumquats hung from the lodgepole pine trees.\n\nEverything's doubled\u2014\n\nonce it arrives and once it fades.\n\nAngels, God bless them, rebound from the meadow, bruised gain,\n\nI guess, from our stern world.\n\nBack in the pittering dark of the pine trees,\n\nthe rats\n\nAre nosing for silver or gold, or whatever glints or shines.\nLIFE LINES\n\nMoon soft-full just over the tips of the white pine trees.\n\nHan Shan could have charactered this,\n\nbut I can't seem to.\n\nMy brush is too short\n\nTo find the right rocks and the bark for eternity.\n\nThe past is closing fast and is just about in front of us.\n\nI like the wind at its back.\n\nI like the way its butt twitches and its shoulders shrug.\n\nIt thinks I don't know where it's going,\n\nbut I do, Jack, I swear I do.\n\nThe beautiful evenings of early summer, blue sky\n\nAt its end, and green of the arborvitae,\n\ngreen of the lime trees.\n\nSuch a wide membrane\n\nHolding eternity back, stretched tight, holding it back.\nFOUR DOG NIGHTS\n\nSunset and dying light,\n\nthe robin, dark warrior,\n\nIn his green domain.\n\nBeyond West Virginia,\n\nthe horses are putting their night shoes on,\n\nReady to break through.\n\nOn the stones of the imagination,\n\ntheir sparks are like stars.\n\nThis is the stepchild hour,\n\nbelonging to neither the light nor dark,\n\nThe hour of disappearing things.\n\nI've made my tentative statement\n\nunder the threatening sky,\n\nHoneysuckle in deep distress along the snow-slugged hedgerow.\n\nEschatology is the underart of the gods,\n\nPatches of bull clover in the high desert landscape,\n\nInstalled but never instilled,\n\nThe bright, shining mirage our hearts are bedeviled to.\n\nTime, great eraser.\nOCTOBER, MON AMOUR\n\nThe first dead leaves lie like sea urchins\n\nbrowned on the asphalt drive.\n\nIt's got to be October,\n\nSlayer of living things, refrigerator of memory.\n\nNext to the wilted lettuce, next to the Simone Weil,\n\nOur lives are shoved in,\n\nbarely visible, but still unspoiled.\n\nOur history is the history of the City of God.\n\nWhat's-to-Come is anybody's guess.\n\nWhatever has given you comfort,\n\nWhatever has rested you,\n\nWhatever untwisted your heart\n\nis what you will leave behind.\n\n\u2014GS\n\"L'AMOR CHE MOVE IL SOLE E L'ALTRE STELLE\"\n\nI love walking into the setting sun\n\nwhere nothing is visible but light,\n\nAnd that not really visible, just a sweet blinding.\n\nThen coming back to the world\n\nUnharmed, but altered slightly,\n\nas though it were not the same setup anymore.\n\nAnd it's not. The camp robbers are here,\n\nDoughy and black in the dusk-dead trees.\n\nThe great wheel has turned a notch,\n\nand I didn't even hear its soft snick.\n\nThe mallards parade on the small pond, the older ones, not the younguns.\n\nNothing's as far away as love is,\n\nnot even the new stars,\n\nThough something is moving them\n\nWe hope in our direction, albeit their skin's not on fire.\n\nThe child steps out of the dark woods, but is not shining.\n\nSomething dies off as my friend.\n\nIf I could walk back to that light, I would,\n\nbut it's buried by now, and gone.\nDUCKS\n\nGasoline smell on my hands, perfume\n\nFrom the generator's toothless mouth,\n\nOpening swallow from the green hose,\n\nSweet odor from the actual world.\n\nThere's an old Buddhist saying I think I read one time:\n\nBefore Enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.\n\nAfter Enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.\n\nThe ducks, who neither carry nor chop,\n\nUnderstand this, as I never will,\n\nTheir little feet propelling them, under the water,\n\nSerene and stabilized,\n\nfrom the far side of the pond\n\nBack to the marsh grasses and cattails.\n\nI watch them every night they're there.\n\nSerenitas. I watch them.\n\nAcceptance of what supports you, acceptance of what's\n\nAbove your body,\n\ninvisible carry and chop,\n\nDark understory of desire\n\nWhere we should live,\n\nnot in the thrashing, dusk-tipped branches\u2014\n\nDesire is anonymous,\n\nMotoring hard, unswaying in the unseeable.\nLULLABY\n\nI've said what I had to say\n\nAs melodiously as it was given to me.\n\nI've said what I had to say\n\nAs far down as I could go.\n\nI've been everywhere\n\nI've wanted to but Jerusalem,\n\nWhich doesn't exist, so I guess it's time to depart,\n\nTime to go,\n\nTime to meet those you've never met,\n\ntime to say goodnight.\n\nGrant us silence, grant us no reply,\n\nGrant us shadows and their cohorts\n\nstealth across the sky.\nTHE CHILDREN OF THE PLAIN\n\nSmall they are, and rudderless,\n\nThey wander in the hot places\n\nand touch their burn marks from time to time.\n\nYou've seen them, avoided them,\n\nWatching the birds circle over them,\n\nTheir blood full of ashes, city boys lost in the sun.\n\nTheir eyelids, it happens, are weighed down by birds, small birds\n\nAnd colorless, who lead them\n\nbeside the dry waters.\n\nThey've become the invisible ones,\n\nTheir footprints like tiny monuments\n\nIn the ever-erasing sands,\n\nthe ever-erasing sands.\nPLAIN SONG\n\nWhere is the crack, the small crack\n\nWhere the dead come out\n\nand go back in?\n\nOnly the dead know that, the speechless and shifting dead.\n\nBut it does ooze, half-inch by half-inch,\n\nUnder the doorway of dejection,\n\nunder the brown, arthritic leaves.\n\nThe clock strikes, but the hands don't move.\n\nThe night birds outside\n\nThe window are gone away.\n\nThe halo around the quarter-moon\n\nMeans no good.\n\nIs this the hour of our undoing?\n\nIf so, we are perfected.\nWHATEVER HAPPENED TO AL LEE?\n\nWhat happened is what happens to all of us: we walked\n\nOn the earth, we threw a couple of handfuls of dirt\n\nInto the air, and when it came down it covered us.\n\"SO LONG, IT'S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YOU\"\n\nOur generation has come to grief, old dears,\n\nas all generations have to.\n\nOutlaw of physics.\n\nWell, hello stranger, put your loving hand in mine,\n\nwell, hello stranger,\n\nYou know me, but you're no pal of mine.\n\nComing in the front door, coming in the back,\n\ngonna raise the roof lid\n\nOn your daddy's shack.\n\nSpeaking in tongues, as we once thought that we were, back then.\n\nTrain whistle, bat swoop,\n\ntwilight papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 in the crimped pine trees,\n\nCloud deck assembling its puzzle pieces together\n\nOne by one.\n\nIt goes like that.\n\nSo snarked, so soon, the tenderness that lurks inside us\n\nMassages its knuckles and slips on its dark hoodie.\n\nIt's like that,\n\nit's always been like that.\n\nI wish I was a bird in a tree.\n\nWatch where you're walking,\n\nThere's always something bigger behind you,\n\nand something bigger ahead.\n\nTwisty the way, and twisty the place you're going to.\n\nA rock here, a rock there, wind in the trees,\n\nbright shards of green glass\n\nThe bat swoops over, listening for food.\n\nIt's starting to rain and I got to go home.\n\nBe good,\n\nSee that my grave is kept clean.\nAPOCRYPHA\nDETOUR\n\nIt seems to be done,\n\nthe world is not enough with us.\n\nTrue, the rivers rise to meet us in late spring, the trees,\n\nConifers mostly, give us their incandescent fingerbones,\n\nAnd the grasses whelp and propagate,\n\nBut it's not enough,\n\nsomehow it's never enough to please us.\n\nAnd so we turn to the other side.\n\nBut what an absence\u2014Jordan's a hard road to travel.\n\nThe love that we detoured into,\n\nthe love that was promised us,\n\nSoon forgotten, Lord, soon forgotten.\n\nGive us our muddy roads, give us our unrequited, forsaken nights,\n\nGive us our barren landscapes,\n\nGive us our desperation,\n\ngive us back our disbelief.\nDRIFT AWAY\n\nAt work in the upper field,\n\nhay tops little Buddhas\n\nCalming the meadow and all its attendant tributaries,\n\nPorcupine, Basin Creek, and God's blue hand like a skillet lid\n\nPressing us down to infinity\u2014\n\nWe thought it was up, but it turns out it's down, Jack, down.\n\nEither way we're stuck in the middle,\n\nnot a bad place to be.\n\nLater, sun like a struck medallion\n\nOver the west edge of things,\n\nthe distance between the woods and water\n\nImmeasurable, tree shadow on water shadow.\n\nI'm here and not here,\n\nabove and under it all.\n\nThese thoughts begin where words end\n\nBack in the timber, back in the sullen nowhere of everything.\n\nI think I'll take a little time off\n\nAnd fiddle the underbugs,\n\nSitting my absence,\n\ndusk growing larger and larger.\n\nThis is the story of our lives, a short story, a page or a page and a half.\n\nEight days after the summer solstice,\n\nHard frost this morning,\n\nmy life just past my fingertips, drifting, drifting.\n\"WELL, ROLL ON, BUDDY, DON'T YOU ROLL TOO SLOW\"\n\nSun out, sun in, cloud gobbets up high, mist candles down below,\n\nStart, and the start of the end of things.\n\nPerhaps. But who knows.\n\nRecluse joys are only skin deep.\n\nIf my life were a dream, I'd be warmer and happier.\n\nBut I'm on a different road,\n\nmist and sun, and the dust of this world.\n\nLate dusk by now and no birds, what do you know, no birds.\n\nThe old have no hiding place.\n\nIf it's going to come, you can't outrun it. Depend\n\nOn nothing and keep your joy-bag just out of sight.\n\nTwo nights till the full moon, a little soft on the lower left,\n\nA ghostly radiance,\n\nalmost there and almost not there.\n\nThe animals know this and sift away, but we have no clue.\n\nOur lives are in ruins, we think, and they seem to be.\n\nThe night will not settle them\n\nOr raise them or cover their spare parts.\n\nWho will discover them\n\nAnd say what our seasons were?\n\nWho will astound himself one night in the lee of the full moon\n\nIn the milky forest, in the scattered and milky forest?\nCHINOISERIE II\n\nI have tried to devote myself to simplicity\n\nBut it isn't that easy.\n\nI trust myself to nothing, not even the star-sprung night sky.\n\nI wish I were able to live in the constant, and wait out\n\nThe end, content to live in the come-and-go of things.\n\nBut it's hard, boys, it is hard,\n\na regret and a non-regret.\n\nLi Po was able to detach self from himself, they say, and\n\nLower and blend his self into the ten thousand things.\n\nWould that detachment were mine, Lord,\n\nO would it were mine.\n\nThe summer tumbles me into its shadowy depths.\n\nIt's dusk again, enveloping dusk,\n\nNo lights to light my way, not here nor there\n\nwhere I could forget myself.\nCHINOISERIE III\n\nAfter 77 years, who's not a pitiful sight?\n\nOnly the blackbirds know my thoughts,\n\na couple of spots\n\nIn the cattails and pond reeds.\n\nThe mountains stretch away, the cloud mountains and the green mountains.\n\nSuch an old song, such old words\n\nAs they drift across the creek.\n\nLate night lingers, water murmurs.\n\nI've listened to wind-spool all my life.\n\nAnd now this,\n\nthe slow grind-down of things, the birds settling down for the night.\nCHINOISERIE IV\n\nAll one sees in distance is distance,\n\nclarity of occurrence\n\nReturning to hold us close.\n\nUnder the high grass at forest's edge,\n\nthe voles and mice run back and forth and back.\n\nTheir distance is not our distance,\n\nand what they see there\n\nIs not what we don't see. It's something shapeless and strong\n\nAnd downright unclarified.\n\nI'd like to say it's something I saw once,\n\nBut it's not.\n\nI'd like to say I wrote a poem once on a stone wall,\n\nBut I didn't.\n\nI'd like to say that it's still there, but it's not.\n\"REMEMBER ME WHEN THE CANDLELIGHT IS GLEAMING\"\n\nThe clouds over Mt. Henry are\n\nas fine as the clouds over Taishan,\n\nOr those over Mt. Pisa.\n\nThe gravel in the creek's bed does not remark on this.\n\nLarch shadows across the meadow lie down in supplication.\n\nIn the small pond, the deer drink, the ducks are cool,\n\nand the deep clouds hang still,\n\nHalf-moon rising behind my back.\n\nIf I had the ink, the paper, the knowledge of magical transformation,\n\nI'd make a shorter poem,\n\none of redemption lament.\n\nThe mountains of the past berate me,\n\ntell me I'm gone and will never be back.\n\nWell, who can listen to them?\n\nStill, I still see them, stoop-shouldered and shining.\n\nWhat shadows, and how many rock-washed recalibrators\n\nwill name us, or number us in time?\n\nNot a one, Jim, not anybody.\nLOST HIGHWAYS\n\nSunlight is black magic,\n\nand transubstantiational even, if\n\nIt touches the right thing at the suddenly right time.\n\nSomewhere under the mixed sky is a vacant tranquillity.\n\nA white moth floats into it from out of the pine tree's shadow,\n\nA small light inside a larger light.\n\nSettling ash and disappearing smoke\n\nIs what we're left with in all of this.\n\nI find I abide in my idleness,\n\nAnd react to what I look at and, it happens, nothing else.\n\nI watch the sunsets defuse.\n\nI watch the ravens return to their darkening trees.\nSOLO JOE REVISITED\n\nMortality is our mother,\n\nmortality is what we hanker for\n\nWhen the sun goes down.\n\nAnd, boy, let me tell you, the sun goes down.\n\nOn Solo Joe Creek, for instance, the ribs of his cabin\n\nExist still, and the trace of the trail\n\nThe horses and mules packed in on,\n\nand the mile-long trench\n\nHe diverted water to\n\nTo sluice down the rock and gravel shards the gold hid in.\n\nOr did not, it seems, did not.\n\nDistance clarifies the water sounds at 2 p.m.\n\nWhat are we talking about, man, a dollar and a quarter\n\nA year from these splotched waters?\n\nThere's no horizon here,\n\nOnly the treetops and half-clouds chasing each other over the blue breaks of the sky.\n\nIt's all gone.\n\nI'd like to be sad, and say that every one of these outlines\n\nSlices my heart and my memory.\n\nBut I have no memory of this,\n\nand my heart is as hard as the lost riprap.\nDOUBLE-DEALING\n\nOrion, the Pleiades, all red dirt in the end.\n\nThe story of our lives,\n\nso short, so analogous,\n\nSpreads open, empty, silent,\n\nNo matter what clothes we put on.\n\nAs twilight tightens, air\n\nFills the air. I'm still here.\n\nIt is, after all, about darkness.\n\nSomething's creeping my batteries, though,\n\nSomething in long, black duds, down there to the left of me.\n\nAnd here it comes, so anxious, so all-encompassing.\n\nIts flash cards say me.\n\nAll of its other cards say you.\nCHINOISERIE V\n\nAlmost September and the meadow is still green, green.\n\nThe widower birds pipe once, or twice, and then are hush.\n\nNothing comes and nothing goes.\n\nThe doors to the mountains remain shut,\n\nSky still alert, but no moon rising,\n\ngrasses alert, but then they're not.\n\nImagine being a true recluse in straw sandals, wet with the rain,\n\nNever able to settle,\n\ngoing night after night.\n\nHard times, then, hard times.\n\nBetter to watch the light come and the light go through the window.\n\nBetter to hear the thunder turn and then return.\n\nRenown is a half-full glass.\nCHINOISERIE VI\n\nI'm looking across four or five mountains\n\ngone rust in twilight.\n\nNo clouds, no smoke-scrim, just mountains dipped in night's foreplay.\n\nThere is a clear path beyond the dust.\n\nThere is a way to reprieve yourself through the empty and full.\n\nThere are waters and waterfalls that go on below us\n\nfor thousands of miles.\n\nContentment comes in little steps, like old age,\n\nand poems written with spray paint.\n\nWhims come, whims go, but this one stays here,\n\nAn emptiness we all share,\n\nwhat falls away falling away.\n\nIt's kind of an afterlife,\n\nRoot and branch, thistle and weed,\n\nwe can't get enough of them, we just can't.\n\nMusician says, beauty is the enemy of expression.\n\nI say, expression is the enemy of beauty.\n\nGod says, who gives a damn anyway,\n\nBons mots, you see, are not art or sublimity.\n\nGo slower, go faster, just get there, you've said your piece. Now rest in it.\nANOTHER NIGHT IN THE PURCELLS\n\nSun-circle-between-mountains,\n\nNo double vision into the forest,\n\ntamaracks doing a second needle-death,\n\nThe old folks at home\n\nLooking into the future.\n\nLight gone, tamarack rust gone,\n\ndarkness, the last clown, sweeping his soft cape.\n\nThe music of the sky is endless\n\nAnd so I sit still, and then\n\nI can't stand it anymore and get up.\n\nEverything is scarce up here\n\nBut distance, and so I look at that.\n\nAnd keep on moving, and look at it,\n\nbut it never changes\n\nNo matter how hard I look.\n\nWhatever we do see starts and ends out of nowhere,\n\nA place we're familiar with\n\nAs we try to look beyond what emendates our lives.\n\nWe look for another heaven,\n\nwe look for another earth.\n\nIn the Gulf of Alaska, icebergs dwindle and drip.\nTRANSLATIONS FROM A FORGOTTEN TONGUE\n\nWhat shall I do with myself?\n\nI'm gone, or I am going,\n\nlet everyone forgive me.\n\nI tried to make a small hole in my life, something to slip through\n\nTo the other side.\n\nIf I get there, don't bother me with your comparisons.\n\nNobody knew I was going,\n\nnobody knew I was coming back.\n\nUnder the push of our footprints,\n\nthe earth is ready for us.\n\nWho knows how long this will go on?\n\nStand still, young soldier boy,\n\ndon't move, don't move, young sailor.\n\nWhose night sky is this\n\nWith no one under it?\n\nWhose darkness has closed our eyes?\nNotes and Acknowledgments\n\n\"Chinoiserie II,\" \"III,\" \"IV,\" \"V,\" and \"VI\": These poems are deeply indebted to Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China. Translated by David Hinton. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002.\n\nDu Fu: A Life in Poetry. Translated by David Young. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.\n\n\"I've Been Sitting Here Thinking Back Over My Life...\": the line \"Stories of cirrus and cumulus\" is from \"The End\" by Mark Strand, found in The Continuous Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.\n\n\"Little Elegy for an Old Friend\" is for George Schneeman.\n\n\"Plain Song\": Georg Trakl: Poems. Translated by Stephen Tapscott. Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College Press, 2011.\n\n\"Translations from a Forgotten Tongue\": Osip Mandlestam. Selected Poems. Translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin. New York: Atheneum, 1973.\n\nGrateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications, in which some of these poems first appeared:\n\nAppalachian Heritage\n\nThe Chronicle of Higher Education (blog)\n\nThe Fiddlehead\n\nFifth Wednesday Journal\n\nThe Kenyon Review\n\nMiramar\n\nThe Nameless Hour (exhibition catalogue). Richmond, VA:\n\nAnderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010.\n\nThe New Republic\n\nThe New Yorker\n\nThe New York Review of Books\n\nNorthwest Review\n\nShenandoah\n\nThe Southern Poetry Anthology, volume VI: Tennessee. Huntsville, TX:\n\nTexas Review Press, Sam Houston State University, 2012.\n\n32 Poems\n\nValparaiso Poetry Review\n\nThe Yale Review\nALSO BY CHARLES WRIGHT\n\nPOETRY\n\nThe Grave of the Right Hand\n\nHard Freight\n\nBloodlines\n\nChina Trace\n\nThe Southern Cross\n\nCountry Music: Selected Early Poems\n\nThe Other Side of the River\n\nZone Journals\n\nXionia\n\nThe World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980\u20131990\n\nChickamauga\n\nBlack Zodiac\n\nAppalachia\n\nNorth American Bear\n\nNegative Blue: Selected Later Poems\n\nA Short History of the Shadow\n\nBuffalo Yoga\n\nScar Tissue\n\nLittlefoot\n\nSestets\n\nBye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems\n\nTRANSLATIONS\n\nThe Storm and Other Things (Eugenio Montale)\n\nOrphic Songs (Dino Campana)\n\nNONFICTION\n\nHalflife\n\nQuarter Notes\nFARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX\n\n18 West 18th Street, New York 10011\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 by Charles Wright\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nFirst edition, 2014\n\neBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.\n\nwww.fsgbooks.com\n\nwww.twitter.com\/fsgbooks\n\nwww.facebook.com\/fsgbooks\n\neISBN 9781466875159\n\nFirst eBook edition: June 2014\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright Notice\n  3. Contents\n  4. Dedication\n  5. Echoes\n    1. Across the Creek Is the Other Side of the River\n    2. Time and the Centipedes of Night\n    3. Cake Walk\n    4. Waterfalls\n    5. The Childhood of St. Thomas\n    6. Everything Passes, but Is It Time?\n    7. Homage to Samuel Beckett\n    8. Crystal Declension\n    9. Grace II\n    10. Heaven's Eel\n    11. \"I'm Going to Take a Trip in That Old Gospel Ship\"\n    12. Ancient of Days\n    13. Next-to-Last Gasp\n    14. Sentences II\n    15. Natura Morta\n    16. Shadow and Smoke\n    17. Road Warriors\n    18. \"Just a Closer Walk with Thee\"\n    19. History Is a Burning Chariot\n    20. Long Ago and Far Away\n    21. \"Things Have Ends and Beginnings\"\n    22. Little Elegy for an Old Friend\n  6. End Papers\n    1. The Last Word\n    2. \"I've Been Sitting Here Thinking Back Over My Life...\"\n    3. \"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted...\"\n    4. \"My Old Clinch Mountain Home\"\n    5. Toadstools\n    6. Dude\n    7. Shadow Play\n    8. Fortune Cookie\n    9. Pack Rats\n    10. Life Lines\n    11. Four Dog Nights\n    12. October, Mon Amour\n    13. \"L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle\"\n    14. Ducks\n    15. Lullaby\n    16. The Children of the Plain\n    17. Plain Song\n    18. Whatever Happened to Al Lee?\n    19. \"So Long, It's Been Good to Know You\"\n  7. Apocrypha\n    1. Detour\n    2. Drift Away\n    3. \"Well, Roll On, Buddy, Don't You Roll Too Slow\"\n    4. Chinoiserie II\n    5. Chinoiserie III\n    6. Chinoiserie IV\n    7. \"Remember Me When the Candlelight Is Gleaming\"\n    8. Lost Highways\n    9. Solo Joe Revisited\n    10. Double-Dealing\n    11. Chinoiserie V\n    12. Chinoiserie VI\n    13. Another Night in the Purcells\n    14. Translations from a Forgotten Tongue\n  8. Notes and Acknowledgments\n  9. Also by Charles Wright\n  10. Copyright\n\n## Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by\nGoogle Books (Oxford University)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Notes:\n\n     1. Page scan source: Google Books\n        http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=LiAGAAAAQAAJ\n        (Oxford University)\n\n     2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].\n\n\n\n\n\n                            THE LAST CALL.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                            THE LAST CALL.\n\n\n                              A Romance.\n\n\n\n                                  BY\n\n                           RICHARD DOWLING,\n\n       AUTHOR OF \"THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD,\" \"THE WEIRD SISTERS,\"\n                         \"SWEET INISFAIL,\" ETC.\n\n\n\n\n\n                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.\n\n                               VOL. II.\n\n\n\n\n                               LONDON:\n             TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.\n                                1884.\n                       [_All rights reserved_.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                      CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS\n                        CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                            THE LAST CALL.\n\n\n                              * * * * *\n\n\n                        Part I.--_Continued_.\n\n\n\n\n                            THE LAST CALL.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XX.\n\n\nWhen Dora Harrington released herself from old Crawford's arms, he led\nher to a chair, and said: \"I have no longer the shadow of a doubt that\nyou are the daughter of my Dora. It was, indeed, a lucky chance which\nmade me in my despair last night turn my steps towards the river. And\nnow,\" he added, \"the next thing is to get some nice comfortable place\nfor you. This old rookery would never suit. Let us go and try if we\ncannot find a suitable, homely place, somewhere outside the City.\"\n\n\"I told you, sir,\" said the girl timidly, \"that when yesterday I found\nout all my money was lost in the bank, I had not a shilling to send a\nmessage to him.\"\n\n\"To Lavirotte?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nThe old man took out a leather bag and handed it to her, saying: \"This\nwill be enough for the present. When it is all gone let me know.\"\n\n\"But, sir,\" said the girl, holding the bag in her hand without opening\nit, \"I do not want all this. A shilling will be sufficient for the\npresent, if you will only let me go to the nearest telegraph office.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, child,\" he said. \"You cannot be without money in London.\nThere is more where that came from. If you wish to go immediately to\nthe telegraph office, you may as well start now. I will meet you in an\nhour at Ludgate Circus.\"\n\nThe young girl descended the ladders through the gloom of the tower,\nand opening the deep sunken door, emerged into the broad morning\nsunlight. She went to the telegraph office and wrote out the following\nmessage:\n\n\n\"Cannot say how sorry you are not well. Could not telegraph yesterday.\nWould go over, but have no money.\"\n\n\nWhen she had written out this message, she untied the string of the\nbag and poured the contents into her hand. She had expected to find a\nfew shillings. She started with surprise.\n\n\"Gold! All gold!\" She counted. \"Twelve pounds!\" Then for a moment she\nstood in thought, tore up the telegram she had written, and walked\nquickly back to the tower.\n\nHere a difficulty presented itself. How was she to summon the old man\nfrom the top or from the pit? If he was above, the feeble sound of her\nhand beating against that door would never be heard, even at night.\nBut now in the day, owing to the roar of traffic around, she could not\nmake herself heard if he was in the pit beneath.\n\nWhat was she to do? This was the only door. Under the circumstances\nshe did not care to ask the aid of any passer-by, lest it might anger\nthe old man. Notwithstanding her conviction that the effort would be\nfruitless, she did knock at the massive door with her hand.\n\nThere came no response. For a quarter of an hour she stood and knocked\nunavailingly. Then she turned to go, and hastened to Ludgate Circus.\nShe had taken no heed of time, and when she got to the Circus she was\nhorrified to find herself twenty minutes behind the time appointed.\n\nShe glanced hastily round, but could not see the old man. Then she\ncarefully examined with her eye each of the four sections that make up\nthe Circus. She found no one she knew. The hurrying crowd and throng\nof vehicles 'confused her senses and her mind. The old man had not\nindicated to her the section in which he would meet her, and to her\neyes, unaccustomed as they were to the ceaseless turmoil of traffic in\nthe City, it seemed almost impossible to find anyone in that place.\n\nShe waited half-an-hour vainly. Then she began to despair. Whither\nshould she turn? That tower in Porter Street now seemed as\ninaccessible to her as the centre of the Great Pyramid. This\ndereliction of to-day was harder to bear than that of yesterday;\nfor since her desperate resolve the previous night she had found a\nfriend--nay, more, a close relative--who was also the friend of the\nman she loved, and who was willing and able to help her. Had she not\nwith her the proof of this willingness and this ability?\n\nThen, as she betook herself once more in the direction of St. Prisca's\nTower, she remembered he had said the money he gave her that morning\nwould do for the present. She was therefore, of course, at liberty to\nemploy the money as she chose. It was hers to use, for a grandfather\nhad of course a perfect right to give his grand-daughter money, and\nthe granddaughter had a perfect right to accept it.\n\nOnce more she found herself in the doorway of the tower. She stood a\nwhile looking up and down the busy way, when all at once, to her great\njoy, she saw the old man approaching.\n\n\"My dear child, where have you been? I have been greatly frightened\nabout you.\"\n\nShe then explained to him what had occurred--how she had not noticed\nthe time slipping by, and how, when she found herself in Ludgate\nCircus, she was twenty minutes too late.\n\n\"Well, there's no harm done so far,\" said Crawford. \"You sent your\ntelegram, and now we shall go and look for a lodging.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"I did not send it. I wrote it out and then tore it\nup. Did you know, sir, that all the money in this bag is gold?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, \"I keep my change loose always. Did you expect to find\nnotes?\"\n\n\"Oh no, sir; but I thought as you were good enough to give this money\nyou might perhaps allow me to do with it what I would most like. That\nis the reason I tore up my telegram.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" he said. \"You may do with it exactly what you please.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" said the girl, \"will you consent to my going to Ireland\nthis evening?\"\n\nThe old man started for a moment. \"I suppose you mean,\" he said, \"to\nGlengowra, to see Lavirotte.\"\n\nShe , and said: \"Yes. If you do not object. He is ill, you\nknow.\"\n\n\"It is a long way for a young girl to go alone; too long I fear.\"\n\n\"I am used to travelling,\" pleaded the girl, \"I do not mind travelling\nin the least. I have travelled a great deal alone.\"\n\n\"Give me a little time to think,\" said the old man. \"I cannot decide\nat the moment. This is no place to stand any longer. Let us sit down\nsomewhere. Come with me.\"\n\nCrawford led the way to a quiet room, where he ordered some light\nrefreshment, and where they could speak without effort or restraint.\n\nThey talked the matter over a little. At last he made up his mind. \"I\nhave resolved,\" he said, \"that you should not go alone so long a\njourney.\"\n\nThe girl looked disappointed; her eyes filled with tears. \"Oh!\" she\ncried, \"I wish you would give me leave.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless,\" said the old man, not heeding the interruption, \"you\nshall go to Ireland this evening. I will go with you.\"\n\nThey were alone. She took his dark, wrinkled hand in hers and kissed\nit, and cried, \"Thank you, grandfather,\" and burst into tears.\n\nIt was the first time the old man had been called grandfather, and the\nname seemed to re-awaken in his breast echoes of his old tenderness.\nHe placed his other hand on her head, and drew her head down on his\nshoulder, saying softly: \"Weep, if it is good for your heart, my\nchild. These are healing tears. You are, as far as I know, the one\nhuman being saved to me out of the shipwreck of my life. I will go\nwith you to-night. He will recover speedily, you may be sure, and I\nwill afterwards do all I can for you and him.\"\n\nThen the detail of their journey was arranged. She was to get what\nthings she required in lieu of those left with her landlady. He had\nsome preparations to make too. That evening they both set out for\nDublin on their way to Glengowra.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXI.\n\n\nThe gold and silver plate and the jewels of the great Lord Tuscar were\nthe wonder and admiration of Europe. Sovereigns envied him for their\npossession. They had not been the result of one generation. The\nTuscars had for a couple of centuries been generals, admirals,\nstatesmen, lawyers. They had, in fact, occupied every favourable\nposition for earning high rewards and for wholesale plundering.\n\nThey had plundered with a will. And now, in addition to fine estates\nin three English counties and a large slice out of \"settled\" Ulster,\nand one of the finest houses in London, Lord Tuscar had the largest\ncollection of plate and jewels owned by any nobleman in the three\nkingdoms. No one had ever attempted even to estimate the value of his\ntreasures.\n\nHis house was situated close to the river, at no great distance from\nSt. Prisca's Church. Those were times of troubles and dangers. Great\nhouses had been ruined and great houses made in an incredibly short\nspace of time. Men who had been at the zenith of power and riches\nyesterday were penniless exiles to-day, and the men who had subsisted\nupon the charity of foreign courts and foreign nobles a week ago, were\nnow environed with all the circumstance and pomp of power and all the\nsplendour of wealth.\n\nNow, one of the most remarkable things in connection with the great\nTuscar treasure was, that for some years no one had seen more of it\nthan the meaner exigencies of a great house required. Some said the\ngreat lord had pawned it. At this most people laughed; for was it not\nknown that, gorgeous as was the state and luxury with which he\nsurrounded himself, his income exceeded his expenses? Others said that\nalthough the time was over when monarchs playfully adopted the\ntreasures of their nobles, the great earl had misgivings, and although\none of the most favoured courtiers of the Merry Monarch, he had a\nmorbid dread that his Majesty might unjustly covet those precious\nstores. Then there was an idea that as the Tuscars had been\nenthusiastic Royalists, and as the present earl was notoriously timid,\nhe had, in dread of a second Commonwealth, sent his plate and gems\nover seas.\n\nHowever the matter stood, there could be no doubt that the treasure\nwas not now at Tuscar House; and, moreover, it was alleged that only\nhis lordship and one confidential person could tell the whereabouts of\nthe hoard.\n\nIt was towards the end of summer, and night. Most of London had\nretired to rest. A strong wind was blowing from the east. The city was\nill-lighted where it was lighted at all, and the streets dangerous\nafter dark; so that most people who were honest and had anything to\nlose kept indoors.\n\nIt was not a fashionable part of the city, but it was not\nunprosperous. As the night went on the wind increased, until about ten\no'clock. Then it blew fiercely.\n\nAll at once in front of the shop of one, Farryner, baker to the King,\nwas raised a cry:\n\n\"Fire!\"\n\nThat was the beginning of it. In an incredibly short time, aided by\nthe wind, Farryner's house was burned out; but, before it was finally\nreduced to ashes, most of Pudding Lane was in flames. Many of the\nhouses were of wood, and offered no protest whatever against the\ndevelopment of the conflagration.\n\nAn hour from the outbreak of the flames it was known Farryner was\nburned out. Two hours later it was known that London was in flames.\n\nNow it could be seen that this was no incidental fire, to be dismissed\nfinally at the end of the nine-days' wonder. This was a fire that\nwould be remembered for years.\n\nThree hours after midnight it was obvious that, if the wind continued\nin its present quarter for any great length of time, the fire would\nbecome a matter which history could never ignore.\n\nBy this time a large portion of the population in the neighbourhood\nafflicted were afoot. Now the fire leaped from street to street, as\nthough with the agility of trained experience. Now, when new material\ncame in its way, it shot upward in spires of flame. Later, these\nspires, bending under the pressure of the wind, made radiant viaducts\nfor the fire across the darkened streets. And when they had done their\ndeadly work, and the buildings opposite crackled and glowed, these\nhuge beams of molten gold contracted as the source upon which they\nhad fed failed them, and finally they made one wild, aspiring rush\nupwards when the roof fell, and the four walls of each house formed\nthe crater of an iridescent volcano, which belched forth one huge mass\nof co-mingled smoke, and flame, and sparks, and flakes, and wands of\nfire.\n\nAbout this time the vast house owned by the great Lord Tuscar was\nthreatened, touched, and fired. He, his suite and retinue, escaped by\nthe river; and in a brief time, before the daylight yet broadened in\nthe east, already red with the flames, Tuscar House was beyond hope.\n\nNow terror had fully seized the people. No efforts were made to save\nthe buildings. Those who could escape with their lives, and a few of\nthe most portable of their worldly goods, were considered lucky. Men\nand women might be seen hurrying through the streets frantically,\nmoving west, carrying such of their possessions as could be borne a\ngreat distance. For now they had come to the conclusion that it was\nimpossible to set a limit to the flames, and that the whole of London\nin a westerly direction might succumb.\n\nThere had been a long, hot, dry season, and the houses burned bravely.\nThey seemed but to need a touch from the fiery wind flying by to\nkindle them. Despair reigned supreme. Men and women went shrieking\nthrough the streets. The roar of the conflagration shook the air. The\ncrash of falling houses made the solid ground tremble. People would\nnot leave their homes until the flames had touched the walls, until\nthe last ray of hope was obscured. Then such as were not encumbered\nwith children or goods flew through the streets, shrieking like\ndemented beings.\n\nOne of those most alarmed by the magnitude of the calamity and the\nterrors of that night was the great Earl of Tuscar. When he entered\nhis barge to row up the river his feet trembled, and he could scarcely\nkeep himself upright.\n\nHe was elderly, and had been in failing health for some time. Before\nthey arrived at the stairs at Westminster he complained of feeling\nfaint; and when at last the barge ran alongside, they had to carry the\ngreat Earl out, for he was dead.\n\nAs the attendants were bearing the body of the great Earl from his\nbarge, a solitary man stood on the leads of the tower belonging to St.\nPrisca's Church, watching the progress of the flames.\n\nEvidently he was very anxious, for his head and eyes moved continually\nfrom right to left. As each spot, which, a moment before had been\nblack, sprang into flame, he shifted his feet restlessly like one\nfeeling he ought to be gone, and yet daring to hope there was no need\nfor flight.\n\n\"If anything is to be saved,\" he said, \"there is no time to lose.\"\n\nAgain he ran his eye over the increasing area of the fire.\n\n\"The walls of the tower may stand,\" he thought. \"They are much thicker\nthan is common. But the church itself must go if the wind does not\nabate. The Earl has already left, of course. The fire did not spare\nhis stout walls, nor respect his greatness. He and I alone know where\nhis treasure is hid. He will, of course, take measures to secure it\nafter the fire. It could be nowhere safer than it is at present. No\none suspects it is in the vault. People who saw the chests come\nbelieved they contained only the rescued archives of an abbey\ndestroyed by Cromwell. But let me see. Supposing anything should have\nhappened to him; supposing he was overtaken by the flames; suppose,\nfrom some cause or other, he should not be able to communicate the\nsecret to anyone, how then could this treasure be discovered? How\ncould it be so arranged that the secret might fall into no other hands\nthan those entitled to know it, for may not I too perish in this\nterrible disaster?\"\n\nHe turned around, and leaving the embrasure in which he had stood,\ndescended quickly to the room below.\n\nHere a light was burning, and it could be seen that he who had watched\nthe fire from the roof was a clergyman.\n\n\"How is it to be done?\" he thought, and pondered some seconds. At last\nhe lifted a small box, and, going to some bookshelves, took out a few\nvolumes. In two of these volumes he wrote something.\n\n\"It will not do,\" he thought, \"to make this matter so plain that\nanyone may understand it. If the Earl is alive, by noon he will surely\ntake some steps with regard to his treasure. If he is not alive, and I\ntoo have perished, it will be necessary some record should be left\nbehind.\"\n\nHe placed a copy of Chaucer, in which he had written something, in the\nbottom of the box, then a few indifferent books, and then \"Mentor on\nHawking,\" in which he had written something also; then a few more\nindifferent books, and finally a piece of paper bearing these words:\n\n\n\"Search diligently if you would know what John Henry Plantagenet\nJames, eighth earl, knew, if he be dead.\"\n\nOn the outside of the box he fastened a piece of parchment on which he\nwrote: \"A box of books. Take this at once to the Earl of Tuscar, who\nwill reward the bearer.\"\n\nThen he locked the box, and, putting it on his shoulder, descended the\nladders of St. Prisca's Tower. As he did so he said to himself: \"I\nhave not been too soon. The air here is already hot. I can smell the\nfire close by.\"\n\nAs he was about half-way down, a sudden light in one of the openings\nattracted his attention. He started, and cried: \"The flames have\nalready struck the church.\"\n\nEre he reached the next loft it was but too plain the tower was\nalready in flames.\n\n\"My retreat cut off!\" he exclaimed in despair. He looked down into the\nnext loft. The floor and the foot of the ladder were alight, and exit\nwas impossible. If there was any hope for him it must be upon the\nroof. He hastened thither.\n\nDuring the time he had been occupied with the books and writing, and\nin descending and ascending, the fire had made rapid, terrible\nprogress. It had touched the Church of St. Prisca, and the smoke was\nalready coming up the opening in the roof.\n\nIt was quite plain now to the man on the leads that he was doomed.\nThere were people in the streets below, but they were as helpless as\nhe.\n\n\"I must die,\" he said. \"Nothing can save me. There is but one chance\nfor my preserving the secret.\"\n\nHe approached an embrasure on the western side, and dropped the box\ninto the street below.\n\nThe box shot downward and was shattered into atoms. Some paltry\npilferer, a few minutes later, snatched up the books and put them into\nhis bag. The label on the box and the manuscript-slip inside were\nnever seen afterwards. The books were carried to Kensington, whither a\ngood deal of the salvage of the fire was brought; and the clergyman,\nwho had tried to save the Earl's secret, fell a victim to the Great\nFire of London on the 3rd of September, 1666.\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXII.\n\n\nIt was evening when Lionel Crawford and his grand-daughter arrived at\nGlengowra. Much of the excitement had by this time disappeared, and a\ntone of gentle disgust was to be observed among the inhabitants of\nthat little town.\n\nWas it not provoking, townfolk thought, that such a splendid\nopportunity for invective and commiseration should be wholly wasted?\nWho could throw stones at Lavirotte if young O'Donnell did not? Who\ncould pity young O'Donnell if he consented to receive the friendly\novertures of Lavirotte. The whole thing was an abominable conspiracy\nagainst comfortable living in Glengowra. There was something to be\ngrateful for, no doubt, in the first blush of that event at the cove,\nbut it had led to nothing worthy of its parts; and a circumstance\nwhich had gone up the very largest of rockets, seemed destined to come\ndown the most insignificant of sticks.\n\nWhen Lionel Crawford and Dora Harrington arrived in Glengowra and went\nto Maher's hotel, a new fillip was given to public curiosity. It was\nknown by the speech of the grandfather and his grand-daughter that\nthey were not of Irish bringing up. There was, of course, no reason\nwhy they should be in any way connected with the great event of that\nweek. Yet, still it had been noised abroad that Lavirotte had\ntelegraphed to a Miss Harrington in London, and here now had arrived\nan old man and a young girl with unfamiliar accents. The shrewd people\nof Glengowra made a connection between these facts, and came, in about\nten minutes, to the conclusion that the young girl was Miss\nHarrington.\n\nIn the back room of the Confectionery Hall, a man who had come out by\nthe same train with the newly-arrived pair brought all news and\nsurmises concerning them; and here, out of gratitude for small\nmercies, the company were for a time solaced by the fact that no one\ncould offer a rational explanation of who the old man was.\n\nWhen Crawford and Dora were safely inside Maher's hotel, the old man\nasked to be shown to a private sitting-room.\n\n\"For,\" said he to Dora, \"I have been so long accustomed to the\nsolitude of St. Prisca's Tower, that I cannot endure the company or\ncurious gaze of strangers.\"\n\nHe had no means of knowing up to this that Lavirotte's illness was not\na natural one, or that he and his grand-daughter were the subjects of\npeculiar interest to the good folk of Glengowra.\n\nHe rang the bell, and when the waiter came, said:\n\n\"I should very much like to see the landlord, if you think he would\noblige me by coming here.\"\n\nIn a few minutes the proprietor entered the room.\n\nThe old man lost no time in stating his case. He said:\n\n\"We have come a long journey, and are tired. We are both deeply\ninterested in a gentleman who is now lying ill here, Mr. Lavirotte,\nand are most anxious to know his present condition.\"\n\nThe landlord looked from one to the other in some perplexity.\n\n\"May I ask,\" said he, \"the nature of the interest you take in Mr.\nLavirotte?\"\n\nThe old man smiled, and said: \"An Irishman's answer.\"\n\n\"An Irishman's answer,\" said Maher, \"is often kindly meant.\"\n\nHe glanced significantly, first at the old man, and then at the young\ngirl.\n\n\"Perhaps you know,\" said Crawford, \"that Mr. Lavirotte telegraphed to\na lady in London, in whose affairs he is interested?\"\n\n\"I wrote out the message myself.\" He paused a moment. \"Have I the\nhonour of seeing Miss Harrington?\"\n\n\"This is Miss Harrington.\"\n\n\"And you are, sir----?\" He paused here.\n\n\"Her grandfather.\"\n\n\"May I ask you, sir,\" said Maher, \"to step out with me for a moment?\"\n\n\"Oh, sir, he is worse,\" cried the girl, looking appealingly at the old\nman.\n\nMaher turned quickly upon her, saying: \"I pledge you my word of\nhonour, Miss Harrington, that, on the contrary, Mr. Lavirotte is much\nbetter; and that he has continued to improve ever since I telegraphed\nto you.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said the girl, \"his illness must have been sudden.\"\n\n\"Rather sudden. If you, sir,\" he continued, turning to the\ngrandfather, \"will accompany me just down to the strand, I should feel\ngreatly obliged. Miss Harrington will, if you approve of it, remain in\nthis room until we come back, with my most emphatic assurance that Mr.\nLavirotte is out of danger and getting on very well.\"\n\nMaher did not wish the girl to meet even a chambermaid, lest the whole\nof the story might reach her at the one time, and give her a most\npainful and unnecessary shock. The substance of the conversation\nbetween the two clerks at the back of the Confectionery Hall had by\nthis time become public property; and, of course, the hotel proprietor\nwas one of the first men to hear all news.\n\nJaded as the old man was, he rose with alacrity, and accompanied\nMaher. As soon as they were in the open air Crawford turned on his\ncompanion, and said: \"I am sure, sir, your intention is kindly. There\nis kindliness in your manner and face; but I hope you are not, through\nsome benevolent motive, deceiving that child we have left behind.\"\n\n\"I--deceiving her!\" cried the landlord. \"_I_ am not deceiving her.\"\n\n\"I do not understand,\" said the old man, \"what you mean by laying such\nemphasis on the word _I_.\"\n\n\"I mean, sir, that although I am not deceiving her now (Lavirotte is\nreally getting better), someone else may be deceiving her.\"\n\n\"You perplex and disturb me,\" said the old man. \"I have no clue\nwhatever to your meaning. Pray, if you would be kind, be plain.\"\n\n\"I take it for granted, sir, that you know Mr. Lavirotte.\"\n\n\"I know Mr. Lavirotte, but not very well.\"\n\nFor a moment or two the landlord was silent. His position was one of\ngreat delicacy and difficulty. He now held a profound hatred for\nLavirotte, and the look of that gentle, confiding young girl had\ntouched him keenly. He pitied her.\n\n\"I hope, sir,\" he said, \"if I am bold enough to ask you a few\nquestions, you will be so kind as not to fancy it is through\ncuriosity.\"\n\n\"I will do anything,\" said the old man, \"if you will only go on.\"\n\n\"There is a rumour here, which may be true or false, that Mr.\nLavirotte met Miss Harrington in London, and that they were good\nfriends there.\"\n\n\"I see what you are driving at. They are engaged to be married.\"\n\n\"Precisely. You have not for some months past heard much of Mr.\nLavirotte, have you?\"\n\n\"Absolutely nothing, except your telegram. Has he been ill all that\ntime?\"\n\n\"No. He was not taken ill until a few hours before I sent that message\nto London.\"\n\n\"What is the nature of his illness?\"\n\n\"He received an injury in a mysterious way, in a quarrel with another\nman, and neither he nor the other man will say anything about the\nquarrel, or the cause of it. But, of course, as in all cases of this\nkind, there is a general notion of what it was about. People say that\njealousy led to it.\"\n\n\"Jealousy of Miss Harrington? I did not understand there was any\nlikelihood of his being jealous of her.\"\n\n\"Nor is he, as far as rumour goes. The facts are that he attacked a\nyoung man in this place, and, after stabbing the young man, was\nrendered insensible himself, no one knows how.\"\n\n\"Stabbing!\" exclaimed the old man with horror. \"Are you sure of that!\"\n\n\"There is no evidence he did. There is no doubt he did.\"\n\n\"I am old,\" said Mr. Crawford, \"and have lived a long time out of the\nways of the world. I am slow, and do not understand. Out of pity to my\ninfirmities, be simple with me. I know something very unpleasant is\ncoming. Let me hear it at once.\"\n\nThe two men had now reached the roadway that ran inside the storm\nwall.\n\n\"It will rest you, sir, if we stand here and lean upon the wall. I\nwill tell you everything I know in a few words.\n\n\"The prettiest girl in this neighbourhood is a Miss Creagh. She is now\nin my house. One of the finest young fellows within twenty miles is\nMr. Eugene O'Donnell. He is now lying in my house. He is the man\nLavirotte stabbed. They were bosom friends. The story goes that about\ntwo months ago Lavirotte made love to Miss Creagh and was rejected. A\nlittle later O'Donnell made love, and was accepted. The wedding was to\nbe in about a month, and to prevent it Lavirotte tried to murder young\nO'Donnell.\"\n\n\"Good God!\" said the old man, \"what a dreadful story, and what a\nscoundrel he must be! It is the most horrible thing that ever came\nnear me in all my life.\"\n\n\"It is very bad, sir, indeed. You will now, sir, understand why I\nwished to speak to you alone. Shall we go back? I left orders that no\none was to enter the private room, so that you can act now as you\nthink best, and be quite certain that the young lady knows nothing of\nthis most miserable affair. It is only right you should know that\nyoung O'Donnell is also doing very well, and no fears are felt about\nhis recovery.\"\n\nIn perfect silence the two men walked back to the hotel.\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXIII.\n\n\nLionel Crawford did not go straight to the room where Dora was. He\nturned into the coffee-room, and there stood a while pondering. Though\nhe was a visionary, a dreamer, a philosopher, he had, before he became\nimmersed in his present studies and pursuits, been, comparatively\nspeaking, a man of the world. For although he had never mingled much\nin society, he had a tolerable knowledge of what people said and did.\n\nWhat would people say of such conduct as Lavirotte's? They would call\nit abominable. What would people say of Lavirotte? They would call him\na scoundrel. Here was a dilemma. If this strange, this unknown girl,\nwere not to marry Lavirotte but the other man, there seemed on the\nface of it to be no reason why he might not still marry Dora. It was\nquite certain his grand-daughter had no hint that Lavirotte's\naffections had strayed from her. This liking for Miss Creagh might\nhave been only the errant fancy of an hour--of a day--of a week. It\nmight turn out that the landlord had exaggerated the position of Miss\nCreagh in the matter, and that the encounter had been the result of\nheated blood, arising from some other cause.\n\nIf things had only run on smoothly, without this wretched interruption\nof the fight, how satisfactory all would be.\n\nHere was Lavirotte, the owner of the tower, and he, the seeker for the\ntreasure, already bound together in a kind of business contract. And\nhere, then, as a second bond of union between the two, had come Dora.\nHis grand-daughter was to be the other's wife if things had not been\ndisturbed. If Lavirotte and he had shared the treasure equally between\nthem, and then these two young people were married, the whole of the\nenormous fortune hidden under St. Prisca's Tower would, when he died,\nbe theirs.\n\nIt would be a thousand pities that such a match should be broken off.\nThe most ordinary prudence pointed at the absurdity of such a step. It\nwould be his duty to his grand-daughter, Lavirotte, and himself, to\ntake care that no such misfortune might befall.\n\nThe agreement which existed between him and Lavirotte had never been\nreduced to writing. Neither of them had desired that it should. He\nknew that such an agreement would not be binding in law. If the\nfinding and retaining of all the treasure was contrary to the law, no\ninstrument embodying the disposal of all the property between him and\nLavirotte would hold for one moment. It would be a cruel shame if,\nafter all his years of inquiry and anxiety, when he was working on the\nmere traditional rumour that a great hoard was concealed somewhere in\nthe city, the labour of that time and the labour of his later years in\nthe tower should all go for nothing, or next to nothing.\n\nLavirotte had been sceptical as to the existence of the treasure; had\ngiven him to understand he would not sink a penny in the speculation.\nIf any difficulty arose between him and the owner of the tower now,\nthat door might remain shut for a hundred years, until they were all\ndead, until the clue to the secret had been destroyed for ever.\n\nBy some means or other this catastrophe must be avoided. It was too\nhideous even to think of. He must prevent it at any cost. How was he\nto prevent it?\n\nIt was plainly his first business to see Lavirotte and ascertain all\nhe could from him. No doubt the Frenchman would be more communicative\nto him than to others in whom he had no interest whatever. Of course\nLavirotte would not recognise in him the grandfather of Dora, but they\nhad been acquainted some time and were partners in his secret, in his\ngreat undertaking. No doubt by this time the girl was becoming\nimpatient for news of some kind. He would go to her first and reassure\nher, and then seek an interview with Lavirotte.\n\nWhen he entered the room where Dora was, she came to him eagerly and\ncaught his hand and said: \"Have you seen him--is he better? What did\nhe say?\"\n\n\"I have not seen Dominique yet,\" said the old man, using the other's\nChristian name for the first time.\n\n\"Oh, you are good to call him Dominique. You have something to tell\nme.\"\n\n\"I have nothing very new to tell you. It is quite true he is\nprogressing most favourably, and there is no cause for alarm. This\nplace is full of strangers, and the landlord thinks you will be most\ncomfortable if you remain in this room a little longer until I see\nDominique.\"\n\n\"You will not be long. I am so impatient to know all--to see him if I\nmay.\"\n\n\"I will make all the haste I can,\" and with these words the old man\nleft the room.\n\nWhen Lionel Crawford entered the injured man's room the latter was\nprepared to see him, as word had been sent up before that Crawford was\ncoming.\n\n\"It was exceedingly kind of you to come, Mr. Crawford,\" said the\nwounded man; \"but, in the name of all that is mysterious, how did you\nfind out I was hurt, or are you here merely by some extraordinary\ncoincidence?\"\n\n\"Let us not waste time now,\" said the old man, \"with idle matters. I\nam in a hurry. By a mere accident, which I will explain to you later,\nI found out you were ill. I lost no time in coming, as, for several\nreasons, I was anxious to see you.\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Lavirotte, \"you heard something of what has occurred\nsince you came to this place?\"\n\n\"I will be candid with you,\" said Crawford, \"and tell you all I\nheard.\"\n\nWhen he had finished, he said: \"Is it true in substance?\"\n\nThe prostrate man admitted it was true in substance, and went on to\nexplain:\n\n\"I will tell you a little more about it than you seem to have heard,\nand what I am going to tell you will lessen me a good deal in your\nregard, for it will show you that the wind is constant compared to me.\nIt is true I was engaged to someone in London. It is true that while I\nwas engaged I fell in love with Miss Creagh. She would not have me.\nShe accepted my dearest friend, Eugene O'Donnell, and in a moment of\nabsolute madness I tried to take his life. He has forgiven me. We are\nfriends again, and now I have only one great fear. It is that what has\noccurred may come to the ears of the girl I am engaged to in London,\nand so prejudice me in her opinion. For, you see, when I proposed to\nher she had a fortune of five thousand pounds, and now she has lost\nall that fortune in the terrible crash of Vernon and Son. If she heard\nof all this, it might make her think--in fact, it would look like\nit--that I made love to her when she had a fortune, and gave her up as\nsoon as I found it swept away.\"\n\n\"So that,\" said the other anxiously, \"if you were up and about once\nmore, and were free to travel, you would go to London, and, if you\nwere in a position to do so, marry Miss Harrington.\"\n\n\"That,\" said Lavirotte eagerly, \"is the only thing I could do which\nwould atone to her in any way for my vile fickleness. It would, at the\nsame time, prove to my dear friend, O'Donnell, that I had not only\nabandoned all my pretensions to Miss Creagh, but that by marrying and\ngoing to London I had put a final barrier between myself and her, and\ngone into voluntary exile as a punishment for my crime. But, you see,\nas to marrying at present, that is completely out of the question. I\nwas too poor before this affair, and now the whole town will turn\nagainst me, and I shall be obliged to leave the place. There will be\nno getting a crust for me here now.\"\n\n\"But,\" said the old man, enthusiastically, \"we must be very near our\ngreat fortune now. I work day and night, night and day. By day in the\npit, by night on the top of the tower. I cannot be far off now.\nAnother six months and I surely must reach the chests in which the\ngreat treasure is hidden.\" His voice had fallen to a whisper, and the\nintense excitement with which he contemplated his final triumph had\ncaused the sweat to break out upon his forehead. He grasped the\ncounterpane convulsively. He could scarcely breathe. This was the\nfirst time for years he had spoken of the matter. It was the second\ntime in all his life. \"You shall be rich,\" he said. \"And I shall be\nrich. I have tried over and over again to estimate what may be the\nvalue of that hoard, and the more I think of it the greater, I am\npersuaded, it must be. At first I thought two hundred thousand pounds\nmight be the outside limit. But the more I read the more it grew,\nuntil at last I have come to the conclusion that it must be somewhere\nbetween a million and a million and a half.\"\n\nThe excitement of the old man was intense. His eyes were fixed, his\nattitude and manner that of one fascinated by some glorious vision.\nThe splendour of the image he had conjured up drew him wholly away\nfrom the present time and his surroundings. He had forgotten\nLavirotte, his own long journey, Dora, everything but the one colossal\nfigure of wealth triumphant gleaming before his mental vision.\n\nThe wounded man shook his head sadly and slowly on his pillow.\n\n\"If I am to wait, Mr. Crawford,\" said he, dreamily, \"until we reach\nthe goal at which you aim, I greatly fear I must starve. This illness\nwill exhaust all the money I have. Popular opinion will drive me from\nthis town. I see nothing before me but ruin.\"\n\nThe words seemed to recall the old man to the immediate circumstances\nof his position, but he did not clearly recover all he had said to\nLavirotte before. \"All my money is not yet gone. Does no means suggest\nitself to you of putting a little capital to some advantage? I don't\nthink you can hope for much from your present occupation. Without any\ndanger to our great project I could, I think, find a few hundred\npounds if they would be of any permanent use to you.\"\n\n\"A little while ago,\" said Lavirotte, in a melancholy tone, \"I thought\nif I could get a few hundred pounds I should be able to put it to very\nprofitable use. I have a voice, if this accident has not taken it\naway, and all my friends said that if I could devote a couple of years\nexclusively to its cultivation, I might succeed as a singer.\"\n\n\"You are not yet too old,\" said the other, with interest. \"Take the\nmoney and try the experiment.\"\n\n\"But I can have no excuse for taking from you money which I may never\nbe able to repay.\"\n\n\"You want no excuse,\" said Lionel Crawford, catching the injured man's\nhand. \"Why should I not help the future husband of my grandchild?\"\n\n\"Your grandchild!\" cried Lavirotte, in astonishment. \"Who is she?\"\n\n\"Dora Harrington.\"\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXIV.\n\n\nThis announcement of Lionel Crawford head an electrical effect upon\nDominique Lavirotte. Notwithstanding Dr. O'Malley's strict orders to\nthe contrary, the Frenchman sat bolt upright in the bed, looking\nghastly in his bandages, and stared at the old man.\n\n\"_You_, Dora's grandfather!\" he cried. His eyes starting in their\nsockets, and bloodless lips remaining open when he had spoken. \"_You_,\nDora's grandfather! You are telling me a hideous lie. For what purpose\nare you telling me this hideous lie?\"\n\n\"Hush!\" cried the old man, alarmed lest Lavirotte in his excitement\nshould make allusion in similarly loud tones to his great secret. \"You\nmust not excite yourself. Someone may hear you, and then how should we\nbe?\"\n\nLavirotte stared still, but uttered no word. The power of speech was\ntaken from him by the nature of the statement made by the other man.\nHad this dark-visaged ogre come here to worm the history of his\nperfidy to Dora from him, in order to be avenged on him out of a\nconfession from his own mouth? Was this man about to add to his mental\ntortures a storm of intolerable abuse, or, taking advantage of his\nhelpless state, finish the work which the night of that encounter had\nleft undone?\n\n\"You seem to misunderstand my intention altogether. I assure you all I\nhave said and have to say is for your good, for our good, for the good\nof our great object.\" Like all other men who have ever been possessed\nby the idea of discovering hidden treasure, all pursuits and\nconsiderations seemed of comparatively little moment compared with the\nthought which possessed him. Like all other such men, he dreaded more\nthan anything else the chance that his secret might become known to\nanyone not absolutely essential to success.\n\nLavirotte fell back, relieved and exhausted. There was no mistaking\nthe wild earnestness of this strange-eyed enthusiast. \"Go on,\" he said\nfaintly.\n\n\"There can be nothing simpler or, I think, better, than I suggest,\"\ncontinued Lionel Crawford. \"I cannot say, I do not know, how long yet\nit may take me to get down to where the plate and jewels lie buried.\nIt may be a year, it may be more or less, six months at least, and not\nfarther off than a year-and-a-half. You are, unfortunately, sceptical\nof the existence of any such treasure. I am as sure it is there as\nthough I myself had buried it.\"\n\n\"Why not then use the money you speak of in employing men to dig for\nit under your superintendence?\" asked Lavirotte, peevishly.\n\n\"Do not talk so loud.\" Lavirotte had, because of his weakness, spoken\nalmost in a whisper. \"Do not talk such nonsense. Employ men to dig,\nand have the whole thing town-talk in twenty-four hours! Let a lot of\nmere day labourers within the magic spell, within touch of the thing I\nhave brooded over and kept secretly apart from all the rest of the\nworld for years and years! What profanation! I would rather forego all\nhope of ever enjoying final triumph than let the shrine of my dreams\nbe defiled by unsympathetic hands!\"\n\nThe old man was once again back in dreamland, and unconscious that the\npresent had any real existence, save that it was the roadway to the\nfuture.\n\n\"But if there is any likelihood of long delay in--in finding this\ntreasure\" (Lavirotte believed his visitor would come on the chests of\nprecious articles belonging to the great Lord Tuscar on the same day\nthat someone else found the philosopher's stone), \"you will want all\nthe money you have, and cannot afford to give it to me for the purpose\nof spending it on a speculation which may be as likely to succeed\nas----,\" he was about to say \"your own,\" but substituted, \"the search\nfor the North Pole. It seems to me that there is no earthly use in my\neven thinking of such a thing. I am beaten by fate, and the best thing\nI can do is to give in.\"\n\nThis speech instantly recalled the old man to the subject in hand\nand the immediate surroundings of the case. Apart from his ruling\npassion--the hidden gold and stones--he was simple, almost childlike.\nBut anything which touched his darling project roused up in him a\nfiery spirit of intelligence no one under ordinary circumstances could\nanticipate.\n\n\"No, no!\" cried he. \"You must not even think of giving in. You must\nmake up your mind to succeed. You must succeed, not only for your own\nsake, but for the sake of Dora as well.\"\n\nA faint smile came over Lavirotte's face. \"Tell me more. Tell me more.\nYou give me hope. You make me aspire.\" The peevishness was fading out\nof Lavirotte's manner and face. \"It may be possible for me to redeem\nmy character and my credit yet.\"\n\n\"Of course it is quite possible, quite easy for you to do so. There is\nnot the least difficulty about the matter. Is it a bargain?\"\n\nAfter a little more talk it was arranged that Lavirotte should take\nthe money as an advance on his share of the great Tuscar hoard.\n\n\"And now,\" said Lavirotte, \"dear Mr. Crawford, don't you think that in\nthis matter of making love to one girl while I was engaged to another,\nI deserved the very severest instead of the most merciful treatment at\nyour hands?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the old man, \"that's all past and gone now, and we all\ngrow wiser as we grow older. It will, I suppose, be some days before\nyou are up and about again. The landlord of this place has been very\nwise, and by his aid I have been able to keep all knowledge of the\ncircumstances of your case from Dora. There is no need why she should\nhear anything about it now, and as you are on the way to recovery, and\nwe need not be anxious about your health, I fancy the best thing we\ncan do is to get her away as quickly as possible from this. What do\nyou think?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lavirotte, gloomily. \"You see, if she does not\nhear the truth now it will be like practising another deceit upon her.\nI shall have to act a part, and not a very creditable one.\"\n\nCrawford became uneasy. He knew too little of Dora to be able to judge\nhow she would receive the whole story, and it seemed now to him a\nmatter of the first importance that he should lose no possible hold of\nLavirotte. \"You see,\" said he, \"she will be shocked to learn that you\nhave been hurt in an encounter, and are not ill in a natural way as\nshe supposes. Then you will have to explain almost everything, and it\nmight be better that portion of the explanation should be postponed.\"\n\nLavirotte moved restlessly. \"It is very difficult,\" he said. \"I own it\nis very difficult. One hardly can know what to do. I want to spare\nher, of course, if I can; and I want to put myself right with her if I\ncan.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said the old man, with a sudden gleam of intelligence in his\neyes, \"let mercy for her prevail. You see you have been in fault.\nSuffer your own explanation to lie over for the present in order to\nspare her feelings. Later on you can put yourself right with her.\"\n\nLavirotte sighed, and then asked, languidly:\n\n\"What do you propose?\"\n\n\"That I should take her back with me to London at once, telling her\nthat you are not allowed to see her in your present state of health;\nbut that immediately on your recovery you will follow us to London,\nand that, in the meantime, I will take care of her.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, after all,\" said the injured man, \"that is the best plan.\"\nNow that the prospect of an immediate meeting between him and Dora\ngrew dim, he lost interest in the conversation, and the excitement of\nanticipation being withdrawn, the weakness of his condition asserted\nitself.\n\nAfter some more talk, it was finally agreed between the two men that\nLionel Crawford's suggestion should be carried out. Then it became the\nduty of the latter to inform Dora of this decision.\n\nHe found the girl in a state of the greatest excitement and anxiety.\n\"Oh!\" she cried, \"I thought you would never come. May I not see him\nnow?\"\n\nThe old man took her by the hands and led her back to the seat she had\nrisen from on his entrance. \"My dear child,\" he said, \"there is not\nthe least cause for your anxiety about Dominique's health. He is\nprogressing most favourably. But it would be exceedingly unwise that\nhe should see you now.\"\n\n\"But you said I might see him. You promised I might see him!\"\n\n\"Since I told you so I have been with him and learned more of his\ncase. Although he is most anxious to see you, he is persuaded that\ndoing so would be injurious now. He will be all right in a few days.\nWe have talked the whole matter over. I intend assisting him to a much\nbetter position than he now holds. I am authorised by him to make all\npreparations for your marriage.\"\n\nThe young girl , partly by surprise and partly by bashfulness.\n\nLionel Crawford saw that these words had made an impression favourable\nto his views. \"If we want to get him well and make him happy soon,\" he\ncontinued, \"he and I agree that the best thing to be done is that you\nand I should instantly set out for London.\"\n\n\"But it is very hard to have to go without seeing him,\" said the girl,\nconfused by the new and unexpected turn affairs had taken, and elated\nby the assurance that the difficulties of her lover's worldly position\nwere at an end, and that when next they met it would be to part no\nmore.\n\nThe old man saw that he had carried his point. He rose briskly, and\nsaid: \"The sooner we are off the better. There is no use in our\nstaying here an hour. Being so near him when you may not see him would\nonly add to your uncomfortableness. I will go and see at once how and\nwhen we are to get back. Wait for me here.\"\n\nAs he reached the bar, he found two young men there. One was in the\nemployment of the railway at Rathclare, the other in the post-office\nof that town. Their backs were towards him, and they did not hear him\nentering the room.\n\n\"Maher told me,\" said the Railway, \"that an old man and a young girl\nhave come to see Lavirotte. That's the girl, no doubt, he made love to\nin London. Maher wouldn't tell me their names; but I'll find out all\nabout them when I get to London.\"\n\n\"You may not find it so easy, my young man,\" thought Lionel Crawford.\n\"I have kept a secret for years.\"\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXV.\n\n\nIt was a sore disappointment to the town of Glengowra when it found\nthat its two interesting visitors had left, and left suddenly; having\nhad, as far as current accounts went, no communication whatever with\nanyone in the place but the landlord of the hotel and Lavirotte,\nneither of whom would give any information as to the strangers or\ntheir business.\n\nIt was not, of course, until the next day that it became generally\nknown two strangers had arrived and gone away. Kempston, the fussy\nlittle magistrate, said it was a shame, a part of a scandalous plot to\ndefeat justice, and that someone or other ought to be punished all the\nmore severely on this account.\n\nThe police became more gloomy and suspicious, and silent, and the\ngeneral townsfolk, visitors included, felt that they had been robbed\nof an exciting item in the programme of crime.\n\nDr. O'Malley was no exception to the general protest, but he took a\nrather different view of it. \"I am told,\" he said to Lavirotte, \"that\ntwo highly mysterious and attractive strangers arrived last night. An\nold man, attractive, because venerable, and all that. A young girl, a\nseraph, a sylph, a miracle of beauty, attractive because of her\nloveliness. The old man has an interview with Maher. The old man has\nan interview with you. The two <DW72>. Let us say, for argument sake,\n'Confound the old man, but what about the nightingale, the bride of\nAbydos, the seraph?' Here am I, Dr. Thomas O'Malley, one of the lights\nof my profession, and a man who may at any time be called into\nconsultation at the bedside of Royalty, and yet I am not permitted to\nbe fascinated. You know, Lavirotte, I am not in the least curious, but\nwho was this goddess, and why was I not permitted to see her?\"\n\nLavirotte raised his hand and let it fall on the counterpane with a\ngesture of deprecation. \"Even I was not permitted to see her,\nO'Malley.\"\n\n\"But all those who did see her say she was adorable, divine. You arch\nhypocrite, you know all about her, and will not speak. At this moment\nthere may be a telegram awaiting me at home, announcing that I have\nbeen created a baronet. How, in heaven's name, am I to get on without\na Lady O'Malley? And once I am a baronet, a man of my appearance,\nparts, and position would be so assailed by ambitious and designing\nspinsters, that I should be compelled, in sheer self-defence, and in\norder to prevent myself committing bigamy, to turn my back upon the\nwhole brood. What spite have you, Lavirotte, against this dark-eyed\nwonder, that you would not give her a chance of becoming Lady\nO'Malley?\"\n\nLavirotte affected to be languid, and said: \"I really cannot give you\nany information, and you said I was not to talk much.\"\n\n\"I'll take very good care you do not talk much while _I_ am present.\n_I_ never let anyone talk too much in my presence.\"\n\n\"Look here, O'Malley,\" said the invalid, \"I really must ask you to let\nme alone on this subject. I'm not equal to it just at present.\"\n\n\"I know, my dear fellow. I won't worry you. I'm the least curious man\nin the world. As your medical adviser, I would recommend you, with a\nview to relieving your mind, to tell me all about this matter. But, as\nyour friend, I would advise you to tell me nothing at all of it,\nunless you wish it all over the town in an hour.\"\n\nThe busy little doctor left and proceeded to the room of the other\npatient. Here he found Mrs. Creagh with O'Donnell. She had insisted\nupon dividing the work of nursing with her daughter, and made the girl\ngo home and lie down for some hours.\n\nUnder the circumstances of Mr. O'Donnell's business difficulties, his\nwife did not dare to leave him. She had paid a flying visit the\nmorning after the encounter, and gone back to Rathclare the following\nday. After the position in which her husband had been found that\nnight, she did not dare to leave him for an hour. Like a brave woman\nshe faced all the world for his sake, and although no one blamed him\nfor the ruin which had overtaken him, the pair were pitied\nuniversally, and pity is harder to bear than blame.\n\nThe doctor found his second patient doing remarkably well; in fact,\nmuch better than could be expected. Of course, Mrs. and Miss Creagh\nhad been cautioned, with all the others who might visit the sick room,\nto say nothing of the Vernon disaster.\n\n\"Let me see,\" said the cheery little man; \"let me see. I think you\nsaid your wedding was fixed for a month after the accident. Well, if\nyou don't want to be all right until a month, I'll have to give you\nsome powerful medicine to keep you back. It's amazing, ma'am,\" he\nsaid, turning to Mrs. Creagh, who sat smiling pleasantly at the\nbedside. She was a plump, fair, good-looking woman, between fifty and\nsixty, with a genial, round face, and a gracious, cordial manner,\nwhich are better in a sick room than all the medicines in the\nPharmacop[oe]ia. \"It is amazing, ma'am, how these young men will get\nwell in spite of us doctors. We can generally manage to polish off the\nold people in a handsome, becoming, and professional way; but these\nyoung people are dead against us--or alive against us, what's worse.\nWhenever, Mrs. Creagh, you hear of a doctor dying of a broken heart,\nit is _always_--mind, I say _always_--because of the stubbornness of\nthe young people. Ordinary men die of broken hearts because of love,\nor business, or something of that kind; but when a patient defies\nprussic acid, nux vomica, or aqua pura, it is all up with one of our\nprofession.\"\n\n\"By-the-way, O'Malley,\" said O'Donnell, \"have you got a couple of\nhours to spare to-day?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, pending the arrival of the official documents\nappointing me Surgeon-in-ordinary to the Queen, I can spare you a\ncouple of hours.\"\n\n\"Then I'd be very much obliged to you,\" said O'Donnell, \"if you'd run\ninto Rathclare and see the old people. I am very anxious about them.\nI know the governor always has his hands full of business, and that\nmy mother does not wish to be away from him, but I cannot help\nwondering why neither of them has come out. I am greatly afraid there\nmust be something the matter with the governor. Of course Mrs. Creagh\nor Nellie writes twice a day, and we hear once a day; but I can't make\nout how neither of them has come here.\"\n\n\"I'm sure your father is in excellent health,\" said O'Malley; \"but if\nit will relieve your mind in the slightest degree, I shall go in by\nthe next train and come out with news.\"\n\nO'Malley went straight to the railway station and took the first train\nleaving Glengowra for Rathclare. He of course knew, or guessed, why it\nwas neither father nor mother came to visit the son; but under the\ncircumstances it was best to humour Eugene and see Mr. and Mrs.\nO'Donnell.\n\nHe found the old couple in the small library behind the dining-room.\nThe window of this looked into the garden in the rear, and so was\nshielded from prying eyes.\n\n\"Dr. O'Malley,\" cried the woman, rising to her feet, \"have they been\nwriting me lies? Is he worse?\"\n\nThe old man was sitting at the table, on which lay a few open ledgers.\nIn his hand he held a quill pen, with which he was making,\ntremorously, figures on a large sheet of ruled paper. At his wife's\nwords he dropped the pen on the paper and looked up. Then, hearing the\nnoise of the pen fall, he looked down again, and cried: \"Confound it,\nI have blotted the sheet.\" At that moment the traditions of a lifetime\nof business were all upon him. He stood in the centre of the ruins of\nhis beloved city, laid low by earthquake; the fiery heat of all his\nyears of commercial toil were focussed on him then.\n\nHe was making out _his bankrupt sheet_.\n\nThe doctor replied instantly, taking no notice of what the old man had\nsaid:\n\n\"On the contrary, Mrs. O'Donnell, I am come to tell you, thinking you\nwould be glad to hear it by word of mouth from me, that your son is\ngetting on infinitely better than I had ever dared to hope. You may\nmake your mind quite easy that he will be up and about sooner than we\nthought at the best.\"\n\nThe woman threw herself into a chair and burst into tears.\n\n\"Mary,\" said the husband, looking at her in perplexity as he sopped up\nthe ink with a piece of blotting-paper, \"I was so busy I did not hear.\nWhat did he say?\"\n\n\"He said that all is well at Glengowra,\" said the woman, through her\nsobs.\n\n\"He means, Mary,\" said the old man, \"that Eugene is dead.\"\n\nShe dried her eyes, ceased her sobs, and looked up.\n\n\"No, James, no. He said Eugene is better--getting on as well as can be\nexpected, and that he will soon be up and about once more.\"\n\nThe father put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, covered his\nface with his hands, and said in a feeble, tremulous voice: \"It would\nbe better if my boy was dead.\"\n\nMrs. O'Donnell made a gesture of silence and caution to the doctor.\nThen she rose and beckoned the latter to follow her out of the room.\nWhen they were in the hall she said: \"The shock, the business shock,\nhas been too much for his brain, I fear. Ever since that awful night\nthey found him in the strong-room with the revolver I am in dread if I\nleave him for even a minute. I must go now. God bless you for coming.\nGood-bye. Be good to my boy.\"\n\nThat evening, when O'Malley called to see Lavirotte, he told him the\nscene he had witnessed that day in the library at O'Donnell's.\n\nAll at once the Frenchman became strangely excited. He sat up in the\nbed, and cried out: \"I have it, O'Malley; I have it. I have done a\ngreat wrong to those people, but I think I see my way to setting it\nright again.\"\n\n\"Lie down, you maniac,\" said the doctor, pushing him softly back. \"Do\nyou want to burst your bandages, or bring on fever? What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Mean!\" cried the other. \"I mean to sell my last shirt rather than\nthat Eugene's father should come to ruin.\"\n\n\"Keep quiet,\" said the doctor. \"Keep quiet, or you will surely bring\non delirium.\"\n\n\"I have the means of doing it,\" cried Lavirotte, fiercely, \"and I will\ndo it.\"\n\nBy this time O'Malley was bathing the injured man's head copiously.\n\"If he gets delirium,\" thought the doctor, \"it's all up with him.\"\n\n\"I see the money,\" cried Lavirotte, excitedly shaking his arms in the\nair. \"Half a million if it's a penny! That will clear James O'Donnell,\nthe noble, honourable James O'Donnell, the father of my best, my\ndearest friend Eugene. Come here, Eugene, and take it, every\nsovereign, every sou. It is all yours. Take it, my boy; clear the old\nman, marry Nellie, and God bless you and her, and then the devil may\nhave me if he will only have the goodness to wait so long.\"\n\n\"Delirium,\" said the doctor, \"has set in, and he will die.\"\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXVI.\n\n\nIt was late that evening when O'Malley left Lavirotte. The doctor gave\ninstructions that if the delirium increased he was to be called. In\nthe case of the Frenchman, two things puzzled the energetic little\ndoctor. Although unquestionably the patient was raving mad, his pulse\nwas normal, and his skin moist.\n\nWhen the nurse came up to the sick room, she could find no sign\nwhatever of delirium. Lavirotte seemed as calm and collected as any\njudge on the bench. He asked was the doctor gone, and receiving an\nanswer in the affirmative, said to the nurse: \"Bring me a pencil and\nsome paper. I want to write a couple of short notes.\"\n\n\"Are you not afraid it would be too much for you, sir?\" remonstrated\nthe nurse.\n\n\"No, no,\" said the other, decisively. \"There is something on my mind,\nand I cannot sleep unless I get rid of it, so the sooner you get me\nwhat I want the better.\"\n\nThe woman left the room, and in a few moments returned with what he\nrequired. Then, on the back of a book, he wrote the two following\nnotes:\n\n\n\"My Dear Mr. Crawford,\n\n\"Since I saw you last I have thought of a matter which makes it of\nvital consequence we should not lose an hour in realising your great\nhope. I therefore beg of you to do all you can in furtherance of the\nscheme. Let me hear from you by return of post. The moment I am able\nto move I shall follow you to London.\n\n\"Give my dearest love to Dora; say I am very sorry they would not let\nme see her when she was so near to me, and that to-morrow I will write\nher as long a letter as my strength will allow.\n\n              \"Yours, most devotedly,\n\n                   \"Dominique Lavirotte.\"\n\n\nThe second was to this effect:\n\n\n\"Dear Mr. O'Donnell,\n\n\"I am too weak to write you a long letter. I hope you will take the\nwill for the deed. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for all that has\nlately occurred, and how deeply I sympathise with you in the business\ntroubles which, because of no fault of your own, have come upon you.\n\n\"You know, of course, that Eugene and I are the greatest friends on\nearth. From news which I received to-day, and which I had little\nexpectation of ever hearing, I have reason, good reason, to hope that\nwithin a very short time I am likely to come into possession of an\nenormous fortune--a fortune so large that it will make me one of the\nrichest men in the kingdom. You are a man of business. To be precise,\nI expect about half a million. Need I tell you what my first, my\ngreatest pleasure, will be in this? It will be to place the whole of\nit absolutely at the disposal of my best friend's father, so that he\nmay be led carefully out of the present storm into the calm waters of\nprosperous trade, in which his honour and his industry have already\nmade his name a household word in Ireland.\n\n\"This note has run out much longer than I expected. Good-night, my\ndear Mr. O'Donnell. God bless you.\n\n              \"Dominique Lavirotte.\"\n\n\nWhen he had finished his two letters he enclosed them in envelopes,\ndirecting the latter first.\n\nThen suddenly he thought of what at first sight seemed an insuperable\ndifficulty.\n\nHow was he to address Crawford's letter? If he wrote on the envelope,\n\"St. Prisca's Tower, Porter Street,\" there was little doubt that in\ndue time the letter would be returned to him through the dead-letter\noffice.\n\nYet St. Prisca's Tower was the only address he knew for Crawford in\nLondon. How stupid it was of him not to have asked for an address. At\nthe time, he had thought Dora or the old man should write to him\nfirst. Since they had left, this idea had occurred to him, and now he\nfelt himself hopeless of communicating it to Crawford for the present.\n\nNo postman would in his senses think of knocking at the massive door\nof that solitary tower, and if a postman, touched with lunacy, did\nknock with his knuckles, he would never receive a reply.\n\nHe was fairly beaten. In this matter every hour was of value, of the\nhighest value; and here he was paralysed by an unpardonable stupidity\nof his own.\n\n\"Will you ask Mr. Maher,\" he said to the nurse, \"if he would be good\nenough to step this way? I want a word with him.\"\n\nWhen the landlord entered, Lavirotte said:\n\n\"Mr. Crawford, who was here last night, left for London without giving\nme his address. Can you think of any means by which I might be able to\nfind it out at once? The matter is of very great importance.\"\n\nThe landlord looked with a keen glance at the sallow face and bandaged\nhead of the prone foreigner. Before Crawford left, he had made a\nconfidant of Maher to the extent that all would yet be well between\nLavirotte and his grand-daughter, and he had bound Maher, as an\nhonourable man, to silence. He had, moreover, tried to persuade Maher\nthat Lavirotte might not be quite so black as circumstances\nrepresented him. Still the other could not help regarding Lavirotte\nwith a feeling the reverse of cordial. There could, however, be no\nharm, he thought, in helping Lavirotte in this matter. He said: \"Mr.\nCrawford came first-class.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"From Euston?\"\n\n\"From Euston.\"\n\n\"Then telegraph to Euston, address Mr. Crawford, first-class passenger\nIrish mail, Euston.\"\n\nThe difficulty was solved, and in a few minutes Lavirotte had\nforwarded the telegram, asking to what address he should send a letter\nto him in London. At the same time he posted his letter to Mr.\nO'Donnell.\n\nThere was little or no chance of his receiving a reply that night, as\nthe Glengowra office would, in all likelihood, be shut before it could\nbe forwarded there.\n\nNext morning the answer came:\n\n\n\"Address letter to the Cygnet Hotel, Porter Street, E.C.\"\n\n\nLavirotte's letter to Mr. O'Donnell was delivered the morning after it\nwas written. He put it aside as the work of a man not responsible for\nhis actions; and yet, since it contained the first suggestion that it\nwas possible his business might be saved, he felt a slight tenderness\ntowards it, as a man, whose powers are altogether small, out of\nproportion to his ambition, feels a tenderness towards the one person\nwho believes in his strength.\n\nImmediately after it became generally known that Vernon and Son had\nstopped payment, Mr. O'Donnell had asked a few of his best friends to\ncome and advise him as to his position. He explained to them that as\nfar as the business in Rathclare was concerned, he was perfectly\nsolvent and capable of carrying it on, but that, as he understood the\naffairs of Vernon and Son were in a desperate and disgraceful way, and\nas the company was unlimited, he should be certainly ruined by the\n\"calls.\"\n\nHe would, he told them, be quite content to lose all the money he had\ninvested in Vernon and Son, if he might only keep on the Rathclare\nbusiness as it was going; but that, of course, he was liable to the\ncreditors of the bank up to the very last penny he had, and the\nchances were a thousand to one that, when Vernon and Son were\ncompletely wound up, he would find himself as poor as the poorest man\nin the parish.\n\nThen he asked what they would recommend him to do with respect to the\nbusiness.\n\nThey tried to persuade him that things were sure to turn out much\nbetter than he anticipated, and they advised him to keep the business\nrunning exactly as it now was.\n\nHe had adopted their advice, but his heart was no longer in his work,\nand he wandered about the place which he had reared from the\nfoundation to the roof, and he looked at the trade which he had\ncreated, with a faltering step and a lack-lustre eye.\n\nThe evening of the day he got Lavirotte's letter was that following\nDr. O'Malley's call. Mrs. O'Donnell had, in the few days between\nEugene's hurt and this, tried to induce the father to go out to\nGlengowra and see their son. But he had declined, saying: \"It would do\nneither him nor me any good. I can be of no use whatever to him now,\nafter all my big promises to him. The boy's prospects are ruined, and,\nof course, for the girl's sake, that marriage must be broken off.\"\n\nThis evening the mother felt more than ever anxious to see her son,\nand she made a strong appeal to the old man to take the train and run\ndown to Glengowra for an hour.\n\n\"No,\" he said, wearily. \"Let me be, let me be. The very sight of the\nboy would be a reproach to me. He must see I was a fool to venture all\nmy money, all my credit, with Vernon and Son.\"\n\n\"Don't say that, James. You know he is the best and kindest son that\never lived. Besides, don't you see, as I told you before, it has all\nbeen kept from him?\"\n\n\"Then it will be all the worse to hear him talk about his marriage and\nhis prospects. I could not stand it, Mary. I should go mad. I should\nlet it all out to him, and kill him. My poor boy!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the mother, \"come down to Glengowra, and don't see him at\nall. He need not know you are there. Come with me--just for company.\"\nThe poor woman was torn between devotion to her husband and affection\nfor her son. She durst not leave the old man alone at home, and her\nheart was breaking to see her only son, her only child, the infinity\nof her maternity.\n\nAt this suggestion of his wife's, that he might go to Glengowra\nwithout seeing his son, the old man looked up.\n\n\"Wait a moment,\" he said, and lifted a paper-weight off some letters\nof the morning. He took up Lavirotte's and read it over carefully once\nmore, then thrust it into his pocket, and said: \"Very well, Mary. Come\nalong.\" He uttered these words more brightly and briskly than any he\nhad spoken since the great crash had come upon him.\n\nWhen the old couple arrived at Glengowra, they went straight to the\nhotel. The mother ascended to her son's room. The father sent his card\nup to Lavirotte.\n\nHe was requested to walk upstairs.\n\nWhen he entered the room Lavirotte asked the woman to retire.\n\n\"Mr. Lavirotte, I got your letter this morning, and I am extremely\nobliged to you for your kind words and for your offer of such enormous\nhelp. I most sincerely hope you may get your fortune; for, from all I\nhave heard from Eugene, no one in the world could deserve better. I\nhave come especially to thank you for your kind offer; but, of course,\nMr. Lavirotte, you know I could never accept it. I am a doomed man.\"\n\n\"You shall, you must accept it,\" cried the prostrate man,\nenergetically. \"I should care no more for all the money in the world\nthan for a handful of pebbles on the beach below. With the money in my\npossession, should I see my friends wanting it? Besides, the sum I am\nto come into will be so great that even largely as you have suffered\nthrough that bank, I shall be able to spare you what you want to make\ngood the breach, and still leave myself in absolute affluence.\"\n\nThe manner of the Frenchman was one of utter self-possession, and it\nconfounded Mr. O'Donnell to find one so apparently sane talking such\ntrash. \"May I ask you,\" said the old man, \"if it is a fair question,\nfrom what source you expect to acquire this fortune?\"\n\n\"I am under an oath of secrecy in the matter, and cannot tell you. But\nsince I have been hurt, the person who is working the affair for me,\nor rather on our joint behalf, has paid me a visit, and assured me\nthere is not the least prospect of failure or miscarriage, and that at\nthe end of six, and certainly in less than eighteen months from this,\nI should be in possession of my share, not less than half a million\nsterling.\"\n\nThe figures six and eighteen months appealed to certain possible\nexigencies in the mind of Mr. O'Donnell, and carried his mind away\nfrom the main prospect of the consideration to the details.\n\n\"I suppose,\" he thought, \"they will make the first 'calls' light, so\nas to get all they can out of the poorer shareholders. Then they will\ngo on increasing the sums of the 'calls' as the poorer ones drop off,\nand this they cannot do under a certain time. Of course, I can pay the\n'calls' up to a certain point, but when they reach the end of the\npoorer shareholders, and have to fall back on the five or six men of\nlarge means, I shall certainly be ruined. But I do not think they can\nreach the point at which I should be left absolutely penniless before\neighteen months.\"\n\nLavirotte and Mr. O'Donnell talked on for half-an-hour in the same\nstrain. The Frenchman was careful to adhere strictly to his vow to\nCrawford, and yet to say such things to the merchant as in the end\nconvinced him there was at least something in the statements made by\nhis son's friend.\n\nAt last he looked at his watch, and saw there was no time to lose if\nthey would catch the last train to Rathclare.\n\nAfter a cordial parting with the Frenchman he went down, and found his\nwife waiting for him.\n\nBy this time both were radiant. One had firm faith in the recovery of\nher son, the other full assurance of the salvation of his position.\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXVII.\n\n\nMr. O'Donnell got home that evening in remarkably good-humour.\nLavirotte had explained to him that his own hope of coming into this\nmoney had been absolutely nothing until the visit from the man who was\nworking with him. So that here were two men who knew all about a\ncertain chance, believing thoroughly in it. Why should not he, a\nthird, who knew absolutely nothing about the matter, accept their\njudgment?\n\nWhat a splendid thing it would be if, after all, the firm which he had\ncreated did succeed in weathering the storm!\n\nHe had said nothing to his wife about the matter on his way to the\nstation, in the train to Glengowra, or from the Glengowra station to\nhis own home. He thought he would preserve the good news--by this time\nit had taken the substantial form of news in his mind--until they were\nquietly seated in his little library, where many of the projects\nleading to his fortune had been devised.\n\nWhen at last he reached that haven, he found the writing-table\nlittered with the ledgers he had left upon it, and between the leaves\nof one of these ledgers was the completed rough balance-sheet he had\nmade out.\n\nMrs. O'Donnell was astonished to find her husband in such good-humour.\nShe could in no way understand it, for he had not even seen their boy\nor noticed the progress towards recovery he was making.\n\n\"The run has done you good, James,\" she said. \"I told you it would.\nWhy, it has been as much to you as good news.\"\n\n\"I should think it has,\" he said; \"in fact, Mary, I have heard the\nvery best news while I was in Glengowra. I have every reason to hope\nwe may be able to save the business, anyway.\"\n\n\"Thank God!\" cried the woman devoutly. There was a tone of incredulity\nin her voice. It was not easy to imagine that, after all the hideous\ncertainties of ruin they had been facing for days, there was any\nprospect these certainties would melt away before doubts that might be\nshaped into hopes.\n\nThey were now both seated in their accustomed easy-chairs. The old man\ncaught the arms of his firmly, as though he now saw no reason why it\nshould come under the hammer and pass away for ever from him.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said; and then he told her all that had passed between him\nand Lavirotte, enjoining her to strict secrecy.\n\nThen the wife lifted up her voice in praise of Lavirotte, and\nthanksgiving for their great deliverance, and bargained with her\nhusband for one thing--namely, that she should be allowed to tell the\ngood news to Nellie. \"For,\" said the mother, \"she heard the bad news,\nand bore it like a true-hearted woman! Of course if she was only to\nthink of him, she must have been very sorry to hear it, but when we\nremember it affected herself too, it must have been harder still to\nbear. Eugene never heard the bad news. It is only now fair she should\nhear what Lavirotte promises.\"\n\nIt was there and then settled that the hopes aroused that evening\nshould be made known to Ellen Creagh.\n\nNext day Mrs. O'Donnell found herself under no necessity of keeping\nclose to her husband, for he was not only not depressed and hopeless,\nbut active, cheerful, and full of projects for the future. So she went\nearly to Glengowra, and, having taken the girl aside, told her all.\n\nNellie clasped her hands in mute stupefaction, and when she did speak\nat last, could say only: \"Mr. Lavirotte! Mr. Lavirotte! Has he really\npromised to do this, and do you think the thing is in his power? I\nnever felt more bewildered in all my life.\"\n\nYes, it was enough to make one think one was dreaming. This Lavirotte\nhad asked her to marry him. He had said her refusal would ruin him.\nO'Donnell had asked her to marry him, and she had consented. Then this\nLavirotte had sought O'Donnell's life. In the struggle both had been\nbadly hurt. O'Donnell had forgiven Lavirotte. Upon this came the\nabsolute ruin of O'Donnell's father, and the consequent ruin of his\nson also. By this commercial catastrophe the possibility of his\nmarrying her was indefinitely postponed, and at the very moment when\nit might be supposed a man in Lavirotte's position, and of his\nexcitable temperament, would nourish hope anew of succeeding where he\nhad failed before with her, he offered to rescue the father from ruin,\nand reinstate the whole family in affluence!\n\n\"It is incredible,\" she said, after a long pause. \"I cannot believe it\npossible.\"\n\n\"But it is true,\" said Eugene's mother. \"Believe me, my dear, it is\ntrue. My husband, after all his years and years in business, is not\nlikely to make a mistake or be misled in such matters.\"\n\n\"It may be true,\" said the girl, \"but I cannot believe it.\"\n\nAll things were now going on well with everybody. The old merchant was\nno longer in dread of bankruptcy. Lionel Crawford had got an\nadditional hold on Lavirotte. The two wounded men were progressing\nrapidly towards perfect health. Lavirotte had forsworn his fickleness,\nand declared himself devoted to Dora. The two men who had met in a\nstruggle for life had shaken hands by proxy, and sworn friendship\nanew; and Nellie and Dora passed the happy days in the full assurance\nof the devotion of their lovers, and the speedy approach of their\nmarriages.\n\nThe time went quickly by. Dr. O'Malley called regularly at the hotel,\nand regularly reported favourably of the patients. Now Lavirotte wrote\na few lines every day to Dora, and she every day a long letter to him.\nAnd every day came Nellie to sit a while with Eugene, and hear his\nvoice, and go away with strengthening consciousness that daily he grew\nmore like his own self. Once more Lionel Crawford was happy at his old\nwork, excavating at the base of the old tower with increased vigour,\nand getting rid of the fruits of his toil with greater despatch.\n\nNothing, indeed, but good seemed to have come of that dark night's\nwork. It is true that the police were still a little bitter over their\ndisappointment, and that the townsfolk observed a more reserved\nattitude towards those connected with that affair. But if those\nchiefly concerned in the matter were content, the police and the\npeople might be dismal and disagreeable if they pleased.\n\nIn the town of Rathclare, besides Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell, there was\nanother person greatly pleased with the turn things had taken. This\nwas Mr. John Cassidy, a gentleman of slight build, pale, small,\nimpertinent, pretty face, the nose of which turned up slightly. He had\nan exquisitely fair moustache, an exquisitely fair imperial, and the\nmost exquisitely made clothes a man on a hundred pounds a year could\nafford to wear in a provincial town in Ireland.\n\nHe had what he believed to be a very pretty English accent, although\nhe never had been out of Ireland. He wore a delicate yellow\nwatch-chain purely as an ornament, for its use had no existence. He\nwore an eye-glass for ornament also. He had never been seen to smoke a\npipe, and never much more than the tenth part of a cigar at a time. He\nwas always scrupulously neat and consciously pretty, and spoke of the\nwhole female sex as \"poor things,\" as though it grieved him to the\nsoul he could not make every woman alive absolutely happy by marrying\nher. He really wasn't a scamp, and had no offensive accomplishments or\nacquirements.\n\nHe had a ravenous curiosity, particularly in love affairs. How it came\nto be that a man who devoted so much of his time to the courtship of\nothers, should have himself the time to break and cast away all female\nhearts he encountered, no one could tell. It was the great prerogative\nof his genius to be able to do so.\n\nThe chief source of his present amiable condition of mind was that he\nfound himself about to start in a few days for London, and that, by\nway of an introduction to that vast place, he carried with him the\nclue to a mysterious love affair in which he was not a principal, and\nwhich he had sworn to follow up.\n\nHe had sworn to his friend of the Post Office that he would discover\nwhat girl Lavirotte was sweet on in London before he had made love to\nNellie Creagh, and his efforts in such a case hitherto had seldom\nfailed. He had no heart and no tact, but instead of these a wonderful\npower of going straight at the mark, and in a case of this kind\ndemanding of a woman point-blank: \"Is it a fact that Mr. Lavirotte,\nwhile engaged to you, asked Miss Creagh to marry him? I'm interested\nin all subjects of this kind.\"\n\nMr. John Cassidy had up to this been employed in the head office of\nthe railway at Rathclare, and was now about to separate himself from\nhis dear friend, a clerk in the Post Office, and go to London, where\nsomething better had offered, and where he should have, he hoped, for\nthe sake of womankind, a larger female audience to hearken to his\nattractions, and where, moreover, he should have a very handsome\nmystery of his own particular pattern to solve.\n\n\n\n\n                           CHAPTER XXVIII.\n\n\nThe gloom of irreparable ruin had fallen on the house of Vernon. The\ndeeper its business affairs became investigated the more ghastly\nappeared the inevitable finish.\n\nAt first people were doubtful as to whether the result of the failure\nwould be this or that or the other, in connection with Mr. Vernon's\nsocial position. Now it seemed there was no longer any room for\nspeculation. Bankruptcy of the worst kind would be the end.\n\nAll at once a still more startling rumour got abroad. At first people\nwhispered it only in quiet places, and only to confidential friends.\nThen gradually a murmur arose. Finally, within a month of the failure\nof the bank, and before yet the accounts had been fully investigated,\npeople had been heard to say openly that William Vernon ought to be\nmade the object of a criminal prosecution and put in the dock.\n\nThe panic of fear which had kept people's mouths shut, upon this\nsuggestion, disappeared at once; and where there had been, a few hours\nbefore, but hints and faint whispers, and timid words of acquiescence,\nthere was now a loud, clear, articulate demand for the impeachment of\nWilliam Vernon.\n\nThere was, on the day of the bank's failure, scarcely less talk of\nthat disaster than there was now of the passionate desire that this\nfraudulent speculator should suffer at the hands of the law.\n\nAn evening paper hinted that steps of the kind ought to be taken at\nonce.\n\nNext morning, Mr. William Vernon was not to be found. He had left\nDublin--Ireland--for some place unknown abroad--Mexico it was\nsupposed.\n\nA few days after the flight of Vernon, the accountants, in whose hands\nthe bank affairs had been placed, made a report, and upon this report\nwas based the first call. It was not a heavy one. It ruined only a few\npeople, and drove only one man mad.\n\nJames O'Donnell met this call promptly and cheerfully. It did not\nstrain him in the least. He had put most of his savings into Vernon's\nbank, but then he was a man of large prudence, and held a considerable\nreserve of ready money. Indeed, after he had paid the first call he\nhad still at command what people in moderate circumstances would\nconsider a very large sum. When he got the acknowledgment from Dublin,\nhe showed it to his wife with a buoyant laugh, and said: \"You see,\nMary, I am not yet quite a bankrupt. Up to this I have met every\nengagement, this included, and, please God, I shall be able to meet\nall.\"\n\nAlthough it had been hoped that there would have been no delay to the\nmarriage of Eugene and Nellie, a variety of circumstances made it\ndesirable that a postponement of about a month should take place. In\nthe present posture of affairs it would have been impossible for Mr.\nO'Donnell to settle money on his son; or, indeed, to give him anything\nworth speaking of, beyond the salary he drew in connection with the\nfirm.\n\nWhen Eugene had recovered sufficient strength to bear the shock, he\nhad been told of the misfortune which had overtaken his father in\nbusiness.\n\nWhen he heard it he made little of it. He thought little of everything\nexcept his approaching marriage. It was Nellie who broke the news to\nhim. She had been timid, fearful, as she approached the subject. She\nhad prepared the way by saying that all those people who were dear to\nhim were in good health and spirits, but that a certain unpleasant\nthing had occurred--a very unpleasant thing--a terribly unpleasant\nthing of a purely business nature; in fact, his father had lost a vast\nsum of money--all his savings.\n\nThe young man looked grave, and said he was very sorry for the poor\nold man; but that--as long as the business held they should be more\nthan comfortable, and that he was sure Nellie did not want riches such\nas would be his if this misfortune had not arisen. What exactly had\nhappened?\n\nShe told him all.\n\nHe was serious, and said it was too bad--too hard on the governor, who\nwas the best of men.\n\nIn an interview later with his father, the latter told him that for\nthe present he was not in a position to make any settlement whatever,\nbut that if his son was contented to marry on his present salary,\nthere would be no opposition.\n\nThe son said he would be more than contented; that he had no\nextravagant habits or expensive tastes, and that he and Nellie could\nmanage very well on the five hundred pounds a year his father allowed\nhim.\n\nThe old man said he had felt quite sure his son would be satisfied;\nbut what would Nellie say, in the face of former promises he, the\nfather, had made?\n\nThe young man laughed a strong, joyous, wholesome laugh, and told his\nfather that Nellie would marry him on a pound a week. \"For you know,\nsir,\" he said, \"she is not used to luxuries. She does not want them,\nand she is the most sensible, as she is the best, girl in the world.\"\n\nThen Eugene's father told his son of what Lavirotte had promised.\n\n\"I am not surprised, father, to hear he has offered to help us. I\nalways told you he was true as steel.\" At the word steel he winced,\nbut recovered himself instantly. \"People here don't like him, because\nthey can't understand his quick southern ways. But the longer you know\nhim the better you like him, and the more you'll trust him.\"\n\nWhen Eugene spoke to Nellie on the subject of his father's\nconversation with him, she confirmed his anticipations, and said: \"You\nknow, Eugene, that five hundred pounds a year is a great deal more\nthan a girl like me could ever reasonably have hoped for. Why, it's a\nsmall fortune to one who has been a poor governess, and who never knew\nwhat it was to have even one hundred pounds a year.\"\n\nHe took her in his arms and kissed her, and called her his own true,\nloyal darling, his best of girls, his wisest sweetheart, his only\nsweetheart. \"And if the worst comes to the worst, Nellie, even\nsupposing that the Lavirotte affair never turns up, you know I am\nyoung and once more strong, and if we had to go to America, love, I\ncould hoe a field, or split rails, or conduct a car, or heave on a\nwinch, or get a crust for the two of us somehow; and if the two of us\nmean, above all things, to be together, what are all other things to\nus compared to our being together?\"\n\nShe was of the same opinion, and so it was settled that at the end of\nthe month to which the marriage had been postponed, it should take\nplace as quietly as possible, but otherwise as though no trouble had\novertaken the house of O'Donnell.\n\nBy this time Lavirotte was established in London. Lionel Crawford had\ntaken lodgings for Dora in Charterhouse Square, and Lavirotte lived in\none of the streets leading from the Strand towards the river.\n\nJohn Cassidy was now regularly installed in his London situation, and\nhad taken a genteel lodging in Bloomsbury. His fellow clerks did not,\nas a rule, live so near the great centre of London. They had rooms in\nPeckham, Islington, Kennington, and such ungenteel neighbourhoods.\nBut no man with any pretensions to be handsome, a gentleman, and a\nlady-killer, could condescend to associate his name with such haunts\nof rabble London as Peckham, Islington, and Kennington.\n\nUp to this he had not been able to devote much time to what he was\npleased to call \"the Lavirotte mystery.\" A variety of other matters\nclaimed his most careful attention.\n\nOn his arrival in London, he found that his coats, and collars, and\nties, and socks, although the very best that his money would allow him\nto get in Rathclare, were not at all the right things for a man of his\nantecedents in the matter of the fair sex. His clothes were, it is\ntrue, equal if not superior to those worn by the mere common, ordinary\nclerks with whom he was bound to associate, and whose coarse and\nungenteel ways he was for a portion of the day obliged to endure. But\nthen the clothes, which in Rathclare had been those of a man of\ndistinguished fashion, were, to his chagrin, in London no more than\nthose proper to a mere common clerk. This was a terrible revelation to\na sensitive soul.\n\nOf course it could be remedied in the future; but how terribly the\nfact reflected upon the past, and fancy the figure he should have made\nin Rathclare if he, when there, had only known as much as he did now.\nImagine how ladies would have stared and admired if he had but\nappeared in a costume such as he was now hastening to assume. Dainty\nshoes, clocked socks, trousers that fitted the limb as the daintiest\nof gloves fit the hands of the daintiest of duchesses, coat and\nwaistcoat which could only be put on before meals and when the lungs\nwere empty, collars and scarfs designed by Royal Academicians and\ntenderly executed by tradespeople who might, if they would, have\nwritten sartorial epics; such were the splendours now preparing for\nhis exquisite person.\n\nApart from the cares born of his tailor and outfitter, certain\nother little matters had to be arranged about his room. A Japanese\nletter-rack had to be purchased and hung up for the reception of his\nprospective love-letters. Open work, china dishes of elegant hues,\nalthough of cheap manufacture, had to be obtained and set forth for\nthe reception of rose-leaves, photographs, and cards. The portraits of\ncelebrated beauties had to be hung up, so that, should an acquaintance\ndrop into his room, he might have an opportunity of showing his\nvisitor the counterpart of his dearest friends.\n\nHis fellow-clerks were coarse enough to consider him a humbug. His\nsuperiors at the office did not know whether he was an ass or not;\nbut the clerks and the superiors agreed that he had two priceless\nvirtues--he could tot all day long without making an error, and there\nwas not a spot of extraneous ink on any folio of his books.\n\nBy this time Lavirotte was thoroughly restored to health. Daily he\npaid a visit to Dora. The course of their true love was running with\nidyllic smoothness. No suitor could be more tender, enthusiastic,\nconstant-minded than he. Dora's life was one long daydream. Her former\nsolitary life in London now seemed to her like a dreary unreality,\nforced upon her imagination merely that her present life might stand\nout in glory against so gray and sad a background. Since Lavirotte\nleft London of old, the place had grown dull and dismal around her.\nNow the whole city was bright and joyous once again. Instead of being\na vast chasm filled with unfamiliar things and unfriendly forms, and\ndark with her inner solitude, the buildings now were full of vital\nbeauty, and the people of courteous friendliness. Although she looked\nforward with pleasant anticipations to the time when she would not be\neven temporarily separated from Dominique, she could not persuade\nherself that the future would be more happy than the present. She\nseemed to want nothing now beyond just a little more of his society.\n\nMeanwhile Lavirotte had availed himself of Lionel Crawford's offer and\ntaken the money, and was getting lessons. But, in addition to these,\nhe was now busy in another way. The idea of the treasure mastered\nhim as completely as it had the old man. He seemed to take but a\nsecond-rate interest in his own affairs, and every hour he could spare\nfrom the lessons and Dora was devoted to helping Crawford in his work\nat St. Prisca's Tower.\n\nHe had said to Crawford: \"There is no knowing when these poor\nO'Donnells will want the money. You said we should have it in six to\neighteen months. We must have it sooner, much sooner, as soon as ever\nwe possibly can.\"\n\nAnd so he bent himself to the work as he did to any other work he took\nin hand--wholly, passionately, fiercely. The old man said he would\nkill himself. He swore he did not care so long as he might succeed.\n\nNow that he had entered fully into the scheme of Crawford, and was\nactively helping him, he, too, felt the wild pleasure of the search;\nthe inexorable determination of not sharing the secret with anyone.\nNo; it was their secret, and they two, unassisted by anyone who might\nbetray them, should alone reach the golden goal.\n\nSo absorbed was he in the work at the tower that he could think of\nlittle else, and felt rather put out when one morning he received a\nletter from Eugene O'Donnell, saying that he and Nellie were to be\nmarried on Wednesday next week, and asking him to come over a day or\ntwo beforehand, as became a best man.\n\nAbout this time Mr. John Cassidy found himself arrayed according to\nhis taste, with his room in order for the reception of anyone he might\ncare to ask in, and with his hands free to follow up the Lavirotte\nmystery.\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER XXIX.\n\n\nNothing could have been quieter than the marriage at Rathclare. There\nwas no display of any kind, no wedding-breakfast, no rejoicings. The\nmen employed by Mr. O'Donnell had proposed subscribing and giving the\nbride a present, until they were told that anything of the kind would\nbe inopportune. The presents which private friends sent were, out of\nrespect to the few people who called, set forth in the dining-room.\nBut, upon the whole, neither before nor after the marriage, was there\nanything connected with it which could give the people of Rathclare\nthe least pretence for uncharitableness.\n\nThe bride and bridegroom drove away from the house early in the\nafternoon, with the intention of spending a short time on the\nContinent, and then returning to Rathclare.\n\nWhen they had gone, not more than half-a-dozen guests remained at\nO'Donnell's. Among these was Lavirotte, who had promised to stay with\nthe old folk that night. There was a very quiet dinner, and before one\no'clock the old man and Lavirotte found themselves alone in the\ndining-room.\n\n\"I have been waiting for this opportunity, sir,\" said the Frenchman,\n\"when we should be quiet and alone, with no chance of interruption, in\norder that I might speak to you about the matter which is nearest my\nheart.\"\n\nThe old man looked at Lavirotte gratefully, and said: \"You are\nalluding to the property you spoke to me of?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Lavirotte. \"I am still in no position to talk freely of\nthe matter; but this much I can tell you, that since I saw you last I\nhave made it my business to ascertain as closely as possible our\nchances of success.\"\n\n\"And they are?\" said O'Donnell, leaning forward and looking at his\nguest eagerly.\n\n\"Excellent, most excellent. Nothing could be better. Ever since I left\nGlengowra I have devoted all my time to their furtherance, and I have\ncome to the conclusion that, although I cannot now say with certainty\nthe exact amount, no more than a few months need pass before you shall\nbe in command of any sum of money you may require.\"\n\n\"Thank God!\" cried the old man, throwing himself back in his chair,\nclasping his hands, and looking upwards. \"You do not know what a\nblessed relief your words are to me; for no longer ago than this\nmorning I had news from Dublin to the effect that there is to be\nanother and an immediate call, and that this will be at least double\nthe former one.\"\n\n\"How soon is this likely to come upon you? How soon shall you want the\nmoney for this call?\"\n\n\"Within a few weeks. What distresses me most of all is other news\nwhich accompanies what I have already told you, to the effect that\nalthough the first demand had been very freely met, the general\nimpression, the conviction, was that the second demand would be met by\nvery few indeed in full, and that all of those who met it in part, and\nmany of those who met it in full, would be absolutely ruined.\"\n\n\"I do not exactly know the full meaning of what you tell me,\" said\nLavirotte. \"Will you explain?\"\n\n\"Nothing is simpler. Let us say a man held one one-hundred pound\nshare. When the bank stopped, having lost all its capital and a vast\nquantity of the money lent to it and deposited in it, this man's\nhundred pounds was then not only gone, but the rest of his fortune\nalso (the bank being unlimited) if the whole of his fortune was\nnecessary to pay the last penny to the lenders and depositors.\"\n\n\"That's very hard,\" said Lavirotte.\n\n\"Very hard--cruel. Now, the first call, let us say of fifty pounds,\nmeans that the man who held the one-hundred pound share is called upon\nto pay fifty pounds towards indemnifying the depositors and lenders.\"\n\n\"So that if the man pays the fifty he loses a hundred and fifty?\"\n\n\"Exactly. Now, if the second call is double the first, he will, when\nhe has paid that----\"\n\n\"He will have lost two hundred and fifty pounds on his original\nhundred pound speculation.\"\n\n\"Quite so. You see that. Let us say nine out of ten can pay the fifty\npounds, but not more than six out of ten can pay the hundred. Now, my\ncorrespondent in Dublin gives me to understand that nothing like six\nout of ten will be able to meet the second call, and that, in fact,\nthe solvent shareholders after the second call will be only rich men;\nso that there will be no need for proceeding further gradually, and,\nin all likelihood, the third call will be for a very large sum indeed\nper share, two hundred and fifty, five hundred, or a thousand pounds\nperhaps.\"\n\n\"Mr. O'Donnell, you will not consider me impertinent if I ask you, in\nstrict confidence, whether you think you will be able to pay this\nsecond call?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think I shall be able to pay the second call, but as far as I\ncan see it will drain me to the utmost. My credit is now, of course,\ngone, and I am obliged to pay cash, so that after paying the hundred\npound call I shall have barely sufficient capital to keep the business\ngoing. The business consists, of course, of the good-will, the plant,\nthe stock, and the debts. All this put together would not go nearly\nmeeting a third call of any such magnitude as I have spoken of.\"\n\n\"And the result of that would be to you?\"\n\n\"That I should be a bankrupt and a pauper.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Lavirotte, going over and taking the old man by the hand,\n\"meet the second at all hazards.\" He drew himself up then to his full\nheight, raised his right hand to heaven, saying: \"And I swear to you,\nMr. O'Donnell, that I will answer for the third.\"\n\nThe merchant rose from his chair and took his hand. \"There is no use\nin attempting to thank a man for a service such as you promise. I will\nnot try to say anything; I could not if I would.\"\n\n\"Be seated, sir, I beg you, be seated. Think no more of the matter.\nRely on me. Leave the rest to me. And now that we have settled the\nmatter\" (both men had sat down) \"I wish you to answer me a question\nwhich affects a friend of mine, and is connected with Vernon's bank.\nMy friend is a minor. Her affairs were in the hands of trustees. Her\ntrustees--or, I believe, trustee, more accurately--invested the money\nin Vernon's bank, shares I presume. Now, my friend has heard nothing\nfrom the bank about these calls. How is that?\"\n\n\"She has nothing to do with the matter. She has lost all her money.\"\n\n\"Yes; but what about the calls?\"\n\n\"The trustee has to pay those.\"\n\n\"Out of his own pocket?\"\n\n\"Yes, out of his own pocket.\"\n\n\"Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the\nbest?\"\n\n\"Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the\nbest.\"\n\n\"What an infamous injustice! What an infamous injustice to a\nwell-meaning, honest man!\"\n\n\"An infamous injustice you may say, supposing the man to be honest. He\ngets your friend's money on trust to invest. Here is a highly\nrespectable banking firm which will pay him, according to the market\nvalue of its shares, six or seven per cent. He is anxious his ward\nshould have the most interest he can safely get for her money. He\ninvests, and is ruined.\"\n\nLavirotte started to his feet, threw his arms above his head wildly,\nand, walking up and down the room, excitedly cried: \"By heavens, Mr.\nO'Donnell, he shall not be ruined, I will see that he shall not be\nruined. He did me a bad turn once, or rather he refused to do me a\ngood one when he could; but I shall protect him against this execrable\ninjustice, this infamous law.\"\n\nMr. O'Donnell did not feel himself justified in asking any questions,\nand there was no further conversation of any interest that night.\n\nNext morning Lavirotte set off for London, arrived in due time, called\nupon Dora first, and related to her all the interesting particulars of\nthe marriage.\n\nShe had but a reflected interest in the bride and bridegroom, and,\ntherefore, the subject was soon exhausted.\n\nBefore this he had, of course, told her of the large fortune into\nwhich he hoped to come soon. They had, upon one or two occasions,\ntalked over the loss of her money; but he had always tossed the matter\nto the winds as of no consequence when confronted with the mighty\nresults he was expecting. Now he had a matter of another kind to speak\nabout.\n\nHe asked her pointedly, elaborately, how upon the whole Kempston had\nbehaved towards her.\n\nShe said that no one could have been more kind and considerate, and\nthat the only occasion upon which she had any reason to complain of\nhim, was when he refused to let Lavirotte have the money or her to\nmarry him.\n\nThen Lavirotte informed her that not only was her money swallowed up\nin the Vernon whirlpool, but that Kempston, her trustee, would\ninevitably be ruined owing to his connection with her and it.\n\nThe girl was horrified.\n\nThen Lavirotte told her that he had sworn this man should not be\nruined, and that he meant to keep his oath.\n\nShe clung to him and kissed him, and praised him with all the dearest\nwords of her heart, for his noble, his sublime generosity, and after\nsome time he left her to see Crawford.\n\nHe found the old man more busy, more energetic, more enthusiastic,\nmore hopeful than ever.\n\nLavirotte told him that since he had seen him last additional reason\nhad arisen for haste. He did not go into detail. He merely said that\nbusiness called him hence for a few hours; but that on his return he\nwould throw into the work twice the energy he had previously\ndisplayed.\n\n\"Then,\" said the old man, \"you are digging at once to find a treasure\nand a grave.\"\n\n\"But in what a glorious cause!\" cried Lavirotte, in an excited voice.\n\"The cause of honour, of justice, of reparation. When I have secured\nmy dear friends from the disaster which now threatens them, and when I\nhave paid back the prudent parsimony of this attorney a thousandfold,\nwhy should I not die! I shall never do a better thing in all my life,\nand when a man has done his best he ought to go, lest, peradventure,\nhe live to do his worst, and die in doing it.\"\n\n\"And Dora?\"\n\nThe look of exaltation faded from the face of Lavirotte. \"And Dora, my\ndarling Dora! My own sweet, trusting girl!\" he cried, tenderly. \"I do\nnot understand myself; I am two beings; I have two natures. To myself\nI would be merciless to gain this final glory of assuaging the wrong I\nhave done my friends, and in act forgiving the injury this man\nKempston has done to me. But Dora! Dora! Then something else comes in,\nmy other self, my weaker self, my better self, perhaps. Any weakness\nis better than the tyranny of glory, than the lust of applause.\"\n\nHe was silent for a while. The old man had listened to him without a\nword.\n\n\"Now, I must go and see that attorney, and show him that I am not the\ninterested adventurer he took me for, and that if a little time ago I\nwas willing to borrow a few paltry pounds, which in a year or two\nshould in any case be my own, I am now willing to throw down thousands\nfor him who never did me personally a service, simply because he was\nkind and good to the woman whom I love.\"\n\nLavirotte left the tower.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXX.\n\n\nAfter the marriage and the going back of Lavirotte to London, all\nthings went on regularly in their old course. Before the return of the\nbride and bridegroom from their Continental tour, Mr. O'Donnell paid\nthe second call. He had done so with extreme difficulty. It had taken\nevery penny he could lay his hand upon; and, indeed, the way in which\nhe was obliged to draw in money from those who owed it to him\nthreatened to be of serious injury to his business.\n\nStill he fought on bravely. The heart of the old man was stirred\nwithin him. His dogged nature was aroused to activity such as it had\nnever known, even in his younger days. James O'Donnell was at bay, and\nhe would show the world what James O'Donnell could do when his case\nseemed desperate.\n\nDay and night he worked. His energy appeared inextinguishable. His\nresources seemed to increase with the demands upon them. His vision\nwas clear, his judgment infallible, his instincts true, his\npremonitions verified. Rathclare stood still and watched this miracle\nof new-born strength in the old man. People knew well enough that he\nhad called in his last farthing, and that now, outside the four walls\nof his business place, he had not a hundred pounds in the world,\nbeyond the book debts, which to claim hastily would be finally to\ndestroy the business.\n\nWhen his son came back from abroad, he was more amazed than anyone\nelse. The slow, plodding manner of late years had completely\ndisappeared from his father, and instead he encountered the\nindomitable energy, the insatiable thirst for activity, and a judgment\nclearer and sounder than he had ever found in any other man.\n\nThe newly-married couple took a small house in Glengowra. Every day\nEugene went in to business, and every day returned to Glengowra in\ntime for dinner.\n\nWhile Eugene was away his father had written to him, saying he had\npaid the second call, and that, with the help of Lavirotte, he would\nbe able to pay the third, which would, he assumed, be the last.\n\nIn Dublin the opinion was that the third call would certainly be the\nlast. The determination was to wind the whole thing up with the\ngreatest possible despatch, and hide its infamy away for ever. It was\npossible for accountants, who had charge of the affair, to go over the\nshare book, and place opposite every name, which had hitherto proved\nsolvent, a very close approximation of the resources at the disposal\nof each; and it gradually oozed out that there would be no use in\nhaving a call of anything less than five hundred pounds, for if they\nhad two hundred and fifty now, and another two hundred and fifty later\non, they would simply have the same names recurring, since the men who\ncould meet the two hundred and fifty could meet the five. In\nRathclare, at last, people began to believe that someone must have\npromised to sustain O'Donnell at the final moment, for all agreed that\nunless the old man had lost his reason, there could be now no doubt he\nwas certain to tide over the affair. He had made arrangements one,\ntwo, three years in advance. He was in treaty for purchasing adjoining\nbuildings with a view to incorporating them in his vast store. He had\nordered new lighters to be laid down for him in the dockyard. Up to\nthis he had always refused the mayoralty of the town, although he had\nfor many years been a member of the corporation. Now he allowed\nhimself to be put forward as a candidate for next year. No bankrupt\ncould be mayor.\n\nFrom first to last he had never once sought any communication with the\nVernons. Now he seemed to think his old friend not so great a criminal\nas at one time he appeared. Although he could not entirely forgive\nhim, he spoke less harshly of him than of old, and was heard even to\nsay once: \"Poor devil, how do we know how he was dragged into it?\"\n\nMeanwhile, Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte wrought with the\nenergy of desperate men in the basement of St. Prisca's Tower. By day\nthey dug and delved, Lavirotte, being younger, carrying the fruit of\ntheir labour to the top of the tower. The slow and cautious mode of\nprocedure adopted by the old man was too tedious for the fiery-hearted\nFrenchman.\n\n\"I'll risk the lofts,\" cried Lavirotte, \"if I were to perish beneath\nthem. You may stick to your old plan if you like, but it is too slow\nfor me. It would kill me. It would drive me mad, when I think of my\nfriends over there, when I think of the approaching ruin which we may\navert.\"\n\nMr. Kempston was a bachelor, easy-going and somewhat indolent, when\nthe first news reached him that Vernon and Son had closed their doors.\nHour after hour, and day after day, brought him nothing but a tedious\naggravation of the worst reports, and gradually it dawned upon him\nthat now, when he was no longer young, he was a ruined man.\n\nHarrington, the father of Dora, and he had been friends in youth.\nHence his trusteeship to the will. Hence his guardianship of Dora. He\nhad always been a man of excellent business capacity; but outside his\nbusiness he was inclined to be lazy, self-indulgent, extravagant. When\nyounger, he was greatly devoted to what is called fun. Now he liked\nrich living, good company, good clubs, and, if the truth might be\ntold, a great deal more rather high whist than was good for his\npocket.\n\nHe paid the first \"call\" of the Vernon bank with a groan. \"When I have\npaid the second,\" he said, \"I shall still have my profession--that\nis,\" he said bitterly, \"if they don't make a bankrupt of me.\"\n\nThen Lavirotte came with his amazing promise of indemnity, and his\nstill more amazing forgiveness. The elderly attorney groaned, smiled,\nshook his head, swore, thanked Lavirotte profusely, said he'd take the\nhelp if it came, grasped Lavirotte by the hand, swore again, gave\nLavirotte an excellent luncheon at his club, shook hands and said\ngood-bye to Lavirotte, and then swore mutely the whole way from his\nclub back to his office.\n\nWhen the time for paying the second instalment arrived, he paid it\nwithout a murmur, and then swore no more. He had nothing to swear by.\n\nDay by day Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte tore at the earth\nand clay and stones at the base of St. Prisca's Tower. Day by day they\ngrew nearer and nearer to the goal.\n\nCrawford had told Lavirotte what that goal would be like. He knew\nevery stone of that tower from his old readings.\n\nThey were to keep now to the centre, as near as possible, driving the\npick down as far as ever they could.\n\n\"If it meets anything hard,\" said the old man, \"strike again with the\npick a few inches all round, and if it meets anything hard all round,\nthat's it--that's the conical roof of the vault. In that vault the\nchests have now lain buried more than two hundred years.\"\n\nAt last, the accountants who had charge of the affairs of Vernon and\nSon issued the last call.\n\nIt was for five hundred pounds per share.\n\nEugene wrote to Lavirotte, and asked him, for God's sake, to be quick.\n\nLavirotte scarcely ate or slept. For days now he did not go near Dora,\neven. He was wasted, haggard, thin. He had long ago given up living at\nhis rooms off the Strand. He and Lionel Crawford spent all their time\nnow in the tower. Once in two or three days he went to his lodgings to\nsee if there were letters. The morning he went and found Eugene's\nthere he felt faint, and he had no sooner sat down in a chair than the\nfact that he had at last worn out all his energies came upon him. If\ndeath threatened him there he could not have arisen. For two nights he\nhad not slept, and he had eaten little for the two days. The lofts had\nalready shown unmistakable signs of impatience at the weight they\nbore. Any moment they might come crushing down upon the two workers,\nburying Crawford and himself and the stupendous treasure for ever,\nsince outside that tower no living being knew what they sought.\n\nThe sight of Eugene's letter, and the sense that not only were his\nlabours not completed, but that they must be redoubled, overcame him.\n\nHe called for wine.\n\nThey brought him some. He drank a little, and felt stronger. He\nthought if he drank a little more he might be able to get back to the\ntower before his drowsiness overcame him.\n\nHe drank a little more wine, and, before he found himself sufficiently\ninvigorated to move, he fell asleep in the chair.\n\nHe did not awake for some hours. Then he felt refreshed and stronger.\n\"It was a shame for me,\" he said, \"to fall asleep, but the sleep has\ndone me good. Now to work once more.\"\n\nHe drove to within a hundred yards of St. Prisca's Tower, and there\nalighted. He walked up to the massive oak door, opened it with his\nkey, and entered the tower.\n\nThe darkness was Cimmerian. He could see absolutely nothing.\n\n\"Crawford must be aloft.\" He looked down.\n\nHis eye detected something unusual below.\n\nIn the middle of the impenetrable gloom there was what seemed to him a\nphosphorescent glow, covering about two square feet of the bottom of\nthe pit. The lantern by which they worked was not to be seen. What\ncould this glow of light be? The lantern, when below, looked like a\ndistinct yellow patch surrounded by circles of light, decreasing in\nbrightness as they receded from the lantern. But the light below was\nperfectly equal. It was not more intense at the centre than at the\nedges, and, contrary to the case of the lantern, there was no dark\npatch in the centre.\n\nLavirotte descended the ladder in uneasy amazement, and approached the\nglowing space.\n\nIt was not until within a few feet of it he discovered what it was.\n\nA hole!\n\nAt the bottom, twelve feet below, an uneven floor.\n\nThrough the hole dangled a rope.\n\nOn the floor below, the lantern by which Crawford and he worked.\n\nClose to the lamp, the prostrate form of a man.\n\nLavirotte seized the rope and descended.\n\nThis was the vault in which they had hidden the treasure,\nunmistakably.\n\nHe stooped and raised the lantern, casting the light slowly all round\nhim, so that when he had finished his inspection nothing that was in\nthat vault could be unknown to him.\n\nThen he knelt down beside the prostrate form of the man, and turned\nthe face upward.\n\nLionel Crawford!\n\nThere was no other way of getting out of that vault but by climbing up\nthat rope.\n\nHe tried to climb that rope and failed. His strength was gone.\n\nHe sat down on the floor of the vault, and covered his face with his\nhands. With the exception of himself, the lantern, and the corpse of\nLionel Crawford, the vault was empty!\n\n\n\n\n\n                               Part II.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER I.\n\n\nFor a while Lavirotte sat on the floor of that vault, immovable. He\nwas confounded, stunned.\n\nHe found himself confronted by three terrible facts.\n\nThere was no treasure here. Here was the dead body of Lionel Crawford.\nHere was he himself entombed.\n\nWhen he closed the door of the tower, he locked it on the inside, and\nput the key in his pocket. How was anyone to find out he was here?\nLionel Crawford had told him that during all the months and months he\nhad lived in that place no one, to his knowledge, had ever rapped at\nthe door. Was it likely anyone would rap now? And, if anyone did, what\nuse would the rapping be?\n\nFrom the top of the vault to the threshold of the door was at least\ntwenty feet; and he was twelve feet below the top of the vault. And\nall day long, around and about the base of St. Prisca's Tower the\nheavy traffic of one of the great waterside streets groaned and\nscreeched and murmured, continually pierced by the shouts and oaths of\nmen, until such a dull, dead, loud tumult reared itself against the\nwalls of the tower that no single human voice could by any possibility\nbe, in the daytime, heard without from where he now sat.\n\nBy night things would not improve. If he happened to be on a level\nwith the door leading from the tower into the lane, he could, no\ndoubt, hear the footfall of the infrequent policeman. But here, thirty\nfeet down, and with the concave shield of the vault between him and\nthe doorway, and the massive door between him and the lane, it would\nbe insanity to expect he could hear so slight a sound.\n\nThere, it is true, dangled the rope through the hole. He could read\nthe last chapter in the life of Lionel Crawford by the aid of that\nrope. Would someone else, years, ay perhaps a century hence, be able\nto read the last chapter of his life by the aid of what would then\nremain of that rope?\n\nHe saw how it had been with the dead old man. During his (Lavirotte's)\nabsence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault.\nCrawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While\nhe (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a\ngiant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now,\nhere was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the\ntreasure from the old man's eyes.\n\nHe could see Crawford stoop in the dim light of the lantern, lean over\nhis pick, grovel under his shovel, panting, praying, sweating, until a\nlarge space of the stonework of the roof had been cleared.\n\nThen he could see the ardent, eager, tremulous haste of the old man\nas, bit by bit, he picked out the mortar from between the stones,\nuntil at last he had freed one stone, and succeeded in getting it out\nof the bed in which it had lain for centuries.\n\nTo enlarge the orifice was a matter of no great labour or time. He\nsimply put his arm through the hole, and swung a sledgehammer against\nthe roof-stones until he had loosed them. Then he removed them one by\none, making the opening big enough to allow him to descend.\n\nWhen all was ready for going down he went up to one of the lofts and\nfetched a rope, tied one end of this rope to the foot of the ladder\nthat dipped into the pit, or to several of the larger stones, or to\nthe handles of one of the baskets filled with earth--to something\nwhich would more than counterpoise his weight. Then, taking the\nlantern with him, and the hopes of years and the certainty of success,\nhe had lowered himself into that blind void, in the full belief that\nwithin a minute from the time he began the descent he would be in\npossession of one of the largest treasures ever discovered by man on\nearth.\n\nHe had slid down that rope. He had in all likelihood done as he\n(Lavirotte) had done--swung the lantern hither and thither, round and\nround, until he had found out that the vault was empty, the treasure\nhad been carried away, or had never been deposited there at all.\n\nThen the shock had, no doubt, been too much for the overwrought\nnature, and the broken spirit of Lionel Crawford had fled.\n\nThere was no reason to suppose that any vapours of the place had\nkilled him, for while he died the light in the lantern lived. Man has\ntaken the wolf and made a servant of him. Man has taken the fox and\nmade a servant of him. He has called the two when fused, the dog. Man\nhas taken the heat of the sun and the blaze of the volcano, and has\ncalled the two when fused, fire. They are both his especial slaves.\nThey are both his especial prerogatives. The dog is his creature. Fire\nis his creature. Neither exists without him. Either will die where he\ncannot live. The light of the lantern had outlived Crawford, which\nshowed that he had not died of any exhaled or infiltrated poisonous\ngas.\n\nShock or exhaustion had killed the old man. What was to kill him,\nLavirotte?\n\nHunger?\n\nHe shuddered and looked around. How horrible the thought of dying of\nhunger; there, within thirty feet of one of the great ways that, from\nearly to late, was crammed and choked with all kinds of simple or rich\nor rare or exquisite food, endlessly moving westward for the\nsustentation of the great city. To die of hunger there, when the\nfreight of one huge van now lumbering by would preserve a whole\nregiment from starving for a week, would give him enough food for\nyears.\n\nTo die of hunger there within five hundred yards of five thousand\npeople, not the humblest of whom would refuse to share with him his\ncrust, if that humblest of the upper earth but knew how dire his\nextremity.\n\nTo die of hunger there, with money in his pocket, when, within a\nstone's throw of the door of that tower, there were ten places whose\nonly business was to supply food, not to those who were absolutely\nhungry in the sense of their approaching death through hunger, but to\nthose who were hungry in the ordinary trivial routine of the day.\n\nIt seemed horrible. He took down his hands from before his eyes, and\nlooked with horror around him. To be alone without any chance of\ndelivery and in danger of death is bad, seemingly almost the worst\ncondition in which a man could find himself; but to be alone, beyond\nsuccour, threatened by death, and in the presence of the already dead,\nis ten thousand times more appalling.\n\nIn the former case we know to a certainty, we are assured beyond doubt\nthat we shall die, but the realisation of death is unfixed and'\nshadowy. We have, ever since we can remember, known we should die. We\nhave seen death, touched death, kissed the dear dead, seen the dead\nput finally away in the cold envicinage of earth. But few have sat\nlooking at the dead, waiting for death.\n\nHere to Lavirotte death was approaching. There to Lavirotte was an\nexemplar of the dead. As that was, he should be. The whole blue vault\nof heaven should vanish. The whole sweet plains and dales and hills of\nearth should be to him no more. No more to him than to _that_ lying\nthere now before him. Hope and love and joy and friendship, and the\nsweet commune with the great body of sympathetic man, where experience\nhad first developed, expectancy had first arisen, and vague and\nsplendid imaginings had had their hint and form, should all, all\nevanesce.\n\nHere, upon what was to have been the completion of their joint great\nwork, was to be no reward, but their joint death. Of old he had smiled\nat Crawford's enthusiastic belief in this buried treasure. Then he had\ncome to share Crawford's beliefs and hopes. Now he had come to share\nCrawford's despair and grave.\n\nOut of that vault there was no chance he should ever go alive. The\nfriends whom he had striven to serve would believe him to have been a\nfoolish braggart or a vicious liar. The girl whom he was to wed would\nknow no more of his fate than though a whirlwind had plucked him up\nand cast him, unseen by man, into the middle of the sea.\n\nThere would be no record of him when all was over, until, perhaps, a\ncentury hence reference would be made somewhere to his bones.\n\nIt was hotter here than above-ground, much hotter.\n\nTo die of hunger was, he had always heard, one of the most painful of\ndeaths. Yet here was he caged in by all adversity, destined to end his\nlife for want of such things as no man above-ground need die for lack\nof, since, when all man's individual enterprise was marred or put\naway, the State stepped forth and said he shall not die for need of\nmere bread.\n\nIt was much hotter here than in the cool broad streets, fenced with\nplaces where one could get wholesome food, and get that wholesome\nfood--cheap. The sky was above those streets. He had seen the sky as\nhe drove along the Strand and Fleet Street to-day. The sky was blue,\nand to wave one's arms upwards towards it was to feel refreshed and\ncool.\n\nCool--cool--cool.\n\nIt was getting hotter.\n\nAs he had come along the Strand that evening he had thought he would\nstop the cab at one of those many, many shops that hedged the way, and\nget a drink of something deliciously cool and bitter to take away the\nthirst which that wine had put upon him. But then he was so eager to\nreach the tower, he had forborne.\n\nNow he was sorry. He had had only two glasses of that wine, and two\nsuch small glasses were very little good to quench thirst when one was\nthirsty. How much better it would have been for him to have taken a\nwhole pint of milk, or cold, clear, sparkling water. If he had had\neither of these----\n\nThe place was getting hotter and hotter. He looked at the candle in\nthe lantern. It was burning low. In an hour he should be in the dark.\n\nWhat a pity he had not bought a lemon for a penny. How strange seemed\nthe difference between a penny here and a penny in the Strand or Fleet\nStreet a little while ago. He had gold and silver in his pocket, and\nalthough he thought to himself as he drove along, \"Why should I give a\npenny for a lemon, when I know as soon as I get to the tower I shall\nbe able to have as much water as I desire for nothing?\" now he was in\nthe tower, and he knew that on one of the lofts above was water more\nthan any man could drink in many days, and yet he would have given all\nthe silver he had in his pocket for one pint.\n\nThe heat seemed to increase.\n\nHe stood up. His limbs were scarcely strong enough to support him. His\nstrength had left him wholly. He looked up at the opening over his\nhead. He clutched the rope. He pushed his arms up as far as they would\nreach, then raised his feet from the ground. The hands would not\nsupport the body. The rope slipped through them. He fell awkwardly\nupon the hard floor of the vault.\n\nA subtle dust rose from the floor. It filled his eyes, his nose, his\nmouth. He rose into a kneeling posture. He pressed his eyelids down\nwith his fingers. He blew the dust from his nose. He thrust out his\ndry parched tongue, and sought to clear it of the dust with the back\nof his hand. But his hand, too, was dusty, dry.\n\nOh, if he might have but one wineglassful of the water in the loft\nabove! Just one wineglassful to clear his mouth of the hideous\ndryness, and the still more hideous dust of two hundred years. Just so\nmuch water as would suffice to lave the parched portions of his mouth,\nand carry away the foul savour.\n\nHe had heard that to die of hunger was painful.\n\nHe had heard that to die of thirst was madness.\n\nWas he to die of thirst?\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER II.\n\n\nThirst! It was an awful death, one of the worst that could befall man.\nHe had read of it, heard of it both aboard ship and on the solid land.\nHe had read how in China they kept malefactors seven or eight days\nwithout food or drink, until at last, having become already mad, they\ndied. But in China or the broad plains of the Pacific, to die of\nthirst was intelligible, tolerable. In China, a man must have done\nsomething more or less criminal, according to the notions of the\npeople there; and at sea, one, when first launched without water,\nmight live for a while upon the hope of a sail.\n\nBut here was he now, absolutely innocent from a criminal point of\nview, doomed, beyond the hope of any sail, to final extinction by one\nof the cruellest of deaths.\n\nThe candle in the lantern would not burn much longer. It would hold\nout for an hour or so, let him say. He had read that men can live\nseven or eight days without sleep, seven or eight days without food,\nseven or eight days without water. If in a warm climate a man had\nwater alone, he might live for thirty days without food. But,\nsupposing he had neither water nor food, there was little or no chance\nof his surviving the ninth day.\n\nWhat to him, in his present position, was the value of nine days, nine\nweeks, nine months; nine years? It was more than probable that since\nthe Great Fire, more than two hundred years ago, no one had ever stood\nin the vault where he sat now. What likelihood was there that for two\nhundred years to come his peace would be disturbed by anybody, once\nhis death-struggle was over?\n\nAs he sat there he could see the clothes of the dead man tremble,\nowing to the vibration of the air caused by the enormous traffic going\non overhead. But all the strong life above-ground was now as remote\nfrom him, as little allied to help he might expect, as the faintest\ncloud darkening in the east.\n\nYes, darkening in the east, for now he knew by the sounds around\nhim--the sounds whose volume thinned while its pitch increased--that\nevening was coming on, and that soon upon the evening would come the\nnight.\n\nWhen it was dead of night, and there was no longer any chance of\nfeeling the touch of man through the vibration of the din, what should\nhe do?\n\nNothing.\n\nWhatever might come or go he could do nothing. He was powerless to\nclimb that rope. The excitement which had sustained him at fever pitch\nfor many days was now gone finally. He could no longer hope, not only\nto save his friends from financial ruin and realise a handsome\nfortune, but he could no longer hope to do more than drag on the most\nmiserable of existences hour by hour, under conditions the meanest\npauper would refuse to accept.\n\nHere was he doomed to death, as surely as the condemned man in the\ncondemned cell is doomed to death. In a certain number of days, in a\ncertain number of hours, he must die, as inevitably as the sun must\nrise and set upon the broad, fair world above him.\n\nHe had hoped greatly, and laboured greatly, and lost all--all--all.\n\nHe put his hand in his pocket and felt his knife.\n\nWould it not be best to die while he had the companionship of the\nlight, the companionship of the spectacle of the dead? To all intents\nand purposes he was as dead as though he had been blown from the\nmuzzle of a gun. Morally, there could be no harm in his anticipating\nby a few hours, a few days of dreary pain, the fate which was\ninevitably before him. Morally, he did not shrink from the knife. But\nin him was strong the brute instinct, the love of life for life's\nsake, for the infinite potentialities of hope that lie hidden in the\nlast ragged remnant of existence.\n\nIt would, perhaps, be better after all to wait until the lantern burnt\nout, and he was alone with silence and the dead. Then he should\npossibly go mad, and it was incredible that the insane could suffer so\nacutely as he was suffering now. Supposing, then, some fine delirium\nseized him, and he fancied himself to be Pluto, and that this realm of\ndarkness was his natural element, his habitual haunt; that hunger and\nthirst were the inevitable accessories of his gloomy rule, and that\nthe dignity of his position was heightened by the fare which Charon\nhad just ferried across the Styx, and now lay there before him!\n\nHere the lantern went out.\n\nFool! Fool! Madman! What had he been thinking about? Two things, only\ntwo, had been left to him--life and light. Now the latter had been\ntaken away from him for ever.\n\nFor ever! What an awful phrase! Here was he, who had no more than\ntouched manhood, thrust downward by a malignant chance into a vile\ndark dungeon to die.\n\nHere was he, who ought to be in the full plenitude of his youthful\nstrength, unable to master the brief space hanging there in the\ndarkness above him, between the invisible floor and the imperceptible\nroof.\n\nIf in the heat and hurry of that morning, he had been asked to clamber\nup a rope three times the length of that now hanging above his head,\nhe could have done so with perfect ease. But since he had left the\ntower that morning the shears of fate had been busy with his hair, and\nit was now almost as difficult for him to stand unsupported as it\nwould then have been for him to put his back against the wall and\nshake down the solid foundations of the tower.\n\nAnd yet, what a paltry thing it was to die because he lacked the brute\nforce to urge, himself upwards twelve feet along that rope. It seemed\nincredible that one so exquisitely formed, so superbly endowed with\nintelligence and the mastery of all forces that exert themselves on\nearth, should here lie prone, helpless, before a difficulty which half\nthe brute creation would have regarded as no difficulty at all.\n\nIt was all over with him. When it was all over with him how would it\nbe with others who had depended upon him?\n\nHe had promised Mr. O'Donnell a vast sum of money to meet the demands\nof the bank. Now he could not even lay his body before that troubled\nman in assurance that he had done his best.\n\nHe had promised to protect Kempston from ruin. Now he was powerless\neven to go and explain to Kempston the reason of his failure.\n\nTo go! All the bitterness of his present situation was wrought up in\nthat one phrase--To go! He could now go nowhere until he went forth\nfor ever.\n\nThen the thought of Dora came upon him. Dora, the sweetest, the\nsimplest, the truest, the most confiding sweetheart man ever had. He\ndid not pity her for losing him. He pitied her for losing the lover\nrather than the man. He knew that all her soul was centred in him,\nthat she waited eagerly for his coming, and grieved when he left; that\nshe lived in one only hope--namely, that some day, and soon, she\nshould leave the solitude of her present ways and come and be with him\nfor ever, to soothe him with her gentle ministerings and cheer him\nwith her anxious hopes.\n\nHe thought of how she would leave her hand trustingly in his, lean her\nhead trustingly on his bosom, take all he said to her as revealed\ntruth, and, in token of gratitude for his love, hold up her sweet lips\nfor his kisses.\n\nHe thought of how he in the fickle wavering of his nature had been\ncarried away from her beauty, which was the beauty, the dark beauty of\nhis own folk purified and chastened by a less ardent sun, to the rich,\nripe, northern beauty of sunnier hue, although remoter from the sun.\n\nHe thought how for a while he had swerved from Dora to Nellie, and now\nhe could not understand it, for the glamour was withdrawn, and he saw\nthe unapparelled hearts of both. In Nellie, he saw nothing now but the\nbeauty, the unapproachable beauty which could never be more to him\nthan the irresponsive beauty of a marble statue. In Dora, he now saw\nbeauty that was thoroughly informed with love, and that radiated\ntowards him with all the responsive faculties of inexhaustive\nsympathy. Her slightest word or gesture, was measured for his regard.\nHer least syllable was designed to move his lightest mood to pleasant\nconsonance. Her smiles were those which came upon her face merely to\nshow him that all the smiles and joyousness of her nature came forth\nbut to greet and welcome him, and show him that all the smiles and\njoyousness of her nature were his wholly.\n\nWhat a contrast was here! The sunlight of success, the sunlight of\nlove, the sunlight of heaven, shut out by one foul, crass adventure!\n\nThe sunlight of life, of young life, of life before it had drunk under\nthe meridian sun, extinguished for ever!\n\n\"Dominique Lavirotte,\" he thought, \"pray to the merciful God that you\nmay go mad--speedily.\"\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER III.\n\n\nOf late Lavirotte's visits to Dora had been so infrequent and\nirregular that she did not know when to expect him, or when to be\nsurprised that he did not come. Three or four days often passed now\nwithout her seeing him. She knew he was busy, exceedingly busy, at St.\nPrisca's Tower, but busy with what she could not tell.\n\nFor the past few weeks he had always seemed to her exhausted and\ntaciturn. There was no falling off in his tenderness towards her. He\nseemed to love her more passionately than ever. But his visits were\nshort, and he said little.\n\nIt was three days before Lavirotte got O'Donnell's last letter that he\nvisited Dora. On going back from her to the tower he had thrown\nhimself more blindly, more enthusiastically into the work of\nexcavation than ever. In this final effort he had exhausted all his\nphysical resources, with the result that when O'Donnell's letter came\nhis strength was completely wasted, and he was as helpless as a little\nchild.\n\nWhen he had seen Dora last he said he would come again soon--as soon\nas the important business upon which he was engaged would allow him.\nBut he named no hour, no day.\n\nThree days passed and she did not see him or hear from him. That was\nnot unusual. A fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh day might go by\nwithout arousing anything stronger than longing and disappointment in\nher heart.\n\nSince she had come back from Ireland she had never passed the\nthreshold of that solitary tower in Porter Street. He had never asked\nher to come, nor had her grandfather.\n\nDominique had told her that matter of the first moment rested upon his\nuninterrupted attendance at the tower. He had taken her no further\ninto his confidence. It would, he had said, be time enough to tell her\nall when all was known, and the hopes which moved him had been\nrealised.\n\nBeyond Dora there was nobody else in London who had any distinct\nknowledge of where Lavirotte and the old man lived. It is true, of\ncourse, that they had to get food, but this Crawford always procured\nand brought into the tower, so that the likelihood was not a soul who\nsupplied them with the necessaries of life had any distinct memory as\nto where they lived. And even if the people knew where they lived,\nthere was no reason in the world why they should be uneasy because a\ncertain old man who had for some time back bought milk, or bread, or\nmeat of them ceased to come any more. It might be he had left the\nplace. It might be he had taken his custom somewhere else. It might be\nhe was dead in the ordinary and familiar ways of death, which require\nno extraordinary comment and exact no extraordinary cares.\n\nAmong the four millions of people who live within the mighty circle\ncalled London, it was unlikely one would take the trouble to inquire\nwhat had become of Crawford and Lavirotte. Dora naturally would; but\nher grandfather had visited her in Charterhouse Square only two or\nthree times since they had come back from Ireland. She had no reason\nto expect a visit from him for one week, two weeks, three weeks. Nor\nhad she any reason to feel uneasy if Dominique did not come to\nCharterhouse Square for several days.\n\nMeanwhile, what was to become of him, Lavirotte? While the candle yet\nburned he had made out that there was only one door into this vault,\nand that in the direction of what had formerly been the body of the\nchurch. Crawford had told him that the ordinary entrance to that vault\nhad been from the crypt of the church, but that with the destruction\nof the church the crypt had been destroyed, and now a solid bank of\nmasonry and earth, thirty or forty feet thick, forming the lane at the\nback, lay between the vault and the cellars of the stores beyond.\n\nSo long as the candle had lasted he did not seem to have severed his\nlast connection with the earth above; but with the absolute darkness\nfollowing the failure of the light, all the realities of the tomb,\nwithout the merciful absence of suffering, had come upon him.\n\nHe was buried, and yet free to move. He could walk about, and yet the\ngreat tower standing over him was little better than a large headstone\non his grave.\n\nHe had committed no crime, and yet was condemned to die--to die the\nslowest and most painful of all deaths--by want of water.\n\nHe had read about the Black Hole of Calcutta. This place was about the\nsize of that terrible dungeon. But how much better it would have been\nto die there a hundred years ago, surrounded by fellow-men--to die\nthere quickly, in the distance of time between evening and day,\ninstead of dragging out here, hour by hour, minute by minute, the\nterrible solitude of doom foreclosed.\n\nIt had been a very hot summer, and now the autumn was at hand. The\nleaves had taken their earliest shade of yellow, and when the wind\nblew strongly the sicklier leaves fell. For months in London a fierce\nsun and a dry air had parched all they touched. Nails in woodwork\nexposed to the sun had worked loose in their holds. It was the\nbeginning of September, and people, thinking of a calamity which\noccurred more than two hundred years ago, said it was a mercy London\nwas no longer built of wood; since if it was, and the fire should then\nbreak out with a strong wind behind it--as at the time of the Great\nFire--what was now called the Great Fire would cease to be so named,\nand be referred to as the Little Fire compared with the gigantic\nproportions which a burning wooden London of to-day would afford.\n\nCrawford and Lavirotte had, owing to the dryness of the season, been\nable to get rid of the excavated earth by exposing it to the heat on\nthe roof of the tower, and then casting it, handful by handful,\nthrough the embrasures.\n\nAlthough no food ever was sent by tradespeople in the vicinity to the\ntower, it was generally known by the men who worked there that two men\nvisited the tower. But why they lived there, or what their occupation\nwas, no one knew. They had been seen to come in and go out. That was\nall.\n\nWhen Lavirotte made up his mind that their means of making away with\nwhat they dug was out of proportion with his desire of getting\ndownward, he had resolved to trust the lofts to a greater weight than\nhad hitherto been put upon them; and finding loft number one but\nslightly cumbered with the larger stones Crawford could not dispose\nof, he had determined to make it the chief depository of the excavated\nearth.\n\nOver and over again Crawford had told him the lofts were old, the\nbeams rotten. He had ignored the warning, saying if they were to win\nat all they must win quickly, and that he would risk everything but\ndelay.\n\nAs the weight of earth upon the first loft increased, it gradually\nsank in the middle.\n\nLavirotte, cautioned by this, tried to find out the absolute condition\nof the beams, and to his great joy discovered, after carefully probing\nthem, while slung under them in a loop of line, that they were\ncomparatively sound.\n\nBut the hotter the weather became, and the greater the burden upon the\nfloor above grew, the more the joists bent downward.\n\nHe did not care. He was certain the joists would not break. They\nshowed no sign of chipping or splitting, and, in perfect fearlessness,\nhe went on piling up the clay, taking, of course, the ordinary\nprecaution to keep the weight as close as possible to the wall.\n\nGradually, however, owing to the inclination towards the centre, the\nclay slid slightly inward, and, as it dried in the hot air of August,\nthe inner surface of the clay fell inward.\n\nBefore leaving the tower, the morning he got O'Donnell's letter,\nLavirotte looked anxiously at the floor of the first loft. It was now\nconcave above, convex below. But although he looked long and\nanxiously, he could see no sign of any of the joists giving way.\n\n\"They will bend like yew,\" he said. \"They will never break.\"\n\nHe had omitted one calculation, that when they had bent to a certain\ndegree, they would be withdrawn to a certain extent from their\nholdfasts in the wall, and when they were withdrawn from their\nholdfasts beyond a certain extent, they would slip out.\n\nOn the morning of the day after Lavirotte was entombed in the vault\nbeneath St. Prisca's Tower, the joists of loft number one had been so\nfar withdrawn from their supports in the wall that the loft was in\nequilibrio, and ten pounds more pressure on the floor would drag the\nwhole loft down with all its burden into the hole beneath.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER IV.\n\n\nThere was no hope. What hope could there be for him, Lavirotte, buried\nthirty feet below a roaring thoroughfare of London, with no possible\nmeans of communication with the upper world, a feebleness so great\nthat it did not allow him to do more than stand, and twelve clear feet\nin the perpendicular between him and deliverance?\n\nUnder such circumstances how could anyone hope? What could anyone do?\nNothing. Lie down and die.\n\nThere was space enough to die, and air enough to make dying tedious.\nThat was the worst of it.\n\nIt was bad enough to die at any time; but to die when young, of no\nfault of one's own, and when dying happened to be tedious, was almost\nbeyond endurance.\n\nAnd yet what could one do but endure? Nothing. No action was possible.\nHe could not without violence accelerate his death. By no power at his\ndisposal could he <DW44> it.\n\nIt was dismal to die here, alone, unknown. It was chilling to think\nthat the whole great, bustling world abroad would go on while, from\nmere hunger, or, still worse, thirst, he was panting out the last\nfaint breaths of life in this hideous darkness here. There was no help\nfor it. Second by second, man lives through his life, is conscious of\nliving; and when the proper time comes, hour by hour he is conscious\nthat, owing to some failure in his internal economy, he is dying.\n\nBut here was he, Lavirotte, in the full consciousness of the\npossession of youth and of health, save in so far as health had been\nexhausted by trying labours and wasting fasts, about to die because\nthere was no pitcher of water from which he might slake his thirst, no\ncrust which could allay the pangs of hunger.\n\nSuppose he had been upon the upper, gracious earth, without any of the\nmoney now in his pocket. Suppose he had nothing but his youth and\nyouthful elasticity of spirits, even feeble as he now was, he might\npick up a living somewhere. He had education and good manners. He\nmight not be able to earn two hundred pounds a year, but he could make\na shilling, eighteenpence a day somehow, and on eighteenpence a day a\nman could live.\n\nOn eighteenpence a day no man could have splendours or luxuries, but\nhe might have water free from the fountain he had just passed in front\nof that church in Fleet Street, and water was a great deal. Water was\nhalf life, more than half life--water was all life when one was\nthirsty, as he was now.\n\nThen, for eighteenpence a day he might have food, not luxurious or\nexquisite food; but in his wanderings through London he had seen\nplaces where suppers were set forth at threepence--large bowls of\nboiled eels swimming in appetising gravy, with, to each bowl, a huge\njunk of milky white bread.\n\nHe had, when his pocket was comparatively full of money, often seen\nthe wearied artisan or factory \"hand\" eating with relish eel-soup and\nbread. He had stood looking in at the windows, and, being full-fed\nhimself, congratulated himself upon the comfort, the luxury, these\npoor people enjoyed in their savoury evening repast.\n\nHe had watched them go in tired and dreary, worn out with the mean\ncommonplaces of hard work and insufficient wages. He had watched them\nsit down in a listless, careless way, as though they cared not whether\nthe next hour brought them death or not. Then, gradually, as the\nsavour of the place penetrated them, and as the eager but delayed\nappetite became satisfied, he had seen a kind of attenuated\nconviviality arise between these poor folk, until, at the end, when\nthey had finished their meal, they came forth congratulating\nthemselves upon the cheapness, wholesomeness, and satisfying power of\nthe food they had enjoyed.\n\nNow, supposing in a shop he had a basin of this eel-soup, not merely\nsoup, but soup with luscious, succulent flesh of the rich fish\nswimming about in that delicious liquor, and in his hand a piece of\nbread larger than one fist, but not quite so large as two, what should\nhe do?\n\nFirst of all he would take the spoon--nay, not the spoon, the bowl\nitself, and quench his thirst and recruit his failing energies with a\nlong draught out of that humble, yellow bowl. He would drink nearly\nall the liquid up, for he was parched and dry. Abroad would be the\nsound of traffic and of human voices, stronger than the sound of\ntraffic now beating against his ears. Then, when he had slaked his\nthirst he would eat some of the bread--no, the bread was too dry. It\nwould make him thirsty again. He would eat some of the fish, and sop\nthe soft white bread in what remained of the soothing liquor. And when\nhe had finished, he, too, would come forth with a contented mind, and\nsupposing any trace of thirst remained, and he had no money to spend\nin fantastic ways of allaying thirst, he would go to some public\ndrinking-fountain where there was an unlimited supply of water, and\nout of the clean white metal cups drink and drink and drink until this\nhorrible dryness of mouth and throat had been finally removed, and he\nfelt cheered and invigorated, and fit to face any difficulty or odds\nthat might be against him.\n\nThreepence, and he might enjoy what then seemed to him an unparalleled\nluxury!\n\nBut supposing he were free and penniless, there was nothing to prevent\nhim walking to the first drinking-fountain that offered and quenching\nhis thirst, drowning his thirst in its free waters.\n\nHe could have one, two, three, any number of cups of water, and, while\ndrinking, he could touch his fellow-man, see the blue sky above him,\nand feel upon his cheek the wind made by passing men and vehicles.\n\nNow was he here, young and full of notions of life, with no malady of\nordinary growth upon him, merely the victim of an extraordinary\naccident, destined to die in darkness of thirst, of hunger, of\ndespair.\n\nThere was no hope for him. Dora knew he spent most of his day in that\ntower. She did not know why. She would never think of seeking him\nthere. And if she did seek him, if she came and knocked, she would get\nno reply. She would have no reason to assume more than that he did not\nhear, being there, or was absent from the place.\n\nIf she called at his lodgings she would be told all they knew of him,\nand all they knew of him would not help her forward towards his\npresent condition.\n\nHe had no means of measuring time. His watch had ceased to beat, he\ncould not tell how long ago. He held it up against his ear. It was\nsilent.\n\nThis silence seemed to him typical of the final silence which already\nsurrounded Lionel Crawford, and which was now gathering around\nhimself.\n\nThrough this silence now came a sound,\n\nIt was the sound of something falling. Something very small falling\nsharply, as it were, against the dull murmur of the traffic around\nhim.\n\nHe paused and listened. Then he sprang to his feet, aroused by a\ntremendous crash which deafened his ears, shook him as though a great\ngale blew, and filled his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils with some\nthick air or dust, he knew not which, that for a moment threatened to\nsuffocate him.\n\nThe loft above had fallen.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER V.\n\n\nBefore this tremendous noise and confusion had arisen, Lavirotte had\nno means of ascertaining how time went. He was conscious of certain\npauses and beats in the great noise of traffic above his head. The\npauses and beats, he assumed, of traffic in the artery of time. But he\nknew nothing certain. He had kept no record whatever. He was conscious\nthat there had been periods of activity and quiescence, just as he was\nconscious there had been periods of activity and quiescence in his\nyouth, when he was a child. But, as in the remote past, he had lost\nall knowledge or record of the numbers of the period.\n\nHis reason told him he could not have been a fortnight entombed. His\nmemory told him nothing.\n\nAbroad in the busy street and lanes close to St. Prisca's Tower, the\nfall of the lowest loft made a prodigious commotion. First of all,\nthere was the roar of noise accompanying the fall of the floor, and of\nthe tons upon tons of stones and clay lying on the loft. Then out\nthrough the narrow windows of the tower sprang shafts of dust, forced\nfuriously outward by the enormous pressure upon the air within.\n\nFor a moment the tumultuous traffic of Porter Street was stopped, and\nmen who would scarcely have minded the downfall of the warehouse out\nof which they were loading their vans or carts, stood in silent\namazement at the inexplicable, tremendous subsidence which had\noccurred in the tower.\n\nThose men who were familiar with the place were all the more amazed,\nbecause they believed there had been no possibility of the old tower\nuttering such a terrible note as that which had proceeded from it.\nThey believed that the lofts of the tower were merely decayed wood. It\nwas well known that the bells had been long ago removed, and as there\nhad been in that tower, so far as the frequenters of Porter Street\nknew, nothing which could with profit be stolen, the interest in that\ntower to them had been less than in the Monument.\n\nTo people of this class the Monument was something like the rainbow or\nthe Milky Way. It had no effect on life, no influence upon wages, and,\nconsequently, was altogether unworthy of consideration. Rain and hail\nand snow influenced wages in so far as they impeded work, but not the\nMonument, not St. Prisca's Tower, not the rainbow, not the Milky Way,\ncontrolled work, and therefore each, while it might be a matter for\ndreamy speculation under the influence of tobacco, was absolutely\nindifferent to the workmen frequenting Porter Street.\n\nFew, except workmen, or those intimately connected with workmen,\nfrequented Porter Street. You might walk there a whole day long with\nthe assurance you would never meet a brougham or a hansom, a beau or a\nlady. It was as much out of the line of the fashionable world as\nKamtchatka. In Nova Zembla, in Patagonia, in Japan, in Florida, you\nmay meet an English nobleman, an English lady, but in the history of\nPorter Street it is not recorded that any member of the elegant world\nwandered there for a hundred years.\n\nThe first effect of the tremendous crash, caused by the falling of the\nloft, was to paralyse activity for a short time. The next thing was to\ncreate discussion as to the possible source and cause of the crash.\nThe third was to induce speculation as to the fate of anyone who might\nhave been in the tower at the time of the catastrophe.\n\nThen slowly, very slowly, those around the place began to realise the\nfact that someone--a man--more than one man--two men it was thought,\nof late--one man of old--two men of late--an old man some time ago--a\nyoung man latterly, had taken up their residence in that tower. This\nmight account for something of the extraordinary in what had taken\nplace. It might have been that owing to something or other done by\nthese men, this enormous explosion--for so it seemed at first--had\noccurred. They may have had some object in blowing down the tower, or\nin some other violent onslaught against its integrity.\n\nIf this were so, in all likelihood they were both now far beyond the\nrange of any danger which could reach them from the tower.\n\nAfter a while, when speculation had become somewhat methodical and\nless vague, people began to remember that there was nothing\nparticularly dangerous-looking about either of the men who had taken\nup their residence in the tower, and that in all probability neither\nof them had been actuated by any criminal designs.\n\nThere for a while public opinion stood still, and men began to wonder\nwhat was the fate of their fellow-men, whose lives had for some time\nback been associated in their minds with the existence of the tower.\n\nSlowly, gradually, the people who were familiar with Porter Street\ncame to think that possibly the two men, whose appearance had been\nconnected in their minds with that place for some time, had been\nimperilled or destroyed in the fall of the lofts. For to the outside\npublic it had seemed that nothing less than the fall of the lofts\ncould have produced so great a noise as they had heard. They had not\ntaken into account that the beams of dust which shot across the street\nand lanes had reached no higher than the first loft, and they had not\ntaken care to conclude that since no dust exuded through the higher\nwindows, the likelihood was that the higher lofts were untouched.\n\nBut after the first sense of arrest and confusion which came upon\nthose within the scope of the sound, there arose the humane idea of\nrendering succour to the living, if the place contained anyone alive,\nor tendering services to the dead, supposing both had perished.\n\nThen it was anxiously asked, was anything known as to whether either\nor both men were in the tower.\n\nIt was well known that the old man now seldom came forth, that the\nyoung man brought in the provisions necessary for the two, and that\neven he was seldom for any long time absent from St. Prisca's.\n\nMoment by moment people began to recollect that the old man had not\nbeen seen out of the tower for many days, and that the young man had\nbeen seen to leave the tower and return.\n\nIn such a crowded thoroughfare it was almost impossible that the door\nof the tower could be opened without exciting observation. It was also\nnearly impossible that any close observation could have been made.\n\nIt is quite common for a busy man who lives close to a church clock\nthat strikes the hours and the quarters, to hear and yet not heed the\nstriking of the clock; so that you may ask him, after the striking,\nwhat has occurred with regard to the hour, and he may have been\nperfectly unconscious at the time the clock struck that he was\nobserving the sound, and yet when asked he may be able to tell\nperfectly the time.\n\nSo it was with these busy folk in Porter Street. They had never\nregarded those two men with any interest whatever beyond the interest\none feels for a friendly but unknown dog, or for a man who is not\nlikely ever in the course of life to have more than a passing interest\nfor the observer.\n\nNevertheless, these busy folk who worked hour by hour, day by day, and\nthe sum of whose life was made up in the sum of their work, and the\nmere material comforts and pleasures which the result of their work\nbrought them, had insensibly drunk in the fact that two men had\nentered that tower, that neither of these men had come forth, and that\nnow the likelihood was the lives of either or both of these men had\nbeen swallowed up in the catastrophe which had occurred.\n\nWith men of the class who worked in Porter Street, thought is a very\nrarely exercised faculty. They have to carry huge weights, heave\nwinches, stow goods, pack and manage vast bales, in the conduct of\nwhich the eye for space and the muscle for motion is all that is\ncalled into play. Everything else is designed by the foreman, and each\nman has no more to do with every separate piece of goods than dispose\nof it as his strength will allow in the position the foreman\nindicates.\n\nHence men of this class are exceedingly slow to invent, and\nexceedingly quick to act. When the loft fell, all the men within\nhearing of the crash immediately ceased to work, and stood stupidly\nlooking on as though they expected some miraculous manifestation. They\ndid not remain inactive because of any disinclination to help, if help\nwere needed, but they had not realised the fact that it was possible\ntheir great strength might be of avail to anyone suffering.\n\nAll at once a woman cried: \"My God, the men are buried!\" and before\nthe words were well out of her mouth, the crowd seemed to grasp the\ncentral idea that underneath the encumbrance of these lofts had been\nburied two men, who were formed in every way like themselves, and who,\nalthough not of their class, were nevertheless entitled to all that\ncould be done for them.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER VI.\n\n\nHow were the entombed men to be delivered? Various ways suggested\nthemselves in the heat of the moment. It was plain to all that the\nfirst thing to be done was to force the door. This was no trivial\nmatter. How it was to be forced was the consideration. There were\nthose among the crowd who had seen the door open, and noticed the huge\nbolt of the lock which shot into an iron holdfast let into the solid\nstonework of the tower. They knew that the old man had never omitted\nto lock the door on the inside when he came in, and that the young man\nhad been no less careful.\n\nThere was a general belief that something secret, and, upon the whole,\nuncommendable, was going on in that tower, and the desire to rescue\nthe two imprisoned men was largely augmented by curiosity.\n\nThe laneway from which the door opened was seldom crowded. There was\nusually a brisk traffic up and down it; but in that part of the City\nthe narrow laneways that feed the great thoroughfares are seldom\nblocked, although the main thoroughfares themselves may be impassable.\n\nA man in the crowd cried out:\n\n\"Someone get a pole or a beam, and we'll soon have them out.\"\n\nThen several men rushed off in various directions.\n\nBy this time the traffic in the laneways and in Porter Street itself\nwas interrupted. The workmen ran out of the stores and wharfs, the\nwaggoners and carters deserted their horses, and even the bargemen\nfrom the river had come up on hearing that some terrible accident had\nbefallen St. Prisca's Tower.\n\nIn a few minutes three men were seen advancing, carrying a heavy beam\nof wood. Other men ran to help them. A dozen willing arms had now\nseized the beam, and a hundred men were anxious to lend their aid if\nopportunity offered.\n\nA way was cleared for the men with the beam. The people separated on\nboth sides. The men turned out of Porter Street and ran up into the\nlane. The men engaged in carrying the baulk were too intent upon\ngetting it to its destination as quick as possible to observe one\nfatal defect. One onlooker shouted out: \"Too long. Too long.\" Then the\nmen carrying it swept up, way was made for them, and they tried to\nbring the beam into position for use as a battering-ram against the\ndoor.\n\nThen the onlooker's words were confirmed by experience, and it was\nseen that it would be utterly impossible to use the baulk effectually\nas a ram, for, owing to the narrowness of the lane, it was impossible\nto get it at right angles to the door, and striking the door with it\nat an acute angle would not be likely to produce the desired effect.\n\nHowever, it was better to try this which was at hand, than to do\nnothing at all. In the meantime some better means might be devised of\nbursting open the door.\n\nOnce, twice, thrice, half-a-dozen times the men thrust the beam\nobliquely against the massive woodwork. It merely glanced off the\nthick stubborn oak, and more than two-thirds of its power was expended\nupon the solid and immovable stonework of the doorway.\n\nOther pieces of timber were brought, but all proved too long to be of\nany effective use. The shortest, it is true, could be brought into a\nhorizontal position against the door, but it allowed of no play, and\ntherefore was incapable of receiving the necessary impetus.\n\nThen the crowd began to clamour for sledges. A great, brown-bearded\nman, tall, lank, and rounded in the shoulders, broke away from the\ncrowd crying: \"I'll soon get it open; I'll soon break it in.\"\n\nThis man was celebrated in Porter Street for his enormous strength. No\nsooner had he undertaken to burst in the door than all other efforts\nwere suspended, in the full faith that he would make good his words.\n\nIn a few moments he returned, bearing in each hand a square\nhalf-hundredweight. He hastened up to the door and said: \"Someone must\nhold me.\"\n\nBut how are they to hold him? \"I want,\" he said, \"to put my back\nagainst the door, lift these up this way\" (he raised the half-hundreds\nabove his head as though they were no heavier than boxing-gloves),\n\"then I'll bring them down against the door; but if it bursts open I\ndon't want to fall in, for there's a pit inside.\"\n\nThe difficulty now was how to hold him, and at the same time give him\nfree play with the weights, and avoid any possibility of the weights\nin the downward swoop touching anyone who might aid him.\n\nSome time was lost in trying to arrange so that he might be held,\nprevented from falling inward, and, at the same time, not impeded.\n\nAt last he cried:\n\n\"Let me alone; I can manage it myself. Stand back. Don't be afraid of\nme.\"\n\nThen they cleared a semicircle round him. He put his back to the door,\nraised his arms aloft, directly over his head, bowed himself backward,\nso that his head and heels alone touched the door, and his back was\nbowed forward as a bent bow is against the string. Then, setting his\nteeth and putting all the energy of his body into the muscles of his\narms and shoulders, he swung the two weights downward with prodigious\nforce, loosed them from his hold when they came level with his legs,\nsprang forward, and turned swiftly round with a look of expectant\nsuccess.\n\nThe crowd cheered. The two half-hundredweights had crushed through the\nlower portion of the door as though it were so much cardboard. The\nlock remained unshaken. The blows had been delivered too low down,\nand, while the wood had given way, the iron had remained firm.\n\nThen, while the people were standing admiring the result of his great\nstrength, a man cried out: \"Here's a crowbar, Bill. You can finish it\nwith that.\"\n\nBill caught the crowbar in his hand, whirled it over his head as\nthough it were but a walking-cane, leaped back from the door as far as\nthe narrowness of the lane would allow him; then, holding the crowbar\nlightly in his hand, as a soldier holds his gun at the charge, he\ndashed forward and flung the crowbar with its blunt edge against the\nplace where the lock held fast.\n\nThe lock had been loosened on the door by the previous assault, and\nnow, with a tearing screech, the bolts drew out of the tough wood, and\nthe door swung back on its hinges.\n\nWhen Bill had succeeded, and seen that he had succeeded, he turned\nround, surveyed the crowd steadily for a few moments, and then said:\n\"That's my share of it. You do the rest.\"\n\nThen, as one who had no further concern with the matter, he strode\noff, the people making way for him as he went.\n\nTwo or three men approached the door and looked in. Below was a wild\njumble of planks and beams and stones and earth, all mixed up,\nhiggledy-piggledy, in the wildest confusion. It was impossible to make\nout anything clearly at first, owing to the dense dust that floated in\nthe air. The men who had thrust in their heads withdrew them after a\nshort time, partly suffocated and partly blinded by the fumes that\narose out of the pit beneath.\n\n\"Ask is there anyone there,\" suggested one of the crowd.\n\nA head was thrust in through the open doorway, and a stentorian voice\ncried out: \"Anyone there!\"\n\nTo this a feeble voice replied from what seemed to be the bowels of\nthe earth: \"Yes. Help. Water, for God's sake.\"\n\n\"All right,\" shouted the man above. \"We'll get you out safe enough.\nKeep up your heart. Are the two of you below?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered the feeble voice; \"but he is dead. Quick, for God's\nsake, or I shall die. This dust is killing me.\"\n\n\"Keep up,\" shouted the man, \"and we'll do the best. We'll get you out\nin a jiffy. There's a hundred of us here. How much of the place has\nfallen?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered the voice below, growing fainter. \"I think\nonly the first floor. I can talk no more. I am dying.\" And then came\nsome sounds, inarticulate and faint, the meaning of which the man\nabove could not gather.\n\nA ladder was got and thrust down into the pit, and in a short time a\nscore of willing hands were at work.\n\nThe joists had drawn gradually out of the wall, and the eastern end\nbeing first freed, that side fell downward, shooting most of the\nstones and earth up into the pit at the eastern side. The floor\ndoubled up in two from the north and south, almost like the leaves of\na book, and in the fold of this a large quantity of clay and stones\nhad remained. This folded part fell almost directly on the hole made\nby Lionel Crawford in the roof of the vault. The weight of the stones\nand the impetus they had gained in their fall was sufficient to cause\nthem to smash through the doubled-up flooring, and some of them fell\nthrough the hole, carrying with them a portion of the roof of the\nvault. By this falling mass Lavirotte had been struck and hurt, and\nunder some of the flooring, earth, and stones he now lay partly\ncovered, prostrate upon the ground of the vault.\n\nOwing to the fact that most of the heavy stones and the great bulk of\nthe earth had been shot to the eastern side of the tower,\ncomparatively little entered the vault, and so Lavirotte escaped\ninstant death.\n\nThe men working at his release found out after a short time, partly by\nhis moaning and partly by looking through the hole in the fallen\nfloor, that Lavirotte was in the vault, and not immediately under the\nfallen floor.\n\nIn less than an hour he was rescued. He was all begrimed with dirt and\nclay, insensible, battered, bleeding, almost pulseless. He was\nimmediately placed in a cab and taken to an hospital. On his way he\nrecovered consciousness and begged for water, which was given him.\n\nUpon examination it was discovered that his injuries were not of much\nmoment, and that exhaustion had more to do with his prostrate\ncondition than the hurts he had received.\n\nFor a long time he lay quiet, expressing no wish. At length he asked\nwhat had become of the body of his companion, and was told that it had\nbeen removed from the tower. He was asked if he had any friends with\nwhom he desired to communicate, and he said no. Now that Lionel\nCrawford was dead, there was no one in London whom he could call a\nfriend. He did not wish that Dora should hear anything of the result\nof that awful day, when her grandfather lost his life, and he all hope\nof the vast fortune upon which he had been building for some time.\n\nThey told him that he would be able to leave the hospital in a few\ndays. A few days would be quite time enough to tell her all the bad\nnews. Indeed, the longer she was kept in ignorance of it the better.\nTo the inquiries of those around him, he had refused to give any reply\nbeyond the facts that St. Prisca's Tower was his property; that he and\nthe dead man, Lionel Crawford, had for some time back lived in the\ntower; and that, for reasons which he declined to state, they had both\nbeen engaged in excavating.\n\nJohn Cassidy usually left his office at about four o'clock in the\nevening. As he was walking in the direction of his home on the\nafternoon Lavirotte was rescued from the tower, his eye was arrested\nby a line in the bills of _The Evening Record_--\"Mysterious affair in\nPorter Street.\"\n\nAs a rule, John Cassidy did not buy newspapers. They did not interest\nhim. His theory was that one could learn enough of public affairs from\nthe conversation of others. But a mysterious affair always did\ninterest him, and in this case he bought _The Evening Record_, and\nread in it a brief paragraph of what occurred in the tower, giving the\nnames of the two men concerned.\n\nMystery on mystery! Here was this man Lavirotte mixed up in two\ninexplicable affairs in a space of a few months.\n\nOn the previous occasion Lavirotte had been found insensible, near a\nwounded man. Now he was found insensible, near a dead man. In the\nparagraph there was no suggestion that any suspected foul play; and\nyet to him, Cassidy, it seemed impossible that Lavirotte was not in\nsome way accountable for the death of the man found with him that day.\n\nCassidy was burning with anxiety to tell someone of Lavirotte's former\npredicament. It would give him such an air of importance if he could\nadd material facts to those already known in connection with this\nmatter. There was no use in his going back to the office, for all his\nfellow-clerks had left. It was impossible for him to go home to his\nroom burdened with this news. He therefore resolved to turn into the\nCleopatra Restaurant in the Strand, in the hope he might there find\nsomeone to whom he might communicate the startling addition to the\nnews in the evening paper.\n\nIt so fell out that he succeeded beyond his wishes. He found a group\nof men standing at the bar, and among these one named Grafton, an\nartist whom he had known for some time, and through whom he hoped to\nfind himself on the track of the Lavirotte mystery, as he knew Grafton\nwas acquainted with Lavirotte.\n\n\"I say, Grafton,\" said he, \"that's a deuce of a mysterious thing that\nhappened to-day in Porter Street. You know, of course, this is the\nLavirotte you told me you knew. He's back in London again, after being\nmixed up in a most extraordinary affair in my part of the world.\"\n\nThen he related, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the group of\nmen standing round, all he knew concerning the affair at Glengowra.\n\nWhen he had finished, one of the bystanders, whom he did not know,\nsaid: \"You would have no objection to my making use of what you say?\"\n\n\"In the press?\" said Cassidy, colouring with delight and importance.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the other. \"I am connected with _The Evening Record_, and\nif you authorise me to do so, I should be greatly pleased to add just\na line to our account of the affair. All I would ask or say: 'We\nunderstand that M. Lavirotte, who was found insensible, was some\nlittle time ago mixed up with another mysterious affair in Glengowra,\nin the south of Ireland.'\"\n\nCassidy gave a willing consent, and the addition suggested appeared in\nthe special edition of _The Evening Record_.\n\nIt was in the special edition of _The Evening Record_ that Dora\nHarrington saw her grandfather was dead, that Lavirotte was injured,\nand that he had been mixed up in a mysterious affair in Glengowra.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER VII.\n\n\nThe shock nearly overwhelmed Dora. The double blow was too much for\nher, and when the landlady came into the room a short time afterwards\nshe found the girl insensible on the floor.\n\nWhen she returned to consciousness she could not believe she had read\nthe paper aright. She took it up again and went carefully over the\npassage with aching eyes. The solid ground seemed to be melting away\nunder her feet, and all the material things around her were visionary,\nunreal, far away.\n\nThe landlady at length made her talk, and with talk came tears, and\nwith tears relief. She pointed out the paragraph to the woman, and\ntold her she must go at once to the hospital and see about the whole\naffair. It was too horrible, she said, to think that her grandfather\nshould be killed and her lover nearly killed in this enterprise,\nwhatever it was, they were engaged upon.\n\nThe woman was of a kindly and compassionate nature, and offered to\naccompany the girl. This offer Dora gladly accepted, and the two set\nout. They ascertained at the hospital that Lavirotte was going on\nfavourably, but that they could not see him until next day. They went\nand saw the body of the old man at the mortuary, and, finding out that\nnothing could be done, returned to Charterhouse Square, greatly\ndepressed and saddened; for the kindly woman shared the girl's grief,\nand felt for her desolate condition.\n\nNext day, when Dora called at the hospital she was admitted.\n\nShe found Lavirotte haggard, and worn, and wild-looking, but far less\nseriously injured than the newspaper report had led her to expect.\n\nIt was not a place for a demonstrative meeting, and she had been\ncautioned not to excite the injured man.\n\nAfter the first words of the meeting she asked him all the particulars\nof what had occurred at the tower. He told her as briefly as he could.\nThen for the first time she learned that her grandfather and her lover\nhad been seeking for a treasure in that lonely place in Porter Street.\nHe told her how the old man had been firmly persuaded a vast hoard had\nbeen hidden beneath the tower before the Great Fire, and had remained\nthere ever since. While he, Lavirotte, was away at his lodgings,\nlooking for letters, the old man had found the top of the vault, had\npierced the vault, and descended into it. Then, no doubt, the shock of\nfinding the work of years useless had been too great for him, and he\nhad succumbed.\n\nHe related how he, being then in a very weak condition from wearing\nanxiety and the want of food and rest, had returned to the tower,\ndescended into the vault, and found himself unable to reascend. Then\nlater on came the crash, his own insensibility, and finally the rescue\nthe afternoon before.\n\nIn grief and pity she listened to him, and when he had finished she\ncould think of nothing to say but that she hoped he would soon get\nstrong again, and that she would do anything she could for him, and\ncome to see him as often as they would let her.\n\nThen he went on to explain how this terrible disappointment at not\nfinding the treasure would not only leave him almost penniless, but\nwould prevent him doing the service he had intended for O'Donnell and\nKempston.\n\nHe told her he had not replied to the letter he found from Eugene at\nhis lodgings, because he hoped that in a day or two he might be able\nto communicate the glorious news that the period of their affluence\nwas at hand. Now all this was changed. The whole aspect of his career\nwas altered, and the first thing she would have to do for him was to\ntelegraph to Eugene, saying that all hope of succour was now at an\nend. It would be a cruel, a terrible, perhaps literally a fatal blow\nto the elder O'Donnell, but that could not now be helped.\n\nHe dictated to her the telegram, and she wrote it down. He also\ndictated a note she was to write to Mr. Kempston. Then he said:\n\n\"They tell me I shall not be long here; but how it is to be with me\nwhen I get about again I cannot say. Misfortune seems to have marked\nme out as one upon whom she was to try all her arts.\"\n\nShe said tenderly, advancing her hand to his: \"Don't say that,\nDominique.\"\n\n\"Forgive me, Dora, darling. I was not thinking of you. I was speaking\nof only the business aspect of things. We shall be as poor as ever\nnow.\"\n\n\"But we were never rich, and yet we were--fond of each other, and very\nhappy.\"\n\n\"Ay, darling, very fond of each other, and very happy, and will be\nalways,\" he added, pressing the hand he had in his. \"I was thinking\nonly of you in the matter. When I had this dream of wealth upon me, I\nused to picture to myself what we should do when we became rich; how\nyou should have all that art and luxury could produce.\"\n\n\"I have never wished for wealth or luxury, Dominique,\" she whispered.\n\"I know I shall be as happy as I ever hoped to be, more happy than I\never deserved, with you. Let us think no more of that treasure. It has\nbrought no good to us up to this. Why should we allow it to cause us\nsorrow now?\"\n\n\"Ay, ay,\" he said. \"We must make the best of it now. Bad will be the\nbest of it, but it might have been worse. You know I have a little\nmoney, and with it I shall be able to continue at the singing until I\nam good enough for the boards. Then I shall be able to earn enough for\nus both, Dora.\"\n\n\"Very little will be enough,\" she whispered, again pressing his hand.\n\nHe returned the pressure, and said: \"Thank you, darling. They will not\nlet you stay much longer now. I am sorry I am not able to be up; but I\nsuppose they will do everything necessary about your grandfather. I\nwant you to go to my landlord. He has some money of mine. Tell him to\narrange all about the funeral. You tell me there is no man in the\nhouse where you lodge, and the few men I know in London, I know\nscarcely sufficiently well to ask a favour of them. Stop,\" he said;\n\"there is Grafton. I might ask him. He was very friendly to me when I\nwas in London before. I remember where he lived. Go to him and tell\nhim all, and give him the money. That will be better.\"\n\nHe gave her Grafton's address, and after a little while she took her\nleave.\n\nShe sought the artist and found him at home. He had two rooms in\nCharlotte Street--one a bedroom; the other served as studio and\nsitting-room. When Dora called, he was not alone. Having renewed his\nacquaintance with Cassidy, he had invited the dandy to his place.\nCassidy and he were now having coffee.\n\nGrafton hurried Cassidy into the bedroom, which was separated from the\nsitting-room by folding doors. Dora was shown up, and explained the\ncircumstances of the case.\n\nGrafton said he would be delighted to do anything he could for\nLavirotte and Miss Harrington. Unfortunately there was a difficulty in\nthe way. It was utterly impossible for him to leave his studio that\nafternoon or night, as he was at work on a block which would take him\ntill five o'clock in the morning to finish, and he had just that\nmoment received a telegram from the illustrated paper on which he\nworked, ordering him north to the scene of a great colliery accident\nthe first thing in the morning. He was deeply grieved. He would try if\nhe could possibly do anything. Stop! A friend of his was in the house.\nHe would go and ask him if he could manage to do what was required.\n\nHe went out by the door leading to the landing, and from that landing\nthrough another door into the bedroom where Cassidy was.\n\nCassidy flushed with surprise and pleasure when he saw a chance of his\ngetting mixed up with the Lavirotte affair. He told Grafton he would\nask them to give him a holiday to-morrow, and between this afternoon\nand to-morrow there would be plenty of time to arrange everything\nabout Lionel Crawford, as, no doubt, the inquest was held that day.\n\nThen Grafton brought Cassidy in and introduced him to Dora, and said\nthat he would act in every way as though he were Grafton himself.\n\nDora expressed her great gratitude.\n\n\"You know,\" Cassidy said, \"I shall go and see Mr. Lavirotte as soon as\npossible, and I have no doubt he will be glad to see me, for I come\nfrom the neighbourhood in which he lived, and know Glengowra\nthoroughly.\" Here the overwhelming desire to rise in importance in the\neyes of Dora, pleasantly or otherwise, mastered him, and he said:\n\"Perhaps you have seen the special edition of _The Evening Record?_\"\n\nShe said yes; that she had there first seen an account of the terrible\naffair.\n\n\"It was I,\" said he, bowing and smiling, \"who gave the information\nrespecting the mysterious occurrence at Glengowra, of which you,\ndoubtless, know.\" By this time he was, of course, aware he was talking\nto the girl to whom Lavirotte had made love when formerly in London.\n\n\"I do not know anything about it,\" she whispered faintly. \"I am\nexceedingly obliged to both of you.\" She said good-bye and went.\n\nWhen she was gone, Cassidy said: \"Strange she doesn't know anything\nabout the Glengowra affair. I don't think it right she should be kept\nin ignorance of it. However, Grafton, you haven't a minute to lose\nnow. I'll be off down east and see what's to be done. I assure you\nnothing could give me greater pleasure than to act for you in this\naffair.\"\n\n\n\n\n                            CHAPTER VIII.\n\n\nWhen Eugene O'Donnell got the telegram he fell into despair. He durst\nnot go to his father or his mother. Up to this his father had been in\nthe very best spirits, fully anticipating deliverance at the hands of\nLavirotte. Now what was to become of them? Ruin of the most complete\nkind stared them in the face. They would not have the least chance of\nsaving anything from the wreck of their fortune, for James O'Donnell\nwas a man of scrupulous honesty, and would not lend himself to the\nleast kind of fraud. When everything was sold up they would not be\nable to pay more than a small portion of the last call, and Eugene\nknew his father too well to think he would conceal a single penny, or\naccept a favour at the hands of the bank.\n\nEugene did not know what to do. The telegram came to him when he was\nalone. He read it three times, put it in his pocket, and went out to\ntry if a walk in the air would help him.\n\nInsensibly his steps turned towards the station, where, a little later\non in the afternoon, he would, in the ordinary course, find himself on\nthe way to Glengowra. When he got to the railway station he looked at\nhis watch, and saw that there was just time for him to run out to\nGlengowra and get back again before his ordinary time for leaving the\noffice. He determined to run out and tell it first of all to Nellie,\nupon whom he had learned to depend.\n\nShe was greatly surprised to see him so early, ran to him with a\nsmile, and, throwing her arms round him, said: \"I cannot tell you why,\nbut I was half expecting to see you earlier than usual. You have\nbrought good news, I dare say, from Lavirotte?\"\n\nHe shook his head, and said: \"No; poor Lavirotte has met with an\naccident.\"\n\n\"Met with an accident!\" cried Nellie, in surprise. \"Is it serious, and\nwill he be able to do what he promised for your father?\"\n\n\"Well, you see,\" said her husband, \"this accident is likely to knock\nhim up for some time, I suppose, and every hour is precious to us.\"\nThe husband and wife were now in the little drawing-room overlooking\nthe sea. He had sat down on a chair, dispiritedly. She stood opposite\nhim, with eager, inquiring eyes.\n\n\"So that you are afraid,\" said she, \"that, after all, his promise may\ncome to nothing.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Eugene, \"I am afraid it may come to nothing.\"\n\nShe sank on a chair beside him, and cried: \"Good heavens, Eugene, what\nis to become of us all?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Nellie,\" he said gloomily, \"I have not dared to tell\nthe governor yet. I must tell him to-night, you know. He must at once\ndecide upon what we shall do.\"\n\n\"Do you believe Lavirotte met with an accident?\"\n\n\"Certainly I believe. What object could he have in telling a lie?\"\n\n\"To screen his failure, if not worse.\"\n\n\"What could be _worse_ at present than his failure?\"\n\n\"Supposing he had deliberately deceived all through.\"\n\n\"What earthly object could Lavirotte have in deceiving us?\"\n\n\"Well, he would tell neither you nor your father where he expected\nthis money from. I don't like Lavirotte. I don't trust him. I wish we\nnever had anything to do with him. I think it was an unfortunate day\nyou first met him.\"\n\n\"Look here, now, Nellie. I believe Lavirotte was perfectly sincere in\nthis matter, as I believe he was sincere in his love of you, or in his\ndesire to destroy me when under the influence of what must have been\ninsanity. Anyway, this is not the time to discuss his merits. We must\nthink of what we ourselves have to do in this matter. How am I to\nbreak it to my father? After all he has gone through, I fear it will\nkill him or drive him mad. He has the fullest faith in Lavirotte's\nturning up with the money in time. As I told you before, he has made\narrangements for the future in the full faith that the help will be\nforthcoming.\"\n\n\"I don't know how you are to do it, Eugene. As you say, there is very\nlittle time, if he must know this evening. Would you like me to go in\nand see your mother, or do you think I should only be in the way?\"\n\n\"I don't know, I'm sure. But I think, after all, it will be best if I\nopen the subject to him.\"\n\nSo it was decided that Eugene should go back to Rathclare, and make\nknown to his father the bad news contained in the telegram.\n\nHis visit to Glengowra had no effect. It left a strong impression on\nNellie's mind, that in addition to Lavirotte being, under great\nexcitement, a dangerous lunatic, he was capable at ordinary times of\ndeliberately and cruelly lying, if the statements he made were not the\nresult of delusion.\n\nWhen Eugene found his father, the latter was in the best of spirits.\n\n\"Well, my son,\" he cried cheerily, \"any news from London? Has our\nfriend, our good friend, got the money? Time is running very short\nnow, and since we are going to pay the call, we may as well do the\nthing decently and be up to time.\"\n\n\"Do you think, sir, there is no chance of getting a later date for\npayment?\"\n\nThe father shook his head. \"No, there is no chance,\" he said. \"Those\nwho can pay must pay up at once. I am not myself uneasy about\nLavirotte, but I wish we had some news. It will be comfortable to hear\nthe mill going when this awful banking affair is pleasantly settled;\nbut I own the sound of the mill does not seem good for my ears just\nnow. This, of course, will be all right in a few days. Why do you ask\nif there is any chance of getting time, boy?\"\n\n\"Because, sir, it has occurred to me that possibly we may want it.\"\n\n\"But Lavirotte knows the circumstances of the case; and with such vast\nexpectations as he has, there can be no difficulty whatever in getting\nin the form of an advance any sum of money we may require.\"\n\n\"That depends on the security he has to offer. Do you know, sir, what\nis the nature of the security he has to offer?\"\n\n\"No, he would not tell me. He said he was under an obligation, and\ncould communicate the matter to no one.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, may it not be that the property which he expects to come\ninto will not realise quite as much as he anticipated? Suppose it fell\na little short of what you want, what should you do?\"\n\n\"Borrow money on this place, of course,\" said the merchant, waving his\nhand over his head.\n\n\"But in case, I mean, that what Lavirotte could give you and what you\ncould borrow on this place would not together make sufficient, what\nwould you do?\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Eugene, you are in a very uncomfortable humour to-day.\nWhat earthly use is there in calculating upon chances or solving\ndifficulties that will never arise? But I may answer you. I should of\ncourse sell the place. I should sell every stick of the place, every\nwheel, every ounce of stuff in it, my house, horses, plate, furniture,\nin fact everything that I have.\"\n\nBy this time the face of the old man had lost its gay aspect. He had\nturned pale. His eyes were no longer sprightly, but fixed with a\nstrange glitter, not turned directly towards his son--in fact,\navoiding his son's gaze. It was as though he suspected--he more than\nsuspected, he assumed--Eugene had some bad news to give him, and that\nhe would wait there patiently for the bad news to come without aiding\nhis son's story by the display of curiosity.\n\n\"But, sir, I have some reason to fear Lavirotte will not be able to do\nall he said. I am disposed to think, on good grounds, that he will not\nhave all the money we want in time.\"\n\nThe son now avoided the father's face. They were sitting at opposite\nsides of the large office table. The son's eyes were turned towards\nthe window looking into the quadrangle. The father's eyes were fixed\nvacantly upon the door of the strong-room behind his son, and to his\nright.\n\n\"In that case,\" said the elder man, \"I should mortgage.\"\n\n\"I am very much disinclined to go on,\" said the young man, frowning\nheavily, \"but I have no alternative. Lavirotte will not be able to\ngive you all you want, and I do not think you will be able to pay\nall.\"\n\n\"Then I shall sell. I shall sell every stick I have in the world.\" The\nold man's eyes became more fixed than ever; they never wandered from\nthat door. His face became more pallid. With both hands he grasped the\nelbows of his chair. He sat well in the chair, leaning slightly\nforward, as though he expected someone who would try and pull him out\nof it.\n\nHis son looked hastily at him for a moment, then turned his eyes away\nas hastily, and said slowly: \"You must know, sir--you must by this\ntime have guessed that I have had bad news from London, from\nLavirotte. You must try and bear up, sir, for all our sakes. It will\nbe a bitter blow after the hope we have lived in for months.\"\n\nJames O'Donnell seemed to abandon the position he had taken up with\nregard to Eugene's news. It would be folly any longer to affect\nignorance that something terrible was coming, or to court delay.\n\n\"What is the news from Lavirotte?\" he asked.\n\n\"Lavirotte is himself injured by some accident, and he has no longer\nany hope of realising the money he expected.\"\n\n\"No longer any hope,\" repeated the old man.\n\n\"No longer any hope, sir. We are not to rely on him for the least aid.\nWhat do you purpose doing, sir?\"\n\n\"I must think over the matter for a while, Eugene.\" He looked calmly\nat his watch. \"You have only just time to catch the train, and I would\nrather be alone at present.\"\n\n\"If you would let me stay, sir, I would much rather remain with you. I\ncan drive home later.\"\n\n\"No, Eugene; you may go now. I would rather be alone.\" The old man\nseemed quite calm and collected; in fact, so calm and collected, that\nEugene resolved not to go to Glengowra by the train, but to run up to\nhis father's house and to tell his mother what had occurred.\n\nWhen James O'Donnell found himself alone, he got up slowly out of his\nchair, crossed the floor, opened the door of the strong-room,\nwhispering to himself:\n\n\"No longer any hope.\"\n\nHe went into the gloomy chamber, and going to the safe, opened it and\ntook something from it. When he returned to the office, he held the\nrevolver in his hand and whispered to himself:\n\n\"No longer any hope.\"\n\nHe looked at his watch. It was just closing time. Having placed the\nrevolver on the table, he sat down in his chair, whispering in the\nsame quiet voice, \"I will wait till they are all gone,\" and repeated\nfor the third time: \"No longer any hope.\"\n\nAt seven o'clock Eugene returned to the private office, for which he\nhad a key. To his astonishment he found his father's chair vacant and\nthe strong-room door open. He went into the strong-room and examined\nit. The door of the safe was open. The drawer was pulled out.\n\nEugene turned sick. He leant against the wall and moaned out: \"Oh!\nwhat has the poor old man done!\"\n\nThen he pushed in the drawer, the door of the safe, the door of the\nstrong-room, and having locked the door of the private office,\nhastened downstairs.\n\nHe could find no trace of his father. He set half-a-dozen men to\nsearch the town quietly.\n\nUp to next morning he failed to find any clue to James O'Donnell.\n\n\n\n                           END OF VOL. II.\n\n\n\n\n                         * * * * * * * * * *\n\n           CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg's The Last Call (Vol. 2 of 3), by Richard Dowling\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nMurder in  \nthe Mews\n\nFour Cases of Hercule Poirot\n\nDedication\n\nTo My Old Friend  \nSybil Heeley  \nWith affection\nContents\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nMurder in the Mews\n\nOne\n\nTwo\n\nThree\n\nFour\n\nFive\n\nSix\n\nSeven\n\nEight\n\nNine\n\nTen\n\nThe Incredible Theft\n\nOne\n\nTwo\n\nThree\n\nFour\n\nFive\n\nSix\n\nSeven\n\nEight\n\nDead Man's Mirror\n\nOne\n\nTwo\n\nThree\n\nFour\n\nFive\n\nSix\n\nSeven\n\nEight\n\nNine\n\nTen\n\nEleven\n\nTwelve\n\nTriangle at Rhodes\n\nOne\n\nTwo\n\nThree\n\nFour\n\nFive\n\nSix\n\nAbout the Authors\n\nOther Works\n\nCopyright\nMURDER IN THE MEWS\nOne\n\nI\n\n\"Penny for the guy, sir?\"\n\nA small boy with a grimy face grinned ingratiatingly.\n\n\"Certainly not!\" said Chief Inspector Japp. \"And, look here, my lad\u2014\"\n\nA short homily followed. The dismayed urchin beat a precipitate retreat, remarking briefly and succinctly to his youthful friends:\n\n\"Blimey, if it ain't a cop all togged up!\"\n\nThe band took to its heels, chanting the incantation:\n\nRemember, remember\n\nThe fifth of November\n\nGunpowder treason and plot.\n\nWe see no reason\n\nWhy gunpowder treason\n\nShould ever be forgot.\n\nThe chief inspector's companion, a small, elderly man with an egg-shaped head and large, military-looking moustaches, was smiling to himself.\n\n\"Tr\u00e8s bien, Japp,\" he observed. \"You preach the sermon very well! I congratulate you!\"\n\n\"Rank excuse for begging, that's what Guy Fawkes' Day is!\" said Japp.\n\n\"An interesting survival,\" mused Hercule Poirot. \"The fireworks go up\u2014crack\u2014crack\u2014long after the man they commemorate and his deed are forgotten.\"\n\nThe Scotland Yard man agreed.\n\n\"Don't suppose many of those kids really know who Guy Fawkes was.\"\n\n\"And soon, doubtless, there will be confusion of thought. Is it in honour or in execration that on the fifth of November the feu d'artifice are sent up? To blow up an English Parliament, was it a sin or a noble deed?\"\n\nJapp chuckled.\n\n\"Some people would say undoubtedly the latter.\"\n\nTurning off the main road, the two men passed into the comparative quiet of a mews. They had been dining together and were now taking a short cut to Hercule Poirot's flat.\n\nAs they walked along the sound of squibs was still heard periodically. An occasional shower of golden rain illuminated the sky.\n\n\"Good night for a murder,\" remarked Japp with professional interest. \"Nobody would hear a shot, for instance, on a night like this.\"\n\n\"It has always seemed odd to me that more criminals do not take advantage of the fact,\" said Hercule Poirot.\n\n\"Do you know, Poirot, I almost wish sometimes that you would commit a murder.\"\n\n\"Mon cher!\"\n\n\"Yes, I'd like to see just how you'd set about it.\"\n\n\"My dear Japp, if I committed a murder you would not have the least chance of seeing\u2014how I set about it! You would not even be aware, probably, that a murder had been committed.\"\n\nJapp laughed good-humouredly and affectionately.\n\n\"Cocky little devil, aren't you?\" he said indulgently.\n\nII\n\nAt half past eleven the following morning, Hercule Poirot's telephone rang.\n\n\" 'Allo? 'Allo?\"\n\n\"Hallo, that you, Poirot?\"\n\n\"Oui, c'est moi.\"\n\n\"Japp speaking here. Remember we came home last night through Bardsley Gardens Mews?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"And that we talked about how easy it would be to shoot a person with all those squibs and crackers and the rest of it going off?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"Well, there was a suicide in that mews. No. 14. A young widow\u2014Mrs. Allen. I'm going round there now. Like to come?\"\n\n\"Excuse me, but does someone of your eminence, my dear friend, usually get sent to a case of suicide?\"\n\n\"Sharp fellow. No\u2014he doesn't. As a matter of fact our doctor seems to think there's something funny about this. Will you come? I kind of feel you ought to be in on it.\"\n\n\"Certainly I will come. No. 14, you say?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\nIII\n\nPoirot arrived at No. 14 Bardsley Gardens Mews almost at the same moment as a car drew up containing Japp and three other men.\n\nNo. 14 was clearly marked out as the centre of interest. A big circle of people, chauffeurs, their wives, errand boys, loafers, well-dressed passersby and innumerable children were drawn up all staring at No. 14 with open mouths and a fascinated stare.\n\nA police constable in uniform stood on the step and did his best to keep back the curious. Alert-looking young men with cameras were busy and surged forward as Japp alighted.\n\n\"Nothing for you now,\" said Japp, brushing them aside. He nodded to Poirot. \"So here you are. Let's get inside.\"\n\nThey passed in quickly, the door shut behind them and they found themselves squeezed together at the foot of a ladderlike flight of stairs.\n\nA man came to the top of the staircase, recognized Japp and said:\n\n\"Up here, sir.\"\n\nJapp and Poirot mounted the stairs.\n\nThe man at the stairhead opened a door on the left and they found themselves in a small bedroom.\n\n\"Thought you'd like me to run over the chief points, sir.\"\n\n\"Quite right, Jameson,\" said Japp. \"What about it?\"\n\nDivisional Inspector Jameson took up the tale.\n\n\"Deceased's a Mrs. Allen, sir. Lived here with a friend\u2014a Miss Plenderleith. Miss Plenderleith was away staying in the country and returned this morning. She let herself in with her key, was surprised to find no one about. A woman usually comes in at nine o'clock to do for them. She went upstairs first into her own room (that's this room) then across the landing to her friend's room. Door was locked on the inside. She rattled the handle, knocked and called, but couldn't get any answer. In the end getting alarmed she rang up the police station. That was at ten forty-five. We came along at once and forced the door open. Mrs. Allen was lying in a heap on the ground shot through the head. There was an automatic in her hand\u2014a Webley .25\u2014and it looked a clear case of suicide.\"\n\n\"Where is Miss Plenderleith now?\"\n\n\"She's downstairs in the sitting room, sir. A very cool, efficient young lady, I should say. Got a head on her.\"\n\n\"I'll talk to her presently. I'd better see Brett now.\"\n\nAccompanied by Poirot he crossed the landing and entered the opposite room. A tall, elderly man looked up and nodded.\n\n\"Hallo, Japp, glad you've got here. Funny business, this.\"\n\nJapp advanced towards him. Hercule Poirot sent a quick searching glance round the room.\n\nIt was much larger than the room they had just quitted. It had a built-out bay window, and whereas the other room had been a bedroom pure and simple, this was emphatically a bedroom disguised as a sitting room.\n\nThe walls were silver and the ceiling emerald green. There were curtains of a modernistic pattern in silver and green. There was a divan covered with a shimmering emerald green silk quilt and numbers of gold and silver cushions. There was a tall antique walnut bureau, a walnut tallboy, and several modern chairs of gleaming chromium. On a low glass table there was a big ashtray full of cigarette stubs.\n\nDelicately Hercule Poirot sniffed the air. Then he joined Japp where the latter stood looking down at the body.\n\nIn a heap on the floor, lying as she had fallen from one of the chromium chairs, was the body of a young woman of perhaps twenty-seven. She had fair hair and delicate features. There was very little makeup on the face. It was a pretty, wistful, perhaps slightly stupid face. On the left side of the head was a mass of congealed blood. The fingers of the right hand were clasped round a small pistol. The woman was dressed in a simple frock of dark green high to the neck.\n\n\"Well, Brett, what's the trouble?\"\n\nJapp was looking down also at the huddled figure.\n\n\"Position's all right,\" said the doctor. \"If she shot herself she'd probably have slipped from the chair into just that position. The door was locked and the window was fastened on the inside.\"\n\n\"That's all right, you say. Then what's wrong?\"\n\n\"Take a look at the pistol. I haven't handled it\u2014waiting for the fingerprint men. But you can see quite well what I mean.\"\n\nTogether Poirot and Japp knelt down and examined the pistol closely.\n\n\"I see what you mean,\" said Japp rising. \"It's in the curve of her hand. It looks as though she's holding it\u2014but as a matter of fact she isn't holding it. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Plenty. She's got the pistol in her right hand. Now take a look at the wound. The pistol was held close to the head just above the left ear\u2014the left ear, mark you.\"\n\n\"H'm,\" said Japp. \"That does seem to settle it. She couldn't hold a pistol and fire it in that position with her right hand?\"\n\n\"Plumb impossible, I should say. You might get your arm round but I doubt if you could fire the shot.\"\n\n\"That seems pretty obvious then. Someone else shot her and tried to make it look like suicide. What about the locked door and window, though?\"\n\nInspector Jameson answered this.\n\n\"Window was closed and bolted, sir, but although the door was locked we haven't been able to find the key.\"\n\nJapp nodded.\n\n\"Yes, that was a bad break. Whoever did it locked the door when he left and hoped the absence of the key wouldn't be noticed.\"\n\nPoirot murmured:\n\n\"C'est b\u00eate, \u00e7a!\"\n\n\"Oh, come now, Poirot, old man, you mustn't judge everybody else by the light of your shining intellect! As a matter of fact that's the sort of little detail that's quite apt to be overlooked. Door's locked. People break in. Woman found dead\u2014pistol in her hand\u2014clear case of suicide\u2014she locked herself in to do it. They don't go hunting about for keys. As a matter of fact, Miss Plenderleith's sending for the police was lucky. She might have got one or two of the chauffeurs to come and burst in the door\u2014and then the key question would have been overlooked altogether.\"\n\n\"Yes, I suppose that is true,\" said Hercule Poirot. \"It would have been many people's natural reaction. The police, they are the last resource, are they not?\"\n\nHe was still staring down at the body.\n\n\"Anything strike you?\" Japp asked.\n\nThe question was careless but his eyes were keen and attentive.\n\nHercule Poirot shook his head slowly.\n\n\"I was looking at her wristwatch.\"\n\nHe bent over and just touched it with a fingertip. It was a dainty jewelled affair on a black moir\u00e9 strap on the wrist of the hand that held the pistol.\n\n\"Rather a swell piece that,\" observed Japp. \"Must have cost money!\" He cocked his head inquiringly at Poirot. \"Something in that maybe?\"\n\n\"It is possible\u2014yes.\"\n\nPoirot strayed across to the writing bureau. It was the kind that has a front flap that lets down. This was daintily set out to match the general colour scheme.\n\nThere was a somewhat massive silver inkstand in the centre, in front of it a handsome green lacquer blotter. To the left of the blotter was an emerald glass pen tray containing a silver penholder\u2014a stick of green sealing wax, a pencil and two stamps. On the right of the blotter was a movable calendar giving the day of the week, date and month. There was also a little glass jar of shot and standing in it a flamboyant green quill pen. Poirot seemed interested in the pen. He took it out and looked at it but the quill was innocent of ink. It was clearly a decoration\u2014nothing more. The silver pen-holder with the ink-stained nib was the one in use. His eyes strayed to the calendar.\n\n\"Tuesday, November fifth,\" said Japp. \"Yesterday. That's all correct.\"\n\nHe turned to Brett.\n\n\"How long has she been dead?\"\n\n\"She was killed at eleven thirty-three yesterday evening,\" said Brett promptly.\n\nThen he grinned as he saw Japp's surprised face.\n\n\"Sorry, old boy,\" he said. \"Had to do the super doctor of fiction! As a matter of fact eleven is about as near as I can put it\u2014with a margin of about an hour either way.\"\n\n\"Oh, I thought the wristwatch might have stopped\u2014or something.\"\n\n\"It's stopped all right, but it's stopped at a quarter past four.\"\n\n\"And I suppose she couldn't have been killed possibly at a quarter past four.\"\n\n\"You can put that right out of your mind.\"\n\nPoirot had turned back the cover of the blotter.\n\n\"Good idea,\" said Japp. \"But no luck.\"\n\nThe blotter showed an innocent white sheet of blotting paper. Poirot turned over the leaves but they were all the same.\n\nHe turned his attention to the wastepaper basket.\n\nIt contained two or three torn-up letters and circulars. They were only torn once and were easily reconstructed. An appeal for money from some society for assisting ex-servicemen, an invitation to a cocktail party on November 3rd, an appointment with a dressmaker. The circulars were an announcement of a furrier's sale and a catalogue from a department store.\n\n\"Nothing there,\" said Japp.\n\n\"No, it is odd . . .\" said Poirot.\n\n\"You mean they usually leave a letter when it's suicide?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"In fact, one more proof that it isn't suicide.\"\n\nHe moved away.\n\n\"I'll have my men get to work now. We'd better go down and interview this Miss Plenderleith. Coming, Poirot?\"\n\nPoirot still seemed fascinated by the writing bureau and its appointments.\n\nHe left the room, but at the door his eyes went back once more to the flaunting emerald quill pen.\nTwo\n\nAt the foot of the narrow flight of stairs a door gave admission to a large-sized living room\u2014actually the converted stable. In this room, the walls of which were finished in a roughened plaster effect and on which hung etchings and woodcuts, two people were sitting.\n\nOne, in a chair near the fireplace, her hand stretched out to the blaze, was a dark efficient-looking young woman of twenty-seven or eight. The other, an elderly woman of ample proportions who carried a string bag, was panting and talking when the two men entered the room.\n\n\"\u2014and as I said, Miss, such a turn it gave me I nearly dropped down where I stood. And to think that this morning of all mornings\u2014\"\n\nThe other cut her short.\n\n\"That will do, Mrs. Pierce. These gentlemen are police officers, I think.\"\n\n\"Miss Plenderleith?\" asked Japp, advancing.\n\nThe girl nodded.\n\n\"That is my name. This is Mrs. Pierce who comes in to work for us every day.\"\n\nThe irrepressible Mrs. Pierce broke out again.\n\n\"And as I was saying to Miss Plenderleith, to think that this morning of all mornings, my sister's Louisa Maud should have been took with a fit and me the only one handy and as I say flesh and blood is flesh and blood, and I didn't think Mrs. Allen would mind, though I never likes to disappoint my ladies\u2014\"\n\nJapp broke in with some dexterity.\n\n\"Quite so, Mrs. Pierce. Now perhaps you would take Inspector Jameson into the kitchen and give him a brief statement.\"\n\nHaving then got rid of the voluble Mrs. Pierce, who departed with Jameson talking thirteen to the dozen, Japp turned his attention once more to the girl.\n\n\"I am Chief Inspector Japp. Now, Miss Plenderleith, I should like to know all you can tell me about this business.\"\n\n\"Certainly. Where shall I begin?\"\n\nHer self-possession was admirable. There were no signs of grief or shock save for an almost unnatural rigidity of manner.\n\n\"You arrived this morning at what time?\"\n\n\"I think it was just before half past ten. Mrs. Pierce, the old liar, wasn't here, I found\u2014\"\n\n\"Is that a frequent occurrence?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"About twice a week she turns up at twelve\u2014or not at all. She's supposed to come at nine. Actually, as I say, twice a week she either 'comes over queer,' or else some member of her family is overtaken by sickness. All these daily women are like that\u2014fail you now and again. She's not bad as they go.\"\n\n\"You've had her long?\"\n\n\"Just over a month. Our last one pinched things.\"\n\n\"Please go on, Miss Plenderleith.\"\n\n\"I paid off the taxi, carried in my suitcase, looked round for Mrs. P., couldn't see her and went upstairs to my room. I tidied up a bit then I went across to Barbara\u2014Mrs. Allen\u2014and found the door locked. I rattled the handle and knocked but could get no reply. I came downstairs and rang up the police station.\"\n\n\"Pardon!\" Poirot interposed a quick, deft question. \"It did not occur to you to try and break down the door\u2014with the help of one of the chauffeurs in the mews, say?\"\n\nHer eyes turned to him\u2014cool, grey-green eyes. Her glance seemed to sweep over him quickly and appraisingly.\n\n\"No, I don't think I thought of that. If anything was wrong, it seemed to me that the police were the people to send for.\"\n\n\"Then you thought\u2014pardon, mademoiselle\u2014that there was something wrong?\"\n\n\"Naturally.\"\n\n\"Because you could not get a reply to your knocks? But possibly your friend might have taken a sleeping draught or something of that kind\u2014\"\n\n\"She didn't take sleeping draughts.\"\n\nThe reply came sharply.\n\n\"Or she might have gone away and locked her door before going?\"\n\n\"Why should she lock it? In any case she would have left a note for me.\"\n\n\"And she did not\u2014leave a note for you? You are quite sure of that?\"\n\n\"Of course I am sure of it. I should have seen it at once.\"\n\nThe sharpness of her tone was accentuated.\n\nJapp said:\n\n\"You didn't try and look through the keyhole, Miss Plenderleith?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Jane Plenderleith thoughtfully. \"I never thought of that. But I couldn't have seen anything, could I? Because the key would have been in it?\"\n\nHer inquiring gaze, innocent, wide-eyed, met Japp's. Poirot smiled suddenly to himself.\n\n\"You did quite right, of course, Miss Plenderleith,\" said Japp. \"I suppose you'd no reason to believe that your friend was likely to commit suicide?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\"\n\n\"She hadn't seemed worried\u2014or distressed in any way?\"\n\nThere was a pause\u2014an appreciable pause before the girl answered.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did you know she had a pistol?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith nodded.\n\n\"Yes, she had it out in India. She always kept it in a drawer in her room.\"\n\n\"H'm. Got a licence for it?\"\n\n\"I imagine so. I don't know for certain.\"\n\n\"Now, Miss Plenderleith, will you tell me all you can about Mrs. Allen, how long you've known her, where her relations are\u2014everything in fact.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith nodded.\n\n\"I've known Barbara about five years. I met her first travelling abroad\u2014in Egypt to be exact. She was on her way home from India. I'd been at the British School in Athens for a bit and was having a few weeks in Egypt before going home. We were on a Nile cruise together. We made friends, decided we liked each other. I was looking at the time for someone to share a flat or a tiny house with me. Barbara was alone in the world. We thought we'd get on well together.\"\n\n\"And you did get on well together?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"Very well. We each had our own friends\u2014Barbara was more social in her likings\u2014my friends were more of the artistic kind. It probably worked better that way.\"\n\nPoirot nodded. Japp went on:\n\n\"What do you know about Mrs. Allen's family and her life before she met you?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"Not very much really. Her maiden name was Armitage, I believe.\"\n\n\"Her husband?\"\n\n\"I don't fancy that he was anything to write home about. He drank, I think. I gather he died a year or two after the marriage. There was one child, a little girl, which died when it was three years old. Barbara didn't talk much about her husband. I believe she married him in India when she was about seventeen. Then they went off to Borneo or one of the godforsaken spots you send ne'er-do-wells to\u2014but as it was obviously a painful subject I didn't refer to it.\"\n\n\"Do you know if Mrs. Allen was in any financial difficulties?\"\n\n\"No, I'm sure she wasn't.\"\n\n\"Not in debt\u2014anything of that kind?\"\n\n\"Oh, no! I'm sure she wasn't in that kind of a jam.\"\n\n\"Now there's another question I must ask\u2014and I hope you won't be upset about it, Miss Plenderleith. Had Mrs. Allen any particular man friend or men friends?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith answered coolly:\n\n\"Well, she was engaged to be married if that answers your question.\"\n\n\"What is the name of the man she was engaged to?\"\n\n\"Charles Laverton-West. He's M.P. for some place in Hampshire.\"\n\n\"Had she known him long?\"\n\n\"A little over a year.\"\n\n\"And she has been engaged to him\u2014how long?\"\n\n\"Two\u2014no\u2014nearer three months.\"\n\n\"As far as you know there has not been any quarrel?\"\n\nMiss Plenderleith shook her head.\n\n\"No. I should have been surprised if there had been anything of that sort. Barbara wasn't the quarrelling kind.\"\n\n\"How long is it since you last saw Mrs. Allen?\"\n\n\"Friday last, just before I went away for the weekend.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Allen was remaining in town?\"\n\n\"Yes. She was going out with her fianc\u00e9 on the Sunday, I believe.\"\n\n\"And you yourself, where did you spend the weekend?\"\n\n\"At Laidells Hall, Laidells, Essex.\"\n\n\"And the name of the people with whom you were staying?\"\n\n\"Mr. and Mrs. Bentinck.\"\n\n\"You only left them this morning?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You must have left very early?\"\n\n\"Mr. Bentinck motored me up. He starts early because he has to get to the city by ten.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\nJapp nodded comprehendingly. Miss Plenderleith's replies had all been crisp and convincing.\n\nPoirot in his turn put a question.\n\n\"What is your own opinion of Mr. Laverton-West?\"\n\nThe girl shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"Does that matter?\"\n\n\"No, it does not matter, perhaps, but I should like to have your opinion.\"\n\n\"I don't know that I've thought about him one way or the other. He's young\u2014not more than thirty-one or two\u2014ambitious\u2014a good public speaker\u2014means to get on in the world.\"\n\n\"That is on the credit side\u2014and on the debit?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Miss Plenderleith considered for a moment or two. \"In my opinion he's commonplace\u2014his ideas are not particularly original\u2014and he's slightly pompous.\"\n\n\"Those are not very serious faults, mademoiselle,\" said Poirot, smiling.\n\n\"Don't you think so?\"\n\nHer tone was slightly ironic.\n\n\"They might be to you.\"\n\nHe was watching her, saw her look a little disconcerted. He pursued his advantage.\n\n\"But to Mrs. Allen\u2014no, she would not notice them.\"\n\n\"You're perfectly right. Barbara thought he was wonderful\u2014took him entirely at his own valuation.\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"You were fond of your friend?\"\n\nHe saw the hand clench on her knee, the tightening of the line of the jaw, yet the answer came in a matter-of-fact voice free from emotion.\n\n\"You are quite right. I was.\"\n\nJapp said:\n\n\"Just one other thing, Miss Plenderleith. You and she didn't have a quarrel? There was no upset between you?\"\n\n\"None whatever.\"\n\n\"Not over this engagement business?\"\n\n\"Certainly not. I was glad she was able to be so happy about it.\"\n\nThere was a momentary pause, then Japp said:\n\n\"As far as you know, did Mrs. Allen have any enemies?\"\n\nThis time there was a definite interval before Jane Plenderleith replied. When she did so, her tone had altered very slightly.\n\n\"I don't know quite what you mean by enemies?\"\n\n\"Anyone, for instance, who would profit by her death?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, that would be ridiculous. She had a very small income anyway.\"\n\n\"And who inherits that income?\"\n\nJame Plenderleith's voice sounded mildly surprised as she said:\n\n\"Do you know, I really don't know. I shouldn't be surprised if I did. That is, if she ever made a will.\"\n\n\"And no enemies in any other sense?\" Japp slid off to another aspect quickly. \"People with a grudge against her?\"\n\n\"I don't think anyone had a grudge against her. She was a very gentle creature, always anxious to please. She had a really sweet, lovable nature.\"\n\nFor the first time that hard, matter-of-fact voice broke a little. Poirot nodded gently.\n\nJapp said:\n\n\"So it amounts to this\u2014Mrs. Allen has been in good spirits lately, she wasn't in any financial difficulty, she was engaged to be married and was happy in her engagement. There was nothing in the world to make her commit suicide. That's right, isn't it?\"\n\nThere was a momentary silence before Jane said:\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nJapp rose.\n\n\"Excuse me, I must have a word with Inspector Jameson.\"\n\nHe left the room.\n\nHercule Poirot remained t\u00eate \u00e0 t\u00eate with Jane Plenderleith.\nThree\n\nFor a few minutes there was silence.\n\nJane Plenderleith shot a swift appraising glance at the little man, but after that she stared in front of her and did not speak. Yet a consciousness of his presence showed itself in a certain nervous tension. Her body was still but not relaxed. When at last Poirot did break the silence the mere sound of his voice seemed to give her a certain relief. In an agreeable everyday voice he asked a question.\n\n\"When did you light the fire, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"The fire?\" Her voice sounded vague and rather absentminded. \"Oh, as soon as I arrived this morning.\"\n\n\"Before you went upstairs or afterwards?\"\n\n\"Before.\"\n\n\"I see. Yes, naturally . . . And it was already laid\u2014or did you have to lay it?\"\n\n\"It was laid. I only had to put a match to it.\"\n\nThere was a slight impatience in her voice. Clearly she suspected him of making conversation. Possibly that was what he was doing. At any rate he went on in quiet conversational tones.\n\n\"But your friend\u2014in her room I noticed there was a gas fire only?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith answered mechanically.\n\n\"This is the only coal fire we have\u2014the others are all gas fires.\"\n\n\"And you cook with gas, too?\"\n\n\"I think everyone does nowadays.\"\n\n\"True. It is much labour saving.\"\n\nThe little interchange died down. Jane Plenderleith tapped on the ground with her shoe. Then she said abruptly:\n\n\"That man\u2014Chief Inspector Japp\u2014is he considered clever?\"\n\n\"He is very sound. Yes, he is well thought of. He works hard and painstakingly and very little escapes him.\"\n\n\"I wonder\u2014\" muttered the girl.\n\nPoirot watched her. His eyes looked very green in the firelight. He asked quietly:\n\n\"It was a great shock to you, your friend's death?\"\n\n\"Terrible.\"\n\nShe spoke with abrupt sincerity.\n\n\"You did not expect it\u2014no?\"\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\n\"So that it seemed to you at first, perhaps, that it was impossible\u2014that it could not be?\"\n\nThe quiet sympathy of his tone seemed to break down Jane Plenderleith's defences. She replied eagerly, naturally, without stiffness.\n\n\"That's just it. Even if Barbara did kill herself, I can't imagine her killing herself that way.\"\n\n\"Yet she had a pistol?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith made an impatient gesture.\n\n\"Yes, but that pistol was a\u2014oh! a hang over. She'd been in out-of-the-way places. She kept it out of habit\u2014not with any other idea. I'm sure of that.\"\n\n\"Ah! and why are you sure of that?\"\n\n\"Oh, because of the things she said.\"\n\n\"Such as\u2014?\"\n\nHis voice was very gentle and friendly. It led her on subtly.\n\n\"Well, for instance, we were discussing suicide once and she said much the easiest way would be to turn the gas on and stuff up all the cracks and just go to bed. I said I thought that would be impossible\u2014to lie there waiting. I said I'd far rather shoot myself. And she said no, she could never shoot herself. She'd be too frightened in case it didn't come off and anyway she said she'd hate the bang.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Poirot. \"As you say, it is odd . . . Because, as you have just told me, there was a gas fire in her room.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith looked at him, slightly startled.\n\n\"Yes, there was . . . I can't understand\u2014no, I can't understand why she didn't do it that way.\"\n\nPoirot shook his head.\n\n\"Yes, it seems\u2014odd\u2014not natural somehow.\"\n\n\"The whole thing doesn't seem natural. I still can't believe she killed herself. I suppose it must be suicide?\"\n\n\"Well, there is one other possibility.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\nPoirot looked straight at her.\n\n\"It might be\u2014murder.\"\n\n\"Oh, no?\" Jane Plenderleith shrank back. \"Oh no! What a horrible suggestion.\"\n\n\"Horrible, perhaps, but does it strike you as an impossible one?\"\n\n\"But the door was locked on the inside. So was the window.\"\n\n\"The door was locked\u2014yes. But there is nothing to show if it were locked from the inside or the outside. You see, the key was missing.\"\n\n\"But then\u2014if it is missing . . .\" She took a minute or two. \"Then it must have been locked from the outside. Otherwise it would be somewhere in the room.\"\n\n\"Ah, but it may be. The room has not been thoroughly searched yet, remember. Or it may have been thrown out of the window and somebody may have picked it up.\"\n\n\"Murder!\" said Jane Plenderleith. She turned over the possibility, her dark clever face eager on the scent. \"I believe you're right.\"\n\n\"But if it were murder there would have been a motive. Do you know of a motive, mademoiselle?\"\n\nSlowly she shook her head. And yet, in spite of the denial, Poirot again got the impression that Jane Plenderleith was deliberately keeping something back. The door opened and Japp came in.\n\nPoirot rose.\n\n\"I have been suggesting to Miss Plenderleith,\" he said, \"that her friend's death was not suicide.\"\n\nJapp looked momentarily put out. He cast a glance of reproach at Poirot.\n\n\"It's a bit early to say anything definite,\" he remarked. \"We've always got to take all possibilities into account, you understand. That's all there is to it at the moment.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith replied quietly.\n\n\"I see.\"\n\nJapp came towards her.\n\n\"Now then, Miss Plenderleith, have you ever seen this before?\"\n\nOn the palm of his hand he held out a small oval of dark blue enamel.\n\nJane Plenderleith shook her head.\n\n\"No, never.\"\n\n\"It's not yours nor Mrs. Allen's?\"\n\n\"No. It's not the kind of thing usually worn by our sex, is it?\"\n\n\"Oh! so you recognize it.\"\n\n\"Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? That's half of a man's cuff link.\"\nFour\n\n\"That young woman's too cocky by half,\" Japp complained.\n\nThe two men were once more in Mrs. Allen's bedroom. The body had been photographed and removed and the fingerprint man had done his work and departed.\n\n\"It would be unadvisable to treat her as a fool,\" agreed Poirot. \"She most emphatically is not a fool. She is, in fact, a particularly clever and competent young woman.\"\n\n\"Think she did it?\" asked Japp with a momentary ray of hope. \"She might have, you know. We'll have to get her alibi looked into. Some quarrel over this young man\u2014this budding M.P. She's rather too scathing about him, I think! Sounds fishy. Rather as though she were sweet on him herself and he'd turned her down. She's the kind that would bump anyone off if she felt like it, and keep her head while she was doing it, too. Yes, we'll have to look into that alibi. She had it very pat and after all Essex isn't very far away. Plenty of trains. Or a fast car. It's worthwhile finding out if she went to bed with a headache for instance last night.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" agreed Poirot.\n\n\"In any case,\" continued Japp, \"she's holding out on us. Eh? Didn't you feel that too? That young woman knows something.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully.\n\n\"Yes, that could be clearly seen.\"\n\n\"That's always a difficulty in these cases,\" Japp complained. \"People will hold their tongues\u2014sometimes out of the most honourable motives.\"\n\n\"For which one can hardly blame them, my friend.\"\n\n\"No, but it makes it much harder for us,\" Japp grumbled.\n\n\"It merely displays to its full advantage your ingenuity,\" Poirot consoled him. \"What about fingerprints, by the way?\"\n\n\"Well, it's murder all right. No prints whatever on the pistol. Wiped clean before being placed in her hand. Even if she managed to wind her arm round her head in some marvellous acrobatic fashion she could hardly fire off a pistol without hanging on to it and she couldn't wipe it after she was dead.\"\n\n\"No, no, an outside agency is clearly indicated.\"\n\n\"Otherwise the prints are disappointing. None on the door-handle. None on the window. Suggestive, eh? Plenty of Mrs. Allen's all over the place.\"\n\n\"Did Jameson get anything?\"\n\n\"Out of the daily woman? No. She talked a lot but she didn't really know much. Confirmed the fact that Allen and Plenderleith were on good terms. I've sent Jameson out to make inquiries in the mews. We'll have to have a word with Mr. Laverton-West too. Find out where he was and what he was doing last night. In the meantime we'll have a look through her papers.\"\n\nHe set to without more ado. Occasionally he grunted and tossed something over to Poirot. The search did not take long. There were not many papers in the desk and what there were were neatly arranged and docketed.\n\nFinally Japp leant back and uttered a sigh.\n\n\"Not very much, is there?\"\n\n\"As you say.\"\n\n\"Most of it quite straightforward\u2014receipted bills, a few bills as yet unpaid\u2014nothing particularly outstanding. Social stuff\u2014invitations. Notes from friends. These\u2014\" he laid his hand on a pile of seven or eight letters\u2014\"and her cheque book and passbook. Anything strike you there?\"\n\n\"Yes, she was overdrawn.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"Is it an examination that you put me through? But yes, I noticed what you are thinking of. Two hundred pounds drawn to self three months ago\u2014and two hundred pounds drawn out yesterday\u2014\"\n\n\"And nothing on the counterfoil of the cheque book. No other cheques to self except small sums\u2014fifteen pounds the highest. And I'll tell you this\u2014there's no such sum of money in the house. Four pounds ten in a handbag and an odd shilling or two in another bag. That's pretty clear, I think.\"\n\n\"Meaning that she paid that sum away yesterday.\"\n\n\"Yes. Now who did she pay it to?\"\n\nThe door opened and Inspector Jameson entered.\n\n\"Well, Jameson, get anything?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, several things. To begin with, nobody actually heard the shot. Two or three women say they did because they want to think they did\u2014but that's all there is to it. With all those fireworks going off there isn't a dog's chance.\"\n\nJapp grunted.\n\n\"Don't suppose there is. Go on.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Allen was at home most of yesterday afternoon and evening. Came in about five o'clock. Then she went out again about six but only to the postbox at the end of the mews. At about nine-thirty a car drove up\u2014Standard Swallow saloon\u2014and a man got out. Description about forty-five, well set up military-looking gent, dark blue overcoat, bowler hat, toothbrush moustache. James Hogg, chauffeur from No. 18 says he's seen him calling on Mrs. Allen before.\"\n\n\"Forty-five,\" said Japp. \"Can't very well be Laverton-West.\"\n\n\"This man, whoever he was, stayed here for just under an hour. Left at about ten-twenty. Stopped in the doorway to speak to Mrs. Allen. Small boy, Frederick Hogg, was hanging about quite near and heard what he said.\"\n\n\"And what did he say?\"\n\n\" 'Well, think it over and let me know.' And then she said something and he answered: 'All right. So long.' After that he got in his car and drove away.\"\n\n\"That was at ten-twenty,\" said Poirot thoughtfully.\n\nJapp rubbed his nose.\n\n\"Then at ten-twenty Mrs. Allen was still alive,\" he said. \"What next?\"\n\n\"Nothing more, sir, as far as I can learn. The chauffeur at No. 22 got in at half-past ten and he'd promised his kids to let off some fireworks for them. They'd been waiting for him\u2014and all the other kids in the mews too. He let 'em off and everybody around about was busy watching them. After that everyone went to bed.\"\n\n\"And nobody else was seen to enter No. 14?\"\n\n\"No\u2014but that's not to say they didn't. Nobody would have noticed.\"\n\n\"H'm,\" said Japp. \"That's true. Well, we'll have to get hold of this 'military gentleman with the toothbrush moustache.' It's pretty clear that he was the last person to see her alive. I wonder who he was?\"\n\n\"Miss Plenderleith might tell us,\" suggested Poirot.\n\n\"She might,\" said Japp gloomily. \"On the other hand she might not. I've no doubt she could tell us a good deal if she liked. What about you, Poirot, old boy? You were alone with her for a bit. Didn't you trot out that Father Confessor manner of yours that sometimes makes such a hit?\"\n\nPoirot spread out his hands.\n\n\"Alas, we talked only of gas fires.\"\n\n\"Gas fires\u2014gas fires.\" Japp sounded disgusted. \"What's the matter with you, old cock? Ever since you've been here the only things you've taken an interest in are quill pens and wastepaper baskets. Oh, yes, I saw you having a quiet look into the one downstairs. Anything in it?\"\n\nPoirot sighed.\n\n\"A catalogue of bulbs and an old magazine.\"\n\n\"What's the idea, anyway? If anyone wants to throw away an incriminating document or whatever it is you have in mind they're not likely just to pitch it into a wastepaper basket.\"\n\n\"That is very true what you say there. Only something quite unimportant would be thrown away like that.\"\n\nPoirot spoke meekly. Nevertheless Japp looked at him suspiciously.\n\n\"Well,\" he said. \"I know what I'm going to do next. What about you?\"\n\n\"Eh bien,\" said Poirot. \"I shall complete my search for the unimportant. There is still the dustbin.\"\n\nHe skipped nimbly out of the room. Japp looked after him with an air of disgust.\n\n\"Potty,\" he said. \"Absolutely potty.\"\n\nInspector Jameson preserved a respectful silence. His face said with British superiority: \"Foreigners!\"\n\nAloud he said:\n\n\"So that's Mr. Hercule Poirot! I've heard of him.\"\n\n\"Old friend of mine,\" explained Japp. \"Not half as balmy as he looks, mind you. All the same he's getting on now.\"\n\n\"Gone a bit gaga as they say, sir,\" suggested Inspector Jameson. \"Ah well, age will tell.\"\n\n\"All the same,\" said Japp, \"I wish I knew what he was up to.\"\n\nHe walked over to the writing table and stared uneasily at an emerald green quill pen.\nFive\n\nJapp was just engaging his third chauffeur's wife in conversation when Poirot, walking noiselessly as a cat, suddenly appeared at his elbow.\n\n\"Whew, you made me jump,\" said Japp. \"Got anything?\"\n\n\"Not what I was looking for.\"\n\nJapp turned back to Mrs. James Hogg.\n\n\"And you say you've seen this gentleman before?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes sir. And my husband too. We knew him at once.\"\n\n\"Now look here, Mrs. Hogg, you're a shrewd woman, I can see. I've no doubt that you know all about everyone in the mews. And you're a woman of judgment\u2014unusually good judgment, I can tell that\u2014\" Unblushingly he repeated this remark for the third time. Mrs. Hogg bridled slightly and assumed an expression of superhuman intelligence. \"Give me a line on those two young women\u2014Mrs. Allen and Miss Plenderleith. What were they like? Gay? Lots of parties? That sort of thing?\"\n\n\"Oh, no sir, nothing of the kind. They went out a good bit\u2014Mrs. Allen especially\u2014but they're class, if you know what I mean. Not like some as I could name down the other end. I'm sure the way that Mrs. Stevens goes on\u2014if she is a Mrs. at all which I doubt\u2014well I shouldn't like to tell you what goes on there\u2014I. . . .\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" said Japp, dexterously stopping the flow. \"Now that's very important what you've told me. Mrs. Allen and Miss Plenderleith were well liked, then?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, sir, very nice ladies, both of them\u2014especially Mrs. Allen. Always spoke a nice word to the children, she did. Lost her own little girl, I believe, poor dear. Ah well, I've buried three myself. And what I say is . . .\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, very sad. And Miss Plenderleith?\"\n\n\"Well, of course she was a nice lady too, but much more abrupt if you know what I mean. Just go by with a nod, she would, and not stop to pass the time of day. But I've nothing against her\u2014nothing at all.\"\n\n\"She and Mrs. Allen got on well together?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes sir. No quarrelling\u2014nothing like that. Very happy and contented they were\u2014I'm sure Mrs. Pierce will bear me out.\"\n\n\"Yes, we've talked to her. Do you know Mrs. Allen's fianc\u00e9 by sight?\"\n\n\"The gentleman she's going to marry? Oh, yes. He's been here quite a bit off and on. Member of Parliament, they do say.\"\n\n\"It wasn't he who came last night?\"\n\n\"No, sir, it was not.\" Mrs. Hogg drew herself up. A note of excitement disguised beneath intense primness came into her voice. \"And if you ask me, sir, what you are thinking is all wrong. Mrs. Allen wasn't that kind of lady, I'm sure. It's true there was no one in the house, but I do not believe anything of the kind\u2014I said so to Hogg only this morning. 'No, Hogg,' I said, 'Mrs. Allen was a lady\u2014a real lady\u2014so don't go suggesting things'\u2014knowing what a man's mind is, if you'll excuse my mentioning it. Always coarse in their ideas.\"\n\nPassing this insult by, Japp proceeded:\n\n\"You saw him arrive and you saw him leave\u2014that's so, isn't it?\"\n\n\"That's so, sir.\"\n\n\"And you didn't hear anything else? Any sounds of a quarrel?\"\n\n\"No, sir, nor likely to. Not, that is to say, that such things couldn't be heard\u2014because the contrary to that is well-known\u2014and down the other end the way Mrs. Stevens goes for that poor frightened maid of hers is common talk\u2014and one and all we've advised her not to stand it, but there, the wages is good\u2014temper of the devil she may have but pays for it\u2014thirty shillings a week. . . .\"\n\nJapp said quickly:\n\n\"But you didn't hear anything of the kind at No. 14?\"\n\n\"No, sir. Nor likely to with fireworks popping off here, there and everywhere and my Eddie with his eyebrows singed off as near as nothing.\"\n\n\"This man left at ten-twenty\u2014that's right, is it?\"\n\n\"It might be, sir. I couldn't say myself. But Hogg says so and he's a very reliable, steady man.\"\n\n\"You actually saw him leave. Did you hear what he said?\"\n\n\"No, sir. I wasn't near enough for that. Just saw him from my windows, standing in the doorway talking to Mrs. Allen.\"\n\n\"See her too?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, she was standing just inside the doorway.\"\n\n\"Notice what she was wearing?\"\n\n\"Now really, sir, I couldn't say. Not noticing particularly as it were.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"You did not even notice if she was wearing day dress or evening dress?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I can't say I did.\"\n\nPoirot looked thoughtfully up at the window above and then across to No. 14. He smiled and for a moment his eye caught Japp's.\n\n\"And the gentleman?\"\n\n\"He was in a dark-blue overcoat and a bowler hat. Very smart and well set up.\"\n\nJapp asked a few more questions and then proceeded to his next interview. This was with Master Frederick Hogg, an impish-faced, bright-eyed lad, considerably swollen with self-importance.\n\n\"Yes, sir. I heard them talking. 'Think it over and let me know,' the gent said. Pleasant like, you know. And then she said something and he answered, 'All right. So long.' And he got into the car\u2014I was holding the door open but he didn't give me nothing,\" said Master Hogg with a slight tinge of depression in his tone. \"And he drove away.\"\n\n\"You didn't hear what Mrs. Allen said?\"\n\n\"No, sir, can't say I did.\"\n\n\"Can you tell me what she was wearing? What colour, for instance?\"\n\n\"Couldn't say, sir. You see, I didn't really see her. She must have been round behind the door.\"\n\n\"Just so,\" said Japp. \"Now look here, my boy, I want you to think and answer my next question very carefully. If you don't know and can't remember, say so. Is that clear?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nMaster Hogg looked at him eagerly.\n\n\"Which of 'em closed the door, Mrs. Allen or the gentleman?\"\n\n\"The front door?\"\n\n\"The front door, naturally.\"\n\nThe child reflected. His eyes screwed themselves up in an effort of remembrance.\n\n\"Think the lady probably did\u2014No, she didn't. He did. Pulled it to with a bit of a bang and jumped into the car quick. Looked as though he had a date somewhere.\"\n\n\"Right. Well, young man, you seem a bright kind of shaver. Here's sixpence for you.\"\n\nDismissing Master Hogg, Japp turned to his friend. Slowly with one accord they nodded.\n\n\"Could be!\" said Japp.\n\n\"There are possibilities,\" agreed Poirot.\n\nHis eyes shone with a green light. They looked like a cat's.\nSix\n\nOn reentering the sitting room of No. 14, Japp wasted no time in beating about the bush. He came straight to the point.\n\n\"Now look here, Miss Plenderleith, don't you think it's better to spill the beans here and now. It's going to come to that in the end.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith raised her eyebrows. She was standing by the mantelpiece, gently warming one foot at the fire.\n\n\"I really don't know what you mean.\"\n\n\"Is that quite true, Miss Plenderleith?\"\n\nShe shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"I've answered all your questions. I don't see what more I can do.\"\n\n\"Well, it's my opinion you could do a lot more\u2014if you chose.\"\n\n\"That's only an opinion, though, isn't it, Chief Inspector?\"\n\nJapp grew rather red in the face.\n\n\"I think,\" said Poirot, \"that mademoiselle would appreciate better the reason for your questions if you told her just how the case stands.\"\n\n\"That's very simple. Now then, Miss Plenderleith, the facts are as follows. Your friend was found shot through the head with a pistol in her hand and the door and the window fastened. That looked like a plain case of suicide. But it wasn't suicide. The medical evidence alone proves that.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nAll her ironic coolness had disappeared. She leaned forward\u2014intent\u2014watching his face.\n\n\"The pistol was in her hand\u2014but the fingers weren't grasping it. Moreover there were no fingerprints at all on the pistol. And the angle of the wound makes it impossible that the wound should have been self-inflicted. Then again, she left no letter\u2014rather an unusual thing for a suicide. And though the door was locked the key has not been found.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith turned slowly and sat down in a chair facing them.\n\n\"So that's it!\" she said. \"All along I've felt it was impossible that she should have killed herself! I was right! She didn't kill herself. Someone else killed her.\"\n\nFor a moment or two she remained lost in thought. Then she raised her head brusquely.\n\n\"Ask me any questions you like,\" she said. \"I will answer them to the best of my ability.\"\n\nJapp began:\n\n\"Last night Mrs. Allen had a visitor. He is described as a man of forty-five, military bearing, toothbrush moustache, smartly dressed and driving a Standard Swallow saloon car. Do you know who that is?\"\n\n\"I can't be sure, of course, but it sounds like Major Eustace.\"\n\n\"Who is Major Eustace? Tell me all you can about him?\"\n\n\"He was a man Barbara had known abroad\u2014in India. He turned up about a year ago, and we've seen him on and off since.\"\n\n\"He was a friend of Mrs. Allen's?\"\n\n\"He behaved like one,\" said Jane dryly.\n\n\"What was her attitude to him?\"\n\n\"I don't think she really liked him\u2014in fact, I'm sure she didn't.\"\n\n\"But she treated him with outward friendliness?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Did she ever seem\u2014think carefully, Miss Plenderleith\u2014afraid of him?\"\n\nJane Plenderleith considered this thoughtfully for a minute or two. Then she said:\n\n\"Yes\u2014I think she was. She was always nervous when he was about.\"\n\n\"Did he and Mr. Laverton-West meet at all?\"\n\n\"Only once, I think. They didn't take to each other much. That is to say, Major Eustace made himself as agreeable as he could to Charles, but Charles wasn't having any. Charles has got a very good nose for anybody who isn't well\u2014quite\u2014quite.\"\n\n\"And Major Eustace was not\u2014what you call\u2014quite\u2014quite?\" asked Poirot.\n\nThe girl said dryly:\n\n\"No, he wasn't. Bit hairy at the heel. Definitely not out of the top drawer.\"\n\n\"Alas\u2014I do not know those two expressions. You mean to say he was not the pukka sahib?\"\n\nA fleeting smile passed across Jane Plenderleith's face, but she replied gravely, \"No.\"\n\n\"Would it come as a great surprise to you, Miss Plenderleith, if I suggested that this man was blackmailing Mrs. Allen?\"\n\nJapp sat forward to observe the result of his suggestion.\n\nHe was well satisfied. The girl started forward, the colour rose in her cheeks, she brought down her hand sharply on the arm of her chair.\n\n\"So that was it! What a fool I was not to have guessed. Of course!\"\n\n\"You think the suggestion feasible, mademoiselle?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"I was a fool not to have thought of it! Barbara's borrowed small sums off me several times during the last six months. And I've seen her sitting poring over her passbook. I knew she was living well within her income, so I didn't bother, but, of course, if she was paying out sums of money\u2014\"\n\n\"And it would accord with her general demeanour\u2014yes?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"Absolutely. She was nervous. Quite jumpy sometimes. Altogether different from what she used to be.\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"Excuse me, but that is not just what you told us before.\"\n\n\"That was different,\" Jane Plenderleith waved an impatient hand. \"She wasn't depressed. I mean she wasn't feeling suicidal or anything like that. But blackmail\u2014yes. I wish she'd told me. I'd have sent him to the devil.\"\n\n\"But he might have gone\u2014not to the devil, but to Mr. Charles Laverton-West?\" observed Poirot.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane Plenderleith slowly. \"Yes . . . that's true. . . .\"\n\n\"You've no idea of what this man's hold over her may have been?\" asked Japp.\n\nThe girl shook her head.\n\n\"I haven't the faintest idea. I can't believe, knowing Barbara, that it could have been anything really serious. On the other hand\u2014\" she paused, then went on. \"What I mean is, Barbara was a bit of a simpleton in some ways. She'd be very easily frightened. In fact, she was the kind of girl who would be a positive gift to a blackmailer! The nasty brute!\"\n\nShe snapped out the last three words with real venom.\n\n\"Unfortunately,\" said Poirot, \"the crime seems to have taken place the wrong way round. It is the victim who should kill the blackmailer, not the blackmailer his victim.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith frowned a little.\n\n\"No\u2014that is true\u2014but I can imagine circumstances\u2014\"\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"Supposing Barbara got desperate. She may have threatened him with that silly little pistol of hers. He tries to wrench it away from her and in the struggle he fires it and kills her. Then he's horrified at what he's done and tries to pretend it was suicide.\"\n\n\"Might be,\" said Japp. \"But there's a difficulty.\"\n\nShe looked at him inquiringly.\n\n\"Major Eustace (if it was him) left here last night at ten-twenty and said goodbye to Mrs. Allen on the doorstep.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" the girl's face fell. \"I see.\" She paused a minute or two. \"But he might have come back later,\" she said slowly.\n\n\"Yes, that is possible,\" said Poirot.\n\nJapp continued:\n\n\"Tell me, Miss Plenderleith, where was Mrs. Allen in the habit of receiving guests, here or in the room upstairs?\"\n\n\"Both. But this room was used for more communal parties or for my own special friends. You see, the arrangement was that Barbara had the big bedroom and used it as a sitting room as well, and I had the little bedroom and used this room.\"\n\n\"If Major Eustace came by appointment last night, in which room do you think Mrs. Allen would have received him?\"\n\n\"I think she would probably bring him in here.\" The girl sounded a little doubtful. \"It would be less intimate. On the other hand, if she wanted to write a cheque or anything of that kind, she would probably take him upstairs. There are no writing materials down here.\"\n\nJapp shook his head.\n\n\"There was no question of a cheque. Mrs. Allen drew out two hundred pounds in cash yesterday. And so far we've not been able to find any trace of it in the house.\"\n\n\"And she gave it to that brute? Oh, poor Barbara! Poor, poor Barbara!\"\n\nPoirot coughed.\n\n\"Unless, as you suggest, it was more or less an accident, it still seems a remarkable fact that he should kill an apparently regular source of income.\"\n\n\"Accident? It wasn't an accident. He lost his temper and saw red and shot her.\"\n\n\"That is how you think it happened?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She added vehemently, \"It was murder\u2014murder!\"\n\nPoirot said gravely:\n\n\"I will not say that you are wrong, mademoiselle.\"\n\nJapp said:\n\n\"What cigarettes did Mrs. Allen smoke?\"\n\n\"Gaspers. There are some in that box.\"\n\nJapp opened the box, took out a cigarette and nodded. He slipped the cigarette into his pocket.\n\n\"And you, mademoiselle?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"The same.\"\n\n\"You do not smoke Turkish?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Nor Mrs. Allen?\"\n\n\"No. She didn't like them.\"\n\nPoirot asked:\n\n\"And Mr. Laverton-West. What did he smoke?\"\n\nShe stared hard at him.\n\n\"Charles? What does it matter what he smoked? You're not going to pretend that he killed her?\"\n\nPoirot shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"A man has killed the woman he loved before now, mademoiselle.\"\n\nJane shook her head impatiently.\n\n\"Charles wouldn't kill anybody. He's a very careful man.\"\n\n\"All the same, mademoiselle, it is the careful men who commit the cleverest murders.\"\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n\"But not for the motive you have just advanced, M. Poirot.\"\n\nHe bowed his head.\n\n\"No, that is true.\"\n\nJapp rose.\n\n\"Well, I don't think that there's much more I can do here. I'd like to have one more look round.\"\n\n\"In case that money should be tucked away somewhere? Certainly. Look anywhere you like. And in my room too\u2014although it isn't likely Barbara would hide it there.\"\n\nJapp's search was quick but efficient. The living room had given up all its secrets in a very few minutes. Then he went upstairs. Jane Plenderleith sat on the arm of a chair, smoking a cigarette and frowning at the fire. Poirot watched her.\n\nAfter some minutes, he said quietly:\n\n\"Do you know if Mr. Laverton-West is in London at present?\"\n\n\"I don't know at all. I rather fancy he's in Hampshire with his people. I suppose I ought to have wired him. How dreadful. I forgot.\"\n\n\"It is not easy to remember everything, mademoiselle, when a catastrophe occurs. And after all, the bad news, it will keep. One hears it only too soon.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's true,\" the girl said absently.\n\nJapp's footsteps were heard descending the stairs. Jane went out to meet him.\n\n\"Well?\"\n\nJapp shook his head.\n\n\"Nothing helpful, I'm afraid, Miss Plenderleith. I've been over the whole house now. Oh, I suppose I'd better just have a look in this cupboard under the stairs.\"\n\nHe caught hold of the handle as he spoke, and pulled.\n\nJane Plenderleith said:\n\n\"It's locked.\"\n\nSomething in her voice made both men look at her sharply.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Japp pleasantly. \"I can see it's locked. Perhaps you'll get the key.\"\n\nThe girl was standing as though carved in stone.\n\n\"I\u2014I'm not sure where it is.\"\n\nJapp shot a quick glance at her. His voice continued resolutely pleasant and offhand.\n\n\"Dear me, that's too bad. Don't want to splinter the wood, opening it by force. I'll send Jameson out to get an assortment of keys.\"\n\nShe moved forward stiffly.\n\n\"Oh,\" she said. \"One minute. It might be\u2014\"\n\nShe went back into the living room and reappeared a moment later holding a fair-sized key in her hand.\n\n\"We keep it locked,\" she explained, \"because one's umbrellas and things have a habit of getting pinched.\"\n\n\"Very wise precaution,\" said Japp, cheerfully accepting the key.\n\nHe turned it in the lock and threw the door open. It was dark inside the cupboard. Japp took out his pocket flashlight and let it play round the inside.\n\nPoirot felt the girl at his side stiffen and stop breathing for a second. His eyes followed the sweep of Japp's torch.\n\nThere was not very much in the cupboard. Three umbrellas\u2014one broken, four walking sticks, a set of golf clubs, two tennis racquets, a neatly-folded rug and several sofa cushions in various stages of dilapidation. On the top of these last reposed a small, smart-looking attach\u00e9 case.\n\nAs Japp stretched out a hand towards it, Jane Plenderleith said quickly:\n\n\"That's mine. I\u2014it came back with me this morning. So there can't be anything there.\"\n\n\"Just as well to make quite sure,\" said Japp, his cheery friendliness increasing slightly.\n\nThe case was unlocked. Inside it was fitted with shagreen brushes and toilet bottles. There were two magazines in it but nothing else.\n\nJapp examined the whole outfit with meticulous attention. When at last he shut the lid and began a cursory examination of the cushions, the girl gave an audible sigh of relief.\n\nThere was nothing else in the cupboard beyond what was plainly to be seen. Japp's examination was soon finished.\n\nHe relocked the door and handed the key to Jane Plenderleith.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"that concludes matters. Can you give me Mr. Laverton-West's address?\"\n\n\"Farlescombe Hall, Little Ledbury, Hampshire.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Miss Plenderleith. That's all for the present. I may be round again later. By the way, mum's the word. Leave it at suicide as far as the general public's concerned.\"\n\n\"Of course, I quite understand.\"\n\nShe shook hands with them both.\n\nAs they walked away down the mews, Japp exploded:\n\n\"What the\u2014the hell was there in that cupboard? There was something.\"\n\n\"Yes, there was something.\"\n\n\"And I'll bet ten to one it was something to do with the attach\u00e9 case! But like the double-dyed mutt I must be, I couldn't find anything. Looked in all the bottles\u2014felt the lining\u2014what the devil could it be?\"\n\nPoirot shook his head thoughtfully.\n\n\"That girl's in it somehow,\" Japp went on. \"Brought that case back this morning? Not on your life, she didn't! Notice that there were two magazines in it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, one of them was for last July!\"\nSeven\n\nI\n\nIt was the following day when Japp walked into Poirot's flat, flung his hat on the table in deep disgust and dropped into a chair.\n\n\"Well,\" he growled. \"She's out of it!\"\n\n\"Who is out of it?\"\n\n\"Plenderleith. Was playing bridge up to midnight. Host, hostess, naval commander guest and two servants can all swear to that. No doubt about it, we've got to give up any idea of her being concerned in the business. All the same, I'd like to know why she went all hot and bothered about that little attach\u00e9 case under the stairs. That's something in your line, Poirot. You like solving the kind of triviality that leads nowhere. The Mystery of the Small Attach\u00e9 Case. Sounds quite promising!\"\n\n\"I will give you yet another suggestion for a title. The Mystery of the Smell of Cigarette Smoke.\"\n\n\"A bit clumsy for a title. Smell\u2014eh? Was that why you were sniffing so when we first examined the body? I saw you\u2014and heard you! Sniff\u2014sniff\u2014sniff. Thought you had a cold in your head.\"\n\n\"You were entirely in error.\"\n\nJapp sighed.\n\n\"I always thought it was the little grey cells of the brain. Don't tell me the cells of your nose are equally superior to anyone else's.\"\n\n\"No, no, calm yourself.\"\n\n\"I didn't smell any cigarette smoke,\" went on Japp suspiciously.\n\n\"No more did I, my friend.\"\n\nJapp looked at him doubtfully. Then he extracted a cigarette from his pocket.\n\n\"That's the kind Mrs. Allen smoked\u2014gaspers. Six of those stubs were hers. The other three were Turkish.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Your wonderful nose knew that without looking at them, I suppose!\"\n\n\"I assure you my nose does not enter into the matter. My nose registered nothing.\"\n\n\"But the brain cells registered a lot?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014there were certain indications\u2014do you not think so?\"\n\nJapp looked at him sideways.\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"Eh bien, there was very definitely something missing from the room. Also something added, I think . . . And then, on the writing bureau . . .\"\n\n\"I knew it! We're coming to that damned quill pen!\"\n\n\"Du tout. The quill pen plays a purely negative r\u00f4le.\"\n\nJapp retreated to safer ground.\n\n\"I've got Charles Laverton-West coming to see me at Scotland Yard in half an hour. I thought you might like to be there.\"\n\n\"I should very much.\"\n\n\"And you'll be glad to hear we've tracked down Major Eustace. Got a service flat in the Cromwell Road.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\"\n\n\"And we've got a little to go on there. Not at all a nice person, Major Eustace. After I've seen Laverton-West, we'll go and see him. That suit you?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"Well, come along then.\"\n\nII\n\nAt half past eleven, Charles Laverton-West was ushered into Chief Inspector Japp's room. Japp rose and shook hands.\n\nThe M.P. was a man of medium height with a very definite personality. He was clean-shaven, with the mobile mouth of an actor, and the slightly prominent eyes that so often go with the gift of oratory. He was good-looking in a quiet, well-bred way.\n\nThough looking pale and somewhat distressed, his manner was perfectly formal and composed.\n\nHe took a seat, laid his gloves and hat on the table and looked towards Japp.\n\n\"I'd like to say, first of all, Mr. Laverton-West, that I fully appreciate how distressing this must be to you.\"\n\nLaverton-West waved this aside.\n\n\"Do not let us discuss my feelings. Tell me, Chief Inspector, have you any idea what caused my\u2014Mrs. Allen to take her own life?\"\n\n\"You yourself cannot help us in any way?\"\n\n\"No, indeed.\"\n\n\"There was no quarrel? No estrangement of any kind between you?\"\n\n\"Nothing of the kind. It has been the greatest shock to me.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it will be more understandable, sir, if I tell you that it was not suicide\u2014but murder!\"\n\n\"Murder?\" Charles Laverton-West's eyes popped nearly out of his head. \"You say murder?\"\n\n\"Quite correct. Now, Mr. Laverton-West, have you any idea who might be likely to make away with Mrs. Allen?\"\n\nLaverton-West fairly spluttered out his answer.\n\n\"No\u2014no, indeed\u2014nothing of the sort! The mere idea is\u2014is unimaginable!\"\n\n\"She never mentioned any enemies? Anyone who might have a grudge against her?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"Did you know that she had a pistol?\"\n\n\"I was not aware of the fact.\"\n\nHe looked a little startled.\n\n\"Miss Plenderleith says that Mrs. Allen brought this pistol back from abroad with her some years ago.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Of course, we have only Miss Plenderleith's word for that. It is quite possible that Mrs. Allen felt herself to be in danger from some source and kept the pistol handy for reasons of her own.\"\n\nCharles Laverton-West shook his head doubtfully. He seemed quite bewildered and dazed.\n\n\"What is your opinion of Miss Plenderleith, Mr. Laverton-West? I mean, does she strike you as a reliable, truthful person?\"\n\nThe other pondered a minute.\n\n\"I think so\u2014yes, I should say so.\"\n\n\"You don't like her?\" suggested Japp, who had been watching him closely.\n\n\"I wouldn't say that. She is not the type of young woman I admire. That sarcastic, independent type is not attractive to me, but I should say she was quite truthful.\"\n\n\"H'm,\" said Japp. \"Do you know a Major Eustace?\"\n\n\"Eustace? Eustace? Ah, yes, I remember the name. I met him once at Barbara's\u2014Mrs. Allen's. Rather a doubtful customer in my opinion. I said as much to my\u2014to Mrs. Allen. He wasn't the type of man I should have encouraged to come to the house after we were married.\"\n\n\"And what did Mrs. Allen say?\"\n\n\"Oh! she quite agreed. She trusted my judgment implicitly. A man knows other men better than a woman can do. She explained that she couldn't very well be rude to a man whom she had not seen for some time\u2014I think she felt especially a horror of being snobbish! Naturally, as my wife, she would find a good many of her old associates well\u2014unsuitable, shall we say?\"\n\n\"Meaning that in marrying you she was bettering her position?\" Japp asked bluntly.\n\nLaverton-West held up a well-manicured hand.\n\n\"No, no, not quite that. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Allen's mother was a distant relation of my own family. She was fully my equal in birth. But of course, in my position, I have to be especially careful in choosing my friends\u2014and my wife in choosing hers. One is to a certain extent in the limelight.\"\n\n\"Oh, quite,\" said Japp dryly. He went on, \"So you can't help us in any way?\"\n\n\"No indeed. I am utterly at sea. Barbara! Murdered! It seems incredible.\"\n\n\"Now, Mr. Laverton-West, can you tell me what your own movements were on the night of November fifth?\"\n\n\"My movements? My movements?\"\n\nLaverton-West's voice rose in shrill protest.\n\n\"Purely a matter of routine,\" explained Japp. \"We\u2014er\u2014have to ask everybody.\"\n\nCharles Laverton-West looked at him with dignity.\n\n\"I should hope that a man in my position might be exempt.\"\n\nJapp merely waited.\n\n\"I was\u2014now let me see . . . Ah, yes. I was at the House. Left at half past ten. Went for a walk along the Embankment. Watched some of the fireworks.\"\n\n\"Nice to think there aren't any plots of that kind nowadays,\" said Japp cheerily.\n\nLaverton-West gave him a fish-like stare.\n\n\"Then I\u2014er\u2014walked home.\"\n\n\"Reaching home\u2014your London address is Onslow Square, I think\u2014at what time?\"\n\n\"I hardly know exactly.\"\n\n\"Eleven? Half past?\"\n\n\"Somewhere about then.\"\n\n\"Perhaps someone let you in.\"\n\n\"No, I have my key.\"\n\n\"Meet anybody whilst you were walking?\"\n\n\"No\u2014er\u2014really, Chief Inspector, I resent these questions very much!\"\n\n\"I assure you, it's just a matter of routine, Mr. Laverton-West. They aren't personal, you know.\"\n\nThe reply seemed to soothe the irate M.P.\n\n\"If that is all\u2014\"\n\n\"That is all for the present, Mr. Laverton-West.\"\n\n\"You will keep me informed\u2014\"\n\n\"Naturally, sir. By the way, let me introduce M. Hercule Poirot. You may have heard of him.\"\n\nMr. Laverton-West's eye fastened itself interestedly on the little Belgian.\n\n\"Yes\u2014yes\u2014I have heard the name.\"\n\n\"Monsieur,\" said Poirot, his manner suddenly very foreign. \"Believe me, my heart bleeds for you. Such a loss! Such agony as you must be enduring! Ah, but I will say no more. How magnificently the English hide their emotions.\" He whipped out his cigarette case. \"Permit me\u2014Ah, it is empty. Japp?\"\n\nJapp slapped his pockets and shook his head.\n\nLaverton-West produced his own cigarette case, murmured, \"Er\u2014have one of mine, M. Poirot.\"\n\n\"Thank you\u2014thank you.\" The little man helped himself.\n\n\"As you say, M. Poirot,\" resumed the other, \"we English do not parade our emotions. A stiff upper lip\u2014that is our motto.\"\n\nHe bowed to the two men and went out.\n\n\"Bit of a stuffed fish,\" said Japp disgustedly. \"And a boiled owl! The Plenderleith girl was quite right about him. Yet he's a good-looking sort of chap\u2014might go down well with some woman who had no sense of humour. What about that cigarette?\"\n\nPoirot handed it over, shaking his head.\n\n\"Egyptian. An expensive variety.\"\n\n\"No, that's no good. A pity, for I've never heard a weaker alibi! In fact, it wasn't an alibi at all . . . You know, Poirot, it's a pity the boot wasn't on the other leg. If she'd been blackmailing him . . . He's a lovely type for blackmail\u2014would pay out like a lamb! Anything to avoid a scandal.\"\n\n\"My friend, it is very pretty to reconstruct the case as you would like it to be, but that is not strictly our affair.\"\n\n\"No, Eustace is our affair. I've got a few lines on him. Definitely a nasty fellow.\"\n\n\"By the way, did you do as I suggested about Miss Plenderleith?\"\n\n\"Yes. Wait a sec, I'll ring through and get the latest.\"\n\nHe picked up the telephone receiver and spoke through it.\n\nAfter a brief interchange he replaced it and looked up at Poirot.\n\n\"Pretty heartless piece of goods. Gone off to play golf. That's a nice thing to do when your friend's been murdered only the day before.\"\n\nPoirot uttered an exclamation.\n\n\"What's the matter now?\" asked Japp.\n\nBut Poirot was murmuring to himself.\n\n\"Of course . . . of course . . . but naturally . . . What an imbecile I am\u2014why, it leapt to the eye!\"\n\nJapp said rudely:\n\n\"Stop jabbering to yourself and let's go and tackle Eustace.\"\n\nHe was amazed to see the radiant smile that spread over Poirot's face.\n\n\"But\u2014yes\u2014most certainly let us tackle him. For now, see you, I know everything\u2014but everything!\"\nEight\n\nMajor Eustace received the two men with the easy assurance of a man of the world.\n\nHis flat was small, a mere pied \u00e0 terre, as he explained. He offered the two men a drink and when that was refused he took out his cigarette case.\n\nBoth Japp and Poirot accepted a cigarette. A quick glance passed between them.\n\n\"You smoke Turkish, I see,\" said Japp as he twirled the cigarette between his fingers.\n\n\"Yes. I'm sorry, do you prefer a gasper? I've got one somewhere about.\"\n\n\"No, no, this will do me very well.\" Then he leaned forward\u2014his tone changed. \"Perhaps you can guess, Major Eustace, what it was I came to see you about?\"\n\nThe other shook his head. His manner was nonchalant. Major Eustace was a tall man, good-looking in a somewhat coarse fashion. There was a puffiness round the eyes\u2014small, crafty eyes that belied the good-humoured geniality of his manner.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"No\u2014I've no idea what brings such a big gun as a chief inspector to see me. Anything to do with my car?\"\n\n\"No, it is not your car. I think you knew a Mrs. Barbara Allen, Major Eustace?\"\n\nThe major leant back, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said in an enlightened voice:\n\n\"Oh, so that's it! Of course, I might have guessed. Very sad business.\"\n\n\"You know about it?\"\n\n\"Saw it in the paper last night. Too bad.\"\n\n\"You knew Mrs. Allen out in India, I think.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's some years ago now.\"\n\n\"Did you also know her husband?\"\n\nThere was a pause\u2014a mere fraction of a second\u2014but during that fraction the little pig eyes flashed a quick look at the faces of the two men. Then he answered:\n\n\"No, as a matter of fact, I never came across Allen.\"\n\n\"But you know something about him?\"\n\n\"Heard he was by way of being a bad hat. Of course, that was only rumour.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Allen did not say anything?\"\n\n\"Never talked about him.\"\n\n\"You were on intimate terms with her?\"\n\nMajor Eustace shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"We were old friends, you know, old friends. But we didn't see each other very often.\"\n\n\"But you did see her that last evening? The evening of November fifth?\"\n\n\"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.\"\n\n\"You called at her house, I think.\"\n\nMajor Eustace nodded. His voice took on a gentle, regretful note.\n\n\"Yes, she asked me to advise her about some investments. Of course, I can see what you're driving at\u2014her state of mind\u2014all that sort of thing. Well, really, it's very difficult to say. Her manner seemed normal enough and yet she was a bit jumpy, come to think of it.\"\n\n\"But she gave you no hint as to what she contemplated doing?\"\n\n\"Not the least in the world. As a matter of fact, when I said goodbye I said I'd ring her up soon and we'd do a show together.\"\n\n\"You said you'd ring her up. Those were your last words?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Curious. I have information that you said something quite different.\"\n\nEustace changed colour.\n\n\"Well, of course, I can't remember the exact words.\"\n\n\"My information is that what you actually said was, 'Well, think it over and let me know.' \"\n\n\"Let me see, yes I believe you're right. Not exactly that. I think I was suggesting she should let me know when she was free.\"\n\n\"Not quite the same thing, is it?\" said Japp.\n\nMajor Eustace shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"My dear fellow, you can't expect a man to remember word for word what he said on any given occasion.\"\n\n\"And what did Mrs. Allen reply?\"\n\n\"She said she'd give me a ring. That is, as near as I can remember.\"\n\n\"And then you said, 'All right. So long.' \"\n\n\"Probably. Something of the kind anyway.\"\n\nJapp said quietly:\n\n\"You say that Mrs. Allen asked you to advise her about her investments. Did she, by any chance, entrust you with the sum of two hundred pounds in cash to invest for her?\"\n\nEustace's face flushed a dark purple. He leaned forward and growled out:\n\n\"What the devil do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"Did she or did she not?\"\n\n\"That's my business, Mr. Chief Inspector.\"\n\nJapp said quietly:\n\n\"Mrs. Allen drew out the sum of two hundred pounds in cash from her bank. Some of the money was in five-pound notes. The numbers of these can, of course, be traced.\"\n\n\"What if she did?\"\n\n\"Was the money for investment\u2014or was it\u2014blackmail, Major Eustace?\"\n\n\"That's a preposterous idea. What next will you suggest?\"\n\nJapp said in his most official manner:\n\n\"I think, Major Eustace, that at this point I must ask you if you are willing to come to Scotland Yard and make a statement. There is, of course, no compulsion and you can, if you prefer it, have your solicitor present.\"\n\n\"Solicitor? What the devil should I want with a solicitor? And what are you cautioning me for?\"\n\n\"I am inquiring into the circumstances of the death of Mrs. Allen.\"\n\n\"Good God, man, you don't suppose\u2014Why, that's nonsense! Look here, what happened was this. I called round to see Barbara by appointment. . . .\"\n\n\"That was at what time?\"\n\n\"At about half past nine, I should say. We sat and talked. . . .\"\n\n\"And smoked?\"\n\n\"Yes, and smoked. Anything damaging in that?\" demanded the major belligerently.\n\n\"Where did this conversation take place?\"\n\n\"In the sitting room. Left of the door as you go in. We talked together quite amicably, as I say. I left a little before half past ten. I stayed for a minute on the doorstep for a few last words. . . .\"\n\n\"Last words\u2014precisely,\" murmured Poirot.\n\n\"Who are you, I'd like to know?\" Eustace turned and spart the words at him. \"Some kind of damned dago! What are you butting in for?\"\n\n\"I am Hercule Poirot,\" said the little man with dignity.\n\n\"I don't care if you are the Achilles statue. As I say, Barbara and I parted quite amicably. I drove straight to the Far East Club. Got there at five and twenty to eleven and went straight up to the card-room. Stayed there playing bridge until one-thirty. Now then, put that in your pipe and smoke it.\"\n\n\"I do not smoke the pipe,\" said Poirot. \"It is a pretty alibi you have there.\"\n\n\"It should be a pretty cast iron one anyway! Now then, sir,\" he looked at Japp. \"Are you satisfied?\"\n\n\"You remained in the sitting room throughout your visit?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You did not go upstairs to Mrs. Allen's own boudoir?\"\n\n\"No, I tell you. We stayed in the one room and didn't leave it.\"\n\nJapp looked at him thoughtfully for a minute or two. Then he said:\n\n\"How many sets of cuff links have you?\"\n\n\"Cuff links? Cuff links? What's that got to do with it?\"\n\n\"You are not bound to answer the question, of course.\"\n\n\"Answer it? I don't mind answering it. I've got nothing to hide. And I shall demand an apology. There are these . . .\" he stretched out his arms.\n\nJapp noted the gold and platinum with a nod.\n\n\"And I've got these.\"\n\nHe rose, opened a drawer and taking out a case, he opened it and shoved it rudely almost under Japp's nose.\n\n\"Very nice design,\" said the chief inspector. \"I see one is broken\u2014bit of enamel chipped off.\"\n\n\"What of it?\"\n\n\"You don't remember when that happened, I suppose?\"\n\n\"A day or two ago, not longer.\"\n\n\"Would you be surprised to hear that it happened when you were visiting Mrs. Allen?\"\n\n\"Why shouldn't it? I've not denied that I was there.\" The major spoke haughtily. He continued to bluster, to act the part of the justly indignant man, but his hands were trembling.\n\nJapp leaned forward and said with emphasis:\n\n\"Yes, but that bit of cuff link wasn't found in the sitting room. It was found upstairs in Mrs. Allen's boudoir\u2014there in the room where she was killed, and where a man sat smoking the same kind of cigarettes as you smoke.\"\n\nThe shot told. Eustace fell back into his chair. His eyes went from side to side. The collapse of the bully and the appearance of the craven was not a pretty sight.\n\n\"You've got nothing on me.\" His voice was almost a whine. \"You're trying to frame me . . . But you can't do it. I've got an alibi . . . I never came near the house again that night. . . .\"\n\nPoirot in his turn, spoke.\n\n\"No, you did not come near the house again . . . You did not need to . . . For perhaps Mrs. Allen was already dead when you left it.\"\n\n\"That's impossible\u2014impossible\u2014She was just inside the door\u2014she spoke to me\u2014People must have heard her\u2014seen her. . . .\"\n\nPoirot said softly:\n\n\"They heard you speaking to her . . . and pretending to wait for her answer and then speaking again . . . It is an old trick that . . . People may have assumed she was there, but they did not see her, because they could not even say whether she was wearing evening dress or not\u2014not even mention what colour she was wearing. . . .\"\n\n\"My God\u2014it isn't true\u2014it isn't true\u2014\"\n\nHe was shaking now\u2014collapsed. . . .\n\nJapp looked at him with disgust. He spoke crisply.\n\n\"I'll have to ask you, sir, to come with me.\"\n\n\"You're arresting me?\"\n\n\"Detained for inquiry\u2014we'll put it that way.\"\n\nThe silence was broken with a long, shuddering sigh. The despairing voice of the erstwhile blustering Major Eustace said:\n\n\"I'm sunk. . . .\"\n\nHercule Poirot rubbed his hands together and smiled cheerfully. He seemed to be enjoying himself.\nNine\n\n\"Pretty the way he went all to pieces,\" said Japp with professional appreciation, later that day.\n\nHe and Poirot were driving in a car along the Brompton Road.\n\n\"He knew the game was up,\" said Poirot absently.\n\n\"We've got plenty on him,\" said Japp. \"Two or three different aliases, a tricky business over a cheque, and a very nice affair when he stayed at the Ritz and called himself Colonel de Bathe. Swindled half a dozen Piccadilly tradesmen. We're holding him on that charge for the moment\u2014until we get this affair finally squared up. What's the idea of this rush to the country, old man?\"\n\n\"My friend, an affair must be rounded off properly. Everything must be explained. I am on the quest of the mystery you suggested. The Mystery of the Missing Attach\u00e9 Case.\"\n\n\"The Mystery of the Small Attach\u00e9 Case\u2014that's what I called it\u2014It isn't missing that I know of.\"\n\n\"Wait, mon ami.\"\n\nThe car turned into the mews. At the door of No. 14, Jane Plenderleith was just alighting from a small Austin Seven. She was in golfing clothes.\n\nShe looked from one to the other of the two men, then produced a key and opened the door.\n\n\"Come in, won't you?\"\n\nShe led the way. Japp followed her into the sitting room. Poirot remained for a minute or two in the hall, muttering something about:\n\n\"C'est emb\u00eatant\u2014how difficult to get out of these sleeves.\"\n\nIn a moment or two he also entered the sitting room minus his overcoat but Japp's lips twitched under his moustache. He had heard the very faint squeak of an opening cupboard door.\n\nJapp threw Poirot an inquiring glance and the other gave a hardly perceptible nod.\n\n\"We won't detain you, Miss Plenderleith,\" said Japp briskly.\n\n\"Only came to ask if you could tell us the name of Mrs. Allen's solicitor.\"\n\n\"Her solicitor?\" The girl shook her head. \"I don't even know that she had one.\"\n\n\"Well, when she rented this house with you, someone must have drawn up the agreement?\"\n\n\"No, I don't think so. You see, I took the house, the lease is in my name. Barbara paid me half the rent. It was quite informal.\"\n\n\"I see. Oh! well, I suppose there's nothing doing then.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I can't help you,\" said Jane politely.\n\n\"It doesn't really matter very much.\" Japp turned towards the door. \"Been playing golf?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She flushed. \"I suppose it seems rather heartless to you. But as a matter of fact it got me down rather, being here in this house. I felt I must go out and do something\u2014tire myself\u2014or I'd choke!\"\n\nShe spoke with intensity.\n\nPoirot said quickly:\n\n\"I comprehend, mademoiselle. It is most understandable\u2014most natural. To sit in this house and think\u2014no, it would not be pleasant.\"\n\n\"So long as you understand,\" said Jane shortly.\n\n\"You belong to a club?\"\n\n\"Yes, I play at Wentworth.\"\n\n\"It has been a pleasant day,\" said Poirot.\n\n\"Alas, there are few leaves left on the trees now! A week ago the woods were magnificent.\"\n\n\"It was quite lovely today.\"\n\n\"Good afternoon, Miss Plenderleith,\" said Japp formally. \"I'll let you know when there's anything definite. As a matter of fact we have got a man detained on suspicion.\"\n\n\"What man?\"\n\nShe looked at them eagerly.\n\n\"Major Eustace.\"\n\nShe nodded and turned away, stooping down to put a match to the fire.\n\n\"Well?\" said Japp as the car turned the corner of the mews.\n\nPoirot grinned.\n\n\"It was quite simple. The key was in the door this time.\"\n\n\"And\u2014?\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"Eh, bien, the golf clubs had gone\u2014\"\n\n\"Naturally. The girl isn't a fool, whatever else she is. Anything else gone?\"\n\nPoirot nodded his head.\n\n\"Yes, my friend\u2014the little attach\u00e9 case!\"\n\nThe accelerator leaped under Japp's foot.\n\n\"Damnation!\" he said. \"I knew there was something. But what the devil is it? I searched that case pretty thoroughly.\"\n\n\"My poor Japp\u2014but it is\u2014how do you say, 'obvious, my dear Watson?' \"\n\nJapp threw him an exasperated look.\n\n\"Where are we going?\" he asked.\n\nPoirot consulted his watch.\n\n\"It is not yet four o'clock. We could get to Wentworth, I think, before it is dark.\"\n\n\"Do you think she really went there?\"\n\n\"I think so\u2014yes. She would know that we might make inquiries. Oh, yes, I think we will find that she has been there.\"\n\nJapp grunted.\n\n\"Oh well, come on.\" He threaded his way dexterously through the traffic. \"Though what this attach\u00e9 case business has to do with the crime I can't imagine. I can't see that it's got anything at all to do with it.\"\n\n\"Precisely, my friend, I agree with you\u2014it has nothing to do with it.\"\n\n\"Then why\u2014No, don't tell me! Order and method and everything nicely rounded off! Oh, well, it's a fine day.\"\n\nThe car was a fast one. They arrived at Wentworth Golf Club a little after half past four. There was no great congestion there on a week day.\n\nPoirot went straight to the caddie-master and asked for Miss Plenderleith's clubs. She would be playing on a different course tomorrow, he explained.\n\nThe caddie master raised his voice and a boy sorted through some golf clubs standing in a corner. He finally produced a bag bearing the initials, J.P.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Poirot. He moved away, then turned carelessly and asked, \"She did not leave with you a small attach\u00e9 case also, did she?\"\n\n\"Not today, sir. May have left it in the clubhouse.\"\n\n\"She was down here today?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I saw her.\"\n\n\"Which caddie did she have, do you know? She's mislaid an attach\u00e9 case and can't remember where she had it last.\"\n\n\"She didn't take a caddie. She came in here and bought a couple of balls. Just took out a couple of irons. I rather fancy she had a little case in her hand then.\"\n\nPoirot turned away with a word of thanks. The two men walked round the clubhouse. Poirot stood a moment admiring the view.\n\n\"It is beautiful, is it not, the dark pine trees\u2014and then the lake. Yes, the lake\u2014\"\n\nJapp gave him a quick glance.\n\n\"That's the idea, is it?\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"I think it possible that someone may have seen something. I should set the inquiries in motion if I were you.\"\nTen\n\nI\n\nPoirot stepped back, his head a little on one side as he surveyed the arrangement of the room. A chair here\u2014another chair there. Yes, that was very nice. And now a ring at the bell\u2014that would be Japp.\n\nThe Scotland Yard man came in alertly.\n\n\"Quite right, old cock! Straight from the horse's mouth. A young woman was seen to throw something into the lake at Wentworth yesterday. Description of her answers to Jane Plenderleith. We managed to fish it up without much difficulty. A lot of reeds just there.\"\n\n\"And it was?\"\n\n\"It was the attach\u00e9 case all right! But why, in heaven's name? Well, it beats me! Nothing inside it\u2014not even the magazines.  \nWhy a presumably sane young woman should want to fling an expensively-fitted dressing case into a lake\u2014d'you know, I worried all night because I couldn't get the hang of it.\"\n\n\"Mon pauvre Japp! But you need worry no longer. Here is the answer coming. The bell has just rung.\"\n\nGeorge, Poirot's immaculate manservant, opened the door and announced:\n\n\"Miss Plenderleith.\"\n\nThe girl came into the room with her usual air of complete self-assurance. She greeted the two men.\n\n\"I asked you to come here\u2014\" explained Poirot. \"Sit here, will you not, and you here, Japp\u2014because I have certain news to give you.\"\n\nThe girl sat down. She looked from one to the other, pushing aside her hat. She took it off and laid it aside impatiently.\n\n\"Well,\" she said. \"Major Eustace has been arrested.\"\n\n\"You saw that, I expect, in the morning paper?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"He is at the moment charged with a minor offence,\" went on Poirot. \"In the meantime we are gathering evidence in connection with the murder.\"\n\n\"It was murder, then?\"\n\nThe girl asked it eagerly.\n\nPoirot nodded his head.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"It was murder. The wilful destruction of one human being by another human being.\"\n\nShe shivered a little.\n\n\"Don't,\" she murmured. \"It sounds horrible when you say it like that.\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014but it is horrible!\"\n\nHe paused\u2014then he said:\n\n\"Now, Miss Plenderleith, I am going to tell you just how I arrived at the truth in this matter.\"\n\nShe looked from Poirot to Japp. The latter was smiling.\n\n\"He has his methods, Miss Plenderleith,\" he said. \"I humour him, you know. I think we'll listen to what he has to say.\"\n\nPoirot began:\n\n\"As you know, mademoiselle, I arrived with my friend at the scene of the crime on the morning of November the sixth. We went into the room where the body of Mrs. Allen had been found and I was struck at once by several significant details. There were things, you see, in that room that were decidedly odd.\"\n\n\"Go on,\" said the girl.\n\n\"To begin with,\" said Poirot, \"there was the smell of cigarette smoke.\"\n\n\"I think you're exaggerating there, Poirot,\" said Japp. \"I didn't smell anything.\"\n\nPoirot turned on him in a flash.\n\n\"Precisely. You did not smell any stale smoke. No more did I. And that was very, very strange\u2014for the door and the window were both closed and on an ashtray there were the stubs of no fewer than ten cigarettes. It was odd, very odd, that the room should smell\u2014as it did, perfectly fresh.\"\n\n\"So that's what you were getting at!\" Japp sighed. \"Always have to get at things in such a tortuous way.\"\n\n\"Your Sherlock Holmes did the same. He drew attention, remember, to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time\u2014and the answer to that was there was no curious incident. The dog did nothing in the nighttime. To proceed:\n\n\"The next thing that attracted my attention was a wristwatch worn by the dead woman.\"\n\n\"What about it?\"\n\n\"Nothing particular about it, but it was worn on the right wrist. Now in my experience it is more usual for a watch to be worn on the left wrist.\"\n\nJapp shrugged his shoulders. Before he could speak, Poirot hurried on:\n\n\"But as you say, there is nothing very definite about that. Some people prefer to wear one on the right hand. And now I come to something really interesting\u2014I come, my friends, to the writing bureau.\"\n\n\"Yes, I guessed that,\" said Japp.\n\n\"That was really very odd\u2014very remarkable! For two reasons. The first reason was that something was missing from that writing table.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith spoke.\n\n\"What was missing?\"\n\nPoirot turned to her.\n\n\"A sheet of blotting paper, mademoiselle. The blotting book had on top a clean, untouched piece of blotting paper.\"\n\nJane shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"Really, M. Poirot. People do occasionally tear off a very much used sheet!\"\n\n\"Yes, but what do they do with it? Throw it into the waste-paper basket, do they not? But it was not in the wastepaper basket. I looked.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith seemed impatient.\n\n\"Because it had probably been already thrown away the day before. The sheet was clean because Barbara hadn't written any letters that day.\"\n\n\"That could hardly be the case, mademoiselle. For Mrs. Allen was seen going to the postbox that evening. Therefore she must have been writing letters. She could not write downstairs\u2014there were no writing materials. She would be hardly likely to go to your room to write. So, then, what had happened to the sheet of paper on which she had blotted her letters? It is true that people sometimes throw things in the fire instead of the wastepaper basket, but there was only a gas fire in the room. And the fire downstairs had not been alight the previous day, since you told me it was all laid ready when you put a match to it.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"A curious little problem. I looked everywhere, in the wastepaper baskets, in the dustbin, but I could not find a sheet of used blotting paper\u2014and that seemed to me very important. It looked as though someone had deliberately taken that sheet of blotting paper away. Why? Because there was writing on it that could easily have been read by holding it up to a mirror.\n\n\"But there was a second curious point about the writing table. Perhaps, Japp, you remember roughly the arrangement of it? Blotter and inkstand in the centre, pen tray to the left, calendar and quill pen to the right. Eh bien? You do not see? The quill pen, remember, I examined, it was for show only\u2014it had not been used. Ah! still you do not see? I will say it again. Blotter in the centre, pen tray to the left\u2014to the left, Japp. But is it not usual to find a pen tray on the right, convenient to the right hand?\n\n\"Ah, now it comes to you, does it not? The pen tray on the left\u2014the wristwatch on the right wrist\u2014the blotting paper removed\u2014and something else brought into the room\u2014the ashtray with the cigarette ends!\n\n\"That room was fresh and pure smelling, Japp, a room in which the window had been open, not closed all night . . . And I made myself a picture.\"\n\nHe spun round and faced Jane.\n\n\"A picture of you, mademoiselle, driving up in your taxi, paying it off, running up the stairs, calling perhaps, 'Barbara'\u2014and you open the door and you find your friend there lying dead with the pistol clasped in her hand\u2014the left hand, naturally, since she is left-handed and therefore, too, the bullet has entered on the left side of the head. There is a note there addressed to you. It tells you what it is that has driven her to take her own life. It was, I fancy, a very moving letter . . . A young, gentle, unhappy woman driven by blackmail to take her life. . . .\n\n\"I think that, almost at once, the idea flashed into your head. This was a certain man's doing. Let him be punished\u2014fully and adequately punished! You take the pistol, wipe it and place it in the right hand. You take the note and you tear off the top sheet of the blotting paper on which the note has been blotted. You go down, light the fire and put them both on the flames. Then you carry up the ashtray\u2014to further the illusion that two people sat there talking\u2014and you also take up a fragment of enamel cuff link that is on the floor. That is a lucky find and you expect it to clinch matters. Then you close the window and lock the door. There must be no suspicion that you have tampered with the room. The police must see it exactly as it is\u2014so you do not seek help in the mews but ring up the police straightaway.\n\n\"And so it goes on. You play your chosen r\u00f4le with judgment and coolness. You refuse at first to say anything but cleverly you suggest doubts of suicide. Later you are quite ready to set us on the trail of Major Eustace. . . .\n\n\"Yes, mademoiselle, it was clever\u2014a very clever murder\u2014for that is what it is. The attempted murder of Major Eustace.\"\n\nJane Plenderleith sprang to her feet.\n\n\"It wasn't murder\u2014it was justice. That man hounded poor Barbara to her death! She was so sweet and helpless. You see, poor kid, she got involved with a man in India when she first went out. She was only seventeen and he was a married man years older than her. Then she had a baby. She could have put it in a home but she wouldn't hear of that. She went off to some out of the way spot and came back calling herself Mrs. Allen. Later the child died. She came back here and she fell in love with Charles\u2014that pompous, stuffed owl; she adored him\u2014and he took her adoration very complacently. If he had been a different kind of man I'd have advised her to tell him everything. But as it was, I urged her to hold her tongue. After all, nobody knew anything about that business except me.\n\n\"And then that devil Eustace turned up! You know the rest. He began to bleed her systematically, but it wasn't till that last evening that she realised that she was exposing Charles too, to the risk of scandal. Once married to Charles, Eustace had got her where he wanted her\u2014married to a rich man with a horror of any scandal! When Eustace had gone with the money she had got for him she sat thinking it over. Then she came up and wrote a letter to me. She said she loved Charles and couldn't live without him, but that for his own sake she mustn't marry him. She was taking the best way out, she said.\"\n\nJane flung her head back.\n\n\"Do you wonder I did what I did? And you stand there calling it murder!\"\n\n\"Because it is murder,\" Poirot's voice was stern. \"Murder can sometimes seem justified, but it is murder all the same. You are truthful and clear-minded\u2014face the truth, mademoiselle! Your friend died, in the last resort, because she had not the courage to live. We may sympathize with her. We may pity her. But the fact remains\u2014the act was hers\u2014not another.\"\n\nHe paused.\n\n\"And you? That man is now in prison, he will serve a long sentence for other matters. Do you really wish, of your own volition, to destroy the life\u2014the life, mind\u2014of any human being?\"\n\nShe stared at him. Her eyes darkened. Suddenly she muttered:\n\n\"No. You're right. I don't.\"\n\nThen, turning on her heel, she went swiftly from the room. The outer door banged. . . .\n\nII\n\nJapp gave a long\u2014a very prolonged\u2014whistle.\n\n\"Well, I'm damned!\" he said.\n\nPoirot sat down and smiled at him amiably. It was quite a long time before the silence was broken. Then Japp said:\n\n\"Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to look like murder!\"\n\n\"Yes, and very cleverly done, too. Nothing overemphasized.\"\n\nJapp said suddenly:\n\n\"But the attach\u00e9 case? Where did that come in?\"\n\n\"But, my dear, my very dear friend, I have already told you that it did not come in.\"\n\n\"Then why\u2014\"\n\n\"The golf clubs. The golf clubs, Japp. They were the golf clubs of a left-handed person. Jane Plenderleith kept her clubs at Wentworth. Those were Barbara Allen's clubs. No wonder the girl got, as you say, the wind up when we opened that cupboard. Her whole plan might have been ruined. But she is quick, she realized that she had, for one short moment, given herself away. She saw that we saw. So she does the best thing she can think of on the spur of the moment. She tries to focus our attention on the wrong object. She says of the attach\u00e9 case 'That's mine. I\u2014it came back with me this morning. So there can't be anything there.' And, as she hoped, away you go on the false trail. For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attach\u00e9 case as a\u2014what is it\u2014kippered herring?\"\n\n\"Red herring. Do you mean that her real object was\u2014?\"\n\n\"Consider, my friend. Where is the best place to get rid of a bag of golf clubs? One cannot burn them or put them in a dustbin. If one leaves them somewhere they may be returned to you. Miss Plenderleith took them to a golf course. She leaves them in the clubhouse while she gets a couple of irons from her own bag, and then she goes round without a caddy. Doubtless at judicious intervals she breaks a club in half and throws it into some deep undergrowth, and ends by throwing the empty bag away. If anyone should find a broken golf club here and there it will not create surprise. People have been known to break and throw away all their clubs in a mood of intense exasperation over the game! It is, in fact, that kind of game!\n\n\"But since she realizes that her actions may still be a matter of interest, she throws that useful red herring\u2014the attach\u00e9 case\u2014in a somewhat spectacular manner into the lake\u2014and that, my friend, is the truth of 'The Mystery of the Attach\u00e9 Case.' \"\n\nJapp looked at his friend for some moments in silence. Then he rose, clapped him on the shoulder, and burst out laughing.\n\n\"Not so bad for an old dog! Upon my word, you take the cake! Come out and have a spot of lunch?\"\n\n\"With pleasure, my friend, but we will not have the cake. Indeed, an Omelette aux Champignons, Blanquette de Veau, Petits pois \u00e0 la Francaise, and\u2014to follow\u2014a Baba au Rhum.\"\n\n\"Lead me to it,\" said Japp.\nTHE INCREDIBLE THEFT\nOne\n\nAs the butler handed round the souffl\u00e9, Lord Mayfield leaned confidentially towards his neighbour on the right, Lady Julia Carrington. Known as a perfect host, Lord Mayfield took trouble to live up to his reputation. Although unmarried, he was always charming to women.\n\nLady Julia Carrington was a woman of forty, tall, dark and vivacious. She was very thin, but still beautiful. Her hands and feet in particular were exquisite. Her manner was abrupt and restless, that of a woman who lived on her nerves.\n\nAbout opposite to her at the round table sat her husband, Air Marshal Sir George Carrington. His career had begun in the Navy, and he still retained the bluff breeziness of the ex-Naval man. He was laughing and chaffing the beautiful Mrs. Vanderlyn, who was sitting on the other side of her host.\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn was an extremely good-looking blonde. Her voice held a soup\u00e7on of American accent, just enough to be pleasant without undue exaggeration.\n\nOn the other side of Sir George Carrington sat Mrs. Macatta, M.P. Mrs. Macatta was a great authority on Housing and Infant Welfare. She barked out short sentences rather than spoke them, and was generally of somewhat alarming aspect. It was perhaps natural that the Air Marshal would find his right-hand neighbour the pleasanter to talk to.\n\nMrs. Macatta, who always talked shop wherever she was, barked out short spates of information on her special subjects to her left-hand neighbour, young Reggie Carrington.\n\nReggie Carrington was twenty-one, and completely uninterested in Housing, Infant Welfare, and indeed any political subject. He said at intervals, \"How frightful!\" and \"I absolutely agree with you,\" and his mind was clearly elsewhere. Mr. Carlile, Lord Mayfield's private secretary, sat between young Reggie and his mother. A pale young man with pince-nez and an air of intelligent reserve, he talked little, but was always ready to fling himself into any conversational breach. Noticing that Reggie Carrington was struggling with a yawn, he leaned forward and adroitly asked Mrs. Macatta a question about her \"Fitness for Children\" scheme.\n\nRound the table, moving silently in the subdued amber light, a butler and two footmen offered dishes and filled up wine glasses. Lord Mayfield paid a very high salary to his chef, and was noted as a connoisseur of wines.\n\nThe table was a round one, but there was no mistaking who was the host. Where Lord Mayfield sat was so very decidedly the head of the table. A big man, square-shouldered, with thick silvery hair, a big straight nose and a slightly prominent chin. It was a face that lent itself easily to caricature. As Sir Charles McLaughlin, Lord Mayfield had combined a political career with being the head of a big engineering firm. He was himself a first-class engineer. His peerage had come a year ago, and at the same time he had been created first Minister of Armaments, a new ministry which had only just come into being.\n\nThe dessert had been placed on the table. The port had circulated once. Catching Mrs. Vanderlyn's eye, Lady Julia rose. The three women left the room.\n\nThe port passed once more, and Lord Mayfield referred lightly to pheasants. The conversation for five minutes or so was sporting. Then Sir George said:\n\n\"Expect you'd like to join the others in the drawing room, Reggie, my boy. Lord Mayfield won't mind.\"\n\nThe boy took the hint easily enough.\n\n\"Thanks, Lord Mayfield, I think I will.\"\n\nMr. Carlile mumured:\n\n\"If you'll excuse me, Lord Mayfield\u2014certain memoranda and other work to get through. . . .\"\n\nLord Mayfield nodded. The two young men left the room. The servants had retired some time before. The Minister for Armaments and the head of the Air Force were alone.\n\nAfter a minute or two, Carrington said:\n\n\"Well\u2014O.K.?\"\n\n\"Absolutely! There's nothing to touch this new bomber in any country in Europe.\"\n\n\"Make rings round 'em, eh? That's what I thought.\"\n\n\"Supremacy of the air,\" said Lord Mayfield decisively.\n\nSir George Carrington gave a deep sigh.\n\n\"About time! You know, Charles, we've been through a ticklish spell. Lots of gunpowder everywhere all over Europe. And we weren't ready, damn it! We've had a narrow squeak. And we're not out of the wood yet, however much we hurry on construction.\"\n\nLord Mayfield murmured:\n\n\"Nevertheless, George, there are some advantages in starting late. A lot of the European stuff is out of date already\u2014and they're perilously near bankruptcy.\"\n\n\"I don't believe that means anything,\" said Sir George gloomily. \"One's always hearing this nation and that is bankrupt! But they carry on just the same. You know, finance is an absolute mystery to me.\"\n\nLord Mayfield's eyes twinkled a little. Sir George Carrington was always so very much the old-fashioned \"bluff, honest old sea dog.\" There were people who said that it was a pose he deliberately adopted.\n\nChanging the subject, Carrington said in a slightly overcasual manner:\n\n\"Attractive woman, Mrs. Vanderlyn\u2014eh?\"\n\nLord Mayfield said:\n\n\"Are you wondering what she's doing here?\"\n\nHis eyes were amused.\n\nCarrington looked a little confused.\n\n\"Not at all\u2014not at all.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, you were! Don't be an old humbug, George. You were wondering, in a slightly dismayed fashion, whether I was the latest victim!\"\n\nCarrington said slowly:\n\n\"I'll admit that it did seem a trifle odd to me that she should be here\u2014well, this particular weekend.\"\n\nLord Mayfield nodded.\n\n\"Where the carcass is, there are the vultures gathered together. We've got a very definite carcass, and Mrs. Vanderlyn might be described as Vulture No. 1.\"\n\nThe Air Marshal said abruptly:\n\n\"Know anything about this Vanderlyn woman?\"\n\nLord Mayfield clipped off the end of a cigar, lit it with precision and, throwing his head back, dropped out his words with careful deliberation.\n\n\"What do I know about Mrs. Vanderlyn? I know that she's an American subject. I know that she's had three husbands, one Italian, one German and one Russian, and that in consequence she has made useful what I think are called 'contacts' in three countries. I know that she manages to buy very expensive clothes and live in a very luxurious manner, and that there is some slight uncertainty as to where the income comes from which permits her to do so.\"\n\nWith a grin, Sir George Carrington murmured:\n\n\"Your spies have not been inactive, Charles, I see.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Lord Mayfield continued, \"that in addition to having a seductive type of beauty, Mrs. Vanderlyn is also a very good listener, and that she can display a fascinating interest in what we call 'shop.' That is to say, a man can tell her all about his job and feel that he is being intensely interesting to the lady! Sundry young officers have gone a little too far in their zeal to be interesting, and their careers have suffered in consequence. They have told Mrs. Vanderlyn a little more than they should have done. Nearly all the lady's friends are in the Services\u2014but last winter she was hunting in a certain county near one of our largest armament firms, and she formed various friendships not at all sporting in character. To put it briefly, Mrs. Vanderlyn is a very useful person to . . .\" He described a circle in the air with his cigar. \"Perhaps we had better not say to whom! We will just say to a European power\u2014and perhaps to more than one European power.\"\n\nCarrington drew a deep breath.\n\n\"You take a great load off my mind, Charles.\"\n\n\"You thought I had fallen for the siren? My dear George! Mrs. Vanderlyn is just a little too obvious in her methods for a wary old bird like me. Besides, she is, as they say, not quite so young as she once was. Your young squadron leaders wouldn't notice that. But I am fifty-six, my boy. In another four years I shall probably be a nasty old man continually haunting the society of unwilling debutantes.\"\n\n\"I was a fool,\" said Carrington apologetically, \"but it seemed a bit odd\u2014\"\n\n\"It seemed to you odd that she should be here, in a somewhat intimate family party just at the moment when you and I were to hold an unofficial conference over a discovery that will probably revolutionize the whole problem of air defence?\"\n\nSir George Carrington nodded.\n\nLord Mayfield said, smiling:\n\n\"That's exactly it. That's the bait.\"\n\n\"The bait?\"\n\n\"You see, George, to use the language of the movies, we've nothing actually 'on' the woman. And we want something! She's got away with rather more than she should in the past. But she's been careful\u2014damnably careful. We know what she's been up to, but we've got no definite proof of it. We've got to tempt her with something big.\"\n\n\"Something big being the specification of the new bomber?\"\n\n\"Exactly. It's got to be something big enough to induce her to take a risk\u2014to come out into the open. And then\u2014we've got her!\"\n\nSir George grunted.\n\n\"Oh, well,\" he said. \"I dare say it's all right. But suppose she won't take the risk?\"\n\n\"That would be a pity,\" said Lord Mayfield. Then he added: \"But I think she will. . . .\"\n\nHe rose.\n\n\"Shall we join the ladies in the drawing room? We mustn't deprive your wife of her bridge.\"\n\nSir George grunted:\n\n\"Julia's a damned sight too fond of her bridge. Drops a packet over it. She can't afford to play as high as she does, and I've told her so. The trouble is, Julia's a born gambler.\"\n\nComing round the table to join his host, he said:\n\n\"Well, I hope your plan comes off, Charles.\"\nTwo\n\nIn the drawing room conversation had flagged more than once. Mrs. Vanderlyn was usually at a disadvantage when left alone with members of her own sex. That charming sympathetic manner of hers, so much appreciated by members of the male sex, did not for some reason or other commend itself to women. Lady Julia was a woman whose manners were either very good or very bad. On this occasion she disliked Mrs. Vanderlyn, and was bored by Mrs. Macatta, and made no secret of her feelings. Conversation languished, and might have ceased altogether but for the latter.\n\nMrs. Macatta was a woman of great earnestness of purpose. Mrs. Vanderlyn she dismissed immediately as a useless and parasitic type. Lady Julia she tried to interest in a forthcoming charity entertainment which she was organizing. Lady Julia answered vaguely, stifled a yawn or two and retired into her own inner preoccupation. Why didn't Charles and George come? How tiresome men were. Her comments became even more perfunctory as she became absorbed in her own thoughts and worries.\n\nThe three women were sitting in silence when the men finally entered the room.\n\nLord Mayfield thought to himself:\n\n\"Julia looks ill tonight. What a mass of nerves the woman is.\"\n\nAloud he said:\n\n\"What about a rubber\u2014eh?\"\n\nLady Julia brightened at once. Bridge was as the breath of life to her.\n\nReggie Carrington entered the room at that minute, and a four was arranged. Lady Julia, Mrs. Vanderlyn, Sir George and young Reggie sat down to the card-table. Lord Mayfield devoted himself to the task of entertaining Mrs. Macatta.\n\nWhen two rubbers had been played, Sir George looked ostentatiously at the clock on the mantelpiece.\n\n\"Hardly worth while beginning another,\" he remarked.\n\nHis wife looked annoyed.\n\n\"It's only a quarter to eleven. A short one.\"\n\n\"They never are, my dear,\" said Sir George good-temperedly. \"Anyway, Charles and I have some work to do.\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn murmured:\n\n\"How important that sounds! I suppose you clever men who are at the top of things never get a real rest.\"\n\n\"No forty-eight hour week for us,\" said Sir George.\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn murmured:\n\n\"You know, I feel rather ashamed of myself as a raw American, but I do get so thrilled at meeting people who control the destinies of a country. I expect that seems a very crude point of view to you, Sir George.\"\n\n\"My dear Mrs. Vanderlyn, I should never think of you as 'crude' or 'raw.' \"\n\nHe smiled into her eyes. There was, perhaps, a hint of irony in the voice which she did not miss. Adroitly she turned to Reggie, smiling sweetly into his eyes.\n\n\"I'm sorry we're not continuing our partnership. That was a frightfully clever four no-trump call of yours.\"\n\nFlushed and pleased, Reggie mumbled:\n\n\"Bit of a fluke that it came off.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, it was really a clever bit of deduction on your part. You'd deduced from the bidding exactly where the cards must be, and you played accordingly. I thought it was brilliant.\"\n\nLady Julia rose abruptly.\n\n\"The woman lays it on with a palette knife,\" she thought disgustedly.\n\nThen her eyes softened as they rested on her son. He believed it all. How pathetically young and pleased he looked. How incredibly na\u00efve he was. No wonder he got into scrapes. He was too trusting. The truth of it was he had too sweet a nature. George didn't understand him in the least. Men were so unsympathetic in their judgments. They forgot that they had ever been young themselves. George was much too harsh with Reggie.\n\nMrs. Macatta had risen. Goodnights were said.\n\nThe three women went out of the room. Lord Mayfield helped himself to a drink after giving one to Sir George, then he looked up as Mr. Carlile appeared at the door.\n\n\"Get out the files and all the papers, will you, Carlile? Including the plans and the prints. The Air Marshal and I will be along shortly. We'll just take a turn outside first, eh, George? It's stopped raining.\"\n\nMr. Carlile, turning to depart, murmured an apology as he almost collided with Mrs. Vanderlyn.\n\nShe drifted towards them, murmuring:\n\n\"My book, I was reading it before dinner.\"\n\nReggie sprang forward and held up a book.\n\n\"Is this it? On the sofa?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. Thank you so much.\"\n\nShe smiled sweetly, said goodnight again and went out of the room.\n\nSir George had opened one of the french windows.\n\n\"Beautiful night now,\" he announced. \"Good idea of yours to take a turn.\"\n\nReggie said:\n\n\"Well, goodnight, sir. I'll be toddling off to bed.\"\n\n\"Goodnight, my boy,\" said Lord Mayfield.\n\nReggie picked up a detective story which he had begun earlier in the evening and left the room.\n\nLord Mayfield and Sir George stepped out upon the terrace.\n\nIt was a beautiful night, with a clear sky studded with stars.\n\nSir George drew a deep breath.\n\n\"Phew, that woman uses a lot of scent,\" he remarked.\n\nLord Mayfield laughed.\n\n\"Anyway, it's not cheap scent. One of the most expensive brands on the market, I should say.\"\n\nSir George gave a grimace.\n\n\"I suppose one should be thankful for that.\"\n\n\"You should, indeed. I think a woman smothered in cheap scent is one of the greatest abominations known to mankind.\"\n\nSir George glanced up at the sky.\n\n\"Extraordinary the way it's cleared. I heard the rain beating down when we were at dinner.\"\n\nThe two men strolled gently along the terrace.\n\nThe terrace ran the whole length of the house. Below it the ground sloped gently away, permitting a magnificent view over the Sussex weald.\n\nSir George lit a cigar.\n\n\"About this metal alloy\u2014\" he began.\n\nThe talk became technical.\n\nAs they approached the far end of the terrace for the fifth time, Lord Mayfield said with a sigh:\n\n\"Oh, well, I suppose we'd better get down to it.\"\n\n\"Yes, good bit of work to get through.\"\n\nThe two men turned, and Lord Mayfield uttered a surprised ejaculation.\n\n\"Hallo! See that?\"\n\n\"See what?\" asked Sir George.\n\n\"Thought I saw someone slip across the terrace from my study window.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, old boy. I didn't see anything.\"\n\n\"Well, I did\u2014or I thought I did.\"\n\n\"Your eyes are playing tricks on you. I was looking straight down the terrace, and I'd have seen anything there was to be seen. There's precious little I don't see\u2014even if I do have to hold a newspaper at arm's length.\"\n\nLord Mayfield chuckled.\n\n\"I can put one over on you there, George. I read easily without glasses.\"\n\n\"But you can't always distinguish the fellow on the other side of the House. Or is that eyeglass of yours sheer intimidation?\"\n\nLaughing, the two men entered Lord Mayfield's study, the french window of which was open.\n\nMr. Carlile was busy arranging some papers in a file by the safe.\n\nHe looked up as they entered.\n\n\"Ha, Carlile, everything ready?\"\n\n\"Yes, Lord Mayfield, all the papers are on your desk.\"\n\nThe desk in question was a big important-looking writing table of mahogany set across a corner by the window. Lord Mayfield went over to it, and began sorting through the various documents laid out.\n\n\"Lovely night now,\" said Sir George.\n\nMr. Carlile agreed.\n\n\"Yes, indeed. Remarkable the way it's cleared up after the rain.\"\n\nPutting away his file, Mr. Carlile asked:\n\n\"Will you want me any more tonight, Lord Mayfield?\"\n\n\"No, I don't think so, Carlile. I'll put all these away myself. We shall probably be late. You'd better turn in.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Goodnight, Lord Mayfield. Goodnight, Sir George.\"\n\n\"Goodnight, Carlile.\"\n\nAs the secretary was about to leave the room, Lord Mayfield said sharply:\n\n\"Just a minute, Carlile. You've forgotten the most important of the lot.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon, Lord Mayfield.\"\n\n\"The actual plans of the bomber, man.\"\n\nThe secretary stared.\n\n\"They're right on the top, sir.\"\n\n\"They're nothing of the sort.\"\n\n\"But I've just put them there.\"\n\n\"Look for yourself, man.\"\n\nWith a bewildered expression, the young man came forward and joined Lord Mayfield at the desk.\n\nSomewhat impatiently the Minister indicated the pile of papers. Carlile sorted through them, his expression of bewilderment growing.\n\n\"You see, they're not there.\"\n\nThe secretary stammered:\n\n\"But\u2014but it's incredible. I laid them there not three minutes ago.\"\n\nLord Mayfield said good-humouredly:\n\n\"You must have made a mistake, they must be still in the safe.\"\n\n\"I don't see how\u2014I know I put them there!\"\n\nLord Mayfield brushed past him to the open safe. Sir George joined them. A very few minutes sufficed to show that the plans of the bomber were not there.\n\nDazed and unbelieving, the three men returned to the desk and once more turned over the papers.\n\n\"My God!\" said Mayfield. \"They're gone!\"\n\nMr. Carlile cried:\n\n\"But it's impossible!\"\n\n\"Who's been in this room?\" snapped out the Minister.\n\n\"No one. No one at all.\"\n\n\"Look here, Carlile, those plans haven't vanished into thin air. Someone has taken them. Has Mrs. Vanderlyn been in here?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Vanderlyn? Oh, no, sir.\"\n\n\"I'll back that,\" said Carrington. He sniffed the air! \"You'd soon smell if she had. That scent of hers.\"\n\n\"Nobody has been in here,\" insisted Carlile. \"I can't understand it.\"\n\n\"Look here, Carlile,\" said Lord Mayfield. \"Pull yourself together. We've got to get to the bottom of this. You're absolutely sure the plans were in the safe?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\n\"You actually saw them? You didn't just assume they were among the others?\"\n\n\"No, no, Lord Mayfield. I saw them. I put them on top of the others on the desk.\"\n\n\"And since then, you say, nobody has been in the room. Have you been out of the room?\"\n\n\"No\u2014at least\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" cried Sir George. \"Now we're getting at it!\"\n\nLord Mayfield said sharply:\n\n\"What on earth\u2014\" when Carlile interrupted.\n\n\"In the normal course of events, Lord Mayfield, I should not, of course, have dreamt of leaving the room. when important papers were lying about, but hearing a woman scream\u2014\"\n\n\"A woman scream?\" ejaculated Lord Mayfield in a surprised voice.\n\n\"Yes, Lord Mayfield. It startled me more than I can say. I was just laying the papers on the desk when I heard it, and naturally I ran out into the hall.\"\n\n\"Who screamed?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Vanderlyn's French maid. She was standing halfway up the stairs, looking very white and upset and shaking all over. She said she had seen a ghost.\"\n\n\"Seen a ghost?\"\n\n\"Yes, a tall woman dressed all in white who moved without a sound and floated in the air.\"\n\n\"What a ridiculous story!\"\n\n\"Yes, Lord Mayfield, that is what I told her. I must say she seemed rather ashamed of herself. She went off upstairs and I came back in here.\"\n\n\"How long ago was this?\"\n\n\"Just a minute or two before you and Sir George came in.\"\n\n\"And you were out of the room\u2014how long?\"\n\nThe secretary considered.\n\n\"Two minutes\u2014at the most three.\"\n\n\"Long enough,\" groaned Lord Mayfield. Suddenly he clutched his friend's arm.\n\n\"George, that shadow I saw\u2014slinking away from this window. That was it! As soon as Carlile left the room, he nipped in, seized the plans and made off.\"\n\n\"Dirty work,\" said Sir George.\n\nThen he seized his friend by the arm.\n\n\"Look here, Charles, this is the devil of a business. What the hell are we going to do about it?\"\nThree\n\n\"At any rate give it a trial, Charles.\"\n\nIt was half an hour later. The two men were in Lord Mayfield's study, and Sir George had been expending a considerable amount of persuasion to induce his friend to adopt a certain course.\n\nLord Mayfield, at first most unwilling, was gradually becoming less averse to the idea.\n\nSir George went on:\n\n\"Don't be so damned pigheaded, Charles.\"\n\nLord Mayfield said slowly:\n\n\"Why drag in a wretched foreigner we know nothing about?\"\n\n\"But I happen to know a lot about him. The man's a marvel.\"\n\n\"Humph.\"\n\n\"Look here, Charles. It's a chance! Discretion is the essence of this business. If it leaks out\u2014\"\n\n\"When it leaks out is what you mean!\"\n\n\"Not necessarily. This man, Hercule Poirot\u2014\"\n\n\"Will come down here and produce the plans like a conjurer taking rabbits out of his hat, I suppose?\"\n\n\"He'll get at the truth. And the truth is what we want. Look here, Charles, I take all responsibility on myself.\"\n\nLord Mayfield said slowly:\n\n\"Oh, well, have it your own way, but I don't see what the fellow can do. . . .\"\n\nSir George picked up the phone.\n\n\"I'm going to get through to him\u2014now.\"\n\n\"He'll be in bed.\"\n\n\"He can get up. Dash it all, Charles, you can't let that woman get away with it.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Vanderlyn, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yes. You don't doubt, do you, that she's at the bottom of this?\"\n\n\"No, I don't. She's turned the tables on me with a vengeance. I don't like admitting, George, that a woman's been too clever for us. It goes against the grain. But it's true. We shan't be able to prove anything against her, and yet we both know that she's been the prime mover in the affair.\"\n\n\"Women are the devil,\" said Carrington with feeling.\n\n\"Nothing to connect her with it, damn it all! We may believe that she put the girl up to that screaming trick, and that the man lurking outside was her accomplice, but the devil of it is we can't prove it.\"\n\n\"Perhaps Hercule Poirot can.\"\n\nSuddenly Lord Mayfield laughed.\n\n\"By the Lord, George, I thought you were too much of an old John Bull to put your trust in a Frenchman, however clever.\"\n\n\"He's not even a Frenchman, he's a Belgian,\" said Sir George in a rather shamefaced manner.\n\n\"Well, have your Belgian down. Let him try his wits on this business. I'll bet he can't make more of it than we can.\"\n\nWithout replying, Sir George stretched a hand to the telephone.\nFour\n\nBlinking a little, Hercule Poirot turned his head from one man to the other. Very delicately he smothered a yawn.\n\nIt was half past two in the morning. He had been roused from sleep and rushed down through the darkness in a big Rolls Royce. Now he had just finished hearing what the two men had to tell him.\n\n\"Those are the facts, M. Poirot,\" said Lord Mayfield.\n\nHe leaned back in his chair, and slowly fixed his monocle in one eye. Through it a shrewd, pale-blue eye watched Poirot attentively. Besides being shrewd the eye was definitely sceptical. Poirot cast a swift glance at Sir George Carrington.\n\nThat gentleman was leaning forward with an expression of almost childlike hopefulness on his face.\n\nPoirot said slowly:\n\n\"I have the facts, yes. The maid screams, the secretary goes out, the nameless watcher comes in, the plans are there on top of the desk, he snatches them up and goes. The facts\u2014they are all very convenient.\"\n\nSomething in the way he uttered the last phrase seemed to attract Lord Mayfield's attention. He sat up a little straighter, his monocle dropped. It was as though a new alertness came to him.\n\n\"I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"I said, Lord Mayfield, that the facts were all very convenient\u2014for the thief. By the way, you are sure it was a man you saw?\"\n\nLord Mayfield shook his head.\n\n\"That I couldn't say. It was just a\u2014shadow. In fact, I was almost doubtful if I had seen anyone.\"\n\nPoirot transferred his gaze to the Air Marshal.\n\n\"And you, Sir George? Could you say if it was a man or a woman?\"\n\n\"I didn't see anyone myself.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully. Then he skipped suddenly to his feet and went over to the writing table.\n\n\"I can assure you that the plans are not there,\" said Lord Mayfield. \"We have all three been through those papers half a dozen times.\"\n\n\"All three? You mean, your secretary also?\"\n\n\"Yes, Carlile.\"\n\nPoirot turned suddenly.\n\n\"Tell me, Lord Mayfield, which paper was on top when you went over to the desk?\"\n\nMayfield frowned a little in the effort of remembrance.\n\n\"Let me see\u2014yes, it was a rough memorandum of some sort of our air defence positions.\"\n\nDeftly, Poirot nipped out a paper and brought it over.\n\n\"Is this the one, Lord Mayfield?\"\n\nLord Mayfield took it and glanced over it.\n\n\"Yes, that's the one.\"\n\nPoirot took it over to Carrington.\n\n\"Did you notice this paper on the desk?\"\n\nSir George took it, held it away from him, then slipped on his pince-nez.\n\n\"Yes, that's right. I looked through them too, with Carlile and Mayfield. This was on top.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully. He replaced the paper on the desk. Mayfield looked at him in a slightly puzzled manner.\n\n\"If there are any other questions\u2014\" he began.\n\n\"But yes, certainly there is a question. Carlile. Carlile is the question!\"\n\nLord Mayfield's colour rose a little.\n\n\"Carlile, M. Poirot, is quite above suspicion! He has been my confidential secretary for nine years. He has access to all my private papers, and I may point out to you that he could have made a copy of the plans and a tracing of the specifications quite easily without anyone being the wiser.\"\n\n\"I appreciate your point,\" said Poirot. \"If he had been guilty there would be no need for him to stage a clumsy robbery.\"\n\n\"In any case,\" said Lord Mayfield, \"I am sure of Carlile. I will guarantee him.\"\n\n\"Carlile,\" said Carrington gruffly, \"is all right.\"\n\nPoirot spread out his hands gracefully.\n\n\"And this Mrs. Vanderlyn\u2014she is all wrong?\"\n\n\"She's a wrong 'un all right,\" said Sir George.\n\nLord Mayfield said in more measured tones:\n\n\"I think, M. Poirot, that there can be no doubt of Mrs. Vanderlyn's\u2014well\u2014activities. The Foreign Office can give you more precious data as to that.\"\n\n\"And the maid, you take it, is in with her mistress?\"\n\n\"Not a doubt of it,\" said Sir George.\n\n\"It seems to me a plausible assumption,\" said Lord Mayfield more cautiously.\n\nThere was a pause. Poirot sighed, and absentmindedly rearranged one or two articles on a table at his right hand. Then he said:\n\n\"I take it that these papers represented money? That is, the stolen papers would be definitely worth a large sum in cash.\"\n\n\"If presented in a certain quarter\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\nSir George mentioned the names of two European powers.\n\nPoirot nodded.\n\n\"That fact would be known to anyone, I take it?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Vanderlyn would know it all right.\"\n\n\"I said to anyone?\"\n\n\"I suppose so, yes.\"\n\n\"Anyone with a minimum of intelligence would appreciate the cash value of the plans?\"\n\n\"Yes, but M. Poirot\u2014\" Lord Mayfield was looking rather uncomfortable.\n\nPoirot held up a hand.\n\n\"I do what you call explore all the avenues.\"\n\nSuddenly he rose again, stepped nimbly out of the window and with a flashlight examined the edge of the grass at the farther side of the terrace.\n\nThe two men watched him.\n\nHe came in again, sat down and said:\n\n\"Tell me, Lord Mayfield, this malefactor, this skulker in the shadows, you do not have him pursued?\"\n\nLord Mayfield shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"At the bottom of the garden he could make his way out to a main road. If he had a car waiting there, he would soon be out of reach\u2014\"\n\n\"But there are the police\u2014the A.A. scouts\u2014\"\n\nSir George interrupted.\n\n\"You forget, M. Poirot. We cannot risk publicity. If it were to get out that these plans had been stolen, the result would be extremely unfavourable to the Party.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" said Poirot. \"One must remember La Politique. The great discretion must be observed. You send instead for me. Ah well, perhaps it is simpler.\"\n\n\"You are hopeful of success, M. Poirot?\" Lord Mayfield sounded a trifle incredulous.\n\nThe little man shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Why not? One has only to reason\u2014to reflect.\"\n\nHe paused a moment and then said:\n\n\"I would like now to speak to Mr. Carlile.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\" Lord Mayfield rose. \"I asked him to wait up. He will be somewhere at hand.\"\n\nHe went out of the room.\n\nPoirot looked at Sir George.\n\n\"Eh bien,\" he said. \"What about this man on the terrace?\"\n\n\"My dear M. Poirot. Don't ask me! I didn't see him, and I can't describe him.\"\n\nPoirot leaned forward.\n\n\"So you have already said. But it is a little different from that is it not?\"\n\n\"What d'you mean?\" asked Sir George abruptly.\n\n\"How shall I say it? Your disbelief, it is more profound.\"\n\nSir George started to speak, then stopped.\n\n\"But yes,\" said Poirot encouragingly. \"Tell me. You are both at the end of the terrace. Lord Mayfield sees a shadow slip from the window and across the grass. Why do you not see that shadow?\"\n\nCarrington stared at him.\n\n\"You've hit it, M. Poirot. I've been worrying about that ever since. You see, I'd swear that no one did leave this window. I thought Mayfield had imagined it\u2014branch of a tree waving\u2014something of that kind. And then when we came in here and found there had been a robbery, it seemed as though Mayfield must have been right and I'd been wrong. And yet\u2014\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"And yet you still in your heart of hearts believe in the evidence (the negative evidence) of your own eyes?\"\n\n\"You're right, M. Poirot, I do.\"\n\nPoirot gave a sudden smile.\n\n\"How wise you are.\"\n\nSir George said sharply:\n\n\"There were no footprints on the grass edge?\"\n\nPoirot nodded.\n\n\"Exactly. Lord Mayfield, he fancies he sees a shadow. Then there comes the robbery and he is sure\u2014but sure! It is no longer a fancy\u2014he actually saw the man. But that is not so. Me, I do not concern myself much with footprints and such things but for what it is worth we have that negative evidence. There were no footprints on the grass. It had rained heavily this evening. If a man had crossed the terrace to the grass this evening his footprints would have shown.\"\n\nSir George said, staring: \"But then\u2014but then\u2014\"\n\n\"It brings us back to the house. To the people in the house.\"\n\nHe broke off as the door opened and Lord Mayfield entered with Mr. Carlile.\n\nThough still looking very pale and worried, the secretary had regained a certain composure of manner. Adjusting his pince-nez he sat down and looked at Poirot inquiringly.\n\n\"How long had you been in this room when you heard the scream, monsieur?\"\n\nCarlile considered.\n\n\"Between five and ten minutes, I should say.\"\n\n\"And before that there had been no disturbance of any kind?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I understand that the house party had been in one room for the greater part of the evening.\"\n\n\"Yes, the drawing room.\"\n\nPoirot consulted his notebook.\n\n\"Sir George Carrington and his wife. Mrs. Macatta. Mrs. Vanderlyn. Mr. Reggie Carrington. Lord Mayfield and yourself. Is that right?\"\n\n\"I myself was not in the drawing room. I was working here the greater part of the evening.\"\n\nPoirot turned to Lord Mayfield.\n\n\"Who went up to bed first?\"\n\n\"Lady Julia Carrington, I think. As a matter of fact, the three ladies went out together.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"Mr. Carlile came in and I told him to get out the papers as Sir George and I would be along in a minute.\"\n\n\"It was then that you decided to take a turn on the terrace?\"\n\n\"It was.\"\n\n\"Was anything said in Mrs. Vanderlyn's hearing as to your working in the study?\"\n\n\"The matter was mentioned, yes.\"\n\n\"But she was not in the room when you instructed Mr. Carlile to get out the papers?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, Lord Mayfield,\" said Carlile. \"Just after you had said that, I collided with her in the doorway. She had come back for a book.\"\n\n\"So you think she might have overheard?\"\n\n\"I think it quite possible, yes.\"\n\n\"She came back for a book,\" mused Poirot. \"Did you find her her book, Lord Mayfield?\"\n\n\"Yes, Reggie gave it to her.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, it is what you call the old gasp\u2014no, pardon, the old wheeze\u2014that\u2014to come back for a book. It is often useful!\"\n\n\"You think it was deliberate?\"\n\nPoirot shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"And after that, you two gentlemen go out on the terrace. And Mrs. Vanderlyn?\"\n\n\"She went off with her book.\"\n\n\"And the young M. Reggie. He went to bed also?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And Mr. Carlile he comes here and sometime between five and ten minutes later he heard a scream. Continue, M. Carlile. You heard a scream and you went out into the hall. Ah, perhaps it would be simplest if you reproduced exactly your actions.\"\n\nMr. Carlile got up a little awkwardly.\n\n\"Here I scream,\" said Poirot helpfully. He opened his mouth and emitted a shrill bleat. Lord Mayfield turned his head away to hide a smile and Mr. Carlile looked extremely uncomfortable.\n\n\"Allez! Forward! March!\" cried Poirot. \"It is your cue that I give you there.\"\n\nMr. Carlile walked stiffly to the door, opened it and went out. Poirot followed him. The other two came behind.\n\n\"The door, did you close it after you or leave it open?\"\n\n\"I can't really remember. I think I must have left it open.\"\n\n\"No matter. Proceed.\"\n\nStill with extreme stiffness, Mr. Carlile walked to the bottom of the staircase and stood there looking up.\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"The maid, you say, was on the stairs. Whereabouts?\"\n\n\"About halfway up.\"\n\n\"And she was looking upset.\"\n\n\"Definitely so.\"\n\n\"Eh bien, me, I am the maid.\" Poirot ran nimbly up the stairs. \"About here?\"\n\n\"A step or two higher.\"\n\n\"Like this?\"\n\nPoirot struck an attitude.\n\n\"Well\u2014er\u2014not quite like that.\"\n\n\"How then?\"\n\n\"Well, she had her hands to her head.\"\n\n\"Ah, her hands to her head. That is very interesting. Like this?\" Poirot raised his arms, his hands rested on his head just above each ear.\n\n\"Yes that's it.\"\n\n\"Aha! And tell me, M. Carlile, she was a pretty girl\u2014yes?\"\n\n\"Really, I didn't notice.\"\n\nCarlile's voice was repressive.\n\n\"Aha, you did not notice? But you are a young man. Does not a young man notice when a girl is pretty?\"\n\n\"Really, M. Poirot, I can only repeat that I did not do so.\"\n\nCarlile cast an agonized glance at his employer. Sir George Carrington gave a sudden chuckle.\n\n\"M. Poirot seems determined to make you out a gay dog, Carlile,\" he remarked.\n\n\"Me, I always notice when a girl is pretty,\" announced Poirot as he descended the stairs.\n\nThe silence with which Mr. Carlile greeted this remark was somewhat pointed. Poirot went on:\n\n\"And it was then she told this tale of having seen a ghost?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Did you believe the story?\"\n\n\"Well, hardly, M. Poirot!\"\n\n\"I do not mean, do you believe in ghosts. I mean, did it strike you that the girl herself really thought she had seen something?\"\n\n\"Oh, as to that, I couldn't say. She was certainly breathing fast and seemed upset.\"\n\n\"You did not see or hear anything of her mistress?\"\n\n\"Yes, as a matter of fact I did. She came out of her room in the gallery above and called, 'Leonie.' \"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"The girl ran up to her and I went back to the study.\"\n\n\"Whilst you were standing at the foot of the stairs here, could anyone have entered the study by the door you had left open?\"\n\nCarlile shook his head.\n\n\"Not without passing me. The study door is at the end of the passage, as you see.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully. Mr. Carlile went on in his careful, precise voice.\n\n\"I may say that I am very thankful that Lord Mayfield actually saw the thief leaving the window. Otherwise I myself should be in a very unpleasant position.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, my dear Carlile,\" broke in Lord Mayfield impatiently. \"No suspicion could possibly attach to you.\"\n\n\"It is very kind of you to say so, Lord Mayfield, but facts are facts, and I can quite see that it looks badly for me. In any case I hope that my belongings and myself may be searched.\"\n\n\"Nonsense, my dear fellow,\" said Mayfield.\n\nPoirot murmured:\n\n\"You are serious in wishing that?\"\n\n\"I should infinitely prefer it.\"\n\nPoirot looked at him thoughtfully for a minute or two and murmured, \"I see.\"\n\nThen he asked:\n\n\"Where is Mrs. Vanderlyn's room situated in regard to the study?\"\n\n\"It is directly over it.\"\n\n\"With a window looking out over the terrace?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nAgain Poirot nodded. Then he said:\n\n\"Let us go to the drawing room.\"\n\nHere he wandered round the room, examined the fastenings of the windows, glanced at the scorers on the bridge table and then finally addressed Lord Mayfield.\n\n\"This affair,\" he said, \"is more complicated than it appears. But one thing is quite certain. The stolen plans have not left this house.\"\n\nLord Mayfield stared at him.\n\n\"But, my dear M. Poirot, the man I saw leaving the study\u2014\"\n\n\"There was no man.\"\n\n\"But I saw him\u2014\"\n\n\"With the greatest respect, Lord Mayfield, you imagined you saw him. The shadow cast by the branch of a tree deceived you. The fact that a robbery occurred naturally seemed a proof that what you had imagined was true.\"\n\n\"Really, M. Poirot, the evidence of my own eyes\u2014\"\n\n\"Back my eyes against yours any day, old boy,\" put in Sir George.\n\n\"You must permit me, Lord Mayfield, to be very definite on that point. No one crossed the terrace to the grass.\"\n\nLooking very pale and speaking stiffly, Mr. Carlile said:\n\n\"In that case, if M. Poirot is correct, suspicion automatically attaches itself to me. I am the only person who could possibly have committed the robbery.\"\n\nLord Mayfield sprang up.\n\n\"Nonsense. Whatever M. Poirot thinks about it, I don't agree with him. I am convinced of your innocence, my dear Carlile. In fact, I'm willing to guarantee it.\"\n\nPoirot murmured mildly:\n\n\"But I have not said that I suspect M. Carlile.\"\n\nCarlile answered:\n\n\"No, but you've made it perfectly clear that no one else had a chance to commit the robbery.\"\n\n\"Du tout! Du tout!\"\n\n\"But I have told you nobody passed me in the hall to get to the study door.\"\n\n\"I agree. But someone might have come in through the study window.\"\n\n\"But that is just what you said did not happen?\"\n\n\"I said that no one from outside could have come and left without leaving marks on the grass. But it could have been managed from inside the house. Someone could have gone out from his room by one of these windows, slipped along the terrace, in at the study window, and back again in here.\"\n\nMr. Carlile objected:\n\n\"But Lord Mayfield and Sir George Carrington were on the terrace.\"\n\n\"They were on the terrace, yes, but they were en promenade. Sir George Carrington's eyes may be of the most reliable\"\u2014Poirot made a little bow\u2014\"but he does not keep them in the back of his head! The study window is at the extreme left of the terrace, the windows of this room come next, but the terrace continues to the right past one, two, three, perhaps four rooms?\"\n\n\"Dining room, billiard room, morning room and library,\" said Lord Mayfield.\n\n\"And you walked up and down the terrace, how many times?\"\n\n\"At least five or six.\"\n\n\"You see, it is easy enough, the thief has only to watch for the right moment!\"\n\nCarlile said slowly:\n\n\"You mean that when I was in the hall, talking to the French girl, the thief was waiting in the drawing room?\"\n\n\"That is my suggestion. It is, of course, only a suggestion.\"\n\n\"It doesn't sound very probable to me,\" said Lord Mayfield. \"Too risky.\"\n\nThe Air Marshal demurred.\n\n\"I don't agree with you, Charles. It's perfectly possible. Wonder I hadn't the wits to think of it for myself.\"\n\n\"So you see,\" said Poirot, \"why I believe that the plans are still in the house. The problem now is to find them!\"\n\nSir George snorted.\n\n\"That's simple enough. Search everybody.\"\n\nLord Mayfield made a movement of dissent, but Poirot spoke before he could.\n\n\"No, no, it is not so simple as that. The person who took those plans will anticipate that a search will be made and will make quite sure that they are not found amongst his or her belongings. They will have been hidden in neutral ground.\"\n\n\"Do you suggest that we've got to go playing hide and seek all over the bally house?\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"No, no, we need not be so crude as that. We can arrive at the hiding place (or alternatively at the identity of the guilty person) by reflection. That will simplify matters. In the morning I would like an interview with every person in the house. It would, I think, be unwise to seek those interviews now.\"\n\nLord Mayfield nodded.\n\n\"Cause too much comment,\" he said, \"if we dragged everybody out of their beds at three in the morning. In any case you'll have to proceed with a good deal of camouflage, M. Poirot. This matter has got to be kept dark.\"\n\nPoirot waved an airy hand.\n\n\"Leave it to Hercule Poirot. The lies I invent are always most delicate and most convincing. Tomorrow, then, I conduct my investigations. But tonight, I should like to begin by interviewing you, Sir George and you, Lord Mayfield.\"\n\nHe bowed to them both.\n\n\"You mean\u2014alone?\"\n\n\"That was my meaning.\"\n\nLord Mayfield raised his eyes slightly, then he said:\n\n\"Certainly. I'll leave you alone with Sir George. When you want me, you'll find me in my study. Come, Carlile.\"\n\nHe and the secretary went out, shutting the door behind them.\n\nSir George sat down, reaching mechanically for a cigarette. He turned a puzzled face to Poirot.\n\n\"You know,\" he said slowly. \"I don't quite get this.\"\n\n\"That is very simply explained,\" said Poirot with a smile. \"In two words, to be accurate. Mrs. Vanderlyn!\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Carrington. \"I think I see. Mrs. Vanderlyn?\"\n\n\"Precisely. It might be, you see, that it would not be very delicate to ask Lord Mayfield the question I want to ask. Why Mrs. Vanderlyn? This lady, she is known to be a suspicious character. Why, then, should she be here? I say to myself there are three explanations. One, that Lord Mayfield has a penchant for the lady (and that is why I seek to talk to you alone. I do not wish to embarrass him). Two, that Mrs. Vanderlyn is perhaps the dear friend of someone else in the house?\"\n\n\"You can count me out!\" said Sir George with a grin.\n\n\"Then, if neither of those cases is true, the question returns in redoubled force. Why Mrs. Vanderlyn? And it seems to me I perceive a shadowy answer. There was a reason. Her presence at this particular juncture was definitely desired by Lord Mayfield for a special reason. Am I right?\"\n\nSir George nodded.\n\n\"You're quite right,\" he said. \"Mayfield is too old a bird to fall for her wiles. He wanted her here for quite another reason. It was like this.\"\n\nHe retailed the conversation that had taken place at the dinner table. Poirot listened attentively.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said. \"I comprehend now. Nevertheless, it seems that the lady has turned the tables on you both rather neatly!\"\n\nSir George swore freely.\n\nPoirot watched him with some slight amusement, then he said:\n\n\"You do not doubt that this theft is her doing\u2014I mean, that she is responsible for it, whether or no she played an active part?\"\n\nSir George stared.\n\n\"Of course not! There isn't any doubt of that. Why, who else would have any interest in stealing those plans?\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Hercule Poirot. He leaned back and looked at the ceiling. \"And yet, Sir George, we agreed, not a quarter of an hour ago, that these papers represented very definitely money. Not perhaps, in quite so obvious a form as banknotes, or gold, or jewellery, but nevertheless they were potential money. If there were anyone here who was hard up\u2014\"\n\nThe other interrupted him with a snort.\n\n\"Who isn't these days? I suppose I can say it without incriminating myself.\"\n\nHe smiled and Poirot smiled politely back at him and murmured:\n\n\"Mais oui, you can say what you like, for you, Sir George, have the one unimpeachable alibi in this affair.\"\n\n\"But I'm damned hard up myself!\"\n\nPoirot shook his head sadly.\n\n\"Yes, indeed, a man in your position has heavy living expenses. Then you have a young son at a most expensive age\u2014\"\n\nSir George groaned.\n\n\"Education's bad enough, then debts on top of it. Mind you, this lad's not a bad lad.\"\n\nPoirot listened sympathetically. He heard a lot of the Air Marshal's accumulated grievances. The lack of grit and stamina in the younger generation, the fantastic way in which mothers spoilt their children and always took their side, the curse of gambling once it got hold of a woman, the folly of playing for higher stakes than you could afford. It was couched in general terms, Sir George did not allude directly to either his wife or his son, but his natural transparency made his generalizations very easy to see through.\n\nHe broke off suddenly.\n\n\"Sorry, mustn't take up your time with something that's right off the subject, especially at this hour of the night\u2014or rather, morning.\"\n\nHe stifled a yawn.\n\n\"I suggest, Sir George, that you should go to bed. You have been most kind and helpful.\"\n\n\"Right, think I will turn in. You really think there is a chance of getting the plans back?\"\n\nPoirot shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"I mean to try. I do not see why not.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll be off. Goodnight.\"\n\nHe left the room.\n\nPoirot remained in his chair staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, then he took out a little notebook and turning to a clean page, he wrote:\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn?\n\nLady Julia Carrington?\n\nMrs. Macatta?\n\nReggie Carrington?\n\nMr. Carlile?\n\nUnderneath he wrote:\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn and Mr. Reggie Carrington?\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn and Lady Julia?\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn and Mr. Carlile?\n\nHe shook his head in a dissatisifed manner, murmuring: \"C'est plus simple que \u00e7a.\"\n\nThen he added a few short sentences.\n\nDid Lord Mayfield see a \"shadow?\" If not, why did he say he did? Did Sir George see anything? He was positive he had seen nothing AFTER I examined flower-bed. Note: Lord Mayfield is nearsighted, can read without glasses but has to use a monocle to look across a room. Sir George is long-sighted. Therefore, from the far end of the terrace, his sight is more to be depended upon than Lord Mayfield's. Yet Lord Mayfield is very positive that he DID see something and is quite unshaken by his friend's denial.\n\nCan anyone be quite as above suspicion as Mr. Carlile appears to be? Lord Mayfield is very emphatic as to his innocence. Too much so. Why? Because he secretly suspects him and is ashamed of his suspicions? Or because he definitely suspects some other person? That is to say, some person OTHER than Mrs. Vanderlyn?\n\nHe put the notebook away.\n\nThen, getting up, he went along to the study.\nFive\n\nLord Mayfield was seated at his desk when Poirot entered the study. He swung round, laid down his pen, and looked up inquiringly.\n\n\"Well, M. Poirot, had your interview with Carrington?\"\n\nPoirot smiled and sat down.\n\n\"Yes, Lord Mayfield. He cleared up a point that had puzzled me.\"\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"The reason for Mrs. Vanderlyn's presence here. You comprehend, I thought it possible\u2014\"\n\nMayfield was quick to realize the cause of Poirot's somewhat exaggerated embarrassment.\n\n\"You thought I had a weakness for the lady? Not at all. Far from it. Funnily enough, Carrington thought the same.\"\n\n\"Yes, he has told me of the conversation he held with you on the subject.\"\n\nLord Mayfield looked rather rueful.\n\n\"My little scheme didn't come off. Always annoying to have to admit that a woman has got the better of you.\"\n\n\"Ah, but she has not got the better of you yet, Lord Mayfield.\"\n\n\"You think we may yet win? Well, I'm glad to hear you say so. I'd like to think it was true.\"\n\nHe sighed.\n\n\"I feel I've acted like a complete fool\u2014so pleased with my stratagem for entrapping the lady.\"\n\nHercule Poirot said, as he lit one of his tiny cigarettes:\n\n\"What was your stratagem exactly, Lord Mayfield?\"\n\n\"Well,\" Lord Mayfield hesitated. \"I hadn't exactly got down to details.\"\n\n\"You didn't discuss it with anyone?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Not even with Mr. Carlile?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nPoirot smiled.\n\n\"You prefer to play a lone hand, Lord Mayfield.\"\n\n\"I have usually found it the best way,\" said the other a little grimly.\n\n\"Yes, you are wise. Trust no one. But you did mention the matter to Sir George Carrington?\"\n\n\"Simply because I realized that the dear fellow was seriously perturbed about me.\"\n\nLord Mayfield smiled at the remembrance.\n\n\"He is an old friend of yours?\"\n\n\"Yes. I have known him for over twenty years.\"\n\n\"And his wife?\"\n\n\"I have known his wife also, of course.\"\n\n\"But (pardon me if I am impertinent) you are not on the same terms of intimacy with her?\"\n\n\"I don't really see what my personal relationships to people has to do with the matter in hand, M. Poirot.\"\n\n\"But I think, Lord Mayfield, that they may have a good deal to do with it. You agreed, did you not, that my theory of someone in the drawing room was a possible one?\"\n\n\"Yes. In fact, I agree with you that that is what must have happened.\"\n\n\"We will not say 'must.' That is too self-confident a word. But if that theory of mine is true, who do you think the person in the drawing room could have been?\"\n\n\"Obviously Mrs. Vanderlyn. She had been back there once for a book. She could have come back for another book, or a handbag, or a dropped handkerchief\u2014one of a dozen feminine excuses. She arranges with her maid to scream and get Carlile away from the study. Then she slips in and out by the windows as you said.\"\n\n\"You forget it could not have been Mrs. Vanderlyn. Carlile heard her call the maid from upstairs while he was talking to the girl.\"\n\nLord Mayfield bit his lip.\n\n\"True. I forgot that.\" He looked throughly annoyed.\n\n\"You see,\" said Poirot gently. \"We progress. We have first the simple explanation of a thief who comes from outside and makes off with the booty. A very convenient theory as I said at the time, too convenient to be readily accepted. We have disposed of that. Then we come to the theory of the foreign agent, Mrs. Vanderlyn, and that again seems to fit together beautifully up to a certain point. But now it looks as though that, too, was too easy\u2014too convenient\u2014to be accepted.\"\n\n\"You'd wash Mrs. Vanderlyn out of it altogether?\"\n\n\"It was not Mrs. Vanderlyn in the drawing room. It may have been an ally of Mrs. Vanderlyn's who committed the theft, but it is just possible that it was committed by another person altogether. If so, we have to consider the question of motive.\"\n\n\"Isn't this rather far-fetched, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"I do not think so. Now what motives could there be? There is the motive of money. The papers may have been stolen with the object of turning them into cash. That is the simplest motive to consider. But the motive might possibly be something quite different.\"\n\n\"Such as\u2014\"\n\nPoirot said slowly:\n\n\"It might have been done definitely with the idea of damaging someone.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Possibly Mr. Carlile. He would be the obvious suspect. But there might be more to it than that. The men who control the destiny of a country, Lord Mayfield, are particularly vulnerable to displays of popular feeling.\"\n\n\"Meaning that the theft was aimed at damaging me?\"\n\nPoirot nodded.\n\n\"I think I am correct in saying, Lord Mayfield, that about five years ago you passed through a somewhat trying time. You were suspected of friendship with a European Power at that time bitterly unpopular with the electorate of this country.\"\n\n\"Quite true, M. Poirot.\"\n\n\"A statesman in these days has a difficult task. He has to pursue the policy he deems advantageous to his country, but he has at the same time to recognize the force of popular feeling. Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddleheaded, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.\"\n\n\"How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician's life. He has to bow to the country's feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.\"\n\n\"That was your dilemma, I think. There were rumours that you had concluded an agreement with the country in question. This country and the newspapers were up in arms about it. Fortunately the Prime Minister was able categorically to deny the story, and you repudiated it, though still making no secret of the way your sympathies lay.\"\n\n\"All this is quite true, M. Poirot, but why rake up past history?\"\n\n\"Because I consider it possible that an enemy, disappointed in the way you surmounted that crisis, might endeavour to stage a further dilemma. You soon regained public confidence. Those particular circumstances have passed away, you are now, deservedly, one of the most popular figures in political life. You are spoken of freely as the next Prime Minister when Mr. Hunberly retires.\"\n\n\"You think this is an attempt to discredit me? Nonsense!\"\n\n\"Tout de m\u00eame, Lord Mayfield, it would not look well if it were known that the plans of Britain's new bomber had been stolen during a weekend when a certain very charming lady had been your guest. Little hints in the newspapers as to your relationship with that lady would create a feeling of distrust in you.\"\n\n\"Such a thing could not really be taken seriously.\"\n\n\"My dear Lord Mayfield, you know perfectly well it could! It takes so little to undermine public confidence in a man.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's true,\" said Lord Mayfield. He looked suddenly very worried. \"God! how desperately complicated this business is becoming. Do you really think\u2014but it's impossible\u2014impossible.\"\n\n\"You know of nobody who is\u2014jealous of you?\"\n\n\"Absurd!\"\n\n\"At any rate you will admit that my questions about your personal relationships with the members of this house party are not totally irrelevant.\"\n\n\"Oh, perhaps\u2014perhaps. You asked me about Julia Carrington. There's really not very much to say. I've never taken to her very much, and I don't think she cares for me. She's one of these restless, nervy women, recklessly extravagant and mad about cards. She's old-fashioned enough, I think, to despise me as being a self-made man.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"I looked you up in Who's Who before I came down. You were the head of a famous engineering firm and you are yourself a first-class engineer.\"\n\n\"There's certainly nothing I don't know about the practical side. I've worked my way up from the bottom.\"\n\nLord Mayfield spoke rather grimly.\n\n\"Oh la la!\" cried Poirot. \"I have been a fool\u2014but a fool!\"\n\nThe other stared at him.\n\n\"I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"It is that a portion of the puzzle has become clear to me. Something I did not see before . . . But it all fits in. Yes\u2014it fits in with beautiful precision.\"\n\nLord Mayfield looked at him in somewhat astonished inquiry.\n\nBut with a slight smile Poirot shook his head.\n\n\"No, no, not now. I must arrange my ideas a little more clearly.\"\n\nHe rose.\n\n\"Goodnight, Lord Mayfield. I think I know where those plans are.\"\n\nLord Mayfield cried out:\n\n\"You know? Then let us get hold of them at once!\"\n\nPoirot shook his head.\n\n\"No, no, that would not do. Precipitancy would be fatal. But leave it all to Hercule Poirot.\"\n\nHe went out of the room. Lord Mayfield raised his shoulders in contempt.\n\n\"Man's a mountebank,\" he muttered. Then, putting away his papers and turning out the lights, he, too, made his way up to bed.\nSix\n\n\"If there's been a burglary, why the devil doesn't old Mayfield send for the police?\" demanded Reggie Carrington.\n\nHe pushed his chair slightly back from the breakfast table.\n\nHe was the last down. His host, Mrs. Macatta and Sir George had finished their breakfasts some time before. His mother and Mrs. Vanderlyn were breakfasting in bed.\n\nSir George, repeating his statement on the lines agreed upon between Lord Mayfield and Hercule Poirot, had a feeling that he was not managing it as well as he might have done.\n\n\"To send for a queer foreigner like this seems very odd to me,\" said Reggie. \"What has been taken, Father?\"\n\n\"I don't know exactly, my boy.\"\n\nReggie got up. He looked rather nervy and on edge this morning.\n\n\"Nothing\u2014important? No\u2014papers or anything like that?\"\n\n\"To tell you the truth, Reggie, I can't tell you exactly.\"\n\n\"Very hush-hush, is it? I see.\"\n\nReggie ran up the stairs, paused for a moment halfway with a frown on his face, and then continued his ascent and tapped on his mother's door. Her voice bade him enter.\n\nLady Julia was sitting up in bed, scribbling figures on the back of an envelope.\n\n\"Good morning, darling.\" She looked up, then said sharply:\n\n\"Reggie, is anything the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing much, but it seems there was a burglary last night.\"\n\n\"A burglary? What was taken?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know. It's all very hush-hush. There's some odd kind of private inquiry agent downstairs asking everybody questions.\"\n\n\"How extraordinary!\"\n\n\"It's rather unpleasant,\" said Reggie slowly, \"staying in a house when that kind of thing happens.\"\n\n\"What did happen exactly?\"\n\n\"Don't know. It was some time after we all went to bed. Look out, Mother, you'll have that tray off.\"\n\nHe rescued the breakfast tray and carried it to a table by the window.\n\n\"Was money taken?\"\n\n\"I tell you I don't know.\"\n\nLady Julia said slowly:\n\n\"I suppose this inquiry man is asking everybody questions?\"\n\n\"I suppose so.\"\n\n\"Where they were last night? All that kind of thing?\"\n\n\"Probably. Well, I can't tell him much. I went straight up to bed and was asleep in next to no time.\"\n\nLady Julia did not answer.\n\n\"I say, Mother, I suppose you couldn't let me have a spot of cash. I'm absolutely broke.\"\n\n\"No, I couldn't,\" his mother replied decisively. \"I've got the most frightful overdraft myself. I don't know what your father will say when he hears about it.\"\n\nThere was a tap at the door and Sir George entered.\n\n\"Ah, there you are, Reggie. Will you go down to the library? M. Hercule Poirot wants to see you.\"\n\nPoirot had just concluded an interview with the redoubtable Mrs. Macatta.\n\nA few brief questions had elicited the information that Mrs. Macatta had gone up to bed just before eleven, and had heard or seen nothing helpful.\n\nPoirot slid gently from the topic of the burglary to more personal matters. He himself had a great admiration for Lord Mayfield. As a member of the general public he felt that Lord Mayfield was a truly great man. Of course, Mrs. Macatta, being in the know, would have a far better means of estimating that than himself.\n\n\"Lord Mayfield has brains,\" allowed Mrs. Macatta. \"And he has carved his career out entirely for himself. He owes nothing to hereditary influence. He has a certain lack of vision, perhaps. In that I find all men sadly alike. They lack the breadth of a woman's imagination. Woman, M. Poirot, is going to be the great force in government in ten years' time.\"\n\nPoirot said that he was sure of it.\n\nHe slid to the topic of Mrs. Vanderlyn. Was it true, as he had heard hinted, that she and Lord Mayfield were very close friends?\n\n\"Not in the least. To tell you the truth I was very surprised to meet her here. Very surprised indeed.\"\n\nPoirot invited Mrs. Macatta's opinion of Mrs. Vanderlyn\u2014and got it.\n\n\"One of those absolutely useless women, M. Poirot. Women that make one despair of one's own sex! A parasite, first and last a parasite.\"\n\n\"Men admired her?\"\n\n\"Men!\" Mrs. Macatta spoke the word with contempt. \"Men are always taken in by those very obvious good looks. That boy, now, young Reggie Carrington, flushing up every time she spoke to him, absurdly flattered by being taken notice of by her. And the silly way she flattered him too. Praising his bridge\u2014which actually was far from brilliant.\"\n\n\"He is not a good player?\"\n\n\"He made all sorts of mistakes last night.\"\n\n\"Lady Julia is a good player, is she not?\"\n\n\"Much too good in my opinion,\" said Mrs. Macatta. \"It's almost a profession with her. She plays morning, noon, and night.\"\n\n\"For high stakes?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed, much higher than I would care to play. Indeed I shouldn't consider it right.\"\n\n\"She makes a good deal of money at the game?\"\n\nMrs. Macatta gave a loud and virtuous snort.\n\n\"She reckons on paying her debts that way. But she's been having a run of bad luck lately, so I've heard. She looked last night as though she had something on her mind. The evils of gambling, M. Poirot, are only slightly less than the evils caused by drink. If I had my way this country should be purified\u2014\"\n\nPoirot was forced to listen to a somewhat lengthy discussion on the purification of England's morals. Then he closed the conversation adroitly and sent for Reggie Carrington.\n\nHe summed the young man up carefully as he entered the room, the weak mouth camouflaged by the rather charming smile, the indecisive chin, the eyes set far apart, the rather narrow head. He thought that he knew Reggie Carrington's type fairly well.\n\n\"Mr. Reggie Carrington?\"\n\n\"Yes. Anything I can do?\"\n\n\"Just tell me what you can about last night?\"\n\n\"Well, let me see, we played bridge\u2014in the drawing room. After that I went up to bed.\"\n\n\"That was at what time?\"\n\n\"Just before eleven. I suppose the robbery took place after that?\"\n\n\"Yes, after that. You did not hear or see anything?\"\n\nReggie shook his head regretfully.\n\n\"I'm afraid not. I went straight to bed and I sleep pretty soundly.\"\n\n\"You went straight up from the drawing room to your bedroom and remained there until the morning?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"Curious,\" said Poirot.\n\nReggie said sharply:\n\n\"What do you mean, curious?\"\n\n\"You did not, for instance, hear a scream?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't.\"\n\n\"Ah, very curious.\"\n\n\"Look here, I don't know what you mean.\"\n\n\"You are, perhaps, slightly deaf?\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\nPoirot's lips moved. It was possible that he was repeating the word curious for the third time. Then he said:\n\n\"Well, thank you, Mr. Carrington, that is all.\"\n\nReggie got up and stood rather irresolutely.\n\n\"You know,\" he said, \"now you come to mention it, I believe I did hear something of the kind.\"\n\n\"Ah, you did hear something?\"\n\n\"Yes, but you see, I was reading a book\u2014a detective story as a matter of fact\u2014and I\u2014well, I didn't really quite take it in.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Poirot, \"a most satisfying explanation.\"\n\nHis face was quite impassive.\n\nReggie still hesitated, then he turned and walked slowly to the door. There he paused and asked:\n\n\"I say, what was stolen?\"\n\n\"Something of great value, Mr. Carrington. That is all I am at liberty to say.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Reggie rather blankly.\n\nHe went out.\n\nPoirot nodded his head.\n\n\"It fits,\" he murmured. \"It fits very nicely.\"\n\nHe touched a bell and inquired courteously if Mrs. Vanderlyn was up yet.\nSeven\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn swept into the room looking very handsome. She was wearing an artfully-cut russet sports suit that showed up the warm lights of her hair. She swept to a chair and smiled in a dazzling fashion at the little man in front of her.\n\nFor a moment something showed through the smile. It might have been triumph, it might almost have been mockery. It was gone almost immediately, but it had been there. Poirot found the suggestion of it interesting.\n\n\"Burglars? Last night? But how dreadful! Why no, I never heard a thing. What about the police? Can't they do anything?\"\n\nAgain, just for a moment, the mockery showed in her eyes.\n\nHercule Poirot thought:\n\n\"It is very clear that you are not afraid of the police, my lady. You know very well that they are not going to be called in.\"\n\nAnd from that followed\u2014what?\n\nHe said soberly:\n\n\"You comprehend, madame, it is an affair of the most discreet.\"\n\n\"Why, naturally, M.\u2014Poirot\u2014isn't it?\u2014I shouldn't dream of breathing a word. I'm much too great an admirer of dear Lord Mayfield's to do anything to cause him the least little bit of worry.\"\n\nShe crossed her knees. A highly-polished slipper of brown leather dangled on the tip of her silk-shod foot.\n\nShe smiled, a warm, compelling smile of perfect health and deep satisfaction.\n\n\"Do tell me if there's anything at all I can do?\"\n\n\"I thank you, madame. You played bridge in the drawing room last night?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I understand that then all the ladies went up to bed?\"\n\n\"That is right.\"\n\n\"But someone came back to fetch a book. That was you, was it not, Mrs. Vanderlyn?\"\n\n\"I was the first one to come back\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"What do you mean\u2014the first one?\" said Poirot sharply.\n\n\"I came back right away,\" explained Mrs. Vanderlyn. \"Then I went up and rang for my maid. She was a long time in coming. I rang again. Then I went out on the landing. I heard her voice and I called her. After she had brushed my hair I sent her away, she was in a nervous, upset state and tangled the brush in my hair once or twice. It was then, just as I sent her away, that I saw Lady Julia coming up the stairs. She told me she had been down again for a book, too. Curious, wasn't it?\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn smiled as she finished, a wide, rather feline smile. Hercule Poirot thought to himself that Mrs. Vanderlyn did not like Lady Julia Carrington.\n\n\"As you say, madame. Tell me, did you hear your maid scream?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, I did hear something of that kind.\"\n\n\"Did you ask her about it?\"\n\n\"Yes. She told me she thought she had seen a floating figure in white\u2014such nonsense!\"\n\n\"What was Lady Julia wearing last night?\"\n\n\"Oh, you think perhaps\u2014Yes, I see. She was wearing a white evening dress. Of course, that explains it. She must have caught sight of her in the darkness just as a white figure. These girls are so superstitious.\"\n\n\"Your maid has been with you a long time, madame?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\" Mrs. Vanderlyn opened her eyes rather wide. \"Only about five months.\"\n\n\"I should like to see her presently, if you do not mind, madame.\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn raised her eyebrows.\n\n\"Oh, certainly,\" she said rather coldly.\n\n\"I should like, you understand, to question her.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\nAgain a flicker of amusement.\n\nPoirot rose and bowed.\n\n\"Madame,\" he said. \"You have my complete admiration.\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn for once seemed a trifle taken aback.\n\n\"Oh, M. Poirot, how nice of you, but why?\"\n\n\"You are, madame, so perfectly armoured, so completely sure of yourself.\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn laughed a little uncertainly.\n\n\"Now I wonder,\" she said, \"if I am to take that as a compliment?\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"It is, perhaps, a warning\u2014not to treat life with arrogance.\"\n\nMrs. Vanderlyn laughed with more assurance. She got up and held out a hand.\n\n\"Dear M. Poirot, I do wish you all success. Thank you for all the charming things you have said to me.\"\n\nShe went out. Poirot murmured to himself:\n\n\"You wish me success, do you? Ah, but you are very sure I am not going to meet with success! Yes, you are very sure indeed. That, it annoys me very much.\"\n\nWith a certain petulance, he pulled the bell and asked that Mademoiselle Leonie might be sent to him.\n\nHis eyes roamed over her appreciatively as she stood hestiating in the doorway, demure in her black dress with her neatly parted black waves of hair and her modestly-dropped eyelids. He nodded slow approval.\n\n\"Come in, Mademoiselle Leonie,\" he said. \"Do not be afraid.\"\n\nShe came in and stood demurely before him.\n\n\"Do you know,\" said Poirot with a sudden change of tone, \"that I find you very good to look at.\"\n\nLeonie responded promptly. She flashed him a glance out of the corner of her eyes and murmured softly:\n\n\"Monsieur is very kind.\"\n\n\"Figure to yourself,\" said Poirot. \"I demand of M. Carlile whether you are or not good-looking and he replies that he does not know!\"\n\nLeonie cocked her chin up contemptuously.\n\n\"That image!\"\n\n\"That describes him very well.\"\n\n\"I do not believe he has ever looked at a girl in his life, that one.\"\n\n\"Probably not. A pity. He has missed a lot. But there are others in this house who are more appreciative, is it not so?\"\n\n\"Really, I do not know what monsieur means.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, Mademoiselle Leonie, you know very well. A pretty history that you recount last night about a ghost that you have seen. As soon as I hear that you are standing there with your hands to your head, I know very well that there is no question of ghosts. If a girl is frightened she clasps her heart, or she raises her hands to her mouth to stifle a cry, but if her hands are on her hair it means something very different. It means that her hair has been ruffled and that she is hastily getting it into shape again! Now then, mademoiselle, let us have the truth. Why did you scream on the stairs?\"\n\n\"But monsieur it is true, I saw a tall figure all in white\u2014\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle, do not insult my intelligence. That story, it may have been good enough for M. Carlile, but it is not good enough for Hercule Poirot. The truth is that you had just been kissed, is it not so? And I will make a guess that it was M. Reggie Carrington who kissed you.\"\n\nLeonie twinkled an unabashed eye at him.\n\n\"Eh bien,\" she demanded, \"after all, what is a kiss?\"\n\n\"What, indeed?\" said Poirot gallantly.\n\n\"You see, the young gentleman he came up behind me and caught me round the waist\u2014and so naturally he startled me and I screamed. If I had known\u2014well, then naturally I would not have screamed.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" agreed Poirot.\n\n\"But he came upon me like a cat. Then the study door opened and out came M. le secr\u00e9taire and the young gentleman slipped away upstairs and there I was looking like a fool. Naturally I had to say something\u2014especially to\u2014\u2014\" she broke into French, \"un jeune homme comme \u00e7a, tellement comme il faut!\"\n\n\"So you invent a ghost?\"\n\n\"Indeed, monsieur, it was all I could think of. A tall figure all in white, that floated. It is ridiculous but what else could I do?\"\n\n\"Nothing. So now, all is explained. I had my suspicions from the first.\"\n\nLeonie shot him a provocative glance.\n\n\"Monsieur is very clever, and very sympathetic.\"\n\n\"And since I am not going to make you any embarrassments over the affair you will do something for me in return?\"\n\n\"Most willingly, monsieur.\"\n\n\"How much do you know of your mistress's affairs?\"\n\nThe girl shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"Not very much, monsieur. I have my ideas, of course.\"\n\n\"And those ideas?\"\n\n\"Well, it does not escape me that the friends of madame are always soldiers or sailors or airmen. And then there are other friends\u2014foreign gentlemen who come to see her very quietly sometimes. Madame is very handsome, though I do not think she will be so much longer. The young men, they find her very attractive. Sometimes I think, they say too much. But it is only my idea, that. Madame does not confide in me.\"\n\n\"What you would have me to understand is that madame plays a lone hand?\"\n\n\"That is right, monsieur.\"\n\n\"In other words, you cannot help me.\"\n\n\"I fear not, monsieur. I would do if I could.\"\n\n\"Tell me, your mistress is in a good mood today?\"\n\n\"Decidedly, monsieur.\"\n\n\"Something has happened to please her?\"\n\n\"She has been in good spirits ever since she came here.\"\n\n\"Well, Leonie, you should know.\"\n\nThe girl answered confidently:\n\n\"Yes, monsieur. I could not be mistaken there. I know all madame's moods. She is in high spirits.\"\n\n\"Positively triumphant?\"\n\n\"That is exactly the word, monsieur.\"\n\nPoirot nodded gloomily.\n\n\"I find that\u2014a little hard to bear. Yet I perceive that it is inevitable. Thank you, mademoiselle, that is all.\"\n\nLeonie threw him a coquettish glance.\n\n\"Thank you, monsieur. If I meet monsieur on the stairs, be well-assured that I shall not scream.\"\n\n\"My child,\" said Poirot with dignity. \"I am of advanced years. What have I to do with such frivolities?\"\n\nBut with a little twitter of laughter, Leonie took herself off.\n\nPoirot paced slowly up and down the room. His face became grave and anxious.\n\n\"And now,\" he said at last, \"for Lady Julia. What will she say, I wonder?\"\n\nLady Julia came into the room with a quiet air of assurance. She bent her head graciously, accepted the chair that Poirot drew forward and spoke in a low, well-bred voice.\n\n\"Lord Mayfield says that you wish to ask me some questions.\"\n\n\"Yes, madame. It is about last night.\"\n\n\"About last night, yes?\"\n\n\"What happened after you had finished your game of bridge?\"\n\n\"My husband thought it was too late to begin another. I went up to bed.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"I went to sleep.\"\n\n\"That is all?\"\n\n\"Yes. I'm afraid I can't tell you anything of much interest. When did this\"\u2014she hesitated\u2014\"burglary occur?\"\n\n\"Very soon after you went upstairs.\"\n\n\"I see. And what exactly was taken?\"\n\n\"Some private papers, madame.\"\n\n\"Important papers?\"\n\n\"Very important.\"\n\nShe frowned a little and then said:\n\n\"They were\u2014valuable?\"\n\n\"Yes, madame, they were worth a good deal of money.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\nThere was a pause, and then Poirot said:\n\n\"What about your book, madame?\"\n\n\"My book?\" She raised bewildered eyes to him.\n\n\"Yes, I understand Mrs. Vanderlyn to say that some time after you three ladies had retired you went down again to fetch a book.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, so I did.\"\n\n\"So that, as a matter of fact, you did not go straight to bed when you went upstairs? You returned to the drawing room?\"\n\n\"Yes, that is true. I had forgotten.\"\n\n\"While you were in the drawing room, did you hear someone scream?\"\n\n\"No\u2014yes\u2014I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Surely, madame. You could not have failed to hear it in the drawing room.\"\n\nLady Julia flung her head back and said firmly:\n\n\"I heard nothing.\"\n\nPoirot raised his eyebrows, but did not reply.\n\nThe silence grew uncomfortable. Lady Julia asked abruptly:\n\n\"What is being done?\"\n\n\"Being done? I do not understand you, madame.\"\n\n\"I mean about the robbery. Surely the police must be doing something.\"\n\nPoirot shook his head.\n\n\"The police have not been called in. I am in charge.\"\n\nShe stared at him, her restless haggard face sharpened and tense. Her eyes, dark and searching, sought to pierce his impassivity.\n\nThey fell at last\u2014defeated.\n\n\"You cannot tell me what is being done?\"\n\n\"I can only assure you, madame, that I am leaving no stone unturned.\"\n\n\"To catch the thief\u2014or to\u2014recover the papers?\"\n\n\"The recovery of the papers is the main thing, madame.\"\n\nHer manner changed. It became bored, listless.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said indifferently. \"I suppose it is.\"\n\nThere was another pause.\n\n\"Is there anything else, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"No, madame. I will not detain you further.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nHe opened the door for her. She passed out without glancing at him.\n\nPoirot went back to the fireplace and carefully rearranged the ornaments on the mantelpiece. He was still at it when Lord Mayfield came in through the window.\n\n\"Well?\" said the latter.\n\n\"Very well, I think. Events are shaping themselves as they should.\"\n\nLord Mayfield said, staring at him:\n\n\"You are pleased.\"\n\n\"No, I am not pleased. But I am content.\"\n\n\"Really, M. Poirot, I cannot make you out.\"\n\n\"I am not such a charlatan as you think.\"\n\n\"I never said\u2014\"\n\n\"No, but you thought! No matter. I am not offended. It is sometimes necessary for me to adopt a certain pose.\"\n\nLord Mayfield looked at him doubtfully with a certain amount of distrust. Hercule Poirot was a man he did not understand. He wanted to despise him, but something warned him that this ridiculous little man was not so futile as he appeared. Charles McLaughlin had always been able to recognize capability when he saw it.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"we are in your hands. What do you advise next?\"\n\n\"Can you get rid of your guests?\"\n\n\"I think it might be arranged . . . I could explain that I have to go to London over this affair. They will then probably offer to leave.\"\n\n\"Very good. Try and arrange it like that.\"\n\nLord Mayfield hesitated.\n\n\"You don't think\u2014?\"\n\n\"I am quite sure that that would be the wise course to take.\"\n\nLord Mayfield shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Well, if you say so.\"\n\nHe went out.\nEight\n\nThe guests left after lunch. Mrs. Vanderlyn and Mrs. Macatta went by train, the Carringtons had their car. Poirot was standing in the hall as Mrs. Vanderlyn bade her host a charming  \nfarewell.\n\n\"So terribly sorry for you having this bother and anxiety. I do hope it will turn out all right for you. I shan't breathe a word of anything.\"\n\nShe pressed his hand and went out to where the Rolls was waiting to take her to the station. Mrs. Macatta was already inside. Her adieu had been curt and unsympathetic.\n\nSuddenly Leonie, who had been getting in front with the chauffeur, came running back into the hall.\n\n\"The dressing case of madame, it is not in the car,\" she exclaimed.\n\nThere was a hurried search. At last Lord Mayfield discovered it where it had been put down in the shadow of an old oak chest. Leonie uttered a glad little cry as she seized the elegant affair of green morocco, and hurried out with it.\n\nThen Mrs. Vanderlyn leaned out of the car.\n\n\"Lord Mayfield, Lord Mayfield.\" She handed him a letter. \"Would you mind putting this in your postbag? If I keep it meaning to post it in town, I'm sure to forget. Letters just stay in my bag for days.\"\n\nSir George Carrington was fidgeting with his watch, opening and shutting it. He was a maniac for punctuality.\n\n\"They're cutting it fine,\" he murmured. \"Very fine. Unless they're careful, they'll miss the train\u2014\"\n\nHis wife said irritably:\n\n\"Oh, don't fuss, George. After all, it's their train, not ours!\"\n\nHe looked at her reproachfully.\n\nThe Rolls drove off.\n\nReggie drew up at the front door in the Carringtons' Morris.\n\n\"All ready, Father,\" he said.\n\nThe servants began bringing out the Carringtons' luggage. Reggie supervised its disposal in the dickey.\n\nPoirot moved out of the front door, watching the proceedings.\n\nSuddenly he felt a hand on his arm. Lady Julia's voice spoke in an agitated whisper.\n\n\"M. Poirot. I must speak to you\u2014at once.\"\n\nHe yielded to her insistent hand. She drew him into a small morning room and closed the door. She came close to him.\n\n\"Is it true what you said\u2014that the discovery of the papers is what matters most to Lord Mayfield?\"\n\nPoirot looked at her curiously.\n\n\"It is quite true, madame.\"\n\n\"If\u2014if those papers were returned to you, would you undertake that they should be given back to Lord Mayfield, and no question asked?\"\n\n\"I am not sure that I understand you.\"\n\n\"You must! I am sure that you do! I am suggesting that the\u2014the thief should remain anonymous if the papers are returned.\"\n\nPoirot asked:\n\n\"How soon would that be, madame?\"\n\n\"Definitely within twelve hours.\"\n\n\"You can promise that?\"\n\n\"I can promise it.\"\n\nAs he did not answer, she repeated urgently:\n\n\"Will you guarantee that there will be no publicity?\"\n\nHe answered then\u2014very gravely:\n\n\"Yes, madame, I will guarantee that.\"\n\n\"Then everything can be arranged.\"\n\nShe passed abruptly from the room. A moment later Poirot heard the car drive away.\n\nHe crossed the hall and went along the passage to the study. Lord Mayfield was there. He looked up as Poirot entered.\n\n\"Well?\" he said.\n\nPoirot spread out his hands.\n\n\"The case is ended, Lord Mayfield.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nPoirot repeated word for word the scene between himself and Lady Julia.\n\nLord Mayfield looked at him with a stupefied expression.\n\n\"But what does it mean? I don't understand.\"\n\n\"It is very clear, is it not? Lady Julia knows who stole the plans.\"\n\n\"You don't mean she took them herself?\"\n\n\"Certainly not. Lady Julia may be a gambler. She is not a thief. But if she offers to return the plans, it means that they were taken by her husband or her son. Now Sir George Carrington was out on the terrace with you. That leaves us the son. I think I can reconstruct the happenings of last night fairly accurately. Lady Julia went to her son's room last night and found it empty. She came downstairs to look for him, but did not find him. This morning she hears of the theft, and she also hears that her son declares that he went straight to his room and never left it. That, she knows, is not true. And she knows something else about her son. She knows that he is weak, that he is desperately hard up for money. She has observed his infatuation for Mrs. Vanderlyn. The whole thing is clear to her. Mrs. Vanderlyn has persuaded Reggie to steal the plans. But she determines to play her part also. She will tackle Reggie, get hold of the papers and return them.\"\n\n\"But the whole thing is quite impossible,\" cried Lord Mayfield.\n\n\"Yes, it is impossible, but Lady Julia does not know that. She does not know what I, Hercule Poirot, know, that young Reggie Carrington was not stealing papers last night, but instead was philandering with Mrs. Vanderlyn's French maid.\"\n\n\"The whole thing is a mare's nest!\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"And the case is not ended at all!\"\n\n\"Yes, it is ended. I, Hercule Poirot, know the truth. You do not believe me? You did not believe me yesterday when I said I knew where the plans were. But I did know. They were very close at hand.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"They were in your pocket, my lord.\"\n\nThere was a pause, then Lord Mayfield said:\n\n\"Do you really know what you are saying, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"Yes, I know. I know that I am speaking to a very clever man. From the first it worried me that you, who were admittedly shortsighted, should be so positive about the figure you had seen leaving the window. You wanted that solution\u2014the convenient solution\u2014to be accepted. Why? Later, one by one, I eliminated everyone else. Mrs. Vanderlyn was upstairs, Sir George was with you on the terrace, Reggie Carrington was with the French girl on the stairs, Mrs. Macatta was blamelessly in her bedroom. (It is next to the housekeeper's room, and Mrs. Macatta snores!) Lady Julia clearly believed her son guilty. So there remained only two possibilities. Either Carlile did not put the papers on the desk but into his own pocket (and that is not reasonable, because, as you pointed out, he could have taken a tracing of them), or else\u2014or else the plans were there when you walked over to the desk, and the only place they could have gone was into your pocket. In that case everything was clear. Your insistence on the figure you had seen, your insistence on Carlile's innocence, your disinclination to have me summoned.\n\n\"One thing did puzzle me\u2014the motive. You were, I was convinced, an honest man, a man of integrity. That showed in your anxiety that no innocent person should be suspected. It was also obvious that the theft of the plans might easily affect your career unfavourably. Why, then, this wholly unreasonable theft? And at last the answer came to me. The crisis in your career, some years ago, the assurances given to the world by the Prime Minister that you had had no negotiations with the power in question. Suppose that that was not strictly true, that there remained some record\u2014a letter, perhaps\u2014showing that in actual fact you had done what you had publicly denied. Such a denial was necessary in the interests of public policy. But it is doubtful if the man in the street would see it that way. It might mean that at the moment when supreme power might be given into your hands, some stupid echo from the past would undo everything.\n\n\"I suspect that that letter has been preserved in the hands of a certain government, that that government offered to trade with you\u2014the letter in exchange for the plans of the new bomber. Some men would have refused. You\u2014did not! You agreed. Mrs. Vanderlyn was the agent in the matter. She came here by arrangement to make the exchange. You gave yourself away when you admitted that you had formed no definite stratagem for entrapping her. That admission made your reason for inviting her here incredibly weak.\n\n\"You arranged the robbery. Pretended to see the thief on the terrace\u2014thereby clearing Carlile of suspicion. Even if he had not left the room, the desk was so near the window that a thief might have taken the plans while Carlile was busy at the safe with his back turned. You walked over to the desk, took the plans and kept them on your own person until the moment when, by prearranged plan, you slipped them into Mrs. Vanderlyn's dressing case. In return she handed you the fatal letter disguised as an unposted letter of her own.\"\n\nPoirot stopped.\n\nLord Mayfield said:\n\n\"Your knowledge is very complete, M. Poirot. You must think me an unutterable skunk.\"\n\nPoirot made a quick gesture.\n\n\"No, no, Lord Mayfield. I think, as I said, that you are a very clever man. It came to me suddenly as we talked here last night. You are a first-class engineer. There will be, I think, some subtle alterations in the specifications of that bomber, alterations done so skilfully that it will be difficult to grasp why the machine is not the success it ought to be. A certain foreign power will find the type a failure . . . It will be a disappointment to them, I am sure. . . .\"\n\nAgain there was a silence\u2014then Lord Mayfield said:\n\n\"You are much too clever, M. Poirot. I will only ask you to believe one thing. I have faith in myself. I believe that I am the man to guide England through the days of crisis that I see coming. If I did not honestly believe that I am needed by my country to steer the ship of state, I would not have done what I have done\u2014made the best of both worlds\u2014saved myself from disaster by a clever trick.\"\n\n\"My lord,\" said Poirot, \"if you could not make the best of both worlds, you could not be a politician!\"\nDEAD MAN'S MIRROR\nOne\n\nI\n\nThe flat was a modern one. The furnishings of the room were modern, too. The armchairs were squarely built, the upright chairs were angular. A modern writing table was set squarely in front of the window, and at it sat a small, elderly man. His head was practically the only thing in the room that was not square. It was egg-shaped.\n\nM. Hercule Poirot was reading a letter:\n\nStation: Whimperley. | Hamborough Close,\n\n---|---\n\nTelegrams: | Hamborough St. Mary\n\nHamborough St. John. | Westshire.\n\n|\n\nSeptember 24th, 1936.\n\nM. Hercule Poirot.\n\nDear Sir,\u2014A matter has arisen which requires handling with great delicacy and discretion. I have heard good accounts of you, and have decided to entrust the matter to you. I have reason to believe that I am the victim of fraud, but for family reasons I do not wish to call in the police. I am taking certain measures of my own to deal with the business, but you must be prepared to come down here immediately on receipt of a telegram. I should be obliged if you will not answer this letter.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nGervase Chevenix-Gore.\n\nThe eyebrows of M. Hercule Poirot climbed slowly up his forehead until they nearly disappeared into his hair.\n\n\"And who, then,\" he demanded of space, \"is this Gervase Chevenix-Gore?\"\n\nHe crossed to a bookcase and took out a large, fat book.\n\nHe found what he wanted easily enough.\n\nChevenix-Gore, Sir Gervase Francis Xavier, 10th Bt. cr. 1694; formerly Captain 17th Lancers; b. 18th May, 1878; e.s. of Sir Guy Chevenix-Gore, 9th Bt., and Lady Claudia Bretherton, 2nd. d. of 8th Earl of Wallingford. S. father, 1911; m. 1912, Vanda Elizabeth, e.d. of Colonel Frederick Arbuthnot, q.v.; educ. Eton. Served European War, 1914\u201318. Recreations: travelling, big game hunting. Address: Hamborough St. Mary, Westshire, and 218 Lowndes Square, S.W.1. Clubs: Cavalry. Travellers.\n\nPoirot shook his head in a slightly dissatisfied manner. For a moment or two he remained lost in thought, then he went to the desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a little pile of invitation cards.\n\nHis face brightened.\n\n\"A la bonne heure! Exactly my affair! He will certainly be there.\"\n\nII\n\nA duchess greeted M. Hercule Poirot in fulsome tones.\n\n\"So you could manage to come after all, M. Poirot! Why, that's splendid.\"\n\n\"The pleasure is mine, madame,\" murmured Poirot, bowing.\n\nHe escaped from several important and splendid beings\u2014a famous diplomat, an equally famous actress and a well-known sporting peer\u2014and found at last the person he had come to seek, that invariably \"also present\" guest, Mr. Satterthwaite.\n\nMr. Satterthwaite twittered amiably.\n\n\"The dear duchess\u2014I always enjoy her parties . . . Such a personality, if you know what I mean. I saw a lot of her in Corsica some years ago. . . .\"\n\nMr. Satterthwaite's conversation was apt to be unduly burdened by mentions of his titled acquaintances. It is possible that he may sometimes have found pleasure in the company of Messrs. Jones, Brown or Robinson, but, if so, he did not mention the fact. And yet, to describe Mr. Satterthwaite as a mere snob and leave it at that would have been to do him an injustice. He was a keen observer of human nature, and if it is true that the looker-on knows most of the game, Mr. Satterthwaite knew a  \ngood deal.\n\n\"You know, my dear fellow, it is really ages since I saw you. I always feel myself privileged to have seen you work at close quarters in the Crow's Nest business. I feel since then that I am in the know, so to speak. I saw Lady Mary only last week, by the way. A charming creature\u2014pot pourri and lavender!\"\n\nAfter passing lightly on one or two scandals of the moment\u2014the indiscretions of an earl's daughter, and the lamentable conduct of a viscount\u2014Poirot succeeded in introducing the name of Gervase Chevenix-Gore.\n\nMr. Satterthwaite responded immediately.\n\n\"Ah, now, there is a character, if you like! The Last of the Baronets\u2014that's his nickname.\"\n\n\"Pardon, I do not quite comprehend.\"\n\nMr. Satterthwaite unbent indulgently to the lower comprehension of a foreigner.\n\n\"It's a joke, you know\u2014a joke. Naturally, he's not really the last baronet in England\u2014but he does represent the end of an era. The Bold Bad Baronet\u2014the mad harum-scarum baronet so popular in the novels of the last century\u2014the kind of fellow who laid impossible wagers and won 'em.\"\n\nHe went on to expound what he meant in more detail. In younger years, Gervase Chevenix-Gore had sailed round the world in a windjammer. He had been on an expedition to the Pole. He had challenged a racing peer to a duel. For a wager he had ridden his favourite mare up the staircase of a ducal house. He had once leapt from a box to the stage and carried off a well-known actress in the middle of her r\u00f4le.\n\nThe anecdotes of him were innumerable.\n\n\"It's an old family,\" went on Mr. Satterthwaite. \"Sir Guy de Chevenix went on the first crusade. Now, alas, the line looks like it's coming to an end. Old Gervase is the last Chevenix-Gore.\"\n\n\"The estate, it is impoverished?\"\n\n\"Not a bit of it. Gervase is fabulously wealthy. Owns valuable house property\u2014coalfields\u2014and in addition he staked out a claim to some mine in Peru or somewhere in South America, when he was a young man, which has yielded him a fortune. An amazing man. Always lucky in everything he's undertaken.\"\n\n\"He is now an elderly man, of course?\"\n\n\"Yes, poor old Gervase.\" Mr. Satterthwaite sighed, shook his head. \"Most people would describe him to you as mad as a hatter. It's true, in a way. He is mad\u2014not in the sense of being certifiable or having delusions\u2014but mad in the sense of being abnormal. He's always been a man of great originality of character.\"\n\n\"And originality becomes eccentricity as the years go by?\" suggested Poirot.\n\n\"Very true. That's exactly what's happened to poor old Gervase.\"\n\n\"He has perhaps, a swollen idea of his own importance?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. I should imagine that, in Gervase's mind, the world has always been divided into two parts\u2014there are the Chevenix-Gores, and the other people!\"\n\n\"An exaggerated sense of family!\"\n\n\"Yes. The Chevenix-Gores are all arrogant as the devil\u2014a law unto themselves. Gervase, being the last of them, has got it badly. He is\u2014well, really, you know, to hear him talk, you might imagine him to be\u2014er, the Almighty!\"\n\nPoirot nodded his head slowly and thoughtfully.\n\n\"Yes, I imagined that. I have had, you see, a letter from him. It was an unusual letter. It did not demand. It summoned!\"\n\n\"A royal command,\" said Mr. Satterthwaite, tittering a little.\n\n\"Precisely. It did not seem to occur to this Sir Gervase that I, Hercule Poirot, am a man of importance, a man of infinite affairs! That it was extremely unlikely that I should be able to fling everything aside and come hastening like an obedient dog\u2014like a mere nobody, gratified to receive a commission!\"\n\nMr. Satterthwaite bit his lip in an effort to suppress a smile. It may have occurred to him that where egoism was concerned, there was not much to choose between Hercule Poirot and Gervase Chevenix-Gore.\n\nHe murmured:\n\n\"Of course, if the cause of the summons was urgent\u2014?\"\n\n\"It was not!\" Poirot's hands rose in the air in an emphatic gesture. \"I was to hold myself at his disposition, that was all, in case he should require me! Enfin, je vous demande!\"\n\nAgain the hands rose eloquently, expressing better than words could do M. Hercule Poirot's sense of utter outrage.\n\n\"I take it,\" said Mr. Satterthwaite, \"that you refused?\"\n\n\"I have not yet had the opportunity,\" said Poirot slowly.\n\n\"But you will refuse?\"\n\nA new expression passed over the little man's face. His brow furrowed itself perplexedly.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"How can I express myself? To refuse\u2014yes, that was my first instinct. But I do not know . . . One has, sometimes, a feeling. Faintly, I seem to smell the fish. . . .\"\n\nMr. Satterthwaite received this last statement without any sign of amusement.\n\n\"Oh?\" he said. \"That is interesting. . . .\"\n\n\"It seems to me,\" went on Hercule Poirot, \"that a man such as you have described might be very vulnerable\u2014\"\n\n\"Vulnerable?\" queried Mr. Satterthwaite. For the moment he was surprised. The word was not one that he would naturally have associated with Gervase Chevenix-Gore. But he was a man of perception, quick in observation. He said slowly:\n\n\"I think I see what you mean.\"\n\n\"Such a one is encased, is he not, in an armour\u2014such an armour! The armour of the crusaders was nothing to it\u2014an armour of arrogance, of pride, of complete self-esteem. This armour, it is in some ways a protection, the arrows, the everyday arrows of life glance off it. But there is this danger; Sometimes a man in armour might not even know he was being attacked. He will be slow to see, slow to hear\u2014slower still to feel.\"\n\nHe paused, then asked with a change of manner:\n\n\"Of what does the family of this Sir Gervase consist?\"\n\n\"There's Vanda\u2014his wife. She was an Arbuthnot\u2014very handsome girl. She's still quite a handsome woman. Frightfully vague, though. Devoted to Gervase. She's got a leaning towards the occult, I believe. Wears amulets and scarabs and gives out that she's the reincarnation of an Egyptian Queen . . . Then there's Ruth\u2014she's their adopted daughter. They've no children of their own. Very attractive girl in the modern style. That's all the family. Except, of course, for Hugo Trent. He's Gervase's nephew. Pamela Chevenix-Gore married Reggie Trent and Hugo was their only child. He's an orphan. He can't inherit the title, of course, but I imagine he'll come in for most of Gervase's money in the end. Good-looking lad, he's in the Blues.\"\n\nPoirot nodded his head thoughtfully. Then he asked:\n\n\"It is a grief to Sir Gervase, yes, that he has no son to inherit his name?\"\n\n\"I should imagine that it cuts pretty deep.\"\n\n\"The family name, it is a passion with him?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nMr. Satterthwaite was silent a moment or two. He was very intrigued. Finally he ventured:\n\n\"You see a definite reason for going down to Hamborough Close?\"\n\nSlowly, Poirot shook his head.\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"As far as I can see, there is no reason at all. But, all the same, I fancy I shall go.\"\nTwo\n\nHercule Poirot sat in the corner of a first-class carriage speeding through the English countryside.\n\nMeditatively he took from his pocket a neatly folded telegram, which he opened and reread:\n\nTake four-thirty from St. Pancras instruct guard have express stopped at Whimperley.\n\nChevenix-Gore.\n\nHe folded up the telegram again and put it back in his pocket.\n\nThe guard on the train had been obsequious. The gentleman was going to Hamborough Close? Oh, yes, Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore's guests always had the express stopped at Whimperley. \"A special kind of prerogative, I think it is, sir.\"\n\nSince then the guard had paid two visits to the carriage\u2014the first in order to assure the traveller that everything would be done to keep the carriage for himself, the second to announce that the express was running ten minutes late.\n\nThe train was due to arrive at 7:50, but it was exactly two minutes past eight when Hercule Poirot descended on to the platform of the little country station and pressed the expected half crown into the attentive guard's hand.\n\nThere was a whistle from the engine, and the Northern Express began to move once more. A tall chauffeur in dark green uniform stepped up to Poirot.\n\n\"Mr. Poirot? For Hamborough Close?\"\n\nHe picked up the detective's neat valise and led the way out of the station. A big Rolls was waiting. The chauffeur held the door open for Poirot to get in, arranged a sumptuous fur rug over his knees, and they drove off.\n\nAfter some ten minutes of cross-country driving, round sharp corners and down country lanes, the car turned in at a wide gateway flanked with huge stone griffons.\n\nThey drove through a park and up to the house. The door of it was opened as they drew up, and a butler of imposing proportions showed himself upon the front step.\n\n\"Mr. Poirot? This way, sir.\"\n\nHe led the way along the hall and threw open a door halfway along it on the right.\n\n\"Mr. Hercule Poirot,\" he announced.\n\nThe room contained a number of people in evening dress, and as Poirot walked in his quick eyes perceived at once that his appearance was not expected. The eyes of all present rested on him in unfeigned surprise.\n\nThen a tall woman, whose dark hair was threaded with grey, made an uncertain advance towards him.\n\nPoirot bowed over her hand.\n\n\"My apologies, madame,\" he said. \"I fear that my train was late.\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" said Lady Chevenix-Gore vaguely. Her eyes still stared at him in a puzzled fashion. \"Not at all, Mr.\u2014er\u2014I didn't quite hear\u2014\"\n\n\"Hercule Poirot.\"\n\nHe said the name clearly and distinctly.\n\nSomewhere behind him he heard a sudden sharp intake of breath.\n\nAt the same time he realized that clearly his host could not be in the room. He murmured gently:\n\n\"You knew I was coming, madame?\"\n\n\"Oh\u2014oh, yes . . .\" Her manner was not convincing. \"I think\u2014I mean I suppose so, but I am so terribly impractical, M. Poirot. I forget everything.\" Her tone held a melancholy pleasure in the fact. \"I am told things. I appear to take them in\u2014but they just pass through my brain and are gone! Vanished! As though they had never been.\"\n\nThen, with a slight air of performing a duty long overdue, she glanced round her vaguely and murmured:\n\n\"I expect you know everybody.\"\n\nThough this was patently not the case, the phrase was clearly a well-worn formula by means of which Lady Chevenix-Gore spared herself the trouble of introduction and the strain of remembering people's right names.\n\nMaking a supreme effort to meet the difficulties of this particular case, she added:\n\n\"My daughter\u2014Ruth.\"\n\nThe girl who stood before him was also tall and dark, but she was of a very different type. Instead of the flattish, indeterminate features of Lady Chevenix-Gore, she had a well-chiselled nose, slightly aquiline, and a clear, sharp line of jaw. Her black hair swept back from her face into a mass of little tight curls. Her colouring was of carnation clearness and brilliance, and owed little to makeup. She was, so Hercule Poirot thought, one of the loveliest girls he had seen.\n\nHe recognized, too, that she had brains as well as beauty, and guessed at certain qualities of pride and temper. Her voice, when she spoke, came with a slight drawl that struck him as deliberately put on.\n\n\"How exciting,\" she said, \"to entertain M. Hercule Poirot! The old man arranged a little surprise for us, I suppose.\"\n\n\"So you did not know I was coming, mademoiselle?\" he said quickly.\n\n\"I hadn't an idea of it. As it is, I must postpone getting my autograph book until after dinner.\"\n\nThe notes of a gong sounded from the hall, then the butler opened the door and announced:\n\n\"Dinner is served.\"\n\nAnd then, almost before the last word, \"served,\" had been uttered, something very curious happened. The pontificial domestic figure became, just for one moment, a highly astonished human being. . . .\n\nThe metamorphosis was so quick and the mask of the well-trained servant was back again so soon, that anyone who had not happened to be looking would not have noticed the change. Poirot, however, had happened to be looking. He wondered.\n\nThe butler hesitated in the doorway. Though his face was again correctly expressionless, an air of tension hung about his  \nfigure.\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore said uncertainly:\n\n\"Oh, dear\u2014this is most extraordinary. Really, I\u2014one hardly knows what to do.\"\n\nRuth said to Poirot:\n\n\"This singular consternation, M. Poirot, is occasioned by the fact that my father, for the first time for at least twenty years, is late for dinner.\"\n\n\"It is most extraordinary\u2014\" wailed Lady Chevenix-Gore. \"Gervase never\u2014\"\n\nAn elderly man of upright soldierly carriage came to her side. He laughed genially.\n\n\"Good old Gervase! Late at last! Upon my word, we'll rag him over this. Elusive collar stud, d'you think? Or is Gervase immune from our common weaknesses?\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore said in a low, puzzled voice:\n\n\"But Gervase is never late.\"\n\nIt was almost ludicrous, the consternation caused by this simple contretemps. And yet, to Hercule Poirot, it was not ludicrous . . . Behind the consternation he felt uneasiness\u2014perhaps even apprehension. And he, too, found it strange that Gervase Chevenix-Gore should not appear to greet the guest he had summoned in such a mysterious manner.\n\nIn the meantime, it was clear that nobody knew quite what to do. An unprecedented situation had arisen with which nobody knew how to deal.\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore at last took the initiative, if initiative it can be called. Certainly her manner was vague in the extreme.\n\n\"Snell,\" she said, \"is your master\u2014?\"\n\nShe did not finish the sentence, merely looked at the butler expectantly.\n\nSnell, who was clearly used to his mistress's methods of seeking information, replied promptly to the unspecified question:\n\n\"Sir Gervase came downstairs at five minutes to eight, m'lady, and went straight to the study.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see\u2014\" Her mouth remained open, her eyes seemed far away. \"You don't think\u2014I mean\u2014he heard the gong?\"\n\n\"I think he must have done so, m'lady, the gong being immediately outside the study door. I did not, of course, know that Sir Gervase was still in the study, otherwise I should have announced to him that dinner was ready. Shall I do so now, m'lady?\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore seized on the suggestion with manifest relief.\n\n\"Oh, thank you, Snell. Yes, please do. Yes, certainly.\"\n\nShe said, as the butler left the room:\n\n\"Snell is such a treasure. I rely on him absolutely. I really don't know what I should do without Snell.\"\n\nSomebody murmured a sympathetic assent, but nobody spoke. Hercule Poirot, watching that room full of people with suddenly sharpened attention, had an idea that one and all were in a state of tension. His eyes ran quickly over them, tabulating them roughly. Two elderly men, the soldierly one who had spoken just now, and a thin, spare, grey-haired man with closely pinched legal lips. Two youngish men\u2014very different in type from each other. One with a moustache and an air of modest arrogance, he guessed to be possibly Sir Gervase's nephew, the one in the Blues. The other, with sleek brushed-back hair and a rather obvious style of good looks, he put down as of a definitely inferior social class. There was a small middle-aged woman with pince-nez and intelligent eyes, and there was a girl with flaming red hair.\n\nSnell appeared at the door. His manner was perfect, but once again the veneer of the impersonal butler showed signs of the perturbed human being beneath the surface.\n\n\"Excuse me, m'lady, the study door is locked.\"\n\n\"Locked?\"\n\nIt was a man's voice\u2014young, alert, with a ring of excitement in it. It was the good-looking young man with the slicked-back hair who had spoken. He went on, hurrying forward:\n\n\"Shall I go and see\u2014?\"\n\nBut very quietly Hercule Poirot took command. He did it so naturally that no one thought it odd that this stranger, who had just arrived, should suddenly assume charge of the situation.\n\n\"Come,\" he said. \"Let us go to the study.\"\n\nHe continued, speaking to Snell:\n\n\"Lead the way, if you please.\"\n\nSnell obeyed. Poirot followed close behind him, and, like a flock of sheep, everyone else followed.\n\nSnell led the way through the big hall, past the great branching curve of the staircase, past an enormous grandfather clock and a recess in which stood a gong, along a narrow passage which ended in a door.\n\nHere Poirot passed Snell and gently tried the handle. It turned, but the door did not open. Poirot rapped gently with his knuckles on the panel of the door. He rapped louder and louder. Then, suddenly desisting, he dropped to his knees and applied his eye to the keyhole.\n\nSlowly he rose to his feet and looked round. His face was stern.\n\n\"Gentlemen!\" he said. \"This door must be broken open immediately!\"\n\nUnder his direction the two young men, who were both tall and powerfully built, attacked the door. It was no easy matter. The doors of Hamborough Close were solidly built.\n\nAt last, however, the lock gave, and the door swung inwards with a noise of splintering, rending wood.\n\nAnd then, for a moment, everyone stood still, huddled in the doorway looking at the scene inside. The lights were on. Along the left-hand wall was a big writing table, a massive affair of solid mahogany. Sitting, not at the table, but sideways to it, so that his back was directly towards them, was a big man slouched down in a chair. His head and the upper part of his body hung down over the right side of the chair, and his right hand and arm hung limply down. Just below it on the carpet was a small, gleaming pistol. . . .\n\nThere was no need of speculation. The picture was clear. Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore had shot himself.\nThree\n\nFor a moment or two the group in the doorway stood motionless, staring at the scene. Then Poirot strode forward.\n\nAt the same moment Hugo Trent said crisply:\n\n\"My God, the Old Man's shot himself!\"\n\nAnd there was a long, shuddering moan from Lady Chevenix-Gore.\n\n\"Oh, Gervase\u2014Gervase!\"\n\nOver his shoulder Poirot said sharply:\n\n\"Take Lady Chevenix-Gore away. She can do nothing here.\"\n\nThe elderly soldierly man obeyed. He said:\n\n\"Come, Vanda. Come, my dear. You can do nothing. It's all over. Ruth, come and look after your mother.\"\n\nBut Ruth Chevenix-Gore had pressed into the room and stood close by Poirot's side as he bent over the dreadful sprawled figure in the chair\u2014the figure of a man of Herculean build with a Viking beard.\n\nShe said in a low, tense voice, curiously restrained and muffled:\n\n\"You're quite sure he's\u2014dead?\"\n\nPoirot looked up.\n\nThe girl's face was alive with some emotion\u2014an emotion sternly checked and repressed\u2014that he did not quite understand. It was not grief\u2014it seemed more like a kind of half-fearful excitement.\n\nThe little woman in the pince-nez murmured:\n\n\"Your mother, my dear\u2014don't you think\u2014?\"\n\nIn a high, hysterical voice the girl with the red hair cried out:\n\n\"Then it wasn't a car or a champagne cork! It was a shot we heard. . . .\"\n\nPoirot turned and faced them all.\n\n\"Somebody must communicate with the police\u2014\"\n\nRuth Chevenix-Gore cried out violently:\n\n\"No!\"\n\nThe elderly man with the legal face said:\n\n\"Unavoidable, I am afraid. Will you see to that, Burrows? Hugo\u2014\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"You are Mr. Hugo Trent?\" to the tall young man with the moustache. \"It would be well, I think, if everyone except you and I were to leave this room.\"\n\nAgain his authority was not questioned. The lawyer shepherded the others away. Poirot and Hugo Trent were left alone.\n\nThe latter said, staring:\n\n\"Look here\u2014who are you? I mean, I haven't the foggiest idea. What are you doing here?\"\n\nPoirot took a card case from his pocket and selected a card.\n\nHugo Trent said, staring at it:\n\n\"Private detective\u2014eh? Of course, I've heard of you . . . But I still don't see what you are doing here.\"\n\n\"You did not know that your uncle\u2014he was your uncle, was he not\u2014?\"\n\nHugo's eyes dropped for a fleeting moment to the dead man.\n\n\"The Old Man? Yes, he was my uncle all right.\"\n\n\"You did not know that he had sent for me?\"\n\nHugo shook his head. He said slowly:\n\n\"I'd no idea of it.\"\n\nThere was an emotion in his voice that was rather hard to classify. His face looked wooden and stupid\u2014the kind of expression, Poirot thought, that made a useful mask in times of stress.\n\nPoirot said quietly:\n\n\"We are in Westshire, are we not? I know your Chief Constable, Major Riddle, very well.\"\n\nHugo said:\n\n\"Riddle lives about half a mile away. He'll probably come over himself.\"\n\n\"That,\" said Poirot, \"will be very convenient.\"\n\nHe began prowling gently round the room. He twitched aside the window curtain and examined the french windows, trying them gently. They were closed.\n\nOn the wall behind the desk there hung a round mirror. The mirror was shivered. Poirot bent down and picked up a small object.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Hugo Trent.\n\n\"The bullet.\"\n\n\"It passed straight through his head and struck the mirror?\"\n\n\"It seems so.\"\n\nPoirot replaced the bullet meticulously where he had found it. He came up to the desk. Some papers were arranged neatly stacked in heaps. On the blotting pad itself there was a loose sheet of paper with the word SORRY printed across it in large, shaky handwriting.\n\nHugo said: \"He must have written that just before he\u2014did it.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully.\n\nHe looked again at the smashed mirror, then at the dead man. His brow creased itself a little as though in perplexity. He went over to the door, where it hung crookedly with its splintered lock. There was no key in the door, as he knew\u2014otherwise he would not have been able to see through the keyhole. There was no sign of it on the floor. Poirot leaned over the dead man and ran his fingers over him.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"The key is in his pocket.\"\n\nHugo drew out a cigarette case and lighted a cigarette. He spoke rather hoarsely.\n\n\"It seems all quite clear,\" he said. \"My uncle shut himself up in here, scrawled that message on a piece of paper, and then shot himself.\"\n\nPoirot nodded meditatively. Hugo went on:\n\n\"But I don't understand why he sent for you. What was it all about?\"\n\n\"That is rather more difficult to explain. While we are waiting, Mr. Trent, for the authorities to take charge, perhaps you will tell me exactly who all the people are whom I saw tonight when I arrived?\"\n\n\"Who they are?\" Hugo spoke almost absently. \"Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. Shall we sit down?\" He indicated a settee in the farthest corner of the room from the body. He went on, speaking jerkily: \"Well, there's Vanda\u2014my aunt, you know. And Ruth, my cousin. But you know them. Then the other girl is Susan Cardwell. She's just staying here. And there's Colonel Bury. He's an old friend of the family. And Mr. Forbes. He's an old friend, too, beside being the family lawyer and all that. Both the old boys had a passion for Vanda when she was young, and they still hang round in a faithful, devoted sort of way. Ridiculous, but rather touching. Then there's Godfrey Burrows, the Old Man's\u2014I mean my uncle's\u2014secretary, and Miss Lingard, who's here to help him write a history of the Chevenix-Gores. She mugs up historical stuff for writers. That's the lot, I think.\"\n\nPoirot nodded. Then he said:\n\n\"And I understand you actually heard the shot that killed your uncle?\"\n\n\"Yes, we did. Thought it was a champagne cork\u2014at least, I did. Susan and Miss Lingard thought it was a car backfiring outside\u2014the road runs quite near, you know.\"\n\n\"When was this?\"\n\n\"Oh, about ten past eight. Snell had just sounded the first gong.\"\n\n\"And where were you when you heard it?\"\n\n\"In the hall. We\u2014we were laughing about it\u2014arguing, you know, as to where the sound came from. I said it came from the dining room, and Susan said it came from the direction of the drawing room, and Miss Lingard said it sounded like upstairs, and Snell said it came from the road outside, only it came through the upstairs windows. And Susan said, \"Any more theories?\" And I laughed and said there was always murder! Seems pretty rotten to think of it now.\"\n\nHis face twitched nervously.\n\n\"It did not occur to anyone that Sir Gervase might have shot himself?\"\n\n\"No, of course not.\"\n\n\"You have, in fact, no idea why he should have shot himself?\"\n\nHugo said slowly:\n\n\"Oh, well, I shouldn't say that\u2014\"\n\n\"You have an idea?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014well\u2014it's difficult to explain. Naturally I didn't expect him to commit suicide, but all the same I'm not frightfully surprised. The truth of it is that my uncle was as mad as a hatter, M. Poirot. Everyone knew that.\"\n\n\"That strikes you as a sufficient explanation?\"\n\n\"Well, people do shoot themselves when they're a bit barmy.\"\n\n\"An explanation of an admirable simplicity.\"\n\nHugo stared.\n\nPoirot got up again and wandered aimlessly round the room. It was comfortably furnished, mainly in a rather heavy Victorian style. There were massive bookcases, huge armchairs, and some upright chairs of genuine Chippendale. There were not many ornaments, but some bronzes on the mantelpiece attracted Poirot's attention and apparently stirred his admiration. He picked them up one by one, carefully examining them before replacing them with care. From the one on the extreme left he detached something with a fingernail.\n\n\"What's that?\" asked Hugo without much interest.\n\n\"Nothing very much. A tiny sliver of looking glass.\"\n\nHugo said:\n\n\"Funny the way that mirror was smashed by the shot. A broken mirror means bad luck. Poor old Gervase . . . I suppose his luck had held a bit too long.\"\n\n\"Your uncle was a lucky man?\"\n\nHugo gave a short laugh.\n\n\"Why, his luck was proverbial! Everything he touched turned to gold! If he backed an outsider, it romped home! If he invested in a doubtful mine, they struck a vein of ore at once! He's had the most amazing escapes from the tightest of tight places. His life's been saved by a kind of miracle more than once. He was rather a fine old boy, in his way, you know. He'd certainly 'been places and seen things'\u2014more than most of his generation.\"\n\nPoirot murmured in a conversational tone:\n\n\"You were attached to your uncle, Mr. Trent?\"\n\nHugo Trent seemed a little startled by the question.\n\n\"Oh\u2014er\u2014yes, of course,\" he said rather vaguely. \"You know, he was a bit difficult at times. Frightful strain to live with, and all that. Fortunately I didn't have to see much of him.\"\n\n\"He was fond of you?\"\n\n\"Not so that you'd notice it! As a matter of fact, he rather resented my existence, so to speak.\"\n\n\"How was that, Mr. Trent?\"\n\n\"Well, you see, he had no son of his own\u2014and he was pretty sore about it. He was mad about family and all that sort of thing. I believe it cut him to the quick to know that when he died the Chevenix-Gores would cease to exist. They've been going ever since the Norman Conquest, you know. The Old Man was the last of them. I suppose it was rather rotten from his point of view.\"\n\n\"You yourself do not share that sentiment?\"\n\nHugo shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"All that sort of thing seems to me rather out of date.\"\n\n\"What will happen to the estate?\"\n\n\"Don't really know. I might get it. Or he may have left it to Ruth. Probably Vanda has it for her lifetime.\"\n\n\"Your uncle did not definitely declare his intentions?\"\n\n\"Well, he had his pet idea.\"\n\n\"And what was that?\"\n\n\"His idea was that Ruth and I should make a match of it.\"\n\n\"That would doubtless have been very suitable.\"\n\n\"Eminently suitable. But Ruth\u2014well, Ruth has very decided views of her own about life. Mind you, she's an extremely attractive young woman, and she knows it. She's in no hurry to marry and settle down.\"\n\nPoirot leaned forward.\n\n\"But you yourself would have been willing, M. Trent?\"\n\nHugo said in a bored tone of voice:\n\n\"I really can't see it makes a ha'p'orth of difference who you marry nowadays. Divorce is so easy. If you're not hitting it off, nothing is easier than to cut the tangle and start again.\"\n\nThe door opened and Forbes entered with a tall, spruce-looking man.\n\nThe latter nodded to Trent.\n\n\"Hallo, Hugo. I'm extremely sorry about this. Very rough on all of you.\"\n\nHercule Poirot came forward.\n\n\"How do you do, Major Riddle? You remember me?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed.\" The chief constable shook hands. \"So you're down here?\"\n\nThere was a meditative note in his voice. He glanced curiously at Hercule Poirot.\nFour\n\n\"Well?\" said Major Riddle.\n\nIt was twenty minutes later. The chief constable's interrogative \"Well?\" was addressed to the police surgeon, a lank elderly man with grizzled hair.\n\nThe latter shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"He's been dead over half an hour\u2014but not more than an hour. You don't want technicalities, I know, so I'll spare you them. The man was shot through the head, the pistol being held a few inches from the right temple. Bullet passed right through the brain and out again.\"\n\n\"Perfectly compatible with suicide?\"\n\n\"Oh, perfectly. The body then slumped down in the chair, and the pistol dropped from his hand.\"\n\n\"You've got the bullet?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" The doctor held it up.\n\n\"Good,\" said Major Riddle. \"We'll keep it for comparison with the pistol. Glad it's a clear case and no difficulties.\"\n\nHercule Poirot asked gently:\n\n\"You are sure there are no difficulties, Doctor?\"\n\nThe doctor replied slowly:\n\n\"Well, I suppose you might call one thing a little odd. When he shot himself he must have been leaning slightly over to the right. Otherwise the bullet would have hit the wall below the mirror, instead of plumb in the middle.\"\n\n\"An uncomfortable position in which to commit suicide,\" said Poirot.\n\nThe doctor shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"Oh, well\u2014comfort\u2014if you're going to end it all\u2014\" He left the sentence unfinished.\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"The body can be moved now?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. I've done with it until the P.-M.\"\n\n\"What about you, Inspector?\" Major Riddle spoke to a tall impassive-faced man in plain clothes.\n\n\"O.K., sir. We've got all we want. Only the deceased's fingerprints on the pistol.\"\n\n\"Then you can get on with it.\"\n\nThe mortal remains of Gervase Chevenix-Gore were removed. The chief constable and Poirot were left together.\n\n\"Well,\" said Riddle, \"everything seems quite clear and aboveboard. Door locked, window fastened, key of door in dead man's pocket. Everything according to Cocker\u2014but for one circumstance.\"\n\n\"And what is that, my friend?\" inquired Poirot.\n\n\"You!\" said Riddle bluntly. \"What are you doing down here?\"\n\nBy way of reply, Poirot handed to him the letter he had received from the dead man a week ago, and the telegram which had finally brought him there.\n\n\"Humph,\" said the chief constable. \"Interesting. We'll have to get to the bottom of this. I should say it had a direct bearing upon his suicide.\"\n\n\"I agree.\"\n\n\"We must check up on who is in the house.\"\n\n\"I can tell you their names. I have just been making inquiries of Mr. Trent.\"\n\nHe repeated the list of names.\n\n\"Perhaps you, Major Riddle, know something about these people?\"\n\n\"I know something of them, naturally. Lady Chevenix-Gore is quite as mad in her own way as old Sir Gervase. They were devoted to each other\u2014and both quite mad. She's the vaguest creature that ever lived, with an occasional uncanny shrewdness that strikes the nail on the head in the most surprising fashion. People laugh at her a good deal. I think she knows it, but she doesn't care. She's absolutely no sense of humour.\"\n\n\"Miss Chevenix-Gore is only their adopted daughter, I understand?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"A very handsome young lady.\"\n\n\"She's a devilishly attractive girl. Has played havoc with most of the young fellows round here. Leads them all on and then turns round and laughs at them. Good seat on a horse, and wonderful hands.\"\n\n\"That, for the moment, does not concern us.\"\n\n\"Er\u2014no, perhaps not . . . Well, about the other people. I know old Bury, of course. He's here most of the time. Almost a tame cat about the house. Kind of A.D.C. to Lady Chevenix-Gore. He's a very old friend. They've known him all their lives. I think he and Sir Gervase were both interested in some company of which Bury was a director.\"\n\n\"Oswald Forbes, do you know anything of him?\"\n\n\"I rather believe I've met him once.\"\n\n\"Miss Lingard?\"\n\n\"Never heard of her.\"\n\n\"Miss Susan Cardwell?\"\n\n\"Rather a good-looking girl with red hair? I've seen her about with Ruth Chevenix-Gore the last few days.\"\n\n\"Mr. Burrows?\"\n\n\"Yes, I know him. Chevenix-Gore's secretary. Between you and me, I don't take to him much. He's good-looking, and knows it. Not quite out of the top drawer.\"\n\n\"Had he been with Sir Gervase long?\"\n\n\"About two years, I fancy.\"\n\n\"And there is no one else\u2014?\"\n\nPoirot broke off.\n\nA tall, fair-haired man in a lounge suit came hurrying in. He was out of breath and looked disturbed.\n\n\"Good evening, Major Riddle. I heard a rumour that Sir Gervase had shot himself, and I hurried up here. Snell tells me it's true. It's incredible! I can't believe it!\"\n\n\"It's true enough, Lake. Let me introduce you. This is Captain Lake, Sir Gervase's agent for the estate. M. Hercule Poirot, of whom you may have heard.\"\n\nLake's face lit up with what seemed a kind of delighted incredulity.\n\n\"M. Hercule Poirot? I'm most awfully pleased to meet you. At least\u2014\" He broke off, the quick charming smile vanished\u2014he looked disturbed and upset. \"There isn't anything\u2014fishy\u2014about this suicide, is there, sir?\"\n\n\"Why should there be anything 'fishy,' as you call it?\" asked the chief constable sharply.\n\n\"I mean, because M. Poirot is here. Oh, and because the whole business seems so incredible!\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Poirot quickly. \"I am not here on account of the death of Sir Gervase. I was already in the house\u2014as a guest.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see. Funny, he never told me you were coming when I was going over accounts with him this afternoon.\"\n\nPoirot said quietly:\n\n\"You have twice used the word 'incredible,' Captain Lake. Are you, then, so surprised to hear of Sir Gervase commiting suicide?\"\n\n\"Indeed I am. Of course, he was mad as a hatter; everyone would agree about that. But all the same, I simply can't imagine his thinking the world would be able to get on without him.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Poirot. \"It is a point, that.\" And he looked with appreciation at the frank, intelligent countenance of the young man.\n\nMajor Riddle cleared his throat.\n\n\"Since you are here, Captain Lake, perhaps you will sit down and answer a few questions.\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir.\"\n\nLake took a chair opposite the other two.\n\n\"When did you last see Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"This afternoon, just before three o'clock. There were some accounts to be checked, and the question of a new tenant for one of the farms.\"\n\n\"How long were you with him?\"\n\n\"Perhaps half an hour.\"\n\n\"Think carefully, and tell me whether you noticed anything unusual in his manner.\"\n\nThe young man considered.\n\n\"No, I hardly think so. He was, perhaps, a trifle excited\u2014but that wasn't unusual with him.\"\n\n\"He was not depressed in any way?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, he seemed in good spirits. He was enjoying himself very much just now, writing up a history of the family.\"\n\n\"How long had he been doing this?\"\n\n\"He began it about six months ago.\"\n\n\"Is that when Miss Lingard came here?\"\n\n\"No. She arrived about two months ago when he had discovered that he could not manage the necessary research work by himself.\"\n\n\"And you consider he was enjoying himself?\"\n\n\"Oh, simply enormously! He really didn't think that anything else mattered in the world except his family.\"\n\nThere was a momentary bitterness in the young man's tone.\n\n\"Then, as far as you know, Sir Gervase had no worries of any kind?\"\n\nThere was a slight\u2014a very slight\u2014pause before Captain Lake answered.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nPoirot suddenly interposed a question:\n\n\"Sir Gervase was not, you think, worried about his daughter in any way?\"\n\n\"His daughter?\"\n\n\"That is what I said.\"\n\n\"Not as far as I know,\" said the young man stiffly.\n\nPoirot said nothing further. Major Riddle said:\n\n\"Well, thank you, Lake. Perhaps you'd stay around in case I might want to ask you anything.\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir.\" He rose. \"Anything I can do?\"\n\n\"Yes, you might send the butler here. And perhaps you'd find out for me how Lady Chevenix-Gore is, and if I could have a few words with her presently, or if she's too upset.\"\n\nThe young man nodded and left the room with a quick, decisive step.\n\n\"An attractive personality,\" said Hercule Poirot.\n\n\"Yes, nice fellow, and good at his job. Everyone likes him.\"\nFive\n\n\"Sit down, Snell,\" said Major Riddle in a friendly tone. \"I've a good many questions to ask you, and I expect this has been a shock to you.\"\n\n\"Oh, it has indeed, sir. Thank you, sir.\" Snell sat down with such a discreet air that it was practically the same as though he had remained on his feet.\n\n\"Been here a good long time, haven't you?\"\n\n\"Sixteen years, sir, ever since Sir Gervase\u2014er\u2014settled down, so to speak.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, of course, your master was a great traveller in his day.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. He went on an expedition to the Pole and many other interesting places.\"\n\n\"Now, Snell, can you tell me when you last saw your master this evening?\"\n\n\"I was in the dining room, sir, seeing that the table arrangements were all complete. The door into the hall was open, and I saw Sir Gervase come down the stairs, cross the hall and go along the passage to the study.\"\n\n\"That was at what time?\"\n\n\"Just before eight o'clock. It might have been as much as five minutes before eight.\"\n\n\"And that was the last you saw of him?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Did you hear a shot?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, indeed, sir; but of course I had no idea at the time\u2014how should I have had?\"\n\n\"What did you think it was?\"\n\n\"I thought it was a car, sir. The road runs quite near the park wall. Or it might have been a shot in the woods\u2014a poacher, perhaps. I never dreamed\u2014\"\n\nMajor Riddle cut him short.\n\n\"What time was that?\"\n\n\"It was exactly eight minutes past eight, sir.\"\n\nThe chief constable said sharply:\n\n\"How is it you can fix the time to a minute?\"\n\n\"That's easy, sir. I had just sounded the first going.\"\n\n\"The first gong?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. By Sir Gervase's orders, a gong was always to be sounded seven minutes before the actual dinner gong. Very particular he was, sir, that everyone should be assembled ready in the drawing room when the second gong went. As soon as I had sounded the second gong, I went to the drawing room and announced dinner, and everyone went in.\"\n\n\"I begin to understand,\" said Hercule Poirot, \"why you looked so surprised when you announced dinner this evening. It was usual for Sir Gervase to be in the drawing room?\"\n\n\"I'd never known him not be there before, sir. It was quite a shock. I little thought\u2014\"\n\nAgain Major Riddle interrupted adroitly:\n\n\"And were the others also usually there?\"\n\nSnell coughed.\n\n\"Anyone who was late for dinner, sir, was never asked to the house again.\"\n\n\"H'm, very drastic.\"\n\n\"Sir Gervase, sir, employed a chef who was formerly with the Emperor of Moravia. He used to say, sir, that dinner was as important as a religious ritual.\"\n\n\"And what about his own family?\"\n\n\"Lady Chevenix-Gore was always very particular not to upset him, sir, and even Miss Ruth dared not be late for dinner.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" murmured Hercule Poirot.\n\n\"I see,\" said Riddle. \"So, dinner being at a quarter past eight, you sounded the first gong at eight minutes past as usual?\"\n\n\"That is so, sir\u2014but it wasn't as usual. Dinner was usually at eight. Sir Gervase gave orders that dinner was to be a quarter of an hour later this evening, as he was expecting a gentleman by the late train.\"\n\nSnell made a little bow towards Poirot as he spoke.\n\n\"When your master went to the study, did he look upset or worried in any way?\"\n\n\"I could not say, sir. It was too far for me to judge of his expression. I just noticed him, that was all.\"\n\n\"Was he left alone when he went to the study?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Did anyone go to the study after that?\"\n\n\"I could not say, sir. I went to the butler's pantry after that, and was there until I sounded the first gong at eight minutes past eight.\"\n\n\"That was when you heard the shot?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nPoirot gently interposed a question.\n\n\"There were others, I think, who also heard the shot?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Mr. Hugo and Miss Cardwell. And Miss Lingard.\"\n\n\"These people were also in the hall?\"\n\n\"Miss Lingard came out from the drawing room, and Miss Cardwell and Mr. Hugo were just coming down the stairs.\"\n\nPoirot asked:\n\n\"Was there any conversation about the matter?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, Mr. Hugo asked if there was champagne for dinner. I told him that sherry, hock and burgundy were being served.\"\n\n\"He thought it was a champagne cork?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"But nobody took it seriously?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, sir. They all went into the drawing room talking and laughing.\"\n\n\"Where were the other members of the household?\"\n\n\"I could not say, sir.\"\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"Do you know anything about this pistol?\" He held it out as he spoke.\n\n\"Oh, yes, sir. That belonged to Sir Gervase. He always kept it in the drawer of his desk in here.\"\n\n\"Was it usually loaded?\"\n\n\"I couldn't say, sir.\"\n\nMajor Riddle laid down the pistol and cleared his throat.\n\n\"Now, Snell, I'm going to ask you a rather important question. I hope you will answer it as truthfully as you can. Do you know of any reason which might lead your master to commit suicide?\"\n\n\"No, sir. I know of nothing.\"\n\n\"Sir Gervase had not been odd in his manner of late? Not depressed? Or worried?\"\n\nSnell coughed apologetically.\n\n\"You'll excuse my saying it, sir, but Sir Gervase was always what might have seemed to strangers a little odd in his manner. He was a highly original gentleman, sir.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I am quite aware of that.\"\n\n\"Outsiders, sir, did not always Understand Sir Gervase.\"\n\nSnell gave the phrase a definite value of capital letter.\n\n\"I know. I know. But there was nothing that you would have called unusual?\"\n\nThe butler hesitated.\n\n\"I think, sir, that Sir Gervase was worried about something,\" he said at last.\n\n\"Worried and depressed?\"\n\n\"I shouldn't say depressed, sir. But worried, yes.\"\n\n\"Have you any idea of the cause of that worry?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Was it connected with any particular person, for instance?\"\n\n\"I could not say at all, sir. In any case, it is only an impression of mine.\"\n\nPoirot spoke again.\n\n\"You were surprised at his suicide?\"\n\n\"Very surprised, sir. It has been a terrible shock to me. I never dreamed of such a thing.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully.\n\nRiddle glanced at him, then he said:\n\n\"Well, Snell, I think that is all we want to ask you. You are quite sure that there is nothing else you can tell us\u2014no unusual incident, for instance, that has happened in the last few days?\"\n\nThe butler, rising to his feet, shook his head.\n\n\"There is nothing, sir, nothing whatever.\"\n\n\"Then you can go.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nMoving towards the doorway, Snell drew back and stood aside. Lady Chevenix-Gore floated into the room.\n\nShe was wearing an oriental-looking garment of purple and orange silk wound tightly round her body. Her face was serene and her manner collected and calm.\n\n\"Lady Chevenix-Gore.\" Major Riddle sprang to his feet.\n\nShe said:\n\n\"They told me you would like to talk to me, so I came.\"\n\n\"Shall we go into another room? This must be painful for you in the extreme.\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore shook her head and sat down on one of the Chippendale chairs. She murmured:\n\n\"Oh, no, what does it matter?\"\n\n\"It is very good of you, Lady Chevenix-Gore, to put your feelings aside. I know what a frightful shock this must have  \nbeen and\u2014\"\n\nShe interrupted him.\n\n\"It was rather a shock at first,\" she admitted. Her tone was easy and conversational. \"But there is no such thing as Death, really, you know, only Change.\" She added: \"As a matter of fact, Gervase is standing just behind your left shoulder now. I can see him distinctly.\"\n\nMajor Riddle's left shoulder twitched slightly. He looked at Lady Chevenix-Gore rather doubtfully.\n\nShe smiled at him, a vague, happy smile.\n\n\"You don't believe, of course! So few people will. To me, the spirit world is quite as real as this one. But please ask me anything you like, and don't worry about distressing me. I'm not in the least distressed. Everything, you see, is Fate. One cannot escape one's Karma. It all fits in\u2014the mirror\u2014everything.\"\n\n\"The mirror, madame?\" asked Poirot.\n\nShe nodded her head towards it vaguely.\n\n\"Yes. It's splintered, you see. A symbol! You know Tennyson's poem? I used to read it as a girl\u2014though, of course, I didn't realise then the esoteric side of it. 'The mirror cracked from side to side. \"The curse is come upon me!\" cried the Lady of Shalott.' That's what happened to Gervase. The Curse came upon him suddenly. I think, you know, most very old families have a curse . . . the mirror cracked. He knew that he was doomed! The Curse had come!\"\n\n\"But, madame, it was not a curse that cracked the mirror\u2014it was a bullet!\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore said, still in the same sweet vague manner:\n\n\"It's all the same thing, really . . . It was Fate.\"\n\n\"But your husband shot himself.\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore smiled indulgently.\n\n\"He shouldn't have done that, of course. But Gervase was always impatient. He could never wait. His hour had come\u2014he went forward to meet it. It's all so simple, really.\"\n\nMajor Riddle, clearing his throat in exasperation, said sharply:\n\n\"Then you weren't surprised at your husband's taking his own life? Had you been expecting such a thing to happen?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\" Her eyes opened wide. \"One can't always foresee the future. Gervase, of course, was a very strange man, a very unusual man. He was quite unlike anyone else. He was one of the Great Ones born again. I've known that for some time. I think he knew it himself. He found it very hard to conform to the silly little standards of the everyday world.\" She added, looking over Major Riddle's shoulder, \"He's smiling now. He's thinking how foolish we all are. So we are really. Just like children. Pretending that life is real and that it matters . . . Life is only one of the Great  \nIllusions.\"\n\nFeeling that he was fighting a losing battle, Major Riddle asked desperately:\n\n\"You can't help us at all as to why your husband should have taken his life?\"\n\nShe shrugged her thin shoulders.\n\n\"Forces move us\u2014they move us . . . You cannot understand. You move only on the material plane.\"\n\nPoirot coughed.\n\n\"Talking of the material plane, have you any idea, madame, as to how your husband has left his money?\"\n\n\"Money?\" she stared at him. \"I never think of money.\"\n\nHer tone was disdainful.\n\nPoirot switched to another point.\n\n\"At what time did you come downstairs to dinner tonight?\"\n\n\"Time? What is Time? Infinite, that is the answer. Time is infinite.\"\n\nPoirot murmured:\n\n\"But your husband, madame, was rather particular about time\u2014especially, so I have been told, as regards the dinner hour.\"\n\n\"Dear Gervase,\" she smiled indulgently. \"He was very foolish about that. But it made him happy. So we were never late.\"\n\n\"Were you in the drawing room, madame, when the first gong went?\"\n\n\"No, I was in my room then.\"\n\n\"Do you remember who was in the drawing room when you did come down?\"\n\n\"Nearly everybody, I think,\" said Lady Chevenix-Gore vaguely. \"Does it matter?\"\n\n\"Possibly not,\" admitted Poirot. \"Then there is something else. Did your husband ever tell you that he suspected he was being robbed?\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore did not seem much interested in the question.\n\n\"Robbed? No, I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Robbed, swindled\u2014victimized in some way\u2014?\"\n\n\"No\u2014no\u2014I don't think so . . . Gervase would have been very angry if anybody had dared to do anything like that.\"\n\n\"At any rate he said nothing about it to you?\"\n\n\"No\u2014no.\" Lady Chevenix-Gore shook her head, still without much real interest. \"I should have remembered. . . .\"\n\n\"When did you last see your husband alive?\"\n\n\"He looked in, as usual, on his way downstairs before dinner. My maid was there. He just said he was going down.\"\n\n\"What has he talked about most in the last few weeks?\"\n\n\"Oh, the family history. He was getting on so well with it. He found that funny old thing, Miss Lingard, quite invaluable. She looked up things for him in the British Museum\u2014all that sort of thing. She worked with Lord Mulcaster on his book, you know. And she was tactful\u2014I mean, she didn't look up the wrong things. After all, there are ancestors one doesn't want raked up. Gervase was very sensitive. She helped me, too. She got a lot of information for me about Hatshepsut. I am a reincarnation of Hatshepsut, you know.\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore made this announcement in a calm voice.\n\n\"Before that,\" she went on, \"I was a Priestess in Atlantis.\"\n\nMajor Riddle shifted a little in his chair.\n\n\"Er\u2014er\u2014very interesting,\" he said. \"Well, really, Lady Chevenix-Gore, I think that will be all. Very kind of you.\"\n\nLady Chevenix-Gore rose, clasping her oriental robes  \nabout her.\n\n\"Goodnight,\" she said. And then, her eyes shifting to a point behind Major Riddle. \"Goodnight, Gervase dear. I wish you could come, but I know you have to stay here.\" She added in an explanatory fashion, \"You have to stay in the place where you've passed over for at least twenty-four hours. It's some time before you can move about freely and communicate.\"\n\nShe trailed out of the room.\n\nMajor Riddle wiped his brow.\n\n\"Phew,\" he murmured. \"She's a great deal madder than I ever thought. Does she really believe all that nonsense?\"\n\nPoirot shook his head thoughtfully.\n\n\"It is possible that she finds it helpful,\" he said. \"She needs, at this moment, to create for herself a world of illusion so that she can escape the stark reality of her husband's death.\"\n\n\"She seems almost certifiable to me,\" said Major Riddle. \"A long farrago of nonsense without one word of sense in it.\"\n\n\"No, no, my friend. The interesting thing is, as Mr. Hugo Trent casually remarked to me, that amidst all the vapouring there is an occasional shrewd thrust. She showed it by her remark about Miss Lingard's tact in not stressing undesirable ancestors. Believe me, Lady Chevenix-Gore is no fool.\"\n\nHe got up and paced up and down the room.\n\n\"There are things in this affair that I do not like. No, I do not like them at all.\"\n\nRiddle looked at him curiously.\n\n\"You mean the motive for his suicide?\"\n\n\"Suicide\u2014suicide! It is all wrong, I tell you. It is wrong psychologically. How did Chevenix-Gore think of himself? As a Colossus, as an immensely important person, as the centre of the universe! Does such a man destroy himself? Surely not. He is far more likely to destroy someone else\u2014some miserable crawling ant of a human being who had dared to cause him annoyance . . . Such an act he might regard as necessary\u2014as sanctified! But self-destruction? The destruction of such a Self?\"\n\n\"It's all very well, Poirot. But the evidence is clear enough. Door locked, key in his own pocket. Window closed and fastened. I know these things happen in books\u2014but I've never come across them in real life. Anything else?\"\n\n\"But yes, there is something else.\" Poirot sat down in the chair. \"Here I am. I am Chevenix-Gore. I am sitting at my desk. I am determined to kill myself\u2014because, let us say, I have made a discovery concerning some terrific dishonour to the family name. It is not very convincing, that, but it must suffice.\n\n\"Eh bien, what do I do? I scrawl on a piece of paper the word SORRY. Yes, that is quite possible. Then I open a drawer of the desk, take out the pistol which I keep there, load it, if it is not loaded, and then\u2014do I proceed to shoot myself? No, I first turn my chair round\u2014so, and I lean over a little to the right\u2014so\u2014and then I put the pistol to my temple and fire!\"\n\nPoirot sprang up from his chair, and wheeling round, demanded:\n\n\"I ask you, does that make sense? Why turn the chair round? If, for instance, there had been a picture on the wall there, then, yes, there might be an explanation. Some portrait which a dying man might wish to be the last thing on earth his eyes would see, but a window curtain\u2014ah non, that does not make sense.\"\n\n\"He might have wished to look out of the window. Last view out over the estate.\"\n\n\"My dear friend, you do not suggest that with any conviction. In fact, you know it is nonsense. At eight minutes past eight it was dark, and in any case the curtains are drawn. No, there must be some other explanation. . . .\"\n\n\"There's only one as far as I can see. Gervase Chevenix-Gore was mad.\"\n\nPoirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner.\n\nMajor Riddle rose.\n\n\"Come,\" he said. \"Let us go and interview the rest of the party. We may get at something that way.\"\nSix\n\nAfter the difficulties of getting a direct statement from Lady Chevenix-Gore, Major Riddle found considerable relief in dealing with a shrewd lawyer like Forbes.\n\nMr. Forbes was extremely guarded and cautious in his statements, but his replies were all directly to the point.\n\nHe admitted that Sir Gervase's suicide had been a great shock to him. He should never have considered Sir Gervase the kind of man who would take his own life. He knew nothing of any cause for such an act.\n\n\"Sir Gervase was not only my client, but was a very old friend. I have known him since boyhood. I should say that he had always enjoyed life.\"\n\n\"In the circumstances, Mr. Forbes, I must ask you to speak quite candidly. You did not know of any secret anxiety or sorrow in Sir Gervase's life?\"\n\n\"No. He had minor worries, like most men, but there was nothing of a serious nature.\"\n\n\"No illness? No trouble between him and his wife?\"\n\n\"No. Sir Gervase and Lady Chevenix-Gore were devoted to each other.\"\n\nMajor Riddle said cautiously:\n\n\"Lady Chevenix-Gore appears to hold somewhat curious views.\"\n\nMr. Forbes smiled\u2014an indulgent, manly smile.\n\n\"Ladies,\" he said, \"must be allowed their fancies.\"\n\nThe chief constable went on:\n\n\"You managed all Sir Gervase's legal affairs?\"\n\n\"Yes, my firm, Forbes, Ogilvie and Spence, have acted for the Chevenix-Gore family for well over a hundred years.\"\n\n\"Were there any\u2014scandals in the Chevenix-Gore family?\"\n\nMr. Forbes's eyebrows rose.\n\n\"Really, I fail to understand you?\"\n\n\"M. Poirot, will you show Mr. Forbes the letter you showed me?\"\n\nIn silence Poirot rose and handed the letter to Mr. Forbes with a little bow.\n\nMr. Forbes read it and his eyebrows rose still more.\n\n\"A most remarkable letter,\" he said. \"I appreciate your question now. No, so far as my knowledge went, there was nothing to justify the writing of such a letter.\"\n\n\"Sir Gervase said nothing of this matter to you?\"\n\n\"Nothing at all. I must say I find it very curious that he should not have done so.\"\n\n\"He was accustomed to confide in you?\"\n\n\"I think he relied on my judgment.\"\n\n\"And you have no idea as to what this letter refers?\"\n\n\"I should not like to make any rash speculations.\"\n\nMajor Riddle appreciated the subtlety of this reply.\n\n\"Now, Mr. Forbes, perhaps you can tell us how Sir Gervase has left his property.\"\n\n\"Certainly. I see no objection to such a course. To his wife, Sir Gervase left an annual income of six thousand pounds chargeable on the estate, and the choice of the Dower House or the town house in Lowndes Square, whichever she should prefer. There were, of course, several legacies and bequests, but nothing of an outstanding nature. The residue of his property was left to his adopted daughter, Ruth, on condition that, if she married, her husband should take the name of Chevenix-Gore.\"\n\n\"Was nothing left to his nephew, Mr. Hugo Trent?\"\n\n\"Yes. A legacy of five thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"And I take it that Sir Gervase was a rich man?\"\n\n\"He was extremely wealthy. He had a vast private fortune apart from the estate. Of course, he was not quite so well-off as in the past. Practically all invested incomes have felt the strain. Also, Sir Gervase had dropped a good deal of money over a certain company\u2014the Paragon Synthetic Rubber Substitute in which Colonel Bury persuaded him to invest a good deal of money.\"\n\n\"Not very wise advice?\"\n\nMr. Forbes sighed.\n\n\"Retired soldiers are the worst sufferers when they engage in financial operations. I have found that their credulity far exceeds that of widows\u2014and that is saying a good deal.\"\n\n\"But these unfortunate investments did not seriously affect Sir Gervase's income?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, not seriously. He was still an extremely rich man.\"\n\n\"When was this will made?\"\n\n\"Two years ago.\"\n\nPoirot murmured:\n\n\"This arrangement, was it not possibly a little unfair to Mr. Hugo Trent, Sir Gervase's nephew? He is, after all, Sir Gervase's nearest blood relation.\"\n\nMr. Forbes shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"One has to take a certain amount of family history into account.\"\n\n\"Such as\u2014?\"\n\nMr. Forbes seemed slightly unwilling to proceed.\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"You mustn't think we're unduly concerned with raking up old scandals or anything of that sort. But this letter of Sir Gervase's to M. Poirot has got to be explained.\"\n\n\"There is certainly nothing scandalous in the explanation of Sir Gervase's attitude to his nephew,\" said Mr. Forbes quickly. \"It was simply that Sir Gervase always took his position as head of the family very seriously. He had a younger brother and sister. The brother, Anthony Chevenix-Gore, was killed in the war. The sister, Pamela, married, and Sir Gervase disapproved of the marriage. That is to say, he considered that she ought to obtain his consent and approval before marrying. He thought that Captain Trent's family was not of sufficient prominence to be allied with a Chevenix-Gore. His sister was merely amused by his attitude. As a result, Sir Gervase has always been inclined to dislike his nephew. I think that dislike may have influenced him in deciding to adopt a  \nchild.\"\n\n\"There was no hope of his having children of his own?\"\n\n\"No. There was a stillborn child about a year after his marriage. The doctors told Lady Chevenix-Gore that she would never be able to have another child. About two years later he adopted Ruth.\"\n\n\"And who was Mademoiselle Ruth? How did they come to settle upon her?\"\n\n\"She was, I believe, the child of a distant connection.\"\n\n\"That I had guessed,\" said Poirot. He looked up at the wall which was hung with family portraits. \"One can see that she was of the same blood\u2014the nose, the line of the chin. It repeats itself on these walls many times.\"\n\n\"She inherits the temper too,\" said Mr. Forbes dryly.\n\n\"So I should imagine. How did she and her adopted father get on?\"\n\n\"Much as you might imagine. There was a fierce clash of wills more than once. But in spite of these quarrels I believe there was also an underlying harmony.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, she caused him a good deal of anxiety?\"\n\n\"Incessant anxiety. But I can assure you not to the point of causing him to take his own life.\"\n\n\"Ah, that, no,\" agreed Poirot. \"One does not blow one's brains out because one has a headstrong daughter! And so mademoiselle inherits! Sir Gervase, he never thought of altering his will?\"\n\n\"Ahem!\" Mr. Forbes coughed to hide a little discomposure. \"As a matter of fact, I took instructions from Sir Gervase on my arrival here (two days ago, that is to say) as to the drafting of a new will.\"\n\n\"What's this?\" Major Riddle hitched his chair a little closer. \"You didn't tell us this.\"\n\nMr. Forbes said quickly:\n\n\"You merely asked me what the terms of Sir Gervase's will were. I gave you the information for which you asked. The new will was not even properly drawn up\u2014much less signed.\"\n\n\"What were its provisions? They may be some guide to Sir Gervase's state of mind.\"\n\n\"In the main, they were the same as before, but Miss Chevenix-Gore was only to inherit on condition that she married Mr. Hugo Trent.\"\n\n\"Aha,\" said Poirot. \"But there is a very decided difference there.\"\n\n\"I did not approve of the clause,\" said Mr. Forbes. \"And I felt bound to point out that it was quite possible it might be contested successfully. The Court does not look upon such conditional bequests with approval. Sir Gervase, however, was quite decided.\"\n\n\"And if Miss Chevenix-Gore (or, incidentally, Mr. Trent) refused to comply?\"\n\n\"If Mr. Trent was not willing to marry Miss Chevenix-Gore, then the money went to her unconditionally. But if he was willing and she refused, then the money went to him instead.\"\n\n\"Odd business,\" said Major Riddle.\n\nPoirot leaned forward. He tapped the lawyer on the knee.\n\n\"But what is behind it? What was in the mind of Sir Gervase when he made that stipulation? There must have been something very definite . . . There must, I think, have been the image of another man . . . a man of whom he disapproved. I think, Mr. Forbes, that you must know who that man was?\"\n\n\"Really, M. Poirot, I have no information.\"\n\n\"But you could make a guess.\"\n\n\"I never guess,\" said Mr. Forbes, and his tone was scandalized.\n\nRemoving his pince-nez, he wiped them with a silk handkerchief and inquired:\n\n\"Is there anything else that you desire to know?\"\n\n\"At the moment, no,\" said Poirot. \"Not, that is, as far as I am concerned.\"\n\nMr. Forbes looked as though, in his opinion, that was not very far, and bent his attention on the chief constable.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Forbes. I think that's all. I should like, if I may, to speak to Miss Chevenix-Gore.\"\n\n\"Certainly. I think she is upstairs with Lady Chevenix-Gore.\"\n\n\"Oh, well, perhaps I'll have a word with\u2014what's his name?\u2014Burrows, first, and the family history woman.\"\n\n\"They're both in the library. I will tell them.\"\nSeven\n\n\"Hard work, that,\" said Major Riddle, as the lawyer left the room. \"Extracting information from these old-fashioned legal wallahs takes a bit of doing. The whole business seems to me to centre about the girl.\"\n\n\"It would seem so\u2014yes.\"\n\n\"Ah, here comes Burrows.\"\n\nGodfrey Burrows came in with a pleasant eagerness to be of use. His smile was discreetly tempered with gloom and showed only a fraction too much teeth. It seemed more mechanical than spontaneous.\n\n\"Now, Mr. Burrows, we want to ask you a few questions.\"\n\n\"Certainly, Major Riddle. Anything you like.\"\n\n\"Well, first and foremost, to put it quite simply, have you any ideas of your own about Sir Gervase's suicide?\"\n\n\"Absolutely none. It was the greatest shock to me.\"\n\n\"You heard the shot?\"\n\n\"No; I must have been in the library at the time, as far as I can make out. I came down rather early and went to the library to look up a reference I wanted. The library's right the other side of the house from the study, so I shouldn't hear anything.\"\n\n\"Was anyone with you in the library?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"No one at all.\"\n\n\"You've no idea where the other members of the household were at that time?\"\n\n\"Mostly upstairs dressing, I should imagine.\"\n\n\"When did you come to the drawing room?\"\n\n\"Just before M. Poirot arrived. Everybody was there then\u2014except Sir Gervase, of course.\"\n\n\"Did it strike you as strange that he wasn't there?\"\n\n\"Yes, it did, as a matter of fact. As a rule he was always in the drawing room before the first gong sounded.\"\n\n\"Have you noticed any difference in Sir Gervase's manner lately? Has he been worried? Or anxious? Depressed?\"\n\nGodfrey Burrows considered.\n\n\"No\u2014I don't think so. A little\u2014well, preoccupied, perhaps.\"\n\n\"But he did not appear to be worried about any one definite matter?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\"\n\n\"No\u2014financial worries of any kind?\"\n\n\"He was rather perturbed about the affairs of one particular company\u2014the Paragon Synthetic Rubber Company to be exact.\"\n\n\"What did he actually say about it?\"\n\nAgain Godfrey Burrows' mechanical smile flashed out, and again it seemed slightly unreal.\n\n\"Well\u2014as a matter of fact\u2014what he said was, 'Old Bury's either a fool or a knave. A fool, I suppose. I must go easy with him for Vanda's sake.' \"\n\n\"And why did he say that\u2014for Vanda's sake?\" inquired Poirot.\n\n\"Well, you see, Lady Chevenix-Gore was very fond of Colonel Bury, and he worshipped her. Followed her about like a dog.\"\n\n\"Sir Gervase was not\u2014jealous at all?\"\n\n\"Jealous?\" Burrows stared and then laughed. \"Sir Gervase jealous? He wouldn't know how to set about it. Why, it would never have entered his head that anyone could ever prefer another man to him. Such a thing couldn't be, you understand.\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"You did not, I think, like Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore very much?\"\n\nBurrows flushed.\n\n\"Oh, yes, I did. At least\u2014well, all that sort of thing strikes one as rather ridiculous nowadays.\"\n\n\"All what sort of thing?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"Well, the feudal motif, if you like. This worship of ancestry and personal arrogance. Sir Gervase was a very able man in many ways, and had led an interesting life, but he would have been more interesting if he hadn't been so entirely wrapped up in himself and his own egoism.\"\n\n\"Did his daughter agree with you there?\"\n\nBurrows flushed again\u2014this time a deep purple.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"I should imagine Miss Chevenix-Gore is quite one of the moderns! Naturally, I shouldn't discuss her father with her.\"\n\n\"But the moderns do discuss their fathers a good deal!\" said Poirot. \"It is entirely in the modern spirit to criticize your parents!\"\n\nBurrows shrugged his shoulders.\n\nMajor Riddle asked:\n\n\"And there was nothing else\u2014no other financial anxiety? Sir Gervase never spoke of having been victimized?\"\n\n\"Victimized?\" Burrows sounded very astonished. \"Oh, no.\"\n\n\"And you yourself were on quite good terms with him?\"\n\n\"Certainly I was. Why not?\"\n\n\"I am asking you, Mr. Burrows.\"\n\nThe young man looked sulky.\n\n\"We were on the best of terms.\"\n\n\"Did you know that Sir Gervase had written to M. Poirot asking him to come down here?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did Sir Gervase usually write his own letters?\"\n\n\"No, he nearly always dictated them to me.\"\n\n\"But he did not do so in this case?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why was that, do you think?\"\n\n\"I can't imagine.\"\n\n\"You can suggest no reason why he should have written this particular letter himself?\"\n\n\"No, I can't.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Major Riddle, adding smoothly, \"Rather curious. When did you last see Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"Just before I went to dress for dinner. I took him some letters to sign.\"\n\n\"What was his manner then?\"\n\n\"Quite normal. In fact I should say he was feeling rather pleased with himself about something.\"\n\nPoirot stirred a little in his chair.\n\n\"Ah?\" he said. \"So that was your impression, was it? That he was pleased about something. And yet, not so very long afterwards, he shoots himself. It is odd, that!\"\n\nGodfrey Burrows shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"I'm only telling you my impressions.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, they are very valuable. After all, you are probably one of the last people who saw Sir Gervase alive.\"\n\n\"Snell was the last person to see him.\"\n\n\"To see him, yes, but not to speak to him.\"\n\nBurrows did not reply.\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"What time was it when you went up to dress for dinner?\"\n\n\"About five minutes past seven.\"\n\n\"What did Sir Gervase do?\"\n\n\"I left him in the study.\"\n\n\"How long did he usually take to change?\"\n\n\"He usually gave himself a full three quarters of an hour.\"\n\n\"Then, if dinner was at a quarter past eight, he would probably have gone up at half past seven at the latest?\"\n\n\"Very likely.\"\n\n\"You yourself went to change early?\"\n\n\"Yes, I thought I would change and then go to the library and look up the references I wanted.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully. Major Riddle said:\n\n\"Well, I think that's all for the moment. Will you send Miss What's-her-name along?\"\n\nLittle Miss Lingard tripped in almost immediately. She was wearing several chains which tinkled a little as she sat down and looked inquiringly from one to the other of the  \ntwo men.\n\n\"This is all very\u2014er\u2014sad, Miss Lingard,\" began Major Riddle.\n\n\"Very sad indeed,\" said Miss Lingard decorously.\n\n\"You came to this house\u2014when?\"\n\n\"About two months ago. Sir Gervase wrote to a friend of his in the Museum\u2014Colonel Fotheringay it was\u2014and Colonel Fotheringary recommended me. I have done a good deal of historical research work.\"\n\n\"Did you find Sir Gervase difficult to work for?\"\n\n\"Oh, not really. One had to humour him a little, of course. But then I always find one has to do that with men.\"\n\nWith an uneasy feeling that Miss Lingard was probably humouring him at this moment, Major Riddle went on:\n\n\"Your work here was to help Sir Gervase with the book he was writing?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What did it involve?\"\n\nFor a moment, Miss Lingard looked quite human. Her eyes twinkled as she replied:\n\n\"Well, actually, you know, it involved writing the book! I looked up all the information and made notes, and arranged the material. And then, later, I revised what Sir Gervase had written.\"\n\n\"You must have had to exercise a good deal of tact, mademoiselle,\" said Poirot.\n\n\"Tact and firmness. One needs them both,\" said Miss Lingard.\n\n\"Sir Gervase did not resent your\u2014er\u2014firmness?\"\n\n\"Oh not at all. Of course I put it to him that he mustn't be bothered with all the petty detail.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I see.\"\n\n\"It was quite simple, really,\" said Miss Lingard. \"Sir Gervase was perfectly easy to manage if one took him the right way.\"\n\n\"Now, Miss Lingard, I wonder if you know anything that can throw light on this tragedy?\"\n\nMiss Lingard shook her head.\n\n\"I'm afraid I don't. You see, naturally he wouldn't confide in me at all. I was practically a stranger. In any case I think he was far too proud to speak to anyone of family troubles.\"\n\n\"But you think it was family troubles that caused him to take his life?\"\n\nMiss Lingard looked rather surprised.\n\n\"But of course! Is there any other suggestion?\"\n\n\"You feel sure that there were family troubles worrying him?\"\n\n\"I know that he was in great distress of mind.\"\n\n\"Oh, you know that?\"\n\n\"Why, of course.\"\n\n\"Tell me, mademoiselle, did he speak to you of the matter?\"\n\n\"Not explicitly.\"\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\n\"Let me see. I found that he didn't seem to be taking in what I was saying\u2014\"\n\n\"One moment. Pardon. When was this?\"\n\n\"This afternoon. We usually worked from three to five.\"\n\n\"Pray go on.\"\n\n\"As I say, Sir Gervase seemed to be finding it hard to concentrate\u2014in fact, he said as much, adding that he had several grave matters preying on his mind. And he said\u2014let me see\u2014something like this\u2014(of course, I can't be sure of the exact words): 'It's a terrible thing, Miss Lingard, when a family has been one of the proudest in the land, that dishonour should be brought on it.' \"\n\n\"And what did you say to that?\"\n\n\"Oh, just something soothing. I think I said that every generation had its weaklings\u2014that that was one of the penalties of greatness\u2014but that their failings were seldom remembered by posterity.\"\n\n\"And did that have the soothing effect you hoped?\"\n\n\"More or less. We got back to Sir Roger Chevenix-Gore. I had found a most interesting mention of him in a contemporary manuscript. But Sir Gervase's attention wandered again. In the end he said he would not do any more work that afternoon. He said he had had a shock.\"\n\n\"A shock?\"\n\n\"That is what he said. Of course, I didn't ask any questions. I just said, 'I am sorry to hear it, Sir Gervase.' And then he asked me to tell Snell that M. Poirot would be arriving and to put off dinner until eight-fifteen, and send the car to meet the seven-fifty train.\"\n\n\"Did he usually ask you to make these arrangements?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014no\u2014that was really Mr. Burrows's business. I did nothing but my own literary work. I wasn't a secretary in any sense of the word.\"\n\nPoirot asked:\n\n\"Do you think Sir Gervase had a definite reason for asking you to make these arrangements, instead of asking Mr. Burrows to do so?\"\n\nMiss Lingard considered.\n\n\"Well, he may have had . . . I did not think of it at the time. I thought it was just a matter of convenience. Still, it's true now I come to think of it, that he did ask me not to tell anyone that M. Poirot was coming. It was to be a surprise, he said.\"\n\n\"Ah! he said that, did he? Very curious, very interesting. And did you tell anyone?\"\n\n\"Certainly not, M. Poirot. I told Snell about dinner and to send the chauffeur to meet the seven-fifty as a gentleman was arriving by it.\"\n\n\"Did Sir Gervase say anything else that may have had a bearing on the situation?\"\n\nMiss Lingard thought.\n\n\"No\u2014I don't think so\u2014he was very much strung up\u2014I do remember that just as I was leaving the room, he said, 'Not that it's any good his coming now. It's too late.' \"\n\n\"And you have no idea at all what he meant by that?\"\n\n\"N\u2014no.\"\n\nJust the faintest suspicion of indecision about the simple negative. Poirot repeated with a frown:\n\n\" 'Too late.' That is what he said, is it? 'Too late.' \"\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"You can give us no idea, Miss Lingard, as to the nature of the circumstance that so distressed Sir Gervase?\"\n\nMiss Lingard said slowly:\n\n\"I have an idea that it was in some way connected with Mr. Hugo Trent.\"\n\n\"With Hugo Trent? Why do you think that?\"\n\n\"Well, it was nothing definite, but yesterday afternoon we were just touching on Sir Hugo de Chevenix (who, I'm afraid, didn't bear too good a character in the Wars of the Roses), and Sir Gervase said, 'My sister would choose the family name of Hugo for her son! It's always been an unsatisfactory name in our family. She might have known no Hugo would turn out well.' \"\n\n\"What you tell us there is suggestive,\" said Poirot. \"Yes, it suggests a new idea to me.\"\n\n\"Sir Gervase said nothing more definite than that?\" asked Major Riddle.\n\nMiss Lingard shook her head.\n\n\"No, and of course it wouldn't have done for me to say anything. Sir Gervase was really just talking to himself. He wasn't really speaking to me.\"\n\n\"Quite so.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"Mademoiselle, you, a stranger, have been here for two months. It would be, I think, very valuable if you were to tell us quite frankly your impressions of the family and household.\"\n\nMiss Lingard took off her pince-nez and blinked reflectively.\n\n\"Well, at first, quite frankly, I felt as though I'd walked straight into a madhouse! What with Lady Chevenix-Gore continually seeing things that weren't there, and Sir Gervase behaving like\u2014like a king\u2014and dramatizing himself in the most extraordinary way\u2014well, I really did think they were the queerest people I had ever come across. Of course, Miss Chevenix-Gore was perfectly normal, and I soon found that Lady Chevenix-Gore was really an extremely kind, nice woman. Nobody could be kinder and nicer to me than she has been. Sir Gervase\u2014well, I really think he was mad. His egomania\u2014isn't that what you call it?\u2014was getting worse and worse every day.\"\n\n\"And the others?\"\n\n\"Mr. Burrows had rather a difficult time with Sir Gervase, I should imagine. I think he was glad that our work on the book gave him a little more breathing space. Colonel Bury was always charming. He was devoted to Lady Chevenix-Gore and he managed Sir Gervase quite well. Mr. Trent, Mr. Forbes and Miss Cardwell have only been here a few days, so of course I don't know much about them.\"\n\n\"Thank you, mademoiselle. And what about Captain Lake, the agent?\"\n\n\"Oh, he's very nice. Everybody liked him.\"\n\n\"Including Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. I've heard him say Lake was much the best agent he'd had. Of course, Captain Lake had his difficulties with Sir Gervase, too\u2014but he managed pretty well on the whole. It wasn't easy.\"\n\nPoirot nodded thoughtfully. He murmured, \"There was something\u2014something\u2014that I had in mind to ask you\u2014some little thing . . . What was it now?\"\n\nMiss Lingard turned a patient face towards him.\n\nPoirot shook his head vexedly.\n\n\"Tchah! It is on the tip of my tongue.\"\n\nMajor Riddle waited a minute or two, then as Poirot continued to frown perplexedly, he took up the interrogation once more.\n\n\"When was the last time you saw Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"At teatime, in this room.\"\n\n\"What was his manner then? Normal?\"\n\n\"As normal as it ever was.\"\n\n\"Was there any sense of strain among the party?\"\n\n\"No, I think everybody seemed quite ordinary.\"\n\n\"Where did Sir Gervase go after tea?\"\n\n\"He took Mr. Burrows with him into the study, as usual.\"\n\n\"That was the last time you saw him?\"\n\n\"Yes. I went to the small morning room where I worked, and typed a chapter of the book from the notes I had gone over with Sir Gervase, until seven o'clock, when I went upstairs to rest and dress for dinner.\"\n\n\"You actually heard the shot, I understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, I was in this room. I heard what sounded like a shot and I went out into the hall. Mr. Trent was there, and Miss Cardwell. Mr. Trent asked Snell if there was champagne for dinner, and made rather a joke of it. It never entered our heads to take the matter seriously, I'm afraid. We felt sure it must have been a car backfiring.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"Did you hear Mr. Trent say, 'There's always murder?' \"\n\n\"I believe he did say something like that\u2014joking, of course.\"\n\n\"What happened next?\"\n\n\"We all came in here.\"\n\n\"Can you remember the order in which the others came down to dinner?\"\n\n\"Miss Chevenix-Gore was the first, I think, and then Mr. Forbes. Then Colonel Bury and Lady Chevenix-Gore together, and Mr. Burrows immediately after them. I think that was the order, but I can't be quite sure because they more or less came in all together.\"\n\n\"Gathered by the sound of the first gong?\"\n\n\"Yes. Everyone always hustled when they heard that gong. Sir Gervase was a terrible stickler for punctuality in the evening.\"\n\n\"What time did he himself usually come down?\"\n\n\"He was nearly always in the room before the first gong went.\"\n\n\"Did it surprise you that he was not down on this occasion?\"\n\n\"Very much.\"\n\n\"Ah, I have it!\" cried Poirot.\n\nAs the other two looked inquiringly at him he went on:\n\n\"I have remembered what I wanted to ask. This evening, mademoiselle, as we all went along to the study on Snell's reporting it to be locked, you stooped and picked something up.\"\n\n\"I did?\" Miss Lingard seemed very surprised.\n\n\"Yes, just as we turned into the straight passage to the study. Something small and bright.\"\n\n\"How extraordinary\u2014I don't remember. Wait a minute\u2014yes, I do. Only I wasn't thinking. Let me see\u2014it must be in here.\"\n\nOpening her black satin bag, she poured the contents on a table.\n\nPoirot and Major Riddle surveyed the collection with interest. There were two handkerchiefs, a powder compact, a small bunch of keys, a spectacle case and one other object on which Poirot pounced eagerly.\n\n\"A bullet, by jove!\" said Major Riddle.\n\nThe thing was indeed shaped like a bullet, but it proved to be a small pencil.\n\n\"That's what I picked up,\" said Miss Lingard. \"I'd forgotten all about it.\"\n\n\"Do you know who this belongs to, Miss Lingard?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, it's Colonel Bury's. He had it made out of a bullet that hit him\u2014or rather, didn't hit him, if you know what I mean\u2014in the South African War.\"\n\n\"Do you know when he had it last?\"\n\n\"Well, he had it this afternoon when they were playing bridge, because I noticed him writing with it on the score when I came in to tea.\"\n\n\"Who was playing bridge?\"\n\n\"Colonel Bury, Lady Chevenix-Gore, Mr. Trent and Miss Cardwell.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said Poirot gently, \"we will keep this and return it to the colonel ourselves.\"\n\n\"Oh, please do. I am so forgetful, I might not remember  \nto so.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, mademoiselle, you would be so good as to ask Colonel Bury to come here now?\"\n\n\"Certainly. I will go and find him at once.\"\n\nShe hurried away. Poirot got up and began walking aimlessly round the room.\n\n\"We begin,\" he said, \"to reconstruct the afternoon. It is interesting. At half past two Sir Gervase goes over accounts with Captain Lake. He is slightly preoccupied. At three, he discusses the book he is writing with Miss Lingard. He is in great distress of mind. Miss Lingard associates that distress of mind with Hugo Trent on the strength of a chance remark. At teatime his behaviour is normal. After tea, Godfrey Burrows tells us he was in good spirits over something. At five minutes to eight he comes downstairs, goes to his study, scrawls 'Sorry' on a sheet of paper, and shoots himself!\"\n\nRiddle said slowly:\n\n\"I see what you mean. It isn't consistent.\"\n\n\"Strange alteration of moods in Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore! He is preoccupied\u2014he is seriously upset\u2014he is normal\u2014he is in high spirits! There is something very curious here! And then that phrase he used, 'Too late.' That I should get here 'Too late.' Well, it is true that. I did get here too late\u2014to see him alive.\"\n\n\"I see. You really think\u2014?\"\n\n\"I shall never know now why Sir Gervase sent for me! That is certain!\"\n\nPoirot was still wandering round the room. He straightened one or two objects on the mantelpiece; he examined a card table that stood against a wall, he opened the drawer of it and took out the bridge-markers. Then he wandered over to the writing table and peered into the wastepaper basket. There was nothing in it but a paper bag. Poirot took it out, smelt it, murmured \"Oranges\" and flattened it out, reading the name on it. \"Carpenter and Sons, Fruiterers, Hamborough St. Mary.\" He was just folding it neatly into squares when Colonel Bury entered the room.\nEight\n\nThe Colonel dropped into a chair, shook his head, sighed and said:\n\n\"Terrible business, this, Riddle. Lady Chevenix-Gore is being wonderful\u2014wonderful. Grand woman! Full of courage!\"\n\nComing softly back to his chair, Poirot said:\n\n\"You have known her very many years, I think?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed, I was at her coming out dance. Wore rosebuds in her hair, I remember. And a white, fluffy dress . . . Wasn't anyone to touch her in the room!\"\n\nHis voice was full of enthusiasm. Poirot held out the pencil to him.\n\n\"This is yours, I think?\"\n\n\"Eh? What? Oh, thank you, had it this afternoon when we were playing bridge. Amazing, you know, I held a hundred honours in spades three times running. Never done such a thing before.\"\n\n\"You were playing bridge before tea, I understand?\" said Poirot. \"What was Sir Gervase's frame of mind when he came in to tea?\"\n\n\"Usual\u2014quite usual. Never dreamed he was thinking of making away with himself. Perhaps he was a little more excitable than usual, now I come to think of it.\"\n\n\"When was the last time you saw him?\"\n\n\"Why, then! Teatime. Never saw the poor chap alive again.\"\n\n\"You didn't go to the study at all after tea?\"\n\n\"No, never saw him again.\"\n\n\"What time did you come down to dinner?\"\n\n\"After the first gong went.\"\n\n\"You and Lady Chevenix-Gore came down together?\"\n\n\"No, we\u2014er\u2014met in the hall. I think she'd been into the dining room to see to the flowers\u2014something like that.\"\n\nMajor Riddle said:\n\n\"I hope you won't mind, Colonel Bury, if I ask you a somewhat personal question. Was there any trouble between you and Sir Gervase over the question of the Paragon Synthetic Rubber Company?\"\n\nColonel Bury's face became suddenly purple. He spluttered a little.\n\n\"Not at all. Not at all. Old Gervase was an unreasonable sort of fellow. You've got to remember that. He always expected everything he touched to turn out trumps! Didn't seem to realize that the whole world was going through a period of crisis. All stocks and shares bound to be affected.\"\n\n\"So there was a certain amount of trouble between you?\"\n\n\"No trouble. Just damned unreasonable of Gervase!\"\n\n\"He blamed you for certain losses he had sustained?\"\n\n\"Gervase wasn't normal! Vanda knew that. But she could always handle him. I was content to leave it all in her hands.\"\n\nPoirot coughed and Major Riddle, after glancing at him, changed the subject.\n\n\"You are a very old friend of the family, I know, Colonel Bury. Had you any knowledge as to how Sir Gervase had left his money?\"\n\n\"Well, I should imagine the bulk of it would go to Ruth. That's what I gathered from what Gervase let fall.\"\n\n\"You don't think that was at all unfair on Hugo Trent?\"\n\n\"Gervase didn't like Hugo. Never could stick him.\"\n\n\"But he had a great sense of family. Miss Chevenix-Gore was, after all, only his adopted daughter.\"\n\nColonel Bury hesitated, then after humming and hawing a moment, he said:\n\n\"Look here, I think I'd better tell you something. Strict confidence, and all that.\"\n\n\"Of course\u2014of course.\"\n\n\"Ruth's illegitimate, but she's a Chevenix-Gore all right. Daughter of Gervase's brother, Anthony, who was killed in the war. Seemed he'd had an affair with a typist. When he was killed, the girl wrote to Vanda. Vanda went to see her\u2014girl was expecting a baby. Vanda took it up with Gervase, she'd just been told that she herself could never have another child. Result was they took over the child when it was born, adopted it legally. The mother renounced all rights in it. They've brought Ruth up as their own daughter and to all intents and purposes, she is their own daughter, and you've only got to look at her to realise she's a Chevenix-Gore all right!\"\n\n\"Aha,\" said Poirot. \"I see. That makes Sir Gervase's attitude very much clearer. But if he did not like Mr. Hugo Trent, why was he so anxious to arrange a marriage between him and Mademoiselle Ruth?\"\n\n\"To regularize the family position. It pleased his sense of fitness.\"\n\n\"Even though he did not like or trust the young man?\"\n\nColonel Bury snorted.\n\n\"You don't understand old Gervase. He couldn't regard people as human beings. He arranged alliances as though the parties were royal personages! He considered it fitting that Ruth and Hugo should marry, Hugo taking the name of Chevenix-Gore. What Hugo and Ruth thought about it didn't matter.\"\n\n\"And was Mademoiselle Ruth willing to fall in with this arrangement?\"\n\nColonel Bury chuckled.\n\n\"Not she! She's a tartar!\"\n\n\"Did you know that shortly before his death Sir Gervase was drafting a new will by which Miss Chevenix-Gore would inherit only on condition that she should marry Mr. Trent?\"\n\nColonel Bury whistled.\n\n\"Then he really had got the windup about her and Burrows\u2014\"\n\nAs soon as he had spoken, he bit the words off, but it was too late. Poirot had pounced upon the admission.\n\n\"There was something between Mademoiselle Ruth and young Monsieur Burrows?\"\n\n\"Probably nothing in it\u2014nothing in it at all.\"\n\nMajor Riddle coughed and said:\n\n\"I think, Colonel Bury, that you must tell us all you know. It might have a direct bearing on Sir Gervase's state of mind.\"\n\n\"I suppose it might,\" said Colonel Bury, doubtfully. \"Well, the truth of it is, young Burrows is not a bad-looking chap\u2014at least, women seem to think so. He and Ruth seem to have got as thick as thieves just lately, and Gervase didn't like it\u2014didn't like it at all. Didn't like to sack Burrows for fear of precipitating matters. He knows what Ruth's like. She won't be dictated to in any way. So I suppose he hit on this scheme. Ruth's not the sort of girl to sacrifice everything for love. She's fond of the fleshpots and she likes money.\"\n\n\"Do you yourself approve of Mr. Burrows?\"\n\nThe colonel delivered himself of the opinion that Godfrey Burrows was slightly hairy at the heel, a pronouncement which baffled Poirot completely, but made Major Riddle smile into his moustache.\n\nA few more questions were asked and answered, and then Colonel Bury departed.\n\nRiddle glanced over at Poirot who was sitting absorbed in thought.\n\n\"What do you make of it all, M. Poirot?\"\n\nThe little man raised his hands.\n\n\"I seem to see a pattern\u2014a purposeful design.\"\n\nRiddle said, \"It's difficult.\"\n\n\"Yes, it is difficult. But more and more one phrase, lightly uttered, strikes me as significant.\"\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"That laughing sentence spoken by Hugo Trent: 'There's always murder . . . ' \"\n\nRiddle said sharply:\n\n\"Yes, I can see that you've been leaning that way all along.\"\n\n\"Do you not agree, my friend, that the more we learn, the less and less motive we find for suicide? But for murder, we begin to have a surprising collection of motives!\"\n\n\"Still, you've got to remember the facts\u2014door locked, key in dead man's pocket. Oh, I know there are ways and means. Bent pins, strings\u2014all sorts of devices. It would, I suppose, be possible . . . But do those things really work? That's what I very much  \ndoubt.\"\n\n\"At all events, let us examine the position from the point of view of murder, not of suicide.\"\n\n\"Oh, all right. As you are on the scene, it probably would be murder!\"\n\nFor a moment Poirot smiled.\n\n\"I hardly like that remark.\"\n\nThen he became grave once more.\n\n\"Yes, let us examine the case from the standpoint of murder. The shot is heard, four people are in the hall, Miss Lingard, Hugo Trent, Miss Cardwell and Snell. Where are all the others?\"\n\n\"Burrows was in the library, according to his own story. No one to check that statement. The others were presumably in their rooms, but who is to know if they were really there? Everybody seems to have come down separately. Even Lady Chevenix-Gore and Bury only met in the hall. Lady Chevenix-Gore came from the dining room. Where did Bury come from? Isn't it possible that he came, not from upstairs, but from the study? There's that pencil.\"\n\n\"Yes, the pencil is interesting. He showed no emotion when I produced it, but that might be because he did not know where I found it and was unaware himself of having dropped it. Let us see, who else was playing bridge when the pencil was in use? Hugo Trent and Miss Cardwell. They're out of it. Miss Lingard and the butler can vouch for their alibis. The fourth was Lady Chevenix-Gore.\"\n\n\"You can't seriously suspect her.\"\n\n\"Why not, my friend? I tell you, me, I can suspect everybody! Supposing that, in spite of her apparent devotion to her husband, it is the faithful Bury she really loves?\"\n\n\"H'm,\" said Riddle. \"In a way it has been a kind of m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois for years.\"\n\n\"And there is some trouble about this company between Sir Gervase and Colonel Bury.\"\n\n\"It's true that Sir Gervase might have been meaning to turn really nasty. We don't know the ins-and-outs of it. It might fit in with that summons to you. Say Sir Gervase suspects that Bury has deliberately fleeced him, but he doesn't want publicity because of a suspicion that his wife may be mixed up in it. Yes, that's possible. That gives either of those two a possible motive. And it is a bit odd really that Lady Chevenix-Gore should take her husband's death so calmly. All this spirit business may be acting!\"\n\n\"Then there is the other complication,\" said Poirot. \"Miss Chevenix-Gore and Burrows. It is very much to their interest that Sir Gervase should not sign the new will. As it is, she gets everything on condition that her husband takes the family name\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, and Burrows's account of Sir Gervase's attitude this evening is a bit fishy. High spirits, pleased about something! That doesn't fit with anything else we've been told.\"\n\n\"There is, too, Mr. Forbes. Most correct, most severe, of an old and well-established firm. But lawyers, even the most respectable, have been known to embezzle their client's money when they themselves are in a hole.\"\n\n\"You're getting a bit too sensational, I think, Poirot.\"\n\n\"You think what I suggest is too like the pictures? But life, Major Riddle, is often amazingly like the pictures.\"\n\n\"It has been, so far, in Westshire,\" said the chief constable. \"We'd better finish interviewing the rest of them, don't you think? It's getting late. We haven't seen Ruth Chevenix-Gore yet, and she's probably the most important of the lot.\"\n\n\"I agree. There is Miss Cardwell, too. Perhaps we might see her first, since that will not take long, and interview Miss Chevenix-Gore last.\n\n\"Quite a good idea.\"\nNine\n\nThat evening Poirot had only given Susan Cardwell a fleeting glance. He examined her now more attentively. An intelligent face, he thought, not strictly good-looking, but possessing an attraction that a merely pretty girl might envy. Her hair was magnificent, her face skilfully made-up. Her eyes, he thought, were watchful.\n\nAfter a few preliminary questions, Major Riddle said:\n\n\"I don't know how close a friend you are of the family, Miss Cardwell?\"\n\n\"I don't know them at all. Hugo arranged that I should be asked down here.\"\n\n\"You are, then, a friend of Hugo Trent's?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's my position. Hugo's girlfriend.\" Susan Cardwell smiled as she drawled out the words.\n\n\"You have known him a long time?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, just a month or so.\"\n\nShe paused and then added:\n\n\"I'm by way of being engaged to him.\"\n\n\"And he brought you down here to introduce you to his people?\"\n\n\"Oh, dear no, nothing like that. We were keeping it very hush-hush. I just came down to spy out the land. Hugo told me the place was just like a madhouse. I thought I'd better come and see for myself. Hugo, poor sweet, is a perfect pet, but he's got absolutely no brains. The position, you see, was rather critical. Neither Hugo nor I have any money, and old Sir Gervase, who was Hugo's main hope, had set his heart on Hugo making a match of it with Ruth. Hugo's a bit weak, you know. He might agree to this marriage and count on being able to get out of it later.\"\n\n\"That idea did not commend itself to you, mademoiselle?\" inquired Poirot gently.\n\n\"Definitely not. Ruth might have gone all peculiar and refused to divorce him or something. I put my foot down. No trotting off to St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, until I could be there dithering with a sheaf of lilies.\"\n\n\"So you came down to study the situation for yourself?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Eh bien!\" said Poirot.\n\n\"Well, of course, Hugo was right! The whole family were bughouse! Except Ruth, who seems perfectly sensible. She'd got her own boyfriend and wasn't any keener on the marriage idea than I was.\"\n\n\"You refer to M. Burrows?\"\n\n\"Burrows? Of course not. Ruth wouldn't fall for a bogus person like that.\"\n\n\"Then who was the object of her affection?\"\n\nSusan Cardwell paused, stretched for a cigarette, lit it, and remarked:\n\n\"You'd better ask her that. After all, it isn't my business.\"\n\nMajor Riddle asked:\n\n\"When was the last time you saw Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"At tea.\"\n\n\"Did his manner strike you as peculiar in any way?\"\n\nThe girl shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"Not more than usual.\"\n\n\"What did you do after tea?\"\n\n\"Played billiards with Hugo.\"\n\n\"You didn't see Sir Gervase again?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What about the shot?\"\n\n\"That was rather odd. You see, I thought the first gong had gone, so I hurried up with my dressing, came dashing out of my room, heard, as I thought, the second gong and fairly raced down the stairs. I'd been one minute late for dinner the first night I was here and Hugo told me it had about wrecked our chances with the old man, so I fairly hared down. Hugo was just ahead of me and then there was a queer kind of pop-bang and Hugo said it was a champagne cork, but Snell said 'No' to that and, anyway, I didn't think it had come from the dining room. Miss Lingard thought it came from upstairs, but anyway we agreed it was a backfire and we trooped into the drawing room and forgot about it.\"\n\n\"It did not occur to you for one moment that Sir Gervase might have shot himself?\" asked Poirot.\n\n\"I ask you, should I be likely to think of such a thing? The Old Man seemed to enjoy himself throwing his weight about. I never imagined he'd do such a thing. I can't think why he did it. I suppose just because he was nuts.\"\n\n\"An unfortunate occurrence.\"\n\n\"Very\u2014for Hugo and me. I gather he's left Hugo nothing at all, or practically nothing.\"\n\n\"Who told you that?\"\n\n\"Hugo got it out of old Forbes.\"\n\n\"Well, Miss Cardwell\u2014\" Major Riddle paused a moment, \"I think that's all. Do you think Miss Chevenix-Gore is feeling well enough to come down and talk to us?\"\n\n\"Oh, I should think so. I'll tell her.\"\n\nPoirot intervened.\n\n\"A little moment, mademoiselle. Have you seen this before?\"\n\nHe held out the bullet pencil.\n\n\"Oh, yes, we had it at bridge this afternoon. Belongs to old Colonel Bury, I think.\"\n\n\"Did he take it when the rubber was over?\"\n\n\"I haven't the faintest idea.\"\n\n\"Thank you, mademoiselle. That is all.\"\n\n\"Right, I'll tell Ruth.\"\n\nRuth Chevenix-Gore came into the room like a queen. Her colour was vivid, her head held high. But her eyes, like the eyes of Susan Cardwell, were watchful. She wore the same frock she had had on when Poirot arrived. It was a pale shade of apricot. On her shoulder was pinned a deep, salmon-pink rose. It had been fresh and blooming an hour earlier, now it drooped.\n\n\"Well?\" said Ruth.\n\n\"I'm extremely sorry to bother you,\" began Major Riddle.\n\nShe interrupted him.\n\n\"Of course you have to bother me. You have to bother everyone. I can save you time, though. I haven't the faintest idea why the Old Man killed himself. All I can tell you is that it wasn't a bit like him.\"\n\n\"Did you notice anything amiss in his manner today? Was he depressed, or unduly excited\u2014was there anything at all abnormal?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. I wasn't noticing\u2014\"\n\n\"When did you see him last?\"\n\n\"Teatime.\"\n\nPoirot spoke:\n\n\"You did not go to the study\u2014later?\"\n\n\"No. The last I saw of him was in this room. Sitting there.\"\n\nShe indicated a chair.\n\n\"I see. Do you know this pencil, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"It's Colonel Bury's.\"\n\n\"Have you seen it lately?\"\n\n\"I don't really remember.\"\n\n\"Do you know anything of a\u2014disagreement between Sir Gervase and Colonel Bury?\"\n\n\"Over the Paragon Rubber Company, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I should think so. The Old Man was rabid about it!\"\n\n\"He considered, perhaps, that he had been swindled?\"\n\nRuth shrugged her shoulders.\n\n\"He didn't understand the first thing about finance.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"May I ask you a question, mademoiselle\u2014a somewhat impertinent question?\"\n\n\"Certainly, if you like.\"\n\n\"It is this\u2014are you sorry that your\u2014father is dead?\"\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n\"Of course I'm sorry. I don't indulge in sob stuff. But I shall miss him . . . I was fond of the Old Man. That's what we called him, Hugo and I, always. The 'Old Man'\u2014you know\u2014something of the primitive\u2014anthropoid-ape-original-Patriarch-of-the-tribe business. It sounds disrespectful, but there's really a lot of affection behind it. Of course, he was really the most complete, muddleheaded old ass that ever lived!\"\n\n\"You interest me, mademoiselle.\"\n\n\"The Old Man had the brains of a louse! Sorry to have to say it, but it's true. He was incapable of any kind of headwork. Mind you, he was a character. Fantastically brave and all that! Could go careering off to the Pole, or fighting duels. I always think that he blustered such a lot because he really knew that his brains weren't up to much. Anyone could have got the better of him.\"\n\nPoirot took the letter from his pocket.\n\n\"Read this, mademoiselle.\"\n\nShe read it through and handed it back to him.\n\n\"So that's what brought you here!\"\n\n\"Does it suggest anything to you, that letter?\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"No. It's probably quite true. Anyone could have robbed the poor old pet. John says the last agent before him swindled him right and left. You see, the Old Man was so grand and so pompous that he never really condescended to look into details! He was an invitation to crooks.\"\n\n\"You paint a different picture of him, mademoiselle, from the accepted one.\"\n\n\"Oh, well\u2014he put up a pretty good camouflage. Vanda (my mother) backed him for all she was worth. He was so happy stalking round pretending he was God Almighty. That's why, in a way, I'm glad he's dead. It's the best thing for him.\"\n\n\"I do not quite follow you, mademoiselle.\"\n\nRuth said broodingly:\n\n\"It was growing on him. One of these days he would have had to be locked up . . . People were beginning to talk as it was.\"\n\n\"Did you know, mademoiselle, that he was contemplating a will whereby you could only inherit his money if you married Mr. Trent?\"\n\nShe cried:\n\n\"How absurd! Anyway, I'm sure that could be set aside by law . . . I'm sure you can't dictate to people about whom they shall marry.\"\n\n\"If he had actually signed such a will, would you have complied with its provisions, mademoiselle?\"\n\nShe stared.\n\n\"I\u2014I\u2014\"\n\nShe broke off. For two or three minutes she sat irresolute, looking down at her dangling slipper. A little piece of earth detached itself from the heel and fell on the carpet.\n\nSuddenly Ruth Chevenix-Gore said:\n\n\"Wait!\"\n\nShe got up and ran out of the room. She returned almost immediately with Captain Lake by her side.\n\n\"It's got to come out,\" she said rather breathlessly. \"You might as well know now. John and I were married in London three weeks ago.\"\nTen\n\nOf the two of them, Captain Lake looked far the more embarrassed.\n\n\"This is a great surprise, Miss Chevenix-Gore\u2014Mrs. Lake, I should say,\" said Major Riddle. \"Did no one know of this marriage of yours?\"\n\n\"No, we kept it quite dark. John didn't like that part of it much.\"\n\nLake said, stammering a little:\n\n\"I\u2014I know that it seems rather a rotten way to set about things. I ought to have gone straight to Sir Gervase\u2014\"\n\nRuth interrupted:\n\n\"And told him you wanted to marry his daughter, and have been kicked out on your head and he'd probably have disinherited me, raised hell generally in the house, and we could have told each other how beautifully we'd behaved! Believe me, my way was better! If a thing's done, it's done. There would still have been a row\u2014but he'd have come round.\"\n\nLake still looked unhappy. Poirot asked:\n\n\"When did you intend to break the news to Sir Gervase?\"\n\nRuth answered:\n\n\"I was preparing the ground. He'd been rather suspicious about me and John, so I pretended to turn my attentions to Godfrey. Naturally, he was ready to go quite off the deep end about that. I figured it out that the news I was married to John would come almost as a relief!\"\n\n\"Did anybody at all know of this marriage?\"\n\n\"Yes, I told Vanda in the end. I wanted to get her on my side.\"\n\n\"And you succeeded in doing so?\"\n\n\"Yes. You see, she wasn't very keen about my marrying Hugo\u2014because he was a cousin, I think. She seemed to think the family was so batty already that we'd probably have completely batty children. That was probably rather absurd, because I'm only adopted, you know. I believe I'm some quite distant cousin's child.\"\n\n\"You are sure Sir Gervase had no suspicion of the truth?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\"\n\nPoirot said:\n\n\"Is that true, Captain Lake? In your interview with Sir  \nGervase this afternoon, are you quite sure the matter was not mentioned?\"\n\n\"No, sir. It was not.\"\n\n\"Because, you see, Captain Lake, there is certain evidence to show that Sir Gervase was in a highly-excitable condition after the time he spent with you, and that he spoke once or twice of family dishonour.\"\n\n\"The matter was not mentioned,\" Lake repeated. His face had gone very white.\n\n\"Was that the last time you saw Sir Gervase?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have already told you so.\"\n\n\"Where were you at eight minutes past eight this evening?\"\n\n\"Where was I? In my house. At the end of the village, about half a mile away.\"\n\n\"You did not come up to Hamborough Close round about that time?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nPoirot turned to the girl.\n\n\"Where were you, mademoiselle, when your father shot himself?\"\n\n\"In the garden.\"\n\n\"In the garden? You heard the shot?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. But I didn't think about it particularly. I thought it was someone out shooting rabbits, although now I remember I did think it sounded quite close at hand.\"\n\n\"You returned to the house\u2014which way?\"\n\n\"I came in through this window.\"\n\nRuth indicated with a turn of her head the window behind her.\n\n\"Was anyone in here?\"\n\n\"No. But Hugo and Susan and Miss Lingard came in from the hall almost immediately. They were talking about shooting and murders and things.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Poirot. \"Yes, I think I see now. . . .\"\n\nMajor Riddle said rather doubtfully:\n\n\"Well\u2014er\u2014thank you. I think that's all for the moment.\"\n\nRuth and her husband turned and left the room.\n\n\"What the devil\u2014\u2014\" began Major Riddle, and ended rather hopelessly: \"It gets more and more difficult to keep track of this business.\"\n\nPoirot nodded. He had picked up the little piece of earth that had fallen from Ruth's shoe and was holding it thoughtfully in his hand.\n\n\"It is like the mirror smashed on the wall,\" he said. \"The dead man's mirror. Every new fact we come across shows us some different angle of the dead man. He is reflected from every conceivable point of view. We shall have soon a complete picture. . . .\"\n\nHe rose and put the little piece of earth tidily in the waste-paper basket.\n\n\"I will tell you one thing, my friend. The clue to the whole mystery is the mirror. Go into the study and look for yourself, if you do not believe me.\"\n\nMajor Riddle, said decisively:\n\n\"If it's murder, it's up to you to prove it. If you ask me, I say it's definitely suicide. Did you notice what the girl said about a former agent having swindled old Gervase? I bet Lake told that tale for his own purposes. He was probably helping himself a bit, Sir Gervase suspected it, and sent for you because he didn't know how far things had gone between Lake and Ruth. Then this afternoon Lake told him they were married. That broke Gervase up. It was 'too late' now for anything to be done. He determined to get out of it all. In fact his brain, never very well-balanced at the best of times, gave way. In my opinion that's what happened. What have you got to say against it?\"\n\nPoirot stood still in the middle of the room.\n\n\"What have I to say? This: I have nothing to say against your theory\u2014but it does not go far enough. There are certain things it does not take into account.\"\n\n\"Such as?\"\n\n\"The discrepancies in Sir Gervase's moods today, the finding of Colonel Bury's pencil, the evidence of Miss Cardwell (which is very important), the evidence of Miss Lingard as to the order in which people came down to dinner, the position of Sir Gervase's chair when he was found, the paper bag which had held oranges and, finally, the all-important clue of the broken mirror.\"\n\nMajor Riddle stared.\n\n\"Are you going to tell me that that rigmarole makes sense?\" he asked.\n\nHercule Poirot replied softly:\n\n\"I hope to make it do so\u2014by tomorrow.\"\nEleven\n\nIt was just after dawn when Hercule Poirot awoke on the following morning. He had been given a bedroom on the east side of the house.\n\nGetting out of bed, he drew aside the window blind and satisfied himself that the sun had risen, and that it was a fine  \nmorning.\n\nHe began to dress with his usual meticulous care. Having finished his toilet, he wrapped himself up in a thick overcoat and wound a muffler round his neck.\n\nThen he tiptoed out of his room and through the silent house down to the drawing room. He opened the french windows noiselessly and passed out into the garden.\n\nThe sun was just showing now. The air was misty, with the mist of a fine morning. Hercule Poirot followed the terraced walk round the side of the house till he came to the windows of Sir Gervase's study. Here he stopped and surveyed the scene.\n\nImmediately outside the windows was a strip of grass that ran parallel with the house. In front of that was a wide herbaceous border. The michaelmas daisies still made a fine show. In front of the border was the flagged walk where Poirot was standing. A strip of grass ran from the grass walk behind the border to the terrace. Poirot examined it carefully, then shook his head. He turned his attention to the border on either side  \nof it.\n\nVery slowly he nodded his head. In the right-hand bed, distinct in the soft mould, there were footprints.\n\nAs he stared down at them, frowning, a sound caught his ears and he lifted his head sharply.\n\nAbove him a window had been pushed up. He saw a red head of hair. Framed in an aureole of golden red he saw the intelligent face of Susan Cardwell.\n\n\"What on earth are you doing at this hour, M. Poirot? A spot of sleuthing?\"\n\nPoirot bowed with the utmost correctitude.\n\n\"Good morning, mademoiselle. Yes, it is as you say. You now behold a detective\u2014a great detective, I may say\u2014in the act of detecting!\"\n\nThe remark was a little flamboyant. Susan put her head on one side.\n\n\"I must remember this in my memoirs,\" she remarked. \"Shall I come down and help?\"\n\n\"I should be enchanted.\"\n\n\"I thought you were a burglar at first. Which way did you get out?\"\n\n\"Through the drawing room window.\"\n\n\"Just a minute and I'll be with you.\"\n\nShe was as good as her word. To all appearances Poirot was exactly in the same position as when she had first seen him.\n\n\"You are awake very early, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"I haven't been to sleep really properly. I was just getting that desperate feeling that one does get at five in the morning.\"\n\n\"It's not quite so early as that!\"\n\n\"It feels like it! Now then, my super sleuth, what are we looking at?\"\n\n\"But observe, mademoiselle, footprints.\"\n\n\"So they are.\"\n\n\"Four of them,\" continued Poirot. \"See, I will point them out to you. Two going towards the window, two coming from it.\"\n\n\"Whose are they? The gardener's?\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle! Those footmarks are made by the small dainty high-heeled shoes of a woman. See, convince yourself. Step, I beg of you, in the earth here beside them.\"\n\nSusan hesitated a minute, then placed a foot gingerly on to the mould in the place indicated by Poirot. She was wearing small high-heeled slippers of dark brown leather.\n\n\"You see, yours are nearly the same size. Nearly, but not quite. These others are made by a rather longer foot than yours. Perhaps Miss Chevenix-Gore's\u2014or Miss Lingard's\u2014or even Lady Chevenix-Gore's.\"\n\n\"Not Lady Chevenix-Gore\u2014she's got tiny feet. People did in those days\u2014manage to have small feet, I mean. And Miss Lingard wears queer flat-heeled things.\"\n\n\"Then they are the marks of Miss Chevenix-Gore. Ah, yes, I remember she mentioned having been out in the garden yesterday evening.\"\n\nHe led the way back round the house.\n\n\"Are we still sleuthing?\" asked Susan.\n\n\"But certainly. We will go now to Sir Gervase's study.\"\n\nHe led the way. Susan Cardwell followed him.\n\nThe door still hung in a melancholy fashion. Inside, the room was as it had been last night. Poirot pulled the curtains and admitted the daylight.\n\nHe stood looking out at the border a minute or two, then he said:\n\n\"You have not, I presume, mademoiselle, much acquaintance with burglars?\"\n\nSusan Cardwell shook her red head regretfully.\n\n\"I'm afraid not, M. Poirot.\"\n\n\"The chief constable, he, too, has not had the advantages of a friendly relationship with them. His connection with the criminal clases has always been strictly official. With me that is not so. I had a very pleasant chat with a burglar once. He told me an interesting thing about french windows\u2014a trick that could sometimes be employed if the fastening was sufficiently loose.\"\n\nHe turned the handle of the left-hand window as he spoke, the middle shaft came up out of the hole in the ground, and Poirot was able to pull the two doors of the window towards him. Having opened them wide, he closed them again\u2014closed them without turning the handle, so as not to send the shaft down into its socket. He let go of the handle, waited a moment, then struck a quick, jarring blow high up on the centre of the shaft. The jar of the blow sent the shaft down into the socket in the ground\u2014the handle turned of its own accord.\n\n\"You see, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"I think I do.\"\n\nSusan had gone rather pale.\n\n\"The window is now closed. It is impossible to enter a room when the window is closed, but it is possible to leave a room, pull the doors to from outside, then hit it as I did, and the bolt goes down into the ground, turning the handle. The window then is firmly closed, and anyone looking at it would say it had been closed from the inside.\"\n\n\"Is that\"\u2014Susan's voice shook a little\u2014\"is that what happened last night?\"\n\n\"I think so, yes, mademoiselle.\"\n\nSusan said violently:\n\n\"I don't believe a word of it.\"\n\nPoirot did not answer. He walked over to the mantelpiece. He wheeled sharply round.\n\n\"Mademoiselle, I have need of you as a witness. I have already one witness, Mr. Trent. He saw me find this tiny sliver of looking glass last night. I spoke of it to him. I left it where it was for the police. I even told the chief constable that a valuable clue was the broken mirror. But he did not avail himself of my hint. Now you are a witness that I place this sliver of looking glass (to which, remember, I have already called Mr. Trent's attention) into a little envelope\u2014so.\" He suited the action to the word. \"And I write on it\u2014so\u2014and seal it up. You are a witness, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014but\u2014but I don't know what it means.\"\n\nPoirot walked over to the other side of the room. He stood in front of the desk and stared at the shattered mirror on the wall in front of him.\n\n\"I will tell you what it means, mademoiselle. If you had been standing here last night, looking into this mirror, you could have seen in it murder being committed. . . .\"\nTwelve\n\nI\n\nFor once in her life Ruth Chevenix-Gore\u2014now Ruth Lake\u2014came down to breakfast in good time. Hercule Poirot was in the hall and drew her aside before she went into the dining room.\n\n\"I have a question to ask you, madame.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"You were in the garden last night. Did you at any time step in the flower bed outside Sir Gervase's study window?\"\n\nRuth stared at him.\n\n\"Yes, twice.\"\n\n\"Ah! Twice. How twice?\"\n\n\"The first time I was picking michaelmas daisies. That was about seven o'clock.\"\n\n\"Was it not rather an odd time of day to pick flowers?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was, as a matter of fact. I'd done the flowers yesterday morning, but Vanda said after tea that the flowers on the dinner table weren't good enough. I had thought they would be all right, so I hadn't done them fresh.\"\n\n\"But your mother requested you to do them? Is that right?\"\n\n\"Yes. So I went out just before seven. I took them from that part of the border because hardly anyone goes round there, and so it didn't matter spoiling the effect.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, but the second time. You went there a second time, you said?\"\n\n\"That was just before dinner. I had dropped a spot of brilliantine on my dress\u2014just by the shoulder. I didn't want to bother to change, and none of my artificial flowers went with the yellow of that dress. I remembered I'd seen a late rose when I was picking the michaelmas daisies, so I hurried out and got it and pinned it on my shoulder.\"\n\nPoirot nodded his head slowly.\n\n\"Yes, I remember that you wore a rose last night. What time was it, madame, when you picked that rose?\"\n\n\"I don't really know.\"\n\n\"But it is essential, madame. Consider\u2014reflect.\"\n\nRuth frowned. She looked swiftly at Poirot and then away again.\n\n\"I can't say exactly,\" she said at last. \"It must have been\u2014oh, of course\u2014it must have been about five minutes past eight. It was when I was on my way back round the house that I heard the gong go, and then that funny bang. I was hurrying because I thought it was the second gong and not the first.\"\n\n\"Ah, so you thought that\u2014and did you not try the study window when you stood there in the flowerbed?\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact, I did. I thought it might be open, and it would be quicker to come in that way. But it was fastened.\"\n\n\"So everything is explained. I congratulate you, madame.\"\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"That you have an explanation for everything, for the mould on your shoes, for your footprints in the flower bed, for your fingerprints on the outside of the window. It is very convenient that.\"\n\nBefore Ruth could answer, Miss Lingard came hurrying down the stairs. There was a queer purple flush on her cheeks, and she looked a little startled at seeing Poirot and Ruth standing together.\n\n\"I beg your pardon,\" she said. \"Is anything the matter?\"\n\nRuth said angrily:\n\n\"I think M. Poirot has gone mad!\"\n\nShe swept by them and into the dining room. Miss Lingard turned an astonished face on Poirot.\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"After breakfast,\" he said. \"I will explain. I should like everyone to assemble in Sir Gervase's study at ten o'clock.\"\n\nHe repeated this request on entering the dining room.\n\nSusan Cardwell gave him a quick glance, then transferred her gaze to Ruth. When Hugo said:\n\n\"Eh? What's the idea?\" she gave him a sharp nudge in the side, and he shut up obediently.\n\nWhen he had finished his breakfast, Poirot rose and walked to the door. He turned and drew out a large old-fashioned watch.\n\n\"It is five minutes to ten. In five minutes\u2014in the study.\"\n\nII\n\nPoirot looked round him. A circle of interested faces stared back at him. Everyone was there, he noted, with one exception, and at that very moment the exception swept into the room. Lady Chevenix-Gore came in with a soft, gliding step. She looked haggard and ill.\n\nPoirot drew forward a big chair for her, and she sat down.\n\nShe looked up at the broken mirror, shivered, and pulled her chair a little way round.\n\n\"Gervase is still here,\" she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. \"Poor Gervase . . . He will soon be free now.\"\n\nPoirot cleared his throat and announced:\n\n\"I have asked you all to come here so that you may hear the true facts of Sir Gervase's suicide.\"\n\n\"It was Fate,\" said Lady Chevenix-Gore. \"Gervase was strong, but his Fate was stronger.\"\n\nColonel Bury moved forward a little.\n\n\"Vanda\u2014my dear.\"\n\nShe smiled up at him, then put up her hand. He took it in his. She said softly: \"You are such a comfort, Ned.\"\n\nRuth said sharply:\n\n\"Are we to understand, M. Poirot, that you have definitely ascertained the cause of my father's suicide?\"\n\nPoirot shook his head.\n\n\"No, madame.\"\n\n\"Then what is all this rigmarole about?\"\n\nPoirot said quietly:\n\n\"I do not know the cause of Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore's suicide, because Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore did not commit suicide. He did not kill himself. He was killed. . . .\"\n\n\"Killed?\" Several voices echoed the word. Startled faces were turned in Poirot's direction. Lady Chevenix-Gore looked up, said, \"Killed? Oh, no!\" and gently shook her head.\n\n\"Killed, did you say?\" It was Hugo who spoke now. \"Impossible. There was no one in the room when we broke in. The window was fastened. The door was locked on the inside, and the key was in my uncle's pocket. How could he have been killed?\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, he was killed.\"\n\n\"And the murderer escaped through the keyhole, I suppose?\" said Colonel Bury sceptically. \"Or flew up the chimney?\"\n\n\"The murderer,\" said Poirot, \"went out through the window. I will show you how.\"\n\nHe repeated his manoeuvres with the window.\n\n\"You see?\" he said. \"That was how it was done! From the first I could not consider it likely that Sir Gervase had committed suicide. He had pronounced egomania, and such a man does not kill himself.\n\n\"And there were other things! Apparently, just before his death, Sir Gervase had sat down at his desk, scrawled the word SORRY on a sheet of notepaper and had then shot himself. But before this last action he had, for some reason or other altered the position of his chair, turning it so that it was sideways to the desk. Why? There must be some reason. I began to see light when I found, sticking to the base of a heavy bronze statuette, a tiny sliver of looking glass. . . .\n\n\"I asked myself, how does a sliver of broken looking glass come to be there?\u2014and an answer suggested itself to me. The mirror had been broken, not by a bullet, but by being struck with the heavy bronze figure. That mirror had been broken deliberately.\n\n\"But why? I returned to the desk and looked down at the chair. Yes, I saw now. It was all wrong. No suicide would turn his chair round, lean over the edge of it, and then shoot himself. The whole thing was arranged. The suicide was a fake!\n\n\"And now I come to something very important. The evidence of Miss Cardwell. Miss Cardwell said that she hurried downstairs last night because she thought that the second gong had sounded. That is to say, she thought that she had already heard the first gong.\n\n\"Now observe, if Sir Gervase was sitting at his desk in the normal fashion when he was shot, where would the bullet go? Travelling in a straight line, it would pass through the door, if the door were open, and finally hit the gong!\n\n\"You see now the importance of Miss Cardwell's statement? No one else heard the first gong, but, then, her room is situated immediately above this one, and she was in the best position for hearing it. It would consist of only one single note, remember.\n\n\"There could be no question of Sir Gervase's shooting himself. A dead man cannot get up, shut the door, lock it and arrange himself in a convenient position! Somebody else was concerned, and therefore it was not suicide, but murder. Someone whose presence was easily accepted by Sir Gervase, stood by his side talking to him. Sir Gervase was busy writing, perhaps. The murderer brings the pistol up to the right side of his head and fires. The deed is done! Then quick, to work! The murderer slips on gloves. The door is locked, the key put in Sir Gervase's pocket. But supposing that one loud note of the gong has been heard? Then it will be realized that the door was open, not shut, when the shot was fired. So the chair is turned, the body rearranged, the dead man's fingers pressed on the pistol, the mirror deliberately smashed. Then the murderer goes out through the window, jars it shut, steps, not on the grass, but in the flower bed where footprints can be smoothed out afterwards; then round the side of the house and into the drawing room.\"\n\nHe paused and said:\n\n\"There was only one person who was out in the garden when the shot was fired. That same person left her footprints in the flower bed and her fingerprints on the outside of the window.\"\n\nHe came towards Ruth.\n\n\"And there was a motive, wasn't there? Your father had learnt of your secret marriage. He was preparing to disinherit you.\"\n\n\"It's a lie!\" Ruth's voice came scornful and clear. \"There's not a word of truth in your story. It's a lie from start to finish!\"\n\n\"The proofs against you are very strong, madame. A jury may believe you. It may not!\"\n\n\"She won't have to face a jury.\"\n\nThe others turned\u2014startled. Miss Lingard was on her feet. Her face altered. She was trembling all over.\n\n\"I shot him. I admit it! I had my reason. I\u2014I've been waiting for some time. M. Poirot is quite right. I followed him in here. I had taken the pistol out of the drawer earlier. I stood beside him talking about the book\u2014and I shot him. That was just after eight. The bullet struck the gong. I never dreamt it would pass right through his head like that. There wasn't time to go out and look for it. I locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Then I swung the chair round, smashed the mirror, and, after scrawling \"Sorry\" on a piece of paper, I went out through the window and shut it the way M. Poirot showed you. I stepped in the flower bed, but I smoothed out the footprints with a little rake I had put there ready. Then I went round to the drawing room. I had left the window open. I didn't know Ruth had gone out through it. She must have come round the front of the house while I went round the back. I had to put the rake away, you see, in a shed. I waited in the drawing room till I heard someone coming downstairs and Snell going to the gong, and then\u2014\"\n\nShe looked at Poirot.\n\n\"You don't know what I did then?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, I do. I found the bag in the wastepaper basket. It was very clever, that idea of yours. You did what children love to do. You blew up the bag and then hit it. It made a satisfactory big bang. You threw the bag into the wastepaper basket and rushed out into the hall. You had established the time of the suicide\u2014and an alibi for yourself. But there was still one thing that worried you. You had not had time to pick up the bullet. It must be somewhere near the gong. It was essential that the bullet should be found in the study somewhere near the mirror. I didn't know when you had the idea of taking Colonel Bury's pencil\u2014\"\n\n\"It was just then,\" said Miss Lingard. \"When we all came in from the hall. I was surprised to see Ruth in the room. I realized she must have come from the garden through the window. Then I noticed Colonel Bury's pencil lying on the bridge table. I slipped it into my bag. If, later, anyone saw me pick up the bullet, I could pretend it was the pencil. As a matter of fact, I didn't think anyone saw me pick up the bullet. I dropped it by the mirror while you were looking at the body. When you tackled me on the subject, I was very glad I had thought of the pencil.\"\n\n\"Yes, that was clever. It confused me completely.\"\n\n\"I was afraid someone must hear the real shot, but I knew everyone was dressing for dinner, and would be shut away in their rooms. The servants were in their quarters. Miss Cardwell was the only one at all likely to hear it, and she would probably think it was a backfire. What she did hear was the gong. I thought\u2014I thought everything had gone without a hitch. . . .\"\n\nMr. Forbes said slowly in his precise tones:\n\n\"This is a most extraordinary story. There seems no motive\u2014\"\n\nMiss Lingard said clearly: \"There was a motive. . . .\"\n\nShe added fiercely:\n\n\"Go on, ring up the police! What are you waiting for?\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"Will you all please leave the room? Mr. Forbes, ring up Major Riddle. I will stay here till he comes.\"\n\nSlowly, one by one, the family filed out of the room. Puzzled, uncomprehending, shocked, they cast abashed glances at the trim, upright figure with its neatly-parted grey hair.\n\nRuth was the last to go. She stood, hesitating in the doorway.\n\n\"I don't understand.\" She spoke angrily, defiantly, accusing Poirot. \"Just now, you thought I had done it.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Poirot shook his head. \"No, I never thought that.\"\n\nRuth went out slowly.\n\nPoirot was left with the little middle-aged prim woman who had just confessed to a cleverly-planned and cold-blooded murder.\n\n\"No,\" said Miss Lingard. \"You didn't think she had done it. You accused her to make me speak. That's right, isn't it?\"\n\nPoirot bowed his head.\n\n\"While we're waiting,\" said Miss Lingard in a conversational tone, \"you might tell me what made you suspect me.\"\n\n\"Several things. To begin with, your account of Sir Gervase. A proud man like Sir Gervase would never speak disparagingly of his nephew to an outsider, especially someone in your position. You wanted to strengthen the theory of suicide. You also went out of your way to suggest that the cause of the suicide was some dishonourable trouble connected with Hugo Trent. That, again, was a thing Sir Gervase would never have admitted to a stranger. Then there was the object you picked up in the hall, and the very significant fact that you did not mention that Ruth, when she entered the drawing room, did so from the garden. And then I found the paper bag\u2014a most unlikely object to find in the wastepaper basket in the drawing room of a house like Hamborough Close! You were the only person who had been in the drawing room when the 'shot' was heard. The paper bag trick was one that would suggest itself to a woman\u2014an ingenious homemade device. So everything fitted in. The endeavour to throw suspicion on Hugo, and to keep it away from Ruth. The mechanism of crime\u2014and its motive.\"\n\nThe little grey-haired woman stirred.\n\n\"You know the motive?\"\n\n\"I think so. Ruth's happiness\u2014that was the motive! I fancy that you had seen her with John Lake\u2014you knew how it was with them. And then with your easy access to Sir Gervase's papers, you came across the draft of his new will\u2014Ruth disinherited unless she married Hugo Trent. That decided you to take the law into your own hands, using the fact that Sir Gervase had previously written to me. You probably saw a copy of that letter. What muddled feeling of suspicion and fear had caused him to write originally, I do not know. He must have suspected either Burrows or Lake of systematically robbing him. His uncertainty regarding Ruth's feelings made him seek a private investigation. You used that fact and deliberately set the stage for suicide, backing it up by your account of his being very distressed over something connected with Hugo Trent. You sent a telegram to me and reported Sir Gervase as having said I should arrive 'too late.' \"\n\nMiss Lingard said fiercely:\n\n\"Gervase Chevenix-Gore was a bully, a snob and a windbag! I wasn't going to have him ruin Ruth's happiness.\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"Ruth is your daughter?\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014she is my daughter\u2014I've often\u2014thought about her. When I heard Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore wanted someone to help him with a family history, I jumped at the chance. I was curious to see my\u2014my girl. I knew Lady Chevenix-Gore wouldn't recognize me. It was years ago\u2014I was young and pretty then, and I changed my name after that time. Besides Lady Chevenix-Gore is too vague to know anything definitely. I liked her, but I hated the Chevenix-Gore family. They treated me like dirt. And here was Gervase going to ruin Ruth's life with pride and snobbery. But I determined that she should be happy. And she will be happy\u2014if she never knows about me!\"\n\nIt was a plea\u2014not a question.\n\nPoirot bent his head gently.\n\n\"No one shall know from me.\"\n\nMiss Lingard said quietly:\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nIII\n\nLater, when the police had come and gone, Poirot found Ruth Lake with her husband in the garden.\n\nShe said challengingly:\n\n\"Did you really think that I had done it, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"I knew, madame, that you could not have done it\u2014because of the michaelmas daisies.\"\n\n\"The michaelmas daisies? I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Madame, there were four footprints and four footprints only in the border. But if you had been picking flowers there would have been many more. That meant that between your first visit and your second, someone had smoothed all those footsteps away. That could only have been done by the guilty person, and since your footprints had not been removed, you were not the guilty person. You were automatically cleared.\"\n\nRuth's face lightened.\n\n\"Oh, I see. You know\u2014I suppose it's dreadful, but I feel rather sorry for that poor woman. After all, she did confess rather than let me be arrested\u2014or at any rate, that is what she thought. That was\u2014rather noble in a way. I hate to think of her going through a trial for murder.\"\n\nPoirot said gently:\n\n\"Do not distress yourself. It will not come to that. The doctor, he tells me that she has serious heart trouble. She will not live many weeks.\"\n\n\"I'm glad of that.\" Ruth picked an autumn crocus and pressed it idly against her cheek.\n\n\"Poor woman. I wonder why she did it. . . .\"\nTRIANGLE AT RHODES\nOne\n\nHercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.\n\nOccasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood be-  \nside her.\n\nOn the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake's tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once.\n\n\"I'm so patchy still,\" she murmured regretfully. \"M. Poirot\u2014would you mind? Just below the right shoulder blade\u2014I can't reach to rub it in properly.\"\n\nM. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk.\n\n\"I was right about that woman\u2014the one in the Chanel model\u2014it is Valentine Dacres\u2014Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She's really rather marvellous, isn't she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That's half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He's terribly good-looking.\"\n\n\"Honeymooners?\" murmured Sarah in a stifled voice.\n\nMiss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner.\n\n\"Oh, no\u2014her clothes aren't new enough. You can always tell brides! Don't you think it's the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?\"\n\n\"Not just looking, darling,\" said Sarah sweetly. \"You ask a lot of questions, too.\"\n\n\"I haven't even spoken to the Golds yet,\" said Miss Lyall with dignity. \"And anyway I don't see why one shouldn't be interested in one's fellow creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don't you think so, M. Poirot?\"\n\nThis time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply.\n\nWithout taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied:\n\n\"\u00c7a depend.\"\n\nPamela was shocked.\n\n\"Oh, M. Poirot! I don't think anything's so interesting\u2014so incalculable as a human being!\"\n\n\"Incalculable? That, no.\"\n\n\"Oh, but they are. Just as you think you've got them beautifully taped\u2014they do something completely unexpected.\"\n\nHercule Poirot shook his head.\n\n\"No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caract\u00e8re. It is in the end monotonous.\"\n\n\"I don't agree with you at all!\" said Miss Pamela Lyall.\n\nShe was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.\n\n\"As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them\u2014what they're like\u2014what relations they are to each other\u2014what they're thinking and feeling. It's\u2014oh, it's quite thrilling.\"\n\n\"Hardly that,\" said Hercule Poirot. \"Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,\" he added thoughtfully, \"has infinitely more variety.\"\n\nSarah turned her head sideways and asked:\n\n\"You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?\"\n\n\"Pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment,\" said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.\n\n\"What's that you're drawing?\" asked Pamela curiously.\n\n\"A triangle,\" said Poirot.\n\nBut Pamela's attention had been diverted elsewhere.\n\n\"Here are the Chantrys,\" she said.\n\nA woman was coming down the beach\u2014a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing dress.\n\nPamela sighed.\n\n\"Hasn't she got a lovely figure?\"\n\nBut Poirot was looking at her face\u2014the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.\n\nHe knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things\u2014for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time\u2014a commander in the navy.\n\nHe it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark\u2014with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him.\n\nShe said:\n\n\"Tony darling\u2014my cigarette case . . .\"\n\nHe had it ready for her\u2014lighted her cigarette\u2014helped her to slip the straps of the white bathing dress from her shoulders. She lay, arms outstretched in the sun. He sat by her like some wild beast that guards its prey.\n\nPamela said, her voice just lowered sufficiently:\n\n\"You know they interest me frightfully . . . He's such a brute! So silent and\u2014sort of glowering. I suppose a woman of her kind likes that. It must be like controlling a tiger! I wonder how long it will last. She gets tired of them very soon, I believe\u2014especially nowadays. All the same, if she tried to get rid of him, I think he might be dangerous.\"\n\nAnother couple came down the beach\u2014rather shyly. They were the newcomers of the night before. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Gold as Miss Lyall knew from her inspection of the hotel visitors' book. She knew, too, for such were the Italian regulations\u2014their Christian names and their ages as set down from their passports.\n\nMr. Douglas Cameron Gold was thirty-one and Mrs. Marjorie Emma Gold was thirty-five.\n\nMiss Lyall's hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. She, therefore, noting the slight hesitancy and shyness of Mrs. Gold's advance, called out:\n\n\"Good morning, isn't it a lovely day?\"\n\nMrs. Gold was a small woman\u2014rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked. Her husband, on the other hand, was extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid.\n\nMrs. Gold looked gratefully at Pamela and sat down near her.\n\n\"What a lovely shade of brown you are. I feel terribly underdone!\"\n\n\"One has to take a frightful lot of trouble to brown evenly,\" sighed Miss Lyall.\n\nShe paused a minute and then went on:\n\n\"You've only just arrived, haven't you?\"\n\n\"Yes. Last night. We came on the Vapo d'Italia boat.\"\n\n\"Have you ever been to Rhodes before?\"\n\n\"No. It is lovely, isn't it?\"\n\nHer husband said:\n\n\"Pity it's such a long way to come.\"\n\n\"Yes, if it were only nearer England\u2014\"\n\nIn a muffled voice Sarah said:\n\n\"Yes, but then it would be awful. Rows and rows of people laid out like fish on a slab. Bodies everywhere!\"\n\n\"That's true, of course,\" said Douglas Gold. \"It's a nuisance the Italian exchange is so absolutely ruinous at present.\"\n\n\"It does make a difference, doesn't it?\"\n\nThe conversation was running on strictly stereotyped lines. It could hardly have been called brilliant.\n\nA little way along the beach, Valentine Chantry stirred and sat up. With one hand she held her bathing dress in position across her breast.\n\nShe yawned, a wide yet delicate cat-like yawn. She glanced casually down the beach. Her eyes slanted past Marjorie Gold\u2014and stayed thoughtfully on the crisp, golden head of Douglas Gold.\n\nShe moved her shoulders sinuously.She spoke and her voice was raised a little higher than it need have been.\n\n\"Tony darling\u2014isn't it divine\u2014this sun? I simply must have been a sun worshipper once\u2014don't you think so?\"\n\nHer husband grunted something in reply that failed to reach the others. Valentine Chantry went on in that high, drawling voice.\n\n\"Just pull that towel a little flatter, will you, darling?\"\n\nShe took infinite pains in the resettling of her beautiful body. Douglas Gold was looking now. His eyes were frankly interested.\n\nMrs. Gold chirped happily in a subdued key to Miss Lyall.\n\n\"What a beautiful woman!\"\n\nPamela, as delighted to give as to receive information, replied in a lower voice:\n\n\"That's Valentine Chantry\u2014you know, who used to be Valentine Dacres\u2014she is rather marvellous, isn't she? He's simply crazy about her\u2014won't let her out of his sight!\"\n\nMrs. Gold looked once more along the beach. Then she said:\n\n\"The sea really is lovely\u2014so blue. I think we ought to go in now, don't you, Douglas?\"\n\nHe was still watching Valentine Chantry and took a minute or two to answer. Then he said, rather absently:\n\n\"Go in? Oh, yes, rather, in a minute.\"\n\nMarjorie Gold got up and strolled down to the water's edge.\n\nValentine Chantry rolled over a little on one side. Her eyes looked along at Douglas Gold. Her scarlet mouth curved faintly into a smile.\n\nThe neck of Mr. Douglas Gold became slightly red.\n\nValentine Chantry said:\n\n\"Tony darling\u2014would you mind? I want a little pot of face cream\u2014it's up on the dressing table. I meant to bring it down. Do get it for me\u2014there's an angel.\"\n\nThe commander rose obediently. He stalked off into the hotel.\n\nMarjorie Gold plunged into the sea, calling out:\n\n\"It's lovely, Douglas\u2014so warm. Do come.\"\n\nPamela Lyall said to him:\n\n\"Aren't you going in?\"\n\nHe answered vaguely:\n\n\"Oh! I like to get well hotted up first.\"\n\nValentine Chantry stirred. Her head was lifted for a moment as though to recall her husband\u2014but he was just passing inside the wall of the hotel garden.\n\n\"I like my dip the last thing,\" explained Mr. Gold.\n\nMrs. Chantry sat up again. She picked up a flask of sunbathing oil. She had some difficulty with it\u2014the screw top seemed to resist her efforts.\n\nShe spoke loudly and petulantly.\n\n\"Oh, dear\u2014I can't get this thing undone!\"\n\nShe looked towards the other group\u2014\n\n\"I wonder\u2014\"\n\nAlways gallant, Poirot rose to his feet, but Douglas Gold had the advantage of youth and suppleness. He was by her side in a moment.\n\n\"Can I do it for you?\"\n\n\"Oh, thank you\u2014\" It was the sweet, empty drawl again.\n\n\"You are kind. I'm such a fool at undoing things\u2014I always seem to screw them the wrong way. Oh! you've done it! Thank you ever so much\u2014\"\n\nHercule Poirot smiled to himself.\n\nHe got up and wandered along the beach in the opposite direction. He did not go very far but his progress was leisurely. As he was on his way back, Mrs. Gold came out of the sea and joined him. She had been swimming. Her face, under a singularly unbecoming bathing cap, was radiant.\n\nShe said breathlessly, \"I do love the sea. And it's so warm and lovely here.\"\n\nShe was, he perceived, an enthusiastic bather.\n\nShe said, \"Douglas and I are simply mad on bathing. He can stay in for hours.\"\n\nAnd at that Hercule Poirot's eyes slid over her shoulder to the spot on the beach where that enthusiastic bather, Mr. Douglas Gold, was sitting talking to Valentine Chantry.\n\nHis wife said:\n\n\"I can't think why he doesn't come. . . .\"\n\nHer voice held a kind of childish bewilderment.\n\nPoirot's eyes rested thoughtfully on Valentine Chantry. He thought that other women in their time had made that same remark.\n\nBeside him, he heard Mrs. Gold draw in her breath sharply.\n\nShe said\u2014and her voice was cold:\n\n\"She's supposed to be very attractive, I believe. But Douglas doesn't like that type of woman.\"\n\nHercule Poirot did not reply.\n\nMrs. Gold plunged into the sea again.\n\nShe swam away from the shore with slow, steady strokes. You could see that she loved the water.\n\nPoirot retraced his steps to the group on the beach.\n\nIt had been augmented by the arrival of old General Barnes, a veteran who was usually in the company of the young. He was sitting now between Pamela and Sarah, and he and Pamela were engaged in dishing up various scandals with appropriate embellishments.\n\nCommander Chantry had returned from his errand. He and Douglas Gold were sitting on either side of Valentine.\n\nValentine was sitting up very straight between the two men and talking. She talked easily and lightly in her sweet, drawling voice, turning her head to take first one man and then the other in the conversation.\n\nShe was just finishing an anecdote.\n\n\"\u2014and what do you think the foolish man said? 'It may have been only a minute, but I'd remember you anywhere, Mum!' Didn't he, Tony? And you know, I thought it was so sweet of him. I do think it's such a kind world\u2014I mean, everybody is so frightfully kind to me always\u2014I don't know why\u2014they just are. But I said to Tony\u2014d'you remember, darling\u2014'Tony, if you want to be a teeny-weeny bit jealous, you can be jealous of that commissionaire.' Because he really was too adorable. . . .\"\n\nThere was a pause and Douglas Gold said:\n\n\"Good fellows\u2014some of these commissionaires.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes\u2014but he took such trouble\u2014really an immense amount of trouble\u2014and seemed just pleased to be able to help me.\"\n\nDouglas Gold said:\n\n\"Nothing odd about that. Anyone would for you, I'm sure.\"\n\nShe cried delightedly:\n\n\"How nice of you! Tony, did you hear that?\"\n\nCommander Chantry grunted.\n\nHis wife sighed:\n\n\"Tony never makes pretty speeches\u2014do you, my lamb?\"\n\nHer white hand with its long red nails ruffled up his dark head.\n\nHe gave her a sudden sidelong look. She murmured:\n\n\"I don't really know how he puts up with me. He's simply frightfully clever\u2014absolutely frantic with brains\u2014and I just go on talking nonsense the whole time, but he doesn't seem to mind. Nobody minds what I do or say\u2014everybody spoils me. I'm sure it's frightfully bad for me.\"\n\nCommander Chantry said across her to the other man:\n\n\"That your missus in the sea?\"\n\n\"Yes. Expect it's about time I joined her.\"\n\nValentine murmured:\n\n\"But it's so lovely here in the sun. You mustn't go into the sea yet. Tony darling, I don't think I shall actually bathe today\u2014not my first day. I might get a chill or something. But why don't you go in now, Tony darling? Mr.\u2014Mr. Gold will stay and keep me company while you're in.\"\n\nChantry said rather grimly:\n\n\"No, thanks. Shan't go in just yet. Your wife seems to be waving to you, Gold.\"\n\nValentine said:\n\n\"How well your wife swims. I'm sure she's one of those terribly efficient women who do everything well. They always frighten me so because I feel they despise me. I'm so frightfully bad at everything\u2014an absolute duffer, aren't I, Tony darling?\"\n\nBut again Commander Chantry only grunted.\n\nHis wife murmured affectionately:\n\n\"You're too sweet to admit it. Men are so wonderfully loyal\u2014that's what I like about them. I do think men are so much more loyal than women\u2014and they never say nasty things. Women, I always think, are rather petty.\"\n\nSarah Blake rolled over on her side towards Poirot.\n\nShe murmured between her teeth.\n\n\"Examples of pettiness, to suggest that dear Mrs. Chantry is in any way not absolute perfection! What a complete idiot the woman is! I really do think Valentine Chantry is very nearly the most idiotic woman I ever met. She can't do anything but say, 'Tony, darling,' and roll her eyes. I should fancy she'd got cottonwool padding instead of brains.\"\n\nPoirot raised his expressive eyebrows.\n\n\"Un peu s\u00e9v\u00e8re!\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. Put it down as pure 'Cat,' if you like. She certainly has her methods! Can't she leave any man alone? Her husband's looking like thunder.\"\n\nLooking out to sea, Poirot remarked:\n\n\"Mrs. Gold swims well.\"\n\n\"Yes, she isn't like us who find it a nuisance to get wet. I wonder if Mrs. Chantry will ever go into the sea at all while she's out  \nhere.\"\n\n\"Not she,\" said General Barnes huskily. \"She won't risk that makeup of hers coming off. Not that she isn't a fine-looking woman although perhaps a bit long in the tooth.\"\n\n\"She's looking your way, General,\" said Sarah wickedly. \"And you're wrong about the makeup. We're all waterproof and kissproof nowadays.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Gold's coming out,\" announced Pamela.\n\n\"Here we go gathering nuts and may,\" hummed Sarah. \"Here comes his wife to fetch him away\u2014fetch him away\u2014fetch him away. . . .\"\n\nMrs. Gold came straight up the beach. She had quite a pretty figure but her plain, waterproof cap was rather too serviceable to be attractive.\n\n\"Aren't you coming, Douglas?\" she demanded impatiently. \"The sea is lovely and warm.\"\n\n\"Rather.\"\n\nDouglas Gold rose hastily to his feet. He paused a moment and as he did so Valentine Chantry looked up at him with a sweet smile.\n\n\"Au revoir,\" she said.\n\nGold and his wife went down the beach.\n\nAs soon as they were out of earshot, Pamela said critically:\n\n\"I don't think, you know, that that was wise. To snatch your husband away from another woman is always bad policy. It makes you seem so possessive. And husbands hate that.\"\n\n\"You seem to know a lot about husbands, Miss Pamela,\" said General Barnes.\n\n\"Other people's\u2014not my own!\"\n\n\"Ah! that's where the difference comes in.\"\n\n\"Yes, but General, I shall have learnt a lot of Do Nots.\"\n\n\"Well, darling,\" said Sarah, \"I shouldn't wear a cap like that for one thing. . . .\"\n\n\"Seems very sensible to me,\" said the General. \"Seems a nice, sensible little woman altogether.\"\n\n\"You've hit it exactly, General,\" said Sarah. \"But you know there's a limit to the sensibleness of sensible women. I have a feeling she won't be so sensible when it's a case of Valentine Chantry.\"\n\nShe turned her head and exclaimed in a low, excited whisper:\n\n\"Look at him now. Just like thunder. That man looks as though he had got the most frightful temper. . . .\"\n\nCommander Chantry was indeed scowling after the retreating husband and wife in a singularly unpleasant fashion.\n\nSarah looked up at Poirot.\n\n\"Well?\" she said. \"What do you make of all this?\"\n\nHercule Poirot did not reply in words, but once again his forefinger traced a design in the sand. The same design\u2014a triangle.\n\n\"The eternal triangle,\" mused Sarah. \"Perhaps you're right. If so, we're in for an exciting time in the next few weeks.\"\nTwo\n\nM. Hercule Poirot was disappointed with Rhodes. He had come to Rhodes for a rest and for a holiday. A holiday, especially, from crime. In late October, so he had been told, Rhodes would be nearly empty. A peaceful, secluded spot.\n\nThat, in itself, was true enough. The Chantrys, the Golds, Pamela and Sarah, the General and himself and two Italian couples were the only guests. But within that restricted circle the intelligent brain of M. Poirot perceived the inevitable shaping of events to come.\n\n\"It is that I am criminal-minded,\" he told himself reproachfully. \"I have the indigestion! I imagine things.\"\n\nBut still he worried.\n\nOne morning he came down to find Mrs. Gold sitting on the terrace doing needlework.\n\nAs he came up to her he had the impression that there was the flicker of a cambric handkerchief swiftly whisked out of sight.\n\nMrs. Gold's eyes were dry, but they were suspiciously bright. Her manner, too, struck him as being a shade too cheerful. The brightness of it was a shade overdone.\n\nShe said:\n\n\"Good morning, M. Poirot,\" with such enthusiasm as to arouse his doubts.\n\nHe felt that she could not possibly be quite as pleased to see him as she appeared to be. For she did not, after all, know him very well. And though Hercule Poirot was a conceited little man where his profession was concerned, he was quite modest in his estimate of his personal attractions.\n\n\"Good morning, madame,\" he responded. \"Another beautiful day.\"\n\n\"Yes, isn't it fortunate? But Douglas and I are always lucky in our weather.\"\n\n\"Indeed?\"\n\n\"Yes. We're really very lucky altogether. You know, M. Poirot, when one sees so much trouble and unhappiness, and so many couples divorcing each other and all that sort of thing, well, one does feel very grateful for one's own happiness.\"\n\n\"It is pleasant to hear you say so, madame.\"\n\n\"Yes. Douglas and I are so wonderfully happy together. We've been married five years, you know, and after all, five years is quite a long time nowadays\u2014\"\n\n\"I have no doubt that in some cases it can seem an eternity, madame,\" said Poirot dryly.\n\n\"\u2014but I really believe that we're happier now than when we were first married. You see, we're so absolutely suited to each other.\"\n\n\"That, of course, is everything.\"\n\n\"That's why I feel so sorry for people who aren't happy.\"\n\n\"You mean\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh! I was speaking generally, M. Poirot.\"\n\n\"I see. I see.\"\n\nMrs. Gold picked up a strand of silk, held it to the light, approved of it, and went on:\n\n\"Mrs. Chantry, for instance\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, Mrs. Chantry?\"\n\n\"I don't think she's at all a nice woman.\"\n\n\"No. No, perhaps not.\"\n\n\"In fact, I'm quite sure she's not a nice woman. But in a way one feels sorry for her. Because in spite of her money and her good looks and all that\"\u2014Mrs. Gold's fingers were trembling and she was quite unable to thread her needle\u2014\"she's not the sort of woman men really stick to. She's the sort of woman, I think, that men would get tired of very easily. Don't you  \nthink so?\"\n\n\"I myself should certainly get tired of her conversation before any great space of time had passed,\" said Poirot cautiously.\n\n\"Yes, that's what I mean. She has, of course, a kind of appeal . . .\" Mrs. Gold hesitated, her lips trembled, she stabbed uncertainly at her work. A less acute observer than Hercule Poirot could not have failed to notice her distress. She went on inconsequently:\n\n\"Men are just like children! They believe anything. . . .\"\n\nShe bent over her work. The tiny wisp of cambric came out again unobtrusively.\n\nPerhaps Hercule Poirot thought it well to change the subject.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"You do not bathe this morning? And monsieur your husband, is he down on the beach?\"\n\nMrs. Gold looked up, blinked, resumed her almost defiantly bright manner and replied:\n\n\"No, not this morning. We arranged to go round the walls of the old city. But somehow or other we\u2014we missed each other. They started without me.\"\n\nThe pronoun was revealing, but before Poirot could say anything, General Barnes came up from the beach below and dropped into a chair beside them.\n\n\"Good morning, Mrs. Gold. Good morning, Poirot. Both deserters this morning? A lot of absentees. You two, and your husband, Mrs. Gold\u2014and Mrs. Chantry.\"\n\n\"And Commander Chantry?\" inquired Poirot casually.\n\n\"Oh, no, he's down there. Miss Pamela's got him in hand.\" The General chuckled. \"She's finding him a little bit difficult! One of the strong, silent men you hear about in books.\"\n\nMarjorie Gold said with a little shiver:\n\n\"He frightens me a little, that man. He\u2014he looks so black sometimes. As though he might do\u2014anything!\"\n\nShe shivered.\n\n\"Just indigestion, I expect,\" said the General cheerfully. \"Dyspepsia is responsible for many a reputation for romantic melancholy or ungovernable rages.\"\n\nMarjorie Gold smiled a polite little smile.\n\n\"And where's your good man?\" inquired the General.\n\nHer reply came without hesitation\u2014in a natural, cheerful voice.\n\n\"Douglas? Oh, he and Mrs. Chantry have gone into the town. I believe they've gone to have a look at the walls of the old city.\"\n\n\"Ha, yes\u2014very interesting. Time of the knights and all that. You ought to have gone too, little lady.\"\n\nMrs. Gold said:\n\n\"I'm afraid I came down rather late.\"\n\nShe got up suddenly with a murmured excuse and went into the hotel.\n\nGeneral Barnes looked after her with a concerned expression, shaking his head gently.\n\n\"Nice little woman, that. Worth a dozen painted trollops like someone whose name we won't mention! Ha! Husband's a fool! Doesn't know when he's well-off.\"\n\nHe shook his head again. Then, rising, he went indoors.\n\nSarah Blake had just come up from the beach and had heard the General's last speech.\n\nMaking a face at the departing warrior's back, she remarked as she flung herself into a chair:\n\n\"Nice little woman\u2014nice little woman! Men always approve of dowdy women\u2014but when it comes to brass tacks the dress-up trollops win hands down! Sad, but there it is.\"\n\n\"Mademoiselle,\" said Poirot, and his voice was abrupt. \"I do not like all this!\"\n\n\"Don't you? Nor do I. No, let's be honest, I suppose I do like it really. There is a horrid side of one that enjoys accidents and public calamities and unpleasant things that happen to one's friends.\"\n\nPoirot asked:\n\n\"Where is Commander Chantry?\"\n\n\"On the beach being dissected by Pamela (she's enjoying herself if you like!) and not being improved in temper by the proceeding. He was looking like a thunder cloud when I came up. There are squalls ahead, believe me.\"\n\nPoirot murmured:\n\n\"There is something I do not understand\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not easy to understand,\" said Sarah. \"But what's going to happen that's the question.\"\n\nPoirot shook his head and murmured:\n\n\"As you say, mademoiselle\u2014it is the future that causes one inquietude.\"\n\n\"What a nice way of putting it,\" said Sarah and went into the hotel.\n\nIn the doorway she almost collided with Douglas Gold. The young man came out looking rather pleased with himself but at the same time slightly guilty. He said:\n\n\"Hallo, M. Poirot,\" and added rather self-consciously, \"Been showing Mrs. Chantry the Crusaders' walls. Marjorie didn't feel up to going.\"\n\nPoirot's eyebrows rose slightly, but even had he wished he would have had no time to make a comment for Valentine Chantry came sweeping out, crying in her high voice:\n\n\"Douglas\u2014a pink gin\u2014positively I must have a pink gin.\"\n\nDouglas Gold went off to order the drink. Valentine sank into a chair by Poirot. She was looking radiant this morning.\n\nShe saw her husband and Pamela coming up towards them and waved a hand, crying out:\n\n\"Have a nice bathe, Tony darling? Isn't it a divine morning?\"\n\nCommander Chantry did not answer. He swung up the steps, passed her without a word or a look and vanished into  \nthe bar.\n\nHis hands were clenched by his sides and that faint likeness to a gorilla was accentuated.\n\nValentine Chantry's perfect but rather foolish mouth fell open.\n\nShe said, \"Oh,\" rather blankly.\n\nPamela Lyall's face expressed keen enjoyment of the situation. Masking it as far as was possible to one of her ingenuous disposition she sat down by Valentine Chantry and inquired:\n\n\"Have you had a nice morning?\"\n\nAs Valentine began, \"Simply marvellous. We\u2014\" Poirot got up and in his turn strolled gently towards the bar. He found young Gold waiting for the pink gin with a flushed face. He looked disturbed and angry.\n\nHe said to Poirot, \"That man's a brute!\" And he nodded his head in the direction of the retreating figure of Commander Chantry.\n\n\"It is possible,\" said Poirot. \"Yes, it is quite possible. But les femmes, they like brutes, remember that!\"\n\nDouglas muttered:\n\n\"I shouldn't be surprised if he ill-treats her!\"\n\n\"She probably likes that too.\"\n\nDouglas Gold looked at him in a puzzled way, took up the pink gin and went out with it.\n\nHercule Poirot sat on a stool and ordered a sirop de cassis. Whilst he was sipping it with long sighs of enjoyment, Chantry came in and drank several pink gins in rapid succession.\n\nHe said suddenly and violently to the world at large rather than to Poirot:\n\n\"If Valentine thinks she can get rid of me like she's got rid of a lot of other damned fools, she's mistaken! I've got her and I mean to keep her. No other fellow's going to get her except over my dead body.\"\n\nHe flung down some money, turned on his heel and went out.\nThree\n\nIt was three days later that Hercule Poirot went to the Mount of the Prophet. It was a cool, agreeable drive through the golden green fir trees, winding higher and higher, far above the petty wrangling and squabbling of human beings. The car stopped at the restaurant. Poirot got out and wandered into the woods. He came out at last on a spot that seemed truly on top of the world. Far below, deeply and dazzlingly blue, was the sea.\n\nHere at last he was at peace\u2014removed from cares\u2014above the world. Carefully placing his folded overcoat on a tree stump, Hercule Poirot sat down.\n\n\"Doubtless le bon Dieu knows what he does. But it is odd that he should have permitted himself to fashion certain human beings. Eh bien, here for a while at least I am away from these vexing problems.\" Thus he mused.\n\nHe looked up with a start. A little woman in a brown coat and skirt was hurrying towards him. It was Marjorie Gold and this time she had abandoned all pretence. Her face was wet with  \ntears.\n\nPoirot could not escape. She was upon him.\n\n\"M. Poirot. You've got to help me. I'm so miserable I don't know what to do! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?\"\n\nShe looked up at him with a distracted face. Her fingers fastened on his coat sleeve. Then, as something she saw in his face alarmed her, she drew back a little.\n\n\"What\u2014what is it?\" she faltered.\n\n\"You want my advice, madame? It is that you ask?\"\n\nShe stammered, \"Yes . . . Yes. . . .\"\n\n\"Eh bien\u2014here it is.\" He spoke curtly\u2014trenchantly. \"Leave this place at once\u2014before it is too late.\"\n\n\"What?\" She stared at him.\n\n\"You heard me. Leave this island.\"\n\n\"Leave the island?\"\n\nShe stared at him stupefied.\n\n\"That is what I say.\"\n\n\"But why\u2014why?\"\n\n\"It is my advice to you\u2014if you value your life.\"\n\nShe gave a gasp.\n\n\"Oh! what do you mean? You're frightening me\u2014you're frightening me.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Poirot gravely, \"that is my intention.\"\n\nShe sank down, her face in her hands.\n\n\"But I can't! He wouldn't come! Douglas wouldn't, I mean. She wouldn't let him. She's got hold of him\u2014body and soul. He won't listen to anything against her . . . He's crazy about her . . . He believes everything she tells him\u2014that her husband ill-treats her\u2014that she's an injured innocent\u2014that nobody has ever understood her . . . He doesn't even think about me any more\u2014I don't count\u2014I'm not real to him. He wants me to give him his freedom\u2014to divorce him. He believes that she'll divorce her husband and marry him. But I'm afraid . . . Chantry won't give her up. He's not that kind of man. Last night she showed Douglas bruises on her arm\u2014said her husband had done it. It made Douglas wild. He's so chivalrous . . . Oh! I'm afraid! What will come of it all? Tell me what to do!\"\n\nHercule Poirot stood looking straight across the water to the blue line of hills on the mainland of Asia. He said:\n\n\"I have told you. Leave the island before it is too late. . . .\"\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"I can't\u2014I can't\u2014unless Douglas . . .\"\n\nPoirot sighed.\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders.\nFour\n\nHercule Poirot sat with Pamela Lyall on the beach.\n\nShe said with a certain amount of gusto, \"The triangle's going strong! They sat one each side of her last night\u2014glowering at each other! Chantry had had too much to drink. He was positively insulting to Douglas Gold. Gold behaved very well. Kept his temper. The Valentine woman enjoyed it, of course. Purred like the man-eating tiger she is. What do you think will happen?\"\n\nPoirot shook his head.\n\n\"I am afraid. I am very much afraid. . . .\"\n\n\"Oh, we all are,\" said Miss Lyall hypocritically. She added, \"This business is rather in your line. Or it may come to be. Can't you do anything?\"\n\n\"I have done what I could.\"\n\nMiss Lyall leaned forward eagerly.\n\n\"What have you done?\" she asked with pleasurable excitement.\n\n\"I advised Mrs. Gold to leave the island before it was too late.\"\n\n\"Oo-er\u2014so you think\u2014\" she stopped.\n\n\"Yes, mademoiselle?\"\n\n\"So that's what you think is going to happen!\" said Pamela slowly. \"But he couldn't\u2014he'd never do a thing like that . . . He's so nice really. It's all that Chantry woman. He wouldn't\u2014He wouldn't\u2014do\u2014\"\n\nShe stopped\u2014then she said softly:\n\n\"Murder? Is that\u2014is that really the word that's in your mind?\"\n\n\"It is in someone's mind, mademoiselle. I will tell you that.\"\n\nPamela gave a sudden shiver.\n\n\"I don't believe it,\" she declared.\nFive\n\nThe sequence of events on the night of October the twenty-ninth was perfectly clear.\n\nTo begin with, there was a scene between the two men\u2014Gold and Chantry. Chantry's voice rose louder and louder and his last words were overheard by four persons\u2014the cashier at the desk, the manager, General Barnes and Pamela Lyall.\n\n\"You goddamned swine! If you and my wife think you can put this over on me, you're mistaken! As long as I'm alive, Valentine will remain my wife.\"\n\nThen he had flung out of the hotel, his face livid with rage.\n\nThat was before dinner. After dinner (how arranged no one knew) a reconciliation took place. Valentine asked Marjorie Gold to come out for a moonlight drive. Pamela and Sarah went with them. Gold and Chantry played billiards together. Afterwards they joined Hercule Poirot and General Barnes in the lounge.\n\nFor the first time almost, Chantry's face was smiling and good-tempered.\n\n\"Have a good game?\" asked the General.\n\nThe Commander said:\n\n\"This fellow's too good for me! Ran out with a break of forty-six.\"\n\nDouglas Gold deprecated this modestly.\n\n\"Pure fluke. I assure you it was. What'll you have? I'll go and get hold of a waiter.\"\n\n\"Pink gin for me, thanks.\"\n\n\"Right. General?\"\n\n\"Thanks. I'll have a whisky and soda.\"\n\n\"Same for me. What about you, M. Poirot?\"\n\n\"You are most amiable. I should like a sirop de cassis.\"\n\n\"A sirop\u2014excuse me?\"\n\n\"Sirop de cassis. The syrup of blackcurrants.\"\n\n\"Oh, a liqueur! I see. I suppose they have it here? I never heard of it.\"\n\n\"They have it, yes. But it is not a liqueur.\"\n\nDouglas Gold said, laughing:\n\n\"Sounds a funny taste to me\u2014but every man his own poison! I'll go and order them.\"\n\nCommander Chantry sat down. Though not by nature a talkative or a social man, he was clearly doing his best to be genial.\n\n\"Odd how one gets used to doing without any news,\" he remarked.\n\nThe General grunted.\n\n\"Can't say the Continental Daily Mail four days old is much use to me. Of course I get The Times sent to me and Punch every week, but they're a devilish long time in coming.\"\n\n\"Wonder if we'll have a general election over this Palestine business?\"\n\n\"Whole thing's been badly mismanaged,\" declared the General just as Douglas Gold reappeared followed by a waiter with the drinks.\n\nThe General had just begun on an anecdote of his military career in India in the year 1905. The two Englishmen were listening politely, if without great interest. Hercule Poirot was sipping his sirop de cassis.\n\nThe General reached the point of his narrative and there was dutiful laughter all round.\n\nThen the women appeared at the doorway of the lounge. They all four seemed in the best of spirits and were talking and laughing.\n\n\"Tony, darling, it was too divine,\" cried Valentine as she dropped into a chair by his side. \"The most marvellous idea of Mrs. Gold's. You all ought to have come!\"\n\nHer husband said:\n\n\"What about a drink?\"\n\nHe looked inquiringly at the others.\n\n\"Pink gin for me, darling,\" said Valentine.\n\n\"Gin and gingerbeer,\" said Pamela.\n\n\"Sidecar,\" said Sarah.\n\n\"Right.\" Chantry stood up. He pushed his own untouched pink gin over to his wife. \"You have this. I'll order another for myself. What's yours, Mrs. Gold?\"\n\nMrs. Gold was being helped out of her coat by her husband. She turned smiling:\n\n\"Can I have an orangeade, please?\"\n\n\"Right you are. Orangeade.\"\n\nHe went towards the door. Mrs. Gold smiled up in her husband's face.\n\n\"It was so lovely, Douglas. I wish you had come.\"\n\n\"I wish I had too. We'll go another night, shall we?\" They smiled at each other.\n\nValentine Chantry picked up the pink gin and drained it.\n\n\"Oo! I needed that,\" she sighed.\n\nDouglas Gold took Marjorie's coat and laid it on a settee.\n\nAs he strolled back to the others he said sharply:\n\n\"Hallo, what's the matter?\"\n\nValentine Chantry was leaning back in her chair. Her lips were blue and her hand had gone to her heart.\n\n\"I feel\u2014rather queer. . . .\"\n\nShe gasped, fighting for breath.\n\nChantry came back into the room. He quickened his step.\n\n\"Hallo, Val, what's the matter?\"\n\n\"I\u2014I don't know . . . That drink\u2014it tasted queer. . . .\"\n\n\"The pink gin?\"\n\nChantry swung round his face worked. He caught Douglas Gold by the shoulder.\n\n\"That was my drink . . . Gold, what the hell did you put in it?\"\n\nDouglas Gold was staring at the convulsed face of the woman in the chair. He had gone dead white.\n\n\"I\u2014I\u2014never\u2014\"\n\nValentine Chantry slipped down in her chair.\n\nGeneral Barnes cried out:\n\n\"Get a doctor\u2014quick. . . .\"\n\nFive minutes later Valentine Chantry died. . . .\nSix\n\nThere was no bathing the next morning.\n\nPamela Lyall, white-faced, clad in a simple dark dress, clutched at Hercule Poirot in the hall and drew him into the little writing room.\n\n\"It's horrible!\" she said. \"Horrible! You said so! You foresaw it! Murder!\"\n\nHe bent his head gravely.\n\n\"Oh!\" she cried out. She stamped her foot on the floor. \"You should have stopped it! Somehow! It could have been stopped!\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Hercule Poirot.\n\nThat brought her up short for the moment.\n\n\"Couldn't you go to someone\u2014to the police\u2014?\"\n\n\"And say what? What is there to say\u2014before the event? That someone has murder in their heart? I tell you, mon enfant, if one human being is determined to kill another human being\u2014\"\n\n\"You could warn the victim,\" insisted Pamela.\n\n\"Sometimes,\" said Hercule Poirot, \"warnings are useless.\"\n\nPamela said slowly, \"You could warn the murderer\u2014show him that you knew what was intended. . . .\"\n\nPoirot nodded appreciatively.\n\n\"Yes\u2014a better plan, that. But even then you have to reckon with a criminal's chief vice.\"\n\n\"What is that?\"\n\n\"Conceit. A criminal never believes that his crime can fail.\"\n\n\"But it's absurd\u2014stupid,\" cried Pamela. \"The whole crime was childish! Why, the police arrested Douglas Gold at once last night.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" He added thoughtfully, \"Douglas Gold is a very stupid young man.\"\n\n\"Incredibly stupid! I hear that they found the rest of the poison\u2014whatever it was\u2014?\"\n\n\"A form of stropanthin. A heart poison.\"\n\n\"That they actually found the rest of it in his dinner jacket pocket?\"\n\n\"Quite true.\"\n\n\"Incredibly stupid!\" said Pamela again. \"Perhaps he meant to get rid of it\u2014and the shock of the wrong person being poisoned paralysed him. What a scene it would make on the stage. The lover putting the stropanthin in the husband's glass and then, just when his attention is elsewhere, the wife drinks it instead . . . Think of the ghastly moment when Douglas Gold turned round and realized he had killed the woman he loved. . . .\"\n\nShe gave a little shiver.\n\n\"Your triangle. The Eternal Triangle! Who would have thought it would end like this?\"\n\n\"I was afraid of it,\" murmured Poirot.\n\nPamela turned on him.\n\n\"You warned her\u2014Mrs. Gold. Then why didn't you warn him as well?\"\n\n\"You mean, why didn't I warn Douglas Gold?\"\n\n\"No. I mean Commander Chantry. You could have told him that he was in danger\u2014after all, he was the real obstacle! I've no doubt Douglas Gold relied on being able to bully his wife into giving him a divorce\u2014she's a meek-spirited little woman and terribly fond of him. But Chantry is a mulish sort of devil. He was determined not to give Valentine her freedom.\"\n\nPoirot shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\"It would have been no good my speaking to Chantry,\" he said.\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" Pamela admitted. \"He'd probably have said he could look after himself and told you to go to the devil. But I do feel there ought to have been something one could have done.\"\n\n\"I did think,\" said Poirot slowly, \"of trying to persuade Valentine Chantry to leave the island, but she would not have believed what I had to tell her. She was far too stupid a woman to take in a thing like that. Pauvre femme, her stupidity killed her.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it would have been any good if she had left the island,\" said Pamela. \"He would simply have followed her.\"\n\n\"He?\"\n\n\"Douglas Gold.\"\n\n\"You think Douglas Gold would have followed her? Oh, no, mademoiselle, you are wrong\u2014you are completely wrong. You have not yet appreciated the truth of this matter. If Valentine Chantry had left the island, her husband would have gone with her.\"\n\nPamela looked puzzled.\n\n\"Well, naturally.\"\n\n\"And then, you see, the crime would simply have taken place somewhere else.\"\n\n\"I don't understand you?\"\n\n\"I am saying to you that the same crime would have occurred somewhere else\u2014that crime being the murder of Valentine Chantry by her husband.\"\n\nPamela stared.\n\n\"Are you trying to say that it was Commander Chantry\u2014Tony Chantry\u2014who murdered Valentine?\"\n\n\"Yes. You saw him do it! Douglas Gold brought him his drink. He sat with it in front of him. When the women came in we all looked across the room, he had the stropanthin ready, he dropped it into the pink gin and presently, courteously, he passed it along to his wife and she drank it.\"\n\n\"But the packet of stropanthin was found in Douglas Gold's pocket!\"\n\n\"A very simple matter to slip it there when we were all crowding round the dying woman.\"\n\nIt was quite two minutes before Pamela got her breath.\n\n\"But I don't understand a word! The triangle\u2014you said yourself\u2014\"\n\nHercule Poirot nodded his head vigorously.\n\n\"I said there was a triangle\u2014yes. But you, you imagined the wrong one. You were deceived by some very clever acting! You thought, as you were meant to think, that both Tony Chantry and Douglas Gold were in love with Valentine Chantry. You believed, as you were meant to believe, that Douglas Gold, being in love with Valentine Chantry (whose husband refused to divorce her) took the desperate step of administering a powerful heart poison to Chantry and that, by a fatal mistake, Valentine Chantry drank that poison instead. All that is illusion. Chantry has been meaning to do away with his wife for some time. He was bored to death with her, I could see that from the first. He married her for her money. Now he wants to marry another woman\u2014so he planned to get rid of Valentine and keep her money. That entailed murder.\"\n\n\"Another woman?\"\n\nPoirot said slowly:\n\n\"Yes, yes\u2014the little Marjorie Gold. It was the eternal triangle all right! But you saw it the wrong way round. Neither of those two men cared in the least for Valentine Chantry. It was her vanity and Marjorie Gold's very clever stage managing that made you think they did! A very clever woman, Mrs. Gold, and amazingly attractive in her demure Madonna, poor-little-thing-way! I have known four women criminals of the same type. There was Mrs. Adams who was acquitted of murdering her husband, but everybody knows she did it. Mary Parker did away with an aunt, a sweetheart and two brothers before she got a little careless and was caught. Then there was Mrs. Rowden, she was hanged all right. Mrs. Lecray escaped by the skin of her teeth. This woman is exactly the same type. I recognized it as soon as I saw her! That type takes to crime like a duck to water! And a very pretty bit of well-planned work it was. Tell me, what evidence did you ever have that Douglas Gold was in love with Valentine Chantry? When you come to think it out, you will realize that there was only Mrs. Gold's confidences and Chantry's jealous bluster. Yes? You see?\"\n\n\"It's horrible,\" cried Pamela.\n\n\"They were a clever pair,\" said Poirot with professional detachment. \"They planned to 'meet' here and stage their crime. That Marjorie Gold, she is a cold-blooded devil! She would have sent her poor, innocent fool of a husband to the scaffold without the least remorse.\"\n\nPamela cried out:\n\n\"But he was arrested and taken away by the police last night.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Hercule Poirot, \"but after that, me, I had a few little words with the police. It is true that I did not see Chantry put the stropanthin in the glass. I, like everyone else, looked up when the ladies came in. But the moment I realized that Valentine Chantry had been poisoned, I watched her husband without taking my eyes off him. And so, you see, I actually saw him slip the packet of stropanthin in Douglas Gold's coat pocket. . . .\"\n\nHe added with a grim expression on his face:\n\n\"I am a good witness. My name is well-known. The moment the police heard my story they realized that it put an entirely different complexion on the matter.\"\n\n\"And then?\" demanded Pamela, fascinated.\n\n\"Eh bien, then they asked Commander Chantry a few questions. He tried to bluster it out, but he is not really clever, he soon broke down.\"\n\n\"So Douglas Gold was set at liberty?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And\u2014Marjorie Gold?\"\n\nPoirot's face grew stern.\n\n\"I warned her,\" he said. \"Yes, I warned her . . . Up on the Mount of the Prophet . . . It was the only chance of averting the crime. I as good as told her that I suspected her. She understood. But she believed herself too clever . . . I told her to leave the island if she valued her life. She chose\u2014to remain. . . .\"\n\nAbout the Author\n\nAgatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.\n\nShe first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence  \nBeresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.\n\nMany of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.\n\nChristie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.\n\nVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.\n\nwww.AgathaChristie.com\nThe Agatha Christie Collection\n\nThe Man in the Brown Suit\n\nThe Secret of Chimneys\n\nThe Seven Dials Mystery\n\nThe Mysterious Mr. Quin\n\nThe Sittaford Mystery\n\nParker Pyne Investigates\n\nWhy Didn't They Ask Evans?\n\nMurder Is Easy\n\nThe Regatta Mystery and Other Stories\n\nAnd Then There Were None\n\nTowards Zero\n\nDeath Comes as the End\n\nSparkling Cyanide\n\nThe Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories\n\nCrooked House\n\nThree Blind Mice and Other Stories\n\nThey Came to Baghdad\n\nDestination Unknown\n\nOrdeal by Innocence\n\nDouble Sin and Other Stories\n\nThe Pale Horse\n\nStar over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories\n\nEndless Night\n\nPassenger to Frankfurt\n\nThe Golden Ball and Other Stories\n\nThe Mousetrap and Other Plays\n\nThe Harlequin Tea Set\n\nThe Hercule Poirot Mysteries\n\nThe Mysterious Affair at Styles\n\nThe Murder on the Links\n\nPoirot Investigates\n\nThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd\n\nThe Big Four\n\nThe Mystery of the Blue Train\n\nPeril at End House\n\nLord Edgware Dies\n\nMurder on the Orient Express\n\nThree Act Tragedy\n\nDeath in the Clouds\n\nThe A.B.C. Murders\n\nMurder in Mesopotamia\n\nCards on the Table\n\nMurder in the Mews\n\nDumb Witness\n\nDeath on the Nile\n\nAppointment with Death\n\nHercule Poirot's Christmas\n\nSad Cypress\n\nOne, Two, Buckle My Shoe\n\nEvil Under the Sun\n\nFive Little Pigs\n\nThe Hollow\n\nThe Labors of Hercules\n\nTaken at the Flood\n\nThe Under Dog and Other Stories\n\nMrs. McGinty's Dead\n\nAfter the Funeral\n\nHickory Dickory Dock\n\nDead Man's Folly\n\nCat Among the Pigeons\n\nThe Clocks\n\nThird Girl\n\nHallowe'en Party\n\nElephants Can Remember\n\nCurtain: Poirot's Last Case\n\nThe Miss Marple Mysteries\n\nThe Murder at the Vicarage\n\nThe Body in the Library\n\nThe Moving Finger\n\nA Murder Is Announced\n\nThey Do It with Mirrors\n\nA Pocket Full of Rye\n\n4:50 from Paddington\n\nThe Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side\n\nA Caribbean Mystery\n\nAt Bertram's Hotel\n\nNemesis\n\nSleeping Murder\n\nMiss Marple: The Complete  \nShort Stories\n\nThe Tommy and  \nTuppence Mysteries\n\nThe Secret Adversary\n\nPartners in Crime\n\nN or M?\n\nBy the Pricking of My Thumbs\n\nPostern of Fate\n\nMemoirs\n\nAn Autobiography\n\nCome, Tell Me How You Live\n\nCopyright\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.\n\nThis title was previously published as Dead Man's Mirror.\n\nAGATHA CHRISTIE\u00ae POIROT\u00ae MURDER IN THE MEWS\u2122. Copyright \u00a9 1937 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved.\n\nMURDER IN THE MEWS \u00a9 1937. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.\n\nFor more information about educational use, teachers should visit\n\nwww.HarperAcademic.com\n\nFIRST HARPER PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2011\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.\n\nISBN 978-0-06-207399-0\n\nEpub Edition \u00a9 AUGUST 2011 eISBN 978-0-06-176336-6\n\n11 12 13 14 15  DIX\/BVG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nTable of Contents\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright Page\n\nDedication\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nChapter 1 - STARTING NOW\n\nChapter 2 - PRE-DAWN\n\nChapter 3 - SCRUTINY\n\nChapter 4 - OJT\n\nChapter 5 - ARRANGEMENTS\n\nChapter 6 - EVALUATION\n\nChapter 7 - PUBLIC IMAGE\n\nChapter 8 - CHANGE OF COMMAND\n\nChapter 9 - DISTANT HOWLS\n\nChapter 10 - POLITICS\n\nChapter 11 - MONKEYS\n\nChapter 12 - PRESENTATION\n\nChapter 13 - TO THE MANNER BORN\n\nChapter 14 - BLOOD IN THE WATER\n\nChapter 15 - DELIVERIES\n\nChapter 16 - THE IRAQI TRANSFER\n\nChapter 17 - THE REVIVAL\n\nChapter 18 - LAST PLANE OUT\n\nChapter 19 - RECIPES\n\nChapter 20 - NEW ADMINISTRATIONS\n\nChapter 21 - RELATIONSHIPS\n\nChapter 22 - TIME ZONES\n\nChapter 23 - EXPERIMENTS\n\nChapter 24 - ON THE FLY\n\nChapter 25 - BLOOMS\n\nChapter 26 - WEEDS\n\nChapter 27 - RESULTS\n\nChapter 28 - . . . BUT A WHIMPER\n\nChapter 29 - FULL COURT\n\nChapter 30 - PRESS\n\nChapter 31 - RIPPLES AND WAVES\n\nChapter 32 - RERUNS\n\nChapter 33 - REBOUNDS\n\nChapter 34 - WWW.TERROR.ORG\n\nChapter 35 - OPERATIONAL CONCEPT\n\nChapter 36 - TRAVELERS\n\nChapter 37 - DISCHARGES\n\nChapter 38 - GRACE PERIOD\n\nChapter 39 - FACE TIME\n\nChapter 40 - OPENINGS\n\nChapter 41 - HYENAS\n\nChapter 42 - PREDATOR\/PREY\n\nChapter 43 - RETREAT\n\nChapter 44 - INCUBATION\n\nChapter 45 - CONFIRMATION\n\nChapter 46 - OUTBREAK\n\nChapter 47 - INDEX CASE\n\nChapter 48 - HEMORRHAGE\n\nChapter 49 - REACTION TIME\n\nChapter 50 - SPECIAL REPORT\n\nChapter 51 - INVESTIGATIONS\n\nChapter 52 - SOMETHING OF VALUE\n\nChapter 53 - SNIE\n\nChapter 54 - FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS\n\nChapter 55 - COMMENCEMENT\n\nChapter 56 - DEPLOYMENT\n\nChapter 57 - NIGHT PASSAGE\n\nChapter 58 - THE LIGHT OF DAY\n\nChapter 59 - RULES OF ENGAGEMENT\n\nChapter 60 - BUFORD\n\nChapter 61 - GRIERSON'S RIDE\n\nChapter 62 - READY AND FORWARD!\n\nChapter 63 - THE RYAN DOCTRINE\n\nEPILOGUE:\n**\"Jack's back. With a vengeance.\"**\n\n_\u2014The Atlanta Journal-Constitution_\n\n**\"A colossal read.\"**\n\n_\u2014Los Angeles Times_\n\n**EXECUTIVE ORDERS**\n\nAt the climax of _Debt of Honor_ , a devastating terrorist act leaves the President, the Joint Chiefs, the Supreme Court, and nearly all of Congress dead. Only Jack Ryan, confirmed Vice President mere minutes before, survived to take the reins of a shaken and leaderless country. Now he must rebuild a government, comfort a grieving nation, and become a true leader. Meanwhile, he is surrounded by enemies\u2014both inside the White House and around the world\u2014all of them plotting to destroy an untested President. And bring an already-wounded country to its knees. . .\n\n**\"A wild ride.\"**\n\n_\u2014San Francisco Chronicle_\n\n**\"An enormous, action-packed,  \nheat-seeking missile of a Tom Clancy novel.\"**\n\n_\u2014The Seattle Times_\n**_Novels by Tom Clancy_**\n\nTHE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER   \nRED STORM RISING   \nPATRIOT GAMES   \nTHE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN   \nCLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER   \nTHE SUM OF ALL FEARS   \nWITHOUT REMORSE   \nDEBT OF HONOR   \nEXECUTIVE ORDERS   \nRAINBOW SIX   \nTHE BEAR AND THE DRAGON   \nRED RABBIT   \nTHE TEETH OF THE TIGER\n\nSSN: STRATEGIES OF SUBMARINE WARFARE\n\n_Nonfiction_\n\nSUBMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR INSIDE A NUCLEAR WARSHIP   \nARMORED CAV: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN ARMORED CAVALRY REGIMENT   \nFIGHTER WING: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIR FORCE COMBAT WING   \nMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR OF A MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT   \nAIRBORNE: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRBORNE TASK FORCE   \nCARRIER: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER   \nSPECIAL FORCES: A GUIDED TOUR OF U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES\n\nINTO THE STORM: A STUDY IN COMMAND   \n_(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nEVERY MAN A TIGER   \n_(written with General Charles Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nSHADOW WARRIORS: INSIDE THE SPECIAL FORCES   \n_(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nBATTLE READY   \n_(written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL   \nTOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: OPERATION BARRACUDA\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: MIRROR IMAGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: GAMES OF STATE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: ACTS OF WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: BALANCE OF POWER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: STATE OF SIEGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: DIVIDE AND CONQUER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: MISSION OF HONOR   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: SEA OF FIRE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: CALL TO TREASON   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: WAR OF EAGLES\n\nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: HIDDEN AGENDAS   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: NIGHT MOVES   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: BREAKING POINT   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: POINT OF IMPACT   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: CYBERNATION   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: STATE OF WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: CHANGING OF THE GUARD   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: SPRINGBOARD   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: THE ARCHIMEDES EFFECT\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: POLITIKA   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: RUTHLESS.COM   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: SHADOW WATCH   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: BIO-STRIKE   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: COLD WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: CUTTING EDGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: ZERO HOUR   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: WILD CARD\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nEXECUTIVE ORDERS\n\nA Berkley Book \/ published by arrangement with Jack Ryan Limited Partnership\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1996 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership.\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nThis book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.\n\nThe scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.\n\nFor information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.\n\nISBN : 978-1-101-00235-3\n\nBERKLEY\u00ae   \nBerkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,   \na division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,   \n375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.   \nBERKLEY and the \"B\" design are trademarks   \nbelonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.\n\n<http:\/\/us.penguingroup.com>\nTO  \nRONALD WILSON REAGAN,  \nFORTIETH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  \nTHE MAN WHO WON THE WAR\nIn the original hardcover edition of _Without Remorse_ are the words of a poem which I found by accident and whose title and author I was unable to identify. I found in them the perfect remembrance for my \"little buddy,\" Kyle Haydock, who succumbed to cancer at the age of eight years and twenty-six days\u2014to me he will never really be gone.\n\nLater I learned that the title of this poem is \"Ascension,\" and that the author who penned these magnificent words is Colleen Hitchcock, a poet of rare talent living in Minnesota. I wish to take this opportunity to commend her work to all students of the lyric phrase. As her words caught and excited my attention, I hope they will have the same effect on others.\n\nThe poem reads as follows:\n\n _ **Ascension**_\n\n_And if I go,_   \n_while you're still here. . ._   \n_Know that I live on,_   \n_vibrating to a different measure_   \n_-behind a thin veil you cannot see through._   \n_You will not see me,_   \n_so you must have faith._   \n_I wait for the time when we can soar together again,_   \n_-both aware of each other._   \n_Until then, live your life to its fullest._   \n_And when you need me,_   \n_Just whisper my name in your heart,_   \n_. . .I will be there._\n\n\u00a9 1989 Colleen Corah Hitchcock   \nSpirit Art International, Inc.   \nP.O. Box 39082   \nEdina, Minnesota 55439   \nU.S.A.\n_I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof._\n\nJOHN ADAMS, SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES LETTER TO ABIGAIL, NOVEMBER 2, 1800, ON MOVING INTO THE WHITE HOUSE\n**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nAgain, I needed a lot of help:   \nPeggy, for some valued insights;   \nMike, Dave, John, Janet, Curt, and Pat   \nat the Johns Hopkins Hospital;   \nFred and his pals at the USSS;   \nPat, Darrell, and Bill, all repeat offenders at the FBI;   \nFred and Sam, men who've honored the uniform with their service;   \nH. R., Joe, Dan, and Doug, who still do.   \nAmerica is because of people like this.\n**PROLOGUE:**\n\n**STARTING HERE**\n\n**I** T HAD TO BE THE SHOCK of the moment, Ryan thought. He seemed to be two people at the same time. One part of him looked out the window of the lunchroom of CNN's Washington bureau and saw the fires that grew from the remains of the Capitol building\u2014yellow points springing up from an orange glow like some sort of ghastly floral arrangement, representing over a thousand lives that had been snuffed out not an hour earlier. Numbness suppressed grief for the moment, though he knew that would come, too, as pain always followed a hard blow to the face, but not right away. Once more, Death in all its horrid majesty had reached out for him. He'd seen it come, and stop, and withdraw, and the best thing to be said about it was that his children didn't know how close their young lives had come to an early conclusion. To them, it had simply been an accident they didn't understand. They were with their mother now, and they'd feel safe in her company while their father was away somewhere. It was a situation to which both they and he long since had unhappily become accustomed. And so John Patrick Ryan looked at the residue of Death, and one part of him as yet felt nothing.\n\nThe other part of him looked at the same sight and knew that he had to _do_ something, and though he struggled to be logical, logic wasn't winning, because logic didn't _know_ what to do or where to start.\n\n\"Mr. President.\" It was the voice of Special Agent Andrea Price.\n\n\"Yes?\" Ryan said without turning away from the window. Behind him\u2014he could see the reflections in the window glass\u2014six other Secret Service agents stood with weapons out to keep the others away. There had to be a score of CNN employees outside the door, gathered together partly from professional interest\u2014they were newspeople, after all\u2014but mostly from simple human curiosity at being face-to-face with a moment in history. They were wondering what it looked like to be there, and didn't quite get the fact that such events were the same for everyone. Whether presented with an auto accident or a sudden grave illness, the unprepared human mind just stopped and tried to make sense of the senseless\u2014and the graver the test, the harder the recovery period. But at least people trained in crisis had procedures to fall back upon.\n\n\"Sir, we have to get you to\u2014\"\n\n\"Where? A place of safety? Where's that?\" Jack asked, then quietly reproached himself for the cruelty of the question. At least twenty agents were part of the pyre a mile away, all of them friends of the men and women standing in the lunchroom with their new President. He had no right to transfer his discomfort to them. \"My family?\" he asked after a moment.\n\n\"The Marine Barracks, Eighth and I streets, as you ordered, sir.\"\n\nYes, it was good for them to be able to report that they'd carried out orders, Ryan thought with a slow nod. It was also good for him to know that his orders had been carried out. He had done one thing right, anyway. Was that something to build on?\n\n\"Sir, if this was part of an organized\u2014\"\n\n\"It wasn't. They never are, Andrea, are they?\" President Ryan asked. He was surprised how tired his voice sounded, and reminded himself that shock and stress were more tiring than the most strenuous exercise. He didn't even seem to have the energy to shake his head and clear it.\n\n\"They can be,\" Special Agent Price pointed out.\n\n_Yes, I suppose she's right._ \"So what's the drill for this?\"\n\n\"Kneecap,\" Price replied, meaning the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, a converted 747 kept at Andrews Air Force Base. Jack thought about the suggestion for a moment, then frowned.\n\n\"No, I can't run away. I think I have to go back there.\" President Ryan pointed to the glow. _Yes, that is where I belong, isn't it?_\n\n\"No, sir, that's too dangerous.\"\n\n\"That's my place, Andrea.\"\n\n_He's already thinking like a politician,_ Price thought, disappointed.\n\nRyan saw the look on her face and knew he'd have to explain. He'd learned something once, perhaps the only thing that applied at this moment, and the thought had appeared in his mind like a flashing highway sign. \"It's a leadership function. They taught me that at Quantico. The troops have to see you doing the job. They have to know you're there for them.\" _And I have to be sure that it's all real, that I actually am the President._\n\nWas he?\n\nThe Secret Service thought so. He'd sworn the oath, spoken the words, invoked the name of God to bless his effort, but it had all been too soon and too fast. Hardly for the first time in his life, John Patrick Ryan closed his eyes and willed himself to awaken from this dream that was just too improbable to be real, and yet when he opened his eyes again the orange glow was still there, and the leaping yellow flames. He knew he'd spoken the words\u2014he'd even given a little speech, hadn't he? But he could not remember a single word of it now.\n\n_Let's get to work,_ he'd said a minute earlier. He did remember that. An automatic thing to say. Did it mean anything?\n\nJack Ryan shook his head\u2014it seemed a major accomplishment to do even that\u2014then turned away from the window to look directly at the agents in the room.\n\n\"Okay. What's left?\"\n\n\"Secretaries of Commerce and Interior,\" Special Agent Price responded, having been updated by her personal radio. \"Commerce is in San Francisco. Interior is in New Mexico. They've already been summoned; the Air Force will bring them in. We've lost all the other Cabinet secretaries: Director Shaw, all nine Supreme Court justices, the Joint Chiefs. We're not sure how many members of Congress were absent when it happened.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Durling?\"\n\nPrice shook her head. \"She didn't get out, sir. The kids are at the White House.\"\n\nJack nodded bleakly at the additional tragedy, compressed his lips, and closed his eyes at the thought of one more thing he had to do personally. For the children of Roger and Anne Durling, it wasn't a public event. For them it was immediately and tragically simple: Mom and Dad had died, and they were now orphans. Jack had seen them, spoken with them\u2014really nothing more than the smile and the \"Hi\" that one gave to another man's kids, but they were real children with faces and names\u2014except their surnames were all that was left, and the faces would be contorted with shock and disbelief. They'd be like Jack, trying to blink away a nightmare that would not depart, but for them it'd be all the harder because of their age and vulnerability. \"Do they know?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President,\" Andrea said. \"They were watching TV, and the agents had to tell them. They have grandparents still alive, other family members. We're bringing them in, too.\" She didn't add that there was a drill for this, that at the Secret Service's operations center a few blocks west of the White House was a security file cabinet with sealed envelopes in which were contingency plans for all manner of obscene possibilities; this was merely one of them.\n\nHowever, there were hundreds\u2014no, thousands\u2014of children without parents now, not just two. Jack had to set the Durling children aside for the moment. Hard as it was, it was also a relief to close the door on that task for the moment. He looked down at Agent Price again.\n\n\"You're telling me I'm the whole government right now?\"\n\n\"It would seem that way, Mr. President. That's why we\u2014\"\n\n\"That's why _I_ have to do the things I have to do.\" Jack headed to the door, startling the Secret Service agents into action by his impulse. There were cameras in the corridor. Ryan walked right past them, the leading wave of two agents clearing the rows of newspeople too shocked themselves to do much more than operate their cameras. Not a single question. That, Jack thought without a smile, was a singular event. It didn't occur to him to wonder what his face looked like. An elevator was waiting, and thirty seconds later, he emerged into the capacious lobby. It had been cleared of people, except for agents, more than half of whom had submachine guns out, and pointed up at the ceiling. They must have come from elsewhere\u2014there were more than he remembered from twenty minutes earlier. Then he saw that Marines stood outside, most of them improperly uniformed, some shivering in their red T-shirts over camouflaged \"utility\" trousers.\n\n\"We wanted the additional security,\" Price explained. \"I asked for the assistance from the barracks.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Ryan nodded. Nobody would think it unseemly for the President of the United States to be surrounded by U.S. Marines at a time like this. They were kids, most of them, their smooth young faces showing no emotion at all\u2014a dangerous state for people carrying weapons\u2014their eyes surveying the parking lot like watchdogs, while tight hands gripped their rifles. A captain stood just outside the door, talking to an agent. When Ryan walked out, the Marine officer braced stiffly and saluted. _So, he thinks it's real, too._ Ryan nodded his acknowledgment and gestured to the nearest HMMWV.\n\n\"The Hill,\" President John Patrick Ryan ordered curtly.\n\nThe ride was quicker than he'd expected. Police had cordoned off all the main streets, and the fire trucks were already there, probably a general alarm, for whatever good it might do. The Secret Service Suburban\u2014a cross between a stationwagon and a light truck\u2014led off, its lights flashing and siren screaming, while the protective detail sweated and probably swore under its collective breath at the foolishness of their new \"Boss,\" the in-house term for the President.\n\nThe tail of the 747 was remarkably intact\u2014at least the rudder fin was, recognizable, like the fletching of an arrow buried in the side of a dead animal. The surprising part for Ryan was that the fire still burned. The Capitol had been a building of stone, after all, but inside were wooden desks and vast quantities of paper, and God only knew what else that surrendered its substance to heat and oxygen. Aloft were military helicopters, circling like moths, their rotors reflecting the orange light back down at the ground. The red-and-white fire trucks were everywhere, their lights flashing red and white as well, giving additional color to the rising smoke and steam. Firefighters were racing about, and the ground was covered in hoses snaking to every hydrant in sight, bringing water to the pumpers. Many of the couplings leaked, producing little sprays of water that quickly froze in the cold night air.\n\nThe south end of the Capitol building was devastated. One could recognize the steps, but the columns and roof were gone, and the House chamber itself was a crater hidden by the rectangular lip of stones, their white color scorched and blackened with soot. To the north, the dome was down, sections of it recognizable, for it had been built of wrought iron during the Civil War, and several of the pie-slice sections had somehow retained their shape. A majority of the firefighting activity was there, where the center of the building had been. Countless hoses, some on the ground, some directed from the tips of aerial ladders and cherry-picker water towers, sprayed water in the hope of stopping the fire from spreading further, though from Ryan's vantage point there was no telling how successful the effort might be.\n\nBut the real story of the scene was the collection of ambulances, several knots of them, their paramedic crews standing with bitter idleness, folding stretchers before them, empty, the skilled crews with nothing to do but look at the white rudder fin with the red crane painted on it, also blackened from the fire, but still hatefully recognizable. Japan Airlines. The war with Japan had ended, everyone thought. But had it? Was this one lone, last act of defiance or revenge? Or just some hideously ironic accident? It hit Jack that the scene was very much like an auto accident, at least in kind if vastly different in scale, and for the trained men and women who'd responded, it was the same story as with so many other calls\u2014too late. Too late to stop the fire in time. Too late to save the lives they were sworn to rescue. Too late to make much of a difference at all.\n\nThe HMMWV pulled in close to the southeast corner of the building, just outside the gaggle of fire trucks, and before Ryan could step out, a full squad of Marines had him surrounded again. One of them, the captain, opened the door for the new President.\n\n\"So, who's in charge?\" Jack asked Agent Price. For the first time he noticed how bitterly cold the night was.\n\n\"I guess one of the firemen.\"\n\n\"Let's find him.\" Jack started walking toward a collection of pumpers. He was already starting to shiver in his light wool suit. The chiefs would be the ones with the white hats, right? And the regular cars, he remembered from his youth in Baltimore. Chiefs didn't ride in trucks. He spotted three red-painted sedans and angled that way.\n\n\"Damn it, Mr. President!\" Andrea Price fairly screamed at him. Other agents ran to get in front, and the Marines couldn't decide whether to lead the group or to follow. There wasn't an entry in anyone's manual for this, and what rules the Secret Service had, their Boss had just invalidated. Then one of them had a thought and sprinted off to the nearest ladder truck. He returned with a rubberized turnout coat.\n\n\"This'll keep you warm, sir,\" Special Agent Raman promised, helping Ryan into it, and disguising him as one of the several hundred firefighters roaming around. Special Agent Price gave him an approving wink and nod, the first moment of almost-levity since the 747 had arrived at Capitol Hill. All the better that President Ryan didn't grasp the real reason for the heavy coat, she thought. This moment would be remembered by the protective Detail as the beginning of the management race, the Secret Service vs. the President of the United States, generally a contest of ego against cajolery.\n\nThe first chief that Ryan found was talking into a handheld radio and trying to direct his firefighters closer into the flames. A person in civilian clothes was close by, holding a large paper roll flat on the car's hood. Probably plans of the building, Jack thought. Ryan waited a few feet away, while the two men moved hands left and right over the plans and the chief spoke staccato instructions into his radio.\n\n\"And, for Christ's sake, be careful with all those loose stones,\" Chief Paul Magill finished his last command. Then he turned around and rubbed his eyes. \"Who the hell are you?\"\n\n\"This is the President,\" Price informed him.\n\nMagill's eyes blinked. He took a quick look at the people with guns, then back at Ryan. \"This is pretty damned bad,\" the chief said first.\n\n\"Anyone get out?\"\n\nMagill shook his head. \"Not from this side. Three people on the other side, all beat up. We think they were in the Speaker's cloak room, someplace around there, probably the explosion just shot them through the windows. Two pages and a Secret Service guy, all burned and busted up. We're conducting a search\u2014well, we're trying to, but so far even the people who weren't roasted\u2014they had the oxygen sucked right out of them, asphyxia, you're just as dead.\" Paul Magill was Ryan's height, but a barrel-chested black man. His hands were mottled with large pale areas that gave testament to a very intimate battle with fire sometime in his professional past. His rugged face showed only sadness now, for fire wasn't a human enemy, just a mindless thing that scarred the fortunate and killed the rest. \"We might get lucky. Some people in small rooms, doors closed, like that, sir. There's a million damned rooms in this place, 'cording to these here plans. We might get a couple people out alive. I seen it happen before. But most of'em . . .\" Magill just shook his head for a moment. \"The line's holding, ought not to spread much more.\"\n\n\"Nobody from the chamber?\" Agent Raman asked. He really wanted to know the name of the agent who'd been blown clear, but it would not have been professional to ask. Magill just shook his head in any case.\n\n\"No.\" He stared off at the diminishing glow, and added, \"It would have been real quick.\" Magill shook his head again.\n\n\"I want to see,\" Jack said impulsively.\n\n\"No,\" Magill replied at once. \"Too dangerous. Sir, it's my fire, and my rules, okay?\"\n\n\"I _have_ to see,\" Ryan said, more quietly. The two pairs of eyes met and communicated. Magill still didn't like it. He saw the people with guns again, and decided, wrongly, that they would support this new President, if that's what he was. Magill hadn't been watching TV when the call had come.\n\n\"Ain't gonna be pretty, sir.\"\n\nIT WAS JUST after sundown in Hawaii. Rear Admiral Robert Jackson was landing at Barbers Point Naval Air Station. His peripheral vision took note of the well-lit hotels on Oahu's south shore, and a passing thought wondered what it cost to stay in one of them now. He hadn't done it since his early twenties, when two or three naval aviators would share accommodations in order to save money for hitting the bars and impressing the local women with their worldly panache. His Tomcat touched down gently, despite the lengthy ride and three aerial refuelings, because Robby still thought of himself as a fighter pilot, and therefore an artist of sorts. The fighter slowed down properly during its run-out, then turned right onto the taxiway.\n\n\"Tomcat Five-Zero-Zero, continue down to the end\u2014\"\n\n\"I've been here before, miss,\" Jackson replied with a smile, breaking the rules. But he was an admiral, wasn't he? Fighter pilot _and_ admiral. Who cared about rules?\n\n\"Five-Zero-Zero, there's a car waiting.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Robby could see it, there by the farthest hangar, along with a sailor waving the usual lighted wands.\n\n\"Not bad for an old guy,\" the backseater noted as he folded up his maps and other unnecessary but gravely important papers.\n\n\"Your vote of approval is noted.\" _I was never this stiff before,_ Jackson admitted to himself. He shifted himself in the seat. His butt felt like painful lead. How could all feeling be gone, yet there still be pain? he asked himself with a rueful smile. _Too old,_ was how his mind answered the question. Then his leg made its presence known. _Arthritis, damn it._ He'd had to make it an order to get Sanchez to release the fighter to him. It was too far for a COD to take him from USS _John C. Stennis_ back to Pearl, and the orders had been specific enough: _Expedite return_. On that basis he'd borrowed a Tom whose fire-control system was down, and therefore was non-mission-capable anyway. The Air Force had supplied the tankers. So after seven hours of blessed silence, he'd flown half the Pacific in a fighter\u2014doubtless for the last time. Jackson moved again as he turned the fighter toward the parking spot, and was rewarded with a back spasm.\n\n\"Is that CINCPAC?\" Jackson asked, spotting the whiteclad figure by the blue Navy car.\n\nAdmiral David Seaton it was, and not standing erect, but leaning against the car and flipping through messages as Robby cut the engines and opened the canopy. A sailor rolled up a stepladder, the sort used by mechanics, to make Robby's descent easier. Another enlisted man\u2014woman, actually\u2014extracted the arriving admiral's bag from the storage compartment underneath. Somebody was in a hurry.\n\n\"Trouble,\" Seaton said the moment Robby had both boots on the ground.\n\n\"I thought we won,\" Jackson replied, stopping dead still on the hot concrete of the ramp. His brain was tired, too. It would be a few minutes before his thinking ran at the customary speed, though his instincts were telling him that something unusual was afoot.\n\n\"The President's dead\u2014and we got a new one.\" Seaton handed over the clipboard. \"Friend of yours. We're back to DEFCON Three for the time being.\"\n\n\"What the hell . . .\" Admiral Jackson said, reading the first page of dispatches. Then he looked up. \"Jack's the new . . . ?\"\n\n\"Didn't you know about him becoming VP?\"\n\nJackson shook his head. \"I was tied up with other things before I got off the boat this morning. Holy God,\" Robby concluded with another shake of the head.\n\nSeaton nodded. Ed Kealty resigned because of that sex scandal, the President persuaded Ryan to take the vice presidency until the elections next year, the Congress confirmed him, but before he could enter the chamber well, you can see what happened. Plane hit down center. \"The JCSs are all gone. The deputies are stepping in. Mickey Moore\"\u2014Army General Michael Moore, the Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs\u2014\"has put in a call for all the CINCs to come into D.C., ASAP. We have a KC-10 waiting for us at Hickam.\"\n\n\"Threat board?\" Jackson asked. His permanent job, insofar as any uniformed posting was permanent, was Deputy J-3, the number-two planning officer for the Joint Chiefs.\n\nSeaton shrugged. \"Theoretically, it's blank. The IO's calmed down. The Japanese are out of the war business\u2014\"\n\nJackson finished the statement: \"But America's never been hit like this before.\"\n\n\"The plane's waiting. You can change aboard. Neatness doesn't count at the moment, Robby.\"\n\nAS ALWAYS, THE world was divided by time and space, especially time, she would have thought had she a moment to think, but she rarely did. She was over sixty, her small frame bowed down by years of selfless work, made all the worse because there were so few young ones to give her rest. That wasn't fair, really. She'd spelled others in her time, and those of generations past had done the same in their time, but not now, not for her. She did her best to put that thought aside. It was unworthy of her, unworthy of her place in the world, and certainly unworthy of her promises, made to God more than forty years before. She now had doubts about those promises, but she'd admitted them to no one, not even her confessor. Her failure to discuss them was more troubling to her conscience even than the doubts were, though she vaguely knew that her priest would speak gently to her about her sin, if that's what it was\u2014was it? she wondered. Even if it were, yes, he'd speak gently about it. He always did, probably because he had such doubts himself, and both of them were of the age when one looks back and wonders what might have been, despite all the accomplishments of a productive and useful life.\n\nHer sister, every bit as religious as she, had chosen the most common of the vocations and was now a grandmother, and Sister M. Jean Baptiste wondered what that was like. She'd made her choice a long time ago, in a youth she could still remember, and like all such decisions it had been made with poor reflection, however correct the choice itself had been. It had seemed simple enough at the time. They were respected, the ladies in black. In her distant youth she could recall seeing the German occupation troops nod politely to their passing, for even though it was widely suspected that the nuns aided Allied airmen, and maybe even Jews trying to escape, it was also known that the nursing order treated everyone equally and fairly, because God required it. Besides even the Germans wanted their hospital when they were wounded, because you had a better chance there than anywhere else. It was a proud tradition, and even though Pride was a sin, it was one the dark ladies had committed after a fashion, telling themselves that perhaps God didn't mind, because the tradition was in His Holy Name. And so when the time had been right, she'd made the decision, and that was that. Some had left, but the critical time for her to make such a choice had been difficult, what with the condition of the country after the war, and the need for her skills, and a world that had not yet changed enough for her to see her options for what they were. So she had thought about leaving, briefly, and put the idea aside, and stayed with her work.\n\nSister Jean Baptiste was a skilled and experienced nurse. She'd come to this place when it had still belonged to her parent country, and stayed after its status had changed. In that time she'd done her job the same way, with the same skill, despite the tornadic political changes that had gone on around her, no matter that her patients were African or European. But forty years, more than thirty of that in this same place, had taken their toll.\n\nIt wasn't that she didn't care anymore. Certainly it wasn't that. It was just that she was almost sixty-five, and that was just too old to be a nurse with too few aides, often as not working fourteen-hour days, with a few hours for prayer tossed in, good for her soul but tiring for everything else. In younger years her body had been robust not to say rugged\u2014and healthy, and more than one of the physicians had called her Sister Rock, but the physicians had gone their way, and she had stayed and stayed and stayed, and even rocks can be worn down. And with fatigue came mistakes.\n\nShe knew what to be wary of. You could not be a health-care professional in Africa and not be careful if you wanted to live. Christianity had been trying to establish itself here for centuries, but while it had made some inroads, it might never make others. One of those problems was sexual promiscuity, a local proclivity that had horrified her on her arrival nearly two generations earlier, but was now just . . . normal. But all too often lethally so. Fully a third of the patients in the hospital had what was known locally as \"the thin disease\" and elsewhere as AIDS. The precautions for that ailment were set in stone, and Sister Jean Baptiste had taught them in courses. The sad truth was that, as with the plagues of old, all that the medical professionals could really do with this modern curse was to protect themselves.\n\nFortunately with this patient, that was not a concern. The boy was only eight, too young to be sexually active. A handsome boy, well formed and bright, he'd been an honor student at the nearby Catholic school, and an acolyte. Perhaps he'd hear the call someday and become a priest\u2014that was easier for the Africans than the Europeans, since the Church, in quiet deference to African customs, allowed priests down here to marry, a secret that was not widely known through the rest of the world. But the boy was ill. He'd come in only a few hours earlier, at midnight, driven in by his father, a fine man who was a senior official in the local government and had a car of his own. The doctor on call had diagnosed the boy with cerebral malaria, but the entry on the chart wasn't confirmed by the usual laboratory test. Perhaps the blood sample had gotten lost. Violent headaches, vomiting, shaking of the limbs, disorientation, spiking fever. Cerebral malaria. She hoped _that_ wasn't going to break out again. It was treatable, but the problem was getting people _to_ treatment.\n\nThe rest of the ward was quiet this late at\u2014no, early in the morning, actually\u2014a pleasant time in this part of the world. The air was as cool as it would get in any twenty-four-hour period, and still, and quiet\u2014and so were the patients. The boy's biggest problem at the moment was the fever, and so she pulled back the sheet and sponged him down. It seemed to calm his restless young body, and she took the time to examine him for other symptoms. The doctors were doctors, and she but a nurse\u2014even so, she'd been here for a very long time, and knew what to look for. There wasn't much really, except for an old bandage on his left hand. How had the doctor overlooked that? Sister Jean Baptiste walked back to the nurses' station, where her two aides were dozing. What she was about to do was properly their job, but there was no sense in waking them. She returned to the patient with fresh dressings and disinfectant. You had to be careful with infections down here. Carefully, slowly, she peeled off the bandage, herself blinking with fatigue. A bite, she saw, like one from a small dog . . . or a monkey. That made her blink hard. Those could be dangerous. She ought to have walked back to the station and gotten rubber gloves, but it was forty meters away, and her legs were tired, and the patient was resting, the hand unmoving. She uncapped the disinfectant, then rotated the hand slowly and gently to fully expose the injury. When she shook the bottle with her other hand, a little escaped from around her thumb and it sprinkled on the patient's face. The head came up, and he sneezed in his sleep, the usual cloud of droplets ejected into the air. Sister Jean Baptiste was startled, but didn't stop; she poured the disinfectant on a cotton ball, and carefully swabbed the wound. Next she capped the bottle and set it down, applied the new bandage, and only then did she wipe her face with the back of her hand, without realizing that when her patient had sneezed, his wounded hand in hers had jerked, depositing blood there, and that it had been on her hand as it had swept across her eyes. The gloves, therefore, might not have mattered at all, a fact that would have been of scant comfort even if she had remembered it, three days hence.\n\nSHOULD HAVE STAYED put, Jack told himself. Two paramedics had guided him up a clear corridor on the east steps, along with the gaggle of Marines and agents, all moving upward with guns still out in a scene of grimly obscene humor, no one knowing quite what to do. They then had encountered a nearly solid line of firefighters and hoses, spraying their water, much of which blew back in everyone's faces in the sort of chill that ran straight into the bones. Here the fire had been smothered by the water fog, and though the hoses continued to wet things down, it was safe for rescue personnel from the ladder companies to creep into the remains of the chamber. One didn't have to be an expert to understand what they found. No lifted heads, no urgent gestures, no shouts. The men\u2014and women, though one couldn't tell at this distance\u2014picked their way carefully, more mindful of their own safety than anything else, because there was plainly no reason to risk one's life on behalf of the dead.\n\n_Dear God_ , he thought. People he knew were here. Not just Americans. Jack could see where a whole section of gallery had fallen down to the well of the chamber. The diplomatic gallery, if he remembered correctly. Various dignitaries and their families, many of whom he'd known, who had come to the Hill for the purpose of seeing him sworn. Did that make their deaths his fault?\n\nHe'd left the CNN building because of the need to do something, or that was what he'd told himself. Ryan wasn't so sure now. Just a change of scenery, perhaps? Or was he merely drawn to the scene the same way the people at the perimeter of the Capitol grounds were, standing silently as he was, just looking, as he was, and not doing anything, as he was. The numbness hadn't gone away. He'd come here expecting to find something to see and feel and then to do, but only discovered something else for his soul to shrink from.\n\n\"It's cold here, Mr. President. At least get out of this damned spray,\" Price urged.\n\n\"Okay.\" Ryan nodded and headed back down the steps. The coat, he found, wasn't all that warm. Ryan was shivering again, and he hoped it was merely from the cold.\n\nThe cameras had been slow setting up, but they were there now, Ryan saw. The little portable ones\u2014Japanese made, all of them, he noted with a grunt\u2014with their small, powerful lights. Somehow they'd managed to get past the police lines and the fire chiefs. Before each of them stood a reporter\u2014the three he could see were all men\u2014holding a microphone and trying to sound as though he knew more than anyone else did. Several lights were trained his own way, Jack noted. People all over the country and the world were watching him, expecting him to know what to do. How did such people ever adopt the illusion that senior government officials were any brighter than their family physician, or lawyer, or accountant? His mind trekked back to his first week as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, when the institution which he'd served then had similarly assumed that he knew how to command and lead a platoon\u2014and when a sergeant ten years his senior had come to him with a family problem, expecting the \"ell-tee,\" who lacked both a wife and children, to know what to say to a man who had trouble with both. Today, Jack reminded himself, such a situation was called a \"leadership challenge,\" meaning that you didn't have a clue about what to do next. But there were the cameras, and he had to do something.\n\nExcept he still didn't have a clue. He'd come here hoping to find a catalyst for action, only to find increased feelings of helplessness. And maybe a question.\n\n\"Arnie van Damm?\" He'd need Arnie, sure as hell.\n\n\"At the House, sir,\" Price replied, meaning the White House.\n\n\"Okay, let's head over there,\" Ryan ordered.\n\n\"Sir,\" Price said, after a moment's hesitation, \"that's probably not safe. If there was\u2014\"\n\n\"I can't run away, damn it. I can't fly away on Kneecap. I can't sneak off to Camp David. I can't crawl into some damned hole. Can't you see that?\" He was frustrated rather than angry. His right arm pointed to the remains of the Capitol building. \"Those people are dead, and I _am_ the government for now, God help me, and the government doesn't run away.\"\n\n\"THAT LOOKS LIKE President Ryan there,\" an anchorman said in his warm, dry studio. \"Probably trying to get a handle on rescue operations. Ryan is a man not unaccustomed to crisis, as we all know.\"\n\n\"I've known Ryan for six years,\" a more senior network analyst opined, studiously not looking at the camera, so as to give the appearance of instructing the more highly paid anchorman who was trying to report on the event. Both had been in the studio to provide commentary for President Durling's speech, and had read all the briefing material on Ryan, whom the analyst didn't really know, though they'd bumped into each other at various dinners during the past few years. \"He's a remarkably low-key gentleman, but without question one of the brightest people in government service.\" Such a statement could not go unchallenged. Tom the anchor leaned forward, half-looking at his colleague, and half at the cameras.\n\n\"But, John, he's not a politician. He has no political background or experience. He's a national-security specialist in an age when national security is not the issue it once was,\" he pontificated.\n\nJohn the analyst managed to stifle the reply that the statement so richly deserved. Someone else did not.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Chavez grumbled. \"And that airplane that took the building out was really a Delta flight that got lost. Jesus!\" he concluded.\n\n\"It's a great country we serve, Ding, my boy. Where else do people get paid five mill' a year to be stupid?\" John Clark decided to finish his beer. There was no sense in driving back to Washington until Mary Pat called. He was a worker bee, after all, and only the top-floor CIA types would be racing around now. And racing around they would be. They wouldn't be accomplishing much, but at times like this you _didn't_ really accomplish much of anything, except to look harried and important . . . and to the worker bees, ineffective.\n\nWITH LITTLE TO show the public, the network reran tape of President Durling's speech. The C-SPAN cameras in the chamber had been remotely controlled, and controlroom technicians froze various frames to show the front row of senior government officials, and, again, the roll of the dead was cataloged: All but two of the Cabinet secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior agency directors, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Director Bill Shaw of the FBI, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Administrator of NASA, all nine Justices of the Supreme Court. The anchorman's voice listed the names and the positions they'd held, and the tape advanced frame by frame until the moment when the Secret Service agents were shown racing into the chamber, startling President Durling and causing some brief confusion. Heads turned, looking for danger, and perhaps the quicker-minded among them had wondered about the presence of a gunman in the galleries, but then came three frames from a wide-shot camera that showed the blurred displacement of the back wall, followed by blackness. Anchor and commentator were then back on-screen, staring down at their desktop monitors, then back up at each other, and perhaps only now the full enormity of the event finally began to hit them, as it was hitting the new President.\n\n\"President Ryan's principal task will be to rebuild the government, if he can,\" John the analyst said, after a long moment's pause. \"My God, so many good men and women . . . dead. . . .\" It had also occurred to him that a few years earlier, before becoming the senior network commentator, he would have been in that chamber, along with so many of his professional friends; and for him, also, the event finally broke past the shock, and his hands started quivering below the top of the desk. An experienced pro who did not allow his voice to shake, he nonetheless could not totally control the look on his face, which sagged with sudden, awful grief, and on the screen his face went ashen under the makeup.\n\n\"God's judgment,\" Mahmoud Haji Daryaei muttered over six thousand miles away, lifting the controller and muting the sound to eliminate extraneous twaddle.\n\nGod's judgment. That made sense, didn't it? America. The colossus that had thwarted so many, a godless land of godless people, at the pinnacle of her power, winner of yet another contest\u2014now, grievously harmed. How else but by God's will could such a thing happen? And what else could it mean but God's own judgment, and God's own blessing? Blessing on what? he wondered. Well, perhaps that would be clear with reflection.\n\nHe'd met Ryan once before, found him spiteful and arrogant\u2014typically American\u2014but not now. The cameras momentarily zoomed in to show a man clutching at his coat, his head turning left and right, mouth slightly open. No, not arrogant now. Stunned, not even aware enough to be frightened. It was a look he'd seen on men's faces before. How interesting.\n\nTHE SAME WORDS and the same images were flooding the world now, delivered by satellites to over a billion pairs of eyes that'd been watching the news coverage, or been alerted to the event and had changed channels from morning shows in some countries, lunch and evening shows in others. History had been made, and there was an imperative to watch.\n\nThis was particularly true of the powerful, for whom information was the raw material of power. Another man in another place looked at the electronic clock that sat next to the television on his desk and did some simple arithmetic. A horrid day was ending in America, while a morning was well begun where he sat. The window behind his desk showed a wide expanse of paving stones, a huge square, in fact, crisscrossed by people mainly traveling by bicycle, though the number of cars he saw was now substantial, having grown by a factor often over the past few years. But still bicycles were the main mode of transportation, and that wasn't fair, was it?\n\nHe'd planned to change that, quickly and decisively in historical terms\u2014and he was a serious student of history only to have his carefully laid plan killed aborning by the Americans. He didn't believe in God, never had and never would, but he did believe in Fate, and Fate was what he saw before his eyes on the phosphor screen of a television set manufactured in Japan. A fickle woman, Fate was, he told himself as he reached for a handleless cup of green tea. Only days before she had favored the Americans with luck, and now, this. . . . So what was the intention of the Lady Fate? His own intentions and needs and will mattered more, the man decided. He reached for his phone, then thought better of it. It would ring soon enough, and others would ask his opinion, and he would have to answer with something, and so it was time to think. He sipped his tea. The heated water stung his mouth, and that was good. He would have to be alert, and the pain focused his mind inward, where important thoughts always began.\n\nUndone or not, his plan hadn't been a bad one. Poorly executed by his unwitting agents, largely because of the Lady Fate and her momentary largesse to America\u2014but it had been a fine plan, he told himself yet again. He'd have another chance to prove that. Because of the Lady Fate. The thought occasioned a thin smile, and a distant look, as his mind probed the future and liked what it saw. He hoped the phone would not ring for a while, because he had to look further still, and that was best done without interference. It came to him after a moment's further thought that the real objective of his plan had been accomplished, hadn't it? He'd wished America to be crippled, and crippled America now was. Not in the manner he'd chosen, but crippled even so. _Even better?_ he asked himself.\n\nYes.\n\nAnd so, the game could go on, couldn't it?\n\nIt _was_ the Lady Fate, toying as she did with the ebb and flow of history. She wasn't a friend or enemy of any man, really\u2014or was she? The man snorted. Maybe she just had a sense of humor.\n\nFOR ANOTHER PERSON, the emotion was anger. Days before had come the humiliation, the bitter humiliation of being told by a foreigner\u2014nothing more than a former provincial governor!\u2014what her sovereign nation must do. She'd been very careful, of course. Everything had been done with great skill. The government itself had not been implicated in anything more than extensive naval exercises on the open sea, which was, of course, free for the passage of all. No threatening notes had been dispatched, no official d\u00e9marche issued, no position taken, and for their part the Americans hadn't done anything more than\u2014what was their arrogant phrase, \"rattle their cage\"?\u2014and call for a meeting of the Security Council, at which there was nothing to be said, really, since nothing official had taken place, and her country had made no announcement. What they had done was nothing more than _exercises_ , weren't they? _Peaceful_ exercises. Of course, those exercises had helped split the American capability against Japan\u2014but she couldn't have known ahead of time, could she? Of course not.\n\nShe had the document on her desk at this very moment: the time required to restore the fleet to full capability. But, no, she shook her head, it wouldn't be enough. Neither she nor her country could act alone now. It would take time and friends, and plans, but her country had needs, and it was her job to see to those needs. It was not her job to accept commands from others, was it?\n\nNo.\n\nShe also drank tea, from a fine china cup, with sugar and a little milk in the English way, a product of her birth and station and education, all of which, along with patience, had brought her to this office. Of all the people around the world watching the same picture from the same satellite network, she probably understood the best what the opportunity was, how vast and appealing it had to be, all the sweeter that it had come so soon after she'd been dictated to in this very office. By a man who was now dead. It was too good to pass up, wasn't it?\n\nYes.\n\n\"THIS IS SCARY. Mr. C.\" Domingo Chavez rubbed his eyes\u2014he'd been awake for more hours than his jet-lagged brain could compute\u2014and tried to organize his thoughts. He was sprawled back on the living-room couch, shoeless feet up on the coffee table. The womenfolk in the house were off to bed, one in anticipation of work the next day, and the other with a college exam to face. The latter hadn't figured that there might not be any school tomorrow.\n\n\"Tell me why, Ding,\" John Clark commanded. The time for worrying himself about the relative skills of various TV personalities had passed, and his young partner _was_ , after all, pursuing his master's degree in international relations.\n\nChavez spoke without opening his eyes. \"I don't think anything like this has ever happened in peacetime before. The world ain't all that different from what it was last week, John. Last week, it was real complicated. We kinda won that little war we were in, but the world ain't changed much, and we're not any stronger than we were then, are we?\"\n\n\"Nature abhors a vacuum?\" John asked quietly.\n\n\"Sum'tim like that.\" Chavez yawned. \"Damned if we ain't got one here and now.\"\n\n\"NOT ACCOMPLISHING VERY much, am I?\" Jack asked, in a voice both quiet and bleak. It was hitting him full force now. There was still a glow, though most of what rose into the sky now was steam rather than smoke. What went into the building was the most depressing sight. Body bags. Rubberized fabric with loop handles at the ends, and some sort of zipper in the middle. Lots of them, and some were coming out now, carried by pairs of firefighters, snaking down the wide steps around the fragments of broken masonry. It had just started, and would not end soon. He hadn't actually seen a body during his few minutes up top. Somehow, seeing the first few bags was worse.\n\n\"No, sir,\" Agent Price said, her face looking the same as his. \"This isn't good for you.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Ryan nodded and looked away.\n\n_I don't know what to_ do, he told himself. _Where's the manual, the training course for this job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go?_\n\n_I don't_ want _this job!_ his mind screamed at itself. Ryan reproached himself for the venality of the thought, but he'd come to this newly dreadful place as some sort of leadership demonstration, parading himself before the TV cameras as though he knew what he was about\u2014and that was a lie. Perhaps not a malicious one. Just stupid. _Walk up to the fire chief and ask how it's going, as though anyone with eyes and a second-grade education couldn't figure that one out!_\n\n\"I'm open to ideas,\" Ryan said at last.\n\nSpecial Agent Andrea Price took a deep breath and fulfilled the fantasy of every special agent of the United States Secret Service all the way back to Pinkerton: \"Mr. President, you really need to get your, cr, stuff\" she couldn't go _that_ far\u2014\"together. Some things you can do and some things you can't. You have people working for you. For starters, sir, figure out who they are and let them do their jobs. Then, maybe, you can start doing yours.\"\n\n\"Back to the House?\"\n\n\"That's where the phones are, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Who's head of the Detail?\"\n\n\"It was Andy Walker.\" Price didn't have to say where he was now. Ryan looked down at her and made his first presidential decision.\n\n\"You just got promoted.\"\n\nPrice nodded. \"Follow me, sir.\" It pleased the agent to see that this President, like all the others, could learn to follow orders. Some of the time, anyway. They'd made it all of ten feet before Ryan slipped on a patch of ice and went down, to be picked back up by two agents. It only made him look all the more vulnerable. A still photographer captured the moment, giving _Newsweek_ its cover photo for the following week.\n\n\"AS YOU SEE, President Ryan is now leaving the Hill in what looks like a military vehicle instead of a Secret Service car. What do you suppose he's up to?\" the anchor asked.\n\n\"In all fairness to the man,\" John the commentator said, \"it's unlikely that he knows at the moment.\"\n\nThat opinion rang across the globe a third of a second later, to the general agreement of all manner of persons, friends and enemies alike.\n\nSOME THINGS HAVE to be done fast. He didn't know if they were the right things\u2014well, he did, and they weren't\u2014but at a certain level of importance the rules got a little muddled, didn't they? The scion of a political family whose public service went back a couple of generations, he'd been in public life practically since leaving law school, which was another way of saying that he hadn't held a real job in his entire life. Perhaps he had little practical experience in the economy except as its beneficiary\u2014his family's financial managers ran the various trusts and portfolios with sufficient skill that he almost never bothered meeting with them except at tax time. Perhaps he had never practiced law though he'd had a hand in passing literally thousands of them. Perhaps he had never served his country in uniform\u2014though he deemed himself an expert in national security. Perhaps a lot of things militated against doing anything. But he knew government, for that had been his profession for all of his active\u2014not to say \"working\"\u2014life, and at a time like this, the country needed someone who really knew government. The country needed healing, Ed Kealty thought, and he knew about that.\n\nSo, he lifted his phone and made a call. \"Cliff, this is Ed . . .\"\n**1**\n\n**STARTING NOW**\n\n**T** HE FBI'S EMERGENCY command center on the fifth floor of the Hoover building is an odd-shaped room, roughly triangular and surprisingly small, with room for only fifteen or so people to bump shoulders. Number sixteen to arrive, tieless and wearing casual clothes, was Deputy Assistant Director Daniel E. Murray. The senior watch officer was his old friend, Inspector Pat O'Day. A large-framed, rugged man who raised beef cattle as a hobby at his northern Virginia home\u2014this \"cowboy\" had been born and educated in New Hampshire, but his boots were custom-made\u2014O'Day had a phone to his car, and the room was surprisingly quiet for a crisis room during a real crisis. A curt nod and raised hand acknowledged Murray's entry. The senior agent waited for O'Day to conclude the call.\n\n\"What's going on, Pat?\"\n\n\"I was just on the phone with Andrews. They have tapes of the radar and stuff. I have agents from the Washington Field Office heading there to interview the tower people. National Transportation Safety Board will have people there, too, to assist. Initial word, looks like a Japan Airlines 747 kamikaze'd in. The Andrews people say the pilot declared an emergency as an unscheduled KLM flight and drove straight over their runways, hung a little left, and . . . well . . .\" O'Day shrugged. \"WFO has people on the Hill now to commence the investigation. I'm assuming this one goes on the books as a terrorist incident, and that gives us jurisdiction.\"\n\n\"Where's the ADIC?\" Murray asked, meaning the Assistant Director in Charge of the Bureau's Washington office, quartered at Buzzard's Point on the Potomac River.\n\n\"St. Lucia with Angie, taking a vacation. Tough luck for Tony.\" The inspector grunted. Tony Caruso had gotten away only three days earlier. \"Tough day for a lot of people. The body count's going to be huge, Dan, lots worse'n Oklahoma. I've sent out a general alert for forensics experts. Mess like this, we'll have to identify a lot of bodies from DNA. Oh, the TV guys are asking how it's possible for the Air Force to let this happen.\" A shake of the head accompanied the conclusion. O'Day needed somebody to dump on, and the TV commentators were the most attractive target of opportunity. There would be others in due course; both hoped the FBI would not be one of them.\n\n\"Anything else we know?\"\n\nPat shook his head. \"Nope. It's going to take time, Dan.\"\n\n\"Ryan?\"\n\n\"Was on the Hill, should be on his way to the White House. They caught him on TV. He looks kinda rocky. Our brothers and sisters at USSS are having a really bad night, too. The guy I talked to ten minutes ago almost lost it. We might end up having a jurisdictional conflict over who runs the investigation.\"\n\n\"Great.\" Murray snorted. \"We'll let the AG sort that one\u2014\" But there wasn't an Attorney General, and there wasn't a Secretary of the Treasury for him to call.\n\nInspector O'Day didn't have to run through it. A federal statute empowered the United States Secret Service as lead agency to investigate any attack on the President. But another federal statute gave FBI jurisdiction over terrorism. A local statute for murder also brought the Washington Metropolitan Police in, of course. Toss in the National Transportation Safety Board\u2014until proven otherwise, it could merely be a horrible aircraft accident\u2014and that was just the beginning. Every agency had authority and expertise. The Secret Service, smaller than the FBI, and with fewer resources, did have some superb investigators, and some of the finest technical experts around. NTSB knew more about airplane crashes than anyone in the world. But the Bureau had to be the lead agency for this investigation, didn't it? Murray thought. Except that Director Shaw was dead, and without him to swing the clout club . . .\n\n_Jesus,_ Murray thought. He and Bill went back to the Academy together. They'd worked in the same squad as rookie street agents in riverside Philadelphia, chasing bank robbers . . .\n\nPat read his face and nodded. \"Yeah, Dan, takes time to catch up, doesn't it? We've been gutted like a fish, man.\" He handed over a sheet from a legal pad with a handwritten list of known dead.\n\n_A nuclear strike wouldn't have hurt us this badly,_ Murray realized as he scanned the names. A developing crisis would have given ample strategic warning, and slowly, quietly, senior people would have left Washington for various places of safety, many of them would have survived\u2014or so the planners went\u2014and after the strike there would have been some sort of functioning government to pick up the pieces. But not now.\n\nRYAN HAD COME to the White House a thousand times, to visit, to deliver briefings, for meetings important and otherwise, and most recently to work in his own office as National Security Advisor. This was the first time he hadn't had to show ID and walk through the metal detectors\u2014more properly, he did walk straight through one from force of habit, but this time, when the buzzer went off, he just kept walking without even reaching for his keys. The difference in demeanor of the Secret Service agents was striking. Like anyone else, they were comforted by familiar surroundings, and though the entire country had just had another lesson in how illusory \"safety\" was, the illusion was real enough for trained professionals to feel more at ease within the substance of a lie. Guns were holstered, coats buttoned, and long breaths taken as the entourage came in through the East Entrance.\n\nAn inner voice told Jack that this was now his house, but he had no wish to believe it. Presidents liked to call it the People's House, to use the political voice of false modesty to describe a place for which some of them would have willingly run over the bodies of their own children, then say that it wasn't really all that big a thing. If lies could stain the walls, Jack reflected, then this building would have a very different name. But there was greatness here, too, and that was more intimidating than the pettiness of politics. Here James Monroe had promulgated the Monroe Doctrine and propelled his country into the strategic world for the first time. Here Lincoln had held his country together through the sheer force of his own will. Here Teddy Roosevelt had made America a real global player, and sent his Great White Fleet around the world to announce America. Here Teddy's distant cousin had saved his country from internal chaos and despair, with little more than a nasal voice and an up-angled cigarette holder. Here Eisenhower had exercised power so skillfully that hardly anyone had noticed his doing anything at all. Here Kennedy had faced down Khrushchev, and nobody had cared that doing so had covered a multitude of blunders. Here Reagan had plotted the destruction of America's most dangerous enemy, only to be accused of sleeping most of the time. What ultimately counted more\u2014the achievements or the dirty little secrets committed by imperfect men who only briefly stepped beyond their weaknesses? But those brief and halting steps made up the sort of history that lived, while the rest was, mainly, forgotten\u2014except by revisionist historians who just didn't get the fact that people weren't supposed to be perfect.\n\nBut it still wasn't his house.\n\nThe entrance was a tunnel of sorts, which headed under the East Wing, where the First Lady\u2014until ninety minutes earlier Anne Durling had her offices. By law the First Lady was a private citizen\u2014an odd fiction for someone with a paid staff\u2014but in reality her functions were often hugely important, however unofficial they might be. The walls here were those of a museum, not a home, as they walked past the small White House theater, where the President could watch movies with a hundred or so close personal friends. There were several sculptures, many by Frederic Remington, and the general motif was supposed to be \"pure\" American. The paintings were of past presidents, and Ryan's eyes caught them\u2014their lifeless eyes seemed to look down at him with suspicion and doubt. All the men who had gone before, good and bad, whether judged well or poorly by historians, they looked at him\u2014\n\n_I'm an historian,_ Ryan told himself. _I've written a few books. I've judged the actions of others from a safe distance of both time and space. Why didn't he see this? Why didn't he do_ that? Now, too late, he knew better. He was _here_ now, and from the inside it looked very different. From the outside you could see in, looking around first to catch all the information and analyze it as it passed by, stopping it when you had to, even making it go backward, the better to understand it all, taking your time to get things exactly right.\n\nBut from the inside it wasn't that way at all. Here everything came directly at you like a series of onrushing trains, from all directions at once, moving by their own time schedules, leaving you little room to maneuver or reflect. Ryan could sense that already. And the people in the paintings had mainly come to this place with the luxury of time to think about their ascension, with the luxury of trusted advisers, and of good will. Those were benefits he didn't have. To historians, however, they wouldn't matter for much more than a cursory paragraph, or maybe even a whole page, before the writer moved on with pitiless analysis.\n\nEverything he said or did, Jack knew, would be subjected to the 20\/20 vision of hindsight\u2014and not just from this moment forward. People would now look into his past for information on his character, his beliefs, his actions good and bad. From the moment the aircraft had struck the Capitol building, he was President, and every breath he'd drawn since would be examined in a new and unforgiving light for generations to come. His daily life would have no privacy, and even in death he would not be safe from scrutiny by people who had no idea what it was like merely to walk into this oversized dwelling-office-museum and know that it was your prison into all eternity. The bars were invisible, perhaps, but even more real because of it.\n\nSo many men had lusted for this job, only to find how horrid and frustrating it was. Jack knew _that_ from his own historical readings, and from seeing three men at close quarters who'd occupied the Oval Office. At least they had come here with eyes supposedly open, and perhaps they could be blamed for having minds smaller than their egos. How much the worse for someone who'd never wished for it? And would history judge Ryan more kindly for it? That was worth an ironic snort. No, he'd come to this House at a time when his country _needed_ , and if he didn't meet that need, then he'd be cursed for all future time as a failure, even though he'd come to the job only by accident\u2014condemned by a man now dead to do the job which the other man had craved.\n\nFor the Secret Service, this was a time to relax a little. Lucky them, Ryan thought, allowing bitterness to creep into his mind, unfair or not. It was their job to protect him and his family. It was his job now to protect them and theirs, and those of millions of others.\n\n\"This way, Mr. President.\" Price turned left into the ground-floor corridor. Here Ryan first saw the White House staff people, standing there to see their new charge, the man whom they would serve to the best of their abilities. Like everyone else, they just stood and looked, without knowing what to say, their eyes evaluating the man and without revealing what they thought, though they would surely exchange views in the privacy of their locker or lunchrooms at the first possible moment. Jack's tie was still crooked in his collar, and he still wore the turnout coat. The water spray that had frozen in his hair and given him an undeserved gray look was melting now. One of the staff members raced out of sight as the entourage continued west. He reappeared a minute later, darting through the security detail and handing Ryan a towel.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Jack said in surprise. He stood still for a moment and started drying his hair. There he saw a photographer running backward and aiming his camera, snapping merrily away. The Secret Service didn't impede him in any way. That, Ryan thought, made him a member of the staff, the official White House photographer whose job it was to memorialize everything. _Great, my own people spy on me!_ But it wasn't time to interfere with anything, was it?\n\n\"Where are we going, Andrea?\" Jack asked as they passed yet more portraits of Presidents and First Ladies, all staring at him . . .\n\n\"The Oval Office. I thought . . .\"\n\n\"Situation Room.\" Ryan stopped dead, still toweling off. \"I'm not ready for that room yet, okay?\"\n\n\"Of course, Mr. President.\" At the end of the wide corridor they turned left into a small foyer walled with cheap looking wood latticework, and then right to go outside again, because there wasn't a corridor from the White House into the West Wing. That's why no one had taken his coat, Jack realized.\n\n\"Coffee,\" Jack ordered. At least the food service would be good here. The White House Mess was run by Navy stewards, and his first presidential cup of coffee was poured into an exquisite cup from a silver pot, by a sailor whose smile was both professional and genuine, and who, like everyone else, was curious about the new Boss. It occurred to Ryan that he was like a creature in the zoo. Interesting, even fascinating\u2014and how would he adapt to the new cage?\n\nSame room, different seat. The President sat in the middle of the table so that aides could assemble on both sides. Ryan picked his place and sat in it naturally enough. It was only a chair, after all. The so-called trappings of power were merely things, and the power itself was an illusion, because such power was always accompanied by obligations that were greater still. You could see and exercise the former. The latter could only be felt. Those obligations came with the air, which suddenly seemed heavy in this windowless room. Jack sipped at his coffee briefly, looking around. The wall clock said 11:14 P.M. He'd been President for . . . what? Ninety minutes? About the time for the drive from his home to . . . his new home . . . depending on traffic.\n\n\"Where's Arnie?\"\n\n\"Right here, Mr. President,\" Arnold van Damm said as he came through the door. Chief of staff to two Presidents, he would now set an all-time record as chief of staff to a third. His first President had resigned in disgrace. His second was dead. Would the third one be the charm\u2014or did bad things always come in threes? Two adages, equally quoted, and mutually exclusive. Ryan's eyes just bored in on him, asking the question that he couldn't voice: _What do I do now?_\n\n\"Good statement on TV, just about right.\" The chief of staff sat down on the other side of the table. He appeared quiet and competent, as always, and Ryan didn't reflect on the effort such an appearance required of a man who'd lost more friends than Ryan had.\n\n\"I'm not even sure what the hell I said,\" Jack replied, searching his mind for memories that had vanished.\n\n\"That's about normal for an ad-lib,\" van Damm allowed. \"It was still pretty good. I always thought your instincts were okay. You're going to need 'em.\"\n\n\"First thing?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Banks, stock markets, all federal offices are closed, call it 'til the end of the week\u2014maybe beyond that. We have a state funeral to plan for Roger and Anne. National week of mourning, probably a month for the flags to be at half-staff. We had a bunch of ambassadors in the chamber, too. That means a ton of diplomatic activity on top of everything else. We'll call that housekeeping stuff\u2014I know,\" van Damm said with a raised hand. \"Sorry. You have to call it something.\"\n\n\"Who\u2014\"\n\n\"We have a Protocol Office here, Jack,\" van Damm pointed out. \"They're already in their cubbyholes and working on this for you. We have a team of speechwriters; they'll prepare your official statements. The media people will want to see you\u2014what I mean by that is, you have to appear in public. You have to reassure people. You have to instill confidence\u2014\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"In time for the morning TV shows at the latest, CNN, all the networks. I'd prefer that we go on camera within the hour, but we don't have to. We can cover that by saying you're busy. You will be,\" Arnie promised. \"You'll have to be briefed on what you can say and what you can't before you go on TV. We'll lay the law down to the newsies on what they may and may not ask, and in a case like this they'll cooperate. Figure you have a week of kind treatment to lean on. That's your press honeymoon, and that's as long as it'll last.\"\n\n\"And then?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"And then you're the by-God President and you'll have to act like it, Jack,\" van Damm said bluntly. \"You didn't have to take the oath, remember?\"\n\nThat statement made Ryan's head jerk back as his peripheral vision caught the stony looks on the others in the room\u2014all of them Secret Service at the moment. He was the new Boss, and their eyes weren't so very different now from those in the portraits on the walk in from the East Wing. They _expected_ him to do the right thing. They'd support him, protect him from others and from himself, but he had to do the job. They wouldn't let him run away, either. The Secret Service was empowered to protect him from physical danger. Arnie van Damm would try to protect him from political danger. Other staffers would serve and protect, too. The housekeeping staff would feed him, iron his shirts, and fetch coffee. But none of them would allow Ryan to run away, either from his place or his duties.\n\nIt was a prison.\n\nBut what Arnie had just said was true. He could have refused to take the oath, couldn't\u2014no, Ryan thought, looking down at the polished oak tabletop. Then he would have been damned for all eternity as a coward\u2014worse, he would have been damned in his own mind as the same thing, for he had a conscience that was more harmful an enemy than any outsider. It was his nature to look in the mirror and see not enough there. As good a man as he knew himself to be, he was never good enough, driven by\u2014what? The values he'd learned from his parents, his educators, the Marine Corps, the many people he'd met, the dangers he'd faced? All those abstract values, did he use them, or did they use him? What had brought him to this point? What had made him what he was and what, really, was John Patrick Ryan? He looked up, around the room, wondering what _they_ thought he was, but they didn't know, either. He was the President now, the giver of orders, which they would carry out; the man who made speeches which others would analyze for nuance and correctness; the man who decided what the United States of America would do, then to be judged and criticized by others who never really knew how to do the thing to which they objected. But that wasn't a person; that was a job description. Inside of that had to be a man\u2014or someday soon, a woman\u2014who thought it through and tried to do the right thing. And for Ryan, less than an hour and a half before, the right thing had been to take the oath. And to try to do his best. The judgment of history was ultimately less important than what he'd judge of himself, looking in the mirror every morning at not enough. The real prison was, and would always be, himself.\n\nDamn.\n\nTHE FIRE WAS out now, Chief Magill saw. His people would have to be careful. There were always hot spots, places where the fire had died, not from the cooling water but rather from lack of oxygen, and waited for the chance to flare back up, to surprise and kill the unwary. But his people were wary, and those little flares of malevolent life would not be important in the greater scheme of things for this fire site. Hoses were already being rolled, and some of his people were taking their trucks back to their houses. He'd stripped the entire city of apparatus for this fire, and he had to send much of it back, lest a new fire go unanswered, and more people die unnecessarily.\n\nHe was surrounded by others now, all wearing one-layer vinyl jackets with large yellow letters to proclaim who they were. There was an FBI contingent, another from Secret Service, the D.C. Metropolitan Police, NTSB, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and his own fire investigators, all looking for someone to be in charge so that they could claim command themselves. Instead of holding an informal meeting and establishing their own chain of command, they stood mostly in homogeneous little knots, probably waiting for someone else to tell them who was running things. Magill shook his head. He'd seen it before.\n\nThe bodies were coming out faster now. For the moment they were being taken to the D.C. Armory, about a mile north of the Hill just off the railroad tracks. Magill didn't envy the identification teams, though he hadn't yet troubled himself to descend into the crater\u2014that's how he thought of it at the moment\u2014to see how badly destroyed things were.\n\n\"Chief?\" a voice asked behind him. Magill turned.\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"NTSB. Can we start looking for the flight recorder?\" The man pointed to the rudder fin. Though the tail assembly of the aircraft was anything but intact, you could tell what it had once been, and the so-called black box\u2014actually painted Day-Glo orange\u2014would be somewhere in there. The area was actually fairly clean. The rubble had been catapulted westward for the most part, and they might actually have a chance of recovering it quickly.\n\n\"Okay.\" Magill nodded and pointed to a pair of firefighters to accompany the crash team.\n\n\"Could you also tell your people as much as possible not to move the aircraft parts around? We need to reconstruct the event, and it helps to leave things pretty much in place.\"\n\n\"The people\u2014the bodies come first,\" Magill pointed out. The federal official nodded with a grimace. This wasn't fun for anyone.\n\n\"I understand.\" He paused. \"If you find the flight crew, please don't move them at all. Call us, and we'll handle it. Okay?\"\n\n\"How will we know?\"\n\n\"White shirts, shoulder boards with stripes on them, and they'll be Japanese, probably.\"\n\nIt should have sounded crazy, but it didn't. Magill knew that bodies often did survive airplane crashes in the most incredible outward condition, so intact that only a trained eye could see the signs of fatal injury on first inspection. It often unnerved the civilians who were usually the first to arrive at a scene. It was so strange that the human body seemed more robust than the life it contained. There was a mercy to it, for the survivors were spared the hellish ordeal of identifying a piece of burned, torn meat, but that mercy was balanced by the cruelty of recognizing someone that could not talk back. Magill shook his head and had one of his senior people relay the special order.\n\nThe firefighters down below had enough of them already. The first special order, of course, had been to locate and remove the body of President Roger Durling. Everything was secondary to that, and a special ambulance was standing by for his body alone. Even the First Lady, Anne Durling, would have to wait a little for her husband, one last time. A contractor's mobile crane was maneuvering into the far side of the building to lift out the stone cubes that covered the podium area like a battered pile of children's hardwood blocks; in the harsh light it seemed that only the letters and numbers painted on their sides were lacking to make the illusion complete.\n\nPEOPLE WERE STREAMING in to all the government departments, especially the senior officials. It was hardly the usual thing for the VIP parking slots to fill up at midnight, but this night they did, and the Department of State was no exception. Security personnel were called in as well, for an attack on one government agency was an attack on all, and even though the nature of the attack on the government devalued the advantage of calling in people armed with handguns, it didn't really matter. When A happened, B resulted, because it was written down somewhere that B was what you did. The people with the handguns looked at one another and shook their heads, knowing that they'd be getting overtime pay, which put them one up on the big shots who'd storm in from their places in Chevy Chase and suburban Virginia, race upstairs, and then just chat with one another.\n\nOne such person found his parking place in the basement and used his key-card to activate the VIP elevator to the seventh floor. What made him different was that he had a real mission for the evening, albeit one he'd wondered about all the way in from his Great Falls home. It was what he thought of as a gut check, though that term hardly applied here. Yet what else could he do? He owed Ed Kealty everything, his place in Washington society, his career at State, so many other things. The country needed someone like Ed right now. So Ed had told him, making a strong case for the proposition, and what he himself was doing was . . . what? A small voice in the car had called it treason, but, no, that wasn't so, because \"treason\" was the only crime defined in the Constitution, cited there as giving \"aid and comfort\" to the enemies of his country, and whatever Ed Kealty was doing, he wasn't doing _that,_ was he?\n\nIt came down to loyalty. He was Ed Kealty's man, as were many others. The relationship had started at Harvard, with beers and double dates and weekends at his family's house on the water, the good times of a lively youth. He'd been the working-class guest of one of America's great families\u2014why? Because he'd caught Ed's youthful eye. But why that? He didn't know, had never asked, and probably would never find out. That was the way of friendship. It just happened, and only in America could a working-class kid who'd scratched into Harvard on a scholarship get befriended by the great son of a great family. He would have done well on his own, probably. No one but God had given him his native intelligence. No one but his parents had encouraged his development of that gift and taught him manners and . . . values. The thought caused his eyes to close as the elevator doors opened. Values. Well, loyalty was one of those values, wasn't it? Without Ed's patronage he would have topped out, maybe, as a DAS, a _Deputy_ Assistant Secretary of State. The first word had long since been expunged from the title painted in gold letters on his office door. In a just world, he would have been in the running for the removal of the next word from the title as well, for wasn't he as good with foreign policy as anyone else on the seventh floor? Yes, he surely was, and that would not have come to be without his having been Ed Kealty's man. Without the parties where he'd met the other mover-shakers, and talked his way to the top. And the money. He'd never taken a bribe of any sort, but his friend had advised him wisely (the advice having come from his own advisers, but that didn't matter) on investments, allowing him to build up his own financial independence and, by the way, buy a five-thousand-square-foot home in Great Falls, and to put his own son into Harvard, _not_ on a scholarship, for Clifton Rutledge III was the son of _somebody_ now, not merely the issue of a worker's loins. All the work he might have done entirely on his own would not have brought him to this place, and loyalty was owed, wasn't it?\n\nThat made it a little easier for Clifton Rutledge II (actually his birth certificate said Clifton Rutledge, _Junior_ , but \"Jr.\" wasn't quite the suffix for a man of his station), Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.\n\nThe rest was mere timing. The seventh floor was always guarded, all the more so now. But the guards all knew him, and it was merely a matter of looking like he knew what he was doing. Hell, Rutledge told himself, he might just fail, and that could well be the best possible outcome\u2014\"Sorry, Ed, it wasn't there. . . .\" He wondered if that was an unworthy thought as he stood there by his office door, listening for footsteps that would match in speed the beating of his heart. There would be two guards on the floor now, walking about separately. Security didn't have to be all that tight at a place like this. Nobody got into State without a reason. Even in daytime, when visitors came in, they needed escorts to wherever they were going. At this time of night, things were tighter still. The number of elevators in service was reduced. Key-card access was needed to get all the way to the top floor, and a third guard was always at the elevator banks. So it was just timing. Rutledge checked his watch for several cycles of footsteps, and found that the intervals were regular to within ten seconds. Good. He just had to wait for the next one.\n\n\"Hi, Wally.\"\n\n\"Good evening, sir,\" the guard replied. \"Bad night.\"\n\n\"Do us a favor?\"\n\n\"What's that, sir?\"\n\n\"Coffee. No secretaries to get the machines going. Could you skip down to the cafeteria and have one of their people bring an urn up here? Have them set it up in the conference room up the hall. We'll be having a meeting in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"Fair enough. Right away?\"\n\n\"If you could, Wally.\"\n\n\"Be back in five, Mr. Rutledge.\" The guard strode off with purpose, turned right twenty yards away and disappeared from view.\n\nRutledge counted to ten and headed the other way. The double doors to the Secretary of State's office were not locked. Rutledge walked right in through the first set, then through the second, turning on the lights as he did so. He had three minutes. Half of him hoped that the document would be locked away in Brett Hanson's office vault. In that case he would surely fail, since only Brett, two of his assistants, and the chief of security had the combination, and _that_ did have an anti-tamper alarm on it. But Brett had been a gentleman, and a careless one at that, always so trusting on the one hand and forgetful on the other, the sort who never locked his car or even his house, unless his wife made him. If it were in the open, it would be in one of two places. Rutledge pulled open the center drawer of the desk and found the usual array of pencils and cheap pens (he was always losing them) and paper clips. One minute gone, as Rutledge carefully shuffled through the desk. Nothing. It was almost a relief, until he examined the desktop, and then he nearly laughed. Right there on the blotter, tucked into the leather edging, a plain white envelope addressed to the Secretary of State, but without a stamp. Rutledge took it from its place, holding the envelope by the edges. Unsealed. He moved the flap and extracted the contents. A single sheet of paper, two typed paragraphs. It was at this point that Cliff Rutledge got a chill. The exercise had been theoretical to this point. He could just replace it, forget he'd been here, forget about the phone call, forget about everything. Two minutes.\n\nWould Brett have receipted it? Probably not. Again, he'd been a gentleman about everything. He would not have humiliated Ed that way. Ed had done the honorable thing by resigning, and Brett would have responded honorably, undoubtedly shaken his hand with a sorrowful look, and that would have been that. Two minutes fifteen.\n\nDecision. Rutledge tucked the letter in his jacket pocket, headed for the door, switched off the lights, and returned to the corridor, stopping short of his own office door. There he waited half a minute.\n\n\"Hi, George.\"\n\n\"Hello, Mr. Rutledge.\"\n\n\"I just sent Wally down to get coffee for the floor.\"\n\n\"Good idea, sir. Bad night. Is it true that \"\n\n\"Yeah, afraid so. Brett was probably killed with all the rest.\"\n\n\"Damn.\"\n\n\"Might be a good idea to lock his office up. I just checked the door and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" George Armitage pulled out his key ring and found the proper one. \"He's always so\u2014\"\n\n\"I know.\" Rutledge nodded.\n\n\"You know, two weeks ago I found his vault unlocked. Like, he turned the handle but forgot to spin the dial.\" A shake of the head. \"I guess he never got hisself robbed, eh?\"\n\n\"That's the problem with security,\" the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs sympathized. \"The big boys never seem to pay attention, right?\"\n\nHOW BEAUTIFUL IT was. Who had done it? The question had a cursory answer. The TV reporters, with little else to do, kept telling their cameras to look at the tail fin. He remembered the logo well enough, having long ago participated in an operation that had blown up an aircraft with the red crane on its rudder fin. He almost regretted it now, but envy prevented that. It was a matter of propriety. As one of the world's foremost terrorists\u2014he used the word within his own mind, and in that private place relished the term, though he couldn't use it elsewhere\u2014such an event ought to have been his doing, not the work of some amateur. For that's who it had been. An amateur whose name he would learn in due course, along with everyone else on earth\u2014from television coverage. The irony was striking enough. Since puberty he'd devoted himself to the study and practice of political violence, learning, thinking, planning\u2014and executing such acts, first as a participant, then as a leader\/commander. And now what? Some _amateur_ had outstripped him, had outstripped the entire clandestine world to which he belonged. It would have been embarrassing except for the beauty of the event.\n\nHis trained mind ran over the possibilities, and the analysis came rapidly. A single man. Perhaps two. More likely one. As always, he thought with a tight-lipped nod, one man willing to die, to sacrifice himself for the Cause\u2014whatever Cause he might have served\u2014could be more formidable than an army: In the case at hand, the man in question had possessed special skills and access to special means, both of which had served his purpose well.\n\nThat was luck, as was the single-actor aspect to the feat. It was easy for a single man to keep a secret. He grunted. That was the problem he'd always faced. The really hard part was finding the right people, people whom he could trust, who wouldn't boast to or confide in others, who shared his own sense of mission, who had his own discipline, and who were truly willing to risk their lives. That last criterion was the price of entry, once easy enough to establish, but now it was becoming so much harder in a changing world. The well into which he dipped was running dry, and it did no good to deny it. He was running out of the truly devoted.\n\nAlways smarter and farther-seeing than his contemporaries, he himself had faced the necessity of participating in three real operations, and though he'd had the steel in his soul to do what had to be done, he didn't crave to repeat it. It was too dangerous, after all. It wasn't that he feared the consequences of his action\u2014it was that a dead terrorist was as dead as his victims, and dead men carried out no more missions. Martyrdom was something he'd been prepared to risk, but nothing he'd ever really sought. He wanted to _win_ , after all, to reap the benefits of his action, to be recognized as a winner, liberator, conqueror, to be in the books which future generations would read as something other than a footnote. The successful mission on the TV in his bedroom would be remembered as an awful _thing_ by most. Not the act of a man, but something akin to a natural disaster, because, elegant as it was, it served no political purpose. And that was the problem with the mad act of one dedicated martyr. Luck wasn't enough. There had to be a reason, a result. Such a successful act was only so if it led to something else. This manifestly had not. And that was too bad. It wasn't often that\u2014\n\nNo, the man reached for his orange juice and sipped it before he allowed his mind to proceed. Wasn't _often?_ This had never happened, had it? That was a largely philosophical question. He could say, harkening back to history, that the Assassins had been able to topple or at least decapitate governments, but back then such a task had meant the elimination of a single man, and for all the bravura shown by emissaries of that hilltop fortress, the modern world was far too complex. Kill a president or prime minister\u2014even one of the lingering kings some nations clung to\u2014and there was another to step into the vacant place. As had evidently happened in this case. But this one was different. There was no Cabinet to stand behind the new man, to show solidarity and determination and continuity on their angry faces. If only something else, something larger and more important had been ready when the aircraft had made its fall, then this thing of beauty would have been more beautiful still. That it hadn't could not be changed, but as with all such events, there was much to learn from both its success and failure, and its aftermath, planned or not, was very, very real.\n\nIn that sense it was tragic. An opportunity had been wasted. If only he'd known. If only the man who'd flown that airplane to its final destination had let someone know what was planned. But that wasn't the way of martyrs, was it? The fools had to think alone, act alone, and die alone; and in their personal success lay ultimate failure. Or perhaps not. The aftermath was still there. . . .\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT?\" A Secret Service agent had picked up the phone. Ordinarily it would have been a Navy yeoman, but the Detail was still a little too shell-shocked to allow just anyone into the Sit Room. \"FBI, sir.\"\n\nRyan pulled the phone from its holder under the desktop. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"Dan Murray here.\" Jack nearly smiled to hear a familiar voice, and a friendly one at that. He and Murray went back a very long way indeed. At the other end, Murray must have wanted to say _Hi, Jack_ , but he wouldn't\u2014couldn't be so familiar without being so bidden\u2014and even if Jack had encouraged him, the man would have felt uncomfortable to do so, and would have run the further risk of being thought an ass-kisser within his own organization. One more obstacle to being normal, Jack reflected. Even his friends were now distancing themselves.\n\n\"What is it, Dan?\"\n\n\"Sorry to bother you, but we need guidance on who's running the investigation. There's a bunch of people running around on the Hill right now, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Unity of command,\" Jack observed sourly. He didn't have to ask why Murray was calling him. All those who could have decided this issue at a lower level were dead. \"What's the law say for this?\"\n\n\"It doesn't, really,\" Murray replied. The discomfort in his voice was clear. He didn't wish to bother the man who had once been his friend, and might still be, in less official circumstances. But this was business, and business had to be carried out.\n\n\"Multiple jurisdictions?\"\n\n\"To a fare-thee-well,\" Murray confirmed with an unseen nod.\n\n\"I guess we call it a terrorist incident. We have a tradition of that, you and I, don't we?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"That we do, sir.\"\n\n_Sir_ , Ryan thought. _Damn it_. But he had another decision to make. Jack scanned the room before replying.\n\n\"The Bureau is the lead agency on this. Everybody reports to you. Pick a good man to run things.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Dan?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Who's senior over at FBI?\"\n\n\"The Associate Director is Chuck Floyd. He's down at Atlanta to give a speech and\u2014\" Then there would be the Assistant Directors, all senior to Murray . . .\n\n\"I don't know him. I do know you. You're acting Director until I say otherwise.\" That shook the other side of the connection, Ryan immediately sensed.\n\n\"Uh, Jack, I\u2014\"\n\n\"I liked Shaw, too, Dan. You've got the job.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\nRyan replaced the phone and explained what he'd just done.\n\nPrice objected first: \"Sir, any attack on the President is under the jurisdiction of \" Ryan cut her off.\n\n\"They have more resources, and somebody has to be in command. I want this one settled as quickly as possible.\"\n\n\"We need a special commission.\" This was Arnie van Damm.\n\n\"Headed by whom?\" President Ryan asked. \"A member of the Supreme Court? Couple of senators and congressmen? Murray's a pro from way back. Pick a good\u2014whoever's the senior career member of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division will oversee the investigation. Andrea, find me the best investigator in the Service to be Murray's chief assistant. We don't have outsiders to use, do we? We run this from the inside. Let's pick the best people and let them run with it. Like, we act as though we trust the agencies who're supposed to do the work.\" He paused. \"I want this investigation to run fast, okay?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\" Agent Price bobbed her head, and Ryan caught an approving nod from Arnie van Damm. Maybe he was doing something right, Jack allowed himself to think. The satisfaction was short-lived enough. Against the wall in the far corner was a bank of television sets. All showed essentially the same picture now, and the flash of a photographer's strobe on all four sets caught the President's eyes. He turned to see four iterations of a body bag being carried down the steps of the Capitol building's west wing. It was one more cadaver to identify\u2014large or small, male or female, important or not, one couldn't tell from the rubberized fabric of the bag. There were only the strained, cold, sad faces of the firefighters carrying the damned thing, and that had attracted the attention of a nameless newspaper photographer and his camera and his flash, and so brought their President back to a reality he now, again, shrank from. The TV cameras followed the trio, two living, one dead, down the steps to an ambulance whose open doors revealed a pile of such bags. The one they were carrying was passed across gently, the professionals showing mercy and solicitude to the body which the living world had forsaken. Then they headed back up the steps to get the next one. The Situation Room fell silent as all eyes took in the same picture. A few deep breaths were taken, and eyes were too steely or too shocked as yet for tears as, two by two, they turned away to stare down at the polished oak of the table. A coffee cup scraped and rattled its way from a saucer. The slight noise only made the silence worse, for no one had the words to fill the void.\n\n\"What else has to be done now?\" Jack asked. It hit him so hard, the fatigue of the moment. The earlier racing of his heart in the face of death and in fear for his family and in agony at the loss was taking its toll on him now. His chest seemed empty, his arms weighed down, as though the sleeves of his coat were made of lead, and suddenly it was an effort just to hold up his head. It was 11:35, after a day that had begun at 4:10 in the morning, filled with interviews about a job he'd held for all of eight minutes before his abrupt promotion. The adrenaline rush which had sustained him was gone, its two-hour duration making him all the more exhausted for its length. He looked around with what seemed an important question:\n\n\"Where do I sleep tonight?\" Not here, Ryan decided instantly. Not in a dead man's bed on dead man's sheets a few feet from a dead man's kids. He needed to be with his own family. He needed to look at his own children, probably asleep by now, because children slept through anything; then to feel his wife's arms around him, because that was the one constant in Ryan's world, the single thing that he would never allow to change despite the cyclonic events that had assailed a life he had neither courted nor expected.\n\nThe Secret Service agents shared a look of mutual puzzlement, before Andrea Price spoke, taking command as was her nature and now her job.\n\n\"Marine Barracks? Eighth and I?\"\n\nRyan nodded. \"That'll do for now.\"\n\nPrice spoke into her radio microphone, which was pinned to the collar of her suit jacket. \"SWORDSMAN is moving. Bring the cars to the West Entrance.\"\n\nThe agents of the Detail rose. As one person they unbuttoned their coats, and as they passed out the door, hands reached for their pistols.\n\n\"We'll shake you loose at five,\" van Damm promised, adding, \"Make sure you get the sleep you need.\" His answer was a brief, empty stare, as Ryan left the room. There a White House usher put a coat on him\u2014whose it was or where it might have come from, Jack didn't think to ask. He climbed into the Chevy Suburban backseat, and it moved off at once, with an identical vehicle in front, and three more behind. Jack could have avoided the sights, but not the sounds, for sirens were still wailing beyond the armored glass, and it would have been cowardice to look away in any case. The fire glow was gone, replaced by the sparkling of lights from scores of emergency vehicles, some moving, most not, on or around the Hill. The police were keeping downtown streets clear, and the presidential motorcade headed rapidly east, ten minutes later arriving at the Marine Barracks. Here everyone was awake now, properly uniformed, and every Marine in sight had a rifle or pistol in evidence. The salutes were crisp.\n\nThe home of the commandant of the Marine Corps dated back to the early nineteenth century, one of the few official buildings that hadn't been burned by the British during their visit in 1814. But the commandant was dead. A widower with grown children, he'd lived here alone until this last night. Now a full colonel stood on the porch in pressed utilities with a pistol belt around his waist and a full platoon spread around the house.\n\n\"Mr. President, your family is topside and all secure,\" Colonel Mark Porter reported immediately. \"We have a full rifle company deployed on perimeter security, and another one is on the way.\"\n\n\"Media?\" Price asked.\n\n\"I didn't have any orders about that. My orders were to protect our guests. The only people within two hundred meters are the ones who belong here.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Colonel,\" Ryan said, not caring about the media, and heading for the door. A sergeant held it open, saluting as a Marine ought, and without thinking, Ryan returned it. Inside, a more senior NCO pointed him up the stairs\u2014this one also saluted, as he was under arms. It was clear to Ryan now that he couldn't go anywhere alone. Price, another agent, and two Marines followed him up the stairs. The second-floor corridor had two Secret Service agents and five more Marines. Finally, at 11:54, he walked into a bedroom to find his wife sitting.\n\n\"Hi.\"\n\n\"Jack.\" Her head turned. \"It's all true?\"\n\nHe nodded, then he hesitated before coming to sit next to Cathy. \"The kids?\"\n\n\"Asleep.\" A pause. \"They don't really know what's going on. I guess that makes four of us,\" she added.\n\n\"Five.\"\n\n\"The President's dead?\" Cathy turned to see her husband nod. \"I hardly got to know him.\"\n\n\"Good guy. Their kids are at the House. Asleep. I didn't know if I was supposed to do anything. So I came here.\" Ryan reached for his collar and pulled the tie loose. It seemed to take a considerable effort to do so. Better not to disturb the kids, he decided. It would have been hard to walk that far anyway.\n\n\"And now?\"\n\n\"I have to sleep. They get me up at five.\"\n\n\"What are we going to do?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Jack managed to get out of his clothes, hoping that the new day would contain some of the answers that the night merely concealed.\n**2**\n\n**PRE-DAWN**\n\n**I** T WAS TO BE EXPECTED that they'd be as exactly punctual as their electronic watches could make them. It seemed to Ryan that he'd hardly closed his eyes when the gentlest of taps at the door startled him off the pillow. There came the brief moment of confusion normal to the moment of awakening in any place other than one's own bed: _Where am I?_ The first organized thought told him that he'd dreamed a lot of things, and maybe\u2014But hard on the heels of that thought was the internal announcement that the worst of the dream was still real. He was in a strange place, and there was no other explanation for it. The tornado had swept him up into a whirling mass of terror and confusion, and then deposited him here, and _here_ was neither Kansas nor Oz. About the best thing he could say, after five or ten seconds of orientation, was that he didn't have the expected headache from sleep-deprivation, and that he wasn't quite so tired. He slid out from under the covers. His feet found the floor, and he made his way to the door.\n\n\"Okay, I'm up,\" he told the wooden door. Then he realized that his room didn't have an attached bathroom, and he'd have to open the door. That he did.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President.\" A young and rather earnest-looking agent handed him a bathrobe. Again, it was the job of an orderly, but the only Marine he saw in the corridor was wearing a pistol belt. Jack wondered if there had been another turf fight the night before between the Marine Corps and the Secret Service to see who had primacy of place in the protection of their new Commander-in-Chief. Then he realized with a start that the bathrobe was his own.\n\n\"We got some things for you last night,\" the agent explained in a whisper. A second agent handed over Cathy's rather tattered maroon housecoat. So, someone had broken into their home last night\u2014must have, Jack realized, as he hadn't handed over his keys to anyone; _and_ defeated the burglar alarm he'd installed a few years earlier. He padded back to the bed and deposited the housecoat there before heading back out. Yet a third agent pointed him down the hall to an unoccupied bedroom. Four suits were hanging on a poster bed, along with four shirts, all newly pressed by the look of them, along with half a score of ties and everything else. It wasn't so much pathos as desperation, Jack realized. The staff knew, or at least had an idea of what he was going through, and every single thing they could do to make things easier for him was being done with frantic perfection. Someone had even spit-shined his three pair of black shoes to Marine specifications. They'd never looked so good before, Ryan thought, heading for the bathroom\u2014where, of course, he found all of his things, even his usual bar of Zest soap. Next to _that_ was the skin-friendly stuff Cathy used. Nobody thought that being President was easy, but he was now surrounded by people who were grimly determined to eliminate every _small_ worry he might have.\n\nA warm shower helped loosen his muscles, and clouded the mirror with mist, which made things even better when he shaved. The usual morning mechanics were finished by 5:20, and Ryan made his way down the stairs. Outside, he saw through a window, a phalanx of camouflage-clad Marines stood guard on the quad, their breathing marked by little white puffs. Those inside braced to attention as he passed. Perhaps he and his family had gotten a few hours of sleep, but no one else had. That was something he needed to remember, Jack told himself as the smells drew him to the kitchen.\n\n\"Attention on deck!\" The voice of the sergeant-major of the Marine Corps was muted in deference to the sleeping children upstairs, and for the first time since dinner the previous night, Ryan managed a smile.\n\n\"Settle down, Marines.\" President Ryan headed toward the coffeepot, but a corporal beat him there. The correct proportions of cream and sugar were added to the mug\u2014again, someone had done some homework\u2014before she handed it across.\n\n\"The staff is in the dining room, sir,\" the sergeant-major told him.\n\n\"Thank you.\" President Ryan headed that way.\n\nThey looked the worse for wear, making Jack feel briefly guilty for his shower-fresh face. Then he saw the pile of documents they'd prepared.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President,\" Andrea Price said. People started to rise from their chairs. Ryan waved them back down and pointed to Murray.\n\n\"Dan,\" the President began. \"What do we know?\"\n\n\"We found the body of the pilot about two hours ago. Good ID. His name was Sato, as expected. Very experienced airplane driver. We're still looking for the co-pilot.\" Murray paused. \"The pilot's body is being checked for drugs, but finding that would be a surprise. NTSB has the flight recorder\u2014they got that around four, and it's being checked out right now. We've recovered just over two hundred bodies\u2014\"\n\n\"President Durling?\"\n\nPrice handled that one with a shake of the head. \"Not yet. That part of the building\u2014well, it's a mess, and they decided to wait for daylight to do the hard stuff.\"\n\n\"Survivors?\"\n\n\"Just the three people who we know to have been inside that part of the building at the time of the crash.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" Ryan shook his head as well. That information was important, but irrelevant. \"Anything important that we know?\"\n\nMurray consulted his notes. \"The aircraft flew out of Vancouver International, B.C. They filed a false flightplan for London Heathrow, headed east, departed Canadian airspace at 7:51 local time. All very routine stuff. We assume that he headed out a little while, reversed course, and headed southeast toward D.C. After that he bluffed his way through air-traffic control.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nMurray nodded to someone Ryan didn't know. \"Mr. President, I'm Ed Hutchins, NTSB. It's not hard. He claimed to be a KLM charter inbound to Orlando. Then he declared an emergency. When there's an in-flight emergency, our people are trained to get the airplane on the ground ASAP. We were up against a guy who knew all the right buttons to push. There's no way anyone could have prevented this,\" he concluded defensively.\n\n\"Only one voice on the tapes,\" Murray noted.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Hutchins continued, \"we have tapes of the radar tracks. He simulated an aircraft with control difficulties, asked for an emergency vector to Andrews, and got what he wanted. From Andrews to the Hill is barely a minute's flying time.\"\n\n\"One of our people got a Stinger off,\" Price said, with somewhat forlorn pride.\n\nHutchins just shook his head. It was the gesture for this morning in Washington. \"Against something that big, might as well have been a spitball.\"\n\n\"Anything from Japan?\"\n\n\"They're in a national state of shock.\" This came from Scott Adler, the senior career official in the State Department, and one of Ryan's friends. \"Right after you turned in, we got a call from the Prime Minister. It's not as though he hasn't had a bad week himself, though he sounds happy to be back in charge. He wants to come over to apologize personally to us. I told him we'd get back\u2014\"\n\n\"Tell him yes.\"\n\n\"You sure, Jack?\" Arnie van Damm asked.\n\n\"Does anybody think this was a deliberate act?\" Ryan countered.\n\n\"We don't know,\" Price responded first.\n\n\"No explosives aboard the aircraft,\" Dan Murray pointed out. \"If there had been\u2014\"\n\n\"I wouldn't be here.\" Ryan finished his coffee. The corporal refilled it at once. \"This is going to come down to one or two nuts, just like they all do.\"\n\nHutchins nodded tentative agreement. \"Explosives are fairly light. Even a few tons, given the carrying capacity of the 747-400, would not have compromised the mission at all, and the payoff would have been enormous. What we have here is a fairly straightforward crash. The residual damage was done by about half a load of jet fuel\u2014upwards of eighty tons. That was plenty,\" he concluded. Hutchins had been investigating airplane accidents for almost thirty years.\n\n\"It's much too early to draw conclusions,\" Price warned.\n\n\"Scott?\"\n\n\"If this was\u2014hell,\" Adler shook his head. \"This was not an act by their government. They're frantic over there. The newspapers are calling for the heads of the people who suborned the government in the first place, and Prime Minister Koga was nearly in tears over the phone. Put it this way, if somebody over there planned this, they'll find out for us.\"\n\n\"Their idea of due process isn't quite as stringent as ours,\" Murray added. \"Andrea is right. It is too early to draw conclusions, but all of the indications so far point to a random act, not a planned one.\" Murray paused for a moment. \"For that matter, we know the other side developed nuclear weapons, remember?\" Even the coffee turned cold with that remark.\n\nTHIS ONE HE found under a bush while moving a ladder from one part of the west face to another. The firefighter had been on duty for seven straight hours. He was numb by now. You can take only so much horror before the mind starts regarding the bodies and pieces as mere things. The remains of a child might have shaken him, or even a particularly pretty female, since this fireman was still young and single, but the body he'd accidentally stepped on wasn't one of those. The torso was headless, and parts of both legs were missing, but it was clearly the body of a man, wearing the shredded remains of a white shirt, with epaulets at the shoulders. Three stripes on each of them, he saw. He wondered what that meant, too tired to do much in the way of thinking. The fireman turned and waved to his lieutenant, who in turn tapped the arm of a woman wearing a vinyl FBI windbreaker.\n\nThis agent walked over, sipping at a plastic cup and wishing she could light a cigarette\u2014still too many lingering fumes for that, she grumbled.\n\n\"Just found this one. Funny place, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, funny.\" The agent lifted her camera and snapped a couple of pictures which would have the exact time electronically preserved on the frame. Next she took a pad from her pocket and noted the placement for body number four on her personal list. She hadn't seen many for her particular area of responsibility. Some plastic stakes and yellow tape would further mark the site; she started writing the tag for it. \"You can turn him over.\"\n\nUnder the body, they saw, was an irregularly shaped piece of flat glass\u2014or glass-like plastic. The agent snapped another photo, and through the viewfinder things somehow looked more interesting than with the naked eye. A glance up showed a gap in the marble balustrade. Another look around revealed a lot of small metallic objects, which an hour earlier she'd decided were aircraft parts, and which had attracted the attention of an NTSB investigator, who was now conferring with the same firedepartment officer with whom she'd been conferring a minute earlier. The agent had to wave three times to get his attention.\n\n\"What is it?\" The NTSB investigator was cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief.\n\nThe agent pointed. \"Check the shirt out.\"\n\n\"Crew,\" the man said, after putting them back on. \"Maybe a driver. What's this?\" It was his turn to point.\n\nThere was a strange delicacy to it. The white uniform shirt had a hole in it just to the right of the pocket. The hole was surrounded by a red-rust stain. The FBI agent held her flashlight close, and that showed that the stain was dried. The current temperature was just under twenty degrees. The body had been thrown into this harsh environment virtually at the moment of impact, and the blood about the severed neck was frozen, the purple-red color of some horrid plum sherbet. The blood on the shirt, she saw, had dried before having the chance to freeze.\n\n\"Don't move the body anymore,\" she told the fireman. Like most FBI agents, she'd been a local police officer before applying to the federal agency. It was the cold that made her face pale.\n\n\"First crash investigation?\" the NTSB man asked, seeing her face, and mistaking her pallor.\n\nShe nodded. \"Yes, it is, but it's not my first murder.\" With that she switched on her portable radio to call her supervisor. For this body she wanted a crime-scene team and full forensics.\n\nTHE TELEGRAMS CAME from every government in the world. Most were long, and all had to be read\u2014well, at least the ones from important countries. Togo could wait.\n\n\"Interior and Commerce are in town and standing by for a Cabinet meeting along with all the deputies,\" van Damm said while Ryan flipped through the messages, trying to read and listen at the same time. \"The Joint Chiefs, all the vices, are assembled, along with all the command CINCs to go over national security\u2014-\"\n\n\"Threat Board?\" Jack asked without looking up. Until the previous day he'd been President Durling's National Security Advisor, and it didn't seem likely that the world had changed too much in twenty-four hours.\n\nScott Adler handled the answer: \"Clear.\"\n\n\"Washington is pretty much shut down,\" Murray said. \"Radio and TV announcements for people to stay home, except for essential services. The D.C. National Guard is out. We need the warm bodies for the Hill, and the D.C. Guard is a military-police brigade. They might actually be useful. Besides, the firemen must be about worn out by now.\"\n\n\"How long before the investigation gives us hard information?\" the President asked.\n\n\"There's no telling that, Ja\u2014Mister\u2014\"\n\nRyan looked up from the official Belgian telegram. \"How long since we've known each other, Dan? I'm not God, okay? If you use my name once in a while, nobody's going to shoot you for it.\"\n\nIt was Murray's turn to smile. \"Okay. You can't predict with any major investigation. The breaks just come, sooner or later, but they do come,\" Dan promised. \"We have a good team of investigators out there.\"\n\n\"What do I tell the media?\" Jack rubbed his eyes, already tired from reading. Maybe Cathy was right. Maybe he did need glasses, finally. Before him was a printed sheet for his morning TV appearances, which had been selected by lot. CNN at 7:08, CBS at 7:20, NBC at 7:37, ABC at 7:50, Fox at 8:08, all from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where the cameras were already set up. Someone had decided that a formal speech was too much for him, and not really appropriate to the situation until he had something substantive to deliver. Just a quiet, dignified, and above all, intimate introduction of himself to people reading their papers and drinking their morning coffee.\n\n\"Softball questions. That's already taken care of,\" van Damm assured him. \"Answer them. Speak slowly, clearly. Look as relaxed as you can. Nothing dramatic. The people don't expect that. They want to know that somebody's in charge, answering the phones, whatever. They know it's too soon for you to say or do anything decisive.\"\n\n\"Roger's kids?\"\n\n\"Still asleep, I expect. We have the family members in town. They're at the White House now.\"\n\nPresident Ryan nodded without looking up. It was hard to meet the eyes of the people sitting around the breakfast table, especially on things like that. There was a plan for this, too. Movers were already on the way, probably. The Durling family\u2014what was left of it\u2014would be removed from the White House kindly but quickly, because it wasn't their house anymore. The country needed someone else in there, and that someone needed to be as comfortable as possible, and _that_ meant eliminating all visible reminders of the previous occupant. It wasn't brutal, Jack realized. It was business. They doubtless had a psychologist standing by to assist the family members with their grief, to \"process\" them through it as best as medical science allowed. But the country came first. In the unforgiving calculus of life, even so sentimental a nation as the United States of America had to move on. When it came time for Ryan to leave the White House, one way or another, the same thing would happen. There had been a time when an ex-President had walked down the hill to Union Station from his successor's inauguration to get a train ticket home. Now they used movers, and doubtless the family would fly out on Air Force transport, but go the children would, leaving behind schools and such friends as they had made, returning to California and whatever life their family members could reconstruct for them. Business or not, it _was_ cold, Ryan thought while staring mindlessly at the Belgian telegram. How much the better for everyone if the aircraft had not fallen on the Capitol building . . .\n\nOn top of all that, Jack had rarely been called upon to console the children of a man he knew, and damned sure hadn't ever taken their home away. He shook his head. It wasn't his fault, but it was his job.\n\nThe telegram, he saw on returning to it, noted that America had twice helped to save that small country within a space of less than thirty years, then protected it through the NATO alliance, that there was a bond of blood and friendship between America and a nation which most American citizens would have been taxed to locate on a globe. And that was true. Whatever the faults of his country, whatever her imperfections, however unfeeling some of her actions might seem to be, the United States of America had done the right thing more often than not. The world was far the better for it, and that was why business had to be carried out.\n\nINSPECTOR PATRICK O'DAY was grateful for the cold. His investigative career had stretched over almost thirty years, and this was not his first time in the presence of multiple bodies and their separated parts. His first had been in Mississippi one May, a Sunday school bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, with eleven victims. At least here the cold eliminated the ghastly odor of dead human bodies. He'd never really wanted a high rank in the Bureau\u2014\"inspector\" was a title with variable importance in the sense of seniority. In his case, much like Dan Murray, O'Day worked as a troubleshooter, often dispatched from Washington to assist on touchy ones. Widely recognized as a superb street agent, he'd been able to stick to real cases, large and small, instead of high-level supervision, which he found boring.\n\nAssistant Director Tony Caruso had gone along another track. He'd been special agent-in-charge of two field offices, risen to head the Bureau's Training Division, then taken over the Washington Field Office, which was sufficiently large to merit \"AD\" rank for its commander, along with one of the worst office locations in North America. Caruso enjoyed the power, prestige, higher pay, and reserved parking place which his status accorded him, but part of him envied his old friend, Pat, for his often dirty hands.\n\n\"What do you figure?\" Caruso asked, staring down at the body. They still needed artificial light. The sun was rising, but on the far side of the building.\n\n\"You can't take it to court yet, but this guy was dead hours before the bird came down.\"\n\nBoth men watched a gray-haired expert from Headquarters Laboratory Division hover over the body. There were all manner of tests to be carried out. Internal body temperature was one\u2014a computer model allowed for environmental conditions, and while the data would be far less reliable than either senior official would want, anything prior to 9:46 P.M. the previous evening would tell them what they needed to know.\n\n\"Knifed in the heart,\" Caruso said, shivering at the thought. You never really got over the brutality of murder. Whether a single person or a thousand, wrongful death was wrongful death, and the number just told you how many _individual_ records had been tied. \"We got the pilot.\"\n\nO'Day nodded. \"I heard. Three stripes, makes him the co-pilot, and he was murdered. So maybe it was just one guy.\"\n\n\"What's the crew on one of these?\" Caruso asked the NTSB supervisor.\n\n\"Two. The earlier ones had a flight engineer, but the new ones don't bother with it. For really long flights they might have a backup pilot, but these birds are pretty automated now, and the engines hardly ever break.\"\n\nThe lab tech stood and waved in the people with the body bag before joining the others. \"You want the early version?\"\n\n\"You bet,\" Caruso replied.\n\n\"Definitely dead before the crash took place. No bruising from the crash trauma. The chest wound is relatively old. There should be contusions from the seat belts, but there aren't, just scrapes and gouges, with damn little blood there. Not enough blood from the severed head. In fact, not enough blood anywhere in the remains right here. Let's say he was murdered in his seat in the aircraft. The belts hold him in a sitting position. Postmortem lividity drains all the blood down to the lower extremities, and the legs are torn off when the bird hits the building\u2014that's why there's so little blood. I got a lot of homework to do, but quick-and-dirty, he was dead three hours at least before the plane got here.\" Will Gettys handed over the wallet. \"Here's the guy's ID. Poor bastard. I guess he wasn't a part of this at all.\"\n\n\"What chance you could be wrong on any of that?\" O'Day had to ask.\n\n\"I'd be real surprised, Pat. An hour or two on time of death\u2014earlier rather than later\u2014yeah, that's possible. But there's nowhere near enough blood for this guy to have been alive at time of impact. He was dead before the crash. You can take that to the bank,\" Gettys told the other agents, knowing that his career rode on that one, and comfortable with the wager.\n\n\"Thank God for that,\" Caruso breathed. It did more than make things easier for the investigation. There would be conspiracy theories for the next twenty years, and the Bureau would proceed on its business, checking out every possibility, aided, they were sure, by the Japanese police, but one guy alone had driven this aircraft into the ground, and that made it extremely likely that this _grand mal_ assassination, like most of the others, was the work of a single man, demented or not, skilled or not, but in any case alone. Not that everyone would ever believe that.\n\n\"Get the information to Murray,\" Caruso ordered. \"He's with the President.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" O'Day walked over toward where his diesel pickup was parked. He probably had the only one in town, the inspector thought, with a police light plugged into the cigarette lighter. You didn't put something like this over a radio, encrypted or not.\n\nREAR ADMIRAL JACKSON changed into his blue mess jacket about ninety minutes out from Andrews, having managed about six hours of needed sleep after being briefed on things that didn't really matter very much. The uniform was the worse for having been packed in his travel bag, not that it would matter all that much, and the navy blue wool hid wrinkles fairly well anyway. His five rows of ribbons and wings of gold attracted the eye, anyway. There must have been an easterly wind this morning, for the KC-10 flew in from Virginia, and a muttered, \"Jesus, look at that!\" from a few rows aft commanded all in the forward part of the aircraft to crowd at the windows like the tourists they were not. Between the beginnings of dawn and the huge collection of lights on the ground it was plain that the Capitol building, the centerpiece of their country's first city, wasn't the same as it had been. Somehow this was more immediate and real than the pictures many of them had seen on TV before boarding the plane in Hawaii. Five minutes later, the aircraft touched down at Andrews Air Force Base. The senior officers found an aircraft of the Air Force's First Heli Squadron waiting to take them to the Pentagon's pad. This flight, lower and slower, gave them a better look still at the damage to the building.\n\n\"Jesus,\" Dave Seaton said over the intercom. \"Did anybody get out of there alive?\"\n\nRobby took his time before responding. \"I wonder where Jack was when it happened. . . .\" He remembered a British Army toast\u2014\"Here's to bloody wars and sickly seasons!\"\u2014which referred to a couple of sure ways for officers to be promoted into vacant slots. Surely quite a few people would fleet up from this incident, but none really wanted advancement this way, least of all his closest friend, somewhere down there in the wounded city.\n\nTHE MARINES LOOKED very twitchy, Inspector O'Day saw. He parked his truck on Eighth Street, S.E. The Marine Barracks were thoroughly barricaded. The curbs were fully blocked with parked cars, the gaps in the buildings doubly so. He dismounted his truck and walked toward an NCO; he was wearing his FBI windbreaker, and carrying his ID in his right hand.\n\n\"I have business inside, Sergeant.\"\n\n\"Who with, sir?\" the Marine asked, checking the photo against the face.\n\n\"Mr. Murray.\"\n\n\"You mind leaving your side arm here with us, sir? Orders,\" the sergeant explained.\n\n\"Sure.\" O'Day handed over his fanny pack, inside of which was his Smith & Wesson 1076 and two spare magazines. He didn't bother with a backup piece on headquarters duty. \"How many people you have around now?\"\n\n\"Two companies, near enough. There's another one setting up at the White House.\"\n\nThere was no better time to lock the barn door than after the horse got out, Pat knew. It was all the more grim since he was delivering the news that it was all unnecessary, but nobody would really care about that. The sergeant waved to a lieutenant who had nothing better to do\u2014the NCOs ran things like this\u2014than to conduct visitors across the quad. The lieutenant saluted for no more reason than being a Marine.\n\n\"Here to see Daniel Murray. He's expecting me.\"\n\n\"Please follow me, sir.\"\n\nThe inner corners of the buildings on the quad had yet another line of Marines, with a third on the quad itself, complete with a heavy machine gun. Two companies amounted to upwards of three hundred rifles. Yeah, President Ryan was fairly safe here, Inspector O'Day thought, unless some other maniac driving an airplane was around. Along the way, a captain wanted to compare the photo on his ID with the face again. It was being overdone. Somebody had to point that out before they started parking tanks on the street.\n\nMurray came out to meet him on the porch. \"How good is it?\"\n\n\"Pretty good,\" the inspector replied.\n\n\"Come on.\" Murray waved him in, and led his friend into the breakfast room. \"This is Inspector O'Day. Pat, I think you know who these people are.\"\n\n\"Good morning. I've been on the Hill, and we found something a little while ago that you need to know,\" he began, going on for another couple of minutes.\n\n\"How solid is it?\" Andrea Price asked.\n\n\"You know how this works,\" O'Day responded. \"It's preliminary, but it looks pretty solid to me, and we'll have good test data after lunch. The ID's already being run. That may be a little shaky, because we don't have a head to work with, and the hands are all ripped up. We're not saying that we've closed the case. We're saying that we have a preliminary indication that supports other data.\"\n\n\"Can I mention this on TV?\" Ryan asked everyone around the table.\n\n\"Definitely not,\" van Damm said. \"First, it's not confirmed. Second, it's too soon for anyone to believe it.\"\n\nMurray and O'Day traded a look. Neither of them was a politician. Arnie van Damm was. For them, information control was about protecting evidence so that a jury saw it clean. For Arnie, information control was about protecting people from things he didn't think they could understand until it was spin-controlled and spoon-fed, one little gulp at a time. Both wondered if Arnie had ever been a father, and if his infant had starved to death waiting for his strained carrots. Both noted next that Ryan gave his chief of staff a long look.\n\nThe well known black box really wasn't much more than a tape recorder whose leads trailed off to the cockpit. There they collected data from engine and other flight controls, plus, in this case, the microphones for the flight crew. Japan Airlines was a government-run carrier, and its aircraft had the latest of everything. The flight-data recorder was fully digitized. That made for rapid and clear transcription of the data. First of all, a senior technician made a clean, high-speed copy of the original metallic tape, which was then removed to a vault while he worked on the copy. Someone had thought to have a Japanese speaker standing by.\n\n\"This flight data looks like pure vanilla on first inspection. Nothing was broken on the aircraft,\" an analyst reported, scanning the data on a computer screen. \"Nice easy turns, steady on the engines. Textbook flight profile . . . until here\"\u2014he tapped the screen\u2013\"here he made a radical turn from zero-six-seven to one-niner-six . . . and settles right back down again until his penetration.\"\n\n\"No chatter in the cockpit at all.\" Another tech ran the voice segment of the tape back and forth, finding only routine traffic between the aircraft and various groundcontrol stations. \"I'm going to back it up to the beginning.\" The tape didn't really have a beginning. Rather it ran on a continuous loop, on this machine, because the 747 7 routinely engaged in long, over-water flights, forty hours long. It took several minutes for him to locate the end of the immediately preceding flight, and here he found the normal exchange of information and commands between two crewmen, and also between the aircraft and the ground, the former in Japanese and the latter in English, the language of international aviation.\n\nThat stopped soon after the aircraft had halted at its assigned jetway. There was a full two minutes of blank tape, and then the recording cycle began again when the flightdeck instruments were powered up during the preflight procedures. The Japanese speaker\u2014an Army officer in civilian clothes\u2014was from the National Security Agency.\n\nThe sound pickup was excellent. They could hear the clicks of _switches_ being thrown, and the background whirs of various instruments, but the loudest sound was the breathing of the co-pilot, whose identity was specified by the track on the recording tape.\n\n\"Stop,\" the Army officer said. \"Back it up a little. There's another voice, can't quite. . . Oh, okay. 'All ready, question mark.' Must be the pilot. Yeah, that was a door closing, pilot just came in. 'Preflight checklist complete . . . standing by for before-start checklist. . . .' Oh . . . oh, God. He killed him. Back it up again.\" The officer, a major, didn't see the FBI agent don a second pair of headphones.\n\nIt was a first for both of them. The FBI agent had seen a murder on a bank video system, but neither he nor the intelligence officer had ever heard one, a grunt from an impact, a gasp of breath that conveyed surprise and pain, a gurgle, maybe an attempt at speech, followed by another voice.\n\n\"What's that?\" the agent asked.\n\n\"Run it again.\" The officer's face stared at the wall. \" 'I am very sorry to do this.' \" That was followed by a few more labored breaths, then a long sigh. \"Jesus.\" The second voice came on a different vox channel less than a minute later, to notify the tower that the 747 was starting its engines.\n\n\"That's the pilot, Sato,\" the NTSB analyst said. \"The other voice must be the co-pilot.\"\n\n\"Not anymore.\" The only remaining noise over the copilot's channel was spill-over and background sounds.\n\n\"Killed him,\" the FBI agent agreed. They'd have to run the tape a hundred more times, for themselves and for others, but the conclusion would be the same. Even though the formal investigation would last for several months, the case was effectively closed less than nine hours after it had begun.\n\nTHE STREETS OF Washington were eerily empty. Normally at this time of day, Ryan knew all too well from his own experience, the nation's capital was gridlocked with the automobiles of federal employees, lobbyists, members of Congress and their staffers, fifty thousand lawyers and their secretaries, and all the private-industry service workers who supported them all. Not today. With every intersection manned by a radio car of the Metropolitan Police or a camouflage-painted National Guard vehicle, it was more like a holiday weekend, and there was actually more traffic heading away from the Hill than toward it, the curious turned away from their place of interest ten blocks from their intended destination.\n\nThe presidential procession headed up Pennsylvania. Jack was back in the Chevy Suburban, and there were still Marines leading and following the collection of Secret Service vehicles. The sun was up now. The sky was mainly clear, and it took a moment to realize that the skyline was wrong.\n\nThe 747 hadn't even harmed the trees, Ryan saw. It hadn't wasted its energy on anything but the target. Half a dozen cranes were working now, lifting stone blocks from the crater that had been the House chamber, depositing them onto trucks that were taking them off somewhere. Only a few fire trucks remained. The dramatic part was over for now. The grim part remained.\n\nThe rest of the city seemed intact enough at 6:40 A.M. Ryan gave the Hill a final sideways look through the darkened windows as his vehicle headed downhill on Constitution Avenue. If cars were being turned away, the usual morning collection of joggers was not. Perhaps they'd run to the Mall as part of the normal morning ritual, but there they stopped. Ryan watched their faces, some of which turned to see his vehicle pass before returning their gaze eastward, talking in little knots, pointing and shaking their heads. Jack noticed that the Secret Service agents in the Suburban with him turned to watch them, perhaps expecting one to pull a bazooka from under his sweats.\n\nIt was novel to drive so fast in Washington. Partly it was because a rapidly moving target was harder to hit, and partly because Ryan's time was far more valuable now, and not to be wasted. More than anything else it meant that he was speeding toward something he would just as soon have avoided. Only a few days before, he'd accepted Roger Durling's invitation for the vice-presidency, but he'd done so mainly as a means of relieving himself from government service once and for all. That thought evoked a pained look behind closed eyes. Why was it that he'd never been able to run away from anything? Certainly it didn't seem like courage. It actually seemed the reverse. He'd so often been afraid, afraid to say no and have people think him a coward. Afraid to do anything but what his conscience told him, and so often what it had told him had been something he hated to do or was afraid to do, but there wasn't ever an honorable alternative that he could exercise.\n\n\"It'll be okay,\" van Damm told him, seeing the look, and knowing what the new President had to be thinking.\n\n_No, it won't_ , Jack could not reply.\n**3**\n\n**SCRUTINY**\n\n**T** HE ROOSEVELT ROOM IS named for Teddy, and on the east wall was his Nobel Peace Prize for his \"successful\" mediation of the Russo-Japanese War. Historians could now say that the effort had only encouraged Japan's imperial ambitions, and so wounded the Russian soul that Stalin\u2014hardly a friend of the Romanov dynasty!\u2014had felt the need to avenge his country's humiliation, but that particular bequest of Alfred Nobel had always been more political than real. The room was used for medium-sized lunches and meetings, and was conveniently close to the Oval Office. Getting there proved to be harder than Jack had expected. The corridors of the White House are narrow for such an important building, and the Secret Service was out in force, though here their firearms were not in evidence. That was a welcome relief. Ryan walked past ten new agents over and above those who had formed his mobile guard force, which evoked a sigh of exasperation from SWORDSMAN. Everything was new and different now, and the protective Detail that in former times had seemed businesslike, sometimes even amusing, was just one more reminder that his life had been traumatically changed.\n\n\"Now what?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"This way.\" An agent opened a door, and Ryan found the presidential makeup artist. It was an informal arrangement, and the artist, a woman in her fifties, had everything in a large fake-leather case. As often as he'd done TV\u2014rather a lot in his former capacity as National Security Advisor\u2014it was something Jack had never come to love, and it required all of his self-control not to fidget as the liquid base was applied with a foam sponge, followed by powder and hair spray and fussing, all of which was done without a word by a woman who looked as though she might burst into tears at any moment.\n\n\"I liked him, too,\" Jack told her. Her hands stopped, and their eyes met.\n\n\"He was always so nice. He hated this, just like you do, but he never complained, and he usually had a joke to tell. Sometimes I'd do the children just for fun. They liked it, even the boy. They'd play in front of the TV, and the crews would give them tapes and . . .\"\n\n\"It's okay.\" Ryan took her hand. Finally he'd met someone on the staff who wasn't all business, and who didn't make him feel like an animal in the zoo. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Mary Abbot.\" Her eyes were running, and she wanted to apologize.\n\n\"How long have you been here?\"\n\n\"Since right before Mr. Carter left.\" Mrs. Abbot wiped her eyes and steadied down.\n\n\"Well, maybe I should ask you for advice,\" he said gently.\n\n\"Oh, no, I don't know anything about that.\" She managed an embarrassed smile.\n\n\"Neither do I. I guess I'll just have to find out.\" Ryan looked in the mirror. \"Finished?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mrs. Abbot.\"\n\nThey sat him in an armed wooden chair. The lights were already set up, which brought the room temperature into the low eighties, or so it felt. A technician clipped a two-headed microphone to his tie with movements as delicate as Mrs. Abbot's, all because there was a Secret Service agent hovering over every member of the crew, with Andrea Price hovering over them all from the doorway. Her eyes were narrow and suspicious, despite the fact that every single piece of gear in the room had been inspected, every visitor scanned continuously by eyes as casually intense and thorough as a surgeon's. One really could make a pistol out of non-metallic composites\u2014the movie was right about that\u2014but pistols were still bulky. The palpable tension of the Detail carried over to the TV crew, who kept their hands in the open, and only moved them slowly. The scrutiny of the Secret Service could rattle almost anyone.\n\n\"Two minutes,\" the producer said, cued by his earpiece. \"Just went into commercial.\"\n\n\"Get any sleep last night?\" CNN's chief White House correspondent asked. Like everyone else, he wanted a quick and clear read on the new President.\n\n\"Not enough,\" Jack replied, suddenly tense. There were two cameras. He crossed his legs and clasped his hands in his lap in order to avoid nervous movements. How, exactly, was he supposed to appear? Grave? Grief-stricken? Quietly confident? Overwhelmed? It was a little late for that now. Why hadn't he asked Arnie before?\n\n\"Thirty seconds,\" the producer said.\n\nJack tried to compose himself. His physical posture would keep his body still. _Just answer the questions. _You've_ been doing that long enough._\n\n\"Eight minutes after the hour,\" the correspondent said directly into the camera behind Jack. \"We're here in the White House with President John Ryan.\n\n\"Mr. President, it's been a long night, hasn't it?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it has,\" Ryan agreed.\n\n\"What can you tell us?\"\n\n\"Recovery operations are under way, as you know. President Durling's body has not yet been found. The investigation is going on under the coordination of the FBI.\"\n\n\"Have they discovered anything?\"\n\n\"We'll probably have a few things to say later today, but it's too early right now.\" Despite the fact that the correspondent had been fully briefed on that issue, Ryan saw the disappointment in his eyes.\n\n\"Why the FBI? Isn't the Secret Service empowered to\u2014\"\n\n\"This is no time for a turf fight. An investigation like this has to go on at once. Therefore, I decided that the FBI would be the lead agency\u2014under the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of other federal agencies. We want answers, we want them fast, and this seems the best way to make that happen.\"\n\n\"It's been reported that you've appointed a new FBI Director.\"\n\nJack nodded. \"Yes, Barry, I have. For the moment I've asked Daniel E. Murray to step in as acting Director. Dan is a career FBI agent whose last job was special assistant to Director Shaw. We've known each other for many years. Mr. Murray is one of the best cops in government service.\"\n\n\"MURRAY?\"\n\n\"A policeman, supposed to be an expert on terrorism and espionage,\" the intelligence officer replied.\n\n\"Hmm.\" He went back to sipping his bittersweet coffee.\n\n\"WHAT CAN YOU tell us about preparation for\u2014I I mean, for the next several days?\" the correspondent asked next.\n\n\"Barry, those plans are still being made. First and foremost, we have to let the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies do their job. There will be more information coming out later today, but it's been a long and difficult night for a lot of people.\" The correspondent nodded at that, and decided it was time for a human-interest question.\n\n\"Where did you and your family sleep? I know it wasn't here.\"\n\n\"The Marine Barracks, at Eighth and I,\" Ryan answered.\n\n\"Oh, _shit_ , Boss,\" Andrea Price muttered, just outside the room. Some media people had found out, but the Service hadn't confirmed it to anyone, and most news organizations had reported that the Ryan family was at \"an undisclosed location.\" Well, they'd be sleeping somewhere else tonight. And the location would not be disclosed this time. Damn.\n\n\"Why there?\"\n\n\"Well, it had to be somewhere, and that seemed convenient. I was a Marine myself once, Barry,\" Jack said quietly.\n\n\"REMEMBER WHEN WE blew them up?\"\n\n\"A fine night.\" The intelligence officer remembered watching through binoculars from the top of the Beirut Holiday Inn. He'd helped set that mission up. The only hard part, really, had been selecting the driver. There was an odd cachet about the American Marines, something seemingly mystical about them that this Ryan's nation clung to. But they died just like any other infidel. He wondered with amusement if there might be a large truck in Washington that one of his people might buy or lease. . . . He set the amusing thought aside. There was work to be done. It wasn't practical, anyway. He'd been to Washington more than once, and the Marine Barracks was one of the places he'd examined. It was too easily defended. Too bad, really. The political significance of the target made it highly attractive.\n\n\"NOT SMART,\" DING observed over his morning coffee.\n\n\"Expect him to hide?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"You know him, Daddy?\" Patricia asked.\n\n\"Yes, as a matter of fact. Ding and I used to look after him back when we were SPOs. I knew his father, once . . . ,\" John added without thinking, which was very unusual for him.\n\n\"What's he like, Ding?\" Patsy asked her fiance, the ring still fresh on her finger.\n\n\"Pretty smart,\" Chavez allowed. \"Kinda quiet. Nice guy, always has a kind word. Well, usually.\"\n\n\"He's been tough when he had to be,\" John observed with an eye to his partner and soon-to-be son-in-law, which thought almost occasioned a chill. Then he saw the look in his daughter's eyes, and the chill became quite real. Damn.\n\n\"That's a fact,\" the junior man agreed.\n\nTHE LIGHTS MADE HIM sweat under his makeup, and Ryan fought the urge to scratch the itches on his face. He managed to keep his hands still, but his facial muscles began a series of minor twitches that he hoped the camera didn't catch.\n\n\"I'm afraid I can't say, Barry,\" he went on, holding his hands tightly together. \"It's just too soon to respond substantively to a lot of questions right now. When we're able to give hard answers, we will. Until then, we won't.\"\n\n\"You have a big day ahead,\" the CNN reporter said sympathetically.\n\n\"Barry, we all do.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President.\" He waited until the light went off and he heard a voice-over from the Atlanta headquarters before speaking again. \"Good one. Thank you.\"\n\nVan Damm came in then, pushing Andrea Price aside as he did so. Few could touch a Secret Service agent without seriously adverse consequences, much less bustle one, but Arnie was one who could.\n\n\"Pretty good. Don't do anything different. Answer the questions. Keep your answers short.\"\n\nMrs. Abbot came in next to check Ryan's makeup. A gentle hand touched his forehead while the other adjusted his hair with a small brush. Even for his high-school prom\u2014what _was_ her name? Ryan asked himself irrelevantly\u2014neither he nor anyone else had been so fussy about his coarse black hair. Under other circumstances it would have been something to laugh about.\n\nThe CBS anchor was a woman in her middle thirties, and proof positive that brains and looks were not mutually exclusive.\n\n\"Mr. President, what is left of the government?\" she asked after a couple of conventional get-acquainted questions.\n\n\"Maria\"\u2014Ryan had been instructed to address each reporter by the given name; he didn't know why, but it seemed reasonable enough\u2014\"as horrid as the last twelve hours have been for all of us, I want to remind you of a speech President Durling gave a few weeks ago: America is still America. All of the federal executive agencies will be operating today under the leadership of the sitting deputy secretaries, and\u2014\"\n\n\"But Washington\u2014\"\n\n\"For reasons of public safety, Washington is pretty well shut down, that is true\u2014\" She cut him off again, less from ill manners than from the fact that she only had four minutes to use, and she wanted to use them.\n\n\"The troops in the street . . . ?\"\n\n\"Maria, the D.C. police and fire departments had the roughest night of all. It's been a long, cold night for those people. The Washington, D.C., National Guard has been called out to assist the civilian agencies. That also happens after hurricanes and tornadoes. In fact, that's really a municipal function. The FBI is working with the mayor to get the job done.\" It was Ryan's longest statement of the morning, and almost left him breathless, he was wound so tightly. That was when he realized that he was squeezing his hands to the point that his fingers were turning white, and Jack had to make a conscious effort to relax them.\n\n\"LOOK AT HIS arms,\" the Prime Minister observed. \"What do we know of this Ryan?\"\n\nThe chief of her country's intelligence service had a file folder in his lap which he had already memorized, having had the luxury of a working day to familiarize himself with the new chief of state.\n\n\"He's a career intelligence officer. You know about the incident in London, and later in the States some years ago\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she noted, sipping her tea and dismissing that bit of history. \"So, a spy . . .\"\n\n\"A well-regarded one. Our Russian friends think very highly of him indeed. So does Century House,\" said the army general, whose training went back to the British tradition. Like his Prime Minister, he'd been educated at Oxford, and, in his case, Sandhurst. \"He is highly intelligent. We have reason to believe that in his capacity as Durling's National Security Advisor he was instrumental in controlling American operations against Japan\u2014\"\n\n\"And us?\" she asked, her eyes locked on the screen. How convenient it was to have communications satellites\u2014and the American networks were all global now. Now you didn't have to spend a whole day in an aircraft to go and see a rival chief of state\u2014and then under controlled circumstances. Now she could see the man under pressure and gauge how he responded to it. Career intelligence officer or not, he didn't look terribly comfortable. Every man had his limitations.\n\n\"Undoubtedly, Prime Minister.\"\n\n\"He is less formidable than your information would suggest,\" she told her adviser. _Tentative_ , _uncomfortable, rattled . . ._ _out of his depth._\n\n\"WHEN DO YOU expect to be able to tell us more about what happened?\" Maria asked.\n\n\"I really can't say right now. It's just too soon. Some things can't be rushed, I'm afraid,\" Ryan said. He vaguely grasped that he'd lost control of this interview, short as it was, and wasn't sure why. It never occurred to him that the TV reporters were lined up outside the Roosevelt Room like shoppers in a checkout line, that each one wanted to ask something new and different after the first question or two\u2014and that each wanted to make an impression, not on the new President, but on the viewers, the unseen people behind the cameras who watched each morning show out of loyalty which the reporters had to strengthen whenever possible. As gravely wounded as the country was, reporting the news was the business which put food on their family tables, and Ryan was just one more subject of that business. That was why Arnie's earlier advice on how they'd been instructed on what questions to ask had been overly optimistic, even coming from an experienced political pro. The only really good news was that the interviews were all time-limited\u2014in this case by local news delivered by the various network affiliates at twenty-five minutes after the hour. Whatever tragedy had struck Washington, people _needed_ to know about local weather and traffic in the pursuit of their daily lives, a fact perhaps lost on those inside the D.C. Beltway, though not lost on the local stations across the country. Maria was more gracious than she felt when the director cut her off. She smiled at the camera\u2014\n\n\"We'll be back.\"\n\n\u2014and Ryan had twelve minutes until NBC had at him. The coffee he'd had at breakfast was working on him now, and he needed to find a bathroom, but when he stood, the microphone wire nearly tripped him.\n\n\"This way, Mr. President,\" Price pointed to the left, down the corridor, then right toward the Oval Office, Jack realized too late. He stopped cold on entering the room. It was still someone else's in his mind, but a bathroom was a bathroom, and in this case, it was actually part of a sitting room off the office itself. Here, at least, there was privacy, even from the Praetorian Guard, which followed him like a pack of collies protecting a particularly valuable sheep. Jack didn't know that when there was someone in this particular head, a light on the upper door frame lit up, and that a peephole in the office door allowed the Secret Service to know even that aspect of their President's daily life.\n\nWashing his hands, Ryan looked in the mirror, always a mistake at times like this. The makeup made him appear more youthful than he was, which wasn't so bad, but also phony, the false ruddiness which his skin had never had. He had to fight off the urge to wipe it all off before coming back out to face NBC. This anchor was a black male, and on shaking hands with him, back in the Roosevelt Room, it was of some consolation that his makeup was even more grotesque than his own. Jack was oblivious to the fact that the TV lights so affected the human complexion that to appear normal on a television screen, one had to appear the clown to non-electronic eyes.\n\n\"What will you be doing today, Mr. President?\" Nathan asked as his fourth question.\n\n\"I have another meeting with acting FBI Director Murray\u2014actually we'll be meeting twice a day for a while. I also have a scheduled session with the national security staff, then with some of the surviving members of Congress. This afternoon, we have a Cabinet meeting.\"\n\n\"Funeral arrangements?\" The reporter checked off another question from the list in his lap.\n\nRyan shook his head. \"Too soon. I know it's frustrating for all of us, but these things do take time.\" He didn't say that the White House Protocol Office had fifteen minutes of his afternoon to brief him on what was being planned.\n\n\"It was a Japanese airliner, and in fact a government owned carrier. Do we have any reason to suspect\u2014\"\n\nRyan leaned forward at that one: \"No, Nathan, we don't. We've had communications with the Japanese government. Prime Minister Koga has promised full cooperation, and we are taking him at his word. I want to emphasize that hostilities with Japan are completely over. What happened was a horrible mistake. That country is working to bring to justice the people who caused that conflict to take place. We don't yet know how everything happened\u2014last night, I mean\u2014but 'don't know' means _don't know_. Until we do, I want to discourage speculation. That can't help anything, but it can hurt, and there's been enough hurt for a while. We have to think about healing now.\"\n\n_\"DOMO ARIGATO_ ,\" MUTTERED the Japanese Prime Minister. It was the first time he'd seen Ryan's face or heard his voice. Both were younger than he'd expected, though he'd been informed of Ryan's particulars earlier in the day. Koga noted the man's tension and unease, but when he had something to say other than an obvious answer to an inane question\u2014why did the Americans tolerate the insolence of their media?\u2014the voice changed somewhat, as did the eyes. The difference was subtle, but Koga was a man accustomed to noting the smallest of nuance. It was one advantage of growing up in Japan, and all the more so for having spent his adult life in politics.\n\n\"He was a formidable enemy,\" a Foreign Ministry official noted quietly. \"And in the past he showed himself to be a man of courage.\"\n\nKoga thought about the papers he'd read two hours earlier. This Ryan had used violence, which the Japanese Prime Minister abhorred. But he had learned from two shadowy Americans who had probably saved his life from his own countrymen that violence had a place, just as surgery did, and Ryan had taken violent action to protect others, suffered in the process, then done so again before returning to peaceful pursuits. Yet again he'd displayed the same dichotomy, against Koga's country, fighting with skill and ruthlessness, then showing mercy and consideration. A man of courage . . .\n\n\"And honor, I think.\" Koga paused for a moment. So strange that there should already be friendship between two men who had never met, and who had only a week before been at war. \"He is samurai.\"\n\nTHE ABC CORRESPONDENT, female and blond, had the name of Joy, which for some reason struck Ryan as utterly inappropriate to the day, but it was probably the name her parents had given her, and that was that. If Maria from CBS had been pretty, Joy was stunning, and perhaps a reason ABC had the top-rated morning show. Her hello handshake was warm and friendly\u2014and something else that almost made Jack's heart stop.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President,\" she said softly, in a voice better suited to a dinner party than a morning TV news show.\n\n\"Please.\" Ryan waved her to the chair opposite his.\n\n\"Ten minutes before the hour. We're here in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to speak with President John Patrick Ryan,\" her voice cooed to the camera. \"Mr. President, it's been a long and difficult night for our country. What can you tell us?\"\n\nRyan had it down sufficiently pat that the answer came out devoid of conscious thought. His voice was calm and slightly mechanical, and his eyes locked on hers, as he'd been told to do. In this case it wasn't hard to concentrate on her liquid brown eyes, though looking so deeply into them this early in the morning was disconcerting. He hoped it didn't show too much.\n\n\"Mr. President, the last few months have been very traumatic for all of us, and last night was only more so. You will be meeting with your national security staff in a few minutes. What are your greatest concerns?\"\n\n\"Joy, a long time ago an American President said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Our country is as strong today as yesterday\u2014\"\n\n\"YES, THAT IS true.\" Daryaei had met Ryan once before. He'd been arrogant and defiant then, in the way of a dog standing before his master, snarling and brave\u2014or seemingly so. But now the master was gone, and here was the dog, eyes fixed on a beautiful but sluttish woman, and it surprised Daryaei that his tongue wasn't out and drooling. Fatigue had something to do with it. Ryan was tired; that was plain to see. What else was he? He was like his country, the Ayatollah decided. Outwardly strong, perhaps. Ryan was a young man still, broad of shoulder, erect of posture. His eyes were clear, and his voice firm, but when asked of his country's strength, he spoke of fear and the fear of fear. Interesting.\n\nDaryaei knew well enough that strength and power were things of the mind more than the body, a fact as true of nations as of men. America was a mystery to him, as were America's leaders. But how much did he have to know? America was a godless country. That was why this Ryan boy talked of fear. Without God, both the country and the man lacked direction. Some had said that the same was true of Daryaei's country, but if that were true at all, it was for a different reason, he told himself.\n\nLike people all over the world, Daryaei concentrated on Ryan's face and voice. The answer to the first question was obviously mechanical. Whatever America knew about this glorious incident, they weren't telling. Probably they didn't know very much, but that was to be understood. His had been a long day, and Daryaei had used it profitably. He'd called his Foreign Ministry and had the chief of the America desk (actually a whole department in the official building in Tehran) order a paper on the working of the American government. The situation was even better than Daryaei had hoped. They could make no new laws, could levy no new taxes, could spend no new money until such time as their Congress was reconstituted, and that would require time. Almost all of their ministries were headless. This Ryan boy\u2014Daryaei was seventy-two-was the American government, and he was not impressed with what he saw.\n\nThe United States of America had thwarted him for years. So much power. Even after reducing its might following the downfall of the Soviet Union\u2014the \"lesser Satan\"\u2014America could do things possible for no other nation. All it needed was political resolve, and though that was rare enough, the threat of it was ever daunting. Every so often the country would rally behind a single purpose, as had happened not so long before against Iraq, with consequences so startlingly decisive as compared with what little his own country had managed in a shooting war that had lasted nearly a full decade. That was the danger of America. But America was a thinner reed now\u2014or rather, America was, if not quite headless, then nearly so. The strongest body was rendered crippled and useless by an injury to its neck, the more so from one to its head. . . .\n\nJust one man, Daryaei thought, not hearing the words from the television now. The words didn't matter now. Ryan wasn't saying anything of substance, but telling the man half a world away much with his demeanor. The new head of that country had a neck that became the focus of Daryaei's gaze. Its symbolism was clear. The technical issue, after all, was to complete the separation of head from body, and all that stood between the two was the neck.\n\n\"TEN MINUTES TO the next one,\" Arnie said after Joy left to catch her car to the airport. The Fox reporter was in makeup.\n\n\"How am I doing?\" Jack disconnected the mike wire before standing this time. He needed to stretch his legs.\n\n\"Not bad,\" van Damm judged, charitably. He might have said something else to a career politician, but a real politico would have had to field really tough questions. It was as though a golfer were playing against his handicap instead of a tour-pro partner, and that was fair, as far as it went. Most important, Ryan needed to have his confidence built up if he were to function at all. The presidency was hard enough at the best of times, and while every holder of that office had wished more than once to be rid of Congress and other agencies and departments as well, it was Ryan who would have to learn how indispensable the whole system of government was\u2014and he'd learn the hard way.\n\n\"I have to get used to a lot, don't I?\" Jack leaned against the wall outside the Roosevelt Room, looking up and down the corridor.\n\n\"You'll learn,\" the chief of staff promised him.\n\n\"Maybe so.\" Jack smiled, not realizing that the activity of the morning\u2014the recent activity\u2014had given his mind something to shunt aside the other circumstances of the day. Then a Secret Service agent handed him a slip of paper.\n\nHOWEVER UNFAIR IT was to the other families, it was to be understood that the first priority had to be the body of President Durling. No fewer than four mobile cranes had been set up on the west side of the building, operating under the direction of hard-hatted construction foremen standing with a team of skilled workers on the floor of the chamber, much too close for safety, but OSHA wasn't around this morning. The only government inspectors who mattered were Secret Service\u2014the FBI might have had overall jurisdiction, but no one would have stood between them and their own mournful quest. There was a doctor and a team of paramedics standing by as well, on the unlikely chance that someone might have survived despite everything to the contrary. The real trick was coordinating the actions of the cranes, which dipped into the crater\u2014that's how it looked\u2014like a quartet of giraffes drinking from the same water hole, never quite banging together due to the skill of the operators.\n\n\"Look here!\" The construction supervisor pointed. In the blackened claw of a dead hand was an automatic pistol. It had to be Andy Walker, principal agent of Roger Durling's Detail. The last frame of TV had shown him within feet of his President, racing to spirit him off the podium, but too late to accomplish anything more than his own death in the line of duty.\n\nThe next dip of the next crane. A cable was affixed around a block of sandstone, which rose slowly, twirling somewhat with the torsion of the steel cable. The remainder of Walker's body was now visible, along with the trousered legs of someone else. All around both were the splintered and discolored remains of the oak podium, even a few sheets of charred paper. The fire hadn't really reached through the pile of stones in this part of the ruined building. It had burned too rapidly for that.\n\n\"Hold it!\" The construction man grabbed the arm of the Secret Service agent and wouldn't let him move. \"They're not going anywhere. It's not worth getting killed for. Couple of more minutes.\" He waited for one crane to clear the path for the next, and waved his arms, telling the operator how to come in, where to dip, and when to stop. Two workers slipped a pair of cables around the next stone block, and the foreman twirled his hand in the air. The stone lifted.\n\n\"We have JUMPER,\" the agent said into his microphone. The medical team moved in at once, over the warning shouts of several construction men, but it was plain from twenty feet away that their time was wasted. His left hand held the binder containing his last speech. The falling stones had probably killed him before the fire had reached in far enough to singe his hair. Much of the body was misshapen from crushing, but the suit and the presidential tieclasp and the gold watch on his wrist positively identified President Roger Durling. Everything stopped. The cranes stood still, their diesel engines idling while their operators sipped their coffee or lit up smokes. A team of forensic photographers came in to snap their rolls of film from every possible angle.\n\nThey took their time. Elsewhere on the floor of the chamber, National Guardsmen were bagging bodies and carrying them off\u2014they'd taken over this task from the firefighters two hours before\u2014but for a fifty-foot circle, there were only Secret Service, performing their last official duty to JUMPER, as they had called the President in honor of his service as a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne. It had gone on too long for tears, though for all of the assembled agents those would come again, more than once. When the medics withdrew, when the photographers were satisfied, four agents in SECRET SERVICE windbreakers made their way down over the remaining stone blocks. First they lifted the body of Andy Walker, whose last conscious act had been to protect his \"principal,\" and lowered it gently into the rubberized bag. The agents held it up so that another pair of their fellows could lift it clear and take it on its way. The next task was President Durling. This proved difficult. The body was askew in death, and the cold had frozen it. One arm was at a right angle to the rest of the body and would not fit into the bag. The agents looked at one another, not knowing what to do about it. The body was evidence and could not be tampered with. Perhaps more important was their horror at hurting a body already dead, and so President Durling went into the bag with the arm outstretched like Captain Ahab's. The four agents carried it out, making their way out of the chamber, around all of the fallen blocks, and then down toward an ambulance waiting for this single purpose. That tipped off the press photographers near and far, who snapped away, or zoomed in their TV cameras to capture the moment.\n\nThe moment cut into Ryan's Fox interview, and he watched the scene on the monitor that sat on the table. Somehow in his mind that made it official. Durling really was dead, and now he really was the President, and that was that. The camera in the room caught Ryan's face as it changed, as he remembered how Durling had brought him in, trusted him, leaned on him, guided him. . . .\n\nThat was it, Jack realized. He'd always had someone to lean on before. Sure, others had leaned on him, asked his opinion, given him his head in a crisis, but there was always someone to come back to, to tell him he'd done the right thing. He could do that now, but what he'd receive in return would be just opinions, not judgments. The judgments were his now. He'd hear all manner of things. His advisers would be like lawyers, some arguing one way, some arguing another, to tell him how he was both right and wrong at the same time, but when it was all over, the decision was his alone.\n\nPresident Ryan's hand rubbed his face, heedless of the makeup, which he smeared. He didn't know that what Fox and the other networks were sending out was splitscreened now, since all had access to the pool feed from the Roosevelt Room. His head shook slightly from side to side in the way of a man who had to accept something he didn't like, his face too blank now for sadness. Behind the Capitol steps, the cranes started dipping again.\n\n\"Where do we go from here?\" the Fox reporter asked. That question wasn't on his list. It was just a human reaction to a human scene. The cut to the Hill had bitten deep into the allotted time for the interview, and for another subject they would have carried over into the next segment, but the rules in the White House were adamantine.\n\n\"Quite a lot of work to be done,\" Ryan answered.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President. Fourteen minutes after the hour.\"\n\nJack watched the light on the TV camera blink off. The originating producer waited a few seconds before waving his hand, and the President detached his microphone and cable. His first press marathon was over. Before leaving the room, he looked more carefully at the cameras. Earlier in his life he'd taught classes in history, and more recently he'd delivered briefings, but all of those had gone to a live audience whose eyes he could see and read, and from their reaction he would adjust his delivery somewhat, speeding up or slowing down, maybe tossing in a little humor if circumstances allowed, or repeating something to make his point clearer. Now his intimate chats would be directed to a _thing_. Something else not to like. Ryan left the room, while all over the world, people evaluated what they'd seen of the new American President. Television commentators would discuss him in fifty or more countries while he found the bathroom again.\n\n\"THIS IS THE best thing that's happened to our country since Jefferson.\" The older man rated himself a serious student of history. He liked Thomas Jefferson for his statement about how a country governed least was governed best, which was about all he knew of the adages from the Sage of Monticello.\n\n\"And it took a Jap to do it, looks like.\" The statement was trailed by an ironic snort. Such an event could even invalidate his closely held racism. Couldn't have that, could he?\n\nThey'd been up all night\u2014it was 5:20 local time\u2014watching the TV news coverage, which hadn't stopped. The newsies, they noted, looked even more wasted than this Ryan guy. Time zones did have an advantage. Both had stopped drinking beer around midnight, and had switched to coffee two hours later when they'd both started dozing. Couldn't have that. What they saw, switching through channels downloaded on a large satellite dish outside the cabin, was like some sort of fantastic telethon, except this one wasn't about raising money for crippled children or AIDS victims or nigger schools. This one was fun. All those Washington bastards, must have been burned to a crisp, most of them.\n\n\"Bureaucrat barbecue,\" Peter Holbrook said for the seventeenth time since 11:30, when he'd come up with his summation of the event. He'd always been the creative one in the movement.\n\n\"Aw, _shit_ , Pete!\" gasped Ernest Brown, spilling some of his coffee into his lap. It was _still_ funny, enough so that he didn't leap immediately to his feet from the uncomfortable feeling that resulted from his slip.\n\n\"Has been a long night,\" Holbrook allowed, laughing himself. They'd watched President Durling's speech for a couple of reasons. For one, all of the networks had preempted normal programs, as was usually the case for an important event; but the truth of the matter was that their satellite downlink gave them access to a total of 117 channels, and they didn't even have to switch the set off to avoid input from the government they and their friends despised. The deeper reason was that they cultivated their anger at their government, and usually watched such speeches\u2014both men caught at least an hour a day of C-SPAN-1 and\u20132\u2014to fuel those feelings, trading barbed comments back and forth every minute of a presidential speech.\n\n\"So, who is this Ryan guy, really?\" Brown asked, yawning.\n\n\"Another 'crat, looks like. A bureaucrat talking bureaucrap.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" judged Brown. \"With nothing to back him up, Pete.\"\n\nHolbrook turned and looked at his friend. \"It's really som'thin', isn't it?\" With that observation he got up and walked to the bookshelves that walled the south side of his den. His copy of the Constitution was a well-thumbed pamphlet edition which he read as often as he could, so as to improve his understanding of the _intent_ of the drafters. \"You know, Pete, there's nothing in here to cover a situation like this.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\nHolbrook nodded. \"Really.\"\n\n\"No shit.\" That required some thought, didn't it?\n\n\"MURDERED?\" PRESIDENT RYAN asked, still wiping the makeup off his face with wet towelettes of the same sort he'd used to clean off baby bottoms. At least it made his face feel clean when he'd finished.\n\n\"That's the preliminary indication, both from a cursory examination of the body and from a quick-and-dirty examination of the cockpit tapes.\" Murray flipped through the notes faxed to him only twenty minutes before.\n\nRyan leaned back in his chair. Like much else in the Oval Office, it was new. On the credenza behind him, all of Durling's family and personal photos had been removed. The papers on the desk had been taken away for examination by the presidential secretarial staff. What remained or what had been substituted were accoutrements from White House stores. The chair at least was a good one, expensively designed to protect the back of its occupant, and it would soon be substituted for a custom designed chair fitted to his own back by a manufacturer who performed the service for free and\u2014remarkably\u2014without public fanfare. Sooner or later he'd have to work in this place, Jack had decided a few minutes earlier. The secretaries were here, and it wasn't fair to make them trek across the building, up and down stairs. Sleeping in this place was another issue entirely\u2014for the moment; that, too, had to change, didn't it? So, he thought, staring across the desk at Murray, _murder_.\n\n\"Shot?\"\n\nDan shook his head. \"Knife right in the heart, only one penetration. The wound looked to our agent to be from a thin blade, like a steak knife. From the cockpit tapes, it appears that it was done prior to takeoff. Looks like we can time-stamp that pretty exactly. From just prior to engine start-up to the moment of impact, the only voice on the tapes is the pilot. His name was Sato, a very experienced command pilot. The Japanese police have gotten a pile of data to us. It would seem that he lost a brother and a son in the war. The brother commanded a destroyer that got sunk with all hands. The son was a fighter pilot who cracked up on landing after a mission. Both on the same day or near enough. So, it was personal. Motive and opportunity, Jack,\" Murray allowed himself to say, for they were almost alone in the office. Andrea Price was there, too. She didn't quite approve; she had not yet been told exactly how far back the two men went.\n\n\"That's pretty fast on the ID,\" Price observed.\n\n\"It has to be firmed up,\" Murray agreed. \"We'll do that with DNA testing just to be sure. The cockpit tape is good enough for voice-print analysis, or so they told our agent. The Canadians have radar tapes tracking the aircraft out of their airspace, so confirming the timing of the event is simple. We have the aircraft firmly ID'd from Guam to Japan to Vancouver, and into the Capitol building. Like they say, it's all over but the shouting. There _will_ be a lot of shouting. Mr. President\"\u2014Andrea Price felt better this time\u2013\"it will be at least two months before we have every lead and tidbit of information nailed down, and I suppose it's possible that we could be wrong, but for all practical purposes, in my opinion and that of our senior agents at the scene, this case is well on its way to being closed.\"\n\n\"What could make you wrong?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Potentially quite a few things, but there are practical considerations. For this to be anything other than the act of a single fanatic\u2014no, that's not fair, is it? One very angry man. Anyway, for this to be a conspiracy, we have to assume detailed planning, and that's hard to support. How would they know the war was going to be lost, how did they know about the joint session\u2014and if it were planned as a war operation, like the NTSB guy said, hell, ten tons of high explosives would have been simple to load aboard.\"\n\n\"Or a nuke,\" Jack interjected.\n\n\"Or a nuke.\" Murray nodded. \"That reminds me: the Air Force attach\u00e9 is going to see their nuclear-weapons-fabrication facility today. It took the Japanese a couple of days to figure out where it was. We're having a guy who knows the things flying over there right now.\" Murray checked his notes. \"Dr. Woodrow Lowell\u2014oh, I know him. He runs the shop at Lawrence Livermore. Prime Minister Koga told our ambassador that he wants to hand over the damned things PDQ and get them the hell out of his country.\"\n\nRyan turned his chair around. The windows behind him faced the Washington Monument. That obelisk was surrounded by a circle of flagpoles, all of whose flags were at half-staff. But he could see that people were lined up for the elevator ride to the top. Tourists who'd come to D.C. to see the sights. Well, they were getting a bargain of sorts, weren't they? The Oval Office windows, he saw, were incredibly thick, just in case one of those tourists had a sniper rifle tucked under his coat. . . .\n\n\"How much of this can we release?\" President Ryan asked.\n\n\"I'm comfortable with releasing a few things,\" Murray responded.\n\n\"You sure?\" Price asked.\n\n\"It's not as though we have to protect evidence for a criminal trial. The subject in the case is dead. We'll chase down all the possibilities of co-conspirators, but the evidence we let go today will not compromise that in any way. I'm not exactly a fan of publicizing criminal evidence, but the people out there want to know something, and in a case like this one, you let them have it.\"\n\n_Besides_ , Price thought, _it makes the Bureau_ _look_ _good_. With that silent observation, at least one government agency started returning to normal.\n\n\"Who's running this one at Justice?\" she asked instead.\n\n\"Pat Martin.\"\n\n\"Oh? Who picked him?\" she asked. Ryan turned to see the discourse on this one.\n\nMurray almost blushed. \"I guess I did. The President said to pick the best career prosecutor, and that's Pat. He's been head of the Criminal Division for nine months. Before that he ran Espionage. Ex-Bureau. He's a particularly good lawyer, been there almost thirty years. Bill Shaw wanted him to become a judge. He was talking to the AG about it only last week.\"\n\n\"You sure he's good enough?\" Jack asked. Price decided to answer.\n\n\"We've worked with him, too. He's a real pro, and Dan's right, he's real judge material, tough as hell, but also extremely fair. He handled a mob counterfeiting case my old partner ramrodded in New Orleans.\"\n\n\"Okay, let him decide what to let out. He can start talking to the press right after lunch.\" Ryan checked his watch. He'd been President for exactly twelve hours.\n\nCOLONEL PIERRE ALEXANDRE, U.S. Army, retired, still looked like a soldier, tall and thin and fit, and that didn't bother the dean at all. Dave James immediately liked what he saw as his visitor took his seat, liked him even more for what he'd read in the man's c.v., and more still for what he'd learned over the phone. Colonel Alexandre\u2014\"Alex\" to his friends, of which he had many\u2014was an expert in infectious disease who'd spent twenty productive years in the employ of his government, divided mainly between Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington and Fort Detrick in Maryland, with numerous field trips sprinkled in. Graduate of West Point and the University of Chicago Medical School, Dr. James saw. Good, his eyes again sweeping over the residency and other professional-experience entries. The list of published articles ran to eight single-spaced pages. Nominated for a couple of important prizes, but not lucky yet. Well, maybe Hopkins could change that. His dark eyes were not especially intense at the moment. By no means an arrogant man, Alexandre knew who and what he was\u2014better yet, knew that Dean James knew.\n\n\"I know Gus Lorenz,\" Dean James said with a smile. \"We interned together at Peter Brent Brigham.\" Which Harvard had since consolidated into Brigham and Women's.\n\n\"Brilliant guy,\" Alexandre agreed in his best Creole drawl. It was generally thought that Gus's work on Lassa and Q fever put him in the running for a Nobel Prize. \"And a great doc.\"\n\n\"So, why don't you want to work with him in Atlanta? Gus tells me he wants you pretty bad.\"\n\n\"Dean James\u2014\"\n\n\"Dave,\" the Dean said.\n\n\"Alex,\" the colonel responded. There was something to be said for civilian life, after all. Alexandre thought of the dean as a three-star equivalent. Maybe four stars. Johns Hopkins carried a lot of prestige. \"Dave, I've worked in a lab damned near all my life. I want to treat patients again. CDC would just be more of the same. Much as I like Gus\u2014we did a lot of work together in Brazil back in 1987; we get along just fine,\" he assured the dean. \"I am _tired_ of looking at slides and printouts all the time.\" And for the same reason he'd turned down one hell of an offer from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, to head up one of their new labs. Infectious diseases were a coming thing in medicine, and both men hoped that it wasn't too late. Why the _hell_ , James wondered, hadn't this guy made general-officer rank? Maybe politics, the dean thought. The Army had that problem, too, just as Hopkins did. But their loss . . .\n\n\"I talked about you with Gus last night.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Not that it was surprising. At this level of medicine everyone knew everyone else.\n\n\"He says just hire you on the spot\u2014\"\n\n\"Good of him,\" Alexandre chuckled.\n\n\"\u2014before Harry Tuttle at Yale gets you for his lab.\"\n\n\"You know Harry?\" Yep, and everybody knew what everybody else was doing, too.\n\n\"Classmates here,\" the dean explained. \"We both dated Wendy. He won. You know, Alex, there isn't much for me to ask you.\"\n\n\"I hope that's good.\"\n\n\"It is. We can start you off as an associate professor working under Ralph Forster. You'll have a lot of lab work\u2014good team to work with. Ralph has put a good shop together in the last ten years. But we're starting to get a lot of clinical referrals. Ralph's getting a little old to travel so much, so you can expect to get around the world some. You'll also be in charge of the clinical side in, oh, six months to get your feet good and wet . . . ?\"\n\nThe retired colonel nodded thoughtfully. \"That's just about right. I need to relearn a few things. Hell, when does learning ever stop?\"\n\n\"When you become an administrator, if you're not careful.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, now you know why I hung up the green suit. They wanted me to command up a hospital, you know, punch the ticket. Damn it, I know I'm good in a lab, okay? I'm very good in a lab. But I signed on to treat people once in a while\u2014and to teach some, naturally, but I like to see sick people and send them home healthy. Once upon a time somebody in Chicago told me that's what the job was.\"\n\nIf this was a selling job, Dean James thought, then he'd taken lessons from Olivier. Yale could offer him about the same post, but this one would keep Alexandre close to Fort Detrick, and ninety minutes' flying time to Atlanta, and close to the Chesapeake Bay\u2014in the resume, it said Alexandre liked to fish. Well, that figured, growing up in the Louisiana bayous. In sum total, that was Yale's bad luck. Professor Harold Tuttle was as good as they came, maybe a shade better than Ralph Forster, but in five years or so Ralph would retire, and Alexandre here had the look of a star. More than anything else, Dean James was in the business of recruiting future stars. In another reality, he would have been the G.M. for a winning baseball team. So, that was settled. James closed the folder on his desk.\n\n\"Doctor, welcome to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n**4**\n\n**OJT**\n\n**T** HE REST OF THE DAY WAS a blur. Even while living through it, Ryan knew that he'd never really remember more than snippets. His first experience with computers had been as a student at Boston College. Before the age of personal computing, he'd used the dumbest of dumb terminals\u2014a teletype\u2014to communicate with a mainframe somewhere, along with other BC students, and more still from other local schools. That had been called \"time-sharing,\" just one more term from a bygone age when computers had cost a million or so dollars for performance that now could be duplicated in the average man's watch. But the term still applied to the American presidency, Jack learned, where the ability to pursue a single thought through from beginning to end was the rarest of luxuries, and work consisted of following various intellectual threads from one separate meeting to the next, like keeping track of a whole group of continuing TV series from episode to episode, trying not to confuse one with another, and knowing that avoiding that error was totally impossible.\n\nAfter dismissing Murray and Price, it had begun in earnest.\n\nRyan's introduction began with a national-security briefing delivered by one of the national intelligence officers assigned to the White House staff. Here, over a period of twenty-six minutes, he learned what he already knew because of the job he'd held until the previous day. But he had to sit through it anyway, if for no other reason than to get a feel for the man who would be one of his daily briefing team. They were all different. Each one had an individual perspective, and Ryan had to understand the nuances peculiar to the separate voices he'd be hearing.\n\n\"So, nothing on the horizon for now?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Nothing we see at the National Security Council, Mr. President. You know the potential trouble spots as well as I do, of course, and those change on a day-to-day basis.\" The man hedged with the grace of someone who'd been dancing to this particular brand of music for years. Ryan's face didn't change, only because he'd seen it before. A real intelligence officer didn't fear death, didn't fear finding his wife in bed with his best friend, didn't fear any of the normal vicissitudes of life. A national intelligence officer _did_ fear being found wrong on anything he said in his official capacity. To avoid that was simple, however: you never took a real stand on any single thing. It was a disease not limited to elected officials, after all. Only the President _had_ to take a stand, and it was his good fortune to have such trained experts to supply him with the information he needed, wasn't it?\n\n\"Let me tell you something,\" Ryan said after a few seconds of reflection.\n\n\"What is that, sir?\" the NIO asked cautiously.\n\n\"I don't just want to hear what you know. I also want to hear what you and your people _think_. You are responsible for what you know, but I'll take the heat for acting on what you think. I've been there and done that, okay?\"\n\n\"Of course, Mr. President.\" The man allowed himself a smile that masked his terror at the prospect. \"I'll pass that along to my people.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Ryan dismissed the man, knowing then and there that he needed a National Security Advisor he could trust, and wondering where he'd get one.\n\nThe door opened as though by magic to let the NIO out\u2014a Secret Service agent had done that, having watched through the spy hole for most of the briefing. The next in was a DOD briefing team.\n\nThe senior man was a two-star who handed over a plastic card.\n\n\"Mr. President, you need to put this in your wallet.\"\n\nJack nodded, knowing what it was before his hands touched the orange plastic. It looked like a credit card, but on it was a series of number groups. . . .\n\n\"Which one?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"You decide, sir.\"\n\nRyan did so, reading off the third such group twice. There were two commissioned officers with the general, a colonel and a major, both of whom wrote down the number group he'd selected and read it back to him twice. President Ryan now had the ability to order the release of strategic nuclear weapons.\n\n\"Why is this necessary?\" he asked. \"We trashed the last ballistic weapons last year.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, we still have cruise missiles which can be armed with W-80 warheads, plus B-61 gravity bombs assigned to our bomber fleet. We need your authorization to enable the Permissible Action Links\u2014the PALs\u2014and the idea is that we enable them as early as possible, just in case \"\n\nRyan completed the sentence: \"I get taken out early.\"\n\n_You're really important now, Jack_ , a nasty little voice told him. _Now you can initiate_ _a nuclear_ _attack_. \"I hate those goddamned things. Always have.\"\n\n\"You aren't supposed to like them, sir,\" the general sympathized. \"Now, as you know, the Marines have the VMH-1 helicopter squadron that's always ready to get you out of here and to a place of safety at a moment's notice, and . . .\"\n\nRyan listened to the rest while his mind wondered if he should do what Jimmy Carter had done at this point: _Okay_ , _let's_ _see, then. Tell them_ _I want_ _them to pick_ _me up_ Now. Which presidential command had turned into a major embarrassment for a lot of Marines. But he couldn't do that now, could he? It would get out that Ryan was a paranoid fool, not someone who wanted to see if the system really worked the way people said it would. Besides, today VMH-1 would definitely be spun up, wouldn't it?\n\nThe fourth member of the briefing team was an Army warrant officer in civilian clothes who carried a quite ordinary-looking briefcase known as \"the football,\" inside of which was a binder, inside of which was the attack plan\u2014actually a whole set of them . . .\n\n\"Let me see it.\" Ryan pointed. The warrant hesitated, then unlocked the case and handed over the navy blue binder, which Ryan flipped open.\n\n\"Sir, we haven't changed it since\u2014\"\n\nThe first section, Jack saw, was labeled MAJOR ATTACK OPTION. It showed a map of Japan, many of whose cities were marked with multicolored dots. The legend at the bottom showed what the dots meant in terms of delivered megatonnage; probably another page would quantify the predicted deaths. Ryan opened the binder rings and removed the whole section. \"I want these pages burned. I want this MAO eliminated immediately.\" That merely meant that it would be filed away in some drawer in Pentagon War Plans, and also in Omaha. Things like this never died.\n\n\"Sir, we have not yet confirmed that the Japanese have destroyed all of their launchers, nor have we confirmed the neutralization of their weapons. You see\u2014\"\n\n\"General, that's an order,\" Ryan said quietly. \"I can give them, you know.\"\n\nThe man's back braced to attention. \"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\nRyan flipped through the rest of the binder. Despite his previous job, what he found was a revelation. Jack had always avoided too-intimate knowledge of the damned things. He'd never expected them to be used. After the terrorist incident in Denver and all the horror that had swept the surface of the planet in its aftermath, statesmen across continents and political beliefs had indulged themselves in a collective think about the weapons under their control. Even during the shooting war with Japan just ended, Ryan had known that somewhere, some team of experts had concocted a plan for a nuclear retaliatory strike, but he'd concentrated his efforts at making it unnecessary, and it was a source of considerable pride to the new President that he'd never even contemplated implementing the plan whose summary was still in his left hand. LONG RIFLE, he saw, was the code name. Why did the names have to be like that, virile and exciting, as though for something that one could be proud of?\n\n\"What's this one? LIGHT Switch **. . .** ?\"\n\n\"Mr. President,\" the general answered, \"that's a method of using an EMP attack. Electromagnetic pulse. If you explode a device at very high altitude, there's nothing\u2014no air, actually\u2014to absorb the initial energy of the detonation and convert it into mechanical energy\u2014no shock wave, that is. As a result all the energy goes out in its original electromagnetic form. The resulting energy surge is murder on power and telephone lines. We always had a bunch of weapons fused for high-altitude burst in our SIOPs for the Soviet Union. Their telephone system was so primitive that it would have been easy to destroy. It's a cheap mission-kill, won't really hurt anybody on the ground.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Ryan closed the binder and handed it back to the warrant officer, who immediately locked the now lighter document away. \"I take it there's nothing going on which is likely to require a nuclear strike of any kind?\"\n\n\"Correct, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"So, what's the point of having this man sitting outside my office all the time?\"\n\n\"You can't predict all possible contingencies, can you, sir?\" the general asked. It must have been difficult for him to deliver the line with a straight face, Ryan realized, as soon as the shock went away.\n\n\"I guess not,\" a chastised President replied.\n\nTHE WHITE HOUSE Protocol Office was headed by a lady named Judy Simmons, who'd been seconded to the White House staff from the State Department four months earlier. Her office in the basement of the building had been busy since just after midnight, when she'd arrived from her home in Burke, Virginia. Her thankless job was to prepare arrangements for what would be the largest state funeral in American history, a task on which over a hundred staff members had already kibitzed, and it was not yet lunchtime.\n\nThe list of all the dead still had to be compiled, but from careful examination of the videotapes it was largely known who was in the chamber, and there was biographical information on all of them\u2014married or single, religion, etc.\u2014from which to make the necessary, if preliminary, plans. Whatever was finally decided, Jack would be the master of the grim ceremony, and had to be kept informed of every step of the planning. A funeral for thousands, Ryan thought, most of whom he hadn't known, for most of whose as yet unrecovered bodies waited wives and husbands and children.\n\n\"National Cathedral,\" he saw, turning the page. The approximate numbers of religious affiliations had been compiled. That would determine the clergy to take the various functions in the ecumenical religious service.\n\n\"That's where such ceremonies are usually carried out, Mr. President,\" a very harried official confirmed. \"There will not be room for all of the remains\"\u2014she didn't say that one White House staffer had suggested an outdoor memorial service at RFK Stadium in order to accommodate all the victims \"but there will be room for the President and Mrs. Durling, plus a representative sampling of the congressional victims. We've contacted eleven foreign governments on the question of the diplomats who were present. We also have a preliminary list of foreign government representatives who will be coming in to attend the ceremony.\" She handed over that sheet as well.\n\nRyan scanned it briefly. It meant that after the memorial service he'd be meeting \"informally\" with numerous chiefs of state to conduct \"informal\" business. He'd need a briefing page for each meeting, and in addition to whatever they all might ask or want, every one would be checking him out. Jack knew how that worked. All over the world, presidents, prime ministers, and a few lingering dictators would now be reading briefing documents of their own\u2014who was this John Patrick Ryan, and what can we expect of him? He wondered if they had a better idea of the answer than he did. Probably not. Their NIOs wouldn't be all that different from his, after all. And so a raft of them would come over on government jets, partly to show respect for President Durling and the American government, partly to eyeball the new American President, partly for domestic political consumption at home, and partly because it was expected that they should do so. And so this event, horrific as it was for uncounted thousands, was just one more mechanical exercise in the world of politics. Jack wanted to cry out in rage, but what else was there to do? The dead were dead, and all his grief could not bring them back, and the business of his country and others would go on.\n\n\"Have Scott Adler go over this, will you?\" Somebody would have to determine how much time he should spend with the official visitors, and Ryan wasn't qualified to do that.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"What sort of speeches will I have to deliver?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"We have our people working on that for you. You should have preliminary drafts by tomorrow afternoon,\" Mrs. Simmons replied.\n\nPresident Ryan nodded and slid the papers into his out-pile. When the Chief of Protocol left, a secretary came in\u2014he didn't know this lady's name\u2014with a pile of telegrams, the leftovers from Eighth and I that he hadn't gotten to, plus another sheet of paper that showed his activities for the day, prepared without his input or assistance. He was about to grumble about that when she spoke.\n\n\"We have over ten thousand telegrams and e-mails from\u2014well, from citizens,\" she told him.\n\n\"Saying what?\"\n\n\"Mainly that they're praying for you.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Somehow that came as a surprise, and a humbling one at that. But would God listen?\n\nJack went back to reading the official messages, and the first day went on.\n\nTHE COUNTRY HAD essentially come to a halt, even as its new President struggled to come to terms with his new job. Banks and financial markets were closed, as were schools and many businesses. All the television networks had moved their broadcast headquarters to the various Washington bureaus in a haphazard process that had them all working together. A gang of cameras sited around the Hill kept up a continuous feed of recovery operations, while reporters had to keep talking, lest the airwaves be filled with silence. Around eleven that morning, a crane removed the remains of the 747's tail, which was deposited on a large flatbed trailer for transport to a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. That would be the site for what was called the \"crash investigation,\" for want of a better term, and cameras tracked the vehicle as it threaded its way along the streets. Two of the engines went out shortly thereafter in much the same way.\n\nVarious \"experts\" helped fill the silence, speculating on what had happened and how. This was difficult for everyone involved, as there had been few leaks as yet those who were trying to find out what had happened were too busy to talk with reporters on or off the record, and though the journalists couldn't say it, their most fertile source of leaks lay in ruin before thirty-four cameras. That gave the experts little to say. Witnesses were interviewed for their recollections\u2014there was no tape of the inbound aircraft at all, much to the surprise of everyone. The tail number of the aircraft was known\u2014it could hardly be missed, painted as it was on the wreckage of the aircraft, and that was as easily checked by reporters as by federal authorities. The ownership of the aircraft by Japan Airlines was immediately confirmed, along with the very day the aircraft had rolled out of the Boeing plant near Seattle. Officials of that company submitted to interviews, and along the way it was determined that the 747-400 (PIP) aircraft weighed just over two hundred tons empty, a number doubled with the mass of fuel, passengers, and baggage it could pull into the air. A pilot with United Airlines who was familiar with the aircraft explained to two of the networks how a pilot could approach Washington and then execute the death dive, while a Delta colleague did the same with the others. Both airmen were mistaken in some of the particulars, none of them important.\n\n\"But the Secret Service is armed with antiaircraft missiles, isn't it?\" one anchor asked.\n\n\"If you've got an eighteen-wheeler heading for you at sixty miles an hour, and you shoot out one of the tires on the trailer, that doesn't stop the truck, does it?\" the pilot answered, noting the look of concentrated intelligence on the face of a highly paid journalist who understood little more than what appeared on his TelePrompTer. \"Three hundred tons of aircraft doesn't just _stop_ , okay?\"\n\n\"So, there was no way to stop it?\" the anchor asked with a twisted face.\n\n\"None at all.\" The pilot could see that the reporter didn't understand, but he couldn't come up with anything to clarify matters further.\n\nThe director, in his control room off of Nebraska Avenue, changed cameras to follow a pair of Guardsmen bringing another body down the steps. An assistant director was keeping an eye on that set of cameras, trying to maintain a running tally of the number of bodies removed. It was now known that the bodies of President and Mrs. Durling had been recovered and were at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for autopsy\u2014required by law for wrongful death\u2014and disposition. At network headquarters in New York, every foot of videotape of or about Durling was being organized and spliced for presentation throughout the day. Political colleagues were being sought out and interviewed. Psychologists were taken on to explain how the Durling children could deal with the trauma, and then expanded their horizons to talk about the impact of the event on the country as a whole, and how people could deal with it. About the only thing not examined on the television news was the spiritual aspect; that many of the victims had believed in God and attended church from time to time was not worthy of air time, though the presence of many people in churches was deemed newsworthy enough for three minutes on one network\u2014and then, because each was constantly monitoring the others for ideas, that segment was copied by the others over the next few hours.\n\nIT ALL CAME down to this, really, Jack knew. The numbers only added individual examples, identical to this one in magnitude and horror. He'd avoided it for as much of the day as had been possible, but finally his cowardice had run out.\n\nThe Durling kids hovered between the numbness of denial, and terror of a world destroyed before their eyes as they'd watched their father on TV. They'd never see Mom and Dad again. The bodies were far too damaged for the caskets to be open. No last good-byes, no words, just the traumatic removal of the foundation that held up their young lives. And how were children supposed to understand that Mom and Dad weren't just Mom and Dad, but were had been\u2014something else to someone else, and for that reason, their deaths had been necessary to someone who hadn't known or cared about the kids?\n\nFamily members had descended on Washington, most of them flown in by the Air Force from California. Equally shocked, they nevertheless, in the presence of children, had to summon from within themselves the strength to make things somewhat easier for the young. And it gave them something to do. The Secret Service agents assigned to JUNIPER and JUNIOR were probably the most traumatized of all. Trained to be ferociously protective of any \"principal,\" the agents who looked after the Durling kids\u2014more than half were women\u2014carried the additional burden of the normal solicitude any human held for any child, and none of them would have hesitated a microsecond to give his or her life to protect the youngsters\u2013in the knowledge that the rest of the Detail would have weapons out and blazing. The men and women of this sub-detail had played with the kids, had bought them Christmas and birthday presents, had helped with homework. Now they were saying good-bye, to the kids, to the parents, and to colleagues. Ryan saw the looks on their faces, and made a mental note to ask Andrea if the Service would assign a psychologist to them.\n\n\"No, it didn't hurt.\" Jack was sitting down so that the kids could look level into his eyes. \"It didn't hurt at all.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Mark Durling said. The kids were immaculately dressed. One of the family members had thought it important that they be properly turned out to meet their father's successor. Jack heard a gasp of breath, and his peripheral vision caught the face of an agent\u2014this one a man\u2014who was on the edge of losing it. Price grabbed his arm and moved him toward the door, before the kids could take note of it.\n\n\"Do we stay here?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jack assured him. It was a lie, but not the sort to hurt anyone. \"And if you need anything, anything at all, you can come and see me, okay?\"\n\nThe boy nodded, doing his best to be brave, and it was time to leave him to his family. Ryan squeezed his hand, treating him like the man he ought not to have become for years, for whom the duties of manhood were arriving all too soon. The boy needed to cry, and Ryan thought he needed to do that alone, for now.\n\nJack walked out the door into the oversized hall of the bedroom level. The agent who'd left, a tall, rugged-looking black man, was sobbing ten feet away. Ryan went over to him.\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\n_\"Fuck_ \u2014sorry\u2014I mean\u2014shit!\" the agent shook his head, ashamed at the display of emotion. His father had been lost in an Army training accident at Fort Rucker, Price knew, when he was twelve years old, and Special Agent Tony Wills, who'd played tight end at Grambling before joining the Service, was unusually good with kids. At times like this, strengths often became weaknesses.\n\n\"Don't apologize for being human. I lost my mom and dad, too. Same time,\" Ryan went on, his voice dreamy and uneven with fatigue. \"Midway Airport, 737 landed short in snow. But I was all grown up when it happened.\"\n\n\"I know, sir.\" The agent wiped his eyes and stood erect with a shudder. \"I'll be okay.\"\n\nRyan patted him on the shoulder and headed for the elevator. To Andrea Price: \"Get me the hell out of here.\"\n\nThe Suburban headed north, turning left onto Massachusetts Avenue, which led to the Naval Observatory and the oversized Victorian-gingerbread barn which the country provided for the sitting Vice President. Again, it was guarded by Marines, who let the convoy through. Jack walked into the house. Cathy was waiting at the entry. She only needed one look.\n\n\"Tough one?\"\n\nAll Ryan could do was nod. He held her tight, knowing that his tears would start soon. His eyes caught the knot of agents around the periphery of the entry hall of the house, and it occurred to him that he'd have to get used to them, standing like impassive statues, present in the most private of moments.\n\n_I hate this job_.\n\nBUT BRIGADIER GENERAL Marion Diggs loved his. Not everyone had stood down. As the Marine Barracks in Washington had gone to a high level of activity, then to be augmented from the sprawling base at Quantico, Virginia, so other organizations remained busy or became busier, for they were people who were not really allowed to sleep anyway\u2014at least not all of them at once. One of these organizations was at Fort Irwin, California. Located in the high Mojave Desert, the base really did sprawl, over an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. The landscape was bleak enough that ecologists had to struggle to find an ecology there among the scrawny creosote bushes, and over drinks even the most dedicated of that profession would confess to finding the surface of the moon far more interesting. Not that they hadn't made his life miserable, Diggs thought, fingering his binoculars. There was a species of desert tortoise, which was distinguished from a turtle somehow or other (the general didn't have a clue), and which soldiers had to protect. To take care of that, his soldiers had collected all the tortoises they could find and then relocated them to an enclosure large enough that the reptiles probably didn't notice the fence at all. It was known locally as the world's largest turtle bordello. With that out of the way, whatever other wildlife existed at Fort Irwin seemed quite able to look after itself. The occasional coyote appeared and disappeared, and that was that. Besides, coyotes were not endangered.\n\nThe visitors were. Fort Irwin was home to the Army's National Training Center. The permanent residents of that establishment were the OpFor, \"the opposing force.\" Originally two battalions, one of armor and the other of mechanized infantry, the OpFor had once styled itself the \"32nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment,\" a _Soviet_ designation, because at its opening in the 1980s, the NTC had been designed to teach the U.S. Army how to fight, survive, and prevail in a battle against the Red Army on the plains of Europe. The soldiers of the \"32nd\" dressed in Russian-style uniforms, drove Soviet-like equipment (the real Russian vehicles had proved too difficult to maintain, and American gear had been modified to Soviet shapes), employed Russian tactics, and took pride in kicking the hell out of the units that came to play on their turf. It wasn't strictly fair. The OpFor lived here and trained here, and hosted regular units up to fourteen times per year, whereas the visiting team might be lucky to come here once in four years. But nobody had ever said war was fair.\n\nTimes had changed with the demise of the Soviet Union, but the mission of the NTC had not. The OpFor had recently been enlarged to three battalions\u2014now called \"squadrons,\" because the unit had assumed the identity of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse Cav\u2014and simulated brigade or larger enemy formations. The only real concession to the new political world was that they didn't call themselves Russians anymore. Now they were \"Krasnovians,\" a word, however, derived from _krasny,_ Russian for \"red.\"\n\nGeneral-Lieutenant Gennady Tosefovich Bondarenko knew most of this\u2014the turtle bordello was something on which he'd not been briefed; his initial tour of the base had taken care of that, however\u2014and was as excited as he had ever been.\n\n\"You started in Signal Corps?\" Diggs asked. The base commander was terse of speech and efficient of movement, dressed in desert-camouflage fatigues called \"chocolate chip\" from their pattern. He, too, had been fully briefed, though, like his visitor, he had to pretend that he hadn't been.\n\n\"Correct.\" Bondarenko nodded. \"But I kept getting into trouble. First Afghanistan, then when the Mudje raided into Soviet Union. They attacked a defense research facility in Tadzhik when I was visitor there. Brave fighters, but unevenly led. We managed to hold them off,\" the Russian reported in a studied monotone. Diggs could see the decorations that had resulted; he had commanded a cavalry squadron leading Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in a wild ride on the American left during Desert Storm, then gone on to command the 10th \"Buffalo\" ACR, still based in the Negev Desert, as part of America's commitment to Israeli security. Both men were forty-nine. Both had smelled the smoke. Both were on the way up.\n\n\"You have country like this at home?\" Diggs asked.\n\n\"We have every sort of terrain you can imagine. It makes training a challenge, especially today. There,\" he said. \"It's started.\"\n\nThe first group of tanks was rolling now, down a broad, U-shaped pass called the Valley of Death. The sun was setting behind the brown-colored mountains, and darkness came rapidly here. Scuttling around also were the HMMWVs of the observer-controllers, the gods of the NTC, who watched everything and graded what they saw as coldly as Death himself. The NTC was the world's most exciting school. The two generals could have observed the battle back at base headquarters in a place called the Star Wars Room. Every vehicle was wired, transmitting its location, direction of movement, and when the time came, where it was shooting and whether it scored a hit or not. From that data, the computers at Star Wars sent out signals, telling people when they had died, though rarely why. That fact they learned later from the observer-controllers. The generals didn't want to watch computer screens, however Bondarenko's staff officers were doing that, but the place for their general was here. Every battlefield had a smell, and generals had to have the nose for it.\n\n\"Your instrumentation is like something from a science novel.\"\n\nDiggs shrugged. \"Not much changed from fifteen years ago. We have more TV cameras on the hilltops now, though.\" America would be selling much of that technology to the Russians. That was a little hard for Diggs to accept. He'd been too young for Vietnam. His was the first generation of flag officers to have avoided that entanglement. But Diggs had grown up with one reality in his life: fighting the Russians in Germany. A cavalry officer for his entire career, he'd trained to be in one of the forwarddeployed regiments\u2014really, augmented brigades\u2014to make first contact. Diggs could remember a few times when it had seemed pretty damned likely that he'd find his death in the Fulda Gap, facing somebody like the man standing next to him, with whom he'd killed a six-pack the night before over stories of how turtles reproduced.\n\n\"In,\" Bondarenko said with a sly grin. Somehow the Americans thought Russians were humorless. He _had_ to correct that misimpression before he left.\n\nDiggs counted ten before his deadpan reply: \"Out.\"\n\nTen more seconds: \"In.\" Then both started laughing. When first introduced to the favorite base joke, it had taken half a minute for Bondarenko to get it. But the resulting laughter had ended up causing abdominal pain. He recovered control and pointed. \"This is the way war should be.\"\n\n\"It gets pretty tense. Wait and see.\"\n\n\"You use _our_ tactics!\" That was plain from the way the reconnaissance screen deployed across the valley.\n\nDiggs turned. \"Why not? They worked for me in Iraq.\"\n\nThe scenario for this night\u2014the first engagement for the training rotation\u2014was a tough one: Red Force in the attack, advance-to-contact, and eliminate the Blue Force reconnaissance screen. The Blue Force in this case was a brigade of the 5th Mechanized Division conducting hasty defense. The overall idea was that this was a very fluid tactical situation. The 11th ACR was simulating a division attack on a newly arrived force one third its theoretical size. It was, really, the best way to welcome people to the desert. Let them eat dirt.\n\n\"Let's get moving.\" Diggs hopped back into his HMMWV, and the driver moved off to a piece of high ground called the Iron Triangle. A short radio message from his senior OC made the American general growl. \"God damn it!\"\n\n\"Problem?\"\n\nGeneral Diggs held up a map. \"That hill is the most important piece of real estate in the valley, but they didn't see it. Well, they're going to pay for that little misjudgment. Happens every time.\" Already, the OpFor had people racing for the unoccupied summit.\n\n\"To push that far that fast, is it prudent for Blue?\"\n\n\"General, it sure as hell ain't prudent not to, as you will see.\"\n\n\"WHY HASN'T HE spoken more, appeared in public more?\"\n\nThe intelligence chief could have said many things. President Ryan was undoubtedly busy. So many things to do. The government of his country was in shambles, and before he could speak, he had to organize it. He had a state funeral to plan. He had to speak to numerous foreign governments, to give them the usual assurances. He had to secure things, not the least of which was his own personal safety. The American Cabinet, the President's principal advisers, was gone and had to be reconstituted . . . but that was not what he wanted to hear.\n\n\"We have been researching this Ryan,\" was the answer given. Mainly from newspaper stories-a lot of them\u2014faxed from his government's UN mission. \"He has made few public speeches before this day, and then only to present the thoughts of his masters. He was an intelligence officer\u2014actually an 'inside' man, an analyst. Evidently a good one, but an inside person.\"\n\n\"So, why did Durling elevate him so?\"\n\n\"That was in the American papers yesterday. Their government requires a vice-presidential presence. Durling also wanted someone to firm up his international-affairs team, and in this Ryan had some experience. He performed well, remember, in their conflict with Japan.\"\n\n\"An assistant then, not a leader.\"\n\n\"Correct. He has never aspired to high office. Our information is that he agreed to the second post as a caretaker, for less than a year.\"\n\n\"I am not surprised.\" Daryaei looked at the notes: _assistant_ to Vice Admiral James Greer, the DDI\/CIA; briefly the _acting_ DDI; then _Deputy_ Director of Central Intelligence; then National Security _Advisor_ to President Durling; finally he'd accepted the _temporary_ post of _Vice_ President. His impressions of this Ryan person had been correct from the very beginning: a helper. Probably a skilled one, as he himself had skilled assistants, none of whom, however, could assume his own duties. He was not dealing with an equal. Good. \"What else?\"\n\n\"As an intelligence specialist, he will be unusually well informed of foreign affairs. In fact, his knowledge of such things may be the best America has had in recent years, but at the cost of near-ignorance of domestic issues,\" the briefing officer went on. This tidbit had come from the _New York Times_.\n\n\"Ah.\" And with that bit of information, the planning started. At this point it was merely a mental exercise, but that would soon change.\n\n\"SO, HOW ARE things in your army?\" Diggs asked. The two generals stood alone atop the principal terrain feature, watching the battle play out below them with low-light viewing gear. As predicted, the 32nd\u2014Bondarenko _had_ to think of them that way\u2014had overwhelmed the Blue Force reconnaissance screen, maneuvered to the left, and was now rolling up the \"enemy\" brigade. With the lack of real casualties, it was a lovely thing to watch as the blinking yellow \"dead\" lights lit up one by one. Then he had to answer the question.\n\n\"Dreadful. We face the task of rebuilding everything from the ground up.\"\n\nDiggs turned. \"Well, sir, that's where I came in at.\" At _least you don't have to deal with drugs_ , the American thought. He could remember being a new second lieutenant, and afraid to enter barracks without sidearms. If the Russians had made their move in the early 1970s . . . \"You really want to use our model?\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\" The only thing the Americans got wrong\u2014and right\u2014was that the Red Force allowed tactical initiative for its sub-unit commanders, something the Soviet Army would never have done. But, combined with doctrine developed by the Voroshilov Academy, the results were plain to see. That was something to remember, and Bondarenko had broken rules in his own tactical encounters, which was one reason why he was a living three-star instead of a dead colonel. He was also the newly appointed chief of operations for the Russian Army. \"The problem is money, of course.\"\n\n\"I've heard that song before, General.\" Diggs allowed himself a rueful chuckle.\n\nBondarenko had a plan for that. He wanted to cut the size of his army by fifty percent, and the money saved would go directly into training the remaining half. The results of such a plan he could see before him. Traditionally, the Soviet Army had depended on mass, but the Americans had proven both here and in Iraq that training was master of the battlefield. As good as their equipment was\u2014he'd get his mat\u00e9riel briefing tomorrow\u2014he envied Diggs his personnel more than anything. Proof of that arrived the moment he formed the thought.\n\n\"General?\" The new arrival saluted. \"Blackhorse! We stripped their knickers right off.\"\n\n\"This is Colonel Al Hamm. He's CO of the 11th. His second tour here. He used to be OpFor operations officer. Don't play cards with him,\" Diggs warned.\n\n\"The general is too kind. Welcome to the desert, General Bondarenko.\" Hamm extended a large hand.\n\n\"Your attack was well executed, Colonel.\" The Russian examined him.\n\n\"Thank you, sir. I have some great kids working for me. Blue Force was overly tentative. We caught them between two chairs,\" Hamm explained. He looked like a Russian, Bondarenko thought, tall and meaty with a pale, florid complexion surrounding twinkling blue eyes. For this occasion, Hamm was dressed in his old \"Russian\"-style uniform, complete with a red star on the tanker's beret, and his pistol belt outside the over-long blouse. It didn't quite make the Russian feel at home, but he appreciated the respect the Americans showed him.\n\n\"Diggs, you were right. Blue should have done everything to get here first. But you made them start too far back to make that option seem attractive.\"\n\n\"That's the problem with battlefields,\" Hamm answered for his boss. \"Too much of the time they choose you instead of the other way around. That's lesson number one for the boys of the 5th Mech. If you let anybody else define the terms of the battle, well, it isn't much fun.\"\n**5**\n\n**ARRANGEMENTS**\n\n**I** T TURNED OUT THAT both Sato and his co-pilot had donated blood for purposes of helping casualties in the abortive war with America, and the blessedly small numbers of wounded had never called that blood into use. Located by computer search by the Japanese Red Cross, samples had been obtained by the police and dispatched by messenger to Washington, via Vancouver\u2014Japanese commercial aircraft were, understandably, still not permitted to fly into the United States, even Alaska\u2014and an Air Force VC-20 from there to Washington. The courier was a senior police officer, with the aluminum case handcuffed to his left wrist. A trio of FBI agents met him at Andrews and drove him to the Hoover building at Tenth and Pennsylvania. The FBI's DNA lab took the samples and went to work to compare them with blood and other tissue specimens from the bodies. They already had matches for the blood types, and the results of the tests seemed a foregone conclusion, which would, nonetheless, be treated as though they were the only tenuous clue in a baffling case. Dan Murray, the acting Director, wasn't exactly a slave to \"the book\" in criminal investigations, but for the purposes of this case, the book was Holy Writ. Backing him up were Tony Caruso, back from his vacation and working around the clock to head up the Bureau's side of the investigation, Pat O'Day in his capacity as roving inspector, and a cast of hundreds, if not quite thousands yet. Murray met the Japanese representative in the Director's conference room. He, too, found it hard to move into Bill Shaw's office right away.\n\n\"We are performing our own tests,\" Chief Inspector Jisaburo Tanaka said, checking his watches\u2014he had decided to wear two, one each for Tokyo and Washington time. \"They will be faxed here as soon as they are completed.\" Then he opened his briefcase again. \"Here is our reconstruction of Captain Sato's schedule for the last week, notes of interviews with family members and colleagues, background on his life.\"\n\n\"Fast work. Thank you.\" Murray took the pages, not quite sure what to do next. It was clear that his visitor wanted to say more. Murray and Tanaka had never met, but the word on his guest was impressive enough. A skilled and experienced investigator, Tanaka had specialized in political-corruption violations, a specialty that had kept him very busy. Tanaka had the Cromwellian look of such a policeman. His professional life had turned him into a priest of the sort used by the Spanish to burn people at the stake. That made him perfect for this case.\n\n\"You will have our total cooperation. In fact, if you wish to send a senior official from your agency to oversee our investigation, I am authorized to tell you that we will welcome it.\" He paused for a few seconds, looking down before proceeding. \"This is a disgrace for my country. The way those people _used_ us all . . .\" For a representative of a country incorrectly known for its lack of emotional display, Tanaka was a surprise. His hands balled tightly, and his dark eyes burned with anger. From the conference room, both men could look down Pennsylvania Avenue to a Capitol Hill scarred by the crash, still lit in the pre-dawn darkness by the hundreds of work lights.\n\n\"The co-pilot was murdered,\" Murray said. Maybe that would help a little.\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\nDan nodded. \"Stabbed, and it appears as though that took place prior to the take-off. It appears at the moment that Sato acted alone\u2014at least as far as flying the airplane was concerned.\" The lab had already determined that the weapon used was a thin-bladed steak knife with a serrated edge, of the sort used on the airline. As long as he'd been in the investigative business, it still amazed Murray what the lab techs could discern.\n\n\"I see. That makes sense,\" Tanaka observed. \"The co-pilot's wife is pregnant, with twins, in fact. She is in the hospital now under close observation. What we have learned to date makes him appear to be a devoted husband and a man of no special political interests. My people thought it unlikely that he would end his life in this way.\"\n\n\"Did Sato have any connections with\u2014\"\n\nA shake of the head. \"None that we have found. He flew one of the conspirators to Saipan, and they spoke briefly. Aside from that, Sato was an international pilot. His friends were his colleagues. He lived quietly in a modest house near Narita International Airport. But his brother was a senior officer in the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and his son was a fighter pilot. Both died during the hostilities.\"\n\nMurray already knew that. _Motive and opportunity_. He scribbled a note to have the legal attach\u00e9 in Tokyo take up the offer to participate in the Japanese investigation\u2014but he'd have to get approval from Justice and\/or State about that. For damned sure the offer seemed sincere enough. Good.\n\n\"LOVE THE TRAFFIC.\" Chavez observed. They were coming up I-95, passing the Springfield Mall. Normally at this time of day\u2014it was still dark\u2014the highway was wall-to-wall with bureaucrats and lobbyists. Not today, though John and Ding had been called in, confirming their \"essential\" status to any who might have doubted it. Clark didn't respond, and the junior officer continued, \"How do you suppose Dr. Ryan is doing?\"\n\nJohn grunted and shrugged. \"Probably rolling with the punches. Better him than me.\"\n\n\"Roge-o, Mr. C. All my friends at George Mason are going to have a fine old time.\"\n\n\"Think so?\"\n\n\"John, he's got a government to rebuild. This will be a textbook case in real life. Ain't nobody ever done that before,' _mano_. You know what we're going to find out?\"\n\nA nod. \"Yeah, if this place really works or not.\" Better _him than me_ , John thought again. They'd been called in for their mission debriefing on operations in Japan. That was ticklish enough. Clark had been in the business for quite a while, but not long enough to be especially happy about telling others the things he'd done. He and Ding had killed\u2014not for the first time\u2014and now they'd get to describe it in detail to people, most of whom had never even held a gun, much less fired one in anger. Secrecy oaths or not, some of them might talk someday, the least consequence of which would be embarrassing revelations in the press. Somewhere in the middle came sworn testimony before a congressional committee\u2014well, not anytime soon on that, John corrected himself\u2014questioning under oath and the necessity of answering questions from people who didn't understand any better than the CIA weenies who sat at desks and judged people in the field for a living. The worst case was an actual prosecution, because while the things he had done weren't exactly illegal, they weren't exactly legal, either. Somehow the Constitution and the United States Code, Annotated, had never quite reconciled themselves with the activities the government carried out but did not wish to admit in open fora. Though his conscience was clear on that and many other things, his views on tactical morality wouldn't strike everyone as reasonable. Probably Ryan would understand, though. That was something.\n\n\"WHAT'S NEW THIS morning?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"We expect recovery operations to be completed by this evening, sir.\" It was Pat O'Day doing the morning FBI brief. He'd explained that Murray was busy. The inspector passed over a folder with the numbers of bodies recovered. Ryan gave it a quick scan. How the hell was he supposed to eat breakfast with such facts before him? the President wondered. Fortunately, there was just coffee at the moment.\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Things seem to be dropping into place. We've recovered what we think is the body of the co-pilot. He was murdered hours before the crash, leading us to believe that the pilot acted alone. We'll be doing DNA tests on the remains to confirm identities.\" The inspector flipped through his notes, not trusting to memory to get things right. \"Drug and alcohol tests on both bodies proved negative. Analysis of the flight-data recorder, tapes of radio traffic, radar tapes, everything we've managed to pull together, it all leads to the same picture, one guy acting alone. Dan's meeting with a senior Japanese cop right now.\"\n\n\"Next step?\"\n\n\"It will be a textbook investigation process. We reconstruct everything Sato\u2014that's the pilot's name\u2014did over the last month or so, and take it back from there. Phone records, where he went, whom he saw, friends and associates, diary if any, everything we can get our hands on. The idea is to rebuild the guy completely and determine if he was part of any possible conspiracy. It will take time. It's a fairly exhaustive process.\"\n\n\"Best guess for now?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"One guy acting alone,\" O'Day said again, rather more positively this time.\n\n\"It's too damned early for any conclusion,\" Andrea Price objected. O'Day turned.\n\n\"It's not a conclusion. Mr. Ryan asked for a best guess. I've been in the investigation business for quite a while. This looks like a fairly elaborate impulse crime. The method of the co-pilot's murder, for example. He didn't even move the body out of the cockpit. He _apologized_ to the guy right after he stabbed him, according to the tapes.\"\n\n\" _Elaborate_ impulse crime?\" Andrea objected.\n\n\"Airline pilots are highly organized people,\" O'Day replied. \"Things that would be highly complex for the layman are as natural to them as pulling up your zipper. Most assassinations are carried out by dysfunctional individuals who get lucky. In this case, unfortunately, we had a very capable subject who largely made his own luck. In any event, that's what we have at the moment.\"\n\n\"For this to have been a conspiracy, what would you look for?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Sir, successful criminal conspiracies are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances.\" Price bristled again, but Inspector O'Day went on: \"The problem is human nature. The most normal of us are boastful; we like to share secrets to show how bright we are. Most criminals talk their way right into prison one way or another. Okay, in a case like this we're not talking about your average robber, but the principle holds. To build any sort of conspiracy takes time and talk, and as a result, things leak. Then there's the problem of selecting the . . . 'shooter,' for want of a better term. Such time did not exist. The joint session was set up too late for much in the way of discussions to have taken place. The nature of the co-pilot's murder is very suggestive of a spur-of-the-moment method. A knife is less sure than a gun, and a steak knife isn't a good weapon, too easily bent or broken on a rib.\"\n\n\"How many murders have you handled?\" Price asked.\n\n\"Enough. I've assisted on plenty of local police cases, especially here in D.C. The Washington Field Office has backed up the D.C. police for years. Anyway, for Sato to have been the 'shooter' in a conspiracy, he would have had to meet with people. We can track his free time, and we'll do that with the Japanese. But to this point there is not a single indicator that way. Quite the contrary, all circumstances point to someone who saw a unique opportunity and made use of it on an impulse.\"\n\n\"What if the pilot wasn't\u2014\"\n\n\"Ms. Price, the cockpit tapes go back before the takeoff from Vancouver. We've voice-printed everything in our own lab\u2014it's a digital tape and the sound quality is beautiful. The same guy who took off from Narita flew the airplane into the ground here. Now, if it wasn't Sato, then why didn't the co-pilot\u2014they flew together as a team\u2014notice? Conversely, if the pilot and co-pilot were showups, then both were part of the conspiracy from the beginning, then why was the co-pilot murdered prior to takeoff from Vancouver? The Canadians are interviewing the rest of the crew for us, and all the service personnel say that the flight crew was just who they were supposed to be. The DNA-ID process will prove that beyond doubt.\"\n\n\"Inspector, you are very persuasive,\" Ryan observed.\n\n\"Sir, this investigation will be rather involved, what with all the facts that have to be checked out, but the meat of the issue is fairly simple. It's damned hard to fake a crime scene. There's just too many things we can do. Is it theoretically possible to set things up in such a way as to fool our people?\" O'Day asked rhetorically. \"Yes, sir, maybe it is, but to do that would take months of preparation, and they didn't have months. It really comes down to one thing: the decision to call the joint session happened while that aircraft was over mid-Pacific.\"\n\nMuch as she wanted to, Price couldn't counter that argument. She'd run her own quick investigation on Patrick O'Day. Emil Jacobs had reinstituted the post of roving inspector years before, and collected people who preferred investigation to management. O'Day was an agent for whom running a field division had little appeal. He was part of a small team of experienced investigators who worked out of the Director's office, an unofficial inspectorate which went into the field to keep an eye on things, mainly sensitive cases. He was a good cop who hated desk work, and Price had to concede that he knew how to run an investigation, better yet was someone outside the chain of command who wouldn't ham things up in order to get a promotion. The inspector had driven to the House in a four-by-four pickup\u2014he wore cowboy boots! she noticed\u2014and probably wanted publicity about as much as he wanted the pox. So Assistant Director Tony Caruso, titularly in charge of the investigation, would report to the Department of Justice, but Patrick O'Day would short-circuit the chain to report directly to Murray\u2014who would, in turn, farm O'Day to the President so as to garner personal favor. She'd figured Murray for a sharp operator. Bill Shaw, after all, had used him as personal troubleshooter. And Murray's loyalty would be to the institution of the FBI. A man could have a worse agenda, she admitted to herself. For O'Day it was simpler still. He investigated crimes for a living, and while he appeared to jump too quickly to conclusions, this transplanted cowboy was doing it all by the book. You had to watch the good ol' boys. They were so good at hiding their smarts. But he would never have made the Detail, she consoled herself.\n\n\"ENJOY YOUR VACATION?\" Mary Pat Foley was either in very early or in very late, Clark saw. It came to him again that of all the senior people in government, President Ryan was probably getting the most sleep, little though that might be. It was a hell of a way to run a railroad. People simply didn't perform well when denied rest for an extended period of time, something he'd learned the hard way in the field, but put a guy into high office, and he immediately forgot that\u2014such pedestrian items as human factors faded into the mist. And then a month later, they wondered how they'd screwed up so bad. But that was usually after they got some poor line-animal killed in the field.\n\n\"MP, when the hell is the last time you slept?\" Not many people could talk to her that way, but John had been her training officer, once upon a time.\n\nA wan smile. \"John, you're not Jewish, and you're not my mother.\"\n\nClark looked around. \"Where's Ed?\"\n\n\"On his way back from the Gulf. Conference with the Saudis,\" she explained. Though Mrs. Foley technically ranked Mr. Foley, Saudi culture wasn't quite ready to deal with a female King Spook\u2014Queen Spook, John corrected himself with a smile\u2014and Ed was probably better on the conferences anyway.\n\n\"Anything I need to know about?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Routine. So, Domingo, did you drop the question?\"\n\n\"You are playing rough this morning,\" Clark observed before his partner could speak.\n\nChavez just grinned. The country might be in turmoil, but some things were more important. \"Could be worse, Mr. C. I'm not a lawyer, am I?\"\n\n\"There goes the neighborhood,\" John grumbled. Then it was time for business. \"How's Jack doing?\"\n\n\"I'm scheduled to see him after lunch, but it wouldn't surprise me if they canceled out. The poor bastard must be buried alive.\"\n\n\"What I saw about how he got roped into this, is what the papers said true?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is. So, we have a Kelly Girl for President,\" the Deputy Director (Operations) posed as a multifaceted inside joke. \"We're going to do a comprehensive threat assessment. I want you two in on it.\"\n\n\"Why us?\" Chavez asked.\n\n\"Because I'm tired of having all that done by the Intelligence Directorate. I tell you one thing that's going to happen: we have a President now who understands what we do here. We're going to beef up Operations to the point where I can pick up a phone, ask a question, and get an answer I can understand.\"\n\n\"PLAN BLUE?\" Clark asked, and received a welcome nod. \"Blue\" had been his last function before leaving the CIA's training facility, known as \"the Farm,\" down near the Navy's nuclear-weapons locker at Yorktown, Virginia. Instead of hiring a bunch of Ivy League intellectuals\u2014at least they didn't smoke pipes anymore\u2014he had proposed that the Agency recruit cops, police officers right off the street. Cops, he reasoned, knew about using informants, didn't have to be taught street smarts, and knew about surviving in dangerous areas. All of that would save training dollars, and probably produce better field officers. The proposal had been File-13'd by two successive DDOs, but Mary Pat had known about it from the beginning, and approved the concept. \"Can you sell it?\"\n\n\"John, you're going to help me sell it. Look how well Domingo here has turned out.\"\n\n\"You mean I'm not affirmative action?\" Chavez asked.\n\n\"No, Ding, that's only with his daughter,\" Mrs. Foley suggested. \"Ryan will go for it. He isn't very keen on the Director. Anyway, for now I want you two to do your debrief on SANDALWOOD.\"\n\n\"What about our cover?\" Clark asked. He didn't have to explain what he meant. Mary Pat had never got her hands dirty in the field\u2014she was espionage, not the paramilitary side of the Operations Directorate\u2014but she understood just fine.\n\n\"John, you were acting under presidential orders. That's written down and in the book. Nobody's going to second-guess anything you did, especially with saving Koga. You both have an Intelligence Star coming for that. President Durling wanted to see you and present the medals himself up at Camp David. I suppose Jack will, too.\"\n\n_Whoa,_ Chavez thought behind unblinking eyes, but nice as that thought was, he'd been thinking about something else on the three-hour drive up from Yorktown. \"When's the threat-assessment start?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow for our side of it. Why?\" MP asked.\n\n\"Ma'am, I think we're going to be busy.\"\n\n\"I hope you're wrong,\" she replied, after nodding.\n\n\"I HAVE TWO procedures scheduled for today,\" Cathy said, surveying the breakfast buffet. Since they didn't know what the Ryans liked to have in the morning, the staff had prepared some\u2014actually quite a lot\u2014of everything. Sally and Little Jack thought that was just great\u2014even better, schools were closed. Katie, a recent graduate to real foods, gnawed at a piece of bacon in her hand while contemplating some buttered toast. For children, the immediate has the greatest importance. Sally, now fifteen (going on thirty, her father sometimes lamented), took the longest view of the three, but at the moment that was limited to how her social life would be affected. For all of them, Daddy was still Daddy, whatever job he might hold at the moment. They'd learn different, Jack knew, but one thing at a time.\n\n\"We haven't figured that out,\" her husband replied, selecting scrambled eggs and bacon for his plate. He'd need his energy today.\n\n\"Jack, the deal was that I could still do my work, remember?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Ryan?\" It was Andrea Price, still hovering around like a guardian angel, albeit with an automatic pistol. \"We're still figuring out the security issues and\u2014\"\n\n\"My patients need me. Jack, Bernie Katz and Hal Marsh can backstop me on a lot of things, but one of my patients today needs _me_. I have teaching rounds to prep for, too.\" She checked her watch. \"In four hours.\" Which was true, Ryan didn't have to ask. Professor Caroline Ryan, M.D., F.A.C.S., was top-gun for driving a laser around a retina. People came from all over the world to watch her work.\n\n\"But schools are\u2014\" Price stopped, reminding herself that she knew better.\n\n\"Not medical schools. We can't send patients home. I'm sorry. I know how complicated things are for everybody, but I have people who depend on me, too, and I have to be there for them.\" Cathy looked at the adult faces in the kitchen for a decision that would go her way. The kitchen staff\u2014all sailors\u2014moved in and out like mobile statues, pretending not to hear anything. The Secret Service people adopted a different blank expression, one with more discomfort in it.\n\nThe First Lady was supposed to be an unpaid adjunct to her husband. That was a rule which needed changing at some point. Sooner or later, after all, there would be a female President, and _that_ would really upset the applecart, a fact well known but studiously ignored to this point in American history. The usual political wife was a woman who appeared at her husband's side with an adoring smile and a few carefully picked words, who endured the tedium of a campaign, and the surprisingly brutal handshakes\u2014certainly Cathy Ryan would not subject her surgeon's hands to _that_ , Price thought suddenly. But _this_ First Lady actually had a job. More than that, she was a physician with a Lasker Memorial Public Service Award shortly to sit on her mantel (the awards dinner had yet to he held), and if she had learned anything about Cathy Ryan, Price knew that she was dedicated to her profession, not merely to her husband. However admirable that might be, it would be a royal pain in the ass to the Service, Price was sure. Worse yet, the principal agent assigned to _Mrs_. Dr. Ryan was Roy Altman, a tall bruiser of a former paratrooper whom she'd not yet met. That decision had been made for Roy's size as well as his savvy. It never hurt to have one obvious bodyguard close aboard, and since the First Lady appeared to many as a soft target, one of Roy's functions was to make the casual troublemaker think twice on that basis alone. Other members of her Detail would be virtually invisible. One of Altman's other functions was to use his bulk to block bullets, something the agents trained for but didn't dwell on.\n\nEach of the Ryan kids would have to be protected as well, in a sub-detail that routinely split into segments. Katie's had been the hardest to select\u2014because agents had fought for the job. The boss there would be the oldest member of the team, a grandfather named Don Russell. Little Jack would get a youngish male principal who was a serious sports fan, while Sally Ryan drew a female agent just over thirty, single, and hip (Price's term rather than the agent's), wise in the ways of young men and mall-shopping. The idea was to make the family as comfortable as was possible with the necessity of being followed everywhere except the bathroom by people with loaded firearms and radios. It was, in the end, a hopeless task, of course. President Ryan had the background to accept the need for all of this. His family would learn to endure it.\n\n\"Dr. Ryan, when will you have to leave?\" Price asked.\n\n\"About forty minutes. It depends on traf\u2014\u2014\"\n\n\"Not anymore,\" Price corrected the First Lady. The day would be bad enough. The idea had been to use the previous day to brief the _Vice_ President's family in on all the things that had to be done, but that plan had been shot completely to hell, along with so many other things. Altman was in another room, going over maps. There were three viable land routes to Baltimore: Interstate-95, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and US Route 1, all of them packed every morning with rush-hour traffic which a Secret Service convoy would disrupt to a fare-thee-well; worse, for any potential assassin, the routes were too predictable, narrowing down as they did on nearing Baltimore. Johns Hopkins Hospital had a helicopter pad atop its pediatrics building, but nobody had yet considered the political fallout that could result from hopping the First Lady to work every day in a Marine Corps VH-60. Maybe that was a viable option now, Price decided. She left the room to confer with Altman, and suddenly the Ryan family was alone, having breakfast as though they were still a normal family.\n\n\"My God, Jack,\" Cathy breathed.\n\n\"I know.\" Instead of talking, they enjoyed the silence for a full minute, both of them looking down at their breakfast, poking things around with forks instead of eating.\n\n\"The kids need clothes for the funeral,\" Cathy said finally.\n\n\"Tell Andrea?\"\n\n\"Okay.\n\n\"Do you know when it'll be?\"\n\n\"I should find out today.\"\n\n\"I'll still be able to work, right?\" With Price gone she could allow her concern to show.\n\nJack looked up. \"Yes. Look, I'm going to try my best to keep us as normal as we can, and I know how important your work is. Matter of fact, I haven't had much chance to tell you what **I** think of that prize you just bagged.\" He smiled. \"I'm damned proud of you, babe.\"\n\nPrice came back in. \"Dr. Ryan?\" she said. And, of course, both heads turned. They could see it on her face. The most basic of issues hadn't been discussed yet. Did they call her _Doctor_ Ryan, _Missus_ Ryan, or\n\n\"Make it easier on everyone, okay? Call me Cathy.\"\n\nPrice couldn't do _that_ , but she let it slide for the moment. \"Until we figure things out, we'll fly you there. The Marines have a helicopter on the way here.\"\n\n\"Isn't that expensive?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"Yes, it is, but we have to figure out procedures and things, and for the moment this is the easiest thing to do. Also\"\u2014a very large man came into the room\u2014\"this is Roy Altman. He'll be your principal agent for a while.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" was all Cathy was able to say at the moment. Six feet three and 220 pounds of Roy Altman came into the room. He had thinning blond hair, pale skin, and a sheepish expression that made him seem embarrassed by his bulk. Like all Secret Service agents, his suit coat was cut a little big to help conceal his service automatic, and in his particular case hiding a machine gun would have been fairly easy. Altman came over to shake her hand, which he did with considerable delicacy.\n\n\"Ma'am, you know what my job is. I'll try to keep as much out of the way as possible.\" Two more people came into the room. Altman introduced them as the rest of her Detail for the day. All of them were temporary. They all had to get along with their principal, and that wasn't all so easy to predict, even with amiable principals, as all the Ryans seemed thus far to be.\n\nCathy was tempted to ask if all this was really necessary, but she knew better. On the other hand, how would she shepherd this mob around the Maumenee Building? She traded a look with her husband, and reminded herself that they would not be in this unhappy predicament had she not agreed to Jack's elevation to the vice presidency, which had lasted all of\u2014what? Five minutes? Maybe not even that long. Just then came the roar of the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, landing up the hill from the house and creating a mini-blizzard on what had once been the site of a small astronomical observatory. Her husband looked at his watch and realized that the Marines of VMH-1 were indeed operating off a short fuse. How long, he wondered, before the smothering attention drove them all mad?\n\n\"THIS SHOT IS _live_ from the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue,\" the NBC reporter said, cued by the director. \"That looks like one of the Marine helicopters. I suppose the President is going somewhere.\" The camera zoomed in as the snow cloud settled down somewhat.\n\n\"An American Black Hawk, extensively modified,\" the intelligence officer said. \"See there? That's a 'Black Hole' infrared suppression system to protect against ground-to-air missiles that track engine heat.\"\n\n\"How effective?\"\n\n\"Very, but not against laser-guided weapons,\" he added. \"Nor is it useful against guns.\" No sooner had the aircraft's main rotor stopped turning than a squad of Marines surrounded it. \"I need a map of the area. Wherever that camera is, a mortar would also be effective. The same is true of the White House grounds, of course.\" And anybody, they knew, could use a mortar, all the more so with the new laser-guided rounds first developed by the British and soon thereafter copied by the rest of the world. In a way it was the Americans who showed the way. It was their aphorism, after all: _If you_ _can see it, you can hit it._ _If_ _you can hit it_ , _you can kill it_. And everyone inside of it, whatever \"it\" might be.\n\nWith that thought, a plan began to form. He checked his watch, which had a stop-watch function button, placing his finger there and waiting. The TV director, six thousand miles away, had nothing better to do than keep on that long-lens camera. Presently, a large vehicle approached the helicopter, and four people got out. They walked right to the aircraft, whose crewman held the sliding door open.\n\n\"That's Mrs. Ryan,\" the commentator said. \"She's a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.\"\n\n\"You suppose she's flying to work?\" the reporter asked.\n\n\"We'll know in a minute.\"\n\nWhich was about right. The intelligence officer pushed the watch button the moment the door closed. The rotor started turning a few seconds later, building power from the two turbine engines, and then the helicopter lifted off, nose-down as they all did, gaining altitude as it headed off, probably to the north. He checked his watch to see the elapsed time from door-close to liftoff. This aircraft had a military crew, and they would take pride in doing everything the same way every time. More than enough time for a mortar round to travel three times the necessary distance, he judged.\n\nIT WAS HER first time in a helicopter. They had Cathy sit in the jump seat behind and between the two pilots. They didn't tell her why. The Black Hawk's rugged airframe was designed to absorb fully fourteen g's in the event of a crash, and this seat was statistically the safest in the bird. The four-bladed rotor made for a smooth ride, and about the only objection she had to the experience was the cold. No one had yet designed a military aircraft with an efficient heating system. It would have been enjoyable but for the lingering embarrassment, and the fact that the Secret Service agents were scanning out the doors, obviously looking for some sort of danger or other. It was becoming clear that they could take the fun out of anything.\n\n\"I GUESS SHE'S commuting to work,\" the reporter decided. The camera had tracked the VH-60 until it disappeared into the tree line. It was a rare moment of levity. All of the networks were doing the same thing they'd done after the assassination of John Kennedy. Every single regular show was off the air while the networks devoted every waking hour\u2014twenty-four hours per day now, which had not been the case in 1963 to coverage of the disaster and its aftermath. What that really meant was a bonanza for the cable channels, as had been proven by tracking information through the various ratings services, but the networks had to be responsible, and doing _this_ was responsible journalism.\n\n\"Well, she _is_ a physician, isn't she? It's easy to forget that, despite the disaster that has overtaken our government, outside the Beltway, there are still people who do real work. Babies are being born. Life goes on,\" the commentator observed pontifically, as was his job.\n\n\"And so does the country.\" The reporter looked directly at the camera for the transition to commercial. He didn't hear the voice from so far away.\n\n\"For now.\"\n\nTHE KINDS WERE shepherded away by their bodyguards, and the real work of the day began. Arnie van Damm looked like hell. He was about to hit the wall, Jack decided; the combination of grueling work and grief was about to destroy the man. All well and good that the President should be spared as much as possible, Ryan knew, but not at the cost of wrecking the people upon whom he depended so much.\n\n\"Say your piece, Arnie, then disappear for a while and get some rest.\"\n\n\"You know I can't do that\u2014\"\n\n\"Andrea?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"When we've finished here, have somebody drive Arnie home. You will not allow him back in the House until four this afternoon.\" Ryan shifted his gaze. \"Arnie, you will _not_ burn out on me. I need you too much.\"\n\nThe chief of staff was too tired to show any gratitude. He handed over a folder. \"Here are the plans for the funeral, day after tomorrow.\"\n\nRyan flipped open the folder, his demeanor deflated as suddenly as he had exercised another dollop of presidential authority.\n\nWhoever had put the plan together had been clever and sensitive about it. Maybe somewhere there had been a contingency plan for this sort of thing, a question Ryan would never bring himself to ask, but whatever the truth was, someone had done well. Roger and Anne Durling would lie in state in the White House, since the Capitol Rotunda was not available, and for twenty-four hours people would be allowed to walk through, entering through the front, and exiting from the East Wing. The sadness of the event would be muted for the mourners by later exposure to the Americana and presidential portraits. The Durlings would be taken by hearse to National Cathedral the next morning, along with three members of the Congress, a Jew, a Protestant, and a Catholic, for the interdenominational memorial service. Ryan had two major speeches to give. The text of both was in the back of the folder.\n\n\"WHAT'S THAT FOR?\" Cathy was wearing a crash helmet with full connections into the helicopter's intercom. She pointed at another aircraft fifty yards to their right rear.\n\n\"We always fly with a backup aircraft, ma'am. In case something breaks and we have to land,\" the pilot explained from the right-front seat, \"we don't want to delay you unnecessarily.\" He didn't say that in the back-up helicopter were four more Secret Service agents with heavier weapons.\n\n\"How often does that happen, Colonel?\"\n\n\"Not since I've been around, ma'am.\" Nor did he say that one of the Marine Black Hawks had crashed into the Potomac in 1993, killing all hands. Well, it had been a long time. The pilot's eyes were scanning the air constantly. Part of VMH-1's institutional memory was what had seemed to be an attempted ramming over the California home of President Reagan. In fact it had been a screwup by a careless private pilot. After his interview with the Secret Service, the poor bastard had probably given up flying entirely. They were the most humorless people, Colonel Hank Goodman knew from long experience. The air was clear and cold, but pretty smooth. He controlled the stick with his fingertips as they followed I-95 northeast. Baltimore was already in view, and he knew the approach into Hopkins well enough from previous duty at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, whose Navy and Marine helos occasionally helped fly accident victims. Hopkins, he remembered, got the pediatric trauma cases for the state's critical-care system.\n\nThe same sobering thought hit Cathy when they flew past the University of Maryland's Shock-Trauma building. This _wasn't_ her first flight in a helicopter, was it? It was just that for the other one she'd been unconscious. People had tried to kill her and Sally, and all the people around her were in jeopardy if somebody else made another try\u2014why? Because of who her husband was.\n\n\"Mr. Altman?\" Cathy heard over the intercom.\n\n\"Yeah, Colonel?\"\n\n\"You called ahead, right?\"\n\n\"Yes, they know we're coming, Colonel,\" Altman assured him.\n\n\"No, I mean, is the roof checked out for a\u201360?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean this bird is heavier than the one the state troopers use. Is the pad certified for us?\" Silence provided the answer. Colonel Goodman looked over at his co-pilot and grimaced. \"Okay, we can handle that this one time.\"\n\n\"Clear left.\"\n\n\"Clear right,\" Goodman replied. He circled once, checking the wind sock on the roof of the building below. Just puffs of wind from the northwest. The descent was gentle, and the colonel kept a close eye on the radio whips to his right. He touched down soft, keeping his rotor turning to prevent the full weight of the aircraft from resting on the reinforced-concrete roof. It probably wasn't necessary, of course. Civil engineers always put more strength into buildings than they actually needed. But Goodman hadn't made the rank of bird-colonel by taking chances for the fun of it. His crew chief moved to pull the door open. The Secret Service agents went first, scanning the building while Goodman kept his hand on the collective, ready to yank up and rocket from the building. Then they helped Mrs. Ryan out, and he could get on with his day.\n\n\"When we get back, call this place yourself and get the rating on the roof. Then ask for plans for our files.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. It just went too fast, sir.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it.\" He switched to the radio link. \"Marine Three, Marine Two.\"\n\n\"Two,\" the orbiting backup aircraft responded at once.\n\n\"On the go.\" Goodman pulled the collective and angled south off the roof. \"She seems nice enough.\"\n\n\"Got nervous just before we landed,\" the crew chief observed.\n\n\"So was I,\" Goodman said. \" _I'll_ call them when we get back.\"\n\nTHE SECRET SERVICE _had_ called ahead to Dr. Katz, who was waiting inside, along with three Hopkins security officers. Introductions were exchanged. Nametags were passed out, making the three agents ostensible staff members of the medical school, and the day of Associate Professor Caroline M. Ryan, M.D., F.A.C.S., began.\n\n\"How's Mrs. Hart doing?\"\n\n\"I saw her twenty minutes ago, Cathy. She's actually rather pleased to have the First Lady operating on her.\" Professor Katz was surprised at Professor Ryan's reaction.\n**6**\n\n**EVALUATION**\n\n**I** T TOOK A LOT TO CROWD Andrews Air Force Base, whose expansive concrete ramps looked to be the approximate size of Nebraska, but the security police force there was now patrolling a collection of aircraft as dense and as diverse as the place in Arizona where they kept out-of-work airliners. Moreover, each bird had its own security Detail, all of whom had to be coordinated with the Americans in an atmosphere of institutional distrust, since the security people were all trained to regard everyone in sight with suspicion. There were two Concordes, one British and one French, for sex appeal. The rest were mainly wide-bodies of one sort or another, and most of them liveried in the colors of the nation-flag carrier of their country of origin. Sabena, KLM, and Lufthansa led off the NATO row. SAS handled each of the three Scandinavian countries, each with its own 747. Chiefs of state traveled in style, and not one of the aircraft, large or small, had flown as much as a third full. Greeting them was a task to tax the skills and patience of the combined White House and State Department offices of protocol, and word was sent through the embassies that President Ryan simply didn't have the time to give everyone the attention he or she deserved. But the Air Force honor guard got to meet them all, forming, dismissing, and reforming more than once an hour while the red VIP carpet stayed in place, and one world leader followed another\u2014at times as quickly as one aircraft could be rolled to its parking place and another could taxi to the specified arrival point with band and podium. Speeches were kept brief and somber for the ranks of cameras, and then they were moved off briskly to the waiting ranks of cars.\n\nMoving them into Washington was yet another headache. Every car belonging to the Diplomatic Protection Service was tied up, forming four sets of escorts that hustled in and out of town, convoying the embassy limousines and tying up Suitland Parkway and Interstate 395. The most amazing part, perhaps, was that every president, prime minister, and even the kings and serene princes managed to get delivered to the proper embassy\u2014most of them, fortunately, on Massachusetts Avenue. It proved to be a triumph of improvised organization in the end.\n\nThe embassies themselves handled the quiet private receptions. The statesmen, all in one place, had to meet, of course, to do business or merely to chat. The British Ambassador, the most senior of both the NATO countries and his nation's Commonwealth, would this night host an \"informal\" dinner for twenty-two national leaders.\n\n\"Okay, his gear _is_ down this time,\" the Air Force captain said, as darkness fell on the base.\n\nThe tower crew at Andrews was, perversely, the same one which had been on duty on That Night, as people had taken to call it. They watched as the JAL 747 floated in on runway Zero-One Right. The flight crew might have noticed that the remains of a sister aircraft were to be found in a large hangar on the east side of the base\u2014at this moment a truck was delivering the distorted remains of a jet engine, recently extracted from the basement of the Capitol building, but the jetliner completed its rollout, following directions to turn left and taxi behind a vehicle to the proper place for deplaning its passengers. The pilot did notice the cameras, and the crewmen walking from the relative warmth of a building to their equipment for the latest and most interesting arrival. He thought to say something to his co-pilot, but decided not to. Captain Torajiro Sato had been, well, if not a close friend, then a colleague, and a cordial one at that, and the disgrace to his country, his airline, and his profession would be a difficult thing to bear for years. It could only have been worse had Sato been carrying passengers, for protecting them was the first rule of their lives, but even though his culture respected suicide for a purpose as an honorable exercise, and beyond that awarded status to the more dramatic exits from corporeal life, this example of it had shocked and distressed his country more than anything in living memory. The pilot had always worn his uniform with pride. Now he would change out of it at the earliest opportunity, both abroad and at home. The pilot shook off the thought, applied the brakes smoothly, and halted the airliner so that the old-fashioned wheeled stairway was exactly even with the forward door of the Boeing airliner. It was then that he and his co-pilot turned inward to share a look of irony and shame at having performed their job with skill. Instead of sleeping over at the usual mid-level Washington hotel, they would be quartered in officers'accommodations on the base, and, probably, with someone to watch over them. With a gun.\n\nThe door of the airliner opened under the gentle ministrations of the senior stewardess. Prime Minister Mogataru Koga, his coat buttoned, and his tie straightened in his collar by a flustered aide, stood in the door briefly, assaulted by a blast of cold February air, and headed down the steps. The Air Force band struck up \"Ruffles and Flourishes.\"\n\nActing Secretary of State Scott Adler was waiting at the bottom. The two had never met, but both had been fully briefed, Adler rather more quickly, as this was his fourth and most important arrival of the day. Koga looked just like his pictures. The man was grossly ordinary, about five feet six inches in height, of middle age, with a full head of black hair. His dark eyes were neutral\u2014or tried to be, Adler thought on closer examination. There was sadness there. Hardly a surprise, the diplomat thought as he extended his hand.\n\n\"Welcome, Mr. Prime Minister.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Adler.\" The two men walked to the podium. Adler spoke a few muted words of welcome\u2014this speech, drafted at Foggy Bottom, had taken an hour to get right, which amounted to about a minute to the world. Then Koga came to the microphone.\n\n\"First of all, **I** must thank you, Mr. Adler, and thank your country, for allowing me to come today. As surprising as this gesture is, I have come to understand that such things are a tradition in your vast and generous country. I come to represent my country today on a sad but necessary mission. I hope it will be a mission of healing for your country and for mine. I hope that your citizens and ours can see in this tragedy a bridge to a peaceful future.\" Koga stepped back, and Adler led him off down the red carpet, as the assembled band played _Kimagayo_ , the brief anthem of Japan which had actually been written by an English composer a hundred years earlier. The Prime Minister looked at the honor guard and tried to read the young faces, looking for hatred or disgust in them, but finding only impassivity on the way to the waiting car. Adler got in behind him.\n\n\"How are you feeling, sir?\" SecState asked.\n\n\"Well, thank you. I slept on the flight.\" Koga assumed that the question was a mere pleasantry, then learned that it was not. It had been Ryan's idea, not Adler's, oddly enough, made somewhat more convenient by the time of day. The sun was down below the horizon now, and the sunset would be a brief one, as clouds rolled in from the northwest.\n\n\"If you wish, we can see President Ryan on the way to your embassy. The President instructed me to say that if you would prefer not to do so, because of the lengthy flight or other reasons, he will not be offended.\" Scott was surprised that Koga didn't hesitate an instant.\n\n\"I gladly accept this honor.\"\n\nThe acting Secretary of State pulled a portable radio from his coat pocket. \"EAGLE to SWORDBASE. Affirmative.\" Adler had chuckled a few days earlier to learn his Secret Service code-name. \"EAGLE\" was the English counterpart to his German-Jewish surname.\n\n\"SWORDBASE copies affirmative,\" the encrypted radio crackled back.\n\n\"EAGLE, out.\"\n\nThe motorcade speeded up Suitland Parkway. Under other circumstances a news helicopter might have tracked them with a live camera, but Washington airspace was effectively shut down for the moment. Even National Airport was closed, with its flights shunted to Dulles or Baltimore-Washington International. Koga hadn't noticed the driver, who was American. The car turned right off the parkway, then hopped a block to the ramp for **I** -295, which turned almost immediately into I-395, a bumpy thoroughfare that led across the Anacostia River toward downtown Washington. As it merged with the main roadway, the stretch Lexus in which he was sitting veered to the right. Another identical car took its place as his formed up with three Secret Service Suburbans in a maneuver that took a mere five seconds. The empty streets made the rest of the trip easy, and in but a few minutes, his car turned onto West Executive Drive.\n\n\"Here they come, sir,\" Price said, notified by the uniformed guard at the gatehouse.\n\nJack walked outside just as the car halted, not sure of the protocol for this\u2014one more thing he'd yet to figure out about his new job. He almost moved to pull open the door himself, but a Marine corporal got there first, yanking the door and saluting like a robot.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" Koga said on standing up.\n\n\"Mr. Prime Minister. Please come this way.\" Ryan gestured with his hand.\n\nKoga had never been to the White House before, and it struck him that had he flown over\u2014what? three months earlier\u2014to discuss the trade problems that had led to a shooting war . . . yet another shameful failure. Then Ryan's demeanor came through the haze. He'd read once that the full ceremonies of a state arrival were not the sign of importance here\u2014well, that was not possible or appropriate in any case, Koga told himself. But Ryan had stood alone at the door, and that must have meant something, the Japanese Prime Minister told himself on the way up the stairs. A minute later, whizzed through the West Wing, he and Ryan were alone in the Oval Office, separated only by a low table and a coffee tray.\n\n\"Thank you for this,\" Koga said simply.\n\n\"We had to meet,\" President Ryan said. \"Any other time and we'd have people watching and timing us and trying to read our lips.\" He poured a cup for his guest and then himself.\n\n_\"Hai_ , the press in Tokyo have become much more forward in the past few days.\" Koga made to lift his cup, but stopped. \"Whom do I thank for rescuing me from Yamata?\"\n\nJack looked up. \"The decision was made here. The two officers are in the area, if you want to see them again personally.\"\n\n\"If it is convenient.\" Koga sipped at his cup. He would have preferred tea, but Ryan was doing his best to be a host, and the quality of the gesture impressed his guest. \"Thank you for letting me come, President Ryan.\"\n\n\"I tried to talk to Roger about the trade problem, but . . . but I wasn't persuasive enough. Then I worried that something might be happening with Goto, but I didn't move quickly enough, what with the Russian trip and everything. It was all a great big accident, but I suppose war usually is. In any case, it is up to the two of us to heal that wound. I want it done as rapidly as possible.\"\n\n\"The conspirators are all under arrest. They will appear in court for treason,\" Koga promised.\n\n\"That is your affair,\" the President replied. Which wasn't really true. Japan's legal system was a curious one in which courts often enough violated the country's constitution in favor of broader but unwritten cultural mores, something unthinkable to Americans. Ryan and America expected that the trials would go by the book with no such variations. Koga understood that fully. A reconciliation between America and Japan depended absolutely on that, along with a multitude of other understandings which could not be spoken, at least not at this level. For his own part, Koga had already made sure that the judges selected for the various trials understood what the rules were.\n\n\"I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen, and then, that madman Sato . . . My country and my people are shamed by it. I have so much to do, Mr. Ryan.\"\n\nJack nodded. \"We both do. But it will be done.\" He paused. \"The technical issues can be handled at the ministerial level. Between ourselves, I only wanted to be sure that we understood each other. I will trust your goodwill.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President.\" Koga set his cup down to examine the man on the opposite sofa. He was young for such a job, though not the youngest American president. Theodore Roosevelt would probably hold that distinction into eternity. On the lengthy flight from Tokyo he'd read up on John Patrick Ryan. The man had killed with his own hand more than once, had been threatened with his own death and that of his family, and had done other things which his intelligence advisers only speculated about. Examining his face over a brief span of seconds, he tried to understand how such a person could also be a man of peace, but the clues were not there to be seen, and Koga wondered if there was something in the American character that he'd never quite understood. He saw the intelligence and the curiosity, one to measure and the other to probe. He saw fatigue and sadness. His recent days must have been the purest form of hell, Koga was sure. Somewhere still in this building, probably, were the children of Roger and Anne Durling, and that would be like a physical weight for the man to carry about. It struck the Prime Minister that Ryan, like most Westerners, was not very skilled at concealing his inner thoughts, but that wasn't true, was it? There had to be other things happening behind those blue eyes, and those things were not being advertised. They were not in any way threatening, but they were there. This Ryan _was_ samurai, as he'd said in his office a few days earlier, but there was an additional layer of complexity as well. Koga set that aside. It wasn't all that important, and there was something that he had to ask, a personal decision he'd made over mid-Pacific.\n\n\"I have a request, if that is permitted.\"\n\n\"What is that, sir?\"\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT, this is not a good idea,\" Price objected a few minutes later.\n\n\"Good or not, we're going to do it. Get it organized,\" Ryan told her.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Andrea Price withdrew from the room.\n\nKoga watched the exercise and learned something else. Ryan was a man capable of making decisions and giving orders entirely without histrionics.\n\nThe cars were still at the West Entrance, and it was simply a matter of donning coats and getting into them. A total of four Suburbans U-turned in the parking area, heading south, then east toward the Hill. The motorcade this time didn't use sirens and lights, instead proceeding almost in accord with the traffic laws\u2014but not quite. The empty streets made it easy for them to jump lights, and soon enough they turned left onto Capitol Street, and left again toward the building. There were fewer lights now in evidence. The steps had been cleared, allowing an easy climb up once the cars had parked and the Secret Service agents deployed. Ryan led Koga upwards, and presently they were both looking down into the now-empty bowl that had been the House chamber.\n\nThe Japanese Prime Minister stood erect at first. He clapped his hands loudly, once, to garner the attention of the spirits who, his religious beliefs told him, would still be here. Then he bowed formally, and said his prayers for them. Ryan was moved to do the same. There were no TV cameras present to record the moment\u2014actually there were still a few network cameras about, but the evening news broadcasts were over, and the instruments stood idle, their crews in the control vans drinking coffee and unaware of what was taking place a hundred yards away. It took only a minute or two in any case. When it was over, an American hand was extended, and a Japanese hand took it, and two pairs of eyes came to an understanding that ministers and treaties could never really have achieved, and in the harsh February wind, peace was finally and completely made between two countries. Standing ten feet away, Andrea Price was glad that the White House photographer had come along, and the tears she blinked away from her eyes were not from the wind. Then she conducted the two men back down the steps and into separate cars.\n\n\"WHY DID THEY overreact so?\" the Prime Minister asked, before sipping her sherry.\n\n\"Well, as you know I have not been fully briefed,\" the Prince of Wales replied, first qualifying himself, since he didn't really speak for Her Majesty's Government. \"But your naval exercises did have the appearance of a threatening act.\"\n\n\"Sri Lanka must come to terms with the Tamils. They've shown a regrettable reluctance to enter into substantive negotiations, and we were trying to influence them. After all, we have our own troops deployed as peacekeepers, and we don't want them to be held hostage to the overall situation.\"\n\n\"Quite so, but then, why don't you withdraw your peacekeepers as the government requested?\"\n\nThe Indian Prime Minister sighed tiredly\u2014it had been a long flight for her, too, and under the circumstances a little exasperation was permissible. \"Your Royal Highness, if we withdraw our troops and then the situation flares up yet again, we will face difficulties with our own Tamil citizens. This is truly a most unhappy situation. We attempted to help assuage a difficult political impasse, entirely at our own expense, but then the Sri Lankan government finds itself unable to take the remedial action necessary to prevent an embarrassment to my country, and a continuing rebellion in their own. _Then_ the Americans interfere without any real cause, and only bolster the intransigence of the Sri Lankans.\"\n\n\"When does their Prime Minister arrive?\" the Prince asked. The substantive reply was a shrug, followed by verbiage. \"We offered the chance to fly over together so that we might discuss the situation, but he regrettably declined. Tomorrow, I think. If his aircraft doesn't malfunction,\" she added. That national-flag carrier had all manner of technical problems, not to mention a long-lived security threat.\n\n\"If you wish, the ambassador can probably arrange a quiet meeting.\"\n\n\"Perhaps that would not be entirely useless,\" the Prime Minister allowed. \"I also wish the Americans would get the proper spin on things. They've always been so hopeless on our part of the world.\"\n\nWhich was the point of the exercise, the Prince understood. He and President Ryan had been friends for years, and India wanted him to be the intercessor. It would hardly have been the first time for such a mission on his part, but in all such cases the Heir Apparent was constrained to seek guidance from the government, which, in this case, meant the ambassador. Someone in Whitehall had decided that His Royal Highness's friendship with the new American President was more important than a government-to-government contact, and besides, it would make the monarchy look good at a time when such appearances were both useful and necessary. It also gave His Highness an excuse to visit some land in Wyoming which was quietly owned by the Royal Family, or \"the Firm,\" as it was sometimes called by insiders.\n\n\"I see,\" was as substantive a reply as he could make, but Britain had to take a request from India seriously. Once the brightest diadem in a world-spanning crown, that country was still an important trading partner, bloody nuisance though it might frequently be. A direct contact between the two heads of government might be embarrassing. The American harassment of the Indian fleet was not widely publicized, falling as it had toward the end of hostilities between America and Japan, and it was in everyone's interest that things should remain that way. President Ryan had enough on his plate, his old friend knew. The Prince hoped that Jack was getting some rest. For the people in the reception room, sleep was just a defense against jet lag. For Ryan it was necessary fuel, and he'd need plenty for the next two days.\n\nTHE LINE WAS endless, the typical clich\u00e9. It stretched well beyond the Treasury building, and the far end of it was like the ragged end of a rope, with new people forming up and tightening into the line so that it appeared to generate itself out of air, constantly replenishing as its members moved slowly forward in the cold air. They entered the building in groups of fifty or so, and the opening-closing cycle of the doors was regulated by someone with a watch, or maybe just counting slowly. There was an honor guard, an enlisted member of each uniformed service. The Detail was commanded by an Air Force captain at the moment. They and the caskets stood still while the people shuffled past.\n\nRyan examined their faces on his office TV just after he came in, again before sunrise, wondering what they thought and why they'd come. Few had actually voted for Roger Durling. He'd been the number-two man on the ticket, after all, and he'd taken over the job only with the resignation of Bob Fowler. But America embraced her presidents, and in death Roger was the recipient of love and respect that had never seemed all that close to him in life. Some of the mourners turned away from the coffins to look around at the entry hall of a building which many had probably never seen before, using their few seconds of time there strangely to look away from the reason for their having come, then to go down the steps and out the East Entrance, no longer a line, but in groups of friends or family members, or even alone, to leave the city and do their business. Then it was time for him to do the same\u2014more properly, to head back to his family, and study up for the tasks of the following day.\n\n_WHY NOT?_ THEY'D decided on arriving at Dulles. Lucky enough to find a cheap motel at the end of the Metro's Yellow Line, they'd ridden the subway into town, and gotten off at the Farragut Square station, only a few blocks from the White House so that they could take a look. It would be a first for both of them\u2014many firsts, in fact, since neither had ever visited Washington, the cursed city on a minor river that polluted the entire country from which it sucked blood and treasure\u2014these were favored lines of the Mountain Men. Finding the end of the line had taken time, and they'd shuffled along for several hours, with the only good news being that they knew how to dress for cold, which was more than they could say for the East Coast idiots in the line with them, with their thin coats and bare heads. It was all Pete Holbrook and Ernest Brown could do to keep from cracking their jokes about what had happened. Instead they listened to what other people in line said. That turned out to be disappointing. Maybe a lot of them were federal employees, both men thought. There were a few whimpers about how sad it all was, how Roger Durling had been a very nice man, and how attractive his wife had been, and how cute the children were, and how awful it must be for them.\n\nWell, the two members of the Mountain Men had to agree between themselves, yeah, sure enough it was tough on the kids\u2014and who didn't like kids?\u2014but scrambling eggs was probably something mama chicken didn't like to see, right? And how much suffering had their father inflicted on honest citizens who only wanted to have their constitutional right to be left alone by all these useless Washington jerks? But they didn't say that. They kept their mouths mostly shut as the line wended its way along the street. Both knew the story of the Treasury building, which sheltered them from the wind for a while, how Andy Jackson had decided to move it so that he couldn't see the Capitol building from the White House (it was still too dark for them to make out very much), causing the famous and annoying jog in Pennsylvania Avenue\u2014not that _that_ mattered anymore, since the street had been closed in front of the White House. And why? To protect the President from the _citizens!_ Couldn't trust the citizens to get too close to the Grand Pooh-Bah. They couldn't say that, of course. It was something the two had discussed on the flight in. There was no telling how many government spy types might be around, especially in the line to the White House, a name for the structure they'd accepted only since it had allegedly been selected by Davy Crockett. Holbrook had recalled that from a movie he'd seen on TV, though he couldn't remember which movie, and ol' Davy was without a doubt their kind of American, a man who'd named his favorite rifle. Yeah.\n\nIt wasn't really a bad-looking house, and some good men had lived there. Andy Jackson, who'd told the Supreme Court where to get off. Lincoln, a tough old son of a bitch. What a shame he'd been killed before implementing his plan to ship the niggers back to Africa or Latin America . . . (Both rather liked James Monroe as well for starting that idea by helping to establish Liberia as a place to ship the slaves back to; a pity that nobody had followed up on it.) Teddy Roosevelt, who had a lot of good things going for him, a hunter and outdoorsman and soldier who'd gone a little far in \"reforming\" the government. Not many since, though, both men judged, but it wasn't the building's fault that it had more recently been occupied by people they didn't like. That was the problem with Washington buildings. The Capitol had once been home to Henry Clay and Dan'l Webster, after all. Patriots, unlike the bunch who'd been roasted by that Jap pilot.\n\nThings got a little bit tense when they turned into the White House grounds, like entering enemy territory. There were guards at the gatehouse of the Secret Service's uniformed division, and inside were Marines. Wasn't that a shame? Marines. Real Americans, even the colored ones, probably, 'cause they went through the training same as the white ones, and probably some of them were patriots, too. Too bad they were niggers, but it couldn't be helped. And all the Marines did what they were told by the 'crats. That made the looks a little hard to take. They were just kids, though, and maybe they'd learn. After all, the Mountain Men had a few ex-military in it. The Marines were shivering in their long coats and white fairy gloves, and finally one of them, a buck sergeant by the stripes, opened the door.\n\nSome house, Holbook and Brown thought, looking up and around the towering foyer. It was easy to see how somebody who lived here might think himself king-shit. You had to watch out for stuff like that. Lincoln had grown up in a log cabin, and Teddy had known life in a tent, hunting up in the mountains, but nowadays whoever lived here was just another damned 'crat. Inside were more Marines, and the honor guard around the two boxes, and most disquieting of all, people in civilian clothes with little plastic curly things that led from their suit collars to their ears. Secret Service. Federal cops. The face of the enemy, members of the same government department that held the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That figured. The first instance of citizens' objecting to the government had been about alcohol, the Whiskey Rebellion\u2014which was why the Mountain Men were equivocal in their admiration for George Washington. The more liberal of them remarked that even a good man can have a bad day, and George wasn't a guy to fuck with. Brown and Holbrook didn't look directly at the Secret Service pukes. You had to be careful fucking with them, too.\n\nSPECIAL AGENT PRICE walked into the foyer then. Her principal was safe in his office, and her responsibilities as Detail commander extended throughout the entire building. The procession wasn't a security threat to the House. In terms of security it was just a nuisance. Even if a gang of gunmen had secreted itself in the line, behind the closed doors all around this area were twenty armed agents, many of them with Uzi submachine guns in their fast-action-gun bags, unkindly known as FAG bags. A metal detector hidden in the doorway told a crew from the Technical Security Division whom to look at, and other agents concealed in their hands photos stacked together like a deck of cards, which they shuffled through constantly until every face coming through the door could be compared with known or suspected troublemakers. For the rest they depended on instincts and training, and that came down to people who looked \"funny,\" the usual Americanism for inappropriate demeanor. The problem with that was the cold weather outside. People came in, and a lot of them looked funny. Some stamped their feet a little. Others shoved hands into pockets, or adjusted coats, or shivered, or just looked around oddly\u2014all of which was calculated to attract the attention of somebody on the Detail. On those occasions when the gestures came from one who had pinged the metal detector, an agent would raise his or her hand as though scratching one's nose and speak into a microphone. \"Blue coat, male, six feet,\" for example, would cause four or five heads to turn for a closer look at, in that case, a dentist from Richmond who had just switched his pocket hand warmer from one side to the other. His physical dimensions were checked against threat photos of similarly sized subjects and found not to match\u2014but they watched him anyway, and a hidden TV camera zoomed in to record his face. In a few more extreme cases, an agent would join up with the exiting mourners and follow a subject to a car to catch the tag number. The long-since-deestablished Strategic Air Command had taken as its official motto PEACE is OUR PROFESSION. For the Secret Service the business was paranoia, the necessity for which was made plain by the two caskets in the White House foyer.\n\nBROWN AND HOLBROOK had their five seconds of direct viewing. Two expensive boxes, doubtless purchased at government expense, and blasphemously, they thought, draped with the Stars and Stripes. Well, maybe not for the wife. After all, the womenfolk were supposed to be loyal to their men, and that couldn't be helped. The flow of the crowd took them to the left, and velvet ropes guided them down the steps. They could feel the change in the others. A collective deep breath, and some sniffles of people wiping their eyes of tears\u2014mainly the womenfolk. The two Mountain Men stayed impassive, as most of the men did. The Remington sculptures on the way out caused both to stop and admire briefly, and then it was back into the open, and the fresh air was a welcome cleansing after the few minutes of federal steam heat. They didn't speak until they were off the grounds and away from others.\n\n\"Nice boxes we bought them,\" Holbrook managed to say first.\n\n\"Shame they weren't open.\" Brown looked around. Nobody was close enough to hear his indiscretion. \"They do have kids,\" Pete pointed out. He headed south so that they could see down Pennsylvania Avenue.\n\n\"Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they'll grow up to be 'crats, too.\" They walked a few more yards. \"Damn!\"\n\nThere was nothing else one could say, except maybe, \"Fuck!\" Holbrook thought, and he didn't like repeating things Ernie said.\n\nThe sun was coming up, and the absence of tall buildings to the east of the Hill meant that the white building was beautifully silhouetted. Though it was the first trip to Washington for both, either man could have done a reasonably accurate sketch of the building from memory, and the _wrongness_ of the horizon could not have been more obvious. Pete was glad that Ernie had talked him into coming. Just the sight made all the travel hassles worth it. This time he managed the first collective thought: \"Ernie,\" Holbrook said in awe, \"it's inspirational.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nONE PROBLEM WITH the disease was that the warning signs were equivocal, and her main concern was one of her patients. He was such a nice boy, but\u2014but he was gravely ill, Sister Jean Baptiste saw now that his fever had spiked to 40.4 degrees Celsius, and that was deadly enough, but the other signs were worse. The disorientation had gotten worse. The vomiting had increased, and now there was blood in it. There were indications of internal bleeding. All that, she knew, could mean one of several things\u2014but the one she worried about was called Ebola Zaire. There were many diseases in the jungle of this country\u2014she still thought of it occasionally as the Belgian Congo\u2014and while the competition for the absolute worst was stiffer than one might imagine, Ebola was at the bottom of that particular pit. She had to draw blood for another test, and this she did with great care, the first sample having been lost somehow or other. The younger staff here weren't as thorough as they ought. . . . His parents held the arm while she drew the blood, her hands fully protected with latex gloves. It went smoothly\u2014the boy was not even semiconscious at the moment. She withdrew the needle and placed it immediately in a plastic box for disposal. The blood vial was safe, but that, too, went into another container. Her immediate concern was the needle. Too many people on staff tried to save money for the hospital by reusing instruments, this despite AIDS and other diseases communicated by blood products. She'd handle this one herself, just to make sure.\n\nShe didn't have time to look more at the patient. Leaving the ward, she walked through the breezeway to the next building. The hospital had a long and honorable history, and had been built to allow for local conditions. The many low frame buildings were connected by covered walkways. The laboratory building was only fifty meters away. This facility was blessed; recently the World Health Organization had established a presence here, along with which had come modern equipment and six young physicians\u2014but, alas, no nurses. All were British\u2013or American trained.\n\nDr. Mohammed Moudi was at the lab bench. Tall, thin, swarthy, he was somewhat cold in his demeanor, but he was proficient. He turned as he saw her approach, and took note of the way she disposed of the needle.\n\n\"What is it, Sister?\"\n\n\"Patient Mkusa. Benedict Mkusa, African male, age eight.\" She handed the paperwork over. Moudi opened the folder and scanned it. For the nurse\u2014Christian or not, she was a holy woman, and a fine nurse\u2014the symptoms had occurred one at a time. The paper presentation to the physician was far more efficient. Headache, chills, fever, disorientation, agitation, and now signs of an internal bleed. When he looked up his eyes were guarded. If petechia appeared on his skin next . . .\n\n\"He's in the general ward?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Move him to the isolation building at once. I'll be over there in half an hour.\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\" On the way out she rubbed her forehead. It must have been the heat. You never really got used to it, not if you came from northern Europe. Maybe an aspirin after she saw to her patient.\n**7**\n\n**PUBLIC IMAGE**\n\n**I** T STARTED EARLY. WHEN two E-3B Sentry aircraft which had deployed from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina took off from the latter at 0800 local time and headed north. It had been decided that closing down all the local airports would have been too much. Washington National remained closed\u2014and with no congressmen to race there for a flight to their districts (their special parking lot was well known), it even appeared that the facility might remain that way\u2014and at the other two, Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International, controllers were under very precise instructions. Flights in and out were to avoid a \"bubble\" more than twenty miles in diameter and centered on the White House. Should any aircraft head toward the \"bubble\" it would instantly be challenged. If the challenge were ignored, it would soon find a fighter aircraft off its wingtip. If that didn't work, the third stage would be obvious and spectacular. Two flights, each of four F-16 fighters, were orbiting the city in relays at an altitude of eighteen and twenty thousand feet, respectively. The altitude kept the noise down (it also would enable them to tip over and reach supersonic speed almost immediately), but the white contrails made patterns in the blue sky as obvious as those the 8th Air Force had once traced over Germany.\n\nAbout the same time, the 260th Military Police Brigade of the Washington, D.C., National Guard redeployed to maintain \"traffic control.\" More than a hundred HMMWVs were in side streets, each with a police or FBI vehicle in close attendance, controlling traffic by blocking the streets. An honor guard assembled from all the services lined the streets to be used. There was no telling which of the rifles might be equipped with a full magazine.\n\nSome people had actually expected the security precautions to be kept quiet because armored vehicles had been dispensed with.\n\nThere was a total of sixty-one chiefs of state in the city; the day would be security hell for everyone, and the media made sure that everyone would share the experience.\n\nFor the last one of these, Jacqueline Kennedy had decided on morning clothes, but thirty-five years had passed, and dark business suits would now suffice, except for those foreign government officials who wore uniforms of various sorts (the Prince of Wales _was_ a commissioned officer), or visitors from tropical countries. Some of them would wear their national garb, and would suffer the consequences in the name of national dignity. Just getting them around town and into the White House was a nightmare. Then came the problem of how to line them up in the procession. Alphabetically by country? Alphabetically by name? By seniority in office would have given undue primacy of place to a few dictators who had come to find for themselves some legitimacy in the diplomatic major leagues\u2014bolstering the status of countries and governments with which America had friendly relations but for which America had little love. They all came to the White House, marching past the coffins after the last of the line of American citizens had been cut off, pausing to pay personal respects, and from there into the East Room, where a platoon of State Department officials struggled to get things organized over coffee and Danish.\n\nRyan and his family were upstairs, putting the finishing touches on their dark clothes, attended by White House staff members. The children handled it the best, accustomed to having Mom and Dad brush their hair on the way out the door, and amused to see Mom and Dad being treated the same way. Jack was holding a copy of his first speech. It was past time for him to close his eyes and wish everything away. Now he felt like a boxer, overmatched by his opponent but unable to take a dive, taking every punch as best he could and trying not to disgrace himself. Mary Abbot applied the final touches to his hair and locked everything in place with spray, something Ryan had never used voluntarily in his life.\n\n\"They're waiting, Mr. President,\" Arnie said.\n\n\"Yeah.\" Jack handed the speech binder to one of the Secret Service agents. He headed out of the room, followed by Cathy, who held Katie. Sally took Little Jack's hand to follow them into the corridor and down the stairs. President Ryan walked slowly down the square spiral of steps, then turned left to the East Room. As he entered the room, heads turned. Every eye in the room looked at him, but these looks were in no way casual, and few of them were sympathetic. Almost every pair belonged to a chief of state. Those that did not belonged to an ambassador, each of whom would this night draft a report on the new American President. It was Ryan's good fortune that the first to approach him was one who would not need to do anything of the sort.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" said the man in the Royal Navy mess jacket. His ambassador had positioned things nicely. On the whole, London rather liked the new arrangement. The \"special relationship\" would become more special, as President Ryan was an (honorary) Knight Commander of the Victorian Order.\n\n\"Your Highness.\" Jack paused, and allowed himself a smile as he shook the offered hand. \"Long time since that day in London, pal.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\nTHE SUN WASN'T as warm as it should have been the wind saw to that\u2014its hard-cast shadows merely making things appear colder. The D.C. police led off with a rank of motorcycles, then three drummers followed by marching soldiers\u2014they were a squad from 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, which had once been Roger Durling's own\u2014then the riderless horse, boots reversed in the stirrups, and the gun carriages, side by side for this funeral, husband and wife. Then the lines of cars. The cold air did one other thing. The drums' brutal thunder echoed sharply up and down the man-made canyons. As the procession headed northwest, the soldiers, sailors, and Marines came to present arms, first for the old President, then for the new. Men mainly removed whatever hats they might be wearing (some forgot) for the former.\n\nBrown and Holbrook didn't forget. Durling may just have been another 'crat, but the Flag was the Flag, and it wasn't the Flag's fault that it was draped there. The soldiers strutted up the street, incongruously wearing battledress uniforms with red berets and bloused jump boots because, the radio commentator said, Roger Durling had been one of their own. Before the gun carriage walked two more soldiers, the first carrying the presidential flag, and the second with a framed plaque which contained Durling's combat decorations. The deceased President had won a medal for rescuing a soldier under fire. That former soldier was somewhere in the procession, and had already been interviewed about a dozen times, soberly recounting the day on which a President-to-be had saved his life. A shame he'd gone wrong, the Mountain Men reflected, but more likely he'd been a politician the whole time.\n\nThe new President appeared presently, his automobile identifiable by the four Secret Service agents pacing alongside it. This new one was a mystery to the two Mountain Men. They knew what they'd seen on TV and read in the papers. A shooter. He'd actually killed two people, one with a pistol and one with an Uzi. Ex-Marine, even. That excited a little admiration. Other TV coverage, repeated again and again, mainly showed him doing Sunday talk shows and briefings. In most of the former he looked competent. In the latter he often appeared uncomfortable.\n\nMost of the car windows in the procession had the dark plastic coating that prevented people from seeing who rode inside, but not the President's car, of course. His three children sitting ahead of him and facing back from the jump seat, with his wife at his side, President John Ryan was easy to see from the sidewalk.\n\n\"WHAT DO WE really know about Mr. Ryan?\"\n\n\"Not much,\" the commentator admitted. \"His government service has been almost exclusively in CIA. He has the respect of Congress, on both sides of the aisle. He's worked with Alan Trent and Sam Fellows for years\u2014that's one of the reasons both members are still alive. We've all heard the story of the terrorists who attacked him\u2014\"\n\n\"Like something out of the Wild West,\" the anchor interjected. \"What do you think about having a President who's\u2014\"\n\n\"Killed people?\" the commentator returned the favor. He was tired from days of long duty, and just a little tired of this coiffeured airhead. \"Let's see. George Washington was a general. So was Andy Jackson. William Henry Harrison was a soldier. Grant, and most of the post-Civil War presidents. Teddy Roosevelt, of course. Truman was a soldier. Eisenhower. Jack Kennedy was in the Navy, as were Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, _and_ George Bush . . .\" The impromptu history lesson had the visual effect of a cattle prod.\n\n\"But he was selected as Vice President really in a caretaker status, wasn't he, and as payback for his handling of the conflict\"\u2014nobody really called it a \"war\"\u2014\"with what turned out to be Japanese business interests.\" There, the anchor thought, that would put this overaged foreign correspondent in his place. Who ever said that a President was entitled to any honeymoon at all, anyway?\n\nRYAN WANTED TO look over his speech, but he found that he couldn't. It was pretty cold out there. It wasn't exactly warm in the car, but thousands of people stood out there in twenty-nine-degree air, five to ten deep on the sidewalks, and their faces tracked his car as it passed by. They were close enough that he could see their expressions. Many pointed and said things to the people standing next to them\u2014 _there he is, there's the new one._ Some waved, small embarrassed gestures from people who were unsure if it was okay to do so, but wanting to do something to show that they cared. More nodded respect, with the tight smile that you saw in a funeral home _hope you'll be okay_. Jack wondered if it was proper to wave back, but decided that it wasn't, bound by some unwritten rule that applied to funerals. And so he just looked at them, his face, he thought, in a neutral mien, without saying anything because he didn't know what to say, either. Well, he had a speech to handle that, Ryan thought, frustrated with himself.\n\n\"NOT A HAPPY camper,\" Brown whispered to Holbrook. They waited a few minutes for the crowd to loosen up. Not all of the spectators were interested in the procession of foreign dignitaries. You couldn't see into the cars anyway, and keeping track of all the flags that flew on the front bumpers merely started various versions of \"Which one is that one?\"\u2014often with an incorrect answer. So, like many others, the two Mountain Men shouldered their way back from the curb into a park.\n\n\"He ain't got it,\" Holbrook replied, finally.\n\n\"He's just a 'crat. Remember the Peter Principle?\" It was a book which, both thought, had been written to explain government workers. In any hierarchy, people tended to rise to their level of incompetence. \"I think I like this.\"\n\nHis comrade looked back at the street and the cars and the fluttering little flags. \"I think you may be right.\"\n\nSECURITY AT THE National Cathedral was airtight. In their hearts the Secret Service agents knew that, and knew that no assassin\u2014the idea of professional assassins was largely a creation of Hollywood anyway\u2014would risk his life under these circumstances. Every building with a direct line of sight to the Gothic-style church had several policemen, or soldiers, or USSS special agents atop it, many of them armed with rifles, and their own Counter-Sniper Team armed with the finest of all, $10,000 handmade instruments that could reach more than half a mile and touch someone in the head the team, which won competition shoots with the regularity of the tides, was probably the best collection of marksmen the world had ever seen, and practiced every day to keep that way. Anyone who wanted to do mischief would either know all these things and stay away, or, in the case of an amateur madman, would see the massive defensive arrangements and decide this wasn't a good day to die.\n\nBut things were tense anyway, and even as the procession appeared in the distance, agents were hustling around. One of them, exhausted from thirty hours of continuous duty, was drinking coffee when he tripped on the stone steps and spilled the cup. Grumbling, he crushed the plastic foam in his hand, stuffed it in his pocket, and told his lapel-mounted radio microphone that everything was clear at his post. The coffee froze almost instantly on the shaded granite.\n\nInside the cathedral, yet another team of agents checked out every shadowed nook one more time before taking their places, allowing protocol officers to make final preparations, referring to seating instructions faxed to them only minutes before and wondering what would go wrong.\n\nThe gun carriages came to a halt in front of the building, and the cars came up one at a time to discharge their passengers. Ryan got out, followed by his family, moving to join the Durlings. The kids were still in shock, and maybe that was good, or maybe it was not. Jack didn't know. At times like this, what did a man do? He placed his hand on the son's shoulder while the cars came, dropped off their passengers, and pulled rapidly away. The other official mourners\u2014the senior ones\u2014would form up behind him. Less senior ones would be entering the church now from side entrances, passing through portable metal detectors, while the churchmen and choir, having already done the same, would be taking their places.\n\nRoger must have remembered his service in the 82nd with pride, Jack thought. The soldiers who'd led the procession stacked arms and prepared to do their duty under the supervision of a young captain, assisted by two serious-looking sergeants. They all looked so young, even the sergeants, all with their heads shaved nearly down to stubble under their berets. Then he remembered that his father had served in the rival 101st Airborne more than fifty years before, and had looked just like these kids, though probably with a little more hair, since the bald look hadn't been fashionable in the 1940s. But the same toughness, the same fierce pride, and the same determination to get the job done, whatever it might be. It seemed to take forever. Ryan, like the soldiers, couldn't turn his head. He had to stand at attention as he'd done during his own service in the Marine Corps, though allowing his eyes to scan around. His children turned their heads and shifted on their feet with the cold, while Cathy kept her eyes on them, worrying as her husband did about the exposure to the cold, but caught in a situation where even parental concerns were subordinated to something else. What was it, she wondered, this thing called duty that even orphaned children knew that they had to stand there and just take it?\n\nFinally the last of the official procession alighted from their cars and took their places. Someone gave it a fivecount, and the soldiers moved to the gun carriages, seven to each. The officer in charge of them unscrewed one clamp, then the other, and the caskets were lifted and moved off in robotic side-steps. The soldier holding the presidential flag started up the steps, followed by the caskets. The President's was in front, led by the captain and followed by the sergeant in charge of the sub-detail.\n\nIt wasn't anybody's fault. There were three soldiers on either side, marching to the slow cadence called by the sergeant. They were stiff from standing fifteen minutes at parade rest after a healthy morning walk up Massachusetts Avenue. The middle one on the right slipped on the frozen coffee just as all were taking a step. He slid inward, not outward, and in going down his legs swept away the soldier behind him. The total load was over four hundred pounds of wood, metal, and body, and it all came down on the soldier who'd been first to slip, breaking both his legs in an instant on the granite steps.\n\nA collective gasp came up from the thousands of people watching. Secret Service agents raced in, fearing that a shot might have felled the soldiers. Andrea Price moved in front of Ryan, her hand inside her coat and obviously holding her service automatic, ready to draw it out, while other agents poised to drag the Ryans and the Durlings clear of the area. The soldiers were already moving the casket off their fallen comrade, his face suddenly white with pain.\n\n\"Ice,\" he told the sergeant through clenched teeth. \"Slipped.\" The soldier even had enough self-control to refrain from the profanity that echoed through his mind at the shame and embarrassment of the moment. An agent looked at the step and saw it there, a white-brown mound that reflected light. He made a gesture that told Price she could stand down, which command was instantly radioed out to all the agents in sight:\n\n\"Just a slip, just a slip.\"\n\nRyan winced to see what had happened. Roger Durling would not have felt it, his mind thought, but the insult to him was an insult to his children, who cringed and snapped their heads away when their father bounced on the stone steps. The son turned back first, taking it all in, the child part of him wondering why the fall hadn't awakened his father. Only hours before he'd risen during the night and walked to the door of his room, wanting to open it, wanting to cross the hall and knock on his parents' door to see if they might be back.\n\n\"OH, GOD,\" the commentator groaned.\n\nThe cameras zoomed in as two of the 3rd Regiment soldiers pulled the injured paratrooper clear. The sergeant took his place. The casket was lifted back up in seconds, its polished oak clearly gouged and defaced by the fall.\n\n\"OKAY. SOLDIERS,\" the sergeant said from his new place. \"By the left.\"\n\n\"Daddy,\" whimpered Mark Durling, age nine. \"Daddy.\" Everyone close by heard it in the silence that had followed the accident. The soldiers bit their lips. The Secret Service agents, already shamed and wounded by the loss of a President, took a second to look down or at one another. Jack instinctively wrapped his arms around the boy, but still didn't know what the hell he was supposed to say. What else could possibly go wrong? the new President wondered as Mrs. Durling followed her husband up the steps and inside.\n\n\"Okay, Mark.\" Ryan placed his arm around the youngster's shoulder and guided him to the door, without thinking about it taking the place of a favored uncle for a few yards. If there were only a way to take away their sorrow, even for a few seconds. The thought was an impossible one, and all it did for Jack was to give him another layer of sadness, as what he added to himself didn't detract a whit from what the children felt.\n\nIt was warmer inside, which was noticed by those less caught up in the emotion of the moment. Fluttering protocol officers took their places. Ryan and his family went to the first pew on the right. The Durling party went opposite them. The caskets sat side by side on catafalques in the sacristy, and beyond them were three more, those of a senator and two members of the House, \"representing\" one last time. The organ played something Ryan had heard before but didn't recognize. At least it wasn't Mozart's grim Masonic procession with its repeating, brutal chant, about as uplifting as a film of the Holocaust. The clergymen were lined up in front, their faces professionally composed. In front of Ryan, in the slot usually occupied by hymnals, was another copy of his speech.\n\nTHE SCENE ON the TV screen was such to make anyone in his chosen profession either ill or excited in a manner beyond sex. If only . . . but such opportunities as this one only happened by accident, never allowing the time to prepare anything. Preparation was everything for a mission like this. Not that it would have been technically hard, and he allowed his mind to consider the method. A mortar, perhaps. You could mount one of those in the back of an ordinary delivery truck such as one might find in any city in the known world. Walk the rounds down the roof of the building, dropping it on the targets. You'd get off at least ten, maybe fifteen or twenty, and though the selection would be random, a target was a target, and terror was terror, and that was his profession.\n\n\"Look at them all,\" he breathed. The cameras traced along the pews. Mostly men, some women, sitting in no order that he could discern, some chatting in whispers, most not, with blank expressions as their eyes surveyed the inside of the church. Then the children of the dead American President, a son and a daughter with the beaten look of those who'd been touched by the harsh reality of life. Children bore the burden surprisingly well, didn't they? They'd survive, all the more so that they were no longer of any political significance, and so his interest in them was as clinical as it was pitiless. Then the camera was on Ryan again, closing in on his face and allowing some careful examination.\n\nHE HADN'T SAID good-bye to Roger Durling yet. There hadn't been time for Jack to compose his mind and concentrate on the thought, the week had been so busy, but now he found his eyes staring at just that one coffin. He'd hardly known Anne, and the three others in the sacristy were strangers to him, actually chosen at random for their religious affiliations. But Roger had been a friend. Roger had brought him back from private life, given him an important job, and trusted him to run it, taking Jack's advice most of the time, confiding in him, chiding and disciplining on occasion, but always as a friend. It had been a tough job, all the harder with the conflict that had developed with Japan\u2014even for Jack, now that it was over, it was no longer a \"war,\" because war was a thing of the past. No longer a part of the real world that was progressing beyond such barbarism. Durling and Ryan had gotten through that, and while the former had wanted to move on to finish the job in other ways, he had also recognized that for Ryan the race had ended. And so, as a friend, he'd given Jack a golden bridge back to private life, a capstone on a career of public service that had turned into a trap.\n\n_But if he'd offered the job to someone else, where would I have been that night?_ Jack asked himself. The answer was simple. He would have been in the front row of the House chamber, and now he would have been dead. President Ryan blinked hard at the realization. _Roger had saved his life._ Probably not just his own. Cathy\u2014and maybe the kids\u2014would have been in the gallery, along with Anne Durling. . . . Was life really that fragile as to turn on such small events? Throughout the city at this moment, other bodies lay in other caskets for other ceremonies, most for adults but some for the children of other victims who'd chosen that night to bring their families to the joint session.\n\nMark Durling was whimpering now. His elder sister, Amy, pulled his head inward to her. Jack turned his head slightly, allowing his peripheral vision to take it in. _They're just kids, dear God, why do kids have to go through this?_ The thought hammered home in an instant. Jack bit his lip and looked down at the floor. There was no one to be a target for his anger. The perpetrator of this crime was dead himself, his body in yet another box in the Washington, D.C., morgue, and some thousands of miles away, such family as the man had left behind bore the additional burden of shame and guilt placed on them. This was why people called all violence senseless. There was nothing to learn from any of this, only the lingering harm of lives lost and lives wrecked\u2014and lives spared for no particular reason other than mere chance. Like cancer or other serious illness, this sort of violence struck with no discernible plan, and no real defense, just one dead man who had decided not to enter alone such afterlife as he believed in. What the hell was anyone supposed to learn from this? Ryan, long a student of human behavior, grimaced and continued to look down, his ears focusing on the sounds of an orphaned child in the hollow echoes of a stone church.\n\n_HE'S WEAK._ IT was obvious on his face. This supposed man, this _President,_ was struggling to hold back tears. Didn't he know that death was part of life? He'd caused death, hadn't he? Didn't he know what death was? Was he only learning now? The other faces did know. One could see that. They were somber, because at a funeral it was expected that one had to be somber, but all life came to an end. Ryan ought to know. He'd faced danger\u2014but that was long ago, he reminded himself, and over time men forget such things. Ryan had had ample cause to forget life's vulnerabilities, protected as he'd been as a government official. It amazed the man how much one could learn from a few seconds' examination of a human face.\n\nThat made things easier, didn't it?\n\nSHE WAS FIVE rows back, but was on the aisle, and though the Prime Minister of India could see only the back of President Ryan's head, she, too, was a student of human behavior. A chief of state couldn't act like this. A chief of state was, after all, an actor on the world's most important stage, and you had to learn what to do and how to behave. She'd been going to funerals of various sorts all of her life, because political leaders had associates not always friends\u2014young and old, and one had to show respect by appearing, even for those one had detested. In the latter case, it could be amusing. In her country the dead were so often burned, and then she could tell herself that, perhaps, the body was still alive as it burned. Her eyebrows flickered up and down in private amusement at the thought. _Especially for the ones you detested._ It was such good practice. To appear saddened. _Yes, we had our differences, but he was always someone to be respected, someone you could work with. someone whose ideas were always worth serious attention._ With practice over the years, you got good enough that the survivors believed the lies\u2014partly because they wanted to believe. You learned to smile just so, and to show grief just so, and to speak just so. You had to. A political leader could rarely allow true feelings to show. True feelings told others what your weaknesses were, and there were always those to use them against you\u2014and so over the years you hid them more and more, until eventually you had few, if any, true feelings left. And that was good, because politics wasn't about feelings.\n\nClearly this Ryan fellow didn't know that, the Prime Minister of \"the world's largest democracy\" told herself. As a result, he was showing what he really was, and worse still, for him, he was doing so in front of a third of the world's highest political leaders, people who would see and learn and file their thoughts away for future use. Just as she was doing. Marvelous, she thought, keeping her face somber and sad in honor of someone she'd thoroughly detested. When the organist began the first hymn, she lifted her book, turned the page to the proper number, and sang along with everyone else.\n\nTHE RABBI WENT first. Each clergyman was given ten minutes, and each of them was an expert\u2014more properly, each was a genuine scholar in addition to his calling as a man of God. Rabbi Benjamin Fleischman spoke from the Talmud and the Torah. He spoke of duty and honor and faith, of a merciful God. Next came the Reverend Frederick Ralston, the Senate Chaplain\u2014he'd been out of town that night, and so spared of a more restrained participation in the events of the day. A Southern Baptist and distinguished authority on the New Testament, Ralston spoke of Christ's Passion in the garden, of his friend Senator Richard Eastman of Oregon, who lay in the sacristy, universally respected as an honorable member of the Congress, segueing then into praise of the fallen President, a devoted family man, as all knew. . . .\n\nThere was no \"right\" way to handle such things, Ryan thought. Maybe it would be easier if the minister\/ priest\/rabbi had time to sit with the grieving, but that hadn't happened in this case, and he wondered\u2014\n\n_No, this isn't right!_ Jack told himself. This was theater. It wasn't supposed to be that. There were _kids_ sitting a few feet across the aisle to his left, and for them this wasn't theater at all. This was a lot simpler for them. It was _Mom_ and _Dad,_ ripped out of their lives by a senseless act, denying them the future that life was supposed to guarantee them, love and guidance, a chance to grow in a normal way into normal people. Mark and Amy were the important ones here, but the lessons of this service, which were supposed to help them, were instead aimed at others. This whole event was a _political_ exercise, something to reassure the country, renew people's faith in God and the world and their country, and maybe the people out there behind the twenty-three cameras in the church needed that, but there were people in greater need, the children of Roger and Anne Durling, the grown sons of Dick Eastman, the widow of David Kohn of Rhode Island, and the surviving family of Marissa Henrik of Texas. Those were real people, and their personal grief was being subordinated to the needs of the country. _Well, the country be damned!_ Jack thought, suddenly angry at what was happening, and at himself for not grasping it early enough to change things around. The country had needs, but those needs could not be so great as to overshadow the horror fate had inflicted on kids. Who spoke for them? Who spoke to them?\n\nWorst of all for Ryan, a Catholic, Michael Cardinal O'Leary, Archbishop of Washington, was no better. \"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called . . .\" For Mark and Amy, Jack's mind raged, their father wasn't a peacemaker. He was Dad, and Dad was gone, and that wasn't an abstraction. Three distinguished, learned, and very decent members of the clergy were preaching to a nation, but right before them were children who got a few kind words of lip service, and that was all. Somebody had to speak to them, for them, about their parents. Somebody had to try to make things better. It wasn't possible, but someone had to try, damn it! Maybe he was President of the United States. Maybe he had a duty to the millions behind the cameras, but Jack remembered the time his wife and daughter had been in Baltimore's Shock-Trauma Center, hovering between life and death, and that hadn't been a damned abstraction, either. _That_ was the problem. _That_ was why his family had been attacked. _That_ was why all these people had died\u2014because some misguided fanatic had seen them all as abstractions instead of human beings with lives and hopes and dreams\u2014and kids. It was Jack's job to protect a nation. He'd sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and he would do that to the best of his ability. But the purpose of the _Constitution_ was pretty simple\u2014to secure the blessings of liberty for _people,_ and that included kids. The country he served and the government he was trying to lead were nothing more or less than a mechanism to protect individual people. _That_ duty was not an abstraction. The reality of that duty sat ten feet to his left, holding back tears as best they could, and probably failing, because there was no feeling lonelier than what those kids were suffering right now, while Mike O'Leary spoke to a country instead of a family. The theater had lasted long enough. There came another hymn, and then it was Ryan's turn to rise and walk to the pulpit.\n\nSecret Service agents turned around, again sweeping the nave, because now SWORDSMAN was an ideal target. Getting to the lectern, he saw that Cardinal O'Leary had done as instructed and set the presidential binder on the wooden top. No, Jack decided. No. His hands grasped the sides of the lectern to steady himself. His eyes swept briefly across the assembly, and then looked down on the children of Roger and Anne Durling. The pain in their eyes broke his heart. They'd borne all the burdens placed on them by duties never theirs to carry. They'd been told by some unnamed \"friends\" to be braver than would have been asked of any Marine at such a time, probably because, \"Mom and Dad would want you to.\" But bearing pain in quiet dignity was not the business of children. That was what adults were supposed to do, as best they could. _Enough_ , Jack told himself, _my duty starts here._ The first duty of the strong was ever to protect the weak. His hands squeezed on the polished oak, and the self-inflicted pain helped compose his thoughts.\n\n\"Mark, Amy, your father was my friend,\" he said gently. \"It was my honor to work for him and help him as best I could\u2014\u2014but you know, he was probably even more help for me. I know you always had to understand that Dad and Mom had important jobs, and didn't always have time for the really important things, but I can tell you that your father did everything he could to spend time with you, because he loved you more than anything in the world, more than being President, more than all the things that came along with that, more than anything\u2014except maybe your Mom. He loved her a lot, too. . . .\"\n\nWHAT RUBBISH! YES, one cared for children. Daryaei did, but children grew to adulthood no matter what. Their place was to learn, and to serve, and someday to do the deeds of adults. Until then, they were children, and the world told them what must be. Fate did. Allah did. Allah was merciful, even though life was hard. He had to admit that the Jew had spoken well, citing scripture quoted exactly the same way in their Torah and his Holy Koran. He would have chosen a different passage, but that was a matter of taste, wasn't it? Theology allowed such things. It had all been a wasted exercise, but formal occasions such as this usually were. This Ryan fool was wasting his chance to rally his nation, to appear strong and sure, thus to consolidate his hold on his government. Talking to children at such a time!\n\nHIS POLITICAL HANDLERS must be having a collective heart attack, the Prime Minister thought, and it required all of the self-control learned over a political lifetime to keep her face composed. Then she decided to change her expression to sympathy. After all, he might be watching her, and she was a woman and a mother, after all, and she would be meeting with him later today. She tilted her head slightly to the right, so as to give herself a better view of the scene and the man. He might like that, too. In another minute or so, she'd pull a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes.\n\n\"I wish I'd had the chance to get to know your mom better. Cathy and I were looking forward to that. I wanted Sally and Jack and Katie and you to become friends. Your dad and I talked a little about that. I guess that won't be happening the way we wanted it to.\" That impromptu thought made Jack's stomach do a flip. They were crying now, because he'd told them without words that now it was okay to cry. Jack couldn't let himself do that. Not for the others. He had to be strong now for them, and so he gripped the lectern harder still until his hands really hurt, and he welcomed the pain for the discipline it imposed on him.\n\n\"You probably want to know why this had to happen. I don't know, kids. I wish I did. I wish _somebody_ did, so that I could go to that person for the answers. But I've never found that person,\" Jack went on.\n\n\"JESUS,\" CLARK MANAGED to say in the grumbly voice that men used to prevent a sob. In his CIA office, as with all senior officials, was a TV set, and every channel was covering this. \"Yeah, I've looked once or twice myself, man.\"\n\n\"You know something, John?\" Chavez was under more control. It was a man's place to be calm at such times, so that the women and kids could cling to him. Or so his culture told him. Mr. C., on the other hand, was just full of surprises. As always.\n\n\"What's that, Domingo?\"\n\n\"He gets it. We're working for somebody who gets it.\"\n\nJohn turned at that. Who'd believe it? Two CIA paramilitary officers, thinking the same thoughts as their President. It was nice to know that he'd read Ryan correctly from the first moment. _Damn, just like his dad._ A pity Fate had denied him the chance to know that Ryan. He next wondered if Jack would succeed as President. He wasn't acting like one of the others. He was acting like a real person. But why was that so bad? Clark asked himself.\n\n\"I WANT YOU to know that you can come to Cathy and me whenever you want. You're not alone. You will _never_ be alone. You have your family with you, and now you have my family, too,\" he promised them from the pulpit. It just got harder. He had to say what he'd just said. Roger was a friend, and you looked after their kids when you had to. He'd done it for Buck Zimmer's family, and now he'd do it for Roger's.\n\n\"I want you to be proud of Mom and Dad. Your father was a fine man, a good friend. He worked very hard to make things better for people. It was a big job, and it denied him a lot of time with you, but your father was a big man, and big men do big things. Your mother was always there, too, and she also did big things. Kids, you will always have them in your heart. Remember all the things they told you, all the little things, and the games, and the tricks, and the jokes, all the ways moms and dads show love for their children. You will never lose that. Never,\" Jack assured them, stretching and hoping for something that could soften the blow Fate had dealt them. He couldn't find anything better. It was time to end it.\n\n\"Mark, Amy, God decided He wanted your mom and dad back. He doesn't explain why in ways that are easy for us to understand, and we can't . . . we can't fight it when that happens. We just can't\u2014\" Ryan's voice finally cracked.\n\nHOW COURAGEOUS OF the man, Koga thought, to allow his emotions to show. Anyone could have stood up there and spoken the usual political drivel, and most would have\u2014in or from any country\u2014but this Ryan wasn't like that at all. Speaking to the children in this way was brilliant\u2014or so he'd thought at the outset. But it wasn't that at all. Inside the President was a _man_. He wasn't an actor. He didn't care about showing strength and resolve. And Koga knew why. More than anyone else in this church, Koga knew what Ryan was made of. He'd guessed right in his own office a few days before. Ryan was samurai, and even more. He did what he did, not caring what others thought. The Japanese Prime Minister hoped that wasn't a mistake as he watched the President of the United States come down the steps, then approach the Durling children. He embraced them, and the audience watched tears well up on Ryan's face. There were sobs around him in the chiefs-of-state seating, but he knew that most of those were forced or feigned\u2014or at most brief, fleeting moments of residual humanity, soon to be forgotten. He regretted that he couldn't join in that, but the rules of his culture were stern, all the more so as he bore the shame of one of his citizens having caused this monstrous tragedy. He _had_ to play the political game, much as he would have preferred otherwise, and it wasn't so much that Ryan didn't have to play the game as that he didn't care. He wondered if America realized her good fortune.\n\n\"HE DIDN'T USE his prepared speech at all,\" the anchorman objected. The speech had been distributed to all the news networks, and all the copies had been highlighted and excerpted already so that the reporters could repeat favored passages, so to reinforce the important things the President had to say for the viewing public. Instead the anchor had been forced to take notes, which he did badly, long past his time as a working reporter.\n\n\"You're right,\" the commentator reluctantly agreed. Things just weren't done this way. On his monitor, Ryan was still holding the Durling children, and that was going too long as well. \"I guess the President decided that this was an important personal moment for them \"\n\n\"And it surely is,\" the anchorman inserted.\n\n\"But Mr. Ryan's job is to govern a nation.\" The commentator shook his head, clearly thinking something he couldn't say quite yet: _not presidential._\n\nJACK HAD TO let go, finally. There was only hurt in their eyes now. The objective part of his mind thought that was probably good\u2014they had to let it out\u2014but that made it no easier to see, for children of that age weren't supposed to have such things at all. But these children did, and there was nothing to be done for it but to try, somehow, to ease the pain. He looked over at the uncles and aunts who'd accompanied them. They were weeping also, but through their tears he saw a grateful look, and that, at least, told him that he'd done something. Nodding, he turned to return to his seat. Cathy looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes, too, and though she couldn't speak, she gripped his hand. Jack saw one more example of his wife's intelligence. She'd worn no eye makeup to run from her tears. Inwardly, he smiled. He didn't like makeup, and his wife didn't really need it.\n\n\"WHAT DO WE know of her?\"\n\n\"She's a physician, an eye surgeon, actually, supposed to be a good one.\" He checked his notes. \"The American news media say that she is continuing to work at her profession despite her official duties.\"\n\n\"And their children?\"\n\n\"There's nothing on that, though . . . I should be able to find out what school they attend.\" He saw the quizzical look and went on. \"If the wife will continue to do her medical work, then I would guess that the children will continue to attend the same schools.\"\n\n\"How do you find that out?\"\n\n\"Easily. All American news stories can be accessed by computer. Ryan has been the subject of numerous news pieces. I can find out anything I want.\" In fact he already had, but not information about his family. The modern age had made the life of an intelligence officer so much easier. He already knew Ryan's age, height, weight, color of hair and eyes, and much of his personal habits, favorite food and drink, the golf clubs he belonged to, all manner of trivia, none of which was trivial to a man in his line of work. He didn't have to ask what his boss was thinking. The opportunity which both had missed with all of the chiefs of state at the National Cathedral was gone forever, but it would not be the only one.\n\nWITH ONE FINAL hymn, it was over. The soldiers returned to collect the caskets, and the procession began again in reverse. Mark and Amy collected themselves well, aided by their relatives, and followed their parents. Jack led his family just after them. Katie was mainly bored and glad to be moving. Jack Jr. was sad for the Durling kids. Sally looked worried. He'd have to talk to her about that. Down the aisle he looked closely into a number of faces, distantly surprised that the first four or five rows of them looked not at the caskets, but at him. They never turned it off, did they? His fellow chiefs of state, Jack thought, wondering just what sort of club he'd just entered. A few faces were friendly. The Prince of Wales, who was not a chief of state and therefore placed by protocol behind the others\u2014some of whom were outright thugs, but that could not be helped\u2014gave a friendly nod. Yeah, he would understand, Jack thought. The new President wanted to check his watch, so tired he felt from the events of a day yet young, but he'd been sternly lectured about looking at one's watch, to the point of being advised to take it off. A President didn't need a watch. There were always people to tell him what came next, just as there were now people searching coat racks, ready to hand Ryan and his family what they needed before going back outside. There was Andrea Price, and other members of the Detail. Outside would be more: a not-so-small army of people with guns and fears, and a car to take him to his next destination, where he would perform more official duties, then be whisked off to the next set, and on, and on.\n\nHe couldn't let all this take control of his life. Ryan frowned at the thought. He'd do the work, but he couldn't make the mistake Roger and Anne had made. He thought of the faces he'd seen walking out of the church and knew that it was a club he might be forced to enter but which he would never join. Or so he told himself.\n**8**\n\n**CHANGE OF COMMAND**\n\n**T** HE PART AT ANDREWS was mercifully short. From the Cathedral, the caskets had traveled in hearses, with the large official party left behind to disperse throughout Embassy Row. Air Force One was waiting on the ramp to take the Durlings back to California one last time. It seemed far more desultory now. There was yet another honor guard to salute the flagdraped coffins, but this was different. The crowd was smaller, composed mostly of Air Force and some other military personnel who had worked directly with the presidential party in one way or another. At the family's request, the actual burial ceremony would be smaller, and limited to relatives only, which was probably better for everybody. And so here at Andrews came the last \"Ruffles and Flourishes\" and the last \"Hail to the Chief.\" Mark stood at attention, holding his hand over his heart in a gesture sure to be on the cover of all the news magazines. A good kid, doing his best, and being more manly than he would ever know. A scissors lift took the caskets to the cargo door, for at this point that's what the bodies were; mercifully, that part of the transfer was hidden from view. Then it was time. The family walked up the steps into the VC-25 for their last ride. It wouldn't even have the Air Force One call sign anymore, because that label went with the President, and the President wasn't aboard. Ryan watched the aircraft taxi off, then rumble down the runway. TV cameras tracked it until it was a mere dot in the sky. Ryan's eyes did the same. By that time, a flight of F-16s, relieved of their guard duty over Washington, landed one by one. When that was done, Ryan and his family climbed aboard a Marine helicopter to return to the White House. The flight crew smiled and fussed over his children. Little Jack got a unit patch after he buckled in. The mood of the day changed with that. The Marines of VMH-1 had a new family to take care of, and life for them moved on.\n\nAlready the White House staff was at work, moving their things in (they'd labored throughout the morning moving the Durlings' things out), changing some furniture, and tonight his family would sleep in the same house first occupied by John Adams. The kids, being kids, looked out the windows as the helicopter began its descent. The parents, being parents, looked at each other.\n\nThings changed at this point. At a private family funeral, this would have been the wake. The sadness was supposed to be left behind, and the mourners would remember what a great guy Roger was, and then talk about what new things were going on in their lives, how the kids were doing at school, discussions of the baseball offseason trades. It was a way for things to return to normal after a sad and stressful day. And so it was in this case, if on a somewhat broader scale. The White House photographer was waiting there on the South Lawn as the helicopter touched down. The stairs were lowered, and a Marine corporal stood at the bottom of them. President Ryan came out first, getting a salute from the corporal in dress blues, which he automatically returned, so ingrained were the lessons from Quantico, Virginia, more than twenty years before. Cathy came down behind, and then the kids. The Secret Service agents formed a loose corridor which told them where to head. News cameras were off to the west, their left, but no questions were shouted\u2014this time; that would change very quickly, too. Inside the White House, the Ryans were directed to the elevators for a rapid trip to the second, bedroom floor. Van Damm was waiting there.\n\n\"Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Do I change, Arnie?\" Jack asked, handing his coat to a valet. Ryan stopped cold, if only for a second or two, in surprise at how easy that simple activity was. He was President now, and in small ways he had automatically started to act like one. Somehow that was more remarkable than the duties he'd already undertaken.\n\n\"No. Here.\" The chief of staff handed over a list of the guests already downstairs in the East Room. Jack scanned it, standing there in the middle of the hall. The names weren't so much people as countries, many friendly, many acquaintances, some genuine strangers, and some . . . Even as a former National Security Advisor, he didn't know everything he ought to have known about them. While he read, Cathy hustled the kids off to the bathroom\u2014or started to. An agent from the Detail had to assist in locating them. Ryan walked into his own, checking his hair in the mirror. He managed to comb it himself, without the ministrations of Mrs. Abbot, under van Damm's scrutiny. _Not even safe in here_ , the President told himself.\n\n\"How long will this go, Arnie?\"\n\n\"No telling, sir.\"\n\nRyan turned. \"When we're alone, the name's still Jack, remember? I've been afflicted, not anointed.\"\n\n\"Okay, Jack.\"\n\n\"Kids, too?\"\n\n\"That'll be a nice touch. . . . Jack, so far, you've been doing well.\"\n\n\"Do I have my speechwriter mad at me?\" he asked, checking his tie and leaving the bathroom.\n\n\"Your instincts weren't so bad, but next time we can have a speech prepared for that.\"\n\nRyan thought about that, handing the list back to van Damm. \"You know, just because I'm President doesn't mean I stopped being a person.\"\n\n\"Jack, get used to it, okay? You're not allowed to be 'just a person' anymore. Okay, you've had a few days to get used to the idea. When you walk downstairs, you are the United States of America, _not_ just a person. That goes for you, that goes for your wife, and to some degree that goes for your kids.\" For his revelation, the chief of staff got a poisonous look that may have lasted a second or two. Arnie ignored it. It was just personal, not business. \"Ready, Mr. President?\"\n\nJack nodded, wondering if Arnie was right or not, and wondering why the observation had angered him so much. And then wondering again how true it was. You couldn't tell with Arnie. He was and would continue to be a teacher, and as with most skilled teachers, he would occasionally tell lies as harsh exemplars of a deeper truth.\n\nDon Russell appeared in the corridor, leading Katie by the hand. She had a red ribbon in her hair as she broke free and ran to her mother. \"Look what Uncle Don did!\" At least one member of the Detail was already a member of the family.\n\n\"You may want to get them all into the bathroom now, Mrs. Ryan. There are no restrooms on the State Floor.\"\n\n\"None?\"\n\nRussell shook his head. \"No, ma'am, they sort of forgot when they built the place.\"\n\nCaroline Ryan grabbed the two youngest and led them off, doing her motherly duty. She returned in a couple of minutes.\n\n\"Want me to carry her downstairs for you, ma'am?\" Russell asked with a grandfatherly smile. \"The stairs are a little tricky in heels. I'll hand her off at the bottom.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" People started heading for the stairwell, and Andrea Price keyed her microphone.\n\n\"SWORDSMAN and party are moving from the residence to the State Floor.\"\n\n\"Roger,\" another agent responded from downstairs.\n\nThey could hear the noise even before making the last turn on the marble steps. Russell set Katie Ryan on the floor next to her mother. The agents faded away, becoming strangely invisible as the Ryans, the First Family, walked into the East Room.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen,\" a staff member announced, \"the President of the United States, Dr. Ryan, and family.\" Heads turned. There was a brief wave of applause which quickly faded, but the looks continued. They appeared friendly enough, Jack thought, knowing that not all were. He and Cathy moved a little to the left, and formed the receiving line.\n\nThey came mainly one by one, though some of the visiting chiefs of state had brought wives. A protocol officer at Ryan's left whispered the name of each into his ear, making Jack wonder how she knew all of these people by sight. The procession to him wasn't quite as haphazard as it appeared. The ambassadors representing countries whose heads had chosen not to make the trip held back, but even those, standing about in little knots of associates and sipping at their Perrier-with-a-twist, didn't hide their professional curiosity, checking out the new President _and_ the way he greeted the men and women who came up to him.\n\n\"The Prime Minister of Belgium, M. Arnaud,\" the protocol officer whispered. The official photographer started clicking away to record every official greeting, and two TV cameras were doing the same, albeit more quietly.\n\n\"Your telegram was very gracious, Mr. Prime Minister, and it came at a sensitive moment,\" Ryan said, wondering if the truth sounded good enough, wondering if Arnaud had even read it\u2014well, of course he had, though he probably hadn't drafted it.\n\n\"Your talk to the children was very moving. I'm sure everyone here thinks the same,\" the P.M. replied, gripping Ryan's hand, testing it for firmness, looking hard and deep into his eyes, and rather pleased with himself for the very skilled mendacity of his greeting. For all that, he had read the telegram and pronounced it fitting, and was gratified at hearing Ryan's reaction to it. Belgium was an ally, and Arnaud had been well briefed by the chief of his country's military-intelligence service, who'd worked with Ryan at several NATO conferences, and always liked the American's read on the Soviets\u2014and now, the Russians. An unknown quantity as a political leader, the gist of the briefing had been, but a bright and capable analyst. Arnaud did his own reading now, first in line mainly by accident, by grip and look and many years of experience in such things. Then he moved on.\n\n\"Dr. Ryan, I have heard so much about you.\" He kissed her hand in a very graceful Continental way. He hadn't been told how attractive the new First Lady was, and how dainty her hands were. Well, she was a surgeon, wasn't she? New to the game and uncomfortable with it, but playing along as she had to.\n\n\"Thank you, Prime Minister Arnaud,\" Cathy replied, informed by her own protocol officer (this one was just behind her) who this gentleman was. The hand business, she thought, was very theatrical . . . but nice.\n\n\"Your children are angels.\"\n\n\"How nice of you to say that.\" And he moved on, to be replaced by the President of Mexico.\n\nNews cameras floated around the room, along with fifteen reporters, because this was a working function of sorts. The piano in the room's northeast corner played some light classical\u2014not quite what on the radio was called \"easy listening,\" but close.\n\n\"And how long have you known the President?\" The question came from the Prime Minister of Kenya, pleased to find a black admiral in the room.\n\n\"We go back quite a ways, sir,\" Robby Jackson replied.\n\n\"Robby! Excuse me, _Admiral_ Jackson,\" the Prince of Wales corrected himself.\n\n\"Captain.\" Jackson shook his hand warmly. \"It's been a while, sir.\"\n\n\"You two know\u2014ah! Yes!\" the Kenyan realized. Then he saw his counterpart from Tanzania and moved off to conduct business, leaving the two alone.\n\n\"How is he doing\u2014really, I mean,\" the Prince asked, vaguely saddening Jackson. But this man had a job. Sent over as a friend in what Robby knew to have been a political decision, he would, on his return to Her Britannic Majesty's embassy, dictate a contact report. It was business. On the other hand, the question deserved an answer. The three of them had \"served\" together briefly one hot, stormy summer night.\n\n\"We had a short meeting with the acting chiefs a couple of days ago. There'll be a working session tomorrow. Jack'll be okay,\" the J-3 decided he would say. He put some conviction behind it. He had to. Jack was now NCA\u2014National Command Authority\u2014and Jackson's loyalty to him was a matter of law and honor, not mere humanity.\n\n\"And your wife?\" He looked over to where Sissy Jackson was talking with Sally Ryan.\n\n\"Still number two piano for the National Symphony.\"\n\n\"Who's the lead?\"\n\n\"Miklos Dimitri. Bigger hands,\" Jackson explained. He decided it would be impolitic to ask any family questions of his own.\n\n\"You did well in the Pacific.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, fortunately we didn't have to kill all that many people.\" Jackson looked his almost-friend in the eye. \"That really stopped being fun, y'know?\"\n\n\"Can he handle the job, Robby? You know him better than I do.\"\n\n\"Captain, he _has_ to handle the job,\" Jackson answered, looking over at his Commander-in-Chief-friend, and knowing how much Jack detested formal occasions. Watching his new President endure the circulating line, it was impossible to avoid thinking back. \"Long way from teaching history at the Trade School, Your Highness,\" the admiral observed in a whisper.\n\nFor Cathy Ryan, it was more than anything else an exercise in protecting her hand. Oddly she knew the formal occasion drill better than her husband. As a senior physician at Johns Hopkins's Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute, she'd had to deal with numerous formal fund-raisers over the years, essentially a high-class version of begging\u2014most of which occasions Jack had missed, often to her displeasure. So, here she was, again, meeting people she didn't know, would never have the chance to like, and not one of whom would support her research programs.\n\n\"The Prime Minister of India,\" her protocol officer said quietly.\n\n\"Hello.\" The First Lady smiled her greeting, shook the hand, which was blessedly light.\n\n\"You must be very proud of your husband.\"\n\n\"I've always been proud of Jack.\" They were of the same height. The Prime Minister's skin was swarthy, and she squinted her eyes behind her glasses, Cathy saw. She probably needed a prescription change, and she probably got headaches from her out-of-date one. Strange. They had some pretty good doctors in India. Not all of them came to America.\n\n\"And such lovely children,\" she added.\n\n\"How nice of you to say that.\" Cathy smiled again, in an automatic sort of way, to an observation that was as perfunctory as a comment on the clouds in the sky. A closer look at the woman's eyes told Cathy something she didn't like. _She thinks she's better than me_. But why? Because she was a politician and Caroline Ryan a mere surgeon? Would it be different had she chosen to become a lawyer? No, probably not, her mind went on, racing as it sometimes did when a surgical procedure went bad unexpectedly. No, it wasn't that at all. Cathy remembered a night right here in the East Room, facing off with Elizabeth Elliot. It was the same supercilious mind-set: _I'm better than you because of who I am and what I do._ SURGEON\u2014that was her Secret Service code name, which had not displeased her at all, really\u2014looked more deeply into the dark eyes before hers. There was even more to it than that. Cathy let go of her hand as the next big shot came through the mill.\n\nThe Prime Minister departed the line and headed for a circulating waiter, from whom she took a glass of juice. It would have been too obvious to do what she really wanted to do. That would come the next day, in New York. For now she looked at one of her fellow Prime Ministers, this one representing the People's Republic of China. She raised her glass a centimeter or so, and nodded without smiling. A smile was unnecessary. Her eyes conveyed the necessary message.\n\n\"Is it true they call you SWORDSMAN?\" Prince Ali bin Sheik asked with a twinkle in his eye.\n\n\"Yes, and, yes, it is because of what you gave me,\" Jack told him. \"Thank you for flying over.\"\n\n\"My friend, there is a bond between us.\" His Royal Highness was not quite a chief of state, but with the current illness of his sovereign, Ali was taking over more and more of the Kingdom's duties. He was now in charge of foreign relations _and_ intelligence, the former schooled by Whitehall, the latter by Israel's Mossad, in one of the most ironic and least-known contradictions in a part of the world known for its interlocking non sequiturs. On the whole, Ryan was pleased by that. Though he had much on his plate, Ali was capable.\n\n\"You've never met Cathy, have you?\"\n\nThe Prince shifted his gaze. \"No, but I have met your colleague, Dr. Katz. He trained my own eye doctor. Indeed, your husband is a fortunate man, Dr. Ryan.\"\n\nAnd the Arabs were supposed to be cold, humorless, and disrespectful of women? Cathy asked herself. Not this guy. Prince Ali took her hand gently.\n\n\"Oh, you must have met Bernie when he went over in 1994.\" Wilmer had helped establish the eye institute in Riyadh, and Bernie had stayed five months to do some clinical instruction.\n\n\"He performed surgery on a cousin who was injured in a plane crash. He's back flying. And those are your children over there?\"\n\n\"Yes, Your Highness.\" This one went into the card file as a good guy.\n\n\"Would you mind if I spoke with them?\"\n\n\"Please.\" The Prince nodded and moved off.\n\n_Caroline Ryan,_ he thought, making his mental notes. _Highly intelligent, highly perceptive. Proud. Will be an asset to her husband if he has the wit to make use of her._ What a pity, he thought, that his own culture utilized its women so inefficiently\u2014but he wasn't King yet, might never be, and even if he were to become so, there were limits to the changes he could make under the best of circumstances. His nation still had far to go, though many forgot how breathtakingly far the Kingdom had come in two generations. Even so, there was a bond between him and Ryan, and because of that, a bond between America and the Kingdom. He walked over to the Ryan family, but before he got there he saw what he needed. The children were slightly overwhelmed by everything. The smallest daughter was having the easiest time of it, sipping at a soft drink under the watchful eye of a Secret Service agent, while a few diplomatic wives attempted to talk to her. She was accustomed to being doted on, as so small a child ought to be. The son, older, was the most disoriented, but that was normal for a lad of his age, no longer a child but not yet a man. The eldest, Olivia to the briefing documents but Sally to her father, was dealing well with the most awkward age of all. What struck Prince Ali was that they were _not_ used to all this. Their parents had protected them from Jack's official life. Spoiled as they undoubtedly were in some ways, they did not have the bored, haughty look of other such kids. You could tell much of a man and woman by examining their children. A moment later, he bent down over Katie. Initially she was taken aback by his unusual clothing\u2014Ali had feared frostbite only two hours before\u2014but in a moment his warm smile had her reaching up to touch his beard while Don Russell stood a meter away like a watch-bear. He took the time to catch the agent's eye, and the two traded a quick look. He knew that Cathy Ryan would be watching, too. What better way to befriend people than to show solicitude to their children? But it was more than that, and in his written report to his ministers, he would warn them not to judge Ryan by his somewhat awkward funeral speech. That he was not the usual sort to lead a country didn't mean that he was unfit to do so.\n\nBut some were.\n\nMany of them were in this room.\n\nSISTER JEAN BAPTISTE had done her best to ignore it, working through the heat of the day to sunset, trying to deny the discomfort that soon grew into genuine pain, hoping it would fade away, as minor ailments did\u2014always did. She'd come down with malaria virtually her first week in this country, and that disease had never really gone away. At first she'd thought that's what it was, but it wasn't. The fever she'd written off to a typically hot Congo day wasn't that, either. It surprised her that she was afraid. For as often as she'd treated and consoled others, she'd never really understood the fear they had. She knew they were afraid, understood the fact that fear existed, but her response to it was succor and kindness, and prayer. Now for the first time, she was beginning to understand. Because she thought she knew what it was. She'd seen it before. Not often. Most of them never got this far. But Benedict Mkusa had gotten here, for what little good it had done. He would surely be dead by the end of the day, Sister Maria Magdalena had told her after morning mass. As little as three days before she would have sighed\u2014but consoled herself with the thought that there would be another angel in heaven. Not this time. Now she feared that there might be two. Sister Jean Baptiste leaned against the door frame. What had she done wrong? She was a careful nurse. She didn't _make_ mistakes. Well.\n\nShe had to leave the ward. She did so, walking down the breezeway to the next building, directly into the lab. Dr. Moudi was, as usual, at his workbench, concentrating as he always did, and didn't hear her walk in. When he turned, rubbing his eyes after twenty minutes on the microscope, he was surprised to see the holy woman with her left sleeve rolled up, a rubber strip tight around her upper arm, and a needle in her antecubital vein. She was on her third 5cc test tube, and discarding that, expertly drew a fourth.\n\n\"What is the matter, Sister?\"\n\n\"Doctor, I think these need to be tested at once. Please, you will wish to put on a fresh pair of gloves.\"\n\nMoudi walked over to her, staying a meter away while she withdrew the needle from her arm. He looked at her face and eyes\u2014like the women in his home city of Qom, she dressed in a very chaste and proper manner. There was much to admire about these nuns: cheerful, hardworking, and very devoutly in service to their false god\u2014that wasn't strictly true. They were People of the Book, respected by the Prophet, but the Shi'a branch of Islam was somewhat less respectful of such people than . . . no, he would save those thoughts for another time. He could see it in her eyes, even more clearly than the overt symptoms which his trained senses were beginning to discern, he saw what she already knew.\n\n\"Please sit down, Sister.\"\n\n\"No\u2014I must\u2014\"\n\n\"Sister,\" the physician said more insistently. \"You are a patient now. You will please do as I ask, yes?\"\n\n\"Doctor, I\u2014\"\n\nHis voice softened. There was no purpose in being harsh, and truly this woman did not deserve such treatment before God. \"Sister, with all the care and devotion you have shown to others in this hospital, please, allow this humble visitor to show some of it to you.\"\n\nJean Baptiste did as she was told. Dr. Moudi first donned a fresh pair of latex gloves. Then he checked her pulse, 88, her blood pressure, 138\/90, and took her temperature, 39\u2014all the numbers were high, the first two because of the third, and because of what she thought it was. It could have been any of a number of ailments, from trivial to fatal, but she'd treated the Mkusa boy, and that luckless child was dying. He left her there, carefully picking up the test tubes and moving them to his laboratory bench.\n\nMoudi had wanted to become a surgeon. The youngest of four sons, all nephews of his country's leader, he'd waited impatiently to grow up, watching his elder brothers march off to war against Iraq. Two of them had died, and the other had come back maimed, later to die by his own despairing hand, and he'd thought to be a surgeon, the better to save the lives of Allah's warriors, so that they could fight another day in His Holy Cause. That desire had changed, and instead he'd learned about infectious diseases, because there was more than one way to fight for the Cause, and after years of patience, his way was finally appearing.\n\nMinutes later, he walked to the isolation ward. There is an aura to death, Moudi knew. Perhaps the image before him was something of the imagination, but the fact of it was not. As soon as the sister had brought the blood sample, he'd divided it in two, sending one carefully packed test tube by air express to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., the global center for the analysis of exotic and dangerous agents. The other he'd kept in cold storage to await developments. CDC was as efficient as ever. The telex had arrived hours earlier: Ebola Zaire was the identification, followed by a lengthy set of warnings and instructions which were entirely unnecessary. As was the diagnosis, really. Few things killed like this, and none of them so fast.\n\nIt was as if Benedict Mkusa had been cursed by Allah Himself, something Moudi knew not to be true, for Allah was a God of Mercy, who did not deliberately afflict the young and innocent. To say \"it was written\" was more accurate, but hardly more merciful for the patient or his parents. They sat by the bedside, dressed in protective garb, watching their world die before their eyes. The boy was in pain\u2014horrid agony, really. Parts of his body were already dead and rotting while his heart still tried to pump and his brain to reason. The only other thing that could do this to a human body was a massive exposure to ionizing radiation. The effects were grossly similar. One by one at first, then in pairs, then in groups, then all at once, the internal organs became necrotic. The boy was too weak to vomit now, but blood issued from the other end of his GI tract. Only the eyes were something close to normal, though blood was there as well. Dark, young eyes, sad and not understanding, not comprehending that a life so recently begun was surely ending now, looking to his parents to make things right, as they always had during his eight years. The room stank of blood and sweat and other bodily fluids, and the look on the boy's face became more distant. Even as he lay still he seemed to draw away, and truly Dr. Moudi closed his eyes and whispered a prayer for the boy, who was just a boy, after all, and though not a Muslim, still a religious lad, and a person of the Book unfairly denied access to the words of the Prophet. Allah was merciful above all things, and surely He would show mercy to this boy, taking him safely into Paradise. And better it were done quickly.\n\nIf an aura could be black, then this one was. Death enveloped the young patient one centimeter at a time. The painful breaths grew more shallow, the eyes, turned to his parents, stopped moving, and the agonized twitches of the limbs traveled down the extremities until just the fingers moved, ever so slightly, and presently that stopped.\n\nSister Maria Magdalena, standing behind and between mother and father, placed a hand on the shoulder of each, and Dr. Moudi moved in closer, setting his stethoscope on the patient's chest. There was some noise, gurgles and faint tears as the necrosis destroyed tissue\u2014a dreadful yet dynamic process, but of the heart there was nothing. He moved the ancient instrument about to be sure, then he looked up.\n\n\"He is gone. I am very sorry.\" He might have added that for Ebola this death had been merciful, or so the books and articles said. This was his first direct experience with the virus, and it had been quite dreadful enough.\n\nThe parents took it well. They'd known for more than a day, long enough to accept, short enough that the shock hadn't worn off. They would go and pray, which was entirely proper.\n\nThe body of Benedict Mkusa would be burned, and the virus with it. The telex from Atlanta had been very clear on that. Too bad.\n\nRYAN FLEXED HIS hand when the line finally ended. He turned to see his wife massaging hers and taking a deep breath. \"Get you something?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Something soft. Two procedures tomorrow morning.\" And they still hadn't come up with a convenient way of getting Cathy to work. \"How many of these things will we have to do?\" his wife asked.\n\n\"I don't know,\" the President admitted, though he knew that the schedule was set months in advance, and that most of the program would have to be adhered to regardless of his wishes. As each day passed, it amazed him more and more that people sought after this job\u2014the job had so many extraneous duties that it could scarcely be done. But the extraneous duties in a real sense _were_ the job. It just went round and round. Then a staffer appeared with soft drinks for the President and First Lady, summoned by another who'd heard what Cathy had said. The paper napkins were monogrammed\u2014stamped, whatever the process was called\u2014with the image of the White House, and under it the words, THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. Husband and wife both noticed that at the same moment, then allowed their eyes to meet.\n\n\"Remember the first time we took Sally to Disney World?\" Cathy asked.\n\nJack knew what his wife meant. Just after their daughter's third birthday, not long before their trip to England . . . and the beginning of a journey which, it seemed, would never end. Sally had fixed on the castle in the center of the Magic Kingdom, always looking to see it no matter where they were at the time. She'd called it Mickey's House. Well, they had their own castle now. For a while, anyway. But the rent was pretty high. Cathy wandered over to where Robby and Sissy Jackson were speaking with the Prince of Wales. Jack found his chief of staff.\n\n\"How's the hand?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"No complaints.\"\n\n\"You're lucky you're not campaigning. Lots of people think a friendly handshake is a knuckle-buster\u2014man-to-man and all that. At least these people know better.\" Van Damm sipped at his Perrier and surveyed the room. The reception was going well. Various chiefs of state and ambassadors and others were engaged in friendly conversation. There were a few discreet laughs at the exchange of jokes and pleasantries. The mood of the day had changed.\n\n\"So, how many exams did I pass and fail?\" Ryan asked quietly.\n\n\"Honest answer? No telling. They all looked for something different. Remember that.\" And some of them really didn't give a damn, having come for their own domestic political reasons, but even under these circumstances it was impolitic to say so.\n\n\"Kinda figured that out on my own, Arnie. Now I circulate, right?\"\n\n\"Hit India,\" van Damm advised. \"Adler thinks it's important.\"\n\n\"Roger.\" At least he remembered what she looked like. So many of the faces in the line had turned immediately into blurs, just as happened at an over-large party of any sort. It made Ryan feel like a fraud. Politicians were supposed to have a photographic memory for names and faces. He did not, and wondered if there were some sort of training method to acquire one. Jack handed his glass off to an attendant, wiped his hands with one of the special napkins, and headed off to see India. Russia stopped him first.\n\n\"Mr. Ambassador,\" Jack said. Valeriy Bogdanovich Lermonsov had been through the receiving line, but there hadn't been time then for whatever he wanted to say. They shook hands again anyway. Lermonsov was a career diplomat, popular in the local community of his peers. There was talk that he'd been KGB for years, but that was hardly something Ryan could hold against him.\n\n\"My government wishes to ask if an invitation to Moscow could be entertained.\"\n\n\"I have no objection to it, Mr. Ambassador, but we were just over a few months ago and my time has many demands on it right now.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt of that, but my government wishes to discuss several questions of mutual interest.\" That code phrase made Ryan turn his body fully to face the Russian.\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"I feared that your schedule would be a problem, Mr. President. Might you then receive a personal representative for a quiet discussion of issues?\"\n\nThat could only be one person, Jack knew. \"Sergey Nikolay'eh?\"\n\n\"Would you receive him?\" the Ambassador persisted.\n\nRyan had a brief moment of, if not panic, then disquiet. Sergey Golovko was the chairman of the RVS\u2014the reborn, downsized, but still formidable KGB. He also was one of the few people in the Russian government who had both brains and the trust of the current Russian president, Eduard Petravich Grushavoy, himself one of the few men in the world with more problems than Ryan had. Moreover, Grushavoy was keeping Golovko as close as Stalin had kept Beriya, needing a counselor with brains, experience, and muscle. The comparison wasn't strictly fair, but Golovko would not be coming over to deliver a recipe for borscht. \"Items of mutual interest\" usually meant serious business; coming directly to the President and not working through the State Department was another such indicator, and Lermonsov's persistence made things seem more serious still.\n\n\"Sergey's an old friend,\" Jack said with a friendly smile. _All the way back to when he had a pistol in my face._ \"He's always welcome in my house. Let Arnie know about the scheduling?\"\n\n\"I will do that, Mr. President.\"\n\nRyan nodded and moved off. The Prince of Wales had the Indian Prime Minister in a holding pattern, awaiting Ryan's appearance.\n\n\"Prime Minister, Your Highness,\" Ryan said with a nod.\n\n\"We thought it important that some matters be clarified.\"\n\n\"What might those be?\" the President asked. He had an electrical twitch under his skin, from knowing what had to be coming now.\n\n\"The unfortunate incident in the Indian Ocean,\" the Prime Minister said. \"Such misunderstandings.\"\n\n\"I'm\u2014glad to hear that . . .\"\n\nEVEN THE ARMS takes days off, and the funeral of a President was one such day. Both Blue Force and OpFor had taken a day to stand down. That included the commanders. General Diggs's house was on a hilltop overlooking a singularly bleak valley, but for all that it was a magnificent sight, and the desert was warm that day from Mexican winds, which allowed a barbecue on his walled and hedged back yard.\n\n\"Have you met President Ryan?\" Bondarenko asked, sipping an early-afternoon beer.\n\nDiggs shook his head as he flipped the burgers and reached for his special sauce. \"Never. Evidently he had a piece of getting the 10th ACR deployed to Israel, but, no. I know Robby Jackson, though. He's J-3 now. Robby speaks very well of him.\"\n\n\"This is American custom, what you do?\" The Russian gestured to the charcoal burner.\n\nDiggs looked up. \"Learned it from my daddy. Could you pass my beer over, Gennady?\" The Russian handed the glass to his host. \"I do hate missing training days, but . . .\" But he liked a day off as much as the next guy.\n\n\"This place you have here is amazing, Marion.\" Bondarenko turned to survey the valley. The immediate base area looked typically American, with its grid of roads and structures, but beyond that was something else. Scarcely anything grew, just what the Americans called creosote bushes, and they were like some sort of flora from a distant planet. The land here was brown, even the mountains looked lifeless. Yet there was something magnificent about the desert\u2014and it reminded him of a mountaintop in Tajikistan. Maybe that was it.\n\n\"So, exactly how did you get those ribbons, General?\" Diggs didn't know all the story. His guest shrugged.\n\n\"The Mudjeheddin decided to visit my country. It was a secret research facility, since closed down\u2014it's a separate country now, as you know.\"\n\nDiggs nodded. \"I'm a cavalryman, not a high-energy physicist. You can save the secret stuff.\"\n\n\"I defended an apartment building\u2014the home for the scientists and their families. I had a platoon of KGB border guards. The Mudje attacked us in company strength under cover of night and a snowstorm. It was rather exciting for an hour or so,\" Gennady admitted.\n\nDiggs had seen some of the scars\u2014he'd caught his visitor in the shower the previous day. \"How good were they?\"\n\n\"The Afghans?\" Bondarenko grunted. \"You did not wish to be captured by them. They were absolutely fearless, but sometimes that worked against them. You could tell which bands had competent leadership and which did not. That one did. They wiped out the other half of the facility, and on my side\"\u2014a shrug\u2014\"we were bloody lucky. At the end we were fighting on the ground floor of the building. The enemy commander led his people bravely\u2014but I proved to be a better shot.\"\n\n\"Hero of the Soviet Union,\" Diggs remarked, checking his burgers again. Colonel Hamm was listening, quietly. This was how members of that community measured one another, not so much by what they had done as by how they told the story.\n\nThe Russian smiled. \"Marion, I had no choice. There was no place to run away, and I knew what they did to captured Russian officers. So, they give me medal and promotion, and then my country\u2014how you say? Evaporate?\" There was more to it, of course. Bondarenko had been in Moscow during the coup, and for the first time in his life faced with making a moral decision, he'd made the right one, attracting the notice of several people who were now highly placed in the government of a new and smaller country.\n\n\"How about a country reborn?\" Colonel Hamm suggested. \"How about, we can be friends now?\"\n\n_\"Da_. You speak well, Colonel. And you command well.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir. Mainly I just sit back and let the regiment run itself.\" That was a lie that any really good officer understood as a special sort of truth.\n\n\"Using Sov\u2014Russian tactical doctrine!\" It just seemed so outrageous to the Russian general.\n\n\"It works, doesn't it?\" Hamm finished his beer.\n\nIt would work, Bondarenko promised himself. It would work for his army as it had worked for the American, once he got back and got the political support he needed to rebuild the Russian Army into something it had never been. Even at its fighting peak, driving the Germans back to Berlin, the Red Army had been a heavy, blunt instrument, depending on the shock value of mass more than anything else. He also knew what a role luck had played. His former country had fielded the world's finest tank, the T-34, blessed with a diesel engine designed in France to power dirigibles, a suspension system designed by an American named J. Walter Christie, and a handful of brilliant design innovations from young Russian engineers. That was one of the few instances in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in which his countrymen had managed to turn out a world-class product and in this case it had been the right one at the right time\u2014without which his country would surely have died. But the time was past for his country to depend on luck and mass. In the early 1980s the Americans had come up with the right formula: a small, professional army, carefully selected, exquisitely trained, and lavishly equipped. Colonel Hamm's OpFor, this 11th Cavalry Regiment, was like nothing he'd ever seen. His pre-travel brief had told him what to expect, but that was different from believing it. You had to see it to believe. In the right terrain, that one regiment could take on a division and destroy it in hours. The Blue Force was hardly incompetent, though its commander had declined the chance to come and eat here in order to work with his sub-unit leaders this day, so badly had they been mauled.\n\nSo much to learn here, but the most important lesson of all was how the Americans faced their lessons. Senior officers were humiliated regularly, both in the mock battles and afterward in what they called the AAR, \"after action review,\" during which the observer-controller officers analyzed everything that had taken place, reading their notes off multicolored file cards like hospital pathologists.\n\n\"I tell you,\" Bondarenko said after a few seconds of reflection, \"in my army, people would start fistfights during\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, we came close to that in the beginning,\" Diggs assured him. \"When they started this place up, commanders got relieved for losing battles, until everybody took a deep breath and realized that it was supposed to be tough here. Pete Taylor is the guy who really got the NTC running right. The OCs had to learn diplomacy, and the Blue Force people had to learn that they were _here_ to learn, but I'll tell you, Gennady, there isn't another army in the world that inflicts humiliation on its commanders the way we do.\"\n\n\"That's a fact, sir. I was talking with Sean Connolly the other day\u2014he's CO of the 10th ACR in the Negev Desert,\" Hamm explained to the Russian. \"The Israelis still haven't got it all the way figured out. They still bitch about what the OCs tell 'em.\"\n\n\"We keep installing more cameras over there.\" Diggs laughed as he started shoveling burgers onto the plate. \"And sometimes the Israelis don't believe what happened even after we show them the videotapes.\"\n\n\"Still too much _hoo-uh_ over there,\" Hamm agreed. \"Hey, I came here as a squadron commander, and I got my ass handed to me more'n once.\"\n\n\"Gennady, after the Persian Gulf War, 3rd ACR came here for their regular rotation. Now, you remember, they led Barry McCaffrey's 24th Mech\u2014\"\n\n\"Kicked ass and took names for two hundred twenty miles in four days,\" Hamm confirmed. Bondarenko nodded. He'd studied that campaign in detail.\n\n\"Couple months later, they came here and got the shit kicked outa them. That's the point, General. The training here is _tougher_ than combat. There's no unit in the world as smart and fast and tough as Al's Blackhorse Cav\u2014\"\n\n\"Except your old Buffalo Soldiers, General,\" Hamm interjected.\n\nDiggs smiled at the reference to the 10th. He was used to Hamm's interruptions anyway. \"That's a fact, Al. Anyway, if you can just break even against the OpFor, you're ready to take on anybody in the world, on the wrong side of three-to-one odds, and kick their ass into the next time zone.\"\n\nBondarenko nodded, smiling. He was learning fast. The small staff that had come with him was still prowling the base, talking with counterpart officers, and learning, learning, learning. Being on the wrong side of three-to-one odds wasn't the tradition of Russian armies, but that might soon change. The threat to his country was China, and if that battle were ever fought, it would be at the far end of a lengthy supply line, against a huge conscript army. The only answer to that threat was to duplicate what the Americans had done. Bondarenko's mission was to change the entire military policy of his country. Well, he told himself, he'd come to the right place to learn how.\n\n_BULLSHIT._ THE PRESIDENT thought behind an understanding smile. It was hard to like India. They called themselves the world's largest democracy, but that wasn't especially true. They talked about the most high-minded principles, but had, when convenient, muscled neighbors, developed nuclear weapons, and in asking America to depart the Indian Ocean\u2014\"It is, after all, called the _Indian_ Ocean,\" a former P.M. had told a former American Ambassador\u2014decided that the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas was variably applicable. And for damned sure, they'd been ready to make a move on Sri Lanka. It was just that now, the move having been foiled, they were saying that no such move had ever been planned. But you couldn't look in the eyes of a chief of state and smile, and say, \"Bullshit.\"\n\nIt just wasn't done.\n\nJack listened patiently, sipping at another glass of Perrier fetched for him by a nameless aide. The situation in Sri Lanka was complex, and did, unfortunately, lend itself to misunderstanding, and India regretted that, and there were no hard feelings at all, but wouldn't it be better if both sides stood down. The Indian fleet was withdrawing back to its bases, training complete, and a few ships damaged by the American demonstration, which, the Prime Minister said without so many words, wasn't exactly cricket. Such bullies.\n\n_And what does Sri Lanka think of you?_ Ryan could have asked, but didn't.\n\n\"If only you and Ambassador Williams had communicated more clearly on the issue,\" Ryan observed sadly.\n\n\"Such things happen,\" the Prime Minister replied. \"David\u2014frankly, pleasant man though he is, I fear the climate is too hot for one of his age.\" Which was as close as she could come to telling Ryan to fire the man. Declaring Ambassador Williams persona non grata was far too drastic a step. Ryan tried not to change his expression, but failed. He needed Scott Adler over here, but the acting SecState was somewhere else at the moment.\n\n\"I hope you can appreciate the fact that I am really not in a position to make serious changes in the government at the moment.\" _Drop dead._\n\n\"Please, I wasn't suggesting that. I fully appreciate your situation. My hope was to allay at least one supposed problem, to make your task easier.\" _Or I could make it harder._\n\n\"Thank you for that, Prime Minister. Perhaps your Ambassador here could discuss things with Scott?\"\n\n\"I'll be sure to speak to him on the matter.\" She shook Ryan's hand again and walked away. Jack waited for several seconds before looking at the Prince.\n\n\"Your Highness, what do you call it when a high-ranking person lies right in your face?\" the President asked with a wry smile.\n\n\"Diplomacy.\"\n**9**\n\n**DISTANT HOWLS**\n\n**G** OLOVKO READ OVER Ambassador Lermonsov's report without sympathy for its subject. Ryan looked \"harried and uncomfortable,\" \"somewhat overwhelmed,\" and \"physically tired.\" Well, that was to be expected. His speech at President Durling's funeral, the diplomatic community agreed\u2014along with the American media, which was straining its capacity for politeness\u2014was not presidential. Well, anyone who knew Ryan knew him to be sentimental, especially when it came to the welfare of children. Golovko could easily forgive that. Russians were much the same. He ought to have done otherwise\u2014Golovko had read over the official, undelivered oration; it was a good one, full of assurances for all listeners\u2014but Ryan had always been what the Americans called a maverick (he'd had to look up the word, discovering that it denoted a wild, untamed horse, which was not far off the mark). That made Ryan both easy and impossible for the Russian to analyze. Ryan was an American, and Americans were and had always been devilishly unpredictable from Golovko's perspective. He'd spent a professional lifetime, first as a field intelligence officer, then as a rapidly climbing staff officer in Moscow, trying to predict what America would do in all manner of situations, and only avoiding failure because he'd never failed to present three possible courses of action in his reports to his superiors.\n\nBut at least Ivan Emmetovich Ryan was predictably unpredictable, and Golovko flattered himself to think of Ryan as a friend\u2014perhaps that was going a bit far, but the two men had played the game, most of the time from opposite sides of the field, and for the most part both had played it skillfully and well, Golovko the more experienced professional, Ryan the gifted amateur, blessed by a system more tolerant of mavericks. There was respect between them.\n\n\"What are you thinking now, Jack?\" Sergey whispered to himself. Right now the new American President was sleeping, of course, fully eight hours behind Moscow, where the sun was only beginning to rise for a short winter day.\n\nAmbassador Lermonsov had not been overly impressed, and Golovko would have to append his own notes to the report lest his government give _that_ evaluation too much credence. Ryan had been far too skilled an enemy to the USSR to be taken lightly under any circumstances. The problem was that Lermonsov had expected Ryan to fit into one mold, and Ivan Emmetovich was not so easily classified. It wasn't so much complexity as a different variety of complexity. Russia didn't have a Ryan\u2014it was not likely that he could have survived in the Soviet environment which still pervaded the Russian Republic, especially in its official bureaucracies. He was easily bored, and his temper, though kept under tight control at most times, was always there. Golovko had seen it bubbling more than once, but only heard of times when it had broken loose. Those stories had percolated out of CIA to ears which reported to Dzerzhinskiy Square. God help him as a head of government.\n\nBut that wasn't Golovko's problem.\n\nHe had enough of his own. He hadn't entirely relinquished control of the Foreign Intelligence Service President Grushavoy had little reason to trust the agency which had once been the \"Sword and Shield of the Party,\" and wanted someone he could rely upon to keep an eye on that tethered predator; Golovko, of course\u2014and at the same time, Sergey was the principal foreign-policy adviser to the beleaguered Russian President. Russia's internal problems were so manifest as to deny the President the ability to evaluate foreign problems, and _that_ meant that for all practical purposes the former spy gave advice that his President almost invariably followed. The chief minister\u2014that's what he was, with or without the title\u2014took the burden seriously. Grushavoy had a domestic hydra to deal with\u2014like the mythical beast of old, every head cut off just gave room for another to grow into its place. Golovko had fewer to deal with, but they made up for it in size. And part of him wished for a return to the old KGB. Only a few years before, it would have been child's play. Lift a phone, speak a few words, and the criminals would have been picked up, and that would have been that not really, but it would have made things more . . . peaceful. More predictable. More orderly. And his country needed order. But the Second Chief Directorate, the \"secret police\" division of the agency, was gone, spun off into an independent bureau, its powers diminished, and its public respect\u2014fear bordering on outright terror in the not-so-old days\u2014had evaporated. His country had never been under the degree of control expected by the West, but now it was worse. The Russian Republic teetered on the edge of anarchy as her citizens groped for something called democracy. Anarchy was what had brought Lenin to power, for the Russians craved strong rule, scarcely having known anything else, and while Golovko didn't want that\u2014as a senior KGB officer he knew better than any what damage Marxism-Leninism had done to his nation\u2014he desperately needed an organized country behind him, because the problems within attracted problems without. And so it was that his unofficial post as chief minister for national security was hostage to all manner of difficulties. His were the arms of an injured body, trying to fend off the wolves while it tried to heal.\n\nAnd so he had little pity for Ryan, whose nation may have taken a severe blow to the head, but was otherwise healthy. However differently it might appear to others, Golovko knew better, and because he did, he would be asking Ryan for help.\n\nChina. The Americans had defeated Japan, but the real enemy hadn't _been_ Japan. He had a desk covered with overhead photographs just brought down from a reconnaissance satellite. Too many divisions of the People's Liberation Army were exercising in the field. Chinese nuclear-rocket regiments were still at a somewhat increased alert status. His own country had discarded its ballistic weapons\u2014despite the threat from China, the huge resulting development loans from American and European banks had made the gamble look attractive only a few months before. Besides, his country, like America, still had bombers and cruise missiles which could be armed with atomic warheads, and so the disadvantage was far more theoretical than real. If one assumed that the Chinese subscribed to the same theories, that is. The Chinese were in any case maintaining their armed forces at a high state of readiness, and Russia's Far Eastern group of forces was at a historic low. He consoled himself that with Japan taken out of play, the Chinese would not move. Probably not move, he corrected himself. If the Americans were hard to understand, the Chinese might as easily have been aliens from another planet. It was enough to remember that the Chinese had been as far as the Baltic once before. Like most Russians, Golovko had a deep respect for history. There he was, Sergey thought, lying on the snow, a stick in his hand to fight off the wolf while he tried to heal. His arm was still strong enough, and the stick still long enough to keep the fangs away. But what if there came another wolf? A document to the left of the satellite photographs was the first harbinger of that, like a distant howl on the horizon, the sort to make blood chill. Golovko didn't reflect far enough. Lying down on the ground, the horizon could be surprisingly close.\n\nTHE AMAZING THING was that it had taken so long. Protecting an important person against assassination is a complex exercise at best, all the more so when that person went out of his way to create enemies. Ruthlessness helps. The ability to snatch people off the street, to make them disappear, was a deterrent of no small value. The further willingness to take away not just a single person, but an entire family\u2014sometimes an entire extended family\u2014and do the same was more effective still. One selected the people to be \"disappeared,\" an unhappy pseudo-verb that had originated in Argentina, through intelligence. That was a polite term for informers, paid in the coin of the realm or in power, which was better still. They would report conversations for their seditious content, to the point that a mere joke about someone's mustache could entail the sentence of death for its raconteur; and soon enough, because institutions were institutions, informers had quotas to fill, and since the informers were themselves human beings with likes and dislikes, their reports as often as not reflected personal slights or jealousy, because the delegated power of life and death was as corrupting to the small as to the great. Eventually a corrupt system was itself corrupted, and the logic of terror reached its logical conclusion: a humble rabbit, cornered by a fox, has nothing to lose by striking out, and rabbits have teeth, and sometimes the rabbit gets lucky.\n\nBecause terror was not enough, there were passive measures as well. The task of assassinating an important man can be made difficult by the simplest of procedures, especially in a despotic state. A few lines of guards to limit approach. Multiple identical cars in which the target might travel\u2014often as many as twenty in this case\u2014denied one the ability to know which car to engage. The life of such a person was busy, and so it was both a convenience and a protective measure to have a double or two, to appear, and give a speech, and take the risk in return for a comfortable life as the staked goat on the public stage.\n\nNext came the selection of the protectors\u2014how did one pick truly reliable fish from a sea of hatred? The obvious answer here was to pick people from one's extended family, then to give them a lifestyle that depended absolutely upon the survival of their leader, and finally to link them so closely with his protection and its necessary ramifications that his death would mean far more than the loss of a highly paid government job. That the guards' lives depended on the guarded one was an effective incentive toward efficiency.\n\nBut really it all came down to one thing. A person was invincible only because people thought him to be so, and therefore that person's security was, like all of the important aspects of life, a thing of the mind.\n\nBut human motivation is also a thing of the mind, and fear has never been the strongest emotion. Throughout history, people have risked their lives for love, for patriotism, for principle, and for God far more often than fear has made them run away. Upon that fact depends progress.\n\nThe colonel had risked his life in so many ways that he could scarcely remember them all, and done that just to be noticed, just to be asked to be a small part in a larger machine, then to rise within it. He'd taken a long time to get this close to the Mustache. Eight years, in fact. In that time he'd tortured and killed men, women, and children from behind blank and pitiless eyes. He'd raped daughters before their fathers' eyes, mothers before their sons'. He'd committed crimes to damn the souls of a hundred men, because there was no other way. He'd drunk liquor in quantities to impress an infidel in order to defile that law of his religion. All of this he had done in God's name, praying for forgiveness, desperately telling himself that it was written that his life should be so, that, no, he didn't enjoy any of it, that the lives he took were sacrifices necessary to some greater plan, that they would have died in any case, and that in this way their deaths by his hand could serve a Holy Cause. He had to believe in all of that lest he go mad\u2014he'd come close enough in any case, until his fixed purpose passed far beyond the meaning of \"obsession,\" and he became that which he did in every possible way, all with one objective, that he would get close enough and trusted enough for a single second's work, to be followed instantly by his own death.\n\nHe knew he had become that which he and everyone around him were trained to fear above all things. All the lectures and the drinking sessions with his peers always came back to the same thing. They spoke of their mission and the dangers of that mission. And _that_ always came down to one subject. The lone dedicated assassin, the man willing to throw away his own life like a gambling chip, the patient man who waited his chance, _that_ was the enemy whom every protective officer in the world feared, drunk or sober, on duty or off, even in his dreams. And that was the reason for all the tests required to protect the Mustache. To get here, you had to be damned before God and men, because when you got here, you saw what really was.\n\nThe Mustache was what he called his target. Not a man at all, an apostate before Allah who desecrated Islam without a thought, a criminal of such magnitude as to deserve a newly designed room in Perdition. From afar the Mustache looked powerful and invincible, but not up close. His bodyguards knew better because they knew all. They saw the doubts and the fears, the petty cruelties inflicted on the undeserving. He'd seen the Mustache murder for amusement, maybe just to see if his Browning pistol worked today. He'd seen him look out the window of one of his white Mercedes autos, spot a young woman, point, give a command, then use the hapless girl for one night. The lucky ones returned home with money and disgrace. The unlucky floated down the Euphrates with their throats cut, not a few by the Mustache himself, if they'd resisted a little too well in the protection of their virtue. But powerful as he was, clever and cunning as he was, heartlessly cruel as he was, no, he was not invincible. And it was now his time to see Allah.\n\nThe Mustache emerged from the building onto the expansive porch, his bodyguards behind him, his right arm outstretched to salute the assembled multitude. The people in the square, hastily assembled, roared their adoration, which fed the Mustache as surely as sunlight fed the flower. And then, from three meters away, the colonel drew his automatic pistol from its leather holster, brought it up in one hand, and fired a single aimed round straight into the back of his target's head. Those in the front of the crowd saw the bullet erupt from their dictator's left eye, and there followed one of those moments in history, the sort when the entire earth seemed to stop its spin, hearts paused, and even the people who'd been screaming their loyalty to a man already dead would remember only silence.\n\nThe colonel didn't bother with another shot. He was an expert marksman who practiced with his comrades almost every day, and his open, blank eyes had seen the impact of his round. He didn't turn, and didn't waste time in fruitless efforts at self-defense. There was no point in killing the comrades with whom he'd drunk liquor and raped children. Others would see to that soon enough. He didn't even smile, though it was very funny indeed, wasn't it, that the Mustache had one instant looked at the square full of the people whom he despised for their adoration of himself\u2014then to look Allah in the face and wonder what had happened. That thought had perhaps two seconds to form itself before he felt his body jerk with the impact of the first bullet. There was no pain. He was too focused on his target, now on the flat paving stones of the porch, already a pool of blood draining rapidly from the ruined head. More bullets hit, and it seemed briefly strange that he could feel them yet not the pain of their passage, and in his last seconds he prayed to Allah for forgiveness and understanding, that all his crimes had been committed in the name of God and His Justice. To the last, his ears reported not the sound of the shots, but the lingering cries of the mob, not yet grasping that their leader was dead.\n\n\"WHO IS IT?\" Ryan checked his clock. _Damn, the extra forty minutes of sleep would have been nice_.\n\n\"Mr. President, my name is Major Canon, Marine Corps,\" the unknown voice announced.\n\n\"That's nice, Major, who are you?\" Jack blinked his eyes and forgot to be polite, but probably the officer understood.\n\n\"Sir, I'm the watch officer in Signals. We have a report with high confidence that the President of Iraq was assassinated about ten minutes ago.\"\n\n\"Source?\" Jack asked at once.\n\n\"Kuwait and Saudi both, sir. It was on Iraqi TV live, some sort of event, and we have people over there to monitor their TV. We have a tape being uplinked to us right now. The initial word is a pistol right in the head, at close range.\" The tone of the officer's voice wasn't exactly regretful. _Well, they finally popped that fucker!_ Of course, you couldn't exactly say that to the President.\n\nAnd you needed to figure who \"they\" was.\n\n\"Okay, Major, what's the drill?\" The answer came quickly enough. Ryan replaced the phone.\n\n\"Now what?\" Cathy asked. Jack swung his feet out of bed before answering.\n\n\"The President of Iraq was just killed.\"\n\nHis wife almost said, _Good_ , but stopped. The death of such a person was not as distant a concept as it had once been. How odd to feel that way about someone who could best serve the world by leaving it.\n\n\"Is that important?\"\n\n\"In about twenty minutes, they'll tell me.\" Ryan coughed before going on. \"What the hell, I used to be competent in those areas. Yeah, it's potentially very important.\" With that he did what every man in America did in the morning. He headed to the bathroom ahead of his wife. For her part, Cathy lifted the remote and performed the other ordinarily male function of clicking on the bedroom TV, surprised to find that CNN didn't have anything on but reports on which airports were operating behind schedule. Jack had told her a few times just how good the White House Signals Office was.\n\n\"Anything?\" her husband asked, coming back out.\n\n\"Not yet.\" Then it was her turn.\n\nJack had to think about where his clothes were, wondering how a President was supposed to dress. He found his robe\u2014moved in from the Naval Observatory after having been moved there from Eighth and I, after having been removed from their home . . . damn\u2014and opened the bedroom door. An agent in the hall handed him three morning papers. \"Thanks.\"\n\nCathy saw that and stopped cold in her tracks, belatedly realizing that there had been people just outside her bedroom door all night. Her face turned away, forming the sort of smile generated by finding an unexpected mess in the kitchen.\n\n\"Jack?\"\n\n\"Yes, honey?\"\n\n\"If I kill you in bed some night, will those people with guns get me right away, or will it wait until morning?\"\n\nTHE REAL WORK was being done at Fort Meade. The video had traveled from one monitoring station on the Kuwait-Iraq border and another in Saudi Arabia, known as PALM BOWL and STORM TRACK, respectively, the latter set up to record all signals out of Baghdad, and the former watching the southeastern part of the country, around Basra. From both places the information traveled by fiber-optic cable to the National Security Agency's deceptively small building in King Khalid Military City (KKMC) and uplinked to a communications satellite, which then shot it back to NSA headquarters. There in the watch room, ten people summoned by one of the junior watch officers huddled around a TV monitor to catch the tape, while the more senior troops, in a separate glass-walled office, sipped their coffee soberly.\n\n\"Yes!\" an Air Force sergeant observed on seeing the shot, \"Nothin' but net!\" Several high fives were exchanged. The senior watch officer, who'd already called White House Signals, nodded his more restrained approval and relayed the original signal along the way, and ordered a digital enhancement, which would take a few minutes\u2014only a few frames were all that important, and they had a massive Cray supercomputer to handle that.\n\nRYAN REMARKED QUIETLY that while Cathy was getting the kids ready for school, and herself ready to operate on people's eyes, here he was in Signals watching the instant replay of a murder. His designated national intelligence officer was still at CIA, finishing his morning intake of information, which he would then regurgitate to the President by way of the morning intelligence briefing. The post of National Security Advisor was currently vacant\u2014one more thing to address today.\n\n\"Whoa!\" Major Canon breathed.\n\nThe President nodded, then reverted to his former life as an intelligence officer. \"Okay, tell me what we know.\"\n\n\"Sir, we know that somebody got killed, probably the Iraqi President.\"\n\n\"Double?\"\n\nCanon nodded, \"Could be, but STORM TRACK is now reporting a _lot_ of VHF signals that started all of a sudden, police and military nets, and the activity is radiating out from Baghdad.\" The Marine officer pointed to his computer monitor, which displayed real-time \"take\" from the NSA's many outposts. \"Translations will take a little time, but I do traffic analysis for a living. It looks pretty real, sir. I suppose it could be faked, but I wouldn't\u2014there!\"\n\nA translation was coming up, identified as emanating from a military command net. He's dead, he's dead, _stsnd your regiment to and be prepared to move into the city imediately\u2014recipient is Replican Gurds Special Operations regiment at Salman Pak\u2014reply is: Yes I will yes I will, who is giving the oders, what are my orders_ \u2014\n\n\"Typos and all,\" Ryan noted.\n\n\"Sir, it's hard for our people to translate and type it at the same time. Usually we clean it up before \"\n\n\"Relax, Major. I only use three fingers myself. Tell me what you think.\"\n\n\"Sir, I'm only a junior officer here, that's why I draw the midwatch and\u2014\"\n\n\"If you were stupid, you wouldn't be here.\"\n\nCanon nodded. \"He's deader 'n hell, sir. Iraq needs a new dictator. We have the imagery, we have unusual signal traffic that fits the pattern of an unusual event. That's my estimate.\" He paused and went on to cover himself, like a good spook. \"Unless it's a deliberate exercise to smoke out disloyal people inside his government. That's possible, but unlikely. Not in public like this.\"\n\n\"Kamikaze play?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President. Something you can only do once, and dangerous the first time.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" Ryan walked to the coffee urn\u2014the White House Office of Signals was mainly a military operation, and they made their own. Jack got two cups and came back, handing one to Major Canon, rather to the horror of everyone else in the room. \"Fast work. Send a 'thanks' to the guys working this, okay?\"\n\n\"Aye aye, sir.\"\n\n\"Who do I talk to to get things happening around here?\"\n\n\"We got the phones right here, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"I want Adler in here ASAP, the DCI . . . who else? State and CIA desks for Iraq. DIA estimate of the state of their military. Find out if Prince Ali is still in town. If he is, ask him to please stand by. I want to talk to him this morning if possible. I wonder what else . . . ?\" Ryan's voice trailed off.\n\n\"CENTCOM, sir. He'll have the best military-intelligence troops down at Tampa, most familiar with the area, I mean.\"\n\n\"Get him up here\u2014no, we'll do that by landline, and we give him time to get briefed in.\"\n\n\"We'll get it all going for you, sir.\" Ryan patted the officer on the shoulder and headed out of the room. The heavy door closed behind him before Major Charles Canon spoke again. \"Hey, NCA knows his shit.\"\n\n\"Is it what I heard?\" Price asked, coming up the corridor.\n\n\"Do you ever sleep?\" Then he thought about it. \"I want you in on this.\"\n\n\"Why me, sir, I'm not\u2014\"\n\n\"You're supposed to know about assassinations, right?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Then right now you're more valuable to me than a spook.\"\n\nTHE TIMING COULD have been better. Daryaei had been surprised by the information just delivered. Not in the least bit displeased by it\u2014except maybe the timing. He paused for a moment, whispering a prayer first of thanks to Allah, then for the soul of the unknown assassin assassin? he asked himself. Perhaps \"judge\" would be a better term for the man, one of many who'd been infiltrated into Iraq ages ago, while the war had still been going on. Most had merely disappeared, probably shot one way or another. The overall mission had been his idea, not nearly dramatic enough for the \"professionals\" working in his intelligence service. Largely leftovers from the Shah's Savak\u2014trained by the Israelis in the 1960s and 1970s\u2014they were effective, but they were mercenaries at heart however much they might protest their religious fervor and their loyalty to the new regime. They'd proceeded along \"conventional\" lines for the unconventional mission, trying bribes of various sorts or testing the waters for dissidents, only to fail at every turn, and for years Daryaei had wondered if the target of all that attention might have Allah's perverse blessings somehow or other but that had been the counsel of despair, not of reason and faith, and even Daryaei was subject to human weakness. Surely the Americans had tried for him also, and probably in the same way, trying to identify military commanders who might like to try out the seat of power, trying to initiate a coup d'\u00e9tat such as they had done often enough in other parts of the world. But, no, this target was too skilled for that, and at every turn he'd become more skilled, and so the Americans had failed, and the Israelis, and all the others. _All but me_.\n\nIt was tradition, after all, all the way back to antiquity. One man, operating alone, one faithful man who would do whatever was necessary to accomplish his mission. Eleven such men had been dispatched into Iraq for this specific purpose, told to go deep under cover, trained to forget everything they had ever been, entirely without contact or control officers, and all records of their existence destroyed so that even an Iraqi spy in his own agencies could not discover the mission without a name. Within an hour, some of his own cronies would come into this office, praising God and lauding their leader for his wisdom. Perhaps so, but even they didn't know all the things he had done, or all the people he'd dispatched.\n\nTHE DIGITIZED RENDITION of the event didn't change much, though now he had a more professional opinion of the options:\n\n\"Mr. President, a guy with a Silicon Graphics workstation could fake this,\" the NIO told him. \"You've seen movies, and movie film has much higher resolution than a TV set. You can fake almost anything now.\"\n\n\"Fine, but your job is to tell me what did happen,\" Ryan pointed out. He'd seen the same few seconds of tape eight times now, and was growing tired of instant replay.\n\n\"We can't say with absolute certainty.\"\n\nMaybe it was the week's sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the stress of the job. Maybe it was the stress of having to face his _second_ crisis. Maybe it was the fact that Ryan was himself still a carded national intelligence officer. \"Look, I'm going to say this once: Your job isn't to cover your ass. Your job is to cover _mine!\"_\n\n\"I know that, Mr. President. That's why I'm giving you all the information I have. . ..\" Ryan didn't have to listen to the rest of the speech. He'd heard it all before, a couple of hundred times. There had even been cases when he'd said similar things himself, but in Jack's case, he'd always hung his hat on one of the options.\n\n\"Scott?\" Jack asked the acting SeeState.\n\n\"The son of a bitch is dead as yesterday's fish,\" Adler replied.\n\n\"Disagreement?\" President Ryan asked the others in the room. Nobody contradicted the assessment, giving it a sort of blessing. Even the NIO would not _disagree_ with the collective opinion. He'd delivered his assessments, after all. Any mistakes now were the Secretary of State's problem. Perfect.\n\n\"Who was the shooter?\" Andrea Price asked. The answer came from CIA's Iraq-desk officer.\n\n\"Unknown. I have people running tapes of previous appearances just to make sure that he's been around before. Look, from all appearances it was a senior member of his protection detail, with the rank of an army colonel, and\u2014\"\n\n\"And I damned well know everybody on my detail,\" Price concluded the statement. \"So, whoever it was, he belonged there, and that means whoever pulled this off managed to get somebody all the way inside, close enough to make the hit, and committed enough to pay the price for it. It must have taken years.\" The continuation of the tape\u2014they'd watched that only five times\u2014showed the man crumble after a cavalcade of pistol shots at point-blank range. That struck Agent Price as odd. You damned well wanted to bag such people alive. Dead men still didn't tell any tales, and executions could always be arranged. Unless he'd been killed by other members of a conspiracy. But how likely was it that more than one assassin had made it that far? Price reflected that she could ask Indira Gandhi that someday. Her whole detail had turned on her one afternoon in a garden. For Price that was the final infamy, killing the person you were sworn to defend. But, then, she hadn't sworn to defend such people as that. One other thing on the tape got her attention: \"Did you notice the body language?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"The way the gun came up, the way he took the shot, the way he just stood there and watched. Like a golfer, it's called follow-through. He must have waited a long time for the chance. He damned sure thought about it for a long, long time. He must have dreamed about it. He wanted the moment to be perfect. He wanted to see it and enjoy it before he went down.\" She shook her head slowly. \"That was one focused, dedicated killer.\" Price was actually enjoying herself, chilling though the subject of the meeting was. More than one President had treated the Secret Service agents as if they were furniture, or at best nice pets. It wasn't often that big shots asked their opinion of much more than narrow professional areas, like where a bad guy might be in a particular crowd.\n\n\"Keep going,\" CIA said.\n\n\"He must have been from outside, a guy with a totally clean record, no connection at all with anybody who made noise in Baghdad. This wasn't a guy getting even for somebody taking his mother out, okay? It was somebody who worked his way up the system, slow and careful all the way.\"\n\n\"Iran,\" CIA said. \"Best guess, anyway. Religious motivation. No way he'd walk away from the hit, so it had to be somebody who didn't care. That could also mean straight revenge, but Ms. Price is correct: his people were clean in that respect. Anyway, it wasn't the Israelis, wasn't the French. The Brits don't do this anymore. The domestic angle is probably taken out by their vetting procedures. So it wasn't for money. It wasn't for personal or family motives. I think we can discount political ideology. That leaves religion, and _that_ means Iran.\"\n\n\"I can't say I'm familiar with all the intelligence side, but from looking at the tape, yeah,\" Andrea Price agreed. \"It's like he was saying a prayer, the way he killed the guy. He just wanted the moment to be perfect. He didn't care about anything else.\"\n\n\"Somebody else to check that out?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"FBI, their Behavioral Sciences people are pretty good at reading minds. We work with them all the time,\" Price responded.\n\n\"Good idea,\" CIA agreed. \"We'll rattle the bushes to ID the shooter, but even if we can get good information, it might not mean anything.\"\n\n\"What about the timing?\"\n\n\"If we can stipulate that the shooter was there for a white\u2014we have enough tapes of public appearances to determine that\u2014then timing is an issue,\" CIA thought.\n\n\"Oh, that's just great,\" the President opined. \"Scott, now what?\"\n\n\"Bert?\" SeeState said to his desk officer. Bert Vasco was the State Department senior desk officer for that country. Rather like a specialist in the trading industry, he concentrated his efforts on learning everything he could about one particular country.\n\n\"Mr. President, as we all know, Iraq is a majority Shi'a Muslim country ruled by a Sunni minority through the Ba'ath political party. It has always been a concern that the elimination of our friend over there could topple\u2014\"\n\n\"Tell me what I don't know,\" Ryan interrupted.\n\n\"Mr. President, we simply do not know the strength of any opposition group that may or may not exist. The current regime has been very effective at cutting the weeds down early. A handful of Iraqi political figures has defected to Iran. None are top-quality people, and none ever had the chance to develop a firm political base. There are two radio stations that broadcast from Iran into Iraq. We know the names of the defectors who use those transmitters to talk to their countrymen. But there's no telling how many people listen and pay attention. The regime isn't exactly popular, we know that. We do not know the strength of the opposition, or what sort of organization exists to make use of an opportunity such as this one.\"\n\nCIA nodded. \"Bert's right. Our friend was awfully good at identifying potential enemies and taking them out of play. We tried to help during and after the Persian Gulf War, but all we really managed to do was get people killed. For sure nobody over there trusts us.\"\n\nRyan sipped at his coffee and nodded. He'd made his own recommendations back in 1991, and they hadn't been exercised. Well, he'd still been a junior executive then.\n\n\"Do we have any options to play?\" the President asked next.\n\n\"Honestly, no,\" Vasco answered.\n\nCIA agreed: \"No assets in place. What few people we have operating in that country are tasked to coverage of weapons development: nuclear, chemical, and so forth. Nobody on the political side. We actually have more people in Iran looking at the political side. We can rattle those bushes some, but not in Iraq.\"\n\nFabulous, Jack thought, a country may or may not go down in one of the most sensitive areas of the world, and the world's most powerful nation could do nothing more than watch television coverage of the event. So much for the power of the American presidency.\n\n\"Arnie?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President,\" the chief of staff replied.\n\n\"We bumped Mary Pat off the schedule a couple days ago. I want her in today if we can work the schedule.\"\n\n\"I'll see what we can do on that, but\u2014\"\n\n_\"But_ when something like this happens, the President of the United States is supposed to have more than his dick in his hand.\" Ryan paused. \"Is Iran going to make a move?\"\n**10**\n\n**POLITICS**\n\n**P** RINCE ALI BIN SHEIK HAD been ready to fly home on his personal aircraft, an aging but beautifully appointed Lockheed L-1011, when the call came in from the White House. The Saudi embassy was located close to the Kennedy Center, and the ride correspondingly short in his official limousine, accompanied by a security force almost as large as Ryan's and made up of American Diplomatic Protection Service personnel, plus the Prince's own detail, composed of former members of Britain's Special Air Service. The Saudis, as always, spent a lot of money and bought quality with it. Ali was no stranger to the White House, or to Scott Adler, who met him at the door and conducted him upstairs and east into the Oval Office.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" His Royal Highness said, walking in from the secretaries' room.\n\n\"Thank you for coming over on such short notice.\" Jack shook his hand and waved him to one of the room's two sofas. Some thoughtful person had started a fire in the fireplace. The White House photographer snapped a few shots, and was dismissed. \"I imagine you've seen the news this morning.\"\n\nAli managed a worried smile. \"What does one say? We will not mourn his passing, but the Kingdom has serious concerns.\"\n\n\"Do you know anything we don't?\" Ryan asked.\n\nThe Prince shook his head. \"I was as surprised as everyone else.\"\n\nThe President grimaced. \"You know, with all the money we spend on\u2014\" His visitor raised a tired hand.\n\n\"Yes, I know. I will have the same conversation with my own ministers as soon as my airplane lands back home.\"\n\n\"Iran.\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly.\"\n\n\"Will they move?\"\n\nThe Oval Office got quiet then, just the crackling of the seasoned oak in the fireplace as the three men, Ryan, Ali, and Adler, traded looks across the coffee table, the tray and cups on it untouched. The issue was, of course, oil. The Persian\u2014sometimes called the _Arabian_ \u2014Gulf was a finger of water surrounded by, and in some places sitting atop, a sea of oil. Most of the world's known supply was there, divided mainly among the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, along with the smaller United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. Of these countries, Iran was by far the largest in terms of population. Next came Iraq. The nations of the Arabian Peninsula were richer, but the land atop their liquid wealth had never supported a large population, and there was the rub, first exposed in 1991, when Iraq had invaded Kuwait with all the grace of a schoolyard bully's attack on a smaller child. Ryan had more than once said that aggressive war was little more than an armed robbery writ large, and such had been the case in the Persian Gulf War. Seizing upon a minor territorial dispute and some equally trivial economic issues as an excuse, Saddam Hussein had attempted at a stroke to double his country's inherent wealth, and then threatened to double down his bets yet again by attacking Saudi Arabia\u2014the reason he'd stopped at the Kuwait-Saudi border would now remain forever unexplained. At the most easily understood level, it was about oil and oil's resulting wealth.\n\nBut there was more to it than that. Hussein, like a Mafia don, had thought about little more than money and the political power that money generated. Iran was somewhat more farsighted.\n\nAll the nations around the Gulf were Islamic, most of them very strictly so. There were the exceptions of Bahrain and Iraq. In the former case, the oil had essentially run out, and that country\u2014really a city-state separated from the Kingdom by a causeway\u2014had evolved into the same function that Nevada exercised for the western United States, a place where the normal rules were set aside, where drinking, gambling, and other pleasures could be indulged a convenient distance from a more restrictive home. In the latter case, Iraq was a secular state which paid scant lip service to the state religion, which largely explained its President's demise after a long and lively career.\n\nBut the key to the region was and would always be religion. The Saudi Kingdom was the living heart of Islam. The Prophet had been born there. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina were there, and from that point of origin had grown one of the world's great religious movements. The issue was less about oil than about faith. Saudi Arabia was of the Sunni branch, and Iran of the Shi'a. Ryan had once been briefed on the differences, which had at the time seemed so marginal that he'd made no effort to remember them. That, the President told himself now, was foolish. The differences were large enough to make two important countries into enemies, and that was as large as any difference needed to be. It wasn't about wealth per se. It was about a different sort of power, the sort that grew from the mind and the heart\u2014and from there into something else. Oil and money just made the struggle more interesting to outsiders.\n\nA lot more interesting. The industrial world depended on that oil. Every state on the Gulf feared Iran for its size, for its large population, and for the religious fervor of its citizens. For the Sunni religious, the fear was about a perceived departure from the true course of Islam. For everyone else, it was about what would happen to them when \"heretics\" assumed control of the region, because Islam is a comprehensive system of beliefs, spreading out into civil law and politics and every other form of human activity. For Muslims the Word of God was Law Itself. For the West it was continuing their economies. For the Arabs\u2014Iran is _not_ an Arab country\u2014it was the most fundamental question of all, a man's place before his God.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President,\" Prince Ali bin Sheik replied after a moment. \"They will move.\"\n\nHis voice was admirably calm, though Ryan knew that inwardly he must be anything but. The Saudis had never wanted Iraq's President to fall. Enemy though he was, apostate though he was, aggressor though he was, he had fulfilled a useful strategic purpose for his neighbors. Iraq had long been a buffer between the Gulf states and Iran. It was a case in which religion played second fiddle to politics, which thereby served religious purposes. By rejecting the Word of Allah, Iraq's majority Shi'a population was taken out of play, and the dual border with Kuwait and the Kingdom was one of mere politics, not religion. But if the Ba'ath Party fell along with its leader, then Iraq might revert to majority religious rule. That would put a Shi'a country on the two borders, and the leader of the Shi'a branch of Islam was Iran.\n\nIran would move, because Iran had been moving for years. The religion systematized by Mohammed had spread from the Arabian Peninsula to Morocco in the west and the Philippines in the east, and with the evolution of the modern world was represented in every nation on earth. Iran had used its wealth and its large population to become the world's leading Islamic nation, by bringing in Muslim clergy to its own holy city of Qom to study, by financing political movements throughout the Islamic world, and by funneling weapons to Islamic peoples who needed help\u2014the Bosnian Muslims were a case in point, and not the only one.\n\n_\"Anschluss,\"_ Scott Adler thought aloud. Prince Ali just looked over and nodded.\n\n\"Do we have any sort of plan to help prevent it?\" Jack asked. He knew the answer. No, nobody did. That was the reason the Persian Gulf War had been fought for limited military objectives, and not to overthrow the aggressor. The Saudis, who had from the beginning charted the war's strategic objectives, had never allowed America or her allies even to consider a drive to Baghdad, and this despite the fact that with Iraq's army deployed in and around Kuwait, the Iraqi capital had been as exposed as a nudist on a beach. Ryan had remarked at the time, watching the talking heads on various TV news shows, that not a single one of the commentators remarked that a textbook campaign would have totally ignored Kuwait, seized Baghdad, and then waited for the Iraqi army to stack arms and surrender. Well, not everyone could read a map.\n\n\"Your Highness, what influence can you exercise there?\" Ryan inquired next.\n\n\"In practical terms? Very little. We will extend the hand of friendship, offer loans\u2014by the end of the week we will ask America and the U.N. to lift sanctions with an eye to improving economic conditions, but . . .\"\n\n\"Yeah, but,\" Ryan agreed. \"Your Highness, please let us know what information you can develop. America's commitment to the Kingdom's security is unchanged.\"\n\nAli nodded. \"I will convey that to my government.\"\n\n\"NICE, PROFESSIONAL JOB,\" Ding observed, catching the enhanced instant replay. \" 'Cept for one little thing.\"\n\n\"Yeah, it is nice to collect the paycheck before your will is probated.\" Clark had once been young enough and angry enough to think in such terms as the shooter whose death he'd just seen repeated, but with age had come circumspection. Now, he'd heard, Mary Pat wanted him to try again for a White House appearance, and he was reading over a few documents. Trying to, anyway.\n\n\"John, ever read up on the Assassins?\" Chavez asked, killing the TV with the remote.\n\n\"I saw the movie,\" Clark replied without looking up.\n\n\"They were pretty serious boys. They had to be. Using swords and knives, well, you have to get pretty close to do the job. Decisively engaged, like we used to say in the 7th Light.\" Chavez was still short of his master's degree in international relations, but he blessed all the books that Professor Alpher had forced him to read. He waved at the TV. \"This guy was like one of them, a two-legged smart bomb\u2014you self-destruct, but you take out the target first. The Assassins were the first terrorist state. I guess the world wasn't ready for the concept back then, but that one little city-state manipulated a whole region just 'cuz they could get one of their troops in close enough to do the job on anybody.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the history lesson, Domingo, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Think, John. If they could get close to him, they can get close to anybody. Ain't no pension plan in the dictator business, y'know? The security around him is, like, real, real tight\u2014but somebody got a shooter in close and blew him into the next dimension. That's scary, Mr. C.\"\n\nJohn Clark continually had to remind himself that Domingo Chavez was no dummy. He might still speak with an accent\u2014not because he had to, but because it was natural for him to; Chavez, like Clark, had a gift for language\u2014and he might still interlace his speech with terms and grammar remembered from his days as an Army sergeant, but God damn if he wasn't the quickest learner John had ever met. He was even learning to control his temper and passion. When it suited him to, John corrected himself.\n\n\"So? Different culture, different motivation, different\u2014\"\n\n\"John, I'm talking about a capability. The political will to use it, 'mano. And patience. It must have taken years. Sleeper agents I know about. First time I saw a sleeper shooter.\"\n\n\"Could have been a regular guy who just got pissed and\u2014\"\n\n\"Who was willing to die? I don't think so, John. Why not pop the guy on the way to the latrine at midnight and try to get the hell out of Dodge? No way, Mr. C. Gomer there was making a statement. Wasn't just his, either. He was delivering a message for his boss, too.\"\n\nClark looked up from his briefing papers and thought about that one. Another government employee might have dismissed the observation as something out of his purview, but Clark had been suborned into government service as a result of his inability to see limits on his activities. Besides that, he could remember being in Iran, being part of a crowd shouting \"Death to America!\" at blindfolded captives from the U.S. embassy. More than that, he remembered what members of that crowd had said after Operation Blue Light had gone to shit, and how close it had been\u2014how near the Khomeini government had been to taking out its wrath on Americans and turning an already nasty dispute into a shooting war. Even then, Iranian fingerprints were on all manner of terrorist operations worldwide, and America's failure to address the fact hadn't helped matters.\n\n\"Well, Domingo, that's why we need more field officers.\"\n\nSURGEON HAD ONE more reason not to like her husband's presidency. She couldn't see him on the way out the door, for one thing. He was in with somebody\u2014well, it had to do with what she'd seen on the morning news, and that was business, and sometimes she'd had to scoot out of the house unexpectedly for a case at Hopkins. But she didn't like the precedent.\n\nShe looked at the motorcade. Nothing else to call it, a total of six Chevy Suburbans. Three were tasked to getting Sally (now code-named SHADOW) and Little Jack (SHORTSTOP) to school. The other three would conduct Katie (SANDBOX) to her day-care center. Partly, Cathy Ryan admitted, that was her fault. She didn't want the children's lives disrupted. She wouldn't countenance changing their schools and friends because of the misfortune that had dropped on their lives. None of this was the kids' fault. She'd been dumb enough to agree to Jack's new post, which had lasted all of five minutes, and as with many things in life, you had to accept the consequences. One consequence was increased travel time to their classes and finger-painting, just to keep friends, but, damn it . . . there was no right answer.\n\n\"Good morning, Katie!\" It was Don Russell, squatting down for a hug and a kiss from SANDBOX. Cathy had to smile at that. This agent was a godsend. A man with grandchildren of his own, he truly loved kids, especially little ones. He and Katie had hit it right off. Cathy kissed her youngest good-bye, and her bodyguard\u2014it was just outrageous, a child needed a bodyguard! But Cathy remembered her own experiences with terrorists, and she had to accept that, too. Russell lifted SANDBOX into her car seat, strapped her in, and the first set of three vehicles pulled away.\n\n\"Bye, Mom.\" Sally was going through a phase in which she and Mom were friends, and didn't kiss. Cathy accepted that without liking it. It was the same with Little Jack: \"See ya, Mom.\" But John Patrick Ryan Jr. was boy enough to demand a front seat, which he'd get this one time. Both sub-details were augmented due to the manner in which the Ryan family had come to the White House, with a total of twenty agents assigned to protect the children for the time being. That number would come down in a month or so, they'd told her. The kids would ride in normal cars instead of the armored Suburbans. In the case of SURGEON, her helicopter was waiting.\n\nDamn. It was all happening again. She'd been pregnant with Little Jack, then to learn that terrorists were . . . why the _hell_ had she ever agreed to this? The greatest indignity of all, she was married to supposedly the world's most powerful man, but he and his family both had to take orders from other people.\n\n\"I know, Doc.\" It was the voice of Roy Altman, _her_ principal agent. \"Hell of a way to live, isn't it?\"\n\nCathy turned. \"You read minds?\"\n\n\"Part of the job, ma'am, I know\u2014\"\n\n\"Please, my name is Cathy. Jack and I are both 'Doctor Ryan.' \"\n\nAltman nearly blushed. More than one First Lady had taken on royal airs with the accession of her husband to POTUS, and the children of politicians weren't always fun to guard, but the Ryan family, the Detail members had already agreed, were not at all like the people they usually had to guard. In some ways that was bad news, but it was hard not to like them.\n\n\"Here.\" He handed over a manila folder. It was her caseload for the day.\n\n\"Two procedures, then follow-ups,\" she told him. Well, at least she could do paperwork on the flight. That was convenient, wasn't it?\n\n\"I know. We've arranged with Professor Katz to keep us posted\u2014so we can keep up with your schedule,\" Altman explained.\n\n\"Do you do background checks on my patients, too?\" Cathy asked, thinking it a joke.\n\nIt wasn't. \"Yes. Hospital records provide names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers. We run NCIC checks, and checks against our own file of\u2014uh, of people we keep an eye on.\"\n\nThe look that pronouncement generated wasn't exactly friendly, but Altman didn't take it personally. They walked back into the building, then back out a few minutes later to the waiting helicopter. There were news cameras, Cathy saw, to record the event, as Colonel Hank Goodman lit up his engines.\n\nIn the operations room for the U.S. Secret Service, a few blocks away, the status board changed. POTUS (President of the United States) was shown by the red LED display as in the White House. FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) was shown as in transit. SHADOW, SHORTSTOP, and SANDBOX were covered on a different board. The same information was relayed by secure digital radio link to Andrea Price, sitting and reading the paper outside the Oval Office. Other agents were already at St. Mary's Catholic School and the Giant Steps Day Care Center, both near Annapolis, and at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Maryland State Police knew that the Ryan children were rolling along U.S. Route 50, and had additional cars posted along the travel route for an obvious police presence. At the moment, yet another Marine helicopter was following SURGEON'S, and a third, with a team of heavily armed agents aboard, was pacing the three children. Were there a serious assassin out there, then he would see the overt display of force. The agents in the moving vehicles would be at their usual alert state, scanning for cars, filing them away for the chance that the same one would show up a little too much. Unmarked Secret Service cars would maneuver around independently, doing much the same thing while being disguised as ordinary commuters. The Ryans would never really know how much security was arrayed around them, unless they asked, and few ever wanted to know.\n\nA normal day was under way.\n\nTHERE WAS NO denying it now. She didn't need Dr. Moudi to tell her. The headaches had worsened, the fatigue had gotten worse. As with young Benedict Mkusa, she'd thought, then hoped it might be a recurrence of her old malaria, the first time she'd ever entertained that sort of thought. But then the pains had come, not in the joints, but in the stomach first of all, and that had been like watching an advancing weather front, the tall white clouds that led a massive, violent storm, and there was nothing for her to do but wait and dread what was approaching, for she knew everything that was to be. Part of her mind still denied it, and another part tried to hide away in prayer and faith, but as with a person at a horror movie, face covered by denying hands, her eyes still peeked sideways to see what was coming, the horror all the worse because of her useless retreat from it.\n\nThe nausea was worse, and soon she'd be unable to control it with her will, strong as that was.\n\nShe was in one of the hospital's few private rooms. The sun was still bright outside, the sky clear, a beautiful day in the unending African spring-summer season. An IV tree was next to her bed, running sterile saline into her arm, along with some mild analgesics and nutrients to fortify her body, but really it was a waiting game. Sister Jean Baptiste could do little else but wait. Her body was limp with fatigue, and so pained that turning her head to look at the flowers out the window required a minute of effort. The first massive surge of nausea came almost as a surprise, and somehow she managed to grasp the emesis tray. She was still nurse enough and detached enough to see the blood there, even as Maria Magdalena took the tray away from her, to empty it into a special container. Fellow nurse, and fellow nun, she was dressed in sterile garb, wearing rubber gloves and a mask as well, her eyes unable to conceal her sorrow.\n\n\"Hello, Sister.\" It was Dr. Moudi, dressed much the same way, his darker eyes more guarded above the green mask. He checked the chart hanging at the foot of the bed. The temperature reading was only ten minutes old, and still rising. The telex from Atlanta concerning her blood had arrived even more recently, inspiring his immediate walk to the isolation building. Her fair skin had been pale only a few hours earlier. Now it appeared slightly flushed, and dry. Moudi thought they'd work to cool the patient down with alcohol, maybe ice later, to fight the fever. That would be bad for the Sister's dignity. They did indeed dress chastely, as women should, and the hospital gown she now wore was ever demeaning to that virtue. Worse still, however, was the look in her eyes. She knew. But he still had to say it.\n\n\"Sister,\" the physician told her, \"your blood has tested positive for Ebola antibodies.\"\n\nA nod. \"I see.\"\n\n\"Then you also know,\" he added gently, \"that twenty percent of the patients survive this disease. You are not without hope. I am a good doctor. Sister Magdalena here is a superb nurse. We will support you as best we can. I am also in contact with some of my colleagues. We will not give up on you. I require that you do not give up on yourself. Talk to your God, good lady. He will surely listen to someone of your virtue.\" The words came easily, for Moudi was after all a physician, and a good one. He surprised himself by half wishing for her survival.\n\n\"Thank you, Doctor.\"\n\nMoudi turned to the other nun before leaving. \"Please keep me informed.\"\n\n\"Of course, Doctor.\"\n\nMoudi walked out of the room, turning left toward the door, removing his protective garb as he went, and dumping the articles into the proper container. He made a mental note to speak to the administrator to be sure that the necessary precautions were strictly enforced. He wanted this nun to be the last Ebola case in this hospital. Even as he spoke, part of the WHO team was on its way to the Mkusa family, where they would interview the griefstricken parents, along with neighbors and friends, to learn where and how Benedict might have encountered the infection. The best guess was a monkey bite.\n\nBut only a guess. There was little known about Ebola Zaire, and most of the unknowns were important. Doubtless it had been around for centuries, or even longer than that, just one more lethal malady in an area replete with them, not recognized as anything more than \"jungle fever\" by physicians as recently as thirty years before. The focal center of the virus was still a matter of speculation. Many _thought_ a monkey carried it, but which monkey no one knew\u2014literally thousands had been trapped or shot in the effort to determine that, with no result. They weren't even sure that it was really a tropical disease\u2014the first properly documented outbreak of this class of fever had actually taken place in Germany. There was a very similar disease in the Philippines.\n\nEbola appeared and disappeared, like some sort of malignant spirit. There was an apparent periodicity to it. The recognized outbreaks had occurred at eight- to ten-year intervals\u2014again, unexplained and slightly suspect, because Africa was still primitive, and there was ample reason to believe that victims could contract the disease and die from it in but a few days, without the time to seek medical help. The structure of the virus was somewhat understood and its symptoms recognized, but its mechanism was still a mystery. That was troubling to the medical community, because Ebola Zaire had a mortality rate of roughly eighty percent. Only one in five of its victims survived, and why that happened was just one more entry in the \"unknown\" column. For all of those reasons, Ebola was perfect.\n\nSo perfect that it was one of the most feared organisms known to man. Minute quantities of the virus were in Atlanta, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and a handful of other institutions, where it was studied under conditions resembling those of a science-fiction novel, the doctors and technicians in virtual space suits. There wasn't even enough known about Ebola to do work on a vaccine. The four known varieties the fourth had been discovered in a bizarre incident in America; but _that_ strain, while uniformly lethal to monkeys, incomprehensibly had _no_ serious effects on humans\u2014were too different. Even now scientists in Atlanta, some of whom he knew, were peering into electron microscopes to map the structure of this new version, later to compare it with samples of other known strains. That process could take weeks and, probably, as with all previous efforts, would yield only equivocal results.\n\nUntil the true focal center of the disease was discovered, it remained an alien virus, something almost from another planet, deadly and mysterious. Perfect.\n\nPatient Zero, Benedict Mkusa was dead, his body incinerated by gasoline, and the virus dead with him. Moudi had a small blood sample, but that wasn't really good enough. Sister Jean Baptiste was something else, however. Moudi thought about it for a moment, then lifted the phone to call the Iranian embassy in Kinshasa. There was work to be done, and more work to prepare. His hand hesitated, the receiver halfway from the desk to his ear. What if God did listen to her prayers? He might, Moudi thought, He just might. She was a woman of great virtue who spent as much of her day in prayer as any Believer in his home city of Qom, whose faith in her God was firm, and who had devoted her life to service of those in need. Those were three of Islam's Five Pillars, to which he could add a fourth\u2014the Christian Lent wasn't so terribly different from the Islamic Ramadan. These were dangerous thoughts, but if Allah heard her prayers, then what he intended to do was not written, and would not happen, and if her prayers were not heard . . . ? Moudi cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and made the call.\n\n\"MR, PRESIDENT, WE can't ignore it anymore.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know, Arnie.\"\n\nIt came down to a technical issue, oddly enough. The bodies had to be identified positively, because a person wasn't dead until there was a piece of paper that said so, and until that person was declared dead, if that person had been a senator or congress-person, then his or her post wasn't vacant, and no new person could be selected for it, and Congress was an empty shell. The certificates would be going out today, and within an hour, governors of \"the several states\" would be calling Ryan for advice or to advise what they would be doing unbidden. At least one governor would today resign his post and be appointed to the United States Senate by his succeeding lieutenant governor in an elegant, if obvious, political payoff, or so the rumors said.\n\nTHE VOLUME OF information was stunning, even to someone familiar with the sources. It went back over fourteen years. The timing could scarcely have been better, however, since that was about the time the major newspapers and magazines had gone to electronic media, which was easily cross-loaded to the World Wide Web, and for which the media empires could charge a modest fee for material which otherwise would have been stored in their own musty basements or at most sold to college libraries for practically nothing. The WWW was still a fairly new and untested source of income, but the media had seized it by the throat, since now for the first time news was less volatile than it had been in the past. It was now a ready source for its own reporters, for students, for those with individual curiosity, and for those whose curiosity was more strictly professional. Best of all, the huge number of people doing a keyword search would make it impossible for anyone to check all the inquiries.\n\nHe was careful anyway\u2014rather, his people were. The inquiries being made on the Web were all happening in Europe, mainly in London, through brand-new Internet access accounts which would last no longer than the time required to download the data, or which came from academic accounts to which numerous people had access. Keywords RYAN JOHN PATRICK, RYAN JACK, RYAN CAROLINE, RYAN CATHY, RYAN CHILDREN, RYAN FAMILY, and a multitude of others were inputted, and literally thousands of \"hits\" had resulted. Many were spurious because \"Ryan\" was not that uncommon a name, but the vetting process was not all that difficult.\n\nThe first really interesting clips came when Ryan had been thirty-one and had first come into the public spotlight in London. Even the photos were there, and though they took time to download, they were worth waiting for. Especially the first. That one showed a young man sitting on a street, covered with blood. Well, wasn't that inspirational ? The subject of the photograph actually looked quite dead in it, but he knew that wounded people often appeared that way. Then had come another set of photos of a wrecked automobile and a small helicopter. In the intervening years the data on Ryan was surprisingly scarce, mainly squibs about his testifying before the American Congress behind closed doors. There were additional hits concerning the end of the Fowler presidency\u2014immediately after the initial confusion it had been reported that Ryan himself had prevented a nuclear-missile launch . . . and Ryan himself had hinted at it to Daryaei . . . but that story had never been officially confirmed, and Ryan himself had never discussed the matter with anyone. That was important. That said something about the man. But that could also be set aside.\n\nHis wife. There was ample press coverage on her, too, including in one article the number of her office at her hospital. A skilled surgeon. That was nice\u2014a recent piece said that she'd continue that. Excellent. They knew where to look for her.\n\nThe children. The youngest\u2014yes, the youngest used the same day-care center that the oldest had used. There was a photo of that, too. A feature article on Ryan's first White House job had even identified the school the older ones attended. . . .\n\nThis was all quite amazing. He'd initiated the research effort in the knowledge that he'd get all or most of this information, but even so, here was in a single day more information than ten people in the field could have gathered\u2014at considerable risk of exposure\u2014in a week. The Americans were so foolish. They practically invited attack. They had no idea of secrecy or security. It was one thing for a leader to appear in public with his family from time to time\u2014everyone did that. It was quite another to let everyone know things that nobody really needed to know.\n\nThe document package\u2014it came to over 2,500 pages\u2014would be collated and cross-referenced by his staff. There were no plans to take action on any of it. It was just data. But that could change.\n\n\"YOU KNOW, I think I like flying in,\" Cathy Ryan observed to Roy Altman.\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Less wear and tear on the nerves than driving myself. I don't suppose that'll last,\" she added, moving into the food line.\n\n\"Probably not.\" Altman was constantly looking around, but there were two other agents in the room, doing their best to look invisible and failing badly at it. Though Johns Hopkins was an institution with fully 2,400 physicians, it was still a professional village of sorts where nearly everyone knew nearly everyone else, and doctors didn't carry guns. Altman was staying close, the better to learn his principal's routine, and she didn't seem to mind. He'd been in with her for the two morning procedures, and teacher that she was, Cathy had explained every step of the process in minute detail. This afternoon she'd be doing teaching rounds with a half dozen or so students. It was Altman's first educational experience on the job\u2014at least in something that had value in an area other than politics, a field he'd learned to detest. His next observation was that SURGEON ate like the proverbial bird. She got to the end of the line and paid for her lunch and Altman's, over his brief protest.\n\n\"This is my turf, Roy.\" She looked around, and spotted the man she wanted to lunch with, heading that way with Altman in tow. \"Hey, Dave.\"\n\nDean James and his guest stood up. \"Hi, Cathy! Let me introduce a new faculty member, Pierre Alexandre. Alex, this is Cathy Ryan\u2014\"\n\n\"The same one who\u2014\"\n\n\"Please, I'm still a doctor, and\u2014\"\n\n\"You're the one on the Lasker list, right?\" Alexandre stopped her cold with that one. Cathy's smile lit up the room.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Congratulations, Doctor.\" He held out his hand. Cathy had to set her tray down to take it. Altman watched with eyes that tried to be neutral, but conveyed something else. \"You must be with the Service.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Roy Altman.\"\n\n\"Excellent. A lady this lovely and this bright deserves proper protection,\" Alexandre pronounced. \"I just got out of the Army, Mr. Altman. I've seen you guys at Walter Reed. Back when President Fowler's daughter came back from Brazil with a tropical bug, I managed the case.\"\n\n\"Alex is working with Ralph Forster,\" the dean explained as everyone sat down.\n\n\"Infectious diseases,\" Cathy told her bodyguard.\n\nAlexandre nodded. \"Just learning the ropes at the moment. But I have a parking pass, so I guess I really belong.\"\n\n\"I hope you're as good a teacher as Ralph is.\"\n\n\"A great doc,\" Alexandre agreed. Cathy decided she'd like the newbie. She next wondered about the accent and the southern manners. \"Ralph flew down to Atlanta this morning.\"\n\n\"Anything special happening?\"\n\n\"A possible Ebola case in Zaire, African male, age eight. The e-mail came through this morning.\"\n\nCathy's eyes narrowed at that. Though she was in a completely different field of medicine, like all physicians she got _Morbidity and Mortality Report,_ and she kept current on everything she could. Medicine is a field in which education never stops. \"Just one?\"\n\n\"Yep.\" Alexandre nodded. \"Seems the kid had a monkey bite on his arm. I've been over there. I deployed out of Detrick for the last mini-outbreak in 1990.\"\n\n\"With Gus Lorenz?\" Dean James asked. Alexandre shook his head.\n\n\"No, Gus was doing something else then. The team leader was George Westphal.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah, he\u2014\"\n\n\"Died,\" Alex confirmed. \"We, uh, kept it quiet, but he got it. I attended him. It wasn't real great to watch.\"\n\n\"What did he do wrong? I didn't know him well,\" James said, \"but Gus told me he was a rising star. UCLA, as I recall.\"\n\n\"George was brilliant, best man on structures I ever met, and he was as careful as any of us, but he got it anyway, and we never figured out how that happened. Anyway, that mini-outbreak killed sixteen people. We had two survivors, both females, both in their early twenties, and nothing remarkable about them that we could ever find. Maybe they were just lucky,\" Alexandre said, not really believing it. Things like this happened for some reason or other. It was just that he hadn't found it, though it was his job to find it. \"In any case, only eighteen total victims, and that _was_ lucky. We were over there for six or seven weeks. I took a shotgun into the woods and blew up about a hundred monkeys, trying to find a carrier. No dice. That strain is called Ebola Zaire Mayinga. I imagine right now they're comparing it to what this little kid contracted. Ebola's a slippery little bastard.\"\n\n\"Just one?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"That's the word. Method of exposure unknown, as usual.\"\n\n\"Monkey bite?\"\n\n\"Yeah, but we'll never find the monkey. We never do.\"\n\n\"It's that deadly?\" Altman asked, unable to hold back from joining the conversation.\n\n\"Sir, the official guess is eighty percent mortality. Put it this way. If you pull your pistol out and shoot me in the chest, right here, right now, my odds are better than beating this little bug.\" Alexandre buttered his roll and remembered visiting Westphal's widow. It was bad for the appetite. \"Probably a lot better, what with the surgeons we have working over in Halstead. You have much better odds with leukemia, much better odds with lymphoma. Somewhat worse odds with AIDS, but that agent gives you ten years. Ebola gives you maybe ten days. That's about as deadly as it gets.\"\n**11**\n\n**MONKEYS**\n\n**R** YAN HAD DONE ALL OF his own writing. He'd published two books on naval history\u2014that now seemed like a previous lifetime summoned to memory on a hypnotist's couch\u2014and uncounted papers for CIA. Each of these he had done himself, once on a typewriter and later on a series of personal computers. He had never enjoyed the writing\u2014it was ever difficult work\u2014but he had enjoyed the solitude of it, alone in his own little intellectual world and safe from any sort of interruption as he formed his thoughts and adjusted their method of presentation until they were as close to perfect as he could achieve. In that way, they were always his thoughts, and there was integrity in the process.\n\nNo longer.\n\nThe chief speechwriter was Callie Weston, short, petite, dirty blond, and a wizard with words who, like many of the enormous White House staff, had come aboard with President Fowler and never managed to leave.\n\n\"You didn't like my speech for the church?\" She was also irreverent.\n\n\"Honestly, I just decided that I had to say something else.\" Then Jack realized he was defending himself to someone he scarcely knew.\n\n\"I cried.\" She paused for effect, staring into his eyes with the unblinking gaze of a poisonous snake for several seconds, manifestly sizing him up. \"You're different.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean you have to understand, Mr. President. President Fowler kept me around because I made him sound compassionate\u2014he's rather a cold fish in most things, poor guy. President Durling kept me around because he didn't have anybody better. I bump heads all the time with staffers across the street. They like to edit my work. I don't like being edited by drones. We fight. Arnie protects me a lot because I went to school with his favorite niece\u2014and I'm the best around at what I do\u2014but I'm probably the biggest pain in the ass on your staff. You need to know that.\" It was a good explanation, but not to the point.\n\n\"Why am I different?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"You say what you really think instead of saying what you think people think they want to hear. It's going to be hard writing for you. I can't dip into the usual well. I have to learn to write the way I used to like to write, not the way I'm paid to write, and I have to learn to write like you talk. It's going to be tough,\" she told him, already girding herself for the challenge.\n\n\"I see.\" Since Ms. Weston was not an inner-circle staff member, Andrea Price was leaning against the wall (it would have been in a corner, except the Oval Office didn't have one) and observing everything with a poker face\u2014or trying to. Ryan was learning to read her body language. Clearly Price didn't much care for Weston. He wondered why. \"Well, what can you turn out in a couple of hours?\"\n\n\"Sir, that depends on what you want to say,\" the speechwriter pointed out. Ryan told her in a few brief sentences. She didn't take notes. She merely absorbed it, smiled, and spoke again.\n\n\"They're going to destroy you. You know that. Maybe Arnie hasn't told you yet, maybe nobody on the staff has, or ever will, but it's going to happen.\" That remark jolted Agent Price from her spot on the wall, just enough that her body was standing instead of leaning.\n\n\"What makes you think I want to stay here?\"\n\nShe blinked. \"Excuse me. I'm not really used to this.\"\n\n\"This could be an interesting conversation, but I\u2014\"\n\n\"I read one of your books day before yesterday. You're not very good with words\u2014not very elegant, that's a technical judgment\u2014but you do say things clearly. So I have to dial back my rhetoric style to make it sound like you. Short sentences. Your grammar is good. Catholic schools, I guess. You don't bullshit people. You say it straight.\" She smiled. \"How long for the speech?\"\n\n\"Call it fifteen minutes.\"\n\n\"I'll be back in three hours,\" Weston promised, and stood. Ryan nodded, and she walked out of the room. Then the President looked at Agent Price.\n\n\"Spit it out,\" he ordered.\n\n\"She's the biggest pain in the ass over there. Last year she _attacked_ some junior staffer over something. A guard had to pull her off him.\"\n\n\"Over what?\"\n\n\"The staffer said some nasty things about one of her speeches, and speculated that her family background was irregular. He left the next day. No loss,\" Price concluded. \"But she's an arrogant prima donna. She shouldn't have said what she did.\"\n\n\"What if she's right?\"\n\n\"Sir, that's not my business, but any\u2014\"\n\n_\"Is_ she right?\"\n\n\"You are different, Mr. President.\" Price didn't say whether she thought that was a good or bad thing, and Ryan didn't ask.\n\nThe President had other things to do in any case. He lifted his desk phone, and a secretary answered.\n\n\"Could you get me George Winston at the Columbus Group?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, I'll get him for you.\" She didn't have that number immediately to mind, and so she lifted another phone for the Signals Office. Down there a Navy petty officer had the number on a Post-It note, and read it off. A moment later he handed the Post-It to the Marine in the next chair over. The Marine fished in her purse, found four quarters, and handed them over to the smirking squid.\n\n\"Mr. President, I have Mr. Winston,\" the intercom phone said.\n\n\"George?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"How fast can you get down here?\"\n\n\"Jack\u2014Mr. President, I'm trying to put my business back together and\u2014\"\n\n\"How fast?\" Ryan asked more pointedly.\n\nWinston had to think for a second. His Gulfstream crew wasn't standing by for anything today. Getting to Newark Airport . . . \"I can catch the next train.\"\n\n\"Let me know which one you're on. I'll have someone waiting for you.\"\n\n\"Okay, but you need to know that I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, you can. See you in a few hours.\" Ryan hung up, then looked up to Price. \"Andrea, have an agent and a car meet him at the station.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\nRyan decided that it was nice to give orders and have them carried out. A man could get used to this.\n\n\"I DON'T LIKE guns!\" She said it loudly enough that a few heads turned, though the kids immediately turned back to their blocks and crayons. There was an unusual number of adults around, three of whom had spiraling cords leading to earpieces. Those heads all turned to see a \"concerned\" (that was the word everyone used in such a case) mother. As head of this detail, Don Russell walked over.\n\n\"Hello.\" He held up his Secret Service ID. \"Can I help you?\"\n\n\"Do you have to be here!\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, we do. Could I have your name, please?\"\n\n\"Why?\" Sheila Walker demanded.\n\n\"Well, ma'am, it's nice to know who you're talking to, isn't it?\" Russell asked reasonably. It was also nice to get background checks on such people.\n\n\"This is Mrs. Walker,\" said Mrs. Marlene Daggett, owner-operator of Giant Steps Day Care Center.\n\n\"Oh, that's your little boy over there, Justin, right?\" Russell smiled. The four-year-old was building a tower with hardwood blocks, which he would then tip over, to the general amusement of the room.\n\n\"I just don't like guns, and I don't like them around children.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Walker, first of all, we're cops. We know how to carry our firearms safely. Second, our regulations require us to be armed at all times. Third, I wish you would look at it this way: your son is as safe here with us as he's ever going to be. You'll never have to worry about having somebody come over and steal a kid off the playground outside, for example.\"\n\n\"Why does she have to be here?\"\n\nRussell smiled reasonably. \"Mrs. Walker, Katie over there didn't become President. Her father did. Isn't she entitled to a normal kid's life, just like your Justin?\"\n\n\"But it's dangerous and\u2014\"\n\n\"Not while we're around, it isn't,\" he assured her. She just turned away.\n\n\"Justin!\" Her son turned to see his mother holding his jacket. He paused for a second, and with one finger pushed the blocks a fraction of an inch, waiting for the four-foot pile to teeter over like a falling tree.\n\n\"Budding engineer,\" Russell heard through his earpiece. \"I'll check her tag number.\" He nodded to the female agent in the doorway. In twenty minutes they'd have a new dossier to look over. Probably it would just say that Mrs. Walker was a New Age pain in the ass, but if she had a history of mental problems (possible), or a criminal record (unlikely), it would be something to remember. He scanned the room automatically, then shook his head. SANDBOX was a normal kid surrounded by normal kids. At the moment she was crayoning a blank sheet of paper, her face screwed into a look of intense concentration. She'd been through a normal day, a normal lunch, a normal nap, and soon would have an abnormal trip back to a decidedly abnormal home. She hadn't noticed the discussion he'd just had with Justin's mother. Well, kids were smart enough to be kids, which was more than one could say for a lot of their parents.\n\nMrs. Walker guided her son to the family car, a Volvo wagon to no one's surprise, where she dutifully strapped him into the safety seat in the back. The agent memorized the tag number for processing, knowing that it would turn nothing of real importance, and knowing that they'd run it anyway, because there was always the off chance that...\n\nIt all came back just then, the reason why they had to be careful. Here they were, at Giant Steps, the same day-care center the Ryans had used since SHADOW was a munchkin, just off Ritchie Highway above Annapolis. The bad guys had used the 7-Eleven just across the road to stake out the location, then followed SURGEON in her old Porsche, using a custom van, and on the Route 50 bridge they'd pulled off a sweet little ambush, and later killed a state trooper in their escape. Dr. Ryan had been pregnant with SHORTSTOP then. SANDBOX had been far off into a future yet undreamed of at the time. All of this had a strange effect on Special Agent Marcella Hilton. Unmarried, again\u2014she was twice divorced, with no kids of her own\u2014being around kids had made her heart flutter a little, tough professional that she was. She figured it was part of her hormones, or the way the female brain was wired, or maybe she just liked kids and wished she had one of her own. Whatever it was, the thought that people would deliberately hurt little kids made her blood chill for a brief moment, like a blast of cold wind that came and went.\n\nThis place was too vulnerable. And there really were people out there who didn't care a rat's ass about hurting kids. And that 7-Eleven was still there. There were six agents on the SANDBOX detail now. That would be down to three or four in a couple of weeks. The Service wasn't the all-powerful agency people thought it was. Oh, sure, it had a lot of muscle, and investigative clout which few suspected. Alone of the federal police forces, the United States Secret Service could knock on somebody's door and walk in and conduct a \"friendly\" interview with someone who might represent a threat\u2014an assumption based on evidence which might or might not be usable in a court of law. The purpose of such an interview would be to let the person know that he or she had an eye fixed firmly on him or her, and though that wasn't strictly true\u2014the Service had only about 1,200 agents nationwide\u2014the mere thought of it was enough to scare the hell out of people who'd said the wrong thing into the wrong ear.\n\nBut those people weren't the threat. As long as the agents did their job correctly, the casual threat wasn't a deadly one. Those people almost always tipped their hand, and people like her knew what to look for. It was the ones their intelligence division didn't hear about who constituted the real threat. Those _could_ be deterred somewhat through a massive show of force, but the massive show was too expensive, too oppressive, too obvious not to attract notice and adverse comment. Even then ---she remembered another event, months after the near death of SURGEON, SHADOW, and the yet unborn SHORTSTOP. _A whole squad_ , she thought. It was a case study at the Secret Service Academy at Beltsville. The Ryan house had been used to film a re-creation of the event. Chuck Avery\u2014a good, experienced supervisory agent\u2014and his whole squad taken out. As a rookie she'd watched the taped analysis of what had gone wrong, and even then she'd chilled at how easy it had been for that team to make a small mistake, that to be compounded by bad luck and bad timing. . . .\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\" She turned to see Don Russell, sipping from a plastic coffee cup while he got some fresh air. Another agent was on post inside.\n\n\"Did you know Avery?\"\n\n\"He was two years ahead of me at the academy. He was smart, and careful, and a damned good shot. He dropped one of the bad guys then, in the dark from thirty yards, two rounds in the chest.\" A shake of the head. \"You don't make little mistakes in this business, Marci.\"\n\nThat is when the second chill came, the one that made you want to reach for your weapon, just to be sure that it was there, to tell yourself that you were ready to get the job done. That's when you remembered, in this case, how cute a little kid could be, and how even if you took the hits you'd make damned sure your last conscious act on the planet would be to put every round through the bastard's X-ring. Then you blinked, and the image went away.\n\n\"She's a beautiful little girl, Don.\"\n\n\"I've rarely seen an ugly one,\" Russell agreed. This was the time when one was supposed to say, _Don't worry_ , _we'll take good care of her_. But they didn't say that. They didn't even think it. Instead they looked around at the highway and the trees and the 7-Eleven across Ritchie Highway, wondering what they'd missed, and wondering how much money they could spend on surveillance cameras.\n\nGEORGE WINSTON WAS used to being met. It was the ultimate perk, really. You got off the airplane\u2014almost always an airplane in his case\u2014and there was somebody to meet you and take you to the car whose driver knew the quickest way to where you were going. No hassles with Hertz and figuring the useless little maps out, and getting lost. It cost a lot of money, but it was worth it, because time was the ultimate commodity, and you were born with only so much to spend, and there was no passbook to tell you the exact amount. The Metroliner pulled into Union Station's track 6. He'd gotten some reading done, and had himself a nice nap between Trenton and Baltimore. A pity the railroad couldn't make money carrying passengers, but you didn't have to buy air to fly in, while it was necessary to build a right-of-way for ground transport. Too bad. He collected his coat and briefcase and headed for the door, tipping the first-class attendant on the way out.\n\n\"Mr. Winston?\" a man asked.\n\n\"That's right.\" The man held up a leather ID holder, identifying himself as a federal agent. He had a partner, Winston noted, standing thirty feet away with his topcoat unbuttoned.\n\n\"Follow me, please, sir.\" With that they were merely three more busy people heading off to an important meeting.\n\nTHERE WERE MANY such dossiers, each of them so large that the data had to be edited so as not to overflow the file cabinets, and it was still more convenient to do it with paper than a computer, because it was hard to get a computer that worked well in his native language. Checking up on the data would not be difficult. For one thing, there would be more press coverage to confirm or alter what he had. For another, he could confirm a lot very simply, merely by having a car drive past a few places once or twice, or by observing roads. There was little danger in that. However careful and thorough the American Secret Service might be, they were not omnipotent. This Ryan fellow had a family, a wife who worked, children who went to school; and Ryan himself had a schedule he had to keep. In their official home they were safe\u2014reasonably so, he corrected himself, since no fixed place was ever truly safe\u2014but that safety did not follow them everywhere, did it?\n\nIt was more than anything else a matter of financing and planning. He needed a sponsor.\n\n\"HOW MANY DO you need?\" the dealer asked.\n\n\"How many do you have?\" the prospective buyer asked.\n\n\"I can get eighty, certainly. Perhaps a hundred,\" the dealer thought aloud, sipping at his beer.\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"A week will suffice?\" They were in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, and a major center for this particular trade. \"Biological research?\"\n\n\"Yes, my client's scientists have a rather interesting project under way.\"\n\n\"What project might that be?\" the dealer asked.\n\n\"That I am not at liberty to say,\" was the not unexpected answer. Nor would he say who his client was. The dealer didn't react, and didn't particularly care. His curiosity was human, not professional. \"If your services are satisfactory, we may be back for more.\" The usual enticement. The dealer nodded and commenced the substantive bargaining.\n\n\"You must understand that this is not an inexpensive undertaking. I must assemble my people. They must find a small population of the creature you desire. There are the problems of capture and transport, export licenses, the usual bureaucratic difficulties.\" By which he meant bribes. Trade in African green monkeys had picked up in the last few years. Quite a few companies used them for various experimental purposes. That was generally bad for the monkeys, but there were a lot of monkeys. The African green was in no way endangered, and even if they were, the dealer didn't especially care. Animals were a national resource for his country, as oil was for the Arabs, to be marketed for hard currency. He didn't get sentimental about them. They bit and spat, and were generally unpleasant little beggars, \"cute\" though they might appear to the tourists at Treetops. They also ate the crops tended by the numerous small farmers in the country, and were thoroughly detested for that reason, whatever the game wardens might say.\n\n\"These problems are not strictly our concern. Speed is. You will find that we are willing to reward you handsomely in return for reliable service.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" The dealer finished his beer, and, lifting his hand, snapped his fingers for a refill. He named his price. It included his overhead, pay to the gatherers, the customs people, a policeman or two, and a mid-level government bureaucrat, plus his own net profit, which in the terms of the local economy was actually quite fair, he thought. Not everyone did.\n\n\"Agreed,\" the buyer said without so much as a sip of his soft drink.\n\nIt was almost a disappointment. The dealer enjoyed haggling, so much a part of the African marketplace. He'd scarcely begun to depose on how difficult and involved his business was.\n\n\"A pleasure doing business with you, sir. Call me in . . . five days?\"\n\nThe buyer nodded. He finished his drink and took his leave. Ten minutes after that, he made a call, the third such communication to the embassy in the day, and all for the same purpose. Though he didn't know it, yet more such calls had been made in Uganda, Zaire, Tanzania, and Mali.\n\nJACK REMEMBERED HIS first time in the Oval Office, the way you shuffled left to right from the secretaries' room through what turned out to be a molded door set in a curved wall, much in the manner of an eighteenth-century palace, which the White House actually was, if a modest one in the context of the times. You tended to notice the windows first of all, especially on a sunny day. Their thickness made them look green, rather like the glass walls of an aquarium designed for a very special fish. Next you saw the desk, a large wooden one. It was always intimidating, all the more so if the President was standing there, waiting for you. All this was good, the President thought. It made his current job all the easier.\n\n\"George,\" Ryan said, extending his hand.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" Winston responded pleasantly, ignoring the two Secret Service agents standing immediately behind him, there to grab him if he did something untoward. You didn't have to hear them. The visitor could feel their eyes on the back of his neck, rather like laser beams. He shook Ryan's hand anyway, and managed a crooked smile. Winston didn't know Ryan very well. They'd worked together well during the Japanese conflict. Previously they'd bumped into each other at a handful of minor social functions, and he knew of Ryan's work in the market, discreet but effective. All that time in the intelligence business hadn't been entirely wasted.\n\n\"Sit down.\" Jack waved to one of the couches. \"Relax. How was the trip down?\"\n\n\"The usual.\" A Navy mess steward appeared seemingly from nowhere and poured two cups of coffee, because it was that time of the day. The coffee, he found, was excellent, and the china exquisite with its gold trim.\n\n\"I need you,\" Ryan said next.\n\n\"Sir, look, there was a lot of damage done to my\u2014\"\n\n\"Country.\"\n\n\"I've never wanted a government job, Jack,\" Winston replied at once, speaking rapidly.\n\nRyan didn't even touch his cup. \"Why do you think I want you? George, I've been there and done that, okay? More than once. I have to put a team together. I'm going to give a speech tonight. You might like what I'm going to say. Okay, first, I need somebody to run Treasury. Defense is okay for the moment. State's in good hands with Adler. Treasury is first on my list of things that have to be filled with somebody new. I need somebody good. You're it. Are you clean?\" Ryan asked abruptly.\n\n\"What\u2014bet your ass I am! I made all my money within the rules. Everybody knows that.\" Winston bristled until he realized that he was expected to.\n\n\"Good. I need somebody who has the confidence of the financial community. You do. I need somebody who knows how the system really works. You do. I need somebody who knows what's broke and needs fixing, and what isn't and doesn't. You do. I need somebody who isn't political. You aren't. I need a dispassionate pro\u2014most of all, George, I need somebody who's going to hate his job as much as I hate mine.\"\n\n\"What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. President?\"\n\nRyan leaned back for a second and closed his eyes before going on. \"I started working inside when I was thirty-one. I got out once, and I did okay on the Street, but I got sucked back, and here I am.\" The eyes opened. \"Ever since I started with the Agency, I've had to watch how things work on the inside, and guess what? I never did like it. I started on the Street, remember, and I did okay then, too, remember? I figured I'd become an academic after I made my pile. History's my first love, and I thought I'd teach and study and write, figure out how things worked and pass my knowledge along. I almost made it, and maybe things didn't work out that way, exactly, but I've done a lot of studying and learning. So, George, I'm going to put a team together.\"\n\n\"To do what?\"\n\n\"Your job is to clean up Treasury. You've got monetary and fiscal policy.\"\n\n\"You mean\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"No political bullshit?\" He had to ask that.\n\n\"Look, George, I don't know _how_ to be a politician, and I don't have time to learn. I never liked the game. I never liked most of the people in it. I just kept trying to serve my country as best I could. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I didn't have a choice. You remember how it started. People tried to kill me and my family. I didn't want to get sucked in, but God damn it, I learned that _somebody_ has to try to get the job done. I'm not going to do it alone anymore, George, and I'm not going to fill all the vacant posts with ticket-punchers who know how to work 'the system,' okay? I want people with ideas in here, not politicians with agendas.\"\n\nWinston set his cup down, managing not to rattle the saucer as he did so. He was a little surprised that his hand wasn't shaking. The length and breadth of what Ryan proposed was quite a bit more than the job which he'd had every intention of declining. It would mean more than was obvious. He'd have to cut himself off from his friends\u2014well, not really, but it meant that he would not make executive decisions based on what campaign contributions the Street would give the President as a result of the nice things that Treasury did for the trading houses up there. That's the way the game had always been played, and though he'd never been a player, he'd talked often enough with those who were, working the system in the same old way, because that was how things were.\n\n\"Shit,\" he whispered half to himself. \"You're serious, aren't you?\"\n\nAs founder of the Columbus Group, he'd assumed a duty so basic that few ever thought about it, beyond those who actually undertook it\u2014and not always enough of them. Literally millions of people, directly or indirectly, entrusted their money to him, and that gave him the theoretical ability to be a thief on the cosmic scale. But you couldn't do that. For one thing, it was illegal, and you ran the risk of rather substandard federal housing as a result of it, with very substandard neighbors to boot. But that wasn't the reason you didn't. The reason was that those were people out there, and they trusted you to be honest _and_ smart, and so you treated their money the same as you treated your own, or maybe even a little better, because they couldn't gamble the way a rich man did. Every so often you'd get a nice letter from some widow, and that was nice, but it really came from inside. Either you were a man of honor or you were not, and honor, some movie writer had once said, was a man's gift to himself. Not a bad aphorism, Winston told himself. It was also profitable, of course. You did the job in the right way, and chances were that people would reward you for it, but the real satisfaction was playing the game well. The money was merely a result of something more important, because money was transitory, but honor wasn't.\n\n\"Tax policy?\" Winston asked.\n\n\"We need Congress put back together first, remember?\" Ryan pointed out. \"But, yes.\"\n\nWinston took a deep breath. \"That's a very big job, Ryan.\"\n\n\"You're telling _me_ that?\" the President demanded ... then grinned.\n\n\"It won't make me any friends.\"\n\n\"You also become head of the Secret Service. They'll protect you, won't they, Andrea?\"\n\nAgent Price was not used to being pulled into these conversations, but she feared she'd have to get used to it. \"Uh, yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Things are just so damned inefficient,\" Winston observed.\n\n\"So fix it,\" Ryan told him.\n\n\"It might be bloody.\"\n\n\"Buy a mop. I want your department cleaned up, streamlined, and run like you want it to make a profit someday. How you do that is your problem. For Defense, I want the same thing. The biggest problem over there is administrative. I need somebody who can run a business and make a profit to cull the bureaucracy out. That's the biggest problem of all, for all the agencies.\"\n\n\"You know Tony Bretano?\"\n\n\"The TRW guy? He used to run their satellite division. . . .\" Ryan remembered his name as a former candidate for a senior Pentagon post, which offer he'd turned down flat. A lot of good people declined such offers. That was the paradigm he had to break.\n\n\"Lockheed-Martin is going to steal him away in a couple weeks, at least that's what my sources tell me. That's why Lockheed's stock is nudging up. We have a buy-advisory on it. He gave TRW a fifty-percent profit increase in two years, not bad for an engineer who isn't supposed to know beans about management. I play golf with him sometimes. You should hear him scream about doing business with the government.\"\n\n\"Tell him I want to see him.\"\n\n\"Lockheed's board is giving him a free hand to\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the idea, George.\"\n\n\"What about my job, I mean, what you want me to do. The rule is\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. You'll be acting Secretary until we get things put back together.\"\n\nWinston nodded. \"Okay. I need to bring a few people down with me.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm not even going to tell you all the things you have to do. I just want it to get done, George. You just have to tell me ahead of time. I don't want to read about it in the papers first.\"\n\n\"When would I start?\"\n\n\"The office is empty right now,\" Ryan told him.\n\nA final hedge: \"I have to talk to my family about it.\"\n\n\"You know, George, these government offices have phones and everything.\" Jack paused. \"Look, I know what you are. I know what you do. I might have turned out the same way, but I just never found it . . . satisfactory, I guess, just to make money. Getting start-ups off the ground, that was something different. Okay, managing money is important work. I didn't like it myself, but I never wanted to be a doctor, either. Fine, different strokes and all that. But I _know_ you've sat around a lot of tables with beer and pretzels talking about how screwed up this town is. Here's your chance. It will never come again, George. Nobody will ever have an opportunity to be SecTreas without political considerations. Never. You can't turn it down, because you'd never forgive yourself if you did.\"\n\nWinston wondered how one could be so adroitly cornered in a room with curved walls. \"You're learning the political stuff, Jack.\"\n\n\"Andrea, you have a new boss,\" the President told his principal agent.\n\nFor her part, Special Agent Price decided that Callie Weston might be wrong after all.\n\nTHE NOTICE THAT there would be a presidential address tonight upset a carefully considered timetable, but only by a day. More of concern was the coordination of that event with another. Timing was everything in politics, as much as in any other field, and they'd spent a week working on this. It wasn't the usual illusion of experts moving with practiced skill. There had never been practice in this particular exercise. It was all guesses, but they'd all made guesses before, and mostly good ones, else Edward J. Kealty would never have risen as far as he had, but like compulsive gamblers, they never really trusted the table or the other players, and every decision carried with it a lot of ifs.\n\nThey even wondered about right and wrong on this one\u2014not the \"right and wrong\" of a political decision, the considered calculation of who would be pleased and who offended by a sudden stand on the principle du jour, but whether or not the action they were contemplating was objectively correct\u2014honest, _moral!_ \u2014and that was a rare moment for the seasoned political operatives. It helped that they'd been lied to, of course. They knew they'd been told lies. They knew _he_ knew that _they_ knew that he'd lied to them, but that was an understood part of the exercise. To have done otherwise would have violated the rules of the game. They had to be protected so long as they did not break faith with their principal, and being protected from adverse knowledge was part of that covenant.\n\n\"So you never really resigned, Ed?\" his chief of staff asked. He wanted the lie to be clear, so that he could tell everyone that it was the Lord's truth, to the best of his knowledge.\n\n\"I still have the letter,\" the former Senator and former Vice President, and that was the rub, replied, tapping his jacket pocket. \"Brett and I talked things over and we decided that the wording of the letter had to be just so, and what I had with me wasn't quite right. I was going to come back the next day with a new one, dated properly, of course, and it would have been handled quietly\u2014but who would have thought . . . ?\"\n\n\"You could just, well, forget about it.\" This part of the dance had to be stepped out in accordance with the music.\n\n\"I wish I could,\" Kealty said after a moment's sincere pause, followed by a concerned, passionate voice. This was good practice for him, too. \"But, dear God, the shape the country's in. Ryan's not a bad guy, known him for years. He doesn't know crap about running a government, though.\"\n\n\"There's no law on this, Ed. None. No constitutional guidance at all, and even if there were, no Supreme Court to rule on it.\" This came from Kealty's chief legal adviser, formerly his senior legislative aide. \"It's strictly political. It won't look good,\" he had to say next. \"It won't look\u2014\"\n\n\"That's the point,\" the chief of staff noted. \"We're doing this for apolitical reasons, to serve the interests of the country. Ed knows he's committing political suicide.\" To be followed by instant and glorious resurrection, live on CNN.\n\nKealty stood and started walking around the room, gesturing as he spoke. \"Take politics out of this, damn it! The government's been _destroyed!_ Who's going to put it back together? Ryan's a goddamned CIA spook. He knows _nothing_ about government operations. We have a Supreme Court to appoint, policy to carry out. We have to get Congress put back together. The country needs leadership, and he doesn't have a clue on how to do that. I may be digging my own political grave, but somebody has to step up and protect our country.\"\n\nNobody laughed. The odd thing was that it never occurred to them to do so. The staffers, both of whom had been with EJK for twenty years or more, had so lashed themselves to this particular political mast that they had no choice in the matter. This bit of theater was as necessary as the passage of the chorus in Sophocles, or Homer's invocation of the Muse. The _poetics_ of politics had to be observed. It was about the country, and the country's needs, and Ed's duty to the country over a generation and a half, because he'd been there and done it for all that time, knew how the system worked, and when it all came down, only a person like he could save it. The government was the country, after all. He'd spent his professional lifetime devoted to that proposition.\n\nThey actually believed all that, and no less than the two staffers, Kealty was lashed to the same mast. How much he was responding to his own ambition even he could no longer say, because belief becomes fact after a lifetime of professing it. The country occasionally showed signs of drifting away from his beliefs, but as an evangelist has no choice but to entreat people back to the True Faith, so Kealty had a duty to bring the country back to its philosophical roots, which he'd espoused for five terms in the Senate, and a briefer time as Vice President. He'd been called the Conscience of the Senate for more than fifteen years, so named by the media, which loved him for his views and his faith and his political family.\n\nIt would have been well for him to consult the media on this call, as he'd done often enough in the past, briefing them on a bill or amendment, asking their views\u2014the media _loved_ for people to ask their opinion on things\u2014or just making sure they came to all the right parties. But not in this case. No, he couldn't do that. He had to play everything straight. The appearance of currying favor could not be risked, whereas the deliberate avoidance of that maneuver would give the patina of legitimacy to his actions. High-minded. That was the image to project. He'd forgo all of the political tapestry for the first time in his life, and in so doing embroider a new segment. The only thing to consider now was timing. And _that_ was something his media contacts could help with.\n\n\"WHAT TIME?\" RYAN asked.\n\n\"Eight-thirty Eastern,\" van Damm replied. \"There are a couple of specials tonight, sweeps week, and they've asked us to accommodate them.\"\n\nRyan might have growled about that, but didn't. His thoughts showed clearly on his face anyway.\n\n\"It means you get a lot of West Coast people on their car radios,\" Arnie explained. \"We have all five networks, plus CNN and C-SPAN. That's not a given, you know. It's a courtesy. They don't have to let you on at all. They play that card for political speeches\u2014\"\n\n\"Damn it, Arnie, this _isn't_ political, it's\u2014\"\n\n\"Mr. President, get used to it, okay? Every time you take a leak, it's political. You can't escape that. Even the absence of politics is a political statement.\" Arnie was working very hard to educate his new boss. He listened well, but he didn't always hear.\n\n\"Okay. The FBI says I can release all of this?\"\n\n\"I talked to Murray twenty minutes ago. It's okay with him. I have Callie incorporating that in the speech right now.\"\n\nSHE COULD HAVE had a better office. As the number-one presidential speechwriter, she could have asked for and gotten a gold-plated personal computer sitting on a desk of Carrara marble. Instead she used a ten-year-old Apple Macintosh Classic, because it was lucky and she didn't mind the small screen. Her office might have been a closet or storeroom once upon a time, back when the Indian Treaty Room had really been used for Indian treaties. The desk had been made at a federal prison, and while the chair was comfortable, it was thirty years old. The room had high ceilings. That made it easier for her to smoke, in violation of federal and White House rules, which were in her case not enforced. The last time someone had tried to muscle her, a Secret Service agent really had been forced to pull her off the male staffer lest she scratch his eyes out. That she had not been terminated at once was a sign to the rest of the personnel in the Old Executive Office Building. Some staff people could not be touched. Callie Weston was one of those.\n\nThere were no windows in her room. She didn't want them. For her, reality was her computer and the photographs on her walls. One was of her dog, an aging English sheepdog named Holmes (Oliver Wendell, not Sherlock; she admired the prose of the Yankee from Olympus, an accolade she accorded few others). The rest were of political figures, friends and enemies, and she studied them constantly. Behind her was a small TV and VCR, the former usually tuned to C-SPAN-1 and -2 or CNN, and the latter used to review tapes of speeches written by others and delivered in all manner of places. The political speech, she thought, was the highest form of communication. Shakespeare might have had two or three hours in one of his plays to get his idea across. Hollywood tried the same thing in much the same time. Not her. She had fifteen minutes at the bottom end, and maybe forty-five at the top, and her ideas had to count. They had to sway the average citizen, the seasoned pol, and the most cynical reporter. She studied her subject, and she was studying Ryan now, playing and replaying the few words he'd said on the night of his accession, then the TV spots the next morning. She watched his eyes and his gestures, his tension and intensity, his posture and body language. She liked what she saw in the abstract sense. Ryan was a man she'd trust as an investment adviser, for example. But he had a lot to learn about being a politician, and somebody had to teach him or maybe not? She wondered. Maybe . . . by _not_ being a politician. . .\n\nWin or lose, it would be fun. For the first time, fun, not work.\n\nNobody wanted to admit it, but she was one of the most perceptive of the people working here. Fowler had known that, and so had Durling, which was why they put up with her eccentricities. The senior political staff hated her, treated her as a useful but minor functionary, and seethed at how she could stroll across the street and go right into the Oval Office, because the President trusted her as he trusted few others. That had finally occasioned a comment suggesting that the President had a rather special reason for calling her over, and, after all, people from her part of the country were known to be a little loose when it came to ... She wondered if he'd managed to get it up lately. The agent had pulled her hands off the little prick's face, but he'd been too slow to contain her knee. It hadn't even made the papers. Arnie had explained to him that a return to the Center of Power would be impeded by a charge of sexual misconduct\u2014and then blacklisted him anyway. She liked Arnie.\n\nShe liked the speech, too. Four hours instead of the three she'd promised, a lot of effort for twelve minutes and thirty seconds\u2014she tended to write them a little short because presidents had a way of speaking slowly. Most did. Ryan would have to learn that. She typed CONTROL P to print up the speech in Helvetica 14-point, three copies. Some political pukes would look things over and try to make corrections. That wasn't as much a problem now as it had been. When the printer stopped, she collated the pages, stapled them together, and lifted her phone. The topmost speed-dial button went to the proper desk across the street.\n\n\"Weston to see the Boss,\" she told the appointments secretary.\n\n\"Come right over.\"\n\nAnd with that everything was as it should be.\n\nGOD HAD NOT heard her prayers, Moudi saw. Well, the odds had been against that. Mixing his Islamic faith with scientific knowledge was as much a problem for the doctor as for his Christian and pagan colleagues\u2014the Congo had been exposed to Christianity for over a hundred years, but the old, animistic beliefs still prospered, and that made it easier for Moudi to despise them. It was the old question, if God were a God of mercy, then why did injustice happen? That might have been a good question to discuss with his imam, but for now it was enough that such things did happen, even to the just.\n\nThey were called petechiae, a scientific name for blotches of subcutaneous bleeding, which showed up very plainly on her pale north European skin. Just as well that these nuns didn't use mirrors\u2014thought a vanity in their religious universe, and one more thing for Moudi to admire, though he didn't quite understand that particular fixation. Better that she should not see the red blotches on her face. They were unsightly all by themselves, but worse than that, they were the harbingers of death.\n\nHer fever was 40.2 now, and would have been higher still but for the ice in her armpits and behind her neck. Her eyes were listless, her body pulled down with induced fatigue. Those were symptoms of many ailments, but the petechia told him that she was bleeding internally. Ebola was a hemorrhagic fever, one of a group of diseases that broke down tissue at a very basic level, allowing blood to escape everywhere within the body, which could only lead to cardiac arrest from insufficient blood volume. That was the killing mechanism, though how it came about, the medical world had yet to learn. There was no stopping it now. Roughly twenty percent of the victims did survive; somehow their immune systems managed to rally and defeat the viral invader\u2014how that happened was one more unanswered question. That it would not happen in this case was a question asked and answered.\n\nHe touched her wrist to take the pulse, and even through his gloves the skin was hot and dry and . . . slack. It was starting already. The technical term was systemic necrosis. The body had already started to die. The liver first, probably. For some reason\u2014not understood\u2014Ebola had a lethal affinity for that organ. Even the survivors had to deal with lingering liver damage. But one didn't live long enough to die from that, because all the organs were dying, some more rapidly than others, but soon all at once.\n\nThe pain was as ghastly as it was invisible. Moudi wrote an order to increase the morphine drip. At least they could attenuate the pain, which was good for the patient and a safety measure for the staff. A tortured patient would thrash about, and that was a risk for those around a fever victim with a blood-borne disease and widespread bleeding. As it was, her left arm was restrained to protect the IV needle. Even with that precaution, the IV looked iffy at the moment, and starting another would be both dangerous and difficult to achieve, so degraded was her arterial tissue.\n\nSister Maria Magdalena was attending her friend, her face covered, but her eyes sad. Moudi looked at her and she at him, surprised to see the sympathy on his face. Moudi had a reputation for coldness.\n\n\"Pray with her, Sister. There are things I must do now.\" And swiftly. He left the room, stripping off his protective garb as he did so and depositing it in the proper containers. All needles used in this building went into special \"sharps\" containers for certain destruction\u2014the casual African attitude toward those precautions had resulted in the first major Ebola outbreak in 1976. That strain was called Ebola Mayinga, after a nurse who had contracted the virus, probably through carelessness. They'd learned better since, but Africa was still Africa.\n\nBack in his office, he made another call. Things would begin to happen now. He wasn't sure what, exactly, though he'd help determine whatever they were, and he did that by commencing an immediate literature search for something useless.\n\n\"I'M GOING TO save you.\" The remark made Ryan laugh and Price wince. Arnie just turned his head to look at her. The chief of staff took note of the fact that she still didn't dress the part. That was actually a plus-point for the Secret Service, who called the sartorially endowed staffers \"peacocks,\" which was more polite than other things they might have said. Even the secretaries spent more on clothes than Callie Weston did. Arnie just held his hand out. \"Here you go.\"\n\nPresident Ryan was quietly grateful for the large type. He wouldn't have to wear his glasses, or disgrace himself by telling somebody to increase the size of the printing. Normally a fast reader, he took his time on this document.\n\n\"One change?\" he said after a moment.\n\n\"What's that?\" Weston asked suspiciously.\n\n\"We have a new SecTreas. George Winston.\"\n\n\"The zillionaire?\"\n\nRyan flipped the first page. \"Well, I could have picked a bum off a park bench, but I thought somebody with knowledge of the financial markets might be a good idea.\"\n\n\"We call them 'homeless people,' Jack,\" Arnie pointed out.\n\n\"Or I could have chosen an academic, but Buzz Fiedler would have been the only one I'd trust,\" Jack went on soberly, remembering again. A rare academic, Fiedler, a man who knew what he didn't know. Damn. \"This is good, Ms. Weston.\"\n\nVan Damm got to page three. \"Callie . . .\"\n\n\"Arnie, baby, you don't write Olivier for George C. Scott. You write Olivier for Olivier, and Scott for Scott.\" In her heart, Callie Weston knew that she could hop a flight from Dulles to LAX, rent a car, go to Paramount, and in six months she'd have a house in the Hollywood Hills, a Porsche to drive to her reserved parking place off Melrose Boulevard, _and_ that gold-plated computer. But no. All the world might be a stage, but the part she wrote for was the biggest and the brightest. The public might not know who she was, but she knew that her words changed the world.\n\n\"So, what am I, exactly?\" the President asked, looking up.\n\n\"You're different. I told you that.\"\n**12**\n\n**PRESENTATION**\n\n**T** HERE WERE FEW ASPECTS of life more predictable, Ryan thought. He'd had a light dinner so that his stomach flutters would not be too painful, and largely ignored his family as he read and reread the speech. He'd made a few penciled changes, almost all of them minor linguistic things to which Callie had not objected, and which she herself modified further. The speech had been transmitted electronically to the secretaries' room off the Oval Office. Callie was a writer, not a typist, and the presidential secretaries could type at a speed that made Ryan gasp to watch. When the final draft was complete, it was printed on paper for the President to hold, while another version was electronically uploaded onto the TelePrompTer. Callie Weston was there to be sure that both versions were exactly the same. It was not unknown for someone to change one from the other at the last minute, but Weston knew about that and guarded her work like a lioness over newborn cubs.\n\nBut the predictably awful part came from van Damm: _Jack, this is the most important speech you will ever give_. _Just relax and do it._\n\n_Gee, thanks, Arnie_. The chief of staff was a coach who'd never really played the game, and expert as he was, he just didn't know what it was like to go out on the mound and face the batters.\n\nThe cameras were being set up: a primary and a backup, the latter almost never used, both of them with TelePrompTers. The blazing TV lights were in place, and for the period of the speech the President would be silhouetted in his office windows like a deer on a ridgeline, one more thing for the Secret Service to worry about, though they had confidence in the windows, which were spee'd to stop a .50-caliber machine-gun round. The TV crews were all known to the Detail, who checked them out anyway, along with the equipment. Everyone knew it was coming. The evening TV shows had made the necessary announcements, then moved on to other news items. It was all a routine exercise, except to the President, of course, for whom it was all new and vaguely horrifying.\n\nHE'D EXPECTED THE phone to ring, but not at this hour. Only a few had the number of his cellular. It was too dangerous to have a real number for a real, hard-wired phone. The Mossad was still in the business of making people disappear. The newly found peace in the Middle East hadn't changed that, and truly they had reason to dislike him. They'd been particularly clever in killing a colleague through his cellular phone, first disabling it via electronic signal, and then arranging for him to get a substitute . . . with ten grams of high explosive tucked into the plastic. The man's last phone message, or so the story went, had come from the head of the Mossad: \"Hello, this is Avi ben Jakob. Listen closely, my friend.\" At which point the Jew had thumbed the # key. A clever ploy, but good only for a single play.\n\nThe trilling note caused his eyes to open with a curse. He'd gone to bed only an hour earlier.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Call Yousif.\" And the circuit went dead. As a further security measure, the call had come through several cutouts, and the message itself was too short to give much opportunity to the electronic-intelligence wizards in the employ of his numerous enemies. The final measure was more clever still. He immediately dialed yet another cellular number and repeated the message he'd just heard. A clever enemy who might have tracked the message through the cellular frequencies would probably have deemed him just another cutout. Or maybe not. The security games one had to play in this modern age were a genuine drag on day-to-day life, and one could never know what worked and what did not\u2014until one died of natural causes, which was hardly worth waiting for.\n\nGrumbling all the more, he rose and dressed and walked outside. His car was waiting. The third cutout had been his driver. Together with two guards, they drove to a secure location, a safe house in a safe place. Israel might be at peace, and even the PLO might have become part of a democratically elected regime\u2014was the world totally mad?\u2014but Beirut was still a place where all manner of people could operate. The proper signal was displayed there\u2014it was the pattern of lighted and unlighted windows\u2014showing that it was safe for him to exit the car and enter the building. Or so he'd find out in thirty seconds or so. He was too drowsy to care. Fear became boring after a lifetime of it.\n\nThere was the expected cup of coffee, bittersweet and strong, on the plain wooden table. Greetings were exchanged, seats taken, and conversation begun.\n\n\"It is late.\"\n\n\"My flight was delayed,\" his host explained. \"We require your services.\"\n\n\"For what purpose?\"\n\n\"One might call it diplomacy,\" was the surprising answer. He went on to explain.\n\n\"TEN MINUTES,\" the President heard.\n\nMore makeup. It was 8:20. Ryan was in place. Mary Abbot applied the finishing touches to his hair, which merely increased the feeling that Ryan was an actor instead of a . . . politician? No, not that. He refused to accept the label, no matter what Arnie or any of the others might say. Through the open door to his right, Callie Weston stood by the secretary's desk, giving him a smile and a nod to mask her own unease. She had written a masterpiece\u2014she always felt that way\u2014and now it would be delivered by a rookie. Mrs. Abbot walked around to the front of the desk, occulting some of the TV lights to look at her work from the perspective of the viewer, and pronounced it good. Ryan merely sat there and tried not to fidget, knowing that soon he'd start sweating under the makup again, and that it would itch like a son of a bitch, and that he couldn't scratch at it no matter what, because Presidents didn't itch or scratch. There were probably people out there who didn't think that Presidents had to use the toilet or shave or maybe even tie their shoes.\n\n\"Five minutes, sir. Mike check.\"\n\n\"One, two, three, four, five,\" Ryan said dutifully.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President,\" the director called from the next room.\n\nRyan had occasionally wondered about this sort of thing. Presidents delivering these official statements\u2014a tradition going back at least as far as FDR and his \"fireside chats,\" which he'd first heard about from his mother\u2014always seemed confident and at ease, and he'd always wondered how they ever managed to bring that off. He felt neither. One more layer of tension for him. The cameras were probably on now, so that the directors could be sure they were working, and somewhere a tape machine was recording the look on his face and the way his hands were playing with the papers in front of him. He wondered if the Secret Service had control of that tape, or whether they trusted the TV people to be honorable about such things . . . surely their own anchorpeople occasionally tipped over their coffee cups or sneezed or snarled at an assistant who messed up right before airtime . . . oh, yes, those taped segments were called bloopers, weren't they . . . ? He was willing to bet, right there, right then, that the Service had a lengthy tape of presidential miscues.\n\n\"Two minutes.\"\n\nBoth cameras had TelePrompTers. These were odd contraptions. A TV set actually hung from the front of each camera, but on those small sets the picture was inverted left-to-right because just above it was a tilted mirror. The camera lens was behind the mirror, shooting through it, while on it the President saw the text of his speech reflected. It was an otherworldly feeling talking to a camera you couldn't really see to millions of people who weren't really there. He'd actually be talking to his speech, as it were. Ryan shook his head as the speech text was fast-tracked, to make sure the scrolling system worked.\n\n\"One minute, stand by.\"\n\nOkay. Ryan adjusted himself in the scat. His posture worried him. Did he plant his arms on the desktop? Did he hold his hands in his lap? He'd been told not to lean back in the chair, because it was both too casual and too arrogant-looking, but Ryan tended to move around a lot, and holding still made his back hurt\u2014or was it something he just imagined? A little late for that now. He noted the fear, the twisting heat in his stomach. He tried to belch, and then stifled it.\n\n\"Fifteen seconds.\"\n\nFear almost became panic. He couldn't run away now. He had to do the job. This was important. People depended on him. Behind each camera was an operator. There were three Secret Service agents to watch over them. A director-assistant was there as well. They were his only audience, but he could barely make them out, hidden as they were in the glare of the lights, and they wouldn't react anyway. How would he know what his real audience thought?\n\n_Oh, shit._\n\nA minute earlier, network anchors had come on to tell people what they already knew. Their evening TV shows would be put back a time for a presidential address. Across the country an indeterminate number of people lifted their controllers to switch to a cable channel as soon as they saw the Great Seal of the President of the United States of America. Ryan took a deep breath, compressed his lips, and looked into the nearer of the two cameras. The red light went on. He counted to two and began.\n\n\"Good evening.\n\n\"My fellow Americans, I'm taking this time to report to you on what has been happening in Washington for the past week, and to tell you about what will be happening over the next few days.\n\n\"First of all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, assisted by the Secret Service, the National Transportation Safety Board, and other federal agencies, have taken the lead in investigating the circumstances surrounding the tragic deaths of so many of our friends, with praiseworthy assistance from the Japanese national police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Full information will be released this evening, and will be in your morning papers. For now I will give you the results of the investigation to date.\n\n\"The crash of the Japan Airlines 747 into the Capitol building was the deliberate act of one man. His name was Torajiro Sato. He was a senior captain with that airline. We've learned quite a lot about Captain Sato. We know that he lost both a brother and a son during our conflict with his country. Evidently he was unbalanced by this, and decided, on his own, to take his revenge.\n\n\"After flying his airliner to Vancouver, Canada, Captain Sato faked a flight order to London, ostensibly to replace a disabled aircraft with his own. Prior to takeoff, Captain Sato murdered his co-pilot in cold blood, a man with whom he had worked for several years. He then continued on entirely alone, the whole time with a dead man strapped in the seat next to him.\" Ryan paused, his eyes tracking the words on the mirror. His mouth felt like raw cotton as a cue on the TelePrompTer told him to turn the page.\n\n\"Okay, how can we be sure of this?\n\n\"First, the identities of both Captain Sato and his co-pilot have been verified by the FBI, using DNA testing. Separate tests conducted by the Japanese national police have produced identical results. An independent laboratory checked these tests with their own, and again the results were the same. The possibility of a mistake in these tests is virtually zero.\n\n\"The other flight-crew members who remained in Vancouver have been interviewed both by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and they are certain that Captain Sato was aboard the aircraft. We have similar eyewitness reports from local officials of the Canadian Ministry of Transport, and from American passengers on the flight\u2014more than fifty people have positively identified him. We have Captain Sato's fingerprints on the bogus flight plan. Voice-print analysis of the cockpit tapes also confirms the pilot's identity. There is, therefore, no question of the identity of the flight crew of the aircraft.\n\n\"Second, the cockpit tapes from the aircraft's flight recorder give us an exact time for the first murder. We even have the voice of Captain Sato on the tape, apologizing to the man as he killed him. After that time, the only voice on the tapes is that of the pilot. The cockpit tapes have been checked against other recordings of Captain Sato's voice, and also have positively established his identity.\n\n\"Third, forensic tests have proven that the co-pilot was dead at least four hours before the crash. This unfortunate man was killed with a knife in the heart. There is no reason to believe that he had anything at all to do with what came later. He was merely the first innocent victim in a monstrous act. He left behind a pregnant wife, and I would ask all of you to think about her loss and remember her and her children in your prayers.\n\n\"The Japanese police have cooperated fully with the FBI, even allowing us full access to their investigation and to conduct our own interviews of witnesses and others. We now have a full record of everything Captain Sato did during the last two weeks of his life, where he ate, when he slept, with whom he talked. We have found no evidence to suggest even the possibility of a criminal conspiracy, or that what this demented man did was part of some larger plan on the part of his government or anyone else. Those investigations will continue until every leaf and stone has been turned, until every possibility, however remote, has been fully checked, but the information we have now would be more than sufficient to convince a jury, and that is why I can give it to you now.\" Jack paused, allowing himself to lean forward a few inches.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, the conflict between our country and Japan is over. Those who caused it will face justice. Prime Minister Koga has personally assured me of that.\n\n\"Mr. Koga is a man of honor and courage. I can tell you now for the first time that he was himself kidnapped and nearly murdered by the same criminals who started the conflict between his country and ours. He was rescued from his kidnappers by Americans, assisted by Japanese officials, in a special operation right in downtown Tokyo, and after his rescue he worked at great personal risk to bring an early end to the conflict, and so save his country and ours from further damage. Without his work, many more lives might have been lost, on both sides. I am proud to call Minoru Koga my friend.\n\n\"Just a few days ago, minutes after he arrived in our country, the Prime Minister and I met privately, right here in the Oval Office. From here we drove to the Capitol building, and together we prayed there. That's a moment I will never forget.\n\n\"I was there, too, when the aircraft struck. I was in the tunnel between the House Office Building and the Capitol, with my wife and children. I saw a wall of flame race toward us, and stop, and pull back. I'll probably never forget that. I wish I could. But I have put those memories aside as best I can.\n\n\"Peace between America and Japan is now fully restored. We do not now have, nor did we ever have a dispute with the citizens of that country. I call on all of you to set aside whatever ill feelings you might have toward the Japanese now and for all time to come.\"\n\nHe paused again and watched as the text stopped scrolling. He turned the page on his printed text again.\n\n\"Next, we all have a major task before us.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, one man, one disturbed and demented individual, thought that he could do fatal damage to our country. He was wrong. We have buried our dead. We will mourn their loss for a long time to come. But our country lives, and the friends we lost on that horrible night would have it no other way.\n\n\"Thomas Jefferson said that the Tree of Liberty often requires blood to grow. Well, the blood has been shed, and now it's time for the tree to grow again. America is a country that looks forward, not backward. None of us can change history. But we can learn from it, building on our past successes, and correcting our mistakes.\n\n\"For the moment, I can tell you that our country is safe and secure. Our military is on duty around the world, and our potential enemies know that. Our economy has taken a nasty shock, but survived, and is still the strongest in the world. This is still America. We are still Americans, and our future starts with every new day.\n\n\"I have today selected George Winston to be acting Secretary of the Treasury. George heads up a large New York mutual-fund company which he founded. He was instrumental in repairing the damage done to our financial markets. He's a self-made man\u2014as America is a self-made country. I will soon be making other Cabinet appointments, and I will report each of those to you as they are made.\n\n\"George cannot become a full Cabinet secretary, however, until we restore the United States Senate, whose members are charged by the Constitution to advise and consent to such appointments. Selecting new senators is the job of the governors of the several states. Starting next week, the governors will pick individuals to fill the posts left vacant.\" Next came the tricky part. He leaned forward again.\n\n\"My fellow Americans\u2014wait, that's a phrase I don't like very much. I never have.\" Jack shook his head slightly, hoping that it didn't look overly theatrical.\n\n\"My name is Jack Ryan. My dad was a cop. I started in government service as a Marine, right after I graduated from Boston College. That didn't last very long. I got hurt in a helicopter crash, and my back didn't get better for years. When I was thirty-one, I got in the way of some terrorists. You've all heard the story, and how it ended, but what you don't know is, that incident is why I reentered government service. I enjoyed my life until that point. I'd made a little money as a stock trader, and then left that business to go back to history, my first love. I taught history\u2014I loved teaching\u2014at the Naval Academy, and I think I would have been content to stay there forever, just as my wife, Cathy, likes nothing more than to practice medicine and look after me and our kids. We would have been perfectly content to live in our house and do our jobs and raise our children. I know I would have.\n\n\"But I couldn't do that. When those terrorists attacked my family, I decided that I had to do something to protect my wife and children. I soon learned that it wasn't just us who needed protecting, and that I had a talent for some things, and so I joined the government and left behind my love for teaching.\n\n\"I've served my country\u2014you\u2014for quite a few years now, but I've never been a politician, and as I told George Winston today in this office, I do not have time to learn how to become one. But I have been inside the government for most of my working life, and I have learned a few things about how government is supposed to work.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a time for us to do the usual things in the usual way. We need to do better. We can do better.\n\n\"John Kennedy once told us, 'Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.' Those are good words, but we've forgotten them. We need to bring them back. Our country needs all of us.\n\n\"I need your help to do my job. If you think I can do it alone, you're wrong. If you think the government can fix itself by itself, you're wrong. If you think the government, fixed or not, can take care of you in every way, you're wrong. It's not supposed to be like that. You men and women out there, you _are_ the United States of America. I work for you. My job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I will do that to the best of my ability, but each one of you is on the team as well.\n\n\"We need our government to do for us the things we cannot do for ourselves, like providing for the common defense, enforcing the law, responding to disaster. That's what the Constitution says. That document, the one I swore to protect and defend, is a set of rules written by a small group of fairly ordinary men. They weren't even all lawyers, and yet they wrote the most important political document in human history. I want you to think about that. They were fairly ordinary people who did something extraordinary. There's no magic to being in government.\n\n\"I need a new Congress to work with me. The Senate will arrive first, because the governors will appoint replacements for the ninety-one men and women we lost last week. The House of Representatives, however, has always been the People's House, and it's _your_ job to pick those, in a voting booth, exercising your rights.\" _Here we go, Jack_.\n\n\"Therefore, to you, and to the fifty governors, I have a request. Please, do not send me politicians. We do not have the time to do the things that must be done through that process. I need people who do real things in the real world. I need people who do not want to live in Washington. I need people who will not try to work the system. I need people who will come here at great personal sacrifice to do an important job, and then return home to their normal lives.\n\n\"I want engineers who know how things are built. I want physicians who know how to make sick people well. I want cops who know what it means when your civil rights are violated by a criminal. I want farmers who grow real food on real farms. I want people who know what it's like to have dirty hands, and pay a mortgage bill, and raise kids, and worry about the future. I want people who know they're working for you and not themselves. That's what I want. That's what I need. I think that's what a lot of you want, too.\n\n\"Once those people get here, it's your job to keep an eye on them, to make sure they keep their word, to make sure they keep faith with you. This is _your_ government. A lot of people have told you that, but I mean it. Tell your governors what you expect of them when they make their appointments to the Senate, and then _you_ select the right people for the House. These are the people who decide how much of your money the government takes, and then how it is spent. It's your money, not mine. It's your country. We all work for you.\n\n\"For my part, I will pick the best Cabinet people I can find, people who know their business, people who have done real work and produced real results. Each of them will have the same orders from this office: to take charge of his or her department, to establish priorities, and to make every government agency run efficiently. That's a big order, and one which you've all heard before. But this President didn't run an election campaign to get here. I have no one to pay off, no rewards to deliver, no secret promises to keep. I will do my damnedest to execute my duties to the best of my ability. I may not always be right, but when I'm not, it's your job, and that of the people you select to represent you, to tell me about it, and I'll listen to them and to you.\n\n\"I will report to you regularly on what is going on, and what your government is doing.\n\n\"I want to thank you for listening to me. I will do my job. I need you to do yours.\n\n\"Thank you, and good night.\"\n\nJack waited and counted to ten before he was sure the cameras were dead. Then he lifted the water glass and tried to drink from it, but his hand was shaking so badly that he nearly spilled it. Ryan stared at it in quiet rage. Why was he shaking now? The tense part was over, wasn't it?\n\n\"Hey, you didn't puke or anything,\" Callie Weston said, suddenly standing next to him.\n\n\"Is that good?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, Mr. President. Vomiting on national television tends to upset people,\" the speechwriter answered with a hooting laugh.\n\nAndrea Price fantasized about drawing her automatic at that moment.\n\nArnie van Damm merely looked worried. He knew that he couldn't turn Ryan away from his course. The usual strictures that Presidents listened to\u2014 _if you want to get reelected, pay attention!\u2014_ simply didn't apply. How could he protect someone who didn't care about the only thing that mattered?\n\n\"REMEMBER _The Gong Show?\"_ Ed Kealty asked.\n\n\"Who wrote this abortion manual?\" his legal aide chimed in. Then all three men in the room returned their attention to the TV set. The picture changed from an external shot of the White House to the network studio.\n\n\"Well, that was a most interesting political statement,\" Tom the anchor observed with the expressionless voice of a poker player. \"I see that this time the President stayed with his prepared speech.\"\n\n\"Interesting and dramatic,\" John the commentator agreed. \"This was not your usual presidential speech.\"\n\n\"Why, John, does President Ryan insist so strongly on inexperienced people to assist him in running the government ? Don't we need experienced hands to put the system back together?\" Tom asked.\n\n\"That's a question many will ask, especially in this town\u2014\"\n\n\"You bet we will,\" Kealty's chief of staff observed.\n\n\"\u2014and what's most interesting about it is that he must know that, and even if he didn't, Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm, as canny a political operator as this city has ever seen, must have made that very clear to Mr. Ryan.\"\n\n\"What about his first Cabinet appointment, George Winston?\"\n\n\"Winston heads the Columbus Group, a mutual-fund company which he founded. He's enormously wealthy, as President Ryan told us, a self-made man. Well, we want a Treasury Secretary who knows money and the financial markets, and surely Mr. Winston does, but many will complain\u2014\"\n\n\"That he's an insider.\" Kealty smirked.\n\n\"\u2014with too many contacts in the system,\" John went on.\n\n\"How do you think official Washington will react to this speech?\" Tom asked.\n\n_\"WHAT_ OFFICIAL WASHINGTON?\" Ryan growled. This was a first. The two books he'd published had been treated generally well by reviewers, but back then you had to wait a few weeks for people to make comments. It was probably a mistake to watch the instant analysis, but it was also impossible to avoid. The hardest part was keeping track of all the TVs that were running at the same time.\n\n\"Jack, 'official Washington' is fifty thousand lawyers and lobbyists,\" Arnie pointed out. \"They may not be elected or appointed, but they're official as hell. So is the media.\"\n\n\"So I see,\" Ryan replied.\n\n\"\u2014AND WE NEED experienced professionals to get the system put back together. That's what they'll say, and a lot of people in this town will agree.\"\n\n\"What did you think of his revelation on the war and the crash?\"\n\n\"What interested me the most was his 'revelation' that Prime Minister Koga was first kidnapped by his own countrymen and then rescued\u2014by Americans. It would be interesting to learn more about that. The President is to be commended for his clear desire to settle things between our country and Japan, and I'd give him high marks for it. A photograph came to us along with the President's speech.\" The network picture changed, showing Ryan and Koga at the Capitol. \"This is a truly moving moment captured by the White House photographer\u2014\"\n\n\"But the Capitol building is still ruined, John, and just as we need good architects and skilled workers to rebuild it, so, I think, we need something other than amateurs to restore the government.\" Tom turned to stare right into the camera. \"So that was the first official speech from President Ryan. We'll have more news as it develops. Now we return you to our regularly scheduled programming.\"\n\n\"That's our theme, Ed.\" The chief of staff rose and stretched. \"That's what we need to say, and _that's_ why you've decided to come back into the political arena, however damaging to your reputation it may be.\"\n\n\"Start making your calls,\" Edward J. Kealty ordered.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT.\" The chief usher presented a silver tray with a drink on it. Ryan took it and sipped his sherry.\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, finally\u2014\"\n\n\"Mary Pat, how long have we known each other?\" It seemed to Ryan that he was always saying this.\n\n\"At least ten years,\" Mrs. Foley replied.\n\n\"New presidential rule, executive order, even: after hours, when we're serving drinks, my name is Jack.\"\n\n_\"Muy bien, jefe,_ \" Chavez observed, humorously but with a guarded look.\n\n\"Iraq?\" Ryan asked curtly.\n\n\"Quiet but very tense,\" Mary Pat replied. \"We're not hearing much, but what we are getting is that the country's under lock-down. The army is in the streets, and the people are in their homes watching TV. The funeral for our friend will be tomorrow. After that, we don't know yet. We have one fairly well-placed agent in Iran, he's on the political beat. The assassination came as a total surprise, and he's not hearing anything, aside from the expected praise to Allah for taking our friend back.\"\n\n\"Assuming God wants him. It was a beautiful job,\" Clark said next, speaking from authority. \"Fairly typical in a cultural sense. One martyr, sacrificing himself and all that. Getting him inside must have taken years, but our friend Daryaei is a patient sort. Well, you've met him. You tell us, Jack.\"\n\n\"Angriest eyes I ever saw,\" Ryan said quietly, sipping his drink. \"That man knows how to hate.\"\n\n\"He's going to make a move, sure as hell.\" Clark had a Wild Turkey and water. \"The Saudis must be a little tense about this.\"\n\n\"That's putting it mildly,\" Mary Pat said. \"Ed's staying over for a few days, and that's what he's getting. They've increased the readiness state of their military.\"\n\n\"And that's all we've got,\" President Ryan summarized.\n\n\"For all practical purposes, yes. We're getting a lot of SigInt out of Iraq, and what we're getting is predictable. The lid is screwed down tight, but the pot's boiling underneath. It has to be. We've increased coverage with the satellites, of course\u2014\"\n\n\"Okay, Mary Pat, give me your speech,\" Jack ordered. He didn't want to hear about satellite photos right now.\n\n\"I want to increase my directorate.\"\n\n\"How much?\" Then he watched her take a deep breath. It was unusual to see Mary Patricia Foley tense about anything.\n\n\"Triple. We have a total of six hundred fifty-seven field officers. I want to jack that number up to two thousand over the next three years.\" She delivered the words in a rush, watching Ryan's face for a reaction.\n\n\"Approved, _if_ you can figure a payroll-neutral way to bring it off.\"\n\n\"That's easy, Jack,\" Clark observed with a chuckle. \"Fire two thousand desk weenies, and you still save money.\"\n\n\"They're people with families, John,\" the President told him.\n\n\"The Directorates of Intelligence and Administration are featherbedded all to hell and gone. You've been there. You know that. It's worth doing just to ease the parking situation. Early retirement will handle most of it.\"\n\nRyan thought that one over for a second. \"I need somebody to swing the axe. MP, can you handle being under Ed again?\"\n\n\"It's the usual position, Jack,\" Mrs. Foley replied with a twinkle in her fey blue eyes. \"Ed's better at administration than I am, but I was always better in the street.\"\n\n\"Plan Blue?\"\n\nClark answered that. \"Yes, sir. I want us to go after cops, young detectives, regular blue-suits. You know why. They're largely pre-trained. They have street smarts.\"\n\nRyan nodded. \"Okay. Mary Pat, next week I'm going to accept with regret the resignation letter of the DCI and appoint Ed in his place. Have him present me with a plan for increasing the DO and decreasing the DI and DA. I will approve that in due course.\"\n\n\"Great!\" Mrs. Foley toasted her Commander-in-Chief with her wineglass.\n\n\"There's one other thing. John?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"When Roger asked me to step up, I had a request for him.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"I'm going to issue a presidential pardon for a gentleman named John T. Kelly. That will be done this year. You should have told me that Dad worked your case.\"\n\nFor the first time in a very long time, Clark went pale as a ghost. \"How did you know?\"\n\n\"It was in Jim Greer's personal files. They were sort of conveyed to me a few years ago. My father worked the case, I remember it well. All those women who were murdered. I remember how twisted he was about it, and how happy he was to put it behind him. He never really talked about that one, but I knew how he felt about it.\" Jack looked down into his drink, swirling the ice around the glass. \"If you want a good guess, I think he'd be happy about this, and I think he'd be happy to know you didn't go down with the ship.\"\n\n\"Jesus, Jack . . . I mean . . . Jesus.\"\n\n\"You deserve to have your name back. I can't condone the things you did. I'm not allowed to think that way now, am I? Maybe as a private citizen I could\u2014but you deserve your name back, Mr. Kelly.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nChavez wondered what it was all about. He remembered that guy on Saipan, the retired Coast Guard chief, and a few words about killing people. Well, he knew Mr. C. didn't faint at the thought, but this story must be a good one.\n\n\"Anything else?\" Jack asked. \"I'd like to get back to my family before all the kids go to bed.\"\n\n\"Plan Blue is approved, then?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is, MP. As soon as Ed writes up a plan for implementing it.\"\n\n\"I'll have him heading back as soon as they can light up his airplane,\" MP promised.\n\n\"Fine.\" Jack rose and headed for the door. His guests did the same.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" It was Ding Chavez.\n\nRyan turned. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"What's going to happen with the primaries?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I stopped over at school today, and Dr. Alpher told me that all of the serious candidates in both parties were killed last week, _and_ the filing deadlines for all the primaries have passed. Nobody new can file. We have an election year, and nobody's running. The press hasn't said much about that yet.\"\n\nEven Agent Price blinked at that, but an instant later they all knew that it was true.\n\n\"PARIS?\"\n\n\"Professor Rousseau at the Pasteur Institute thinks he's developed a treatment. It's experimental, but it's the only chance she has.\"\n\nThey spoke in the corridor outside Sister Jean Baptiste's room, both wearing blue-plastic \"space suits\" and sweating inside of them despite the environmental-control packs that hung on the belts. Their patient was dying, and while that was bad enough, the manner of her protracted death would be horrid beyond words. Benedict Mkusa had been fortunate. For some reason or other, the Ebola had attacked his heart earlier than usual; it had been a rare act of mercy, which allowed the boy to expire much more quickly than usual. This patient wasn't quite so lucky. Blood tests showed that her liver was being attacked, but slowly. Heart enzymes were actually normal. Ebola was advancing within her body at a rapid but uniform rate. Her gastrointestinal system was quite literally coming apart. The resulting bleeding, both from vomiting and diarrhea, was serious, and the pain from it was intense, but the woman's body was fighting back as best it could in a valiant but doomed effort to save itself. The only reward for that struggle would be increasing pain, and already the morphine was losing its battle to stay ahead of the agony.\n\n\"But how would we\u2014\" She didn't have to go on. Air Afrique had the only regular service to Paris, but neither that carrier nor any other would transport an Ebola patient, for the obvious reasons. All of this suited Dr. Moudi just fine.\n\n\"I can arrange transport. I come from a wealthy family. I can have a private jet come in and fly us to Paris. It's easier to take all of the necessary precautions that way.\"\n\n\"I don't know. I'll have to\u2014\" Maria Magdalena hesitated.\n\n\"I will not lie to you, Sister. She will probably die in any case, but if there is any chance, it is with Professor Rousseau. I studied under him, and if he says he has something, then he does. Let me call for the aircraft,\" he insisted.\n\n\"I cannot say no to that, but I must\u2014\"\n\n\"I understand.\"\n\nTHE AIRCRAFT IN question was a Gulfstream G-IV, and it was just landing at Rashid Airfield, located to the east of a wide meandering loop of the River Tigris, known locally as the Nahr Dulah. The registration code near the aircraft's tail denoted Swiss registry, where it was owned by a corporation that traded in various things and paid its taxes on time, which ended official interest on the part of the Swiss government. The flight in had been short and unremarkable, except perhaps for the time of day, and the routing, Beirut to Tehran to Baghdad.\n\nHis real name was Ali Badrayn, and while he'd lived and worked under several others names, he'd finally returned to his own because it was Iraqi in origin. His family had left Iraq for the supposed economic opportunity in Jordan, but then been caught up like everyone else in the region's turmoil, a situation not exactly helped by their son's decision to become part of the movement which would put an end to Israel. The threat perceived by the Jordanian king, and his subsequent expulsion of the threatening elements, had ruined Badrayn's family, not that he'd especially cared at the time.\n\nBadrayn cared now, somewhat. The life of a terrorist paled with the accumulating years, and though he was one of the best in that line of work, especially at gathering information, he had little to show for it beyond the undying enmity of the world's most ruthless intelligence service. A little comfort and security would have been welcome. Perhaps this mission would allow that. His Iraqi identity and the activities of his life had garnered him contacts throughout the region. He'd provided information for Iraqi intelligence, and helped finger two people they had wished to eliminate, both successfully. That had given him entree, and that was why he'd come.\n\nThe aircraft finished its rollout, and the co-pilot came aft to lower the steps. A car pulled up. He entered it, and it pulled off.\n\n\"Peace be with you,\" he told the other man in the back of the Mercedes.\n\n\"Peace?\" The general snorted. \"The whole world cries out that we have little enough of that.\" Clearly the man hadn't slept since the death of his president, Badrayn saw. His hands shook from all the coffee he'd drunk, or perhaps from the alcohol he'd used to counteract it. It would not be a pleasant thing to look into the coming week and wonder if one would live to see the end of it. On the one hand one needed to stay awake. On the other, one needed to escape. This general had a family and children in addition to his mistress. Well, they probably all did. Good.\n\n\"Not a happy situation, but things are under control, yes?\" The look this question generated was answer enough. About the only good thing that could be said was that had the President merely been wounded, this man would now be dead for failing to detect the assassin. It was a dangerous job, being intelligence chief for a dictator, and one which made many enemies. He'd sold his soul to the devil, and told himself that the debt would never be collected. How could a bright man be such a fool?\n\n\"Why are you here?\" the general asked.\n\n\"To offer you a golden bridge.\"\n**13**\n\n**TO THE MANNER BORN**\n\n**T** HERE WERE TANKS IN the streets, and tanks were \"sexy\" things for the \"overhead imagery\" people to look at and count. There were three KH-11-class reconnaissance satellites in orbit. One of them, eleven years old, was dying slowly. Long since out of maneuvering fuel, and with one of its solar panels degraded to the point that it could barely power a flashlight, it could still take photos through three of its cameras and relay them to the geosynchronous communications bird over the Indian Ocean. Less than a second later they were downlinked and forwarded to various interpretation offices, one of them at CIA.\n\n\"That ought to cut down on pursesnatchings.\" The analyst checked his watch and added eight hours. Okay, approaching ten A.M. \"Lima,\" or local time. People should have been out on the streets, working, moving around, socializing at the many sidewalk restaurants, drinking the awful local version of coffee. But not today. Not with tanks in the streets. A few individuals were moving around, mainly women by the look of them, probably shopping. A main battle tank was parked about every four blocks on the main thoroughfares\u2014and one at every traffic circle, of which there were many\u2014supported by lighter vehicles on the side streets. Little knots of soldiers stood at every intersection. The photos showed that all of them carried rifles, but couldn't determine rank or discern unit patches.\n\n\"Get a count,\" his supervisor instructed.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" The analyst didn't grumble. Counting the tanks was something they always did. He'd even type them, mainly by checking the main gun. By doing this they'd be able to determine how many of the tanks regularly counted in their regimental laagers had turned their engines over and moved from one place to another. The information had importance to someone or other, though for the past ten years they'd been doing the same thing, generally to learn that whatever the faults and flaws of the Iraqi military, it did its maintenance well enough to keep the engines running. It was rather less diligent about its gunnery, which they'd learned in the Persian Gulf War, but as the analyst had already noted, you look at a tank and assume that it works. It was the only prudent course. He hunched down over the viewer and saw that a white car, probably a Mercedes from the shape, was driving up National Route 7. A more detailed look at the photos would have showed it heading toward the Sibaq' al Mansur racetrack, where he would have seen more automobiles of the same type, but he'd been told to count the tanks.\n\nIRAQ'S CLIMATIC VARIATIONS are more striking than in most places in the world. This February morning, with the sun high in the sky, it was barely above freezing, though in the summer 115 degrees Fahrenheit attracted little in the way of notice. The assembled officers, Badrayn saw, were in their winter wool uniforms, with high collars and voluminous gold braid; most of them were smoking, and all of them were worried. His host introduced the visitor to those who didn't know him. He didn't bother wishing peace unto them. They weren't in the mood for the traditional Islamic greeting. These men were surprisingly Western and totally secular in their outlook and demeanor. Like their departed leader, they gave mere lip service to their religion, though at the moment they all wondered if the teachings of eternal damnation for a sinful life were true or not, knowing that some of them would probably find out soon enough. That possibility worried them enough that they had left their offices and come to the racetrack to hear him speak.\n\nThe message Badrayn had to deliver was a simple one. This he did.\n\n\"How can we believe you?\" the army chief asked when he'd finished.\n\n\"It is better for everyone this way, is it not?\"\n\n\"You expect us to abandon our motherland to . . . _him?_ \" a corps commander demanded, disguising frustration as anger.\n\n\"What you decide to do is your concern, General. If you desire to stand and fight for what is yours, the decision is clearly yours as well. I was asked to come here and deliver a message as an honest broker. This I have done,\" Badrayn replied evenly. There was no sense getting excited about things like this, after all.\n\n\"With whom are we supposed to negotiate?\" This was the chief of the Iraqi air force.\n\n\"You may make your reply to me, but as I have already told you, there really is nothing to negotiate. The offer is a fair one, is it not?\" _Generous_ would be a better term. In addition to saving their own skins, and the skins of those close to them, they would all emerge from their country wealthy. Their president had salted away huge sums of money, little of which had ever actually been detected and seized. They all had access to travel documents and passports from any country in the known world. In that particular area the Iraqi intelligence service, assisted by the engraving bureau of its treasury, had long since established its expertise. \"You have his word before God that you will not be harassed, wherever you may go.\" And that was something they had to take seriously. Badrayn's sponsor was their enemy. He was as bitter and spiteful as any man on earth. But he was also a man of God, and not one to invoke His name lightly.\n\n\"When do you need your reply?\" the army chief asked, more politely than the others.\n\n\"Tomorrow would be sufficient, or even the day after. Beyond that, I cannot say. My instructions,\" Badrayn went on, \"go only that far.\"\n\n\"And the arrangements?\"\n\n\"You may set them yourselves, within reason.\" Badrayn wondered how much more they could possibly expect from him, or his sponsor.\n\nBut the decision he demanded was harder than one might imagine. The patriotism of the assembled general officers was not of the usual sort. They loved their country, largely because they controlled it. They had power, genuine life-and-death power, a far greater narcotic than money, and one of the things for which a man would risk his life and his soul. One of their number, many of them thought\u2014hoped\u2014just might pull it off. One of them just might assume the presidency of their country successfully, and together they just might calm things down and continue as before. They'd have to open their nation up somewhat, of course. They'd have to allow U.N. and other inspectors to see everything, but with the death of their leader they'd have the chance to start anew, even though everyone would know that nothing new at all was happening. Such were the rules of the world. A promise here or there, a few remarks about democracy and elections, and their former enemies would fall all over themselves giving them and their nation a chance. A further incentive was the sheer opportunity of it. Not one of them had felt truly secure in years. Everyone knew of colleagues who had died, either at the hands of their dead leader, or under circumstances euphemistically called \"mysterious\"\u2014helicopter crashes had been a favorite ploy of their fallen and beloved President. Now they had a chance to live lives of power with much greater confidence, and against that was a life of indolence in some foreign place. Each of them already had a life of every luxury a man could imagine\u2014 _plus_ power. Each could snap his fingers and the people who jumped were not servants but soldiers. . . .\n\nExcept for one thing. To stay would be the greatest and most dangerous gamble of their lives. Their country was now under the strictest control they could remember, and there was a reason for it. The people who'd roared their love and affection for the dead one\u2014what did they really think? It hadn't mattered a week before, but it mattered now. The soldiers they commanded came from the same human sea. Which of them had the charisma to assume the leadership of the country? Which of them had the keys to the Ba'ath Party? Which of them could rule by the force of will? Because only then could they look into the future, if not without fear, then with a small enough quantity of it that their experience and courage could deal with the chances they would be taking. Each of them, standing at the racetrack, looked around the assembly of brother officers and wondered the same question: _Which one_?\n\nThat was the problem, because if there had been one of their number to do it, he would already have been dead, probably in a tragic helicopter mishap. And a dictatorship was not operated by a committee. Strong as they all felt themselves to be, each looked at the others and saw potential weakness. Private jealousies would destroy them. Jockeying and rivalries would, probably, cause such internal turmoil that the iron hand needed to control the people would weaken. And in a few months, probably, it would come apart. They had all seen it happen before, and the ultimate result was foretold in their deaths, standing before a line of their own soldiers, and a wall to their backs.\n\nThere was no ethos for these men other than power and its exercise. That sufficed for one man, but not for many. _Many_ needed to be unified around something, whether it be the rule imposed by one superior, or a commonly held idea, but it had to be something that imposed a common outlook. No one of them could do the former, and collectively they lacked the latter. Powerful as they each might be, they were also weak in a fundamental way, and as the officers stood there, looking around at one another, they all knew it. At base, they believed in nothing. What they enforced with weapons they could not impose with will. They could command from behind, but not lead from the front. At least most of them were intelligent enough to know it. That was why Badrayn had flown to Baghdad.\n\nHe watched their eyes and knew what they were thinking, however impassive their faces might have been. A bold man would have spoken up with confidence, and thus assumed leadership of the group. But the bold ones were long since dead, cut down by one bolder and more ruthless, only to be cut down by the unseen hand of someone more patient and more ruthless still\u2014enough so that he could now make a generous offer. Badrayn knew what the answer had to be, and so did they. The dead Iraqi President had left nothing behind to replace himself, but that was the way of men who believed in nothing except themselves.\n\nTHE PHONE RANG at 6:05 this time. Ryan didn't mind awakening before 7:00. It had been his custom for years, but back then he'd had to drive in to work. Now the job was an elevator ride away, and he'd expected that the time previously spent in a car could now be spent in bed. At least he'd been able to doze in the back of his official car.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Mr. President?\" Jack was surprised to hear Arnie's voice. Even so, he was tempted to demand who the hell else would pick the phone up.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Trouble.\"\n\nVICE PRESIDENT EDWARD J. Kealty had not slept all night, but one would not have known it from looking at him. Shaved pink, clear of eye, and straight of back, he strode into the CNN building with his wife and his aides, there to be met by a producer who whisked him into an elevator for the trip upstairs. Only the usual pleasantries were exchanged. The career politician just stared forward, as though trying to convince the stainless-steel doors that he knew what he was about. And succeeding.\n\nThe preparatory calls had been made over the previous three hours, starting with the head of the network. An old friend, the TV executive had been thunderstruck for the first time in his career. One halfway expected airplane crashes, train wrecks, violent crimes\u2014the routine disasters and sorrows from which the media made its living\u2014but something like this was the occurrence of a lifetime. Two hours earlier, he'd called Arnie van Damm, another old friend, because one had to cover one's bases as a reporter; besides, there was also a love of country in him that he rarely expressed but it was there nonetheless, and the CNN president didn't have a clue where this story would go. He'd called on the network's legal correspondent, a failed trial attorney, who in turn was now on the phone with a professor friend at Georgetown University Law School. Even now, the CNN president called into the green room.\n\n\"Are you really sure, Ed?\" was all he had to ask.\n\n\"I don't have a choice. I wish I didn't have to.\" Which was the expected answer.\n\n\"Your funeral. I'll be watching.\" And the line went dead. At the far end there was a form of rejoicing. It would be a _hell_ of a story, and it was CNN's job to report the news, and that was that.\n\n\"ARNIE, IS THIS totally crazy or am I still dreaming?\" They were in an upstairs sitting room. Jack had thrown on some casual clothes. Van Damm didn't have his tie on yet, and his socks were mismatched, Ryan noticed. Worst of all, van Damm looked rattled, and he'd never seen that before.\n\n\"I guess we'll just have to wait and see.\" Both men turned when the door opened.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" A fiftyish man came in, properly dressed in a business suit. He was tall and harried-looking. Andrea followed him in. She, too, had been briefed, insofar as that was possible.\n\n\"This is Patrick Martin,\" Arnie said.\n\n\"Criminal Division at Justice, right?\" Jack rose to shake hands and waved him to the coffee tray.\n\n\"Yes, sir. I've been working with Dan Murray on the crash investigation.\"\n\n\"Pat's one of our better trial lawyers. He also lectures at George Washington on constitutional law,\" the chief of staff explained.\n\n\"So, what do you think of all this?\" the President asked, his voice still somewhere between whimsy and outright disbelief.\n\n\"I think we need to see what he has to say.\" The quintessential lawyer's reply.\n\n\"How long at Justice?\" Jack asked next, returning to his seat.\n\n\"Twenty-three years. Four years in the FBI before that.\" Martin poured a cup and decided to stand.\n\n\"Here we go,\" van Damm observed, unmuting the TV.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, with us here in our Washington bureau is Vice President Edward J. Kealty.\" CNN's chief political correspondent also looked as though he'd been dragged from his bed and genuinely shaken. Ryan noted that, of all the people he'd seen that day, Kealty looked the most normal. \"Sir, you have something unusual to say.\"\n\n\"Yes, I do, Barry. I probably need to start by saying that this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in over thirty years of public life.\" Kealty's voice was quiet and restrained, speaking in the tone of an essay by Emerson, slow and clear, and painfully earnest. \"As you know, President Durling asked me to resign from my post. The reason for this was a question of my conduct while a senator. Barry, it's no secret that my personal conduct has not always been as exemplary as it should have been. That's true of many people in public life, but it's no excuse, and I do not claim that it is. When Roger and I discussed the situation, we agreed that it would be best for me to resign my office, allowing him to select a new running mate for the elections later this year. It was his further intention to have John Ryan fill my post as interim Vice President.\n\n\"Barry, I was content with that. I've been in public life for a very long time, and the idea of retiring to play with my grandchildren and maybe teach a little bit actually looked pretty attractive. And so I agreed to Roger's request in the interests of\u2014well, really for the good of the country.\n\n\"But I never actually resigned.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" the correspondent said, holding his hands up as though to catch a baseball. \"I think we need to be really clear on this, sir. What exactly did happen?\"\n\n\"Barry, I drove over to the State Department. You see, the Constitution specifies that when the President or Vice President resigns, the resignation is presented to the Secretary of State. I met with Secretary Hanson privately to discuss the issue. I actually had a letter of resignation prepared, but it was in the wrong form, and Brett asked me to redraft it. So I drove back, thinking that I could have it done and resubmitted the following day.\n\n\"None of us expected the events of that evening. I was badly shaken by them, as were many. In my case, as you know, well, so many of the friends with whom I'd worked for years were just snuffed out by that brutal and cowardly act. But I never actually resigned my office.\" Kealty looked down for a moment, biting his lip before going on. \"Barry, I would have been content even with that. I gave my word to President Durling, and I had every intention of keeping it.\n\n\"But I can't. I just can't,\" Kealty went on. \"Let me explain.\n\n\"I've known Jack Ryan for ten years. He's a fine man, a courageous man, and he's served our country honorably, but he is, unfortunately, not the man to heal our country. What he said last night, trying to speak to the American people, proves it. How can we possibly expect our government to work under these circumstances without experienced, capable people to fill the offices left vacant?\"\n\n\"But he is the President\u2014isn't he?\" Barry asked, scarcely believing what he was doing and what he was hearing.\n\n\"Barry, he doesn't even know how to do a proper investigation. Look at what he said last night about the plane crash. Hardly a week has passed and already he says he knows what happened. Can anyone believe that?\" Kealty asked plaintively. \"Can anyone really believe that? Who has oversight over this investigation? Who's actually running it? To whom are they reporting? And to have conclusions in a _week?_ How can the American people have confidence in that? When President Kennedy was assassinated, it took months. The investigation was run by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Why? Because we had to be sure, that's why.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, but that really doesn't answer my question.\"\n\n\"Barry, Ryan was never Vice President, because I never resigned. The post was never vacant, and the Constitution allows only one Vice President. He never even took the oath associated with the office.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"You think I want to do this? I don't have a choice. How can we rebuild the Congress and the executive branch with amateurs? Last night Mr. Ryan told the governors of the states to send him people with no experience in government. How can laws be drafted by people who don't know how?\n\n\"Barry, I've never committed public suicide before. It's like being one of the people, one of the senators at the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. I'm looking down into my open political grave, but I have to place the country first. I have to.\" The camera zoomed in on his face, and the anguish there was manifest. One could almost see tears in his eyes as his voice proclaimed his selfless patriotism.\n\n\"He always was good on TV,\" van Damm noted.\n\n\"I do have trouble believing all this,\" Ryan said after a moment.\n\n\"Believe it,\" Arnie told him. \"Mr. Martin? We could use some legal guidance.\"\n\n\"First of all, get someone over to State and check the Secretary's office out.\"\n\n\"FBI?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"Yes.\" Martin nodded. \"You won't find anything, but that's how it has to start. Next, check phone logs and notes. Next, we start interviewing people. That's going to be a problem. Secretary Hanson's dead, along with his wife, and President and Mrs. Durling, of course. Those are the people most likely to have knowledge on the facts of the issue. I would expect that we will develop very little hard evidence, and not very much useful circumstantial evidence.\"\n\n\"Roger told me that\u2014\" Martin cut him off.\n\n\"Hearsay. You're telling me that someone said to you what he was told by somebody else\u2014not much use in any court of law.\"\n\n\"Go on,\" Arnie said.\n\n\"Sir, there really is no constitutional or statutory law on this question.\"\n\n\"And there's no Supreme Court to rule on the issue,\" Ryan pointed out. To that pregnant pause, he added: \"What if he's telling the truth?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, whether or not he's telling the truth is really beside the point,\" Martin replied. \"Unless we can prove that he's lying, which is unlikely, then he has a case of sorts. By the way, on the issue of the Supreme Court, assuming that you get a new Senate and make your nominations, all of the new Justices would ordinarily have to recuse themselves because you selected them. That probably leaves no legal solution possible.\"\n\n\"But if there's no law on this issue?\" the President\u2014was he?\u2014asked.\n\n\"Exactly. This is a beauty,\" Martin said quietly, trying to think. \"Okay, a President or Vice President stops holding office when he or she resigns. Resignation happens when the office holder conveys the instrument of resignation\u2014a letter suffices to the proper official. But the man who accepted the instrument is dead, and we will doubtless find that the instrument is missing. Secretary Hanson probably called the President to inform him of the resignation\u2014\"\n\n\"He did,\" van Damm confirmed.\n\n\"But President Durling is also dead. His testimony would have had evidentiary value, but that isn't going to happen, either. That puts us back to square one.\" Martin didn't like what he was doing, and he was having enough trouble trying to talk and think about the law at the same time. This was like a chessboard with no squares, just the pieces arrayed at random.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"The phone logs will show there was a call, fine. Secretary Hanson might have said that the letter was poorly worded and would be fixed the following day. This is politics, not law. So long as Durling was President, Kealty had to leave, because\u2014\"\n\n\"Of the sexual harassment investigation.\" Arnie was getting it now.\n\n\"You got it. His TV statement even covered that, and he did a nice job of neutralizing the issue, didn't he?\"\n\n\"We're back to where we started,\" Ryan observed.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\" That elicited a wry smile.\n\n\"Nice to know that somebody believes.\"\n\nINSPECTOR O'DAY AND three other agents from Headquarters Division left their car right in front of the building. When a uniformed guard came over to object, O'Day just flashed his ID and kept on going. He stopped at the main security desk and did the same.\n\n\"I want your chief to meet me on the seventh floor in one minute,\" he told the guard. \"I don't care what he's doing. Tell him to come up right now.\" Then he and his team walked to the elevator bank.\n\n\"Uh, Pat, what the hell\u2014\"\n\nThe other three had been picked more or less at random from the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility. That was the FBI's own internal-affairs department. All experienced investigators with supervisory rank, their job was to keep the Bureau clean. One of them had even investigated a former Director. OPR's charter was to respect nothing but the law, and the surprising thing was that, unlike similar organizations in city police forces, it retained, for the most part, the respect of the street agents.\n\nThe lobby guard had called ahead to the guard post on the top floor. It was George Armitage this morning, working a different shift from the previous week.\n\n\"FBI,\" O'Day announced as the elevator door opened. \"Where's the Secretary's office?\"\n\n\"This way, sir.\" Armitage led them down the corridor.\n\n\"Who's been using the office?\" the inspector asked.\n\n\"We're getting ready to move Mr. Adler in. We've just about got Mr. Hanson's things out and\u2014\"\n\n\"So people have been going in and out?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nO'Day hadn't expected that it would be much use bringing in the forensics team, but that would be done anyway. If there had ever been an investigation that had to go strictly by the book, this was the one.\n\n\"Okay, we need to talk to everyone who's been in or out of the office since the moment Secretary Hanson left it. Every single one, secretaries, janitors, everybody.\"\n\n\"The secretarial staff won't be in for another half hour or so.\"\n\n\"Okay. You want to unlock the door?\"\n\nArmitage did so, letting them into the secretaries' room, and then through the next set of doors into the office itself. The FBI agents stopped cold there, the four of them just looking at first. Then one of them took post at the door to the main corridor.\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Armitage,\" O'Day said, reading the name tag. \"Okay, for the moment, we're treating this as a crime scene. Nobody in or out without our permission. We need a room where we can interview people. I'd like you to make a written list of everyone you know to have been in here, with date and time if that's possible.\"\n\n\"Their secretaries will have that.\"\n\n\"We want yours, too.\" O'Day looked up the corridor and was annoyed. \"We asked for your department chief to join us. Where do you suppose he is?\"\n\n\"He usually doesn't get in until eight or so.\"\n\n\"Could you call him, please? We need to talk to him right now.\"\n\n\"You got it, sir.\" Armitage wondered what the hell this was all about. He hadn't seen the TV this morning, nor heard what was going on yet. In any case, he didn't care all that much. Fifty-five and looking forward to retirement after thirty-two years of government service, he just wanted to do his job and leave.\n\n\"GOOD MOVE, DAN,\" Martin said into the phone. They were in the Oval Office now. \"Back to you.\" The attorney hung up and turned.\n\n\"Murray sent one of his roving inspectors over, Pat O'Day. Good man, troubleshooter. He's being backed up by OPR guys\"\u2014Martin explained briefly what that meant\u2014\"another smart move. They're apolitical. With that done, Murray has to back away from things.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Jack asked, still trying to catch up.\n\n\"You appointed him acting Director. I can't be involved much with this, either. You need to select someone to run the investigation. He has to be smart, clean, and not the least bit political. Probably a judge,\" Martin thought. \"Like a Chief Judge of a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. There's lots of good ones.\"\n\n\"Any ideas?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"You have to get that name from somebody else. I can't emphasize enough, this has to be clean in every possible respect. Gentlemen, we're talking about the Constitution of the United States here.\" Martin paused. He had to explain things. \"That's like the Bible for me, okay? For you, too, sure, but I started off as an FBI agent. I worked mainly civil-rights stuff, all those sheet-heads in the South. Civil rights are important, I learned that looking at the bodies of people who died trying to secure those rights for other people they didn't even know. Okay, I left the Bureau, entered the bar, did a little private practice, but I guess I never stopped being a cop, and so I came back in. At Justice, I've worked OC, I've worked espionage, and now I just started running the Criminal Division. This is important stuff to me. You have to do it the right way.\"\n\n\"We will,\" Ryan told him. \"But it would be nice to know how.\"\n\nThat evoked a snort. \"Damned if I know. On the substance of the issue, anyway. On the form, it has to appear totally clean, no questions at all. That's impossible, but you have to try anyway. That's the legal side. The political side I leave to you.\"\n\n\"Okay. And the crash investigation?\" Ryan was slightly amazed with himself. He'd actually turned away from the investigation to something else. Damn.\n\nThis time Martin smiled. \"That pissed me off, Mr. President. I don't like having people to tell me how to run a case. If Sato were alive, I could take him into court today. There won't be any surprises. The thing Kealty said about the JFK investigation was pretty disingenuous. You handle one of these cases by running a thorough investigation, not by turning it into a bureaucratic circus. I've been doing that my whole life. This case is pretty simple\u2014big, but simple\u2014and for all practical purposes it's already closed. The real help came from the Mounties. They did a nice job for us, a ton of corroborative evidence, time, place, fingerprints, catching people from the plane to interview. And the Japanese police\u2014Christ, they're ready to eat nails, they're so angry about what happened. They're talking to all of the surviving conspirators. You, and we, don't want to know their interrogation methods. But their due process is not our problem. I'm ready to defend what you said last night. I'm ready to walk through everything we know.\"\n\n\"Do that, this afternoon,\" van Damm told him. \"I'll make sure you get the press coverage.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"So you can't be part of the Kealty thing?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"No, sir. You cannot allow the process to be polluted in any way.\"\n\n\"But you can advise me on it?\" President Ryan went on. \"I need legal counsel of some sort.\"\n\n\"That you do, and, yes, Mr. President, I can do that.\"\n\n\"You know, Martin, at the end of this\u2014\"\n\nRyan cut his chief of staff off cold, even before the attorney could react. \"No, Arnie, none of that. God damn it! I will not play that game. Mr. Martin, I like your instincts. We play this one absolutely straight. We get professionals to run it, and we trust them to be pros. I am sick and fucking tired of special prosecutors and special this and special that. If you don't have people you can trust to do the job right, then what the hell are they doing there in the first place?\"\n\nVan Damm shifted in his seat. \"You're a na\u00eff, Jack.\"\n\n\"Fine, Arnie, and we've been running the government with politically aware people since before I was born, and look where it's gotten us!\" Ryan stood to pace around the room. It was a presidential prerogative. \"I'm tired of all this. What ever happened to honesty, Arnie? What ever happened to telling the goddamned truth? It's all a fucking game here, and the object of the game isn't to do the right thing, the object of the game is to _stay_ here. It's not supposed to be that way! And I'll be _damned_ if I'll perpetuate a game I don't like.\" Jack turned to Pat Martin. \"Tell me about that FBI case.\"\n\nMartin blinked, not knowing why that had come up, but he told the story anyway. \"They even made a bad movie about it. Some civil-rights workers got popped by the local Klukkers. Two of them were local cops, too, and the case wasn't going anywhere, so the Bureau got involved under interstate commerce and civil rights statutes. Dan Murray and I were rookies back then. I was in Buffalo at the time. He was in Philly. They brought us down to work with Big Joe Fitzgerald. He was one of Hoover's roving inspectors. I was there when they found the bodies. Nasty,\" Martin said, remembering the sight and the horrid smell. \"All they wanted to do was to get citizens registered to vote, and they got killed for it, and the local cops weren't doing anything about it. It's funny, but when you see that sort of thing, it isn't abstract anymore. It isn't a document or a case study or a form to fill out. It just gets real as hell when you look at bodies that've been in the ground for two weeks. Those Klukker bastards broke the law and killed fellow citizens who were doing something the Constitution says isn't just okay\u2014it's a _right._ So, we got 'em, and put 'em all away.\"\n\n\"Why, Mr. Martin?\" Jack asked. The response was exactly what he expected.\n\n\"Because I swore an oath, Mr. President. That's why.\"\n\n\"So did I, Mr. Martin.\" _And it wasn't to any goddamned game._\n\nTHE CUEING WAS somewhat equivocal. The Iraqi military used hundreds of radio frequencies, mainly FM VHF bands, and the traffic, while unusual for the overall situation, was routine in its content. There were thousands of messages, as many as fifty going at any given moment, and STORM TRACK didn't begin to have enough linguists to keep track of them all, though it had to do just that. The command circuits for senior officers were well known, but these were encrypted, meaning that computers in KKMC had to play with the signals in order to make sense of what sounded like static. Fortunately a number of defectors had come across with examples of the encryption hardware, and others trickled over various borders with daily keying sequences, all to be handsomely rewarded by the Saudis.\n\nThe use of radios was more now rather than less. The senior Iraqi officers were probably less concerned with electronic intercepts than with who might be listening in on a telephone line. That simple fact told the senior watch officers a lot, and a document was even now being prepared to go up the ladder to the DCI for delivery to the President.\n\nSTORM TRACK looked like most such stations. One huge antenna array, called an Elephant Cage for its circular configuration, both detected and localized signals, while other towering whip antennas handled other tasks. The listening station had been hastily built during the buildup for DESERT STORM as a means of gathering tactical intelligence for allied military units, then to be expanded for continuing interest in the region. The Kuwaitis had funded the sister station, PALM BOWL, for which they were rewarded with a good deal of the \"take.\"\n\n\"That's three,\" a technician said at the latter station, reading off his screen. \"Three senior officers heading to the racetrack. A little early in the day to play the ponies, isn't it?\"\n\n\"A meet?\" his lieutenant asked. This was a military station, and the technician, a fifteen-year sergeant, knew quite a bit more about the job than his new boss. At least the elltee was smart enough to ask questions.\n\n\"Sure looks like it, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Why there?\"\n\n\"Middle of town, not in an official building. If you're out to meet your honey, you don't do it at home, do you?\" The screen changed. \"Okay, we cracked another one. The Air Force chief is there, too\u2014was, probably. Traffic analysis seems to show that the meet broke up an hour or so ago. I wish we could crack their crypto gear faster . . .\"\n\n\"content?\"\n\n\"Just where to go and when, ma'am, nothing substantive, nothing about what they're meeting for.\"\n\n\"When's the funeral, Sergeant?\"\n\n\"Sunset.\"\n\n\"YES?\" RYAN LIFTED the phone. You could pretty much tell how important the call was from the line that was lit. This one was Signals.\n\n\"Major Canon, sir. We're getting feed from Saudi. The intel community is trying to make sense of it now. They told me to cue you on that.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Ryan replaced the phone. \"You know, it would be nice to have 'em come in one at a time. Something happening in Iraq, but they're not sure what yet,\" he told his guests. \"I guess I have to start paying attention. Anything else I have to do now?\"\n\n\"Put Secret Service protection on Vice President Kealty,\" Martin suggested. \"He's entitled to it anyway under the law as a former VP\u2014for six months?\" the attorney asked Price.\n\n\"That's correct.\"\n\nMartin thought about that. \"Did you have any discussions on that issue?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Pity,\" Martin thought.\n**14**\n\n**BLOOD IN THE WATER**\n\n**E** D FOLEY'S EXECUTIVE aircraft was big and ugly, a Lockheed C-141B cargo carrier, known to the fighter community as a \"trash hauler,\" in whose cargo area was a large trailer. The trailer's history was interesting. It had originally been built by the Airstream company as a receiving facility for the Apollo astronauts, though this one was a backup and had never actually been used for that purpose. It allowed senior officials to travel with homelike amenities and was used almost exclusively by senior intelligence officers. This way they could travel in both anonymity and comfort. There were lots of Air Force Starlifters, and from the outside Foley's looked like any other\u2014big, green, and ugly.\n\nIt touched down at Andrews just before noon, after an exhausting flight of almost seven thousand miles, seventeen hours, and two aerial refuelings. Foley had traveled with a staff of three, two of them security and protection officers, called SPOs. The ability to shower had improved the attitude of each, and their night's sleep hadn't been interrupted by the signals that had started to arrive a few hours earlier. By the time the cargo lifter stopped rolling and the doors opened, he was refreshed and informed. That didn't happen often enough for the ADDO to regard it as anything short of a miracle. So much the better that his wife was there to greet him with a kiss. It was enough that the Air Force ground crew wondered what the hell this was all about. The flight crew was too tired to care.\n\n\"Hi, honey.\"\n\n\"We really need to fly together this way once,\" her husband observed with a twinkle in his eye. Then he shifted gears in a heartbeat. \"What's the word on Iraq?\"\n\n\"Something's happening. At least nine, probably twenty or so senior officers got together for a quiet little meeting. We don't know what about, but it wasn't to pick the menu for the wake.\" They got in the back of the car, and she handed over a folder. \"You're getting promoted, by the way.\"\n\n\"What?\" Ed's head came up from the document package.\n\n\"DCI. We're moving with Plan Blue, and Ryan wants you to front it for the Hill. I stay DDO, and I get to run my shop the way I want to, don't I, honey?\" She smiled sweetly. Then she explained the other problem of the day.\n\nCLARK HAD HIS own office at Langley, and his seniority guaranteed him a view of the parking lot and the trees beyond, which beat a windowless cubby. He even shared a pool secretary with four other senior field officers. In many ways Langley was alien country for him. His official job title was that of a training officer down at the Farm. He came to headquarters to deliver reports and get briefed in on new jobs, but he didn't like it here. There was a smell to any headquarters facility. The desk weenies wanted things their way. They didn't want irregularities. They didn't care to work overtime, and miss favorite TV shows as a result. They didn't much like surprises and data that made them rethink stuff. They were the bureaucratic tail in an intelligence agency, but at CIA the tail had become so massive that it wagged the dog without ever moving itself. The phenomenon wasn't exactly unusual, but when things went bad, his was the life at risk in the field, and if he were ever killed out there, he'd turn into one residual memo, to be quickly filed and forgotten by people who did National Intelligence Estimates based often as not on newspaper stories.\n\n\"Catch the news this morning, Mr. C.?\" Chavez asked lightly on entering the room.\n\n\"I got in at five.\" He held up a folder with PLAN BLUE printed on it. Because he so hated paperwork, when he did it he worked with supreme intensity, the more quickly to be rid of it.\n\n\"Then turn your set to CNN.\" John did, expecting a news story that would surprise his Agency. And that's what he got, but not quite what he'd expected.\n\n\"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the President.\"\n\nHe had to get out in public fast. Everyone agreed on that. Ryan walked into the press room, stood behind the podium, and looked down at his notes. It was easier than looking out at the room, smaller and shabbier than most parts of the building, built atop the former swimming pool. There were eight rows of six seats each. Every one, he'd seen on the way in, was full.\n\n\"Thank you for coming in so early,\" Jack said in as relaxed a voice as he could manage.\n\n\"Recent events in Iraq affect the security of a region which is of vital interest to America and her allies. We note without grief the death of the Iraqi President. As you know, this individual was responsible for the instigation of two wars of aggression, the brutal suppression of that country's Kurdish minority, and the denial of the most fundamental human rights to his own citizens.\n\n\"Iraq is a nation which should be prosperous. It has a sizable fraction of the world's petroleum reserves, a respectable industrial base, and a substantial population. All that is lacking in that country is a government which looks after the needs of its citizens. We would hope that the passing of the former leader offers an opportunity for just this.\" Jack looked up from his notes.\n\n\"America therefore extends the hand of friendship to Iraq. We hope that there will be an opportunity to normalize relations, and to put an end once and for all to the hostility between Iraq and its Gulf neighbors. I have directed acting Secretary of State Scott Adler to make contact with the Iraqi government, and to offer the chance of a meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest. In the event that the new regime is willing to address the question of human rights, and to commit to free and fair elections, America is willing to address the question of the removal of economic sanctions, and the rapid restoration of normal diplomatic relations.\n\n\"There has been enough enmity. It is unseemly for a region of such natural wealth to be the site of discord, and America is willing to do her part as an honest broker to assist in bringing peace and stability, along with our friends among the Gulf states. We await a favorable reply from Baghdad so that initial contacts might be established.\" President Ryan folded the paper away.\n\n\"That's the end of my official statement. Any questions?\" That took about a microsecond.\n\n\"Sir, this morning, as you know,\" the _New York Times_ shouted first, \"Vice President Edward Kealty claimed that he is the President and you are not. What do you have to say about that?\"\n\n\"The allegation by Mr. Kealty is groundless and totally without value,\" Jack replied coldly. \"Next question.\"\n\nHaving forsworn the game, Ryan was now condemned to playing it. Nobody in the room was the least bit fooled by his appearance. The announcement he'd just made could as easily have been delivered by his press secretary or the official State Department spokesman. Instead, he was here in front of the lights, looking at the assembled faces, and feeling rather like a lone Christian in a Colosseum full of lions. Well, that's what the Secret Service was for.\n\n\"A follow-up\u2014what if he actually didn't resign?\" the _Times_ insisted over the shouts of others.\n\n\"He _did_ actually resign. Otherwise, I could not have been appointed. Therefore your question has no meaning.\"\n\n\"But, sir, what if he is telling the truth?\"\n\n\"He isn't.\" Ryan took a breath, as Arnie had told him to do, and then went on, saying what Arnie had told him to say. \"Mr. Kealty resigned his position at the request of President Durling. You all know the reason. He was under investigation by the FBI for sexual misconduct while he was a senator. The investigation was in the matter of a sexual assault\u2014not to say\"\u2014which Ryan then said\u2014\"rape of one of his Senate aides. His resignation was part of a ... deal, a plea bargain, I guess, to avoid criminal prosecution.\" Ryan paused just then, somewhat surprised to see the assembled faces go a little pale. He'd just hurled down a gauntlet, and it made a loud noise on the floor. The next one was even louder. \"You know who the President is. Now, shall we get on with the business of the country?\"\n\n\"What are you doing about this?\" ABC asked.\n\n\"You mean Kealty or Iraq?\" Ryan asked. His tone indicated what the subject ought to be.\n\n\"The Kealty question, sir.\"\n\n\"I've asked the FBI to check into it. I expect them to report back to me later today. Aside from that, we have enough things to be done.\"\n\n\"Follow-up\u2014what about what you said to the governors in your speech last night, and what Vice President Kealty said this morning? Do you really want inexperienced people to\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I do. First of all, what people do we have who are experienced in the workings of Congress? The answer is, not very many. We have the few survivors, people fortunate enough to have been elsewhere that night. Aside from that\u2014what? People defeated in the last election? Do you want them back? I want, and I think the country needs, people who know how to do things. The plain truth is that government is by nature inefficient. We can't make it more efficient by selecting people who've always worked in government. The idea the Founding Fathers had was for citizen legislators, not for a permanent ruling class. In that I think I am in agreement with the intentions of the framers of our Constitution. Next?\"\n\n\"But who will decide the question?\" the _Los Angeles Times_ asked. It wasn't necessary to say which question.\n\n\"The question is decided,\" Ryan told him. \"Thanks for coming. If you will excuse me, I have a lot of work to do today.\" He picked up his opening statement and walked off to his right.\n\n\"Mr. Ryan!\" The shout came from a good dozen voices. Ryan walked through the door and around the corner. Arnie was waiting.\n\n\"Not bad under the circumstances.\"\n\n\"Except for one thing. Not one of them said 'Mr. President.'\"\n\nMOUDI TOOK THE call, which required only a few seconds. With that he walked over to the isolation ward. Outside, he donned protective gear, carefully checking the plastic fabric for leaks. The suit was made by a European company, modeled on the American Racal. The thick plastic was an incongruous powder blue, reinforced with Kevlar fiber. At the back on the web belt hung the ventilation unit. This pumped filtered air into the suit, and did so with a slight overpressure so that a tear would not suck environmental air inside. It wasn't known if Ebola was airborne or not, and nobody wanted to be the first to prove that it was. He opened the door to go inside. Sister Maria Magdalena was there, attending her friend, dressed the same way. Both knew all too well what it meant for a patient to see her attendants dressed in a way that so clearly denoted their fear of what she carried within her.\n\n\"Good afternoon, Sister,\" he said, his gloved hands lifting the chart off the foot of the bed. Temperature 41.4, despite the ice. Pulse rapid at 115. Respiration 24 and shallow. Blood pressure was starting to fall from the internal bleeding. The patient had received a further four units of whole blood\u2014and probably lost at least that much, most of it internally. Her blood chemistry was starting to go berserk. The morphine was as high as he could prescribe without risking respiratory failure. Sister Jean Baptiste was semiconscious\u2014she should have been virtually comatose from the drugs, but the pain was too severe for that.\n\nMaria Magdalena just looked over at him through the plastic of her mask, her eyes beyond sadness into a despair that her religion forbade. Moudi and she had seen all manner of deaths, from malaria, from cancer, from AIDS. But there was nothing so brutally cruel as this. It hit so fast that the patient didn't have the time to prepare, to steel the mind, to fortify the soul with prayer and faith. It was like some sort of traffic accident, shocking but just long enough in duration for the suffering to\u2014if there were a devil in creation, then this was his gift to the world. Physician or not, Moudi put that thought aside. Even the devil had a use.\n\n\"The airplane is on the way,\" he told her.\n\n\"What will happen?\"\n\n\"Professor Rousseau has suggested a dramatic treatment method. We will do a complete blood-replacement procedure. First the blood supply will be removed completely, and the vascular system flushed out with oxygenated saline. Then he proposes to replace the blood supply completely with whole blood in which he has Ebola antibodies. Theoretically, in this way the antibodies will attack the virus systemically and simultaneously.\"\n\nThe nun thought about that. It wasn't quite as radical as many would imagine. The total replacement of a body's blood supply was a procedure dating back to the late 1960s, having been used in the treatment of advanced meningitis. It wasn't a treatment that could be used routinely. It required a heart-lung-bypass machine. But this was her friend, and she was well past thinking of other patients and practicality.\n\nJust then, Jean Baptiste's eyes opened wide. They looked at nothing, unfocused, and the very slackness of the face proclaimed her agony. She might not even have been conscious. It was just that the eyes could not remain closed in severe pain. Moudi looked over at the morphine drip. If pain had been the only consideration, he might well have increased it and taken the risk of killing the patient in the name of mercy. But he couldn't chance it. He had to deliver her alive, and though her fate might be a cruel one, he hadn't chosen it for her.\n\n\"I must travel with her,\" Maria Magdalena said quietly.\n\nMoudi shook his head. \"I cannot allow that.\"\n\n\"It is a rule of our order. I cannot allow her to travel unaccompanied by one of us.\"\n\n\"There is a danger, Sister. Moving her is a risk. In the aircraft we will be breathing recirculated air. There is no need to expose you to the risk as well. Her virtue is not in question here.\" And one death was quite enough for his purposes.\n\n\"I have no choice.\"\n\nMoudi nodded. He hadn't chosen her destiny either, had he? \"As you wish.\"\n\nTHE AIRCRAFT LANDED at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport ten miles outside Nairobi and taxied to the cargo terminal. It was an old 707, once part of the Shah's personal fleet, the internal furnishings long since ripped out to reveal a metal deck. The trucks were waiting. The first of them backed up to the rear door, located on the right side, which opened a minute after the chocks secured the wheels in place on the ramp.\n\nThere were a hundred fifty cages, in each of them an African green monkey. The black workers all wore protective gloves. The monkeys, as if sensing their fate, were in an evil mode, using every opportunity to bite and scratch at the handlers. They screeched, urinated, and defecated as well, but to little avail.\n\nInside, the flight crew watched, keeping their distance. They wanted no part of the transfer. These noisy, small, nasty little creatures might not have been designated as unclean by the Koran, but they were clearly unpleasant enough, and after this job was over, they'd have the aircraft thoroughly washed and disinfected. The transfer took half an hour. The cages were stacked and tied down in place, and the handlers moved off, paid in cash and pleased to be done with the job, and their truck was replaced by a low-slung fuel bowser.\n\n\"Excellent,\" the buyer told the dealer.\n\n\"We were lucky. A friend had a large supply ready to go, and his buyer was slow getting the money. In view of this ...\"\n\n\"Yes, an extra ten percent?\"\n\n\"That would be sufficient,\" the dealer said.\n\n\"Gladly. You will have the additional check tomorrow morning. Or would you prefer cash?\"\n\nBoth men turned as the 707 lit off its engines. In minutes it would take off, this flight a short hop to Entebbe, Uganda.\n\n\"I DON'T LIKE the smell of this,\" Bert Vasco said, handing the folder back.\n\n\"Explain,\" Mary Pat commanded.\n\n\"I was born in Cuba. Once my dad told me about the night Batista bugged out. The senior generals had a little meeting and started boarding airplanes, quick and quiet, off to where their bank accounts were, and left everybody else holding the bag.\" Vasco was one of the State Department people who enjoyed working with CIA, probably as a result of his Cuban birth. He understood that diplomacy and intelligence each worked better when working together. Not everyone at Foggy Bottom agreed. That was their problem. They'd never been chased out of their homelands.\n\n\"You think that's what's happening here?\" Mary Pat asked, beating Ed by half a second.\n\n\"That's the morning line from where I sit.\"\n\n\"You feel confident enough to tell the President that?\" Ed Foley asked.\n\n\"Which one?\" Vasco asked. \"You should hear what they're saying over at the office. The FBI just took over the seventh floor. That has things a little shook up. Anyway, yes. It's just a guess, but it's a good guess. What we need to know is, who, if anyone, has been talking to them. Nobody on the ground, eh?\"\n\nThe Foleys both looked down, which answered the question.\n\n\"MR. RYAN'S ALLEGATIONS show that he's learned the shabby part of politics faster than the proper ones,\" Kealty said, in a voice more hurt than angry. \"I had honestly expected better of him.\"\n\n\"So, you deny the allegations?\" ABC asked.\n\n\"Of course I do. It's no secret that I once had an alcohol problem, but I overcame it. And it's no secret that my personal conduct has at times been questionable, but I've changed that, too, with help from my church, and the love of my wife,\" he added, squeezing her hand as she looked on with soft compassion and ironclad support. \"That really has nothing to do with the issue here. We have to place the interests of our country first. Personal animosity has no place in this, Sam. We're supposed to rise above that.\"\n\n\"You bastard,\" Ryan breathed.\n\n\"This is not going to be pleasant,\" van Damm said.\n\n\"How can he win, Arnie?\"\n\n\"Depends. I'm not sure what game he's playing.\"\n\n\"\u2014could say things about Mr. Ryan, too, but that isn't the sort of thing we need to do now. The country needs stability, not discord. The American people are looking for leadership\u2014experienced, seasoned leadership.\"\n\n\"Arnie, how much has this\u2014\"\n\n\"I remember when he'd fuck a snake, if somebody held it straight for him. Jack, we can't think about that sort of thing. Remember what Allen Drury said, this is a town in which we deal with people not as they are, but as they are reputed to be. The press likes Ed, always has. They like him. They like his family. They like his social conscience\u2014\"\n\n\"My ass!\" Ryan nearly shouted.\n\n\"You listen to me right now. You want to be the President? You're not _allowed_ to have a temper. You hold on to that thought, Jack. When the President loses his temper, people die. You've seen how that happens, and the people out there want to know that you are calm and cool and collected _at all times,_ got it?\"\n\nRyan swallowed and nodded. Every so often it was good to lose one's temper, and Presidents _were_ allowed. But you had to know when, and that was a lesson as yet unlearned. \"So what are you telling me?\"\n\n\"You _are_ the President. Act like it. Do your job. Look presidential. What you said at the press conference was okay. Kealty's claim is groundless. You're having the FBI check out his claim, but the claim doesn't matter. You swore the oath, you live here, and that's that. Make him irrelevant and he'll go away. Focus on this thing and you give him legitimacy.\"\n\n\"And the media?\"\n\n\"Give them a chance, and they'll get things right.\"\n\n\"FLYING HOME TODAY, Ralph?\"\n\nAugustus Lorenz and Ralph Forster were of an age, and a profession. Both men had begun their medical careers in the United States Army, one a general surgeon, the other an internist. Assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MAC-V), in the time of President Kennedy, long before the war had heated up, both men had at the same time discovered things in the real world that they'd studied and passed over in _Principles of Internal Medicine._ There were diseases out in the remote sections of the world that killed people. Brought up in urban America, they were old enough to remember the conquest of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and poliomyelitis. Like most men of their generation, they'd thought that infectious diseases were a defeated enemy. In the jungles of a relatively peaceful Vietnam, they'd learned different, occasionally seeing healthy, fit young men, American and Vietnamese soldiers, die before their eyes from bugs they had never learned about and which they could not combat. It wasn't supposed to be that way, they both had decided one night in the Caravelle Bar, and like the idealists and scientists they were, both went back to school and started relearning their profession, and in that process beginning yet another process that would not end in their lifetimes. Forster had wound up at Johns Hopkins, Lorenz at Atlanta, head of the Special Pathogens Branch of the Centers for Disease Control. Along the way they'd flown more miles than some airline captains, and to more exotic places than any photographer for _National Geographic,_ almost always in pursuit of something too small to see, and too deadly to ignore.\n\n\"I'd better, before the new kid takes my department over.\"\n\nThe Nobel candidate chuckled. \"Alex is pretty good. I'm glad he got out of the Army. We did some fishing together down in Brazil, back when they had the . . .\" In the hot lab, a technician made a final adjustment on the electron microscope. \"There,\" Lorenz said. \"There's our friend.\"\n\nSome called it the Shepherd's Crook. Lorenz thought it more like an ankh, but that wasn't right, either. It was in any case not a thing of beauty. To both men it was evil incarnate. The vertical, curved strand was called RNA, ribonucleic acid. That contained the genetic code of the virus. At the top was a series of curled protein structures whose function wasn't yet understood, but which probably, both thought, determined how the disease acted. Probably. They didn't know, despite fully twenty years of intensive study.\n\nThe damned thing wasn't even alive, but it killed even so. A true living organism had both RNA and DNA, but a virus had only one or the other. It lived, somehow, in a dormant state until it came in contact with a living cell. Once there, it came to murderous life, like some sort of alien monster waiting its chance, able to live and grow and reproduce only with the help of something else, which it would destroy, and from which it would try to escape, then to find another victim.\n\nEbola was elegantly simple and microscopically tiny. A hundred thousand of them, lined up head to tail, would scarcely fill out an inch on a ruler. Theoretically one could kill and grow and migrate and kill again. And again. And again.\n\nMedicine's collective memory wasn't as long as either physician would have liked. In 1918, the \"Spanish flu,\" probably a form of pneumonia, had swept the globe in nine months, killing at least twenty million people\u2014probably quite a few more\u2014and some so rapidly that there had been victims who went to sleep healthy and failed to wake up the next day. But while the symptoms of the disease had been fully documented, the state of medical science hadn't yet progressed to the point of understanding the disease itself, as a result of which nobody knew what that outbreak had actually been about\u2014to the point that in the 1970s suspected victims buried in permafrost in Alaska had been exhumed in the hope of finding samples of the organism for study; a good idea that hadn't worked. For the medical community, that disease was largely forgotten, and most assumed that should it reappear, it would be defeated with modern treatment.\n\nSpecialists in infectious disease weren't so sure. That disease, like AIDS, like Ebola, was probably a virus, and medicine's success in dealing with viral disease was precisely\u2014\n\n_Zero._\n\nViral diseases could be prevented with vaccines, but once infected, a patient's immune system either won or lost, with the best of physicians standing by and watching. Doctors, as with any other profession, frequently preferred to ignore that which they didn't see and didn't understand. That was the only explanation for the medical community's inexplicably slow recognition of AIDS and its lethal implications. AIDS was another exotic pathogen which Lorenz and Forster studied, and another gift from the jungles of Africa.\n\n\"Gus, sometimes I wonder if we'll ever figure these bastards out.\"\n\n\"Sooner or later, Ralph.\" Lorenz backed away from the microscope\u2014it was, actually, a computer monitor\u2014and wished he could smoke his pipe, a vice he didn't really want to break, though working in a government building made it hard for him to indulge. He thought better with a pipe, Gus told himself. Both men stared at the screen, looking at the curlicue protein structures. \"This one is from the kid.\"\n\nThey walked in the footsteps of a handful of giants. Lorenz had written a paper on Walter Reed and William Gorgas, the two Army doctors who had defeated Yellow fever with a combination of systematic investigation and ruthless application of what they had learned. But learning in this business came so slow and so dear.\n\n\"Put up the other one, Kenny.\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor,\" the intercom replied. A moment later, a second image came up alongside the first.\n\n\"Yep,\" Forster said. \"Looks pretty much the same.\"\n\n\"That's from the nurse. Watch this.\" Lorenz hit the button on the phone. \"Okay, Kenny, now hit the computer.\" Before their eyes a computer image of both examples appeared. The computer rotated one to match the other, then overlaid them. They matched exactly.\n\n\"At least it hasn't mutated.\"\n\n\"Hasn't had much of a chance. Two patients. They've done a good job of isolating. Maybe we were lucky. The kid's parents have been tested. They seem to be clean, or so the telex says. Nothing else from his neighborhood. The WHO team is checking around the area. The usual, monkeys, bats, bugs. So far, nothing. Could just be an anomaly.\" It was as much a hope as a judgment.\n\n\"I'm going to play with this one a little. I've ordered some monkeys. I want to grow this one, get it into some cells, and then, Ralph, I'm going to examine what it does on a minute-by-minute basis. Get the infected cells, and pull a sample out every minute, slice it down, burn it with UV, freeze it in liquid nitrogen, and put it under the scope. I want to look at how the virus RNA gets going. There's a sequencing issue here . . . can't quite say what I'm thinking. The thought's kind of lurking out there on me. Damn.\" Gus opened his desk drawer, pulled out his pipe, and lit it with a kitchen match. It _was_ his office, after all, and he _did_ think better with a pipe in his mouth. In the field he said that the smoke kept the bugs away, and besides, he didn't inhale. Out of politeness, he cracked open the window.\n\nThe idea for which he had just received funding was more complicated than his brief expression, and both men knew it. The same experimental procedure would have to be repeated a thousand times or more to get a correct read on how the process took place, and that was just the baseline data. Every single sample would have to be examined and mapped. It could take years, but if Lorenz were right, at the end of it, for the first time, would be a blueprint of what a virus did, how its RNA chain affected a living cell.\n\n\"We're playing with a similar idea up in Baltimore.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Part of the genome project. We're trying to read the complex interactions. The process\u2014 _how_ this little bastard attacks the cells down at the molecular level. How Ebola replicates without a proper editing function in the genome. There's something to be learned there. But the complexity of the issue is a killer. We have to figure out the questions to ask before we can start looking for answers. And then we need a computer genius to tell a machine how to analyze it.\"\n\nLorenz's eyebrows went up. \"How far along are you?\"\n\nForster shrugged. \"Chalk on a blackboard.\"\n\n\"Well, when I get my monkeys, I'll let you know what we develop here. If nothing else, the tissue samples ought to shed a little light.\"\n\nTHE FUNERAL WAS epic, with a ready cast of thousands, howling their loyalty to a dead man and concealing their real thoughts; you could almost feel them looking around and wondering what came next. There was the gun carriage, the soldiers with reversed rifles, the riderless horse, the marching soldiers, all captured off Iraqi TV by STORM TRACK and uplinked to Washington.\n\n\"I wish we could see more faces,\" Vasco said quietly.\n\n\"Yeah,\" the President agreed. Ryan didn't smile but wanted to. He'd never really stop being an intelligence officer. Jack was sure of that. He wanted the data fresh, not massaged and presented to him by others. In this case he got to watch it live, with his color commentators at his side.\n\nIn America, a generation earlier, it would have been called a happening. People showed up and acted out because it was an expected thing. A literal sea of people filled the square\u2014it had a name, but nobody seemed to know it\u2014and even those who couldn't see . . . oh, a new camera gave the answer to the question. Big-screen TVs showed everyone what was happening. Jack wondered if they'd do an instant replay. Two lines of generals marched behind the gun carriage, and were keeping step, Ryan saw.\n\n\"How much farther you think they'll walk?\"\n\n\"Hard to say, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"It's Bert, right?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Bert, I can call in one of my NIOs to tell me he doesn't know.\"\n\nVasco blinked, as expected. Then he decided, what the hell? \"Eight out often, they bug out.\"\n\n\"Those are betting odds. Tell me why.\"\n\n\"Iraq has nothing to fall back on. You don't run a dictatorship by committee, at least not for long. Not one of those people has the stones to take over on his own. If they stay put and the government changes, it won't change into something nice for them. They'll end up like the Shah's general staff did, backs to a wall, looking at guns. Maybe they'll try to fight it out, but I doubt it. They must have money salted away somewhere. Drinking daiquiris on a beach may not be as much fun as being a general, but it beats the hell out of looking at flowers from the wrong side. They have families to worry about, too.\"\n\n\"So we should plan on a completely new regime in Iraq?\" Jack asked.\n\nVasco nodded. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Iran?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't bet against it,\" Vasco answered, \"but we just don't have good enough information to make any kind of prediction. I wish I could tell you more, sir, but you don't pay me to speculate.\"\n\n\"That's good enough for now.\" Actually it wasn't, but Vasco had given Ryan the best he had. \"There's not a thing we can do, is there?\" This one was for the Foleys.\n\n\"Not really,\" Ed replied. \"I suppose we could get someone over there, maybe fly one of our people up from the Kingdom, but the problem then is, whom does he try to meet? We have no way of knowing who's in command there.\"\n\n\"If anyone,\" Mary Pat added, looking at the marching men. None of them took the lead.\n\n\"WHAT DO YOU mean?\" the buyer asked.\n\n\"You didn't pay me on time,\" the dealer explained with a belch after draining his first beer. \"I had another buyer.\"\n\n\"I was only two days late,\" the buyer protested. \"There was an administrative problem getting the funds transferred.\"\n\n\"You have the money now?\"\n\n\"Yes!\"\n\n\"Then I will find you some monkeys.\" The dealer lifted his hand, snapped his fingers, and caught the attention of the bar boy. An English planter could not have done it better, in this same bar, fifty years earlier. \"It isn't all _that_ hard, you know. A week? Less?\"\n\n\"But CDC wants them at once. The aircraft is already on the way.\"\n\n\"I will do my best. Please explain to your client that if they want their consignment on time, then they should pay their bills on time as well. Thank you,\" he added for the bar boy. \"One for my friend, too, if you please.\" He could afford that, what with the payment he'd just accepted.\n\n\"How long?\"\n\n\"I told you. A week. Perhaps less.\" Why was the chap so excited over a few days?\n\nThe buyer had no choice, at least not in Kenya. He decided to drink his beer down and speak of other things. Then he'd make a telephone call to Tanzania. After all, the African green monkey was \"abundant\" throughout Africa. It wasn't as though there were a shortage of the things, he told himself. Two hours later, he learned something different. There _was_ a shortage, though it would last only a few days, as long as it took for the trappers to find a few more troops of the long-tailed pests.\n\nVASCO HANDLED THE translation in addition to his commentary duties. \" 'Our wise and beloved leader who has given our country so much . . .' \"\n\n\"Like population control the hard way,\" Ed Foley snorted.\n\nThe soldiers, all guardsmen, moved the coffin into the prepared tomb, and with that, two decades of Iraqi history passed into the books. More likely a loose-leaf binder, Ryan thought. The big question was, who would write the next chapter?\n**15**\n\n**DELIVERIES**\n\n**S** O?\" PRESIDENT RYAN asked, after dismissing his latest set of guests.\n\n\"The letter, if there ever was one, is missing, sir,\" Inspector O'Day replied. \"The most important bit of information developed to the moment is that Secretary Hanson wasn't all that scrupulous in his document-security procedures. That comes from the State's security chief. He says he counseled the Secretary on several occasions. The people I took over with me are interviewing various people to determine who went in and out of the office. It will go on from there.\"\n\n\"Who's running it?\" Ryan remembered that Hanson, good diplomatic technician though he might have been, had never listened all that well to anybody.\n\n\"Mr. Murray had designated OPR to continue the investigation independently of his office. That means I'm out, too, because I have reported directly to you in the past. This will be my last direct involvement with the case.\"\n\n\"Strictly by the book?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, it has to be that way,\" the inspector said with a nod. \"They'll have additional help from the Legal Counsel Division. Those are agents with law degrees who act as in-house legal beagles. They're good troops.\" O'Day thought for a moment. \"Who's been in and out of the Vice President's office?\"\n\n\"Here, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nAndrea Price answered that one: \"Nobody lately. It's been unused since he left. His secretary went with him and\u2014\"\n\n\"You might want to have someone check the typewriter. If it uses a carbon-tape ribbon\u2014\"\n\n\"Right!\" She almost moved right out of the Oval Office. \"Wait. Have your people\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll make the call,\" O'Day assured her. \"Sorry, Mr. President. I should have thought of that sooner. Please seal the office for us?\"\n\n\"Done,\" Price assured him.\n\nTHE NOISE WAS unbearable. The monkeys were social animals, who customarily lived in \"troops\" of up to eighty individuals that populated mainly the margins of forests on the edge of the broad savannas, the easier to come down from their trees and raid the surrounding open land for food. They had learned in the past hundred years to raid farms, which was easier and safer than what Nature had programmed into their behavior, because the humans who operated the farms typically controlled the predators which ate the monkeys. An African green was a tasty morsel for a leopard or hyena, but so was a calf, and farmers had to protect those. What resulted was a curious bit of ecological chaos. To protect livestock, the farmers, legally or not, eliminated the predators. That allowed the monkey population to expand rapidly, and the hungry African greens would then attack the cereal and other crops which fed both the farmers and their livestock. As a complication, the monkeys also ate insects which preyed on the crops as well, leading local ecologists to suggest that eliminating the monkeys was bad for the ecology. For the farmers it was much simpler. If it ate their livestock, it was killed. If it ate their crops, it was killed also. Bugs might not be large enough to see, but monkeys were, and so few farmers objected when the trappers came.\n\nOf the family _cercopithecus,_ the African green has yellow whiskers and a gold-green back. It can live to thirty years of age\u2014more likely in comfortable captivity than in the predator-infested wild\u2014and has a lively social life. The troops are made of female families, with male monkeys joining the troops individually for periods of a few weeks or months before moving on. An abundance of females in mating season allows a number of males cooperatively to enjoy the situation, but that was not the case in the aircraft. Rather, the cages were stacked like a truckload of chicken coops on the way to market. Some females _were_ in season but totally inaccessible, frustrating the would-be suitors. Males stacked next to the cages of other males hissed, clawed, and spat at their unwilling neighbors, all the more unhappy that their captors had not noted the simple fact that same-sized cages were used to imprison different-sized monkeys\u2014the male African green is fully double the size of the female\u2014and cramping males who could smell that most welcome of natural signals, so near and yet so far. Added to the unfamiliar smells of the aircraft and the absence of food and water, the crowding caused nothing short of a simian riot, and since the issue could not be resolved by combat, all that resulted was a collective screech of rage from hundreds of individuals which far outstripped the sound of the JT-8 engines driving the aircraft east over the Indian Ocean.\n\nForward, the flight crew had their cabin door firmly shut and their headphones clamped tightly over their ears. That attenuated the sound, but not the fetid smell which the aircraft's recirculation systems cycled back and forth, both further enraging the cargo and sickening the crew.\n\nThe pilot, normally an eloquent man with his invective, had run out of curses and had tired of entreating Allah to expunge these horrid little creatures from the face of the earth. In a zoo, perhaps, he would have pointed to the long-tailed creatures, and his twin sons would have smiled and perhaps tossed some peanuts to their amusing captives. No more. With his tolerance gone, the pilot reached for the emergency oxygen mask and switched the flow on, wishing then he might blow open the cargo doors, depressurize the aircraft and thus both extinguish the monkeys and vent the dreadful smell. He would have felt better had he known what the monkeys knew. Something evil was afoot for them.\n\nBADRAYN MET THEM again in a communications bunker. It didn't give him the sense of security that all the massed concrete might have. The only reason this one still stood was that it was concealed under the falsework of an industrial building\u2014a bookbindery, in fact, which actually turned out a few books. This one and a handful of others had survived the war with America only because the Americans' intelligence had been faulty. Two \"smart bombs\" had targeted a building directly across the road. You could still see the crater where the Americans had thought this structure to be. There was a lesson in that, Badrayn thought, still waiting. You had to see it, really, to believe it. It wasn't the same to look at a TV screen or hear about it. There were five meters of rebarred concrete over his head. Five meters. It was solid, built under the supervision of well-paid German engineers. You could still see the impression of the plywood sheets which had held the wet concrete in place. Not a crack to be seen\u2014and yet the only reason this place still stood was because the Americans had bombed the wrong side of the street. Such was the power of modern weapons, and though Ali Badrayn had existed in the world of arms and struggle for all of his life, this was the first time he fully appreciated that fact.\n\nThey were good hosts. He had a full colonel to look after him. Two sergeants fetched snacks and drinks. He'd watched the funeral on the TV. It was as predictable as one of the American police programs that blanketed the world. You always knew how it would end. The Iraqis, like most people in the region, were a passionate race, particularly when assembled in large numbers and encouraged to make the proper noises. They were easily led and easily moved, and Badrayn knew that it didn't always matter by whom. Besides, how much of it had been genuine? The informers were still out there to note who didn't cheer or grieve. The security apparatus which had failed the dead President still operated, and everyone knew it. And so little of the emotion which had flowed so freely on the screen and across the broad plazas was real. He chuckled to himself. Like a woman, Badrayn told himself, feigning her moment of supreme pleasure. The question was, would the men who so often took their pleasure without giving it notice the difference?\n\nThey arrived singly, lest a pair or small group travel together and discuss things which the entire assembly needed to hear as one. A fine wooden cabinet was opened to reveal bottles and glasses, and the laws of Islam were violated. Badrayn didn't mind. He had a glass of vodka, for which he'd acquired the taste twenty years earlier in Moscow, then the capital of a country now vanished.\n\nThey were surprisingly quiet for such powerful men, all the more so for people attending the wake of a man they'd never loved. They sipped their drinks\u2014mainly scotch\u2014and again they mainly looked at one another. On the television, still switched on, the local station was replaying the funeral procession, the announcer extolling the surpassing virtue of the fallen leader. The generals looked on and listened, but the look on their faces was not one of sadness, but fear. Their world had come to an end. They were not moved by the shouts of the citizens or the words of the news commentator. They all knew better.\n\nThe last of them arrived. He was the intelligence chief who'd met Badrayn earlier in the day, fresh from having stopped in at his headquarters. The others looked to him, and he answered without the necessity of hearing the question.\n\n\"Everything is quiet, my friends.\"\n\n_For now._ That terse observation didn't have to be spoken either.\n\nBadrayn could have spoken, but didn't. His was an eloquent voice. Over the years he'd had to motivate many persons, and he knew how, but this was a time when silence was the most powerful statement of all. He merely looked at them, and waited, knowing that his eyes spoke far more loudly than any voice could have done.\n\n\"I don't like this,\" one of them said finally. Not a single face changed. Hardly surprising. None of them liked it. The one who spoke merely affirmed what all thought, and showed himself in doing so to be the weakest of the group.\n\n\"How do we know we can trust your master?\" the head of the Guards asked.\n\n\"He gives you his word in the name of God,\" Badrayn replied, setting down his glass. \"If you wish, a delegation of your number may fly to see him. In that case, I will remain here as your hostage. But if you wish that, it must be done quickly.\"\n\nThey all knew that, too. The thing they feared was as likely to happen before their possible departure as after. There followed another period of silence. They were scarcely even sipping at their drinks now. Badrayn could read their faces. They all wanted someone else to make a stand, and then that stand could be agreed to or disputed, and in the process the group would reach a collective position with which all would probably abide, though there might be a faction of two or three to consider an alternative course of action. That depended on which of them placed his life on the scales and tried to weigh it against an unknown future. He waited vainly to see who would do that. Finally, one of them spoke.\n\n\"I was late marrying,\" the air force chief said. His twenties and thirties had been the life of a fighter pilot on the ground if not quite in the air. \"I have young children.\" He paused and looked around. \"I think we all know the possible\u2014the _likely_ \u2014outcome for our families should things\n\n. . . develop unfavorably.\" It was a dignified gambit, Badrayn thought. They could not be cowardly. They were soldiers, after all.\n\nDaryaei's promise in God's name was not overly convincing to them. It had been a very long time since any of them had visited a mosque for any purpose other than to be photographed there in his simulated devotions, and though it was very different for their enemy, trust in another's religion begins in one's own heart.\n\n\"I presume that finances are not at issue here,\" Badrayn said, both to be sure that it was not, and to make them examine that option themselves. A few heads turned with looks that were close to amusement, and the question was answered. Though official Iraqi accounts had long been frozen, there were other such accounts which had not. The nationality of a bank account was, after all, fungible, all the more so with the size of the account. Each of these men, Badrayn thought, had personal access to nine figures of some hard currency, probably dollars or pounds, and this was not the time to worry about whose money it should have been.\n\nThe next question was, Where could they go, and how could they get there safely? Badrayn could see that in their faces, and yet he could do nothing at the moment. The irony of the situation, which only he was in a position to appreciate, was that the enemy whom they feared and whose word they distrusted wished nothing more than to allay their fear and keep his word. But Ali knew him to be a surpassingly patient man. Else he would not have been here at all.\n\n\"YOU'RE QUITE SURE?\"\n\n\"The situation is nearly ideal,\" Daryaei's visitor told him, explaining further.\n\nEven for a religious man who believed in the Will of God, the confluence of events was just too good to be true, and yet it was or appeared to be so.\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And we are proceeding according to the plan.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" It wasn't. Daryaei would have much preferred to deal with each in turn, the better to concentrate his formidable intellect on the three developing situations one at a time, but this was not always possible, and perhaps that was the sign. In any case, he had no choice. How strange that he should feel trapped by events resulting from plans he himself had set in motion.\n\nTHE HARDEST PART was dealing with his World Health Organization colleagues. That was only possible because the news was good so far. Benedict Mkusa, the \"Index Patient\" or \"Patient Zero,\" depending on one's favored terminology, was dead, and his body was destroyed. A team of fifteen had scoured the family's neighborhood and found nothing as yet. The critical period had yet to run out\u2014Ebola Zaire had a normal incubation period of four to ten days, though there were extreme cases as brief as two days and as long as nineteen but the only other case was before his eyes. It turned out that Mkusa was a budding naturalist, who spent much of his free time in the bush, and so now there was a search team in the tropical forest, catching rodents and bats and monkeys to make yet another attempt to discover the \"host,\" or carrier of the deadly virus. But above all they hoped that, for once, fortune had smiled on them. The Index Patient had come directly to hospital because of his family status. His parents, educated and affluent, had let health-care professionals treat the boy instead of doing so themselves, and in that they had probably saved their own lives, though even now they were waiting out the incubation period with what had to be stark terror that surpassed even their grief at the loss of a son. Every day they had their blood drawn for the standard IFA and antigen tests, but the tests could be misleading, as some insensitive medico had foolishly told them. Regardless, the WHO team was allowing itself to hope that this outbreak would stop at two patient-victims, and because of that, they were willing to consider what Dr. Moudi proposed to do.\n\nThere were objections, of course. The local Zairean physicians wanted to treat her here. There was merit to that. They had more experience with Ebola than anybody, though it had done little good to anyone, and the WHO team was reluctant for political reasons to insult their colleagues. There had been some unfortunate incidents before, with the natural hauteur of the Europeans resented by the local doctors. There was justice on both sides. The quality of the African doctors was uneven. Some were excellent, some terrible, and some ordinary. The telling argument was that Rousseau in Paris was a genuine hero to the international community, a gifted scientist and a ferociously dedicated clinician who refused to accept the fact that viral diseases could not be treated effectively. Rousseau, in the tradition of Pasteur before him, was determined to break that rule. He'd tried ribavirin and interferon as treatments for Ebola, without positive result. His latest theoretical gambit was dramatic and likely to be ineffective, but it had shown some small promise in monkey studies, and he wanted to try it on a human patient under carefully controlled conditions. Though his proposed method of treatment was anything but practical for real clinical application, you had to start somewhere.\n\nThe deciding factor, predictably, was the identity of the patient. Many of the WHO team knew her from the last Ebola outbreak at Kikwit. Sister Jean Baptiste had flown to that town to supervise the local nurses, and doctors no less than others could be moved by familiarity with those under their care. Finally, it was agreed that, yes, Dr. Moudi could transport the patient.\n\nThe mechanics of the transfer were difficult enough. They used a truck rather than an ambulance, because a truck would be easier to scrub down afterward. The patient was lifted on a plastic sheet onto a gurney and wheeled out into the corridor. That was cleared of other people, and as Moudi and Sister Maria Magdalena wheeled the patient toward the far door, a group of technicians dressed in plastic \"space suits\" sprayed the floor and walls, the very air itself, with disinfectant in a smelly man-made chemical fog that trailed the procession like exhaust from an overaged car.\n\nThe patient was heavily sedated and firmly restrained. Her body was cocooned to prevent the release of virus-rich bleeding. The plastic sheet under her had been sprayed with the same neutralizing chemicals, so that leaks would immediately find a very adverse environment for the virus particles they carried. As Moudi pushed the gurney from behind, he marveled at his own madness, taking such chances with something as deadly as this. Jean Baptiste's face, at least, was placid from the dangerously high dosage of narcotics, marked though it was with the growing petechia.\n\nThey moved outdoors onto the loading dock where supplies arrived at the hospital. The truck was there, its driver seated firmly behind the wheel and not even looking backward at them, except perhaps in the mirror. The interior of the van body had likewise been sprayed, and with the door closed and the gurney firmly locked in place, it drove off with a police escort, never exceeding thirty kilometers per hour for the short trip to the local airport. That was just as well. The sun was still high, and its heat rapidly turned the truck into a mobile oven, boiling off the protective chemicals into the enclosed space. The smell of the disinfectant came through the suit's filtration system. Fortunately, the doctor was used to it.\n\nThe aircraft was waiting. The G-IV had arrived only two hours earlier after a direct flight from Tehran. The interior had been stripped of everything but two seats and a cot. Moudi felt the truck stop and turn and back up. Then the cargo door opened, dazzling them with the sun. Still the nurse, and still a compassionate one, Sister Maria Magdalena used her hand to shield the eyes of her colleague.\n\nThere were others there, of course. Two more nuns in protective garb were close by, and a priest, with yet more farther away. All were praying as some other lifted the patient by the plastic sheet and carried her slowly aboard the white-painted business jet. It took five careful minutes before she was firmly strapped in place, and the ground crewmen withdrew. Moudi gave his patient a careful look, checking pulse and blood pressure, the former rapid and the latter still dropping. That worried him. He needed her alive as long as possible. With that done, he waved to the flight crew and strapped into his own seat.\n\nSitting down, he took the time to look out his window, and Moudi was alarmed to see a TV camera pointed at the aircraft. At least they kept their distance, the doctor thought, as he heard the first engine spool up. Out the other window, he saw the cleanup crew respraying the truck. That was overly theatrical. Ebola, deadly as it was, appeared to be a delicate organism, soon killed by the ultraviolet of direct sunlight, vulnerable also to heat. That was why the search for the host was so frustrating. _Something_ carried this dreadful \"bug.\" Ebola could not exist on its own, but whatever it was that provided a comfortable home to the virus, whatever it was that Ebola rewarded for the service by not harming it, whatever the living creature was that haunted the African continent like a shadow, was as yet undiscovered. The physician grunted. Once he'd hoped to discover that host and so make use of it, but that hope had always been in vain. Instead he had something almost as good. He had a living patient whose body was now breeding the pathogen, and while all previous victims of Ebola had been burned, or buried in soil soaked with chemicals, this one would have a very different fate. The aircraft started moving. Moudi checked his seat belt again and wished he could have something to drink.\n\nForward, the two pilots were wearing flight suits of protective nomex previously sprayed. Their face masks muffled their words, forcing repetition of their request for clearance, but finally the tower got things right, and the Gulfstream began its takeoff roll, rotating swiftly into the clean African sky, and heading north. The first leg of their trip would be 2,551 miles, and would last just over six hours.\n\nAnother, nearly identical G-IV had already landed at Benghazi, and now its crew was being briefed on emergency procedures.\n\n\"CANNIBALS.\" HOLBROOK SHOOK his head in temporary disbelief. He'd slept very late, having been up late the night before, watching all manner of talking heads on C-SPAN discuss the confusing situation with Congress after this Ryan guy's speech. Not a bad speech, considering. He'd seen worse. All lies, of course, kind of like a TV show. Even the ones you liked, well, you just knew that they weren't real, funny though they might be in ways intended and not. Some talented man had written the speech, with the purpose of getting just the right points across. The skill of those people was impressive. The Mountain Men had worked for years to develop a speech they could use to get people mobilized to their point of view. Tried and tried, but they just couldn't ever get it right. It wasn't that their beliefs had anything wrong with them, of course. They all knew that. The problem was packaging, and only the government and its ally, Hollywood, could afford the right people to develop the ideas that twisted the minds of the poor dumb bastards who didn't really get it\u2014that was the only possible conclusion.\n\nBut now there was discord in the enemy camp.\n\nErnie Brown, who'd driven over to wake his friend up, muted the TV. \"I guess there just isn't enough room for both of them in that there town, Pete.\"\n\n\"You think one will be gone by sundown?\" Holbrook asked.\n\n\"I wish.\" The legal commentary they'd just watched on the CNN political hour had been as muddled as a nigger march on Washington to increase welfare. \"Well, uh, gee, the Constitution doesn't say what to do in a case like this. I suppose they _could_ settle it with forty-fours on Pennsylvania Avenue at sundown,\" Ernie added with a chuckle.\n\nPete turned his head and grinned. \"Wouldn't that be a sight?\"\n\n\"Too American.\" Brown might have added that Ryan _had_ actually been in a position like that once, or so the papers and TV said. Well, yeah, it was true. Both vaguely remembered the thing in London, and truth be told, they'd both been proud to see an American showing the Europeans how a gun is used\u2014foreigners didn't know dick about guns, did they? They were as bad as Hollywood. It was a shame Ryan had gone bad. What he'd said in his speech, that was why he'd entered the government\u2014that's what they _all_ said. At least with that Kealty puke, he could fall back on family and stuff. They were all crooks and thieves, and that's just how the guy was brought up, after all. At least he wasn't a hypocrite about it. A high-class gypsy or . . . coyote? Yeah, that was right. Kealty was a lifetime political crook, and he was just being what he was. You couldn't blame a coyote for crooning at the moon; he was just being himself, too. Of course, coyotes were pests. Local ranchers could kill all they wanted . . . Brown tilted his head. \"Pete?\"\n\n\"Yeah, Ernie?\" Holbrook reached for the TV controller and was about to unmute it.\n\n\"We got a constitutional crisis, right?\"\n\nIt was Holbrook's turn to look. \"Yeah, that's what all the talking heads say.\"\n\n\"And it just got worse, right?\"\n\n\"The Kealty thing? Sure looks that way.\" Pete set the controller down. Ernie was having another idea attack.\n\n\"What if, um . . .\" Brown started and stopped, staring at the silent TV. It took time for his thoughts to form, Holbrook knew, though they were often worth waiting for.\n\nTHE 707 LANDED, finally, at Tehran-Mehrabad International Airport, well after midnight. The crew were zombies, having flown almost continuously for the past thirty-six hours, well over the cautious limits of civil aviation, abused all the more by the nature of their cargo, and in so foul a mood from it all that angry words had been traded during the long descent. But the aircraft touched down with a heavy thump, and with that came relief and embarrassment, which each of the three felt as they took a collective sigh. The pilot shook his head and rubbed his face with a tired hand, taxiing south, steering between the blue lights. This airport is also the site of Iranian military and air force headquarters. The aircraft completed its turn, reversing directions and heading for the spacious air force ramp area\u2014though its markings were civil, the 707 actually belonged to the Iranian air force. Trucks were waiting there, the flight crew was glad to see. The aircraft stopped. The engineer switched off the engines. The pilot set the parking brakes. The three men turned inward.\n\n\"A long day, my friends,\" the pilot said by way of apology.\n\n\"God willing, a long sleep to follow it,\" the engineer\u2014he'd been the main target of his captain's temper\u2014replied, accepting it. They were all too weary to sustain an argument in any case, and after a proper rest they wouldn't remember the reasons for it anyway.\n\nThey removed their oxygen masks, to be greeted by the thick fetid smell of their cargo, and it was everything they could do not to vomit as the cargo door was opened in the rear. They couldn't leave just yet. The aircraft was well and truly stuffed with cages, and short of climbing out the windows\u2014which was too undignified\u2014they'd have to await their freedom, rather like passengers at any international terminal.\n\nSoldiers did the unloading, a process made all the more difficult by the fact that no one had warned their commander to issue gloves, as the Africans had done. Every cage had a wire handle at the top, but the African greens were every bit as testy as the men up front, clawing and scratching at the hands trying to lift them. Reactions differed among the soldiers. Some slapped at the cages, hoping to cow the monkeys into passivity. The smart ones removed their field jackets and used them as a buffer when they handled the cages. Soon a chain of men was established, and the cages were transferred, one at a time, to a series of trucks.\n\nThe procedure was noisy. It was barely fifty degrees in Tehran that night, far below what the monkeys were accustomed to, and that didn't help their collective mood any more than anything else that had happened to them over the past few days. They responded to the newest trauma with screeches and howls that echoed across the ramp. Even people who'd never heard monkeys before would not mistake it for anything else, but that could not be helped. Finally it was done. The cabin door opened, and the crew had a chance to look at what had become of their once-spotless aircraft. It would be weeks before they got the smell out, they were sure, and just scrubbing it down would be an onerous task best not considered at the moment. Together they walked aft, then down the stairs and off to where their cars were parked.\n\nThe monkeys headed north in what for them was their third or fourth\u2014and last\u2014journey by truck. It was a short one, up a divided highway, over a cloverleaf interchange built under the reign of the Shah, then west to Hasanabad. Here there was a farm, long since set aside for the same purpose which had occasioned the transport of the monkeys from Africa to Asia. The farm was state-owned, used as an experimental station to test new crops and fertilizers, and it had been hoped that the produce grown here would feed the new arrivals, but it was still winter and nothing was growing at the moment. Instead, several truckloads of dates from the southeastern region of the country had just arrived. The monkeys smelled them as their transport pulled up to the new three-story concrete building that would be their final home. It only agitated them all the more, since they'd had neither food nor water since leaving the continent of their birth, but at least it gave them the hope of a meal, and a tasty one at that, as a last meal is supposed to be.\n\nTHE GULFSTREAM G-IV touched down at Benghazi exactly on its flight plan. It had actually been as pleasant a journey as was possible under the circumstances. Even the normally roiled air over the central Sahara had been calm, making for a smooth ride. Sister Jean Baptiste had remained unconscious for most of the flight, drifting into semi-awareness only a few times, and soon drifting back out again, actually more comfortable than the other four people aboard, whose protective garb prevented even a sip of water.\n\nThe doors never opened on the aircraft. Instead fuel trucks pulled up and their drivers dismounted to attach hoses to the caps in the long white wings. Dr. Moudi was still tensely awake. Sister Maria Magdalena was dozing. She was as old as the patient, and had scarcely slept in days, devoted as she was to her colleague. It was too bad, Moudi thought, frowning as he looked out the window. It was unjust. He didn't have it in his heart to hate these people anymore. He'd felt that way once. He'd thought all Westerners were enemies of his country, but these two were not. Their home country was essentially neutral toward his. They were not the animistic pagans of Africa, ignorant and uncaring of the true God. They'd devoted their lives to service in His name, and both had surprised him by showing respect for his personal prayers and devotions. More than anything, he respected their belief that faith was a path to progress rather than acceptance of preordained destiny, an idea not totally congruent with his Islamic beliefs, but not exactly contrary to them either. Maria Magdalena had a rosary in her hands\u2014disinfected\u2014which she used to organize her prayers to Mary, mother of Jesus the prophet, venerated as thoroughly in the Koran as in her own abbreviated scriptures, and as fine a model for women to follow as any woman who had ever lived ...\n\nMoudi snapped his head away from them to look outside. He couldn't allow such thoughts. He had a task, and here were the instruments of that task, one's fate assigned by Allah, and the other's chosen by herself\u2014and that was that. The task was without, not within, not one of his making, a fact made clear when the fuel trucks pulled away and the engines started up again. The flight crew was in a hurry, and so was he, the better to get the troublesome part of his mission behind, and the mechanical part begun. There was reason to rejoice. All those years among pagans, living in tropical heat, not a mosque within miles of his abode. Miserable, often tainted food, always wondering if it was clean or unclean, and never really being sure. That was behind him. What lay before was service to his God and his country.\n\nTwo aircraft, not one, taxied off to the main north-south runway, jostling as they did so on concrete slabs made uneven by the murderous desert heat of summer and the surprising cold of winter nights. The first of them was not Moudi's. That G-IV, outwardly identical in every way but a single digit's difference on the tail code, streaked down the runway and lifted off due north. His aircraft duplicated the takeoff roll, but as soon as the wheels were up, this G-IV turned right for a southeasterly heading toward Sudan, a lonely aircraft in a lonely desert night.\n\nThe first turned slightly west, and entered the normal international air corridor for the French coast. In due course, it would pass near the island of Malta, where a radar station existed to serve the needs of the airport at Valetta and also to perform traffic-control duties for the central Mediterranean. The crew of this aircraft were all air force types who customarily flew political and business luminaries from point to point, which was safe, well paid, and boring. Tonight would be different. The co-pilot had his eyes fixed jointly on his knee chart and the GPS navigation system. Two hundred miles short of Malta, at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, he took the nod from the pilot and flipped the radar transponder setting to 7711.\n\n\"VALETTA APPROACH, VALETTA Approach, this is November-Juliet-Alpha, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.\"\n\nThe controller at Valetta immediately noted the triple-bogie signature on his scope. It was a quiet watch at the traffic-control center, the normally sparse air traffic to monitor, and this night was as routine as any other\u2014he keyed his microphone at once as his other hand waved for his supervisor.\n\n\"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, are you declaring an emergency, sir?\"\n\n\"Valetta, Juliet-Alpha, affirmative. We are medical evacuation flight inbound Paris from Zaire. We just lost number-two engine and we have electrical problems, stand by\u2014\"\n\n\"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, standing by, sir.\" The scope showed the aircraft's altitude as 390, then 380, then 370. \"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta, I show you losing altitude.\"\n\nThe voice in his headphones changed. \"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Both engines out, both engines out. Attempting restart. This is Juliet-Alpha.\"\n\n\"Your direct penetration course Valetta is three-four-three, say again, direct vector Valetta three-four-three. We are standing by, sir.\"\n\nA terse, clipped \"Roger\" was all the controller got back. The altitude readout was 330 now.\n\n\"What's happening?\" the supervisor asked.\n\n\"He says both engines out, he's dropping rapidly.\" A computer screen showed the aircraft to be a Gulfstream, and the flight plan was confirmed.\n\n\"It glides well,\" the supervisor offered optimistically; 310, they both saw. The G-IV didn't glide all that well, however.\n\n\"Juliet-Alpha, Valetta.\"\n\nNothing.\n\n\"Juliet-Alpha, this is Valetta Approach.\"\n\n\"What else is\u2014\" The supervisor checked the screen himself. No other aircraft in the area, and all one could do was watch anyway.\n\nTHE BETTER TO simulate the in-flight emergency, the pilot throttled his engines back to idle. The tendency was to ham things up, but they wouldn't. In fact, they'd say nothing else at all. He pushed the yoke farther forward to increase his rate of descent, then turned to port as though angling toward Malta. That should make the tower people feel good, he thought, passing through 25,000 feet. It actually felt good. He'd been a fighter pilot for his country once, and missed the delightful feelings you got from yanking and banking an airplane around the sky. A descent of this speed would have his passengers white-faced and panicking. For the pilot it just felt like what flying was supposed to be.\n\n\"HE MUST BE very heavy,\" the supervisor said.\n\n\"Cleared into Paris De Gaulle.\" The controller shrugged and grimaced. \"Just topped off in Benghazi.\"\n\n\"Bad fuel?\" The answer was merely another shrug.\n\nIt was like watching death on television, all the more horrible that the alpha-numeric blip's altitude digits were clicking down like the symbols on a slot machine.\n\nThe supervisor lifted a phone. \"Call the Libyans. Ask if they can get a rescue aircraft up. We have an aircraft about to go down in the Gulf of Sidra.\"\n\n\"Valetta Approach, this is USS _Radford,_ do you copy, over.\"\n\n\" _Radford,_ Valetta.\"\n\n\"WE HAVE YOUR contact on radar. Looks like he's coming down hard.\" The voice was that of a junior-grade lieutenant who had the CIC duty this night. _Radford_ was an aging Spruance-class destroyer heading for Naples after an exercise with the Egyptian navy. Along the way she had orders to enter the Gulf of Sidra to proclaim freedom-of-navigation rights, an exercise which was almost as old as the ship herself. Once the source of considerable excitement, and two pitched air-sea battles in the 1980s, it was now boringly routine, else _Radford_ wouldn't be going it alone. Boring enough that the CIC crewmen were monitoring civilian radio freqs to relieve their torpor. \"Contact is eight-zero miles west of us. We are tracking.\"\n\n\"Can you respond to a rescue request?\"\n\n\"Valetta, I just woke the captain up. Give us a few to get organized here, but we can make a try for it, over.\"\n\n\"Dropping like a rock,\" the petty officer on the main scope reported. \"Better pull out soon, fella.\"\n\n\"Target is a Gulf-Four business jet. We show him one-six-thousand and descending rapidly,\" Valetta advised.\n\n\"Thank you, that's about what we have. We are standing by.\"\n\n\"What gives?\" the captain asked, dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt. The report didn't take long. \"Okay, get the rotor heads woke up.\" Next the commander lifted a growler phone. \"Bridge, CIC, captain speaking. All ahead full, come right to new course\u2014\"\n\n\"Two-seven-five, sir,\" the radar man advised. \"Target is two-seven-five and eighty-three miles.\"\n\n\"New course two-seven-five.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir. Coming right to two-seven-five, all ahead full, aye,\" the officer of the deck acknowledged. On the bridge the quartermaster of the watch pushed down the direct engine-control handles, dumping additional fuel into the big GE jet-turbines. _Radford_ shuddered a bit, then settled at the stern as she began to accelerate up from eighteen knots. The captain looked around the capacious combat information center. The crewmen were alert, a few shaking their heads to come fully awake. The radar-men were adjusting their instruments. On the main scope, the display changed, the better to lock in the descending aircraft.\n\n\"Let's go to general quarters,\" the skipper said next. Might as well get some good training time out of this. In thirty seconds, everyone aboard was startled into consciousness and running to stations.\n\nYOU HAVE TO be careful descending to the ocean surface at night. The pilot of the G-IV kept a close eye on his altitude and rate of descent. The lack of good visual references made it all too easy to slam into the surface, and while that might have made their evening's mission perfect, it wasn't supposed to be _that_ perfect. In another few seconds they'd drop off the Valetta radar scope, and then they could start pulling out of the dive. The only thing that concerned him now was the possible presence of a ship down there, but no wakes were visible before him in the light of a quarter moon.\n\n\"I have it,\" he announced when the aircraft dropped through five thousand feet. He eased back on the yoke. Valetta might note the change in descent rate from his transponder, if they were still getting a signal, but even if they did, they'd assume that after diving to get airflow into his engines, the better to achieve a restart, he was now trying to level out for a controlled landing on the calm sea.\n\n\"LOSING HIM,\" THE controller said. The display on the screen blinked a few times, came back, then went dark.\n\nThe supervisor nodded and keyed his microphone. \" _Radford,_ this is Valetta. Juliet-Alpha has dropped off our screen. Last altitude reading was six thousand and descending, course three-four-three.\"\n\n\"VALETTA, ROGER, WE still have him, now at four thousand, five hundred, rate of descent has slowed down some, course three-four-three,\" the CIC officer replied. Just six feet away from him, the captain was talking with the commander of _Radford'_ s air detachment. It would take more than twenty minutes to get the destroyer's single SH-60B Seahawk helicopter launched. The aircraft was now being pre-flighted prior to being pulled out onto the flight deck. The helicopter pilot turned to look at the radar display.\n\n\"Calm seas. If he has half a brain, somebody might just walk away from this. You try to splash down parallel to the ground swells and ride it out. Okay, we're on it, sir.\" With that, he left the CIC and headed aft.\n\n\"Losing him under the horizon,\" the radar man reported. \"Just passed through fifteen hundred. Looks like he's going in.\"\n\n\"Tell Valetta,\" the captain ordered.\n\nTHE G-IV LEVELED out at five hundred feet by the radar altimeter. It was as low as the pilot cared to risk. With that done, he powered the engines back up to cruising power and turned left, south, back toward Libya. He was fully alert now. Flying low was demanding under the best circumstances, and far more so over water at night, but his orders were clear, though their purpose was not. It went rapidly in any case. At just over three hundred knots, he had forty minutes to the military airfield, at which he'd refuel one more time for a flight out of the area.\n\n_RADFORD_ WENT TO flight quarters five minutes later, altering course slightly to put the wind over the deck from the proper direction. The Seahawk's tactical navigation system copied the needed data from the ship's CIC. It would search a circle of water fifteen miles in diameter in a procedure that would be tedious, time-consuming, and frantic. There were people in the water, and rendering assistance to those in need was the first and oldest law of the sea. As soon as the helicopter lifted off, the destroyer came back left and raced off with all four main engines turning full power, driving the ship at thirty-four knots. By this time the captain had radioed his situation to Naples, requesting additional assistance from any nearby fleet units\u2014there were no American ships in the immediate vicinity, but an Italian frigate was heading south for their area, and even the Libyan air force asked for information.\n\nTHE \"LOST\" G-IV landed just as the U.S. Navy helicopter reached the search area. The crew left the aircraft for refreshments while their business jet was fueled. As they watched, a Russian-made AN-10 \"Cub\" four-engine transport fired up its engines to participate in the search-and-rescue mission. The Libyans were cooperating now with such things, trying to rejoin the world community, and even their commanders didn't know very much indeed, hardly anything at all\u2014of what had gone on. Just a few phone calls had made the arrangements, and whoever had taken the call and cooperated knew only that two aircraft would be landing to fuel and move on. An hour later, they lifted off again for the three-hour flight to Damascus, Syria. It had been originally thought that they would fly right back to their home base in Switzerland, but the pilot had pointed out that two aircraft of the same ownership flying over the same spot at nearly the same time would cause questions. He turned the aircraft east during the climb-out.\n\nBelow to his left, in the Gulf of Sidra, they saw the flashing lights of aircraft, one of them a helicopter, they were surprised to note. People were burning fuel and spending time and all for nothing. That thought amused the pilot as he reached his cruising altitude and relaxed, letting the auto-pilot do the work for the remainder of a long day's flying.\n\n\"ARE WE THERE yet?\"\n\nMoudi turned his head. He'd just changed the IV bottle for their patient. Inside his plastic helmet his face itched from his growing beard. He saw that Sister Maria Magdalena had the same crawly, unwashed feeling he had. Her first action on waking was to move her hands to her face, stopped short by the clear plastic.\n\n\"No, Sister, but soon. Please, rest yourself. I can do this.\"\n\n\"No, no, you must be very tired, Dr. Moudi.\" She started to rise.\n\n\"I am younger and better rested,\" the physician replied with a raised hand. Next he replaced the morphine bottle with a fresh one. Jean Baptiste was, thankfully, still too heavily drugged to be a problem.\n\n\"What time is it?\"\n\n\"Time for you to rest. You will attend your friend when we arrive, but then other doctors will be able to relieve me. Please, conserve your strength. You will need it.\" Which was true enough.\n\nThe nun didn't reply. Accustomed to following the orders of doctors, she turned her head, probably whispered a prayer, and allowed her eyes to close. When he was sure that she was back asleep, he moved forward.\n\n\"How much longer?\"\n\n\"Forty minutes. We'll land a little early. The winds have been good to us,\" the co-pilot answered.\n\n\"So, before dawn?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What is her problem?\" the pilot asked, not turning, but sufficiently bored that he wanted to hear something new.\n\n\"You do not wish to know,\" Moudi assured him.\n\n\"She will die, this woman?\"\n\n\"Yes, and the aircraft must be completely disinfected before it is used again.\"\n\n\"That's what they told us.\" The pilot shrugged, not knowing how frightened he should be of what he was carrying. Moudi did. The plastic sheet under his patient would now contain a pool of infected blood. They'd have to be extremely careful unloading her.\n\nBADRAYN WAS GRATEFUL that he'd avoided alcohol. He was the most conscious man in the room. Ten hours, he thought, looking at his watch. Ten hours they'd talked and disputed like a bunch of old women in a market.\n\n\"He will agree to this?\" the Guards commander asked.\n\n\"It is not unreasonable in the least,\" Ali replied. Five senior mullahs would fly to Baghdad, offering themselves as hostage to\u2014if not the goodwill, then the good word of their leader. It actually worked out better than the assembled generals knew, not that they really cared. With that settled, the general officers looked at one another, and one by one they nodded.\n\n\"We accept,\" the same general said, speaking for the group. That hundreds of lesser officers would be left behind to face whatever music was in store for them was, after all, a small thing. The lengthy discussion hadn't touched on that subject very much.\n\n\"I require a telephone,\" Badrayn told them next. The intelligence chief led him to a side room. There had always been a direct line to Tehran. Even during hostilities there had been a communications link\u2014that one via microwave tower. The next one was a fiber-optic cable whose transmissions could not be intercepted. Under the watchful eyes of the Iraqi officer he punched the numbers he'd memorized several days earlier.\n\n\"This is Yousif. I have news,\" he told the voice which answered.\n\n\"Please wait,\" was the reply.\n\nDARYAEI DIDN'T ENJOY being awakened early any more than a normal person, the less so that he'd slept poorly over the last few days. When his bedside phone rang, he blinked his eyes for several rings before reaching to lift it.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"This is Yousif. It is agreed. Five friends are required.\"\n\n_All praise to Allah, for He is beneficent,_ Daryaei thought to himself. All the years of war and peace had come to fruition in this moment. No, no, that was premature. There was much yet to be done. But the most difficult thing _was_ done now.\n\n\"When shall we begin?\"\n\n\"As quickly as possible.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I will not forget.\" With that he came fully awake. This morning, the first in many years, he forgot his morning prayers. God would understand that His work must be done quickly.\n\nHOW WEARY SHE must have been, Moudi thought. Both nuns started to wakefulness when the aircraft touched down. There came the usual jolting as the aircraft slowed, and a watery sound announced the fact that Jean Baptiste had indeed bled out as he'd expected. So, he'd gotten her here alive at least. Her eyes were open, though confused as an infant's as she stared at the curving ceiling of the cabin. Maria Magdalena took a moment to look out the windows, but all she saw was an airport, and those appeared the same all over the world, particularly at night. In due course the aircraft stopped, and the door dropped open.\n\nAgain they would travel in a truck. Four people came into the aircraft, all of them dressed in protective plastic. Moudi loosened the straps on his patient, waving the other nun to stay in place. Carefully, the four army medics lifted the sturdy plastic sheet by the corners and moved toward the door. As they did so, Moudi saw something drip onto the flat-folded seat which had served their patient as a bed. He shook it off. The flight crew had their orders, and the orders had been repeated often enough. When the patient was safely on the truck, Moudi and Maria Magdalena walked down the steps as well. Both removed their headgear, allowing themselves to breathe fresh, cool air. He took a canteen from one of the armed party around the aircraft and offered it to her, as he fetched another for himself. Both drained a full liter of water before entering the truck. Both were disoriented by the long flight, she the more so for not knowing where she really was. Moudi saw the 707 which had arrived shortly before with the monkeys, though he didn't know that was the cargo.\n\n\"I've never seen Paris\u2014well, except flying through, all these years,\" she said, looking around before the back flap was dropped, cutting off the view.\n\n_A pity you never will._\n**16**\n\n**THE IRAQI TRANSFER**\n\n**A** WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING here,\" the pilot observed. The Seahawk was circling at a thousand feet, scanning the surface with a search radar acute enough to detect wreckage\u2014it was designed to spot a submarine's periscope\u2014but finding not so much as a floating bottle of Perrier. Both also wore low-light goggles, and they should have turned up a slick of jet fuel from the oily shine, but that also was negative.\n\n\"Must have hit pretty hard not to leave anything,\" the co-pilot replied over the intercom.\n\n\"Unless we're looking in the wrong spot.\" The pilot looked down at his tactical navigation system. They were in the right place. They were down to an hour's fuel. Time to start thinking about landing back on _Radford,_ which was now combing the search area herself. The searchlights looked theatrical in the pre-dawn darkness, like something out of a World War II movie. A Libyan Cub was circling around, too, trying to be helpful but mainly being a pain in the ass.\n\n\"Anything at all?\" the controller on _Radford_ asked.\n\n\"Negative. Nothing, say again nothing, down there that we can see. One hour's worth of gas here, over.\"\n\n\"Copy one hour gas,\" _Radford_ acknowledged.\n\n\"Sir, the target's last course was three-four-three, speed two-nine-zero knots, rate of descent three thousand foot per minute. If he ain't in this footprint, I don't know why,\" a chief operations specialist said, tapping the chart. The captain sipped at his coffee and shrugged. Topside, the fire-and-rescue party was standing by. Two swimmers were in wetsuits, with a boat crew standing by the launch. There was a lookout posted for every set of binoculars aboard, looking for strobe lights or anything else, and sonar was listening for the high-frequency ping of the aircraft's emergency locator. Those instruments were designed to survive a severe impact, were automatically activated when exposed to seawater, and had battery power to operate for several days. _Radford_ 's sonar was sensitive enough to detect the damned thing from thirty miles away, and they were right over the impact zone predicted by the radar crew. Neither the ship nor her crew had ever done a rescue like this, but it was something for which they regularly drilled, and every procedure had been executed as perfectly as the CO could wish.\n\n\"USS _Radford,_ USS _Radford,_ this is Valetta Approach, over.\"\n\nThe captain lifted the microphone. \"Valetta, this is _Radford._ \"\n\n\"Have you located anything, over?\"\n\n\"Negative, Valetta. Our helo's been all over the area, nothing to report yet.\" They'd already queried Malta for corrected data on the aircraft's last speed and heading, but it had dropped off the civilian radar even before departing the destroyer's more precise coverage. On both ends of the radio link, men sighed. They all knew how this would play out now. The search would continue for a day, no more, no less, and nothing would be found, and that was that. A telex had already gone to the manufacturer, informing them that one of their aircraft was lost at sea. Gulfstream representatives would fly to Bern to go over maintenance records and other printed data on the aircraft, hoping to garner a clue, and probably finding nothing, and this whole case would go into the \"unknown\" column in somebody's ledger book. But the game had to be played out, and, hell, it was still good training time for the crew of USS _Radford._ The crew would shrug it off. It wasn't anyone they knew, however desirable and uplifting a successful rescue would have been.\n\nIT WAS PROBABLY the smell that told her what was wrong. The drive from the airport had been brief. It was dark outside still, and when the truck stopped, both doctor and nurse were still suffering from the lengthy time in movement. They arrived, and the first business was to get Sister Jean Baptiste inside. Only then did both of them remove their plastic garb for the last time. Maria Magdalena smoothed her short hair and breathed heavily, finally taking the time to look around, then was surprised at what she saw. Moudi saw the confusion, and led her inside before she could comment on it.\n\nThat was when the smell hit them, a familiar African smell from the entry of the monkeys a few hours earlier, decidedly not something one would associate with Paris or a place as clean and orderly as the Pasteur Institute had to be. Next, Maria Magdalena looked around and realized that the signs on the walls were not in French. There was no way she could know what the situation was, there were merely grounds for confusion, to be followed by questions\u2014and then, just as well, it was time, before the questions could be asked. A soldier appeared and took her arm and led her away, too uncomprehending still to say anything. She merely looked over her shoulder at an unshaven man in surgical greens, a sad look on his face giving greater substance to her confusion.\n\n\"What is this? Who is she?\" the director of the project asked.\n\n\"It is a rule of their religion that they cannot travel alone. To protect their chastity,\" Moudi explained. \"Otherwise I could not have come here with our patient.\"\n\n\"She is still alive?\" He hadn't been there for the arrival.\n\nMoudi nodded. \"Yes, we should be able to keep her going another three days, maybe four,\" he thought.\n\n\"And the other?\"\n\nMoudi dodged: \"That is not for me to say.\"\n\n\"We could always have another\u2014\"\n\n\"No! That would be barbaric,\" Moudi protested. \"Such things are hateful to God.\"\n\n\"And what we plan to do is not?\" the director asked. Clearly Moudi had been in the bush for too long. But it wasn't worth fighting over. One fully infected Ebola patient was all they needed. \"Get cleaned up and we will go up to see her.\"\n\nMoudi headed off to the doctors' lounge on the second floor. The facility was actually more private than its Western counterparts, as people in this part of the world had higher standards of body modesty. The plastic suit, he saw with some surprise, had survived the trip without a single tear. He dumped it in a large plastic bin before heading into a shower whose hot water was supplemented with chemicals\u2014he hardly noticed the smell anymore\u2014and there he enjoyed five minutes of sanitary bliss. On the flight he'd wondered if he would ever be clean again. In the shower now, his mind asked a similar question, but more quietly. He emerged to don fresh greens fresh everything, in fact\u2014and to complete his normally fastidious routine. A medical orderly had placed a brand-new suit in the lounge for him, this one a blue American Racal fresh out of its box, which he put on before heading out into the corridor. The director, similarly dressed, was waiting for him, and together they walked down toward the suite of treatment rooms.\n\nThere were only four of them, behind sealed, guarded doors. The Iranian army ran this facility. The doctors were military physicians, and the orderlies all men with battlefield experience. Security was tight, as one would expect. Moudi and the director had cleared security on the first floor, however, and the guard at the post touched the buttons to open the doors into the air lock. These opened with a hiss of hydraulics to reveal a second set, and they could see that smoke from the soldier's cigarette was sucked into the secure area. Good. The air system was working properly. Both men had a strange prejudice against their own countrymen. It would have been preferable for this entire facility to have been built by foreign engineers\u2014Germans were popular in the Middle East for such things\u2014but Iraq had made that mistake to its sorrow. The orderly Germans kept plans of everything they built, as a result of which so many of their projects had been bombed to dust. And so while a lot of the building's hardware had been bought elsewhere, the facility had been constructed locally. Their very lives depended on the exact performance of every subsystem here, but that could not be helped now. The inner doors would not open unless the outer ones were locked tight. That worked. The director activated them, and they proceeded.\n\nSister Jean Baptiste was in the last room on the right. Three medical orderlies were in with her. They'd already cut off all her clothing, revealing a death in progress. The soldiers were repulsed by what they saw, her condition more terrible than any battlefield injury. Quickly, they cleaned off her body, then covered it, respectful of the woman's modesty as their culture insisted. The director looked at the morphine drip and immediately turned it back by a third.\n\n\"We want to keep her alive as long as possible,\" he explained.\n\n\"The pain from this\u2014\"\n\n\"Cannot be helped,\" he responded coldly. He thought to reproach Moudi, but stopped himself. He was a physician, too, and knew that it was hard to regard one's patient with harshness. Elderly Caucasian female, he saw, stuporous from the morphine, respiration too slow for his liking. The orderlies attached leads for the electrocardiograph, and he was surprised at how well her heart was working. Good. Blood pressure was low, as expected, and he ordered two units of whole blood to be hung on the IV tree. The more blood the better.\n\nThe orderlies were well drilled. Everything that had come in with the patient had already been bagged, then double-bagged. One of their number carried the bundle out of the room and off to the gas-fired incinerator which would leave behind nothing but sterilized ashes. The main issue here was management of the virus. The patient was their culture dish. Previously, such victims had had a few cc's of blood drawn for analysis, and the patient in due course would die, and the body was either burned or sprayed and buried in chemically treated ground. Not this time. He would have in his control, in due course, the largest quantity of the virus ever seen, and from that he would grow more, all virulent, all powerful. He turned.\n\n\"So, Moudi, how did she contract it?\"\n\n\"She was treating the Index Patient.\"\n\n\"The Negro boy?\" the director asked, standing in the corner.\n\nMoudi nodded. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"What did she do wrong?\"\n\n\"We never found out. I asked her when she was still lucid. She never gave the boy an injection, and Sister was always very careful with 'sharps.' She's an experienced nurse,\" Moudi reported mechanically. He really was too tired to do much of anything but report what he knew, and that, the director thought, was just fine. \"She worked with Ebola before, at Kikwit and other places. She taught procedures to staff.\"\n\n\"Aerosol transmission?\" the director asked. It was too much to hope for.\n\n\"CDC believes that this is the Ebola Mayinga sub-type. You will recall that this strain is named for a nurse who contracted the disease through unknown means.\"\n\nThat statement made the director look hard into Moudi's eyes. \"You're quite sure of what you said?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure of anything at the moment, but I also interviewed staff at the hospital, and all injections were given to the Index Patient by others, not Sister here. So, yes, this may be a case of aerosol transmission.\"\n\nIt was a classic case of good news and bad news. So little was known of Ebola Zaire. It _was_ known that the disease could be passed on by blood and other bodily fluids, even by sexual contact\u2014that was almost entirely theoretical, since an Ebola victim was hardly in a position to engage in such practices. It was further believed that the virus fared poorly out of a living host, quick to die in the open. For that reason it was not believed that the disease could be spread through the air in the manner of pneumonia or other common ailments. But at the same time every outbreak of the virus produced cases which could not be explained. The unfortunate nurse Mayinga had given her name to a strain of the disease which had reached out to claim her life through an unknown means. Had she lied about something, or forgotten something, or had she searched her mind and reported the truth, and thus memorialized a sub-type of Ebola which _did_ survive in the air long enough to be transmitted as readily as the common cold? If so, that would make the patient before them the carrier of a biological weapon of such power as to make the entire world shake.\n\nSuch a possibility also meant that they were quite literally dicing with Death himself. The smallest mistake could be lethal. Without conscious thought, the director looked upward at the air-conditioning vent. The building had been designed with that very contingency in mind. The incoming air was all clean, sucked in through a vent located at the end of two hundred meters of piping. The air exiting from the \"hot\" areas passed through a single plenum chamber before leaving the building. There it was subjected to blazingly powerful ultraviolet lights, since that frequency of radiation destroyed viruses with total reliability. The air filters were soaked with chemicals\u2014phenol was one of them to achieve the same end. Only then was it ejected to the outside, where other environmental factors also could be depended upon to deny the disease a chance to survive. The filters\u2014three separate banks of them\u2014were changed with religious precision every twelve hours. The UV lights, five times the number required for the task, were constantly monitored. The Hot Lab was kept at intentionally low ambient air pressure to prevent a leak, and that fact enabled the building to be evaluated for structural integrity. For the rest, he thought, well, that was why they'd all trained so carefully in suit-safety and sharps procedures.\n\nThe director, too, was a physician, trained in Paris and London, but it had been years since he'd treated a human patient. Mainly he'd devoted the last decade to molecular biology, most particularly to the study of viruses. He knew as much as any man about them, though that was little enough. He knew how to make them grow, for example, and before him now was a perfect medium, a human being converted by fate into a factory for the deadliest organism known to man. He'd never known her healthy, had never spoken with her, never seen her at work. That was good. Perhaps she had been an effective nurse, as Moudi said, but that was all in the past, and there was little point in getting overly attached to someone who would be dead in three days, four at the most. The longer the better, though, for the factory to do its work, using this human body for its raw material as it turned out its product, turning Allah's finest creation into His most deadly curse.\n\nFor the other question, he'd given the order while Moudi had been showering. Sister Maria Magdalena was taken to another cleanup area, issued clothing, and left to herself. There she had showered in privacy, wondering as she did so what was going on\u2014where was she? She was still too confused to be truly afraid, too disoriented to understand. Like Moudi, she showered long, and the procedure did clear her head somewhat, as she tried to form the right questions to pose. She'd find the doctor in a few minutes to ask what was happening. Yes, that's what she would do, Maria Magdalena thought as she dressed. There was a comfortable familiarity to the medical garb, and she still had her rosary, taken into the shower with her. It was a metal one rather than the formal rosary that went along with her religious habit, the same one given to her when she'd taken her final vows more than forty years before. But the metal one was more easily disinfected, and she'd taken the time in the shower to clean it. Outside, dressed, she decided that prayer would be the best preparation for her quest for information, and so she knelt, blessed herself, and began her prayers. She didn't hear the door open behind her.\n\nThe soldier from the security force had his orders. He could have done it a few minutes earlier, but to invade a woman's privacy while nude and bathing would have been a hateful act, and she wasn't going anywhere. It pleased him to see that she was praying, her back to him, plainly comfortable and well practiced with her devotions. This was proper. A condemned criminal was invariably given the chance to speak to Allah; to deny that chance was a grave sin. So much the better, he thought, raising his 9mm automatic. She was speaking to her God now ...\n\n... and now she was doing so more directly. He de-cocked the hammer, holstered his weapon, and called for the two orderlies outside to clean up the mess. He'd killed people before, had participated in firing parties for enemies of the state, and that was duty, sometimes distasteful, but duty nonetheless. This one made him shake his head. This time, he was sure, he'd sent a soul to Allah. How strange to feel good about an execution.\n\nTONY BRETANO HAD flown in on a TRW-owned business jet. It turned out that he hadn't yet decided to accept the offer from the Lockheed-Martin board, and it was pleasing to Ryan that George Winston's information was incorrect. It showed that he wasn't privy to this particular piece of insider information, at least.\n\n\"I've said 'no' before, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Twice.\" Ryan nodded. \"To head ARPA and to be Deputy Secretary for Technology. Your name came up for NRO also, but they never called you about it.\"\n\n\"So I heard,\" Bretano acknowledged. He was a short man, evidently with short-man complex, judging by his combativeness. He spoke with the accent of someone from Manhattan's Little Italy, despite many years on the West Coast, and that also told Ryan something. He liked to proclaim who and what he was, this despite a pair of degrees from MIT, where he might as easily have adopted a Cambridge accent.\n\n\"And you turned the jobs down because it's a great big clusterfuck over there across the river, right?\"\n\n\"Too much tail and not enough teeth. If I ran my business that way, the stockholders would lynch me. The Defense bureaucracy\u2014\"\n\n\"So fix it for me,\" Jack suggested.\n\n\"Can't be done.\"\n\n\"Don't give me that, Bretano. Anything man can make, he can unmake. If you don't think you have the stuff to get the job done, fine, tell me that, and you can head back to the coast.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute\u2014\"\n\nRyan cut him off again.\n\n\"No, you wait a minute. You saw what I said on TV, and I'm not going to repeat it. I need to clean up a few things, and I need the right people to do it, and if you don't have it, fine, I'll find somebody tough enough to\u2014\"\n\n\"Tough?\" Bretano nearly came off his seat. \" _Tough?_ I got news for you, _Mister_ President, my papa sold fruit from a cart on the corner. The world didn't give me shit!\" Then he stopped short when Ryan laughed, and thought a moment before going on. \"Not bad,\" he said more sedately, in the manner of the corporate chairman he was.\n\n\"George Winston says you're feisty. We haven't had a halfway decent SecDef in ten years. Good. When I'm wrong, I need people to tell me so. But I don't think I'm wrong about you.\"\n\n\"What do you want done?\"\n\n\"When I pick up the phone, I want things to happen. I want to know that if I have to send kids into harm's way, they're properly equipped, properly trained, and properly supported. I want people to be afraid of what we can do. It makes life a lot easier for the State Department,\" the President explained. \"When I was a little kid in east Baltimore and I saw a cop walking up Monument Street, I knew two things. I knew it wasn't a good idea to mess with him, and I also knew I could trust him to help me if I needed it.\"\n\n\"In other words, you want a product that we can deliver whenever we have to.\"\n\n\"Correct.\"\n\n\"We've drawn down a long way,\" Bretano said warily.\n\n\"I want you to work with a good team\u2014you pick it\u2014to draw up a force structure that meets our needs. Then I want you to rebuild the Pentagon to deliver it.\"\n\n\"How much time do I have?\"\n\n\"I'll give you two weeks on the first part.\"\n\n\"Not long enough.\"\n\n\"Don't give me that. We study things so much I'm surprised the paper all those things are printed on hasn't consumed every tree in the country. Hell, _I_ know what the threats are out there, remember? That used to be _my_ business. A month ago we were in a shooting war, sucking air because we were out of assets to use. We got lucky. I don't want to depend on luck anymore. I want you to clear out the bureaucracy, so if we need to do something it gets done. In fact, I want things done before we have to do them. If we do the job right, nobody'll be crazy enough to take us on. Question is, are you willing to take it on, Dr. Bretano?\"\n\n\"It'll be bloody.\"\n\n\"My wife's a doc,\" Jack told him.\n\n\"Half the job's getting good intelligence,\" Bretano pointed out.\n\n\"I know that, too. We've already started on CIA. George ought to be okay at Treasury. I'm checking out a list of judges to head Justice. I said it all on TV. I'm putting a team together. I want you on it. I made my way on my own, too. You think two people like us would have got this far anywhere else? Payback time, Bretano.\" Ryan leaned back, pleased with himself for the delivery.\n\nThere was no fighting it, the executive knew. \"When do I start?\"\n\nRyan checked his watch. \"Tomorrow morning suit you?\"\n\nTHE MAINTENANCE CREW showed up just after dawn. The aircraft had a military guard arrayed around it to keep the curious away, though this airport was already more secure than most of its international counterparts because of the Iranian air force presence. The crew foreman's clipboard told him what had to be done, and the long list of procedures had him curious, but little else. Aircraft of this type always got special treatment, because the people who flew in them deemed themselves the elect of God, or something even higher still. Not that it mattered. He had his procedures, and the advice for extra caution was hardly necessary. His people were always thorough. The aircraft maintenance sheet said that it was time to replace two cockpit instruments, and two replacements were ready, still in the manufacturer's boxes; those would have to be calibrated after installation. Two other members of his crew would refuel the aircraft and change the engine oil. The rest would work on the cabin under the foreman's supervision.\n\nThey'd scarcely begun when a captain showed up with fresh orders, predictably ones which contradicted the first set. The seats had to be replaced quickly. The G-IV would be taking off in a few hours for another flight. The officer didn't say where to, and the foreman didn't care to ask. He told his instrument mechanic to hurry with his assigned task. That was fairly easy in the G-IV with its modular instrument arrangement. A truck appeared with the seats that had been taken out two days earlier, and the cleanup crewmen assisted, manhandling them into place before they could properly begin. The foreman wondered why they'd been removed in the first place, but it wasn't his place to ask, and the answer would not have made much sense anyway. A pity everyone was in a hurry. It would have been easier to do the cleaning with so much open space. Instead, the fourteen-seat configuration was quickly reestablished, making the aircraft back into a mini-airliner, albeit a very comfortable one. The replacement seating had been dry-cleaned in the hangar as it always was, the ashtrays emptied and swabbed out. The caterer showed up next with food for the galley, and soon the aircraft was overcrowded with workers, each getting in the other's way, and in the resulting confusion, work was not done properly, but that was not the foreman's fault. Things just accelerated from there. The new flight crew showed up with their charts and flight plans. They found a mechanic lying half on the pilot's seat and half on the cabin floor, finishing his work on the digital engine instruments. Never patient with mechanics, the pilot merely stood and glared as the man did his work\u2014for his part, the mechanic didn't care at all what pilots thought. He attached the last connector, wriggled his way free, and ran a test program to make sure it was working properly, without so much as a look at the aviators who would be sure to curse him all the louder if he failed to install the electronics properly. He'd not yet left the area when the co-pilot took his place and ran the same test program again. Leaving the aircraft to get out of the way, the mechanic saw the reason for the rush.\n\nFive of them, standing there on the ramp, looking impatient and important as they stared at the white-painted executive jet, excited about something. The mechanic and everyone else on the crew knew them all by name, they appeared so often on TV. All of them nodded deference to the mullahs and speeded their efforts, as a result of which not everything got done. The cleanup crew was called off the aircraft, and limited their efforts to wiping a few surfaces down after getting all the seats reinstalled. The VIP passengers boarded at once, heading to the after portion of the cabin so that they could confer. The flight crew started up, and the Guards force and the trucks hardly had a chance to withdraw before the G-IV taxied off to the end of the runway.\n\nIN DAMASCUS, THE second member of that small executive fleet touched down, to discover that it had orders to return to Tehran at once. The crew swore, but did as they were told, limiting their time on the ground to a scant forty minutes before lifting off again in their turn for the short hop into Iran.\n\nIT WAS A busy time at PALM BOWL. Something was going on. You could tell that by what wasn't going on. Traffic on the encrypted channels used by senior Iraqi generals had peaked and zeroed, then peaked again, and zeroed again. At the moment it was back at zero. Back at KKMC in Saudi Arabia, the computers were grinding through solutions to the chip-controlled scrambling systems used on Iraqi tactical radios. It took time in every case. Encryption technology, once the province only of affluent countries, had, with the advent of personal computers, become readily available to the humblest citizen in America and other technically advanced countries, and an unexpected spin-off of that fact was the current availability of highly advanced communications-security apparatus to the humblest nations. Now Malaysia had codes nearly as hard to break as Russia's\u2014and so did Iraq, courtesy of Americans who worried about having the FBI read their fictitious e-mail adulteries. The encryption systems on tactical radios were necessarily somewhat simpler, and still breakable, but even that required a Cray computer that had been flown to the Saudi Kingdom years earlier. Another factor was that PALM BOWL was in Kuwait, and had indeed been fully financed by the local government, for which courtesy a return courtesy was required. They got to see the \"take\" from the NSA station. That was only fair, but the NSA and military-intelligence personnel hadn't been trained to consider what \"fair\" was. They had their orders, even so.\n\n\"They're talking about their families?\" a USAF sergeant asked himself aloud. That was new. PALM BOWL had tapped into intimate information on this network before, and learned more than a few things about the personal habits of senior Iraqi generals, along with some crude jokes which alternately did and did not translate well into English, but this was a first.\n\n\"Evac,\" the Chief Master Sergeant next to him observed. \"It's a bug-out. Lieutenant!\" he called. \"Something happening here.\"\n\nThe junior watch officer was working on something else. The radar at Kuwait International Airport was an unusually powerful one, installed since the war, and it operated in two modes, one for the aircraft controllers, and another for the Kuwaiti air force. It could see a good, long way. For the second time in as many days, there was a business jet heading toward Baghdad from Iran. The flight path was identical with the previous trip, and the transponder code was the same. The distance between the two capitals was a mere four hundred miles, just enough distance to make it worthwhile for a business jet to climb up to cruising altitude and so make efficient use of its fuel\u2014and, by the way, touch the fringe of their radar coverage. There would be a circling E-3B AWACS around, too, but that reported directly to KKMC and not to PALM BOWL. It was a matter of professional pride for the uniformed spooks at the ground station to beat the airborne people at their own game, all the more so since most of them were themselves USAF personnel. The lieutenant made a mental note of that information, then walked across the room to where the sergeants were.\n\n\"What is it, Chief?\" she asked.\n\nThe chief master sergeant scrolled his computer screen, showing the translated content of several \"cracked\" conversations, tapping his finger on the screen to call attention to the times. \"We have some folks getting the hell outa Dodge City, ma'am.\" A moment later, a Kuwaiti major slid alongside. Ismael Sabah was distantly related to the royal family, Dartmouth-educated, and rather liked by the American personnel. During the war he'd stayed behind and worked with a resistance group\u2014one of the smart ones. He'd laid low, gathered information on the movement and disposition of Iraqi military units, and gotten it out, mainly using cellular phones which were able to reach into a Saudi civilian network just across the border, and which the Iraqis had been unable to track. Along the way, he'd lost three close family members to the Iraqi terror. He'd learned all manner of lessons from the experience, the least of which was a hatred for the country to his north. A quiet, insightful man in his middle thirties now, he seemed to get smarter every day. Sabah leaned in to scan the translations on the computer screen.\n\n\"How do you say, the rats are leaving the ship?\"\n\n\"You think so, too, sir?\" the chief asked, before his lieutenant could.\n\n\"To _Iran?_ \" the American officer asked. \"I know it looks that way, but it doesn't make sense, does it?\"\n\nMajor Sabah grimaced. \"Sending their air force to Iran didn't make sense either, but the Iranians kept the fighter planes and let the pilots go home. You need to learn more of the local culture, Lieutenant.\"\n\n_I've learned that nothing here makes much sense,_ she couldn't say.\n\n\"What else do we have?\" Sabah asked the sergeant.\n\n\"They talk and go quiet and then they talk some more and go quiet. There's traffic under way now, but KKMC is still trying to crack it.\"\n\n\"Radar surveillance reports an inbound from Mchrabad to Baghdad, coded as a business jet.\"\n\n\"Oh? Same one as before?\" Sabah asked the American lieutenant.\n\n\"Yes, Major.\"\n\n\"What else? Anything?\" The chief master sergeant handled the answer.\n\n\"Major, that's probably what the computers are cooking on right now. Maybe in thirty minutes.\"\n\nSabah lit a cigarette. PALM BOWL was technically a Kuwaiti-owned facility, and smoking was permitted, to the relief of some and the outrage of others. His relatively junior rank did not prevent him from being a fairly senior member of his country's intelligence service, all the more so that he was modest and businesslike in manner, a useful contrast with his war record, on which he'd lectured in Britain and America.\n\n\"Opinions?\" he asked, already having formed his own.\n\n\"You said it, sir. They're bugging out,\" the chief master sergeant replied.\n\nMajor Sabah completed the thought. \"In hours or days, Iraq will not have a government, and Iran is assisting in the transition to anarchy.\"\n\n\"Not good,\" the chief breathed.\n\n\"The word 'catastrophe' comes to mind,\" Sabah observed mildly. He shook his head and smiled in a grim sort of way, earning additional admiration from the American spooks.\n\nTHE GULFSTREAM LANDED in calm air after the sixty-five-minute flight in from Tehran, timed by Badrayn's watch. As punctual as Swissair, he noted. Well, that was to be expected. As soon as it stopped, the door dropped open and the five passengers deplaned, to be met with elaborately false courtesy, which they returned in kind. A small convoy of Mercedes sedans spirited them off at once to regal accommodations awaiting them in the city center, where they would, of course, be murdered if things went poorly. Scarcely had their cars pulled off when two generals, their wives, their children, and one bodyguard each emerged from the VIP terminal and walked to the aircraft. They quickly boarded the G-IV. The co-pilot lifted the door back into place, and the engines started up, all in less than ten additional minutes by Badrayn's Seiko. Just that fast, it taxied off to make the return flight to Mehrabad International. It was something too obvious for the tower personnel to miss. That was the problem with security, Badrayn knew. You really couldn't keep some things secret, at least not something like this. Better to use a commercial flight, and treat the departing generals as normal passengers on a normal trip, but there were no regular flights between the two countries, and the generals would not have submitted themselves to such plebeian treatment in any case. And so the tower people would know that a special flight had come in and out under unusual circumstances, and so would the terminal employees who'd been required to fawn on the generals and their retinues. For one such flight, that might not be important. But it would matter for the next.\n\nPerhaps that was not overly important in the Great Scheme of Things. There was now no stopping the events he had helped to set in motion, but it offended Ali Badrayn in a professional sense. Better to keep everything he did secret. He shrugged as he walked back to the VIP terminal. No, it didn't matter, and through his actions he'd won the gratitude of a very powerful man in charge of a very powerful country, and for doing no more than talking, telling people what they already knew, and helping them to make a decision which could not have been avoided, whatever their efforts to the contrary. How curious life was.\n\n\"SAME ONE. JEEZ, he wasn't on the ground very long.\" Through a little effort, the radio traffic for that particular aircraft was isolated and playing in the earphones of an Army spec-6 language expert. Though the language of international aviation was English, this aircraft was speaking in Farsi. Probably thought a security measure, it merely highlighted that aircraft, tracked by radar and radio-direction finders. The voice traffic was wholly ordinary except for that, and for the fact that the aircraft hadn't even been on the ground long enough to refuel. That meant the whole thing was preplanned, which was hardly a surprise under the circumstances, but enlightening even so. Aloft, over the far northwest end of the Persian Gulf, an AWACS was now tracking the aircraft as well. Interest, cued by PALM BOWL, had perked up enough to move the E-3B off its normal patrol station, now escorted by four Saudi F-15 Eagle fighters. Iranian and Iraqi electronic-intelligence troops would take note of this and know that someone was interested in what was going on\u2014and wonder why, because _they_ didn't know. The game was ever a fascinating one, neither side knowing all it wished, and assuming the other side\u2014at the moment there were actually _three_ sides in the game\u2014knew too much, when in fact none of the three knew much of anything.\n\nABOARD THE G-IV, the language was Arabic. The two generals chatted quietly and nervously in the rear, their conversation masked by engine sounds. Their wives just sat, more nervous still, while the various children read books or napped. It was hardest on the bodyguards, who knew that if anything went wrong in Iran they could do nothing but die uselessly. One of these sat in the middle of the cabin and found that his seat was wet, with what he didn't know, but it was sticky and ... red? Tomato juice or something, probably. Annoyed, he went to the lavatory and washed his hands off, taking a towel back to wipe the seat off. He returned the towel to the lav before he reseated himself, then looked down at the mountains and wondered if he'd live to see another sunrise, not knowing that he'd just limited the number to twenty.\n\n\"HERE WE GO,\" the chief master sergeant said. \"That was the vice-chief of their air force, and the commanding general of Second Iraqi Army Corps\u2014 _plus_ families,\" he added. The decryption had required just over two hours from the time the scrambled signal had been copied down.\n\n\"Expendables?\" the USAF lieutenant asked. She was learning, the other spooks thought.\n\n\"Relatively so,\" Major Sabah agreed with a nod. \"We need to look for another aircraft lifting off from Mehrabad soon after this one lands.\"\n\n\"Where to, sir?\"\n\n\"Ah. Lieutenant, that is the question, is it not?\"\n\n\"Sudan,\" the chief thought. He'd been in-country for two years, and it was his second tour at PALM BOWL.\n\n\"I would not wager against you on that, Sergeant,\" Sabah observed with a wink. \"We should confirm that through the time cycle of the flights out of Baghdad.\" And he really couldn't make a judgment call on the entire exercise until then, though he already had flagged his own superiors that something unusual was afoot. Soon it would be time for the Americans to do the same.\n\nTWENTY MINUTES LATER, a preliminary report was on its way from KKMC to Fort Meade, Maryland, where the vagaries of time landed it in the watch center just after midnight. From the National Security Agency it was cross-decked by fiber-optic cable to Langley, Virginia, into Mercury, the CIA's communications-watch facility, then upstairs to the CIA's Operations Center, room 7-F-27 in the old headquarters building. At every stop, the information was handed over raw, sometimes with the local assessment, but more often without, or if it were, placed at the bottom so that the national intelligence officers in charge of the various watches could make their own assessments, and duplicate the work of others. Mostly this made sense, but in fast-breaking situations it very often did not. The problem was that one couldn't tell the difference in a crisis.\n\nThe national intelligence officer in charge of the watch at CIA was Ben Goodley, a fast-riser in the Directorate of Intelligence, recently awarded his NIO card, along with the worst duty schedule because of his lack of seniority. As usual, he showed his good sense by turning to his area-specialist and handing over the printout just as fast as he could read the pages and tear the sheets away from the staple.\n\n\"Meltdown,\" the area-specialist said by the end of page three. Which was not unexpected, but neither was it pleasant.\n\n\"Doubts?\"\n\n\"My boy\"\u2014the area specialist had twenty years on his boss\u2014\"they ain't going to Tehran to shop.\"\n\n\"SNIE?\" Goodley asked, meaning a Special National Intelligence Estimate, an important official document meant for unusual situations.\n\n\"I think so. The Iraqi government is coming down.\" It wasn't all that much of a surprise.\n\n\"Three days?\"\n\n\"If that much.\"\n\nGoodley stood. \"Okay, let's get it drafted.\"\n**17**\n\n**THE REVIVAL**\n\n**I** T IS TO BE EXPECTED THAT important things never happen at convenient times. Whether the birth of a baby or a national emergency, all such events seem to find the appropriate people asleep or otherwise indisposed. In this case, there was nothing to be done. Ben Goodley determined that CIA had no assets in place to confirm the signal-intelligence take, and interested though his country was in the region, there was no action that could be taken. The public news organizations hadn't twigged to this development, and as was often the case, CIA would play dumb until they did. In doing so, the Central Intelligence Agency would give greater substance to the public belief that the news organizations were as efficient as the government in finding things out. It wasn't always the case, but was more frequently so than Goodley would have preferred.\n\nThis SNIE would be a short one. The substance of it didn't require a great deal of pontificating, and the fact of it didn't take long to present. Goodley and his area specialist took half an hour to draft it. A computer printer generated the hard copy for in-house use, and a modem transmitted it via secure lines to interested government agencies. With that done, the men returned to the Operations Center.\n\nGOLOVKO WAS DOING his best to sleep. Aeroflot had just purchased ten new Boeing 777 jetliners for use in its international service to New York, Chicago, and Washington. They were far more comfortable, and reliable, than the Soviet airliners in which he'd traveled for so many years, but he was less than enthralled with the idea of flying so far on two engines, American-made or not, rather than the usual four. The seats, at least, were comfortable here in first class, and the vodka he'd had soon after takeoff was a premium Russian label. The combination had given him five and a half hours of sleep until the usual disorientation of travel clicked in, waking him up over Greenland, while his bodyguard next to him managed to remain in whatever dreamland his profession allowed. Somewhere aft, the stewardesses were probably sleeping as well as they could in their folding seats.\n\nIn previous times, Sergey Nikolayevich knew, it wouldn't have been like this. He would have flown on a special charter with full communications gear, and if something had taken place in the world, he'd be informed just as quickly as the transmission towers outside of Moscow could dot-dash the information out. All the more frustrating was the fact that something was happening. Something had to be. It was always this way, he thought in the noisy darkness. You traveled for an important meeting because you expected something to take place, and then it happened while you were on the move and, if not totally out of touch, then at least denied the chance to confer with your senior aides. Iraq _and_ China. Thankfully, there was a wide separation between the two hot spots. Then Golovko reminded himself that there was a wider separation still between Washington and Moscow, one which lasted about as long as an overnight flight on a twin-engine aircraft. With that pleasant realization, he turned slightly and told himself that he'd need all the sleep he could get.\n\nTHE HARD PART wasn't getting them out of Iraq. The hard part would be getting them from Iran to Sudan. It had been a long while since flights from Iran had been allowed to overfly the Saudi Kingdom, and the only exceptions were the pilgrimage flights into Mecca during the annual hajj. Instead, the business jet had to skirt around the Arabian Peninsula, then up the Red Sea before turning west to Khartoum, tripling both time and distance on the delivery leg of the process, and the next short flight couldn't begin until the first long one had arrived in Africa, _and_ the VIPs had arrived at their hastily prepared quarters, _and_ found them satisfactory, _and_ made a phone call with the inevitable code word confirming that all was well. It would have been so much easier had it been possible to load them all onto a single airliner for a single Baghdad-Tehran-Khartoum cycle, but that wasn't possible. Neither was it possible to take the far shorter air routing directly from Baghdad to Khartoum through the simple expedient of overflying Jordan. But that meant passing close to Israel, not a prospect to make the Iraqi generals happy. And then there was the secrecy issue, too, to make things inconvenient.\n\nA lesser man than Daryaei would have found it enraging. Instead he stood alone at the window of a closed portion of the main terminal, watching the G-IV stop alongside another, watching the doors open, watching the people scurry down one staircase and immediately onto another, while baggage handlers transferred what few belongings they'd brought along\u2014doubtless jewels and other items of high value and portability, the holy man thought without a smile. It took only a few minutes, and then the waiting aircraft started moving.\n\nIt was foolish, really, to have come down just to see something so pedestrian and tedious as this, but it represented fully two decades of effort, and man of God though he was, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei was still human enough to want to see the fruits of his labor. A lifetime had gone into this, and even so it was a task not even half done. And his time was running out ...\n\nAs it was for every man, Daryaei reminded himself, one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time, the same for all, but somehow it seemed to run faster when one was over seventy years of age. He looked down at his hands, the lines and scars of a lifetime there, some natural, some not. Two of his fingers had been broken while a guest of Savak, the Shah's Israeli-trained security service. He remembered the pain of it. He remembered even better the reckoning with the two men who'd interrogated him. Daryaei hadn't spoken a word. He'd just looked at them, stood there like a statue, as they were taken off to the firing squad. Not very much satisfaction in it, really. They'd been functionaries, doing a job assigned to them by others, without really caring who he was or why they were supposed to hate him. Another mullah had sat with each in turn to pray with them, because to deny anyone a chance to reconcile himself with Allah was a crime\u2014and what did it hurt? They died just as quickly that way as any other. One small step in a lifetime's journey, though theirs had ultimately been far shorter than his.\n\nAll the years spent for his single-minded purpose. Khomeini had taken his exile in France, but not Daryaei. He'd remained in the background, coordinating and directing for his leader. Picked up that one time, he'd been let go because he hadn't talked, nor had anyone close to him. That had been the Shah's mistake, one of many. The man had ultimately succumbed to indecision. Too liberal in his policies to make the Islamic clergy happy, too reactionary to please his Western sponsors, trying vainly to find a middle ground in a part of the world where a man had only two choices. Only one, really, Daryaei corrected himself as the Gulfstream jet lifted off. Iraq had tried the other path, away from the Word of God, and what had it profited them? Hussein had started his war with Iran, thinking the latter country weak and leaderless, and achieved nothing. Then he had struck out to the south and accomplished even less, all in the sole quest for temporal power.\n\nIt was different for Daryaei. He'd never lost sight of his goal, as Khomeini had not, and though the latter was dead, his task lived on. His objective lay behind him as he faced north, too far to see, but there even so, in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina ... and Jerusalem. He'd been to the first two, but not the third. As a boy, young and pious, he'd wanted to see the Rock of Abraham, but something, he didn't remember what, had prevented his merchant father from taking him there. Perhaps in time. He'd seen the city of the Prophet's birth, however, and of course made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj, more than once despite the political and religious differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia. He wished to do so again, to pray before the veiled Kaaba. But there was more to it than that, even.\n\nTitular chief of state, he wanted more. Not so much for himself. No, he had a larger task at the bottom of his humble life. Islam stretched from the extreme west of Africa to the extreme east of Asia, not counting the small pockets of the Faith's adherents in the Western Hemisphere, but the religion had not had a single leader and a single purpose for over a thousand years. It caused Daryaei pain that this should be so. There was but one God and one Word, and it must have saddened Allah that His Word was so tragically misunderstood. That was the only possible reason for the failure of all men to grasp the True Faith, and if he could change that, then he could change the world and bring all of mankind to God. But to do that\u2014\n\nThe world was the world, an imperfect instrument with imperfect rules for imperfect men, but Allah had made it so, and that was that. Worse, there were those who would oppose everything he did, Believers and un-Believers both, another cause more for sadness than for anger. Daryaei didn't hate the Saudis and the others on the far side of the Persian Gulf. They were not evil men. They were Believers, and despite their differences with him and his country, they'd never be denied access to Mecca. But their way wasn't _the_ Way, and that couldn't be helped. They'd grown fat and rich and corrupt, and that had to be changed. Daryaei had to control Mecca in order to reform Islam. To do that meant acquiring worldly power. It meant making enemies. But that wasn't new, and he'd just won his first major battle.\n\nIf only it didn't take so long. Daryaei often spoke of patience, but his was the work of a lifetime, and he was seventy-two, and he didn't want to die as his mentor had, with the work not even half done. When there came his moment to face Allah, he wanted to speak of accomplishment, of successfully fulfilling the noblest task any man could have, the reunification of the True Faith. And Daryaei was willing to do much for that goal. He himself didn't even know how much it was that he was willing to undertake, because not all the questions had yet been asked. And because his goal was so pure and bright, and his remaining time so short, he'd never asked himself how deeply he would cross into darkness in order to get there.\n\nWell. He turned away from the window and walked off with his driver to the car. The process had begun.\n\nPEOPLE IN THE intelligence community are not paid to believe in coincidences, and these particular people had maps and watches to predict them. The unrefueled range of the G-IV was well known, and the distances to be covered were easily computed. The circling AWACS aircraft established a track heading south from Tehran. Transponder settings told them the type of aircraft, along with speed, heading, and altitude, the last being 45,000 feet for maximum fuel efficiency. Timing was checked between one such flight and another. The course told them even more.\n\n\"Sudan,\" Major Sabah confirmed. It could have gone elsewhere. He almost thought that Brunei was a possible option, but, no, that would be too far from Switzerland, and Switzerland was where the money was\u2014had to be.\n\nWith that judgment, a satellite signal was sent to America, again to CIA, and this one occasioned waking a senior DO official up merely to say yes to a brief question. The answer was relayed back to PALM BOWL out of courtesy to the Kuwaitis. Then it was just a matter of waiting.\n\nTHE CIA HAD a small presence in Khartoum, really just a station chief and a couple of field officers and a secretary whom they shared with the NSA-run signals section. The station chief was a good one, however, who had recruited a number of local citizens to act as agents. It helped that the Sudanese government had little to hide, most of the time, too poor to be of interest as much of anything. In previous times the government had used its geographic location as a ploy to play East against West, garnering cash and weapons and favor out of the bargain, but the USSR had fallen and with it the Great Power Game which had sustained the Third World for two generations. Now the Sudanese had to depend on their own resources, which were slim, and the few crumbs tossed their way by whichever country had transitory need for what little they had. The country's leaders were Islamic, and in proclaiming it as loudly as they could lie\u2014they were no more devout than their Western counterparts they managed to get aid from Libya and Iran and others, in return for which they were expected to make life hard on the pagan animists in the southern part of the country, plus risk a rising Islamic political tide in their own capital, people who knew the real level of devotion of the country's leaders, and wanted to replace them with people who truly believed. On the whole the political leaders of that impoverished nation thought it was easier to be religious and rich than religious and poor.\n\nWhat that meant to the American embassy personnel was great unpredictability. Sometimes Khartoum was safe, when the fundamentalist troublemakers were under control. Sometimes it was not, because they were not. At the moment, the former seemed to be the case, and all the American foreign service officers had to worry about were the environmental conditions, which were vile enough to place this post in the bottom ten of global embassy assignments even without a terrorist threat. For the station chief it meant early advancement, though his wife and two children remained home in Virginia, because most of the official American residents didn't feel safe enough to set up their families here. Almost as bad, AIDS was becoming a threat sufficient to deny much in the way of nightlife to them, not to mention the question of getting safe blood in the event of an injury. The embassy had an Army doctor to handle those issues. He worried a lot.\n\nThe station chief shook that off. He'd jumped a whole pay grade on taking this assignment. He'd performed well, with one especially well-placed agent in the Sudanese foreign ministry to inform America about everything that country did. That his country didn't do all that much was not important to the desk-sitters at Langley. Better to know everything about nothing than nothing about everything.\n\nHe'd handle this one himself. Checking time and distance against his own maps, the station chief had an early lunch and drove off to the airport, only a few miles out of town. Security there was African-casual, and he found a shady spot outside. It was easier to cover the private terminal than the public one, especially with a 500mm lens on his camera. He even had time to make sure he had the aperture right. A buzz on his cellular phone from the NSA people at the embassy confirmed that the inbound aircraft was on final, a fact further verified by the arrival of some official-looking cars. He'd already memorized two photographs faxed to him from Langley. Two senior Iraqi generals, eh? he thought. Well, with the death of their boss, it wasn't all that surprising. The problem with the dictatorship business was that there wasn't much of a retirement plan for any of those near the top of it.\n\nThe white business jet floated in with the customary puffs of rubber smoke. He locked the camera on it and shot a few frames of high-speed black-and-white to make sure the motor drive worked. The only worry now was whether the bird would stop in such a way that he could cover the exit with the camera\u2014the bastards could always face the wrong way and spoil the whole thing for him. In that he had little choice. The Gulfstream stopped. The door dropped open, and the station chief started shooting frames. There was a middle-level official there to do the semi-official greeting. You could tell who was important by who got the hugs and kisses\u2014and from the sweep-around look they gave the area. _Click. Click._ He recognized one face for sure, and the other was a probable hit. The transfer took only a minute or two. The official cars pulled off, and the station chief didn't much care where they were heading at the moment. His agent in the foreign ministry would fill that one in. He shot the remaining eight frames of the aircraft, already being refueled, and decided to wait to see what it would do. Thirty minutes later, it lifted off yet again, and he headed back to the embassy. While one of his junior people handled the developing, he made a call to Langley.\n\n\"CONFIRMATION,\" GOODLEY SAID, approaching the end of his watch. \"Two Iraqi generals touched down at Khartoum fifty minutes ago. It's a bug-out.\"\n\n\"Makes the SNIE look pretty good, Ben,\" the area specialist observed, with a raised eyebrow. \"I hope they pay attention to the time stamp on it.\"\n\nThe national intelligence officer managed a smile. \"Yeah, well, the next one has to say what it means.\" The regular analysts, just starting to arrive for a day's work, would fiddle around with that.\n\n\"Nothing good.\" But you didn't need to be a spook to figure that one out.\n\n\"Photos coming in,\" a communications officer called.\n\nTHE FIRST CALL had to go to Tehran. Daryaei had told his ambassador to make things as clear as possible. Iran would assume responsibility for all expenses. The best possible accommodations were to be provided, with every level of comfort that the country could arrange. The overall operation would not cost a great amount of money, but the savages in that country were impressed by small sums, and ten million American dollars\u2014a pittance\u2014had already been transferred electronically to ensure that everything went well. A call from the Iranian ambassador confirmed that the first pickup had gone properly and that the aircraft was on its way back.\n\nGood. Now perhaps the Iraqis would begin to trust him. It would have been personally satisfying to have these swine eliminated, and that would not have been difficult to arrange under the circumstances, but he'd given his word, and besides, this wasn't about personal satisfaction. Even as he set the phone down, his air minister was calling in additional aircraft to expedite the transfer. This was better done quickly.\n\nBADRAYN WAS TRYING to make the same point. The word was going to get out, probably in one day, certainly no more than two. They were leaving people behind who were too senior to survive the coming upheaval, and too junior to merit the solicitude the Iranians were willing to show the generals. Those officers, colonels and brigadiers, would not be overly happy at the prospect of becoming the sacrificial goats necessary to assuage the awakening rage of the mob. This fact was becoming clear, but instead of making them more eager to leave, it emerged as a nonspecific fear that made all the other fears loom larger in the unknown darkness ahead. They stood on the deck of a burning ship off an unfriendly shore, and they didn't know how to swim all that well. But the ship was still afire. He had to make them grasp that.\n\nIT WAS ROUTINE enough by now that Ryan was becoming used to it, at home with it, even comfortable with the discreet knock on the door, more startling in its way than the clock-radio which had begun his days for twenty years. Instead his eyes opened at the muted knock, and he rose, put on his robe, walked the twenty feet from the bed to the door, and got his paper, along with a few sheets of his daily schedule. Next, he headed to the bathroom, and then to the sitting room adjoining the presidential bedroom, while his wife, a few minutes behind him, started her wake-up routine.\n\nJack missed the normality of merely reading the paper. Though it wasn't nearly as good\u2014usually\u2014as the intelligence documents waiting on the table for him, the _Washington Post_ also covered things whose interest was not strictly governmental, and so was fuel for his normal desire to keep abreast of things. But the first order of business was a SNIE, an urgent official document stapled inside a manila folder. Ryan rubbed his eyes before reading it.\n\n_Damn._ Well, it could have been worse, the President told himself. At least this time they hadn't awakened him to let him know about something he couldn't change. He checked the schedule. Okay, Scott Adler would be in to discuss that one, along with that Vasco guy. Good. Vasco seemed to know his stuff. Who else today? He skimmed down the page. Sergey Golovko? Was that today? Good luck for a change. Brief press conference to announce Tony Bretano's appointment as SecDef, with a list of possible questions to worry about, and instructions from Arnie\u2014ignore the Kealty question as much as possible. Let Kealty and his allegations die from apathy\u2014 _oh, yeah,_ that' _s a good one-liner!_ Jack coughed as he poured some coffee\u2014getting himself the right to do that alone had entailed direct orders; he hoped the Navy mess stewards didn't take it as a personal insult, but Ryan was used to doing _some_ things for himself. Under the current arrangement, the stewards set up breakfast in the room and let the Ryans serve themselves, while others hovered in the corridor outside.\n\n\"Morning, Jack.\" Cathy's head appeared in his view. He kissed her lips and smiled.\n\n\"Morning, honey.\"\n\n\"Is the world still out there?\" she asked, getting her own coffee. That told the President that the First Lady wasn't operating today. She never touched coffee on a surgery day, saying that she couldn't risk the slight tremor that caffeine might impart to her hands when she was carving up somebody's eyeball. The image always made him shudder, even though she mainly operated with lasers now.\n\n\"Looks like the Iraqi government is falling.\"\n\nA female snort. \"Didn't that happen last week?\"\n\n\"That was act one. This is act three.\" _Or maybe act four._ He wondered what act five would be.\n\n\"Important?\" Jack also heard the toast go down.\n\n\"Could be. What's your day like?\"\n\n\"Clinic and follow-ups, budget meeting with Bernie.\"\n\n\"Hmph.\" Jack next started looking at the _Early Bird,_ a collection of government-edited clippings from the major papers. Cathy appeared again in his peripheral vision, as she looked at his office schedule.\n\n\"Golovko ... ? Didn't I meet him in Moscow\u2014he's the one who joked about having a gun on you!\"\n\n\"Wasn't a joke,\" Ryan told his wife. \"It really happened.\"\n\n\"Come on!\"\n\n\"He said later that the gun wasn't loaded.\" Jack wondered if that was true. Probably, he thought.\n\n\"But he was telling the truth?\" she asked incredulously.\n\nThe President looked up and smiled. Amazing, he thought, that it seemed funny now. \"He was very pissed with me at the time. That's when I helped with the defection of the KGB chairman.\"\n\nShe lifted her morning paper. \"Jack, I never know when you're kidding or not.\"\n\nJack thought about that. The First Lady was, technically, a private citizen. Certainly in Cathy's case, since she was not a political wife but a working physician who had about as much interest in politics as she did in group sex. She was also, therefore, _not_ technically the holder of a security clearance, but it was assumed that the President would confide in his spouse just as any normal person did. Besides, it made sense. Her judgment was every bit as good as his, and unschooled as she might be in international relations, every day she made decisions that directly affected the lives of real people in the most immediate way. If she goofed, they went blind.\n\n\"Cathy, I think it's about time to tell you some of the things I've been stuck with over the years, but for now, yeah, Golovko had a pistol to my head once, on one of the runways at Moscow airport, because I helped two very senior Russians skip the country. One of them was his boss at KGB.\"\n\nThat made her look up, and wonder again about the nightmares that had plagued her husband for months, a few years ago. \"So where is he now?\"\n\n\"In the D.C. area, I forget exactly where, Virginia horse country, I think.\" Jack vaguely remembered hearing that the daughter, Katryn Gerasimov, was engaged to some old-money fox-killer out around Winchester, having changed from one form of nobility to another. Well, the stipend CIA had paid to the family was enough to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle.\n\nCathy was used to her husband's jokes. Like most men, he would tell amusing little stories whose humor was in their exaggeration\u2014and besides, his ancestry was Irish\u2014but now she marked the fact that his revelation was as casual as a report of the baseball scores. He didn't see her stare at the back of his head. _Yes_ , she decided, as the kids entered the room, _I'd like to hear the stories._\n\n\"Daddy!\" Katie said, seeing Jack first. \"Mommy!\" With that the morning routine stopped, or rather changed over to something more immediately important than world news and events. Katie was already in her school clothes, like most small children, able to awaken in a good mood.\n\n\"Hi,\" Sally said, coming next, clearly vexed.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" Cathy asked her elder daughter.\n\n\"All those people out there! You can't even walk around here without people seeing you everywhere!\" she grumped, getting a glass of juice off the tray. And she didn't feel like Frosted Flakes this morning. She'd rather have Just Right. But that box was all the way down on the ground floor in the capacious White House kitchen. \"It's like living in a hotel, but not as private.\"\n\n\"What exam is it today?\" Cathy asked, reading the signals for what they were.\n\n\"Math,\" Sally admitted.\n\n\"Did you study?\"\n\n\"Yes, _Mom.\"_\n\nJack ignored that problem, and instead fixed cereal for Katie, who liked Frosted Flakes. Little Jack arrived next and turned on the TV, selecting the Cartoon Channel for his morning ration of Road Runner and Coyote, which Katie also approved.\n\nOutside, the day was starting for everyone else. Ryan's personal NIO was putting the finishing touches on his dreaded morning intelligence brief. This President was far too hard to please. The chief usher was in early to supervise some maintenance on the State Floor. In the President's bedroom, the valet was setting out clothes for POTUS and FLOTUS. Cars were waiting to take the children off to school. Maryland State Police officers were already checking out the route to Annapolis. The Marines were warming up their helicopter for the trip to Baltimore\u2014 _that_ problem had still not been worked out. The entire machine was already in motion.\n\nGUS LORENZ WAS in his office early because of a telephone call from Africa returning his call from Atlanta. Where, he demanded, were his monkeys? His purchasing agent explained from eight time zones away that, because CDC had fumbled getting the money cleared, somebody else had bought up the shipment, and that a new batch had to be obtained from out in the bush. A week, perhaps, he told the American doctor.\n\nLorenz grumbled. He'd hoped to start his new study this week. He made a note on his desk pad, wondering who the hell would have bought so many African greens just like that. Was Rousseau starting something new in Paris? He'd call the guy a little later, after his morning staff conference. The good news, he saw, was that\u2014oh, that was too bad. The second patient, killed in a plane crash, the telex from WHO said. But there were no new cases reported, and it had been long enough from Number Two that they could say now, rather than hope, that this micro-outbreak was over\u2014probably, maybe, hopefully, Lorenz added with his thoughts. That was good news. It looked like the Ebola Zaire Mayinga strain under the electron microscope, and that was the worst of the sub-types of the virus. It could still be that the host was out there, waiting to infect someone else, but the Ebola host was the most bafflingly elusive quarry since malaria\u2014\"bad air,\" in Italian, which was what people had thought caused it. Maybe, he thought, the host was some rodent that had gotten run over by a truck. He shrugged. It was possible, after all.\n\nWith the reduction in her morphine drip, Patient Two was semiconscious at the Hasanabad facility. She was aware enough to know, and to feel, the pain, but not to understand what was really happening. The pain would have taken over in any case, all the worse because Jean Baptiste knew what every twinge meant. The abdominal pain was the worst, as the disease was destroying her gastrointestinal tract throughout its ten-meter length, quite literally _eating_ the delicate tissues designed to convert food into nutrients, and dumping infected blood down toward her rectum.\n\nIt felt as though her entire body were being twisted and crushed and burned at the same time. She needed to move, to do _something_ to make things different, just to make the pain come briefly from a new direction, and so briefly relieve that which tormented her, but when she tried to move she found that every limb was restrained with Velcrocoated straps. The insult of that was somehow worse than the pain, but when she tried to object it only caused violent nausea that started her gagging. At that indication the blue-coated spaceman rotated the bed\u2014what sort of bed was this? she wondered\u2014which allowed her to vomit into a bucket, and what she saw there was black, dead blood. It distracted her from the pain for a second, but all the distraction told her was that she could not survive, that the disease had gone too far, that her body was dying, and then Sister Jean Baptiste started praying for death, because this could have only one end, and the pain was such that the end needed to come soon, lest she lose her faith in the process. The prospect sprang out into her diminished consciousness like a jack-in-the-box. But this childhood toy had horns and hooves. She needed a priest at hand. She needed where was Maria Magdalena? Was she doomed to die alone? The dying nurse looked at the space suits, hoping to find familiar eyes behind the plastic shields, but though the eyes she saw were sympathetic, they were not familiar. Nor was their language, as two of them came close.\n\nThe medic was very careful drawing blood. First he checked to see that the arm was fully restrained, unable to move more than a centimeter. Then he had a comrade hold the arm in his two strong hands, careful himself to keep those hands well away from the needle. With a nod of agreement, the first selected the proper vein and stabbed the needle in. He was lucky this time. The needle went right in on the first try. To the back of the needle-holder he attached a 5cc vacuum tube, which took in blood that was darker than the usual purple. When it was full, he withdrew it, and set it carefully in a plastic box, to be followed by three more. He withdrew the needle next, and placed gauze on the puncture, which wouldn't stop bleeding. The medic released the arm, noting that their brief grasp had discolored the skin badly. A cover was placed on the box, and the first medic walked it out of the room, while the second went to the corner to spray his gloves and arms with dilute iodine. They'd been fully briefed on how dangerous this duty was, but in the way of normal men they hadn't really believed it, despite all the repetitions and the films and the slides. Both men believed it now, every cursed word, and to a man the army medics wished and prayed for Death to come and spirit this woman off to whatever destination Allah had planned for her. Watching her body disintegrate was bad enough. The thought of following her in this horrid journey was enough to quail the stoutest heart. It was like nothing they'd ever seen. This woman was _melting_ from the inside out. As the medic finished cleaning the outside of his suit, he turned, startled by her cry of pain, as if from an infant tortured by the hands of the devil himself. Eyes open, mouth wide, a rasping, liquid cry escaped into the air and penetrated the plastic of his suit.\n\nThe blood samples were handled quickly, but under the greatest care, in the Hot Lab up the corridor. Moudi and the project director were in their offices. It wasn't strictly necessary for them to be in the lab for this, and it was easier for them to view the tests without the hindrance of the protective garb.\n\n\"So fast, so remarkably fast.\" The director shook his head in awe.\n\nMoudi nodded. \"Yes, it overwhelms the immune system like a tidal wave.\" The display on the computer screen came off an electron microscope, which showed the field full of the shepherd-staff-configured viruses. A few antibodies were visible on the screen, but they might as well have been individual sheep in a pride of lions for all the good they might do. The blood cells were being attacked and destroyed. Had they been able to take tissue samples of the major organs, they could have found that the spleen was turning into something as hard as a rubber ball, full of little crystals which were like transport capsules for the Ebola virus particles. It would, in fact, have been interesting, and maybe even scientifically useful, to do laparoscopic examination of the abdomen, to see exactly what the disease did to a human patient over measured time intervals, but there was the danger of accelerating the patient's death, which they didn't want to risk.\n\nSamples of her vomitus showed tissue fragments from her upper GI, and those were interesting because they were not merely torn loose, but dead. Large sections of the patient's still-living body had already died, come loose from the living remainder, and been ejected as the corporate organism fought vainly to survive. The infected blood would be centrifuged and deep-frozen for later use. Every drop that came out was useful, and because of that, more blood was dripped into her via rubber IV tubes. A routine heart-enzyme test showed that her heart, unlike that of the Index Patient, was still normal and healthy.\n\n\"Strange how the disease varies in its mode of attack,\" the director observed, reading the printout.\n\nMoudi just looked away, imagining that he could hear her cries of anguish through the multiple concrete walls of the building. It would have been an act of supreme mercy to walk into the room and push in 20ccs of potassium, or just to turn the morphine drip all the way open and so kill her with respiratory arrest.\n\n\"Do you suppose the African boy had a preexisting cardiovascular problem?\" his boss asked.\n\n\"Perhaps. It wasn't diagnosed if he did.\"\n\n\"Liver function is failing rapidly, as expected.\" The director scanned the blood-chemistry data slowly. All the numbers were well out of normal ranges, except the heart indicators, and those but barely. \"It's a textbook case, Moudi.\"\n\n\"Indeed it is.\"\n\n\"This strain of the virus is even more robust than I'd imagined.\" He looked up. \"You've done well.\"\n\n_Oh, yes._\n\n\". . . ANTHONY BRETANO has two doctorates from MIT, Mathematics and Optical Physics. He has an impressive personal record in industry and engineering, and I expect him to be a uniquely effective Secretary of Defense,\" Ryan said, concluding his statement. \"Questions?\"\n\n\"Sir, Vice President Kealty\u2014\"\n\n\" _Former_ Vice President,\" Ryan interrupted. \"He resigned. Let's get that right.\"\n\n\"But he says he didn't,\" the _Chicago Tribune_ pointed out.\n\n\"If he said he had a talk with Elvis, would you believe that?\" Ryan asked, hoping that he'd delivered the prepared line properly. He scanned faces for the reaction. Again, all forty-eight seats were filled, with twenty more reporters standing. Jack's scornful remark made them all blink, and a few even allowed themselves a smile. \"Go ahead, ask your question.\"\n\n\" _Mister_ Kealty has requested a judicial commission to ascertain the facts of the matter. How do you respond to that?\"\n\n\"The question is being investigated by the FBI, which is the government's principal investigative agency. Whatever the facts are, they have to be established before anyone can make a judgment. But I think we all know what is going to happen. Ed Kealty resigned, and you all know why. Out of respect for the constitutional process, I have directed the FBI to look into the matter, but my own legal advice is absolutely clear. Mr. Kealty can talk all he wants. I have a job to do here. Next question?\" Jack asked confidently.\n\n\"Mr. President\"\u2014Ryan nodded fractionally at hearing the _Miami Herald_ say that\u2014\"In your speech the other night, you said that you're not a politician, but you are in a political job. The American people want to know your views on a lot of issues.\"\n\n\"That makes good sense. Like what?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Abortion, for one,\" the _Herald_ reporter, a very liberated woman, asked. \"What exactly is your position?\"\n\n\"I don't like it,\" Ryan answered, speaking the truth before thinking about it. \"I'm Catholic, as you probably know, and on that moral issue I think my Church is correct. However, _Roe v. Wade_ is the law of the land until such time as the Supreme Court might reconsider the ruling, and the President isn't allowed to ignore the rulings of the federal courts. That puts me in a somewhat uncomfortable position, but as President I have to execute my office in accordance with the law. I swore an oath to do that.\" _Not bad, Jack_ , Ryan thought.\n\n\"So you do not support the right of a woman to choose?\" the _Herald_ asked, smelling the blood.\n\n\"Choose what?\" Ryan asked, still comfortable. \"You know, somebody once tried to kill my wife while she was pregnant with our son, and soon thereafter I watched my oldest child lying near death in a hospital. I think life is a very precious commodity. I've learned that lesson the hard way. I'd hope that people would think about that before deciding to have an abortion.\"\n\n\"That doesn't answer the question, sir.\"\n\n\"I can't stop people from doing it. Like it or not, it's the law. The President may not break the law.\" Wasn't this obvious?\n\n\"But in your appointments for the Supreme Court, will you use abortion as a litmus-test issue? Would you like to have _Roe v. Wade_ overturned?\" Ryan scarcely noticed the cameras changing focus, and the reporters concentrating on their scribbled notes.\n\n\"I don't like _Roe v. Wade_ , as I said. I think it was a mistake. I'll tell you why. The Supreme Court interjected itself into what should have been a legislative matter. The Constitution doesn't address this issue, and on issues where the Constitution is mute, we have state and federal legislatures to write our laws.\" This civics lesson was going well. \"Now, for the nominations I have to make to the Supreme Court, I will look for the best judges I can find. That's something we will be addressing shortly. The Constitution is sort of the Bible for the United States of America, and the justices of the Supreme Court are the\u2014theologians, I guess, who decide what it means. They aren't supposed to write a new one. They're supposed to figure out what it means. When a change in the Constitution is needed, we have a mechanism to change it, which we've used more than twenty times.\"\n\n\"So, you will select only strict-constructionists who are likely to overturn _Roe._ \"\n\nIt was like hitting a wall. Ryan paused noticeably before answering. \"I hope to pick the best judges I can find. I will not interrogate them on single issues.\"\n\nThe _Boston Globe_ leaped to his feet. \"Mr. President, what about where the life of the mother is in danger, the Catholic Church\u2014\"\n\n\"The answer to that is obvious. The life of the mother is the paramount consideration.\"\n\n\"But the Church used to say\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't speak for the Catholic Church. As I said earlier, I cannot violate the law.\"\n\n\"But you want the law changed,\" the _Globe_ pointed out.\n\n\"Yes, I think it would be better for everybody if the matter was returned to the state legislatures. In that way the people's elected representatives can write the laws in accordance with the will of their electorates.\"\n\n\"But then,\" the _San Francisco Examiner_ pointed out, \"we'd have a hodgepodge of laws across the country, and in some areas abortion would be illegal.\"\n\n\"Only if the electorate wants it that way. That's how democracy works.\"\n\n\"But what about poor women?\"\n\n\"It's not for me to say,\" Ryan replied, feeling the beginnings of anger, and wondering how he'd ever gotten into this mess.\n\n\"So, do you support a constitutional amendment against abortion?\" the _Atlanta Constitution_ demanded.\n\n\"No, I don't think that's a constitutional question. I think it is properly a legislative question.\"\n\n\"So,\" the _New York Times_ summarized, \"you are personally against abortion on moral and religious grounds, but you will not interfere with women's rights; you plan to appoint conservative justices to the new Supreme Court who will probably overturn _Roe_ , but you don't support a constitutional amendment to outlaw freedom of choice.\" The reporter smiled. \"Exactly what _do_ you believe in on this issue, sir?\"\n\nRyan shook his head, pursed his lips, and bit off his first version of an answer to the impertinence. \"I thought I just made that clear. Shall we go on to something else?\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President!\" a senior reporter called loudly, so advised by the frantic gestures of Arnold van Damm. Ryan left the podium puzzled, walked around the corner, then another until he was out of sight. The chief of staff grabbed the President by the arm, and nearly pushed him against the wall, and this time the Secret Service didn't move a muscle.\n\n\"Way to go, Jack, you just pissed off the entire country!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" the President replied, thinking, _Huh?_\n\n\"I mean you don't pump gas in your car when you're smoking a cigarette, God damn it! Jesus! Don't you know what you just did?\" Arnie could see that he didn't. \"The pro-choice people now think you're going to take their rights away. The pro-life people think you don't care about their issue. It was just perfect, Jack. You alienated the whole fucking country in five minutes!\" Van Damm stormed off, leaving his President outside the Cabinet Room, afraid that he'd really lose his temper if he said anything more.\n\n\"What's he talking about?\" Ryan asked. The Secret Service agents around him didn't say anything. It wasn't their place\u2014politics\u2014and besides, they were split on the issue as much as the country was.\n\nIT WAS LIKE taking candy from a baby. And after the initial shock, the baby cried pretty loud.\n\n\"BUFFALO Six, this is GUIDON Six, over.\" Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Masterman\u2014\"Duke\" to his peers\u2014stood atop \"Mad Max II,\" his M1A2 Abrams command tank, microphone in one hand, and binoculars in the other. Before him, spread over about ten square miles in the Negev Training Area, were the Merkava tanks and infantry carriers of the Israeli army's 7th Armored Brigade, all with yellow lights blinking and purple smoke rising from their turrets. The smoke was an Israeli innovation. When tanks were hit in battle, they burned, and when the MILES gear receptors recorded a laser \"hit\" they set off the marker. But the idea had been for the Israelis to count coup that way on the OpFor. Only four of Masterman's tanks and six of his M3 Bradley Scout tracks were similarly \"dead.\"\n\n\"GUIDON, BUFFALO,\" came the return call from Colonel Sean Magruder, commander of the 10th \"Buffalo\" Armored Cavalry Regiment.\n\n\"I think this one's about concluded, Colonel, over. The fire sack is full.\"\n\n\"Roger that, Duke. Come on down for the AAR. We're going to have one really pissed Israeli in a few minutes.\" Just as well the radio link was encrypted.\n\n\"On the way, sir.\" Masterman stepped down off the turret as his HMMVW pulled up. His tank crew started back up, heading down toward the squadron laager.\n\nIt didn't get much better than this. Masterman felt like a football player allowed to play every day. He commanded 1st \"Guidon\" Squadron of the 10th ACR. It would have been called a battalion, but the Cav was different, to the yellow facings on their shoulder straps and the red-and-white unit guidons, and if you weren't Cav, you weren't shit.\n\n\"Kickin' some more ass, sir?\" his driver asked as his boss lit up a Cuban cigar.\n\n\"Lambs to the slaughter, Perkins.\" Masterman sipped some water from a plastic bottle. A hundred feet over his head, some Israeli F-16 fighters roared past, showing outrage at what had happened below them. Probably a few of them had run afoul of the administrative SAM \"launches.\" Masterman had been especially careful today siting his Stinger-Avenger vehicles, and sure enough, they'd come in just as he'd expected. Tough.\n\nThe local \"Star Wars Room\" was a virtual twin to the original one at Fort Irwin. A somewhat smaller main display screen, and nicer seats, and you could smoke in this one. He entered the building, shaking the dust off his chocolate-chip cammies and striding like Patton into Bastogne. The Israelis were waiting.\n\nIntellectually, they had to know how useful the exercise had been to them. Emotionally, it was something else. The Israeli 7th Armored was as proud an outfit as any in the world. Practically alone, it had stopped an entire Syrian tank corps on the Golan Heights back in 1973, and their current CO had been a lieutenant then who'd taken command of a headless company and fought brilliantly. Not accustomed to failure, he'd just seen the brigade in which he'd practically grown up annihilated, in thirty brutal minutes.\n\n\"General,\" Masterman said, extending his hand to the chastened brigadier. The Israeli hesitated before taking it.\n\n\"Not personal, sir, just business,\" said Lieutenant Colonel Nick Sarto, who commanded the 2nd \"Bighorn\" Squadron, and who had just played hammer to Masterman's anvil. With the Israeli 7th in the middle.\n\n\"Gentlemen, shall we begin?\" called the senior observer-controller. As a sop to the Israeli Army, the OC team here was a fifty-fifty mix of experienced American and Israeli officers, and it was hard to determine which group was the more embarrassed.\n\nThere was, first, a quick-time replay of the theoretical engagement. The Israeli vehicles in blue marched into the shallow valley to meet GUIDON'S reconnaissance screen, which leapfrogged back rapidly, but not toward the prepared defense positions of the rest of the squadron, instead leading them away at an angle. Thinking it a trap, the Israeli 7th had maneuvered west, so as to loop around and envelop their enemies, only to walk into a solid wall of dug-in tanks, and then to have Bighorn come in from the east much faster than expected\u2014so fast that Doug Mills's 3rd \"Dakota\" Squadron, the regimental reserve, never had a chance to come into play for the pursuit phase. It was the same old lesson. The Israeli commander had guessed at his enemy's positions instead of sending his reconnaissance screen to find out.\n\nThe Israeli brigadier watched the replay, and it seemed that he deflated like a balloon. The Americans didn't laugh. They'd all been there before, though it was far nicer to be on the winning side.\n\n\"Your reconnaissance screen wasn't far forward enough, Benny,\" the senior Israeli OC said diplomatically.\n\n\"Arabs don't fight that way!\" Benjamin Eitan replied.\n\n\"They're supposed to, sir,\" Masterman pointed out. \"This is standard Soviet doctrine, and that's who trained'em all, remember. Pull 'em into the fire sack and slam the back door. Hell, General, that's exactly what you did with your Centurions back in '73. I read your book on the engagement,\" the American added. It defused the mood at once. One of the other things the American officers had to exercise here was diplomacy. General Eitan looked sideways and managed something approaching a smile.\n\n\"I did, didn't I?\"\n\n\"Sure as hell. You clobbered that Syrian regiment in forty minutes, as I recall.\"\n\n\"And you, at 73 Easting?\" Eitan responded, grateful for the compliment, even though he knew it was a deliberate effort to calm his temper.\n\nIt was no accident that Magruder, Masterman, Sarto, and Mills were here. All four had participated in a vicious combat action in the Persian Gulf War, where three troops of the 2nd \"Dragoon\" Cav had stumbled into an elite Iraqi brigade force under very adverse weather conditions\u2014too bad for the regimental aircraft to participate, even to warn of the enemy's presence\u2014and wiped it out over a period of a few hours. The Israelis knew it, and therefore couldn't complain that the Americans were book soldiers playing theoretical games.\n\nNor was the result of this \"battle\" unusual. Eitan was new, only a month in command, and he would learn, as other Israeli officers had learned, that the American training model was more unforgiving than real combat. It was a hard lesson for the Israelis, so hard that nobody really learned it until he'd visited the Negev Training Area, the NTA, and had his head handed to him. If the Israelis had a weakness, it was pride, Colonel Magruder knew. The OpFor's job here, as in California, was to strip that away. A commander's pride got his soldiers dead.\n\n\"Okay,\" the senior American OC said. \"What can we learn from this?\"\n\n_Don't fuck with the Buffalo Soldiers,_ all three squadron commanders thought, but didn't say. Marion Diggs had reestablished the regiment's gritty reputation in his command tour before moving on to command Fort Irwin. Though the word was still percolating down through the Israeli Defense Forces, the troopers of the 10th had adopted a confident strut when they went out shopping, and for all the grief they caused the Israeli military on the playing fields of the NTA, they were immensely popular. The 10th ACR, along with two squadrons of F-16 fighters, was America's commitment to Israeli security, all the more so that they trained the Jewish state's ground forces to a level of readiness they hadn't known since the Israeli army had nearly lost its soul in the hills and towns of Lebanon. Eitan would learn, and learn fast. By the end of the training rotation he'd give them trouble. Maybe, the three squadron commanders thought. They weren't in the business of giving freebies.\n\n\"I REMEMBER WHEN you told me how delightful democracy was, Mr. President,\" Golovko said chirpily, as he walked through the door.\n\n\"You must have caught me on TV this morning,\" Ryan managed to reply.\n\n\"I remember when such comments would have gotten such people shot.\" Behind the Russian, Andrea Price heard the comment and wondered how this guy had the chutzpah to twist the President's tail.\n\n\"Well, we don't do that here,\" Jack responded, taking his seat. \"That will be all for now, Andrea. Sergey and I are old friends.\" This was to be a private conversation, not even a secretary present to take notes, though hidden microphones would copy down every word for later transcription. The Russian knew that. The American knew that he knew that, but the symbolism of no other people in the room was a compliment to the visitor, another fact which the American knew the Russian to know as well. Jack wondered how many sets of interlocking wheels he was supposed to keep track of, just for an informal meeting with a foreign representative.\n\nWhen the door closed behind the agent, Golovko spoke on. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Hell, we are old friends, aren't we?\"\n\nGolovko smiled. \"What a superb enemy you were.\"\n\n\"And now . . . ?\"\n\n\"How is your family adjusting?\"\n\n\"About as well as I am,\" Jack admitted, then shifted gears. \"You had three hours at the embassy to get caught up.\"\n\nGolovko nodded; as usual, Ryan was well briefed for this meeting, covert though it was. The Russian embassy was only a few blocks up Sixteenth Street, and he'd walked down to the White House, a simple way to avoid notice in a town where official people traveled in official cars. \"I didn't expect things in Iraq to fall so quickly.\"\n\n\"Neither did we. But that's not why you came over, Sergey Nikolay'ch. China?\"\n\n\"I presume your satellite photos are as clear as ours on the issue. Their military is at an unusually high state of readiness.\"\n\n\"Our people are divided on that,\" Ryan said. \"They might be building up to put some more pressure on Taiwan. They've been building their navy up.\"\n\n\"Their navy isn't ready for combat operations yet. Their army still is, and their rocket forces. Neither is going to cross the Formosa Strait, Mr. President.\"\n\nThat made the reason for his trip clear enough. Jack paused to look out the window at the Washington Monument, surrounded as it was by a circle of flagpoles, rather like a garland. What was it George had said about avoiding entangling foreign alliances? But it had been a far simpler world back then, two months to cross the Atlantic, not six or seven hours....\n\n\"If you are asking what I think you are, yes\u2014or should I say, no.\"\n\n\"Could you clarify?\"\n\n\"America would not look kindly upon an attack by China against Russia. Such a conflict would have very adverse effects upon world stability, and would also impede your progress to full democratic status. America wants to see Russia become a prosperous democracy. We were enemies long enough. We should be friends, and America wants her friends safe and peaceful.\"\n\n\"They hate us, they covet what we have,\" Golovko went on, not satisfied with America's statement.\n\n\"Sergey, the time for nations to steal what they cannot earn is past. It's history, and not to be repeated.\"\n\n\"And if they move on us anyway?\"\n\n\"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Sergey,\" the President answered. \"The idea is to prevent such actions. If it appears that they are really thinking about a move, we'll counsel them to reconsider. We are keeping an eye on things.\"\n\n\"I don't think you understand them.\" Another push, Ryan saw. They really were worked up about this.\n\n\"Do you think anyone does? Do you think they themselves know what they want?\" The two intelligence officers\u2014that was how both men would always think of themselves\u2014shared a look of professional amusement.\n\n\"That is the problem,\" Golovko admitted. \"I try to explain to my President that it is difficult to predict the behavior of undecided people. They have capabilities, but so do we, and the calculus of the matter appears different from both sides\u2014and then the personalities come into play. Ivan Emmetovich, those are old men with old ideas. Their personalities are the major consideration here.\"\n\n\"And history, and culture, and economics, and trade\u2014and I haven't had the chance to look them in the eye yet. I'm weak on that part of the world,\" Jack reminded his guest. \"I spent most of my life trying to figure you people out.\"\n\n\"So you will stand with us?\"\n\nRyan shook his head. \"It's too early and too speculative to go that far. We will do everything in our power, however, to prevent a possible conflict between the PRC and Russia. If it happens, you'll go nuclear. I know it. You know it. I think they know it.\"\n\n\"They don't believe it.\"\n\n\"Sergey, nobody's that stupid.\" Ryan made a mental note to discuss this with Scott Adler, who knew the region far better than he did. It was time to close the book on that issue for the moment, and open another. \"Iraq. What are your people saying?\"\n\nGolovko grimaced. \"We had a network go down three months ago. Twenty people, all shot or hanged\u2014after interrogation, that is. What we have left doesn't tell us much, but it appears that senior generals are preparing to do something.\"\n\n\"Two of them just showed up in the Sudan this morning,\" Ryan told him. It wasn't often he caught Golovko by surprise.\n\n\"So fast?\"\n\nRyan nodded, handing over the photographs from the Khartoum airport. \"Yep.\"\n\nGolovko scanned them, not knowing the faces, but not really needing to. Information passed along at this level was never, ever faked. Even with enemies and former enemies, a nation had to keep its word on some things. He handed the photos back. \"Iran, then. We have some people there, but we've heard nothing in the last few days. It's a dangerous environment in which to operate, as you know. We expect that Daryaei had something to do with the assassination, but we have no evidence to support it.\" He paused. \"The implications of this are serious.\"\n\n\"You're telling me that you can't do anything about it, either, then?\"\n\n\"No, Ivan Emmetovich, we cannot. We have no influence there, and neither do you.\"\n**18**\n\n**LAST PLANE OUT**\n\n**T** HE NEXT SHUTTLE FLIGHT got off early. The shell corporation's third and last business jet was recalled from Europe, and with a change of flight crews, was ready three hours early. That meant that the first of the G-IVs could fly to Baghdad, pick up two more generals, and return. Badrayn felt rather like a travel agent or dispatcher in addition to his unusual role as diplomat. He just hoped it wouldn't take too long. It might be dangerous to be a passenger on the last plane, because the last one\u2014well, there was no telling _which_ would be the last, was there? The generals didn't grasp that yet. The last one might well be pursued by tracer fire, leaving people on the ground to face the music, and Badrayn knew he would be with them ... in a region where selectivity wasn't an integral part of the justice system. Well, he shrugged, life had risks, and he was being well paid. They'd told him, at least, that there would be another pickup flight in less than three hours, and a fourth five hours beyond that one. But the sum total would be ten or eleven, and that would go for another three days on the current schedule, and three days could be a lifetime.\n\nBeyond the confines of this airport, the Iraqi army was still in the streets, but there would be a change now. Those conscript soldiers, and even the elite guardsmen, would have been out there for several days, settled into a dull and purposeless routine, and _that_ was something destructive to soldiers. They'd be shuffling around on their feet, smoking cigarettes, starting to ask questions amongst themselves: _What exactly is going on?_ Initially there would be no answers. Their sergeants would tell them to mind their duties, so advised by their company officers, so advised in turn from battalion staffs, and so on all the way up the line ... until somewhere that same question would be repeated, and there would _be_ no one farther up the chain of command to tell the questioner to sit down and shut up. At that point the question would rebound back _down_ the line. It was something an army could sense, as a thorn in the foot instantly told the brain that something was amiss. And if the thorn was dirty, then an infection would follow that could spread and kill the entire body. The generals were supposed to know such things\u2014but, no, they didn't anymore. Something very foolish happened to generals, especially in this part of the world. They forgot. It was that simple. They just forgot that the villas and the servants and the cars were not a divine bequest, but a temporal convenience that could disappear as quickly as morning fog. They were still more afraid of Daryaei than of their own people, and that was foolish. It would have merely been annoying to Badrayn, except that his life now depended on theirs.\n\nTHE SEAT ON the right side of the cabin was still damp. This time it was occupied by the youngest daughter of the general who had, until minutes before, commanded the 4th Guards Division (Motorized), and who was now conferring with an air force colleague. The child felt the lingering damp on her hand and, puzzled, licked at it, until her mother saw it and sent her off to wash her hands. Then the mother complained to the Iranian steward who rode in the back with this group. He had the child moved, and made a note to have the seat cleaned or replaced at Mehrabad. There was less tension now. The first pair of officers had reported in from Khartoum that all was well. A Sudanese army platoon guarded the large house which they shared, and all appeared to be secure. The generals had already determined that they would make a sizable \"contribution\" to that country's treasury, to ensure their own safety for the time\u2014hopefully brief\u2014they'd spend in that country before moving on. Their intelligence chief, still back in Baghdad, was on the phone now, calling around to various contacts in various countries to find secure permanent housing for them. Switzerland? They wondered. A cold country in terms of both climate and culture, but a safe one, and for those with money to invest, an anonymous one.\n\n\"WHO OWNS THREE G-IVs over there?\"\n\n\"The registration of the aircraft is Swiss, Lieutenant,\" Major Sabah reported, having just learned the fact. From the photos shot at Khartoum he'd gotten the tail number, and that was easily checked on a computer database. He flipped the page to determine the ownership. \"A corporately owned jet. They have three of them, and a few smaller turboprops for flying around Europe. We'll have to check further to learn more about the corporation.\" But somebody would be working on that, and they'd find the obvious. Probably some import-export concern, more a letter-drop than anything else, perhaps with a small storefront that conducted real, if negligible, business for appearance's sake. The corporation would have a medium-sized account in a commercial bank; it would have a law firm to make sure that it scrupulously obeyed every local rule; its employees would be fully briefed on how to behave\u2014Switzerland was a law-abiding country\u2014and how to keep everything in order; the corporation would vanish into the woodwork, because the Swiss didn't trouble people who deposited money in their banks and kept within their laws. Those who broke the rules severely could find the country as inhospitable as the one the generals were leaving. That was well understood, too.\n\nThe pity of it, Sabah thought, was that he knew the first two faces, and probably also knew the faces now in transit. It would have been pleasing to get them before the bar of justice, especially a Kuwaiti bar. They'd been more junior, most of them, when Iraq had invaded his country. They would have participated in the pillaging. Major Sabah remembered prowling the streets, trying to look as inconspicuous and harmless as possible while other Kuwaiti subjects had resisted more actively, which had been brave, but dangerous. Most of them had been caught and killed, along with family members, and though the survivors were now famous and well rewarded, those few had operated on information he'd gathered. The major didn't mind. His family was wealthy enough, and he _liked_ being a spook. Even more, he was damned sure his country would never be surprised like that again. He would see to that personally.\n\nIn any case, the generals who were leaving were less a concern than the ones who would replace them. That had the major worried.\n\n\"WELL, I'M AFRAID it was a pretty weak performance in all respects for Mr. Ryan,\" Ed Kealty said on the noon news-interview show. \"Dr. Bretano is, first of all, an industry official who has long since opted out of public service. I was there when his name came up before, and I was there when he refused to consider a high government position\u2014so that he could stay where he was to make money, I suppose. He's a talented man, evidently a good engineer,\" Kealty allowed with a tolerant smile, \"but a Secretary of Defense, no.\" A shake of the head emphasized it.\n\n\"What did you think of President Ryan's position on abortion, sir?\" Barry asked on CNN.\n\n\"Barry, that's the problem. He's _not_ really the President,\" Kealty replied in a mild, businesslike tone. \"And we need to correct that. His lack of understanding for the public showed clearly in that contradictory and ill-considered statement in the Press Room. _Roe v. Wade_ is the law of the land. That's all he had to say. It's not necessary that the President should like the laws, but he has to enforce them. Of course, for any public official not to understand how the American people think on this issue doesn't so much show insensitivity to the rights of women to choose, as simple incompetence. All Ryan had to do was listen to his briefers on what to say, but he didn't even do that. He's a loose cannon,\" Kealty concluded. \"We don't need one of those in the White House.\"\n\n\"But your claim\u2014\" A raised hand stopped the correspondent cold.\n\n\"It's not a claim, Barry. It's a fact. I never resigned. I never actually left the vice-presidency. Because of that, when Roger Durling died, I became President. What we have to do right now, and Mr. Ryan will do this if he cares about his country, is to form a judicial panel to examine the constitutional issues and decide who the President really is. If Ryan does not do that\u2014well, he's putting himself before the good of the country. Now, I must add that I fully believe that Jack Ryan is acting in good conscience. He's an honorable man, and in the past he's shown himself to be a courageous man. Unfortunately, right now, he's confused, as we saw at the press conference this morning.\"\n\n\"A pat of butter would not melt in his mouth, Jack,\" van Damm observed, turning the sound down. \"You see how good he is at this?\"\n\nRyan nearly came out of his chair. \"God damn it, Arnie, that's what I said! I must have said it three or four times\u2014that's the law, and I can't break the law. _That's what I said!\"_\n\n\"Remember what I told you about keeping your temper under control?\" The chief of staff waited for Ryan's color to go back down. He turned the sound back up.\n\n\"What's most disturbing, however,\" Kealty was saying now, \"is what Ryan said about his appointments to the Supreme Court. It's pretty clear he wants to turn the clock back on a lot of things. Litmus tests on issues like abortion, appointing only strict-constructionists. It makes you wonder if he wants to overturn affirmative action, and heaven knows what else. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation where the sitting President will exercise immense power, particularly in the courts. And Ryan just doesn't know how, Barry. He doesn't, and what we learned today about what he wants to do\u2014well, it's just plain frightening, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Am I on a different planet, Arnie?\" Jack demanded. \"I didn't say 'litmus test.' A reporter did. I didn't say 'strict-constructionist.' A reporter did.\"\n\n\"Jack, it isn't what you say. It's what people hear.\"\n\n\"Just how much damage do you think President Ryan could do, then?\" Barry asked on the TV. Arnie shook his head in admiration. Kealty had seduced him right out of his shorts, right on live television, and Barry had responded perfectly, framing the question to show that he still called Ryan the President, but then asking the question in a form that would shake people's faith in him. It was no wonder that Ed was so good with the ladies, was it? And the average viewer would never grasp the subtlety with which he'd pulled Barry's drawers off. What a pro.\n\n\"In a situation like this, with the government decapitated? It could take years to fix what he might break,\" Kealty said with the grave concern of a trusted family physician. \"Not because he's an evil person. He certainly is not. But because he simply doesn't know how to execute the office of President of the United States. He just doesn't, Barry.\"\n\n\"We'll be back after these messages from our cable operators,\" Barry told the camera. Arnie had heard enough, and didn't need to see the commercials. He lifted the controller and clicked the TV off.\n\n\"Mr. President, I wasn't worried before, but I'm worried now.\" He paused for a moment. \"Tomorrow you will see some editorials in a few of the major papers agreeing that a judicial commission is necessary, and you'll have no choice but to let it go forward.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute. The law doesn't say that\u2014\"\n\n\"The law doesn't say anything, remember? And even if it did, there's no Supreme Court to decide. We're in a democracy, Jack. The will of the people will decide who's the President. The will of the people will be swayed by what the media says, and you'll never be as good at working the media as Ed is.\"\n\n\"Look, Arnie, _he_ resigned. _I_ got confirmed by the Congress as VP, Roger got killed, and _I_ became President, and that's the fucking law! And _I_ have to abide by the law. I swore an oath to do that, and I will. I never wanted this fucking job, but I've never run away from anything in my life, either, and I'll be damned if I'll run away from this!\" There was one other thing. Ryan despised Edward Kealty. Didn't like his political views, didn't like his Harvard hauteur, didn't like his private life, damned sure didn't like his treatment of women. \"You know what he is, Arnie?\" Ryan snarled.\n\n\"Yes, I do. He's a pimp, a hustler, a con man. He has no convictions at all. He's never even practiced law, but he's helped write thousands of them. He's not a doctor, but he's established national health policy. He's been a professional politician his whole life, always on the public payroll. He's never generated a product or a service in the private sector of the economy, but he's spent his life deciding how high the taxes should be, and how that money should be spent. The only black people he ever met as a kid were the maids who picked up his bedroom, but he's a champion of minority rights. He's a hypocrite. He's a charlatan. And he's going to win unless you get your shit together, Mr. President,\" Arnie said, pouring dry ice over Ryan's fiery temper. \"Because he knows how to play the game, and you don't.\"\n\nTHE PATIENT, THE records said, had taken a trip to the Far East back in October, and in Bangkok had indulged himself in the sexual services for which that country was well known. Pierre Alexandre, then a captain assigned to a military hospital in the tropical country, had once indulged in them himself. His conscience didn't trouble him about it. He'd been young and foolish, as people of that age were supposed to be. But that had been before AIDS. He'd been the guy to tell the patient, male, Caucasian, thirty-six, that he had HIV antibodies in his blood, that he could not have unprotected sex with his wife, and that his wife should have her blood tested at once. Oh, she was pregnant? Immediately, right away. Tomorrow if possible.\n\nAlexandre felt rather like a judge. It wasn't the first time he'd delivered news like this, and damned sure it wouldn't be the last, but at least when a judge pronounced a sentence of death it was for a serious crime, and there was an appeals process. This poor bastard was guilty of nothing more than being a man twelve time-zones from home, probably drunk and lonely. Maybe he'd had an argument over the phone with his wife. Maybe she'd been pregnant then, and he wasn't getting any. Maybe it had just been the exotic locations, and Alex remembered well how seductive those childlike Thai girls could be, and what the hell, who'd ever know? Now a lot of people would, and there was no appeals process. That could change, Dr. Alexandre thought. He had just told the patient that. You couldn't take their hope away. That's what oncologists had told their patients for two generations. That hope was real, was true, wasn't it? There were some smart people working on this one\u2014Alexandre was one of them\u2014and the breakthrough could happen tomorrow, for all he knew. Or it could take a hundred years. The patient, on the form card, had ten.\n\n\"You don't look very happy.\"\n\nHe looked up. \"Dr. Ryan.\"\n\n\"Dr. Alexandre, and I think you know Roy.\" She gestured at the table with her tray. The dining area was packed today. \"Mind?\"\n\nHe got halfway to his feet. \"Please.\"\n\n\"Bad day?\"\n\n\"E-Strain case,\" was all he had to say.\n\n\"HIV, Thailand? Over here now?\"\n\n\"You _do_ read _M &M.\"_ He managed a smile.\n\n\"I have to keep up with my residents. E-Strain? You're sure?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"I reran the test myself. He got it in Thailand, business trip, he said. Pregnant wife,\" Alex added. Professor Ryan grimaced at the addition.\n\n\"Not good.\"\n\n\"AIDS?\" Roy Altman asked. The rest of SURGEON'S detail was spread around the room. They would have preferred that she ate in her office, but Dr. Ryan had explained that this was one of the ways in which Hopkins docs kept up with one another, and was for her a regular routine. Today it was infectious disease. Tomorrow pediatrics.\n\n\"E-Strain,\" Alexandre explained with a nod. \"America is mostly B-Strain. Same thing in Africa.\"\n\n\"What's the difference?\"\n\nCathy answered. \"B-Strain is pretty hard to get. It mainly requires direct contact of blood products. That happens with IV drug users who share needles or through sexual contact, but mainly it's still homosexuals who have tissue lesions either from tearing or more conventional venereal diseases.\"\n\n\"You forgot bad luck, but that's only one percent or so.\" Alexandre picked up the thread. \"It's starting to look as though E-Strain\u2014that cropped up in Thailand\u2014well, that it makes the heterosexual jump a lot more easily than B. It's evidently a heartier version of our old friend.\"\n\n\"Has CDC quantified that yet?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"No, they need a few more months, least that's what I heard a couple weeks ago.\"\n\n\"How bad?\" Altman asked. Working with SURGEON was turning into an educational experience.\n\n\"Ralph Forster went over five years ago to see how bad things were. Know the story, Alex?\"\n\n\"Not all of it, just the bottom line.\"\n\n\"Ralph flew over on a government ticket, official trip and all that, and first thing happens off the plane, the Thai official meets him at customs, walks him to the car and says, 'Want some girls for tonight?' That's when he knew there was a real problem.\"\n\n\"I believe it,\" Alex said, remembering when he would have smiled and nodded. This time he managed not to shudder. \"The numbers are grim. Mr. Altman, right now, nearly a third of the kids inducted into the Thai army are HIV positive. Mainly E-Strain.\" The implications of that number were unmistakable.\n\n\"A third? A _third_ of them?\"\n\n\"Up from twenty-five percent when Ralph flew over. That's a hard number, okay?\"\n\n\"But that means\u2014\"\n\n\"It might mean in fifty years, no more Thailand,\" Cathy announced in a matter-of-fact voice that masked her inner horror. \"When I was going to school here, I thought oncology was the place to be for the supersmart ones\"\u2014she pointed for Altman's benefit\u2014\"Marty, Bert, Curt, and Louise, those guys in the corner over there. I didn't think I could take it, take the stress, so I cut up eyeballs and fix 'em. I was wrong. We're going to beat cancer. But these damned viruses, I don't know.\"\n\n\"The solution, Cathy, is in understanding the precise interactions between the gene strings in the virus and the host cell, and it shouldn't be all _that_ hard. Viruses are such tiny little sunzabitches. They can only do so many things, not like the interaction of the entire human genome at conception. Once we figure that one out, we can defeat all the little bastards.\" Alexandre, like most research docs, was an optimist.\n\n\"So, researching the human cell?\" Altman asked, interested in learning this. Alexandre shook his head.\n\n\"A lot smaller than that. We're into the genome now. It's like taking a strange machine apart, every step you're trying to figure what the individual parts do, and sooner or later you got all the parts loose, and you know where they all go, and then you figure out what they all do in a systematic way. That's what we're doing now.\"\n\n\"You know what it's going to come down to?\" Cathy suggested with a question, then answered it: \"Mathematics.\"\n\n\"That's what Gus says down at Atlanta.\"\n\n\"Math? Wait a minute,\" Altman objected.\n\n\"At the most basic level, the human genetic code is composed of four amino acids, labeled A, C, G and T. How those letters\u2014the acids, I mean\u2014are strung together determines everything,\" Alex explained. \"Different character sequences mean different things and interact in different ways, and probably Gus is right: the interactions are mathematically defined. The genetic code really is a code. It _can_ be cracked, and it _can_ be understood.\" _Probably someone will assign a mathematical value to them_ . . . _complex polynomials . . ._ he thought. Was that important?\n\n\"Just nobody smart enough to do it has come along yet,\" Cathy Ryan observed. \"That's the home-run ball, Roy. Someday, somebody is going to step up to the plate, and put that one over the fence, and it will give us the key to defeating all human diseases. All of them. Every single one. The pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is medical immortality\u2014and who knows, maybe human immortality.\"\n\n\"Put us all out of business, especially you, Cathy. One of the first things they'll edit out of the human genome is myopia, and diabetes and that\u2014\"\n\n\"It'll unemploy you before it unemploys me, Professor,\" Cathy said with an impish smile. \"I'm a surgeon, remember? I'll still have trauma to fix. But sooner or later, you're going to win your battle.\"\n\nBut would it be in time for this morning's E-Strain patient? Alex wondered. Probably not. Probably not.\n\nSHE WAS CURSING them now, mainly in French, but Flemish also. The army medics didn't understand either language. Moudi spoke the former well enough to know that, vile as the imprecations were, they were not the product of a lucid mind. The brain was now being affected, and Jean Baptiste was unable to converse even with her God. Her heart was under attack, finally, and that gave the doctor hope that Death would come for her and show some belated mercy for a woman who deserved far more than she had received from life. Maybe delirium was a blessing for her. Maybe her soul was detached from her body. Maybe in not knowing where she was, who she was, what was wrong, the pain didn't touch her anymore, not in the places that mattered. It was an illusion the doctor needed, but if what he saw was mercy, it was a ghastly variety of it.\n\nThe patient's face was a mass of rashes now, almost as though she'd been brutally beaten, her pale skin like an opaque window onto misplaced blood. He couldn't decide if her eyes were still working. There was bleeding both on the surface and the interior of each, and if she could still see, it wouldn't last much longer. They'd almost lost her half an hour earlier, occasioning his rush to the treatment room to see her choking on aspirated vomit and the medics trying both to clear her airway and keep their gloves intact. The restraints that held her in place, coated though they were with smooth plastic, had abraded away her skin, causing more bleeding and more pain. The tissues of her vascular system were breaking down as well, and the IV leaked as much out on the bed as went into the arms and legs, all of the fluids as deadly as the most toxic poison. Now the medical corpsmen were truly frightened even of touching the patient, gloves or not, suits or not. Moudi saw that they'd gotten a plastic bucket and filled it with dilute iodine, and as he watched, one of them dipped his gloves into it, shaking them off but not drying them, so that if he touched her there would be a chemical barrier against the pathogens that might leap at him from her body. Such precautions weren't necessary\u2014the gloves were thick\u2014but he could hardly blame the men for their fear. At the turning of the hour, the new shift arrived, and the old one left. One of them looked back on his way out the door, praying with silent lips that Allah would take the woman before he had to come back in eight hours. Outside the room, an Iranian army doctor similarly dressed in plastic would lead the men to the disinfection area, where their suits would be sprayed before they took them off, and then their bodies, while the suits were burned to ashes in the downstairs incinerator. Moudi had no doubts that the procedures would be followed to the letter\u2014no, they would be exceeded in every detail, and even then the medics would be afraid for days to come.\n\nHad he possessed a deadly weapon right then and there, he might have used it on her, and to hell with the consequences. A large injection of air might have worked a few hours before, causing a fatal embolism, but the breakdown of her vascular system was such that he couldn't even be sure of that. It was her strength that made the ordeal so terrible. Small though she was, she'd worked forty years of long hours, and earned surprisingly good health as a result. The body which had sustained her courageous soul for so long would not give up the battle, futile as it was.\n\n\"Come, Moudi, you know better than this,\" the director said behind him.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" he asked without turning.\n\n\"If she were back in the hospital in Africa, what would be different? Would they not treat her the same way, taking the same measures to sustain her? The blood, and the IV fluids, and everything else. It would be exactly the same. Her religion does not allow euthanasia. If anything, the care here is better,\" he pointed out, correctly, if coldly, then turned away to check the chart. \"Five liters. Excellent.\"\n\n\"We could start\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" The director shook his head. \"When her heart stops, we will drain all her blood. We will remove the liver, kidneys and spleen, and then our real work begins.\"\n\n\"Someone should at least pray for her soul.\"\n\n\"You will, Moudi. You are a fine doctor. You care even for an infidel. You may be proud of that. If it were possible to save her, you would have done so. I know that. You know that. She knows that.\"\n\n\"What we are doing, to inflict this on\u2014\"\n\n\"On unbelievers,\" the director reminded him. \"On those who hate our country and our Faith, who spit upon the words of the Prophet. I will even agree that this is a woman of virtue. Allah will be merciful with her, I am sure. You did not choose her fate. Neither did I.\" He had to keep Moudi going. The younger man _was_ a brilliant physician. If anything, too good. The director for his part thanked Allah that he'd spent the last decade in laboratories, else he might have succumbed to the same human weaknesses.\n\nBADRAYN INSISTED. This time, three generals. Every seat full, and one of them with two small children strapped in together. They understood now. They had to. He'd explained it to them, pointing to the tower, whose controllers had watched every flight in and out, and who _had to know_ what was going on by now, and arresting them would do little good, as their families would miss them, and if their families were picked up, the neighbors would know, wouldn't they?\n\n_Well, yes,_ they had agreed.\n\n_Just send a damned airliner next time,_ he wanted to tell Tehran, but no, someone would have objected, here or there, it didn't matter, because no matter what you said, no matter how sensible it was, somebody would object to it. Whether on the Iranian side or the Iraqi, that didn't matter, either. Either way it would get people killed. It certainly would. There was nothing for him to do but wait now, wait and worry. He could have had a few drinks, but he decided against it. He'd had alcohol more than once. All those years in Lebanon. As Bahrain still was, Lebanon had been, and probably would be again, a place where the strict Islamic rules could be violated, and there he had indulged in Western vice along with everyone else. But not now. He might be close to death and, sinner or not, he was a Muslim, and he would face death in the proper way. And so he drank coffee for the most part, staring out the windows from his seat, next to the phone, telling himself that the caffeine was making his hands shake, and nothing else.\n\n\"YOU'RE JACKSON?\" Tony Bretano asked. He'd spent the morning with the acting chiefs. Now it was time for the worker bees.\n\n\"Yes, sir, J-3. I guess I'm your operations officer,\" Robby replied, taking his seat and not, for once, carrying a bundle of papers and scurrying around like the White Rabbit.\n\n\"How bad is it?\"\n\n\"Well, we're spread pretty thin. We still have two carrier battle-groups in the IO looking after India and Sri Lanka. We're flying a couple battalions of light infantry to the Marianas to reassert control there and supervise the withdrawal of Japanese personnel. That's mainly political, we don't expect any problems. Our forward-deployed air assets have been recalled to CON US to refit. That aspect of operations against Japan went well.\"\n\n\"You will want me to speed production of the F-22 and restart B-2 production, then? That's what the Air Force said.\"\n\n\"We just proved that Stealth is one hell of a force-multiplier, Mr. Secretary, and that's a fact. We need all of those we can get.\"\n\n\"I agree. What about the rest of the force structure?\" Bretano asked.\n\n\"We're too damned thin for all the commitments we have. If we had to go to Kuwait again, for example, like we did in 1991, we can't do it. We literally do not have all that force to project anymore. You know what my job is, sir. I have to figure out how to do the things we have to do. Okay, operations against Japan took us as far as we could go, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Mickey Moore said a lot of nice things about the plan you put together and executed,\" the SecDef pointed out.\n\n\"General Moore is very kind. Yes, sir, it worked, but we were on a shoestring the whole time, and that's not the way American forces are supposed to go out into harm's way, Mr. Secretary. We're supposed to scare the bejeebers out of people the moment the first private steps off the airplane. I _can_ improvise if I have to, but that's not supposed to be my job. Sooner or later, I goof, or somebody goofs, and we end up with dead people in uniform.\"\n\n\"I agree with that, too.\" Bretano took a bite of his sandwich. \"The President's given me a free hand to clean this department out, do things my way. I have two weeks to put the new force requirements together.\"\n\n\"Two weeks, sir?\" If Jackson were able to go pale, that would have done it to him.\n\n\"Jackson, how long you been in uniform?\" the SecDef asked.\n\n\"Counting time at the Trade School? Call it thirty years.\"\n\n\"If you can't do it by tomorrow, you're the wrong guy. But I'll give you ten days,\" Bretano said generously.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, I'm Operations, not Manpower, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Exactly. In my way of looking at things, Manpower fills the needs that Operations defines. Decisions in a place like this are supposed to be made by the shooters, not the accountants. That's what was wrong at TRW when I moved in. Accountants were telling engineers what they could have to be engineers. No.\" Bretano shook his head. \"That didn't work. If you build things, your engineers decide how the company runs. For a place like this, the shooters decide what they need, and the accountants figure out how to shoehorn it into the budget. There's always a struggle, but the product end of the business makes the decisions.\"\n\n_Well, damn._ Jackson managed not to smile. \"Parameters?\"\n\n\"Figure the largest credible threat, the most serious crisis that's likely, not possible, and design me a force structure that can handle it.\" Even that wasn't good enough, and both men knew it. In the old days there had been the guideline of two and a half wars, that America could deploy to fight two major conflicts, plus a little brush fire somewhere else. Few had ever admitted that this \"rule\" had always been a fantasy, all the way back to the Eisenhower presidency. Today, as Jackson had just admitted, America lacked the wherewithal to conduct a single major military deployment. The fleet was down to half of what it had been ten years earlier. The Army was down further. The Air Force, ever sheltering behind its high-tech, was formidable, but had still retired nearly half its total strength. The Marines were still tough and ready, but the Marine Corps was an expeditionary force, able to deploy in the expectation that reinforcements would arrive behind them, and dangerously light in its weapons. The cupboard wasn't exactly bare, but the enforced diet hadn't really done anyone much good.\n\n\"Ten days?\"\n\n\"You've got what I need sitting in a desk drawer right now, don't you?\" Planning officers always did, Bretano knew.\n\n\"Give me a couple days to polish it up, sir, but, yes, we do.\"\n\n\"Jackson?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Secretary?\"\n\n\"I kept track of our operations in the Pacific. One of my people at TRW, Skip Tyler, used to be pretty good at this stuff, and we looked over maps and things every day. The operations you put together, they were impressive. War isn't just physical. It's psychological, too, like all life is. You win because you have the best people. Guns and planes count, but brains count more. I'm a good manager, and one hell of a good engineer. I'm not a fighter. I'll listen to what you say, 'cause you and your colleagues know how to fight. I'll stand up for you wherever and whenever I have to. In return for that, I want what you really need, not what you'd like to have. We can't afford that. We can cut bureaucracy. That's Manpower's job, civilian and uniform. I'll lean this place out. At TRW I got rid of a lot of useless bodies. That's an engineering company, and now it's run by engineers. This is a company that does operations, and it ought to be run by operators, people with notches cut in their gun grips. Lean. Mean. Tough. Smart. You get what I'm saying?\"\n\n\"I think so, sir.\"\n\n\"Ten days. Less if you can. Call me when you're ready.\"\n\n\"CLARK,\" JOHN SAID, picking up his direct line.\n\n\"Holtzman,\" the voice said. The name made John's eyes go a little wide.\n\n\"I suppose I could ask how you got this number, but you'd never reveal your source.\"\n\n\"Good guess,\" the reporter agreed. \"Remember that dinner we had a while back at Esteban's?\"\n\n\"Vaguely,\" Clark lied. \"It's been a long time.\" It hadn't actually been a dinner, but the tape machine that had to be on the phone didn't know that.\n\n\"I owe you one. How about tonight?\"\n\n\"I'll get back to you.\" Clark hung up and stared down at his desk. What the hell was this about?\n\n\"COME ON, THAT'S not what Jack said,\" van Damm told the _New York Times._\n\n\"That's what he meant, Arnie,\" the reporter responded. \"You know it. I know it.\"\n\n\"I wish you'd go easy on the guy. He's not a politician,\" the chief of staff pointed out.\n\n\"Not my fault, Arnie. He's in the job. He has to follow the rules.\"\n\nArnold van Damm nodded agreement, concealing the anger that had risen in an instant at the correspondent's casual remark. Inwardly he knew that the reporter was right. That's how the game was played. But he also knew that the reporter was wrong. Maybe he'd grown too attached to President Ryan, enough so that he'd actually absorbed some of his flaky ideas. The media, exclusively composed of the employees of private businesses\u2014most of them corporations with publicly traded stock\u2014had grown in power to the point that they _decided_ what people said. That was bad enough. What was worse, they enjoyed their jobs too much. They could make or break anyone in this town. They made the rules. He who broke them could himself be broken.\n\nRyan _was_ a naif. There was no denying it. In his defense, he'd never sought his current job. He'd come here by accident, having sought nothing more than a final opportunity to serve, and then to leave once and for all, to return to private life. He'd not been elected to his post. But neither had the media, and at least Ryan had the Constitution to define his duties. The media was crossing the line. They were taking sides in a constitutional matter, and they were taking the wrong side.\n\n\"Who makes the rules?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"They just are,\" the _Times_ answered.\n\n\"Well, the President isn't going to attack _Roe_. He never said that he would. And he's not going to pick Justices off park benches, either. He isn't going to pick liberal activists, and he isn't going to pick conservative activists, and I think you know that.\"\n\n\"So Ryan misspoke himself?\" The reporter's casual grin said it all. He'd report this as spin control by a senior administration official, \" 'clarifying,' which means correcting, what the President said,\" the article would read.\n\n\"Not at all. You misunderstood him.\"\n\n\"It sounded pretty clear to me, Arnie.\"\n\n\"That's because you're used to listening to professional politicians. The President we have now says things straight. Actually I kind of like that,\" van Damm went on, lying; it was driving him crazy. \"And it might even make life easier for you. You don't have to check the tea leaves anymore. All you have to do is take proper notes. Or maybe just judge him by a fair set of rules. We've agreed that he's not a politician, but you're treating him as if he were. Listen to what he's really saying, will you?\" Or maybe even look at the videotape, he didn't add. He was skating on the edge now. Talking to the media was like petting a new cat. You never knew when they'd reach up and scratch.\n\n\"Come on, Arnie. You're the most loyal guy in this town. Damn, you would have been a great family doctor. We all know that. But Ryan doesn't have a clue. The speech at National Cathedral, that loony speech from the Oval Office. He's about as presidential as the chairman of the Rotary in Bumfuck, Iowa.\"\n\n\"But who decides what's presidential and what isn't?\"\n\n\"In New York, I do.\" The reporter smiled again. \"For Chicago, you have to ask somebody else.\"\n\n\"He is the President of the United States.\"\n\n\"That's not what Ed Kealty says, and at least Ed _acts_ presidential.\"\n\n\"Ed's out. He resigned. Roger took the call from Secretary Hanson, and told me about it. Damn it, _you_ reported that yourself.\"\n\n\"But what possible motive could he have for \"\n\n\"What motive could he have for boffing every skirt that crossed his bow?\" the chief of staff demanded. _Great,_ he thought, _now I'm losing control of the media!_\n\n\"Ed's always been a ladies' man. He's gotten better since he got off the booze. It never affected his duties,\" the White House correspondent made clear. Like his paper, he was a strong proponent of women's rights. \"This one will have to play out.\"\n\n\"What position will the _Times_ take?\"\n\n\"I'll get you a copy of the editorial,\" the reporter promised.\n\nHE COULDN'T STAND it anymore. He lifted the phone and dialed the six digits while staring out at the darkness. The sun was down now, and clouds were rolling in. It would be a cold, rainy night, leading to a dawn which might or might not take place before his eyes.\n\n\"Yes?\" a voice said halfway through the first ring.\n\n\"Badrayn here. It would be more convenient if the next aircraft were larger.\"\n\n\"We have a 737 standing by, but I need authorization to have it sent.\"\n\n\"I will work on this end.\"\n\nIt was the TV news which had gotten him moving. Even more muted than usual, there had not been a single political story. Not one, in a nation where political commentary often as not displaced the weather forecasts. Most ominously of all, there was a story about a mosque, an old Shi'a mosque, one that had fallen into disrepair. The story lamented that fact, citing the building's long and honorable history, and ignoring the fact that it had fallen into disrepair because it had once been a meeting place for a group charged, perhaps truthfully, with plotting the demise of Iraq's fallen, beloved, great, and evidently soon-to-be-forgotten political leader. Worst of all, the taped footage had shown five mullahs standing outside the mosque, not even looking directly at the camera, merely gesturing at the faded blue tile on the wall and probably discussing what needed to be done. The five were the same ones who'd flown in to be hostages. But not a single soldier was in sight on the TV screen, and the faces of at least two of the mullahs were well known to Iraqi audiences. Somebody had gotten to the TV station, more precisely to the people who worked there. If the reporters and others wanted to retain their jobs and their heads, it was time to face a new reality. Were the brief few moments on the screen enough for the common folk to see and recognize the visitors' faces\u2014and get the message? Finding out the answer to that question could be dangerous.\n\nBut the common people didn't matter. Colonels and majors did. Generals not on the proper list did. Quite soon they'd know. Probably some already did. They'd be on the phone, first calling up the line to see what was going on. Some would hear lies. Some would hear nothing. They'd start thinking. They'd start making contacts. Over the next twelve hours they'd talk among themselves and have to make hard decisions. These were the men who were identified with the dying regime. The ones who couldn't run, who had no place to run to and no money to run with, the ones who had to stay. Their identification with the past regime could be a death sentence\u2014for many, certainly would be so. For others, there was a chance. To survive, they would have to do what criminals all over the world did. They would save their own lives by offering up a larger fish. So it always was. The colonels would overthrow the generals.\n\nFinally, the generals understood.\n\n\"There is a 737 standing by. Enough room for all. It can be here in ninety minutes,\" he told them.\n\n\"And they will not kill us at Mehrabad Airport?\" the deputy chief of staff of the Iraqi army demanded.\n\n\"Would you prefer to die here?\" Badrayn asked in reply.\n\n\"What if it's all a trap?\"\n\n\"There is that risk. In that case, the five television personalities will die.\" Of course they wouldn't. That would have to be the act of troops loyal to generals already dead. That sort of loyalty didn't exist here. They all knew that. The mere act of taking hostages had been an instinctive gesture, and one already invalidated by someone, perhaps in the media, but maybe the colonel who'd headed the guard force over the Iranian clerics. _He_ was supposed to be a trusted intelligence specialist, Badrayn remembered on reflection, a loyal Sunni officer, son of a Ba'ath Party member. That could mean that the Ba'ath Party was already being suborned. It was going too fast now. The mullahs would not have concealed the nature of their mission, would they? But none of that mattered. Killing the hostages would accomplish nothing. The generals were doomed if they stayed here, and martyrdom wasn't exactly offensive to Iranian clerics. It was an integral part of the Shi'a tradition.\n\nNo, the decision had already been irreversibly made. These senior commanders hadn't grasped that. They hadn't thought it all the way through.\n\nWell, had they been truly competent officers, they would have been killed ages ago, by their beloved leader.\n\n\"Yes,\" the most senior of them said.\n\n\"Thank you. Badrayn lifted the phone and punched the buttons again.\n\n_THE DIMENSIONS OF the constitutional crisis in which America has found itself were not apparent until yesterday. Although the issue may seem to be technical, the substance of it is not._\n\n_John Patrick Ryan is a man of ability, but whether or not he has the necessary talent to perform his presidential duties has yet to be established. The initial indications are less than promising. Government service is not a job for amateurs. Our country has often enough turned to such people, but always in the past they have been in the minority, able to grow into their duties in an orderly way._\n\n_There is nothing orderly about the crisis facing the country. To this point Mr. Ryan has done a proper and careful job of stabilizing the government. His interim appointment to head the FBI, for example, Daniel Murray, is an acceptable choice. Similarly, George Winston is probably a fair interim choice for the Department of the Treasury, though he is politically unschooled. Scott Adler, a highly talented, lifelong foreign service officer, may be the best member of the current cabinet . . ._ Ryan skipped the next two paragraphs.\n\n_Vice President Edward Kealty, whatever his personal failings, knows government, and his middle-of-the-road position on most national issues offers a steady course until elections can select a new administration. But are his claims true?_\n\n\"Do you care?\" Ryan asked the lead editorial for the next day's _Times_.\n\n\"They know him. They don't know you,\" Arnie answered. Then the phone rang.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Mr. Foley for you, Mr. President. He says it's important.\"\n\n\"Okay ... Ed? Putting you on speaker.\" Jack pushed the proper button and replaced the receiver. \"Arnie's listening in.\"\n\n\"It's definite. Iran's making a move, big and fast. I have a TV feed for you if you have the time.\"\n\n\"Roll it.\" Jack knew how to do that. In this office and others were televisions fed off secure fiber-optic cables to the Pentagon and elsewhere. He pulled the controller from a drawer and turned the set on. The \"show\" lasted only fifteen seconds, was rerun again, then freeze-framed.\n\n\"Who are they?\" Jack asked.\n\nFoley read off the names. Ryan had heard two of them before. \"Mid- and top-level advisers to Daryaei. They're in Baghdad, and somebody decided to get the word out. Okay, we know senior generals are flying out. Now we have five mullahs talking about rebuilding an important mosque on national TV. Tomorrow they'll be talking louder,\" the DCI-designate promised.\n\n\"Anything from people on the ground?\"\n\n\"Negative,\" Ed admitted. \"I was talking to station chief Riyadh about sneaking up there for a sit-down, but by the time he gets there, there won't be anyone to sit down with.\"\n\n\"THAT'S A LITTLE big,\" an officer said aboard the duty AWACS. He read off the alpha-numeric display. \"Colonel,\" the lieutenant called over the command line, \"I have what appears to be a 737 charter inbound Mehrabad to Baghdad, course two-two-zero, speed four-five-zero knots, twenty thousand feet. PALM BOWL reports encrypted voice traffic to Baghdad from that track.\"\n\nFarther aft, the senior officer commanding the aircraft checked his display. The elltee in front was right. The colonel lit up his radio to report to KKMC.\n\nTHE REST OF them arrived together. They should have waited longer, Badrayn thought. Better to show up with the aircraft already here, the quicker to\u2014but, no.\n\nIt was amusing to see them this way, these powerful men. A week earlier they'd strutted everywhere, sure of their place and their power, their khaki shirts decorated with various ribbons denoting some heroic service or other. That was unfair. Some _had_ led men into battle, once or twice. Maybe one or two of them had actually killed an enemy. Iranian enemies. The same people to whom they would now entrust their safety, because they feared their own countrymen more. So now they stood about in little worried knots, unable to trust even their own bodyguards. Especially them. They had guns and were close, and they would not have been in this fix had bodyguards been trustworthy.\n\nDespite the danger to his own life, Badrayn could not help but be amused by it. He'd spent his entire adult life dedicated to bringing about a moment such as this. How long had he dreamed of seeing senior Israeli officials standing about an airport like this\u2014leaving their own people to an uncertain fate, defeated by his . . . _that_ irony was not amusing, was it? Over thirty years, and all he'd accomplished was the destruction of an _Arab_ country? Israel still stood. America still protected her, and all he was doing was adjusting the chairs of power around the Persian Gulf.\n\nHe was running away no less than they were, Badrayn admitted. Having failed in the mission of his life, he had done this one mercenary job, and then what? At least these generals had money and comfort before them. He had nothing ahead, and only failure behind. With that thought, Ali Badrayn swore, and sat back in his seat, just in time to see a dark shape race across the near runway in its rollout. A bodyguard at the door gestured at the people in the room. Two minutes later, the 737 came back into view. Additional fuel was not needed. The truck-borne stairway headed off, stopping only when the aircraft did. The stairs were in place before the door opened, and the generals, and their families, and one bodyguard each, and for most of them a mistress, hurried out the door into the cold drizzle that had just begun. Badrayn walked out last. Even then he had to wait. The Iraqis had all arrived at the bottom of the stairs in a tight little knot of jostling humanity, forgetting their importance and their dignity as they elbowed their way onto the steps. At the top was a uniformed crew member, smiling a mechanical greeting to people he had every reason to hate. Ali waited until the stairs were clear before heading up, arriving at the small platform and turning to look back. There hadn't really been all that much reason to rush. There were as yet no green trucks approaching with their confused soldiers. Another hour, it turned out, would have been fine. In due course they'd come here and find nothing but an empty lounge. He shook his head and entered the aircraft. The crewman closed the door behind him.\n\nForward, the flight crew radioed the tower for clearance to taxi, and that came automatically. The tower controllers had made their calls and passed along their information, but without instructions, they just did their jobs. As they watched, the aircraft made its way to the end of the runway, increased power, and lifted off into the darkness about to descend on their country.\n**19**\n\n**RECIPES**\n\n\" **I** T'S BEEN A WHILE, MR. Clark.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Holtzman, it has,\" John agreed. They were in the same booth as before, all the way in the back, close to the jukebox. Esteban's was still a nice family place off Wisconsin Avenue, and still well patronized by nearby Georgetown University. But Clark remembered that he'd never told the reporter what his name was.\n\n\"Where's your friend?\"\n\n\"Busy tonight,\" Clark replied. Actually Ding had left work early and driven down to Yorktown, and was taking Patsy out to dinner, but the reporter didn't need to know that. It was clear from his face that he already knew too much. \"So, what can I do for you?\" the field officer asked.\n\n\"We had a little deal, you'll recall.\"\n\nClark nodded. \"I haven't forgotten. That was for five years. Time isn't up yet.\" The reply wasn't much of a surprise.\n\n\"Times change.\" Holtzman lifted the menu and scanned it. He liked Mexican food, though of late the food didn't seem to like him very much.\n\n\"A deal's a deal.\" Clark didn't look at his menu. He stared straight across the table. His stare was something people often had trouble dealing with.\n\n\"The word's out. Katryn is engaged to be married to some fox-chaser out in Winchester.\"\n\n\"I didn't know,\" Clark admitted. Nor did he especially care.\n\n\"Didn't think you would. You're not an SPO anymore. Like it back in the field?\"\n\n\"If you want me to talk about that, you know I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"More's the pity. I've been checking up on you for a couple of years now,\" the reporter told his guest. \"You have one hell of a service reputation, and the word is that your partner is a comer. You were the guy in Japan,\" Holtzman said with a smile. \"You rescued Koga.\"\n\nA scornful look concealed John's real feelings of alarm. \"What the hell would give you that idea?\"\n\n\"I talked with Koga when he was over. Two-man rescue team, he said. Big guy, little guy. Koga described your eyes\u2014blue, hard, intense, he said, but he also said that you were a reasonable man in your speech. How smart do I have to be to figure that one out?\" Holtzman smiled. \"Last time we talked, you said I would have made a good spook.\" The waiter showed up with two beers. \"Ever have this before? Pride of Maryland, a new local micro on the Eastern Shore.\" Then the waiter went away. Clark leaned across the table.\n\n\"Look, I respect your ability, and the last time we talked, you played ball, kept your word, and I respect that, too, but I would like you to remember that when I go out in the field, my life rides on\u2014\"\n\n\"I won't reveal your identity. I don't do that. Three reasons, it's wrong, it's against the law, and I don't want to piss off somebody like you.\" The reporter sipped his beer. \"Someday I'd sure as hell like to do a book about you. If half the stories are true\u2014\"\n\n\"Fine, get Val Kilmer to play me in the movies.\"\n\n\"Too pretty.\" Holtzman shook his head with a grin. \"Nick Cage has a better stare. Anyway, what this meet is about . . .\" He paused. \"It was Ryan who got her father out, but I'm not clear on how. You went on the beach and got Katryn and her mother out, took them out by boat to a submarine. I don't know which one, but I know it was one of our nuclear subs. But that's not the story.\"\n\n\"What is?\"\n\n\"Ryan, like you, the Quiet Hero.\" Robert Holtzman enjoyed seeing the surprise in Clark's eyes. \"I like the guy. I want to help him.\"\n\n\"Why?\" John asked, wondering if he could believe his host.\n\n\"My wife, Libby, got the goods on Kealty. Published it too soon, and we can't go back to it now. He's scum, even worse than most of the people down there. Not everybody in the business feels that way, but Libby's talked to a couple of his victims. Once upon a time a guy could get away with that, especially if his politics were 'progressive.' Not anymore. Not supposed to, anyway,\" he corrected himself. \"I'm not so sure Ryan's the right guy, either, okay? But he's honest. He'll try to do the right thing, for the right reasons. As Roger Durling liked to say, he's a good man in a storm. I have to sell my editors on that idea.\"\n\n\"How do you do that?\"\n\n\"I do a story about how he did something really important for his country. Something old enough that it isn't sensitive anymore, and recent enough that people know it's the same guy. Jesus Christ, Clark, he _saved_ the Russians! He prevented an internal power play that could have dialed the Cold War back in for another decade. That's a big _fucking_ deal\u2014and he _never_ told anybody about it. We'll make it clear that Ryan didn't leak this. We'll even approach him before we run it, and you know what he'll say\u2014\"\n\n\"He'd tell you not to run it,\" Clark agreed. Then he wondered whom Holtzman might have talked with. Judge Arthur Moore? Bob Ritter? Would they have talked? Ordinarily he'd be sure the answer to that one was an emphatic no, but now? Now he wasn't so sure. You got to a certain level and people figured breaking the rules was part of some higher duty to the country. John knew about \"higher duty\" stuff. It had landed him in all manner of trouble, more than once.\n\n\"But it's too good a story not to run. It took me years to figure it all out. The public has a right to know what kind of man is sitting in the Oval Office, especially if he's the right man,\" the reporter went on. Holtzman clearly was a man who could talk a nun right out of her habit.\n\n\"Bob, you don't know the half of it.\" Clark stopped talking an instant later, annoyed with himself for saying that much. This was deep water, and he was trying to swim with a weight belt on. Oh, what the hell . . . \"Okay, tell me what you know about Jack.\"\n\nIT WAS AGREED that they'd use the same aircraft, and somewhat to the relief of both sides, that they wouldn't stay one unnecessary minute in Iran. There was the problem that the 737 didn't have the range of the smaller G-IVs, however, and it was agreed that the airliner would land in Yemen to refuel. The Iraqis never left the plane at Mehrabad, but when the stairs pulled up, Badrayn did, without a single word of thanks from the people he'd saved. A car was waiting. He didn't look back. The generals were part of his past, and he part of theirs.\n\nThe car took him into town. There was just a driver, who took his time negotiating the streets. Traffic wasn't all that dense at this time of night, and the going was easy. Forty minutes later, the car stopped in front of a three-story building. Here there was security. So, Badrayn thought, he was living in Tehran now? He got out of the car on his own. A uniformed security guard compared a photograph with his face and gestured him toward the door. Inside another guard, this one a captain by the three pips at his shoulders, patted him down politely. From there it was upstairs to a conference room. By now it was three in the morning, local time.\n\nHe found Daryaei sitting in a comfortable chair reading some papers stapled together at the corner, the quintessential government briefing document instead of the Holy Koran. Well, Daryaei must have had it memorized by now, so long had he studied it.\n\n\"Peace be unto you,\" Ali said.\n\n\"And unto you, peace,\" Daryaei replied, not so mechanically as Badrayn had expected. The older man rose and came to him for the expected embrace. The face was far more relaxed than he'd expected. Tired, certainly, since it had been a long day or two for the cleric, but old or not, the man was buoyed by the events. \"You are well?\" he asked solicitously, waving his guest to a chair.\n\nAli allowed himself a long breath as he took his seat. \"I am now. I'd wondered how long the situation in Baghdad would remain stable.\"\n\n\"There was nothing to be gained from discord. My friends tell me that the old mosque is in need of repair.\"\n\nBadrayn might have said that he didn't know\u2014he didn't\u2014but the reason was that he hadn't seen the inside of a mosque in rather a long time, a fact not calculated to please Daryaei. \"There is much to do,\" he decided to respond.\n\n\"Yes, there is.\" Mahmoud Haji Daryaei returned to his chair, setting the papers aside. \"Your services were very valuable. Were there any difficulties?\"\n\nBadrayn shook his head. \"Not really, no. It's surprising how fearful such men can be, but I was prepared for that. Your proposal was generous. They had no choice but to take it. You will not . . . ?\" Ali allowed himself to ask.\n\nHe shook his head. \"No, they shall go in peace.\"\n\nAnd that, if true, was something of a surprise, though Ali didn't allow his face to show it. Daryaei had little reason to love those men. All had played a role in the Iran-Iraq war, and been responsible for the deaths of thousands, a wound still raw on this nation. So many young men had died. The war was one of the reasons why Iran had played no major role in the world for years. But that was about to change, wasn't it?\n\n\"So, may I ask what you will do next?\"\n\n\"Iraq has been a sick country for so long, kept away from the True Faith, wandering in the darkness.\"\n\n\"And strangled by the embargo,\" Badrayn added, wondering what information this observation would elicit.\n\n\"It is time for that to end,\" Daryaei agreed. Something in his eyes congratulated Ali for the observation. Yes, that was the obvious play, wasn't it? A sop to the West. The embargo would be lifted. Food would then flood the country, and the population would be delighted with the new regime. He would please everybody at once, all the while planning to please no one but himself. And Allah, of course. But Daryaei was one of those who was sure that his policies were inspired by Allah, an idea Badrayn had long since disposed of.\n\n\"America will be a problem, as will others closer to you.\"\n\n\"We are examining those issues.\" This statement was delivered comfortably. Well, that made sense. He must have been thinking about this move for years, and at a moment like this one he must have felt invincible. That also made sense, Badrayn knew. Daryaei always thought Allah was on his side\u2014 _at_ his side was more accurate. And perhaps He was, but there was much more to it than that. There had to be if you wanted success. Miracles most often appeared when summoned by preparation. Why not a play to see if he might take a hand in the next miracle, Ali thought.\n\n\"I've been looking at the new American leader.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Daryaei's eyes focused a little more tightly.\n\n\"It's not difficult, gathering information in the modern age. The American media publishes so much, and it can all be easily accessed now. I have some of my people working on it even now, building a careful dossier.\" Badrayn kept his voice casual. It wasn't hard. He was bone-tired. \"It really is quite remarkable how vulnerable they are now.\n\n\"Indeed. Tell me more.\"\n\n\"The key to America is this Ryan fellow. Is that not obvious?\"\n\n\"THE KEY TO changing America is a constitutional convention,\" Ernie Brown said, after long days of silent contemplation. Pete Holbrook was flipping the controller on his slide projector. He'd shot three rolls of film of the Capitol building, and a few more of other buildings like the White House, unable completely to avoid being the tourist. He grumbled, seeing that one of the slides was in the caddie upside-down. This idea had gestated long enough, and the result wasn't all that impressive.\n\n\"We've talked about that for a long time,\" Holbrook agreed as he lifted the caddie off the projector. \"But how do you\u2014\"\n\n\"Force it? Easy. If there's no President and no way to select one within the Constitution, then _something_ has to happen, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Kill the President?\" Pete snorted. \" _Which_ one?\"\n\nThere was the problem. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Take out Ryan, and Kealty would step in. Take out Kealty, and Ryan was in like Flynn. It would be tough enough now. Both men remembered all the security they'd seen at the White House. Kill either one, and the American SS would put a wall around the one who was left that you'd need a nuke to breach. The Mountain Men didn't have any of those. They preferred traditional American weapons, like rifles. Even those had their limitations. The South Lawn of the White House was thoroughly forested with trees, and, they'd noticed, also shielded by skillfully concealed earthen berms. Just seeing the White House was possible down only one visual avenue, past the fountain at the building itself. The surrounding buildings were all government-owned, and atop them would always be people with binoculars\u2014and rifles. The American SS were determined to keep the people away from \"their\" President, the servant of the people, whose guards didn't trust the people at all. But if the man who lived in that house was really one of the people, there would have been no need, would there? Once Teddy Roosevelt had thrown open the doors and shaken hands with ordinary citizens for four whole hours. No way _that_ would happen anymore!\n\n\"Both at once. The way I figure, Ryan will be the hard target, right?\" Brown asked. \"I mean, he's _there_ where most of the protection is. Kealty has to move around a lot, talking to the newspaper pukes, and he won't be as well protected, will he?\"\n\nHolbook replaced the slide caddie. \"Okay, that makes sense.\"\n\n\"So, if we figure a way to do Ryan, taking Kealty out will be much easier to do on the fly.\" Brown took the cellular phone out of his pocket. \"Easy to coordinate.\"\n\n\"Keep going.\"\n\n\"It means getting a fix on his schedule, learning his routine, and picking our time.\"\n\n\"Expensive,\" Holbrook observed, flipping to the next slide. It was one so often taken by so many people, from the top of the Washington Monument, the tiny north window, looking down on the White House. Ernie Brown had taken one, too, and had the print blown up to poster size in the local photo shop. Then he'd stared at it for hours. Then he'd gotten a map and checked the scale. Then he'd done some rough calculations.\n\n\"The expensive part's buying the cement truck, and renting a place not too far out of town.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I know what the spot is, Pete. And I know how to bring it off. Just a matter of picking the time.\"\n\nSHE WOULDN'T LIVE through the night, Moudi decided. Her eyes were open now. What they saw was anyone's guess. Finally, mercifully, she was beyond pain. That happened. He'd seen it before, with cancer patients, mostly, and it was always the harbinger of death. His knowledge of neurology was insufficient to understand the reason for it. Maybe the electro-chemical pathways got overloaded, or maybe there was some editing function in the brain. The body knew what was happening, that the time for battle had ended, and since the nervous system reported pain mainly as a warning system, when the time for warning was past, so was the time for pain. Or maybe it was all his imagination. Possibly her body was simply too damaged to react to anything. Certainly the intra-ocular bleeding had her blind. The last blood line had fallen out, so damaged were her veins now, and she was bleeding from that point in addition to so many others. Only the morphine drip remained, held in place with tape. The heart was being starved of blood, and trying ever harder to pump what diminished supply it had left, it was exhausting itself.\n\nJean Baptiste still made noises difficult to hear through the Racal suit\u2014the occasional whimper, and the timing of them made the physician wonder if they might be prayers. They probably were, he decided. Robbed of sanity along with her life, the one thing that remained in her would be the endless hours of prayer, the discipline which had ruled her life, and she'd return to that in her madness because her mind had nowhere else to go. The patient cleared her throat, choking, really, but then murmuring more clearly, and Moudi leaned his head down to listen.\n\n\". . .\u2014ther of God, pray for us sinners . . .\"\n\n_Oh, that one_. Yes, it would have to be her favorite prayer.\n\n\"Fight no more, lady,\" Moudi told her. \"It is your time. Fight no more.\"\n\nThe eyes changed. Even though she could not see, the head turned and she stared at him. It was a mechanical reflex, the physician knew. Blind or not, years of practice told the muscles what to do. The face instinctively turned to a source of noise, and the eyes\u2014the muscles still worked\u2014focused in the direction of interest.\n\n\"Dr. Moudi? Are you there?\" The words came slowly, and not all that clearly, but understandable even so.\n\n\"Yes, Sister. I am here.\" He touched her hand automatically, then was dumbfounded. _She was_ still _lucid?_\n\n\"Thank you for . . . helping me. I will pray for you.\"\n\n_She would._ He knew that. He patted her hand again, and with the other increased the morphine drip. Enough was enough. They could put no more blood into her to be polluted with the virus strands. He looked around the room. Both army medics were sitting in the corner, quite content to let the doctor stand with the patient. He walked over to them and pointed to one.\n\n\"Tell the director\u2014soon.\"\n\n\"At once.\" The man was very pleased to leave the room. Moudi counted to ten before speaking to the other.\n\n\"Fresh gloves, please.\" He held up his hands to show that he didn't like touching her either. That medic left, too. Moudi figured he had a minute or so.\n\nThe medication tray in the corner had what he needed. He took a 20cc needle from its holder and stuck it into the vial of morphine, pulling in enough to fill the plastic cylinder completely. Then he returned to the bedside, pulled the plastic sheet back and looked for . . . there. The back of her left hand. He took it in his and slid the needle in, immediately pushing down the plunger.\n\n\"To help you sleep,\" he told her, moving back across the room. He didn't look to see if she responded to his words or not. The needle went into the red-plastic sharps container, and by the time the medic came back with new gloves, everything was as before.\n\n\"Here.\"\n\nMoudi nodded and stripped the overgloves off into their disposal container, replacing them with a new set. Back at the bedside, he watched the blue eyes close for the last time. The EKG display showed her heart rate at just over one-forty, the spiky lines shorter than they should have been, and irregularly spaced. Just a matter of time now. She was probably praying in her sleep, he thought, dreaming prayers. Well, at least he could be sure now that she was in no pain. The morphine would be well into her diminishing blood supply now, the chemical molecules finding their way to the brain, fitting into the receptors, and there releasing dopamine, which would tell the nervous system . . . yes.\n\nHer chest rose and fell with the labored respiration. There was a pause, almost like a hiccup, and the breathing restarted, but irregularly now, and the flow of oxygen to the bloodstream was now diminishing. The heart rate changed, becoming yet more rapid. Then respiration ceased. The heart still didn't stop at once, so strong it was, so valiant, the doctor thought sadly, admiring this undying part of a person already dead, but that couldn't last long, and with a few final traces on the screen, it, too, ceased to function. The EKG machine began making a steady alarm tone. Moudi reached up and shut it off. He turned to see the medics sharing a look of relief.\n\n\"So soon?\" the director asked, coming into the room and seeing the flat, silent line on the EKG readout.\n\n\"The heart. Internal bleeding.\" Moudi didn't have to say anything else.\n\n\"I see. We are ready, then?\"\n\n\"Correct, Doctor.\"\n\nThe director motioned to the medics, who had one last job to do. One of them bundled up the plastic sheeting to contain drips. The other disconnected the last IV and the electronic EKG leads. This was done expeditiously, and when the former patient was wrapped like a piece of slaughtered meat, the locks on the wheels were kicked loose, and the two soldiers wheeled her out the door. They would return to clean the room so thoroughly as to make sure that nothing could live on the walls, floor, or ceiling.\n\nMoudi and the director followed them to \"Post,\" a room in the same confined area behind the double doors. Here was an autopsy table made of smooth, cold stainless steel. They wheeled the treatment bed beside it, uncovering the body and rolling it to a facedown position on the steel, while the doctors observed from the corner, each donning surgical gowns over his protective suit\u2014more from habit than necessity; some habits are just that. Next the plastic sheets were lifted, held by the edges to form a U shape that allowed the accumulated blood to be poured into a container. About half a liter, the doctors estimated. The sheets were carefully carried to a large bin. The medics stuffed them in and left the room, wheeling the bin with them, off to the incinerator. Nervous as they were, it didn't appear that they'd spilled a drop anywhere.\n\n\"Very well.\" The director pressed a button and the table elevated from the far end. Out of long-standing professionalism, he touched his fingertips to the left carotid artery to make sure there was no pulse, then to the right, where again there was none. When the body was at a twenty-degree angle, he took a large scalpel and cut both arteries, along with the parallel jugular veins. Blood poured out onto the table, pulled by gravity out of the body, channeled into grooves leading in turn to a drain, and over the next several minutes four liters of blood were captured in a plastic container. The body went pale so quickly, Moudi saw. Moments earlier, the skin had been mottled red and purple. It seemed to fade before his eyes, or perhaps it was just imagination. A laboratory technician came to collect the blood container, which he placed on a small wheeled cart. Nobody wanted to carry something like that, even for a short distance.\n\n\"I've never posted an Ebola victim,\" the director observed. Not that this was a proper postmortem examination. For all the care the director had just shown for the patient's departed humanity, bleeding her out like that, he might have slaughtered a lamb.\n\nThey still had to be careful, however. In cases like this, only one pair of hands worked within the surgical field, and Moudi let the director do that, as he made rough, wide incisions. Stainless-steel retractors pulled back the flaps of skin and muscle. Moudi handled those, his eyes locked on the scalpel in the director's gloved hands. In another minute, the left kidney was fully exposed. They waited for the medical corpsmen to return. One of them set a tray on the table next to the cadaver. Moudi was revolted by what he saw next. One effect of the Ebola virus and its disease process was to break down tissue. The exposed kidney was half liquefied, and when the director reached in to remove it, the organ actually broke\u2014pulled itself apart into two pieces like a horrid red-brown pudding. The director clucked at himself with annoyance. He'd known what to expect, but forgotten even so.\n\n\"Remarkable what happens to the organs, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Expect the same from the liver, but the spleen \"\n\n\"Yes, I know. The spleen will be like a brick. Watch your hands, Moudi,\" the director warned. He lifted a fresh retractor\u2014the instrument was shaped rather like a scoop\u2014to remove the remaining kidney fragment. This went onto the tray. He nodded, and the medic took it off to the lab. The right kidney went more smoothly. At the director's insistence, after all the muscle and blood vessels were disconnected, both doctors used their hands to remove it, and this one stayed reasonably intact\u2014until it landed on the tray. There the organ deformed and split open. The only good thing about it was that the softness of the tissue would not compromise the integrity of their doubled gloves. That fact didn't prevent both doctors from cringing.\n\n\"Here!\" The director flicked his hand for the orderlies to approach. \"Turn it over.\"\n\nThe medics did so, one grasping the shoulders, and the other the knees, flipping the body over as briskly as they could. That caused blood and some tissue to spatter on their cloth gowns. The orderlies pulled back, keeping as far away as possible.\n\n\"I want the liver and spleen, that's all,\" the director told Moudi, looking up. He turned to the orderlies. \"Then you will wrap the body and remove it to the incinerator. This room will then be disinfected thoroughly.\"\n\nSister Jean Baptiste's eyes were open, as sightless now as they had been thirty minutes earlier. The doctor took a cloth and covered the face, murmuring a prayer for her soul which the director heard.\n\n\"Yes, Moudi, she is doubtless in Paradise. Now, shall we continue?\" he asked brusquely. He made the usual Y-shaped incision to open the thorax, deep and crude as before, peeling back the layers quickly, more like a meat-cutter than a physician. What they saw there even shocked the director. \"How did she live so long like this . . . ?\" the man breathed.\n\nMoudi thought back to his medical-school days, remembering a life-sized plastic model of the human body in his first anatomy class. It was as though someone had taken the model and poured in a bucket of powerful solvent. Every exposed organ was misshapen. The surface tissue layer on most of them was . . . dissolved. The abdomen was a sea of black blood. All they'd put in, Moudi thought ... not even half of it had leaked out. Amazing.\n\n\"Suction!\" the director commanded. An orderly appeared at his side with a plastic tube leading to a vacuum bottle, and the sound of it was obscene. The process lasted fully ten minutes, with the doctors standing back while the orderly moved the suction tube around, like a maid cleaning a house. Another three liters of contaminated, virus-rich blood for the lab.\n\nThe body was supposed to be a Temple of Life, the Holy Koran taught. Moudi looked down to see one transformed into\u2014what? A factory of death, more surely than the building in which he stood. The director moved back in, and Moudi watched his hands uncover the liver, more carefully than before. Perhaps he'd been spooked by the blood in the abdominal cavity. Again the blood vessels were cut, the connective tissue cut away. The director set his instruments down, and without being so bidden, Moudi reached in to lift out the organ and set it on the tray which, again, an orderly removed.\n\n\"I wonder why the spleen behaves so differently?\"\n\nDOWNSTAIRS, OTHER MEDICAL orderlies were at work. One by one, the monkey cages were lifted from the orderly piles in the storage room. The African greens had been fed, and they were still recovering from the shock of their travel. That somewhat reduced their ability to scratch and bite and fight the gloved hands moving the cages. But the panic of the animals returned soon enough when they arrived in another room. This part of the operation was being handled ten at a time. Once in the killing room, when the doors were all tightly closed, the monkeys knew. The unlucky ones got to watch as one cage at a time was set on a table. The door to each was opened, and into the cage went a stick with a metal-band loop on the end. The loop went over the head of each monkey and was yanked tight, usually to the faint crackling sound of the broken neck. In every case the animal went taut, then fell limp, usually with the eyes open and outraged at the murder. The same instrument pulled the dead animal out. And when the loop was loosened, the body was tossed to a soldier, who carried it to the next room. The others saw and screeched their rage at the soldiers, but the cages were too small to give them room to dodge. At best one might interpose an arm in the loop, only to have that broken as well. Intelligent enough to see and know and understand what was happening to them, the African greens found it not unlike sitting in a lone tree on the savanna, watching a leopard climb up, and up, and up . . . and there was nothing they could do but screech. The noise was troublesome to the soldiers, but not that troublesome.\n\nIn the next room, five teams of medical corpsmen worked at five separate tables. Clamps affixed at the neck and at the base of the tail helped keep the bodies in place. One soldier, using a curved knife, would slice open the back, tracing up the backbone, and then the other would make a perpendicular cut, pulling the hide apart to expose the inner back. The first would then remove the kidneys and hand them to the second, and while the small organs went into a special container, he would remove the body, tossing it into a plastic trash barrel for later incineration. By the time he returned to pick up his knife, the other team member would have the next monkey corpse fixed in place. It took about four minutes per iteration of the procedure. In ninety minutes, all the African green monkeys were dead. There was some urgency to this. All the raw material for their task was biological, and all subject to biological processes. The slaughtering crew handed off their product through double-doored openings cut into the walls, leading to the Hot Lab.\n\nThere things were different. Every man in the large room wore the blue plastic suit. Every motion was slow and careful. They'd been well drilled and well briefed, and what little might have been overlooked in their training had recently been recounted by the medical corpsmen selected by lot to treat the Western woman upstairs, in every dreadful detail. When something was carried from one place to another, an announcement was made, and people made a path.\n\nThe blood was in a warming tank, and air bubbled through it. The simian kidneys, two large buckets of them, were taken to a grinding machine\u2014actually not terribly different from the kind of food processor found in gourmet kitchens. This reduced the kidneys to mush, which was moved from one table to another and layered onto trays, along with some liquid nutrients. It struck more than one of the people in the lab that what they were doing was not at all unlike baking a cake or other confection. The blood was poured generously into the trays. About half was used in that way. The rest, divided into plastic containers, went into a deep-freezer cooled by liquid nitrogen. The Hot Lab was kept warm and moist, not at all unlike the jungle. The lights were not overly bright, and shielded to contain whatever ultra-violet radiation the fluorescent might emit. Viruses didn't like UV. They needed the right environment in which to grow, and the kidneys of the African green monkey were just that, along with nutrients, proper temperature, correct humidity, and just a pinch of hate.\n\n\"YOU'VE LEARNED SO much?\" Daryaei asked.\n\n\"It's their media, their newspeople,\" Badrayn explained.\n\n\"They're all spies!\" the mullah objected.\n\n\"Many think so,\" Ali said with a smile. \"But they aren't, really. They are\u2014how does one explain them? Like medieval heralds. They see what they see and they tell what they see. They are loyal to no one except themselves and their profession. Yes, it is true that they spy, but they spy on _everyone,_ their own people most of all. It's mad, I admit, but it's true even so.\"\n\n\"Do they believe in anything?\" That was a hard one for his host to grasp.\n\nAnother smile. \"Nothing that I've ever identified. Oh, yes, the American ones are devoted to Israel, but even that is an exaggeration. It took me years to understand that. Like dogs, they will turn on anyone, bite any hand, no matter how kind. They search and they see and they tell. And so, on this Ryan fellow, I've been able to learn everything\u2014his home, his family, the schools his children attend, the number of the office his wife works in, everything.\"\n\n\"What if some of the information is lies?\" Daryaei asked suspiciously. As long as he'd dealt with the West, the nature of their reporters was just too foreign to him to be fully understood.\n\n\"It's all easily verified. His wife's workplace, for example. I'm sure there must be some of the faithful on staff at that hospital. It's simply a matter of approaching one and asking a few harmless questions. Their home, well, that will be guarded. The same is true of the children. It's a conundrum for all such people. They must have some protection to move about, but the protection can be seen, and that tells one where they are, and who they are. Given the information I've developed, we even know where to start looking.\" Badrayn kept his remarks short and simple. It wasn't that Daryaei was a fool he most assuredly was not\u2014just that he was insular. One advantage to all his years in Lebanon was that Ali had been exposed to much and had learned much. Most of all, he'd learned that he needed a sponsor, and in Mahmoud Haji Daryaei he had a prospective one. This man had plans. He needed people. And for one reason or another, he didn't fully trust his own. Badrayn didn't wonder why. Whatever the reason was, it was good fortune, and not to be questioned.\n\n\"How well protected are such people?\" the mullah asked, his hand playing with his beard. The man hadn't shaved in nearly twenty-four hours.\n\n\"Very well indeed,\" Badrayn replied, noting something odd about the question and filing that fact away. \"American police agencies are quite effective. The crime problem in America has nothing to do with their police. They simply don't know what to do after the criminals are caught. As applied to their President . . . ?\" Ali leaned back for a stretch. \"He will be surrounded by a highly trained group of expert marksmen, well motivated, and utterly faithful.\" Badrayn added these words to his presentation to see if his interlocutor's eyes changed. Daryaei was weary, and there was such a change. \"Otherwise, protection is protection. The procedures are straightforward. You do not need my instruction on that.\"\n\n\"America's vulnerability?\"\n\n\"It's severe. Their government is in chaos. Again, you know this.\"\n\n\"They are difficult to measure, these Americans . . . ,\" Daryaei mused.\n\n\"Their military might is formidable. Their political will is unpredictable, as someone we both . . . knew found out to his misfortune. It is a mistake to underestimate them. America is like a sleeping lion, to be treated with care and respect.\"\n\n\"How does one defeat a lion?\"\n\nThat one caught Badrayn short for a second or two. Once on a trip to Tanzania he'd been advising the government on how to deal with insurgents\u2014he'd gone into the bush for a day, driving with a colonel in that country's intelligence service. There he'd spotted a lion, an old one which had nonetheless managed a kill all by himself. Perhaps the wildebeest had been crippled. Then there came into view a troop of hyenas, and seeing that, the Tanzanian colonel had stopped the Soviet-made Zil jeep and handed binoculars to Badrayn, and told him to observe and so learn a lesson about insurgents and their capacities. It was something he'd never forgotten. The lion, he remembered, was a large one, perhaps old, perhaps slowed down from his prime, but still powerful and forbidding to behold, even from two hundred meters away, a creature of undeniable magnificence. The hyenas were smaller, doglike creatures, with their broken-back gait, an odd canter that must have been very efficient. They gathered first in a little group, twenty meters from the lion, which was trying to feed on his kill. And then the hyenas had moved, forming a circle around the lion, and whichever one was directly behind the powerful cat would move in to nip at the hindquarters, and the lion would turn and roar and dart a few meters, and that hyena would withdraw quickly\u2014but even as that happened, another one would advance behind the lion for another nip. Individually, the hyenas would have had no more chance against this king of the grasslands than a man with a knife would have against a soldier armed with a machine gun, but try though he might, the lion could not protect his kill\u2014nor even himself\u2014and in just five minutes the lion was on the defensive, unable even to run properly, because there was always a hyena behind him, nipping at his balls, forcing the lion to run in a way that was pathetically comical, dragging his bottom on the grass as he tried to maneuver. And finally the lion just went away, without a roar, without a backward glance, while the hyenas took the kill, cackling in their odd, laughing barks, as though finding amusement in their usurpation of the greater animal's labor. And so the mighty had been vanquished by the lesser. The lion would get older, and weaker, and someday would be unable to defeat a real hyena attack aimed at his own flesh. Sooner or later, his Tanzanian friend had told him, the hyenas got them all. Badrayn looked at his host's eyes again.\n\n\"It can be done.\"\n**20**\n\n**NEW ADMINISTRATIONS**\n\n**T** HERE WERE THIRTY OF them in the East Room\u2014all men, much to his surprise\u2014with their wives. As Jack walked into the reception his eyes scanned the faces. Some pleased him. Some did not. Those who did were as scared as he was. It was the confident, smiling ones who worried the President.\n\nWhat was the right thing to do with them? Even Arnie didn't know the answer, though he had run through several approaches. Be very strong and intimidate them? Sure, Ryan thought, and tomorrow the papers would say he was trying to be King Jack I. Take it easy? Then he'd be called a wimp who was unable to take his proper leadership position. Ryan was learning to fear the media. It hadn't been all that bad before. As a worker bee, he'd been largely ignored. Even as Durling's National Security Advisor, he'd been thought of as a ventriloquist's dummy. But now the situation was very different, and there was not a single thing he could say that could not, and _would_ not, be twisted into whatever the particular listener wanted to say himself. Washington had long since lost the capacity for objectivity. Everything was politics, and politics was ideology, and ideology came down to personal prejudices rather than the quest for truth. Where had all these people been educated that the truth didn't matter to them?\n\nRyan's problem was that he really didn't _have_ a political philosophy per se. He believed in things that worked, that produced the promised results and fixed whatever was broken. Whether those things adhered to one political slant or another was less important than the effects they had. Good ideas worked, even though some of them might seem crazy. Bad ideas didn't, even though some of them seemed sensible as hell. But Washington didn't think that way. Ideologies _were_ facts in this city, and if the ideologies didn't work, people would deny it; and if the ones with which they disagreed _did_ worlc, those who'd been opposed would never admit it, because admitting error was more hateful to them than any form of personal misconduct. They'd sooner deny God than deny their ideas. Politics had to be the only arena known to man in which people took great action without caring much for the realworld consequences, and to which the real world was far less important than whatever fantasy, right, left, or center, they'd brought to this city of marble and lawyers.\n\nJack looked at the faces, wondering what political baggage they'd brought along with their hanging bags. Maybe it was a weakness that he didn't understand how that all worked, but for his part, he had lived a life in which mistakes got real people killed\u2014and in Cathy's case, made people blind. For Jack, the victims were people with real names and faces. For Cathy, they were those whose faces she had _touched_ in an operating room. For political figures, they were abstractions far more distant than their closely held ideas.\n\n\"Like being in a zoo,\" Caroline Ryan, FLOTUS, SURGEON, observed to her husband, behind a charming smile. She'd raced home\u2014the helicopter helped\u2014just in time to change into a new white slinky dress and a gold necklace that Jack had bought her for Christmas . . . a few weeks, he remembered, before the terrorists had tried to kill her on the Route 50 bridge in Annapolis.\n\n\"With golden bars,\" her husband, POTUS, SWORDSMAN, replied, fronting a smile of his own that was as fake as a three-dollar bill.\n\n\"So what are we?\" she asked as the assembled senators designate applauded their entrance. \"Lion and lioness? Bull and cow? Peacock and peahen? Or two lab bunnies waiting to have shampoo poured in our eyes?\"\n\n\"Depends on who's doing the beholding, baby.\" Ryan was holding his wife's hand, and together they walked to the microphone.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington.\" Ryan had to pause for another round of applause. That was something else he'd have to learn. People applauded the President for damned near anything. Just as well that his bathroom had a door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some three-by-five cards, the way Presidents always kept their speaking points. The cards had been prepared by Callie Weston, and the hand-printing was large enough that he didn't need his reading glasses. Even so he'd come to expect a headache. He had one every day from all the reading.\n\n\"Our country has needs, and they're not small ones. You're here for the same reason I am. You've been appointed to fill in. You have jobs which many of you never expected, and which some of you may not have wanted.\" This was vain flattery, but the sort they wanted to hear\u2014more accurately, which they wanted to be _seen_ to hear on the C-SPAN cameras in the corners of the room. There were perhaps three people in the room who were not career politicians, and one of those was a governor who'd done the me-you dance with his lieutenant governor and so come to Washington to fill out the term of a senator from another party. That was a curveball which the papers had only started writing about. The polarity of the Senate would change as a result of the 747 crash, because the control of thirty-two of America's state houses hadn't quite been in line with the makeup of the Congress.\n\n\"That's good,\" Ryan told them. \"There is a long and honorable tradition of citizens in service to their nation that goes back at least as far as Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen who more than once answered his country's call, then returned to his farm and his family and his work. One of our great cities is named in memory of that gentleman,\" Jack added, nodding to a new senator from Ohio\u2014his home was in Dayton, which was close enough.\n\n\"You would not be here if you didn't understand what many of those needs are. But my real message for you, today, is that we must work together. We do not have the time and our _country_ does not have the time for us to bicker and fight.\" He had to pause for applause again. Annoyed by the delay, Ryan managed to look up with an appreciative smile and nod.\n\n\"Senators, you will find me an easy man to work with. My door is always open, I know how to answer a phone, and the street goes both ways. I will discuss any issue. I will listen to any point of view. There are no rules other than the Constitution which I have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.\n\n\"The people out where you come from, out there beyond Interstate 495, expect all of us to get the job done. They don't expect us to get reelected. They expect us to work for them to the best of our ability. We work for them. They don't work for us. We have the duty to perform for them. Robert E. Lee once said that 'duty' is the most sublime word in our language. It's even more sublime and even more important now, because none of us has been elected to our offices. We represent the people of a democracy, but in every case we have come here in a way that simply wasn't supposed to happen. How much greater, then, is our personal duty to fulfill our roles in the best possible manner?\" More applause.\n\n\"There is no higher trust than that which fate has conferred on us. We are not medieval noblemen blessed by birth with high station and great power. We are the servants, not the masters, to those whose consent gives us what power we have. We live in the tradition of giants. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, and so many other members of your house of the Congress must be your models. 'How stands the Union?' Webster is said to ask from his grave. We will determine that. The Union is in our hands. Lincoln called America the last and best hope of mankind, and in the past twenty years America has given truth to that judgment by our sixteenth President. America is still an experiment, a collective idea, a set of rules called the Constitution to which all of us, within and without the Beltway, give allegiance. What makes us special is that brief document. America isn't a strip of dirt and rock between two oceans. America is an idea and a set of rules we all follow. That's what makes us different, and in holding true to that, we in this room can make sure that the country we pass on to our successors will be the same one entrusted to us, maybe even a little bit improved. And now\"\u2014Ryan turned to the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Judicial Circuit, the nation's most senior appellate judge, up from Richmond\u2014\"it's time for you to join the team.\"\n\nJudge William Staunton came to the microphone. Every senatorial spouse held a Bible, and every senatorial appointee placed his left hand on it, raising the other.\n\n\"I\u2014state your name . . .\"\n\nAs Ryan watched, the new senators were duly sworn. At least it looked solemn enough. The oaths were spoken. A few of the new legislators kissed the Bibles, either from personal religious conviction or because they were close to the cameras. Then they kissed their wives, most of whom beamed. There was a collective intake of breath, and then they all looked around at one another, and the White House staff came into the room with drinks just after the cameras were turned off, because now the real work started. Ryan got himself a glass of Perrier and walked into the middle of the room, smiling despite his fatigue and his unease at performing political duties.\n\nTHE PHOTOS CAME in one more time. Security at Khartoum airport had not improved, and this time three American intelligence officers were snapping photos of the people walking down the stairs. Everyone around was surprised that no newspeople had yet twigged to the story. A stream of official cars\u2014probably the entire complement for this poor nation\u2014ferried the visitors away. When the process was complete, the 737 airliner went back east, and the spooks drove off to the embassy. Two others of their number were camped out at the dwellings assigned to the Iraqi generals\u2014this tidbit had come from the station chief's contact in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry. When those photos had been taken, the additional officers also drove back, and in the embassy darkroom the frames were processed, blown up, and faxed off via satellite. At Langley, Bert Vasco identified every face, assisted by a pair of CIA desk officers and a set of mug shots in the CIA files.\n\n\"That's it,\" the State Department officer pronounced. \"That's the whole military leadership. But not one civilian out of the Ba'ath Party.\"\n\n\"So we know who the sacrificial goats are.\" That observation came from Ed Foley.\n\n\"Yep,\" Mary Pat answered with a nod. \"And it gives a chance for the senior surviving officers to arrest them, 'process' them, and show loyalty to the new regime. Shit,\" she concluded. \"Too fast.\" Her station chief in Riyadh was all dressed up with no place to go. The same was true of some Saudi diplomats who'd hastily put together a program of fiscal incentives for the notional new Iraqi regime. It would now be unnecessary.\n\nEd Foley, the new DCI-designate, shook his head in admiration. \"I didn't think they had it in 'em. Killing our friend, sure, but coaxing the leadership out this fast and this smooth, who would've thunk it?\"\n\n\"You got me there, Mr. Foley,\" Vasco agreed. \"Somebody must have brokered the deal\u2014but who?\"\n\n\"Get buzzin', worker bees,\" Ed Foley told the desk officers, with a wry smile. \"Everything you can develop, ASAP.\"\n\nIT LOOKED LIKE some sort of awful stew, the darkened human blood and the red-brown nephritic mush of monkey kidneys, just sitting there, marinating in flat, shallow glass trays under dim lights shielded to keep ultraviolet light from harming the viruses. There wasn't much to do at this point except to monitor the environmental conditions, and simple analog instruments did that. Moudi and the director walked in, wearing their protective garb, to check the sealed culturing chambers for themselves. Two-thirds of Jean Baptiste's blood was now deep-frozen in case something went wrong with their first effort at reproducing the Ebola Mayinga virus. They also checked the room's multi-stage ventilation systems, because now the building was truly a factory of death. The precautions were double-sided. As in this room they strove to give the virus a healthy place to multiply, just outside the door the army medical corpsmen were spraying every square millimeter to make sure that it was the only such place\u2014and so the virus had to be isolated and protected from the disinfectant as well. Thus the air drawn into the culture chambers had to be carefully filtered, lest in their effort to stay alive the people in the building killed that which might kill them if they made another sort of mistake.\n\n\"So you really think this version might be airborne?\"\n\n\"As you know, the Ebola Zaire Mayinga strain is named for a nurse who became infected despite all conventional protective measures. Patient Two\"\u2014he had decided it was easier not to speak her name\u2014\"was a skilled nurse with Ebola experience; she did not give any injections; and she didn't know how she might have contracted the virus. Therefore, yes, I believe this is possible.\"\n\n\"That would be very useful, Moudi,\" the director whispered, so faintly that the junior physician had trouble hearing it. He heard it even so. The thought alone was loud enough. \"We can test for it,\" the older man added.\n\nThat would be easier on him, Moudi thought. At least he wouldn't know those people by name. He wondered if he was right about the virus. Might Patient Two have made a mistake and forgotten it? But, no, he _had_ examined her body for punctures, as had Sister Marin Magdalena, and it wasn't as though she might have licked secretions from the young Benedict Mkusa, was it? So what did that have to mean? It meant that the Mayinga strain survived for a brief period of time in air, and that meant they had a potential weapon such as man had never before encountered, worse than nuclear weapons, worse than chemical weapons. They had a weapon which could reproduce itself and be spread by its own victims, one to another and another until the disease outbreak burned out in due course. It _would_ burn out. All the outbreaks did. It had to burn out, didn't it?\n\nDidn't it?\n\nMoudi's hand came up to rub his chin, a contemplative gesture stopped short by the plastic mask. He didn't know the answer to that one. In Zaire and the few other African countries afflicted by this odious disease, the outbreaks, frightening though they were, all did burn out\u2014despite the ideal environmental conditions which protected and sustained the virus strands. But on the other side of that equation was the primitive nature of Zaire, the horrible roads and the absence of efficient transport. The disease killed people before they could get far. Ebola wiped out villages, but did little more. But nobody really knew what would happen in an advanced country. Theoretically, one could infect an aircraft, say an international flight into Kennedy. The travelers would leave one aircraft and fan out into others. Maybe they'd be able to spread the disease through coughs and sneezes immediately, or maybe not. It didn't matter, really. Many of them would fly again in a few days, wondering if they had the flu, and then they'd be able to communicate the virus, and so infect more.\n\nThe question of how an epidemic spread was one of time and opportunity more than anything else. The more rapidly it got out from the focal center, and the more rapid the instrumentalities of travel, the farther a disease could spread laterally through a population. There were mathematical models, but they were all theoretical, dependent on a multitude of individual variables, each of which could affect the entire threat equation by at least one order of magnitude. To say the epidemic would die out in time was correct. The question was _how fast?_ That would determine the number of people infected before protective measures took effect. One percent invasion of a society, or ten percent, or fifty percent? America wasn't a provincial society. Everyone interacted with everyone else. A truly airborne virus with a three-day incubation period . . . there was no model for that known to Moudi. The deadliest recent Zaireian outbreak in Kikwit had claimed fewer than three hundred lives, but it had started with one unfortunate woodcutter, then his family, then their neighbors. The trick, then, if you wanted to create a much wider outbreak, was to increase the number of index cases. If you could do that, the initial blossoming of Ebola Zaire Mayinga _America_ could be so large as to invalidate conventional control measures. It would spread not from one man and one family, but from hundreds of individuals and families\u2014or thousands? Then the next generational leap could involve hundreds of thousands. About this time, the Americans would realize that something evil was afoot, but there would be time for one more generational leap, and that would be an order of magnitude greater still, perhaps into the millions. At that point, medical facilities would be overwhelmed . . .\n\n. . . and there might be no stopping it at all. Nobody knew the possible consequences of a deliberate mass infection in a highly mobile society. The implications might be truly global. But probably not. Almost certainly not, Moudi judged, looking down at the glass culture trays behind thick wire-glass panels, through the plastic of his mask. The first generation of this disease had come from an unknown host and killed a young boy. The second generation had claimed but a single victim, due to fate and luck and his own competence as a physician. The third generation would grow before his eyes. How far that might spread was undetermined, but it was generations Four, Five, Six, and perhaps even Seven which would determine the fate of an entire country\u2014which happened to be the enemy of his own.\n\nIt was easier now. Jean Baptiste had had a face and a voice and a life which had touched his own. He could not make that mistake again. She'd been an infidel, but a righteous one, and she was now with Allah, because Allah was truly merciful. He'd prayed for her soul, and surely Allah would hear his prayers. Few in America or elsewhere could possibly be as righteous as she had been, and he knew well that Americans hated his country and distrusted his religious faith. They might have names and faces, but he didn't see them here and he never would, and they were all ten thousand kilometers away, and it was easy to switch the television off.\n\n\"Yes,\" Moudi agreed. \"Testing for it will be easy enough.\"\n\n\"LOOK.\" GEORGE WINSTON was telling a knot of three new senators, \"if the federal government made cars, a Chevy pickup would cost eighty thousand dollars and have to stop every ten blocks to fill up the tank. You guys know business. So do I. We can do better.\"\n\n\"It is really that bad?\" the (alphabetically) senior senator from Connecticut asked.\n\n\"I can show you the comparative-productivity numbers. If Detroit ran this way, we'd all be driving Japanese cars,\" Winston replied, jabbing his finger into the man's chest, and reminding himself to get rid of his Mercedes 500SEL, or at least garage it for a while.\n\n\"It's like having one cop car to cover East L.A.,\" Tony Bretano was saying to five more, two of them from California. \"I don't have the forces I need to cover _one_ MRC. That's major regional conflict,\" he explained to the new people and their spouses. \"And we're supposed to\u2014on paper, I mean\u2014we're supposed to be able to cover two of them at the same time, plus a peacekeeping mission somewhere else. Okay? Now, what I need at Defense is a chance to reconfigure our forces so that the shooters are the most important, and the rest of the outfit supports them, not the other way around. Accountants and lawyers are useful, but we have enough of them at Treasury and Justice. My side of the government, we're the cops, and I don't have enough cops on the street.\"\n\n\"But how do we pay for that?\" Colorado the younger asked. The senior senator from the Rocky Mountain State had been at a fund-raiser in Golden that night.\n\n\"The Pentagon isn't a jobs program. We have to remember that. Now, next week I'll have a full assessment of what we need, and then I'm going to come to the Hill, and together we'll figure how to make that happen at the least possible cost.\"\n\n\"See, what did I tell you?\" Arnie van Damm said quietly, passing behind Ryan's back. \"Let them do it for you. You just stay pleasant.\"\n\n\"What you said was right, Mr. President,\" the new senator from Ohio professed to believe, sipping a bourbon and water now that the cameras were off. \"You know, once in school, I did a little history paper on Cincinnatus, and . . .\"\n\n\"Well, all we have to do is remember to put the country first,\" Jack told him.\n\n\"How do you manage to do your job and\u2014I mean,\" the wife of the senior senator from Wisconsin explained, \"you still do your surgery?\"\n\n\"And teaching, which is even more important,\" Cathy said with a nod, wishing she were upstairs and doing her patient notes. Well, there was the helicopter ride in tomorrow. \"I will _never_ stop doing my work. I give blind people their sight back. Sometimes I take the bandages off myself, and the look on their faces is the best thing in the world. The best,\" she repeated.\n\n\"Even better than me, honey?\" Jack asked, placing his arm around her shoulder. This might even be working, he thought. Charm them, Arnie and Callie had told him.\n\nTHE PROCESS HAD already started. The colonel assigned to guard the five mullahs had followed them into the mosque, where, moved by the moment, he'd worshiped with them. At the conclusion of the devotions, the senior of their number had spoken to him, quietly and politely, touching on a favored passage in the Holy Koran, so as to establish some common ground. It brought to the colonel a memory of his youth and his own father, a devout and honorable man. It was the usual thing in dealing with people, no matter the place or the culture. You got them talking, read their words, and chose the proper path for continuing the conversation. The mullah, a member of the Iranian clergy for over forty years, had counseled people on their faith and on their troubles for all that time, and so it was not hard for him to establish a rapport with his captor, a man supposedly sworn to kill him and his four colleagues should those orders arrive from his superiors. But in picking a man deemed faithful, the departing generals had chosen a little too wisely, because men who display true loyalty are men of thoughts and principles, and such men are ever vulnerable to ideas demonstrably better than those to which they adhere. There could be no real contest. Islam was a religion with a long and honorable history, neither of which attribute attached to the dying regime which the colonel had sworn to uphold.\n\n\"It must have been a hard thing, fighting in the swamps,\" the mullah told him a few minutes later, as the conversation turned to relations between the two Islamic countries.\n\n\"War is evil. I never took pleasure in killing,\" the colonel admitted. It was rather like being a Catholic in the confessional, and all at once the man's eyes teared up, and he related some of the things he'd done over the years. He could see now that while he'd never taken such pleasure, he had hardened his heart to it, finally not distinguishing the innocent from the guilty, the just from the corrupt, and done what he'd been told _because_ he'd been told, not because it had been in any way the right thing to do. He saw that now.\n\n\"Man falls often, but through the words of the Prophet we may always find our way back to a merciful God. Men are forgetful of their duties, but Allah is never forgetful of His.\" The mullah touched the officer's arm. \"I think your prayers are not finished this day. Together we will pray to Allah, and together we will find peace for your soul.\"\n\nAfter that, it had been very easy indeed. On learning that the generals were even now leaving the country, the colonel had two good reasons for cooperating. He had no wish to die. He was quite willing to follow the will of his God in order to stay alive and serve. In demonstration of his devotion, he assembled two companies of soldiers to meet with the mullahs and get their orders. It was very easy for the soldiers. All they had to do was follow the orders of their officers. To do anything else was a thought that never occurred to any of them.\n\nIt was now dawn in Baghdad, and at a score of large houses, doors were kicked in. Some occupants they found awake. Some were drunkenly asleep. Some were packed to leave and trying to figure a place to go and a way to get there. All were a little too late in their understanding of what was going on around them, in a place where a minute's error was the difference between prosperous life and violent death. Few resisted, and the one man who came closest to doing so successfully was cut nearly in half by a twenty-round burst from an AK-47, along with his wife. Mostly they were led barefoot from their homes into waiting trucks, heads down to the sidewalk, knowing the way this particular drama would end for them.\n\nTHESE TACTICAL RADIO nets were not encrypted, and the faint VHF signals were monitored, this time at STORM TRACK, which was closer to Baghdad. Names were spoken, more than once in every case as the pickup teams reported back to their dispatchers, which made life easy for the ELINT teams close to the border and at King Khalid Military City. The watch officers called in their supervisors, and CRITIC-priority dispatches were shot off via satellite.\n\nRYAN HAD JUST walked the last of the new senators to the door when Andrea Price walked up.\n\n\"My shoes are killing me, and I have a procedure at\u2014\" Cathy stopped talking.\n\n\"FLASH Traffic coming in now, sir.\"\n\n\"Iraq?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\nThe President kissed his wife. \"I'll be up in a little while.\"\n\nCathy had no choice but to nod and head to the elevator, where one of the ushers was waiting to take the First Couple upstairs. The kids would already be in bed. Their homework was all done, probably in some cases with the help of their bodyguards. Jack turned right, trotted down the stairs, then right again, left to get outside of the building, then back inside the West Wing and the Situation Room.\n\n\"Talk to me,\" the President commanded.\n\n\"It's started,\" Ed Foley's face said on the wall-mounted TV. And all they could do was watch.\n\nIRAQI NATIONAL TELEVISION greeted a new day and a new reality. This was clear when the newsreaders commenced their daily presentation with an invocation of Allah's name, not for the first time, but never with this degree of fervor. \"Gimme that ol' time religion, it's good enough for me\u2014now,\" observed the chief master sergeant at PALM BOWL, because the transmission was national, and repeated from the transmitters in nearby Basra. He turned and waved. \"Major Sabah?\"\n\n\"Yes, Chief, yes,\" the Kuwaiti officer replied with a nod as he came over. He hadn't had much in the way of doubt before. His superiors had expressed reservations. They always did, they were never quite as close to the pulse of their enemy as the major was, thinking politics instead of ideas. He checked his watch. They'd be in their offices in two hours after the normal morning routine, and that didn't matter now. Hurrying wouldn't change anything. The dam had broken, and the water would spill out. The time to stop it had passed, assuming that such a chance had ever existed.\n\nThe Iraqi military had taken over, the TV news broadcast said. This was announced as though the situation were unique. A council of revolutionary justice had been formed. Those guilty of crimes against the people (a good catchall term which meant very little but was understood by all) were being arrested, and would face the judgment of their countrymen. The nation needed calm most of all, the TV told them. Today would be a national holiday. Only those in essential public-service jobs were expected to go to work. For the rest of the country's citizens, it was advised that they consider this a day of prayer and reconciliation. For the rest of the world, the new regime promised peace. The rest of the world would have all day to think about that.\n\nDARYAEI HAD ALREADY done a good deal of thinking about it. He'd managed three hours of sleep before awakening for morning prayers. He found that as he aged he needed less and less. Perhaps the body understood that, with little time remaining, there was no longer time for rest, though there was for dreams, and he'd dreamed of lions in the early hours of this day. Dead lions. The lion had also been the symbol of the Shah's regime, and truly Badrayn had been correct. Lions could be killed. The real ones had once been native to Iran\u2014Persia, in the old style\u2014and had been hunted down to extinction in classical times. The symbolic ones, the Pahlavi dynasty, had similarly been eradicated with a combination of patience and ruthlessness. He'd played a role in that. It hadn't always been pretty. He'd ordered and supervised an atrocity, the fire-bombing of a crowded theater filled with people more interested in Western decadence than their Islamic faith. Hundreds had died horribly, but\u2014but it had been necessary, a needed part of the campaign to bring his country and his people back to the True Path, and while he regretted that particular incident, and regularly prayed in atonement for the lives taken, no, he didn't regret it. He was an instrument of the Faith, and the Holy Koran itself told of the need for war, Holy War, in defense of the Faith.\n\nAnother gift of Persia (some said India) to the world was the game of chess, which he had learned as a child. The very word for the end of the game, _checkmate,_ came from the Persian _shah mat_ \u2014\"the king is dead\"\u2014something he had himself helped to achieve in real life, and while Daryaei had long since stopped playing mere games, he remembered that a good player thought not move by move, but four, or even more, moves ahead. One problem with chess, as with life, was that the next move could sometimes be seen, especially when the other player was skilled\u2014to assume him to be anything else could be dangerous. But by playing ahead, it was far more difficult to see what was coming, until the very end, at which point the opponent could see clearly but, maneuvered out of position, depleted of his players, power, and options, he had no choice but to resign the game. Such had been the case in Iraq until this morning. The other player\u2014actually, many of them\u2014had resigned and run away, and Daryaei had been pleased to allow it. It was even more delicious when the other player could not run, but the point was winning, not satisfaction, and winning meant thinking farther and faster than the other player, so that the next move _was_ a surprise, so that the other player was harried and confused, would be forced to take time to react, and in a chess match, as in life, time was limited. It was all a thing of the mind, not the body.\n\nSo it was with lions, it would seem. Even one so powerful could be outmaneuvered by lesser creatures if the time and the setting were right, and that was both the lesson and the task of the day. Finished with his prayers, Daryaei called for Badrayn. The younger man was a skilled tactician and gatherer of information. He needed the direction of one schooled in strategy, but with that guidance he would be very useful indeed.\n\nIT HAD BEEN conclusively decided in an hour's conversation with his country's leading experts that the President could do absolutely nothing at all. The next move was simply to wait and watch and see. Any citizen could do it, but America's leading experts could wait and watch and see a little faster than anyone else, or so they told themselves. That would all be done for the President, of course, and so Ryan walked out of the Situation Room, up the steps, and outside to see wet, cold rain falling on the South Lawn beyond the overhang of the walkway. The coming day promised to be blustery, with March arriving, typically, like a lion, then to be replaced by a lamb. Or so the aphorism went. At the moment it just looked gloomy, however nurturing the rain might be to ground recovering from a cold, bitter winter.\n\n\"This will finish off the last of the snow,\" Andrea Price said, surprising herself by speaking unbidden to her principal.\n\nRyan turned and smiled. \"You work harder than I do, Agent Price, and you're a\u2014\"\n\n\"Girl?\" she asked with a weary smile.\n\n\"My chauvinism must be showing. I beg your pardon, ma'am. Sorry, I was just wishing for a cigarette. Quit years ago\u2014Cathy bullied me into it. More than once,\" Jack admitted with good humor. \"It can be tough, being married to a doctor.\"\n\n\"It can be tough, being married.\" Price was wedded to her job, with two failed relationships to prove it. Her problem, if one could call it that, was in possessing the same devotion to duty that only men were supposed to have. It was a simple enough fact, but one which first a lawyer and then an advertising executive had failed to grasp.\n\n\"Why do we do it, Andrea?\" Ryan asked.\n\nSpecial Agent Price didn't know, either. The President necessarily was a father figure to her. He was the man supposed to have the answers, but after years on the Detail, she knew better. Her father had always had such answers, or so it had seemed in her youth. Then she'd grown, finished her education, joined the Service, worked her way rapidly up a steep and slippery ladder, and in the process lost her way in life somehow. Now she was at the pinnacle of her profession, alongside the nation's \"father,\" only to learn that life didn't allow people to know what they wanted and needed to know. Her job was hard enough. His was infinitely worse, and maybe it was better for the President to be something other than the decent and honorable gentleman John Patrick Ryan was. Maybe a son of a bitch could survive better here . . .\n\n\"No answer?\" Ryan smiled at the rain. \"I think you're supposed to say that _somebody_ has to do it. Jesus, I just tried to seduce thirty new senators. You know that? Seduce,\" Jack repeated. \"Like they were girls or something, and like I was that kind of guy\u2014and I don't have a fucking clue.\" The voice stopped cold and the head shook in surprise at what he'd said. \"Sorry, excuse me.\"\n\n\"That's okay, Mr. President. I've heard the word before, even from other presidents.\"\n\n\"Who do you talk to?\" Jack asked. \"Once upon a time, I'd talk to my father, my priest, to James Greer when I worked for him, or Roger, until a few weeks ago. Now they all ask me. You know, they told me at Quantico, at the Basic Officers' School, that command could be lonely. Boy, they weren't kidding. They really weren't kidding.\"\n\n\"You have one hell of a good wife, sir,\" Price pointed out, envying both of them for that.\n\n\"There's always supposed to be somebody smarter than you. The person you go to when you're just not sure. Now they come to me. I'm not smart enough for that.\" Ryan paused, just then hearing what Price had told him. \"You're right, but she's busy enough, and I'm not supposed to burden her with my problems.\"\n\nPrice decided to laugh. \"You _are_ a chauvinist, Boss.\"\n\nThat snapped his head around. \"I beg your pardon, Ms. Price!\" Ryan said in a voice that sounded cross until a presidential laugh followed it. \"Please don't tell the media I said that.\"\n\n\"Sir, I don't tell reporters where the bathroom is.\"\n\nThe President yawned. \"What's tomorrow look like?\"\n\n\"Well, you're in the office all day. I imagine this Iraq business will wreck your morning. I'll be out early, back in the afternoon. I'm going to do a walk-around tomorrow, to check security arrangements for all the kids. We have a meeting to see if there's a way to get SURGEON to work and back without the helicopter\u2014\"\n\n\"That is funny, isn't it?\" Ryan observed.\n\n\"A FLOTUS with a real job is something the system never really allowed for.\"\n\n\"Real job, hell! She makes more money than _I_ do, has for ten years, except for when I was back in the market. The papers haven't picked up on that, either. She's a great doc.\"\n\nHis words were meandering, Price saw. He was too tired to think straight. Well, that happened to Presidents, too. Which was why she was around.\n\n\"Her patients love her, that's what Roy says. Anyway, I'm going to look over arrangements for all your children\u2014routine, sir, I'm responsible for all of the arrangements for your family. Agent Raman will stand post with you for most of the day. We're moving him up. He's coming along very nicely,\" Special Agent Price reported.\n\n\"The one who got the fire coat to disguise me back on the first night?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"You knew?\" Price asked in return. The President turned to enter the White House proper. The grin was one of exhaustion, but for all that the blue eyes twinkled at his principal agent.\n\n\"I'm not _that_ dumb, Andrea.\"\n\nNo, she decided, it wasn't better to have a son of a bitch as POTUS.\n**21**\n\n**RELATIONSHIPS**\n\n**P** ATRICK O'DAY WAS A widower whose life had changed in a particularly cruel and abrupt way after a late-life marriage. His wife, Deborah, had been a fellow agent in the Laboratory Division, an expert on forensic investigation, which had occasioned a great deal of travel out of headquarters, until one afternoon, flying into Colorado Springs, her aircraft had crashed into the ground for reasons still undetermined. It had been her first field assignment after maternity leave, and she'd left behind a daughter, Megan, aged fourteen weeks.\n\nMegan was two and a half now, and Inspector O'Day was still wrestling with how he should introduce Megan to her mother. He had videotapes and photographs, but were he to point to dyed paper or a phosphor screen and tell his daughter, \"That's Mommy,\" might it make her think that all life was artificial? What effect would it have on her development? It was one more question in the life of a man supposed to find answers. The single fatherhood enforced on him by fate had made him all the more devoted as a father, and this on top of a professional career in which he'd worked no less than six kidnappings all the way to conclusion. Six four, two hundred wiry pounds, he had sacrificed his Zapata mustache to the requirements of Headquarters Division, but tough guy among tough guys, his attention to his daughter would have made his colleagues chuckle. Her hair was blondish and long, and each morning he brushed it to silky smoothness after dressing her in colorful toddler clothes and helping her with her tiny sneaks. For Megan, Daddy was a great big protective bear who towered into the blue sky, and snatched her off the ground like a rocket so that she could wrap her arms around his neck.\n\n\"Oof!\" Daddy said. \"You hug too hard!\"\n\n\"Did I hurt?\" Megan asked in mock alarm. It was part of the morning routine.\n\nA smile. \"No, not this time.\" With that, he walked out of the house and opened the door to his muddy pickup, carefully strapped her into her car seat, and set her lunch box and blanky between them. It was six-thirty, and they were on their way to a new day-care center. O'Day could not start his truck without looking down at Megan, the image of her mother, a daily realization that always made him bite his lip and close his eyes and shake his head, wondering again why the 737 had rolled and plunged straight into the ground with his wife of sixteen months in seat 18-F.\n\nThe new day-care center was more convenient to his route to work, and the people next door loved it for their twin boys. He turned left onto Ritchie Highway, and found the place right across from a 7-Eleven where he could get a pint of coffee for the commute in on U.S. 50. Giant Steps, nice name.\n\nHell of a way to make a living, Pat thought, parking his truck. Marlene Daggett was always there at six, tending to the children of the bureaucrats who trekked to D.C. every morning. She even came out to meet them for the first arrival.\n\n\"Mr. O'Day! And this is Megan!\" the teacher announced with stunning enthusiasm for so early an hour. Megan had her doubts, and looked up at her daddy. She turned back in surprise to see something special. \"Her name is Megan, too. She's _your_ bear, and she's been waiting all day for you.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" The little girl seized the brown-furred creature and hugged it, name tag and all. \"Hello.\"\n\nMrs. Daggett looked up in a way that told the FBI agent, _it works every time._ \"You have your blanky?\"\n\n\"Right here, ma'am,\" O'Day told her, also handing over the forms he'd completed the night before. Megan had no medical problems, no allergies to medicine, milk, or food; yes, in case of a real emergency you can take her to the local hospital; and the inspector's work and pager numbers, and his parents' number, and the number of Deborah's parents, who were damned good grandparents. Giant Steps was well organized. O'Day didn't know how well organized only because there was something Mrs. Daggett wasn't supposed to talk casually about. His identity was being checked out by the Secret Service.\n\n\"Well, Miss Megan, I think it's time for us to play and make some new friends.\" She looked up. \"We'll take good care of her.\"\n\nO'Day got back into his truck with the usual minor pain that attended leaving his daughter behind\u2014anywhere, no matter the time or place\u2014and jumped across the street to the 7-Eleven for his commute coffee. He had a conference scheduled at nine o'clock to go over further developments on the crash investigation\u2014they were down to T-crossing and I-dotting now\u2014followed by a day of administrative garbage which would at least not prevent him from picking his little girl up on time. Forty minutes later, he pulled into FBI Headquarters at Tenth and Pennsylvania. His post as roving inspector gave him a reserved parking place. From there he walked, this morning, to the indoor pistol range.\n\nAn expert marksman since Boy Scouts, Pat O'Day had also been a \"principal firearms instructor\" at several FBI field offices, which meant that he'd been selected by the SAC to supervise weapons training for the other agents\u2014always an important part of a cop's life, even though few ever fired their side arms in anger.\n\nThe range was rarely busy this time of day\u2014he got in at 7:25\u2014and the inspector selected two boxes of Federal 10mm hollow-points for his big stainless Smith & Wesson 1076 automatic, along with a couple of standard \"Q\" targets and a set of ear protectors. The target was a simple white cardboard panel with an outline of the vital parts of a human body. The shape resolved itself into the rough size and configuration of a farmer's steel milk can, with the letter \"Q\" in the center, about where the heart would be. He attached the target to the spring-clip on the traveler, set the distance for thirty feet, and hit the travel switch. As it moved downrange, he let his thoughts idle, contemplating the sports page and the new Orioles lineup in spring-training camp. The range hardware was programmable. On arriving at its destination, the target turned sideways, and became nearly invisible. Without looking, O'Day dialed the timer to a random setting and continued to look downrange, his hands at his side. Now his thinking changed. There was a Bad Guy there. A serious Bad Guy. Convicted felon, now cornered. A Bad Guy who had told informants that he'd never go back inside, never be taken alive. In his long career, Inspector O'Day had heard that one many times, and whenever possible he'd given the subject the opportunity to keep his word\u2014but they all folded, dropped their gun, wet their pants, or even broke down into tears when confronted by real danger instead of the kind more easily considered over beers or a joint. But not this time. This Bad Guy was serious. He had a hostage. A child, perhaps. Maybe even his own little Megan. The thought made his eyes narrow. A gun to her head. In the movies, the Bad Guy would tell you to drop your weapon, but if you did that, all you were guaranteed was a dead cop _and_ a dead hostage, and so you talked to your Bad Guy. You made yourself sound calm and reasonable and conciliatory, and you waited for him to relax, just a little, just enough to move the gun away from the hostage's head. It might take hours, but sooner or later\u2014\u2014\n\n\u2014the timer clicked, and the target card turned to face the agent. O'Day's right hand moved in a blur, snatching the pistol from its holster. Simultaneously, his right foot moved backward, his body pivoted and crouched slightly, and the left hand joined the right on the rubber grips when the gun was halfway up. His eyes acquired the gunsights at the bottom of his peripheral vision, and the moment they were aligned with the head of the \"Q\" target, his finger depressed the trigger twice, Bring so fast that both ejected cartridge cases were in the air at the same time. It was called a double-tap, and O'Day had practiced it for so many years that the sounds almost blended in the air, and the two-shot echo was just returning from the steel backstop when the empty cases pinged off the concrete floor, but by then there were two holes in the head of the target, less than an inch apart, between and just above where the eyes would be. The target flipped side-on, less than a second after it had turned, rather nicely simulating the fall of the subject to the ground.\n\nYes.\n\n\"I think you got 'em there, Tex.\"\n\nO'Day turned, startled from his fantasy by a familiar voice. \"Morning, Director.\"\n\n\"Hey, Pat.\" Murray yawned, a set of ear protectors dangling in his left hand. \"You're pretty fast. Hostage scenario?\"\n\n\"I try to train for the worst possible situation.\"\n\n\"Your little girl.\" Murray nodded. They all did that, because the hostage had to be important enough in your mind. \"Well, you got him. Show me again,\" the Director ordered. He wanted to watch O'Day's technique. There was always something to learn. After the second iteration, there was one ragged hole in the target's notional forehead. It was actually rather intimidating for Murray, though he considered himself an expert marksman. \"I need to practice more.\"\n\nO'Day relaxed his routine now. If you could do it with your first shot of the day\u2014and he'd done it with all four\u2014you still had it figured out. Two minutes and twenty shots later, the target's head was an annulus. Murray, in the next lane, was busy in the standard Jeff Cooper technique, two rapid shots into the chest, followed by a slower aimed round into the head. When both were satisfied that their targets were dead, it was time to contemplate the day.\n\n\"Anything new?\" the Director asked.\n\n\"No, sir. More follow-up interviews on the JAL case are coming in, but nothing startling.\"\n\n\"What about Kealty?\"\n\nO'Day shrugged. He was not allowed to interfere with the OPR investigation, but he did get daily summaries. A case of this magnitude had to be reported to somebody, and though supervision of the case was entirely under the purview of OPR, the information developed also went to the Director's office, filtered through his lead roving inspector. \"Dan, enough people went in and out of Secretary Hanson's office that anybody could have walked off with the letter, assuming there was one, which, our people think, there probably was. At least Hanson talked to enough people about it\u2014or so those people tell us.\"\n\n\"I think that one will just blow over,\" Murray observed.\n\n\"GOOD MORNING, Mr. President.\"\n\nAnother day in the routine. The kids were off. Cathy was off. Ryan emerged from his quarters suited and tied\u2014his jacket was buttoned, which was unusual for him, or had been until moving in here\u2014and his shoes shined by one of the valet staff. Except that Jack still couldn't think of this place as a home. More like a hotel, or the VIP quarters he'd had while traveling on Agency business, albeit far more ornate and with much better service.\n\n\"You're Raman?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Special Agent Aref Raman replied. He was six feet and solidly built, more a weight lifter than a runner, Jack thought, though that might come from the body armor that many of the Detail members wore. Ryan judged his age at middle thirties. Good-looking in a Mediterranean sort of way, with a shy smile and eyes as blue as SURGEON'S. \"SWORDSMAN is moving,\" he said into his microphone. \"To the office.\"\n\n\"Raman, where's that from?\" Jack asked, on the way to the elevator.\n\n\"Mother Lebanese, father Iranian, came over in '79, when the Shah had his problems. Dad was close to the regime.\"\n\n\"So what do you think of the Iraq situation?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Sir, I hardly even speak the language anymore.\" The agent smiled. \"Now, if you want to ask me about who's lookin' good in the NCAA finals, I'm your man.\"\n\n\"Kentucky,\" Ryan said decisively. The White House elevator was old, pre\u2014Art Deco in the interior finishings, with worn black buttons, which the President wasn't allowed to push. Raman did that for him.\n\n\"Oregon's going all the way. I'm never wrong, sir. Ask the guys. I won the last three pools. Nobody'll bet against me anymore. The finals will be Oregon and Duke\u2014my school\u2014and Oregon will win by six or eight. Well, maybe less if Maceo Rawlings has a good night,\" Raman added.\n\n\"What did you study at Duke?\"\n\n\"Pre-law, but I decided I didn't want to be a lawyer. Actually I decided that criminals shouldn't have any rights, and so I figured I'd rather be a cop, and I joined the Service.\"\n\n\"Married?\" Ryan wanted to know the people around him. At one level, it was mere good manners. At another, these people were sworn to defend his life, and he couldn't treat them like employees.\n\n\"Never found the right girl\u2014at least not yet.\"\n\n\"Muslim?\"\n\n\"My parents were, but after I saw all the trouble religion caused them, well\"\u2014he grinned\u2014\"if you ask around, they'll tell you my religion is ACC basketball. I never miss a Duke game on the TV. Damned shame Oregon's so tough this year. But that's one thing you can't change.\"\n\nThe President chuckled at the truth of that statement. \"Aref, you said, your first name?\"\n\n\"Actually, they call me Jeff. Easier to pronounce,\" Raman explained as the door opened. The agent positioned himself in the center of the doors, blocking a direct line of sight to POTUS. A member of the Uniform Division was standing there, along with two more of the Detail, all of them known by sight to Raman. With a nod, he walked out, with Ryan in tow, and the group turned west, past the side corridor that led to the bowling alley and the carpenter shops.\n\n\"Okay, Jeff, an easy day planned,\" Ryan told him unnecessarily. The Secret Service knew his daily schedule before he did.\n\n\"Easy for us, maybe.\"\n\nThey were waiting for him in the Oval Office. The Foleys, Bert Vasco, Scott Adler, and one other person stood when the President walked in. They'd already been scanned for weapons and nuclear material.\n\n\"Ben!\" Jack said. He paused to set his early morning papers on the desk, and joined his guests.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" Dr. Ben Goodley replied with a smile.\n\n\"Ben's prepared the morning brief,\" Ed Foley explained.\n\nSince not all of the morning visitors were part of the inner circle, Raman would stay in the room, lest somebody leap across the coffee table and try to strangle the President. A person didn't need a firearm to be lethal. A few weeks of study and practice could turn any reasonably fit person into enough of a martial-arts expert to kill an unwary victim. For that reason, members of the Detail carried not only pistols, but also Asps, police batons made of telescoping steel segments. Raman watched as this Goodley\u2014a carded national intelligence officer\u2014handed out the briefing sheets. Like many members of the Secret Service, he got to hear nearly everything. The \"EYES-ONLY PRESIDENT\" sticker on a particularly sensitive folder didn't really mean that. There was almost always someone else in the room, and while the Detail members professed even among themselves not to pay any attention to such things, what that really meant was that they didn't discuss them very much. Not hearing and not remembering were something else. Cops were not trained or paid to forget things, much less to ignore them.\n\nIn that sense, Raman thought, he was the perfect spy. Trained by the United States of America to be a law enforcement officer, he had performed brilliantly in the field, mainly in counterfeiting cases. He was a proficient marksman, and a very organized thinker\u2014a trait revealed all the way back in his schooling; he'd graduated from Duke summa cum laude, with nothing less than an A grade on his transcript, plus he'd been a varsity wrestler. It was useful for an investigator to have a good memory, and he did. Photographic, in fact, a talent which had attracted the Detail leadership to him early on, because the agents protecting the President needed to be able to recognize a particular face instantly from the scores of photographs which they carried when the Boss was out pressing flesh. During the Fowler administration, as a junior agent gazetted to the Detail from the St. Louis field office to cover a fundraising dinner, he'd ID'd and detained a suspected presidential stalker who'd turned out to have a .22 automatic in his pocket. Raman had pulled the man from the crowd so quietly and skillfully that the subject's processing into the Missouri state mental-health system had never made the papers, which was just what they tried to achieve. The young agent had \"Detail\" written all over him, the then-Director of the United States Secret Service had decided on reviewing the case, and so Raman had been transferred over soon after Roger Durling's ascension to the Presidency. As a junior member of the Detail he'd stood boring hours on post, run alongside the Presidential limousine, and gradually worked his way up rather rapidly for a young man. He'd worked the punishing hours without complaints, only commenting from time to time that, as an immigrant, he knew how important America was, and as his distant ancestors might have served Darius the Great as one of the \"Immortals,\" so he relished doing the same for his new country. It was so easy, really, much easier than the task his brother\u2014ethnic, not biological\u2014had performed in Baghdad a short time earlier. Americans, whatever they might say to pollsters, truly loved immigrants in their large and foolish hearts. They knew much, and they were always learning, but one thing they had yet to learn was that you could never look into _another_ human heart.\n\n\"No assets we can use on the ground,\" Mary Pat was saying.\n\n\"Good intercepts, though,\" Goodley went on. \"NSA is really coming through for us. The whole Ba'ath leadership is in the jug, and I don't think they're going to be coming out, at least not standing up.\"\n\n\"So Iraq is fully decapitated?\"\n\n\"A military ruling council, colonels and junior generals. Afternoon TV showed them with an Iranian mullah. No accident,\" Bert Vasco said positively. \"The least that comes out of this is a rapprochement with Iran. At most, the two countries merge. We'll know that in a couple of days\u2014two weeks at the outside.\"\n\n\"The Saudis?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"They're having kittens, Jack,\" Ed Foley replied at once. \"I talked with Prince Ali less than an hour ago. They cobbled together an aid package that would just about have paid off _our_ national debt in an effort to buy the new Iraqi regime\u2014did it overnight, biggest goddamned letter of credit ever drafted\u2014but nobody's answering the phone. That has 'em shook in Riyadh. Iraq's always been willing to talk business. Not now.\"\n\nAnd that would be what frightened all the states on the Arabian Peninsula, Ryan knew. It wasn't well appreciated in the West that the Arabs were businessmen. Not ideologues, not fanatics, not lunatics, but businessmen. Theirs was a maritime trading culture that predated Islam, a fact remembered in America only in remakes of Sinbad the Sailor movies. In that sense they were very like Americans, despite the difference in language, clothing, and religion, and just like Americans they had trouble understanding people who were not willing to do business, to reach an accommodation, to make some sort of exchange. Iran was such a country, changed from the previous state of affairs under the Shah by the Ayatollah Khomeini into a theocracy. _They're not like us_ was the universal point of concern for any culture. _They're not like us ANYMORE_ would be a very frightening development for Gulf States who'd always known that, despite political differences, there had always been an avenue of commonality and communication.\n\n\"Tehran?\" Jack asked next. Ben Goodley took the question unto himself.\n\n\"Official news broadcasts welcome the development\u2014the routine offers of peace and renewed friendship, but nothing beyond that at this point,\" Goodley said. \"Officially, that is. Unofficially, we're getting all sorts of intercept traffic. People in Baghdad are asking for instructions, and people in Tehran are giving them. For the moment they're saying to let the situation develop apace. The revolutionary courts come next. We're seeing a lot of Islamic clergy on TV, preaching love and freedom and all that nice stuff. When the trials start, and people start backing into walls to pose for rifle-fire, then there's going to be a total vacuum.\"\n\n\"Then Iran takes over, probably, or maybe runs Iraq like a puppet on a string,\" Vasco said, flipping through the latest set of intercepts. \"Goodley may be right. I'm reading this SIGINT stuff for the first time. Excuse me, Mr. President, but I've been concentrating on the political side. This stuff is more revealing than I expected it to be.\"\n\n\"You're saying it means _more_ than I think it does?\" the NIO asked.\n\nVasco nodded without looking up. \"I think it might. This is not good,\" the desk officer opined darkly.\n\n\"Later today, the Saudis are going to ask us to hold their hand,\" Secretary Adler pointed out. \"What do I tell them?\"\n\nRyan's reply was so automatic that it startled him. \"Our commitment to the Kingdom is unchanged. If they need us, we're there, now and forever.\" And with two sentences, Jack thought a second later, he had committed the full power and credibility of the United States of America to a non-democratic country seven thousand miles away. Fortunately, Adler made it easier for him.\n\n\"I fully agree, Mr. President. We can't do anything else.\" Everyone else nodded agreement, even Ben Goodley. \"We can do that quietly. Prince Ali understands, and he can make the King understand that we're not kidding.\"\n\n\"Next stop,\" Ed Foley said, \"we have to brief Tony Bretano in. He's pretty good, by the way. Knows how to listen,\" the DCI-designate informed the President. \"You plan to do a cabinet meeting about this?\"\n\nRyan shook his head. \"No. I think we should play this one cool. America is observing regional developments with interest, but there's nothing for us to get excited about. Scott, you handle the press briefing through your people.\"\n\n\"Right,\" SecState replied.\n\n\"Ben, what do they have you doing at Langley now?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, they went and made me a senior watch officer for the Operations Center.\"\n\n\"Good briefing,\" Ryan told the younger man, then turned to the DCI. \"Ed, he works for me now. I need an NIO who speaks my language.\"\n\n\"Gee, do I at least get a decent relief pitcher back?\" Foley replied with a laugh. \"This kid's a good prospect, and I expect to be in the pennant race this fall.\"\n\n\"Nice try, Ed. Ben, your hours just got worse. For now, you can have my old office around the corner. The food's a lot better here,\" the President promised.\n\nThroughout it all, Aref Raman stood still, leaning against the white-painted walls while his eyes flickered automatically from one visitor to another. He was trained not to trust anyone, with the possible exceptions of the President's wife and kids. No one else. Of course, they all trusted him, including the ones who had trained him not to trust anyone, because everybody had to trust somebody.\n\nIt was just a matter of timing, really, and one of the things his American education and professional training had conferred upon him was the patience to wait for the chance to make the proper move. But other events on the other side of the globe were bringing that moment closer. Behind expressionless eyes Raman thought that maybe he needed guidance. His mission was no longer the random event he'd promised to fulfill twenty years earlier. That he could do almost any time, but he was _here_ now, and while anyone could kill, and while a dedicated person could kill almost anyone, only a truly skilled assassin could kill the proper person at the proper moment in pursuit of a larger goal. So deliciously ironic, he thought, that while his mission came from God, every factor in its accomplishment had come directly from the Great Satan himself, embodied in the life of one man who could best serve Allah by departing this life at just the proper moment. Picking the moment would be the hard part, and so after twenty years, Raman decided that he might just have to break cover after all. There was a danger in that, but, he judged, a slight one.\n\n\"YOUR OBJECTIVE IS a bold one,\" Badrayn said calmly. Inwardly he was anything but calm. It was breathtaking.\n\n\"The meek do not inherit the earth,\" Daryaei replied, having for the first time explained his mission in life to someone outside his own inner circle of clerics.\n\nIt was a struggle for both of them to act like gamblers around a poker table, while they discussed a plan that would change the shape of the world. For Daryaei it was a concept toward which he'd labored and thought and planned for more than a generation, the culmination of everything he'd ever done in life, the fulfillment of a dream, and such a goal as to put his name aside that of the Prophet himself\u2014if he achieved it. The unification of Islam. That was how he typically expressed it in his inner circle.\n\nBadrayn merely saw the power. The creation of a new superstate centered on the Persian Gulf, a state with immense economic power, a huge population, self-sustaining in every detail and able to expand across Asia and Africa, perhaps fulfilling the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed, though he didn't pretend to know what the founder of his religion would or would not have wished. He left that to men like Daryaei. For Badrayn the game was simply power, and religion or ideology merely defined the team identities. His team was this one because of where he'd been born, and because he'd once looked closely at Marxism and decided it was insufficient to the task.\n\n\"It is possible,\" Badrayn said after a few more seconds of contemplation.\n\n\"The historical moment is unique. The Great Satan\"\u2014he didn't really like to fall into ideological cant in discussions of statecraft, but sometimes there was no avoiding it\u2014\"is weak. The Lesser Satan is destroyed, with its Islamic republics ready to fall into our laps. They need an identity, and what better identity could there be than the Holy Faith?\"\n\nAnd that was entirely true, Badrayn agreed with a silent nod. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement with the so-called Confederation of Independent States had merely generated a vacuum not yet filled. The southern tier of \"republics\" were still economically tied to Moscow, rather like a series of carts hitched to a dying horse. They'd always been rebellious, unsettled mini-nations whose religion had set them apart from the atheist empire, and now they were all struggling to establish their own economic identity so that they could once and for all separate themselves from the center of a dead country to which they'd never truly belonged. But they couldn't sustain themselves economically, not in the modern age. They all needed another patron, another guide into the new century. That new leadership had to mean money, and lots of it, plus the unifying banner of religion and culture long denied them by Marxism-Leninism. In return, the republics would provide land and people. And resources.\n\n\"The obstacle is America, but you do not need me to tell you that,\" Badrayn observed unnecessarily. \"And America is too large and powerful to destroy.\"\n\n\"I've met this Ryan. But first, you tell me what you think of him.\"\n\n\"He's no fool, and no coward,\" Badrayn said judiciously. \"He has shown physical bravery, and he is well versed in intelligence operations. He is well educated. The Saudis trust him, as do the Israelis.\" Those two countries mattered at this moment. So did a third: \"The Russians know and respect him.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Do not underestimate him. Do not underestimate America. We have both seen what happens to those who do,\" Badrayn said.\n\n\"But America's current state?\"\n\n\"What I have seen tells me that President Ryan is working hard to reconstitute the government of his country. It is a huge task, but America is a fundamentally stable country.\"\n\n\"What about the problem in the succession?\"\n\n\"This I do not understand,\" Badrayn admitted. \"I haven't seen enough news reports to understand the issues.\"\n\n\"I have met Ryan,\" Daryaei said, finally revealing his own thoughts. \"He is an assistant, nothing more. He appears strong, but is not. Were he a man of strength, he would deal with this Kealty directly. The man commits treason, does he not? But this is not important. Ryan is one man. America is one country. Both can be attacked, at the same time, from more than one direction.\"\n\n\"Lion and hyenas,\" Badrayn noted, then explained himself. Daryaei was so pleased with the idea that he didn't object to his own place in the metaphor.\n\n\"Not one great attack, but many small ones?\" the cleric asked.\n\n\"It has worked before.\"\n\n\"And what of many large ones? Against America, and against Ryan. For that matter, what if Ryan were to fall? What would happen then, my young friend?\"\n\n\"Within their system of government, chaos would result. But I would counsel caution. I would also recommend allies. The more hyenas and the more directions, the better to harry the lion. As for attacking Ryan personally,\" Badrayn went on, wondering why his host had said that, and wondering if it was an error, \"the President of the United States is a difficult target, well protected and well informed.\"\n\n\"So I am told,\" Daryaei replied, behind dark eyes devoid of expression. \"What other countries would you recommend as our allies?\"\n\n\"Have you paid close attention to the conflict between Japan and America?\" Badrayn asked. \"Did you ever wonder why some large dogs did not bark at all?\" It was a funny thing about large dogs. They were always hungry. More than once now, however, Daryaei had talked about Ryan and his protection. One dog was the hungriest of all. It would make for an interesting pack.\n\n\"MAYBE IT JUST malfunctioned.\"\n\nThe Gulfstream representatives were sitting in a room with Swiss civil-aviation officials, along with the chief of flight operations of the corporation which owned the jets. His written records showed that the aircraft had been properly maintained by a local firm. All parts had come from the approved suppliers. The Swiss corporation which did the maintenance had ten years of accident-free history behind it, regulated in turn by the same government agency which oversaw the investigation.\n\n\"It wouldn't be the first time,\" the Gulfstream rep agreed. The flight-data recorder was a robust piece of hardware, but they didn't always survive crashes, because every crash was different. A careful search by USS _Radford_ had failed to turn up the locator pings. Absent that, the bottom was too deep for an undirected search, and then there was the issue of the Libyans, who didn't want ships poking around their waters. Had the missing aircraft been an airliner, the issue might have been pushed, but a business jet with a crew of two and three reported passengers\u2014one of them with a deadly plague\u2014wasn't important enough. \"Without the data, there isn't much to be said. Engine failure was reported, and that could mean bad fuel, bad maintenance\u2014\"\n\n\"Please!\" the maintenance contractor objected.\n\n\"I'm speaking theoretically,\" Gulfstream pointed out. \"Or even pilot error of some sort or other. Without hard data, our hands are pretty well tied.\"\n\n\"The pilot had four thousand hours in type. The copilot had over two thousand,\" the owner's representative said for the fifth time this afternoon.\n\nThey were all thinking the same thing. The aircraft manufacturer had a superb safety record to defend. There were relatively few airliner manufacturers for the big carriers to choose from, and as important as safety was for them, it was even more so for the builders of business jets, for whom competition was stiffer. The buyers of such corporate toys had long memories, and without hard information to hang their hats on about the few crashes which took place, all they remembered was a missing aircraft with missing passengers.\n\nThe maintenance contractor had no wish to be firmly associated with a fatal accident, either. Switzerland had a lot of airfields, and a lot of business aircraft. A bad maintainer could lose business as well, not to mention the trouble from the Swiss government for violating its stringent civil-aviation rules.\n\nThe corporate owner had the least to lose in terms of reputation, but _amour propre_ would not allow him to assume responsibility without real cause.\n\nAnd there was no real cause for any of them to take the blame, not without the flight-data recorder. The men looked at one another around the table, thinking the same thought: good people _did_ make mistakes, but rarely did they wish to admit them, and never when they didn't have to. The government representative had gone over the written records and been satisfied that the paperwork was all correct. Beyond that there was nothing any of them could do except talk to the engine manufacturer and try to get a sample of the fuel. The former was easy. The latter was not. In the end, they'd know little more than they knew now. Gulfstream might lose a plane or two in sales. The maintenance contractor would undergo increased government scrutiny. The corporation would have to buy a new jet. To show loyalty, it would be another G-class business jet and with the same maintenance contractor. That would please everybody, even the Swiss government.\n\nBEING A ROVING Inspector paid more than being a street agent, and it was more fun than sitting behind a desk all the time, but Pat O'Day still chafed at spending most of his day reading over written reports generated by agents or their secretaries. More junior people cross-checked the data for inconsistencies, though he did the same, keeping careful penciled notes on his own yellow pad, which his secretary would collate for his summary reports to Director Murray. Real agents, O'Day believed implicitly, didn't type. Well, that's what his instructors at Quantico would have said, probably. He finished his meetings early down at Buzzard's Point and decided that his office in the Hoover Building didn't need him. The investigation was indeed at the point of diminishing returns. The \"new\" information was all interviews, every single one of which confirmed information already developed and already verified by voluminous cross-referenced documents.\n\n\"I've always hated this part,\" ADIC Tony Caruso said. It was the point when the United States Attorney had everything he needed to get a conviction, but, being a lawyer, never had enough\u2014as though the best way to convict a hood were to bore the jury to death.\n\n\"Not even a sniff of contrary data. This one's in the bag, Tony.\" The two men had long been friends. \"Time for me to get something new and exciting.\"\n\n\"Lucky you. How's Megan?\"\n\n\"New day-care center, started today. Giant Steps, on Ritchie Highway.\"\n\n\"Same one,\" Caruso observed. \"Yeah, I guess it would be.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"The Ryan kids\u2014oh, you weren't here back then when those ULA bastards hit it.\"\n\n\"She didn't\u2014the owner of the place didn't say anything about . . . well, I guess she wouldn't, would she?\"\n\n\"Our brethren are a little tight-assed about that. I imagine the Service gave her a long brief on what she can and cannot say.\"\n\n\"Probably an agent or two helping with the finger painting.\" O'Day thought for a second. There was a new clerk at the 7-Eleven across the street. He'd remembered thinking when he'd gotten his coffee that the guy was a little too clean-cut for that early in the morning. Hmph. Tomorrow he'd eyeball the guy for a weapon, as the clerk had surely done with him already, and out of professional courtesy he'd show his ID, along with a wink and a nod.\n\n\"Kinda overqualified,\" Caruso agreed. \"But what the hell, can't hurt to know there's coverage where your kid is.\"\n\n\"You bet, Tony.\" O'Day stood. \"Anyway, I think I'll go and pick her up.\"\n\n\"Headquarters puke. Eight-hour day,\" the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office grumped.\n\n\"You're the one wanted to be a bigshot, Don Antonio.\"\n\nIt was always liberating to leave work. The air smelled fresher on the way out than on the way in. He walked out to his truck, noting that it hadn't been touched or stolen. There was an advantage to dirt and mud. He shed his suit jacket\u2014O'Day rarely bothered with an overcoat\u2014and slipped into his ten-year-old leather one, a Navy-type flight jacket worn just enough to be comfortable. The tie was disposed of next. Ten minutes later, he was outbound on Route 50 toward Annapolis, just ahead of the bow wave of government commuters, and listening to C&W on the radio. Traffic was especially favorable today, and just before the hourly news he pulled into the Giant Steps parking lot, this time looking for official cars. The Secret Service was fairly clever about that. Like the Bureau, its automobiles were randomly tagged, and they'd even learned not to go with the obvious cheap-body, neutral paint motif that fingered so many unmarked cop cars. He spotted two even so, and confirmed his suspicions by parking next to one and looking down inside to see the radio. That done, he wondered about his own disguise, and decided to see how good _they_ were, then realized that if they were halfway competent, they'd already checked out his ID through the documents he'd handed over to Mrs. Daggett that very morning, or more likely even before. There was a considerable professional rivalry between the FBI and the USSS. In fact, the former had been started with a handful of Secret Service agents. But the FBI had also grown much larger, and along the way accumulated far more corporate experience in criminal investigation. Which was not to say the Service wasn't damned good, though as Tony Caruso had truthfully observed, very tight-assed. Well, they were probably the world's foremost baby-sitters.\n\nHe walked across the parking lot with his jacket zipped up, and spotted a big guy just inside the door. Would he stay covert? O'Day walked right past him, just another father in to pick up his munchkin. Inside, it was just a matter of checking out the clothes and the earpieces. Yep, two female agents wearing long smocks, and under them would be SigSauer 9mm automatics.\n\n\"Daddy!\" Megan hooted, leaping to her feet. Next to her was another child of similar age and looks. The inspector headed over, bending down to look at the day's crayoning.\n\n\"Excuse me.\" And he felt light hand pressure through the jacket, on his service automatic.\n\n\"You know who I am,\" he said without turning.\n\n\"Oh! I do now.\" And then O'Day recognized the voice. He turned to see Andrea Price.\n\n\"Demoted?\" He stood to look her in the face. The two female agents mingled with the kids were also watching him closely, alerted by the bulge under the leather jacket. Not bad, O'Day thought. They'd had to look closely; the bulk of the leather was good concealment. Both had their gun hands off whatever educational task they'd been performing, and the looks in their eyes would appear casual only to the unschooled.\n\n\"Sweep. Checking out arrangements for all the kids,\" she explained.\n\n\"This is Katie,\" Megan said, introducing her new friend. \"And that's my daddy.\"\n\n\"Well, hello, Katie.\" He bent down again to shake her hand, then stood again. \"Is she . . . ?\"\n\n\"SANDBOX, First Toddler of the United States,\" Price confirmed.\n\n\"And one across the street?\" Business first.\n\n\"Two, relays.\"\n\n\"She looks like her mom,\" Pat said of Katie Ryan. And just to be polite he pulled out his official ID and tossed it to the nearest female agent, Marcella Hilton.\n\n\"You want to be a little careful testing us, okay?\" Price asked.\n\n\"Your man at the door knew who I was coming in. He looks like he's been around the block.\"\n\n\"Don Russell, and he has, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But ain't no such thing as 'too careful,' \" Inspector O'Day agreed. \"Yeah, okay, I admit it, I wanted to see how careful you were. Hey, my little girl's here, too. I guess this place is a target now.\" _Damn,_ he didn't say aloud.\n\n\"So do we pass?\"\n\n\"One across the street, three I can see here. I bet you have three more camped out within a hundred yards, want me to look for the Suburban and the long guns?\"\n\n\"Look hard. We've got them well concealed.\" She didn't mention the one in the building he hadn't spotted.\n\n\"I bet you do, Agent Price,\" O'Day agreed, catching the clue and looking around some more. There were two disguised TV cameras that must have gone in recently. That also explained the faint smell of paint, which in turn explained the lack of little hand-prints on the walls. The building was probably wired like a pinball machine. \"I must admit, you guys are pretty smooth. Good,\" he concluded.\n\n\"Anything new on the crash?\"\n\nPat shook his head. \"Not really. We went over some additional interviews at WFO today. The only inconsistencies are too minor to count for much of anything. The Mounties are doing a hell of a job for us, by the way. So are the Japs. I think they've talked to everybody from Sato's kindergarten teacher on up. They even turned two stewardesses he was playing with on the side. This one's in the bag, Price.\"\n\n\"Andrea,\" she replied.\n\n\"Pat.\" And they both smiled.\n\n\"What do you carry?\"\n\n\"Smith 1076. Better than that 9mm mouse gun you guys pack.\" This was delivered with a somewhat superior attitude. O'Day believed in making big holes, to date only in targets, but in people if necessary. The Secret Service had its own weapons policy, and in that area he was sure the Bureau had better ideas. She didn't bite.\n\n\"Do us a favor? Next time you come in, show your ID to the agent out front. Might not always be the same one.\" She didn't even ask him to leave it in his truck. Damn, there was professional courtesy.\n\n\"So, how's he doing?\"\n\n\"SWORDSMAN?\"\n\n\"Dan\u2014Director Murray\u2014thinks the world of him. They go back a ways. So do Dan and I.\"\n\n\"Tough job, but you know\u2014Murray's right. I've met worse men. He's smarter than he lets on, too.\"\n\n\"The times I've been around him, he listens well.\"\n\n\"Better than that, he asks questions.\" They both turned when a kid yelled, swept the room at the same time and in the same way, then turned back to the two little girls, who were sharing crayons for their respective works of art. \"Yours and ours seem to get along.\"\n\n_Ours,_ Pat thought. That said it all. The big old bruiser at the door, Russell, she'd said. He'd be the chief of the sub-detail, and sure as hell that was one experienced agent. They'd have selected younger ones, both women, for inside work, the better to blend in. They'd be good, but not as good as he was. _Ours_ was the key word, though. Like lions around their cubs, or just one cub in this case. O'Day wondered how he'd handle this job. It would be boring, just standing post like that, but you couldn't allow yourself to get bored. That would be a fight. He'd done his share of \"discreet surveillance\" assignments, quite a feat for one of his size, but this would be far worse. Even so, a cop's eye saw the difference between them and the other preschool teachers in the room.\n\n\"Andrea, looks to me like your people know their job. Why so many?\"\n\n\"I know we have this one overmanned.\" Price tilted her head. \"We're still figuring this one out. Hey, we took a big hit on the Hill, y'know? Ain't gonna be any more, not on my watch, not while I run the Detail, and if the press makes noise about it, fuck 'em.\" She even talked like a real cop.\n\n\"Ma'am, that's just fine with me. Well, with your permission, I have to go home and make cheese and macaronis.\" He looked down. Megan was about finished with her masterpiece. The two little girls were difficult to tell apart, at least for the casual observer. That was distantly worrisome, but that was also the reason the Service was here.\n\n\"Where do you practice?\" He didn't have to say practice _what_.\n\n\"There's a range in the old Post Office building, convenient to the White House. Every week,\" she told him. \"There's not an agent here who's short of 'expert,' and I'll put Don up against anybody in the world.\"\n\n\"Really.\" O'Day's eyes sparkled. \"One day we'll have to see.\"\n\n\"Your place or mine?\" Price asked, with a twinkle of her own.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT, Mr. Golovko on three.\" That was the direct line. Sergey Nikolayevich was showing off again.\n\nJack pushed the button. \"Yes, Sergey?\"\n\n\"Iran.\"\n\n\"I know,\" the President said.\n\n\"How much?\" the Russian asked, his bags already packed to go home.\n\n\"We'll know in ten days or so for sure.\"\n\n\"Agreed. I offer cooperation.\"\n\nThis was getting to be habit forming, Jack thought, but it was always something to think over first. \"I will discuss that with Ed Foley. When will you be back home?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Call me then.\" Amazing that he could speak so efficiently with a former enemy. He'd have to get Congress trained that way, the President thought with a smile. Ryan stood from his desk and headed into the secretaries' room. \"How about some munchies before my next appointment\u2014\"\n\n\"Hello, Mr. President,\" Price said. \"Have a minute?\"\n\nRyan waved her in while his number-two secretary called the mess. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"Just wanted to tell you, I looked over the security arrangements for your children. It's pretty tight.\" If this was supposed to please POTUS, he didn't show it, Andrea thought. But that was understandable. _Hey, we have enough bodyguards on your children._ What a world it was. Two minutes later, she was talking with Raman, who was ready to head off duty, having arrived in the White House at 5:00 A.M. There was, as usual, nothing to report. It had been a quiet day in the House.\n\nThe younger agent walked out to his car and drove off the compound, first showing his pass to the gate guards and waiting for the fortified gate to open\u2014a nine-inchsquare post held the leaves in place, and looked strong enough to stop a dump truck. From there he made his way through the concrete barricades on Pennsylvania Avenue\u2014which until fairly recently had been a public street. He turned west and headed toward Georgetown, where he had a loft apartment, but this time he didn't go all the way home. Instead he turned onto Wisconsin Avenue, then right again to park.\n\nIt was vaguely amusing that the man should be a rug merchant. So many Americans thought that Iranians became either terrorists, rug merchants, or impolite physicians. This one had left Persia\u2014but most Americans didn't connect Persian rugs with Iran, as though they were two distinct nations\u2014more than fifteen years before. On his wall was a photograph of his son who, he told those who asked, had been killed in the Iran-Iraq war. That was quite true. He also told those who expressed interest that he hated the government of his former country. That was not true. He was a sleeper agent. He'd never had a single contact with anyone even connected at third hand with Tehran. Maybe he'd been checked out. More likely he had not. He belonged to no association, didn't march, speak out, or otherwise do anything but conduct a prosperous business\u2014like Raman, he didn't even attend a mosque. He had, in fact, never met Raman, and so when the man walked in the front door, his interest only concerned which of his wide selection of handmade rugs the man might want. Instead, after determining that there was no one else in the shop at the moment, his visitor went directly to the counter.\n\n\"The picture on the wall. He looks like you. Your son?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the man replied with a sadness which had never left him, promises of Paradise or not. \"He was killed in the war. \"\n\n\"Many lost sons in that conflict. Was he a religious boy?\"\n\n\"Does it matter now?\" the merchant asked, blinking hard.\n\n\"It always matters,\" Raman said, in a voice that was totally casual.\n\nWith that, both men went over to the nearer of two rug piles. The dealer flipped a few corners.\n\n\"I am in position. I require instructions on timing.\" Raman didn't have a code name, and the code phrase he'd just exchanged was only known to three men. The dealer didn't know anything beyond that, except to repeat the nine words he'd just heard to someone else, then wait for a reply, and pass that along.\n\n\"Would you mind filling out a card for my client list?\"\n\nThat Raman did, putting down the name and address of a real person. He'd picked the name in the phone book\u2014actually a crisscross directory right in the White House, which had made it easy to select a number that was one digit off his own. A tick mark over the sixth digit told the dealer where to add 1 to 3 to get 4 and so complete the call. It was excellent tradecraft, taught to his Savak instructor by an Israeli more than two decades earlier and not forgotten, just as neither man from the holy city of Qom had forgotten much of anything.\n**22**\n\n**TIME ZONES**\n\n**T** HE SIZE OF THE EARTH and the location of the trouble spots made for great inconvenience. America was going to sleep when other parts of the world were just waking up to a new day, a situation made even more difficult by the fact that the people eight or nine hours ahead were also the ones making decisions to which the rest of the world had to react. Added to that was the fact that America's vaunted CIA had little in the way of agents or officers to predict what was happening. That left to STORM TRACK and PALM BOWL the duty of reporting mainly what the local press and TV were saying. And so while the U.S. President slept, people struggled to collect and analyze information which, when he saw it, would be late by a working day, and the analysis of which might or might not be accurate. Even then, the best of the spooks in Washington were in the main too senior to be stuck with night duty they had families, after all\u2014and so they also had to be brought up to speed before they could make their own pronouncements, which involved discussion and debate, further delaying presentation of vital national-security information. In military terms it was called \"having the initiative\"\u2014making the first move, physical, political, or psychological. How much the better if the other side in the race started off a third of a day behind.\n\nThings were slightly better in Moscow, which was only an hour off Tehran time, and in the same time zone with Baghdad, but here for once the RVS, successor to the KGB, was in the same unhappy position as CIA, with nearly all of its networks wiped out in both countries. But for Moscow the problems were also somewhat closer to home, as Sergey Golovko would find out when his aircraft landed at Sheremetyevo.\n\nThe largest problem at the moment would be reconciliation. Morning TV in Iraq announced that the new government in Baghdad had informed the United Nations that all international inspection teams were to be given full freedom to visit any facility in the country, entirely without interference\u2014in fact, Iraq requested that the inspections be carried out as rapidly as possible\u2014that full cooperation with any requests would be instantly provided; that the new Baghdad government was desirous of removing any obstacle to full restoration of their country's international trade. For the moment, the neighboring country of Iran, the announcement said, would begin trucking in foodstuffs in accordance with Islamic ancient guidelines on charity for those in need; this in anticipation of the former nation's willingness to reenter the community of nations. Video copied at PALM BOWL from Basra TV showed the first convoy of trucks carrying wheat down the twisting Shahabad Highway and crossing into Iraqi territory at the foot of the mountains which separated the two countries. Further pictures showed Iraqi border guards removing their obstacles and waving the trucks through, while their Iranian counterparts stood peacefully aside on their side of the border, no weapons in evidence.\n\nAt Langley, people ran calculations on the number of trucks, the tonnage of their cargo, and the number of loaves of bread which would result. They concluded that shiploads of wheat would have to be delivered to make more than a symbolic difference. But symbols _were_ important, and the ships were even now being loaded, a set of satellite overheads determined. United Nations officials in Geneva, only three hours behind the time, received the Baghdad requests with pleasure and sent immediate orders to their inspection teams, which found Mercedes automobiles waiting for them, to be escorted to the first entries on their inspection lists by wailing police cars. Here they also found TV crews to follow them around, and friendly installation staffs, who professed delight at their newfound ability to tell all they knew and to offer suggestions on how to dismantle, first, a chemical-weapons facility disguised as an insecticide plant. Finally, _Iran_ requested a special meeting of the Security Council to consider the lifting of the remaining trade sanctions, something as certain as the rising of the sun, even late, over the American East Coast. Within two weeks, the average Iraqi's diet would increase by at least five hundred calories. The psychological impact wasn't difficult to figure, and the lead country in restoring normality to the oil-rich but isolated nation was its former enemy, Iran\u2014as always, citing religion as the motivating factor in offering aid.\n\n\"Tomorrow we will see pictures of bread being distributed for free from mosques,\" Major Sabah predicted. He could have added the passages from the Koran which would accompany the event, but his American colleagues were not Islamic scholars and would not have grasped the irony terribly well.\n\n\"Your estimate, sir?\" the senior American officer asked.\n\n\"The two countries will unite,\" Sabah replied soberly. \"And soon.\"\n\nThere was no particular need to ask why the surviving Iraqi weapons plants were being exposed. Iran had all it needed.\n\nTHERE IS NO such thing as magic. That was merely the word people used to explain something so cleverly done that there was no ready explanation for it, and the simplest technique employed by its practitioners was to distract the audience with one moving and obvious hand (usually in a white glove) while the other was doing something else. So it was with nations as well. While the trucks rolled, and the ships were loaded, and the diplomats were summoned, and America was waking up to figure out what was going on, it was, after all, evening in Tehran.\n\nBadrayn's contacts were as useful as ever, and what he could not do, Daryaei could. The civilian-marked business jet lifted off from Mehrabad and turned east, heading first over Afghanistan, then Pakistan, in a two-hour flight that ended at the obscure city of Rutog near the Pakistani-Indian-Kashmiri border. The city was in the former country's Kunlun Mountains, and home to some of China's Muslim population. The border town had an air force base with some locally manufactured MiG fighters, and a single landing strip, all separate from the city's small regional airport. The location was ideal for everyone's purpose, as it was a bare 600 miles from New Delhi, though perversely the longest flight came from Beijing, nearly two thousand miles away, even though the real estate was Chinese-owned. The three aircraft landed a few minutes apart, soon after local sunset, taxied to the far end of the ramp, and parked. Military vehicles took their occupants to the ready room for the local MiG contingent. The Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei was accustomed to cleaner accommodations and, worse, he could smell the odor of cooked pork, always a part of the Chinese diet but quite nauseating to him. This he put aside. He wasn't the first of the faithful who'd had to treat with pagans and unbelievers.\n\nThe Indian Prime Minister was cordial. She'd met Daryaei before at a regional trade conference and found him withdrawn and misanthropic. That, she saw, had not changed very much.\n\nLast to arrive was Zhang Han San, whom the Indian had met as well. He was a rotund, seemingly jolly man until one watched his eyes closely. Even his jokes were told with an aim to learn something of his companions. Of the three, he was the only one whose job was not really known to the others. It was clear, however, that he spoke with authority, and since his country was the most powerful of the three, it was not regarded as an insult that a mere minister-without-portfolio was treating with chiefs of state. The meeting was conducted in English, except for Zhang's dismissal of the general officer who'd handled the greetings.\n\n\"Please forgive me for not being here when you arrived. The . . . irregularity in protocol is sincerely regretted.\" Tea was served, along with some light snacks. There hadn't been time to prepare a proper meal, either.\n\n\"Not at all,\" Daryaei responded. \"Speed makes for inconvenience. For myself, I am most grateful for your willingness to meet under such special circumstances.\" He turned. \"And to you, Madam Prime Minister, for joining us. God's blessing on this meeting,\" he concluded.\n\n\"My congratulations on developments in Iraq,\" Zhang said, wondering if the agenda was now entirely in Daryaei's hands, so skillfully had he posed the fact that he'd convened the assembly. \"It must be very satisfying after so many years of discord between your two nations.\"\n\n_Yes,_ India thought, sipping her tea. _So clever of you to murder the man in such a timely fashion._ \"So how may we be of service?\" she asked, thus giving Daryaei and Iran the floor, to the impassive annoyance of China.\n\n\"You've met this Ryan recently. I am interested in your impressions.\"\n\n\"A small man in a large job,\" she replied at once. \"The speech he gave at the funeral, for example. It would have been better suited to a private family ceremony. For a President, bigger things are expected. At the reception later, he seemed nervous and uneasy, and his wife is arrogant\u2014a physician, you see. They often are.\"\n\n\"I found him the same when we met, some years ago,\" Daryaei agreed.\n\n\"And yet he controls a great country,\" Zhang observed.\n\n\"Does he?\" Iran asked. \"Is America still great? For where comes the greatness of a nation, except in the strengths of its leaders?\" And that, the other two knew at once, was the agenda.\n\n\"JESUS,\" RYAN WHISPERED to himself, \"this is a lonely place.\" The thought kept returning to him, all the more so when alone in this office with its curving walls and molded three-inch doors. He was using his reading glasses all the time now\u2014Cathy's recommendation\u2014but that merely slowed down the headaches. It wasn't as though he were a stranger to reading. Every job he'd held in the past fifteen years had required it, but the continual headaches were something new. Maybe he should talk to Cathy or another doc about it? No. Ryan shook his head. It was just job stress, and he just had to learn to deal with it.\n\n_Sure, it's just stress. And cancer is just a disease._\n\nThe current task was politics. He was reading over a position paper prepared by the political staffers across the street in the OEOB. It was a source of amusement, if not consolation, that they didn't know what to advise him. Ryan had never belonged to a political party. He'd always registered himself as an independent, and that had managed to keep him from getting solicitation letters from the organized parties, though he and Cathy had always ticked the box on their tax returns to contribute their one dollar to the government slush fund. But the President was not only supposed to be a member of a party\u2014but also the _leader_ of that party. The parties were even more thoroughly decapitated than the three branches of government were. Each of them still had a chairman, neither of whom knew what to do at the moment. For a few days, it had been assumed that Ryan was a member of the same party as Roger Durling, and the truth had only been discovered by the press a few days before, to the collective _oh, shit!_ of the Washington establishment. For the ideological mavens of the federal city, it was rather like asking what 2 + 2 equaled, and finding out that the answer was, \"Chartreuse.\" His position paper was predictably chaotic, the product of four or so professional political analysts, and you could tell who had written the different paragraphs, which resolved into a multi-path tug of war. Even his intelligence staff did better than this, Jack told himself, tossing the paper into the out basket and wishing, again, for a cigarette. That was stress talking, too, he knew.\n\nBut he still had to go out to the _hustings,_ a word whose meaning he'd never learned, and _campaign_ for people, or at least give speeches. Or something. The position paper's guidance hadn't exactly been clear on that. Having already shot himself in the foot on the issue of abortion\u2014higher up and more to the centerline, Arnie van Damm had remarked acidly the previous day, to reinforce his earlier lesson\u2014now Ryan would have to make his political stance clear on a multitude of issues: affirmative action at one end of the alphabet, and welfare at the other, with taxes, the environment, and God only knew what else in between. Once he'd decided where he stood on such things, Callie Weston would write a series of speeches for him to deliver from Seattle to Miami and God only knew where else in between. Hawaii and Alaska were left out because they were small states in terms of political importance, and poles apart ideologically, anyway. They would only confuse matters, or so the position paper told him.\n\n\"Why can't I just stay here and work, Arnie?\" Ryan asked his arriving chief of staff.\n\n\"Because out there is work, Mr. President.\" Van Damm took his seat to commence the latest class in Presidency 101. \"Because, as you put it, 'It's a leadership function'\u2014did I get that right?\" Arnie asked with a sardonic growl. \"And leading means getting out with the troops, or, in this case, the citizens. Are we clear on that, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Are you enjoying this?\" Jack closed his eyes and rubbed them under the glasses. He hated the goddamned glasses, too.\n\n\"About as much as you are.\" Which was an altogether fair comment.\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Most people who come here genuinely like escaping from this museum and meeting real people. Of course, it makes people like Andrea nervous. They'd probably agree with keeping you here all the time. But it already feels like a prison, doesn't it?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"Only when I'm awake.\"\n\n\"So get out. Meet people. Tell them what you think, tell them what you want. Hell, they might even listen. They might even tell you what _they_ think, and maybe _you_ will learn something from it. In any case, you can't _be_ President and not do it.\"\n\nJack lifted the position paper he'd just finished. \"Did you read this thing?\"\n\nArnie nodded. \"Yep.\"\n\n\"It's confusing garbage,\" Ryan said, quite surprised.\n\n\"It's a political document. Since when is politics consistent or sensible?\" He paused. \"The people I've worked with for the last twenty years got this sort of thing with their mother's milk\u2014well, they were probably all bottle babies.\"\n\n_\"What?\"_\n\n\"Ask Cathy. It's one of those behavioral theories, that New Age stuff that's supposed to explain everything about everything to everybody everywhere. Politicians are all bottle babies. Mommy never nursed them, and they never bonded properly, felt rejected and all that, and so as compensation they go out and make speeches and tell people in different places the different things they want to hear so that they can get the love and devotion from strangers that their mothers denied them\u2014not to mention the ones like Kealty, who're getting laid all the time. Properly nurtured infants, on the other hand, grow up to become\u2014oh, doctors, I suppose, or maybe rabbis \"\n\n\"What the _hell!_ \" the President nearly shouted. His chief of staff just grinned.\n\n\"Had you going for a second, didn't I? You know,\" van Damm went on, \"I figured out what we really missed when we set this country up.\"\n\n\"Okay, I'll bite,\" Jack said, eyes still closed, and finding the humor in the moment. Damn, but Arnie knew how to run a classroom.\n\n\"A court jester, make it a Cabinet post. You know, a dwarf\u2014excuse me, a male person with an unusually large degree of vertical challenge\u2014dressed in multicolored tights and the funny hat with bells on it. Give him a little stool in the corner\u2014'course, there isn't a corner here, but what the hell\u2014and every fifteen minutes or so, he's supposed to jump up on your desk and shake his rattle in your face just to remind you that you have to take a leak every so often, just like the rest of us. Do you get it now, Jack?\"\n\n\"No,\" the President admitted.\n\n\"You dumbass! This job can be _fun!_ Getting out and seeing your citizens is _fun._ Learning what they want is important, but there's also an exhilaration to it. They _want_ to love you, Jack. They _want_ to support you. They _want_ to know what you think. They most of all _want_ to know that you're one of them\u2014and you know what? You're the first President in one hell of a long time who really _is!_ So get the hell off the bench, tell the air scouts to fire up the Big Blue Bird, and play the damned game.\" He didn't have to add that the schedule was already set sufficiently in stone that he couldn't back out.\n\n\"Not everybody will like what I say and believe, Arnie, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lie to people just to kiss ass or get votes or whatever.\"\n\n\"You expect everybody to love you?\" van Damm asked, sardonic again. \"Most Presidents will settle for fifty-one percent. Quite a few have had to settle for less. I tore your head off over your abortion statement\u2014why? Because your statement was confused.\"\n\n\"No, it wasn't, I\u2014\"\n\n\"You going to listen to your teacher or not?\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" the President said.\n\n\"Start off, about forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln\u2014or against FDR, just to cover both sides.\"\n\n\"But why\u2014\"\n\nExasperation: \"Why is the sky blue, Jack? It just is, okay? Even if you can explain why, and I suppose there is a reason some astronomer can explain, the sky is blue, and so let's just accept the fact, okay? That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another. Maybe they're the true independents, like you. That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country, and if you want things to happen your way, those are the people you have to reach. Now, here's the funny part. Those twenty percent don't especially care what you think.\" This conclusion was delivered with a wry smile.\n\n\"Wait a minute\u2014\"\n\nArnie held up his hand. \"You keep interrupting teacher. The hard eighty percent that votes the party line doesn't care much about character. They vote party because they believe in the philosophy of the party\u2014or because Mom and Dad always voted that way; the reason doesn't really matter. It happens. It's a fact. Deal with it. Now, back to the twenty percent that _does_ matter. They care less about what you believe than they do in _you._ There is your advantage, Mr. President. Politically speaking, you have as much place in this office as a three-year-old has in a gun shop, but you have character up the ass. That's what we play on.\"\n\nRyan frowned at the \"play on\" part, but this time kept his peace. He nodded for the chief of staff to go on.\n\n\"Just tell the people what you believe. Make it simple. Good ideas are expressed simply and efficiently. Make it consistent. That twenty percent wants to believe that you really do believe in what you say. Jack, do you respect a man who says what he believes, even if you disagree with it?\"\n\n\"Of course, that's what\u2014\"\n\n\"A man is supposed to do,\" Arnie said, completing the thought. \"So does the twenty percent. They will respect you and support you even though in some cases they disagree with you. Why? Because they will know that you are a man of your word. And they want the occupant of this office to be a man of character and integrity. Because if things go to shit, you can depend on somebody like that to at least try to do the right thing.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"The rest is packaging. And don't disparage packaging and handling, okay? There's nothing wrong about being intelligent about how you get your ideas across. In the book you wrote about Halsey, _Fighting Sailor_ , you chose your words carefully to present your ideas, right?\" The President nodded. \"So it is with these ideas\u2014hell, these ideas are even more important, and so you have to package them with proportionately greater skill, don't you?\" The lesson plan was moving along nicely, the chief of staff thought.\n\n\"Arnie, how many of those ideas will you agree with?\"\n\n\"Not all of them. I think you're wrong on abortion\u2014a woman should have the right to choose. I bet you and I disagree on affirmative action and a passel of other things, but you know, Mr. President, I've never doubted your integrity for one single minute. I can't tell you what to believe, but you know how to listen. I love this country, Jack. My family escaped from Holland, crossed the English Channel in a boat when I was three years old. I can still remember puking my guts out.\"\n\n\"You're Jewish?\" Jack asked in surprise. He had no idea what church, if any, Arnie attended.\n\n\"No, my father was in the Resistance and got himself fingered by a German plant. We skipped just in time, or he would have been shot, and Mom and I would have ended up in the same camp as Anne Frank. Didn't do the rest of the family much good, though. His name was Willem, and after the war ended, he decided that we'd come over here, and I grew up hearing about the old country, and how this place was different. It is different. I became what I am to protect the system. What makes America different? The Constitution, I guess. People change, governments change, ideologies change, but the Constitution stays pretty much the same. You and Pat Martin both swore an oath. So did I,\" van Damm went on. \"Except mine was made to me, and my mom and my dad. I don't have to agree with you on all the issues, Jack. I know you'll try to do the right thing. My job, then, is to protect you so that you can. That means you have to listen, and that you'll sometimes have to do things you don't like, but this job you have, Mr. President, has its own rules. You have to follow them,\" the chief of staff concluded quietly.\n\n\"How have I been doing, Arnie?\" Ryan asked, absorbing the largest lesson of the week.\n\n\"Not bad, but you have to do better. Kealty is still an annoyance rather than a real threat to us. Getting out and looking presidential will further marginalize him. Now, something else. As soon as you go out, go off campus, people are going to start asking you about reelection. So what will you say?\"\n\nRyan shook his head emphatically. \"I do not want this job, Arnie. Let somebody else take over when\u2014\"\n\n\"In that case, you're screwed. Nobody will take you seriously. You will not get the people in Congress you want. You will be crippled and unable to accomplish the things you're thinking about. You will become politically ineffective. America cannot afford that, Mr. President. Foreign governments\u2014those are run by politicians, remember\u2014will not take you seriously, and _that_ has national security implications, both immediate and long-term. So what do you say when reporters ask you that question?\"\n\nThe President felt like a student holding up his hand in third grade. \"I haven't decided yet?\"\n\n\"Correct. You are carrying out your job of reconstituting the government, and that is a question which you will address in due course. I will quietly leak the fact that you're thinking about staying on, that you feel your first duty is to the country, and when reporters ask you about _that_ , you will simply repeat your original position. That sends out a message to foreign governments that they will understand and take seriously, and the American people will also understand and respect it. As a practical matter, the presidential primaries for both parties will not select the marginal candidates who didn't get wiped out on the Hill. They'll vote for uncommitted delegations. We might even want you to speak on that issue. I'll talk that one over with Callie.\" He didn't add that the media would just _love_ that prospect. Covering two brokered, wide-open political conventions was a dream such as few of them had ever dared to consider. Arnie was keeping it as simple as he could. No matter what positions Ryan took, as soon as he took them, no less than forty percent of the people would object to it, and probably more. The funny thing about the twenty percent he kept harping on was that they covered the whole political spectrum\u2014like himself, less concerned with ideology than with character. Some of them would object vociferously, and in that they would be indistinguishable from whichever forty percent grouping shared that particular ideological stance, though at the end of the day they would vote the man. They always did, honest people that they were, placing country before prejudice, but joining in a process that most often honestly selected people who lacked the honor of their electors. Ryan didn't yet grasp the opportunity he held in his hands, and it was probably better that he didn't, for in thinking about it too much\u2014perhaps at all\u2014he would try to control the spin, which he'd never learn to do well. Even honorable men could make mistakes, and Ryan was no different from the rest. That was why people like Arnold van Damm existed, to teach and to guide from the inside and the outside of the system at the same time. He looked at his President, noting the confusion that came along with new thoughts. He was trying to make sense of it, and he'd probably succeed, because he was a good listener and a particularly adept processor of information. He wouldn't see it through to the natural conclusion, however. Only Arnie and maybe Callie Weston were able to look that far into the future. In the past weeks, van Damm had decided that Ryan had the makings of a real President. It would be his job, the chief of staff decided, to make sure that Jack stayed here.\n\n\"WE CANNOT DO that,\" the Indian Prime Minister protested, with the admission: \"We only recently had a lesson from the American navy.\"\n\n\"It was a harsh one,\" Zhang agreed. \"But it did no permanent harm. I believe the damage to your ships will be made good in two more weeks.\" That statement turned India's head around. She'd learned that fact herself only a few days earlier. The repairs were using up a sizable portion of the Indian navy's annual operating budget, which had been her principal concern. It wasn't every day that a foreign country, particularly one which had once been a shooting enemy, revealed its penetration of another's government.\n\n\"America is a facade, a giant with a sick heart and a damaged brain,\" Daryaei said. \"You told us yourself, Prime Minister. President Ryan is a small man in a large job. If we make the job larger and harder, then America will lose its ability to interfere with us, for a long enough time that we can achieve our goals. The American government is paralyzed, and will remain so for some weeks to come. All we need do is to increase the degree of paralysis.\"\n\n\"And how might one do that?\" India asked.\n\n\"Through the simple means of stretching their commitments while at the same time disturbing their internal stability. On the one hand, mere demonstrations will suffice on your part. On the other, that is my concern. It is better, I think, that you have no knowledge of it.\"\n\nHad he been able to do so, Zhang would not even have breathed at the moment, the better to control his feelings. It wasn't every day that he met someone more ruthless than himself, and, no, he didn't want to know what Daryaei had in mind. Better for another country to commit an act of war. \"Do go on,\" he said, reaching inside his jacket for a cigarette.\n\n\"Each of us represents a country with great abilities and greater needs. China and India have large populations and need both space and resources. I will soon have resources, and the capital that comes with them, and also the ability to control how both are distributed. The United Islamic Republic will become a great power, as you are already great powers. The West has dominated the East for too long.\" Daryaei looked directly at Zhang. \"To our north is a rotting corpse. Many millions of the Faithful are there and require liberation. There are also resources and space which your country needs. These I offer to you, if you will in turn offer the lands of the Faithful to me.\" Then he looked at the Indian Prime Minister. \"To your south lies an empty continent with the space and resources you need. For your cooperation, I think the United Islamic Republic and the People's Republic are willing to offer their protection. From each of you I ask only quiet cooperation without direct risk.\"\n\nIndia remarked to herself that she'd heard that one before, but her needs had not changed from before, either. China immediately came up with a means of providing a distraction that offered little in the way of danger. It had happened before. Iran\u2014what _was_ this United Islamic Republic . . . oh, of course, Zhang thought. Of course. The UIR would take all the real risks, though it would seem that those were unusually well calculated. He would do his own check of the correlation of forces on his return to Beijing.\n\n\"I ask no commitments at this point, obviously. You will need to assure yourselves that I am serious in my abilities and intentions. I do ask that you give full consideration to my proposed\u2014informal\u2014alliance.\"\n\n\"Pakistan,\" the Prime Minister said, foolishly tipping her hand, Zhang thought.\n\n\"Islamabad has been an American puppet for too long, and cannot be trusted,\" Daryaei replied at once, having thought that one through already, though he hadn't really expected India to jump so readily. This woman hated America as much as he did. Well, the \"lesson\" as she'd called it must have injured her pride even more deeply than his diplomats had told him. How typical for a woman to value her pride so highly. And how weak. Excellent. He looked over at Zhang.\n\n\"Our arrangements with Pakistan are commercial only, and as such are subject to modification,\" China observed, equally delighted at India's weakness. It was no one's fault but her own. She'd committed forces to the field\u2014well, the sea\u2014in support of Japan's inefficient attack on America . . . while China had done nothing and risked nothing, and emerged from the \"war\" unhurt and uninvolved. Even Zhang's most cautious superiors had not objected to his play, failed though it was. And now, again, someone else would take the risks, and India would move in pacifist support, and China would have to do nothing but repeat an earlier policy that seemingly had nothing to do with this new UIR, but was rather a test of a new American President, and that sort of thing happened all the time anyway. Besides, Taiwan was still an annoyance. It was so curious. Iran, motivated by religion of all things. India, motivated by greed and anger. China, on the other hand, thought for the long term, dispassionately, seeking what really mattered, but with circumspection, as always. Iran's goal was self-evident, and if Daryaei was willing to risk war for it, then, why not watch in safety, and hope for his success? But he wouldn't commit his country now. Why appear too eager? India _was_ eager, enough so to overlook the obvious: If Daryaei was successful, then Pakistan would make its peace with the new UIR, perhaps even join it, and then India would be isolated and vulnerable. Well, it was dangerous to be a vassal, and all the more so if you had aspirations to graduate to the next level\u2014but without the wherewithal to make it happen. One had to be careful choosing allies. Gratitude among nations was a hothouse flower, easily wilted by exposure to the real world.\n\nThe Prime Minister nodded in acknowledgment of her victory over Pakistan, and said no more.\n\n\"In that case, my friends, I thank you for graciously agreeing to meet with me, and with your permission, I will take my leave.\" The three stood. Handshakes were exchanged, and they headed to the door. Minutes after that, Daryaei's aircraft rotated off the bumpy fighter strip. The mullah looked at the coffeepot and decided against it. He wanted a few hours of sleep before morning prayers. But first\u2014\n\n\"Your predictions were entirely correct.\"\n\n\"The Russians called these things 'objective conditions.' They are and remain unbelievers, but their formulas for analysis of problems have a certain precision to them,\" Badrayn explained. \"That is why I have learned to assemble information so carefully.\"\n\n\"So I have seen. Your next task will be to sketch in some operations.\" With that, Daryaei pushed back his seat and closed his eyes, wondering if he would dream again of dead lions.\n\nMUCH AS HE wished for a return to clinical medicine, Pierre Alexandre didn't especially like it, at least this matter of treating people who would not survive. The former Army officer in him figured that defending Bataan had been like this. Doing all you could, firing off your best rounds, but knowing that relief would never come. At the moment, it was three AIDS patients, all homosexual men, all in their thirties, and all with less than a year to live. Alexandre was a fairly religious man, and he didn't approve of the gay lifestyle, but nobody deserved to die like this. And even if they did, he was a physician, not God sitting in judgment. Damn, he thought, walking off the elevator and speaking his patient notes into a mini\u2014tape recorder.\n\nIt's part of a doctor's job to compartmentalize his life. The three patients on his unit would still be there tomorrow, and none of them would require emergency attention that night. Putting their problems aside was not cruel. It was just business, and their lives, were they to have any hope at all, would depend on his ability to turn away from their stricken bodies and back to researching the microsized organisms that were attacking them. He handed the tape cassette to his secretary, who'd type up the notes.\n\n\"Dr. Lorenz down in Atlanta returned your call returning his call returning your original call,\" she told him as he passed. As soon as he sat down, he dialed the direct line from memory.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Gus? Alex here at Hopkins. Tag,\" he chuckled, \"you're it.\" He heard a good laugh at the other end of the line. Phone tag could be the biggest pain in the ass.\n\n\"How's the fishing, Colonel?\"\n\n\"Would you believe I haven't had a chance yet? Ralph's working me pretty hard.\"\n\n\"What did you want from me\u2014you did call first, didn't you?\" Lorenz wasn't sure anymore, another sign of a man working too hard.\n\n\"Yeah, I did, Gus. Ralph tells me you're starting a new look at the Ebola structure\u2014from that mini-break in Zaire, right?\"\n\n\"Well, I would be, except somebody stole my monkeys,\" the director of CDC reported sourly. \"The replacement shipment is due in here in a day or two, so they tell me.\"\n\n\"You have a break-in?\" Alexandre asked. One of the troublesome developments for labs that had experimental animals was that animal-rights fanatics occasionally tried to bust in and \"liberate\" the animals. Someday, if everyone wasn't careful, some screwball would walk out with a monkey under his arm and discover it had Lassa fever\u2014or worse. How the hell were physicians supposed to study the goddamned bug without animals\u2014and who'd ever said that a monkey was more important than a human being? The answer to that was simple: in America there were people who believed in damned near anything, and there was a constitutional right to be an ass. Because of that, CDC, Hopkins, and other research labs had armed guards, protecting monkey cages. And even _rat_ cages, which really made Alex roll his eyes to the ceiling.\n\n\"No, they were highjacked in Africa. Somebody else is playing with them now. Anyway, so it kicks me back a week. What the hell. I've been looking at this little bastard for fifteen years.\"\n\n\"How fresh is the sample?\"\n\n\"It's off the Index Patient. Positive identification, Ebola Zaire, the Mayinga strain. We have another sample from the only other patient. That one disappeared\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\" Alexandre asked in immediate alarm.\n\n\"Lost at sea in a plane crash. They were evidently flying her to Paris to see Rousseau. No further cases, Alex. We dodged the bullet this time for a change,\" Lorenz assured his younger colleague.\n\n_Better_ , Alexandre thought, _to crunch in a plane crash than bleed out from that little fucker._ He still thought like a soldier, profanity and all. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"So, why did you call?\"\n\n\"Polynomials,\" Lorenz heard.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" the doctor asked in Atlanta.\n\n\"When you map this one out, let's think about doing a mathematical analysis of the structure.\"\n\n\"I've been playing with that idea for a while. Right now, though, I want to examine the reproduction cycle and\u2014\"\n\n\"Exactly, Gus, the mathematical nature of the interaction. I was talking to a colleague up here\u2014eye cutter, you believe? She said something interesting. If the amino acids have a quantifiable mathematical value, and they should, then _how_ they interact with other codon strings may tell us something.\" Alexandre paused and heard a match striking. Gus was smoking his pipe in the office again.\n\n\"Keep going.\"\n\n\"Still reaching for this one, Gus. What if it's like you've been thinking, it's all an equation? The trick is cracking it, right? How do we do that? Okay, Ralph told me about your time-cycle study. I think you're onto something. If we have the virus RNA mapped, and we have the host DNA mapped, then\u2014\"\n\n\"`! The interactions will tell us something about the values of the elements in the polynomial\u2014\"\n\n\"And that will tell us a lot about how the little fuck replicates, and just maybe\u2014\"\n\n\"How to attack it.\" A pause, and a loud puff came over the phone line. \"Alex, that's pretty good.\"\n\n\"You're the best guy for the job, Gus, and you're setting up the experiment anyway.\"\n\n\"Something's missing, though.\"\n\n\"Always is.\"\n\n\"Let me think about that one for a day or so and get back to you. Good one, Alex.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\" Professor Alexandre replaced the phone and figured he'd done his duty of the day for medical science. It wasn't much, and there _was_ an element missing from the suggestion.\n**23**\n\n**EXPERIMENTS**\n\n**I** T TOOK SEVERAL DAYS TO get everything in place. President Ryan had to meet with yet another class of new senators\u2014some of the states were a little slow in getting things done, mainly because some of the governors established something akin to search committees to evaluate a list of candidates. That was a surprise to a lot of Washington insiders who'd expected the state executives to do things as they'd always been done to appoint replacements to the upper house just as soon as the bodies were cold\u2014but it turned out that Ryan's speech had mattered a little bit. Eight governors had realized that this situation was unique, and had therefore acted in a different way, earning, on reflection, the praise of their local papers, if not the complete approval of the establishment press.\n\nJack's first political trip was an experimental one. He rose early, kissed his wife and kids on the way out the door, and boarded the helicopter on the South Lawn just before seven in the morning. Ten minutes later, he left the aircraft to trot up the stairs onto Air Force One, technically known to the Pentagon as a VC-25A, a 747 expensively modified to be the President's personal conveyance. He boarded just as the pilot, a very senior colonel, was making his airline-like preflight announcements. Looking aft, Ryan could see eighty or so reporters belting into their better-than-first-class leather seats\u2014actually some _didn't_ strap in, because Air Force One generally rode more smoothly than an ocean liner on calm seas\u2014and when he turned to head forward, he heard, _\"And this is a nonsmoking flight!\"_\n\n\"Who said that?\" the President asked.\n\n\"One of the TV pukes,\" Andrea replied. \"He thinks it's his airplane.\"\n\n\"In a way, it is,\" Arnie pointed out. \"Remember that.\"\n\n\"That's Tom Donner,\" Callie Weston added. \"The NBC anchor. His personal feces are not odorific, and he uses more hair spray than I do. But part of it's glued on.\"\n\n\"This way, Mr. President.\" Andrea pointed forward. The President's cabin in Air Force One is in the extreme nose on the main deck, where there are regular, if very plush, seats, plus a pair of couches that fold out into beds for long trips. As the principal agent watched, her principal strapped in. Passengers could get away with breaking the rules\u2014the USSS wasn't all that concerned with journalists\u2014but not POTUS. When that was done, she waved to an Air Force crewman, who lifted a phone and told the pilot that he could go now. With that, the engines started up. Jack had mostly lost his fear of flying, but this was the part of the flight where he closed his eyes and thought (earlier in his life he'd whispered) a prayer for the collective safety of the people aboard\u2014\u2014in the belief that praying merely for yourself might appear selfish to God. About the time that was finished, the takeoff roll began, rather more quickly than was normal on a 747. Lightly loaded, it felt like an airplane instead of a train pulling out of a station.\n\n\"Okay,\" Arnie said, as the nose lifted off. The President studiously did not grip the armrests as he usually did. \"This is going to be an easy one. Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, and back home for dinner. The crowds will be friendly, and about as reactionary as you are,\" he added with a twinkle. \"So you don't really have anything to worry about.\"\n\nSpecial Agent Price, sitting in the same compartment for the takeoff, hated it when anybody said that. Chief of Staff van Damm\u2014CARPENTER to the Secret Service; Callie Weston was CALLIOPE\u2014was one of the staffers who never quite appreciated the headaches the Service went through. He thought of danger as a political hazard, even after the 747 crash. Remarkable, she thought. A few feet aft, Agent Raman was in an aft-facing seat watching access forward, in case a reporter showed up with a gun instead of a pencil. There were six more agents aboard to keep an eye on everyone, even the uniformed crewmen, and a platoon of them standing by in each of the two destination cities, along with a huge collection of local cops. At Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, the fuel truck was already under USSS guard, lest someone contaminate the JP to go into the presidential aircraft; it would remain so until well _after_ the 747 returned to Andrews. A C-5B Galaxy transport was already in Indianapolis, having ferried the presidential automobiles there. Moving the President around was rather like transporting the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, except people generally didn't worry about people trying to assassinate the man on the flying trapeze.\n\nRyan, Agent Price saw, was going over his speech. That was one of his few normal acts. They were almost always nervous about speeches\u2014generally not so much stage fright as concern for the content spin. The thought made Price smile. Ryan wasn't worried about the content, but _was_ worried about blowing the delivery. Well, he'd learn, and his good fortune was that Callie Weston, administrative pain in the ass that she was, wrote one hell of a speech.\n\n\"Breakfast?\" a steward asked now that the aircraft was leveled off. The President shook his head.\n\n\"Not hungry, thanks.\"\n\n\"Get him ham and eggs, toast, and decaf,\" van Damm ordered.\n\n\"Never try to give a speech on an empty stomach,\" Callie advised. \"Trust me.\"\n\n\"And not too much real coffee. Caffeine can make you jumpy. When a President gives a speech,\" Arnie explained for this morning's lesson, \"he's\u2014Callic, help me out here?\"\n\n\"Nothing dramatic for these two today. You're the smart neighbor coming over because the guy next door wants your advice on something he's been thinking about. Friendly. Reasonable. Quiet. 'Gee, Fred, I really think you might want to do it this way,' \" Weston explained with raised eyebrows.\n\n\"Kindly family doctor telling a guy to go easy on the greasy food and maybe play an extra round of golf\u2014exercise is supposed to be fun, that sort of thing,\" the chief of staff explained on. \"You do it all the time in real life.\"\n\n\"Just do it this morning in front of four thousand people, right?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"And C-SPAN cameras, and it'll be on all the evening network news broadcasts\u2014\"\n\n\"CNN will be doing it live, too, 'cuz it's your first speech out in the country,\" Callie added. No sense lying to the man.\n\n_Jesus_. Jack looked back down at the text of his speech. \"You're right, Arnie. Better decaf.\" He looked up suddenly. \"Any smokers aboard?\"\n\nIt was the way he asked it that made the Air Force steward turn. \"Want one, sir?\"\n\nThe answer was somewhat shameful, but\u2014\"Yes.\"\n\nShe handed him a Virginia Slim and lit it with a warm smile. It wasn't every day one got a chance to provide so personal a service to the Commander-in-Chief. Ryan took a puff and looked up.\n\n\"If you tell my wife, Sergeant\u2014\"\n\n\"Our secret, sir.\" She disappeared aft to get breakfast, her day already made.\n\nTHE FLUID WAS surprisingly horrid in color, deep scarlet with a hint of brown. They'd monitored the process with small samples under an electron microscope. The monkey kidneys exposed to the infected blood were composed of discrete and highly specialized cells, and for whatever reason, Ebola loved those cells as a glutton loves his chocolate mousse. It had been both fascinating and horrifying to watch. The micron-sized virus strands touched the cells, penetrated them\u2014and started to replicate in the warm, rich biosphere. It was like something from a science-fiction movie, but quite real. This virus, like all the others, was only equivocally alive. It could act only with help, and that help had to come from its host, which by providing the means for the virus to activate, also conspired at its own death. The Ebola strands contained only RNA, and for mitosis to take place, both RNA and DNA are required. The kidney cells had both, the virus strands sought them out, and when they were joined, the Ebola started to reproduce. To do that required energy, and that energy was supplied by the kidney cells, which were, of course, completely destroyed in the process. The multiplication process was a microcosm of the disease process in a human community. It started slowly, then accelerated geometrically\u2014the faster it went, the faster it went: 2\u20134\u201316\u2013256\u201365,536\u2014until all of the nutrients were eaten up and only virus strands remained, then went dormant and awaited their next opportunity. People applied all manner of false images to disease. It would lie in wait for its chance; it would kill without mercy; it would seek out victims. All of that was anthropomorphic rubbish, Moudi and his colleague knew. It didn't think. It didn't do anything overly malevolent. All Ebola did was to eat and reproduce and go back to its dormant state. But as a computer is only a collection of electrical switches which can only distinguish between the numerals 1 and 0\u2014but does so more rapidly and efficiently than its human users\u2014so Ebola was supremely well adapted to reproduce so rapidly that the human body's immune system, ordinarily a ruthlessly effective defense mechanism, was simply overwhelmed, as though by an army of carnivorous ants. In that lay Ebola's historic weakness. It was _too_ efficient. It killed _too_ fast. Its survival mechanism within the human host also tended to kill the host before it could pass the disease along. It was also super-adapted to a specific ecosystem. Ebola didn't survive long in the open, and only then in a jungle environment. For this reason, and since it could not survive in a human host without killing that host in ten days or less, it had also evolved slowly\u2014without taking the next evolutionary step of becoming airborne.\n\nOr so everyone thought. Perhaps \"hoped\" would be a better word, Moudi reflected. An Ebola variant that could be spread by aerosol would be catastrophically deadly. It was possible they had exactly that. This was the Mayinga strain, as repeated microscopy had established, and _that_ strain was suspected to be capable of aerosol transmission, and that was what they had to prove.\n\nDeep-freezing, using liquid nitrogen as the refrigerant, for example, killed most normal human cells. When they froze, the expansion of the water, which accounted for most of the cellular mass, burst the cell walls, leaving nothing behind but wreckage. Ebola, on the other hand, was too primitive for that to happen. Too much heat could kill it. Ultraviolet light could kill it. Micro-changes in the chemical environment could kill it. But give it a cold, dark place to sleep, and it was content to slumber in peace.\n\nThey worked in a glove box. It was a highly controlled and lethally contaminated environment bordered with clear lexan strong enough to stop a pistol bullet. On two sides holes were cut into the sturdy plastic, and riveted at each workstation was a pair of heavy rubber gloves. Moudi withdrew 10cc's of the virus-rich liquid and transferred it to a small container, which he sealed. The sluggishness of the process was less from physical danger than from the awkwardness of the gloves. When the container was sealed, he transferred it from one gloved hand to another, then off to the director, who performed a similar switch, finally moving it into a small airlock. When that door was closed, as indicated by a light which read off a pressure sensor, the small compartment was flooded with disinfectant spray\u2014dilute phenol\u2014and allowed to sit for three minutes, until it was certain that the air and the transfer container were safe to release. Even then no one would touch it with ungloved hands, and despite the safety of the glove box, both physicians also wore full protective gear. The director removed the container, cradling it in both hands for the three-meter walk to the worktable.\n\nFor experimental purposes, the aerosol can was of the type used for insect spray, the sort one can place on a floor, activate, and leave to fog a whole room. It had been fully disassembled, cleaned out three times with live steam, and put back together\u2014the plastic parts had been a problem, but that had been figured out a few months earlier. It was a crude device. The production versions would be far more elegant. The only danger here was from the liquid nitrogen, a watery-appearing fluid which, if spilled on the gloves, would freeze them immediately and soon thereafter cause them to fragment like black crystal glass. The director stood aside as Moudi poured the cryogenic liquid around the pressure vessel. Only a few cc's were required for the purpose of the experiment. Next, the Ebola-rich liquid was injected into the stainless-steel inner container, and the top screwed in place. When the cap was sealed, the new container was sprayed with disinfectant, then washed with sterile saline. The smaller transfer container went into a disposal bin for incineration.\n\n\"There,\" the director said. \"We are ready.\"\n\nInside the spray can, the Ebola was already deep-frozen, but not for long. The nitrogen would boil off relatively rapidly, and the sample would thaw. In that time, the rest of the experiment would be set up. And in that time, the two physicians would remove their protective clothing and have dinner.\n\nTHE COLONEL DRIVING the airplane touched down with consummate skill. It was his first time flying this President, and he had something to prove. The rollout was routine, with the reverse-thrusters slowing the jumbo to auto-speed before the nose came around to the left. Out the windows, Ryan could see hundreds\u2014no, he realized, _thousands\u2014_ of people. _All there to see me?_ he wondered. _Damn_. In their hands, dangling over the low perimeter fence, were the red, white, and blue colors of the national flag, and when the aircraft finally stopped, those flags came up at one time, as though in a wave. The mobile stairs came to the door, which was opened by the steward\u2014to call her a steward _ess_ would have been incorrect\u2014who'd given him a cigarette.\n\n\"Want another one?\" she whispered.\n\nRyan grinned. \"Maybe later. And thanks, Sarge.\"\n\n\"Break a leg, Mr. President\u2014but not on the stairs, okay?\" She got a chuckle as reward.\n\n\"All ready for the Boss,\" Price heard over her radio circuit from the leader of the advance team. With that, she nodded at President Ryan.\n\n\"Showtime, Mr. President.\"\n\nRyan took a deep breath and stood in the center of the door, looking out into the bright Midwestern sunlight.\n\nThe protocol was that he had to walk down first and alone. Barely had he stood in the opening when a cheer went up, and this from people who scarcely knew a thing about him. His coat buttoned, his hair combed down and sprayed into place despite his objections, Jack Ryan walked down the steps, feeling more like a fool than a President until he got to the bottom. There an Air Force chief master sergeant snapped a salute, which Ryan, so imprinted by his brief months in the Marine Corps, returned smartly\u2014and another cheer went up. He looked around to see Secret Service and other Treasury agents deployed around, almost all of them looking outward. The first person to come close was the governor of the state.\n\n\"Welcome to Indiana, Mr. President!\" He seized Ryan's hand and shook it vigorously. \"We're honored to host your first official visit.\"\n\nThey'd laid out everything for this one. A company of the local National Guard was formed up. The band crashed out \"Ruffles and Flourishes,\" immediately followed by \"Hail to the Chief,\" and Ryan felt himself to be a singular fraud. With the governor to his left and half a step behind, Ryan followed the red\u2014what else?\u2014carpet. The assembled soldiers came to present arms, and their ancient regimental standard dipped, though not the Stars and Stripes, of course, which, an American athlete had once proclaimed, dips to no earthly king or potentate (he'd been an Irish-American unwilling so to honor the King of England at the 1908 Olympiad). Jack moved his right hand over his heart as he passed, a gesture remembered from his youth, and looked at the assembled guardsmen. He was their commander-in-chief now, the President told himself. He could give orders sending them off to the field of battle, and he had to look at their faces. There they were, clean-shaven and young and proud, as he would have been twenty-odd years earlier. They were here for him. And he always had to be there for them. _Yeah,_ Jack told himself. _Have to remember that._\n\n\"May I introduce you to some local citizens, sir?\" the governor asked, pointing to the fence. Ryan nodded and followed.\n\n\"Heads up, pressin' flesh,\" Andrea called over her radio microphone. For as many times as they'd seen it happen, the agents on presidential Detail detested this above all things. Price would be with POTUS at all times. Raman and three others hovered on both sides of him, their eyes scanning the crowd from behind dark sunglasses, looking for guns, for the wrong expression, for faces memorized from photographs, for anything out of the ordinary.\n\nThere were so many of them, Jack thought. None of them had voted for him, and until very recently few had even known his name. Yet they were here. Some, perhaps, state-government employees getting half a day off, but not the ones holding kids, not all of them, and the looks in their eyes stunned the President, who'd never in his life experienced anything even close to this. Hands extended frantically, and he shook all that he could, moving to his left down the line, trying to hear individual voices through the cacophony of screams.\n\n_\"Welcome to Indiana!\"\u2014\"How are ya!\"\u2014\"MISTER PRESIDENT!\"\u2014\"We trust you!\"\u2014\"Good job so far!\"_ \u2014 _\"We're with ya!\"_\n\nRyan tried to answer back, achieving little more than a repeated thank-you, his mouth mainly open in surprise at the overpowering warmth of the moment, and all directed at him. It was enough to make him overlook the pain in his hand, but finally he had to step away from the fence and wave, to yet another roar of love for the new President.\n\n_Damn_. If they only knew what a fraud he was, Jack thought, what would they do then? _What the hell am I doing here?_ his mind demanded, as he headed for the open door of the presidential limousine.\n\nTHERE WERE TEN of them, down in the basement of the building. All were men. Only one was a political prisoner, and his crime was apostasy. The rest were singularly undesirable people, four murderers, a rapist, two child molesters, and two thieves who were repeat offenders and, under the Koranic law of their nation, subject to removal of their right hands. They were in a single, climate-controlled room, each of them secured to the foot of the bed by leg cuffs. All were condemned to death, except the thieves who were only supposed to be mutilated, and knew it, and wondered why they were here with the rest. Why the others were still alive was a mystery to them, which none questioned but from which none took satisfaction, either. Their diet over the past few weeks had been particularly poor, enough to reduce their physical energy and their level of alertness. One of their number stuck a finger in his mouth to feel his sore and bleeding gums. The finger came out when the door opened.\n\nIt was someone in a blue plastic suit, which none of them had seen before. The person\u2014a man, though they could barely make out the face through the plastic mask\u2014set a cylindrical container down on the concrete floor, took off the blue plastic cap, and pressed down on a button. Then he hastily withdrew. Scarcely had the door closed when there came a hiss from the container, and a steamlike fog sprayed up into the room.\n\nOne of their number screamed, thinking that it was a poison gas, seizing the thin bedsheet and clasping it over his face. The one closest to the spray was slower-witted and merely watched, and when the cloud came over him, he looked around at it while the others waited for him to die. When he didn't, they were more curious than fearful. After a few minutes, the incident passed into their limited history. The lights were turned off, and they went to sleep.\n\n\"Three days to find out,\" the director said, turning off the TV that fed from the cell. \"The spray system appears to work well, proper dispersion. They had a problem with the delay device. On the production version, it has to be good for\u2014what? Five minutes, I think.\"\n\nThree days, Moudi thought. Seventy-two hours to see what evil they had wrought.\n\nFOR ALL THE money and hype, for all the exquisite planning, Ryan was sitting on a simple folding metal chair, the sort to make a person's rump sore. In front of him was a wooden rail covered with red, white, and blue bunting. Under the bunting was sheet steel supposed to stop a bullet. The podium was similarly armored\u2014steel _and_ Kevlar in this case; Kevlar is both stronger and lighter\u2014and would protect nearly all of his body below the shoulders. The university field house\u2014a very large gymnasium, though not the one used for the school's basketball team, already eliminated in the NCAA tournament\u2014was packed \"to the rafters,\" reporters would probably say, that being the stock phrase for a building with all its seats occupied. Most of the audience were probably students, but it was hard to tell. Ryan was the target of numerous bright lights, and the flood of brilliance denied him the ability to see most of the crowd. They'd arrived via the back door, walking through a smelly locker room because the President took the fast way in and out. The motorcade had come down a highway for most of the way, but in the regular city streets that had occupied maybe a quarter of the distance, there had been people on the sidewalks, waving to him while their governor extolled the virtues of the city and the Hoosier State. Jack had thought to ask the origin of \"Hoosier,\" but decided not to.\n\nThe governor was talking again now, succeeding three others. A student, followed by the university president, followed by the mayor of the local town. The President actually tried listening to the speeches, but while on one hand they all said mainly the same thing, on the other little of it was true. It was as though they were speaking of someone else, a theoretical President with generic virtues to deal with the misstated duties. Maybe it was just that the local speechwriters dealt with local issues only, Jack decided. So much the better for them.\n\n\". . . my great honor to introduce the President of the United States.\" The governor turned and gestured. Ryan rose, approached the podium, shook the governor's hand. As he set his speech folder on the top of the podium, he nodded embarrassed appreciation at the crowd he could barely see. In the first few rows, right on the hardwood of the basketball court, were local big shots. In other times and circumstances, they'd be major contributors. In this case, Ryan didn't know. Maybe from both parties, even. Then he remembered that major contributors donated money to _both_ parties anyway, to hedge their bets by guaranteeing themselves access to power no matter who was there. They were probably already trying to figure how to donate money to _his_ campaign.\n\n\"Thank you, Governor, for that introduction.\" Ryan turned to gesture to the people on the dais with him, naming them from the list on the first page of his speech folder, good friends whom he'd never see again after this first time, whose faces were illuminated by the simple fact that he spoke their names in the correct order.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, I've never been to Indiana before. This is my first visit to the Hoosier State, but after experiencing your welcome, I hope it won't be the last\u2014\"\n\nIt was as though someone had held up the APPLAUSE sign on a TV show. He'd just spoken the truth, followed by something that might or might not have been a lie, and while they had to know it, they didn't care a whit. And then Jack Ryan learned something important for the first time.\n\n_God, it's like a narcotic,_ Jack thought, understanding just then why people entered politics. No man could stand here like this, hearing the noise, seeing the faces, and not love the moment. It came through the stage fright, through the overwhelming sense of not belonging. Here he was, before four thousand people, fellow citizens each of them, equal to him before the law, but in their minds he was something else entirely. He was the United States of America. He was their President, but more than that, he was the embodiment of their hopes, their desires, the image of their own nation, and because of that they were willing to love someone they didn't know, to cheer his every word, to hope that for a brief moment they could believe that he'd looked directly into each individual pair of eyes so that the moment would be forever special, never to be forgotten. It was power such as he had never known to exist. This crowd was his to command. _This_ was why men devoted their lives to seeking the presidency, to bathe in this moment like a warm ocean wave, a moment of utter perfection.\n\nBut why did they think he was so different? What made him special in their minds? Ryan wondered. It was only chance in his case, and in every other instance, it was they who'd done the choosing, they who had elevated the man to the podium, they who by their act had changed the ordinary into something else\u2014and perhaps not even that. It was only perception. Ryan was the same man he'd been a month or a year before. He'd acquired little in the way of new knowledge and less in the way of wisdom. He was the same person with a different job, and while the trappings of the new post were all around him, the person within the protective ring of bodyguards, the person surrounded by a flood of love which he'd never sought, was merely the product of parents, a childhood, an education, and experiences, just as they all were. They thought him different and special and perhaps even great, but that was perception, not reality. The reality of the moment was sweaty hands on the armored podium, a speech written by someone else, and a man who knew that he was out of place, however pleasant the moment might be.\n\n_So, what do I do now_? the President of the United States asked himself, his mind racing as the current wave of applause diminished. He'd never be what they thought he was. He was a good man, he thought, but not a great one, and the presidency was a job, a post, a government office that came with duties defined by James Madison, and, as with all things in life, a place of transition from one reality to another. The past was something you couldn't change. The future was something you tried to see. The present was where you were, and that's where you had to do your best\u2014and if you were lucky, maybe you'd be worthy of the moment. It wasn't enough to feel the love. He had to earn it, to make the looks on the assembled faces something other than a lie, for in giving power they also gave responsibility, and in giving love they demanded devotion in return. Chastened, Jack looked at the glass panel that reflected the text of his speech, took a deep breath, and started talking as he'd done as a history instructor in Annapolis.\n\n\"I come here today to speak to you about America . . .\"\n\nBelow the President were five Secret Service agents standing in line, their sunglasses shielding their eyes so that those in the audience could not always tell where they were looking, and also because people without eyes are intimidating at a visceral level. Their hands were clasped in front, and radio earpieces kept them in contact with one another as they scanned the crowd. In the rear of the field house were others, this group scanning with binoculars, because they knew that the love in the building was not uniform, or even that there were some who sought to kill the things they loved. For that reason, the advance team had erected portable metal-detector arches at all the entrances. For that reason Belgian Malinois dogs had sniffed the building for explosives. For that reason they watched everything in the same way an infantryman in a combat zone was careful to examine every shadow.\n\n\"... and the strength of America lies not in Washington, but in Indiana, and New Mexico, and in every place Americans live and work, wherever it might be. We in Washington are not America. You are,\" the President's voice boomed through the PA system\u2014not a good system, the agents thought, but this event had been laid on a little fast. \"And we work for you.\" The audience cheered again anyway.\n\nThe TV cameras all fed into vans outside the building, and those had uplink dishes to relay the sound and pictures to satellites. The reporters were mainly in the back today, taking notes despite the fact that they had the full text, along with a written promise that the President really would deliver this one. \"The President's speech today,\" all would say this evening, but it wasn't really the President's speech at all. They knew who'd written it. Callie Weston had already talked to several of their number about it. They read the crowd, an easier task for them because they didn't have the klieg lights in their faces.\n\n\". . . is not an opportunity, but a responsibility which we all share, because if America belongs to us all, so then the duty for running our country starts here, not in Washington.\" More applause.\n\n\"Good speech,\" Tom Donner observed to his commentator \/analyst, John Plumber.\n\n\"Pretty good delivery, too. I talked to the superintendent of the Naval Academy. They say he was an excellent teacher once,\" Plumber replied.\n\n\"Good audience for him, mainly kids. And he's not talking major policy issues.\"\n\n\"Getting his feet wet,\" John agreed. \"You have a team working the other segment for tonight, right?\"\n\nDonner checked his watch and nodded. \"Should be there now.\"\n\n\"SO, DR. RYAN, how do you like being First Lady?\" Krystin Matthews asked, with a warm smile.\n\n\"I'm still figuring it out.\" They were talking in Cathy's cubbyhole office overlooking central Baltimore. It had barely enough room for a desk and three chairs (a good one for the doctor, one for the patient, and the other for the spouse or mother of the patient), and with all the cameras and lights in the room, she felt trapped. \"You know, I miss cooking for my family.\"\n\n\"You're a surgeon\u2014and your husband expects you to cook, too?\" the NBC co-anchor asked, in surprise bordering on outrage.\n\n\"I've always loved cooking. It's a good way for me to relax when I get home.\" _Instead of watching TV,_ Professor Caroline Ryan didn't add. She was wearing a new starched lab coat. She'd had to take fifteen minutes with her hair and makeup, and she had patients waiting. \"Besides, I'm pretty good at it.\"\n\nAh, well, that was different. A cloying smile: \"What's the President's favorite meal?\"\n\nA smile returned. \"That's easy. Steak, baked potato, fresh corn on the cob, and my spinach salad\u2014and I know, the physician in me tells him that it's a little heavy on the cholesterol. Jack's pretty good with a grill. In fact, he's a pretty handy man to have around the house. He doesn't even mind cutting the grass.\"\n\n\"Let me take you back to the night your son was born, that awful night when the terrorists\u2014\"\n\n\"I haven't forgotten,\" Cathy said in a quieter voice.\n\n\"Your husband has killed people. You're a doctor. How does that make you feel?\"\n\n\"Jack and Robby\u2014he's Admiral Jackson now\u2014Robby and Sissy are our closest friends,\" Cathy explained. \"Anyway, they did what they had to do, or we would not have survived that night. I don't like violence. I'm a surgeon. Last week I had a trauma case, a man lost his eye as a result of a fistfight in a bar a few blocks from here. But what Jack did is different from what _they_ did. My husband fought to protect me and Sally, and Little Jack, who wasn't even born yet.\"\n\n\"You like being a doctor?\"\n\n\"I love my work. I wouldn't leave it for anything.\"\n\n\"But usually a First Lady\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what you want to say. I'm not a political wife. I practice medicine. I'm a research scientist, and I work in the best eye institute in the world. I have patients waiting for me now. They need me\u2014and you know, I need them, too. My job is who I am. I'm also a wife and a mother, and I like nearly everything about my life.\"\n\n\"Except this?\" Krystin asked, with a smile.\n\nCathy's blue eyes twinkled. \"I really don't have to answer that, do I?\" And Matthews knew she had the tagline for the interview.\n\n\"What sort of man is your husband?\"\n\n\"Well, I can't be totally objective, can I? I love him. He's risked his life for me and my children. Whenever I've needed him, he was there. And I do the same for him. That's what love and marriage mean. Jack is smart. He's honest. I guess he's something of a worrier. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night\u2014at home, I mean\u2014and spend half an hour looking out the windows at the water. I don't think he knows that I know that.\"\n\n\"Does he still do that?\"\n\n\"Not lately. He's pretty tired when he gets to bed. These are the worst hours he's ever worked.\"\n\n\"His other government posts, at CIA, for example, there are reports that he\u2014\"\n\nCathy stopped that one with a raised hand. \"I do not have a security clearance. I don't know, and probably I don't want to know. It's the same with me. I am not allowed to discuss confidential patient information with Jack, or anyone else outside the faculty here.\"\n\n\"We'd like to see you with patients and\u2014\" FLOTUS shook her head, stopping the question dead.\n\n\"No, this is a hospital, not a TV studio. It's not so much my privacy as that of my patients. To them, I am not the First Lady. To them, I am Dr. Ryan. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a physician and a surgeon. To my students, I'm a professor and teacher.\"\n\n\"And reportedly one of the best in the world at what you do,\" Matthews added, just to see the reaction.\n\nA smile resulted. \"Yes, I've won the Lasker prize, and the respect of my colleagues is a gift that's worth more than money\u2014but you know, that isn't it, either. Sometimes\u2014not very often\u2014but sometimes after a major procedure, I'm the one who takes the bandages off in a darkened room, and we turn the lights up slowly, and I see it. I can see it on the patient's face. I fixed the eyes, and they work again, and the look you see on his or her face\u2014well, nobody's in medicine for the money, at least not here at Hopkins. We're here to make sick people well, and for me to preserve and restore sight, and the look you see when that job is done is like having God tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Nice job.' That's why I'll never, _never_ leave medicine,\" Cathy Ryan said, almost lyrically, knowing that they'd use this on TV tonight, and hoping that maybe some bright young high-school kid would see her face and hear the words and decide to think about medicine. If she had to put up with this waste of her time, perhaps she could use it to serve her art.\n\nIt was a pretty good sequence, Krystin Matthews thought, but with only two minutes and thirty seconds of air time, they would not be able to use it. Better the part about how she hated being First Lady. Everybody was used to hearing doctors talk.\n**24**\n\n**ON THE FLY**\n\n**T** HE RETURN TO THE AIRplane was quick and efficient. The governor went his way. The people who'd lined the sidewalks were mainly back to their jobs, and those who turned and looked were shoppers who probably wondered what the sirens were all about\u2014or if they knew, were annoyed with the noise. Ryan was able to lean back in the plush leather seats, deflated by the fatigue that comes after a stressful moment.\n\n\"So, how'd I do?\" he asked, looking out the window as Indiana passed by at seventy miles per hour. He smiled inwardly at the thought of driving this fast in the outskirts of a city without getting a ticket.\n\n\"Very well, actually,\" Callie Weston said first. \"You talked like a teacher.\"\n\n\"I _was_ a teacher once,\" the President said. _And with luck, I may be again someday._\n\n\"That's okay for a speech like this, but for others you'll need a little fire,\" Arnie observed.\n\n\"One thing at a time,\" Callie advised the chief of staff. \"You crawl before you walk.\"\n\n\"Same speech in Oklahoma, right?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"A few changes, but no big deal. Just remember you're not in Indiana anymore. Sooner State, not Hoosier State. Same line about tornadoes, but football instead of basketball.\"\n\n\"They also lost both senators, but they still have a congressman left, and he'll be on the dais with you,\" van Damm advised.\n\n\"How'd he make it?\" Jack asked idly.\n\n\"Probably getting laid that night,\" was the curt answer. \"You'll announce a new contract for Tinker Air Force Base. It means about five hundred new jobs, consolidating a few operations at the new location. That'll make the local papers happy.\"\n\nBEN GOODLEY DIDN'T know if he was the new National Security Advisor or not. If so, he was rather young for the job, but at least the President he served was well grounded in foreign affairs. That made him more a high-class secretary than an adviser. It was a function he didn't mind. He'd learned much in his brief time at Langley, and had advanced rapidly, becoming one of the youngest men ever to win the coveted NIO card because he knew how to organize information, and because he had the political savvy to grade the important stuff. He especially liked working directly for President Ryan. Goodley knew that he could play it straight with the Boss, and that Jack he still thought of him by that name, though he could no longer use it\u2014would always let him know what he was thinking. It would be another learning experience for Dr. Goodley, and a priceless one for someone whose new life dream was someday becoming DCI on merit and not through politics.\n\nOn the wall opposite his desk was the sort of clock that shows the sun position for the entire world. He'd ordered it the very day he'd arrived\u2014and to his surprise it had appeared literally overnight, instead of perking its way through five levels of procurement bureaucracy. He'd heard stories that the White House was one portion of the government that actually did work, and had not believed them the Harvard graduate had been in government service about four years now, and figured he knew what worked and what didn't. The surprise was welcome, and the clock, he'd found from his work in the CIA Operations Center, was an instant reference, better than the array of regular clocks that some places had. Your eye instantly saw where noon was and could automatically grasp what time it was anywhere in the world. More to the point, you instantly knew if something was happening at an unusual hour, and that told you as much as the Signals Intelligence\u2014SIGINT\u2014bulletin. Such as the one that had just come in over his personal fax machine that was connected to his STU-4 secure phone.\n\nThe National Security Agency was in the habit of posting periodic summaries of activity across the world. Its own watch center was staffed by senior military people, and while their outlook was more technical and less political than his own, they were not fools. Ben had gotten to know many of them by name in addition to reputation, and had also learned their individual strengths. The USAF colonel who had command of the NSA Watch Center on weekday afternoons didn't bother people with trivia. That was left to lower-level people and lower-level signals. When the colonel put his name on something, it was usually worth reading. And so it was just after noon, Washington time.\n\nGoodley saw that the FLASH concerned Iraq. That was another thing about the colonel. He didn't go using CRITIC headers for the fun of it, as some did. Ben looked up to check the wall clock. After sundown, local time, a time of relaxation for some, and action for others. The action would be the sort to last all night, the better to get things accomplished without interference, so that the next day would be genuinely new, and genuinely different.\n\n\"Oh, boy,\" Goodley breathed. He read down the page again, then turned his swivel chair and picked up the phone, touching the #3 speed-dial button.\n\n\"Director's office,\" a fiftyish female voice answered.\n\n\"Goodley for Foley.\"\n\n\"Please hold, Dr. Goodley.\" Then: \"Hi, Ben.\"\n\n\"Hello, Director.\" He felt it improper to first-name the DCI. He'd probably go back to work at Langley within the year, and not as a seventh-floor-rank official. \"You have what I have?\" The page was still warm in his hand from the printer.\n\n\"Iraq?\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"You must have read it twice, Ben. I just told Bert Vasco to get his ass up here.\" CIA's own Iraq desk was weak, both thought, while this State guy was very good indeed.\n\n\"Looks pretty hot to me.\"\n\n\"Agreed,\" Ed Foley replied, with an unseen nod. \"Jesus, but they're moving fast over there. Give me an hour, maybe ninety minutes.\"\n\n\"I think the President needs to know,\" Goodley said, with a voice that concealed the urgency he felt. Or so he thought.\n\n\"He needs to know more than we can tell him now. Ben?\" the DCI added.\n\n\"Yes, Director?\"\n\n\"Jack won't kill you for patience, and we can't do any more than watch it develop anyway. Remember, we can't overload him with information. He doesn't have the time to see it all anymore. What he sees has to be concise. That's your job,\" Ed Foley explained. \"It'll take you a few weeks to figure it out. I'll help,\" the DCI went on, reminding Goodley how junior he was.\n\n\"Okay. I'll be waiting.\" The line clicked off.\n\nGoodley had about a minute during which he reread the NSA bulletin, and then the phone rang again.\n\n\"Dr. Goodley.\"\n\n\"Doctor, this is the President's office,\" one of the senior secretaries said. \"I have a Mr. Golovko on the President's private line. Can you take the call?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied, thinking, _Oh, shit_.\n\n\"Go ahead, please,\" she said, clicking off the line.\n\n\"This is Ben Goodley.\"\n\n\"This is Golovko. Who are you?\"\n\n\"I am acting National Security Advisor to the President.\" _And I know who you are._\n\n\"Goodley?\" Ben could hear the voice searching his memory. \"Ah, yes, you are national intelligence officer who just learned to shave. My congratulations on your promotion.\"\n\nThe gamesmanship was impressive, though Goodley figured that there was a file on the Russian's desk with everything down to his shoe size. Even Golovko's memory couldn't be that good, and Goodley had been in the White House long enough that the word would have gotten out, and the RVS\/KGB would have done its homework.\n\n\"Well, somebody has to answer the phones, Minister.\" Gamesmanship could go two ways. Golovko wasn't really a minister, though he acted as such, and that was technically a secret. It was a weak reply, but it was something. \"What can I do for you?\"\n\n\"You know the arrangement I have with Ivan Emmetovich?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I do.\"\n\n\"Very well, tell him that a new country is about to be born. It will be called the United Islamic Republic. It will include, for the moment, Iran and Iraq. I rather suspect that it will wish to grow further.\"\n\n\"How reliable is that information, sir?\" Better to be polite. It would make the Russian feel bigger.\n\n\"Young man, I would not make a report to your President unless I felt it to be reliable, but,\" he added generously, \"I understand you must ask the question. The point of origin for the report does not concern you. The reliability of the source is sufficient for me to pass the information along with my own confidence. There will be more to follow. Do you have similar indications?\"\n\nThe question froze Goodley's eyeballs in place, staring down at a blank spot on his desk. He had no guidance on this. Yes, he'd learned that President Ryan had discussed cooperation with Golovko, that he'd also discussed the matter with Ed Foley, and that both had decided to go forward with it. But nobody had told him the parameters for giving information back to Moscow, and he didn't have time to call Langley for instructions, else he would appear weak to the Russians, and the Russians didn't want America to appear weak at the moment, and he was the man on the spot, and he had to make a decision. That entire thought process required about a third of a second.\n\n\"Yes, Minister, we do. Your timing is excellent. Director Foley and I were just discussing the development.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, Dr. Goodley, I see that your signals people are as efficient as ever. What a pity that your human sources do not match their performance.\"\n\nBen didn't dare to respond at all to the observation, though its accuracy caused his stomach to contract. Goodley had more respect for Jack Ryan than he did for any man, and now he remembered the admiration Jack had often expressed for the man on the other end of the phone. Welcome to the bigs, kid. Don't hang any curveballs. He ought to have said that Foley had called _him._\n\n\"Minister, I will be speaking to President Ryan within the hour, and I will pass your information along. Thank you for your timely call, sir.\"\n\n\"Good day, Dr. Goodley.\"\n\n_United Islamic Republic,_ Ben read on his desk pad. There had once been a United Arab Republic, an unlikely alliance between Syria and Egypt doomed to failure in two respects. The separated countries had been fundamentally incompatible, and the alliance had been made only to destroy Israel, which had objected to the goal, and done so effectively. More to the point, a United _Islamic_ Republic was a religious statement as much as a political one, because Iran was not an Arab nation\u2014as Iraq was\u2014but rather an Aryan one with different ethnic and linguistic roots. Islam was the world's only major religion to condemn in its scripture all forms of racism and proclaim the equality of all men before God, regardless of color\u2014a fact often overlooked by the West. So, Islam was overtly designed to be a unifying force, and this new notional country would play on that fact with its very name. That said a lot, enough that Golovko didn't even need to explain it, and it also said that Golovko felt that he and Ryan were on the same wavelength. Goodley checked the wall clock again. It was nighttime in Moscow, too. Golovko was working late\u2014well, not all _that_ late for a senior official. Ben lifted the phone and hit #3 again. It took him less than a minute to summarize the call from Moscow.\n\n\"We can believe anything he says\u2014on this issue, anyway. Sergey Nikolay'ch is a pro from way back. I imagine he twisted your tail just a little, right?\" the DCI asked.\n\n\"Ruffled the fur some,\" Goodley admitted.\n\n\"It's a carryover from old days. They do like their status games. Don't let it bother you, and don't shoot back. Better just to ignore it,\" Foley explained. \"Okay, what's he worried about?\"\n\n\"A lot of republics with '-stan' at the end,\" Goodley blurted out, without thinking.\n\n\"Concur.\" This came from another voice.\n\n\"Vasco?\"\n\n\"Yeah, just walked in.\" And then Goodley had to repeat what he'd told Ed Foley. Probably Mary Pat was there, too. Individually, both were good at what they did. In the same room, thinking together, they were a deadly weapon. It was something you had to see to understand, Ben knew.\n\n\"This looks to me like a big deal,\" Goodley observed.\n\n\"Looks that way to me, too,\" Vasco said over the speakerphone. \"Let us kick a few things around. Be back to you in fifteen or twenty.\"\n\n\"Would you believe Avi ben Jakob is checking in with us?\" Ed reported, after a background noise on the line. \"They must be having a really tough day.\"\n\nFor the moment it was just irony that the Russians were both the first to check in with America (and that they were doing so at all), and that they were the only ones calling straight into the White House, beating the Israelis on both scores. But the amusement wouldn't last, and all the players knew that. Israel was probably having the worst day of all. Russia was merely having a very bad one. And America was getting to share the experience.\n\nIT WOULD HAVE been uncivilized to deny them a chance at prayer. Cruel though they were, and criminals though they had been, they had to have their chance at prayer, albeit a brief one. Each was in the presence of a learned mullah, who, with firm but not unkind voice, told them of their fates, and cited scripture, and spoke to them of their chance to reconcile with Allah before meeting Him face to face. Every one did\u2014whether they believed in what they did was another issue, and one left for Allah to judge, but the mullahs had done their duty\u2014and then every one was led out into the prison yard.\n\nIt was a sort of assembly-line process, carefully timed so that the three clergymen gave each condemned criminal exactly three times the interval required to take each out in his turn, tie him to the post, shoot him, remove the body, and restart the process. It worked out to five minutes per execution and fifteen minutes for prayer.\n\nThe commanding general of the 41 st Armored Division was typical, except that his religion was something more than vestigial. His hands were bound in his cell before his imam\u2014the general preferred the Arabic term to the Farsi one\u2014and he was led out by soldiers who a week before would have saluted and trembled at his passage. He'd reconciled himself to his fate, and he would not give the Persian bastards he'd fought in the border swamps the least bit of satisfaction, though inwardly he cursed to God the cowardly superiors who had skipped the country and left him behind. Perhaps he might have killed the President himself and taken over, he thought as his handcuffs were looped to the post. The general took a moment to look back at the wall to gauge how good was the marksmanship of the firing squad. He found strange humor in the fact that it might take him a few extra seconds to die, and he snorted in disgust. Russian-trained and competent, he'd tried to be an honest soldier\u2014nonpolitical, following his orders faithfully and without question, whatever they might be\u2014and therefore had never been fully trusted by his country's political leadership, and this was his reward for it. A captain came up with a blindfold.\n\n\"A cigarette, if you please. You may keep _that_ for when you sleep later tonight.\"\n\nThe captain nodded without expression, his emotions already numbed by the ten killings done in the past hour. Shaking a cigarette from his pack, he put it into the man's lips and lit it with a match. That done, he said what he felt he must:\n\n_\"Salaam alaykum._ \" Peace be unto you.\n\n\"I will have more than you, young man. Do your duty. Make sure your pistol is loaded, will you?\" The general closed his eyes for a long, pleasurable puff. His doctor had told him only a few days before that it was bad for his health. Wasn't that a joke? He looked back on his career, marveling that he was still alive after what the Americans had done to his division in 1991. Well, he'd avoided death more than once, and that was a race a man could lengthen, but never win, not really. And so it was written. He managed another long puff. An American Winston. He recognized the taste. How did a mere captain ever get a pack of those? The soldiers brought their rifles up to \"aim.\" There was no expression on their faces. Well, killing did that to men, he reflected. What was supposed to be cruel and horrible just became a job that\u2014\n\nThe captain came over to the body that was slumped forward, suspended by the nylon rope that looped around the handcuffs. Again, he thought, drawing his 9mm Browning and aiming from a meter away. A final crack put an end to the groans. Then two soldiers cut the rope and dragged the body off. Another soldier replaced the rope on the post. A fourth used a gardener's rake to move the dirt around, not so much to conceal the blood as to mix dirt with it, because blood was slippery to walk on. The next one would be a politician, not a soldier. The soldiers, at least, died with dignity for the most part, as the last one had. Not the civilians. They whimpered and wept and cried out to Allah. And they always wanted the blindfold. It was something of a learning experience for the captain, who'd never done anything like this before.\n\nIT HAD TAKEN a few days to get things organized, but they were all now in separate houses in separate parts of town\u2014and once that had been accomplished, the generals and their entourages had started worrying about it. Separately quartered, they'd all thought, they could be picked up one by one and jailed preparatory to a return flight to Baghdad, but it wouldn't really have mattered very much. None of the families had more than two bodyguards, and what could they do, really, except to keep beggars away when they went outside? They met frequently\u2014every general had a car assigned\u2014mainly with the purpose of making further travel arrangements. They also bickered over whether they should continue to travel together to a new collective home or begin to go their separate ways. Some argued that it would be both more secure and more cost-effective to buy a large piece of land and build on it, for example. Others were making it clear that now that they were out of Iraq once and for all (two of them had illusions about going back in triumph to reclaim the government, but that was fantasy, as all but those two knew), they would be just as happy not to see some of their number ever again. The petty rivalries among them had long concealed genuine antipathy, which their new circumstances didn't so much exacerbate as liberate. The least of them had personal fortunes of over $40 million\u2014one had nearly $300 million salted away in various Swiss banks\u2014more than enough to live a comfortable life in any country in the world. Most chose Switzerland, always a haven to those with money and a desire to live quietly, though a few looked farther to the cast. The Sultan of Brunei wanted some people to reorganize his army, and three of the Iraqi generals thought to apply for the job. The local Sudanese government had also begun informal discussions about using a few as advisers for ongoing military operations against animist minorities in the southern part of that country\u2014the Iraqis had long experience dealing with Kurds.\n\nBut the generals had more to worry about than themselves alone. All had brought their families out. Many had brought mistresses, who now lived, to everyone's discomfort, in the homes of their patrons. These were as ignored now as they had been in Baghdad. That would change.\n\nSudan is mostly a desert country, known for its blistering dry heat. Once a British protectorate, its capital has a hospital catering to foreigners, with a largely English staff. Not the world's best facility, it was better than most in Saharan Africa, staffed mostly with young and somewhat idealistic physicians who'd arrived with romantic ideas about both Africa and their careers (the same thing had been going on for over a hundred years). They learned better, but they did their best and that, for the most part, was pretty good.\n\nThe two patients arrived scarcely an hour apart. The young girl came in first, accompanied by her worried mother. She was four years old, Dr. Ian MacGregor learned, and had been a healthy child, except for a mild case of asthma, which, the mother correctly said, ought not to have been a problem in Khartoum, with its dry air. Where were they from? Iraq? The doctor neither knew nor cared about politics. He was twenty-eight, newly certified for internal medicine, a small man with prematurely receding sandy hair. What mattered was that he'd seen no bulletin concerning that country and a major infectious disease. He and his staff had been alerted about the Ebola blip in Zaire, but it had been only a blip.\n\nThe patient's temperature was 38.0, hardly an alarming fever for a child, all the more so in a country where the noon temperature was always at least that high. Blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration were unremarkable. She appeared listless. How long in Khartoum, did you say? Only a few days? Well, it could be merely jet lag. Some people were more sensitive to it than others, MacGregor explained. New surroundings, and so forth, could make a child out of sorts. Maybe a cold or the flu, nothing serious. Sudan has a hot climate, but really a fairly healthy one, you see, not like other parts of Africa. He slipped his hands into rubber gloves, not for any particular need but because his medical training at the University of Edinburgh had drilled it into him that you did it the same way every time, because the one time you forgot, you might end up like Dr. Sinclair\u2014oh, didn't you hear how he caught AIDS from a patient? One such story was generally enough. The patient was not in great distress. Eyes a little puffy. Throat slightly inflamed, but nothing serious. Probably a good night's sleep or two. Nothing to be prescribed. Aspirin for the fever and aches, and if the problem persists, please call me. She's a lovely child. I'm sure she'll be fine. Mother took child away. The doctor decided it was time for a cup of tea. Along the way to the doctor's lounge, he stripped off the latex gloves which had saved his life, and dropped them in the disposal bin.\n\nThe other came in thirty minutes later, male, thirtythree, looking rather like a thug, surly and suspicious toward the African staff, but solicitous to the Europeans. Obviously a man who knew Africa, MacGregor thought. Probably an Arab businessman. Do you travel a great deal? Recently? Oh, well, that could be it. You want to be careful drinking the local water, that could explain the stomach discomfort. And he, too, went home with a bottle of aspirin, plus an over-the-counter medication for his GI problems, and presently MacGregor went off duty after one more routine day.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT? Ben Goodley coming through on the STU,\" a sergeant told him. Then she showed him how the phones worked up front.\n\n\"Yeah, Ben?\" Jack said.\n\n\"We have reports of a lot of Iraqi big shots getting put up against the wall. I'm faxing the report down to you. The Russians and the Israelis both confirm.\" And on cue, another Air Force NCO appeared and handed Ryan three sheets of paper. The first one merely said TOP SECRET\u2014PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY, even though three or four communications types had seen it, and that was just in the airplane, now beginning its descent into Tinker.\n\n\"Got it now, let me read it.\" He took his time, first scanning the report, then going back to the beginning for a slower read. \"Okay, who's going to be left?\"\n\n\"Vasco says nobody worth mentioning. This is the entire Ba'ath Party leadership and all the remaining senior military commanders. That leaves nobody with status behind. Okay, the scary part comes from PALM BOWL, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's this Major Sabah?\"\n\n\"I called on that myself, sir,\" Goodley replied. \"He's a Kuwaiti spook. Our people say he's pretty swift. Vasco concurs in his assessment. It's going down the track we were afraid of, and it's going real fast.\"\n\n\"Saudi response?\" Ryan was jolted by a minor bump as the VC-25A came through some clouds. It looked to be raining outside.\n\n\"None yet. They're still talking things over.\"\n\n\"Okay, thanks for the heads-up, Ben. Keep me posted.\"\n\n\"Will do, sir.\"\n\nRyan put the phone back in its cradle and frowned.\n\n\"Trouble?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"Iraq, it's going fast. They're executing people at a brisk clip at the moment.\" The President handed the pages over to his chief of staff.\n\nThere was always a huge sense of unreality to it. The NSA report, as amended and augmented by CIA and others, gave a list of men. Had he been in his office, Ryan would also have looked at photos of men he'd never met, and now never would, because while he was descending into Oklahoma to give a nonpolitical political speech, the lives of the men on that list were ending more likely already had. It was rather like listening to a ballgame on the radio, except in this game real people were being shot. Reality was coming to an end for human beings seven thousand miles away, and Ryan was hearing about it from radio intercepts made even farther away and relayed to him, and it was real, but at the same time not real. There was just something about distance which did that\u2014and his surroundings. _A hundred or so senior Iraqi officials are being shot\u2014want a sandwich before you get off the airplane?_ The dualism might have been amusing except for the foreign-policy implications. No, that wasn't true, either. There wasn't anything funny about it at all.\n\n\"What are you thinking?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"I ought to be back at the office,\" Ryan replied. \"This is important, and I need to keep track of it.\"\n\n\"Wrong!\" Arnie said at once with a shake of the head and a pointing finger. \"You are not the National Security Advisor anymore. You have people to do that for you. You're the President, and you have a lot of things to do, and they're all important. The President never gets tied down on one issue and he never gets trapped in the Oval Office. The people out there don't want to see that. It means you're not in control. It means events are controlling you. Ask Jimmy Carter about how great his second term was. Hell, this isn't all _that_ important.\"\n\n\"It could be,\" Jack protested, as the aircraft touched down.\n\n\"What's important right now is your speech for the Sooner State.\" He paused before going on. \"It isn't just charity that begins at home. It's political power, too. It starts right out there.\" He pointed out the windows, as Oklahoma slowed to a halt outside.\n\nRyan looked, but what he saw was the _United Islamic Republic_.\n\nIT HAD ONCE been hard to enter the Soviet Union. There had been a vast organization called the Chief Border Guards Directorate of the Committee for State Security which had patrolled the fences\u2014in some cases minefields and genuine fortifications, as well\u2014with the dual purpose of keeping people both in and out, but these had long since fallen into disrepair, and the main purpose of the border checkpoints today was for the new crop of regional border guards to accept the bribes that came from smugglers who now used large trucks to bring their wares into the nation that had once been ruled with an iron hand in Moscow, but was now a collection of semi-independent republics that were mostly on their own in economic, and because of that, political terms as well. It hadn't been planned that way. When he'd established the country's central-planned economy, Stalin had made a deliberate effort to spread out production sites, so that each segment of the vast empire would depend for vital commodities upon every other, but he'd overlooked the discordant fact that if the entire economy went to pot, then needing something you couldn't get from one source meant that you had to get it from another, and with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, smuggling, which had been well controlled under Communist rule, had become a genuine industry of its own. And with wares also came ideas, hard enough to stop, and impossible to tax.\n\nThe only thing lacking was a welcoming committee, but that wouldn't have done. The corruption of the border guards went both ways. They might well have told their superiors about things while sharing the requisite percentage of the loot from their informal tariff collection, and so the representative merely sat in the right seat of the truck while the driver handled business\u2014out the back of the truck in this case, an offer to the guards of a selection of his cargo. They weren't the least bit greedy about it, instead taking little more than they could easily conceal in the back of their personal automobiles. (The only concession to the illegality of the entire business was that it took place at night.) With that, the proper stamps were affixed to the proper documents, and the truck pulled off, heading down the cross-border highway, which was probably the only decently surfaced road in the area. The remaining drive took a little over an hour, and then, entering the large town which had once serviced the caravan trade, the truck stopped briefly and the representative got out and walked to a private automobile to continue his journey, carrying only a small bag with a change of clothes or two.\n\nThe president of this semiautonomous republic claimed to be a Muslim, but he was mainly an opportunist, a former senior party official who as a matter of course had denied God regularly to ensure his political advancement and then, with the changing of the political wind, embraced Islam with public enthusiasm and private disinterest. His faith, if one could call it that, was entirely about his secular well-being. There were several passages in the Koran concerning such people, none of them flattering. He lived a comfortable life in a comfortable personal palace which had once quartered the party boss of this former Soviet republic. In that official residence, he drank liquor, fornicated, and ruled his republic with a hand that was by turns too firm and too gentle. Too firmly he controlled the regional economy (with his Communist training, he was hopelessly inept) and too gently he allowed Islam to flourish, so, he thought, to give his people the illusion of personal freedom (and in that he clearly misunderstood the nature of the Islamic Faith he professed to have, for Islamic law was written to apply to the secular as well as the spiritual). Like all presidents before him, he thought himself beloved of his people. It was, the representative knew, a common illusion of fools. In due course, the representative arrived at the modest private home of a friend of the local religious leader. This was a man of simple faith and quiet honor, beloved by all who knew him and disliked by no one, for his was a kindly voice in most things, and his occasional anger was founded on principles that even unbelievers could respect. In his middle fifties, he'd suffered at the hands of the previous regime, but never wavered in the strength of his beliefs. He was perfectly suited to the task at hand, and around him were his closest associates.\n\nThere were the usual greetings in God's Holy Name, followed by the serving of tea, and then it was time for business.\n\n\"It is a sad thing,\" the representative began, \"to see the faithful living in such poverty.\"\n\n\"It has always been so, but today we can practice our religion in freedom. My people are coming back to the Faith. Our mosques have been repaired, and every day they are more full. What are material possessions compared to the Faith?\" the local leader responded, with the reasonable voice of a teacher.\n\n\"So true that is,\" the representative agreed. \"And yet Allah wishes for His Faithful to prosper, does He not?\" There was general agreement. Every man in the room was an Islamic scholar, and few prefer poverty to comfort.\n\n\"Most of all, my people need schools, proper schools,\" was the reply. \"We need better medical facilities\u2014I grow weary of consoling the parents of a dead child who needed not to have died. We need many things. I do not deny that.\"\n\n\"All these things are easily provided if one has money,\" the representative pointed out.\n\n\"But this has always been a poor land. We have resources, yes, but they have never been properly exploited, and now we have lost the support of the central government\u2014at the very moment when we have the freedom to control our own destiny, while that fool of a president we have gets drunk and abuses women in his palace. If only he were a just man, a faithful man, for then we might bring prosperity to this land,\" he observed, more in sadness than in anger.\n\n\"That, and a little foreign capital,\" one of the more economically literate of his retinue suggested modestly. Islam has never had a rule against commercial activity. Though it is remembered by the West for spreading by the sword, it had gone east on the ships of traders, much as Christianity had spread through the word and example of its own adherents.\n\n\"In Tehran, it is thought that the time has arrived for the faithful to act as the Prophet commands. We have made the error common to unbelievers, of thinking in terms of national greed rather than the needs of all people. My own teacher, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, has preached of the need to return to the foundations of our Faith,\" the representative said, sipping his tea. He spoke as a teacher himself, his voice quiet. Passion he saved for the public arena. In a closed room, sitting on the floor with men as learned as himself, he, too, spoke only with reason's voice. \"We have wealth\u2014such wealth as only Allah could have awarded by His own plan. And now we have the moment as well. You men in this room, you kept the Faith, honored the Word in the face of persecution, while others of us grew rich. It is now our obligation to reward you, to welcome you back into the fold, to share our bounty with you. This is what my teacher proposes.\"\n\n\"It is good to hear such words,\" was the cautious reply. That the man was primarily a man of God did not make him naive. He guarded his thoughts with the greatest care\u2014growing up under Communist rule had taught him that\u2014but what he had to be thinking was obvious.\n\n\"It is our hope to unite all Islam under one roof, to bring the Faithful together as the Prophet Mohammed, blessings and peace be upon him, desired. We are different in place, in language, often in color, but in our Faith we are one. We _are_ the elect of Allah.\"\n\n\"And so?\"\n\n\"And so, we wish your republic to join our own so that we may be as one. We will bring you schools and medical assistance for your people. We will help you take control of your own land, so that what we give you will be returned to all many-fold, and we shall be as the brothers Allah intends us to be.\"\n\nThe casual Western observer might have remarked that these men all appeared unsophisticated, due to their less-than-splendid clothing, their simple mode of speech, or merely the fact that they sat on the floor. Such was not exactly the case, and what the visitor from Iran proposed was hardly less startling than an embassy from another planet might have been. There were differences between his nation and this one, between his people and theirs. Language and culture, for starters. They had fought wars over the centuries, there had been banditry and brigandage, this despite the most serious strictures in the Holy Koran about armed conflict between Islamic nations. There was, in fact, virtually no common ground between them at all\u2014except for one. That one might have been called accidental, but the truly Faithful didn't believe in accidents. When Russia, first under the czars and then under Marxism-Leninism, had conquered their land (a lengthy process rather than an event), they'd stripped so much away. Culture, for one. History and heritage; everything but language, a sop to what the Soviets for generations had uneasily called \"the nationalities question.\" They'd brought schooling aimed first at destroying everything and then at rebuilding it in a new and godless mode, until the only unifying force left to the people was their Faith, which they'd tried hard to suppress. And even that was good, they all thought now, because the Faith could never be suppressed, and such attempts only made the truly Faithful more determined. It might even\u2014had to have been a plan from Allah Himself, to show the people that their one salvation could only be the Faith. Now they were coming back to it, to the leaders who had kept the flame alight, and now, all in the room reflected, as their visitor knew they must, Allah Himself had washed away their petty differences so that they could unify as their God wished. So much the better to do so with the promise of material prosperity, as Charity was one of the Pillars of Islam, and so long denied by people calling themselves faithful to the Holy Word. And now the Soviet Union was dead, and its successor state crippled, and the distant and unloved children of Moscow left largely on their own, all of them governed by an echo of what was gone. If it were not a sign from Allah that this opportunity should present itself, then what was it? they all asked themselves.\n\nThey only had to do one thing to bring it all about. And _he_ was an unbeliever. And Allah would judge him through their hands.\n\n\"AND ALTHOUGH I can't say that I liked the way you treated my Boston College Eagles last October,\" Ryan said, with a smile, to the assembled NCAA football champions from the University of Oklahoma at Norman, \"your tradition of excellence is part of the American soul.\" Which hadn't been much of a pleasure for the University of Florida in the last Orange Bowl, in a 35\u201410 blowout.\n\nAnd the people applauded again. Jack was so pleased by this that he almost forgot the fact that the speech was not really his. His smile, crooked teeth and all, lit up the arena, and he waved his right hand, this time not tentatively. One could tell the difference on the C-SPAN cameras.\n\n\"He's a fast learner,\" Ed Kealty said. He was objective about such matters. His public face was one thing, but politicians are realists, at least in the tactical sense.\n\n\"He's very well coached, remember,\" the former Vice President's chief of staff reminded his boss. \"They don't come any better than Arnie. Our initial play got their attention, Ed, and van Damm must have laid the word on Ryan pretty hard and pretty fast.\"\n\nHe didn't have to add that their \"play\" had gone nowhere fast after that. The newspapers had written their initial editorials, but then reflected a little and backed off\u2014not editorially, since the media rarely admits to error, but the news stories coming from the White House press room, if not praising Ryan, hadn't used the usual assassination buzzwords: _unsure, confused_ , _disorganized,_ and the like. No White House with Arnie van Damm in it would ever be disorganized, and the whole Washington establishment knew it.\n\nRyan's major Cabinet appointments had shaken things up, but then the officials had all started doing the right things. Adler was another insider who'd worked his way to the top; as a junior official he'd briefed in too many foreign-affairs correspondents over the years for them to turn on him\u2014and he never lost a chance to extol Ryan's expertise on foreign policy. George Winston, outsider and plutocrat though he was, had initiated a \"quiet\" reexamination of his entire department, and Winston had on his Rolodex the number of every financial editor from Berlin to Tokyo, and was seeking out their views and counsel on his internal study. Most surprising of all was Tony Bretano in the Pentagon. A vociferous outsider for the last ten years, he'd promised the defense-reporting community that he'd clean out the temple or die in the attempt, that the Pentagon _was_ wasteful now as they'd always proclaimed, but that he, with the President's approval, was going to do his damnedest to de-corrupt the acquisition process once and for all. It was a singularly uncharming collection of people, Washington outsiders all, but, damn it, they were charming the media in the best possible way, quietly, in the back rooms of power. Most disturbingly of all, the _Washington Post_ , an internal spy had told Kealty earlier in the day, was preparing a multipart story about Ryan's history at CIA, and it would be a canonization piece by no less than Bob Holtzman. Holtzman was the quintessential media insider, and for reasons unknown, he liked Ryan personally\u2014and he had one hell of a source inside somewhere. That was the Trojan horse. If the story ran, and if it were picked up around the nation\u2014both likely, since it would increase the prestige both of Holtzman and the _Post_ \u2014then his media contacts would back away rapidly; the editorials would counsel him to withdraw his claim for the good of the nation and he'd have no leverage at all, and his political career would end in greater disgrace than he'd accepted only a short time before. Historians who might have overlooked his personal indiscretions would instead focus on his overreaching ambition, and instead of seeing it as an irregularity, would then fold it back into his entire career, questioning everything he'd ever done, seeing him in a different and unfavorable light at every step, saying that the good things he'd done were the irregularities. Kealty wasn't so much looking into his political grave as at eternal damnation.\n\n\"You left out Callie,\" Ed grumped, still watching the speech, listening to the content and paying close attention to the delivery\u2014academic, he thought, fitting for an audience mainly of students, who cheered this Ryan as though he were a football coach or someone of similar irrelevance.\n\n\"One of her speeches could make Pee-Wee Herman look presidential,\" the chief of staff agreed. And that was the greatest danger of all. To win, Ryan just had to _appear_ presidential, whether he really was or not\u2014and he _wasn't,_ of course, as Kealty kept reminding himself. How could he be?\n\n\"I never said he was stupid,\" Kealty admitted. He had to be objective. This wasn't a game anymore. It was even more than life.\n\n\"It's gotta happen soon, Ed.\"\n\n\"I know.\" But he had to have something bigger to shoot, Kealty told himself. It was a curious metaphor for someone who'd advocated gun control all of his political life.\n**25**\n\n**BLOOMS**\n\n**T** HE FARM HAD COME with a barn. It mainly served as a garage now. Ernie Brown had been in the construction business, and had earned a good deal of money, first in the late 1970s as a union plumber, then he'd established his own business in the 1980s to partake in the California building boom. Though a pair of divorces had depleted his funds, the selling of the business had been well timed, and he'd taken the money and run, and bought a sizable parcel of land in an area not yet chic enough to have its property values driven up by Hollywood types. What had resulted was almost a full \"section\"\u2014a square mile\u2014of privacy. Actually more than that, because the neighboring ranches were dormant at this time of year, the pastures frozen, and the cattle in pens comfortably eating silage. You could go several days without seeing so much as another car on the road, or so it seemed out in Big Sky Country. School buses, they told themselves, didn't count.\n\nA five-ton flatbed truck also had been conveyed with the ranch\u2014a diesel, conveniently enough\u2014along with a buried two-thousand-gallon fuel tank right by the barn. The family that had sold off the ranch and barn and house to the newcomer from California hadn't known that they were giving over title to a bomb factory. The first order of business for Ernie and Pete was to get the old truck started up. That proved to be a forty-minute exercise, because it wasn't just a case of a dead battery, but Pete Holbrook was a competent mechanic, and in due course the truck's engine roared to unmuffled life and showed every sign of remaining with the living. The truck was not licensed, but that wasn't terribly unusual in this area of huge holdings, and their drive of forty miles north to the farm-supplies store was untroubled.\n\nIt could hardly have been a better portent of spring for the store. Planting season was coming (there were a lot of wheat farmers around), and here was the first major customer for the virtual mountain of fertilizer just trucked in from the distributor's warehouse in Helena. The men bought four tons, not an unusual quantity, which a propane-powered forklift deposited on the flatbed of the truck, and they paid cash for it, then drove off with a handshake and a smile.\n\n\"This is going to be hard work,\" Holbrook observed, halfway back.\n\n\"That's right, and we're going to do it all ourselves.\" Brown turned. \"Or do you want to bring in somebody who might be an informer?\"\n\n\"I hear you, Ernie,\" Pete replied, as a state police car went the other way. The cop didn't even turn his head, chilling though the moment was for the two Mountain Men. \"How much more?\"\n\nBrown had done the calculations a dozen times. \"One more truckload. It's a shame this stuff is so bulky.\" They'd make the second purchase tomorrow, at a store thirty miles southwest of the ranch. This evening would be busy enough, unloading all this crap inside the barn. A good workout. Why didn't the goddamn farm have a forklift? Holbrook wondered. At least when they refilled the fuel tank, the local oil company would do it. That was some consolation.\n\nIT WAS COLD on the Chinese coast, and that made things easier for the satellites to see a series of thermal blooms at two naval bases. Actually, the \"Chinese navy\" was the naval service of the People's Liberation Army, so gross a disregard for tradition that Western navies ignored the correct name in favor of custom. The imagery was recorded and cross-linked to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, where the senior watch officer turned to his intelligence specialist.\n\n\"Do the Chinese have an exercise laid on?\"\n\n\"Not that we know of.\" The photos showed that twelve ships, all of them alongside, had their engines running, instead of the normal procedure by which they drew electrical power from the dock. A closer look at the photo showed a half-dozen tugboats moving around the harbor, as well. The intel specialist for this watch was Army. He called a naval officer over.\n\n\"Sailing some ships,\" was the obvious analysis.\n\n\"Not just doing an engineering exam or something?\"\n\n\"They wouldn't need tugboats for that. When's the next pass?\" the Navy commander asked, meaning a satellite pass, checking the time reference on the photo. It was thirty minutes old.\n\n\"Fifty minutes.\"\n\n\"Then it ought to show three or maybe four ships standing out to sea at both bases. That'll make it certain. For right now, two chances out of three, they're laying on a major exercise.\" He paused. \"Any political hoo-rah going on?\"\n\nThe senior watch officer shook his head. \"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Then it's a FleetEx. Maybe somebody decided to check out their readiness.\" They would learn more with a press release from Beijing, but that was thirty minutes into a future they couldn't see, paid though they were to do so.\n\nTHE DIRECTOR WAS a religious man, as was to be expected, what with the sensitivity of his post. Gifted physician that he had been, and scientist-virologist that he still was, he lived in a country where political reliability was measured by devotion to the Shi'a branch of Islam, and in this there was no doubt. His prayers were always on time, and he scheduled his laboratory work around them. He required the same of his people, for such was his devotion that he went beyond the teachings of Islam without even knowing it, bending such rules as stood in his way as though they were made of rubber, and at the same time telling himself that, no, he never violated the Prophet's Holy Word, or Allah's Will. How could he be doing that? He was helping to bring the world back to the Faith.\n\nThe prisoners, the experimental subjects, were all condemned men in one way or another. Even the thieves, lesser criminals, had four times violated the Holy Koran, and they had probably committed other crimes as well, perhaps\u2014probably, he told himself\u2014those worthy of death. Every day they were informed of the time for prayer, and though they knelt and bowed and mouthed the prayers, you could tell by watching them on the TV monitor that they were merely going through the ritual, not truly praying to Allah in the manner prescribed. That made them all apostates and apostasy was a capital crime in their country\u2014even though only one had been convicted of that crime.\n\nThat one was of the Baha'i religion, a minority almost stamped out, a belief structure that had evolved _after_ Islam. Christians and Jews were at least People of the Book; however misguided their religions, at least they acknowledged the same God of the Universe, of whom Mohammed was the final messenger. The Baha'i had come later, _inventing_ something both new and false that relegated them to the status of pagans, denying the True Faith, and earning the wrath of their government. It was fitting that this man was the first to show that the experiment was successful.\n\nIt was remarkable that the prisoners were so braindulled by their conditions that the onset of flu symptoms caused no special reaction at first. The medical corpsmen went in, as always in full protective gear, to take blood samples, and one additional benefit of the prisoners' condition was that they were far too cowed to make trouble. All of them had been in prison for some time, subject to a deficient diet which had its own effects on their energy levels, plus a discipline regime so harsh that they didn't dare resist. Even the condemned prisoners who knew they faced death had no wish to accelerate the process. All meekly submitted to having their blood drawn by exquisitely careful medics. The test tubes were carefully labeled in accordance with the numbers on the beds, and the medics withdrew.\n\nIn the lab, it was Patient Three's blood which went under the microscope first. The antibody test was prone to give some false positive readings, and this was too important to risk error. So slides were prepared and placed under the electron microscopes, first set at magnification 20,000 for area search. The fine adjustments for the instruments were handled by exquisitely machined gears, as the slide was moved left and right, up and down, until . . .\n\n\"Ah,\" the director said. He centered the target in the viewing field and increased the magnification to 112,000 . . . and there it was, projected onto the computer monitor inblack-and-white display. His culture knew much of shepherding, and the aphorism \"Shepherd's Crook\" seemed to him a perfect description. Centered was the RNA strand, thin and curved at the bottom, with the protein loops at the top. These were the key to the action of the virus, or so everyone thought. Their precise function was not understood, and that also pleased the director's identity as a bio-war technician. \"Moudi,\" he called.\n\n\"Yes, I see it,\" the younger doctor said, with a slow nod, as he walked to that side of the room. Ebola Zaire Mayinga was in the apostate's blood. He'd just run the antibody test as well, and watched the tiny sample change color. This one was not a false positive.\n\n\"Airborne transmission is confirmed.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" Moudi's face didn't change. He was not surprised.\n\n\"We will wait another day\u2014no, two days for the second phase. And then we will know.\" For now, he had a report to make.\n\nTHE ANNOUNCEMENT IN Beijing caught the American embassy by surprise. It was couched in routine terms. The Chinese navy would be holding a major exercise in the Taiwan Strait. There would be some live firings of surface-toair and surface-to-surface missiles on dates yet unspecified (weather considerations had yet to be resolved, the release said). The People's Republic of China government was issuing Notice to Airmen and Notice to Mariner alerts, so that both airlines and shipping companies would be able to adjust their routings accordingly. Other than that, the release said nothing at all, and that was somewhat disturbing to the deputy chief of mission in Beijing. The DCM immediately conferred with his military attaches and the CIA chief of station, none of whom had any insights to offer, except that the release had nothing at all to say about the Republic of China government on Taiwan. On the one hand, that was good news\u2014there was no complaint about the continued political independence of what Beijing deemed a rebel province. On the other hand, it was bad news\u2014the release did _not_ say that this was a routine exercise and not intended to disturb anyone. The notice was just that, with no explanation at all attached to it. The information was dispatched to the NMCC in the Pentagon, to the State Department, and to CIA headquarters at Langley.\n\nDARYAEI HAD TO search his memory for the face that went with the name, and the face he remembered was the wrong one, really, for it was that of a boy from Qom, and the message came from a grown man half a world away. Raman . . . oh, yes, Aref Raman, what a bright lad he'd been. His father had been a dealer in automobiles, Mercedes cars, and had sold them in Tehran to the powerful, a man whose faith had wavered. But his son's had not. His son had not even blinked on learning of the death of his parents, killed by accident, really, at the hands of the Shah's army, for having been on the wrong street at the wrong time, caught up in a civil disturbance in which they'd had no part at all. Together, he and his teacher had prayed for them. Dead by the hands of those they trusted was the lesson from that event, but the lesson had not been a necessary one. Raman had already been a lad of deep faith, offended by the fact that his elder sister had taken up with an American officer, and so disgraced her family and his own name. She, too, had disappeared in the revolution, condemned by an Islamic court for adultery, which left only the son. They could have used him in many ways, but the chosen one had been Daryaei's own doing. Linked up with two elderly people, the new \"family\" had fled the country with the Raman family wealth and gone first to Europe and then almost immediately thereafter to America. There they had done nothing more than live quietly; Daryaei imagined they were dead by now. The son, selected for the mission because of his early mastery of English, had continued his education and entered government service, performing his duties with all the excellence he'd displayed in the revolution's earliest phases, during which he'd killed two senior officers in the Shah's air force while they drank whiskey in a hotel bar.\n\nSince then, he'd done as he'd been told. Nothing. Blend in. Disappear. Remember your mission, _but do nothing._ It was gratifying for the Ayatollah that he'd judged the boy well, for now he knew from the brief message that the mission was almost fully accomplished.\n\nThe word _assassin_ is itself derived from _hashshash,_ the Arabic word for the narcotic hashish, the tool once used by members of the Nizari subsect of Islam to give themselves a drug-induced vision of Paradise prior to setting out on missions of murder. In fact, they'd been heretics to Daryaei's way of thinking\u2014and the use of drugs was an abomination. They'd been weak-minded but effective servants of a series of master terrorists such as Hasan and Rashid ad-Din, and, for a time that stretched between two centuries, had served the political balance of power in a region stretching from Syria to Persia. But there was a brilliance in the concept which had fascinated the cleric since learning of it as a boy. To get one faithful agent inside the enemy's camp. It was the task of years, and for that reason a task of faith. Where the Nizaris had failed was that they were heretics, separate from the True Faith, able to recruit a few extremists into their cult, but not the multitude, and so they served a single man and not Allah, and so they needed drugs to fortify themselves, as an unbeliever did with liquor. A brilliant idea flawed. But a brilliant idea nonetheless. Daryaei had merely perfected it, and so now he had a man close, something he'd hoped for but not known. Better yet, he had a man close and waiting for instructions, at the far end of an unknown message path that had never been used, all composed of people who'd gone abroad no more recently than fifteen years ago, an altogether better state of affairs than that which he'd set in place in Iraq, for in America people who might be scrutinized were either arrested or cleared, or if they were watched, only for a little while, until the watchers became bored and went on to other tasks. In some countries when that happened, the watchers became bored, picked up those whom they watched, and frequently killed them.\n\nSo it was just timing before Raman completed his mission, and after all these years, he still used his head, unaddled by drugs and trained by the Great Satan himself. The news was too sublime even to occasion a smile.\n\nThen the phone rang. The private one. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"I have good news,\" the director said, \"from the Monkey Farm.\"\n\n\"YOU KNOW, ARNIE, you were right,\" Jack said, in the breezeway to the West Wing. \"It was great to get the hell out of here.\"\n\nThe chief of staff noted the spring in his step, but didn't get overly excited about it. Air Force One had brought the President back in time for a quiet dinner with his family instead of the usual rigors of three or four such speeches, endless hours of schmoozing with major contributors, and the usual four-hour night that resulted\u2014and that, often enough, in the aircraft\u2014followed by a quick shower and a working day artificially extended by the revelries in the hustings. It was remarkable, he thought, that any President was able to do any work at all. The real duties of the office were difficult enough, and those were almost always subordinated to what was little more than public relations, albeit a necessary function in a democracy, in which the people needed to see the President doing more than sitting at his desk and doing . . . his work. The presidency was a job which one could love without liking it, a phrase seemingly contradictory until you came here and saw it.\n\n\"You did just fine,\" van Damm said. \"The stuff on TV was perfect, and the segment NBC ran with your wife was okay, too.\"\n\n\"She didn't like it. She didn't think they used her best line,\" Ryan reported lightly.\n\n\"Could have been a lot worse.\" _They didn't ask her about abortion,_ Arnie thought. To keep that from happening, he'd used up a few large markers with NBC, and made sure that Tom Donner had been treated at least as well as a senator, maybe even a Cabinet member, on the flight the previous day, including a rare taped segment in flight. The following week, Donner would be the first network anchor to have a one-on-one with the President in the upstairs sitting room, and for that there was no agreement on the scope of the questions, meaning that Ryan would have to be briefed for hours to make sure he didn't step on the presidential crank. But for now the chief of staff allowed his President to bask in the afterglow of what had been a pretty good day in the Midwest, whose real mission, aside from getting Ryan out of Washington and so get a feel for what the presidency really was, was to have him look like a President, and further marginalize that bastard Kealty.\n\nThe Secret Service people were as upbeat as their President, as they so often drew their mood from POTUS, returning his smiles and nods with spoken greetings of their own: \"Good morning, Mr. President!\" repeated by four of them as Ryan passed, finding his way to the Oval Office.\n\n\"Good morning, Ben,\" Ryan said cheerily, heading to his desk and falling into the comfortable swivel chair. \"Tell me how the world looks.\"\n\n\"We may have a problem. The PRC navy's putting to sea,\" the acting National Security Advisor said. The Secret Service had just assigned him a code name, CARDSHARP.\n\n\"And?\" Ryan asked, annoyed that the morning might be spoiled.\n\n\"And it looks like a major fleet exercise, and they're saying there will be live-fire missile shoots. No reaction from Taipei yet.\"\n\n\"They don't have elections or anything coming up, do they?\" Jack asked.\n\nGoodley shook his head. \"No, not for another year. The ROC has continued to spend money with the UN, and they're quietly lobbying a lot of countries in case they go through with a request for representation, but nothing remarkable about that, either. Taipei is playing its cards close to the vest, and not making any noise to offend the mainland. Their commercial relationship is stable. In short, we have no explanation for the exercise.\"\n\n\"What do we have in the area?\"\n\n\"One submarine in the Formosa Strait, keeping an eye on a Chinese SSN.\"\n\n\"Carriers?\"\n\n\"Nothing closer than the Indian Ocean. _Stennis_ is back in Pearl for engine repairs, along with _Enterprise,_ and they'll be there for a while. The cupboard is still pretty bare.\" CARDSHARP reminded the President what he had himself said to _his_ President only months before.\n\n\"What about their army?\" the President asked next.\n\n\"Again, nothing new. We have higher-than-usual levels of activity, like the Russians said, but that's been going on for a while.\"\n\nRyan leaned back in his chair and contemplated a cup of decaf. He'd found on his speechifying trip that his stomach really did feel better that way, and remarked on it to Cathy, who'd merely smiled and said _I told you so!_ \"Okay, Ben, speculate.\"\n\n\"I talked it over with some China people at State and the Agency,\" Goodley replied. \"Maybe their military is making a political move, interior politics, I mean, increasing their readiness state to let the other people on the Beijing Politburo know that they're still around and still matter. Aside from that, anything else is _pure_ speculation, and I'm not supposed to do that here, boss, remember?\"\n\n\"And 'don't know' means _don't know,_ doesn't it?\" It was a rhetorical question, and one of Ryan's favored aphorisms.\n\n\"You taught me that on the other side of the river, Mr. President,\" Goodley agreed, but without the expected smile. \"You also taught me not to like things I can't explain.\" The national intelligence officer paused. \"They know we'll know, and they know we'll be interested, and they know you're new here, and they know you don't need a hassle. So, why do it?\" Goodley asked, also rhetorically.\n\n\"Yeah,\" the President agreed quietly. \"Andrea?\" he said. Price, as usual, was in the room, pretending not to pay attention.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"Where's the nearest smoker?\" Ryan said it entirely without shame.\n\n\"Mr. President, I don't\u2014\"\n\n\"The hell you don't. I want one.\"\n\nPrice nodded and disappeared into the secretaries' room. She knew the signs as well as anyone. Switching from regular coffee to decaf, and now a smoke. In a way it was surprising that it had taken this long, and it told her more about the intelligence briefing than the words of Dr. Benjamin Goodley did.\n\nIt had to be a woman smoker, the President saw a minute later. Another one of the thin ones. Price even brought a match and an ashtray along with her disapproving look. He wondered if they'd acted the same way with FDR and Eisenhower.\n\nRyan took his first drag, deep in thought. China had been the silent partner in the conflict\u2014he still couldn't use the word _war_ , not even in his own mind\u2014with Japan. At least that was the supposition. It all made sense, and it all fitted together nicely, but there was no proof of the sort to flesh out a SNIE\u2014a Special National Intelligence Estimate\u2014much less present to the media, which often as not required the same degree of reliability as an especially conservative judge. _So_ . . . Ryan lifted the phone. \"I want Director Murray.\"\n\nOne of the nice things about the presidency was the use of the telephone. \"Please hold for the President,\" a simple phrase spoken by a White House secretary in the same voice one might use for ordering out a pizza, never failed to cause an instant, almost panicked, reaction on the other end of whatever line she might use. It rarely took longer than ten seconds to get the call through. This time it took six.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Morning, Dan. I need something. What's the name of that Japanese police inspector who came over?\"\n\n\"Jisaburo Tanaka,\" Murray replied at once.\n\n\"Is he any good?\" Jack said next.\n\n\"Solid. As good as anybody I have working here. What do you want from him?\"\n\n\"I presume they're talking a lot with that Yamata guy.\"\n\n\"You may safely assume that a wild bear goes potty in the woods, too, Mr. President,\" the acting Director of the FBI managed to say without a laugh.\n\n\"I want to know about his conversations with China, especially who his contact was.\"\n\n\"That we can do. I'll try to get him right now. Call back to you?\"\n\n\"No, brief Ben Goodley in, and he'll coordinate with the people down the hall,\" Ryan said, using an old catch-phrase between the two. \"Ben's here now in my old office.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Let me do it now. It's heading up to midnight in Tokyo.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Dan. Bye.\" Jack put the phone back. \"Let's start figuring this one out.\"\n\n\"You got it, boss,\" Goodley promised.\n\n\"Anything else happening in the world? Iraq?\"\n\n\"Same news as yesterday, lots of people executed. The Russians fed us this 'United Islamic Republic' thing, and we all think it likely, but no overt move yet. That's what I'd planned to do today, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Okay, then, get to it.\"\n\n\"OKAY, WHAT'S THE drill for this?\" Tony Bretano asked.\n\nRobby Jackson didn't especially like doing things on the fly, but that was the job of the newly promoted J-3, Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the previous week, he'd come to like the designate\u2014Secretary of Defense. Bretano was one tough-minded little guy, but his snarl was mainly for show, and concealed a very thoughtful brain able to make quick decisions. And the man was an engineer\u2014he knew what he didn't know, and was quick to ask questions.\n\n\"We have _Pasadena_ \u2014fast-attack sub\u2014in the strait already doing routine surveillance. We break her off the current job of trailing the PRC SSN and have her move northwest. Next, we move two or three additional boats into the area, assign them operating areas, and let them keep an eye on things. We open a line of communications with Taipei and have them feed us what they see and know. They'll play ball. They always do. Ordinarily, we'd move a carrier a little closer, but this time, well, we don't have one very close, and absent a political threat to Taiwan, it would appear to be an overreaction. We stage electronics-intelligence aircraft over the area out of Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. We're hampered by the lack of a nearby base.\"\n\n\"So, essentially we gather intelligence information and do nothing substantive?\" the SecDef asked.\n\n\"Gathering intelligence is substantive, sir, but, yes.\"\n\nBretano smiled. \"I know. I built the satellites you'll be using. What will they tell us?\"\n\n\"We'll probably get a lot of in-the-clear chatter that'll use up every Mandarin-speaker they have at Fort Meade and tell us not very much about their overall intentions. The operational stuff will be useful\u2014it'll tell us a lot about their capabilities. If I know Admiral Mancuso\u2014COM-SUBPAC\u2014he'll have one or two of his boats play a little fast and loose to see if the Chinese can acquire one and prosecute it, but nothing overt. That's one of our options if we don't like the way this exercise is going.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean if you really want to put the fear of God in a naval officer, you let him know there's a submarine around which is to say, Mr. Secretary, one appears unexpectedly in the middle of your formation and immediately disappears again. It's a head game, and a nasty one. Our people are good at that, and Bart Mancuso knows how to use his boats. We couldn't have defeated the Japanese without him,\" Jackson said positively.\n\n\"He's that good?\" Mancuso was just a name to the new SecDef.\n\n\"None better. He's one of the people you listen to. So's your CINCPAC, Dave Seaton.\"\n\n\"Admiral DeMarco told me\u2014\"\n\n\"Sir, may I speak freely?\" the J-3 asked.\n\n\"Jackson, in here that's the only way.\"\n\n\"Bruno DeMarco was made Vice Chief of Naval Operations for a reason.\"\n\nBretano got it at once. \"Oh, to give speeches and not do anything that can hurt the Navy?\" Robby's reply was a nod. \"Noted, Admiral Jackson.\"\n\n\"Sir, I don't know much about industry, but there's something you need to learn about this building. There's two kinds of officers in the Pentagon, operators and bureaucrats. Admiral DcMarco has been here for more than half of his career. Mancuso and Seaton are operators, and they try very hard to stay out of this building.\"\n\n\"So have you,\" Bretano observed.\n\n\"I guess I just like the smell of salt air, Mr. Secretary. I'm not polishing my own apple here, sir. You'll decide if you like me or not\u2014what the hell, I'm out of the flying business anyway, and that's what I signed up to do. But, damn it, when Seaton and Mancuso talk, I hope you'll listen.\"\n\n\"What's the matter with you, Robby?\" the SecDef asked with sudden concern. He knew a good employee when he saw one.\n\nJackson shrugged. \"Arthritis. Runs in the family. Could be worse, sir. It won't hurt my golf game, and flag officers don't get to fly very much anyway.\"\n\n\"You don't care about getting promoted, do you?\" Bretano was about to recommend another star for Jackson.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, I'm the son of a preacher man in Mississippi. I got into Annapolis, flew fighters for twenty years, and I'm still alive to talk about it.\" All too many of his friends were not, a fact Robby never forgot. \"I can retire whenever I want and get a good job. I figure I'm ahead of the game whatever happens. But America's been pretty good to me, and I owe something back. What I owe, sir, is to tell the truth and do my best and screw the consequences.\"\n\n\"So you're not a bureaucrat, either.\" Bretano wondered what Jackson's degree was in. He sure talked like a competent engineer. He even smiled like one.\n\n\"I'd rather play piano in a whorehouse, sir. It's more honest work.\"\n\n\"We're going to get along, Robby. Put a plan together. Let's keep a close eye on the Chinese.\"\n\n\"Actually, I'm just supposed to advise and\u2014\"\n\n\"Then coordinate with Seaton. I imagine he listens to you, too.\"\n\nTHE UN INSPECTION teams had become so accustomed to frustration that they hardly knew how to deal with satisfaction. The various staffs at the various facilities had given over reams of paper, still photographs, and videotapes, and practically raced the inspectors through the installations, pointing out the important aspects of the workings, and often demonstrating the easiest method of deactivating the more offensive features. There was the minor problem that the difference between a chemical-weapons plant and a factory for insecticide was essentially nil. Nerve gas had been an accidental invention of research into killing bugs (most insecticides are nerve poisons), and what it came down to, really, were the chemical ingredients, called \"precursors.\" Besides which, any country with oil resources and a petrochemical industry routinely produced all manner of specialized products, most of them toxic to humans anyway.\n\nBut the game had rules, and one of the rules was that honest people were assumed not to produce forbidden weapons, and overnight Iraq had become an honest member of the world community.\n\nThis fact was made clear at the meeting of the United Nations Security Council. The Iraqi ambassador spoke from his seat at the annular table, using charts to show what had already been opened to the inspection teams, and lamenting the fact that he'd been unable to speak the truth before. The other diplomats in the room understood. Many of them lied so much that they scarcely knew what the truth was. And so it was now that they saw truth and didn't recognize the lie behind it.\n\n\"In view of the full compliance of my country with all United Nations resolutions, we respectfully request that, in view of the needs of the citizens of my country, the embargo on foodstuffs be lifted as quickly as possible,\" the ambassador concluded. Even his tone was reasonable now, the other diplomats noted with satisfaction.\n\n\"The chair recognizes the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran,\" said the Chinese ambassador, who currently had the rotating chairmanship for the Security Council.\n\n\"No country in this body has greater reason to dislike Iraq. The chemical-weapons plants inspected today manufactured weapons of mass destruction which were then used against the people of my country. At the same time, we feel it is incumbent upon us to recognize the new day that has dawned over our neighbor. The citizens of Iraq have suffered long because of the actions of their former ruler. That ruler is gone, and the new government shows every sign of reentering the community of nations. In view of that, the Islamic Republic of Iran will support an immediate suspension of the embargo. We will, moreover, initiate an emergency transfer of foodstuffs to bring relief to the Iraqi citizens. Iran proposes that the suspension should be conditional upon Iraq's continued good faith. To that end, we submit Draft Resolution 3659 . . .\"\n\nScott Adler had flown up to New York to take the American seat at the Council. The American ambassador to the UN was an experienced diplomat, but for some situations the proximity of Washington was just too convenient, and this was one. For what little good it did, Adler thought. The Secretary of State had no cards to play at all. Often the cleverest ploy in diplomacy was to do exactly what your adversary requested. That had been the greatest fear in 1991, that Iraq could have simply withdrawn from Kuwait, leaving America and her allies with nothing to do, and preserving the Iraqi military to fight another day. It had been, fortunately, an option just a little too clever for Iraq to exercise. But someone had learned from that. When you demanded that someone should do something or else be denied something that he needed, and then that person did it\u2014well, then you could no longer deny what he wanted, could you?\n\nAdler had been fully briefed on the situation, for all the good it did him. It was rather like sitting at a poker game with three aces after the draw, only to learn that your opponent had a straight flush. Good information didn't always help. The only thing that could delay the proceedings was the turgid pace of the United Nations, and even that had limitations when diplomats had an attack of enthusiasm. Adler could have asked for a postponement of the vote to ensure Iraqi compliance with the long-standing UN demands, but Iran had already handled that by submitting a resolution that specified the temporary and conditional nature of the embargo suspension. They'd also made it very clear that they were going to ship food anyway\u2014in fact already had, via truck, on the theory that doing something illegal in public made it acceptable. The SecState looked over at his ambassador\u2014they'd been friends for years\u2014and caught the ironic wink. The British ambassador was looking down at a pad of penciled doodles. The Russian one was reading dispatches. Nobody was listening, really. They didn't have to. In two hours, the Iranian resolution would pass. Well, it could have been worse. At least he'd have a chance to speak face-to-face with the Chinese ambassador and ask about their naval maneuvers. He knew the answer he'd get, but he wouldn't know if it was the truth or not. Of course. _I'm the Secretary of State of the world's most powerful nation,_ Adler thought, _but I'm just a spectator today_.\n**26**\n\n**WEEDS**\n\n**T** HERE WERE FEW THINGS sadder than a sick child. Sohaila, her name was, Dr. MacGregor remembered. A pretty name, for a pretty, elfin little girl. Her father carried her in his arms. He appeared to be a brutish man\u2014that was MacGregor's first impression, and he'd learned to trust them\u2014but if so, one transformed by concern for his child. His wife was in his wake, along with another Arabic-appearing man wearing a jacket, and behind _him_ was an official-looking Sudanese, all of which the physician noted and ignored. They weren't sick. Sohaila was.\n\n\"Well, hello again, young lady,\" he said, with a comforting smile. \"You are not feeling at all well, are you? We'll have to see about that, won't we? Come with me,\" he said to the father.\n\nClearly these people were important to someone, and they would be treated accordingly. MacGregor led them to an examining room. The father set the little girl down on the table and backed away, letting his wife hold Sohaila's hand. The bodyguards\u2014that's what they had to be\u2014remained outside. The physician touched his hand to the child's forehead. She was burning up\u201439 at least. Okay. He washed his hands thoroughly and donned gloves, again because this was Africa, and in Africa you took every precaution. His first considered action was to take her temperature via the ear: 39.4. Pulse was rapid but not worrisome for a child. A quick check with a stethoscope confirmed normal heart sounds and no particular problem with the lungs, though her breathing was rapid as well. So far she had a fever, something hardly uncommon with young children, especially those recently arrived into a new environment. He looked up.\n\n\"What seems to be the problem with your daughter?\" The father answered this time.\n\n\"She cannot eat, and her other end\u2014\"\n\n\"Vomiting and diarrhea?\" MacGregor asked, checking her eyes out next. They seemed unremarkable as well.\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\n\"You've arrived here recently, I believe?\" He looked up when the answer was hesitation. \"I need to know.\"\n\n\"Correct. From Iraq, just a few days.\"\n\n\"And your daughter has a mild case of asthma, nothing else, no other health problems, correct?\"\n\n\"That is true, yes. She's had all her shots and such. She's never been ill like this.\" The mother just nodded. The father clearly had taken over, probably to get the feeling of authority, to make things happen, the physician surmised. It was fine with him.\n\n\"Since arriving here, any unusual things to cat? You see,\" MacGregor explained, \"travel can be very unsettling to some people, and children are unusually vulnerable. It could just be the local water.\"\n\n\"I gave her the medicine, but it got worse,\" the mother said.\n\n\"It is not the water,\" the father said positively. \"The house has its own well. The water is good.\"\n\nAs though on cue, Sohaila moaned and turned, vomiting off the examining table and onto the tile floor. It wasn't the right color. There were traces of red and black. Red for new blood, black for old. It wasn't jet lag or bad water. Perhaps an ulcer? Food poisoning? MacGregor blinked and instinctively checked to be sure his hands were gloved. The mother was looking for a paper towel to\u2014\n\n\"Don't touch that,\" he said mildly. He next took the child's blood pressure. It was low, confirming an internal bleed. \"Sohaila, I'm afraid you will be spending the night with us so that we can make you well again.\"\n\nIt could have been many things, but the doctor had been in Africa long enough to know that you acted as though it were the worst. The young physician consoled himself with the belief that it couldn't be all _that_ bad.\n\nIT WASN'T QUITE like the old days\u2014what was?\u2014but Mancuso enjoyed the work. He'd had a good war\u2014 _he_ thought of it as a war; his submarines had done exactly what they'd been designed to do. After losing _Asheville_ and _Charlotte_ \u2014those before the known commencement of hostilities\u2014he'd lost no more. His boats had delivered on every mission assigned, savaging the enemy submarine force in a carefully planned ambush, supporting a brilliant special operation, conducting deep-strike missile launches, and, as always, gathering vital tactical intelligence. His best play, COMSUBPAC judged, had been in recalling the boomers from retirement. They were too big and too unwieldy to be fast-attack boats, but God damn if they hadn't done the job for him. Enough so that they were all down the hill from his headquarters, tied alongside, their crews swaggering around town a bit, with brooms still prominent on their sails. Okay, so he wasn't Charlie Lockwood exactly, modesty told him. He'd done the job he'd been paid to do. And now he had another.\n\n\"So what are they supposed to be up to?\" he asked his immediate boss, Admiral Dave Scaton.\n\n\"Nobody seems to know.\" Seaton had come over to look around. Like any good officer, he tried to get the hell out of his office as much as possible, even if it only meant visiting another. \"Maybe just a FleetEx, but with a new President, maybe they want to flex their muscles and see what happens.\" People in uniform did not like such international examinations, since they were usually the ones whose lives were part of the grading procedure.\n\n\"I know this guy, boss,\" Bart said soberly.\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Not all that well, but you know about _Red October.\"_ Seaton grinned. \"Bart, if you ever tell me that story, one of us has to kill the other, and I'm bigger.\" The story, one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Navy's history, still was not widely known, though the rumors\u2014one could never stop those were many and diverse.\n\n\"You need to know, Admiral. You need to know what National Command Authority has hanging between his legs. I've been shipmates with the guy.\"\n\nThat earned Mancuso a hard blink from CINCPAC. \"You're kidding.\"\n\n\"Ryan was aboard the boomer with me. Matter of fact, he got aboard before I did.\" Mancuso closed his eyes, delighted that he could finally tell this sea story and get away with it. Dave Seaton was a theater commander-in-chief, and he had a right to know what sort of man was sending the orders down from Washington.\n\n\"I heard he was involved in the operation, even that he got aboard, but I thought that was at Norfolk, when they parked her at the Eight-Ten Dock. I mean, he's a spook, right, an intel weenie . . .\"\n\n\"Not hardly. He killed a guy\u2014shot him, right in the missile room\u2014before I got aboard. He was on the helm when we clobbered the Alfa. He was scared shitless, but he didn't cave. This President we've got's been there and done that. Anyway, if they want to test our President, my money's on him. Two big brass ones, Dave, that's what he's got hangin'. He may not look like it on TV, but I'll follow that son of a bitch anywhere.\" Mancuso surprised himself with the conclusion. It was the first time he'd thought it all the way through.\n\n\"Good to know,\" Seaton thought.\n\n\"So what's the mission?\" SUBPAC asked.\n\n\"J-3 wants us to shadow.\"\n\n\"You know Jackson better than I do. What are the parameters?\"\n\n\"If this is a FleetEx and nothing else, we observe covertly. If things change, we let them know we care. You've got point, Bart. My cupboard's pretty damned bare.\"\n\nThey had only to look out the windows to see that. _Enterprise_ and _John Stennis_ were both in drydock. CINCPAC did not have a single carrier to deploy, and wouldn't for two more months. They'd run _Johnnie Reb_ on two shafts for the retaking of the Marianas, but now she lay alongside her older sister, with huge holes torched from the flight deck down to the first platform level while new turbines and reduction gears were fabricated. The aircraft carrier was the usual means for the United States Navy to make a show of force. Probably that was part of the Chinese plan, to see how America would react when a substantive reaction was not possible, or so it would appear to some.\n\n\"Will you cover for me with DeMarco?\" Mancuso asked.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean that Bruno's from the old school. He thinks it's bad to get detected. Personally, I think sometimes it can be a good thing. If you want me to rattle John Chinaman's cage, he has to hear the bars shake, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"I'll write the orders accordingly. How you run it is your business. For the moment, if some 'can skipper talks to his XO about getting laid on the beach, I want it on tape for my collection.\"\n\n\"Dave, that's an order a man can understand. I'll even get you the phone number, sir.\"\n\n\"AND NOT A damned thing we can do,\" Cliff Rutledge concluded his assessment.\n\n\"Gee, Cliff,\" Scott Adler responded. \"I kinda figured that one out for myself.\" The idea was that subordinates gave you alternatives instead of taking them away\u2014or in this case, telling you what you already knew.\n\nThey'd been fairly lucky to this point. Nothing much had gotten out to the media. Washington was still too shell-shocked, the junior people filling senior posts were not yet confident enough to leak information without authorization, and the senior posts President Ryan had filled were remarkably loyal to their Commander-in-Chief, an unexpected benefit of picking outsiders who didn't know from politics. But it couldn't last, especially with something as juicy as a new country about to be born from two enemies, both of whom had shed American blood.\n\n\"I suppose we could always just do nothing,\" Rutledge observed lightly, wondering what the reaction would be. This alternative was distinct from not being able to do anything, a metaphysical subtlety not lost on official Washington.\n\n\"Taking that position only encourages developments adverse to our interests,\" another senior staffer observed crossly.\n\n\"As opposed to proclaiming our impotence?\" Rutledge replied. \"If we say we don't like it, and then we fail to stop it, that's worse than our taking no position at all.\"\n\nAdler reflected that you could always depend on a Harvard man for good grammar and finely split hairs and, in Rutledge's case, not much more than that. This career foreign service officer had gotten to the seventh floor by never putting a foot wrong, which was another way of saying that he'd never led a dance partner in his life. On the other hand, he was superbly connected\u2014or had been. Cliff had the deadliest disease of a FSO, however. Everything was negotiable. Adler didn't think that way. You had to stand and fight for some things, because if you didn't, the other guy would decide where the battlefield was, and then he had control. The mission of diplomats was to prevent war, a serious business, Adler thought, which one accomplished by knowing where to stand firm and where the limits on negotiation were. For the Assistant Secretary of State for Policy, it was just an unending dance. With someone else leading. Alas, Adler didn't yet have the political capital to fire the man, or maybe make him an ambassador to some harmless post. He himself still had to be confirmed by the new Senate, for example.\n\n\"So just call it a regional issue?\" another senior diplomat asked. Adler's head turned slowly. Was Rutledge building a consensus?\n\n\"No, it is not that,\" the Secretary of State pronounced, making his stand within his own conference room. \"It is a vital security interest of the United States. We have pledged our support to the Saudis.\"\n\n\"Line in the sand?\" Cliff asked. \"There's no reason to do that yet. Look, let's be sensible about this, okay? Iran and Iraq merge and form this new United Islamic Republic, fine. Then what? It takes them years to get the new country organized. In that time, forces which we know to be under way in Iran weaken the theocratic regime that's been giving us such a royal pain in the butt. This is not a one-way deal, is it? We can expect that from the influence the secular elements in Iraqi society will necessarily have in Iran. If we panic and get pushy, we make life easier for Daryaei and his fanatics. But if we take it easy, then we lessen the imperative for them to stoke up the rhetoric against us. Okay, we can't stop this merger, can we?\" Rutledge went on. \"So if we can't, what do we do? We think of it as an opportunity to open a dialogue with the new country.\"\n\nThere was a certain logic to the proposal, Adler noted, noting also the tentative nods around the conference table. He knew the proper buzzwords. Opportunity. Dialogue.\n\n\"That'll really make the Saudis feel warm and fuzzy,\" a voice objected from the far end of the table. It was Bert Vasco, the most junior man here. \"Mr. Rutledge, I think you underestimate the situation. Iran managed the assassination\u2014\"\n\n\"We have no proof of that, do we?\"\n\n\"And Al Capone was never convicted for Valentine's Day, but I saw the movie.\" Being called into the Oval Office had enlivened the desk officer's rhetoric. Adler raised an amused eyebrow. \"Somebody is orchestrating this, starting with the shooting, continuing with the elimination first of the military high command, and then second with the slaughter of the Ba'ath Party leadership. Next, we have this religious revival now under way. The picture I have of this is one of renewed national and religious identity. _That_ will attenuate the moderating influences you referred to. The internal dissent in Iran will be knocked back a full year at least by these developments\u2014and we don't know what else might be going on. Daryaei's a plotter, and a good one. He's patient, dedicated, and one ruthless son of a bitch\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's on his last legs,\" one of Rutledge's allies in the room objected.\n\n\"Says who?\" Vasco shot back. \"He's managed this one pretty sharp.\"\n\n\"He's in his seventies.\"\n\n\"He doesn't smoke or drink. Every tape we have of him in public, he looks vigorous enough. Underestimating this man is a mistake we've made before.\"\n\n\"He's out of touch with his own people.\"\n\n\"Maybe he doesn't know that. He's having a good year so far, and everybody likes a winner,\" Vasco concluded.\n\n\"Bert, maybe you're just worried about losing your desk when they form the UIR,\" someone joked. It was a low blow, aimed by a senior man at a junior, with chuckles around the table to remind him of that. The resulting silence told the Secretary of State that there was a consensus forming, and not the one he wanted. Time to take control again.\n\n\"Okay, moving on,\" Adler said. \"The FBI will be back tomorrow to talk to us about the purloined letter. And guess what they'll be bringing?\"\n\n\"Not the Box again,\" someone groaned. Nobody noticed the way Rutledge's head turned.\n\n\"Just think of it as a routine test for our security clearances,\" SecState told his principal subordinates. Polygraphs weren't exactly unknown for the senior people here.\n\n\"God damn it, Scott,\" Cliff said, speaking for the others. \"Either we're trusted or we're not. I've already wasted hours with those people.\"\n\n\"You know, they never found Nixon's letter of resignation, either,\" another said.\n\n\"Maybe Henry kept it,\" a third joked.\n\n\"Tomorrow. Starting at ten o'clock. Myself included,\" Adler told them. He thought it a waste of time as well.\n\nHIS SKIN WAS very fair, his eyes gray, and his hair had a reddish tinge, the result, he thought, of an Englishwoman somewhere in his ancestry, or such was the family joke. One advantage was his ability to pass for any Caucasian ethnicity. That he could still do so was the result of his caution. On his few \"public\" operations, he'd tinted his hair, worn dark glasses, and let his beard grow\u2014that was black\u2014which resulted in jokes within his own community: \"Movie star,\" they said. But many of the jokers were dead, and he was not. Perhaps the Israelis had photos of him one never knew about them, but one did know that they rarely shared information with anyone, even their American patrons, which was foolish. And you couldn't worry about everything, even photographs in some Mossad file cabinet.\n\nHe came through Dulles International Airport after the flight from Frankfurt, with the requisite two bags of the serious businessman he was, with nothing more to declare than a liter of Scotch purchased in a German dutyfree store. Purpose of his visit to America? Business and pleasure. Is it safe to move around Washington now? Terrible thing, saw the replay on the TV news, must be a thousand times, dreadful. It is? Really? Things are back to normal now? Good. His rental car was waiting. He drove to a nearby hotel, tired from the long flight. There he purchased a paper, ordered dinner in, and switched on the TV. That done, he plugged his portable computer into the room's phone they all had data jacks now\u2014and accessed the Net to tell Badrayn that he was safely in-country for his reconnaissance mission. A commercial encryption program transformed what was a meaningless code phrase into total gibberish.\n\n\"WELCOME ABOARD. My name is Clark,\" John told the first class of fifteen. He was turned out much better than was his custom, wearing a properly tailored suit, buttondown shirt, and a striped tie. For the moment, he had to impress in one way. Soon he'd do it in another. Getting the first group in had been easier than expected. The CIA, Hollywood notwithstanding, is an agency popular among American citizens, with at least ten applications for every opening, and it was just a matter of doing a computer search of the applications to find fifteen which fit the parameters of Clark's PLAN BLUE. Every one was a police officer with a college degree, at least four years of service, and an unblemished record which would be further checked by the FBI. For the moment, all were men, probably a mistake, John thought, but for the moment it wasn't important. Seven were white, two black, and one Asian. They were, mainly, from big-city police forces. All were at least bilingual.\n\n\"I am a field intelligence officer. Not an 'agent,' not a 'spy,' not an 'operative.' An _officer,\"_ he explained. \"I've been in the business for quite some time. I'm married and I have two children. If any of you have ideas about meeting a sleek blonde and shooting people, you can leave now. This business is mainly dull, especially if you're smart enough to do it right. You're all cops, and therefore you already know how important this job is. We deal with high-level crime, and the job is about getting information so that those major crimes can be stopped before people get killed. We do that by gathering information and passing it on to those who need it. Others look at satellite pictures or try to read the other guy's mail. We do the hard part. We get our information from _people_. Some are good people with good motives. Some are not such good people who want money, who want to get even, or who want to feel important. What these people are doesn't matter. You've all worked informants on the street, and they're not all Mother Teresa, are they? Same thing here. Your informants will often be better educated, more powerful people, but they won't be very different from the ones you've been working with. And just like your street informants, you have to be loyal to them, you have to protect them, and you'll have to wring their scrawny little necks from time to time. If you fuck up, those people die, and in some of the places you'll be working, their wives and children will die, too. If you think I'm kidding on that, you're wrong, people. You will work in countries where due process of law means whatever somebody wants it to mean. You've seen that on television just in the last few days, right?\" he asked. Some of the Ba'ath officials shot in Baghdad had made world news telecasts, with the usual warnings about children and the sensitive, who invariably watched anyway. The heads nodded soberly.\n\n\"You will, for the most part, _not_ be armed in the field. You will survive by your wits. You will sometimes be at risk of your life. I've lost friends in the field, some in places you know about, and some in places you don't. The world may be kinder and gentler now, but not everywhere. You're not going to be going to the nice places, guys,\" John promised them. In the back of the room, Ding Chavez was struggling hard not to smile. _That little greasy guy is my partner and he's engaged to my little girl._ No sense, Domingo knew, in scaring them all away.\n\n\"What's good about the job? Well, what's good about being a cop? Answer: every bad guy you put away saves lives on the street. In this job, getting the right information to the right people saves lives, too. Lots,\" Clark emphasized. \"When we do the job right, wars _don't_ happen.\n\n\"Anyway, welcome aboard. I am your supervising teacher. You will find the training here stimulating and difficult. It starts at eight-thirty tomorrow morning.\" With that John left the podium and walked to the back of the room. Chavez opened the door for him and they walked out into the fresh air.\n\n\"Gee, Mr. C., where do I sign up?\"\n\n\"God damn it, Ding, I had to say _something._ \" It had been John's longest oration in some years.\n\n\"So, to get these rookies aboard, what did Foley have to do?\"\n\n\"The RIFs have begun, m'boy. Hell, Ding, we had to get things started, didn't we?\"\n\n\"I think you should have waited a few weeks. Foley isn't confirmed by the Senate yet. Better to wait,\" Chavez thought. \"But I'm just a junior spook.\"\n\n\"I keep forgetting how smart you've gotten.\"\n\n\"SO WHO THE hell is Zhang Han San?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Somewhere in his fifties, but young looking for his age, ten kilos overweight, five four or so, medium everything, so says our friend,\" Dan Murray reported from his written notes. \"Quiet and thoughtful, and he stiffed Yamata.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Mary Pat Foley said. \"How so?\"\n\n\"Yamata was on Saipan when we got control of things. He placed a call to Beijing, looking to bug out to a safe place. Mr. Zhang reacted as though it were a cold call. 'What deal? We don't have any deal,' \" the FBI Director mimicked. \"And after that, the calls didn't go through at all. Our Japanese friend regards that as a personal betrayal.\"\n\n\"Sounds as though he's singing like a canary,\" Ed Foley observed. \"Does that strike anybody as suspicious?\"\n\n\"No,\" Ryan said. \"In World War Two, what Japanese prisoners we took talked plenty.\"\n\n\"The President's right,\" Murray confirmed. \"I asked Tanaka about that myself. He says it's a cultural thing. Yamata wants to take his own life\u2014the honorable way out in their cultural context\u2014but they've got him on suicide watch\u2014not even shoestrings. The resulting disgrace is so great for the guy that he has no particular reason to keep secrets. Hell of an interrogation technique. Anyway, Zhang is supposedly a diplomat\u2014Yamata said he was titularly part of a trade delegation\u2014but State's never heard of him. The Japanese have no records of the name on any diplomatic list. That makes him a spook, as far as I'm concerned, and so . . .\" He looked over at the Foleys.\n\n\"I ran the name,\" Mary Pat said. \"Zippo. But who's to say it's a real name?\"\n\n\"Even if it were,\" her husband added, \"we don't know that much about their intelligence people. If I had to guess\"\u2014and he did\u2014\"he's political. Why? He cut a deal, a quiet one but a big one. Their military is still on an increased readiness and training regime because of that deal, which is why the Russians are still nervous. Whoever this guy is, best guess, he's a very serious player.\" Which wasn't exactly an earth-shaking revelation.\n\n\"Anything you can do to find out?\" Murray inquired delicately.\n\nMrs. Foley shook her head. \"No assets in place, at least nothing we can use for this. We have a good husband-wife team in Hong Kong, setting up a nice little network. We have a couple of assets in Shanghai. In Beijing we have some low-level agents in the defense ministry, but they're long-term prospects and using them on this issue wouldn't accomplish much more than to endanger them. Dan, the problem we have with China is that we don't really know how their government works. It has levels of complexity that we can only guess at. The Politburo members, we know who they are\u2014we think. One of the biggies might be dead now, and we've been fishing for that tidbit for over a month. Even the Russians let us know when they buried people,\" the DDO noted, as she sipped her wine. Ryan had come to like bringing his closest advisers in for drinks after the close of regular office hours. It hadn't quite occurred to him that he was extending their working day. He was also short-circuiting his own National Security Advisor, but as loyal and clever as Ben Goodley was, Jack Ryan still wanted to hear it directly when he could.\n\nEd took up the explanation. \"You see, sure, we think we know the political varsity over there, but we've never had a real handle on the second-string players. The dynamic is simple when you think about it, but it took us long enough to twig to it. We're talking elderly folks over there. They can't get around all that well. They need mobile eyes and ears, and over the years those gofers have accumulated a lot of power. Who's really calling the shots? We don't know for sure, and without ID'ing people, we can't find out.\"\n\n\"I can dig it, guys.\" Murray grunted, and reached for his beer. \"When I was working OC\u2014organized crime sometimes we ID'd Mafia _capi_ by who held the car door open for whom. Hell of a way to do business.\" It was the friendliest thing the Foleys remembered hearing from the FBI about CIA. \"Operational security really isn't all that hard if you think about it a little.\"\n\n\"Makes a good case for PLAN BLUE,\" Jack said next.\n\n\"Well, then you might be pleased to know the first fifteen are in the pipeline even as we speak. John should have given them their welcoming speech a few hours ago,\" the DCI announced.\n\nRyan had gone over Foley's reduction-in-force plan for CIA. Ed planned to swing a mean ax, ultimately reducing the Agency budget by $500 million over five years while increasing the field force. It was something to make people on the Hill happy, though with much of CIA's real budget in the black part of federal expenditures, few would ever know. Or maybe not, Jack thought. That was likely to leak.\n\nLeaks. He'd hated them over his entire career. But now they were part of statecraft, weren't they? the President reflected. But what was he supposed to think? That leaks were _okay_ now that he was the one doing it or allowing it? Damn. Laws and principles weren't supposed to work that way, were they? What exactly, what idea or ideal or principle or rock was he supposed to hold on to?\n\nTHE BODYGUARD'S NAME was Saleh. He was a physically robust individual, as his work demanded, and, as such, one who tried to deny illness or discomfort of any sort. A man of his station in life simply did not admit to difficulty. But when discomfort didn't go away as he'd expected and as the doctor had told him\u2014Saleh knew that all men were vulnerable to stomach problems\u2014and then he saw blood in the toilet . . . it was that, really. The body isn't supposed to issue blood except from a shaving cut or a bullet wound. Not in any case from moving one's bowels, and it was the sort of indicator certain to shake any man, all the more so a strong and otherwise confident one. Like many, he delayed somewhat, asking himself if it might be a temporary problem that would go away, that the discomfort would peak and abate, as flu symptoms always did. But these kept getting worse, and finally his fear got the better of him. Before dawn he left the villa, taking the car and driving to the hospital. Along the way he had to stop the car to vomit, deliberately not looking to see what he'd left on the street before heading on, his body weakening with every minute, until the walk from the car to the door seemed to take every bit of energy he had. In what passed here for an emergency room, he waited while people searched for his records. It was the smell of hospitals which frightened him, the same disinfectant odor which makes a dog stop dead and strain backward at the leash and whimper and pull away, because the smell is associated with pain, until finally a black nurse called his name, and then he rose, assembled his dignity and composure, and walked into the same examining room he'd visited before.\n\nTHE SECOND GROUP often criminals was little different from the first, except that in this one there was not a condemned apostate. It was easy to dislike them, Moudi thought, looking at the group with their sallow faces and slinking mannerisms. It was their expressions most of all. They looked like criminals, never quite meeting his eyes, glancing this way and that, always, it seemed, searching for a way out, a trick, an angle, something underhanded. The combination of fear and lingering brutality on their faces. They were not just men, and while that seemed to the doctor a puerile observation, it did mark them as different from himself and the people he knew, and therefore as the bearers of lives which were unimportant.\n\n\"We have some sick people here,\" he told them. \"You have been assigned to look after them. If you do this job well, you will be trained as hospital aides for work at your prisons. If not, you will be returned to your cells and your sentences. If any of you misbehaves, your punishment will be immediate and severe.\" They all nodded. They knew about severe treatment. Iranian prisons were not noted for their amenities. Nor, it would seem, for good food. They all had pale skin and rheumy eyes. Well, what solicitude did such people merit? the physician asked himself. Each of them was guilty of known crimes, all of them serious, and what unknown crimes lay in their pasts only the criminals and Allah knew. What pity Moudi felt for them was residual, a result of his medical training, which compelled him to view them as human beings no matter what. That he could overcome. Robbers, thieves, pederasts all, they'd violated the law in a country where law was a thing of God, and if it was stern, it was also fair. If their treatment was harsh by Western standards\u2014Europeans and Americans had the strangest ideas about human rights; what of the rights of the victims of such people?\u2014that was just too bad, Moudi told himself, distancing himself from the people before him. Amnesty International had long since stopped complaining about his country's prisons. Perhaps they could devote their attention to other things, like the treatment of the Faithful in other lands. There was not a Sister Jean Baptiste among them, and she was dead, and that was written, and what remained was to see if their fates had been penned by the same hand in the book of life and death. He nodded to the head guard, who shouted at the new \"aides.\" They even stood insolently, Moudi saw. Well, they'd all see about that.\n\nThey'd all been pre-processed, stripped, showered, shaved, disinfected, and dressed in surgical greens with single-digit numbers on the back. They wore cloth slippers. The armed guards led them off to the air-lock doors, inside of which were the army medics, supplemented by a single armed guard, who kept his distance, a pistol in his gloved hands. Moudi returned to the security room to watch on the TV system. On the black-and-white monitors he watched them pad down the corridor, eyes shifting left and right in curiosity\u2014and doubtless looking for a way out. All the eyes lingered on the guard, who was never less than four meters distant. Along the way, each of the new arrivals was handed a plastic bucket with various simple tools inside\u2014the buckets also were numbered.\n\nThey'd all started somewhat at seeing the medics in their protective suits, but shuffled along anyway. It was at the entrance of the treatment room that they stopped. It must have been the smell, or perhaps the sight. Slow to pick up on the situation, one of their number had finally realized that whatever this was\u2014\n\nOn the monitor, a medic gestured at the one who froze in the doorway. The man hesitated, then started speaking back. A moment later, he hurled his bucket down at the floor and started shaking his fist, while the others watched to see what would result. Then the security guard appeared out of the corner of the picture, his arm coming up and his pistol extended. At a range of two meters, he fired\u2014so strange to see the shot but not hear it\u2014straight into the criminal's face. The body fell to the tile floor, leaving a pattern of black spots on the gray wall. The nearest medic pointed to one of the prisoners, who immediately retrieved the fallen bucket and went into the room. There would be no more disciplinary trouble with this group. Moudi shifted his gaze to the next monitor.\n\nThis one was a color camera. It had to be. It could also be panned and zoomed. Moudi indicated the corner bed, Patient 1. The new arrival with _I_ on his back and bucket just stood there at the foot of the bed at first, bucket in his hand, not knowing what he beheld. There was a sound pickup for this room, but it didn't work terribly well because it was a single nondirectional mike, and the security staff had long since turned it down to zero, because the sound was so piteous as to be debilitating to those who listened\u2014moans, whimpers, cries from dying men who in their current state did not appear so sinister. The apostate, predictably, was the worst. He prayed and even tried to comfort those he could reach from his bed. He'd even attempted to lead a few in prayer, but they'd been the wrong prayers, and his roommates were not of the sort to speak to God under the best of circumstances.\n\nAide 1 continued to stand for a minute or so, looking down at Patient 1, a convicted murderer, his ankle chained to the bed. Moudi took control of the camera and zoomed it in further to see that the shackles had worn away the skin. There was a red stain on the mattress from it. The man\u2014the _condemned patient,_ Moudi corrected himself\u2014was writhing slowly, and then Aide 1 remembered what he'd been told. He donned his plastic gloves, wet his sponge, and rubbed it across the patient's forehead. Moudi backed the camera off. One by one, the others did the same, and the army medics withdrew.\n\nThe treatment regime for the patients was not going to be a serious one. There was no point in it, since they'd already fulfilled their purpose in the project. That made life much easier on everyone. No IV lines to run, no needles to stick\u2014and no \"sharps\" to worry about. In contracting Ebola, they'd confirmed that the Mayinga strain was indeed airborne, and now all that was left was to prove that the virus had not attenuated itself in the reproductive process . . . and that it could be passed on by the same aerosol process which had infected the first grouping of criminals. Most of the new arrivals, he saw, did what they'd been told to do\u2014but badly, crassly, wiping off their charges with quick, ungentle strokes of the sponges. A few seemed genuinely compassionate. Perhaps Allah would notice their charity and show them mercy when the time came, less than ten days from now.\n\n\"REPORT CARDS,\" CATHY said when Jack came into the bedroom.\n\n\"Good or bad?\" her husband asked.\n\n\"See for yourself,\" his wife suggested.\n\n_Uh-oh,_ the President thought, taking them from her hand. For all that, it wasn't so bad. The attached commentary sheets\u2014every teacher did a short paragraph to supplement the letter grade\u2014noted that the quality of the homework turned in had improved in the past few weeks ... so, the Secret Service agents _were_ helping with that, Jack realized. At one level, it was amusing. At another\u2014strangers were doing the father's job, and that thought made his stomach contract a little. The loyalty of the agents merely illustrated something that he was failing to do for his own kids.\n\n\"If Sally wants to get into Hopkins, she's going to have to pay more attention to her science courses,\" Cathy observed.\n\n\"She's just a kid.\" To her father she'd always be the little girl who\u2014\n\n\"She's growing up, and guess what? She's interested in a young soccer player. Name of Kenny, and he's way Cool,\" SURGEON reported. \"Also needs a haircut. His is longer than mine.\"\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" SWORDSMAN replied.\n\n\"Surprised it took this long. I started dating when I was\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't want to hear about it\u2014\"\n\n\"I married you, didn't I?\" Pause. \"Mr. President . . .\"\n\nJack turned. \"It has been a while.\"\n\n\"Any way we can get to the Lincoln Bedroom?\" Cathy asked. Jack looked over and saw a glass on her nightstand. She'd had a drink or two. Tomorrow wouldn't be a surgery day.\n\n\"He never slept there, babe. They call it that because\u2014\"\n\n\"The picture. I know. I asked. I like the bed,\" she explained with a smile. Cathy set her patient notes down and took off her reading glasses. Then she held her arms up, almost like a toddler soliciting a pickup and a hug. \"You know, I've never made love to the most powerful man in the world before\u2014at least not this week.\"\n\n\"What about the timing?\" Cathy had never used the pill.\n\n\"What _about_ the timing?\" she replied. And she'd always been as regular as a metronome.\n\n\"You don't want another\u2014\"\n\n\"Maybe I don't especially care.\"\n\n\"You're forty,\" POTUS objected.\n\n\"Well, thank you! That's well short of the record. What are you worried about?\"\n\nJack thought about that for a moment. \"Nothing, I guess. Never did get that vasectomy, did I?\"\n\n\"Nope, you never even talked to Pat about it like you said you would\u2014and if you do it now,\" FLOTUS went on with a positively wicked grin, \"it'll be in _all_ the papers. Maybe even on live TV. Arnie might tell you that it'll set a good example for the Zero Population Growth people, and you'll cave on that. Except for the national security implications . . .\"\n\n_\"What?\"_\n\n\"President of the United States has his nuts cut, and they won't respect America anymore, will they?\"\n\nJack almost started laughing, but stopped himself. The Detail people in the corridor might hear and\u2014\n\n\"What got into you?\"\n\n\"Maybe I'm finally getting comfortable with all this\u2014or maybe I just want to get laid,\" she added.\n\nThat's when the phone next to the bed rang. Cathy's face made a noiseless snarl as she reached for it. \"Hello? Yes, Dr. Sabo. Mrs. Emory? Okay . . . no, I don't think so ... No, definitely not, I don't care if she's agitated or not, not till tomorrow. Get her something to help her sleep ... whatever it takes. The bandages stay on till I say otherwise, and make sure that's on her chart, she's too good at whining. Yes. Night, Doctor.\" She replaced the phone and grumbled. \"The lens replacement I did the other day. She doesn't like being blindfolded, but if we take the coverings off too soon\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait a minute, he called\u2014\"\n\n\"They have our number at Wilmer.\"\n\n\"The direct residence?\" That one even bypassed Signals, though it, like all White House lines, was bugged. Or probably was. Ryan hadn't asked, and probably didn't want to know.\n\n\"They had it for home, didn't they?\" Cathy asked. \"Me surgeon, me treat patients, me professor, always on call when me have patients\u2014especially the pain-in-the-ass ones.\"\n\n\"Interruptions.\" Jack lay down next to his wife. \"You don't really want another baby, do you?\"\n\n\"What I want is to make love to my husband. I can't be picky about timing anymore, can I?\"\n\n\"Has it been that bad?\" He kissed her gently.\n\n\"Yes, but I'm not mad about it. You're trying very hard. You remind me of my new residents\u2014older, though.\" She touched his face and smiled. \"If something happens, it happens. I like being a woman.\"\n\n\"I rather like it myself.\"\n**27**\n\n**RESULTS**\n\n**S** OME OF THEM HAD DEGREES in psychology. It was a common and favored degree for law-enforcement officers. Some even had advanced degrees, and one member of the Detail had a doctorate, having done his dissertation on the sub-specialty of profiling criminals. All were at the least gifted amateurs in the science of reading minds; Andrea Price was one of these. SURGEON had a spring in her step as she walked out to her helicopter. SWORDSMAN walked her out to the groundfloor door and kissed her good-bye\u2014the kiss was routine, the walk-out and the hand-holding were not, or hadn't been lately. Price shared a glance with two of her agents, and they read one another's minds, as cops can do, and they judged it to be good, except for Raman, who was as smart as the rest of them, but rather more straitlaced. He devoted more passion to sports than anything else, and Price imagined him in front of his TV every night. He probably knew even how to program his VCR. Well, there were many personality types in the Service.\n\n\"What's today look like?\" POTUS asked, turning away when the Black Hawk lifted off.\n\n\"SURGEON is airborne,\" Andrea heard in her earpiece. \"Everything's clear,\" the overwatch people reported from their perches on the government buildings around the White House. They'd been scanning the perimeter for the last hour, as they did every day. There were the usual people out there, the \"regulars,\" known by sight to the Detail members. These were people who seemed to turn up a lot. Some were just fascinated by the First Family, whichever family it might be. For them, the White House was America's real soap opera, _Dallas_ writ large, and the trappings, the mechanics, really, of life in this most famous of dwellings drew them for some reason that Service psychologists struggled to understand, because for the armed agents on the Detail, \"regulars\" were dangerous by their very existence. And so the snipers on the Old Executive Office Building\u2014OEOB\u2014and Treasury knew them all by sight through their powerful spotting glasses, and knew them all by name, too, because Detail members were out there, too, disguised as street rats or passersby. At one time or another, the \"regulars\" had all been trailed to whatever homes they might have, and identified, and investigated, quietly. Those with irregularities were profiled for personality type\u2014they all had a few kinks\u2014and then they'd be carefully scanned by the Detail members who worked outside for weapons\u2014up to and including being bumped into by a \"jogger\" and expertly groped while being helped to their feet during the embarrassed apology. But that danger was past, for now.\n\n\"Didn't you check your schedule last night?\" Price asked, distracted from her duties into asking a dumb question.\n\n\"No, decided to catch some TV,\" SWORDSMAN lied, not knowing that they spotted the lie. He didn't even blush, Price saw. For her part, she didn't allow her face to change. Even POTUS was allowed to have a secret or two, or at least the illusion of it.\n\n\"Okay, here's my copy.\" She handed it over. Ryan scanned the first page, which took him to lunch. \"SecTreas is on the way in for breakfast right after CARDSHARP.\"\n\n\"What do you guys call George?\" Jack asked, entering the West Wing.\n\n\"TRADER. He likes that,\" Andrea reported.\n\n\"Just so you pronounce it right.\" Which wasn't a bad line for 7:50 A.M., POTUS thought. But it was hard to tell. The Detail liked nearly all of his jokes. Maybe they were just being polite?\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President.\" Goodley stood, as usual, when Jack entered the Oval Office.\n\n\"Hi, Ben.\" Ryan dropped the schedule down on his desk, made a quick scan for important documents, and took his seat. \"Go.\"\n\n\"You stole my thunder talking with the crew last night. We have _gornischt_ on Mr. Zhang. I could give you the long version, but I imagine you've already heard it.\" The President nodded for him to go on.\n\n\"Okay, developments in the Taiwan Strait. The PRC has fifteen surface ships at sea, two formations, one of six, one of nine. I have compositions if you want, but they're all destroyers and frigates. Deployed in regular squadron groupings, the Pentagon tells us. We have an EC-135 listening in. We have a submarine, _Pasadena,_ camped between the two groups, with two more boats en route from central Pacific, timed to arrive in-area in thirty-six and fifty hours, respectively. CINCPAC, Admiral Seaton, is up to speed and tasking out a full surveillance package. His parameters are on Secretary Bretano's desk now. I've discussed it over the phone. Sounds like Seaton knows his business.\n\n\"Political side, the ROC government is taking no official notice of the exercise. They put out a press release to that effect, _but_ their military is in contact with ours\u2014through CINCPAC. We'll have people in their listening posts\"\u2014Goodley checked his watch\u2014\"may be there already. State doesn't think this is a very big deal, but they're watching.\"\n\n\"Overall picture?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Could just be routine, but we wish their timing was a little better. They're not overtly pushing anything.\"\n\n\"And until they do, we don't push back. Okay, we take no official notice of this exercise. Let's keep our deployments quiet. No press releases, no briefings to the media. If we get any questions, it's no big deal.\"\n\nGoodley nodded. \"That's the plan, Mr. President.\n\n\"Next, Iraq, again, we have little in the way of direct information. Local TV is on a religious kick. It's all Shi'a. The Iranian clergymen we've been seeing are getting a lot of air time. The TV news coverage is almost entirely religion-based. The anchors are getting rhapsodic. The executions are done. We don't have a full body count, but it's over one hundred. That appears to be over. The Ba'ath leadership is gone for good. The littler fish are in the can. There was some stuff about how merciful the provisional government was to the 'lesser criminals'\u2014that's a quote. The 'mercy' is religiously justified, and it seems that some of the 'lesser criminals' have come back to Jesus excuse me, back to Allah\u2014in one big hurry. There's TV pictures of them sitting with an imam and discussing their misdeeds.\n\n\"Next indicator, we're seeing more organized activity within the Iranian military. Troops are training. We're getting intercepts of tactical radio traffic. It's routine, but there's a lot of it. They had an all-nighter at Foggy Bottom to go over all this stuff. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Rutledge, set it up. He evidently ran the I and R division pretty ragged.\" The State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research was the smaller and much poorer cousin to the intelligence community, but in it were a handful of very astute analysts whose diplomatic perspective occasionally gave insights the intelligence community missed.\n\n\"Conclusions?\" Jack asked. \"From the all-nighter, I mean.\"\n\n\"None.\" _Of course,_ Goodley could have added, but didn't. \"I'll be talking to them in an hour or so.\"\n\n\"Pay attention to what I and R says. Pay particular attention to\u2014\"\n\n\"Bert Vasco. Yes,\" Goodley agreed. \"He's all right, but I'll bet the seventh floor is giving him a pain in the ass. I talked to him twenty minutes ago. He says, are you ready, forty-eight hours. Nobody agrees with that. _Nobody,_ \" CARDSHARP emphasized.\n\n\"But . . . ?\" Ryan rocked back in his chair.\n\n\"But I won't bet against him, boss. I have nothing to support his assessment. Our desk people at CIA don't agree. State won't back him up\u2014they didn't even give it to me; I got it from Vasco directly, okay? But, you know, I am not going to say he's wrong.\" Goodley paused, realizing that he was not sounding like every other NIO. \"We have to consider this one, boss. Vasco has good instincts, and he's got balls, too.\"\n\n\"We'll know quickly enough. Right or wrong, I agree that he's the best guy over there. Make sure Adler talks to him, and tell Scott I don't want him stomped, regardless of how it turns out.\"\n\nBen nodded emphatically as he made a note. \"Vasco gets high-level protection. I like that, sir. It might even encourage other people to make a gut call once in a while.\"\n\n\"The Saudis?\"\n\n\"Nothing from them. Almost like they're catatonic. I think they're afraid to ask for any help until there's a reason for it.\"\n\n\"Call Ali within the hour,\" the President ordered. \"I want his opinion.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And if he wants to talk to me, at any time, night or day, tell him he's my friend, and I always have time for him.\"\n\n\"And that's the morning news, sir.\" He rose and stopped. \"Who ever decided on CARDSHARP, by the way?\"\n\n\"We did,\" Price said from the far end of the room. Her left hand went up to her earpiece. \"It's in your file. You evidently played a good game of poker in your frat house.\"\n\n\"I won't ask you what my girlfriends said about me,\" the acting National Security Advisor said, on his way out the door.\n\n\"I didn't know that, Andrea.\"\n\n\"He's even won some money at Atlantic City. Everybody underestimates him 'cause of his age. TRADER just pulled in.\"\n\nRyan checked his agenda. Okay, this was about George's appearance before the Senate. The President took a minute to review his morning appointment list, while a Navy mess steward brought in a light breakfast tray.\n\n\"Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury,\" Agent Price announced at the side door to the corridor.\n\n\"Thank you, we can handle this alone,\" Ryan said, rising from his desk as George Winston came in.\n\n\"Morning, sir,\" SecTreas said, as the door closed quietly. He was dressed in one of his handmade suits, and was carrying a manila folder. Unlike his President, the Secretary of the Treasury was used to wearing a jacket most of the time. Ryan took his off and dropped it on the desk. Both sat on the twin couches, with the coffee table between them.\n\n\"Okay, how are things across the street?\" Ryan asked, pouring himself some coffee, with the caffeine in this morning.\n\n\"If I ran my brokerage house like that, the SEC would have my hide on the barn door, my head over the fireplace, and my ass in Leavenworth. I'm going to\u2014hell, I've already started bringing in some of my administrative folks down from New York. There are just too many people over there whose only job is looking at each other and telling them how important they all are. Nobody's _responsible_ for anything. Damn it, at Columbus Group, we often make decisions by committee, but we make by-God _decisions_ in time for them to matter. There are too many people, Mr. Pres\u2014\"\n\n\"You can call me Jack, at least in here, George, I\u2014\" The door to the secretaries' room opened and the photographer came in with his Nikon. He didn't say anything. He rarely did. He just snapped away, and the rubric was for everyone to pretend he simply wasn't there. It would have been a hell of an assignment for a spy, Ryan thought.\n\n\"Fine. Jack, how far can I go?\" TRADER asked.\n\n\"I already told you that. It's your department to run. Just so you tell me about it first.\"\n\n\"I'm telling you, then. I'm going to cut staff. I'm going to set that department up like a business.\" He stopped for a second. \"And I'm going to rewrite the tax code. God, I didn't know how screwed up it was until two days ago. I had some in-house lawyers come in and\u2014\"\n\n\"It has to be revenue-neutral. We can't go dicking around with the budget. None of us has the expertise yet, and until the House of Representatives is reconstituted\u2014\" The photographer left, having caught the President in a great pose, both hands extended over the coffee tray.\n\n\"Playmate of the Month,\" Winston said, with a hearty laugh. He lifted a croissant and buttered it. \"We've run the models. The effect on revenue will be neutral on the basis of raw numbers, Jack, but there will probably be an overall increase in usable funds.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? Don't you need to study all the\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Jack. I don't need to study anything. I brought Mark Gant in to be my executive assistant. He knows computer modeling better than anybody I've ever met. He spent last week chewing through the\u2014didn't anybody ever tell you? They never _stop_ looking at the tax system over there. Study? I pick up the phone, and inside half an hour I'll have a thousand-page document on my desk telling me how things were in 1952, what the tax code _then_ did in every segment of the economy\u2014or what people think it did, as opposed to what they thought _then_ that it did, or as opposed to what the studies in the 1960s said _they_ thought that it did.\" SecTreas paused for a bite. \"Bottom line? Wall Street is far more complex, and uses simpler models, and those models _work._ Why? Because they're simpler. And I'm going to tell the Senate that in ninety minutes, with your permission.\"\n\n\"You're sure you're right on this, George?\" POTUS asked. That was one of the problems, perhaps the largest of all. The President couldn't check everything that was done in his name\u2014even checking one percent would have been an heroic feat\u2014but he was responsible for it all. It was that knowledge that had doomed so many Presidents to micro-managerial failure. \"Jack, I'm sure enough to bet my investors' money on it.\"\n\nTwo pairs of eyes met over the table. Each man knew the measure of the other. The President could have said that the welfare of the nation was a matter of greater moment than the few billions of dollars Winston had managed at the Columbus Group, but he didn't. Winston had built his investment house from nothing. Like Ryan, a man of humble origins, he'd created a business in a ferociously competitive environment on the basis of brains and integrity. Money entrusted to him by his clients had to be _more_ precious than his own, and because it had always been so, he'd grown rich and powerful, but never forgotten the how and why of it all. The first important public-policy statement to be made by Ryan's administration would ride on Winston's savvy and honor. The President thought it over for a second, and then he nodded.\n\n\"Then run with it, TRADER.\" But then Winston had his misgivings. It was instructive to the President that even so powerful a figure as the Secretary of the Treasury lowered his eyes for a second, and then said something quieter and less positive than his confident assertion of five seconds earlier.\n\n\"You know, politically this is going to\u2014\"\n\n\"What you're going to say to the Senate, George, is it good for the country as a whole?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" An emphatic nod of the head.\n\n\"Then don't wimp out on me.\"\n\nSecTreas wiped his mouth with the monogrammed napkin, and looked down again. \"You know, after this is all over and we go back to normal life, we really have to find a way to work together. There aren't many people like us, Ryan.\"\n\n\"Actually there are,\" the President said, after a moment's reflection. \"The problem is that they never come here to work. You know who I learned that from? Cathy,\" Jack told him. \"She fucks up, somebody goes blind, but she can't run away from making the call, can she? Imagine, you fuck up, and somebody loses his sight forever\u2014or dies. The guys who work the emergency room are really on the ragged edge, like when Cathy and Sally went into Shock-Trauma. You blow the call, and somebody is gone forever. Big deal, George, bigger than trading equities like we used to do. Same thing with cops. Same thing with soldiers. You have to make the call, right now, or something really bad happens. But those kinds of people don't come here to Washington, do they? And mainly that sort of guy goes to the place he\u2014or she\u2014has to be, where the real action is,\" Ryan said, almost wistfully. \"The really good ones go where they're needed, and they always seem to know where that is.\"\n\n\"But the really good ones don't like the bullshit. So they don't come here?\" Winston asked, getting his own course in Government 101, and finding Ryan a teacher of note.\n\n\"Some do. Adler at State. Another guy over there I've discovered, name of Vasco. But those are the ones who buck the system. The system works against them. Those are the ones we have to identify and protect. Mostly little ones, but what they do isn't little. They keep the system running, and mainly they go unnoticed because they don't care much about being noticed. They care about getting it done, serving the people out there. You know what I'd really like to do?\" Ryan asked, for the first time revealing something from the depths of his soul. He hadn't even had the guts to say this to Arnie.\n\n\"Yeah, set up a system that really works, a system that recognizes the good ones and gives them what they deserve. You know how hard that is in _any_ organization? Hell, it was a struggle at my shop, and Treasury has more janitors than I had trading executives. I'm not even sure where to start a job like that,\" Winston said. He would be one to grasp the scope of the dream, his President thought.\n\n\"Harder than you think, even. The guys who really do the work don't want to be bosses. They want to work. Cathy could be an administrator. They offered her the chair at the University of Virginia Medical School\u2014and that would have been a big deal. But it would have cut her patient time in half, and she likes doing what she does. Someday Bernie Katz at Hopkins is going to retire, and they'll offer his chair to her, and she'll turn _that_ down. Probably,\" Jack thought. \"Unless I can talk her out of it.\"\n\n\"Can't be done, Jack.\" TRADER shook his head. \"Hell of an idea, though.\"\n\n\"Grover Cleveland reformed the Civil Service over a hundred years ago,\" POTUS reminded his breakfast guest. \"I know we can't make it perfect, but we _can_ make it better. You're already trying\u2014you just told me that. Think about it some.\"\n\n\"I'll do that,\" SecTreas promised, standing. \"But for now, I have another revolution to foment. How many enemies can we afford to make?\"\n\n\"There's always enemies, George. Jesus had enemies.\"\n\nHE LIKED THE sobriquet \"Movie Star,\" and having learned of it fifteen years before, he had also learned to make it work for him. The mission was reconnaissance, and the weapon was charm. He had a choice of accents in his repertoire. Since he had German travel documents, he affected the speech of a person from Frankfurt to go along with German clothing, complete to shoes and wallet, all purchased with money that came from whatever sponsor Ali Badrayn had recently found. The rental-car company had provided him with excellent maps, all spread on the bucket seat next to his. That saved him from memorizing all his routes, which was tiresome, and wasteful of both his time and his photographic memory.\n\nThe first stop was St. Mary's School, located a few miles outside Annapolis. It was a religious school, Roman Catholic, that ran from pre-kindergartcn to twelfth grade, and had just under six hundred students. That made it a borderline case in terms of economics. The Star would get two or perhaps three passes, made somewhat easier by the fact that the school was on a point of land that had once been a sizable farm which the Catholic Church had talked out of some wealthy family or other. There was only one access road. The school's land ended at the water, and there was a river on the far side, past the athletic fields. The road had houses on one side, a residential development perhaps thirty years old. The school had eleven buildings, some closely bunched, others more spread out. Movie Star knew the ages of the targets, and from that it was easy enough to guess the buildings where they would spend much, if not all, of their time. The tactical environment was not a favorable one, and became less so when he spotted the protection. The school had plenty of land\u2014at least two hundred hectares\u2014and that made for a sizable defense perimeter, penetrating which had instant risks. He spotted a total of three large, dark vehicles, Chevy Suburbans, which could not have been more obviously the transport for the targets and their protectors. How many? He saw two people standing in the open, but the vehicles would have at least four guards each. The vehicles would be armored, and equipped with heavy weapons. One way in, and one way out. Almost a kilometer out to the main road. What about the water? Movie Star thought, driving to the end. Ah. There was a Coast Guard cutter there, a small one, but it would have a radio, and that made it large enough.\n\nHe stopped the car at the cul-de-sac, getting out to look at a house with a for-sale sign in the yard. He retrieved the morning paper from the car, ostentatiously checking the folded page against the number, then looking around some more. He had to be quick about it. The guards would be wary, and though they couldn't check everything\u2014even the American Secret Service had limits on its time and resources\u2014he couldn't afford to dawdle. His initial impressions were not at all favorable. Access was limited. So many students\u2014picking out the right two would be difficult. The guards were many and dispersed. That was the bad part. Numbers mattered less than physical space. The most difficult defense to breach was a defense in depth, because depth meant both space _and_ time. You could neutralize any number of people in a matter of seconds if you had the proper weapons and they were bunched up. But give them anything more than five seconds, and their training would kick in. The guards would be well-drilled. They'd have plans, some predictable, some not. That Coast Guard boat, for example, could dart into shore and take the targets clear. Or the guards could retreat with their charges to an isolated point and fight it out, and Movie Star had no illusions about their training and dedication. Give them as much as five minutes, and they'd win. They'd call in help from the local police force\u2014which even had helicopters; he'd checked\u2014and the attacking force would be cut off. No, this was not a favored site. He tossed the newspaper back into the car and drove off. On the way out, he looked on the street for a covert vehicle. There were a few vans parked in driveways, none of them with darkened plastic on the windows which might conceal a man with a camera. His peripheral vision confirmed his assessment. This was not a good location. To take these targets, it would be far better to do it on the fly. On the road, more correctly. But not much better. The protection for that would probably be excellent. Kevlar panels. Lexan windows. Special tires. And doubtless overhead protection in the form of helicopters. That didn't even count the unmarked cars and ready access to supplementary police reinforcement.\n\nOkay, Movie Star thought, using in his mind an Americanism that had universal application. Giant Steps Day Care Center and Nursery School, Ritchie Highway above Joyce Lane. Only one target there, but a better one, and probably, Movie Star hoped, a more favorable tactical environment.\n\nWINSTON HAD BEEN in the business of selling himself and his ideas for more than twenty years. Along with it had come a certain theatrical sense. Better yet, the stage fright went in both directions. Only one of the senators on the committee had previous experience, and he was in the minority party\u2014the polarity of the Senate had changed with the 747 crash, and done so in his ideological favor. As a result, the men and women taking their seats behind the massive oak bench were every bit as nervous as he was. While he took his seat and set out his papers, a total of six people were piling up huge bound volumes on the next table over. Winston ignored them. The C-SPAN cameras did not.\n\nIt soon got better. While the Secretary-designate chatted with Mark Gant, the latter's portable computer open and operating in front of him, the table to their left groaned and crashed, spilling the pile of books to the floor, to the collective gasp of everyone in the room. Winston turned, startled and pleased. His gofers had done exactly what he'd told them, piling the collected volumes of the United States Tax Code right in the middle of the table instead of distributing the load evenly.\n\n\"Oh, shit, George,\" Gant whispered, struggling not to laugh.\n\n\"Maybe God really is on our side.\" He jumped up to see that nobody had been hurt. Nobody had. The first oaken cry of protest had made the people stand back. Now security guards darted in, only to see that nothing, really, had happened. Winston leaned into the microphone.\n\n\"Mr. Chairman, sorry about that, but it doesn't really hurt anything. Can we proceed without further delay?\"\n\nThe chairman gaveled the room to order, without taking his eyes off the disaster. A minute later, George Winston was sworn.\n\n\"Do you have an opening statement, Mr. Winston?\"\n\n\"Sir, I did.\" SecTreas shook his head and stifled a laugh, though not quite all the way. \"I guess I have to apologize to the members of the committee for our little accident. I'd meant that to be an illustration of one of my points, but . . . well . . .\" He rearranged his papers and sat more erect in his chair.\n\n\"Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is George Winston, and President Ryan has asked me to step away from my business to serve my country in the capacity of Secretary of the Treasury. Let me tell you a little bit about myself . . .\"\n\n\"WHAT DO WE know about him?\" Kealty asked.\n\n\"Plenty. He's smart. He's tough. He's pretty honest. And he's richer 'n God.\" _Even richer than you,_ the aide didn't say.\n\n\"Ever investigated?\"\n\n\"Never.\" His chief of staff shook his head. \"Maybe he's skated on thin ice, but\u2014no, Ed, I can't even say that. The book on Winston is that he plays by the rules. His investment group is highly rated for performance and integrity. He had a bad trader working for him eight years ago, and George personally testified against him in court. He also made good the guy's shenanigans out of his own pocket. His own _personal_ pocket, that is. Forty million dollars' worth. The crook served five years. He's a good choice for Ryan. He's no politician, but he's well respected on the Street.\"\n\n\"Shit,\" Kealty observed.\n\n\"MR. CHAIRMAN, THERE are a lot of things that need to be done.\" Winston set his opening statement aside and continued off the cuff. Or so it seemed. He jerked his left hand to the pile of books. \"That broken table over there. That's the U.S. Tax Code. It's a principle of common law that ignorance of the law is not a defense before the bar of justice. But that doesn't make sense anymore. The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service both promulgate and enforce the tax law of our country. Excuse me, those laws are passed by the Congress, as we all know, but mainly they happen because my department submits the proposed set of rules, and the Congress modifies and approves them, and then we enforce them. In many cases, the interpretation of the code you pass is left to people who work for me, and as we all know, the interpretation can be as important as the laws themselves. We have special tax courts to make further rulings\u2014but what we end up with is that pile of printed paper over there, and I would submit to this committee that nobody, not even an experienced member of the bar, can possibly understand it all.\n\n\"We even have the absurd situation that when a citizen brings his tax records and return forms into an IRS office for assistance from the people who enforce the law, and those IRS employees make a mistake, then the _citizen_ who comes to his government for help is responsible for the mistakes the _government_ makes. Now, when I was in the trading business, if I gave my client a bad piece of advice, I had to take the responsibility for it.\n\n\"The purpose of taxes is to provide revenue for the country's government so that the government can serve the people. But along the way we've created an entire industry that takes billions of dollars from the public. Why? To explain a tax code that gets more complex every year, a code that the enforcement people themselves do not understand with a sufficient degree of confidence to undertake responsibility for getting it right. You already know, or you should\"\u2014they didn't\u2014\"the amount of money we spend on enforcing that tax code, and that's not especially productive, either. We're supposed to be working for the people, not confusing them.\n\n\"And so, Mr. Chairman, there are some things I hope to be able to accomplish during my term at Treasury, if the committee sees fit to confirm my nomination. First, I want the tax code completely rewritten into something a normal person can understand. I want that tax code to make sense. I want a code with no special breaks. I want the same rules to apply equally to everybody. I am prepared to present a proposal to do exactly that. I want to work with the committee to make that into law. I want to work with you ladies and gentlemen. I will not let any corporate or any other form of lobbyist into my office to discuss this matter, and here and now, I beseech you to do the same. Mr. Chairman, when we start talking to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has a little suggestion to take care of a special group with special needs, we end up with that!\" Winston pointed to the broken table again. \"We're all Americans. We're supposed to work together, and in the long run, tweaking the tax laws of our country for every lobbyist with an office and a clientele ultimately takes _more_ money from everybody. The laws of our country are not supposed to be a jobs program for accountants and lawyers in the private sector, and bureaucrats in the public sector. The laws which you pass and which people like me enforce are supposed to serve the needs of the citizens, not the needs of the government.\n\n\"Second, I want my department to run efficiently. _Efficiency_ is not a word that government knows how to spell, much less implement. That has to change. Well, I can't change this whole city, but I _can_ change the department with which the President has entrusted me, and which, I hope, you will let me have. I know how to run a business. The Columbus Group serves literally millions of people, directly and indirectly, and I've borne that burden with pride. I will, in the next few months, submit a budget for a Department of the Treasury that doesn't have so much as one excess position.\" It was a considerable exaggeration, but nonetheless an impressive one. \"This room has heard such claims before, and I will not blame you for taking my words with a ton of salt, but I am a man accustomed to backing up my words with results, and that's going to happen here, too.\n\n\"President Ryan had to yell at me to get me to move into Washington. I don't _like_ it here, Mr. Chairman,\" Winston told the committee. He had them now. \"I want to do my job and leave. But the job is going to get done, if you let me. That concludes my opening statement.\"\n\nThe most experienced people in the room were the reporters in the second row\u2014the first row had Winston's wife and family. They knew how things were done and how things were said. A cabinet officer was supposed to wax rhapsodic about the honor of being allowed to serve, about the joy of being entrusted with power, about the responsibility that would bear heavily upon him or her.\n\n_I don't like it here?_ The reporters stopped writing their notes and looked up, first at the dais, and then at one another.\n\nMOVIE STAR LIKED what he saw. Though the danger to him was greater, the risk was balanced. Here there was a main four-lane highway within a few meters of the objective, and that led to an infinite network of side roads. Best of all, you could see almost everything. Directly behind the objective was a clump of woods, dense enough that it could not hold a support vehicle. There had to be one, and where would it be . . . ? Hmm, _there,_ he thought. There was one house close enough with an attached garage that actually faced the day-care center and that one . . . yes. Two cars parked right in front of that house\u2014why weren't they parked inside? So probably the Secret Service had made an arrangement with the owners. It was ideal, fifty meters from the demi-school, facing in the right direction. If something untoward happened, the alarm would be issued, and the support vehicle would instantly be manned, the garage door opened, and out it would race like a tank, except that it wasn't a tank.\n\nThe problem with security in a case such as this was that you had to set your procedures in stone, and clever as the Secret Service people undoubtedly were, their arrangements had to fit parameters both known and predictable. He checked his watch. How to confirm his suspicions? For starters, he needed a few minutes at rest. Directly across from Giant Steps was a convenience store, and that he'd check, because the enemy would have a person there, maybe more than one. He pulled in, parked the car, and went in, spending a minute or so blundering about.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" a voice asked. Female, twenty-five\u2014no older than that, but trying to look young. One did that with the cut of the hair and a little makeup, Movie Star knew. He'd used female operatives himself, and that's what he'd told them. Younger people always appear less threatening, especially the females. With a smile of confusion and embarrassment, he walked to the counter.\n\n\"I'm looking for your maps,\" he said.\n\n\"Right there under the counter.\" The clerk pointed with a smile. She was Secret Service. The eyes were too bright for the person to be in such a menial job.\n\n_\"Ach,\"_ he said in disgust, selecting a large book map that would show every residential street in the district county, they called them in America. He lifted it and flipped pages, one eye trained across the street. The children were being led outside to the playground. Four adults with them. Two would have been the normal number. So, at least two\u2014three, he realized, spotting a man in the shadows, hardly moving at all. Large man, 180 centimeters or so, wearing casual clothes. Yes, the playground faced the dwelling with the garage. The watchers _had_ to be there. Two more, perhaps three, would be in the dwelling, always watching. This would not exactly be easy, but he _would_ know where the opposition was. \"How much for the map?\"\n\n\"Printed right there on the cover.\"\n\n_\"Ach, ja,_ excuse me.\" He reached into his pocket. \"Five dollar, ninety-five,\" he said to himself, fishing for the change.\n\n\"Plus tax.\" She rang it up on the register. \"Are you new to the area?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am. I am teacher.\"\n\n\"Oh, what do you teach?\"\n\n\"German,\" he replied, taking his change, and counting it. \"I want to see what houses are like here. Thank you for the map. I have much to do.\" A curt European nod punctuated the encounter, and he left without a further look across the street. Movie Star had a sudden chill. The clerk had definitely been a police type. She'd be watching him right now, probably taking down his license number, but if she did, and if the Secret Service ran the number, they'd find that his name was Dieter Kolb, a German citizen from Frankfurt, a teacher of English, currently out of the country, and unless they pressed, that cover would be sufficient. He pulled north on Ritchie Highway, turning right at the first opportunity. There was a community college on a hill nearby, and in America those all had parking lots.\n\nIt was just a matter of finding a good spot. This was it. The intervening woods would soon fill out with the coming of spring, blocking visual access to Giant Steps. The rear of the house whose garage probably held the Chevy Suburban support vehicle had only a few windows facing in this direction, and those were curtained. The same was true of the preschool itself. Movie Star\/Kolb lifted a pair of compact binoculars and scanned. It wasn't easy with all the tree trunks between him and the objective, but thorough as the American Secret Service was, its people weren't perfect. None were. More to the point, Giant Steps was not a favorable location for quartering so important a child, but that wasn't surprising. The Ryan family had sent all of its children here. The teachers were probably excellent, and Ryan and his physician wife probably knew them and were friendly with them, and the news stories he'd copied down from the Internet emphasized the fact that the Ryans wanted to keep their family life intact. Very human. And foolish.\n\nHe watched the children cavort on the playground. It seemed to be covered with wood chips. How natural it all was, the little ones cocooned in bulky winter clothes\u2014the temperature was eleven or twelve, he estimated\u2014and running about, some on the monkey bars, others on swings, still more playing in what dirt they could find. The manner of dress told him that these children were well lookedafter, and they were, after all, children. Except for one. Which one he couldn't tell from this distance\u2014they'd need photos for that, when the time came\u2014but that one wasn't a child at all. That one was a political statement for someone to make. Who would make the statement, and exactly why the statement would be made didn't concern Movie Star. He'd remain in his perch for several hours, not thinking at all about what might result from his activities. Or might not. He didn't care. He'd write up his memorized notes, draw his detailed maps and diagrams, and forget about it. \"Kolb\" was years past caring about it all. What had begun with religious fervor for the liberating Holy War of his people had, with the passage of time, become work for which he was paid. If, in the end, something happened which he found politically beneficial, so much the better, but somehow that had never taken place, despite all the hopes and dreams and fiery rhetoric, and what sustained him was the work and his skill at it. How strange, Movie Star thought, that it should have become so, but the passionate ones were mainly dead, victims of their own dedication. His face grimaced at the irony of it. The true believers done in by their own passion, and those who sustained the hope of his people were those who . . . didn't care anymore? Was that true?\n\n\"MANY PEOPLE WILL object to the nature of your proposed tax plan. A really fair plan is progressive,\" the senator went on. Predictably, he was one of the survivors, not one of the new arrivals. He had the mantra down. \"Doesn't this place rather a high burden on working Americans?\"\n\n\"Senator, I understand what you're saying,\" Winston replied after taking a sip from his water glass. \"But what do you mean when you say 'working' Americans? I work. I built my business from the ground up and, believe me, that's work. The First Lady, Cathy Ryan, makes something like four hundred thousand dollars per year\u2014much more than her husband, I might add. Does that mean she doesn't work? I think she does. She's a surgeon. I have a brother who's a physician, and I know the hours he works. True, those two people make more than the average American does, but the marketplace has long since decided that the work they do is more valuable than what some other people do. If you're going blind, a union auto worker can't help you; neither can a lawyer. A physician can. That doesn't mean that the physician doesn't _work,_ Senator. It means that the work requires higher qualifications and much longer training, and that as a result the work is more highly compensated. What about a baseball player? That's another category of skilled work, and nobody in this room objects to the salary paid Ken Griffey, Jr., for example. Why? Because he's superb at what he does, one of the\u2014what?\u2014four or five best in the entire world, and he is lavishly compensated for it. Again, that's the marketplace at work.\n\n\"In a broader sense, speaking in my capacity as a mere citizen instead of a Secretary-designate, I object strongly to the artificial and mainly false dichotomy that some people in the political arena place between blue-collar and white-collar workers. There is no way to earn an honest living in this country except by providing a product or a service to the public and, generally speaking, the harder and smarter you work, the more money you make. It's just that some people have greater abilities than others. If there is an idle-rich class in America, I think the only place you find them is in the movies. Who in this room, if you had the choice, would not instantly trade places with Ken Griffey or Jack Nicklaus? Don't all of us dream about being that good at something? I do,\" Winston admitted. \"But I can't swing a bat that hard.\n\n\"Okay, what about a really talented software engineer? I can't do that, either. What about an inventor? What about an executive who transforms a company from a loser to a profit-maker\u2014remember what Samuel Gompers said? The worst failure of a captain of industry is to fail to show a profit. Why? Because a profitable company is one that does its job well, and only those companies can compensate their workers properly, and at the same time return money to their shareholders\u2014and those are the people who invest their money in the _company_ which generated _jobs_ for its _workers._\n\n\"Senator, the thing we forget is why we're here and what we're trying to do. The government doesn't provide productive jobs. That's not what we're supposed to do. General Motors and Boeing and Microsoft are the ones who employ workers to turn out products the people need. The job of government is to protect the people, to enforce the law, and to make sure people play by the rules, like the umpires on a ball field. It's not supposed to be our job, I think, to punish people for playing the game well.\n\n\"We collect taxes so that the government can perform its functions. But we've gotten away from that. We should collect those taxes in such a way as to do minimum harm to the economy as a whole. Taxes are by their very nature a negative influence, and we can't get away from that, but what we can do is at least structure the tax system in such a way that it does minimum harm, and maybe even encourages people to use their money in such a way as to encourage the overall system to work.\"\n\n\"I know where you're going. You're going to talk about cutting capital-gains taxes, but that benefits only the few, at the cost of\u2014\"\n\n\"Senator, excuse me for interrupting, but that simply is not true, and you know it's not true,\" Winston chided brusquely. \"Reducing the rate of tax on capital gains means the following: it encourages people to invest their money\u2014no, let me back up a little.\n\n\"Let's say I make a thousand dollars. I pay taxes on that money, pay my mortgage, pay for food, pay for the car, and what I have left I invest in, oh, XYZ Computer Company. XYZ takes my money and hires somebody. That person works at his job like I work at mine, and from what work he does\u2014he's making a product which the public likes and buys, right?\u2014the company generates a profit, which the company shares with me. _That_ money is taxed as regular income. Then I sell the stock and buy into another company, so that it can hire somebody else. The money realized from selling the stock issue is capital gains. People don't put their money under the mattress anymore,\" he reminded them, \"and we don't want them to. We want them to invest in America, in their fellow citizens.\n\n\"Now, I've already paid tax on the money which I invested, right? Okay, then I help give some fellow citizen a job. That job makes something for the public. And for _helping_ give a worker a job, and for _helping_ that worker make something for the public, I get a modest return. That's good for that worker I helped to hire, and good for the public. Then I move on to do the same thing somewhere else. Why punish me for that? Doesn't it make more sense to _encourage_ people to do that? And, remember, we've already taxed that investment money once anyway\u2014in actual practice, more than once.\n\n\"That isn't good for the country. It's bad enough that we take so much, but the manner in which we take it is egrcgiously counterproductive. Why are we here, Senator? We're supposed to be _helping_ things along, not hurting. And the net result, remember, is a tax system so complicated that we need to collect billions to administer it\u2014and _that_ money is totally wasted. Toss in all the accountants and tax lawyers who make their living off something the public can't understand,\" SecTreas concluded.\n\n\"America isn't about envy. America isn't about class rivalry. We don't _have_ a class system in America. Nobody tells an American citizen what they can do. Birth doesn't count for much. Look at the committee members. Son of a farmer, son of a teacher, son of a truck driver, son of a lawyer, you, Senator Nikolides, son of an immigrant. If America was a class-defined society, then how the heck did you people get here?\" he demanded. His current questioner was a professional politician, son of another, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch, Winston thought, and didn't get classified. Everyone he'd just pointed to _kvelled_ a little at being singled out for the cameras. \"Gentlemen, let's try and make it easier for people to do what we've all done. If we have to skew the system, then let's do it in such a way that it encourages our fellow citizens to help one another. If America has a structural economic problem, it's that we don't generate as many opportunities as we should and can do. The system isn't perfect. Fine, let's try to fix it some. That's why we're all here.\"\n\n\"But the system must demand that everyone pay their fair share,\" the senator said, trying to take the floor back.\n\n\"What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and _twenty_ times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and dole it back\u2014and, oh, by the way, those rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists who talk to people in the political arena and get a million special exceptions written into the system so that they don't get totally fleeced\u2014and they don't, and we all know that\u2014and what do we end up with?\" Winston waved his hand at the pile of books on the floor of the committee room. \"We end up with a jobs program for bureaucrats, and accountants, and lawyers, and lobbyists, and somewhere along the way the taxpaying citizens are just plain forgotten. We don't care that they can't make sense of the system that's supposed to serve them. It's not supposed to be that way.\" Winston leaned into the microphone. \"I'll tell you what I think 'fair' means. I think it means that we all bear the same burden in the same proportion. I think it means that the system not only allows but encourages us to participate in the economy. I think it means that we promulgate simple and comprehensible laws so that people know where they stand. I think 'fair' means that it's a level playing field, and everybody gets the same breaks, and that we don't punish Ken Griffey for hitting home runs. We admire him. We try to emulate him. We try to make more like him. And we keep out of his way.\"\n\n\"Let 'em eat cake?\" the chief of staff said.\n\n\"We can't say hot dogs, can we?\" Kealty asked. Then he smiled broadly. \"Finally.\"\n\n\"Finally,\" another aide agreed.\n\nTHE RESULTS WERE _all_ equivocal. The FBI polygrapher had been working all morning, and every single set of tracings on the fan-fold paper was iffy. It couldn't be helped. An all-night session, they'd all told him, looking into something important which he wasn't cleared for. That made it the Iran\/Iraq situation, of course. He could watch CNN as well as anyone. The men he'd put on the box were all tired and irritable, and some had fluttered badly on telling him their proper names and job descriptions, and the whole exercise had been useless. Probably.\n\n\"Did I pass?\" Rutledge asked, when he took off the pressurized armband in the manner of someone who'd done this all before.\n\n\"Well, I'm sure you've been told before\u2014\"\n\n\"It's not a pass-or-fail examination process,\" the Under Secretary of State said tiredly. \"Yeah, tell that to somebody who lost his clearance because of a session on the box. I hate the damned things, always have.\"\n\nIt was right up\u2014or down\u2014there with being a dentist, the FBI agent thought, and though he was one of the best around at this particular black art, he'd learned nothing this day that would help the investigation.\n\n\"The session you had last night\u2014\"\n\nRutledge cut him off cold. \"Can't discuss it, sorry.\"\n\n\"No, I mean, this sort of thing normal here?\"\n\n\"It will be for a while, probably. Look, you know what it's about, probably.\" The agent nodded, and the Under Secretary did the same. \"Fine. Then you know it's a big deal, and we're going to be burning a lot of midnight oil over it, especially my people. So, lots of coffee and long hours and short tempers.\" He checked his watch. \"My working group gets together in ten minutes. Anything else?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\"\n\n\"Thanks for a fun ninety minutes,\" Rutledge said, heading for the door. It was so easy. You just had to know how the things worked. They wanted relaxed and peaceful subjects to get proper results\u2014the polygraph essentially measured tension induced by awkward questions. So make everybody tense. That was simple enough. And really the Iranians were doing the work. All he had to do was stoke the fires a little. That was good for a smile as he entered the executive washroom.\n\n_THERE_. MOVIE STAR checked his watch and made a further mental note. Two men walked out of the private dwelling. One of them turned to say something as he closed the door. They walked to the parking lot of Giant Steps, eyes scanning around in a way that identified them as positively as uniforms and rifles. The Chevy Suburban emerged from the private garage. A good hiding place, but a little too obvious to the skilled observer. Two children came out together, one led by a woman, the other by a man . . . yes, the one who'd been in the shadowed doorway when they'd gone out for their afternoon playtime. Large man, formidable one. Two women, one in front, one behind. All the heads turning and scanning. They took the child to a plain car. The Suburban halted in front of the driveway, and the other cars followed it down the highway, with a police car, he saw, fifteen seconds behind.\n\nIt would be a difficult task, but not an impossible one, and the mission had several different outcomes, all acceptable to his patrons. Just as well that he didn't get sentimental about children. He'd been involved in such missions before, and you simply couldn't look at them as children at all. The one who'd been led by the large hand of her bodyguard was what he'd decided before, a political statement to be made by someone else. Allah would not have approved. Movie Star knew that. There was not a religion in the world that sanctioned harm to a child, but religions were not instruments of statecraft, regardless of what Badrayn's current superior might believe. Religions were something for an ideal world, and the world wasn't ideal. And so one might use unusual means to serve religious goals, and that meant . . . something he simply didn't think about. It was business, his business, to see what could be done, rules or not, and Movie Star wasn't the least bit sanctimonious about it, which, he thought, was probably why he was still alive while others were not\u2014and, if he read this properly, still others would not be.\n**28**\n\n**. . . BUT A WHIMPER**\n\n**P** OLITICIANS RARELY LIKE surprises. Much as they enjoy dropping them on others\u2014mainly other politicians, usually in public, and invariably delivered with all the care and planning of a jungle ambush\u2014they reciprocally detest being on the receiving end. And that was just the political sort, in countries where politics was a fairly civilized business.\n\nIn Turkmenistan, things had not gotten that far yet. The Premier\u2014he had a wide variety of titles to choose from, and he liked this one better than \"president\"\u2014enjoyed everything about his life and his office. As a chieftain of the semi-departed Communist Party, he would have lived under greater personal restrictions than were now the case, and would always be at the end of a telephone line to Moscow, like a brook fish at the end of a long leader. But not now. Moscow no longer had the reach, and he had become too large a fish. He was a vigorous man in his late fifties and, as he liked to joke, a man of the people. The \"people\" in this case had been an attractive clerk of twenty years who, after an evening of fine dining and a little ethnic dancing (at which he excelled), had entertained him as only a young woman could, and now he was driving back to his official residence under a clear, starry sky, sitting in the right-front seat of his black Mercedes with the sated smile of a man who'd just proven that that's what he was, in the best possible way. Perhaps he'd wangle a promotion for the girl . . . in a few weeks. His was the exercise of, if not absolute power, then surely enough for any man, and with that came near-utter contentment. Popular with his people as an earthy, commonfolk sort of leader, he knew how to act, how to sit with the people, how to grasp a hand or a shoulder, always in front of TV cameras to show that he was one of them. \"Cult of personality\" was what the former regime had called it, and that's what it was, and that, he knew for sure, was what all politics had to be. His was a great responsibility, and he met that duty, and in return he was owed some things. One of them was this fine German automobile\u2014smuggling that into the country had been an exercise in panache rather than corruption\u2014and another was now returning to her bed with a smile and a sigh. And life was good. He didn't know he had less than sixty seconds of it left.\n\nHe didn't bother with a police escort. His people loved him. He was sure of that, too, and besides it was late. But there was a police car, he saw, at an intersection, its light turning and flashing, blocking the way, just beyond the cross street. A dismounted policeman raised his hand while talking into his radio, hardly even looking at them. The Premier wondered what the problem was. His driver\/ bodyguard slowed the Mercedes with an annoyed snort, stopping it right in the intersection and making sure his pistol was readily accessible. Barely had the official car stopped when both of them heard a noise to their right. The Premier turned that way, and scarcely had time for his eyes to go wide before the Zil-157 truck hit him at forty kilometers per hour. The high military-style bumper hit just at the bottom of the door glass, and the official car was thrown ten meters to the left, stopping when it hit the stone walls of an office building. Then it was time for the policeman to walk over, assisted by two others who had appeared from the shadows. The driver was dead from a broken neck. The policemen could see that from the angle of his head, and one of them reached through the shattered windshield to shake it around, just to make sure. But the Premier, to everyone's astonishment, was still moaning, despite his injuries. Due to all the drink, they thought, his body limp and limber. Well, that was easily fixed. The senior cop walked to the truck, flipped open the tool box, took a tire iron, returned, and smashed it against the side of his Premier's head just forward of the ear. That task completed, he tossed the tool back to the truck driver, and the premier of Turkmenistan was dead as the result of an auto accident. Well, then, their country would have to have elections, wouldn't it? That would be something of a first, and it would call for a leader whom the people knew and respected.\n\n\"SENATOR, IT'S BEEN a long day,\" Tony Bretano agreed. \"And it's been rather a long couple of weeks for me, learning the ropes and meeting the people, but, you know, management is management, and the Department of Defense has been without it for quite some time. I am especially concerned with the procurement system. It takes too long and costs too much. The problem isn't so much corruption as an attempt to impose a standard of fairness so exacting that\u2014well, as a pedestrian example, if you bought food the way DOD is forced to buy weapons, you'd starve to death in the supermarket while trying to decide between Libby and DelMonte pears. TRW is an engineering company, and to my way of thinking, a very good one. There's no way I could run my company like this. My stockholders would lynch me. We can do better, and I intend to see that we do.\"\n\n\"Mr. Secretary-designate,\" the senator asked, \"how much longer does this have to go on? We just won a war and\u2014\"\n\n\"Senator, America has the best medical care in the world, but people still die from cancer and heart disease. The best isn't always good enough, is it? But more than that, and more to the point, we can do better for less money. I am not going to come to you with a request for increased overall funding. Acquisition funding will have to be higher, yes. Training and readiness will be higher also. But the real money in defense goes out in personnel costs, and that is where we can make a difference. The whole department is overmanned in the wrong places. That wastes the taxpayers' money. I know. I pay a lot of taxes. We do not utilize our people effectively, and nothing, Senator, is more wasteful than that. I think I can promise you a net reduction of two or three percent. Maybe more if I can get a handle on the acquisition system. For the latter, I need statutory assistance. There's no reason why we have to wait eight to twelve years to field a new airplane. We study things to death. That was once meant to save money, and maybe once it was a good idea, but now we spend more money on studies than we do on real R and D. It's time to stop inventing the wheel every two years. Our citizens work for the money we spend, and we owe it to them to spend it intelligently.\n\n\"Most important of all, when America sends her sons and daughters into harm's way, they must be the besttrained, best-supported, best-equipped forces we can put into the field. The fact of the matter is that we can do that and save money also, by making the system work more efficiently.\" The nice thing about this new crop of senators, Bretano reflected, was they didn't know what was impossible. He would never have gotten away with what he'd just said as recently as a year earlier. Efficiency was a concept foreign to most government agencies, not because there was anything wrong with the people, but because nobody had ever told them to do better. There was much to be said for working at the place that printed the money, but there was much to be said for eating eclairs, too, until your arteries clogged up. If the heart of America were its government, the nation would long since have fallen over dead. Fortunately, his country's heart was elsewhere, and surviving on healthier food.\n\n\"But why do we need so much defense in an age when\u2014\"\n\nBretano cut him off again. It was a habit he'd have to break, which he knew even as he did it\u2014but this was too much. \"Senator, have you checked the building across the street lately?\"\n\nIt was amusing to see the way the man's head jerked back, even though the aide to Bretano's left flinched almost as badly. That senator had a vote, both on the committee and on the floor of the Senate chamber, which was still open for business now that they'd gotten the smoke out of the building. But the point got across to most of the others, and the SecDef was willing to settle for that. In due course, the chairman gaveled the session to a close, and scheduled a vote for the following morning. The senators had already made their votes clear with their praise for Bretano's forthright and positive statement, pledging their desire to work with him in words almost as naive as his own, and with that another day ended on one place, with a new one soon to begin in another.\n\nNO SOONER HAD the UN resolution passed, than the first ship had sailed for the brief steam to the Iraqi port of Bushire, there to be unloaded by the huge vacuum cleanerlike structures, and from that point on, things had gone quickly. For the first morning in many years, there would be bread enough on the breakfast tables of Iraq for everyone. Morning television proclaimed the fact for all\u2014with the predictable live shots of neighborhood bakeries selling off their wares to happy, smiling crowds\u2014and then concluding with word that the new revolutionary government was meeting today to discuss other matters of national importance. These signals were duly copied down at PALM BOWL and STORM TRACK and passed along, but the real news that day came from another source.\n\nGolovko told himself that the Turkoman Premier might well have died in an accident. His personal proclivities were well known to the RVS, and vehicle accidents were hardly unknown in his country or any other\u2014in fact, auto mishaps had been hugely disproportionate in the Soviet Union, especially those associated with drink. But Golovko had never been one to believe in coincidences of any sort, most particularly those which happened in ways and at times inconvenient to his country. It didn't help that he had ample assets in place to diagnose the problem. The Premier was dead. There would be elections. The likely winner was obvious because the departed politician had been wonderfully effective stifling political opposition. And now also, he saw, Iranian military units were forming up for road marches to their west. Two dead chiefs of state, in such a short time, within such a short radius, both in countries bordering Iran . . . no, even if it had been a coincidence, he would not have believed it. With that, Golovko changed hats\u2014the Western aphorism\u2014and lifted his phone.\n\nUSS _PASADENA_ WAS positioned between the two PRC surface-action groups, currently operating about nine miles apart. The submarine had a full load of weapons, war shots all, but for all that, it was rather like being the only cop in Times Square at midnight on New Year's, trying to keep track of everything at the same time. Having a loaded gun didn't amount to very much. Every few minutes he deployed his ESM mast to get a feel for the electronic signals being radiated about, and his sonar department also fed data to the tracking party in the after portion of the attack center\u2014as many men as could fit around the chart table were busily keeping tabs on the various contacts. The skipper ordered his boat to go deep, to three hundred feet, just below the layer, so that he could take a few minutes to examine the plot, which had become far too complex for him to keep it all in his head. With the boat steadied up on her new depth, he took the three steps aft to look.\n\nIt was a FleetEx, but the type of FleetEx wasn't quite . . . ordinarily one group played the \"good guys\" against the theoretical \"bad guys\" in the other group, and you could tell what was what by the way the ships were arrayed. Instead of orienting toward each other, however, both groups were oriented to the east. This was called the \"threat axis,\" meaning the direction from which the enemy was expected to strike. To the east lay the Republic of China, which comprised mainly the island of Taiwan. The senior chief operations specialist supervising the plot was marking up the acetate overlay, and the picture was about as clear as it needed to be.\n\n\"Conn, sonar,\" came the next call.\n\n\"Conn, aye,\" the captain acknowledged, taking the microphone.\n\n\"Two new contacts, sir, designate Sierra Twenty and Twenty-one. Both appear to be submerged contacts. Sierra Twenty, bearing three-two-five, direct path and faint . . . stand by . . . okay, looks like a Han-class SSN, good cut on the fifty-Hertz line, plant noise also. Twenty-one, also submerged contact, at three-three-zero, starting to look like a Xia, sir.\"\n\n\"A boomer in a FleetEx?\" the senior chief wondered.\n\n\"How good's the cut on Twenty-one?\"\n\n\"Improving now, sir,\" the sonar chief replied. The entire sonar crew was in their compartment, just forward of the attack center on the starboard side. \"Plant noise says Xia to me, Cap'n. The Han is maneuvering south, bearing now three-two-one, getting a blade rate . . . call its speed eighteen knots.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" The operations chief made a quick, notional plot. The SSN and the boomer would be behind the northern surface group.\n\n\"Anything else, sonar?\" the captain asked.\n\n\"Sir, getting a little complicated with all these tracks.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" someone breathed at the tracking table, while making another change.\n\n\"Anything to the east?\" the CO persisted.\n\n\"Sir, easterly we have six contacts, all classified as merchant traffic.\"\n\n\"We got 'em all here, sir,\" the operations chief confirmed. \"Nothing yet from the Taiwan navy.\"\n\n\"That's gonna change,\" the captain thought aloud.\n\nGENERAL BONDARENKO DIDN'T believe in coincidences, either. More than that, the southern part of the country once known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics held little charm for him. His time in Afghanistan and a frantic night in Tajikistan had seen to that. In the abstract he would not have minded the total divorce of the Russian Republic from the Muslim proto-nations arrayed on his country's southern border, but the real world wasn't abstract.\n\n\"So, what do you think is going on?\" the general-lieutenant asked.\n\n\"Are you briefed in on Iraq?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am, Comrade Chairman.\"\n\n\"Then you tell me, Gennady Iosefovich,\" Golovko commanded.\n\nBondarenko leaned across the map table, and spoke while moving a finger about. \"I would say that what concerns you is the possibility that Iran is making a bid for superpower status. In uniting with Iraq, they increase their oil wealth by something like forty percent. Moreover, that would give them contiguous borders with Kuwait and the Saudi kingdom. The conquest of those nations would redouble their wealth-one may safely assume that the lesser nations would fall as well. The objective circumstances here are self-evident,\" the general went on, speaking in the calm voice of a professional soldier analyzing disaster. \"Combined, Iran and Iraq outnumber the combined populations of the other states by a considerable margin\u2014five to one, Comrade Chairman? More? I do not recall exactly, but certainly the manpower advantage is decisive, which would make outright conquest or at least great political influence likely. That alone would give this new United Islamic Republic enormous economic power, the ability to choke off the energy supply to Western Europe and Asia at will.\n\n\"Now, Turkmenistan. If this is, as you suspect, not a coincidence, then we see that Iran wishes to move north also, perhaps to absorb Azerbaijan\"\u2014his finger traced along the map\u2014\"Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, at least part of Kazakhstan. That would triple their population, add a significant resource base to their United Islamic Republic, and next, one assumes, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we have a new nation stretching from the Red Sea to the Hindu Kush\u2014 _nyet_ , more to the point, from the Red Sea to China, and then our southern border is completely lined with nations hostile to us.\" Then he looked up.\n\n\"This is much worse than I had been led to expect, Scrgcy Nikolay'ch,\" he concluded soberly. \"We know the Chinese covet what we have in the east. This new state threatens _our_ southern oil fields in the Transcaucasus\u2014I cannot defend this border. My God, defending against Hitler was child's play compared to this.\"\n\nGolovko was on the other side of the map table. He'd called Bondarenko for a reason. The senior leadership of his country's military was composed of holdovers from the earlier era\u2014but these were finally dying off, and Gennady Iosefovich was one of the new breed, battle-tested in the misbegotten Afghan War, old enough to know what battle was\u2014perversely, this made him and his peers the superiors of those whom they would soon replace\u2014and young enough that they didn't have the ideological baggage of the former generation, either. Not a pessimist, but an optimist ready to learn from the West, where he'd just spent over a month with the various NATO armies, learning everything he could\u2014especially, it would seem, from the Americans. But Bondarenko was looking down at the map in alarm.\n\n\"How long?\" the general asked. \"How long to establish this new state?\"\n\nGolovko shrugged. \"Who can say? Three years, perhaps two at the worst. At best, five.\"\n\n\"Give me five years and the ability to rebuild our country's military power, and we can . . . probably . . . no.\" Bondarenko shook his head. \"I can give you no guarantee. The government will not give me the money and resources I require. It can't. We do not have the money to spend.\"\n\n\"And then?\" The general looked up, straight into the RVS chairman's eyes.\n\n\"And then I would prefer to be the operations officer for the other side. In the east we have mountains to defend, and that is good, but we have only two rail lines for logistical support, and that is _not_ so good. In the center, what if they absorb all of Kazakhstan?\" He tapped the map. \"Look how close that puts them to Moscow. And what about alliances? With Ukraine, perhaps? What about Turkey? What about Syria? All of the Middle East will have to come to terms with this new state . . . we lose, Comrade Chairman. We can threaten to use nuclear arms but what real good does that do us? China can afford the loss of five hundred million, and still outnumber us. Their economy grows strong while ours continues to stagnate. They can afford to buy weapons from the West, or better yet to license the designs to manufacture their own. Our use of nuclear arms is dangerous, both tactically and strategically, and there is the political dimension which I will leave to you. Militarily, we will be outnumbered in all relevant categories. The enemy will have superiority in terms of arms, manpower, and geographic location. Their ability to cut off the oil supply to the rest of the world limits our hope of securing foreign help\u2014assuming that any Western nation will have such a desire in the first place. What you have shown me is the potential destruction of our country.\" That he delivered this assessment calmly was the most disturbing fact of all. Bondarenko was not an alarmist. He was merely stating objective fact.\n\n\"And to prevent it?\"\n\n\"We cannot permit the loss of the southern republics, but at the same time, how do we hold them? Take control of Turkmenistan? Fight the guerrilla campaign that would surely result? Our army is in no shape to fight that sort of war\u2014not even one of them, and it won't be just one, will it?\" Bondarenko's predecessor had been fired over the failure of the Red Army\u2014the term and the thought died hard\u2014to deal effectively with the Chechens. What should have been a relatively simple effort at pacification had advertised to the world that the Russian army was scarcely a shadow of what it had been only a few years before.\n\nThe Soviet Union had operated on the principle of fear, they both knew. Fear of the KGB had kept the citizens in line, and fear of what the Red Army could and would do to any systematic rebellion had prevented large-scale political disturbances. But what happened when the fear went away? The Soviet failure to pacify Afghanistan, that despite the most brutal measures imaginable, had been a signal to the Muslim republics that their fear was misplaced. Now the Soviet Union was gone, and what remained was a mere shadow, and now that shadow could be erased by a brighter sun to the south. Golovko could see it on his visitor's face. Russia didn't have the power she needed. For all the bluster his country could still summon to awe the West\u2014the West still remembered the Warsaw Pact, and the specter of the massive Red Army, ready to march to the Bay of Biscay\u2014other parts of the world knew better. Western Europe and America still remembered the steel fist which they'd seen but never felt. Those who _had_ felt it knew at once when the grip lessened. More to the point, they knew the significance of the relaxed grip.\n\n\"What will you need?\"\n\n\"Time and money. Political support to rebuild our military. Help from the West.\" The general was still staring at the map. It was, he reflected, like being the scion of a powerful capitalist family. The patriarch had died, and he was the heir to a vast fortune\u2014only to discover that it was gone, leaving only debts. He'd come back from America upbeat, feeling that he'd seen the way, seen the future, found a way to secure his country and do it in the proper way, with a professional army composed of long-service experts, held together by esprit de corps, proud guardians and servants of a free nation, the way the Red Army had been on its march to Berlin. But that would take years to build. As it was . . . if Golovko and the RVS were right, then the best he could hope for was that his nation would rally as it had in 1941, trade space for time, as it had in 1941, and struggle back as it had in 1942\u201443. The general told himself that no one could see the future; that was a gift given to no man. And perhaps that was just as well, because the past, which all men knew, rarely repeated itself. Russia had been lucky against the fascists. One could not depend upon luck.\n\nOne could depend on a cunning and unpredictable adversary. Other people could look at a map the same as he, see the distances and obstacles, discern the correlation of forces, and know that the wild card lay on another sheet of printed paper, on the other side of the globe. The classical formula was first to cripple the strong, then crush the weak, and then, later, confront the strong again in one's own good time. Knowing that, Bondarenko could do nothing about it. He was the weak one. He had his own problems. His nation could not count on friends, only the enemies she had labored so long and so hard to create.\n\nSALEH HAD NEVER known such agony. He'd seen it, and had even inflicted it in his time as part of his country's security service\u2014but not like this, not this bad. It was as though he were now paying for every such episode all at once. His body was racked with pain throughout its entire length. His strength was formidable, his muscles firm, his personal toughness manifest. But not now. Now every gram of his tissue hurt, and when he moved slightly to assuage the hurt, all he accomplished was to move it about to a fractionally different place. The pain was so great as to blot out even the fear which should have attended it.\n\nBut not for the doctor. Ian MacGregor was wearing full surgical garb, a mask over his face, and his hands gloved\u2014only his concentration prevented them from shaking. He'd just drawn blood with the greatest care of his life, more than he'd ever exercised with AIDS patients, with two male orderlies clamping the patient's arm while he took the samples. He'd never seen a case of hemorrhagic fever. It had been for him nothing more than an entry in a textbook, or an article in the _Lancet._ Something intellectually interesting, and distantly frightening, as was cancer, as were other African diseases, but this was here and now.\n\n\"Saleh?\" the physician asked.\n\n\". . . yes.\" A word, a gasp.\n\n\"You came here how? I must know if I am to help you.\"\n\nThere was no mental hesitation, no consideration of secrets or security. He paused only to take a breath, to summon the energy to answer the question. \"From Baghdad. Airplane,\" he added unnecessarily.\n\n\"Africa? Have you visited Africa recently?\"\n\n\"Never before.\" The head turned left and right not so much as a centimeter, the eyes screwed shut. The patient was trying to be brave, and largely succeeding. \"First time Africa.\" -\n\n\"Have you had sexual relations recently? Last week or so,\" MacGregor clarified. It seemed so cruel a question. One could theoretically get such diseases through sexual contact\u2014maybe a local prostitute? Perhaps there was another case of this at another local hospital and it was being hushed up . . . ?\n\nIt took a moment for the man to realize what the man was asking, then another shake. \"No, no women in long time.\" MacGregor could see it on his face: _Never again, not for me_ ...\n\n\"Have you had any blood lately, been given blood, I mean?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Have you been in contact with anyone who had traveled anywhere?\"\n\n\"No, only Baghdad, only Baghdad, I am security guard for my general, with him all time, nothing else.\"\n\n\"Thank you. We're going to give you something for the pain. We're going to give you some blood, too, and try to cool you down with ice. I'll be back in a little while.\" The patient nodded, and the doctor left the room, carrying the blood-filled tubes in his gloved hands. \"Bloody hell,\" MacGregor breathed.\n\nWhile the nurses and orderlies did their job, MacGregor had his to do. One of the blood samples he split into two, packing both with the greatest care, one for Paris and the Pasteur Institute, and the other for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They'd go out via air express. The rest went to his lead technician, a competent Sudanese, while the doctor drafted a fax. Possible hemorrhagic fever case, it would read, giving country, city, and hospital\u2014but first . . . he lifted his phone and called his contact in the government health department.\n\n\"Here?\" the government doctor asked. \"In Khartoum? Are you sure? Where is the patient from?\"\n\n\"That is correct,\" MacGregor replied. \"The patient says that he came here from Iraq.\"\n\n\"Iraq? Why would this disease come from there? Have you tested for the proper antibodies?\" the official demanded.\n\n\"The test is being set up right now,\" the Scot told the African.\n\n\"How long?\"\n\n\"An hour.\"\n\n\"Before you make any notifications, let me come over to see,\" the official directed.\n\nTo supervise, the man meant. MacGregor closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the phone. This putative physician was a government appointee, the son of a longtime minister, and the best that could be said for this professional colleague was that while seated in his plush office he didn't endanger any living patients. MacGregor had to struggle to keep his temper in check. It was the same all over Africa. It was as though the local government were desirous to protect their tourist industry\u2014something Sudan singularly lacked, except for some anthropologists doing digs for primitive man down south, near the Ethiopian border. But it was the same everywhere on this lush continent. The government health departments denied everything, one reason why AIDS was so out of control in central Africa. They'd all denied and denied, and they would keep denying until what percentage of their populations were dead? Ten? Thirty? Fifty? But everyone was afraid to criticize African governments and their bureaucrats. It was so easy to be called a racist\u2014and so, better to keep quiet . . . and let people die.\n\n\"Doctor,\" MacGregor persisted, \"I am confident in my diagnosis, and I have a professional duty to\u2014\"\n\n\"It can wait until I come over,\" was the casual reply. It was just the African way, MacGregor knew, and there was no sense in fighting it. This battle he could not win. The Sudanese health department could have his visa lifted in minutes, and then who would treat his patients?\n\n\"Very well, Doctor. Please come over directly,\" he urged.\n\n\"I have a few things I must do, and then I will come over.\" That could mean all day, or even longer, and both men knew it. \"The patient is isolated?\"\n\n\"Full precautions are in place,\" MacGregor assured him.\n\n\"You are a fine physician, Ian, and I know I can trust you to see to it that nothing serious will happen.\" The line clicked off. He'd scarcely replaced the phone receiver when the instrument rang again.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Doctor, please come to Twenty-four,\" a nurse's voice told him.\n\nHe was there in three minutes. It was Sohaila. An orderly was carrying out the emesis tray. There was blood in it. She also had come here from Iraq, MacGregor knew. Oh, my God.\n\n\"NONE OF YOU have anything to fear.\"\n\nThe words were somewhat reassuring, though not as much as the members of the Revolutionary Council would have liked. The Iranian mullahs were probably telling the truth, but the colonels and generals around the table had fought against Iran as captains and majors, and one never forgets battlefield enemies.\n\n\"We need you to take control of your country's military,\" the senior one went on. \"As a result of your cooperation, you will retain your positions. We require only that you swear your loyalty to your new government in God's name.\" There would be more to it than that. They'd be watched closely. The officers all knew that. If they put a single foot wrong, they'd be shot for it. But they had nothing in the way of options, except perhaps to be taken out and shot this afternoon. Summary execution was not exactly unknown in either Iran or Iraq, an efficient way of dealing with dissidents, real or imagined, in both countries.\n\nFacing such a thing was so different from one side to the other. On the side of the guns, one saw it as a quick, efficient, and final way of settling things in one's favor. From the other side, it had the abrupt injustice of a helicopter crash\u2014just enough time for your spirit to scream _No!_ before the racing earth blotted everything out, the disbelief and outrage of it. Except that in this case, they actually had a choice of sorts. Certain death now, or the chance of death later. The senior surviving officers of the Iraqi military shared furtive looks. They were _not_ in control of their country's military. The military, the soldiers, were with the people, or with their company officers. The former was pleased to have a surplus of food to eat for the first time in almost a full decade. The latter was pleased as well to see a new day for their country. The break from the old regime was complete. It was just a bad memory now, and there was no return to it. The men in this room could reestablish control only through the good offices of the former enemies who stood at the end of the table with the serene smiles that went along with winning, that went along with holding the gift of life in their hands like pocket change, easily given and just as easily put away. They offered no choice, really.\n\nThe titular leader of the council nodded his submission, followed in seconds by all the others, and with the gesture, the identity of their country faded into history.\n\nFrom that point on, it was just a matter of making some telephone calls.\n\nTHE ONLY SURPRISE was that it didn't happen on television. For once, the listening posts at STORM TRACK and PALM BOWL were beaten by analysts elsewhere. The TV cameras were in place, as would later be seen, but first there was business to be done, and that was recorded on satellite.\n\nThe first Iranians across the border were in motorized units which speeded down the highways under radio silence, but it was daylight, and overhead came two KH-11 satellites which cross-linked their signals to communications birds, and from there down to the reception points. The nearest to Washington were at Fort Belvoir.\n\n\"Yes,\" Ryan said, lifting the phone to his ear.\n\n\"It's Ben Goodley, Mr. President. It's happening now. Iranian troops are crossing the border without any opposition we can see.\"\n\n\"Announcement?\"\n\n\"Nothing as yet. It looks like they want to be in control first.\"\n\nJack checked the clock on the night table. \"Okay, we'll handle it at the morning brief.\" There was no sense in ruining his sleep. He had people who would work through the night for him, Ryan told himself. He'd done it often enough himself.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nRyan replaced the phone, and was able to go back to sleep. It was one presidential skill he was learning to master. Maybe, he thought, as he faded out again, maybe he'd learn to play golf during a crisis . . . wouldn't that be...\n\nFITTINGLY, IT WAS one of the pederasts. He'd been looking after a fellow criminal\u2014this one was a murderer\u2014and doing a proper job of it, judging by the videotapes, which had accelerated the process.\n\nMoudi had been careful to tell the medical orderlies to supervise the new caregivers closely. The latter had taken the ordinary precautions, wearing their gloves, washing up carefully, keeping the room clean, mopping up all the fluids. This last task had become increasingly difficult with the advancing disease process in the first group of exposed subjects. Their collective moans came through the sound pickup with enough clarity for him to know what they were going through, especially with the absence of pain medications\u2014a violation of the Muslim rules of mercy, which Moudi set aside. The second group of subjects were doing what they'd been told, but they'd not been issued masks, and that was for a reason.\n\nThe pederast was a young man, perhaps early twenties, and he'd been surprisingly attentive to his charge. Whether out of an appreciation for the murderer's pain or just to appear to be worthy of mercy himself, it didn't matter. Moudi zoomed the camera in. The man's skin was flushed and dry, his movements slow and achy. The doctor lifted the phone. A minute later, one of the army medics came into the picture. He spoke briefly with the pederast, then poked the thermometer into his ear before leaving the room and lifting a corridor phone.\n\n\"Subject Eight has a temperature of thirty-nine-pointtwo and reports fatigue and aches in his extremities. His eyes are red and puffy,\" the medic reported brusquely. It was to be expected that the medics would not feel the same degree of empathy for any of the test subjects that they'd felt for Sister Jean Baptiste. Even though the latter had been an infidel, at least she'd been a woman of virtue. That was manifestly not true of the men in the room, and it made things easier for everyone.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nSo, it was true, Moudi told himself. The Mayinga strain was indeed airborne. Now it only remained to be seen if it had fully transmitted itself, that this new victim would die from it. When half of the second group showed symptoms, they would be moved across the hall to a treatment room of their own, and the first group\u2014they were all fatally afflicted with the Ebola\u2014would be medically terminated.\n\nThe director would be pleased, Moudi knew. The latest step in the experiment had been as successful as those before. It was now increasingly certain that they had a weapon in their hands such as no man had ever wielded. Isn't that wonderful, the physician observed to himself.\n\nTHE FLIGHT OUT was always easier on the disposition. Movie Star walked through the metal detector, stopped, had the magic wand waved over him, resulting in the usual embarrassment over his gold Cross pen, and then he walked to the first-class lounge, without even looking around for the policemen who, if they were about, would stop him here and now. But they weren't, and they didn't. His carry-on bag had a leather-bound clipboard in it, but he wouldn't take that out quite yet. The flight was called in due course, and he walked to the jetway, and quickly found his seat in the front of the 747. The flight was only half full, and that made things very convenient. No sooner had the aircraft lifted off than he took out his pad and started recording all the things he'd not wished to commit to paper just yet. As usual, his photographic memory helped, and he worked for three solid hours until, over mid-Atlantic, he succumbed to the need for sleep. He suspected, correctly, that he'd need it.\n**29**\n\n**FULL COURT**\n\n**I** T MIGHT BE HIS LAST shot, Kealty knew, again using in his own mind a metaphor denoting firearms. The irony of it never registered. He had more important things to do. The previous evening he had been summoning his remaining press contacts\u2014the reliable ones. Others had, if not exactly backed away, at least maintained a discreet distance in their uncertainty, but for most, it wasn't all that hard to get their attention, and his two-hour midnight meeting had been called on the basis of a few key words and phrases known to excite their professional sensibilities. After that all he had to do was set the rules. This was all on background, not for attribution, not to be quoted. The reporters agreed, of course.\n\n\"It's pretty disturbing. The FBI subjected the whole top floor of the State Department to lie-detector tests,\" he told them. It was something they'd heard about but not yet confirmed. This would count as confirmation. \"But more disturbingly, look at the policies we're seeing now. Build up defense under this Bretano guy\u2014a guy who's grown up within the military-industrial complex. He says he wants to eliminate all the safeguards within the procurement system, wants to slash congressional oversight. And George Winston, what does he want to do? Wreck the tax system, make it more regressive, do away with capital-gains entirely\u2014and why? To lay the country's whole tax burden on the middle and working classes and give the big shots a free ride, that's why.\n\n\"I never figured Ryan for a professional, for a competent sort of man to occupy the presidency, but I have to tell you, this is not what I expected. He's a reactionary, a radical conservative\u2014I'm not sure what you'd call him.\"\n\n\"Are you sure about the thing at State?\" the _New York Times_ asked.\n\nKealty nodded. \"Positive, hundred percent. You mean you people haven't\u2014come on, are you doing _your_ job?\" he asked tiredly. \"In the middle of a Mideast crisis, he has the FBI harassing the most senior people we have, trying to accuse them of stealing a letter that was never there.\"\n\n\"And now,\" Kealty's chief of staff added, seeming to speak out of turn, \"we have the _Washington Post_ about to run a canonization piece on Ryan.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" the _Post_ reporter said, straightening his back, \"that's Bob Holtzman, not my doing. I _told_ my AME that it wasn't a good idea.\"\n\n\"Who's the leak?\" Kealty asked.\n\n\"I don't have a clue. Bob never lets that out. You know that.\"\n\n\"So what is Ryan doing at CIA? He wants to _triple_ the Directorate of Operations the spies. Just what the country needs, right? What is Ryan doing?\" Kealty asked rhetorically. \"Beefing up defense. Rewriting the tax code to benefit the fat cats. And taking CIA back to the days of the Cold War. We're going back to the 1950s\u2014 _why?\"_ Kealty demanded. _\"Why_ is he doing all this? What is he thinking about? Am I the only one in this city asking questions? When are you people going to do your job? He's trying to bully Congress, and succeeding, and where is the media? Who's protecting the people out there?\"\n\n\"What are you saying, Ed?\" the _Times_ asked.\n\nThe gesture of frustration was done with consummate skill. \"I'm standing in my own political grave here. I have nothing to gain by this, but I _can't_ just stand by and do nothing. Even if Ryan has the entire power of our government behind him, I can't just let him and his cronies try to concentrate all of the power of our government in a few hands, increase their own ability to spy on us, load the tax system in such a way as to further enrich people who've never paid their fair share, reward the defense industry\u2014what's next, trashing the civil rights laws? He's flying his wife to work every day, and you people haven't even remarked that that's never happened before. This is an imperial presidency like Lyndon Johnson never dreamed of, _without_ a Congress to do anything about it. You know what we have here now?\" Kealty gave them a moment. \"King Jack the First. Somebody's supposed to care about that. Why is it that you people don't?\"\n\n\"What do you know about the Holtzman piece?\" the _Boston Globe_ wanted to know.\n\n\"Ryan has a lively history in CIA. He's killed people.\"\n\n\"James fucking Bond,\" Kealty's chief of staff said on cue. The Post reporter then had to defend his publication's honor:\n\n\"Holtzman doesn't say that. If you mean the time the terrorists came to\u2014\"\n\n\"No, not that. Holtzman's going to write about the Moscow thing. Ryan didn't even set that up. It was Judge Arthur Moore, when he was DCI. Ryan was the front man. It's bad enough anyway. It interfered with the inner workings of the old Soviet Union, and it never occurred to anyone that _maybe_ that wasn't such a great idea\u2014I mean, what the hell, right, screwing around with the government of a country with ten thousand warheads pointed at us\u2014you know, people, that's called an act of war, like? And why? To rescue their head thug from a purge for stepping over the line _so that_ we could crack a spy ring inside CIA. I bet he didn't tell Holtzman that, did he?\"\n\n\"I haven't seen the story,\" the _Post_ reporter admitted. \"I've only heard a few things.\" It was almost worthy of a smile. Kealty's sources inside the paper were better than those of the senior political reporter. \"Okay, you say Ryan has killed people like James Bond. Support that,\" he said in a flat voice.\n\n\"Four years ago, remember the bombs in Colombia, took out some cartel members?\" Kealty waited for the nod. \"That was a CIA operation. Ryan went to Colombia\u2014and that was _another_ act of war, people. That's two that I know about.\"\n\nIt was amusing to Kealty that Ryan was so skillfully conniving at his own destruction. The PLAN BLUE move within CIA was already rippling through the Directorate of Intelligence, many of whose senior people faced either early retirement or the diminution of their bureaucratic empires, and many of those enjoyed walking the corridors of power. It was easy for them to think that they were vital to the security of their country, and thinking that, they had to do something, didn't they? More than that, Ryan had stepped on a lot of bureaucratic toes at Langley, and now it was payback time, all the better that he was a higher target than ever before, that the sources were, after all, merely talking to the former Vice President of the United States\u2014maybe even the real President, they could say\u2014and not to the media, which was, after all, against the law, as opposed to a legitimate discussion of vital national policy.\n\n\"How sure of that are you?\" the _Globe_ asked.\n\n\"I have dates. Remember when Admiral James Greer died? He was Ryan's mentor. He probably set up the operation from his deathbed. Ryan didn't attend the funeral. He was in Colombia then. That's a fact, and you can check it,\" Kealty insisted. \"Probably that's why James Cutter committed suicide\u2014\"\n\n\"I thought that was an accident,\" the _Times_ said. \"He was out jogging, and\u2014\"\n\n\"And he just happened to step in front of a transit bus? Look, I'm not saying that Cutter was murdered. I am saying that he was implicated in the illegal operation that Ryan was running, and he didn't want to face the music. That gave Jack Ryan the chance to cover his tracks. You know,\" Kealty concluded, \"I've underestimated this Ryan fellow. He's as slick an operator as this town has seen since Allen Dulles, maybe Bill Donovan\u2014but the time for that is past. We don't need a CIA with three times as many spies. We don't need to pile more dollars into defense. We don't need to redraft the tax code to protect the millionaires Ryan hangs out with. For sure we don't need a President who thinks the 1950s were just great. He's doing things to our country which we cannot allow to happen. I don't know\"\u2014another gesture of frustration\u2014\"maybe I have to go it all alone on this. I'm\u2014I know I risk ruining my reputation for all history, standing up like this ... but, damn it, once I swore an oath to the Constitution of our country ... first time,\" he went on in a quiet, reflective voice, \"when I won my first House scat ... then into the Senate ... and then when Roger asked me to step up and be his Vice President. You know, you don't forget that sort of thing ... an', an', an' maybe I'm not the right guy for this, okay? Yes, I've done some pretty awful things, betrayed my wife, lived in a bottle for so many years. The American people probably deserve somebody better than me to stand up and do what's right ... but I'm all there is, and I can't\u2014I _can't_ break faith with the people who sent me to this town, no matter what it costs. Ryan is not the President of the United States. He knows that. Why else is he trying to change so many things so fast? Why is he trying to bully the senior people at State into lying? Why is he playing with abortion rights? Why is he playing with the tax code through this plutocrat Winston? He's trying to buy it. He's going to continue to bully Congress until the fat cats try to have him elected king or something. I mean, who represents the _people_ right now?\"\n\n\"I just don't see him that way, Ed,\" the _Globe_ responded, after a few seconds. \"His politics are pretty far to the right, but he comes across as sincere as hell.\"\n\n\"What's the first rule of politics?\" the _Times_ asked with a chuckle. Then he continued: \"I tell you, if this stuff about Russia and Colombia is true ... whoa! It is the '50s, fucking around with other governments that way. We're not supposed to do that anymore, sure as hell not at that level.\"\n\n\"You never got this from us, and you can't reveal the source at Langley.\" The chief of staff handed out tape cassettes. \"But there are enough verifiable facts here to back up everything we've told you.\"\n\n\"It's going to take a couple of days,\" the _San Francisco Examiner_ said, fingering the cassette and looking at his colleagues. The race started now. Every reporter in the room would want to be the first to break the story. That process would start with them playing their tapes in their cars during the drive to their homes, and the one with the shortest drive had the advantage.\n\n\"Gentlemen, all I can say is, this is an important story, and you have to apply your best professional conduct to it. It's not for me,\" Kealty said. \"I wish I could pick someone else to do this, someone with a better record\u2014but I can't. Not for me. It's for the country, and that means you have to play it as straight as you can.\"\n\n\"We will, Ed,\" the _Times_ promised. He checked his watch. Almost three in the morning. He'd work all day to make the ten P.M. deadline. In that time he'd have to verify, re-verify, and conference in with his assistant managing editor to make sure that he got the front page, above the fold. The West Coast papers had the advantage\u2014three more hours because of time zones\u2014but he knew how to beat them to the punch. The coffee cups went down on the table, and the journalists rose, tucking their personal mini-tape machines in their jacket pockets, and each holding his personal cassette in the left hand while the right fished for the car keys.\n\n\"TALK TO ME, BEN.\" Jack commanded barely four hours later.\n\n\"Still nothing on the local TV, but we've caught microwave stuff transmitted for later broadcast.\" Goodley paused as Ryan took his seat behind the desk. \"Quality is too poor to show you, but we have the audio tracks. Anyway, they spent all day consolidating power. Tomorrow, they go public. Probably the word's out on the street, and the official stuff will be for the rest of the world.\"\n\n\"Smart,\" the President observed.\n\n\"Agreed.\" Goodley nodded. \"New wild card. The Premier of Turkmenistan bit the big one, supposedly an automobile accident. Golovko called me about\u2014just after five, I think to let us know. He ain't a real happy camper at the moment. He thinks that Iraq and Turko-land are part of the same play\u2014\"\n\n\"Do we have anything to support that?\" Ryan asked, tying his necktie. It was a dumb question.\n\n\"You kidding, boss? We don't have crap, not even overheads in this case.\"\n\nJack looked down at his desktop for a second. \"You know, for all the things people say about how powerful CIA is\u2014\"\n\n\"Hey, I work there, remember? Thank God for CNN. Yeah, I know. Good news, the Russians are telling us at least some of what they know.\"\n\n\"Scared,\" the President observed.\n\n\"Very,\" the national intelligence officer agreed.\n\n\"Okay, we have Iran taking over Iraq. We have a dead leader in Turkmenistan. Analysis?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"I won't contradict Golovko on this one. He doubtless does have agents in place, and it sounds like he's in the same situation we're in. He can watch and worry, but he doesn't have any real operational possibilities. Maybe it's a coincidence, but spooks aren't supposed to believe in such things. Damned sure Sergey doesn't. He thinks it's all one play. I think that's a definite possibility. I'll be talking to Vasco about that, too. What he says is shaping up is starting to look a little scary. We'll be hearing from the Saudis today.\" And Israel could not be far behind, Ryan knew.\n\n\"China?\" the President asked next. Maybe the other side of the world was a little better. It wasn't.\n\n\"Major exercise. Surface and sub-surface combatants, no air yet, but the overheads show the fighter bases are tooling up\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait a minute\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. If it's a planned exercise, why weren't they ready for it? I'll be talking to the Pentagon about that one at eight-thirty. The ambassador had a little talk with a foreign ministry type. Feedback is, no big deal, the ministry didn't even know about it, routine training.\"\n\n\"Bullshit.\"\n\n\"Maybe. Taiwan is still low-keying it, but they'll be sending some ships out today\u2014well, tonight over there. We have assets heading to the area. The Taiwanese are playing ball, full cooperation with our observers in their listening posts. Soon they will ask us what we will do if 'A' or 'B' happens. We need to think about that. The Pentagon says that the PRC doesn't have the assets to launch an invasion, same as back in '96. The ROC air force is stronger now than it was. So, I don't see that this is likely to lead anywhere. Maybe it really is just an exercise. Maybe they want to see how we\u2014you, that is\u2014will react.\"\n\n\"What's Adler think?\"\n\n\"He says to ignore it. I think he's right. Taiwan is playing low-key. I think we do the same. We move ships, especially subs, but we keep them out of sight. CINCPAC seems to have a handle on it. We let him run it for the time being?\"\n\nRyan nodded. \"Through SecDef, yes. Europe?\"\n\n\"Nice and quiet, ditto our hemisphere, ditto Africa. You know, if the Chinese are just being their usual obnoxious selves, then the only real problem is the Persian Gulf\u2014and the truth of the matter is that we've been there and done that, sir. We've told the Saudis that we're not going to back off of them. That word will get to the other side in due course, and it ought to make the other side stop and think before making any plans to go farther. I don't like the UIR thing, but I think we can deal with it. Iran is fundamentally unstable; the people in that country want more freedom, and when they get a taste, that country will change. We can ride it out.\"\n\nRyan smiled and poured himself a cup of decaf. \"You're getting very confident, Dr. Goodley.\"\n\n\"You pay me to think. I might as well tell you what's moving around between the ears, boss.\"\n\n\"Okay, get on with your work and keep me posted. I have to figure a way to reconstitute the Supreme Court today.\" Ryan sipped his coffee and waited for Arnie to come in. This job wasn't all that tough, was it? Not when you had a good team working for you.\n\n\"IT'S ABOUT SEDUCTION,\" Clark said to the shiny new faces in the auditorium, catching Ding's grin in the back of the room and cringing. The training film they'd just watched had gone over the history of six important cases. There were only five prints of the film, and this one was already being rewound for the walk back to the vault. Two of the cases he'd worked himself. One of the agents had been executed in the basement of 2 Dzerzhinskiy Square after being burned by a KGB mole inside Langley. The other had a small farm in the birch country of northern New Hampshire, probably still wishing that he could go home\u2014but Russia was still Russia, and the narrow view their culture took of high treason wasn't an invention of the previous regime. Such people were forever orphans ... Clark turned the page and continued from his notes.\n\n\"You will seek out people with problems. You will sympathize with those problems. The people with whom you will work are not perfect. They will all have beefs. Some of them will come to you. You don't have to love them, but you do have to be loyal to them.\n\n\"What do I mean by seduction? Everyone in this room has done it once or twice, right? You listen more than you talk. You nod. You agree. Sure, you're smarter than your boss\u2014I know about him, we have the same sort of jerk in our government. I had a boss like that once myself. It's hard to be an honest man in that kind of government, isn't it? You bet, honor really is important.\n\n\"When they say _that,_ you know they want money. That's fine,\" Clark told them. \"They never expect as much as they ask for. We have the budget to pay anything they want\u2014but the important thing is getting them on the hook. Once they lose their virginity, people, they can't get it back.\n\n\"Your agents, the people you recruit, will get addicted to what they do. It's _fun_ to be a spy. Even the most ideologically pure people you recruit will giggle from time to time because they know something nobody else knows.\n\n\"They will _all_ have something wrong with them. The most idealistic ones are often the worst. They experience guilt. They drink. Some might go to their priest, even\u2014I've had that happen to me. Some break the rules for the first time and figure no rules matter anymore. Those kind will start boffing every girl that crosses their path and taking all sorts of chances.\n\n\"Handling agents is an art. You are mother, father, priest, and teacher to them. You have to settle them down. You have to tell them to look after their families, and look after their own ass, especially the 'good' ideological recruits. They're dependable for a lot of things, but one of them is to get too much into it. A lot of these agents self-destruct. They can turn into crusaders. Few of the crusaders,\" Clark went on, \"died of old age.\n\n\"The agent who wants money is often the most reliable. They don't take too many chances. They want out eventually, so they can live the good life in Hollywood and get laid by a starlet or something. Nice thing about agents who work for money\u2014they want to live to spend it. On the other hand, when you need something done in a hurry, when you need somebody to take a risk, you can use a money guy\u2014just be ready to evac him the next day. Sooner or later he'll figure that he's done enough, and demand to be got out.\n\n\"What am I telling you? There are no hard and fast rules in this business. You have to use your heads. You have to know about people, how they are, how they act, how they think. You must have genuine empathy with your agents, whether you like them or not. Most you will not like,\" he promised them. \"You saw the film. Every word was real. Three of those cases ended with a dead agent. One ended with a dead officer. Remember that.\n\n\"Okay, you now have a break. Mr. Revell will have you in the next class.\" Clark assembled his notes and walked to the back of the room while the trainees absorbed the lessons in silence.\n\n\"Gee, Mr. C., does that mean seduction is okay?\" Ding asked.\n\n\"Only when you get paid for it, Domingo.\"\n\nALL OF GROUP Two was sick now. It was as though they'd all punched in on some sort of time clock. Within ten hours, they'd all complained of fever and aches\u2014flu symptoms. Some knew, Moudi saw, or certainly suspected what had happened to them. Some of them continued to help the sicker subjects to whom they were assigned. Others called for the army medics to complain, or just sat on the floor in the treatment room and did nothing but savor their own illness in fear that they would become what they saw. Again the conditions of their prior imprisonment and diet worked against them. The hungry and debilitated are more easily controlled than the healthy and well fed.\n\nThe original group was deteriorating at the expected rate. Their pain grew worse, to the point that their slow writhing lessened because it hurt more to move than to remain still. One seemed very close to death, and Moudi wondered if, as with Benedict Mkusa, this victim's heart was unusually vulnerable to the Ebola Mayinga strain\u2014perhaps this sub-type of the disease had a previously unsuspected affinity for heart tissue? That would have been interesting to learn in the abstract, but he'd gone well beyond the abstract study of the disease.\n\n\"We gain nothing by continuing this phase, Moudi,\" the director observed, standing beside the younger man and watching the TV monitors. \"Next step.\"\n\n\"As you wish.\" Dr. Moudi lifted the phone and spoke for a minute or so.\n\nIt took fifteen minutes to get things moving, and then the medical orderlies entered the picture, taking all of the nine members of the second group out of that room, then across the corridor to a second large treatment room, where, on a different set of monitors, the physicians saw that each was assigned a bed and given a medication which, in but a few minutes, had them all asleep. The medics then returned to the original group. Half of them were asleep anyway, and all the others stuporous, unable to resist. The wakeful ones were killed first, with injections of Dilaudid, a powerful synthetic narcotic into whatever vein was the most convenient. The executions took but a few minutes and were, in the end, merciful. The bodies were loaded one by one onto gurneys for transport to the incinerator. Next the mattresses and bedclothes were bundled for burning, leaving only the metal frames of the beds. These, along with the rest of the room, were sprayed with caustic chemicals. The room would be sealed for several days, then sprayed again, and the collective attention of the facility's staff would transfer to Group Two, nine condemned criminals who had proven, or so it would seem, that Ebola Zaire Mayinga could be transmitted through the air.\n\nTHE HEALTH DEPARTMENT official took a whole day to arrive, doubtless delayed, Dr. MacGregor suspected, by a pile of paperwork on his desk, a fine dinner, and a night with whatever woman spiced up his daily life. And probably the paperwork was still there on his desk, the Scot told himself.\n\nAt least he knew about the proper precautions. The government doctor barely entered the room at all he had to come an additional, reluctant step so that the door could be closed behind him, but moved no farther than that, standing there, his head tilting and his eyes squinting, the better to observe the patient from two meters away. The lights in the room were turned down so as not to hurt Saleh's eyes. Despite that the discoloration of his skin was obvious. The two hanging units of type-O blood and the morphine drip told the rest, along with the chart, which the government official held in his gloved, trembling hands.\n\n\"The antibody tests?\" he asked quietly, summoning his official dignity.\n\n\"Positive,\" MacGregor told him.\n\nThe first documented Ebola outbreak\u2014no one knew how far back the disease went, how many jungle villages it might have exterminated a hundred years earlier, for example\u2014had gone through the nearest hospital's staff with frightening speed, to the point that the medical personnel had left the facility in panic. And that, perversely, had helped end the outbreak more rapidly than continued treatment might have done\u2014the victims died, and nobody got close enough to them to catch what they had. African medics now knew what precautions to take. Everyone was masked and gloved, and disinfection procedures were ruthlessly enforced. As casual and careless as many African personnel often were, this was one lesson they'd taken to heart, and with that feeling of safety established, they, like medical personnel all over the world, did the best they could.\n\nFor this patient, that was very little use. The chart showed that, too.\n\n\"From _Iraq?\"_ the official asked.\n\nDr. MacGregor nodded. \"That is what he told me.\"\n\n\"I must check on that with the proper authorities.\"\n\n\"Doctor, I have a report to make,\" MacGregor insisted. \"This is a possible outbreak and\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" The official shook his head. \"Not until we know more. When we make a report, if we do, we must forward all of the necessary information for the alert to be useful.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"But this is _my_ responsibility, and it is _my_ duty to see that the responsibility is properly executed.\" He pointed the chart to the patient. His hand wasn't shaking now that he had established his power over the case. \"Does he have a family? Who can tell us more about him?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Let me check that out,\" the government doctor said. \"Have your people make copies of all records and send them to me at once.\" With a stern order given, the health department representative felt as though he had done his duty to his profession and his country.\n\nMacGregor nodded his submission. Moments like this made him hate Africa. His country had been here for more than a century. A fellow Scot named Gordon had come to the Sudan, fallen in love with it\u2014was the man mad? MacGregor wondered\u2014and died right in this city 120 years earlier. Then the Sudan had become a British protectorate. A regiment of infantry had been raised from this country, and that regiment had fought bravely and well under British officers. But then Sudan had been returned to the Sudanese\u2014too quickly, without the time and money spent to create the institutional infrastructure to turn a tribal wasteland into a viable nation. The same story had been told in the same way all over the continent, and the people of Africa were still paying the price for that disservice. It was one more thing neither he nor any other European could speak aloud except with one another\u2014and sometimes not even then\u2014for fear of being called a racist. But if he were a racist, then _why_ had he come here?\n\n\"You will have them in two hours.\"\n\n\"Very well.\" The official walked out the door. There the head nurse for the unit would take him to the disinfection area, and for that the official would follow orders like a child under the eye of a stern mother.\n\nPAT MARTIN CAME in with a well-stuffed briefcase, from which he took fourteen folders, laddering them across the coffee table in alphabetical order. Actually they were labeled _A_ to _M,_ because President Ryan had specifically asked that he not know the names at first.\n\n\"You know, I'd feel a lot better if you hadn't given me all this power,\" Martin said without looking up.\n\n\"Why's that?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"I'm just a prosecutor, Mr. President. A pretty good one, sure, and now I run the Criminal Division, and that's nice, too, but I'm only\u2014\"\n\n\"How do you think I feel?\" Ryan demanded, then softened his voice. \"Nobody since Washington has been stuck with this job, and what makes you think _I_ know what I'm supposed to be doing? Hell, I'm not even a lawyer to understand all this stuff without a crib sheet.\"\n\nMartin looked up with half a smile. \"Okay, I deserved that.\"\n\nBut Ryan had set the criteria. Before him was a roster of the senior federal judiciary. Each of the fourteen folders gave the professional history of a judge in the United States Court of Appeals, ranging from one in Boston to another in Seattle. The President had ordered Martin and his people to select judges of no less than ten years' experience, with no less than fifty important written decisions (as distinguished from routine matters like which side won in a liability case), none of which had been overturned by the Supreme Court\u2014or if one or two had been overturned, had been vindicated by a later reversal in Washington.\n\n\"This is a good bunch,\" Martin said.\n\n\"Death penalty?\"\n\n\"The Constitution specifically provides for that, remember. Fifth Amendment,\" Martin quoted from memory: \" 'Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' So _with_ due process, you can take a person's life, but you can only try him once for it. The Court established the criteria for that in a number of cases in the '70s and '80s\u2014guilt trial followed by penalty trial, with the penalty phase dependent upon 'special' circumstances. All of these judges have upheld that rule\u2014with a few exceptions. _D_ here struck down a Mississippi case on the basis of mental incompetence. That was a good call, even though the crime was pretty gruesome\u2014the Supreme Court affirmed it without comment or hearing. Sir, the problem with the system is one that nobody can really fix. It's just the nature of law. A lot of legal principles are based on decisions from unusual cases. There's a dictum that hard cases make for bad law. Like that case in England, remember? Two little kids murder a younger kid. What the hell is a judge supposed to do when the defendants are eight years old, definitely guilty of a brutal murder, but only eight years old? What you do then is, you pray some other judge gets stuck with it. Somehow we all try to make cohesive legal doctrine out of that. It's not really possible, but we do it anyway.\"\n\n\"I figure you picked tough ones, Pat. Did you pick fair ones?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Remember what I said a minute ago? I don't want this sort of power? I didn't dare do otherwise. _E_ here reversed a conviction one of my best people got on a technicality\u2014an issue of admissibility\u2014and when he did it, we were all pretty mad. The issue was entrapment, where the line is. The defendant was guilty as hell, no doubt of it. But Judge ... _E_ looked at the arguments and probably made the right call, and that ruling is part of FBI guidelines now.\"\n\nJack looked at the folders. It would be a full week's reading. This, as Arnie had told him a few days before, would be his most important act as President. No Chief Executive since Washington had been faced with the necessity of appointing the entire Supreme Court, and even that had been in an age when the national consensus on law had been far firmer and deeper than what existed in America now. Back then \"cruel and unusual punishment\" had meant the rack and burning at the stake\u2014both of those things that _had_ been used in pre-Revolutionary America\u2014but in more recent rulings had been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons. _So_ _fine,_ Ryan thought, _the prisons are too crowded, and then why not release dangerous criminals on society for fear of being cruel to convicted felons?_\n\nNow he had the power to change that. All he had to do was select judges who took as harsh a view on crime as he did, an outlook he'd learned from listening to his father's occasional rant about a particularly vile crime, or an especially bat-brained judge who hadn't ever viewed a crime scene, and therefore never really known what the issues were. And for Ryan there was the personal element. He'd been the subject of attempted murder, as had his wife and children. He _knew_ what it was all about, the outrage at facing the fact that there were people who could take a life as easily as buying candy at a drug store, who preyed on others as though they were game animals, and whose actions cried out for retribution. He could remember looking into Sean Miller's eyes more than once and seeing _nothing,_ nothing in there at all. No humanity, no empathy, no feelings\u2014not even hatred, so outside the human community he'd taken himself that there was no returning ...\n\nAnd yet.\n\nRyan closed his eyes, remembering the moment, a loaded Browning pistol in his grip, his blood boiling in his veins but his hands like ice, the exquisite moment at which he could have ended the life of the man who had so wanted to end his own\u2014and Cathy's, and Sally's, and Little Jack, yet unborn. Looking in his eyes, and finally seeing the fear at last, breaking through the shell of inhumanity ... but how many times had he thanked a merciful God that he'd neglected to cock the hammer on his pistol? He would have done it. He'd wanted to do it more than anything in his life, and he _could_ remember pulling the trigger, only to be surprised when it hadn't moved\u2014and then the moment had passed away. Jack could remember killing. The terrorist in London. The one in the boat at the base of his cliff. The cook on the submarine. Surely he'd killed others\u2014that horrible night in Colombia which had given him nightmares for years after. But Sean Miller was different. It hadn't been necessity for Miller. For him it had been justice of a sort, and he'd been there, and he'd been the Law, and, God, how he'd wanted to take that worthless life! But he hadn't. The Law that had ended the life of that terrorist and his colleagues had been well considered, cold and detached ... as it had to be\u2014and for _that_ reason he had to select the best possible people to repopulate the Court, because the decisions they would make were not about one enraged man trying at the same time to protect and avenge his family. They would say what the law was for everyone, and that wasn't about personal desires. This thing people called civilization was about something more than one man's passion. It had to be. And it was his duty to make sure that it was, by picking the right people.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Martin said, reading the President's face. \"Big deal, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Wait a minute.\" Jack rose and walked out the door to the secretaries' room. \"Which one of you smokes?\" he asked there.\n\n\"It's me,\" said Ellen Sumter. She was of Jack's age, and probably trying to quit, as all smokers of that age at least claimed. Without another question, she handed her President a Virginia Slim\u2014the same as the crewwoman on his airplane, Jack realized-and a butane lighter. The President nodded his thanks and walked back into his office, lighting it. Before he could close the door, Mrs. Sumter raced to follow him with an ashtray taken from her desk drawer.\n\nSitting down, Ryan took a long drag, eyes on the carpet, which was of the Great Seal of the President of the United States, covered though it was with furniture.\n\n\"How the hell,\" Jack asked quietly, \"did anybody ever decide that one man could have this much power? I mean, what I'm doing here\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Kind of like being James Madison, isn't it? You pick the people who decide what the Constitution really means. They're all in their late forties or fifties, and so they'll be there for a while,\" Martin told him. \"Cheer up. At least it's not a game for you. At least you're doing it the right way. You're not picking women because they're women, or blacks because they're black. I gave you a good mix, color, bathrooms, and everything, but all the names have been redacted out\u2014and you won't be able to tell who's who unless you follow cases, which you probably don't. I give you my word, sir, they're all good ones. I spent a lot of time assembling the list for you. Your guidelines helped, and they were good guidelines. For what it's worth, they're all people who think the way you do. People who like power scare me,\" the attorney said. \"Good ones reflect a lot on what they're doing before they do it. Picking real judges who've made some hard calls\u2014well, read their decisions. You'll see how hard they worked at what they did.\"\n\nAnother puff. He tapped the folders. \"I don't know the law well enough to understand all the points in there. I don't know crap about the law, except you're not supposed to break it.\"\n\nMartin grinned at that one: \"Not a bad place to start when you think about it.\" He didn't have to go any further. Not every occupant of this office had thought of things quite that way. Both men knew it, but it wasn't the sort of thing one said to the sitting President.\n\n\"I know the things I don't like. I know the things I'd like to see changed, but, God damn it\"\u2014Ryan looked up, eyes wide now\u2014\"do I have the _right_ to make that sort of call?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, you do, because the Senate has to look over your shoulder, remember? Maybe they'll disagree on one or two. All these judges have been checked out by the FBI. They're all honest. They're all smart. None of them ever wanted or expected to make it to the Supreme Court except through a certiori grant. If you can't come up with nine you like, we'll search some more\u2014better then if you have somebody else do it. The head of the Civil Rights Division is also a pretty good man\u2014he's off to my left some, but he's another thinker.\"\n\n_Civil rights,_ Jack thought. Did he have to make government policy on _that,_ too? How was he supposed to know what might be the right way to treat people who might or might not be a little different from everybody else? Sooner or later you lost the ability to be objective, and then your beliefs took over\u2014and were you then making policy based on personal prejudice? How were you supposed to know what was right? Jesus.\n\nRyan took a last puff and stubbed the cigarette out, rewarded as always by a dizzying buzz from the renewed vice. \"Well, I guess I have a lot of reading to do.\"\n\n\"I'd offer you some help, but probably better that you try to do it yourself. That way, nobody pollutes the process\u2014more than I've already done, that is. You want to keep that in mind. I might not be the best guy for this, but you asked me, and that's the best I have.\"\n\n\"I suppose that's all any of us can do, eh?\" Ryan observed, staring at the pile of folders.\n\nTHE CHIEF OF the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice was a political appointee dating back to President Fowler. Formerly a corporate lawyer and lobbyist\u2014it paid far better than the academic post he'd held before his first political appointment\u2014he'd been politically active since before his admission to law school, and as with so many occupants of official offices he had become, if not his post, then his vision of it. He had a constituency, even though he'd never been elected to anything, and even though his government service had been intermittent, a series of increasingly high posts made possible by his proximity to the power that rested in this city, the power lunches, the parties, the office visits made while representing people he might or might not really care about, because a lawyer had an obligation to serve the interests of his clients\u2014and the clients chose him, not the reverse. One often needed the fees of the few to serve the needs of the many\u2014which was, in fact, his own philosophy of government. Thus he'd unknowingly come to live Ben Jonson's dictum about \"speaking to mere contraries, yet all be law.\" But he'd never lost his passion for civil rights, and he'd never lobbied for anything contrary to that core belief\u2014of course, nobody since the 1960s had lobbied _against_ civil rights _per se,_ but he told himself that was important. A white man with stock originating well before the Revolutionary War, he spoke at all the right forums, and from that he'd earned the admiration of people whose political views were the same as his. From that admiration came power, and it was hard to say which aspect of his life influenced the other more. Because of his early work in the Justice Department he'd won the attention of political figures. Because he'd done that work with skill, he'd also earned the attention of a powerful Washington law firm. Leaving the government to enter that firm, he'd used his political contacts to practice his profession more effectively, and from that effectiveness he'd generated additional credibility in the political world, one hand constantly washing the other until he couldn't really discern which hand was which. Along the way the cases he argued had become his identity in a process so gradual and seemingly so logical that he hardly knew what had taken place. He was what he'd argued for over the years.\n\nAnd that was the problem right now. He knew and admired Patrick Martin as a lesser legal talent who'd advanced at Justice by working exclusively in the courts\u2014never even a proper United States Attorney (those were political appointments, mainly selected by senators for their home states), but rather one of the apolitical professional worker bees who did the real casework while their appointed boss worked on speeches, caseload management, and political ambition. And the fact of the matter was that Martin was a gifted legal tactician, fortyone and one in his formal trials, better yet as a legal administrator guiding young prosecutors. But he didn't know much about politics, the Civil Rights chief thought, and for that reason he was the wrong man to advise President Ryan.\n\nHe had the list. One of his people had helped Martin put it together, and his people were loyal, because they knew that the real path to advancement in this city was to move in and out as their chief had done, and their chief could by lifting a phone get them that job at a big firm, and so one of them handed his chief the list, with the names not redacted out.\n\nThe chief of the Civil Rights Division had only to read off the fourteen names. He didn't need to call up the paperwork on their cases. He knew them all. This one, at the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, had reversed a lower-court ruling and written a lengthy opinion questioning the constitutionality of affirmative action\u2014too good a discourse, it had persuaded the Supreme Court in a sharply divided 5-4 decision. The case had been a narrow one, and the affirmation of it in Washington had been similarly narrow, but the chief didn't like _any_ chips in that particular wall of stone.\n\n_That_ one in New York had affirmed the government's position in another area, but in doing so had limited the applicability of the principle\u2014and _that_ case hadn't gone further, and was law for a large part of the country.\n\nThese were the wrong people. Their view of judicial power was too circumscribed. They deferred too much to Congress and the state legislatures. Pat Martin's view of law was different from his own. Martin didn't see that judges were _supposed_ to right what was wrong\u2014the two had often debated the issue over lunch in conversations spirited but always good-natured. Martin was a pleasant man, and a sufficiently good debater that he was hard to move off any position, whether he was wrong or not, and while that made him a fine prosecutor he just didn't have the temperament, he just didn't _see_ the way things were supposed to be, and he'd picked judges the same way, and the Senate might be dumb enough to consent to the selections, and that _couldn't happen._ For this sort of power, you had to pick people who knew how to exercise it in the proper way.\n\nHe really had no choice. He bundled the list into an envelope and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket and made a phone call for lunch with one of his many contacts.\n**30**\n\n**PRESS**\n\n**T** HEY DID IT FOR THE morning news, so pervasive had become the influence of television. This was how reality was defined, changed, and announced. A new day had surely dawned. The viewer was left in little doubt. There was a new flag hanging behind the announcer, a green field, the color of Islam, with two small gold stars. He started off with an invocation from the Koran, and then went into political matters. There was a new country. It was called the United Islamic Republic. It would be comprised of the former nations of Iran and Iraq. The new nation would be guided by the Islamic principles of peace and brotherhood. There would be an elected parliament called a majlis. Elections, he promised, would be held by the end of the year. In the interim there would be a revolutionary council comprised of political figures from both countries, in proportion to population\u2014which gave Iran the whip hand, the announcer didn't say; he didn't have to.\n\nThere was no reason, he went on, for any other country to fear the UIR. The new nation proclaimed its goodwill for all Muslim nations, and all nations who had friendly relations with the former divided segments of the new land. That this statement was contradictory in numerous ways was not explored. The other Gulf nations, all of them Islamic, had _not_ actually enjoyed friendly relations with either of the partners. The elimination of the former Iraqi weapons facilities would continue apace so that there would be no question of hostility to the international community. Political prisoners would be freed at once\u2014\n\n\"And now they can make room for the new ones,\" Major Sabah observed at PALM BOWL. \"So, it's happened.\" He didn't have to phone anyone. The TV feed was being viewed all over the Gulf, and in every room with a functioning television the only happy face was the one on the screen\u2014that is, until the scene changed to show spontaneous demonstrations at the various mosques, where people made their morning prayers, and walked outside to display their joy.\n\n\"HELLO, ALI,\" Jack said. He'd stayed up reading the folders Martin had left, knowing that the call would come, suffering, again, from a headache that he seemed to acquire just from walking into the Oval Office. It was surprising that the Saudis had been so long in authorizing the call from their Prince\/Minister-Without-Portfolio. Maybe they'd just hoped to wish it away, a characteristic not exactly unique to that part of the world. \"Yes, I'm watching the TV now.\" At the bottom of the display, like the captioning for the hearing-impaired, was a dialogue box being typed by intelligence specialists at the National Security Agency. The rhetoric was a little flowery, but the content was clear to everyone in the room. Adler, Vasco, and Goodley had come in as soon as the feed arrived, liberating Ryan from his reading, if not his headache.\n\n\"This is very unsettling, if not especially surprising,\" the Prince said over the encrypted line.\n\n\"There was no stopping it. I know how it looks to you, Your Highness,\" the President said tiredly. He could have indulged in coffee, but he did want to get _some_ sleep tonight.\n\n\"We are going to place our military at a higher state of readiness.\"\n\n\"Is there anything you want us to do?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"For the moment, just to know that your support has not changed.\"\n\n\"It hasn't. I've told you before. Our security commitment to the Kingdom remains the same. If you want us to do something to demonstrate that, we're ready to take whatever steps seem reasonable and appropriate. Do you\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Mr. President, we have no formal requests at this time.\" That statement was delivered in a tone that made Jack's eyes flicker off the speakerphone and to his visitors.\n\n\"In that case, might I suggest that you have some of your people discuss options with some of mine?\"\n\n\"It must be kept quiet. My government has no wish to inflame the situation.\"\n\n\"We'll do what we can. You can start talking to Admiral Jackson\u2014he's J-3 in the\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, I met him in the East Room. I will have our working-level people contact him later today.\"\n\n\"Okay. If you need me, Ali, I'm always at the end of the phone.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Jack. I hope you will sleep well.\" _You'll_ need it. _We all will._ And the line went dead. Ryan killed the button on the phone to make sure.\n\n\"Opinions?\"\n\n\"Ali wants us to do something, but the King hasn't decided yet,\" Adler said.\n\n\"They'll try to establish contacts with the UIR.\" Vasco took up the conversation. \"Their first instinct will be to get a dialogue going, try to do a little business. The Saudis will take the lead. Figure Kuwait and the rest of the lesser states will let them handle the contacts, but we'll be hearing from them soon, probably through channels.\"\n\n\"We have a good ambassador in Kuwait?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Will Bach,\" Adler said, with an emphatic nod. \"Career FSO. Good man. Not real imaginative, but a good plugger, knows the language and culture, lots of friends in their royal family. Good commercial guy. He's been pretty effective as a middleman between our businesspeople and their government.\"\n\n\"Good deputy chief of mission to back him up,\" Vasco went on, \"and the attaches there are tops, all spooks, good ones.\"\n\n\"Okay, Bert.\" Ryan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. \"Tell me what happens next.\"\n\n\"The whole south side of the Gulf is scared shitless. This is their nightmare come true.\"\n\nRyan nodded and shifted his gaze. \"Ben, I want CIA's assessment of the UIR's intentions, and I want you to call Robby and see what kind of options we have. Get Tony Bretano into the loop. He wanted to be SecDef, and I want him to start thinking about the non-admin part of the job.\"\n\n\"Langley doesn't have much of a clue,\" Adler pointed out. \"Not their fault, but that's how it is.\" And so their assessment would present a range of potential options, from theater nuclear war\u2014Iran might have nukes, after all\u2014to the Second Coming, and three or four options in between, each with its theoretical justification. That way, as usual, the President had the chance to choose the wrong one, and it wouldn't be anyone's fault but his own.\n\n\"Yeah, I know. Scott, let's see if we can establish some contacts with the UIR, too.\"\n\n\"Extend the olive branch?\"\n\n\"You got it,\" the President agreed. \"Everyone figure they need time to consolidate before they do anything radical?\" There were nods with the President's assessment, but not from everyone.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" Vasco said.\n\n\"Yeah, Bert\u2014by the way, good call. You weren't exactly right on timing, but damned if you weren't right enough.\"\n\n\"Thanks. Mr. President, on the consolidation issue, that's about people, right?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" Ryan and the rest nodded. Consolidating a government meant little more than that the people got used to the new system of rule and accepted it.\n\n\"Sir, if you look at the number of people in Iraq who have to get used to this new government, compare that number to the population of the Gulf states. It's a big jump in terms of distance and territory, but not in terms of population,\" Vasco said, reminding them that although Saudi Arabia was larger than all of America east of the Mississippi, it had fewer people than the Philadelphia metropolitan area.\n\n\"They're not going to do anything right away,\" Adler objected.\n\n\"They might. Depends on what you mean by 'right away,' Mr. Secretary.\"\n\n\"Iran has too many internal problems,\" Goodley started to say.\n\nVasco had come to like presidential access and attention, and decided to seize the floor. \"Don't underestimate the religious dimension,\" he warned. \"That is a unifying factor which could erase or at least suppress their internal problems. Their flag says it. The name of the country says it. People all over the world like a winner. Daryaei sure looks like a winner now, doesn't he? One other thing.\"\n\n\"What's that, Bert?\" Adler asked.\n\n\"You notice the flag? The two stars are pretty small,\" Vasco said pensively.\n\n\"So?\" This was Goodley. Ryan looked back at the TV and the announcer. The flag was still there behind him and\u2014\n\n\"So, there's plenty of room for more.\"\n\nIT WAS A moment such as he had dreamed of, but the culmination of such a dream is always better than its contemplation, because now the cheers were real, striking his ears from the outside, not the inside. Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had flown in before dawn, and with the rising of the sun he'd walked into the central mosque, removing his shoes, washing his hands and forearms, because a man was supposed to be clean before his God. Humbly, he'd listened to the incantation from the minaret, calling the faithful to prayer, and this day people didn't roll back over and try to capture a few more hours of sleep. Today they flocked to the mosque from blocks around in a gesture of devotion that moved their visitor to his core. Daryaei took no special place, but he appreciated the singularity of the moment, and tears streamed down his dark, deeply lined cheeks at the overwhelming emotion of the moment. He had fulfilled the first of his tasks. He had fulfilled the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed. He had restored a measure of unity to the Faith, the first step in his holy quest. In the reverent hush following the conclusion of morning prayers, he rose and walked out into the street, and there he was recognized. To the despairing panic of his security guards, he walked along the street, returning the greetings of people at first stupefied and then ecstatic to see the former enemy of their country walking among them as a guest.\n\nThere were no cameras to record this. It was not a moment to be polluted by publicity, and though there was danger, he accepted it. What he was doing would tell him much. It would tell him of the power of his Faith, and the renewed faith of these people, and it would tell him whether or not he had Allah's blessing on his quest, for Daryaei truly was a humble man, doing what he had to do, not for himself, but for his God. Why else, he often asked himself, would he have chosen a life of danger and denial? Soon the sidewalk traffic turned into a crowd, and from a crowd to a mob. People he'd never met appointed themselves to be his guardians, forcing a path for him through the bodies and the cheers as his aged legs made their way while his now-serene dark eyes swept left and right, wondering if danger would come, but finding only joy that reflected his own. He gazed and gestured to the crowd as a grandfather might greet his progeny, not smiling, but composed, accepting their love and respect, and with his benign eyes promising greater things, because great deeds had to be followed by greater ones, and the moment was right.\n\n\"SO, WHAT SORT of man is he?\" Movie Star asked. His flight to Frankfurt had been followed by one to Athens, and from there to Beirut, and from there to Tehran. He knew Daryaei only by reputation.\n\n\"He knows power,\" Badrayn answered, listening to the demonstrations outside. There was something about peace, he imagined. The war between Iraq and Iran had lasted close to a decade. Children had been sent off to die. Rockets had blasted the cities of both countries. The human cost would never be fully assessed, and though the war had ended years before, now it was truly ended\u2014a thing of the heart rather than of law, perhaps. Or maybe a thing of God's law, which was different from that of man. The resulting euphoria was something he'd once felt himself. But now he knew better. Feelings like that were weapons of statecraft, things to be used. Outside were people who a short time before had chafed at what they had and what they did not have, who questioned the wisdom of their leader, who bridled\u2014as much as one could in so tightly controlled a society as this one was\u2014at the freedoms they lacked. That was gone now, and it would remain gone for\u2014how long? That was the question, and that was why such moments had to be properly used. And Daryaei knew all of those things.\n\n\"So,\" Badrayn said, turning off the outside noise of the faithful, \"what have you learned?\"\n\n\"The most interesting things I learned from watching television. President Ryan is doing well, but he has difficulties. The government is not yet fully functional. The lower house of their parliament has not yet been replaced\u2014the elections for that will begin to take place next month. Ryan is popular. The Americans love to poll one another,\" he explained. \"They call people on the telephone and ask questions\u2014only a few thousand, often not that many, and from this they report to one another what everyone thinks.\"\n\n\"The result?\" Badrayn asked.\n\n\"A large majority seems to approve what he is doing\u2014but he isn't really doing anything except to continue. He hasn't even chosen a Vice President yet.\"\n\nBadrayn knew that, but not the reason. \"Why?\" he asked.\n\nMovie Star grinned. \"I asked that question myself. The full parliament must approve such a thing, and the full parliament has not yet been reestablished. It will not be so for some time. Moreover, there is the problem with the former Vice President, that Kealty fellow, who claims that he is the President\u2014and this Ryan has not imprisoned him. Their legal system doesn't deal with treason effectively.\"\n\n\"And if we were able to kill Ryan ... ?\"\n\nMovie Star shook his head. \"Very difficult. I took an afternoon to walk around Washington. Security at the palace is very strict. It is not open to public tours. The street in front of the building is closed. I sat on a bench for an hour, reading, and watched for signs around the place. Riflemen on all the buildings. I suppose we would have a chance on one of his official trips, but that would require extensive planning for which we lack the necessary time. And so, that leaves us with\u2014\"\n\n\"His children,\" Badrayn observed.\n\n_JESUS, I HARDLY see them anymore,_ Jack thought. He'd just gotten off the elevator, accompanied by Jeff Raman, and checked his watch. Just after midnight. Damn. He'd managed to sit through a hurried dinner with them and Cathy before hustling back downstairs for his reading and meetings, and now ... everyone was asleep.\n\nThe upstairs corridor was a lonely place, too wide for the intimacy of a real home. Three agents were in view, \"standing post,\" as they called it, and the warrant officer with \"the Football\" full of its nuclear codes. It was quiet because of the time of night, and the overall impression was rather like that of an upscale funeral home, not a house with a family in it. No clutter, no toys lying on the rug, no empty glasses in front of a TV. Too neat, too tidy, too cold. Always somebody around. Raman traded looks with the other agents, whose nods meant \"Okay, everything clear.\" _Nobody with guns around,_ Ryan thought. _Super_.\n\nThe bedrooms were too far apart up here. He turned left, heading for Katie's room first. Opening the door, he saw his youngest, recently graduated from crib to bed, lying on her side, a fuzzy brown teddy bear next to her. She still wore sleepers with feet on them. Jack could remember when Sally had worn the same, and how cute children looked that way, like little packages. But Sally now looked forward to the day she'd buy things from Victoria's Secret, and Little Jack\u2014he had taken to objecting to that label of late\u2014now insisted on boxer shorts because that was the new \"in\" thing for boys of his age group, and they had to be pulled down low, because the \"in\" thing was to risk having them fall off. Well, he still had a toddler. Jack approached the bed, and stood there for a minute, just looking at Katie and quietly enjoying the status of fatherhood. He looked around, and again the room was unnaturally neat. Everything was picked up. Not a loose item on the floor. Her clothing for the coming day was neatly laid out on a wooden valet. Even the white socks were folded next to the diminutive sneakers with cartoon animals on them. Was this a way for a child to live? It seemed like a Shirley Temple movie from when his mom and dad were kids\u2014some upper-class thing that he'd always wondered about: _Did people really live that way_?\n\nNot real people, just royalty, and the family of the man sentenced to the presidency. Jack smiled, shook his head, and left the room. Agent Raman closed the door for him, not even letting POTUS do that. Somewhere else in the building, Ryan was sure, an electronic status board showed that the door had been opened and closed, probably sensors told that someone had entered the room, and probably someone had asked over the radio link the Service people used to be told that SWORDSMAN was tucking SANDBOX in.\n\nHe stuck his head in Sally's room. His elder daughter was similarly asleep, doubtless dreaming of some boy or other in her class\u2014Kenny or something, wasn't it? Somebody who was way cool. Little Jack's bedroom floor was actually polluted by the presence of a comic book, but his white shirt was pressed and hanging on another valet, and someone had shined his shoes.\n\n_Another day shot to hell,_ the President thought. He turned to his bodyguard. \"Night, Jeff.\"\n\n\"Good night, sir,\" Agent Raman said outside the door to the master bedroom. Ryan nodded his farewell to the man, and Raman waited for the door to shut. Then he looked left and right at the other Detail agents. His right hand brushed against the service pistol under his jacket, and his eyes smiled in a private way, knowing what might so easily have been. Word had not come back. Well, his contact was doubtless being careful, as well he should. Aref Raman had the duty tonight as supervisor for the Detail. He walked up the corridor, nodding to the agents on post, asked one innocuous question, then headed down the elevator to the State Floor, and outside to get some air, stretch, and look at the perimeter guard posts, where, also, everything was quiet. There were some protesters in Lafayette Park across the street, this time of night huddled together, many of them smoking\u2014exactly what he didn't know but had suspicions. Maybe hashish? he wondered with a cryptic smile. Wouldn't that be funny. Beyond that there were only the traffic sounds, a distant siren to the east, and people standing at their posts, trying to stay alert by talking about basketball, or hockey, or spring training for baseball, eyes sweeping outward, looking for dangers in the shadows of the city. The wrong place to look, Raman thought, turning back to head for the command post.\n\n\"IS IT POSSIBLE to kidnap them?\"\n\n\"The two older ones, no, too inconvenient, too difficult, but the youngest, that is possible. It could be both dangerous and costly,\" Movie Star warned.\n\nBadrayn nodded. That meant picking especially reliable people. Daryaei had such people. That was obvious from what had taken place in Iraq. He looked over the diagrams in silence for a few minutes while his guest stood to look out the window. The demonstration was still under way. Now they were shouting \"Death to America!\" The crowds and the cheerleaders who organized them had long experience with that particular mantra. Then his intelligence man came back.\n\n\"What exactly,\" Movie Star asked, \"is the mission, Ali?\"\n\n\"The strategic mission would be to prevent America from interfering with us.\" Badrayn looked up. Us now meant whatever Daryaei wanted it to mean.\n\nALL NINE OF them, Moudi saw. He ran the antibody tests himself. He actually did each three times, and the tests were all positive. Every one of them was infected. For the sake of security, they were given drugs and told that they'd be all right\u2014as they would until it was determined that the disease had been transmitted in its full virulence, not attenuated by reproduction in the previous set of hosts. Mainly they were dosed with morphine, the better to keep them quiet and stuporous. So first Benedict Mkusa, then Sister Jean Baptiste, then ten criminals, and now nine more. Twenty-two victims, if one also counted Sister Maria Magdalena. He wondered if Jean Baptiste was still praying for him in Paradise and shook his head.\n\nSOHAILA, DR. MACGREGOR thought, looking over his notes. She was ill, but she had stabilized. Her temperature had abated a whole degree. She was occasionally alert. He'd thought jet lag at first, until there had been blood in her vomit and stool, but that had stopped ... Food poisoning ? That had seemed the likely diagnosis. She'd probably eaten the same things as the rest of her family, but it could have been one bad piece of meat, or maybe she'd done what every child did, and swallowed the wrong thing. It happened literally every week in every doctor's office in the world, and was particularly common among the Western community in Khartoum. But she was from Iraq, too, just as Patient Saleh was. He'd rerun the antibody tests on the latter, and there was no doubt. The bodyguard fellow was gravely ill, and unless his immune system rallied itself\u2014\n\nChildren, MacGregor remembered, somewhat startled by the connection, have powerful immune systems, rather more so than adults had. Though every parent knew that every child could come down with a disease and high fever in a matter of hours, the reason was simply that children, as they grew, were exposed to all manner of ailments for the first time. Each organism attacked the child, and in each child the immune system fought back, generating antibodies which would forever defeat that particular enemy (measles, mumps, and all the rest) whenever it again appeared\u2014and rapidly defeating it the first time in nearly all cases, which was why a child could spike a high fever one day and be out playing the next, another characteristic of childhood that first terrified and then vexed parents. The so-called childhood diseases were those _defeated_ in childhood. An adult exposed to them for the first time was in far greater distress\u2014mumps could render a healthy man impotent; chicken pox, a childhood annoyance, could _kill_ adults; measles had killed off whole peoples. Why? Because for all its apparent frailty, the human child was one of the toughest organisms known to exist. Vaccines for the childhood diseases had been developed not to save the many, but the few who for whatever reason\u2014probably genetic, but that was still being investigated\u2014were unusually vulnerable. Even polio, a devastating neuro-muscular disease, had done permanent harm to only a fraction of its victims\u2014but they were mostly children, and adults protected children with a ferocity usually associated with the animal kingdom\u2014and properly so, MacGregor thought, because the human psyche was programmed to be solicitous to children\u2014which was why so much scientific effort had been devoted to childhood disease over the years.... Where was this line of thought taking him? the doctor wondered. So often his brain went off on its own, as though wandering in a library of thoughts, searching for the right reference, the right connection ...\n\nSaleh had come from Iraq.\n\nSohaila had also come from Iraq.\n\nSaleh had Ebola.\n\nSohaila showed symptoms of flu, or food poisoning, or\u2014\n\nBut Ebola initially presented itself as flu ...\n\n\"My God,\" MacGregor breathed. He rose from his desk and his notes and walked to her room. Along the way he got a syringe and some vacuum tubes. There was the usual whining from the child about a needle, but MacGregor had a good touch, and it was all over before she was able to start crying, which problem he left to her mother, who'd slept overnight in the room.\n\n_Why didn't I run this test before?_ the young doctor raged at himself. _Damn._\n\n\"THEY ARE NOT officially here,\" the foreign ministry official told the health department official. \"What exactly is the problem?\"\n\n\"He seems to have Ebola virus.\" That got the other man's attention. His eyes blinked hard, and he leaned forward across his desk.\n\n\"Are you certain?\"\n\n\"Quite,\" the Sudanese physician confirmed with a nod. \"I've seen the test data. The doctor on the case is Ian MacGregor, one of our British visitors. He's actually a fine practitioner.\"\n\n\"Has anyone been told?\"\n\n\"No.\" The doctor shook his head emphatically. \"There is no cause to panic. The patient is fully isolated. The hospital staff know their business. We are supposed to make the proper notifications to the World Health Organization, informing them of the case and\u2014\"\n\n\"You are certain there is no risk of an epidemic?\"\n\n\"None. As I said, full isolation procedures are in place. Ebola is a dangerous disease, but we know how to deal with it,\" the physician answered confidently.\n\n\"Then why must you notify the WHO?\"\n\n\"In these cases, they dispatch a team to oversee the situation, to advise on procedures, and to look for the focal source of the infection so that\u2014\"\n\n\"This Saleh chap, he didn't catch the disease here, did he?\"\n\n\"Certainly not. If we had that problem here, I would know of it straightaway,\" he assured his host.\n\n\"So, there is no danger of spreading the disease, and he brought it in with him, so there is no question that there is a public-health danger to our country?\"\n\n\"Correct.\"\n\n\"I see.\" The official turned to look out the window. The presence of the former Iraqi officers in Sudan was still a secret, and it was in his country's interest to make sure it stayed that way. Keeping secrets meant keeping secrets from everyone. He turned back. \"You will _not_ notify the World Health Organization. If the presence of this Iraqi in our country became widely known, it would be a diplomatic embarrassment for us.\"\n\n\"That might be a problem. Dr. MacGregor is young and idealistic and\u2014\"\n\n\"You tell him. If he objects, I will have someone else speak to him,\" the official said, with a raised eyebrow. Such warnings, properly delivered, rarely failed to get someone's attention.\n\n\"As you wish.\"\n\n\"Will this Saleh fellow survive?\"\n\n\"Probably not. The mortality rate is roughly eight of ten, and his symptoms are advancing rapidly.\"\n\n\"Any idea how he contracted the disease?\"\n\n\"None. He denies ever having been in Africa before, but such people do not always speak the truth. I can speak with him further.\"\n\n\"That would be useful.\"\n\nPRESIDENT EYES CONSERVATIVES FOR THE SUPREME COURT, the headline ran. The White House staff never sleeps, though this privilege is occasionally granted to POTUS. Copies of various papers arrived while the rest of the city slept, and staff workers would take one of the copies and scan it for items of particular interest to the government. Those stories would be clipped, pasted to- . gether, and photocopied for the _Early Bird_ , an informal publication which allowed the powerful to find out what was happening or at least what the press thought was happening, which was sometimes true, sometimes false, and mainly in between.\n\n\"We got a major leak,\" one of them said, using an X-Acto knife to cut out the story from the _Washington Post._\n\n\"Look like it. Looks like it gets around, too,\" her counterpart on the _Times_ agreed.\n\n_An internal Justice Department document lists the judges being reviewed by the Ryan administration for possible nomination to fill the hine vacant seats on the Supreme Court._\n\n_Each of the jurists listed is a senior appeals court judge. The list is a highly conservative roster. Not a single judicial appointee from presidents Fowler or Durling is to be,found on it._\n\n_Ordinarily such nominees are first submitted to a committee of the American Bar Association, but in this case the list was prepared internally by senior career officials at the Justice Department, overseen by Patrick J. Martin, a career prosecutor and chief of the Criminal Division._\n\n\"The press doesn't like this.\"\n\n\"Think that's bad? Check this editorial out. Boy, they really responded fast to this one.\"\n\nTHEY'D NEVER WORKED so hard on anything. The mission had turned into sixteen-hour days, not much beer in the evenings, hasty pre-cooked meals, and only a radio for entertainment. That had to be played loud at the moment. They had lead boiling. The rig was the same as that used by plumbers, a propane tank with a burner on top, like an inverted rocket being static-tested, and atop that was a metal pot filled with lead kept in a liquid state by the roaring flame. A ladle came with the pot and this was dipped, then poured into bullet molds. The latter were .58 caliber, 505-grain, made for muzzle-loading rifles, rather like what the original mountain men had carried west back in the 1820s. These had been ordered from catalogs. There were ten of the molds, with four cavities per mold.\n\nSo far, Ernie Brown thought, things were going well, especially on the security side. Fertilizer was not a controlled substance. Neither was diesel fuel. Neither was lead, and every purchase had been made at more than one place, so that no single acquisition was so large as to cause comment.\n\nIt was still time-consuming menial labor, but as Pete had remarked, Jim Bridger hadn't come west by helicopter. No, he'd traveled the distance on horseback, doubtless with a packhorse or two, making maybe fifteen or twenty miles per day, then trapping his beaver one at a time, doing everything the hard way, the individual way, occasionally bumping into another of his kind and trading for jugged liquor or tobacco. So what they did was in the tradition of their kind. That was important.\n\nThe timing worked out nicely. Pete was doing the ladle work now, and from the time he poured into the first mold-set until he poured the last, the first set hardened enough that, when dipped in water and opened\u2014the twopiece tool was like a pair of pliers\u2014the mini\u00e9-ball-type projectiles were fully formed and solid. These were tossed into an empty oil drum, and the molds replaced in their holders. Ernie collected the spilled lead and dumped it back in the pot so that none would be wasted.\n\nThe only hard part was getting the cement truck, but a search of local papers had found an auction sale for a contractor going out of business, and for a mere $21,000 they'd acquired a three-year-old vehicle with a Mack truck body, only 70,567.1 miles on the odometer, and in pretty good running shape. They'd driven that down at night, of course, and it was now parked in the barn, sitting twenty feet away, its headlights watching them like a pair of eyes.\n\nThe work was menial and repetitive, but even that helped. Hanging on the barn wall was a map of downtown Washington, and as Ernie stirred the lead, he turned to look at it, his brain churning over the flat paper image and his own mental picture. He knew all the distances, and distance was the prime factor. The Secret Service thought it was pretty smart. They'd closed off Pennsylvania Avenue for the very purpose of keeping bombs away from the President's house. Well, hell, weren't they smart. They'd overlooked only one little thing.\n\n\"BUT I HAVE TO,\" MacGregor said. \"We're _required_ to.\"\n\n\"You will not,\" the health department official told him. \"It is not necessary. The Index Patient brought the disease with him. You have initiated proper containment procedures. The staff are doing their job\u2014you trained them well, Ian,\" he added to assuage the heat of the moment. \"It would be inconvenient for my country for this word to go out. I discussed it with the foreign ministry, and word will _not_ go out. Is that clear?\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"If you pursue this, we will have to ask you to leave the country.\"\n\nMacGregor flushed. He had a pale, northern complexion, and his face too easily showed his emotional state. This bastard could and would make another telephone call, and he would have a policeman\u2014so they called them here, though they were decidedly not the civilized, friendly sort he'd known in Edinburgh\u2014come to his house to tell him to pack his things for the ride to the airport. It had happened before to a Londoner who'd lectured a government official a little too harshly about AIDS dangers. And if he left, he'd be leaving patients behind, and that was his vulnerability, as the official knew, and as MacGregor knew that he knew. Young and dedicated, he looked after his patients as a doctor should, and leaving them to another's care wasn't something he could do easily, not here, not when there were just too few really competent physicians for the patient load.\n\n\"How is Patient Saleh?\"\n\n\"I doubt he will survive.\"\n\n\"That is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped. Do we have any idea how this man was exposed to the disease?\"\n\nThe younger man flushed again. \"No, and that's the point!\"\n\n\"I will speak to him myself.\"\n\n_Bloody hard thing to do from three meters away,_ MacGregor thought. But he had other things to think about.\n\nSohaila had tested positive for antibodies also. But the little girl was getting better. Her temperature was down another half a degree. She'd stopped her GI bleeding. MacGregor had rerun a number of tests, and baselined others. Patient Sohaila's liver function was nearly normal. He was certain she'd survive. Somehow she'd been exposed to Ebola, and somehow she'd defeated it\u2014but without knowing the former, he could only guess at the reason for the latter. Part of him wondered if Sohaila and Saleh had been exposed in the same way\u2014no, not exactly. As formidable as a child's immune defenses were, they were not all _that_ much more powerful than a healthy adult's, and Saleh showed no underlying health problems. But the adult was surely dying while the child was going to live. Why?\n\nWhat other factors had entered into the two cases? There was no Ebola outbreak in Iraq\u2014there had never been such a thing, and in a populous country like that\u2014didn't Iraq have a bio-war program? Could they have had an outbreak and hushed it up? But, no, the government of that country was in turmoil. So said the SkyNews service he had at his apartment, and in such circumstances secrets like this could not be kept. There would be panic.\n\nMacGregor was a doctor, not a detective. The physicians who could do both worked for the World Health Organization, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and at CDC in America. Not so much brighter than he as more experienced and differently trained.\n\nSohaila. He had to manage her case, keep checking her blood. Could she still infect others? MacGregor had to check the literature on that. All he knew for sure was that one immune system was losing and another was winning. If he were to figure anything out, he had to stay on the case. Maybe later he could get the word out, but he had to stay here to accomplish anything.\n\nBesides, before telling anyone, he had gotten the blood samples out to Pasteur and CDC. This strutting bureaucrat didn't know that, and the phone calls, if they came, would come to this hospital and to MacGregor. He _could_ get some word out. He could tell them what the political problem was. He could ask some questions, and relay others. He had to submit.\n\n\"As you wish, Doctor,\" he told the official. \"You will, of course, follow the necessary procedures.\"\n**31**\n\n**RIPPLES AND WAVES**\n\n**T** HE PAYOFF WAS THIS morning, and again President Ryan suffered through the ordeal of makeup and hair spray.\n\n\"We should at least have a proper barber chair,\" Jack observed while Mrs. Abbot did her duty. He'd just learned the day before that the presidential barber came to the Oval Office and did _his_ job at the President's swivel chair. That must be a real treat for the Secret Service, he thought, having a man with scissors and a straight razor an inch from his carotid artery. \"Okay, Arnie, what do I do with Mr. Donner?\"\n\n\"Number one, he asks any question he wants. That means you have to think about the answers.\"\n\n\"I do try, Arnie,\" Ryan observed with a frown.\n\n\"Emphasize the fact that you're a citizen and not a politician. It might not matter to Donner, but it will matter to the people who watch the interview tonight,\" van Damm advised. \"Expect a hit on the court thing.\"\n\n\"Who leaked that?\" Ryan demanded crossly.\n\n\"We'll never know, and trying to find out only makes you look like Nixon.\"\n\n\"Why is it that no matter what I do, somebody\u2014damn,\" Ryan sighed as Mary Abbot finished with his hair. \"I told George Winston that, didn't I?\"\n\n\"You're learning. If you help some little old lady to cross the street, some feminist will say that it was condescending. If you don't help her, the AARP will say you're insensitive to the needs of the elderly. Throw in every other interest group there is. They all have agendas, Jack, and those agendas are a lot more important to them than you are. The idea is to offend as few people as possible. That's different from offending nobody. Trying to do that offends everybody,\" the chief of staff explained.\n\nRyan's eyes went wide. \"I got it! I'll say something to piss everybody off\u2014and then they'll all love me.\"\n\nArnie wasn't buying: \"And every joke you tell will piss somebody off. Why? Humor is always cruel to someone, and some people just don't have a sense of humor to begin with.\"\n\n\"In other words, there's people out there who _want_ to get mad at something, and I'm the highest-profile target.\"\n\n\"You're learning,\" the chief of staff observed with a grim nod. He was worried about this one.\n\n\"WE HAVE MARITIME Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia,\" Jackson said, touching the proper point on the map.\n\n\"How much is there?\" Bretano asked.\n\n\"We just reconfigured the TOE\u2014\"\n\n\"What's that?\" SecDef asked.\n\n\"Table of Organization and Equipment.\" General Michael Moore was the Army's chief of staff. He'd commanded a brigade of the First Armored Division in the Persian Gulf War. \"The load-out is enough for a little better than a brigade, a full-sized heavy Army brigade, along with all the consumables they need for a month's combat operations. Added to that, we have some units set in Saudi Arabia. The equipment is almost all new, M1A2 main battle tanks, Bradleys, MLRS. The new artillery tracks will be shipped out in three months. The Saudis,\" he added, \"have been helping on the funding side. Some of the equipment is technically theirs, supposedly reserve equipment for their army, but we maintain it, and all we have to do is fly our people over to roll it out of the warehouses.\"\n\n\"Who would go first, if they ask for help?\"\n\n\"Depends,\" Jackson answered. \"Probably the first out would be an ACR\u2014Armored Cavalry Regiment. In a real emergency, we'd airlift the personnel from the 10th ACR in the Negev Desert. That can be done in as little as a single day. For exercises, the 3rd ACR out of Texas or the 2nd out of Louisiana.\"\n\n\"An ACR, Mr. Secretary, is a well-balanced brigadesized formation. Lots of teeth, but not much tail. It can take care of itself, and people will think twice before taking it on,\" Mickey Moore explained, adding, \"Before they can deploy for a lengthy stay, however, they need a combat-support battalion\u2014supply and repair troops.\"\n\n\"We still have a carrier in the Indian Ocean\u2014she's at Diego now with the rest of the battle group to give the crews some shore leave,\" Jackson went on. Which just about covered that atoll with sailors, but it was something. At least they could have a beer or two, and stretch their legs and play softball. \"We have an F-16 wing\u2014well, most of one\u2014in the Negev as well, as part of our commitment to Israeli security. That and the 10th Cav are pretty good. Their continuing mission is to train up the IDF, and it keeps them busy.\"\n\n\"Soldiers love to train, Mr. Secretary. They'd rather do that than anything,\" General Moore added.\n\n\"I need to get out and see some of this stuff,\" Bretano observed. \"Soon as I get the budget thing worked out\u2014the start of it, anyway. It sounds thin, gentlemen.\"\n\n\"It is, sir,\" Jackson agreed. \"Not enough to fight a war, but probably enough to deter one, if it comes to that.\"\n\n\"WILL THERE BE another war in the Persian Gulf?\" Tom Donner asked.\n\n\"I see no reason to expect it,\" the President replied. The hard part was controlling his voice. The answer was wary, but his words had to sound positive and reassuring. It was yet another form of lying, though telling the truth might change the equation. That was the nature of \"spin,\" a game so false and artificial that it became a kind of international reality. Saying what wasn't true in order to serve the truth. Churchill had said it once: in time of war, truth was so precious as to need a bodyguard of lies. But in peacetime?\n\n\"But our relations with Iran and Iraq have not been friendly for some time.\"\n\n\"The past is the past, Tom. Nobody can change it, but we can learn from it. There is no good reason for animosity between America and the countries in that region. Why should we be enemies?\" the President asked rhetorically.\n\n\"So will we be talking to the United Islamic Republic?\" Donner asked.\n\n\"We are always willing to talk to people, especially in the interest of fostering friendly relations. The Persian Gulf is a region of great importance to the entire world. It is in everyone's interest for that region to remain peaceful and stable. There's been enough war. Iran and Iraq fought for\u2014what?\u2014eight years, at enormous human cost to both countries. Then all the conflicts between Israel and her neighbors. Enough is enough. Now we have a new nation being born. This new country has much work to do. Its citizens have needs, and fortunately they also have the resources to address those needs. We wish them well. If we can help them, we will. America has always been willing to extend the hand of friendship.\"\n\nThere was a brief break, which probably denoted a commercial. The interview would run this evening at nine o'clock. Then Donner turned to his senior colleague, John Plumber, who took the next segment.\n\n\"So, how do you like being President?\"\n\nRyan tilted his head and smiled. \"I keep telling myself that I wasn't elected, I was sentenced. Honestly? The hours are long, the work is hard, much harder than I ever appreciated, but I've been pretty lucky. Arnie van Damm is a genius at organization. The staff here at the White House is just outstanding. I've gotten tens of thousands of letters of support from the people outside the Beltway, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them, and to let them know that it really helps.\"\n\n\"Mr. Ryan\" Jack supposed that his Ph.D. didn't count anymore\u2014\"what things are you going to try and change?\" Plumber asked.\n\n\"John, that depends on what you mean by 'change.' My foremost task is to keep the government operating. So, not 'change,' but 'restore,' is what I'm trying to do. We still don't really have a Congress yet\u2014not until the House of Representatives is reestablished\u2014and so I cannot submit a budget. I've tried to pick good people to take over the major Cabinet departments. Their job is to run those departments efficiently.\"\n\n\"Your Secretary of the Treasury, George Winston, has been criticized for his rather abrupt desire to change the federal tax code,\" Plumber said.\n\n\"All I can say is that I support Secretary Winston fully. The tax code is unconscionably complicated, and that is fundamentally unfair. What he wants to do will be revenue-neutral. Actually, that may be overly pessimistic. The net effect will be to enhance government revenues because of administrative savings in other areas.\"\n\n\"But there has been a lot of adverse comment about the regressive nature\u2014\"\n\nRyan held up his hand. \"Wait a minute, John, one of the problems in this town is that the language used by people has been warped. Charging everyone the same is not regressive. That word means a backward step, charging the poor more than the rich. We will _not_ be doing that. When you use that word in the incorrect way, you're misleading people.\"\n\n\"But that's the way people have described the tax system for years.\" Plumber hadn't had his grammar challenged in years.\n\n\"That doesn't make it right,\" Jack pointed out. \"In any case, as I keep saying, I am not a politician, John. I only know how to talk straight. Charging everyone the same tax rate fulfills the dictionary's definition of 'fair.' Come on, John, you know how the game is played. You and Tom make a lot of money\u2014far more than I do\u2014and every year your lawyer and accountant go over everything. You probably have investments that are designed to reduce your tax payments, right? How did those loopholes happen? Easy, lobbyists talked Congress into changing the law a little. Why? Because rich people paid them to do so. So what happens? The supposedly 'progressive' system is manipulated in such a way that the increased rates for the rich don't actually apply, because their lawyers and accountants tell them how to beat the system, and they _do_ beat the system, for a fee. So, the increased rates they pay are a lie, aren't they? Politicians know all this when they pass the laws.\n\n\"You see where all this takes us? Nowhere, John. It takes us nowhere. It's a great big game, that's all. Just a game that wastes time, misleads the public, and makes a lot of money for people who work the system\u2014and where does the money come from? The citizens, the people who pay for everything that happens. So George Winston wants to change the system\u2014and we agreed on that\u2014and what happens? The people who play the game and work the system use the same misleading words to make it look as though we're doing something unfair. These insiders are the most dangerous and pernicious special-interest group there is.\"\n\n\"And you don't like that.\" John smiled.\n\n\"Everyjob I've ever had, stock broker, history teacher, everything else, I've had to tell the truth as best I could. I'm not going to stop that now. Maybe some things do need changing, and I'll tell you what one of them is:\n\n\"Every parent in America sooner or later tells every child that politics is a dirty business, a rough business, a nasty business. Your dad told you. My dad told me\u2014and we accept that as though it makes sense, as though it's normal and right and proper. But it's _not_ , John. For years we've accepted the fact that politics\u2014wait, let's define terms, shall we? The political system is the way we govern the country, pass the laws we all have to follow, levy taxes. These are important things, aren't they? But at the same time we accept people into that system whom we would not willingly invite into our homes, whom we would not trust to baby-sit our children. Does this strike you as just a little odd, John?\n\n\"We allow people into the political system who routinely distort facts, who twist laws in order to suit patrons who give them campaign money. Some of whom just plain lie. And we accept this. You people in the media do. You would not accept that sort of behavior in your own profession, would you? Or in medicine, or in science, or in business, or in law enforcement.\n\n\"There's something wrong here,\" the President went on, leaning forward and talking passionately for the first time. \"This is our _country_ we're talking about, and the standards of behavior we demand of our representatives shouldn't be lower\u2014they should be higher. We should demand intelligence and integrity. That's why I've been giving speeches around the country. John, I'm a registered independent. I don't _have_ a party affiliation. I don't have an agenda except for wanting to make things work for everyone. I swore an oath to do that, and I take my oaths seriously. Well, I've learned that this upsets people, and I'm sorry about that, but I will _not_ compromise my beliefs to accommodate every special group with an army of paid lobbyists. I'm here to serve everybody, not just to serve the people who make the most noise and offer the most money.\"\n\nPlumber didn't show his pleasure at the outburst. \"Okay, Mr. President, for starters, then, what about civil rights?\"\n\n\"The Constitution is color-blind as far as I am concerned. Discrimination against people because of how they look, how they sound, what church they go to, or the country their ancestors came from is against the laws of our country. Those laws will be enforced. We are all supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, whether we obey them or break them. In the latter case, those people will have the Department of Justice to worry about.\"\n\n\"Isn't that idealistic?\"\n\n\"What's wrong with idealism?\" Ryan asked in return. \"At the same time, what about a little common sense once in a while? Instead of a lot of people chiseling for advantages for themselves or whatever small group they represent, why can't we all work together? Aren't we all Americans before we're anything else? Why can't we all try a little harder to work together and find reasonable solutions to problems? This country wasn't set up to have every group at the throat of every other group.\"\n\n\"Some would say that's the way we fight things out to make sure that everyone gets a fair share,\" Plumber observed.\n\n\"And along the way, we corrupt the political system.\"\n\nThey had to stop for the crew to change tapes on their cameras. Jack looked longingly at the door to the secretaries' office, wishing for a smoke. He rubbed his hands together, trying to look relaxed, but though he'd been given the chance to say things he'd wanted to say for years, the opportunity to do so only made him more tense.\n\n\"The cameras are off,\" Tom Donner said, settling back in his seat a little. \"Do you really think you can bring _any_ of this off?\"\n\n\"If I don't try, what does that make me?\" Jack sighed. \"The government's a mess. We all know that. If nobody tries to fix it, then it'll just get worse.\"\n\nDonner almost felt sympathy for his subject at that point. This Ryan guy's sincerity was manifest, as though his heart were beating right there on the sleeve of his jacket. But he just didn't get it. It wasn't that Ryan was a bad guy. He was just out of his depth, just as everyone else said. Kealty was right, and because he was right, Donner had his job to do.\n\n\"Ready,\" the producer said.\n\n\"The Supreme Court,\" Donner said, taking up the questioning from his colleague. \"It's been reported that you are now looking over a list of prospective justices for submission to the Senate.\"\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" Ryan replied.\n\n\"What can you tell us about them?\"\n\n\"I instructed the Justice Department to send me a list of experienced appeals-court judges. That's been done. I'm looking over the list now.\"\n\n\"What exactly are you looking for?\" Donner asked next.\n\n\"I'm looking for good judges. The Supreme Court is our nation's primary custodian of the Constitution. We need people who understand that responsibility, and who will interpret the laws fairly.\"\n\n\"Strict-constructionists?\"\n\n\"Tom, the Constitution says that the Congress makes the law, the Executive Branch enforces the law, and the courts explain the law. That's called checks and balances.\"\n\n\"But historically the Supreme Court has been an important force for change in our country,\" Donner said.\n\n\"And not all of those changes have been good ones. _Dred Scott_ started the Civil War. _Plessy v. Ferguson_ was a disgrace that set our country back seventy years. Please, you need to remember that as far as the law is concerned, I'm a layman\u2014\"\n\n\"That's why the American Bar Association routinely goes over judicial appointments. Will you submit your list to the ABA?\"\n\n\"No.\" Ryan shook his head. \"First, all of these judges have already passed that hurdle in order to get where they are. Second, the ABA is also an interest group, isn't it? Fine, they have a right to look out for the interests of their members, but the Supreme Court is the body of government which decides the law for everybody, and the ABA is the organization of people who use the law to make a living. Isn't it a conflict of interest for the group which makes use of the law to select the people who define the law? It would be in any other field, wouldn't it?\"\n\n\"Not everyone will see it that way.\"\n\n\"Yes, and the ABA has a big office here in Washington, and it's full of lobbyists,\" the President agreed. \"Tom, my job isn't to serve the interest groups. My job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution to the best of my ability. To help me do that, I'm trying to find people who think the same way I do, that the oath means what it says, without any game-playing under the table.\"\n\nDonner turned. \"John?\"\n\n\"You spent many years at the Central Intelligence Agency,\" Plumber said.\n\n\"Yes, I did,\" Jack agreed.\n\n\"Doing what?\" Plumber asked.\n\n\"Mainly I worked in the Directorate of Intelligence, going over information that came in through various means, trying to figure out what it meant, and then passing it on to others. Eventually I headed the Intelligence Directorate, then under President Fowler I became Deputy Director. Then, as you know, I became National Security Advisor to President Durling,\" Jack answered, trying to steer the talk forward rather than backward.\n\n\"Along the way, did you ever go out into the field?\" Plumber asked.\n\n\"Well, I advised the arms-control negotiations team, and I went off to a lot of conferences,\" the President replied.\n\n\"Mr. Ryan, there are reports that you did more than that, that you participated in operations that resulted in the deaths of, well, the deaths of Soviet citizens.\"\n\nJack hesitated for a moment, long enough that he knew the impression he'd be giving to the viewers for this \"special.\" \"John, it's been a principle of our government for many years that we never comment on intelligence operations. I will not change that principle.\"\n\n\"The American people have a right and a need to know what sort of man sits in this office,\" Plumber insisted.\n\n\"This administration will never discuss intelligence operations. As far as what sort of person I am, that's the purpose of this interview. Our country has to keep some secrets. So do you, John,\" Ryan said with a level gaze into the commentator's eyes. \"If you reveal sources, you're out of business. If America does the same thing, people get hurt.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"The subject is closed, John. Our intelligence services operate under congressional oversight. I've always supported that law, and I will continue to uphold it, and that's it on this subject.\"\n\nBoth reporters blinked pretty hard at that, and surely, Ryan thought, that part of the tape wouldn't make it onto the network tonight.\n\nBADRAYN NEEDED TO select thirty people, and while the number wasn't especially difficult\u2014nor was the required dedication\u2014brains were. He had the contacts. If there was a surplus of anything in the Middle East, it was terrorists, men like himself, if somewhat younger, who had dedicated their lives to the Cause, only to have it wither before their eyes. And that only made their anger and dedication worse\u2014and better, depending on one's point of view. On reflection, he needed only twenty smart ones. The rest just had to be dedicated, with one or two intelligent overseers. They all had to follow orders. They all had to be willing to die, or at least to take the chance. Well, that wasn't much of a problem, either. Hezbollah still had a supply of people willing to strap explosives to their bodies, and there were others.\n\nIt was part of the region's tradition\u2014probably not one that Mohammed would have approved entirely, but Badrayn wasn't particularly religious, and terrorist operations were his business. Historically, Arabs had not been the world's most efficient soldiers. Nomadic tribesmen for most of their history, their military tradition was one of raiding, later quantified as guerrilla tactics, rather than set-piece battle, which was, in fact, an invention of the Greeks, passed along to the Romans and thence to all Western nations. Historically, a single person would step forward to become a sacrifice\u2014in Viking tradition the person was called a \"berzerker,\" and in Japan they'd been part of the special attack corps also known as kamikaze\u2014on the field of battle, to swing his sword gloriously, and take as many of his foes off to be his servants in Paradise as possible. This was especially true in a _jihad,_ or \"holy war,\" whose objective was to serve the interests of the Faith. It ultimately proved that Islam, like any religion, could be corrupted by its adherents. For the moment, it meant that Badrayn had a supply of people who would do what he told them to do, his instructions relayed from Daryaei, who would also tell them that this was, indeed, a _jihad_ service in which lay their individual keys to a glorious afterlife.\n\nHe had his list. He made three telephone calls. The calls were relayed through several cutout chains, and in Lebanon and elsewhere, people made travel plans.\n\n\"SO, HOW'D WE do, coach?\" Jack asked with a smile.\n\n\"The ice got pretty thin, but I guess you didn't get wet,\" Arnie van Damm said with visible relief. \"You hit the interest groups pretty hard.\"\n\n\"Isn't it okay to trash the special interests? Hell, everybody else does!\"\n\n\"It depends on which groups and which interests, Mr. President. They all have spokespersons, too, and some of them can come across like Mother Teresa after a nicepill\u2014right before they slash your throat with a machete.\" The chief of staff paused. \"Still, you handled yourself pretty well. You didn't say anything they could turn against you too badly. We'll see how they cut it up for tonight, and then what Donner and Plumber say at the end. The last couple of minutes count the most.\"\n\nTHE TUBES ARRIVED in Atlanta in a very secure container called a \"hatbox\" because of its shape. It was in its way a highly sophisticated device, designed to hold the most dangerous of materials in total safety, multiple-sealed, and spec'd to survive violent impacts. It was covered with biohazard warning labels and was treated with great respect by the handlers, including the FedEx deliveryman who'd handed it over this morning at 9:14.\n\nThe hatbox was taken to a secure lab, where the outside was checked for damage, sprayed with a powerful chemical disinfectant, and then opened under strict containment procedures. The accompanying documents explained why this was necessary. The two blood tubes were suspected to contain viruses which caused hemorrhagic fever. That could mean any of several such diseases from Africa\u2014the indicated continent of origin\u2014all of which were things to be avoided. A technician working in a glove box made the transfer after examining the containers for leaks. There were none he could see, and more disinfectant spray made sure of that. The blood would be tested for antibodies and compared with other samples. The documentation went off to the office of Dr. Lorenz in the Special Pathogens Branch.\n\n\"GUS, ALEX,\" Dr. Lorenz heard on the phone.\n\n\"Still not getting any fishing in?\"\n\n\"Maybe this weekend. There's a guy in neurosurgery with a boat, and we have the house pretty well set up, finally.\" Dr. Alexandre was looking out the window of his office at east Baltimore. One could see the harbor, which led to the Chesapeake Bay, and there _were_ supposed to be rockfish out there.\n\n\"What's happening?\" Gus asked, as his secretary came in with a folder.\n\n\"Just checking in on the outbreak in Zaire. Anything new?\"\n\n\"Zip, thank God. We're out of the critical time. This one burned out in a hurry. We were very\u2014\" Lorenz stopped when he opened the folder and scanned the cover sheet. \"Wait a minute. Khartoum?\" he muttered to himself.\n\nAlexandre waited patiently. Lorenz was a slow, careful reader. An elderly man, rather like Ralph Forster, he took his time with things, which was one of the reasons he was a brilliant experimental scientist. Lorenz rarely took a false step. He thought too much before moving his feet.\n\n\"We just had two samples come in from Khartoum. Cover sheet is from a Dr. MacGregor, the English Hospital in Khartoum, two patients, adult male and fouryear-old female, possible hemorrhagic fever. The samples are in the lab now.\"\n\n\"Khartoum? Sudan?\"\n\n\"That's what it says,\" Gus confirmed.\n\n\"Long way from the Congo, man.\"\n\n\"Airplanes, Alex, airplanes,\" Lorenz observed. If there was one thing that frightened epidemiologists, it was international air travel. The cover sheet didn't say much, but it did give phone and fax numbers. \"Okay, well, we have to run the tests and see.\"\n\n\"What about the samples from before?\"\n\n\"Finished the mapping yesterday. Ebola Zaire, Mayinga sub-type, identical with the samples from 1976, down to the last amino acid.\"\n\n\"The airborne one,\" Alexandre muttered, \"the one that got George Westphal.\"\n\n\"That was never established, Alex,\" Lorenz reminded him.\n\n\"George was careful, Gus. You know that. You trained him.\" Pierre Alexandre rubbed his eyes. Headaches. He needed a new desk light. \"Let me know what those samples tell you, okay?\"\n\n\"Sure. I wouldn't worry too much. Sudan is a crummy environment for this little bastard. Hot, dry, lots of sunlight. The virus wouldn't last two minutes in the open. Anyway, let me talk to my lab chief. I'll see if I can micrograph it myself later today\u2014no, more likely tomorrow morning. I have a staff meeting in an hour.\"\n\n\"Yeah, and I need some lunch. Talk to you tomorrow, Gus.\" Alexandre\u2014he still thought of himself more as \"Colonel\" than \"Professor\"\u2014replaced the phone and walked out, heading off to the cafeteria. He was pleased to find Cathy Ryan in the food line again, along with her bodyguard.\n\n\"Hey, Prof.\"\n\n\"How's the bug business?\" she asked, with a smile.\n\n\"Same-o, same-o. I need a consult, Doctor,\" he said, selecting a sandwich off the counter.\n\n\"I don't do viruses.\" But she did enough work with AIDS patients whose eye troubles were secondary to their main problem. \"What's the problem?\"\n\n\"Headaches,\" he said on the way to the cashier.\n\n\"Oh?\" Cathy turned and took his glasses right off his face. She held them up to the light. \"You might try cleaning them once in a while. You're about two diopters of minus, pretty strong astigmatism. How long since you had the prescription checked?\" She handed them back with a final look at the encrusted dirt around the lenses, already knowing the answer to her question.\n\n\"Oh, three\"\n\n\"Years. You should know better. Have your secretary call mine and I'll have you checked out. Join us?\"\n\nThey selected a table by the window, with Roy Altman in tow, scanning the room, and catching looks from the other detail members doing the same. All clear.\n\n\"You know, you might be a good candidate for our new laser technique. We can re-shape your cornea and bring you right down to 20-20,\" she told him. She'd helped ramrod that program, too.\n\n\"Is it safe?\" Professor Alexandre asked dubiously.\n\n\"The only unsafe procedures I perform are in the kitchen,\" Professor Ryan replied with a raised eyebrow.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\" Alex grinned.\n\n\"What's new on your side of the house?\"\n\nIT WAS ALL in the editing. Well, mostly in the editing, Tom Donner thought, typing on his office computer. From that he would slide in his own commentary, explaining and clarifying what Ryan had really meant with his seemingly sincere ... seemingly? The word had leaped into his mind of its own accord, startling the reporter. Donner had been in the business for quite a few years, and before his promotion to network anchor, he'd been in Washington. He'd covered them all and knew them all. On his well-stuffed Rolodex was a card with every important name and number in town. Like any good reporter, he was _connected._ He could lift a phone and get through to anyone, because in Washington the rules for dealing with the media were elegantly simple: either you were a source or a target. If you didn't play ball with the media, they would quickly find an enemy of yours who did. In other contexts, the technical term was \"blackmail.\"\n\nDonner's instincts told him that he'd never met anyone like President Ryan before, at least not in public life ... or was that true? The I'm-one-of-you, Everyman stance went at least as far back as Julius Caesar. It was always a ploy, a sham to make voters think that the guy really was like them. But he never was, really. Normal people didn't get this far in any field. Ryan had advanced in CIA by playing office politics just like everyone else\u2014he must have. He'd made enemies and allies, as everyone did, and maneuvered his way up. And the leaks he'd gotten about Ryan's tenure at CIA ... could he use them? Not in the special. Maybe in the news show, which would contain a teaser anyway to make people watch it instead of their usual evening TV fare.\n\nDonner knew he had to be careful on this. You didn't go after a sitting President for the fun of it\u2014well, that wasn't true, was it? Going after a President was the best sort of fun, but there were rules about how you did it. Your information had to be pretty solid. That meant multiple sources, and they had to be good sources. Donner would have to take them to a senior official of his news organization, and people would hem and haw, and then they'd go over the copy for his story, and then they'd let him run it.\n\n_Everyman._ But Everyman didn't work for CIA and go into the field to be a spy, did he? Damned sure Ryan was the first spy who'd ever made it to the Oval Office ... was that good?\n\nThere were so many blanks in his life. The thing in London. He'd killed there. The terrorists who'd attacked his home\u2014he'd killed at least one of them there, too. This incredible story about stealing a Soviet submarine, during which, his source said, he'd killed a Russian sailor. The other things. Was this the sort of person the American people wanted in the White House?\n\nAnd yet he tried to come across as ... Everyman. Common sense. This is what the law says. I take my oaths seriously.\n\n_It's a lie,_ Donner thought. _It has to be a lie._\n\n_You're one clever son of a bitch, Ryan,_ the anchorman thought.\n\nAnd if it was that he was clever, and if it _was_ a lie, then what? Changing the tax system. Changes in the Supreme Court. Changes in the name of efficiency, Secretary Bretano's activities at Defense ... damn.\n\nThe next leap of imagination was that CIA and Ryan had had a role in the crash at the Capitol\u2014no, that was too crazy. Ryan was an opportunist. They all were, the people Donner had covered for all of his professional life, all the way back to his first job at the network affiliate in Des Moines, where his work had landed a county commissioner in jail, and so gotten Donner noticed by the network executives at 30 Rock. Political figures. Donner reported on all manner of news from avalanches to warfare, but it was politicians whom he had studied as a profession and a hobby.\n\nThey were all the same, really. Right place, right time, and they already had the agenda. If he'd learned anything at all, he'd learned that. Donner looked out his window and lifted his phone with one hand while flipping the Rolodex with the other.\n\n\"Ed, this is Tom. Just how good are those sources, and how quickly can I meet them?\" He couldn't hear the smile on the other end of the line.\n\nSOHAILA WAS SITTING up now. Such situations provided a relief that never failed to awe the young doctor. Medicine was the most demanding of the professions, MacGregor believed. Every day, to a greater or lesser degree, he diced with Death. He didn't think of himself as a soldier, or a warrior knight on a bloodied charger, at least not in conscious terms, because Death was an enemy who never showed himself\u2014but he was always there, even so. Every patient he treated had that enemy inside, or hovering about somewhere, and his job as a physician was to discover his hiding place, seek him out, and destroy him, and you saw the victory in the face of the patient, and you savored every one.\n\nSohaila was still unwell, but that would pass. She was on liquids now, and she was keeping them down. Still weak, she would grow no weaker. Her temperature was down. All her vital signs were either stabilized or heading back to normal. This was a victory. Death wouldn't claim this child. In the normal course of events, she would grow and play and learn and marry and have children of her own.\n\nBut it was a victory for which MacGregor could not really take credit, at least not all of it. His care for the child had been merely supportive, not curative. Had it helped? Probably, he told himself. You couldn't know where the line was between what would have happened on its own and what had made a real difference. Medicine would be far easier if its practitioners possessed that degree of sight, but they didn't yet and probably never would. Had he not treated her\u2014well, in this climate, just the heat might have done it, or certainly the dehydration, or maybe some opportunistic secondary infection. People so often expired not from their primary ailment, but from something else that took hold from the general weakening of the body. And so, yes, he _would_ claim this victory, better yet that it was the life of a charming and attractive little girl who would in just a short time learn to smile again. MacGregor took her pulse, savoring the touch of the patient as he always did, and the remote contact with a heart that would still be beating a week from now, and as he watched, she fell off to sleep. He gently replaced the hand on the bed and turned.\n\n\"Your daughter will recover fully,\" he told the parents, confirming their hopes and crushing their fears with five quiet words and a warm smile.\n\nThe mother gasped as though punched, her mouth open, tears exploding from her eyes as she covered her face with her hands. The father took the news in what he deemed a more manly way, his face impassive\u2014but not his eyes, which relaxed and looked up to the ceiling in relief. Then he seized the doctor's hand, and his dark eyes came back down to bore in on MacGregor's.\n\n\"I will not forget,\" the general told him.\n\nThen it was time to see Saleh, something he'd consciously delayed. MacGregor left the room and walked down the corridor. Outside he changed into a different set of clothing. Inside he saw a defeat. The man was under restraints. The disease had entered his brain. Dementia was yet another symptom of Ebola, and a merciful one. Saleh's eyes were vacant and stared at the water marks on the ceiling. The nurse in attendance handed him the chart, the news on which was uniformly bad. MacGregor scanned it, grimaced, and wrote an order to increase the morphine drip. Supportive care in this case hadn't mattered a damn. One victory, one loss, and if he'd had the choice of which to save and which to lose, this was how he'd have written the story, for Saleh was grown and had had a life of sorts. That life had but five days to run, and MacGregor could do nothing now to save it, only a few things to make its final passage less gruesome for the patient\u2014and the staff. After five minutes he left the room, stripped off his protective garb, and walked to his office, his face locked in a frown of thought.\n\nWhere had it come from? Why would one survive and one die? What didn't he know that he needed to know? The physician poured himself a cup of tea and tried to think past the victory and the defeat in order to find the information that had decided both issues. Same disease, same time. Two very different outcomes. Why?\n**32**\n\n**RERUNS**\n\n**I** CAN'T GIVE THIS TO YOU, and I can't let you copy any of it, but I can let you look at it.\" He handed the photo over. He had light cotton gloves on, and he'd already given a pair to Donner. \"Fingerprints,\" he explained quietly.\n\n\"Is this what I think it is?\" It was a black-and-white photograph, eight-by-ten glossy, but there was no classification stamp on it, at least not on the front. Donner didn't turn it over.\n\n\"You really don't want to know, do you?\" It was a question and a warning.\n\n\"I guess not.\" Donner nodded, getting the message. He didn't know how the Espionage Act\u201418 U.S.C. \u00a7793E\u2014interacted with his First Amendment rights, but if he didn't know that the photo was classified, then he didn't have to find out.\n\n\"That's a Soviet nuclear missile submarine, and that's Jack Ryan on the gangway. You'll notice he's wearing a Navy uniform. This was a CIA operation, run in cooperation with the Navy, and that's what we got out of it.\" The man handed over a magnifying glass to make sure that the identifications were positive. \"We conned the Soviets into thinking she'd exploded and sunk about halfway between Florida and Bermuda. They probably still think that.\"\n\n\"Where is it now?\" Donner asked.\n\n\"They sank her a year later, off Puerto Rico,\" the CIA official explained.\n\n\"Why there?\"\n\n\"Deepest Atlantic water close to American territory, about five miles down, so nobody will ever find her, and nobody can even look without us knowing.\"\n\n\"This was back\u2014I remember!\" Donner said. \"The Russians had a big exercise going and we raised hell about it, and they actually lost a submarine, didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"Two.\" Another photo came out of the folder. \"See the damage to the submarine's bow? _Red October_ rammed and sank another Russian sub off the Carolinas. It's still there. The Navy didn't recover that one, but they sent down robots and stripped a lot of useful things off the hulk. It was covered as salvage activity on the first one, that sank from a reactor accident. The Russians never found out what happened to the second Alfa.\"\n\n\"And this never leaked?\" It was pretty amazing to a man who'd spent years extracting facts from the government, like a dentist with an unwilling patient.\n\n\"Ryan knows how to hush things up.\" Another photo. \"That's a body bag. The person inside was a Russian crewman. Ryan killed him\u2014shot him with a pistol. That's how he got his first Intelligence Star. I guess he figured we couldn't risk having him tell\u2014well, isn't too hard to figure, is it?\"\n\n\"Murder?\"\n\n\"No.\" The CIA man wasn't willing to go that far. \"The official story is that it was a real shoot-out, that other people got hurt also. That's how the documents read in the file, but . . .\"\n\n\"Yeah. You have to wonder, don't you?\" Donner nodded, staring down at the photos. \"Could this possibly be faked?\"\n\n\"Possibly, yes,\" he admitted. \"But it's not. The other people in the photo: Admiral Dan Foster, he was Chief of Naval Operations back then. This one is Commander Bartolomeo Mancuso. Back then he commanded USS _Dallas._ He was transferred to Red October to facilitate the defection. He's still on active duty, by the way, an admiral now. He commands all the submarines in the Pacific. And that one is Captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius of the Soviet navy. He was the captain of _Red October._ They're all still alive. Ramius lives in Jacksonville, Florida, now. He works at the Navy's base at Mayport under the name Mark Ramsey. Consulting contract,\" he explained. \"The usual thing. Got a big stipend from the government, too, but God knows he earned it.\"\n\nDonner noted the details, and he recognized one of the extraneous faces. Sure as hell this wasn't faked. There were rules for that, too. If somebody lied to a reporter, it wasn't all that hard to make sure the right people found out who had broken the law\u2014worse yet, that person became a target, and the media was in its way a crueler prosecutor than anyone in the Justice Department could ever hope to be. The court system, after all, required due process of law.\n\n\"Okay,\" the journalist said. The first set of photos went back in their folder. Another folder appeared, and from it a photograph.\n\n\"Recognize this guy?\"\n\n\"He was\u2014wait a minute. Gera-something. He was\u2014\"\n\n\"Nikolay Gerasimov. He was chairman of the old KGB.\"\n\n\"Killed in a plane crash back in\u2014\"\n\nAnother photo went down. The subject was older, grayer, and looking far more prosperous. \"This picture was taken in Winchester, Virginia, two years ago. Ryan went to Moscow, covered as a technical adviser to the START talks. He got Gerasimov to defect. Nobody's exactly sure how. His wife and daughter got out, too. That op was run directly out of Judge Moore's office. Ryan worked that way a lot. He was never really part of the system. Ryan knows\u2014well, look, in fairness to the guy, he's one hell of a spook, okay? He supposedly worked directly for Jim Greer as part of the DI, not the DO. A cover within a cover. Ryan's never made an operational mistake that I know of, and that's some record. Not too many others can claim that, but one reason for it is he's one ruthless son of a bitch. Effective, yes, but ruthless. He cut through all the bureaucracy whenever he wanted. He does it his way every time, and if you get in his way\u2014well, there's one dead Russian we buried off the Red October, and a whole Alfa crew off the Carolinas, to keep that op a secret. This one, I'm not sure. Nothing in the file, but the file has a lot of blanks. How the wife and daughter got out, it's not in the file. All I have for that are rumors, and they're pretty thin.\"\n\n\"Damn, I wish I'd had this a few hours ago.\"\n\n\"Rolled you, did he?\" This question came from Ed Kealty over a speaker phone.\n\n\"I know the problem,\" the CIA official said. \"Ryan is slick. I mean, _slick._ He's skated through CIA like Dorothy Hamill at Innsbruck, done it for years. Congress loves him. Why? He comes across as the most straightforward guy this side of Honest Abe. Except he's killed people.\" The man's name was Paul Webb, and he was a senior official in the Directorate of Intelligence, but not senior enough to prevent his whole unit from ending up on the RIF list. He should have been DDI now, Webb thought, and he would have been except for the way Ryan had gotten James Greer's ear and never let go of it. And so his career had ended as an entry-level supergrade at CIA, and now _that_ was being taken away from him. He had his retirement. Nobody could take that away well, if it became known that he'd smuggled these files out of Langley, he'd be in very deep trouble ... or maybe not. What really happened to whistle-blowers, after all? The media protected them pretty well, and he had his time in service, and ... he didn't _like_ being part of a reduction-in-force exercise. In another age, though he didn't admit it even to himself, his anger might have prompted him to make contact with\u2014no, not that. Not to an enemy. But the media wasn't an enemy, was it? He told himself that it was not, despite an entire career of thinking otherwise.\n\n\"You've been rolled, Tom,\" Kealty said again over the phone line. \"Welcome to the club. _I_ don't even know all the stuff he can pull off. Paul, tell him about Colombia.\"\n\n\"There's no file on that one that I can find,\" Webb admitted. \"Wherever it is\u2014well, there are special files, the ones with date-stamps on them. Like 2050 at the earliest. Nobody sees those.\"\n\n\"How does _that_ happen?\" Donner demanded. \"I've heard that before, but I've never been able to confirm\u2014\"\n\n\"How they keep those off the books? It's a deal that has to go through Congress, an unwritten part of the oversight process. The Agency goes there with a little problem, asks for special treatment, and if Congress agrees, off the file goes into the special vault\u2014hell, for all I know, the whole thing's been shredded and turned into compost, but I can give you a few verifiable facts,\" Webb concluded with an elegant dangle.\n\n\"I'm listening,\" Donner replied. And so was his tape recorder.\n\n\"How do you suppose the Colombians broke up the Medellin cartel?\" Webb asked, drawing Donner in further. It wasn't all that hard. These people thought they knew about intrigue, Webb thought with a benign smile.\n\n\"Well, they had some sort of internal faction fight, a couple of bombs went off and\u2014\"\n\n\"They were CIA bombs. Somehow\u2014I'm not sure exactly how, we initiated the faction fight. This I do know: Ryan was down there. His mentor at Langley was James Greer\u2014they were like father and son. But when James died, Ryan wasn't there for the funeral, and he wasn't at home, and he wasn't away on CIA business\u2014he'd just come _back_ from a NATO conference in Belgium. But then he just dropped off the map, like he's done any number of times. Soon thereafter the President's National Security Advisor, Jim Cutter, is _accidentally_ run down by a D.C. transit bus on the G.W., right? He didn't look? He just ran in front of a bus. That's what the FBI said, but the guy running that was Dan Murray, and what job does he have now? FBI Director, right? It just so happens he and Ryan go back more than ten years. Murray was the 'special' guy for both Emil Jacobs _and_ Bill Shaw. When the Bureau needed something done quietly, they called in Murray. Before that he was legal attach\u00e9 in London\u2014that's a spook post, lots of contacts with the intelligence communities over there; Murray's the black side of FBI, big time and well connected. And _he_ picked Pat Martin to advise Ryan on Supreme Court appointments. Is the picture becoming clear?\"\n\n\"Wait a minute. I _know_ Dan Murray. He's a tough son of a bitch, but he's an honest cop\u2014\"\n\n\"He was in Colombia with Ryan, which is to say, he was off the map at exactly the same time. Okay, remember, I do _not_ have the file on this operation, okay? I can't prove any of this. Look at the sequence of events. Director Jacobs and all the others were killed, and right after that we have bombs going off in Colombia, and a lot of the cartel boys go to talk it over with God\u2014but a lot of innocent people got killed, too. That's the problem with bombs. Remember how Bob Fowler made an issue of that? So what happens then? Ryan disappears. Murray does, too. I figure they went down to turn the operation off before it got totally out of hand\u2014and then Cutter dies at a very convenient moment. Cutter didn't have the balls for wet work, he probably knew that, and people probably were afraid he'd crack because he just didn't have the nerve. But Ryan sure as hell did\u2014and still does. Murray\u2014well, you kill the FBI Director, and you piss off a very serious organization, and I can't say I disapprove. Those Medellin bastards stepped way over the line, and they did it in an election year, and Ryan was in the right place to play a little catch-up ball, and so somebody issued him a hunting license, and maybe things got a little out of hand\u2014it happens\u2014and so he goes down there to shut it down. Successfully,\" Webb emphasized. \"In fact, the whole operation was a success. The cartel came apart\u2014\"\n\n\"Another one took its place,\" Donner objected. Webb nodded with an insider's smile.\n\n\"True, and they haven't killed any American officials, have they? Somebody explained to them what the rules are. Again, I will not say that what Ryan did was wrong, except for one little thing.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" Donner asked, disappointing Webb, though he was fully caught up in the story now.\n\n\"When you deploy military forces into a foreign country, and kill people, it's called an act of war. But, again, Ryan skated. The boy's got some beautiful moves. Jim Greer trained him well. You could drop Ryan in a septic tank and he'll come out smelling like Old Spice.\"\n\n\"So, what's your beef with him?\"\n\n\"You finally asked,\" Webb observed. \"Jack Ryan is probably the best intelligence operator we've had in thirty years, the best since Allen Dulles, maybe the best since Bill Donovan. _Red October_ was a brilliant coup. Getting the chairman of KGB out was even better. The thing in Colombia, well, they twisted the tiger's tail, and they forgot that the tiger has great big claws. Okay,\" Webb allowed. \"Ryan's a king spook\u2014but he needs somebody to tell him what the law is, Tom.\"\n\n\"A guy like this would never get elected,\" Kealty observed, straining himself to say as little as possible. Three miles away his own chief of staff almost pulled the phone away from him, they were so close to getting the message across. Fortunately, Webb carried on.\n\n\"He's done a great job at the Agency. He was even a good adviser for Roger Durling, but that's not the same as being President. Yeah, he rolled you, Mr. Donner. Maybe he rolled Durling\u2014probably not, but who can say? But this guy is rebuilding the whole fucking government, and he's building it in _his_ image, in case you didn't notice. Every appointment he's made, they're all people he's worked with, some for a long time\u2014or they were selected for him by close associates. Murray running the FBI. Do you want Dan Murray in charge of America's most powerful law enforcement agency? You want these two people picking the Supreme Court? Where will he take us?\" Webb paused, and sighed. \"I hate doing this. He's one of us at Langley, but he isn't supposed to be President, okay? I have an obligation to my country, and my country isn't Jack Ryan.\" Webb collected the photos and tucked them back in the folders. \"I gotta get back. If anyone finds out what I've done, well, look what happened to Jim Cutter . . .\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Donner said. Then he had some decisions to make. His watch said three-fifteen, and he had to make them fast. Driving that decision would be a well-understood fact. There was something in creation even more furious than a woman scorned. It was a reporter who'd discovered that he'd been rolled.\n\nALL NINE WERE dying. It would take from five to eight days, but they were all doomed, and they all knew it. Their faces stared at the overhead cameras, and they had no illusions now. Their executions would be even crueller than the courts had decided for them. Or so they thought. This group promised to be more dangerous than the first\u2014they just knew more of what was going on\u2014and as a result they were more fully restrained. As Moudi watched, the army medics went in to draw blood samples from the subjects, which would be necessary to confirm and then to quantify the degree of their infection. On their own, the medics had come up with a way to keep the \"patients\" from struggling during the process\u2014a jerked arm at the wrong moment could make one of the medical corpsmen stab the needle into the wrong body, and so while one man did the sample, the other held a knife across the subject's throat. Doomed though the criminals believed themselves to be, they _were_ criminals, and cowards, and therefore unwilling to hasten their deaths. It wasn't good medical technique, but then nobody in the building was practicing good medicine. Moudi watched the process for a few minutes and left the monitoring room.\n\nThey'd been overly pessimistic on many things, and one of them was the quantity of virus that would be needed. In the culturing tank, the Ebola had consumed the monkey kidneys and blood with a gusto whose results chilled even the director. Though it happened fundamentally at the molecular level, overall it was like seeing ants going after dead fruit, seeming to come from nowhere and then covering it, turning it black with their bodies. So it was with the Ebola virus; even though it was too small to see, there were literally trillions of them eating and displacing the tissue offered them as food. What had been one color was now another, and you didn't have to be a physician to know that the contents of the chamber were hateful beyond words. It chilled his blood merely to look at the dreadful \"soup.\" There were liters of it now, and they were growing more, using human blood taken from the Tehran central blood bank.\n\nThe director was examining a sample under the electron microscope, comparing it with another. As Moudi approached, he could see the date-stamp labels on each. One was from Jean Baptiste. The other was newly arrived from a \"patient\" in the second group of nine.\n\n\"They're identical, Moudi,\" he said, turning when the younger man approached.\n\nThis was not as much to be expected as one might think. One of the problems with viruses was that, since they were scarcely alive at all, they were actually ill suited for proper reproduction. The RNA strand lacked an \"editing function\" to ensure that each generation would fully follow in the footsteps of its predecessor. It was a serious adaptive weakness of Ebola, and many other similar organisms. Sooner or later each Ebola outbreak petered out, and this was one of the reasons. The virus itself, maladapted to the human host, became less virulent. And _that_ was what made it the ideal biological weapon. It would kill. It would spread. Then it would die before doing too much of the latter. How much it did of the former was a function of the initial distribution. It was both horribly lethal and also self-limiting.\n\n\"So, we have at least three generations of stability,\" Moudi observed.\n\n\"And by extrapolation, probably seven to nine.\" The project director, whatever his perversion of medical science, was a conservative on technical issues. Moudi would have said nine to eleven. Better that the director was right, he admitted to himself, turning away.\n\nOn a table at the far wall were twenty cans. Similar to the ones used to infect the first collection of criminals, but slightly modified, they were labeled as economy-size cans of a popular European shaving cream. (The company was actually American-owned, which amused everyone associated with the project.) They'd been exactly what they said, and been bought singly in twelve different cities in five different countries, as the lot numbers inked on their curving bottoms showed. Here in the Monkey House they'd been emptied and carefully disassembled for modification. Each would contain a half liter of the thinnedout \"soup,\" plus a neutral-gas propellant (nitrogen, which would not involve any chemical reaction with the \"soup\" and would not support combustion) and a small quantity of coolant. Another part of the team had already tested the delivery system. There would be no degradation of the Ebola at all for more than nine hours. After that, with the loss of the coolant, the virus particles would start to die in a linear function. At 9 + 8 hours, less than ten percent of the particles would be dead\u2014but those, Moudi told himself, were the weak ones anyway, and probably the particles that would be unlikely to cause illness. At 9 + 16 hours, fifteen percent would be dead. Thereafter, experiments had revealed, every eight hours\u2014for some reason the numbers seemed to track with thirds of days\u2014an additional five percent would die. And so ...\n\nIt was simple enough. The travelers would all fly out of Tehran. Flight time to London, seven hours. Flight time to Paris, thirty minutes less. Flight time to Frankfurt, less still. Much of that factor was the time of day, Moudi had learned. In the three cities there would be easy connecting flights. Baggage would not be checked because the travelers would be moving on to another country, and therefore customs inspection wasn't necessary, and therefore no one would notice the cans of unusually cold shaving cream. About the time the coolant ran out, the travelers would be in their first-class seats, climbing to cruising altitude to their cities of final destination, and there again international air travel worked out nicely. There were direct flights from Europe to New York, to Washington, to Boston, to Philadelphia, to Chicago, to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to Atlanta, to Dallas, to Orlando, and regular connecting flights to Las Vegas, and Atlantic City\u2014in fact to all of America's convention cities. The travelers would all fly first class, the quicker to claim their luggage and get through customs. They would have good hotel reservations, and return tickets that took them out from different airports. From time-zero to delivery no more than twenty-four hours would pass, and therefore eighty percent of the Ebola released would be active. After that, it was all random, in Allah's hands\u2014 _no!_ Moudi shook his head. He was not the director. He would not apply this act to the will of his God. Whatever it might be, however necessary it was to his country\u2014and a new one at that\u2014he would not defile his religious beliefs by saying or even thinking _that._\n\nSimple enough? It had been simple once, but then\u2014it was a legacy of sorts. Sister Jean Baptiste, her body long since incinerated . . . instead of leaving children behind as a woman's body ought, disease was its only physical legacy, and that was an act of such malignance that surely Allah must be offended. But she'd left something else, too, a real legacy. Moudi had once hated all Westerners as unbelievers. In school he'd learned of the Crusades, and how those supposed soldiers of the prophet Jesus had slaughtered Muslims, as Hitler had later slaughtered Jews, and from that he'd taken the lesson that all Westerners and all Christians were something less than the people of his own Faith, and it was easy to hate such people, easy to write them off as irrelevancies in a world of virtue and belief. But that one woman. What was the West and what was Christianity? The criminals of the eleventh century, or a virtuous woman of the twentieth who denied every human wish she might have had\u2014and for what? To serve the sick, to teach her faith. Always humble, always respectful. She'd never broken her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience\u2014Moudi was sure of that\u2014and though those vows and those beliefs might have been false, they hadn't been _that_ false. He'd learned from her the same thing that the Prophet had learned. There was but one God. There was but one Book. She had served both with a pure heart, however misguided her religious beliefs might have been.\n\n_Not just Sister Jean Baptiste,_ he reminded himself. _Sister Maria Magdalena, too._ And she had been murdered\u2014and why? Loyalty to her faith, loyalty to her vows, loyalty to her friend, not one of which the Holy Koran found the least bit objectionable.\n\nIt would have been so much easier for him had he only worked with black Africans. Their religious beliefs were things the Koran abhorred, since many of them were still pagans in deed if not in word, ignorant of the One God, and he could easily have looked down on them, and not worried at all about Christians\u2014but he had met Jean Baptiste and Maria Magdalena. Why? Why had that happened?\n\nUnfortunately for him it was too late to ask such questions. What was past was past. Moudi walked to the far corner of the room and got himself some coffee. He'd been awake for more than a day, and with fatigue came doubts, and he hoped the drink would chase them away until sleep could come, and with it rest, and with that, perhaps, peace.\n\n\"YOU HAVE TO be kidding!\" Arnie snarled into the phone.\n\nTom Donner's voice was as apologetic as it could be. \"Maybe it was the metal detectors on the way out. The tape\u2014I mean, it's damaged. You can still see it and hear it just fine, but there's a little noise on the audio track. Not broadcast quality. The whole hour's worth is shot. We can't use it.\"\n\n\"So?\" van Damm demanded.\n\n\"So, we have a problem, Arnie. The segment is supposed to run at nine.\"\n\n\"So, what do you want me to do about it?\"\n\n\"Is Ryan up to redoing it live? We'll get better share that way,\" the anchorman offered.\n\nThe President's chief of staff almost said something else. If this had been sweeps week\u2014during which the networks did their best to inflate their audiences in order to get additional commercial fees\u2014he might have accused Donner of having done this deliberately. No, that was a line even _he_ couldn't cross. Dealing with the press on this level was rather like being Clyde Beatty in center ring, armed with a bottomless chair and a blank-loaded revolver, holding great jungle cats at bay for the audience, having the upper hand at all times, but knowing that the cats needed to get lucky only once. Instead he just offered silence, forcing Donner to make the next move.\n\n\"Look, Arnie, it'll be the same agenda. How often do we give the President a chance to rehearse his lines? And he did fine this morning. John thinks so, too.\"\n\n\"You can't retape?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"Arnie, I go on the air in forty minutes, and I'm wrapped till seven-thirty. That gives me thirty minutes to scoot down to the White House, set up and shoot, and get the tape back here, all before nine? You want to lend me one of his helicopters?\" He paused. \"This way\u2014tell you what. I will say on the air that we goofed on the tape, and that the Boss graciously agreed to go live with us. If that isn't a network blow job, I don't know what is.\"\n\nArnold van Damm's alarm lights were all flashing red. The good news was that Jack had handled himself pretty well. Not perfect, but pretty well, especially on the sincerity. Even the controversial stuff, he'd come across as believing what he'd said. Ryan took coaching well, and he learned fast. He hadn't looked as relaxed as he should, but that was okay. Ryan _wasn't_ a politician\u2014he'd said that two or three times\u2014and therefore looking a little tense was all right. Focus groups in seven different cities all said that they liked Jack because he acted like one of them. Ryan didn't know that Arnie and the political staff were doing that. _That_ little program was as secret as a CIA operation, but Arnie justified it to himself as a reality check on how the President could best project his agenda and his image in order to govern effectively\u2014and no President had ever known all the things done in his name. So, yes, Ryan _did_ come across as presidential\u2014not in the normal way, but in _his own_ way, and that, the focus groups all agreed, was good, too. And going live, yes, that would _really_ look good, and it _would_ get a lot more people to flip the channel to NBC, and Arnie wanted the people to get to know Ryan better.\n\n\"Okay, Tom, a tentative yes. But I _do_ have to ask him.\"\n\n\"Fast, please,\" Donner replied. \"If he cancels out, then we have to jerk around the whole network schedule for tonight, and that could mean _my_ ass, okay?\"\n\n\"Back to you in five,\" van Damm promised. He killed the button on the phone and hustled out of the room, leaving the receiver on his desk pad.\n\n\"On the way to see the Boss,\" he told the Secret Service agents in the east-west corridor. His stride told them to jump out of his way even before they saw his eyes.\n\n\"Yes?\" Ryan said. It wasn't often his door opened without warning.\n\n\"We have to redo the interview,\" Arnie said somewhat breathlessly.\n\nJack shook his head in surprise. \"Why? Didn't I have my fly zipped?\"\n\n\"Mary always checks that. The tape got screwed up, and there isn't time to reshoot. So Donner asked me to ask you if you would do it live at nine o'clock. Same questions and everything\u2014no, no,\" Arnie said, thinking fast. \"What about we get your wife down here, too?\"\n\n\"Cathy won't like that. Why?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Really, all she has to do is sit there and smile. It will look good for the people out there. Jack, she has to act like the First Lady occasionally. This should be an easy one. Maybe we can even bring the kids in toward the end\u2014\"\n\n\"No. My kids stay out of the public eye, period. Cathy and I have talked about that.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Arnie, no now, no tomorrow, no in the future, no.\" Ryan's voice was as final as a death sentence.\n\nThe chief of staff figured he couldn't talk Ryan into everything. This would take a little time, but he'd come around eventually. You couldn't be one of the people without letting them meet your kids, but now wasn't the time to press on that one. \"Will you ask Cathy?\"\n\nRyan sighed and nodded. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Right, okay, I'll tell Donner that she might be on, but we're not sure yet because of her medical obligations. It'll give him something to think about. It will also take some of the heat off you. That's the First Lady's main job, remember.\"\n\n\"You want to tell her that, Arnie? Remember, she's a surgeon, good with knives.\"\n\nVan Damm laughed. \"I'll tell you what she is. She's a hell of a lady, and she's tougher than either one of us. Ask nicely,\" he advised.\n\n\"Yeah.\" Right before dinner, Jack thought.\n\n\"OKAY, HE'LL DO it. But we want to ask his wife to join us, too.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Arnie asked. \"Not sure yet. She isn't back from work,\" he added, and that was a line that made the reporters smile.\n\n\"Okay, Arnie, thanks, I owe you one.\" Donner turned off the speakerphone.\n\n\"You realize that you just lied to the President of the United States,\" John Plumber observed pensively. Plumber was an older pro than Donner. He wasn't of the Edward R. Murrow generation\u2014quite. Pushing seventy now, he'd been a teenager in World War II, but had gone to Korea as a young reporter, and been foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Bonn, and finally Moscow. Plumber had been ejected from Moscow, and his somewhat left political stance had nonetheless never turned into sympathy with the Soviet Union. But more than that, though he was not of Murrow's generation, he had grown up listening to the immortal CBS correspondent, and he could still close his eyes and hear the gravelly voice which had somehow carried a measure of authority usually associated with the clergy. Maybe it was because Ed had started on the radio, when one's voice was the currency of the profession. He'd certainly known language better than most of his own time, and infinitely better than the semi-literate reporters and newswriters of the current generation. Plumber was something of a scholar in his own right, a devoted student of Elizabethan literature, and he tried to draft his copy and his spontaneous comments with an elegance in keeping with that of the teacher he'd only watched and heard, but never actually met. More than anything else, people had listened to Ed Murrow because of his honor, John Plumber reminded himself. He'd been as tough as any of the later generation of \"investigative journalists\" that the schools turned out now, but you always knew that Ed Murrow was fair. And you knew that he didn't break the rules. Plumber was of the generation that believed that his profession was supposed to have rules, one of which was you _never_ told a lie. You could bend, warp, and twist the truth in order to get information out of someone\u2014that was different\u2014but you _never_ told someone something that was deliberately and definitely false. That troubled John Plumber. Ed would never have done that. Not a chance.\n\n\"John, he rolled us.\"\n\n\"You think.\"\n\n\"The information I got\u2014well, _what_ do you think?\" It had been a frantic two hours, with the entire network research staff running down bits of such minor trivia that even two or three of the pieces, put together, didn't amount to much of anything. But they'd _all_ checked out, and that was something else entirely.\n\n\"I'm not sure, Tom.\" Plumber rubbed his eyes. \"Is Ryan a little out of his depth? Yes, he is. But is he trying pretty hard? Definitely. Is he honest? I think so. Well, as honest as any of them ever can be,\" he amended himself.\n\n\"Then we'll give him the chance to prove it, won't we?\" Plumber didn't say anything. Visions of ratings, and maybe even an Emmy, were dancing in the eyes of his junior colleague like sugar plums on Christmas Eve. In any case, Donner was the anchor, and Plumber was the commentator, and Tom had the ear of the front office in New York, which had once been peopled by men of his own generation, but was now entirely populated by people of Donner's, businessmen more than journalists, who saw ratings as the Holy Grail on their quarterly earnings statements. Well, Ryan liked businessmen, didn't he?\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\nTHE HELICOPTER LANDED on the South Lawn pad. The crew chief jerked the door open and jumped out, next helping the First Lady out with a smile. Her portion of the Detail followed, walking up the gentle slope to the south entrance, then to the elevator, where Roy Altman pushed the button for her, since the First Lady wasn't allowed to do that, either.\n\n\"SURGEON is in the elevator, heading for the residence,\" Agent Raman reported from the ground floor.\n\n\"Roger,\" Andrea Price acknowledged upstairs. She'd already had some people from the Technical Security Unit check all the metal detectors the NBC crew had passed on the way out. The TSU chief commented that occasionally they got a little fluky, and the large-format Beta tapes the networks used could easily be damaged\u2014but he didn't think so. Maybe a line surge, she'd asked. No chance, he'd replied, reminding her archly that even the _air_ in the White House was checked continuously by his people. Andrea debated discussing that with the chief of staff, but it would have been no use. Damn the reporters anyway. They were the biggest pain in the ass on the campus.\n\n\"Hi, Andrea,\" Cathy said, breezing past her.\n\n\"Hello, Dr. Ryan. Dinner is just coming up now.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" SURGEON replied on her way into the bedroom. She stopped on entering, seeing that a dress and jewelry were on her valet. Frowning, she kicked off her shoes and got casual clothes for dinner, wondering, as always, if there were cameras hidden somewhere to record the event.\n\nThe White House cook, George Butler, was by far her superior. He'd even improved on her spinach salad, adding a pinch of rosemary to the dressing she'd perfected over the years. Cathy kibitzed with him at least once a week, and in turn he showed her how to use the institutional-class appliances. She sometimes wondered how good a cook she might have become had she not opted for medicine. The executive chef hadn't told her that she had a gift for it, being fearful of patronizing her\u2014SURGEON was a surgeon, after all. Along the way he'd learned the family preferences, and cooking for a toddler, he'd discovered, was a treat, especially when she occasionally came down with her towering bodyguard to search for snacks. Don Russell and she had milk and cookies at least twice a week. SANDBOX had become the darling of the staff.\n\n\"Mommy!\" Katie Ryan said when Cathy came through the door.\n\n\"Hi, honey.\" SANDBOX got the first hug and kiss. POTUS got the second. The older kids resisted, as always. \"Jack, why are my clothes out?\"\n\n\"We're going to be on TV tonight,\" SWORDSMAN replied warily.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"The tape from this morning got all farbled up, and they want to do it live at nine, and if you're willing, I want you to be there, too.\"\n\n\"To answer what?\"\n\n\"About what you'd expect as far as I'm concerned.\"\n\n\"So, what do I do, walk in with a tray of cookies?\"\n\n\"George makes the _best_ cookies!\" SANDBOX added to the conversation. The other kids laughed. It broke the tension somewhat.\n\n\"You don't _have_ to if you don't want, but Arnie thinks it's a good idea.\"\n\n\"Great,\" Cathy observed. Her head tilted as she looked at her husband. Sometimes she wondered where the puppet strings were, the ones Arnie used to jerk her husband around.\n\nBONDARENKO WAS WORKING late\u2014or early, depending on one's point of view. He'd been at his desk for twenty hours, and since his promotion to general officer he'd learned that life was far better as a colonel. As a colonel he'd gotten out to jog, and even managed to sleep with his wife most of the time. Now\u2014well, he'd always aspired to higher rank. He'd always had ambition, else why would a Signal Corps officer have gone into the Afghan mountains with the Spetznaz? Recognized for his talent, his colonelcy had almost been his undoing, as he'd worked as a close aide for another colonel who'd turned out to be a spy\u2014that fact still boggled him. Misha Filitov a spy for the West? It had shaken his faith in many things, most of all his faith in his country\u2014but then the country had died. The Soviet Union which had raised him and uniformed him and trained him had died one cold December night, to be replaced with something smaller and more . . . comfortable to serve. It was easier to love Mother Russia than a huge polyglot empire. Now it was as though the adopted children had all moved away, and the true children remained, and that made for a happier family.\n\nBut a poorer one. Why hadn't he seen it before? His country's military had been the world's largest and most impressive, or so he had once thought, with its huge masses of men and arms, and its proud history of destroying the German invaders in history's most brutal war. But that military had died in Afghanistan, or if not quite that, then lost its soul and its confidence, as America's had done in Vietnam. But America had recovered, a process his country had yet to begin.\n\nAll that money wasted. Wasted on the departed provinces, those ungrateful wretches whom the Union had supported for generations, now gone, taking so much wealth with them, and in some cases turning away to join with others, then, he feared, to turn back as enemies. Just like unfaithful adopted children.\n\nGolovko was right. If that danger was to be stopped, it had to be stopped early. But how? Dealing with a few bandit Chechens had proved difficult enough.\n\nHe was operations chief now. In five more years, he'd be commanding general. Bondarenko had no illusions about that. He was the best officer of his age group, and his performance in the field had won him high-level attention, ever the determining factor in the ultimate advancement. He could get that job just in time to fight Russia's last losing battle. Or maybe not. In five years, given funding and a free hand to reshape doctrine and training, he might just convert the Russian army into a force such as it had never been. He would shamelessly use the American model, as the Americans had shamelessly used Soviet tactical doctrine in the Persian Gulf War. But for that to happen he needed a few years of relative peace. If his forces were to be trapped into fighting brushfires all along its southern periphery, he would not have the needed time or funding to save the army.\n\nSo what was he supposed to do? He was the operations chief. He was supposed to know. It was his job to know. Except he didn't. Turkmenistan was first. If he didn't stop it there, he never would. On the left side of his desk was a roster of available divisions and brigades, with their supposed states of readiness. On the right side was a map. The two made a poor match.\n\n\"YOU HAVE SUCH nice hair,\" Mary Abbot said.\n\n\"I didn't do surgery today,\" Cathy explained. \"The cap always ruins it.\"\n\n\"You've had the same hairstyle for how long?\"\n\n\"Since we got married.\"\n\n\"Never changed it?\" _That_ surprised Mrs. Abbot. Cathy just shook her head. She thought that she looked rather like the actress Susannah York\u2014or at least she'd liked the look from a movie she'd seen while in college. And the same was true of Jack, wasn't it? He'd never changed _his_ haircut, except when he didn't have the time to get a trim, something else the White House staff took care of, every two weeks. They were far better at managing Jack's life than she'd ever been. They probably just did things and scheduled things instead of asking first, as she had always done. A much more efficient system, Cathy told herself.\n\nShe was more nervous than she let on, worse than the first day of medical school, worse than her first surgical procedure, when she'd had to close her eyes and scream inwardly at her hands to keep them from shaking. But at least they'd listened then, and they listened now, too. Okay, she thought, that was the key. This was a surgical procedure, and she was a surgeon, and a surgeon was always in control.\n\n\"I think that does it,\" Mrs. Abbot said.\n\n\"Thank you. Do you like working with Jack?\"\n\nAn insider's smile. \"He _hates_ makeup. But most men do,\" she allowed.\n\n\"I have a secret for you\u2014so do I.\"\n\n\"I didn't do much,\" Mary observed at once. \"Your skin doesn't need much.\"\n\nThe woman-to-woman observation made Dr. Ryan smile. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Can I make a suggestion?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Let your hair grow another inch, maybe two. It would complement the shape of your face better.\"\n\n\"That's what Elaine says\u2014she's my hairdresser in Baltimore. I tried it once. The surgical caps make it all scrunchy.\"\n\n\"We can make bigger caps for you. We try to take care of our First Ladies.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" _And why didn't_ I _think of that?_ Cathy asked herself. It had to be cheaper than taking the helicopter to work . . . \"Thank you!\"\n\n\"This way.\" Mrs. Abbot led FLOTUS to the Oval Office.\n\nSurprisingly, Cathy had been in the room only twice before, and only once to see Jack there. It suddenly struck her as odd. Her bedroom wasn't fifty yards away from her husband's place of work, after all. The desk struck her as grossly old-fashioned, but the office itself was huge and airy compared to hers at Hopkins, even now with the TV lights and cameras set up. Over the mantel opposite the desk was what the Secret Service called the world's most photographed plant. The furniture was too formal to be comfortable, and the rug with the President's Seal embroidered on it was downright tacky, she thought. But it wasn't a normal office for a normal person.\n\n\"Hi, honey.\" Jack kissed her and handled introductions. \"This is Tom Donner and John Plumber.\"\n\n\"Hello.\" Cathy smiled. \"I used to listen to you while fixing dinner.\"\n\n\"Not anymore?\" Plumber asked with a smile.\n\n\"No TV in the dining room upstairs, and they won't let me fix dinner.\"\n\n\"Doesn't your husband help?\" Donner asked.\n\n\"Jack in the kitchen? Well, he's okay on a grill, but the kitchen is my territory.\" She sat down, looking at their eyes. It wasn't easy. The TV lights were already on. She made the extra effort. Plumber she liked. Donner was hiding something. The realization made her blink, and her face changed over to her doctor's look. She had the sudden desire to say something to Jack, but there wasn't\u2014\n\n\"One minute,\" the producer said. Andrea Price, as always, was in the room, standing by the door to the secretaries' space, and the door behind Cathy was open to the corridor. Jeff Raman was there. He was another odd duck, Cathy thought, but the problem with the White House was that everyone treated you like you were Julius Caesar or something. It was so hard just being friendly with people. It seemed that there was always something in the way. Fundamentally, neither Jack nor Cathy was used to having servants. Employees, yes, but not servants. She was popular with her nurses and technicians at Hopkins because she treated them all like the professionals they were, and she was trying to do the same thing here, but for some reason it didn't work quite the same way, and that was bothersome in a distant way.\n\n\"Fifteen seconds.\"\n\n\"Are we having fun yet?\" Jack whispered.\n\n_Why couldn't you just have stayed at Merrill Lynch?_ Cathy almost said aloud. He would have been a senior VP by now but, no. He would never have been happy. Jack was as driven to do his work as she was to fix people's eyes. In that they were the same.\n\n\"Good evening,\" Donner said to the camera behind the Ryans. \"We're here in the Oval Office to speak with President Jack Ryan and the First Lady. As I said on _NBC Nightly News,_ a technical glitch damaged the taping we did earlier today. The President has graciously allowed us to come back and talk live.\" His head turned. \"And for that, sir, we thank you.\"\n\n\"Glad to see you again, Tom,\" the President said, comfortably. He was getting better at concealing his thoughts.\n\n\"Also joining us is Mrs. Ryan\u2014\"\n\n\"Please,\" Cathy said, with a smile of her own. \"It's Dr. Ryan. I worked pretty hard for that.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" Donner said with a charm that made Cathy think about a bad trauma case rolling off on Monument Street at lunchtime. \"You're both doctors, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Donner, Jack in history, and me in ophthalmology.\"\n\n\"And you're a distinguished eye surgeon with the Lasker Public Service Award,\" he observed, applying his anchorman's charm.\n\n\"Well, I've been working in medical research for over fifteen years. At Johns Hopkins we're all clinicians and researchers, too. I work with a wonderful group of people, and, really, the Lasker Prize is more a tribute to them than it is to me. Back fifteen years ago, Professor Bernard Katz encouraged me to look into how we could use lasers to correct various eye problems. I found it interesting, and I've been working in that area ever since, in addition to my normal surgical practice.\"\n\n\"Do you really make more money than your husband?\" Donner asked with a grin for the cameras.\n\n\"Lots,\" she confirmed with a chuckle.\n\n\"I always said that Cathy was the brains of the outfit,\" Jack went on, patting his wife's hand. \"She's too modest to say that she's just about the best in the world at what she does.\"\n\n\"So, how do you like being First Lady?\"\n\n\"Do I have to answer?\" A charming smile. Then she turned serious. \"The way we got here\u2014well, it's not something anyone would wish for, but I guess it's like what I do at the hospital. Sometimes a trauma case comes in, and that person didn't choose to be injured, and we try our best to fix what's wrong. Jack's never turned away from a problem or a challenge in his life.\"\n\nThen it was time for business. \"Mr. President, how do you like _your_ job?\"\n\n\"Well, the hours are pretty long. As much time as I have spent in government service, I don't think I ever really understood how difficult this job is. I am blessed with a very fine staff, and our government has thousands of dedicated workers doing the public's business. That helps a lot.\"\n\n\"As you see it, sir, what is _your_ job?\" John Plumber asked.\n\n\"The oath says to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,\" Ryan replied. \"We're working to restore the government. We now have the Senate fully in place, and as the several states get on with their elections, we'll soon have a new House of Representatives. I've got most of the Cabinet posts filled\u2014for HHS and Education, we still have the sitting Deputy Secretaries doing a fine job.\"\n\n\"We spoke this morning about events in the Persian Gulf. What are the problems there as you see them?\" It was Plumber again. Ryan was handling himself well, much more relaxed, and Plumber noted the look in his wife's eyes. She was smart.\n\n\"The United States wants nothing more than peace and stability in that region. We have every wish to establish friendly relations with the new United Islamic Republic. There's been enough strife there and elsewhere in the world. I'd like to think that we've turned the corner on that. We've made peace\u2014a real peace, not just the absence of war\u2014with the Russians, after generations of turmoil. I want us to build on that. Maybe the world's never been fully at peace, but that is no reason why we can't do it. John, we've come a very long way in the past twenty years. There's a lot more for us to do, but we have a lot of good work to build on.\"\n\n\"We'll be back after this break,\" Donner told the cameras. He could see that Ryan was pretty pleased with himself. Excellent.\n\nA staffer came in from the back door with water glasses. Everyone had a sip while they waited for the two commercials to run. \"You really hate all this, don't you?\" he asked Cathy.\n\n\"As long as I can do my work, I can live with almost anything, but I do worry about the kids. After this is over, they have to go back to being normal children, and we didn't raise them for all this hoopla.\" Then everyone was quiet for the rest of the commercial time.\n\n\"We're back on the Oval Office with the President and First Lady. Mr. President,\" Donner asked, \"what about the changes you are making?\"\n\n\"Mainly my job isn't to 'change,' Tom, it's to 'restore.' Along the way we will try to do a few things. I've tried to select my new Cabinet members with an eye toward making the government function more efficiently. As you know, I've been in government service for quite a while, and along the way I've seen numerous examples of inefficiency. The citizens out there pay a lot of money in taxes, and we owe it to them to see that the money is spent wisely\u2014and efficiently. So I've told my Cabinet officers to examine all of the executive departments with an eye to doing the same work for less cost.\"\n\n\"A lot of presidents have said that.\"\n\n\"This one means it,\" Ryan said seriously.\n\n\"But your first major policy act has been to attack the tax system,\" Donner observed.\n\n\"Not 'attack,' Tom. 'Change.' George Winston has my full support. The tax code we have now is totally unfair\u2014and I mean unfair in many ways. People can't understand it, for one. That means that they have to hire people to explain the tax system to them, and it's hard to see how it makes sense for people to pay good money for people to explain how the law takes more of their money away\u2014especially when the government writes the laws. Why make laws that the people can't understand? Why make laws that are so complicated?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"But along the way, your administration's goal is to make the tax system _re_ gressive, not _pro_ gressive.\"\n\n\"We've been over that,\" the President replied, and Donner knew he had him then. It was one of Ryan's more obvious weaknesses that he didn't like repeating himself. He really was _not_ a politician. They loved to repeat themselves. \"Charging everyone the same amount is just as fair as anything can be. Doing so in a way that everyone can understand will actually _save_ money for people. Our proposed tax changes will be revenue-neutral. Nobody's getting any special breaks.\"\n\n\"But the tax rates for the rich will fall dramatically.\"\n\n\"That's true, but we'll also eliminate all the breaks that their lobbyists have written into the system. They'll actually end up paying the same, or more probably, a little more than they already do. Secretary Winston has studied that very carefully, and I concur in his judgment.\"\n\n\"Sir, it's hard to see how a thirty percent rate reduction will make them pay more. That's fourth-grade arithmetic.\"\n\n\"Ask your accountant.\" Ryan smiled. \"Or for that matter, look at your own tax returns, if you can figure them out. You know, Tom, I used to be an accountant\u2014I passed the exam before I went into the Marine Corps\u2014and _I_ can't even figure the darned things out. The government does not serve the public interest by doing things that the people can't understand. There's been too much of that. I'm going to try to dial it back a bit.\"\n\n_Bingo._ To Donner's left, John Plumber grimaced. The director with his selection of camera feeds made sure that one didn't go out. Instead he picked Donner's winning anchorman smile.\n\n\"I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. President, because there are many things that the American people would like to know about government operations. Nearly all of your government service has been in the Central Intelligence Agency.\"\n\n\"That's true but, Tom, as I told you this morning, no President has ever spoken about intelligence operations. There's a good reason for that.\" Ryan was still cool, not knowing what door had just opened.\n\n\"But, Mr. President, you have personally been involved in numerous intelligence operations which had important effects on bringing that end to the Cold War. For example, the defection of the Soviet missile submarine _Red October._ You played a personal part in that, didn't you?\"\n\nThe director, cued ahead of time to the question, had selected the camera zeroed in on Ryan's face just in time to see his eyes go as wide as doorknobs. He really wasn't all that good at controlling his emotions. \"Tom, I\u2014\"\n\n\"The viewers should know that you played a decisive role in one of the greatest intelligence coups of all time. We got our hands on an intact Soviet ballistic-missile submarine, didn't we?\"\n\n\"I won't comment on that story.\" By this time his makeup couldn't hide the pale look. Cathy turned to look at her husband, having felt his hand in hers turn to ice.\n\n\"And then less than two years later, you personally arranged the defection of the head of the Russian KGB.\"\n\nJack managed to control his face, finally, but his voice was wooden. \"Tom, this has to stop. You're making unfounded speculations.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, that individual, Nikolay Gerasimov, formerly of the KGB, now lives with his family in Virginia. The captain of the submarine lives in Florida. It's not a 'story'\"\u2014he smiled\u2014\"and you know it. Sir, I don't understand your reticence. You played a major role in bringing that peace to the world that you talked about a few minutes ago.\"\n\n\"Tom, let me make this clear. I will not ever discuss intelligence operations in any public forum. Period.\"\n\n\"But the American people have a right to know what sort of man sits in this office.\" The same thing had been said eleven hours before by John Plumber, who winced inwardly to hear himself quoted in this way, but who could not turn on his own colleague in public.\n\n\"Tom, I have served my country to the best of my ability for a number of years, but just as you cannot reveal your news sources, so our intelligence agencies cannot reveal many of the things they do, for fear of getting real people killed.\"\n\n\"But, Mr. President, you have done that. You have killed people.\"\n\n\"Yes, I have, and more than one President has been a soldier or\u2014\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" Cathy interrupted, and now her eyes were flaring. \"I want to say something. Jack joined CIA after our family was attacked by terrorists. If he hadn't done those things back then, none of us would be alive. I was pregnant with our son then, and they tried to kill me and our daughter in my car in Annapolis and\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me, Mrs. Ryan, but we have to take a break now.\"\n\n\"This has to stop, Tom. This has to stop right now,\" Ryan said forcefully. \"When people talk about field operations in the open, real people can get killed. Do you understand that?\" The camera lights were off, but the tapes were still rolling.\n\n\"Mr. President, the people have a right to know, and it's my job to report the facts. Have I lied about anything?\"\n\n\"I can't even comment on that, and you know it,\" Ryan said, having almost snarled an accurate answer. _Temper, Jack, temper,_ he reminded himself. _A President can't have a temper, damned sure not on live TV._ Damn, Marko would never cooperate with the\u2014or would he? He was Lithuanian, and maybe he might like the idea of becoming a national hero, though Jack figured he might just talk him out of such a thing. But Gerasimov was something else. Ryan had disgraced the man, threatened him with death\u2014at the hands of his own countrymen, but that didn't matter to a man like him\u2014and stripped him of all his power. Gerasimov now enjoyed a life far more comfortable than anything he might have enjoyed in the Soviet Union, which he had sought to maintain and rule, but he wasn't the sort of man to enjoy comfort so much as power. Gerasimov had aspired to the sort of position Ryan now enjoyed himself, and would have felt very comfortable in this office or another like it. But those who aspired to power were most often those who misused it, which distinguished him from Jack in one more way. Not that it mattered at the moment. Gerasimov would talk. Sure as hell. And they knew where he was.\n\n_So what do I do now?_\n\n\"We're back in the Oval Office with President and Mrs. Ryan,\" Donner intoned for anyone who might have forgotten.\n\n\"Mr. President, you are an expert in national security and foreign affairs,\" Plumber said before his colleague could speak. \"But our country faces more problems than that. You now have to reestablish the Supreme Court. How do you propose to do that?\"\n\n\"I asked the Justice Department to send me a list of experienced judges from federal appeals courts. I'm going over that list now, and I hope to make my nominations to the Senate in the next two weeks.\"\n\n\"Normally the American Bar Association assists the government in screening such judges, but evidently that's not being done in this case. May I ask why, sir?\"\n\n\"Tom, all of the judges on the list have been through that process already, and since then all have sat on the appeals bench for a minimum of ten years.\"\n\n\"The list was assembled by prosecutors?\" Donner asked.\n\n\"By experienced professionals in the Justice Department. The head of the search group is Patrick Martin, who just took over the Criminal Division. He was assisted by other Justice Department officials, like the head of the Civil Rights Division, for example.\"\n\n\"But they're all prosecutors, or people whose job it is to prosecute cases. Who suggested Mr. Martin to you?\"\n\n\"It's true that I don't personally know the Department of Justice all that well. Acting FBI Director Murray recommended Mr. Martin to me. He did a good job supervising the investigation of the airplane crash into the Capitol building, and I asked him to assemble the list for me.\"\n\n\"And you and Mr. Murray have been friends for a long time.\"\n\n\"Yes, we have.\" Ryan nodded.\n\n\"On another of those intelligence operations, Mr. Murray accompanied you, didn't he?\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"The CIA operation in Colombia, when you played a role in breaking up the Medellin cartel.\"\n\n\"Tom, I'm going to say this one last time: I will not discuss intelligence operations, real ones or made-up ones, at all\u2014ever. Are we clear on that?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, that operation resulted in the death of Admiral James Cutter. Sir,\" Donner went on, a sincerely pained expression on his face, \"a lot of stories are coming out now about your tenure at CIA. These stories are going to break, and we really want you to have the chance to set the record straight as rapidly as possible. You were not elected to this office, and you have never been examined in the way that political candidates usually are. The American people want to know the man who sits in this office, sir.\"\n\n\"Tom, the world of intelligence is a secret world. It has to be. Our government has to do many things. Not all of those things can be discussed openly. Everyone has secrets. Every viewer out there has them. You have them. In the case of the government, keeping those secrets is vitally important to the well-being of our country, and also, by the way, to the safety of the lives of the people who do our country's business. Once upon a time the media respected that rule, especially in times of war, but also in other times. I wish you still did.\"\n\n\"But at what point, Mr. President, does secrecy work against our national interests?\"\n\n\"That's why we have a law that mandates Congress's right to oversee intelligence operations. If it were just the Executive Branch making these decisions, yes, you would have just cause to worry. But it isn't that way. Congress also examines what we do. I have myself reported to Congress on many of these things.\"\n\n\"Was there a secret operation to Colombia? Did you participate in it? Did Daniel Murray accompany you there after the death of then-FBI Director Emil Jacobs?\"\n\n\"I have nothing to say on that or on any of the other stories you brought up.\"\n\nAnd there was another commercial break.\n\n\"Why are you doing this?\" To everyone's surprise, the question came from Cathy.\n\n\"Mrs. Ryan\u2014\"\n\n\"Dr. Ryan,\" she said at once.\n\n\"Excuse me. Dr. Ryan, these allegations must be laid to rest.\"\n\n\"We've been through this before. Once people tried to break our marriage up\u2014and that was all lies, too, and\"\n\n\"Cathy,\" Jack said quietly. Her head turned toward his.\n\n\"I know about that one, Jack, remember?\" she whispered.\n\n\"No, you don't. Not really.\"\n\n\"That's the problem,\" Tom Donner pointed out. \"These stories will be followed up. The people want to know. The people have a right to know.\"\n\nHad the world been just, Ryan thought, he would have stood, tossed the microphone to Donner, and asked him to leave his house, but that wasn't possible, and so here he was, supposedly powerful, trapped by circumstance like a criminal in an interrogation room. Then the camera lights came back on.\n\n\"Mr. President, I know this is a difficult subject for you.\"\n\n\"Tom, okay, I will say this. As part of my service with CIA, I occasionally had to serve my country in ways that cannot be revealed for a very long time, but at no time have I ever violated the law, and every such activity was fully reported to the appropriate members of the Congress. Let me tell you why I joined CIA.\n\n\"I didn't want to. I was a teacher. I taught history at the Naval Academy. I love teaching, and I had time to write a couple of history books, and I like that, too. But then a group of terrorists came after me and my family. There were two very serious attempts to kill us\u2014all of us. You know that. It was all over the media when it happened. I decided then that my place was in the Agency. Why? To protect others against the same sort of dangers. I never liked it all that much, but it was the job I decided I had to do. Now I'm here, and you know what? I don't much like this job, either. I don't like the pressure. I don't like the responsibility. No one person should have this much power. But I _am_ here, and I swore an oath to do my best, and I'm doing that.\"\n\n\"But, Mr. President, you are the first person to sit in this office who's never been a political figure. Your views on many things have never been shaped by public opinion, and what is disturbing to a lot of people is that you seem to be leaning on others who have never achieved high office, either. The danger, as some people see it, is that we have a small group of people who lack political experience but who are shaping policy for our country for some time to come. How do you answer that concern?\"\n\n\"I haven't even _heard_ that concern anywhere, Tom.\"\n\n\"Sir, you've also been criticized for spending too much time in this office and not enough out among the people. Could that be a problem?\" Now that he'd sunk the hook, Donner could afford to appear plaintive.\n\n\"Unfortunately I do have a lot of work to do, and this is where I have to do that work. For the team I've put together, where do I start?\" Jack asked. Next to him, Cathy was seething. Now her hand felt cold in his. \"Secretary of State, Scott Adler, a career foreign service officer, son of a Holocaust survivor. I've known Scott for years. He's the best man I know to run State. Treasury, George Winston, a self-made man. He was instrumental in saving our financial system during the conflict with Japan; he has the respect of the financial community, and he's a real thinker. Defense, Anthony Bretano, is a highly successful engineer and businessman who's already making needed reforms at the Pentagon. FBI, Dan Murray, a career cop, and a good one. You know what I'm doing with my choices, Tom? I'm picking pros, people who know the work because they've done it, not political types who just talk about it. If you think that's wrong, well, I'm sorry about that, but I've worked my way up inside the government, and I have more faith in the professionals I've come to know than I do in the political appointees I've seen along the way. And, oh, by the way, how is that different from a politician who selects the people he knows\u2014or, worse, people who contributed to his campaign organization?\"\n\n\"Some would say that the difference is that ordinarily people selected to high office have much broader experience.\n\n\"I would not say that, and I have worked under such people for years. The appointments I've made are all people whose abilities I know. Moreover, a President is supposed to have the right, with the assent of the people's elected representatives, to pick people he can work with.\"\n\n\"But with so much to do, how do you expect to succeed without experienced political guidance? This is a political town.\"\n\n\"Maybe that's the problem,\" Ryan shot back. \"Maybe the political process that we've all studied over the years gets in the way more than it helps. Tom, I didn't ask for this job, okay? The idea, when Roger asked me to be Vice President, was that I serve out the remaining term and leave government service for good. I wanted to go back to teaching. But then that dreadful event happened, and here I am. I am not a politician. I never wanted to be one, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm not a politician now. Am I the best man for this job? Probably not. I am, however, the President of the United States, and I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. That's all I can do.\"\n\n\"And that's the last word. Thank you, Mr. President.\" Jack barely waited for the camera lights to go off a final time before unclipping the microphone from his tie and standing. The two reporters didn't say a word. Cathy glared at them.\n\n\"Why did you do that?\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\" Donner replied.\n\n\"Why do people like you always attack people like us? What have we done to deserve it? My husband is the most honorable man I know.\"\n\n\"All we do is ask questions.\"\n\n\"Don't give me that! The way you ask them and the questions you choose, you give the answers before anyone has a chance to say anything.\"\n\nNeither reporter responded to that. The Ryans left without another word. Then Arnie came in.\n\n\"Okay,\" he observed, \"who set this up?\"\n\n\"THEY GUTTED HIM like a fish,\" Holbrook thought aloud. They were due for some time off, and it was always a good thing to know your enemy.\n\n\"This guy's scary,\" Ernie Brown thought, considering things a little more deeply. \"At least, politicians you can depend on to be crooks. This guy, Jesus, he's going to try to we're talking a police state here, Pete.\"\n\nIt was actually a frightening thought for the Mountain Man. He'd always thought that politicians were the worst thing in creation, but suddenly he realized that they were not. Politicians played the power game because they liked it, liked the idea of power and jerking people around because it made them feel big. Ryan was worse. He thought it was _right._\n\n\"God damn,\" he breathed. \"The court he wants to appoint . . .\"\n\n\"They made him look like a fool, Ernie.\"\n\n\"No, they didn't. Don't you get it? They were playing _their_ game.\"\n**33**\n\n**REBOUNDS**\n\n**T** HE EDITORIALS WERE ESTABLISHED by front-page stories in every major paper. In the more enterprising of them, there were even photographs of Marko Ramius's house\u2014it turned out that he was away at the moment\u2014and that of the Gerasimov famiiy\u2014he was home, but a security guard managed to persuade people to leave, after getting his own photo shot a few hundred times.\n\nDonner came into work very early, and was actually the most surprised by all of that. Plumber walked into his office five minutes later, holding up the front page of the _New York Times._\n\n\"So who rolled whom, Tom?\"\n\n\"What do you\u2014\"\n\n\"That's a little weak,\" Plumber observed acidly. \"I suppose after you walked out of the meeting, Kealty's people had another little kaffeeklatsch. But you've trapped everybody, haven't you? If it ever gets out that your tape wasn't\"\n\n\"It won't,\" Donner said. \"And all this coverage does is make our interview look better.\"\n\n\"Better to whom?\" Plumber demanded on his way out the door. It was early in the day for him, too, and his first irrelevant thought of the day was that Ed Murrow would never have used hair spray.\n\nDR. GUS LORENZ finished his morning staff meeting early. Spring was coming early to Atlanta. The trees and bushes were budding, and soon the air would be filled with the fragrances of all the flowering plants for which the southern city was so famous\u2014and a lot of pollen, Gus thought, which would get his sinuses all stuffed, but it was a fair trade for living in a vibrant and yet gracious southern city. With the meeting done, he donned his white lab coat and headed off to his own special fiefdom in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC (\"and P\" had never been added to the acronym) was one of the government's crown jewels, an elite agency that was one of the world's important centers of medical research\u2014many would say the most important. For that reason the center in Atlanta attracted the best of the profession. Some stayed. Some left to teach at the nation's medical schools, but all were forever marked as CDC people, as others might boast of having served their time in the Marine Corps, and for much the same reason. They were the first people their country sent to trouble spots. They were the first to fight diseases, instead of armed enemies, and that cachet engendered an _esprit de corps_ which more often than not retained the best of them despite the capped government salaries.\n\n\"Morning, Melissa,\" Lorenz said to his chief lab assistant\u2014she had a master's and was finishing up her doctorate in molecular biology at nearby Emory University, after which she'd get a sizable promotion.\n\n\"Good morning, Doctor. Our friend is back,\" she added.\n\n\"Oh?\" The specimen was all set up on the microscope. Lorenz took his seat, careful as always to take his time. He checked the paperwork to identify the proper sample against the record he'd had on his desk: 98-3-063A. Yes, the numbers matched. Then it was just a matter of zooming in on the sample . . . and there it was, the Shepherd's Crook.\n\n\"You're right. Got the other one set up?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor.\" The computer screen split into two vertical halves, and next to the first was a specimen from 1976. They weren't quite identical. The curve at the bottom of the RNA chain was seemingly never the same way twice, as snowflakes had almost infinite patterns, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the protein loops at the top, and those were\u2014\n\n\"Mayinga strain.\" He spoke the words matter-offactly.\n\n\"I agree,\" Melissa said from just behind him. She leaned across to type on the keyboard, calling up -063B. \"These were a lot harder to isolate, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, identical again. This one's from the child?\"\n\n\"A little girl, yes.\" Both voices were detached. One can only bear so much exposure to sadness before the mind's defense mechanism kicks in, and the samples become samples, disembodied from the people who donated them.\n\n\"Okay, I have some calling to do.\"\n\nTHE TWO GROUPS were kept separate for obvious reasons, and in fact neither knew of the existence of the other. Badrayn spoke to one group of twenty. The Movie Star spoke to the second group, composed of nine. For both groups there were similarities of preparation. Iran was a nation-state, with the resources of a nation-state. Its foreign ministry had a passport office, and its treasury had a department of printing and engraving. Both allowed the printing of passports from any number of countries and the duplication of entry-exit stamps. In fact such documents could be prepared in any number of places, mostly illegally, but this source made for somewhat higher quality without the risk of revealing the place of origin.\n\nThe more important of the two missions was, perversely, the safer in terms of actual physical danger\u2014well, depending on how one looked at it. Badrayn could see the looks on their faces. The very idea of what they were doing was the sort of thing to make a person's skin crawl, though in the case of these people, it was merely one more example of the vagaries of human nature. The job, he told them, was simple. Get in. Deliver. Get out. He emphasized that they were completely safe, as long as they followed the procedures on which they would be fully briefed. There would be no contacts on the other side. They needed none, and doing without them just made things safer. Each had a choice of cover stories, and such were the parameters of the mission that having more than one of the group select the same one didn't matter. What did matter was that the stories could be plausibly presented, and so each traveler would pick a field of business activity in which he had some knowledge. Nearly all had a university degree, and those who didn't could talk about trading or machine tools or some field better known to them than any customs official asking questions out of mere boredom.\n\nThe Movie Star's group was far more comfortable with their task. He supposed it was some flaw in the character of his culture that this was so. This group was younger and less experienced, and part of it was that the young simply know less of life, and therefore less of death. They were motivated by passion, by a tradition of sacrifice, and by their own hatreds and demons, all of which clouded their judgment in a way that pleased the masters, who always felt free to expend the hatreds and the passions, along with the people who bore them. This briefing was more detailed. Photographs were displayed, along with maps and diagrams, and the group drew closer, the better to see the details. None of them remarked on the character of the target. Life and death was so simple a question to those who didn't know the ultimate answers\u2014or who thought they did, even if they did not\u2014and that was better for all, really. With an answer to the Great Question fixed in their minds, the lesser ones would not even occur to them. The Movie Star had no such illusions. He asked the questions within his own mind, but never answered them. For him the Great Question had become something else. For him it was all a political act, not a matter of religion, and one didn't measure one's destiny by politics. At least not willingly. He looked at their faces, knowing that they were doing exactly that, but without realizing it. They were the best sort of people for the task, really. They thought they knew everything, but in reality they knew very little, only the physical tasks.\n\nThe Movie Star felt rather like a murderer, but it was something he'd done before, at secondhand, anyway. Doing it firsthand was dangerous, and this promised to be the most dangerous such mission in years.\n\nHow remarkable that they didn't know better. Each of them inwardly styled himself the stone in Allah's own sling, without reflecting that such stones are by their very nature thrown away. Or maybe not. Perhaps they would be lucky, and for that eventuality he gave them the best data he'd managed to generate, and that data was pretty good. The best time would be afternoon, just before people got out from work, the better to use crowded highways to confuse their pursuers. He himself would go into the field again, he told them, to facilitate their ultimate escape\u2014he didn't tell them, _if it came to that._\n\n\"OKAY, ARNIE, WHAT'S going on?\" Ryan asked. It was just as well that Cathy didn't have any procedures scheduled for today. She had seethed all night and was not in a proper mental state to do her normal work. He wasn't feeling much better, but there was neither justice nor much point in snapping at his chief of staff.\n\n\"Well, for damned sure there's a leak at CIA, or maybe in the Hill, somebody who knows about some of the things you did.\"\n\n\"Colombia, the only people who know are Fellows and Trent. And they also know that Murray wasn't there not exactly, anyway. The rest of that operation is locked up tight.\"\n\n\"What actually happened?\" And need-to-know applied to Arnie now. The President gestured and spoke as one explaining something to a parent:\n\n\"There were two operations, SHOWBOAT and RECIPROCITY. One of them involved putting troops into Colombia, the idea was to bird-dog drug flights. Those flights were then splashed\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Shot down, by the Air Force\u2014well, some were intercepted, the crews arrested and processed quietly. Some other things happened, and then Emil Jacobs got killed, and RECIPROCITY got laid on. We started dropping bombs on places. Things got a little out of hand. Some civilians got killed, and it all started coming apart.\"\n\n\"How much did you know?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"I didn't know jack shit until late in the game. Jim Greer was dying then, and I was handling his work, but that was mostly NATO stuff. I was cut out of it until after the bombs started falling\u2014I was in Belgium when that happened. I saw it on TV, would you believe? Cutter was actually running the operation. He suckered Judge Moore and Bob Ritter into starting it, and then he tried to close it down. That's when things got crazy. Cutter tried to cut off the soldiers\u2014the idea was that they'd just disappear. I found out. I got into Ritter's personal records vault. So I went down into Colombia with the rescue crew, and we got most of them out. It wasn't much fun,\" Ryan reported. \"There was some shooting involved, and I worked one of the guns on the chopper. A crewman, a sergeant named Buck Zimmer, got killed on the last extraction, and I've been looking after his family ever since. Liz Elliot got a hold of that and tried to use it against me a while later.\"\n\n\"There's more to it,\" Arnie said quietly.\n\n\"Oh, yeah. I had to report the operations to the Select Committee, but I didn't want to rip the government apart. So I talked it over with Trent and Fellows, and I came in to see the President. We talked for a while, and then I stepped out of the room, and Sam and Al talked with him for a while. I'm not exactly sure what they agreed on, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But he threw the election. He dumped his campaign manager and his campaign was for crap the whole way. Christ, Jack, what did you do?\" Arnie demanded. His face was pale now, but for political reasons. And all along van Damm had figured that he'd run a brilliant and successful campaign for Bob Fowler, unseating a popular sitting President. And so, a fix had been in? And he'd never found out?\n\nRyan closed his eyes. He'd just forced himself to relive a dreadful night. \"I terminated an operation that was technically legal, but teetering right on the edge. I closed it down quietly. The Colombians never found out. I thought I prevented another Watergate, domestically\u2014and a godawful international incident. Sam and Al signed off on it, the records are sealed until long after we're all dead. Whoever leaked that must have picked up on a couple of rumors and made a few good guesses. What did _I_ do? I think I obeyed the law as best I could\u2014no, Arnie, I did _not_ break the law. I followed the rules. It wasn't easy, but I did.\" The eyes opened. \"So, Arnie, how will that play in Peoria?\"\n\n\"Why couldn't you have just reported to Congress and\u2014\"\n\n\"Think back,\" the President said. \"It wasn't just the one thing, okay? That's when Eastern Europe was coming unglued, the Soviet Union was still there but teetering, some really big things were happening, and if our government had come apart, right then, with everything else happening, hell, it could have been a mess like nobody's ever seen. America couldn't\u2014we would not have been able to help settle Europe down if we'd been pissing around with a domestic scandal. And I was the guy who had to make the call and take the action, _right now,_ _or_ those soldiers would have been killed. Think about the box I was in, will you?\n\n\"Arnie, I couldn't go to anybody for guidance on that one, okay? Admiral Greer was dead. Moore and Ritter were compromised. The President was up to his eyeballs in it; at the time I thought _he_ was running the show through Cutter\u2014he wasn't; he got finessed into it by that incompetent political bastard. I didn't know where to go, so I went to the FBI for help. I couldn't trust _anybody_ but Dan Murray and Bill Shaw, and one of our people at Langley on the operational side. Bill\u2014did you know he was a J.D.?\u2014worked me through the law part of it, and Murray helped with the recovery operation. They had an investigation started on Cutter. It was a code-word op, I think they called it ODYSSEY, and they were about to go to a U.S. magistrate for criminal conspiracy, but Cutter killed himself. There was an FBI agent fifty yards behind him when he jumped in front of the bus. You've met him, Pat O'Day. Nobody ever broke the law except for Cutter. The operations themselves were within the Constitution\u2014at least that's what Shaw said.\"\n\n\"But politically. . .\"\n\n\"Yeah, even I'm not that ignorant. So here I am, Arnie. I didn't break the law. I served my country's interests as best I could under the circumstances, and look what good it's done me.\"\n\n\"Damn. How is it that Bob Fowler never was told?\"\n\n\"That was Sam and Al. They thought it would have poisoned Fowler's presidency. Besides, I don't really _know_ what the two of them said to the President, do I? I never wanted to know, I never found out, and all I have is speculation\u2014pretty good speculation,\" Ryan admitted, \"but that's all.\"\n\n\"Jack, it's not often I don't know what to say.\"\n\n\"Say it anyway,\" the President ordered.\n\n\"It's going to get out. The media has enough now to put some pieces together, and that will force Congress to launch an investigation. What about the other stuff?\"\n\n\"It's all true,\" Ryan said. \"Yeah, we got our hands on _Red October,_ yeah, I got Gerasimov out myself. My idea, my operation, nearly got my ass killed, but there you go. If we hadn't, then Gerasimov was poised to launch his own coup to topple Andrey Narmonov and then there might still be a Warsaw Pact, and the bad old days might never have gone away. So we compromised the bastard, and he didn't have any choices but to get on the airplane. He's still pissed despite all we did to get him set up over here, but I understand his wife and daughter like America just fine.\"\n\n\"Did you kill anybody?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"In Moscow, no. In the sub\u2014he was trying to selfdestruct the submarine. He killed one of the ship's officers and shot up two others pretty bad, but I punched his ticket myself\u2014and I had nightmares about it for years.\"\n\nIn another reality, van Damm thought, his President would be a hero. But reality and public politics had little in common. He noted that Ryan hadn't recounted his story about Bob Fowler and the aborted nuclear launch. The chief of staff had been around for that one, and he knew that three days later, J. Robert Fowler had come nearly apart at the realization at how he'd been saved from mass murder on a Hitlerian scale. There was a line in Hugo's _Les Miserables_ that had struck the older man when he'd first read the book in high school: \"What evil good can be.\" Here was another case. Ryan had served his country bravely and well more than once, but not one of the things he'd done would survive public scrutiny. Intelligence, love of country, and courage merely added up to a series of events which anyone could twist out of recognition into scandal. And Ed Kealty knew how to do just that.\n\n\"How do we spin-control all this?\" the President asked.\n\n\"What else do I need to know?\"\n\n\"The files on _Red October_ and Gerasimov are at Langley. The Colombian thing, well, you know what you need to know. I'm not sure even I have the legal right to unseal the records. On the other hand, you want to destabilize Russia? This will do it.\"\n\n_RED OCTOBER,_ GOLOVKO thought, then he looked up at the high ceiling of his office. \"Ivan Emmetovich, you clever bastard. _Zvo tvoyu maht!\"_\n\nThe curse was spoken in quiet admiration. From the first moment he'd met Ryan, he'd underestimated him, and even with all the contacts, direct and indirect, that had followed, he had to admit, he'd never stopped doing it. So _that_ was how he'd compromised Gerasimov! And in so doing, he'd saved Russia, perhaps\u2014but a country was supposed to be saved from within, not without. Some secrets were supposed to be kept forever, because they protected everyone equally. This was such a secret. It would embarrass both countries now. For the Russians, it was the loss of a valuable national asset through high treason\u2014worse still, something their intelligence organs had not discovered, which was quite incredible on reflection, but the cover stories had been good ones, and the loss of two hunter submarines in the same operation had made the affair something that the Soviet navy had every desire to forget\u2014and so they hadn't looked far beyond the cover story.\n\nSergey Nikolay'ch knew the second part better than the first. Ryan had forestalled a coup d'\u00e9tat. Golovko supposed that Ryan might as easily have told him what was happening and left it to the Soviet Union's internal organs\u2014but, no. Intelligence services turned everything to their advantage, and Ryan would have been mad not to have done so here. Gerasimov must have sung like a canary\u2014he knew the Western aphorism\u2014and given up everything he'd known; Ames, for one, had been identified that way, he was sure, and Ames had been a virtual diamond mine for KGB.\n\n_And you always told yourself that Ivan Emmetovich was a gifted amateur,_ Golovko thought.\n\nBut even his professional admiration was tempered. Russia might soon need help. How could she go for that help to someone who, it would now be known, had tampered with his country's internal politics like a puppeteer? That realization was worth another oath, not spoken in admiration of anything.\n\nPUBLIC WATERWAYS ARE free for the passage of all, and so the Navy couldn't do anything more than prevent the charter boat from getting too close to the Eight-Ten Dock. Soon it was joined by another, then more still, until a total of eleven cameras were pointing at the covered graving dock, now empty with the demise of most of America's missile submarines, and also empty of another which had briefly lived there, not American, or so the story went.\n\nIt was possible to access the Navy's personnel records via computer, and some were doing that right now, checking for former crewmen of USS _Dallas._ An early-morning call to COMSUBPAC concerning his tenure as commanding officer of _Dallas_ got no farther than his public affairs officer, who was well-schooled in no-commenting sensitive inquiries. Today he'd get more than his fair share. So would others.\n\n\"THIS IS RON Jones.\"\n\n\"This is Tom Donner at NBC News.\"\n\n\"That's nice,\" Jonesy said diffidently. \"I watch CNN myself.\"\n\n\"Well, maybe you want to watch our show tonight. I'd like to talk to you about\u2014\"\n\n\"I read the _Times_ this morning. It's delivered up here. No comment,\" he added.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"But, yes, I used to be a submariner, and they call us the Silent Service. Besides, that was a long time ago. I run my own business now. Married, kids, the whole nine yards, y'know?\"\n\n\"You were lead sonar man aboard USS _Dallas_ when\u2014\"\n\n\"Mr. Donner, I signed a secrecy agreement when I left the Navy. I don't talk about the things we did, okay?\" It was his first encounter with a reporter, and it was living up to everything he'd ever been told to expect.\n\n\"Then all you have to do is tell us that it never happened.\"\n\n\"That what never happened?\" Jones asked.\n\n\"The defection of a Russian sub named Red _October.\"_\n\n\"You know the craziest thing I ever heard as a sonar man?\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Elvis.\" He hung up. Then he called Pearl Harbor.\n\nWITH DAYLIGHT, THE TV trucks rolled through Winchester, Virginia, rather like the Civil War armies that had exchanged possession of the town over forty times.\n\nHe didn't actually own the house. It could not even be said that CIA did. The land title was in the name of a paper corporation, in turn owned by a foundation whose directors were obscure, but since real-property ownership in America is a matter of public record, and since all corporations and foundations were also, that data would be run down in less than two days, despite the tag on the files which told the clerks in the county courthouse to be creatively incompetent in finding the documents.\n\nThe reporters who showed up had still photos and taped file footage of Nikolay Gerasimov, and long lenses were set up on tripods to aim at the windows, a quarter mile away, past a few grazing horses which made for a nice touch on the story: CIA TREATS RUSSIAN SPYMASTER LIKE VISITING KING.\n\nThe two security guards at the house were going ape, calling Langley for instructions, but the CIA's public affairs office\u2014itself rather an odd institution\u2014didn't have a clue on this one, other than falling back on the stance that this was private property (whether or not that was legally correct under the circumstances was something CIA's lawyers were checking out) and that, therefore, the reporters couldn't trespass.\n\nIt had been years since he'd had much to laugh about. Sure, there had been the occasional light moment, but this was something so special that he'd never even considered its possibility. He'd always thought himself an expert on America. Gerasimov had run numerous spy operations against the \"Main Enemy,\" as the United States had once been called in the nonexistent country he'd once served, but he admitted to himself that you had to come here and live here for a few years to understand how incomprehensible America was, how nothing made sense, how literally anything could happen, and the madder it was, the more likely it seemed. No imagination was sufficient to predict what would happen in a day, much less a year. And here was the proof of it.\n\n_Poor Ryan,_ he thought, standing by the window and sipping his coffee. In his country\u2014for him it would always be the Soviet Union\u2014this would never have happened. A few uniformed guards and a hard look would have driven people off, or if the look alone didn't, then there were other options. But not in America, where the media had all the freedom of a wolf in the Siberian pines\u2014he nearly laughed at _that_ thought, too. In America, wolves were a protected species. Didn't these fools know that wolves killed people?\n\n\"Perhaps they will go away,\" Maria said, appearing at his side.\n\n\"I think not.\"\n\n\"Then we must stay inside until they do,\" his wife said, terrified at the development.\n\nHe shook his head. \"No, Maria.\"\n\n\"But what if they send us back?\"\n\n\"They won't. They can't. One doesn't do that with defectors. It's a rule,\" he explained. \"We never sent Philby, or Burgess, or MacLean back\u2014drunks and degenerates. Oh, no, we protected them, bought them their liquor, and let them diddle with their perversions, because that's the rule.\" He finished his coffee and walked back to the kitchen to put the cup and saucer in the dishwasher. He looked at it with a grimace. His apartment in Moscow and his dacha in the Lenin Hills\u2014probably renamed since his departure\u2014hadn't had an appliance like that one. He'd had servants to do such things. No more. In America convenience was a substitute for power, and comfort the substitute for status.\n\nServants. It could all have been his. The status, the servants, the power. The Soviet Union could still have been a great nation, respected and admired across the world. He would have become General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He could then have initiated the needed reforms to clear out the corruption and get the country moving again. He would probably have made a full rapprochement with the West, and made a peace, but a peace of equals it would have been, not a total collapse. He'd never been an ideologue, after all, though poor old Alexandrov had thought him so, since Gerasimov had always been a Party man\u2014well, what else could you be in a one-party state? Especially if you knew that destiny had selected you for power.\n\nBut, no. Destiny had betrayed him, in the person of John Patrick Ryan, on a cold, snowy Moscow night, sitting, he recalled, in a streetcar barn, sitting in a resting tram. And so now he had comfort and security. His daughter would soon be married to what the Americans called \"old money,\" what other countries called the nobility, and what he called worthless drones\u2014the very reason the Communist Party had won its revolution. His wife was content with her appliances and her small circle of friends. And his own anger had never died.\n\nRyan had robbed him of his destiny, of the sheer joy of power and responsibility, of being the arbiter of his nation's path\u2014and then Ryan had taken to himself that same destiny, and the fool didn't know how to make use of it. The real disgrace was to have been done in by such a person. Well, there was one thing to be done, wasn't there? Gerasimov walked into the mud room that led out the back, selected a leather jacket, and walked outside. He thought for a moment. Yes, he'd light a cigarette, and just walk up the driveway to where they were, four hundred meters away. Along the way he would consider how to couch his remarks, and his gratitude to President Ryan. He'd never stopped studying America, and his observations on how the media thought would now stand him in good stead, he thought.\n\n\"DID I WAKE you up, Skipper?\" Jones asked. It was about four in the morning at Pearl Harbor.\n\n\"Not hardly. You know, my PAO is a woman, and she's pregnant. I hope all this crap doesn't put her into early labor.\" Rear Admiral (Vice Admiral selectee, now) Mancuso was at his desk, and his phone, on his instructions, wasn't ringing without a good reason. An old shipmate was such a reason.\n\n\"I got a call from NBC, asking about a little job we did in the Atlantic.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\"\n\n\"What do you think, Skipper? Zip.\" In addition to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of his work with the Navy. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody always does.\"\n\n\"They know too much already. The _Today Show_ is doing a live shot from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they're saying.\"\n\nMancuso thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the NBC morning news show\u2014no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming.\n\n\"Next they might ask about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer.\"\n\n\"Open line, Dr. Jones,\" COMSUBPAC warned.\n\n\"I didn't say where, Skipper. It's just something you'll want to think about.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Mancuso agreed.\n\n\"Maybe you can tell me one thing.\"\n\n\"What's that, Ron?\"\n\n\"What's the big deal? I mean, sure, I won't talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a sea story not to tell. But what's the big deal, Bart? Didn't we do the right thing?\"\n\n\"I think so,\" the admiral replied. \"But I guess people just like a story.\"\n\n\"You know, I hope Ryan runs. I'll vote for him. Pretty cool stuff, bagging the head of the KGB and\u2014\"\n\n\"Ron!\"\n\n\"Skipper, I'm just repeating what they're saying on TV, right? I have no personal knowledge of that at all.\" _Damn,_ Jonesy thought, _what a sea story this one is_. _And it's all true._\n\nAt the other end of the line the \"Breaking News\" graphic came up on Mancuso's TV screen.\n\n\"YES, I AM Nikolay Gerasimov,\" the face said on screens all over the world. There were at least twenty reporters clustered on the other side of the stone fence, and the hard part was hearing one of the shouted questions.\n\n\"Is it true that you were\u2014\"\n\n\"Are you\u2014\"\n\n\"Were you\u2014\"\n\n\"Is it true that\u2014\"\n\n\"Silence, please.\" He held up his hand. It took fifteen seconds or so. \"Yes, I was at one time the chairman of KGB. Your President Ryan induced me to defect, and I have lived in America ever since, along with my family.\"\n\n_\"How_ did he get you to defect?\" a reporter shouted.\n\n\"You must understand that the intelligence business is, as you say, rough. Mr. Ryan plays the game well. At the time there was ongoing power struggle. CIA opposed my faction in favor of Andrey Il'ych Narmonov. So, he came to Moscow under cover of advisor to START talks. He claimed that he wanted to give me information to make the meeting happen, yes?\" Gerasimov had decided that downgrading his English skills would make him seem more credible to the cameras and microphones. \"Actually, you can say he trap me with accusation that I was going to create, how you say, treason? Not true, but effective, and so I decide to come to America with my family. I come by airplane. My family come by submarine.\"\n\n\"What? Submarine?\"\n\n\"Yes, was submarine _Dallas.\"_ He paused and smiled rather grimly. \"Why are you so hard on President Ryan? He serve his country well. A master spy,\" Gerasimov said admiringly.\n\n\"WELL, THERE GOES that story.\" Bob Holtzman muted his television and turned to his managing editor.\n\n\"Sorry, Bob.\" The editor handed the copy back. It was to have run in three days. Holtzman had done a masterful job of assembling his information, and then taken the time to integrate it all into a cohesive and flattering picture of the man whose office was only five blocks from his own. It was about spin, that most favored of Washington words. Somebody had changed the spin, and that was that. Once the initial story went out, it was impossible even for an experienced journalist like Holtzman to change it, especially if his own paper didn't support him.\n\n\"Bob,\" the editor said with a measure of embarrassment, \"your take on this is different than mine. What if this guy's a cowboy? I mean, okay, getting the submarine was one thing, Cold War and all that, but tampering with internal Soviet politics\u2014isn't that close to an act of war?\"\n\n\"That's not what it was really about. He was trying to get an agent out, code name CARDINAL. Gerasimov and Aleksandrov were using that spy case to topple Narmonov and kill off the reforms he was trying to initiate.\"\n\n\"Well, Ryan can say that all day if he wants. That's not how it's going to come across. 'Master spy'? Just what we need to run the country, hmph?\"\n\n\"Ryan isn't like that, God damn it!\" Holtzman swore. \"He's a straight shooter right out of\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, he shoots straight, all right. He's killed at least three people. _Killed,_ Bob! How the hell did Roger Durling ever get it into his head that this was the right guy to be Vice President. I mean, Ed Kealty isn't much of a prize, but at least\u2014\"\n\n\"At least he knows how to manipulate us, Ben. He suckered that airhead on TV, and then he suckered the rest of us into following the story his way.\"\n\n\"Well . . .\" Ben Saddler ran out of things to say at that point. \"It's factual, isn't it?\"\n\n\"That isn't the same as 'true,' Ben, and you know it.\"\n\n\"This is going to have to be looked into. Ryan looks like a guy who's played fast and loose with everything he's touched. Next, I want this Colombian story run down. Now, can you do it? Your contacts at the Agency are pretty good, but I have to tell you, I worry about your objectivity on this.\"\n\n\"You don't have a choice, Ben. If you want to keep up, it's my story\u2014course you can always just reword what the _Times_ says,\" Holtzman added, making his editor flush. Life could be tough in the media, too.\n\n\"Your story, Bob. Just make sure you deliver. Somebody broke the law, and Ryan's the one who covered everything up and came out smelling like a rose. I want that story.\" Saddler stood. \"I have an editorial to write.\"\n\nDARYAEI COULD SCARCELY believe it. The timing could scarcely have been better. He was days away from his next goal, and his target was about to descend into the abyss entirely without his help. With his help, of course, the fall would be farther still.\n\n\"Is that what it appears to be?\"\n\n\"It would seem so,\" Badrayn replied. \"I can do some quick research and be back to you in the morning.\"\n\n\"Is it truly possible?\" the Ayatollah persisted.\n\n\"Remember what I told you about lions and hyenas? For America it is a national sport. It is no trick. They don't do such tricks. However, let me make sure. I have my methods.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow morning, then.\"\n**34**\n\n**WWW.TERROR.ORG**\n\n**H** E HAD MUCH WORK TO do along those lines anyway. Back in his office, Badrayn activated his desktop computer. This had a high-speed modem and a dedicated fiber-optic telephone line that ran to an Iranian\u2014UIR, now\u2014embassy in Pakistan, and from there another line to London, where he could link into the World Wide Web without fear of a trace. What had once been a fairly simple exercise for police agencies\u2014that's what counterespionage and counterterrorism was, after all was now virtually impossible. Literally millions of people could access all the information mankind had ever developed, and more quickly than one could walk to one's car for a trip to the local library. Badrayn started by hitting press areas, major newspapers from the _Times_ in Los Angeles to the _Times_ in London, with Washington and New York in between. The major papers all presented much the same basic story\u2014quicker on the Web than in the printed editions, in fact\u2014though the initial editorial comment differed somewhat from one to another. The stories were vague on dates, and he had to remind himself that the mere repetition of the content didn't guarantee accuracy, but it _felt_ real. He knew Ryan had been an intelligence officer, knew that the British, the Russians, _and_ the Israelis respected him. Surely stories such as these would explain that respect. They also made him slightly uneasy, a fact which would have surprised his master. Ryan was potentially a more formidable adversary than Daryaei appreciated. He knew how to take decisive action in difficult circumstances, and such people were not to be underestimated.\n\nIt was just that Ryan was out of his element now, and that was plain from the news coverage. As he changed from one home page to another, a brand-new editorial came up. It called for a congressional inquiry into Ryan's activities at CIA. A statement from the Colombian government asked in clipped diplomatic terms for an explanation of the allegations and _that_ would start another firestorm. How would Ryan respond to the charges and the demands? An open question, Badrayn judged. He was an unknown quantity. That was disturbing. He printed up the more important articles and editorials for later use, and then went on with his real business.\n\nThere was a dedicated home page for conventions and trade shows in America. Probably for the use of travel agents, he thought. Well, that wasn't far off. Then it was just a matter of selecting them by city. That told him the identity of the convention centers, typically large barnlike buildings. Each of those had a home page as well, to boast of their capabilities. Many showed diagrams and travel directions. All gave phone and fax numbers. These he collected as well until he had twenty-four, a few extra, just in case. One could not send one of his travelers to a ladies' underwear show, for example\u2014although ... he chuckled to himself. Fashion and fabric shows\u2014these would be for the winter season, though summer had not yet come even to Iran. Automobile shows. These, he saw, traced across America as the various car and truck manufacturers showed their wares like a traveling circus . . . so much the better.\n\n_Circus,_ he thought, and punched up another home page\u2014but, no, it was just a few weeks too early in the year for that. Too bad. Too bad indeed! Badrayn groused. Didn't the big circuses travel in private trains? Damn. But that was just bad timing, and bad timing could not be helped. The auto show would have to do.\n\nAnd all the others.\n\nGROUP TWO'S MEMBERS were all fatally ill now, and it was time to end their suffering. It wasn't so much mercy as efficiency. There was no point at all in risking the lives of the medical corpsmen by treating people condemned to death by law and science both, and so like the first group they were dispatched by large injections of Dilaudid, as Moudi watched the TV. The relief for the medics was visible, even through the cumbersome plastic suits. In just a few minutes all of the test subjects were dead. The same procedures as before would be exercised, and the doctor congratulated himself that they'd worked so well, and no extraneous personnel had been infected. That was mainly because of their ruthlessness. Other places proper hospitals\u2014would not be so lucky, he knew, already mourning the loss of fellow practitioners.\n\nIt was a strange truism of life that second thoughts came only when it was too late for them. He could no more stop what was to come than he could stop the turning of the earth.\n\nThe medics started loading the infected bodies on the gurneys, and he turned away. He didn't need to see it again. Moudi walked into the lab.\n\nAnother set of technicians was now loading the \"soup\" into containers known as flasks. They had a thousand times more than was needed for the operations, but the nature of the exercise was such that it was actually easier to make too much than it was to make just enough and, the director had explained offhandedly, one never knew when more might be needed. The flasks were all made of stainless steel, actually a specialized alloy that didn't lose its strength in extreme cold. Each was three-quarters filled and sealed. Then it would be sprayed with a caustic chemical to make certain the outside was clean. Next it would be placed on a cart and rolled to the cold-storage locker in the building's basement, there to be immersed in liquid nitrogen. The Ebola virus particles could stay there for decades, too cold to die, completely inert, waiting for their next exposure to warmth and humidity, and a chance to reproduce and kill. One of the flasks stayed in the lab, sitting in a smaller cryogenic container, about the size of an oil drum but somewhat taller, with an LED display showing the interior temperature.\n\nIt was something of a relief that his part in the drama would soon be over. Moudi stood by the door, watching the lesser personnel do their jobs, and probably they felt the same. Soon the twenty spray containers would be filled and removed from the building, and every square centimeter of the building would be rigorously cleaned, marking everything safe again. The director would spend all of his time in his office, and Moudi\u2014well, he couldn't reappear at the WHO, could he? He was dead, after all, killed in the airplane crash just off the Libyan coast. Someone would have to generate a new identity and passport for him before he could travel again, assuming that he ever could. Or perhaps as a security measure\u2014no, even the director wasn't that ruthless, was he?\n\n\"HELLO, I'M CALLING for Dr. Ian MacGregor.\"\n\n\"Who's calling, please?\"\n\n\"This is Dr. Lorenz at CDC Atlanta.\"\n\n\"Wait, please.\"\n\nGus had to wait for two minutes, by his watch, long enough to light his pipe and open a window. The younger staffers occasionally chided him about the habit, but he didn't inhale, and it was good for thinking . . .\n\n\"This is Dr. MacGregor,\" a young voice said.\n\n\"This is Gus Lorenz in Atlanta.\"\n\n\"Oh! How do you do, Professor?\"\n\n\"How are your patients doing?\" Lorenz asked from seven time zones away. He liked the sound of MacGregor, clearly working a little late. The good ones did a lot of that.\n\n\"The male patient isn't doing well at all, I'm afraid. The child, however, is recovering nicely.\"\n\n\"Indeed? Well, we examined the specimens you sent. Both contained the Ebola virus, Mayinga sub-strain.\"\n\n\"You're quite certain?\" the younger man asked.\n\n\"No doubt about it, Doctor. I ran the tests myself.\"\n\n\"I was afraid of that. I sent another set to Paris, but they haven't got back to me yet.\"\n\n\"I need to know a few things.\" On his end of the line, Lorenz had a pad out. \"Tell me more about your patients.\"\n\n\"There's a problem with that, Professor Lorenz,\" MacGregor had to say. He didn't know if the line might be bugged, but in a country like Sudan, it was not something he could discount. On the other hand, he had to say something, and so he started picking his way through the facts he could disclose.\n\n\"I SAW YOU on TV last night.\" Dr. Alexandre had decided to see Cathy Ryan at lunch again for that very reason. He'd taken a liking to her. Who would have expected an eye cutter and laser jockey (for Alex, these were more mechanical specialties than the true medicine he practiced\u2014even that profession had its rivalries, and he felt that way about almost all surgical specialties) to take an interest in genetics? Besides, she probably needed a friendly voice.\n\n\"That's nice,\" Caroline Ryan replied, looking down at her chicken salad as he took his seat. The bodyguard, Alexandre saw, merely looked unhappily tense.\n\n\"You did okay.\"\n\n\"Think so?\" She looked up, saying evenly: \"I wanted to rip his face off.\"\n\n\"Well, that didn't quite come across. You were pretty supportive of your husband. You came across smart.\"\n\n\"What is it with reporters? I mean, why\u2014\"\n\nAlex smiled. \"Doctor, when a dog urinates on a fire hydrant, he's not committing vandalism. He's just being a dog.\" Roy Altman nearly choked on his drink.\n\n\"Neither one of us ever wanted this, you know?\" she said, still unhappy enough to miss the jibe.\n\nProfessor Alexandre held his hands up in mock surrender. \"Been there, done that, ma'am. Hey, I never wanted to join the Army. They drafted me right out of med school. It turned out all right, making colonel and all. I found an interesting field to keep the brain busy, and it pays the bills, y'know?\"\n\n_\"I_ don't get paid for this abuse!\" Cathy objected, albeit with a smile.\n\n\"And your husband doesn't get paid enough,\" Alex added.\n\n\"He never has. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just do the job for free, turn the checks back in, just to make the point that he's worth more than they pay him.\"\n\n\"You think he would have made a good doc?\"\n\nHer eyes brightened. \"I've told him that. Jack would have been a surgeon, I think\u2014no, maybe something else, like what you're in. He's always liked poking around and figuring things out.\"\n\n\"And saying what he thinks.\"\n\nThat almost started a laugh. \"Always!\"\n\n\"Well, guess what? He comes across as a good guy. I've never met him, but I liked what I saw. Sure as hell he's no politician, and maybe that's not a bad thing once in a while. You want to lighten up a little, Doctor? What's the worst thing that can happen? He leaves the job, goes back to whatever he wants to do\u2014teaching, I guess from what he said\u2014and you're still a doc with a Lasker on the wall.\"\n\n\"The worst thing that can happen\u2014\"\n\n\"You have Mr. Altman here to take care of that, don't you?\" Alexandre looked him over. \"I imagine you're big enough to stand in the way of the bullet.\" The Secret Service agent didn't reply, but his look at Alex told the tale. Yes, he'd stop one for his principal. \"You guys can't talk about this sort of thing, can you?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, we can, if you ask.\" Altman had wanted to say this all day. He'd seen the TV special, too, and as had often happened before, there was light talk in the Detail this morning about popping a cap on the reporter in question. The Secret Service had a fantasy life, too. \"Dr. Ryan, we like your family a lot, and I'm not just saying that to be polite, okay? We don't always like our principals. But we like all of you.\"\n\n\"Hey, Cathy.\" It was Dean James, passing by with a smile and a wave.\n\n\"Hi, Dave.\" Then she noted a few waves from faculty friends. So, she wasn't as alone as she thought.\n\n\"Okay, Cathy, are you married to James Bond or what?\" In a different context the question might have set her off, but Alexandre's Creole eyes were twinkling at her.\n\n\"I know a little. I got briefed in on some of it when President Durling asked Jack to be Vice President, but I can't\u2014\"\n\nHe held up his hand. \"I know. I still have a security clearance because I still drive up to Fort Detrick once in a while.\"\n\n\"It isn't like the movies. You don't do stuff like that and have a drink, kiss the girl, and drive away. He used to have nightmares and I\u2014well, I'd hug him in his sleep and usually that calmed him down, then when he wakes up, he pretends it never happened at all. I know some of it, not all. When we were in Moscow last year, a Russian comes up and says that he had a gun to Jack's head once\"\u2014Altman's head turned at that one\u2014\"but he said it like a joke or something, then he said the gun wasn't loaded. Then we had dinner together, like we were pals or something, and I met his wife\u2014pediatrician, would you believe it? She's a doc and her husband is the head Russian spy and\u2014\"\n\n\"It does sound a little far-fetched,\" Dr. Alexandre agreed with a judiciously raised eyebrow, and then a real laugh happened on the other side of the table.\n\n\"It's all so crazy,\" she concluded.\n\n\"You want crazy? We have two Ebola cases reported in Sudan.\" Now that her mood had changed, he could talk about his problems.\n\n\"Funny place for that virus to turn up. Did they come in from Zaire?\"\n\n\"Gus Lorenz is checking that out. I'm waiting for him to get back to me,\" Professor Alexandre reported. \"It can't be a local outbreak.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\" Altman asked.\n\n\"Worst possible environment,\" Cathy explained, finally picking at her lunch. \"Hot, dry, lots of direct sun. The UV from the sunlight kills it.\"\n\n\"Like a flamethrower,\" Alex agreed. \"And no jungle for a host animal to live in.\"\n\n\"Only two cases?\" Cathy asked with a mouthful of salad. At least, Alexandre thought, he'd gotten her to eat. Yep, he still had a good bedside manner, even in a cafeteria.\n\nHe nodded. \"Adult male and a little girl, that's all I know right now. Gus is supposed to run the tests today, probably already has.\"\n\n\"Damn, that's a nasty little bug. And you still don't know the host.\"\n\n\"Twenty years of looking,\" Alex confirmed. \"Never found one sick animal\u2014well, the host wouldn't be sick, but you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Like a criminal case, eh?\" Altman asked. \"Poking around for physical evidence?\"\n\n\"Pretty much,\" Alex agreed. \"Just we're trying to search a whole country, and we've never figured exactly what we're looking for.\"\n\nDON RUSSELL WATCHED as the cots went out. After lunch\u2014today it was ham-and-cheese sandwiches on wheat bread, glass of milk, and an apple\u2014the kids all went down for their afternoon nap. An altogether good idea, all the adults thought. Mrs. Daggett was a superb organizer, and the kids all knew the routine. The beds came out of the storage room, and the kids knew their spaces. SANDBOX was getting along well with young Megan O'Day. Both usually dressed in Oshkosh B'gosh outfits decorated with flowers or bunnies\u2014at least a third of the kids had them; it was a popular label. The only hard part was parading the children into the bathrooms so that no \"accidents\" happened during the naps some happened anyway, but that was kids for you. It took fifteen minutes, less than before because two of his agents helped. Then the kids were all down in their cots, with their blankets and bears, and the lights went down. Mrs. Daggett and her helpers found chairs to sit in and books to read.\n\n\"SANDBOX is sleeping,\" Russell said, stepping outside for some fresh air.\n\n\"Sounds like a winner,\" the mobile team thought, sitting in the den of the house across the street. Their Chevy Suburban was parked in the family garage. There were three agents there, two of whom were always on watch, seated close to the window which faced Giant Steps. Probably playing cards, ever a good way to pass dead time. Every fifteen minutes\u2014not quite regularly in case someone was watching\u2014Russell or another of the crew would walk around the grounds. TV cameras kept track of traffic on Ritchie Highway. One of the inside people was always positioned to cover the doors in and out of the center. At the moment it was Marcella Hilton; young and pretty, she always had her purse with her. A special purse of a type made for female cops, it had a side pocket she could just reach into for her SigSauer 9mm automatic, and two spare magazines. She was letting her hair grow to something approaching hippie length (he'd had to tell her what a hippie was) to accentuate her \"disguise.\"\n\nHe still didn't like it. The place was too easy to approach, too close to the highway with its heavy volume of traffic, and there was a parking lot within plain sight, a perfect spot for notional bad guys to do surveillance. At least reporters had been shooed away. On that one SURGEON had been ruthlessly direct. After an initial spate of stories about Katie Ryan and her friends, the foot had come down hard. Now visiting journalists who called were told, firmly but politely, to stay away. Those who came anyway had to talk to Russell, whose grandfatherly demeanor was saved for the children at Giant Steps. With adults he was simply intimidating, usually donning his Secret Service sunglasses, the better to appear like Schwarzenegger, who was shorter than he by a good three inches.\n\nBut his sub-detail had been cut down to six. Three directly on site, and three across the street. The latter trio had shoulder weapons, Uzi submachine guns and a scoped M-16. In another location, six would have been plenty, but not this one, he judged. Unfortunately, any more than that would have made this day-care center appear to be an armed camp, and President Ryan was having trouble enough.\n\n\"WHAT'S THE WORD, Gus?\" Alexandre asked, back in his office before starting afternoon rounds. One of his AIDS patients had taken a bad turn, and Alex was trying to figure what to do about it.\n\n\"ID is confirmed. Ebola Mayinga, same as the two Zairean cases. The male patient isn't going to make it, but the child is reportedly recovering nicely.\"\n\n\"Oh? Good. What's the difference in the cases?\"\n\n\"Not sure, Alex,\" Lorenz replied. \"I don't have much patient information, just first names, Saleh for the male and Sohaila for the child, ages and such.\"\n\n\"Arabic names, right?\" But Sudan was an Islamic country.\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"It would help to know what's different about the cases.\"\n\n\"I made that point. The attending physician is an Ian MacGregor, sounds pretty good, University of Edinburgh, I think he said. Anyway, he doesn't know any differences between them. Neither has any idea how they were exposed. They appeared at the hospital at roughly the same time, in roughly the same shape. Initial presentation was as flu and\/or jet lag, he said\u2014\"\n\n\"Travel from where, then?\" Alexandre interrupted.\n\n\"I asked. He said he couldn't say.\"\n\n\"How come?\"\n\n\"I asked that, too. He said he couldn't say that, either, but that it had no apparent connection with the cases.\" Lorenz's tone indicated what he thought of that. Both men knew it had to be local politics, a real problem in Africa, especially with AIDS.\n\n\"Nothing more in Zaire?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Gus confirmed. \"That one's over. It's a head-scratcher, Alex. Same disease turned up in two different places, two thousand miles apart, two cases each, two dead, one dying, one apparently recovering. MacGregor has initiated proper containment procedures at his hospital, and it sounds as though he knows his business.\" You could almost hear the shrug over the phone.\n\nWhat the Secret Service guy had said over lunch was right on target, Alexandre thought. It was more detective work than medicine, and this one didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, like some sort of serial-murder case with no clues. Entertaining in book form, maybe, but not in reality.\n\n\"Okay, what _do_ we know?\"\n\n\"We know that Mayinga strain is alive and kicking. Visual inspection is identical. We're running some analysis on the proteins and sequences, but my gut says it's a oneto-one match.\"\n\n\"God damn, what's the host, Gus? If we could only find that!\"\n\n\"Thank you for that observation, Doctor.\" Gus was annoyed\u2014enraged\u2014in the same way and for the same reason. But it was an old story for both of them. Well, the older man thought, it had taken a few _thousand_ years to figure malaria out. They'd been playing with Ebola for only twenty-five or so. The bug had been around, probably, for at least that long, appearing and disappearing, just like a fictional serial killer. But Ebola didn't have a brain, didn't have a strategy, didn't even move of its own accord. It was super-adapted to something very limited and exceedingly narrow. But they didn't know what. \"It's enough to drive a man to drink, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I imagine a stiff shot of bourbon will kill it, too, Gus. I have patients to see.\"\n\n\"How do you like regular clinical rounds, Alex?\" Lorenz missed them, too.\n\n\"Good to be a real doc again. I just wish my patients had a little more hope. But that's the job, ain't it?\"\n\n\"I'll fax you data on the structural analysis on the samples if you want. The good news is that it seems pretty well contained,\" Lorenz repeated.\n\n\"I'd appreciate it. See ya, Gus.\" Alexandre hung up. _Pretty well contained? That's what we thought before_ ... But then his thoughts shifted, as they had to. _White male patient, thirty-four, gay, resistant TB that came out of left freld. How do we stabilize him?_ He lifted the chart and walked out of his office.\n\n\"SO I'M THE wrong guy to help with the court selections?\" Pat Martin asked.\n\n\"Don't feel too bad,\" Arnie answered. \"We're _all_ the wrong guy for everything.\"\n\n\"Except you,\" the President noted with a smile.\n\n\"We all make errors of judgment,\" van Damm admitted. \"I could have left with Bob Fowler, but Roger said he needed me to keep this shop running, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Ryan nodded. \"That's how I got here, too. So, Mr. Martin?\"\n\n\"No laws were broken by any of this.\" He'd spent the last three hours going over the CIA files and Jack's dietated summary of the Colombian operations. Now one of his secretaries, Ellen Sumter, knew about some rather restricted things\u2014but she was a _presidential_ secretary, and besides, Jack had gotten a smoke out of it. \"At least not by you. Ritter and Moore could be brought up on failure to fully report their covert activities to the Congress, but their defense would be that the sitting President told them to do it that way, and the Special and Hazardous Operations guidelines appended to the oversight statute give them an arguable defense. I suppose I could get them indicted, but I wouldn't want to prosecute the case myself,\" he went on. \"They were trying to work on the drug problem, and most jurors wouldn't want to hurt them for doing so, especially since the Medellin cartel came apart partly as a result. The real problem on that one is the international-relations angle. Colombia's going to be pissed, sir, and with very good reason. There are issues of international law and treaties which applied to the activity, but I'm not good enough in that field to render an opinion. From the domestic point of view, it's the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The President is Commander-in-Chief. The President decides what is or is not in the country's security interest as part of his executive powers. The President can, therefore, take whatever action he deems appropriate to protect those interests\u2014that's what _executive_ power means. The brake on that, aside from statutory violations that mainly apply _inside_ the country, is found in the checks and balances exercised by the Congress. They can deny funds to prevent something, but that's about all. Even the War Powers Resolution is written in such a way as to let you act first before they try and stop you. You see, the Constitution is flexible on the really important issues. It's designed for reasonable people to work things out in a reasonable way. The elected representatives are supposed to know what the people want, and act accordingly, again, within reasonable limits.\"\n\n_The people who wrote the Constitution,_ Ryan wondered to himself, _were_ they _politicians or something else?_\n\n\"And the rest?\" the chief of staff asked.\n\n\"The CIA operations? Not even close to any sort of violation, but again the problem is one of politics. Speaking for myself\u2014I used to run espionage investigations, remember\u2014Mr. President, what beautiful jobs they were. But the media is going to have a ball,\" he warned.\n\nArnie thought that was a pretty good start. His third President didn't have to worry about going to jail. The political stuff came _after_ that, which was, for him, a first of sorts.\n\n\"Closed hearings or open?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"That's political. The main issue there is the international side. Best to kick that one around with State. By the way, you've got me right against the edge here, ethically speaking. Had I discovered a possible violation against you in any of these three cases, I'd be unable to discuss them with you. As it is, my cover is to say that you, Mr. President, asked me for an opinion on the possible criminal violations of others, to which inquiry I must, as a federal official, respond as part of my official duties.\"\n\n\"You know, it would be nice if everybody around me didn't talk like a lawyer all the time,\" Ryan observed crossly. \"I have real problems to deal with. A new country in the Middle East that doesn't like us, the Chinese making trouble at sea for reasons I don't understand, and I still don't have a Congress.\"\n\n\"This _is_ a real problem,\" Arnie told him. Again.\n\n\"I can read.\" Ryan gestured to the pile of clippings on his desk. He'd just discovered that the media graced him with early drafts of adverse editorials scheduled to run the next day. How nice of them. \"I used to think CIA was Alice in Wonderland. That's not even Triple-A ball. Okay, the Supreme Court. I've read over about half of the list. They're all good people. I'll have my selections this time next week.\"\n\n\"ABA is going to raise hell,\" Arnie said.\n\n\"Let 'em. I can't show weakness. I've learned that much last night. What's Kealty going to do?\" the President asked next.\n\n\"The only thing he can do, weaken you politically, threaten you with scandal, and force you to resign.\" Arnie held his hand up again. \"I'm not saying it makes sense.\"\n\n\"Damned little in this town does, Arnie. That's why I'm trying.\"\n\nONE CRUCIAL ELEMENT in the consolidation of the new country was, of course, its military. The former Republican Guards divisions would keep their identity. There had to be a few adjustments in the officer corps. The executions of previous weeks hadn't totally expunged undesirable elements, but in the interest of amity, the new eliminations were made into simple retirements\u2014the departure briefings were forcefully direct: _Step out of line and disappear._ It was not a warning to be disregarded. The departing officers invariably nodded their submission, grateful to be allowed to live.\n\nThese units had mainly survived the Persian Gulf War\u2014at least a majority of their personnel had, and the shock of their treatment at American hands had been assuaged by their later campaigns to crush rebellious civilian elements, replacing part of their swagger and much of their bravado. Their equipment had been replaced from stocks and other means, and that would soon be augmented as well.\n\nThe convoys moved out of Iran, down the Abadan highway, through border checkpoints already dismantled. They moved under cover of darkness, and with a minimum of radio traffic, but that didn't matter to satellites.\n\n\"THREE DIVISIONS, HEAVIES at that,\" was the instant analysis at I-TAC, the Army's Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center, a windowless building located in the Washington Navy Yard. The same conclusion was rapidly reached at DIA and CIA. A new Order of Battle assessment for the new country was already under way, and though it was not yet complete, the first back-of-theenvelope calculations showed that the UIR had more than double the military power of all the other Gulf states combined. It would probably be worse when all the factors were fully evaluated.\n\n\"Headed where, exactly, I wonder,\" the senior watch officer said aloud as the tapes were rewound.\n\n\"Bottom end of Iraq has always been Shi'a, sir,\" a warrant officer area specialist reminded the colonel.\n\n\"And that's the closest part to our friends.\"\n\n\"Roge-o.\"\n\nMAHMOUD HAJI DARYAEI had much to think about, and he usually tried to do it outside, not inside, a mosque. In this case it was one of the oldest in the former country of Iraq, within sight of the world's oldest city, Ur. A man of his God and his Faith, Daryaei was also a man of history and political reality who told himself that all came together in a unified whole that defined the shape of the world, and that all had to be considered. It was easy in moments of weakness or enthusiasm (the two were the same in his mind) to tell himself that certain things were written by Allah's own immortal hand, but circumspection was also a virtue taught by the Koran, and he found he was able to achieve that most easily by walking outside a holy place, usually in a garden, such as this mosque had.\n\nCivilization had started here. Pagan civilization, to be sure, but all things began somewhere, and it was not the fault of those who had first built this city five thousand years before that God had not yet fully revealed Himself. The faithful who had built this mosque and its garden had also rectified the oversight.\n\nThe mosque was in disrepair. He bent down to pick up a piece of tile that had fallen off the wall. It was blue, the color of the ancient city, a color somewhere between that of sky and sea, made by local artisans to the same shade and texture for more than fifty centuries, adopted in turn for temples to pagan statues, palaces of kings, and now a mosque. One could pluck a new one off a building or dig ten meters into the earth to find one over three thousand years old, and the two would be indistinguishable. In that there was such continuity here as at no other place in the world. A kind of peace came from it, especially in the chill of a cloudless midnight, when he alone was walking here, and even his bodyguards were out of sight, knowing their leader's mood.\n\nA waning moon was overhead, and that gave emphasis to the numberless stars which kept him company. To the west was ancient Ur, once a great city as things had been reckoned, and surely even today it would be a noteworthy sight, with its towering brick walls and its towering ziggurat to whatever false god the people here had worshiped. Caravans would travel in and out of the fortified gates, bringing everything from grain to slaves. The surrounding land would be green with planted fields instead of mere sand, and the air alive with the chatter of merchants and tradesmen. The tale of Eden itself had probably begun not far from here, somewhere in the parallel valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates that emptied into the Persian Gulf. Yes, if humanity were all one vast tree, then the oldest roots were right here, virtually in the center of the country he had just created.\n\nThe ancients would have had the same sense of centrality, he was sure. Here are _we,_ they would have thought, and out there were . . . _they_ , the universal appellation for those who were not part of one's own community. They were dangerous. At first _they_ would have been nomadic travelers for whom the idea of a city was incomprehensible. How could one stay in one place and live? Didn't the grass for the goats and sheep run out? On the other hand, what a fine place to raid, they would have thought. That was why the city had sprouted defensive walls, further emphasizing the primacy of place and the dichotomy of we and _they_ , the civilized and the uncivilized.\n\nAnd so it was today, Daryaei knew, Faithful and Infidel. Even within the first category there were differences. He stood in the center of a country which was also the center of the Faith, at least in geographic terms, for Islam had spread west and east. The true center of his religion lay in the direction in which he always prayed, southwest, in Mecca, home of the Ka'aba stone, where the Prophet had taught.\n\nCivilization had begun in Ur, and spread, slowly and fitfully, and in the waves of time, the city had risen and fallen because, he thought, of its false gods, its lack of the single unifying idea which civilization needed.\n\nThe continuity of this place told him much about the people. One could almost hear their voices, and they were no different, really, from himself. They'd looked up on quiet nights into the same sky and wondered at the beauty of the same stars. They'd heard the silence, the best of them, just as he did, and used it as a sounding board for their most private thoughts, to consider the Great Questions and find their answers as best they could. But they'd been flawed answers, and that was why the walls had fallen, along with all the civilizations here\u2014but one.\n\nAnd so, his task was to restore, Daryaei told the stars. As his religion was the final revelation, so his culture would grow from here, down-river from the original Eden. Yes, he'd build his city here. Mecca would remain a holy city, blessed and pure, not commercialized, not polluted. There was room here for the administrative buildings. A fresh beginning would take place on the site of the oldest beginning, and a great new nation would grow.\n\nBut first . . .\n\nDaryaei looked at his hand, old and gnarled, scarred by torture and persecution, but still the hand of a man and the servant of his mind, an imperfect tool, as he himself was an imperfect tool for his God, but a faithful tool even so, able to smite, able to heal. Both would be necessary. He knew the entire Koran by heart\u2014memorization of the entire book was encouraged by his religion\u2014and more than that he was a theologian who could quote a verse to any purpose, some of them contradictory, he admitted to himself, but it was the Will of Allah that mattered more than His words. His words often applied to a specific context. To kill for murder was evil, and the Koranic law on that was harsh indeed. To kill in defense of the Faith was not. Sometimes the difference between the two was clouded, and for that one had the Will of Allah as a guide. Allah wished the Faithful to be under one spiritual roof, and while many had attempted to accomplish that by reason and example, men were weak and some had to be shown more forcefully than others\u2014and perhaps the differences between Sunni and Shi'a _could_ be resolved in peace and love, with his hand extended in friendship and both sides giving respectful consideration to the views of the other\u2014Daryaei was willing to go that far in his quest\u2014but first the proper conditions had to be established. Beyond the horizon of Islam were others, and while God's Mercy applied to them as well, after a fashion, it did not apply while they sought to injure the Faith. For those people, his hand was for smiting. There was no avoiding it.\n\nBecause they _did_ injure the Faith, polluting it with their money and strange ideas, taking the oil away, taking the children away to educate them in corrupt ways. They sought to limit the Faith even as they did business with those who called themselves Faithful. They would resist his efforts to unify Islam. They'd call it economics or politics or something else, but really they knew that a unified Islam would threaten their apostasy and temporal power. They were the worst kind of enemies in that they called themselves friends, and disguised their intentions well enough to be mistaken for such. For Islam to unify, they had to be broken.\n\nThere really was no choice for him. He'd come here to be alone and to think, to ask God quietly if there might be another way. But the blue piece of tile had told him of all that had been, the time that had passed, the civilizations that had left nothing behind but imperfect memories and ruined buildings. He had the idea and the faith that they had all lacked. It was merely a question of applying those ideas, guided by the same Will that had placed the stars in the sky. His God had brought flood and plague and misfortune as tools of the Faith. Mohammed had himself fought wars. And so, reluctantly, he told himself, would he.\n**35**\n\n**OPERATIONAL CONCEPT**\n\n**W** HEN MILITARY FORCES move, other forces watch with interest, though what they do about it depends on the instructions of their leaders. The move of Iranian forces into Iraq was entirely administrative. The tanks and other tracked vehicles came by low-hauler trailers, while the trucks rolled on their own wheels. There were the usual problems. A few units took wrong turns, to the embarrassment of their officers and the rage of superiors, but soon enough each of the three divisions had found a new home, in every case co-located with a formerly Iraqi division of the same type. The traumatically enforced downsizing of the Iraqi army had made for almost enough room for the new occupants of the bases, and scarcely had they arrived but the staffs were integrated in corps units, and joint exercises began to acquaint one grouping with the other. Here, too, there were the usual difficulties of language and culture, but both sides used much the same weapons and doctrine; and the staff officers, the same all over the world, worked to hammer out a common ground. This, too, was watched from satellite.\n\n\"How much?\"\n\n\"Call it three corps formations,\" the briefing officer told Admiral Jackson. \"One of two armored divisions, and two of an armored and a heavy mechanized. They're a little light in artillery, but they have all the rolling stock they need. We spotted a bunch of command-and-control vehicles running around in the desert, probably doing unit-movement simulations for a CPX.\" That was a Command-Post Exercise, a war game for professionals.\n\n\"Anything else?\" Robby asked.\n\n\"The gunnery ranges at this base here, west of Abu Sukayr, are being bulldozed and cleaned up, and the air base just north at Nejef has a few new tenants, MiGs and Sukhois, but on IR their engines are cold.\"\n\n\"Assessment?\" This came from Tony Bretano.\n\n\"Sir, you can call it anything,\" the colonel replied. \"New country integrating their military, there's going to be a lot of getting-to-know-you stuff. We're surprised by the integrated corps formations. It's going to pose administrative difficulties, but it might be a good move from the political-psychological side. This way, they're acting like they really are one country.\"\n\n\"Nothing threatening at all?\" the SecDef asked.\n\n\"Nothing overtly threatening, not at this time.\"\n\n\"How quick could that corps move to the Saudi border?\" Jackson asked, to make sure his boss got the real picture.\n\n\"Once they're fully fueled and trained up? Call it forty-eight to seventy-two hours. We could do it in less than half the time, but we're trained better.\"\n\n\"Force composition?\"\n\n\"Total for the three corps, we're talking six heavy divisions, just over fifteen hundred main battle tanks, over twenty-five hundred infantry fighting vehicles, upwards of six hundred tubes\u2014still haven't got a handle on their red team, Admiral. That's artillery, Mr. Secretary,\" the colonel explained. \"Logistically they're on the old Soviet model.\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\"\n\n\"Their loggies are organic to the divisions. We do that also, but we maintain separate formations to keep our maneuver forces running.\"\n\n\"Reservists for the most part,\" Jackson told the Secretary. \"The Soviet model allows for a more integrated maneuver force, but only for the short term. They can't sustain operations as long as we can, in terms of time or distance.\"\n\n\"The admiral is correct, sir,\" the briefing officer went on. \"In 1990, when the Iraqis jumped into Kuwait, they went about as far as their logistical tail allowed. They had to stop to replenish.\"\n\n\"That's part of it. Tell him the other part,\" Jackson ordered.\n\n\"After a pause of from twelve to twenty-four hours, they _were_ ready to move again. The reason they didn't was political.\"\n\n\"I always wondered about that. Could they have taken the Saudi oil fields?\"\n\n\"Easy,\" the colonel said. \"He must have thought a lot about that in later months,\" the officer added without sympathy.\n\n\"So, we have a threat here?\" Bretano was asking simple questions and listening to the answers. Jackson liked that. He knew what he didn't know, and wasn't embarrassed about learning things.\n\n\"Yes, sir. These three corps represent a potential striking force about equal in power to what Hussein used. There would be other units involved, but they're just occupying forces. That's the fist right here,\" the colonel said, tapping the map with his pointer.\n\n\"But it's still in their pocket. How long to change that?\"\n\n\"A few months at minimum to do it right, Mr. Secretary. It depends most of all on their overall political intentions. All of these units are individually trained up to snuff by local standards. Integrating their corps staffs and organizations is the real task ahead for them.\"\n\n\"Explain,\" Bretano ordered.\n\n\"Sir, I guess you could call it a management team. Everybody has to get to know everybody else so that they can communicate properly, start thinking the same way.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's easier to think of it as a football team, sir.\" Robby took it further. \"You don't just take eleven guys and put them in a huddle together and expect them to perform properly. You have to have everybody reading out of the same playbook, and everybody has to know what everybody else is able to do.\"\n\nSecDef nodded. \"So it's not the hardware we're worried about. It's the people.\"\n\n\"That's right, sir,\" the colonel said. \"I can teach you to drive a tank in a few minutes, but it'll be a while before I want you driving around in my brigade.\"\n\n\"That's why you people must love having a new Secretary come in every few years,\" Bretano observed with a wry smile.\n\n\"Mostly they learn pretty fast.\"\n\n\"So, what do we tell the President?\"\n\nTHE CHINESE AND Taiwanese navies were keeping their respective distances, as though an invisible line were drawn north-south down the Formosa Strait. The latter kept pacing the former, interposing itself between its island home, but informal rules were established and so far none was being violated.\n\nThis was good for the CO of USS _Pasadena,_ whose sonar and tracking parties were trying to keep tabs on both sides, all the while hoping that a shooting war wouldn't start with them in the middle. Getting killed by mistake seemed such a tawdry end.\n\n\"Torpedo in the water, bearing two-seven-four!\" was the next call from the sonar compartment. Heads turned and ears perked up at once.\n\n\"Stay cool,\" the captain ordered quietly. \"Sonar, Conn, I need more than that!\" That statement was not quiet.\n\n\"Same bearing as contact Sierra Four-Two, a Luda IICLASS'can, sir, probably launched from there.\"\n\n\"Four-Two is bearing two-seven-four, range thirty thousand yards,\" a petty officer in the tracking party interjected at once.\n\n\"Sounds like one of their new homers, sir, six blades, turning at high speed, bearing is changing north to south, definite side aspect on the fish.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" the captain said, allowing himself to stay as calm as he pretended to be.\n\n\"Could be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen, sir.\" That contact was an old Ming-class submarine, a Chinese copy of the old Russian Romeo-class, a clunker whose design dated from the 1950s which had snorted less than an hour before to recharge batteries. \"He's at two-six-one, range about the same.\" That came from the officer in charge of the tracking party. The senior chief at his left nodded agreement.\n\nThe captain closed his eyes and allowed himself a breath. He'd heard the stories about the Good Old Days of the Cold War, when people like Bart Mancuso had gone Up North into the Barents Sea and, occasionally, found themselves right in the middle of a live-fire ShootEx of the Soviet navy\u2014perhaps mistaken for practice targets, even. A fine opportunity to figure out how good Soviet weapons really were, they joked now, sitting in their offices. Now he knew what they'd really felt at the time. Fortunately, his private head was a mere twenty feet away, if it came to that . . .\n\n\"Transient, transient, mechanical transient bearing two-six-one, sounds like a noisemaker, probably released by contact Sierra-Fifteen. The torpedo bearing is now two-six-seven, estimated speed four-four knots, bearing continues to change north to south,\" sonar reported next. \"Hold it\u2014 _another_ torpedo in the water bearing two-fivefive!\"\n\n\"No contact on that bearing, could be a helo launch,\" the senior chief said.\n\nHe'd have to discuss one of those sea stories with Mancuso when he got back to Pearl, the captain thought.\n\n\"Same acoustical signature, sir, another homing fish, drifting north, could also be targeted on Sierra-Fifteen.\"\n\n\"Bracketed the poor bastard.\" This came from the XO.\n\n\"It's dark topside, isn't it?\" the captain thought suddenly. Sometimes it was easy to lose track.\n\n\"Sure is, sir.\" From the XO again.\n\n\"Have we seen them do night helo ops this week?\"\n\n\"No, sir. Intel says they don't like to fly off their 'cans at night.\"\n\n\"That just changed, didn't it? Let's see. Raise the ESM mast.\"\n\n\"Raise the ESM, aye.\" A sailor pulled the proper handle and the reed-thin electronics-sensor antenna hissed up on hydraulic power. _Pasadena_ was running at periscope depth, her long sonar \"tail\" streamed out behind her as the submarine stayed roughly on what they hoped was the borderline between the two enemy fleets. It was the safest place to be until such time as real shooting started.\n\n\"Looking for\u2014\"\n\n\"Got it, sir, a Ku-band emitter at bearing two-fivefour, aircraft type, frequency and pulse-repetition rate like that new French one. Wow, _lots_ of radars turning, sir, take a while to classify them.\"\n\n\"French Dauphin helos on some of their frigates, sir,\" the XO observed.\n\n\"Doing night ops,\" the captain emphasized. That was unexpected. Helicopters were expensive, and landing on tin cans at night was always dicey. The Chinese navy was training up to do something.\n\nTHINGS COULD BE slippery in Washington. The nation's capital invariably panics at the report of a single snowflake despite the realization that a blizzard might do little more than fill the potholes in the street, if only people would plow the snow that way. But there was more to it than that. As soldiers once followed flags onto a battlefield, so senior Washington officials follow leaders or ideologies, but near the top it got slippery. A lower- or middle-level bureaucrat might just sit at his post and ignore his sitting department Secretary's identity, but the higher one went, the closer one came to something akin to decision or policy making. In such positions, one actually had to do things, or tell others to do things, from time to time, other than what someone else had already written down. One regularly went in and out of top-floor offices and became identified with whoever might be there, ultimately all the way to the President's office in the West Wing, and though access to the top meant power of a sort, and prestige, and an autographed photo on the office wall to tell _your_ visitors how important you were, if something happened to the _other_ person in the photo, then the photo and its signature might become a liability rather than an asset. The ultimate risk lay in changing from an insider, always welcome, to an outsider, if not quite _always_ shunned, then forced to earn one's way back inside, a prospect not attractive to those who had spent so much time getting there in the first place.\n\nThe most obvious defense, of course, was to be _networked_ , to have a circle of friends and associates which didn't have to be deep so much as broad, and include people in all parts of the political spectrum. You had to be known by a sufficiently wide number of fellow insiders so that no matter what happened at the very top there was always a safe platform just below, a safety net of sorts. The net was close enough to the top that the people in it had the upward access without the risk of falling off. With care, those at the top positions enjoyed its protection, too, always able to slide in and out of appropriate postings, to and from other offices not too far away\u2014usually less than a mile\u2014to await the next opportunity, and so even though _out_ , to remain in the Network, to retain the access, and also rent out that access to those who needed it. In that sense, nothing had changed since the pharaonic court in the ancient Nile city of Thebes, where knowing a nobleman who had access to Pharaoh gave one a power which translated into both money and the pure joy of being important enough to bow and scrape for profit.\n\nBut in Washington as in Thebes, being too close to the wrong leader's court meant you ran the risk of becoming tarnished, especially when the Pharaoh didn't play ball (actually jackals and hounds in the Middle Kingdom) with the system.\n\nAnd President Ryan didn't. It was as though a foreigner had usurped the throne, not necessarily a bad man, but a _different_ man who didn't assemble people from the Establishment. They'd waited patiently for him to come to them, as all Presidents did, to seek their wisdom and counsel, to give access and get it in return, as courtiers had for centuries. They handled things for a busy chief, doling out justice, seeing to it that things were done in the same old way, which had to be the right way, since all of their number agreed with it while serving and being served by it.\n\nBut the old system hadn't so much been destroyed as ignored, and that befuddled the thousands of members of the Great Network. They held their cocktail parties and discussed the new President over Perrier and pate, smiling tolerantly at his new ideas and waiting for him to see the light. But it had been quite a while now since that awful night, and it hadn't happened yet. Networked people still working inside as appointees of the Fowler-Durling administration came to the parties and reported that they didn't understand what was going on. Senior lobbyists tried to make appointments through the office of the President, only to be told that the President was extremely tied up, and didn't have time.\n\nDidn't have time?\n\nDidn't have time for _them?_\n\nIt was as though Pharaoh had told all the nobles and courtiers to go home and tend their estates up and down the river kingdom, and _that_ was no fun\u2014to live in the provinces . . . with the . . . common folk?\n\nWorse, the new Senate, or a large part of it, was following the President's example. Worst of all, many, if not most, were curt with them. A new senator from Indiana was reported to have a kitchen timer on his desk and to twist it to a mere five minutes for lobbyists, and to none at all for people talking to him about the _absurd_ ideas for rewriting the tax code. Worst of all, he even lacked the courtesy to have his executive secretary deflect appointment requests. He'd actually _told_ the chief of a powerful Washington law firm\u2014a man who'd only wanted to educate the newcomer from Peoria\u2014that he would _not_ listen to such people, ever. Told the man himself. In another context it would have been an amusing story. Such people occasionally came to Washington with such purity of purpose as to justify a white horse, but in due course they would learn that horses were out of date\u2014and in most cases, they were merely doing it for show anyway.\n\nBut not this time. The story had spread. First reported in the local D.C. papers with whimsy, it had been picked up in Indianapolis as something genuinely new and decidedly \"Hoosier,\" and then respread through a couple of the news syndicates. This new senator had talked forcefully with his new colleagues, and won a few converts. Not all that many, but enough to be worrisome. Enough to give him a chairmanship of a powerful subcommittee, what was too bully a pulpit for one such as he, especially since he had a flair for the dramatic and an effective, if not exactly nice, turn of phrase that reporters couldn't avoid quoting. Even reporters in the Great Network enjoyed reporting genuinely new things\u2014which was what \"news\" meant, something everyone mainly forgot.\n\nAt the parties, people joked that it was a fad, like hula hoops, amusing to watch and soon to fade, but every so often one of them would worry. The tolerant smile would freeze on his or her face in mid-joke, and they'd wonder if something genuinely new might be happening.\n\nNo, nothing genuinely new ever happened here. Everybody knew that. The system had rules, and the rules had to be obeyed.\n\nEven so, a few of them worried at their dinner parties in Georgetown. They had expensive houses to pay off, children to educate, and status to maintain. All had come from somewhere else, and none wanted to go back there.\n\nIt was just so outrageous. How did the newcomers expect to find out what they needed to, without lobbyists from the Network to guide and educate them\u2014and didn't _they_ represent the people, too? Weren't they paid to do exactly that? Didn't _they_ tell the elected representatives\u2014worse, these new ones weren't elected, they were all appointed, many of them by governors who, in their wish to get reelected themselves, had bowed to President Ryan's impassioned but utterly unrealistic televised speech. As though some new religion had broken out.\n\nAt the parties in Chevy Chase, many of them worried that the new laws these new senators would pass would be ... laws, just like the ones produced by the system, at least in their power if not in their wisdom. These new people could actually pass new laws without being \"helped.\" That was so genuinely new an idea as to be ... frightening. But only if you really believed it.\n\nAnd then there were the House races, just about to start around the country, the special elections required to repopulate the People's House, as everyone liked to call it, which was Disneyland for lobbyists, so many meetings all in one convenient complex of buildings, 435 lawmakers and their staffs within a mere twenty acres. Polling data that had been reported mainly in local papers was now being picked up by the national media in shocked disbelief. There were people running who had never run for anything before; businessmen, community leaders who had never worked the system, lawyers, ministers, even some physicians. Some of them might win as they spewed forth neo-populist-type speeches about supporting the President and \"restoring America\"\u2014a phrase that had gained wide currency. But America had never died, the Network people told themselves. _They_ were still here, weren't they?\n\nIt was all Ryan's doing. He'd never been one of them. He'd actually said more than once that he didn't like being President!\n\n_Didn't like it?_\n\nHow could any man \"person\" to the Network Establishment in the new age of enlightenment\u2014not _like_ having the ability to do so much, to pass out so many favors, to be courted and flattered like a king of old?\n\n_Didn't like it?_\n\nThen he didn't belong, did he?\n\nThey knew how to handle that. Someone had already started it. Leaks. Not just from inside. Those were little people with lesser agendas. There was more. There was the big picture, and for that, access still counted, because the Network had many voices, and there were still ears to listen. There would be no plan and no conspiracy _per se_. It would all happen naturally, or as naturally as anything happened here. In fact, it had already begun.\n\nFOR BADRAYN, AGAIN, it was time on his computer. The task, he learned, was time-critical. Such things often were, but the reason was new in this case. The travel time itself had to be minimized, rather than arranged in such a way as to meet a specific deadline or rendezvous. The limiting factor here was the fact that Iran was still something of an outlaw country with surprisingly little in the way of air travel options.\n\nFlights with convenient times were astoundingly limited:\n\nKLM 534 to Amsterdam left just after one A.M., and arrived in Holland at 6:10 A.M. after an intermediary stop;\n\nLufthansa's nonstop 601 left at 2:55, and got to Frankfurt at 5:50;\n\nAustrian Airlines 774, leaving at 3:40 A.M., arrived in Vienna nonstop at 6:00 A.M.;\n\nAir France 165 left at 5:25 A.M., arrived at Charles de Gaulle at nine A.M.;\n\nBritish Airways 102 left at six A.M., stopping en route, arriving at Heathrow at 12:45 P.M.;\n\nAeroflot 516 left at three A.M. for Moscow, arrived there at 7:10.\n\nOnly one nonstop to Rome, no direct flights to Athens, not even a nonstop to Beirut! He could have his people connect through Dubai\u2014remarkably, Emirates Airlines _did_ fly out of Tehran into its own international hub, as did Kuwait's flag carrier, but they, he thought, were not a very good idea.\n\nJust a handful of flights to use, all of them easily observed by foreign intelligence services\u2014if they were competent, as he had to assume they were, either they'd have their own people aboard the flights or the cabin staff would be briefed on what to look for and how to report it while the aircraft was still in the air. So, it wasn't just time, was it?\n\nThe people he'd selected were good ones; educated for the most part, they knew how to dress respectably, how to carry on a conversation, or at least to deflect one politely\u2014on international flights the easiest thing was to feign the need for sleep, which most often wasn't feigned anyway. But only one mistake, and the consequences could be serious. He'd told them that, and all had listened.\n\nBadrayn had never been given a mission like this one, and the intellectual challenge was noteworthy. Just a handful of really usable flights out, and the one to Moscow wasn't all that attractive. The gateway cities of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam would have to do------and one flight each per day. The good news was that all five of them offered a wide choice of connections via American and other flag carriers. So one group would take 601 to Frankfurt, and there, some would disperse through Brussels (Sabena to New York-JFK) and Paris (Air France to Washington-Dulles; Delta to Atlanta; American Airlines to Orlando; United to Chicago) via conveniently timed connecting flights, while others took Lufthansa to Los Angeles. The British Airways team had the most options of all. One would take Concorde Flight 3 into New York. The only trick was getting them through the first series of flights. After that, the whole massive system of international air travel would handle the dispersal.\n\nStill, twenty people, twenty possible mistakes. Operational security was always a worry. He'd spent half his life trying to outfox the Israelis, and while his continued life was some testimony to his success\u2014or lack of total failure, which was somewhat more honest the hoops he'd had to leap through had nearly driven him mad more than once. Well. At least he had the flights figured out. Tomorrow he would brief them in. He checked his watch. Tomorrow wasn't all that far away.\n\nNOT EVERY INSIDER agreed. Every group had its cynics and rebels, some good, some bad, some not even outcasts. Then there was also anger. The Network members, when thwarted by other members in one of their endeavors, often took a philosophical view of the matter\u2014one could always get even later, and still stay friends\u2014but not always. This was especially true of the media members who both were and were not part of it all. They were, in the sense that they did have their own personal relationships and friendships with the government in and out people; they could go to them for information and insights, and stories about their enemies. They were not, in that the insiders never really trusted them, because the media could be used and fooled\u2014most often cajoled, which was easier for one side of the political spectrum than the other. But trust? Not exactly. Or more exactly, not at all.\n\nSome of them even had principles.\n\n\"Arnie, we need to talk.\"\n\n\"I think we do,\" van Damm agreed, recognizing the voice that had come in on _his_ direct line.\n\n\"Tonight?\"\n\n\"Sure. Where?\"\n\n\"My place?\"\n\nThe chief of staff gave it a few seconds of consideration. \"Why not?\"\n\nTHE DELEGATION CAME just in time for evening prayers. The greetings were cordial and modest on both sides, and then all three of them entered the mosque and performed their daily ritual. Ordinarily, all would have felt purified by their devotions as they walked back out to the garden. But not this time. Only long practice in the concealment of emotions prevented overt displays of tension, but even that told much to all three, and especially to the one.\n\n\"Thank you for receiving us,\" Prince Ali bin Sheik said first of all. He didn't add that it had taken long enough.\n\n\"I am pleased to welcome you in peace,\" Daryaei replied. \"It is well that we should pray together.\" He led them to a table prepared by his security people, where coffee was served, the strong, bitter brew favored in the Middle East. \"The blessings of God on this meeting, my friends. How may I be of service?\"\n\n\"We are here to discuss recent developments,\" the Royal Prince observed after a sip. His eyes locked in on Daryaei. His Kuwaiti colleague, Mohammed Adman Sabah, his country's foreign minister, remained quiet for the moment.\n\n\"What do you wish to know?\" Daryaei asked.\n\n\"Your intentions,\" Ali replied bluntly.\n\nThe spiritual head of the United Islamic Republic sighed. \"There is much work to be done. All the years of war and suffering, all the lives lost to so many causes, the destruction to so much. Even this mosque\"\u2014he gestured to the obvious need for repairs\u2014\"is a symbol of it all, don't you think?\"\n\n\"There has been much cause for sorrow,\" Ali agreed.\n\n\"My intentions? To restore. These unhappy people have been through so much. Such sacrifices\u2014and for what? The secular ambitions of a godless man. The injustice of it all cried out to Allah, and Allah answered the cries. And now, perhaps, we can be one prosperous and godly people.\" The _again_ hung unspoken on the end of the statement.\n\n\"That is the task of years,\" the Kuwaiti observed.\n\n\"Certainly it is,\" Daryaei agreed. \"But now with the embargo lifted, we have sufficient resources to see to the task, and the will to see it done. There will be a new beginning here.\"\n\n\"In peace,\" Ali added.\n\n\"Certainly in peace,\" Daryaei agreed seriously.\n\n\"May we be of assistance? One of the Pillars of our Faith is charity, after all,\" Foreign Minister Sabah observed.\n\nA gracious nod. \"Your kindness is noted with gratitude, Mohammed Adman. It is well that we should be guided by our Faith rather than worldly influences that have so sadly swept over this region in recent years, but for the moment, as you can see, the task is so vast that we can scarcely begin to determine what things need to be done, and in what order. Perhaps at a later time we might discuss that again.\"\n\nIt wasn't quite a flat rejection of aid, but close. The UIR wasn't interested in doing business, just as Prince Ali had feared.\n\n\"At the next meeting of OPEC,\" Ali offered, \"we can discuss the rearrangement of production quotas so that you can share more fairly in the revenue we collect from our clients.\"\n\n\"That would indeed be useful,\" Daryaei agreed. \"We do not ask for all that much. A minor adjustment,\" he allowed.\n\n\"Then on that we are agreed?\" Sabah asked.\n\n\"Certainly. That is a technical issue which we can delegate to our respective functionaries.\"\n\nBoth visitors nodded, noting to themselves that the allocation of oil production quotas was the most rancorous of issues. If every country produced too much, then the world price would fall, and all would suffer. On the other hand, if production were overly restricted, the price would rise, damaging the economies of their client states, which would then reduce demand and revenues with it. The proper balance\u2014hard to strike, like all economic issues\u2014was the yearly subject of high-level diplomatic missions, each with its own economic model, no two ever the same, and considerable discord within the mainly Muslim association. This was going far too easily.\n\n\"Is there a message you wish to convey to our governments?\" Sabah asked next.\n\n\"We desire only peace, peace so that we can accomplish our tasks of restoring our societies into one, as Allah intends it to be. There is nothing for you to fear from us.\"\n\n\"SO WHAT DO you think?\" Another training rotation was completed. Present at the final review of operations were some very senior Israeli officers, at least one of whom was a senior spook. Colonel Sean Magruder was a cavalryman, but in a real sense every senior officer was an intelligence consumer, and willing to shop at any source.\n\n\"I think the Saudis are very nervous, along with all their neighbors.\"\n\n\"And you?\" Magruder asked. He'd unconsciously adopted the informal and direct mode of address common in the country, especially its military.\n\nAvi ben Jakob, still titularly a military officer\u2014he was wearing a uniform now\u2014was deputy chief of the Mossad. He wondered how far he could go, but with his job title, that was really for him to decide.\n\n\"We are not pleased at all by the development.\"\n\n\"Historically,\" Colonel Magruder observed, \"Israel has had a working relationship with Iran, even after the Shah fell. That goes all the way back to the Persian Empire. I believe your festival of Purim results from that period. Israeli air force pilots flew missions for the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and\u2014\"\n\n\"We had a large number of Jews then in Iran, and that was intended to get them out,\" Jakob said quickly.\n\n\"And the arms-for-hostages mess that Reagan got into went through here, probably your agency,\" Magruder added, just to show that he, too, was a player in the game.\n\n\"You are well informed.\"\n\n\"That's my job, part of it anyway. Sir, I am not making value judgments here. Getting your people out of Iran back then was, as we say at home, business, and all countries have to do business. I'm just asking what you think of the UIR.\"\n\n\"We think Daryaei is the most dangerous man in the world.\"\n\nMagruder thought of the eyes-only brief he'd had earlier in the day about the Iranian troop movements into Iraq. \"I agree.\"\n\nHe'd come to like the Israelis. That hadn't always been true. For years, the United States Army had cordially disliked the Jewish state, along with the other branches of the service, mainly because of the corporate arrogance adopted by the small nation's senior military officers. But the IDF had learned humility in Lebanon, and learned to respect American arms as observers in the Persian Gulf War\u2014after literally months of telling American officers that they needed advice on how to fight first the air war and then the ground war, they'd quickly taken to asking, politely, to look over some of the American plans because there _might_ be some few _minor_ things worthy of a _little_ study.\n\nThe descent of the Buffalo Cav into the Negev had changed things some more. America's tragedy in Vietnam had broken another type of arrogance, and from that had grown a new type of professionalism. Under Marion Diggs, first CO of the reborn 10th United States Cavalry, quite a few harsh lessons had been handed out, and while Magruder was continuing that tradition, the Israeli troopers were learning, just as Americans had done at Fort Irwin. After the initial screams and near fistfights, common sense had broken out. Even Benny Eitan, commander of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade, had rallied from the first set of drubbings to finish his training rotation with a pair of break-evens, and come away thanking his American hosts for the lessons\u2014and promising to kick their asses when he returned the next year. In the central computer in the local Star Wars building, a complex mathematical model said that the performance of the Israeli army had improved by fully forty percent in just a few years, and now that they again had something to be arrogant about, the Israeli officers were showing disarming humility and an almost ruthless desire to learn\u2014ever signs of truly professional soldiers.\n\nAnd now one of their head spooks wasn't talking about how his forces could handle anything the Islamic world might throw at his country. That was worth a contact report to Washington, Magruder thought.\n\nTHE BUSINESS JET once \"lost\" in the Mediterranean could no longer leave the country. Even using it to ferry the Iraqi generals to Sudan had been a mistake, but a necessary one, and perhaps the odd covert mission was all right as well, but for the most part it had become Daryaei's personal transport, and a useful one, for his time was short, and his new country large. Within two hours of seeing his Sunni visitors off, he was back in Tehran.\n\n\"So?\"\n\nBadrayn laid out his papers on the desk, showing cities and routes and times. It was mere mechanics. Daryaei looked the plans over with a cursory eye, and while they seemed overly complex, that was not a major concern for him. He'd seen maps before. He looked up for the explanation that had to come with the paperwork.\n\n\"The primary issue is time,\" Badrayn said. \"We want to have each traveler to his destination no more than thirty hours after departure. This one, for example, leaves Tehran at six A.M., and arrives in New York at two A.M. Tehran time, elapsed time twenty hours. The trade show he will attend\u2014it is at the Jacob Javits Center in New York\u2014will be open past ten in the evening. This one departs at 2:55 A.M., and ultimately arrives in Los Angeles twenty-three hours later\u2014early afternoon, local time. His trade show will be open all day. That is the most lengthy in terms of distance and time, and his 'package' will still be more than eighty-five percent effective.\"\n\n\"And security?\"\n\n\"They are all fully briefed. I have selected intelligent, educated people. All they need do is be pleasant en route. After that, a little caution. Twenty at once, yes, that is troublesome, but those were your orders.\"\n\n\"And the other group?\"\n\n\"They will go out two days later via similar arrangements,\" Badrayn reported. \"That mission is far more dangerous.\"\n\n\"I am aware of that. Are the people faithful?\"\n\n\"They are that.\" Badrayn nodded, knowing that the question really asked if they were fools. \"The political risks concern me.\"\n\n\"Why?\" The observation didn't surprise Daryaei, but he wanted the reason.\n\n\"The obvious question of discovering who sent them, though their travel documents will be properly prepared, and the usual security measures put in place. No, I mean the American political context. An unhappy event to a politician can often create sympathy for him, and from that sympathy can come political support.\"\n\n\"Indeed! It does not make him appear weak?\" That was rather much to swallow.\n\n\"In our context, yes, but not necessarily in theirs.\"\n\nDaryaei considered that and compared it with other analyses he'd ordered and reviewed. \"I have met Ryan. He is weak. He does _not_ deal effectively with his political difficulties. He still has no true government behind him. Between the first mission and the second, we will break him\u2014or at least we will distract him long enough to achieve our next goal. After that is accomplished, America becomes irrelevant.\"\n\n\"Better the first mission only,\" Badrayn advised.\n\n\"We must shake their people. If what you say of their government is true, we will do such harm as they have never known. We will shake their leader, we will shake his confidence, we will shake the confidence of the people in him.\"\n\nHe had to respond to that carefully. This was a Holy Man with a Holy Mission. He was not fully amenable to reason. And yet there was one other factor which he didn't know about. There had to be. Daryaei was more given to wishes than considered action\u2014no, that wasn't true, was it? He united the two while giving another impression entirely. What the cleric did appreciate was that the American government was still vulnerable, since its lower house of parliament had not yet been replaced, a process just beginning.\n\n\"Best of all merely to kill Ryan, if we could. An attack on children will inflame them. Americans are very sentimental about little ones.\"\n\n\"The second mission goes on only after the first is known to be successful?\" Daryaei demanded.\n\n\"Yes, that is true.\"\n\n\"Then that is sufficient,\" he said, looking back down at the travel arrangements, and leaving Badrayn to his own thoughts.\n\n_There is a third element._ There had to be.\n\n\"HE SAYS HIS intentions are peaceful.\"\n\n\"So did Hitler, Ali,\" the President reminded his friend. He checked his watch. It was after midnight in Saudi Arabia. Ali had flown back and conferred with his government before calling Washington, as one would expect. \"You know about the troop movement.\"\n\n\"Yes, your people briefed our military earlier today. It will be some time before they are ready to make any threat. Such things take time. Remember, I was once in uniform.\"\n\n\"True, that's what they told me, too.\" Ryan paused. \"Okay, what does the Kingdom propose?\"\n\n\"We will observe closely. Our military is training. We have your pledge of support. We are concerned, but not overly so.\"\n\n\"We could schedule some joint exercises,\" Jack offered.\n\n\"That might only inflame matters,\" the Prince replied. The absence of total conviction in his voice was not accidental. He'd probably fielded the idea in council himself and gotten a negative reply.\n\n\"Well, I guess you've had a long day. Tell me, how did Daryaei look? I haven't seen the guy since you introduced him to me.\"\n\n\"His health appears good. He looks tired, but he's had a busy time.\"\n\n\"I can relate to that. Ali?\"\n\n\"Yes, Jack?\"\n\nThe President stopped then, reminding himself that he was unschooled in diplomatic exchange. \"How concerned should I be about all this?\"\n\n\"What do your people tell you?\" the Prince replied.\n\n\"About the same as you do, but not all of them. We need to keep this line open, my friend.\"\n\n\"I understand, Mr. President. Good-bye for now.\"\n\nIt was an unsatisfactory conclusion to an unsatisfactory call. Ryan replaced the phone and looked around at his empty office. Ali wasn't saying what he wanted to say because the position of his government was different from what he thought it should be. The same had happened to Jack often enough, and the same rules applied. Ali had to be loyal to that government\u2014hell, it was mainly his own family\u2014but he had allowed himself one slip, and the Prince was too clever to do that sort of thing by mistake. It probably would have been easier before, when Ryan had not been President and both could talk without the worry of making policy with every word. Now Jack was America to those beyond the borders, and governmental officials could talk to him only that way, instead of remembering that he was also a thinking man who needed to explore options before making decisions. Maybe if it hadn't been over the phone, Jack thought. Maybe face-to-face would have been better. But even Presidents were limited by time and space.\n**36**\n\n**TRAVELERS**\n\n**K** LM\u2014ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES\u2014FLIGHT 534\u2014left the gate on time at 1:10 A.M. The aircraft was full at this hour, full of weary people who stumbled to their seats, strapped in, and accepted pillows and blankets. The more experienced travelers among them waited for the sound of the wheels being retracted, then pushed their seats as far back as they could go, and closed their eyes in the hope of a smooth ride and something akin to real sleep.\n\nFive of Badrayn's men were aboard, two in first class, three in business. They all had baggage in the cargo hold, and a carry-on tucked under the seat in front. All had a minor case of nerves, and all would have had a drink to ameliorate it\u2014religious prohibition or not\u2014but the aircraft had landed in an Islamic airport and would not serve alcohol until it had left United Islamic Republic airspace. To a man, they considered their situation and bowed to circumstance. They'd been well briefed and properly prepared. They'd come through the airport like ordinary travelers, and submitted their carry-ons to X-ray inspection by security personnel who were every bit as careful as their Western counterparts actually more so, since the flights were relatively few, and the local paranoia relatively greater. In every case, the X-ray display had shown a shaving kit, along with papers, books and other sundries.\n\nThey were all educated men, many of them having attended the American University of Beirut, some to obtain degrees, the others simply to learn about the enemy. They were dressed neatly, all with ties, loose now in their collars, and their coats hung in the mini-closets throughout the aircraft. Within forty minutes, they, along with the rest of the passengers, were fitfully asleep.\n\n\"SO WHAT'S YOUR take on all this?\" van Damm asked.\n\nHoltzman swirled his drink, watching the ice cubes circle around. \"Under different circumstances I might call it a conspiracy, but it's not. For a guy who says he's just trying to put things back together, Jack sure is doing a lot of new and crazy things.\"\n\n\" 'Crazy' is a little strong, Bob.\"\n\n\"Not for them, it isn't. Everybody's saying 'he isn't one of us,' and they're reacting strongly to his initiatives. Even you have to admit that his tax ideas are a little way off the usual playing field, but that's the excuse for what's happening\u2014one of the excuses, anyway. The game's the same one it always was. A couple of leaks, and the manner of their presentation, that's what determines how it's played.\"\n\nArnie had to nod. It was like highway littering. If someone dumped all the trash in the proper barrel, then things were neat, and the task was done in a few seconds. If that same someone tossed it all out the window of a moving car, then you had to spend hours picking it all up. The other side was now dumping the trash haphazardly, and the President was having to use his limited time doing wasteful and unproductive things instead of the real work of driving down the road. The simile was ugly, but apt. Politics was so often less about doing constructive work than about spreading garbage around for others to clean up.\n\n\"Who leaked?\"\n\nThe reporter shrugged. \"I can only guess. Somebody in the Agency, probably somebody who's being RIF'd. You have to admit that building up the spy side of the house looks kind of Neanderthal. How far are they cutting the Intelligence Directorate?\"\n\n\"More than enough to compensate for the new field people. The idea is to save money overall, better information, more efficient overall performance, that sort of thing. I don't,\" he added, \"tell the President how to do intelligence stuff. On that, he really is an expert.\"\n\n\"I know that. I had my story almost ready to run. I was about to call you for an interview with him when the bubble broke.\"\n\n\"Oh? And\u2014\"\n\n\"What was my angle? He's the most contradictory son of a bitch in this town. In some ways he's brilliant\u2014but in others? Babe-in-the-woods is charitable.\"\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"I like the guy,\" Holtzman admitted. \"For damned sure, he's honest\u2014not relatively honest, really honest. I was going to tell it pretty much the way it was. You want to know what has _me_ pissed?\" He paused for a sip of the bourbon, hesitated again before proceeding, and then spoke with unconcealed anger. \"Somebody at the _Post_ leaked my story, probably to Ed Kealty. Then Kealty probably arranged a leak to Donner and Plumber.\"\n\n\"And they used your story to hang him?\"\n\n\"Pretty much,\" Holtzman admitted.\n\nVan Damm nearly laughed. He held it back for as long as he could, but it was too delicious to resist: \"Welcome to Washington, Bob.\"\n\n\"You know, some of us really do take our professional ethics seriously,\" the reporter shot back, rather lamely. \"It was a good story. I researched the hell out of it. I got my own source in CIA\u2014well, I have several, but I got a new one for this, somebody who really knew the stuff. I took what he gave me, and I back-checked the hell out of it, verified everything I could, wrote the piece stating what I knew and what I thought\u2014careful to explain the difference at all times,\" he assured his host. \"And you know? Ryan comes out looking pretty good. Yeah, sure, sometimes he short-circuits the system, but the guy's never broken the rules far as I can tell. If we ever have a major crisis, that's the guy I want in the Oval Office. But some son of a _bitch_ took _my_ story, _my_ information from _my_ sources, and played with it, I don't like that, Arnie. _I_ have a public trust, too, and so does my paper, and somebody _fucked_ with that.\" He set his drink down. \"Hey, I know what you think about me and my\"\n\n\"No, you don't,\" van Damm interrupted.\n\n\"But you've always\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm the chief of staff, Bob. I _have_ to be loyal to my boss, and so I have to play the game from my side, but if you think I don't respect the press, you're not as smart as you're supposed to be. We're not always friends. Sometimes we're enemies, but we need you as much as you need us. For Christ's sake, if I didn't respect you, why the hell are you drinking my booze?\"\n\nIt was either an elegant roll or a truthful statement, Holtzman thought, and Arnie was too skillful a player for him to tell the difference right off. But the smart thing to do was finish the drink, which he did. A pity that his host preferred cheap booze to go along with his L. L. Bean shirts. Arnie didn't know how to dress, either. Or maybe that was a considered part of his mystique. The political game was so intricate as to be a cross between classical metaphysics and experimental science. You could never know it all, and finding out one part as often as not denied you the ability to find out another, equally important part. But that was why it was the best game in town.\n\n\"Okay, Arnie, I'll accept that.\"\n\n\"Good of you.\" Van Damm smiled, and refilled the glass. \"So why did you call me?\"\n\n\"It's almost embarrassing.\" Another pause. \"I will not participate in the public hanging of an innocent man.\"\n\n\"You've done that before,\" Arnie objected.\n\n\"Maybe so, but they were all politicians, and they all had it coming in one way or another. I don't know what\u2014okay, how about I'm not into child abuse? Ryan deserves a fair chance.\"\n\n\"And you're pissed about losing your story and the Pulitzer that\u2014\"\n\n\"I have two of them already,\" Holtzman reminded him. Otherwise, he would have been taken off the story by his managing editor, but internal politics at the _Washington_ Post were as vicious as those elsewhere in the city.\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"So, I need to know about Colombia. I need to know about Jimmy Cutter and how he died.\"\n\n\"Jesus, Bob, you don't know what our ambassador went through down there today.\"\n\n\"Great language for invective, Spanish.\" A reporter's smile.\n\n\"The story can't be told, Bob. It just can't.\"\n\n\"The story _will_ be told. It's just a question of who tells it, and that will determine _how_ it's told. Arnie, I know enough now to write something, okay?\"\n\nAs so often happened in Washington at times like this, everyone was trapped by circumstance. Holtzman had a story to write. Doing it the right way would, perhaps, resurrect his original story, put him in the running for another Pulitzer\u2014it was still important to him, previous denials notwithstanding, and Arnie knew it\u2014and tell whoever had leaked his story to Ed Kealty that he or she had better leave the Post before Holtzman nailed that name down and wrecked his or her career with a few well-placed whispers and more than a few dead-end assignments. Arnie was trapped by his duty to protect his President, and the only way to do it was to violate the law and his President's trust. There had to be an easier way, the chief of staff thought, to earn a living. He could have made Holtzman wait for his decision, but that would have been mere theatrics, and both men were past that.\n\n\"No notes, no tape recorder.\"\n\n\"Off the record. 'Senior official,' not even 'senior administration official,' \" Bob agreed.\n\n\"And I can tell you who to confirm it with.\"\n\n\"They know it all?\"\n\n\"Even more than I do,\" van Damm told him. \"Hell, I just found out about the important part.\"\n\nA raised eyebrow. \"That's nice, and the same rules will apply to them. Who really knows about this?\"\n\n\"Even the President doesn't know it all. I'm not sure if anybody knows it all.\"\n\nHoltzman took another sip. It would be his last. Like a doctor in an operating room, he didn't believe in mixing alcohol and work.\n\nFLIGHT 534 TOUCHED down at Istanbul at 2:55 A.M. local time, after a flight of 1,270 miles and three hours, fifteen minutes. The passengers were groggily awake, having been roused by the cabin staff thirty minutes earlier and told to put their seat-backs to the upright position in a series of languages. The landing was smooth, and a few of them raised the plastic shades on the windows to see that they were indeed on the ground at one more anonymous piece of real estate with white runway lights and blue taxiway lights, just like those all over the world. Those getting out stood at the proper time to stumble off into the Turkish night. The rest pushed their seats back for another snooze during the forty-five-minute layover, before the aircraft left yet another gate at 3:40 A.M. for the second half of the trip.\n\nLufthansa 601 was a European-made Airbus 310 twinjet, roughly the same as the KLM Boeing in size and capacity This one, too, had five travelers aboard, and left its gate at 2:55 for the nonstop flight to Frankfurt. The departure was routine in all details.\n\n\"THAT'S SOME STORY, Arnie.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah. I didn't know the important parts until this week.\"\n\n\"How sure are you of this?\" Holtzman asked.\n\n\"The pieces all fit.\" He shrugged again. \"I can't say I liked hearing it. I think we would have won the election anyway, but, Jesus, the guy threw it. He tanked on a presidential election, but you know,\" van Damm said wistfully, \"that might have been the most courageous and generous political act of the century. I didn't think he had it in him.\"\n\n\"Does Fowler know?\"\n\n\"I haven't told him. Maybe I should.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute. Remember how Liz Elliot planted a story on me about Ryan and how\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, that all folds into this. Jack went down personally to get those soldiers out. The guy next to him in the chopper was killed, and he's looked after the family ever since. Liz paid for it. She came apart the night the bomb went off in Denver.\"\n\n\"And Jack really did . . . you know that's one story that never came out all the way. Fowler lost it and almost launched a missile at Iran\u2014it was Ryan, wasn't it? He's the one who stopped it.\" Holtzman looked down at his drink and decided on another sip. \"How?\"\n\n\"He got onto the Hot Line,\" Arnie replied. \"He cut the President off and talked directly with Narmonov, and persuaded him to back things off some. Fowler flipped out and told the Secret Service to go arrest him, but by the time they got to the Pentagon, things _were_ calmed down. It worked, thank God.\"\n\nIt took Holtzman a minute or so to absorb that, but again, the story fit with the fragments he knew. Fowler had resigned two days later, a broken man, but an honorable one who knew that his moral right to govern his country had died with his order to launch a nuclear weapon at an innocent city. And Ryan had also been shaken by the event, badly enough to leave government service at once, until Roger Durling had brought him back in.\n\n\"Ryan's broken every rule there is. Almost as if he likes it.\" But that wasn't fair, was it?\n\n\"If he hadn't, we might not be here.\" The chief of staff poured himself another. Holtzman waved him off. \"You see what I mean about the story, Bob? If you tell it all, the country gets hurt.\"\n\n\"But then why did Fowler recommend Ryan to Roger Durling?\" the reporter asked. \"He couldn't stand the guy and\u2014\"\n\n\"Whatever his faults, and he has them, Bob Fowler is an honest politician, that's why. No, he doesn't like Ryan personally, maybe it's chemistry, I don't know, but Ryan saved him and he told Roger\u2014what was it? 'Good man in a storm.' That's it,\" Arnie remembered.\n\n\"Shame he doesn't know politics.\"\n\n\"He learns pretty fast. Might surprise you.\"\n\n\"He's going to gut the government if he gets the chance. I can't\u2014I mean, I _do_ like the guy personally, but his policies . . .\"\n\n\"Every time I think I have him figured out, he swerves on me, and then I have to remind myself that he doesn't have an agenda,\" van Damm said. \"He just does the job. I give him papers to read, and he acts on them. He listens to what people tell him\u2014asks good questions, and always listens to the answers\u2014but he makes his own decisions, as though he knows what's right and what's wrong\u2014but the hell of it is, mostly he does. Bob, he's rolled _me!_ But that's not it, either. Sometimes I'm not sure what it is with him, you know?\"\n\n\"A total outsider,\" Holtzman observed quietly. \"But\u2014\"\n\nThe chief of staff nodded. \"Yeah, _but. But_ he's being analyzed as though he's an insider with a hidden agenda, and they're playing the insider games as if they apply to him, but they don't.\"\n\n\"So the key to the guy is there's nothing to figure out ... son of a bitch,\" Bob concluded. \"He hates the job, doesn't he?\" \"Most of the time. You should have been there when he spoke in the Midwest. He got it then. All those people loving him, and he loved them back, and it showed\u2014and it scared the shit out of him. Nothing to figure out? Exactly. Like they say in golf, the hardest thing to do is to hit a straight ball, right? Everybody's looking for curves. There aren't any.\"\n\nHoltzman snorted. \"So, what's the angle if there isn't an angle?\"\n\n\"Bob, I just try to control the media, remember? Damned if I know how you report this, except to state the facts\u2014you know, like you're _supposed_ to do.\"\n\nThat was a lot for the journalist to take. He'd been in Washington for all of his professional life. \"And every politician is _supposed_ to be like Ryan. But they're not.\"\n\n\"This one is,\" Arnie shot back.\n\n\"How am I supposed to tell my readers that? Who'll believe it?\"\n\n\"Ain't that the problem?\" he breathed. \"I've been in politics all my life, and I thought I knew it all. Hell, I _do_ know it all. I'm one of the best operators ever was, everybody knows that, and all of a sudden this yahoo comes into the Oval Office and says the emperor's naked, and he's right, and nobody knows what to do about it except to say that he isn't. The system isn't ready for this. The system is only ready for itself.\"\n\n\"And the system will destroy anybody who says different.\" Holtzman snorted with the thought: If Hans Christian Andersen had written \"The Emperor's Clothes\" about Washington, then the kid who'd spoken the truth out loud would have been killed on the spot by the assembled crowd of insiders.\n\n\"It'll try,\" Arnie agreed.\n\n\"And what are we supposed to do about it?\"\n\n\"You're the one who said that you don't want to officiate at the hanging of an innocent man, remember?\"\n\n\"Where's that leave us?\"\n\n\"Maybe to talk about the unruly mob,\" Arnie suggested, \"or the emperor's corrupt court.\"\n\nNEXT TO GO was Austrian Airlines 774. It was down to a routine now, and the arrangements were well within the technical parameters. The cans of shaving cream had been filled a bare forty minutes before departure. The proximity of the Monkey House to the airport helped, as did the time of day, and having people race the last few hundred meters to the gate was not unusual anywhere in the world, particularly for flights like this one. The \"soup\" was sprayed into the bottom of the can, by a plastic valve that was invisible to X-ray examination. The nitrogen went in the top to a separate insulated container located in the center of the cans. The process was clean and safe\u2014for extra but really unnecessary safety, the cans were sprayed and wiped; that was just to make the travelers happy. The cans were quite cold, of course, though not dangerously so. As the liquid nitrogen boiled off, it would vent through a pressure valve into the ambient atmosphere, where it merely joined the air. Though nitrogen is an important element in explosives, by itself it is totally inert, clear, and odorless. Nor would it react chemically with the contents of the cans, and so the pressure-relief valve retained a precise quantity of the warming gas to act as a safe propellant for the \"soup\" when the time came.\n\nThe filling was done by the medical corpsmen in their protective suits\u2014they refused to work without them, and ordering them otherwise would only have made them nervous and sloppy, and so the director indulged their fears. Two groups of five remained to be done. The cans could really all have been prepared at the same time, Moudi knew, but no unnecessary chances were being taken, a thought that made him stop cold. No unnecessary chances? Sure.\n\nDARYAEI DIDN'T SLEEP that night, which was unusual for him. Though with increasing years he found that he needed less of it, getting off to sleep had never been difficult for him. On a really quiet night, if the winds were right, he could hear the airliners bring their engines to the roar of takeoff power\u2014a distant sound, rather like a waterfall, he sometimes thought, or perhaps an earthquake. Some fundamental sound of nature, distant and foreboding. And now he found himself listening for it, and with his imagination, wondering if he heard it or not.\n\nHad he gone too fast? He was an old man in a country where so many died young. He remembered the diseases of his youth, and later he'd learned their scientific causes, mainly poor water and sanitation, for Iran had been a backward country for most of his lifetime, despite its long history of civilization and power. Then it had been resurrected by oil and the immense riches that had come with it. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shahanshah\u2014 _King of kings!_ the phrase proclaimed\u2014had begun to raise the country, but made the mistake of moving too fast and making too many enemies. In Iran's dark age, as in every other such time, secular power had devolved to the Islamic clergy, and in liberating the nation's peasantry, he'd trod on too many toes, making enemies of people whose power was spiritual and to whom the common folk looked for order in lives made chaotic by change. Even so, the Shah had almost succeeded, but not quite, and _not quite_ was as damning a curse as the world produced for those who would be great.\n\nWhat did such men think? Just as he himself was old, so the Shah had grown old and sick with cancer, and watched the work of a lifetime evaporate in a matter of weeks, his associates executed in a brief orgy of settled scores, bitter at his betrayal by his American friends. Had he thought that he'd gone too far\u2014or not far enough? Daryaei didn't know, and now he would have liked to know, as he listened for the distant sounds of waterfalls in the still of a Persian night.\n\nTo move too fast was a grievous error, which the young learned and the old knew, but not to move enough, fast enough, far enough, strongly enough, that was what really denied goals to those who would be great. How bitter it must be to lie in bed, without the sleep one needed to think clearly, and wonder and curse oneself for chances missed and chances lost.\n\nPerhaps he knew what the Shah had thought, Daryaei admitted to himself. His own country was drifting again. Even insulated as he was, he knew the signs. It showed up as subtle differences in dress, especially the dress of women. Not much, not quite enough for his true believers to persecute them, for even the true believers had softened their devotion, and there were gray areas into which people could venture to see what might happen. Yes, the people still believed in Islam, and yes, they still believed in him, but, really, the Holy Koran wasn't _that_ strict, and their nation was rich, and to grow richer it needed to do business. How could it be a champion of the Faith unless it grew richer, after all? The best and brightest of Iran's young went abroad to be educated, for his country did not possess the schools that the infidel West had\u2014and, for the most part, they came back, educated in skills which his country needed. But they also came back with other things, invisible, doubts and questions, and memories of a freewheeling life in a different society where the pleasures of the flesh were available to the weak, and all men were weak. What if all Khomeini and he had accomplished was to delay what the Shah had started? The people who had come back to Islam in reaction to Pahlavi were now drifting back to the promise of freedom he'd offered them. Didn't they _know_? Didn't they _see?_ They could have all the trappings of power and all the blessings of what people called civilization and still remain faithful, still have the spiritual anchor\u2014without which all was nothing.\n\nBut to have all that, his country needed to be more than it was, and so he could not afford to be _not quite._ Daryaei had to deliver the things that would show he'd been right all along, that uncompromising faith was the true root of power.\n\nThe assassination of the Iraqi leader, the misfortune that had befallen America\u2014these things had to be a sign, didn't they? He'd studied them carefully. Now Iraq and Iran were one, and _that_ had been the quest of decades\u2014and at virtually the same instant, America had been crippled. It wasn't just Badrayn who was telling him things. He had his own America experts who knew the workings of that country's government. He knew Ryan from a single important meeting, had seen his eyes, heard the bold but hollow words, and so he knew the measure of the man who might be his principal adversary. He knew that Ryan had not, and by the laws of his country _could_ not _,_ have a replacement selected for himself, and so there was only this moment, and he had to act in it, or else assume for himself the curse of _not quite._\n\nNo, he would not be remembered as another Mohammad Pahlavi. If he did not covet the trappings of power, he lusted for the fact of it. Before his death he would lead all Islam. In a month he would have the oil of the Persian Gulf and the keys to Mecca, secular _and_ spiritual power. From that his influence would expand in all directions. In but a few years his country would be a superpower in every way, and he would leave to his successors a legacy such as the world hadn't seen since Alexander, but with the added security that it was founded in the words of God. To achieve that end, to unite Islam, to fulfill the Will of Allah and the words of the Prophet Mohammed, he would do what was needed, and if that meant moving fast, then he would move fast. Overall, the process was a simple one, three simple steps, the third and most difficult of which was already established and nothing could stop, even if Badrayn's plans all failed completely.\n\nWas he moving too fast? Daryaei asked himself for the last time. No, he was moving decisively, with surprise, with calculation, with boldness. That was what history would say.\n\n\"FLYING AT NIGHT is a big deal?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"Sure is, for them it is,\" Robby replied. He liked briefing the President this way, late evening in the Oval Office, with a drink. \"They've always been more parsimonious with equipment than they are with people. Helicopters\u2014French ones in this case, same model the Coast Guard has a bunch of\u2014cost money, and we haven't seen much in the way of night operations. The operation they're running is heavy on ASW. So maybe they're thinking about dealing with all those Dutch subs the Republic of China bought last year. We're also seeing a lot of combined operations with their air force.\"\n\n\"Conclusion?\"\n\n\"They're training up for something.\" The Pentagon's Director of Operations closed his briefing book. \"Sir, we\u2014\"\n\n\"Robby,\" Ryan said, looking over the new reading glasses Cathy had just gotten him, \"if you don't start calling me 'Jack' when we're alone, I'm going to break you back to ensign by executive order.\"\n\n\"We're not alone,\" Admiral Jackson objected, nodding toward Agent Price.\n\n\"Andrea doesn't count\u2014oh, shit, I mean\u2014\" Ryan blushed.\n\n\"He's right, Admiral, I don't count,\" she said, with a barely contained laugh. \"Mr. President, I've been waiting _weeks_ for you to say that.\"\n\nJack looked down at the table and shook his head. \"This is no way for a man to live. Now my best friend calls me 'sir,' and I'm being impolite to a lady.\"\n\n_\"Jack,_ you are my commander-in-chief,\" Robby pointed out, with a relaxed grin at his friend's discomfort. \"And I'm just a poor sailor man.\"\n\nFirst things first, the President thought: \"Agent Price?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Pour yourself a drink and sit down.\"\n\n\"Sir, I'm on duty, and regulations\u2014\"\n\n\"Then make it a light one, but that's an order from your President. Do it!\"\n\nShe actually hesitated, but then decided that POTUS was trying to make some sort of point. Price poured a large thimbleful of whiskey into the Old Fashioned glass and added a lot of ice and Evian to it. Then she sat next to the J-3. His wife, Sissy, was upstairs in the House with the Ryan family.\n\n\"As a practical matter, people, the President needs to relax, and it's easier for me to do that if I don't make ladies stand up, and my friend can call me by my name once in a while. Are we agreed on that?\"\n\n\"Aye aye,\" Robby said, still smiling but seeing the logic and desperation of the moment. \"Yes, Jack, we are all relaxed now, and we _will_ enjoy it.\" He looked over at Price. \"You're here to shoot me if I misbehave, right?\"\n\n\"Right in the head,\" she confirmed.\n\n\"I prefer missiles myself. Safer,\" he added.\n\n\"You did okay with a shotgun one night, or so the Boss has told me. By the way, thanks.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"For keeping him alive. We actually like taking care of the Boss, even if he gets too familiar with the hired help.\"\n\nJack freshened his drink while they relaxed on the other sofa. Remarkable, he thought. For the first time, there was a genuinely relaxed atmosphere in the office, to the point that two people could joke about him, right in front of him, as though he were a human being instead of POTUS.\n\n\"I like this a lot better.\" The President looked up. \"Robby, this gal has been around more crap than we have, listened in on all sorts of things. She has a master's degree, she's smart, but I'm supposed to treat her like she's a knuckle-dragger.\"\n\n\"Well, hell, I'm just a fighter jock with a bad knee.\"\n\n\"And I still don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be. Andrea?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\" Getting her to call him by his name was an impossible goal, Jack knew.\n\n\"China, what do you think?\"\n\n\"I think I'm no expert, but since you ask, I don't know.\"\n\n\"You're expert enough,\" Robby observed with a grunt. \"All the king's horses and all the king's men don't know much, either. The additional subs are arriving,\" he told the President. \"Mancuso wants them on the north-south line between the two navies. I've concurred on that, and the Secretary's signed off on it.\"\n\n\"How's Bretano doing?\"\n\n\"He knows what he doesn't know, Jack. He listens to us on operational stuff, asks good questions, and listens some more. He wants to start getting out into the field next week, poke around and see the kids at work to educate himself. His managerial skills are downright awesome, but he's swinging a big ax\u2014he's going to, that is. I've seen his draft plan for downsizing the bureaucracy. Whoa,\" Admiral Jackson concluded, with an eye-roll.\n\n\"You have problems with that?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"No way. It's about fifty years overdue. Ms. Price, I'm an operator,\" he explained. \"I like greasy flight suits and the smell of jet fuel and pulling g's. But us guys at the sharp end always have the desk-sitters after us like a bunch of little dogs at our ankles all the time. Bretano loves engineers and people who do things, but along the way he's learned to hate bureaucrats and cost accountants. My kind of guy.\"\n\n\"Back to China,\" Ryan said.\n\n\"Okay, we still have the electronics-intelligence flights working out of Kadena. We're getting routine training stuff. We do not know what intentions the ChiComs have. CIA isn't giving us much. Signal intelligence is unremarkable. State says that their government says, 'What's the big deal?' And that's it. The Taiwanese navy is big enough to handle the threat, if there is one, unless they get coldcocked. That's not going to happen. They're brighteyed and bushy-tailed, doing their own training ops. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing I can make out.\"\n\n\"The Gulf?\"\n\n\"Well, we're hearing from our people in Israel that they're taking a very close look, but I gather they're not getting much in the way of hard intel. Whatever sources they had were probably with the generals who bugged out to Sudan\u2014aides and such, probably. I got a fax in from Sean Magruder\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's that?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"He's an Army colonel, boss-man of the 10th Cav in the Negev. I met him last year; he's a guy we listen to. 'Most dangerous man in the world,' is what our good pal Avi ben Jakob says of Daryaei. Magruder thought that was insightful enough to pass it along.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And we need to keep an eye on it. It's probably a ways off, but Daryaei has imperial ambitions. The Saudis are playing it wrong. We should have people on the way over now, maybe not many, but some, to show the other side that we're in the game.\"\n\n\"I talked to Ali about that. His government wants to cool it.\"\n\n\"Wrong signal,\" Jackson observed.\n\n\"Agreed.\" POTUS nodded. \"We'll work on that.\"\n\n\"What's the state of the Saudi military?\" Price asked.\n\n\"Not as good as it ought to be. After the Persian Gulf War, it got fashionable to join their National Guard, and they bought equipment like it was a bunch of Mercedes cars from a wholesaler. For a while they had themselves a fine old time playing soldier, but then they found out that you have to maintain the stuff. They hired people to do that for them. Kinda like squires and knights back in the old days. Ain't the same,\" Jackson said. \"And now they're not training. Oh, sure, they run around in their tanks, and they do their gunnery\u2014the M1 is a fun tank to shoot, and they do a lot of that\u2014but they're not training in units. Knights and squires. Their tradition is guys on horses going after other guys on horses-one-on-one, like in the movies. War ain't like that. War is a great big team working together. Their culture and history are against that model, and they haven't had the chance to learn. Bottom line, they're not as good as they think they are. If the UIR gets its military act together someday and comes south, the Saudis are outgunned and damned sure outmanned.\"\n\n\"How do we fix that?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"For starters, get some of our people over there, and some of their people over here, out to the National Training Center for a crash course in reality. I've talked it over with Mary Diggs at the NTC\u2014\"\n\n\"Mary?\"\n\n\"General Marion Diggs. 'Mary' goes back to the Point. It's a uniform thing,\" Robby told Price. \"I'd like to fly a Saudi heavy battalion over here and have the OpFor pound them into the sand for a few weeks to get the message across. That's how our people learned. That's how the Israelis learned. And that's how the Saudis are going to have to learn, damned sight easier that way than in a shooting war. Diggs is for it, big time. Give us two or three years, maybe less if we set up a proper training establishment in Saudi, and we can snap their army into shape\u2014except for politics,\" he added.\n\nPOTUS nodded. \"Yeah, it'll make the Israelis nervous, and the Saudis have always worried about having too strong a military, for domestic reasons.\"\n\n\"You could tell them the story about the three little pigs. It might not fly with their culture, but the big bad wolf just moved in next door to them, and they'd better start paying attention before he starts a-huffin' and a-puffin'.\"\n\n\"I hear you, Robby. I'll have Adler and Vasco think that one over.\" Ryan checked his watch. Another fifteenhour day. One more drink would have been nice, but as it was, he'd be lucky to get six hours of sleep, and he didn't want to wake up with a larger headache than necessary. He set his drink down and waved for the other two to follow, down the ramp and out the door.\n\n\"SWORDSMAN heading to the residence,\" Andrea spoke into her radio mike. A minute later, they were in the elevator and going up.\n\n\"Try not to let the booze show,\" Jack remarked to his principal agent.\n\n\"What _are_ we going to do with you?\" she asked the ceiling, as the doors opened.\n\nJack walked out first, leaving the other two behind as he took his jacket off. He hated wearing a jacket all the time.\n\n\"Well, now you know,\" Robby said to the Secret Service agent. She turned to look in his eyes.\n\n\"Yeah.\" Actually she'd known for quite a while, but she kept learning more and more about SwoRDSMAN.\n\n\"Take good care of him, Price. When he escapes from this place, I want my friend back.\"\n\nTHE VAGARIES OF winds made the Lufthansa flight first to arrive at the international terminal in Frankfurt, Germany. For the travelers it was like an inverted funnel. The jetway was the narrow part, and on entering the concourse they all spread out, checking the video monitors for their gates. The layovers ranged from one to three hours, and their luggage would be automatically transferred from one aircraft to another\u2014for all the complaints about airport luggage-handlers, 99.9 percent is a passing grade in most human endeavors; and the Germans were notoriously efficient. Customs control points didn't worry them, because none of them were spending any more time in Europe than was necessary. They studiously avoided eye contact, even when three of them entered a coffee shop, and all three, on reflection, decided on decaf. Two walked into the men's rooms for the usual reason, and then looked into the mirrors to check their faces. They'd all shaved just before leaving, but one of them, especially heavilybearded, saw that his jaw was already shadowed. Perhaps he should shave? Not a good idea, he thought, smiling at the mirror. Then he lifted his carry-on bag and walked off to the first-class lounge to wait for the flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.\n\n\"LONG DAY?\" JACK asked, after everyone had gone home, and just the usual squad of guards patrolled outside.\n\n\"Yeah. Grand rounds tomorrow with Bernie. Some procedures the next day, though.\" Cathy changed into her nightgown, as tired as her husband was.\n\n\"Anything new?\"\n\n\"Not in my shop. Had lunch with Pierre Alexandre. He's a new associate professor working under Ralph Forster, ex-Army, pretty smart.\"\n\n\"Infectious diseases?\" Jack vaguely remembered meeting the guy at some function or other. \"AIDS and stuff?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Nasty,\" Ryan observed, getting into bed.\n\n\"They just dodged a bullet. There was a mini-outbreak of Ebola in Zaire,\" Cathy said, getting in the other side. \"Two deaths. Then two more cases turned up in Sudan, but it doesn't look like it's going anywhere.\"\n\n\"Is that as bad as people say?\" Jack turned the light off.\n\n\"Eighty percent mortality\u2014pretty bad.\" She adjusted the covers and moved toward him. \"But enough of that stuff. Sissy says she's got a concert scheduled for two weeks from now at Kennedy Center. Beethoven's Fifth, with Fritz Bayerlein conducting, would you believe? Think we can get tickets?\" He could sense his wife's smile in the dark.\n\n\"I think I know the theater owner. I'll see what I can do.\" A kiss. A day ended.\n\n\"SEE YOU IN the morning, Jeff.\" Price went to the right for her car. Raman went to the left for his.\n\nA mind could be dulled by this job, Aref Raman told himself. The sheer mechanics of it, the hours, the watching and waiting and doing nothing\u2014but always being ready.\n\n_Hmph._ Why should he complain about that? It was the story of his adult life. He drove north, waited for the security gate to open and headed northwest. The empty streets made it go quickly. By the time he got to his home, the bled-off stress of working the Detail in the White House had him nodding, but there were still mechanics.\n\nUnlocking the door, he next turned off the security system, picked up the mail that had come through the slot in the door and scanned it. One bill, and the rest was junk mail offering him the chance of a lifetime to buy things he didn't need. He hung up his coat, removed the pistol and holster from his belt, and walked into the kitchen. The light was blinking on the answering machine. There was one message.\n\n\"Mr. Sloan,\" the digital recorder said to him in a voice that was familiar, though he'd only heard it once before, \"this is Mr. Alahad. Your rug just came in, and is ready for delivery.\"\n**37**\n\n**DISCHARGES**\n\n**A** MERICA WAS SLEEPING when they boarded their flights in Amsterdam, and London, and Vienna, and Paris. This time no two were on the same aircraft, and the schedules were staggered so that the same customs inspector would not have the chance to open two shaving kits and find the same brand of cream and then wonder about it, however unlikely that might be. The real risk had been in placing so many men on the same flights out of Tehran, but they'd been properly briefed on how to act. While the ever-watchful German police, for example, might have taken note of a gaggle of Middle Eastern men huddling together after arriving on the same flight, airports have always been anonymous places full of semi-confused wandering people, often tired and usually disoriented, and one lonely, aimless traveler looked much like another.\n\nThe first to board a transatlantic flight walked onto a Singapore Airlines 747 at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport. Coded as SQ26, the airliner pulled away at eight-thirty A.M. and got into the air on time, then angled northwest for a great-circle course that would take it over the southern tip of Greenland. The flight would last just under eight hours. The traveler was in a first-class window seat, which he tilted all the way back. It was not even three in the morning in his next destination city, and he preferred sleep to a movie, along with most of the other people in the nose of the aircraft. He had his itinerary memorized, and if his memory failed, with the confusion of long-distance travel, he still had his tickets to remind him of what to do next. For the moment, sleep was enough, and he turned his head on the pillow, soothed by the swish of passing air outside the double windows.\n\nAround him, in the air, were other flights, with other travelers heading for Boston, Philadelphia, Washington-Dulles, Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Los Angeles, the ten principal gateway cities into America. Each of them had a trade show or convention of some sort underway now. Ten other cities, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Nashville, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, and New Orleans, also had events, and each was but a brief flight\u2014in two cases, a drive\u2014from the nearest port of entry.\n\nThe traveler on SQ26 thought about that as he faded off. The shaving kit was tucked in his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him, carefully insulated and wrapped, and he made certain that his feet didn't touch, much less kick, the bag.\n\nIT WAS APPROACHING noon outside Tehran. The Movie Star watched as his group conducted weapons practice. It was a formality really, designed more for morale than anything else. They all knew how to shoot, having learned and practiced in the Bekaa Valley, and though they weren't using the same weapons they'd have in America, it didn't really matter. A gun was a gun, and targets were targets, and they knew about both. They couldn't simulate everything, of course, but all of them knew how to drive, and they spent hours every day going over the diagram and the models. They would go in during the late afternoon, when parents came in to pick up their children for the daily trip home, when the bodyguards would be tired and bored from a day of watching the children doing childish things. Movie Star had gotten descriptions of several of the \"regular\" cars, and some were common types which could be rented. The opposition was as trained and experienced as they had to be, but they were not supermen. Some were even women, and for all his exposure to the West, the Movie Star could not take women seriously as adversaries, guns or no guns. But their biggest tactical advantage was that his team was willing to use deadly force with profligate abandon. With over twenty toddlers about, plus the school staff, and probably a few parents in the way as well, the opposition would be greatly hampered. So, no, the initial part of the mission was the easiest. The hard part would be getting away\u2014if things got that far. He had to tell his team that they would get away, and that there was a plan. But really it didn't matter, and in their hearts all of them knew it.\n\nThey were all willing to become sacrifices in the unannounced _jihad,_ else they would never have joined Hezbollah in the first place. They were also willing to see their victims as sacrifices. But that was just a convenient label. Religion was really nothing more than a fa\u00e7ade for what they did and who they were. A true scholar of their religion would have blanched at their purpose, but Islam had many adherents, and among them were many who chose to read the scriptures in unconventional ways, and they too, had their following. What Allah might have thought of their actions was not something they considered very deeply, and the Movie Star didn't trouble himself to think about it at all. For him, it was business, a political statement, a professional challenge, one more task to occupy his days. Perhaps, too, it was a step toward a larger goal, the achievement of which would mean a life of comfort, and perhaps even some personal power and stability\u2014but in his heart he didn't really believe that, either. At first, yes, he'd thought that Israel might be overthrown, the Jews expunged from the face of the earth, but those careless beliefs of his youth had long since faded. For him, it was all mere process now, and this was one more task. The substance of the task didn't really matter all that much, did it? he asked himself, watching the team's grimly enthusiastic faces, as the men hit the targets. Oh, it seemed to matter to them. But he knew better.\n\nTHE DAY BEGAN at five-thirty A.M. for Inspector Patrick O'Day. A clock-radio roused him from his bed, then off to the bathroom for the usual start-up functions, a look in the mirror, and off to the kitchen to get the coffee going. It was the quiet of the day. Most people (the sensible ones) weren't up yet. No traffic on the streets. Even the birds still slumbering on their perches. Outside to get the papers, he could feel the silence and wonder why the world wasn't always this way. Through the trees to the east was the glow of a coming dawn, though the stronger of the stars still burned overhead. Not a single light showing in the rest of the houses in the development. Damn. Was he the only one who had to work such punishing hours?\n\nBack inside, he took ten minutes to scan the morning _Post_ and _Sun_. He kept track of the news, especially crime cases. As a roving inspector working directly out of the office of the Director, he never knew from one day to the next when he might be sent off on a case, which often meant calling in a sitter, to the point that he sometimes thought about getting a full-time nanny. He could afford it\u2014the insurance settlement for his wife's death in the plane crash had actually given him a measure of financial independence, though its circumstances seemed altogether blasphemous, but they had offered it and he, on advice of counsel, had taken it. But a nanny? No. It would be a woman, and Megan would think of her as Mommy, and, no, he couldn't have that. Instead, he did the hours and denied himself so that he could be both parents, and no grizzly bear had ever been more protective of a cub. Maybe Megan didn't know the difference. Maybe kids thrived under the care of a mother and bonded firmly to her but could as easily bond to a father. When asked about her mommy by other kids, she explained that Mommy had gone to heaven early\u2014and this is my daddy! Whatever the psychological circumstances, the closeness of the two which seemed so natural to Megan\u2014she'd scarcely had the chance to know anything else\u2014was something that occasionally brought tears to her father's eyes. The love of a child is ever unconditional, all the more so when there is but one object for it. Inspector O'Day was sometimes grateful for the fact that he hadn't worked a kidnapping in years. Were he to do so today . . . he took a sip of coffee and admitted to himself that he might just find himself searching for an excuse not to bring the subject in. There were always ways. He'd worked on six of those cases as a young agent\u2014kidnapping for money was a very rare crime today; the word had gotten out that it was a losing game, that the full power of the FBI descended on such cases like the wrath of God\u2014and only now did he understand how hateful such crimes were. You had to be a parent, you had to know the feel of tiny arms around your neck to understand the magnitude of such a violation\u2014but then your blood turned to ice, and you didn't so much turn off your emotions as block them out for as long as you had to before letting them free again. He remembered his first squad supervisor, Dominic DiNapoli\u2014\"the toughest wop this side of the Gambino family\" was the office joke\u2014crying like a baby himself as he carried the living victim of such a crime to see her parents. Only now did he understand how it was just one more sign of Dom's toughness. Yeah. And _that_ subject would _never_ get out of Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.\n\nThen it was time to get Megan up. She was curled up in her full-body sleeper, the blue one with Casper the Friendly Ghost on it. She was outgrowing it, he saw. Her little toes were pushing at the plastic feet. They did grow so fast. He tickled her nose, and her eyes opened.\n\n\"Daddy!\" She sat up, then stood to give him a kiss, and Pat wondered how kids woke up with a smile. No adult ever did. And the day began in earnest with another trip to the bathroom. He noted with pleasure that her training pants were dry. Megan was catching on to sleeping through the night\u2014it had been a struggle for a while\u2014though it seemed a very strange thing to be proud about, he thought. He started to shave, a daily event that utterly fascinated his daughter. Done, he bent down so that she could feel his face and pronounce it, \"Okay!\"\n\nDinner this morning was oatmeal with sliced banana and a glass of apple juice, and watching the Disney Channel on the kitchen TV while Daddy returned to his paper. Megan took her bowl and glass to the dishwasher all by herself, a very serious task which she was learning to master. The hard part was getting the bowl into the holder properly. Megan was still working on that. It was harder than doing her own shoes, which had Velcro closures. Mrs. Daggett had told him that Megan was an unusually bright child, one more thing to beam with pride about, followed by the sadness, always, of remembering his wife. Pat told himself that he could see Deborah's face in hers, but the honest part of the agent occasionally wondered how much of that was a wish and how much fact. At least she seemed to have her mother's brains. Maybe the bright expression was what he saw?\n\nThe ride in the truck was routine. The sun was up now, and the traffic still light. Megan was in her safety seat, as usual looking at the other cars with wonderment.\n\nThe arrival was routine also. There was the agent working in the 7-Eleven, of course, plus the advance team at Giant Steps. Well, nobody would ever kidnap _his_ little girl. At the working level, rivalry between the Bureau and the Service largely disappeared, except for the occasional inside joke or two. He was glad they were there, and they didn't mind having _this_ armed man come in. He walked Megan in, and she immediately ran off to hug Mrs. Daggett and put her blanky in her cubby in the back, and her day of learning and play began.\n\n\"Hey, Pat,\" the agent at the door greeted him.\n\n\" 'Morning, Norm.\" Both men enjoyed an early-morning yawn.\n\n\"Your schedule's as screwed up as mine,\" Special Agent Jeffers replied. He was one of the agents who rotated on and off the SANDBOX detail, this morning working as part of the advance team.\n\n\"How's the wife?\"\n\n\"Six more weeks, and then we have to think about shopping for a place like this. Is she as good as she seems?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Daggett? Ask the President,\" O'Day joked. \"They've sent all their kids here.\"\n\n\"I guess it can't be too bad,\" the Secret Service man agreed. \"What's the story on the Kealty case?\"\n\n\"Somebody at State is lying. That's what the OPR guys think.\" He shrugged. \"Not sure which. The polygraph data was worthless. Your guys picking up on anything?\"\n\n\"You know, it's funny. He sends his detail off a lot. He's actually said to them that he doesn't want to put them in a position where they'd have to\u2014\"\n\n\"Gotcha.\" Pat nodded. \"And they have to play along?\"\n\n\"No choice. He's meeting with people, but we don't always know who, and we're not allowed to find out what he's doing against SWORDSMAN.\" A wry shake of the head. \"Don't you love it?\"\n\n\"I like Ryan.\" His eyes scanned the area, looking for trouble. It was automatic, just like breathing.\n\n\"We love the guy,\" Norm agreed. \"We think he's going to make it. Kealty's full of crap. Hey, I worked his detail back when he was V.P., okay? I fuckin' stood post outside the door while he was inside boffin' some cookie or other. Part of the job,\" he concluded sourly. The two federal agents shared a look. This was an inside story, to be repeated only within the federal law-enforcement community, and while the Secret Service was paid to protect their principals and keep all the secrets, that didn't mean they liked it.\n\n\"I think you're right. So things here okay?\"\n\n\"Russell wants three more people, but I don't think he's going to get it. Hell, we have three good agents inside, and three doing overwatch next door\"\u2014he wasn't revealing anything; O'Day had figured that one out\u2014\"and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, across the street. Russell looks like he knows his stuff.\"\n\n\"Grandpa's the best,\" Norm offered. \"Hell, he's trained half the people in the Service, and you oughta see him shoot. Both hands.\"\n\nO'Day smiled. \"People keep telling me that. One day I'll have to invite him over for a friendly match.\"\n\nA grin. \"Andrea told me. She, uh, pulled your Bureau file\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Hey, Pat, it's business. We check everybody out. We have a principal in here every day, y'dig?\" Norm Jeffers went on. \"Besides, she wanted to see your firearms card. I hear you're pretty decent, but I'm telling you, man, you want to play with Russell, bring money, y'hear?\"\n\n\"That's what makes a horse race, Mr. Jeffers.\" O'Day loved such challenges, and he'd yet to lose one.\n\n\"Bet your white ass, Mr. O'Day.\" His hand went up. He checked his earpiece, then his watch. \"They just started moving. SANDBOX is on the way. Our kid and your kid are real buddies.\"\n\n\"She seems like a great little girl.\"\n\n\"They're all good kids. A couple of rough spots, but that's kids. SHADOW is going to be a handful when she starts dating for real.\"\n\n\"I don't want to hear it!\"\n\nJeffers had a good laugh. \"Yeah, I'm hoping ours'll be a boy. My dad\u2014he's a city police captain in Atlanta\u2014he says that daughters are God's punishment on ya for being a man. You live in fear that they'll meet somebody like you were at seventeen.\"\n\n\"Enough! Let me go to work and deal with some criminals.\" He slapped Jeffers on the shoulder.\n\n\"She'll be here when you get back, Pat.\"\n\nO'Day passed on the usual coffee refill across Ritchie Highway, instead heading south to Route 50. He had to admit that the Service guys knew their stuff. But there was at least one aspect of presidential security that the Bureau was handling. He'd have to talk to the OPR guys this morning\u2014informally, of course.\n\nONE DIED, ONE went home, and at roughly the same time. It was MacGregor's first Ebola death. He'd seen enough others, heart-attack failures-to-resuscitate, strokes, cancer, or just old age. More often than not, doctors weren't there, and the job fell on nurses. But he was there for this one. At the end, it wasn't so much peace as exhaustion. Saleh's body had fought as best it could, and his strength had merely extended the struggle and the pain, like a soldier in a hopeless battle. But his strength had given out, finally, and the body collapsed, and waited for death to come. The alarm chirp on the cardiac monitor went off, and there was nothing to do but flip it off. There would be no reviving this patient. IV leads were removed, and the sharps carefully placed in the red-plastic container. Literally everything that had touched the patient would be burned. It wasn't all that remarkable. AIDS and some hepatitis victims were similarly treated as objects of deadly contamination. Just with Ebola, burning the bodies was preferable\u2014and besides, the government had insisted. So, one battle lost.\n\nMacGregor was relieved, somewhat to his shame, as he stripped off the protective suit for the last time, washed thoroughly, then went to see Sohaila. She was still weak, but ready to leave to complete her recovery. The most recent tests showed her blood full of antibodies. Somehow her system had met the enemy and passed the test. There was no active virus in her. She could be hugged. In another country she would have been kept in for further tests, and would have donated a good deal of blood for extensive laboratory studies, but again the local government had said that such things would not take place, that she was to be released from the hospital the first minute that it was safe to do so. MacGregor had hedged on that, but now he was certain that there would be no more complications. The doctor himself lifted her and placed her in the wheelchair.\n\n\"When you feel better, will you come back to see me?\" he asked, with a warm smile. She nodded. A bright child. Her English was good. A pretty child, with a charming smile despite her fatigue, glad to be going home.\n\n\"Doctor?\" It was her father. He must have had a military background, so straight of back was he. What he was trying to say was evident on his face, before he could even think the words.\n\n\"I did very little. Your daughter is young and strong, and that is what saved her.\"\n\n\"Even so, I will not forget this debt.\" A firm handshake, and MacGregor remembered Kipling's line about East and West. Whatever this man was\u2014the doctor had his suspicions\u2014there was a commonality among all men.\n\n\"She will be weak for another fortnight or so. Let her eat whatever she wants, and best to let her sleep as long as possible.\"\n\n\"It will be as you say,\" Sohaila's father promised.\n\n\"You have my number, here and at home, if you have any questions at all.\"\n\n\"And if you have any difficulties, with the government, for example, please let me know.\" The measure of the man's gratitude came across. For what it was worth, MacGregor had a protector of sorts. It couldn't hurt, he decided, walking them to the door. Then it was back to his office.\n\n\"So,\" the official said after listening to the report, \"everything is stabilized.\"\n\n\"That is correct.\"\n\n\"The staff have been checked?\"\n\n\"Yes, and we will rerun the tests tomorrow to be sure. Both patient rooms will be fully disinfected today. All contaminated items are being burned right now.\"\n\n\"The body?\"\n\n\"Also bagged and to be burned, as you directed.\"\n\n\"Excellent. Dr. MacGregor, you have done well, and I thank you for that. Now we can forget that this unhappy incident ever happened.\"\n\n\"But _how_ did the Ebola get here?\" MacGregor demanded\u2014plaintively, which was as far as he could go.\n\nThe official didn't know, and so he spoke confidently: \"That does not concern you, and it does not concern me. It will not be repeated. Of that I am certain.\"\n\n\"As you say.\" After a few more words, MacGregor hung the phone up and stared at the wall. One more fax to CDC, he decided. The government couldn't object to that. He had to tell them that the outbreak, such as it was, was closed out. And that was a relief, too. Better to go back to the normal practice of medicine, and diseases he could defeat.\n\nIT TURNED OUT that Kuwait had been more forthcoming than Saudi on forwarding the substance of the meeting, perhaps because the Kuwaiti government really was a family business, and their establishment happened to be on a very dangerous street corner. Adler handed the transcript over. The President scanned it quickly.\n\n\"It reads like, 'Get lost.' \"\n\n\"You got it,\" the Secretary of State agreed.\n\n\"Either Foreign Minister Sabah edited all the polite stuff out, or what he heard scared him. I'm betting on number two,\" Bert Vasco decided.\n\n\"Ben?\" Jack asked.\n\nDr. Goodley shook his head. \"We may have a problem here.\"\n\n\" 'May'?\" Vasco asked. \"This goes beyond 'may.' \"\n\n\"Okay, Bert, you're our champ prognosticator for the Persian Gulf,\" the President observed. \"How about another forecast?\"\n\n\"The culture over there is one of bargaining. There are elaborate verbal rituals for important meetings. 'Hi, how are you?' can take an hour. If we're to believe that such things did not take place, there's a message in their absence. You said it, Mr. President: _Get lost._ \" Though it was interesting, Vasco thought, that they'd begun by praying together. Perhaps that was a signal that had meant something to the Saudis but not the Kuwaitis? Even he didn't know every aspect of the local culture.\n\n\"Then why are the Saudis low-keying this?\"\n\n\"You told me that Prince Ali gave you another impression?\"\n\nRyan nodded. \"That's right. Go on.\"\n\n\"The Kingdom is a little schizophrenic. They like us, and they trust us as strategic partners, but they also dislike us and distrust us as a culture. It's not even that simple, and it goes round and round, but they're afraid that too much exposure to the West will adversely affect their society. They're highly conservative on what we call social issues, like when our Army was over there in '91, and they requested that Army chaplains remove the religious insignia from their uniforms, and seeing women drive cars and carry guns drove them a little nuts. So, on one hand, they depend on us as guarantor of their security\u2014Prince Ali keeps asking you about that, right?\u2014but on the other hand they worry that in protecting them we might mess up their country. It keeps coming back to religion. They'd probably prefer to make a deal with Daryaei than to have to invite us back to guard their border, and so the majority of their government is going to run down that track in the knowledge that we _will_ come in if asked. Kuwait's going to be a different story. If we ask to be allowed to stage an exercise, they'll say 'yes' in a heartbeat, even if the Saudis ask them not to. Good news, Daryaei knows that, and he can't move all that fast. If he starts moving troops south\u2014\"\n\n\"The Agency will give us warning,\" Goodley said confidently. \"We know what to look for, and they're not sophisticated enough to hide it.\"\n\n\"If we run troops into Kuwait now, it will be perceived as an aggressive act,\" Adler warned. \"Better we should meet with Daryaei first and sound him out.\"\n\n\"Just so we give him the right signal,\" Vasco put in.\n\n\"Oh, we won't make that mistake, and I think he knows that the status of the Gulf countries is a topdrawer item with us. No mixed signals this time.\" Ambassador April Glaspie had been accused of giving such a signal to Saddam Hussein in the summer of 1990\u2014but she'd denied Hussein's account, and the latter wasn't all that reliable a source of information. Maybe it had been a linguistic nuance. Most likely of all, he'd heard exactly what he'd wanted to hear and not what had actually been said, a habit frequently shared by heads of state and children.\n\n\"How fast can you set it up?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Pretty fast,\" the Secretary of State replied.\n\n\"Do it,\" Ryan ordered. \"All possible speed. Ben?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"I talked with Robby Jackson already. Coordinate with him for a plan to get a modest security force rapiddeployed over there. Enough to show that we're interested, not enough to provoke them. Let's also call Kuwait and tell them that we're here if they need us, and that we _can_ deploy to their country if they so request. Who's ondeck for this?\"\n\n\"Twenty-fourth Mech, Fort Stewart, Georgia. I checked,\" Goodley said, rather proud of himself. \"Their second brigade is on rotating alert-status now. Also a brigade of the 82nd at Fort Bragg. With the equipment warehoused in Kuwait, we can do the match-up and be rolling in as little as forty-eight hours. I'd also advise increasing the readiness state of the Maritime Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia. That we can do quietly.\"\n\n\"Nice job, Ben. Call the SecDef and tell him I want it done\u2014quietly.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"I'll tell Daryaei that we offer a friendly hand to the United Islamic Republic,\" Adler said. \"Also that we're committed to peace and stability in that region, and that means territorial integrity. I wonder what he'll say . . . ?\"\n\nEyes turned to Bert Vasco, who was learning to curse his newly acquired status as resident genius. \"He might just have wanted to rattle their cage. I don't think he wants to rattle ours.\"\n\n\"That's your first hedge,\" Ryan observed.\n\n\"Not enough information,\" Vasco replied. \"I don't see that he wants a conflict with us. That happened once, and everybody watched. Yes, he doesn't like us. Yes, he doesn't like the Saudis or any of the other states. But, no, he doesn't want to take us on. Maybe he _could_ knock them all off. That's a military call, and I'm just an FSO. But not with us in the game, and he knows it. So, political pressure on Kuwait and the Kingdom, sure. Beyond that, however, I don't see enough to be worried about.\"\n\n\"Yet,\" the President added.\n\n\"Yes, sir, _yet,_ Vasco agreed.\n\n\"Am I leaning on you too hard, Bert?\"\n\n\"It's okay, Mr. President. At least you listen to me. It wouldn't hurt for us to generate a Special National Intelligence Estimate of the UIR's full capabilities and intentions. I need broader access to what the intel community's generating.\"\n\nJack turned. \"Ben, the SNIE is ordered. Bert's on the team with full access, by my order. You know, guys, giving orders can be fun,\" the President added, with a smile to break up the tension that the meeting had generated. \"This is a potential problem, but not a ball-buster yet, correct?\" There were nods. \"Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Let's keep an eye on this one.\"\n\nSINGAPORE AIRLINES FLIGHT 26 landed five minutes later, coming to the terminal at 10:25 A.M. The first-class passengers, having enjoyed wider, softer seats, now enjoyed quicker access to the entry rigmarole which America inflicts on her visitors. The traveler recovered his two-suiter from the carousel, and with his carry-on slung on his other shoulder, picked a line to stand in, in his hand held his entry card, which declared nothing of interest to the United States government. The truth would not have been pleasing to them in any case.\n\n\"Hello,\" the inspector said, taking the card and scanning it. The passport came next. It seemed an old one, its pages liberally covered with exit and entry stamps. He found a blank page and prepared to make a new mark. \"Purpose of your visit to America?\"\n\n\"Business,\" the traveler replied. \"I am here for the auto show at Javits Center.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\" The inspector had scarcely heard the answer. The stamp was placed and the visitor pointed to another line. There his bags were X-rayed instead of opened. \"Anything to declare?\"\n\n\"No.\" Simple answers were best. Another inspector looked at the TV display of the bag and saw nothing interesting. The traveler was waved through, and he collected his bags from the conveyor and walked out to where the taxis were.\n\nAmazing, he thought, finding a place in another line, and getting into a cab in less than five minutes. His first concern, being caught at the customs checkpoint, was behind him. For his next, the taxi he was in could not have been pre-selected for him. He'd fumbled with his bags and let a woman go ahead of him in order to keep that from happening. Now he slumped back in his seat and made a show of looking around, while in reality looking to see if there was a car following the cab into town. The prelunchtime traffic was so dense that it hardly seemed possible, all the more so that he was in one of thousands of yellow vehicles, darting in and out of traffic like cattle in a stampede. About the only bad news was that his hotel was sufficiently far from the convention center that he'd need another cab. Well, that couldn't be helped, and he needed to check in first anyway.\n\nAnother thirty minutes and he was in the hotel, in the elevator, going up to the sixth floor, a helpful bellman holding his two-suiter while the traveler retained his carry-on. He tipped the bellman two dollars\u2014he'd been briefed on what to tip; better to give a modest one than to be remembered as one who'd tipped too much or not at all\u2014which was taken with gratitude, but not too much. With his entry tasks complete, the traveler unpacked his suits and shirts, also removing extraneous items from his carry-on. The shaving kit he left in, using what the hotel provided to re-shave his bristly face after a cleansing shower. Despite the tension, he was amazed at how good he felt. He'd been on the go for\u2014what? Twenty-two hours? Something like that. But he'd gotten a lot of sleep, and air travel didn't make him anxious, as it did for so many. He ordered lunch from the room-service menu, then dressed, and slinging his carry-on over his shoulder, walked downstairs and got a cab for the Javits Center. The auto show, he thought. He'd always liked cars.\n\nBehind him in space and time, most of the nineteen others were still in the air. Some were just landing\u2014Boston first, then more in New York, and one at Dulles\u2014to make their own way through customs, testing their knowledge and their luck against the Great Satan, or whatever rubbish Daryaei termed their collective enemy. Satan, after all, had great powers and was worthy of respect. Satan could look in a man's eyes and see his thoughts, almost as Allah could. No, these Americans were functionaries, only dangerous to them if given warning.\n\n\"YOU HAVE TO know how to read people,\" Clark told them. It was a good class. Unlike people in a conventional school, they all wanted to learn. It almost took him back to his own days here at the Farm, at the height of the Cold War, when everyone had wanted to be James Bond and actually believed a little in it despite everything the instructors had said. Most of his classmates had been recent college grads, well educated from books but not yet from life. Most had learned pretty well. Some hadn't, and the flunking grade out in the field could be more than a red mark on a blue book, but mainly it had been less dramatic than what they showed in the movies. Just the realization that it was time for a career change. Clark had higher hopes for this bunch. Maybe they hadn't arrived with degrees in history from Dartmouth or Brown, but they had studied something, somewhere, then learned more on the streets of some big cities. Maybe they even knew that _everything_ they learned would be important to them someday.\n\n\"Will they lie to us\u2014our agents, I mean?\"\n\n\"You're from Pittsburgh, Mr. Stone, right?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"You worked confidential informants on the street. They ever lie to you?\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" Stone admitted.\n\n\"There's your answer. They will lie about their importance, the danger they're in, damned near anything, depending on how they feel today. You have to know them and know their moods. Stone, did you know when your informants were telling sea stories?\"\n\n\"Most of the time.\"\n\n\"How did you tell?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"Whenever they know a little too much, whenever it doesn't fit\u2014\"\n\n\"You know,\" their instructor observed with a grin, \"you people are so smart that sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here. It's about knowing people. In your careers at the Agency, you will always be running into folks who think they can tell it all from overheads\u2014the satellite knows all and tells all. Not exactly,\" Clark went on. \"Satellites can be fooled, and it's easier than people like to admit. People have their weaknesses, too, ego foremost among them, and there is never a substitute for looking them in the eyes. But the nice thing about working agents in the field is, even their lies will reveal some of the truth to you. Case in point, Moscow, Kutuzovkiy Prospyekt, 1983. This agent we brought out, and he'll be here next week for you to meet. He was having a hard time with his boss and\u2014\"\n\nChavez appeared at the back door and held up a phonemessage form. Clark hurried through the rest of the lesson and handed the class over to his assistant.\n\n\"What is it, Ding?\" John asked.\n\n\"Mary Pat wants us up in D.C. in a hurry, something about an SNIE.\"\n\n\"The United Islamic Republic, I bet.\"\n\n\"Hardly worth taking the message down, Mr. C,\" Chavez observed. \"They want us up in time for dinner. Want me to drive?\"\n\nTHERE WERE FOUR Maritime Pre-Positioning Ships at Diego Garcia. They were relatively new ships, built for their purpose, which was to be floating parking garages for military vehicles. A third of those were tanks, mobile artillery, and armored personnel carriers, and the rest were the less dramatic \"trains,\" vehicles pre-loaded with everything from ammunition to rations to water. The ships were painted Navy gray, but with colored bands around their funnels to designate them as part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, crewed by merchant sailors whose job was to maintain them. That wasn't overly difficult. Every few months they'd light off the huge diesel engines and sail around for a few hours, just to be absolutely sure everything worked. This evening they got a new message to increase their alert status.\n\nOne by one, the engine-room crews went below and fired up the engines. Fuel quantities were verified against written records, and various benchmark tests made to ensure that the ship was ready to sail\u2014which was why they were maintained so lovingly. Testing the engines was not abnormal. Testing all at the same time was, and the collection of monster engines made for a thermal bloom that was obvious to infrared detectors overhead, especially at night.\n\nThat came to the attention of Sergey Golovko within thirty minutes of its detection, and like intelligence chiefs all over the world, he assembled a team of specialists to discuss it.\n\n\"Where is the American carrier battle group?\" he asked first of all. America loved to throw them around the oceans of the world.\n\n\"They left the atoll yesterday, heading east.\"\n\n\"Away from the Persian Gulf?\"\n\n\"Correct. They have exercises scheduled with Australia. It's called SOUTHERN CUP. We have no information to suggest that the exercise is being canceled.\"\n\n\"Then why exercise their troopships?\"\n\nThe analyst gestured. \"It could be an exercise, but the turmoil in the Persian Gulf suggests otherwise.\"\n\n\"Nothing in Washington?\" Golovko asked.\n\n\"Our friend Ryan continues to navigate the political rapids,\" the chief of the American political section reported. \"Badly.\"\n\n\"Will he survive?\"\n\n\"Our ambassador believes so, and the _rezident_ concurs, but neither thinks he is firmly in command. It's a classic muddle. America has always prided herself on the smooth transition of government power, but their laws did not anticipate such events as we have seen. He cannot move decisively against his political enemy\u2014\"\n\n\"What Kealty's doing is state treason,\" Golovko observed, the penalty for which in Russia had always been severe. Even the phrase was enough to lower the temperature of a room.\n\n\"Not according to their law, but my legal experts tell me that the issue is sufficiently confused that there will be no clear winner, and in such a case Ryan remains in command because of his position\u2014he got there first.\"\n\nGolovko nodded, but his expression was decidedly unhappy. _Red October_ and the Gerasimov business should never have become public knowledge. He and his government had known the latter, but only suspected the former. On the submarine business, American security had been superb\u2014so _that_ was the card Ryan had played to make Kolya defect. It had to be. It all made sense from the distance of time, and a fine play it had been. Except for one thing: it had become public knowledge in Russia as well, and he was now forbidden to contact Ryan directly until the diplomatic fallout had been determined. America was doing something. He did not yet know what that was, and instead of calling to ask, and perhaps even getting a truthful answer, he'd have to wait for his field officers to discern it on their own. The problem lay in the harm that had been done to the American government, and in Ryan's own habit, learned at CIA, of working with a small number of people instead of playing the entire bureaucracy like a symphony orchestra. Instinct told him that Ryan would be cooperative, he'd trust former enemies to act in collective self-interest, but one thing the traitor Kealty had accomplished\u2014who else could have told the American press those stories!\u2014was to create a political impasse. Politics!\n\nPolitics had once been the center of Golovko's life. A party member since the age of eighteen, he'd studied his Lenin and Marx with all the fervor of a theology student, and though the fervor had changed over time to something else, those logical but foolish theories _had_ shaped his adult life, until they'd evaporated, leaving him, at least, a profession at which he excelled. He'd been able to rationalize his previous antipathy to America in historical terms, two great powers, two great alliances, two differing philosophies acting in perverse unison to create the last great world conflict. National pride still wished that his nation had won, but the _Rodina_ hadn't, and that was that. The important part was that the Cold War was over, and with it the deadly confrontation between America and his country. Now they could actually recognize their common interests, and at times act in cooperation. It had actually happened already. Ivan Emmetovich Ryan had come to him for help in the American conflict with Japan, and together the two countries had accomplished a vital goal\u2014something still secret. Why the hell, Golovko thought, couldn't the traitor Kealty have revealed _that_ secret instead of the others? But, no, now his country was embarrassed, and while the newly freed media had as great a field day with this story as the Americans were having\u2014or even more\u2014he was unable to make a simple phone call.\n\nThose ships were turning their engines for a reason. Ryan was doing something or thinking about doing something, and instead of merely asking, he had to be a spy again, working against another spy instead of working with an ally. Well, he had no choice.\n\n\"Form a special study group for the Persian Gulf. Everything we have, bring it together as quickly as possible. America will have to react somehow to the developing situation. First, we must determine what is happening. Second, what America probably knows. Third, what America will do. That general, G. I. Bondarenko, get him involved. He just spent time with their military.\"\n\n\"Immediately, Comrade Chairman,\" his principal deputy replied for the rest of the meeting. At least _that_ hadn't changed!\n\nCONDITIONS, HE THOUGHT, were excellent. Not too hot, not too cold. The Javits Center was right on the river, and that made for relatively high local humidity, and that was good also. He'd be inside, and so there was no concern about ultraviolet radiation harming the contents of his container. For the rest, the theory of what he was doing was not his concern; he'd been briefed on it and would do exactly what he'd been told. Whether or not it worked, well, that was in Allah's hands, wasn't it? The traveler got out of his cab and walked in.\n\nHe'd never been in so capacious a building, and there was a little disorientation after he got his visitor's badge and program book, which showed a map of the interior. With that came an index that allowed him to see the location of various exhibits, and with a muted smile he decided that he had hours to accomplish his goal, and would spend the time looking at cars, just like everybody else.\n\nThere were lots of them, sparkling like jewels, some on turntables for those too lazy to walk around them, many with scantily clad women gesturing at them as though one might have sexual relations with them\u2014the cars, that is, though some of the women might be possibilities, he thought, watching their faces with concealed amusement. He'd known intellectually that America made millions of cars, and in almost that many shapes and colors. It seemed hugely wasteful\u2014what was a car, after all, except for a method of moving from one place to another, and in the course of use they got damaged and dirty, and the show here was a lie in that it showed them as they would be for less time than it took to drive one home even in America, as he'd seen in the drive here from his hote!\u2014\n\nBut it was a pleasant experience even so. He would have thought of it as shopping, but this was not the souk which he connected with the process, not an alley full of small shops operated by merchants for whom bargaining was as important as the air. No, America was different. Here they prostituted women to sell things for a predetermined price. It wasn't that he was personally against such use of women; the traveler was not married and had the usual carnal desires, but to proclaim it in this way attacked the puritanical modesty of his culture, and so while he never once looked away from the women standing by the cars, he was glad that none of them was from his part of the world.\n\nAll the makes and models. Cadillac had a huge display in the General Motors section. Ford had another area of its own for all of its trademark products. He wandered through the Chrysler section, and then off to the foreign makers. The Japanese section, he saw, was being avoided, doubtless as a result of the American conflict with that country\u2014though above many of the displays were signs proclaiming **MADE IN AMERICA BY AMERICANS** **!** in three-meter letters to those few who seemed to care. Toyota, Nissan, and the rest would have a bad year, even the sporty Cressida, regardless of where they might be assembled. You could tell that by the lack of people in the area, and with that realization, his interest in Asian cars died. No, he decided, not around here.\n\nEuropean cars were profiting from Japan's misfortune, he saw. Mercedes especially was drawing a huge crowd, especially a new model of their most expensive sports car, painted a glossy midnight black that reflected the overhead lighting like a piece of the clear desert sky. Along the way, the traveler picked up a brochure at every booth from a friendly manufacturer's representative. These he tucked into his carry-on bag so as to make himself look like every other visitor. He found a food booth and got something to eat\u2014it was a hot dog, and he didn't worry if it had pork in it or not; America wasn't an Islamic country, after all, and he didn't have to worry about such things. He spent a good deal of time looking at all-terrain vehicles, first wondering if they'd survive the primitive roads of Lebanon and Iran, and deciding that they probably would. One was based on a military type he'd seen before, and if he'd had a choice, it would have been that one, wide and powerful. He got the entire publicity package for that one, then leaned against a post so that he might read it. Sports cars were for the effete. This was something of substance. What a pity he'd never own one. He checked his watch. Early evening. More visitors were crowding in as work let out and people took the evening to indulge their fantasies. Perfect.\n\nAlong the way he'd noted the air conditioning. It would have been better to set his canister in the system itself, but he'd been briefed on that, too. The Legionnaire's disease outbreak years before in Philadelphia had taught Americans about the need for keeping such systems clean; they often used chlorine to treat the condensate water which humidified the recirculating air, and chlorine would kill the virus as surely as a bullet killed a man. Looking up from the color-printed brochure, he noted the huge circular vents. Cool air descended from them, and washed invisibly along the floor. On being heated by the bodies in the room, the warm air would rise back into the returns and go through the system for cooling\u2014and some degree of disinfection. So he had to pick a spot where the air flow would be his ally, not his enemy, and he considered that, standing there like an interested car shopper. He started wandering more, walking under some of the vents, feeling the gentle, cooling breeze with his skin, evaluating one and another and looking for a good spot to leave his canister. The latter was equally important. The spray period would last for about fifteen seconds. There would be a hissing sound\u2014probably lost in the noise of the crowded building-and a brief fog. The cloud would turn invisible in just a few more seconds; the particulate matter was so small and, being as dense as the surrounding air, would become part of the ambient atmosphere and spread around randomly for at least thirty minutes, perhaps more, depending on the efficiency of the environmental systems in the center. He wanted to expose as many people as possible, consistent with those parameters, and with that renewed thought in his mind, he started wandering again.\n\nIt helped that, vast as the auto show was, it did not fill the Javits Center. Every exhibit was constructed of prefabricated parts like those in a business office, and behind many of those were large swatches of cloth, like vertical banners, whose only purpose was to break up the line of sight to empty portions of the building. They were easily accessible, the traveler saw. Nothing was fenced off. You simply ducked around an exhibit. He saw some people holding mini-meetings there, and some circulating maintenance personnel, but little else. The maintenance personnel were a potential problem, though. It wouldn't do to have his canister picked up before it discharged. But such people would be on regular routines, wouldn't they? It was just a matter of discerning the patterns of their movement. Of course. So, he thought, where is the best spot? The show would be open for several more hours. He wanted to pick a perfect place and time, but he'd been briefed not to worry too greatly about that. He took that advice to heart. Better to be covert. That was his primary mission.\n\n_The main entrance is . . . there_. People entered and left through the same side of the building. Emergency exits were everywhere, all of them properly marked, but with alarm buzzers on them. At the entrance was a bank of airconditioning vents to form a thermal barrier of sorts, and the returns were mainly in the center of the exhibit hall. So the air flow was designed to move inward from the periphery ... and everyone had to come in and out the same way . . . how to make that work for him . . . ? A bank of rest rooms was on that side, with regular traffic back and forth\u2014too dangerous; someone might see the can and pick it up and put it in a trash can. He walked to the other side, fumbling with his program as he did so, bumping into people, and finding himself again at the edge of the General Motors section. Beyond that were Mercedes and BMW, all on the way to the returns, and there were lots of people in all three areas\u2014plus the downward bloom of the air would wash across part of the entrance\/exit. The green banners blocked view of the wall, but there was space under them, open area . . . partially shielded from view. This was it. He walked away, checking his watch and then the program for the show's hours. The program he tucked into the carry-on bag while his other hand unzipped the shaving kit. He circulated around one more time, looking for another likely place, and while he found one, it wasn't as good as the first. Then he made a final check to see if someone might be following him. No, nobody knew he was here, and he wouldn't announce his presence or his mission with a burst from an AK-47 or the crash of a tossed grenade. There was more than one way to be a terrorist, and he regretted not having discovered this one sooner. How much he might have enjoyed setting a canister like this one into a theater in Jerusalem . . . but, no, the time for that would come later, perhaps, once the main enemy of his culture was crippled. He looked at the faces now, these Americans who so hated him and his people. Shuffling around, like cattle, purposeless. And then it was time.\n\nThe traveler ducked behind an exhibit, extracted the can and set it on its side on the concrete floor. It was weighted to roll to the proper position, and, lying on its side, it would be harder to see. With that done, he pressed the simple mechanical timer and walked away, back into the exhibition area, turning left to leave the building. He was in a taxi in five minutes, on the way back to his hotel. Before he got there, the timer-spring released the valve, and for fifteen seconds the canister emptied its contents into the air. The noise was lost in the cacophony of the crowd. The vapor cloud dispersed before it could be seen.\n\nIN ATLANTA, IT was the Spring Boat Show. About half of the people there might have serious thoughts of buying a boat, this year or some other. The rest were just dreaming. Let them dream, this traveler thought on the way out.\n\nIN ORLAN DO, IT was recreational vehicles. That was particularly easy. A traveler looked under a Winnebago, as though to check the chassis, slid his canister there, and left.\n\nIN CHICAGO'S MCCORMICK Center, it was housewares, a vast hall full of every manner of furniture and appliance, and the women who wished to have them.\n\nIN HOUSTON, IT was one of America's greatest horse shows. Many of them were Arabians, he was surprised to note, and the traveler whispered a prayer that the disease didn't hurt those noble creatures, so beloved of Allah.\n\nIN PHOENIX, IT was golf equipment, a game that the traveler didn't know a thing about, though he had several kilos of free literature which he might read on the flight back to the Eastern Hemisphere. He'd found an empty golf bag with a hard-plastic lining that would conceal the canister, set the timer, and dropped it in.\n\nIN SAN FRANCISCO, it was computers, the most crowded show of all that day, with over twenty thousand people in the Moscone Convention Center, so many that this traveler feared he might not get outside to the garden area before the can released its contents. But he did, walking upwind to his hotel, four blocks away, his job complete.\n\nTHE RUG SHOP was just closing down when Aref Raman walked in. Mr. Alahad locked the front door and switched off the lights.\n\n\"My instructions?\"\n\n\"You will do nothing without direct orders, but it is important to know if you are able to complete your mission.\"\n\n\"Is that not plain?\" Raman asked in irritation. \"Why do you think\"\n\n\"I have my instructions,\" Alahad said gently.\n\n\"I am able. I am ready,\" the assassin assured his cutout. The decision had been made years before, but it was good to say it out loud to another, here, now.\n\n\"You will be told at the proper time. It will be soon.\"\n\n\"The political situation . . .\"\n\n\"We are aware of that, and we are confident of your devotion. Be at peace, Aref. Great things are happening. I know not what they are, merely that they are under way, and at the proper time, your act will be the capstone of the Holy Jihad. Mahmoud Haji sends his greetings and his prayers.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Raman inclined his head at word of the distant but powerful blessing. It had been a very long time since he'd heard the man's voice over anything but a television, and then he'd been forced to turn away, lest others see his reaction to it.\n\n\"It has been hard for you,\" Alahad said.\n\n\"It has.\" Raman nodded.\n\n\"It will soon be over, my young friend. Come to the back with me. Do you have time?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"It is time for prayer.\"\n**38**\n\n**GRACE PERIOD**\n\n**I** 'M NOT AN AREA SPECIAList,\" Clark objected. He'd been to Iran before.\n\nEd Foley would have none of that: \"You've been on the ground there, and I think you're the one who always talks about how there's no substitute for dirty hands and a good nose.\"\n\n\"He was just laying more of that on the kiddies at the Farm this afternoon,\" Ding reported with a sly look. \"Well, today it was about reading people by lookin' in their eyes, but it's the same thing. Good eye, good nose, good senses.\" _He_ hadn't been to Iran, and they wouldn't send Mr. C. alone, would they?\n\n\"You're in, John,\" Mary Pat Foley said, and since she was the DDO, that was that. \"Secretary Adler may be flying over real soon. I want you and Ding to go over as SPOs. Keep him alive, and sniff around, nothing covert or anything. I want your read on what the street feels like. That's all, just a quick recon.\" It was the sort of thing usually done by watching footage on CNN, but Mary Pat wanted an experienced officer to take the local pulse, and it was her call.\n\nIf there were a curse in being a good training officer, it was that the people you trained often got promoted, and remembered their lessons\u2014and worse, who'd taught them. Clark could recall both of the Foleys in his classes at the Farm. From the start, she'd been the cowboy\u2014well, cow _girl_ \u2014of the pair, with brilliant instincts, fantastically good Russian skills, and the sort of gift for reading people more often found in a professor of psychiatry . . . but somewhat wanting in caution, trusting a little too much on the baby blues and dumb blonde act to keep her safe. Ed lacked her passion but had the ability to formulate The Big Picture, to take a long view that made sense most of the time. Neither was quite perfect. Together they were a piece of work, and John took pride in having taught them his way. Most of the time.\n\n\"Okay. We have anything in the way of assets over there?\"\n\n\"Nothing useful. Adler wants to eyeball Daryaei and tell him what the rules are. You'll be quartered in the French embassy. The trip is secret. VC-20 to Paris, French transport from there. In and out in a hurry,\" Mary Pat told them. \"But I want you to spend an hour or two walking around, just to get a feel for things, price of bread, how people dress, you know the drill.\"\n\n\"And we'll have diplomatic passports, so nobody can hassle us,\" John added wryly. \"Yeah, heard that one before. So did everyone else in the embassy back in 1979, remember?\"\n\n\"Adler's Secretary of State,\" Ed reminded him.\n\n\"I think they know that.\" _They know he's Jewish, too,_ he didn't add.\n\nTHE FLIGHT INTO Barstow, California, was how the exercise always started. Buses and trucks rolled up to the airplanes, and the troops came down the stairs for the short drive up the only road into the NTC. General Diggs and Colonel Hamm watched from their parked helicopter as the soldiers formed up. This group was from the North Carolina National Guard, a reinforced brigade. It wasn't often that the Guard came to Fort Irwin, and this one was supposed to be pretty special. Because the state was blessed with very senior senators and congressmen\u2014well, until recently\u2014over the years, the men from Carolina had gotten the very best in modern equipment, and been designated a round-out brigade for one of the Regular Army's armored divisions. Sure enough, they strutted like real soldiers, and their officers had been prepping for a year in anticipation of this training rotation. They'd even managed to get their hands on additional fuel with which they'd trained a few extra weeks. Now the officers formed their men up in regular lines before putting them on the transport, and from a distance of a quarter mile, Diggs and Hamm could see their officers talking to their men over the noise of the arriving aircraft.\n\n\"They look proud, boss,\" Hamm observed.\n\nThey heard a distant shout, as a company of tankers told their captain they were ready to kick some ass. A news crew was even out there to immortalize the event for local TV.\n\n\"They _are_ proud,\" the general said. \"Soldiers should be proud, Colonel.\"\n\n\"Only one thing missing, sir.\"\n\n\"What's that, Al?\"\n\n\" _Baaaaaaaaa,\"_ Colonel Hamm said around his cigar. \"Lambs to the slaughter.\" The two officers shared a look. The first mission of the OpFor was to take away that pride. The Blackhorse Cav had never lost so much as a single simulated engagement to anything other than a regular formation\u2014and that rarely enough. Hamm didn't plan to start this month. Two battalions of Abrams tanks, one more of Bradleys, another of artillery, a cavalry company, and a combat-support battalion against his three squadrons of Opposing Force. It hardly seemed fair. For the visitors.\n\nTIIEY WERE ALMOST done. The most annoying work of all was mixing the AmFo, which turned out to be a pretty good upper-body workout for the Mountain Men. The proper proportions of the fertilizer (which was mainly an ammonia-based chemical compound) and the diesel fuel came from a book. It struck both men as amusing that plants should like to eat a deadly explosive. The propellant used in artillery rounds was also ammonia-based, and once upon a time, in post-World War I Germany, a chemical plant making fertilizer had exploded and wiped out the neighboring village. The addition of diesel fuel was partly to provide an additional element of chemical energy, but mainly to act as a wetting agent, the better for the internal shock wave te propagate within the explosive mass and hasten the detonation. They used a large tub for the mixing, and an oar, like a canoe's, to stir the mass into the proper consistency (that came from a book also). The resuit was a large glob of mud-like slurry which formed into blocks of a sort. These they lifted by hand.\n\nIt was dirty and smelly and a little dangerous inside the drum of the cement truck. They took turns doing the filling. The access hatch, which was designed to admit semiliquid cement, was just over three feet in diameter. Holbrook had rigged an electric fan to blow fresh air into the drum, because the fumes from the fresh AmFo mix were unpleasant and possibly dangerous\u2014it gave them headaches, which was warning enough. It was the work of over a week, but now the drum was as filled as they needed it to be, about three-quarters, when the last block was nested in with all the rest. Every layer had been somewhat uneven, and the void spaces were filled with a mix that was more liquid and had been handed in by bucket, so that the circular body of the drum was as full as two men working alone could make it. If one could have seen through the steel, it would have looked like a pie chart, the unfilled part a V-shape, facing upwards.\n\n\"I think that does it, Pete,\" Ernie Brown said. \"We have about another hundred pounds or so, but\u2014\"\n\n\"No place for it to go,\" Holbrook agreed, climbing out. He clambered down the ladder and the two walked outside, sat in lawn chairs and got some fresh air. \"Damn, I'm glad _that'_ s done!\"\n\n\"You bet.\" Brown rubbed his face and took a deep breath. His head hurt so badly that he wondered if his face might come off. They'd stay out here for a long while, until they got all those goddamned fumes out of their lungs.\n\n\"This has got to be bad for us,\" Pete said.\n\n\"Sure as hell gonna be bad for somebody. Good idea on the bullets,\" he added. There were two oil drums full of them inside, probably too many, but that was okay.\n\n\"What's a brownie without some walnuts?\" Holbrook asked.\n\n\"You bastard!\" Brown laughed so hard he nearly came out of the chair. \"Oh, Jesus, my head hurts!\"\n\nAPPROVAL FOR FRENCH cooperation on the meeting came from the Quai d'Orsay with remarkable speed. France had diplomatic interests with every country bordering on the Gulf that connected to all manner of commercial relationships, from tanks to pharmaceuticals. French troops had deployed in the Persian Gulf War to find themselves fighting against French products, but that sort of thing wasn't all that unusual. It made for lots of markets. Approval of the mission was phoned to the American Ambassador at nine in the morning, who telexed Foggy Bottom in less than five minutes, where it was relayed to Secretary Adler while he was still in his bed. Action officers made other notifications, first of all to the 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base.\n\nGetting the Secretary of State out of town quietly was never the easiest of tasks. People tended to notice empty offices of that magnitude, and so an easy cover story was laid on. Adler was going to consult with European allies on several issues. The French were far better able to control their media, a task which was more than anything else a matter of timing.\n\n\"Yeah?\" Clark said, lifting the phone at the Marriott closest to Langley.\n\n\"It's on for today,\" the voice said.\n\nA blink. A shake of the head. \"Super. Okay, I'm packed.\" Then he rolled back over for some more sleep. At least there didn't have to be a mission brief for this one. Keep an eye on Adler, take a walk, and come home. There wasn't any real worry about security. If the Iranians\u2014UIR-ians was a phrase he hadn't come to terms with yet\u2014wanted to do something, two men with pistols wouldn't be able to do much about it except hand their weapons over unused, and either locals or Iranian security would keep the hostile peons away. He was going to be there for show, because it was something you did, for some reason or other.\n\n\"We goin'?\" Chavez asked from the other bed.\n\n\"yep.\"\n\n\" _Bueno._ \"\n\nDARYAEI CHECKED HIS desk clock, subtracting eight, nine, ten, and eleven hours, and wondering if anything had gone wrong. Second thoughts were the bane of people in his position. You made your decisions and took the action, and only then did you really worry, despite all the planning and thought that might have gone into what you did. There was no royal road to success. You had to take risks, a fact never appreciated by those who merely _thought_ about being a chief of state.\n\nNo, nothing had gone wrong. He'd received the French Ambassador, a very pleasant unbeliever who spoke the local language so beautifully that Daryaei wondered what it might be like to have him read some of his country's poetry. And a courtly man, ever polite and deferential, he'd posed his secondhand request like a man arranging a marriage of family alliance, his hopeful smile also conveying the wishes of his government. The Americans would not have made the request if they'd had any pre-warning of Badrayn's people and their mission. No, in a case like that, the meeting would have been on neutral ground\u2014Switzerland was always a possibility\u2014for informal but direct contact. In this case, they would send their own Foreign Minister into what they had to consider to be enemy country\u2014and a Jew at that! _Friendly contact, friendly exchange of views, friendly offers of friendly relations,_ the Frenchman had said, pitching the meeting, doubtless hoping that if it went well, then France would be remembered as the country that fostered a new friendship\u2014well, maybe a \"working relationship\" **\u2014** and if the meeting went badly, then all that would be remembered was that France had tried to be an honest broker. Had Daryaei known about ballet, he would have used it as a visual image for the exchange.\n\n_Damn the French, anyway,_ he thought. _Had their warrior chief Martel not stopped 'Abd-ar-Rahman in 732 at Poitiers, then the whole world might be . . ._ but even Allah couldn't change history. Rahman had lost that battle because his men had grown greedy, fallen away from the purity of the Faith. Exposed to the riches of the West, they'd stopped fighting and started looting, and given Martel's forces the chance to re-form and counterattack. Yes, that was the lesson to be remembered. There was always time for looting. You had to win the battle first. First destroy the enemy's forces, and _then_ take that which you wanted to take.\n\nHe walked from his office into the next room. There on the wall was a map of his new country and its neighbors, and a comfortable seat from which to view it. There came the usual error from looking at maps. Distances were truncated. Everything seemed so close, all the more so after all the lost time of his life. Close enough to reach. Close enough to grasp. Nothing could go wrong now. Not with everything so close.\n\nLEAVING WAS EASIER than arriving. Like most Western countries, America was more concerned with what people might bring in than with what they might take out\u2014and properly so, the first traveler thought, as his passport was processed at JFK. It was 7:05 A.M., and Air France Flight 1, a supersonic Concorde, was waiting to take him part of the way home. He had a huge collection of auto brochures, and a story he'd spent some time concocting should anyone ask about them, but his cover wasn't challenged, or even examined. He was leaving, and that was okay. The passport was duly stamped. The customs agent didn't even ask why he had come one day and left the next. Business travelers were business travelers. Besides, it was early in the morning, and nothing important happened before ten.\n\nThe Air France first-class lounge served coffee, but the traveler didn't want any. He was almost done. Only now did his body want to tremble. It was amazing how easily it had gone. Badrayn's mission brief had told them how easy it would be, but he hadn't quite believed it, used, as he was, to dealing with Israeli security with their numberless soldiers and guns. After all the tension he'd felt, like being wrapped tightly with rope, it was all diminishing now. He'd slept poorly in his hotel the previous night, and now he'd get on the aircraft and sleep all the way across. On getting back to Tehran, he'd look at Badrayn and laugh and ask for another such mission. On passing the buffet, he saw a bottle of champagne, and poured himself a glass. It made him sneeze, and it was contrary to his religion, but it was the Western way to celebrate, and indeed he had something to celebrate. Twenty minutes later, his flight was called, and he walked off to the jetway with the others. His only concern now was jet lag. The flight would leave at eight sharp, then arrive in Paris at 5:45 P.M.! From breakfast to dinner without the intervening midday meal. Well, such was the miracle of modern travel.\n\nTHEY DROVE SEPARATELY to Andrews, Adler in his official car, Clark and Chavez in the latter's personal auto, and while the Secretary of State was waved through the gate, the CIA officers had to show ID, which at least earned them a salute from the armed airman.\n\n\"You really don't like the place, do you?\" the junior officer asked.\n\n\"Well, Domingo, back when you were taking the training wheels off your bike, I was in Tehran with a cover so thin you could read an insurance policy through it, yelling 'Death to America!' with the gomers and watching our people being paraded around blindfolded by a bunch of crazy kids with guns. For a while there, I thought they were going to be lined up against a wall and hosed. I knew the station chief. Hell, I recognized him. They had him in the bag, too, gave him a rough time.\" Just standing there, he remembered, only fifty yards away, not able to do a damned thing . . .\n\n\"What were you doing?\"\n\n\"First time, it was a quick recon for the Agency. Second time, it was to be part of the rescue mission that went tits-up at Desert One. We all thought it was bad luck at the time, but that operation really scared me. Probably better it failed,\" John concluded. \"At least we got them all out alive in the end.\"\n\n\"So, bad memories, you don't like the place?\"\n\nClark shrugged. \"Not really. Never figured them out. The Saudis I understand\u2014I like 'em a lot. Once you get through the crust, they make friends for life. Some of the rules are a little funny to us, but that's okay. Kinda like old movies, sense of honor and all that, hospitality,\" he went on. \"Anyway, lots of good experiences there. Not on the other side of the Gulf. Just as soon leave that place alone.\" Ding parked his car. Both men retrieved their bags as a sergeant came up to them.\n\n\"Going to Paris, Sarge,\" Clark said, holding up his ID again.\n\n\"You gentlemen want to come with me?\" She waved them toward the V1P terminal. The low, one-story building had been cleared of other distinguished visitors. Scott Adler was on one of the couches, going over some papers.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary?\"\n\nAdler looked up. \"Let me guess, this one is Clark, and this one is Chavez.\"\n\n\"You might even have a future in the intelligence business.\" John smiled. Handshakes were exchanged.\n\n\"Good morning, sir,\" Chavez said.\n\n\"Foley says, with you, my life is in good hands,\" SecState offered, closing his briefing book.\n\n\"He exaggerates.\" Clark walked a few feet to get a Danish. Was it nerves? John asked himself. Ed and Mary Pat were right. This should be a routine operation, in and out, Hi, how are you, eat shit and die, so long. And he'd been in tighter spots than Tehran in 1979-80\u2014not many, but some. He frowned at the pastry. Something had brought the old feeling back, the creepy-crawly sensation on his skin, like something was blowing on the hairs there, the one that told him to turn around and look real hard at things.\n\n\"He also tells me you're on the SNIE team, and I should listen to you,\" Adler went on. At least he seemed relaxed, Clark saw.\n\n\"The Foleys and I go back some,\" John explained.\n\n\"You've been there before?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Secretary.\" Clark followed with two minutes of explanation that earned a thoughtful nod from the senior official.\n\n\"Me, too. I was one of the people the Canadians snuck out. Just showed up a week before. I was out apartmenthunting when they seized the embassy. Missed all the fun,\" SecState concluded. \"Thank God.\"\n\n\"So you know the country some?\"\n\nAdler shook his head. \"Not really. A few words of the language. I was there to learn up on the place, but it didn't work out, and I branched off into other areas. I want to hear more about your experiences, though.\"\n\n\"I'll do what I can, sir,\" John told him. Then a young captain came in to say that the flight was ready. A sergeant got Adler's things.\n\nThe CIA officers lifted their own bags. In addition to two changes of clothes, they had their sidearms\u2014John preferred his Smith & Wesson; Ding liked the Beretta 40\u2014and compact cameras. You never knew when you might see something useful.\n\nBOB HOLTZMAN 11AD a lot to think about, as he sat alone in his office. It was a classic newsman's place of work, the walls glass, which allowed him a modicum of acoustic privacy while also letting him see out into the city room and the reporters there to see in. All he really needed was a cigarette, but you couldn't smoke in the Post building anymore, which would have amused the hell out of Ben Hecht.\n\nSomebody'd got to Tom Donner and John Plumber. It had to be Kealty. Holtzman's views on Kealty were an exact mirror image of his feelings toward Ryan. Kcalty's political ideas, he thought, were pretty good, progressive and sensible. It was just the man who was useless. In another age, his womanizing would have been overlooked, and in fact, Kealty's political career had straddled those ages, the old and the new. Washington was full of women drawn to power like bees to honey\u2014or like flies to something else\u2014and they got used. Mainly they went away sadder and wiser; in the age of abortion on demand, more permanent consequences were a thing of the past. Politicians were so charming by nature that most of the cookies\u2014that euphemism went _way_ back\u2014even went away with a smile, hardly realizing how they'd been used. But some got hurt, and Kealty had hurt several. One woman had even committed suicide. Bob's wife, Libby Holtzman, had worked that story, only to see it lost in the shuffle during the brief conflict with Japan, and in the interim the media had decided in some collective way that the story was history, and Kealty had been rehabilitated in everyone's memory. Even women's groups had looked at his personal behavior, then compared it with his political views, and decided that the balance fell one way and not another. It all offended Holtzman in a distant way. People had to have _some_ principles, didn't they?\n\nBut this was Washington.\n\nKealty had got to Donner and Plumber, and must have done so between the taped morning interview and the live evening broadcast. And that meant . . .\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" Holtzman breathed, when the lightbulb flashed on in his head.\n\n_That_ was a story! Better yet, it was a story his managing editor would love. Donner had said on live TV that the morning tape had been damaged. _It had to be a lie_. A reporter who lied directly to the public. There weren't all that many rules in the business of journalism, and most of them were amorphous things that could be bent or skirted. But not that one. The print and TV media didn't get along all that well. They competed for the same audience, and the lesser of the two was winning. _Lesser?_ Holtzman asked himself. Of course. TV was flashy, that was all, and maybe a picture was worth a thousand words, but not when the frames were selected with an eye more toward entertainment than information. TV was the girl you looked at. The print media was the one who had your kids.\n\nBut how to prove it?\n\nWhat could be sweeter? He could destroy that peacock, with his perfect suits and his hair spray. He could cast a pall over all television news, and wouldn't that boost circulation ! He could couch it all as a religious ceremony on the altar of Journalistic Integrity. Wrecking careers was part of his business. He'd never broken a fellow reporter before, but there was an anticipatory delight in drumming this one out of the corps.\n\nBut what about Plumber? Holtzman knew and respected him. Plumber had come to TV at a different time, when the industry had been trying to gain respectability, and hired journalistic craftsmen on the basis of their professional reputations rather than their movie-star looks. Plumber had to know. And he probably didn't like it.\n\nRYAN COULDN'T _NOT_ see the Colombian Ambassador. The latter, he saw, was a career diplomat from the aristocracy, immaculately dressed for a meeting with the American chief of state. The handshake was strong and cordial. The usual pleasantries were exchanged in front of the official photographer, and then it was time to talk business.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" he began formally, \"my government has instructed me to inquire about some unusual allegations in your news media.\"\n\nJack nodded soberly. \"What do you wish to know?\"\n\n\"It has been reported that some years ago the United States government may have invaded my country. We find this assertion disturbing, not to mention a violation of international law and various treaty relationships between our two democracies.\"\n\n\"I understand your feelings on the matter. In your position I would feel much the same way. Let me say now that my administration will not countenance such action under any circumstances. On that, sir, you have my personal word, and I trust you will convey it to your government.\" Ryan decided to pour the man some coffee. He'd learned that such small personal gestures were vastly powerful in diplomatic exchanges, for reasons he didn't quite understand, but was quite willing to accept when they worked for him. It worked this time, too, and broke the tension of the moment.\n\n\"Thank you,\" the ambassador said, lifting his cup.\n\n\"I believe it's even Colombian coffee,\" the President offered.\n\n\"Regrettably, not our most famous export product,\" Pedro Ochoa admitted.\n\n\"I don't blame you for that,\" Jack told his visitor.\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Mr. Ambassador, I am fully aware that your country has paid a bitter price for America's bad habits. While I was at CIA, yes, I did look over all manner of information concerning the drug trade and the effects it's had in your part of the world. I had no part at all in initiating any improper activity in your country, but, yes, I did look over a lot of data. I know about the policemen who've been killed\u2014my own father was a police officer, as you know\u2014and the judges, and the journalists. I know that Colombia has worked harder and longer than any other country in your region to bring about a true democratic government, and I will say one more thing, sir. I am ashamed at some of the things that have been said in this city about your country. The drug problem does not begin in Colombia, or Ecuador, or Peru. The drug problem starts here, and you are as much a victim as we are\u2014actually more so. It's American money that's poisoning your country. It is not you who hurts us. It is we who hurt you.\"\n\nOchoa had expected many things from this meeting, but not this. He set his cup down, and his peripheral vision suddenly reported that they were alone in the room. The bodyguards had withdrawn. There wasn't even an aide to take notes. This was unusual. More than that, Ryan had just admitted that the stories were true\u2014partly true, anyway.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" he said, in English learned at home and polished at Princeton, \"we have not often heard such words from your country.\"\n\n\"You're hearing them now, sir.\" Two very level pairs of eyes crossed the table. \"I will not criticize your country unless you deserve it, and on the basis of what I know, such criticism is not deserved. Diminishing the drug trade, most of all, means attacking the demand side, and that will be a priority of this administration. We are now drafting legislation to punish those who _use_ drugs, not merely those who sell them. When the Congress is properly reestablished, I will press hard for passage of that legislation. I also wish to establish an informal working group, composed of members of my government and yours, to discuss how we may better assist you in your part of the problem\u2014but always with full respect for your national integrity. America has not always been a good neighbor to you. I can't change the past, but I can try to change the future. Tell me, might your President accept an invitation so that we could discuss this issue face-to-face?\" _I want to make up for all this lunacy_.\n\n\"I think it likely that he would view such an invitation favorably, with due consideration for time and other duties, of course.\" Which meant, _damned right he will!_\n\n\"Yes, sir, I am myself learning just how demanding such a job can be. Perhaps,\" Jack added with a smile, \"he might give _me_ some advice.\"\n\n\"Less than you think.\" Ambassador Ochoa was wondering how he'd explain this meeting to his government. Clearly, the basis of a deal was on the table. Ryan was offering what could only be seen in South America as an elaborate apology for something that would never be admitted, and whose full revelation could only damage everyone involved. And yet this was not being done for political reasons, was it?\n\nWas it?\n\n\"Your proposed legislation, Mr. President, what will you seek to accomplish?\"\n\n\"We're studying that now. For the most part, believe, people use drugs because it's fun\u2014escape from reality, whatever you might want to call it\u2014it comes down to personal amusement of one sort or another. Our data suggests that at least half of the drugs sold in the country are for recreational users rather than true addicts. I think we should make the use of drugs un-fun, by which I mean some form of punishment for any level of possession or intoxication. Obviously, we do not have the prison space for all the drug users in America, but we do have lots of streets that need sweeping. For recreational users, thirty days\u2014for the first offense\u2014of sweeping streets and collecting garbage in an economically disadvantaged area, wearing distinctive clothing, of course, will take much of the fun out of it. You are Catholic, I believe?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am, as you are.\"\n\nRyan grinned. \"Then you know about shame. We learned it in school, didn't we? It's a starting place, that's all it is for the moment. The administrative issues need to be looked at. Justice is also examining some constitutional questions, but those appear to be less troublesome than I expected. I want this to be law by the end of the year. I've got three kids, and the drug problem here frightens the hell out of me at the personal level. This isn't a perfect response to the problem. The truly addicted people need professional help of one sort or another, and we're now looking at a variety of state and local programs for things that really work\u2014but, hell, if we can kill off recreational use, that's at least half of the trade, and where I come from, half is a good start.\"\n\n\"We will watch this process with great interest,\" Ambassador Ochoa promised. Cutting the income of the drug traffickers by that much would reduce their ability to buy protection, and help his government do what it had so earnestly tried to do, for the monetary power of the drug trade was a political cancer in the body of his country.\n\n\"I regret the circumstances that brought this meeting about, but I am glad that we've had a chance to discuss the issues. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for being so forthright. I want you to know that I am always open to any exchange of views. Most of all, I want you and your government to know that I have great respect for the rule of law, and that respect does not stop at our borders. Whatever may have happened in the past, I propose a new beginning, and I will back up my words with action.\"\n\nBoth men stood, and Ryan took his hand again, and led him outside. There followed a few minutes on the edge of the Rose Garden in front of some TV cameras. The White House Press Office would release a statement about a friendly meeting between the two men. The photos would run on the news to show that it might not be a lie.\n\n\"It promises to be a good spring,\" Ochoa said, noting the clear sky and warming breezes.\n\n\"But summers here can be very unpleasant. Tell me, what's it like in Bogot\u00e1?\"\n\n\"We are high up. It's never terribly hot, but the sun can be punishing. This is a fine garden. My wife loves flowers. She's becoming famous,\" the ambassador said. \"She's developed her own new type of rose. Somehow she crossbred yellow and pink and produced something that's almost golden in color.\"\n\n\"What does she call it?\" Ryan's entire knowledge of roses was that you had to be careful about the branches, or stalks, or whatever you called the thorny part. But the cameras were rolling.\n\n\"In English, it would be 'Dawn Display.' All the good names for roses, it seems, have already been taken,\" Ochoa noted, with a friendly smile.\n\n\"Perhaps we might have some for the garden here?\"\n\n\"Maria would be greatly honored, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Then we have more than one agreement, _se\u00f1or_.\" Another handshake.\n\nOchoa knew the game, too. For the cameras his Latin face broke into the friendliest of diplomatic smiles, but the handshake also had genuine warmth in it. \"Dawn Display\u2014for a truly new day between us, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"My word on it.\" And they took their leave. Ryan walked back into the West Wing. Arnie was waiting inside the door. It was widely known but little acknowledged that the Oval Office was wired like a pinball machine\u2014or more properly, a recording studio.\n\n\"You're learning. You're really learning,\" the chief of staff observed.\n\n\"That one was easy, Arnie. We've been fucking those people over for too long. All I had to do was tell the truth. I want that legislation fast-tracked. When will the draft be ready?\"\n\n\"Couple of weeks. It's going to raise some hell,\" van Damm warned.\n\n\"I don't care,\" the President replied. \"How about we try something that might work instead of spending money for show all the time? We've tried shooting the airplanes down. We've tried murder. We've tried interdiction. We've tried going after pushers. We've exhausted all the other possibilities, and they don't work because there's too much money involved for people not to give it a go. How about we go after the source of the problem for a change? That's where the problem starts, and that's where the money comes from.\"\n\n\"I'm just telling you it's going to be hard.\"\n\n\"What useful thing isn't?\" Ryan asked, heading back to his office. Instead of the direct door off the corridor, he went through the secretaries' room. \"Ellen?\" he said, gesturing to the Oval Office.\n\n\"Am I corrupting you?\" Mrs. Sumter asked, bringing her cigarettes, to the semi-concealed smiles of the other ladies in the room.\n\n\"Cathy might see it that way, but we don't have to tell her, do we?\" In the sanctity of his office, the President of the United States lit up a skinny woman's cigarette, celebrating with one addiction an attack on another\u2014and, oh, by the way, having neutralized a potential diplomatic carthquake.\n\nTHE LAST OF the travelers left America, strangely enough, from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, via Northwest and KLM flights. Badrayn would sweat it out for hours more. In the interest of security, none of them had so much as a telephone number to call to announce success, warn of failure, or to give to whomever might have arrested them, tying them to the UIR with something more than their own words. Instead, Badrayn had people at all of the return airports with flight schedules. When the travelers got off their flights in Europe and were visually recognized, _then_ calls would be made circuitously, from public phones, using pre-paid and anonymous calling cards.\n\nThe successful return of the travelers to Tehran would start the next operation. Sitting in an office there, Badrayn had nothing more to do than look at the clock and worry. He was logged onto the Net via his computer, and had been scanning the news wires, and finding nothing of note. Nothing would be certain until all the travelers got back and made their individual reports. Not even then, really. It would take three or four days, maybe five, before the e-mail lines to CDC would be screaming. Then he'd know.\n**39**\n\n**FACE TIME**\n\n**T** HE FLIGHT ACROSS THE pond was pleasant. The VC-20B was more a mini-airliner than a business jet, and the Air Force crewmen, who looked to Clark as though they might be old enough to take driving lessons, kept things smooth. The aircraft began its descent into the enveloping darkness of the European night, finally landing at a military airfield west of Paris.\n\nThere was no arrival ceremony _per se,_ but Adler was an official of ministerial rank, and he had to be met, even on a covert mission. In this case, a high-level official\u2014a civil servant\u2014walked up to the aircraft as soon as the engines wound down. Adler recognized him as the stairs descended.\n\n\"Claude!\"\n\n\"Scott. Congratulations on your promotion, my old friend!\" In deference to American tastes, kisses were not exchanged.\n\nClark and Chavez scanned the area for danger, but all they saw were French troops, or maybe police\u2014they couldn't tell at this distance\u2014standing in a circle, with weapons in evidence. Europeans had a penchant for showing people machine guns, even on city streets. It probably had a salutary effect on street muggings, John thought, but it seemed a little excessive. In any case, they'd expected no special dangers in France, and indeed there were none. Adler and his friend got in an official vehicle. Clark and Chavez got in the chase car. The flight crew would head off for mandated crew rest, which was USAF-talk for having a few with their French colleagues.\n\n\"We go to the lounge for a few minutes before your aircraft is ready,\" a French air force colonel explained. \"Perhaps you wish to freshen up?\"\n\n_\"Merci, mon commandant,\"_ Ding replied. Yeah, he thought, the Frenchies do know how to make you feel safe.\n\n\"Thank you for helping to arrange this,\" Adler said to his friend. They'd been FSOs together, once in Moscow and once more in Pretoria. Both had specialized in sensitive assignments.\n\n\"It is nothing, Scott.\" Which it wasn't, but diplomats talk like diplomats even when they don't have to. Claude had once helped him get through a divorce in a uniquely French way, all the while speaking as though conducting treaty negotiations. It was almost a joke between the two. \"Our ambassador reports that he will be receptive to the right sort of approach.\"\n\n\"And what might that be?\" SecState asked his colleague. They got out at what appeared to be the base officers club, and a minute later found themselves in a private dining room, with a carafe of fine Beaujolais on the table. \"What's your take on this, Claude? What does Daryaei want?\"\n\nThe shrug was as much a part of the French character as the wine, which Claude poured. They toasted, and the wine was superb even by the standards of the French diplomatic service. Then came business.\n\n\"We're not sure. We wonder about the death of the Turkoman Premier.\"\n\n\"You don't wonder about the death of\u2014\"\n\n\"I do not believe anyone has doubts about that, Scott, but that is a long-standing business, is it not?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\" Another sip. \"Claude, you're still the best authority on wine I know. What's he thinking about?\"\n\n\"Probably many things. His domestic troubles\u2014you Americans don't appreciate them as well as you should. His people are restless, less so now that he's conquered Iraq, but the problem is still there. We feel that he must consolidate before he does anything else. We also feel that the process may turn out to be unsuccessful. We are hopeful, Scott. We are hopeful that the extreme aspects of the regime will moderate over time, perhaps not very much time. It must. It is no longer the eighth century, even in that part of the world.\"\n\nAdler took a few seconds to consider that, then nodded thoughtfully. \"Hope you're right. The guy's always scared me.\"\n\n\"All men are mortal. He is seventy-two, and he works a hard schedule. In any case, we have to check on him, do we not? If he moves, then we will move, together, as we have done in the past. The Saudis and we have talked on this matter also. They are concerned, but not overly so. Our assessment is the same. We counsel you to keep an open mind.\"\n\nClaude might be correct, Adler thought. Daryaei _was_ old, and consolidating the rule over a newly acquired country wasn't exactly a trivial undertaking. More than that, the easiest way to bring a hostile country down, if you have the patience for it, was to be nice to the bastards. A little trade, a few journalists, some CNN, and a couple of G-rated movies, such things could do wonders. If you have the patience. If you had the time. There were plenty of Iranian kids in American universities. That could be the most effective means for America to change the UIR. Problem was, Daryaei had to know that, too. And so here he was, Scott Adler, Secretary of State, a post he'd never expected to approach, much less have, and he was supposed to know what to do next. But he'd read enough diplomatic history to know better.\n\n\"I'll listen to what he has to say, and we're not looking to make any new enemies, Claude. I think you know that.\"\n\n_\"D'accord.\"_ He topped off Adler's glass. \"Unfortunately, you will find none of this in Tehran.\"\n\n\"And two is my limit when I'm working.\"\n\n\"Your flight crew is excellent,\" Claude assured him. \"They fly our own ministers.\"\n\n\"When has your hospitality ever been lacking?\"\n\nFOR CLARK AND Chavez it was Perrier, cheaper to buy here, they both imagined, though the lemons probably were not.\n\n\"So how are things in Washington?\" a French counterpart asked, just killing time, or so it seemed.\n\n\"Pretty strange. You know, it's amazing how quiet the country is. Maybe having a lot of the government turned off helps,\" John said, trying to dodge.\n\n\"And this talk of your President and his adventures?\"\n\n\"Sounds like a lot of movie stuff to me,\" Ding said, with the open face of honesty.\n\n\"Stealing a Russian sub? All by himself? Damn.\" Clark grinned. \"I wonder who made _that_ up?\"\n\n\"But the Russian spy chief,\" their host objected. \"It is he, and he's been on the television.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, I bet we paid him a ton of money to come across, too.\"\n\n\"Probably wants to do a book and make some more.\" Chavez laughed. \"Sumbitch'll get it, too. Hey, _mon ami,_ we're just worker bees, okay?\"\n\nIt didn't fly any better than a lead glider. Clark looked into their interrogator's eyes and they just clicked. The man was DGSE, and he knew Agency when he saw it.\n\n\"Then be careful of the nectar you will find where you are going, my young friend. It is, perhaps, too sweet.\" It was like the start of a card game. The deck was out, and he was shuffling. Probably just one hand, and maybe a friendly one, but the hand had to be played.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"The man you go to meet, he is dangerous. He has the look of one who sees what we do not.\"\n\n\"You've worked the country?\" John asked.\n\n\"I have traveled through the country, yes.\"\n\n\"And?\" This was Chavez.\n\n\"And I have never understood them.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Clark agreed. \"I know what you're saying.\"\n\n\"An interesting man, your President,\" the Frenchman said again, and it was pure curiosity, actually an endearing thing to see in the eyes of an intelligence officer.\n\nJohn looked right in those eyes and decided to thank the man for his warning, one pro to another. \"Yeah, he is. He's one of us,\" Clark assured him.\n\n\"And those entertaining stories?\"\n\n\"I cannot say.\" Delivered with a smile. _Of course they're true. You think reporters have the wit to make such things up?_\n\nBoth men were thinking the same thing, and both men knew it, though neither could speak it aloud: _A shame we cannot get together some evening for a dinner and some stories._ But it just wasn't done.\n\n\"On the way back, I will offer you a drink.\"\n\n\"On the way back, I will have it.\"\n\nDing just listened and watched. The old bastard still had it, and there were still lessons to learn from how he did it. \"Nice to have a friend,\" he said five minutes later on the way to the French aircraft.\n\n\"Better than a friend, a pro. You listen to people like him, Domingo.\"\n\nNOBODY HAD EVER said that governance was easy, even for those who invoked the word of God for nearly everything. The disappointment, even for Daryaei, who'd been governing Iran for nearly twenty years in one capacity or another, was in all the petty administrative rubbish that reached his desk and took from his time. He'd never grasped that it was almost entirely his fault. His rule was fair by his own reckoning, but harsh by most others. Most violations of the rules mandated death for the miscreant, and even small administrative errors on the part of bureaucrats could entail the end of a career\u2014that degree of mercy depended on the magnitude of the error, of course. A bureaucrat who said no to everything, noting that the law was clear on an issue, whether it was or not, rarely got into trouble. One who broadened the scope of the government's power over the most minor of day-to-day activities was merely adding to the scope of Daryaei's rule. Such decisions came easily and caused little in the way of difficulty to the arbiter in question.\n\nBut real life wasn't that simple. Practical questions of commerce, for example, just the way in which the country did business in everything from the sale of melons to the honking of auto horns around a mosque required a certain degree of judgment, because the Holy Koran hadn't anticipated every situation, and neither had the civil law been based upon it. But to liberalize anything was a major undertaking, because any liberalization of any rule might be seen as a theological error\u2014this in a country where apostasy was a capital crime. And so the lowest-level bureaucrats, when stuck with the necessity of saying yes to a request, from time to time, tended to hem and haw and kick things upstairs, which gave a higher-level official the chance to say no, which came just as easily to them after a career of doing so, but with somewhat greater authority, somewhat greater responsibility, and far more to lose in the event that someone higher still disagreed with the rare and erroneous yes decision. All that meant was that such calls kept perking up the pyramid. In between Daryaei and the bureaucracy was a council of religious leaders (he'd been a member under Khomeini), and a titular parliament, and experienced officials, but, disappointingly to the new UIR's religious leader, the principle held, and he found himself dealing with such weighty issues as the business hours for markets, the price of petrol, and the educational syllabus of grade-school females. The sour expression he'd adopted for such trivial issues merely made his lesser colleagues all the more obsequious in their presentation of the pros and cons, which added an additional measure of gravity to the absurd, while they sought favor for being strict (opposing whatever change was on the table) or for being practical (supporting it). Earning Daryaei's favor was the biggest political game in town, and he inevitably found himself as tied down as an insect in amber by small issues, while he needed all his time to deal with the big ones. The amazing part is that he never understood why people couldn't take _some_ initiative, even as he destroyed people on occasion for taking any.\n\nSo it was that he landed in Baghdad this evening to meet with local religious leaders. The issue of the day was which mosque in need of repair would get repaired first. It was known that Mahmoud Haji had one personal favorite for his own prayers, another for its architectural beauty, and yet a third for its great historical significance, while the people of the city loved yet another\u2014and wouldn't it be a better idea, politically, to deal with the maintenance needs of that one first, the better to ensure the political stability of the region? After that came a problem with the right of women to drive cars (the previous Iraqi regime had been overly liberal on that!), which was objectionable, but was it not difficult to take away a right already possessed, and what of women who lacked a man (widows, for example) to drive them, and also lacked the money with which to hire one? Should the government look after their needs? Some\u2014physicians for one example, teachers for another\u2014were important to the local society. On the other hand, since Iran and Iraq were now one, the law had to be the same, and so did one grant a right to Iranian women or deny it to the Iraqi? For these weighty issues and a few others, he had to take an evening flight to Baghdad.\n\nDaryaei, sitting in his private jet, looked over the agenda for the meeting and wanted to scream, but he was too patient a man for that\u2014or so he told himself. He had something important to prepare for, after all. In the morning he'd be meeting with the Jew American foreign minister. His expression, as he looked through the papers, frightened even the flight crew, though Mahmoud Haji didn't notice that, and even if he had, would not have understood why.\n\n_Why couldn't people take_ some _initiative!_\n\nTHE JET WAS a Dassault Falcon 900B, about nine years old, similar in basic type and function to the USAF VC-20B twin-jet. The two-man flight crew was a pair of French air force officers, both rather senior for this \"charter,\" and there was also a pair of cabin attendants, both female and as charming as they could be. At least one, Clark figured, was a DGSE spook. Maybe both. He liked the French, especially their intelligence services. As troublesome an ally as France occasionally was, when the French did business in the black world, they damned well did business as well as any and better than most. Fortunately, in the case at hand, aircraft are noisy and hard to bug. Perhaps that explained why one attendant or the other would come back every fifteen minutes or so to ask if they needed anything.\n\n\"Anything special we need to know?\" John asked, when the latest offer was declined with a smile.\n\n\"Not really,\" Adler replied. \"We want to get a feel for the guy, what he's up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris, says that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound. Mainly I'm delivering the usual message.\"\n\n\"Behave yourself,\" Chavez said, with a smile.\n\nThe Secretary of State smiled. \"Somewhat more diplomatically, but yes. What's your background, Mr. Chavez?\"\n\nClark liked that one: \"You don't want to know where we got him from.\"\n\n\"I just finished my master's thesis,\" the young spook said proudly. \"Get hooded in June.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"George Mason University. Professor Alpher.\"\n\nThat perked Adler's interest. \"Really? She used to work for me. What's the thesis on?\"\n\n\"It's called 'A Study in Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century Europe.'\"\n\n\"The Germans and the Brits?\"\n\nDing nodded. \"Mainly, especially the naval races.\"\n\n\"Your conclusion?\"\n\n\"People couldn't recognize the differences between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking 'future' were thinking 'right now,' instead. Because they confused politics with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue.\" It was remarkable, Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding's voice changed when discussing his school work.\n\n\"And you're an SPO?\" SecState asked, with a certain degree of incredulity.\n\nA very Latino grin reappeared. \"Used to be. Sorry if I don't drag my knuckles on the ground like I'm supposed to, sir.\"\n\n\"So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?\"\n\n\"My fault,\" Clark said. \"They want us to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things.\"\n\n\"Your fault?\" Scott asked.\n\n\"I was their training officer, once upon a time,\" John explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.\n\n\"You're the guys who got Koga out! You're the guys who\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, we were there,\" Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. \"Lots of fun.\"\n\nThe Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he had two field spooks with him\u2014and the younger one's remark about being a knuckle-dragger wasn't that far off. But a master's from George Mason . . .\n\n\"You're also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work.\" He'd wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now he knew.\n\n\"But nobody listened,\" Chavez pointed out. It may have been a deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and statecraft hadn't changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew no one good.\n\n\"I'll listen,\" Adler promised. \"Let me know what your little stroll turns up, okay?\"\n\n\"Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this,\" John observed, with a raised eyebrow.\n\nAdler turned and waved to one of the attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook. She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant.\n\n\"Yes, Monsieur Minister?\"\n\n\"How long until we land?\"\n\n\"Four hours.\"\n\n\"Okay, then, could we have a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?\"\n\n\"Certainly.\" She hustled the twelve feet to get them.\n\n\"Not supposed to drink on duty, sir,\" Chavez said.\n\n\"You're off-duty until we land,\" Adler told them. \"And I like to play cards before I go into one of these sessions. Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a friendly game?\"\n\n\"Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist,\" John replied. Now they'd all get a read on the mission. \"A little five-card stud, maybe?\"\n\nEVERYBODY KNEW WHERE the line was. No official communiques had been exchanged, at least not between Beijing and Taipei, but it was known and understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous, as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more easily disciplined\u2014the former were too big for that.\n\nAmerica now had four submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on\u2014under\u2014the invisible line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS _Port Royal_ , along with destroyers _The Sullivans_ and _Chandler_. All were SAM ships, equipped with a total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier from air attack, but \"their\" carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines replaced. _Port Royal_ and _The Sullivans_ \u2014named for a family of sailors wiped out on the same ship in 1942\u2014were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars, which were now surveilling air activity while the submarines were handling the rest. _Chandler_ had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to interfere with anyone's exercises as to let people know that The Law was around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things would not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren't in anyone's way, were they? That they were actually part of someone _else's_ plan was not immediately apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone.\n\nIt was dawn in the air, if not yet on the surface, when a flight of four PRC fighters came off the mainland, heading east, followed five minutes later by four more. These were duly tracked by the American ships at the extreme range of their billboard radars. Routine track numbers were assigned, and the computer system followed their progress to the satisfaction of the officers and men in the CIC of _Port Royal._ Until they didn't turn. Then a lieutenant lifted a phone and pushed a button.\n\n\"Yes?\" a groggy voice answered.\n\n\"Captain, Combat, we have a flight of PRC aircraft, probably fighters, about to cross the line, bearing two-one-zero, altitude fifteen thousand, course zero-niner-zero, speed five hundred. There's a flight of four more a few minutes behind.\"\n\n\"On the way.\" The captain, partially dressed, arrived in the combat information center two minutes later, not in time to see the PRC fighters break the rules, but in time to hear a petty officer report something:\n\n\"New track, four or more fighters coming west.\"\n\nFor the purposes of convenience, the computer had been told to assign \"enemy\" designator-graphics to the mainland fighters and \"friendly\" symbols to the Taiwanese. (There were also a few American aircraft around from time to time, but these were electronic-intelligence gatherers and well out of harm's way.) At this point, there were two immediately converging flights of four each, about thirty miles apart, but with a closure speed of over a thousand miles per hour. The radar was also tracking six commercial airliners, all on the east side of the line, minding their own business as they skirted the agreed-upon \"exercise\" arcas.\n\n\"Raid Six is turning,\" a sailor reported next. This was the first outbound flight off the mainland, and as the captain watched, the velocity vector turned southward, while the outbound flight off Taiwan bored in on them.\n\n\"Illuminators coming on,\" the chief at the ESM console said. \"The ROCs are lighting up Raid Six. Their radars seem to be in tracking mode.\"\n\n\"Maybe that's why they turned,\" the captain thought.\n\n\"Maybe they got lost?\" the CIC officer wondered.\n\n\"Still dark out. Maybe they just went too far.\" They didn't know what sort of navigation gear the ChiCom fighters might have had, and driving a single-seat aircraft over the sea at night was not a precise business.\n\n\"More airborne radars coming on, easterly direction, probably Raid Seven,\" the ESM chief said. This was the second flight off the mainland.\n\n\"Any electronic activity from Raid Six?\" the CIC officer asked.\n\n\"Negative, sir.\" These fighters continued their turn and were now heading west, back for the line, with the ROC F-16s in pursuit. It was at this point that things changed.\n\n\"Raid Seven is turning, course now zero-nine-seven.\"\n\n\"That puts them on the -16s . . . and they're illuminating . . .,\" the lieutenant observed, with the first hint of worry in his voice. \"Raid Seven is lighting up the F-16's, radars in tracking mode.\"\n\nThe Republic of China F-16s then turned also. They'd been getting a lot of work. The newer, American-made fighters and their elite pilots comprised only about a third of their fighter force, and were drawing the duty of covering and responding to the flight exercises of their mainland cousins. Leaving Raid Six to return, they necessarily got more interested in the trailing flight, still heading east. The closure rate was still a thousand miles per hour, and both sides had their missile-targeting radars up and running, aimed at each other. That was internationally recognized as an unfriendly act, and one to be avoided for the simple reason that it was the aerial equivalent of aiming a rifle at someone's head.\n\n\"Uh-oh,\" the petty officer on the ESM board said. \"Sir, Raid Seven, their radars just shifted to tracking mode.\" Instead of just searching for targets, the airborne systems were now operating in the manner used to guide air-to-air missiles. What had been merely unfriendly a few seconds ago now became overtly hostile.\n\nThe F-16s broke into two pairs\u2014elements\u2014and began maneuvering freely. The outbound PRC fighters did the same. The original flight of four, Raid Six, was now across the line, heading west on what appeared to be a direct line to their airfield.\n\n\"Oh, I think I know what's going on here, sir, look how\u2014\"\n\nA very small pip appeared on the screen, leaving one of the ROC F-16s\u2014\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" a sailor said. \"We have a missile in the air \"\n\n\"Make that two,\" his chief said.\n\nAloft, a pair of American-made AIM-120 missiles were now taking separate paths to separate targets.\n\n\"They thought it was an attack. Oh, Christ,\" the captain said, turning to his communications. \"Get me CINCPAC right now!\"\n\nIt didn't take long. One of the mainland fighters turned into a puff on the screen. Warned, the other jinked hard and dodged its missile at the last second.\n\nThen it turned back. The southern PRC fighter element maneuvered also, and Raid Six turned radically to the north, its illumination radars now on. Ten seconds later, six more missiles were airborne and tracking targets.\n\n\"We got a battle on our hands!\" the chief of the watch said. The captain lifted the phone:\n\n\"Bridge, combat, general quarters, general quarters!\" Then he grabbed the TBS microphone, getting the captains of his two companion ships, both ten miles away, east and west of his cruiser as the alarm gong started sounding on USS _Port Royal._\n\n\"I have it,\" _The Sullivans_ reported. That destroyer was outboard.\n\n\"Me, too,\" _Chandler_ chimed in. That one was closer to the island nation, but getting the radar picture from the Aegis ships via data link.\n\n\"That's a kill!\" Another ChiCom fighter took its hit and headed down to the still-dark surface. Five seconds later, an F-16 died. More crewmen arrived in CIC, taking their battle stations.\n\n\"Captain, Raid Six was just trying to simulate\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, I see that now, but we have a train wreck on our hands.\"\n\nAnd then, predictably, a missile went wild. These were so small as to be hard for the Aegis radar to track, but a technician boosted power, throwing six million watts of RF energy into the \"exercise\" area, and the picture became more clear.\n\n\"Oh, shit!\" a chief said, pointing to the main tactical display. \"Captain, look there!\"\n\nIt was instantly obvious. Someone had loosed what was probably an infra-red-seeking missile, and the hottest target in town was an Air China Airbus 310, with two huge General Electric CF6 turbofans\u2014the same basic engines as those which powered all three of the American warships\u2014which looked like the sun to its single red eye.\n\n\"Chief Albertson, get him on guard!\" the skipper shouted.\n\n\"Air China Six-Six-Six, this is a U.S. Navy warship, you have a missile inbound on you from the northwest, I say again, maneuver immediately, you have a missile tracking you from the northwest!\"\n\n\"What, what?\" But the plane started moving, turning left and descending. Not that it mattered.\n\nThe plotted velocity vector of the missile never wavered from the target. There was a hope that it would burn out and fall short, but the missile was going at mach 3, and the Air China flight was already slowed down, commencing its approach to its home field. When the pilot put his nose down, he just made things easier for the missile.\n\n\"It's a big airplane,\" the captain said.\n\n\"Only two engines, sir,\" the weapons officer pointed out.\n\n\"That's a hit,\" a radarman said.\n\n\"Get her down, pal, get her down. Oh, fuck,\" the captain breathed, wanting to turn away. On the display, the 310's blip tripled in size and flashed the emergency code.\n\n\"He's calling Mayday, sir,\" a radioman said. \"Air China flight triple-six is calling Mayday . . . engine and wing damage . . . possible fire aboard.\"\n\n\"Only about fifty miles out,\" a chief said. \"He's vectoring for a direct approach into Taipei.\"\n\n\"Captain, all stations report manned and ready. Condition One is set throughout the ship,\" the IC man of the watch told the skipper.\n\n\"Very well.\" His eyes were locked on the center of the three radar displays. The fighter engagement, he saw, had ended as quickly as it had started, with three fighters splashed, another possibly damaged, and both sides withdrawing to lick their wounds and figure out what the hell had happened. On the Taiwanese side, another flight of fighters was up and forming just off their coast.\n\n\"Captain!\" It was the ESM console. \"Looks like every radar on every ship just lit off. Sources all over the place, classifying them now.\"\n\nBut that didn't matter, the captain knew. What mattered now was that Airbus 310 was slowing and descending, according to his display.\n\n\"CINCPAC Operations, sir.\" The radio chief pointed.\n\n\"This is _Port Royal,_ \" the captain said, lifting the phonetype receiver for the satellite radio link. \"We just had a little air battle here\u2014and a missile went wild and it appears that it hit an airliner inbound from Hong Kong to Taipei. The aircraft is still in the air, but looks to be in trouble. We have two ChiCom MiGs and one ROC F-16 splashed, maybe one more -16 damaged.\"\n\n\"Who started it?\" the watch officer asked.\n\n\"We think the ROC pilots fired the first missile. It could have been a screwup.\" He explained on for a few seconds. \"I'll upload our radar take as quick as I can.\"\n\n\"Very well. Thank you, Captain. I'll pass that along to the boss. Please keep us informed.\"\n\n\"Will do.\" The skipper killed the radio link and turned to the IC man of the watch. \"Let's get a tape of the battle set up for uplinking to Pearl.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\"\n\nAir China 666 was still heading toward the coast, but the radar track showed the aircraft snaking and yawing around its straight-line course into Taipei. The ELINT team on _Chandler_ was now listening in on the radio circuits. English is the language of international aviation, and the pilot in command of the wounded airliner was speaking quickly and clearly, calling ahead for emergency procedures, while he and his co-pilot struggled with their wounded airliner. Only they, really, knew the magnitude of the problem. Everyone else was just a spectator, rooting and praying that he'd keep it together for another fifteen minutes.\n\nTHIS ONE WENT up the line fast. The communications nexus was Admiral David Seaton's office on the hilltop overlooking Pearl Harbor. The senior communications watch officer changed buttons on his phone to call the theater commander-in-chief, who immediately told him to shoot a CRITIC-level flash message to Washington. Seaton next ordered an alert message to the seven American warships in the area\u2014mainly the submarines\u2014to perk their ears up. After that, a message went off to the Americans who were \"observing\" the exercise in various Republic of China military command posts\u2014these would take time to get delivered. There was still no American embassy in Taipei, and therefore no attaches or CIA personnel to hustle down to the airport to see if the airliner made it in safely or not. At that point, there was nothing to do but wait, in anticipation of the questions that would start arriving from Washington, and which as yet he was in no real position to answer.\n\n\"YES?\" RYAN SAID, lifting the phone.\n\n\"Dr. Goodley for you, sir.\"\n\n\"Okay, put him on.\" Pause. \"Ben, what is it?\"\n\n\"Trouble off Taiwan, Mr. President; could be a bad one.\" The National Security Advisor explained on, telling what he knew. It didn't take long.\n\nIt was, on the whole, an impressive exercise in communications. The Airbus was still in the air, and the President of the United States knew that there was a problem\u2014and nothing else.\n\n\"Okay, keep me posted.\" Ryan looked down at the desk he was about to leave. \"Oh, shit.\" It was such a pleasure, the power of the presidency. Now he had virtually instant knowledge of something he could do nothing about. Were there Americans on the aircraft? What did it all mean? What was happening?\n\nIT COULD HAVE been worse. Daryaei got back on the aircraft after having been in Baghdad for less than four hours, having dealt with the problems even more tersely than usual, and taking some satisfaction from the fear he'd struck into a few hearts for having bothered him with such trivial matters. His sour stomach contributed to an even more sour expression as he boarded and found his seat, and waved to the attendant to tell the flight crew to get moving\u2014the sort of wrist-snapping gesture that looked like _off with their heads_ to so many. Thirty seconds later, the stairs were up and the engines turning.\n\n\"WHERE DID YOU learn this game?\" Adler asked.\n\n\"In the Navy, Mr. Secretary,\" Clark answered, collecting the pot. He was ten dollars up now, and it wasn't the money. It was the principle of the thing. He'd just bluffed the Secretary of State out of two bucks. Miller Time.\n\n\"I thought sailors were crummy gamblers.\"\n\n\"That's what some people say.\" Clark smiled, as he piled the quarters up.\n\n\"Watch his hands,\" Chavez advised.\n\n\"I _am_ watching his hands.\" The attendant came aft and poured out the rest of the wine. Not even two full glasses for the men, just enough to pass the time. \"Excuse me, how much longer?\"\n\n\"Less than an hour, Monsieur Minister.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Adler smiled at her as she moved back forward.\n\n\"King bets, Mr. Secretary,\" Clark told him.\n\nChavez checked his hole card. Pair of fives. Nice start. He tossed a quarter into the center of the table after Adler's.\n\nTHE EUROPEAN-MADE Airbus 310 had lost its right-side engine to the missile, but that wasn't all. The heat-seeker had come in from the right rear and impacted on the side of the big GE turbofan, with fragments from the explosion ripping into the outboard wing panels. Some of these sliced into a fuel cell\u2014fortunately almost empty\u2014which trailed some burning fuel, panicking those who could look out their windows and see. But that wasn't the frightening part. Fire behind the aircraft couldn't hurt anyone, and the vented fuel tank didn't explode, as it might have done had it been hit as little as ten minutes earlier. The really bad news was the damage to the aircraft's control surfaces.\n\nForward, the two-man flight crew was as experienced as that of any international airline. The Airbus could fly quite well, thank you, on one engine, and the left-side engine was undamaged, and now turning at full power while the co-pilot shut down the right side of the aircraft and punched the manual controls on the elaborate fire-suppression systems. In seconds, the fire-warning alarms went silent and the co-pilot started breathing again.\n\n\"Elevator damage,\" the pilot reported next, working the controls and finding that the Airbus wasn't responding as it should.\n\nBut the problem wasn't with the flight crew, either. The Airbus actually flew via computer software, a huge executive program that took inputs directly from the airframe as well as from the control movements of the pilots, analyzed them, and then told the control surfaces what to do next. Battle damage was not something the software engineers had anticipated in the design of the aircraft. The program noted the traumatic loss of the engine and decided it was an engine explosion, which it had been taught to think about. The onboard computers evaluated the damage to the aircraft, what control surfaces worked and how well, and adjusted itself to the situation.\n\n\"Twenty miles,\" the co-pilot reported, as the Airbus settled in on its direct-penetration vector. The pilot adjusted his throttle, and the computers\u2014the aircraft actually had seven of them\u2014decided this was all right, and lowered engine power. The aircraft, having burned off most of its fuel, was light. They had all the engine power they needed. The altitude was low enough that depressurization was not an issue. They could steer. They just might make this, they decided. A \"helpful\" fighter aircraft pulled alongside to look over their damage and tried to call them on the guard frequency, only to be told to keep out of the way, in very irate Mandarin.\n\nThe fighter could see skin peeling off the Airbus, and tried to report that, only to be rebuffed. His F-5E backed off to observe, talking to his base all the while.\n\n\"Ten miles.\" Speed was below two hundred knots now, and they tried to lower flaps and slats, but the ones on the right side didn't deploy properly, and the computers, sensing this, didn't deploy them on the left side, either. The landing would have to be overly fast. Both pilots frowned, cursed, and got on with it.\n\n\"Gear,\" the pilot ordered. The co-pilot flipped the levers, and the wheels went down\u2014and locked in place, which was worth a sigh of relief to both drivers. They couldn't tell that both tires on the right side were damaged.\n\nThey had the field in view now, and both could see the flashing lights of emergency equipment as they crossed the perimeter fencing, and the Airbus settled. Normal approach speed was about 135 knots. They were coming in at 195. The pilot knew he'd need every available foot of space, and touched down within two hundred meters of the near edge.\n\nThe Airbus hit hard, and started rolling, but not for long. The damaged right-side tires lasted about three seconds before they both lost pressure, and one second after that, the metal strut started digging a furrow in the concrete. Both men and computers tried to maintain a straight-line course for the aircraft, but it didn't work. The 310 yawed to the right. The left-side gear snapped with a cannon-shot report, and the twin-jet bellied out. For a second, it appeared that it might pinwheel onto the grass, but then a wingtip caught, and the plane started turning over. The fuselage broke into three uneven sections. There was a gout of flame when the left wing separated\u2014mercifully, the forward bit of fuselage shot clear, as did the after section, but the middle section stopped almost cold in the middle of the burning jet fuel, and all the efforts of the racing firefighters couldn't change that. It would later be determined that the 127 people killed quickly asphyxiated. Another 104 escaped with varying degrees of injury, including the flight crew. The TV footage would be uplinked within the hour, and a full-blown international incident was now world news.\n\nCLARK FELT A slight chill as his aircraft touched down. Looking out the window, he imagined a certain familiarity, but admitted it was probably imaginary, and besides, all international airports looked pretty much alike in the dark. Forward, the French aviators followed directions, taxiing to the air force terminal for security, instructed to follow another business-type jet which had landed a minute ahead of them.\n\n\"Well, we're here,\" Ding said, with a yawn. He had two watches on, one for local time and one for Washington, and from them he tried to decide what time his body thought it was. Then he looked outside with all the curiosity of a tourist, and suffered the usual disappointment. It might as easily have been Denver from what he could see.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" the brunette attendant said. \"They've instructed us to remain in the aircraft while another is serviced first.\"\n\n\"What's a few more minutes?\" Secretary Adler thought, as tired as the rest of them.\n\nChavez looked out the window. \"There, he must have gotten in ahead of us.\"\n\n\"Kill the cabin lights, will you?\" Clark asked. Then he pointed at his partner.\n\n\"Why\u2014\" Clark cut the SecState off with a gesture. The attendant did as she was told. Ding took his cue and pulled the camera out of his bag.\n\n\"What gives?\" Adler asked more quietly, as the lights went off.\n\n\"There's a G right in front of us,\" John replied, taking his own look. \"Not many of them around, and he's going to a secure terminal. Let's see if we can tell who it is, okay?\"\n\nSpooks had to be spooks, Adler knew. He didn't object. Diplomats gathered information, too, and knowing who had access to such expensive official transport could tell them something about who really rated in the UIR government. In a few seconds, just as their own wheels were chocked, a parade of cars rolled up to the Gulfstream fifty meters away from them on the Iranian\u2014UIR-ian\u2014air force ramp.\n\n\"Somebody important,\" Ding said.\n\n\"How you loaded?\"\n\n\"ASA 1200, Mr. C.,\" Chavez replied, selecting the telephoto setting. The whole aircraft fit into the frame. He couldn't zoom any closer. He started shooting as the steps came down.\n\n\"Oh,\" Adler said first. \"Well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise.\"\n\n\"Daryaei, isn't it?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"That's our friend,\" SecState confirmed.\n\nHearing this, Chavez got off ten rapid frames, showing the man getting off, to be greeted by some colleagues, who embraced him like a long-lost uncle, then guided him into the car. The vehicles pulled off. Chavez fired off one more, then put the camera back in his bag. They waited another five minutes before they were allowed to de-plane.\n\n\"Do I want to know what time it is?\" Adler asked, heading for the door.\n\n\"Probably not,\" Clark decided. \"I guess we'll get a few hours of rack time before the meeting.\"\n\nAt the bottom of the steps was the French ambassador, with one obvious security guard, and ten more locals. They would travel to the French embassy in two cars, with two Iranian vehicles leading and two more trailing the semi-official procession. Adler went with the ambassador in the first one. Clark and Chavez bundled into the second. They had a driver and another man in the front seat. Both would have to be spooks.\n\n\"Welcome to Tehran, my friends,\" the guy riding shotgun said.\n\n_\"Merci,\"_ Ding replied, with a yawn.\n\n\"Sorry to get you up so early,\" Clark added. This one would probably be the station chief. The people he and Ding had sat with at Paris would have called ahead to let him know that they were probably not State Department security types.\n\nThe Frenchman confirmed it. \"Not your first time, I am told.\"\n\n\"How long have you been here?\" John asked.\n\n\"Two years. The car is safe,\" he added, meaning that it probably wasn't bugged.\n\n\"We have a message for you from Washington,\" the ambassador told Adler in the leading car. Then he relayed what he knew about the Airbus incident at Taipei. \"You will be busy when you return home, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"Oh, Christ!\" the Secretary observed. \"Just what we need. Any reaction yet?\"\n\n\"Nothing I know of. But that will change within hours. You are scheduled to see the Ayatollah Daryaei at ten-thirty, so you have time for some sleep. Your flight back to Paris will leave just after lunch. We will give you all the assistance you request.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.\" Adler was too tired to say much else.\n\n\"Any idea what happened?\" Chavez asked in the trail car.\n\n\"We have only what your government has told us to pass along. Evidently there was a brief clash over the Strait of Taiwan, and a missile hit an unintended target.\"\n\n\"Casualties?\" Clark said next.\n\n\"Unknown at this time,\" the local DGSE station chief said.\n\n\"Kinda hard to hit an airliner without killing somebody.\" Ding closed his eyes in anticipation of a soft bed at the embassy.\n\nTHE SAME NEWS was given to Daryaei at exactly the same time. He surprised his fellow cleric by taking it without a visible reaction. Mahmoud Haji had long since decided that people who didn't know anything couldn't interfere with much.\n\nFRENCH HOSPITALITY WAS not disgraced even by its transplantation to a place which could hardly have been more different from the City of Light. Inside the compound, three uniformed soldiers collected the Americans' bags, while another man in some sort of livery conducted them to their quarters. The beds were turned down, and there was ice water on the nightstands. Chavez checked his watches again, groaned, and collapsed into the bed. For Clark, sleep came harder. The last time he'd looked at an embassy compound in this city . . . _what was it?_ he asked himself. What was bothering him so much about this?\n\nADMIRAL JACKSON DID the brief, complete with videotape.\n\n\"This is the upload from _Port Royal_. We have a similar tape from _The Sullivans,_ no real differences, so we'll just use the one,\" he told those in the Sit Room. He had a wooden pointer and started moving it around the large-screen TV display.\n\n\"This is a flight of four fighters, probably Jianjiji Hongzhaji-7s\u2014we call it the B-7 for the obvious reason. Two engines and two seats, performance and capabilities like an old F-4 Phantom. The flight departs the mainland, and comes out a little too far. There's a no-man's-land right about here that neither side had violated until today. Here's another flight, probably the same aircraft and\u2014\"\n\n\"You're not sure?\" Ben Goodley asked.\n\n\"We've ID'd the aircraft from their avionics, their radar emissions. A radar can't directly identify an airplane by type,\" Robby explained. \"You have to deduce types by what they do, or from the electronic signatures of their equipment, okay? Anyway, the lead group is coming east, and crosses the invisible line here.\" The pointer moved. \"Here's a flight of four Taiwanese F-16s with all the bells and whistles. They see the lead PRC group come too far and vector in on them. Then the lead group turns back west. Soon thereafter, right about . . . now, the trailing group lights off their radars, but instead of tracking their own lead group, they're hitting the F-16s.\"\n\n\"What are you saying, Rob?\" the President asked.\n\n\"What this looks like, the lead group was simulating a dawn attack on the mainland, and the trail group was supposed to defend against the simulated attack. On the surface, it looks like a fairly standard training exercise. The trail group, however, lit up the wrong people, and when they shifted radar modes to the attack setting, one of the Taiwanese pilots must have thought he was under attack and so he pickled off a missile. Then his wingman did the same. Zap! Right here, a B-7 eats a Slammer, but this one evades it\u2014damned lucky for him\u2014and he gets off a missile of his own. Then everybody starts shooting. This F-16 jinks around one but walks right into another\u2014see here, the pilot ejects, and we think he survived. But this element launches four missiles, and one of those acquires this airliner. Must have just barely made it all the way. We've checked the range, and it's actually two miles over what we thought the missile could do. By the time it caught up and hit, the fighters have all turned back, the PRC guys because they were probably bingo-fuel, and the ROC guys because they were Winchester\u2014out of missiles. All in all, it was a fairly sloppy engagement on both sides.\"\n\n\"You're saying it was a goof?\" This came from Tony Bretano.\n\n\"It certainly looks that way, except for one thing\u2014\"\n\n\"Why carry live missiles on an exercise?\" Ryan said.\n\n\"Close, Mr. President. The ROC pilots, sure, they're carrying white ones because they see the whole PRC exercise as a threat\u2014\"\n\n\"White ones?\" It was Bretano again.\n\n\"Excuse me, Mr. Secretary. White missiles are war shots. Exercise missiles are usually painted blue. The PRC guys, though, why carry heat-seekers? In situations like this, we usually don't, because you can't turn them off\u2014once they go they're entirely on their own, fire-and-forget, we call it. One other thing. All the birds fired at the F-16s were radar-homers. This one, the one that went for the airliner, seems to be the _only_ heat-seeker that was launched. I don't much like the smell of that.\"\n\n\"Deliberate act?\" Jack asked quietly.\n\n\"That is a possibility, Mr. President. The whole show looks just like a screwup, classic case. A couple fighter jocks get really hyped on something, you have an instant fur-ball, some people get killed, and we'll never be able to prove otherwise, but if you look at this two-plane element, I think they were aiming for the airliner all along\u2014unless they took it for a ROC fighter, and I don't buy that\u2014\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"It was heading the wrong way all the time,\" Admiral Jackson answered.\n\n\"Buck fever,\" Secretary Bretano offered.\n\n\"Why not engage people heading right for you instead of somebody heading away? Mr. Secretary, I'm a fighter pilot. I don't buy it. If I'm in an unexpected combat situation, first thing I do is identify the threats to me and shoot 'em right in the lips.\"\n\n\"How many deaths?\" Jack asked bleakly.\n\nBen Goodley handled that one: \"News reports say over a hundred. There are survivors, but we don't have any kind of count yet. And we should expect that there were some Americans aboard. A lot of business goes on between Hong Kong and Taiwan.\"\n\n\"Options?\"\n\n\"Before we do anything, Mr. President, we need to know if any of our people are involved. We only have one carrier anywhere close, the _Eisenhower_ battle group on the way to Australia for SOUTHERN CUP. But it's a good bet that this won't exactly help things out between Beijing and Taipei.\"\n\n\"We'll need some kind of press release,\" Arnie told the President.\n\n\"We need to know if we lost any citizens first,\" Ryan said. \"If we did . . . well, what do we do, demand an explanation?\"\n\n\"They'll say it was a mistake,\" Jackson repeated. \"They might even blame the Taiwanese for shooting first and starting it, then disclaim all responsibility.\"\n\n\"But you don't buy it, Robby?\"\n\n\"No, Jack\u2014excuse me, no, Mr. President, I don't think so. I want to go over the tapes with a few people, to back-check me some. Maybe I'm wrong . . . but I don't think so. Fighter pilots are fighter pilots. The only reason to shoot the guy who's running away instead of the guy who's closing in is because you want to.\"\n\n\"Move the _Ike_ group north?\" Bretano wondered.\n\n\"Get me contingency plans to do just that,\" the President said.\n\n\"That leaves the Indian Ocean uncovered, sir,\" Jackson pointed out. _\"Carl Vinson_ is most of the way home to Norfolk now. _John Stennis_ and _Enterprise_ are still in the yard at Pearl, and we do not have a deployable carrier in the Pacific. We're out of carriers on that whole half of the world, and we'll need a month at best to move another one in from LantFleet.\"\n\nRyan turned to Ed Foley. \"What are the chances this could blow all the way up?\"\n\n\"Taiwan's going to be pretty unhappy about this. We have shots fired and people dead. National-flag airline clobbered. Countries tend to be protective of those,\" the DCI observed. \"It's possible.\"\n\n\"Intentions?\" Goodley asked the DCI.\n\n\"If Admiral Jackson is correct\u2014I'm not ready to buy into that yet, by the way,\" Ed Foley added for Robby's benefit. He got an understanding nod. \"Then we have something going on, but what it is, I don't know. Better for everybody if this was an accident. I can't say I like the idea of pulling the carrier out of the Indian Ocean with the developing situation in the Persian Gulf.\"\n\n\"What's the worst thing that can happen between the PRC and Taiwan?\" Bretano asked, annoyed that he had to ask the question at all. He was still too new in his job to be as effective as his President needed.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, the People's Republic has nuclear-tipped missiles, enough to turn Formosa into a cinder, but we have reason to believe that the Republic of China has them too and\u2014\"\n\n\"Roughly twenty,\" Foley interrupted. \"And those F-16s can one-way a couple all the way to Beijing if they want. They can't destroy the People's Republic, but twenty thermonuclear weapons will knock their economy back at least ten years, maybe twenty. The PRC does not want that to happen. They're not crazy, Admiral. Keep it conventional, okay?\"\n\n\"Very well, sir. The PRC does _not_ have the ability to invade Taiwan. They lack the necessary amphibious assets to move large numbers of troops for a forced-entry assault. So what happens if things blow up anyway? Most likely scenario is a nasty air and sea battle, but one that leads to no resolution, since neither side can finish off the other. That also means a shooting war astride one of the world's most important trade routes, with all sorts of adverse diplomatic consequences for all the players. I can't see the purpose in doing this intentionally. Just too destructive to be deliberate policy . . . I think.\" He shrugged. It didn't make sense, but neither did a deliberate attack on a harmless airliner\u2014and he'd just told his audience that _had_ probably been deliberate.\n\n\"And we have large trade relationships with both,\" the President noted. \"We want to prevent that, don't we? I'm afraid it's looking like we have to move that carrier, Robby. Let's get some options put together, and let's _try_ to figure out what the hell the PRC might be up to.\"\n\nCLARK WOKE UP first, feeling quite miserable. But that wasn't allowed under the circumstances. Ten minutes later, he was shaved, dressed, and heading out the door, leaving Chavez in bed. Ding didn't speak the language anyway.\n\n\"Morning walk?\" It was the guy who'd brought them in from the airport.\n\n\"I could use a stretch,\" John admitted. \"And you are?\"\n\n\"Marcel Lefevre.\"\n\n\"Station chief?\" John asked bluntly.\n\n\"Actually, I am the commercial attach\u00e9,\" the Frenchman replied\u2014meaning, _yes._ \"You mind if I come along?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" Clark replied, surprising his companion as they headed for the door. \"Just wanted to take a walk. Any markets around here?\"\n\n\"Yes, I will show you.\"\n\nTen minutes later, they were in a street of commerce. Two Iranian shadows were fifty feet behind them, and obvious about it, though they did nothing more than to observe.\n\nThe sounds brought it all back. Clark's Farsi was not all that impressive, especially since it was over fifteen years since he'd practiced it, but though his speech might not have been terribly good, his hearing clicked back in, soon catching the chatter and bargaining as the two Westerners passed stalls on both sides of the street.\n\n\"How are food prices?\"\n\n\"Fairly high,\" Lefevre answered. \"Especially with all the supplies they shipped to Iraq. A few grumbles about that.\"\n\nThere was something lacking, John saw, after a few minutes of contemplation. Passing half a block of food stalls, they were now in another area\u2014gold, always a popular trade item in this part of the world. People were buying and selling. But there wasn't the enthusiasm he remembered from before. He looked at the stalls as he passed, trying to figure what it was.\n\n\"Something for your wife?\" Lefevre asked.\n\nClark tried an unconvincing smile. \"Oh, you never know. Anniversary coming up soon.\" He stopped to look at a necklace.\n\n\"Where are you from?\" the dealer asked.\n\n\"America,\" John replied, also in English. The man had picked out his nationality at once, probably from his clothes, and taken the chance to speak in that language.\n\n\"We do not see many Americans here.\"\n\n\"Too bad. In my younger days I traveled here quite a lot.\" It was actually rather a nice necklace, and on checking the price tag and doing the mental calculation, the cost was reasonable as hell. And he _did_ have an anniversary approaching.\n\n\"Perhaps someday that will change,\" the goldsmith said.\n\n\"There are many differences between my country and yours,\" John observed sadly. Yes, he _could_ afford it, and as usual he had plenty of cash with him. One nice thing about American currency was that it was damned near universally accepted.\n\n\"Things change,\" the man said next.\n\n\"Things have changed,\" John agreed. He looked at a slightly more expensive necklace. It wasn't any problem handling them. One thing about Islamic countries, they had a way of discouraging thieves. \"There's so little smiling here, and this is a market street.\"\n\n\"You have two men following you.\"\n\n\"Really? Well, I'm not breaking any laws, am I?\" Clark asked with some obvious concern.\n\n\"No, you are not.\" But the man was nervous.\n\n\"This one,\" John said, handing it to the goldsmith.\n\n\"How will you pay?\"\n\n\"American dollars, is that okay?\"\n\n\"Yes, and the price is nine hundred of your dollars.\"\n\nIt required all of his control not to show surprise. Even in a New York wholesale shop, this necklace would have been triple that, and while he wasn't quite prepared to spend that much, haggling was part of the fun of shopping in this part of the world. He'd figured that he could talk the guy down to maybe fifteen hundred, still a considerable bargain. Had he heard the man properly?\n\n\"Nine hundred?\"\n\nAn emphatic finger pointed right at his heart. \"Eight hundred, not a dollar less\u2014you wish to ruin me?\" he added loudly.\n\n\"You bargain hard.\" Clark adopted a defensive posture for the benefit of the watchers, who were coming closer.\n\n\"You are an unbeliever! You expect charity? This is a fine necklace, and I hope you will give it to your honorable wife and not a lesser, debauched woman!\"\n\nClark figured he'd put the man in enough danger. He pulled out his wallet and counted off the bills, handing them over.\n\n\"You pay me too much, I am not a thief!\" The goldsmith handed one back.\n\n_Seven hundred dollars for_ this?\n\n\"Excuse me, I meant no insult,\" John said, pocketing the necklace, which the man not quite tossed to him without a case.\n\n\"We are not all barbarians,\" the dealer said quietly, abruptly turning his back a split-second later. Clark and Lefevre walked to the end of the street and headed to the right. They moved quickly, forcing their tail to follow.\n\n\"What the hell?\" the CIA officer observed. He hadn't expected anything like that to happen.\n\n\"Yes. The enthusiasm for the regime has abated somewhat. What you saw is representative. That was nicely done, Monsieur Clark. How long in the Agency?\"\n\n\"Long enough that I don't like being surprised that much. I believe your word is _merde_. \"\n\n\"So, is it for your wife?\"\n\nJohn nodded. \"Yeah. Will he get into any trouble?\"\n\n\"Unlikely,\" Lefevre said. \"He may have lost money on the exchange, Clark. An interesting gesture, was it not?\"\n\n\"Let's get back. I have a Cabinet secretary to wake up.\" They were back in fifteen minutes. John went right to his room.\n\n\"What's the weather like outside, Mr. C.?\" Clark reached into his pocket and tossed something across the room. Chavez caught it. \"Heavy.\"\n\n\"What do you suppose it costs, Domingo?\"\n\n\"Looks like twenty-one carat, feels like it too.... coupla grand, easy.\"\n\n\"Would you believe seven hundred?\"\n\n\"You related to the guy, John?\" Chavez asked with a laugh. The laugh stopped. \"I thought they didn't like us here?\"\n\n\"Things change,\" John said quietly, quoting the goldsmith.\n\n\"HOW BAD WAS it?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"One hundred four survivors, it says, some pretty beat up, ninety confirmed dead, about thirty still unaccounted for, meaning they're dead, too, just haven't identified the body parts yet,\" Jack said, reading the dispatch just brought to the bedroom door by Agent Raman. \"Sixteen Americans in the survivor category. Five dead. Nine unknown and presumed dead. Christ, there were forty PRC citizens aboard.\" He shook his head.\n\n\"How come\u2014if they don't get along\u2014\"\n\n\"Why do they do so much business? They do, and that's a fact, honey. They spit and snarl at each other like alley cats, but they need each other, too.\"\n\n\"What will we do?\" his wife asked.\n\n\"I don't know yet. We're saving the press release for tomorrow morning, when we have more information. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on a night like this?\" the President of the United States asked. \"We have fourteen dead Americans halfway around the world from here. I was supposed to protect them, wasn't I? I'm not supposed to let people kill our citizens.\"\n\n\"People die every day, Jack,\" the First Lady pointed out.\n\n\"Not from air-to-air missiles.\" Ryan put the dispatch on his night table and switched off the light, wondering when sleep would come, wondering how the meeting would go in Tehran.\n\nIT STARTED WITH handshakes. A foreign ministry official met them outside the building. The French ambassador handled introductions, and everyone swiftly moved inside, the better to avoid the coverage of a TV camera, though none appeared to be in evidence on the street. Clark and Chavez played their parts, standing close to their principal, but not too close, looking around nervously, as they were supposed to do.\n\nSecretary Adler followed the official, with everyone else in trail. The French ambassador stopped in the anteroom with the others, as Adler and his guide went all the way into the rather modest official office of the UIR's spiritual leader.\n\n\"I welcome you in peace,\" Daryaei said, rising from his chair to greet his guest. He spoke through an interpreter. It was a normal ploy for such meetings. It made for greater precision in communications\u2014and also if something went badly wrong, it could be said that the interpreter had made the mistake, which gave both sides a convenient way out. \"Allah's blessing on this meeting.\"\n\n\"Thank you for receiving me on such short notice,\" Adler said, taking his seat.\n\n\"You have come far. Your journey was a good one?\" Daryaei inquired pleasantly. The entire ritual would be pleasant, or at least the beginning of it.\n\n\"It was uneventful,\" Adler allowed. He struggled not to yawn or show fatigue. Three cups of strong European coffee helped, though they made his stomach a little jumpy. Diplomats in serious meetings were supposed to act like surgeons in an operating room, and he had long practice in showing none of his emotions, jumpy stomach or not.\n\n\"I regret that we cannot show you more of our city. There is so much history and beauty here.\" Both men waited for the words to be translated. The translator was thirtyish, male, intense, and, Adler saw . . . afraid of Daryaei? he wondered. He was probably a ministry official, dressed in a suit that needed a little pressing, but the Ayatollah was in robes, emphasizing his national and clerical identity. Mahmoud Haji was grave, but not hostile in demeanor\u2014and, strangely, he seemed totally lacking in curiosity.\n\n\"Perhaps the next time I visit.\"\n\nA friendly nod. \"Yes.\" This was said in English, which reminded Adler that the man understood his visitor's language. Nothing all that unusual in form, SecState noted.\n\n\"It has been a long time since there were direct contacts between your country and mine, certainly at this level.\"\n\n\"This is true, but we welcome such contacts. How may I be of service to you, Secretary Adler?\"\n\n\"If you do not object, I would like to discuss stability in this region.\"\n\n\"Stability?\" Daryaei asked innocently. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"The establishment of the United Islamic Republic has created the largest country in the region. This is a matter of concern to some.\"\n\n\"I would say that we have improved stability. Was not the Iraqi regime the destabilizing influence? Did not Iraq start two aggressive wars? We certainly did no such thing.\"\n\n\"This is true,\" Adler agreed.\n\n\"Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood,\" Daryaei went on, speaking as the teacher he'd been for years. _Probably a tough one_ , Adler thought to himself, _with steel under the gentle voice._\n\n\"That is also true, but in the world of men the rules of religion are not always followed by those who call themselves religious,\" the American pointed out.\n\n\"Other countries do not accept the rule of God as we do. Only in the recognition of that rule can men hope to find peace and justice. That means more than saying the words. One must also live the words.\"\n\n_And thank you for the Sunday school lesson_ , Adler thought, with a respectful nod. _Then why the hell do you support Hezbollah?_\n\n\"My country wishes no more than peace in this region\u2014throughout the world, for that matter.\"\n\n\"As is indeed the wish of Allah, as revealed to us through the Prophet.\"\n\nHe was sticking to the script, Adler saw. Once upon a time, President Jimmy Carter had dispatched an emissary to visit this man's boss, Khomeini, at his exile home in France. The Shah had been in deep political trouble then, and the opposition had been sounded out, just to hedge America's bets. The emissary had come home after the meeting to tell his President that Khomeini was a \"saint.\" Carter had accepted the report at face value, and brought about the removal of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, allowing the \"saint\" to supplant him.\n\nOops.\n\nThe next administration had dealt with the same man and gotten nothing more for it than a scandal and world ridicule.\n\nOuch.\n\nThose were mistakes Adler was determined not to repeat.\n\n\"It is also one of my country's principles that international borders are to be honored. Respect for territorial integrity is the sine qua non of regional and global stability.\"\n\n\"Secretary Adler, all men are brothers, this is the will of Allah. Brothers may quarrel from time to time, but to make war is hateful to God. In any case, I find the substance of your remarks somewhat unsettling. You seem to suggest that we have unfriendly intentions to our neighbors. Why do you say such a thing?\"\n\n\"Excuse me, I think you misunderstand. I make no such suggestions. I have come merely to discuss mutual concerns.\"\n\n\"Your country and its associates and allies depend on this region for their economic health. We will not do harm to that. You need our oil. We need the things that oil money can buy. Ours is a trading culture. You know that. Our culture is also Islamic, and it is a source of great pain to me that the West seems never to appreciate the substance of our Faith. We are not barbarians, despite what your Jewish friends may say. We have, in fact, no religious quarrel with the Jews. Their patriarch, Abraham, came from this region. They were the first to proclaim the true God, and truly there should be peace between us.\"\n\n\"It pleases me to hear those words. How may we bring this peace about?\" Adler asked, wondering when the last time had been that someone had tried to drop a whole olive _tree_ on his head.\n\n\"With time, and with talk. Perhaps it is better that we should have direct contacts. They, too, are people of trade in addition to being people of faith.\"\n\nAdler wondered what he meant by that. Direct contacts with Israel. Was it an offer, or a sop to toss at the American government?\n\n\"And your Islamic neighbors?\"\n\n\"We share the Faith. We share oil. We share a culture. We are already one in so many ways.\"\n\nOUTSIDE, CLARK, CHAVEZ, and the ambassador sat quietly. The office personnel studiously ignored them, after having provided the usual refreshments. The security people stood about, not looking at the visitors, but not looking away from them, either. For Chavez it was a chance to meet a new people. He noted that the setting was old-fashioned, and oddly shabby, as though the building hadn't changed much since the departure of the previous government\u2014a long time ago, he reminded himself\u2014and it wasn't so much that things were run down as that they weren't modern. There was a real tension here, though. That he could feel in the air. An American office staff would have looked at him with curiosity. The six people in this room did not. Why?\n\nClark had expected that. Being ignored didn't surprise him. He and Ding were here as security troops, and they were just furniture, unworthy of notice. The people here would be trusted aides and underlings, faithful to their boss because they had to be. They had a measure of power because of him. These visitors would either ratify that power in the international sense or threaten it, and while that was important to their individual well-being, they could no more affect it than they could affect the weather, and so they just tuned their visitors out, except for the security pukes, who were trained to view everyone as a threat even though protocol disallowed them from the physical intimidation which they would have preferred to show.\n\nFor the ambassador it was one more exercise in diplomacy, conversations in carefully chosen words selected to show little on the one hand, and to uncover much on the other. He could guess at what was being said by both sides. He could even guess at the real meaning of the words. It was their truth that interested him. What _did_ Daryaei have planned? The ambassador and his country hoped for peace in the region, and so he and his colleagues had prepped Adler to feel open to that possibility, while at the same time not knowing how this would really go. An interesting man, Daryaei. A man of God who had surely murdered the Iraqi President. A man of peace and justice who ruled his country with an iron hand. A man of mercy who clearly had his own personal staff terrified of him. You had only to look around the room to see that. A modern, Middle Eastern Richelieu? There was a novel thought, the Frenchman joked to himself, behind an impassive face. He'd have to run that idea past his ministry later today. And in with him right now was a brand-new American minister. He allowed for the fact that Adler had a fine reputation as a career diplomat, but was he good enough for _this_ task?\n\n\"WHY DO WE discuss this? Why should I have territorial ambitions?\" Daryaei asked, almost pleasantly, but telegraphing his irritation. \"My people desire only peace. There has been too much strife here. For all my life I have studied and taught the Faith, and now, finally, in the closing days of my life, there _is_ peace.\"\n\n\"We have no more wish for this region than that, except perhaps to reestablish our friendship with your country.\"\n\n\"On that we should talk further. I thank your country for not hindering the removal of trade sanctions against the former country of Iraq. Perhaps that is a beginning. At the same time, we would prefer that America did not interfere in the internal affairs of our neighbors.\"\n\n\"We are committed to the integrity of Israel,\" Adler pointed out.\n\n\"Israel is not, strictly speaking, a neighbor,\" Daryaei replied. \"But if Israel can live in peace, then we can also live in peace.\"\n\nThe guy was good, Adler thought. He wasn't revealing very much, just denying everything. He made no policy statements aside from the usual protestations of peaceful intent. Every chief of state did that, though not many invoked the name of God so much. Peace. Peace. Peace.\n\nExcept that Adler didn't believe him for an instant on the subject of Israel. If he'd had peaceful intentions, he would have told Jerusalem first, the better to get them on his side for dealing with Washington. Israel had been the unnamed middleman for the arms-for-hostages disaster, and they'd been suckered, too.\n\n\"I hope that is a foundation upon which we can build.\"\n\n\"If your country treats my country with respect, then we can talk. Then we can discuss an improvement in relations.\"\n\n\"I will tell my President that.\"\n\n\"Your country, too, has endured much sorrow of late. I wish him the strength to heal your nation's wounds.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Both men stood. Handshakes were exchanged again, and Daryaei conducted Adler to the door.\n\nCLARK NOTED THE way the office staff jumped to their feet. Daryaei conveyed Adler to the outer door, took his hand one more time, and let the man leave with his escorts. Two minutes later, they were in their official cars and on the way directly to the airport.\n\n\"I wonder how that went?\" John asked nobody in particular. Everyone else wondered the same thing, but not another word was spoken. Thirty minutes later, aided by their official escort, the cars were back at Mehrabad International, and pulling up to the air force part of the facility, where their French jet was waiting.\n\nThere had to be a departure ceremony, too. The French ambassador talked with Adler for several minutes, all the while holding his hand in an extended farewell shake. With ample UIR-ian security, there was nothing for Clark and Chavez to do but look around, as they were supposed to do. In plain view were six fighter aircraft, with maintenance people working on them. The mechanics walked in and out of a large hangar that had doubtless been built under the Shah. Ding looked inside, and nobody made a fuss about it. Another airplane was in there, seemingly half disassembled. An engine was sitting on a cart, with another team of people tinkering with it.\n\n\"Chicken coops, you believe it?\" Chavez asked.\n\n\"What's that?\" Clark said, looking the other way.\n\n\"Check it out, Mr. C.\"\n\nJohn turned. Stacked against the far wall of the hangar were rows of wire cages, about the size of those used for moving poultry. Hundreds of them. Funny thing for an air force base, he thought.\n\nON THE OTHER side of the airport, the Movie Star watched the last of his team board a flight to Vienna. He happened to gaze across the expansive vista to see the private jets on the far side, with some people and cars close to one of them. He wondered briefly what that was about. Probably some government function. So was what he had planned, of course, but one that would never be acknowledged. The Austrian Airlines flight pulled away from the gate on time, and would head off just behind the business jet, or whatever it was. Then he walked to another gate to board his own flight.\n**40**\n\n**OPENINGS**\n\n**M** OST AMERICANS WOKE up to learn what their President already knew. Eleven American citizens were dead, with three more unaccounted for, in an airliner disaster on the opposite side of the world. A local TV crew had made it to the airport just in time, having learned of the emergency from a helpful source at the terminal. Their video showed little more than a distant fireball erupting into the sky, followed by some closer shots that were so typical that they, too, might have come from anywhere. Ten fire trucks surrounded the burning wreckage, blasting it with foam and water, both too late to save anyone. Ambulances scurried about. Some people, obvious survivors, wandered in the haze of shock and disorientation. Others, their faces blackened, staggered into the arms of rescue personnel. There were wives without husbands, parents without children, and the sort of chaos that always appeared dramatic but which passed on nothing in the way of explanation, even as it cried out for action of some kind.\n\nThe Republic of China's government issued a blistering statement about air piracy, then requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Beijing issued its own statement minutes later, stating that its aircraft, on a peaceful training exercise, had been attacked entirely without provocation, then returned fire in self-defense. Beijing totally disavowed any involvement in the damage to the airliner, and blamed the entire episode on their rebellious province.\n\n\"So, what else have we turned up?\" Ryan asked Admiral Jackson at seven-thirty.\n\n\"We went over both tapes for about two hours. I brought in a few fighter pilots I've worked with, and a pair of Air Force guys, and we kicked it around some. Number one, the ChiComs\u2014\"\n\n\"Not supposed to call them that, Robby,\" the President observed.\n\n\"Old habit, sorry. The _gentlemen_ of the PRC\u2014hey, they knew we had ships there. The electronic signature of an Aegis ship is like Mount St. Helens with an attitude, okay? And the capabilities of the ships ain't exactly a secret. They've been in service for almost twenty years. So they knew we were watching, and they knew we'd see everything. Let's keep that one in mind.\"\n\n\"Keep going,\" Jack told his friend.\n\n\"Number two, we have a spook team on the _Chandler,_ listening in on radio chatter. We have translated the voice transmissions of the Chinese fighter pilots. Quoting now\u2014this is thirty seconds into the engagement\u2014'I have him, I have him, taking the shot.' Okay, the time stamp on that is exactly the same as the heat-seeker launch on the airliner.\n\n\"Number three, every driver I talked to said the same as I did\u2014why shoot at an airliner on the edge of your missile range when you have fighters in your face? Jack, this one smells\u2014real bad, man.\n\n\"Unfortunately, we can't prove the voice transmission came from the fighter that launched on the Airbus, but it is my opinion, and that of my pals across the river, that this was a deliberate act. They tried to splash that airliner on purpose,\" the Pentagon's director of operations concluded. \"We're lucky anybody got off at all.\"\n\n\"Admiral,\" Arnie van Damm asked, \"could you take that into a court of law?\"\n\n\"Sir, I'm not a lawyer. I'm an airplane driver. I don't have to prove things for a living, but I'm telling you, it's a hundred-to-one against that we're wrong on this.\"\n\n\"I can't say this in front of the cameras, though,\" Ryan said, checking his watch. He'd have to do makeup in a few minutes. \"If they did it on purpose\u2014\"\n\n\"No 'if,' Jack, okay?\"\n\n\"Damn it, Robby, I heard you the first time!\" Ryan snapped. He paused and took a breath. \"I can't accuse a sovereign country of an act of war without absolute proof. Next, okay, fine, they _did_ do it on purpose, and they did it with the knowledge that we'd know they did. What's that _mean?_ \"\n\nJack's national security team had had a long night. Goodley took the lead. \"Hard to say, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Are they making a move on Taiwan?\" the President asked.\n\n\"They _can't,\"_ Jackson said, shaking off his Commander-in-Chief's tantrum. \"They do not have the physical ability to invade. There is no sign of unusual activity in their ground forces in this area, just the stuff they've been doing in the northwest that has the Russians so annoyed. So from a military point of view the answer is no.\n\n\"Airborne invasion?\" Ed Foley asked. Robby shook his head.\n\n\"They don't have the airlift capacity, and even if they tried, the ROC has enough air-defense assets to turn it into early duck season. They could stage an air-sea battle like I told you last night, but it'll cost them ships and planes\u2014 _for_ _what_ _purpose?\"_ the J-3 asked.\n\n\"So did they splash an airliner to test _us?\"_ POTUS wondered. \"That doesn't make sense, either.\"\n\n\"If you say 'me' instead of 'us,' that's a possibility,\" the DCI said quietly.\n\n\"Come on, Director,\" Goodley objected. \"There were two hundred people on that plane, and they must have thought they'd kill them all.\"\n\n\"Let's not be too naive, Ben,\" Foley observed tolerantly. \"They don't share our sentimentality for human life over there, do they?\"\n\n\"No, but\u2014\"\n\nRyan interrupted: \"Okay, hold it. We think this was a deliberate act, but we don't have positive proof, and we have no idea what its purpose might have been\u2014and if we don't, I can't call it a deliberate act, right?\" There were nods. \"Fine, now in fifteen minutes I have to go down to the Press Room and deliver this statement and then the reporters will ask me questions, and the only answers I can give them will be lies.\"\n\n\"That about sums it up, Mr. President,\" van Damm confirmed.\n\n\"Well, isn't that just _great_ ,\" Jack snarled. \"And Beijing will know, or at least suspect, that I'm lying.\"\n\n\"Possible, but not certain on that,\" Ed Foley observed.\n\n\"I'm not good at lying,\" Ryan told them.\n\n\"Learn how,\" the chief of staff advised. \"Quickly.\"\n\nTHERE WAS NO talking on the flight from Tehran to Paris. Adler took a comfortable seat in the back, got out a legal pad, and wrote the whole way, using his trained memory to reconstruct the conversation, then added a series of personal observations on everything from Daryaei's physical appearance to the clutter on his desk. After that, he examined the notes for an hour, and started making analytical comments. In the process, he wore down half a dozen pencils. The layover in Paris lasted less than an hour, enough for Adler to spend a little time with Claude again and for his escorts to have a quick drink. Then it was off again in their Air Force VC-20B.\n\n\"How'd it go?\" John asked.\n\nAdler had to remind himself that Clark was on the SNIE team, and not just a gun-toting SPO.\n\n\"First, what did you find out on your walk?\"\n\nThe senior CIA officer reached in his pocket and handed the Secretary of State a gold necklace.\n\n\"Does this mean we're engaged?\" Adler asked, with a surprised chuckle.\n\nClark gestured to his partner. \"No, sir. He's engaged.\"\n\nNow that they were aloft, the cabin crewman who ran the communications panel turned on his equipment. The fax machine started chirping at once.\n\n\"... WE HAVE CONFIRMED eleven American deaths, with three more U.S. citizens missing. Four of the American survivors are injured and are being treated in local hospitals. That concludes my opening statement,\" the President told them.\n\n_\"Mister President!\"_ thirty voices called at once.\n\n\"One at a time, please.\" Jack pointed to a woman in the front row.\n\n\"Beijing claims that Taiwan shot first. Can we confirm that?\"\n\n\"We are examining some information, but it takes a while to figure these things out, and until such time as we have definitive information, I do not think it proper to draw any conclusions at this time.\"\n\n\"But both sides traded shots, didn't they?\" she asked as a follow-up.\n\n\"That would seem to be the case, yes.\"\n\n\"So then do we know whose missile hit the Airbus?\"\n\n\"As I said, we are still examining the data.\" _Keep it short_ , _Jack,_ he told himself. And that wasn't quite a lie, was it? \"Yes?\" He pointed to another reporter.\n\n\"Mr. President, with so many American citizens lost, what action will you be taking to ensure this does not happen again?\" At least this one he could answer truthfully.\n\n\"We are examining options right now. Beyond that, I have nothing to say, except that we call on both Chinas to step back and think about their actions. The loss of innocent life is in the interest of no country. Military exercises there have been ongoing for some time now, and the resulting tension is not helpful to regional stability.\"\n\n\"So you're asking both countries to suspend their exercises?\"\n\n\"We're going to ask them to consider that, yes.\"\n\n\"Mr. President,\" said John Plumber, \"this is your first foreign policy crisis and . . .\"\n\nRyan looked down at the elderly reporter and wanted to observe that his first _domestic_ crisis had been of _his_ making, but you couldn't afford to make enemies of the press, and you could only make friends with them if they liked you\u2014an altogether unlikely possibility, he'd come to understand.\n\n\"Mr. Plumber, before you do anything, you have to find out the facts. We're working on that just as hard as we can. I had my national security team in this morning \"\n\n\"But not Secretary Adler,\" Plumber pointed out. Good reporter that he was, he'd checked the official cars on West Executive Drive. \"Why wasn't he here?\"\n\n\"He'll be in later today,\" Ryan dodged.\n\n\"Where is he now?\" Plumber persisted.\n\nRyan just shook his head. \"Can we limit this to just one topic? It's a little early in the morning for so many questions, and as you pointed out, I _do_ have a situation to deal with, Mr. Plumber.\"\n\n\"And he is your principal foreign policy adviser, sir. Where is he now?\"\n\n\"Next question,\" the President said tersely. He got about what he deserved from Barry of CNN:\n\n\"Mr. President, a moment ago you said _both_ Chinas. Sir, does this signal a change in our China policy, and if so\u2014\"\n\nIT WAS JUST after eight in the evening in Beijing, and things were good. He could see it on TV. How strange to watch a political figure so singularly lacking in charm and adroitness, especially an American. Zhang Han San lit a cigarette and congratulated himself. He'd done it again. There had been a danger in staging the \"exercise,\" most particularly the recent air sorties\u2014but then the Republic's aviators had so kindly obliged by shooting first, just as he'd hoped they would, and now there was a crisis which he could control precisely, and end it at any time, merely by recalling his own forces to their bases. He'd force America to react not so much by action as by inaction\u2014and then someone else would take the lead in provoking its new President. He had no idea what Daryaei had in mind. An assassination attempt, perhaps? Something else? All he had to do was watch, as he was doing now, and reap the harvest when the opportunity arose, which it surely would. America couldn't stay lucky forever. Not with this young fool in the White House.\n\n\"BARRY, ONE COUNTRY calls itself the People's Republic of China, and the other calls itself the Republic of China. I have to call them something, don't I?\" Ryan asked testily. _Oh, shit, have I done it_ again?\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But we probably have fourteen American citizens dead, and this is not a time to worry about semantics.\" _There, take that._\n\n\"What are we going to do?\" a female voice demanded.\n\n\"First, we're going to try to find out what took place. _Then_ we can start thinking about reactions.\"\n\n\"But _why_ don't we know yet?\"\n\n\"Because as much as we would like to know everything that takes place in the world every minute, it's simply impossible.\"\n\n\"Is that why your administration is radically increasing the size of the CIA?\"\n\n\"As I have said before, we do not discuss intelligence matters, ever.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, there are published reports that\u2014\"\n\n\"There are published reports that UFOs land here on a regular basis,\" Ryan shot back. \"Do you believe _that,_ too?\"\n\nThe room actually went quiet for a moment. It wasn't every day that you saw a President lose his temper. They loved it.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret the fact that I cannot answer all your questions to your satisfaction. In fact, I am asking some of the same questions myself, but correct answers take time. If I have to wait for the information, so do you,\" he said, trying to get the news conference back on track.\n\n\"Mr. President, a man who looks very much like the former Chairman of the Soviet KGB has appeared on live television and\u2014\" The reporter stopped, as he saw Ryan's face glow red under the makeup. He expected another blowup, but it didn't happen. The President's knuckles went ivory-white on the lectern, and he took a breath.\n\n\"Please go on with your question, Sam.\"\n\n\"And that gentleman said that he is who he is. Now, sir, the cat is well out of the bag, and I think my question is a legitimate one.\"\n\n\"I haven't heard a question yet, Sam.\"\n\n\"Is he who he says he is?\"\n\n\"You don't need me to tell you that.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, this event, this . . . operation has great international significance. At some point, intelligence operations, sensitive though they may well be, have a serious effect on our foreign relations. At that point, the American people want to know what such things are all about.\"\n\n\"Sam, I will say this one last time: I will never, not ever, discuss intelligence matters. I am here this morning to inform our citizens of a tragic and so far unexplained incident in which over a hundred people, including fourteen American citizens, have lost their lives. This government will do its utmost to determine what took place, and then to decide upon a proper course of action.\"\n\n\"Very well, Mr. President. Do we have a one-China policy, or a two-China policy?\"\n\n\"We have made no changes.\"\n\n\"Might a change result from this incident?\"\n\n\"I will not speculate on something so important as that. And now, with your permission, I have to get back to work.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President!\" Jack heard on his way out the door. Just around the corner was a well-hidden gun cabinet. POTUS slammed it with his hand hard enough to rattle a few of the Uzis inside.\n\n\"God damn it!\" he swore on the fifty-yard walk back to his office.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" Ryan spun around. It was Robby, holding his briefcase. It seemed so out of place for an aviator to be toting one of those.\n\n\"I owe you an apology,\" Jack said, before Robby could get another word out. \"Sorry I blew up.\"\n\nAdmiral Jackson popped his friend on the arm. \"Next time we play golf, it's a buck a hole, and if you're going to get mad, do it at me, not them, okay? I've seen your temper before, man. Dial it back. A commander can only get pissed in front of the troops for show\u2014leadership technique, we call it\u2014not for real. Yelling at staff is something else. I'm staff,\" Robby said. \"Yell at me.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know. Keep me posted and\u2014\"\n\n\"Jack?\"\n\n\"Yeah, Rob?\"\n\n\"You're doing fine, just keep it cool.\"\n\n\"I'm not supposed to let people kill Americans, Robby. That's not what I'm here for.\" His hands balled into fists again.\n\n\"Shit happens, Mr. President. If you think you can stop it all, you're just kidding yourself. And I don't have to tell you that. You're not God, Jack, but you are a pretty good guy doing a pretty good job. We'll have more information for you as soon as we can put it together.\"\n\n\"When things settle down, how about another golf lesson?\"\n\n\"I am yours to command.\" The two friends shook hands. It wasn't enough for either of them at this moment, but it had to do. Jackson headed for the door, and Ryan turned back toward his office. \"Mrs. Sumter!\" he called on the way in. Maybe a smoke would help.\n\n\"SO WHAT GIVES, Mr. Secretary?\" Chavez asked. The three-page fax off the secure satellite link told them everything the President had. He'd let them read it, too.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Adler admitted. \"Chavez, that thesis paper you told me about?\"\n\n\"What about it, sir?\"\n\n\"You should have waited to write it. Now you know what it's like up here. Like playing dodge ball as a kid, except it ain't a rubber ball we're trying to dodge, is it?\" The Secretary of State tucked his notes into his briefcase and waved to the Air Force sergeant who was supposed to look after them. He wasn't as cute as the French attendant had been.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"Did Claude leave us anything?\"\n\n\"A couple of bottles from the Loire Valley,\" the NCO replied, with a smile.\n\n\"You want to uncork one and get some glasses out?\"\n\n\"Cards?\" John Clark asked.\n\n\"No, I think I'm going to have a glass or two, and then I'm going to get a little sleep. Looks like I have another trip laid on,\" SecState told them.\n\n\"Beijing.\" No surprise, John thought.\n\n\"It won't be Philadelphia,\" Scott said, as the bottle and glasses arrived. Thirty minutes later, all three men pushed their seat backs down all the way. The sergeant closed the window shades for them.\n\nThis time Clark got some sleep, but Chavez did not. There was truth in what Adler had remarked to him. His thesis had savagely attacked turn-of-the-century statesmen for their inability to see beyond immediate problems. Now Ding did know a little better. It was hard to tell the difference between an immediate tactical problem and a truly strategic one when you were dodging the bullets on a minute-to-minute basis, and history books couldn't fully convey the temper, the _feel_ of the times on which they supposedly reported. Not all of it. They also gave the wrong impression of people. Secretary Adler, now snoring in his leather reclining seat, was a career diplomat, Chavez reminded himself, and he'd earned the trust and respect of the President\u2014a man he himself deeply respected. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't venal. But he was merely a man, and men made mistakes . . . and great men made big ones. Someday some historian would write about this trip they'd just taken, but would that historian really know what it had been like and, not knowing, how could he really comment on what had taken place?\n\nWhat's going on? Ding asked himself. Iran gets real frisky and knocks over Iraq and starts a new country, and just as America is trying to deal with that, something else happens. An event minor in the great scheme of things, perhaps\u2014but you never knew that until it was all over, did you? How could you tell? That was always the problem. Statesmen over the centuries had made mistakes because when you were stuck in the middle of things, you couldn't step outside and take a more detached look. That's what they were paid to do, but it _was_ pretty hard, wasn't it? He had just finished his master's thesis, and he'd get hooded later this year, and officially proclaimed an expert in international relations. But that was a lie, Ding thought, settling back into his own seat. A flippant observation he'd once made on another long flight came back to him. All too often international relations was simply one country fucking another. Domingo Chavez, soon-to-be master in international relations, smiled at the thought, but it wasn't very funny, really. Not when people got killed. Especially not when he and Mr. C. were front-line worker-bees. Something happening in the Middle East. Something else happening with China . . . four thousand miles away, wasn't it? Could those two things be related? What if they were? But how could you tell? Historians assumed that people _could_ tell if only they'd been smart enough. But historians didn't have to do the work . . .\n\n\"NOT HIS BEST performance,\" Plumber said, sipping his iced tea.\n\n\"Twelve hours, not even that much, to get a handle on something halfway 'round the world, John,\" Holtzman suggested.\n\nIt was a typical Washington restaurant, pseudo-French with cute little tassels on a menu listing overpriced dishes of mediocre quality\u2014but, then, both men were on expense accounts.\n\n\"He's supposed to handle himself better,\" Plumber observed.\n\n\"You're complaining that he can't lie effectively?\"\n\n\"That's one of the things a President is supposed to do\u2014\"\n\n\"And when we catch him at it ...\" Holtzman didn't have to go on.\n\n\"Who ever said it was supposed to be an easy job, Bob?\"\n\n\"Sometimes I wonder if we're really supposed to make the job harder.\" But Plumber didn't bite.\n\n\"Where do you suppose Adler is?\" the NBC correspondent wondered aloud.\n\n\"That was a good question this morning,\" the _Post_ reporter granted, lifting his glass. \"I have somebody looking into that.\"\n\n\"So do we. All Ryan had to do was say he was preparing to meet with the PRC ambassador. That would have covered things nicely.\"\n\n\"But it would have been a lie.\"\n\n\"It would have been the _right_ lie. Bob, that's the game. The government tries to do things in secret, and we try to find out. Ryan likes this secrecy stuff a little too much.\"\n\n\"But when we burn him for it, whose agenda are we following?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Come on, John. Ed Kealty leaked all that stuff to you. I don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Everybody knows it.\" Bob picked at his salad.\n\n\"It's all true, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is,\" Holtzman admitted. \"And there's a lot more.\"\n\n\"Really? Well, I know you had a story working.\" He didn't add that he was sorry to have scooped the younger man, mainly because he wasn't.\n\n\"Even more than I can write about.\"\n\n\"Really?\" That got John Plumber's attention. Holtzman was one of the younger generation in relation to the TV correspondent, and one of the older generation for the newest class of reporters\u2014which regarded Plumber as a fuddy-duddy even as they attended his seminars at Columbia University's journalism program.\n\n\"Really,\" Bob assured him.\n\n\"Like?\"\n\n\"Like things that I can't write about,\" Holtzman repeated. \"Not for a long time, anyway. John, I've been on part of this story for years. I know the CIA officer who got Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. We have a little deal. In a couple years he tells me how it was done. The submarine story is true and\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. I've seen a photograph of Ryan on the boat. Why he doesn't let that one leak is beyond me.\"\n\n\"He doesn't break the rules. Nobody ever explained to him that it's okay to do that\u2014\"\n\n\"He needs more time with Arnie\u2014\"\n\n\"As opposed to Ed.\"\n\n\"Kealty knows how the game is played.\"\n\n\"Yes, he does, John, maybe a little too well. You know, there's one thing I've never quite been able to figure out,\" Bob Holtzman remarked.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"The game we're in, are we supposed to be spectators, referees, or players?\"\n\n\"Bob, our job is to report the truth to our readers\u2014well, viewers for me.\"\n\n\"Whose facts, John?\" Holtzman asked.\n\n\"A FLUSTERED AND angry President Jack Ryan . . .\" Jack picked up the remote and muted the CNN reporter who'd zapped him with the China question. \"Angry, yes, flustered, n\u2014\"\n\n\"Also yes,\" van Damm said. \"You bungled the thing on China, and where Adler is\u2014where is he, by the way?\"\n\nThe President checked his watch. \"He should be getting into Andrews in about ninety minutes. Probably over Canada now, I guess. He comes straight here, and then probably off again to China. What the _hell_ are they up to?\"\n\n\"You got me,\" the chief of staff admitted. \"But that's why you have a national security team.\"\n\n\"I know as much as they do, and I don't know shit,\" Jack breathed, leaning back in his chair. \"We've _got_ to increase our human-intelligence capability. The President can't be stuck here all the time not knowing what's going on. I can't make decisions without information, and all we have now are guesses\u2014except for what Robby told us. That's a hard data-point, but it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't fit in with anything else.\"\n\n\"You have to learn to wait, Mr. President. Even if the press doesn't, you do, and you have to learn to focus on what you can do when you can do it. Now,\" Arnie went on, \"we have the first set of House elections coming up next week. We have you scheduled to go out and make speeches. If you want the right kind of people in Congress, then that's what you have to go out and do. I have Callie preparing a couple of speeches for you.\"\n\n\"What's the focus?\"\n\n\"Tax policy, management improvement, integrity, all your favorites. We'll have the drafts to you tomorrow morning. Time to spend some more time out among the people. Let them love you some, and you can love them back some more.\" The chief of staff earned himself a wry look. \"I've told you before, you can't be trapped in here, and the radios on the airplane work just fine.\"\n\n\"A change of scenery would be nice,\" POTUS admitted.\n\n\"You know what would really be good now?\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\nArnie grinned. \"A natural disaster, gives you the chance to fly out and look presidential, meet people, console them and promise federal disaster relief and\u2014\"\n\n\"God damn it!\" It was so loud the secretaries heard it through the three-inch door.\n\nArnie sighed. \"You gotta learn to take a joke, Jack. Put that temper of yours in a box and lock it the hell up. I just set you off for fun, and I'm on _your_ side, remember?\" Arnie headed back to his office, and the President was alone again.\n\nYet another lesson in Presidency 101. Jack wondered when they would stop. Sooner or later he'd have to _act_ presidential, wouldn't he? But he hadn't quite made it yet. Arnie hadn't said that, exactly, and neither had Robby, but they didn't have to. He still didn't belong. He was doing his best, but his best wasn't good enough\u2014yet, his mind added. Yet? Maybe never. _One thing at a time_ , he thought. What every father said to every son, except they never warned you that one at a time was a luxury some people couldn't afford. Fourteen dead Americans on a runway on an island eight thousand miles away, killed on purpose probably, for a purpose he could scarcely guess at, and he was supposed to set that fact aside and get on with other things, like a trip back out to meet the people he was supposed to preserve, protect, and defend, even as he tried to figure out how he'd failed to do so for fourteen of them. What was it you needed in order to do this job? Turn off dead citizens and fix on other things? You had to be a sociopath to accomplish that, didn't you? Well, no. Others had to\u2014doctors, soldiers, cops. And now him. _And_ control his temper, salve his frustration, and focus on something else for the rest of the day.\n\nMOVIE STAR LOOKED down at the sea, six kilometers below, he estimated. To the north he could see an iceberg on the blue-gray surface, glistening in the bright sunlight. Wasn't that remarkable? As often as he'd flown, he'd never seen one of those before. For someone from his part of the world, the sea was strange enough, like a desert, impossible to live on, though a different way. Strange how it looked like the desert in all but color, the surface crinkling in almost-regular parallel lines just like dunes, but uninvitingly. Despite his looks\u2014about which he was quite vain; he liked the smiles he got from flight attendants, for example\u2014almost nothing was inviting to him. The world hated him and his kind, and even those who made use of his services preferred to keep him at arm's length, like a vicious but occasionally useful dog. He grimaced, looking down. Dogs were not favored animals in his culture. And so here he was, back on another airplane, alone, with his people on other aircraft in groups of three, heading to a place where they would be decidedly not welcome, sent from a place where they were scarcely more so.\n\nSuccess would bring him\u2014what? Intelligence officers would seek to identify and track him, but the Israelis had been doing that for years, and he was still alive. What was he doing this _for?_ Movie Star asked himself. It was a little late for that. If he canceled the mission, then he wouldn't be welcome anywhere at all. He was supposed to be fighting for Allah, wasn't he? _Jihad._ A holy war. It was a religious term for a military-religious act, one meant to protect the Faith, but he didn't really believe that anymore, and it was vaguely frightening to have no country, no home, and then . . . no faith? Did he even have _that_ anymore? He asked himself, then admitted that if he had to ask\u2014he didn't. He and his kind, at least the ones who survived, became automatons, skilled robots\u2014computers in the modern age. Machines that did things at the bidding of others, to be thrown away when convenient, and below him the surface of the sea or the desert never changed. Yet he had no choice.\n\nPerhaps the people who were sending him on the mission would win, and he would have some sort of reward. He kept telling himself that, after all, even though there was nothing in his living experience to support the belief\u2014and if he'd lost his faith in God, then why was it that he could remain faithful to a profession that even his employers regarded with distaste?\n\nChildren. He'd never married, never fathered one to his knowledge. The women he'd had, perhaps\u2014but, no, they were debauched women, and his religious training had taught him to despise them even as he made use of their bodies, and if they produced offspring, then the children, too, would be cursed. How was it that a man could chase an idea for all his life and then realize that here he was, looking down at the most inhospitable of scenes\u2014a place where neither he nor any man could live\u2014and be more at home here than anyplace else? And so he would assist in the deaths of children. Unbelievers, political expressions, things. But they were not. They were innocent of any guilt at that age, their bodies not yet formed, their minds not yet taught the nature of good and evil.\n\nMovie Star told himself that such thoughts had come to him before, that doubts were normal to men on difficult tasks, and that each previous time he'd set them aside and gotten on with it. If the world had changed, then perhaps\u2014\n\nBut the only changes that had taken place were contrary to his lifelong quest, and was it that having killed for nothing, he had to keep killing in the hope of achieving _something?_ Where did that path lead? If there were a God and there were a Faith, and there were a Law, then\u2014\n\nWell, he had to believe in something. He checked his watch. Four more hours. He had a mission. He had to believe in that.\n\nTHEY CAME BY car instead of helicopter. Helicopters were too visible, and maybe this way nobody would notice. To make things more covert still, the cars came to the East Wing entrance. Adler, Clark, and Chavez walked into the White House the same way Jack had on his first night, hustled along by the Secret Service, and they managed to arrive unseen by the press. The Oval Office was a little crowded. Goodley and the Foleys were there, as well, along with Arnie, of course.\n\n\"How's the jet lag, Scott?\" Jack asked first, meeting him at the door.\n\n\"If it's Tuesday, it must be Washington,\" the Secretary of State replied.\n\n\"It isn't Tuesday,\" Goodley observed, not getting it.\n\n\"Then I guess the jet lag is pretty bad.\" Adler took his seat and brought out his notes. A Navy mess steward came in with coffee, the fuel of Washington. The arrivals from the UIR all had a cup.\n\n\"Tell us about Daryaei,\" Ryan commanded.\n\n\"He looks healthy. A little tired,\" Adler allowed. \"His desk is fairly clean. He spoke quietly, but he's never been one to raise his voice in public, to the best of my knowledge. Interestingly, he was getting into town about the same time we were.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Ed Foley said, looking up from some of his own notes.\n\n\"Yeah, he came in on a business jet, a Gulfstream,\" Clark reported. \"Ding got a few pictures.\"\n\n\"So, he's hopping around some? I guess that makes sense,\" POTUS observed. Strangely, Ryan could identify with Daryaei's problems. They weren't all that different from his own, though the Iranian's methods could hardly have been more different.\n\n\"His staffs afraid of him,\" Chavez added impulsively. \"Like something from an old World War II Nazi movie. The staff in his outer office was pretty wired. If somebody had yelled 'boo,' they would have hit the ceiling.\"\n\n\"I'd agree with that,\" Adler said, not vexed at the interruption. \"His demeanor with me was very old-world, quiet, platitudes, that sort of thing. The fact of the matter is that he said nothing of real significance\u2014maybe good, maybe bad. He's willing to have continued contacts with us. He says he desires peace for everybody. He even hinted at a certain degree of goodwill for Israel. For a lot of the meeting, he lectured me on how peaceful he and his religion are. He emphasized the value of oil and the resulting commercial relationships for all parties involved. He denied having any territorial ambitions. No surprises in any of it.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" the President said. \"What about body language?\"\n\n\"He appears very confident, very secure. He likes where he is now.\"\n\n\"As well he might.\" It was Ed Foley again.\n\nAdler nodded. \"Agreed. If I had to describe him in one word, it would be 'serene.' \"\n\n\"When I met him a few years ago,\" Jack remembered, \"he was aggressive, hostile, looking for enemies, that sort of thing.\"\n\n\"None of that earlier today.\" SecState stopped and asked himself if it was still the same day. Probably, he decided. \"Like I said, serene, but then on the way back, Mr. Clark here brought something up.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" Goodley asked.\n\n\"It set off the metal detector.\" John pulled the necklace out again, and handed it to the President.\n\n\"Get some shopping done?\"\n\n\"Well, everybody wanted me to do a walkabout,\" he reminded his audience. \"What better place than a market?\" Clark went on to report the incident with the goldsmith, while POTUS examined the necklace.\n\n\"If he sells these things for seven hundred bucks, maybe we should all get his address. Isolated incident, John?\"\n\n\"The French station chief was walking with me. He said that this guy was pretty representative.\"\n\n\"So?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"So maybe Daryaei doesn't have much to be all that serene about,\" Scott Adler suggested.\n\n\"People like that don't always know what the peasants are thinking,\" the chief of staff thought.\n\n\"That's what brought the Shah down,\" Ed Foley told him. \"And Daryaei is one of the people who made that happen. I don't think it likely that he's forgotten that particular lesson . . . and we know that he's still cracking down on people who step out of line.\" The DCI turned to look at his field officer. \"Good one, John.\"\n\n\"Lefevre\u2014the French spook\u2014told me twice that we don't have a very good feel for the mood in the street over there. Maybe he was shining me on,\" Clark continued, \"but I don't think so.\"\n\n\"We know there's dissent. There always is,\" Ben Goodley said.\n\n\"But we don't know how much.\" It was Adler again. \"On the whole, I think we have a man here who wants to project serenity for a reason. He's had a couple of good months. He's knocked over a major enemy. He has some internal problems whose magnitude we need to evaluate. He's hopping back and forth to Iraq\u2014we saw that. He's tired-looking. Tense staff. I'd say he has a full plate right now. Okay, he told me how he wants peace. I almost buy it. I think he needs time to consolidate. Clark here tells me that food prices are high. That's an inherently rich country, and Daryaei can best quiet things down by playing on his political success and turning that into economic success as quickly as possible. Putting food on the table won't hurt. For the moment, he needs to look in instead of looking out.\n\n\"So I think it's possible that we have a window of opportunity here,\" SecState concluded.\n\n\"Extend the open hand of friendship?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"I think we keep the contacts quiet and informal for the time being. I can pick somebody to handle the meetings. And then we see what develops.\"\n\nThe President nodded. \"Good one, Scott. Now I guess we'd better get you up to speed on China.\"\n\n\"When do I leave?\" SecState inquired, with a pained expression.\n\n\"You'll have a bigger airplane this time,\" his President promised him.\n**41**\n\n**HYENAS**\n\n**M** OVIE STAR FELT THE main landing gear thump down at Dulles International Airport. The physical sensation didn't exactly end his doubts, but it did announce that it was time to put them aside. He lived in a practical world. The entry routine was\u2014routine, again.\n\n\"Back so soon?\" the immigration officer asked, flipping to the last entry in the passport.\n\n_\"Ja, doch.\"_ Movie Star replied in his German identity. \"Perhaps I get apartment here soon.\"\n\n\"The prices in Washington are kinda steep,\" the man reported, stamping the booklet yet again. \"Have a pleasant stay, sir.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nIt wasn't that he had anything to fear. He was carrying nothing illegal, except what was in his head, and he knew that American intelligence had virtually never caused substantive harm to a terrorist group, but this trip was different, even if only he knew it, as he walked alone in the mob of the terminal. As before, no one would meet him. They had a rendezvous to which he would be the last to arrive. He was more valuable than the other members of the team. Again he rented a car, and again he drove toward Washington, checking his mirror, taking the wrong exit deliberately and watching to see if anyone followed as he reversed direction to get back on the proper road. Again as before, the coast was clear. If there were anyone on him, the coverage was so sophisticated that he had no chance at all to survive. He knew how that worked: multiple cars, even a helicopter or two, but such an investment of time and resources only happened if the opposition knew nearly everything\u2014it took time to organize\u2014and that could only mean deep penetration of his group by the American CIA. The Israelis were capable of such a thing, or so everyone in the terrorist movement feared, but over the years a brutally Darwinian process had ended the lives of all the careless men; the Israeli Mossad had never once blanched at the sight of Islamic blood, and had he been discovered by that agency, he would long since have been dead. Or that's what he told himself, still watching his rearview mirror because that was how he stayed alive.\n\nOn the other hand, it amused him greatly that this mission would not have been possible without the Israelis. Islamic terrorist groups existed in America, but they had all the hallmarks of amateurs. They were overtly religious. They held meetings in known places. They talked among themselves. They could be seen, spotted, and positively identified as being _different_ from the other fish in their adopted sea. And then they wondered how they were caught. _Fools_ , Movie Star thought. But they served their purpose. In being visible, they attracted attention, and the American FBI had only so many assets. However formidable the world's intelligence services, they were also human institutions, and humans universally pounded on the nails that stuck up.\n\nIsrael had taught him that, after a fashion. Before the fall of the Shah, his own intelligence service, the Savak, had received training from the Israeli Mossad, and not all Savak members had been executed with the arrival of the new Islamic regime. The tradecraft they'd learned had also been taught to those like Movie Star, and the truth of the matter was that it was very easy to understand. The more important the mission, the more caution was required. If you wanted to avoid being spotted, then you had to disappear into your surroundings. In a secular country, do not be obviously devout. In a Christian and Jewish country, do not be Muslim. In a nation that had learned to distrust people from the Middle East, be from somewhere else\u2014or better yet, on occasion, be truthful after a fashion. Yes, I come from _there_ , but I am a Christian, or a Baha'i, or a Kurd, or an Armenian, and _they_ persecuted my family cruelly, and so I came to America, the land of opportunity, to experience true freedom. And if you followed those simple rules, the opportunity was quite real, for America made it so easy. This country welcomed foreigners with an openness that reminded Movie Star of his own culture's stern law of hospitality.\n\nHere he was in the camp of his enemy, and his doubts faded, as the exhilaration of it increased his heart rate and brought a smile to his face. He was the best at what he did. The Israelis, having trained him at second hand, had never gotten close to him, and if they couldn't, then neither could the Americans. You just had to be careful.\n\nIn each team of three there was one man like him, not quite as experienced as he was, but close enough. Able to rent a car and drive safely. To know to be polite and friendly with all he met. If a policeman were to stop him, he knew to be contrite and apologetic, to ask what he'd done wrong, and then ask for directions, because people remembered hostility more clearly than amity. To profess to be a physician or engineer or something else respectable. It was easy if you were careful.\n\nMovie Star reached his first destination, a middle-level hotel on the outskirts of Annapolis, and checked in under his cover name, Dieter Kolb. The Americans were so foolish. Even their police thought that all Muslims were Arabs, never remembering that Iran was an Aryan country\u2014the very same ethnic identity which Hitler had claimed for his nation. He went to his room, and checked his watch. If everything went according to plan, they would meet in two hours. To be sure, he placed a call to the 1-800 numbers for the proper airlines\u2014and inquired about arriving flights. They'd all arrived on time. There might have been a problem with customs, or bad traffic, but the plan had allowed for that. It was a cautious one.\n\nTHEY WERE ALREADY on the road for their next stop, which was Atlantic City, New Jersey, where there was a huge convention center. The various new-model and \"concept\" cars were wrapped in covers to protect their finish, most of them on conventional auto trailers, but a few in covered trailers like those used by racing teams. One of the manufacturer's representatives was going over handwritten comments his company had solicited from people who'd stopped by to look at their products. The man rubbed his eyes. Damned headache, sniffles. He hoped he wasn't coming down with something. Achy, too. That's what you got for standing around all day right under the air-conditioning vent.\n\nTHE OFFICIAL TELEGRAM was hardly unexpected. The American Secretary of State requested an official consultation with his government to discuss matters of mutual interest. Zhang knew there was no avoiding this, and all the better to receive him in a friendly way, protesting innocence\u2014and inquiring delicately if the American President had merely misspoken himself or had changed long-standing U.S. policy at his press conference. That side issue alone would tie up Adler for some hours, he imagined. The American would probably offer to be an intermediary between Beijing and Taipei, to shuttle back and forth between the two cities, hoping to calm things down. That would be very useful.\n\nFor the moment, the exercises were continuing, albeit with somewhat greater respect for the neutral space between the two sets of forces. The heat was still on, but at the \"simmer\" setting. The People's Republic, the ambassador had already explained in Washington, had done nothing wrong, had _not_ fired the first shot, and had no desire to initiate hostilities. The problem was with the breakaway province, and if only America would accede to the obvious solution to the problem\u2014there is _one_ China\u2014then the matter would be settled, and quickly.\n\nBut America had long held to a policy that made sense to none of the countries involved, wanting to be friendly with Beijing _and_ Taipei, treating the latter as the lesser nation it was, but unwilling to take that to its logical conclusion. Instead, America said that, yes, there was only one China, but that the one China did not have the right to enforce its rule on the \"other\" China, which, according to official American policy, didn't actually exist. Such was American consistency. It would be such a pleasure to point this out to Secretary Adler.\n\n\"'THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC is pleased to welcome Secretary Adler in the interests of peace and regional stability.' Well, isn't that nice of them,\" Ryan said, still in his office at nine in the evening, and wondering what TV his kids were watching without him. He handed the message back to Adler.\n\n\"You're really sure they did it?\" SecState asked Admiral Jackson.\n\n\"If I go over it any more, the tape will wear out.\"\n\n\"You know, sometimes people just screw up.\"\n\n\"Sir, this is not one of those times,\" Robby said, wondering if he'd have to run the videotape _again_. \"And they've been exercising their fleet for quite a while now.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"To the point that they must be wearing things out by now. They're not as good on maintenance as we are. Besides that, they're using up a lot of fuel. This is the most at-sea time we've ever seen them do. Why are they stringing things out? This shoot-down looks to me like a great excuse to call it a day and head back to port and say they've made their point.\"\n\n\"National pride,\" Adler suggested. \"Face saving.\"\n\n\"Well, since then they've curtailed operations somewhat. Not approaching the line I showed you. The Taiwanese are really at full alert now. Hell, maybe that's it,\" the J-3 opined. \"You don't attack a pissed-off enemy. You let him relax some first.\"\n\n\"Rob, you said that a real attack isn't possible,\" Ryan said.\n\n\"Jack, in the absence of knowledge of their intentions, I have to go by capabilities. They _can_ stage a major engagement in the strait, and they will probably come off winners if they do. Maybe that will put sufficient political pressure on Taiwan to force some sort of major concession. They killed people,\" Jackson reminded the other two. \"Sure, the value they place on human life isn't the same as ours, but when you kill people you cross another invisible line\u2014and they know how _we_ feel about that.\"\n\n\"Move the carrier up,\" Adler said.\n\n\"Why, Scott?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, it gives me a face card to lay on the table. It shows that we're taking this seriously. As Admiral Jackson just told us, we _do_ take the loss of life seriously, and they will just have to accept the fact that we don't want and might not _allow_ this to go any further.\"\n\n\"What if they press anyway\u2014what if there's another 'accident' that might involve us?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, that's operations, and that's my business. We'd park _Ike_ on the east side of the island. They can't get to her by accident then. They'd have to come through three defense belts to do so, the ROC one over the strait, then Taiwan itself, and then the wall the battle-group commander puts up. I could also spot an Aegis at the bottom end of the strait to give us full radar coverage of the entire passage. If, that is, you order us to move _Ike._ The advantage for Taiwan, well, four squadrons of fighters, plus airborne radar coverage. That should make them feel more secure.\"\n\n\"Which will allow me to play a better game if I shuttle back and forth,\" the Secretary concluded.\n\n\"But that still leaves the IO uncovered. It's been a long time since we did that.\" Robby kept coming back to that, the other two noticed.\n\n\"Nothing else there?\" Jack asked. He realized that he should have found out before.\n\n\"A cruiser, _Anzio,_ two destroyers, plus two frigates guarding an under way-replenishment group based at Diego Garcia. We never leave Diego uncovered by warships, not with the Pre-Positioning Ships there. We have a 688-class sub in the area, too. It's enough to matter, but not enough to project power. Mr. Adler, you understand what a carrier means.\"\n\nSecState nodded. \"People take them seriously. That's why I think we need it off China.\"\n\n\"He makes a good case, Rob. Where is _Ike_ now?\"\n\n\"Between Australia and Sumatra, should be approaching the Sunda Strait. Exercise SOUTHERN CUP is supposed to simulate an Indian attack on their northwest coast. If we move her now, she can get to Formosa in four days plus a couple hours.\"\n\n\"Get her moving that way, Rob, all possible speed.\"\n\n\"Aye aye, sir,\" Jackson acknowledged, his doubts still visible on his face. He gestured to the phone and, getting a nod, he called the National Military Command Center. \"This is Admiral Jackson with orders from National Command Authority. Execute GREYHOUND BLUE. Acknowledge that, Colonel.\" Robby listened and nodded. \"Very well, thank you.\" Then he turned to his President. \"Okay, _Ike_ will turn north in about ten minutes and make a speed run to Taiwan.\"\n\n\"That fast?\" Adler allowed himself to be impressed.\n\n\"The miracle of modern communications, and we already had alert orders to Admiral Dubro. This won't be a covert move. The battle group will head through several narrows, and people will notice,\" he warned.\n\n\"Press release won't hurt,\" Adler said. \"We've done it before.\"\n\n\"Well, there's your card to play in Beijing and Taipei,\" Ryan said, having exercised yet another executive order, but distantly concerned that Robby was unhappy about it. The really difficult matter was fuel. A fleet-replenishment group would have to move as well, to refill the bunkers of _Eisenhower's_ non-nuclear escort ships.\n\n\"Will you let on that we know about the shoot-down?\"\n\nAdler shook his head. \"No, definitely not. It will be more unsettling to them if they think we don't know.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" This came from a somewhat surprised President.\n\n\"Then I can decide _when_ we 'find out,' Boss, and when that happens, I have another card to play\u2014that way I can make it a big card.\" He turned. \"Admiral, don't overestimate the intelligence of your enemy. Diplomats like me aren't all that savvy on the technical aspects of what you do. That applies to people in foreign countries, too. A lot of our capabilities are unknown to them.\"\n\n\"They have spooks to keep them informed,\" Jackson objected.\n\n\"You think they always listen? Do we?\"\n\nThe J-3 blinked at that lesson and filed it away for future use.\n\nIT HAPPENED IN a large shopping mall, an American invention that seemed designed for covert operations, with its many entrances, bustling people, and near-perfect anonymity. The first rendezvous wasn't really a meeting at all. Nothing more than eye contact was made, and that not at a distance closer than ten meters, as the groups strolled past one another. Instead, each of the sub-groups performed a count, confirmed identity visually, and then each checked to be sure that there was no surveillance on the others. With that done, they all returned to their hotel accommodations. The real rendezvous would take place tomorrow.\n\nMovie Star was pleased. The sheer audacity of this was very exciting indeed. This wasn't the relatively simple task of getting one bomb-clad fool\u2014 _heroic martyr,_ he corrected himself\u2014into Israel, and the beauty of it was that had one of his teams been spotted, the enemy couldn't possibly risk ignoring them. You _could_ force the opposition into showing its hand, and so much the better to do it at a point in time when none of your people had done anything more than enter the country with false travel documents.\n\nDoubts be damned, the leader of the operation told himself. There was the sheer beauty of being ready to do something right in the lion's own den, and _that_ was what kept him in the business of terrorism. In the lion's own den? He smiled at the cars as he walked across the parking lot. The lion's own _cubs._\n\n\"SO WHAT ARE you doing?\" Cathy asked in the dark.\n\n\"Scott leaves for China tomorrow morning,\" Jack answered, lying next to his wife. People said that the President of the United States was the world's most powerful man, but at the end of every day the exercise of that power surely seemed to exhaust him. Even his time at Langley, with an auto commute each way every day, hadn't worn him out as this job did.\n\n\"To say what?\"\n\n\"Try to get them calmed down, defuse the situation.\"\n\n\"You're really sure that they deliberately\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes. Robby is positive, about as much as you are with a diagnosis,\" her husband confirmed, staring up at the ceiling.\n\n\"And we're going to negotiate with them?\" SURGEON asked.\n\n\"Have to.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Honey, sometimes\u2014hell, most of the time a nation-state commits murder, they get away with it. I'm supposed to think about 'the big picture,' 'the larger issues,' and all that stuff.\"\n\n\"That's awful,\" Cathy told him.\n\n\"Yes, it sure is. This game you have to play by its own rules. If you mess up, more people suffer. You can't talk to a nation-state the way you talk to a criminal. There are thousands of Americans over there, businessmen and like that. If I get too far out of line, then things might happen to some of them, and then things escalate and get worse,\" POTUS explained to her.\n\n\"What's worse than killing people?\" his physician-wife asked.\n\nJack didn't have an answer. He'd come to accept the fact that he didn't have all the answers for press conferences, or for all the people out there, or even for his own staff sometimes. Now he didn't even have a single answer for his wife's simple and logical question. Most powerful man in the world? Sure. With that thought, another day ended at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.\n\nEVEN IMPORTANT PEOPLE got careless, an eventuality made easier by a little creativity on the part of more careful folk. The National Reconnaissance Office was working hard to keep track of two places. Every pass of the reconsats over the Middle East and now the Formosa Strait resulted in copious numbers of download pictures, literally thousands of images which photo-interpretation specialists had to examine one by one in their new building close to Dulles Airport. It was just one more task that couldn't be done by computer. The readiness state of the UIR military had become the number-one priority item for the American government, as part of the Special National Intelligence Estimate now in preparation on White House orders. That meant the entire attention of the team fell that way, and for the other things, more people were called in to work overtime. These looked continuously at the photos downloaded from over China. If the PRC was going to make a real military move, then it would show in many ways. People's Liberation Army troops would be out training and maintaining their equipment, or loading their tanks onto trains and the parking areas would look different. Aircraft would have weapons hanging from their wings. These were things a satellite photo would reveal. More care was taken to spot ships at sea\u2014that was far harder, since they were not in fixed locations. America still had three photographic satellites aloft, each making two passes per day over the areas of interest, and they were spaced so that there was little \"sad time.\" That made the technicians feel pretty good about things. They had a continuous feed of data with which to firm up their estimates and so do their duty for their President and their country.\n\nBut they couldn't watch everything everywhere, and one place they didn't watch was Bombay, western headquarters of the Indian navy. The orbits of the American KH-11 satellites were well defined, as were their schedules. Just after the newest satelite swept over the area, with the other new one on the far side of the world, came a four-hour window, which would end with the overhead passage of the oldest and least reliable of the trio. Happily, it also coincided with a high tide.\n\nTwo carriers, their repairs recently completed, and their escorts, slipped their mooring lines and stood out to sea. They would be conducting training exercises in the Arabian Sea, in case anyone noticed and asked about it.\n\nDAMN. THE COBRA representative woke up, feeling a little feverish. It took him a few seconds to orient himself. Different motel, different city, different room lights. He fumbled for the proper switch, then put on his glasses, squinting in the uncomfortable light, and spotted his bag. Yeah. Shaving kit. He took that into the bathroom, pulled the paper cover off the glass, and half filled it with water. Then he worked the childproof top on the aspirin bottle, tipped two tablets into his hand and washed them down. He ought not to have had all those beers after dinner, the sales rep told himself, but he'd made a fairly decent deal with a couple of club pros, and beer was always a good lubricant for the golf business. He'd feel better in the morning. A former touring professional who hadn't been quite good enough to make it big, he was now a very successful manufacturer's representative. What the hell, he thought, heading back to his bed. He still had a minus handicap, the pace was easier, and he was making a pretty good living\u2014plus being able to play a new course practically every week, the better to demonstrate his wares. He hoped the aspirin would work. He had an eight-thirty tee time.\n\nSTORM TRACK AND PALM BOWL were connected by a fiber-optic communications cable, the better to share information. Another training exercise was under way in the former Iraq and this one wasn't a CPX. The three heavy corps of integrated Iraqi and Iranian units were in the field. Direction-finding radios placed them well away from the Saudi and Kuwaiti borders, and so no special danger was attached to their activities, but the ELINT troops were listening closely to get a feel for the skill level of the commanders who were moving tanks and infantry fighting vehicles across the broad, dry plains southeast of Baghdad.\n\n\"Here's good news, Major,\" the American lieutenant said, handing over a telex. The UIR SNIE had generated something positive for a change.\n\nTwo hundred miles northwest of Kuwait, at a spot five miles south of the \"berm\"\u2014actually a man-made dune\u2014that marked the border between the Kingdom and the UIR, a deuce-and-a-half truck stopped. The crew got out, attached the extension to the launch ramp and fired up their Predator drone. But \"drone\" was an obsolete term. This mini-aircraft was an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV, a blue-gray-colored, propeller-driven spy. It took about twenty minutes to attach the wings, run diagnostics on the electronics, and spin up the engine, and then it was launched, the annoying buzz of its engine fading rapidly as it climbed to its operating altitude and headed north.\n\nThe product of three decades of research, Predator was fairly stealthy, difficult to detect on radar due to its small size, the inclusion of radar-absorbing material in its design, and the fact that its operating speed was so slow that modern computer-controlled radars, if they caught it at all, classified it as a bird and erased it from the operator's scope. The paint covering the airframe was the same IR-suppresive product the Navy had taken to using. It was both ugly and prone to provide a sticky home to anything that touched it\u2014the technicians had to brush sand off their baby all the time\u2014but that was balanced by the fact that the color blended in with the sky exceedingly well. Armed only with a TV camera, this one soared up to ten thousand feet, and cruised north under the control of another team at STORM TRACK, the better to keep an eye on the UIR exercises. It was a technical violation of the new country's sovereignty, but two pounds of explosive in the UAV would ensure that if it hit the ground in the wrong place, no one would be able to tell what it was. A directional antenna beamed the \"take\" from the camera to receivers in the Kingdom.\n\nThe fiber-optic data link crossloaded the same signal to PALM BOWL, and when a USAF enlisted woman switched on the room's monitor, they were looking down at a nearly featureless landscape while the Predator was guided to its destination by its operators.\n\n\"It'll be good to see if they know what they're doing,\" the lieutenant observed to Major Sabah.\n\n\"Better if we see that they don't,\" the Kuwaiti officer replied thoughtfully. Other members of his extended family were increasingly concerned. Enough so, the major thought, that their country's military was quietly ramping up to a very high state of readiness. Like the Saudis, the Kuwaiti citizens who'd flocked enthusiastically to man the best equipment that their small but wealthy country could obtain felt that maintenance of their tanks was a task for lesser men, but, unlike their Saudi cousins, they had experience with being on the bottom side of conquest. Many of them had lost family members, and a long memory was characteristic of this part of the world. For that reason, they trained with a will. They weren't yet near the level of the Americans who taught them or the Israelis who held them in distant contempt, Major Sabah knew. His countrymen had first of all learned how to shoot. They'd burned out at least one gun tube per tank in the pure joy of learning that skill, and they had been firing real rounds, not just practice\u2014war shots fly straighter and farther\u2014as they combined a diverting hobby with a national survival skill. Able now to hit their targets, their current task was to learn to maneuver and fight on the move. Again, they couldn't do it well, not yet, but they were learning. The developing crisis put emphasis on their training, and even now his countrymen were leaving their banking, oil, and trading offices to mount their vehicles. An American advisory team would take them into the field again, give them a battle problem, and watch their performance. While it pained the major that his countrymen, many of them relatives, were not yet ready, it was a source of pride to him that they were making a real effort. Bright as he was, however, it never occurred to him how close his military was to the Israeli model: citizen soldiers learning to fight after the harsh lesson of not having known.\n\n\"SWORDSMAN IS AWAKE,\" Andrea Price heard in her earpiece. They were in the kitchen, the Detail commander with her sub-detail chiefs, standing and sipping coffee around one of the stainless-steel countertops used for preparing food. \"Roy?\"\n\n\"Another routine day,\" Special Agent Altman said. \"She's got three procedures scheduled for the morning, then a lecture to some Spanish docs in the afternoon\u2014University of Barcelona, ten of them, eight males, two females. We checked the names with the Spanish police. They're all clean. No special threats reported against SURGEON. Looks like a normal day at the office.\"\n\n\"Mike?\" she asked Special Agent Michael Brennan, principal agent to Little Jack.\n\n\"Well, SHORTSTOP has a first-period biology test today and baseball practice after school. Pretty good with a glove, but his batting needs help,\" the agent added. \"Otherwise, same-o same-o.\"\n\n\"Wendy?\" Special Agent Gwendolyn Merritt was principal agent for Sally Ryan.\n\n\"Chemistry exam for SHADOW in third period today. She's getting very interested in Kenny. Nice kid, needs a haircut and a new tie. She's thinking about going out for the girls' lacrosse team.\" A few faces winced at that revelation. How do you protect someone being chased by teenagers with sticks?\n\n\"What's the family background on Master Kenny again?\" Price asked. Even she couldn't remember everything.\n\n\"Father and mother both lawyers, tax stuff mainly.\"\n\n\"SHADOW needs better taste,\" Brennan observed to general amusement around the counter. He was the joker on the crew. \"There is a potential threat there, Wendy.\"\n\n\"Huh? What?\"\n\n\"If POTUS gets the new tax laws passed, they're in the shitter.\"\n\nAndrea Price made another check mark on her morning list. \"Don?\"\n\n\"Today's routine is the same as usual, Introductory Crayon. I'm still not happy with the setup, Andrea. I want some more people, one more inside, and two more for overwatch on the south side,\" Don Russell announced. \"We're too exposed. We just don't have enough defensive depth there. The outer perimeter is essentially the only one, and I am not comfortable with that.\"\n\n\"SURGEON doesn't want us to overpower the place. You have yourself and two agents inside, three for immediate backup, and one surveillance agent across the road,\" Price reminded him.\n\n\"Andrea, I want three more. We're too exposed there,\" Russell repeated. His voice was reasonable and professional as ever. \"The family has to listen to us on professional questions.\"\n\n\"How about I come over tomorrow afternoon to look things over again?\" Price asked. \"If I agree, then I go to the Boss.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" Special Agent Russell nodded.\n\n\"Any more problems with Mrs. Walker?\"\n\n\"Sheila tried to get a petition drive started with the other Giant Steps parents\u2014get SANDBOX out of there, that sort of thing. It turns out that Mrs. Daggett gets a lot of repeat business, and more than half the parents know the Ryans and like 'em. So, that crapped out in a hurry. You know what the only real problem is?\"\n\n\"What's that, Don?\"\n\nHe smiled. \"At that age\u2014sometimes I turn around and the kids move and when I turn back I can't tell which one SANDBOX is. You know there's only two kinds of haircuts for little girls, and half the mothers there think Oshkosh is the only brand of kid's clothes.\"\n\n\"Don, it's a woman thing,\" Wendy Merritt observed. \"If the First Toddler wears it, it has to be fashionable.\"\n\n\"Probably the same thing with the hair,\" Andrea added. \"By the way, I forgot to tell you, Pat O'Day wants a little match with you,\" she told the Detail's most senior member.\n\n\"The Bureau guy?\" Russell's eyes lit up. \"Where? When? Tell him to bring money, Andrea.\" It occurred to Russell that he was due to have some playtime of his own. He hadn't lost a pistol match in seven years\u2014his last bout with the flu.\n\n\"We all set?\" Price asked her senior agents.\n\n\"How's the Boss doing?\" Altman asked.\n\n\"They're keeping him pretty busy. Cutting into his sleep time.\"\n\n\"Want me to talk to SURGEON about it? She keeps a good eye on him,\" Roy told her.\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\n\"I know how. Gee, Dr. Ryan, is the Boss doing okay? He looked a little tired this morning . . . ,\" Altman suggested.\n\nThe four agents exchanged looks. President-management was their most delicate duty. This President listened to his wife almost as though he were a normal husband. So why not make SURGEON into an ally? All four nodded at once.\n\n\"Go with it,\" Price told him.\n\n\"SON OF A BITCH,\" Colonel Hamm said inside his command track.\n\n\"Surprised you, did they?\" General Diggs inquired delicately.\n\n\"They have a ringer in there?\" the CO of the Blackhorse Cav wanted to know.\n\n\"No, but they sprung one on me, Al. They didn't let anybody know they had IVIS training. Well, that is, I found out last night.\"\n\n\"Nice guy, sir.\"\n\n\"Surprises work both ways, Colonel,\" Diggs reminded him.\n\n\"How the _hell_ did they get the funding for that?\"\n\n\"Their fairy god-senators, I suppose.\"\n\nVisiting units didn't bring their own equipment to Fort Irwin, for the obvious reason that it was too expensive to transport it all back and forth. Instead they mated up with vehicle sets permanent to the base, and those were top-of-the-linc. Included in all of them was IVIS, the Inter-Vehicle Information System, a battlefield data link that projected data onto a computer screen inside the tanks and Bradleys. It was something the 11th Cav had been issued for only its own vehicles (their real ones, not the simulated enemy sets) six months earlier. Seemingly a simple system for trading data\u2014it even ordered spare parts automatically when something broke it presented the crew with a comprehensive overview of the battlefield, and converted hard-won reconnaissance information into general knowledge in a matter of seconds. No longer was data on a developing engagement limited to a harried and distracted unit commander. Now sergeants knew everything the colonel did, and information was still the most valuable commodity known to man. The visiting tankers from the Carolina Guard were fully trained up on its use. So were the troopers of the Blackhorse, but their pseudo-Soviet OpFor vehicles didn't have it.\n\n\"Colonel, now we really know how good the system is. It beat you.\"\n\nThe simulated engagement had been a bloody one. Hamm and his operations officer had contrived a devilish ambush, only to have the Weekend Warriors detect it, avoid it, and enter into a battle of maneuver which had caught the OpFor leaning the wrong way. A daring counterstroke by one of his squadron commanders had almost saved the day, and killed off half of the Blue Force, but it hadn't been enough. The first night engagement had gone to the good guys, and the Guardsmen were whooping it up as if after an ACC basketball game.\n\n\"I'll know better next time,\" Hamm promised.\n\n\"Humility is good for the soul,\" Marion Diggs said, enjoying the sunrise.\n\n\"Death is bad for the body, sir,\" the colonel reminded him.\n\n_\"Baaaaaaaaa,\"_ Diggs said, grinning on the way to his personal Hummer. Even Al Hamm needed the occasional lesson.\n\nTHEY TOOK THEIR time. Movie Star handled the car rentals. He had duplicate IDs, enough to rent four vehicles, three four-door private cars and a U-Haul van. The former had been selected to match vehicles owned by parents who had children at the nursery school. The latter was for their escape\u2014an eventuality which he now thought likely and not merely possible. His men were smarter than he'd appreciated. Driving past the objective in their rented cars, they didn't turn their heads to stare, but allowed their peripheral vision to take in the scene. They already had exact knowledge from the model they'd built, based on data from their leader's photographs. Driving past the site gave them a better full-size, three-dimensional view, and added more substance to their mental image, and to their growing confidence. With that task done, they drove west, turned off Route 50 and proceeded to a lonely farmhouse in southern Anne Arundel County.\n\nThe house was owned by a man thought by his neighbors to be a Syrian-born Jew who'd lived in the area for eleven years, but who was a sleeper agent. Over the past few years, he'd made discreet purchases of arms and ammunition, all of them legal, and all made before restrictive laws on some of the weapons had been passed\u2014he could have evaded them anyway. In his coat pocket were airline tickets under a different name and passport. This was the final rendezvous point. They would bring the child here. Then six of them would leave the country at once, all on separate flights, and the remaining three would enter the homeowner's personal car and drive to yet another pre-determined location to await developments. America was a vast country, with many roads. Cellular telephones were difficult to track. They'd give a devil of a time to their pursuers, Movie Star thought. He knew how he'd do things, if it got that far. The team with the child would have one phone. He would have two, one to make brief calls to the American government, and another to call his friends. They would demand much for the life of the child, enough to throw this country into chaos. Perhaps the child might even be set free alive. He wasn't sure about that, but he supposed it was possible.\n**42**\n\n**PREDATOR\/PREY**\n\n**C** IA HAS ITS OWN PHOTO shop, of course. The film shot out the aircraft window by Field Officer Domingo Chavez was tagged by the technician in a manner little different from that used by commercial shops, and then processed on standard equipment. There the routine treatment stopped. The grainy ASA-1200 film produced a poor-quality image, and one couldn't give _that_ to the people on the seventh floor. The employees in the photo shop knew about the RIF order, and the best way to avoid being laid off, in this or any other business, was to be indispensable. So the developed roll of film went into a computer-enhancement system. It took only three minutes per frame to convert the images into something that might have been shot by an expert with a Hasselblad under studio conditions. Less than an hour after the film's arrival, the tech produced a set of eight-by-ten glossies that positively identified the airplane passenger as the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, and provided a shot of his aircraft, so clear and dramatic that the manufacturer might have used it on a sales brochure. The film was put in an envelope and sent off to secure storage. The photos themselves were stored in digital form on tape, their precise identity\u2014date, time of day, location, photographer, and subject\u2014also coded into a computer register for extensive cross-referencing. It was standard procedure. The technician had long since stopped caring about what he developed, though he still did see the occasional frame showing someone on the news in a position that never made the TV screen . . . but not this guy. From what he'd heard about Daryaei, the man probably didn't have much interest in boys or girls, and the dour expression on his face seemed to confirm it. What the hell, he did have nice taste in airplanes, a G-IV, it looked like. Odd, wasn't that a Swiss registration code on the tail, though . . . ?\n\nWhen the photos went upstairs, one complete set was also set aside for a different kind of analysis. A physician would examine them closely. Some diseases left visible signs, and the Agency always kept an eye on the health of foreign leaders.\n\n\"... SECRETARY ADLER will be leaving for Beijing this morning,\" Ryan told _them_. Arnie had told _him_ that, as unpleasant as these news appearances were, being seen on TV doing presidential things was good for him politically\u2014and _that_ , Arnie always went on, meant being more effective in the job. The President also remembered hearing from his mom how important it was to go to the dentist twice a year, too, and just as the antiseptic smells of that place were certain to frighten a child, so he had come to loathe the damp of this room. The walls leaked, some of the windows were cracked, and this part of the West Wing of the White House was about as neat and well kept as a high-school locker room, something the citizens couldn't tell from watching TV. Though the area was only a few yards from his own office, nobody really cared much about tidying things up. Reporters were such slobs, the staff claimed, that it wouldn't have mattered much anyway. What the hell, the reporters didn't seem to worry about it.\n\n\"Mr. President, have we learned anything more about the airliner incident?\"\n\n\"It's been announced that the body count is complete. The flight-data recorders have been recovered and\u2014\"\n\n\"Will we have access to the black-box information?\"\n\nWhy did they call it the _black_ box when it was _orange?_ Jack had always wondered about that, but knew he'd never get a sensible answer. \"We've asked for that access, and the Republic of China government has promised its full cooperation. They don't have to do that. The aircraft is registered in that country, and the aircraft is made in Europe. But they are being helpful. We acknowledge that with thanks. I should add that none of the Americans who survived the crash itself are in any medical danger\u2014some of the injuries are severe, but not life-threatening.\"\n\n\"Who shot it down?\" another reporter asked.\n\n\"We're still examining the data, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Mr. President, the Navy has two Aegis-class ships in that immediate area. You must have a good idea of what happened.\" This guy had done his homework.\n\n\"I really can't comment further on that. Secretary Adler will discuss the incident with the parties concerned. We want, first of all, to make sure that no further loss of life takes place.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, a follow-up: you _must_ know more than you're saying. Fourteen Americans were killed in this incident. The American people have a right to know why.\"\n\nThe hell of it was, the man was right. The hell of it also was that Ryan had to evade: \"We really do not know exactly what happened yet. I cannot make a definitive statement until we do.\" Which was philosophically true, anyway. He knew who'd taken the shot. He didn't know why. Adler had made a good point yesterday on keeping that knowledge close.\n\n\"Mr. Adler returned from somewhere yesterday. Why is that a secret?\" It was Plumber again, chasing down his question from the previous day.\n\n_I'm going to kill Arnie for exposing me this way all the time._ \"John, the Secretary was engaged in some important consultations. That's all I have to say on the issue.\"\n\n\"He was in the Middle East, wasn't he?\"\n\n\"Next question?\"\n\n\"Sir, the Pentagon has announced that the carrier _Eisenhower_ is moving into the South China Sea. Did you order that?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did. We feel that the situation warrants our close attention. We have vital interests in that region. I point out that we are not taking sides in this dispute, but we are going to look after our own interests.\"\n\n\"Will moving the carrier cool things down or heat them up?\"\n\n\"Obviously, we're not trying to make things worse. We're trying to make them better. It's in the interests of both parties to take a step back and think about what they are doing. Lives have been lost,\" the President reminded them. \"Some of those were American lives. That gives us a direct interest in the matter. The reason we have a government and a military is to look after American interests and to protect the lives of our citizens. The naval forces heading for the region will observe what is happening and conduct routine training operations. That is all.\"\n\nZHANG HAN SAN checked his watch again and remarked to himself that it was becoming a fine way to end his working day\u2014the sight of the American President doing exactly what he wanted him to do. Now China had fulfilled her obligations to that Daryaei barbarian. The Indian Ocean was devoid of a major American naval presence for the first time in twenty years. The American foreign minister would leave Washington in another two hours or so. Another eighteen hours to fly to Beijing, and then the platitudes could be exchanged. He'd see what concessions he could wring out of America and the Taiwanese puppet state. Maybe a few good ones, he thought, with the trouble America was sure to face elsewhere....\n\nADLER WAS IN his office. His bags were packed and in his official car, which would take him to the White House to catch a helicopter to Andrews after a presidential handshake and a brief departure statement which would be as bland as oatmeal. The more dramatic departure would look good on TV, make his mission appear to be a matter of importance, and cause additional wrinkling to his clothes\u2014but the Air Force crew had an ironing board on the plane.\n\n\"What do we know?\" Under Secretary Rutledge asked of the Secretary's senior staff.\n\n\"The missile was shot by a PRC aircraft. That's pretty positive from the Navy's radar tapes. No idea why, though Admiral Jackson is very positive in saying that it was not an accident.\"\n\n\"How was it in Tehran?\" another assistant secretary inquired.\n\n\"Equivocal. I'll get that written up on the flight and fax it back here.\" Adler, too, was pressed for time and hadn't had enough to think through his meeting with Daryaei.\n\n\"We need that if we're going to be much use on the SNIE,\" Rutledge pointed out. He really wanted _that_ document. With it, Ed Kealty could prove that Ryan was up to his old tricks, playing secret agent man, and even suborning Scott Adler into doing the same. It was out there somewhere, the key to destroying Ryan's political legitimacy. He was dodging and counterpunching well, doubtless due to Arnie van Damm's coaching, but his gaffe yesterday on China policy had sent rumbles throughout the building. Like many people at State, he wished that Taiwan would just go away, and enable America to get on with the business of conducting normal relations with the world's newest superpower.\n\n\"One thing at a time, Cliff.\"\n\nThe meeting returned to the China issue. By mutual consent, it was decided that the UIR problem was on the back burner for the next few days.\n\n\"Any change in China policy from the White House?\" Rutledge asked.\n\nAdler shook his head. \"No, the President was just trying to talk his way through things\u2014and, yeah, I know, he shouldn't have called the Republic of China China, but maybe it rattled their cage just a little in Beijing, and I'm not all that displeased about it. They do need to learn about not killing Americans. We have crossed a line here, people. One of the things I have to do is let them know that we take that line seriously.\"\n\n\"Accidents happen,\" someone observed.\n\n\"The Navy says it wasn't an accident.\"\n\n\"Come on, Mr. Secretary,\" Rutledge groaned. \"Why the hell would they do that on purpose?\"\n\n\"It's our job to find out. Admiral Jackson made a good case for his position. If you're a cop on the street and you have an armed robber in front of you, why shoot the little old lady down the block?\"\n\n\"Accident, obviously,\" Rutledge persisted.\n\n\"Cliff, there are accidents, and there are accidents. This one killed Americans, and in case anybody in this room forgot, we are supposed to take that seriously.\"\n\nThey weren't used to that sort of reprimand. What was _with_ Adler, anyway? The job of the State Department was to maintain the peace, to forestall conflict that killed people in the thousands. Accidents were accidents. They were unfortunate, but they happened, like cancer and heart attacks. State was supposed to deal with the Big Picture.\n\n\"THANK YOU, Mr. President.\" Ryan left the podium, having again survived the slings and arrows of the media. He checked his watch. Damn. He'd missed seeing the kids off to school\u2014again\u2014and hadn't kissed Cathy good-bye, either. Where in the Constitution, he wondered, was it written down that the President wasn't a human being?\n\nOn reaching his office, he scanned the printed sheet of his daily schedule. Adler was due over in an hour for the send-off to China. Winston at ten o'clock to go over the details of his administrative changes across the street at Treasury. Arnie and Callie at eleven to go through his speeches for next week. Lunch with Tony Bretano. A meeting after lunch with\u2014who? The Anaheim Mighty Ducks? Ryan shook his head. Oh. They'd won the Stanley Cup, and this would be a photo opportunity for them and for him. He had to talk to Arnie about that political crap. Hmph. Ought to have Ed Foley over for that, Jack smiled to himself. He was a hockey fanatic . . .\n\n\"YOU'RE RUNNING LATE,\" Don Russell said, as Pat O'Day dropped Megan off.\n\nThe FBI inspector continued past him, saw to Megan's coat and blanky, then returned. \"The power went off last night and reset my clock-radio for me,\" he explained.\n\n\"Big day planned?\"\n\nPat shook his head. \"Desk day. I have to finish up a few things\u2014you know the drill.\" Both did. It was essentially editing and indexing reports, a secretarial function which on sensitive cases was often done by sworn, gun-toting agents.\n\n\"I hear you want to have a little contest,\" Russell said.\n\n\"They say you're pretty good.\"\n\n\"Oh, fair, I guess,\" the Secret Service agent allowed.\n\n\"Yeah, I try to keep the shots inside the lines, too.\"\n\n\"Like the SigSauer?\"\n\nThe FBI agent shook his head. \"Smith 1076 stainless.\"\n\n\"The ten-millimeter.\"\n\n\"It makes a bigger hole,\" O'Day pointed out.\n\n\"Nine's always been enough for me,\" Russell reported. Then both men laughed.\n\n\"You hustle pool, too?\" the FBI agent asked.\n\n\"Not since high school, Pat. Shall we set the amount of the wager?\"\n\n\"It has to be serious,\" O'Day thought.\n\n\"Case of Samuel Adams?\" Russell suggested.\n\n\"An honorable bet, sir,\" the inspector agreed.\n\n\"How about at Beltsville?\" That was the site of the Secret Service Academy. \"The outside range. Indoors is always too artificial.\"\n\n\"Standard combat match?\"\n\n\"I haven't shot bull's-eye in years. I don't ever expect one of my principals to be attacked by a black dot.\"\n\n\"Tomorrow?\" It seemed a good Saturday diversion.\n\n\"That's probably a little quick. I can check. I'll know this afternoon.\"\n\n\"Don, you have a deal. And may the best man win.\" They shook hands.\n\n\"The best man will, Pat. He always does.\" Both men knew who it would be, though one of them would have to be wrong. Both also knew that the other would be a good guy to have at your back, and that the beer would taste pretty good either way when the issue was decided.\n\nTHE WEAPONS WEREN'T fully automatic. A good machinist could have changed that, but the sleeper agent wasn't one of those. Movie Star and his people didn't mind all that much. They were trained marksmen and knew that full-auto was only good for three rounds unless you had the arms of a gorilla\u2014after that, the gun jumped up and you were just drilling holes in the sky instead of the target, who just might fire back at you. There was neither time nor space for another round of shooting, but they were familiar with the weapon type, the Chinese knock-off of the Soviet AK-47, itself a development of a German weapon from the 1940s. It fired a short-case 7.62mm cartridge. The magazines held thirty rounds each. The team members used duct tape to double them up, inserting and ejecting the magazines to be sure that everything fit properly. With that task completed, they resumed their examination of the objective. Each of them knew his place and his task. Each also knew the dangers involved, but they didn't dwell on that. Nor, Movie Star saw, did they dwell on the nature of the mission. They were so dehumanized by their years of activity within the terrorist community that, though this was the first real mission, for most of them, all they really thought about was proving themselves. How they did it, exactly, was less important.\n\n\"THEY'RE GOING TO bring up a lot of things,\" Adler said.\n\n\"Think so?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"You bet. Most-favored nation, copyright disputes, you name it, it'll all come up.\"\n\nThe President grimaced. It seemed obscene to place the copyright protection for Barbra Streisand CDs alongside the deliberate killing of so many people, but\u2014\n\n\"Yeah, Jack. They just don't think about stuff the same way we do.\"\n\n\"Reading my mind?\"\n\n\"I'm a diplomat, remember? You think I just listen to what people say out loud? Hell, we'd never get any negotiations done that way. It's like playing a long low-stakes card game, boring and tense all at the same time.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking about the lives lost . . .\"\n\n\"I have, too,\" SecState replied with a nod. \"You can't dwell on it\u2014it's a sign of weakness in their context\u2014but I won't forget it, either.\" That got a rise out of his Commander-in-Chief.\n\n\"Why is it, Scott, that we always have to respect their cultural context? Why is it that they never seem to respect ours?\" POTUS wanted to know.\n\n\"It's always been that way at State.\"\n\n\"That doesn't answer the question,\" Jack pointed out.\n\n\"If we lean too hard on that, Mr. President, it's like being a hostage. Then the other side always knows that they can hang a couple of lives over us and use it to pressure us. It gives them an advantage.\"\n\n\"Only if we allow it. The Chinese need us as much as we need them\u2014more, with the trade surplus. Taking lives is playing rough. We can play rough, too. I've always wondered why we don't.\"\n\nSecState adjusted his glasses. \"Sir, I do not disagree with that, but it has to be thought through very carefully, and we do not have the time to do that now. You're talking a doctrinal change in American policy. You don't shoot from the hip on something that big.\"\n\n\"When you get back, let's get together over a weekend with a few others and see if there are any options. I don't like what we've been doing on this issue in a moral sense, and I don't like it because it makes us a little too predictable.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"Playing by a given set of rules is all well and good, as long as everybody plays by the same rules, but playing by a known set of rules when the other guy _doesn't_ just makes us an easy mark,\" Ryan speculated. \"On the other hand, if somebody else breaks the rules and then we break them, too, maybe in a different way, but break them even so, it gives him something to think about. You want to be predictable to your friends, yes, but what your enemy needs to predict is that messing with you gets him hurt. How hurt he gets, that part we make unpredictable.\"\n\n\"Not without merit, Mr. President. Sounds like a nice subject for a weekend up at Camp David.\" Both men stopped talking when the helicopter came down on the pad. \"There's my driver. Got your statement?\"\n\n\"Yeah, and about as dramatic as a weather report on a sunny day.\"\n\n\"That's how the game is played, Jack,\" Adler pointed out. He reflected that Ryan was hearing a lot of that song. No wonder he was bridling at it.\n\n\"I've never run across a game where they never change the rules. Baseball went to a designated hitter to liven things up,\" POTUS remarked casually.\n\n_Designated hitter_ , SecState wondered on his way out the door. _Great choice of words . . ._\n\nFIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Ryan watched the helicopter lift off. He'd done the handshake for the cameras, made his brief statement for the cameras, looked serious but upbeat for the cameras. Maybe C-SPAN had covered it live, but nobody else would. Were it to be a slow news day\u2014Friday in Washington often was\u2014it might get a minute and a half on one or two of the evening news shows. More likely not. Friday was their day to summarize the week's events, recognize some person or other for doing something or other, and toss in a fluff story.\n\n\"Mr. President!\" Jack turned to see TRADER, his Secretary of the Treasury, walking over a few minutes early.\n\n\"Hi, George.\"\n\n\"That tunnel between here and my building?\"\n\n\"What about it?\"\n\n\"I took a look at it this morning. It's a real mess. You have any beefs about cleaning it up?\" Winston asked.\n\n\"George, that's a Secret Service function, and _you_ own them, remember?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know, but it does come to your house, and so I thought I ought to ask. Okay, I'll get it taken care of. Might be nice for when it rains.\"\n\n\"How's the tax plan coming?\" Ryan asked, on his way to the door. An agent yanked it open and held it for him. Such things still made Jack uncomfortable. A man had to do _some_ things for himself.\n\n\"We'll have the computer models done next week. I really want the case tight on this one, revenue-neutral, easier on the little guy, fair on the big guy, and I have my people jumping through hoops on the administrative savings. Jesus, Jack, was I wrong about that!\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" They turned the corner for the Oval Office.\n\n\"I thought I was the only guy pissing money away to work the tax code. Everybody does. It's a huge industry. It'll put a lot of people out of work\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm supposed to be happy about that?\"\n\n\"They'll all find honest work, except for the lawyers, maybe. And we'll save the taxpayers a few billion dollars by giving them a tax form they can figure out from fourth-grade math. Mr. President, the government doesn't insist that people buy buggy whips, does it?\"\n\nRyan told his secretary to call Arnie in. He'd want a little political guidance on the ramifications of George's plan.\n\n\"YES, ADMIRAL?\"\n\n\"You asked for a report on the _Eisenhower_ group,\" Jackson said, walking to the large wall map and consulting a slip of paper. \"They're right here, making good speed.\" Then Robby's pager started vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the number. His eyebrows went up. \"Sir, do you mind . . . ?\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" Secretary Bretano said. Jackson took the phone on the other side of the room, dialing five digits. \"J-3 here . . . oh? Where are they? Then let's find out, shall we, Commander? Correct.\" He put the phone back. \"That was the NMCC. The NRO reports that the Indian navy's missing\u2014their two carriers, that is.\"\n\n\"What does that mean, Admiral?\"\n\nRobby walked back to the map and walked his hand across the blue part west of the Indian subcontinent. \"Thirty-six hours since the last time we checked. Figure three hours to clear the port and form up . . . twenty knots times thirty-three is six hundred sixty nautical miles, that's seven hundred sixty statute miles . . . about halfway between their home port and the Horn of Africa.\" He turned. \"Mr. Secretary, they have two carriers, nine escorts, and an UNREP group missing from their piers. The fleet oilers mean they might be planning to stay out for a while. We had no intelligence information to warn us about this.\" _As_ _usual,_ he didn't add.\n\n\"So where exactly are they?\"\n\n\"That's the point. We don't know. We have some P-3 Orion aircraft based at Diego Garcia. They're going to launch a couple to go looking. We can task some satellite assets to the job also. We need to tell State about this. Maybe the embassy can find out something.\"\n\n\"Fair enough. I'll tell the President in a few minutes. Anything to worry about?\"\n\n\"Could be they're just putting out after completing repairs\u2014we rattled their cage pretty hard a while back, as you know.\"\n\n\"But now the only two aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean are somebody else's?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" _And our nearest one is heading the wrong way_. But at least SecDef was catching on some.\n\nADLER WAS IN a former Air Force One, an old but solid version of the venerable 707-320B. His official party comprised eight people, with five Air Force stewards to look after them. For the moment, he looked at his watch, computed the travel time\u2014they had to stop for fuel at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska\u2014and decided he'd catch up on his sleep during the last leg. What a shame, he thought, that the government didn't award frequent-flyer miles. He'd be traveling free for the rest of his life. For now, he took out his Tehran notes and started examining them again. He closed his eyes, trying to recall additional details as he relived the experience from his arrival at Mehrabad to the departure, visualizing every single episode. Every few minutes, he opened his eyes, flipped to the page in his notes, and made a few marginal comments. With luck, he'd be able to have them typed up and sent by secure fax to Washington for the SNIE team.\n\n\"DING, MAYBE YOU have another career ahead of you,\" Mary Pat observed, as she examined the photo through a magnifying glass. Her voice went on in some disappointment. \"He looks healthy.\"\n\n\"You suppose being a son of a bitch is good for longevity?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"Worked for you, Mr. C.,\" Chavez joked.\n\n\"I may have to put up with this for the next thirty years.\"\n\n\"But such handsome grandsons you will have, _jefe._ And bilingual.\"\n\n\"Back to business, shall we?\" Mrs. Foley suggested, Friday afternoon or not.\n\nIT'S NEVER FUN to be ill on an airplane. He wondered what he'd eaten, or maybe he'd picked up something in San Francisco at the computer show, all those damned people around. The executive was an experienced traveler, and his personal \"first-aid kit\" never left his side. In with his razor and such he found some Tylenol. He washed two down with a glass of wine and decided that he'd just try to sleep it off. With luck, he'd feel better by the time his flight made it into Newark. Sure as hell, he didn't want to drive home feeling like this. He eased the seat all the way back, clicked off the light, and closed his eyes.\n\nIT WAS TIME. The rental cars pulled away from the farmhouse. Each driver knew the route to and from the objective. There were no maps or other written material in their vehicles aside from photos of their prey. If any of them had uneasy feelings about kidnapping a small child, none showed it. Instead, their weapons were loaded and set on safe, and in every case sat on the floor, covered with a blanket or cloth. All wore suits and ties so that if a police car pulled alongside, a look would reveal only three well-groomed men, probably businessmen in nice private cars. The team thought that last part amusing. The Movie Star was a stickler for proper appearance, probably, they all thought, because of his vanity.\n\nPRICE WATCHED THE arrival of the Mighty Ducks with no small amusement. She'd seen it all before. The most powerful of men walked into this place and were turned into children by it. What to her and her colleagues was just part of the scenery, the paintings and so forth, was to others the trappings of ultimate power. And in a way, she admitted to herself, they were right and she was wrong. Anything can become routine after sufficient repetition, whereas the new visitor, seeing everything for the first time, may have seen more clearly. The processing helped make it that way, as they came through the metal detectors under the watchful eyes of members of the USSS Uniformed Division. They'd get a quick walk-around while the President finished his meeting with the SecDef, which was reportedly running very late. The hockey players, bearing gifts for the President\u2014the usual sticks, pucks, and a jersey-sweater with his name on it (actually they had them for the whole family)\u2014shuffled through the passage from the East Entrance, their eyes sweeping left and right over the decorations on the white-painted walls of what for Andrea was a place of work and for them something else, powerful and special. An interesting dualism, she thought, walking over to Jeff Raman.\n\n\"I'm heading over to check out arrangements for SAND-BOX.\"\n\n\"I heard Don was getting a little antsy. Anything I need to know?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"POTUS isn't planning anything special. Callie Weston will be over later. They changed her slot. Otherwise, everything's routine.\"\n\n\"Fair enough,\" Raman acknowledged.\n\n\"This is Price,\" she said into her microphone. \"Show me in transit to SANDBOX.\"\n\n\"Roger that,\" the command post replied.\n\nThe Detail chief headed out the way the Mighty Ducks had come in, and turned left for her personal vehicle, a Ford Crown Victoria. The vehicle looked ordinary, but wasn't. Under the hood was the biggest standard engine Ford made. There were two cellular phones and a pair of secure radios. The tires had steel disks inside so that were one to be flattened, the car could still drive. Like all members of the Detail, she'd been trained in the Service's special evasive-driving course at Beltsville\u2014it was something they all loved. And in her purse was her SigSauer 9mm automatic, along with two spare clips, plus her lipstick and credit cards.\n\nPrice was a fairly ordinary-looking woman. Not as pretty as Helen D'Agustino . . . she sighed at the memory. Andrea and Daga had been close. The latter had helped her through a divorce and gotten her some dates. Good friend, good agent, dead with all the rest that night on the Hill. Daga\u2014nobody in the Service had called her Helen\u2014had been blessed with Mediterranean features that stopped just short of voluptuous, and that had made for a fine disguise. She just hadn't looked at all like a cop. Presidential aide, secretary, or mistress, maybe . . . but Andrea was more ordinary, and so she donned the sunglasses that agents on the Detail adopted. She was no-nonsense, maybe a little strident? They'd said that about her once, back when it had been a novelty for women to join up and carry guns. The system was over that now. Now she was one of the boys, to the point that she laughed at the jokes and told some of her own. Her instant assumption of command on that night with SWORDSMAN, getting his family to safety\u2014she owed Ryan, Andrea knew. He'd made the call because he liked the way she did things. She would never have made Detail chief so rapidly but for his instant decision. Yes, she had the savvy. Yes, she knew the personnel very well. Yes, she genuinely loved the work. But she was young for the responsibility\u2014and female. POTUS didn't seem to care, however. He hadn't picked her because she was female and it might therefore look good to the voting public. He'd done it because she'd gotten the job done during a tough time. That made it right, and that made SWORDSMAN special. He even asked her questions about things. That was unique.\n\nShe didn't have a husband. She didn't have kids, probably never would. Andrea Price wasn't one of those who sought to escape her womanhood in pursuit of a career. She wanted it all, but she hadn't quite managed that. Her career was important\u2014she could think of nothing more vital to her country than what she did\u2014and the good news was that it was so all-encompassing that she rarely had the time to dwell on what was missing . . . a good man to share her bed, and a small voice to call her Mommy. But on drives alone, she did think about it, like now, heading up New York Avenue.\n\n\"Not all that liberated at all, are we?\" she asked the windshield. But the Service didn't pay her to be liberated. It paid her to look after the First Family. Her personal life was supposed to run on her personal time, though the Service didn't issue her any of that, either.\n\nINSPECTOR O'DAY WAS already on Route 50. Friday was best of all. He'd done his duty for the week. His tie and suit jacket were on the seat next to him, and he was back in his leather bomber jacket and his lucky John Deere ballcap, without which he'd never consider playing golf or going out to hunt. This weekend he had a ton of things to do around the house. Megan would help with many of them. Somehow she knew. Pat didn't fully understand it. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe she just responded to her father's devotion. However it came about, the two were inseparable. At home, she left his side only to sleep, and only then after a major hug and kiss, her little arms tight around his neck. O'Day chuckled to himself.\n\n\"Tough guy.\"\n\nRUSSELL SUPPOSED IT was the grandfather in him. All these little munchkins. They were playing outside now, every one in his or her parka, about half with the hoods up, because little kids liked that for some reason. Serious playtime here. SANDBOX was in the sandbox, along with the O'Day kid who so closely resembled her, and a little boy\u2014the Walker kid, the rather nice young son of that pain in the ass with the Volvo wagon. Agent Hilton was out, too, supervising. Strangely, they could relax more out here. The playground was on the north side of the Giant Steps building, under the direct view of the support team just across the street. The third member of the team was inside on the phone. She ordinarily worked the back room, where the TV monitors were. The kids knew her as Miss Anne.\n\n_Too thin_ , Russell told himself, even as he watched the toddlers having the purest sort of fun. In the extreme case, somebody could drive by on Ritchie Highway and hose the place. Trying to talk the Ryans out of sending Katie here was a wasted effort, and, sure, they wanted their youngest to be a normal kid. But . . .\n\nBut it was all insane, wasn't it? Russell's entire professional life had revolved around the knowledge that there were people who hated the President and everyone around him. Some were truly crazy. Some were something else. He'd studied the psychology of it. He had to, since learning about them helped to predict what to look for, but that wasn't the same as understanding it. These were kids. Even the fucking Mafia, he knew, didn't mess with children. He sometimes envied the FBI for its statutory authority to track down kidnappers. To rescue a child and apprehend the criminal in that sort of case must be a sweet moment indeed, though part of him wondered how hard it was to bring in alive that kind of subject instead of just sending him off to have his Miranda rights read to him by God Himself. That random thought evoked a smile. Or maybe what really happened was better yet. Kidnappers had a _very bad time_ in prison. Even hardened robbers couldn't stomach the abusers of children, and so that variety of hood learned a whole new form of recreation in the federal corrections system: survival.\n\n\"Russell, Command Post,\" his earpiece said.\n\n\"Russell.\"\n\n\"Price is heading out here like you requested,\" Special Agent Norm Jeffers said from the house across the street. \"Forty minutes, she says.\"\n\n\"Right. Thanks.\"\n\n\"I see the Walker lad is continuing his engineering studies,\" the voice continued.\n\n\"Yeah, maybe he'll do bridges next,\" Don agreed. The youngster had the second level building on his sand castle, to the rapt admiration of Katie Ryan and Megan O'Day.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT,\" THE team captain said, \"I hope you'll like this.\"\n\nRyan had a good laugh and donned the team jersey for the cameras. The team bunched around him for the shot.\n\n\"My CIA Director is a big hockey fan,\" Jack said.\n\n\"Really?\" Bob Albertsen asked. He was a very physical defenseman, the terror of his conference for his board checking, but as docile as a kitten in this setting.\n\n\"Yeah, he has a kid who's pretty good, played in the kids' leagues in Russia.\"\n\n\"Then maybe he learned something. Where's he go to school?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure what colleges they're thinking about. I think they said Eddie wants to study engineering.\" It was so damned pleasant, Jack thought, to talk about normal things like a normal person to other normal people once in a while.\n\n\"Tell them to send the kid to Rensselaer. It's a good tech school up by Albany.\"\n\n\"Why there?\"\n\n\"Those damned nerds win the college championship every other year. I went to Minnesota, and they cleaned our clock twice in a row. Send me his name and I'll see he gets some stuff. His dad, too, if that's okay, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"I'll do that,\" the President promised. Six feet away, Agent Raman heard the exchange and nodded.\n\nO'DAY ARRIVED JUST as the kids were trooping back in the side door for bathroom call. This, he knew, was a major undertaking. He pulled his diesel pickup in just after four. He watched the Secret Service agents switch positions. Russell appeared at the front door, his regular post for when the children were inside.\n\n\"We got us a match for tomorrow?\"\n\nRussell shook his head. \"Too quick. Two weeks from tomorrow, two in the afternoon. It'll give you a chance to practice.\"\n\n\"And you won't?\" O'Day asked, passing inside. He watched Megan enter the girls' bathroom without seeing her daddy in the room. Well, then. He squatted down outside the door to surprise her when she came out.\n\nMOVIE STAR, TOO, was at his surveillance position in the school parking lot to the northeast. The trees were starting to fill in, he realized. He could see, but his view was somewhat obstructed. Things appeared normal even so, and from this point on, it was in Allah's hands, he told himself, surprised that he used the term for a decidedly ungodly act. As he watched, Car I turned right just north of the day-care center. It would proceed down the street, reverse directions, and head back.\n\nCar 2 was a white Lincoln Town Car, the twin of one belonging to a family with a child here. That family comprised two physicians, though none of the terrorists knew that. Immediately behind it was a red Chrysler whose twin belonged to the again-pregnant wife of an accountant. As Movie Star watched, both pulled into parking spaces opposite each other, as close to the highway as the parking lot allowed.\n\nPRICE WOULD BE here soon. Russell took note of the cars' arrival, thinking over his arguments for the Detail chief. The afternoon sun reflected off the windshields, preventing him from seeing anything more inside than the outline of the drivers. Both cars were early, but it was a Friday . . .\n\n... the tag numbers . . . ?\n\n... his eyes narrowed slightly as he shook his head, asking himself why he hadn't\u2014\n\nSOMEONE ELSE HAD. Jeffers lifted his binoculars, scanning the arriving cars as part of his surveillance duties. He didn't even know he had a photographic memory. Remembering things was as natural to him as breathing. He thought everyone could do it.\n\n\"Wait, wait, something's wrong here. They're not\u2014\" He lifted the radio mike. \"Russell, those are not our cars!\" It was almost in time.\n\nIN ONE SMOOTH motion, two drivers opened their car doors and swung their legs out, lifting their weapons off the front seats as they did so. In the back of both cars, two pairs of men came up, also armed.\n\nRUSSELL'S RIGHT HAND moved back and down, reaching for his automatic while his left lifted the collar-mounted radio microphone: _\"Gun!\"_\n\nInside the building, Inspector O'Day heard something but wasn't sure what, and he was facing the wrong way to see how Agent Marcella Hilton turned away from a child who was asking her a question and shoved her hand into her gun purse.\n\nIt was the simplest of code words. An instant later, he heard the same word repeated over his earpiece as Norm Jeffers shouted it from the command post. The black agent's hand pushed another button, activating a radio link to Washington. _\"SANDSTORM SANDSTORM SANDSTORM!\"_\n\nLIKE MOST CAREER cops, Special Agent Don Russell had never fired his side arm in anger, but years of training made his every action as automatic as gravity. The first thing he'd seen was the elevated front sight of an AK-47-class automatic rifle. With that, as though a switch had been thrown, he changed from a watchful cop into a guidance system for a firearm. His SigSauer was out now. His left hand was racing to meet his right on the grip of the weapon, as the rest of his body dropped to one knee to lower his profile and give him better control. The man with the rifle would get the first shot off, but it would miss high, Russell's mind reported. Three such rounds did, passing over his head into the door frame as the area exploded with staccato noise. While that was happening, his tritium-coated front sight matched up with the face behind the weapon. Russell depressed the trigger, and from fifteen yards, he fired a round straight into the shooter's left eye.\n\nINSIDE, O'DAY'S OWN instincts were just lighting off when Megan emerged from the bathroom, struggling with the suspender clips on her Oshkosh coveralls. Just then, the agent the kids knew as Miss Anne bolted out of the back room, her pistol in both hands and pointed up.\n\n\"Jesus,\" the FBI inspector had time to say, when Miss Anne bounded right through him like an NFL fullback, knocking him down at his daughter's feet and banging his head against the wall in the process.\n\nACROSS THE STREET, two agents ran out the front door of the residence, both holding Uzi submachine guns while Jeffers worked the communications inside. He'd already gotten the emergency code word to headquarters. Next he activated the direct drop lines to Barracks J of the Maryland State Police on Rowe Boulevard in Annapolis. There was noise and confusion, but the agents were expertly drilled. Jeffers's function was to make sure that the word got out, then to back up the other two members of his team, already crossing the lawn of the house\u2014\n\n\u2014they never had a chance. From fifty yards away, the shooters from Car 1 dropped both of them with aimed fire. Jeffers watched them go down while he got the word to the state police. He didn't have time for shock. As soon as his information was acknowledged, he lifted his M-16 rifle, flipped off the safety, and moved for the door.\n\nRUSSELL SHIFTED FIRE. Another shooter made the mistake of standing to get a better shot. He never made it. Two quick rounds exploded his head like a melon, saw the agent, who was not thinking, not feeling, not doing anything but servicing targets as quickly as he could identify them. The enemy rounds were still going over his head. Then he heard a scream. His mind reported that it was Marcella Hilton, and he felt something heavy fall on his back and knock him to the ground. Dear God, it had to be Marcella. Her body\u2014something\u2014was on his legs, and as he rolled to get clear of the obstruction, four men came into view, advancing toward him, now with a clear line of sight to where he was. He fired one round that scored, drilling one of them right through the heart. The man's eyes went wide with the shock of the impact, until a second round took him in the face. It was like he'd always dreamed it would be. The gun was doing all the work. His peripheral vision showed movement to his left\u2014the support group\u2014but no, it was a car, driving across the playground right at them\u2014not the Suburban, something else. He scarcely could tell as his pistol centered on another shooter, but that man went down, shot three times by Anne Pemberton in the doorway behind him. The remaining two\u2014only two, he had a chance\u2014then Annie got one in the chest, then fell forward, and Russell knew he was alone, all alone now, only him between SANDBOX and these motherfuckers.\n\nDon Russell rolled to his right to avoid fire on the ground to his left, shooting as his body turned, getting off two rounds that went wild. Then his Sig locked open on an empty magazine. He had another ready, and instantly he ejected the empty and slapped in a full one, but that took time and he felt a round enter his lower back, the impact like a kick that shook his body, as his right thumb dropped the slide lever and another bullet struck him in the left shoulder, ripping all the way down his torso to exit out his right leg. One more round, but he couldn't get the gun high enough, something wasn't working right, and he hit somebody straight through the kneecap an instant before a series of shots lowered his face to the ground.\n\nO'DAY WAS JUST trying to get up when two men came through the door, both armed with AKs. He looked around the room, now full of stunned, silent kids. The silence seemed to hang for a long moment, then turn to the shrill screams of toddlers. One of the men had blood all over his leg, and was gritting his teeth in pain and rage.\n\nOUTSIDE, THE THREE men from Car 1 surveyed the carnage. Four men were dead, they saw, as they jumped out of the car, but they'd done for the covering group and\u2014\n\n\u2014the first one out the right-rear door fell facedown. The other two turned around to see a black man in a white shirt with a gray rifle.\n\n\"Eat shit and die.\" His memory would fail him on this occasion. Norman Jeffers would never remember saying that as he shifted to the next target and squeezed off a three-round burst into his head. The third man of the team which had killed his two friends dropped behind the front of his car, but the car was stuck in the middle of the playground with open air to the left and right. \"Come on, stick it up and say hi, Charlie,\" the agent breathed\u2014\n\nand sure enough he did, swinging his weapon around to shoot back at the remaining bodyguard, but not fast enough. His eyes as open and unblinking as an owl's, Jeffers watched the blood cloud fly back as the target disappeared.\n\n\"Norm!\" It was Paula Michaels, the afternoon surveillance agent from the 7-Eleven across the street, her pistol out and in both hands.\n\nJeffers dropped to one knee behind the car whose occupants he'd just killed. She joined him, and with the sudden negation of activity, both agents started breathing heavily, their hearts racing, their heads pounding.\n\n\"Get a count?\" she asked.\n\n\"At least one made it inside\u2014\"\n\n\"Two, I saw two, one hit in the leg. Oh, Jesus, Don, Anne, Marcella\u2014\"\n\n\"Save it. We got kids in there, Paula. Fuck!\"\n\nSO. MOVIE STAR thought, it wasn't going to work out after all. Damn it, he swore silently. He'd _told_ them there were _three_ people in the house to the north. Why hadn't they waited to kill the third? They could have had the child away from here by now! Well. He shook his head clear. He'd never fully expected the mission to succeed. He'd warned Badrayn of that\u2014and picked his people accordingly. Now all he had to do was watch to make sure\u2014what? Would they kill the child? That was something they'd discussed. But they might not fulfill their duty before they died.\n\nPRICE HAD BEEN five miles out when the emergency call had come over her radio. In less than two seconds, she'd had the pedal to the floor, and the car accelerating through traffic, the flashing light in place, and siren screaming. Turning north onto Ritchie Highway, she could see cars blocking the road. Immediately, she maneuvered left onto the median, the car side-slipping as it clawed its way across the inward-sloping surface. She arrived a few seconds ahead of the first olive-and-black Maryland State Police radio car.\n\n\"Price, is that you?\"\n\n\"Say who?\" she replied.\n\n\"Norm Jeffers. I think we have two subjects inside. We have five agents down. Michaels is with me now. I'm sending her around the back.\"\n\n\"There in a second.\"\n\n\"Watch your ass, Andrea,\" Jeffers warned.\n\nO'DAY SHOOK HIS head. His ears were still ringing and his head sore from the hit on the wall. His daughter was next to him, shielded by his body from the two\u2014terrorists\u2014who were now sweeping their weapons left and right around the room while the children screamed. Mrs. Daggett moved slowly, standing between them and \"her\" kids, instinctively holding her hands in the open. Around them, all the kids were cowering. There were cries for Mommy\u2014none for Daddy, oddly enough, O'Day realized. And a lot of wet pants.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT?\" RAMAN said, pressing his earpiece in tight. _What the hell was this?_\n\nAT ST. MARY'S, the call of \"SANDSTORM\" over the radio links had hit the SHADOW\/SHORTSTOP details with a thunderbolt. Agents standing outside the classrooms of the Ryan kids slammed in, weapons drawn, to drag their protectees out to the corridor. Questions were asked, but none answered, as the Detail fell into the pre-set plan for such an event. Both kids entered the same Chevy Suburban, which drove not out to the road but off to a service building across the athletic field. One way in, one way out of this place, and an ambush team might be right out there, disguised as Christ knew what. In Washington, a Marine helicopter spooled up to fly to the school and extract the Ryan children. The second Suburban took position on the field, one hundred fifty yards from where the kids were. The class that had been doing gym outside was chased off, and agents stood behind their kevlar-armored vehicle, heavy weapons out, looking for targets.\n\n\"DOC!\"\n\nCathy Ryan looked up from her desk. Roy had never called her that before. He'd never had his pistol out in her presence, either, knowing that she was not fond of firearms. Her reaction was probably instinctive. Cathy's face went as white as her lab coat.\n\n\"Is it Jack or\u2014\"\n\n\"It's Katie. That's all I know, Doc. Please come with me right now.\"\n\n\"No! Not again, not again!\" Altman wrapped his arm around SURGEON to guide her out into the corridor. Four more agents were there, weapons out and faces grim. Hospital security people kept out of the way, though uniformed Baltimore City Police made up an outer perimeter, all of them trying to remember to look outward toward a possible threat, not inward toward a mother whose child was in peril.\n\nRYAN STRETCHED OUT his arm, placed his hand against the wall of his office, looked down, and bit his lip for a second before speaking: \"Tell me what you know, Jeff.\"\n\n\"Two subjects are in the building. Don Russell is dead, so are four other agents, sir, but we have it contained, okay? Let us do the work,\" Agent Raman said, touching the extended arm to steady the President.\n\n\"Why my kids, Jeff? I'm the one\u2014here. If people get mad, it's supposed to be at me. Why do people like this go after children, tell me that . . .\"\n\n\"It's a hateful act, Mr. President, hateful to God and man,\" Raman said, as three more agents came into the Oval Office. What was he doing now? the assassin asked himself. What in hell was he doing? Why had he said _that?_\n\nTHEY WERE TALKING in a language he didn't understand. O'Day stayed down, sitting on the floor with his little girl, holding her in his lap with both arms and trying to look as harmless as she did. Dear God, all the years he'd trained for things like this\u2014but never to be inside, never to be _in_ the crime scene while the crime happened. Outside, you knew what to do. He knew exactly what was happening. If any Service people were left\u2014probably some, yes, there had to be. Somebody had fired three or four bursts with an M-16\u2014O'Day knew the distinctive chatter of that weapon. No more bad guys had entered. His mind added those facts up. Okay, there were good guys outside. First they'd establish a perimeter to make sure nobody got in or out. Next they'd call in\u2014who? The Service probably had its own SWAT team, but also close by would be the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, with its own choppers to get them here. Almost on cue, he heard a helicopter overhead.\n\n\"THIS IS TROOPER three, we're orbiting the area now,\" a voice said over the radio. \"Who's in charge down there?\"\n\n\"This is Special Agent Price, United States Secret Service. How long you with us, Trooper?\" she asked over a state police radio.\n\n\"We have gas for ninety minutes, and then another chopper will relieve us. Looking down now, Agent Price,\" the pilot reported. \"I have one individual to the west, looks like a female behind a dead tree, looking into the scene. She one of yours?\"\n\n\"Michaels, Price,\" Andrea said over her personal radio system. \"Wave to the chopper.\"\n\n\"Just waved at us,\" Trooper Three reported at once.\n\n\"Okay, that's one of mine, covering the back.\"\n\n\"All right. We have no movement around the building, and no other people within a hundred yards. We will continue to orbit and observe until you say otherwise.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Out.\"\n\nTHE MARINE VH-60 landed on the athletic field. Sally and Little Jack were fairly thrown aboard, and Colonel Goodman lifted off at once, heading east toward the water, which, the Coast Guard had told him moments before, was free of unknown craft. He rocketed the Black Hawk to altitude, going north over the water. To his left he could see the shape of a French-made police helicopter orbiting a few miles north of Annapolis. It didn't require much insight to explain it, and behind calm eyes he wished for a couple of squads of recon Marines to deliver to the site. He'd once heard that criminals who hurt children faced a rough go in prison, but that wasn't half of what Marines would do if they got the chance. His reverie ended there. He didn't even look back to see how the other two kids were doing. He had an aircraft to fly. That was his function. He had to trust others to do theirs.\n\nTHEY WERE LOOKING out the windows now. They were being careful about it. While the wounded one stood leaning against the wall\u2014looked like a kneecap, O'Day saw; good\u2014the other one allowed his eye to peer around the edge. It wasn't too hard to guess what he saw. Sirens announced the arrival of police cars. Okay, they probably had the perimeter forming now. Mrs. Daggett and her three women helpers had the kids in a single bunch on the corner, while the two subjects traded words. Good, that was smart. They weren't doing all that well, O'Day thought. One of them was always sweeping the room with eyes and muzzle, but they hadn't\n\nJust then one of them reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a photo. He said something else in whatever tongue they spoke. Then he closed the shades. Damn. That would prevent scoped rifles from seeing inside. They were smart enough to know that people might just shoot. Few of the kids here were tall enough to look out and\u2014\n\nThe one with the photo held it up again and walked toward the kids. He pointed.\n\n\"That one.\"\n\nStrangely, it was only now, it seemed, that they saw O'Day in the room. The knee-shot one blinked his eyes and aimed the AK right at him. The inspector took his arms from around his daughter's chest and held them up.\n\n\"Enough people been hurt, pal,\" he said. It didn't require all that much effort to make his voice shake. He'd made a mistake, too, holding his Megan that way. That fuck might shoot through her to get to me, he realized, a sudden wave of nausea rippling through his stomach at the thought. Slowly, carefully, he lifted her and moved her off his lap, and onto the floor to his left.\n\n\"No!\" It was Marlene Daggett's voice.\n\n\"Bring her to me!\" the man insisted.\n\n_Do it, do it_ , O'Day thought. _Save your resistance for when it counts. It doesn't change anything right now_. But she couldn't hear his thoughts.\n\n\"Bring her!\" the shooter repeated.\n\n_\"No!\"_\n\nThe man shot Daggett in the chest from a range of three feet.\n\n\"WHAT WAS THAT?\" Price snapped. Ambulances were coming up Ritchie Highway now, their whooping sirens different from the monotonal screams of the police cars. Down to her left, state troopers were trying to get the road clear, shunting traffic away from the area while their hands rubbed on their holsters, wishing they were there to help. Their angry gestures conveyed their mental state to the puzzled drivers.\n\nCloser to Giant Steps, those immediately outside heard a renewed wave of screams, little kids in terror, for what reason they could only guess.\n\nTHE LEATHER JACKET rode up when you were sitting down like this. If anyone had been behind him, he'd see the holster in the small of his back, the inspector knew. He'd never seen a murder before. He'd investigated his share of them, but to see one . . . a lady who worked with kids. The shock on his face was as real as any man's, watching life vanish . . . innocent life, his mind added. So he really had no choice.\n\nWhen he next looked at Marlene Daggett, he wished that he might tell her that her murderers would not be leaving this building alive.\n\nIt was miraculous that none of the kids were wounded as yet. All the shooting had gone high, and he realized that had Miss Anne not knocked him down, he might be dead beside his daughter now. There were holes in the wall, and the bullets that had made them would have transited the space he'd been in a second or two before. He looked down a second, to see his hands shaking. His hands knew what they had to do. They knew their task and they didn't understand why they weren't doing it, why the mind which commanded them hadn't yet given them the release. But his hands had to be patient. This was a job of the mind.\n\nThe subject lifted Katie Ryan by her arm, wrenching it, making her cry out as he twisted it. O'Day thought about his first supervisor, working that first kidnapping case, Dom DiNapoli, that big, tough guinea who'd wept bringing the child back to her family: \"Never forget, they're _all_ our kids.\"\n\nThey might just as easily have selected Megan, they were so close\u2014and that thought _did_ cross from mind to mind as the one with SANDBOX looked at the photo again, and over toward Pat O'Day.\n\n\"Who are you?\" the voice demanded, while his partner moaned with increasing pain.\n\n\"What d'ya mean?\" the inspector asked in nervous reply. _Look dumb and scared._\n\n\"Whose child is that?\" He pointed at Megan.\n\n\"She's mine, okay? I don't know who that one belongs to,\" the FBI agent lied.\n\n\"She is the one we want, she is President's child, yes?\"\n\n\"How the hell should I know? My wife usually picks Megan up, not me. Do what you gotta do and get the fuck outa here, okay?\"\n\n\"You inside,\" a female voice boomed from outside. \"This is the United States Secret Service. We want you to come out. You will not be hurt if you do. You have no place to go. Come out where we can see you, and you will not be hurt.\"\n\n\"That's good advice, man,\" Pat told him. \"Nobody's gonna get out of here, you know?\"\n\n\"You know who this girl is? She is daughter of your President Ryan! They will not dare shoot me!\" the subject proclaimed. His English was pretty good, O'Day noted, nodding.\n\n\"What about all the other kids, man? That's the only one you want, that's the only other one that matters\u2014hey, why not, you know, like, let some out, eh?\"\n\nThe man was partly right. The Service guys wouldn't shoot at one target for fear that someone else might be in here, as one surely was, his rifle leveled at Pat's chest. And they were smart enough that they were never less than five feet apart. Shooting them would take two separate moves.\n\nWhat really scared O'Day was the casual, reflexive way he'd killed Marlene Daggett. They just plain didn't care. You couldn't predict that sort of criminal. You could talk to them, try to calm them down, distract them, but beyond that, there was only one way to deal with them.\n\n\"We give them children, they give us car, yes?\"\n\n\"Hey, that works for me, okay? I think that's just fine. I just want to get my daughter home tonight, y'know?\"\n\n\"Yes, you take good care of your little one. Sit there.\"\n\n\"No problem.\" He relaxed his hands, bringing them closer to his chest, right at the top of the zipper on his jacket. Undo that and the leather would hang better, concealing his gun.\n\n\"Attention,\" the voice called again. \"We want to talk.\"\n\nCATHY RYAN JOINED her children in the helicopter. The agents' faces were grim enough. Sally and Jack were coming out of the initial shock and sobbing now, looking to their mother for solace as the Black Hawk leaped into the sky again, heading southwest for Washington with another in trail. The pilot, she saw, was not taking the usual route, but was instead going directly west, away from where Katie was. That was when SURGEON collapsed into the arms of her kids.\n\n\"O'DAY IS IN there,\" Jeffers told her.\n\n\"You sure, Norm?\"\n\n\"That's his truck. I saw him going in right before this went down.\"\n\n\"Shit,\" Price swore. \"That's probably the shot we heard.\"\n\n\"Yah.\" Jeffers nodded grimly.\n\nTHE PRESIDENT WAS in the Situation Room, the best spot to keep track of things. Perhaps he might have been elsewhere, but he couldn't face his office, and he wasn't President enough to pretend that\u2014\n\n\"Jack?\" It was Robby Jackson. He came over as his President stood, but they'd been friends much longer than that, and the two shared an embrace. \"Been here before, man. It worked out then, too, remember?\"\n\n\"We have tag numbers off the cars in the parking lot. Three are rentals. We're running them now,\" Raman said, a phone to his ear. \"Should be able to get some kind of ID.\"\n\nHOW DUMB MIGHT they be? O'Day asked himself. They'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to think they had any chance at all of getting out of here . . . and if they didn't have that hope, then they had nothing to lose . . . not a damned thing . . . and they didn't seem to care about killing. It had happened before, in Israel, Pat remembered. He didn't recall the name or the date, but a couple of terrorists had had a bunch of kids and hosed them before the commandos were able to ...\n\nHe'd taught tactics for every possible situation, or so he'd thought, and would have said as recently as twenty minutes before\u2014but to have your only child next to you . . .\n\n_They're_ all _our kids,_ Dom's voice told him again.\n\nThe unhurt killer had Katie Ryan by the upper arm. She was only whimpering now, exhausted from her earlier screams, almost hanging from his hand as the subject stood there to the left of the wounded one. His right hand held the AK. If he'd had a pistol, he could have held that weapon to her head, but the AK was too lengthy for that. Ever so slowly, Inspector O'Day moved his hand down, opening the zipper on his jacket.\n\nThey started talking back and forth again. The wounded one was in considerable discomfort. At first, the adrenaline rush had blocked it out, but now things were settling down somewhat, and with the release of tension also went the pain-blocking mechanism that protected the body in periods of great stress. He was saying something, but Pat couldn't tell what it was. The other one snarled a reply, gesturing to the door, speaking with passion and frustration. The scary part would come when they came to a decision. They might just shoot the kids. Those outside would probably rush the building if they heard more than a shot or two. They might be fast enough to save some of the kids, but . . .\n\nHe started thinking of them as Hurt and Unhurt. They were pumped up but confused, excited but undecided, wanting to live but coming to the realization that they would not . . .\n\n\"Hey, uh, guys,\" Pat said, holding his arms up and moving them to distract them from the open zipper. \"Can I say something?\"\n\n\"What?\" Hurt demanded, as Unhurt watched.\n\n\"All these kids you have here, it's like too many to cover, right?\" he asked, with an emphatic nod to get the idea across. \"How about I take my little girl out and some of the others, okay? Make things easier for you, maybe?\"\n\nThat generated some more jabbering. The idea actually seemed attractive to Unhurt, or so it appeared to O'Day.\n\n\"Attention, this is the Secret Service!\" the voice called yet again. It sounded like Price, the FBI agent thought. Unhurt was looking toward the door, and his body language was leaning him that way, and to get there he had to pass in front of Hurt.\n\n\"Hey, come on, okay, let some of us go, will ya?\" O'Day pleaded. \"Maybe I can tell them to give you a car or something.\"\n\nUnhurt waved his rifle in the inspector's direction. \"Stand!\" he commanded.\n\n\"Okay, okay, be cool, all right?\" O'Day stood slowly, keeping his hands well away from his body. Would they see his holster if he turned around? The Service people had spotted it the first time he'd come in, and if he fucked this one up, then Megan . . . there was no turning back. There just wasn't.\n\n\"You tell them, you tell them they give us car or I kill this one and all the rest!\"\n\n\"Let me take my daughter with me, okay?\"\n\n\"No!\" Hurt said.\n\nUnhurt said something in his native tongue, looking down at Hurt, his weapon still pointed at the floor while Hurt's was aimed at O'Day's chest.\n\n\"Hey, whatcha got to lose?\"\n\nIt was almost as though Unhurt said the same thing to his wounded friend, and with that he gave Katie Ryan a yank on the arm. She cried out loudly again as he walked across the room, pushing her ahead of him, blocking Hurt's field of view as he did so. It had taken twenty minutes to achieve. Now he had one second to see if it would work.\n\nThe drill was the same for O'Day as it had been for Don Russell. His right hand raced back, whipped inside the jacket, and pulled the pistol out, as he dropped to one knee. The moment Unhurt's body cleared the target, the Smith 1076 loosed two perfect rounds, both of the stainless-steel cases flying in the air, as Hurt became Dead. Unhurt's eyes went wide in surprise, as the children's screams erupted again.\n\n_\"DROP IT,_ \" O'Day bellowed at him.\n\nUnhurt's first reaction was to yank again at Katie Ryan's arm, and at the same time the gun started to move up, as though it were a pistol, but the AK was far too heavy to be used that way. O'Day wanted him alive, but there wasn't the time for chances. His right index finger pushed back on the trigger, then pushed again. The body fell straight down, behind it a red shadow on the white walls of Giant Steps.\n\nInspector Patrick O'Day jumped across the room, kicking one, then the other rifle free of their dead owners' hands. He gave each body a careful look, and for all the years of practice and instruction he'd given and taken, it still came as a surprise that it all had worked. Only then did his heart start beating again, or so it seemed, as a vacuum filled his chest. His body slumped down for a moment. Then he tensed his muscles and knelt beside the body of Katie Ryan, SANDBOX to the Secret Service, and a _thing_ to the people he'd just killed.\n\n\"You okay, honey?\" he asked. She didn't answer. She was holding her arm and sobbing, but there was no blood on her. \"Come on,\" he said gently, wrapping his arms around a daughter who now would forever be partly his. Next he picked up his Megan and walked to the door.\n\n\"THERE'S SHOOTING IN the building!\" a voice said on the desk-mounted speaker. Ryan just froze. The rest of the people in the Sit Room cringed.\n\n\"Sounded like a pistol. Do they have pistols?\" another voice asked on the same radio circuit.\n\n\"Holy shit, look there!\"\n\n\"Who's that?\"\n\n\"COMING OUT!\" A voice called. \"Coming out!\"\n\n_\"HOLD FIRE!\"_ Price called over the loudspeaker. Guns didn't move away from the door, but hands relaxed a fraction.\n\n\"Jesus!\" Jeffers said, standing and racing to join him in the doorway.\n\n\"Both subjects dead, Mrs. Daggett, too,\" O'Day said. \"All clear, Norm. All clear.\"\n\n\"Let me\u2014\"\n\n\"No!\" Katie Ryan screamed.\n\nHe had to get out of the way. Pat looked down to see the blood-soaked clothing of three agents of his rival agency. There were at least ten rounds by Don Russell's body, and an empty magazine. Beyond were four dead criminals. Two, he saw, walking to the perimeter, head shots. He stopped by his pickup. His knees were a little weak now, and he set the kids down, sitting himself on the bumper. A female agent came up. Pat took the Smith from his belt and handed it over without really looking.\n\n\"You hurt?\" It was Andrea Price.\n\nHe shook his head; it took him a moment to speak again. \"I might start shaking in a minute.\" The agent looked at his two little girls. A state trooper scooped Katie Ryan up, but Megan refused to leave his side. That was when he hugged his daughter to his chest, and the tears began for both of them.\n\n\"SANDBOX is safe!\" he heard Price say. \"SANDBOX is safe and unhurt!\"\n\nPrice looked around. Backup Service agents hadn't arrived yet, and most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene were troopers of the Maryland State Police in their starched khaki shirts. Ten of them formed a ring around SANDBOX, guarding her like a pride of lions.\n\nJeffers rejoined them. O'Day had never fully appreciated the way time changed in such moments as this. When he looked up, the children were being let out the side door. Paramedics were flooding the area, going to the children first. \"Here,\" the black agent said, handing over a handkerchief.\n\n\"Thanks, Norm.\" O'Day wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and stood. \"Sorry about that, guys.\"\n\n\"It's okay, Pat, you did\u2014\"\n\n\"Better if I'd've taken the last one alive, but couldn't ... couldn't take the chance.\" He was able to stand now, as he held Megan by the hand. \"Oh, damn,\" he added.\n\n\"I think we should get you out of here,\" Andrea observed. \"We can do the interviews in a better place than this.\"\n\n\"Thirsty,\" O'Day said next. He shook his head again. \"Never expected this, Andrea. Kids around. Not supposed to be this way, is it?\" Why was he babbling? the inspector asked himself.\n\n\"Come on, Pat. You did just fine.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute.\" The FBI inspector rubbed his face with two large hands, took a deep breath, and looked around the crime scene. Christ, what a mess. Three dead just this side of the playground. That would be Jeffers, he thought, with his M-16. Not bad. But there was one other thing he had to do. By each of the rented cars was a body, each a head shot. Another one, one round in the chest, and one in the head, it looked like. The fourth, he wasn't sure who'd gotten him. Probably one of the girls. Ballistics tests would determine which one, he knew. O'Day walked back toward the front door, to the body of Special Agent Donald Russell. There he turned, looking back at the parking lot. He'd seen his share of crime scenes. He knew the signs, knew how to figure things out. No warning, not a damned bit, maybe a second, no more than that, and he'd stood his ground against six armed subjects and gotten three of them. Inspector Patrick O'Day knelt beside the body. He removed the Sig pistol from Russell's hand, gave it to Price, then took the hand in his own for what seemed a long time.\n\n\"See y'around, champ,\" O'Day whispered, letting go after a few seconds. It was time to leave.\n**43**\n\n**RETREAT**\n\n**T** HE NEAREST CONVENIENT place to land a Marine helicopter was the Naval Academy, and the hard part was finding available Secret Service personnel to ride with SANDBOX. Andrea Price, senior agent on the crime scene as well as Detail chief, had to stay at Giant Steps, so USSS personnel racing to Annapolis were diverted, met the state troopers at the Academy, and took custody of Katie. And so it happened that the first team of federal officers to arrive at the scene were FBI agents from the small Annapolis office, a satellite of the Baltimore Field Division. What orders they needed they took from Price, but for the moment their duties were straightforward, and quite a few more were on the way.\n\nO'Day walked across the street to the house which had been Norm Jeffers' local command post, whose owner, a grandmother, overcame her shock to make coffee. A tape recorder was set up, and the FBI inspector ran through an uninterrupted narrative, really just a long ramble which was actually the best way to get fresh information. Later, they would walk him back through it, probing for additional facts. From where he was sitting, O'Day could see out the window. Ambulance crews were standing by to remove the bodies, but first, photographers had to record the event for posterity.\n\nThey couldn't know that Movie Star was still looking down, along with what was now a crowd of several hundred, students and teachers from the community college plus others who'd guessed the nature of the event and wanted to watch. Movie Star had already seen enough, however, and he made his way to his car, picking his way across the parking lot, and then drove north on Ritchie Highway.\n\n\"Hey, I gave him a chance. I told him to drop his weapon,\" O'Day said. \"I yelled so loud I'm surprised you didn't hear it outside, Price. But the gun started moving, and I wasn't in a mood to take chances, you know?\" His hands were steady now. The immediate shock period was over. Others would come later.\n\n\"Any idea who they were?\" Price asked, after he'd gone through it the first time.\n\n\"They were talking in some language, but I don't know what one. Wasn't German or Russian\u2014aside from that, I don't know. Foreign languages sound like foreign languages. I couldn't recognize any words or phrases. Their English was pretty good, accented, but again, not sure what the accent was. Physical appearance, Mediterranean. Maybe from the Middle East. Maybe from some other place. Absolutely ruthless. He shot Mrs. Daggett down, not a blink, no emotion\u2014no, that's wrong. He was pissed, very pumped up. No hesitation at all. _Boom,_ she's down. Nothing I could have done,\" the inspector went on. \"The other one had his gun on me, and it happened so fast, I didn't really see that happening so fast.\"\n\n\"Pat.\" Andrea took his hand. \"You did great.\"\n\nTHE HELICOPTER LANDED on the White House pad, just south of the ground-floor entrance. Again a ring of agents with weapons was in evidence, as Ryan ran to the aircraft while the rotor was still turning, and nobody tried to stop him. A Marine crewman in a green flight suit pulled the door open and stepped out, which allowed the agents on the helicopter to carry SANDBOX off and hand her off to her father.\n\nJack cradled her like the baby she no longer was but always would be in his mind, and walked up the slope to the house, where the rest of his family was waiting under cover. News cameras recorded the event, though no reporter got within fifty yards of POTUS. The Secret Service members of the Detail were in a mood to kill; for the first time in the memory of the White House press corps, they looked overly dangerous.\n\n\"Mommy!\" Katie twisted in her father's arms, reaching for her mother, who took her away from Jack at once. Sally and Little Jack closed in on the pair, leaving their father standing alone. That didn't last for long.\n\n\"How you doing?\" Arnie van Damm asked quietly.\n\n\"Better now, I guess.\" His face was still ashen, his body limp but still able to stand. \"Do we know any more?\"\n\n\"Look, first thing, how about we get all of you out of here? Up to Camp David. You can calm down there. Security is airtight. It's a good place to relax.\"\n\nRyan thought about that. The family hadn't been up there yet, and he'd only been there twice, most recently on a dreadful January day several years before. \"Arnie, we don't have clothes or\u2014\"\n\n\"We can take care of that,\" the chief of staff assured him.\n\nThe President nodded. \"Get it set up. Fast,\" he added. While Cathy took the kids upstairs, Jack headed back out and over to the West Wing. Two minutes later, he was back in the Situation Room. The mood was better there. The initial shock and fear were gone, replaced with a quiet determination.\n\n\"Okay,\" Ryan said quietly. \"What do we know?\"\n\n\"Is that you, Mr. President?\" It was Dan Murray on the table-mounted speakerphone.\n\n\"Talk to me, Dan,\" SWORDSMAN commanded.\n\n\"We had a guy inside, one of mine. You know him. Pat O'Day, one of my roving inspectors. His daughter\u2014Megan, I think\u2014goes there, too. He got the drop on the subjects and blew 'em both away. The Secret Service people killed the rest\u2014the total count is nine, two by Pat and the rest by Andrea's people. There are five Service agents dead, plus Mrs. Daggett. No children were wounded, thank God. Price is interviewing Pat right now. I have about ten agents on the scene to assist with the investigation, with a lot of Service people on the way there, too.\"\n\n\"Who runs the investigation?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"Two statutes on this one. An attack on you or any member of your family is under the purview of the Secret Service. Terrorism is our bailiwick. I'd give the Service lead on this one, and we'll provide all possible assistance,\" Murray promised. \"No pissin' contest on this one, my word on it. I've already called Justice. Martin will assign us a senior attorney to coordinate the criminal investigation. Jack?\" the FBI Director added.\n\n\"What, Dan?\"\n\n\"Get your family put back together. We know how to do this. I know you're the President, but for the next day or two, just be a guy, okay?\"\n\n\"Good advice, Jack,\" Admiral Jackson observed.\n\n\"Jeff?\" Ryan said to Agent Raman. All his friends were saying the same thing. They were probably right.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"Let's get us the hell out of town.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\" Raman left the room.\n\n\"Robby, how about you and Sissy fly up, too. I'll have a helo waiting for you here.\"\n\n\"Anything you say, pal.\"\n\n\"Okay, Dan,\" Ryan told the speakerphone. \"We're going to Camp David. Keep me informed.\"\n\n\"Will do,\" the FBI Director promised.\n\nTHEY HEARD IT on the radio. Brown and Holbrook were heading north on US Route 287 to join Interstate 90-East. The cement truck drove like a pig, even with its multirange gearbox, top-heavy, slow to accelerate, and almost as slow to brake. Maybe the interstate would be better driving, they hoped. But it did have a decent radio.\n\n\"Damn,\" Brown said, adjusting the dial.\n\n\"Kids.\" Holbrook shook his head. \"We have to make sure no kids are around, Ernie.\"\n\n\"I think we can handle that, Pete, assuming we can horse this rig all the way there.\"\n\n\"What do you figure?\"\n\nA grunt. \"Five days.\"\n\nDARYAEI TOOK IT well, Badrayn saw, especially with the news that all of them were dead.\n\n\"Forgive me for saying so, but I did warn you that\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. I remember,\" Mahmoud Haji acknowledged. \"The success of this mission was never really necessary, so long as the security arrangements were properly looked after.\" With that, the cleric looked closely at his guest.\n\n\"They all had false travel documents. None had a criminal file anywhere in the world, so far as I know. None had anything to connect him with your country. Had one been taken alive, there was a chance, and I warned you about that, but it appears that none were.\"\n\nThe Ayatollah nodded, and spoke their epitaph: \"Yes, they were faithful.\"\n\n_Faithful to what?_ Badrayn asked himself. Overtly religious political leaders weren't exactly uncommon in this part of the world, but it was tiresome to hear. Now, supposedly, all nine of them were in Paradise. He wondered if Daryaei actually believed that. He probably did; he was probably so sure that he believed that he could speak with God's own voice, or at least had told himself so often that he thought he did. One could do that to himself, Ali knew, just keep repeating any idea enough, and however it had first entered one's mind\u2014for political advantage, personal revenge, greed, any of the baser motivations\u2014after enough repetitions it became an article of faith, as pure in purpose as the words of the Prophet himself. Daryaei was seventy-two, Badrayn reminded himself, a long life of self-denial, focused on something outside himself, continuing on a journey that had begun in his youth with shining purpose toward a holy goal. He was a long way from the beginning now, and very close to the end. Now the goal could be seen so clearly that the purpose itself could be forgotten, couldn't it? That was the trap for all such men. At least he knew better, Badrayn told himself. For him it was just business, devoid of illusions and devoid of hypocrisy.\n\n\"And the rest?\" Daryaei asked, after a prayer for their souls.\n\n\"We will know by Monday, perhaps, certainly by Wednesday,\" Ali replied.\n\n\"And security for that?\"\n\n\"Perfect.\" Badrayn was totally confident. All of the travelers had returned safely, and reported in every case that their missions had been properly carried out. Whatever physical evidence they'd left behind\u2014just the spray cans\u2014would have been collected as trash and carted away. The plague would appear, and there would never be any evidence of how it might have gotten there. And so what had apparently failed today was not a failure at all. This Ryan fellow, relieved though he might be at the rescue of his child, was now a weakened man, as America was a weakened country, and Daryaei had a plan. A good one, Badrayn thought, and for his help in implementing it, his life would change forever now. His days as an international terrorist were a thing of the past. He might have some position in the expanding UIR government\u2014security or intelligence, probably, with a comfortable office and a sizable stipend, able finally to settle down in peace and safety. Daryaei had his dream, and might even achieve it. For Badrayn, the dream was closer still, and he need now not do a thing more to make it a reality. Nine men had died to make it so. That was their misfortune. Were they truly in Paradise for their sacrificial act? Perhaps Allah truly was that merciful, enough to forgive any act done in His Name, mistakenly or not. Perhaps.\n\nIt didn't really matter, did it?\n\nTHEY TRIED TO make the departure look normal. The kids had changed clothes. Bags were packed and would go out on a later flight. Security looked tighter than usual, but not grossly so. That was mistaken. Atop the Treasury Building to the east and the Old Executive Office Building to the west, the Secret Service people who usually crouched were now standing, showing their full profiles as they scanned the area with their binoculars. Beside each was a man with a rifle. Eight agents were on the south perimeter fence, examining the people who were passing by or had come just to be there after hearing the horrid news, for whatever purpose. Most had probably come because they cared to some degree or another, maybe even to offer a prayer for the Ryans' safety. For those who had some other purpose, the agents watched, and this time, as with all the others, saw nothing unusual.\n\nJack strapped in, as did the rest of his family. The engines over their heads started whining, and the rotor turning. Inside with them were Agent Raman and another guard, plus the Marine crew chief. The VH-3 helicopter vibrated, then lifted off, climbing rapidly into the westerly wind, first heading toward the OEOB, then south, then northwest, its curving flight path designed to confuse someone who might be out there with a surface-to-air missile. Light conditions were good enough that such a person would probably be spotted\u2014it takes a few seconds to make a successful launch\u2014and anyway the helicopter was equipped with the newest variant of the Black Hole IR-suppression system, which made Marine One a hard kill. The pilot\u2014it was Colonel Hank Goodman again\u2014knew all this, took the proper protective measures, and did his best to forget about it as he did so.\n\nIt was quiet in the back. President Ryan had his thoughts. His wife had hers. The kids looked out the windows, for helicopter flying is one of the greatest thrill rides known to man. Even little Katie twisted in her seat belt to look down, her dreadful afternoon suppressed by the wonder of the moment. Jack turned, and seeing that, he decided that the short attention span of children was as much a blessing as a curse. His own hands were shaking a little now. Fear or rage, he couldn't tell. Cathy just looked bereft, her face slack in the golden light of sunset. Their talk tonight would not be a pleasant one.\n\nBehind them, a Secret Service car had collected Cecilia Jackson from their Fort Myers home. Admiral Jackson and his wife boarded a backup VH-60, along with some carry-on bags, and more substantial luggage for the Ryan family. There were no cameras to record this. The President and First Family were gone, and the cameras with them, while pundits put together their thoughts for the evening news broadcasts, trying to find a deeper significance in the events of the day, coming to conclusions well in advance of the federal officers who only now were allowing the ambulance crews to remove the thirteen bodies from the crime scene. The flashing police lights looked dramatic as TV crews set up to do live broadcasts, one of them from the very spot where Movie Star had observed the burned operation.\n\nHe had prepared for this eventuality, of course. He drove north on Ritchie Highway\u2014the traffic wasn't bad at all, considering the police still had the road blocked at Giant Steps\u2014and at Baltimore-Washington International he even had time to turn in his rental car and catch the British Airways 767 for Heathrow. Not first-class this time, he realized. The aircraft was all business class. He didn't smile. He had hoped the kidnapping might actually succeed, though from the beginning he had planned also for its failure. For Movie Star the mission hadn't failed at all. He was still alive, and escaping yet again. Here he was, lifting off, soon to be in another country, and there to disappear completely, even while the American police were trying to establish if there might have been another member of the criminal conspiracy. He decided to have a few glasses of wine, the better to help him sleep after a very stressful day. The thought that it was against his religion made him smile. What aspect of his life wasn't?\n\nSUNSET COMES QUICKLY. By the time they started circling at Camp David, the ground was an undulating shadow punctuated by the stationary lights of private homes and the moving lights of automobiles. The helicopter descended slowly, flared out fifty feet above the ground, then settled vertically for a whisper-soft landing. There were few lights beyond the square landing pad's perimeter. When the crew chief opened the door, Raman and the other agent stepped down first. The President undid his lap belt and walked forward. He stopped just behind the flight crew, tapping the pilot on the shoulder.\n\n\"Thanks, Colonel.\"\n\n\"You have a lot of friends, Mr. President. We're here when you need us,\" Goodman told his Commander-in-Chief.\n\nJack nodded, went down the steps, and beyond the lights he saw the spectral outlines of Marine riflemen in camouflaged utilities.\n\n\"Welcome to Camp David, sir.\" It was a Marine captain.\n\nJack turned to help his wife down. Sally led Katie down. Little Jack came out last. It hit Ryan that his son was almost as tall as his mother now. He might have to call his son something else.\n\nCathy looked around nervously. The captain saw it. \"Ma'am, there's sixty Marines out there,\" he assured her. He didn't have to add what they were there for. He didn't have to tell the President how alert they were.\n\n\"Where?\" Little Jack asked, looking and seeing nothing.\n\n\"Try this.\" The captain handed over his PVS-7 night-vision goggles. SHORTSTOP held them to his eyes.\n\n_\"Cool!\"_ His arm reached out, pointing to those he could see. Then he lowered the goggles, and the Marines turned invisible again.\n\n\"They're great for spotting deer, and there's a bear that wanders on and off the grounds every so often. We call him Yogi.\" Captain Larry Overton, USMC, congratulated himself for calming them down, and led them toward the HMMWVs that would transport them to quarters. Yogi, he'd explain later, had a radio collar on so that he wouldn't surprise anybody, least of all a Marine with a loaded rifle.\n\nThe quarters at Camp David appeared rustic, and truly were not anywhere near as plush as those in the White House, but could accurately be described as the sort of hideaway a millionaire might set up for himself outside Aspen\u2014in fact, Presidential Quarters are officially known as Aspen Cottage. Maintained by Naval Surface Detachment, Thurmont (Maryland), and guarded by a short company of handpicked Marines, the compound was as remote and secure a location as anything within a hundred miles of Washington could possibly be. There were Marines at the presidential cabin to let them in, and inside were sailors to guide each to a private bedroom. Outside were twelve additional cottages, and the closer you were to Aspen, of course, the more important you were.\n\n\"What's for dinner?\" Jack Junior asked.\n\n\"Just about anything you want,\" a Navy chief steward replied.\n\nJack turned to Cathy. She nodded. This would be a whatever-you-want night. The President took off his jacket and tie. A steward darted up to collect them. \"The food is great here, Mr. President,\" he promised.\n\n\"That's a fact, sir,\" the chief confirmed. \"We have a deal with some local folks. Fresh everything, right off the farm. Can I get you something to drink?\" he asked hopefully.\n\n\"That sounds like a great plan, chief. Cathy?\"\n\n\"White wine?\" she asked, the stress bleeding off her, finally.\n\n\"We have a pretty good selection, ma'am. For domestic, how about a Chateau Ste. Michelle reserve chardonnay? It's a 1991 vintage, and about as good as a chardonnay gets.\"\n\n\"You're a Navy chief?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir. I used to take care of admirals, but I got promoted, and if I may say so, sir, I do know my wines.\"\n\nRyan held up two fingers. The chief nodded and went out the door.\n\n\"This is insane,\" Cathy said after he left.\n\n\"Don't knock it.\" While they waited for drinks, the two big kids agreed on a pizza. Katie wanted a burger and fries. They heard the buzz of another helicopter coming into the pad. Cathy was right, her husband thought. This is insane.\n\nThe door reopened, and the chief returned with two bottles and a silver bucket. Another steward followed with glasses.\n\n\"Chief, I just meant two glasses.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, but we have two more guests arriving, Admiral and Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson likes a good white also, sir.\" He popped the cork and poured a splash for SURGEON. She nodded.\n\n\"Doesn't it have a wonderful nose?\" He filled her glass and one other, handing that to the President. Then he withdrew.\n\n\"They always told me the Navy had guys like that, but I never believed it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jack.\" Cathy turned. The kids were watching TV, all three sitting on the floor, even Sally, who was trying to become an elegant lady. They were retreating into the familiar, while their parents did what parents always did, came to terms with a new reality, in order to buffer their children from the world.\n\nJack saw the lights of a HMMWV go past to the left. Robby and Sissy would have their own cabin, he imagined. They'd change before coming over. He turned back and wrapped his arms around his wife from behind. \"It's okay, babe.\"\n\nCathy shook her head. \"It'll never be okay, Jack. It'll never be okay again. Roy told me, as long as we live, we'll have bodyguards with us. Everywhere we go, we'll need protection. Forever,\" she said, sipping her wine, not so much angry as resigned, not so much dazed as comprehending something she'd never dreamed. The trappings of power were seductive sometimes. A helicopter to work. People to take care of your clothes, look after the kids, whatever food you wanted as close as the phone, escorts everywhere, fast track into everything.\n\nBut the price of it? No big deal. Just every so often somebody might try to murder one of your children. There was no running away from it. It was as though she'd been given a diagnosis of cancer, of the breast, the ovaries, something else. Horrible as it was, you had to do what you had to do. Crying didn't help, though she'd do a lot of that, SURGEON was sure. Screaming at Jack wouldn't help\u2014and she wasn't a screamer anyway, and it wasn't Jack's fault, was it? She just had to roll with the punch, like patients at Hopkins did when you told them they had to go see the Oncology Department\u2014 _oh_ , _please, don't worry. They're the best, the very best, and times have changed, and they really know what they're doing now_. Her colleagues in the Department of Oncology were the best. And they had a nice new building now. But who really wanted to go there?\n\nAnd so she and Jack had a nice house of sorts, with a wonderful staff, some of whom were even wine experts, she thought, taking another sip from her glass. _But who really wants to go there?_\n\nSO MANY AGENTS were assigned to the case that they didn't know what to do yet. They didn't have enough rough information to generate leads, but that was changing fast. Most of the dead terrorists had been photographed\u2014two of them, shot from behind by Norm Jeffers' M-16 rifle, didn't have faces to photograph\u2014and all of the bodies fingerprinted. Blood samples would be taken for DNA records in case that later became useful\u2014a possibility, since identity _could_ be confirmed by a genetic match with close relatives. For now they went with the photos. These were transmitted to the Mossad first of all. The terrorists had probably been Islamic, everyone thought, and the Israelis had the best data on them. CIA handled the initial notice, followed by the FBI. Full cooperation was promised at once, personally, by Avi ben Jakob.\n\nAll of the bodies were taken to Annapolis for postmortem examination. This was required by law, even in cases where the cause of death was as obvious as an earthquake. The pre-death condition of each body would be established, plus a full blood-toxicology check to see if any were on drugs.\n\nThe clothing of each was removed for full examination at the FBI laboratory in Washington. The brand names were established first of all to determine country of origin. That, and general condition, would determine time of purchase, which could be important. More than that, the technicians now working overtime on a Friday evening would use ordinary Scotch tape to collect loose fibers, and especially pollen particles, which could determine many things, because some plants grew only in limited regions of the world. Such results could take weeks, but with a case such as this, there was no limit on resources. The FBI had a lengthy roster of scientific experts to consult.\n\nTag numbers for the cars had been transmitted even before O'Day had done his shooting, and already agents were at the car-rental agencies, checking the computerized records.\n\nAt Giant Steps, the adult survivors were being interviewed. They mainly confirmed O'Day's reportage. Some of the details were askew, but that was not unexpected. None of the young women recognized the language the terrorists had spoken. The children were subjected to far gentler interrogations, in every case sitting on a parent's lap. Two of the parents were from the Middle East, and it was thought that perhaps the children knew something of foreign languages, but that proved to be a false hope.\n\nThe weapons had all been collected, and their serial numbers checked with a computerized database. The date of manufacture was easily established, and the makers' records checked to see which distributor had purchased them, and from there which store had sold them. That trail proved cold indeed. The weapons were old ones, a fact belied by their new condition, which was established by visual inspection of the barrel and bolt mechanisms. They hardly had any wear at all. That tidbit of information went up the line even before they had a purchaser's name.\n\n\"DAMN, I WISH Bill was here,\" Murray said aloud, for the first time in his career feeling inadequate to a task. His division chiefs were arrayed around his conference table. From the first it was certain that this investigation would be a joint venture between the Criminal and Foreign Counter-Intelligence divisions, aided, as always, by Laboratory. Things were moving so rapidly that there wasn't yet a Secret Service official to join them. \"Thoughts?\"\n\n\"Dan, whoever bought these guns has been in-country a long time,\" FCI said.\n\n\"Sleeper.\" Murray nodded agreement.\n\n\"Pat didn't recognize their language. He would probably have recognized a European one. Has to be the Middle East,\" Criminal said. This wasn't exactly Nobel-class work, but even the FBI had to follow form in what it did. \"Well, Western Europe, anyway. I suppose we have to consider the Balkan countries.\" There was reluctant agreement around the table.\n\n\"How old are those guns again?\" the Director asked.\n\n\"Eleven years. Long before the ban was passed,\" Criminal answered for FCI. \"They may have been totally unused until today, virgins, Dan.\"\n\n\"Somebody's set up a network that we didn't know about. Somebody real patient. Whoever the purchaser turns out to be, I think we'll find that it's a nicely faked ID, and he's already flown the coop. It's a classic intelligence job, Dan,\" FCI went on, saying what everybody was thinking. \"We're talking pros here.\"\n\n\"That's a little speculative,\" the Director objected.\n\n\"When's the last time I was wrong, Danny?\" the assistant director asked.\n\n\"Not lately. Keep going.\"\n\n\"Maybe the Lab guys can develop some good forensic stuff\"\u2014he nodded to the assistant director for the Laboratory Division\u2014\"but even then, what we're going to end up with won't be good enough to take into a court, unless we get real lucky and bag either the purchaser, or the other people who had to be involved in this mission.\"\n\n\"Flight records and passports,\" Criminal said. \"Two weeks back for starters. Look for repeaters. Somebody reconned the objective. Must have been since Ryan became President. That's a start.\" Sure, he didn't go on, only about ten million records to check. But that was what cops did.\n\n\"Christ, I hope you're wrong on the sleeper,\" Murray said, after a further moment's reflection.\n\n\"So do I, Dan,\" FCI replied. \"But I'm not. We'll need time to ID his house, assembly point, whatever, interview his neighbors, check the real-estate records to come up with a cover name and try to proceed from there. He's probably already gone, but that's not the scary part, is it? Eleven years at least he's been here. He was bankrolled. He was trained. He kept the faith all the way to today to help with that mission. All that time, and he still believed enough to help kill kids.\"\n\n\"He won't be the only one,\" Murray concluded bleakly.\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"WILL YOU COME with me, please?\"\n\n\"I've seen you before, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Jeff Raman, sir.\"\n\nThe admiral took his hand. \"Robby Jackson.\"\n\nThe agent smiled. \"I know that, sir.\"\n\nIt was a pleasant walk, though it would have been more so without the obvious presence of armed men. The mountain air was cool and clear, lots of stars blinking overhead.\n\n\"How's he doing?\" Robby asked the agent.\n\n\"Tough day. A lot of good people dead.\"\n\n\"And some bad ones, too.\" Jackson would always be a fighter pilot, for whom inflicted death was part of the job description. They turned into the Presidential Quarters.\n\nBoth Robby and Sissy were struck by the scene. Not parents themselves\u2014Cecilia's medical problem had not allowed it, despite the best of efforts\u2014they didn't fully understand how it was with kids. The most horrific events, if followed by a parent's hug and other signs of security, were usually set aside. The world, especially for Katie, had resumed its proper shape. But there would be nightmares, too, and those would last for weeks, maybe longer, until the memories faded. Embraces were exchanged, and then also as usual, man paired with man and woman with woman. Robby got himself a glass of wine and followed Jack outside.\n\n\"How you doing, Jack?\" By unspoken agreement, here and now Ryan wasn't the President.\n\n\"The shock comes and goes,\" he admitted. \"It's all come back from before. The bastards can't just come after me\u2014oh, no, they have to go for the soft targets. _Those cowardly fucks!\"_ Jack cursed as it came back again.\n\nJackson sipped at his glass. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot to be said right now, but that would change.\n\n\"It's my first time here,\" Robby said, just to say something.\n\n\"My first time\u2014would you believe we buried a guy up here?\" Jack remarked, remembering. \"He was a Russian colonel, an agent we had in their Defense Ministry. Hell of a soldier, hero of the Soviet Union, three or four times, I think, we buried him in his uniform with all the decorations. I read off the citations myself. That's when we got Gerasimov out.\"\n\n\"The KGB head. So, that's true, eh?\"\n\n\"Yep.\" Ryan nodded. \"And you know about Colombia, and you know about the submarine. How the hell did those newsies find out, though?\"\n\nRobby almost laughed aloud, but settled for a chuckle. \"Holy God, and I thought my career was eventful.\"\n\n\"You volunteered for yours,\" Jack observed crossly.\n\n\"So did you, my friend.\"\n\n\"Think so?\" Ryan went back inside for a refill. He returned with the night-vision goggles and switched them on, scanning the surroundings. \"I didn't volunteer for having my family guarded by a company of Marines. There's three of them down there, flak jackets, helmets, and rifles\u2014and why? Because there's people in the world who want to kill us. Why? Because\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll tell you why. Because you're better than they are, Jack. You stand for things, and they're good things. Because you've got balls, and you don't run away from shit. I don't want to hear this, Jack,\" Robby told his friend. \"Don't give me this 'oh, my God' stuff, okay? I know who you are. I'm a fighter pilot because I chose to be one. You're where you are because you chose, too. Nobody ever said it was supposed to be easy, okay?\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"But, my ass, Mr. President. There's people out there who don't like you? Okay, fine. You just figure out how to find them, and then you can ask those Marines out there to go take care of business. You know what they'll say. You may be hated by some, but you're respected and loved by a lot more, and I'm telling you now, there's not one person in our country's uniform who isn't willing to dust _anybody_ who fucks with you and your family. It's not just what you are, it's who you are, okay?\"\n\n_Who am I?_ SWORDSMAN asked himself. At that moment, one of his weaknesses asserted itself.\n\n\"Come on.\" Ryan walked over to the west. He'd just seen a sudden flare of light, and thirty seconds later, at the corner of another cabin, he found a Navy cook smoking a cigarette. President or not, he wasn't going to be overly proud tonight. \"Hello.\"\n\n\"Jesus!\" the sailor blurted, snapping to attention and dropping his smoke into the grass. \"I mean, hello, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Wrong the first time, right the second time. Got a smoke?\" POTUS asked, entirely without shame, Robby Jackson noted.\n\n\"You bet, sir.\" The cook fished one out and lit it.\n\n\"Sailor, if the First Lady sees you do that again, she'll have the Marines shoot you,\" Jackson warned.\n\n\"Admiral Jackson!\" Those words made the kid brace again. \"I think the Marines work for me. How's dinner coming?\"\n\n\"Sir, the pizza is being cut right now. Baked it myself, sir. They oughta like it,\" he promised.\n\n\"Settle down. Thanks for the cigarette.\"\n\n\"Anytime, sir.\" Ryan shook his hand and wandered off with his friend.\n\n\"I needed that,\" Jack admitted, somewhat shamefully, taking a long drag.\n\n\"If I had a place like this, I'd use it a lot. Almost like being at sea,\" Jackson went on. \"Sometimes you go outside, stand on one of the galleries off the flight deck, and just sort of enjoy the sea and the stars. The simple pleasures.\"\n\n\"It's hard to turn it off, isn't it? Even when you went communing with the sea and the stars, you didn't turn it off, not really.\"\n\n\"No,\" the admiral admitted. \"It makes thinking a little easier, makes the atmosphere a little less intense, but you're right. It doesn't really go away.\" And it didn't now, either.\n\n\"Tony said India's navy's gone missing on us.\"\n\n\"Both carriers at sea, with escorts and oilers. We're looking for them.\"\n\n\"What if there's a connection?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"With what?\"\n\n\"The Chinese make trouble in one place, the Indian navy goes to sea again, and _this_ happens to me\u2014am I being paranoid?\" SWORDSMAN asked.\n\n\"Probably. Could be the Indians put out when they finished their repairs, and maybe to show us that we didn't teach them all that big a lesson. The China thing, well, it's happened before, and it's not going anywhere, especially after Mike Dubro gets there. I know Mike. He'll have fighters up and poking around. The attempt on Katie? Too early to say, and it's not my field. You have Murray and the rest for that. In any case, they failed, didn't they? Your family's in there, watching TV, and it'll be a long time before somebody tries anything else.\"\n\nIT WAS BECOMING an all-nighter all over the world. In Tel Aviv, where it was now after four in the morning, Avi ben Jakob had called in his top terrorism experts. Together they went over the photos transmitted from Washington and were comparing them with their own surveillance photographs that had been taken over the years in Lebanon and elsewhere. The problem was that many of their photos showed young men with beards\u2014the simplest method of disguise known to man\u2014and the photos were not of high quality. By the same token, the American-transmitted images were not exactly graduation pictures, either.\n\n\"Anything useful?\" the director of Mossad asked.\n\nEyes turned to one of the Mossad's experts, a fortyish woman named Sarah Peled. Behind her back, they called her the witch. She had some special gift for ID'ing people from photographs, and was right just over half the time in cases where other trained intelligence officers threw up their hands in frustration.\n\n\"This one.\" She slid two photos across the table. \"This is a definite match.\"\n\nBen Jakob looked at the two side by side\u2014and saw nothing to confirm her opinion. He'd asked her many times what keyed her in on such things. Sarah always said it was the eyes, and so Avi took another look, comparing the eyes of one with the eyes of the other photo. All he saw were eyes. He turned the Israeli photo over. The printed data on the back said that he was a suspected Hezbollah member, name unknown, age about twenty in their photo, which was dated six years earlier.\n\n\"Any others, Sarah?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, none at all.\"\n\n\"How confident are you on this one?\" one of the counterintelligence people asked, looking at the photos himself now and, like Avi, seeing nothing.\n\n\"One hundred percent, Benny. I said 'definite,' didn't I?\" Sarah was often testy, especially with unbelieving men at four in the morning.\n\n\"How far do we go on this?\" another staff member asked.\n\n\"Ryan is a friend of our country, and President of the United States. We go as far as we can. I want inquiries to go out. All contacts, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, everywhere.\"\n\n\"SWINE.\" BONDARENKO RAN a hand through his hair. His tie was long since gone. His watch told him it was Saturday, but he didn't know what that day was anymore.\n\n\"Yes,\" Golovko agreed.\n\n\"A black operation\u2014a 'wet' one, you used to call it?\" the general asked.\n\n\"Wet and incompetent,\" the RVS chairman said crossly. \"But Ivan Emmetovich was lucky, Comrade General. This time.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" Gennady Iosefovich allowed.\n\n\"You disagree?\"\n\n\"The terrorists underestimated their opponents. You will recall that I recently spent time with the American army. Their training is like nothing else in the world, and the training of their presidential guard must be equally as expert. Why is it that people so often underestimate the Americans?\" he wondered.\n\nThat was a good question, Sergey Nikolay'ch recognized, nodding for the chief of operations to go on.\n\n\"America often suffers from a lack of political direction. That is not the same as incompetence. You know what they are like? A vicious dog held on a short leash\u2014and because he cannot break the leash, people delude themselves that they need not fear him, but within the are of that leash he is invincible, and a leash, Comrade Chairman, is a temporary thing. You know this Ryan fellow.\"\n\n\"I know him well,\" Golovko agreed.\n\n\"And? The stories in their press, are they true?\"\n\n\"All of them.\"\n\n\"I tell you what I think, Sergey Nikolay'ch. If you regard him as a formidable adversary, and he has that vicious dog on the leash, I would not go far out of my way to offend him. An attack on a child? _His_ child?\" The general shook his head.\n\nThat was it, Golovko realized. They were both tired, but here was a moment of clarity. He'd spent too much time reading over the political reports from Washington, from his own embassy, and directly from the American media. They all said that Ivan Emmetovich ... was that the key? From the beginning he'd called Ryan that, thinking to honor the man with the Russian version of his name and the Russian patronymic. And an honor it was in Golovko's context . . .\n\n\"You are thinking what I am thinking, _da?\"_ the general asked, seeing the man's face and gesturing for him to speak.\n\n\"Someone has made a calculation . . .\"\n\n\"And it is not an accurate one. I think we need to find out who has done so. I think a systematic attack on American interests, an attempt to weaken America, Comrade Chairman, is really an attack against our interests. Why is China doing what she is doing, eh? Why did they force America to change her naval dispositions? And now this? American forces are being stretched, and at the same time a strike at the very heart of the American leader. This is no coincidence. Now we can stand aside and do nothing more than observe, or\u2014\"\n\n\"There is nothing we can do, and with the revelations in the American press\u2014\"\n\n\"Comrade Chairman,\" Bondarenko interrupted. \"For seventy years, our country has confused political theory with objective fact, and that was almost our undoing as a nation. There are objective conditions here,\" he went on, using a phrase beloved of the Soviet military\u2014a reaction, perhaps, to their three generations of political oversight. \"I see the patterns of a clever operation, a coordinated operation, but one which has a fatal flaw, and that flaw is a misestimation of the American President. Do you disagree?\"\n\nGolovko gave that a few seconds of thought, noting also that Bondarenko might just be seeing something real\u2014but did the Americans? It was so much harder to see something from the inside than the outside. A coordinated operation? Back to Ryan, he told himself.\n\n\"No. I made that mistake myself. Ryan appears much less than what he is. The signs are all there, but people don't see them.\"\n\n\"When I was in America, that General Diggs told me the story of the time terrorists attacked Ryan's house. He took up arms and defeated them, courageously and decisively. From what you say, it appears he is also highly effective as an intelligence officer. His only flaw, if one may call it that, is that he is not politically adept, and politicians invariably take that for weakness. Perhaps it is,\" Bondarenko allowed. \"But if this is a hostile operation against America, then his political weaknesses are far less important than his other gifts.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Help the man,\" the general urged. \"Better that we should be on the winning side, and if we do not help, then we might be on the other. Nobody will attack America directly. We are not so fortunate, Comrade Chairman.\" He was almost right.\n**44**\n\n**INCUBATION**\n\n**R** YAN AWOKE AT DAWN, wondering why. The quiet. Almost like his home on the Bay. He strained to listen for traffic or other sounds, but there were none. Moving out of the bed was difficult. Cathy had decided to have Katie in with them, and there she was in her pink sleeper, looking angelic as toddlers did, still babies at that age whatever others might say. He had to smile, then made his way to the bathroom. Casual clothes had been set out in the dressing room, and he put them on, with a pair of sneaks and a sweater, to head outside.\n\nThe air was brisk, with traces of frost on the boxwoods, and the sky clear. Not bad. Robby was right. This wasn't a bad place to come to. It put a distance between himself and other things, and he needed that right now.\n\n\"Morning, sir.\" It was Captain Overton.\n\n\"Not bad duty, is it?\"\n\nThe young officer nodded. \"We do the security. The Navy does the petunias. It's a fair division of labor, Mr. President. Even the Secret Service guys can sleep in here, sir.\"\n\nRyan looked around and saw why. There were two armed Marines immediately around the cabin, and three more within fifty yards. And those were just the ones he could see.\n\n\"Get you anything, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Coffee'll do for a start.\"\n\n\"Follow me, sir.\"\n\n\"Attention on deck!\" a sailor shouted a few seconds later, when Ryan went into the cook shed\u2014or whatever they called it here.\n\n\"As you were,\" the President told them. \"I thought this was the Presidential Retreat, not boot camp.\" He picked a seat at the table the staff used. Coffee appeared as if by magic. Then more magic happened.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Hi, Andrea. When did you get in?\"\n\n\"Around two, helicopter,\" she explained.\n\n\"Get any sleep?\"\n\n\"About four hours.\"\n\nRyan took a sip. Navy coffee was still Navy coffee. \"And?\"\n\n\"The investigation is under way. The team's put together. Everybody's got a seat at the table.\" She handed over a folder, which Ryan would get to read before his morning paper. Anne Arundel County and Maryland State Police, Secret Service, FBI, ATF, and all the intelligence agencies were working the case. They were running IDs on the terrorists, but the two whose documents had so far been checked turned out to be non-persons. Their papers were false, probably of European origin. Big surprise. Any competent European criminal, much less a terrorist organization, could procure phony passports. He looked up.\n\n\"What about the agents we lost?\"\n\nA sigh, a shrug. \"They all have families.\"\n\n\"Let's get it set up so that I can meet with them . . . should it be all at once or one at a time?\"\n\n\"Your choice, sir,\" Price told him.\n\n\"No, it has to be what's best for them. They're your people, Andrea. You work that out for me, okay? I owe them my daughter's life, and I have to do what's right for them,\" POTUS said soberly, remembering why he was in this quiet and peaceful place. \"And I presume that they will be properly looked after. Get me the details on that, insurance, pensions, and stuff, okay? I want to look that over.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Do we know anything important yet?\"\n\n\"No, not really. The terrorists who've been posted, their dental work definitely isn't American, that's it for now.\"\n\nRyan flipped through the papers he had. One preliminary conclusion leaped off the page at him: \"Eleven years?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"So this is a major operation for somebody\u2014a country.\"\n\n\"That's a real possibility.\"\n\n\"Who else would have the resources?\" he asked, and Price reminded herself that he'd been an intelligence officer for a long time.\n\nAgent Raman came in and took his seat. He'd heard that observation, and he and Price traded a look and a nod.\n\nThe wall phone rang. Captain Overton walked over to get it. \"Yes?\" He listened for a few minutes, then turned. \"Mr. President, this is Mrs. Foley at CIA.\"\n\nThe President went to take the call. \"Yeah, Mary Pat.\" \"Sir, we had a call a few minutes ago from Moscow. Our friend Golovko asks if he can be of any assistance. I recommend a 'yes' on that.\"\n\n\"Agreed. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Avi ben Jakob wants to talk to you later today. Earsonly,\" the DDO told him.\n\n\"About an hour, let me get woke up first.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.... Jack?\"\n\n\"Yeah, MP?\"\n\n\"Thank God about Katie,\" she said, mother to father, then going on as mother alone: \"If we can get a line on this, we will.\"\n\n\"I KNOW YOU'RE our best,\" Mrs. Foley heard. \"We're doing okay right now.\"\n\n\"Good. Ed and I will be in all day.\" She hung up.\n\n\"How's he sound?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"He'll make it, John.\"\n\nChavez rubbed his hand over the night's growth of beard. The three of them plus quite a few others had spent the night reviewing everything CIA had on terrorist groups. \"We have to do something about this, guys. This is an act of war.\" His voice was devoid of accent now, as it tended to be when he got serious enough to call on his education instead of his L.A. origins.\n\n\"We don't know much. Hell,\" the DDO said, \"we don't know anything yet.\"\n\n\"Shame he couldn't have taken one alive.\" This observation, to the surprise of the two others, came from Clark.\n\n\"He probably didn't have much of a chance to snap the cuffs on the guy,\" Ding replied.\n\n\"True.\" Clark lifted the set of crime-scene photos that had been couriered over from the FBI just after midnight. He'd worked the Middle East, and it had been hoped that he might have recognized a face, but he hadn't. Mainly he'd learned that whichever FBI puke had been inside, the gent could shoot as well as he ever had. Lucky man, to have been there, to have had that chance, and to take it.\n\n\"Somebody's taking one hell of a big chance,\" John said.\n\n\"That's a fact,\" Mary Pat agreed automatically, but then they all wondered about it.\n\nThe question was not how big the chance was, but rather how big the chance was perceived to be by whoever had tossed the dice. The nine terrorists had all been throwaways, as surely marked for death as the Hezbollah fanatics who'd gone strolling down Israeli streets in clothing made by DuPont\u2014that was the CIA joke about it, though in fact the plastic explosives had probably come from the Skoda Works in the former Czechoslovakia. \"Not-so-smart bombs\" was the other in-house sobriquet. Had they really believed that they could pull it off? The problem with some of the fanatics was that they didn't weigh things very well . . . maybe they hadn't even cared.\n\nThat was also the problem of those who sent them. This mission had been different, after all. Ordinarily, terrorists boasted widely of what they did, however odious the act, and at CIA and elsewhere they'd waited for fifteen hours for the press release. But it never came, and if it hadn't by now, then it never would. If they didn't make the release, then they didn't want anyone to know. But that was an illusion. Terrorists always proclaimed their acts, but they didn't always appreciate that police agencies could figure things out anyway.\n\nNation-states knew better, or were supposed to. Okay, fine, the dealers hadn't had anything that could identify their point of origin\u2014or so some might think. But Mary Pat was under no such illusions. The FBI was better than good, good enough that the Secret Service was letting the Bureau handle all of the forensics. And so it was likely that whoever had initiated the mission might actually expect that the story would eventually unravel. Knowing that\u2014probably\u2014they'd gone ahead with it anyway. If this line of speculation were true, then\u2014\n\n\"Part of something else?\" Clark asked. \"Not a standalone. Something else, too.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Mary Pat observed.\n\n\"If it is, it's big,\" Chavez went on for them. \"Maybe that's why the Russians called in to us.\"\n\n\"So big . . . so big that even if we figure it out, it won't matter when we do.\"\n\n\"That's pretty big, Mary Pat,\" Clark said quietly. \"What could it be ...?\"\n\n\"Something permanent, something we can't change after it's done,\" Domingo offered. His time at George Mason University hadn't been wasted.\n\nMrs. Foley wished her husband were in on this, but Ed was meeting with Murray right now.\n\nSATURDAYS IN THE spring are often days of dull but hopeful routine, but in just over two hundred homes little was done. Gardens were not planted. Cars were not washed. Garage sales were not attended. Paint cans went unopened. That wasn't counting government employees or news personnel working the big story of the week. Mainly the people suffering from the flu were men. Thirty of them were in hotel rooms. Several even tried to work, attending their trade shows in the new cities. Wiping their faces, blowing their noses, and wishing the aspirin or Tylenol would kick in. Of the last group, most went back to the hotel rooms to relax\u2014no sense in getting the customers sick, was there? In not a single case did anyone seek medical attention. There was the usual winter\/spring flu bug circulating around, and everybody got it sooner or later. They weren't that sick, after all, were they?\n\nNEWS COVERAGE OF the incident at Giant Steps was entirely predictable, starting with camera shots taken from about fifty yards away, and the same words repeated by all of the correspondents, followed by the same words delivered by \"experts\" in terrorism and\/or other fields. One of the networks took the viewer all the way back to Abraham Lincoln for no other reason than that it was otherwise a very slow news day. All of the coverage pointed to the Middle East, though the investigating agencies had declined any comment at all on the event so far, except to cite an FBI agent's heroic interference and the spirited battle put up by the Secret Service bodyguards of little Katie Ryan. Words like \"heroic,\" \"dedicated,\" and \"determined\" were bandied about with great frequency, leading to the \"dramatic conclusion.\"\n\nSomething very simple had gone wrong, Badrayn was certain, though he wouldn't know for sure until his colleague got back to Tehran from London, via Brussels and Vienna, on several different sets of travel documents.\n\n\"The President and his family are at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David,\" the reporter concluded, \"to recover from the shock of this dreadful event just north of peaceful Annapolis, Maryland. This is . . .\"\n\n\"Retreat?\" Daryaei asked.\n\n\"It means many things in English, first among them is to run away,\" Badrayn answered, mainly because he was sure that's what his employer would like to hear.\n\n\"If he thinks he can run away from me, he is mistaken,\" the cleric observed in dark amusement, the spirit of the moment getting the better of his discretion.\n\nBadrayn didn't react to the revelation. It was easy at the instant of his realization, since he was looking at the TV and not at his host, but things then became more clear. There was not all that much risk at all, was there? Mahmoud Haji had a way to kill this man, perhaps whenever he wished to do so, and it was all being orchestrated. Could he really do it? But, of course, he already had.\n\nIVIS MADE LIFE hard on the OpFor. Not all that hard. Colonel Hamm and the Blackhorse had won this one, but what only a year before would have been a wipeout of cosmic proportions\u2014Fort Irwin _was_ in California, and some linguistic peculiarities were inevitable\u2014had been a narrow victory. War was about information. It was always the lesson of the National Training Center: Find the enemy. Don't let the enemy find you. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. The IVIS system, operated by halfway competent people, shot the information out to everyone so fast that the soldiers were leaning in the right direction even before the orders came down. That had nearly negated a maneuver on the OpFor's part, which would have been worthy of Erwin Rommel on his best day, and as he watched the fast-play of the exercise on the big screen in the Star Wars Room, Hamm saw just how close it had been. If one of those Blue Force tank companies had moved just five minutes faster, he would have lost this one, too. The NTC would surely lose its effectiveness if the Good Guys won regularly.\n\n\"That was a beautiful move, Hamm,\" the colonel of the Carolina Guard admitted, reaching in his pocket for a cigar and handing it over. \"But we'll whip your ass tomorrow.\"\n\nOrdinarily, he would have smiled and said, _Sure you will_. But the cracker son of a bitch just might pull it off, and that would take a lot of the fun out of Hamm's life. The colonel of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment would now have to come up with ways of spoofing IVIS. It was something he'd thought about, and had been the subject of a few discussions over beers with his operations officer, but so far they had only agreed that it was no small feat, probably involving dummy vehicles . . . like Rommel had used. He'd have to get funding for those. He walked outside to smoke his cigar. It had been honorably won. He found the Guard colonel there, too.\n\n\"For Guardsmen, you're pretty damned good,\" Hamm had to admit. He'd never said such a thing to a Guard formation before. He rarely said it to anyone at all. Except for one deployment error, the Blue Force plan had been a thing of beauty.\n\n\"Thank you for saying that, Colonel. IVIS came as a rude surprise, didn't it?\"\n\n\"You might say that.\"\n\n\"My people love it. A lot come in on their own time to play on the simulators. Hell, I'm surprised you took us on this one.\"\n\n\"Your reserve was too close in,\" Hamm told him. \"You thought you knew what to exploit. Instead, I caught you out of position to meet my counterattack.\" It wasn't a revelation. The senior observer\/controller had made that lesson clear to the momentarily contrite tank commander.\n\n\"I'll try to remember that. Catch the news?\"\n\n\"Yeah, that sucks,\" Hamm thought aloud.\n\n\"Little kids. I wonder if they award medals to the Secret Service?\"\n\n\"They have something, I imagine. I can think of worse things to die for.\" And that's what it was all about. Those five agents had died doing their jobs, running to the sound of the guns. They must have made some mistakes, but sometimes you didn't have a choice in the matter. All soldiers knew that.\n\n\"God rest their brave souls.\" The man sounded like Robert Edward Lee. It triggered something in Hamm.\n\n\"What's the story on you guys? You, Colonel Eddington, you're not supposed\u2014what the hell do you do in real life?\" The guy was over fifty, very marginal for an officer in command of a brigade, even in the Guard.\n\n\"I'm professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. What's the story? This brigade was supposed to be the round-out for 24th Mech back in 1991, and we came here for workups and got our ass handed to us. Never got to deploy. I was a battalion XO then, Hamm. We wanted to go. Our regimental standards go back to the Revolution. It hurt our pride. We've been waiting to come back here near on ten years, boy, and this IVIS box gives us a fair chance.\" He was a tall, thin man, and when he turned, he was looking down at the regular officer. \"We are going to make use of that chance, son. I know the theory. I been readin' and studyin' on it for over thirty years, and my men ain't'a'gonna roll over and die for you, you he'ah?\" When aroused, Nicholas Eddington tended to adopt an accent.\n\n\" 'Specially not for Yankees?\"\n\n\"Damn right!\" Then it was time for a laugh. Nick Eddington was a teacher, with a flair for the impromptu dramatic. The voice softened. \"I know, if we didn't have IVIS, you'd murder us\u2014\"\n\n\"Ain't technology wonderful?\"\n\n\"It almost makes us your equal, and your men are the best. Everybody knows that,\" Eddington conceded. It was a worthy peace gesture.\n\n\"With the hours we keep, kinda hard to get a beer at the club when you need one. Can I offer you one at my home, sir?\"\n\n\"Lead on, Colonel Hamm.\"\n\n\"What's your area of specialty?\" BLACKHORSE SIX asked on the way to his car.\n\n\"My dissertation was on the operational art of Nathan Bedford Forrest.\"\n\n\"Oh? I've always admired Buford, myself.\"\n\n\"He only had a couple of days, but they were all good days. He might have won the war for Lincoln at Gettysburg.\"\n\n\"The Spencer carbines gave his troopers the technical edge,\" Hamm announced. \"People overlook that factor.\"\n\n\"Choosing the best ground didn't hurt, and the Spencers helped, but what he did best was to remember his mission,\" Eddington replied.\n\n\"As opposed to Stuart. Jeb definitely had a bad day. I suppose he was due for one.\" Hamm opened the car door for his colleague. It would be a few hours before they had to prepare for the next exercise, and Hamm was a serious student of history, especially of the cavalry. This would be an interesting breakfast: beer, eggs, and the Civil War.\n\nTHEY BUMPED INTO each other in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, which was doing a great business in coffee and donuts at the moment.\n\n\"Hi, John,\" Holtzman said, looking at the crime scene from across the street.\n\n\"Bob,\" Plumber acknowledged with a nod. The area was alive with cameras, TV and still, recording the scene for history.\n\n\"You're up early for a Saturday\u2014TV guy, too,\" the _Post_ reporter noted with a friendly smile. \"What do you make of it?\"\n\n\"This really is a terrible thing.\" Plumber was himself a grandfather many times over. \"Was it Ma'alot, the one in Israel, back\u2014what? 1975, something like that?\" They all seemed to blend together, these terrorist incidents.\n\nHoltzman wasn't sure, either. \"I think so. I have somebody checking it back at the office.\"\n\n\"Terrorists make for good stories, but, dear God, we'd be better off without them.\"\n\nThe crime scene was almost pristine. The bodies were gone. The autopsies were complete by now, they both imagined. But everything else was intact, or nearly so. The cars were there, and as the reporters watched, ballistics experts were running strings to simulate shots at mannequins brought in from a local department store, trying to re-create every detail of the event. The black guy in the Secret Service windbreaker was Norman Jeffers, one of the heroes of the day, now demonstrating how he'd come down from the house across the street. Inside was Inspector Patrick O'Day. Some agents were simulating the movements of the terrorists. One man lay on the ground by the front door, aiming a red plastic \"play gun\" around. In criminal investigations, the dress rehearsals always came after the play.\n\n\"His name was Don Russell?\" Plumber asked.\n\n\"One of the oldest guys in the Service,\" Holtzman confirmed.\n\n\"Damn.\" Plumber shook his head. \"Horatius at the bridge, like something from a movie. 'Heroic' isn't a word we use often, is it?\"\n\n\"No, that isn't something we're supposed to believe in anymore, is it? We know better. Everybody's got an angle, right?\" Holtzman finished off his coffee and dumped the cup in the trash bin. \"Imagine, giving up your life to protect other people's kids.\"\n\nSome reports talked about it in Western terms. \"Gunfight at the Kiddy Corral\" some local TV reporter had tried out, winning the low-taste award for last night, and earning his station a few hundred negative calls, confirming to the station manager that his outlet had a solid nighttime viewership. None had been more irate about that than Plumber, Bob Holtzman noted. He still thought it was supposed to mean something, this news business they both shared.\n\n\"Any word on Ryan?\" Bob asked.\n\n\"Just a press release. Callie Weston wrote it, and Arnie delivered it. I can't blame him for taking the family away. He deserves a break from somebody, John.\"\n\n\"Bob, I seem to remember when\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know. I got snookered. Elizabeth Elliot fed me a story on Ryan back when he was Deputy at CIA.\" He turned to look at his older colleague. \"It was all a lie. I apologized to him personally. You know what it was really all about?\"\n\n\"No,\" Plumber admitted.\n\n\"The Colombian mission. He was there, all right. Along the way, some people got killed. One of them was an Air Force sergeant. Ryan looks after the family. He's putting them all through college, all on his own.\"\n\n\"You never printed that,\" the TV reporter objected.\n\n\"No, I didn't. The family\u2014well, they're not public figures, are they? By the time I found out, it was old news. I just didn't think it was newsworthy.\" That last word was one of the keys to their profession. It was news personnel who decided what got before the public eye and what did not, and in choosing what got out and what didn't, it was they who controlled the news, and decided what, exactly, the public had a right to know. And in so choosing, they could make or break everyone, because not every story started off big enough to notice, especially the political ones.\n\n\"Maybe you were wrong.\"\n\nHoltzman shrugged. \"Maybe I was, but I didn't expect Ryan to become President any more than he did. He did an honorable thing\u2014hell, a lot more than honorable. John, there are things about the Colombian story that can't ever see the light of day. I think I know it all now, but I can't write it. It would hurt the country and it wouldn't help anybody at all.\"\n\n\"What did Ryan do, Bob?\"\n\n\"He prevented an international incident. He saw that the guilty got punished one way or another\u2014\"\n\n\"Jim Cutter?\" Plumber asked, still wondering what Ryan was capable of.\n\n\"No, that really was a suicide. Inspector O'Day, the FBI guy who was right there across the street?\"\n\n\"What about him?\"\n\n\"He was following Cutter, watched him jump in front of the bus.\"\n\n\"You're sure of this?\"\n\n\"As sure as I've ever been. Ryan doesn't know that I'm into all this. I have a couple of good sources, and everything matches up with the known facts. Either it's all the truth or it's the cleverest lie I've ever run into. You know what we have in the White House, John?\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"An honest man. Not 'relatively honest,' not 'hasn't been caught yet.' Honest. I don't think he's ever done a crooked thing in his life.\"\n\n\"He's still a babe in the woods,\" Plumber replied. It was almost bluster, if not disbelief, because his conscience was starting to make noise.\n\n\"Maybe he is. But who ever said we were wolves? No, that's not right. We're supposed to chase after the crooks, but we've been doing it so long and so well that we forgot that there are some people in government who aren't.\" He looked over at his colleague again. \"And so then we play one off against another to get our stories and along the way we got corrupted, too. What do we do about that, John?\"\n\n\"I know what you're asking. The answer is no.\"\n\n\"In an age of relative values, nice to find an absolute, Mr. Plumber. Even if it is the wrong one,\" Holtzman added, getting the reaction he'd hoped for.\n\n\"Bob, you're good. Very good, in fact, but you can't roll me, okay?\" The commentator managed a smile, though. It was an expert attempt, and he had to admire that. Holtzman was a throwback to the days Plumber remembered so fondly.\n\n\"What if I can prove I'm right?\"\n\n\"Then why didn't you write the story?\" Plumber demanded. No real reporter could turn away from this one.\n\n\"I didn't print it. I never said I didn't write it,\" Bob corrected his friend.\n\n\"Your editor would fire you for\u2014\"\n\n\"So? Aren't there things you never did, even after you had everything you needed?\"\n\nPlumber dodged that one: \"You talked about proof.\"\n\n\"Thirty minutes away. But this story can't ever get out.\"\n\n\"How can I trust you on that?\"\n\n\"How can I trust you, John? What do we put first? Getting the story out, right? What about the country, what about the people? Where does professional responsibility end and public responsibility begin? I didn't run this one because a family lost a father. He left a pregnant wife behind. The government couldn't acknowledge what happened, and so Jack Ryan stepped in himself to make things right. He did it with his own money. He never expected people to find out. So what was I supposed to do? Expose the family? For what, John? To break a story that hurts the country\u2014no, that hurts one family that doesn't need any more hurt. It could jeopardize the kids' educations. There's plenty of news we can cover without that. But I'm telling you this, John: You've hurt an innocent man, and your friend with the big smile _lied_ to the public to do it. We're supposed to care about that.\"\n\n\"So why don't you write _that?_ \"\n\nHoltzman made him wait a few seconds for the answer. \"I'm willing to give you the chance to set things right. That's why. You were there, too. But I have to have your word, John. I'll take yours.\"\n\nThere was more to it than that. There had to be. For Plumber, it was a matter of two professional insults. First, that he'd been steamrolled by his younger associate at NBC, one of the new generation who thought journalism was how you looked in front of a camera. Second, that he'd also been rolled by Ed Kealty\u2014used ... to hurt an innocent man? If nothing else, he had to find out. He had to, otherwise he'd be spending a lot of time looking in mirrors.\n\nThe TV commentator took Holtzman's mini\u2014tape recorder from his hand and punched the record button.\n\n\"This is John Plumber, it's Saturday, seven-fifty in the morning, and we're standing across the street from the Giant Steps Day Care Center. Robert Holtzman and I are about to leave this location to go somewhere. I have given my word that what we are about to investigate will remain absolutely confidential between us. This tape recording is a permanent record of that promise on my part. John Plumber,\" he concluded, \"NBC News.\" He clicked it off, then clicked it back on again. \"However, if Bob has misrepresented himself to me, all bets are off.\"\n\n\"That's fair,\" Holtzman agreed, removing the tape cassette from the recorder and pocketing it. The promise had no legal standing at all. Even if it had been a contractual agreement, the First Amendment would probably negate it, but it was a man's word, and both of the reporters knew that something had to hold up, even in the modern age. On the way to Bob's car, Plumber grabbed his field producer.\n\n\"We'll be back in an hour or so.\"\n\nTHE PREDATOR WAS circling at just under ten thousand feet. For purposes of convenience, the three UIR army corps were identified as I, II, and III by the intelligence officers at STORM TRACK and PALM BOWL. The UAV was circling I Corps now, a reconstituted Iraqi Republican Guard armored division and a similar division from the former Iranian army, \"The Immortals,\" it was called, harkening back to the personal guard of Xerxes. The deployment was conventional. The regimental formations were in the classic two-up\/one-back disposition, a triangle of sorts, with the third forming the divisional reserve. The two divisions were abreast. Their frontage was surprisingly narrow, however, with each division covering a mere thirty kilometers of linear space, and only a five-kilometer gap between the two.\n\nThey were training hard. Every few kilometers were targets, plywood cutouts of tanks. When they came into view, they were shot at. The Predator couldn't tell how good the gunnery was, though most of the targets were knocked over by the time the first echelon of fighting vehicles passed. The vehicles were mainly of Russian\/Soviet origin. The heavy ones were T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks made at the huge Chelyabinsk works. The infantry vehicles were BMPs. The tactics were Soviet, too. That was evident from the way they moved. Sub-units were kept under tight control. The huge formations moved with geometric precision, like harvesting machines in a Kansas wheatfield, sweeping across the terrain in regular lines.\n\n\"Geez, I've seen the movie,\" the chief master sergeant observed at the Kuwaiti ELINT station.\n\n\"Yes?\" Major Sabah asked.\n\n\"The Russians\u2014well, the Soviets, used to make movies of this, sir.\"\n\n\"How would you compare the two?\" And _that_ , the NCO intelligence-specialist thought, was a pretty good question.\n\n\"Not much different, Major.\" He pointed to the lower half of the screen. \"See here? The company commander has everything on line, proper distance and interval. Before, the Predator was over the division reconnaissance screen, and that was right out of the book, too. Have you read up on Soviet tactics, Major Sabah?\"\n\n\"Only as the Iraqis implemented them,\" the Kuwaiti officer admitted.\n\n\"Well, it's pretty close. You hit hard and fast, just go right through your enemy, don't give him a chance to react. You keep your own people under control. It's all mathematics to them.\"\n\n\"And the level of their training?\"\n\n\"Not bad, sir.\"\n\n\"ELLIOT HAD SURVEILLANCE on Ryan, right over there,\" Holtzman pointed as he brought the car into the 7-Eleven.\n\n\"She was having him followed?\"\n\n\"Liz hated his guts. I never\u2014well, okay, I did figure it out. It was personal. She really had it in for Ryan, something that happened before Bob Fowler got elected. Enough that she leaked a story that was supposed to hurt his family. Nice, eh?\"\n\nPlumber wasn't all that impressed. \"That's Washington.\"\n\n\"True, but what about using official government assets for a personal vendetta? That may be real Washington, too, but it's against the law.\" He switched off the car and motioned for Plumber to get out.\n\nInside they found a diminutive owner, female, and a bunch of Amerasian kids stocking the shelves on this Saturday morning.\n\n\"Hello,\" Carol Zimmer said. She recognized Holtzman from previous visits to buy bread and milk\u2014and to eyeball the establishment. She had no idea he was a reporter. But she did recognize John Plumber. She pointed. \"You on TV!\"\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" the commentator admitted with a smile.\n\nThe eldest son\u2014his name tag said Laurence\u2014came up with a less friendly look on his face. \"Can I help you with something, sir?\" His voice was unaccented, his eyes bright and suspicious.\n\n\"I'd like to talk to you, if I might,\" Plumber asked politely.\n\n\"About what, sir?\"\n\n\"You know the President, don't you?\"\n\n\"Coffee machine's that way, sir. You can see where the doughnuts are.\" The young man turned his back. His height must have come from his father, Plumber saw, and he had education.\n\n\"Wait a minute!\" Plumber said.\n\nLaurence turned back. \"Why? We have a business to run here. Excuse me.\"\n\n\"Larry, be nice to man.\"\n\n\"Mom, I told you what he did, remember?\" When Laurence looked back at the reporters, his eyes told the tale. They wounded Plumber in a way he hadn't known in years.\n\n\"Excuse me. Please,\" the commentator said. \"I just want to talk to you. There aren't any cameras with me.\" \"Are you in medical school now, Laurence?\" Holtzman asked.\n\n\"How did you know that? Who the hell are you?\"\n\n\"Laurence!\" his mother objected.\n\n\"Wait a minute, please.\" Plumber held his hands up. \"I just want to talk. No cameras, no recorders. Everything is off the record.\"\n\n\"Oh, sure. You give us your word on that?\"\n\n\"Laurence!\"\n\n\"Mom, let me handle this!\" the student snapped, then instantly apologized. \"Sorry, Mom, but you don't know what this is about.\"\n\n\"I'm just trying to figure out\u2014\"\n\n\"I saw what you did, Mr. Plumber. Didn't anybody tell you? When you spit on the President, you spit on my father, too! Now, why don't you buy what you need and take a hike.\" The back turned again.\n\n\"I didn't know,\" John protested. \"If I've done something wrong, then why don't you tell me about it? I promise, you have my word, I will not do anything to hurt you or your family. But if I've done something wrong, please tell me.\"\n\n\"Why you hurt Mr. Ryan?\" Carol Zimmer asked. \"He good man. He look after us. He\u2014\"\n\n\"Mom, please. These people don't care about that!\" Laurence had to come back and handle this. His mom was just too naive.\n\n\"Laurence, my name is Bob Holtzman. I'm with the _Washington Post_. I've known about your family for several years now. I never ran the story because I didn't want to invade your privacy. I know what President Ryan is doing for you. I want John to hear it from you. It will not become public information. If I wanted that to happen, I would have done it myself.\"\n\n\"Why should I trust you?\" Laurence Zimmer demanded. \"You're reporters.\" That remark broke through Plumber's demeanor hard and sharp enough to cause physical pain. Had his profession sunk so low as that?\n\n\"You're studying to be a doctor?\" Plumber asked, starting at square one.\n\n\"Second year at Georgetown. I have a brother who's a senior at MIT, and a sister who just started at UVA.\"\n\n\"It's expensive. Too expensive for what you make off this business. I know. I had to educate my kids.\"\n\n\"We all work here. I work weekends.\"\n\n\"You're studying to be a physician. That's an honorable profession,\" Plumber said. \"And when you make mistakes, you try to learn from them. So do I, Laurence.\"\n\n\"You sure talk the talk, Mr. Plumber, but lots of people do that.\"\n\n\"The President helps, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"If I tell you something off the record, does that mean you can't report it at all?\"\n\n\"No, actually 'off the record' doesn't quite mean that. But if I tell you, right here and right now, that I will never use it in any way\u2014and there are other people around to back you up\u2014and then I break my word, you can wreck my career. People in my business are allowed to get away with a lot, maybe even too much,\" Plumber conceded, \"but we can't lie.\" And that was the point, wasn't it?\n\nLaurence looked over to his mother. Her poor English did not denote a poor mind. She nodded to him.\n\n\"He was with my dad when he got killed,\" the youth reported. \"He promised Pop that he would look after us. He does, and yeah, he pays for school and stuff, him and his friends at CIA.\"\n\n\"They had some trouble here with some rowdies,\" Holtzman added. \"A guy I know at Langley came over here and\u2014\"\n\n\"He shouldna done that!\" Laurence objected. \"Mr. Clar\u2014well, he didn't have to.\"\n\n\"How come you didn't go to Johns Hopkins?\" Holtzman asked.\n\n\"They accepted me,\" Laurence told them, hostility still in his voice. \"This way I can commute easier, and help out here with the store. Dr. Ryan\u2014Mrs. Ryan, I mean\u2014she didn't know at first, but when she found out, well, 'nother sister starts at the university this fall. Pre-med, like me.\"\n\n\"But why . . . ?\" Plumber's voice trailed off.\n\n\" 'Cuz maybe that's the kind of guy he is, and you fucked him over.\"\n\n\"Laurence!\"\n\nPlumber didn't speak for fifteen seconds or so. He turned to the lady behind the counter. \"Mrs. Zimmer, thank you for your time. None of this will ever be repeated. I promise.\" He turned. \"Good luck with your studies, Laurence. Thank you for telling me that. I will not be bothering you anymore.\"\n\nThe two reporters walked back outside, straight to Holtzman's Lexus.\n\n_Why should I trust you? You're reporters_. The artless words of a student, perhaps, but deeply wounding even so. Because those words had been earned, Plumber told himself.\n\n\"What else?\" he asked.\n\n\"As far as I know they don't even know the circumstances of Buck Zimmer's death, just that he died on duty. Evidently, Carol was pregnant with their youngest when he died. Liz Elliot tried to get a story out that Ryan was fooling around and the baby was his. I got suckered.\"\n\nA long breath. \"Yeah. Me, too.\"\n\n\"So, what are you going to do about it, John?\"\n\nHe looked up. \"I want to confirm a few things.\"\n\n\"The one at MIT is named Peter. Computer science. The one going to Charlottesville, I think her name is Alisha. I don't know the name of the one graduating high school, but I could look that up. I have dates for the purchase of this business. It's a sub-chapter-S corporation. It all tallies with the Colombian mission. Ryan does Christmas for them every year. Cathy, too. I don't know how they'll work that now. Pretty well, probably.\" Holtzman chuckled. \"He's good at keeping secrets.\"\n\n\"And the CIA guy who\u2014\"\n\n\"I know him. No names. He found out that some punks were annoying Carol. He had a little chat with them. The police have records. I've seen them,\" Holtzman told him. \"He's an interesting guy. He's the one who got Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. Carol thinks he's a great big teddy bear. He's also the guy who rescued Koga. Serious player.\"\n\n\"Give me a day. One day,\" Plumber said.\n\n\"Fair enough.\" The drive back to Ritchie Highway passed without another word.\n\n\"DR. RYAN?\" BOTH heads turned. It was Captain Overton, sticking his head in the door.\n\n\"What. is it?\" Cathy asked, looking up from a journal article.\n\n\"Ma'am, there's something happening that the kids might like to see, with your permission. All of you, if you want.\"\n\nTwo minutes later they were all in the back of a Hummer, heading into the woods, close to the perimeter fence. The vehicle stopped two hundred yards away. The captain and a corporal led them the rest of the way, to within fifty feet.\n\n\"Shh,\" the corporal said to SANDBOX. He held binoculars to her eyes.\n\n\"Neat!\" Jack Junior thought.\n\n\"Will she be scared of us?\" Sally asked.\n\n\"No, nobody hunts them here, and they're used to the vehicles,\" Overton told them. \"That's Elvira, she's the second-oldest doe here.\"\n\nShe'd given birth only minutes before. Elvira was getting up now, licking the newborn fawn whose eyes were confused by a new world it had no reason to expect.\n\n\"Bambi!\" Katie Ryan observed, being an expert on the Disney film. It only took minutes, and then the fawn wobbled to its\u2014they couldn't tell the gender yet\u2014feet.\n\n\"Okay. Katie?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" she asked, not looking away.\n\n_\"You_ get to give her her name,\" Captain Overton told the toddler. It was a tradition here.\n\n\"Miss Marlene,\" SANDBOX said without hesitation.\n**45**\n\n**CONFIRMATION**\n\n**A** S THE SAYING WENT, miles and miles of miles and miles. The road was about as boring as any civil engineer could make, but it hadn't been anyone's fault. So was the land. Brown and Holbrook now knew why the Mountain Men had become Mountain Men. At least there was scenery there. They could have driven faster, but it took time to learn the handling characteristics of this beast, and so they rarely got above fifty. That earned them the poisonous looks of every other driver on 1-90, especially the cowboy-hatted K-Whopper owner-operators who thought the unlimited speed limit in eastern Montana was just great, plus the occasional lawyer\u2014they _had_ to be lawyers\u2014in German muscle cars who blazed by their truck as though it were a cattle-feeder.\n\nThey also found it was hard work. Both men were pretty tired from all the preparation. All the weeks of effort to set up the truck, mix the explosives, cast the bullets, and then embed them. It had all made for little sleep, and there was nothing like driving a western interstate highway to put a man to sleep. Their first overnight was at a motel in Sheridan, just over the line into Wyoming. Getting that far, their first day driving the damned thing, had almost been their undoing, especially negotiating the split of 1-90 and 1-94 in Billings. They'd known that the cement truck would corner about as well as a hog on ice, but actually experiencing it had exceeded their worst fears. They ended up sleeping past eight that morning.\n\nThe motel was actually a truck stop of sorts that catered both to private cars and to interstate freight carriers. The dining room served a hearty breakfast, wolfed down by a lot of rugged-looking independent men, and a few similarly minded women. Breakfast conversation was predictable.\n\n\"Gotta be rag-head sunzabitches,\" opined a big-bellied trucker with tattoos on his beefy forearms.\n\n\"Think so?\" Ernie Brown asked from down the counter, hoping to get a feel for how these kindred souls felt about things.\n\n\"Who _else_ would go after younguns? Sunzabitches.\" The driver returned to his blueberry pancakes.\n\n\"If the TV has it right, those two cops got it done,\" a milk hauler announced. \"Five head shots. Whoa!\"\n\n\"What about the one guy who went down hard, standing up like that against six riflemen! With a _pistol_. Dropped three of them, maybe four. There died a real American lawman.\" He looked up from his pancakes again. This one had a load of cattle. \"He's earned his place in Valhalla, and that's for _damn_ sure.\"\n\n\"Hey, they were feds, man,\" Holbrook said, chewing on his toast. \"They ain't heroes. What about\u2014\"\n\n\"You can stick that one, good buddy,\" the milk hauler warned. \"I don't wanna hear it. There was twenty, thirty children in that place.\"\n\nAnother driver chimed in. \"And that black kid, rollin' on in with his -16. Damn, like when I was in the Cav for the Second of Happy Valley. I wouldn't mind buying that boy a beer, maybe shake his hand.\"\n\n\"You were AirCav?\" the cattle hauler asked, turning away from his breakfast.\n\n\"Charlie, First of the Seventh.\" He turned to show the oversized patch of the First Air Cavalry Division on his leather jacket.\n\n\"Gary Owen, bro'! Delta, Second\/Seventh.\" He stood up from the counter and walked over to take the man's hand. \"Where you outa?\"\n\n\"Seattle. That's mine out there with the machine parts. Heading for St. Louis. Gary Owen. Jesus, nice to hear that one again.\"\n\n\"Every time I drive through here . . .\"\n\n\"You bet. We got brothers buried out yonder at Little Big Horn. Always say a little prayer for 'em when I come through.\"\n\n\"Shit.\" The two men shook hands again. \"Mike Fallon.\"\n\n\"Tim Yeager.\"\n\nThe two Mountain Men had not just come into the room for breakfast. These were their kind of people. Supposed to be, anyway. Rugged individualists. Federal cops as heroes? What the hell was that all about?\n\n\"Boy, we find out who bankrolled this job, I hope that Ryan fella knows what to do 'bout it,\" machine parts said.\n\n\"Ex-Marine,\" cattle replied. \"He ain't one of them. He's one of us. Finally.\"\n\n\"You may be right. Somebody's gotta pay for this one, and I hope we get the right people to do the collectin'.\"\n\n\"Damn right,\" the milk hauler agreed from his spot on the counter.\n\n\"Well.\" Ernie Brown stood. \"Time for us to boogie on down the road.\"\n\nThe others nearby took a cursory look, and that was all, as the truckers returned to their informal opinion poll.\n\n\"IF YOU DON'T feel better by tomorrow, you're going to the doctor, and that's final!\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, I'll be all right.\" But that protestation came out as a groan. He wondered if this was Hong Kong flu or something else. Not that he knew the difference. Few people did, and in a real sense that included docs and he did know that. What would they tell him? Rest, liquids, aspirin, which he was already doing. He felt as though he'd been placed in a bag and beaten with baseball bats, and all the traveling didn't help. Nobody liked traveling. Everyone liked _being_ somewhere else, but getting there was always a pain in the . . . everywhere, he grumped. He allowed himself to fade back off to sleep, hoping his wife wouldn't worry too much. He'd feel better by tomorrow. These things always went away. He had a comfortable bed, and a TV controller. As long as he didn't move around it didn't hurt . . . much. It couldn't get any worse. Then it would get better. It always did.\n\nWHEN PEOPLE GOT to a certain point, their work never really stopped. They could go away, but then the work came to them, found them wherever they might be, and the only issue, really, was how expensive it was to bring the work to them. That was a problem for both Jack Ryan and Robby Jackson.\n\nFor Jack it was the speeches Callie Weston had prepared for him\u2014he'd be flying tomorrow, to Tennessee, then to Kansas, then to Colorado, then to California, and finally back to Washington, arriving at three in the morning on what was going to be the biggest special-election day in American history. Just over a third of the House seats vacated by that Sato guy would be selected, with the remainder to be done over the following two weeks. Then he'd have a full Congress to work with, and maybe, just maybe, he could get some real work done. Pure politics loomed in his immediate future. This coming week he'd be going over the detailed plans to streamline two of the government's most powerful bureaucracies, Defense and Treasury. The rest were in the works, too.\n\nSince he was here with the President, Admiral Jackson was also getting everything developed by the office of J-2, the Pentagon's chief of intelligence, so that he could conduct the daily around-the-world brief. It took him an hour just to go over the materials.\n\n\"What's happening, Rob?\" Jack asked, and instead of a friendly inquiry into how a guy's week was going, the President was asking the state of the entire planet. The J-3's eyebrows jerked up.\n\n\"Where do you want me to start?\"\n\n\"Pick a spot,\" the President suggested.\n\n\"Okay, Mike Dubro and the _Ike_ group are still heading north to China, making good time. Good weather and calm seas, they're averaging twenty-five knots. That advances their ETA by a few hours. Exercises continue on the Formosa Strait, but both sides are hugging their coasts now. Looks like maybe the shoot-downs got everybody to calm down a bit. Secretary Adler is supposed to be in there right now, talking to them about things.\n\n\"Middle East. We're watching the UIR military run exercises, too. Six heavy divisions, plus attachments and tactical air. Our people on the scene have Predators up and watching pretty closely\u2014\"\n\n\"Who authorized that?\" the President asked.\n\n\"I did,\" Jackson replied.\n\n\"Invading another country's airspace?\"\n\n\"J-2 and I are running this. You want us to know what they're up to and what their capabilities are, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, I need that.\"\n\n\"Good, you tell me what to do, and let me worry about how, all right? It's a stealthy platform. It self-destructs if it goes out of control or the guys directing it don't like something, and it gives us very good real-time data we can't get from satellites, or even from J-STARS, and we don't have one of those over there at the moment. Any other questions, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Touch\u00e9, Admiral. What's the take look like?\"\n\n\"They're looking better than our initial intelligence assessment led us to expect. Nobody's panicking yet, but this is starting to get our attention.\"\n\n\"What about Turkestan?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"They're evidently trying to get elections going, but that's old information, and that's all we know on the political side. The overall situation there is quiet at the moment. Satellites show increased cross-border traffic\u2014mainly trade, the overhead-intelligence guys think, nothing more than that.\"\n\n\"Anybody looking at Iranian\u2014damn, UIR\u2014troop dispositions on the border?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I can check.\" Jackson made a note. \"Next, we've spotted the Indian navy.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"They're not making a secret of anything. I had 'em send a pair of Orions off from Diego Garcia. They spotted our friends from three hundred miles out, electronic emissions. They are about four hundred miles offshore from their base. And, by the way, that places them directly between Diego and the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Our defense attach\u00e9 will drop in tomorrow to ask what they're up to. They probably won't tell him very much.\"\n\n\"If they don't, I think maybe Ambassador Williams will have to make a call of his own.\"\n\n\"Good idea. And that's the summary of today's news, unless you want the trivia.\" Robby tucked his documents away. \"What do your speeches look like?\"\n\n\"The theme is common sense,\" the President reported.\n\n\"In Washington?\"\n\nADLER WAS NOT overly pleased. On arriving in Beijing, he'd learned that the timing wasn't good. His aircraft had gotten in on what had turned out to be a Saturday evening\u2014the date line again, he realized\u2014then he learned that the important ministers were out of town, studiously downplaying the significance of the air battle over the strait, and giving him a chance to recover from jet lag so that he would be up to a serious meeting. Or so they'd said.\n\n\"What a pleasure to have you here,\" the Foreign Minister said, taking the American's hand and guiding him into his private office. Another man was waiting in there. \"Do you know Zhang Han San?\"\n\n\"No, how do you do, Minister?\" Adler asked, taking his hand as well. _So, this was what he looked like._\n\nPeople took their seats. Adler was alone. In addition to the two PRC ministers, there was an interpreter, a woman in her early thirties.\n\n\"Your flight was a pleasant one?\" the Foreign Minister inquired.\n\n\"Coming to your country is always pleasant, but I do wish the flight were faster,\" Adler admitted.\n\n\"The effects of travel on the body are often difficult, and the body does affect the mind. I trust you have had some time to recover. It is important,\" the Foreign Minister went on, \"that high-level discussions, especially in times of unpleasantness, are not clouded by extraneous complications.\"\n\n\"I am well rested,\" Adler assured them. He'd gotten plenty of sleep. It was just that he wasn't sure what time it was in whatever location his body thought itself to be. \"And the interests of peace and stability compel us to make the occasional sacrifice.\"\n\n\"That is so true.\"\n\n\"Minister, the unfortunate events of the last week have troubled my country,\" SecState told his hosts.\n\n\"Why do those bandits seek to provoke us?\" the Foreign Minister asked. \"Our forces are conducting exercises, that is all. And they shot down two of our aircraft. The crewmen are all dead. They have families. This is very sad, but I hope you have noted that the People's Republic has not retaliated.\"\n\n\"We have noted this with gratitude.\"\n\n\"The bandits shot first. You also know that.\"\n\n\"We are unclear on that issue. One of the reasons for my coming here is to ascertain the facts,\" Adler replied.\n\n\"Ah.\"\n\nHad he surprised them? SecState wondered. It was like a card game, though the difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand. A flush still beat a straight, but the hole card was always down, even for its owner. In this case, he had lied, but while the other side might suspect the lie, they didn't know for sure, and that affected the game. If they thought he knew, they would say one thing. If they thought he didn't know, they'd say another. In this case, they thought he knew, but they weren't sure. He'd just told them otherwise, which could be a lie or the truth. Advantage, America. Adler had thought about this all the way over.\n\n\"You have said publicly that the first shot was taken by the other side. Are you sure of this?\"\n\n\"Completely,\" the Foreign Minister assured him.\n\n\"Excuse me, but what if the shot were taken by one of your lost pilots? How would we ever know?\"\n\n\"Our pilots were under strict orders not to fire except in self-defense.\"\n\n\"That is both a reasonable and prudent guide for your personnel. But in the heat of battle\u2014or if not battle, a somewhat tense situation, mistakes do happen. We have the problem ourselves. I find aviators to be impulsive, especially the young, proud ones.\"\n\n\"Is not the same true of the other side as well?\" the Foreign Minister asked.\n\n\"Certainly,\" Adler admitted. \"That is the problem, isn't it? Which is why,\" he went on, \"it is the business of people like ourselves to ensure that such situations do not arise.\"\n\n\"But they always provoke us. They hope to garner your favor, and we find it troubling that this may have succeeded.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"Your President Ryan spoke of _two_ Chinas. There is only one China, Secretary Adler. I'd thought that issue settled a long time ago.\"\n\n\"That was a semantic error on the President's part, a linguistic nuance,\" Adler replied, dismissing the observation. \"The President has many qualities, but he has yet to learn the niceties of diplomatic exchange, and then a foolish reporter seized on the issue. Nothing more than that. There have been no changes in our policies toward this region.\" But Adler had deliberately _not_ said \"our policies,\" and \"have been\" instead of \"are.\" There were times when he thought that he might have made a fortune for himself by drafting insurance policies.\n\n\"Such linguistic errors can be seen as things other than errors,\" the Foreign Minister replied.\n\n\"Have I not made our position clear on this issue? You will recall that he was responding to a most unfortunate incident in which American lives were lost, and in searching for words to use, he selected words which have one meaning in our language, and another in yours.\" This was going a lot easier than he'd expected.\n\n\"Chinese lives were lost as well.\"\n\nZhang, Adler saw, was doing a lot of listening but wasn't uttering a single word. In the Western context, that made him an aide, a technical assistant, there to assist his minister on an issue of law or interpretation. He wasn't so sure that rule applied in this case. More likely, the reverse applied. If Zhang were what the American thought him to be, and if Zhang were smart enough to suspect that the American would be thinking along those lines\u2014then why the hell was he here?\n\n\"Yes, and various others, to little purpose and great sorrow. I hope you will understand that our President takes such things seriously.\"\n\n\"Indeed, and I am remiss in not saying sooner that we view with horror the attack on his daughter. I trust you will convey to President Ryan our heartfelt sympathy at this inhuman act, and our pleasure that no harm has come to his child.\"\n\n\"I thank you on his behalf, and I will pass your good wishes along.\" Twice in a row now the Foreign Minister had temporized. He had an opening. He reminded himself that his interlocutors thought themselves smarter and shrewder than everybody else. \"My President is a sentimental man,\" the Secretary admitted. \"It is an American trait. Moreover, he feels strongly about his duty to protect all of our citizens.\"\n\n\"Then you need to speak to the rebels on Taiwan. We believe that it is they who destroyed the airliner.\"\n\n\"But why do such a thing?\" Adler asked, ignoring the really surprising part. Was it a slip? Talk to Taiwan. The PRC was asking him to do that?\n\n\"To foment this incident, obviously. To play upon your President's personal feelings. To cloud the real issues between the People's Republic and our wayward province.\"\n\n\"Do you really think so?\"\n\n\"Yes, we do,\" the Foreign Minister assured him. \"We do not wish to have hostilities. Such things are so wasteful of people and resources, and we have greater concerns for our country. The Taiwan issue will be decided in due course. So long as America does not interfere,\" he added.\n\n\"As I have already told you, Minister, we have made no policy changes. All we wish is the restoration of peace and stability,\" Adler said, the obvious import being the indeterminate maintenance of the status quo, which was decidedly _not_ part of the People's Republic game plan.\n\n\"Then we are agreed.\"\n\n\"You will not object to our naval deployments?\"\n\nThe Foreign Minister sighed. \"The sea is free for the innocent passage of all. It is not our place to give orders to the United States of America, as it is not your place to give orders to the People's Republic. The movement of your forces gives the impression that you will influence local events, and we will make pro forma comments on this. But in the interests of peace,\" he went on in a voice that was both patient and weary, \"we will not object too strongly, especially if it encourages the rebels to cease their foolish provocations.\"\n\n\"It would be useful to know if your naval exercises will end soon. That would be a very favorable gesture.\"\n\n\"The spring maneuvers will continue. They do not threaten anyone, as your increased naval presence will determine quite clearly. We do not ask you to take our word. Let our deeds speak for us. It would be well also if our rebellious cousins reduce their own activities. Perhaps you might speak to them on this?\" Twice now? He hadn't misspoken before, then.\n\n\"If you request it, yes, I would be pleased to add my voice and that of my country to the quest for peace.\"\n\n\"We value the good offices of the United States, and we trust you to be an honest broker for this occasion, in view of the fact that, regrettably, American lives were lost in this tragic incident.\"\n\nSecretary Adler yawned. \"Oh, excuse me.\"\n\n\"Travel is a curse, is it not?\" These words came from Zhang, speaking for the first time.\n\n\"It truly can be,\" Adler agreed. \"Please allow me to consult my government. I think our response to your request will be favorable.\"\n\n\"Excellent,\" the Foreign Minister observed. \"We seek to make no precedent here. I hope you understand this, but in view of the singular circumstances here, we welcome your assistance.\"\n\n\"I shall have a reply for you in the morning,\" Adler promised, rising. \"Forgive me for extending your day.\"\n\n\"Such is duty, for all of us.\"\n\nScott Adler took his leave, wondering what exactly this bombshell was that had landed on him. He wasn't sure who'd won the card game, and realized that he wasn't even sure what game it had been. It certainly hadn't gone as expected. It seemed like he'd won, and won easily. The other side had been more accommodating than he would have been in their place.\n\nSOME CALLED IT checkbook journalism, but it wasn't new, and it wasn't expensive at the working level. Any experienced reporter had people he could call, people who, for a modest fee, would check things. It wasn't in any way illegal, to ask a favor of a friend, at least not grossly so. The information was rarely sensitive\u2014and in this case was public record. It was just that the offices weren't always open on Sunday.\n\nA mid-level bureaucrat in the office of Maryland's Secretary of State drove into his office in Baltimore, used his card-pass to get to his parking place, then walked in and unlocked the right number of doors until he got to a musty file room. Finding the right cabinet, he pulled open a drawer and found a file. He left a marker in the drawer and carried the file to the nearest copying machine. Copies of all the documents were made in less than a minute, and then he replaced everything. With that task done, he walked back to his car and drove home. He did this often enough that he had a personal fax machine at home, and within ten minutes, the documents had been sent off, then taken to the kitchen and dumped in the trash. For this he would receive five hundred dollars. He got extra for working weekends.\n\nJOHN PLUMBER WAS reading the documents even before the transmission was complete. Sure enough, a Ryan, John P., had established a sub-S corporation at the time Holtzman had told him. Control of that corporation had conveyed to Zimmer, Carol (none), four days later (a weekend had stood in the way), and that corporation now owned a 7-Eleven in southern Maryland. The corporate officers included Zimmer, Laurence; Zimmer, Alisha; and one other child, and the stockholders all shared the same surname. He recognized Ryan's signature on the transfer documents. The legal work had been done by a firm in Washington\u2014a big one, he knew that name, too. There had been some tricky, but entirely legal, maneuvering to make the transaction tax-free for the Zimmer family. There was no further paperwork on that subject. Nothing else was needed, really.\n\nHe had other documents as well. Plumber knew the registrar at MIT, and had learned the previous evening, also via fax, that the tuition and housing expenses for Peter Zimmer were paid by a private foundation, the checks issued and signed by a partner in the same law firm that had set up the sub-S corp for the Zimmer family. He even had a transcript for the graduating senior. Sure enough, he was in computer science, and would be staying in Cambridge for his graduate work in the MIT Media Lab. Aside from mediocre marks in his freshman literature courses\u2014even MIT wanted people to be literate, but evidently Peter Zimmer didn't care for poetry\u2014the kid was straight A.\n\n\"So, it's true.\" Plumber settled back in his swivel chair and examined his conscience. \" 'Why should I trust you? You're reporters,' \" he repeated to himself.\n\nThe problem with his profession was one that its members almost never talked about, just as a wealthy man will not often bemoan low taxes. Back in the 1960s, a man named Sullivan had sued the _New York Times_ over defamation of character, and had demonstrated that the newspaper had not been entirely correct in its commentary. But the paper had argued, and the court had agreed, that in the absence of true malice, the mistake was not really culpable, and that the public's interest in learning the goings-on in their nation superseded protection of an individual. It left the door open for suits, technically, and people did still bring action against the media, and sometimes they even won. About as often as Slippery Rock University knocked off Penn State.\n\nThat court ruling was necessary, Plumber thought. The First Amendment guaranteed freedom of the press, and the reason for it was that the press was America's first and, in many ways, only guardian of freedom. People lied all the time. Especially people in government, but others, too, and it was the job of the media to get the facts\u2014the _truth_ \u2014out to the people, so that they could make their own choices.\n\nBut there was a trap built into the hunting license the Supreme Court had issued. The media could destroy people. There was recourse against almost any improper action in American society, but reporters had such protections as those once enjoyed by kings, and, as a practical matter, his profession was above the law. As a practical matter, also, it worked hard to stay that way. To admit error was not only a legal faux pas, for which money might have to be paid. It would also weaken the faith of the public in their profession. And so they never admitted error when they didn't have to, and when they did, the retractions were almost never given the prominence of the initial, incorrect, assertions\u2014the minimum necessary effort defined by lawyers who knew exactly the height of the castle walls they defended. There were occasional exceptions, but everyone knew that exceptions they were.\n\nPlumber had seen his profession change. There was too much arrogance, and too little realization of the fact that the public they served no longer trusted them\u2014and _that_ wounded Plumber. He deemed himself worthy of that trust. He deemed himself a professional descendant of Ed Murrow, whose voice _every_ American had learned to trust. And that was how it was supposed to be. But it wasn't, because the profession could not be policed from without, and it would never be trusted again until it was policed from within. Reporters called down every other profession\u2014medicine, law, politics\u2014for failing to meet a level of professional responsibility which they would allow no one to enforce on themselves, and which they themselves would too rarely enforce on their own. _Do as I say, not as I do_ was something you couldn't say to a six-year-old, but it had become a ready cant for grown-ups. And if it got any worse, then what?\n\nPlumber considered his situation. He could retire whenever he wanted. Columbia University had more than once invited him in to be an adjunct professor of journalism ... and ethics, because his was a trusted voice, a reasoned voice, an honest voice. An old voice, he added to himself. Maybe the last voice?\n\nBut it all came down, really, to one man's conscience, to ideas inculcated by parents long dead, and teachers whose names he had forgotten. He had to be loyal to something. If he were to be loyal to his profession, then he had to be loyal to its foundation. To tell the truth and let the chips fall. He lifted his phone.\n\n\"Holtzman,\" the reporter answered, because it was the business line in his Georgetown home.\n\n\"Plumber. I've done some checking. It appears you were right.\"\n\n\"Okay, now what, John?\"\n\n\"I have to do this myself. I'll give you the exclusive on print coverage.\"\n\n\"That's generous, John. Thank you,\" Bob acknowledged.\n\n\"I still don't like Ryan very much as a President,\" Plumber added, rather defensively, the other thought. That made sense. He couldn't appear to be doing this to curry favor.\n\n\"You know that's not what this is about. That's why I talked to you about it. When?\" Bob Holtzman asked.\n\n\"Tomorrow night, live.\"\n\n\"How about we sit down and work out a few things? This will be a biggie for the _Post_. Want to share the byline?\"\n\n\"I might just be looking for another job by tomorrow night,\" Plumber observed, with a rueful chuckle. \"Okay, we'll do that.\"\n\n\"SO, WHAT'S THAT mean?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"They do not mind anything we're doing. It's almost like they want the carrier there. They have requested that I shuttle back and forth to Taipei\u2014\"\n\n\"Directly?\" The President was astonished. Such direct flights would give the appearance of legitimacy to the Republic of China government. An American Secretary of State would be shuttling back and forth, and a ministerial official did so only between capitals of sovereign countries. Lesser disputes were left to \"special envoys,\" who might carry the same power, but nothing approaching the same status.\n\n\"Yeah, that kinda surprised me, too,\" Adler replied over the encrypted channel. \"Next, the dogs that didn't bark: a cursory objection to your 'two Chinas' gaffe at the press conference, and trade never raised its ugly head. They're being real docile for people who killed a hundred-plus airline passengers.\"\n\n\"Their naval exercises?\"\n\n\"They will continue, and they practically invited us to observe how routine they are.\"\n\nAdmiral Jackson was listening on the speakerphone. \"Mr. Secretary? This is Robby Jackson.\"\n\n\"Yes, Admiral?\"\n\n\"They staged a crisis, we move a carrier, and now they say they want us around, am I getting this right?\"\n\n\"That's correct. They do not know that we know, at least I don't think they do\u2014but you know, I'm not sure that matters at the moment.\"\n\n\"Something's wrong,\" the J-3 said immediately. \"Big-time wrong.\"\n\n\"Admiral, I think you might be correct on that one, too.\"\n\n\"Next move?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"I guess I go to Taipei in the morning. I can't evade this one, can I?\"\n\n\"Agreed. Keep me informed, Scott.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\" The line went dead.\n\n\"Jack\u2014no, Mr. President, I just had a big red flashing light go off.\"\n\nRyan grimaced. \"I have to go be political tomorrow, too. I fly out at, uh\"\u2014he checked his schedule\u2014\"leave the House at six-fifty, to speak in Nashville at eight-thirty. We need an assessment on this in one big hurry. Shit. Adler's over there, I'm on the road, and Ben Goodley isn't experienced enough for this. I want you there, Rob. If there's operational ramifications to this, that's your bailiwick. The Foleys. Arnie on the political side. We need a good China hand from State . . .\"\n\nADLER WAS SETTLING into his bed in the embassy VIP quarters. He went over his notes, trying to figure the angle. People made mistakes at every level. The wide belief that senior officials were canny players was not nearly as true as people thought. They made mistakes. They made slips. They loved to be clever.\n\n\"Travel is a curse,\" Zhang had said. His only words. Why then, and why those? It was so obvious that Adler didn't get it then.\n\n\"BEDFORD FORREST, EH?\" Diggs said, spreading relish on his hot dog.\n\n\"Best cavalry commander we've ever had,\" Eddington said.\n\n\"You'll pardon me, Professor, if I show diminished enthusiasm for the gentleman,\" the general observed. \"The son of a bitch _did_ found the Ku Klux Klan.\"\n\n\"I never said the man was politically astute, sir, and I do not defend his personal character, but if we've ever had a better man with a cavalry command, I have not learned his name,\" Eddington replied.\n\n\"He's got us there,\" Hamm had to admit.\n\n\"Stuart was overrated, sometimes petulant, and very lucky. Nathan had the _Fingerspitzengef\u00fchl,_ knew how to make decisions on the fly, and damned if he made many bad ones. I'm afraid we just have to overlook his other failings.\"\n\nHistory discussions among senior Army officers could last for hours, as this one had, and were as learned as those in any university's seminar room. Diggs had come over for a chat with Colonel Hamm, then found himself embroiled in the millionth refighting of the Civil War. Millionth? Diggs wondered. No, a _lot_ more than that.\n\n\"What about Grierson?\" Diggs asked.\n\n\"His deep raid was a thing of beauty, but he didn't actually conceive it, remember. Actually, I think his best work was as commander of the 10th.\"\n\n\"Now you're talking, Dr. Eddington.\"\n\n\"See how the boss's eyes just lit up. You\u2014\"\n\n\"That's right! You had that regiment until a little while ago. Ready and Forward!\" the colonel of the Carolina Guard added.\n\n\"You even know our regimental motto?\" Maybe this guy was a serious historian after all, even if he did admire that racist murderer, Diggs thought.\n\n\"Grierson built that regiment from the ground up, mainly illiterate troopers. He had to grow his own NCOs, and they drew every shit job in the Southwest, but they're the ones who defeated the Apaches\u2014and only one damned movie ever made about 'em. I've been thinking about a book on the subject after I retire. He was our first real desert fighter, and he figured things out in a hurry. He knew about deep strike, he knew how to pick his fights, and once he got hold, he didn't let go. I was glad to see that regimental standard come back.\"\n\n\"Colonel Eddington, I take back what I was thinking.\" Diggs lifted his beer can in salute. \"That's what the cav is all about.\"\n**46**\n\n**OUTBREAK**\n\n**I** T WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER to come back Monday morning, but it would have meant getting the kids up too early. As it was, Jack Junior and Sally had to study for tests, and for the moment, Katie needed new arrangements of her own. Camp David had been so different it was very much like returning from a vacation, and coming back was something of a shock. As soon as the Executive Mansion appeared in the windows of the descending helicopter, faces and moods changed. Security was vastly increased. The body count around the perimeter was noticeably different, and that, too, was a reminder of how undesirable this place and the life it contained were for them. Ryan stepped off first, saluted the Marine at the bottom of the stairs then looked up at the south face of the White House. It was like a slap in the face. Welcome back to reality. After seeing his family safely inside, President Ryan headed west for his office.\n\n\"Okay, what's happening?\" he asked van Damm, who hadn't had much of a weekend himself\u2014but then, nobody was trying to kill him or his family, either.\n\n\"The investigation hasn't turned up much of anything yet. Murray says to be patient, things are happening. Best advice, Jack, just keep going with it,\" the chief of staff advised. \"You have a full day tomorrow. The country's mood is for you. There's always an outpouring of sympathy in times like\u2014\"\n\n\"Arnie, I'm not going out after votes for myself, remember? It's nice that people think better of me after some terrorists attack my daughter, but, you know, I really don't want to look at things in those terms,\" Jack observed, his anger returning after two days of relief. \"If I ever had thoughts about staying in this job, last week cured me.\"\n\n\"Well, yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\" 'But,' hell! Arnie, when it's all said and done, what will I take away from this place? A place in the history books? By the time that's written, I'll be dead, and I won't be around to care what historians say, will I? I have a friend in the history business who says that all history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the past\u2014and I won't be around to read it anyway. The only thing I want to take away from here is my life and the lives of my family. That's all. If somebody else wants the pomp and circumstance of this fucking prison, then let 'em have it. I've learned better. Fine,\" POTUS said bitterly, his mood totally back in his office now. \"I'll do the job, make the speeches, and try to get some useful work done, but it ain't worth it all, Arnie. For goddamned sure it isn't worth having nine terrorists try to kill your daughter. There's only one thing you leave behind on this planet. That's your kids. Everything else, hell, other people just make it up to suit themselves anyway, just like the news.\"\n\n\"It's been a rough couple of days, and\u2014\"\n\n\"What about the agents who died? What about their families? I had a nice two-day vacation. They sure as hell didn't. I've gotten used enough to this job that I hardly thought about them at all. Over a hundred people worked hard to make sure I forgot about it. And I let them do it! It's important that I don't dwell on such things, right? What am I supposed to concentrate on? 'Duty, Honor, Country'? Anybody who can do that and turn his humanity off doesn't belong here, and that's what this job is turning me into.\"\n\n\"You finished, or do I have to get a box of Kleenex for you?\" For one brief moment the President looked ready to punch van Damm. Arnie plunged on. \"Those agents died because they chose jobs they thought were important. Soldiers do the same thing. What's with you, anyway, Ryan? How the hell do you think a country happens? You think it's just nice thoughts? You weren't always that stupid. You were a Marine once. You did other stuff for CIA. You had balls then. You have a job. You didn't get drafted, remember? You volunteered for this, whether you admit it or not. You knew it was possible this would happen. And so now you're here. You want to run away, fine\u2014run away. But don't tell me it isn't worth it. Don't tell me it doesn't matter. If people _died_ to protect your family, don't you fucking _dare_ tell me it doesn't matter!\" Van Damm stormed out of the office, without even bothering to close the door behind him.\n\nRyan didn't know what to do right then. He sat down behind his desk. There were the usual piles of paper, neatly arrayed by a staff that never slept. Here was China. Here was the Middle East. Here was India. Here was advance information on the leading economic indicators. Here were political projections for the 161 House seats to be decided in two days. Here was a report on the terrorist incident. Here was a list of the names of the dead agents, and under each was a list of wives and husbands, parents and children, and in the case of Don Russell, grandchildren. He knew all the faces, but Jack had to admit that he hadn't remembered all the names. They'd died to protect his child, and he didn't even know all the names. Worst of all, he'd allowed himself to be carted away, to indulge himself in yet more artificial comfort\u2014and forget. But here it all was, on his desk, waiting for him, and it wouldn't go away. And he couldn't run away, either. He stood and walked out the door, heading left for the chief of staff's corner office, passing Secret Service agents who'd heard the exchange, probably traded looks, certainly developed their own thoughts, and now concealed them.\n\n\"Arnie?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"OKAY, HONEY,\" HE groaned. He'd go to see the doctor tomorrow morning. It hadn't gotten better at all. If anything, it had gotten worse. The headaches were punishing, and that despite two extra-strength Tylenol every four hours. If only he could sleep it off, but that was proving hard. Only exhaustion allowed him an hour here and an hour there. Just getting up to use the bathroom required a few minutes of concentrated effort, enough that his wife offered to help, but, no, a man didn't need an escort for that. On the other hand, she was right. He did need to see a doctor. Would have been smarter to do it yesterday, he thought. Then he might have felt better now.\n\nIT HAD BEEN easy for Plumber, at least on the procedural side. The tape-storage vault was the size of a respectable public library, and finding things was easy. There, on the fifth shelf, were three boxed Beta-format cassettes. Plumber took them down, removed the tapes from the boxes, and replaced them with blanks. The three tapes he placed in his briefcase. He was home twenty minutes later. There, for his own convenience, he had a commercial-type Betamax, and he ran the tapes of the first interview, just to make sure, just to confirm the fact that the tapes were undamaged. And they were. These would have to be sent to a secure place.\n\nNext, John Plumber drafted his three-minute commentary piece for the next day's evening news broadcast. It would be a mildly critical piece on the Ryan presidency. He spent an hour on it, since, unlike the current crop of TV reporters, he liked to achieve a certain elegance in his language, a task which came easily to him, as his grammar was correct. This he printed up and read over because he both edited and detected errors more easily on paper than on a computer monitor. Satisfied, he copied the piece over to disk, which would later be used at the studio to generate copy for the TelePrompTer. Next, he composed another commentary piece of the same overall length (it turned out to be four words shorter), and that he printed also. Plumber spent rather more time with this one. If it were to be his professional swan song, then it had to be done properly, and this reporter, who had drafted quite a few obituaries for others, both admired and not, wanted his own to be just right. Satisfied with the final copy, he printed that up as well, tucking the pages into his briefcase, with the cassettes. This one he would not copy to disk.\n\n\"I GUESS THEY'RE finished,\" the chief master sergeant said.\n\nThe take from the Predator showed the tank columns heading back to their laagers, hatches open on the turrets, crewmen visible, mainly smoking. The exercise had gone well for the newly constituted UIR army, and even now they were conducting their road movement in good order.\n\nMajor Sabah spent so much time looking over this man's shoulder that they really should have spoken on a more informal basis, he thought. It was all routine. Too routine. He'd expected\u2014hoped\u2014that his country's new neighbor would require much more time to integrate its military forces, but the commonality of weapons and doctrine had worked in their favor. Radio messages copied down here and at STORM TRACK suggested that the exercise was concluded. The TV coverage from the UAV confirmed it, however, and confirmation was important.\n\n\"That's funny . . .\" the sergeant observed, to his own surprise.\n\n\"What is that?\" Sabah asked.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir.\" The NCO stood and walked over to a corner cabinet, from which he extracted a map, and brought it back to his workstation. \"There's no road there. Look, sir.\" He unfolded the map, matched the coordinates with those on the screen\u2014the Predator had its own Global Positioning Satellite navigation system and automatically told its operators where it was\u2014and tapped the right section on the paper. \"Sec?\"\n\nThe Kuwaiti officer looked back and forth from map to screen. On the latter, there was a road, now. But that was easily explained. A column of a hundred tanks would convert almost any surface into a hard-packed highway of sorts, and that had happened here.\n\nBut there hadn't been a road there before. The tanks had made it over the last few hours.\n\n\"That's a change, Major. The Iraqi army was always road-bound before.\"\n\nSabah nodded. It was so obvious that he hadn't seen it. Though native to the desert, and supposedly schooled in traveling there, the Iraqi army in 1991 had connived at its own destruction by sticking close to roads, because its officers always seemed to get lost when moving cross-country. Not as mad as it sounded\u2014the desert was essentially as featureless as the sea\u2014it had made their movements predictable, never a good thing in a war, and given advancing allied forces free rein to approach from unexpected directions.\n\nThat had just changed.\n\n\"You suppose they have GPS, too?\" the chief master sergeant asked.\n\n\"We couldn't expect them to stay stupid forever, could we?\"\n\nPRESIDENT RYAN KISSED his wife on the way to the elevator. The kids weren't up yet. One sort of work lay ahead. Another sort lay behind. Today there wasn't time for both, though some efforts would be made. Ben Goodley was waiting on the helicopter.\n\n\"Here's the notes from Adler on his Tehran trip.\" The National Security Advisor passed them over. \"Also the write-up from Beijing. The working group is getting together at ten to go over that situation. The SNIE team will be meeting at Langley later today, too.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Jack strapped into his seat and started reading. Arnie and Callie came aboard and took their seats forward of his.\n\n\"Any ideas, Mr. President?\" Goodley asked.\n\n\"Ben, you're supposed to tell me, remember?\"\n\n\"How about I tell you that it doesn't make much sense?\"\n\n\"I already know that part. You guard the phones and faxes today. Scott should be in Taipei now. Whatever comes from him, fast-track it to me.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nThe helicopter lurched aloft. Ryan hardly noticed that. His mind was on the job, crummy though it was. Price and Raman were with him. There would be more agents on the 747, and more still waiting even now in Nashville. The presidency of John Patrick Ryan went on, whether he liked it or not.\n\nTHIS COUNTRY MIGHT be small, might be unimportant, might be a pariah in the international community\u2014not because of anything it had done, except perhaps to prosper, but because of its larger and less prosperous neighbor to the west\u2014but it did have an _elected_ government, and that was supposed to count for something in the community of nations, especially those with popularly elected governments themselves. The People's Republic had come to exist by force of arms\u2014well, most countries did, SecState reminded himself\u2014and had immediately thereafter slaughtered millions of its own citizens (nobody knew how many; nobody was terribly interested in finding out), launched into a revolutionary development program (\"the Great Leap Forward\"), which had turned out more disastrously than was the norm even for Marxist nations; and launched yet another internal \"reform\" effort (\"the Cultural Revolution\") which had come _after_ something called the \"Hundred Flowers\" campaign, whose real purpose had been to smoke out potential dissidents for later elimination at the hands of students whose revolutionary enthusiasm had indeed been revolutionary toward Chinese culture\u2014they'd come close to destroying it entirely, in favor of _The Little Red Book_. Then had come more reform, the supposed changeover from Marxism to something else, another student revolution\u2014this one against the existing political system\u2014arrogantly cut down with tanks and machine guns on global television. Despite all that, the rest of the world was entirely willing to let the People's Republic crush their cousins on Taiwan.\n\nThis was called _realpolitik,_ Scott Adler thought. Something similar had resulted in an event called the Holocaust, an event his father had survived, with a number tattooed on his forearm to prove it. Even his own country officially had a one-China policy, though the unspoken codicil was that the PRC would not attack the ROC\u2014and if it did, then America might just react. Or might not.\n\nAdler was a career diplomat, a graduate of Cornell and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He loved his country. He was often an instrument of his country's policy, and now found himself to be his country's very voice of international affairs. But what he often had to say was not terribly just, and at moments like this, he wondered if he might himself be doing the same things that had been done sixty years earlier by other Fletcher grads, well-educated and well-meaning, who, after it was all over, wondered how the hell they'd been so blind as not to have seen it coming.\n\n\"We have fragments\u2014and actually some rather large pieces from the missile that were lodged in the wing. It is definitely of PRC origin,\" the ROC Defense Minister said. \"We will allow your technical people to look them over and make your own tests to confirm matters.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I will discuss that with my government.\"\n\n\"So.\" This was the Foreign Minister. \"They allow a direct flight from Beijing to Taipei. They do not object privately to the dispatch of an aircraft carrier. They disclaim any responsibility for the Airbus incident. I confess I see no rationale for this behavior.\"\n\n\"I am gratified that they express interest only in the restoration of regional stability.\"\n\n\"How good of them,\" Defense said. \"After they deliberately upset it.\"\n\n\"This has caused us great economic harm. Again, foreign investors get nervous, and with the flight of their capital, we face some minor embarrassments. Was that their plan, do you suppose?\"\n\n\"Minister, if that were the case, why did they ask me to fly here directly?\"\n\n\"Some manner of subterfuge, obviously,\" the Foreign Minister answered, before Defense could say anything.\n\n\"But if so, what for?\" Adler wanted to know. Hell, _they_ were Chinese. Maybe they could figure it out.\n\n\"We are secure here. We know that, even if foreign investors do not. Even so, the situation is not an entirely happy one. It is rather like living in a castle with a moat. Across the moat is a lion. The lion would kill and eat us if he had the chance. He cannot leap the moat, and he knows that, but he keeps trying to do so, even with that knowledge. I hope you can understand our concern.\"\n\n\"I do, sir,\" SecState assured him. \"If the PRC reduces the level of its activity, will you do the same?\" Even if they couldn't figure out what the PRC was up to, perhaps they could de-stress the situation anyway.\n\n\"In principle, yes. Exactly how, is a technical question for my colleague here. You will not find us unreasonable.\"\n\nAnd the entire trip had been staged for that simple statement. Now Adler had to fly back to Beijing to deliver it. Matchmaker, matchmaker . . .\n\nHOPKINS HAD ITS own day-care center, staffed by permanent people and always some students from the university doing lab work for their child-care major. Sally walked in, looked around and was pleased by the multicolored environment. Behind her were four agents, all male, because there weren't any unassigned women. One carried a FAG bag. Nearby was a trio of plainclothes officers of the Baltimore City Police, who exchanged credentials with the USSS to confirm identity, and so another day started for SURGEON and SANDBOX. Katie had enjoyed the helicopter ride. Today she'd make some new friends, but tonight, her mother knew, she'd ask where Miss Marlene was. How did one explain death to a not-yet-three-year-old?\n\nTHE CROWD APPLAUDED with something more than the usual warmth. Ryan could feel it. Here he was, not yet three days after an attempt on the life of his youngest daughter, doing his job for them, showing strength and courage and all that other bullshit, POTUS thought. He'd led off with a prayer for the fallen agents, and Nashville was the Bible Belt, where such things were taken seriously. The rest of the speech had actually been pretty good, the President thought, covered things he really believed in. Common sense. Honesty. Duty. It was just that hearing his own voice speaking words written by somebody else made it seem hollow, and it was hard to keep his mind from wandering so early in the morning.\n\n\"Thank you, and God bless America,\" he concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck up. Ryan turned away from the armored podium to shake hands again with the local officials, and made his way off the stage, waving as he did so. Arnie was waiting behind the curtain.\n\n\"For a phony, you still do pretty good.\" Ryan didn't have time to respond to that before Andrea came up.\n\n\"FLASH-traffic waiting for you on the bird, sir. From Mr. Adler.\"\n\n\"Okay, let's roll. Stay close,\" he told his principal agent on the way out the back.\n\n\"Always,\" Price assured him.\n\n\"Mr. President!\" a reporter shouted. There were a bunch of them. He was the loudest this morning. He was one of the NBC team. Ryan turned and stopped. \"Will you press Congress for a new gun-control law?\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"The attack on your daughter was\u2014\"\n\nRyan held his hand up. \"Okay. As I understand it, the weapons used were of a type already illegal. I don't see how a new law would accomplish much, unfortunately.\"\n\n\"But gun-control advocates say\u2014\"\n\n\"I know what they say. And now they're using an attack on my little girl, and the deaths of five superb Americans, to advance a political agenda of their own. What do you think of that?\" the President asked, turning away.\n\n\"WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?\"\n\nHe described his symptoms. His family physician was an old friend. They even played golf together. It wasn't hard. At the end of every year, the Cobra representative had plenty of demonstrator clubs in nearly mint condition. Most were donated to youth programs or sold to country clubs as rental sticks. But some he could give to his friends, not to mention some Greg Norman autographs.\n\n\"Well, you have a temperature, one hundred and three, and that's a little high. Your BP's one hundred over sixty-five, and that's a little low for you. Your color's rotten\u2014\"\n\n\"I know, I feel sick.\"\n\n\"You are sick, but I wouldn't worry about it. Probably a flu bug you picked up in some bar, and all the air travel doesn't help much, either\u2014and I've been telling you for years about cutting back on the booze. What happened is you picked something up, and other factors worsened it. Started Friday, right?\"\n\n\"Thursday night, maybe Friday morning.\"\n\n\"Played a round anyway?\"\n\n\"Ended up with a snowman for my trouble,\" he admitted, meaning a score of 80.\n\n\"I'd settle for that myself, healthy and stone-sober.\" The doctor had a handicap of twenty. \"You're over fifty and you can't wallow with the pigs at night and expect to soar with the eagles in the morning. Complete rest. A lot of liquids-non-alcoholic. Stay on the Tylenol.\"\n\n\"No prescription?\"\n\nThe doc shook his head. \"Antibiotics don't work on viral infections. Your immune system has to handle those, and it will if you let it. But while you're here, I want to draw some blood. You're overdue for a cholesterol check. I'll send my nurse in. You have somebody here to drive you home?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I didn't want to drive myself.\"\n\n\"Good. Give it a few days. Cobra can do without you, and the golf courses will still be there when you feel better.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" He felt better already. You always did when the doc told you that you weren't going to die.\n\n\"HERE YOU GO.\" Goodley handed the paper over. Few office buildings, even secure government ones, had the communications facilities that were shoehorned into the upper-level lounge area of the VC-25, whose call sign was Air Force One. \"Not bad news at all,\" Ben added.\n\nSWORDSMAN skimmed it once, then sat down to read it more slowly. \"Okay, fine, he thinks he can defuse the situation,\" Ryan noted. \"But he still doesn't know what the goddamned situation is.\"\n\n\"Better than nothing.\"\n\n\"Does the working group have this?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Maybe they can make some sense out of it. Andrea?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Tell the driver it's time to get moving.\" He looked around. \"Where's Arnie?\"\n\n\"I'M CALLING YOU on a cellular,\" Plumber said.\n\n\"Fine,\" van Damm replied. \"I'm on one, too, as a matter of fact.\" The instruments on the aircraft were also secure, with STU-4 capability. He didn't say that. He just needed a retort. John Plumber was no longer on his Christmas card list. Unfortunately, his direct line was still on Plumber's Rolodex. What a shame he couldn't change it. And he'd have to tell his secretary _not_ to put this guy through anymore, at least not when he was traveling.\n\n\"I know what you're thinking.\"\n\n\"Good, John. Then I don't have to say what I think.\"\n\n\"Catch the broadcast tonight. I'll be on at the end.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"See for yourself, Arnie. So long.\"\n\nThe chief of staff thumbed the kill switch on the phone and wondered what Plumber meant. He'd once trusted the man. Hell, he'd once trusted the man's colleague. He could have told the President about the call, but decided not to. He'd just delivered a pretty good speech, distractions and all, doing well in spite of himself, because the poor son of a bitch really did believe in more than he knew. It wouldn't be smart to drop something else on him. They'd tape the speech on the flight into California, and if it were fit to view, then he'd show it to POTUS.\n\n\"I DIDN'T KNOW there was a flu bug around,\" he said, putting his shirt back on. It took time. The auto executive was sore all over.\n\n\"There always is. Just it doesn't always make the news,\" the physician replied, looking over the vital signs his nurse had just written down. \"And you got it.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"So, take it easy. Don't go to the office. No sense infecting your whole company. Ride it out. You should be fine by the end of the week.\"\n\nTHE SNIE TEAM met at Langley. A ton of new information had come across from the Persian Gulf region, and they were sorting through it in a conference room on the sixth floor. Chavez's photo of Mahmoud Haji Daryaei had been blown up by the in-house photo lab and was now hanging on the wall. Maybe somebody would throw darts at it, Ding thought.\n\n\"Track toads,\" the former infantryman snorted, watching the Predator video.\n\n\"Kinda big to take on with a rifle, Sundance,\" Clark observed. \"Those things always scared the hell out of me.\"\n\n\"LAWS rocket'll do 'em fine, Mr. C.\"\n\n\"What's the range on a LAWS, Domingo?\"\n\n\"Four, five hundred meters.\"\n\n\"Those guns shoot two or three kilometers,\" John pointed out. \"Think about it.\"\n\n\"I'm not up on the hardware,\" Bert Vasco said. He waved at the screen. \"What's this mean?\"\n\nThe answer came from one of CIA's military analysts. \"It means the UIR military is in much better shape than we'd expected.\"\n\nAn Army major brought over from the Defense Intelligence Agency didn't dispute that. \"I'm fairly impressed. It was a pretty vanilla exercise, nothing really complicated on the maneuver side, but they kept themselves organized for all of it. Nobody got lost\u2014\"\n\n\"You suppose they're using GPS now?\" the CIA analyst asked.\n\n\"Anybody who subscribes to _Yachting_ magazine can buy the things. The price is down to four hundred bucks, last time I looked,\" the officer told his civilian counterpart. \"It means they can navigate their mobile forces a lot better. More than that, it means their artillery will become a whole lot more effective. If you know where your guns are, where your forward observer is, and where the target is in relation to him, then your first round is going to be pretty much on the money.\"\n\n\"Fourfold increase in performance?\"\n\n\"Easy,\" the major replied. \"That elderly gent on the wall has a big stick to wave at his neighbors. I imagine he'll let them know about it, too.\"\n\n\"Bert?\" Clark asked.\n\nVasco squirmed in his seat. \"I'm starting to worry. This is going faster than I expected. If Daryaei didn't have other things to worry about, I'd be more worried.\"\n\n\"Like?\" Chavez asked.\n\n\"Like he has a country to consolidate, and he has to know that if he starts rattling sabers, we'll react.\" The FSO paused. \"Sure as hell, he wants to let his neighbors know who the big boy on the block is. How close is he to being able to do something?\"\n\n\"Militarily?\" the civilian analyst asked. He gestured to the guy from DIA.\n\n\"If we were not in the picture, now. But we are in the picture.\"\n\n\"I ASK NOW that you will join me in a moment of silence,\" Ryan told the audience in Topeka. It was eleven here. That made it noon back home. Next stop Colorado Springs, then Sacramento, then, blessedly, home.\n\n\"YOU HAVE TO ask yourself what kind of man we have here,\" Kealty said in front of cameras of his own. \"Five men and women dead, and he doesn't see the need for a law to control these guns. It's just beyond my comprehension how anyone can be as coldly heartless as that. Well, if he doesn't care about those brave agents, I do. How many Americans will have to die before he sees the need for this? Will he have to actually lose a family member? I'm sorry, I just can't believe that remark,\" the politician went on for the minicam.\n\n\"WE CAN ALL remember when people ran for reelection to Congress, and one of the things they told us was, 'Vote for me, because for every dollar that taxes take from this district, a dollar-twenty comes back.' Do you remember those claims?\" the President asked.\n\n\"What they didn't say was\u2014well, it was actually a lot of things. Number one, who ever said that you depend on the government for money? We don't vote for Santa Claus, do we? It's the other way around. The government can't exist unless _you_ give _it_ money.\n\n\"Number two, are they telling you, 'Vote for me, 'cause I really stick it to those rotten people in North Dakota'? Aren't they Americans, too?\n\n\"Number three, the real reason this happens is that the government deficit means every district gets more in federal payments than it lost in federal taxes\u2014excuse me, I mean _direct_ federal taxes. The ones you can see.\n\n\"So they were bragging to you that they were spending more money than they had. If your next-door neighbor told you he was kiting checks drafted on your personal bank, you think maybe you might call the police about it?\n\n\"We all know that the government _does_ take more than it gives back. They've just learned to hide it. The federal budget deficit means that every time you borrow money, it costs more than it should\u2014why? Because the government borrows so much money that it drives up interest rates.\n\n\"And so, ladies and gentlemen, every house payment, every car payment, every credit-card bill is also a _tax._ And maybe they give you a tax break on interest payments. Isn't that nice?\" POTUS asked. \"Your government gives you a tax break on money you ought not to have to pay in the first place, and then it tells you that you get back more than you pay out.\" Ryan paused.\n\n\"Does anybody out there really believe that? Does anybody really believe it when people say that the United States can't _afford_ \u2014 _not_ to spend more money than it has? Are these the words of Adam Smith or Lucy Ricardo? I have a degree in economics, and _I Love Lucy_ wasn't on the course.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen. I am not a politician, and I am not here to speak on behalf of any of your local candidates for the vacant seats in the People's House. I am here to ask you to think. You, too, have a duty. The government belongs to you. You don't belong to it. When you go out to vote tomorrow, please take the time to think about what the candidates say and what they stand for. Ask yourself, 'Does this make sense?' and then make the best choice you can\u2014and if you don't like any of them, go to the polls anyway, go into the voting booth, and then go home without giving your vote to anyone, but at least show up. You owe that to your country.\"\n\nTHE HEATING AND air-conditioning van pulled up the driveway, and a pair of men got out and walked up to the porch. One of them knocked.\n\n\"Yes?\" the lady of the house asked in puzzlement.\n\n\"FBI, Mrs. Sminton.\" He showed his credentials. \"Could we come in, please?\"\n\n\"Why?\" the sixty-two-year-old widow asked.\n\n\"We'd like you to help us with something, if you might.\" It had taken longer than expected. The guns used in the SANDBOX case had been traced to a manufacturer, from the manufacturer to a wholesaler, from the wholesaler to a dealer, and from the dealer to a name, and from a name to an address. With the address, the Bureau and Secret Service had gone to a United States District Court judge for a search-and-seizure warrant.\n\n\"Please come in.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Mrs. Sminton, do you know the gentleman who lives next door?\"\n\n\"Mr. Azir, you mean?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"Not very well. Sometimes I wave.\"\n\n\"Do you know if he's home now?\"\n\n\"His car's not there,\" she replied, after looking. The agents already knew that. He owned a blue Oldsmobile wagon with Maryland tags. Every cop in two hundred miles was looking for it.\n\n\"Do you know when the last time was you saw him?\"\n\n\"Friday, I guess. There were some other cars there, and a truck.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" The agent reached in his coveralls pocket and pulled out a radio. \"Move in, move in. Bird is probably\u2014say again, _probably_ \u2014out of the coop.\"\n\nBefore the widow's astonished eyes, a helicopter appeared directly over the house three hundred yards away. Zip lines dropped from both sides, and armed agents slid down them. At the same time, four vehicles converged from both directions on the country road, all of them driving off the road, onto the wide lawn straight toward the dwelling. Ordinarily, things would have gone slower, with some period of discreet surveillance, but the word was out on this one. Front and back doors were kicked in\u2014and thirty seconds later, a siren went off. Mr. Azir, it seemed, had a burglar alarm. Then the radio crackled.\n\n\"Clear, building is clear. This is Betz. Search complete, building is clear. Bring in the lab troops.\" With that, two vans appeared. These proceeded up the driveway, and one of the first things the passengers did was to take samples of the gravel there, plus grass, to match with scrapings from the rented cars left at Giant Steps.\n\n\"Mrs. Sminton, could we sit down, please? There are a couple questions we'd like to ask you about Mr. Azir.\"\n\n\"SO?\" MURRAY ASKED, arriving in the FBI Command Center.\n\n\"No joy,\" the agent at the console said.\n\n\"Damn.\" It wasn't said with passion. He'd never really expected it. But he expected some important information anyway. The Lab had collected all manner of physical evidence. Gravel samples could match the driveway. Grass and dirt found on the inside offenders and bumpers could link the vehicles to the Azir house. Carpet fibers\u2014maroon wool\u2014on the shoes of the dead terrorists could put them inside the house. Even now, a team of ten agents was beginning the process of discovering exactly who \"Mordecai Azir\" was. Smart money was that he was about as Jewish as Adolf Eichmann. Nobody was covering that wager.\n\n\"Commander Center, this is Betz.\" Billy Betz was assistant special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Division, and a former HRT shooter, hence his dramatic descent from the helicopter, leading his men . . . and a woman.\n\n\"Billy, this is Dan Murray. What do you have?\"\n\n\"Would you believe it? A half-empty crate of seven-six-two ball ammo, and the lot numbers match, Director. Living room has a dark red wool rug. This is our place. Some clothes missing from the master-bedroom closet. I'd say nobody's been here for a couple of days. Location is secure. No booby traps. The lab troops are starting their routine.\" And all eighty minutes from the time the Baltimore SAC had walked into the Garmatz Federal Courthouse. Not fast enough, but fast.\n\nThe forensics experts were a mix of Bureau, Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a troubled agency whose technical staff was nonetheless excellent. They'd all be shaking the house for hours. Everyone wore gloves. Every surface would be dusted for fingerprints to match with those of the dead terrorists.\n\n\"SOME WEEKS AGO you saw me take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That's the second time I did that. The first time was as a brand-new Marine second lieutenant, when I graduated from Boston College. Right after that, I read the Constitution, to make sure I knew what it was that I was supposed to be defending.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, we often hear politicians saying how they want government to empower you, so that you can do things.\n\n\"That's not the way it is,\" Ryan told them forcefully. \"Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments derive their just powers from the _consent_ of the governed. That's you. The Constitution is something you should all read. The Constitution of the United States was not written to tell you what to do. The Constitution establishes the relationship among the three branches of government. It tells the government what it may do, and it also tells the government what it may _not_ do. The government may _not_ restrict your speech. The government may _not_ tell you how to pray. The government may _not_ do a lot of things. Government is a lot better at taking things away than it is at giving, but most of all, the government does not empower you. You empower the government. Ours is a government of the people. You are _not_ people who belong to the government.\n\n\"Tomorrow you will not be electing masters, you will be choosing employees, servants of your will, guardians of your rights. We do not tell you what to do. You tell us what to do.\n\n\"It is not my job to take your money and give it back. It is my job to take what money I must have to protect and serve you\u2014and to do that job as efficiently as possible. Government service may be an important duty, and a great responsibility, but it is not supposed to be a blessing for those who serve. It is your government servants who are supposed to sacrifice for you, not you who sacrifice for them.\n\n\"Last Friday, three good men and two good women lost their lives in the service of our country. They were there to protect my daughter, Katie. But there were other children there, too, and in protecting one child, you protect all children. People like that do not ask for much more than your respect. They deserve that. They deserve it because they do things that we cannot easily do for ourselves. That's why we hire them. They sign on because they know that service is important, because they care about us, because they _are_ us. You and I know that not all government employees are like that. That's not their fault. That's _your_ fault. If you do not demand the best, you will not get the best. If you do not give the right measure of power to the right kind of people, then the wrong people will take more power than they need and they will use it the way they want, not the way you want.\n\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, that's why your duty tomorrow to elect the right people to serve you is so important. Many of you operate your own businesses and you hire people to work for you. Most of you own your own homes, and sometimes you hire plumbers, electricians, carpenters to do work for you. You try to hire the right people for the work because you pay for that work, and you want it done right. When your child is sick, you try to pick the best physician\u2014and you pay attention to what that doctor does and how well he or she does it. Why? Because there is nothing more important to you than the life of your child.\n\n\"America is also your child. America is a country forever young. America needs the right people to look after her. It is _your_ job to pick the right people, regardless of party, or race, or gender, or anything other than talent and integrity. I can't and I won't tell you which candidate merits your vote. God gave you a free will. The Constitution is there to protect your right to exercise that will. If you fail to exercise your will intelligently, then you have betrayed yourselves, and neither I nor anyone else can fix that for you.\n\n\"Thank you for coming to see me on my first visit to Colorado Springs. Tomorrow is your day. Please use it to hire the right people.\"\n\n\"IN A SERIES OF speeches clearly designed to reach conservative voters, President Ryan is stumping the country on the eve of the House elections, but even as federal officials investigate the vicious terrorist attack on his own daughter, the President flatly _rejected_ the idea of improved gun-control laws. We have this report from NBC correspondent Hank Roberts, traveling with the presidential party today.\" Tom Donner continued looking into the camera until the red light went off.\n\n\"I thought he said some pretty good things today,\" Plumber observed while the tape ran.\n\n\"Invoking _I Love Lucy_ must have come from Callie Weston on a serious PMS day,\" Donner observed, flipping through his copy. \"Funny, she used to do great speeches for Bob Fowler.\"\n\n\"Did you _read_ the speech?\"\n\n\"John, come on, we don't have to read what he says. We _know_ what he's going to say.\"\n\n\"Ten seconds,\" the director called over their earpieces.\n\n\"Nice copy for later, by the way, John.\" The face broke into the smile at \"three.\"\n\n\"A huge federal task force is now investigating Friday's attack on the President's daughter. We have this report from Karen Stabler in Washington.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd like it, Tom,\" Plumber replied, when the light went dark again. So much the better, he thought. His conscience was clear now.\n\nTHE VC-25 LIFTED off on time, and headed north to avoid some adverse weather over northern New Mexico. Arnie van Damm was topside in the communications area. There were enough important-looking boxes to run half the world here, or so it seemed, and hidden in the skin of the aircraft was a satellite dish whose expensive aiming system could track almost anything. At the chief of staff's direction, it was now getting the NBC feed off a Hughes bird.\n\n\"WE HAVE THIS closing comment from special correspondent John Plumber.\" Donner turned graciously. \"John.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Tom. The profession of journalism is one I entered many years ago, because I was inspired in my youth. I remember my crystal radio set\u2014those of you old enough might recall how you had to ground them to a pipe,\" he explained, with a smile. \"I remember listening to Ed Murrow in London during the blitz, to Eric Sevareid from the jungles of Burma, to all the founding fathers\u2014giants, really\u2014of our profession. I grew up with pictures in my mind painted by the words of men whom all America could trust to tell the truth to the best of their ability. I decided that finding the truth and communicating it to people was as noble a calling as any to which a man\u2014or woman\u2014could aspire.\n\n\"We're not always perfect in this profession. No one is,\" Plumber went on.\n\nTo his right, Donner was looking at the TelePrompTer in puzzlement. This _wasn't_ what was rolling in front of the camera lens, and he realized that, though Plumber had printed pages in front of him, he was giving a _memorized_ speech. Imagine that. Just like the old days, apparently.\n\n\"I would like to say that I am proud to be in this profession. And I was, once.\n\n\"I was on the microphone when Neil Armstrong stepped down on the moon, and on sadder occasions, like the funeral of Jack Kennedy. But to be a professional does not mean merely being there. It means that you have to profess something, to believe in something, to stand _for_ something.\n\n\"Some weeks ago, we interviewed President Ryan twice in one day. The first interview in the morning was taped, and the second one was done live. The questions were a little different. There's a reason for that. Between the first interview and the second, we were called over to see someone. I will not say who that was right now. I will later. That person gave us information. It was sensitive information aimed at hurting the President, and it looked like a good story at the time. It wasn't, but we didn't know that then. At the time, it seemed as though we had asked the wrong questions. We wanted to ask better ones.\n\n\"And so we lied. We lied to the President's chief of staff, Arnold van Damm. We told him that the tape had been damaged somehow. In doing that, we also lied to the President. But worst of all, we lied to you. I have the tapes in my possession. They are not damaged in any way.\n\n\"No law was broken. The First Amendment allows us to do almost anything we want, and that's all right, because you people out there are the final judge of what we do and who we are. But one thing we may not do is to break faith with you.\n\n\"I have no brief for President Ryan. Speaking personally, I disagree with him on many policy issues. If he should run for reelection, I will probably vote for someone else. But I was part of that lie, and I cannot live with it. Whatever his faults, John Patrick Ryan is an honorable man, and I am not supposed to allow my personal animus for or against anyone or anything to affect my work.\n\n\"In this case, I did. I was wrong. I owe an apology to the President, and I owe an apology to you. This might well be the end of my career as a broadcast journalist. If so, I want to leave it as I entered it, telling the truth as best I can.\n\n\"Good night, from NBC News.\" Plumber took a very deep breath as he stared at the camera.\n\n\"What the hell was _that_ all about?\"\n\nPlumber stood before he answered. \"If you have to ask that question, Tom\u2014\"\n\nThe phone on his desk rang\u2014actually, it had a blinking light. Plumber decided not to answer it, and instead walked to his dressing room. Tom Donner would have to figure it out all by himself.\n\nTWO THOUSAND MILES away, over Rocky Mountain National Park, Arnold van Damm stopped the machine, ejected the tape, and carried it down the circular stairs to the President's compartment in the nose. He saw Ryan going over his next and final speech of the day.\n\n\"Jack, I think you will want to see this,\" the chief of staff told him, with a broad grin.\n\nTHERE HAS TO be a first one of everything. This time it happened in Chicago. She'd seen her physician on Saturday afternoon and been told the same as everyone else. Flu. Aspirin. Liquids. Bed rest. But looking in the mirror, she saw some discoloration on her fair skin, and that frightened her even more than the other symptoms she'd had to that point. She called her doctor, but she got only an answering machine, and those blotches could not wait, and so she got in her car and drove to the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of America's finest. She waited in the emergency room for about forty minutes, and when her name was called, she stood and walked toward the desk, but she didn't make it, instead falling to the tile floor in sight of the administrative people. That caused some instant reactions, and a minute later, two orderlies had her on a gurney and were wheeling her back to the treatment area, her paperwork carried behind by one of the admissions people.\n\nThe first physician to see her was a young resident most of the way through his first year of post-graduate study in internal medicine, doing his ER rotation and liking it.\n\n\"What's the problem?\" he asked, as the nursing staff went to work, checking pulse, blood pressure, and respiration.\n\n\"Here,\" the woman from admissions said, handing over the paper forms. The physician scanned them.\n\n\"Flu symptoms, looks like, but what's this?\"\n\n\"Heart rate is one twenty, BP is\u2014wait a minute.\" The nurse ran it again. \"Blood pressure is ninety over fifty?\" She looked much too normal for that.\n\nThe doctor was unbuttoning the woman's blouse. And there it was. The clarity of the moment made passages from his textbooks leap into his mind. The young resident held up his hands.\n\n\"Everybody, stop what you're doing. We may have a major problem here. I want everybody regloved, everybody masked, right now.\"\n\n\"Temp is one-oh-four-point-four,\" another nurse said, stepping back from the patient.\n\n\"This isn't flu. We have a major internal bleed, and those are petechiae.\" The resident got a mask and changed gloves as he spoke. \"Get Dr. Quinn over here.\"\n\nA nurse trotted out, while the resident looked again at the admission papers. Might be vomiting blood, darkened stool. Depressed blood pressure, high fever, and subcutaneous bleeding. But this was Chicago, his mind protested. He got a needle.\n\n\"Everybody stay clear, okay, nobody get close to my hands and arms,\" he said, slipping the needle into the vein, then drawing four 5cc tubes.\n\n\"What gives?\" Dr. Joe Quinn asked. The resident recited the symptoms, and posed his own question as he moved the blood tubes onto a table.\n\n\"What do you think, Joe?\"\n\n\"If we were somewhere else . . .\"\n\n\"Yeah. Hemorrhagic fever, if that's possible.\"\n\n\"Anybody ask her where she's been?\" Quinn asked.\n\n\"No, Doctor,\" the admissions clerk replied.\n\n\"Cold packs,\" the head nurse said, handing over an armload of them. These went under the armpits, under the neck, and elsewhere to bleed off the body's potentially lethal heat.\n\n\"Dilantin?\" Quinn wondered.\n\n\"She's not convulsing yet. Hell.\" The chief resident took out his surgical scissors and cut off the patient's bra. There were more petechiae forming on her torso. \"We have a very sick lady here. Nurse, call Dr. Klein in infectious disease. He'll be at home now. Tell him we need him here at once. We have to get her temp down, wake her up, and find out where the hell she's been.\"\n**47**\n\n**INDEX CASE**\n\n**M** ARK KLEIN WAS A FULL professor at the medical school, and therefore a man accustomed to regular working hours. Getting called in at almost nine in the evening wasn't the usual thing for him, but he was a physician, and when called, he went. It was a twenty-minute drive on this Monday night to his reserved parking space. He walked through the security staff with a nod, changed into scrubs, came into the emergency room from the back, and asked the charge nurse where Quinn was.\n\n\"Isolation Two, Doctor.\"\n\nHe was there in twenty seconds, and stopped cold when he saw the warning signs posted on the door. Okay, he thought, donning a mask and gloves, then walking in.\n\n\"Hi, Joe.\"\n\n\"I don't want to make this call without you, Professor,\" Quinn said quietly, handing the chart over.\n\nKlein scanned it, then his brain stopped cold, and he started from the beginning, looking up to compare the patient with the data. Female Caucasian, yes, age forty-one, about right, divorced, that was her business, apartment about two miles away, fine, temperature on admission 104.4, pretty damn high, BP, that was awfully low. Petechiae?\n\n\"Let me take a look here,\" Klein said. The patient was coming around. The head was moving a little, and she was making some noise. \"What's her temp now?\"\n\n\"One-oh-two-two, coming down nicely,\" the admitting resident replied, as Klein pulled the green sheet back. The patient was nude now, and the marks could hardly have been more plain on her otherwise very fair skin. Klein looked at the other doctors.\n\n\"Where's she been?\"\n\n\"We don't know,\" Quinn admitted. \"We looked through her purse. It seems she's an executive with Sears, office over in the tower.\"\n\n\"Have you examined her?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor,\" Quinn and the younger resident said together.\n\n\"Animal bites?\" Klein asked.\n\n\"None. No evidence of needles, nothing unusual at all. She's clean.\"\n\n\"I'm calling it possible hemorrhagic fever, method of transmission unknown for now. I want her upstairs, total isolation, full precautions. I want this room scrubbed\u2014everything she touched.\"\n\n\"I thought these viruses only passed\u2014\"\n\n\"Nobody knows, Doctor, and things I can't explain scare me. I've been to Africa. I've seen Lassa and Q fever. Haven't seen Ebola. But what she has looks a hell of a lot like one of those,\" Klein said, speaking those awful names for the first time.\n\n\"But how\u2014\"\n\n\"When you don't know, it means you don't know,\" Professor Klein said to the resident. \"For infectious diseases, if you do not know the means of transmission, you assume the worst. The worst case is aerosol, and that's how this patient will be handled. Let's get her moved up to my unit. Everybody who's been in contact with her, I want you to scrub down. Like AIDS or hepatitis. Full precautions,\" he emphasized again. \"Where's the blood you drew?\"\n\n\"Right there.\" The admitting physician pointed to a red plastic container.\n\n\"What's next?\" Quinn asked.\n\n\"We get a sample off to Atlanta, but I think I'm going to take a look myself.\" Klein had a superb laboratory in which he worked every day, mainly on AIDS, which was his passion.\n\n\"Can I come with you?\" Quinn asked. \"I go off duty in a few minutes anyway.\" Monday was usually a quiet day for emergency rooms. Their hectic time was generally weekends.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"I KNEW HOLTZMAN would come through for me,\" Arnie said. He was having a drink to celebrate, as the 747 began its descent into Sacramento.\n\n\"What?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Bob's a tough son of a bitch, but he's an honest son of a bitch. That also means that he will honestly burn you at the stake if he thinks you have it coming. Always remember that,\" the chief of staff advised.\n\n\"Donner and Plumber lied,\" Jack said aloud. \"Damn.\"\n\n\"Everybody lies, Jack. Even you. It's a question of context. Some lies are designed to protect the truth. Some lies are designed to conceal it. Some are designed to deny it. And some lies happen because nobody gives a damn.\"\n\n\"And what happened here?\"\n\n\"A combination, Mr. President. Ed Kealty wanted 'em to ambush you for him, and he suckered them. But I got that treacherous bastard for you. I'll bet that tomorrow there will be a front-page article in the Post exposing Kealty as the guy who suborned two very senior reporters, and the press will turn on him like a pack of wolves.\" The reporters riding in the back of the plane were already buzzing about it. Arnie had seen to it that the NBC news tape had run on the cabin video system.\n\n\"Because he's the one who made them look bad . . .\"\n\n\"You got it, boss,\" van Damm confirmed, tossing off the remainder of his drink. He couldn't add that it might not have happened without the attack on Katie Ryan. Even reporters felt sympathy on occasion, which might have been decisive in Plumber's change of heart on the matter. But he was the one who'd made the carefully measured leaks to Bob Holtzman. He decided that he'd have a Secret Service agent find him a good cigar once they got on the ground. He felt like having one right now.\n\nADLER'S BODY CLOCK was totally confused now. He found that catching cat-naps helped, and it also helped that the message he was delivering was a simple and favorable one. The car stopped. A minor official opened the door for him and bowed curtly. Adler stifled a yawn as he walked into the ministry building.\n\n\"So good to see you again,\" the PRC Foreign Minister said, through his interpreter. Zhang Han San was there again, too, and made his own greeting.\n\n\"Your gracious agreement to allow direct flights certainly makes the process easier for me. Thank you for that,\" SecState replied, taking his seat.\n\n\"Just so you understand that these are exceptional circumstances,\" the Foreign Minister observed.\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"What news do you bring us from our wayward cousins?\"\n\n\"They are entirely willing to match your reductions in activity, with an eye toward reducing tension.\"\n\n\"And their insulting accusations?\"\n\n\"Minister, that issue never arose. I believe that they are as interested as you in returning to peaceful circumstances.\"\n\n\"How good of them,\" Zhang commented. \"They initiate hostilities, shoot down two of our aircraft, damage one of their own airliners, kill over a hundred people, whether by deliberate act or by incompetence, and then they say that they will match _us_ in reducing provocative acts. I hope your government appreciates the forbearance we are showing here.\"\n\n\"Mr. Minister, peace serves everyone's best interests, does it not? America appreciates the actions of both parties in these informal proceedings. The People's Republic has indeed been gracious in more than one way, and the government in Taiwan is willing to match your actions. What more is required than that?\"\n\n\"Very little,\" the Foreign Minister replied. \"Merely compensation for the deaths of our four aviators. Each of them left a family behind.\"\n\n\"Their fighters did shoot first,\" Zhang pointed out.\n\n\"That may be true, but the question of the airliner is still undetermined.\"\n\n\"Certainly, _we_ had nothing to do that that.\" This came from the Foreign Minister.\n\nThere were few things more boring than negotiations between countries, but there was actually a reason for that. Sudden or surprise moves could force a country into making impromptu decisions. Unexpected pressure caused anger, and anger had no place in high-level discussions and decisions. Therefore, important talks were almost never decisive, but were, rather, evolutionary in nature, which gave each side time to think through its position, and that of the other side, carefully, so to arrive at a final communique with which both sides could be relatively content. Thus the demand for compensation was a violation of the rules. More properly done, this would have been said at the first session, and Adler would have taken it to Taipei and probably presented it as his own suggestion after the Republic of China government had agreed to cooperate in the reduction of tension. But they had already done that, and now the PRC wanted him to take back the request for compensation instead of a formula for local detente. That was an insult to the Taiwanese government, and also a measured insult to the American government for having been used as a stalking horse for another country.\n\nThis was all the more true since Adler and the ROC knew who'd killed the airliner, and who had therefore shown contempt for human life\u2014for which the PRC now demanded compensation! And now Adler wondered again how much of what he knew of the incident was known to the PRC. If they knew a lot, then this was definitely a game whose rules had yet to be decoded.\n\n\"I think it would be more useful if both sides were to cover their individual losses and needs,\" Secretary Adler suggested.\n\n\"I regret that we cannot accept that. It is a matter of principle, you see. He who commits the improper act must make amends.\"\n\n\"But what if\u2014I do not have any evidence to suggest this, but what if it is determined that the PRC inadvertently damaged the airliner? In such a case your request for compensation might appear unjust.\"\n\n\"That is not possible. We have interviewed our surviving pilots and their reports are unequivocal.\" Again it was Zhang.\n\n\"What precisely do you request?\" Adler asked.\n\n\"Two hundred thousand dollars for each of the four aviators lost. The money will go to their families, of course,\" Zhang promised.\n\n\"I can present this request to\u2014\"\n\n\"Excuse me. It is not a request. It is a requirement,\" the Foreign Minister told Adler.\n\n\"I see. I can present your position to them, but I must urge you not to make this a condition of your promise to reduce tension.\"\n\n\"That _is_ our position.\" The Foreign Minister's eyes were quite serene.\n\n\"... AND GOD BLESS America,\" Ryan concluded. The crowd stood and cheered. The band struck up\u2014there had to be a band everywhere he went, Jack supposed\u2014and he made his way off the dais behind a wall of nervous Secret Service agents. Well, the President thought, no gunfire out of the blinding lights this time, either. He stifled another yawn. He'd been on the move for over twelve hours. Four speeches didn't seem to be all that much physical work, but Ryan was learning just how exhausting public speaking could be. You had the shakes every time before getting up there, and though you got over it in a few minutes, the accumulated stress did take its toll. The dinner hadn't helped much. The food had been bland, so carefully chosen to offend no one that it wasn't worth anyone's attention. But it had given him heartburn anyway.\n\n\"Okay,\" Arnie told him, as the presidential party assembled to head out the back door. \"For a guy who was ready to chuck it yesterday, you did awfully well.\"\n\n\"Mr. President!\" a reporter called.\n\n\"Talk to him,\" Arnie whispered.\n\n\"Yes?\" Jack said, walking over, to the displeasure of his security force.\n\n\"Do you know about what John Plumber said this evening on NBC?\" The reporter was ABC, and unlikely to pass on the chance to slam a competing network.\n\n\"Yes, I've heard about it,\" the President replied soberly.\n\n\"Do you have any comment?\"\n\n\"Obviously, I do not like learning about all this, but as far as Mr. Plumber is concerned, that's as gracious an act of moral courage as I've seen in quite a while. He's okay in my book.\"\n\n\"Do you know who it was who\u2014\"\n\n\"Please, let Mr. Plumber handle that. It's his story, and he knows how to tell it. Now if you will excuse me, I have a plane to catch.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President,\" the ABC reporter said to Ryan's back.\n\n\"Just right,\" Arnie said, with a smile. \"We've had a long day, but it's been a good day.\"\n\nRyan let out a long breath. \"You say so.\"\n\n\"OH, MY GOD,\" Professor Klein whispered. There it was on the display monitor. The Shepherd's Crook, right out of a medical text. How the hell had it come to Chicago?\n\n\"That's Ebola,\" Dr. Quinn said, adding, \"That's not possible.\"\n\n\"How thorough was your physical examination?\" the senior man asked again.\n\n\"Could have been better, but\u2014no bite marks, no needle marks. Mark, it's _Chicago_. I had _frost_ on my windshield the other day.\"\n\nProfessor Klein pressed his hands together, and pushed his gloved fingers up against his nose. Then he stopped the gesture when he realized that he was still wearing a surgical mask. \"Keys in her purse?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"First, we have cops around the ER. Get one, tell him we need a police escort to go to her apartment and allow us to look around. Tell him this woman's life is in danger. Maybe she's got a pet, a tropical plant, something. We have the name of her physician. Get him up, get him in here. We need to find out what he knows about her.\"\n\n\"Treatment?\"\n\n\"We cool her down, we keep her hydrated, we medicate for pain, but there isn't anything that really works on this. Rousseau in Paris has tried interferon and a few other things, but no luck so far.\" He frowned at the display again. \"How'd she get it? How the hell did she contract this little bastard?\"\n\n\"CDC?\"\n\n\"You get the cop up here. I'll get a fax off to Gus Lorenz.\" Klein checked his watch. Damn.\n\nTHE PREDATOR DRONES were back in Saudi, having never been discovered. It was felt that having them circle over a stationary position, like a divisional encampment, was a little too dangerous, however, and now the overhead work was being done by satellites, whose photos downloaded to the National Reconnaissance Office.\n\n\"Check this out,\" one of the night crew said to the guy at the next workstation. \"What are these?\"\n\nThe tanks of the UIR \"Immortals\" division were grouped in what was essentially a large parking lot, all evenly spaced in long, regular lines so that they could be counted\u2014a stolen tank with a full basic load of shells was a dangerous thing to have on the loose, and all armies took security of the tank laagers seriously. It also made things more convenient for the maintenance personnel to have them all together. Now they were all back, and men were swarming over the tanks and other fighting vehicles, doing the normal maintenance that followed a major exercise. In front of every tank in the first row were two dark lines, each about a meter across, and ten meters long. The man on the screen was ex\u2014Air Force, and more expert on airplanes than land-combat vehicles.\n\nHis neighbor only needed one look. \"Tracks.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"They're rotating the tires, like. Tracks wear out, and you put new ones on. The old ones go into the shop to be worked on, replacing pads and stuff,\" the former soldier explained. \"It's no big deal.\"\n\nCloser examination showed how it was done. The new tracks were laid in front of the old ones. The old ones were then disconnected, and attached to the new, and the tank, its motor running, simply drove forward, the sprocket wheel pulling the new track in place over the road wheels. It required several men and was hot, heavy work, but it could be done by a well-trained tank crew in about an hour under ideal conditions, which, the ex-soldier explained, these were. Essentially, the tank drove onto the new tracks.\n\n\"I never knew how they did that.\"\n\n\"Beats having to jack the sumbitch off the ground.\"\n\n\"What's a track good for?\"\n\n\"On one of these, cross-country in a desert? Oh, call it a thousand miles, maybe a little less.\"\n\nSURE ENOUGH, THE two couches in Air Force One's forward cabin folded out to make beds. After dismissing his staff, Ryan hung up his clothes and lay down. Clean sheets and everything, and he was weary enough that he didn't mind being on an airplane. Flight time to Washington was four and a half hours, and then he'd be able to sleep some more in his own bed. Unlike normal red-eye travelers, he might even be able to do some useful work the next day.\n\nIn the big cabin, aft, the reporters were doing the same, having decided to leave the issue of Plumber's astounding revelation to the next day. They had no choice in the matter; a story of this magnitude was handled at least at the assistant managing editor level. Many of the print journalists were dreaming about the editorials that would appear in the papers. The TV reporters were trying not to cringe at what this would mean to their credibility.\n\nIn between were the President's staff members. They were all smiles, or nearly so.\n\n\"Well, I finally saw his temper,\" Arnie told Callic Weston. \"Big-time.\"\n\n\"And I bet he saw yours, too.\"\n\n\"And mine won.\" Arnie sipped at his drink. \"You know, the way things are going, I think we have a pretty good President here.\"\n\n\"He hates it.\" Weston had one of her own.\n\nArnie van Damm didn't care: \"Fabulous speeches, Callie.\"\n\n\"There's such an engaging way about how he delivers them,\" she thought. \"Every time, he starts off tight, embarrassed, and then the teacher in him takes over, and he really gets into it. He doesn't even know it, either.\"\n\n\"Honesty. It really does come out, doesn't it?\" Arnie paused. \"There's going to be a memorial service for the dead agents.\"\n\n\"I'm already thinking about it,\" Weston assured him. \"What are you going to do about Kealty?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking about _that_. We're going to sink that bastard once and for all.\"\n\nBADRAYN WAS BACK on his computer, checking the proper Internet sites. Still nothing. In another day he might start worrying, though it wasn't really his problem if nothing happened, was it? Everything he'd done had gone perfectly.\n\nPATIENT ZERO OPENED her eyes, which got everyone's attention. Her temperature was down to 101.6, entirely due to the cold packs that now surrounded her body like a fish in the market. The combination of pain and exhaustion was plain on her face. In that way, she looked like a patient with advanced AIDS, a disease with which the physician was all too familiar.\n\n\"Hello, I'm Dr. Klein,\" the professor told her from behind his mask. \"You had us a little worried there for a minute, but things are under control now.\"\n\n\"Hurts,\" she said.\n\n\"I know, and we're going to help you with that, but I need to ask you a few questions. Can you help me with a few things?\" Klein asked.\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"Have you been doing any traveling lately?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Every word she spoke drew down on her energy reserves.\n\n\"Have you been out of the country?\"\n\n\"No. Flew to Kansas City ... ten days ago, that's all. Day trip,\" she added.\n\n\"Okay.\" It wasn't. \"Have you had any contact with someone who's been out of the country?\"\n\n\"No.\" She tried to shake her head. It moved maybe a quarter inch.\n\n\"Forgive me, but I have to ask this. Do you have any ongoing sexual relationships at the moment?\"\n\nThat question shook her. \"AIDS?\" she gasped, thinking that was the worst thing she might have.\n\nKlein shook his head emphatically. \"No, definitely not. Please don't worry about that.\"\n\n\"Divorced,\" the patient said. \"Just a few months. No new . . . men in my life yet.\"\n\n\"Well, as pretty as you are, that'll have to change soon,\" Klein observed, trying to get a smile out of her. \"What do you do at Sears?\"\n\n\"Housewares, buyer. Just had ... big show ... McCormick Center . . . lots of paperwork, orders and things.\"\n\nThis was going nowhere. Klein tried a few more questions. They led nowhere. He turned and pointed to the nurse.\n\n\"Okay, we're going to do something about the pain now,\" the professor told her. He stepped away so as not to crowd the nurse when she started the morphine on the IV tree. \"This will start working in a few seconds, okay? I'll be back soon.\"\n\nQuinn was waiting out in the hall with a uniformed police officer, a checkerboard band around his cap.\n\n\"Doc, what's the story?\" the cop asked.\n\n\"The patient has something very serious, possibly very contagious. I need to look over her apartment.\"\n\n\"That's not really legal, you know. You're supposed to go to a judge and get\u2014\"\n\n\"Officer, there's no time for that. We have her keys. We could just break in, but I want you there so that you can say we didn't do anything wrong.\" And besides, if she had a burglar alarm, it wouldn't do for them to be arrested. \"There's no time to waste. This woman is very sick.\"\n\n\"Okay, my car is outside.\" The cop pointed and the doctors followed.\n\n\"Get the fax off to Atlanta?\" Quinn asked. Klein shook his head.\n\n\"Let's look at her place first.\" He decided not to wear a coat. It was cold outside, and the temperature would be very inhospitable to the virus in the unlikely event that it had somehow gotten on his scrubs. Reason told him that there was no real danger here. He'd never encountered Ebola clinically, but he knew as much about it as any man could. It was regrettably normal for people to show up with diseases whose presence they could not explain. Most of the time, careful investigation would reveal how it had been contracted, but not always. Even with AIDS, there was the handful of unexplained cases. But only a handful, and you didn't start with one of those as your Index Case. Professor Klein shivered when he got outside. The temperature was in the low thirties, with a north wind blowing down off Lake Michigan. But that wasn't the reason for his shaking.\n\nPRICE OPENED THE door to the nose cabin. The lights were off except for a few faint indirect ones. The President was lying on his back and snoring loudly enough to be heard over the whining drone of the engines. She had to resist the temptation to tiptoe in and cover him with a blanket. Instead, she smiled and closed the door.\n\n\"Maybe there is such a thing as justice, Jeff,\" she observed to Agent Raman.\n\n\"The newsie thing, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Don't bet on it,\" the other agent said.\n\nThey looked around. Finally everyone was asleep, even the chief of staff. Topside, the flight crew was doing their job, along with the other USAF personnel, and it really was like a red-eye flight back to the East Coast, as Air Force One passed over central Illinois. The two agents moved back to their seating area. Three members of the Detail were playing cards, quietly. Others were reading or dozing.\n\nAn Air Force sergeant came down the circular steps, holding a folder.\n\n\"FLASH-traffic for the Boss,\" she announced.\n\n\"Is it that important? We get into Andrews in about ninety minutes.\"\n\n\"I just take 'em off the fax machine,\" the sergeant pointed out.\n\n\"Okay.\" Price took the message and headed aft. To where Ben Goodley was. It was his job to be around to tell the President what he needed to know about the important happenings in the world\u2014or, in this case, to evaluate the importance of a message. Price shook the man's shoulder. The national intelligence officer opened one eye.\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Do we wake the Boss for this?\"\n\nThe intelligence specialist scanned it and shook his head. \"It can wait. Adler knows what he's doing, and there's a working group at State for this.\" He turned back into his seat without another word.\n\n\"DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING,\" Klein told the policeman. \"Best for you to stand right by the door, but if you want to follow us around, don't touch a thing. Wait.\" The physician reached into the plastic trash bag he'd brought along, and pulled out a surgical mask in a sterile container. \"Put this on, okay?\"\n\n\"Anything you say, Doc.\"\n\nKlein handed over the house key. The police officer opened the door. It turned out that there was an alarm system. The control panel was just inside the door, but not turned on. The two physicians put on their own masks and donned latex gloves. First, they turned on all the lights.\n\n\"What are we looking for?\" Quinn asked.\n\nKlein was already looking. No cat or dog had come to note their arrival. He saw no bird cages\u2014part of him had hoped for a pet monkey, but somehow he knew that wasn't in the cards. Ebola didn't seem to like monkeys very much, anyway. It killed them with all the alacrity it applied to human victims. Plants, then, he thought. Wouldn't it be odd if Ebola's host was something other than an animal? That would be a first of sorts.\n\nThere were plants, but nothing exotic. They stood in the center of the living room, not touching anything with their gloved hands or even with their green-trousered legs, as they turned around slowly, looking.\n\n\"I don't see anything,\" Quinn reported.\n\n\"Neither do I. Kitchen.\"\n\nThere were some more plants there, two that looked like herbs in small pots. Klein didn't recognize their type and decided to lift them.\n\n\"Wait. Here,\" Quinn said, opening a drawer and finding freezer bags. The plants went into those bags, which the younger physician sealed carefully. Klein opened the refrigerator. Nothing unusual there. The same was true of the freezer. He'd thought it possible that some exotic food product . . . but, no. Everything the patient ate was typically American.\n\nThe bedroom was a bedroom and nothing more. No plants there, they saw.\n\n\"Some article of clothing? Leather?\" Quinn asked. \"Anthrax can\u2014\"\n\n\"Ebola can't. It's too delicate. We know the organism we're dealing with. It can't survive in this environment. It just _can't,\"_ the professor insisted. They didn't know much about the little bastard, but one of the things they did at CDC was to establish the environmental parameters, how long the virus could survive in a whole series of conditions. Chicago at this time of year was as inhospitable to that sort of virus as a blast furnace. Orlando, some place in the South, maybe. But Chicago? \"We got nothing,\" he concluded in frustration.\n\n\"Maybe the plants?\"\n\n\"You know how hard it is to get a plant through customs?\"\n\n\"I've never tried.\"\n\n\"I have, tried to bring some wild orchids back from Venezuela once . . .\" He looked around some more. \"There's nothing here, Joe.\"\n\n\"Is her prognosis as bad as\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" A pair of gloved hands rubbed against the scrub pants. Inside the latex rubber, his hands were sweating now. \"If we can't determine where it came from . . . if we can't explain it ...\" He looked at his younger, taller colleague. \"I have to get back. I want to take another look at that structure.\"\n\n\"HELLO,\" GUS LORENZ said. He checked his clock. What the hell?\n\n\"Gus?\" the voice asked.\n\n\"Yes, who's this?\"\n\n\"Mark Klein in Chicago.\"\n\n\"Something wrong?\" Lorenz asked groggily. The reply opened his eyes all the way.\n\n\"I think\u2014no, Gus, I _know_ I have an Ebola case up here.\"\n\n\"How can you be sure?\"\n\n\"I have the crook. I micrographed it myself. It's the Shepherd's Crook, and no mistake, Gus. I wish it were.\"\n\n\"Where's he been?\"\n\n\"It's a she, and she hasn't been anywhere special.\" Klein summarized what he knew in less than a minute. \"There is no immediately apparent explanation for this.\"\n\nLorenz could have objected that this was not possible, but the medical community is an intimate one at its higher levels; he knew Mark Klein was a full professor at one of the world's finest medical schools. \"Just one case?\"\n\n\"They all start with one, Gus,\" Klein reminded his friend. A thousand miles away, Lorenz swung his legs off the bed and onto the floor.\n\n\"Okay. I need a specimen.\"\n\n\"I have a courier on the way to O'Hare now. He'll catch the first flight down. I can e-mail you the micrographs right now.\"\n\n\"Give me about forty minutes to get in.\"\n\n\"Gus?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Is there anything on the treatment side that I don't know? We have a very sick patient here,\" Klein said, hoping that for once maybe he wasn't fully up to speed on something in his field.\n\n\" 'Fraid not, Mark. Nothing new that I know about.\"\n\n\"Damn. Okay, we'll do what we can here. Call me when you get there. I'm in my office.\"\n\nLorenz went into the bathroom and ran some water to splash in his face, proving to himself that this wasn't a dream. No, he thought. Nightmare.\n\nTHIS PRESIDENTIAL PERK was one even the press respected. Ryan walked down the steps first, saluted the USAF sergeant at the bottom, and walked the fifty yards to the helicopter. Inside, he promptly buckled his belt and went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later he was roused from his seat again, walked down another set of stairs, saluted a Marine this time, and headed into the White House. Ten minutes after that, he was in a sleeping place that didn't move.\n\n\"Good trip?\" Cathy asked, one eye partly open.\n\n\"Long one,\" her husband reported, falling back to sleep.\n\nTHE FIRST FLIGHT from Chicago to Atlanta left the gate at 6:15 A.M., Central Time. Before then, Lorenz was in his office, on his computer terminal, dialed into the Internet and on the phone at the same time.\n\n\"I'm downloading the image now.\"\n\nAs the older man watched, the micrograph grew from top to bottom, one line at a time, faster than a fax would come out of a machine, and far more detailed.\n\n\"Tell me I'm wrong, Gus,\" Klein said, no hope in his voice at all.\n\n\"I think you know better, Mark.\" He paused as the image finished forming. \"That's our friend.\"\n\n\"Where's he been lately?\"\n\n\"Well, we had a couple of cases in Zaire, and two more reported in Sudan. That's it, as far as I know. Your patient, has she been\u2014\"\n\n\"No. There aren't any risk factors that I have been able to identify so far. Given the incubation period, she must almost certainly have contracted it here in Chicago. And that's not possible, is it?\"\n\n\"Sex?\" Lorenz asked. He could almost hear the shake of the head over the phone.\n\n\"I asked. She says she's not getting any of that. Any reports anyplace else?\"\n\n\"None, none anywhere. Mark, are you sure of what you've told me?\" As insulting as the question was, it had to be asked.\n\n\"I wish I weren't. The micrograph I sent is the third one, I wanted good isolation for it. Her blood is full of it, Gus. Wait a minute.\" He heard a muffled conversation. \"She just came around again. Says she had a tooth extracted a week or so ago. We have the name of her dentist. We'll run that one down. That's all we have here.\"\n\n\"All right, let me get set up for your sample. It's only one case. Let's not get too excited.\"\n\nRAMAN GOT HOME shortly before dawn. It was just as well that the streets were almost entirely devoid of traffic at this time of day. He was in no condition for safe driving. Arriving home, he followed the usual routine. On his answering machine was another wrong number, the voice of Mr. Alahad.\n\nTHE PAIN WAS so severe that it woke him up from the sleep of exhaustion. Just walking the twenty feet around the bed and into the bathroom seemed like a marathon's effort, but he managed to stagger that far. The cramping was terrible, which amazed him, because he hadn't eaten all that much in the past couple of days despite his wife's insistence on chicken soup and toast, but with all the urgency he could suffer, he dropped his shorts and sat down just in time. Simultaneously, his upper GI seemed to explode as well, and the former golf pro doubled over, vomiting on the tiles. There was an instant's embarrassment at having done so unmanly a thing. Then he saw what was there at his feet.\n\n\"Honey?\" he called weakly. \"Help . . .\"\n**48**\n\n**HEMORRHAGE**\n\n**S** IX HOURS OF SLEEP, maybe a little more, was better than nothing. This morning, Cathy got up first, and the father of the First Family came into the breakfast room unshaven, following the smell of coffee.\n\n\"When you feel this rotten, you should at least have a hangover to blame it on,\" the President announced. His morning papers were in the usual place. A Post-it note was affixed to the front page of the _Washington Post_ , just over an article bylined to Bob Holtzman and John Plumber. Now, _there_ was something to start off his day, Jack told himself.\n\n\"That's really sleazy,\" Sally Ryan said. She'd already heard TV coverage of the controversy. \"What finks.\" She would have said \"dicks,\" a newly favored term among the young ladies at St. Mary's School, but Dad wasn't ready to acknowledge the fact that his Sally was talking like a grown-up.\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" her father replied. The story gave far more detail than was possible in a couple of minutes of air time. And it named Ed Kealty, who had, it seemed\u2014unsurprisingly, but still against the law\u2014a CIA source who had leaked information which, the story explained, had not been entirely truthful and, even worse, had been a deliberate political attack on the President, using the media as an attack dog. Jack snorted. As though that were new. The _Post_ 's emphasis was on the gross violation of journalistic integrity. Plumber's recantation of his actions was very sincere, it said. The article said that senior executives at NBC's news division had declined comment, pending their own inquiry. It also said that the _Post_ had custody of the tapes, which were entirely undamaged.\n\nThe _Washington Times_ , he saw, was just as irate but not in quite the same way. There would be a colossal internecine battle in the Washington press corps over this, something, the _Times_ editorial observed, that the politicians would clearly watch with amusement.\n\n_Well_ , Ryan told himself, _that ought to keep them off_ my _back for a while_.\n\nNext, he opened the manila folder with the secret-tape borders on it. This document, he saw, was pretty old.\n\n\"Bastards,\" POTUS whispered.\n\n\"They really did it to themselves this time,\" Cathy said, reading her own paper.\n\n\"No,\" SWORDSMAN replied. \"China.\"\n\nIT WASN'T AN epidemic yet, because nobody knew about it. Doctors were already reacting in surprise to telephone calls. Excited, if not frantic, calls to answering services had already awakened over twenty of them across the country. Bloody vomit and diarrhea were reported in every case, but only one to a customer, and there were various medical problems that could explain that. Bleeding ulcers, for example, and many of the calls came from businesspeople for whom stress came with the tic and white shirt. Most were told to drive to the nearest hospital's emergency room, and in nearly all cases the doctor got dressed to meet his or her patient there, or to have a trusted associate do so. Some were instructed to be at the office first thing, usually between eight and nine in the morning, to be the first patient of the day and thus not interfere with the daily schedule.\n\nGUS LORENZ HADN'T felt like being in his office alone, and had called in a few senior staff members to join him at his computer. They noted that his pipe was lit when they came in. One of them might have objected\u2014it was contrary to federal regulations\u2014but she stopped short, looking at the image on the screen.\n\n\"Where's this one from?\" the epidemiologist asked.\n\n\"Chicago.\"\n\n\" _Our_ Chicago?\"\n\nPIERRE ALEXANDRE ARRIVED at his office on the eleventh floor of the Ross Building just before eight. His morning routine began with checking his fax machine. Attending physicians with AIDS cases regularly sent him patient information that way. It allowed him to monitor a large number of patients, both to advise treatment options and to increase his own knowledge base. There was only one fax this morning, and it was relatively good news. Merck had just fielded a new drug which the FDA was fast-tracking into clinical trials, and a friend of his at Penn State was reporting some interesting results. That's when his phone rang.\n\n\"Dr. Alexandre.\"\n\n\"This is the ER, sir. Could you come down here? I got a patient here, Caucasian male, thirty-seven. High fever, internal bleeding. I don't know what this is\u2014I mean,\" the resident said, \"I mean, I know what it looks like, but \"\n\n\"Give me five minutes.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" she acknowledged.\n\nThe internist\/virologist\/molecular biologist donned his starched lab coat, buttoned it, and headed down toward the emergency room, which was in a separate building on the sprawling Hopkins campus. Even in the military, he'd dressed the same way. The Doctor Look, he called it. Stethoscope in the right-side pocket. Name embroidered onto the left side. A calm expression on his face as he walked into the largely idle ER. Nighttime was the busy period here. There she was, cute as a button . . . putting on a surgical mask, he saw. What could be all that wrong this early on a spring day?\n\n\"Good morning, Doctor,\" he said, in his most charming Creole accent. \"What seems to be the problem?\" She handed him the chart and started talking while he read.\n\n\"His wife brought him in. High fever, some disorientation, BP is low, probable internal bleed, bloody vomit and stool. And there are some marks on his face,\" she reported. \"And I'm not sure enough to say.\"\n\n\"Okay, let's take a look.\" She sounded like a promising young doc, Alexandre thought pleasantly. She knew what she didn't know, and she'd called for consultation ... but why not one of the internal-medicine guys? the former colonel asked himself, taking another look at her face. He put on mask and gloves and walked past the isolation curtain.\n\n\"Good morning, I'm Dr. Alexandre,\" he said to the patient. The man's eyes were listless, but it was the marks on his cheeks that made Alexandre's breath stop. It was George Westphal's face, come back from more than a decade in Alex's past.\n\n\"How did he get here?\"\n\n\"His personal physician told his wife to drive him in. He has privileges at Hopkins.\"\n\n\"What's he do? News photographer? Diplomat? Something to do with traveling?\"\n\nThe resident shook her head. \"He sells Winncbagos, RVs and like that, dealership over on Pulaski Highway.\"\n\nAlexandre looked around the area. There were a medical student and two nurses, in addition to the resident who was running the case. All gloved, all masked. Good. She was smart, and now Alex knew why she was scared.\n\n\"Blood?\"\n\n\"Already taken, Doctor. Doing the cross-match now, and specimens for analysis in your lab.\"\n\nThe professor nodded. \"Good. Admit him right now. My unit. I need a container for the tubes. Be careful with all the sharps.\" A nurse went off to get the things.\n\n\"Professor, this looks like\u2014I mean, it can't be, but\u2014\"\n\n\"It can't be,\" he agreed. \"But it does look that way. Those are petechiae, right out of the book. So we'll treat it like it is for the moment, okay?\" The nurse returned with the proper containers. Alexandre took the extra blood specimens. \"As soon as you send him upstairs, everybody strip, everybody scrub. There's not that much danger involved, as long as you take the proper precautions. Is his wife around?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor, out in the waiting room.\"\n\n\"Have somebody bring her up to my office. I have to ask her some things. Questions?\" There were none. \"Then let's get moving.\"\n\nDr. Alexandre visually checked the plastic container for the blood and tucked it into the left-side pocket of his lab coat, after determining that it was properly sealed. The calm Doctor's Look was gone, as he walked to the elevator. Looking at the burnished steel of the automatic doors, he told himself that, no, this wasn't possible., Maybe something else. But what? Leukemia had some of the same symptoms, and as dreaded as that diagnosis was, it was preferable to what it looked like to him. The doors opened, and he headed off to his lab.\n\n\"Morning, Janet,\" he said, walking into the hot lab.\n\n\"Alex,\" replied Janet Clemenger, a Ph.D. molecular biologist.\n\nHe took the plastic box from his pocket. \"I need this done in a hurry. Like, immediately.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" She wasn't often told to stop everything she was doing, especially at the start of a working day.\n\n\"Looks like hemorrhagic fever. Treat it as level . . . four.\"\n\nHer eyes went a little wide. \"Here?\" People were asking the same question all over America, but none of them knew it yet.\n\n\"They should be bringing the patient up now. I have to talk to his wife.\"\n\nShe took the container and set it gently on the worktable. \"The usual antibody tests?\"\n\n\"Yes, and please be careful with it, Janet.\"\n\n\"Always,\" she assured him. Like Alexandre, she worked a lot of AIDS experiments.\n\nAlexandre next went to his office to call Dave James.\n\n\"How certain are you?\" the dean asked two minutes later.\n\n\"Dave, it's just a heads-up for now, but\u2014I've seen it before. Just like it was with George Westphal. I have Jan Clemenger working on it right now. Until further notice, I think we have to take this one seriously. If the lab results are what I expect, I get on the phone to Gus and we declare a for-real alert.\"\n\n\"Well, Ralph gets back from London day after tomorrow. It's your department for the moment, Alex. Keep me posted.\"\n\n\"Roger,\" the former soldier said. Then it was time to speak to the patient's wife.\n\nIn the emergency room, orderlies were scrubbing the floor where the bed had been, overseen by the ER charge nurse. Overhead they could hear the distinctively powerful sound of a Sikorsky helicopter. The First Lady was coming to work.\n\nTHE COURIER ARRIVED at CDC, carrying his \"hatbox,\" and handed it over to one of Lorenz's lab technicians. From there everything was fast-tracked. The antibody tests were already set up on the lab benches, and under exquisitely precise handling precautions, a drop of blood was dipped into a small glass tube. The liquid in the tube changed color almost instantly.\n\n\"It's Ebola, Doctor,\" the technician reported. In another room a sample was being set up for the scanning electron microscope. Lorenz walked there, his legs feeling tired for so early in the morning. The instrument was already switched on. It was just a matter of getting things aimed properly before the images appeared on the TV display.\n\n\"Take your pick, Gus.\" This was a senior physician, not a lab tech. As the magnification was adjusted, the picture was instantly clear. This blood sample was alive with the tiny strands. And soon it would be alive with nothing else. \"Where's this one from?\"\n\n\"Chicago,\" Lorenz answered.\n\n\"Welcome to the New World,\" he told the screen as he worked the fine control to isolate one particular strand for full magnification. \"You little son of a bitch.\"\n\nNext came a closer examination to see if they could subtype it. That would take a while.\n\n\"AND SO HE has not traveled out of the country?\" Alex was running down his list of stock questions.\n\n\"No, no he hasn't,\" she assured him. \"Just to the big RV show. He goes to that every year.\"\n\n\"Ma'm, I have to ask a number of questions, and some of them may seem offensive. Please understand that I have to do this in order to help your husband.\" She nodded. Alexandre had a quiet way of getting past that problem. \"Do you have any reason to suspect that your husband has been seeing other women?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Sorry, I had to ask that. Do you have any exotic pets?\"\n\n\"Just two Chesapeake Bay retrievers,\" she replied, surprised at the question.\n\n\"Monkeys? Anything from out of the country?\"\n\n\"No, nothing like that.\"\n\n_This isn't going anywhere._ Alex couldn't think of another relevant question. They were supposed to say _yes_ to the travel one. \"Do you know anybody, family member, friend, whatever, who does a lot of traveling?\"\n\n\"No\u2014can I see him?\"\n\n\"Yes, you can, but first we have to get him settled into his room and get some treatment going.\"\n\n\"Is he going to\u2014I mean, he's never been sick at all, he runs and doesn't smoke and doesn't drink much and we've always been careful.\" And then she started losing control.\n\n\"I won't lie to you. Your husband appears to be a very sick man, but your family doctor sent you to the best hospital in the world. I just started here. I spent more than twenty years in the Army, all of that in the area of infectious diseases. So you are in the right place, and I am the right doc.\" You had to say things like that, empty words though they might be. The one thing you could never, ever, do was take hope away. The phone rang.\n\n\"Dr. Alexandre.\"\n\n\"Alex, it's Janet. Antibody test is positive for Ebola. I ran it twice,\" she told him. \"I have the spare tube packaged to go to CDC, and the microscopy will be ready to go in about fifteen minutes.\"\n\n\"Very well. I'll be over for that.\" He hung up. \"Here,\" he told the patient's wife. \"Let me get you out to the waiting room and introduce you to the nurses. We have some very good ones on my unit.\"\n\nThis was not the fun part, even though infectious diseases was not a particularly fun field. In trying to give her hope, he'd probably given her too much. Now she'd listen to him, thinking that he spoke with God's voice, but right now God didn't have any answers, and next he had to explain to her that the nurses would be taking some of her blood for examination, too.\n\n\"WHAT GIVES, SCOTT?\" Ryan asked across thirteen time zones.\n\n\"Well, they sure as hell tossed a wrench into it. Jack?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"This guy Zhang, I've met him twice now. He doesn't talk a hell of a lot, but he's a bigger fish than we thought. I think he's the one keeping an eye on the Foreign Minister. He's a player, Mr. President. Tell the Foleys to open a file on the guy and put a big flag on it.\"\n\n\"Will Taipei spring for compensation?\" SWORDSMAN asked.\n\n\"Would you?\"\n\n\"My instinct would be to tell them where they could shove it, but I'm not supposed to lose my temper, remember?\"\n\n\"They will listen to the demand, and then they will ask me where the United States of America stands. What do I tell them?\"\n\n\"For the moment, we stand for renewed peace and stability.\"\n\n\"I can make that last an hour, maybe two hours. Then what?\" SecState persisted.\n\n\"You know that area better than I do. What's the game, Scott?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I thought I did, but I don't. First, I kinda hoped it was an accident. Then I thought they might be rattling their cage\u2014Taiwan's, I mean. No, it's not that. They're pushing too hard and in the wrong way for that. Third option, they're doing all this to test you. If so, they're playing very rough\u2014too rough. They don't know you well enough yet, Jack. It's too big a pot for the first hand of the night. Bottom line, I do not know what they're thinking. Without that, I can't tell you how to play it out.\"\n\n\"We know they were behind Japan\u2014Zhang personally was behind that Yamata bastard and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I know. And they must know that we know, and that's one more reason not to piss us off. There are a lot of chips on the table, Jack,\" Adler emphasized again. \"And I do not see a reason for this.\"\n\n\"Tell Taiwan we're behind them?\"\n\n\"Okay, if you do that, and it gets out, and the PRC ups the ante, we have thousands\u2014hell, close to a hundred thousand citizens over here, and they're hostages. I won't go into the trade considerations, but that's a big chip in political-economic terms.\"\n\n\"But if we don't back Taiwan up, then they'll think they're on their own and cornered\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, and the same thing happens from the other direction. My best suggestion is to ride with it. I deliver the demand, Taipei says no, then I suggest that they suggest the issue is held in abeyance until the issue of the airliner is determined. For that, we call in the U.N. We, that is, the United States, call the question before the Security Council. That strings it out. Sooner or later, their friggin' navy's gotta run out of fuel. We have a carrier group in the neighborhood, and so nothing _can_ happen, really.\"\n\nRyan frowned. \"I won't say I like it, but run with it. It'll last a day or two anyway. My instinct is to back up Taiwan and tell the PRC to suck wind.\"\n\n\"The world isn't that simple, and you know it,\" Adler's voice told him.\n\n\"Ain't it the truth. Run with what you said, Scott, and keep me posted.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nALEX CHECKED HIS watch. Next to the electron microscope was Dr. Clemenger's notebook. At 10:16, she lifted it, made a time notation, and described how both she and her fellow associate professor confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus. On the other side of the lab, a technician was running a test on blood drawn from the wife of Patient Zero. It was positive for Ebola antibodies. She had it, too, though she didn't know it yet.\n\n\"They have any children?\" Janet asked, when the news arrived.\n\n\"Two, both away in school.\"\n\n\"Alex, unless you know something I don't . . . I hope their insurance is paid up.\" Clemenger didn't quite have the status of an M.D. here, but at moments like this she didn't mind. Physicians got to know the patients a lot better than the pure scientists did.\n\n\"What else can you tell me?\"\n\n\"I need to map the genes out a little, but look here.\" She tapped the screen. \"See the way the protein loops are grouped, and this structure down here?\" Janet was the lab's top expert on how viruses were formed.\n\n\"Mayinga?\" _Christ, that's what got George . . ._ And nobody knew how George had gotten it, and he didn't know now how this patient . . .\n\n\"Too early to be sure. You know what I have to do to run that down, but . . .\"\n\n\"It fits. No known risk factors for him, maybe not for her, either. Jesus, Janet, if this is airborne.\"\n\n\"I know, Alex. You call Atlanta or me?\"\n\n\"I'll do it.\"\n\n\"I'll start picking the little bastard apart,\" she promised.\n\nIt seemed a long walk from the lab back to his office. His secretary was in now, and noticed his mood.\n\n\"DR. LORENZ IS in a meeting now,\" another secretary said. That usually put people off. Not this time:\n\n\"Break in, if you would, please. Tell him it's Pierre Alexandre at Johns Hopkins, and it's important.\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor. Please hold.\" She pressed one button and then another, ringing the line in the conference room down the hall. \"Dr. Lorenz, please, it's urgent.\"\n\n\"Yes, Marjorie?\"\n\n\"I have Dr. Alexandre holding on three. He says it's important, sir.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Gus switched lines. \"Talk fast, Alex, we have a developing situation here,\" he said in an unusually businesslike voice.\n\n\"I know. Ebola's made it to this side of the world,\" Alexandre announced.\n\n\"Have you been talking to Mark, too?\"\n\n\"Mark? Mark who?\" the professor asked.\n\n\"Wait, wait, back up, Alex. Why did you call here?\"\n\n\"We have two patients on my unit, and they've both got it, Gus.\"\n\n\"In Baltimore?\"\n\n\"Yes, now what\u2014where else, Gus?\"\n\n\"Mark Klein in Chicago has one, female, forty-one. I've already micrographed the blood sample.\" In two widely separated cities, two world-class experts did exactly the same thing. One pair of eyes looked at a wall in a small office. The other pair looked down a conference table at ten other physicians and scientists. The expressions were exactly the same. \"Has either one been to Chicago or Kansas City?\"\n\n\"Negative,\" the former colonel said. \"When did Klein's case show up?\"\n\n\"Last night, ten or so. Yours?\"\n\n\"Just before eight. Husband has all the symptoms. Wife doesn't, but her blood's positive . . . oh, shit, Gus . . .\"\n\n\"I have to call Detrick next.\"\n\n\"You do that. Keep an eye on the fax machine, Gus,\" Professor Alexandre advised. \"And hope it's all a fucking mistake.\" But it wasn't, and both knew it now.\n\n\"Stay close to the phone. I may want your input.\"\n\n\"You bet.\" Alex thought about that as he hung up. He had a call to make, too.\n\n\"Dave, Alex.\"\n\n\"Well?\" the dean asked.\n\n\"Husband and wife both positive. Wife is not yet symptomatic. Husband is showing all the classic signs.\"\n\n\"So what's the story, Alex?\" the dean asked guardedly.\n\n\"Dave, the story is I caught Gus at a staff meeting. They were discussing an Ebola case in Chicago. Mark Klein called it in around midnight, I gather. No commonalties between that one and our Index Case here. I, uh, think we have a potential epidemic on our hands. We need to alert our emergency people. There might be some very dangerous stuff coming in.\"\n\n\"Epidemic? But\u2014\"\n\n\"That's my call to make, Dave. CDC is talking to the Army. I know exactly what they're going to say up at Detrick. Six months ago it would have been me making that call, too.\" Alexandre's other line started ringing. His secretary got it in the outer office. A moment later, her head appeared in the doorway.\n\n\"Doctor, that's ER, they say they need you stat.\" Alex relayed that message to the dean.\n\n\"I'll meet you there, Alex,\" Dave James told him.\n\n\"AT THE NEXT call on your machine, you will be free to complete your mission,\" Mr. Alahad said. \"The timing is yours to decide.\" He didn't have to add that it would be better for him if Raman erased all his messages. To do so would have appeared venal to one who was willing to sacrifice himself. \"We will not meet again in this lifetime.\"\n\n\"I must go to my workplace.\" Raman hesitated. So the order had really come, after a fashion. The two men embraced, and the younger one took his leave.\n\n\"CATHY?\" SHE LOOKED up to see Bernie Katz's head sticking in her office door.\n\n\"Yeah, Bernie?\"\n\n\"Dave has called a department head meeting in his office at two. I'm leaving for New York to do that conference at Columbia, and Hal's operating this afternoon. Sit in for me?\"\n\n\"Sure, I'm clear.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Cath.\" His head vanished again. SURGEON went back to her patient records.\n\nACTUALLY THE DEAN had told his secretary to call the meeting on his way out the door. David James was in the emergency room. Behind the mask he looked like any other physician.\n\nThis patient had nothing at all to do with the other two. Watching from ten feet away in a corner of the ER already set aside for the situation, they watched him vomit into a plastic container. There was ample evidence of blood.\n\nIt was the same young resident working this one, too. \"No traveling to speak of. Says he was in New York for some stuff. Theater, auto show, regular tourist stuff. What about the first one?\"\n\n\"Positive for Ebola virus,\" Alex told her. That snapped her head around like an owl's.\n\n\"Here?\"\n\n\"Here. Don't be too surprised, Doctor. You called me, remember?\" He turned to Dean James and raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"All department heads in my office at two. I can't go any faster, Alex. A third of them are operating or seeing patients right now.\"\n\n\"Ross for this one?\" the resident asked. She had a patient to deal with.\n\n\"Quick as you can.\" Alexandre took the dean by the arm and walked him outside. There, dressed in greens, he lit a cigar, to the surprise of the security guards, who enforced a smoking ban out there.\n\n\"What the hell's going on?\"\n\n\"You know, there is something to be said for these things.\" Alex took a few puffs. \"I can tell you what they're going to say up at Detrick, sure as hell.\"\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"Two separate index cases, Dave, a thousand miles apart in distance, and eight hours apart in time. No connection of any kind. No commonalties at all. Think it through,\" Pierre Alexandre said, taking another worried puff.\n\n\"Not enough data to support it,\" James objected.\n\n\"I hope I'm wrong. They're going to be scrambling down in Atlanta. Good people down there. The best. But they don't look at this sort of the thing the way I do. I wore that green suit a long time. Well\"\u2014another puff\u2014\"we're going to see what the best possible supportive care can do. We're better than anyplace in Africa. So's Chicago. So are all the other places that are going to phone in, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Others?\" As fine a physician as he was, James still wasn't getting it.\n\n\"The first attempt at biological warfare was undertaken by Alexander the Great. He launched bodies of plague victims into a besieged city with catapults. I don't know if it worked or not. He took the city anyway, slaughtered all the citizens, and moved on.\"\n\nHe got it now, Alex could see. The dean was as pale as the new patient inside.\n\n\"JEFF?\" RAMAN WAS in the local command post going over the coming schedule for POTUS. He had a mission to complete now, and it was time to start doing some planning. Andrea walked over to him. \"We have a trip to Pittsburgh on Friday. You want to hop up there with the advance team? There are a couple local problems that have cropped up at the hotel.\"\n\n\"Okay. When do I leave?\" Agent Raman asked.\n\n\"Flight leaves in ninety minutes.\" She handed him a ticket. \"You get back tomorrow night.\"\n\nHow much the better, Raman thought, if he might even survive. Were he to structure all the security at one of these events, that might actually be possible. The idea of martyrdom didn't turn his head all that much, but if survival were possible, then he would opt for that.\n\n\"Fair enough,\" the assassin replied. He didn't have to worry about packing. The agents on the Detail always had a bag in the car.\n\nIT TOOK THREE satellite passes before NRO was willing to make its estimate of the situation. All six of the UIR heavy divisions which had participated in the war game were now in a full-maintenance stand-down. Some might say that such a thing was normal. A unit went into a heavy-maintenance cycle after a major training exercise, but six divisions\u2014three heavy corps\u2014at once was a bit much. The data was immediately forwarded to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments. In the meantime, the Pentagon called the White House.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Secretary,\" Ryan said.\n\n\"The SNIE isn't ready yet for the UIR, but we have received ... well, some disturbing information. I'll let Admiral Jackson present it.\"\n\nThe President listened, and didn't need much in the way of analysis, though he wished the Special National Intelligence Estimates were on his desk to give him a better feel for the UIR's political intentions. \"Recommendations?\" he asked, when Robby was done.\n\n\"I think it's a good time to get the boats at Diego moving. It never hurts to exercise them. We can move them to within two steaming days of the Gulf without anybody noticing. Next, I recommend that we issue warning orders to XVIII Airborne Corps. That's the 82nd, 101st, and 24th Mechanized.\"\n\n\"Will it make noise?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"No, sir. It's treated as a practice alert. We do those all the time. All it really does is to get staff officers thinking.\"\n\n\"Make it so. Keep it quiet.\"\n\n\"This would be a good time to do a joint training exercise with friendly nations in the region,\" J-3 suggested.\n\n\"I'll see about that. Anything else?\"\n\n\"No, Mr. President,\" Bretano replied. \"We'll keep you informed.\"\n\nBY NOON, THE fax count at CDC Atlanta was over thirty, from ten different states. These were forwarded to Fort Detrick, Maryland, home of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases\u2014USAMRIID\u2014the military counterpart to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. As chilling as the data was, it was just a little too chilling for snap judgment. A major staff meeting was called for just after lunch, while the commissioned officers and civilians tried to get their data organized. More senior officers from Walter Reed got in their staff cars for the ride up Interstate-70.\n\n\"DR. RYAN?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Cathy looked up.\n\n\"The meeting in Dr. James's office has been moved up,\" her secretary said. \"They want you over there right now.\"\n\n\"I guess I better head over, then.\" She stood and headed for the door. Roy Altman was standing there.\n\n\"Anything I need to know about?\" SURGEON'S principal agent asked.\n\n\"Something's up. I don't know what it is.\"\n\n\"Where is the dean's office?\" He'd never been there before. All of the staff meetings she'd attended recently were in Maumenee.\n\n\"That way.\" She pointed. \"Other side of Monument Street in the admin building.\"\n\n\"SURGEON is moving, going north to Monument.\" The agents just appeared out of nowhere, it seemed. It might have seemed funny except for recent events. \"If you don't mind, I'll stand in the room. I'll keep out of the way,\" Altman assured her.\n\nCathy nodded. There was no fighting it. He'd hate the dean's office for all the big windows there, she was sure. It was a ten-minute walk over, almost all of it undercover. She headed outdoors to cross the street, wanting a little fresh air. Entering the building, she saw a lot of her friends, either department chairmen or senior staffers standing in as she was doing. The director-level people were always traveling, one reason why she wasn't sure if she ever wanted to be that senior herself. Pierre Alexandre stormed in, wearing greens, carrying a folder, and looking positively grim as he almost bumped into her. A Secret Service agent prevented that.\n\n\"Glad you're here, Cathy,\" he said on the way past. \"Them, too.\"\n\n\"Nice to be appreciated,\" Altman observed to a colleague, as the dean appeared at the door.\n\n\"Come in.\"\n\nOne look at the conference room convinced Altman to lower the shades with his own hands. The windows faced a street of anonymous brick houses. A few of the doctors looked on with annoyance, but they knew who he was and didn't object.\n\n\"Calling the meeting to order,\" Dave James said, before everyone was seated. \"Alex has something important to tell us.\"\n\nThere was no preamble: \"We have five Ebola cases in Ross right now. They all came in today.\"\n\nHeads turned sharply. Cathy blinked at her seat at the end of the table.\n\n\"Students from someplace?\" the surgery director asked. \"Zaire?\"\n\n\"One auto dealer and his wife, a boat salesman from Annapolis, three more people. Answering your question, no. No international travel at all. Four of the five are fully symptomatic. The auto dealer's wife shows antibodies, but no symptoms as yet. That's the good news. Our case wasn't the first. CDC has cases reported in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Dallas. That's as of an hour ago. Total reported cases is twenty, and that number doubled between ten and eleven. Probably still going up.\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ,\" the director of medicine whispered.\n\n\"You all know what I did before I got here. Right now I imagine they're having a staff meeting at Fort Detrick. The conclusion from that meeting will be that this is not an accidental outbreak. Somebody has initiated a biological-warfare campaign against our country.\"\n\nNobody objected to Alexandre's analysis, Cathy saw. She knew why. The other physicians in the room were so bright that sometimes she wondered if she belonged on the same faculty with them\u2014she had never considered that most of them might harbor the same thoughts. All of them were world experts in their fields, at least four the very best there was. But all of them also spent time as she did, having lunch with a colleague in a different field to exchange information, because, like her, they were all truly fanatical about learning. They all wanted to know everything, and even though they knew that such a thing was impossible, even within one professional field, that didn't stop them from trying. In this case, the suddenly rigid faces concealed the same analytical process.\n\nEbola was an infectious disease, and such diseases started from a single place. There was always a first victim, called Patient Zero or the Index Case, and it spread from there. No disease just exploded in this way. CDC and USAMRIID, which had to make that conclusion official, would have the duty to assemble, organize, and present information in what was almost a legalistic structure to prove their case. For their medical institution, it was simpler, all the more so because Alex had commanded one of the divisions at Fort Detrick. Moreover, since there was a plan for everything, Johns Hopkins was one of the institutions tapped to receive cases in the event something like this took place.\n\n\"Alex,\" the director of urology said, \"the literature says that Ebola is only spread by large particles of liquid. How could it explode so fast, even at the local level?\"\n\n\"There's a sub-strain called Mayinga. It's named for a nurse who picked it up and died. The method of her infection was never determined. A colleague of mine, George Westphal, died of the same thing in 1990. We never determined the means of transmission in his case, either. There is thought that this sub-strain may spread by aerosol. It's never been proven one way or the other,\" Alex explained. \"Besides, there are ways to fortify a virus, as you know. You admit some cancer genes into the structure.\"\n\n\"And there's no treatment, nothing experimental even?\" Urology asked.\n\n\"Rousseau is doing some interesting work at Pasteur, but so far he hasn't produced any positive results.\"\n\nA physical reaction, ripped down the conference table from one physician to another. They were among the best in the world, and they knew it. They also knew now that it didn't matter against this enemy.\n\n\"How about a vaccine?\" Medicine asked. \"That shouldn't be too hard.\"\n\n\"USAMRIID has been playing with that for about ten years. The first issue is that there seems to be a specificity problem. What works for one sub-strain may not always work with another. Also, the quality-control issue is a killer. Studies I've seen predict a two-percent infection rate from the vaccine itself. Merck thinks they can do better, but trials take time to run.\"\n\n\"Ouch,\" Surgery commented with a wince. Giving one person out of fifty a disease with an eighty-percent mortality rate\u2014twenty thousand people infected per million doses, of whom roughly sixteen thousand might die from it. Applied to the population of the United States, it could mean three _million_ deaths from an attempt to safeguard the population. \"Hobson's choice.\"\n\n\"But it's too early to determine the extent of the notional epidemic, and we do not have hard data on the ability of the disease to spread in existing environmental conditions,\" Urology thought. \"So we really aren't sure what measures need to be taken yet.\"\n\n\"Correct.\" At least it was easy to explain things to these people.\n\n\"My people will see it first,\" Emergency said. \"I have to get them warned. We can't risk losing our people unnecessarily.\"\n\n\"Who tells Jack?\" Cathy wondered aloud. \"He's got to know, and he's got to know fast.\"\n\n\"Well, that's the job of USAMRIID and the Surgeon General.\"\n\n\"They're not ready to make the call yet. You just said that,\" Cathy replied. \"You're sure about this?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nSURGEON turned to Roy Altman: \"Get my helicopter up here stat.\"\n**49**\n\n**REACTION TIME**\n\n**C** OLONEL GOODMAN WAS surprised by the call. He was having a late lunch after a check-flight for a spare VH-60 just out of the maintenance shop for engine replacement. The one he used for SURGEON was on the ramp. The three-man crew walked out to it and spooled up the engines, not knowing why the schedule for the day had changed. Ten minutes after the call, he was airborne and heading northeast. Twenty minutes after that, he was circling the landing pad. Well, there was SURGEON, with SANDBOX by her side, and the Secret Service squad . . . and one other he didn't know, wearing a white coat. The colonel checked the wind and began his descent.\n\nThe faculty meeting had gone on until five minutes before. Decisions had to be made. Two complete medical floors would be cleared and tooled up for possible Ebola arrivals. The director of emergency medicine was even now assembling his staff for a lecture. Two of Alexandre's people were on the phone to Atlanta, getting updates on the total number of known cases, and announcing that Hopkins had activated its emergency plan for this contingency. It meant that Alex hadn't been able to go to his office and change clothes. Cathy was wearing her lab coat, too, but in her case it was over a normal dress. He'd been wearing greens\u2014his third set of the day\u2014for the meeting, and still was. Cathy told him not to worry about it. They had to wait for the rotor to stop before the Secret Service allowed their protectees to board the aircraft. Alex noted the presence of a backup chopper, circling a mile away, and a third circling closer in. It looked like a police bird, probably for security, he imagined.\n\nEveryone was bundled aboard. Katie\u2014he'd never met her before\u2014got the jump seat behind the pilots, supposedly the safest place on the aircraft. Alexandre hadn't ridden in a Black Hawk in years. The four-point safety belt still worked, though. Cathy snapped hers right in place. Little Katie had to be helped, but she loved her helmet, painted pink, with a bunny on it, doubtless some Marine's idea. Seconds later the rotor started turning.\n\n\"This is going a little fast,\" Alex said over the intercom.\n\n\"You really think we should wait?\" Cathy replied, keying her microphone.\n\n\"No.\" And it wouldn't do to say that he wasn't dressed for seeing the President. The aircraft lifted off, climbed about three hundred feet, and turned south.\n\n\"Colonel?\" Cathy said to the pilot in the right-front seat.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Make it fast,\" she ordered.\n\nGoodman had never heard SURGEON talk like a surgeon before. It was a voice of command that any Marine would recognize. He dropped the nose and brought the Black Hawk to 160 knots.\n\n\"You in a hurry, Colonel?\" the backup chopper called.\n\n\"The lady is. Bravo routing, direct approach.\" Next he called to BWI Airport to tell the controllers to hold arrivals and departures until he'd passed overhead. It wouldn't take long. Nobody on the ground really noticed, but two USAir 737s had to go around once, to the annoyance of their passengers. Watching from the jump seat, SANDBOX thought it was pretty neat.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT?\"\n\n\"Yes, Andrea?\" Ryan looked up.\n\n\"Your wife is inbound from Baltimore. She needs to see you about something. I don't know what. About fifteen minutes,\" Price told him.\n\n\"Nothing's wrong?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"No, no, everybody's fine, sir. SANDBOX is with her,\" the agent assured him.\n\n\"Okay.\" Ryan went back to the most recent update of the investigation.\n\n\"WELL, IT'S OFFICIALLY a clean shoot, Pat.\" Murray wanted to tell his inspector that himself. There hadn't been much doubt of that, of course.\n\n\"Wish I could have taken the last one alive,\" O'Day remarked with a grimace.\n\n\"You can stow that one. There was no chance, not with kids around. I think we'll probably arrange a little decoration for you.\"\n\n\"We have anything on that Azir guy yet?\"\n\n\"His driver's license photo and a lot of written records, but aside from that, we'd have a hard time proving he ever existed.\" It was a classic set of circumstances. Sometime Friday afternoon, \"Mordecai Azir\" had driven his car to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and caught a flight to New York-Kennedy. They knew that much from the USAir desk clerk who'd issued him the ticket in that name. Then he'd disappeared, like a cloud of smoke on a windy day. He doubtless had had a virgin set of travel documents. Maybe he'd used them in New York for an international flight. If he'd really been smart, he would have caught a cab to Newark or LaGuardia first, and taken an overseas flight from the former, or maybe a flight to Canada from the latter. Even now agents from the New York office were interviewing people at every airline counter. But nearly every airline in the world came into Kennedy, and the clerks there saw thousands per day. Maybe they would establish what flight he'd taken. If so, he'd be on the moon before they managed that feat.\n\n\"Trained spook,\" Pat O'Day observed. \"It's really not all that hard, is it?\"\n\nWhat came back to Murray were the words of his FCI chief. If you could do it once, you could do it more than once. There was every reason to believe that there was a complete espionage\u2014worse, a terrorist\u2014network in his country, sitting tight and waiting for orders . . . to do what? And to avoid detection, all its members really had to do was _nothing_. Samuel Johnson had once remarked that everybody could manage that feat.\n\nTHE HELICOPTER FLARED and landed, rather to the surprise of the newspeople who always kept an eye out. Anything unexpected at the White House was newsworthy. They recognized Cathy Ryan. Her white doctor's coat was unusual, however, and on seeing another person dressed in the same way but wearing greens, the immediate impression was of a medical emergency involving the President. This was actually correct, though a spokesman came over to say that, no, the President was fine, working at his desk; no, he didn't know why Dr. Ryan had come home early.\n\n_I'm not dressed for this_ , Alex thought. The looks of the agents on the way to the West Wing confirmed that, and now a few of _them_ wondered if SWORDSMAN might be ill, resulting in a few radio calls that were immediately rebuffed. Cathy led him down the corridor, then tried the wrong door until an agent pointed and opened the one into the Oval Office. They noted that she didn't bother with anger or embarrassment at the mistake. They'd never seen SURGEON so focused.\n\n\"Jack, this is Pierre Alexandre,\" she said without a greeting.\n\nRyan stood. He didn't have any major appointments for another two hours, and had shed his suit coat. \"Hello, Doctor,\" he said, extending his hand and taking in the manner of his visitor's dress. Then he realized that Cathy had her work coat on as well. \"What's going on, Cathy?\" he asked his wife.\n\n\"Alex?\" Nobody had even sat down yet. Two Secret Service agents had followed the physicians in, and the tension in the room was like an alarm bell for them, though they didn't know what was going on, either. Roy Altman was in another room, talking to Price.\n\n\"Mr. President, do you know what the Ebola virus is?\"\n\n\"Africa,\" Jack said. \"Some jungle disease, right? Deadly as hell. I saw a movie\u2014\"\n\n\"Pretty close,\" Alexandre confirmed. \"It's a negative-strand RNA virus. We don't know where it lives\u2014I mean, we know the place but not the host. That's the animal it lives in,\" he explained. \"And it's a killer, sir. The crude mortality rate is eighty percent.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" POTUS said, still standing. \"Go on.\"\n\n\"It's here now.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"At last count we had five cases at Hopkins. More than twenty countrywide\u2014that number is about three hours old now. Can I use the phone?\"\n\nGUS LORENZ WAS alone in his office when the phone rang. \"It's Dr. Alexandre again.\"\n\n\"Yes, Alex?\"\n\n\"Gus, what's the count now?\"\n\n\"Sixty-seven,\" the speakerphone replied. Alex was leaning over it.\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Mainly big cities. The reports are coming in mostly from major medical centers. Boston, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, one in Richmond, seven right here in Atlanta, three in Orlando . . .\" They could hear a door open and a paper being handled. \"Eighty-nine, Alex. They're still coming in.\"\n\n\"Has USAMRIID put the alert out yet?\"\n\n\"I expect that within the hour. They are having a meeting to determine\u2014\"\n\n\"Gus, I am in the White House right now. The President is here with me. I want you to tell him what you think,\" Alexandre commanded, speaking like an Army colonel again.\n\n\"What\u2014how did you\u2014Alex, it's not sure yet.\"\n\n\"Either you say it or I will. Better that you do.\"\n\n\"Mr. President?\" It was Ellen Sumter at the side door. \"I have a General Pickett on the phone for you, sir. He says it's most urgent.\"\n\n\"Tell him to stand by.\"\n\n\"John's good, but he's a little conservative,\" Alex observed. \"Gus, talk to us!\"\n\n\"Sir, Mr. President, this appears to be something other than a natural event. It looks very much like a deliberate act.\"\n\n\"Biological warfare?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President. Our data isn't yet complete enough for a real conclusion, but naturally occurring epidemics don't start this way, not all over the place.\"\n\n\"Mrs. Sumter, can you put the general on this line?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Mr. President?\" a new voice asked.\n\n\"General, I have a Dr. Lorenz on the line, and next to me is Dr. Alexandre from up the road at Hopkins.\"\n\n\"Hi, Alex.\"\n\n\"Hi, John,\" Alexandre responded.\n\n\"Then you know.\"\n\n\"How confident are you in this estimate?\" SWORDSMAN asked.\n\n\"We have at least ten focal centers. A disease doesn't get around like that by itself. The data is still coming in, sir. All these cases appearing in twenty-four hours, it's no accident, and it's no natural process. You have Alex there to explain things further. He used to work for me. He's pretty good,\" Pickett told his commander-in-chief.\n\n\"Dr. Lorenz, you concur in this?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Jesus.\" Jack looked at his wife. \"What's next?\"\n\n\"Sir, we have some options,\" Pickett replied. \"I need to get down to see you.\"\n\nRyan turned: \"Andrea!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"Get a chopper up to Fort Detrick, right now!\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"I'll be waiting, General. Dr. Lorenz, thank you. Anything else I need to know now?\"\n\n\"Dr. Alexandre can handle that.\"\n\n\"Very well, I will put Mrs. Sumter on the phone to give you the direct lines to this office.\" Jack walked to the door. \"Get on and give them what they need. Then get Arnie and Ben in here.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\nJack walked back to sit on the edge of his desk. He was silent for a moment. In a way, he was now grateful for the failed attack on his daughter. That had hit him with a dreadful immediacy. This one as yet had not, and though intellectually he knew that the ramifications were far worse, he didn't need the emotional impact for the time being.\n\n\"What do I need to know?\"\n\n\"Most of the important stuff we can't tell you yet. The issues are technical,\" Alex explained. \"How easily the disease spreads, all we have now is anecdotal and unreliable. That's the key issue. If it spreads easily by aerosol\u2014\"\n\n\"What's that?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"Spray, little droplets, like a cough or a sneeze. If it spreads that way, we're in very deep trouble.\"\n\n\"It's not supposed to,\" Cathy objected. \"Jack, this bug is very delicate. It doesn't last in the open for more than\u2014what, Alex, a few seconds?\"\n\n\"That's the theory, but some strains are more robust than others. Even if it can survive just a few minutes in the open\u2014that's pretty damned bad. If this is a strain we call Mayinga, well, we just don't know how robust it is. But it goes farther than that. Once a person gets it, then they take it home. A house is a pretty benign environment for pathogens. We have heating and air-conditioning to make it that way, and family members are in close contact. They hug. They kiss. They make love. And once somebody has it in their system, they're always pumping the things out.\"\n\n\"Things?\"\n\n\"Virus particles, Mr. President. The size of these things is measured in microns. They're far smaller than dust particles, smaller than anything you can see.\"\n\n\"You used to work at Detrick?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I was a colonel, head of pathogens. I retired, and Hopkins hired me.\"\n\n\"So you have an idea what General Pickett's plans are, the options, I mean?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. That stuff is reevaluated at least once a year. I've sat in on the committee that draws the plans up.\"\n\n\"Sit down, Doctor. I want to hear this.\"\n\nTHE MARITIME PRE-POSITION Ships had just gotten back from an exercise, and what little maintenance had been required was already done. On receiving orders from CIN-CLANTFLT, they initiated engine-start procedures, which mainly meant warming up the fuel and lubricating oils. To the north, the cruiser _Anzio_ , plus destroyers _Kidd_ and _O'Bannon,_ got orders of their own and turned west for a projected rendezvous point. The senior officer present was the skipper of the Aegis cruiser, who wondered how the hell he was supposed to get those fat merchants into the Persian Gulf without air cover, if it came to that. The United States Navy didn't go anywhere without air cover, and the nearest carrier was _Ike_ , 3,000 miles away, with Malaya in the way. On the other hand, it wasn't all that bad to be a mere captain in command of a task force without an admiral to look over his shoulder.\n\nThe first of the MPS ships to sortie from the large anchorage was USNS _Bob Hope_ , a newly built military-type roll-on\/roll-off transport displacing close to 80,000 tons, and carrying 952 vehicles. Her civilian crew had a little tradition for their movements. Oversized speakers blared \"Thanks for the Memories\" at the naval base as she passed by, just after midnight, followed by four of her sisters. Aboard, they had the full vehicle complement for a reinforced heavy brigade. Passing the reef-marked entrance, the handles were pushed down on the enunciators, demanding twenty-six knots of the big Colt-Pielstick diesels.\n\nTHEY WAITED FOR Goodley and van Damm to come in, and then it took ten minutes to bring them up to speed on what was going on. By this time, the enormity of it was sinking into the President's consciousness, and he had to struggle with emotions now in addition to intellect. He noted that Cathy, though she had to be as horrified as he was, was taking everything calmly, at least outwardly so. Well, it was her field, wasn't it?\n\n\"I didn't think Ebola could survive outside a jungle,\" Goodley said.\n\n\"It can't, at least not long-term, or it would have traveled around the world by now.\"\n\n\"It kills too fast for that,\" SURGEON objected.\n\n\"Cathy, we've had jet travel for over thirty years now. This little bastard is delicate. That works for us.\"\n\n\"How do we find out who did it?\" This came from Arnie.\n\n\"We interview all the victims, find out where they've been, and try to narrow the focal centers down to one point if we can. That's an investigative function. Epidemiologists are pretty good at that . . . but this one's a little big,\" Alexandre added.\n\n\"Could the FBI help, Doctor?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"Can't hurt.\"\n\n\"I'll get Murray over here,\" the chief of staff told the President.\n\n\"You can't treat it?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"No, what happens is the epidemic burns itself out over several generational cycles. What I mean by that\u2014okay, one person gets it. The virus reproduces in them, and then they pass it on to somebody else. Every victim becomes an imperfect host. As the disease reproduces and kills the victim, the victim passes it on to the next one. _But_ , and here's the good news, Ebola doesn't reproduce efficiently. As it goes through these generational cycles, it becomes less virulent. Most of the survivors in an outbreak happen toward the end, because the virus progressively mutates itself into a less dangerous form. The organism is so primitive that it doesn't do everything well.\"\n\n\"How many cycles before that happens, Alex?\" Cathy asked.\n\nHe shrugged. \"It's empirical. We know the process, but we can't quantify it.\"\n\n\"Lots of unknowns.\" She grimaced.\n\n\"Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Yes, Doctor?\"\n\n\"The movie you saw?\"\n\n\"What about it?\"\n\n\"The budget for that movie is quite a bit more than all the funding for research in virology. Keep that in mind. I guess it isn't sexy enough.\" Arnie started to say something. Alex cut him off with a raised hand. \"I'm not on the government payroll anymore, sir. I don't have any empire to build. My research is privately funded. I'm just stating a fact. What the hell, I guess we can't fund everything.\"\n\n\"If we can't treat it, how do we stop it?\" Ryan asked, getting things back on track. His head turned. A shadow crossed the South Lawn, and the roar of a helicopter came through the bulletproof windows.\n\n\"AHII,\" BADRAYN OBSERVED with a smile. The Internet was designed to give access to information, not to conceal it, and from a friend of a friend of a friend who was a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, he had the password to crack into that medical center's electronic mail. Another keyword eliminated all of the clutter, and there it was. It was 1400 hours on America's east coast, and Emory reported to CDC that it now had six cases of suspected hemorrhagic fever. Better yet, CDC had already replied, and that told him a lot more. Badrayn printed up both letters, and made a telephone call. Now he really had good news to deliver.\n\nRAMAN FELT THE DC-9 thump down in Pittsburgh after a brief flight that had allowed him to sit alone and think through several options. His colleague\u2014brother\u2014in Baghdad had been a little too sacrificial in his attitude, a little too dramatic, and the detail around the Iraqi leader had been pretty large, actually larger than the one on which he himself served. How to do it? The trick was to create as much confusion as possible. Perhaps when Ryan walked into the crowd to press the flesh. Take the shot, kill one or two of the other agents, then race into the crowd. If he could make it past the first line or two of spectators, all he had to do was hold up his Secret Service TD, better than a gun for getting through things\u2014everyone would think that he was chasing the subject. The key to escaping from an assassination\u2014the USSS had taught him this\u2014was in the first thirty seconds. Survive that, and you have a better-than-even chance of surviving it all. And he would be the one setting all the security arrangements for the Friday trip. How, then, could he get the President to a spot in which he would have that option? Take POTUS. Take Price. Take one other. Then melt into the crowd. Probably better to fire from the hip. Best if the citizens didn't see the gun in his hand until after the shots. Yes, that might work, he thought, taking off the lap belt and standing. There would be a local Treasury agent at the end of the jetway. They'd go right to the hotel whose large dining room would host President Ryan's speech. Raman would have all day and part of tomorrow to think it through, under the very eyes of fellow agents. How challenging.\n\nMAJOR GENERAL JOHN Pickett, it turned out, was a graduate of Yale Medical School, added to which were a pair of doctorates\u2014molecular biology from Harvard, and public health from UCLA. He was a pale, spare man who looked small in his uniform\u2014he hadn't had time to change and was wearing camouflage BDUs\u2014making his parachutist's wings look very out of place. Two colonels came with him, followed by Director Murray of the FBI, who'd raced over from the Hoover Building. The three officers came to attention as they walked in, but now the Oval Office was too small, and the President led them across the hall into the Roosevelt Room. On the way a Secret Service agent handed the general a fax that was still warm from the machine in the secretaries' room.\n\n\"Case count is now one hundred thirty-seven, according to Atlanta,\" Pickett said. \"Fifteen cities, fifteen states, coast-to-coast.\"\n\n\"Hi, John,\" Alexandre said, taking his hand. \"I've seen three of them myself.\"\n\n\"Alex, glad to see you, buddy.\" He looked up. \"I guess Alex has briefed everybody in on the baseline stuff?\"\n\n\"Correct,\" Ryan said.\n\n\"Do you have any immediate questions, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"You're certain that this is a deliberate act?\"\n\n\"Bombs do not go off by accident.\" Pickett unfolded a map. A number of cities were marked with red dots. One of his attending colonels placed three more down: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.\n\n\"Convention cities. Just how I would have done it,\" Alexandre breathed. \"Looks like Bio-War 95, John.\"\n\n\"Close. That's a wargame we played with the Defense Nuclear Agency. We used anthrax for that one. Alex here was one of our best for planning offensive bio,\" Pickett told his audience. \"He was Red Team commander for this.\"\n\n\"Isn't that against the law?\" Cathy said, her face outraged at the revelation.\n\n\"Offense and defense are two sides of the same coin, Dr. Ryan,\" Pickett replied, defending his former subordinate. \"We have to think like the bad guys do if we're going to stop them.\"\n\n\"Operational concept?\" the President asked. He understood that better than his wife did.\n\n\"Biological warfare at the strategic level means starting a chain reaction within your target population. You try to infect as many people as possible\u2014and that's not very many; we're not talking nuclear weapons here. The idea is for the people, the victims, to spread it for you. That's the elegance of bio-warfare. Your victims actually do most of the killing. Any epidemic starts low and ramps up, slowly at first, like a tangential curve, and then it rockets up geometrically. So, if you're using bio in the offensive role, you try to jump-start it by infecting as large a number of people as you can, and you opt for people who travel. Las Vegas is the tip-off. It's a convention city, and sure enough they just had a big one. The conventioneers get infected, get on the airplanes to fly home, and they spread it for you.\"\n\n\"Any chance of discovering how they did it?\" Murray asked. He showed his ID so that the general would know who he was.\n\n\"Probably a waste of time. The other nice thing about bio weapons is\u2014well, in this case the incubation period is a minimum of three days. Whatever distribution system was used has been picked up, bagged, and trucked off to a landfill. No physical evidence, no proof of who did it to us.\"\n\n\"Save that for later, General. What do we do? I see a lot of states with no infection\u2014\"\n\n\"That's just for now, Mr. President. There's a three- to ten-day lead time on Ebola. We don't know how far it's gotten already. The only way we can find out is by waiting.\"\n\n\"But we have to initiate CURTAIN CALL, John,\" Alexandre said. \"And we have to do it fast.\"\n\nMAHMOUD HAJI WAS reading. He had an office adjoining his bedroom, and actually preferred working here because of the familiar surroundings. He did not enjoy being disturbed here, however, and so his security people were surprised at his response to the telephone call. Twenty minutes later, they let the visitor in, without an escort.\n\n\"Has it begun?\"\n\n\"It has begun.\" Badrayn handed over the CDC printout. \"We will know more tomorrow.\"\n\n\"You have served well,\" Daryaei told him, dismissing him. When the door was closed, he made a telephone call.\n\nALAHAD DIDN'T KNOW how circuitous the link to him was, merely that it was an overseas call. He suspected London, but he didn't know and wouldn't ask. The inquiry was entirely routine, except for the time of day\u2014it was evening in England, after business hours. The variety of the rug and the price were the key parts, telling him what he needed to know, in a code long since memorized and never written down. In knowing little, he could reveal little. That part of the tradecraft he did fully understand. His own part came next. Placing the Back in a Few Minutes sign in his window, he walked out, locked the door, and went around the corner, proceeding two blocks to a pay phone. There he made a call to pass on his last order to Aref Raman.\n\nTHE MEETINGS HAD started in the Oval Office, were transferred to the Roosevelt Room, and were now all the way down the hall in the Cabinet Room, where more than one image of George Washington could watch the proceedings. The Cabinet secretaries arrived almost together, and their arrival couldn't be a secret. Too many official cars, too many guards, too many faces known to the reporters.\n\nPat Martin came, representing Justice. Bretano was SecDef, with Admiral Jackson sitting on the wall behind him. (Everyone brought a deputy of some sort, mainly to take notes.) Winston was SecTreas, having walked from across the street. Commerce and Interior were survivors from the Durling presidency, actually having been appointed by Bob Fowler. Most of the rest were of undersecretary rank, holding on from presidential apathy in some cases, and in others because they appeared to know what they were doing. But none of them knew what he was doing now. Ed Foley arrived, summoned by the President despite CIA's previous loss of Cabinet rank. Also present were Arnie van Damm, Ben Goodley, Director Murray, the First Lady, three Army officers, and Dr. Alexandre.\n\n\"We will be in order,\" the President said. \"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. There's no time for a preamble here. We face a national emergency. The decisions we make here today will have serious effects on our country. In the corner is Major General John Pickett. He's a physician and scientist, and I will now turn the meeting over to him. General, do your brief.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, I am commanding general at Fort Detrick. Earlier today, we started getting some very disturbing reports . . .\"\n\nRyan tuned the general out. He'd heard it all twice now. Instead he read over the file Pickett had handed him. The folder was bordered in the usual red-and-white-striped tape. The sticker in the center read TOP SECRET - AFFLICTION, rather an appropriate code name for the special-access compartment this one was in, SWORDSMAN thought. Then he opened the folder and started reading OPPLAN CURTAIN CALL. There were four variants of the plan, Jack saw. He turned to Option Four. That was called SOLITARY, and that name, too, was appropriate. Reading through the executive summary chilled him, and Jack found himself turning to look over at George, hanging there on the wall, and wanting to ask, _Now what the hell do I do?_ But George wouldn't have understood. He didn't know from airliners and viruses and nuclear weapons, did he?\n\n\"How bad is it now?\" HHS asked.\n\n\"Just over two hundred cases have been reported to CDC as of fifteen minutes ago. I emphasize that these have all appeared in less than twenty-four hours,\" General Pickett told the Secretary.\n\n\"Who did it?\" Agriculture asked.\n\n\"Set that aside,\" the President said. \"We will address that issue later. What we have to decide now is the best chance we have to contain the epidemic.\"\n\n\"I just can't believe that we can't treat\u2014\"\n\n\"Believe it,\" Cathy Ryan said. \"You know how many viral diseases we know how to cure?\"\n\n\"Well, no,\" HUD admitted.\n\n\"None.\" It constantly amazed her how ignorant some people could be on medical issues.\n\n\"Therefore containment is the only option,\" General Pickett went on.\n\n\"How do you contain a whole country?\" It was Cliff Rutledge, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy, sitting in for Scott Adler.\n\n\"That's the problem we face,\" President Ryan said. \"Thank you, General. I'll take it from here. The only way to contain the epidemic is to shut down all places of assembly\u2014theaters, shopping malls, sports stadia, business offices, everything\u2014and also to shut off all interstate travel. To the best of our information, at least thirty states are so far untouched by this disease. We would do well to keep it that way. We can accomplish that by preventing all interstate travel until such time as we have a handle on the severity of the disease organism we are facing, and then we can come up with less severe countermeasures.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, that's unconstitutional,\" Pat Martin said at once.\n\n\"Explain,\" Ryan ordered.\n\n\"Travel is a constitutionally protected right. Even inside states, any restriction of travel is a constitutional violation under the Lemuel Penn case\u2014he was a black Army officer who was murdered by the Klan in the sixties. That's a Supreme Court precedent,\" the head of the Criminal Division reported.\n\n\"I understand that I\u2014excuse me, just about everybody in the room\u2014was sworn to uphold the Constitution. But if upholding it means killing off a few million citizens, what have we accomplished?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"We can't _do_ that!\" HUD insisted.\n\n\"General, what happens if we don't?\" Martin asked, surprising Ryan.\n\n\"There is no precise answer. There cannot be, because we do not know the ease of transmission for this virus yet. If it is an aerosol, and there is reason to suspect that it is\u2014well, we've got a hundred computer models we can use. Problem is deciding which one. Worst case? Twenty million deaths. At that point, what happens is that society breaks down. Doctors and nurses flee the hospitals, people lock themselves in their homes, and the epidemic burns out pretty much like the Black Death did in the fourteenth century. Human interactions cease, and because of that the disease stops spreading.\"\n\n\"Twenty million? How bad was the Black Death?\" Martin asked, his face somewhat ashen.\n\n\"Records are sketchy. There was no real census system back then. Best data is England,\" Pickett replied. \"It depopulated that country by half. The plague lasted about four years. Europe took about one hundred fifty years to return to the 1347 population level.\"\n\n_\"Shit,\"_ breathed Interior.\n\n\"Is it really that dangerous, General?\" Martin persisted.\n\n\"Potentially yes. The problem, sir, is that if you take no action at all, and then you find out that it is that virulent, then it's just too late.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Martin turned. \"Mr. President, I do not see that we have much of a choice here.\"\n\n\"You just said it was against the law, damn it!\" HUD shouted.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and although I think I know how the Supreme Court would rule on this, there has never been a case in point, and it could be argued, and the process would have to deal with it.\"\n\n\"What changed your mind, Pat?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Twenty million reasons, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"If we flout our own laws, then what are we?\" Cliff Rutledge asked.\n\n\"Alive,\" Martin answered quietly. \"Maybe.\"\n\n\"I am willing to listen to arguments for fifteen minutcs,\" Ryan said. \"Then we have to come to a decision.\"\n\nIt was lively.\n\n\"If we violate our own Constitution,\" Rutledge said, \"then nobody in the world can trust us!\" HUD and HHS agreed.\n\n\"What about the practical considerations?\" Agriculture objected. \"People have to eat.\"\n\n\"What kind of country are we going to turn over to our children if we\u2014\"\n\n\"What do we turn over to them if they're dead?\" George Winston snapped back at HUD.\n\n\"Things like this don't happen today!\"\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, would you like to come up to my hospital and see, sir?\" Alexandre asked from his seat in the corner.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Ryan said, checking his watch. \"I am calling the issue on the table.\"\n\nDefense, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce voted aye. All the rest voted no. Ryan looked at them for a long few seconds.\n\n\"The ayes have it,\" the President said coldly. \"Thank you for your support. Director Murray, the FBI will render all assistance required by CDC and USAMRIID to ascertain the focal centers of this epidemic. That has absolute and unconditional priority over any other matter.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Mr. Foley, every intelligence asset we have goes into this. You will also work in conjunction with the medical experts. This came from somewhere, and whoever did it has committed an act of war, using weapons of mass destruction against our country. We need to find out who that was, Ed. All the intelligence agencies will report directly to you. You have statutory authority to coordinate all intelligence activities. Tell the other agencies that you have my order to exercise it.\"\n\n\"We'll do our best, sir.\"\n\n\"Secretary Bretano, I am declaring a state of national emergency. All Reserve and National Guard formations are to be activated immediately and placed under federal command. You have this contingency plan in the Pentagon.\" Ryan held the CURTAIN CALL folder up. \"You will execute Option Four, SOLITARY, at the earliest possible moment.\"\n\n\"I will do that, sir.\"\n\nRyan looked down the table at the Secretary of Transportation. \"Mr. Secretary, the air-traffic-control system belongs to you. When you get back to your office, you will order all aircraft in flight to proceed to their destinations and stop there. All aircraft on the ground will remain there, commencing at six o'clock this evening.\"\n\n\"No.\" SecTrans stood. \"Mr. President, I will not do that. I believe it to be an illegal act, and I will not break the law.\"\n\n\"Very well, sir. I will accept your resignation effective immediately. You're the deputy?\" Ryan said to the woman sitting behind him.\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President, I am.\"\n\n\"Will you execute my order?\"\n\nShe looked around the room without really knowing what to do. She'd heard it all, but she was a career civil servant, unaccustomed to making a hard call without political coverage.\n\n\"I don't like it, either,\" Ryan said. The room was invaded by the roar of jet engines, an aircraft taking off from Washington National. \"What if that airplane's carrying death somewhere? Do we just let it happen?\" he asked so quietly she could barely hear.\n\n\"I will carry out your order, sir.\"\n\n\"You know, Murray,\" the former\u2014he wasn't sure yet\u2014SecTrans said, \"you could arrest the man right now. He's breaking the law.\"\n\n\"Not today, sir,\" Murray replied, staring at his President. \"Somebody's going to have to decide what the law is first.\"\n\n\"If anyone else in the room feels the need to leave federal service over this issue, I will accept your resignations without prejudice\u2014but _please_ think what you are doing. If I'm wrong on this, fine, I'm wrong, and I'll pay the price for that. But if the doctors are right and we do nothing, we've got more blood on our hands than Hitler ever did. I need your help and your support.\" Ryan stood and walked out of the room as the others struggled to their feet. He moved fast. He had to. He entered the Oval Office, turned right to the presidential sitting room, and barely made it to the bathroom in time. Seconds later, Cathy found him there, flushing down a bowlful of vomit. \"Am I doing the right thing?\" he asked, still on his knees.\n\n\"You've got my vote, Jack,\" SURGEON told him.\n\n\"You look great,\" van Damm observed, catching POTUS in rather an undignified posture.\n\n\"Why didn't you say anything, Arnie?\"\n\n\"Because you didn't need me to, Mr. President,\" the chief of staff replied.\n\nGeneral Pickett and the other physicians were waiting when he came back into the office. \"Sir, we just had a fax from CDC. There are two cases at Fort Stewart. That's the 24th Mech's home base.\"\n**50**\n\n**SPECIAL REPORT**\n\n**I** T STARTED WITH NATIONAL Guard armories. Virtually every city and town in America had one, and in each was a duty sergeant, or perhaps an officer, sitting at a desk to answer the phone. When the phone rang, a voice from the Pentagon spoke a code word that designated an activation order. The duty person in the armory would then alert the unit commander, and more calls were made, branching out like the limbs of a tree, with every recipient detailed to call several others. It usually took an hour or so for everyone to get the word\u2014or nearly everyone, as some were inevitably out of town, traveling for either work or vacation. Senior Guard commanders usually worked directly for the governors of the several states, as the National Guard is a hybrid institution, partly a state militia and partly United States Army (or Air Force, in the case of the Air National Guard, which gave many of the state governors access to state-of-the-art fighter aircraft). These senior Guard officers, surprised by the activation orders, reported the situation to their governors, asking for guidance which the state executives were as yet in no position to give, since mainly they didn't know what was going on yet, either. But at the company and battalion level, officers and men (and women) hurried home from their civilian jobs, citizen soldiers that they were, donned their woodland-pattern BDU fatigues, buffed their boots, and drove to the local armory to form up with their squads and platoons. Once there they were startled to see that they were supposed to draw weapons and, more disturbingly, their MOPP gear. MOPP, for Mission-Oriented Protective Posture, was the chemical-warfare equipment in which they had all trained at one time or another, and which every person in uniform cordially detested. There were the usual jokes and good humor, stories of work, tales of spouses and children, while the officers and senior non-coms met in conference rooms to find out what the hell was going on. They emerged from those brief meetings angry, confused, and for the better informed of them, frightened. Outside the armories, vehicles were fired up. Inside, TV sets were switched on.\n\nIN ATLANTA, THE special agent in charge of the FBI's Atlanta Field Division drove with sirens screaming to CDC, followed by ten more agents. In Washington, a number of CIA and other intelligence officers drove more sedately to the Hoover Building to set up a joint task force. In both cases, the job was to figure out how the epidemic had started and from that to try to determine its point of origin. These people were not all civilians. The Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency were mainly uniformed organizations, and among that grouping grim-faced officers let everyone know that something new in American history had taken place. If this truly were a deliberate attack against the United States of America, then a nation-state had made use of what was delicately termed a \"weapon of mass destruction.\" Then they explained to their civilian counterparts what had been U.S. policy for two generations for responding to such an eventuality.\n\nIT WAS ALL happening too fast, of course, since emergencies are by definition things for which one cannot plan terribly well. That extended to the President himself, who walked into the White House press room, accompanied by General Pickett of USAMRIID. Only thirty minutes earlier the White House had told the major networks that the President had an announcement to make, and that on this occasion, the government would exercise its option to demand airtime instead of requesting it\u2014since the 1920s, the government had adopted the position that it owned the airwaves\u2014thus supplanting all the talk shows and other programming which preceded the evening news. Lead-in commentary told viewers that nobody knew what this was about, but that there had been an emergency Cabinet meeting only minutes before.\n\n\"My fellow Americans,\" President Ryan began, his face in most American homes, and his voice in every car on the road. Those who had become accustomed to their new President took note of the pale face (Mrs. Abbot hadn't had time to do his makeup) and grim voice. The message was grimmer still.\n\nTHE CEMENT TRUCK had a radio, of course. It even had a tape and CD player, since, work-vehicle or not, it had been designed for the use of an American citizen. They were in Indiana now, having crossed both the Mississippi River and Illinois earlier in the day on their trek to their nation's capital. Holbrook, who had no use for the words of any President, hit the scan button, only to find that the same voice was on all the stations. That was sufficiently unusual that he stayed with one of them. Brown, driving the truck, saw that cars and trucks were pulling over\u2014not many at first, but more and more as the speech progressed, their drivers, like himself, leaning down to listen to the radio.\n\n\"ACCORDINGLY, BY EXECUTIVE order of the President, your government is taking the following actions:\n\n\"One, until further notice, all schools and colleges in the country will be closed.\n\n\"Two, all businesses except for those providing essential services\u2014the media, health care, food, law-enforcement, and fire protection\u2014will also be closed until further notice.\n\n\"Three, all places of public assembly, theaters, restaurants, bars and the like, will be closed.\n\n\"Fourth, all interstate travel is suspended until further notice. This means all commercial air travel, interstate trains and buses, and private-passenger automobiles. Trucks carrying foodstuffs will be allowed to travel under military escort. The same is true of essential supplies, pharmaceuticals and the like.\n\n\"Fifth, I have activated the National Guard in all the fifty states and placed it under federal control to maintain public order. A state of martial law is now in force throughout the country.\n\n\"We urge our citizens\u2014no, let me speak more informally. Ladies and gentlemen, all that is required for us to weather this crisis is a little common sense. We do not yet know how dangerous this disease is. The measures I have ordered today are precautionary in nature. They seem, and indeed they are, extreme measures. The reason for that, as I have told you, is that this virus is potentially the most deadly organism on the planet, but we do not yet know how dangerous it is. We _do_ know that a few simple measures can limit its spread, no matter how deadly it is, and in the interest of public safety, I have ordered those measures. This action is being taken on the best scientific advice available. To protect yourselves, remember how the disease is spread. I have General John Pickett, a senior Army physician and an expert in the field of infectious diseases, to provide medical advice to all of us. General?\" Ryan stepped away from the microphone.\n\n\"WHAT THE FUCK!\" Holbrook shouted. \"He can't do that!\"\n\n\"Think so?\" Brown followed an eighteen-wheeler onto the shoulder. They were a hundred miles from the Indiana-Ohio border. About two hours driving this pig, he thought. No way he'd get there before the local Guard closed the road.\n\n\"I think we better find a motel, Pete.\"\n\n\"SO WHAT DO I do?\" the FBI agent asked in Chicago.\n\n\"Strip. Hang your clothes on the door.\" There was no time and little spare room for the niceties, and he was, after all, a physician. His guest didn't blush. Dr. Klein decided, on full surgical garb, long-sleeve greens instead of the more popular sort. There were not enough of the plastic space suits to go around, and his staff would use all of those. They had to. They got closer. They handled liquids. They touched the patients. His medical center now had nine symptomatic patients who tested positive. Six of those were married, and of the spouses, four tested positive for Ebola antibodies. The test gave an occasional false-positive reading; even so it was not the least bit pleasant to tell someone\u2014well, he did that often enough with AIDS patients. They were testing children now. That really hurt.\n\nThe protective outfit he gave the agent was made of the usual cotton, but the hospital had taken a number of sets and sprayed them with disinfectant, especially the masks. The agent also was given a pair of laboratory glasses, the broad plastic ones known to chemistry students.\n\n\"Okay,\" Klein told the agent. \"Don't get close. No closer than six feet, and you should be completely safe. If she vomits or coughs, if she has a convulsion, stay clear. Dealing with that sort of thing is our job, not yours. Even if she dies right in front of you, don't touch anything.\"\n\n\"I understand. You going to lock the office up?\" She pointed to the gun hanging with her clothes.\n\n\"Yes, I will. And when you're done, give me your notes. I'll run them through the copying machine.\"\n\n\"How come?\"\n\n\"It uses a very bright light to make copies. The ultraviolet will almost certainly kill any virus particle that might find its way to the paper,\" Professor Klein explained. Even now in Atlanta, rapid experiments were under way to determine just how robust the Ebola particles were. That would help define the level of precaution that was necessary in hospitals first of all, and perhaps also provide useful guidance for the general population.\n\n\"Uh, Doc, why not just let me make the copies?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Klein shook his head. \"Yes, I suppose that will work, too, won't it?\"\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT.\" IT was Barry of CNN. \"These steps you're taking, sir, are they legal?\"\n\n\"Barry, I do not have the answer to that,\" Ryan said, his face tired and drawn. \"Whether they're legal or not, I am convinced that they are necessary.\" As he spoke, a White House staffer was passing out surgical masks for the assembled reporters. That was Arnie's idea. They'd been procured from the nearby George Washington University Hospital.\n\n\"But, Mr. President, you can't break the law. What if you're wrong?\"\n\n\"Barry, there's a fundamental difference between what I do in my job and what you do in yours. If you make a mistake, you can make a retraction. We just saw that, only yesterday, with one of your colleagues, didn't we? But, Barry, if I make a mistake in a situation like this, how do I retract a death? How do I retract thousands of deaths? I don't have that luxury, Barry,\" the President said. \"If it turns out that what I am doing is wrong, then you can have at me all you want. That's part of my job, too, and I'm getting used to that. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe I'm just afraid of letting people die for no good reason when I have the power to prevent it.\"\n\n\"But you don't really know, do you?\"\n\n\"No,\" Jack admitted, \"none of us really knows. This is one of those times when you have to go with your best guess. I wish I could sound more confident, but I can't, and I won't lie about it.\"\n\n\"Who did it, Mr. President?\" another reporter asked.\n\n\"We don't know, and for the moment I will not speculate as to the origin of this epidemic.\" And that was a lie, Ryan knew even as he was saying it, speaking the lie right after stating that he wouldn't lie, because the situation demanded that, too. What a crazy fucking world it was.\n\nIT WAS THE worst interview of her life. The woman, she saw, called the Index Case, was attractive, or had been so a day or two previously. Now skin that had so recently qualified as a peaches-and-cream complexion was sallow and mottled with red-purple blotches. Worst of all, she knew. She had to know, the agent thought, hiding behind her mask, holding her felt-tip pen in the rubber gloves (nothing sharp that might penetrate the thin latex), taking her notes, and learning not very much. She had to know that this sort of medical care was not the usual thing, that the medics were afraid to touch her, and that now a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not even approach her bed.\n\n\"Aside from the trip to Kansas City?\"\n\n\"Nothing really,\" the voice replied, as though from the bottom of a grave. \"Working at my desk, getting ready for the fall orders. Went to the housewares show at McCormick Center two days.\"\n\nThere were some more questions, none of which turned up any immediately useful information. The woman in the agent wanted to reach out, touch her hand, provide some measure of comfort and sympathy but no. The agent had just learned the previous week that she was pregnant with her first child. She had custody of two lives now, not just her own, and it was all she could do to keep her hand from shaking.\n\n\"Thank you. We'll be back to you,\" the agent said, rising from her metal chair and moving to the door. Opening it, she pulled her shoulders in so as not to touch the door frame, and proceeded to the next room down the hall for the next interview. Klein was in the corridor, discussing something with another staffer\u2014doc or nurse, the agent couldn't tell.\n\n\"How'd it go?\" the professor asked.\n\n\"What are her chances?\" the agent asked.\n\n\"Essentially zero,\" Mark Klein replied. For diseases like this one, Patient Zero was just that.\n\n\"COMPENSATION? THEY ASK _us_ for compensation!\" the Defense Minister demanded before the Foreign Minister could speak.\n\n\"Minister, I merely convey the words of others,\" Adler reminded his hosts.\n\n\"We have had two officers from your Air Force examine the missile fragments. Their judgment confirms our own. It is a Pen-Lung-13, their new heat-seeker with the long range, a development of a Russian weapon. It's definite now, in addition to the radar evidence developed from your ships,\" Defense added. \"The shooting of the airliner was a deliberate act. You know that. So do we. So, tell me, Mr. Adler, where does America stand in this dispute?\"\n\n\"We wish nothing more than the restoration of peace,\" SecState replied, confirming his own predictions. \"I would also point out that the PRC, in allowing my direct flights between their capital and yours, are showing a measure of goodwill.\"\n\n\"Quite so,\" the Foreign Minister replied. \"Or so it might seem to the casual observer, but tell me, Mr. Adler, what do they really want?\"\n\nSo much, the American Secretary of State told himself, for settling the situation down. These two were as smart as he was, and even more angry. Then that changed.\n\nA secretary knocked, then entered, annoying his boss until they exchanged a few words in Mandarin. A telex was passed over and read. Then another was given directly to the American.\n\n\"It seems that there is a serious problem in your country, Mr. Secretary.\"\n\nTHE PRESS CONFERENCE was cut off. Ryan left the room, returned to the Oval Office and sat on the couch with his wife.\n\n\"How did it go?\"\n\n\"Didn't you watch?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"We were talking over some things,\" Cathy explained. Then Arnie came in.\n\n\"Not bad, boss,\" the chief of staff opined. \"You will have to meet with people from the Senate this evening. I just worked that out with the leadership on both sides. This will make the elections today a little interesting and\u2014\"\n\n\"Arnie, until further notice we will not discuss politics in this building. Politics is about ideology and theory. We have to deal with cold facts now,\" SWORDSMAN said.\n\n\"You can't get away from it, Jack. Politics _is_ real, and if this is the deliberate attack the general here says it is, then it's war, and war _is_ a political act. You're leading the government. You have to lead the Congress, and that is a political act. You're not a philosopher king. You're the President of a democratic country,\" van Damm reminded him.\n\n\"All right.\" Ryan sighed his surrender to the moment. \"What else?\"\n\n\"Bretano called. The plan is being implemented right now. In a few minutes, the air-traffic system tells all the airliners to stop flying. There's probably a lot of chaos in the airports right now.\"\n\n\"I bet.\" Jack closed his eyes, and rubbed them.\n\n\"Sir, you don't have much choice in the matter,\" General Pickett told the President.\n\n\"How do I get back to Hopkins?\" Alexandre asked. \"I have a department to run and patients to treat.\"\n\n\"I told Bretano that people will be allowed to leave Washington,\" van Damm informed the others in the room. \"The same will be true of all big cities with borders nearby. New York, Philadelphia and like that. We have to let people go home, right?\"\n\nPickett nodded. \"Yes, they're safer there. It's unrealistic to assume that the plan will be properly implemented until midnight or so.\"\n\nThen Cathy spoke: \"Alex, I guess you'll come with me. I have to fly up, too.\"\n\n\"What?\" Ryan's eyes opened.\n\n\"Jack, I'm a doctor, remember?\"\n\n\"You're an _eye_ doctor, Cathy. People can wait to get new glasses,\" Jack insisted.\n\n\"At the staff meeting today, we agreed that everybody has to pitch in. We can't just leave it to the nurses and the kids\u2014the residents\u2014to treat these patients. I'm a clinician. We all have to take our turn on this, honey,\" SURGEON told her husband.\n\n\"No! No, Cathy, it's too dangerous.\" Jack turned to face her. \"I won't let you.\"\n\n\"Jack, all those times you went away, the things you never told me about, the dangerous things, you were doing your job,\" she said reasonably. \"I'm a doctor. I have a job, too.\"\n\n\"It's not all that dangerous, Mr. President,\" Alexandre put in. \"You just have to follow the procedures. I work with AIDS patients every day and\u2014\"\n\n\"No, God damn it!\"\n\n\"Because I'm a girl?\" Caroline Ryan asked gently. \"It worries me some, too, Jack, but I'm a professor at a medical school. I teach students how to be doctors. I teach them what their professional responsibilities are. One of those responsibilities is to be there for your patients. You can't run away from your duties. I can't, either, Jack.\"\n\n\"I'd like to see the procedures you've set up, Alex,\" Pickett said.\n\n\"Glad to have you, John.\"\n\nJack continued to look in his wife's face. He knew she was strong, and he'd always known that she sometimes treated patients with contagious diseases\u2014AIDS produced some serious eye complications. He'd just never thought much about it. Now he had to: \"What if\u2014\"\n\n\"It won't. I have to be careful. I think you did it to me again.\" She kissed him in front of the others. \"My husband has the most remarkable timing,\" she told the audience.\n\nIt was too much for Ryan. His hands started to shake a little and his eyes teared up. He blinked them away. \"Please, Cathy . . .\"\n\n\"Would you have listened to me on the way to that submarine, Jack?\" She kissed him again and stood.\n\nTHERE WAS RESISTANCE, but not all that much. Four governors told their adjutant generals\u2014the usual title for a state's senior National Guard officer\u2014not to obey the presidential order, and three of those wavered until the Secretary of Defense called to make the order clear and personal, threatening them with immediate relief, arrest, and court-martial. Some talked about organizing protests, but that took time, and the green vehicles were already starting to move, their orders modified in many cases, like the Philadelphia Cavalry, one of the Army's most ancient and revered units, whose members had escorted George Washington to his inauguration more than two centuries earlier, and whose current troopers now headed for the bridges on the Delaware River. Local TV and radio told people that commuters would be allowed to go home without inhibitions until nine that night, and until midnight with identification check. If it was easy, people would be allowed to get home. That happened in most cases, but not all, and motels filled up all across America.\n\nChildren, told that schools would be closed for at least a week, greeted the news with enthusiasm, puzzled at the concern and even outright fear their parents displayed.\n\nPharmacies which sold things like surgical masks ran out of them in a matter of minutes, their clerks mainly not knowing why until someone switched on a radio.\n\nIN PITTSBURGH, STRANGELY, the Secret Service agents going over security arrangements for President Ryan's coming visit were late getting the word. While most on the advance team hustled into the bar to watch the President on TV, Raman broke away to make a phone call. He called his home, waited for the four rings until his answering machine kicked in, then punched the code to access the messages. It was a false one, as before, announcing the arrival of a rug he hadn't ordered and a price he would not have to pay. Raman experienced a slight chill. He was now free to complete his mission at his discretion. That meant soon, as it was expected that he would die in the effort. This he was willing to do, though he thought he might have a chance now, as he walked to the bar. The other three agents stood right by the TV. When someone objected to their blockage of his view, a set of credentials were held up.\n\n\"Holy shit!\" the senior man from the Pittsburgh office said for the rest. \"Now what do we do?\"\n\nIT WAS TRICKY with international flights. The word was only now getting to the embassies in Washington. They communicated the nature of the emergency to their governments, but for the European ones, senior officials were at home, many getting into bed when the calls came. These had to get into their offices, have their own meetings, and decide what to do, but the long duration of over-water flights mainly gave time for that. Soon it was decided that all passengers on flights from America would be quarantined\u2014how long, they didn't know yet. Urgent calls to the American Federal Aviation Administration made arrangements to allow flights to America to sit on the ground, be refueled, and then depart for their points of origin. These aircraft were identified as uncontaminated, their passengers allowed to proceed home, though there would be bureaucratic mistakes along the way.\n\nThat the financial markets would be closed was made apparent by an Ebola case which arrived in Northwestern University Medical Center. He was a commodities trader who customarily worked on the raucous floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the news was quick to get out. All the exchanges would be closed, and the next worry for the business and financial community was the effect this would have on their activities. But mainly people watched the TV coverage. Every network found its medical expert and gave him or her free rein to explain the problem, usually in too much detail. Cable channels ran science specials on Ebola outbreaks in Zaire, showing just how far flu symptoms might lead. What resulted was a quiet, private sort of panic throughout the nation, people in their homes, inspecting their pantries to see how much food they had, watching TV and worrying as they also struggled to ignore. When neighbors talked, it was at a distance.\n\nTHE CASE COUNT reached five hundred just before eight o'clock in Atlanta. It had been a long day for Gus Lorenz, gyrating as he did between his laboratory and his office. There was danger for him and his staff. Fatigue made for errors and accidents. Normally a sedate establishment, one of the world's finest research laboratories, the people there were accustomed to working in a calm, orderly way. Now it was frantic. Blood samples couriered to them had to be tagged and tested, and the results faxed to the hospital of origin. Lorenz struggled throughout the day to reorganize his people and their functions, so as to keep staff on duty around the clock, but also not to overly fatigue anyone. He had to apply that to himself as well, and when he returned to his office to catch a nap, he found someone waiting inside.\n\n\"FBI,\" the man said, holding up his ID folder. It was actually the local SAC, a very senior agent who'd been running his own office over a cellular phone. He was a tall, quiet man, slow to excite. In crisis situations, he told his force of agents, you think first. There was always time to screw things up, and there had to be time to get them right, too.\n\n\"What can I do for you?\" Lorenz asked, taking his seat.\n\n\"Sir, I need you to brief me in. The Bureau is working with a few other agencies to see how this all started. We're interviewing every victim to try and determine where they got sick, and we figure you're the expert to ask about the overall situation. Where did all this start?\"\n\nTHE MILITARY DIDN'T know where it had started, but it was rapidly becoming apparent where it had gotten to. Fort Stewart, Georgia, had only been the first. Nearly every Army base was near some big city or other. Fort Stewart was within easy driving distance of Savannah and Atlanta. Fort Hood was close to Dallas\u2014Fort Worth. Fort Campbell an hour from Nashville, where Vanderbilt had already reported cases. The personnel lived mainly in barracks, where they shared common showers and toilet facilities, and at these bases the senior medical officers were quite literally terrified. Naval personnel lived the most closely of all. Their ships were enclosed environments. Those ships at sea were instantly ordered to remain there while the shoreside situation was evaluated. It was soon determined that every major base was at risk, and though some units\u2014mainly infantry and military police\u2014deployed to augment the National Guard, medics kept an eye on every soldier and Marine. Soon they started finding men and women with flu symptoms. These were instantly isolated, put in protective MOPP gear and flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital that was receiving suspected Ebola cases. By midnight it would be clear that, until further notice, the U.S. military was a contaminated instrument. Urgent calls into the National Military Command Center reported which units had found cases, and on that information whole battalions were separated from others and kept that way, the personnel eating combat rations because their mess halls were closed, and thinking about an enemy they couldn't see.\n\n\"JESUS, JOIIN,\" CHAVEZ said in the latter's office.\n\nClark nodded silently. His wife, Sandy, was an instructor in nursing in a teaching hospital, and her life, he knew, might be at risk. She worked a medical floor. If an infected patient arrived, he would come to her unit, and Sandy would take the lead to show her students how to treat such patients safely.\n\nSafely? he asked himself. Sure. The thought brought back dark memories and the sort of fear he hadn't known in many years. This attack on his country\u2014Clark hadn't been told yet, but he never had learned to believe in coincidences\u2014didn't put him at risk, but it put his wife at risk.\n\n\"Who do you suppose did it?\" It was a dumb question, and it generated a dumber reply.\n\n\"Somebody who doesn't like us a whole hell of a lot,\" John answered crossly.\n\n\"Sorry.\" Chavez looked out the window and thought for a few seconds. \"It's one hell of a gamble, John.\"\n\n\"If we find out it is ... and operational security on something like this is a motherfucker.\"\n\n\"Roge-o, Mr. C. The people we've been looking at?\"\n\n\"That's a possibility. Others, too, I suppose.\" He checked his watch. Director Foley should be back from Washington by now, and they should head up to his office. It took only a couple of minutes.\n\n\"Hi, John,\" the DCI said, looking up from his desk. Mary Pat was there, too.\n\n\"Not an accident, is it?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"No, it's not. We're setting up a joint task force. The FBI is talking to people inside the country. If we get leads, it'll be our job to work outside the borders. You two will stand by to handle that. I'm trying to figure a way now to get people overseas.\"\n\n\"The SNIE?\" Ding asked.\n\n\"Everything else is on the back burner now. Jack even gave me authority to order NSA and DIA around.\" Though the DCI by law had the power to do just that, in fact the other large agencies had always been their own independent empires. Until now.\n\n\"How are the kids, guys?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"Home,\" Mary Pat replied. Queen spook or not, she was still a mother with a mother's concerns. \"They say they feel fine.\"\n\n\"Weapons of mass destruction,\" Chavez said next. He didn't have to say anything more.\n\n\"Yeah.\" The DCI nodded. Somebody either had overlooked or didn't care about the fact that United States policy for years had been explicit on that issue. A nuke was a germ was a gas shell, and the reply to a germ or a gas shell was a nuke, because America had those, and didn't have the others. Foley's desk phone rang. \"Yes?\" He listened for a few seconds. \"Fine, could you send a team here for that? Good, thank you.\"\n\n\"What was that?\"\n\n\"USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. Okay, they'll be here in an hour. We can send people overseas, but they have to have their blood tested first. The European countries are\u2014well, you can imagine. Shit, you can't take a fucking _dog_ into England without leaving him in a kennel for a month to make sure he doesn't have rabies. You'll probably have to be tested on the other side of the pond, too. Flight crew also,\" the DCI added.\n\n\"We're not packed,\" Clark said.\n\n\"Buy what you need over there, John, okay?\" Mary Pat paused. \"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Do we have any leads to run down?\"\n\n\"Not yet, but that will change. You can't do something like this without leaving _some_ footprints.\"\n\n\"Something's strange here,\" Chavez observed, looking down the long, narrow top-floor office. \"John, remember what I said the other day?\"\n\n\"No,\" Clark said. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Some things you can't retaliate about, some things you can't reverse. Hey, if this was a terrorist op\u2014\"\n\n\"Too big,\" Mary Pat objected. \"Too sophisticated.\"\n\n\"Fine, ma'am, even if it was, hell, we could turn the Bekaa Valley into a parking lot, and send the Marines in to paint the lines after it cools down. That ain't no secret. Same thing's true of a nation-state, isn't it? We ditched the ballistic missiles, but we still have nuclear bombs. We can burn any country down to bedrock, and President Ryan would do it least I wouldn't bet the house against it. I've seen the guy in action, and he ain't no pantywaist.\"\n\n\"So?\" the DCl asked. He didn't say that it wasn't that simple. Before Ryan or anyone else initiated a nuclear-release order, the evidence would have to be of the sort to pass scrutiny with the Supreme Court, and he _didn't_ think Ryan was the sort to do such a thing under most circumstances.\n\n\"So whoever ran this op is thinking one of two things. Either it won't matter if we find out, or we can't respond that way, or ...\" There was a third one, wasn't there? It was almost there, but not quite.\n\n\"Or they take the President out but then why try for his little girl first?\" Mary Pat asked. \"That just increases security around him, makes the job harder instead of easier. We have things happening all over. The Chinese thing. The UIR. The Indian navy sneaked out to sea. All the political crap here, and now this Ebola. There's no picture. All these things are unconnected.\"\n\n\"Except they're all making _our_ life hard, aren't they?\" The room got quiet for a few seconds.\n\n\"The boy's got a point,\" Clark told the other two.\n\n\"IT ALWAYS STARTS in Africa,\" Lorenz said, filling his pipe. \"That's where it lives. There was an outbreak in Zaire a few months ago.\"\n\n\"Didn't make the news,\" the FBI agent said.\n\n\"Only two victims, a young boy and a nurse\u2014nursing nun, I think, but she was lost in a plane crash. Then there was a mini-break in Sudan, again two victims, an adult male and a little girl. The man died. The child survived. That was weeks ago, too. We have blood samples from the Index Case. We've been experimenting with that one for a while now.\"\n\n\"How do you do that?\"\n\n\"You culture the virus in tissue. Monkey kidneys, as a matter of fact\u2014oh, yeah,\" he remembered.\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"I put in an order for some African greens. That's the monkey we use. You euthanatize them and extract the kidneys. Somebody got there first, and I had to wait for another order.\"\n\n\"Do you know who it was?\"\n\nLorenz shook his head. \"No, never found out. Put me back a week, ten days, that's all.\"\n\n\"Who else would want the monkeys?\" the SAC asked.\n\n\"Pharmaceutical houses, medical labs, like that.\"\n\n\"Who would I talk to about that?\"\n\n\"You serious?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nLorenz shrugged and pulled the card off his Rolodex. \"Here.\"\n\nTHE BREAKFAST MEETING had taken a little time to arrange. Ambassador David L. Williams left his car, then was escorted into the Prime Minister's official residence. He was grateful for the time of day. India could be a furnace, and at his age the heat became increasingly oppressive, especially since he had to dress like an Ambassador, instead of a governor of Pennsylvania, where it was okay to look working class. In this country, working class meant even more informal clothing, and that made the upper crust even haughtier with their beloved symbols of status. World's largest democracy they liked to call this place, the retired politician thought. Sure.\n\nThe P.M. was already seated at the table. She rose when he entered the room, took his hand and conveyed him to his seat. The china was gold-trimmed, and a liveried servant came in to serve coffee. Breakfast started with melon.\n\n\"Thank you for receiving me,\" Williams said.\n\n\"You are always welcome in my house,\" the P.M. replied graciously. About as much as a snake, the Ambassador knew. The hi-how-are-you chitchat lasted for ten minutes. Spouses were fine. Children were fine. Grandchildren were fine. Yes, it was warming up with the approach of summer. \"So what business do we have to discuss?\"\n\n\"I understand that your navy has sailed.\"\n\n\"Yes, it has, I believe. After the unpleasantness your forces inflicted on us, they had to make repairs. I suppose they are making sure all their machines work,\" the P.M. replied.\n\n\"Just exercises?\" Williams asked. \"My government merely asks the question, madam.\"\n\n\"Mr. Ambassador, I remind you that we are a sovereign nation. Our armed forces operate under our law, and you keep reminding us that the sea is free for the innocent passage of all. Are you now telling me that your country wishes to deny us that right?\"\n\n\"Not at all, Prime Minister. We merely find it curious that you are evidently staging so large an exercise.\" He didn't add, _with your limited resources._\n\n\"Mr. Ambassador, no one likes to be bullied. Only a few months ago you falsely accused us of harboring aggressive intentions to a neighbor. You threatened our country. You actually staged an attack on our navy and damaged our ships. What have we done to merit such unfriendly acts?\" she asked, leaning back in her chair.\n\n_Unfriendly acts_ was not a phrase used lightly, the Ambassador noted, and was not accidentally spoken here.\n\n\"Madam, there has been no such act. I would suggest that if there were misperceptions, perhaps they were mutual, and to prevent further such errors, I come here to ask a simple question. America makes no threats. We simply inquire as to the intentions of your naval forces.\"\n\n\"And I have answered. We are conducting exercises.\" A moment before, Williams noted, she had _supposed_ that something was going on. Now she seemed more certain of it. \"Nothing more.\"\n\n\"Then my question is answered,\" Williams commented with a benign smile. Jesus, but she thought she was clever. Williams had grown up in one of America's most complex political environments, the Pennsylvania Democratic party, and had fought his way to the top of it. He'd met people like her before, just less sanctimonious. Lying was such a habit for political figures that they thought they could always get away with it. \"Thank you, Prime Minister.\"\n\nTHE ENGAGEMENT WAS a wipeout, the first such in this training rotation. Pretty bad timing, Hamm thought, watching the vehicle returning up the dirt roads. They'd headed into it just after the President's announcement. They were Guardsmen, and they were far from home, and they were worried about their families. That had distracted them badly, since they hadn't had time to let things settle down a little, to call home and make sure things were okay with Mom and Dad, or honey and the kids. And they'd paid for it, but professional soldier that he was, Hamm knew it wasn't fair to mark this one down against the Carolina brigade. This sort of thing wouldn't happen in the field. Realistic as the NTC was, it was still play. Nobody died here except by accident, while at home the real thing might well be taking place. That wasn't how it was supposed to be with soldiers, was it?\n\nCLARK AND CHAVEZ had their blood drawn by an Army medic who also ran the screening test. They watched it with morbid fascination, especially since the medic wore thick gloves and a mask.\n\n\"You're both clean,\" he told them, with a sigh of his own.\n\n\"Thanks, Sarge,\" Chavez said. It was very real now. His dark Latino eyes were showing something other than relief. Like John, Domingo was putting on his mission face.\n\nWith that, they bundled into an official car for the drive to Andrews. The streets in the Washington metropolitan area were unusually empty. It made for a swift passage that didn't assuage the sense of foreboding they both felt. Crossing one of the bridges, they stopped and had to wait for three other vehicles to pass a checkpoint. There was a National Guard Hummer in the middle of the eastbound lanes, and when Clark pulled up, he showed his CIA picture-pass.\n\n\"Agency,\" he told the MP.\n\n\"Pass,\" the Spec-4 replied.\n\n\"So, where we going, Mr. C.?\"\n\n\"Africa, via the Azores.\"\n**51**\n\n**INVESTIGATIONS**\n\n**T** HE MEETING WITH THE Senate leadership went predictably. Issuing them surgical masks had set the tone of the evening for them\u2014again, van Damm's idea. General Pickett had been to Hopkins to review procedures there, then flown back to give the main part of the briefing. The fifteen senators assembled in the East Room listened gravely, only their eyes showing above the masks.\n\n\"I'm not comfortable with your actions, Mr. President,\" one of them said. Jack couldn't tell which one.\n\n\"You think _I_ am?\" he replied. \"If anybody has a better idea, let's hear it. I have to go with the best medical advice. If this thing is as deadly as the general says, then any mistake could kill people in the thousands\u2014even millions. If we err, we have to err on the side of caution.\"\n\n\"But what about civil liberties?\" another one demanded.\n\n\"Does any of those come before life?\" Jack asked. \"People, if anyone wants to give me a better option, I will listen\u2014we have one of our experts here to help evaluate it. _But_ I will _not_ listen to objections that are not based on scientific fact. The Constitution and the law cannot anticipate every eventuality. In cases like this, we're supposed to use our heads\u2014\"\n\n\"We're supposed to be guided by principle!\" It was the civil liberties Senator again.\n\n\"Fine, then let's talk about it. If there's a balance between what I have done and whatever else will keep the country moving\u2014 _and safe!_ \u2014let's find it. I _want_ options! _Give me something I can use!_ \" There followed a silence and a lot of crossed looks. Even that was hard. The senators were spaced out in their seating.\n\n\"Why did you have to move so fast?\"\n\n\"People may be dying, you jackass!\" another senator snarled at his good friend and distinguished colleague. He had to be one of the new crop, Jack thought. Someone who didn't know the mantras yet.\n\n\"But what if you're wrong?\" a voice asked.\n\n\"Then you can hold your impeachment trial after the House indicts me,\" Jack replied. \"Then somebody else can make these decisions, and God help him. Senators, my wife is in Hopkins right now, and she's going to take her turn treating these people. I don't like _that_ , either. I would like to have your support. It's lonely standing up by myself like this, but whether you support your President or not, I have to do the best I can. I'll say it one more time: if anybody here has a better idea, let's hear it.\"\n\nBut nobody did, and it wasn't their fault. As little time as he'd had to come to terms with the situation, they'd had less.\n\nTHE AIR FORCE had managed tropical uniforms for them out of the Andrews Post Exchange\u2014a medium-sized department store\u2014since their Washington clothes were a little too heavy for a tropical environment. It made for good cover, too. Clark wore the silver eagles of a colonel, and Chavez was a major, complete with silver pilot's wings and ribbons donated by the flight crew of their VC-20B. There were, in fact, two sets of pilots. The backup crew was sleeping in the two most-forward passenger seats.\n\n\"Not bad for a retired E-6,\" Ding noted, though the uniform didn't fit all that well.\n\n\"Not bad for a retired E-7, either, and that's 'sir,' to you, Major Chavez.\"\n\n\"Three bags full, sir.\" It was their only light moment. The military version of the Gulfstream business jet had a ton of communications gear, and a sergeant to run it. The documents coming over the equipment threatened to exhaust the on-board supply of paper as they passed over Cape Verde, inbound to Kinshasa.\n\n\"Second stop is Kenya, sir.\" The communications sergeant was really an intelligence specialist. She read all the inbound traffic. \"You have to see a man about some monkeys.\"\n\nClark took the page\u2014he was the colonel, after all\u2014and read it, while Chavez figured out how the ribbons went on the blue uniform shirt. He decided he didn't have to be too careful. It wasn't as though the Air Force were really a military service\u2014at least according to the Army in which he'd once served, where it was an article of faith.\n\n\"Check this out,\" John said, handing the page over.\n\n\"That's a lead, Mr. C.,\" Ding observed at once. They traded a look. This was a pure intelligence mission, one of the few on which they'd been dispatched. They were tasked to gather vitally important information for their country, and nothing else. For now. Though they didn't say so, neither would have objected to doing something more. Though both were field officers of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, both were also former combat soldiers (in Clark's case, a former SEAL) who more often than not dropped into the DO's paramilitary side, where they did things that the pure spooks regarded as a little too exciting. But often satisfying, Chavez told himself. Very satisfying. He was learning to control his temper\u2014in fact, that part of his genetic heritage, as he called it now, had always been under tight control\u2014but it didn't stop him from thinking about finding whoever it was who had attacked his country, and then dealing with him as soldiers did.\n\n\"You know him better than I do, John. What's he going to do?\"\n\n\"Jack?\" Clark shrugged. \"That depends on what we get for him, Domingo. That's our job, remember?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the younger man said seriously.\n\nTHE PRESIDENT DID not sleep well that night, though he told himself, and was told by others, that sleep was a prerequisite to making good decisions\u2014and _that_ , everyone emphasized, was his only real function. It was what the citizens expected him to do above all other things. He'd only had about six hours the previous day after an exhausting schedule of travel and speeches, but even so, sleep came hard. His staff and the staffs of many other federal agencies slept less, because, as sweeping as the executive orders were, they had to be implemented in a practical world, and that meant interpretation of the orders in the context of a living nation. A final complication was the fact that there was a problem with the two Chinas, who were thirteen hours ahead of Washington; another potential problem with India, ten hours ahead; and the Persian Gulf, eight hours ahead; in addition to the major crisis in America, which stretched across seven time zones all by itself, if one counted Hawaii\u2014or even more if you added lingering possessions in the Pacific. Lying in bed on the residence floor of the White House, Ryan's mind danced around the globe, finally wondering what part of the world _wasn't_ an area of some kind of concern. Around three he gave up the effort and rose, put on casual clothes and headed to the West Wing for the Signals Office, with members of the Detail in tow.\n\n\"What's happening?\" he asked the senior officer present. It was Major Charles Canon, USMC, who'd been the one to inform him of the Iraqi assassination . . . which had seemed to start everything, he remembered. People started to jump to their feet. Jack waved them back into their seats. \"As you were.\"\n\n\"Busy night, sir. Sure you want to be up for all this?\" the major asked.\n\n\"I don't feel much like sleeping, Major,\" Ryan replied. The three Service agents behind him made faces behind SWORDSMAN'S back. They knew better even if POTUS didn't.\n\n\"Okay, Mr. President, we're linked in now with CDC and USAMRIID communications lines, so we're copying all their data. On the map there we have all the cases plotted.\" Canon pointed. Someone had installed a new, large map of the United States mounted on a corkboard. Red pushpins obviously designated Ebola cases. There was a supply of black ones, too, whose import was all too obvious, though none were on the board yet. The pins were mainly clustered in eighteen cities now, with seemingly random singles and pairs spread all over the map. There were still a number of states untouched. Idaho, Alabama, both the Dakotas, even, strangely, Minnesota with its Mayo Clinic, were among the states so far protected by Ryan's executive order\u2014or chance, and how did one tell the difference? There were several computer printouts\u2014the printers were all running now. Ryan picked one up. The victim-patients were listed alphabetically by name, by state, by city, and by occupation. Roughly fifteen percent of them were in the \"maintenance custodial\" category, and that was the largest statistical grouping other than \"sales marketing.\" This data came from the FBI and CDC, which were working together to study patterns of infection. Another printout showed suspected sites of infection, and that confirmed General Pickett's statement that trade shows had been selected as primary targets.\n\nIn all his time at CIA, Ryan had studied all manner of theoretical attacks against his country. Somehow this sort had never made it to his desk. Biological warfare was beyond the pale. He'd spent thousands of hours thinking about nuclear attack. What we had, what they had, what targets, what casualties, the hundreds of possible targeting options selected for political, military, or economic factors, and for each option there was a range of possible outcomes depending on weather, time of year, time of day, and other variables until the result could be addressed only by computers, and even then the likely results were only expressions of probability calculations. He'd hated every moment of that, and rejoiced at the end of the Cold War and its constant, implied threat of megadeaths. He'd even lived through a crisis that might have led that far. The nightmares from that, he remembered ...\n\nThe President had never taken a course in government per se, just the usual political-science courses at Boston College in pursuit of his first degree in economics. Mainly he remembered the words of an aristocratic planter, written almost thirty years before his ascension to become the country's third President: \"... Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.\" That was the mission statement right there. The Constitution he'd sworn to Preserve, Protect, and Defend was itself designed to preserve, protect, and defend the lives and rights of the people out there, and he wasn't supposed to be here going over lists of names and places and occupations of people, at least eighty percent of whom were going to die. They were entitled to their lives. They were entitled to their liberty. They were entitled to the pursuit\u2014by which Jefferson had meant the _vocation of,_ not the chase after\u2014of happiness. Well, somebody was taking lives. Ryan had ordered the suspension of their liberty. Sure as hell not many were happy right now . . .\n\n\"Here's actually a little bit of good news, Mr. President.\" Canon handed over the previous day's election results. It startled Ryan. He'd allowed himself to forget about that. Someone had compiled a list of the winners by profession, and less than half of them were lawyers. Twenty-seven were physicians. Twenty-three were engineers. Nineteen were farmers. Eighteen were teachers. Fourteen were businessmen of one sort or another. Well, that was something, wasn't it? Now he had about a third of a House of Representatives. How to get them to Washington, he wondered. They could not be impeded from that. The Constitution was explicit on that issue. While Pat Martin might argue that the suspension of interstate travel had never been argued before the high court, the Constitution mandated that members of the Congress could not be stopped from coming to a session except on cause of treason . . . ? Something like that. Jack couldn't remember exactly, but he knew that congressional immunity was a big deal.\n\nThen a telex machine started chattering. An Army Spec-5 walked over to it.\n\n\"FLASH-traffic from State, from Ambassador Williams in India,\" he announced.\n\n\"Let's see.\" Ryan walked over, too. It wasn't good news. Neither was the next one from Taipei.\n\nTHE PHYSICIANS WERE working four-hour shifts. For every young resident there was a senior staff member. They were largely doing nurses' work, and though they mainly were doing it well, they also knew that it wouldn't matter all that much.\n\nIt was Cathy's first time in a space suit. She'd operated on thirty or so AIDS patients for eye complications of their disease, but that hadn't been terribly difficult. You used regular gloves, and the only real worry was the number of hands allowed in the surgical field, and for ophthalmic surgery that wasn't nearly the problem it was for thoracic. You went a little slower, were a little more careful in your movements, but that was it, really. Not now. Now she was in a big, thick plastic bag, wearing a helmet whose clear faceplate often fogged from her breath, looking at patients who were going to die despite the attention of professor-rank physicians.\n\nBut they had to try anyway. She was looking down at the local Index Case, the Winnebago dealer whose wife was in the next room. There were two IVs running, one of fluids and electrolytes and morphine, the other of whole blood, both held rigidly in place so as not to damage the steel-vein interface. The only thing they could do was to support. It had once been thought that interferon might help, but that hadn't worked. Antibiotics didn't touch viral diseases, a fact which was not widely appreciated. There was nothing else, though a hundred people were now examining options in their labs. No one had ever taken the time with Ebola. CDC, the Army, and a few other labs across the world had done some work, but there hadn't been the effort devoted to other diseases that raged through \"civilized\" countries. In America and Europe research priority went to diseases that killed many, or which attracted a lot of political attention, because the allocation of government research money was a political act, and for private funding it tracked with what rich or prominent person had been unlucky. Myasthenia gravis had killed Aristotle Onassis, and the resultant funding, while not fast enough to help the shipping magnate, had made significant progress almost overnight\u2014largely luck, Dr. Ryan knew, but true even so, and a blessing to other victims. The same principle extended to oncology, where the funding for breast cancer, which attacked roughly one woman in ten, far outstripped research in prostate cancer, which afflicted roughly half of the male population. A huge amount went into childhood cancers, which were statistically quite rare\u2014only twelve cases a year per hundred thousand kids\u2014but what was more valuable than a child? Nobody objected to that; certainly she did not. It came down to minuscule funding for Ebola and other tropical diseases because they didn't have a high profile in the countries which spent the money. That would change now, but not soon enough for the patients filling up the hospital.\n\nThe patient started gagging and turned to his right. Cathy grabbed the plastic trash can\u2014emesis trays were too small and tended to spill\u2014and held it for him. Bile and blood, she saw. Black blood. Dead blood. Blood full of the little crystalline \"bricks\" of Ebola virus. When he was done, she gave him a water container, the sort with a straw that gave a little bit of water from a squeeze. Just enough to wet his mouth.\n\n\"Thanks,\" the patient groaned. His skin was pale except in the places where it was blotched from subcutaneous bleeding. Petechiae. Must be Latin, Cathy thought. A dead language's word to designate the sign of approaching death. He looked at her, and he knew. He had to know. The pain was fighting up against the border of the current morphine dosage, reaching his consciousness in waves, like the battering of a tide against a seawall.\n\n\"How am I doing?\" he asked.\n\n\"Well, you're pretty sick,\" Cathy told him. \"But you're fighting back very well. If you can hang in there long enough, your immune system can beat this thing down, but you have to hang tough for us.\" And that wasn't quite a lie.\n\n\"I don't know you. You a nurse?\"\n\n\"No, I'm actually a professor.\" She smiled at him through the plastic shield.\n\n\"Be careful,\" he told her. \"You really don't want this. Trust me.\" He even managed to smile back in the way that severely afflicted patients did. It nearly tore Cathy's heart from her chest.\n\n\"We're being careful. Sorry about the suit.\" She so needed to touch the man, to show that she really did care, and you couldn't do that through rubber and plastic, damn it!\n\n\"Hurts real bad, Doc.\"\n\n\"Lie back. Sleep as much as you can. Let me adjust the morphine for you.\" She walked to the other side of the bed to increase the drip, waiting a few minutes before his eyes closed. Then she walked back to the bucket and sprayed it with a harsh chemical disinfectant. The container was already soaked in it, to the point that the chemical had impregnated the plastic, and anything alive that fell into it would quickly be extinguished. Spraying the thirty or so cc's that he'd brought up was probably unnecessary, but there was no such thing as too many precautions now. A nurse came in and handed over the printout with the newest blood work. The patient's liver function was nearly off the scale, automatically highlighted by asterisks as though she wouldn't have noticed. Ebola had a nasty affinity for that organ. Other chemical indicators confirmed the start of systemic necrosis. The internal organs had started to die, the tissues to rot, eaten by the tiny virus strands. It was theoretically possible that his immune system could still summon its energy and launch a counterattack, but that was only theory, one chance in several hundred. _Some_ patients _did_ fight this off. It was in the literature which she and her colleagues had studied over the last twelve hours, and in that case, they were already speculating, if they could isolate the antibodies, they might have something they could use therapeutically.\n\n_If\u2014maybe_ \u2014 _might_ \u2014 _could_ \u2014 _possibly._\n\nThat wasn't medicine as she knew it. Certainly it wasn't the clean, antiseptic medicine she practiced at Wilmer, fixing eyes, restoring and perfecting sight. She thought again about her decision to enter ophthalmology. One of her professors had pressed her hard to look at oncology. She had the brains, she had the curiosity, she had the gift for connecting things, he'd told her. But looking down at this sleeping, dying patient, she knew that, no, she didn't have the heart to do this every day. Not to lose so many. So did that make her a failure? Cathy Ryan asked herself. With this patient, she had to admit, yes, it did.\n\n\"DAMN,\" CHAVEZ SAID. \"It's like Colombia.\"\n\n\"Or Vietnam,\" Clark agreed on being greeted with the tropical heat. There was an embassy official, and a representative of the Zaire government. The latter wore a uniform and saluted the arriving \"officers,\" which courtesy John returned.\n\n\"This way, if you please, Colonel.\" The helicopter, it turned out, was French, and the service was excellent. America had dropped a lot of money into this country. It was payback time now.\n\nClark looked down. Triple-canopy jungle. He'd seen that before, in more than one country. In his youth, he'd been underneath, looking for enemies, and with enemies looking for him\u2014little men in black pajamas or khaki uniforms, carrying AK-47s, people who wanted to take his life. Now he appreciated the fact that there was something down there even smaller, that was not carrying any weapon, and was targeted not merely on him, but at the heart of his country. It seemed so damned unreal. John Clark was a creature of his country. He'd been wounded in combat operations and other, more personal events, and every time was restored quickly to full health. There had been that one time, when he'd rescued an A-6 pilot up some river in North Vietnam whose namc he couldn't remember anymore. He'd gotten cut, and the polluted river had infected him, and _that_ had been fairly unpleasant, but drugs and time had fixed it. He'd come away from all the experiences with a deeply held belief that his country produced doctors who could fix just about anything\u2014not old age, and not cancer, yet, but they were working on it, and in due course they'd win their battles as he'd won most of his. That was an illusion. He had to admit that now. As he and his country had lost their struggle in a jungle like this one, a thousand feet below the racing helicopter, so now the jungle was reaching out, somehow. No. He shook that off. The jungle wasn't reaching out. People had done that.\n\nTHE FOUR RO\/RO ships formed up six hundred miles north-northwest of Diego Garcia. They were in a box formation, spaced a thousand yards abeam and a thousand yards fore and aft. The destroyer _O'Bannon_ took position five thousand yards dead ahead. _Kidd_ was ten thousand yards northeast of the ASW ship, with _Anzio_ twenty miles in advance of the rest. The replenishment group with its two frigates was westbound and would join up around sunset.\n\nIt was a good opportunity for an exercise. Six P-3C Orion aircraft were based at Diego Garcia\u2014the number had once been larger\u2014and one of them was patrolling ahead of the mini-convoy, dropping sonobuoys, a complex undertaking for so rapidly moving a formation, and listening for possible submarines. Another Orion was well in advance, tracking the Indian navy's two-carrier battle group from their radar emissions while staying well out of detection range. The lead Orion was not armed with anything but anti-sub weapons at the moment, and its mission was routine surveillance.\n\n\"YES, MR. PRESIDENT,\" the J-3 said. _Why aren't you asleep, Jack?_ he couldn't say.\n\n\"Robby, did you see this thing from Ambassador Williams?\"\n\n\"It got my attention,\" Admiral Jackson confirmed.\n\nDavid Williams had taken his time drafting the communiqu\u00e9. That had annoyed people at State, and caused two requests for his report which he had ignored. The former governor was drawing on all of his political savvy to consider the words the Prime Minister had chosen, her tone, her body language\u2014the look in her eyes most of all. There was no substitute for that. Dave Williams had learned that lesson more than once. One thing he hadn't learned was diplomatic verbiage. His report was straightfrom-the-shoulder, and his conclusion was that India was up to something. He further noted that the Ebola crisis in America had not come up. Not a word of sympathy. That, he wrote, was probably a mistake in one sense, and a very deliberate act in another. India should have cared about it, or should have expressed concern even if she didn't. Instead it had been ignored. If asked, the Prime Minister would have said that she hadn't yet been informed, but that would be a lie, Williams added. In the age of CNN, things like that never went unnoticed. Instead, she had harped on being bullied by America, reminded him of the \"attack\" on her navy not once but twice, and then extended the remark into calling it an \"unfriendly act,\" a phrase used in diplomacy right before a hand descended toward the holster. He concluded that India's naval exercise was not a mistake in either timing or location. The message hc'd received was: _In your face!_\n\n\"So, what do you think, Rob?\"\n\n\"I think Ambassador Williams is one shrewd son of a bitch, sir. The only thing he didn't say is something he didn't know: we don't have a carrier there. Now, the Indians haven't been tracking us in any way, but it's public knowledge that _Ike_ is heading toward China, and if their intcl officers are halfway competent, they definitely _do_ know. Then, _shazam_ , they put out to sea. And now, we get this from the Ambassador. Sir\u2014\"\n\n\"Stow that, Robby,\" Ryan told him. \"You've said that enough for one day.\"\n\n\"Fine. Jack, we have every reason to believe that China and India were working together before. So what happens now? China stages an incident. It gets nastier. We move a carrier. The Indians put to sea. Their fleet is on a direct line between Diego Garcia and the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf heats up.\"\n\n\"And we have a plague,\" Ryan added. He leaned forward on the cheap desk in Signals. He couldn't sleep, but that didn't mean he was fully awake, either. \"Coincidences '?\"\n\n\"Maybe. Maybe the Indian Prime Minister is pissed at us because we rattled their cage a while back. Maybe she just wants to show us that we can't push her around. Maybe it's petty bullshit, Mr. President. But maybe it ain't.\"\n\n\"Options?\"\n\n\"We have a surface-action group in the Eastern Med, two Aegis cruisers, a Burke-class 'can, and three figs. The Med's quiet. I suggest that we consider moving that group through Suez to back up the _Anzio_ group. I further suggest that we consider moving a carrier from WestLant to the Med. That will take a while, Jack. It's six thousand miles; even with a speed of advance of twenty-five knots that's almost nine days just to get a carrier close. We have more than a third of the world without a carrier handy, and the part that isn't covered is starting to make me nervous. If we have to do something, Jack, I'm not sure we can.\"\n\n\"HELLO, SISTER,\" CLARK said, taking her hand gently. He hadn't seen a nun in quite a few years.\n\n\"Welcome, Colonel Clark. Major.\" She nodded to Chavez.\n\n\"Afternoon, ma'am.\"\n\n\"What brings you to our hospital?\" Sister Mary Charles's English was excellent, almost as though she taught it, with a Belgian accent that sounded just like French to the two Americans.\n\n\"Sister, we're here to ask about the death of one of your colleagues, Sister Jean Baptiste,\" Clark told her.\n\n\"I see.\" She waved to the chairs. \"Please sit down.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Sister,\" Clark said politely.\n\n\"You are Catholic?\" she asked. It was important to her.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, we both are.\" Chavez nodded agreement with the \"colonel.\"\n\n\"Your education?\"\n\n\"Actually all Catholic schools for me,\" Clark said, indulging her. \"Grade school was the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Jesuits after that.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" She smiled, pleased at the news. \"I have heard of the sickness that has broken out in your country. This is very sad. And so you are here to ask about poor Benedict Mkusa, Sister Jean, and Sister Maria Magdalena. But I fear we cannot be of much help to you.\"\n\n\"Why is that, Sister?\"\n\n\"Benedict died and his body was cremated on government order,\" Sister Mary Charles explained. \"Jean was taken ill, ycs, but she left for Paris on a medical evacuation flight, you see, to visit the Pasteur Institute. The airplane crashed into the sea, however, and all were lost.\"\n\n\"All?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"Sister Maria Magdalena flew off also, and Dr. Moudi, of course.\"\n\n\"Who was he?\" John inquired next.\n\n\"He was part of the World Health Organization mission to this area. Some of his colleagues are in the next building.\" She pointed.\n\n\"Moudi, you said, ma'am?\" Chavez asked, taking his notes.\n\n\"Yes.\" She spelled it for him. \"Mohammed Moudi. A good doctor,\" she added. \"It was very sad to lose them all.\"\n\n\"Mohammed Moudi, you said. Any idea where he was from?\" It was Chavez again.\n\n\"Iran\u2014no, that's just changed, hasn't it? He was educated in Europe, a fine young physician, and very respectful of us.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Clark adjusted himself in his seat. \"Could we talk with his colleagues?\"\n\n\"I THINK THE President's gone much too far,\" the doctor said on TV. He had to be interviewed in a local affiliate since he was unable to drive from Connecticut to New York this morning.\n\n\"Why is that, Bob?\" the host asked. He'd come in from his home in New Jersey to the New York studio off Central Park West, just before the bridges and tunnels had been closed, and was sleeping in his office now. Understandably, he wasn't very happy about it.\n\n\"Ebola is a nasty one. There's no doubt of that,\" said the network's medical correspondent. He was a physician who didn't practice, though he spoke the language quite well. He mainly presented medical news, in the morning concentrating on the benefits of jogging and good diet. \"But it's never been here, and the reason is that the virus can't survive here. However these people contracted it\u2014and for the moment I will leave speculation on that aside\u2014it _can't_ spread very far. I'm afraid the President's actions are precipitous.\"\n\n\"And unconstitutional,\" the legal correspondent added. \"There's no doubt of that. The President has panicked, and that's not good for the country in medical or legal terms.\"\n\n\"Thanks a bunch, fellas,\" Ryan said, muting the set.\n\n\"We have to work on this,\" Arnie said.\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"You fight bad information with good information.\"\n\n\"Super, Arnie, except that proving I did the right thing means people have to die.\"\n\n\"We have a panic to prevent, Mr. President.\"\n\nSo far that hadn't happened, which was remarkable. Timing had helped. The news had mainly hit people in the evening. For the most part, they'd gone home, they had enough food in the pantry to see them through a few days, and the news had shocked enough that there had not been a nationwide raid on supermarkets. Those things would change today, however. In a few hours people would be protesting. The news media would cover that, and some sort of public opinion would form. Arnie was right. He had to do something about it. But what?\n\n\"How, Arnie?\"\n\n\"Jack, I thought you'd never ask.\"\n\nTHE NEXT STOP was the airport. There it was confirmed that, yes, a privately owned, Swiss-registered G-IV business jet had indeed lifted off with a flight plan taking it to Paris via Libya, for refueling. The chief controller had a Xerox copy of the airport records and the aircraft's manifest ready for the visiting Americans. It was a remarkably comprehensive document, since it had to allow for customs control as well. Even the names for the flight crew were on it.\n\n\"Well?\" Chavez asked.\n\nClark looked at the officials. \"Thank you for your valuable assistance.\" Then he and Ding headed for the car that would take them to their aircraft.\n\n\"Well?\" Ding repeated.\n\n\"Cool it, partner.\" The five-minute ride passed in silence. Clark looked out the window. Thunderheads were building. He hated flying in the things.\n\n\"No way. We wait a few minutes.\" The backup pilot was a lieutenant colonel. \"We have rules.\"\n\nClark tapped the eagles on his epaulets and leaned right into his face. \"Me colonel. Me say go, air scout. Right the _fuck_ now!\"\n\n\"Look, Mr. Clark, I know who you are and\u2014\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Chavez said, \"I'm only an artificial major, but this mission's more important than your rules. Steer around the worst parts, will ya? We have barf bags if we need'em.\" The pilot glared at them, but moved back into the front office. Chavez turned. \"Temper, John.\"\n\nClark handed over the paper. \"Check the names for the flight crew. They ain't Swiss, and the registration of the aircraft is.\"\n\nChavez looked for that. HX-NJA was the registration code. And the names for the flight crew wcren't Germanic, Gallic, or Italian.\n\n\"Sergeant?\" Clark called as the engines started up.\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" The NCO had seen this man tear the driver a new asshole.\n\n\"Fax this to Langley, please. You have the right number to use. Quick as you can, ma'am,\" he added, since she was a lady, and not just a sergeant. The NCO didn't get it, but didn't mind, either.\n\n\"Cinch those belts in tight,\" the pilot called over the intercom as the VC-20B started to taxi.\n\nIT TOOK THREE tries because of electrical interference from the storm, but the facsimile transmission went through the satellite, downlinked to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and reappeared in Mercury, the Agency's communications nexus. The senior watch officer had his deputy run it to the seventh floor. By that time, Clark was on the phone to him.\n\n\"Getting some interference,\" the watch officer said. Digital satellite radio and all, a thunderstorm was still a thunderstorm.\n\n\"It's a little bumpy at the moment. Run the registration number and the names on that manifest. Everything you can get on them.\"\n\n\"Say again.\"\n\nClark did. It got through this time.\n\n\"Will do. Somebody's got a file on this. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Back to you later. Out,\" he heard.\n\n\"SO?\" DING ASKED, reefing his belt in tighter as the G took a ten-foot drop.\n\n\"Those names are in Farsi, Ding\u2014oh, shit.\" Another major bump. He looked out the window. It was like a huge arena, a cylindrical formation of clouds with lightning all over the place. It wasn't often he looked down at that. \"The bastard's doing this on purpose.\"\n\nBut he wasn't. The lieutenant colonel on the controls was scared. Air Force regulations not to mention common sense prohibited what he was doing. The weather radar in the nose showed red twenty degrees left and right of his projected course to Nairobi. Left looked better. He turned thirty degrees, banking the executive jet like a fighter, searching for a smooth spot as he continued the climb-out. What he found wasn't smooth, but it was better. Ten minutes later the VC-20B broke into sunlight.\n\nOne of the spare pilots turned in her front row seat: \"Satisfied, Colonel?\" she asked.\n\nClark unbuckled his belt in defiance of the sign and went to the lavatory to splash water in his face. Then he knelt down on the floor next to her and showed her the paper that had just been transmitted. \"Can you tell me anything about this?\" She only needed one look.\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" the captain said. \"We got a notice on that.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"This is essentially the same aircraft. When one breaks, the manufacturer tells everybody about it\u2014I mean, we'd ask anyway, but it's almost automatic. He came out of here, flew north to Libya, landed to refuel, right? Took off right away, practically\u2014medical flight, I think, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Correct. Go on.\"\n\n\"He called emergency, said he lost power on one engine, then the other, and went in. Three radars tracked it. Libya, Malta, and a Navy ship, destroyer, I think.\"\n\n\"Anything funny about it, Captain?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"This is a good airplane. I don't think the military's ever broke one. You just saw how good. A couple of those bumps were two and a half, maybe three gees, and the engines\u2014Jerry, have we ever lost an engine in flight on a -20?\"\n\n\"Twice, I think. First one there was a defect on the fuel pump\u2014Rolls-Royce sent out a fix on all of those. The other one, it was in November, a few years back. They ate a goose.\n\n\"That'll do it every time,\" she told Clark. \"Goose weighs maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. We try to keep clear of them.\"\n\n\"This guy lost both engines, though?\"\n\n\"They haven't figured out why yet. Maybe bad fuel. That happens, but the engines are isolated units, sir. Separate everything, pumps, electronics, you name it\u2014\"\n\n\"Except fuel,\" Jerry said. \"That all comes out of one truck.\"\n\n\"What else? What happens when you lose an engine?\"\n\n\"If you're not careful you can lose control. You get a full shutdown, the aircraft yaws into the dead engine. That changes airflow over the control surfaces. We lost a Lear, a VC-21, that way once. If it catches you in a transition maneuver when it happens, well, then it can get a little bit exciting. But we train for that, and the flight crew on this one, that was in the report. They were both experienced drivers, and they go in the box\u2014the training simulator\u2014pretty regular. You have to, or they take your insurance away. Anyway, the radar didn't show them maneuvering. So, no, that shouldn't have done it to them. The best guess was bad fuel, but the Libyans said the fuel was okay.\"\n\n\"Unless the crew just totally screwed up,\" Jerry added. \"But even that's hard. I mean, they make these things so you really have to try to break 'em, y'know? I got two thousand hours.\"\n\n\"Two and a half for me,\" the captain said. \"It's safer'n driving a car in D.C., sir. We all love these things.\"\n\nClark nodded and went forward.\n\n\"Enjoying the ride?\" the pilot in command said over his shoulder. His voice wasn't exactly friendly, and he didn't exactly have to worry about insubordination. Not with an \"officer\" wearing his own ribbons.\n\n\"I don't like leaning on people, Colonel. This is very important shit. That's all I can say.\"\n\n\"My wife's a nurse in the base hospital.\" He didn't have to say more. He was worried about her.\n\n\"So's mine, down in Williamsburg.\" The pilot turned on learning that, and nodded at his passenger.\n\n\"No real harm done. Three hours to Nairobi, Colonel.\"\n\n\"WELL, HOW DO _I_ get back?\" Raman asked over the phone.\n\n\"You don't for now,\" Andrea told him. \"Sit tight. Maybe you can help the FBI with the investigation they have running.\"\n\n\"Well, that's just great!\"\n\n\"Deal with it, Jeff. I don't have time for this,\" she told her subordinate crossly.\n\n\"Sure.\" He hung up.\n\nThat was odd, Andrea thought. Jeff was always one of the cool ones. But who was cool at the moment?\n**52**\n\n**SOMETHING OF VALUE**\n\n**E** VER BEEN HERE BEFORE, John?\" Chavez asked as their aircraft descended to meet its shadow on the runway.\n\n\"Passed through once. Didn't see much more than the terminal.\" Clark slipped off his belt and stretched. Sunset was descending here, too, and with it _not_ the end of a very long day for the two intelligence officers. \"Most of what I know comes from books by a guy named Ruark, hunting and stuff.\"\n\n\"You don't hunt\u2014not animals, anyway,\" Ding added.\n\n\"Used to. I still like reading about it. Nice to hunt things that don't shoot back.\" John turned with part of a smile.\n\n\"Not as exciting. Safer, maybe,\" the junior agent allowed. How dangerous could a lion really be? he wondered.\n\nThe rollout took them to the military terminal. Kenya had a small air force, though what it did was a mystery to the visiting CIA\/Air Force \"officers,\" and seemed likely to remain so. The aircraft was met, again, by an embassy official, this one the Defense attach\u00e9, a black Army officer with the rank of colonel, and a Combat Infantryman's Badge that marked him as a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.\n\n\"Colonel Clark, Major Chavez.\" Then his voice stopped. \"Chavez, do I know you?\"\n\n\"Ninja!\" Ding grinned. \"You were brigade staff then, First of the Seventh.\"\n\n\"Cold Steel! You're one of the guys who got lost. I guess they found you. Relax, gentlemen, I know where you're from, but our hosts do not,\" the officer warned.\n\n\"Where's the CIB from, Colonel?\" the former staff sergeant asked on the walk over to where the cars were.\n\n\"I had a battalion of the Big Red One in Iraq. We kicked a few and took a few.\" Then his mood changed. \"So how are things at home?\"\n\n\"Scary,\" Ding replied.\n\n\"Something to remember, bio-war is mainly a psychological weapon, like the threat of gas was against us back in '91. \"\n\n\"Maybe so,\" Clark responded. \"It sure as hell's got my attention, Colonel.\"\n\n\"Got mine, too,\" the Defense attach\u00e9 admitted. \"I got family in Atlanta. CNN says there's cases there.\"\n\n\"Rcad fast.\" John handed over the last data sent to them on the airplane. \"This ought to be better than what's on TV.\" Not that _better_ was the right word, he thought.\n\nThe colonel rated a driver, it seemed. He took the front seat in the embassy car and flipped through the pages.\n\n\"No official greeting this time?\" Chavez asked.\n\n\"Not here. We'll have a cop where we're going. I asked my friends in the ministry to low-profile this one. I have some pretty good contacts around town.\"\n\n\"Good call,\" Clark said as the car started moving. Getting there only took ten minutes.\n\nThe animal dealer had his place of business on the outskirts of the city, conveniently located to the airport and the main highway west into the bush, but not too close to much else. The CIA officers soon discovered why.\n\n\"Christ,\" Chavez observed, getting out of the car.\n\n\"Yeah, they're noisy, aren't they? I was here earlier today. He's getting a shipment of greens ready for Atlanta.\" He opened a briefcase and handed something over. \"Here, you'll need this.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Clark slid the envelope into his clipboard.\n\n\"Hello!\" the dealer said, coming out of his office. He was a big man and, judging by his gut, knew his way around a case of beer. With him was a uniformed police officer, evidently a senior one. The attach\u00e9 went to speak with him, and move him aside. The cop didn't seem to object. This infantry colonel, Clark saw, knew how the game was played.\n\n\"Howdy,\" John said, taking his hand. \"I'm Colonel Clark. This is Major Chavez.\"\n\n\"You are American Air Force?\"\n\n\"That's right, sir,\" Ding replied.\n\n\"I love airplanes. What do you fly?\"\n\n\"All sorts of things,\" Clark answered. The local businessman was already half in the bag. \"We have a few questions, if you don't mind.\"\n\n\"About monkeys? Why are you interested in monkeys? The chief constable didn't explain.\"\n\n\"Is it all that important?\" John asked, handing over an envelope. The dealer pocketed it without opening it to count. He'd felt how thick it was.\n\n\"Truly it is not, but I do love to watch airplanes. So what can I tell you?\" he asked next, his voice friendly and open.\n\n\"You sell monkeys,\" John said.\n\n\"Yes, I deal in them. For zoos, for private collectors, and for medical laboratories. Come, I will show you.\" He led them toward a three-sided building made of corrugated iron, it looked like. Two trucks were there, and five workers were loading cagcs onto it, their hands in thick leather gloves.\n\n\"We just had an order from your CDC in Atlanta,\" the dealer explained, \"for a hundred greens. They are pretty animals, but very unpleasant. The local farmers hate them.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Ding asked, looking at the cages. They were made of steel wire, with handles at the top. From a distance they appeared to be of the size used to transport chickens to market . . . viewed closer, they were a little large for that, but ...\n\n\"They ravage crops. They are a pest, like rats, but more clever, and people from America think they are gods or something, the way they complain on how they are used in medical experiments.\" The dealer laughed. \"As though we would run out of them. There are millions. We raid a place, take thirty, and a month later we can come back and take thirty more. The farmers beg us to come and trap them.\"\n\n\"You had a shipment ready for Atlanta earlier this year, but you sold them to someone else, didn't you?\" Clark asked. He looked over to his partner, who didn't approach the building. Rather, he separated from Clark and the dealer, and walked on a line away from it. He seemed to be staring at the empty cages. Maybe the smell bothered him. It was pretty thick.\n\n\"They did not pay me on time, and another customer came along, and he had his money all ready,\" the dealer pointed out. \"This is a business, Colonel Clark.\"\n\nJohn grinned. \"Hey, I'm not here from the Better Business Bureau. I just want to know who you sold them to.\"\n\n\"A buyer,\" the dealer said. \"What else do I need to know?\"\n\n\"Where was he from?\" Clark persisted.\n\n\"I do not know. He paid me in dollars, but he was probably not an American. He was a quiet fellow,\" the dealer remembered, \"not very friendly. Yes, I know I was late getting the new shipment to Atlanta, but they were late in paying me,\" he reminded his guest. \"You, fortunately, were not.\"\n\n\"They went out by air?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was an old 707. It was full. They were not just my monkeys. They had gotten them elsewhere, too. You see, the green is so common. It lives all over Africa. Your animal worshippers need not worry about extinction for the green. The gorilla, now, I admit that is something else.\" Besides, they mainly lived in Uganda and Rwanda, and more was the pity. People paid real money for them.\n\n\"Do you have records? The name of the buyer, the manifest, the registration of the airplane?\"\n\n\"Customs records, you mean.\" He shook his head. \"Sadly, I do not. Perhaps they were lost.\"\n\n\"You have an arrangement with the airport officials,\" John said with a smile that he didn't feel.\n\n\"I have many friends in the government, yes.\" Another smile, the sly sort that confirmed his arrangement. Well, it wasn't as though there was no such thing as official corruption in America, was it? Clark thought.\n\n\"And you don't know where they went, then?\"\n\n\"No, there I cannot help you. If I could, I would gladly do so,\" the dealer replied, patting his pocket. Where the envelope was. \"I regret to say that my records are incomplete for some of my transactions.\"\n\nClark wondered if he could press the man further on this issue. He suspected not. He'd never worked Kenya, though he had worked Angola, briefly, in the 1970s, and Africa was a very informal continent, and cash was the lubricant. He looked over to where the Defense attach\u00e9 was talking to the chief constable\u2014the title was a holdover from British rule, which he'd read about in one of Ruark's books, and so were the shorts and kneesocks. He was probably confirming that, no, the dealer wasn't a criminal, just creative in his relationships with local authorities who, for a modest fee, looked the other way when asked. And monkeys were hardly a vital national commodity, assuming the dealer was truthful about the numbers of the things. And he probably was. It sounded true. The farmers would probably be just as happy to be rid of the damned things just to make the noise stop. It sounded like a riot in the biggest bar in town on a Friday night. And they were nasty little bastards, reaching and snapping at the gloved hands transferring the cages. What the hell, they were having a bad day. And on getting to CDC Atlanta, it wouldn't get much better, would it? Were they smart enough to know? Damned sure Clark knew. You didn't ship this many to pet stores. But he didn't have enough solicitude to waste on monkeys at the moment.\n\n\"Thank you for your help. Perhaps someone will be back to speak with you.\"\n\n\"I regret that I could not tell you more.\" He was sincere enough about it. For five thousand dollars in cash, he thought he should do more. Not that he'd return any, of course.\n\nThe two men walked back toward the car. Chavez joined up, looking pensive, but not saying anything. As they approached, the cop and the attach\u00e9 shook hands. Then it was time for the Americans to leave. As the car pulled off, John looked back to see the dealer take the envelope from his pocket and extract a few bills to hand over to the friendly chief constable. That made sense, too.\n\n\"What did you learn?\" the real colonel asked.\n\n\"No records,\" John replied.\n\n\"It's the way they do business here. There's an export fee for those things, but the cops and the customs people usually have an\u2014\"\n\n\"Arrangement,\" John interrupted with a frown.\n\n\"That's the word. Hey, my father came from Mississippi. They used to say down there that one term as county sheriff fixed a guy up for life, y'know?\"\n\n\"Cages,\" Ding said suddenly.\n\n\"Huh?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"Didn't you see, John, the cages! We seen 'em before, just like those\u2014in Tehran, in the air force hangar.\" He'd kept his distance in order to duplicate what he'd seen at Mehrabad. The relative size and proportions were the same. \"Chicken coops or cages or whatever in a hangar with fighter planes, remember?\"\n\n\"Shit!\"\n\n\"One more indicator, Mr. C. Them coincidences are piling up, 'mano. Where we goin' next?\"\n\n\"Khartoum.\"\n\n\"I saw the movie.\"\n\nNEWS COVERAGE CONTINUED, but little else. Every network affiliate became more important as the \"name\" correspondents were trapped in their base offices of New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and the news devoted a great deal of time to visuals of National Guardsmen on the major interstate highways, blocking the roads physically with Hummers or medium trucks. No one really tried to run the blockades there. Food and medical supply trucks were allowed through, after each was inspected, and in a day or two, the drivers would be tested for Ebola antibodies, and given picture passes to make their way more efficiently. The truckers were playing ball.\n\nIt was different for other vehicles and other roads. Though most interstate highway traffic went on the major highways, there was not a state in the Union that didn't have an extensive nctwork of side roads that interconnected with those of neighboring states, and all of these had to be blocked, too. That took time to accomplish, and there were interviews of people who'd gotten across and thought it something of a joke, followed by learned commentary that this proved that the President's order was impossible to implement completely, in addition to being wrong, stupid, and unconstitutional.\n\n\"It just isn't possible,\" one transportation expert said on the morning news.\n\nBut that hadn't accounted for the fact that National Guardsmen lived in the country they guarded, and could read maps. They were also offended by the implied statcment that they were fools. By noon on Wednesday there was a vehicle on every country road, crewed by men with rifles and wearing the chemical-protective suits that made them look like men (and women, though that was almost impossible to tell) from Mars.\n\nOn the side roads, if not the main ones, there were clashes. Some were mere words\u2014my family is right over there, give a guy a break, okay? Sometimes the rule was enforced with a little common sense, after an identification check and a radio call. In other cases, the enforcement was literal, and here and there words were exchanged, some of them heated, and some of those escalated, and in two cases shots were fired, and in one of them a man was killed. Reported rapidly up the line, it was national news in two hours, and again commentators wondered at the wisdom of the President's order. One of them laid the death on the front steps of the White House.\n\nFor the most part, even those most determined to make their way to their cross-border destinations saw the uniformed men with guns and decided that it wasn't worth the risk.\n\nThe same applied to international borders. The Canadian military and police closed all border-crossing points. American citizens in Canada were asked to report to the nearest hospital for testing, and there they were detained, in a civilized way. Something similar happened in Europe, though there the treatment differed from one country to another. For the first time, it was the Mexican army which closed America's southern border, in cooperation with U.S. authorities, this time against traffic mainly moving south.\n\nSome local traffic was moving. Supermarkets and convenience stores allowed people in, mainly in small numbers, to purchase necessities. Pharmacies sold out of surgical masks. Many called local hardware and paint dealers to get protective masks made for other uses, and TV coverage helped there by telling people that such masks, sprayed with common household disinfectants, offered better protection against a virus than the Army's chemical gear. But inevitably, some people overdid the spraying, and that resulted in allergic reactions, respiratory difficulties, and a few deaths.\n\nPhysicians all across the country were frantically busy. It was rapidly known that the initial presentation of Ebola was similar to flu symptoms, and any doctor could relate that people could _think_ themselves into those. Telling the truly sick from the hypochondriac was rapidly becoming the most demanding of medical skills.\n\nDespite it all, however, people dealt with it, watched their televisions, looked at one another, and wondered how much substance there was to the scare.\n\nTHAT WAS THE job of CDC and USAMRIID, aided by the FBI. There were now five hundred confirmed cases, each of which had been tied directly or indirectly to eighteen trade shows. That gave them time references. It also identified four other trade shows from which no illnesses had as yet developed. All twenty-two had been visited by agents, all of whom learned that in every case the rubbish from the shows had long since been hauled off. There was some thought that the trash might be picked through, but USAMRIID waved the Bureau off, and said that identifying the distribution system would mean comparing the contents of thousands of tons of material, a task that simply was not possible, and might even be dangerous. The important discovery was the time window. That information was made public at once. Americans who had traveled out of the country prior to the start dates of the trade shows that were known to have been focal centers were not dangerous. That fact was made known to national health services worldwide, most of which tacked on from two days to a full week. From them, the information became global knowledge within a few hours. There was no stopping it, and there was no purpose in keeping the secret, even if it were possible to do so.\n\n\"WELL. THAT MEANS we're all safe,\" General Diggs told his staff at the morning conference. Fort Irwin was one of the most isolated encampments in America. There was only one way in and out, and that road was now blocked by a Bradley.\n\nThat wasn't true of other military bases; the problem was global. A senior Army officer from the Pentagon had flown to Germany to hold a conference with V Corps headquarters, and two days later collapsed, in the process infecting a doctor and two nurses. The news had shaken NATO allies, who instantly quarantined American encampments that dated back to the 1940s. The news was also instantly on global TV. What was worse in the Pentagon was that nearly every base had a case, real or suspected. The effect on unit morale was horrific, and that information, also, was impossible to conceal. Transatlantic phone lines burned with worry headed in both directions.\n\nTHINGS WERE FRANTIC in Washington, too. The joint task force included members of all the intelligence services, plus FBI and the federal law-enforcement establishment. The President had given them a lot of power to use, and they intended to use it. The manifest of the lost Gulfstream business jet had started things moving in a new and unexpected direction, but that was the way of investigations.\n\nIn Savannah, Georgia, an FBI agent knocked on the door of the president of Gulfstream and handed him a surgical mask. The factory was shut down, as were most American businesses, but that executive order would be bent today. The president called his chief safety officer and told him to head in, along with the firm's senior test pilot. Six FBI agents sat down with them for a lengthy chat. That soon evolved into a conference call. The most important immediate result was the discovery that the lost aircraft's flight recorder hadn't been recovered. _That_ resulted in a call to the CO of USS _Radford,_ who confirmed that his ship, now in drydock, had tracked the lost aircraft and then had searched for the sonar pings of the black box, but to no avail. The naval officer could not explain that. Gulfstream's chief test pilot explained that if the aircraft hit hard enough, the instrument could break despite its robust design. But it hadn't been going all _that_ fast, the _Radford_ 's skipper remembered, and no debris had been found, either. As a result of that, the FAA and NTSB were called in and told to produce records instantly.\n\nIn Washington\u2014the working group was in the FBI Building\u2014looks were exchanged over the masks everyone was wearing. The FAA part of the team had run down the identity of the flight crew and their qualifications. It turned out that they were both former Iranian air force pilots, trained in America in the late 1970s. From that came photos and fingerprints. Another pair of pilots, flying the same sort of aircraft for the same Swiss corporation, had similar training, and the FBI's legal attach\u00e9 in Bern made an immediate call to his Swiss colleagues to request assistance in interviewing them.\n\n\"Okay,\" Dan Murray summarized. \"We got a sick Belgian nun and a friend with an Iranian doctor. They fly off in a Swiss-registered airplane that disappears without a trace. The airplane belongs to a little trading company the leg-alt will run that down for us pretty fast, but we know the flight crew was Iranian.\"\n\n\"It does seem to be heading in a certain direction, Dan,\" Ed Foley said. Just then an agent came in with a fax for the CIA Director. \"Check this out.\" He slid it across the table. It wasn't a long message.\n\n\"People think they're so fuckin' smart,\" Murray told the people around the table. He passed the new dispatch around.\n\n\"Don't underestimate 'em,\" Ed Foley warned. \"We don't have anything hard yet. The President can't take any action at all on anything until we do.\" And maybe not even then, his mind went on, as gutted as the military is right now. There was also the thing Chavez had said before flying off. Damn, but that kid was getting smart. Foley wondered whether to bring that up. There were more pressing matters for now, he decided. He could discuss it with Murray privately.\n\nCHAVEZ DIDN'T FEEL smart as he dozed in his leather seat. It was another three-hour hop to Khartoum, and he was having dreams, fitful ones. He'd done his share of flying as a CIA officer, but even on a plush executive jet with all the bells and whistles, you got tired of it in a hurry. The diminished air pressure meant diminished oxygen, and that made you tired. The air was dry, and that dehydrated you. The noise of the engines made it like sleeping out in the boonies with insects swarming around all the time, always ready to suck your blood, and you could never make the little bastards go away.\n\nWhoever was doing whatever was happening wasn't all that smart. Okay, an airplane had disappeared with five people aboard, but that wasn't necessarily a dead end, was it? HX-NJA, he remembered from the customs document. Hmph. They'd probably kept records because they were shipping out people, rather than monkeys. HX for Switzerland. Why HX? he wondered. \"H\" for Helvetia, maybe? Wasn't that an old name for Switzerland? Didn't some languages still call it that? He seemed to remember that some did. German, maybe. NJA to identify the individual aircraft. They used letters instead of numbers bccause it made for more permutations. Even this one had such a code, with an \"N\" prefix because American aircraft used that letter code. NJA, he thought with his eyes closed. NJA. Ninja. That generated a smile. The sobriquet for his old outfit, 1st Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment. \"We own the night!\" Yeah, those were the days, humping the hills at Fort Ord and Hunter-Liggett. But the 7th Infantry Division (Light) had been deestablished, its standards furled and cased for retirement, or maybe later use ... Ninja. That seemed important. Why?\n\nHis eyes opened. Chavez stood, stretched, and went forward. There he woke the pilot with whom Clark had had that little tiff. \"Coloncl?\"\n\n\"What is it?\" Only one eye opened.\n\n\"What's one of these things cost?\"\n\n\"More 'n either one of us can afford.\" The eye closed back down.\n\n\"Seriously.\"\n\n\"Upwards of twenty million dollars, depending on the version and the avionics package. If somebody makes a better business jet, I don't know what it is.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Chavez returned to his seat. There was no sense in trying to fade back out. He felt the nose lower and heard the engines reduce their annoying sound. They were starting their descent into Khartoum. The local CIA station chief would be meeting\u2014excuse me, he thought to himself. Commercial attach\u00e9. Or was it political officer? Whatever. He knew that this city wouldn't be as friendly as the last two.\n\nTHE HELICOPTER LANDED at Fort McHenry, close to the statue of Orpheus that someone had decided was appropriate to honor the name of Francis Scott Key, Ryan noted irrelevantly. About as irrelevant as Arnie's idea for a fucking photo opportunity. He had to show he was concerned. Jack wondered about that. Did people think that at times like this the President threw a party? Hadn't Poe written a story like that? \"The Mask of the Red Death\"? Something like that. But that plague had gotten into the party, hadn't it? The President rubbed his face. _Sleep_. _Have to sleep_. _Thinking crazy shit_. It was like flashbulbs. Your mind got tired and random thoughts blinked into your mind for no apparent reason, and then you had to fight them back, and get your mind going on the important stuff.\n\nThe usual Chevy Suburbans were there, but not the presidential limo. Ryan would ride in the obviously armored vehicle. There were cops around, too, looking grim. Well, everybody else did, too. Why not them?\n\nHe, too, was wearing a mask, and there were three TV cameras to record the fact. Maybe it was going out live. He didn't know, and scarcely looked at the cameras on the short walk to the cars. They started moving almost at once, up Fort Avenue, then north onto Key Highway. It was ten fast minutes over vacated city streets, heading toward Johns Hopkins, where the President and First Lady would show how concerned they were for other cameras. A leadership function, Arnie had told him, picking a phrase he was sure to recognize as something he had to respect whether he liked it or not. And the hell of it was, Arnie was right. He was the President, and he couldn't isolate himself from the people-whether he could do anything substantive to help them or not, they had to see him being concerned. It was something that did and didn't make sense, all at the same time.\n\nThe motorcade pulled into the Wolfe Street entrance. There were soldiers there, Guardsmen of the 175th Infantry Regiment, the Maryland Line. The local commander had decided that all hospitals had to be guarded, and Ryan supposed that was one of the things that did make sense. The Detail was nervous to have men around with loaded rifles, but they were soldiers, and that was that\u2014disarming them might have made the news, after all. They all saluted, masked as they were in their MOPP gear, rifles slung over their shoulders. Nobody had threatened the hospital. Perhaps they were the reason why, or maybe it was just that people were scared. Enough that one cop had remarked to a Service agent that street crime had dropped to almost nil. Even the drug dealers were nowhere to be seen.\n\nThere were not very many people to be seen anywhere at this hour, but all of them were masked, and even the lobby was heavy with the chemical smell that was now the national scent. How much of that was a necessary physical measure, and how much psychological? Jack wondered. But, then, that's what his trip was.\n\n\"Hi, Dave,\" the President said to the dean. He was wearing greens instead of his suit, masked like everyone else, and gloved, too. They didn't shake hands.\n\n\"Mr. President, thank you for coming.\" There were cameras in the lobby\u2014they'd followed him in from outside. Before any of the reporters could shout a request for a statement, Jack pointed, and the dean led the party off. Ryan supposed it would look businesslike. Secret Service agents hustled to get ahead as they walked from the elevator bank to the medical floor. The doors slid open to reveal a busy corridor. Here there was bustle and people.\n\n\"What's the score, Dave?\"\n\n\"We have thirty-four patients admitted here. Total for the area is one hundred forty\u2014well, was the last time I checked. We have all the space we need for now, and all the staff, too. We've released about half of our patients, the ones we could sign out safely. All elective procedures are canceled for now, but there is the usual activity. I mean, babies are being born. People get sick from the normal diseases. Some outpatient treatments have to be continued, epidemic or not.\"\n\n\"Where's Cathy?\" Ryan asked, as the next elevator arrived with a single camera whose tape would be pooled with all the networks. The hospital didn't want or need to be crowded with extraneous people, and while media management people had made a little noise, their field personnel weren't all that eager, either. Maybe it was the antiseptic smell. Maybe it affected people the same way it affected dogs taken to the vet. It was the smell of danger for everyone.\n\n\"This way. Let's get you suited up.\" The floor had a doctors' lounge, and one for nurses. Both were being used. The one at the far end was \"hot,\" used for disrobing and decontamination. The near one was supposed to be safe, used for suiting up. There wasn't time or space for all the niceties. The Secret Service agents went in first and saw a woman in bra and panties, picking a plastic suit that was her size. She didn't blush. It was her fourth shift on the unit, and she was beyond that.\n\n\"Hang your clothes over there.\" She pointed. \"Oh!\" she added, recognizing the President.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Ryan said, taking his shoes off and taking a clothes hanger from Andrea. Price examined the woman briefly. Clearly she wasn't carrying a weapon. \"How is it?\" Jack asked.\n\nShe was the charge nurse for the floor. She didn't turn to answer. \"Pretty bad.\" She paused for a second and then decided she had to turn. \"We appreciate the fact that your wife is up here with us.\"\n\n\"I tried to talk her out of it,\" he admitted to her. He didn't feel the least bit guilty about it, either, and wondered if he should or not.\n\n\"So'd my husband.\" She came over. \"Here, the helmet goes on like this.\" Ryan experienced a brief moment of panic. It was a most unnatural act to put a plastic bag over one's head. The nurse read his face. \"Me, too. You get used to it.\"\n\nAcross the room, Dean James was already in his. He also came over to check the President's protective gear.\n\n\"Can you hear me?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Jack was sweating now, despite the portable air-conditioning pack that hooked on his belt.\n\nThe dean turned to the Secret Service personnel. \"From here on, I'm the boss,\" he told them. \"I won't let him get into any danger, but we don't have enough suits for you people. If you stay in the corridors, you'll be safe. Don't touch anything. Not the walls, not the floors, nothing. Somebody goes past you with a cart, get out of the way. If you can't get out of the way, walk to the end of the corridor. If you see any kind of plastic container, stay clear of it. Do you understand?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" For once, Andrea Price was cowed, POTUS saw. As was he. The psychological impact of this was horrific. Dr. James tapped the President on the shoulder.\n\n\"Follow me. I know it's scary, but you are safe in this thing. We all had to get used to it, too, didn't we, Tisha?\"\n\nThe nurse turned, now fully in hers. \"Yes, Doctor.\"\n\nYou could hear your breathing. There was the whir of the A\/C pack, but everything else was muted. Ryan felt a frightening sense of confinement as he walked behind the dean.\n\n\"Cathy's in here.\" He opened the door. Ryan entered.\n\nIt was a child, a boy, aged eight or so, Jack saw. Two blue-clad figures were ministering to him. From behind he couldn't tell which one was his wife. Dr. James held his hand up, forbidding Ryan from taking another step. One of the two was trying to restart an IV, and there couldn't be any distractions. The child was moaning, writhing on the bed. Ryan couldn't see much of him, but he saw enough for his stomach to turn.\n\n\"Hold still now. This will make you feel better.\" It was Cathy's voice; evidently she was doing the stick. The other two hands were holding the arm in place. \"... there. Tape,\" she added, lifting her hands.\n\n\"Good stick, Doctor.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Cathy went to the electronic box that controlled the morphine and pushed in the right numbers, checking to be sure that the machine started functioning properly. With that done, she turned. \"Oh.\"\n\n\"Hi, honey.\"\n\n\"Jack, you don't belong here,\" SURGEON told him firmly.\n\n\"Who does?\"\n\n\"OKAY. I HAVE a line on this Dr. MacGregor,\" the station chief told them, driving his red Chevy. His name was Frank Clayton, a graduate of Grambling, whom Clark had seen through the Farm some years earlier.\n\n\"Then let's go see him, Frank.\" Clark checked his watch, did the calculations, and decided that it was two hours after midnight. He grunted. Yeah, that was about right. First stop was the embassy, where they changed clothes. American military uniforms weren't all that welcome here. In fact, the station chief warned, few things American were. Chavez noted that a car followed them in from the airport.\n\n\"Don't sweat it. We'll lose him at the embassy. You know, sometimes I wonder if it wasn't a good deal when my folks got kidnapped out of Africa. Don't tell anybody I said that, okay? South Alabama is like heaven on earth compared to this shithole.\"\n\nHe parked the car in the embassy's back lot and took them inside. A minute later one of his people walked out, started the Chevy, and headed right back out. The tail car went with him.\n\n\"Shirts,\" the CIA resident officer said, handing them over. \"I suppose you can leave the pants on.\"\n\n\"Have you talked to MacGregor?\" Clark asked.\n\n\"On the phone a few hours ago. We're going to drive over to where he lives, and he's going to get into the car. I have a nice quiet parking spot picked out for our chat,\" Clayton told them.\n\n\"Any danger to him?\"\n\n\"I doubt it. The locals are pretty sloppy. If we have anybody tailing us, I know what to do about it.\"\n\n\"Then let's move, buddy,\" John said. \"We're burning moonlight.\"\n\nMacGregor's quarters weren't all that bad, located in a district favored by Europeans, and, the station chief related, fairly secure. He lifted his cellular phone and dialed the doctor's beeper number\u2014\u2014there was a local paging service. Less than a minute later his door opened, and a figure walked to the car, got in the back, and closed the door a second before it moved off.\n\n\"This is rather unusual for me.\" He was younger than Chavez, John was surprised to note, and eager in rather a shy way. \"Who exactly are you chaps?\"\n\n\"CIA,\" Clark told him.\n\n\"Indeed!\"\n\n\"Indeed, Doctor,\" Clayton said from the front seat. His eyes checked the mirrors. They were clear. Just to make sure, he took the next left, then a right, and then another left. Good.\n\n\"Are you allowed to tell people that?\" MacGregor asked as the car pulled back onto what passed locally as the main drag. \"Do you have to kill me now?\"\n\n\"Doc, save that for the movies, okay?\" Chavez suggested. \"Real life ain't like that, and if we told you we were from the State Department, you wouldn't believe us anyway, right?\"\n\n\"You don't look like diplomats,\" MacGregor decided.\n\nClark turned in the front seat. \"Sir, thank you for agreeing to meet with us.\"\n\n\"The only reason I did so\u2014well, the local government forced me to disregard normal procedures for my two cases. There's a reason for those procedures, you know.\"\n\n\"Okay, first of all, could you please tell me all you can about them?\" John asked, switching on the tape recorder.\n\n\"YOU LOOK TIRED, Cathy.\" Not that it was all that easy to tell through the plastic mask. Even her body language was disguised.\n\nSURGEON looked over to the wall clock behind the nursing station. She was technically off duty now. She would never learn that Arnie van Damm had called the hospital to make sure the timing went right for this. It would have enraged her, and she was mad enough at the whole world already.\n\n\"The kids started arriving this afternoon. Second-generation cases. That one in there must have got it from his father. His name is Timothy. He's in the third grade. His dad's on the next floor up.\"\n\n\"Rest of the family?\"\n\n\"His mom tested positive. They're admitting her now. He has a big sister. She's clean so far. We have her sitting over in the outpatient building. They set up a holding area there for people who've been exposed but don't test out. Come on. I'll show you around the floor.\" A minute later they were in Room 1, temporary home of the Index Case.\n\nRyan thought he must be imagining the smell. There was a dark stain on the bedclothes which two people\u2014nurses, doctors, he couldn't tell\u2014were struggling to change. The man was semiconscious, and fighting the restraints that held his arms to the bed bars. That had the two medics concerned, but they had to change the sheets first. Those went into a plastic bag.\n\n\"They'll get burned,\" Cathy said, pressing her helmet against her husband's. \"We've really dialed up the safety precautions.\"\n\n\"How bad?\"\n\nShe pointed back to the door and followed Jack into the corridor. Once there, with the door closed behind them, she poked an angry finger into his chest. \"Jack, you never, _ever_ discuss a patient's prognosis in front of them, unless you know it's good. _Never!_ \" She paused, and went on without an apology for the outburst: \"He's three days into frank symptoms.\"\n\n\"Any chance?\"\n\nHer head shook inside the helmet. They walked back up the corridor, stopping in some more rooms where the story was dismally the same.\n\n\"Cathy?\" It was the dean's voice. \"You're off duty. Move,\" he commanded.\n\n\"Where's Alexandre?\" Jack asked on the way to the former physicians' lounge.\n\n\"He's got the floor upstairs. Dave has taken this one himself. We hoped Ralph Forster would get back and help out, but there aren't any flights.\" Then she saw the cameras. \"What the hell are _they_ doing here?\"\n\n\"Come on.\" Ryan led his wife into the changing room. The clothing he'd worn to the hospital was bagged somewhere. He put on scrubs, in front of three women and a man who didn't seem all that interested in ogling any of the females. Leaving the room, he headed for the elevator.\n\n\"Stop!\" a female voice called. \"There's a case coming up from ER! Use the stairs.\" And obediently, the Secret Service Detail did just that. Ryan led his wife down to the main floor, and from there out front, still wearing masks.\n\n\"How are you holding up?\"\n\nBefore she could answer, a voice screamed, _\"Mr._ _President!\"_ Two Guardsmen got in the way of the reporter and cameraman, but Ryan waved them off. The pair approached under armed scrutiny, uniformed and plainclothes.\n\n\"Yes, what is it?\" Ryan asked, pulling his mask down. The reporter held the microphone at full arm's length. It would have been comical under other circumstances. Everybody was spooked.\n\n\"What are you doing here, sir?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess it's part of my job to see what's going on, and also I wanted to see how Cathy is doing.\"\n\n\"We know the First Lady is working upstairs. Are you trying to make a statement to the nation\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm a _doctor!_ \" Cathy snapped. \"We're all taking turns up there. It's my job.\"\n\n\"Is it bad?\"\n\nRyan spoke before she could explode at them. \"Look, I know you have to ask that question, but you know the answer. These people are extremely ill, and the docs here, and everyplace else, are doing their best. It's hard on Cathy and her colleagues. It's really hard on the patients and their families.\"\n\n\"Dr. Ryan, is Ebola really as deadly as everyone has been saying?\"\n\nShe nodded. \"It's pretty awful, yes. But we're giving these people the best we got.\"\n\n\"Some have suggested that since the hope for the patients is so bleak, and since their pain is so extreme\u2014\"\n\n\"What are you saying? Kill them?\"\n\n\"Well, if they're really suffering as much as everyone reports\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not that kind of doctor,\" she replied, her face flushed. \"We're going to save some of these people. From those we save, maybe we can learn to save more, and you don't learn _anything_ by giving up. That's why real doctors don't kill patients! What is the matter with you? Those are _people_ in there, and my job is fighting for their lives\u2014and don't you dare tell me how to do it!\" She stopped when her husband's arm squeezed her shoulder. \"Sorry. It's a little tough in there.\"\n\n\"Could you excuse us for a few minutes?\" Ryan asked. \"We haven't talked since yesterday. You know, we are husband and wife, just like real pcople.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" They pulled back, but the camera stayed on them.\n\n\"Comc here, babe.\" Jack embraced her for the first time in more than a day.\n\n\"We're going to lose them all, Jack. Every one, starting tomorrow or the next day,\" she whispered. Then she started crying.\n\n\"Yeah.\" He lowered his head on hers. \"You know, you're allowed to be human, too, Doctor.\"\n\n\"How do they think we learned anything? Oh, we can't fix it, so let 'em all die with dignity. Give up. That's not what they taught me here.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nShe sniffed and wiped her eyes on his shirt. \"Okay, back under control now. I'm off duty for eight hours.\"\n\n\"Where are you sleeping?\"\n\nA deep breath. A shudder. \"Maumenee. They have some cots set up. Bernie's up in New York, helping out at Columbia. They have a couple hundred cases there.\"\n\n\"You're pretty tough, Doctor.\" He smiled down at his wife.\n\n\"Jack, if you find out who did this to us ...\"\n\n\"Working on it,\" POTUS said.\n\n\"KNOW ANY OF these people?\" The station chief handed over some photos he'd shot himself. He handed over a flashlight, too.\n\n\"That's Saleh! Who was he, exactly? He didn't say and I never found out.\"\n\n\"These are all Iraqis. When the government came down, they flew here. I have a bunch of photos. You're sure of this one?\"\n\n\"Quite sure, I treated him for over a week. The poor chap died.\" MacGregor went through some more. \"And that looks like Sohaila. She survived, thank God. Lovely child\u2014and that's her father.\"\n\n\"What the hell?\" Chavez asked. \"Nobody told us that.\"\n\n\"We were at the Farm then, weren't we?\"\n\n\"Back to being a training officer, John?\" Frank Clayton grinned. \"Well, I got the word, and so I went out to shoot the pictures. They came in first class, by God, a big ol' G. Here, see?\"\n\nClark looked at it and grunted\u2014it was almost a twin to the one they were using for their round-the-world jaunt. \"Nice shots.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\n\"Let me see that.\" Chavez took the photo. He held the light right up against it. _\"Ninja, \"_ he whispered. \"Fucking _ninja_ ...\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"John, read those letters off the tail,\" Ding said quietly.\n\n\"HX-NJA ... my God.\"\n\n\"Clayton,\" Chavez said, \"is that cellular phone secure?\"\n\nThe station chief turned it on and punched in three digits. \"It is now. Where do you want to call?\"\n\n\"Langley.\"\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT, CAN we talk to you now?\"\n\nJack nodded. \"Yeah, sure, come on.\" He needed to walk some, and waved for them to follow. \"Maybe I should apologize for Cathy. She's not like that. She's a good doc,\" SWORDSMAN said tiredly. \"Thcy'rc all pretty stressed out up there. The first thing they teach 'em here, I think it goes _primum non nocere_ , 'First of all, do no harm.' It's a pretty good rule. Anyway, my wife's had a couple of hard days in there. But so have all of us.\"\n\n\"It is possible that this was a deliberate act, sir?\"\n\n\"We're not sure, and I can't talk about that until I have good information one way or the other.\"\n\n\"You've had a busy time, Mr. President.\" The reporter was local, not part of the Washington scene. He didn't know how to talk to a President, or so others might think. Regardless, this one was going out live on NBC, though even the reporter didn't know that.\n\n\"Yeah, I guess I have.\"\n\n\"Sir, can you give us any hope?\"\n\nRyan turned at that. \"For the people who're sick, well, the hope comes from the docs and the nurses. They're fine people. You can see that here. They're fighters, warriors. I'm very proud of my wife and what she does. I'm proud of her now. I asked her not to do this. I suppose that's selfish of me, but I said it anyway. Some people tried to kill her once before, you know. I don't mind danger to me, but my wife and kids, no, it's not supposed to happen to them. Not supposed to happen to any of these people. But it did, and now we have to do our best to treat the sick ones and make sure people don't get sick unnecessarily. I know my executive order has upset a lot of people, but I can't live with not doing something that might save lives. I wish there were an easier way, but if there is, nobody's told me about it yet. You see, it's not enough to say, 'No, I don't like that.' Anybody can do that. We need more right now. Look, I'm pretty tired,\" he said, looking away from the camera. \"Can we call it a day for now?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" Ryan turned away, walking south, just wandering really, toward the big parking garages. He saw a man smoking a cigarette there, a black man about forty, in defiance of the signs that prohibited the vice within sight of this shrine of medical learning. POTUS walked up to him, heedless of the three agents and two soldiers behind him.\n\n\"Got a spare?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" The man didn't even look up as he sat on the edge of the brick planter, looking down at the concrete. His left hand held out the pack and a butane lighter at arm's length. By unspoken consent they didn't sit close together.\n\n\"Thanks.\" Ryan sat down about four feet away from the man, reaching to hand the items back.\n\n\"You, too, man?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"My wife's in there, got the sickness. She work with a family, nanny, like. They're all sick. Now she is, too.\"\n\n\"My wife's a doc, she's up there with 'em.\"\n\n\"Ain't gonna matter, man. Ain't gonna matter at all.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Ryan took a long pull and let it out.\n\n\"Won't even let me in, say it too dangerous. Takin' _my_ blood, say I gotta stay close, won't let me smoke, won't let me see her. Sweet Jesus, man, how come?\"\n\n\"If it was you who was sick, and you knew that you might give it to your wife, what would you do?\"\n\nHe nodded with angry resignation. \"I know. The doctor said that. He's right. I know. But that don't _make_ it right.\" He paused. \"Hclps to talk.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I guess it does.\"\n\n\"The fuckers did this, like they say on TV, somebody did this. Fuckers gotta pay, man.\"\n\nRyan didn't know what to say then. Somebody else did. It was Andrea Price:\n\n\"Mr. President? I have the DCI for you.\"\n\nThat turned the man's head. He looked at Ryan in the yellow-orange lighting. \"You're him.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Jack answered quietly.\n\n\"You say your wife is workin' up there?\"\n\nA nod. A sigh. \"Yeah, she's been working here for fifteen years. I came in to see her, and see how it is, how it's going. I'm sorry ...\"\n\n\"What'd'ya mean?\"\n\n\"They won't let you in, but they let me in.\"\n\nHe grimaced. \"Guess you gotta see, eh? Tough what happened with your little girl last week. She okay?\"\n\n\"Yeah, she's fine. At that age, well, you know how it is.\"\n\n\"Good. Hey, thanks for talking with me.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the smoke,\" the President said, standing and walking to Agent Price. He took the phone. \"Ed, it's Jack.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, we need you back. We have something you need to see,\" Ed Foley told him. He wondered how he would explain that the evidence was hanging on the wall of a conference room in CIA Headquarters.\n\n\"Givc me an hour, Ed.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. We're getting it organized now.\"\n\nJack hit the END switch on the phone and handed it back. \"Let's move.\"\n**53**\n\n**SNIE**\n\n**B** EFORE FLYING HOME, everyone had to be decontaminated. Hopkins had set up a large room with separation of the sexes this time. The water was hot, and stank of chemicals, but the smell gave Ryan a needed sense of safety. Then he donned a new set of greens. He'd worn them before, when he'd attended the births of his children. Happy connotations. No longer, he thought, as he headed for the Suburban for the drive back to Fort McHenry and the helicopter hop back to the White House. At least the shower had enlivened him. It might even last a few hours, POTUS thought, as the VH-3 lifted off and turned southwest. If he were lucky.\n\nIT WAS THE most lackluster performance in the history of the National Training Center. The troopers of the 11th Cav and the tankers of the Carolina Guard had blundered about for five hours, barely executing the plans that both had set up. The replay in the Star Wars Room showed cases where tanks had been less than a thousand meters apart and in plain sight, yet hadn't exchanged fire. Nothing had worked on either side, and the simulated engagement had not so much ended as stopped by apathetic consent. Just before midnight, the units formed up for the drive back to their respective laagers, and the senior commanders went to General Diggs's home on the hill.\n\n\"Hi, Nick,\" Colonel Hamm said.\n\n\"Hi, Al,\" Colonel Eddington replied, in about the same tone of voice.\n\n\"And what the hell was that all about?\" Diggs demanded.\n\n\"The men are coming a little unglued, sir,\" the Guardsman replied first. \"We're all worried about our people back home. We're safe here. They're in danger there. I can't blame them for being distracted, General. They're human.\"\n\n\"Best thing I can say is that our immediate families seem to be safe here, General,\" Hamm agreed with his older comrade in arms. \"But we all got family back in the world.\"\n\n\"Okay, gentlemen, we've all had a chance to cry in our beer. I don't like this shit, either, y'hear? But _your_ job is to lead your people, and that means _lead_ , God damn it! In case you two warrior chiefs haven't noticed yet, the whole fuckin' United States Army is tied up in this epidemic\u2014 _except_ _us!_ You two colonels want to think about that? Maybe get your people thinking about it? Nobody ever told me soldiering was an easy job, and damned sure command isn't, but it is the job we do, and if you gentlemen can't get it done, well, there are others who can.\"\n\n\"Sir, that isn't going to work. Ain't nobody to relieve us with,\" Hamm pointed out wryly.\n\n\"Colonel\u2014\"\n\n\"The man's right, Diggs,\" Eddington said. \"Some things are too much. There's an enemy out there we can't fight. Our people'll come around once they have a chance to get used to it, maybe get some good news for a change. Come on, General, you know better. You know history. Those are people out there\u2014yes, soldiers, but people first. They're shook. So am I, Diggs.\"\n\n\"I also know that there are no bad regiments, only bad colonels,\" Diggs retorted, with one of Napoleon's best aphorisms, but he saw that neither man rose to the bait. Jesus, this really was bad.\n\n\"HOW WAS IT?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"Horrible,\" Ryan replied. \"I saw six or seven people who're going to die. One of 'em's a kid. Cathy says there'll be more of them showing up.\"\n\n\"How's she doing?\"\n\n\"Pretty stressed, but okay. She really let a reporter have it.\"\n\n\"I know, it was on TV,\" the chief of staff informed him.\n\n\"Already?\"\n\n\"You were on live.\" Arnie managed a smile. \"You looked great. Concerned. Sincere as hell. You said nice things about your wife. You cvcn apologized for what she said\u2014really good, boss, especially since she looked wondcrful. Dedicated. Intense. Just like a doctor is supposed to be.\"\n\n\"Arnie, this isn't theater.\" Ryan was too tired to be angry. The reviving effects of the shower, disappointingly, had already worn off.\n\n\"No, it's leadership. Someday you're going to learn that\u2014shit, maybe not. Just keep goin' like you're goin',\" Arnie advised. \"You do it without even knowing it, Jack. Don't think about it at all.\"\n\nNBC SHARED THEIR tape with the whole world. As competitive as the news business was, a consciousness of public responsibility _did_ pervade the profession, and the tape of the President's brief conversation went out an hour later on television sets across the globe.\n\nShe'd been right from the first instant, the Prime Minister told herself. He was far out of his depth. He couldn't even stand up straight. His words rambled. He let his wife speak for him\u2014and she was frantic, emotional, weak. America's time as a major power was ending, because the country lacked firm leadership. She didn't _know_ who had caused this plague to happen, but it was easy to guess. It had to be the UIR. Why else had he called them together in western China? With her fleet at sea guarding the approaches to the Persian Gulf, she was doing her part. She was sure she would be rewarded for it in due course.\n\n\"YOUR PRESIDENT IS distracted,\" Zhang said. \"Understandably so.\"\n\n\"Such a great misfortune. You have our deepest sympathy,\" the Foreign Minister added. The three, plus the translator, had also just seen the tape.\n\nAdler had been slow in getting the news of the epidemic, but he was up to speed now. He had to set it all aside, however. \"Shall we proceed?\"\n\n\"Does our distant province agree to our compensation demand?\" the Foreign Minister asked.\n\n\"Unfortunately not. They take the position that the entire incident results from your extended maneuvers. Viewed abstractly, that point of view is not entirely without merit,\" the Secretary of State told them in diplo-speak.\n\n\"But the situation is not abstract. We are conducting peaceful exercises. One of their pilots saw fit to attack our aircraft, and in the process another of their foolish aviators destroyed an airliner. Who is to say if it was an accident or not?\"\n\n\"Not an accident?\" Adler asked. \"What possible purpose could there be for such a thing?\"\n\n\"Who can say with these bandits?\" the Foreign Minister asked in return, stirring the pot a little more.\n\nED AND MARY Pat Foley came in together. Ed was carrying a large rolled poster or something, Jack saw as he sat in the Cabinet Room, still wearing greens with HOPKINS stenciled on them. Next came Murray, with Inspector O'Day in his wake. Ryan stood to go to him.\n\n\"I owe you, sorry I didn't get to see you sooner.\" He took the man's hand.\n\n\"That was pretty easy compared to this,\" Pat said. \"And my little girl was there, too. But, yeah, glad I was there. I won't have any nightmares about that shoot.\" He turned. \"Oh, hi, Andrea.\"\n\nPrice smiled for the first time that day. \"How's your daughter, Pat?\"\n\n\"Home with the sitter. They're both okay,\" he assured her.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" It was Goodley. \"This is pretty hot.\"\n\n\"Okay, then shall we get to work? Who starts?\"\n\n\"I do,\" the DCI said. He slid a sheet of paper across the table. \"Here.\"\n\nRyan took it and scanned it. It was some sort of official form, and the words were all in French. \"What's this?\"\n\n\"It's the immigration and customs clearance form for an airplane. Check the ID box, top-left corner.\"\n\n\"HX-NJA. Okay, so?\" SWORDSMAN asked. His chief of staff sat at his side, kccping his peace. He felt the tension that the executives had brought into the room.\n\nThe blowup of Chavez's photo at Mehrabad Airport was actually larger than a poster, and had been printed up mainly as a joke. Mary Pat unrolled it, and laid it flat on the table. Two briefcases were used to keep it from rolling back up. \"Check the tail,\" the DDO advised.\n\n\"HX-NJA. I don't have time for Agatha Christie, people,\" the President warned them.\n\n\"Mr. President.\" This was Dan Murray. \"Let me walk you through this, but I'll say up front, that photo is something I could take into court and get a conviction with.\n\n\"The customs form identifies a business jet, a Gulfstream G-IV belonging to this Swiss-based corporation.\" A piece of paper went down on the conference table. \"Flown by this flight crew.\" Two photos and fingerprint cards. \"It left Zaire with three passengers. Two were nuns, Sister Jean Baptiste and Sister Maria Magdalena. They were both nurses at a Catholic hospital down there. Sister Jean treated Benedict Mkusa, a little boy who contracted Ebola and died of it. Somehow, Sister Jean caught it, too, and the third passenger, Dr. Mohammcd Moudi\u2014we don't have a photo of him yet; we're working on it\u2014decided to fly the sick one to Paris for treatment. Sister Maria tagged along, too. Dr. Moudi is an Iranian national working with the WHO. He told the boss-nun that she might have a chance there and said that he could whistle up a private jet to get her there. With me so far?\"\n\n\"And this is the jet.\"\n\n\"Correct, Mr. President. This is the jet. Except for one thing. This jet supposedly crashed into the sea after taking off after a refueling stop in Libya. We have a ton of paperwork about that. Except for one thing.\" He tapped the poster again. \"That photo was taken by Domingo Chavez\u2014\"\n\n\"You know him,\" Mary Pat put in.\n\n\"Go on. When did Ding shoot the framc?\"\n\n\"Clark and Chavez accompanied Secretary Adler to Tehran, just last week.\"\n\n\"The aircraft was reported lost some time before that. It was even tracked by one of our destroyers when it squawked emergency. No trace was ever found, however,\" Murray went on. \"Ed?\"\n\n\"When Iraq came apart, Iran allowed the senior military leadership to skip. They all had golden parachutes. Our friend Daryaei let them jump out of the airplane. He _even_ provided transport, all right? This started the day after the jet disappeared,\" Foley told them. \"They were flown to Khartoum, in the Sudan. Our station chief there is Frank Clayton, and he drove to the airport and shot these pictures to confirm our intelligence information.\" The DCI slid them across.\n\n\"Looks like the same airplane, but what if somebody just played with the numbers\u2014letters, whatever?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Next indicator,\" Murray said. \"There were two Ebola cases in Khartoum.\"\n\n\"Clark and Chavez talked to the attending physician a few hours ago,\" Mary Pat added.\n\n\"Both the patients flew on this airplane. We have photos of them getting off. So,\" the FBI Director said, \"now, we have an airplane with a sick person aboard. The airplane disappears\u2014 _but_ it turns up less than twenty-four hours later somewhere else, and two of the passengers come down with the same illness that the nun had. The passengers came from Iraq, via Iran, to the Sudan.\"\n\n\"Who owns the airplane?\" Arnie asked.\n\n\"It's a corporation. We should have further details in a few hours from the Swiss. But the flight crew is Iranian. We have info on them because they learned how to fly over here,\" Murray explained. \"And, finally, we have our friend Daryaei here on the same airplane. Looks like it's been taken out of international service. Maybe Daryaei is using it to hop around his new country now. So, Mr. President, we have the disease, the airplane, and the owner, all tied up. Tomorrow we'll work with Gulfstream to see if the aircraft has any unique characteristics that we can identify in addition to the registration code. We'll have the Swiss pull info on the ownership and the flight logs for the rest of their fleet.\n\n\"We now know who did this, sir,\" Murray concluded. \"This chain of evidence is hard to beat.\"\n\n\"There are more details to flesh out,\" Mary Pat said. \"Background on this Dr. Moudi. Tracking down some monkey shipments\u2014they use monkeys to study the disease. How they staged the faked airplane crash you believe it? The bastards even made an insurance claim.\"\n\n\"Wc're going to suspend this meeting for a moment. Andrea?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Get Secretary Bretano and Admiral Jackson in here.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" She left the room.\n\nEd Foley waited for the door to close behind her. \"Uh, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Yeah, Ed?\"\n\n\"There is one other thing. I haven't even told Dan this yet. We now know that the UIR\u2014really, our friend Mahmoud Haji Daryaei\u2014is behind this. Chavez brought something up before we sent him and John off. The other side could well expect us to trace this back to them. Operational security for something like this is almost impossible to achieve.\" a So?\"\n\n\"So, two things, Jack. First, whatever they're planning, they may think it's irreversible, and therefore it doesn't matter whether we figure this out or not. Second, let's remember how they knocked off Iraq. They got somebody all the way inside.\"\n\nThose were two very big thoughts. Ryan started pondering the first one. Dan Murray's head turned to his roving inspector and they traded looks on the second.\n\n\"Christ, Ed,\" the FBI Director said a moment later.\n\n\"Think it through, Dan,\" the DCI said. \"We have a President. We have a Senate. We have a third of the House. We do not have a Vice President yet. The presidential succession is still dicey, no really powerful figures, and the top level of the government is still gutted. Toss in this epidemic, which has the whole country tied up in knots. To almost anybody outside, we look weak and vulnerable.\"\n\nRyan looked up as Andrea came back in. \"Wait a minute. They made a play for Katie. Why do that if they want me out of the way?\"\n\n\"What's this?\" Price asked.\n\n\"The other side has demonstrated a frightening capability. One,\" Foley said, \"they got all the way into the Iraqi President's security detail and blew him away. Two, the operation last week was run by a sleeper agent who's been here more than a decade, and in that time did nothing at all, but when he woke up, he cared enough to assist in an attempt on a child.\"\n\nMurray had to agree with that: \"That's occurred to us, too. The Intelligence Division is thinking about it right now.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" Andrea objected. \"I know every person on the Detail. For God's sake, we lost five of them defending SANDBOX!\"\n\n\"Agent Price,\" Mary Pat Foley said. \"You know how many times CIA's been burned by people we knew all about\u2014people _I_ knew. Hell, I lost three agents to one of those fucking moles. I _knew_ them, and I _knew_ the guy who shopped 'em. Don't tell me about paranoia. We are up against a very capable enemy here. And it only takes one.\"\n\nMurray whistled as the argument took its full form. His mind had been racing for the past few hours in one direction. Now it had to race in another.\n\n\"Mrs. Foley, I \"\n\n\"Andrea,\" Inspector O'Day said, \"this isn't personal. Take a step back and think about it. If you had the resources of a nation-state, if you were patient, and if you had people who were really motivated, how would you do it?\"\n\n\"How did they do Iraq?\" Ed Foley took up the argument. \"Would you have thought that was possible?\"\n\nThe President looked around the room. _Fabulous, now they're telling me not to trust the Secret Service_.\n\n\"It all makes sense if you think like the other guy,\" Mary Pat told them. \"It's part of their tradition, remember ?\"\n\n\"Okay, but what do we do about it?\" Andrea asked, her face openly stunned at the possibility.\n\n\"Pat, you have a new assignment,\" Murray told his subordinate. \"With the President's permission, that is.\"\n\n\"Granted,\" POTUS breathed.\n\n\"Rules?\" O'Day wanted to know.\n\n\"None, none at all,\" Price told him.\n\nIT WAS APPROACHING noon over the United Islamic Republic. Maintenance was going well on the six heavy divisions based in the south-central part of the country. Nearly all the tracks on the mechanized fighting vehicles had been replaced. A healthy spirit of competition had developed between the former Iraqi divisions and those moved down from Iran. With their vehicles restored to full fighting order, the troopers drew ammunition to bring all of the T-80 tanks and BMP infantry carriers to full basic loads.\n\nThe battalion commanders looked over the results of their training exercise with satisfaction. Their newly acquired GPS locators had been like magic, and now the Iraqis understood one of the reasons why the Americans had treated them so harshly in 1991. With GPS one didn't need roads at all. The Arabic culture had long termed the desert a sea, and now they could navigate on it like sailors, moving from point to point with a confidence they had never known before.\n\nCorps and divisional staff officers knew why this was so important. They had just been issued new maps, and with them a new mission. They also learned that their three-corps mechanized force had a name, the Army of God. By tomorrow, sub-unit commanders would be briefed in on that, and many other things.\n\nIT TOOKAN hour for them to get in. Admiral Jackson had been sleeping in his office, but Secretary Bretano had gone home after a marathon session of reviewing deployments within the country. The White House dress code had been relaxed, they saw. The President, also red-eyed, was wearing doctor clothes.\n\nDan Murray and Ed Foley repeated their brief.\n\nJackson took it well: \"All right. Now we know what we're up against.\"\n\nBretano did not: \"This is an overt act of war.\"\n\n\"But we're not the objective,\" the DCI told him. \"It's Saudi Arabia, and all the other Gulf states. It's the only thing that makes sense. He figures that if he takes over those states, we _can't_ nuke him\u2014it would turn off the oil for the whole world.\" The DCI almost had it right, but not quite.\n\n\"And he has India and China in his pocket,\" Robby Jackson went on. \"They're just running interference, but it's good interference. _Ike's_ in the wrong place. The Indians have their carriers blocking the Straits of Hormuz. We can't get the MPS ships in without air cover. Zap, he moved those three corps down. The Saudis'll fight, but they're outmanned. It's over in a week, maybe less. Not a bad operational concept,\" the J-3 concluded.\n\n\"The bio-attack's pretty clever, too. I think they got more than they bargained for. Almost every base and unit we have is out of business at the moment,\" SecDef observed, catching up fast on the operational side.\n\n\"Mr. President, when I was a boy in Mississippi, I remember the Klukkers used to say, when you see a mad dog, don't kill the poor thing\u2014toss it in somebody's backyard. You know, some sheet-head actually did that to us once, 'cause my pap was real big on getting people registered to vote.\"\n\n\"What did you do, Rob?\"\n\n\"Pap blew it away with his Fox double,\" Admiral Jackson replied. \"And continued the mission. We have to move fast if we're going to move. Problem is, what with?\"\n\n\"How long before the MPS ships get to Saudi?\"\n\n\"Just under three days, but there's somebody in the way. CINCLANT'S cut orders for that surface group to scoot down the Suez, and they can be at the strait in time, but we gotta get those tank-carriers past the Indians first. Those four boats are escorted by one cruiser, two 'cans, and two frigates, and if we lose them, nearest equipment re-supply's in Savannah, sir.\"\n\n\"What do we have in storage in Saudi?\" Ben Goodley asked.\n\n\"Enough for a heavy brigade. Same in Kuwait. The third brigade-set is afloat and standing in harm's way.\"\n\n\"Kuwait's first in line,\" the President said. \"What can we get there?\"\n\n\"If we're balls-to-the-wall, we can fly the 10th ACR out of Israel to mate up with the POMCUS site south of Kuwait City. That we can do in twenty-four hours. The Kuwaitis'll handle transport. They have a quiet understanding with Israel on that. We helped broker it,\" Robby said. \"The plan's called BUFFALO FORWARD.\"\n\n\"Anybody think that's a bad idea?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"One armored cavalry regiment\u2014I I don't think it's enough to deter them, sir,\" Goodley said.\n\n\"The man's right,\" the J-3 agreed.\n\nRyan looked around the table. Knowing was one thing. Being able to act was something else. He _could_ order a strategic nuclear attack on Iran. He had B-2A stealth bombers at Whitcman Air Force Base, and with the information he'd been given in the past two hours, getting CiNC-STRIKE to validate the order under the two-man rule would not be a problem. The \"Spirits,\" as the B-2s were called, could be there in less than eighteen hours, and turn that nation into a smoking, poisoned ruin.\n\nBut he couldn't do that. Even if he had to, he probably couldn't. Though American Presidents had long been faced with the necessity of telling the world that, yes, we _will_ launch our missiles and bombers if we have to, it was a duty Ryan never expected to carry out. Even this attack on his country, the use of weapons of mass destruction\u2014to America the equivalent of nuclear arms\u2014had been the decision of one man, and carried out by a relative handful. Could he flatten whole cities in response, kill the innocent as Daryaei had done, because the other guy had done it first? And live with himself afterward? There had to be something better, some other option. Killing Daryaei was one.\n\n\"Ed?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"Where are Clark and Chavez right now?\"\n\n\"Khartoum, still, awaiting instructions.\"\n\n\"Think they can get into Tehran again?\"\n\n\"Won't be easy, sir.\" He turned to his wife.\n\n\"The Russians have helped us in the past. I can ask. What would their mission be?\"\n\n\"Find out if they can get in first. We'll figure out the mission in a little while. Robby?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. President?\"\n\n\"The 10th Regiment moves to Kuwait at once.\"\n\nJackson took a deep and skeptical breath. \"Aye aye, sir.\"\n\nTHERE WAS THE intermediary step of getting the approval of the Kuwaiti government. The Ambassador handled that. It did not prove to be hard. Major Sabah had kept his governmcnt informed of developments in their new neighbor to the north, and the satellite photos of the retracking of the UIR tanks turned the trick. With their own military fully activated, the Kuwait government telexed a formal request for America to commence an extended training exercise in the western part of their nation. This moved fast. The rulers of the small nation had fresh memories of earlier mistakes. Their only proviso was that the movement be made secretly, and America did not object. Within four hours, the plush, brand-new airliners of the national airline started lifting off, headed southwest over Saudi Arabia, and later turned north, up the Gulf of Aqaba.\n\nThe order was issued by Training and Doctrine Command, which administratively owned the 10th ACR, since it was technically a training establishment. Most other stateside units belonged to Forces Command, FORCECOM. The emergency-deployment order went by CRITIC-priority to Colonel Sean Magruder. He had roughly five thousand personnel to move, and that would require twenty jumbo flights. The roundabout routing made for a distance of 1,300 miles and three hours in each direction, with an hour's turnaround time at both ends. But it had all been thought through, and the diminution of international air travel had made more aircraft available than the plan had anticipated for BUFFALO FORWARD. Even the Israelis cooperated. The pilots of the Kuwaiti jumbos had the singular experience of seeing F-15 fighters with blue Star of David markings flying escort as they came into the big Israeli air base in the Negev.\n\nThe first group out comprised senior officers and a security group to supplement the Kuwaiti guard force at the POMCUS site. The site was a group of warehouses containing the complete equipment set of a heavy brigade, which was exactly what the armored cavalry regiment was. The equipment was lovingly maintained by contractors, who were well paid by their Kuwaiti hosts.\n\nThe second aircraft had A-Troop, 1st of the 10th. Buses took them through the late-afternoon sun to their vehicles, which in every case started up at once, fully loaded with fuel and ammunition. A troop of the 1st \"Guidon\" Squadron rolled out under the watchful eyes of their squadron CO, Lieutenant Colonel Duke Mastcrman. He had family in the Philadelphia area, and he could add two and two together. Something very bad was happening in his country, and out of a clear sky BUFFALO FORWARD had been activated. That was fine with him, he decided, and his troopers.\n\nMagruder and his staff also watched. He'd even insisted that the command group bring the regimental standard. This was the Cav.\n\n\"FOLEYLVA, IS IT that bad?\" Golovko asked, meaning the epidemic. They were speaking in Russian. Though his English was nearly perfect, the CIA official spoke his native language with a poetic elegance learned from her grandfather.\n\n\"We don't know, Sergey Nikolay'ch, and I have bccn looking at other things.\"\n\n\"Ivan Emmetovich is bcaring up?\"\n\n\"What do you think? I know you saw the TV interview a few hours ago.\"\n\n\"An interesting man, your President. So easy to underestimate. I did that once myself.\"\n\n\"And Daryaei?\"\n\n\"Formidable, but an uncultured barbarian.\" Mary Pat could almost hear the man spit.\n\n\"Quite.\"\n\n\"Tell Ivan Emmetovich to think the scenario through, Foleyeva,\" Golovko suggested. \"Yes, we will cooperate,\" he added, answering a question not yet asked. \"Fully.\"\n\n\" _Spasiba_. I will be back to you.\" Mary Pat looked over at her husband. \"You have to love the guy.\"\n\n\"I wish he was on our side,\" the DCI observed.\n\n\"He is, Ed.\"\n\nTHE DOG HAD stopped barking, they noted in STORM TRACK. The three corps they were trying to observe had stopped using their radios around noon. Zero. As sophisticated as their computer-aided ELINT equipment was, nothing was still nothing. It was an obvious sign, and just as often overlooked. The direct lines to Washington burned constantly now. More Saudi officers were coming in, demonstrating the increased alert state of their own military, which was quietly deploying to the field around King Khalid Military City. That was some comfort to the intelligence people in the listening post, but not much. They were far closer to the mouth of the lion. Being spooks, they thought like spooks, and by consensus they decided that the events in America had somehow started here. Elsewhere, such thoughts engendered a feeling of helplessness; here they had a different effect. The rage was real, and they had a mission to fulfill, exposed position or not.\n\n\"OKAY,\" JACKSON SAID on the conference line, \"who _can_ we deploy?\"\n\nThe answer was a brief silence. The Army was half the size it had been less than a decade before. There were two heavy divisions in Europe, V Corps, but they were quarantined by the Germans. The same was true of the two armored divisions at Fort Hood, Texas, and the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Riley, Kansas. Parts of the 82nd at Fort Bragg and the 101st at Fort Campbell _were_ deployed to support National Guard units, but the units that had been kept back at their bases had soldiers who'd tested positive for Ebola. The same was true of the two stateside Marine divisions, based at Lejeune in North Carolina and Pendleton in California.\n\n\"Look,\" FORCECOM said. \"We got the 11th ACR and a Guard brigade training up at the NTC. That base is totally clean, we can move them out as quick as you can whistle up the airplanes. The rest? Before we can move them, we have to sort everybody out. I don't dare move them before we've tested every soldier for this damned bug, and the kits ain't out everywhere yet.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" another voice said. Every head on the conference line nodded. The pharmaceutical companies were racing to produce them. Millions of test kits were needed, but only a few tens of thousands were available, and those were being used for targeted people, the ones who showed symptoms, relatives or close associates of known cases, truckers delivering food and medical supplies, and most of all, the medical personnel themselves, who were the most exposed to the virus. Worse still, one \"clear\" reading wasn't enough. Some people would have to be tested daily for three days or more, because although the test was reliable, the immune systems of potential victims were not. The antibodies could start showing up an hour after a negative test reading. Doctors and hospitals throughout the country were screaming for the kits, and in this case the Army was sucking hind tit.\n\n_The UIR is going to throw a war_ , J-3 thought, _and nobody's going to come._ Robby wondered if some hippie from the sixties might find that amusing.\n\n\"How long on that?\"\n\n\"End of the week, at best,\" FORCECOM replied. \"I have an officer on it.\"\n\n\"I got the 366th Wing at Mountain Home. They're all clean,\" Air Combat Command reported. \"We have the F-16 wing in Israel. My European units are being held hostage, though, all of them.\"\n\n\"Airplanes are nice, Paul,\" FORCECOM said. \"So are ships, but we need soldiers over there in one big fucking hurry.\"\n\n\"Cut warning orders to Fort Irwin,\" Jackson said. \"I'll have the SecDef authorize their release within the hour.\"\n\n\"Done.\"\n\n\"MOSCOW?\" CHAVEZ ASKED. \"Jesu Cristo, we are getting around.\"\n\n\"Ours is not to reason why.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know the second part, Mr. C. If we're going to the right place, I'll take that chancc.\"\n\n\"Your carriage awaits, gents,\" Clayton said. \"The blue suits are turning the airplane over for you.\"\n\n\"Yeah, that reminds me.\" Clark pulled the uniform shirt out of the closet. In a minute, he was a colonel again. Five minutes after that, they were off for the airport, soon to leave the Sudan to the ministrations of Frank Clayton and memories of \"Chinese\" Gordon.\n\nTHERE WAS AN aspect of schadenfreude about it. O'Day assembled a team of FBI agents to go over the personnel packets of every Secret Service agent who got close to the President, both the plainclothes and Uniformed Division officers. There were quite a few. Ordinarily some would have been tossed for obvious no-hit indicators\u2014a name like O'Connor, for example\u2014but this case was too important for that, and every file had to be examined in full before it could bc set aside. This job he left to others. Another team was examining something not widely known. There was a computerized record of every telephone call made in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Legal in a strict sense, the program, had it extended farther afield, would have excited Big Brother-ish outrage from even the most extreme law-enforcement hawk, but the President lived in Washington, and America had lost Presidents there. It was almost too much to hope for. By definition, a conspirator in the Secret Service would be an expert on security measures. Their target, if there was one, would be one of the boys. He might stand out in professional excellence\u2014you had to, in order to make the Detail\u2014but nothing else. He'd fit in. He'd have a good service reputation. He'd tell jokes, bct on ballgames, have a beer at the local hangout\u2014he'd be just like all the others who would willingly guard the life of the President as courageously as Don Russell had done, O'Day knew, and part of him hated the rest of him for having to treat them like suspects in a criminal investigation. It wasn't supposed to be this way. But then, what was?\n\nDIGGS CALLED BOTH colonels to his office to give them the news: \"We have warning orders to deploy overseas.\"\n\n\"Who?\" Eddington asked.\n\n\"Both of your units,\" the general answered.\n\n\"Where to, sir?\" Hamm asked next.\n\n\"Saudi. We've both been there and done that before, Al, and here's your chance, Colonel Eddington.\"\n\n\"Why?\" the Guardsman asked.\n\n\"They haven't said yet. I have background information coming into the fax machine now. All they told me over the phone was that the UIR is getting frisky. The 10th is mating up with their POMCUS gear right now\u2014\"\n\n\"BUFFALO FORWARD?\" Hamm asked. \"No warning?\"\n\n\"Correct, Al.\"\n\n\"Is this related to the epidemic?\" Eddington asked.\n\nDiggs shook his head. \"Nobody's told me anything about that.\"\n\nIT HAD TO be done in Federal District Court in Baltimore. Edward J. Kealty filed a suit naming John Patrick Ryan as defendant. The substance of the complaint was that the former wanted to cross a state line, and the latter wouldn't let him. The filing asked for summary judgment, the vacating of the executive order of the President (strangely, the complaint named Ryan as President of the United States) immediately. Kealty figured that he'd win this one. The Constitution was on his side, and he'd chosen the judge with care.\n\nTHE SPECIAL NATIONAL Intelligence Estimate was now complete, and irrelevant. The intentions of the United Islamic Republic were totally clear. The trick now was to do something about them, but that was not, strictly speaking, an intelligence function.\n**54**\n\n**FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS**\n\n**T** HEY DIDN'T SEE IT coming, and it did get their attention. By dawn the next day, all three ground squadrons of the 10th Cavalry were fully deployed, while the fourth squadron, composed of attack helicopters, needed one more day to get up to speed. Kuwaiti regular officers\u2014their standing army was still relatively small, with the ranks fleshed out by enthusiastic reservists\u2014greeted their American counterparts with waving swords and embraces in front of the cameras, and serious, quiet conversation in the command tents. For his part, Colonel Magruder arranged for one of his squadrons to assemble in parade formation with standards flying. It was good for everyone's morale, and the fifty-two tanks massed together looked like the fist of an angry god. The UIR intelligence service expected something to happen, but not this, and not this fast.\n\n\"What is this?\" Daryaei demanded, allowing his deadly rage to show for once. Ordinarily, it was enough that people knew it was hidden there, somewhere.\n\n\"It's a sham.\" After the initial shock, his chief of intelligence had taken the time to get a feel for the reality of the situation. \"That is a _regiment_. Each of the six divisions in the Army of God has three\u2014in two cases, four\u2014brigades. And so, we are twenty to their one. Did you expect that the Americans would not respond at all? That is unrealistic. But here we see they have responded. With one regiment, moved in from Israel, and sent in the wrong place. With this they intend to frighten us.\"\n\n\"Go on.\" The dark eyes softened slightly, merely simmering rather than dangerously hostile.\n\n\"America cannot deploy its divisions from Europe. They are contaminated. The same is true of their heavy divisions in America. So we will face the Saudis first of all. It will be a great battle, which we shall win. The rump states will surrender to us, or be crushed\u2014and then Kuwait will stand alone, at the top of the Gulf, with its own forces and this American regiment, and then we shall see about that. They probably expect us to invade Kuwait first. We will not repeat that error, will we?\"\n\n\"And if they reinforce the Saudis?\"\n\n\"Again, they have the equipment for but one brigade in the Kingdom. The second is afloat. You talked to India about that, did you not?\" It was so normal that he might have predicted it, the chief UIR spook thought behind outwardly cowed eyes. They always got nervous just before things started, as though expecting everyone to follow the script they'd written. The enemy was the enemy. He didn't always cooperate. \"And I doubt they have the troops to move. Aircraft, perhaps, but there is no carrier within ten thousand kilometers, and aircraft, though they are an annoyance, can neither take nor hold ground.\"\n\n\"Thank you for making that clear.\" The old man's mood softened.\n\n\"AT LAST WE meet, Comrade Colonel,\" Golovko said to the CIA officer.\n\nClark had always wondered if he'd see the inside of KGB headquarters. He'd never quite expected to be offered drinks there in the Chairman's office. Early in the morning or not, he took a slug of the Starka-brand vodka. \"Your hospitality is not what I was trained to expect, Comrade Chairman.\"\n\n\"We don't do that here anymore. Lefortovo Prison is more convenient.\" He paused, set down his glass, and switched back to tea. A drink with the man was mandatory, but it was early in the day. \"I must ask. Was it you who brought Madam Gerasimov and the girl out?\"\n\nClark nodded. There was nothing to be gained from lying to the man. \"Yes, that was me.\"\n\n\"You are welcome to all three of them, Ivan ... your father's name?\"\n\n\"Timothy. I am Ivan Timofeyevich, Sergey Nikolay'ch.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Golovko had a good laugh. \"As hard as the Cold War was, my friend, it is good now, at the end of it, to see old enemies. Fifty years from now, when all of us are dead, historians will compare CIA records with ours, and they will decide who won the intelligence war. Have you any idea what they will decide?\"\n\n\"You forget, I was a foot soldier, not a commander, for most of it.\"\n\n\"Our Major Schcrenko was impressed with you and your young partner here. Your rescue of Koga was impressive. And now we will work together again. Have you been briefed in?\"\n\nFor Chavez, who'd come to manhood watching Rambo movies, and whose early Army training had taught him to expect going head-to-head with the Soviets at any time, it was an experience which he wanted to ascribe to jet lag, though both CIA officers had noted how empty the corridors were for their passage. There was no sense letting them see faces they might remember in some other time and some other place.\n\n\"No, mainly we've been gathering information.\"\n\nGolovko hit a button on his desk. \"Is Bondarenko here?\" A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing a senior Russian general officer.\n\nBoth Americans stood. Clark read the medals and gave the man a hard look. Bondarenko did the same. The handshakes exchanged were wary, curious, and strangely warm. They were of an age, raised in one, growing into another.\n\n\"Gennady Iosefovich is chief of operations. Ivan Timofeyevich is a CIA spy,\" the Chairman explained. \"As is his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?\"\n\n\"Yes, that is certain.\"\n\n\"Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?\"\n\n\"Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait,\" Bondarenko said. \"They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions southeast of Baghdad will be ready to move in three days, four at the most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we will see what their plan is.\"\n\n\"Any thoughts?\"\n\n\"We have no more intelligence on this than you do,\" Golovko said. \"Regrettably, most of our assets in the area have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime have left the country.\"\n\n\"The high command of the army is Iranian, many were trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they survived the purges,\" Bondarenko said. \"We have dossiers on many of them, and these are being transmitted to the Pentagon.\"\n\n\"That's very cordial of you.\"\n\n\"You bet,\" Ding observed. \"If they dust us off, next they come north.\"\n\n\"Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual interests,\" Golovko agreed.\n\n\"If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then we will have to deal with him in three years,\" Bondarenko said seriously. \"Better today, I think, for all of us.\"\n\n\"We have offered our support to Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we will see what we can do.\"\n\nSOME WOULD LAST longer than others. Some would last less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms. Doctors interviewing her determined that she'd probably contracted the disease by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any intimate contact, because he'd felt too ill even to kiss her after returning from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data, it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information, however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief because the man's condition toward the end was both hopeless and agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer in coming.\n\nThe same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while unconscious with his massive dose of painkillers. This, too, came as something of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the country's horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be next.\n\nIt was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted, but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word _death_ was being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens, in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure and relaxation, followed by the somber words of reporters who were themselves becoming as familiar as family members\u2014it all entered the public consciousness with an immediacy that was as new and different as it was horrid. It was no longer the sort of nightmare from which one awoke. It was one which went on and on, seeming to grow, like the child's dream in which a black cloud entered a room, growing and growing, approaching despite all attempts at evasion, and you knew that if it touched you, you were lost.\n\nGrumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived on telephones now. Long-distance lines were jammed with calls to ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T, MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use. There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one. There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being.\n\nReporters, still moving around with their mobile cameras, reported on all that, and in doing so, they both increased the degree of tension, and contributed to its solution.\n\n\"IT'S WORKING,\" GENERAL Pickett said over the phone to his former subordinate in Baltimore.\n\n\"Where are you, John?\" Alexandre asked.\n\n\"Dallas. It's working, Colonel. I need you to do something.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"Stop playing practitioner. You have residents to do that. I have a working group at Walter Reed. Get the hell over there. You're too big an asset on the theoretical side to waste in a Racal suit doing sticks, Alex.\"\n\n\"John, this is my department now, and I have to lead my troops.\" It was a lesson well remembered from his time in green suits.\n\n\"Fine, your people know you care, Colonel. Now you can put the damned rifle down and start thinking like a goddamned _commander._ This battle's not going to be won in hospitals, is it?\" Pickett asked more reasonably. \"I have transport waiting for you. There should be a Hummer downstairs to bring you into Reed. Want me to reactivate you and make it an order?\"\n\nAnd he could do that, Alexandre knew. \"Give me half an hour.\" The associate professor hung up the phone and looked down the corridor. Another body bag was being carried out of a room by some orderlies in plastic suits. There was a pride in being here. Even though he was losing patients and would lose more, he was here, being a doctor, doing his best, showing his staff that, yes, he was one of them, ministering to the sick, taking his chances in accordance with the oath he'd sworn at the age of twenty-six. When this was over, the entire team would look back on this with a feeling of solidarity. As horrible as it had been, they'd done the job\n\n\"Damn,\" he swore. John Pickett was right. The battle was being fought here, but it wouldn't be won here. He told his chief assistant that he was heading down to the next floor, which was being run by Dean James.\n\nThere was an interesting case there. Female, thirtynine, admitted two days earlier. Her common-law significant other was dying, and she was distraught, and her blood showed Ebola antibodies, and she'd presented the classic flu symptoms, but the disease hadn't gone further. It had, in fact, seemed to stop.\n\n\"What gives with this one?\" Cathy Ryan was speculating with Dean James.\n\n\"Don't knock it, Cath,\" he responded tiredly.\n\n\"I'm not, Dave, but I want to know why. I intcrvicwcd her myself. She slept in the same bed with him two days before she brought him in\u2014\"\n\n\"Did they have sex?\" Alex asked, entering the conversation.\n\n\"No, Alex, they didn't. I asked that. He didn't feel well enough. I think this one's going to survive.\" And that was a first for Baltimore.\n\n\"We keep her in for at least a week, Cathy.\"\n\n\"I _know_ that, Dave, but this is the first one,\" SURGEON pointed out. \"Something's different here. What is it? We have to know!\"\n\n\"Chart?\" Cathy handed it over to Alcxandre.\n\nHe scanned it. Temperature down to 100.2, blood work\n\n... not normal, but ... \"What does she say, Cathy?\" Alexandre asked, flipping back through some pages.\n\n\"How she says she feels, you mean? Panicked, frightened to death. Massive headaches, abdominal cramps\u2014I think a lot of that is pure stress. Can't blame her, can we?\"\n\n\"These values are all improving. Liver function blipped hard, but that stopped last night, and it's coming back ...\"\n\n\"That's what got my attention. She's fighting it off, Alex,\" Dr. Ryan said. \"First one, I think we're going to win with her. But _why?_ What's different? What can we learn from this? What can we apply to other patients?\"\n\nThat turned the trick for Dr. Alexandre. John Pickett was right. He had to get to Reed.\n\n\"Dave, they want me in Washington right now.\"\n\n\"Go,\" the dean replied at once. \"We're covered here. If you can help make sense of this, get yourself down there.\"\n\n\"Cathy, the most likely answer to your question is the simple one. Your ability to fight this thing off is inversely proportional to the number of particles that get into your system. Everybody thinks that just one strand can kill you. That's not true. Nothing's that dangerous. Ebola kills first of all by overpowering the immune system; _then_ it goes to work on the organs. If she only got a small number of the little bastards, then her immune system fought the battle and won. Talk to her some more, Cathy. Every detail of her contact with her husband-whatever in the last week. I'll call you in a couple of hours. How are you guys doing?\"\n\n\"Alex, if there's some hope in this,\" Dr. James replied, \"then I think we can hack it.\"\n\nAlexandre went back upstairs for decontamination. First his suit was thoroughly sprayed. Then he disrobed and changed into greens and a mask, took the \"clean\" elevator down to the lobby, and out the door.\n\n\"You Colonel Alexandre?\" a sergeant asked.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe NCO saluted. \"Follow me, sir. We got a Hummer and a driver for you. You want a jacket, sir? Kinda cool out.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" He donned the rubberized chemical-warfare parka. They were so miserable to wear that it would surely keep him warm all the way down. A female Spec-4 was at the wheel. Alexandre got into the uncomfortable seat, buckled the belt, and turned to her. \"Go!\" Only then did he rethink what he'd told Ryan and James upstairs. His head shook as though to repel an insect. Pickett was right. Maybe.\n\n\"MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE, let us reexamine the data first. I even called Dr. Alexandre down from Hopkins to work with the group I set up at Reed. It's much too soon for any conclusions. Please, let us do our work.\"\n\n\"Okay, General,\" Ryan said angrily. \"I'll be here. Damn,\" he swore after hanging up.\n\n\"We have other things to do, sir,\" Goodley pointed out.\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nIT WAS STILL dark when it started in the Pacific Time Zone. At least getting the aircraft was easy. Jumbos from most of the major airlines were heading for Barstow, California, their flight crews screened for Ebola antibodies and passed by Army doctors with test kits which were just now coming on line. There were also modifications to the aircraft ventilation systems. At the National Training Center, soldiers were boarding buscs. That was normal for the Blue Force, but not for the OpFor, whose families watched the uniformed soldiers leave their homes for the deployment. Little was known except that they were leaving. The destination was a secret for now; the soldiers would learn it only after lifting off for the sixteen-hour flights. Over ten thousand men and women meant forty flights, leaving at a rate of only four per hour from the rudimentary facilities in the high desert of California. If asked, the local public affairs officers would tell whoever called that the units at Fort Irwin were moving out to assist with the national quarantine. In Washington, a few reporters learned something else.\n\n\"THOMAS DONNER?\" THE woman in the mask asked.\n\n\"That's right,\" the reporter answered crossly, pulled away from his breakfast table, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.\n\n\"FBI. Would you come with me, sir? We have to talk to you about some things.\"\n\n\"Am I under arrest?\" the TV personality demanded.\n\n\"Only if you want to be, Mr. Donner,\" the agent told him. \"But I need you to come with me, right now. You won't need anything special, except your wallet and ID and stuff,\" she added, handing over a surgical mask in a plastic container.\n\n\"Fine. Give me a minute.\" The door closed, allowing Donner to kiss his wife, get a jacket, and change shoes. He emerged, put the mask on, and followed the agent to her car. \"So what is this all about?\"\n\n\"I'm just the limo service,\" she said, ending the morning's conversation. If he was too dumb to remember that he was a member of the press pool pre-sclected for Pentagon operations, it wasn't her lookout.\n\n\"THE BIGGEST MISTAKE the Iraqis made in 1990 was logistics,\" Admiral Jackson explained, moving his pointer on the map. \"Everybody thinks it's about guns and bombs. It isn't. It's about fuel and information. If you have enough fuel to keep moving, and you know what the other guy's doing, chances are you'll win.\" The slide changed on the screen next to the map. The pointer moved there next. \"Here.\"\n\nThe satellite photos were clear. Every tank and BMP laager was accompanied by something else. A large collection of fuel bowsers. Artillery limbers were attached to their trucks. Blowups showed fuel drums attached to the rear decks of the T-80 tanks. Each contained fifty-five gallons of diesel. These greatly increased the tank's vulnerability to damage, but could be dropped off by flipping a switch inside the turret.\n\n\"No doubt about it. They're getting ready to move, probably within the week. We have the 10th Cavalry in place in Kuwait. We have the 11th and the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard moving now. That's all we can do for the moment. It won't be till Friday at the earliest that we can cut any more units loose from the quarantine.\"\n\n\"And that's public information,\" Ed Foley added.\n\n\"Essentially, we're deploying one division, a very heavy one, but only one,\" Jackson concluded. \"The Kuwait military is fully in the field. The Saudis are spinning up, too.\"\n\n\"And the third brigade depends on getting the MPS ships past the Indian navy,\" Secretary Bretano pointed out.\n\n\"We can't do that,\" Admiral DeMarco informed them. \"We don't have the combat power to fight our way through.\"\n\nJackson didn't reply to that. He couldn't. The acting Chief of Naval Operations was his senior, despite what he thought of him.\n\n\"Look, Brucie,\" Mickey Moore said, turning to look right at him, \"my boys need those vehicles, or the Carolina Guard is gonna be facing an advancing enemy mechanized force with side arms. You blue-suits been telling us for years how ballsy those Aegis cruisers are. Put up or shut up, okay? By this time tomorrow, I'll have fifteen thousand soldiers at risk.\"\n\n\"Admiral Jackson,\" the President said. \"You're Operations.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, without air cover\u2014\"\n\n\"Can we do it or can't we?\" Ryan demanded.\n\n\"No,\" DeMarco replied. \"I won't see ships wasted that way. Not without air cover.\"\n\n\"Robby, I want your best judgment on this,\" Secretary Bretano said.\n\n\"Okay.\" Jackson took a breath. \"They have a total of about forty Harriers. Nice airplanes, but not really high-performance. The escorting force has a total of maybe thirty surface-to-surface missiles. We don't have to worry about a gunfight. _Anzio_ currently carries seventy-five SAMs, fifteen Tomahawks, and eight harpoons. _Kidd_ has seventy SAMs, and eight Harpoons. _O'Bannon_ isn't a SAM ship. She just has point-defense weapons, but she has Harpoons, too. The two frigates that just joined up have about twenty SAMs each. Theoretically, they can fight through.\"\n\n\"It's too dangerous, Jackson! You don't send a surface force against a carrier group by itself, _ever!_ \"\n\n\"What if we shoot first?\" Ryan asked. _That_ caused heads to turn.\n\n\"Mr. President.\" It was DeMarco again. \"We don't do that. We're not even sure that they are hostile.\"\n\n\"The ambassador thinks they are,\" Bretano told them.\n\n\"Admiral DeMarco, that equipment has to be dclivered,\" the President said, his own face coloring up.\n\n\"The Air Force is deploying to Saudi now. Two extra days and we can deal with it, but until then\u2014\"\n\n\"Admiral, call your relief.\" Secretary Bretano looked down at his briefing folder. \"Your services are not needed here anymore. We don't have two days to bicker.\"\n\nThat was actually a violation of protocol. The Joint Chiefs were presidential appointments, and while they were titularly military advisers to the Secretary of Defense _and_ the President, supposedly only the latter could ask one to resign. Admiral DeMarco looked to Ryan's place in the center of the conference table.\n\n\"Mr. President, I have to give you my best feel for this.\"\n\n\"Admiral, we have fifteen thousand men standing in harm's way. You can't tell us that the Navy will not support them. You are relieved of duty effective now,\" the President said. \"Good day.\" The other uniformed Chiefs glanced at one another. This hadn't happened before. \"How long before contact with the Indians?\" Ryan asked, moving on.\n\n\"About twenty-four hours, sir.\"\n\n\"Any way we can provide additional support?\"\n\n\"There's a submarine there also, loaded with torpedoes and missiles. She's about fifty miles in advance of _Anzio,_ \" Jackson said, as a stunned admiral and his aide left the room. \"We can speed her up. That risks detection, but the Indians aren't all that swift on ASW. She would be an offensive weapon, sir. Submarines can't defend passively. They sink ships.\"\n\n\"I think the Indian Prime Minister and I need to have a little chat,\" POTUS observed. \"After we get through them, then what?\"\n\n\"Well, then we have to transit the strait and make it up to the unloading ports.\"\n\n\"That I can help you with,\" the Air Force chief of staff promised. \"We'll have the F-16s in-country and in range for that part of the passage. The 366th Wing won't be ready yet, but the boys from Israel will be.\"\n\n\"We're going to need that cover, General,\" Jackson emphasized.\n\n\"Well, God damn, the Navy's asking for help from us Air Scouts,\" the Air Force said lightly, then turned serious. \"We'll kill every rag-head son of a bitch who gets in the air, Robby. Those forty-eight-16-Charlies are locked and cocked. As soon as you're within a hundred miles of the Strait, you have a friend overhead.\"\n\n\"Is it enough?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Strictly speaking, no. The other side has four hundred top-of-the-line airplanes. When the 366th gets fully set up\u2014in three days, minimum\u2014we'll have eighty fighters for air-to-air, but the Saudis aren't bad. We have AWACS in place. Your tanks will fight under a neutral sky at worst, Mickey.\" The general checked his watch. \"They should be getting off right about now.\"\n\nTHE FIRST FLIGHT of four F-15C fighter-interceptors rotated aloft together. Twenty minutes later, they formed up with their KC-135R tankers. There were six of them from their own wing, and others would join from the Montana and North and South Dakota Air National Guard, their home states as yet untouched by the epidemic. For most of the way to the Arabian Peninsula, they'd hold position ten miles from the lead commercial aircraft coming out of California. The flight path took them north to the Pole, then over the hump and south toward Russia, continuing over Eastern Europe. West of Cyprus, they would be joined by an Israeli escort, which would convey them as far as Jordan. From there on, the American Eagle fighters would be augmented by Saudi F-15s. They might make the first few arrivals covertly, the planning officers thought in their own commercial transports, but if the other side woke up, then there would be an air battle. The pilots in the lead Eagle flight really didn't mind that very much. There was no extraneous chatter on the radios as they saw dawn to their right. It would be a flight of two dawns. The next one would be to their left.\n\n\"OKAY, LADIES AND gentlemen,\" the public affairs officer told the fifteen assembled journalists. \"Here's the scoop. You have been called up for a military deployment. Sergeant Astor is now handing out consent forms. You will please sign them and hand them back.\"\n\n\"What's this?\" one of them asked.\n\n\"You maybe want to try reading it?\" the Marine colonel suggested from behind his mask.\n\n\"Blood test,\" one muttered. \"I guess so. But what about the rest?\"\n\n\"Ma'am, those of you who sign the form will find out more. Those who do not will be driven home.\" Curiosity won in every case. They all signed.\n\n\"Thank you.\" The colonel examined all the forms. \"Now if you will go through the door to your left, some Navy corpsmen are waiting for you.\"\n\nHE WAS PLEADING his own case. Though a member of the bar for thirty years, Ed Kealty had been in a court of law only as a spectator, though on many occasions he'd stood on the steps of a courthouse to make a speech or announcement. It was always dramatic, and so was this.\n\n\"May it please the court,\" the former Vice President began, \"I stand here to request summary judgment. My right to cross a state line has been violated by the executive order of the President. This is contrary to explicit constitutional guarantees, and also to Supreme Court precedent, to wit, the Lemuel Penn case, in which the Court ruled unanimously . . .\"\n\nPat Martin sat beside the Solicitor General, who would speak for the government. There was a camera from _Court TV_ to send the case up and down via satellite into homes across the nation. It was a strange scene. The judge, the court reporter, the bailiff, all the attorneys, the ten reporters, and four spectators were all wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves. All had just seen Ed Kealty make the greatest political miscalculation of his career, though none had grasped it yet. Martin had come in anticipation of that very fact.\n\n\"Freedom of travel is central to all of the freedoms established and protected by the Constitution. The President has neither constitutional nor statutory authority to deny this freedom to the citizens, most particularly not by the application of armed force, which has already resulted in the death of a citizen, and the wounding of several others. This is a simple point of law,\" Kealty was saying, half an hour later, \"and on behalf of myself and our fellow citizens, I beg the court to set this illegal order aside.\" With that, Edward J. Kealty took his place.\n\n\"Your Honor,\" the Solicitor General said, walking to the podium with the TV microphone, \"as the complainant tells us, this is a most important case, but not one of great legal complexity at its foundation.\n\n\"The government cites Mr. Justice Holmes in the celebrated free speech case where he told us that the suspension of freedoms is permissible when the danger to the country as a whole is both real and present. The Constitution, Your Honor, is not a suicide pact. The crisis which the country faces today is deadly, as press reports have told us, and it is of a nature that the drafters could not have anticipated. In the late eighteenth century, I remind learned counsel, the nature of infectious disease was not yet known. But quarantining of ships at the time was both common and accepted. We have Jefferson's embargo of foreign trade as a precedent, but most of all, Your Honor, we have common sense. We cannot sacrifice our citizens on the altar of legal theory ...\"\n\nMartin listened, rubbing his nose under the mask. It smelled as though a barrel of Lysol had been spilled in the room.\n\nIT MIGHT HAVE been comical, but was not, when each of the fifteen reporters reacted the same way to the blood test. A blink. A sigh of relief. Each one stood and walked to the far side of the room, taking the opportunity to remove his or her mask. When the tests were complete, they were led into another briefing room.\n\n\"Okay, we have a bus outside to take you to Andrews. You will receive further information after you take off,\" the PAO colonel told them.\n\n\"Wait a minute!\" Tom Donner objected.\n\n\"Sir, that was on your consent form, remember?\"\n\n\"YOU WERE RIGHT, John,\" Alexandre said. Epidemiology was the medical profession's version of accounting, and as that dull profession was vital to running a business, so the study of diseases and how they spread was actually the mother of modern medicine, when in the 1830s a French physician had determined that people who became ill died or recovered at the same rate whether they were treated or not. That awkward discovery had forced the medical community to study itself, to look for things that worked and things that did not, and along the way changed medicine from a trade into a scientific art.\n\nThe devil was always in the details. In this case, it might not be a devil at all, Alex realized.\n\nThere were now 3,451 Ebola cases in the country. That included those who had started dying, those who showed frank symptoms, and those who showed antibodies. The number by itself wasn't large. Lower than AIDS deaths, lower by more than two orders of magnitude than cancer and heart disease. The statistical study, aided by FBI interviews and feedback from local physicians all over the country, had established 223 primary cases, all of them infected at trade shows, and all of whom had infected others who had in turn infected more. Though the incoming cases were still on the upslope, the rate was lower than that predicted by preexisting computer models ... and at Hopkins they'd had the first case of someone who showed antibodies, but no symptoms....\n\n\"There should have been more primary cases, Alex,\" Pickett said. \"We started seeing that last night. The first one who died, he flew from Phoenix to Dallas. The FBI got the flight records, and University of Texas tested everybody aboard, finished this morning. Only one shows antibodies, and he isn't really symptomatic.\"\n\n\"Risk factors?\"\n\n\"Gingivitis. Bleeding gums,\" General Pickett reported.\n\n\"It's trying to be an aerosol . . . but . . .\"\n\n\"That's what I think, Alex. The secondary cases appear to be mostly intimate contact. Hugs, kisses, taking personal care of a loved one. If we're right, this will peak in three days, and then it'll stop. Along the way we'll start seeing survivors.\"\n\n\"We have one of those at Hopkins. She's got the antibodies, but it didn't get beyond the initial presentation.\"\n\n\"We need to get Gus working on environmental degradation. He should be already.\"\n\n\"Agreed. You call him. I'm doing some follow-ups down here.\"\n\nTHE JUDGE WAS an old friend of Kealty. Martin wasn't exactly sure how he'd fiddled with the docket in this particular district, but that didn't matter now. The two presentations had taken about thirty minutes each. It was, as Kealty had said and the Solicitor General had agreed, a fundamentally simple point of law, though the practical applications of it led into all manner of complexity. It was also a matter of great urgency, as a result of which the judge reappeared from chambers after a mere hour's contemplation. He would read his decision from his notes, and type up a full opinion later in the day.\n\n\"The Court,\" he began, \"is cognizant of the grave danger facing the country, and must sympathize with President Ryan's sincerely felt duty to safeguard the lives of Americans in addition to their freedoms.\n\n\"However, the Court must acknowledge the fact that the Constitution is, and remains, the supreme law of the land. To violate that legal bulwark is a step that potentially sets a precedent with consequences so grave as to reach beyond the current crisis, and though the President is certainly acting under the best motives, this Court must vacate the executive order, trusting our citizens to act intelligently and prudently in the pursuit of their own safety. So ordered.\"\n\n\"Your Honor.\" The Solicitor General stood. \"The government will and must appeal your ruling immediately to the Fourth Circuit in Richmond. We request a stay until the paperwork can be processed, later today.\"\n\n\"Request is denied. Court is adjourned.\" The judge stood and left the bench without a further word. The room, of course, erupted.\n\n\"What does this mean?\" the _Court TV_ correspondent\u2014himself a lawyer, who knew what it probably meant\u2014said to Ed Kealty, his microphone extended, as reporters tended to do at the moment.\n\n\"It means that so-called President Ryan cannot break the law. I think I have shown here that the rule of law still exists in our country,\" the politician replied. He was not being overtly smug.\n\n\"What does the government say?\" the reporter asked the Solicitor General.\n\n\"Not very much. We will have papers filed with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before Judge Venable has his opinion drafted. The order of the court is not officially binding until it is written up, signed, and properly filed. We'll have our appeal drafted first. The Fourth Circuit will stay the order \"\n\n\"And if it doesn't?\"\n\nMartin took that on. \"In that case, sir, the executive order will remain in place in the interest of public safety until the case can be argued in a more structured setting. But there is every reason to believe that the Fourth Circuit will stay the order. Judges are people of reality in addition to being people of the written word. There is one other thing, however.\"\n\n\"Yes?\" the reporter asked. Kealty was watching from ten feet away.\n\n\"The court has settled another important constitutional issue here. In referring to President Ryan by both his name and the title of his office, the court has settled the succession question raised by former Vice President Kealty. Further, the court said that that order was vacated. Had Mr. Ryan not been the President, the order would have been invalid and never legally binding, and the court could have stated that as well. Instead, the Court acted improperly on point, I believe, but properly in a procedural sense. Thank you. The Solicitor General and I have to get some paperwork done.\"\n\nIt wasn't often you shut reporters up. Shutting political figures up was harder still.\n\n\"Now, wait a minute!\" Kealty shouted.\n\n\"You never were a very good lawyer, Ed,\" Martin said on his way past.\n\n\"I THINK HE'S right,\" Lorenz said. \"Jesus, I sure hope he is.\"\n\nCDC laboratories had been frantically at work since the beginning, studying how the virus survived in the open. Environmental chambers were set up with differing values of temperature and humidity, and different lightintensity levels, and the data, incomprehensibly, kept telling them the same thing. The disease that had to be spreading by aerosol\u2014wasn't, or at most it was barely doing so. Its survival in the open, even under benign conditions, was measured in minutes.\n\n\"I wish I understood the warfare side of this a little better,\" Lorenz went on after a moment's thought.\n\n\"Two-two-three primary cases. That's all. If there were more, we'd know by now. Eighteen confirmed sites, four additional trade shows that generated no hits. Why eighteen and not the other four?\" Alex wondered. \"What if they did hit all twenty-two, but four didn't work?\"\n\n\"On the basis of our experimental data, that's a real possibility, Alex.\" Lorenz was pulling on his pipe. \"Our models now predict a total of eight thousand cases. We're going to get survivors, and the numbers on that will alter the model somewhat. This quarantine stuff has scared the shit out of people. You know, I don't think the travel ban really matters directly, but it scared people enough that they're not interacting enough to\u2014\"\n\n\"Doctor, that's the third good piece of news today,\" Alexandre breathed. The first had been the woman at Hopkins. The second was Pickett's analytical data. Now the third was Gus's lab work and the logical conclusion it led to. \"John always said that bio-war was more psychological than real.\"\n\n\"John's a smart doc, Alex. So are you, my friend.\"\n\n\"Three days and we'll know.\"\n\n\"Agreed. Rattle some beads, Alex.\"\n\n\"You can reach me through Reed for the time being.\"\n\n\"I'm sleeping in the office, too.\"\n\n\"See ya.\" Alexandre punched off the speakerphone. Around him were six Army physicians, three from Walter Reed, three from USAMRIID. \"Comments?\" he asked them.\n\n\"Crazy situation,\" a major observed with an exhausted smile. \"It's a psychological weapon, all right. Scares the hell out of everybody. But that works for us, too. And somebody goofed on the other side. I wonder how . . . ?\"\n\nAlex thought about that for a moment. Then he lifted the phone and dialed Johns Hopkins. \"This is Dr. Alexandre,\" he told the desk nurse on the medical floor. \"I need to talk to Dr. Ryan, it's very important . . . okay, I'll hold.\" It took a few minutes. \"Cathy? Alex here. I need to talk to your husband, and it's better if you're there, too. ... It's damned important,\" he told her a moment later.\n**55**\n\n**COMMENCEMENT**\n\n**T** WO HUNDRED FILES meant two hundred birth certificates, two hundred driver's licenses, houses or apartments, sets of credit cards, and all manner of other permutations to be checked out. It was inevitable that once such an investigation started, Special Agent Aref Raman would garner special attention from the three hundred FBI agents assigned to the case. But in fact every Secret Service employee who had regular access to the White House was on the immediate checklist. All across the country (the USSS draws personnel from as wide a field as any other government agency), agents did start with birth certificates and move on, also checking high-school yearbooks for graduation pictures to be compared with ID photos of all the agents. Three agents on the Detail turned out to be immigrants, some of whose exact personal details could not be easily checked. One was French-born, having come to America in his mother's arms. Another hailed from Mexico, having actually come illegally with her parents; she'd later legitimatized her status and distinguished herself as a genius with the Technical Security Division\u2014and a ferociously patriotic member of the team. That left \"Jeff\" Raman as an agent with some missing documentation, which was reasonably explained by his parents' reported refugee status.\n\nIn many ways, it was too easy. It was on his record that he'd been born in Iran and had come to America when his parents had fled the country with the fall of the Shah's regime. Every indicator since showed that he had fully adapted to his new country, even adopting a fanaticism for basketball that was a minor legend in the Service. He almost never lost a wager on a game, and it was a standing joke that professional gamblers consulted him on the line for an important game. He was always one to enjoy a beer with his colleagues. He'd developed an outstanding service reputation as a field agent. He was unmarried. That was not terribly unusual for a federal law enforcement officer. The Secret Service was especially tough on spouses who had to share their loved ones (mainly husbands) with a job far more unforgiving than the most demanding mistress which made divorce more common than marriage. He'd been seen around with female company, but didn't talk about that much. Insofar as he had a private life, it was a quiet one. It was certain that he'd had no contacts at all with other Iranian-born citizens or aliens, that he was not the least bit religious, that he'd never once brought up Islam in a conversation, except to say, as he'd told the President once, that religion had caused his family so much grief that it was a subject he was just as happy to leave alone.\n\nInspector O'Day, back at work because Director Murray trusted him with the sensitive cases, was not the least bit impressed with this or any other story. He supervised the investigation. He assumed that the adversary, if he existed, would be an expert, and therefore the most plausible and consistent identity was to him only a potential cover to be examined. Better yet, there were no rules on this one. Agent Price had made that determination herself. He picked the local investigating team himself from Headquarters Division and the Washington Field Office. The best of them he assigned to Aref Raman, now, conveniently, in Pittsburgh.\n\nHis apartment in northwest D.C. was modest, but comfortable. It had a burglar alarm, but that was not a problem. The agents selected for the illegal breaking-andentering included a technical wizard who, after defeating the locks in two minutes, recognized the control panel and punched in the maker's emergency code\u2014he had them all memorized\u2014to deactivate the system. This procedure had once been called a \"black bag job,\" a term which had fallen by the wayside, though the function itself had not quite done so. Now the term \"special operation\" was used, which could mean anything one wanted it to.\n\nThe first two agents in the door called three more into the apartment after the break-in had been effected. They photographed the apartment first of all, looking for possible telltales: seemingly innocent or random objects which, if disturbed in any way, warned the occupant that someone had been inside. These could be devilishly hard things to detect and defeat, but all five of the agents were part of the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Division, both trained against and trained by professional spooks. \"Shaking\" the apartment would take hours of exquisitely tedious effort. They knew that at least five other teams were doing the same thing to other potential subjects.\n\nTHE P-3C WAS hovering at the edge of the radar coverage for the Indian ships, keeping low and bumping through the roiled air over the warm surface of the Arabian Sea. They had tracks on thirty emitters from nineteen sources. The powerful, low-frequency search radars were the ones they worried about most, though the threat-receivers were getting traces of SAM radars as well. Supposedly, the Indians were running exercises, their fleet back at sea after a long stand-down for maintenance. The problem was that such workup exercises were quite indistinguishable from battle readiness. The data being analyzed by the on-board ELINT crew was downlinked to _Anzio_ and the rest of the escorts for Task Group COMEDY, as the sailors had taken to calling the four _Bob Hopes_ and their escorts.\n\nThe group commander was sitting in his cruiser's combat information center. The three large billboard displays (actually rear-projection televisions linked to the Aegis radar-computer system) showed the location of the Indian battle group with a fair degree of precision. He even knew which of the blips were probably the carriers. His task was a complex one. COMEDY was now fully formed. Under way-replenishment ships _Platte_ and _Supply_ were now attached to the group, along with their escorts _Hawes_ and _Carr_ , and over the next few hours all of the escorts would take turns alongside to top off their fuel bunkers\u2014for a Navy captain, having too much fuel was like having too much money: impossible. After that, the UNREP ships would be ordered to take position outboard of the leading tank carriers, and the frigates outboard of the trailers. _O'Bannon_ would move forward to continue her ASW search\u2014the Indians had two nuclear submarines, and nobody seemed to know where they were at the moment. _Kidd_ and _Anzio_ , both SAM ships, would back into the formation, providing close air defense. Ordinarily the Aegis cruiser would stand farther out, but not now.\n\nThe reason for that came not from his mission orders, but from TV. Every naval vessel in the group had its own satellite-TV receiver; in the modern Navy, the sailors wanted and got their own cable system, and while the crew spent most of their time watching the various movie channels\u2014 _Playboy_ was always a favorite, sailors being sailors\u2014the group commander was overdosing on CNN, because while his mission orders didn't always give him all the background information he needed for his missions, very often commercial TV did. The crews were tense. The news of events at home could not have been concealed from them in any case, and the images of sick and dying people, blocked interstates, and empty city streets had initially shaken them badly, causing officers and chiefs to sit down with the men on the mess decks to talk things through. Then had come these orders. Things were happening in the Persian Gulf, things were happening at home, and all of a sudden the MPS ships, with their brigade set of combat vehicles, were heading for the Saudi port of Dhahran . . . and the Indian navy was in the way. The crew was quiet now, Captain Greg Kemper of USS _Anzio_ saw. His chiefs reported that the \"troops\" were not laughing and cutting up in the mess rooms, and the constant simulations on the Aegis combat system in the past few days had conveyed their own message. COMEDY was sailing in harm's way.\n\nEach of the escorting ships had a helicopter. These coordinated with the crack ASW team on _O'Bannon_ , namesake of the Navy's golden ship of World War II, a Fletcher-class destroyer which had fought in every major Pacific engagement without a casualty or a scratch; the new one had a gold A on her superstructure, the mark of a submarine-killer of note\u2014at least in simulation. _Kidd'_ s heritage was less lucky. Named for Admiral Isaac Kidd, who had died aboard USS _Arizona_ on the morning of December 7, 1941, she was a member of the \"dead-admiral class\" of four missile destroyers originally built for the Iranian navy under the Shah, forced on a reluctant President Carter, and then perversely all named for admirals who'd died in losing battles. _Anzio_ , in one of the Navy's stranger traditions, was named for a land battle, part of the Italian campaign in 1943, in which a daring invasion had developed into a desperate struggle. Ships of war were actually made for that sort of business, but it was the business of their commanders to see that the desperate part applied to the other guy.\n\nIn a real war, that would have been easy. _Anzio_ had fifteen Tomahawk missiles aboard, each with a thousand-pound warhead, and nearly in range of the Indian battle group. In an ideal world he'd loose them at just over two hundred miles, based on targeting information from the Orions\u2014his helicopters could do that, too, but the P-3Cs were far more survivable.\n\n\"Captain!\" It was a petty officer on the ESM board. \"We're getting airborne radars. The Orion has some company approaching, looks like two Harriers, distance unknown, constant bearing, signal strength increasing.\"\n\n\"Thank you. It's a free sky until somebody says different,\" Kemper reminded everybody.\n\nMaybe it was an exercise, but the Indian battle group hadn't moved forty miles in the past day, instead traveling back and forth, east and west, crossing and recrossing its own course track. Exercises were supposed to be more free-form than that. What the situation told the captain of USS _Anzio_ was that they'd staked out this piece of ocean as their own. And the Indians just happened to be between where COMEDY was and where it wanted to be.\n\nNothing was very secret about it, either. Everyone pretended that normal peacetime conditions were in effect. _Anzio_ had her SPY-1 radar operating, pumping out millions of watts. The Indians were using theirs as well. It was almost like a game of chicken.\n\n\"Captain, we have bogies, we have unknown multiple air contacts bearing zero-seven-zero, range two-one-five miles. No squawk ident, they are not commercial. Designate Raid-One.\" The symbols came up on the center screen.\n\n\"No emitters on that bearing,\" ESM reported.\n\n\"Very well.\" The captain crossed his legs in his command chair. In the movies this was where Gary Cooper lit up a smoke.\n\n\"Raid-One appears to be four aircraft in formation, speed four-five-zero knots, course two-four-five.\" Which made them inbounds, though not quite directly at COMEDY.\n\n\"Projected CPA?\" the captain asked.\n\n\"They will pass within twenty miles on their current course, sir,\" a sailor responded crisply.\n\n\"Very well. Okay, people, listen up. I want this place cool and businesslike. You all know the job. When there's reason to be excited, I will be the one to tell you,\" he told the CIC crew. \"Weapons tight.\" Meaning that peacetime rules still applied, and nothing was actually ready to fire\u2014a situation that could be remedied by turning a few keys.\n\n\" _Anzio_ , this is Gonzo-Four, over,\" a voice called on the air-to-surface radio.\n\n\"Gonzo-Four, _Anzio_ , over.\"\n\n_\"Anzio,\"_ the aviator reported, \"we got two Harriers playing tag with us. One just zipped by at about fifty yards. He's got white ones on the rails.\" Real missiles hanging under the wings, not pretend ones.\n\n\"Doing anything?\" the air-control officer asked.\n\n\"Negative, just like he's playing a little.\"\n\n\"Tell him to continue the mission,\" the captain said. \"And pretend he doesn't care.\"\n\n\"Aye, sir.\" The message was relayed.\n\nThis sort of thing wasn't all that unusual. Fighter pilots were fighter pilots, the captain knew. They never grew up past the stage of buzzing by girls on their bikes. He directed his attention to Raid-One. Course and speed were unchanged. This wasn't a hostile act. The Indians were letting him know that they knew who was in their neighborhood. That was evident from the appearance of fighters in two places at the same time. It was definitely a game of chicken now.\n\n_What to do now?_ he wondered. _Play tough? Play dumb? Play apathetic?_ People so often overlooked the psychological aspect of military operations. Raid-One was now 150 miles out, rapidly approaching the range of his SM-2 MR SAMs.\n\n\"What d'ya think, Weps?\" he asked his weapons officer.\n\n\"I think they're just trying to piss us off.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" The captain flipped a mental coin. \"Well, they're harassing the Orion. Let 'em know we see 'em,\" he ordered.\n\nTwo seconds later, the SPY search radar jacked up its power to four million watts, sent all of it down one degree of bearing at the inbound fighters, and increased the \"dwell\" on the targets, which meant they were being hit almost continuously. It was enough to peg the threat-detection gear they had to have aboard. Inside of twenty miles, it could even start damaging such equipment, depending on how delicate it was. That was called a \"zorch,\" and the captain still had another two million watts of power up his sleeve. The joke was that if you really pissed off an Aegis, you might start producing two-headed kids.\n\n\" _Kidd_ just went to battle stations, sir,\" the officer of the deck reported.\n\n\"Good training time, isn't it?\" Range to Raid-One was just over one hundred miles now. \"Wcps, light 'em up.\"\n\nWith that command, the ship's four SPG-51 target-illumination radars turned, sending pencil beams of X-band energy at the inbound fighters. These radars told the missiles how to find their targets. The Indian threat gear would pick that up, too. The fighters didn't change course or speed.\n\n\"Okay, that means we're not playing rough today. If they were of a mind to do something, they'd be maneuvering now,\" the captain told his crew. \"You know, like turning the corner when you see a cop.\" Or they had ice water in their veins, which didn't seem likely.\n\n\"Going to eyeball the formation?\" Weps asked.\n\n\"That's what I'd do. Take some pictures, see what's here,\" Kemper thought.\n\n\"A lot of things happening at once, sir.\"\n\n\"Yep,\" the captain agreed, watching the display. He lifted the growler phone.\n\n\"Bridge,\" the OOD answered.\n\n\"Tell your lookouts I want to know what they are. Photos, if possible. How's visibility topside?\"\n\n\"Surface haze, not bad aloft, sir. I've got men on the Big Eyes now.\"\n\n\"Very well.\"\n\n\"They'll go past us to the north, turn left, and come down our port side,\" the captain predicted.\n\n\"Sir, Gonzo-Four reports a very close pass a few seconds ago,\" air control said.\n\n\"Tell him to stay cool.\"\n\n\"Aye, Cap'n.\" The situation developed quickly after that. The fighters circled COMEDY twice, never closer than five nautical miles. The Indian Harriers spent another fifteen minutes around the patrolling Orion, then had to return back to their carrier to refuel, and another day at sea continued with no shots fired and no overtly hostile acts, unless you counted the fighter play, and that was pretty routine. When all was settled down, the captain of USS _Anzio_ turned to his communications officer.\n\n\"I need to talk to CINCLANT. Oh, Weps?\" Kemper added.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"I want every combat system on this ship fully checked out.\"\n\n\"Sir, we just ran a full check twelve hours\u2014\"\n\n\"Right now, Weps,\" he emphasized quietly.\n\n\"AND THAT'S GOOD news?\" Cathy asked.\n\n\"Doctor, that's real simple,\" Alexandre said in reply. \"You watched some people die this morning. You will watch more die tomorrow, and that stinks. But thousands is better than millions, isn't it? I think this epidemic is going to burn out.\" He didn't add that it was somewhat easier for him. Cathy was an eye cutter. She wasn't used to dealing with death. He was infectious diseases, and he was used to it. Easier? Was that the word? \"We'll know in a couple of days from statistical analysis of the cases.\"\n\nThe President nodded silently. Van Damm spoke for him: \"What's the count going to be?\"\n\n\"Less than ten thousand, according to the computer models at Reed and Detrick. Sir, I am not being cavalier about this. I'm saying that ten thousand is better than ten million.\"\n\n\"One death is a tragedy, and a million is a statistic,\" Ryan said finally.\n\n\"Yes, sir. I know that one.\" The good news didn't make Alexandre all that happy. But how else to tell people that a disaster was better than a catastrophe?\n\n\"Iosef Vissarionovich Stalin,\" SWORDSMAN told them. \"He did have a way with words.\"\n\n\"You know who did it,\" Alex observed.\n\n\"What makes you say that?\" Jack asked.\n\n\"You didn't react normally to what I told you, Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Doctor, I haven't done much of anything normally over the past few months. What does this mean about the no-travel order?\"\n\n\"It means we leave it in place for at least another week. Our prediction is not carved in stone. The incubation period for the disease is somewhat variable. You don't send the fire trucks home as soon as the last flame disappears. You sit there and watch for another possible flare-up. That will happen here, too. What's worked to this point is that people are frightened to death. Because of that, personal interactions are minimized, and _that_ 's how you stop one of these things. We keep 'em that way. The new cases will be very circumscribed. We attack those like we did with smallpox. Identify the cases, test everyone with whom they've had contact, isolate the ones with antibodies, and see how they do. It's _working_ , okay? Whoever did this miscalculated. The disease isn't anywhere near as contagious as they thought\u2014or maybe the whole thing was just a psychological exercise. That's what bio-war is. The great plagues of the past really happened because people didn't know how diseases spread. They didn't know about microbes and fleas and contaminated water. We do. Everybody does, you learn it in health class in school. Hell, that's why we haven't had any medics infected. We've had lots of practice dealing with AIDS and hepatitis. The same precautions that work with those also work with this.\"\n\n\"How do we keep it from happening again?\" van Damm asked.\n\n\"I told you that already. Funding. Basic research on the genetic side, and more focused work on the diseases we know about. There's no particular reason why we can't develop safe vaccines for Ebola and a lot of others.\"\n\n\"AIDS?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"That's a toughie. That virus is an agile little bastard. No attempt for a vaccine has even come close yet. No, on that side, basic genetic research to determine how the biologic mechanism works, and from that to get the immune system to recognize it and kill it\u2014some sort of vaccine; that's what a vaccine is. But how to make it work, well, we haven't figured that one yet. We'd better. In twenty years, we might have to write Africa off. Hey,\" the Creole said, \"I got kin over there, y'know?\n\n\"That's one way to keep it from happening again. You, Mr. President, are already working on the other way. Who was it?\"\n\nHe didn't have to tell anybody how secret it was: \"Iran. The Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei and his merry men.\"\n\nAlexandre reverted to officer in the United States Army: \"Sir, you can kill all of them you want, as far as I'm concerned.\"\n\nIT WAS INTERESTING to see Mehrabad International Airport in daylight. Clark had never experienced Iran as a friendly country. Supposedly, before the fall of the Shah, the people had been friendly enough, but he hadn't made the trip soon enough for that. He'd come in covertly in 1979 and again in 1980, first to develop information for, and then to participate in, the attempt to rescue the hostages. There were no words to describe what it was like to be in a country in a revolutionary condition. His time on the ground in the Soviet Union had been far more comfortable. Enemy or not, Russia had always been a civilized country with lots of rules and citizens who broke them. But Iran had ignited like a dry forest in a lightning storm. \"Death to America\" had been a chant on everyone's lips, and _that_ , he remembered, was about as scary as things got when you were in the middle of the mob singing _that_ song. One little mistake, just contacting an agent who'd been turned, would have been his death, rather a frightening thought to a man with young children, spook or no spook. Locally they shot some criminals, but spies they mostly hanged. It seemed a gratuitously cruel way to take a man's life.\n\nSome things had changed in the intervening years. Some had not. There was still a suspicion of foreigners here at the customs post. The clerk was backed up by armed men, and their job was to prevent the entry of people like him. For the new UIR, as for the previous country, every new face was a potential spy.\n\n\"Klerk,\" he said, handing over his passport, \"Ivan Sergeyevich.\" What the hell, the Russian cover identity had worked before, and he already had it memorized. Better yet, his Russian was letter-perfect. He'd passed as a Soviet citizen before a uniformed official more than once.\n\n\"Chekov, Yevgeniy Pavlovich,\" Chavez told the next clerk over.\n\nThey were, again, news correspondents. Rules prohibited CIA officers from covering themselves as _American_ reporters, but that didn't apply to the foreign media.\n\n\"The purpose of your visit?\" the first clerk asked.\n\n\"To learn about your new country,\" Ivan Sergeyevich replied. \"It must be very exciting for everyone.\" For their work in Japan, they'd brought camera gear, and a useful little gadget that looked like, and indeed was, a bright light. Not this time.\n\n\"He and I are together,\" Yevgeniy Pavlovich told his clerk.\n\nThe passports were brand-new, though one could not have told it from casual inspection. It was one of the few things Clark and Chavez didn't have to worry about. RVS tradecraft was every bit as good as the former KGB's had been. They made some of the best fake documents in the world. The pages were covered with stamps, many overlapping, and were creased and dog-eared from years of apparent use. An inspector grabbed their bags and opened them. He found clothing, clearly much used, two books, which he flipped through to see if they were pornographic, two cameras of medium quality, their black enamel wellchipped but the lenses new. Each had a carry-on bag with note pads and mini-tape recorders. The inspectors took their time, even after the clerks had done their work, finally passing their country's visitors through with a palpable reluctance.\n\n\" _Spasiba_ ,\" John said pleasantly, getting his bags and moving off. Over the years, he'd learned not to conceal his relief completely. Normal travelers were intimidated. He had to be, too, lest he stand apart from them. The two CIA officers went outside to catch a cab, standing together in line silently as the rank of taxis ate up the new arrivals. When they were two back, Chavez dropped his travel bag, and the contents spilled out. He and Clark let two people jump ahead of them in line while he repacked the bag. That almost certainly guaranteed a random cab, unless they were all being driven by spooks.\n\nThe trick was to look normal in all respects. Not too stupid. Never too smart. To get disoriented and ask for directions, but not too often. To stay in cheap hotels. And in their particular case, to pray that none of the people who'd seen them during their brief visit to this city crossed their path. The mission was supposed to be a simple one. That was usually the idea. You rarely sent intelligence officers out on complex missions\u2014they'd have the good sense to refuse. The simple ones were hairy enough once you got out there.\n\n\"IT'S CALLED TASK Group COMEDY,\" Robby told him. \"They got their doorbell rung this morning.\" The J-3 explained on for a few minutes.\n\n\"Playing rough?\" the President asked.\n\n\"Evidently, they gave the P-3 a real air show. I've done that myself a few times, back in my young-and-foolish days. They want us to know they're there, and they're not intimidated. The group commander is Greg Kemper. I don't know him, but his rep's pretty good. CINCLANT likes him. He's asking for a ROE change.\"\n\n\"Not yet. Later today.\"\n\n\"Okay. I would not expect a night attack, but remember dawn there is midnight here, sir.\"\n\n\"Arnie, what's the book on the P.M.?\"\n\n\"She and Ambassador Williams don't exchange Christmas presents,\" the chief of staff replied. \"You met her in the East Room a while back.\"\n\n\"Warning her off risks having her call Daryaei,\" Ben Goodley reminded them all. \"If you confront her, she'll weasel on you.\"\n\n\"And? Robby?\"\n\n\"If we get past the Indians, but she warns Daryaei? They can try to block the strait. The Med force will turn the corner in a few hours and join up fifty miles off the entrance. We'll have air cover. It could be exciting, but they should make it. Mines are the scary part. The strait there is pretty deep for them. Closer into Dhahran is another story. The longer the UIR's in the dark, the better, but they may already know what COMEDY is made up of.\"\n\n\"Or maybe not,\" van Damm thought. \"If she thinks she can handle it herself, she might just try to show him what kind of balls she has.\"\n\nTHE TRANSFER WAS called Operation CUSTER. All forty aircraft were aloft now, each carrying roughly 250 soldiers in a sky train six thousand miles long. The lead aircraft were now six hours out from Dhahran, leaving Russian airspace and overflying Ukraine.\n\nThe F-15 pilots had traded waves with a handful of Russian fighters which had come up to say hello. They were tired now. Their rumps were like painful lead from all the time in the same seat\u2014the airliner pilots behind them could get up and move around; they even had toilets, quite a luxury for a fighter pilot who had an appliance called a relief tube. Arms tightened up. Muscles were sore from staying in the same position. It was to the point that tanking from their KC-135s was becoming difficult, and gradually they came to the opinion that an air-to-air engagement an hour out from their destination might not be much fun at all. Most drank coffee, tried to shift hands on the stick, and stretched as much as they could.\n\nThe soldiers were mainly sleeping, still ignorant of the nature of their mission. The airlines had stocked their aircraft normally, and the troops indulged what would be their last chance to have a drink for some time to come. Those who had deployed to Saudi in 1990 and 1991 told their war stories, chief among which was the memory that the Kingdom wasn't a place you went to for the nightlife.\n\nNEITHER WAS INDIANA. Brown and Holbrook had found, at least not now. They had at least been smart enough to get into a motel before the general panic, and here they were trapped. This motel, like the ones they'd used in Wyoming and Nebraska, catered to truckers. It had a large restaurant, the old-fashioned sort with a counter and booths, and now with masked waitresses and customers who didn't group closely together to socialize. Instead, they ate their meals and went back to their rooms, or to sleep in their trucks. There was a daily dance of sorts. The trucks had to be moved, lest staying in the exact same spot damage the tires. Everyone listened to the radio for hourly news broadcasts. The rooms, the restaurant, and even some of the trucks had televisions for further information and distraction. There was boredom, the tense sort familiar to soldiers but not known to the two Mountain Men.\n\n\"Goddamned government,\" a furniture hauler said. He had family two states away.\n\n\"I guess they showed us who was boss, eh?\" Ernie Brown said, for general consumption.\n\nLater, data would show that not a single interstate trucker had caught the virus. Their existence was too solitary for that. But their working lives depended on movement, both because they earned their living that way and because they had chosen to do so. Sitting still was not in their nature. Being told to sit still was even less so.\n\n\"What the hell,\" another driver added. He couldn't think of anything else to say. \"Goddamned glad I got outa Chicago when I did. That news is scary.\"\n\n\"You suppose this all makes sense?\" someone asked.\n\n\"Since when does the government make sense?\" Holbrook griped.\n\n\"I hear that,\" a voice chimed in, and finally the Mountain Men felt at home somewhere. Then, by unspoken consent, it was time for them to leave.\n\n\"How the hell much longer will we be stuck here, Pete?\" Ernie Brown wanted to know.\n\n\"You're askin' me?\"\n\n\"A WHOLE LOT of nothing,\" concluded the lead agent. Aref Raman was a little neat for a single man living alone, but not grossly so. One of the FBI agents had noted with surprise that even the man's socks were neatly folded, along with everything else in the bureau drawers. Then one of the group remembered a study of NFL football players. A psychologist had determined after months of study that offensive linemen, whose job was to protect the quarterback, had neat lockers, while defensive linemen, whose job it was to pound the opposing quarterbacks into the turf, were slobs in every respect. It was good for a laugh, and an explanation. Nothing else was found. There was a photo of his parents, both dead. He subscribed to two news magazines, had the full cable options for his two televisions, had no booze in the house, and ate healthy. He had a particular affinity for kosher hot dogs, judging by the freezer. There were no hidden drawers or compartments they would have found them\u2014and nothing the least bit suspicious. That was both good news and bad.\n\nThe phone rang. Nobody answered it, because they weren't there, and they had beepers and cellular phones for their own communications needs.\n\n\"Hello, this is 536-3040,\" the recording of Raman's voice said, after the second ring. \"Nobody's here to answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message, somebody will get back to you.\" Followed by a beep, and in this case, a click.\n\n\"Wrong number,\" one of the agents said.\n\n\"Pull the messages,\" the lead agent ordered the technical genius on the team.\n\nRaman owned a digital recording system, and again there was a punch code programmed in by the manufacturer. The agent hit the six digits and another took notes. There were three clicks and a wrong number. Somebody calling for Mr. Sloan, whoever that was.\n\n\"Rug? Mr. Alahad?\"\n\n\"Sounds like the name of a rug dealer,\" another one said. But when they looked around, there was no such rug in the apartment, just the usual cheap wall-to-wall carpet you found in apartments of this type.\n\n\"Wrong number.\"\n\n\"Run the names anyway.\" It was more habit than anything else. You checked everything. It was like working FCI. You just never knew.\n\nJust then the phone rang again, and all five of the agents turned to stare at the answering machine, as though it were a real witness with a real voice.\n\nSHIT, RAMAN THOUGHT, he'd forgotten to erase the messages from before. There was nothing new. His control officer hadn't called again. It would have been a surprise if he had. With that determined, Raman, sitting in a Pittsburgh hotel room, punched the erase-all code. One nice thing about the new digitals was that, once erased, they were gone forever. That wasn't necessarily true of the ones using tape cassettes.\n\nTHE FBI AGENTS took note of that, sharing looks.\n\n\"Hey, we all do that.\" There was general agreement. And everybody got wrong numbers, too. And this was a brother officer. But they'd run the numbers anyway.\n\nSURGEON, TO THE relief of her detail, was sleeping upstairs in the residence. Roy Altman and the rest assigned to guard her had been going crazy with her on the fever ward\u2014their term for it\u2014at Johns Hopkins, as much from the physical danger as for the fact that she had run herself right into the ground. The kids, being kids, had spent the time like most other American children, watching TV and playing under the eyes of their agents, who now worried about seeing the onset of flu symptoms, blessedly absent from the entire campus. SWORDSMAN was in the Situation Room.\n\n\"What's the time there?\"\n\n\"Ten hours ahead, sir.\"\n\n\"Make the call,\" POTUS ordered.\n\nTHE FIRST 747, in United livery, crossed into Saudi airspace a few minutes earlier than expected, due to favorable arctic winds. A more circuitous routing at this point would not have helped very much. Sudan had airports and radars, too, as did Egypt and Jordan, and it was assumed that the UIR had informants somewhere in those countries. The Saudi Air Force, augmented by the F-16Cs which had sneaked in from Israel the previous day as part of BUFFALO FORWARD, stood combat air patrol along the Saudi-UIR border. Two E-3B AWACS were up and turning their rotodomes. The sun was rising now in that part of the world\u2014at least one could see first light from their cruising altitude, though the surface, six miles below, was still black.\n\n\"GOOD MORNING, PRIME Minister. This is Jack Ryan,\" the President said.\n\n\"A pleasure to hear your voice. It is late in Washington, is it not?\" she asked.\n\n\"We both work irregular hours. I imagine your day is just beginning.\"\n\n\"So it is,\" the voice answered. Ryan had a conventional receiver to his ear. The conversation was on speakerphone as well, and feeding into a digital tape recorder. The CIA had even supplied a voice-stress analyzer. \"Mr. President, the troubles in your country, have they improved?\"\n\n\"We have some hope, but, no, not quite yet.\"\n\n\"Is there any way in which we might be of assistance?\" Neither voice showed the least emotion beyond the false amity of people suspicious of each other, and trying to hide it.\n\n\"Well, yes, actually, there is.\"\n\n\"Please, then, how may we be of help?\"\n\n\"Prime Minister, we have some ships heading through the Arabian Sea at the moment,\" Ryan told her.\n\n\"Is that so?\" Total neutrality in the voice.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am, it is, and you know it is, and I want your personal assurance that your navy, which is also at sea, will not interfere with their passage.\"\n\n\"But why do you ask this? Why should we interfere\u2014for that matter, what is the purpose of your ship movement?\"\n\n\"Your word on the matter will suffice, Prime Minister,\" Ryan told her. His right hand gripped a number 2 lead pencil.\n\n\"But, Mr. President, I fail to understand the purpose of this call.\"\n\n\"The purpose of this call is to seek your personal assurance that the Indian navy will not interfere with the peaceful passage of United States Navy ships through the Arabian Sea.\"\n\nHE WAS SO weak, she thought, repeating himself that way.\n\n\"Mr. President, I find your call unsettling. America has never spoken to us about such a matter before. You say you move warships close to my country, but not the purpose for the move. The movement of such vessels without an explanation is not the act of a friend.\" What if she could make him back down?\n\nWHAT DID I TELL YOU? the note from Ben Goodley read.\n\n\"Very well, Prime Minister, for the third time, will you give me your assurance that there will be no interference in this activity?\"\n\n\"But why are you invading our waters?\" she asked again.\n\n\"Very well.\" Ryan paused, and then his voice changed. \"Prime Minister, the purpose of the movement does not directly concern your country, but I assure you, those ships will sail on to their destination. Since their mission is one of importance to us, we will not, I repeat not, brook interference of any kind, and I must warn you that should any unidentified ship or aircraft approach our formation, there might be adverse consequences. No, please excuse me, there _will_ be such consequences. To avoid that, I give you notice of the passage, and I request your personal assurance to the United States of America that there will be no attack on our ships.\"\n\n\"And now you threaten me? Mr. President, I understand the stress which has come to you of late, but, please, you may not treat sovereign countries in this way.\"\n\n\"Prime Minister, then I will speak very clearly. An overt act of war has been committed against the United States of America. Any interference with, or attack on, any part of our military will be deemed a further act of war, and whatever country commits such an act will face the most serious possible consequences.\"\n\n\"But who has done this to you?\"\n\n\"Prime Minister, that is not your concern unless you wish it to be. I think in the interests of both your country and mine, it would be well if your navy returned to port forthwith.\"\n\n\"And you blame us, you order us?\"\n\n\"I began with a request, Prime Minister. You saw fit to evade my request three times. I regard that as an unfriendly act. And so I have a new question: Is it your desire to be at war with the United States of America?\"\n\n\"Mr. President\u2014\"\n\n\"Because if those ships don't move, Prime Minister, you will be.\" The pencil snapped in Ryan's hand. \"I think you may have associated yourself with the wrong friends, Prime Minister. I hope I am incorrect, but if my impression is correct, then your country could well pay dearly for that misjudgment. We have experienced a direct attack on our citizens. It is a particularly cruel and barbaric attack, utilizing weapons of mass destruction.\" He enunciated these words very clearly. \"This is not yet known to our citizens. That will soon change,\" he told her. \"When it does, Prime Minister, those guilty of launching that attack will face our justice. We will not send notes of protest. We will not call a special meeting of the UN Security Council in New York. We will make war, Prime Minister. We will make war with all the power and rage this country and her citizens can muster. Do you now understand what I am saying? Ordinary men, women, and now even children have been murdered within our borders by a foreign power. There has even been an attack upon my own child, Prime Minister. Does your country wish to be associated with those acts? If so, Prime Minister, if you wish to be part of that, then the war commences now.\"\n**56**\n\n**DEPLOYMENT**\n\n**J** ESUS, JACK, YOU HAD ME convinced,\" Jackson breathed.\n\n\"Our friend in the clergy won't be as easy,\" the President said. He rubbed his two sweaty hands together. \"And we still don't know if she'll keep her word. Okay, Task Group COMEDY is at DEFCON 1. If they think it's hostile, kill it. But for Christ's sake, make sure that commander knows how to use his head.\"\n\nThe Situation Room was quiet now, and President Ryan felt very alone, despite the people assembled around him. Secretary Bretano and the Joint Chiefs were there. Rutledge was there for State. Secretary Winston, because Ryan trusted his judgment. Goodley, because he was fully briefed in on all the intelligence information; plus his chief of staff and the usual bodyguards. They all showed their support, but it really didn't help all that much. He alone had talked to India, because despite all the help and staff and advice, Jack Ryan was now the United States of America, and the country was going to war.\n\nTHE MEDIA POOL learned that over the Atlantic Ocean. America expected an attack at any time from the United Islamic Republic into the other Gulf states. They would be there to cover the story. They also learned about the forces being deployed.\n\n\"That's all?\" one of the more knowledgeable of them asked.\n\n\"That's it for the moment,\" the public affairs officer confirmed. \"We hope that the show of force will be sufficient to deter the attack, but if not, it's going to be exciting.\"\n\n\"Exciting ain't the word.\"\n\nThen the PAO told them why it was happening, and the windowless KC-135 that was taking them to Saudi Arabia became very quiet indeed.\n\nKUWAIT ESSENTIALLY HAD two heavy brigades, complemented by a motorized reconnaissance brigade equipped with antitank weapons and designed to be a screening force on the border. The two heavy brigades, equipped and trained on the American model, were held back from the border in the usual way so as to be able to move to counter an incursion rather than having to meet the initial attack\u2014possibly in the wrong place. The 10th U.S. Cavalry stood between and slightly behind those two. Overall command was somewhat equivocal. Colonel Magruder was the most senior officer in time of service, and the most experienced tactician, but there were Kuwaitis more senior in rank\u2014all three brigades were commanded by brigadier generals\u2014and it _was_ their country. On the other hand, the country was small enough to require only one primary command post, and Magruder was there, both to command his regiment and to advise the Kuwaiti commanders. The latter were both proud and nervous. They were understandably pleased by the strides their small country had made since 1990. No longer the comic-opera force which had disintegrated on the Iraqi invasion\u2014though some sub-units had fought bravely\u2014they had what looked on paper and to the eye like a very capable mechanized force. They were nervous because they were heavily outnumbered, and their mainly reservist soldiers had a long way to go before they met the American training standards to which they aspired. But the one thing they knew was gunnery. Shooting tanks is as enjoyable a pastime as it is a vital one; the empty slots in their formations were explained by the fact that twenty tanks were in the shop for replacement of their main gun tubes. That was being done by civilian contractors while the tank crews paced and waited.\n\nThe 10th Cav's helicopters were flying around the country's border, their Longbow radars looking deep into the UIR for movement, and so far seeing nothing of particular note. The Kuwaiti air force was standing a four-plane combat air patrol, with the rest of the force on high alert. Outmanned though they were, this would not be a repeat of 1990. The busiest people were the engineers, who were digging holes for all the tanks so that they could fight hull-down, with only their turrets showing. These were covered with netting to make them invisible from the air.\n\n\"And so, Colonel?\" the senior Kuwaiti commander asked.\n\n\"Nothing wrong with your deployments, General,\" Magruder replied, scanning the map again. He didn't show everything he felt. Two or three weeks of intensive training would have been a blessing. He'd run one very simple exercise, one of his squadrons against the Kuwaiti 1st Brigade, and even then he'd gone very easy on them. It wasn't the time to break their confidence. They had enthusiasm, and their gunnery was about seventy percent of American standards, but they had a lot to learn about maneuver warfare. Well, it took time to raise an army, and more time to train field officers, and they were doing their best.\n\n\"YOUR HIGHNESS, I need to thank you for your cooperation to this point,\" Ryan said over the phone. The wall clock in the Sit Room said 2:10.\n\n\"Jack, with luck they will see this and not move,\" Prince Ali bin Sheik replied.\n\n\"I wish I could agree with that. It is time for me to tell you something you do not yet know, Ali. Our ambassador will present you with full information later in the day. For the moment, you need to know what your neighbors have been up to. It isn't just about the oil, Your Highness.\" He went on for five minutes.\n\n\"Are you certain of this?\"\n\n\"The evidence we have will be in your hands in four hours,\" Ryan promised. \"We haven't even told our soldiers yet.\"\n\n\"Might they use these weapons against us?\" The natural question. Biological warfare made everyone's skin crawl.\n\n\"We don't think so, Ali. Environmental conditions militate against it.\" That had been checked, too. The weather forecast for the next week was hot, dry, and clear.\n\n\"Those who would use such weapons, Mr. President, this is an act of utter barbarism.\"\n\n\"That's why we do not expect them to back down. They can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Not 'they,' Mr. President. One man. One godless man. When will you speak to your people about this?\"\n\n\"Soon,\" Ryan replied.\n\n\"Please, Jack, this is not our religion, this is not our faith. Please tell your people that.\"\n\n\"I know that, Your Highness. It isn't about God. It's about power. It always is. I'm afraid I have other things to do.\"\n\n\"As do I. I must see the King.\"\n\n\"Please give him my respects. We stand together, Ali, just like before.\" With that the line went dead.\n\n\"Next, where exactly is Adler right now?\"\n\n\"Shuttling back to Taiwan,\" Rutledge answered. Those negotiations were still going on, though their purpose was now rather clear.\n\n\"Okay, he has secure comm links on the plane. You brief him in,\" he told the Under Secretary. \"Anything else I need to do right now?\"\n\n\"Sleep,\" Admiral Jackson told him. \"Let us do the all-nighter, Jack.\"\n\n\"That's a plan.\" Ryan rose. He wobbled a bit from the stress and lack of sleep. \"Wake me up if you need me.\"\n\n_We won't_ , nobody said.\n\n\"WELL,\" CAPTAIN KEMPER said, reading the CRITIC message from CINCLANT. \"That makes things a lot simpler.\" Range to the Indian battle group was now two hundred miles, about eight hours of steaming\u2014still the term they used, though all the combatant ships were now powered by jet-turbine engines. Kemper lifted the phone and flipped a switch to speak on the ship's 1-MC address system. \"Now hear this. This is the captain speaking.\n\n\"Task Group COMEDY is now at DefCon 1. That means if anybody gets close, we shoot him. The mission is to deliver our tank-carriers to Saudi Arabia. Our country is flying in the soldiers to drive them in anticipation of an attack on our allies in the region by the new United Islamic Republic.\n\n\"In sixteen hours, we will link up with a surface action making a speed-run down from the Med. We will then enter the Persian Gulf to make our delivery. The group will have friendly air cover in the form of Air Force F-16C fighters, but it is to be expected that the UIR\u2014our old Iranian friends\u2014will not be happy with our arrival.\n\n\"USS _Anzio_ is going to war, people. That is all for now.\" He flipped the switch back. \"Okay, let's start running simulations. I want to see everything those bastards might try on us. We will have an updated intelligence estimate here in two hours. For now, let's see what we can do about aircraft and missile attacks.\"\n\n\"What about the Indians?\" Weps asked.\n\n\"We'll be keeping an eye on them, too.\" The main tactical display showed a P-3C Orion passing COMEDY to relieve the aircraft now on station. The battle group was heading east, again recrossing its wake, as it had been doing for some time now.\n\nA KH-11 SATELLITE was just sweeping down, northwest-tosoutheast, over the Persian Gulf. Its cameras, having already looked at the three heavy corps of the Army of God, were now photographing the entire Iranian coast, looking for the launch sites of Chinese-made Silkworm missiles. The take from the electronic cameras was cross-linked to a communications satellite over the Indian Ocean, and from there to the Washington area, where technicians still wearing chemically impregnated surgical masks started looking for the airplane-shaped surface-to-surface missiles. The fixed launch sites were well known, but the weapon also could be fired off the back of a large truck, and there were plenty of coastal roads to survey.\n\nTHE FIRST GROUP of four airliners touched down without incident outside Dhahran. There was no arrival ceremony. It was already hot. Spring had come early to the region after the surprisingly cold and wet winter season, and that meant noon temperatures close to 100 degrees, as opposed to the 120 of high summer, but night temperatures down in the forties. It was humid this close to the coast as well.\n\nWhen the first airliner stopped, the truck-mounted stairs were driven up, and Brigadier General Marion Diggs was the first off. He would be the ground commander for this operation. The virus epidemic still raging in America had also compromised MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, home of Central Command, which had responsibility for this area. The briefing papers he'd seen to this point said that the commander of the 366th Air Combat Wing was also a one-star, but junior to him. It had been a long time since so vital an operation had been turned over to someone as junior as himself, Marion Diggs thought on the way down the steps.\n\nAt the bottom was a Saudi three-star. The two men exchanged salutes and entered a car for the ride to the local command post, and an intelligence update. Behind Diggs was the command group of the 11th ACR, and on the other three aircraft, a security group and most of the Second Squadron of the Black Horse. Buses waited to take them to the POMCUS site. It was all rather like the RE-FORGER exercises of the Cold War, which had anticipated a NATO-Warsaw Pact clash requiring American soldiers to get off the airplanes, board their vehicles, and march off to the front. That had never happened except in simulation, but now, again, it was happening, and this time it was for real. Two hours later, 2nd of the Blackhorse was rolling into the open.\n\n\"WHAT DO YOU mean?\" Daryaei asked.\n\n\"There appears to be a major troop movement under way,\" his intelligence chief told him. \"Radar sites in western Iraq have detected commercial aircraft entering Saudi Arabia from Israeli airspace. We also show fighters escorting them and patrolling the border.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\n\"Nothing at the moment, but it would seem likely that America is moving another force into the Kingdom. I am not sure what it could be\u2014certainly, it cannot be very large. Their German-based divisions are under quarantine, and all their home-quartered divisions are in the same condition. Most of their army is actually deployed for internal security.\"\n\n\"We should attack them anyway,\" his air force adviser urged.\n\n\"I think that would be a mistake,\" Intelligence said. \"It would be an invasion of Saudi airspace, alerting those goatherds too soon. The Americans can at most move one brigade-sized force. There is a second based at Diego Garcia the equipment, that is\u2014but we have no information to suggest that it has moved, and even if it does, we expect that our Indian friends can stop it.\"\n\n\"We trust pagans?\" Air Force asked with contempt. That was how Muslims viewed the official religion of the Subcontinent.\n\n\"We can trust their antipathy to America. And we can ask them if their fleet has spotted anything. In any case, the Americans can deploy another brigade-sized force. That is all.\"\n\n\"Kill it anyway!\"\n\n\"That throws away operational security,\" Intelligence pointed out.\n\n\"If they don't know we are coming by now, then they are fools,\" Air Force objected.\n\n\"The Americans have no reason to suspect that we have taken hostile actions against them. To attack their aircraft, if that's what they are, will alert _them_ unnecessarily, not just the Saudis. They are probably concerned about our troop movements in Iraq. So they fly in some small reinforcements. We can deal with them when the time comes,\" Intelligence told them.\n\n\"I will call India,\" Daryaei said, temporizing.\n\n\"NAVIGATION RADARS ONLY . . . make that two air-search, probably from the carriers,\" the petty officer said. \"Their course track is zero-niner-zero, speed about sixteen.\"\n\nThe tactical officer on the Orion, called a tacco, looked down at his chart. The Indian battle group was at the extreme eastern edge of the racetrack pattern they'd been following for the last several days. In less than twenty minutes, they should reverse course to head west. If they turned, things would become exciting. COMEDY was now 120 miles away from the other formation, and his aircraft was feeding constant information to _Anzio_ and _Kidd._ Under the wings of the four-engine Lockheed turboprop were four Harpoon missiles. White ones, war shots. The aircraft was now under the tactical command of Captain Kemper on _Anzio_ , and on his order they could launch those missiles, two each at the Indian carriers, because they were the long gun of the opposing navy. A few minutes behind would be a swarm of Tomahawks and more Harpoons headed the same way.\n\n\"Are they EMCON'D?\" the officer wondered.\n\n\"With nav sets emitting?\" the sailor replied. \"COMEDY must have 'em on their ESM gear by now. Damned sure our guys are lighting up the sky, sir.\" COMEDY had essentially two choices. Adopt EMCON\u2014for emissions control\u2014turning off their radars to make the other side expend time and fuel searching for them, or simply light everything off, creating an electronic bubble which the other side could easily see, but the penetration of which would be dangerous. _Anzio_ had gone with the second option.\n\n\"Any airplane chatter?\" the tacco asked another crewman.\n\n\"Negative, sir, none at all.\"\n\n\"Hmph.\" As low as the Orion was flying, its presence was probably not known to the Indians, despite their use of air-search gear. He was sorely tempted to pop up and illuminate himself with his own search radar. What were they up to? Might a few ships have broken away from the group, heading west, say, to launch an off-axis missile attack? He couldn't know what they were saying or thinking. All he had were computer-generated course tracks based on radar signals. The computer knew exactly where aircraft was at all times off the Global Positioning Satellite system. From that the bearing to the radar sources enabled calculation of their location and . . .\n\n\"Course change?\"\n\n\"Negative, system shows them still leading zero-niner-zero at sixteen knots. They are passing out of the box now, sir. This is farther cast than we've seen them in three days. They are now thirty miles east of COMEDY'S course to the Strait.\"\n\n\"I wonder if they changed their minds about this....\"\n\n\"YES, OUR FLEET is at sea,\" the Prime Minister told him.\n\n\"Have you seen the American ships?\"\n\nThe leader of the Indian government was all alone in her office. Her Foreign Minister had been in earlier, and was on his way back at this moment. This phone call had been anticipated, but not hoped for.\n\nThe situation had changed. President Ryan, weak though she still thought him to be\u2014who else but a weak man would have threatened a sovereign country so?\u2014had nonetheless frightened her. What if the plague in America had been initiated by Daryaei? She had no evidence that it had, and she would never seek such information out. Her country could never be associated with such an act. Ryan had asked\u2014what was it, four times? five?\u2014for her word that the Indian navy would not hinder the American fleet movement. But only one time had he said _weapons of mass destruction_. That was the deadliest code phrase in international exchange. All the more so, her Foreign Minister had told her, because America only possessed one kind of such weapons, and for that reason, America regarded biological weapons and chemical weapons _to be_ nuclear weapons. That led to another calculation. Aircraft fought aircraft. Ships fought ships. Tanks fought tanks. One answered an attack with the same weapon used by one's enemy. _Full power and rage_ , she remembered also. Ryan had overtly suggested that he would take action based on the nature of the supposed attack by the UIR. Nor, finally, did she discount the lunatic attack on his little daughter. She remembered that from the East Room, the reception after the funeral, how Ryan doted on his children. Weak man though he had to be, he was an _angry_ weak man, armed with weapons more dangerous than any others.\n\nDaryaei had been foolish to provoke America in that way. Better just to have launched his attack on Saudi and win with conventional arms on the field of battle, and that would have been that. But, no, he had to try to cripple America at home, to provoke them in a way that was the purest form of lunacy\u2014and now she and her government _and her country_ could be implicated, the P.M. realized.\n\nShe hadn't bargained for any of that. Deploying her fleet was chance enough\u2014and the Chinese, what had they done? Launched an exercise, perhaps damaged that airliner\u2014five thousand kilometers away! What risks were _they_ taking? Why, none at all. Daryaei expected much of her country, and with his attack on the very citizens of America, it was too much.\n\n\"No,\" she told him, choosing her words carefully. \"Our fleet units have seen American patrol aircraft, but no ships at all. We have heard, as you perhaps have, that an American ship group is transiting Suez, but only warships and nothing more.\"\n\n\"You are sure of this?\" Daryaei asked.\n\n\"My friend, neither our ships nor our naval aircraft have spotted any American ships in the Arabian Sea at all.\" The one overflight had been by land-based MiG-23s of the Indian air force. She hadn't lied to her supposed ally. Quite. \"The sea is large,\" she added. \"But the Americans are not that clever, are they?\"\n\n\"Your friendship will not be forgotten,\" Daryaei promised her.\n\nThe Prime Minister replaced the phone, wondering if she'd done the right thing. Well. If the American ships got to the Gulf, she could always say that they hadn't been spotted. That was the truth, wasn't it? Mistakes happened, didn't they?\n\n\"HEADS UP. I got four aircraft lifting off from Gasr Amu,\" a captain said aboard the AWACS. The newly-constituted UIR air force had been working up, too, but mainly over what was the central part of the new country, and hard to spot even from the airborne radar platform.\n\nWhoever had timed this wasn't doing all that badly. The fourth quartet of inbound airliners had just crossed into Saudi airspace, less than two hundred miles from the UIR fighters doing their climb-out. It had been quiet on the air front to this point. Two fighters had been tracked over the last few hours, but those appeared to be check-hops from the mission profiles, probably aircraft that had been fixed for some major or minor defect, then taken up to see if the new widgets worked properly. But this was a flight of four which had taken off in two closely spaced elements. That made them fighters on a mission.\n\nThe current air cover for Operation CUSTER in this sector was a flight of four American F-16s, orbiting within twenty miles of the border.\n\n\"Kingston Lead, this is Sky-Eye Six, over.\"\n\n\"Sky, Lead.\"\n\n\"We have four bandits, zero-three-five your position, angels ten and climbing, course two-niner-zero.\" The four American fighters moved west to interpose themselves between the UIR fighters and the inbound airliners.\n\nAboard the AWACS, a Saudi officer listened in to the radio chatter between the ground radar station controlling the flight of four and the fighters. The UIR fighters, now identified as French-made F-1s, continued to close the border, then turn ten miles short of it, finally tracing only one mile inside. The F-16s did much the same, and the pilots saw each other, and examined one another's aircraft from four thousand yards apart, through the protective visors of their helmets. The air-to-air missiles were clearly visible under the wings of all the aircraft.\n\n\"Y'all want to come over and say hello?\" the USAF major leading the F-16s said over guard. There was no response. The next installment of Operation CUSTER proceeded unhindered to Dhahran.\n\nO'DAY WAS IN early. His sitter, with no classes to worry about, rather enjoyed the thought of all the money that would come in from this, and the most important bit of news for everyone was that not a single case of the new illness had happened within ten miles of his home. Despite the inconvenience, he had slept at home every night\u2014even though on one occasion that had been a mere four hours. He couldn't be a daddy if he didn't kiss his little girl at least once a day, even in her sleep. At least the ride into work was easy. He'd gotten a Bureau car. It was faster than his pickup, complete with a flashing light that allowed him to zip through all the checkpoints on the way.\n\nOn his desk were the case summaries from the background checks of all the Secret Service personnel. The work in nearly every case had been stultifyingly duplicative. Full background checks had been done on every USSS employee, or else they could not have held the security clearances that were an automatic part of their jobs. Birth certificates, high-school photos, and everything else matched up perfectly. But ten files showed loose ends, and all of those would be run down later in the day. O'Day went over all of them. He kept coming back to one.\n\nRaman was of Iranian birth. But America was a nation of immigrants. The FBI had originally been constructed of Irish-Americans, preferably those educated at Jesuit institutions\u2014Boston College and Holy Cross were the favorites, according to the legend\u2014because J. Edgar Hoover was supposed to have believed that no Irish-American with a Jesuit education could conceivably betray his country. Doubtless, there had been some words about that at the time, and even today, anti-Catholicism was the last of the respectable prejudices. But it was well-known that immigrants so often made the most loyal of citizens, some ferociously so. The military and other security agencies often profited from that. Well, Pat thought, it was easily settled. Just check out the rug thing and let it be. He wondered who Mr. Sloan was. A guy who wanted a rug, probably.\n\nTHERE WAS A quiet to the streets of Tehran. Clark didn't remember them that way from 1979\u201480. His more recent trip had been different, more like the rest of the region, bustling but not dangerous. Being journalists, they acted like journalists. Clark reentered market areas, talking politely to people about business conditions, the availability of food, what they thought of the unification with Iraq, what their hopes for the future were, and what he got was pure vanilla. Platitudes. The political comments were especially bland, singularly lacking in the passion he remembered from the hostage crisis, when every heart and mind had been turned against the entire outside world\u2014especially America. Death to America. Well, they'd given substance to that wish, John thought. Or someone had. He didn't sense that animus anymore among the people, remembering the strangely cordial jeweler. Probably they just wanted to live, just like everyone else. The apathy reminded him of Soviet citizens in the 1980s. They'd just wanted to get along, just wanted to live a little better, just wanted their society to respond to their needs. There was no revolutionary rage left in them. So why, then, had Daryaei taken his action? How would the people respond to that? The obvious answer was that he'd lost touch, as Great Men so often did. He'd have his coterie of true believers, and a larger number of people willing to ride the bus and enjoy the comfortable seating while everyone else walked and kept out of the way, but that was it. It was fertile ground to recruit agents, to identify those who'd had enough and were willing to talk. What a shame that there was no time to run a proper intelligence operation here. He checked his watch. Time to head back to the hotel. Their first day had been both a waste and part of their cover. Their Russian colleagues would arrive tomorrow.\n\nTHE FIRST ORDER of business was to check out the names Sloan and Alahad. That started with a check of the telephone book. Sure enough, there was a Mohammed Alahad. He had an ad in the Yellow Pages. Persian and Oriental Rugs. For some reason, people didn't connect \"Persia\" with \"Iran,\" a saving grace for a lot of rug merchants. The shop was on Wisconsin Avenue, about a mile from Raman's apartment, which was not in the least way remarkable. Similarly, there was a Mr. Joseph Sloan in the crisscross, whose telephone number was 536-4040, as opposed to Raman's 536-3040. A one-digit goof, which easily explained the wrong number on the Secret Service agent's answering machine.\n\nThe next step was pure form. The computer records of telephone calls were run by command. The massive numbers of them took almost a minute to run, even with knowledge of the probable dates ... and there it came up on the agent's screen, a call to 202-536-3040 from 202-459-6777. But that wasn't Alahad's store number, was it? A further check showed -6777 as a pay phone two blocks from the shop. Odd. If he were that close to his shop, why drop a dime\u2014actually a quarter now\u2014to make the call?\n\nWhy not make another check? The agent was his squad's techno-genius, with a mustache and a marginal haircut. He'd been something less than a raving success working bank robberies, but had found foreign counterintelligence to his liking. It was like the engineering classes of his college days. You just kept picking at things. He'd also found that the foreign spies he chased thought the same way he did. Toss in his technical prowess\n\n... hmph, in the past month there had _not_ been a call from the rug shop to 536-4040. He went back another month. No. How about the other direction? No, 536-4040 had _never_ called 457-1100. Now, if he'd ordered a rug, and those things took time\u2014must have, if the dealer had called to let the guy know it had finally come in ... why hadn't there been a call about it in either direction?\n\nThe agent leaned over to the next desk. \"Sylvia, want to take a look at this?\"\n\n\"What is it, Donny?\"\n\nTHE BLACKHORSE WAS fully on the ground now. Most of them were in their vehicles or attending their aircraft. The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment comprised 123 M1A2 Abrams main-battle tanks, 127 M3A4 Bradley scout vehicles, 16 M109A6 Paladin 155mm mobile guns, and 8 M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket System tracks, plus a total of 83 helicopters, 26 of which were AH-54D Apache attack choppers. Those were the shooting platforms. They were supported by hundreds of soft vehicles\u2014mostly trucks to carry fuel, food, and ammunition\u2014plus twenty extras locally called Water Buffaloes, a vital need in this part of the world.\n\nThe first order of business was to get everyone away from the POMCUS site. The tracked vehicles were driven onto low-boy trailers for the ride north to Abu Hadriyah, a small town with an airport and the designated assembly point for the 11th Cav. As every vehicle rolled out of its warehouse, it stopped on a pre-selected spot painted red. There the GPS navigation systems were checked against a known reference point. Two of the IVIS boxes were down. One of them announced the fact all by itself, sending a coded radio message to the regiment's support troop, demanding that it be replaced and repaired. The other was completely dead, and the crew had to figure it out for themselves. The large red square helped.\n\nThe trailer trucks were driven by Pakistanis, a few hundred of the thousands imported into the Saudi Kingdom to do menial labor. For the Abrams and Bradley crews, it would prove to be exciting, while they worked inside their tracks to make sure that everything was working. With the routine tasks done, drivers, loaders, and commanders stuck their heads out of their hatches, hoping to enjoy the view. What they saw was different from Fort Irwin but not terribly exciting. To the east was an oil pipeline. To the west was a lot of nothing. The crews watched anyway\u2014the view was better than they'd experienced on the flight\u2014except for the gunners, many of whom fought motion-sickness, a common problem for people in that position. It was almost as bad for those who could see. The local truckers, it seemed, were paid by the mile and not the hour. They drove like maniacs.\n\nThe Guardsmen were beginning to arrive now. They had nothing to do at the moment except set up the tents provided for them, drink lots of water, and exercise.\n\nSUPERVISOR SPECIAL AGENT Hazel Loomis commanded this squad of ten agents. \"Sissy\" Loomis had been in FCI from the beginning of her career, virtually all of it in Washington. Approaching forty now, she still had the cheerleader look that had served her so well earlier in her time as a street agent. She also had a number of successful cases under her belt.\n\n\"This looks a little odd,\" Donny Selig told her, laying out his notes on her desk.\n\nIt didn't require much by way of explanation. Phone contacts between intelligence agents never included the words, \"I have the microfilm.\" The most innocuous of messages were pre-selected to convey the proper information. Which was why they were called \"code words.\" And it wasn't that the tradecraft was bad. It was just that if you knew what to look for, it looked like tradecraft. Loomis looked the data over, then looked up.\n\n\"Got addresses?\"\n\n\"You bet, Sis,\" Selig told her.\n\n\"Then let's go see Mr. Sloan.\" The one bad part about promotion was that being a supervisor denied her the chance to hit the bricks. Not for this one, Loomis told herself.\n\nAT LEAST THE F-15E Strike Eagle had a crew of two, allowing the pilot and weapons-systems operator to engage in conversation for the endless flight. The same was true of the six B-1B bomber crews; the Lancer even had enough area that people could lie down and sleep\u2014not to mention a sit-down toilet. This meant that, unlike the fighter crews, they didn't have to shower immediately upon reaching Al Kharj, their final destination, south of Riyadh. The 366th Air Combat Wing had three designated \"checkered flag\" locations throughout the world. These were bases in anticipated trouble spots, with support equipment, fuel, and ordnance facilities maintained by small caretaker crews, who would be augmented by the 366th's own personnel, mainly flying in by chartered airliners. That ineluded additional flight crews, so that, theoretically, the crew which had flown in from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho could indulge in crew rest, while another relief crew could, theoretically, fly the aircraft off to battle. Fortunately for all concerned, this wasn't necessary. Thoroughly exhausted airmen (and, now, -women) brought their birds in for landing, taxied off to their shelters, and dismounted, handing their charges over to maintenance personnel. The bomb-bay fuel tanks were removed first of all, and replaced with the appliances made to hold weapons, while the crews went off for long showers and briefings from intelligence officers. Over a period of five hours, the entire 366th combat strength was in Saudi, less one F-16C, which had developed avionics trouble and diverted to Bentwaters Royal Air Force Base in England.\n\n\"YES?\" THE ELDERLY woman wasn't wearing a surgical mask. Sissy Loomis handed her one. It was the new form of greeting in America.\n\n\"Good morning, Mrs. Sloan. FBI,\" the agent said, holding up her ID.\n\n\"Yes?\" She wasn't intimidated, but she was surprised.\n\n\"Mrs. Sloan, we're conducting an investigation, and we'd like to ask you a few questions. We just need to clear something up. Could you help us, please?\"\n\n\"I suppose.\" Mrs. Joseph Sloan was over sixty, dressed neatly, and looked pleasant enough, if somewhat surprised by all this. Inside the apartment the TV was on, tuned to a local station by the sound of it. The weather forecast was running.\n\n\"May we come in? This is Agent Don Selig,\" she said, nodding her head to the techno-weenie. As usual, her friendly smile won the day; Mrs. Sloan didn't even put the mask on.\n\n\"Surely.\" The lady of the house backed away from the door.\n\nIt took only a single glance to tell Sissy Loomis that something was not quite right here. For one thing, there was no Persian rug to be seen in the living room\u2014in her experience people didn't just buy one of the things. For another, this apartment was just too neat.\n\n\"Excuse me, is your husband in?\" The response was immediate, and pained.\n\n\"My husband passed away last September,\" she told the agent.\n\n\"Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Sloan. We didn't know.\" And with that a fairly routine follow-up changed into something very different indeed.\n\n\"He was older than me. Joe was seventy-eight,\" she said, pointing to a picture on the coffee table of two people a long time ago, one about thirty and one in her late teens.\n\n\"Does the name Alahad mean anything to you, Mrs. Sloan?\" Loomis asked after sitting down.\n\n\"No. Should it?\"\n\n\"He deals in Persian and Oriental rugs.\"\n\n\"Oh, we don't have any of those. I'm allergic to wool, you see.\"\n**57**\n\n**NIGHT PASSAGE**\n\n**J** ACK?\" RYAN'S EYES clicked open to see that there was bright sunlight coming through the windows. His watch said it was just after eight in the morning.\n\n\"What the hell? Why didn't anybody\u2014\"\n\n\"You even slept through the alarm,\" Cathy told him. \"Andrea said that Arnie said to let you sleep till about now. I guess I needed it, too,\" SURGEON added. She'd been in bed for over ten hours before waking at seven. \"Dave told me to take the day off,\" she added.\n\nJack jolted up and moved at once into the bathroom. When he came back, Cathy, in her housecoat, handed over his briefing papers. The President stood in the center of the room, reading them. Reason told him that if anything serious had happened he would have been awakened\u2014he had slept through the clock-radio alarm before, but he'd never failed to be aroused by a phone. The papers told him that all was, if not exactly well, then relatively stable. Ten minutes after that, he was dressed. He took the time to say hello to his kids, and kiss his wife. Then he headed out.\n\n\"SWORDSMAN is moving,\" Andrea. said into her radio mike. \"Sit Room?\" she asked POTUS.\n\n\"Yeah. Whose idea was it to\u2014\"\n\n\"Mr. President, that was the chief of staff, but he was right, sir.\"\n\nRyan looked at her as she punched the elevator button for the ground floor. \"I guess I'm outvoted, then.\"\n\nThe national-security team had clearly been up all night on his behalf. Ryan had coffee waiting at his place. They'd been living on it.\n\n\"Okay, what's happening over there?\"\n\n\"COMEDY is now one hundred thirty miles beyond the Indians\u2014would you believe they resumed their patrol station _behind_ us?\" Admiral Jackson told his Commander-in-Chief.\n\n\"Playing both sides of the street,\" Ben Goodley concluded.\n\n\"It's a good way to get hit by traffic in both directions,\" Arnie put in.\n\n\"Go on.\"\n\n\"Operation CUSTER is just about done. The 366th is also in Saudi, less one broke fighter that diverted to England. The 11th Cav is rolling out of its storage site to an assembly area. So far,\" the J-3 said, \"so good. The other side sortied some fighters to the border, but we and the Saudis had a blocking force, and nothing happened aside from some mean looks.\"\n\n\"Anybody think they're going to back down?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"No.\" This came from Ed Foley. \"They can't, not now.\"\n\nTHE RENDEZVOUS TOOK place fifty miles off Cape Rass al Hadd, the far southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Cruisers _Normandy_ and _Yorktown_ , destroyer _John Paul Jones_ , and frigates _Underwood, Doyle_ , and _Nicholas_ took a trailing position so that _Platte_ and _Supply_ could take them alongside after their high-speed run down from Alexandria, to top off their bunkers. Helicopters ferried the captains to _Anzio_ , whose captain was senior, for an hour's worth of discussion of the mission. Their destination was Dhahran. To get there they had to drive northwest into the Strait of Hormuz. Getting there would take just over six hours, 2200 hours local time. The strait was twenty miles across and speckled with islands, plus it was one of the most heavily traveled waterways in the world\u2014even now, despite the growing crisis. Supertankers, one of which displaced more water than all of the warships in the now-designated TF-61.1 combined, were merely the bestknown vessels transiting the area. There were also massive container ships wearing the flags of ten nations, and even a multilevel sheep carrier which looked like a big-city parking garage, which was bringing in live mutton from Australia. The smell of it was famous on all the oceans of the world. The strait was covered by radar to establish traffic control\u2014the possibility of a ramming incident between two supertankers didn't bear thinking about\u2014which meant that TF-61.1 would be unlikely to sneak in entirely unnoticed. But they could do a few things. At the narrowest point, the Navy ships would hold to the south, dodging between islands belonging to Oman, and hopefully somewhat obscured by the clutter. Next they'd move south of Abu Musa, past the crowd of oil platforms, again using them for radar cover, and then make a straight run for Dhahran, past the mini-states of Qatar and Bahrain. Opposition, the intelligence officers said, included ships of American, British, Chinese, Russian, and French origin, all of them armed with one sort of missile or another. The most important ships in the group, of course, were totally unarmed. Maintaining their box formation, _Anzio_ would lead them, 2,000 yards in front. _Normandy_ and _Yorktown_ would take position 2,000 yards to starboard, with _Jones_ in trail. The two under way-replenishment ships, with _O'Bannon_ and all the frigates in close escort, would form a second, decoy group. Helicopters would be aloft, both to patrol and, with their radar transponders on, to simulate much larger targets. The various COs agreed on the plan and waited for their helicopters to return them to their commands. It was the first time in ages that an American naval formation had stood in harm's way without a carrier in close support. Their bunkers full of fuel, the group formed up as planned, pointed their bows northwest, and bent on twenty-six knots. At 1800 local time, a flight of four F-16 fighters blazed overhead, both to give the Aegis ships a chance to practice fire-control against live targets and also to verify the IFF codes to be used for the night's mission.\n\nMOHAMMED ALAHAD, THEY saw, was just as ordinary as hell. He'd come to America more than fifteen years earlier. He was said to be widowed and childless. He ran a decent and profitable business on one of Washington's nicer shopping streets. He was, in fact, in there right now. Though the CLOSED sign was on the door, they supposed he had nothing better to do but sit in his shop and go over his bills.\n\nOne of Loomis's squad went up to the shop and knocked on the door. Alahad came to open it, and a brief conversation ensued, with the expected gestures, and they could figure what was being said. _I'm sorry, but all businesses are closed because of the President's order\u2014Yeah, sure, but I don't have anything to do, and neither do you, right?\u2014Yes, but_ it is _an order\u2014Hey, who's gonna know, what' d' ya say?_ Finally the agent went in, wearing a surgical mask. He stayed there for ten minutes before coming back out, walking around the corner, and making a radio call from his car.\n\n\"It's a rug shop,\" the agent told Loomis over the encrypted radio channel. \"If we want to toss the place, we'll have to wait.\" There was already a tap on the phone line, but so far there had not been a single call in or out.\n\nThe other half of her squad was in Alahad's apartment. There they found a photo of a woman and a child, probably his son, wearing something like a uniform\u2014about fourteen, the agent thought, photographing them with a Polaroid. But again, everything was pure vanilla. It was exactly the way a businessman would live in the Washington area, or an intelligence officer. You just couldn't tell. They had the beginning of a case, but not enough evidence to take to a judge, certainly not enough for a search warrant. Their probable-cause quotient was a little on the thin side. But this was a national-security investigation involving the personal safety of the President, and headquarters _had_ told them that there were no rules. They'd already committed two technical violations of the law in invading two apartments without a warrant, and two more in tapping a couple of phone lines. With all that work accomplished, Loomis and Selig made their way into an apartment building across the street. From the manager, they learned that there was a vacant apartment facing Alahad's storefront. They got the keys to that without any difficulty and set up their surveillance of the front, while two more agents watched the back door. Sissy Loomis then used her cellular phone to call headquarters. Maybe it wasn't enough to take to a judge or a U.S. attorney, but it was enough to talk to another agent about.\n\nONE OTHER POTENTIAL subject wasn't completely clear yet, O'Day noted. There was Raman, and a black agent whose wife was a Muslim and who was evidently trying to convert her husband\u2014but the agent had discussed it with his comrades, and there was a notation in his file that this agent's marriage, like others in the Service, was on shaky ground.\n\nThe phone rang.\n\n\"Inspector O'Day.\"\n\n\"Pat? It's Sissy.\"\n\n\"How's Raman looking?\" He'd worked three cases with her, all involving Russian spies. The cheerleader had the jaw of a pit bull once she got onto something.\n\n\"The message on his phone, the wrong number?\"\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Our rug merchant was calling a dead person whose wife is allergic to wool,\" Loomis told him.\n\n_Click._\n\n\"Keep going, Sis.\" She read off her notes and the information garnered by the people who'd entered the dealer's apartment.\n\n\"This one feels real, Pat. The tradecraft is just too good. Right out of the book. It looks so normal that you don't think about it. But why the pay phone, except that he's worried somebody might have a tap on his phone? Why call a dead man by mistake? And why did the wrong number go to somebody on the Detail?\"\n\n\"Well, Raman's out of town.\"\n\n\"Keep him there,\" Loomis advised. They didn't have a case. They were still struggling for probable cause. If they arrested Alahad, he'd have the sense to ask for a lawyer\u2014and what did they have? He'd made a phone call. He wouldn't have to defend the call. He just had to say nothing. His lawyer would say it was all some kind of mistake\u2014Alahad might even have a plausible explanation already prepared; he'd keep that one in his pocket, of course\u2014ask for evidence, and the FBI would have nothing to show.\n\n\"That tips our hand, too, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Better safe than sorry, Pat.\"\n\n\"I have to take this to Dan. When are you tossing the shop?\"\n\n\"Tonight.\"\n\nTHE TROOPERS OF the Blackhorse were thoroughly exhausted. Fit and desert-trained soldiers that they were, they'd spent two-thirds of a day in airplanes with dry air, sitting in cramped seats, their personal weapons in the overhead bins\u2014that always got a curious reaction from the stewardesses\u2014and then arrived eleven time zones away in blazing heat. But they did what they had to do.\n\nFirst came gunnery. The Saudis had established a large shooting range for their own use, with pop-up steel targets as close as three hundred meters and as far as five thousand. Gunners bore-sighted their weapons, then tried them out, using real ammunition instead of practice, then learned that the war shots were far more accurate, the projectiles flying \"right through the dot,\" meaning the circular reticle in the center of their sighting systems. Once off the transport trailers, drivers exercised their mounts to make sure that everything worked properly, but the tanks and Bradleys were in the nearly mint condition promised on the flight over. Radio checks were made so that everyone could talk to everyone else. Then they verified the all-important IVIS data links. The more mundane tasks came last of all. The Saudi-deployed M1A2s did not yet have the newest modification to the vehicle series, pallet-loaded ammunition racks. Instead there was a large steel-wire bustle for personal things, especially water. One by one, the crews cycled their vehicles through the course. The Bradley crews even got to fire a single TOW missile each. Then they entered the reloading area, taking on new ammunition to replace what had been expended on the range.\n\nIt was all quiet and businesslike. The Blackhorse, because they trained other soldiers so regularly in the fine art of mechanized death, were utterly desensitized to the routine tasks of soldiering. They had to remind themselves that this was not _their_ desert\u2014deserts all look pretty much alike; this one, however, didn't have creosote bushes and coyotes. It did have camels and merchants. The Saudis honored their hospitality laws by providing food and soft drinks in abundance to the troopers, while their senior officers conferred over maps with the region's bitter coffee.\n\nMarion Diggs was not a big man. A cavalryman all of his life, he'd always enjoyed the ability to direct sixty tons of steel with his fingertips, to reach out and touch someone else's vehicle at three miles' distance. Now he was a senior commander, effectively commanding a division, but with a third of it two hundred miles to the north, and another third aboard some ships which would be running a gauntlet later this evening.\n\n\"So what are we really up against, how ready are they?\" the general asked.\n\nSatellite photos went down, and the senior American intelligence officer, based at KKMC, went through his mission brief. It took thirty terse minutes, during which Diggs stood. He was very tired of sitting.\n\n\"STORM TRACK reports minimal radio traffic,\" the briefing officer, a colonel, reported. \"We need to remember that they're pretty exposed where they are, by the way.\"\n\n\"I have a company moving to cover it,\" a Saudi officer reported. \"They should be in position by morning.\"\n\n\"What's Buffalo doing?\" Diggs asked. Another map went down. The Kuwaiti dispositions looked all right to his eye. At least they were not forward-deployed. Just the screening force on the berm, he saw, with the three heavy brigades in position to counter a penetration. He knew Magruder. In fact, he knew all three of the groundsquadron commanders. If the UIR hit there first, outnumbered or not, the Blue Force would give the Red one hell of a bloody nose.\n\n\"Enemy intentions?\" he inquired next.\n\n\"Unknown, sir. There are elements to this we do not understand yet. Washington has told us to expect an attack, but not why.\"\n\n\"What the hell?\"\n\n\"Tonight or tomorrow morning for that, best I can tell you, sir,\" the intel officer replied. \"Oh, we have newsies assigned to us. They flew in a few hours ago. They're in a hotel in Riyadh.\"\n\n\"Marvelous.\"\n\n\"In the absence of knowledge of what they plan to do . . .\"\n\n\"The objective is plain, is it not?\" the senior Saudi commander observed. \"Our Shi'ite neighbors have all the desert they need.\" He tapped the map. \"There is our economic center of gravity.\"\n\n\"General?\" another voice asked. Diggs turned to his left.\n\n\"Colonel Eddington?\"\n\n\"Center of gravity is political, not military. We might want to keep that in mind, gentlemen,\" the colonel from Carolina pointed out. \"If they want to go for the coastal oil fields, we'll have a lot of strategic warning.\"\n\n\"They do have us outnumbered, Nick. That does give them a certain degree of strategic flexibility. Sir, I see a lot of fuel trucks in these photos,\" the American general noted.\n\n\"They stopped at the Kuwait border the last time because they were out of fuel,\" the Saudi commander reminded them.\n\nThe Saudi army\u2014actually called their National Guard\u2014comprised five heavy brigades, almost all of it American equipment. Three were deployed south of Kuwait, with one at Ras al Khafji, site of the only invasion of the Kingdom, but right on the water, and nobody expected an attack from the sea. It was not unusual for soldiers to prepare to fight the last war, the American remembered.\n\nFor his part, Eddington remembered a quote from Napoleon. When shown a defense plan that had troops evenly spaced on the French border, he'd asked the officer if the idea was to prevent smuggling. That defensive concept had been given the patina of legitimacy by NATO's doctrine of forward defense on the inner German border, but it had never been tested, and if there were ever a place to trade space for time, it was the Saudi desert. Eddington kept his mouth shut on that one. He was junior to Diggs, and the Saudis seemed quite possessive about their territory, as most people were. He and Diggs shared a look. As the 10th Cav was the theater reserve for the Kuwaitis, so the 11th would perform the same function for the Saudis. That might change when his Guardsmen mounted their tracks at Dhahran, but for the moment this deployment would have to do.\n\nOne big problem with the situation was the command relationship in place. Diggs was a one-star\u2014one hell of a good one, Eddington knew, but just a brigadier. Had CENTCOM been able to fly over, he would have had the rank status to make firmer suggestions to the Saudis. Evidently, Colonel Magruder of the Buffalo Cav had done something like that, but Diggs's position was just a little ticklish.\n\n\"Well, we'll have a couple of days, anyway.\" The American general turned. \"Get additional recon assets in place. If those six divisions fart, I want to know what they had for dinner.\"\n\n\"We'll have Predators going up at sunset,\" the intel colonel promised.\n\nEddington walked outside to light a cigar. He needn't have troubled himself, he realized after a few puffs. The Saudis all smoked.\n\n\"Well, Nick?\" Diggs asked, joining him.\n\n\"Beer'd be nice.\"\n\n\"Just empty calories,\" the general observed.\n\n\"Four-to-one odds, and they have the initiative. That's if my people get their gear in time. This could get right interesting, Diggs.\" Another puff. \"Their deployments suck.\" A phrase acquired from his students, his senior thought. \"By the way, what are we calling this?\"\n\n\"BUFORD, Operation BUFORD. Pick a moniker for your brigade, Nick?\"\n\n\"How's WOLFPACK grab you? It's the wrong school, but TARHEEL just doesn't sound right. This damned thing's going pretty fast, General.\"\n\n\"One lesson the other side _must_ have learned from the last one: don't give us time to build our forces up.\"\n\n\"True. Well, I have to see after my people.\"\n\n\"Use my chopper,\" Diggs told him. \"I'll be here a while.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Eddington turned, saluted, and started walking off. Then he turned. \"Diggs?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Maybe we're not as well-trained as Hamm and his boys, but we'll get it done, y'hear?\" He saluted again, tossed his cigar, and walked off to the Black Hawk.\n\nNOTHING MOVES AS quietly as a ship. An automobile moving at this speed, a fraction below thirty miles per hour, made noise one could hear for hundreds of yards on a silent night, but for a ship it was the high-frequency _swish_ of steel hull cutting through what were at the moment calm seas, and that didn't carry very far at all. Those aboard could feel the vibrations of the engine, or hear the deep sucking breath of the turbine engines, but that was all, and those sounds scarcely carried a hundred yards across the water at night. Just the swish, and behind every ship was a foaming wake, a ghostly shade of green in the water from tiny organisms upset by the pressure wave of their passage, and phosphorescing as some sort of biological protest to the disturbance. To those on the ships, it seemed hellishly bright. On every bridge, the lights were turned down, so that night vision wouldn't be compromised. Navigation lights were turned off, a rules-of-theroad violation in these confined waters. Lookouts used conventional binoculars and light-amplification gear to scan forward. The formation was just now turning the corner, in the narrowest part of the passage.\n\nIn every combat information center, people hovered over scopes and charts, talking in whispers lest they somehow be heard. Those who smoked wished they could in the antiseptic spaces, and those who'd quit now wondered why. Something about a health hazard, they remembered as they contemplated surface-to-surface missiles mounted in emplacements about fifteen thousand yards away, each of them with a ton of explosives right behind the seekerhead.\n\n\"Coming left, new course two-eight-five,\" the officer of the deck reported on _Anzio._\n\nOn the main plot, there were over forty \"targets,\" as radar contacts were called, each with a vector showing approximate course and speed. The number of inbounds and outbounds was about the same. Some of them were huge, the radar returns of supertankers being about that of a medium-sized island.\n\n\"Well, we've made it this far,\" Weps said to Captain Kemper. \"Maybe they're asleep.\"\n\n\"Maybe there really is a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.\"\n\nOnly navigation radars were turning now. The Iranian \/UIR-ians had to have ESM gear over there, but if they were standing a patrol in the Strait of Hormuz, they hadn't spotted it yet. There were unexplained targets. Fishing boats? Smugglers? Somebody in a pleasure craft? There was no telling. Probably the enemy was a little reticent about sending their vessels too far over the centerline of the strait. The Arabs were as territorial as everyone else, Kemper imagined.\n\nThe ships were all at battle stations. All combat systems were fully powered up, but on standby. If somebody turned toward them, they would first try to get a visual. If somebody lit them up with a targeting radar, then the ship on the clearest bearing would step up her alert level somewhat and make a few sweeps with the SPY radars to see if there might be an inbound track. But that would be tough. Those missiles all had independent seeker-heads, and the strait was crowded, and a missile just might acquire something unintended. The other side couldn't be all that trigger-happy. They might even end up slaughtering a few thousand sheep, Kemper thought with a smile. As tense as this part of the mission was, the task for the other side wasn't all _that_ easy.\n\n\"Course change on track four-four, coming left,\" a quartermaster said.\n\nThat one was a surface contact just inside UIR-ian waters, seven miles away and passing aft. Kemper leaned forward. A computer command showed the contact's course-track for the last twenty minutes. It had been moving along at mere steerage speed, about five knots. It was now doing ten, and had turned . . . toward the trailing decoy group. That data was linked to USS _O'Bannon,_ whose captain was the senior officer for the group. The range between the two ships was 16,000 yards and closing.\n\nThings got more interesting. _Normandy_ 's helicopter closed on the track from behind, keeping low. The pilots saw a green-white bloom as the unknown craft increased power, stirring the water and disturbing more of the organisms which somehow survived all the pollution here. A sudden burst of power meant . . .\n\n\"That's a gunboat,\" the pilot reported over the data link. \"He just goosed it. Target has just increased power.\"\n\nKemper grimaced. He had a choice now. Do nothing, and maybe nothing would happen. Do nothing, and maybe give the gun\/missile boat the first shot at _O'Bannon_ and her group. Do something, and risk alerting the other side. But if the enemy craft shot first, the enemy would know something anyway, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It was a complex set of data for five seconds. He waited five more.\n\n\"Target is a missile boat, I see two launchers, target steadying down on course.\"\n\n\"He's got a direct line to _O'Bannon_ , sir,\" Weps reported.\n\n\"Radio chatter, I have radio chatter on UHF, bearing zero-one-five.\"\n\n\"Take the shot,\" Kemper said instantly.\n\n\"Shoot!\" Weps said over the voice channel to the helo.\n\n\"Roger, engaging!\"\n\n\"Combat, lookout, sir, I have a flash like a missile launch on the port quarter\u2014make that two, sir,\" a speaker announced.\n\n\"Give it a sweep\"\n\n\"Two more launches, sir.\"\n\n_Shit_ , Kemper thought. The helo carried only two Penguin antiship missiles. The enemy had gotten the first two off. And he couldn't do anything now. The decoy group was fulfilling its function. It was getting shot at.\n\n\"Two vampires inbound\u2014target destroyed,\" the pilot added, announcing the destruction of the missile boat\u2014 confirmed a moment later by the topside lookout. \"Say again, two vampires inbound _O'Bannon._ \"\n\n\"Silkworms are big targets,\" Weps said.\n\nThey watched the mini-battle imperfectly. The navigation-radar display showed _O'Bannon_ changing course to port. That would be to unmask her point-defense missile system, located far aft. It would also provide a huge radar target to the inbound missiles. The destroyer did not fire off her decoys for fear that spoofing the inbounds would only divert them to the replenishment ships she was guarding. An automatic decision? Kemper wondered. A considered one? Ballsy either way. The destroyer's illumination radar came on. That meant she was firing her missiles, but the navigation radar couldn't tell. Then at least one of the frigates joined in.\n\n\"All kinda flashes aft,\" the topside lookout said next. \" _Wow_ , that was a big one! There goes another!\" Then five seconds of silence.\n\n\" _O'Bannon_ to group, we're okay,\" a voice reported.\n\nFor now, Kemper thought.\n\nTHE PREDATORS WERE up, three of them, one each for the three corps encamped southwest of Baghdad, motoring through the air at only twice the speed of a tank. None of them got as far as planned. Thirty miles short of their objectives, their look-down thermal cameras showed the glowing shapes of armored vehicles. The Army of God was moving. The feed to STORM TRACK was instantly cross-loaded to KKMC, and from there all over the world.\n\n\"Another couple of days would have been nice,\" Ben Goodley thought aloud.\n\n\"How ready are our people?\" Ryan turned to the J-3.\n\n\"The 10th's ready to rock. The 11th needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn't even have its equipment yet,\" Jackson replied.\n\n\"How long before contact?\" the President asked next.\n\n\"At least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they're going, exactly.\"\n\nJack nodded. \"Arnie, has Callie been briefed in on all this?\"\n\n\"No, not at all.\"\n\n\"Then let's get that done. I have a speech to make.\"\n\nALAHAD MUST HAVE gotten bored running a business with no customers, Loomis thought. He left early, walked to where his car was parked, and drove off. Tailing him on such empty streets would probably be fairly easy. A few minutes later, the subject was observed to park his car and enter his apartment building. Then she and Selig walked out of the unit they'd been in, crossed the street, and walked around the back. There were two locks on the door, which caused the junior agent to take ten minutes to defeat them, much to his own annoyance. Then came the alarm system, but that was more easily accomplished. It was an old one with a socket key and a very simple disarming code. Inside they found a few more photos, one, probably, of his son. They checked the Rolodex first, and there was the card for J. Sloan, with the number 536-4040, but no address.\n\n\"Tell me what you think,\" Loomis said.\n\n\"I think it's a new card, not dog-eared or anything like that, and I think there's a dot over the first numeral _four._ Tells him which number to change, Sis.\"\n\n\"This guy's a player, Donny.\"\n\n\"I think you're right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too.\"\n\nBut how to prove it?\n\nTHE COVER MIGHT or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off a broadcast and received permission to fire . . . Maybe the young commander had decided to shoot on his own . . . probably not. Dictatorial countries didn't give much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were continuing, going southwest now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had just happened north of Abu Musa.\n\nOmani patrol boats were out now, and _they_ were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was going on.\n\nIn confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business.\n\n\"When's nautical twilight?\"\n\n\"Five hours, sir,\" the quartermaster of the watch replied.\n\n\"That's a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things out if they can.\" Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle enough.\n\nTHEY LAID IT all out on Inspector O'Day's desk. \"It all\" amounted to three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig's scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had.\n\n\"Not exactly the thickest pile of proof I've ever seen,\" Pat noted.\n\n\"Hey, Pat, you said to move fast,\" Loomis reminded him. \"They're both dirty. I can't prove it to a jury, but that's enough to start a major investigation, assuming we have the luxury of time, which I don't think we do.\"\n\n\"Correct. Come on,\" he said, rising. \"We have to see the Director.\"\n\nIt wasn't as though Murray weren't busy enough. The FBI wasn't exactly running the epidemiological investigation of all the Ebola cases, but the Bureau's agents were doing a lot of legwork. There was the ongoing, and practically new, case on the attack on Giant Steps, which was both criminal and FCI\u2014and an inter-agency case to boot. And now this, the third \"put everything else aside\" situation in less than ten days. The inspector waved his way past the secretaries and walked into the Director's office without a knock.\n\n\"It's a good thing I wasn't taking a leak,\" Murray observed.\n\n\"I didn't think you'd have time for that. I don't,\" Pat told him. \"There's probably a mole in the Service after all, Dan.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah, and oh, shit. I'll let Loomis and Selig walk you through it.\"\n\n\"Can I take this to Andrea Price without getting shot?\" the Director asked.\n\n\"I think so.\"\n**58**\n\n**THE LIGHT OF DAY**\n\n**I** T WASN'T SOMETHING TO celebrate, but for the second day in a row, new Ebola cases had dropped. Of the new cases identified, moreover, about a third were people who tested positive for the antibodies but were asymptomatic. CDC and USAMRIID rechecked the data twice before reporting it to the White House, also cautioning that it was too preliminary to be released to the public. The travel ban, it seemed, and the spinoff effects it was having on interpersonal contacts, was working\u2014but the President couldn't say it was working, because then it would stop working.\n\nThe Giant Steps case was also ongoing, mainly a task of the FBI laboratory division. There, electronic microscopes were being used for something other than the identification of Ebola strands, and were narrowing in on pollen and other tiny particles. This was complicated by the fact that the Giant Steps attack had been made in the spring, when the air was full of pollens.\n\nMordecai Azir, it was now firmly established, was a quintessential unperson who had sprung into existence seemingly for a single purpose and, fulfilling it, had disappeared. But he had left behind photographs, and there were ways of dealing with that, Ryan learned. He wondered if there might be some good news to end the day. There wouldn't be.\n\n\"Hi, Dan.\" He was back in his office. The Situation Room was just one more reminder that his next major order was to send people into combat.\n\n\"Mr. President,\" the FBI Director said, entering with Inspector O'Day and Andrea Price.\n\n\"Why do you look so happy?\"\n\nAnd then they told him.\n\nIT WAS A BRAVE man who awoke the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei before dawn, and since those around him feared his wrath, it took two hours for them to summon the courage to do so. Not that it would help matters. At four in the morning in Tehran, the phone by the side of his bed rang. Ten minutes after that, he was in the sitting room of his private apartment, his dark, sunken eyes waiting to punish those responsible.\n\n\"We have a report that American ships have entered the Gulf,\" the intelligence chief told him.\n\n\"When and where?\" the Ayatollah asked quietly.\n\n\"It was after midnight at the narrows. One of our missile-patrol boats spotted what it reported to be an American destroyer. It was ordered in to attack by the local naval commander, but we've heard nothing more from the boat.\"\n\n\"That is all?\" _You awakened me for_ this?\n\n\"There was some radio traffic in the area, ships talking back and forth. They talked about several explosions. We have reason to believe that our missile boat was attacked and destroyed by someone, probably an aircraft\u2014but an aircraft from where?\"\n\n\"We want your permission to commence air operations to sweep the Gulf after dawn. We have never done this without your word,\" the air force chief pointed out.\n\n\"Permission is _given_ ,\" Daryaei told them. Well, he _was_ awake now, the cleric told himself. \"What else?\"\n\n\"The Army of God is making its approach march to the border area. The operation is proceeding as scheduled.\" Surely this news would please him, the intelligence chief thought.\n\nMahmoud Haji nodded. He'd hoped for a decent night's sleep, in anticipation of being up long hours for the next few days, but it was his nature that, once awakened, he could not return to sleep. He looked at his desk clock\u2014he didn't wear a watch\u2014and decided that the day would have to begin.\n\n\"Will we surprise them?\"\n\n\"Somewhat, certainly,\" Intelligence responded. \"The army is under strict orders to maintain radio silence. The American listening posts are very sensitive, but they cannot hear nothing. When they reach Al Busayyah, we must expect detection, but then we will be ready to jump off, and it will be at night.\"\n\nDaryaei shook his head. \"Wait, what did our patrol boat tell us?\"\n\n\"He reported an American destroyer or frigate, possibly with other ships, but that was all. We will have aircraft up to look in two hours.\"\n\n\"Their transport ships?\"\n\n\"We don't know,\" Intelligence admitted. He'd hoped that they were past that.\n\n_\"Find out!\"_\n\nThe two men took their leave with that order. Daryaei rang his servant for tea. He had another thought just then. All would be settled, or at least solved, when the Raman boy fulfilled his mission. The report was that he was in place, and had received his order. Why, then, hadn't he fulfilled it! the Ayatollah asked himself, with a building anger. He looked at the clock again. It was too early to make a call.\n\nKEMPER HAD GIVEN his crew something akin to a stand-down. The automation of the Aegis ships made that possible, and so, starting two hours after the incident with the gunboat\u2014missile boat, he corrected himself\u2014crewmen were allowed to rotate off their battle stations, to relieve themselves, to get something to eat, and in many cases to pump a little iron. That had lasted an hour, with each officer and man having had fifteen minutes. They were all back now. It was two hours to nautical twilight. They were just under a hundred miles from Qatar, now heading west-northwest, after having dodged behind every island and oil platform that might confuse an enemy radar post. COMEDY had been through the tough part. The Gulf was far wider here. There was sea room to maneuver in and to make full use of his powerful sensors. The radar picture in _Anzio_ 's CIC showed a flight of four F-16s twenty miles north of his formation, their IFF codes clear on the display\u2014his people had to be careful about that. It would have been better if there could be an AWACS aloft, but, he had just learned an hour before, all of those were deployed up north. Today, there would be a fight. It would not be the sort of thing Aegis had been designed for, or quite what he'd been trained for, but that was the Navy for you.\n\nThe decoy group he ordered south. Their job was done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was and where they were going, he thought.\n\n\"HOW SURE OF this are you?\" POTUS asked. \"Christ, I've been alone with the guy a hundred times!\"\n\n\"We know,\" Price assured him. \"We know. Sir, it's hard to believe. I've known Jeff on and off\u2014\"\n\n\"He's the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA finals. He was right. His _point spread_ was right on.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Andrea had to agree with that, too. \"Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to explain.\"\n\n\"Are you going to arrest him?\"\n\n\"We can't.\" Murray took that one. \"It's one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can't prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though.\"\n\n\"Then let's hear it,\" Ryan ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn't right. The intervening, brief period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he'd been told of the vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they thought they had proof\u2014no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for proof, just more fucking suspicion!\u2014that one of the people trusted to be around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But he listened anyway.\n\n\"Actually, it's pretty simple,\" O'Day concluded.\n\n\"No!\" Price said immediately. \"What if\u2014\"\n\n\"We can control that. There won't be any real danger,\" the inspector assured everyone.\n\n\"Hold it,\" SWORDSMAN said. \"You say you can smoke the guy out?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"And I actually get to _do_ something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Pat repeated.\n\n\"Where do I sign up?\" Ryan asked rhetorically. \"Let's do it.\"\n\n\"Mr. President\u2014\"\n\n\"Andrea, you'll be here, right?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Then it's approved,\" POTUS told her. \"He doesn't get _near_ my family. I mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself, Andrea, got that?\"\n\n\"I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only.\"\n\nWith that, they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.\n\n\"OKAY, LET'S LIGHT up the sky,\" Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, _Anzio_ and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY radars from standby to full radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right under a commercial air route designated W-15, and any airline pilot could look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he'd probably talk about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits.\n\nIn a second, the three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk of airspace outside O'Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit still one second and raise hell the next. They'd come to the right place to do that.\n\nTHE FIRST IRANIAN fighters to head into the sky that day were two aged F-14 Tomcats from Shiraz. The Shah had purchased about eighty of the fighters from Grumman in the 1970s. Ten could still fly, with parts cannibalized from all the others or procured on the world's lively black market in combat-aircraft components. These flew southeast, overland to Bandar Abbas, then they increased speed and darted south to Abu Musa, passing just north of it, with the pilots driving and the backseaters scanning the surface with binoculars. The sun was plainly visible at twenty thousand feet, but on the surface there was still the semidarkness of nautical twilight.\n\nOne doesn't see ships from aloft, a fact often lost on both sailors and airmen. In most cases, ships are too small, and the surface of the sea too vast. What one sees, whether from a satellite photo or the unaided human eye, is the wake, a disturbance in the water much like an arrow with an oversized head\u2014the bow and stern waves generated by the ship's passage through the water\u2014and the foaming a straight line caused by the propellers is the arrow's shaft. The eye is drawn to such shapes as naturally as to the body of a woman, and at the apex of the V-shape, there one finds the ship. Or, in this case, many ships. They spotted the decoy group first, from forty miles away. The main body of COMEDY was identified a minute later.\n\nTHE PROBLEM FOR the ships was positive identification. Kemper couldn't risk killing an airliner, as USS _Vincennes_ had once done. The four F-16s had already turned toward them when the radio call went out. He didn't have anyone aboard who spoke the language well enough to catch what they'd just said.\n\n\"Tally-ho,\" the F-16 flight leader called. \"Looks like F-14s.\" And he knew the Navy didn't have any of those around.\n\n\" _Anzio_ to STARFIGHTER, weapons free, splash 'em.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\"\n\n\"FLIGHT, LEAD, GO Slammer.\" They were too busy looking down instead of looking around. Recon flight, Starfighter Lead figured. Tough. He selected AIM-120 and fired, a fraction before the other three aircraft in his formation did the same. \"Fox-One, Fox-One!\" And the Battle of Qatar was under way.\n\nTHE UIR TOMCATS were just a little too busy for their own good. Their radar-warning receivers were reporting all manner of emitters at the moment, and the air-to-air radar on the Vipers was just one of many. The leader of the two was trying to get a count of the warships below and talking on his radio at the same time, when a pair of AM-RAAM missiles exploded twenty meters in front of his aging fighter. The second pilot at least looked up in time to see death coming.\n\n\" _ANZIO_ , STARFIGHTER, SPLASH two, no 'chutes, say again, splash two.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\"\n\n\"What a nice way to start the day,\" commented a USAF major who'd just spent sixteen months playing against the Israeli air force in the Negev. \"Returning to station. Out.\"\n\n\"I'M NOT SURE that's a good idea,\" van Damm said. The radar picture from _John Paul Jones_ had been uplinked from the new ship via satellite to Washington. They were seeing things less than half a second after they really happened.\n\n\"Those ships cannot be stopped, sir,\" Robby Jackson told the chief of staff. \"We can't take chances.\"\n\n\"But they can say we shot first and\u2014\"\n\n\"Wrong, sir. Their missile boat shot first five hours ago,\" the J-3 reminded him.\n\n\"But they won't say that.\"\n\n\"Save it, Arnie,\" Ryan said. \"My order, remember. The rules of engagement are in place. What now, Robby?\"\n\n\"Depends on whether the Iranians got the word out. That first kill was easy. The first one usually is,\" Jackson said, remembering the ones he'd made in his career, nothing at all like what he'd trained for at Top Gun, but there were no fair-play rules in real combat, were there?\n\nThe narrowest part of the passage was just over a hundred miles between Qatar and the Iranian town of Basatin. There was an air base there, and satellite coverage said there were fighters sitting on the ramp.\n\n\"III, JEFF.\"\n\n\"What's happening, Andrea?\" Raman asked, adding, \"Glad you remembered that you left me up here.\"\n\n\"It's pretty busy with all this fever stuff. We need you back here. Got a car?\"\n\n\"I think I can steal one from the local office.\" In fact, he had an official car already.\n\n\"Okay,\" she told him, \"come on down. I don't suppose we really need the advance work up there. Your ID will get you through the roadblocks on 1-70. Quick as you can. Things are happening here.\"\n\n\"Give me four hours.\"\n\n\"You have a change of clothes?\"\n\n\"Yeah, why?\"\n\n\"You're going to need it. We've set up decontamination procedures here. Everybody has to scrub down before getting into the West Wing. You'll see when you get here,\" the chief of the Detail told him.\n\n\"Fine with me.\"\n\nALAHAD WASN'T DOING anything. Bugs planted in his house had determined that he was watching TV, flipping channels from one cable station to another in search of a movie he hadn't seen before, and before going to bed he'd listened to _CNN Headline News_. After that, nothing. The lights were all out, and even the thermal-viewing cameras couldn't see through the curtained windows of his bedroom. The agents doing surveillance drank their coffee from plastic cups and looked on, at nothing, while discussing their worries about the epidemic, just like everyone else in America. The media continued to devote virtually all of its airtime to the story. There was little else. Sports had stopped. Weather continued, but few were outside to notice. Everything else rotated around the Ebola crisis. There were science segments explaining what the virus was and how it spread\u2014actually, how it _might_ be spreading, as there was still diverse opinion on that\u2014and the agents with the headphones had listened to the latest installment over Alahad's own TV. It was all nature's revenge, one environmental advocate was preaching. Man had gone into the jungle, cut down trees, killed animals, upset the ecosystem, and now the ecosystem was getting even. Or something like that.\n\nThere was legal analysis of the court case Edward Kealty had brought, but there simply was no enthusiasm for lifting the travel ban. Stories showed airplanes at airports, buses in terminals, trains at stations, and a lot of empty roads. Stories showed people in hotels, and how they were coping. Stories showed how to reuse surgical masks, and told people that this simple safety measure worked almost flawlessly; most people seemed to believe that. But to counter that, most of the stories showed hospitals and, now, body bags. Reports on how the bodies of the dead were being burned ran without showing the flames; that was by mutual consent. The raw data was distasteful enough without the image of its reality. Reporters and medical consultants were starting to comment on the lack of data on the number of cases\u2014which was alarming to many\u2014but hinting that the space in hospitals to deal with the Ebola cases had not expanded\u2014which was comforting to some. The extreme doom-and-gloom-sayers were still distributing their cant, but others said quietly that the data didn't support that view, that the situation might be stabilizing, though in every case they added that it was much too soon to tell.\n\nThey were starting to say that people were coping, that some states were totally clean, that many regions within those states that had cases were similarly healthy. And, finally, some people were coming forward to say with some authority that the epidemic had definitely not been a natural event. There was no public opinion on the issue that the media could really measure. People didn't interact enough, share thoughts enough to make informed judgments, but with the beginnings of confidence that the world was _not_ going to end came the big question: How had this begun?\n\nSECRETARY OF STATE Adler was back in his airplane, flying west to the People's Republic. While aloft, and in the Beijing embassy, he had access to the latest news. It had caused rage and, perversely, some degree of satisfaction. It was Zhang who was leading his government in this direction. That was fairly certain, now that they knew India had been involved\u2014again\u2014this time duped by Iran and China. The real question was whether or not the Prime Minister would let her partners know that she'd reneged on her part of the deal. Probably not, Adler thought. She'd outmaneuvered herself again. She seemed able to do that standing still.\n\nBut the rage kept coming back. His country had been attacked, and by someone he'd met only a few days before. Diplomacy had failed. He had failed to stop a conflict\u2014and wasn't that his job? Worse than that, he and his country had been duped. China had maneuvered _him_ and a vital naval force out of position. The PRC was now stringing out a crisis they'd made themselves, for the purpose of hurting American interests, and probably for the ultimate purpose of reshaping the world into their own design. They were being clever about it. China had not directly done anything to anyone, except a few air passengers, but had let others take the lead, and the risks that went with them. However this turned out, they would still have their trade, they would still have the respect due a superpower, and influence over American policy, and they planned to maintain all of those things until such time as they made the changes they desired. They'd killed Americans on the Airbus. Through their maneuvers they were helping to kill others, to do real and permanent harm to his country, and doing so entirely without risk, SecState thought quietly, gazing out the window as his aircraft made landfall.\n\nBut they didn't know that he knew these things, did they?\n\nTHE NEXT ATTACK would be a little more serious. The UIR had a large supply of C-802 missiles, so intelligence said. Made by China Precision Machine Import and Export Corporation, these were similar in type and capabilities to the French Exocet, with a range of about seventy miles. However, again the problem was targeting. There were just too many ships in the Gulf. To get the right destination for their missiles, the Iranians would have to get close enough for the look-down radars on their fighters to brush the edge of COMEDY'S missile envelope.\n\nWell, Kemper decided, he'd have to see about that. _John Paul Jones_ increased speed to thirty-two knots and moved north. The new destroyer was stealthy\u2014on a radar set she looked rather like a medium-sized fishing boat\u2014and to accentuate it she turned off all her radars. COMEDY had shown them one look. Now they would show them another. He also radioed Riyadh and screamed for AWACS support. The three cruisers, _Anzio, Normandy,_ and _Yorktown,_ maintained position close to the cargo ships, and it was now pretty clear to the civilian crews on the _Bob Hopes_ that the warships were not there merely for missile defense. Any inbound vampire would have to go through a cruiser to get to them. But there was nothing to be done about that. The civilian seamen were all at their duty stations. Firefighting gear was deployed throughout the cargo decks. Their diesels were pounding out all the continuous power that the manuals allowed.\n\nAloft, the dawn patrol of F-16s was replaced by another. Weapons were free, and word was getting out now to the civilian traffic that the air over the Persian Gulf was not a good place to be. It would make everyone's task a lot easier. It was no secret that they were there. Iranian radar had to have them, but there was no helping that at the moment.\n\n\"IT APPEARS THAT there are two naval forces in the Gulf,\" Intelligence told him. \"We are not sure of their composition, but it is possible that they are military transport ships.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And two of our fighters have been shot down approaching them,\" Air Force went on.\n\n\"The American ships\u2014some of them are warships of a very modern type. The report from our aircraft said that there are others as well, looking like merchant ships. It is likely that these are tank transports from Diego Garcia\u2014\"\n\n\"The ones the Indians were supposed to stop!\"\n\n\"That is probably correct.\"\n\n_What a fool I was to trust that woman!_ \"Sink them!\" he ordered, thinking that his wish could become a fact.\n\nRAMAN LIKED TO drive fast. The nearly clear interstate, the dark night, and the powerful Service car allowed him to indulge that pastime, as he tore down Interstate 70 toward Maryland. The number of trucks on the road surprised him. He hadn't known that there were so many vehicles dedicated to moving food and medical supplies. His rotating red light told them to keep out of his way, and also allowed his passage at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour without interference from the Pennsylvania State Police.\n\nIt also gave him time to think. It would have been better for everyone if he'd known beforehand about all the things that were happening. Certainly it would have been better for him. The attack on SANDBOX had not pleased him. She was a child, too young, too innocent to be an enemy\u2014he _knew_ her by face and name and sound\u2014and the shock of it had disturbed him, briefly. He didn't quite understand why it had been ordered ... unless to draw the protective circle even more tightly around POTUS, and so make his own mission easier. But that hadn't been necessary, not really. America was not Iraq, which Mahmoud Haji probably didn't fully understand.\n\nThe disease attack, that was something else. The manner of its spread was a matter of God's Will. It was distasteful, but that was life. He remembered the burning of the theater in Tehran. People had died there, too, ordinary people whose mistake had been to watch a movie instead of attending to their devotions. The world was hard, and the only thing that made its burden easier to bear was faith in something larger than oneself. Raman had that faith. The world didn't change its shape by accident. Great events had to be cruel ones, for the most part. The Faith had spread with the help of the sword, despite the Prophet's own admonition that the sword could not make one faithful . . . a dichotomy he did not fully understand, but that, too, was the nature of the world. One man could hardly comprehend it all. For so many things, one had to depend on the guidance of those wiser than oneself, to tell one what had to be done, what was acceptable to Allah, what served His purpose.\n\nThat he had not been told things that would have been useful\u2014well, he had to admit, that was a reasonable security measure ... if one accepted the fact that one was not supposed to survive. The realization did not bring a chill along with it. He had accepted that possibility a long time before, and if his distant brother could have fulfilled his mission in Baghdad, then he could fulfill his own in Washington. But he would try to survive if the chance offered itself. There wasn't anything wrong with that, was there?\n\nCLEARLY, THEY WERE still figuring this operation out, Kemper told himself. In 1990-91 there had been the luxury of time to decide things, to allocate assets, to set up communications links and all the rest. But not this time. When he'd called for the AWACS, some Air Force puke had replied, \"What, you don't have one? Why didn't you ask?\" The commanding officer of USS _Anzio_ and Task Force 61.1 hadn't vented his temper at the man. It probably wasn't his fault anyway, and the good news was that they had one now. The timing was good enough, too. Four fighter aircraft, type unknown, were just rotating off the ground at Basatin, ninety miles away.\n\n\"COMEDY, this is Sky-Two, we show four inbounds.\" The data link came up on one of the Aegis screens. His own radar couldn't see that far, because it was well under the horizon. The AWACS showed four blips in two pairs.\n\n\"Sky, COMEDY, they're yours. Splash 'em.\"\n\n\"Roger\u2014stand by, four more coming up.\"\n\n\"HERE'S WHERE IT gets interesting,\" Jackson told them in the Sit Room. \"Kemper has a missile trap set up outboard of the main formation. If anybody gets past the -16s, we'll see if it works.\"\n\nA THIRD GROUP of four lifted off a minute later. The twelve fighter aircraft climbed to ten thousand feet, then turned south at high speed.\n\nThe flight of F-16s couldn't risk straying too far from COMEDY, but moved to meet the threat in the center of the Gulf under direction from the AWACS. Both sides switched on their targeting radars, the UIR force controlled by ground-based sets, and the USAF teams guided by the E-3B circling a hundred miles behind them. It wasn't elegant. The -16s, with their longer-ranging missiles, shot first, and turned away as the southbound Iranian interceptors loosed their own and tried to evade. Then the first group of four dived down for the water. Jamming pods went on, aided by powerful shore-based interference, which the Americans hadn't expected. Three UIR fighters, still heading in, fell to the missile volley, while the Americans outran the return volley, then turned back to reengage. The American flight split into two-plane elements, racing east, then turned again to conduct an anvil attack. But the speeds involved were high, and one Iranian flight was now within fifty miles of COMEDY. That was when they appeared on _Anzio_ 's radar.\n\n\"Cap'n,\" the chief on the ESM board said into his microphone, \"I am getting acquisition radar signals, bearing three-five-five. These are detection values, sir. They may have us.\"\n\n\"Very well.\" Kemper reached to turn his key. On _York-town_ and _Normandy_ the same thing happened. The former was an older version of the cruiser. In her case, four white-painted SM-2 MR came out of the fore and aft magazines onto the launch rails. For _Anzio_ and _Normandy_ nothing changed visually. Their missiles were in vertical launch cells. The SPY radars were now pumping out six _million_ watts of RF energy, and dwelling almost continuously on the inbound fighter-bombers, which were just out of range of the cruisers.\n\nBut not out of range for _John Paul Jones,_ ten miles to the north of the main body. In the space of three seconds, her main radar went active, and then the first of eight missiles erupted from her launch cells, rocketing skyward on columns of smoke and flame, then changing direction in skidding turns to level out and burn north.\n\nThe fighters hadn't seen _Jones._ Her stealthy profile had not shown as a real target on their scopes, and neither had they noticed the fact that a fourth SPY radar was now tracking them. The series of white smoke trails came as an unpleasant surprise when the pilots looked up from their own radar scopes. But two of them triggered off their C-802s just in time.\n\nFour seconds out from their targets, the SM-2 missiles received terminal guidance signals from the SPG-62 illumination radars. It was too sudden, too unexpected for them to jink clear. All four fighters were blotted out on massive clouds of yellow and black, but they'd managed to launch six antiship missiles.\n\n\"Vampire, vampire! I show inbound missile seekers, bearing three-five-zero.\"\n\n\"Okay, here we go.\" Kemper turned the key another notch, to the \"special-auto\" setting. Aegis would now go fully automatic. Topside, the CIWS gatling guns turned to starboard. Everywhere aboard the four warships, sailors listened and tried not to cringe. The merchant crews they guarded simply didn't know to be scared yet.\n\nAloft, the F-16s closed on the still-intact flight of four. These were also antiship-missile carriers, but they'd looked in the wrong place, probably for the decoy group. The first group had seen a close gaggle of ships. The second hadn't yet, and never would. They'd just turned into the signals of the Aegis radars to their west when the sky filled with down-bound smoke trails. The four scattered. Two exploded in midair. Another was damaged and tried to limp back northwest before he lost power and went in, while a fourth, missed entirely, reefed into a left turn, punched burner, and jettisoned his exterior weapons load. The four Air Force F-16s had splashed six enemy fighters in under four minutes.\n\n_Jones_ got one of the sea-skimmers on the way by, but none of them had locked into her radar return, and the resulting high-speed crossing targets were too difficult to engage. Three of four computer-launched attempts all failed. That left five. The destroyer's combat systems recycled and looked for additional targets.\n\nThey'd seen _Jones_ 's smoke and wondered what it was, but the first real warning that something was badly wrong came when the near trio of cruisers started launching.\n\nIn _Anzio_ 's CIC, Kemper decided, as _O'Bannon_ had, not to launch his decoy rockets. Three of the inbounds seemed aimed at the after part of the formation, with only two at the lead. His cruiser and _Normandy_ concentrated on those. You could feel the launches. The hull shivered when the first two went out. The radar display was changing every second now, showing inbound and outbound tracks. The \"vampires\" were eight miles away now. At ten miles per minute, that meant less than fifty seconds to engage and destroy. It would seem like a week.\n\nThe system was programmed to adopt a fire-control mode appropriate to the moment. It was now doing shootshoot-look. Fire one missile, fire another, and then look to see if the target had survived the first two, and merit a third try. His target was exploded by the first SM-2 and the second SAM self-destructed. _Normandy_ 's first missile missed, but the second nicked the C-802, tumbling it into the sea with an explosion they felt through the hull a second later.\n\n_Yorktown_ had an advantage and a disadvantage. Her older system allowed launches directly at the inbound missiles instead of forcing the missiles to turn in flight before they could engage. But she could not launch as fast. She had three targets and fifty seconds to destroy them. The first -802 splashed five miles out, killed by a double hit. The second was now at its terminal height of three meters, ten feet over the flat surface. The next outgoing SM-2 missed high, exploding harmless behind it. The following missile missed as well. The next ripple from the forward launchers obliterated that one three miles out, filling the air with fragments that confused the guidance of the next pair, causing both to explode in the shredded remains of a dead target. Both of the cruiser's launchers swiveled fore and aft and vertical to receive the next set of four SAMs. The last -802 passed through the spray and fragments, heading straight into the cruiser. _Yorktown_ got off two more launches, but one faulty missile failed to guide at all, and the other missed. Then the CIWS systems located on the forward and after superstructure turned slightly, as the vampire entered their targeting envelope. Both opened up at eight hundred yards, missing, missing yet again, but then exploding the missile less than two hundred yards off the starboard beam. The five-hundred-pound warhead showered the cruiser with fragments, and parts of the missile body kept coming, striking the ship's foreright SPY radar panel and ripping into the superstructure, killing six sailors and wounding twenty more.\n\n\"WOW,\" SECRETARY BRETANO said. All the theoretical stuff he'd learned in the past weeks was suddenly real.\n\n\"Not bad. They've launched fourteen aircraft at us, and they're getting two or three back, that's all,\" Robby said. \"That'll give them something to think about for the next time.\"\n\n\"What about _Yorktown_?\" the President asked.\n\n\"We have to wait and see.\"\n\nTHEIR HOTEL WAS only half a mile from the Russian embassy, and like good parsimonious journalists, they decided to walk, and left a few minutes before eight. Clark and Chavez had gone a scarce hundred yards when they saw that something was wrong. People were moving listlessly for so early on the start of a working day. Had the war with the Saudis been announced? John took a turn onto another market street, and there he found people listening to portable radios in their stalls instead of moving their wares onto the shelves.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" John said in Russian-accented Farsi. \"Is something the matter?\"\n\n\"We are at war with America,\" a fruit vendor said.\n\n\"Oh, when did this happen?\"\n\n\"The radio says they have attacked our airplanes,\" the fruit seller said next. \"Who are you?\" he asked.\n\nJohn pulled out his passport. \"We are Russian journalists. Can I ask what you think of this?\"\n\n\"Haven't we fought enough?\" the man asked.\n\n\"TOLD YOU. THEY'RE blaming us,\" Arnie said, reading over the intercept report off Tehran radio. \"What will that do to the politics in the region?\"\n\n\"The sides are pretty much drawn up,\" Ed Foley said. \"You're either on one side or the other. The UIR is the other. Simpler than the last time.\"\n\nThe President checked his watch. It was just past midnight. \"When do I go on the air?\"\n\n\"Noon.\"\n\nRAMAN HAD TO stop at the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. A good twenty or so trucks were waiting for clearance from the Maryland State Police, with the National Guard in close attendance, and they lined up two by two, completely blocking the road at this point. Ten angry minutes later, he showed his ID. The cop waved him through without a word. Raman turned his light back on and sped off. He turned on the radio, caught an all-news AM station, but missed the top-of-the-hour news summary and had to suffer through all the rest, largely the same thing he'd been hearing all week, until twelve-thirty, when the network news service announced a reported air battle in the Persian Gulf. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had commented on the alleged incident. Iran claimed to have sunk two American ships and shot down four fighters.\n\nPatriot and zealot that he was, Raman couldn't believe it. The problem with America, and the reason for his mission of sacrifice, was that this poorly organized, idolatrous, and misguided nation was lethally competent in the use of force. Even President Ryan, he had seen, discounted as he was by politicians, had a quiet strength to him. He didn't shout, didn't bluster, didn't act like most \"great\" men. He wondered how many people appreciated just how dangerous SWORDSMAN was, for that very reason. Well, that was why he had to kill him, and if that had to come at the cost of his own life, so be it.\n\nTF61.1 TURNED SOUTH behind the Qatar Peninsula without further incident. _Yorktown_ 's forward superstructure was badly damaged, the electrical fire having done as much damage as the missile fragments, but with her stern turned to the enemy, that didn't matter. Kemper maneuvered his escorting ships yet again, placing all four behind the tank carriers, but another attack was not forthcoming. The result of the first had stung the enemy too badly. Eight F-15s, four each of the Saudi Air Force and the 366th, orbited overhead. A mixture of Saudi and other escort ships turned up. Mainly mine-hunters, they pinged the bottom in front of COMEDY, looking for danger and finding none. Six huge container ships had been moved off the Dhahran quay to make room for _Bob Hope_ and her sisters, and now three tugs each appeared to move them alongside. The four Aegis ships maintained station even sitting still, dropping their anchors fore and aft, mooring five hundred yards off their charges to maintain air defense coverage through the unloading process. The decoy force, having suffered not a single scratch, pulled into Bahrain to await developments.\n\nFrom the wheelhouse of USS _Anzio_ , Captain Gregory Kemper watched as the first brown buses pulled up to the tank-carriers. Through his binoculars, he could see men in \"chocolate-chip\" fatigues trot to the edge, and watched the stern ramps come down to meet them.\n\n\"WE HAVE NO comment at this time,\" van Damm told the latest reporter to call in. \"The President will be making a statement later today. That's all I can say right now.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"That's all we have to say right now.\" The chief of staff killed the line.\n\nPRICE HAD ASSEMBLED all of the Detail agents in the West Wing, and gone through the game plan for what was coming. The same would be repeated for the people in the White House proper, and the reaction there would be pretty much the same, she was certain: shock, disbelief, and anger bordering on rage.\n\n\"Let's all get that out of our systems, shall we? We know what we're going to be doing about it. This is a criminal case, and we'll treat it like a criminal case. Nobody loses control. Nobody gives anything away. Questions?\" There were none.\n\nDARYAEI CHECKED HIS clock again. Yes, finally, it was time. He placed a telephone call over a secure line to the UIR embassy in Paris. There, the ambassador placed a call to someone else. That person made a call to London. In all cases, the words exchanged were innocuous. The message was not.\n\nPAST CUMBERLAND, HAGERSTOWN, Frederick, Raman turned south on 1-270 for the last hour's worth into Washington. He was tired, but his hands tingled. He'd see a dawn this morning. Perhaps his last. If so, he hoped it would be a pretty one.\n\nTHE NOISE MADE the agents jump. Both checked their watches. First of all, the number calling in came up on an LED display. It was overseas, code 44, which made it from the U.K.\n\n\"Yes?\" It was the voice of the subject, Mohammed Alahad.\n\n\"Sorry to disturb you so early. I call about the threemeter Isfahan, the red one. Has it arrived yet? My customer is very anxious.\" The voice was accented, but not in quite the right way.\n\n\"Not yet,\" the groggy voice replied. \"I have asked my supplier about it.\"\n\n\"Very well, but as I said, my customer is quite anxious.\"\n\n\"I will see what I can do. Good-bye.\" And the line went dead.\n\nDon Selig lifted his cellular phone, dialed headquarters, and gave them the U.K. number for a quick check.\n\n\"Lights just came on,\" Agent Scott said. \"Looks like it woke our boy up. Heads up,\" she said into her portable radio. \"Subject is up and moving.\"\n\n\"Got the lights, Sylvia,\" another agent assured her.\n\nFive minutes later, he emerged from the front door of the garden-style apartment building. Tracking him was not the least bit easy, but the agents had taken the trouble to locate the four closest public phones and had people close to all of them. It turned out that he picked one at a combination gas station\/convenience store. The computer monitor would tell them what number he called, but through a long-lens camera he was observed to drop in a quarter. The agent on the camera saw him hit 3-6-3 in rapid succession. It was clear a few seconds later, when another tapped phone rang, and was answered by a digital answering machine.\n\n\"Mr. Sloan, this is Mr. Alahad. Your rug is in. I don't understand why you do not call me, sir.\" Click.\n\n\"Bingo!\" another agent called over the radio net. \"That's it. He called Raman's number. Mr. Sloan, we have your rug.\"\n\nYet another voice came on. \"This is O'Day. Take him down right now!\"\n\nIt wasn't really all _that_ hard. Alahad went into the store to buy a quart of milk, and from there he walked directly back home. He had to use a key to enter his apartment house, and was surprised to find a man and a woman inside.\n\n\"FBI,\" the man said.\n\n\"You're under arrest, Mr. Alahad,\" the woman said, producing handcuffs. No guns were in evidence, but he didn't resist\u2014they rarely did\u2014and if he had, there were two more agents just outside now.\n\n\"But why?\" he asked.\n\n\"Conspiracy to murder the President of the United States,\" Sylvia Scott said, pushing him against the wall.\n\n\"That's not so!\"\n\n\"Mr. Alahad, you made a mistake. Joseph Sloan died last year. How do you sell a rug to a dead man?\" she asked. The man jerked back as though from an electric shock, the agents saw. The clever ones always did when they found out that they had not been so clever at all. They never expected to be caught. The next trick was in exploiting the moment. That would start in a few minutes, when they told him what the penalty was for violating 18 USC \u00a7 1751.\n\nTHE INSIDE OF USNS _Bob Hope_ looked like the parking garage from hell, with vehicles jammed in so closely that a rat would have had a difficult time passing between them. To board a tank, an arriving crew had to walk on the decks of the vehicles, crouching lest they smash their skulls into the overhead, and they found themselves wondering about the sanity of those who'd periodically had to check the vehicles, turning over the engines and working the guns back and forth so that rubber and plastic seals wouldn't dry out.\n\nAssigning crews to tracks and trucks had been an administrative task of no small proportions, but the ship was loaded in such a way as to allow the most important items off first. The Guardsmen arrived as units, with computerized printouts giving them the number and location of their assigned vehicles, and ship crewmen pointing them to the quickest way out. Less than an hour after the ship tied up, the first M1A2 main-battle tank rolled off the ramp onto the quay to board the same tank transporter used shortly before by a tank of the 11th Cav, and with the same drivers. Unloading would take more than a day, and most of another would be needed to get WOLFPACK Brigade organized.\n\nTHE DAWN PROVED to be a pretty one, Aref Raman saw with satisfaction as he pulled into West Executive Drive. It would be a clear day for his mission. The uniformed guard at the gate waved hello as the security barrier went down. Another car came in behind him, and that one went through as well. It parked two spaces from his spot, and Raman recognized the driver as that FBI guy, O'Day, who'd been so lucky at the day-care center. There was no sense in hating the man. He'd been defending his own child, after all.\n\n\"How are you doing?\" the FBI inspector asked cordially.\n\n\"Just got in from Pittsburgh,\" Raman replied, hefting his suitcase out of the trunk.\n\n\"What the hell were you doing up there?\"\n\n\"Advance work\u2014but that speech won't be happening, I guess. What are you in for?\" Raman was grateful for the distraction. It allowed him to get his mind into the game, as it were.\n\n\"The Director and I have something to brief the Boss about. Gotta shower first, though.\"\n\n\"Shower?\"\n\n\"Disinfec\u2014oh, you haven't been here. A White House staff member is sick with this virus thing. _Everybody_ has to shower and disinfect on the way in now. Come on,\" O'Day said, carrying a briefcase. Both men went through the West Entrance. Both buzzed the metal detectors, but since both were sworn federal officers, nothing was made of the fact that both were carrying side arms. The inspector pointed to the left.\n\n\"This is a treat, showing you something in the place,\" he joked to Raman.\n\n\"Been in a lot lately?\" The Secret Service agent saw that two offices had been converted into something. One marked MEN and the other WOMEN. Andrea Price came out of one just then, her hair wet, and, he noted as she passed him, smelling of chemicals.\n\n\"Hey, Jeff, how was the drive? Pat, how's the hero?\" she inquired.\n\n\"Hey, no big deal, Price. Just two rag-heads,\" O'Day said with a grin. He opened the MEN door and went in, and set his briefcase down.\n\nIt had clearly been a rush job, Raman saw. Some minor functionary had had the office, but all the furniture was gone and the floor covered with plastic. A hanging rack was there for clothing. O'Day stripped down and headed into the canvas-enclosed shower.\n\n\"These damn chemicals at least wake you up,\" the FBI inspector reported as the water started. He emerged two minutes later and started toweling off vigorously. \"Your turn, Raman.\"\n\n\"Great,\" the Service agent griped, removing his clothing and showing some of the lingering body modesty of his parent society. O'Day didn't look at him and didn't look away. Didn't do anything except dry off, until Raman was behind the canvas. The agent's service pistol, a SigSauer, had been set atop the clothing rack. O'Day opened his briefcase first. Then he pulled Raman's automatic, ejected the magazine, and quietly worked the action to remove the chambered round.\n\n\"How are the roads?\" O'Day called.\n\n\"Clear, made great time damn, this water stinks!\"\n\n\"Ain't that the truth!\" Raman kept two spare magazines for his pistol. O'Day saw. He put all three in the lid-pocket before unwrapping the four he'd prepared. One he slid into the butt of the Sig. He worked the action one more time to load a round, then replaced it with a new, full magazine, and two more for the agent's belt holder. Finished, he hefted the gun. Weight and balance were exactly the same as before. Everything went back in place as O'Day returned to dressing. He needn't have rushed. Raman evidently needed a shower. Maybe he was purifying himself, the inspector thought coldly.\n\n\"Here.\" O'Day tossed over a towel as he put his shirt on.\n\n\"Glad I brought a change.\" Raman pulled new underwear and socks from his two-suiter.\n\n\"I guess it's a rule you have to be all spiffy when you work in with the President, eh?\" The FBI agent bent down to tie his shoes. He looked up. \"Morning, Director.\"\n\n\"I don't know why I bothered at home,\" Murray grumped. \"Got the paperwork, Pat?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. This is something to show him.\"\n\n\"Damned right it is.\" And Murray doffed his jacket and tie. \"White House locker room,\" he noted. \"Morning, Raman.\"\n\nBoth agents completed dressing, made sure their personal weapons were tucked in the right place, then stepped outside.\n\n\"Murray and I are going right in,\" Pat told the other in the corridor. They didn't have to wait long for Murray, and then Price showed up again, just as the FBI Director reemerged. O'Day rubbed his nose to tell her all was done. She nodded back.\n\n\"Jeff, want to take these gentlemen into the office? I have to head to the command post. The Boss is waiting.\"\n\n\"Sure, Andrea. This way,\" Raman said, leading O'Day. Behind them, Price waited and did not head toward the command post.\n\nIn the next level up, Raman saw TV equipment being prepared for installation in the Oval Office. Arnie van Damm buzzed out the corridor entrance, trailed by Callie Weston. President Ryan was at his desk in the usual shirtsleeves, going through a folder. CIA Director Ed Foley was in there, too.\n\n\"Enjoy the shower, Dan?\" the DCI asked.\n\n\"Oh, yeah, I'm losing the rest of my hair, Ed.\"\n\n\"Hi, Jeff,\" the President said, looking up.\n\n\"Good morning, Mr. President,\" Raman said, taking his usual place against the wall.\n\n\"Okay, Dan, what do you guys have for me?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"We've broken an Iranian espionage ring. We think it's associated with the attempt on your daughter.\" While Murray talked, O'Day opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder.\n\n\"The Brits turned the connection,\" Foley started to say. \"And the contact here is a guy named Alahad\u2014would you believe the bastard has a business about a mile from here?\"\n\n\"We have him under surveillance right now,\" Murray put in. \"We're running his phone records.\"\n\nThey were all looking down at the papers on the President's desk and didn't see Raman's face freeze in place. His mind started racing, as though a drug had been injected into his bloodstream. If they were doing that right now . . . There might still be a chance, a slim one, but if not, here was the President, the directors of FBI and CIA, and he could deliver them all to Allah, and if that weren't sacrifice enough . . . Raman unbuttoned his jacket with his left hand. He eased off the spot on the wall he was leaning against and closed his eyes for a quick prayer. Then, in a rapid, smooth movement, his right hand went to his automatic.\n\nRaman was surprised to see the President's eyes move and stare right at him. Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? Ryan should know that his death was coming, and the only shame was he'd never quite understand why.\n\nRyan flinched as the pistol came out. The reaction was automatic, despite the briefing on what to expect, and the sign from O'Day that it was okay. He dodged anyway, wondering if he could really trust anyone, and saw that Jeff Raman's hands tracked him and pulled back on the trigger like an automaton, no emotion in his eyes at all\u2014\n\nThe sound made everyone jump, albeit for different reasons.\n\n_Pop._\n\nThat was all. Raman's mouth dropped open in disbelief. The weapon was loaded. He could feel the added weight of the live rounds in it, and\u2014\n\n\"Put it down,\" O'Day said calmly, his Smith out and aimed now. An instant later, Murray had his service weapon out.\n\n\"We have Alahad in custody already,\" the Director explained.\n\nRaman had another weapon, a telescoping billy club called an Asp, but the President was fifteen feet away and . . .\n\n\"I can put one right through your kneecap if you want,\" O'Day said coldly.\n\n\"You fuckin' traitor!\" Andrea said, entering the room with her pistol out, too. \"You fuckin' assassin! _On the floor now!\"_\n\n\"Easy, Price. He's not going anywhere,\" Pat told her.\n\nBut it was Ryan who nearly lost control: \"My little girl, my _baby_ , you helped plan to murder _her?_ \" He started around the desk, but Foley stopped him. \"No, not this time, Ed!\"\n\n\"Stop!\" the DCI told him. \"We have him, Jack. We've got him.\"\n\n\"One way or another, you get on the floor,\" Pat said, ignoring the others and aiming at Raman's knee. \"Drop the weapon and get down.\"\n\nHe was trembling now, fear, rage, all manner of emotions assaulted him, everything but the one he'd expected. He racked the Sig's action and pulled the trigger again. It wasn't even aimed, it was just an act of denial.\n\n\"I couldn't use blanks. They don't weigh the same,\" O'Day explained. \"They're real rounds. I just tapped the bullets out and dumped the powder. The primer makes a cute little pop, doesn't it?\"\n\nIt was as though he'd forgotten to breathe for a minute or so. Raman's body collapsed in on itself. He dropped the pistol to the rug with the Seal of the President on it and fell to his knees. Price came over and pushed him the rest of the way. Murray, for the first time in years, snapped the cuffs on.\n\n\"You want to hear about your rights?\" the FBI Director asked.\n**59**\n\n**RULES OF ENGAGEMENT**\n\n**D** IGGS HAD NOT REceived proper mission orders yet and what was even more disturbing, his Operation BUFORD did not really have much of a plan yet, either. The Army trained its commanders to act swiftly and decisively, but as with doctors in hospitals, emergency situations were not as welcome as planned procedures. The general was in continuous contact with the commanders of his two Cavalry regiments, the senior Air Force commander, the one-star who'd brought the 366th over, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and various intelligence assets, just trying to get a feel for what the enemy was actually doing, and from that to determine what the enemy might be planning\u2014from which he would try to formulate some sort of plan of his own aside from mere ad-hoc reaction.\n\nThe orders and rules of engagement arrived on his fax machine around 11:00 Washington time, 16:00 Zulu time, and 19:00 Lima, or local time. Here was the explanation he'd lacked. He relayed it at once to his principal subordinates, and assembled his staff to brief them. The troops, he told the assembled officers, would learn from their Commander-in-Chief. Their officers would have to be with their people when _that_ word came down.\n\nThings were busy enough. According to the satellites, the Army of God\u2014as the intelligence people had determined the name to be\u2014was within one hundred miles of the Kuwaiti border, approaching from the west in good order, and following the roads as expected. That made the Saudi deployment look pretty good, since three of their five brigades were covering the approaches to the oil fields.\n\nThey still weren't ready. The 366th Wing was in the Kingdom, but it wasn't enough to have the airplanes on the right airfields. A thousand minor details had to be sorted out, and that job wasn't even half done yet. The F-16s from Israel were pretty well spun up, all forty-eight of their single-engine fighters running, and even some kills recorded in the initial skirmishes, but the rest needed another day. Similarly, the 10th Cav was fully ready, but the 11 th was not; it was still assembling and moving to its initial deployment area. His third brigade had just started drawing equipment. An army wasn't a collection of weapons. It was a team composed of people with an idea of what they were supposed to be doing. But picking the time and place for war was usually the job of an aggressor, which was a role his country hadn't practiced very much.\n\nHe looked at the three-page fax again. It seemed quite literally explosive in his hands. His planning staff read their copies and were eerily quiet until the 11 th's S-3, the regimental operations officer, said it for all of them:\n\n\"We're gonna get some.\"\n\nTHREE RUSSIANS HAD recently arrived. Clark and Chavez had to remind themselves that this wasn't some sort of alcohol-induced dream. The two CIA officers were being supported by Russians under mission orders from Langley by way of Moscow. Actually, they had two missions. The Russians had drawn the hard one, and had brought the necessary equipment in the diplomatic pouch for the two Americans to have a try at the easier one. A dispatch had also come from Washington, via Moscow, that all of them read.\n\n\"Too fast, John,\" Ding breathed. Then his mission face came on. \"But what the hell.\"\n\nTHE PRESS ROOM was still underpopulated. So many of the regulars were elsewhere, some caught out of town and blocked by the travel ban, others just missing, and nobody quite sure why.\n\n\"The President will be making a major speech in one hour,\" van Damm told them. \"Unfortunately, there will be no time to give you advance copies of the speech. Please inform your networks that this is a matter of the highest importance.\"\n\n\"Arnie!\" a reporter called, but the chief of staff had already turned his back.\n\nTHE REPORTERS IN Saudi knew more than both their friends back in Washington, and they were moving out to join their assigned units. For Tom Donner, it was B-Troop, 1st of the 11th. He was fully outfitted in a desert battle-dress uniform, or BDU, and found the twenty-nine-year-old troop commander standing by his tank.\n\n\"Howdy,\" the captain said, halfway looking up from his map.\n\n\"Where do you want me?\" Donner asked.\n\nThe captain laughed. \"Never ask a soldier where he wants a reporter, sir.\"\n\n\"With you, then?\"\n\n\"I ride this,\" the officer responded, nodding at the tank. \"I'll put you in one of the Brads.\"\n\n\"I need a camera crew.\"\n\n\"They're already here,\" the captain told him, pointing. \"Over that way. Anything else?\"\n\n\"Yeah, would you like to know what this is all about?\" Donner asked. The journalists had been virtual prisoners in a Riyadh hotel, not even allowed to call home to tell their families where they were\u2014all they'd known was that the reporters had been called up, and their parent corporations had signed agreements not to reveal the purpose of their absences for such deployments. In Donner's case, the network said that he was \"on assignment,\" a difficult thing to explain with the travel ban. But they had been told the overall situation\u2014there'd been no avoiding it\u2014which put them one up on a lot of soldiers.\n\n\"We hear that in an hour or so, or that's what the colonel told us.\" But the young officer was interested now.\n\n\"This is something you need to know now. Honest.\"\n\n\"Mr. Donner, I know what you pulled on the President and\u2014\"\n\n\"If you want to shoot me, do it later. Listen to me, Captain. This is important.\"\n\n\"Say your say, sir.\"\n\nTHERE SEEMED SOMETHING perverse in being made up at a time like this. It was, as always, Mary Abbot doing the job, wearing her mask, and this time gloves as well, while both TelePrompTers ran their copy. Ryan hadn't had the time or really the inclination to rehearse. Important as the speech was, he only wished to do it once.\n\n\"THEY CAN'T DO cross-country,\" the Saudi general insisted. \"They haven't trained for it, and they're still road-bound.\"\n\n\"There is information to suggest otherwise, sir,\" Diggs said.\n\n\"We are ready for them.\"\n\n\"You're never ready enough, General. Nobody is.\"\n\nIT WAS TENSE but otherwise normal at PALM BOWL. Downloaded satellite photos told them that the UIR forces were still moving, and if they continued, then they would be met by two Kuwaiti brigades fighting on their own turf, and an American regiment in reserve, and the Saudis ready to provide rapid support. They didn't know how the battle would turn out\u2014the overall numbers weren't favorable\u2014but it wouldn't be like the last time, Major Sabah told himself. It seemed so foolish to him that the allied forces could not strike first. They _knew_ what was coming.\n\n\"Getting some radio chatter,\" a technician reported. Outside, the sun was just starting to set. The satellite photos the intelligence officers looked at were four hours old. More would not be available for another two.\n\nSTORM TRACK WAS close to the Saudi-UIR border, too far for a mortar round, but not safe from real tube artillery. A company of fourteen Saudi tanks was now arrayed between the listening post and the berm. There also, for the first time in days, they were starting to copy radio transmissions. The signals were scrambled, more like the command sets than the regular tactical radios, which were far too numerous for easy encryption systems. Unable to read them immediately\u2014that was the job of the computers back at KKMC\u2014they did start trying to locate their points of origin. In twenty minutes, they had thirty pointsources. Twenty represented brigade headquarters. Six for the division command posts. Three for the corps commanders, and one for the army command. They seemed to be testing their commo net, the ELINT people decided. They'd have to wait for the computers to unscramble what was being said. The direction-finders had them arrayed on the road to Al Busayyah, still doing their approach march to Kuwait. The radio traffic wasn't all that remarkable. Maybe, most thought, the Army of God needed more practice in march discipline ... though they hadn't done all that badly in their exercise....\n\nWith sunset the Predators were launched again, motoring north. They headed to the radio sources first of all. Their cameras turned on ten miles inside the UIR, and the first thing one of them saw was a battery of 203mm towed guns, off their trucks, their limbers spread out, and the tubes pointed south.\n\n\"Colonel!\" a sergeant called urgently.\n\nOutside, the Saudi tankers had selected hillocks to hide behind and were putting a few crewmen out to act as spotters. The first few had just started to settle into their observation points when the northern horizon flashed orange.\n\nDIGGS WAS STILL discussing deployment patterns when the first message came in:\n\n\"Sir, STORM TRACK reports they're taking artillery fire.\"\n\n\"GOOD MORNING, MY fellow Americans,\" Ryan said to the cameras. His image was being carried worldwide. His voice would be heard even by those without TV sets at hand. In Saudi Arabia, his words went out on AM, FM, and shortwave bands so that every soldier, sailor, and airman would hear what he was about to say. \"We have been through much in the past two weeks.\n\n\"The first order of business is to tell you of progress we have made with the epidemic which has been inflicted upon our country.\n\n\"It was not easy for me to order the imposition of a ban on interstate travel. There are few freedoms more precious than the right to come and go as one pleases, but based on the best medical advice, I felt it necessary to take that action. I can report to you now that it has had the desired effect. New disease cases have been trending down for four days now. Partly that's because of what your government did, but it's more because you have taken the proper measures to protect yourselves. We will give more detailed information later in the day, but for the moment I can tell you that the Ebola epidemic is going to end, probably in the next week. Many of the new cases are people who will definitely survive. America's medical professionals have performed superhuman work to help the afflicted, and to help us understand what has happened, and how best to combat it. This task is not yet complete, but our country will weather this storm, as we have weathered many others.\n\n\"A moment ago, I said that the epidemic has been inflicted upon us.\n\n\"The arrival of this disease into our country was not an accident. We have been struck with a new and barbaric form of attack. It's called biological warfare. That is something outlawed by international treaty. Biological warfare is designed to terrify and to cripple a nation, rather than to kill it. We've all felt the disgust and horror at what's been happening in our country, the way in which the disease attacks people at random. My own wife, Cathy, has worked around the clock with Ebola victims at her hospital in Baltimore. As you know, I was only there a few days ago to see for myself. I saw the victims, talked with the doctors and nurses, and outside the hospital I sat with a man whose wife was ill.\n\n\"I could not tell him then, but I can tell you now, that from the beginning we suspected that this epidemic was a man-made act, and over the last few days, our lawenforcement and intelligence agencies have formulated the proof we needed before I could tell you what you are about to hear.\" On TV screens across the world appeared the faces of a young African boy, and a white-clad Belgian nun.\n\n\"This disease started some months ago in the country of Zaire,\" the President went on. He had to walk everyone through it, slowly and carefully, and Ryan found it hard to keep his voice even.\n\nTHE SAUDI TANKERS remounted their vehicles at once, fired up the turbine engines, and moved to new locations lest their original points had been spotted. But the fire, they saw, was aimed at STORM TRACK. That made sense, their commander thought. The listening post was a prime intelligence-gathering point. Their job was to protect it, which they could do against tanks and troops, but not against artillery fire. The Saudi captain was a handsome, almost rakish young man of twenty-five. He was also devoutly religious, and therefore mindful of the fact that the Americans were guests of his country, and thus worthy of his protection. He got on his radio to call back to his battalion headquarters, and requested armored personnel carriers\u2014helicopters would have been suicidal\u2014to evacuate the intelligence specialists.\n\n\"AND SO, WE HAVE the disease traveling from Africa to Iran. How do we know this?\" the President asked. \"We know it because the disease traveled back to Africa on this aircraft. Please note the registration code, HX-NJA. This is the same aircraft supposedly lost with Sister Jean Baptistc aboard....\"\n\n_WE NEED ANOTHER day, damn it!_ Diggs thought. And the enemy forces were nearly two hundred miles west of where everyone planned to meet them.\n\n\"Who's closest?\" he asked.\n\n\"Fourth Brigade's area,\" the senior Saudi replied. But that brigade was spread over a front of over a hundred miles. There were some helicopter-reconnaissance assets there, but the attack choppers were also in the wrong place, fifty miles south of Wadi al Batin. The other side wasn't cooperating very well, was it?\n\nDARYAEI WAS SHOCKED to see his photograph on TV. Worse, at least ten percent of the people in his country were seeing this. The American CNN was not available in the UIR, but the British Sky News service was, and nobody had thought to\u2014\n\n\"This is the man behind the biological attack upon our country,\" Ryan said, with the sort of calm that seemed robotic. \"He is the reason several thousand of our citizens have died. Now, I will tell you why he did this, why there was an attack on my daughter, Katie, and why there was an attempt on my own life, right in the Oval Office a few hours ago. I imagine Mr. Daryaei is watching this broadcast, too, right now. Mahmoud Haji,\" he said, right into the camera's eye, \"your man Aref Raman is now in federal custody. Do you really think America is as foolish as that?\"\n\nLIKE EVERYONE ELSE in the Blackhorse, Tom Donner was listening\u2014in his case with a pair of headphones off the Bradley's radio. There weren't quite enough to go around, and the crewmen had to share. He watched their faces. They, too, were as blank and expressionless as Ryan's voice had been, until his last sentence of contempt.\n\n\"Fuck,\" one spec-4 said. He was an 11-Delta, a Cavalry scout, and backup gunner for this track.\n\n\"My God,\" Donner managed to say.\n\nRyan went on: \"UIR forces are now poised to invade our ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Over the past two days, we have moved forces there to stand with our friends.\n\n\"There is something very important I must say now. The attack on my daughter, the attempt on my own life, and the barbaric attack on our country was undertaken by people who call themselves Muslims. We must all understand that religion has nothing at all to do with these inhuman acts. Islam is a _religion._ America is a country in which religious liberty is the _first_ freedom expressed in our Bill of Rights, even before speech and all the others. Islam is not the enemy of our country or any other. Just as my family was once attacked by people calling themselves Catholics, so these people have twisted and defiled their own religious faith in the name of worldly power, and then hidden behind it like the cowards they are. What God thinks of that, I cannot say. I know that Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, teaches us about a God of love and mercy\u2014and justice.\n\n\"Well, there will be justice. If the UIR forces arrayed on the Saudi border move to invade, we will meet them. Our armed forces are in the field even as I speak to you, and now I will speak directly to them:\n\n\"Now you know why you have been taken away from your homes and families. Now you know why you must take up arms in the defense of your country. Now you know the nature of your enemy, and the nature of his acts.\n\n\"But America does not have a tradition of deliberate attack on the innocent. You will act in accordance with our laws at all times. I must now send you into battle. I wish this were not necessary. I have myself served as a Marine, and I know what it is like to be in a foreign place. But you stand there for your country, and here at home your country stands up for you. You will be in our prayers.\n\n\"To our allies in Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and all the Gulf states: America stands again with you to stop aggression and restore the peace. Good luck.\" Ryan's voice changed then, for the first time allowing his emotions to show. \"And good hunting.\"\n\nThe crewmen in B-Troop's command track looked at one another for several seconds before anyone spoke. They even managed to forget the presence of the reporter. The youngest of them, a PFC, looked down at shaking hands and had his say.\n\n\"Fuckers gonna pay. Motherfuckers gonna pay for this, guys.\"\n\nFOUR ARMORED PERSONNEL carriers were racing across the desert at about forty miles per hour. They avoided the beaten-dirt road to STORM TRACK for fear that it would be targeted with artillery fire; that proved to be a sensible precaution. Their first view of their objective was a cloud of smoke and dust drifting away from the antenna farm as fire continued to pour into the site. One of the three buildings appeared to be standing, but on fire, and the Saudi lieutenant leading the scout platoon wondered if anyone could possibly be alive there. To the north he saw a different sort of flash\u2014five miles away, the horizontal tongue of flame from a tank's main gun illuminated the bumps and knolls of a landscape that was not at all as level as it appeared in daylight. A minute after that, the fire on STORM TRACK diminished somewhat, shifting to where the tanks were evidently engaging enemy vehicles invading his country. He thanked Allah that his immediate job had just gotten a little easier while his radio operator called ahead on the track's tactical radio.\n\nThe four APCs picked their way through the fallen antennas on the way into the wrecked compound. Then their rear doors opened and the soldier raced out to look around. Thirty men and women worked here. They found nine unhurt people, plus five wounded. The scout platoon took about five minutes searching the wreckage, but no more living people were discovered, and there wasn't time to be fastidious about the dead. The tracks moved out, back toward the battalion CP, where helicopters waited to ferry the Americans out.\n\nIT AMAZED THE Saudi tank commander that surprise had been achieved. He knew that most of his country's forces were two hundred miles to the east. But the enemy was _here_ and coming south. They weren't going into Kuwait or after the oil fields at all. That became plain when the first UIR tanks appeared in his thermal viewer, cresting a low spot in the berm, out of gun range because he'd been ordered not to move too close. The young officer really didn't know what to do. Ordinarily, his military worked under fairly tight control, and so he radioed back for instructions. But his battalion commander was busy now, his own command of fifty-four tanks and other vehicles spread over a front of thirty kilometers, all of which was being hit with indirect artillery fire, and much of which was reporting enemy tanks crossing the border, with infantry carriers in support.\n\nThe officer decided he had to do something, so he ordered his tanks forward to meet the attack. At three thousand meters, his men opened fire, and the first fourteen shots resulted in eight hits, not bad under the circumstances for part-time soldiers, he thought as he decided to stand and fight right there, and defend his soil against the invader. His fourteen tanks were spread over a line three kilometers long. It was a defensible deployment, but a stationary one, and in the center of his own line he was too fixed on what lay before him. The second volley got another six kills at the long range, but then one of his tanks took a direct hit from an artillery round, which destroyed its engine and started a fire that made its crew bail out, only to be shredded by more of the artillery fire before they could run five meters. He was looking that way and saw them die, four hundred meters away, and he knew that there was a hole in his line now, and he was supposed to do something about that.\n\nHis gunner, like the others, was looking for and trying to engage enemy tanks, the T-80s with their domed turrets, when the first flight of antitank missiles zoomed away from the BMP infantry carriers that lay behind them. Those started getting hits, and though they could not penetrate the frontal armor on his tanks, tracks were knocked off, more engines set afire, and fire-control systems damaged. When half his command was burning, it was time to pull back. Four started moving again turning and darting two kilometers south. The captain remained with the other three, and got another tank kill before he started to move. The air was filled with missiles now, and one of them hit the rear of his turret, igniting the ammo-storage box. The vertical flame sucked the air from the open hatch, asphyxiating his crew even as it burned him alive. Leaderless, the company fought on for thirty minutes, falling back again until the three surviving tanks ran south at fifty kilometers per hour, trying to find the battalion command post.\n\nThat was no longer there. It had been located by its radio transmissions and pounded by a full brigade of UIR artillery in its unprepared position just as the survivors from STORM TRACK arrived with the scout troop. In the first hour of the Second Persian Gulf War, a thirty-mile rent had been made in the Saudi lines, and there was a direct path to Riyadh. For that, the Army of God had lost half a brigade, a stiff price, but one which they were willing to pay.\n\nTHE INITIAL PICTURE wasn't clear. It rarely was. That was the advantage the attacker almost always had, Diggs knew, and the job of the commander was to make order from chaos and use the former to inflict the latter on his enemy. With the destruction of STORM TRACK, his Predator capability was temporarily gone and would have to be reestablished. The 366th had deployed without J-STARS airborne radar capable of tracking the movement of ground troops. Aloft were two E-3B AWACS aircraft, each with four fighters in close attendance. Twenty UIR fighters came up and started going after them. That would be exciting for the Air Force.\n\nBut Diggs had his own problems. With the loss of STORM TRACK and its Predator drones, he was largely blind and his first remedial action was to order the 10th Cav's air squadron to probe west. Eddington's words had come back hard to him. The Saudi center of gravity might not be an economic target after all.\n\n\"OUR TROOPS ARE inside the Kingdom,\" Intelligence told him. \"They are meeting opposition, but are breaking through. The American spy post has been destroyed.\"\n\nThe news didn't make Daryaei any happier. \"How did they know\u2014how did they know?\"\n\nThe intelligence chief was afraid to ask how _they_ knew _what_. So he dodged the issue: \"It does not matter. We will be in Riyadh in two days, and then nothing matters.\"\n\n\"What do we know about the sickness in America? Why are not more people ill? How can they have troops to send?\"\n\n\"This I do not know,\" Intelligence admitted.\n\n\"What _do_ you know?\"\n\n\"It appears that the Americans have one regiment in Kuwait, and another in the Kingdom, with a third taking equipment from the ships\u2014the ones the Indians failed to stop in Dhahran.\"\n\n\"So attack them!\" Mahmoud Haji almost shouted. The arrogance of that American, calling him by name in a way that his own people might have seen and heard . . . and believed?\n\n\"Our air force is attacking in the north. That is the place of decision. Any diversion from that is a waste of time,\" he replied reasonably.\n\n\"Missiles, then!\"\n\n\"I will see.\"\n\nTHE BRIGADIER COMMANDING the Saudi 4th Brigade had been told to expect nothing more than a diversionary attack in his area and to stand ready to launch a counterattack into the UIR right upon the commencement of their massed attack into Kuwait. Like many generals throughout history, he had made the mistake of believing his intelligence a little too much. He had three mechanized battalions, each covering a thirty-mile sector, with a five- to ten-mile gap between them. In an offensive role, it would have been a flexible deployment for harassing the enemy's flank, but the early loss of his middle battalion had split his command in two, leaving him no easy way to command the separated parts. He next compounded the error by moving forward instead of backward. A courageous decision, it overlooked the fact that he had one hundred miles of depth behind him to King Khalid Military City, space in which he could have reorganized for a weighted counterstroke instead of a fragmented impromptu one.\n\nThe UIR attack was made on the model perfected by the Soviet army in the 1970s. The initial break-in phase had been composed on a heavy brigade surging forward behind massed artillery fire. The elimination of STORM TRACK had been intended from the beginning. It and PALM BOWL\u2014they even knew the code names\u2014were largely the eyes of their enemy's command structure. Satellites they could do nothing about, but ground-based intelligence-gathering posts were fair game. As expected, the Americans had deployed some assets, but not many, it appeared, and half of those would be day-flying aircraft. As with the Soviets, who had written the book to drive to the Bay of Biscay, the UIR would accept the cost, balancing lives against time to reach their political objective before the full weight of their potential enemies could come to bear. If the Saudis believed that Daryaei wanted their oil more than anything else, so be it, for in Riyadh was the royal family and the government. In doing so, the UIR risked its left flank, but Kuwait-based forces would have to negotiate the terrain of the Wadi al Batin, and then cross two hundred miles of desert just to get to where the Army of God had already been.\n\nThe key was speed, and the key to achieving speed was the rapid elimination of the Saudi 4th. The artillery still massed north of the berm tracked in on the urgent radio transmissions, and commenced a relentless area fire aimed at disrupting communications and cohesion in the units that they fully expected would be used to counter the initial invasion. It was a tactic almost certain to work, so long as they were willing to pay the price. One brigade each had been allocated to the three border battalions.\n\nThe 4th Brigade commander also had artillery of his own, but this, he decided, was best used on the center breakthrough, to punish the units with a clear road into the heart of his nation. The support mainly went there, to harass people just passing through rather than the brigades, which were just now making contact with his remaining mechanized forces. With their destruction, he would triple the width of the gap in the Saudi lines.\n\nDIGGS WAS IN the main command post with all of this news coming in, and he realized what was happening to him, after a fashion. He'd done it to the Iraqis in 1991. He'd done it to the Israelis for a couple of years as CO of the Buffalo Cav. And he'd commanded the National Training Center for a time as well. Now he saw what it was like on the other side. Things were happening too fast for the Saudis. They were reacting rather than thinking, seeing the crisis in its magnitude but not its shape, semiparalyzed by the speed of events which, had they been on the other side, would have seemed merely exciting and nothing more.\n\n\"Have the 4th pull back about thirty klicks,\" he said quietly. \"You have plenty of room to maneuver in.\"\n\n\"We will stop them right there!\" the Saudi commander replied, too automatically.\n\n\"General, that is a mistake. You are risking that brigade when you don't have to. You can recover lost ground. You cannot recover lost time and lost men.\"\n\nBut he wasn't listening, and Diggs didn't have enough stars on his collar to speak more insistently. _One more day,_ he thought _, one more goddamned day._\n\nTHE HELICOPTERS TOOK their time. M-Troop, 4th of the 10th, was made of six OH-58 Kiowa scout choppers and four AH-64 Apache attack birds, all carrying more extra fuel tanks than weapons. They had warning that enemy fighters were aloft, which prohibited flying very high. Their sensors were sniffing the air for the radar emissions of SAM radars\u2014there had to be some around\u2014while the pilots picked their way from hilltop to hilltop, scanning forward with low-light viewing systems and Longbow radars. Passing into UIR territory, they spotted the occasional scout vehicle, perhaps a company spread over twenty klicks within sight of the Kuwaiti border, they estimated, but that was all. The next fifty miles revealed much of the same, though the vehicles were heavier. Arriving on the outskirts of Al Busayyah, which the Army of God had been approaching according to satellite-intelligence information, all they really found were tracks in the sand and a few groups of support vehicles, mainly fuel trucks. Destroying them wasn't their mission. Their task was to locate the enemy's main body and determine its axis of advance.\n\nThat took another hour of ducking and side-slipping and darting, the helicopters leap-frogging. There were SAM vehicles around here, Russian- and French-made short-range ones that helicopters knew to avoid. One Kiowa-Apache team got close enough to see a column of tanks moving through a gap in the berm in brigade strength, and that was 150 miles from the point they'd left. With that information, the helicopters withdrew, without taking a shot at anything. The next time, they might well come in strength, and there was no sense in warning people about the gap in their air defenses before it could be properly exploited.\n\nTHE 4TH BRIGADE'S easternmost battalion stood its ground, and mainly died there. By this time, UIR attack helicopters had joined in, and while the Saudis shot well, the inability to maneuver doomed them. It cost the Army of God another brigade to accomplish this mission, but at the end of it, the gap in Saudi lines was seventy miles wide.\n\nIt was different in the west. This battalion, commanded now by a major with the death of his colonel, broke contact and headed southwest with half its strength, then tried to turn east, to get ahead of the advancing attack. Lacking the strength to stand, he stung and moved, in the process accounting for twenty tanks and a number of other vehicles, before running out of fuel, thirty kilometers north of KKMC. The 4th Brigade's support vehicles had gotten lost somewhere. The major radioed for help and wondered if any might arrive.\n\nIT CAME AS more of a surprise than it should have. A Defense Support System Program satellite over the Indian Ocean spotted the launch bloom. That word went to Sunnyvale, California, and from there to Dhahran. It had all happened before, but not with missiles launched from Iran. The ships were scarcely half unloaded. The war was only four hours old when the first Scud left its truck-bed launcher, heading south out of the Zagros Mountains.\n\n\"Now what?\" Ryan asked.\n\n\"Now you see why the cruisers are still there,\" Jackson replied.\n\nRAID WARNING WAS scarcely needed. The three cruisers, plus _Jones,_ had their radars sweeping the sky, and they all acquired the inbound ballistic track over a hundred miles out. National Guardsmen waiting their turn to fetch their tracked vehicles watched the fireballs of surface-to-air missiles lance into the sky, leaping after things that only radars could see. The initial launch of three exploded separately in the darkness, and that was that. But the soldiers were now even more motivated to collect their tanks as the triple boom came down from one hundred thousand feet.\n\nOn _Anzio,_ Captain Kemper watched the track disappear from the display. This was one other thing Aegis should be good at, though sitting still under fire wasn't exactly his idea of fun.\n\nTHE OTHER EVENT of the evening was a spirited air battle over the border. The AWACS aircraft had watched what turned out to be twenty-four fighters coming in directly for them in an attempt to deny the allies air coverage. That proved a costly exercise. No attack on the E-3B aircraft was actually accomplished. Instead, the UIR air force continued to demonstrate its ability to lose aircraft to no purpose. But would that matter? The senior American controller on one AWACS remembered an old NATO joke. One Soviet tank general ran into another in Paris and asked, \"By the way, who won the air war?\" The point of it was that wars were ultimately won or lost on the ground. So it would be here.\n**60**\n\n**BUFORD**\n\n**I** T WASN'T UNTIL SIX hours after the first artillery barrage that enemy intentions were clear. It took the reports of the helicopter reconnaissance to give an initial picture, but what finally turned the trick was satellite photography that was impossible to discount. The historical precedents flooded into Marion Diggs's mind. When the French high command had got wind of the German Schlieffen Plan prior to World War I, their reaction had been, \"So much the better for us!\" That assault had barely ground to a halt outside Paris. In 1940, the same high command had greeted initial news of another German attack with smiles\u2014and _that_ attack had ended at the Spanish border. The problem was that people tended to wed their ideas more faithfully than their spouses, and the tendency was universal. It was well after midnight, therefore, when the Saudis realized that the main force of their army was in the wrong place, and that their western covering force had been steamrollered by an enemy who was either too smart or too dumb to do what they'd expected him to do. To counter that, they had to fight a battle of maneuver, which they were unprepared for. The UIR sure as hell was driving first to KKMC. There would be a battle for that point on the map, after which the enemy would have the option of turning east toward the Persian Gulf\u2014and the oil\u2014thus trapping allied forces; or continuing south to Riyadh to deliver a political knockout and win the war. All in all, Diggs thought, it wasn't a terribly bad plan. If they could execute it. Their problem was the same as the Saudis', though. They had a plan. They thought it was pretty good, and they, too, thought that _their_ enemy would connive at his own destruction. Sooner or later, everyone did, and the key to being on the winning side was knowing what you could do and what you couldn't. This enemy didn't know the _couldn't_ part yet. There was no sense in teaching them that too soon.\n\nIN THE SITUATION Room, Ryan was on the phone with his friend in Riyadh.\n\n\"I have the picture, Ali,\" the President assured him.\n\n\"This is serious.\"\n\n\"The sun will be up soon, and you have space to trade for time. It's worked before, Your Highness.\"\n\n\"And what will your forces do?\"\n\n\"They can't exactly drive home from there, can they?\"\n\n\"You are that confident?\"\n\n\"You know what those bastards did to us, Your Highness.\"\n\n\"Why, yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\"So do our troops, my friend.\" And then Ryan had a request.\n\n\"THIS WAR HAS started badly for allied forces,\" Tom Donner was saying live on _NBC Nightly News_. \"That's what we're hearing, anyway. The combined armies of Iraq and Iran have smashed through Saudi lines west of Kuwait and are driving south. I'm here with the troopers of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse. This is Sergeant Bryan Hutchinson of Syracuse, New York. Sergeant, what do you think of this?\"\n\n\"I guess we're just going to have to see, sir. What I can tell you, B-Troop is ready for anything they got. I wonder if they're ready for us, sir. You come along and watch.\" And that was all he had to say on the subject.\n\n\"As you see, despite the bad news from the battlefield, these soldiers are ready\u2014even eager\u2014for contact.\"\n\nTHE SENIOR SAUDI commander hung up the phone, having just talked with his sovereign. Then he turned to Diggs. \"What do you recommend?\"\n\n\"For starters, I think we should move the 5th and 2nd Brigades southwest.\"\n\n\"That leaves Riyadh uncovered.\"\n\n\"No, sir, actually it doesn't.\"\n\n\"We should counterattack at once!\"\n\n\"General, we don't have to yet,\" Diggs told him, staring down at the map. The 10th sure was in an interesting position.... He looked up. \"Sir, have you ever heard the story about the old bull and the young bull?\" Diggs proceeded to tell one of his favorite jokes, and one which, after a few seconds, had the senior Saudi officers nodding.\n\n\"YOU SEE, EVEN the American television says that we are succeeding,\" the intelligence chief told his boss.\n\nThe general commanding the UIR air force was less sanguine. In the past day, he'd lost thirty fighters, for perhaps two Saudi aircraft in return. His plan to bore in and kill the AWACS aircraft which so tilted the odds in the air had failed, and cost him a gaggle of his best-trained pilots in the process. The good news, for him, was that his enemies lacked the aircraft needed to invade his country and do serious damage. Now more ground forces were moving down from Iran to advance on Kuwait from the north, and with luck all he would have to do would be to cover the advance ground forces, which his people knew how to do, especially in daylight. They'd learn about that course in a few hours.\n\nA TOTAL OF fifteen Scud-type ballistic missiles had been launched at Dhahran. Hitting the COMEDY ships had been a long shot at best, and all of the inbounds had either been intercepted or, in most cases, had fallen harmlessly into the sea during a night of noise and fireworks. The last of the load\u2014mainly trucks at this stage\u2014were rolling off now, and Greg Kemper set his binoculars down, as he watched the line of brown-painted trucks fade into the dawn haze. Where they were heading, he didn't know. He did know that about five thousand very pissed-off National Guardsmen from North Carolina were ready to do something.\n\nEDDINGTON WAS ALREADY south of KKMC with his brigade staff. His WOLFPACK force would probably not get there in time to fight a battle. Instead, he had headed them to Al Artawiyah, one of those places which sometimes became important in history because roads led there. He wasn't sure if that would happen here, though he remembered that Gettysburg had been a place where Bobby Lee hoped to get some shoes for his men. While his staff did their work, the colonel lit a cigar and walked outside, to see two companies of men arriving with their vehicles. He decided to head over that way while the MPs got them scattered into hasty-defense locations. Fighters screamed overhead. American F-15Es, by the look of them. Okay, he thought, the enemy'd had a pretty good twelve hours. Let 'em think that.\n\n\"Colonel!\" a staff sergeant Bradley commander saluted from his hatch. Eddington climbed up as soon as the vehicle stopped. \"Good morning, sir.\"\n\n\"How is everybody?\"\n\n\"We're just ready as hell, sir. Where are they?\" the sergeant asked, taking off his dust-covered goggles.\n\nEddington pointed. \"About a hundred miles that way, coming this way. Tell me about how the troops feel, Sergeant.\"\n\n\"How many can we kill before they make us stop, sir?\"\n\n\"If it's a tank, kill it. If it's a BMP, kill it. If it's a truck, kill it. If it's south of the berm, and it's holding a weapon, kill it. _But_ the rules are serious about killing unresisting people. We don't break those rules. That's important.\"\n\n\"Fair 'nuff, Colonel.\"\n\n\"Don't take any unnecessary chances with prisoners, either.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" the track commander promised. \"I won't.\"\n\nGEOMETRY PUT THE Blackhorse first, advancing west from their assembly area toward KKMC. Colonel Hamm had his command advancing on line, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Squadrons lined up south to north, each covering a twenty-mile frontage. The 4th (Aviation) Squadron he kept in his pocket, with just a few helo scouts probing forward while the ground-support elements of their battalion moved to set up an advanced base at a point which his leading troops had not yet reached. Hamm was in his M4 command track\u2014called, naturally enough, the Star Wars (some called it \"God\") Track\u2014sitting athwartships, which made for motion-sickness, and starting to get that \"take\" from his advanced units.\n\nThe IVIS system was starting to go on-line now in a real tactical environment. The Inter-Vehicle Information System was a data-link network the Army had been playing with for about five years. It had never been tested in combat, and it pleased Al Hamm that he would be the first to prove its worth. His command screens in the M4 got everything. Each single vehicle was both a source and a recipient of information. It began by telling everybody where all friendly units were, which, with GPS location equipment, was accurate to the meter, and that was supposed to prevent blue-on-blue \"friendly fire\" losses. At the touch of a key, Hamm knew the location of every fighting vehicle he had, plotted on a map which showed all relevant terrain features. In time he would have a similarly accurate picture of enemy dispositions, and with the knowledge of everyone's location came the option to pick his spots. The Saudi 2nd and 5th Brigades were to his northwest, coming down from the Kuwaiti border area. He had about one hundred miles to move cross-country before he had to worry about making contact, and the four hours of approach march would serve to establish control of his units and make sure that everything was working. He had few doubts of that, but it was a drill he had to perform, because mistakes on the battlefield, however small, were expensive ones.\n\nREMNANTS OF THE Saudi 4th Brigade tried to assemble north of KKMC. They amounted to perhaps two companies of tanks and infantry carriers, most having fought hit-and-run actions during the long desert night. Some had survived from pure luck, others through the brutally Darwinian process that was mobile warfare. The senior surviving officer was a major whose billet had been intelligence, and who had commandeered a tank from an angry NCO. His men had neglected practice on their IVIS gear, preferring gunnery and racing about instead of more structured battle drills. Well, they'd paid for that, the major knew. His first order of business was finding and calling in the scattered fuel trucks his brigade had kept to the rear, so that the surviving twenty-nine tanks and fifteen other tracks could fill up their tanks. Some ammunition trucks were also found, which allowed about half of his heavy vehicles to replenish their storage racks. With that done, he sent the support vehicles to the rear and selected a wadi\u2014a dry riverbed north and west of KKMC as his next defense position. It took another half hour for him to establish reliable contact with his high command and to call for support.\n\nHis force was not coherent. The tanks and tracks came from five different battalions. Some crews knew others only casually or not at all, and he was short of officers to command what force he had. With that knowledge came the realization that his job was to command rather than to fight himself. He reluctantly returned the tank to the sergeant who \"owned\" it, and chose instead an infantry carrier with more radios and fewer distractions. It wasn't a warlike decision, not for a person whose cultural tradition was leading a mob of warriors on horseback with a sword waving in the air, but he'd learned a few hard lessons in the darkness south of the berm, which put him one up on a lot of men who'd died from not learning fast enough.\n\nTHE DAY'S FIGHTING began after a pause from both movement and killing that would afterward seem as stylized as the halftime of a football game. The reason the Saudi 4th's survivors had garnered the time and space to reorganize and replenish was that the Army of God had to do the same. Trailing elements refueled from the bowsers, which had followed the combat units. Then they leapfrogged forward, allowing the fuel trucks to succor the erstwhile advance units. That process took four hours. The brigade and divisional commanders were pleased to this point. They were only ten kilometers behind the plan\u2014plans are always too optimistic\u2014in distance, and an hour in time. The refueling took place almost on schedule as well. They'd smashed the initial opposition, taking more losses than hoped, but crushing their foe in any case. Men were tired, but soldiers were supposed to be tired, too, everyone thought, and the time for refueling allowed most to nap enough to freshen them. With the coming of dawn, the Army of God started its diesel engines and renewed its drive south.\n\nTHE FIRST BATTLES this day would be aloft. The allied air forces started taking off in numbers just after four from bases in the southern portion of the Kingdom. The first rank of aircraft were F-15 Eagles, which joined up with three circling E-3B AWACS aircraft lined up east and west of Riyadh. The UIR fighters rose as well, still in the control of ground radar stations inside the former country of Iraq. It began as a sort of dance between two chorus lines. Both sides wanted to know where the other side's SAMs were, information on which had been gathered during the dark hours. Both sides, it was gradually determined, would have a missile belt to hide behind, but in both cases the initial battles would be fought in an electronic no-man's-land. The first move was by a flight of four from the 390th Fighter Squadron, the Wild Boars. Alerted by their control aircraft that a UIR flight had turned east, the Eagles angled west, went to burner, and darted across the empty space, reversing course back toward the sea as they did so. The Americans expected to win, and they did. The UIR fighters\u2014actually, Iranian F-4s left over from the time of the Shah\u2014were caught looking the wrong way. Warned by their ground controllers, they turned back, but their problem was deeper than the tactical situation. They'd expected an engagement pattern in which one side would fire missiles, and the other would evade, then turn back to fire its own in a style of encounter as rigid as a medieval joust. Nobody had told them that this was not how their American enemies were trained.\n\nThe Eagles fired first, loosing one AMRAAM each. It was a fire-and-forget missile, which allowed them to retreat after shooting. But they didn't, and instead bored in behind them, following both their doctrine and inclinations after ten hours of contemplating what their President had said on the radio. It was all personal now, and the first team of Eagle drivers kept closing while their missiles tracked in on the first group of targets. Three of the four targets were destroyed, adversely surprised by the missile American pilots called the Slammer. The fourth evaded, blessed his luck, and turned back to fire off his own weapon, only to see on his radar that there was a fighter fifteen kilometers distant, with a closure rate of nearly two thousand knots. That made him flinch and turn south, a mistake. The Eagle pilot, his wingman half a mile behind, chopped power to slow down and got in a tail-chase position. He wanted an eyeball-kill, and he got it, closing on the enemy's \"six,\" and selecting guns. The other guy was a little slow to catch on this morning. In fifteen more seconds, the F-4 expanded to fill the gunsight . . .\n\n\"Fox-Three, Fox-Three for a kill!\"\n\nA second flight of Eagles was in the combat area now, going after their own targets. The UIR ground controllers were startled by the speed of the result, and ordered their fighters to point at the oncoming Americans and fire off their radar-guided long-range missiles but even then, the Americans did not run away to evade as expected. Instead, their tactic was to roll ninety degrees to the ground, and maintain an even distance to the launching aircraft. That denied the fighter radars a Doppler, or range-rate change, to their targets, broke radar lock, and sent the missiles into random, unguided courses. Then the Eagles turned in, selected their own missiles, and shot from under ten miles while the UIR fighters were trying to reacquire and fire another volley, again boring in behind them. Warned that more missiles were in the air, the enemy fighters tried to turn and run, but they were too far inside the Slammer envelope, and all four of them were blotted out as well.\n\n\"Hey, dude, this is Bronco,\" a voice taunted over the UIR guard channel. \"Send us some more. We're hungry. We wanna shoot 'em _all_ down and fuck their ol' ladies!\" He switched channels to Sky-One. \"Razorback Lead, more business, over?\"\n\n\"Not in your sector, stand by.\"\n\n\"Roger that.\" The lieutenant colonel commanding the 390th rolled sideways again, looking down to see the massed tanks moving out from their assembly points, and for the first time in his life he wished that he was air-to-mud instead of air-to-air. Colonel Winters came from New York. There were sick people there, he knew, and here he was at war against those who had caused it, but he'd killed only two aircraft, and just three people so far. \"Razorback, Lead, form up on me.\" Then he checked his fuel state. He'd have to tank soon.\n\nNext in were the Strike Eagles of the 391st, escorted by HARM-equipped F-16s. The smaller, single-seat fighters cruised in with their threat-receivers on, sniffing for mobile SAM launchers. There turned out to be a goodly collection of low-altitude missile vehicles, French Crotales and old Russian SA-6 Gainfuls, just behind the lead echelons. The Viper drivers jinked down to draw their attention, then fired off their anti-radar missiles to cover the inbound F-15Es. Those were looking for enemy artillery first of all.\n\nTHE PREDATORS WERE working on that. Three had crashed with the loss of their ground-control at STORM TRACK, creating a gap in intelligence coverage that had taken hours to rectify. There were only ten left in theater. Four of those were up and flying at eight thousand feet, loitering almost invisibly over the advancing divisions. The UIR forces relied mostly on towed tubes. These were now setting up for the next major attack, lined up behind two mechanized brigades about to make the next leap toward KKMC. One Predator found the six-battery group. The data went to a collection team, then up to the AWACS, and back down to the sixteen Strike Eagles of the 391st.\n\nTHE SAUDI FORMATION waited tensely. Their forty-four fighting vehicles were spread over eight kilometers, as wide as the major commanding them dared, having to balance dispersal against firepower in what he hoped would be at least a delaying action, and maybe a stand. An approaching scream in the sky told him and his men to button up, as eight-inch shells started landing in front of his position. The initial bombardment lasted three minutes, the rounds advancing toward where his vehicles were....\n\n\"TIGERS IN HOT!\" the strike commander called. The enemy had evidently expected his first attack to go after the leading tanks. That's where the SAMs were, and the Vipers were trying to deal with them. The three flights of four separated, then split into elements of two, coming down to four thousand feet, smoking in at five hundred knots. The gun batteries were lined up nice and neat, in even lines, the cannons spaced about a hundred meters apart, along with their trucks, just like their manual must have said, LTC Steve Berman thought. His weapons-system operator selected cluster munitions and started sprinkling them with bomblets.\n\n\"Lookin' good.\" They had dropped two canisters of BLU-97 combined-effects munitions, a total of over four hundred softball-sized mini-bombs. The first battery was wiped out when the pattern covered their position. Secondary explosions erupted from the ammo trucks. \"Next.\" The pilot reefed his fighter into a tight right turn. His wizzo called him back around toward the next battery, then he spotted\u2014\n\n\"Triple-A at ten.\" That proved to be a ZSU-23 mobile antiaircraft vehicle, whose four guns started sending tracers at their Strike Eagle. \"Selecting Mav.\"\n\nThis death dance lasted just a few seconds. The Eagle evaded fire and got off a Maverick air-to-ground missile, which streaked down to obliterate the gun-track, and then the pilot went after the next battery of howitzers.\n\nIt was like Red Flag, the pilot thought in a blink. He'd been here in 1991 as a captain and killed targets, but mainly wasted his time in Scud-hunts. The experience of real combat had never measured up to battle practice in the Nellis Air Force Base weapons range. It did now. The mission was only planned in a general sense. He was looking for targets in real time with look-down radar and mark-one eyeball, and unlike his playtime at Nellis, these guys were shooting back with real bullets. Well, he was dropping real bombs, too. More ground fire started up as he lined his aircraft on the next collection of targets.\n\nIT SEEMED, OF all things, like a cough in the middle of a conversation. There was a final crash of twenty or thirty rounds on the desert a hundred meters in front of his position. Thirty seconds later, ten more fell. Thirty seconds after that, only three. On the horizon, well behind the first row of tanks just appearing, there were dust clouds. Some seconds later, they felt something through their boots, and after that a distant rumble. It became clear in a few seconds. Green-painted fighters appeared, heading due south. They were friendly, he saw from their shape. Then another appeared, trailing smoke, staggering in the sky, then tipping over, and two objects jolted out of it, turning into parachutes that drifted to the ground a kilometer behind his position, as the fighter smashed down separately, making an immense fireball. The major dispatched a vehicle to pick them up, then returned his attention to tanks still out of range\u2014and he had no artillery to call in on them as yet.\n\nWELL, SHIT, THE colonel thought, it was like Red Flag after all, except this night wouldn't be spent telling lies in the O club and sneaking off to Vegas for a show and some time in a casino. His third pass had run him into fire, and the Eagle was too sick to make it all the way home. He wasn't even on the ground yet when he saw a vehicle coming toward him, and he wondered whose it was. A moment later, it looked like an American-made Hummer, fifty meters away when he hit the ground, jolting hard on the packed sand. He popped the release on his chute and pulled his pistol out, but sure enough the vehicle was friendly, with two Saudi soldiers in it. One came over to him while the other took the Hummer to where the wizzo was standing, half a mile away.\n\n\"Come, come!\" the Saudi private said. A minute later, the Hummer was back with the wizzo, who was holding his knee and grimacing.\n\n\"Twisted it bad, boss. Landed on a fuckin' rock,\" he explained, getting in one of the backseats.\n\nEverything he'd heard about Saudi drivers was true, the colonel learned in a few seconds. It was like being inside a Burt Reynolds movie, as the Hummer bounded its way back to the safety of the wadi, but it was good to see the shapes of friendly vehicles there. The Hummer took him to what had to be the command post. There were still some shells falling forward of their position, but their aim had worsened, now dropping the shells five hundred meters short.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Lieutenant Colonel Steve Berman asked.\n\n\"Major Abdullah.\" The man even saluted. Berman holstered his pistol and looked around.\n\n\"I guess you're the guys we came to support. We took out their artillery pretty good, but some bastard got lucky with his Shilka. Can you get us a chopper?\"\n\n\"I will try. Are you injured?\"\n\n\"My wizzo had a bum knee. We could use something to drink, though.\"\n\nMajor Abdullah handed over his canteen. \"We have an attack coming in.\"\n\n\"Mind if I watch?\" Berman asked.\n\nONE HUNDRED MILES to the south, Eddington's brigade was still forming. He had one battalion pretty much intact. This he moved twenty miles forward, left and right of the road to KKMC, to screen the rest of his forces as they came up the road from Dhahran. Unhappily, his artillery was the last group to have been off-loaded, and they weren't due for at least another four hours. But that couldn't be helped. As units arrived, he first of all got them to assembly areas where they could top off their fuel tanks. What with getting people off the road, directed to their intermediate destinations, and gassed up, it took about an hour per company to get things organized. His second battalion was just about ready to move. This one he would send west of the road, which would allow the first one to move laterally to the east, and double his advanced security force. It was so hard to explain to people that fighting battles was more about traffic control than killing people. That, and gathering information. A combat action was like the last act of a massive ballet\u2014most of the time it was just getting the dancers to the right parts of the stage. The two acts\u2014knowing where to send them and then getting them there\u2014were interactive, and Eddington still didn't have a very clear picture. His brigade intelligence group was just setting up and starting to get hard information from Riyadh. Forward, his lead battalion had a reconnaissance screen of HMMWVs and Bradleys ten miles in advance of the main force, all of them hunkered down, their vehicles hidden as best they could be, and the troops on their bellies, scanning forward with binoculars, so far reporting nothing but the occasional wisp of dust well beyond the visible horizon and the rumbles of noise that carried amazingly far. Well, Eddington decided, so much the better. He had time to prepare, and time was the most valuable commodity a soldier could hope for.\n\n\"LOBO-SIX, this is WOLFPACK-SIX, over.\"\n\n\"LOBO-SIX copies.\"\n\n\"This is WOLFPACK-SIX-ACTUAL. WHITEFANG is moving out now. They should be on your left in an hour. You may commence your lateral movement when they arrive on line. Over.\"\n\n\"LOBO-SIX-ACTUAL copies, Colonel. Still nothing to see up here. We're in pretty good shape, sir.\"\n\n\"Very well. Keep me informed. Out.\" Eddington handed the radio phone back.\n\n\"Colonel!\" It was the major who ran his intelligence section. \"We have some information for you.\"\n\n\"Finally!\"\n\nTHE ARTILLERY FIRE continued, with a few rounds dropping right in the wadi. It was Colonel Berman's first experience with that, and he found that he didn't like it very much. It also explained why the tanks and tracks were spread out so much, which had struck him as very odd at first. One round went off a hundred meters to the left of the tank behind which he and Major Abdullah were sheltering, thankfully to the far side. They both quite distinctly heard the _ping_ s of fragments hitting the brown-painted armor.\n\n\"This is not fun,\" Berman observed, shaking his head to clear the noise of the shell-burst.\n\n\"Thank you for dealing with the rest of their guns. It was quite frightening,\" Abdullah said, looking through his binoculars. The advancing UIR T-80s were just over three thousand meters away, having not yet spotted his hulldown M1A2s.\n\n\"How long have you been in contact?\"\n\n\"It started just after sunset yesterday. We are all that is left of the 4th Brigade.\" And that didn't help Berman's confidence at all. Above their heads, the tank's turret made a slight adjustment to the left. There was a short phrase over the major's radio, and he replied with a single word\u2014shouted, however. A second after that, the tank to the left of them jerked backward a foot or so, and a blast of fire erupted from the main gun. It made the artillery round seem like a firecracker in comparison. Against all logic, Berman raised his head. In the distance he saw a column of smoke, and tumbling atop it was a tank turret.\n\n\"Jesus!\"\n\n\"You have a radio I can use?\"\n\n\"SKY-ONE, THIS is Tiger Lead,\" an AWACS officer heard on a side channel. \"I am on the ground with a Saudi tank group north of KKMC.\" He gave the position next. \"We are in heavy contact here. Got any help you can send us? Over.\"\n\n\"Tiger, can you authenticate?\"\n\n\"No, God damn it, my fuckin' codes went down with my -15. This is Colonel Steve Berman out of Mountain Home, and I am one very pissed-off aviator right now, Sky. Forty minutes ago, we beat the snot out of some Iraqi artillery, and now we got tanks coming out the ass. You gonna believe me or not, over.\"\n\n\"Sounds American to me,\" a more senior officer thought.\n\n\"And if you look close, their tanks are round on top and pointing south and ours are flat on the top and pointing north, over.\" That bit of information was followed by the crash of an explosion. \"This ground-pounder shit ain't no fun at all,\" he told them.\n\n\"Me too,\" the first controller decided. \"Tiger, stand by. Devil-Lead, this is Sky-One, we have some business for you . . .\"\n\nIt wasn't supposed to be this way at all, but it was happening even so. There were supposed to be frag\u2014for fragmentary\u2014orders detailing \"packages\" of tactical aircraft to hunting patches, but there weren't enough aircraft for that, and no time to select their patches, either. Sky-One had a flight of four F-16s waiting for some air-to-mud action, and this seemed as good a time as any.\n\nTHE ADVANCING TANKS stopped to trade fire at first, but that was a losing game against the fire-control systems on the American-made Abrams tanks, and these Saudi crews had gotten a post-graduate course in gunnery earlier in the day. The enemy backed off and maneuvered left and right, blowing smoke from their rear decks to obscure the battlefield. More vehicles were left behind, contributing their own black columns to the morning sky as their ammunition racks cooled off. The initial part of the engagement had lasted five minutes and had cost the UIR twenty vehicles that Berman could see, with no losses for the friendlies. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.\n\nThe Vipers came in from the west, hardly visible about four miles downrange, dropping their Mark-82 dumb bombs in the middle of the enemy formation.\n\n\"Brilliant!\" the English-educated Major Abdullah said. They couldn't tell how many vehicles had died as a result, but now his men knew they were not alone in their engagement. That made a difference.\n\nIF ANYTHING, THE streets of Tehran had become grimmer still. What struck Clark and Chavez (Klerk and Chekov, currently) was the absence of conversation. People moved along without speaking to one another. There was also a sudden shortage of men, as reserves were being called up to trek into their armories, draw weapons, and prepare to move into the war which their new country had halfheartedly announced after President Ryan's preemption.\n\nThe Russians had given them the location of Daryaei's home, and their job really was only to look at it\u2014which was easily said, but rather a different task on the streets of the capital city of the country with which you were at war. Especially if you had been in that city shortly before, and seen by members of its security force. The complications were piling up.\n\nThe man lived modestly, they saw from two and a half blocks away. It was a three-story building on a middle-class street that displayed no trappings of power at all, except for the obvious presence of guards on the front steps, and a few cars spotted at the corners. Looking closer from two hundred meters away, they could also see that people avoided walking on that side of the street. Popular man, the Ayatollah.\n\n\"So, who else lives there?\" Klerk asked the Russian _rezident._ He was covered as the embassy's second secretary, and performed many diplomatic functions to maintain his legend.\n\n\"Mainly his bodyguards, we believe.\" They were sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and studiously not looking directly at the building of their interest. \"To either side, we think the buildings have been vacated. He has his security concerns, this man of God. The people here are increasingly uneasy under his rule\u2014even the enthusiasm of the Iraqi conquest fades now. You can see the mood as well as I, Klerk. These people have been under control for almost a generation. They grow tired of it. And it was clever of your President to announce hostilities before our friend did. The shock value was very effective, I think. I like your President,\" he added. \"So does Sergey Nikolay'ch.\"\n\n\"This building is close enough, Ivan Sergeycvich,\" Chavez said quietly, calling the kaffeeklatsch back to order. \"Two hundred meters, direct line of sight.\"\n\n\"What about collateral damage?\" Clark wondered. It required some circumlocutions to make that come out in Russian.\n\n\"You Americans are so sentimental about such things,\" the _rezident_ observed. It amused him.\n\n\"Comrade Klerk has always had a soft heart,\" Chekov confirmed.\n\nAT HOLLOMAN AIR Force Base in New Mexico, a total of eight pilots arrived at the base hospital to have their blood checked. The Ebola testing kits were finally coming out in numbers. The first major military deliveries went to the Air Force, which could deploy more power more quickly than the other branches of the service. There had been a few cases in nearby Albuquerque, all being treated at the University of New Mexico Medical Center and two on this very base, a sergeant and his wife, the former dead and the latter dying\u2014the news of it was all over the base, further enraging warriors who already possessed a surfeit of passion. The aviators all checked out clean, and the relief they felt was not ordinary. Now, they knew, they could go out and do something. The ground crews came in next. These also tested negative. All went off to the flight line. Half of the pilots strapped into F-117 Nighthawks. The other half, with the ground crews, boarded KC-10 tanker\/transport aircraft for the long flight to Saudi.\n\nWord was coming in over the Air Force's own communications network. The 366th and the F-16s from the Israeli base were doing pretty well, but everyone wanted a piece of this one, and the men and women from Holloman would lead the second wave into the battle zone.\n\n\"IS HE QUITE mad?\" the diplomat asked an Iranian colleague. It was the RVS officers who had the dangerous\u2014or at least most sensitive\u2014part of the intelligence mission.\n\n\"You may not speak of our leader in that way,\" the foreign ministry official replied as they walked down the street.\n\n\"Very well, does your learned holy man fully understand what happens when one employs weapons of mass destruction?\" the intelligence officer asked delicately. Of course he did not, they both knew. No nation-state had done such a thing in over fifty years.\n\n\"He may have miscalculated,\" the Iranian allowed.\n\n\"Indeed.\" The Russian let it go at that for the moment. He'd been working this mid-level diplomat for over a year. \"The world now knows that you have this capability. So clever of him to have flown on the very aircraft that made it possible. He is quite mad. You know that. Your country will be a pariah\u2014\"\n\n\"Not if we can\u2014\"\n\n\"No, not if you can. But what if you cannot?\" the Russian asked. \"Then the entire world will turn against you.\"\n\n\"THIS IS TRUE?\" the cleric asked.\n\n\"It is quite true,\" the man from Moscow assured him. \"President Ryan is a man of honor. He was our enemy for most of his life, and a dangerous enemy, but now, with peace between us, he turns into a friend. He is well respected by both the Israelis and the Saudis. The Prince Ali bin Sheik and he are very close. That is well known.\" This meeting was in Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenistan, disagreeably close to the Iranian border, especially with the former Premier dead in a traffic accident\u2014probably a creative one, Moscow knew\u2014and elections pending. \"Ask yourself this: Why did President Ryan say those things about Islam? An attack on his country, an attack on his child, an attack on himself\u2014but does he attack your religion, my friend? No, he does not. Who but an honorable man would say such things?\"\n\nThe man on the other side of the table nodded. \"This is possible. What do you ask of me?\"\n\n\"A simple question. You are a man of God. Can you condone those acts committed by the UIR?\"\n\nIndignation: \"The taking of innocent life is hateful to Allah. Everyone knows that.\"\n\nThe Russian nodded. \"Then you must decide for yourself which is more important to you, political power, or your faith.\"\n\nBut it wasn't quite that simple: \"What do you offer us? I have people who will soon look to me for their welfare. You may not use the Faith as a weapon against the Faithful.\"\n\n\"Increased autonomy, free trade of your goods to the rest of the world, direct flights to foreign lands. We and the Americans will help you to arrange lines of credit with the Islamic states of the Gulf. They do not forget acts of friendship,\" he assured the next Premier of Turkmenistan.\n\n\"How can a man faithful to God do such things?\"\n\n\"My friend\"\u2014he wasn't really, but that was what one said\u2014\"how many men start to do something noble and then become corrupted? And then what do they stand for? Perhaps it is a lesson for you to remember. Power is a deadly thing, most deadly of all to those who hold it in their earthly hands. For yourself, you must decide. What sort of leader do you wish to be, and with what other leaders will you associate your country?\" Golovko leaned back and sipped at his tea. How wrong his country had been not to understand religion\u2014and yet, how right was the result. This man had clung to his Islamic faith as an anchor against the previous regime, finding in it a continuity of belief and values which the political reality of his youth had lacked. Now that his character, known to all in the land, was carrying him to political power, would he remain what he had been, or would he become something else? He had to recognize that danger now. He hadn't thought it all the way through, Golovko saw. Political figures so rarely did. This one had to do so, and right now, and the chairman of the RVS watched him search his soul\u2014something the Marxist doctrine of his youth had told him did not exist. It turned out to be better that it did.\n\n\"Our religion, our Faith, it is a thing of God, not of murder. The Prophet teaches Holy War, yes, but it does not teach us to become our enemies. Unless Mahmoud Haji proves these things are false, I will not stand with him, for all his promises of money. I would like to meet this Ryan, when the time comes.\"\n\nBY 13:00 LIMA TIME, the picture was firming up nicely. The numbers were still pretty unattractive, Diggs thought, with five concentrated divisions on the move facing four brigade-sized forces, which were still dispersed. But there were things that could be done about that.\n\nThe small Saudi blocking force north of KKMC had held for three spectacular hours, but was now being enveloped and had to move, despite the wishes of the Saudi general staff. Diggs didn't even know the kid's name, but hoped to meet him later. With a couple years of proper training, he might really turn into something.\n\nAt his \"suggestion,\" King Khalid Military City was being evacuated. The one part about that which hurt was turning off the intelligence assets there. Especially the Predator teams which now had to recall their birds for their withdrawal to WOLFPACK'S line north of Al Artawiyah. Now that they'd all had time to think about it, the battle was like a huge training exercise at the NTC\u2014three corps instead of battalions to face, but the principle was the same, wasn't it?\n\nThe lingering concern was an Iranian heavy division now known to be crossing the swamps west of Basra. The enemy's operational concept did leave one blank spot. In bypassing Kuwait, they had not had a covering force in place, perhaps because they thought it unnecessary, more likely because they didn't want to tip their hand, figuring to patch the hole as they were doing now. Well, every plan had a flaw.\n\nSo did the plan he'd put together for Operation BUFORD, probably. But he didn't see it, despite two hours of looking.\n\n\"Are we agreed, gentlemen?\" he had to ask. Every Saudi officer in the room was still senior to him, but they'd come to see the logic of his proposal. They were going to fuck 'em all, not just a few. The assembled generals nodded. They didn't even complain any more about leaving KKMC to the enemy. They could always rebuild it. \"Then Operation BUFORD commences at sundown.\"\n\nTHEY FELL BACK by echelon. A few Saudi mobile guns had appeared and they now fired smoke to obscure the battlefield. As soon as they landed, half of Major Abdullah's vehicles backed off their positions and hurried south. The flanking units were already moving, fending off encirclement attempts which the enemy had adopted, probing expensively for the extreme ends of the Saudi line.\n\nBerman's helicopter had never arrived, and the afternoon of noisy and confusing action\u2014you couldn't see crap down here! he had come to learn\u2014had been instructive. Calling in four more air strikes and seeing the effects on the ground was something he would keep in mind, if the Saudis clawed their way out of the trap the other side was casting about them.\n\n\"Come with me, Colonel,\" Abdullah said, turning to run for his command track, ending the First Battle of KKMC.\n**61**\n\n**GRIERSON'S RIDE**\n\n**T** HE VIEW ON THE MAP was just awful. It was easy for anyone to see, a lot of long red arrows and short blue ones. The maps on the morning TV shows were not all that different from those in the Situation Room, and commentary\u2014especially \"expert\" commentary\u2014talked about how American and Saudi forces were badly outnumbered and poorly deployed, with their backs to the sea. But then there was the direct satellite feed.\n\n\"We've heard stories of fierce air battles to the northwest,\" Donner told the camera from \"somewhere in Saudi Arabia.\" \"But the troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment have yet to see action. I can't say where I am right now\u2014the fact of the matter is that I just don't know. B-Troop is stopped for refueling now, pouring hundred of gallons into those big M1 Abrams tanks. It's a real fuel-hog, the troopers tell me. But their mood remains the same. These are angry men\u2014 _and_ women back in the headquarters troop,\" he added. \"I don't know what we will find at the western horizon. I can say that these soldiers are straining at the leash despite all the bad news that has come down from the Saudi high command. The enemy is somewhere out there, driving south in great strength, and soon after sundown, we expect to make contact. This is Tom Donner in the field with the B-Troop, 1st of the Blackhorse,\" the report concluded.\n\n\"His poise isn't bad,\" Ryan noted. \"When does that go on the air?\"\n\nFortunately for all concerned, the television uplinks were over military channels, which were encrypted and controlled. It wasn't time for the UIR to learn exactly who was where. The negative commentary of the \"defeat\" of the Saudi army _was,_ however, going out. That news, leaked in Washington, and studiously not commented on by the Pentagon, was being accepted as gospel. Jack was still worried, however amusing it might have been in the abstract that the media was doing disinformation without even being asked.\n\n\"This evening. Maybe sooner,\" General Mickey Moore replied. \"Sunset over there is in three hours.\"\n\n\"Can we do it?\" POTUS asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nWOLFPACK, FIRST BRIGADE, North Carolina National Guard, was fully formed now. Eddington took to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for a flyover of his forward units. LOBO, his 1st Battalion Task Force, had its left edge on the road from Al Artawiyah to KKMC. WHITEFANG, the 2nd, was arrayed to the west side of the highway. COYOTE, the 3rd, was in reserve, his maneuver force, leaning to the west, because that's where he thought the possibilities were. His artillery battalion he split into two segments, able to cover the left or right extremes, and both able to cover the center. He lacked air assets and had been unable to get anything more than three Black Hawks for medevac. He also had an intelligence group, a combat-support battalion, medical personnel, MPs, and all the other things organic to a unit of brigade size. Forward of his two frontline battalions was a reconnaissance element whose mission was, first, to report, and second, to take out the enemy's eyes when they appeared. He'd thought of asking the 11th ACR for some of their helicopter assets, but he knew what Hamm had planned for those, and it was a waste of breath to ask. He _would_ get the take from their reconnaissance efforts, and that would have to do.\n\nLooking down, he saw that the forward line of M1A2s and Bradleys had all found comfortable spots, mainly behind berms and mini-dunes, where possible just behind high ground, so that at most the top of a turret was visible and mainly not even that. Just the track commander's head and a pair of binoculars would suffice in most cases. The tanks were spaced no less than three hundred meters apart, and mostly more than that. It made them an unattractively diluted target for artillery or air attack. He'd been told not to worry about the latter, but he worried anyway, as much as circumstance allowed. His subordinate commanders knew their jobs as well as reservists could, and the truth of the matter was that the mission was right out of the textbooks written by Guderian and practiced by Rommel and every mounted commander ever since.\n\nTHE WITHDRAWAL STARTED with a ten-mile dash at thirty-five miles per hour, enough to outrun artillery fire, and to look like the rout that Berman initially thought it to be\u2014until he remembered that _he_ made a practice of leaving enemy fire behind at least fifteen times as fast as these mechanized vehicles were doing. They were riding with top hatches open, and Berman stood to look behind, past the brown-black fountains of exploding artillery shells. He'd never known what a defensive stand was like. Mainly lonely, he thought. He'd expected bunched vehicles and men, forgetting what he himself did to such things when he spotted them from the air. He saw what had to be fifty columns of smoke, all vehicles blown apart by the Saudi National Guard. Maybe they didn't take training seriously enough\u2014he had heard such things\u2014but this team had stood their ground against a force at least five times as large, and held them for three hours.\n\nNot without cost. He turned forward and counted only fifteen tanks, plus eight infantry tracks. Perhaps there were more he couldn't see in the clouds of dust, he hoped. He looked up, into what he hoped was a friendly sky.\n\nIT WAS. THE score since dawn was forty UIR fighters down, all of them air-to-air, against six American and Saudi losses, all of them ground-to-air. The opposing air force had been unable to overcome the advantage of the allied airborne radar coverage, and the best thing that could be said for their effort was that they had distracted efforts to attack the ground forces, which would otherwise have been totally unimpeded. The ragtag collection of American-, French-, and Russian-made fighter aircraft looked impressive on paper and on the ramp, but less so in the air. But the allied air forces were far less capable at night. Only the small collection of F-15E Strike Eagles was really all\u2014weather capable (night is considered a weather condition). There were about twenty of those, UIR intelligence estimated, and couldn't do all that much harm. The advancing divisions halted right before KKMC, again to refuel and rearm. One more such jump, their commanders thought, and they'd be to Riyadh before the Americans were organized enough to take the field. They still had the initiative, and were halfway to their objective.\n\nPALM BOWL KEPT track of all that, feeding what radio intercepts it was garnering from the southwest, but now facing a new threat to the north from an Iranian armored division. Perhaps the UIR had expected that, with the Kingdom out of the way or at least heavily engaged, the Kuwaitis would be intimidated into inaction. If so, it was wishful thinking. Borders could be crossed in two directions, and Kuwait's government made the correct assumption that doing nothing would only make things worse for them, not better. It turned out to be another case of one more day needed to patch things up, but this time it was the other side which needed the extra time.\n\nThe Air Cavalry Squadron, 4th of the 10th, lifted off twenty minutes after sunset, heading north. There were some light motorized units on border guard duty, soon, they thought, to be relieved by the unit now crossing the Tigris-Euphrates delta. It comprised two battalions of troops in trucks and light armored vehicles. They'd chatted quite a bit on their radios, the commanders moving units back and forth, but strangely unprepared to be invaded by a nation not a tenth the size of their own. For the next hour, all twenty-six of the Buffalo Cav's Apaches would hunt them with cannon and rocket fire, burning a path for Kuwait's own light mechanized brigade, whose reconnaissance vehicles fanned out, searching for and finding the lead elements of Iranian armor. Five kilometers back was a battalion of heavy armor guided by the reconnaissance information, and the first major surprise of the night for the UIR was the sundering of nightfall by twenty tank guns, followed two seconds later by fifteen kills. The next lesson applied was that of confidence. Their first contact with the enemy a successful one, the lead Kuwaiti elements pressed the attack with gusto. It was all coming together for them. The night-vision systems worked. The guns worked. They had an enemy with his back to unsuitable ground and noplace to go.\n\nListening at PALM BOWL, Major Sabah heard the radio calls, again experiencing things at second hand. It turned out that only one brigade of the Iranian 4th Armored Division, mainly a reserve formation, had gotten across, and had driven blithely and unwarned into an advancing armor force. It was, Sabah thought, just about as fair as what had happened to his country on the morning of 1 August 1990. By sunset plus three hours, the only usable access route into southern Iraq was completely blocked, and with it, easy reinforcement of the Army of God. Throughout the night, precision-guided bombs would drop bridges to make certain of that. It was a small battle for his small nation, but a winning one to set the stage for her nation's allies.\n\nThe Buffalo Cav was already moving its ground elements due west, while the Air Cav squadron returned to refuel and rearm, leaving a buoyant Kuwaiti army holding the allied rear and spoiling for another battle.\n\nTHE UIR I CORPS had been in reserve until this point. One division was the former Iranian 1st Armored, \"The Immortals,\" accompanied by another armored division comprised mainly of surviving Republican Guards officers, and a new class of enlisted men untouched by the 1991 war. II Corps had made the breakthrough at the border and held the lead for the advance to KKMC, though in the course of combat action losing more than a third of its strength. That task accomplished, it moved left, east, clearing the path for I Corps, as yet untouched except by a few air attacks, and III Corps, similarly untouched. II Corps would now guard the flank of the advancing force against counterstrikes fully expected from the seaward side. All units, following their doctrine, sent out reconnaissance forces as darkness fell.\n\nThe lead units, advancing by bounds, skirted around King Khalid Military City, surprised to find no opposition. Emboldened, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion sent units directly into the city, then found it virtually empty of people, most of whom had driven out during the previous day. It seemed logical when he thought about it. The Army of God was advancing, and though it had taken a few heavy blows, nothing the Saudis had could stop it. Satisfied, he pressed south, a little more cautiously now. There had to be some opposition ahead.\n\nEDDINGTON'S MP DETACHMENT had done its job conveying people south and out of the way. He'd seen a few faces, downcast mainly, until they'd gotten a look at what was waiting between KKMC and Al Artawiyah. WOLFPACK couldn't hide everything. Saudi MP units brought up the rear, passing through the recon screen at 21:00 local time. They'd said that there was nothing behind them. They were wrong.\n\nWith his soft vehicles in the lead and his fighting tracks guarding the rear with their turrets turned aft, Major Abdullah had thought about making one more stand, but didn't have the combat power to hold much of anything against what he knew had to be behind him. His men were exhausted by twenty-four hours of continuous combat operations, and the worst off were his tank drivers. Their position in the front of their vehicles was so comfortable as to cause them to fall asleep, only to be awakened by the shouts of their tank commanders, or the lurch of heading off the road into a ditch. His additional concern was that he'd expected to make contact with friendly units\u2014battlefields, he'd learned in the past day, were anything but friendly places.\n\nThey appeared as white blobs at first on the thermal-imaging scopes, the vehicles straggling down the highway. Eddington, in his command post, knew that there might be some Saudi stragglers downbound, and had warned his recon screen to expect it, but it wasn't until the evening's Predators took to the sky that he was sure. Through the thermal viewers, the distinctive flat top of the M1A2 tanks was clearly visible. This information he relayed to HOOTOWL, his recon detachment, which lessened their tension as the shapeless thermal blobs on their ground-based viewing systems gradually turned into friendlier profiles. Even then, there was the chance that friendly vehicles had been captured and converted to enemy use.\n\nTroopers cracked chemical-light wands and dropped them on the road. These were spotted and the advancing trucks stopped practically on top of them, even rolling slowly as they were, without lights. A handful of Saudi liaison officers assigned to WOLFPACK verified their identity and waved them south. Major Abdullah, arriving at the screening position ten minutes later, jumped out of his command track, along with Colonel Berman. The American Guardsmen handed over food and water, first of all, quickly followed by GI coffee out of their MRE packs, the sort with triple the normal amount of caffeine.\n\n\"They're a ways back, but they're coming,\" Berman said. \"My friend here well, he's had a busy day.\"\n\nThe Saudi major was at the point of collapse, the physical and mental exertions like nothing he'd ever known. He staggered over to the HOOTOWL command post and, over a map, relayed what he knew as coherently as he could.\n\n\"We must stop them,\" he concluded.\n\n\"Major, why don't you head on down about ten miles, and you'll see the biggest fuckin' roadblock ever was. Nice job, son,\" the lawyer from Charlotte told the young man. The major walked off toward his track. \"Was it that tough?\" he asked Berman when the Saudi was out of earshot.\n\n\"I know they killed fifty tanks, and that's just the ones I could see,\" Berman said, sipping coffee from a metal cup. \"A lot more coming, though.\"\n\n\"Really?\" the lawyer\/lieutenant colonel said. \"That suits us just fine. No friendlies back of you?\"\n\nBerman shook his head. \"No chance.\"\n\n\"You head on down the road now, Berman. Ten miles, and then you watch the show, y'hear?\"\n\nThey looked like Americans, Berman saw, in their desert BDUs, their faces painted under the Germanshaped Fritz helmets. There were red-shielded lights to point at the maps. It was dark out here, about as dark as a clear sky could get, just the stars enabling him to tell the difference between land and sky. A sliver of moon would appear later, but that wouldn't be much. The screen commander had a command HMMWV with lots of radios. Beyond, he could see a single Bradley, a few troops, and little else. But they stood like Americans and they spoke like Americans.\n\n\"HOOT-SIX, this is Two-Niner.\"\n\n\"Two-Niner, Six, go,\" the commander took the radio.\n\n\"We have some movement, five miles north of our position. Two vehicles nosing around right on the horizon.\"\n\n\"Roger, Two-Niner. Keep us informed. Out.\" He turned to Berman. \"Get going, Colonel. We have work to do here.\"\n\nTHERE WAS A flanking screen. That would be the enemy II Corps, Colonel Hamm thought. His forward line of Kiowa scout helicopters was now watching it. The Kiowas\u2014the military version of the Bell 206, the copter most often used in America for reporting on traffic congestion\u2014specialized in hiding, most often behind hills and ridges, with just the top-mounted electronic periscope peering about the terrain while the pilot held his aircraft in hover, seeing but not seen, while the TV systems recorded the event, relaying their \"take\" back. Hamm had six of them up now, advance scouts for his 4th Squadron, ten miles in front of his ground elements, now lying still thirty miles southeast of KKMC.\n\nWhile he watched his display in the Star Wars Track, technicians converted the information from the Kiowa scouts into data that could be displayed graphically and distributed to the fighting vehicles in his command. Next came data from the Predator drones. They were up, covering the roads and desert south of the captured city, with one drone over it. The streets, he saw, were full of fuel and supply trucks. It was a convenient place to hide them.\n\nMost important, electronic sensors were now at work. The UIR forces were moving too fast to rely on radio silence. Commanders had to talk back and forth. Those sources were moving, but they were moving predictably now, talking almost all the time, as commanders told subunits where to go and what to do, got information and reported it up the chain. He had two brigade CPs positively identified, and probably a divisional one, too.\n\nHamm changed display to get the larger picture. Two divisions were moving south from KKMC now. That would be the enemy I Corps, spread on a ten-mile frontage, two divisions moving abreast in columns of brigades, a tank brigade in front, mobile artillery right behind it. II Corps was moving to their left, spread thin to provide flank guard. III Corps appeared to be in reserve. The deployment was conventional and predictable. First contact with WOLFPACK would be in about an hour, and he would hold back until then, allowing I Corps to pass north to south, right to left along his front.\n\nThere hadn't been time to prepare the battlefield properly. The Guard troops lacked a full engineer detachment and the antitank mines they might have strewn to dirty up the terrain. There hadn't been time to prepare proper obstacles and traps. They'd scarcely been in place for ten hours, and the full brigade less than that. All they really had was a fire plan. WOLFPACK could shoot short wherever it wanted, but all deep fire had to be west of the road.\n\n\"Pretty good picture here, sir,\" his S-2 intelligence officer said.\n\n\"Send it out.\" And with that, every fighting vehicle in the Blackhorse had the same digital picture of the enemy that he had. Then Hamm lifted his radio.\n\n\"WOLFPACK-SIX, this is BLACKHORSE-SlX.\"\n\n\"This is WOLFPACK-SIX-ACTUAL. Thanks for the data feed, Colonel,\" Eddington replied over the digital radio. Both units also knew where all the friendlies were. \"I'd say initial contact in about an hour.\"\n\n\"Ready to rock, Nick?\" Hamm asked.\n\n\"Al, it's all I can do to hold my boys back. We are locked and cocked,\" the Guard commander assured him. \"We have visual on their advance screen now.\"\n\n\"You know the drill, Nick. Good luck.\"\n\n\"Blackhorse,\" Eddington said in parting.\n\nHamm changed settings on his radio, calling BUFORD-SIX.\n\n\"I have the picture, Al,\" Marion Diggs assured him, a hundred miles back and not liking _that_ fact one bit. He was sending men into battle by remote control, and that came hard to a new general officer.\n\n\"Okay, sir, we are fully in place. All they have to do is walk in the door.\"\n\n\"Roger, BLACKHORSE. Standing by here. Out.\"\n\nThe most important work was now being done by the Predators. The UAV operators, sited with Hamm's intelligence section, circled their mini-aircraft higher to minimize the chance they might be spotted or heard. Cameras pointed down, counting and checking locations. The Immortals were on the enemy left, and the former Iraqi Guards Division on the right, west of the road. They were moving along steadily, battalions on line and tightly packed for maximum power and shock effect if they encountered opposition, ten miles behind their own reconnaissance screen. Behind the lead brigade was the divisional artillery. This force was divided in two, and as they watched in the intel track, one half halted, spread out, and set up to provide covering fire, while the other half took up and moved forward. Again, that was right out of the book. They would be in place for about ninety minutes. The Predators flew over the line of guns, marking their position from GPS signals. That data went down to the MLRS batteries. Two more Predators were sent along. These were dedicated to getting exact locations on enemy command vehicles.\n\n\"WELL, I'M NOT sure when this will go out,\" Donner told the camera. \"I'm here inside Bravo-Three-Two, number-two scout track in 3rd Platoon of B-Troop. We just got information on where the enemy is. He's about twenty miles west of us right now. There are at least two divisions moving south on the road from King Khalid Military City. I know now that a brigade of the North Carolina National Guard is in a blocking position. They deployed with the 11th Cavalry Regiment because they were at the National Training Center for routine training.\n\n\"The mood here\u2014well, how can I explain this? The troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment, they're almost like doctors, strange as that may sound. These men are angry at what's happened to their country, and I've talked to them about it, but right now, like doctors waiting for the ambulance to come into the emergency room. It's quiet in the track. We just heard that we'll be moving west in a few minutes to the jump-off point.\n\n\"I want to add a personal note. Not long ago, as you all know, I violated a rule of my profession. I did something wrong. I was misled, but the fault was mine. I learned earlier today that the President himself requested that I should come here\u2014maybe to get me killed?\" Donner adlibbed in an obvious joke. \"No, not that. This is the sort of situation that people in the news business live for. I am here where history may soon take place, surrounded by other Americans who have an important job to do, and however this turns out, this is where a reporter belongs. President Ryan, thank you for the chance.\n\n\"This is Tom Donner, southeast of KKMC, with B-Troop, 1st Squadron of the Blackhorse.\" He lowered the mike. \"Got that?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" the Army spec-5 told him. The soldier said something into his own microphone. \"Okay, that went up to the satellite, sir.\"\n\n\"Good one, Tom,\" the track commander said, lighting up a cigarette. \"Come here. I'll show you how this IVIS thing works and\u2014\" He stopped, holding his helmet with his hand to hear what was coming over the radio. \"Start'er up, Stanley,\" he told the driver. \"It's showtime.\"\n\nHE LET THEM come in. The man commanding the WOLFPACK'S reconnaissance screen was a criminal-defense attorney by profession who'd actually graduated from West Point but later decided on a civilian career. He'd never quite lost the bug, as he thought of it, though he didn't quite know why. Age forty-five now, he'd been in uniformed service of one sort or another for almost thirty years of drills and exhausting exercise and mind-numbing routine which took away from his time and his family. Now, in the front line of his recon force, he knew why.\n\nThe lead scout vehicles were two miles to his front. He estimated two platoons that he could see, a total of ten vehicles spread across three miles, moving three or four at a time in the darkness. Maybe they had low-light gear. He wasn't sure of that, but had to assume that they did. On his thermal systems he could make them out as BRDM-2 scout cars, four-wheeled, equipped with a heavy machine gun or antitank missiles. He saw both versions, but he was especially looking for the one with four radio antennas. That would be the platoon or company commander's vehicle . . .\n\n\"Antenna track direct front,\" a Bradley commander called from four hundred meters to the colonel's right. \"Range two-kay meters, moving in now.\"\n\nThe lawyer-officer lifted his head above the abbreviated ridge and scanned the field with his thermal viewer. Now was as good a time as any.\n\n\"HOOTOWL, this is Six, party in ten, I say again, party in ten seconds. Four-Three, stand by.\"\n\n\"Four-Three is standing by, SIX.\" That Bradley would take the first shot in 2nd of KKMC. The gunner selected high-explosive incendiary tracer. A BRDM wasn't tough enough to need the armor-piercing rounds he had in the dual-feed magazine of his Bushmaster cannon. He centered the target in his pipper, and the on-board computer adjusted for the range.\n\n\"Eat shit and _die_ , \" the gunner said into the interphones.\n\n\"HOOTOWL, SIX, commence firing, commence firing.\"\n\n\"Fire!\" the track commander told the gunner. The spec-4 on the 25mm gun depressed the triggers for a threeround burst. All three tracers made a line across the desert, and all three hit. The command BRDM erupted into a fireball as the vehicle's gas tank\u2014strangely for a Russian-made vehicle, it was not diesel-powered-exploded. \"Target!\" the commander said instantly, confirming that the gunner had destroyed it. \"Traverse left, target _burdum.\"_\n\n\"Identified!\" the gunner said when he was locked on.\n\n\"Fire!\" A second later: \"Target! Cease fire, traverse right! Target _burdum,_ two o'clock, range fifteen hundred!\" The Bradley's gun turret rotated the other way as the enemy vehicles started to react.\n\n\"Identified!\"\n\n\"Fire!\" And the third one was dead, ten seconds after the first.\n\nWithin a minute, all the BRDMs the screen commander had seen were burning. The brilliant white light made him cringe to see. Then other flashes appeared left and right of his position. Then: \"Move out, run 'em down!\"\n\nAcross ten miles of desert, twenty Bradleys darted from behind their hiding places, going forward, not backward, their turrets traversing and their gunners hunting for enemy scout vehicles. A short, vicious, running gunfight began, lasting ten minutes and three klicks, with the BRDMs trying to pull back but unable to shoot back effectively. Two Sagger antitank missiles were launched, but both fell short and exploded in the sand when their launch vehicles were killed by Bushmaster fire. Their heavy machine guns weren't powerful enough to punch through the Bradleys' frontal armor. The enemy screen, comprising a total of thirty vehicles, was exterminated by the end of it, and HOOTOWL owned this part of the battlefield.\n\n\"WOLFPACK, this is HOOT-SIX-ACTUAL, I think we got'em all. Their lead screen is toast. No casualties,\" he added. God damn, he thought, those Bradleys can shoot.\n\n\"SOME RADIO CHATTER got out, sir,\" the ELINT trooper next to Eddington reported. \"Getting some more now.\"\n\n\"He's calling for artillery fire,\" a Saudi intelligence officer said quickly.\n\n\"HOOT, you may expect some fire shortly,\" Eddington warned.\n\n\"Roger, understand. HOOT is moving forward.\"\n\nIT WAS SAFER than staying in place or falling back. On command, the Bradleys and Hummers darted two klicks to the north, looking for the enemy supplementary reconnaissance screen\u2014there had to be some\u2014which would move up now, probably cautiously, on direction of their brigade or divisional commanders. This, the Guard lieutenant colonel knew, would be the reconnaissance battle, the undercard for the main event, with the lightweights duking it out before the heavyweights closed. But there was a difference. He could continue to shape the battlefield for WOLIPACK. He expected to find another company of reconnaissance vehicles, closely followed by a heavy advanced guard of tanks and BMPs. The Bradley had TOW missiles to do the tanks, and the Bushmaster had been designed for the express purpose of killing the infantry carrier they called the _bimp._ Moreover, though the enemy now knew where the Blue Force recon screen was\u2014had been\u2014he would expect it to fall back, not advance.\n\nThat was plain two minutes later, when a planned-fire barrage dropped a klick behind the moving Bradleys. The other side was playing it by the book, the old Soviet book. And it wasn't a bad book, but the Americans had read it, too. HOOTOWL pressed on rapidly for another klick and stopped, finding a convenient line of low ridges, with blobs on the horizon again. The lawyer\/colonel lifted his radio to report that.\n\n\"BUFORD, THIS IS WOLFPACK, we are in contact, sir,\" Eddington relayed to Diggs from his CP. \"We just clobbered their recon element. Our screening forces now have visual on the advance guard. My intentions are to engage briefly and pull them back and right, southeast. We have enemy artillery fire dropping between the screen and the main body. Over.\"\n\n\"Roger, WOLFPACK.\" On his command screen, Diggs saw the advancing Bradleys, moving in a fairly even line, but well spread. Then they started spotting movement. The things they saw started appearing as unknown-enemy symbols on the IVIS command system.\n\nIt was immensely frustrating to the general in command. He had more knowledge of a developing battle than had ever been possible in the history of warfare. He had the ability now to tell platoons what to do, where to go, whom to shoot\u2014 _but he couldn't allow himself to do that._ He'd approved the intentions of Eddington, Hamm, and Magruder, coordinating their plans in space and time, and now as their commander he had to let them do it their way, interfering only if something went wrong or some new and unexpected situation offered itself. The commander of American forces in the Kingdom, he was now a spectator. The black general shook his head in wonderment. He'd known it would be like this. He hadn't known how hard it would hit him.\n\nIT WAS ALMOST time. Hamm had his squadrons advancing abreast, covering only ten kilometers each, but separated by intervals of ten more. In every case, the squadron commanders had opted to have their scout troops in the lead, and their tank companies in reserve. Each troop had nine tanks and thirteen Brads, plus two mortar-carrying M113 tracks. In front of them, now seven kilometers away, were the brigades of UIR II Corps, bloodied by the breakthrough battles north of KKMC, weakened, but probably alert. There was nothing like violent death to get someone's attention. His helicopters and video feed from the Predators had well defined their positions. He knew where they were. They didn't know about him yet probably, he had to admit. Certainly they were trying as hard as he would have done to make sure. His final order was for his helicopters to make one more sweep of the intervening terrain for an enemy outpost line. Everything else was pretty well locked into place, and fifty miles back, his Apaches started lifting off, along with their Kiowa scouts, for their part in the main event.\n\nTHE F-15E STRIKE Eagles were all up north. Two of their number had been lost earlier in the day, including that of the squadron commander. Now, protected by HARM-EQUIPPED F-16s, they were pounding the bridges and causeways across the twin-rivers estuary with smart bombs. They could see tanks on the ground, burning ones west of the swamps and intact ones bunched up to the east. In an exciting hour, every route across was destroyed by repeated hits.\n\nThe F-15Cs were over the KKMC area, as always under AWACS control. One group of four stayed high, outside the envelope of the mobile SAMs with the advancing land force. Their job was to watch for UIR fighters who might get in the way of things. The rest were hunting for helicopters belonging to the armored divisions. It didn't carry the prestige of a fighter kill\u2014but a kill was a kill, and was something they could do with near-total impunity. Better still, generals traveled in helicopters, and most of all, those would be part of the UIR reconnaissance effort, and that, the plan said, couldn't be allowed.\n\nBelow them, word must have gotten out in a hurry. Only three choppers had been killed during the daylight hours, but with the coming of darkness a number had lifted off, half of them splashed in the first ten minutes. It was so different from the last time. The hunting was pretty easy. The enemy, on the offense, had to offer battle\u2014couldn't hide in shelters, couldn't disperse. That suited the Eagle drivers. One driver, south of KKMC, was vectored by his AWACS, located a chopper on his look-down radar, selected AIM-120, and triggered the missile off in seconds. He watched the missile all the way in, spotting the fireball that jerked left and splattered widely on the ground. Part of him thought it a needless waste of a perfectly good Slammer. But a kill was a kill. That would be the last chopper kill of the evening. The pilots heard from their E-3B Sentry control aircraft that friendly choppers were now entering the battle area, and weapons went tight on the Eagles.\n\nLESS THAN HALF of his Bradley gunners had ever fired TOW missiles for real, though all had done so hundreds of times in simulation. HOOTOWL waited for the advance guard to get just within the margins. It was tricky. The supplementary recon screen was closer still. The Bradleys engaged them first, and this gunfight was a little more two-sided. Two BRDMs were actually behind the American scout line. Both turned at once. One nearly drove over a HMMWV, hosing it with its machine gun before a Bradley blew it apart. The armored vehicle raced to the site, finding one wounded survivor from the three-man crew on the Hummer. The infantrymen tended to him while the driver got up on a berm and the gunner elevated his TOW launcher.\n\nThe leading group of tanks was shooting now, seeking out the flashes of the Bradley guns, activating their own night-vision systems, and again there was a brief, vicious battle over the barren, unlit ground. One Bradley was hit and exploded, killing all aboard. The rest got off one or two missiles each, collecting twenty tanks in reply before their commander called them back, and just escaping the artillery barrage called in by the enemy tank commander on their positions. HOOTOWL left behind that one Bradley, and two Hummers, and the first American ground casualties of the Second Persian Gulf War. These were reported up the line.\n\nIT WAS RIGHT after lunch in Washington. The President had eaten lightly, and the word came into the Situation Room just after he'd finished, still able to look down at the gold-trimmed plate, the crust of bread from his sandwich, and the chips he'd not eaten. The news of the deaths hit him hard, harder, somehow, than the casualties on USS _Yorktown_ or the six missing aviators\u2014 _missing_ didn't necessarily mean _dead_ , did it? he allowed himself to think. These men certainly were. National Guardsmen, he'd learned. Citizen soldiers most often used to help people after floods or hurricanes . . .\n\n\"Mr. President, would you have gone over there for this mission?\" General Moore asked, even before Robby Jackson could speak. \"If you were twenty-something again, a Marine lieutenant, and they told you to go, you'd go, right?\"\n\n\"I suppose\u2014no, no, I'd go. I'd have to.\"\n\n\"So did they, sir,\" Mickey Moore told him.\n\n\"That's the job, Jack,\" Robby said quietly. \"That's what they pay us for.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" And he had to admit that it was what they paid him for, too.\n\nTHE FOUR F-117 Nighthawks landed at Al Kharj, rolling out and taxiing to shelters. The transports carrying the spare pilots and ground crews were right behind. Intelligence officers down from Riyadh met the latter group, taking the spare pilots aside for their first mission briefing in a war which was just now getting started in a big way.\n\nTHE MAJOR GENERAL in charge of the Immortals Division was in his command vehicle, trying to make sense of things. It had been a quite satisfactory war to this point. II Corps had done its job, blasting open the hole, allowing the main force to shoot through, and until an hour before, the picture had been both clear and pleasing. Yes, there were Saudi forces heading southwest for him, but they were the best part of a day away. By then, he'd be on the outskirts of their capital, and there were other plans for them as well. At dawn, II Corps would jump east from its covering position on his left, feinting toward the oil fields. That should give the Saudis second thoughts. Certainly it would give him another day in which, with luck, he'd get some, maybe all of the Saudi government. Maybe even the royal family\u2014or, if they fled, as they might well do, then the Kingdom would be leaderless, and then his country would have won the war.\n\nIt had been costly to this point. II Corps had paid the price of half its combat power to deliver the Army of God this far, but victory had never been cheaply bought. Nor would it be the case here. His forward screen had disappeared right off the radio net. One call of contact with unknown forces, a request for artillery support, then nothing. He knew that a Saudi force was somewhere ahead of him. He knew it was the remains of the 4th Brigade, which II Corps had almost but not quite immolated. He knew it had fought hard north of KKMC and then pulled back ... it had probably been ordered to hold so that the city could be evacuated . . . it was probably still strong enough to chew up his reconnaissance force. He didn't know where the American cavalry regiment was . . . probably to his cast. He knew that there might be another American brigade somewhere, probably also to his east. He wished for helicopters, but he'd just lost one to American fighters, along with his chief intelligence officer. So much for the air support he'd been promised. The only friendly fighter he'd seen all day had been a smoking hole in the ground just east of KKMC. But though Americans could annoy him, they couldn't stop him, and if he got to Riyadh on time, then he could send troops to cover most of the Saudi airfields and preempt that threat. So the key to the operation, as his Corps and Army command had told him, was to press on with all possible speed. With that decision made, he ordered his lead brigade to advance as scheduled, with his advance guard playing the reconnaissance role. They'd just reported contact and a battle, losses taken and inflicted on an enemy as yet unidentified, but who had withdrawn after a brief firefight. Probably that Saudi force, he decided, doing its best to sting and run, and he'd run it down after sunrise. He gave the orders, informed his staff of his intentions, and left the command post to drive forward, wanting to see things at the front, as a good general should, while the staff radioed orders to subordinate commanders.\n\nTHERE WERE SOME screening elements, the Kiowas reported. Not many. They'd probably been badly shot up on the drive south, Colonel Hamm thought. He directed one of his squadrons to maneuver left to avoid, and told his air commander to detail an Apache to deal with that one in a few minutes. One of the others could be bypassed easily. The third was directly in the path of 3rd Squadron, and that was just too bad. The position of the BRDMs was marked on the IVIS screens, along with most of UIR's battered II Corps.\n\nSO WERE THE Immortals. Eddington saw that the advance guard, with the leading elements of the main force close behind, was just entering gun range of his tanks, advancing at about twenty kilometers per hour. He called Hamm.\n\n\"Five minutes from _now._ Good luck, Al.\"\n\n\"You, too, Nick,\" Eddington heard.\n\nIT WAS CALLED synchronicity. Thirty miles apart, several groups of Paladin mobile guns elevated their tubes and pointed them to spots picked by Predator drones and ELINT intercepts. The cannoneers of the new age punched the proper coordinates into their computers so that the widely separated weapons could fire to the same point. Eyes were on clocks now, watching the digital numbers change, one second at a time, marching toward 22:30:00 Lima time, 19:30:00 Zulu, 14:30:00 Washington.\n\nIt was much the same in the Multiple-Launch Rocket System tracks. There the troops made sure their compartments were scaled, locked their suspension to stabilize the vehicles during the launch cycle, and then closed down windshield shutters. The exhaust from their rockets could be lethal.\n\nSouth of KKMC, the Carolina Guard tankers watched the advancing white blobs. Gunners thumbed their laser range-finders. The lead screening elements were now 2,500 meters distant, and the follow-on line of the main body a thousand behind them, mixed tanks and BMPs.\n\nSoutheast of KKMC, the Blackhorse was advancing at fifteen kph now, toward a line of targets on a ridge four thousand meters west.\n\nIt wasn't perfect. B-Troop, 1st of the 11th, stumbled right into an unsuspected BRDM position and opened fire on its own, starting fireballs into the air, turning eyes, and alerting people a few seconds too soon, but in the end that didn't matter, as the digital numbers kept changing at the same pace, either fast or slow, depending on the perceptions of the onlookers.\n\nEddington timed it to the second. Unable to smoke throughout the evening, for fear of making a glow that would show up on somebody's night viewer, he opened his Zippo and flicked it as 59 changed to 00. A little bit of light wouldn't matter . . . now.\n\nTHE ARTILLERY WENT first, already ordered to time its fire to the second. The most spectacular were the MLRS rockets, twelve from each launcher, rippling out less than two seconds apart, their flaming motors illuminating the exhaust smoke as they streaked into a sky no longer dark. By 22:30:30, nearly two hundred of the M77 free-flight rockets were in the air. By that time, the mobile guns were being reloaded, their lanyards pulled, the guns discharged, and now their breeches open for the next set of rounds.\n\nThe night was clear, and the light show could not be missed by anyone within a hundred miles. Fighter pilots aloft to the northeast saw the rockets fly, and looked closely at their course. They didn't want to be in the same sky with the things.\n\nIraqi officers in the advancing Guards Armored Division saw them first, coming up from the south, and next they saw that all were angling west of the north-south road from KKMC to Al Artawiyah. Many of them had seen the same sight as lieutenants and captains, and knew exactly what they meant. Steel rain was coming. Some were paralyzed by the sight. Others shouted orders for men to get cover, close their hatches, and ride it out.\n\nThat wasn't possible for the divisional artillerymen. Most of their guns were towed, and most of the gunners were in the open, ammunition trucks standing by for the fire mission that had to be coming. They saw the rocket motors burn out, noted their direction, and there was little to be done but wait. Men dived to the ground, usually scattering first, holding their helmets in place and praying that the damned things were heading somewhere else.\n\nThe rockets tipped over on apogee, heading back to the ground. At several thousand feet, a timer blew open the noses, and each projectile released 644 submunitions, each weighing half a pound, which made for 7,728 for each of the launchers employed. All were targeted at the Guards Division's artillery. That was their longest-reaching weapon, and Eddington wanted it out of play immediately. As was the practice in the U.S. Army, MLRS was the unit commander's personal shotgun. A few of the Iraqi gunners looked up. They couldn't see or hear them coming, but come they did.\n\nFrom a distance, it looked like sparklers on the ground, or maybe firecrackers at Chinese New Year, dancing and exploding in celebration. It was noisy death for those on the ground, as a total of over seventy _thousand_ of the munitions exploded over an area of about two hundred acres. Trucks caught fire and exploded in flame. Propellant charges lit off in secondary explosions, but most of all the artillerymen were slaughtered, over eighty percent of them killed or wounded by the first volley. There would be two more. Back of WOLFPACK'S center, the launch vehicles scuttled back to their resupply trucks. Just before getting there, the expended \"six-pack\" launch cells were ejected and new ones hoisted into place with rigging equipment. It took about five minutes to accomplish the reload.\n\nIt was faster for the 155mm guns. These, too, were gunning for their enemy counterparts, and their rounds were every bit as accurate as the rockets. It was the most mechanistic of military activities. The gun did the killing and the people served the gun. They couldn't see their work, and in this case didn't even have a forward-observer to tell them how they were doing, but they'd learned that with GPS doing the aiming, it didn't matter\u2014and if things went as planned, they would later see the results of their deadly work.\n\nPerversely, those with direct views of the advancing enemy fired last, the tankers waiting for the word, delivered as company commanders fired first for their units.\n\nFor all its lethality, the fire-control system for the Abrams tank is one of the simplest mechanisms ever placed in the hands of soldiers, and even easier to use than the million-dollar crew-training simulators. The gunners each had assigned sectors, and the initial rounds fired by the company commanders had been HEAT\u2014high-explosive antitank\u2014rounds, which made a distinctive visual signature. Tanks were assigned areas left or right of those first kills. The thermal-imaging viewing systems keyed on heat, infrared radiation. Their targets were warmer than the desert landscape at night and announced their presence as clearly as lightbulbs. Each gunner was told what area to pick from, and each selected an advancing T-80. Centering the target in the sight, the laser buttons were depressed. The beam went out to the target and reflected back. The return signal told the ballistic computer the target's distance, speed, and direction of movement. Other sensors told it the outside temperature, the temperature of the ammunition, atmospheric density, wind direction and speed, the condition of the gun (hot ones droop), and how many shells had been fired through the tube to this point in its career. The computer digested this and other information, processed it, and when finished, flashed a white rectangle in the gunsight to tell the gunner the system was on target. Then it was just a matter of his closing his index fingers on the yoke's twin triggers. The tank lurched, the breech surged back, the muzzle flash blinded the sight momentarily, and the \"sabot\" rounds streaked downrange at more than a mile a second. The projectiles were like overly thick arrows, less than the length of a man's arm, and two inches in diameter, with stubby fins on the tail that burned from air friction in their brief flight, and trailing tracers for the tank commander to watch the \"silver bullets\" all the way in.\n\nThe targets were Russian-made T-80s, old tanks with old design histories. They were much smaller than their American adversaries, mainly due to their inadequate engine power, and their diminished size had made for a number of design compromises. There was a fuel tank in the front, the line for which went along the turret ring. Gun rounds were fitted in slots that nested in the rear fuel tank, so that their ammunition was surrounded by diesel fuel. Finally, to save on turret space, the loader had been replaced by an automated loading system, which in addition to being slower than a man, also required that a live round be in the open in the turret at all times. It might not have made all that much of a difference in any case, but it did make for spectacular kills.\n\nThe second T-80 to die took a \"silver bullet\" at the base of the turret. The incoming round obliterated the fuel line first of all, and in the process of crashing through the armor created a lethal shower of fragments moving at over a thousand meters per second in the cramped confines, caroming off the inner surface and chopping the crewmen to bits; at the same time the ready round ignited on its tray and other rounds exploded in their racks. The crew was already dead when the ammunition exploded, also setting off the fuel and creating an explosion which blew the heavy turret fifty feet straight up in what the Army called a \"catastrophic kill.\" Fifteen others died the same way in the space of three seconds. The Immortals Division's advance guard evaporated in ten more, and the only resistance they were able to offer was that the pyres of their vehicles obscured the battlefield.\n\nFire shifted at once to the main body, three battalions advancing on line, now just over three thousand meters away, a total of just over a hundred fifty advancing toward a battalion of fifty-four.\n\nThe commanders of the Iranian tanks were mainly still out of their turrets, the better to see, despite their having seen the rockets lifting off several miles downrange. They next saw a linear ripple of white and orange three kilometers in the distance, followed by explosions to their direct front. The quicker of the officers and conscripted tank commanders ordered their gunners to get rounds off at the muzzle flashes, and no less than ten did shoot, but they hadn't had time to gauge the range, and all their rounds fell short. The Iranian crews were drilled in what to do, and they hadn't as yet had time for fear to replace shock. Some started reload cycles, while others worked their range finders to get off properly aimed rounds, but then the horizon turned orange again, and what followed scarcely gave them the time to take note of the change of color in the sky.\n\nThe next volley of fifty-four main-gun rounds found forty-four marks, ten of the T-80s being double-targeted. This was less than twenty seconds into the engagement.\n\n\"Find one still moving,\" one E-6 tank commander said to his gunner. The battlefield was lighting up now, and the fireballs interfered with the thermal viewers. There. The gunner got his laser range\u20143,650m\u2014the box came up, and he fired. The sights blanked, then came back, and he could see the tracer of his round arcing flat across the desert, all the way in\n\n\"Target!\" the commander said. \"Shift fire.\"\n\n\"Identified\u2014got one!\"\n\n\"Fire!\" the commander ordered.\n\n\"On the way!\" The gunner fired his third round of the half-minute, and three seconds later, another T-80 turret became a ballistic object.\n\nJust that fast, the tank phase of the battle was over.\n\nThe Bradleys were engaging the advancing BMPs, their Bushmaster cannons reaching out. It was slower for them, the range more difficult for their lighter guns, but the result was just as final.\n\nTHE COMMANDER OF the Immortals was just approaching the trail elements of the lead brigade when he saw the rockets fly. Telling his driver to pull over, he stood and turned in his command vehicle and saw the secondary explosions of his divisional artillery array, when, turning back forward, he saw the second volley of Eddington's tanks. Forty percent of his combat power had disappeared in less than a minute. Even before the shock hit him, he knew that he'd walked into an ambush\u2014but of what?\n\nTHE MLRS ROCKETS which had robbed the Immortals of their artillery had come from the east, not the south. It was Hamm's gift to the National Guardsmen, who were unable to go after the Iranian guns themselves with the existing fire plan. Blackhorse's MLRS had done that, then shifted fire to make way for the regiment's Apache attack helicopters, which were striking deep, actually beyond the 11 Corps units now being engaged by the three ground squadrons.\n\nThe division of labor on this battlefield had been determined in principle the previous day, and developments had not changed anyone's thoughts. Artillery would initially target artillery. Tanks would target tanks. The helicopters were out to kill commanders. The Immortals Division CP had stopped twenty minutes earlier. Ten minutes before the first rocket launch, Apache-Kiowa teams looped around from the north, approaching from the rear and heading for the places from which the radio signals were emitting. First would come the division-level targets, followed by the brigades.\n\nThe Immortals' staff was just coming to terms with the incoming signals. Some officers requested confirmation or clarification, information needed before they could react properly to the situation. That was the problem with command posts. They were the institutional brains of the units they commanded, and the people who made up the decision process had to be together to function.\n\nFrom six kilometers away, the collection of vehicles was obvious. Four SAM-shooters were oriented south, and there was a ring of AAA guns, too. Those went first. The Apaches of P-(Attack)-Troop stopped in place, picking a spot with nothing dangerous around, and hovering at about a hundred feet. Front-seated gunners, all of them young warrant officers, used optical equipment to zoom in, selected the first group of targets, and selected Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The first launch was made by surprise, but an Iranian soldier saw the flash, and shouted to a gun crew, which slewed its guns around and started shooting before the missiles were all the way on. What followed was a madhouse. The targeted Apache dodged left, accelerating sideways at fifty knots to throw them off, but also ruining the aim of the startled gunner, who had to shoot again, as the first missile went wide. The other AH-64s were not hampered, and of their six launches, five hit. In another minute, the antiair problem was neutralized, and the attack choppers closed. They could see people running now, out and away from the command tracks. Some soldiers in the command security group started firing their rifles into the sky, and there was more structured activity from machine-gunners, but surprise was on the other side. The gunners fired 2.75-inch rockets to blanket the area, Hellfires to eliminate the few remaining armored vehicles, and then shifted to their 30mm cannon. In display of their rage, they closed in now, like the oversized insects they appeared to be, buzzing and slipping from side to side while the gunners looked for people the heavier weapons had missed. There was noplace to hide on the flat terrain, and the human bodies glowed on the dark, colder surface, and the gunners hunted them down in groups, in pairs, and finally one by one, sweeping across the site like harvesters. In their pre-mission discussion on the flight line, it had been decided that, unlike in 1991, helicopters would not accept surrender in this war, and the 30mm projectiles had explosive tips. P-Troop\u2014they called themselves the Predators\u2014lingered for ten minutes before they were satisfied that every single vehicle was destroyed and every moving body dead before they twisted in the sky, dipped their noses, and headed back east for their rearm points.\n\nTHE PREMATURE ATTACK on II Corps's reconnaissance element had started one part of this battle a little too early, and alerted a reasonably intact tank company sooner than intended, but the enemy tanks were still white blobs on a black background, and less than four thousand meters away.\n\n\"Battlestars engage,\" B-Troop's commander ordered, firing off his first round, soon to be followed by eight more. Six hit, even at this extreme range, and the attack by the Blackhorse on II Corps began even before the first MLRS volley. The next volley was delivered on the move, and five more tanks exploded, their return rounds falling short. It was a little harder to hit this way. Though the gun was stabilized, hitting a bump could throw the aim off, and misses were expected, if not exactly welcomed.\n\nB-Troop's tanks were spaced fully half a kilometer apart, and each had a hunting zone exactly that wide, and the farther they went, the more targets appeared. The Bradley scout vehicles hung back a hundred yards or so, and their gunners looked for infantry who might wield antitank weapons. II Corps's two divisions were spread across twenty miles of linear space and about eight miles of depth, so said the IVIS gear. In ten minutes, B-Troop chopped its way through a battalion diminished by the Saudis and now erased by the Americans. The bonus came ten minutes later, when they spotted a battery of artillery setting up. The Bradleys got those, sweeping the area with their 25mm cannon and adding to the fireballs that gave the lie to the sunset only four hours old.\n\n\"DAMN.\" EDDINGTON MERELY spoke the word, without any emphasis at all. He had been called forward by his battalion commanders and was now standing up in his HMMWV.\n\n\"You believe less than five minutes?\" LOBO-SIX asked. He'd heard the amazement himself over his battalion net: \"Is that all?\" more than one sergeant had asked aloud. It was crummy radio discipline, but everyone was thinking the same thing.\n\nBut there was more to do than admire the work. Eddington lifted his radio handset and called for his brigade S-2.\n\n\"What's Predator tell us?\"\n\n\"We have two more brigades still southbound, but they slowed some, sir. They're roughly nine klicks north of your line on the near one, and twelve on the far one.\"\n\n\"Put me through to BUFORD,\" WOLFPACK-SIX ordered.\n\nTHE GENERAL WAS still in the same place, with death before and behind. Scarcely ten minutes had passed. Three tanks and twelve BMPs had run backward, stopping at a depression and holding position while they waited for instructions. There were men coming back now, too, some wounded, most not. He could not scream at them. If anything, the shock of the moment was harder on him than it was on them.\n\nHe'd already tried contacting his divisional command post, but gotten only static in return, and for all his experience in uniform, his time in command, the schools he'd attended, and the exercises he'd won and lost\u2014nothing had prepared him for this.\n\nBut he still had more than half a division to command. Two of his brigades were still fully intact, and he hadn't come here to lose. He ordered his driver to turn and head back. To the surviving elements of the lead brigade went orders to hold until further word. He had to maneuver. He'd run into a nightmare, but it couldn't be everywhere.\n\n\"WHAT DO YOU propose, Eddington?\"\n\n\"General Diggs, I want to move my people north. We just ate up two tank brigades easier'n a plate full of grits. The enemy's artillery is largely destroyed, sir, and I have a clear field in front of me.\"\n\n\"Okay, take your time and watch your flanks. I'll notify BLACKHORSE.\"\n\n\"Roger that, sir. We'll be moving in twenty.\"\n\nThey'd thought about this possibility, of course. There was even a sketch plan on the maps. LOBO would shift and extend right. WHITEFANG would go straight north, straddling the road, and the so far unengaged Battalion Task Force COYOTE would take the left, echeloned to be able to sweep in from the rough terrain to the west. From their new positions, the brigade would grind north to phaselines spaced ten kilometers apart. They'd have to move slowly because of the darkness, the unfamiliar ground, and the fact that it was only half a plan, but the activation code word was NATHAN, and the first phase-line was MANASSAS. Eddington hoped Diggs wouldn't mind.\n\n\"This is WOLFPACK-SIX to all sixes. Code word is NATHAN. I repeat, we are activating Plan NATHAN in two-zero minutes. Acknowledge,\" he ordered.\n\nAll three battalion commanders chimed in seconds later.\n\nDIGGS HAD KEPT him in the loop, and the picture, such as it was, was up on the command screen in the M4 God Track. Colonel Magruder wasn't all that surprised at the initial results, except maybe that the Guardsmen had done so well. Rather more surprising was the progress the 10th had made. Advancing at a steady thirty kilometers per hour, he was well into the former Iraq, and ready to turn south. This he did at 0200L. His helicopter squadron left behind to cover the Kuwaitis, he felt a little naked at the moment, but it was still dark and would be for another four hours. By then he'd be back in Saudi. BUFFALO-SIX judged that he had the best cavalry mission of all. Here he was, deep into enemy territory, and deeper still in his rear. Just like what Colonel John Grierson had done to Johnny Reb, and what he and the Buffalo Soldiers had done to the Apaches. He ordered his units to spread wide. Reconnaissance said there wasn't much out here to get in the way, that the enemy's main strength was deep in the Kingdom. Well, he didn't think it would get much deeper, and all he had to do was slam the door behind.\n\nDONNER WAS STANDING up in the top hatch of the scout track, behind the turret, with his Army cameraman next to him. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. He'd gotten the assault on the gun battery on tape, though he didn't think the tape would be all that usable, what with all the bouncing and bumping. All around him was destruction. Behind to the southeast were at least a hundred burned-out tanks, trucks, and other things he didn't recognize, and it had all happened in less than an hour. He lurched forward, striking his face on the hatch rim when the Bradley stopped.\n\n\"Get security out!\" the track commander shouted. \"We're gonna be here for a bit.\"\n\nThe Bradleys were arrayed in a circle, about a mile north of the wrecked UIR guns. There was nothing moving around them, which the gunner made sure of by traversing his turret around. The rear hatch opened, and two men jumped out, first looking and then running, rifles in hand.\n\n\"Come here,\" the sergeant said, holding his hand out. Donner took it and climbed to the vehicle's roof. \"Want a smoke?\"\n\nDonner shook his head. \"Gave it up.\"\n\n\"Yeah? Well, those folks'll stop smoking in a day or two,\" he said, gesturing to the mess a mile back. The sergeant thought that was a pretty good one. He lifted binoculars to his eyes and looked around, confirming what the gunsights said.\n\n\"What do you think of this?\" the reporter asked, tapping his cameraman.\n\n\"I think this is what they pay me for, and it all works.\"\n\n\"What are we stopped for?\"\n\n\"We'll get some fuel in half an hour, and we need to replenish ammo.\" He put the glasses down.\n\n\"We need fuel? We haven't been moving that much.\"\n\n\"Well, the colonel thinks tomorrow might be kinda busy, too.\" He turned. \"What do _you_ think, Tom?\"\n**62**\n\n**READY AND FORWARD!**\n\n**W** HAT PEOPLE CALL \"THE initiative,\" whether in war or any other field of human activity, is never anything more or less than a psychological advantage. It combines one side's feeling that they are winning with the other side's feeling that something has gone wrong\u2014that they must now prepare for and respond to the actions of their enemy instead of preparing their own offensive action. Couched in terms of \"momentum\" or \"ascendancy,\" it really always comes down to who is doing what to whom, and a sudden change in that equation will have a stronger effect than that of a gradual buildup to the same set of circumstances. The expected, when replaced by the unexpected, lingers for a time, lingers in the mind, since it is easier, for a while, to deny rather than to adapt, and that just makes things harder for those who are being done _to_. For the doers, there are other tasks.\n\nFor the American forces in contact, there came a brief, unwelcome, but necessary pause. It should have been easiest of all for Colonel Nick Eddington of WOLFPACK, but it wasn't. His force of National Guard troops had done little more than stay in place for their first battle, which had allowed the enemy to come into their kill box, an ambush fifteen miles wide by fifteen deep. Except for the brigade's reconnaissance screen, the men from Carolina had hardly moved at all. But now that had to change, and Eddington was reminded of the fact that though he was after a fashion a ballet master, the things performing the maneuvering were tanks, ponderous and clumsy, moving in the dark across unfamiliar ground.\n\nTechnology helped. He had radios to tell his people when and where to go, and the IVIS system to tell them how. Task Force LOBO started by backing off the reverseslope positions that had served them so well only forty minutes earlier, turning south and heading through preselected navigational way points to destinations less than ten kilometers south of their initial fighting positions. In the process, the augmented battalion diluted itself, spread itself more thinly than it had been, a feat made possible because the battalion staff was able to program the move electronically and transmit their intentions to sub-unit commanders, who, assigned areas of responsibility, were able to subdivide them almost automatically, until every single vehicle knew its destination to the meter. The initial delay of twenty minutes from notification that Plan NATHAN was about to be activated allowed that selection process to begin. The lateral shift required an hour, with the vehicles moving across what appeared to be vacant land at the speed of commuters in a particularly congested rush hour. Even so, it worked, and an hour from the time the movement was started, it had been completed. WOLFPACK, now covering well over twenty miles of lateral space, wheeled, turned north, and started moving out at ten kilometers per hour, with recon teams darting forward faster still to take position five klicks in advance of the main body. That was well short of what the book said the interval should be. Eddington had to be mindful of the fact that he was maneuvering a large force of part-time soldiers whose dependence on their electronic technology was a little too great for his total comfort. He'd keep his force of three fighting battalions under tight control until contact was established and the overall picture was clear.\n\nIT SURPRISED TOM Donner that the support vehicles, nearly all of them robust-looking trucks, were able to follow the fighting units as quickly as they did. Somehow he hadn't understood how important this was, accustomed as he was to hitting one particular gas station once or twice a week. Here the service personnel had to be as mobile as their customers, and that, he realized, was a major task. The fuel trucks set up. The Bradleys and battle tanks came to them two at a time, then went back to their perimeter posts, where ammunition was dropped off other trucks for the track crewmen to load up. Every Bradley, he learned, had a Sears socket wrench, in nearly every case bought out of the gunner's salary, to facilitate reloading of the Bushmaster magazine. It worked better than the tool designed for the purpose. That was probably worth a little story, he thought with a distant smile.\n\nThe troop commander, now in his command HMMWV instead of his M1A2, raced about from track to track to ascertain the condition of each vehicle and crew. He saved Three-Two for the last.\n\n\"Mr. Donner, you doing okay, sir?\"\n\nThe reporter sipped at coffee brewed up by the Bradley's driver, and nodded. \"Is it always like this?\" he asked the young officer.\n\n\"First time for me, sir. Pretty much like training, though.\"\n\n\"What do you _think_ about all this?\" the journalist asked. \"I mean, back there, you and your people, well, _killed_ a lot of the enemy.\"\n\nThe captain thought about that briefly. \"Sir, you ever cover tornadoes and hurricanes and stuff?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And people get their lives all messed up, and you ask them what it's like, right?\"\n\n\"That's my job.\"\n\n\"Same with us. These guys made war on us. We're making war back. If they don't like it, well, maybe next time they'll think more about it. Sir, I got an uncle in Texas\u2014uncle and an aunt, actually. Used to be a golf pro, he taught me how to play, then went to work for Cobra\u2014the club company, okay? Right before we left Fort Irwin, my mom called and told me they both died of that Ebola shit, sir. You _really_ want to know what we think of this?\" asked an officer who'd killed five tanks this night. \"Saddle up, Mr. Donner. The Blackhorse will be rolling in ten. You can expect contact right before dawn, sir.\" There was a dull flash on the horizon, followed a minute or so later by the rumble of distant thunder. \"I guess the Apaches are starting early.\"\n\nFifteen miles to the northwest, II Corps's command post had just been destroyed.\n\nThe plan was evolving. First Squadron would pivot and drive north through remaining II Corps units. Third Squadron would come south through lighter opposition, massing the regiment for the first attack into the enemy III Corps's left flank. Ten miles away, Hamm was moving his artillery to facilitate the destruction of the remains of II Corps, whose commanders his helicopter squadron had just eliminated.\n\nEDDINGTON REMINDED HIMSELF again that he had to keep it simple. Despite all his years of study and the name he'd assigned to his counterstroke, he _wasn't_ Nathan Bedford Forrest, and this battlefield _wasn't_ small enough for him to ad-lib his maneuvers, as that racist genius had done so often in the War of the Northern Aggression.\n\nHOOTOWL was spread especially thin now, with the brigade's front almost doubled in the last ninety minutes, and that was slowing them down. Probably not a bad thing, the colonel thought. He had to be patient. The enemy force couldn't maneuver too far east for fear of running into the left of Blackhorse\u2014assuming they knew it was there, he thought\u2014and the ground to the west was too choppy to allow easy movement. They'd tried the middle and gotten pounded for it. So the logical move for the enemy I Corps was to try a limited envelopment maneuver, probably weighted to the east. Incoming pictures from the Predator drones started to confirm that.\n\nTHE COMMANDER OF the Immortals no longer had a proper command post to use, and so he absorbed what was left of the command post from the vanished 1st Brigade, having also learned that he had to keep moving at all times. The first order of business for him had been to reestablish contact with I Corps command, which had proved somewhat difficult, as that CP had been on the move when he'd walked into the American\u2014it had to be American\u2014ambush along the road to Al Artawiyah. Now I Corps was setting up again, and probably talking a lot to Army command. He broke in, got the three-star, a fellow Iranian, and told what he could as rapidly as possible.\n\n\"There cannot be more than a single brigade,\" his immediate superior assured him. \"What will you do?\"\n\n\"I shall mass my remaining forces and strike from both flanks before dawn,\" the divisional commander replied. It wasn't as though he had much choice in the matter, and both senior officers knew it. I Corps couldn't retreat, because the government which had ordered it to march would not countenance that. Staying still meant waiting for the Saudi forces storming down from the Kuwaiti border. The task, then, was to regain the initiative by overpowering the American blocking force by maneuver and shock effect. That was what tanks were designed to do, and he had more than four hundred still under his command.\n\n\"Approved. I will dispatch you my corps artillery. Guards Armored on your right will do the same. Accomplish your breakthrough,\" his fellow Iranian told him. \"Then we will drive to Riyadh by dusk.\"\n\nVery well, the Immortals commander thought. He ordered his 2nd Brigade to slow its advance, allowing 3rd to catch up, concentrate, and maneuver east. To his west, the Iraqis would be doing much the same in mirror image. Second would advance to contact, fix the enemy flank, and 3rd would sweep around, taking them in the rear. The center he would leave empty.\n\n\"THEY'VE STOPPED. THE lead brigade has stopped. They're eight klicks north,\" the brigade S-2 said. \"HOOT should have visual on them in a few minutes to confirm.\" That explained what one of the enemy forces to his front was doing. The western group was somewhat farther back, not stopped, but moving slowly forward, evidently waiting for orders or some change in their dispositions. His opponent and his people were taking time to think.\n\nEddington couldn't allow that.\n\nThe only real problem with MLRS was that it had a minimum range far less convenient than the maximum. For the second mission that night, the rocket vehicles, which hadn't really moved at all, locked their suspensions in place and elevated their launcher boxes, again aimed by electronic information only. Again the night was disturbed by the streaks of rocket trails, though this time on much lower trajectories. Tube artillery did the same, with both forces dividing their attention between the advance brigades left and right of the highway.\n\nThe purpose was more psychological than real. The mini-bomblets of the MLRS rockets would not _kill_ a tank. A lucky fall atop a rear deck might disable a diesel engine, and the sides of the BMP infantry carriers could sometimes be penetrated by a nearby detonation, but these were chance events. The real effect was to make the enemy button up, to limit their ability to see, and with the falling steel rain, limit their ability to think. Officers who'd leaped from their command tanks to confer had to run back, some of them killed or wounded by the sudden barrage. Sitting safely in stationary vehicles, they heard the ping sound of fragments bounding off their armor, and peered out their vision systems to see if the artillery barrage presaged a proper attack. The less numerous 155mm artillery rounds were a greater danger, all the more so since the American gun rounds were not bursting in the air, but were \"common\" shells that hit the ground first. The laws of probability guaranteed that some of the vehicles would be hit\u2014and some were, erupting into fireballs as the rest of 2nd Brigade was forced to hold in place, ordered to do so while 3rd moved up to their left. Unable to move and, with the loss of their own divisional artillery, unable to respond in kind, they could do nothing but cringe and stay alert, look out of their vehicles, and watch the shells and bomblcts fall.\n\nB-TROOP, 1ST of the 11th, moved out on schedule, spreading out and traveling due north, with the Bradley scouts in the lead and the \"Battlestar\" tanks half a klick behind, ready to respond to a report of contact. It provided a strange revelation to Donner. An intelligent man, and even an outdoorsman of sorts who enjoyed backpacking with his family on the Appalachian Trail, he spent as much time as he could looking out of the Bradley, and didn't have a clue as to what was really going on. He finally overcame his embarrassment and got on the interphones to ask the track commander how _he_ knew, and was called forward, where he crammed himself as a third man in a space designed for two\u2014more like one and a half, the reporter thought.\n\n\"We're here,\" the staff sergeant told him, touching his finger to the IVIS screen. \"We're going that way. 'Cording to this, there's nobody around to bother us, but we're looking out for that. The enemy\"\u2014he changed the display somewhat\u2014\"is here, and we're along this line.\"\n\n\"How far?\"\n\n\"About twelve klicks and we should start to see 'cm.\"\n\n\"How good is this information?\" Donner asked.\n\n\"It got us this far, Tom,\" the track commander pointed out.\n\nThe pattern of movement was annoying, and reminded the reporter of stop-and-go traffic on a Friday afternoon. The armored vehicles would dart\u2014never faster than twenty miles per hour\u2014from one terrain feature to another, scan ahead, then move some more. The sergeant explained that they'd move in a steadier manner on better ground, but that this part of the Saudi desert was marked by hillocks and ridges and dips that people might hide behind. The Brads were in a platoon, but actually seemed to move in pairs. Every M3 had a \"wingman,\" a term borrowed from the Air Force.\n\n\"What if there's somebody out there?\"\n\n\"Then he'll probably try to shoot at us,\" the staff sergeant explained. All this time, the gunner was traversing his turret left and right, searching for the glow of a warm body on the chilled ground. They could actually see better at night, Donner learned, which was why Americans had adopted the darkness as their preferred hunting time. \"Stanley, come left and stop behind that bump,\" he ordered the driver. \"If I was a grunt, I'd like that place over to the right. We'll cover Chuck as he comes around it.\" The turret rotated and sighted in on a larger bump, while the Bradley's wingman drove past. \"Okay, Stanley, move out.\"\n\nTHE ARMY OF God command section had proved devilishly hard to pin down, but now Hamm had two heloscout troops detailed to that single mission, and his electronic-intelligence section had just set up again, colocated with 2nd Squadron's headquarters troop. They'd taken to calling their target the enchilada. Locate it, and disorganize the entire enemy force. Saudi intelligence officers attached to the ELINT tracks were listening to signals. The UIR forces had encrypted radios for the senior commanders, but those were good only for talking to other people with the same equipment, and with the gradual degradation of the enemy radio network, sooner or later the enchilada would have to start talking in the clear. One Corps and two divisional command posts had been hit, two of those almost totally destroyed and the other badly disrupted. Moreover, they knew roughly where III Corps was, and Army would have to start talking to that formation, since it was the only one so far not engaged except by a few air strikes. They didn't have to read the messages, nice though that would have been. They knew the frequency ranges for the high-command circuit, and a few minutes of traffic would enable them to localize it enough for M- and N-helicopter-scout troops to dart in and start ruining their whole morning.\n\nIt sounded like static, but digitally encrypted radios usually did. The ELINT officer, a first lieutenant, loved eavesdropping, but missed his jamming gear, which had been overlooked in the POMCUS equipment sets, probably, he thought, because that was supposed to be an Air Force mission. There was an art to this. His troopers, all military-intelligence specialists, had to tell the difference between real atmospheric static and manmade static as they swept the frequencies.\n\n\"Bingo!\" One said. \"Bearing three-zero-five, hissin' like a snake.\" It was too loud to be atmospheric noise, random though it might have sounded.\n\n\"How good?\" the officer asked.\n\n\"Ninety percent, elltee.\" A second vehicle, slaved electronically to the first, was a klick away, providing a baseline for triangulation . . . \"There.\" The location came up on the computer screen. The lieutenant lifted a radio for the 4th Squadron command post.\n\n\"ANGEL-SIX, this is PEEPER, we may have a posit for the enchilada....\"\n\nM-Troop's four Apaches and six Kiowas were but twenty klicks away from the position, conducting a visual search. A minute later, they turned south.\n\n\"WHAT IS HAPPENING!\" Mahmoud Haji demanded. He hated using this phone-radio lash-up, and just getting in contact with his own army commander had proved difficult enough.\n\n\"We have encountered opposition south of King Khalid Military City. We are dealing with it.\"\n\n\"Ask him the nature of the opposition,\" Intelligence advised his leader.\n\n\"Perhaps your guest could tell _me_ that,\" the general on the other side of the conversation suggested. \"We're still working to find out.\"\n\n\"The Americans cannot have more than two brigades in theater!\" the man insisted. \"One more brigade-equivalent in Kuwait, but that is all!\"\n\n\"Is that so? Well, I have lost more than a division in strength in the last three hours, and I still don't know what I'm facing here. Two Corps has been badly mauled. One Corps has run into something and is continuing the attack now. Three Corps is so far untouched. I can continue the attack to Riyadh, but I need more information on what I'm facing.\" The commanding general, a man of sixty years, was not a fool, and he still felt that he could win. He still had about four divisions' worth of combat power. It was just a matter of directing it properly. He actually felt lucky that air attacks from American and Saudi forces had been so light. He'd learned a few other lessons fast. The disappearance of three command sections had made him cautious, at least for his own safety. He was now a full kilometer from the radio transmitters attached to his armored command vehicle, a BMP-1KSh, his handset at the end of a lengthy spool of commo wire. He himself was surrounded by a squad of soldiers, who did their best not to listen to the excitement in their commander's voice.\n\n\"DAMN, LOOK AT all those SAM tracks,\" a Kiowa observer said over the radio, from eight klicks north. His pilot made the call while the observer did a count.\n\n\"MARAUDER-LEAD, this is MASCOT-THREE. I think we have the enchilada.\"\n\n\"THREE, LEAD, go,\" was the terse reply.\n\n\"Six _bimps,_ ten trucks, five SAM tracks, two radar tracks, and three ZSU-23s in a wadi. Recommend approach from the west, say again, approach from the west.\" It was far too much defensive firepower to be much of anything other than the Army of God's mobile command section. The SAM launchers were all French Crotales, and those little fuckers were scary, MASCOT-THREE knew. But they should have picked a different spot. This was one of those situations where you were better in the open, or even on high ground, so that your SAM radars could see better.\n\n\"THREE, LEAD, can you illuminate?\"\n\n\"Affirmative. Tell us when. Radar tracks first.\"\n\nThe Apache leader, a captain, was hugging the ground to the west, creeping forward at thirty knots now, coming up on what he thought was a ridgeline that would tip over into the wadi. Slowly, slowly, letting his own mast sensor do the looking. The pilot flew the airplane like a kid learning to parallel-park, while the gunner manned the sensors.\n\n\"Hold it right there, sir,\" the gunner advised from his front seat.\n\n\"THREE, LEAD, start the music,\" the pilot called.\n\nThe Kiowa lit up its laser-illuminator, an invisible infrared beam that aimed first at the far radar track. It was actually a wheeled vehicle, but nobody was being particular. On notification that the target was lit up, the Apache tilted its nose up and loosed first one Hellfire, then another five seconds later.\n\nTHE GENERAL HEARD the shouted warning from a thousand meters away. Only one of the radar vehicles was actually transmitting, and that intermittently as an electronic-security measure. It was radiating now, and caught the inbound missile. One of the launcher trucks rotated its four-tube mount and fired, but the Crotale lost lock when the Hellfire angled down and went harmlessly ballistic. The radar vehicle blew apart a moment later, and the second one six seconds after that. The commanding general of the Army of God stopped talking then, and ignored the incoming conversation from Tehran. There was quite literally nothing for him to do but crouch down, which his bodyguards made him do.\n\nALL FOUR APACHES of the troop were hovering in a semicircle now, waiting for their troop commander to ripple off his Hellfires. This he did, about five seconds apart, letting the Kiowa guide them in, switching from target to target. Next came the SAM-launcher vehicles, followed by the Russian-made gun tracks. Then there was nothing left to protect the BMP command tracks.\n\nIT WAS UTTERLY heartless, the general saw. Men tried shooting back, but at first there was nothing to shoot at. Some people looked. Others pointed. Only a few ran. Most stayed and tried to fight. The missiles seemed to come from the west. He could see the yellow-white glow of rocket motors racing through the darkness like fireflies, but he couldn't see anything shooting them, and one after another the air defense vehicles were destroyed, then the BMPs, then the trucks. It took less than two minutes, and only then did the helicopters begin to appear. The security detachment for his mobile command post was a company of picked infantrymen. They fought back with heavy machine-gun fire and shoulder-launched rockets, but the ghostly shapes of the helicopters were too far away. The man-portable missiles couldn't seem to find them. His men tried, but then the tracers lanced out, reaching for them like beams of light into an area now bright with vehicle fires. A squad here, a section there, a pair there. The men tried to run, but the helicopters closed in, firing from only a few hundred meters away, herding them in a cruel, remorseless game. The radio handset was dead in his hand, but he still held it, watching.\n\n\"LEAD, TWO, I got a bunch to the east,\" a pilot told the Apache commander.\n\n\"Get 'em,\" the flight leader ordered, and one of the attack choppers ducked south around the remains of the command post.\n\nNOTHING TO DO. No place to flee. Three of his men shouldered their weapons and fired. Others tried to run, but there was no running and no hiding. Whoever flew those aircraft were killing everything they saw. Americans. Had to be. Angry at what they'd been told. Might even be true, the general thought, and if\u2014\n\n\"HOW D'YA SAY _tough shit_ in rag-head?\" the gunner asked, taking his time to make sure he got every one.\n\n\"I think they got the message,\" the pilot said, turning the chopper around and scanning for additional targets.\n\n\"ANGEL-SIX, ANGEL-SIX, this is MARAUDER-SIX-ACTUAL. This sure looked like a CP, and it's toast now,\" the troop commander called. \"We are RTB for bullets and gas. Out.\"\n\n\"WELL, GET HIM back!\" Daryaei shouted at the communications officer on the line. The intelligence chief in the room didn't say anything, suspecting that they'd never talk to the army commander again in this lifetime. The worst part was not knowing why. His intelligence assessment on arriving American units had been correct. He was sure of that. How could so few do so much harm . . . ?\n\n\"THEY HAD A pair of brigades\u2014regiments, whatever\u2014there, didn't they?\" Ryan asked, getting the latest upload from the battlefield onto his projection TV in the Sit Room.\n\n\"Yep.\" General Moore nodded. He noted with some pleasure that even Admiral Jackson was pretty quiet. \"Not anymore, Mr. President. Jesus, those Guardsmen are doing just fine.\"\n\n\"Sir,\" Ed Foley said, \"just how far do you want to take this?\"\n\n\"Do we have any doubts at all that it was Daryaei personally who made all these decisions?\" It was, Ryan thought, a dumb question. Why else had he told the citizens that? But he had to ask the question, and the others in the Sit Room knew why.\n\n\"None,\" the DCI replied.\n\n\"Then we take it all the way, Ed. Will the Russians play?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, I think they will.\"\n\nJack thought of the plague now dying out in America. Thousands of the innocent had already died, with more yet to follow. He thought of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen at risk under his distant command. He found himself thinking, even, of the UIR troops who'd followed the wrong banner and wrong ideas because they hadn't had the chance to select their country or its leader, and were now paying the price for that mistake of birthplace. If they were not completely innocent, then neither were they completely guilty, because for the most part soldiers merely did what they were told. He also found himself remembering the look in his wife's eyes when Katie had arrived by helicopter on the South Lawn. There were times when he was allowed to be a man, just like other men, except for the power he held in his hands.\n\n\"Find out,\" the President said coldly.\n\nIT WAS A sunny morning in Beijing, and Adler knew more than the other people in the discussion. It hadn't been much of a detailed dispatch, just the high points, which he'd shown to the Defense attach\u00e9, and the Army colonel had told him to trust every word. But the information wasn't widely known. The TV reports had to come out over military communications nets, and because of the time of day in most of America, those hadn't reported much beyond the commencement of combat action. If the PRC was in cahoots with the UIR, they might yet believe that their distant friends held the upper hand. It was worth a try, SecState thought, sure that POTUS would back him up.\n\n\"Mr. Secretary, welcome again,\" the Foreign Minister said graciously. And again, Zhang was there, silent and enigmatic as he tried always to be.\n\n\"Thank you.\" Adler took his regular seat. It wasn't as comfortable as the one in Taipei.\n\n\"These new developments\u2014can it be true?\" his official host asked.\n\n\"That is the public position of my President and my country,\" the Secretary of State replied. Thus it had to be true.\n\n\"Do you have sufficient forces to protect your interests in that region?\"\n\n\"Minister, I am not a military expert, and I cannot comment on that,\" Adler replied. That was entirely true, but a man in a position of strength would probably have said something else.\n\n\"It would be a great misfortune if you cannot,\" Zhang observed.\n\nIt might have been fun to inquire about the PRC's position on the matter, but the answer would have been neutral and meaningless. Nor would they have said anything about the presence of the _Eisenhower_ battle group, now flying patrols over the \"international waters\" of the Formosa Strait. The trick was to make them say anything at all.\n\n\"The world situation occasionally requires reexamination of one's position on many things, and one must sometimes think carefully about one's friendships,\" Adler tried. It lay on the table for half a minute.\n\n\"We have been friends since your President Nixon first courageously came here,\" the Foreign Minister said after reflection. \"And we remain so, despite the occasional misunderstanding.\"\n\n\"That is good to hear, Minister. We have a saying about friendship in time of need.\" Okay, think about that one. Maybe the news reports are true. Maybe your friend Daryaei will succeed. The bait dangled for another fifteen seconds.\n\n\"Really, our only area of permanent discord is America's position on what your President inadvertently called the 'two Chinas.' If only this could be regularized . . . ,\" the Minister mused.\n\n\"Well, as I told you, the President was trying to express himself to reporters in a confusing situation.\"\n\n\"And we are to disregard it?\"\n\n\"America continues to feel that a peaceful solution to this provincial dispute serves the interests of all parties.\" That was status quo ante, a position established by a strong, confident America whom China would not challenge openly.\n\n\"Peace is always preferable to conflict,\" Zhang said. \"But how long must we show such great forbearance? These recent events have only served to illustrate the central problem.\"\n\nA very small push, Adler noted: \"I understand your frustration, but we all know that patience is the most valuable of virtues.\"\n\n\"At some point, patience becomes indulgence.\" The Foreign Minister reached for his tea. \"A helpful word from America would be most gratefully received.\"\n\n\"You ask that we alter our policy somewhat?\" SecState wondered if Zhang would speak again after altering the course of the conversation ever so slightly.\n\n\"Merely that you see the logic of the situation. It would make the friendship of our two nations far more substantial, and it is, after all, a minor issue to countries such as ours.\"\n\n\"I see,\" Adler replied. And he did. It was certain now. He congratulated himself for making them tip their hand. The next call on this would have to be made in Washington, assuming they had the time there for something other than a shooting war.\n\nTHE 10TH ACR crossed back into Saudi territory at 0330L. The Buffalo Cav was now spread in a line thirty miles across. In another hour, they would be astride the UIR army's supply line, having gotten here without any notice. The force was moving faster now, almost thirty miles in an hour. His lead elements had found a few patrol and internal-security units in UIR territory, mainly single vehicles which had been dispatched immediately upon sighting. There would be more now, as soon as they hit the next road. It would be MP units at first\u2014whatever the enemy called them\u2014used for traffic control. There had to be a lot of fuel rolling down the road to KKMC, and that was the first mission of the Buffalo Soldiers.\n\nSECOND BRIGADE OF the Immortals had been under fire for nearly an hour, when orders came to go forward, and the armored vehicles of the former Iranian armored division moved with a will. The two-star in command was in back of the flanking 3rd Brigade now, listening rather than talking, wondering about and thankful for the absence of American air power. Corps artillery had arrived and set up without firing to reveal its presence. They might not last long, but he wanted the benefit of their presence. The opposing force could hardly be as much as a full brigade on this side of the highway, and he had double that\u2014and even if he did face a complete brigade, then his Iraqi comrades on the far side would loop around to support him, as he would for them if he found a clear field. Over the radio, on the move in order to prevent being attacked by artillery or helicopters, he exhorted his commanders to press the attack, as he followed on in an open-topped command vehicle. Now, if his enemy would just sit still in the positions they'd held successfully for the first attack, he would see about things....\n\nLOBO PASSED PHASE-LINE MANASSAS twenty minutes late, to the quiet anger of Colonel Eddington, who thought that he'd allowed ample time for the maneuver. But that damned criminal lawyer a redundancy, he'd joked more than once\u2014commanding HOOTOWL was well forward again, covering the right while his battalion XO took the left, calling fire but not taking any shots of his own.\n\n\"WOLFPACK-SIX, this is HOOT-SIX, over.\"\n\n\"SIX-ACTUAL, HOOT,\" Eddington replied.\n\n\"They're coming on, sir, two brigades on line, packed in pretty close, advancing over phase-line HIGHPOINT right now.\"\n\n\"How close are you, Colonel?\"\n\n\"Three thousand. I am pulling my people back now.\" They had designated safe-travel lanes for that. HOOT hoped that everybody remembered where they were. The redeployment would take them east, to screen the right edge of the flanking battalion task force.\n\n\"Okay, clear the field, counselor.\"\n\n\"Roger that, Professor Eddington. HOOTOWL is flying,\" the misplaced lawyer replied. \"Out.\" In a minute he told his driver to see how fast he could go in the dark. It was something the NASCAR fan was just as pleased as hell to demonstrate.\n\nThe same report arrived four minutes later from the left. His one brigade was facing four. It was time to narrow those odds some. His artillery battalion shifted fire. His tank and Bradley commanders started sweeping the horizon for movement, and the three mechanized battalions started rolling forward to meet their enemy on the move. Company and platoon commanders checked their lines for proper interval. The battalion commander was in his own command tank on the left side of the line. The S-3 operations officer backed up the right. As usual, the Bradleys were slightly back on the fifty-four Abrams tanks, their mission to sweep the field for infantry and support vehicles.\n\nThe falling artillery was common shell, and now VT proximity, to make life very hard on tanks with open hatches and people dumb enough to be in the open. Nobody thought of armored knights. The battlefield was too dispersed for that. It was more like a naval battle fought on a sandy, rocky sea which was every bit as hostile to human life as the conventional kind, and about to become more so. Eddington stayed with WHITEFANG, which was essentially an advancing reserve force, as it became clear that the enemy was advancing on both flanks, and leaving the center with a screening force, if anything.\n\n\"Contact,\" a platoon leader called on his company net. \"I have enemy armored vehicles at five thousand meters.\" He checked his IVIS display to confirm, again, that there were no friendlies out there. Good. HOOTOWL was clear. There was only a Red Force to his front.\n\nTHE MOON WAS up now, less than a quarter of a waning moon, but it lit up the land enough for the lead Immortals to see movement on their visible horizon. The men of 2nd Brigade, furious at the pounding they'd taken in their wait to advance, were loaded up. Some of them had laser range-finders, which showed targets at nearly double their effective range. That word, too, went up the line, and back down came orders to increase speed, the quicker to close the distance and get out of the indirect fire that had to stop soon. Gunners centered on targets that were still too far away, in anticipation of that changing in two minutes or less. They felt their mounts speed up, heard the words of their tank commanders to stand by. There were enough targets to count now, and the opposing numbers were not impressive. They had the advantage. They must have, the Immortals all thought.\n\nBut why were the Americans advancing toward them?\n\n\"COMMENCE FIRING AT four thousand meters,\" the company commander told his crews. The Abrams tanks were spread nearly five hundred meters apart in two staggered lines, covering a lot of ground for one mounted battalion. The TCs mainly kept their heads up and out of the vehicles for the approach phase, then ducked down to activate their own fire-control systems.\n\n\"I'm on one,\" one gunner told his TC. \"T-80, identified, range forty-two-fifty.\"\n\n\"Setting?\" the tank commander asked, just to make sure.\n\n\"Set on Sabot. Loader, all silver bullets till I say different.\"\n\n\"I hear you, gunner. Just don't miss any.\"\n\n\"Forty-one,\" the gunner breathed. He waited for another fifteen seconds and became the first in his company to fire, and to kill. The sixty-two-ton tank staggered with the shot, then kept moving.\n\n\"Target, cease fire, target tank at eleven,\" the TC said over the interphones.\n\nThe loader stomped his boot down on the pedal, opened the ammo doors, and yanked out another \"silver bullet\" round, then turned in a graceful move, first to guide, then to slam the mainly plastic round into the breech.\n\n\"Up!\" he called.\n\n\"Identified!\" the gunner told the TC.\n\n\"Fire!\"\n\n\"On the way!\" A pause. The tracer flew true. \"Right through the dot!\"\n\nCommander: \"Target! Cease fire! Traverse right, target tank at one.\"\n\nLoader: \"Up!\"\n\nGunner: \"Identified!\"\n\nCommander: \"Fire!\"\n\n\"On the waaaaay!\" the gunner said, squeezing off his third shot in eleven seconds.\n\nIt wasn't like reality, the battalion commander saw, really too busy watching to take his own shots. It was like an advancing wave. First the lead rank of T-80s blew up, just a handful of misses that were corrected five seconds later, as the second rank of enemy vehicles started to go. They started to return fire. The flashes looked like the Hoffman simulation charges he'd so recently seen at the NTC, and turned out to be just as harmless. Enemy rounds were marked with their own tracers, and all of their first volley fell short. Some of the T-80s got off a second shot. None got off a third.\n\n\"Jesus, sir, give me a target!\" his gunner called.\n\n\"Pick one.\"\n\n_\"Bimp,_ \" the gunner said, mainly to himself. He fired off a high-explosive round, and got a kill at just over four thousand meters, but as before, the battle was over in less than a minute. The American line advanced. Some of the BMPs launched missiles, but now they were being engaged by tanks and Bradleys. Vehicles exploded, filling the sky with fire and smoke. Now individual men were visible, mainly running, some turning to fire or trying to deploy. The tank gunners, with nothing large left to shoot, switched to the coaxial machine guns. The Bradleys pulled up level with the tanks, and they did the serious hunting.\n\nThe lead line of tanks passed through the smoking wreckage of the Immortals division less than four minutes after the first volley. Turrets traversed left and right, looking for targets. Tank commanders had their heads back up, hands on their top-mounted heavy machine guns. Where fire originated, it was returned, and at first there was a race to see who could kill the most, because there is an excitement, a _rush_ to battle unknown to those who have never felt it, the feeling of godlike power, the ability to make a life-and-death decision and then enforce it at the touch of a finger. More than that, these Guardsmen knew why they were here, knew what they had been sent to avenge. In some, that rage lasted for some minutes, as the vehicles rolled forward, grinding along at less than ten miles per hour, like farm tractors or harvesting combines, collecting life and converting it to death, looking like something from the dawn of time, utterly inhuman, utterly heartless.\n\nBut then it began to stop. It stopped being duty. It stopped being revenge. It stopped being the fun they'd expected it to be. It became murder, and one by one, the men on the weapons realized what they themselves were supposed to be and what they might become if they didn't turn away from this. It wasn't like being an aviator, hundreds of meters away, shooting at shapes that moved comically in their aiming systems and were never really human beings at all. These men were closer. They could see the faces and the wounds now, and the harmless backs of people running away. Even those fools who still shot back attracted pity from the gunners who dispatched them, but soon the futility of it was clear to everyone, and soldiers who'd arrived in the desert with rage grew sick at what the rage had become. The guns gradually fell silent, by common consent rather than order, as resistance stopped, and with it the need to kill. Battalion Task Force LOBO rolled completely through the smoking ruin of two heavy brigades, searching for targets worthy of professional attention, rather than personal, from which they had to turn away.\n\nTHERE WAS NOTHING left to be done. The general stood and walked away from his command vehicle, beckoning for the crew to do the same. On his order, they put their weapons down and stood on high ground to wait. They didn't have to wait long. The sun was rising. The first glow of orange was to the east, announcing a new day far different from the old.\n\nTHE FIRST CONVOY rolled right in front of them, thirty fuel trucks, driving at a good clip, and the drivers must have taken the south-moving vehicles for those of their own army. The Bradley gunners of I-Troop, 3rd of the 10th, took care of that with a series of shots that ignited the first five trucks. The rest of them halted, two of them turning over and exploding on their own when their drivers rolled them into ditches in their haste to escape. The Bradley crews mainly let the people get clear, plinked the trucks with high-explosive rounds, and kept moving south past the bewildered drivers, who just stood there and watched them pass.\n\nIT WAS A Bradley that found him. The vehicle pulled to within fifty meters before stopping. The general who, twelve hours before, had commanded a virtually intact armored division didn't move or resist. He stood quite still, as four infantrymen appeared from the back of the M2A4, advancing with rifles out, while their track covered his detail with even more authority.\n\n\"On the ground!\" the corporal called.\n\n\"I will tell my men. I speak English. They do not,\" the general said, then kept his word. His soldiers went facedown. He continued to stand, perhaps hoping that he could die.\n\n\"Get those hands up, partner.\" This corporal was a police officer in civilian life. The officer\u2014he didn't know what kind yet, but the uniform was too spiffy for a grunt\u2014complied. The corporal next handed his rifle off and drew a pistol, walked in, and held it to the man's head while he searched him expertly. \"Okay, you can get down now. If you play smart, nobody gets hurt. Please tell your men that. We will kill them if we have to, but we ain't going to murder anybody, okay?\"\n\n\"I will tell them.\"\n\nWITH THE COMING of daylight, Eddington got back into the helicopter he'd borrowed, and flew to survey the battlefield. It was soon plain that his brigade had crushed two complete divisions. He ordered his screen forward to scout ahead for the pursuit phase that had to come next, then called Diggs for instructions on what he was supposed to do with prisoners. Before anyone figured that out, a chopper arrived from Riyadh with a television crew.\n\nEVEN BEFORE THE pictures got out, the rumors did, as they always do in countries lacking a free press. A telephone call arrived in the home of a Russian embassy official. It came just before seven, and awakened him, but he was out of his house in minutes and driving his car through quiet streets to the rendezvous point with a man who, he thought, was finally crossing the line to become an agent of the RVS.\n\nThe Russian spent ten extra minutes checking his back, but anyone following him this morning would have to be invisible, and he imagined that a lot of the Ayatollah's security forces had been called up.\n\n\"Yes?\" he said on meeting the man. There wasn't much time for formalities.\n\n\"You are right. Our army was\u2014defeated last night. They called me in at three for an opinion of American intentions, and I heard it all. We cannot even talk with our units. The army commander simply vanished. The Foreign Ministry is in a panic.\"\n\n\"As well it might be,\" the diplomat thought. \"I should tell you that the Turkoman leader has\u2014\"\n\n\"We know. He called Daryaei last night to ask if the plague story was true.\"\n\n\"And what did your leader say?\"\n\n\"He said that it was an infidel lie\u2014what do you expect?\" The official paused. \"He was not entirely persuasive. Whatever you said to the man, he is neutralized. India has betrayed us\u2014I learned about that, too. China does not yet know.\"\n\n\"If you expect _them_ to stand with you, you have violated your religion's laws on the consumption of alcohol. Of course, my government stands with America as well. You are quite alone,\" the Russian told him. \"I need some information.\"\n\n\"What information?\"\n\n\"The location of the germ factory. I need that today.\"\n\n\"The experimental farm north of the airport.\"\n\n_That_ easy? the Russian thought. \"How can you be sure?\"\n\n\"The equipment was bought from the Germans and the French. I was in the commercial section then. If you wish to confirm, it should be easy. How many farms have guards in uniform?\" the man asked helplessly.\n\nThe Russian nodded. \"I will see about that. There are other problems. Your country will soon be fully\u2014by which I mean _completely_ \u2014at war with America. My country may be able to offer her good offices to negotiate a settlement of some kind. If you whisper the right word into the right ear, our ambassador is at your disposal, and then you will have done the world a service.\"\n\n\"That is simple. By noon we will be looking for a way out of this.\"\n\n\"There is no way out for your government. None,\" the RVS officer emphasized.\n**63**\n\n**THE RYAN DOCTRINE**\n\n**W** ARS USUALLY BEGIN AT exact moments in time, but most often end neither cleanly nor precisely. Daylight found the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in command of yet another battlefield, having completed the destruction of one of UIR II Corps's divisions. The other division was now facing the Saudi 2nd Brigade, which was attacking from the rising sun while the American unit halted again to refuel and rearm in preparation for the continued attack on III Corps, still not decisively engaged.\n\nBut that was already changing. Those two divisions now had the full and undivided attention of all tactical aircraft in theater. First their air defense assets were targeted. Every radar which switched on drew the attention of **HARM** **H** igh-speed **A** nti- **R** adiation **M** issile\u2014equipped F-16s, and in two hours the skies were friendly to American and Saudi pilots. UIR fighters made an effort to strike down from their home bases to defend their beleaguered ground forces, but none made it past the radarfighter screen set up well beyond the location of the forces they had been dispatched to support. They lost over sixty aircraft in the futile attempt. It was easier for them to lash out at the Kuwaiti brigades which had so impudently invaded their vastly larger and more powerful neighbor. The small air force of that country was on its own for most of the day, and the battle had little strategic relevance. The routes across the swamps were cut and would take days to repair. The resulting air battle was more a display of mutual anger than anything else, and here, too, the Kuwaiti forces held the day, not spectacularly so, but giving three kills for every one they absorbed. For a small country learning the martial arts, it was a battle that men would talk of for years, the magnitude of their deeds growing with every recounting. Yet all the deaths on this day would be useless, lives wasted in mere punctuation of a decision already reached.\n\nOver III Corps, with the SAMs taken out, attention turned to more structured murder. There were over six hundred tanks on the ground, another eight hundred infantry carriers, more than two hundred pieces of towed and self-propelled artillery, several thousand trucks, and thirty thousand men, all of them well inside a foreign nation and trying to escape. The F-15E Strike Eagles circled at about 15,000 feet, almost loitering on low power settings, while the weapons-systems operators selected targets one by one for laser-guided bombs. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and the battlefield was flat. It was far easier than any exercise in the Nellis bombing range. Lower down in different hunting patches, F-16s joined in with Maverick and conventional bombs. Before noon, III Corps's three-star commander, correctly thinking himself the senior ground officer, ordered a general retreat, gathered up the support trucks laagered in KKMC, and tried to get his units out in something resembling order. Bombs falling on him from above, the Saudi 5th Brigade approaching from the east, and an American force closing on his rear, he turned northwest, hoping to cross back into friendly territory at the same point he had entered. On the ground, his vehicles used smoke to obscure themselves as best they could, which somewhat frustrated the allied aviators, who did not, however, come down low to press their attacks, since the UTR forces might have shot back with some effect. That gave the commander hope that he might make it back with something like two-thirds of his strength. Fuel was not a concern. The combined fuel trucks for the entire Army of God were with his corps now.\n\nDIGGS STOPPED OFF first to see Eddington's brigade. He'd seen the sights and smelled the smells before. Tanks could burn for a surprisingly long time, as much as two days, from all the fuel and ammunition they carried, and the stink of diesel oil and chemical propellants served to mask the revolting stench of burning human flesh. Armed enemies were always things to be killed, but dead ones soon enough became objects of pity, especially slaughtered as they had been. But only a few, in relative terms, had died by the guns of the men from Carolina. Many more had surrendered. Those had to be gathered, disarmed, counted, and set to work, mainly in disposing of the bodies of their fallen comrades. It was a fact as old as warfare, and the lesson for the defeated was always the same: _This is why you don't want to mess with us again._\n\n\"Now what?\" Eddington asked, a cigar in his teeth. The victors suffered through many mood swings on the battlefield. Arriving in confusion and haste, facing the unknown with concealed fear, entering battle with determination\u2014and, in their case, with such wrath as they had never felt\u2014winning with exhilaration, and then feeling horror at the carnage and pity for the vanquished. The cycle changed anew. Most of the mechanized units had reorganized over the last few hours, and were ready to move again, while their own MPs and arriving Saudi units took possession of the prisoners gathered by the line units.\n\n\"Just sit tight,\" Diggs replied, to Eddington's disappointment and relief. \"The remains are running hard. You'd never catch them, and we don't have orders to invade.\"\n\n\"They just came at us in the same old way,\" the Guard colonel said, remembering Wellington. \"And we stopped them in the same old way. What a terrible business.\"\n\n\"Bobby Lee, remember, Chancellorsville?\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah. He was right, too. Those couple of hours, Diggs, getting things set up, maneuvering my battalions, getting the information, acting on it.\" He shook his head. \"I never knew anything could feel like that . . . but now . . .\"\n\n\" 'It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.' Funny thing is, you forget sometimes. Those poor bastards,\" the general said, watching fifty men being herded off to trucks for the ride back to the rear. \"Clean up, Colonel. Get your units put back together. There may be orders to move, but I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Three Corps?\"\n\n\"Ain't goin' far, Nick. We're 'keepin' up the skeer' and we're running them right into the 10th.\"\n\n\"So you know Bedford Forrest after all.\" It was one of the Confederate officer's most important aphorisms. _Keep up the skeer:_ never give a fleeing enemy the chance to rest; harry him, punish him, force him into additional errors, run him into the ground. Even if it really didn't matter anymore.\n\n\"My doctoral dissertation was on Hitler as a political manipulator. I didn't much like him, either.\" Diggs smiled and saluted. \"You and your people did just fine, Nick. Glad to have you on this trip.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't have missed it, sir.\"\n\nTHE VEHICLE HAD diplomatic tags, but the driver and passenger knew that such things had not always been respected in Tehran. Things changed in a country at war, and you could often spot previously clandestine facilities by the fact that they got more guards in time of trouble instead of remaining the same. The latter would have been far smarter, but everyone did it. The car halted. The driver lifted binoculars. The passenger lifted a camera. Sure enough, the experimental farm had armed men around the research building, and that wasn't the normal sort of thing, was it? It was just that easy. The car turned in the road and headed back to the embassy.\n\nTHEY WERE GETTING only stragglers. The Blackhorse was in full pursuit now, and this tail chase was proving to be a long one. American vehicles were better and generally faster than those they were pursuing, but it was easier to run than to chase. Pursuers had to be a little careful about possible ambushes, and the lust to kill more of the enemy was muted by the concern at dying in a war already won. Enemy disorder had allowed the 11th to pull in tight, and the right-flank units were now in radio contact with the advancing Saudis, who were just now finishing off the last few battalions of II Corps and thinking about engaging III in a final decisive battle.\n\n\"Target tank,\" one TC said. \"Ten o'clock, forty-one hundred.\"\n\n\"Identified,\" the gunner said as the Abrams halted to make the shot easier.\n\n\"Hold fire,\" the TC said suddenly. \"They're bailing out. Give 'em a few seconds.\"\n\n\"Right.\" The gunner could see it, too. The T-80's main gun was pointed away, in any case. They waited for the crew to make a hundred meters or so.\n\n\"Okay, take it.\"\n\n\"On the way.\" The breech recoiled, the tank jolted, and the round flew. Three seconds later, one more tank turret blew straight up. \"Jack-in-the-box.\"\n\n\"Target. Cease fire. Driver, move out,\" the TC ordered. That made the twelfth kill for their tank. The crew wondered what the unit record would be, while the TC made a position notation for the three-man enemy crew on his IVIS box, which automatically told the regimental security detail where to pick them up. The advancing cavalrymen gave them a wide berth. Unlikely though it was, one of them might shoot or do something stupid, and they had neither the time nor the inclination to waste ammunition. One more battle to fight, unless the other side got some brains and just called it a day.\n\n\"COMMENTS?\" POTUS ASKED.\n\n\"Sir, it sets a precedent,\" Cliff Rutledge replied.\n\n\"That's the idea,\" Ryan said. They were getting the battlefield video first, unedited. It included the usual horrors, body parts of those ripped to shreds by high explosives, whole bodies of those whose deaths had come from some mysterious cause, a hand reaching out of a personnel carrier whose interior still smoked, some poor bastard who'd almost gotten out, but not quite. There had to be something about carrying a mini-cam that just drew people to that sort of thing. The dead were dead, and the dead were all victims in one way or another\u2014more than one way, Ryan thought. These soldiers of two previously separate countries and one overlapping culture had died at the hands of armed Americans, but they'd been sent to death by a man whose orders they'd had to follow, who had miscalculated, and who had been willing to use their lives as tokens, gambling chips, quarters in a big slot machine whose arm he'd yanked to see what would result. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Power carried responsibility. Jack knew that he would hand-write a letter to the family of every dead American, just as George Bush had done in 1991. The letters would serve two purposes. They would, perhaps, be some measure of comfort to the families of the lost. They would, certainly, remind the man who had ordered them to the field that the dead had once been living. He wondered what their faces had been like. Probably no different from the Guardsmen who'd formed that honor guard at Indianapolis, the day of his first public appearance. They looked the same, but each human life was individual, the most valuable possession of its owner, and Ryan had played a part in stripping it away, and though he knew it had been necessary, it was also necessary for him, now and for as long as he sat in this building, to remember that they were more than just faces. And that, he told himself, is the difference. I know about my responsibility. _He_ doesn't know about _his. He_ still lived with the illusion that people were responsible to him, and not the reverse.\n\n\"It's political dynamite, Mr. President,\" van Damm said.\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"There is a legal problem,\" Pat Martin told them. \"It violates the executive order that President Ford put in place.\"\n\n\"I know about that one,\" Ryan responded. \"But who decides the executive orders?\"\n\n\"The Chief Executive, sir,\" Martin answered.\n\n\"Draft me a new one.\"\n\n\"WHAT IS THAT smell?\" Back at the Indiana motel, the truck drivers were out for the morning dance of moving the trucks around to protect the tires. They were sick of this place by now, and heartily wished the travel ban would be lifted soon. One driver had just exercised his Mack, and parked it back next to the cement truck. Spring was turning warm, and the metal bodies of the trucks turned the interiors into ovens. In the case of the cement truck, it was having an effect its owners hadn't thought about. \"You got a fuel leak?\" he asked Holbrook, then bent down to look. \"No, your tank's okay.\"\n\n\"Maybe somebody had a little spill over at the pumps,\" the Mountain Man suggested.\n\n\"Don't think so. They just hosed it down a while ago. We better find this. I seen a KW burn once 'cuz some mechanic fucked up. Killed the driver, that was on I-40 back in '85. Hell of a mess.\" He continued to walk around. \"You got a leak somewhere, ol' buddy. Let's check your fuel pump,\" he said next, turning the locks on the hood panels.\n\n\"Hey, uh, wait a minute\u2014I mean\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't sweat it, pard, I know how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work.\" The hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses, then felt the fuel-line connectors. \"Okay, they're all right.\" Next he looked at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn't anything unusual. He bent down again to look underneath. \"Nothin' drippin'. Damn,\" he concluded, standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from . . . no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of the day. The smell was coming from right here . . . something else, too, not just diesel, now that he thought about it.\n\n\"What's the problem, Coots?\" another driver asked, walking over.\n\n\"Smell that?\" And both men stood there, sniffing the air like woodchucks.\n\n\"Somebody got a bad tank?\"\n\n\"Not that I can see.\" The first one looked at Holbrook. \"Look, I don't want to be unneighborly, but I'm an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y'know? Would you mind moving your truck over there? And I'd have somebody give the engine a look, okay?\"\n\n\"Hey, sure, no problem, don't mind a bit.\" Holbrook remounted his truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant part of the lot. The other two watched him do it.\n\n\"The goddamned smell went away, didn't it, Coots?\"\n\n\"That is a sick truck.\"\n\n\"Fuck 'im. About time for the news. Come on.\" The other driver waved.\n\n\"Whoa!\" they heard on entering the restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real. But this was.\n\n\"Colonel, what happened last night?\"\n\n\"Well, Barry, the enemy came in on us twice. The first time,\" Eddington explained, holding a cigar in his extended hand, \"we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here . . .\" The camera turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was giving his lecture.\n\n\"I bet those fuckers are fun to drive,\" Coots said.\n\n\"I bet they're fun to shoot.\" The scene changed again. The reporter's familiar, handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his eyes.\n\n\"This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I've been riding with this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through\u2014I don't know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was _War of the Worlds_ in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians.\n\n\"The UIR forces\u2014the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians\u2014fought back, or tried to, but nothing they did . . .\"\n\n\"Shit, wish they'd've sent my unit,\" a highway patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He'd gotten to know some of the drivers.\n\n\"Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?\" Coots asked.\n\n\"Yeah, my unit's armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a big night. Jesus.\" The cop shook his head, and in the mirror noticed a man walking in from the parking lot.\n\n\"Enemy forces are in full flight now. You've just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two complete armored divisions\u2014\"\n\n\"That many! Wow,\" the cop observed, sipping his coffee.\n\n\"\u2014the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner League.\"\n\n\"Welcome to the bigs, you bastards,\" Coots told the TV screen.\n\n\"Hey, is that your cement truck?\" the cop asked, turning.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" Holbrook answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast.\n\n\"Make sure it don't blow the hell up on you,\" Coots said, not turning his head.\n\n\"What the hell is a cement truck from Montana doing here?\" the cop asked lightly. \"Huh?\" he added to Coots.\n\n\"He's got some kinda fuel problem. We asked him to move the rig. Thanks, by the way,\" he added. \"Don't mean to be unneighborly, buddy.\"\n\n\"It's all right. I'll have it checked for sure.\"\n\n\"Why all the way from Montana?\" the cop inquired again.\n\n\"Well, uh, we bought it there, and bringing it east for our business, y'know?\"\n\n\"Hmmm.\" Attention returned to the TV.\n\n\"Yes, they were coming south, and we drove right into them!\" a Kuwaiti officer was telling another reporter now. He patted the gun tube of his tank with the affection he might have shown a prize stallion, a little man who'd grown about a foot in the last day or so, along with his country.\n\n\"Any word on when we can get back to work, Smoky?\" Coots asked the cop.\n\nThe highway patrolman shook his head. \"You know as much as I do. When I leave here, I go up to the line to play roadblock some more.\"\n\n\"Yeah, all that good ticket money you're losin', Smoky Bear!\" a driver commented with a chuckle.\n\n\"I didn't notice the tags. Why the hell drive a cement truck in from Montana?\" Coots wondered. Those guys just didn't fit in.\n\n\"Maybe he got it cheap,\" the cop thought, finishing his coffee. \"I don't have anything on the sheet about a hot one. Damn, I wonder if anyone ever stole one of those?\"\n\n\"Not that I heard of\u2014zap!\" Coots said. The current shot was of smart bombs. \"At least it can't hurt much.\"\n\n\"Y'all have a good one,\" the cop said on the way out. He entered his Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot. Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn't the diesel ... ammonia . . . ? It was a smell he'd always associated with ice cream, having once worked a summer in a plant which made it . . . and also with the smell of propellant in his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the cafe. \"Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?\" \"Yeah, why?\" Brown asked. \"We do something wrong?\"\n\nIt was his hands that betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right. \"Would you gentlemen come with me, please?\"\n\n\"Wait a minute, what's the beef here?\"\n\n\"No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?\"\n\n\"We're going to have it looked at.\"\n\n\"You're going to have it looked at right now, gentlemen.\" He gestured. \"If you would, please?\"\n\nThe cop followed them out, got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They were talking back and forth. Something just wasn't right. His fellow highway cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he got out and looked up at the truck again.\n\n\"You want to turn it over?\"\n\n\"Okay, sure.\" Brown got in and cranked the engine, which was noisy enough.\n\n\"What is going on here?\" the cop asked Holbrook. \"Could I see some identification, please?\"\n\n\"Hey, I don't understand what the beef is.\"\n\n\"No beef, sir, but I do want to see your ID.\"\n\nPete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Holbrook's wallet in his hand, and the cop's hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just the way cops stood, but Brown didn't think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn't thought to carry them to breakfast. The policeman took Pete's driver's license, then walked back to his car, lifting the microphone\u2014\n\n\"The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot,\" the lady at the station informed him.\n\n\"Thank you.\" He tossed the mike back inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand\u2014\n\nBrown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they'd just talked on the radio\u2014\n\nThe highway patrolman looked up in surprise as the truck jerked forward. He yelled and pointed for the man to stop. The second car moved to block him, and then the cement truck did stop. That did it. Something was just not right.\n\n\"Out!\" he shouted, his pistol in his hands now. The second officer took control of Holbrook, not having a clue what this was all about. Brown stepped down, and felt his collar grabbed and himself thrust against the body of the truck. \"What is the matter with you?\" the cop demanded. It would take hours to find out, and then a very interesting time at the truck stop.\n\nTHERE WAS NOTHING for him to do but scream, and that, uncharacteristically, he did. The video was undeniable. There was an instant respectability to global TV, and he couldn't stop it from going out. The affluent in his country had their own satellite dishes, and so did many others, including little neighborhood groups. What would he do now? Order them turned off?\n\n\"Why aren't they attacking?\" Daryaei demanded.\n\n\"The Army commander and all corps commanders are off the air. We have some contact with two of our divisions only. One brigade reported it is heading north with enemy forces in pursuit.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"And our forces have been defeated,\" Intelligence said.\n\n_\"But how?\"_\n\n\"Does that matter?\"\n\nTHEY CAME ON north. Buffalo came on south. UIR III Corps didn't know what lay ahead. The discovery took place in midafternoon. Masterman's 1st Squadron had so far eliminated a hundred or so fuel and other trucks, more than the other two battalions. The only question now was how much resistance the enemy would display. From air coverage, he knew exactly where the advancing force was, in what strength and concentration, and in what direction. It was much easier than the last time he'd seen action.\n\nA-Troop was screening in advance, with B and C three klicks back, and the tank company in reserve. As fearful a pounding as their UIR forces were taking, he decided not to use his own artillery yet. No sense warning them that tanks were close by. With contact less than ten minutes away, he shifted A-Troop to the right. Unlike the first\u2014and only previous\u2014battle in his career, Duke Masterman wouldn't really see this one. Instead, he listened to it on the radio.\n\nA-Troop engaged at extreme range with both gun tubes and TOW missiles, and crumpled the first ragged line of vehicles. The troop commander estimated at least battalion strength as he engaged them from their left-front, approaching obliquely in the planned opening maneuver. This UIR division was Iraqi in origin and recoiled the other way, without realizing that it was being herded right into two more cavalry troops.\n\n\"This is GULDON-SIX. Punch left, say again punch left,\" Masterman ordered from his command track. B and C turned to the east, sprinted about three kilometers, then wheeled back. At about the same time, Masterman let his artillery fire into the enemy's second echelon. There was no surprise to lose now, and it was time to hurt the enemy in every possible way. In another few minutes, it was clear that he was engaging at least a brigade with the 1st Squadron of the Buffalo, but the numbers didn't matter any more now than they had during the night.\n\nFor one last time, there was a mechanistic horror. The gun flashes were less brilliant in the light of day, and tanks drove through the dust of their own shots as they advanced. As planned, the enemy force recoiled again from the devastating effects of B- and C-Troop, turning back, hoping to find a gap between the first attacking force and the second. What they found were fourteen M1A2s of the squadron's tank company, spaced two hundred meters apart like a breakwater. As before, first the tanks were destroyed, then the mechanized infantry carriers, as GUIDON rolled into the enemy formation. Then it stopped. Vehicles not yet engaged stopped moving. Crews hopped out and ran away from them. It was the same, Masterman heard, all the way west on the line. Surprised, running, their exit blocked, the soldiers lucky enough to see what was rolling toward them in time decided that resistance was surely fatal, and the Third (and last) Battle of KKMC stopped thirty minutes after it had begun.\n\nIt wasn't quite that easy for the invaders. Advancing Saudi forces, finally in heavy contact, fought a deliberate battle, grinding their way through another brigade, this one Iranian and therefore getting more attention than an Arab unit might have, but by sunset, all six of the UIR divisions that had entered their country were destroyed. Sub-units with some lingering fight in them were ordered to surrender by senior officers, before enemies on three sides could enforce a more final decision.\n\nThe biggest administrative headache, as before, was the prisoners, all the worse with the additional confusion of nightfall. That problem would last for at least a day, commanders reported. Fortunately, in most cases the UIR soldiers had water and rations of their own. They were moved away from their equipment and placed under guard, but this far from home, there was little danger of their striking across the desert on foot.\n\nCLARK AND CHAVEZ left the Russian embassy an hour after nightfall. In the back of their car was a large suitcase whose contents would not appear overly dangerous to anyone, and was in fact largely in keeping with their journalistic cover. The mission, they decided, was slightly crazy, but while that troubled the senior member of the team somewhat, it had Ding rather juiced. The premise of it seemed incredible, however, and that had to be verified. The drive to the alley behind the coffee shop was uneventful. The security perimeter around Daryaei's home stopped short of their destination. The coffee shop was closed, what with the blackout conditions imposed on a city half at war and half at peace\u2014streetlights were off, and windows draped, but cars were allowed to drive about with lights, and domestic electricity was evidently on. That worked to their benefit. The door lock was easily defeated in the unlit alley. Chavez eased the door open and looked inside. Clark followed, lugging the case, and both men went inside, closing the door behind them. They were already on the second floor when they heard noises. A family lived here. It turned out to be a husband and wife in their fifties, proprietors of the eating place, watching television. Had the mission been properly planned, he knew, they would have established that sooner. Oh, well.\n\n\"Hello,\" Clark said quietly. \"Please do not make any noise.\"\n\n\"What\u2014\"\n\n\"We will not hurt you,\" John said as Ding looked around for\u2014yes, electric cords would do just fine. \"Please lie down on the floor.\"\n\n\"Who\u2014\"\n\n\"We will let you go when we leave,\" Clark went on in literate Farsi. \"But if you resist, we must hurt you.\"\n\nThey were too terrified to resist the two men who had appeared like thieves in their home. Clark used the light cords to tie their arms, then their ankles. Chavez laid them on their sides, first getting the woman some water before he gagged her.\n\n\"Make sure they can breathe,\" Clark said, in English this time. He checked all the knots, pleased that he remembered his basic seamanship skills from thirty years before. Satisfied, they went upstairs.\n\nThe truly crazy part was the communications lash-up. Chavez opened the case and started taking things out. The roof of the building was flat, and had a clear line of sight to another such building three blocks away. For that reason, they had to keep low. First of all, Ding set up the mini-dish. The tripod for it was heavy, with spiked feet to secure it to the roof. Next he had to turn it, to get the buzzing chirp of the carrier signal from the proper satellite. That done, he twisted the clamp to lock the dish in place. Then came the camera. This, too, had a tripod. Chavez set that up, screwed the camera in place, and aimed it, switching it on and pointing it at the center of the three buildings that held their interest. Then the cable from the camera went into the transmitter\/power-supply box, which they left in the opened suitcase.\n\n\"It's running, John.\"\n\nThe odd part was that they had an up-link, but not a down-link. They could download signals from the satellite, but there wasn't a separate audio channel for them to use. For that they needed additional equipment, which they didn't have.\n\n\"THERE IT IS,\" Robby Jackson reported from the National Military Command Center.\n\n\"That's the one,\" Mary Pat Foley confirmed, looking at the same picture. She dialed a phone number to the American embassy in Moscow, from there to the Russian Foreign Ministry, from there to the Russian embassy in Tehran, and from there by the digital phone in John's hand. \"Do you hear me, Ivan?\" she asked in Russian. \"It's Foleyeva.\" It took a very long second for the reply to come through.\n\n\"AH, MARIA, HOW good to hear your voice.\" _Thank God for the phone company,_ John thought to himself, letting out a long breath. _Even the one here._\n\n\"I have your picture here on my desk,\" she said next.\n\n\"I was so much younger then.\"\n\n\"HE'S IN PLACE and everything's cool,\" the DDO said.\n\n\"Okay.\" Jackson lifted another phone. \"It's a go. I repeat, it's a go. Acknowledge.\"\n\n\"Operation BOOTH is go,\" Diggs confirmed from Riyadh.\n\nTHE IRANIAN AIR defense system was about as tense as it could be. Though no attack at all had been launched into their territory, the radar operators were keeping a close eye on things. They watched several aircraft patrolling the Saudi and Qatari coasts, mainly running parallel, not even pushing toward the center of the waterway.\n\nBANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE and BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-TWO completed refueling from their tankers within seconds of each other. It wasn't often that Stealth fighters operated in unison. They were, in fact, designed to operate entirely alone. But not this time. Both separated from the KC-10s and turned north for a flight of about one hour, albeit with a thousand feet of vertical separation. The tanker crews remained on station, and used the time to refuel the standing fighter patrol on the Saudi coast, exactly routine for night operations. Fifty miles away, an AWACS tracked everything\u2014or almost. The E-3B couldn't detect an F-117, either.\n\n\"WE KEEP MEETING like this,\" the President said to the makeup woman, with forced good humor.\n\n\"You look very tired,\" Mary Abbot told him.\n\n\"I am pretty tired,\" Ryan admitted.\n\n\"Your hands are shaking.\"\n\n\"Lack of sleep.\" This was a lie.\n\nCALLIE WESTON WAS typing alterations to the speech directly into the electronic memory of the TelePrompTer. Even the TV technicians were not allowed to see the content of this one, and in a way she was surprised that she herself was. She finished, scanning the whole thing for typos, which, she'd learned over the years, could be very disconcerting to Presidents on live TV.\n\nSOME OF THEM were smoking, Clark saw, the guards outside. Poor discipline, but maybe it did serve to keep people awake.\n\n\"John, you ever think that this job is maybe just a little too exciting?\"\n\n\"Gotta take a leak?\" It was the usual reaction, even for them.\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Me, too.\" It was something that never made the James Bond movies. \"Hmph. I didn't know that.\" Clark pressed the earpiece in, hearing a normal voice, as opposed to one of a known announcer, say that the President would be on in two minutes. Maybe some network director, he thought. With that, the last two items came out of the suitcase.\n\n\"MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I am here to give you an updated report on the situation in the Middle East,\" the President said without preamble.\n\n\"Approximately four hours ago, organized resistance ceased among the forces of the United Islamic Republic which invaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi, Kuwaiti, and American forces, working together, have destroyed six divisions in a battle which raged through a night and a day.\n\n\"I can now tell you that our country dispatched the 10th and 11th Cavalry regiments, plus the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, and the 366th Wing from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. A massive battle was fought south of King Khalid Military City. You have already seen some of the details on TV. The final UIR units attempted to flee the battlefield to the north, but they were cut off, and after a brief engagement, they began to surrender. Ground combat in the area has, _for the moment,_ concluded.\n\n\"I say 'for the moment,' because this war is unlike any most of us have known in the past fifty years. An attack was made directly upon our citizens, on our soil. It was an attack deliberately made upon civilians. It was an attack made using a weapon of mass destruction. The violations of international law are too numerous to list,\" the President went on, \"but it would be wrong to say that this attack was made by the people of the United Islamic Republic upon America.\n\n_\"Peoples_ do not make war. The decision to start a war is most often made by one man. They used to be kings, or princes, or barbarian chiefs, but throughout history it's usually one man who decides, and never is the decision to start a war of aggression the result of a democratic process.\n\n\"We Americans have no quarrel with the people of the former Iran and Iraq. Their religion may be different from ours, but we are a country which protects freedom of religion. Their languages may be different, but America has welcomed people of many languages. If America has proven anything to the world, it is that all men are the same, and given the same freedom and the same opportunity, they will all prosper to the limit only of their own abilities.\n\n\"In the last twenty-four hours, we killed at least ten thousand soldiers of the UIR. Probably many more. We do not know now and probably never will know the total number of _enemy_ deaths, and we need to remind ourselves that they did not choose their fates. Those fates were chosen for them by others, and ultimately by one person.\" Ryan clasped his hands together theatrically. It seemed a very awkward gesture to all who watched.\n\n\"THERE IT GOES,\" Chavez said, his face to the camera's small eyepiece screen, which was now showing the download from the orbiting satellite. \"Start the music.\"\n\nClark thumbed the laser transmitter, careful to see that it was on the invisible infra-red setting. A check through his eyepiece put the dot on the building's cornice\u2014or parapet, he couldn't remember the difference. Whatever, there was a guard standing there, his foot on the structure.\n\nDIGGS IN RIYADH: \"Final check.\"\n\n\"BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE,\" he heard in reply\n\n\"TWO-FIVE-TWO.\"\n\n\"THROUGHOUT HISTORY, KINGS and princes have made war at their whim, sending people off to die. To the kings, they were just peasants, and the wars were just grabs for power and riches, a kind of entertainment, and if people died, nobody much cared, and when it was all over, for the most part the kings were still kings, whether they won or lost, because they were above it all. All the way into this century, it was assumed that a chief of state had a _right_ to make war. At Nuremberg, after the Second World War, we changed that rule by trying and executing some of those responsible. But getting to that point, arresting the criminals, as it were, cost the lives of twenty million Russians, six million Jews, so many lives lost that historians don't even know....\" Ryan looked up to see Andrea Price wave to him. She didn't smile. It was not a smiling matter. But she gave the signal anyway.\n\nTHE GROUND-BASED laser was only insurance. They could have gone in without it, but picking out exactly the right house in the city would have been difficult, and they wanted to limit collateral damage. This way, also, the aircraft could drop their weapons from higher altitude. Simple ballistics would guarantee a drop to within a hundred yards, and the improved optics systems on the guidance packages cut that figure to one. Exactly on time, both BANDIT aircraft (\"Bandit\" was the semi-official call sign for the pilots of the Black Jets) opened their bomb-bay doors. Each aircraft carried a single five-hundred-pound weapon, the smallest that could take a PAVEWAY guidance package. These hung from a trapeze while the seeker heads looked for a modulated laser signal. Both acquired the laser dot, and so informed the pilots, who executed the release. Then they both did something neither had ever done before on a Stealth mission.\n\n\"BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE, bomb away!\"\n\n\"TWO-FIVE-TWO, bomb gone!\"\n\n\"EVERY IDEA IN the history of man, good or bad, has started in a single human mind, and wars begin because one mind thinks it profitable to kill and steal. This time, it's happened to us in a particularly cruel way. This time, we can be exactly sure who did it\u2014and more.\"\n\nWORLDWIDE, IN EVERY country with a satellite dish and TV cable, in over a billion homes, the picture changed from the Oval Office of the White House to a three-story building on a city street. Most viewers thought it some mad error, something from a movie, a bad connection\u2014\n\nA HANDFUL KNEW different, even before the President went on. Daryaei, too, was watching the President's speech, as much from pure curiosity as political advantage. What sort of man was this Ryan, really? he'd wondered so long. Too late, he found out.\n\n\"THIS IS WHERE he lives, Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, the man who attacked our country with disease, the man who attacked my child, the man who tried to attack me, the man who sent his army on a mission of conquest that turned into a mission of death. He is a man who has defiled his religion and the laws of men and nations, and now, Mr. Daryaei, here is the reply of the United States of America.\"\n\nTHE PRESIDENT'S VOICE stopped, and a second or two later, so did translations all over the world, replaced only by silence, as eyes watched an ordinary black-and-white picture of a quite ordinary building\u2014and yet everyone knew that something extraordinary was about to happen. Those looking very closely saw a light go on in a window, and the front door open, but no one would ever know the identity of the person who might have been attempting to leave, because both weapons fell true, struck the roof of the building, and went off a hundredth of a second later.\n\nTHE NOISE WAS awful. The passing pressure wave was worse. Both men watched, ignoring the danger. The echoes were punctuated by the tinkle of glass from half a mile around.\n\n\"You okay?\" Ding asked.\n\n\"Yeah. Time to boogie, partner.\"\n\n\"Fuckin' A, Mr. C.\"\n\nThey got down to the bedroom level as quickly as possible. Chavez cut most of the way through the cords with a pocket knife. He figured it would take them about five minutes to work themselves free. The alleys allowed them to drive from the area, and keep out of the way of emergency vehicles, which screamed their way to the remains of the three buildings. Half an hour later, they were back in the safety of the Russian embassy. Vodka was offered. Vodka was drunk. Chavez had never experienced so bad a case of the shakes. Clark had. The vodka helped.\n\n\"TO THE PEOPLE of the United Islamic Republic, the United States of America says this:\n\n\"First, we know the exact location of the germ-warfare factory. We have asked for and received the help of the Russian Federation. They are neutrals in our dispute, but they have knowledge of this type of weapon. A team of technical experts is now on its way to Tehran. They will land, and you will take them immediately to the facility to supervise its neutralization. They will be accompanied by journalists for an independent verification of the facts. If this does not happen, then twelve hours from now we will destroy the site with a low-yield nuclear bomb to be delivered by a Stealth aircraft. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I am unwilling to give that order. The United States of America will not tolerate the existence of that facility and its inhuman weapons. The twelve-hour period starts now.\n\n\"Second, your prisoners will be treated in full accordance with international convention, and also the stern and admirable laws of hospitality which are part of your Islamic faith. Your prisoners will be returned as soon as you deliver to the United States the living bodies of every single person who had a role in preparing and delivering those weapons to our country, and those behind the attack on my daughter. On that there will be no compromise.\n\n\"Third, we will give your country a week to comply with this requirement. If you do not, then America will declare and wage unlimited war. You have seen what we can do, what we have done. I assure you that, if we have to, we can do more still. The choice is yours to make. Choose wisely.\n\n\"Finally, and I say this to all nations who may wish us ill, the United States of America will not tolerate attacks on our country, our possessions, or our citizens. From this day forward, whoever executes or orders such an attack, no matter who you are, no matter where you might hide, no matter how long it may take, we will come for you. I have sworn an oath before God to execute my duties as President. That I will do. To those who wish to be our friends, you will find no more faithful friend than we. To those who would be our enemies, remember that we can be faithful at that, too.\n\n\"My fellow Americans, it has been a hard time for us, for some of our allies, and for our enemies as well. We have defeated aggression. We have punished the person most guilty for the cruel deaths in our land, and we will have a reckoning also with those who followed his orders, but for the rest, let us now recall the words of President Abraham Lincoln:\n\n\" 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.'\n\n\"Thank you, and good day.\"\n**EPILOGUE:**\n\n**PRESS ROOM**\n\n\" . . . AND FINALLY, I AM SUBMITTING to the Senate the name of Dr. Pierre Alexandre to fill the post of Surgeon General. Dr. Alexandre, after a distinguished career in the United States Army Medical Corps, then joined the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an associate professor in the area of infectious disease. He was very helpful to me during the Ebola outbreak. Dr. Alexandre is a brilliant clinician and researcher who will initiate and oversee several new programs, including basic research in rare infectious diseases, and will also head up a new federal oversight commission to coordinate AIDS research. This will not be bureaucratic,\" the President said, \"there's enough of that. The idea here is to set up a new system by which physicians and other research scientists can more easily exchange research data. It is my hope that the Senate will see quickly to confirmation of his appointment.\n\n\"That concludes my opening statement.\" Jack pointed. \"Yes, Helen?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, your opening remarks on China\u2014\"\n\n\"I thought I made that clear. We have had private discussions with the Republic of China and concluded that the restoration of full diplomatic relations is in the best interests of both our countries. It is not the policy of the United States to discourage countries with freely elected governments. The Republic of China is such a country, and merits our full respect and recognition.\"\n\n\"But what will mainland China think of this?\"\n\n\"What they think is their affair. We are both sovereign nations. So is Taiwan, and it's time we stopped pretending otherwise.\"\n\n\"Does this have anything to do with the shoot-down of the airliner?\"\n\n\"That matter is still under investigation. Next?\" Ryan pointed.\n\n\"Mr. President, the new Iranian provisional government is reportedly seeking to establish full diplomatic relations with our country. Will we entertain that request?\"\n\n\"Yes, we certainly will,\" Jack replied. \"If there's a better way to turn an enemy into a friend than by open discussion and trade, I don't know what it is. They have been very cooperative, and we still have an embassy building there, but I suppose we'll have to change the lock on the front door.\" There was general laughter. \"Yes, Tom. Nice tan, by the way. Welcome home.\"\n\n\"Mr. President, thank you. Regarding the destruction of the germ-warfare lab outside Tehran, the only journalists who ever got in there were those two Russians that their embassy drafted for the purpose. How can we be sure\u2014\"\n\n\"Tom, the Russian experts who supervised the neutralization of the facility were indeed experts. We have video of their procedures from the reporters, and both I and my consultants on this matter are fully satisfied. Ed?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, the prisoner exchange is now concluded. How will we respond to Iranian and Iraqi requests for credit?\"\n\n\"Secretaries Adler and Winston will be flying to London next week to discuss this with representatives of both governments.\"\n\n\"Sir, a follow-up, will this mean preferential prices for imported oil, and if so, for how long?\"\n\n\"Ed, those are subjects for negotiation, but I suppose they will offer us something in return for the credit approval they desire. The exact details will have to be worked out, and we have two very good men to handle that for us.\"\n\n\"What about good women?\" a female reporter asked.\n\n\"We have a lot of those around, Denise, including yourself. In case you haven't heard, Special Agent Andrea Price\"\u2014POTUS gestured toward the door at his right\u2014\"has accepted a proposal of marriage. It will be a mixed marriage, however, as her fianc\u00e9, Inspector Patrick O'Day, is a special agent in the FBI. I wish them the very best, even if it means I may need a new bodyguard. Yes, Barry,\" he said, pointing to the senior CNN reporter.\n\n\"So the big question that nobody has asked yet today, Mr. President\u2014\"\n\nRyan held up his hand. \"There is so much\u2014so many things yet to be done just to get the government fully functional again after all we've been through\u2014\"\n\n\"Sir, we're not going to let you off the hook.\"\n\nA smile. A sigh. A nod. A surrender. \"The answer to your question, Barry, is, yes, I will.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mr. President.\"\n_It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to  \nbecome conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to   \nrecall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask   \nourselves what we can do for our country in return._\n\nOLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.\n\n**_Novels by Tom Clancy_**\n\nTHE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER   \nRED STORM RISING   \nPATRIOT GAMES   \nTHE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN   \nCLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER   \nTHE SUM OF ALL FEARS   \nWITHOUT REMORSE   \nDEBT OF HONOR   \nEXECUTIVE ORDERS   \nRAINBOW SIX   \nTHE BEAR AND THE DRAGON   \nRED RABBIT   \nTHE TEETH OF THE TIGER\n\nSSN: STRATEGIES OF SUBMARINE WARFARE\n\n_Nonfiction_\n\nSUBMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR INSIDE A NUCLEAR WARSHIP   \nARMORED CAV: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN ARMORED CAVALRY REGIMENT   \nFIGHTER WING: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIR FORCE COMBAT WING   \nMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR OF A MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT   \nAIRBORNE: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRBORNE TASK FORCE   \nCARRIER: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER   \nSPECIAL FORCES: A GUIDED TOUR OF U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES\n\nINTO THE STORM: A STUDY IN COMMAND   \n_(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nEVERY MAN A TIGER   \n_(written with General Charles Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nSHADOW WARRIORS: INSIDE THE SPECIAL FORCES   \n_(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_   \nBATTLE READY   \n_(written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)_\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL   \nTOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: OPERATION BARRACUDA\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: MIRROR IMAGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: GAMES OF STATE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: ACTS OF WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: BALANCE OF POWER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: STATE OF SIEGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: DIVIDE AND CONQUER   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: MISSION OF HONOR   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: SEA OF FIRE   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: CALL TO TREASON   \nTOM CLANCY'S OP-CENTER: WAR OF EAGLES\n\nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: HIDDEN AGENDAS   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: NIGHT MOVES   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: BREAKING POINT   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: POINT OF IMPACT   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: CYBERNATION   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: STATE OF WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: CHANGING OF THE GUARD   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: SPRINGBOARD   \nTOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: THE ARCHIMEDES EFFECT\n\n_Created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg_\n\nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: POLITIKA   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: RUTHLESS.COM   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: SHADOW WATCH   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: BIO-STRIKE   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: COLD WAR   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: CUTTING EDGE   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: ZERO HOUR   \nTOM CLANCY'S POWER PLAYS: WILD CARD\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
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+{"text":"\n# _Katharine the Great_\n\n# KATHARINE GRAHAM  \nAND HER   \nWASHINGTON POST EMPIRE\n\n_Deborah Davis_\n\n_For William H. Schaap, publisher and civil rights lawyer, who worked quietly for justice every day of his life.\n\nAnd to my grandmother, an uneducated immigrant who made it all possible. _\n\n# _Contents_\n\nIntroduction\n\n1. Katharine Graham\n\n2. The Legend\n\nPART I. _The Family_\n\n3. The Father\n\n4. The Father and the Mother\n\n5. Miss Katharine Meyer\n\n6. Kate\n\n7. A Fortunate Marriage\n\n8. Half German, Half Jewish\n\nPART II. _The Paper_\n\n9. Philip L. Graham, Publisher, and His Wife, Kate\n\n10. The Man or the Empire: Katharine Loses Phil\n\n11. Katharine's Wars\n\nPART III. _Mediapolitics_\n\n12. Katharine the Great\n\nPART IV. Post _script_\n\n13. Katharine Graham and the Years After Watergate\n\nAppendix: The CIA's Propaganda Campaign Against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: A Historical Notation\n\nSources and Bibliography\nA biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as one thousand.\n\nVIRGINIA WOOLF\n\nSome are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.\n\nWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, _Twelfth Night_\n\n# INTRODUCTION\n\n _How This Book Was Censored_\n\nTHIS IS the third edition of a book originally written shortly after President Nixon resigned as a result of the _Washington Post's_ investigation of the Watergate scandal. The conceptual center of the book is the question: Could Katharine Graham, as publisher of the _Post_ , have been in the position to end the presidency of Richard Nixon by chance, or was that ability the result of something deeply rooted and systemic? Such an idea is at odds with the story of Watergate presented in such officially sanctioned books as _All the President's Men_ , in which _Post_ reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are portrayed as finding out about Nixon's crimes essentially by accident.\n\nIn researching the content of Katharine Graham's power, I found that both her late husband Philip, from whom she inherited the newspaper in 1963, and Benjamin Bradlee, whom she hired as executive editor in 1965, had been part of a group of men who worked with strategic information during the Second World War. These men had gone on to use their skills in propaganda or intelligence to create and reinforce peacetime definitions of patriotism. Their careers in this way coincided with the formation of the modern news industry; and it was not simply their access to the instruments of mass communication, but also their style of political thinking, their identification with the values of the state, which gave them and others of their background a disproportionate influence on American political culture. The relation of such careers to Katharine Graham's ability to destroy Richard Nixon is discussed in the book in detail.\n\nBenjamin Bradlee as a young journalist was at the very heart of the government's effort to order political thinking after the war. He spent forty wartime months handling classified cables and codes on a naval destroyer, then three years at the _Washington Post_ in the late 1940s under Philip Graham, who as a \"liberal anti-Communist\" supported the search for traitors in government. In 1951, Bradlee went, with Graham's assistance, to the American Embassy in Paris, where as a press attach\u00e9 he became part of a covert operation integral to America's foreign policy: the production of propaganda against Communism. One purpose of the operation was to cast doubt on the patriotism of western European Communists, many of whom had fought in the resistance and were therefore trusted figures in post-war politics. They were discredited as instruments of Stalin. The propaganda was disseminated throughout Europe by the CIA, mainly in the form of newspaper stories appearing under the bylines of pro-American foreign journalists.\n\nIn the original edition of this book, Bradlee was described as a State Department appointee who, while at the embassy, produced CIA material only occasionally, before returning permanently to journalism. Those few lines, and other references to his past, Bradlee denied vehemently. Rather than join the company of other prominent journalists who now freely say they worked with the CIA in the 1950s because times were different then, it was the patriotic thing to do, Bradlee set about to discredit the book, and ruin me as a writer, by having friends produce negative press stories.\n\nHarcourt Brace Jovanovich had bought the rights to _Katharine the Great_ in early 1978, when it was half-finished, and announced publication for fall 1979. The chairman of the company, William Jovanovich, had reviewed the final manuscript and said Katharine Graham was not going to tell him what he could publish. He put the machinery in motion to make _Katharine_ a bestselling book; the sales force took prepublication orders on the entire 25,000 copy first print run, sold rights to the Literary Guild, and recorded bids from a British publisher and seven American paperback houses. He also sold an excerpt about the _Post's_ intelligence connections to the prestigious _New York_ magazine; the excerpt was scheduled to run the same week the book hit the bookstores.\n\nJust before _New York_ went to press, however, Bradlee learned of the article and threatened to sue the magazine. So the article was aborted. _Village Voice_ columnist Alexander Cockburn, who was living with Katharine Graham's daughter, explained this to his readers as having been caused by the \"fact\" (untrue) that I had become \"hysterical\" when an editor at _New York_ questioned some of my information. Cockburn's article came out just as copies of _Katharine_ were reaching the bookstores. Harcourt Brace suspended plans for publicity until the article had been reviewed by its lawyers.\n\nTwo weeks went by without publicity or reviews, and then _Wall Street Journal_ writer David Ignatius, son of former Washington Post Company president Paul Ignatius, called me at home to say he was drafting an Op-Ed piece \"that's going to say you were right about Deep Throat.\" The book said that Deep Throat was Richard Ober, the CIA's deputy chief of counterintelligence. It also said Ober had known Woodward when he was a naval communications officer at the Pentagon and the White House, and had known Bradlee when they were both at Harvard in the early 1940s.\n\nThe call from Ignatius came on a Sunday, and he wanted me at his office right away, that day, with my interview notebooks, which he said he needed to be sure of his facts before he could run the story. I hurried downtown in the rain with my notebooks.\n\nIgnatius greeted me tensely, a young man around thirty, my age, with arms too short for his body. We sat in padded chairs at one end of a vast office, and he opened aggressively, \"How can you do this to poor Ben Bradlee? Do you want to ruin his career?\" For more than two hours, he questioned me angrily: \"Who told you this? Who told you that? Was it________, or was it______, or was it_______?\" \"That guy's given people some bad information.\" I nervously searched my notebooks, aware now of his intentions but believing, naively, that the right answers would make a difference. At four o'clock, suddenly, he broke off; \"I'm due at Woodward's house, I'm late, I have to call him and tell him how it's going\"; and we watched each other while he moved his mouth into the receiver of a black telephone.\n\nHis article, printed on the _Journal'_ s editorial page, said that my book was \"garbage . . . the only interesting thing about it is wondering who is going to sue for libel first.\" The _Journal_ identified Ignatius as an intelligence specialist; it did not disclose his father's relationship with the _Washington Post._\n\nRichard Ober, for his part, had his lawyer begin negotiating with Harcourt Brace to have certain lines about his association with the White House Plumbers Unit deleted from the second edition. He said he was not involved in any way with the Plumbers' criminal break-ins. But the letter from Ober's attorney did not deny my claim that he was Deep Throat, nor that he had known Woodward at the Pentagon or Bradlee in the mid-1940s when they were both in the exclusive Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard. I went to New York to discuss the situation with Harcourt's attorney, David Blasband. When I got there, Blasband was smiling. \"We did it!\" he exclaimed, waving Ober's letter. \"No denial!\" The changes Ober wanted left my analysis of his role in Watergate essentially unaltered. The pages, with Ober's changes, went to the Literary Guild in December, and the Guild featured _Katharine the Great_ in a full-page advertisement on the back cover of the _New York Times Book Review._\n\nBut pressure from Bradlee was escalating. \"Miss Davis is lying,\" he insisted in a letter to my editor, which he also released to reporters. \"I never produced CIA material.\" He said that \"as an editor libel suits are anathema to me,\" but \"what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't give a shit for the truth.\" He attached a list of twenty-six \"inaccuracies,\" which again put a chill on Harcourt's plans for promotion.\n\nThese \"inaccuracies\" concerned the involvement of journalists and news executives with the CIA in the early 1950s, a practice in which, I had written, both Bradlee and Philip Graham had participated. Associations of that kind had been common during the early Cold War era, and were hardly secret before I wrote _Katharine the Great._ They were investigated by the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) in 1976 and explored further in a lengthy article by Carl Bernstein, \"The CIA and the Media\" ( _Rolling Stone_ , October 20, 1977). Bernstein's interviews with CIA officials and Committee staff confirmed that \"brand-name\" journalists at CBS, Time, etc., had worked with the CIA during the Cold War as a matter of course, as an expression of patriotism. Bernstein reported that Agency officials at that time thought of Philip Graham as \"somebody you could get help from,\" meaning he helped arrange journalistic cover for agents. Bernstein said, too, that Mrs. Graham had been shielded from any knowledge of her husband's involvement, and that she had called CIA director William Colby in 1973, after having been in control of the newspaper for ten years, demanding to be told whether any _Post_ employees were on the CIA payroll. Colby had said no in reference to salaried employees but had refused to discuss the question of stringers.\n\nAnother meeting with the publisher's attorney. \"Is that the best Bradlee can do?\" Blasband smiled again, this time not quite so broadly. \"Twenty-six errors out of the whole book, when he was obviously looking.\" His voice trailed off. Then he sat down next to me and said kindly, \"I'm Harcourt Brace's attorney, I'm not your attorney. At some point you may want to have your own.\" I blinked. Blasband wanted me to write responses to every item on Bradlee's list. \"Do it, but don't worry about it, it's all routine,\" he advised me. I took the train back to Washington. I sent my answers to Blasband, he said all right, and the publisher promised that a full promotion campaign for _Katharine the Great_ would begin right after Christmas.\n\nI waited through the holidays. Then, the first Monday after New Year's Day, Peter Jovanovich, son of the chairman and head of the trade book department, called me and said stiffly, \"We are reverting the rights to your book to you as of today. You will be getting a letter.\" I could keep my advance, and my royalty account would be credited with my half of the money from the Literary Guild sale. \"But since the book did not sell enough copies to earn back its advance, the company will be retaining your share of the Guild money.\" He said the Guild, too, had decided it did not care to publish my book. An hour later, a reporter from the _Washington Post_ called and asked, \"How do you feel about your book being taken off the market?\" \"How would you feel?\" I said sadly.\n\nThe next day the _Washington Post_ ran a story which said that the controversial biography of Katharine Graham had been repudiated by the publisher due to \"numerous errors.\"\n\n* * *\n\nI became frightened and isolated and could not make myself go near my typewriter. Roger Wilkins, the first black person on the _New York Times_ editorial board, later fired for supporting a discrimination claim by black _Times_ employees, took me aside at a party. \"You have to keep writing,\" he said urgently. \"When you write you are creating yourself.\" And the exiled Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman told me with extraordinary kindness, \"If they make you stop writing, they have won. We have terrible enemies to fight.\"\n\nI had no strength for a fight, yet feared that if I did not defend my book, I would never write again. None of the lawyers I consulted, however, thought I had grounds for a lawsuit. They said it was not a freedom of speech case, because the First Amendment prohibits only government censorship, not censorship by a publishing company. It was not breach of contract, because the publisher had promised to publish the book, and it had in fact been published. It was not illegal interference with a contract, because a New York court had recently held that corporate executives like Bradlee who exert pressure against books they do not like are exercising their right of free speech. The lawyers also thought the CIA might have had something to do with the book's destruction, which would make a suit prohibitively complicated and expensive.\n\nA year went by. Then, in 1982, a journalist doing research on censorship in America sent me a copy of a letter that had come to him from Harcourt Brace in response to his question about the withdrawal of my book. The letter said that \"due to various complex reasons the book was never published. The few copies that were released were recalled and shredded.\" He also sent a copy of a letter he'd received from Katharine Graham's secretary, who said \"the book was taken off the market with apologies to Mrs. Graham and she purchased no copies.\" I showed these two letters to a lawyer in New York, Richard Bellman, the son of a veteran labor organizer. He thought that the case could make new publishing law.\n\nBellman's idea was that publishing companies control information as a public trust, and so have an implicit First Amendment responsibility to make controversial ideas available to the public. In the case of a book, he planned to argue, the publisher must publish it \"in its full sense,\" which involves \"placing and keeping the book before the public\" and \"letting it enjoy its full life.\"\n\nWe filed against Harcourt Brace in a New York federal court on July 22, 1982, claiming two counts of breach of contract and two counts of damage to reputation. We did not include Graham and Bradlee as defendants because Bellman felt the grievance against my publisher was more well-defined, and also because suing _Post_ executives would have put me in their jurisdiction, and I would have had to plead my case in their town. But they were named in the complaint as accessories to Harcourt's action, and their role in the killing of my book consequently became very well known. The _New York Times_ ran a story the day the lawsuit was filed which said \"Miss Davis and her lawyer maintain that the publisher took the action in the face of [Benjamin Bradlee's] implied threats [in his letter] to the author and publisher.\" The story included Bradlee's response to my accusation: The editor of the _Post_ \"laughingly said\" his letter had been his way of \"just letting off steam.\"\n\nThe legal process started with a trial conference with Judge Thomas Griesa, a maverick member of the New York Superior Court who had once held an attorney general of the United States in contempt for withholding evidence. At the meeting, David Blasband asked that the case be dismissed on grounds that the company had met its obligations to me under the contract. By current industry standards, that meant the book had been physically typeset and printed. My attorney argued that publishing \"in its true sense\" commits a publisher to \"placing and keeping an author's work before the public.\" \"I go to bookstores,\" the judge told Blasband, \"I saw that one day the book was on the shelf, and the next day it wasn't.\" He allowed us to go forward with our request to see all of the publisher's internal documents.\n\nWe knew that those documents could have proven anything: that I had been wrong about the _Post_ , Woodward, Phil Graham, and Bradlee; that the CIA had killed my book; that any number of unknown factors had influenced my publisher's behavior. We waited one week, two weeks, and then Blasband's law firm, Linden & Deutsch, withdrew from the case. An attorney from a new law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman called Bellman and offered a settlement of twenty-five thousand dollars on the condition that I waive my right to see the documents. I refused. Cartons of papers were delivered to my lawyer's office, and I took the train up to New York to read them.\n\nI sorted the documents into five categories: prepublication, promotion, subsidiary rights, criticism, and destruction. There were memos from my editor to his boss saying the book needed a \"very good\" libel reading to insulate it from outside pressure. There were lists of talk show hosts and reviewers, layouts of ads, and handwritten notes on publishers who had bid for paperback rights, along with the prices they had offered. There was also an exchange of letters between Harcourt's chief legal counsel, Richard Udell, and the president of the Literary Guild regarding cancellation of the Guild edition. The Guild claimed to have lost members as a result of Harcourt's action, and wanted reimbursement for printing and advertising costs and lost membership revenues in the amount of sixty thousand dollars. Harcourt Brace had paid it.\n\nI found documents regarding the shredding of the book. \"Catherine [sic] has been recycled!\" the manager of one warehouse notified Jovanovich. Another wrote that the book had been \"recycled and converted into waste paper.\" In the corner of his letter was a picture of a dragon and the words, \"Peter, Peter, paper eater.\" On the bottom of the last carton I also found a photocopy of a check for fifty dollars to Harcourt Brace with the notation, \"refund for entry fee, American Book Award.\" This was the first I knew that the publisher had put my book forward for such an honor.\n\nThere was no evidence in the documents of interference by the CIA, no evidence that the publisher found the book to contain any serious \"inaccuracies.\" The real cause of Jovanovich's decision to kill the book was tragic in its banality: a series of letters to him from Katharine Graham that evoked in him a combination of guilt, longing for acceptance, doubt in his own judgment, and, finally, the possibility of forgiveness.\n\n\"The whole theme of the book is so fanciful it defies serious discussion,\" Katharine Graham had written him. She said the idea that her husband ever cooperated with the CIA was nothing but \"the author's CIA fantasy.\" She reminded Jovanovich that their sons had served together in Vietnam and that she had enjoyed his wife's birthday party. Then she wrote, \"I was puzzled that such a book could have been published by a firm as distinguished as yours.\" She said she did not blame him personally, because as a publisher she knew he had relied on the judgment of his editor, and \"editors sometimes let you down.\"\n\nJovanovich obediently responded, \"If we should ever meet again, I would like to tell you some of my thoughts on what I have come to recognize as a kind of 'editorial blackmail,' in which persons say that if you reject a work . . . you are repressing free expression and limiting the truth. . . . It has been a bitter lesson for me, but even so, my feelings in this matter are not to be compared to your own.\"\n\nAfter Jovanovich killed the book, Graham wrote back, \"I was full of admiration anyway for what you did and for the way you did it. Now I am all the more so.\"\n\nJovanovich next received a letter of forgiveness from Benjamin Bradlee, who asked him for an essay for \"our brain section, _Outlook_ ,\" on the experience of having been accused of censoring my book by several writers' organizations. \"Something you wrote to Katharine (and which she graciously showed me),\" Bradlee told him, \"struck a chord. . . . You talked about a kind of editorial blackmail, where people charge you with various heinous crimes if you insist on certain standards.\" Mr. Jovanovich agreed to write the piece, but it was never published.\n\nIn November 1983, almost four years to the day after my book was first printed, the chief legal counsel for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich admitted during his deposition that the publisher knew of no specific misstatements in my book and had no reason to think anyone was going to sue for libel. Within a few days, the publisher settled my breach of contract and damage to reputation claims out of court.\n\n* * *\n\nSEVERAL years later, I came into possession of a set of documents which helped explain Bradlee's distress at having been described as a minor CIA propagandist. Those documents, pertaining to his time at the U. S. Embassy in Paris and consisting of classified messages and an \"Operations Memorandum\" he authored, showed that he had been in fact deeply involved in one of the pivotal propaganda operations of the Cold War\u2014the massive worldwide campaign against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. That campaign was designed to persuade Europeans that the Rosenbergs, convicted of espionage and sentenced to death, were in fact guilty and deserved to die. The documents describe Bradlee's visit to the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York under orders of \"the head of the CIA in Paris,\" as he told an assistant prosecutor. From their material, he composed his \"Operations Memorandum\" on the case, which was the basis of all propaganda the CIA sent out to hundreds of foreign journalists.\n\nThe Rosenberg documents and an essay on Benjamin Bradlee's role in the campaign made up a long appendix to the second edition, which was finally published by a small Washington publisher, National Press, in 1987. Before that edition went to press, Graham and Bradlee were asked to notify the new publisher of any changes they would like to have made in the original text. They responded by reiterating their general disapproval of the book, and declined the request. When the book reappeared in September 1987, along with newspaper stories about how the first edition was censored, neither Bradlee nor Graham made any public comment. As I write this, eleven years after the first edition was published, no one has ever sued for libel.\n\nThe appendix on the Rosenberg case is also included in this volume, along with a new final part on the _Post_ 's retreat from investigative reporting under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush.*\n\n* Portions of this introduction originally appeared in _The American Voice_ , Number 17, Winter 1989.\n\n# [CHAPTER ONE\n\n_Katharine Graham_](content-toc.xhtml#aa1)\n\nKATHARINE GRAHAM came to national prominence during the Watergate scandals, when the _Washington Post_ , which she controls, ran a daring series of stories on political corruption that ultimately led into the Nixon White House and caused President Nixon to resign from office. The Watergate stories established Mrs. Graham as a publisher of conscience and courage and of legendary power. She was the woman who brought down a president.\n\nWashington is in many ways Katharine Graham's town. She was raised there; her father bought the _Washington Post_ at auction there in 1933; she married and gave birth to four children there; and there she nursed her erratic husband, Philip, through years of well-publicized mental illness. His illness jeopardized the stability of the newspaper that her father gave him shortly after their marriage. When her husband committed suicide in 1963, Katharine inherited the _Post_ and by harsh, efficient management built it into a news vehicle that is economically and journalistically dominant in the capital of the United States. This means that she has close social and political relationships with many of the city's, that is, the nation's, most important political actors, and that they influence her newspaper, just as her newspaper influences them. When her husband ran the paper, there were working arrangements with officials in the departments of State and Justice, the intelligence agencies, and the president's office. She supported the Vietnam war because of her friendship with Lyndon Johnson, and had it not been for what happened between her and Nixon, she most likely would not have sponsored the two years of Watergate stories, which she suspected would implicate him.\n\nNixon came to Washington as president in 1968 with a hatred for the press in general, and the _Washington Post_ in particular, that he had acquired as a congressman twenty years earlier. He had been a calculating, effective witch-hunter on the House Un-American Activities Committee and later in the Senate, which had earned him the reputation as the brightest and hardest-working of the young Republicans. He had come to despise Philip Graham, not because Graham had opposed the spirit of his campaign against domestic Communists\u2014he had not\u2014but because the _Post_ had accused him of \"excesses\" in performing that important service. Then, when Nixon landed the vice-presidential slot on the Eisenhower ticket in 1952, Graham had dared to print a story about a Nixon campaign slush fund, which had created a crisis in Republican ranks so that Nixon, to save his nomination, was forced to deliver the humiliating Checkers speech. He had not profited personally from the money, he said tearfully in a television appearance; Pat doesn't have a mink coat. Nixon did admit having been given his cocker spaniel as a gift; did the people want him to give back his dog Checkers? That experience ensured Nixon's enmity for the _Washington Post_ forever afterwards.\n\nDespite the stormy history between Nixon and the Grahams, Katharine supported Nixon for president in 1968, when antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy did well against Johnson in the Democratic primaries. After Johnson announced in March that he would not accept the nomination for another term as president, she looked to Nixon for a solution not so much to the war as to the intolerable problem of dissent. When the antiwar displays continued, and intensified, during Nixon's first year in office, Katharine ran an editorial objecting to the movement's attempt to \"break\" a president.\n\nIn exchange for her support, she expected Nixon's friendship and received instead his unprovoked attacks. Spiro Agnew announced publicly that the _Washington Post_ and its subsidiary news companies, including _Newsweek_ magazine, \"all grind out the same editorial line . . . powerful voices harken to the same master,\" by whom he meant Katharine. In the privacy of her office, John Ehrlichman read off a list of media sins, and she was beside herself trying to elicit from him exactly what it was that the president wanted to see in print.\n\nTheir mutual dance ended abruptly in June 1971, when the _New York Times_ published the first of its stories based upon the Pentagon Papers, the classified Defense Department documents that revealed misjudgment and deception in the conduct of the war. Once published, the documents became a matter of journalistic competition; the _Post_ obtained a set, and when a Nixon administration official telephoned executive editor Benjamin Bradlee to ask that he not publish them, Bradlee said, \"I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand I must respectfully decline.\" Nixon's attacks became more bitter, his threats more serious; in June 1972, Katharine and Bradlee seized the opportunity to cover the arrest of the Watergate burglars.\n\nKatharine did not, much as she enjoyed the acclaim that Watergate brought her, want the taste for scandal to alter permanently the practice of journalism; she became concerned, after it was over, that reporters' disrespect for the men in public life had gotten out of control. Several months after Nixon's resignation, she wrote an essay entitled \"The Press after Watergate: Getting Down to New Business,\"* in which she complained that the \"dedicated public servants\" Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, who were both her friends, did not \"entirely understand\" the new requirements for disclosure. She disliked the breakdown in authority and felt that scrutiny of political behavior was not the proper way to determine a man's fitness for office. To judge a leader, one must look beyond his actions into his \"character.\" Her message was that Richard Nixon had been an exception. Reporters should now, again, simply report the news.\n\nHer fame brought unwanted attention to her own power. There were several flattering \"authorized\" portraits, all reiterating the same few themes, as she provided them: the eccentric, dynamic family, the education at Vassar and the University of Chicago, the marriage, her husband's suicide, her learning to run the newspaper \"from the top down.\" There were also unauthorized articles, which examined her ruthless labor policies and her enduring support for the Vietnam war and speculated that a relationship with the CIA might have had something to do with Watergate. It did.\n\nThese are the questions that go to the heart of Mrs. Graham's life as a publisher. She is not comfortable with them, has not cooperated with any efforts to analyze them, and wishes they would stop. \"I have called a halt to all articles and books about me,\" she told me when I began work on the book in 1975. When she wanted a book, she would ask one of her own writers to do it. I continued to work, and she told her friends not to speak to me, as she feared the book would be a \"hatchet job.\" (Just before this third edition of _Katharine the Great_ went to press, she signed a $750,000 contract with Knopf to write her autobiography. The publisher does not know when the manuscript will be delivered.) Recognizing the tendency of the rich and powerful, as well as the poor and powerless, to be suspicious of people they do not know, I was nevertheless struck by the arrogance implicit in her attitude: that unless she can control what is being written, it is neither legitimate nor reliable. What is the elusive wisdom of the people who own the means to shape the flow of information to us; how do their attitudes determine what we know?\n\nOne who writes about Katharine Graham's life is led unavoidably to a study of the political uses of information, which I have called mediapolitics. A discussion of this phenomenon is woven into the narrative. A political treatment of her life and work, as she would agree, is more interesting than a book that might attempt merely to humanize her, to penetrate the legend and reduce her mystery with anecdotes, which explain nothing at all. Her legend is about her political power, and that is the reason she is an important and worthy subject.\n\n* _New York_ magazine, November 4, 1974.\n\n# [CHAPTER TWO\n\n_The Legend_](content-toc.xhtml#aa2)\n\nIT WAS a sweet, sunny spring morning in 1974 when Katharine Graham held a breakfast meeting for Robert Redford on the veranda of her Georgetown mansion. The meeting was a prelude to his making a film about her newspaper, a detective story in which two _Washington Post_ reporters uncover political crimes that implicate the president of the United States. It was to be a true-to-life account, ending when seven of the president's closest aides are indicted. The meeting was extraordinary in that even as they spoke, Congress was preparing three articles of impeachment against the president himself, and he would resign from office in less than five months.\n\nSeated with Redford and Katharine on her black and white tiled porch, at several small round tables, was a group of young men all nervously eyeing one another: Dustin Hoffman, Redford's co-star; Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the Watergate reporters, the authors of _All the President's Men_ , just submitted for publication, which would be the basis for the movie in question; and Donald Graham (\"Donny\"), Katharine's son, a Harvard graduate, Vietnam veteran, former member of the District of Columbia police force, and heir to his mother's fortune and to her publishing empire.\n\nDonny was with his mother that day because the _Washington Post_ was a family newspaper, the Grahams' claim to being a great American family. The family, that was the central thing, the reason and the spirit of Katharine's publishership. Her determination was a legacy from her husband, Philip Graham, who had killed himself in 1963. Her sense of mission in publishing came from her parents\u2014millionaires, social servants, art patrons (modern art and Oriental masterpieces dominated the living room, where the breakfast guests drank their final cups of coffee)\u2014who had bought the _Post_ in 1933 with the intention of building it into an influential political force. The Watergate stories had been the culmination of that effort, the proof of the family's power in media, its facility with politics, its good name, its right to command deference; and Robert Redford's calling on Katharine symbolized all of that, although she was surprised to find herself only mildly flattered. Before Watergate she would have been thrilled at his interest in her; now, having played her tense, dramatic role in bringing down a president, having achieved her place in and around and above the political life of the nation, her family itself at last a medium for political communication\u2014now, Robert Redford's world, a world of images devoid of substance, seemed by comparison silly and frivolous and small.\n\nArising at seven on the morning of the mediapolitics breakfast, Katharine had put on a good casual dress and gold chains and gone downstairs to consult her servant. They decided on scrambled eggs and sausage set out in silver chafing dishes, fruit, little rolls; Katharine thought that it would be more gracious if she served the food than if her woman did it, that it would allow everybody to feel more at home.\n\nThe legend that surrounded her seemed to inhibit conversation, just as she was afraid it would. Redford was awkward, Hoffman nearly speechless; Woodward joked with Bernstein feebly. In such situations the solution was light gossip, an art that Katharine perfected after her husband's death, when she was forty-six years old. Telling short, funny stories that illuminated the human side of politics would help to break the ice; one of her favorites was about Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser and war architect who, in spite of a hatred of the press equal to the president's, had persuaded Katharine that he was her friend. Back in 1970, Katharine told the actors brightly, Kissinger was trying to negotiate an end to the Vietnam war and was exhausting himself shuttling back and forth to the peace talks in Paris. Then Nixon let the country know about the invasion of Cambodia and said that the United States had been bombing Cambodia secretly for a year. Suddenly there had been a great outcry against Kissinger; he was called a war criminal, accused of genocide; and in addition to his other concerns, he began to worry all the time about that. He became so preoccupied with the war criminal stigma, Katharine went on sympathetically, that when he took her to the movies, as he did every time he returned to Washington, he would sit through the entire show thinking about why he was misunderstood. And now she came to the point of the story, at which the guests laughed politely: that on one of these occasions, when the movie ended, Kissinger was unable to remember the plot.\n\nIt is true that personal alliances of this sort are the small pieces out of which the riddle of history is woven, and Donny proudly thought that the story displayed his mother's virtuosity in politics. Yet Carl Bernstein must have wondered. Kissinger worked closely with Richard Nixon; their ideas not only about the war, but about necessary measures regarding opposition to the war (infiltration, wiretaps, other political intelligence), were indistinguishable. How could the woman who had been appalled at Nixon's political crimes admire his colleague in these matters? Had she not learned since Watergate that men in government are capable of many things, that political behavior should not be overlooked just because a man takes her to the movies?\n\nKatharine had always said that Watergate was simply good journalism, not the result of any political agenda. For Bernstein it had been different: All his life he had associated Nixon with McCarthyism and the persecution of his parents, and he did not believe that Nixon as president was any less villainous. The Watergate burglars were arrested in June 1972; since the day that Bernstein and Woodward traced the slush fund that paid the burglars to Nixon's campaign counsel John Mitchell, Bernstein had been convinced that this time Nixon was going to be exposed for what he was. In anticipation, he contracted with Simon and Schuster to write a psychological study of two of Nixon's men, Mitchell and Gordon Liddy, the finance counsel of the Committee to Re-elect the President, who had been indicted in September for paying the burglars. The book (working title: _The Worst and the Dumbest_ ) was put together haphazardly over the next six months, between newspaper stories; by the spring of 1973 a manuscript was in private circulation. Redford, it seems, obtained a copy, for one day he telephoned Woodward, whom he had never met, to say that the structure of the book was wrong, that it should be the story of their investigation, that they, not the president's men, should be the protagonists.\n\nWoodward waited a month before telling Bernstein about the actor's call; it was difficult enough being journalists without thinking of themselves as heroes in a drama of their own creation. But they rewrote the book Redford's way over the next year, and he paid them almost half a million dollars for the film rights. He cast himself as Woodward and asked Dustin Hoffman, who had also tried to obtain the property, to portray Bernstein. After all of these arrangements had been made, and Redford had rented an apartment in the Watergate apartment complex, where he and his wife would live during the location shooting (the FBI building, the Library of Congress), he asked Woodward to introduce him to Mrs. Graham. Katharine thought, since it was her newspaper that he was going to exploit, that the request came rather later than it might have, but she agreed, graciously.\n\nFinally, on Katharine's veranda, the conversation drifted to Redford's plans for the production. He would need photographs and measurements of the newsroom, her office, Ben Bradlee's office, in order to build accurate sets (when Bradlee visited the duplicate of his office, he felt dizzy; even the same books were on the shelf); Redford would want to ship their trash to the Burbank studio; he and Hoffman would have to spend several weeks in the newsroom observing real reporters at work. He would want to feature the _Washington Post_ prominently, use real names, engage a major actress to play Mrs. Graham's part. He mentioned Lauren Bacall, and Katharine gave her consent.\n\nThe filming was well under way before Katharine changed her mind and had her lawyers see what could be done to prevent Redford from finishing. She was not able to prevent Redford from fulfilling his contracts with the reporters and with Warner Brothers, but her attitude deeply angered him. He cut her out of the movie and deleted all references to her, except for one unflattering remark by John Mitchell.\n\nThe movie, _All the President's Men_ , had its international premiere in Washington in 1976; Katharine, as it happened, loved it and forgave Redford for their past differences. It was exhilarating to see one's triumph reenacted on the screen. It was proof of her greatness; it secured Katharine's place in the national consciousness.\n\n# [PART I\n\n _The Family_](content-toc.xhtml#a1)\n\n# [CHAPTER THREE\n\n_The Father_](content-toc.xhtml#aa3)\n\nIN THE beginning was the father, Eugene Isaac Meyer, who was born on October 31, 1875, into a cultured Jewish mercantile family in the pioneer village of Los Angeles. He was the fourth of eight children and the first son. In a patriarchal family, that made him the most honored child.\n\nEugene Meyer's father, Marc Eugene, had come to Los Angeles in 1860 from Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, France, fleeing anti-Semitism and poverty and seeking adventure. His new town was predominantly Spanish in culture. The land had belonged to Mexico until a decade before their arrival. Official records were kept in both English and Spanish, and merchants posted bilingual advertisements. It was a wild town of only five thousand, where American gunfighters and Mexican _bandidos_ often terrorized the citizens. But Marc Eugene quickly felt at home among the French Jewish settlers, who spoke French as well as English and Spanish, if less so with the Prussian Jews, who spoke Polish. The Jewish colony was largely responsible for the town's developing industry and business; nearly all were merchants, and by the time Eugene Isaac was born, his father had become one of the most prominent. He was at once the consular agent for the French government, an agent for imports and exports of fine fabrics, a fledgling banker, a gold speculator, a real estate investor, and a director of the crude system of wooden pipes known as the Los Angeles City Water Works. \"Mr. Meyer,\" a contemporary wrote of Marc Eugene, \"was a man of fine physique, handsome appearance and with a great measure of personality.\" He was descended from one of the most outstanding Jewish families in Europe.\n\nJewish religious leaders then were also the political leaders of their people. Marc Eugene's father, Isaac, had been a rabbi and the secretary of the Jewish Consistory, the civil governing body of Strasbourg. His grandfather Jacob had been a member of the Congress of Jewish Notables convoked by Emperor Napoleon I for the consideration of Jewish rights. And his brother-in-law, the eminent Zadoc Kahn, served as the Grand Rabbi of France from 1880 until 1905, acting as a liaison between wealthy Jews and early immigrants to Palestine, who were beginning to create settlements in the Holy Land in response to the pogroms of Eastern Europe.\n\nWhen Marc's father died, his mother refused help from wealthy relatives, and she and her two daughters and son were forced to make a living selling flour in Alsace. Marc had to drop out of the _Gymnasium Protestant_ at the age of fourteen. Rather than wait until he was old enough to work in a relative's business, Marc Eugene left for an unknown new life in 1859, at the age of seventeen, sailing four months around Cape Horn to the gold-rush town of San Francisco. He carried a letter of introduction to his cousin Alexander Weill, the San Francisco representative for the Lazard brothers, investment bankers whose past ventures in the New World included financing the Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War, and soon would include the Civil War. The Weills, Lazards, Kahns, and Meyers had all intermarried many times, as was the custom among wealthy European Jews, and the families took care of one another.\n\nWeill immediately feared that his teenaged cousin would fall into bad ways\u2014drinking, prospecting, or worse\u2014and put him to work in his dry-goods store, where Marc Eugene was introduced to the rudiments of business. The store was a frontier bank of sorts. Many of Weill's customers paid in gold dust, which he would then ship to the Lazards in France. Others left bags of dust for him to hold in his safe, which he did free of charge, as a service. He might not see the depositor again for a year, when he would come in again from the mines with another bag of dust for the safe and a smaller bag as a bonus for Weill. Soon he was lending money to other businesses and to real estate developers, and Marc Eugene found that despite his intention to break away from the family business, to work in Weill's dry goods was to learn banking.\n\nThe young Meyer left Weill after a year for the more exotic village of Los Angeles. Again he had a letter of introduction, from Weill to cousin Solomon Lazard, who had also become the banker in his territory, holding money for Basque shepherds. Here Marc Eugene decided to settle and began to take an active part in the life of the town.\n\nLazard, one of the most civilized of the townsmen, was a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, a voluntary military company that patrolled the hills surrounding the city to protect against bandits, Indians, and an anticipated invasion of Mormons, said to be migrating there from Utah. Meyer, too, joined the Rifles and, to prove himself, another vigilante group as well. He also belonged to the Hillcrest Country Club and to the Hebrew Benevolent Society, which gave money to fledgling charities. He worked faithfully for Solomon Lazard & Company and in 1864, at the age of twenty-two, was made a member of the company. In 1868, a year after he married sixteen-year-old Harriet Newmark, whose older sister Caroline had married Solomon Lazard (the tradition of intermarriage continuing in the colony), he became a principal partner.\n\nThe Newmarks had welcomed the ambitious young man like a son. \"Dear [Marc] Eugene brought [Harriet's] bridal dress from San Francisco, that is to say, the material,\" wrote Harriet's mother to another daughter. \"Everybody said she was the prettiest bride they ever saw. I can assure you, dear Eugene is not a little proud of her. He was dressed very nicely, all in white, black swallow-tailed coat and white necktie, and embroidered bosom shirt. . . . I feel very happy as she has a very nice young man for a husband. She could not have done better had she been very accomplished.\"\n\nThe ceremony was performed by Harriet's father, Joseph, a lay rabbi. Newmark was a learned man who had been a kosher ritual butcher in Poland and had founded no fewer than four synagogues in the United States: two in New York and one in St. Louis, as well as the one in Los Angeles, which exists today as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. He carried out the marriage service in Hebrew, then hosted the wedding feast in the Bella Union Hotel, where \"a colored man cooked the poultry,\" according to a contemporary account, and tables were set with pies, jellies, and chicken salad. One floor below was a funeral for a man who had been killed in a gunfight.\n\nThe couple moved into a one-bedroom house that neighbors and relatives furnished beautifully with horsehair chairs and sofa, walnut and marble-top tables, a rosewood piano, hat stands, lace curtains, scarlet draperies, and carpets imported from Brussels by Alexander Weill, who also supplied the material for Harriet's wedding dress.\n\nMarc Eugene's marriage secured his place in the tight Jewish community. In 1868 he was asked to join the board of directors of the Los Angeles City Water Works, a private company of which Solomon Lazard was the president. Dr. John S. Griffin and Prudent Beaudry, a merchant who once swore that he would drive every Jew in Los Angeles out of business, were his partners. The company had been formed to buy the contract to modernize and manage the city's water system from Don Louis Sainsevain, who was unable to fulfill his promise to the city to replace the primitive wooden system with a network of solid iron pipes. The three men completed that task, then applied in 1869 to lease the Los Angeles River water for fifty years. In return for this lease, they offered to establish a complete distribution system for domestic use, cancel several claims against the city, place fire hydrants on downtown corners (a number of buildings having been lost to fire), and construct an ornamental fountain in the plaza, at a cost of about two hundred thousand dollars. The company received instead a thirty-year contract, which was sufficient to give the board of directors very special standing indeed until the turn of the century.\n\nThe French government, at about this time, asked Meyer, through Lazard, to be France's consular agent and work with French bankers who wanted to invest in the American West. He consented, but found that affiliation with France drew him into the events that were shaking Europe. Anti-Semitism was becoming a virulent force in politics, and so, in 1868, Meyer organized a Los Angeles chapter of the Alliance Isralite Universelle, a French-Jewish defense society that had been founded in 1860 after a Jewish child was kidnapped by the Papal Guard. The alliance was dedicated to the political and physical protection of European and Middle Eastern Jews. The Los Angeles chapter, with Meyer as president, raffled rifles and cigars to raise money to send to Paris headquarters.\n\nMeyer's Alliance lasted only two years, until 1870, when the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the French, Polish, and German Jews in Los Angeles found themselves unable to cooperate on anything, even charity. The Newmarks and other Poles raised money for war relief for the Prussians. The Germans, caught in shifting European political loyalties, supported the Prussians, whereas the French, Marc Eugene among them, already in conflict with his new family, sent money to France. These frontier Jews still felt themselves to be loyal citizens of their respective homelands. \"Two well known citizens, one of Prussian and the other of French birth,\" reported the local newspaper, \"discussed the war yesterday afternoon with such emphasis that they came to blows.\" The Pole was a man named Moritz Morris; the Frenchman, Marc Eugene.\n\nHis marriage to the Polish Harriet somehow survived the Franco-Prussian War, and the family prospered. By the time Meyer had bought out Solomon Lazard's store in 1873, they had three daughters. Then, in 1875, Harriet gave birth to Eugene Isaac, the father of the subject of this book. He grew up alternately proud and contemptuous of his immigrant parents. There were later two more sons and two more daughters.\n\nThe boy, Eugene Isaac Meyer, spent his early years in school and at the old Lazard store, which his father had renamed Eugene Meyer & Company. The townspeople called it the City of Paris. Meyer supplied not only settlers but country merchants throughout the lower California coast and as far inland as Tucson, and his store soon became the largest and most magnificent in the Southwest. The retail salesroom was 125 feet long and 80 feet wide, with counters stretching 120 feet. Along each counter were forty cushioned stools for customers. The stock, many tons of cloth and clothing, was organized by department: silks, calicoes, carpets, oilcloths, mats, and ready-made hats, boots, shirts, and shoes. There was a private room for wholesale transactions. Behind the main store was a warehouse in which were stored hundreds of barrels of grain.\n\nThe town did not offer much for a spirited and wealthy youngster. Every night Eugene and his parents and sisters visited relatives, which after a generation of intermarriage included most of the Jews in town. These well-to-do families all lived within twelve blocks of the center of the young city.\n\nIt was common for wealthy families to have a nurse-governess, an upstairs maid who during meals was the waitress, a parlormaid, a full-time cook, a private tutor, and, in times of illness, a medical nurse. In addition, there was a seamstress who visited several times a week, another woman who did only mending, a laundress, a music teacher, a cabinetmaker, and a woman who made the rounds of the families to shampoo and comb everybody's hair\u2014the combined salaries totaling not even a hundred dollars a month.\n\nEugene was taken from this narrow life at the age of nine. His father, Alexander Weill's former stockboy, was asked to take over Weill's position as San Francisco representative for Lazard Fr\u00e8res because Weill wanted to return to Paris. Marc Eugene sold his department store and moved the family into a spacious Victorian mansion on the 1700 block of Pine Street, in downtown San Francisco. Here the boy saw a city teeming with Irish, Chinese, Czechs (micks, chinks, bohunks, he learned from other boys), and gold miners and Basque shepherds, who staged bloody public cockfights on Washington Square.\n\nMarc Eugene now directed all West Coast investments of the Lazards' London, Paris, and American banks and relished the international banker's life. He dressed his wife and daughters in a manner befitting their affluence, attended cultural events, and belonged to the boards of social welfare groups. He wore long double-breasted coats and bow ties, and he required his son to wear starched Eton collars, which, Eugene objected, caused bullies to pick on him. His father did not relent on the collars, but he paid for boxing lessons with James J. \"Gentleman Jim\" Corbett, a fighter who was on his way to becoming heavyweight champion of the world. Eugene became, consequently, something of a bully himself, running around in his starched collars mocking and taunting his teachers, provoking his classmates, tormenting his sisters and little brothers, unafraid because a champion fighter had taught him to box.\n\nThe once rebellious Mr. Meyer started to worry about his oldest son's education. \"You don't work enough to suit me,\" he told him after a bout of bad behavior, and arranged with a professor from the University of California to tutor him three days a week in Greek, Latin, ancient history, and mathematics. Eugene was made to read his father's financial journals from New York, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Vienna and to learn French and German from them, as well as finance. He read briefs in a lawsuit against Lazard Fr\u00e8res for alleged faulty maintenance of military roads on federal lands in California and Oregon. Soon he appreciated how completely his father was absorbed in the world of business. Even card games with friends, to which his father took him, became forums for the discussion of politics and finance. Meyer was, his son realized, one of San Francisco's dominant financial minds.\n\nThe Meyers could have become one of the great San Francisco families. Cultured, educated, civic-minded, they also became connected with the Levi Strauss fortune in 1892, when their oldest daughter, Rosalie, married Sigmund Stern, the bachelor Strauss's nephew and heir. Then, in 1893, their second daughter, Elise, married Sigmund's brother Abraham, and there was the possibility of Lazard Fr\u00e8res financing mining and industrial operations with Levi Strauss supplying the clothing for the workers, the two clans together controlling much of the wealth of California and the Northwest. But political and financial events intervened\u2014the Panic of 1893, a crisis of confidence in U.S. currency\u2014and Meyer, one of Lazard Fr\u00e8res' most versatile men, was called to New York, where Lazard occupied a pivotal position in America's investment banking network. The Meyers, minus the two married daughters, piled their belongings onto a train in May 1893 and rode across the country to a new life in the East. The most memorable part of the trip for Eugene was passing a band of Apaches as they were being relocated by U.S. troops. The Meyers, with the three boys and three girls, first stayed in the elegant Savoy Hotel in New York City and then bought a townhouse on East 72nd Street.\n\nThe Panic was caused by the European bankers' response to the Sherman Free Silver Act of 1890, which required the U.S. Treasury to purchase four to eight million dollars worth of western-mined silver each month and mint the equivalent in silver dollars. The rest of the world was on the gold standard, and bankers in Europe did not believe that the silver dollar would have equivalent market value. They began to withdraw their money from American industry, especially from the railroads, which they had financed through J.P. Morgan, an American who sat with them on the Court of the Bank of England. The railroads were the principal instrument of industrial development in the United States, and Meyer's job, as Lazard saw it, was to persuade the bankers to leave their money in and allow the crisis to burn itself out. Meyer persuaded Morgan, Morgan influenced the European bankers, the Free Silver Act was repealed late in 1893, and the Panic ended as quickly as it began. But the \"Jewish banking fraternity,\" as the Populists called it, became hated for suppressing financial populism, even though Lazard, a Jewish banker, had been one of the first to move capital into the West and had been instrumental in keeping it there.\n\nEugene had been taken out of the University of California in midyear when his family went east and put to work that summer as a messenger in the Lazard office, for which he was paid twelve dollars a week. He spent endless days in a stuffy cubicle and on weekends desolately wandered the slums of the Lower East Side, where everywhere was living evidence of the anti-Semitic agitation in Europe. By the time he went to Yale that fall, as planned, he had become quite self-consciously Jewish in a way he had not been in California; he did not live in an official Yale residence, where Jews were not welcome, but shared a room in a rooming house with another Lazard Fr\u00e8res son. He studied the full range of subjects: logic, ethics, psychology, Spanish, English literature, German, French, and political economics; he was interested primarily, though, in European politics, an interest heightened in 1894 by the Dreyfus affair in France.\n\nAlfred Dreyfus was a wealthy Alsatian Jew, a captain in the French army, who was accused of promising to pass military documents to Germany, which had annexed Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to \"degradation and deportation\" for life on Devil's Island, a barbaric penal colony for political prisoners off the coast of French Guiana. In 1896 the army's chief of intelligence discovered that the real traitor had been one Walsin Esterhazy, but the military suppressed this evidence. In 1897 Dreyfus's brother made the same finding, and the army held a court-martial for the accused; but he was acquitted within minutes, and Dreyfus remained on Devil's Island in solitary confinement. The next year an army colonel was proved to have forged the papers that incriminated Dreyfus. The colonel committed suicide and Esterhazy fled to England. But in a third court-martial in 1899 the court was still unable to admit error; Dreyfus was again found guilty, but his sentence was reduced from life to ten years. The Dreyfus case divided all French political actors, on every conceivable issue, into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards: the nationalists, royalists, and militarists aligning against Dreyfus; the republicans, anticlericals, and socialists, including Georges Clemenceau, the future prime minister, coalescing around him, less concerned with the Dreyfus case than with discrediting the rightist government. The left wing came to power as a result of the Dreyfus case in 1899, but Dreyfus was not completely cleared until 1906.\n\nFrance was weakened by the long political crisis. Engaged in an arms race with Germany since the 1870s, the purpose of which was one day to win back Alsace-Lorraine, the French nationalists and militarists so lost credibility that the new pro-Dreyfus government cut military spending and reduced the influence of the army in government. The Triple Alliance, which Germany had formed with Austria and Italy after the Franco-Prussian War, could therefore commit itself to commercial and colonial expansion without fear of French reprisal. France had signed a mutual aid treaty with Russia in 1894, partly to ensure completion of the trans-Siberian railroad, which ironically had been financed in 1891 by the Jewish Rothschilds; but the French-Russian alliance did not neutralize the Triple Alliance. Rather, it fed the fever of shifting political affinities throughout Central, Western, and Eastern Europe and made France part of a network of countries that were pulled into World War I when Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in 1914.\n\nEugene finished Yale in 1895, having taken a double load to get out early because he was eager to go to Europe. His ostensible reason for wanting to go abroad was to study, and he enrolled at the University of Berlin, but he spent most of his time in France with his father's brother-in-law, Zadoc Kahn, the Grand Rabbi. Kahn was one of the most ardent and vocal defenders of Dreyfus. The writer Emile Zola, a famous and fascinating man, was working closely with Kahn at that time, producing pro-Dreyfus pamphlets. The most inflammatory of these came to be _J'Accuse_ , published in 1898, in which Zola charged the judges with obeying orders from the war office in their acquittal of Esterhazy.\n\nEugene had been distressed by the case while at Yale and had wanted to see firsthand his uncle's legendary commitment to justice. Kahn arranged for him to meet Alexander Weill, the man who so long before had employed Eugene's father as a stockboy in gold-rush San Francisco. Weill was now the manager of Lazard Fr\u00e8res in Paris. The old man learned that Eugene was interested in finance and asked him if he would go to the London office, marry a Lazard daughter, and eventually become head of the English branch. Eugene politely refused. \"I think you're going to have a war here,\" he told Weill, \"and I'd rather live in a country that won't be involved in that war.\"\n\nBut he had other reasons for refusing Weill's offer. Lazard had become a conservative, unexciting house. Other bankers were making history: J.P. Morgan financing arms manufacture in France, Great Britain, and Russia, the Triple Entente countries, helping them prepare to fight expansionist Germany; the Rothschilds floating billions of rubles' worth of Russian bonds in France to pay for the trans-Siberian railroad; Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company dramatically refusing to aid Russia because of the czar's oppression of Jews (and later contributing to the czar's overthrow by financing Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and still later financing the Kerensky regime); the Rothschilds and Schiff financing settlements in Palestine. The Lazard house, maddeningly, opposed Zionism on the theory that French Jews ought to remain loyal to France.\n\nEugene could have forgiven the provincialism, the indifference to political currents, and the lack of historical understanding\u2014and he would have, had the company not been treating his father so badly. The European partners had finally promoted Marc Eugene Meyer to managing partner of the New York office, but they extracted high service fees for every piece of support work they performed for him and made it clear they would not renew his five-year contract if he complained. Eugene returned to his clerk's job in New York after his year in Europe and absorbed what he could about finance. He learned arbitrage and the buying and selling of foreign currencies from Lazard partner George Blumenthal, who had opportunely, Eugene thought, married his sister Florence. But he knew it would be only a matter of time before he formally broke with the Lazard company, and he began looking around for something else to do.\n\nEugene's raw instinct for making money was as fine as any man's. While he was in Europe, he came into the eight hundred dollars that his father had promised him if he would not smoke until he was twenty-one. He invested the money in Northern Pacific common stock, his first venture in the stock market, and let it earn dividends until he learned all he could on his job; by 1900 his initial investment had yielded five thousand dollars. He protected this money by putting part of it into gold certificates, a hedge against a presidential victory by free silver advocate William Jennings Bryan; with the rest, he bought options on one thousand shares of what he considered to be the best railroad stock, at a guaranteed price. When William McKinley, in whom the bankers had confidence, defeated Bryan, Eugene exercised his options on the railroad stock; prices shot up, as he had predicted, and by January 1901, two months later, its value had increased tenfold\u2014and he had fifty thousand dollars. He then told his father that he was leaving Lazard.\n\n\"I've worked all my life to make a position for you in the firm,\" Marc Eugene exploded, wounded. \"You know I've had you in mind in everything I've done. What sort of ungrateful son are you?\"\n\n\"You've done everything a father could do for his son,\" Eugene replied calmly, \"and a good deal more besides. I owe everything to you. But now you've done enough. You can't deny me the one thing you had.\"\n\n\"I've denied you nothing.\"\n\n\"You've denied me the chance to make my own way in life.\"\n\nMeyer was alarmed enough to notify Alexander Weill, who came to New York. Weill offered Eugene a small partnership in the New York office, but it would have come out of his father's share, and Eugene again refused him. He left the company, and soon afterward his father and his brother-in-law, Blumenthal, followed him.\n\nFifty thousand dollars was precisely the cost of a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Eugene bought one that was available as part of an estate and began to operate on the floor, finding, immediately, that his international training put him at a distinct advantage on all the crucial matters of finance: not only arbitrage, but interest rates, foreign exchange rates, and how to use the time difference between New York and the financial centers of Europe. He affiliated with several correspondents in Paris and London and planned his actions on the floor on the basis of their reports of monetary movements there. In his first year he capitalized on a ferocious stock fight for control of several railroads between J.P. Morgan and E.H. Harriman, Wall Street's two railroad giants, and came away with half a million dollars. He used that money to found his own brokerage house, Eugene Meyer Jr. and Company, in 1903.\n\nEugene's tiny firm contributed to the financial world the idea of statistical research. He produced reports (and sent them to Morgan, Harriman, other legendary financiers, just to let them know that he was also on the Street) that evaluated companies by geographical location, climate, access to natural resources and croplands, proximity to transportation and to other industry. His method enabled investors to judge stock values accurately, on the basis of fact rather than rumor. Within five years, using this method, he achieved several substantial financial coups. Other brokers began telling each other to watch out for Eugene Meyer, who soon was going to have \"all the money on Wall Street.\"\n\nEugene was an iconoclastic young millionaire. Although profoundly independent, he lived happily with his parents in their Upper East Side townhouse. Though a consummate businessman, he preferred the company of left-wing intellectuals and activists like the people he had known in France. During the few years in which he was earning his first fortune, his steady lady friend was Irene Untermyer, daughter of the eminent leftist attorney Samuel Untermyer, who was involved in some of the most important litigation in the country. As part of his continuing effort to reduce the power of bankers, Untermyer campaigned against the bankers' stranglehold on the nation's credit (and eventually headed a congressional investigation of J.P. Morgan, the worst offender). He also wanted government control of the stock market, demanded government regulation of the railroads, and blamed bankers for profiting from the wave of Jewish immigration by building shoddy slum housing.\n\nThe Untermyers introduced Eugene to the founders of the Henry Street Settlement, Lillian Wald, a nurse, and Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, a social economist. These women had raised the money to buy a seven-story brick Georgian house for their project in 1900, and the old mansion was a center for artists and union organizers, as well as a makeshift school and hospital for the poor. Eugene spent evenings and weekends at the house and donated funds to pay the salary and expenses of a full-time nurse. These activities did not make him popular with his Wall Street colleagues. They did not like him any better when he left Wall Street in 1918 for the War Finance Corporation, an agency through which the government provided money for economic recovery from World War I. Later, in 1931, they would also dislike his efforts as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to design legislation to reduce the power of private banking and empower the government to lend money to help bring the country out of the Depression. Still later, in 1946, when Eugene Meyer was the first president of the World Bank, they would resent his lending money on the world market for the public good, not for profit. Wall Street respected Eugene Meyer, even idolized him, but did not like him.\n\nHis failure to marry Irene Untermyer was explained by his unwillingness to enter into one of those incestuous family alliances that characterized New York Jewish society. He remained uninterested in marriage until the age of thirty-two, when in an art gallery he saw a woman looking at Japanese prints, dressed in a tweed suit and gray squirrel hat. \"That's the girl I'm going to marry,\" he told his companion, the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the man who later carved Mount Rushmore.\n\n\"Are you serious?\"\n\n\"Never more so.\"\n\n\"Then you'd better speak to her or you'll never see her again.\"\n\nA week later Borglum telephoned Eugene to say that he had met \"that girl\" and had arranged a party for them to get acquainted. The meeting turned out to be rather awkward; she was not interested in his money, which surprised him, and not particularly impressed with his achievements. She had her own life to worry about. She had saved five hundred dollars, she told him, and was about to go to Europe to study. She did not want any entanglements. It had been very nice to meet him. He loved her wildly.\n\n# [CHAPTER FOUR\n\n_The Father and the Mother_](content-toc.xhtml#aa4)\n\nTHE MOTHER was Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, a slim German beauty, a member of the inner circle of the 291 Club, within whose modest walls one could meet such artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Edward Steichen\u2014and on whose walls hung some of the first Picassos and Matisses ever to be seen outside Europe. Agnes was also, at twenty-one, the first female reporter to be hired by the influential _New York Sun_ ; she taught Bible classes to youth gangs; she did heavy-handed but determined sketches and was a student of Oriental painting and sculpture. She was also a successful and cruel flirt, in whose diaries were recorded tales of amorous advances by men such as Auguste Rodin, whom she rejected with just the right balance of firmness and grace, so that their intellectual relationship would not be sacrificed. These were the tales she inflicted on the rich Eugene Meyer, who insisted, to her amusement, on seeing her again and again.\n\n\"This morning I had a note from Rodin saying that next Sunday, when I am going out to see him, was too long to wait,\" she notified Eugene in 1909 in a letter from Paris, where she had gone on her five hundred dollars a few months after they met. \"Would I not come sometime Thursday, rue de Varime, to look at the drawings once more? . . . Of course I have to go. But it means that he expects 'gratitude.' You need have no fears for me, however; tactful self-defence has become my second nature of late, and I shall do my best to carry off the situation\u2014and the drawings. . . . The whole thing is an awful circus. Only:\u2014Rodin has not been my only complication of late, and sometimes I get a bit tired of the game. I yearn for mountains, fresh air, and the elimination of the male element.\"\n\nEugene went about his courtship methodically. Agnes sent him several Rodin sketches, as evidence of the artist's feeling for her; Eugene responded with a check for four hundred dollars, ostensibly as payment for the drawings, but he wanted her to keep it. She protested\u2014\"The idea of sending me $400 was mad. You are a sweet child to think about it but please consider me quite spoiled enough\"\u2014but her five hundred dollars was long since spent and she did not send Eugene's money back. He sent her other checks on other pretexts, making possible her prolonged stay in Europe. He visited her in France, where he met Rodin, of whom, Agnes was startled to discover, he was not jealous. Eugene asked the sculptor to join him and Agnes for dinner. Rodin liked Eugene, accepted his claim to Agnes even though she did not, and drew a \"French interpretation\" of Eugene and Agnes together.\n\nEugene also introduced Agnes to his sister Elise, who was then in Paris, and when he went back to New York, Elise entertained Agnes on his behalf. Eugene visited Agnes's parents in the Bronx on Christmas Day, then wrote Agnes about the meeting, hoping she would then tell them more about him. All Agnes wrote her mother was \"Mr. Meyer, isn't he a brick?\" She thought him solid, reliable, boring, generous, tough, and lonely. She also felt that he needed her, as other men did not. \"And now I am going to scold,\" she once wrote him. \"I heard from some one that you were not looking well because you were working so hard. And you tell me to take care of myself. I wish you wouldn't do such things or I shall have to come home and lead you astray.\" Unwillingly, that year in Paris, she came to rely on his money and to expect his visits. When was his steamer coming in? She demanded in the fall: \"HURRY UP.\" He thought her petulant, brilliant, sophisticated, confused, lonely, desirable, and unloving. She frequently was able to enrage him, despite his efforts to be calculating.\n\nHis trip produced an argument within the first few hours; he went angrily to his hotel and did not telephone her for a week. Finally Agnes repented and had a messenger deliver a note: \"I wish to send you just a little scrawl so that we may meet like nice sensible children when you come back. . . . I have come to realize that I have been expecting from you the resolution and the work of two will-powers,\u2014even more at times when mine was almost deliberately working against yours. Knowing me as you do, the recognition of unfairness needs no added promises, _n'est-ce pas_?\" She was the most fascinating woman he had ever met. Since he did not yet know her or her family well, he did not understand the depth of her unhappiness.\n\nDuring Agnes's childhood, the Ernsts had lived in a large, solid house thirty miles from New York City, in Pelham Heights, a community in the woods with one school and three churches. There were three older brothers, maids, and cousins, all of whom spoke German and loved Martin Luther, father of Lutheranism. They were not simply Germans, but Hanoverians, immigrants from the northwest province, the seat of German science, technology, medicine, music, art, and education. They hated the militaristic Prussians, descended from Teutonic knights, whose conquests of other German provinces enabled them, from the late 1800s onward, to dictate the tone of German national life. Agnes's father's father had been the personal clergyman to the last king of Hanover. The king refused to support Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War, and as a consequence he fell to Prussian forces in 1866, with his kingdom becoming a Prussian province. To build a stronger army, Prussia developed a government-controlled economy and obedient central bureaucracy. All the young men were conscripted for military service. Agnes's grandfather, deploring the \"vulgarization of life,\" sent his six sons out of the country. The youngest, Agnes's father Frederick, went to sea at age fourteen. Some years later, in New York, he married Agnes's mother, also a refugee from Hanover, and studied law at night. They built a harsh Hanoverian home life\u2014worship of Luther, Wagner, cold baths, long walks in the winter, sacrifice, and discipline. They had three boys, the oldest of whom, Carl, ran away from home at an early age and never saw the family again. Agnes was born on January 2, 1887. She was her father's darling; she was preoccupied with him for the rest of her life.\n\nShe remembered her father as having \"soft curls.\" He was physically undemonstrative; there never was the \"slightest caress, but many loving looks and perfect mutual trust and understanding.\" He woke her at five in the morning to take walks in the forest, reciting poetry. She loved him unquestioningly and forgave him the occasional beatings he gave her. Even late in life, after she had long hated him, the sweet memory of his worrying over her, a girl of five, as she was prepared for brain surgery, was untainted by the thought that the bullet, fired by a playful brother, had come from her father's carelessly placed gun; that it was his irresponsibility that had nearly killed her.\n\nWhen Frederick Ernst had an affair with a widow, his daughter's happy life began to deteriorate. He neglected his work, needed money, and sold their beautiful country home. He demanded that Agnes go to secretarial school instead of Barnard, where she had been admitted at the age of sixteen. Her mother encouraged her education, but Agnes, never close to her, grew away from them both. Only years later, when Agnes's own daughter, Katharine Graham, asked about her mother's family, did Agnes begin to wonder about it. In 1968, when in her eighties, she began to correspond with Lucie Schmidt, a cousin who had grown up in her parents' house, asking about \"my story.\" Lucie, who had become a governess about the same time millionaire Eugene Meyer married Agnes, was living in a Lutheran deaconry in Bernardsville, New Jersey, in the company of \"twenty old women,\" she said, \"who are still up and about.\" Her room had two large windows which overlooked trees. Agnes began to send her two hundred dollars a month and urged her to accept the \"welfare checks,\" probably Social Security, that were mailed to her at the deaconry.\n\nAt the age of ninety-two, Lucie Schmidt began to tell Agnes, eighty-five, about the family of her mother, Lucie Schmidt Ernst. Mrs. Ernst, like her husband, was born in Hanover. \"Jurgen Schmidt was our grandfather,\" Lucie Schmidt wrote, \"a sailor who died in his middle years of Yellow Fever somewhere at sea, where he had nursed some of the young sailors who had caught it from the natives when they went ashore against rules. He must have been an unusually fine man. People still talked about him when I grew up. One of the things that impressed me most was that they had been fine German folk dancers, that he and his wife could dance on a wooden plate.\"\n\nJurgen had been buried at sea. When the ship got home, his wife learned she was a widow with seven children, of whom Agnes's mother, also named Lucie, was the oldest girl. Fortunately, Mrs. Schmidt owned some land and the little white house built for her when she had married Jurgen. The boys went to America, and later Lucie went, too. After she married Frederick Ernst and established a household, Lucie sent to Hanover for her nieces, one of whom was Lucie Schmidt, Agnes's aged cousin. That was all Lucie could tell her.\n\nAgnes, possessed of both \"theoretical and practical genes\" from her scholarly and seafaring ancestors, defied her father and attended Barnard on scholarship in 1903. She lost her scholarship the following year, because of what one of her professors termed \"insolence,\" and paid her own way until she graduated. She tutored high school students in geometry and algebra for her out-of-pocket expenses, which included bringing money home to her mother and father. During the summer, to earn the money for fall registration, she became the principal of a Baptist high school in Hell's Kitchen, where at the age of seventeen she made peace between two rival gangs.\n\nAt Barnard she belonged to the Alpha Phi sorority. Like all the Barnard sororities, Alpha Phi excluded Jews, and Agnes began to cultivate members of this mysterious group, who she felt had more cultural depth and more \"brains\" than the general student population. One of these girls, Judith Bernays, told Agnes that she had an uncle in Vienna who wrote \"the most extraordinary things\"; his name was Sigmund Freud. Agnes read some of the obscure man's writings, the groping early experiments with the subconscious that would develop into the science of psychoanalysis, and she was \"revolted.\" Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex shocked and upset her; it was, she thought, a description of her relationship with her father, with the sexes reversed. But whatever complex there was vanished shortly afterward, when Agnes landed a job on the _New York Sun_ ; she was the first woman the newspaper ever hired, and her childish father said, \"A reporter? I would rather see you dead.\"\n\nOne of Agnes's first assignments for the _Sun_ was to interview a photographer named Alfred Stieglitz, vice-president of the amateurish New York Camera Club. Stieglitz had founded the Photo-Secession movement, which endeavored to elevate photography to a fine art. In 1905, with Edward Steichen, famous for taking the first good color photograph, Stieglitz opened an attic studio at 291 Fifth Avenue, which he called \"291.\" There they exhibited not only their own works, but also those of Picasso and other progressive European artists. This caused the Camera Club to expel him, a news event in the art world. When Agnes went to interview Stieglitz, she remained for six hours, talking about art theory, and wrote an enthusiastic story that ran on page one. Art collectors started coming to 291, and buying.\n\nAgnes became involved with the group, which included the painters John Marin, Max Weber, Marsden Hartley, Katharine Rhoades (after whom she would name her third daughter), and Georgia O'Keeffe, who married Stieglitz in 1924. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz were, Agnes thought, an odd pair. Stieglitz took photographs of old New York that looked like paintings; O'Keeffe painted flowers with an intricacy and attention to detail that gave her paintings the appearance of photographs.\n\nEarly in her association with the 291 artists, Agnes sat for a portrait by Steichen, which is now hanging at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a back view, showing only the right side of her face, in which she wears a high draped hat, a white blouse open halfway down her back, a dark shift, and a wide sash, looking for all purposes like the Gibson girl. Later Agnes tried to learn to draw from Stieglitz, who published one of her thick-limbed attempts in the short-lived 29 _1_ magazine, in the same issue that carried the enigmatic comment, \"Marriage without license, religion without god.\"\n\nIn those years Agnes was not at all interested in marriage. She was an unattached young woman whose friends were the most exciting group of men in the country; and that was exactly what she wanted. When she overheard Meyer and Borglum talking about her in the American Art Galleries in February 1908, she attributed it to her hat, the success of hats at that time being measured by the number of compliments they evoked from strange men. When she later met Eugene Meyer, she thought him a good man, but he did not excite her. She soon left for Europe, inspired by Stieglitz to be present at the birth of French modernism. She visited an aunt in the German town of Lesum and was disturbed by German hysteria and hero worship. Then she found a small apartment in Paris and made the rounds with introductions from Stieglitz. She met Matisse and Rodin, whom she adored, as she unsparingly informed Meyer when he continued to pursue her. She also made the acquaintance of Gertrude Stein, a \"magpie\" whom she did not like, because she was \"ugly\" and \"masculine\" and \"offended my aesthetic sense . . . [as she was] enveloped by a monklike habit of brown corduroy.\"\n\nEugene was a source of security for her while she was in Europe, but little more, as her letters to him revealed. \"Very intelligent but there's no love in them,\" Eugene said to Borglum. When she returned to New York, they continued to meet for lunch and the theater, but, as often as not, she took along a poor male artist friend, and Eugene ended up entertaining them both. After several months of this behavior, he quietly bought two first-class tickets on a steamer to the Orient, then met Agnes for lunch at a French restaurant. She had been talking lately about going back to Europe; she talked about it then. \"I'm going away myself for a while,\" he said indifferently.\n\n\"For how long?\"\n\n\"Six months at least.\"\n\nAgnes was suddenly overcome with a sense of loss. \"I'm going with you,\" she almost begged.\n\n\"I know. I already have your ticket.\"\n\nAfter the quiet Lutheran wedding on February 12, 1910, which was attended by the 291 artists, the Ernsts, and the senior Meyers (Orthodox Jews, all of whom said that it wouldn't last), Eugene gave the wedding feast at the Plaza Hotel. When it ended, early the next morning, the couple took the train to Seven Springs, Eugene's farm in Westchester County, which Agnes was thrilled to find was close to her childhood village of Pelham Heights. They stayed there two weeks, getting acquainted, and then left for San Francisco, where they would board the ship for the Far East. Agnes, who days earlier had been earning forty dollars a week writing freelance newspaper articles (the _Sun_ never put her on salary), now traveled with a full-time maid in attendance. Eugene bought an entire railroad car for their privacy.\n\nWhen they reached Chicago, Eugene wrote to Agnes's mother, claiming to be a poor substitute for Agnes, who wanted to sleep late: \"Liebe Mutterchen [dear little mother],\" it began, \"In Washington we saw the sights. . . . We also were introduced to the President [Taft]\u2014who congratulated us\u2014and sounded a big laugh from the bottom of his big chest. . . . Agnes seems to be happy still and joins me in sending you our love. Your dutiful son Eugene.\" The maid was not to Agnes's liking, so in San Francisco they let her off and found another, who accompanied them across the Pacific. In the Orient, Agnes \"was released,\" she believed, \"from the bondage of seeing myself as the center of my private universe.\" This had been to her a problem of great significance; it paralleled \"that wider egotism which has isolated the Western mentality from the magnificent cultural achievements of the Orient.\"\n\nBack in New York, the Meyers began married life in a townhouse on 70th and Park. Agnes began to have her dresses made by Gunther's\u2014tweed, jersey, simple designs and good fabric\u2014for a thousand dollars apiece. She bought a sixty thousand dollar string of pearls from Tiffany and a twenty-four thousand dollar diamond necklace from Cartier. Eugene set up a large fund for her use, and notes started to pass between them regarding finances: \"Please pay this as it is correct\"; \"Please give [Agnes's secretary] Miss Meyer [no relation] $10 and I will pay you back in cash\u2014do not attach my account.\" Their early years together were a surprise to them both. Eugene turned out not to be adoring, but a stiff taskmaster, breaking Agnes into the maze of social and housekeeping requirements, making her feel that her artist's life had been selfish and irresponsible. Agnes did not, however, easily submit to being tamed. She continued her Bohemian friendships. And she did not come home to nurse their new baby, Florence, who had been conceived during the honeymoon, because she did not like the baby to bite her nipples. She offended Eugene's business associates. She did not, she insisted, have to do anything she did not want to do.\n\nAs a rich married woman, Agnes, who had little talent as an artist, became a patron of the arts. An art book published many years later by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York noted that \"Agnes and her new husband Eugene Meyer commenced a regular pattern of purchase and outright financial subsidy to the circle of American painters Stieglitz had begun to support through exhibitions at Photo-Secession Galleries . . . the Meyers supported painters Marin, Weber, Hartley, and Walkowitz, who became mainstays of Stieglitz's stable of American artists.\"* The book also remarked upon Edward Steichen's working \"to develop a vivacious portrait style to support himself; his clients were rich Americans like the Meyers and the [George] Blumenthals [of Lazard Fr\u00e8res].\" The artists themselves assigned her this new role; she was no longer Agnes but \"Mrs. Meyer,\" the arbiter of their disputes.\n\n\"Our future as a group is now in full discussion,\" wrote the twenty-eight-year-old Cubist painter Marius de Zayas to Agnes in July 1915, \"and I believe you ought to know our different points of view and give us yours forthwith. . . . I don't think that Stieglitz at heart is really interested in taking any definite attitude or in doing any particular thing. . . . At present it is in the power of Stieglitz to make of New York the world center of the best elements of modern art. But to do it he would have to take a business attitude which for personal reasons and lack of capital he refuses to take. . . . I suppose you are now giving your attention to something far more important than art and its evolutions. But I also believe you are still interested in knowing. . . .\"\n\nStieglitz, aware of the dissatisfaction and wounded by it, defended himself to Agnes in letters written in thick, open script: \"The Marin that you want is yours. No one else is to have it. You are to make your own price. . . . I regret deeply that both you & De Zayas should feel that I have not been frank with you. . . . I regret most though that you should feel that 291 has lived solely in your imagination\u2014that it was an illusion.\u2014I'm truly sorry. . . . Personally I see many other things to be done by 291. . . . And many of those things will be done whether at 291 Fifth Ave. or on the street.\"\n\nThe Meyers became one of the most important and remarkable couples in New York. They had five children in ten years and, depending on their fortunes (which were, in any case, considerable), moved the family into the St. Regis Hotel, into apartments on Central Park West, East 55th Street, and Fifth Avenue, and back and forth between New York and Washington, where they finally bought a vast mansion and stayed, interrupted by world trips, for the rest of their lives.\n\nIn the first years of their marriage, Eugene was preoccupied with stock sales and bond flotations that helped create new American industry. His investment firm, Eugene Meyer Jr. and Company, though prominent, was small. His statistical reports had helped J.P. Morgan sell stock in United States Steel, the nation's first billion-dollar corporation, and in International Harvester. Despite his success, though, or because of it, Morgan and the other financial powers were reluctant to work in partnership with him. His ambitions to finance great projects were frustrated as a consequence, until he became involved with the creation of Allied Chemical Corporation and Anaconda Copper, both of which became crucial to America during two world wars.\n\nAnaconda began as a small venture to produce low-grade copper ore and became an international giant largely as a result of a unique mineral separation process invented by a man Eugene found working in a London basement. Eugene bought the patent and used Anaconda to supply the Allied countries with copper wire for their communications network during the First World War.\n\nAllied Chemical also started in a makeshift laboratory; a German-trained chemist, in response to the German boycott of American textile manufacturers, was cooking dyes in pots and pans in a garage in Brooklyn. This chemist was acquainted with the Blum family of Alsace, France, which included the socialist leader L\u00e8on Blum, who entered politics as a result of the Dreyfus affair. Eugene knew Henri Blum, whose father, Nathan, a silk merchant, had been the one to suggest to Eugene's father that he emigrate from France to the United States. Henri Blum asked Eugene to put up money for the chemist's work in February 1915, and within a year and a half the company was employing two hundred researchers in a two million dollar plant. It supplied all the blue dyes for the U.S. Navy; by 1931, during the Depression, Eugene's stock in Allied Chemical was worth forty-three million dollars. These companies, which grew wealthy from America's effort to counter the rising militarism of Germany\u2014blue dyes for uniforms, copper for wire\u2014brought him international fame as a financier and gave him the power and financial independence to exert extraordinary influence in government. His government service, however, was slow in coming.\n\nWhen the United States entered World War I in 1917, Eugene offered his services to Bernard Baruch, another lone Wall Street operator, who went to Washington to run the National Defense Council's Raw Materials Committee, which coordinated the military's raw material needs with industry. Baruch considered Meyer to be his principal rival, however, and did not answer his letters. Eugene then wrote to his friend Louis Brandeis, associate justice of the Supreme Court, offering to \"give my time and work to the service of the country,\" and Brandeis found him a job for a dollar a year on the Advisory Council's Committee on Finished Goods, where he lasted three days. He was fired when he accused the director of conflict of interest in choosing a manufacturer to supply the United States armed forces with shoes.\n\nEugene Meyer and Louis Brandeis had an unlikely friendship. They were very different men in style, personality, and political views, Eugene believing in the power of money to alleviate social ills, Brandeis blaming the great money trusts for those problems and working to control Wall Street for most of his early life. In important ways, though, they were not so different. Both were idealists, men of great character, not fully accepted in their respective fields, but whose methods revolutionized established practice. Both were pioneers in the use of hard economic data, Meyer at his investment firm, Brandeis in briefs that he wrote in support of social and economic reform legislation. The most famous of these \"Brandeis briefs\" was a legal document written to uphold maximum-hour legislation. The brief did not cite a single case, but for the first time presented statistical, economic, physiological, and medical information to prove that women who were forced to work sixty or seventy hours each week or lose their jobs were becoming sick or dying.\n\nBrandeis also opposed monopoly in the transportation industry and worked with Samuel Untermyer to control J.P. Morgan. Like Untermyer and Meyer, he was concerned with the Lower East Side ghettos in which Jewish immigrants were living and working, and he was always asking Jewish millionaires, his ideological enemies, to contribute time and money to help their people.\n\nHis concern for the Jews also led him to Zionism, and in 1915 he approached Meyer, whom he barely knew, and suggested that he assume the presidency of an innocuous educational organization, the new University Society at Harvard. Meyer himself was no Zionist, but Brandeis hoped Meyer and his intellectual wife would draw thinkers, professionals, businessmen, and artists into the society, and that it would become an intellectual home for the American Zionist movement. After their initial talk, Brandeis was, he recorded, \"strongly convinced, as is [Felix] Frankfurter,\" another Harvard-trained labor-reform lawyer and Zionist, \"that he would be an excellent choice.\" A few days later Frankfurter also \"talked with Eugene Meyer and he is very receptive. . . . He has a fine sense of wanting to 'back up Mr. Brandeis,' but feels his inadequacy for that leadership. I urged on him the opportunity of fitting himself for leadership. I can land him, I'm sure.\"\n\nEugene accepted the assignment after long deliberation, and though he never acknowledged membership in a Zionist organization, he remained intimately involved with Zionist efforts for the next several years, mainly because of his admiration for Brandeis. Brandeis cast him in the role of persuading his rich associates \"to ease their swollen fortunes,\" a task he was unable to perform himself because he had alienated most of the rich Jews in New York, particularly after publication of his book, _Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It_ ,* which attacked Jacob Schiff and the Guggenheims. Eugene was able to elicit hundreds of thousands of dollars for the movement from these families, although some, like Untermyer, resented the movement's dictating to them what to do with their money. These people, Brandeis told him, were to be \"humored\" by giving them a limited voice in Zionist executive committees.\n\nMeyer gave generously and backed Brandeis, head of the Provisional Executive Committee, in his factional disputes with the other major American Zionist group, the American Jewish Committee. The Provisional Committee believed the movement ought to be widely understood and used Meyer's University Society as its tool. The American Jewish Committee and its subfaction, the Workmen, however, wanted to work out policy in secret among the leadership. The leader of that group was also a member of a prominent New York family: a young man named Cyrus Sulzberger.\n\nIn addition to being a figurehead, Eugene also did technical work for the movement. He advised the Anglo-Palestine Company, which transported hard-won funds from London to the Palestine settlers. This money was distributed carefully, according to the Zionist ideal. \"The utmost vigilance should be exercised to prevent the acquisition by private persons of land, water. . . or any concession for public utilities,\" Brandeis wrote to Chaim Weizmann, his counterpart in Europe and later the first president of Israel. \"These must all be secured for the whole Jewish people. . . . The possibility of capitalistic exploitation must be guarded against. A high development of the Anglo-Palestine Company will doubtless prove one of the most effective means of protection.\" With Meyer's help, Anglo-Palestine became the largest bank in Israel, the instrument for financing industry, agriculture, and a socialistic government.\n\nIn 1916 Brandeis was appointed to the Supreme Court by Woodrow Wilson and turned over his Zionist work to Felix Frankfurter, who was also friendly with the Meyers. Eugene and Agnes were by then going to \"cellar meetings,\" as Agnes said, participating in the most sensitive negotiating of the movement, deciding how and from whom to buy guns for the early Palestine army, the Haganah. If such associations were unusual for a banker, they were natural for Zadoc Kahn's nephew, who had spent an intense year in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair. They were natural also for Eugene's brother Walter, a wealthy attorney, who later became a founder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and for his sister Aline and her husband, Dr. Charles Liebman, through whom Eugene channeled his contributions to the underground once he moved to Washington and started working in government.\n\nBrandeis was sorry that Eugene lasted only three days on the Advisory Council and spoke to President Wilson about using his talents to better advantage. A month later, in late spring 1917, Wilson named Meyer to a commission going to Russia to establish relations with the Kerensky regime. Wilson hoped to persuade the Russians not to pull out of the war against Germany. Meyer's appointment was considered a victory among Zionists, who thought that Kerensky, a socialist, would be a friend to the Jews and their socialist movement. Meyer was their man on the commission: \"The President has appointed Eugene Meyer on the Russian Commission,\" Justice Brandeis wrote to another Zionist. \"The thing now is to select the best aides to go with him.\"\n\nEugene told the president he would like to pay for the commission to take along two doctors and enough serum to vaccinate the Russians against the typhus epidemic that threatened the population. Meyer believed strongly in preventive medicine. As the lay chairman of the pathology laboratory committee at Mount Sinai Hospital, an institution created by the wealthy Jews of New York, he had sent medical teams into Mexico and Serbia with this vaccine, which had been developed at Mount Sinai. But to his amazement his offer was rejected. Wilson, it turned out, had changed his mind about including him on the commission at all; the new Kerensky regime, for which Jacob Schiff had floated bonds for billions of rubles, had decided that Jewish financiers were the world's archetypal oppressive capitalists. Meyer was to them a villain.\n\nAfter his second disappointment in Washington in less than two months, having no desire to return to New York, Eugene wandered one day into Bernard Baruch's office. Baruch's Raw Materials Committee was a loosely organized effort to coordinate wartime production of all essential industries. Baruch was a terrible choice for the job; he was notoriously disorganized himself and had not, as Eugene noticed, even put together a filing system, but was running his office from notes scribbled on pieces of paper. Eugene returned to Baruch's office every day until he organized Baruch's files. He continued to come in, Baruch grudgingly saying nothing because he needed him, and performed other services\u2014answering phones, writing letters. Finally, Baruch said that he might as well take over as head of the Metals Unit, where he would supervise the manufacture of copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, and silver. He naturally outshone Baruch, just as Baruch had feared, and Wilson soon made Meyer the director of the new War Finance Corporation, which provided government loans to war industries. This function, performed in all previous wars by private investment bankers, did not endear Eugene to his Wall Street colleagues, and he warned Agnes, who had shown a remarkable ability to spread around his professional secrets, that _\"you_ must be _very careful_ not to discuss what I tell you.\"\n\nThe War Finance Corporation was the beginning of Eugene's decades of government work. After 1918 he and Agnes lived and worked principally in Washington, although they maintained an apartment in New York, where Eugene went frequently to attend to his business affairs. His government work kept him in touch with Brandeis and Frankfurter, who remained lifelong friends; Agnes wrote and lectured on art and education and continued to donate money for Israel, including, in the 1960s, one million dollars for Hadassah Hospital.\n\nThe Meyer family lived in a large apartment in Northwest Washington, at 2201 Connecticut Avenue, and later moved into the mansion that their children remember as home. There were eventually five of them: Florence, named after Eugene's sister; Elizabeth, after a cousin of Agnes's; Eugene III, whose nickname, Bill, was the name of Agnes's favorite brother; Katharine, after the artist Katharine Rhoades; and Ruth, after another of Eugene's sisters. On May 2, 1926, all of the children were baptized to please Lucie Ernst, Agnes's mother. Agnes was Lutheran, but the children were baptized Episcopalians. Later that month the parson wrote to Agnes asking that she \"look at them [the children] 60 years from now\" and think of him. \"On that day,\" the parson said, \"Eugene [Bill] won't be so chippy, nor the blessed Ruth quite as pretty, Florence will have lost weight, Elizabeth some of her wisdom, Katharine none of her joy.\"\n\n* Weston J. Naef, _Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography: The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz_ (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art\/Viking, 1978).\n\n* New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914.\n\n# [CHAPTER FIVE\n\n_Miss Katharine Meyer_](content-toc.xhtml#aa5)\n\nKATHARINE WAS born in New York City on June 16, 1917. She was a pretty and happy baby, rather moon-faced, with fat cheeks. Her parents and brother and sisters lived at 820 Fifth Avenue, uptown from the 291 Club, where Agnes had met the painter Katharine Rhoades.\n\nOn June 29, thirteen days after her birth, Katharine Rhoades wrote the new baby a letter. \"Dear Namesake Katharine, will you accept from me as a token full of affection and joyous wishes for you, this little necklace which I have loved for many years, and which I wore very very often when I was younger and wiser. . . . It goes to you with all my early hopes & joys strung together with the little pearls.\" Miss Rhoades was a feminist whose best-known work was an untitled drawing that had illustrated an article in 291 magazine, \"Motherhood a Crime.\" The story described an unwed mother who took her life with a bullet. The drawing, if held upright, looked like the head of a rooster, with an egg at the top of the page and a sperm at the bottom; but if turned on its side, it became a pistol: thus, life and death. Rhoades was one of the most promising of the 291 artists, but she abandoned art for religion and became a secretary to museum curator Charles Freer; Katharine never learned much about her from Agnes, except that she had been a legendary beauty whom Katharine could never hope to equal.\n\nThe baby grew up amid extraordinary wealth and power. Her father was a multimillionaire. During her infancy, when he was director of the War Finance Corporation, he was one of the pivotal figures in Washington. The WFC had been essentially Eugene Meyer's creation: he drafted the enacting legislation at the request of President Wilson, and he decided which companies to subsidize for war production, for what products, and at what cost. Politicians and businessmen, consequently, courted him; he testified before Congress; he worked grueling hours while the war was being fought. After the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed heavy war reparations on Germany (a provision that Eugene opposed, predicting, correctly, that Germany would refuse to pay them), he was invited to the Supreme Economic Council in Paris, where in 1919 financial ministers from every European nation were meeting to set policy that would aid the economic recovery of the Continent.\n\nAfter meeting the ministers, Eugene persuaded Wilson to retain the WFC, which could make postwar loans to enable American companies to increase their exports to Europe. His plan was to administer one and a half billion dollars in revolving credit, one of the first times that this concept was used. He remained director of the WFC until 1925, through the presidency of Warren Harding and into the term of Calvin Coolidge, who disbanded it in 1925. He then administered loans for the Farm Loan Board until 1929, when, disillusioned with public service, he went back without enthusiasm to the investment business (making money was no challenge to him). But he returned to government during the Depression, when Katharine was fourteen.\n\nKatharine's mother, too, was a busy, distracted parent. When Katharine was five and her sister Ruth was still an infant, Agnes devoted most of her time to writing _Chinese Painting as Reflected in the Thought and Art of Li Lungmien,*_ a study of Oriental \"selflessness.\" Sometimes she accompanied her husband on trips and left the children in the care of their governess, who sent them with the chauffeur to Potomac Elementary School every morning and did their lessons with them at night. Agnes tried to compensate for their absences by taking the children on summer pack trips (\"horrible events,\" Katharine remembered, the entire family climbing mountain trails preceded by servants, who set up camp for them), but the children's letters show them to have missed their parents' participation in their daily lives. \"K got your cable to-day,\" wrote sister Elizabeth to their father, on the occasion of Katharine's seventh birthday. \"It was from Paris, and we thought that you were already in London.\"\n\nKatharine and her siblings spent their winters in Washington and their summers at the Mount Kisco farm. The Washington home, Crescent Place, was thought of as her mother's house; she had wanted it, and it reflected her taste: an imposing building with columns, a circular driveway, and a front yard with a fountain over which was the cement head of a lion. The house had three floors and a basement. On the first floor was an enormous foyer with a fifteen-foot ceiling from which hung a huge crystal chandelier. The floor was white marble with black insets. On the left wall was a seven-foot Oriental statue from the fifth century, worth, at the time, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. This was Agnes's most prized possession. Immediately behind that wall was a reception room, where guests deposited their calling cards or invitations; to the left of that was the drawing room, where the Meyers entertained their guests before dinner. To the right of the foyer was a flower room, stocked twice a week with fresh flowers grown in Agnes's garden at Mount Kisco and shipped down to her. Adjacent to the flower room was an office for Agnes's secretary, paneled in wood, with its own bathroom. At the back end of the ground floor was the dining room, which seated forty and was covered wall to wall with an antique Oriental rug. Off the dining room was the pantry, which contained a walk-in safe where the Meyers kept their silver and their liquor. On one wall was a dumbwaiter that carried food and dishes to the kitchen in the basement. Near the back stairs was a buzzer system that told the maids where they were to bring refreshments; lights went on in a box on the wall, each light having the appropriate label: South Porch, Entrance Hall, Stair Hall, Reception Room, Dining Room, Library, Drawing Room, Office, Mr. Meyer, Mrs. Meyer, Mrs. Meyer's Dressing Room, Miss Ruth, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Katherine (with her name misspelled), Miss Florence, Sitting Room, Second Floor Hall, Loggia (lounge), Mr. Wm. A, Mr. Wm. B, Sewing Room.\n\nThe second floor was the family's living quarters, and the third floor was for servants. During the winter the house had a full staff of twelve, including a butler, pantry maid, parlormaid, governess, chauffeur, and a series of personal maids for Agnes, although Eugene never had a valet. The house was set on two acres on a small hill, on a residential block in the middle of the city. Eugene built tennis courts in the yard, after the children repeatedly demanded, \"Are you going to put in tennis courts or not?\"\n\nDuring Washington's steamy, oppressive summers, the Meyers moved up to Mount Kisco, which was considered Eugene's home; he had owned the property before he and Agnes were married and had planned and built the house shortly afterward. Sometimes they drove up with the chauffeur or, after they bought an airplane, sent him up alone to pick them up at the local airport. The Mount Kisco home was much larger than Crescent Place and was furnished even more lavishly. There were marble floors and fireplaces and thick velvet draperies. On every wall hung valuable Oriental and modern paintings, many of which they had bought directly from C\u00e9zanne and Picasso when they were still considered artistic wild men. The grounds were wooded; there were tennis courts; a thirty-thousand-gallon swimming pool that filled from its own storage tank; and stables for horses, including Eugene's favorite, Buddy, and Florence's, Sir Hercules. There was pasture land for their cattle, and they employed a butcher who killed the cattle and cut premium steaks. During the winter these steaks were shipped to the family in Washington.\n\nThe Mount Kisco estate became legendary among great artists and politicians. Agnes spent many hours writing letters of invitation, arranging visitors' schedules, and, when she had succeeded in assembling a group of eminent people, which might include Alfred Stieglitz, Constantin Brancusi, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Adlai Stevenson, directing their activities as if they were children. Katharine remembers these occasions without fondness. Her mother displayed Florence and Elizabeth as the beauties and Ruth as the sensitive artist. Katharine, ignored, felt like a \"plodding peasant\" and spent a lot of time playing tennis with her brother.\n\nThe visitors did not always enjoy Agnes's posturing. Thomas Mann, the German writer, whose work contained the recurring theme of the artist in conflict with society, told her after an extended stay that her \"good children\" were right to complain that she sacrificed them to her writing, a comment that only confirmed Agnes's view of herself as an artist. Years later, another guest having made a similar observation, she actually left a houseful of visitors, in a rage, and flew to California, where, in a few days, she received a conciliatory telegram:\n\n> WE THE . . . UNDERSIGNED . . . DO HEREBY DECLAIR [ _sic_ ] OUR INDEPENDENCE OF MATRIARCHAL DOMINATION [and] WILL BE GLAD TO WELCOME YOU BACK ON A COOPERATIVE BASIS . . . IF AND WHEN YOU RETURN TO SEVEN SPRINGS FARM YOU SUBSCRIBE TO PROGRAM OF FULL . . . COLLABORATION SIGNED . . . MEYERS [and the Edward] STEICHENS.\n\nAgnes also poured herself into a number of park and school projects in Westchester County, an exercise in political muscle (she was the county supervisor's personal emissary) that prompted Eugene to write teasingly, \"I have just been reading an article on 'The Finance of Tyrant Governments in Ancient Greece.' Under the heading of 'Public Works' it says: 'Nearly all the more noted tyrants were famous for their many and costly public works.' . . . Very truly yours, Eugene Meyer.\"\n\nEugene was an even less accessible but a more benevolent figure to his children. Though his frequent absences once provoked a comical show of parental concern from Agnes in the form of a long letter to all their children explaining their father to them, Eugene, unlike Agnes, had a real understanding with them. Their dinnertime political debates were the foundation of this relationship. Eugene would ask a question; each child would be required to state his or her position; he pointed out the disparities; they argued more and more vehemently, until all of them, except Agnes, deteriorated into laughter. He was a man who appreciated intellect and was largely bored by his children's other preoccupations: tennis, horseback riding, swimming, social ritual. Katharine was his favorite child. \"You watch my little Kay,\" he had said to a friend when she was only five. \"No matter how many times she's knocked down, she'll always come up straight.\" There was a seriousness and depth to her that set her apart, that made it difficult for a self-centered person like Agnes to be comfortable with her thoughtfulness and distance.\n\nKatharine followed her sisters to the elite Madeira School, one of the oldest and finest girls' preparatory schools in the country. (Madeira later became widely known outside of upper class circles when its headmistress, Jean Harris, murdered her lover, diet doctor Herman Tarnower, in 1980.) Lucy Madeira had founded the school in 1906 and ran it out of a modest building in the city. By the late 1920s, after the Meyers sent their oldest daughters there, the school had grown too large for its quarters and Lucy Madeira wanted to move it, but because of the Depression there was no available money. The Meyers owned several hundred acres of vacation property on the Potomac River in northern Virginia, and since they \"never used it anyway,\" as Agnes said, they donated it to Lucy Madeira's cause. The school put girls through a rigorous routine of language, economics, science, and philosophy, as well as regular afternoons learning about life. In the ninth and tenth grades, Katharine was an assistant in a hospital; in the eleventh, a messenger for a congressman on Capitol Hill. She graduated in 1934 and in September started at Vassar, like Elizabeth (Florence went to Radcliffe); but unlike Elizabeth, who spent most of her time riding horses, as her father noted, \"Kay plans to be a student, not an athlete.\"\n\nKatharine Meyer, class of '38, intended to specialize in German and economics, but her father suggested that she concentrate on literature and economics, as she was already fluent in one foreign language from the family's French tutor and could \"always do the German over in Europe.\" She lived in one of Vassar's dormitory houses, as Vassar had no sororities. She was among the girls chosen for the Daisy Chain in her sophomore year, the single function of this group being to appear draped in flowers at that year's commencement ceremony.\n\nVassar, like Madeira, had been founded to promote the radical cause of women's education. It was established in 1865 by a brewer, Matthew Vassar, who wanted to do something worthwhile with his fortune, and was set in New York's rich Hudson River Valley about fifty miles north of Mount Kisco. Its reputation grew steadily until its board of trustees could claim at the turn of the century that a Vassar education was \"in a fair degree comparable\" to that which could be obtained at men's colleges. When Katharine enrolled there, the campus was as charming as it had been for seventy years. The grounds were enclosed by high stone walls and crossed by narrow dirt paths. The buildings were Gothic. On the far end was Vassar Lake. Across the street were shops that catered to the students: skirts and sweaters, hamburgers, cosmetics. Many of the faculty were feminists who had devoted their lives to women's education when it had been thought a useless luxury, aging radicals who held lectures on the political facts of life for new students.\n\nKatharine's more formal clothes were custom-made, and even at college she corresponded endlessly with her mother about fittings and other details. One dress in particular was \"too tight under the arms,\" Katharine told her, \"too short waisted & the skirt just not at all. Was too long & too narrow. I wore it last year & looked like the original scarecrow in it.\" She had left the dress, a brown two-piece with silver buttons, with her dressmaker, Clyne, who had told her it could be fixed. Katharine suggested that Agnes write to Clyne about it, because she thought it was pretty and that with alterations it could still be worn. The matter was handled by Agnes's secretary, Miss O'Hara, who suggested to Clyne that the dress be remade for Katharine's sister Ruth. Agnes also wanted to know whether a blue satin dress was something Clyne \"is trying to force on you. It looks like a good useful dress.\" She ordered Katharine's coats from her own dressmaker, Gunther's. During the Depression, in 1937, she bought Katharine a full-length mink, immediately insured it, and insisted that when Katharine was not wearing it she lock it up.\n\nKatharine was not interested just in clothes, however. She was a good student and quickly showed a strong interest in politics. Her parents approved of this but encouraged her to be moderate. \"Why don't you write to Walter Lipman [ _sic_ ] at the Herald-Tribune,\" suggested Agnes in 1935, \"and tell him what the situation is at College, and that those of you who believe in a practical program for the progress of democratic thought and organization are creating this liberal club to combate [ _sic_ ] the emotional trend toward communism amongst the girls.\"\n\nKatharine's parents did not anticipate that her liberal club would grow and merge with a powerful national movement. In December 1935 she went to Ohio to the founding convention of an organization called the American Student Union, whose goal was to coordinate progressive activities on the major American campuses. There she was elected to the National Executive Committee, in such company as executive secretary Joseph P. Lash, a recent graduate of Columbia University and professional organizer, and James A. Wechsler, also from Columbia, who became the founding editor of ASU's publication, the _Student Advocate._ Her inclusion on the national board brought her new status among her classmates, most of whom had thought her to be \"an observer rather than a joiner.\" She was objectively a good choice for the board, an intelligent and diligent worker, but there were some who suspected that she was chosen for her money (movements need benefactors) or because her famous and idealistic father had less than two years earlier bought a newspaper in the capital city (movements need platforms), the economically weak but highly visible _Washington Post._\n\nMeyer bought the _Post_ at auction in 1933, for eight hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, only a few weeks after resigning as governor of the Federal Reserve Board, the latest and most problematic of his government positions. He had left government once before, in 1929, but this time he vowed never to return to public service, where he felt ill-treated. One of the most skilled and prescient of the country's financial managers, a lone operator of whose success the big Wall Street houses were envious, he was also one of only a small number willing to sacrifice their own interests, spend their own money (it cost Meyer seventy thousand dollars to run the War Finance Corporation), to help the hopelessly mismanaged government agencies control the power of private capital. For his pains he had been repeatedly hauled before congressional committees and accused of making money off the government. He had been forced to submit his judgments for approval by politicians, who said that he was Wall Street's attempt to run the government, while at the same time he was resented by other bankers for setting up economic mechanisms for the public that had always been the bankers' prerogative.\n\nAfter resigning from the Farm Loan Board in 1929 for these sorts of reasons, he did not want to stay in government or go back to Wall Street. He was making a fortune from Allied Chemical and other investments, did not want or need more money (any more Wall Street success and he would be a billionaire), and toyed with the idea of buying a bankrupt railroad and revitalizing it. But working for the public interest, he knew he could no longer be happy in purely private financial pursuits. He decided instead, at age fifty-four, to retire temporarily from life in the East; he bought a ranch, sight unseen, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and planned to \"run a few cattle.\" Louis Brandeis tried to persuade him at this time to head a delegation that was going to Palestine for a year to study the economic and industrial problems of the settlers, but Meyer wanted a vacation, he said, and refused. He and Agnes and the children left for Jackson Hole in the early fall of 1929 and had not been there a month when the stock market crashed. President Hoover appointed Meyer a governor of the Federal Reserve Board and ordered him back to Washington.\n\nThe crash, however, was a crisis of small and medium-size banks, and of corporations, none of which was eligible for Federal Reserve funds. Hoover therefore asked Meyer to draft legislation for a Reconstruction Finance Corporation that could lend money to businesses, and Eugene obliged, modeling it after his earlier War Finance Corporation. With Hoover's backing, the RFC legislation was enacted by Congress in January 1932 with initial funds of two billion dollars. Eugene, still a governor of the Federal Reserve (\"the Governor,\" his family now called him), was appointed director of the RFC as well, making him the single most powerful financial manager to work in government since Alexander Hamilton. Within ten days of its establishment, by the second week in January 1932, the RFC was receiving loan requests from trust companies, agricultural associations, and insurance companies at the rate of a hundred a day; in six months Meyer had lent more than one billion dollars to more than five thousand companies and institutions. He made credit available, and interest rates dropped almost to the level at which they had been before the Crash.\n\nMeyer's framework for stimulating economic activity was expanded during the New Deal, when the RFC financed construction and operation of factories, lent money to foreign governments to buy American products, and insured businesses against damages in the event of war and disaster. But all this activity went on without him. Eugene resigned from government finance in May 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt, newly elected on a platform of economic reform, began to circumvent him in making policy, a violation not only of faith but of law, since the president is legally required to act in concert with the Federal Reserve in economic matters. Just after resigning, Eugene heard that the _Washington Post_ , the poorest and worst of the Washington newspapers, for years the toy of the McLean family, had gone bankrupt, and he decided instantly to buy it. As in his other successful efforts, he acted on instinct, but immediately after he had won the bidding and received title, he understood that the _Post_ would be his way to remain in public life while retaining his political independence. It would be his personal, powerful voice in government, sounding above debates in Congress and arguments in back rooms, that would finally earn him a permanent place in the capital city and give his family a focus, a common purpose, an identity as people who were more than famous, more than wealthy, but who were a great American family in the classical sense, dedicated to the public good.\n\nFrom the beginning, the newspaper was a family operation. Agnes wrote articles for the _Post_ on education, refugees, art, and foreign affairs, for which she received wide notice from other newspapers. Some said she was so far left that she was probably a Communist, while others, such as the _Daily Worker_, produced long editorials criticizing her capitalistic point of view. These attacks distressed her more than they might otherwise have because she was worried about her son's revolutionary politics, which were causing his schoolwork to suffer, but was not able to bring herself to talk to him. (She did begin to write a letter, decided it was too preachy and might drive him farther away from her, and instead sent him motherly advice about taking care of himself. Since he was losing his hair, she talked to him about that: \"The woman who takes care of my hair is the best specialist on that subject in New York . . . ,\" Agnes wrote her son. \"She is sending you one bottle of tonic and one little box of grease, and she guarantees that new hair will grow.\" Meanwhile she mailed the _Daily Worker_ attacks to the moderate Katharine and asked _her_ to forward them to Bill at Yale \"after reading them yourself. . . . As they must have had my articles before them when they wrote it, they might at least have copied the name correctly. I am afraid sloppy thinking such as this is typical of the Communist.\")\n\nFamily relations improved when Bill came down the next summer to be a reporter for the family newspaper. Elizabeth, who had left Vassar to go to Hollywood to write scripts for David Selznick, did not want to write for the _Post_ herself, but she recommended that her father hire a former classmate, \"a girl very much worth your notice, called Mary McCarthy. She works for the 'Nation' . . . a very brilliant girl. She was at Vassar when I was, and I knew her slightly. After I left, she joined our 'group.'\"\n\nAs a student during the Depression, Katharine was interested primarily in history, economics, and political causes. Her \"liberal club,\" as Agnes called her group of activist friends, went by bus to Albany in the fall of 1935 to campaign against a bill then before the New York State legislature, the Nunan Bill, which would have required loyalty oaths of all public school students. That trip had brought her together with Betty Welt, the editor of the Vassar _Miscellany News_ , and by that December, the same month she was elected to ASU, her name appeared on the masthead of the _Miscellany News_ as an apprentice editor. Katharine soon became known for her \"crisp, accurate, no-nonsense copy,\" and by the following spring she was on the regular editorial staff. Most of her articles were unsigned, but her name appeared on a \"Contributors' Column\" in February 1936 in which she demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the relation between media and politics:\n\n> . . . the censorship of Sinclair Lewis' novel _It Can't Happen Here_ proves that Hollywood means to dedicate its technological advance to the cause of reaction. Under the control of dictators such as Williams, Hays and Hearst, the vast potential mastery of the movies promises to play an actively anti-social role. . . .\n> \n> According to Lewis' statement in the _New York Times_ , February 16, his novel, which deals with fascism but is propaganda only for an American democracy, was banned by Will Hays for fear of \"international politics and fear of boycotts abroad.\" . . .\n> \n> Lewis, in his reply to the ban, said that the book had been read more than any other novel in the United States this month because it dealt with something in the public mind. \"In describing the forces which eventually rallied against fascism,\" he went on, \"I made the anti-fascist leader a Republican supported by many Democrats, and if Mr. Hays thinks an anti-fascist feeling can be interpreted as anti-Republican, that ought to interest a lot of Republicans.\" In answer to the suggestion that it might create foreign complications, Lewis said, \"Mr. Hays is saying that a film cannot be made showing the horrors of fascism and extolling the advantages of a Liberal Democracy because Hitler and Mussolini might ban other Hollywood films from their countries if we were so rash.\" . . .\n> \n> The best the movies seem able to accomplish in the way of artistic, socially conscious production is a milk and water liberalism marred with attempts at broad appeal, resulting in such a production as _The Informer._ . . . When they tire of this, they go in for frank assaults on behalf of the Right wing, as in _Red Salute._ A Hollywood picture with a genuine Left wing tendency is obviously impossible.\n> \n> The widespread appeal of _It Can't Happen Here_ proves that it is Hollywood, not America, that is evidencing Fascistic tendencies. Similar strict censorship has not been seen in the press or radio. An occasional social significance is inserted in British movies, but America backs down rather than follow such a lead. In filming _A Farewell to Arms_ , Hollywood complied with Italy's requests and made the rout at Caporetto resemble an Italian victory. In accordance with Turkey's wishes, _The Forty Days of Musa Dagh_ was not filmed at all.\n> \n> The same forces in the motion picture business that bring about such censorship will hinder progress that might otherwise be made. Any progressive leaning, any fundamental truth will be eliminated in order not to diminish a picture's box office appeal, annoy a foreign or Fascist government, or encourage disagreement with the status quo which is after all the faithful watch dog of the movie interests.\n\nKatharine Meyer was one of several progressives to control the _Miscellany News_ in 1936, and the only one from Vassar to be elected to the national board of the American Student Union. The _News_ , consequently, promoted her as an important political force. In March she went to Washington with Constance Dimock, a fellow reporter and activist, and two other Vassar students to \"demand passage,\" as the _News_ said proudly, of the American Youth Act, a New Deal social program that would provide relief, education, and vocational training for youth. \"Meyer, Shedden, Liebman, Dimock Represent Vassar,\" said the _News_ headline. They submitted a polemical report \"for the record\" to the Senate Committee on Labor and Education, which argued, as ASU's James Wechsler had earlier argued, that students and workers were all laborers, \"whether by hand or by brain,\" and that they therefore felt solidarity with labor, considered labor's struggle their struggle, and demanded, like labor, that the government recognize them as a political constituency.\n\nThe national ASU board decided shortly after its formation in December 1935 that its first major activity would be to organize a nationwide peace strike for the following spring, an action that would put ASU effectively in command of the growing student peace movement. The movement suffered during the Depression, when student liberalism seemed to many students to be a selfish indulgence. Communists were the exception. The Vassar Communist Club wanted, in 1932, \"a new social order, based on production for use and not for profit\"; and an outraged Vassar alumna demanded in reply to this, in an incoherent but alarming letter to a wealthy trustee of the college, \"What is Fascism? What IS it but the Christian's answer to Jewish Communist? As for me, the weal of my country comes first. . . .\"\n\nThe ASU platform outlined the group's position on four issues of the day: Peace, Freedom, Security, and Equality. The union opposed American war preparations, wanted the abolition of ROTC, and supported the Oxford Pledge, an oath by which students vowed never to fight in a war. It defended academic freedom for students and for teachers, including their right not to sign loyalty oaths. It favored an increase in federal student aid and advocated passage of the American Youth Act; it demanded \"adequate social security legislation\" of all sorts. And it advocated universal educational opportunity and condemned persecution of Negroes and other minority groups.\n\nPeace was the priority, and the springtime peace strike, the second annual Student Strike Against War (the first had been an uncoordinated venture in 1933), was joined by five hundred thousand students nationwide, affiliated with various peace groups or unaffiliated, who boycotted classes for half a day, most of them with their professors' blessing. At Vassar, ASU Peace Council chairman Betty Bliss told the student body that \"the purpose of the strike is to make it clear to those who form government policy that American students . . . do not want another World War. The re-armament of the Rhineland, the border disputes between Russia and Japan, the Italo-Ethiopian dispute, and our billion-dollar armament program testify to the timeliness of such a demonstration. If we wish to prevent war, we must signify this desire now.\" And Katharine Meyer of ASU's national board, speaking on a CBS radio program, said that \"at Vassar, the administration has been wholeheartedly behind the student peace movement. This year we hope to have the student body one hundred percent present as every college organization is cooperating in managing the strike. . . . The support of [an expected] three hundred thousand students, by way of the strike, will be given to those fighting for peace by legislation such as the Nye-Kvale Bill to abolish compulsory ROTC.\" This was the first step, in Katharine's view, toward doing away with student military training altogether.\n\nIn Washington, Katharine's parents listened to her strike day radio show and spoke glowingly of their daughter's performance on a \"national hook-up.\" The strike had been fomented by his radical son Bill, Eugene joked. Elizabeth, hearing about it a week later in Hollywood, informed her father indignantly that \"I feel I should have been notified.\"\n\nKatharine continued to be active, bringing the movement to the Vassar campus. In May, less than a month after the Strike Against War, and while only a sophomore, she spoke at a conference on undergraduate life and upset many parents with her defense of student political activism. While other panelists addressed such eternal Vassar issues as weekend leaves for juniors and seniors, the \"implications of social maturity,\" and the value of having one's own banking account, \"Miss Meyer pointed out,\" as the _Miscellany News_ reported, \"that extracurricular activities are an important part of a college education because they . . . bridge the gap between college life and the outside world, and give the individual a chance to apply her ideas.\" Katharine was at this time one of the most prominent women on campus. She was also one of the richest, most outspoken, and politically fearless. Her classmates idolized her; her professors cited her example. But Katharine was bored with the isolation of a women's school, and at the end of the year transferred to the University of Chicago, which was the intellectual center for the thirties radicals.\n\n* New York: Duffield and Company, 1923 \n\n# [CHAPTER SIX\n\n_Kate_](content-toc.xhtml#aa6)\n\nKATHARINE BROACHED the subject of changing schools to her father while working with him at the _Post_ the summer after her sophomore year. \"Kate put up the proposition that she should go to the London School of Economics this year instead of to Vassar,\" Eugene wrote to Agnes in August 1935 at their Wyoming ranch, where she and Ruth were hiking and fishing. Katharine's friend Connie Dimock wanted to go, too. But Eugene vetoed the idea of London; he felt that what his daughter needed at that stage of her education was information\u2014facts\u2014not to become caught up in the powerful ideologies and emotions that were creating so much tension in Europe. He agreed with Katharine, however, that the Vassar faculty did not have anything to offer that was worth two more years of her time, and so he gave her permission to transfer to another college in the United States. She chose the University of Chicago.\n\nKatharine became interested in the University of Chicago through a colleague in the ASU whom she met at a national convention. He had said Chicago was the most daring and innovative university of the day, as well as one of the most rigorous. Its president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, had been dean of the Yale Law School at the age of twenty-eight and became president of Chicago at thirty, and had developed a system of undergraduate education called the Chicago Plan, an interdisciplinary course of study in philosophy, history, culture, and language. Hutchins called his course of study \"the history of ideas.\" Katharine told her father that she wanted to \"do\" history and philosophy with Hutchins and economics with Professor (later Senator) Paul Douglas, who was known for his leftleaning theories of wage controls and social security.\n\nEugene telephoned Hutchins personally to arrange his daughter's transfer. Hutchins referred him to Dean Works, who asked Katharine to write Vassar for approval. \"Later,\" Eugene told Agnes, \"Kate asked me what I thought of Connie Dimock going out there with her, or did I think Connie was too radical, which was her [Kate's] suspicion of me. I told her I thought that if Connie wanted to go it would be all right, but that I did not think she should urge or persuade, because if it did not turn out satisfactorily she would be taking more responsibility than she should. There the matter rests as far as Connie is concerned.\"\n\nEugene took Kate to Chicago by plane near the end of August to meet the dean and find housing. Then they returned to Washington for another week\u2014Eugene was worried about _Post_ advertising and circulation and still had not achieved coordination among his news and editorial writers\u2014before joining Agnes and Ruth in Mount Kisco for Labor Day.\n\nThe University of Chicago in 1936 was widely known as a hotbed of radicalism, a tradition that began when the school was founded in 1890 as a \"great experiment.\" One aspect of this experiment was the radical ideal of equal education for women. The only reservation the school had had about this, as an early yearbook noted, was, \"Were they physically strong enough to stand the mental strain of intellectually competing with men?\"\n\nThe campus was enormous compared to Vassar. The buildings were Gothic, like Oxford, with high arches and the heavy white stone blocks characteristic of the Chicago school of architecture. The atmosphere was intensely intellectual, electric. In the International House, where Katharine lived\u2014\"the best place to be,\" she thought\u2014political debates broke out spontaneously over meals, in the lounges, at the front desk where residents collected their mail. Though she had been one of the most politically sophisticated women at Vassar, Katharine was overwhelmed. At I House were refugees from countries that had been ravaged during World War I. There were Spanish refugees from the Civil War who had lost their families to the Fascist revolution. There were Jews, victims of Nazism. There was a young Nazi named Heinrich Pagels who was confronted and said, \"I am glad and I am proud that I'm a Nazi.\" He justified National Socialism on the grounds that the Treaty of Versailles had been unfair to Germany; he left after a Jewish resident produced evidence that Pagels was reporting the activities of I House exiles to Hermann Goering's secret police, who were using the information against their families. There were fraternities that displayed the Nazi flag and hung Adolf Hitler's picture out their windows, claiming later that it was a joke.\n\nInternational House was a large, rambling structure at 1414 East 59th Street, at the southeast edge of the campus. It had a dining room and four lounges, where the students engaged in the popular pastime of smoking cigarettes (\"digestion proceeds more smoothly . . . alkalinity is increased . . . when you make Camels a pleasant interlude in dining,\" advised the ads in the student newspaper, the _Maroon)._ I House also had eight residential floors with long corridors, accessible by a self-service elevator and carefully segregated by sex. There were thirty rooms on each floor, and a common bathroom with showers and an ironing board that stood under a sign reading \"Do Not Iron in the Bathroom.\" At the far end of each floor was a private \"bath suite,\" where two students who could afford twice the normal rate had two bedrooms behind a locked door and their own bathroom. It was in one of these that Katharine lived, with Tayloe Hannaford, an heiress from the wealthy northern Chicago suburb of Lake Forest. Tayloe was physically the opposite of Katharine, short and blond, expensively dressed, polite, shy, and not as bright as Katharine, as a housemate remembers, but more sociable.\n\nKatharine was \"very happy and interested in her work,\" her father reported to Agnes. She enrolled, her first year, in President Hutchins's History of Culture 201, 202, and 203, the Great Books course, under the auspices of the Committee of the History of Culture. The committee expected each student to master \"the political and social history, the literature, art, science, philosophy and religion\" that pertained to his or her chosen field. Hutchins was a passionately intellectual\u2014some say elitist\u2014educator. He believed firmly that vocational training and similar efforts to make schooling \"pay off\" would be the ruin of Western civilization; he taught by means of the \"classics of the Western world.\" And that is what Katharine studied: Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ the Old Testament, Plato's Dialogues, Aristotle's _Ethics,_ Virgil's _Aeneid,_ Plutarch's _Lives,_ the New Testament, St. Augustine's _Confessions,_ Dante's _Divine Comedy,_ Machiavelli's _The Prince,_ Cervantes' _Don Quixote,_ Shakespeare's plays, Swift's _Gulliver's Travels,_ Spinoza's _Ethics,_ Fielding's _Tom Jones,_ Rousseau's _Social Contract,_ Freud's _Outline of Psychoanalysis._\n\nThe class met once a week, on Tuesdays at four. During that year Katharine studied and wrote constantly, preparing so that she would be able to speak at the discussion sessions, which visiting professors often attended. Sometimes her father would sit in, when he was in town on business, and on those afternoons she really put on a performance. \"We require a little more from you because we expect to do more for you than most parents,\" he would tell her. Katharine earned A's and passed her comprehensive examinations. Hutchins told the Meyers he was surprised to find that their daughter was so \"nice.\"\n\nDespite its richness and depth, however, the Great Books program began to fall out of favor with many students during the 1930s because the lofty truths it claimed to represent seemed unconnected to the urgent social and political problems of the day. Other professors, unlike Hutchins, were advisors to the government on New Deal social programs and believed, to the students' satisfaction, that these things could not wait. Katharine acceded to her father's wish and took Economics 201 in her winter quarter, a survey course taught by a conservative. But in the spring, while still studying under Hutchins, she took Economics 240 from Paul Douglas\u2014labor economics, because she wanted to get a leftist point of view.\n\nDouglas had written parts of the Social Security Act of 1935, a crucial part of Roosevelts New Deal legislation, which ensured for the first time federal assistance for the aged and unemployed. When Katharine took his course, Douglas was working on the Fair Labor Standards Act, which would provide a minimum wage of forty-four cents per hour and a maximum work week of forty-four hours; it was enacted into law in 1938. Douglas, too, was a passionate thinker and teacher, every bit as passionate as Hutchins; but whereas Hutchins was a snob, Douglas was a champion of the working man. The impressionable Katharine Meyer took much of what he said to heart. In May 1937 she went with a small group to the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago to join a demonstration in support of strikers; the police dispersed the demonstrators so violently it was called \"the Memorial Day Massacre.\"\n\nThe picketing at Republic was staged by the Chicago chapter of the American Student Union, which was more active than the Vassar chapter and more militant in demanding social and political reform. This chapter so effectively used the converging pressures of the New Deal, the war, the momentum of activism itself, that the \"item\" at Chicago became, \"Did you belong to the ASU or didn't you?\"\n\nAt first, the question at I House, among the poorer residents, was whether Miss Katharine Meyer belonged to this radical organization. The consensus was that she probably paid dues but didn't participate. But Katharine did not broadcast her activities to people not her friends and was particularly close-mouthed about her political work. In fact she was an officer of the group. In October 1936, a month after she arrived, the local ASU chapter asked for nominations to its executive committee. Her reputation from Vassar had preceded her, and when she volunteered, the ASU accepted her at once. The _Maroon_ carried the names of the five women and three men who were the new executive board, Katharine's name among them, and the new leaders quickly sponsored a production of the left-wing play _Black Pit_ , a story of life in the Illinois coal fields. It was praised as a \"muscular\" and moving play, a fine work in the tradition of revolutionary art.\n\nThe ASU executive board then formed a committee called Material Aid for Spain. The committee appealed to students to contribute clothing, shoes, canned food, and blankets \"to relieve distress among Spanish government troops\" fighting Generalissimo Francisco Franco, whose rebel army was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. The committee raised one hundred and thirty-five dollars, most of that coming after ASU asked I House to show the film _Spanish Earth,_ in which a solemnvoiced Ernest Hemingway told of the suffering of the people of Spain. ASU did not directly sponsor, but encouraged, other leftist programs as well. Among them were trial attorney Clarence Darrow speaking on \"Crime and Punishment\" (education is the only way to deter crime, he said; punishment is irrelevant to it); and William O. Douglas, then an attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking on \"Capitalistic Waste.\"\n\nAside from its campus programs, the ASU officers were concerned with the second national ASU convention, which was to be held at Chicago in December 1936, exactly a year after the first convention in Ohio. As hosts, Katharine and her colleagues arranged for meeting rooms in churches and did what they could to find out-of-town delegates free places to sleep.\n\nThe four-day convocation became the forum for a number of unrelated political struggles. On Monday, James Wechsler, editor of ASU's _Student Advocate,_ read a speech by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Lewis thanked the ASU for its solidarity with labor and asked that students picket with him at the gates of a local steel mill at five-thirty the following morning. Forty delegates showed up at the mill to distribute leaflets and get pushed around by police. After Wechsler came a woman named Loh Tsei, \"the Chinese Joan of Arc,\" who led off with \"a smashing attack on Japanese aggression in China,\" as the _Ma_ _roon_ reported, and asked American students to support China against Japan. Joseph P. Lash, ASU's national secretary, then asked for mass support for a student pilgrimage to Washington to push for passage of the American Youth Act.\n\nOn Tuesday there were round tables, and Tuesday night a banquet and a speech by Spanish Catholics urging support of the Loyalists against Franco and \"war on Fascism wherever it appears.\" On Wednesday the delegates argued hotly over the Oxford Pledge, adopted during its first convention, which committed ASU members to refuse to participate in any war. This was a position attractive to the pacifists but increasingly difficult to reconcile with concern for the Spanish and for the abominations of Nazism.\n\nThe Oxford Pledge was retained, barely, and on Thursday the delegates once more heard of the evils of capitalism. \"There is too much emphasis on the discrepancy between our culture and that of pre-revolutionary Russia,\" reported a Yale professor. He had witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution, \"but I never felt more personal terror and horror than when I visited some of our own 'peace-time' coal counties.\"\n\nWith the confusion and glory of the convention\u2014the pacifism and anti-fascism, the sympathy with labor and wariness of Communism, the opposition to an embargo against Spain and advocacy of an embargo against Japan\u2014the ASU attracted an increasingly conflicted membership. By the winter of 1937, Chicago had the largest ASU chapter in the country, with more than four hundred paid members, many of whom wanted ASU to become more militant. While the _Maroon_ begged the ASU simply to \"study\" various problems, especially academic freedom, and while Robert Maynard Hutchins criticized its leaders, the ASU prepared for its spring Strike Against War. For this they coordinated with the prominent Socialist Club, headed by George Reedy, who later became advisor to President Lyndon Johnson.\n\nThe executive board now included Katharine's closest friend, Sidney Hyman, an I House resident who took charge of ASU's Committee on International Affairs. Hyman, one of Chicago's most prominent intellectual activists, had once been co-editor of the campus literary magazine _Comment_ , but left when control of the magazine went to an anti-Communist named Charles Tyroler, later the founder of the right-wing Committee on the Present Danger. Tyroler's most famous essay at Chicago was an editorial on the noted anarchist Emma Goldman, who had been Agnes Meyer's friend in the 291 Club days. Goldman was \"an atheist, anarchist, free-love advocate,\" Tyroler wrote, \". . . who would be in jail if the law were enforced.\"\n\nBreaking with Tyroler's views, Hyman left _Comment_ to become editor of the left-wing magazine _Phoenix_ , where he worked when Katharine and he served together on the ASU. Hyman invited her to join _Phoenix_ , but Katharine instead founded a weekly ASU bulletin that carried activity notices and articles by guest columnists\u2014her first venture as a publisher. The bulletin kept her involved, while safely at a distance, during the Strike Against War, after which her name no longer appeared in the _Maroon_ in connection with ASU. This may have been because of the growing domination of the club by the Communists, which caused many moderates to drop out, or because her schoolwork had suffered. That summer she was obliged to repeat economics.\n\nIn her senior year, weary of political battles and disenchanted with Hutchins, she devoted herself to European history, her major, and to a clique of people at I House whom she thought the most intelligent and interesting of the European exiles. They would sit together at a round table, Kay, Tayloe, Sid Hyman, a White Russian, a Bulgarian, Elizabeth Mann and her husband, the famous anti-fascist professor Giuseppe Borgese, whom her father, Thomas Mann, had not wanted her to marry. \"At the age of fifty-seven,\" Mann had complained jealously, Borgese \"probably no longer expected to win so much youth. But the child wanted it so and brought it off. He is a brilliant, charming, and excellently preserved man. . . .\"\n\nIt was common at I House for groups to linger at the tables after dinner, their conversation open to anyone who cared to join, but this group was an exception; one did not sit with them unless invited. The refugees appreciated Americans with money and position and accepted Katharine readily, although she did not have much to say to them and usually just listened appreciatively. Several times a week they went for beer to Hanley's Buffet, the campus hangout, Katharine in her plain blouse and plaid skirt, her low shoes, was \"forever modest,\" Sid Hyman remembers, \"grateful for small kindnesses.\" Hyman was the son of a rabbi and her constant escort, although \"going out with Jewish boys is a thing that queers a girl with the clubs faster and more completely than anything else,\" as a _Maroon_ story once noted. Katharine was horrified at this petty, clubby anti-Semitism on the eve of the Holocaust.\n\nMost of her friends were poor, and though the beer at Hanley's was only a dime a glass, and nobody could have more than two (Joe Hanley's orders), Katharine would quietly pick up the bill and pay it. Sometimes she would take them driving in her big black Buick, her brother's car, which he no longer wanted because it was a symbol of capitalism. Summers and holidays Katharine brought her friends to Mount Kisco, always fighting her fear that they would be put off by her parents' ostentatious display of wealth.\n\nHer friends of course knew her father from his frequent visits, when he would take them to dinner and talk politics, encouraging them to challenge his thinking, liking them better the more they did. Agnes was a different case. Once or twice a year she would appear at the house in her heavy, fitted, brocaded clothing, wearing pearls or diamonds, and speak to no one, but sit sternly in a straight-backed chair waiting to take Katharine to meet a politician or diplomat. Katharine, upstairs, nervously bit her lip while dressing, and then slunk down the back stairs in her long dress, trying to avoid being noticed by her friends. Naturally they did notice, and the consensus was that Agnes was the bane of Katharine's existence. This idea was confirmed when Agnes did not show up for Katharine's graduation in 1938 (neither did Eugene, but more is expected of mothers), but instead sent a note signed by her secretary, who spelled Katharine's name incorrectly. Katharine read it and burst into tears.\n\nArmed with an A.B. in history, experience in politics, and a knowledge of foreign affairs, Katharine set out to be a reporter. Eugene arranged a job for her on the _San Francisco Daily News_ , and she went to California to live with Rosalie and Sigmund Stern, Eugene's oldest sister and her husband, the nephew of Levi Strauss. Living among Jewish high society of that lovely city where her father's father had begun life in America, where Jews were a much more visible part of city life than in Washington, she covered dockworkers' strikes and paid dues to the American Newspaper Guild, founded five years earlier, in 1933, as part of the nationwide union movement. The work was easy enough, but she was unhappy at first. Male reporters ridiculed her, treated her offhandedly, and did not respect her education. She wanted to go to the _Post._ Her father suggested she stick it out for a year. But he soon regretted his advice; within a few months she got a better beat, the Treasure Island navy base, and some professional recognition, and had no thoughts of returning to Washington at all. Her father then pleaded that they needed her on the _Post._ She went home, moved into Crescent Place, and was not there six months when she married a thin, nervous law clerk named Philip Graham, a _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_ of Felix Frankfurter's who had earned some of the highest grades in the history of Harvard Law School.\n\n# [CHAPTER SEVEN\n\n_A Fortunate Marriage_](content-toc.xhtml#aa7)\n\nKATHARINE CAME home to live with her wealthy, prominent family in a cliquish, power-conscious city. She was twenty-two years old, and her style was University of Chicago. She wore skirts, not dresses, and she expressed her political opinions with a stridency that was offensive to men who worked with real problems of government and who liked women to be demure rather than intelligent, and beautiful in the traditional way.\n\nShe had a natural inner beauty, a softness and generosity that went quite beyond her youthful bravado, but somehow in Washington it went unnoticed, while her younger sister, Ruth, the only other sister still living at home, got the attention, the compliments, the invitations to society affairs. Ruth had many friends in Washington, including the brightest and most exciting young men working in government, whereas Katharine knew hardly anyone. She was not home more than a month or two when she had to endure Ruth's lavish debutante party, which their parents held at Crescent Place during Christmas week of 1939. Even at that occasion, when she should have been thinking of her sister, Katharine felt insecure and envious; Ruth's party was so much nicer than hers had been.\n\nOn the night of the party she saw a tall, thin young man in an inexpensive suit hovering nervously in the hallway. Katharine approached, he said something about Ruth's good looks, she retorted sharply that that girl was four years younger than herself. \"And you're getting along in years too,\" the young man mocked. He liked her sharpness, her lack of polish, and before he left that night he asked her out to dinner. There was an electricity between them; they laughed, they argued politics. He was Philip Graham, a Supreme Court law clerk, a passionate New Dealer who, like other New Dealers, was beginning to forget his commitment to social welfare as he became caught up in the excitement of the war in Europe. Katharine was a pacifist, but had been disillusioned when the Soviet Union and Germany signed their nonaggression pact and Germany attacked Poland. Phil blamed the student peace movement for America's unpreparedness to join the war. Katharine liked a man who knew what he wanted.\n\nSince her return from San Francisco, Katharine's father had been grooming her to take over the paper someday. She wrote articles, sat in on editorial conferences and helped decide editorial policy, worked in the advertising and circulation departments, and every night mechanically assembled the pages, writing headlines and placing stories where they would have the proper degree of impact. A few days after her dinner with Phil Graham, he telephoned her at the _Post_ at six-thirty, just before deadline, while she was pasting up the front page, and commanded her to meet him at Harvey's restaurant for drinks. Katharine said that she would like to but she was busy, but Phil said to bring the pages with her and they would work on them together. Katharine liked a man who took charge.\n\nPhil knew very well that laying out the front page of the _Post_ was no small opportunity for an ambitious young lawyer, nor was having drinks at a place like Harvey's, among powerful businessmen and politicians, with the publisher's daughter. Katharine could not be much more flattered, for her part, than to be seen with a Supreme Court clerk. They sat at a table together, attended by a waiter in a red jacket, trying not to get the layouts wet from Scotch, laughing and arguing, on the eve of another world war, and suddenly realized they had fallen in love. On their next date Phil told her abruptly that they were going to be married, and that he hoped she wouldn't mind having only two dresses because he wasn't going to take a lot of money from her father. Katharine said she would not mind at all.\n\nPhil was in awe of this society girl who had been a subject of interest in Washington and New York since birth. He was also in awe of her father, who could buy a newspaper in order to have an independent voice in government. Eugene Meyer had made himself president of the Washington Post Company and his eccentric wife the vice-president. Meyer's only son was interested in medicine, not journalism, which meant, as Phil was aware, that at the age of sixty-four Eugene had no male heir for his newspaper.\n\nThe Meyers did not know much about Phil. He was an enigma, vaguely thought to be a country boy who had excelled at Harvard, and was accepted on that basis by the New Deal crowd. He dressed Ivy League but did not have the manners of an Ivy Leaguer; he was nervous, volatile, almost frenetic, and loved to talk about feelings and personalities as well as ideas. He was a gossip and gave the impression of openness; his charm drew people to him, though he rarely said much about himself.\n\nPhil was part of an elite group of Harvard Law School graduates carefully selected by their professor, Felix Frankfurter, to become clerks of the United States Supreme Court. This group, the \"Frankfurters,\" lived together in an old Virginia mansion called Hockley Hall, set on a hill overlooking the Potomac River. There, assured of bright futures, they luxuriated in the bachelor life. The house was modeled after Frankfurter's own bachelor quarters when he was a young lawyer in Washington before joining the Harvard faculty in 1914. Frankfurter had called his home the House of Truth. \"How or why I can't recapture,\" Frankfurter later wrote, \"but almost everybody who was interesting in Washington sooner or later passed through that house. The magnet . . . was exciting talk, and it was exciting because talk was free and provocative.\" Hockley never quite lived up to Frankfurter's example. There was intellectual talk, but it was \"like a southern plantation,\" as people remember, \"something out of _Gone with the Wind,_ with black houseboys to bring mint juleps\" to the guests during weekend parties. On weekdays a butler served tea every afternoon at four. Professor and Mrs. Frankfurter did not have children, and the Hockley men were like sons to them. The young Joseph Rauh became an eminent lawyer and founder of Americans for Democratic Action; Hedley Donovan later published _Fortune_ ; John Oakes went with his family's business, the _New York Times_ ; Carl McGowan became a judge. But the most outstanding, Frankfurter's favorites, were Philip Graham and Phil's closest friend, Ed Prichard, whom everybody called Prich. Phil was from Florida, Prich from Kentucky, both country boys who reached great heights and fell to early ruin.\n\nPhil arrived in Washington with the distinction of having been president of the Harvard _Law Review_ , the top honor in the top law school in the country. The competition at Harvard was brutal. Six hundred students were admitted to the first-year class, and at the opening convocation the dean told them to \"look at the man on your left and the man on your right. At the end of the year one of you won't be here.\" Harvard admitted students from every background and let them fight one another for the right not to be one of the lower third of the class that was annually flunked out. There were one or two suicides during Phil's first year. But Harvard was \"the most democratic place in the world,\" Frankfurter insisted; you rose or fell strictly on merit, not connections, not social rank. At the end of the first year the top sixteen or seventeen students were invited to join the _Review._ They worked on the _Review_ their second year and then voted one of their number, \"the best man for the job,\" to be president their final year.\n\nPhil entered Harvard Law in 1936. He did not strike the Harvard crowd as the academic type, but \"contrary to appearances,\" recalls a classmate, \"I thought he was a great man.\" This friend met him at the start of their second year, when they both made _Law Review._ \"Phil looked like a playboy, he came from the University of Florida, not Ivy League. People on the _Law Review_ were grinds, and Phil went out with women, screwed around, drank a lot. He worked harder and played harder. I would hear stories about him having parties at his apartment, girls staying overnight, but I was jealous, I wasn't going out yet with women, and for all I knew they may have been nice girls from Radcliffe.\"\n\nOn the _Review_ Phil was now part of a great tradition, and the editors realized that despite his casual manner, he had unusual brilliance and talent. The men on _Law Review_ were the school's aristocrats, not bound by ordinary rules, which Phil enjoyed. They rarely went to class; they worked on the _Review_ until early morning, seven nights a week, went to an all-night cafeteria at three or four for some kind of meal, worked again until eight or nine in the morning, slept, and started again at five. To stay on the _Review_ they had to keep up a B-minus average, which the _Review_ made easy to do. There were canned lecture notes for each course on file in the offices, and right after they put to bed the June issue, the editors spent two or three days doing a year's worth of studying.\n\nAt the end of his second year, Phil found himself in a fight for the presidency with an editor named Ted Tannenwald, who was number one in the class. Phil was tenth. The second-year editors got together and eliminated each other, one by one, until only Phil and Tannenwald were left. The few Jews on the _Review_ wanted Tannenwald, but the others thought Phil was the better man. \"It was hardly unanimous,\" he later told Katharine.\n\nAs the _Law Review's_ president and editor-in-chief, Phil solicited articles from leading professors and legal scholars and personally edited them. He also supervised the production of case comments, the analyses of recent court decisions for which the _Review_ was famous. The process of \"commenting\" consisted of assigning editors to read hundreds of pages of fine-printed advance sheets on federal and state opinions, and then, for cases they wanted to publish, doing \"prelims,\" preliminary checks of other journals to see whether the subject had already been treated. The editors then met with the note editor, who was Ted Tannenwald, and he would approve comment topics, which would take four or five weeks to write. \"You learned a hell of a lot of law that way,\" Phil said, \"almost as if we were running a school for ourselves.\" Phil upheld the tradition of the presidency. He worked at Gannett House under a burning light, his head bent over his work, writing, smoking, his tired figure visible through the window in the middle of the night, as other _Law Review_ presidents had done before him. He worked so hard that his colleagues had the sense \"it wouldn't take very much [to push him over the edge]. He always looked as if he needed sleep, and he was so damn skinny, and nervous.\"\n\nWhen Phil was at Harvard, Frankfurter was one of the dominant figures on campus. He was a prominent legal scholar and radical thinker, but more than that, he was a man of great energy and presence who could be an extraordinary friend, a guiding force in a favorite student's life. Frankfurter taught courses in administrative and labor law and public utilities regulation, but he was best known for Federal Jurisdiction, a seminar on that week's Supreme Court decisions, which was open only to members of the _Review_ and a few others whom Frankfurter approved.\n\nHis influence extended well beyond Harvard. Since he came to the law school he had placed many young lawyers in government, particularly for the reform agencies of the New Deal. He found the law clerks for Benjamin Cardozo, Stanley Reed, Louis D. Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, all of whom wanted clerks only out of Harvard; and in this way he created an elite that influenced American law and politics for years afterward. The clerks he selected were unmarried, with no other demands upon their time, men who could be not just lawyers, but companions to old men who were frequently lonely. \"I used to pick up my justice in the morning,\" remembers one former clerk, \"have breakfast at his house, be available for every kind of errand.\"\n\nFrankfurter himself was appointed to the Court in 1939, in large part for his contribution to the cause of individual liberty. He had helped W.E.B. Du Bois organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1910; and had formed the American Civil Liberties Union with Jane Addams, Helen Keller, and Norman Thomas in 1920. The ACLU was his vehicle for defending Sacco and Vanzetti\u2014two Italian anarchists, a shoemaker and a fish peddler, accused of bank robbery and murder, whose defenders said they were on trial for their anarchism. Frankfurter campaigned for their release from the time of their arrest in 1920. When they were executed in 1927, he wrote a book, _The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti_ , which argued that justice had failed.\n\nFrankfurter's first law clerk on the Court was Ed Prichard, Philip Graham's best friend, who was less a researcher, as were most clerks, than a statesman-companion, a young friend with whom the justice could test his knowledge of the issues before the Court. Phil worked for Justice Stanley Reed his first year out of law school and went with Frankfurter in the summer of 1940, when Prich's term ended. Both Phil and Prich were fascinated by Washington's social and political workings; they knew not only lawyers, but top men in government like Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and presidential assistant (later Secretary of Defense) James Forrestal. They spent many evenings at Frankfurter's house, entertaining the justice and his wife, Marion, who was a semi-invalid. Prich was the one with the unusual wit; he was a mimic and great storyteller. Phil always had something to say about people; he had humor; he could characterize them in a few well-chosen words, devastate them with a remark.\n\nDuring Phil's engagement to Katharine, he often took her to visit the Frankfurters. Katharine knew them through her parents but now became an especially good companion for Marion, who, like herself, had been a newspaper reporter. Frankfurter thought Phil and Katharine a \"most compatible couple\" and assured Eugene Meyer that Phil was very, very bright. Eugene told Frankfurter he was sure that Phil would make a fine son-in-law.\n\nEugene Meyer and Phil had their first political argument the day Katharine brought him home to dinner. Roosevelt's Courtpacking plan had just failed, and Phil the young lawyer told Meyer the banker that the Supreme Court was the \"old enemy\" that had to be controlled for the survival of social welfare legislation. \"Life has taught me that there are three elements to success,\" Meyer answered: \"know everything there is to know, work harder than anybody else, and be absolutely honest\"; and that while he didn't doubt the young man's integrity, he suspected that even the clerk to Justice Frankfurter, who had been a friend of his for years, didn't know everything there was to know about constitutional law. Court-packing was, clearly, unconstitutional. Phil asked him slyly whether it was true that Meyer's loans to banks and large corporations in 1932, when he had been the director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, had made necessary a lot of these government welfare programs. Meyer answered that no, his policies created deliberate inflation, which pulled the country out of the Depression faster than handouts ever could.\n\nOnce Phil decided to marry, he wanted to do it right away. The place was to be Mount Kisco. The date was set for June 5, 1940, guest list drawn up, flowers and food and liquor ordered, announcements placed in the Washington and New York newspapers. Then Phil began to worry: suppose his marriage interfered with his Court duties. He was scheduled to start with Frankfurter that summer, and Felix, as Phil called him, needed constant companionship, attention. He was driving the justice home from Court one night, the question churning in his brain, the car weaving from lane to lane on the deserted street. Phil finally blurted out that he was planning to marry Kay Meyer, not knowing that Frankfurter had helped maneuver Eugene into accepting him. \"Can I do it? Can I still work for you on the Court?\" Phil's driving was getting wilder, and Frankfurter in the best of circumstances hated cars. Phil was heading right into one of those hundreds of statues that rise up from the streets in Washington when Frankfurter told him to go ahead and marry her, but to watch the road in the meantime.\n\nThe _Post's_ competitor, the _Washington Evening Star_ , printed a detailed account of the wedding, particularly of Katharine's clothing:\n\n> Seven Springs Farm, the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Meyer at Mount Kisco, N.Y., was the scene of the wedding of their daughter, Miss Katharine Meyer and Mr. Philip Leslie Graham of Hockley in Arlington, Va., son of Ernest R. Graham of Miami, Fla. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Dr. Carl Kretzmann, pastor of the Lutheran Church of South Orange, N.J., officiating at 5 o'clock, in the garden which nature at its loveliest made a beautiful setting. Mr. Meyer escorted his daughter and gave her in marriage. She was attended by her sister, Miss Ruth Meyer, and Mr. Edward F. Prichard, Jr., of Paris, Ky., was the best man. The bride was dressed in a period costume of heavy silk in ivory shade made with long fitted sleeves, the close-fitting bodice buttoned with small silk buttons to her throat where it was finished with a narrow turned-down collar of the silk. The skirt was very full and long and had bands of the silk wider as they were nearer the hem, from two to four inches apart. About her shoulders she wore rare old lace and on her head a wreath of orange blossoms and she carried a spray of white orchids. . . . The informal reception which immediately followed was for only the members of the two families and intimate friends. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Graham left later for a wedding trip to Bermuda, the bride wearing a light gray and yellow print frock with light gray coat and hat and yellow accessories.\n\nWhen they returned from Bermuda, the Grahams bought a modest two-story house on 37th and R streets in a run-down section of Georgetown, directly opposite a high school. Phil could not afford a nicer house on a better street, and he would not allow the Meyers, parents or daughter, to offer him money. Katharine was already beginning to see the sort of sacrifice she was going to have to make for the sake of his pride, and she would say ruefully, when letting people know their new address, that \"we will definitely have to change it someday.\"\n\nKatharine immediately proved herself to be an unobtrusive, good-natured wife who was happy just to be married to a man she thought so much smarter and more worldly than herself. Phil made it clear from the start that he still needed his time with men. He stayed out frequently after Court discussing great issues with the Hockley crowd, and Katharine would come downstairs in a bathrobe to greet them when Phil invited them in around midnight for a last drink.\n\nIn the early 1940s the Supreme Court was hearing a great many tax and labor matters. They were called \"mop-up cases,\" technical questions left over from the volumes of New Deal legislation: how much violence should be tolerated during strikes; could unions compel worker membership; should the Court uphold certain taxes? These sorts of cases, business cases, really, did not interest Phil, and although he did whatever research Frankfurter asked of him, his heart was not in issues of the private bar. He saved himself mainly for matters of the Constitution, individual rights, the permissible powers of Congress, which had been tested during the New Deal and were increasingly important with the United States about to enter the Second World War.\n\nThe most controversial case while Phil was with the Court was _Minersville v. Gobitis,_ known as the flag-salute case, which concerned two Jehovah's Witness children who had been compelled to salute the American flag against their religious principles. Most of the justices on the Court by 1939 were civil libertarians, appointed by Roosevelt, and the Court's decision against the Jehovah's Witnesses was a shock. Frankfurter, incredibly, wrote for the majority: \"A grave responsibility confronts this Court whenever . . . it must reconcile the conflicting claims of liberty and authority. But when the liberty invoked is liberty of conscience, and the authority is authority to safeguard the nation's fellowship, judicial conscience is put to its severest test.\" Frankfurter, like many immigrants, was an ardent patriot (he would walk the halls of the Supreme Court whistling \"Stars and Stripes Forever\"), and he felt, quite simply, that government had a right to instill patriotism in its citizens, especially during wartime. \"National unity is the basis of national security,\" his opinion continued. \"To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem\" than such free speech issues as the right to distribute handbills. The decision foreshadowed a change in the country and was the beginning of Phil's consuming war fever. National security would now be valued above civil liberties, both throughout and after the war; and national security would remain Phil's priority during all the years that he was publisher of the _Post._\n\nHis time with his wife was spent traveling, playing tennis at Crescent Place, having dinners with her family (she dressed casually, he wore a suit and tie), attending Washington social functions. A fellow law clerk recalls that Phil, with the Meyers, began to move in the \"stratospheric heights\" of society, a level far above that of the other Harvard lawyers, who, though ambitious, were for the most part not yet political and social beings. The conspicuous exception, besides Phil, was Ed Prichard, who considered himself Phil's intellectual equal or better and was comfortable not only with the Meyers but with every other powerful man or woman in Washington. Prich appreciated Katharine's gentleness, and she believed, along with others, that he would someday be president of the United States.\n\nBut it happened one November in the early 1940s that Prich was caught stuffing ballot boxes in Kentucky and was convicted of election fraud. It was not an indication of the man; Phil still believed in him. So did Joe Rauh, and so did four Supreme Court justices, who liked him so well that they felt they would be biased and refused to hear his appeal. Thus Prich entered the Federal Correctional Institution at Ashland in July 1950, where he remained until President Truman, responding to Phil's and Joe Rauh's pleas, granted him Christmas clemency five months later. His career in government was ruined, and he remained in Kentucky in the private practice of law for the rest of his life. When visited by the author shortly before his death in 1984 he was blind from diabetes and needed an assistant to lead him out of the small courtroom where he had been arguing a case about faulty bridge construction. But in those earlier days, when the possibilities for the bright young men from Hockley were without limit, Prich's misfortune seemed like a bad dream, a mistake. Katharine did not condemn Prich, nor did she understand why Phil feared so for himself.\n\n\"I've been reading up on the history of Scottish Grahams,\" Katharine's oldest son once wrote to Agnes, his grandmother, thirty years after his parents' marriage, \"\u2014a lot of backers of lost causes.\" Several generations ago, the Grahams had migrated from Scotland to Canada and then down to Michigan, where Ernest Graham, Phil's father, was born. Ernest might have been called a drifter. For much of his youth he wandered through Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana, working the gold mines in the mountains, a victim of the mining fever that drove the Indians ever westward. In South Dakota, around 1910, the same year Eugene Meyer married Agnes Ernst, Ernest Graham married a pioneer woman named Florence, whom he found teaching school in the Black Hills. They had two children, Mary and Philip. The family went briefly back to Michigan, where Ernest bought a general store, which soon went bankrupt. In Michigan he met an executive of the Pennsylvania Sugar Company (Pennsuco), who told Ernest that if he would go to Florida he could manage an experimental Pennsuco project to grow sugar cane in the Everglades. It sounded fine, and in 1921 Ernest took his family to live on a houseboat in the Florida swamps.\n\nPennsuco was a wealthy company which held lucrative contracts to process sugar from the two largest sugar plantations in Cuba. This was a time when Cuban sugar was in great demand, the sugar beet crop in Europe having been destroyed during World War I. Because of Cuba's political instability, however, Pennsuco wanted to grow sugar cane in Florida and thought it could be done cheaply. The experiment failed. Mud, burning heat, alligators, mosquitoes, and malaria plagued the men who tried to work the seven thousand acres of swamp, and costs rose. Pennsuco did not want to pay the taxes on the land, and in 1932 the company gave the entire seven thousand acres to Ernest Graham. And so there, in the Florida swamps, he started a dairy farm.\n\nThrough the eleven years of sugar cane farming, Philip and his sister Mary lived among Mikosukee Indians, a people who had once fiercely fought the white man's encroachment but who now lived with them in harmony, hunting and fishing among the water reeds in slim canoes. The Mikosukee wrestled alligators for sport, and Phil's best friend, one of a number of Mikosukee men called Charlie Tigertail, taught him to turn the alligators on their backs by twisting their necks, tickle their stomachs to put them to sleep, and then wake them up by whistling the alligator mating call. Later, in a nostalgic mood, Phil would tell this story as a comment on his humble beginnings.\n\nErnest had made Phil cut cane while he managed the Pennsuco project; and after he started the dairy farm and the family had moved onto the land, when Phil was at the University of Florida, he insisted that Phil take a year off school to work for him driving trucks. Phil's mother, a schoolteacher, was the opposite of her husband; she subscribed to the _New Yorker_ in Phil's name and repeatedly told him that she wanted him to go to Harvard. When Phil was a sophomore in college, she died of cancer, demanding on her deathbed that Ernest send Phil to Harvard to study law. This seemed an unlikely prospect. His grades at Florida were not high, and after his mother's death he became even more nervous and high strung. He often talked to himself and did not seem to be in the best of health, physically or mentally.\n\nErnest quickly remarried and had two more children, William and Donald Robert (Bob), who helped their father build his dairy farm into a vast real estate empire. The younger boy, Bob, eventually parlayed the family's wealth into political power, and became the Democratic governor of Florida in 1978, a United States senator in 1986. In those early days, though, when the family was struggling, Phil would drive home from college on weekends to help on the farm, but acted distant with his strange new family. He drove recklessly, almost as if he did not want to get there, as if he felt he no longer had a home.\n\n* * *\n\nIN his senior year he applied to Harvard, which rejected him. However, his father, now grown rich from the increased value of his land holdings close to Miami, was acquainted with U.S. Senator Claude Pepper. Pepper knew the Harvard dean and wrote him a letter to persuade him that rejecting Phil, a \"most brilliant\" young man, was a serious mistake. Phil got in. If not for Pepper, and for his mother, he would not have become president of the Harvard _Law Review,_ would not have been living in Hockley Hall in 1939 and clerking for Felix Frankfurter in 1940. He would not have married the eligible heiress Katharine Meyer, and it would not have been said of him, as it was said by Joseph Rauh, that \"Phil is the most flawless human being I have ever met.\"\n\nPhil finished clerking in June 1941 and started work in the Lend-Lease Administration under Oscar Cox, who had discovered a statute written in 1879 which enabled President Roosevelt to lend and lease military equipment to the Allies even before the United States entered the war. For this reason Cox was one of the most influential men in the Roosevelt administration, and Phil, obsessed with fighting Hitler, thought that to have maximum impact, he ought to be in Cox's office. Lend-Lease, however, was a temporary creation that soon lost ground to the Office of Emergency Management. Created as a contingency agency under the president's 1939 Reorganization Act, OEM became the department primarily responsible for the war against Japan. Phil had met OEM's director, Wayne Coy, while at Lend-Lease and quickly got himself transferred to Coy's department. Joseph Rauh and Ed Prichard were already working for Coy, and Phil joined their efforts to push industry leaders\u2014and thus the president\u2014toward fighting Hitler and away from what Rauh called their \"pillow fights\" over such old issues as social welfare and taxes.\n\nWar was more urgent than Roosevelt's social programs, and Phil was on the \"cutting edge,\" as Rauh remembers, of all their efforts, \"the most brilliant, vibrant legal mind,\" the most effective at moving Roosevelt toward the goal, for despite his contingency war agencies, Roosevelt was vacillating and, in the opinion of the Hockley men, needed to be pushed.\n\nPhil deluged the president with memoranda. A _Time_ magazine story noted that the Russians had lost more arms fighting the Nazi invasion than the total number the United States had on order, and Phil sent the article to Roosevelt. He took it on himself to look into certain industry practices, and when he found that gasoline production was low, for instance, because oil companies were saving money by producing low octane when the military needed high octane, he sent Roosevelt a note through Coy asking that the president grant him, at age twenty-six, the authority to require high-octane production. Roosevelt granted permission, Phil ran around issuing orders, and gas output rose. He wrote an article for the April 1942 issue of _Atlantic Monthly_ entitled \"Teamwork in Washington: Conversion to War\"\u2014he wrote it, but Wayne Coy got the byline\u2014which urgently drove home the point: \"We now have a better working government than France or England had at the start of the war,\" Phil said; \"it is better than we ever had in the last war. In fact, if it continues as it is, it will probably be the best government that ever lost a war.\" The piece helped Phil win his campaign for eight billion dollars in government loans to defense factories, a strategy reminiscent of Eugene Meyer's at the War Finance Corporation during World War I. Phil had once accused Meyer of contributing to the Depression by aiding business at the expense of the little man; now with these government loans came industry conversion to war production on a large scale, and Phil experienced the power of capital and now believed that Meyer had been right.\n\nMeyer was usually right. He knew politics, finance, felt a social responsibility and acted on it, was acquainted with everybody Phil might meet or could hope to meet. Yet marrying into a wealthy, prominent, and well-connected family posed problems as well as opportunities for Phil. He resented his dependence on the Meyers even as they helped him. Agnes, he soon found, was arrogant and presumptuous. \"I know how hard it is coming into a rich family with no money of your own,\" she told him, wanting him to understand he could have anything, that what was theirs was his; humiliating him. Katharine, with her shoulder-length hair and red lipstick, was without conceit, yet she had the easy, superior air of the privileged, the fluency in French and familiarity with German, the plan for graduate work in American history at Harvard (or economics at the London School, which her father and Professor Hutchins had had in mind for her) or a real newspaper career, all of which she had given up to marry him. His conflict was expressed one day when he came into the office grinning widely and showed around a few new hundred-dollar bills. \"Where do you think I got these?\" he asked boyishly. Coy had given him half the fee for writing the article in _Atlantic_ , and his friends were struck by the irony: Why is a man married to a woman worth millions still excited about a few hundred dollars?\n\nThe United States entered the war in December 1941, and the Office of Emergency Management was suddenly taking orders from the War Department. Young men were drafted. Philip Graham, exempt because he was already in government service, but with what he called his \"ghastly weakness for action, movement, and go,\" wanted desperately to join the army, be part of the fight, capture some of life's romance. Within a week after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor he asked Felix Frankfurter to recommend him for the Army Air Corps, and regardless of how the Meyers may have felt about it, Frankfurter gave Phil his letter on December 19. \"I deem it a patriotic duty no less than a source of deep personal pleasure to write in support of Mr. Philip L. Graham's application to enter the Air Corps. I cannot imagine that any applicant would bring to the service of this country a stronger combination of character, resourcefulness, and those indefinable qualities of personality by which men are endowed for leadership. . . . He early showed powers much beyond his years and he naturally became the leading man in his [law school] class. . . . He has shown zeal, intrepidity, complete devotion to the task at hand, the capacity to arouse confidence in other men, and that sparkling humor. . . . Among the literally thousands of young lawyers I have known there are very few about whom I could be as confident that they would give a good account of themselves. . . .\n\nIn the spring of 1942, Phil entered the Air Corps as a private, turning down a commission because he wanted to see combat. He was sent to a training camp in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, his mother's state, where he lived with Katharine for the rest of the summer and fall. The Air Corps was the place to be in this war, the first war to use modern fighter planes, and it was Phil's chance for heroism. Unfortunately, though, his first year of service was anything but heroic. Injured on the base, he wrote to Frankfurter in December 1942 that \"Time has been working away at my once raw wounds with all the efficacy of the sulfa drugs. . . . Kay's very helpful Lt. has by now started on the tortuous path to Washington the following: an application from Pvt. G. . . . for a waiver of the defect under a War Department Regulation which the Lt. discovered; a statement of the Flight Surgeon that my 'calcified lesions' are 'of no present or future clinical significance.' . . . Our Lt.,\" Phil continued, \"is hopeful that the papers may be approved and back here by mid-January for the next OCS [Officer Candidate School] shipment but. . . frankly I am grown convinced that God intended me for Sioux Falls.\"\n\nWhile still a private, Phil was asked to join the Sioux Falls teaching staff, but he declined the offer. In January 1943, still waiting for his medical clearance to join OCS, which he now thought was his only way to get out of camp, he learned the clearance would probably come through that month. But one of his instructors told him he ought to consider cadet training, commission in four weeks, instead of OCS, commission in thirteen weeks. He accepted cadet school, and the flight surgeon approved him for \"general military service.\" He was promised combat. Phil never made it to the New Haven cadet training school, however. Whether by mistake or intention, the army deciding for itself how to use this highly intelligent man, he was sent instead to the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Katharine went with him, to her parents' surprise. They had not been sure she would make a good army wife.\n\nAt Harrisburg Phil had an instructor named James Russell Wiggins, a former editor of the _St. Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch_ , who knew East Coast newspapers and had heard of the Meyer family. Wiggins made a special effort to know Katharine, a publisher's daughter, and it might then have occurred to Phil that the intelligence community is interested in newspaper people. He told Wiggins he was going to stay with law, but Wiggins, who later became the _Post's_ managing editor, did not believe him. He says he \"just always assumed that Phil was the _Washington Post.\"_\n\nPhil completed intelligence training and was assigned to the air intelligence staff of General George C. Kenney, commander of the Army Air Corps in the Pacific, directly under General MacArthur. The Japanese had taken the Philippines in December 1941, and in 1943 MacArthur was still arguing with the Joint Chiefs over Pacific strategy. He wanted to attack the Philippine islands and destroy the Japanese fleet; the Joint Chiefs insisted that he push through Japanese lines to Formosa, which would give the United States the advantage of having its B-29 bombers under the protection of Chiang Kai-shek.\n\nIn this high-level military debate, Phil Graham made himself the expediter, as he had in the Office of Emergency Management. MacArthur's plan was supported without question by Kenney and the other Pacific generals, and Phil undertook to get Roosevelt's personal approval for MacArthur. But first he needed intelligence on the Philippine islands: Could they be taken? How strong, actually, were the Japanese ground forces and fleet? How safe was MacArthur's grand strategy? Phil learned from a pilot who flew reconnaissance missions that the middle islands were the \"vulnerable belly of the imperial dragon,\" and he carried that information to Roosevelt, who gave MacArthur permission to execute what historians have said was the most brilliant \"strategic conception and tactical execution of the entire war.\" The Americans made their first main landing on October 29, 1944, followed by the battle of Leyte Gulf, \"the greatest naval engagement of all time,\" in which American naval forces completely destroyed the Japanese fleet. Following that, in January and February 1945, was a bloody fight on Luzon island for Manila Bay, and protracted mop-up operations until June.\n\nFor his role in the Leyte and Luzon campaigns, Phil was made a commissioned officer and received the Legion of Merit, the military's fifth-highest award, for \"exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services.\" His medical problems continued to keep him away from battle, but he rose rapidly to the rank of major and for a time did high-level intelligence work inside the Pentagon.\n\nOne man who served with Phil in the Pacific was Pare Lorentz, the documentary filmmaker who married Katharine's sister Elizabeth in June 1943. Lorentz had been head of the United States Film Service during the Depression, when it produced such left-wing films as _The Plow That Broke the Plains, The River,_ and _The Fight for Life,_ documentaries critical of war and capitalism that were shown widely in American movie theaters. Lorentz had a sharp wit and could see through Phil rather easily. \"Phil is in good physical condition and has a clear picture of the confusion,\" he wrote to Eugene in August 1945, six days after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. \"Thank you again for the Scotch; with seven bottles of Haig & Haig used judicially Phil should be a Lt. Col. very soon. . . .\"\n\nWhen Phil was first shipped overseas, Katharine had returned to Washington, and their marriage, at least for her, regained the aura of wartime romance. She felt purposeless without him; she waited; she worked on the _Post_ but without interest. \"I was pregnant\"\u2014her first pregnancy the previous year had resulted in a miscarriage\u2014\"and Philip was away and I was just looking for a mindless job to make the time go faster,\" she told a woman who had known her as a pacifist at Vassar. Her \"mindless job\" was in fact not mindless but quite demanding, a weekly column called the \"Magazine Rack,\" which summarized articles from major magazines. The column was well-written and popular, and she became one of the most widely read of the many Washington feature writers.\n\nHer baby was born in 1944, with difficulty, danger, and pain. She named the child Elizabeth, after her sister. With her husband gone, Katharine became closer to her parents than she had been since childhood; Agnes even took care of the baby for her, or when she couldn't, gave her to a \"very good maid.\" Phil occasionally came home on leave to see his wife and baby; during one visit Katharine conceived again, and their first son, Donald, was born in April 1945, another hard birth. \"Kay and the baby couldn't be better,\" Agnes wrote happily to Eugene, who was away on business. \"I was over there yesterday and shall . . . bring Kay home on Tuesday in the car. The baby is a strapper and I think looks more like Phil. . . . He is lighter in coloring than Elizabeth and may yet turn out to be blond. Kay and I grow happier every day about his being a boy.\"\n\nThroughout the war years, Katharine took an active part in the social life of the capital city. Parties were inevitably gatherings of the people responsible for the war effort, and she had the idea of using the _Post_ to publicize these occasions as patriotic events. She shared her thoughts with Felix Frankfurter, who was appalled. \"In order that the morale of the country should be right,\" he scolded her, \"the dominant atmosphere of Washington must be austere. Now the fact of the matter is that the influence of trivial and frivolous 'so-called social life' has always been bad in creating the right atmosphere in which Government moves. . . . It is bad enough to have this so in peacetime. In wartime it is indefensible.\" Frankfurter himself liked good company, lively talk, but he enjoyed even more his eternal role as teacher. \"There are not many influences stronger than the seductions of publicity\u2014silly as it may appear to you\u2014for taking people's thoughts and time and energies in to frivolities like cocktail parties and dinners and whatnot. . . . And then, of course, there is the encouragement to snobbery, which, to put it mildly, should be discouraged when a life and death struggle for democracy is going on.\"\n\nKatharine dropped the notion of publicizing Washington parties, although \"to stop publicity,\" as Frankfurter said, \"is not going to make little men big and frivolous women serious.\" She concentrated on her babies, worked with her mother's Committee on the Reorganization of Community Services, and with her father's refugee committee, and awaited Phil's return. On September 2, 1945, the family received a letter from Pare Lorentz saying that Phil would be coming home soon. \"I suppose old Graham is in Tokyo Bay,\" he remarked. That was where MacArthur was, in Tokyo setting up a new government for the Japanese, writing them a constitution patterned after that of the United States, and Phil had a way of being at the center of events. Pare had gotten to know Phil as men get to know each other during war, and he liked him. He did think him a bit taken with himself, though, and ended his note with a good-humored warning: \"He will be unfit to live with for a while after he gets back.\"\n\n# [CHAPTER EIGHT\n\n _Half German, Half Jewish_](content-toc.xhtml#aa8)\n\nKATHARINE SUFFERED from the war, while Phil was gone, in another way. She had a Jewish father whose relatives were persecuted by Nazis, and a German mother who was ashamed and bitter that her country could let the Nazis take power. Katharine was the only one of the Meyer children then living in Washington, and she saw the war pull her parents apart. It tore at her as well.\n\nA cable arrived for Eugene from London on June 25, 1940, only twenty days after Katharine was married, which suddenly made the war very real to her.\n\n> ZADOC KAHNS DAUGHTER SUZANNE DREYFUS AFTER NARROW ESCAPE OUT OF ST MALO NOW IN LONDON WITH TWO GIRLS AGED 18 AND 14 YEARS NEPHEWS AGED 17 AND 15 STOP WOULD YOU BE PREPARED TO SPONSOR THEIR COMING IN USA STOP IF SO COULD YOU BE SO GOOD CABLE ANSWER TO GALERIES LAFAYETTE REGENT ST LONDON AND ALSO HAVE THE CONSULATE GENERAL INFORMED AND INSTRUCTED STOP ALINE LIEBMAN [Eugene's sister] KNOWS ALL PARTICULARS OF THE ABOVE SAID STOP WITH ALL OUR ANXIOUS HOPES AND DEEPEST THANKFULNESS = SUZANNE DREYFUS.\n\nSuzanne Dreyfus was Eugene Meyer's first cousin, whom he had met only once, in 1896, when he went to Paris and Berlin to study after graduating from Yale. She was the daughter of his uncle Zadoc Kahn, the Grand Rabbi of France. The Kahn and Dreyfus families had grown close during the ten-year Dreyfus ordeal, and the man Suzanne had married, Adolph Dreyfus, appears to have been one of Captain Dreyfus's nephews. Suzanne and her children were at a French summer resort when the Germans occupied France in early 1940. They hid on a Belgian coal barge that was sailing for England, and when they contacted Eugene Meyer, their rich American cousin, from London, they had no money with which to leave Europe.\n\nEugene cabled Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, asking for visas for his relatives. Kennedy replied that the law required Meyer to assume responsibility for their maintenance and support and to guarantee in writing that they would not become public charges; Meyer promised to do so. Meyer also contacted the American Express Company in New York, which sent a message to its London office:\n\n> EXERT EVERY POSSIBLE INFLUENCE TO ASSIST IN SECURING TRANSPORTATION FOR MADAM SUZANNE DREYFUS AND CHILDREN . . . ON FIRST AVAILABLE BRITISH STEAMER TO UNITED STATES OR CANADA STOP THIS CLIENT FRENCH NATIONAL AND AMBASSADOR KENNEDY GREATLY INTERESTED ACCOUNT OF EUGENE MEYER IMPORTANT WASHINGTON CITIZEN AND FRIEND OF OUR HIGHEST OFFICIALS.\n\nKennedy was a dominant figure in London society in 1940, an enthusiastic host, a loyal friend. And he was an advocate of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler, which some of his critics thought a result of his business interests. Kennedy nevertheless obtained the visas for Eugene's Jewish relatives in less than a month, and by August 1940 the Dreyfuses were \"living in your house,\" as the oldest of the Dreyfus boys, Bertrand, wrote gratefully to Meyer later, \"drinking your wine, smoking your cigars, and using your tennis court.\"\n\nThe three younger children were placed in the right schools by Agnes's brother Frederick Ernst, the deputy superintendent of the New York City school system. Bertrand, of high school age, was enrolled in the program for advanced high school students at the College of the University of Chicago; Eugene asked Robert Maynard Hutchins to reserve him a room in the International House, where Katharine had lived only a year before. He then wrote Hutchins with a change of plans: \"I have conferred with our mutual friend Katharine, who suggested that International House is so full of foreigners that it might be better for young Dreyfus to live in a dormitory.\" Kay may have felt that Bertrand would become Americanized faster if he lived with American students, but Bertrand told Eugene, after one year, \"The fellows were awfully nice, very familiar . . . but, on the whole, they were too childish and rather uninteresting.\" He moved over to I House, which \"reminds me of Paris' Quartier Latin,\" and eventually earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.\n\nAfter the children were settled, the Meyers undertook to get the rest of Eugene's relatives out of France. They secured a visa for Suzanne's husband, Adolph, who arrived in New York with a request that the Meyers help his brother Jacques, stranded without money in Casablanca with his wife, Madeline, who was Suzanne's sister, and their daughter, Catherine. The Jacques Dreyfuses had sailed from Marseilles to Casablanca expecting to leave from there for America on a reserved steamship. But the United States was in the process of changing its immigration quotas, and officials in Casablanca suspended the Dreyfuses' visas until the new quota was announced. They were there for five months, savings dwindling, before they were able to sail.\n\nFor the support of the two families, Eugene established the tax-exempt Fund for Assistance to French Relatives, which paid their passage, immediate expenses, and a stipend of eight hundred dollars a month per family. His sisters and brother contributed several thousand dollars, but he bore the bulk of the cost, which amounted to $31,275 after four years. He then spoke to his business manager, Floyd Harrison, about the Dreyfuses trying to become self-supporting. He refused, however, any efforts at cash repayment; four years earlier he had insisted that Adolph reverse his instructions to make him beneficiary of a life insurance policy. \"This is not merely a formal request, but one which I mean definitely. . . . In connection with my helping you. . . . it is not my purpose to put you under any obligations. . . . Should the war be over some day . . . I am willing that you should repay the amount in your own good time [but] should you be unable to do so . . . the matter will not affect me or my family's welfare so far as I can now see.\"\n\nThe ordeal of the Dreyfus family dramatized the meaning of the war for Katharine: It was a war against Jews. Germany had defeated France three days before Katharine's father received Suzanne Dreyfus's telegram; in the months that the Dreyfuses remained at Crescent Place, telling their sad stories, France established the Vichy government, which showed an \"understanding\" of the Jewish problem. Marshal Henri Philippe P\u00e9tain, the German-appointed head of Vichy, established laws that discriminated against Jews and consented to the German plan that France be given top priority in \"combing Europe from West to East\" to \"resettle\" Jews in the depths of Eastern Europe. Jews were to be deported even if they had only one Jewish parent, even if they were baptized Christians.\n\nKatharine was not raised as a Jew and knew little of her father's thinking on the subject. He rarely spoke about Jewish issues, not even the central role that Jews as scapegoats were playing in the politics of Europe. He \"spared\" his children the emotional and political torments of Zionism, but in children's eyes reticence can make a parent seem secretive, ashamed. Katharine's mother was a more vocal person; she made no secret of her sympathies with the Jewish cause, giving freely to Jewish charities and discussing Zionism with her guests; but Agnes had many causes: education, Oriental art, social welfare, the Democratic party. And she had not raised them to be Jews; she had baptized them. Washington was a city where people were suspicious of the Jewish influence in finance, government, and the news, and Katharine had lived through several periods of \"rejection,\" as she described them, when there was a feeling in Washington against Eugene Meyer's inordinate power, a Jewish power. She had seen anti-Semitism at Chicago, where girls \"queered\" themselves by dating Jewish boys. Her closest friend there, her steady date for two years, had been Sidney Hyman, a Jew, but she had married a Scottish Methodist.\n\nHer father's Jewishness was a liability in running the _Post_. Washington was a Protestant town, dominated, when Meyer bought the _Post_ , by _Times-Herald_ publisher Cissy Patterson, who was openly anti-Semitic. She was related by marriage to both the Hearsts and the McCormicks, the two most powerful newspaper families in the country, and she had wanted, with their backing, to buy the _Post_ herself, to publish the _Times-Herald_ in the evening and the _Post_ in the morning. When Meyer got the paper, he declared that it would be independent, a slap at her, with her obvious political ties and effort to dominate the news. She also owned the syndicate that distributed the _Post's_ four best comics, \"Andy Gump,\" \"Winnie Winkle,\" \"Dick Tracy,\" and \"Gasoline Alley,\" and tried to cancel the _Post's_ contract to run them. He sued, she fought it; two years later the court decided in his favor. She sent him a package of raw meat with a note saying, \"Take your pound of flesh.\"\n\nJews themselves expected special treatment from Meyer. In 1942, while Katharine visited her husband at his army camp, Meyer was confronted by Peter Bergson, the chairman of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation; Bergson demanded the _Post's_ support for a Hebrew Palestine Army to fight the \"disastrous event occurring to the Hebrew people of Europe.\" Rumors of the Holocaust were just beginning to filter out of Eastern Europe, and they were not universally believed; perhaps Meyer did not yet believe them. He would not publish Bergson's stories about Zionists cooperating with the British Colonial Office to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine. \"The _Washington Post_ is not a Jewish paper,\" Meyer told Bergson. But Bergson would not let the matter drop. He kept after Meyer for two more years, writing lengthy letters, blaming mistaken interpretations on \"your managing and city editors [rather] than [on] personal sinister intentions on your part,\" until Meyer finally printed Bergson's charges and refuted them on the editorial page. \"The Jewish Agency,\" not Bergson's committee, \"represents the people of Palestine,\" the editorial said. It was a risky statement, a victory for Bergson in that it forced Meyer to take a position different from the official American position, a position as a Jew. United States policy was to support British control of Palestine and not to acknowledge separate Jewish liberation efforts.\n\nMeyer and other rich Jews gave money to the Jewish Agency through underground channels, money that bought arms and medical supplies, that paid for the ideal of Zionism, but they did not talk about it, let alone say it in print. Meyer had been working to be accepted as a patriotic American; he had once gone so far as to telephone Secretary of War Henry Stimson (who made a transcript of the conversation and classified it Secret) to tell him that \"I would like, if it seems that the _Post_ can be helpful in a major way, to make it so. . . . I have in mind that we could do a campaign [on military training] both in the news and in the editorial department.\" Meyer felt that the Jewish issue compromised his credibility, his independence. He also felt that the pain it caused him was nobody else's concern.\n\nIn the spring of 1944, Katharine's father learned from Adolph Dreyfus, who was living in New York, that his cousin, Dr. Leon Zadoc-Kahn, had been taken from Paris with his wife to \"an unknown destination\" by the Nazis. Dreyfus begged him to use the resources of the _Post_ to try to find them, but Meyer was strangely cold. \"I was distressed to read your letter . . . about Leon and Suzanne. It was fearing this that I offered to bring them out. When they declined, I felt it was a mistake, because I could not imagine that they would have ultimately escaped. I was happy that such an event did not occur sooner.\" Dreyfus wrote again to say that he was sure Meyer was doing what he could; Eugene replied, \"I cannot say that I am trying to do anything. I merely wanted the information [about them] for my records. I never heard of anybody in America being able to do anything for somebody in a concentration camp in Occupied France.\" Ten years later, Eugene told his son, Bill, who had been an army air surgeon in Europe, about \"Dr. Leon Zadoc-Kahn, who was burned at Auschwitz, you may remember, with his wife during the war. He was the head of the Rothschild Hospital in Paris for a long time. . . . I was very fond of my cousin, Leon, and I lived with him at his apartment in Paris for six months.\" Characteristically, he said little else, though he hung Leon Zadoc-Kahn's portrait at Mount Kisco, above the mantel in the sitting room.\n\nAs the war rallied Americans to support the cause of the Jews, it overwhelmed many German-Americans with guilt. Agnes felt a deep rift with her husband during those years, not because he was Jewish but because she was German, and he did not seem to think Nazism a tragedy for Germany. When Hitler began eliminating his political opponents in the Blood Purge, depriving Jews of citizenship, dissolving labor unions, Meyer did not want to publish her views on the subject. It was a continuing source of tension between them that he barred her access to the pages of the newspaper, saying that her ideas were unsophisticated, although as a young woman she had been a journalist. The tension was exacerbated by the fact that he continued to include Katharine in editorial conferences and to encourage her interest in the paper. Eugene did take Agnes to Europe in 1937, when he and editorial page editor Felix Morley went to formulate the _Post's_ positions on the German threat; but as a matter of principle, as a Jew, he would not go with Agnes into Berlin; so while the men visited France and Austria, she went to Berlin alone. That was the beginning of her frustrating and lonely efforts to discover what had happened to the German soul.\n\nShortly after the Meyers' trip, Germany annexed Austria without an armed struggle, which Eugene saw as evidence that Hitler was accepted as the political leader in Europe. The _Post_ ran a long analysis of the attraction of Nazism, which horrified and enraged Agnes. She addressed a lengthy letter to Morley (bypassing Eugene, as he had her) in which she accused him of \"approval of Fascism as a program.\" Morley responded a few days later. \"One of the most illuminating experiences of my trip with Mr. Meyer last Summer,\" he equivocated, \"was when a Jewish banker friend of his, with whom we lunched in Vienna . . . said . . . that Hitler's idea of a synthesis between Nationalism and Socialism was 'a stroke of extraordinary genius.'\" \"The week before I had talked with an old Socialist friend . . . who told me that hundreds of thousands of former party members, as well as a large proportion of former German Communists, were now confirmed Nazis because of the unquestionably Socialistic aspects of the program. I am not (as you said),\" Morley continued, \"attempting to contradict the judgment of Thomas Mann,\" whom Agnes idolized, \"that this is a spurious Socialism but to the average run-of-the-mine Socialist worker that philosophy means that the State will find him work . . . and see that he shall not be exploited by an individual capitalist. The Nazi government certainly does all this. . . . I do not like [it but] merely state . . . a fact. Infinite damage has been done by the . . . idea that the Nazi government is merely a dictatorship based on military police or Gestapo espionage. Those elements are there and they are used to terrorize the courageous minority of dissidents. But the real power of the movement lies in its enthusiastic endorsement by the . . . lower middle class\u2014the same elements which would follow a Huey Long.\"\n\nThis sort of rationalism, Agnes believed, was precisely the way Americans acquiesced in the destruction of the German culture. Agnes, raised as a German, learning strict German virtues and speaking the rich German language, knew better than Morley. She had bitter arguments with Eugene, which Katharine witnessed. She began to drink; she was losing her country; Hitler was destroying the Germany she had known more completely than he was destroying the Jews. Eugene began locking up his liquor, she refused to buy her own, and they argued about that.\n\nDuring this time Agnes found solace in Thomas Mann's novels; he was a compatriot whose writings explored the inner self in relation to the changing values in Europe. Mann had been deprived of his German citizenship by the Nazi party in 1936 and was living in exile in Switzerland; Agnes prepared a long review of his allegorical _Joseph in Egypt_ , which the _Post_ printed, and the novelist began corresponding with her, writing in German. They met in Europe. She arranged for his family to enter the United States through Canada and to receive official immigrant status in May 1938. She rented a house in New York specifically so they would have a place to visit, to speak German together; and she felt, each time he left, that two \"god-seekers\" had gone \"their way together, for a little while.\" After he settled in Princeton with a teaching post, she wrote to him almost daily\u2014importuning letters that demanded from him as much as she felt she had given. Mann saw Agnes Meyer as a patron and friend, but she, to her family's embarrassment, thought of him as a spiritual lover. They had a number of meetings over a period of years.\n\nA short time after his defection from Europe, Agnes went to Mann to persuade the writer that he should perform the politically heroic act of denouncing Hitler. She took Eugene with her, and he later recalled to Katharine that \"it was a bit grim.\" As always, Agnes positioned herself at odds with Katia, Mann's brilliant wife, whom she did not like, although acknowledging that she was \"necessary\" for Mann's well-being. Agnes interacted with Katia to the extent of lending \"Mrs. Thomas Mann\" table linens, bed linens, bath towels, tea sets, and different linens for the \"help,\" as she recorded in her household log, but in matters of the German mind and heart, she insisted that _Mr._ Mann see her alone. She was happy with no less than intense three- to four-hour sessions with him, though the emigration had left him nervous and frail.\n\nOn one such occasion, Agnes reminded him of his essay, \"Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man,\" in which he had written that artists must participate in politics to preserve a creative society. Mann told Agnes he was unwilling to display his family as a group of suffering German intellectuals. Agnes insisted; for a time he withdrew. \"I adore him openly and he returns it diffidently,\" she wrote to Katharine after one of their meetings. Katharine had known Mann's daughters, Elizabeth and Erika, at Chicago and knew how he loved and admired his daughters and his wife. \"I have the feeling,\" Agnes told Katharine, \"that I am one of the . . . very few women he ever liked.\"\n\nNeither wealth nor personal force could buy Mrs. Meyer the answers she needed, even from the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern German letters. As Mann warmed to her attentions\u2014in 1941 Agnes endowed a chair for him at the Library of Congress, where he became Americas' \"Consultant in German Literature,\" at $4,800 per year; and she translated and reviewed his work\u2014she saw him less as a \"god-seeker\" than as an unhappy old man. This understanding allowed her to get ever more personal; she gave him a velvet smoking jacket, the kind of gift a man would receive from his lover. She also began to pick quarrels. In February 1942, as she was preparing for a trip to his new home in Pacific Palisades, California, she complained about the intrusion of his family during her last visit, hoping they would be left more alone this time. Mann's answer was injured and petulant. \"It does seem to me, dear friend, that you do an injustice to your first visit on this coast, and it saddens me that you have so inadequate a memory of it\u2014I mean, remember it as having been so inadequate. We devoted two whole mornings to one another [Mann wrote between nine and noon every morning; Agnes was in fact the only person for whom he sacrificed his working time], were undisturbed and alone for hours both days, talked, had a reading and a walk on the beach, and then I believe you once gave us the pleasure of coming to lunch with me _en famille_ , in the sphere in which my life is lived. But the idea that you saw me only _en famille_ is an illusion of memory. . . . I would be delighted simply if it could be repeated just as it was. I grant, though, that is quite a responsibility to ask you to come, fearing as I would that you would again go away with the sense that it was a waste of time. . . . I do not overestimate the charm and importance of my company . . . and would understand only too well if you should not wish to see our good relationship _par distance_ disturbed by my unpredictability as a human being. I am often tired and know that I can be deadly boring.\" Agnes's daughter Florence, who was married to the dark, brooding actor Oscar Homolka, was then living in Los Angeles, and Mann added, \"If you have so little time that Florence must go to San Francisco to meet you, then how can I presume to ask you to come all the way here on my account alone?\"\n\nThe wisdom that Agnes expected to find in Mann, the solemn interpretations of Nazi Germany, were not forthcoming. He was, as he said, \"often tired\" and worried about his children, who were fighting fascism more actively than he. Erika Mann went back into Germany to rescue her father's manuscript of _Joseph and His Brothers_. She produced _School for Barbarians_ , a report on the Nazi educational system; _The Other Germany_ , on the German Resistance; and, with her brother Klaus, _Escape to Life_ , the story of the German refugees. Yet with his children, as with Agnes, Mann spoke only of literary matters, the effectiveness of political expression rather than politics itself. He was just an old man who had lost his country, but Agnes's disappointment in him turned to bitterness. She used his children to strike at him: Why weren't his sons in the army, like her son and her son-in-law Phil? It was then that she pushed him too far, and he let her know, in a ferocious letter in May 1943, exactly what he had come to understand about her: \"I might say you had 'chosen' the moment when I was in the midst of conceiving a new book and therefore in a state of great, easily shattered nervous tension, to send me the insignificant blather of the lady from Smith College\u2014not in order for me to see how malignant and hate-filled the writer is, but so that I could see what a good-for-nothing my son Klaus is,\" he accused. \"I have suffered bitterly . . . from your having nothing but feelings of scorn and rejection for my children, for after all I love these children, by the same right that you love your children. . . . I can scarcely imagine a more horrible blow\u2014to me personally\u2014than that something should happen to your wonderful [sons] in the course of the war . . . [or] your [pregnant] daughters Katharine and Florence who are approaching their difficult hour.\"\n\nMann was all the more enraged at Agnes because Klaus was a brave young man who worked with the European underground, for which he had spent three months in a concentration camp in France. Mann had even told Agnes of his fear that Klaus would someday be \"murdered in my place.\" Yet Agnes complained to him that Klaus was staying out of the American army \"so that\" American boys might die, even though, as Mann angrily pointed out to her, he \"literally fought to be taken in,\" which Agnes had forgotten. \"I reported this to you. You sent not a word of . . . congratulation.\"\n\nMann identified the source of her attack as a \"profounder disappointment\" of some sort, but guessed, wrongly, that it was a disappointment with himself as a man. \"I have read aloud to you for hours from new work no one else has seen,\" he complained; \"I have shown the most sincere admiration for your patriotic and social activities. But nothing was right, nothing enough. . . . You always wanted me different from the way I am. You did not have the humor, or the respect, or the discretion, to take me as I am. You wanted to educate, dominate, improve, redeem me. In vain I warned you . . . that this . . . was an attempt on an unsuitable object, that at the age of nearly seventy my life was too thoroughly formed.\" Mann did not realize he had been for her the living symbol of a mythical, spiritual Germany, a wise father who could have helped her to understand her loss. After their estrangement, when the war was over, Agnes began to look for answers herself by interviewing Nazi prisoners of war. \"An older man, 52, with blond hair and blue eyes, aquiline nose, sloping forehead and tense eagle-like profile,\" Agnes wrote in the diary that she kept of these interviews. \"'To think,' he gasped, 'that after all my friends . . . died joyously that [Hitler] . . . crept off and croaked like a rat in a corner. . . . Anyway, there's no place to go. You give yourself like that just once in your life and never never will we ever have such faith again.'\"\n\n* * *\n\nKATHARINE had maintained a cheerful fa\u00e7ade throughout the war, but the tensions between her parents had their effect. Their fighting made them objects of curiosity, even ridicule, in their small city, and ridicule was very distressing to Katharine. She made wry, offhand jokes about the home battle front, but her friends thought she was perhaps too gay, her smile too forced. Her parties were sufficiently gracious and lavish, but the patriotism that had become the eternal theme of Washington parties did not resolve the problems at home. She waited for her husband's return and for normal life to resume.\n\nPhilip Graham came back in the fall of 1945 full of war stories and, as Pare Lorentz had warned, full of himself. He showed off his Legion of Merit medal; he played with his babies; he teased Katharine about having gotten fat. Katharine gratefully handed him the reins of their small family and spoke a little about things that had happened while he was away. She filled him in on gossip. She told him what had been bothering her, and he said something characteristically wise and flippant. She asked him what he was planning to do.\n\nIf one question is anathema to a soldier, it is how he will earn his way in civilian life. When Phil and Katharine had married, he was first a Supreme Court clerk; then a New Dealer, one of a small group of bright young men farsighted enough to lay the groundwork for war; then an intelligence officer fighting fascists. Now he was none of these. Lorentz had predicted that he would be \"unfit to live with for a while,\" and indeed he was. But the cause was not the happiness he had felt from the war, his pride in accomplishment; rather it was this sense of loss, the hero fading with the war's end. He had two children he barely knew. A lifetime stretched ahead of him with this rich woman (and all rich women were spoiled); and her father, seventy years old and anxious for an heir, was pressing him to come to work at the _Post_. Katharine said she would agree to whatever he wanted to do, but when he said he wanted to go back to Florida and practice law, and maybe run for Congress, she bit her lip nervously, and he knew he could not talk about it with her at all. He spent three days thrashing it out with his friends at Hockley. It was late 1945, around Christmas, as Joe Rauh remembers, and \"Phil was pacing around playing Hamlet. I didn't understand why. All I could see was that Meyer had offered him a job, a great opportunity. Twenty years later I knew why Phil was Hamlet.\" \n\n# [PART II\n\n _The Paper_](content-toc.xhtml#a2)\n\n# [CHAPTER NINE\n\n_Philip L. Graham, Publisher, and His Wife, Kate_](content-toc.xhtml#aa9)\n\nFOR THE next seventeen years, Katharine's story was her husband's story, until his suicide took him from her and she succeeded to control of the _Washington Post_. Her story was his story, but he was used to carry on the Meyer family legacy. Phil became assistant to Eugene Meyer in January 1946; by June, Meyer had accepted President Truman's offer to become the first head of the World Bank and left Phil on his own as publisher and editor-in-chief of the _Post_ at the age of thirty. This did not mean that Phil was rid of Meyer, whose gamble on an unproved young man caused Meyer's friends to wait smugly for Phil to fail. Phil did not fail; he mastered the newspaper brilliantly, but then his critics congratulated Meyer. \"The power that the father created for them was simply gorgeous,\" one of them said, but it was the father's power. Many people thought Phil might not be in control of the _Post_ at all, that Meyer maintained his hold on it through Katharine. She insisted that this was not true. \"He thinks I'm an idiot,\" she protested. \"Honestly, I have no influence.\"\n\nIn an authentic tragedy the victim brings about his own downfall. Phil was willing to carry on the Meyer legacy because he got what he wanted: he was soon \"in control of forces larger than human beings\" with that newspaper. But the danger, as he soon discovered, was that \"you can't have a normal family life on the basis of power.\"\n\nKatharine loved her husband and wanted to be a good wife. He had stayed in Washington partly on her account, and a man of that caliber\u2014so brilliant, so adamant about doing things his way\u2014did not need competition from a wife. He needed support. Whatever Phil believed to be the proper role for a wife\u2014he wanted her to continue writing and once said, \"I couldn't stand coming home if you were waiting for me with a pie\"\u2014her idea about marriage was to do the opposite of what her own mother had done. A wife should be a wife, a mother should be a mother, unlike Agnes, whom she likened to \"a kind of Viking.\" She told Phil that with the house and the children she did not have time to write, and that the columns were difficult for her. He said, \"Your salary can pay the cook.\"\n\nHer contribution was to ease him into the style of the rich. They definitely needed a more impressive house now that Phil was publishing the _Post_ , if only to show that the _Post_ was prosperous. She took him to see an eight-bedroom square brick structure on 31st and R streets, set a quarter of a block back from the narrow road, with a circular driveway, wide lawns, and columns by the front. It was across the street from Oak Hill Cemetery; from the back one could look out over Georgetown. The house had belonged to William \"Wild Bill\" Donovan, the first director of the Office of Strategic Services, created in 1942. Donovan had built the OSS into a formidable tool \"to procure and obtain political, economic, psychological, sociological, military, and other information which may bear upon the national interest.\"* His house was one of the most valuable in Washington.\n\nPhil was drawing a salary of about thirty thousand dollars, but it was not enough to buy that historic house. He told Katharine she was \"crazy,\" and Katharine went to her father for the down payment. This hurt Phil's pride, but he _had_ taken the _Post_ , and the Meyer style of life simply followed. Meyer put in his bid, and later in the summer of 1946 Katharine \"woke up and found I had it and almost died.\" They decorated it in velvet and mahogany and hung modern French and old Oriental paintings.\n\nPhil ran the _Post_ the way he did everything: with complete concentration bordering on frenzy. Katharine woke up first, fed the children, and had his breakfast ready when he staggered down the stairs at about ten. \"I get up hard,\" he liked to say. Katharine served him pancakes with syrup every morning in their dining room, which had a black and white marble floor. He drank three cups of coffee with cream and sugar. She drank coffee with him as he inspected that morning's _Post_. He took the _Post_ upstairs and read it while he shaved and dressed. His clothes were conservative, as if to hold him in: wing-tip shoes, dark suits and ties, white shirts above which rose a long, deeply lined face that _Time_ magazine later would call \"Lincolnesque.\" He read the _Post_ while Katharine drove them to work in their modest car, and one of his first acts upon reaching the office was to send reporters small handwritten notes complimenting their work.\n\nPhil was bursting with talent. Sober or drunk, he could take apart and put together a page in a few minutes, a task that would take other men half an hour. He could place stories so they had the proper emphasis, so the reader's eye would fall on them in proper sequence and see their importance relative to the rest of the news breaking that day. From the first, people had a tendency to use the word genius when referring to Phil and his editing abilities\u2014not only his friends, but the editors that Meyer had in place before Phil came on the scene.\n\nWhen Phil took over, the issues the paper covered were dictated by the close of the war: wage and price deregulation and an end to wartime rationing, veterans' benefits, labor unions that had grown within wartime factories, refugees and economic aid to Europe, the new Soviet threat and corresponding need for effective intelligence. The young publisher took predictable, liberal, politically sound positions, and Meyer felt that \"the best thing I have done . . . was to succeed in interesting him in making it his occupation.\" Even though the old man went out of his way to assure people that Phil was completely in charge, he did not transfer ownership to him. Eugene and Agnes remained sole owners and Phil their employee. The _Post_ had been operating in the red ever since the Meyers had bought it, and they had poured in about twenty million dollars of their own money. Phil had to account for what he spent and felt that to be a form of control. More than the great issues of the day, therefore, Phil became preoccupied with making the paper pay for itself. He instituted a gimmicky radio campaign over the _Post's_ station, WINX, which Meyer had bought in 1944, in an attempt to increase circulation. Better circulation would mean higher advertising rates. But, though it was a good idea, Meyer resented not having been consulted, even as a matter of courtesy.\n\nEugene was having his own troubles at the World Bank, where internal politicking was hurting its seven-and-a-half-billion-dollar loan program, a system of revolving credit for member nations. The World Bank had been created after the war as part of the United Nations, and its success would also mean the success of the great powers' attempt to have a council for regulating international disputes. If the bank failed in its initial stages, that responsibility would be Meyer's. As its first president, he designed a system for selling World Bank bonds on the securities market which would provide perpetual financing; but the New York banking houses, including his own former house, Lazard Fr\u00e8res, were reluctant to support the bank's efforts, which threatened their own role in international finance. The possibility that Meyer would have won their cooperation was thwarted by the infighting among the bank's board of directors, who were jealous of each other's influence and collectively wanted Meyer to be their puppet. Meyer was seventy-one years old then, at the point in life when he valued a confidential relationship more than a professional challenge. He spent time alone with Philip Graham talking about the problems of the bank (and Phil had a chance to say how the bank should operate, how it could help raise the standard of living in poor nations), but he did little to try to solve them. \"I could stay and fight these bastards . . . but I'm too old for that,\" he said in December 1946. He had loved publishing and wished aloud that he had had \"sense enough to stick to it.\" Abruptly, with two weeks' notice to the bank, he resigned and went back to the _Post_ , only six months after he had made Phil publisher.\n\nMen with wealth, intelligence, and accomplishment do not retire easily. Meyer let Phil know he would be available for counsel, \"just the old man called chairman of the board,\" but Phil asked very little of him, and Meyer found himself sitting at his hand-carved desk with no decisions to make. When he did interject himself, Phil called him \"an irascible old man\" and said he would run the newspaper his way or return to the practice of law. Katharine, caught between her husband and her father, asked Phil to flatter him, make him feel important, for he had worked hard to build the paper and cared immensely about it.\n\nMeyer, though unreconciled to old age, finally transferred ownership to Phil and Katharine, as he had promised, in the summer of 1948. The _Post_ carried this story:\n\n> Eugene Meyer, Chairman of the Board of the _Washington Post_ , announced yesterday completion of a plan to insure the continued operation of the _Post_ as an independent newspaper dedicated to the public welfare.\n> \n> Voting stock . . . has been transferred to Mr. and Mrs. Philip L. Graham, son-in-law and daughter of Mr. Meyer, and a committee of five has been named to approve any future changes of control. [This committee was modeled after the one set up in 1924\u2014with the Lord Chief Justice of England as its head\u2014to oversee the _Times_ of London.] \n> \n> Nonvoting stock continues to be held by Eugene Meyer and Agnes E. Meyer.\n\nMembers of the committee are:\n\n1. Chester I. Barnard, President of the Rockefeller Foundation.\n\n2. James B. Conant, President of Harvard University.\n\n3. Colgate W. Darden, Jr., President of the University of Virginia.\n\n4. Bolitha J. Laws, Chief Justice, District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia.\n\n5. Mrs. Millicent C. McIntosh, Dean of Barnard College.\n\n> Mr. Meyer stated: \"Mr. Graham has been associated with me in publishing . . . since . . . 1946. . . . Mrs. Graham has worked in various departments of the paper over the last 10 years. I am confident that under their control the paper will adhere to its principles of independence and public service.\n> \n> \"It is the joint concern of Mr. and Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Meyer and myself that the _Washington Post_ shall always serve those principles. The committee has been established so that any control of the _Post_ subsequent to that of Mr. and Mrs. Graham will also be determined by loyalty to the same ideals. It is our purpose that the control of the _Post_ shall be treated as a public trust, and that it shall never be transferred to the highest bidder without regard to other considerations.\"\n\nThe Grahams' partnership was formalized on August 3, 1948, with Phil buying seventy percent of the voting stock from Agnes and Eugene, Katharine buying thirty percent. Phil could not pay for the stock on his own, so Meyer gave him an outright gift of seventy-five thousand dollars, which Phil then paid to Meyer for the stock. For the next few years, until the paper began to make money, the Graham family lived on Katharine's income from investments.\n\nWhen her father retired, Katharine asked her old college friend Sidney Hyman to write the story of Meyer's life. Hyman had been living in Washington since receiving his master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago, and had worked on the staffs of Senators Paul Douglas, J. William Fulbright, and Hubert Humphrey, had drafted speeches for Adlai Stevenson, and had done research for Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He therefore had practical experience with a wide spectrum of issues, from the economic reforms of Douglas (who had been elected to the Senate after the war), to the farm-labor plank of Humphrey, to Acheson's wariness of Communism. Katharine thought that this qualified him to understand her father and the concerns of the Meyer family. He accepted the assignment with a deep sense of responsibility and drew up a preliminary agreement with Meyer whereby he would have a draft ready for his approval in a year and a half.\n\nYears earlier, Katharine's sister Elizabeth had wanted to write her fathers' biography, and Meyer had put her off gently by joking that he was not ready for the world to know \"what a great guy I am.\" Now he and Hyman devoted themselves to producing an official record of his life's work. Meyer put Hyman on his personal payroll (the account Phil had left open for his father-in-law at the _Post_ ) and gave him access to hundreds of boxes of his personal papers. Hyman traveled with him to New York, where they toured Wall Street, Meyer reminiscing distractedly: In this building I created Allied Chemical; over there we decided to finance Anaconda Copper. One day he told Hyman that if he had it to do again, he would be a psychiatrist because \"the mind is a more dangerous frontier than politics or finance.\" Meyer insisted that the book should be an account of his professional life, not his private life. Yet Hyman, in the course of his work, which went on for thirteen years, fell victim to the writer's temptation of caring too much about his subject and being unable to treat the project as just a job.\n\nHyman was not married and spent a good deal of his free time with Katharine and Phil, going so far as to babysit for their children. (There were soon two more boys, William and Stephen.) He was included in many of their activities and received their confidences. He and Phil, especially, were united in their dislike of Katharine's mother. Hyman remembered the way Katharine had wept when Agnes was too busy to attend her college graduation, and years later he would still talk about a scene he had witnessed while working on his book at Mount Kisco. Agnes was getting ready for a party, and her servant had not shown up to help her dress. The woman's son ran in shouting that she had died on the path between her cottage and the main house. Agnes reacted with annoyance\u2014the woman's death was inconvenient. Eugene, Hyman noted, was \"appalled at her insensitivity.\"\n\nNor was Agnes any too happy with Hyman. He seemed to work and work, taking the family's hospitality (after a while he had refused to accept any more money) yet never coming up with a satisfactory book. The task became agonizing for him. He showed parts of chapters to Katharine, who gave him \"warm encouragement,\" which he believed to be \"more an act of [her] characteristic kindness\" than an expression of the book's merit. Phil thought he should walk away from the project. \"Your book has got to be impossible to write,\" he told Hyman. \"This family needs a novel.\"\n\nThe years passed. In 1961, two years after Meyer died, Hyman (still working) wrote Agnes to explain that his job had been infinitely complicated by Meyer's dimming faculties, his natural secretiveness, and his conviction that the book was in fact a tombstone inscription. He said he deserved her harsh judgment, but that he did not have time for the book anymore, as he had married \"and started a family of my own.\" Agnes had her lawyer pay Hyman $50 to sign a release on the material, and told Katharine, \"I really think he's a louse.\" She then handed the unfinished manuscript to _Post_ reporter Merlo J. Pusey, who published _Eugene Meyer_ with Knopf in 1974.\n\nIn 1948, the year Meyer turned over the _Post_ to the Grahams, Washington was very different than when he had been an active publisher. Without the war, the city was no longer united in the fight against fascism. The liberalism of the thirties had survived, but there was also a chilling new force: the fear of Communist spies, which gave rise to the security-loyalty program and McCarthyism. During this transition period, an inner circle set the tone of the city, discovering and managing the great public issues by consensus. The power of this inner circle depended upon an inside knowledge of the workings of government, and on the means of influencing others. Katharine and Philip Graham, owners of the most exciting news vehicle in Washington, were at the center of this elite.\n\nPhilip Graham had taken over the _Post_ when it was gaining ground on the city's other newspapers. The _Daily News,_ part of the Scripps-Howard chain, was editorially bland; the _Evening Star_ concentrated on local news. And the _Times-Herald,_ the _Post's_ stiffest competition, was floundering because its owner, Cissy Patterson, had died two days after Meyer transferred ownership of the _Post_ to Katharine and Phil. Phil's first venture as owner, in fact, was to try to buy the _Times-Herald_ from Patterson's heirs. Phil flew from Mount Kisco to Washington to offer four and a half million dollars for the paper, and for a few days it looked as if he would get it. If he did not, he told Katharine, he would \"just die for a week.\" When his bid lost to that of Colonel Robert McCormick of the _Chicago Tribune_ , he telephoned Katharine with the news. She \"wept as if the end were at hand,\" as Merlo Pusey recorded. Phil, as he had predicted, fell into a week-long depression that did not end until he was convinced that the _Post_ would eventually win its fight to dominate the Washington scene. Shortly thereafter, he persuaded CBS network radio to sell him fifty-five percent of its Washington outlet, WTOP, and the added influence from that helped to establish him as the city's most important publisher. Five years later he acquired the other forty-five percent, and then Colonel McCormick sold him the _Times-Herald_. This gave the Grahams a monopoly on the morning news, the most critical news slot of the day.\n\nWhen a company buys out a competitor, the transaction can be challenged under the antitrust laws, especially if the company's business is news and the market is Washington, D.C., where differing views are an essential part of the political process. The _Post's_ takeover of the _Times-Herald_ could therefore have caused the Justice Department to bring suit to block the combination. But no questions were raised. The acquisition was approved within hours of the announcement, and Eugene Meyer (who had paid the eight and a half million dollars for the _Times-Herald_ , since Phil did not have the money) told Sidney Hyman that \"the real significance of this event is that it makes the paper safe for Donny.\" Katharine's first son was eight years old; his mother, Pusey noted, \"screamed in ecstasy.\"\n\nPhil's emergence as publisher and heir had its effects within the Meyer family. Although none of Katharine's sisters, nor her brother, had wanted to be involved with the _Post_ while the Meyers owned it, its growing stature (and the fact that it had needed so much of the Meyer fortune to keep it afloat) provoked Florence Homolka, Katharine's oldest sister, to a resentful outburst. She had not been close to her family for many years, and one of the few contacts they had with her husband, actor Oscar Homolka, was in 1942, when Eugene arranged for him to meet the Russian ambassador Maxim Litvinov and Madame Litvinov at Crescent Place when Homolka was preparing to play the part of the ambassador in the movie _Mission to Moscow_. The film, part of Hollywood's war effort, was based on former ambassador Joseph E. Davies's account of the attempt to keep America and the Soviet Union united against Hitler. \"In order [for Homolka] to give a better interpretation of your personality,\" Meyer had written Litvinov, \". . . it would give Mrs. Meyer and myself great pleasure if you . . . could take luncheon with us at our home.\"\n\nFlorence and Oscar Homolka were divorced shortly afterward, and Florence, who had always been fat, started to gain more weight and to drink heavily. She had established a reputation as a photographer\u2014among her subjects were Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, and James Agee (her picture of Agee was used on the cover of his book _A Death in the Family_ ). Yet despite her success, she was deeply unhappy. She lived comfortably on the interest from a three-million-dollar trust fund that Meyer had provided for her, dividing her time among Switzerland, Italy, and California, and each of her two sons also had trust funds from Meyer. But she was convinced that she was being financially \"punished\" for having made an \"unfortunate marriage.\" Each of her married sisters and brothers received several thousand dollars every Christmas (not to be spent, Meyer told them, but as \"an increase in capital\"); she did not, and attempted to compensate for this deprivation by continually trying to get her father and mother to pay her bills. Agnes might receive an invoice from a strange doctor and write Florence coldly to ask if anything was seriously wrong. Eugene once invited her to Washington for a week and was billed by the St. Regis Hotel for five hundred and eighty-one dollars, a figure that did not include, as he irately informed her, charges for \"telephones, restaurants, valets, and other things.\" He sent her a check for a thousand dollars with a terse note to \"take care of these matters in the future\" herself.\n\nA psychiatrist might have said that a rich woman's preoccupation with family money indicated a serious disturbance. But Florence's parents were merely offended. When Florence heard of the _Times-Herald_ purchase, and that Meyer had said the newspaper would eventually go to Katharine's son Donny, she demanded a \"fuller explanation\" of Meyer's plans to provide for _her_ sons. She had had to raise these boys without a father, she complained to him in a series of letters in June and July 1954, and she thought he had been \"pleased with the result.\" Meyer pondered each letter for several days, then asked Phil, at whom much of her hostility was directed, to help him draft replies. On June 3 Phil wrote, and Meyer and his son Bill revised, an answer to Florence that said in part: \"I know how hard the last years have been for you and . . . how faithful you have been in the job of bringing up two fine boys. . . . You wrote of my assurance that the boys had a future on the newspaper. But of course no one can give any youngsters any such assurance. What I was trying to say to you was that the family had a good newspaper, radio and television stations [in addition to WTOP radio, they had acquired WTOP-TV, and WMBR radio and television in Jacksonville, Florida], an important interest in a good chemical company [Allied]\u2014not to mention an association with one of the best medical schools [Johns Hopkins] in America.\" Katharine's brother Bill was a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins.\n\nMeyer wrote another letter in July spelling out \"the factual information that I think you lack. . . . The Grahams have purchased, at my wish, a certain amount of 'A' stock which gives Phil the managerial control over the paper. This he has to have. Incidentally, the income from ownership of this stock has been, to date, exactly nil. . . . The prime example of the results of fractionating management control is the Washington Star, which is reduced to a do nothing policy of 'not antagonizing people' [Phil changed this sentence to read \"several examples of the results of fractionated management control may be cited among important papers in our country\"]. . . . Nor do I expect Phil Graham to be more interested in passing control . . . to some member of his family than to preserve what he has worked . . . to maintain and improve, namely the character, the principles, and the aims of the paper. . . . I think that you . . . are insuring the future [of your sons] in the best way that you can, namely to bring them up as intelligent, decent, interested, and kindly people. . . .\"\n\nThe self-consciousness of this family, which saw itself as a great American family, was part of what made its members want to contribute to all aspects of American life. \"You can't just sit around the house and be rich,\" as Agnes repeatedly told them. The Meyer children had taken this admonition seriously: Bill became a physician, then a psychiatrist; Ruth was a nurse's aide at Bellevue Hospital in New York; and Elizabeth, with her husband, had founded Pare Lorentz Associates, a small company that did its part to promote peace by making United Nations films on world hunger. Perhaps her parents felt that Florence (who died in 1962, at fifty-one, from an overdose of drugs and alcohol) did not do her share, that she wanted to be rich more than useful. Great families, though, who try to harness \"forces larger than human beings\" sometimes pay a price. Katharine Graham was certainly paying, not as her sister had, but in modest ways, \"cleaning up after\" her husband, she once commented, \"lurking in the background,\" playing \"idiot\" (in both senses: the Greeks used _idiot_ to mean the opposite of the public person), all so that Phil could run around Washington being the brilliant keeper and beneficiary of the Meyer family's social conscience. Although he and Katharine owned the _Post_ together, only Phil had the media power, the power to do good as he defined it. As he grew cocky, Katharine, who was not finding happiness as a housewife, responded by compulsively eating. And his drinking began in earnest.\n\nPhil was an intellectual man who linked his actions with intellectual ideas. He was conversant with political theory, read widely and hungrily, and had a special fondness for the theories of the British political scientist and philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, by which he justified his view of the publisher's function. Berlin wrote extensively, the major body of his work devoted to refuting two popular views that he thought dangerous: determinism, whereby the individual is said to be controlled by history and therefore is impotent; and relativism, whereby ethical truths vary from group to group and the individual is free of responsibility.\n\nBerlin also believed that the forces of history produce unpredictable events. Phil, improvising liberally, thought that if history does not mold men, then men can mold history. The notion was apropos for a newspaper publisher, and he felt comfortable in that role: feet on the desk, chain-smoking Parliaments, running the _Post_ with little money but enormous charm, he sustained an awareness of politics on two levels. There was politics as it appeared to be, as his editors presented it to his readers; and underlying that, politics as it really existed for him, as it was understood by the intelligence community. This reporting of politics with an eye toward government interests formed a new category of thought that can be called mediapolitics. Philip Graham, believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA.\n\nThe reason for his involvement with intelligence was anti-Communism, an abiding concern of liberals after the war. Phil was convinced, as were some of the most outspoken champions of civil rights, that the Soviet Union was engaged in a campaign of worldwide conquest. Only if Americans defeated Communism, they believed, could men around the world enjoy freedom as it is known in the United States. This view was for them perfectly consistent with a belief in domestic reform. These schizophrenic politics were best articulated by a group formed in 1947 (the year that Truman created the CIA) known as Americans for Democratic Action, whose founders included two of Phil's closest friends, Ed Prichard and Joseph Rauh. Phil, as a publisher, liked to retain the appearance of independence, and his name was on none of the group's rosters, but he went to the founding meetings and often visited Rauh and Prichard in ADA's small cluttered office.\n\nADA was the outstanding liberal intellectual organization of the day, and many of its members were forces in their own right: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Jerry Voorhis, Will Rogers, Hubert Humphrey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Cornelia Rryce Pinchot, Joseph P. Lash, and James Wechsler, the last two of whom had known Katharine Meyer in the thirties through the American Student Union. The ASU's progressive programs\u2014civil rights, pacifism, support of labor\u2014had suffered from charges that the union was controlled by Communists; and the leaders of the ADA knew from the beginning that they would have a similar problem. They therefore set out to establish their anti-Communist credentials: \"The democratic faith is obviously on the defensive through the world,\" said a confidential internal ADA memo in 1947. \"Central to the problem of peace are the relationships between the United States and the USSR. These relationships cannot be solved by continuous surrender to Soviet political or territorial demands, since experience has taught us that the effect of appeasement is to encourage not the moderates in the country appeased, but those constantly insisting upon further aggressions.\" Another memo declared that the _primary purpose_ of the ADA was to combat Communism, a purpose not made public but one that affected the organization's behavior in every arena during those years.\n\nAfter Truman's election, the fear of foreign and domestic communists continued to grow, and ADA itself was accused in right-wing circles of being a communist organization. Although ADA's national chairman, Francis Biddle, was close with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover\u2014a friendship that began when Biddle, as Roosevelt's attorney general from 1941 to 1945, expanded Hoover's authority to investigate subversives\u2014that friendship did not save ADA from the public denunciations of Joseph McCarthy, who, even more than Hoover, equated ADA's progressive stands on labor and civil rights with the evils of the Soviet Empire. Perhaps because of Biddle's friendship with Hoover, McCarthy never formalized his charges against the organization, but for years afterward ADA spent most of its energies reaffirming its anti-communism.\n\nADA was particularly concerned with a farther-left Democratic group called Progressive Citizens of America, formed to back Henry Wallace for president in 1948, whose members included playwright Lillian Hellman, Philip Graham's brother-in-law Oscar Homolka, and a number of former ASU members. When people belonging to the Progressive Citizens were called before the Senate Internal Security Committee and asked if they were Communists or knew Communists, ADA's position was that the inquiry was necessary but should be conducted circumspectly. Joseph Rauh defended Lillian Hellman in front of the committee, but few of the other members stuck their necks out, and it has been argued that because ADA, a \"liberal\" organization, acquiesced in rather than opposed the witch-hunting, it \"bears a major responsibility for the Cold War and for the ugliness of McCarthyism.\"*\n\nDuring the McCarthy era, Stalin was in power in the Soviet Union. He had overrun Eastern Europe and was threatening a worldwide Communist revolution. The Communist threat was therefore the most important issue in domestic as well as international politics. A politician who did not take a position against Communism was labeled a Communist and quickly became a pariah. It was of course largely a political game, in which congressmen chased down traitors, held sensational hearings, and in other ways made political capital, and only a few politicians benefited while the rest of the country suffered. Among those who benefited was a young Californian named Richard Nixon, who in 1946 had been able to take the congressional seat of ADA member Jerry Voorhis by accusing him of Communist leanings. Nixon joined the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in 1948 used his position on the committee to promote charges by _Time_ magazine reporter Whittaker Chambers, a one-time Communist, that former State Department advisor Alger Hiss was also a Communist. Nixon's handling of the affair brought him to the Senate in 1951 and to the vice-presidency in 1953.\n\nHiss was a Harvard man, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, an exemplary product of the Eastern liberal establishment. Like Phil Graham, Hiss had been a New Dealer. President Roosevelt had in fact thought well enough of Hiss to appoint him staff attorney at the Yalta Conference in 1945, when he met with Churchill and Stalin to negotiate the future of the world after World War II\u2014German war reparations, war crimes trials, and zones of occupation\u2014negotiations which, Roosevelt's critics said, virtually handed the Soviets all of Eastern Europe. After Yalta, Hiss had helped draft the charter of the United Nations, in which the Soviets were given three votes, \"a fool decision,\" Phil's newspaper editorialized in 1948, which \"arose, as we delicately suggested, out of the plural personality of Mr. Roosevelt.\"\n\nWhen Chambers accused Hiss of passing secrets to the Soviets, there was general alarm in Washington that he might have been the Soviets' instrument at Yalta. Philip Graham knew Hiss and his brother Donald, thought they were decent men, and defended Hiss in the newspaper. \"As things stand,\" said a _Post_ editorial, \"it is the committee [HUAC] which is subject to the most serious indictment of all.\" The defense of an accused Communist was risky, but Phil had declared his anti-Communism a year earlier and felt himself on safe ground: \"The world power which belongs to America,\" he had written elegantly, . . . is anti-aggression, but on its other face it is pro-freedom. This is its saving grace. For nothing anti will survive in the struggle of ideas that makes the entire world a battlefield.\" Nobody was more anti-Communist than Philip Graham, or more in love with America's \"ethical truth,\" the moral force of democracy. Philip Graham was a patriot, but when he stood up for Hiss, Congressman Nixon accused the _Post_ of being a Communist newspaper. That remark, intended to discredit the _Post_ , would eventually cost him dearly.\n\nLiberal intellectuals differed from Nixon and others of his ilk in believing that Communism could be fought more subtly, more interestingly, and more effectively than by simple name-calling. Their fascination with theory and tactics, with information, psychology, and political science, led them naturally to the fields of intelligence and propaganda, which offered ways to use information for political purposes. Hatred of Communists, they thought, might lead to suppressing them, but information about them could allow them to be manipulated, controlled. It was the liberal intellectuals in Washington who worked in the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency to penetrate and disrupt Communism in Europe. The Agency's approach was threefold: espionage, counterintelligence, and covert operations, which included paramilitary, political, and psychological warfare. The fledgling CIA penetrated Communist movements, and it aided youth, labor, intellectuals, components of the non-Communist left, on the theory that democratic socialists who had rejected Communism would cooperate with the CIA to defeat it. The CIA was known in Washington, therefore, as a left-leaning organization, and it appalled conservatives that the security of the nation was in the hands of people with so conciliatory an approach to the problem. A barometer of sentiment against the CIA's work at that time is the fact that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who was allied with HUAC in searching out and exposing domestic spies, publicly declared that the CIA itself was Communist.\n\nCentral Intelligence was run by well-educated men from prominent families, people of a caliber to keep company with the Grahams, who had a kind of salon where a select few of them would gather. The association was casual at first, views exchanged over drinks with Frank Wisner, Richard Helms, Desmond FitzGerald, Allen Dulles, fascinating and genteel men who helped Philip Graham to see that they were all doing much the same work.\n\nPhil's experience with army intelligence gave him an affinity for the Agency men. He understood their dedication, the uniqueness of their knowledge, and their resentment of President Truman, who, when the Agency was created in 1947, had not made it at all clear whether he would listen to their warnings of foreign Communist agitation. Phil had found men for the _Post_ with intelligence backgrounds\u2014Alfred Friendly and Russell Wiggins from the Army Intelligence School, Alan Barth from the Office of War Information, John Hayes from the Armed Forces Network of the OSS\u2014and he believed in the rightness and sophistication of the intelligence world view. The Agency men, though, saw Phil as an unsophisticated Southern boy guiltily obsessed with civil rights and skilled in using the _Post_ to campaign for the Negro. But when it came to using information for other political purposes, they said of him, Phil was not as skilled as he thought he was.\n\nWashington was then a thoroughly segregated city. It had two separate school systems. Blacks could not eat in white restaurants. When segregation cases began reaching the Supreme Court in the early 1950s, the leading NAACP attorney was Thurgood Marshall, who, when he came to town to argue his cases, had no alternative but to stay in a slum hotel. The District of Columbia was governed by a congressional committee. It was a city whose population had no vote, where the black majority served the white minority, where even the simplest local matter had to be deliberated by a Congress dominated by Southern committee chairmen who had seniority.\n\nWashington was also a city where newspapermen could draw upon rich examples of hypocrisy in federal policy\u2014one standard for the rest of the country, another for the place where the congressmen lived\u2014and where the _Post_ , by merely publishing accounts of racial confrontations in the District, could have a clear and direct effect upon the public conscience. That has always been the power of a newspaper. Yet when a young _Post_ reporter named Benjamin Bradlee came in with a story of riots caused when blacks tried to swim in public (white) swimming pools, Phil was not content merely to print the story. He wanted influence not so much with the public, the common man, as with the political leaders themselves. \"We won't run the article tough and prominent,\" he told the Secretary of the Interior, who had responsibility for the pools, \"if you will agree to open those pools next year for everyone.\" Phil was coming to think of himself as an independent political power in Washington, as a man who could publish or withhold information as it suited him, as it served his ends. It was not enough for him that Bradlee's pool story helped create genuine, consensual political pressure for change. The way Phil remembered that incident was that it was his deal-making, not the published story or even the riots themselves, that forced the desegregation of the city's swimming pools.\n\nPhil did not indulge in this sort of trading all the time, but neither was it an isolated example. The tension between the public's right to know and his desire to use the information to which he had access for more private, directly political purposes was in fact becoming a dominant theme of his publishership. As early as 1947, three years before Ben Bradlee wrote the pool story, when Phil had been in control of the _Post_ for about a year, he had already found the first of his higher purposes, the coverage of the presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, who opposed the anti-Communist foreign policy of President Truman.\n\nWallace had impeccable New Deal credentials: Secretary of Agriculture under Roosevelt, he had developed a progressive and sweeping farm policy. Later he had been Roosevelt's vice-president, and then his Secretary of Commerce. When Roosevelt died, Commerce Secretary Wallace was horrified that Truman used two atomic bombs to end the war with Japan, and his relationship with the new president deteriorated. As Truman enunciated his policy of containing Communism through economic warfare\u2014economic and military aid to underdeveloped countries that were \"resisting attempted subjugation by outside pressures\"\u2014Wallace accused him of creating a blueprint for future war. The conservative Democrats supported Truman, but with the help of the Progressive Citizens of America, the \"Hollywood left,\" Wallace challenged Truman for the presidency in 1948.\n\nThe anti-Communist liberals in Washington feared that Wallace would dismantle the apparatus\u2014economic aid offices, military outposts, Marshall Plan overseers\u2014by which America was monitoring Communism in Europe. The ADA, therefore, devoted dozens of speeches and newsletters to painting Wallace himself as a Communist, the quickest way to discredit any opponent, and Philip Graham, who in such matters followed the ADA line, printed an editorial \"revealing\" that \"the Communist minority had the convention [where Wallace was nominated by the Progressive party] in hand from beginning to end.\" The _Post_ also said that Wallace as vice-president had been instrumental in shipping uranium and nuclear information to the Soviets, when in truth those secret exchanges were handled by Lend-Lease, the New Deal agency for which Phil himself had worked.\n\nTo accuse a man of Communist leanings had higher stakes than merely winning an election; as Phil knew, it would destroy Wallace's reputation and his career. The eccentric, disruptive, socially unacceptable Henry Wallace may have been dispensable in Phil's eyes, but he did not feel the same way a year later when the Communist label threatened to destroy the thin, nervous, aristocratic Alger Hiss. That Phil took some risk to defend Hiss is to his credit; but the risk was not great. The entire liberal Washington establishment defended him as well, for he was one of their own.\n\nWhen Hiss was accused of espionage, Phil quickly made the judgment that Hiss was not capable of passing documents to the Soviets. He tried to make light of Richard Nixon's charges, accusing the Congressman of \"excessive abuses\" of Truman's security-loyalty program. And because Phil physically resembled Hiss, being also tall and gaunt, he even joked with strangers that he was Hiss, and then would add, turning to a stouter man on his left, \"This is my brother Donald.\" As time went on, Phil developed so strong a dislike for Nixon's blatant, crude, publicity-oriented prosecution of Hiss\u2014Nixon once took a cruise with reporters so that they could photograph him being rushed back to Congress in an army helicopter when he got word of a breakthrough in the case\u2014that when Nixon ran for vice-president in 1952, and the _Post_ learned of illegal contributions to his campaign, Phil played the story on page one. Nixon went on television with the humiliating Checkers speech. His cocker spaniel, Checkers, had also been a gift, Nixon tearfully told his audience; should he give away his dog?\n\nHiss was convicted of perjury in 1950, bringing Phil to say that Nixon had been right. But his new position did not cause Nixon to forgive him, and only angered some of the people closest to the Grahams and the Meyers. \"Alger Hiss had the misfortune of being tempted to betray his country,\" said one _Post_ editorial, \"in an era of widespread illusions about Communism . . . [but] that does not excuse him or minimize the enormity of the crime.\" Other liberal establishment figures continued to support Hiss, including Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who issued a statement saying, \"I should like to make it clear . . . that whatever the outcome of any appeal which Mr. Hiss . . . may make . . . I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss.\" But Phil then attacked Acheson, declaring that the Secretary of State \"has played right into the hands of the yammerers in our midst who are trying to rend our society with the Alger Hiss conviction as the instrument. . . . Judgment was obscured when Secretary Acheson decided to yield to a personal sentiment.\"\n\nThe vehemence of Phil's sudden feeling against Hiss shocked his mother-in-law, Agnes, who had repeatedly said that Communist hunting was little more than \"gangsterism.\" It also angered and upset Felix Frankfurter, who had been watching Phil's behavior as publisher with increasing alarm. \"Please listen to me for a few minutes,\" Frankfurter wrote to him early in 1950. \". . . To worry [about] 'yammerers in our midst'. . . is to join the misinformed and the yammerers. I had supposed that the press enjoys its constitutional status because its duty is to enlighten and not to submit to darkness.\" Later letters told him that \"you are not only a publisher\u2014that's only part of you. You are also a person, a man. And if as such, in your private judgment, you do not condemn the throwing of the Hiss stone at Dean Acheson, I should be much disappointed in you.\" And \"interfering with [your writers'] intellectual independence is one thing, but enlightening them through what happens to be the special understanding of the publisher is another thing. After all, you have had the benefit of a first-rate legal education and have shared for a year the experiences of a man who has had a good deal to do with [opposing] . . . the totalitarian scheme of things. . . . Why don't you give your editors an understanding of what all this means and what it implies in not talking about a case editorially or unfairly in the news column when men are called upon to stand trial.\" But Frankfurter pleaded with him in vain, for Phil's special understanding of the Hiss case came from his friends in Central Intelligence. Soon after Phil had declared Hiss to be innocent, someone from the Agency showed him documents purporting to prove that Hiss in fact had transmitted information to the Soviets. Without informing the public that the Agency possessed such apparent proof, which would have explained his confusing change of position, Phil began to rely on his friends for other insights, which led to a healthy working relationship between Philip Graham and the Agency men.\n\nThe salon at the elegant Graham home was an informal affair, a Sunday brunch once or twice a month that ran into the cocktail hour. Guests would sit at small round tables on the wide screened veranda, where Katharine served from monogrammed silver platters (\"A nice monogram makes such a difference,\" Agnes Meyer had taught her daughters). After the meal the men and women would separate, an enduring ritual at upper-class parties, and the women, who were sophisticated club women, talked travel and parties in the yard and watched the children playing football, while the men went to the living room, which was comfortably furnished with heavy, masculine pieces and hung with velvet draperies and Oriental art, drank Scotch and talked politics. But though that was the accepted way of life for Washington wives, which was the life Katharine had chosen, she permitted herself to resent being excluded from the more interesting conversations. It did not matter if she entered the living room, for the men talked around her, making vague references to other countries and their plans to influence elections, encourage uprisings, defeat Communists. \"I know they're talking English,\" she once complained to the other wives, \"but I don't understand a thing they're saying. They're talking jargon.\"\n\nThey were all very aware of their superior knowledge, knowing that they knew more than the public; and knowing that they were liberals and patriots, the men felt it was their duty to maintain the democratic ideal abroad. In the months after Phil's successful settlement of a labor strike at the _Post_ in 1949, and his purchase of more than half of WTOP, which gave him preeminence among the four Washington publishers, the salon was the scene of discussions on altering perceptions of foreign peoples who might be susceptible to Communism. Work was already going on to that end, most of it attributable to the cheerful, portly, aggressive Frank Wisner, whose wife was Katharine's friend Polly.\n\nFrank Wisner, like Phil Graham, was a Southerner who made his way into the Northeastern legal establishment. During the war William Donovan had recruited him into the OSS and sent him to the Balkans, where he conceived of and executed operations that became models for future psychological warfare. He was excluded from postwar intelligence planning because of bureaucratic infighting, but later was asked to return as deputy assistant secretary of state for occupied countries, and in September 1948 he was named director of the Office of Policy Coordination, the covert operations arm of the CIA. (OPC and CIA were officially merged in 1952.) At OPC Wisner developed the vision that the war against Communism would be fought not as another large war, but as a series of \"guerrillalike skirmishes\" which he would seek to control. Sometimes in cooperation with embassies or Marshall Plan outposts, and sometimes not, Wisner began wide-scale recruitment of foreign students and infiltration of labor unions. But he wanted something more, a way not only to subvert and disrupt, but to give foreign peoples a sense of America, to \"alter their perceptions\" against Communism without violence; and the publisher Philip Graham helped him conceive of a way to use journalists for that objective. Intelligence agencies had used journalists before, but the practice had remained haphazard. This, however, was to be a formal program, structured and run according to high-level policy. The program had the code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD.\n\nMOCKINGBIRD was the CIA's response to a propaganda body called the International Organization of Journalists, founded in Copenhagen in 1946, which Wisner believed had been taken over by Communists. The group received money from Moscow and controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating stories that promoted the Communist cause. \"They had stolen the great words,\" as Tom Braden, a former executive assistant to CIA director Allen Dulles, later wrote in a magazine column. Young people reading such stories, Braden complained, grew up to \"assume that . . . 'Peace' and 'Freedom' and 'Justice' must also [mean] Communism.\"\n\nBy the early 1950s, Wisner had implemented his plan and \"owned\" respected members of the _New York Times, Newsweek,_ CBS, and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst who worked with MOCKINGBIRD. Each journalist was a separate \"operation,\" requiring a code name, a field supervisor, and a field office, at an annual cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2014there has never been an accurate accounting. Some of these journalists thought of themselves as helpers of the Agency, some simply as patriots who wanted to run stories that would benefit their country. Some did not know where their information was going, or did not know that the information they received was \"planted\" with them. The Agency considered all of them to be operatives.\n\nPhilip Graham's name has been conspicuously absent from recent debates on the question of the CIA and the press, except for a brief reference to him in a long article by Carl Bernstein, \"The CIA and the Media,\" written after the Watergate era, when Bernstein had resigned as a reporter from the _Washington Post_. The piece gave a close, detailed view of the relationship between the CIA and such major news organizations as CBS News and _Time_ Magazine. Of Phil Graham and the _Post_ , Bernstein quoted a former deputy director of the Agency as saying, \"It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from. Frank Wisner dealt with him.\"* Of course Wisner did not want to insult Phil by suggesting that he lend his own reporters to MOCKINGBIRD, so he dealt with him in such a way that Phil believed he was not compromising himself. Over a period of months, at the Graham salon and other meeting places, as a former Agency man who attended those meetings recalls, Wisner discussed with him which journalists were for sale and at what price (\"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl,\" the former Agency man says, \"for a couple hundred dollars a month\"), how to handle them, where to place them, and what sorts of stories to produce. Phil recommended target reporters for jobs with other newspapers, especially those with overseas bureaus, and Wisner, knowing Phil's frustration at being unable to afford foreign correspondents for the _Post_ , reciprocated by paying for _Post_ reporters' trips, which was not the same, Phil believed, as the CIA \"owning them,\" and which future investigators could not say was proof of a relationship.\n\nStories appearing in the United States played up the Soviet threat, said to be growing daily, and urged President Eisenhower to develop air power, including intercontinental ballistic missiles. These stories helped create pressure from the public and from what Eisenhower called the \"military-industrial complex,\" which pushed Eisenhower toward that goal. But MOCKINGBIRD propaganda disseminated overseas did not have such predictable results. In Eastern Europe, CIA propaganda and other covert programs were meant not just to \"twist the Russian bear's tail,\" but ultimately to generate revolts in the satellite countries. One of these, the Hungarian uprising of 1956, encouraged by CIA men in the field, resulted in sixty thousand people being killed, many of them crushed when Soviet tanks rolled over them in the streets of Budapest. Hungary was the start of Wisner's disenchantment with covert operations, a personal crisis helped along by his drinking, his thwarted drive for power and lost sense of mission, that resulted in 1964 in his suicide, a year after Phil's suicide.\n\nThe Graham salons were also, at times, purely social events. Katharine wrote her mother about one of these in the early fifties. They gave a dinner for John Stembler, a college friend of Phil's, and his wife, Kate, who were in town from Atlanta. The occasion gave Katharine an opportunity to repay sixteen obligations, as she told her mother, so she hadn't minded the large group. The party included an assortment of people from both journalism and government: Crosby Boyd; Philip Perlman, the U.S. solicitor general; Georgia Neese Clark, the U.S. treasurer, who the next day sent Lally and Donny dollar bills she had signed; the Drew Pearsons; the Frank Wisners; G. Frederick Reinhardt, from the Office of Eastern European Affairs at the State Department, and his wife. Also present were Benjamin Bradlee, a young _Post_ reporter, and his wife, Jean, a cousin of Senator Leverett Saltonstall, the former governor of Massachusetts who was appointed to the Senate in 1944 to fill the seat left when Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., joined the army. Saltonstall was one of a very small and secret group of congressmen and senators who met informally to oversee the CIA\u2014a group that included Richard Russell, Harry Byrd, and Lyndon Johnson, an opportunistic young senator from Texas whom Phil Graham was badgering about civil rights.\n\nIt was not common for the Grahams to entertain beginning reporters, but Ben Bradlee was of aristocratic stock and fit naturally with the Grahams' social circle. His father, banker Frederick Josiah Bradlee, whom everybody called \"B,\" had married his fourth cousin, Josephine de Gersdorff, who was a Crowninshield, from a New York society family. Ben Bradlee grew up in Beverly, north of Boston. The Bradlees were socially and culturally from the same mold as the Lodges, the Saltonstalls, the Taylors who owned the _Boston Globe_ , and other prominent New England families who made their influence felt in American politics over many decades.\n\nBen Bradlee, like his father, affected rebellion against his class; one aspect of that was his dirty language. He married Jean Saltonstall and after the war was able to invest ten thousand dollars in a new newspaper called the _New Hampshire Sunday News_ , where he worked until the paper was purchased by William Loeb, whom he did not like. Cursing out Loeb, he rode the train down the eastern corridor, as he has recounted, intending to get off and look for a job in Baltimore, but staying on the train until Washington because it was raining. Family connections\u2014bankers or politicians who knew Eugene Meyer\u2014seem to have helped him get onto the _Post_. He was assigned the police beat, which he had worked in New Hampshire, and stuck with it for three years before he told Phil he wanted more excitement. Phil talked to a few people about Bradlee, and he was hired as an assistant press attach\u00e9 in the American embassy in Paris in 1951. A year later, according to embassy lists, he was on the staff of the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange, the embassy's special propaganda arm. USIE, the parent of Voice of America and the United States Information Agency (USIA), had been mandated by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 to disseminate worldwide \"cultural information,\" including films, magazines, research, speeches, and news stories. The American embassies, the Marshall Plan offices, and the CIA relied heavily on USIE productions to discredit Communism and promote American interests in Europe and on other continents.\n\nBenjamin Bradlee's work at USIE put him at the center of one of the most significant anti-Communist propaganda battles of that period: the campaign against accused atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The intent of the campaign was to create the suspicion that members of Western European Communist parties would be more loyal to Moscow than to their own governments. Although Bradlee has denied ever having produced propaganda, documents released through the Freedom of Information Act show that when he was a press attach\u00e9, he visited the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York under orders of \"the head of the CIA in Paris,\" as he told them, and that he then wrote an \"Operations Memorandum\" on the case which painted the Rosenbergs as guilty and deserving the death sentence. Bradlee's Memorandum became the basis of propaganda that was disseminated to forty countries on four continents, much of it showing up in newspapers as factual accounts. The campaign is discussed in the Appendix in more detail.\n\nAt the end of 1953, after the Rosenbergs were electrocuted, Ben Bradlee returned to journalism, as a correspondent for _Newsweek_ in Paris. His most notable feat as a foreign correspondent was to obtain an interview with the FLN, the Algerian guerrillas who were then in revolution against the French government. The interview, which had all the earmarks of an intelligence operation\u2014clandestine meeting places, contact men, danger, and glamour\u2014caused the French to expel Bradlee from the country in 1957. By then he had a new wife, Antoinette Pinchot, an American sculptor whom he had met in Paris, where she had gone to live with her four children after the breakup of her marriage to a Marshall Plan lawyer. Tony Pinchot was the product of a fine old Pennsylvania family; Bradlee married her in 1956, and returned to Washington with her and his four stepchildren in 1957.\n\nIn Washington, Bradlee continued with _Newsweek_ , and he said in a letter to the author that it was during this time that he met the CIA official Richard McGarrah Helms, who was to become the director of the Agency in 1966. Helms's grandfather, Gates White McGarrah, an international financier, was a member of the board of directors of the Astor Foundation, which owned _Newsweek_ ; and in 1961, the year that Bradlee became the magazine's Washington bureau chief, he is said to have heard from his friend Richard Helms, who heard it from his grandfather, that _Newsweek_ would be put up for sale. Bradlee contacted Phil Graham, who by then had been diagnosed a manic depressive and was in one of his manic episodes. Phil gave Bradlee a handwritten check for $1 million to convey to McGarrah as a down payment.\n\n* Donovan said this to Harold Smith, director of the budget under Truman, in a letter dated August 25, 1945. \"While the intelligence community was in disarray\" at the end of the war, writes William R. Corson in _Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of The American Intelligence Empire_ (New York: Dial Press\/James Wade, 1977), \" . . . Harold Smith went about the task of studying the intelligence system and laying the groundwork for restructuring it in accordance with Truman's marching order, which said, 'This country wanted no Gestapo under any guise or for any reason.'\" Donovan responded to Smith's inquiries \"in sorrow more than in anger.\" OSS was disbanded on October 1 of that year, to be replaced by the Central Intelligence Agency, created as part of the National Security Act of 1947.\n\n* This quotation is from Richard J. Walton, _Henry Wallace_ , _Harry Truman and the Cold War_ (New York: Viking, 1976). Walton discusses ADA's role in the politics of the late forties and early fifties in elaborate detail.\n\n* Bernstein, \"The CIA and the Media,\" _Rolling Stone_ , October 20, 1977. \n\n# [CHAPTER TEN\n\n_The Man or the Empire: Katharine Loses Phil_](content-toc.xhtml#aa10)\n\nPOWER AND achievement overwhelmed this intelligent and high-strung young man. The complicated, influential men with whom he interacted, the rush of events, the inevitable ramifications of every action, every word, all taking place within a rigid, confined social framework that was never to be violated, the snobbishness and cattiness of the men and the women, the judgments, the advantages that they took for granted, the unending comments on his usefulness to the family\u2014\"Kate sure had good sense to marry someone who could run the _Post_ \"\u2014made Phil more nervous, more driven, the more success he achieved. Accomplishment was something that the Meyers expected, whereas lack of it was usually the result of bad judgment, the equivalent of bad taste.\n\nKatharine had grace, spoke fluent French, and exercised great patience and good humor in handling Phil, reminding him that he could afford to dress more elegantly, that certain things\u2014the obsequiousness of employees, for example\u2014just went with their kind of life. The ease with which she accepted what was her due made him feel, when his confidence was shaky, that he was out of place in their world. In public, Kay was his fall guy, his stooge, the butt of jokes about her intelligence and appearance. And because her husband treated her offhandedly, so did his men at the _Post._ Later, after Phil was dead, those men would pay for that.\n\nThere was another element to the dynamic between Phil and Katharine. The _Post,_ the object of tension and envy in the family, could have been hers, and they both knew it. Had Katharine married a doctor, a scientist, a man with no ambitions toward the newspaper, she would have continued to learn the operation, as she had been doing when she met Phil; and when her father was ready to retire, after she had had her children, she would have succeeded him. The one hundred editorials that she wrote when her father was publisher were rehearsals for future policy decisions. She thought so, and the rest of the family thought so. Then when Phil, obviously brighter, more aggressive, a better choice, came along, Katharine simply stepped aside and let him have what he wanted, which was to have everything at once, his way, or to go back to Florida. Meyer retired early to satisfy Phil, and Katharine accepted less than one-third of the stock, as Phil demanded, so the Meyers could never overrule him. All of this, of course, was conditional upon his fulfilling the promise to infuse the _Post_ with his energy and brilliance. But as the years wore on and some of his judgments missed the mark, as his faculties deteriorated and his hostility increased, his wife interceded more and more in his business, which reminded him again that it was the Meyer family's newspaper and that he was being used.\n\nThe trouble began in 1952, when Phil walked sadly into the newsroom one morning, his head hanging, and said he did not feel well enough to run the paper for a while. He was going to stay home for a few weeks. He said the executives could handle whatever problems might arise. Then he went home and went to bed, humiliated, exhausted. Katharine spent the day with him, telling him not to worry, that nobody thought less of him, everybody needs a rest. He was convinced that people were laughing, delighting in his failure. He stayed away from the paper for a quarter of a year, greeting his visitors in a long white dressing gown. He read a book about Africa. He thought. He played with the new baby, Stephen, his fourth child, born that year. At times he seemed lost and lonely, dependent, complaining, fearful, and nothing that Katharine could do allayed his feeling of emptiness. Other times he acted well. Katharine told friends that it was only overwork. Her parents insisted that they be informed if anything was really wrong with Phil. Katharine, a bad liar, maintained there was not; but she asked her brother, Bill, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, to have a casual talk with Phil, and Bill referred him to another psychiatrist for formal diagnosis. Then he spent time familiarizing his sister with manic depressive psychosis. This condition was at that time considered the most difficult of all mental disorders to work with, almost incurable, an illness that psychiatrists did not like to treat because manic depressives were frequently able to manipulate their doctors. The \"peculiar frankness and intenseness, [the] lack of complexity and subtlety\"* that were so characteristic of Phil, for which his friends and family loved him, were in psychiatric terms typical of the manic depressive; and once the diagnosis was made, neither Phil nor Katharine could be sure which aspects of his personality were really Phil and which were manifestations of his illness.\n\nHe pulled himself out of the depression (the psychiatric \"tendency toward health\") and returned to work, and once again he ran the _Post_ beautifully; but the breakdown had shown him how easily everything he had worked for could be lost. He read books on manic depression and learned that his wittiness, talkativeness, and social aggression were \"stereotyped social interactions,\" not a \"talent for . . . aliveness or freedom in expression\" but substitutes for it. The Meyers readily gave him another chance, and his political associations did not seem to suffer from his incapacity. But from that time until the end of his life he was haunted by the fear that in everything he did, every political involvement, every judgment, he was somehow a fraud.\n\nPsychotics suffer an \"uncanny, frightening, gruesome\" loneliness, caused, psychiatrists think, by childhood isolation (the child experiencing an intense, vivid inner life) and aggravated by \"the taboos with regard to touching . . . among people of . . . upper social strata.\" Loneliness is not necessarily a physical state; it can be an inability to trust the very people upon whom one is dependent, members of the family, especially women if one is a man. The greater the dependence, the greater the distrust and the feeling of fraudulence, the fear that someday he will be found out. Phil was painfully aware of what can happen to those who fall out of favor; Florence Homolka and Ed Prichard preyed on his mind.\n\nThis was not a question of morality so much as the rules of the game. Power has its own nature. The powerful man no longer has an interest in old friends, and when he loses power, the powerful no longer have an interest in him. This was what frightened Phil the most\u2014what power does to the powerful. He was still reeling from what had happened to James Forrestal, the secretary of the navy who became the first secretary of defense in 1947. Forrestal had been not only a powerful man, but one of dignity and wisdom. Publishers had trusted Forrestal. Phil had done favors for him. In 1948 Phil had invited sixteen publishers to his home, including Arthur Sulzberger of the _New York Times,_ so that Forrestal could talk with them about the atomic bomb. Russia, Forrestal said, was threatening to block the Berlin airlift. Would they support his using the atomic bomb against Russia? They talked for a while about possible effects, and Forrestal's persuasive abilities were such that the publishers all said that they would _expect_ him to use the bomb. Yet the following year, Forrestal exhibited symptoms of manic depression and his friends deserted him. He was forced to resign, was put in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital, on the sixteenth floor, and received few expressions of concern and fewer visitors. At three o'clock one morning he committed suicide by walking out an unguarded window.\n\nIn spite of these ghosts, the Grahams overcame Phil's illness this time. Phil was again a devoted father, \"playful,\" Katharine commented, \"nutty.\" His favorite child was his daughter, Elizabeth, whom he called Lally. He often wrote her long letters, one of which warned her solemnly, when she was approaching adolescence, that \"sex is a part, just a part, of life.\" Lally adored him, but the older women in his life were more of a problem for him. Agnes had a standing arrangement with Phil to publish all her articles, for which she was to be compensated only expenses, yet he would not read her submissions. \"I am sending [this] to you,\" she said in a note to Phil's assistant, \"because I don't want him to put it in the bottom drawer and forget about it.\" He also was wary of Katharine, who had learned something of the _Post's_ operations while he was ill, and was now being too free with her advice. He nudged her aside, saying jealously that what she understood to be politics was not the way politics worked at all. Her competence unnerved him. She began to work with her mother's campaign to establish a department of health, education, and welfare, and in 1953 it was given cabinet status by President Eisenhower. The first HEW secretary was a woman, newspaper publisher Oveta Culp Hobby of the _Houston Post,_ who was also giving Katharine a sense of her own talents.\n\nObvious good causes were fine for his wife, but Phil operated on a level other than the obvious. For him, politics was not campaigns, but relationships, agreements, tacit understandings, _quid pro quo._ His most clearly political relationships during those years, the ones that corrupted his publishership and contributed to his destruction more directly than others, were those he had with Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of the Armed Services Committee, the majority leader, one of five who watched over the CIA; and with Senator John F. Kennedy of Foreign Relations. Both pragmatic men, they were genuine friends to Phil, as far as it is possible for men in politics to be friends, using him (to tell their versions of stories) and letting him use them (the stories were frequently exclusive), but without malice. In using him they brought him to new heights of self-importance, teased him with a kind of power he felt was more real than his own, the power not of talk but of action. Being the sick man that he was, this kind of attention satisfied a need even while it damaged him.\n\nPhil's association with Johnson began when Congress drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1956, the first attempt at sweeping racial reform since Reconstruction. Phil approached Johnson to ask for his help in passing the act. Johnson refused, resenting not so much Negro progress as the influence of \"ADA liberalism\" in Texas politics. Phil argued with him, cajoled him in a southern accent, notified him that he could be the leader of a new modern South and that the _Post_ would, if the opportunity should arise, support him for president. Johnson eventually received credit for carrying the act through Congress, but there is some question of who enlisted whom: Phil agreed to moderate his civil rights line, began turning down Agnes Meyer's more inflammatory articles on the subject, and printed editorials about difficulties that Johnson, a farsighted southerner, was having supporting the act without alienating his constituents. Phil, believing that he had swayed an intractable man, would not accept reports that Johnson had \"gutted\" the act, that it could have passed without him in a stronger form. Instead he used the passage of the act as an excuse to delude himself that he could become a permanent part of the policy-making apparatus, that politicians, up to and including the president, would naturally include him in their discussions and solicit his advice. He was suddenly more than a publisher, he believed; he was a mastermind.\n\nLater, in 1957, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Phil designed a plan he thought would enable President Eisenhower to force the integration of the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus was making a stand for the old South. Faubus had declared that he would defy the Supreme Court's integration order, and it was the president's responsibility to enforce the ruling\u2014if necessary, with the National Guard. Phil felt that he was an interested party to this problem, a southerner with a conscience. He stayed up for two or three nights and days, writing instructions for the president, notes, legal bases for action, all on a long yellow pad, a habit retained from his legal training, going without food, becoming distraught and agitated. He presented his document, finally, to the president, who, not surprisingly, did not read it. The humiliation and rejection that Phil felt, coupled with exhaustion and the shock of his misjudgment, caused the manic depression to appear again, five years after the first major attack. But this time it did not cure itself with bed rest. It stayed with him, hovering near the surface, coming out at increasingly shorter intervals, making him at times seem gay and unpredictable, at other times sad and fragile. Manic depression is not simply a series of mood swings, with the victim going from elation to gloom. The manic depressive's basic psychotic pattern is depressive. He becomes mad, wild, irrational, excessively friendly\u2014manic\u2014to try to escape an unbearable feeling of loneliness, which is brought about by a defeat or a loss. With the mania or without it, the depression remains.\n\nAgain Katharine hid his illness. He was rumored to be an alcoholic, which he was, but the drinking obscured the far more serious problem, and rumors therefore were better than truth. He remained brilliant, still able to put together _Post_ pages with attention to \"style, placement, and timing\" of stories; but the loose, rebellious manner became more obvious. He committed adultery in the company of John Kennedy, a neighbor in Georgetown. (Thus was established a political bond.) The tension between promiscuity and marriage which delights the common playboy, however, added to Phil's feeling of fraudulence. He was hurting his wife, he was disillusioning their teenage daughter, Lally, and providing no example for his sons. He was casting doubt on Eugene Meyer's judgment in giving him the _Post._ He was, in accordance with the manic depressive script, bringing about his own downfall.\n\n* * *\n\nIn 1959 Eugene Meyer was dying, and Agnes asked Phil to make the funeral arrangements. Several days later she wrote to the Reverend Duncan Howlett, the minister of the All Souls Unitarian Church, telling him that Meyer's lung cancer had progressed to a stage that required him to remain in bed, tended by nurses around the clock. She thought he had weakened so much that the end was near. Phil was preparing to leave for Paris in a few days, to join Katharine and the children, and Agnes did not want him to go without discussing what the family would do for the funeral, in case Eugene died before the Grahams returned from abroad. \"After all,\" Agnes confided to the minister, \"Eugene is a public figure and there are so many friends and admirers . . . that their feeling for him must be considered. . . . At present . . . he is somewhat better. . . . That is why I urged the Graham family to carry out their plans, made long ago, to give their four children a chance to see something of Europe. If necessary, they can return in a few hours.\"\n\nPhil went to Paris. It was July; he always liked to take his vacations in the spring or summer. The family was living in a suite in an elegant old hotel. They spent their time touring and shopping. Katharine was at ease there with her perfect French; she ordered the food in restaurants, talked with cab drivers. Phil, not having been taught the language, could not exercise his ability to charm. He was anonymous, just a man, a husband and father. The tedium of a long series of family meals; his anxiety about Meyer, whom he loved better than his own father; Katharine's forced gaiety during the final stages of the cancer; all added to Phil's sense of alienation. One morning he and Katharine went to the Paris office of _Newsweek,_ as Ben Bradlee, now a neighbor and friend of John Kennedy's, had suggested. _Newsweek,_ with its connections to intelligence, was an important source of stories about the politics of Europe, and Phil thought he might be able to work out an exchange. While the Grahams were speaking to the bureau chief, they were interrupted by a messenger, Robin Webb, the alluring, dark-eyed daughter of an Australian diplomat. She seemed thrilled to be in the presence of the powerful Philip Graham. He had an intense and immediate reaction to her. With her sensual gifts and her lack of interest in the constraints of his position, she helped Phil escape the desolation of the vacation in Paris. He allowed himself to love her, wanting not just an affair but another marriage.\n\nEugene died on July 17, at eighty-three, after going into shock from choking on orange juice; the Grahams returned for the funeral. \"Eugene is so magnificent a patient,\" Agnes had written to the Reverend Mr. Howlett, \"and so philosophical that it is an exalting experience to be with him. I said to Adlai Stevenson who came to see him two weeks ago, 'I am not to be pitied, I am to be envied.' . . . One more thing: We should like passages read from the Old Testament\u2014some of the Songs of Solomon, Proverbs, or Psalms\u2014that are full of faith in the beauty and goodness of life. . . . He never had any official connection with the Jewish religion as neither one of us . . . [has] any feeling for orthodoxy; as far as Eugene is concerned I am reminded of something John Dewey said when accused of 'Godlessness': 'I am as good a Christian as any of them.'\"\n\nThe Meyer family's concern for what the public need and need not learn about Eugene Meyer, \"what history should record,\" resulted in a compromise Unitarian service, \"a bloodless, horrible event,\" as a friend of Katharine's later described it, at which Chief Justice Earl Warren gave the eulogy and a list of Meyer's achievements was read. Afterward, the family argued bitterly whether to honor Eugene's last request, to be buried in Israel\u2014a result of senility, Katharine felt. In his old age he had turned increasingly toward his Jewish heritage, taking trips to Israel, advising Israeli bankers. He had confided his desire to be buried there to Felix Frankfurter, who had told some of his former law clerks. It is not clear whether he had told Phil. The family considered the request an embarrassment, in any case, as they were sure Eugene in his more lucid days would have understood. He had, after all, been sensitive to the problem\u2014like the time, in 1949, when Agnes was awarded an honorary membership in the Washington chapter of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, for being \"a distinguished citizen of the United States of America and a great humanitarian.\" Eugene had sent each of his children a note about the award that was almost apologetic in tone. After his death, his daughter Kate was the most adamantly opposed to the last wish, and Eugene was cremated and placed in the Meyer mausoleum in Kensico Cemetery near Mount Kisco, which he had built in the twenties when mausoleums were the fashion among Wall Street bankers. He had planned the structure with his brother Walter and sister Rosalie, looking over blueprints, commissioning a stained-glass window, discussing the placement of urns and plaques. Both of his parents had been placed there, and there was a plaque commemorating his brother Edgar, who had gone down with the _Titanic._\n\nPhilip Graham, witnessing the burial rites of this odd family, was overcome by a wrenching sense of loss and isolation. He lived with an anxiety and guilt he could not understand. The depression that set in became a deep well, an almost physical \"deterioration of personality\" that he was incapable of fighting. In a perverted attempt to defend his dead father-in-law, he alternately claimed that he was \"more of a Zionist than Eugene Meyer\" and described his assimilationist family as \"a bunch of kikes.\" His sexual powers, depleted from the years of alcohol, became of serious concern, as they do with manic depressives, and he invited Robin Webb to live in Washington in a large house that he bought for her on wooded, secluded Foxhall Road. Then he bought her a farm. Katharine, whom he now saw as the villain in his drama, demanded that he begin psychiatric treatment.\n\nIn 1959, as at present, Washington had an active and cohesive psychiatric community, dominated by the experimental work at three area institutions: Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Chestnut Lodge Sanitarium in Rockville, Maryland, and the small, prestigious Washington School of Psychiatry. Many of the doctors who form the core of this community are on the faculties of two or all three of these institutions; they are the writers, theorists, lecturers, those whose patients are the most interesting and the most famous. Katharine's brother, Bill, at Hopkins, specialized in psychosomatic illness and was connected to Washington psychiatry circles through the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, which he had persuaded his parents to establish in 1944 to finance projects in mental health and law. He and his sister Elizabeth Lorentz were also large contributors to the Washington School, where in 1959 the chairman of the faculty was Dr. Leslie Farber, the self-described \"poet-philosopher of the current human predicament,\" an advocate of the integrity of the will in the psychoanalytic method and author of such essays as \"my wife the naked movie star\" and \"oh death where is thy sting-a-ling-ling?\"* Farber was more than a psychiatrist. He was a social success, having induced Martin Buber, philosopher and Zionist, to come from Israel to Washington in 1957, when he was seventy-nine, to lecture on the \"philosophical anthropology of psychology,\" something of a coup for the Washington School. Buber's words inspired Farber, who took on the difficult case of his colleague's brother-in-law, the guilty, tormented Philip Graham, in 1959 or 1960, after which Bill Meyer became chairman of the Washington School's board of trustees, Farber remaining as chairman of the faculty. If the publisher of the _Washington Post_ would endure the shame of psychiatric treatment, he would do so with a man of essentially the same social position.\n\nMuch of the time the children were at school, Lally at Madeira, the boys at St. Albans. Their father had always been there for them when they came home, but as months went by, and normalcy became more elusive, the cruel gossip reached them through other children. They would walk in and see Mother crying. Most often Daddy would be away. Friends felt compelled to choose sides in this exciting event, the breakdown of a marriage, and talked among themselves about whose dinner parties to attend\u2014Katharine's, which she gave alone, fighting back tears; or Phil's, which he gave expansively with Robin; a difficult choice, for Phil was violating social norms, but Katharine seemed the obvious loser in a city preoccupied with winners. Her friends said she maintained a good appearance. One or two suggested divorce. Unaware of the diagnosis or the tragic life script, they assumed that she cared what they thought. Few of them understood that the parties were for her own distraction and the tears were for him. She worried about him whenever he was out of her sight. He might damage himself. Robin did not understand he was sick. When he came home, it was to explain rationally, with piercing eyes and a sweet, sad smile, that he did not want to destroy what they had built together, that he was going to get well. Katharine repeatedly took him back. She saved her affection for the children, who were feeling the strain, Don becoming moralistic, Lally high-strung and anxious. Katharine told them they were not to think badly of their father, he was ill but was a wonderful man, that no matter what people said, they were always to respect and love him.\n\nThe dialogue with Agnes was of another tenor. Living with only her servants in Crescent Place, which had taken on the character of her own mausoleum, Agnes sat for hours, her feet on an ottoman to permit circulation of blood, downing martinis (the cause of the bad circulation) and trying to write an autobiography, _Life as Chance and Destiny,_ a chronicle of the fifty years she had shared with Eugene Meyer.* The book was never finished. In the winter one of the servants was attacked in the yard, and so she encased the mansion in a high brick wall, a symbol of her new life as an aged recluse. Visitors came and went, but she was most interested in her daughter and her grandchildren. She saw that Katharine was in poor health\u2014overweight, gray-haired, continually tired\u2014a weariness that developed into tuberculosis in 1961. Agnes knew enough to blame Phil, whom she saw through mercilessly, and considered an ingrate, like her daughter Florence. After Phil left Katharine's house and moved in with Robin, about the time Katharine went into the hospital for tests, Agnes accepted the explanation of his \"illness\" for the sake of his children. Then she came to believe it. \"I think your letters are terrific and I think your idea of sending him a copy of the letter he wrote you is superb,\" Agnes wrote to Lally. \"Let's just keep fighting, girl, and we are bound to win.\" But to Katharine, to whom she took cold madrilene soup, cold chicken, and wine jelly (\"Hospital food gets boring so quickly\"), she said that the _Washington Post_ should be \"ours.\" Katharine had a mother who had always told her the truth. Now, with an irresponsible man in control of the source of the Meyer family's power, Agnes told her what she wanted but also did not want to hear.\n\nKennedy was president, a phenomenon for which Agnes felt partly responsible. \"If it interests you,\" she had written to Katharine in August 1960, a month before the Kennedy-Nixon television debates, \"I found out that the labor unions, although they do not like Nixon, are indifferent to Kennedy. So Eleanor Roosevelt, when she sees him Sunday, is going to ask him to devote a day to visiting the factories in New York City to captivate the women. I got this idea from one of the labor leaders and passed it on to her.\" In this matter she competed with Phil Graham, who had written a long\u2014she thought selfserving\u2014memorandum telling of his role in helping get Kennedy elected by putting him together on the ticket with his good friend Lyndon Johnson. Phil had circulated this memo among the reporters at the _Post,_ and it was later reproduced in Theodore H. White's _The Making of the President 1964_.*\n\nIn his memo, Phil credited himself with putting together the only combination that could have beaten Nixon, implying that only he could have done it\u2014an idea that Kennedy, who knew how to play the press, did not dispute. Instead Kennedy allowed Phil to think they could work together to create national policy. This dangerous illusion was fed by the Grahams' inclusion in Kennedy's \"Hickory Hill seminars,\" informal weekend meetings at Robert Kennedy's estate, Hickory Hill, that were patterned after the Grahams' own salons of the fifties. Katharine sat once again with the wives\u2014Margaret McNamara, Virginia Rusk\u2014and heard the men discussing the fantastic, and saw the fantastic coming true. In the anti-Communist fever that Kennedy brought back to foreign policy, Phil believed himself to be the president's accomplice (as Kennedy was his, regarding Robin): invading Cuba, facing down Khrushchev in Berlin and Vienna, putting a man on the moon before the Russians did it, committing advisors to Vietnam (a plan that Phil particularly urged on him). The _Post,_ one of the vehicles for the Camelot myth, supported Kennedy in all his knightly ventures, more uncritically than it had ever supported Lyndon Johnson, who after accepting the vice-presidency with the rationale that \"power is where power goes\" was not included at Hickory Hill. Observing all of this, Agnes once said to Katharine with understated sarcasm, \"Has the _Post_ fallen for Kennedy?\" and Katharine shrugged. Manic depressives adopt the views of the men they admire at the moment; they lose their independence of thought. Phil fantasized that he had made Kennedy; the evidence was right there in the White House, and now the president of the United States was his friend, and he, Phil Graham, was one of the powers behind the president. Of course he didn't need psychiatric treatment anymore.\n\nThe reality, however, was very different. Apart from theoretical discussions which the publisher regularly translated into pro-Kennedy editorials and features, such as the spread he printed on Kennedy's opinions of Khrushchev (all negative), there was little presidential interest in Philip Graham. Something as simple as giving a job in the attorney general's office to one of Phil's old law school friends, a well-known and excellent lawyer, which was the most standard kind of political payola, turned out to be beyond Kennedy's debt to him. Phil countered this slight in his own mind, as manic depressives do, by telling the president that this job was going to be Phil's way of doing something for _him_ ; Phil's friend was going to take care of Kennedy's brother Bobby, the attorney general. He stayed up all night drafting a long letter, then called his friend to the _Post_ to discuss it.\n\n\"Phil was unshaven and looked terrible,\" the friend remembers. \"Maybe his hair was combed and maybe it wasn't. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes. He had a long yellow pad. He said, 'I want to read this to you. This is something I'm going to be giving to Jack Kennedy. ' He flips through it. It was something like this: 'Mr. ________ has been recommended to you for assistant attorney general. You can depend on him. He will look after Bobby. Bobby will need all the help and protection . . . he'll keep Bobby out of trouble . . . ' It was all Bobby. Phil says, 'I'm saying all these things about you. Can I say this? If I do will you promise me to do it?' 'Yes, of course.' 'What do you know about Bobby? Everything you've read about Bobby is wrong. Bobby is frightened. Attorney General overwhelms him. Bobby needs assurance. Bobby is a sensitive, compassionate, warm, loving human being. You've seen how nasty he was dealing with Hubert Humphrey. It wasn't the real Bobby. If you want to do something for your country you'll go over there and put his interests and protecting him above everything else.'\"\n\nWith Phil's importuning, the friend was finally put on at the Department of Justice, where he worked as an assistant attorney general for several weeks without being officially hired and without meeting Bobby. \"One day Bobby sent for me and conducted a reluctant interview. 'I understand you want to be assistant attorney general. ' 'Yes, sir. ' 'What law school did you go to?' 'Harvard.\" The friend was then in his forties and had argued landmark cases before the Supreme Court. \"'What were your grades?'\" A week later Bobby sent for him again and asked nervously, \"'What are your long-range ambitions?' 'Only to serve you and President Kennedy.' 'Does it have to be in the Department of Justice?'\" Bobby fired Phil Graham's old friend and replaced him with the ambitious young Nicholas Katzenbach, who later, after Phil's death, became Attorney General and then vice-president of IBM Corporation, and who subsequently was invited by Katharine Graham to join the board of directors of the _Washington Post._\n\nCompounding this insult, which in political society showed a loss of status, was Kennedy's not admitting Phil into the two most significant intelligence operations of his presidency, those called MONGOOSE and Special Group CI. MONGOOSE was the plan, laid out in NSAM (National Security Action Memorandum) 100, \"to use all available assets . . . to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime\"; it gave rise to the Bay of Pigs invasion and the eight or so separate attempts to assassinate Castro. Special Group CI (counterinsurgency), established the year after MONGOOSE by NSAM 124, was assigned the task of designing a war, so to speak, in reaction to the failure of MONGOOSE. The group, which included CIA director John McCone, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, created Kennedy's \"counterinsurgency doctrine,\" which legitimized Frank Wisner's early \"strategic hamlet\" concept and gave Kennedy a way into the guerrilla war of Southeast Asia.* Because it included McCone, it was a joint presidential and CIA operation. Because it included the newsman Edward R. Murrow, who was invited to sit in as an observer and was soon made a voting member, it was an operation of mediapolitics. Murrow, until 1961 a vice-president of CBS and now Kennedy's director of the United States Information Agency, was therefore an architect of the Vietnam war (and Phil wasn't). He was also instrumental in mobilizing consent for that war, through the USIA and through CBS. That network, in addition to promoting the cause in its news broadcasts, held government contracts to provide war communications, such as \"Photoscan\" electro-optical systems for war reconnaissance.\u2020 Murrow was where Phil Graham had been during MOCKINGBIRD, and now wanted to be again: on the inside.\n\nThe jealousy that he suffered over Murrow and the alienation from Kennedy were only consequences of his increasing cynicism about the nature of power. He had begun to talk, after his second breakdown, about the CIA's manipulation of journalists. He said it disturbed him. He said it to the CIA. His enchantment with journalism, it seemed, was fading. \"Newspapers are the rough drafts of history,\" he now thought; mediapolitics did not become history until the moral judgments were in. As he became more desperate, unable to control the forces that controlled him, which is one of the manic depressive's greatest fears, he turned against the newsmen and politicians whose code was mutual trust and, strangely, silence. Their ethic led them to keep Phil's insanity \"out of the papers,\" as he had kept stories \"out of the papers\" for his friends; but now the word was that Phil Graham could not be trusted, and his friends began to see very little of him.\n\nIn the final stages, Phil's deterioration was rapid. The newspaper was run completely by the executives, and Phil would lie on the couch in his office for hours on end, drinking, crying, threatening suicide, calling his half brothers in Florida and reminiscing about their childhood in the swamps. An assistant recorded his mutterings on scraps of paper. He was preoccupied with Katharine, whom he hoped to badger into divorcing him with the demented strategy, copied down by his assistant, \"I must torture Kay.\" He abused Katharine in public. His attorney for the divorce was Edward Bennett Williams, the noted criminal and political trial lawyer and part owner of the Washington Redskins who was to spend the next twenty-five years battling cancer, and finally die in 1988. One of Williams's last big political fights was this battle in 1965 for control of the _Post_ empire, and Katharine was to be cut out.\n\nAgnes Meyer \"broke off relations\" with Phil during this time and informed various acquaintances by letter that he was not to be considered her son-in-law anymore. The split seems to have come after a violent argument about the space program. \"You must remember,\" Agnes lectured him, \"that it all began when President Kennedy had lost prestige over the Bay of Pigs incident. The inside ring then got their bright heads together and decided there had to be some sensational program to take people's minds off the debacle in Cuba, so Kennedy announced\u2014I forget his exact words\u2014that America would put a man on the moon.\"\n\nPhil was then the chairman of COMSAT, the government-owned Communications Satellite Corporation, which was the single honor that Kennedy had offered him. This was an innocuous position on the periphery of the space program, where he had also put Lyndon Johnson, as chairman of the Aeronautics and Space Council. And as COMSAT chairman, Phil resented Agnes's contemptuous remark. Whatever the \"inside ring\" may have thought of COMSAT, even if it was a diversion from real politics, Phil was determined to make it work. He was going to launch a communications satellite that would, in addition to its commercial functions, help the United States penetrate the Iron Curtain with propaganda, and in the process he would become an international communications baron, as he had become a national baron with the purchase of _Newsweek._ Using all of his powers of persuasion in this last effort, he succeeded in hiring a satellite expert away from the State Department to become his fulltime COMSAT advisor. He spent days interviewing prospective staff members, researchers, planners, scientists. He held meetings of the board of directors.\n\nFor all his will, though, he was unable to sustain a fa\u00e7ade of rationality. He telephoned officials in the State Department to say that propaganda in Europe was his responsibility now, that they should call their own men home. He punched people who disagreed with him at meetings, shouting, throwing books and water glasses. Kennedy realized that he had made a serious error in judgment. Fearing that Phil would start to talk about the internal workings of COMSAT, he asked Clark Clifford, former intelligence advisor to President Truman, the future head of the National Intelligence Advisory Board, and Kennedy's personal lawyer, to report Phil's activities to him. Clifford could oblige with no trouble because he was already involved with the Grahams' problems as Agnes's personal counselor and attorney for the divorce.\n\nIf Katharine could have done something, anything, to help Phil, other than continue to love him, which she did, she did not know what it was. \"Desperately hungry for reconciliation,\" Leslie Farber once wrote of the manic depressive, \"he becomes increasingly estranged from those loved ones who might conceivably offer him some relief, were it not being demanded of them. . . . Even if the loved one manages not to fall into despair himself, he may still feel himself charged with the responsibility to love, so that in a self-conscious way he attempts to will what cannot be willed. . . .\"* If the loved one, that is, the family member, the wife, gives up hope or stops caring, the patient usually loses his remaining hope as well. Katharine must certainly have understood this, but she also accepted that he would never get better. She told Clark Clifford that the divorce settlement must assign control of the _Washington Post,_ and all of the _Post_ companies,\u2020 exclusively to her.\n\nThe case never reached the courts, but was negotiated between the lawyers, Agnes pushing and Katharine holding back from filing divorce papers, which would have meant publicly accusing Phil of being mentally and morally incompetent. Agnes feared that Phil would try to ride out the storm and wait another two years until he could get a divorce on the basis of separation, that he would not readily relinquish control because he had no position at all unless he was publisher of the _Post._ But Katharine knew that he dreaded an open fight even more than she because he obviously could not win it.\n\nA man with a debilitating mental illness is in danger of suicide if the things that make him what he is are lost. If he is very rich, he can purchase psychiatric help, but he can also use his position and money to avoid the effects of the treatment.\n\nIn early 1963, while the divorce was in process, Phil flew to Phoenix on a Gulfstream I, a ten-passenger executive jet that the _Post_ leased from a charter service. There he and Robin Webb put up in a modest residence motel. When he had been there for several weeks, he called Katharine to tell her to send Lally out to see him, which Katharine flatly refused to do. Phoenix was then the scene of a newspaper publishing convention, to which Phil had not been invited. He got wind of it, appeared in the banquet room during a speech, grabbed the microphone, and drunkenly announced to the crowd that he was going to tell them exactly who in Washington was sleeping with whom, beginning with President Kennedy. His favorite, sputtered Phil, was now Mary Pinchot Meyer, who had been married to CIA official Cord Meyer (no relation to Katharine Meyer Graham) and was the sister of Ben Bradlee's wife, Tony. Mary had her art studio in the Bradlees' carriage house, which is where Kennedy visited her. As Phil ranted on, one of the newsmen called Kennedy, who immediately called Katharine, wanting to know if there was anything he could do to bring Phil under control. The call came as Katharine was meeting with the _Post_ executives in her home, planning to bring Phil back forcibly and commit him to a psychiatric hospital. She declined the president's offer. Phil's assistant, James Truitt, however, was neither so angry at Kennedy nor so proud. He took the phone and asked Kennedy to send Phil's doctor, Leslie Farber, to Phoenix on a military jet. Phil was brought back to the motel, where Farber injected him with a heavy sedative and then took him to the airport in an ambulance.\n\nThe Gulfstream which had taken Phil to Phoenix in the early spring now carried Katharine Graham to the Phoenix airport. On board with her were John Sweeterman, who had the title of publisher, and Frederick Beebe, the _Post's_ attorney and chairman of the board of the Washington Post Company. Katharine had little to say to the two men during the long flight. She was worried and sat biting her lip.\n\nThe ambulance was waiting at the airport. Phil was carried out of it and placed in the Gulfstream jet. He was dressed in pajamas that were spotted with blood from a deep cut his nails had made in the face of one of his captors. After he had stopped struggling, when the sedative took effect, he had been bound in a straitjacket. Robin Webb had been given some money and told to disappear. On the flight back to Washington he lay quietly. Katharine did not speak. When Phil regained consciousness, he begged to be allowed to go to George Washington University Hospital, to which his beloved father-in-law, Eugene Meyer, had donated nearly one million dollars. Katharine obtained a court order committing him to Chestnut Lodge.\n\nChestnut Lodge is one of the most expensive psychiatric hospitals in the country; it is also one of the finest. It is situated on eight gently rolling acres in Rockville, a town in Maryland about five miles outside Washington, and looks like a small college campus. There are a colonial-style main building that was once an old hotel, four apartment-dormitories that house altogether eighty patients, two suites of doctors' offices, a recreation area which gives the sanitarium a clubby atmosphere, a student nurses' residence, and several lovely stone houses which the most dedicated doctors inhabit. There are oak trees, dirt pathways, asphalt roads, fields for team sports, and openings to a residential street in Rockville that are not barred. Most of the patients are young, with a chance to get well and begin their lives again. Phil Graham was one of the oldest patients; he had already had his chance at life and had lost it.\n\nBefore the discovery, in the mid 1960s, of lithium and other medication to control the chemical aspects of psychotic mood disorders, Chestnut was the first hospital not to treat such disorders with electroshock therapy or lobotomy. Instead, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, a student of Freud's and an exile from Nazi Germany, spent twenty-two years at Chestnut working to disprove Freud's idea that psychosis was \"not accessible to psychoanalytic method.\" She combined classical psychoanalysis, which addresses the intellect, with an unusual sensitivity to emotional reaction. She herself was \"highly sensitive,\" wrote a colleague, \"\u2014otherwise she could not have accompanied her patients so fully into the depths of destructive rage.\" She recorded her work painstakingly: her efforts to dissolve the \"patient's fear of his own unbearable malevolence,\" to alleviate \"intense anxieties and guilt feelings,\" to \"collaborate\" with the patient to \"reconstruct\" the \"disintegrated personality,\" to \"form a bridge between him and those sectors of reality from which he had withdrawn.\"* Fromm-Reichmann died in 1957, but the literature she created on schizophrenia and manic depression remained so strong an influence on the doctors at Chestnut Lodge that even in the 1970s and 1980s, they would not use medication as an adjunct to psychoanalytic treatment until several patients won the right to medication through lawsuits.\n\nPhil was committed to Chestnut Lodge only six years after Fromm-Reichman's death, his family expecting that he would receive sophisticated and sympathetic care. His case was complicated, however, by his ability to play people off against each other, making it difficult for his two doctors, John Cameron, on the staff of Chestnut Lodge, and his outside doctor, Leslie Farber, to give him consistent treatment. Farber, though he was not on the Chestnut staff, was a distinguished member of the faculty at the Washington School of Psychiatry and was therefore not to be lightly brushed off. He was, at his insistence, allowed to share responsibility with Cameron, presumably with Katharine's consent.\n\nJohn Cameron worked to build a tenuous \"transference\" with Phil, a relationship in which Phil would trust him enough to begin to act out his guilt and fears. Thus could the doctor begin to treat him, although, because Phil was already badly deteriorated, with only limited chance of success. The initial stages of therapy concerned Phil's inability to adjust to institutional life\u2014going through channels, respecting symbols of power that he considered inauthentic or primitive, obeying ward rules and medical orders, enduring a monotonous daily routine, fitting in with the other patients, whom he called the \"sewing circle.\" This acting out did indeed tell Cameron what he wanted to know about Phil: his need always to be outside, or at the top of, every hierarchy; but it made Cameron, who was keeping him down, the enemy.\n\nPhil expended a great deal of energy charming the nurses, lending money to the staff aides, making them love him, trying to bribe them for weekend passes. Alternately, he stayed in bed for days and spoke to no one. Cameron told Katharine to encourage visitors, but most of his old friends felt too sorry for him to make the trip; they would not know how to act or what to say. One of the few who did visit him was Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, whose kindness Katharine remembered and to whom she gave editorial support when he was criticized for the Vietnam war. McNamara sat on the edge of Phil's bed and just gossiped, told him jokes, treated him as if he were normal. His attention \"restored fire to Phil's eye,\" one of McNamara's biographers recorded,* and made his last days a little happier. It eased the immediate danger of suicide, which with self-destructive patients is the doctor's first and most important duty to prevent.\n\nLeslie Farber was a more eclectic thinker than Cameron, however, and saw suicide in its philosophical dimension. The suicidal person, by Farber's thinking, is guilty of egotism. \"The absurdity and pathos of the life of suicide,\" he once wrote, \"stem from the despairer's will to achieve\u2014through suicide\u2014his status as a moral human being. . . . Even the extent of the despairer's suffering must be witnessed and authenticated by suicide. Repeatedly, he announces to himself that his state is unbearable. But should he be challenged on this score\u2014that is, how is he to know what is and what is not bearable for himself, in other words, what gives him this godlike certainty\u2014his answer, to himself at least, is that it must be unbearable, otherwise he would not be thinking of suicide.\n\n\"In suicide,\" Farber went on, \"this answer appears unassailable to the despairer. In fact, it may happen that the act of suicide seems to have become necessary to demonstrate how unendurable his pain is, in which case he commits suicide in order to prove it unendurable. Here, the despairer takes, his own life to prove that he is not responsible for taking his own life. By definition, what is unendurable cannot be endured; therefore his suicide is not a matter of choice but an externally determined response to a situation that has deprived him of choice. The flaw in this construct, of course, is that his definition of his condition as unendurable is very much a matter of choice, and, thus, obviously, so is his suicide.\"* Farber described suicide as \"moral grotesquerie.\" Nowhere in his literature, however, was there a consideration of why a person might come to feel, rightly or wrongly, that his life is unendurable to him, or how, other than cynically, his doctor ought to respond in order to save the \"despairer's\" life.\n\nAfter Phil killed himself, Bill Meyer conceded to his sister that the suicide had been a tragedy \"in the literal sense of the word,\" and not simply because Phil's brilliance and pride had made him incapable of tolerating his mental deterioration any longer, but also because of the possibility of \"poor medical judgment.\" Agnes told friends that \"for Phil it was the last straw to be locked up with a lot of lunatics [and] he took the brave way out.\"\n\nDeath had preoccupied Phil all that spring. Three times, with permission to leave Chestnut, he had visited Edward Bennett Williams to rewrite his will, each time reducing Katharine's share of his estate and giving more of it to Robin. On the second visit he demanded that Williams burn the first will. On the third, he insisted that Williams burn the second. These wills rescinded and superseded a carefully thought out document of long standing, one that provided trust funds for his children and gave the bulk of the estate to his wife. After he died, during probate, Katharine's lawyer challenged the legality of the last will, and Edward Bennett Williams, wishing to retain the _Post_ account, now testified that Phil had not been of sound mind when he had drawn up Phil's final will for him. As a result, the judge ruled that Phil had died intestate. Williams helped Katharine take control of the _Post_ with no significant legal problems and ensured that the final will, which left the _Washington Post_ to another woman, never entered the public record.\n\nManic depressives frequently plan their deaths on the anniversary of a significant event, and Saturday, August 3, 1963, was the fifteenth anniversary of the formation of the Washington Post Company, in which Katharine and Philip Graham were sole partners. On the morning of August 3, Phil telephoned Katharine from Chestnut Lodge and said that he was feeling much better. He asked if he could spend the weekend with her on their farm. Katharine called Joe Rauh and told him happily, \"Phil is better! He's coming home! Why don't you come over and see him on Tuesday?\" On Monday he was going to spend the day with the children. She picked him up at Chestnut Lodge that morning and they drove to Warrenton, a small Virginia town in Fauquier County, forty-two miles southwest of Washington, in the Virginia hunt country. Their farm, Glen Welby, was that of a gentleman and weekend hunter, equipped with television and telephones, books and paintings, shotguns for hunting deer and rifles for quail-shooting parties, horses, servants, and a well-stocked kitchen and bar. Katharine and Phil spent some time together, and then Katharine took a nap. Phil went downstairs, sat on the edge of the bathtub, and shot himself in the head.\n\nFame and obscurity, the future and the past. \"Katharine has been so really brave,\" Bill Meyer wrote to Agnes, who at the time of Phil's death was cruising on the Black Sea, \"so thoughtful and considerate of others (and there were many others) that I can't really describe it to you. She and all the children\u2014Lally & Donny especially\u2014were just first-rate in every respect. They have set an example of courage that you will hear about.\" On Monday, August 5, Katharine went before the board of directors of the _Post_ and \"spoke briefly & to the point,\" Bill wrote, \"in respect to her intention of carrying on 'as is' & in the spirit & principle of her father & husband. She did a superb job,\u2014just wonderful and it was very reassuring to everyone. . . . Of course all the Wash. Post are behind Kay.\" After she left the meeting, Bill remained behind to inform the men, whose contempt for Katharine had been poorly hidden, that the Meyer family fortune was in back of Katharine's publishership. Later in the day, Alfred Friendly and Russell Wiggins, in a gratuitous gesture, let the sole owner of the _Washington Post_ know that they really did want her to be their boss.\n\nAfter a showy public funeral, Katharine joined her mother on the yacht on the Aegean Sea. They visited Romania, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union and met the Russian leader, \"I mean Mr. K.,\" said Agnes, \"who was at his dacha on the Black Sea.\" Katharine interviewed political leaders. She interviewed Khrushchev. She found, only days after Phil's death, that she was still a natural journalist, as he had been.\n\nBut who had he been? A man perhaps predisposed to psychosis, but whose early life of alienation and loss set the stage for his disorder to be easily triggered by a reminiscent event or feeling. He came from a family of outcasts living in the swamps, his father a failure who used his son for money, ignoring his brilliance, taking him out of college to drive trucks, his mother telling him he would surpass his father, but then dying and leaving him emotionally alone while he was young. The Meyer family had loved Phil, but his script, it now seems, had been written in advance.\n\n* The psychiatric phrasing in this chapter is taken from _Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy,_ selected papers of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959).\n\n* \"The poet-philosopher . . . \" appeared on the book jacket of Farber's _lying_ , _despair_ ; _jealousy_ , _envy, sex, suicide_ , _drugs_ , _and the good life_ (New York: Basic Books, 1976). \"my wife the naked movie star\" was first published in _Harper's,_ June 1969, and reprinted in _lying_ , _despair_ . . . And \"oh death where is thy sting-a-ling-ling?\" appeared in _Commentary_ , June 1977.\n\n* Agnes Ernst Meyer wrote her first autobiography, _Out of These Roots: The autobiography of an american Woman_ , in 1953 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company). She wrote one book on art and two on politics and translated two by Thomas Mann.\n\n* New York: Atheneum, 1965.\n\n* For a discussion of NSAM 100 and 124, see Corson, _Armies of Ignorance,_ pp. 398-99.\n\n\u2020 CBS manufactured Photoscan under its CBS Laboratories division, which existed from 1955 until 1975. Photoscan, according to CBS's annual report for 1960, \"is unique in that it worked equally well with cameras that record photographic, radar, or infrared intelligence.\" Another CBS Labs product was VIDIAC, a Visual Information Display and Control generator that was included in a major defense communications system built by Thompson Ramo Wooldridge. Both products were used by the American military in Vietnam. In 1975, with the end of the war, CBS Labs was reorganized into CBS Technologies, which, the company boasts, accepts no outside contracts, but does only research and development for CBS. The CBS Labs' Professional Products Department was sold to Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, and its military operations were sold to a Boston company called EPSCO, which with the war's end could get no military contracts and went out of business after a year. (CBS was not the only network involved in the Vietnam war. NBC was at that time owned by RCA, which performed military contract work through its RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1986 RCA was in turn acquired by General Electric, which continues to be involved in the research and manufacture of military weaponry.)\n\n* Farber, \"despair and the life of suicide,\" in _lying despair_ ; _jealousy_ . . . , p. 78.\n\n\u2020 The empire that Phil had built up from her father's bankrupt newspaper would grow, after his death, to include not only the _Post_ and _Newsweek_ , but Newsweek Books, the _Trenton Times_ and _Sunday Times-advisor,_ Robinson Terminal Warehouse Corporation (newsprint warehousing), the Washington Post Writers Group (syndication), WJXT-TV (Jacksonville, Florida, a CBS affiliate), WPLG-TV (Miami, ABC), WFSB-TV (Hartford, CBS), Bowater Mersey Paper Company Ltd. (Nova Scotia, newsprint manufacturing), and part ownership in the _International Herald-Tribune_ (Paris), and in the _Los angeles Times\/Washington Post_ News Service.\n\n* Editorial note by Dr. Edith Weigert in Fromm-Reichmann, _Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy_ , p. vii. _op. cit._\n\n* Henry L. Trewhitt, _McNamara_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).\n\n* Farber, \"despair and the life of suicide,\" in _lying, despair, jealousy_ . . . , pp. 79-81.\n\n# [CHAPTER ELEVEN\n\n_Katharine's Wars_](content-toc.xhtml#aa11)\n\nKATHARINE WAS to become a very different newspaper publisher than Phil had been. Acutely aware of her less engaging personality, her less dazzling intellect, she cultivated a management style that was the opposite of his: logical rather than intuitive, methodical rather than sporadic and inspired, technical rather than general, and more rigid, more politically naive, more principled. In this manner she would guide the _Post_ through the most turbulent dozen years in recent American history\u2014supporting the Vietnam war; neither liking nor understanding the radical sixties; weeping when Lyndon Johnson refused to run for reelection; hating and fearing Richard Nixon and publishing stories that brought about his downfall; in the process creating herself. Because of Watergate, Katharine Graham is known as a \"great\" publisher who has mastered the contradiction between corporate interests and public service.\n\nThe shock of widowhood was diminished by her husband's long illness, which had allowed her to prepare for life without him, but she still felt as all widows feel: numb, lonely, and confused. When the numbness faded, there was sadness, pain, anger, and guilt; she had the paper only because her husband was dead.\n\nPsychiatrists say that a widow grieves for as long as two years, during which time she sees few people, remains inactive, and thinks about the futility of life. This mourning period is a necessary and healthy part of the recovery process; by allowing herself to experience the enormous pain of a loved one's death, the widow learns to accept death and becomes able to love again. Katharine has never gotten over Phil. She escaped some of the feelings of the mourning period by frantic activity, dedicating herself to the _Post_ and to her children; now every summer, near the anniversary of his death, she becomes depressed. She still has tears in her eyes when she talks about him; and although men like her, she has remained uninvolved, as if she were still married to him. \"When Phil died,\" she once said, \"I had to choose between another husband or running the newspaper and remaining a monk.\" Before leaving to meet her mother on the Aegean Sea, Katharine buried Phil in Oak Hill Cemetery, a small, wooded graveyard directly across the street from their, now her, Georgetown home. He was placed just inside the gate, near the fence, at a site she can see from her bedroom window. It is marked only with a two-foot-high rectangular stone of gray granite, engraved simply:\n\n## PHILIP L. GRAHAM   \n1915-1963\n\nThese same words still appear on the _Washington Post_ masthead, under \"Eugene Meyer, 1875-1959.\"\n\nAll that first autumn, while starting to relearn the _Post's_ operation, she was subjected to the probate proceeding, an unpleasant affair in the best of circumstances, and complicated in this case by the wills that Phil had drawn with Edward Bennett Williams. The registrar of wills quickly ruled that these later wills revoked the well-drawn will that Phil had made in 1957; since they had been destroyed, Phil had effectively died intestate, leaving his wife and children to fight each other for pieces of his estate. Most important to Katharine, the 7,889 shares of class-A _Washington Post_ stock he had left to her in his original will now did not go automatically to her. Under the 1957 will, Katharine had been guaranteed 100 percent of this stock; in his two later wills, Phil had reduced her share of the stock and then reduced it again. The final will would have left her enough stock to bring her own holdings up to 55 percent, a controlling interest in the _Post_ but not an absolute one. The absence of any will, however, meant that the _Post_ stock would be distributed according to the terms of the 1948 trust agreement that had created the Washington Post Company: all of Phil's shares would go to his children. Katharine's interests would therefore best be served if the court accepted his 1957 will as his real will, while the children's interests would technically be served if the court did not accept it. A hearing on the matter, however, would have had to include a discussion on the public record of Phil's mental condition, which Katharine wanted to avoid. \"Under the circumstances,\" wrote the registrar of wills in his recommendation to the judge, Joseph McGarraghy, \"and particularly considering the fact that a contest over the 1957 will would place the mother and the children in the embarrassing situation of entering into a contest with each other, which all parties desire to prevent, it is proposed to enter into a compromise agreement.\"\n\nIn the compromise with her children's lawyer, James F. Reilly, who had been appointed by the court to be their guardian for the duration of the action, Katharine traded her children her own interest in Phil's trust, over $1 million, for all of the 7,889 shares of Washington Post Company stock. Their trusts were increased from half a million dollars each to one and a half million, and they could receive the income immediately instead of waiting until Katharine's death, although, the court noted, \"all of the minors are independently wealthy from other sources.\" Katharine, who did not need money, was awarded, in addition to the stock, a token marital inheritance of $500, which she took in the form of three paintings. She would have bargained for Post Company stock no matter what its value, but as it happened, the shares were worth three hundred eight dollars apiece, or a total of more than three million dollars. They also represented a new life, fame, greatness, power.\n\nAt the University of Chicago, Katharine had seen politics as a radical, theoretical, critical, analytical process that works against the government, students wanting to keep the power of the government in check. During her marriage she had adopted the views of many Washington wives: if a politician was your friend, his actions and motives were usually honorable; if he was not, they were suspect. The rule was to be charming, accepting, deferential, feminine, and to leave the harsh realities of politics to the men.\n\nThe women's world was at once inane and brutal, but it permitted a kind of innocence. Katharine once went to a party at the exclusive F Street Club, where she wore a new gray dress. A friend said to her that the dress was very pretty but would Katharine please wear her yellow dress the following Friday night at the friend's dinner for the Robert Lovetts. Lovett was a former Secretary of State, former Secretary of Defense, a Wall Street banker, the man who had advised President Kennedy to hire Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk; and he liked yellow.\n\nAnother time Katharine gave a small family dinner that included columnists Walter Lippmann and Joseph Alsop, who had an argument. It was vaguely about Western Europe, Katharine recalled, and \"fur flew all over the place.\" On yet another occasion she and Phil invited one hundred people to cocktails, among whom were most of the members of the Atomic Energy Commission. One of them was a funny little man who went around pinching all the women; but he was the expert on isotopes, and he was, Katharine felt, entitled. The subject of isotopes had recently been taken up in a series of _Post_ editorials, the controversy being that atomic energy commissioner Lewis Strauss had made public his dissent against an AEC plan to ship radioactive materials to Europe. Sentiment was against Strauss, who had violated protocol; Katharine had joined others in believing that he should have kept his dissent a secret.\n\nFor twenty-three years Katharine had been a society woman married to a powerful man, a woman given no credit, as such women frequently are not, for having any kind of intellect. It was no secret that the _Post_ editors considered her a poor candidate for the game of mediapolitics. But she did have the strength to do what most women or men would not have done: to learn a new way of thinking at the age of forty-six. That strength came from her family. So strong was the force of the family, as Katharine once told her mother and father, that she and her sisters and brothers had all passed through at least one phase of rejection until they were able to live with the fact that the family was sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, depending upon their parents' public activities of the moment. That seemed to Katharine, in hindsight, to be a better way to grow up than most and meant that the family was a source of comfort to all of them.\n\nHaving known radical theory and conformist social ritual, Katharine now had to learn to understand and manage power. Her first lesson was with the men who ran the newspaper, an old-boy group that had worked without direction from the onset of Phil's illness and showed an immediate incapacity to take her authority seriously. The mysterious ways that men, particularly newsmen, cement their friendships, helped along by Scotch, cigarettes, and girlie pictures coming in over the wire, produced a vision that allowed them to mistake femininity and shyness for weakness. She was a female animal, \"a shaky little doe on wobbly legs coming in out of the forest,\" as one of these men described her. She was a child, \"a new girl in school,\" a silly \"girl reporter,\" as she described herself, who apologized that she did not want to bother them with her questions, whereupon they told her \"good, don't.\"\n\nThey had many secrets and met after hours in wood-paneled restaurants to discuss what she should and should not be told about the newspaper. There were special arrangements with officials that gave the _Post_ its advantage in predicting and interpreting events to the public: inside information in exchange for sympathetic treatment of the government's position about a particular issue or event. If Katharine were aware of these complexities, the editors fretted, her enthusiasm for the government's cause might lead her to make the trades too cheaply; or, alternatively, she might invoke the ideal of journalistic independence and demand that the collaborations stop. The tradition of mediapolitics was too well established for them to risk interference; it was vital to the ways they chose to carry out their jobs. \"It was on this business that he had come to talk,\" wrote President Eisenhower's national security adviser Robert Cutler about _Post_ columnist Joseph Alsop. \"He spoke of 'confidants' in the press whom former Presidents had used to create a favorable background and of the benefit derived from that relationship. Such a person, trusted by a President, could provide an anonymous channel to help shape public opinion. I listened attentively,\" Cutler wrote. \"In 'our' case, [Alsop] went on, there could be a much closer relation of confidence. His family's tradition was Republican. He and I had known each other during his college days and had shared good times. . . . Naturally, he did not contemplate that I would reveal anything of a secret nature. But by periodically outlining background material I could provide enough orientation to make his column an authoritative, but of course anonymous, spokesman for the President without the world being aware of the source of the background. While there was no mention of 'exclusive,' I sensed that Joe anticipated such a sensible arrangement.\"*\n\nAlsop had been one of the men at the _Post_ when Katharine started there who took for granted that such \"arrangements\" served all interests. Officials had a forum for their views, newsmen had their sources, and readers were guided in forming their opinions. Alsop had been a minor columnist until World War II. Then he joined the navy, was sent to India, and became part of a semi-official, semimilitary outfit called the American Volunteer Group, or the Flying Tigers, run by retired general Claire Lee Chennault. General Chennault organized air defenses for Chiang Kai-shek in 1941; in 1942 he was returned to active military service and competed with General Joseph Stilwell for primacy of command of American forces in China. By 1943, Alsop was on General Chennault's personal staff as speechwriter, letter writer, and public relations aide.\n\nThe Flying Tigers was in part an intelligence operation set up to oppose Stilwell's even-handed treatment of the Nationalist and Communist armies, and Alsop was its propagandist. He supported Chennault \"fanatically,\" according to historian Barbara Tuchman. He was \"literate, excitable, and persuasive with just enough superficial acquaintance with the situation to be opinionated and to appear knowledgeable.\" Alsop wanted President Roosevelt to replace Stilwell with Chennault. He wrote repeatedly to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's special assistant, promoting Chennault's cause, asserting that Stilwell's command was \"a national tragedy . . . a national scandal . . . grossly dishonoring to President, Army, and country.\"* In this way, Alsop helped bring about Stilwell's removal from command in 1944. Later, in 1951, Alsop testified against Stilwell in front of the Senate Internal Security Committee, blaming him for Mao's Red Army's defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.\n\nAlsop's link to intelligence had made his journalistic career secure. After the war his columns became more informed, opinionated, anti-Communist, and doomsaying, and were understood to reflect official voices. He went on fact-finding trips for the newly formed CIA, which had absorbed the Flying Tigers, making him a very early Mockingbird. He later said, in defense of his activities, which he has never denied, that \"the notion that a newspaperman doesn't have a duty to his country is perfect balls.\" Phil Graham brought him to the _Post_ in 1958.\n\nThe theories of intelligence and propaganda (two aspects of the same activity: information handling for political ends) that had been developed in the twenties and thirties were tested and refined during World War II and simultaneously molded the men who put the theories into practice. Some of these men were the editors Philip Graham had hired to run the _Post_ \u2014men who, like Alsop, understood the role of information in promoting the national interest. James Russell Wiggins, the executive editor, had been an instructor at the Army Air Force Intelligence School, where he had trained officers, including Phil himself, in cable interception, code-breaking, and enemy disinformation\u2014a background that sensitized him less to the journalist's absolute duty to publish than to the dilemma, as he entitled his book, of _Freedom or Secrecy_* Chalmers Roberts, whom Katharine inherited as national affairs editor, had been a communications specialist in the Pentagon, part of the \"brotherhood of communications intelligence specialists,\" in the jargon, where he had intercepted and deciphered Japanese cables, one of the most sensitive jobs of the war. Membership in the \"brotherhood\" had endowed Roberts with a permanent trust; he had known, and as a newsman had never revealed, the details of Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He had been Phil's expert on diplomatic affairs at the _Post_ precisely because he knew what not to tell the public.\n\nThe Office of War Information had been one of two early agencies specifically built upon the new information theories. The other was the Economic Cooperation Administration, created after the war by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 to promote \"worldwide cultural information.\" The names Smith and Mundt stand with that of Nixon in sponsorship of laws in the late forties that were the darkest side of American post-war Cold Warriorism. To fight Communists within the United States, this team had pursued passage of laws that required fingerprinting and registration of aliens (the Smith Act); had tried to outlaw sedition (the Mundt-Nixon Bill); and had established both an attorney general's list and internment camps for subversives (the McCarran Act, pushed through jointly by McCarran, Mundt, and Nixon and incorporating the provisions of the failed sedition bill). The laws had enjoyed a degree of popular support, for Nixon had known then how to use the press.\n\nConceived by these minds, the \"worldwide cultural information\" that was to be perpetrated first on Europe, from Marshall Plan headquarters in Paris, had involved agents posing as journalists who planted inflammatory stories in European newspapers, and agents passing as labor union men who incited \"Communist\" riots. The purpose of such activities had been to create additional, \"deeper\" support for the Marshall Plan by provoking anti-Communist backlash. ECA, which administered Smith-Mundt funds, had also used Paris embassy personnel for propaganda and various other activities. In and around the Paris embassy during that time were to be found such future CIA legends as E. Howard Hunt, who was there in 1948 and 1949, two years before the arrival of Benjamin Bradlee. Also associated with the embassy was ECA's director of overseas information, a newsman named Alfred Friendly, whom Bradlee and Katharine Graham would later encounter as managing editor of the _Washington Post._ Interestingly, Friendly listed himself in the _International Who's Who_ as having been an employee of the _Post_ from 1939 through 1951, the period during which he also served in Air Force intelligence (1942-45) and as director of overseas information for ECA (1948-49).\n\nThe wartime privilege that the _Post_ editors enjoyed in helping to shape national security policy had become, as Katharine learned, a taste, a habit, and a world view. They were an informational elite who had moved naturally into defining national security issues throughout the Cold War\u2014and later for most of the Vietnam war\u2014always by the same three measures: American cultural dominance, American military dominance, Communism as a threat to the American way of life. They were sincere in saying that the news process is free, equally sincere in believing that national security information must be managed. The absence of sustained intellectual inquiry disqualified these contradictory views as a dialectic; one was a myth, the other a prejudice supported by the same assumption that had guided their war work, that information is a tool for the elite in manipulating the masses.\n\nThe information theories had developed in stages, modifying and then perverting the original reason for a free American press: that an enlightened citizenry is a political necessity in a democracy; that information is a citizen's power. In 1925 this basic tenet had been attacked by a political scientist named Walter Lippmann, later a _Post_ columnist, who wrote a book called _The Phantom Public_ in which he \"demolished whatever illusion existed that 'the public' could be regarded as a . . . collectivity equipped to decide the affairs of state.\"* His argument, extended over the years in other books, was circular. In 1925 he had said that \"average men\" exhaust their energies earning a living and do not need to be told about public matters. In 1955, in _The Public Philosophy,_ he then lamented that \"average men\" could not learn enough \"by glancing at newspapers\" and insisted that decisions ought to be left to those with \"experience and seasoned judgment.\" The \"duality of function\" between elite and masses is quite natural, he added, having \"a certain resemblance to that of the two sexes. In the act of reproduction each sex has an unalterable function. If this function is confused with the function of the other sex, the result is sterility and disorder.\"\u2020 Lippmann worried too that disorder would result if \"average men\" were free to speak, think, and criticize, a contention that he hoped would prove that the \"average man\" does not care about politics, but which in fact tended to prove the opposite.\n\nLippmann's seminal writings set the intellectual framework for other theorists, who were then able to \"tackle empirically the real issue\u2014what kinds of publics exist for what sort of messages?\"\u2014a line of thinking that accepted Lippmann's ideas as truth. The argument was first taken up by Harold Lasswell, also a political scientist, who wrote a book curiously entitled _Psychopathology and Politics_\u2021 in which he reaffirmed that superior information is power and admonished the elite to exercise it with \"prowess.\" They were, Lasswell said, to use \"communication in the achievement of preventive politics,\" a condition whereby the elite accept the \"burden\" of social administration and save the public from issues that \"would be detrimental to [its] interest.\" The elite save the public by withholding information from it. Additionally, Lasswell said that one of the tasks of the communications specialist is \"surveillance of the environment\" to find the preconceptions of the audience so that \"messages\" can be slanted appropriately.\n\nLasswell's work stimulated research on audiences, out of which grew the field of motivation research, the basis for both propaganda and advertising. The \"father of Madison Avenue\" was a sociologist, Bernard Berelson, who designed a method for \"content analysis\" of informational messages that allowed communicators to achieve more specific and predictable results. His colleague Paul Lazarsfeld, a German \u00e9migr\u00e9, conducted studies for the government in the 1930s on the psychological responses of radio audiences, a continuation of the motivation research he had contributed to German social science, which was later turned to the benefit of Adolf Hitler. These American studies had been most immediately of commercial interest, to help advertisers sell products, but they, like the German, soon became the foundation for wartime propaganda agencies, the Armed Forces Radio Network and the Office of War Information, and, after the war, ECA's Voice of America and the CIA's Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.\n\nGearing messages to different audiences and putting out information to evoke certain psychological responses are techniques that are not easily unlearned. The role that the _Post_ men played in creating consent for government policies was one that they continued to play at the _Post,_ with class consciousness but without self-consciousness. They were so completely the products of the information theories that they could see the world no differently, let alone explain their system of thinking to Katharine Graham. Alfred Friendly from ECA, Chalmers Roberts from the Pentagon, Russell Wiggins from the Intelligence School at Harrisburg, understanding themselves to be the elite, ran a newspaper that had a startling coincidence of interest with the government, a situation augmented by their ownership of nonvoting Post Company stock, which Phil had offered to eighteen executives in 1952 in place of a pension plan. The stock had encouraged them to think of the _Post_ as their company. Their dedication, despite the low salaries, had enabled Phil to build the _Post_ into the money-making corporation that it was when he died; but it also put Katharine in the position of confronting a group of near-millionaires with the claim that the _Post_ was hers, not theirs, while they jealously guarded their prerogatives as owner-managers.\n\nThe _Post_ was in many ways like other \"companies,\" as Walter Lippmann called the news organizations, fighting deadlines, living uneasily with unions, suffering with \"technical conditions [that] do not favor genuine and productive debate.\" But the _Post_ was also unique among news companies in that its managers, living and working in Washington, thought of themselves simultaneously as journalists, businessmen, and patriots, a state of mind that made them singularly able to expand the company while promoting the national interest (Bernard Baruch's idea of the \"essential oneness\" of corporate interests and the interests of the state). Their individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war; their secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning with MOCKINGBIRD. Philip Graham's commitment to intelligence had given his friends Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles an interest in helping to make the _Washington Post_ the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they had done by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the _Times-Herald_ and WTOP radio and television stations. The _Post_ executives most essential to these transactions, other than Phil, had been Wayne Coy, who had been Phil's former New Deal boss, and John S. Hayes, who replaced Coy in 1947 when Coy was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.\n\nThe acquisition of the _Times-Herald_ and WTOP was accomplished by men dedicated to Philip Graham's vision of journalism. Hayes had been commander of the Armed Forces Radio Network ETO (European Theater of Operations) and in that capacity had made intelligence connections all over Europe. He had come to the _Post,_ after turning the network to the service of the Marshall Plan, with the title of vice-president for radio and television. In Washington he had become friendly with Frank Wisner, father of MOCKINGBIRD, and with Allen Dulles, an OSS man who became the second director of the CIA in 1953. The relationship with Dulles was particularly important because of Dulles's ties to Wall Street, from which intelligence, industry, and government all draw their leaders. Between 1937 and 1943, before joining the OSS, Dulles had been a director of the Schroeder Bank, which had misjudged the oneness of corporate and national interests to the extent of helping to finance Hitler, because Hitler promised to stabilize the German economy. From his membership in the tiny merchant banking community, which included at any time only about a hundred active partners distributed among the Morgan, Lazard, Rothschild, Hambros, and Baring houses, Dulles had known and respected former Lazard partner Eugene Meyer. From his corporate law work at Sullivan and Cromwell, the preeminent foreign policy law firm in America, Dulles had become close to Post Company attorney Frederick S. Beebe of another foreign policy firm, Cravath, Swaine, and Moore. A quiet, thoughtful man, Beebe had been recruited out of Yale, 1938, by Cravath senior partner Roswell Gilpatric, later the assistant secretary of defense under Robert McNamara during the Vietnam war. At Cravath, Beebe was assigned to handle estate planning and other legal affairs for the Meyer family and eventually became their chief corporate as well as personal counsel, representing their interests in every significant transaction over three decades, including the legally complex, monopolistic acquisition of the _Times-Herald_ in 1954.\n\nThe merger with the _Times-Herald_ had been critical for Katharine's family, confirming their power and influence in Washington and making the paper financially \"safe enough for Donny.\" It had also been critical to Hayes, Phil Graham, Beebe, Wisner, and Dulles, men who had a political interest in her family's newspaper, because the _Times-Herald_ had maintained a bank of dossiers that it routinely made available to the FBI, the CIA's rival in domestic Cold War intelligence. When Colonel McCormick had decided to sell his nearly bankrupt Washington newspaper, he offered it to Eugene Meyer for eight and a half million dollars, about three times its value. John Hayes went to Chicago in March 1954 to make the initial payment in cash.\n\nThe merger had driven up the value of _Post_ stock and had made the executives richer. It also increased the CIA's access to information, news sources, and cooperative newsmen, to the benefit of MOCKINGBIRD, which Frank Wisner had been expanding throughout the Cold War. As early as 1948, Wisner had become fascinated with the possibilities of broadcasting and had conceived of two \"private\" broadcasting companies, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, that would monitor information transmissions from Communist countries in Europe. The information that the stations would pick up would serve two purposes: to enhance Wisner's intelligence network, and to form the basis of programs his people would broadcast to \"the captive peoples of Europe.\" Wisner had promoted his idea by organizing \"citizens' committees\" in New York and Washington, which placed advertisements in newspapers asking for donations to pay for the stations' programming. Wisner's dream had been realized in 1949 when Wayne Coy, in his capacity as FCC chairman, had attended the World Administrative Radio Conference in Paris, where he negotiated to set up stations for Free Europe and Liberty in Germany and Portugal. While in Paris, Coy had lived at the elegant Hotel Continental, temporary home of many Americans working for the Marshall Plan, and he and Phil Graham had carried on an interesting correspondence. \"I am glad to hear that you are getting the _Post,\"_ Phil wrote in July of that year, \"and I shall pass this information along to our efficient______ [the CIA agent who delivered the _Post_ to Coy daily]. Your suggestion about destruction of the files when parties are found loyal is probably theoretically all right, but practically I think perpetuation of the files, for some time at least, is one of the evils inherent in a world where Communist conspiracy exists.\" In 1950 Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty established headquarters in Munich and began broadcasting to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. In 1976 the board of directors of the two stations appointed as its chairman former Post Company vice-president for radio and television John S. Hayes.\n\nHayes had been able to contribute to Post Company broadcasting largely because of his wartime acquaintance with Colonel William S. Paley, the founder and chairman of the board of CBS. Paley was a businessman who believed that the commercial media, as well as the military, must develop \"all manner of propaganda\" to help in the war effort; Hayes was the director of a radio network that was the military extension of Paley's commercial network. When Hayes came to the _Post,_ which then owned only one local radio station, he looked to Paley, who owned a Washington radio outlet, as the company's entree into national broadcasting.\n\nPaley's own friendship with Allen Dulles is now known to have been one of the most influential and significant in the communications industry. He provided cover for CIA agents, supplied out-takes of news film, permitted the debriefing of reporters, and in many ways set the standard for the cooperation between the CIA and the major broadcast companies which lasted until the mid-1970s. But in 1948, despite the mutual intelligence connections, when Hayes and Graham asked to buy WTOP-CBS radio, Paley had refused to sell. Within a year, though, an arrangement was worked out, Dulles having spoken of Graham and Hayes to Paley, and fifty-five percent of the WTOP stock was transferred to the Post Company. Wayne Coy at the FCC approved the license reassignment, and CBS and the _Post_ began sharing their Washington news staffs (reporters then worked interchangeably for print and broadcast). In 1950 Phil then bought a small Washington television station, license approved by Wayne Coy, and changed its call letters to WTOP-TV; it became a CBS affiliate. That year he and Hayes also hired a news analyst who for two years after the war had been chief correspondent for United Press International in Moscow, a man who had experience with American intelligence and was also endowed with a good television presence; the man's name was Walter Cronkite. He soon worked his way onto the network staff.\n\nPaley sold the remaining WTOP stock to Phil in 1953, a year before Wayne Coy died, giving the Washington Post Company complete control over the CBS radio and television outlets in Washington, which it retained until required by law to sell the television station in 1977. The _Post_ men continued to see Paley and Cronkite every Christmas at a dinner given by Allen Dulles at a private club called the Alibi. The club is in an old, dark, red brick townhouse in the middle of downtown Washington, the only house on a block of office buildings. It bears a simple brass plaque and brass doorknob; membership is limited to men in or close to intelligence and is by invitation only.\n\n* * *\n\nTHESE men believed that Katharine, who had come by the paper \"through matrimony and patrimony\" rather than by merit, had no need to understand either the philosophy or the particular arrangements that characterized the _Washington Post_ in 1963, when Phil died and Kennedy was president. She needed simply not to sell the paper and not to ask questions, so that Phil's executives could continue their control. President Kennedy had warned the American Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27, 1961, one week after the failure of his Bay of Pigs invasion (reports of which Katharine had watched on television with her mother at Crescent Place), that \"in time of war, the government and the press have customarily joined in an effort, based largely on self-discipline, to prevent unauthorized disclosures to the enemy. In times of clear and present danger, the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the publics need for national security.\n\n\"Today no war has been declared,\" Kennedy had continued, \"and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.\n\n\"If the press is waiting for a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions,\" the president had concluded, \"then I can only say that no war has ever imposed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of 'clear and present danger,' then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent. . . .\"\n\nThis philosophy, which remained in force throughout the Kennedy years, flattered the newsmen into thinking they had an active role to play in helping the president do his difficult job. Kennedy had exploited that desire during the Berlin crisis, when he took the Grahams with him to the Berlin Wall, where they had all wept, and during the Cuban missile crisis, when Kennedy had asked Phil, while Katharine's mother raged against the secrecy of the \"inner ring,\" not to publish anything about American troop movements before he presented his ultimatum to Khrushchev. After Phil's death he exploited it further, by using the resources of Katharine's newspaper for a strictly political task. Without asking Katharine, Kennedy appointed John Hayes, still the Post Company's vice-president for radio and television, to a secret CIA task force to explore methods of beaming American propaganda broadcasts to Communist China. The other members of the team were Richard Salant, president of CBS News; Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University who had been on the agency payroll for several years; Cord Meyer of the CIA; McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the president for national security; Leonard Marks, director of the USIA; Bill Moyers, who went on to become a distinguished and highly independent journalist for CBS and then for PBS; and Paul Henze, * the CIA chief of station in Ethiopia who had established secret communications capabilities there and who later worked on African problems for Brzezinski in the Carter White House. Hayes's lack of concern for Katharine's authority was such that he did not tell her, or ask her, but he did clear his participation in the project, which was activated in late 1964, with Frederick Beebe, * who had given up law at Phil's request to become chairman of the board of the Post Company in 1961, two years after Eugene Meyer, who had been chairman, had died. Beebe did not tell Katharine either; although she was only three years his junior, she was like a daughter to him.\n\nKatharine's struggle to control her newspaper was defined, and complicated, by this array of issues: conceited and patronizing men; politics, money, power; the manipulative nature of intelligence, editorial opinion, and news; her lack of belief in her own abilities and in the quality of her intellect; her guilt and sorrow that Phil's death had been her opportunity to learn and to grow. Her struggle was simplified by a feeling for business, from her father, and ambition, from her mother; her class consciousness; her belief in the careful and benevolent uses of information; her pride; and her determination, twenty-three years after she had made her marriage, to finally get hold of what was hers.\n\nJournalism during the Kennedy years was not what it had been at the San Francisco dockyards in 1939, and the difference was not merely one of perception. Katharine's crisp, articulate narratives about union organizing among seamen during the Roosevelt years had been journalism in the old sense, good writing on a worthy subject. President Roosevelt had been an idealist, and journalism during Katharine's youth had reflected that. National journalism under Kennedy, though, seemed to be a series of arguments disguised as news: points in question, matters of contention, major developments, all supporting Kennedy's main theme: Americas intentions toward the \"enemy,\" Kennedy's personal courage against the Communist \"danger.\" His ruthless glamour\u2014a word that once meant \"the association of erudition with occult practices\"\u2014was his political device, toward his friends as well as toward the public, and particularly toward journalists through whom he spoke to the public. His preeminent journalist friend was Benjamin Bradlee, whom Katharine found on her payroll as Washington bureau chief of _Newsweek._ Bradlee produced stories and covers at Kennedy's casual hints but rarely printed what Kennedy did not want him to print (when he once did, Kennedy ostracized him for three months, and Bradlee learned his lesson). Bradlee later wrote a memoir of his relationship with Kennedy, parts of which read almost like a manual for the political use of journalists, _Conversations with Kennedy_.*\n\nBradlee's work and the work that John Hayes performed for the CIA were mediapolitics at its extreme, the conversion of political secrets into corporate secrets, to the public's detriment. This practice, the old intelligence principle translated, contained the seeds of political blackmail: once the newsman or his organization has been compromised, the politician can threaten to expose his lack of independence unless he cooperates further. Many Mockingbirds have been faced with this choice. After Katharine took over the company, the implicit threat to her employees was that she could be informed about them, and that the knowledge would hurt her. She did not learn of Hayes's involvement with the CIA until Carl Bernstein, the co-author of the _Post's_ shattering Watergate stories, wrote \"The CIA and the Media\" in 1977.\u2020 She has never learned everything about Bradlee's role in the _Post_ getting the Watergate story.\n\nLess dramatic, more pervasive than threats, was a body of etiquette that dignified most government-news relationships during the Kennedy years, allowing for routine cooperation even on, or especially on, sensitive subjects. This etiquette, to which all media people in Washington subscribed to some degree, was further codified, and made a formal part of the news process, by _Post_ managing editor Alfred Friendly in 1958.\n\n\"We do not make the circumstances under which some information is available,\" Friendly wrote in a staff memo that was quickly embraced throughout the industry. \"They exist. We have to live with them. It is the purpose of this memorandum to make it more convenient to live with them and to minimize the possibilities of misunderstanding between the newspapers and our colleagues and our sources. . . . Off the record,\" Friendly said, means that a reporter \"may not use [the information] in anything he writes, even without attribution to the source, however guarded. A violation of a confidence of this kind is considered, and properly, a cardinal newspaper sin. . . . For background only\" refers to a variety of forms of attribution other than by name. \"In such cases,\" Friendly instructed, \"the reporter may not, of course, identify the source and may not hint at, imply or suggest his identity. In some cases, the source may insist that no attribution be given even to [his] agency. . . .\" Friendly advised reporters to accept precise wording of attribution as the source specifies it. \"In all circumstances, and whatever the conventions stated or implied,6 remember that a cheap [scoop], won by cutting a corner, by a technicality, or by violating the spirit if not the letter of the understanding of the news sources . . . is empty, usually worthless, and is followed by penalties and regrets far heavier and longer enduring than any momentary gains that are obtained.\"*\n\nImplicit in Friendly's memo was the understanding that \"off the record\" is a politician's way of saying, \"I will now tell you why you should let me deceive the public.\" Like \"background,\" and to extend the absurdity, \"deep background,\" all essential tools of mediapolitics, it helps reassure the politician or other source that if he confides in a newsman, he will get the better of the exchange,\u2020 It is asking a journalist, whose job is to report, not to report, on the promise that he will get another piece of information at another time that he will be permitted to report. Or it is asking him to report something different from what he knows.\n\nNo matter how Friendly reached the decision that stories obtained outside the boundaries of his system were \"empty, usually worthless,\" such stories were scarcely seen during the glamorous Kennedy years. For example, the _Post_ editors promoted official opinion about the Cuban threat before the Bay of Pigs invasion from the moment Kennedy took office, but did not report their prior knowledge of the invasion itself. They minimized critical news coverage the following year of the Cuban missile crisis; and in December 1962 the military issued a set of instructions entitled \"Ground Rules for Discussion with the Press, Interviews, Press Conferences and Press Briefings,\" modeled after Friendly's rules, which the army used in handling the journalists who were beginning to arrive in South Vietnam.\n\nAll of these inhibiting guidelines helped to produce the harmless Vietnam reportage that later made the Pentagon Papers, released in 1971, so shocking. They created a climate in which Katharine Graham, by publishing them, suddenly achieved national prominence, despite the fact that her newspaper had provided neither criticism nor serious analysis of the war throughout the 1960s and in fact had been disparaging in its coverage of the anti-war movement.\n\n* * *\n\nAGAINST this difficult and intriguing backdrop, Katharine Graham, a society woman newly widowed, tried to make a place for herself in the company that her family had built and that she now controlled in name but not in practice. The _Post_ was the Meyer family's identity, and without it, as Agnes had once remarked about Phil, she, the children, and the grandchildren would have \"no position at all.\"\n\nNow the custodian of the family's fortunes, she was to some extent still immobilized by widowhood and still longed for the protection of the husband who had abused her and for the wisdom of the childish man who had elevated himself at her expense. Phil, the poor boy from Florida, had cut away at her self-esteem throughout their marriage. His themes had been the two areas where she felt most vulnerable, her intellect and her heritage. \"I think to some extent you suffer from not being brought up by more cultured parents,\" Phil had told Donny and Lally in 1960, when they were both near college age. \"Also you suffer from living in a secular home in a secular era.\" The latter referred to Katharine's lack of Jewishness, and therefore to her Jewishness. There had been discussions of her weight, her thin gray hair; Lally had been told to try to be \"better\" than her mother. Yet the widow mourned her dead husband. \"There is no recovery really from grief,\" Katharine told a friend, \"\u2014even the void left by having to take care of someone who isn't well. . . .\" She suspected the attentions of other men (there were many, whom she called \"vultures\") as designs upon the family business; she decided early into her life alone not to marry again. \"There is no recovery really from grief . . . but after some time passes, you become someone else.\"*\n\nA long-buried personality began to find its way to the surface. A feminine head of the family who disliked masculine women (defining as masculine any attitude in a woman that was not of a piece with \"Wear the yellow one for me Friday night\"), she was also genuinely assertive, temperamental, hard-minded. It had been she, for instance, who did not allow the children to smoke (the youngest boy, Stephen, rebelliously became a heavy smoker) and who insisted, along with Agnes, that they take their schoolwork seriously, an opportunity for their father to tell them not to become \"greasy-grinds,\" that mother and \"grandma [are] full of baloney.\" Yet she paradoxically allowed Lally to travel alone in Europe with a boyfriend the summer of her father's death and invited both of them to stay for a week on the yacht in the Aegean, where she had gone with Agnes. At least one of them could afford to have a love affair.\n\nKatharine had within her a capacity for action, anger, spontaneity, boldness. As a product of wealth, she knew to pay experts to bring out her desirable characteristics: speech from a dramatics professor, resulting in a low, sluggish, throaty finishing-school voice; hair styling from Kenneth; straight, narrow dresses from Halston. Femininity, but effective femininity, was the style she cultivated. As she gained control of her business, more than one man would be touched\u2014in both senses of the word\u2014by it.\n\nSome time after Katharine began her efforts to appear to be coolly at ease, a good appearance being half the battle (although closely bitten nails gave her away), a friend remarked that she was once again as she had been at the University of Chicago, which was to say, happy. And she was; it was the surprised happiness of a woman overreaching herself and finding that the impossible was within her grasp after all.\n\nShe was of course a different woman now. Student radicalism was half a lifetime ago. She was now frankly interested in money, power, position. Each new issue among Washington society was grist for the mill, none a matter worthy of great passion. Unlike her mother, who was always something of an outcast precisely because of her endless political passions\u2014poverty, civil rights, peace, public education, Israel, Adlai Stevenson\u2014Katharine's fight was for herself. That is how she ran her newspaper business. Money, power, and position became her corporate tools, and issues were the corporate raw materials, to be reported, edited, printed, folded, delivered, consumed, and discarded. Her preference for management, where judgments are impersonal and can be mathematically calculated, enabled her to build the _Post_ into an important newspaper while remaining relatively unconcerned with the complexity of political issues. A person in the news who caught her interest might be invited to the _Post_ for a seminar luncheon in her private dining room with a few key editors and reporters; but the greatest part of her energy was spent on management and finance. Sophisticated management techniques would come with time; at the beginning, Katharine achieved control of the company by following her father's three basic rules of business: \"Know everything there is to know, work harder than anybody else, and be absolutely honest.\"\n\nIn a family business, management problems often become personal battles. Executive maneuverings can be perceived as intrigues and betrayals, and union demands for more money or greater control in the workplace can be interpreted by the owners as a repudiation of their efforts to treat their workers fairly. \"[Managing editor William] Haggard, threatened by the improvements in efficiency . . . began to buck and finally resigned,\" Agnes had confided to Katharine, away at Vassar, in 1935. \"As Dad accepted his resignation on the spot he tried to start an insurrection and got twelve people to hand in their resignations with him. . . . It was rather upsetting to everybody but Dad who cannot be threatened. . . . From some rumours that we have, it looks like a very deep plot about which I cannot write you.\" Katharine's thirty-year association of employee activity with distress for her family and her quite reasonable mistrust of the executives caused her to turn for help, when she became publisher, to men she knew were absolutely loyal to the Meyer-Graham cause. That meant absolutely loyal to her.\n\nSoon after taking over, Katharine made an offer to James Reston, the _New York Times_ columnist, whose relationship with the family was such that Phil had named him as guardian of the Graham children should he and Katharine both die, and had left him and his wife one hundred thousand dollars. Reston had lived and worked in Washington since 1941 and, like Katharine's own editors, was deeply on the inside. But he was also in the awkward position, when Katharine approached him, of being out of favor with his superiors in New York for having fallen victim to his own connections. The _Times_ felt that to be one of the hazards of the Washington beat. Reston, his bosses felt, was too \"impressed by pleas that printing certain stories might go against the national interest . . . [and] allowed his news judgment to be influenced by his patriotism\"*\u2014a reference to his advice prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion that the _Times_ not print a story about the plans on the grounds of national security. \"Jack Kennedy was in no mood\" to call it off, the well-informed Reston had told his newspaper.\n\nThe _Times_ consequently ran a vague story about an invasion that was vaguely being planned, not mentioning that the target country was Cuba. When Kennedy later told the _Times_ that a strong story might have prevented the invasion, that they should have run one, Reston began to notice his exclusion from high editorial and management conferences. Katharine then told him what he could have if he came to her newspaper: stock, editorial authority, a column, a large amount of money. She would make him rich. She needed him. Reston took nearly a year to decide that bad treatment at the _Times_ was preferable to being honored at the _Post,_ so great was the difference in prestige of the two papers. Reston continued to advise her, while telling other prominent Washington men, all of whom very much wanted to know, that Katharine was looking for someone who would be more than just another employee. In those days she made no secret of needing help and support; only later did she grow harder, tougher. But even years into her publishership, when she was secure in her power, every man who was able to work successfully with her saw her vulnerability as well as her toughness, and learned to treat her not only as a woman who commands respect but also as one who has suffered.\n\nKatharine wanted to find a man, at the beginning of her struggle to take control of the _Post,_ who would be simultaneously her confidant and corporate lieutenant and would teach her to run a multimillion-dollar company without thinking that it was his company. She needed someone to control both labor unions and executives for her but not himself usurp her power, someone who would help sustain her emotionally during this difficult time yet never come too close. Interested neither in remarriage nor in romance, she looked for a man who for her purposes would be better than a husband, and her search became a critical part of her life alone, the life of a woman running a complicated, profitable, politically sensitive, and strike-prone business.\n\nIt was this continual danger of strikes that soon reduced Reston's refusal to insignificance. Her most immediate problems, she found, were labor problems, for which Reston's political acumen would have been useless. In December 1964, the American Newspaper Guild, to which she had belonged as a young reporter in San Francisco, threatened to strike the _Washington Post._ The Guild rejected an offer that Katharine considered to be fair, and federal mediators finally forced the inexperienced publisher to grant contracts under which _Post_ reporters would be paid two hundred dollars a week, at that time the highest reporters' salaries in the United States. This humiliating defeat was the beginning of Katharine's legendary anti-unionism and brought her to depend upon a man in her employ named Jack Patterson, who had built a career fighting newspaper unions. He was an unlikely ally of humble origins, but he was there for her when she needed him\u2014not her mythical perfect man, as Phil had once been, but a strong and good man who had also suffered, and whose own fight was as personal as hers.\n\nPatterson had been at the _Post_ for eleven years by the time Katharine became publisher. He was not of the East, not \"one of the boys,\" a man much too hardworking to have time for the social life in Washington and too unpolished to have been included. But he had worked as intimately with Philip Graham to build the _Post_ as had any of Phil's sophisticated editors, and so, because it was a family business, the Pattersons and the Grahams knew each other well.\n\nAs a young man, Patterson had dreamed of becoming a doctor and had supported his family by working nights as a distributor for the _Seattle Star,_ sitting at an outpost and parceling out newspapers to small delivery trucks, while studying science during the day. He was repeatedly denied admission to medical school and channeled his energy and frustration into his newspaper job, determined to break into the upper ranks of management. The _Star,_ like its chief competitor, the _Seattle Post-Intelligencer,_ employed truckers for distribution who were members of the Teamsters Union, which Patterson, who did not want to be labor yet was forced to work among labor, hated for its corruption, inefficiency, and violence. He became the _Star's_ circulation manager, distributing newspapers from a desk inside the printing plant instead of in the field. He tried to improve the distribution system, clashed with the union, and felt its muscle. Over the next fifteen years, as publishers competed among themselves for greater shares of the urban and suburban market and home delivery became an increasingly important way to control the market, Patterson followed better jobs around the West: home delivery manager of the _San Francisco Chronicle,_ circulation director of the _Los Angeles Mirror,_ promotion director and assistant to the publisher of the _San Antonio Light._ Whenever he tried to implement smoother, more profitable distribution systems, the Teamsters opposed him and made his work difficult. But his reputation as a union fighter spread. Philip Graham heard about him in 1952 and offered him a job at the _Washington Post,_ where the Teamsters had never taken hold.\n\nFor all his efforts, Patterson and his family still had precious little, and Graham could give them little more. They came to Washington without savings and moved into a cramped apartment. Patterson started at the financially shaky newspaper as assistant circulation director, with a salary insufficient to support a wife and children and \"a block of shares of worthless stock.\" He found a young publisher who had unlimited access to his father-in-law's fortune, who was running the paper at a deficit, and who had identified union wage demands as a major cause. The publisher said that he wanted to control his workers, but he seemed constitutionally unable to do so; he sometimes provoked confrontations with them, but more often he drank and joked with them and signed overly generous contracts, a symptom of his obsession with being universally loved. \"The weekend was quiet except for the threatened strike Sunday night which didn't come off,\" Katharine wrote to her mother in 1950. Phil had become excited by developments at the _Miami Herald,_ where automation had produced the dual effects of saving money and cutting into union strength. Katharine told her mother that Phil felt the threatened strike might materialize later in the week, but that the union knew about his enthusiasm for what the Miami newspaper had done and therefore might not risk a strike at all.\n\nWhile Phil ran the _Post_ on his wife's father's money, which made the problem of the union's growing power less urgent to Phil than it was to Katharine, Jack Patterson was fighting organizers who stepped onto the _Post's_ premises. His son remembers bomb threats, menacing phone calls, men in trucks parked for hours outside the building where they lived. More than once, Patterson was jumped by thugs and came home with knife slashes across his face. While Phil dabbled in politics, Katharine visited the families of employees. She visited Patterson's home, saw how poorly he and his wife and children were living, and out of her personal funds repaid the Pattersons for some of the danger by helping them to buy their own small house.\n\nPhil's death enabled Patterson to return the kindness. Mrs. Philip L. Graham, as the widow called herself, needed at least one of Phil's men not to resent her and shut her out, but to spend time simply talking with her, explaining the business and encouraging her to be strong. As she emerged from her netherworld, confronted first with editors who acted like management and then with writers who banded together against her like labor, she needed to be told how to achieve control. The confused company records that she found upon Phil's death, the fragmented authority, the easygoing labor policy, his having given the unions a \"stake in the _Washington Post\"_ through profit-sharing because he lacked the money for a pension plan\u2014these practices, all of which grew in some way out of Phil's character, suddenly seemed to Katharine, who knew something about business, to have been rather amateurish. They left her in the position of keeping alive an idealized memory of her dead husband (he was still her husband) while asking Patterson to help her reverse the damage Phil had done.\n\nPatterson saw that this shy, aloof nervous, and brittle woman was resented merely for replacing the outgoing, casual Philip Graham. But being ill at ease as a publisher, as she was as a widow, she also provoked other sentiments. Either she was pitied because she was probably not going to be able to do his work, or she was a bitch because in spite of the tragedy, she could. The ability of that common English word to convey an escalating series of derogatory ideas about a woman\u2014assertive, therefore domineering, therefore spiteful, therefore sexually frustrated, therefore driven to success (if she is a successful bitch) by her psychological problems\u2014makes it a persuasive deterrent to feminine action. In spite of this, Katharine developed an ability to control the corporation, to master its men and resources, and to \"work them\" efficiently. She made the _Post_ economically dominant in the Washington news market, which directly and distinctly contributed to her political power. Economic dominance within the capital city enabled Katharine Graham to become a publisher-hostess (unavoidably a political force, a political actor) known for her grace, confidence, and gentility; although her hard business methods cannot be separated from her public, polite journalist's life\u2014they are its foundation and its means.\n\nPatterson's advice was her preliminary training for power. His techniques, developed over a lifetime of personal struggle, were pragmatic to the point of being almost cruel. Do not care about being loved, he told her after the Guild action the year after Phil's death; that had been Phil's mistake. Care only about respect. It is better to be feared than to be taunted. Do not ask for loyalty, demand it; make the workers know that they are working for you. Use rewards and punishments to divide the union men against one another. Take union officers into your confidence, give them responsibility, a taste of the privileges that come with management. Ask them to understand your problems during contract negotiations. If they remain militantly pro-union, tell the men that their leaders are not bargaining in good faith, which will create dissension between the leaders and their men. Make plans to automate, as the unions have asked you to do, thinking that new equipment will make their work easier; but instead of retraining them, as they expect, bring in nonunion workers to run the new machines. Turn the Guild victory into your act of goodwill; acknowledge that the Guild's wage demands were an effort to achieve dignity and professional status, and announce that the _Washington Post_ is the first newspaper in the country to pay reporters professional-level salaries. Professional men do not have much interest in unions; they like to think they are working for themselves, or for you; they compete against rather than ally themselves with their colleagues.\n\nIn her effort to become an exemplary manager, Katharine departed radically from the ideas of the family in whose name she was running the newspaper. If she avoided Phil's foolish excesses, she also betrayed her mother's commitment to social justice and her father's Jewish philanthropic tradition. His rules\u2014to know, to work, to be honest\u2014had been the rules of wisdom, not coercion. Eugene Meyer too had had management problems, but he had treated the unions as if they were part of the publishing process and in 1951 had been made an honorary member of the pressmen's union, Local 6. Twenty-five years later, in 1976, Katharine would break her father's favorite union by deciding to \"take a strike\"\u2014the union would say she deliberately provoked the strike\u2014and by then hiring scabs at wages above the industry standard. (\"Please be advised,\" the ad for new pressmen read, \"that we are seeking replacements for strikers.\")\n\nThose negotiations, on the surface, were about automation and the attrition of pressmen's jobs, but the real issue was control of what she considered to be her property. Katharine, by then more secure in her power, said that the pressmen enjoyed too much autonomy inside her pressroom, and presented them with terms which, had they accepted, would have completely changed the nature of their work environment and made them feel like \"chattel,\" as one pressman put it, rather than allowing them the respect due to them as skilled craftsmen. The strike left damaged presses, criminal prosecutions against some of the pressmen charged with sabotage of machinery, a suicide of one pressman too old to find other work, bitterness and demoralization among a number of working class families, and a savings in labor costs for Katharine of three million dollars for that year\u2014the same amount she then spent a few months later on a party at the New York headquarters of _Newsweek._ The 1976 strike of the pressmen's union Local 6 at the _Washington Post_ is remembered as one of the most painful and unnecessary union-busting episodes in the history of the American newspaper industry, and some of her oldest family friends, including Joseph Rauh, the civil liberties lawyer, had great difficulty forgiving her for it.\n\nAlthough it was her choice to put the prerogative to manage above the cost of broken lives, Katharine was nevertheless so personally distressed by the actual experience of breaking the pressmen's union that Ben Bradlee and other editors took bets on whether or not she would be able to see it through without backing down. What upset her the most were the pressmen's wives who stood vigil outside the gates of her Georgetown home every Sunday, telling her to her face that \"you live in luxury; your family will never have to do without,\" and \"you're Jewish, you should know what oppression is.\" Katharine seemed so disturbed by their presence, one woman remembers, that it was not easy for her to enter or leave her property unaccompanied. Once she ventured through the gates on the fatherly arm of Clark Clifford. This was more protection than she could get at the newspaper, where one pressman continually paced back and forth outside the building carrying a picket sign that announced, \"Phil shot the wrong Graham.\"\n\nOne of the wives sent Katharine handwritten letters on lined notebook paper about the effect that her actions were having on her husband, a \"trustworthy, good and loving father who has raised four children\" and was \"now being stripped of his dignity,\" the woman wrote. \"You may have acheived [ _sic_ ] in breaking people's spirits . . . but I feel this is not a victory for you because I am sure you have some feelings left inside your harder shell. . . this is ill-gotten money. . . . You, with some of your trials and struggles of life . . . as a wife, daughter and mother, must be able to see what you have done.\"\n\nKatharine had told newspaper reporters that if the union accepted her final offer rather than striking \"I would have slit my throat.\" She had also met reluctantly with AFL-CIO president George Meany about the pressmen, at his insistence, after which Meany remarked only, \"she said no,\" and shrugged his shoulders. She wrote back to the pressman's wife, \"I have great sympathy for the plight of the members of Local 6 and very much wish the leaders of the union had been willing to take the course of negotiation. Failing this, I also wish more members had come back as individuals. . . . The grand jury proceedings [concerning the damaged presses] were not instituted or prosecuted, nor could they have been, by the Post Company. Nor would we try to interfere with judicial proceedings in any way at all.\" Katharine had told police that the damage to the pressroom on the first night of the strike, when the presses were disabled, ran to several million dollars, and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia therefore charged more than twenty pressmen with conspiracy, arson, and other felonies. Investigators later determined that actual damages were about thirteen thousand dollars, and the charges against most of the men were dropped for lack of evidence. The rest of them had their cases reduced to destruction of property and disorderly conduct, and served their time in halfway houses on work-release. Ten years later, after most of the pressmen and their families had scattered, one pressman's son found employment in the _Post's_ mail-room. With hard work, he overcame his father's reputation as a troublemaker and was promoted to foreman.\n\nFrom the beginning of her tenure as publisher in 1963, her anti-unionism, her publicly stated belief that \"unions interfere with freedom of the press\" and that they \"come between management and its employees,\" dictated her relations with a series of executives brought in to work with herself and Patterson. Each of these men she hired with high hopes, paid a salary of one hundred thousand dollars a year or more, assigned entire areas of the corporation to manage, and abruptly fired when they failed to control the unions to her satisfaction. One of them was former Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius, her executive vice-president for labor negotiations, whom she hired in 1969 at the suggestion of Robert McNamara (Ignatius was to bring McNamara's military cost-accounting methods to the _Post)_ and fired in 1971 because he spent weekends at his farm instead of learning the labor operation intimately by \"riding the trucks.\" Ignatius, however, remained a family friend, and she later hired his son David, an intelligence reporter for the _Wall Street Journal,_ as an assistant editor. He quickly worked his way up to foreign editor.\n\nThe upheavals, sacrifices, and bloodletting that took place during Katharine's first five years produced a pretax corporate profit that was double in 1969 what it had been when Phil died in 1963. Some of that profit came from money saved by stringent labor policies; a good deal more came from advertising. Readers had been increasingly drawn to the paper by the editorial flash of Ben Bradlee and his brilliant roster of reporters, costly though they were. By 1969 the _Post_ was attracting more than half the advertising revenue available in the Washington market, more than the _Star_ and the _Daily News_ combined.* This ability to attract advertising was Patterson's triumph, not only because it made the _Post_ economically the strongest of any Washington paper, but because it made him, once the owner of \"a block of shares of worthless stock,\" a wealthy man.\n\nMoney did not make up for the long hours spent away from his family, however. Patterson's wife, who had lived for years with him on the underside of the _Post's_ corporate world, grew increasingly unhappy the closer they came to being part of the Washington elite. After Mrs. Patterson threatened to leave the city without Jack, and after she had left and bought a home on an island in Canada with some of their money and another home in Florida, Patterson was promoted to corporate vice-president in 1974. His promotion followed a traumatic Newspaper Guild strike at the _Post._ He was promoted again, to senior vice-president, in 1979, three years after the pressmen's strike. Whenever possible he visits his wife, whom he has not divorced. And he continues to work for Katharine, who, although she has become the nation's top female business executive, the chairman of the board of a Fortune 500 corporation, and employer of a number of highly trained business executives, still relies upon his fundamental strength.\n\nThere were limits, however, from the beginning, to what Patterson could do for her. The purpose of a corporation is to distribute its products and make money, and for this Patterson would have been valuable anywhere. But the \"higher,\" more prestigious activities of this particular corporation\u2014the use of information, political influence, pursuit of \"the public welfare\"\u2014were in the hands of men whose secrets Patterson did not know. The ethic of the news industry was that he ought not to know them, that publishers should have goals for society that are separate from the inelegant necessity of using somebody like Patterson to solve their distribution and personnel problems. Publishers want to make money, but want to speak only about their contributions to the social order.\n\nIn spite of the editors' lack of respect for their publisher, Katharine was one of them. As a member of a newspaper family, she believed in the power of information. She believed that information should be used responsibly, for the public interest, and at first she believed that those who controlled information in Washington, the people with whom she socialized, the men who had worked for Phil but did not want to work for her, were capable of judging what the public interest was.\n\nKatharine wanted to be a publisher with worldly concerns, confident, respected. Her presumed lack of ability\u2014Washington's hottest piece of gossip, fueled by the lamentations of her editors in their private men's clubs\u2014caused her great anguish. These men neither sheltered her from the routine pressures she began to feel as a publisher\u2014complaints about inaccuracy, bias, mistrust, betrayal\u2014nor prepared her for approaches that would be made toward her, the attempts by politicians to \"get to her,\" to flatter or threaten her, during major political events.\n\nThe first of these was the Republican National Convention held in San Francisco in July 1964, when Barry Goldwater was nominated to run for president against Lyndon Johnson. Katharine attended with her daughter, while her editors went on their own, and she was shocked to witness Republican antipathy toward the entire eastern \"liberal\" press. Former president Eisenhower delivered a twenty-minute speech attacking \"sensation-seeking columnists and commentators\" that drew cheers from the audience, and Richard Nixon, who two years earlier had lost his bid for the governorship of California and was consequently looking for a national issue, echoed Eisenhower. Among the various ideas emerged Goldwater's conviction that the press was Communist because the reporters' union, like all unions, was Communist: \"If this country of ours ever falls,\" warned Goldwater, \"go back to the day [in 1933 when _New York Post_ columnist Heywood] Broun founded the American Newspaper Guild.\"\n\nFrom the Republican experience with the pro-Kennedy press, in particular with Phil Graham's _Post_ inside Washington and his national magazine _Newsweek,_ came a media theory that served the Republicans well over the next decade, particularly in 1968 and 1972 as a campaign issue for Richard Nixon. From the Democratic experience with the _Post_ came the assumption of Katharine's unqualified support. After the Democratic convention the following month in Atlantic City, to which Katharine again took Lally and where she was among friends, Lyndon Johnson treated her solicitously, and afterward took her to his ranch. As a result, Katharine became one of Johnson's strongest supporters for the remaining years of his presidency.\n\nShe had planned to leave Atlantic City with Lally on a chartered Martin, a fifty-passenger twin-engine plane, and was waiting with her at the airport when Johnson arrived by helicopter to board Air Force One. He saw Katharine, insisted that she accompany him to Texas, and sent Secret Service agents to find her bags while Lally returned home. On board the presidential aircraft, Katharine congratulated Johnson on his nomination and his selection of Humphrey as running mate. Johnson said that when he dumped the \"Cabinet\" (his euphemism for Bobby Kennedy), he had to be sure to get the right man with widespread support. In the end, said Johnson, the Kennedys and other vital people were all pushing him to have Humphrey, which was exactly as he wished it to happen.\n\nAfter the amenities, Katharine became uncomfortably aware, also as Johnson wished it to happen, that this friendly trip was going to have its price. He started to talk about Phil; Phil had always thought he (Johnson) was better than other people did; he owed his nomination to Phil. Then he assessed Phil's reporters: he had not at first trusted Ben Bradlee, then of _Newsweek,_ but was very impressed with the accuracy of his report of an interview with him and now did trust him.\n\nAt the Johnson ranch the president escorted Katharine through picnics, waterskiing, a visit to his aged aunt, all with a conspicuous absence of pressure. At the end of her few days in his home, Katharine asked for a minute alone with him. He took her into his bedroom; she sat on a chair while he lay down on the bed. Anxious to explain herself to the president, Katharine talked of her feeling that Johnson had separated her in his mind from Phil, that in general she thought the two of them were in agreement politically, that as much as she had admired President Kennedy, Phil had gotten along with him better than she had. She told Johnson she respected the legislation he had gotten passed. She was for him, and she wanted to make sure he knew it. She said that her mother wanted to contribute to his campaign and wondered if there was any particular direction in which he would like it to go. Johnson answered smoothly. He appreciated her help and had in the past; they should see each other more often; he understood that she had to run an independent newspaper. He thanked her, hugged and kissed her, and she left.\n\nHer devotion to him was soon tested by the Vietnam war. Aware as Johnson was of the difficulties that this \"pretty, cleareyed, soft and endearing\" woman was having in controlling her corporation, he nevertheless insisted on her accounting personally for every story of which he disapproved, for the actions of every reporter he did not \"trust.\" His petulant demands forced her to confront her editors sooner than she might otherwise have\u2014to try to achieve control not just for the sake of control but for a great purpose. Johnson of course defined the purpose\u2014the war\u2014and since Katharine was a woman, he explained it to her in terms she would understand: The war was tearing at him, the war was keeping him from his family, the war was causing him mental anguish. She supported him faithfully, yet because she could not save him from the political consequences of his involvement in Southeast Asia, the embittered man later told her sadistically that \"if Phil were running the paper it would have been a different presidency for me.\"\n\n* Robert Cutler, _No Time for Rest_ (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1965), pp. 317-18.\n\n* Barbara Tuchman, _Stilwell and the American Experience in China_ (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 339, 358.\n\n* New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.\n\n* New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925. The comment is by another political scientist, V. O. Key.\n\n\u2020 Boston: Little, Brown, 1955, p. 31.\n\n\u2021 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930.\n\n* Bernstein, \"The CIA and the Media,\" _Rolling Stone_ , October 20, 1977.\n\n* Beebe became the guardian of the Meyer-Graham empire after Eugene Meyer's death, sitting on the board of directors not only of the Post Company but also of every outside company in which the family was involved: Allied Chemical; Bowater Mersey newsprint manufacturers; Tricontinental investment corporation; Sengra, the Graham brother's development corporation in Miami, named for their father, Ernest Graham, who had become wealthy from his dairy farm and real estate and had, in his forties, been elected state senator; and Southeast Banking Corporation, the holding company for Sengra property north of Miami.\n\n* New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.\n\n\u2020 _Rolling Stone_ , _op. cit_\n\n* Alfred Friendly, \"Attribution of News,\" in _Reporting the News_ , ed. Louis Lyons (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965).\n\n\u2020 Leon V. Sigal, in _Reporters and Officials_ (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1973), has estimated that seventy to eighty percent of the _Washington Post's_ national news is taken from press releases, press conferences, planned events, and background briefings, all official forms of information. Nine-tenths of one percent comes from the reporters' own analysis, and, of the balance, two to three percent comes from sources who legitimately require protection because they expose wrongdoing at their own risk. The public figure who regularly manipulates the news deserves no such protection.\n\n* Chalmers Roberts, _The Washington Post: The First 100 Years_ (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).\n\n* _New York Times_ editor Turner Catledge as quoted by Sigal, _Reporters and Officials_ , p. 82.\n\n* The _Washington Daily News_ , financially the weakest of the three papers, folded on July 12, 1972, selling nearly all its assets to the _Washington Evening Star._ In its last years it had been plagued by strikes, and Katharine had offered some of the strikers jobs at the _Post._ The _Star_ , also increasingly unable to compete with the _Post_ , ceased publication on August 7, 1981. \n\n# [PART III\n\n_Mediapolitics_](content-toc.xhtml#a3)\n\n# [CHAPTER TWELVE\n\n_Katharine the Great_](content-toc.xhtml#aa12)\n\nAS KATHARINE looked back, remembering her youth, her marriage, the world war, the growth of the newspaper that had preoccupied her family for most of her lifetime, and the political authority that the paper had given them, she tried to distinguish between herself and the Meyer family imperative: to be of service, to be an exemplary American woman. An unhappy wife who became a widow in her forties, whose husband had been a victim of \"forces larger than human beings,\" she was only too conscious that power does not make for a \"normal family.\" Yet the power of the newspaper was all that she and her mother, as well as their men, had ever wanted, all that her children had ever known.\n\nAt the time of the suicide, Lally was a sophomore at Radcliffe and Donny a freshman at Harvard, and the two younger sons, Bill and Stephen, were at St. Albans, a prestigious boys' school run by one of Washington's wealthiest Episcopal churches. Agnes was suffering from a variety of ailments, including alcoholism, gout, and an acute sense of isolation. Her autobiography, _Life as Chance and Destiny,_ once meant as an homage to her dead husband, remained unfinished because of the alcoholism. But that did not prevent her, in all her magnificent spirit, from rejecting overtures from publishers she thought unworthy of her book as late as 1970, the last year of her life. Anthony Schulte at Knopf learned that she would not want to work on so intimate a project with somebody she did not know and trust; Byron Dobell at _McCall's_ was told that they could get on perfectly, but that she did not like their list of publications. No, she did not need a publisher; the book became an obsessional, confessional chronicling of the life of one good German woman, and finally an attempt to vindicate the Germany she loved.\n\nKatharine called her mother every few days and had lunch with her on Saturdays. She was developing her own compulsive working routine: tennis at 7:00 A. M., shower and change clothes at the office, walk the corridors with a notebook, present lists of questions to Jack Patterson at night, and study business texts until early morning. She was flying to New York once a week to learn the _Newsweek_ operation, staying overnight at her apartment at United Nations Plaza. She was combining visits to her children in Cambridge with speeches in Boston and in other ways forcing herself to appear in public.\n\nAgnes one night saw Katharine on David Susskind's television program and thought she was a little nervous, but on the whole looked more distinguished than any of the men, and that her features came across more clearly on the screen. She noticed that her voice was good and that the points she made were original, but she worried that her daughter worked too hard in preparing for such ordeals.\n\nAgnes felt slighted if Katharine failed to communicate the most trivial item of gossip, like the time Katharine did not bother to tell her about the party at the home of Chief Justice Earl Warren because it was, Katharine thought, quite routine. Agnes resented and envied Katharine. She also proudly told friends that Katharine had never looked happier or more beautiful; or alternately that she had never seemed more tired, that Katharine, who had had tuberculosis in 1961, might have inherited a weakness of the lungs from her father. Agnes smoked heavily but did not like to see Katharine smoke; she was sorry but knowing when Katharine had to swallow a tube so her lungs could be X-rayed in 1968.\n\nAnd she was, even with the occasional praise, eternally critical of Katharine's intellect. Lally had an ancient Chinese horse's head which Katharine had dismissed as a copy, much to Lally's chagrin. Agnes wrote her granddaughter a comforting letter in which she explained that Katharine did not understand copying was an honorable tradition in Chinese art and not the \"dishonest one it is in ours.\" If Kay had been more familiar with Chinese customs and traditions she would have understood this, Agnes told Lally; furthermore, if Katharine were sure of herself she would not worry whether something was a copy because she would not care what anybody thought.\n\nYet Agnes was a comfort to her, and to the children, for whom she was a better grandmother than she had been a mother. She was forever scolding, advising, sending them money, though Agnes would add, in an accompanying note, that she knew they were already well provided for. She took a liking to Mary Wissler, with whom Don worked on the Harvard _Crimson_ and whom he would marry in 1967, and offered her eight antique chairs and a couch covered with lovely Chinese red leather, as well as a thirty-foot table which she said Mary could cut down to size for eight people. When Don enlisted for Vietnam, Agnes sent him boxes of candied fruits ordered from a San Francisco tea shop; when he worked as a policeman during Washington's anti-war rioting, she told him the family was afraid for his life.\n\nAgnes also told Katharine that her second son, Bill, was a sweet, considerate boy for helping Phil's brother renovate the farm that Phil had bought for Robin. And she informed Stephen, the youngest, who Don believed had not yet found himself, that she was glad he had gotten into the school of his choice, namely Harvard\u2014not, honesty forced her to add, that she was so crazy about Harvard. Steve was interested in theater, so Agnes warned him about the vulgarization of sex on the American stage. Because he was, in his mother's estimation, a wild kid, Agnes also told him sternly that everyone in the family was against the Vietnam war, but that he must be careful not to get mixed up with those on the very left wing, because they \"lack good sense.\"\n\nAgnes could be overbearing, and there were times that Katharine had to compensate her children for the old woman's insensitivity. In the fall of 1964, shortly after her father died, Lally became engaged to Yann Weymouth, a promising architecture student at MIT who bore an uncanny resemblance to Phil. Agnes did not like the fact that the boy was Catholic. This seemed to worry Lally, so Yann finally wrote to Agnes that although he was Catholic, he hoped that he was not aggressive about it. He did not find it heretical to say that he abhorred the Inquisition, he informed her, just as he would not deny his U. S. citizenship because of the murder of Medgar Evers. To blunt the sting of the matriarch's disapproval, Katharine made her only daughter an elegant Catholic wedding and sent the couple to their married student life with the loving gift of six dozen disposable frying pans.\n\nLally went on to become a feature writer at the _Boston Globe,_ where, at Katharine's suggestion, she interviewed Joseph Alsop. Then Yann was offered a job at the influential architectural firm of I. M. Pei & Partners and the Weymouths moved to New York City. They were eventually featured in _Vogue_ magazine for their work with \"the colored situation,\" as Agnes called it. \"Young, attractive, involved . . . the Weymouths are lookers\u2014both tall, handsome, spirited, with dark hair and brown eyes. They belong to the new young breed that thinks the way to tackle ghetto problems is to wade in and help\u2014working with people in the neighborhood, on the block-and-storefront level. Both have been deeply involved with the program to improve conditions in Brooklyn's problem-wracked Bedford-Stuyvesant section. Yann . . . designed and executed the first 'superblock' in Bed-Stuy, actually a three-block area of renovated homes with an interior park. Lally has worked in Bed-Stuy on two different projects: helping to set up a community TV program of local news and interviews, on a tiny budget; and helping to organize a triumphal rock concert. . . . They live in a white-white, sun-flooded modern apartment. . . .\"*\n\nThe Weymouths had two daughters and named the first one Katharine. She was truly her grandmother's namesake, independent, orderly, industrious, and quietly aloof, and Katharine adored her. The younger child was named for a British friend of Katharine's, Lady Pamela Berry. Katharine was particularly concerned for both of them\u2014still quite young when their parents were divorced.\n\nKatharine shared her children's lives but did not want to burden them with her problems. Her mother existed more and more in the past. Katharine went on long trips once or twice a year when work left her frustrated and depressed, and, while traveling, wrote long, chatty letter-diaries, copies of which she sent to her mother and each of her children. These letter-diaries are now among her mother's papers in the manuscript collection of the Library of Congress. In January and February 1965, immediately after her expensive wage settlement with the Newspaper Guild, she toured for four weeks in Cambodia, South Vietnam (where she shopped for blue and white china), Tokyo (Vietnam, she said later, naturally came up immediately), New Delhi (Indira Gandhi, she thought, behaved like a snake), Cairo, and Beirut.\n\nLater in the year, in July, when tensions in the _Post_ newsroom reached new heights with her hiring of the ambitious Benjamin Bradlee, she took another month in London (having to defend U.S. policy in Vietnam, as usual, she complained), Paris, Greece (Mrs. Niarchos was charming, had a marvelous figure, and wore not an ounce of makeup), Yugoslavia (after Tito sent word through his embassy that he would see her), and Moscow (where she defended _Newsweek's_ coverage of Vietnam and had her hair washed in the American embassy by a Russian hairdresser whom the diplomats' wives thought \"quite mad\").\n\nIn London she had a call from her second son, Bill, who had arrived with his group and a French boy they had picked up. They were staying in a fleabag hotel, and Katharine took him with her to dinner at the home of Ambassador David K. Bruce. They talked until midnight. Katharine gave him advice and money; then he left in a taxi, Katharine feeling that she had lost him again. She found Bill later at the American Hospital in Paris with pneumonia, after one of the boys had called the Paris _Newsweek_ office to ask if he was insured. She left him in the care of Avis Bohlen, the wife of Chip Bohlen, the U.S. ambassador to France.\n\nIn Yugoslavia, as planned, she met up with Truman Capote, her neighbor at United Nations Plaza, a confidant to and observer of wealthy women, and together they went to Greece to see Lally and Yann, who were vacationing there with Margaret Mead and Barbara Ward. The brains, Agnes said competitively of them; both had the gift of gab but neither had done any original work in years, in her opinion. Agnes and Barbara Ward had been particularly close to Adlai Stevenson, who had died suddenly just a few days before Katharine and Capote, looking happy, arrived in Greece. Katharine had just seen Stevenson in London, she reported to her mother, and had a long talk with him the night before he died. He had told Katharine that much as he admired her, he wanted her to know that she was not the brain that her mother was. Katharine duly reported this and assured Agnes that Stevenson had planned to visit her when he went home.\n\nThe serious attention of foreign leaders, to which she was unaccustomed, and the social and personal side of politics, to which she was, helped Katharine put her problems at the paper in better perspective. But by the following June, having gone unrespected by her own men for yet another year, she was once again feeling so \"low,\" as Capote observed, that he told her, \"I'm going to give you the nicest party, darling, you ever went to.\" The third anniversary of her husband's death would be in August, and she was still committed to being a woman without a man, \"a monk,\" as she put it, listing herself in the telephone book as Mrs. Philip L. Graham when she could easily not have had a public listing, not having lovers\u2014no one would ever be able to marry her for the _Post_ \u2014but \"masculine friends,\" one of the most trusted of whom seemed to be Capote, a homosexual.\n\nWhen he decided to give her this party, in 1966, Capote had just finished _In Cold Blood,_ which \"really washed me out,\" he complained. He was already collecting material for the brutal, explicit study of high society, _Answered Prayers,_ which would preoccupy him until his death in 1984, and which would be published posthumously.* Katharine and her children were not particular subjects for this book, but Capote cultivated them as he did other society families, seeing Lally in New York and visiting Katharine in Washington, flattering them, sharing their concerns, studying them even as they studied themselves.\u2020\n\nCapote decided that Katharine's party would be a live version of the horse-race scene in _My Fair Lady,_ which had been created by Cecil Beaton, with beautiful, stylized people moving to music, outfitted in black and white. Capote sent out orange-and-yellow invitations to five hundred \"real friends\" whom he spent \"oh, so many hours\" selecting; they had to dress in black and white and be \"either very rich, very talented, or very beautiful, and of course preferably all three.\" He rented the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel for Monday, November 28; engaged the all-white Peter Duchin Orchestra and the all-black Soul Brothers, who would alternate on the stand; planned decorations; asked a dozen closest friends to give dinner parties before the ball and provided them with guest lists. A real-life Cecil Beaton movie: to remove it all again from reality and indulge his sense of drama, Capote told everyone to wear a mask.\n\nKatharine was uneasy about her role as guest of honor at Capote's Black and White Masked Ball, as it was called, and began worrying. She would have to order a gown\u2014what kind of gown?\u2014make appointments for nails, makeup, hair; serve as hostess, in a city that dwarfed her home city, to sophisticated and glamorous people who would be asking each other in whispers, \"Who is Katharine Graham?\" She had lunch with the _Post's_ New York bureau chief. What should I wear? he remembers her asking him nervously; who will be there, will they like me, how should I act? The bureau chief was a good-looking dark-haired man at least fifteen years younger than Katharine. He was embarrassed and touched, and reassured her with the propriety due a boss, without responding to her, he hoped, \"as a man to a woman.\" She supposed she would have to wear a low-cut dress, she said; you would look equally elegant in a high neck, he said. What sort of fancy thing should I do with my hair? she said; wear it smooth and simple, he said. What should I talk about? she said; just ask them about themselves, he said. Thank you for all your help, she said; just call me if you need me, he said.\n\nOn the fateful night Katharine went to dinner with Capote and then at 10:00 P.M. received guests with him at the Plaza in a custom Balmain creation that was conspicuous for its modesty. Other women wore dresses without sleeves, without backs, with bodices that exposed or emphasized their breasts; hers covered her like a tunic, one solid sheet of white from her chin to the floor, with long, full sleeves that ended just above the wrists. Both neck and sleeves were set off, in an Egyptian effect, with rows of black ornaments. Once introduced, she became quite incidental to the evening. _Life_ magazine,* which did a seven-page spread on the \"gala f\u00eate,\" mentioned her as the guest of honor, but concentrated, to her relief, on the \"jarring juxtaposition\" of the others: Marianne Moore and Henry Geldzahler, Frank Sinatra and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Janet Flanner and Andy Warhol, Henry Ford and Norman Mailer, McGeorge Bundy and Douglas Fairbanks, Princess Pignatelli and Alvin Dewey, the detective from Garden City, Kansas, whom Capote portrayed as the hero of _In Cold Blood._ Alvin and Marie Dewey bought plain dime-store masks; others spent up to six hundred dollars on masks with sequins, feathers, jewels. There was one picture of Katharine dancing with Capote, towering above him, and the comment that she owned _Newsweek,_ but \"on the Fame-O-Meter,\" _Life_ concluded, \"nobody ranked higher than Frank and Mia, whose arrival caused by all odds the biggest scrimmage among the photographers lining the stairwells below the ballroom.\" Still, \"one and all, they were denizens of Truman Capote's frugging, waltzing, glamorous, nervous, pedigreed, productive and fantastically eclectic whole world.\"\n\nAlthough Capote was remembered for the Masked Ball, and Katharine wasn't, his introducing her to the world of New York chic in such a manner on that damp November night brought her, for the first time, attention in magazines and newspapers. There was immediately a profile in _Vogue,_* written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who had known Phil, with a stilted black-and-white portrait of her (to continue the theme) by Cecil Beaton, who felt that he could in a small way take credit for her new fame. \"Attractive, gentle without necessarily yielding, soft without mental flab,\" Schlesinger wrote, \"knowledgeable without aggressiveness, a woman with a woman's smart mind, a mother of four\u2014that is Katharine Graham. . . .\" In the tradition of his writings on the Kennedys, he then said, wishfully, \"She runs a sizable empire and is the acknowledged boss. . . . To do that with grace [as Kennedy would have], she listens long and makes reasonably quick decisions. [With] her stamina and her brains and her good looks . . . [she] manages the intricacies of her life partly because she takes two steps at a time. She likes it that way.\" In fact, she had a tendency to burst into tears at odd moments, thinking about Phil, and would tell friends, \"I liked it better before.\"\n\nA year later there was another article, this one impressively in _Esquire,_\u2020 written by William F. Buckley, Jr. The sarcastic Buckley called his essay \"The Politics of the Capote Ball,\" the politics being, in his view, the matter of who was included and who left out. He had liked the party and felt that to sustain its mood he would have to discredit the one effort that had been made to put the party and the Vietnam war into a cohesive piece of writing. Buckley attacked: \"Let's dispose of [this] problem once and for all. . . . There was a . . . columnist, Mr. Pete Hamill, who reviewed the affair most awfully sociologically, from his desk at the _New York Post_ (from where else?).\" Buckley quoted Hamill: '\"And Truman was just marvelous! He was the first to arrive, along with Mrs. Kay Graham, who was the guest of honor. You see, _she_ threw _him_ a party in Washington, and he did get on the cover of _Newsweek,_ and she _does_ own _Newsweek._ . . . Truman is a little fat fellow, you know, and he was so nice and round and sweet and polite that, God, you just wanted to _hug_ him . . . ( _The helicopter landed in a scrubby open field six miles north of Bong Son. It was very quiet . . . when the machine gun started hammering from the tree line. You could hear the phwup-phwup of a mortar and the snapping of small arms fire and then when it was quiet again, you realized that the young man next to you was dead. His right eye was torn from his skull). '_ \" Buckley commented: \"The implicit point . . . is that one shouldn't enjoy oneself publicly while there is a war on, and of course such advice would be easier to accept [if] Mr. Hamill [did not so] enjoy weaving . . . Vietnam through his editorial loom. But it is true,\" Buckley admitted, before moving on to his main subject, \"that certain functionaries intimately involved in the Vietnam war deemed it inappropriate to frug-with-Kay at Truman's blast, indeed that was just the reason why Secretary McNamara did not come; at least, that is the reason he gave . . . for regretfully, declining his kind invitation.\"\n\n* * *\n\nKATHARINE wanted to be part of her time. If she was publishing the _Post_ for any single contemporary purpose (keeping the paper in the family and proving that she could be a publisher being not purposes but motivations), if one editorial theme would characterize the _Post_ for most of her first decade there, it was support of the Vietnam war. The month that she had toured South Vietnam, February 1965, was the month during which Johnson began the regular and intensive bombing of North Vietnam. He asked her to go for him\u2014she called it a _\"Newsweek_ trip\"\u2014as he had gone to Vietnam for Kennedy. He arranged for her to see the diplomats, the generals, to have a field tour; he debriefed her when she returned.\n\nIt was still, then, a relatively \"private war,\"* an elite war, created by men whom she knew to be good men; far away, painless, reasonable, and fashionable, a strategically brilliant response to the exotic political forces of Asia. Katharine visited the Delta, where she saw a village that had been adapted to the pacification program, and wrote home that the national police were instrumental in detecting Viet Cong within the hamlets, where they \"kidnap young men of 15 or 16.\" The police, she was told, posted billboards \"telling the people what to do in case of Viet Cong attack\" and watched the hamlet dwellers for signs of Viet Cong allegiance. A police official showed her a graph of the population and a wall chart with the names of families with Viet Cong relatives. They discussed with her their system of psychological interviews and spoke at length about the Viet Cong infrastructure. They said that as a result of the pacification program, the villagers who did not speak to them a year earlier now freely reported guerrilla squads.\n\nAfter her day in the field, Katharine was taken by helicopter back to Saigon in time to go to the U.S. embassy, where McGeorge Bundy, a special assistant to President Johnson for national security affairs, was being given a stag party. The next day she met the acting premier and had dinner with columnists Stuart Alsop and Rowland Evans, and later had drinks with them at the Caravelle bar, from where she could see flares dropping in the streets.\n\nNotable in Katharine's view were the muddled theories of the war-makers themselves, that the Viet Cong were simultaneously aiding the villagers and terrorizing them; that \"pacification\" (hauling them before internal security police) made the people less discourteous, therefore more loyal; that they were both their own enemy and the victims of an encroaching army from the North.\n\nHer trip, and consultation with the president, made Vietnam the single issue in which the _Post_ men recognized Katharine's editorial authority. It was also the only one about which she felt strongly enough to ask each of her editors pointedly what he thought. Several days after her return, the newspaper's unsigned editorial said that the violence of the war \"disclose[s] with dreadful clarity that Vietnam is not an isolated battlefield but a part of a long war which the Communist world seems determined to continue until every vestige of Western power and influence has been driven from Asia.\" A month later the paper suggested mildly that \"President Johnson forgo the use of all gas and napalm in this war theater,\" but that was a temporary lapse, remedied within four days\u2014when another _Post_ editorial said, \"There is considerable . . . pious hypocrisy in some of the moans of outrage over the use of nontoxic [ _sic_ ] gases.\" After that, the paper's editorials remained, until Richard Nixon was elected, exemplary pieces of obfuscation, reflections of the calls that Katharine received from Johnson and from Robert McNamara, of the editors' privileged contacts with Pentagon officials, of their readings of secret cables.\n\nThroughout the decade no questions were raised about the bombing, although Johnson's decision to bomb had been based upon the \"fact,\" thought up in an advisor's office, that Ho Chi Minh was not really a guerrilla fighter \"with nothing to lose,\" but had an \"industrial complex\" (a few factories) to protect. Ho would therefore surrender, this theory went, if only he were bombed enough.\n\nOn the matter of the war, Katharine and her editors had no real differences, although afterward, the fact that the _Washington Post_ had supported the war longer than any other major newspaper in the nation was attributed to its male editors, not to its female publisher. But she had come back from Asia in 1965 knowing that Vietnam was an issue that could mature the paper (every journalist needs his war) and understanding also that war is a young man's business and it could be her weapon against those editors close to retirement age, as most of them were. Alfred Friendly, the managing editor, in particular, had been sluggish, as well as condescending, taking two months' vacation per year, one of these months for \"contemplation\"\u2014not a good editor for wartime; and though he was a friend, a father figure to her children, she returned from Vietnam having decided to replace him with a younger man.\n\nBy April, a year and seven months before the Capote party, she became interested in Benjamin Bradlee, the former _Post_ reporter who had returned from working in Europe and was now the chief of the Washington bureau of her magazine _Newsweek._ Bradlee claimed, during their interview, to have no politics, no opinion on the war, but he did say that he would hire no \"son-of-a-bitch reporter\" who was not a patriot. He had recently refused a promotion to New York\u2014Washington was his turf, his inside track\u2014and now he wanted desperately to regain his momentum within the corporation. Katharine asked him what he wanted, alluding to Friendly's job, and since that day is now seen as the beginning of the fortuitous Graham-Bradlee partnership, his remark has been preserved by chroniclers of the occasion: \"I'd give my left one for it.\"\n\nKatharine put him in as assistant managing editor and he immediately started agitating for Friendly's retirement. \"Don't be in such a hurry,\" Friendly told him nervously. Katharine, for her part, was not sure that she would keep Bradlee. \"I hardly knew him\"\u2014she was conscious mainly that he had said around town that there was nothing wrong with Phil that a good divorce wouldn't cure\u2014\"and didn't like him at all.\"\n\nBen Bradlee was considered by some members of the Washington press to be insensitive and ruthless, professionally and socially. The feeling was that he was rather too indiscreet, for a journalist, about having been on intimate terms with President Kennedy, a bond made stronger by the fact that his wife's sister, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been Kennedy's lover, and that Kennedy had often visited at her art studio in the Bradlees' renovated garage. Bradlee became more reticent about his relationship with Kennedy after Mary Meyer was murdered under strange circumstances in October 1964, and although a young black male was put on trial for the crime, he was acquitted and ten months later ordered released from prison after being held without bail for that period. The killer was never found. Questions about Mary Meyer's death continued to plague those who knew her and others who examined the court record. The mystery was compounded by the fact that immediately after the murder, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence, conducted a search of her studio and took away a diary she had been keeping about her affair with Kennedy.\n\nAngleton told Bradlee he was taking the diary to CIA headquarters to destroy it by fire. But a former CIA official familiar with Angleton's method of operation says it is unlikely that the counterintelligence chief actually burned the diary since \"he never destroyed anything, he held on to every scrap.\" A year later, by the time Bradlee went to work at the _Post,_ he, his wife, Katharine Graham, and others who had known Mary, had grown silent about the death of the talented, beautiful young painter, which had come only a year after both Kennedy's death and Phil Graham's death. The incident was rarely mentioned again.\n\n* * *\n\nNINETEEN fifty-six. Ben Bradlee, recently remarried, is a European correspondent for _Newsweek._ He left the embassy for _Newsweek_ in 1953, a year before CIA director Allen Dulles authorized one of his most skilled and fanatical agents, former OSS operative James Angleton, to set up a counterintelligence staff. As chief of counterintelligence, Angleton has become the liaison for all Allied intelligence and has been given authority over the sensitive Israel desk, through which the CIA is receiving eighty percent of its information on the KGB.* Bradlee is in a position to help Angleton with the Israelis in Paris, and they are connected in other ways as well: Bradlee's wife, Tony Pinchot, Vassar '44, and her sister Mary Pinchot Meyer, Vassar '42, are close friends with Cicely d'Autremont, Vassar '44, who married James Angleton when she was a junior, the year he graduated from Harvard Law School and was recruited into the OSS by one of his former professors at Yale.\n\nAlso at Harvard in the early 1940s were Ben Bradlee and a young man, Richard Ober, who would later become Angleton's primary counterintelligence deputy, and work with the master in Europe and Washington throughout the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. The Harvard yearbook for 1943-44 shows Bradlee and Ober, who are four months apart in age, both to have been in the Hasty Pudding club as lowerclassmen; it is a four-year club and students join as freshmen. According to a Hasty Pudding club historian, \"the eating clubs at Harvard had only about forty members\" then and were often the source of close, even lifelong friendships among the young men. Not only did they dine together every evening, the historian relates, but there were also \"lunches and cocktail hours, study rooms and lounges where they played pool. It is hard to imagine that all members who were in the club at the same time would not know each other fairly well.\" Bradlee said in a letter to the author, after the first edition of this book was published, that \"I did not know Ober then. I do not know him now.\" His denial was in response to the suggestion that years later, when Bradlee was executive editor of the _Washington Post_ and Ober was the top CIA man working out of the Nixon White House, Ober was very likely the principal source for the _Post's_ \"deep background\" information about Watergate.\n\nOber graduated with the class of '43, went into the OSS, and became a liaison with the anti-fascist underground in the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. Bradlee, eager to be part of the war effort, doubled his course load to graduate in the summer of '42, and became an ensign on a destroyer in the South Pacific. Within two months he became a combat communications officer, was rapidly promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and was given the responsibility of handling classified cables and coded messages, in effect functioning as the eyes and the ears of his unit. After forty months at sea, when the war ended, Bradlee worked, he informed me, as a \"go-fer\" for Roger Baldwin, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union, for three months, at $30 a week. \"Baldwin hired me because he correctly felt I knew nothing about civil liberties,\" Bradlee wrote. His job was to catalog their library.\n\nIn 1956 Ben and Tony Bradlee are part of a community of Americans who have remained in Europe after the defeat of fascism, patriots trained in wartime intelligence and propaganda who are now part of the Marshall Plan effort to fight the new enemy, Communism. Many of the Americans work under cover of the American embassy in Paris, through which the Smith-Mundt funds for the promotion of \"worldwide cultural information\" are being channeled. In 1956, Bradlee has left the embassy and is working for _Newsweek,_ where he and his colleagues are writing from the Cold War point of view. Angleton and Ober are intelligence operatives who travel between Washington and Paris, London, and Rome. In Washington, at private places such as Philip and Katharine Graham's salon, these patriots philosophize and make plans; in foreign cities, they do the work of keeping European Communism under control by using whatever means necessary\u2014planting negative stories, infiltrating labor unions, supporting or discrediting political leaders\u2014to provoke anti-Communist sentiment.\n\nRichard Helms, the future director of the CIA, is also part of this community. He has written portions of the National Security Act of 1947, a set of laws creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, the latter to support the CIA with research into codes and electronic communications. In 1956 Helms is the CIA's chief expert on espionage; his agents penetrate the government of the Soviet Union and leftist political parties throughout Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.\n\nAngleton and Ober are counterintelligence, and run agents from Washington and Paris who do exactly the opposite: they prevent spies from penetrating American embassies, the State Department, the CIA itself. Head of the third activity, covert operations, is Phil Graham's compatriot Frank Wisner, the father of MOCKINGBIRD, whose principal operative is a man named Cord Meyer, Jr. Meyer was a literature and philosophy major at Yale and is consequently well liked by Angleton, who when at Yale thought himself a poet and edited a literary magazine. Meyer is married to Tony Bradlee's sister, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the woman who later became Kennedy's lover and was murdered in 1964.\n\nAmong the fascinating and glamorous Americans of Paris, London, and Rome, the Meyers are more fascinating and glamorous than the rest. Mary was the most brilliant and beautiful girl in her class at Vassar and is now a painter, beginning to be critically recognized. Cord is an attractive, articulate figure whose seemed evolution from a World Federalist to an anti-Communist has given him a unique understanding of Communist trends in European trade union and Third World liberation movements. Because of this specialized knowledge, he is considered within the Agency to be indispensable, as few men are.\n\nMeyer had served as a Marine on Guam and emerged from the war an ardent one-world advocate. He became an aide to Harold Stassen at the San Francisco Conference to form the United Nations, but believed that so loose an association of nations could not succeed; in the late forties he founded United World Federalists, an organization that promotes world government as the way to end war. \"Within a decade,\" Meyer had predicted in one of his position papers, \"the world will be organized into one political unit. The only question that remains to be settled is, what form?\" The one-world movement was exceptionally strong after the first nuclear bombs were dropped, and the magnetic Meyer became the spiritual leader of it all, overshadowing other people in other groups. He commissioned a film from Katharine Graham's brother-in-law Pare Lorentz, _The Beginning or the End,_ that was to be the definitive statement about the dangers of the atomic age, and then commanded various organizations to sponsor it, while refusing to accommodate their views in the script.\n\nIn 1950, Cord Meyer began to work with Robert Maynard Hutchins and Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Thomas Mann's daughter, who were about to achieve leadership in the one-world movement by organizing a conference of the world's major progressive groups to be held in 1951 in Rome. Meyer at some point strangely had started accepting money from the conservative McCormick family, and said he was interested in contributing to Hutchins's conference. \"You might send all the details to me,\" he wrote to Mrs. Borgese on World Federalist letterhead. She obliged by providing him with their \"plan of action\" to secure \"the cooperation of other not specifically federalist organizations (political parties, trade unions, scientific and religious organizations, etc.) who . . . should be invited to join . . . because to make them work on specific world federalist problems is the best method of penetrating them with federalist propaganda.\" She gave Meyer a list that included the International Cooperative Alliance, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Indian Socialist party, and the Congress of Peoples Against Imperialism, which, Mrs. Borgese noted, \"represents national democratic and socialist parties in all of the French, British, and Belgian colonies. In the Cameroons alone it counts 300,000.\"\n\nIn 1952, Cord Meyer showed up as a CIA official in Washington knowing the names and activities of these same trade union and national liberation organizations, and the public story was that he had defected from the one-world movement because he had suddenly seen that world government was in danger of becoming Communist. This transformation, so out of character for a man of his methodical intellect, caused people within the movement to believe that World Federalism had been a lengthy intelligence assignment.\n\nIt is 1956, then, and Meyer, who is Ben Bradlee's brother-in-law, is stationed as a covert operations agent in Europe. Bradlee said in a letter to the author that he was unaware of the nature of Meyer's work. Meyer travels constantly, inciting \"student\" demonstrations, \"spontaneous\" riots and trade union strikes; creating splits among leftist factions, distributing Communist literature to provoke anti-Communist backlash. This localized psychological warfare is ultimately, of course, warfare against the Soviets, who are presumed to be the source of every leftist political sentiment in Italy, France, the entire theater of Meyer's operations. In Eastern Europe his aim on the contrary is to foment rebellion. Nineteen fifty-six is the year the CIA learns that the Soviets would indeed kill sixty thousand Agency-aroused Hungarians.\n\nAll of Meyer's activities, of course, go on quite apart from his marriage. Mary does not have a security clearance, so he cannot tell her what he is doing most of the time. They begin to drift apart, and Mary draws closer to her sister and to Ben. When in the late fifties her marriage to Cord ends, she goes to live in Washington where her brother-in-law has been transferred by _Newsweek._ She sets up her art studio in Ben and Tony's converted garage.\n\nThe reaction of the intelligence community to Bradlee's presence in Washington is mixed: he is one of them, but he is not. Agency men as a rule do not trust journalists; and Bradlee was a particular problem to them because he knew them so well, and they did not trust him to keep a secret. It is only a matter of time, Angleton feels, until Bradlee makes a serious mistake, as he eventually does with the publication of _Conversations with Kennedy,_ in which he mentions that Mary Meyer was murdered, but only in a footnote. A former _Post_ editor named James Truitt is enraged at this obfuscation. According to Truitt, Bradlee has forced him out of the paper in a particularly nasty fashion, with accusations of mental incompetence, and now Truitt decides to get back at Bradlee by revealing to other newspapers his belief that Bradlee's story on the Cord Meyers in _Conversations with Kennedy_ was not the whole story, that Mary Meyer had been Kennedy's lover and that on the day of her murder, James Angleton of the CIA searched her apartment and took her diary. Truitt's feud with Bradlee unnecessarily exposes Angleton, to his disgust and bitterness.\n\n* * *\n\nTHE remarkable thing about Katharine hiring Bradlee was that she was able to sacrifice her personal feelings for the sake of the newspaper. She decided to try him on the advice of Walter Lippmann, who knew Bradlee's parents and had tutored him in the fundamentals of journalism. Lippmann had suggested Bradlee, so three months after he was hired, Katharine wanted Lippmann to tell Al Friendly that Bradlee was going to have his job. \"Have you thought about returning to writing?\" Lippmann asked him gently one day, as they were eating lunch together. No, Friendly hadn't, and he was not pleased. The hurt was all the greater because Friendly had once supervised an array of information activities in Europe, at a time when Bradlee was just beginning his career as a journalist. Later that afternoon he confronted Katharine, who had hoped to avoid just such a scene. \"Is this what you want?\" he asked her mournfully, standing at the door of her office, while she stared unhappily at her desk, \"I would rather have heard it from you.\" Friendly returned to writing, was given a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, contracted throat and lung cancer, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1983.\n\nKatharine was preoccupied in 1965 with the paper's corporate, political, and journalistic problems, as well as with moving into a position to be able to solve them, but she lacked the force of a comprehensive vision (even her determination to have an executive shake-up had disintegrated with Friendly's tears); and Bradlee, who did indeed have a vision, began to spend long nights at her R Street mansion, working out his ideas. He was coming in only five months after the Newspaper Guild had bullied Katharine into the $200-per-week wage settlement, and she told him that she wanted a man to control the newsroom the way Jack Patterson controlled the truckers. Reporters, she said, had to be broken of their union mentality (\"Unions interfere with freedom of the press,\" she learned to say), editors had to be made to respect her; whereupon Bradlee, whose own loyalty, he knew, was by no means as clear to her as Patterson's, put forth the all-encompassing proposition that she could become as powerful in Washington as the president.\n\nAfter settling the matter of salary (which, speculation had it, was as high as $150,000 plus stock, but which Bradlee informed the author was $50,000 to start, \"the same as I had earned as bureau chief of _Newsweek,\"_ and no stock), he informed his wife that the dedication required of him in this venture was going to \"cost you a year\" of marriage. It was a marriage already traumatized by Mary Meyer's death, and Bradlee threw himself into his work with frenzy, not only because of ambition, but to escape the anger and guilt that hung over him at home. The year stretched into two, then three, his relationship with Tony deteriorating as the one with Katharine improved, until by 1969 the marriage was not worth saving, and Bradlee moved into an apartment in the expensive Watergate complex on the Potomac River. By this time things had started to go badly between Katharine and Washington Post Company president Paul Ignatius, and Agnes, fearing that she might offer the job to Bradlee, told her daughter that \"he is not the kind of man who should be given everything he wants.\" Bradlee says he never wanted the job of corporate president, \"though at one time I was scared she might ask me to do that. It was an unnecessary fear.\"\n\nBen Bradlee was not generally a theorist, but he had an original theory of \"creative tension\" that was so brilliant and to the point that it enabled him to achieve simultaneously three crucial and seemingly unrelated objectives at the _Post_ : authority over other editors (management), control of the reporters (labor), and his own unique journalistic tone.\n\nCreative tension was most immediately a technique of business, the idea that if a worker can't keep up, he is replaceable. The tension, in Bradlee's construct, was that people competing for their jobs, for career advancement, would have a hard time holding together a union. The second condition followed from the first: If they are working well enough not to be fired, they are by definition working cost-effectively. The relationship between such methods and the news was obvious to Bradlee. \"I have an answer\" to improving the paper \"that's so revolutionary and anti-union,\" he liked to say. \"I'd have the power to get rid of people. . . . If I had the power to get rid of people, I could put out a hell of a lot better newspaper.\" The issue was not whether analytical, well-researched, intelligent stories could be produced at all under great stress, but rather who would be in and who would be out with Ben Bradlee, who would write his kind of stories.\n\nBradlee was a showman; the newsroom was his theater. Once in possession of Friendly's job, he spent time every day strutting up and down the aisles, stopping to talk with certain favored reporters and pointedly ignoring others, conferring status or revoking it on the basis of yesterday's work. The _Post_ had always been an enclave of masculine gentility; it now became less genteel, more masculine in the sense of ruthless competitiveness; and many of the older men, Phil Graham's men, became unhappy, as was Bradlee's intention. Because the Newspaper Guild contract did not permit firings, he tried to make them feel uncomfortable, insecure, outdated, while hiring modern young men at better salaries for the choicer assignments. All this was in the way of solidifying his control, and in the first year Friendly was not the only one of the older generation who left; there was also John Hayes, the radio and television manager, whom President Johnson then appointed ambassador to Switzerland, a position that allowed him to continue his participation in the CIA project initiated the previous year to broadcast propaganda to Communist China. Bradlee reached accords with Alan Barth and Chalmers Roberts, who stayed on. But tension between Bradlee and editor-in-chief Russell Wiggins was never resolved and continued to increase, until Wiggins, whose authority Katharine soon limited to the editorial pages, eventually retired to run a small newspaper in Maine.\n\nBradlee then asked Katherine to raise his budget by half a million dollars a year, until it reached more than seven million dollars. She agreed: Bradlee suited her purposes.\n\nIn accordance with business theories of correct executive behavior, Katharine learned not to want to know every horror story of corporate and personnel management. Once she had found Bradlee and other managers she trusted, she preferred rather to be informed selectively about problems of implementing her policies (profit efficiency, acquisitions,* wide readership, Bradlee's journalistic \"impact\" upon the city) and to save herself, as publisher, for issues concerning the soul of the newspaper. These fell into three categories: her relationship with the president of the United States and his advisors, and how the _Post_ could communicate their political views; labor, of course, because labor, she believed, was the enemy of the Meyer family; and finally, how to maintain the _Post's_ character as a benevolent family-run institution and convince employees that nothing had changed.\n\nThe irony of her executive approach was that it freed her from the complexities of journalism itself; it cut her off from the soul of the news business. As Bradlee maneuvered every day with delicate questions of emphasis (when should a story become the headline story, and how will that affect events?), attitude (what ought to be accomplished with this story, whom should it help or hurt?), accuracy (whom do you believe, the reporter or the official who denies the reporter's account?)\u2014as the news product visibly improved under his touch, as the paper grew fatter and more handsome\u2014Katharine was able to indulge her proclivity for the personal. Most stubbornly, she believed Johnson, McNamara, and later Henry Kissinger, who were not telling her the truth about the war in Vietnam. She continued to run her seminar lunches for reporters. She walked along picket lines (as well as through them) during strikes, shaking hands and asking about the men's families, so that for years the unions thought her to be unaware of her own managers' harsh policies (\"If that nice Mrs. Graham only knew . . . \"), when in fact she directed them.\n\nIn relations with the \"talent,\" as distinguished from other labor, she expected, despite creative tension, to enjoy their friendship. She wanted to know their wives and husbands, to be consulted on family problems; in turn she wanted them to understand: she had been hurt by Phil, the newspaper was everything to her, she was not simply a woman of power, she was more significantly a woman alone. The self-pity here was just a part of her general self-consciousness and did not dominate her, except once in a while. At such moments she displayed the most irrational, unfair sort of behavior, driven by her painful memories, and did the sort of damage that a woman in her position can do.\n\nTwo men in particular stirred up her deep anger, and saw their careers suffer, because they were divorcing their wives. James Truitt, an editor and a vice-president of the Post Company, was hospitalized for exhaustion early in 1969, after having worked feverishly for several months on the _Post's_ experimental Style section. Katharine called his doctor, an internist, to ask if the problem might be mental. As a result of her inquiry, Truitt was placed under psychiatric observation; Katharine said he could return to the _Post_ when cleared. The psychiatrist certified Truitt's mental health three months later, and Truitt came back to the paper in May. A day after his return he was terminated without explanation.\n\nKatharine had a similar, if less extreme, reaction to Ben Bagdikian's divorce. Bagdikian was a press critic from the RAND Corporation whom Katharine hired as national affairs editor in 1969 after he had published an article describing the _Post_ as \"the most frustrating newspaper in America because it is almost great.\"* He was a serious, thoughtful man quite incapable of mistreating women, yet he and his wife had decided to end their marriage, and Katharine had become friendly with the wife. \"When a man leaves a woman it tears the guts right out of her,\" she pleaded with him one day, Bagdikian remembers. \"It's different with a woman. I saw her. She doesn't look good at all.\" Katharine could not comprehend Bagdikian for other reasons. He declined dinner invitations on the excuse that the \"dinner circuit\" was journalistically unproductive; he turned down her offer of stock as being a \"conflict of interest\" with his function as internal press critic* (\"I think you're being nitpicking,\" Katharine told him in a frosty note, \"but if you don't want it . . . \"); he began living with a reporter, Betty Metzger, who had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the _Post_ discriminated against women. On the few occasions that he did show an interest in Katharine's parties, he told her that he wanted to come with Betty, who in retaliation for her lawsuit had been transferred to the night shift, and he was offended when Katharine responded, \"I hope you're not going to do anything to hurt your wife.\" He and Betty were planning to marry but were being treated like children, which eventually caused them to leave the paper, and all of this in spite of the fact that Bagdikian had directly contributed to Katharine's sudden heroism during the Pentagon Papers crisis, when Ben Bradlee had been desperate to get copies of the same secret documents that were being published by the _New York Times._ Bagdikian had tracked down a former RAND Corporation colleague who was then living in Boston and was able to obtain a set of them from him. The man's name was Daniel Ellsberg.\n\n* * *\n\nALTHOUGH the Pentagon Papers, published to compete with the _Times,_ established Katharine Graham as the greatest American woman of the 1970s, a leader of the moral opposition to the Nixon administration, the truth of the matter was that her newspaper had done a less than admirable job of handling the moral issues of the 1960s, as sorry a job as that of the politicians themselves. The significance of the Pentagon Papers was that they put her belatedly on the right side of the issues. They marked the reluctant beginning of her open battle against Nixon, after she had meekly endured his attacks for two years. And the Papers formed the link between the enduring American crisis of Vietnam and Nixon's seventh and most terrible crisis, Watergate.\n\nAmong the Washington elite, to whom the _Post_ was something of a house organ, Katharine had throughout the 1960s represented order. A widow thrust into the public arena and offended by what she found there, the most serious political and ethical challenges to governmental authority in several decades, she had allied herself with Lyndon Johnson, the highest authority of all. She had decided, as Johnson had, that dissidents were confused youngsters being manipulated by the Communists. This profound unspoken conviction applied equally to the anti-war movement and to civil rights, neither being, in the minds of these American aristocrats, the result of legitimate political frustration. Manipulation, on the other hand, was very real to them. They engaged in it themselves.\n\nJohnson had always known that the Negroes had grievances and was more willing to respond than were most of the political elite living in the predominantly black capital city, where blacks acted as the servant class. Johnson's main concern, though, and one of the reasons he had become champion of the 1964 Voting Rights Act, was that the movement might grow because of government indifference, and attract the more ideological, dangerous kinds of radicals. Extremism, not injustice, was the more dangerous problem, and extremism was the recurring theme in Johnson's speeches, in _Post_ editorials (\"Let them ask themselves with some humility what action . . . they are entitled to take\"), and in Katharine's private conversation. \"The students will be used by extremists who want very much to see the state occupied by federal troops,\" she had said about the Mississippi Freedom Riders. The theoretical basis for this comment, for the _Post's_ \"voice of reason,\" had been that Communists were working in America to try to create chaos, a belief that Katharine shared not only with the president, but with the directors of the FBI, CIA, army intelligence, and navy intelligence. All of them a few years later came to blame the Soviets for the rise of Black Power.*\n\nThe preoccupation with Vietnam, by militarists of both the Democratic and Republican parties, began in 1949, the year the Communists took power in China, which borders Vietnam on the north. With the Chinese revolution had come the secret American decision to pay seventy percent of France's military costs in Vietnam.\u2020 Also there had come to America, under CIA sponsorship, a student named Ngo Dinh Diem, a member of one of Vietnam's prominent Roman Catholic families. Diem's brother was a Catholic bishop whose mentor was Cardinal Francis Spellman, a priest from Boston who was head of the New York archdiocese. Spellman, a friend of the Kennedy family, had introduced Diem to political circles in New York and Washington as the young hope of his beleaguered country.\n\nBy 1954 the French were on the verge of defeat, and the emperor, whom the French had installed to oppose nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, had appointed Diem his prime minister, not in small part because of Diem's powerful American friends. The following year Diem deposed the emperor, which the Americans did not mind, but he also began repressing the Buddhists, which made the Americans uneasy. To ensure continued support for Diem, Cardinal Spellman asked Joseph Kennedy to use his influence with the American Catholic leadership to organize a propaganda campaign for Diem among newsmen and members of Congress. Three politicians then began to emerge as crucial to Joe Kennedy's effort: his own son John, a senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, which controlled foreign aid; Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, whose advocacy of military preparedness had earned him the chairmanship of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee and a place in the secret group that had sole authority for oversight of the CIA;* and Vice-President Richard Nixon. Nixon in those years often spoke unofficially for Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Arthur W. Radford and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, both of whom had long been angry about \"losing\" China to the Communists and wanted to contain China by bombing Vietnam. In 1954, Nixon had presented the idea of bombing Vietnam in a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where politicians frequently test the political waters. The editors had not encouraged the bombing, but they had not opposed it and had not criticized the vice-president's suggestion in their newspapers.\n\nThe pressure created by Nixon's bombing speech was not sufficient to force President Eisenhower to attack the little country, so in 1955 Nixon joined forces with Joe Kennedy, lending his name to Kennedy's appeals to editors of _Life, Time, Look,_ the _New York Times,_ and the _New York Herald-Tribune._ Nixon was not on good terms with Philip Graham of the _Washington Post,_ but John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were, and soon the editorial line emerged, supported on the academic end by Arthur Schlesinger's American Friends of Vietnam committee.\u2020 Americans began to read that Ho Chi Minh wanted to take over Vietnam, that he was directed by China, that the United States had to come to the aid of the democratic Diem, that if we could not get rid of Ho at least we could contain China.\n\nBy the time Joe Kennedy's son John was elected president of the United States, the public relations myth of Vietnam had become the truth of the marketplace; the lies used as political tools to settle old grievances, to promote a favorite dictator, had become the basis for military action. Kennedy's inability to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs gave him additional reason to enter Southeast Asia: It was going to be a laboratory for training Americans in techniques of counterinsurgency, including \"pacification\" of Communist-leaning populations. In Vietnam that meant, since reality did not fit the theory, that people who were being \"used\" by Ho were to be surveilled by internal security police, just in case they actually supported him.\n\nThe distorted reasoning that enabled three future presidents to participate in the creation of a war through public relations and then, as presidents, to continue the war because they had come to believe their own propaganda\u2014that reasoning also permitted them, particularly Johnson, to think that the anti-war movement could be remedied by selling the story more persuasively. This was what Katharine tried to help Johnson do. But the movement soon became too serious for advertising theory. Unable to admit error, or to understand grassroots political sentiment, and accustomed and committed to the notion that people believe what they are deceived into believing, the president began to think that Communists were manipulating American youth, rather than that they were unwilling to fight his badly conceived war. \"Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh\" was their slogan, \"NLF [National Liberation Front] is gonna win.\" The movement became Johnson's battleground for American \"hearts and minds.\"\n\nJohnson began ordering up regular reports on the movement from the FBI, CIA, and military intelligence agencies, which were already reporting to him about civil rights and Black Power. The assignment, as with the racial justice movement, was to find evidence of foreign influence. Johnson became increasingly frustrated as they could not find it and insisted that their methods were deficient. As a result of this pressure, CIA director Richard Helms, through his deputy Thomas Karamessines, authorized counterintelligence chief James Angleton, on August 15, 1967, to establish an \"intelligence collection program with definite domestic counterintelligence aspects\" and \"some sort of system by [Angleton's deputy] Dick Ober for the orderly coordination of the operations\" among all the intelligence agencies.\"* On August 31, a cable went out to all CIA field offices describing the collection requirement and warning, \"High sensitivity is obvious.\"\u2020\n\nOber ran his operation out of the CIA until Richard Nixon succeeded Johnson as president. Then, on May 19, 1969, Helms arranged with Attorney General John Mitchell for Ober to meet Jerris Leonard, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, to \"discuss cooperation on student unrest and establish a point of contact between Justice and CIA.\" According to a memorandum of the meeting later released under the Freedom of Information Act, Leonard told Ober about a Justice Department computer \"which keeps track of students engaged in campus disorders by name of student, campus and incident.\" He also said his \"greatest concern\" was \"with urban rather than campus civil disturbances.\" Ober responded that \"CIA's concern is with possible foreign. . . control over persons or organizations involved in student unrest.\" Ober told Leonard about \"SDS travel to Cuba last summer and stated that CIA could probably be of assistance in providing information concerning foreign travel and contacts of individuals of interest to Justice.\" He also told Leonard he would not \"inform anyone else in CIA now\" about their arrangement but might \"mention [it] later depending on how things progress.\"\n\nThe agencies buried their long-standing rivalries to cooperate on mail intercepts, phone taps, monitoring meetings, the use of LSD to pump people for information, and surveillance of \"U.S. Negro expatriates as well as travelers passing through certain select areas abroad. Objective is to find out extent to which Soviets, Chicoms [Chinese Communists] and Cubans are exploiting our domestic problems in terms of espionage and subversion.\" Ober's organization reported, in order of priority, to the CIA, the FBI, the president, and the National Security Council, whose chairman was the secretary of state. It had the code name Operation CHAOS.\n\n* * *\n\nSUPREMELY competent as a businesswoman, working at nothing except building a powerful news machine, Katharine reflected no more deeply upon the purpose of such an instrument than to want it to express her loyalty to the politicians toward whom she felt like a sister or wife. This vulnerability, and the sublimation of her feelings into intellectual, emotional, and political alliances, seemed to be a fundamental aspect of her widowhood.\n\nShe retained the prejudices imparted to her by Phil, which reinforced her natural fear and arrogance. If Johnson, on a strictly political level, saw Communists in the civil rights movement, she did not doubt that there were Communists, but her point of understanding was that \"Phil [had been] too much of a Southerner for me not to have a heavy sense of the . . . resentment of the Southerners. I don't mean the thugs but the decent ones.\" She told Johnson that \"my heart bleeds for you\" as the victim of anti-southern sentiment.\n\nIf she knew that Robert McNamara was torn by the war, and resented the public portrait of him as a warmonger because it hurt him deeply, she was more affected by McNamara as a father who blamed himself for driving his young son Craig into the antiwar movement. Was Craig being used? McNamara's unenviable dilemma was that with every political or military decision that he made, he had to bear the guilt of knowing that his son might be a tool for the organizers working fervently against him. Katharine's own guilt was that she was not suffering along with McNamara, that she had somehow been spared. Her oldest son had volunteered for the army in the summer of 1966, immediately upon graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, with a degree in English history and literature. \"Vietnam\" and not the opposition to it \"is the experience of my generation,\" Donny thought.\n\nDon's strange rebellion against his peers in favor of his class possessed elements of the romantic. The oldest male in his family, he could have requested a deferral from McNamara himself but decided to follow in the footsteps of his father. Donny left behind a new wife, as his father had done; and a mother and a grandmother who as women had nothing of value to say to him about it, although his mother had seen another generation go to war, and his grandmother had seen two generations in two world wars and was now (a war every generation, indeed) \"quite weary of it all.\"\n\nPhil Graham had never seen battle, and neither did Donny. A former president of the Harvard _Crimson_ (as his father had headed the _Law Review),_ he became a public information officer, handling newsmen for the famous 1st Cavalry, which was fighting in the Central Highlands, and spending time in Tokyo publishing the division's internal magazine and newspaper. He learned to use a camera and did some simple photography. At night he pored over William Styron's _Lie Down in Darkness,_ which his mother had sent him, and wrote home about the war in the manner of Styron's poetic, rhetorical prose. Donny considered the marines to be the real butchers of the war, he told his family; the marines, loaded with rifles, packs, and fighting gear, found people and killed them with fantastic precision. They shot anyone who looked vaguely suspicious, who tried to run when they flew overhead. His own unit, by contrast, he thought, was a parody of Americans fighting a war: killing Vietnamese they never saw, then stopping the war at night and living comfortably.\n\nWhile Donny was in Vietnam, he was visited by _Post_ columnist Joseph Alsop, whose long affiliation with the China Lobby permitted him to see this war as merely a tactic in America's larger war against Communism in Asia. Because of his support, the army brought Alsop into the country by military plane, put helicopters at his disposal for tours of the countryside, provided liquor and the finest accommodations, and briefed him at the embassy in Saigon. Donny thought Alsop was brave to come to Vietnam, and wrote his mother that Alsop was doing a good job for her. Donny himself was temporarily taken out of action about this time when a truck ran into the car he was driving and he had to have three stitches in his cheek.\n\nIf men think that the finest quality in a woman is to stand firm with them during wartime, Katharine in another war would have been exemplary. She was faithful to her friends by inclination and by class, and so sensitive to loyalty, or lack of it, in Washington's political theater (as members of her class have always been) that she interpreted any criticism of them as betrayal. Katharine could not accept the fact that in this war there were different rules. She was gifted with a penetrating, nontheoretical, non-contemplative intelligence that should have served her well here. But being remote and shy, and profoundly untrusting since her early days with Phil (which is what his condescension and his womanizing had done for her), she preferred to maintain her distance in all aspects of her life. In politics, this meant disassociating herself from the masses. In business, it meant defining herself as a tycoon.\n\nThere was no question that such a posture enabled her to laugh at sexual or romantic advances, for which she had no use, glamorous and alluring as she had learned to be. (\"You'd really like to fuck a tycoon, wouldn't you?\" she has admitted to thinking, when a brave male presumed to make an overture.) More to the point, though, her conceit became a very clear part of her personality at the newspaper. It was known that she expected her powerful attachments to the president and defense secretary to be translated into her news pages, and when a reporter put together a story or an editorial writer drafted an essay, trying to be fresh and exciting while holding to the company line, there was always the additional need not to upset Mrs. Graham.\n\nHer moods could be felt throughout the building and corresponded to the progress of the war. She was anxious and irritable with every troop escalation, every bombing raid, and furious when any criticism of Johnson or McNamara crept into her paper, coming downstairs to confront Bradlee about it. She was appalled when late in 1967 Johnson humiliated McNamara by suddenly nominating him for the presidency of the World Bank, thus revoking his authority for the war. That McNamara had lost heart for the war upset her further. But still, she stuck by the president. \"It seems that the burdens you bear,\" she wrote emotionally to Johnson, \" . . . are almost too much for one human being. The only thanks you ever seem to receive is. . . criticism. Unlike Phil, I find it hard to express [my feelings]. I can't write in the eloquent words he used. But I want you to know [that I]. . . believe in you and [am] behind you with trust and devotion.\"*\n\nAs Johnson's presidency was eroded, and her editors began to think that 1968 might be his final year in politics, Katharine was able to transform her confusion and anger into an unsentimental concern about preserving the machinery of state. That did not mean abandoning Johnson; on the contrary, McNamara's weakness necessitated Johnson's strength. This was particularly true after the start of the Tet offensive, an orchestrated attack on one hundred towns and cities in the South, which the Vietnamese began in January, Donny's last month in Southeast Asia, and finished in February, while McNamara remained impotently in office until his replacement, Clark Clifford, was sworn in on the first of March.\n\nTet was a devastating blow to Johnson and created new difficulties for him, not the least of which was Eugene McCarthy, whose campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination was built entirely upon his opposition to the war. McCarthy was in Katharine's opinion a distasteful character, who pretentiously recited poetry in public and claimed to be above politics, but who had nevertheless found within himself the pragmatism to exploit the Tet disaster for his own gain, precisely at the time the nation most needed to be unified. The courage that McCarthy showed in defying the Democratic party apparatus, which then was very strong, his willingness to jeopardize a twenty-year career in Congress for a principle\u2014these were not the issues for her. She refused, until he almost won the influential New Hampshire primary early in March, to take his candidacy seriously (indeed, McCarthy had a difficult time shaking the _Post_ 's label of him as a frivolous candidate).\n\nWhen he did nearly win, she personally selected the _Post_ 's editorial comment. Printed more than two weeks before Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not run again (at which time he \"lanced the boil of faction and opened the abscess of partisanship on the body politic\"),* the McCarthy column seemed to be informed by the publisher's knowledge of the president's plans: McCarthy was \"nakedly opposed to the Administration,\" it said. His supporters had \"deserted the President.\" Richard Nixon, who was clearly going to be the Republican candidate, would be preferable to him, although Nixon ought now to \"moderate his position on Vietnam\" or McCarthy would retain the youth vote and Nixon would lose the election \"by default.\"\u2020\n\nIn that harrowing year of Johnson's political destruction, of the Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy assassinations, of the ghetto riots so dreadful that the army had to be called up to quell them, of the shootings and beatings at the Democratic convention in Chicago, of the My Lai massacre, Richard M. Nixon was Katharine Graham's candidate of choice. She appeared with Don at the Republican convention in Miami in August and ordered an editorial upon Nixon's nomination which praised his \"admirable understanding and restraint in his public approach to Vietnam\" and his \"commendable comprehension of some aspects of the Nation's social ills.\" Nixon was painted as wise and calm, the right man to solve the domestic problems created by Vietnam, though the war itself was left unmentioned and unanalyzed.\n\nAnd then, after his election, Nixon increased troop strength to half a million men, having promised to de-escalate, and began secretly to bomb Cambodia, which was neutral. The demonstrations grew increasingly violent, and he placed \"internal security\" wiretaps on the movement leadership, which his attorney general, who thought that the demonstrations looked like \"a Russian Revolution,\" publicly said he had a right to do. Operation CHAOS was not exposed as the source of the taps. In this way things went from bad to abysmal in 1969, and Katharine supported Nixon more staunchly. After Johnson had appointed Russell Wiggins his ambassador to the United Nations in September 1968, widely seen as payment for his editorial loyalty, she had started to check every editorial before it went into the paper, having the writer bring it to her house for her to read if she was not at the office.\n\nContinuing to check every editorial after Nixon took office, on October 7,1969, Katharine approved a silly, snide piece about the first Moratorium against the war, which CHAOS estimated was going to produce two hundred and fifty thousand people in Washington the following week. \"If there are any smart literary agents around these days,\" the editorial observed, \"one of them will copyright the title 'The Breaking of the President'. . . for it is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon B. Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard M. Nixon in 1969. . . . There is still a vital distinction . . . between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent. . . and mass movements aimed at breaking the President. . . the one man who can negotiate the peace. . . . The orators who remind us that Mr. Nixon has been in office for nine months should remind themselves that he will remain for 39 more months\u2014unless, of course, they are willing to put their convictions to the test by moving to impeach him. . . . And what a wonderful chapter it would make for Volume 2 of 'The Breaking of the President.'\"*\n\nAs frantic as Katharine was about the political deterioration and the social upheaval, as eager as she was to establish her moral authority in relation to it, and to prove to Nixon that her family and her corporation shared his interests, Ben Bradlee remained calm. Being a man \"irritated and bored with serious ideas but quick and contemporaneous in his tastes,\"* he did not need political opinions because he had a social vision. That the counterculture was a reaction to the war was so obvious that Bradlee favored reporters who avoided mentioning the fact, but who instead glorified its most innocuous aspects (flower children, drugs, rock music, denim fashions) while rarely giving the anti-war point of view the benefit of a straightforward analysis. The same applied to coverage of the war itself. The Vietnam correspondent whom he most liked was Ward Just, a promising novelist, whose reportage consisted of \"vignettes about men in the field.\"\u2020 Just was sent to Vietnam in January 1966 and remained until June 1967, when Bradlee decided that the war effort was in trouble and replaced him with an honest hawk named Peter Braestrup, who consistently produced stories assuring the reader that the United States was winning the war.\n\nOne of the ways to get ahead in an atmosphere of creative tension was to write in the manner of a \"new journalist.\" Bradlee's best new journalists, other than Just, were Nicholas von Hoffman, former assistant to community organizer Saul Alinsky, who became a confidant of Mrs. Graham's, an adviser to her on her youngest son's fascination with hippyism; and Sally Quinn, who lived with Bradlee for seven years before finally marrying him in 1978. Such were the rewards of good (entertaining) writing. Von Hoffman and Quinn became the most important of the writers on Style, the section of the _Post_ that was Bradlee's ultimate sociological vision, introduced in January 1969, two weeks before Nixon's first inaugural. One of the first things that Washington readers learned about Nixon from Style was that his favorite dish was cottage cheese and ketchup.\n\nThe second way to succeed within Bradlee's system was to possess an old-fashioned understanding and mastery of news as intelligence. This, the ability to cultivate sources in the government and eventually to get leaks, scoops, even classified information from them, supplemented the sophisticated, hip tone that Bradlee wanted with the political \"impact\" (his word) that he also wanted.\n\nIts most astute young practitioner was a reporter named Bob Woodward, who came to the _Post_ in 1971 with a background almost identical to Bradlee's own: he too had been a communications officer in the navy. Woodward had enlisted in 1965 after graduating from Yale and had handled coded cables on a guided missile ship. After sea duty, and still with the navy, he spent a year in California during the height of the anti-war movement, and then was transferred to the Pentagon, where he became, as he conceded to a _Time_ magazine reporter, a member of an ultra-secret unit that handled highly classified information at the White House. It is the hypothesis of this author that Woodward at this time met and worked with Operation CHAOS director Richard Ober, who was coordinating CIA, FBI, and military surveillance of the anti-war movement. It does not have to be said that Bradlee took a special interest in this unusual young man, who, like Donny Graham, was so unlike others his age. While Woodward was still on probation at the Metro desk, developing his first contacts with the police department and the FBI, not yet trusted with the national news, Bradlee began assigning him stories that had the chance of bringing Woodward a Pulitzer Prize.\n\nBy contrast there were those reporters who did neither new journalism nor intelligence journalism, and they had a very different experience with their editor. Two cases in point were Ben Bagdikian, who wrote thoughtful press criticism, and Betty Metzger, the woman Katharine did not want Bagdikian to marry. Metzger, an acclaimed local affairs reporter, was transferred to the night shift after she and Bagdikian became engaged.\n\nAnd then there was the matter of Carl Bernstein, the house misfit, who was talented enough to be a new journalist and wrote in the dramatic prose that Bradlee wanted, but whose insistent pieces on ethnic neighborhoods, alternative politics (the missing link between the war and the counterculture), the movement as a movement, not a fashion, were a continual source of annoyance to him. Bernstein was not part of Bradlee's scheme; he killed a good number of Bernstein's stories, and he cursed the Guild for standing in the way of his firing him.\n\nThere is a certain convenience in having a company scapegoat, and Bernstein served the purpose well. He was the child of Jewish labor organizers, allegedly Communists (\"Al and Sylvia Bernstein, Communist labor leaders,\" was the title of a McCarthy-era file that Carl accidentally found in the _Post_ 's morgue, years later). He, with his long hair and political commitments and his infamous parents, embodied all that was myth about Jews\/Communists\/hippies\/radicals. No doubt this was part of his self-image. The terror of McCarthyism had forced his family to hide with relatives for months after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed. They feared the beginning of a wave of persecution of Jews, and their fear had left its mark on Carl. If it was easy enough at the _Post_ to dismiss him as childish or dangerous, and either way to ridicule his causes, it was also true that Mrs. Graham was embarrassed by him. She saw Bernstein as the type who provoked Spiro Agnew's attacks on the \"Jewish-dominated, left-leaning\" media, which she understood as a reference to her own Jewish blood.\n\nThe assault from Nixon's vice-president began without warning in November 1969, a year after the election, while Katharine was still straining to achieve a rapport with the man she felt she had helped to elevate to the highest office. Superficially, it seemed to be Agnew's wounded response to an editorial that the _Post_ had published after Nixon chose him as a running mate fifteen months before. Ward Just, back from Vietnam, had cavalierly written: \"You can view Agnew with alarm, or you can point to him with pride, but for now we prefer to look on with horrified fascination. . . . Nixon's decision . . . to name Agnew . . . may come to be regarded as perhaps the most eccentric political appointment since the Roman emperor Caligula named his horse a consul.\"* Cruel as this characterization was, though, it had little political significance; if it was the reason that Agnew, rather than another man, was allowed to deliver the initial blows, it was certainly far too trivial to be the original cause of the problem. The irrationality and self-destructiveness of Nixon's media hatred have been analyzed at length elsewhere and need not be repeated here; it is important only to say that Katharine Graham offered him her friendship, and that he rejected her.\n\nHe did so even though she was with him on the war, which was most important, and on questions of domestic unrest; even though, in fact, she had joined a Special Committee on Crime Prevention and Control at the invitation of Edward Bennett Williams, its chairman (one of his innumerable gestures toward her since the episode with her husband's wills), and she had been meeting with District police about methods for handling anti-war demonstrators.\n\nThe police had for some time been recruiting men directly from the military bases as they returned from Vietnam, telling them that the war was not won unless it was won at home.* Katharine's son Donny had himself joined the District force in 1969. He had taken Civil Disturbance Unit training, where he had learned to use a gun, to negotiate with terrorists, to control crowds with nightstick and gas pellets (trainees were required to breathe the gas in order to understand its effects); and by June he had gone undercover, four months before the first Moratorium against the war.\u2020 The Graham family involvement with the problem was therefore substantial, Don being in physical danger from it, and when Katharine went to the White House in October, after the \"Breaking of the President\" editorial, to ask Nixon for National Guard protection at the _Post_ during the Moratorium (something that Johnson would have done for her as a matter of course, without making her ask for it), she was more than insulted when he wanted to know whether she thought her newspaper was a national asset. She was more than insulted, sensing the profoundness of Nixon's contempt for her: she was afraid.\n\nSoon after that, Katharine gave a luncheon for John Ehrlichman in her private dining room. It was to be a routine meeting with Bradlee and several other editors to ask Ehrlichman the standard newspaperman's question: What were the administration's concerns, what sorts of stories would the president like to see in the paper, what could they expect to happen in the next few months? Things started pleasantly, Katharine seating Ehrlichman next to her at a rectangular table, asking how he was, Ehrlichman replying cordially; but the luncheon deteriorated from there. Before the salads had been served, Ehrlichman reached matter-of-factly into his breast pocket and extracted a folded paper. He put on his glasses, assumed his bulldog expression, and slowly began to read, as Ben Bagdikian remembers, a \"grocery list of sins\" that the _Washington Post_ had committed against the president of the United States. The points were trivial, many of them factually incorrect, all contentious. Katharine sat biting her lip and tightly twisting her napkin underneath the table, sad and disturbed. \"What can we do to improve ourselves?\" she asked him over and over again.\n\nIt happened during this time, in late 1969, that Daniel Ellsberg began to visit the paper. He was an analyst, considered to be brilliant, who had worked in the 1960s on the most sensitive of assignments. In 1962, on loan from the RAND Corporation, the elite foreign policy think tank, he had done strategic nuclear war planning for Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. In 1965 he took a leave of absence from RAND to become special assistant to Major General Edward G. Lansdale in Vietnam and also to work for the deputy ambassador at the embassy in Saigon. In 1967, again at RAND, he became part of the McNamara Study Group which McNamara, in his disillusionment, had commissioned to write a classified \"History of Decisionmaking in Vietnam, 1945-1968.\" This was the Pentagon Papers, in forty-seven volumes. Ellsberg worked on the Kennedy years.\n\nIn 1968, shortly before the disturbing study was finished (disturbing for the analysts, who concluded that Vietnam had been twenty years of misjudgment and calculated deception; disturbing for the war-makers who read it), Ellsberg and several colleagues consulted jointly for the National Security Council, Defense, and State on Vietnam \"options.\" From this effort evolved the \"two-track method\" for trying to settle the war. The theory was that on one track the United States and North Vietnam should negotiate only about military withdrawal from South Vietnam, while on the other track Saigon and the NLF should negotiate a political settlement. Clifford made this the basic structure for the peace talks opening in Paris on May 10.\n\nThese talks, taking place during the presidential campaign, were a grave threat to the success of Nixon's candidacy, and there were two things the future president did to try to damage them. He hired Henry Kissinger, Rockefeller's foreign policy advisor, and had Kissinger develop _his_ plan for ending the war, which Nixon claimed was superior (the plan went largely unexplained). And he told South Vietnam's President Thieu that if he would hold back in the talks with Johnson, then he, Nixon, would give Saigon a better deal.* After Nixon won the election, Kissinger worked with Ellsberg and other analysts on the peace plan and in January 1969 published an article in _Foreign Affairs_ in which he explained Ellsberg's \"two-track method\" and claimed it as his own.\n\nIn 1969 Daniel Ellsberg was a man tormented. After months of working with Kissinger, having seen his peace plan, which was to pressure Hanoi through the Soviet Union and Communist China (hence d\u00e9tente and the China initiative), destroyed by the bombing of Cambodia; having been invited to San Clemente three times to tell Kissinger about \"options\" and having urged him to read the Pentagon Papers, which, incredibly, he had not looked at, Ellsberg wanted to repudiate everything he had done for the past ten years. He became obsessed with breaking the deadly silence (the Cambodia bombing would remain secret from the American people until April 1970). He wanted to end the deception and the self-deception of the national security types who were still, in spite of the Pentagon study, keeping that ridiculous war going out of more self-deception and pride. In September he and his daughter and son and Anthony Russo (a RAND fellow who had analyzed Viet Cong \"motivation and morale\" for the government by interviewing prisoners in Saigon jails) made copies of the Pentagon Papers in a small Los Angeles advertising agency. The papers had been in private circulation at RAND, and Ellsberg, one of their authors, had legitimate access to them.\n\nIn November he gave several of the documents to Senator J. William Fulbright, a war critic, who could not see their value in ending the war and did nothing with them. Ellsberg then gave a complete set to Marcus Raskin at the Institute for Policy Studies, a prestigious left-wing think tank in Washington, and Raskin, with two colleagues, immediately started work on a book based upon them, _Washington Plans an Aggressive War._*\n\nEllsberg also began showing up at the _Post_ to see editorial page editor Phil Geyelin, talking passionately about how important it was that the paper change its position on the war. On one occasion Ellsberg asked Geyelin if it were true that he could not always write as he wanted because of Mrs. Graham's relationship with Kissinger, who had been cultivating her, taking her to movies, confiding his well-known \"anguish of power.\" In fact Kissinger had warned Katharine about Ellsberg being \"unbalanced,\" which was all he had needed to say. \"That's not true,\" Geyelin blurted, \"we ran a critical editorial the other day and now Kissinger stopped seeing her and won't return her phone calls and things are very tense around here.\" Geyelin walked with Ellsberg into the lobby, where they saw Katharine and Bradlee. There were introductions all around. Katharine shook Ellsberg's hand coldly and walked away. Bradlee wordlessly followed her.\n\nThe _New York Times_ broke the Pentagon Papers on Sunday, June 13, 1971, with six pages of news stories and documents that finally told a deeper, less official version of the war: that Truman and Eisenhower had committed the United States to Indochina through France; that Kennedy had turned that commitment into a war by using a secret \"provocation strategy\" that led eventually to the Gulf of Tonkin incidents; that Johnson had not intended to bring the war to an early end, as he promised during his campaign, but had planned from the beginning of his presidency to expand it; that the CIA had concluded that the bombing was utterly ineffective in winning it. One of the documents was a memorandum written in 1964 by assistant secretary of defense John T. McNaughton. American goals in South Vietnam, McNaughton had said, are \"70 pct.\u2014To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat . . . 20 pct.\u2014to keep SVN [South Vietnam] territory from Chinese hands. 10 pct.\u2014To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. Also\u2014To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT\u2014To 'help a friend,' although it would be hard to stay in if asked out.\" The story out at last, Daniel Ellsberg went into hiding.\n\nKatharine and Bradlee were humiliated that the _Times_ broke the story first and were anxious for the _Post_ to catch up. On Monday morning, when the _Times_ headline read \"Vietnam Archive: A Consensus to Bomb Developed Before '64 Election, Study Says,\" Bradlee met with Marcus Raskin and expressed interest in reading his manuscript. He received a copy of it by noon, but then refused to publish excerpts because \"they [the authors] were in the war criminal racket,\" having concentrated on the Kennedy years.* That the Pentagon Papers told of war crimes became clear to the entire country by Tuesday, when the _Times_ headline read \"Vietnam Archive: Study Tells How Johnson Secretly Opened Way to Ground Combat.\" Tuesday night the Nixon administration took the _Times_ to court and won a temporary restraining order on the basis of the Espionage Act. By the time Ben Bagdikian located Ellsberg in Boston on Wednesday and flew up to get a set of the Papers, Bradlee was excited about defying Nixon for the cause of freedom of the press. On Thursday he felt differently. The papers were in his den, and his face was gray at the prospect of publishing them. Suddenly there were other considerations: legal issues, national security issues, the fact that two days before, the _Post_ had become a public corporation and that its stock might drop.\n\nBradlee later said in a letter to the author that the _Post_ 's attorneys suggested they notify Attorney General John Mitchell that the Pentagon Papers were in their possession, but that the idea was \"quickly dismissed with outspoken encouragement of Messrs. Bagdikian, [Chalmers] Roberts,\" and others. Bagdikian's objections were the strongest. \"You're going to have a full-scale revolt from the staff,\" he told Bradlee angrily. He had obtained the Papers from Ellsberg, he reminded him, on Bradlee's word they would be published. \"You know you have an obligation to me to publish these Papers.\" Bradlee called Katharine, who was hosting a party for a retiring business manager. \"It certainly weighed very heavily in this rush decision that the editors were absolutely wild about this,\" she reasoned, \"and the reporters felt incredibly strongly that we had to go ahead.\" Bradlee told her it would be \"all over town\" that the _Post_ had gotten the papers but had been afraid to publish them. \"OK,\" Katharine told him, \"go ahead.\" That night, as Jack Patterson was supervising the loading of delivery trucks, two FBI agents approached him and ordered him to destroy the freshly printed newspapers. Patterson looked levelly at them. \"Get the fuck off the loading dock,\" he said.\n\nThe _Post_ 's first story, \"Documents Reveal U.S. Effort in '54 to Delay Viet Election,\" was from the Eisenhower era, although Ellsberg had stipulated that the series begin with the Kennedy years. One week later, after the Nixon government had sued to restrain the _Post_ from continuing to publish the Papers, and the _Post_ and the _Times_ had consolidated their appeals, Katharine sat victoriously in the Supreme Court listening to the justices find in the newspapers' favor, six to three. \"The _Washington Post_ and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly,\" Justice Hugo Black noted. That was on June 25; from then on Katharine Graham was famous.*\n\nBut when the excitement faded, she was not at all happy to be openly at war with the president. The next time she saw Bagdikian she stopped him. \"Well, what kind of trouble have you gotten us into today?\" she demanded. She began to fear for her television licenses, and by July 6, as John Ehrlichman recorded, the _\"Post_ want[ed] to return all sensitive documents.\"\u2020\n\nThat summer and fall, a series of meetings took place within the White House that included Nixon, Kissinger, H.R. Haldeman, and Ehrlichman. Their purpose was threefold: ruin Ellsberg by painting him as another Alger Hiss; increase security in their ranks (Ellsberg had worked with Kissinger's staff); and turn the Pentagon Papers to their advantage, by pressuring the CIA, the FBI, and former Johnson advisers to reveal additional documents that would prove that the war had been the fault of the Democrats.*\n\n_June 6,_ 1971\u2014 _Nixon, Mitchell, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: It's treasonable.\n\nPRESIDENT: I went through all this on the Hiss case and we won that.\n\n_June_ 17\u2014 _Nixon, Kissinger, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nKISSINGER: Ellsberg\u2014genius, best student I ever had, shot at peasants, always a little unbalanced, drugs-flipped, hawk to peacenik in early '66.\n\nPRESIDENT: Like [Whittaker] Chambers.\n\nKISSINGER: McNamara in tears, won't betray Pres. Johnson; Bundy wants to come clean regarding Johnson.\n\n_June_ 23\u2014 _Nixon, Kissinger, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nKISSINGER: Go on the attack.\n\n_July 1, 10:30 A.M._\u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Charles Colson, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: 6 Crises\u2014Hiss chapter\u2014it was won in press, Truman, Hoover wouldn't help me.\n\n_July 1, 1:30 P.M.\u2014Nixon, National Security Study Group, William Rehnquist, Ehrlichman:_\n\nREHNQUIST: Ellsberg says 10 years is a small price to pay.\n\nPRESIDENT: Yes, & he'll pay it.\n\n_July 2_ \u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: Brookings\u2014pull clearances of people\u2014Council on Foreign Relations also.\n\nPRESIDENT: CIA, FBI\u2014Military Espionage\u2014use.\n\n_July 6_ \u2014 _Nixon, Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: Need Hoover's cooperation. Must be tried in the paper. Get conspiracy smoked out through the papers. Hiss & Bentley cracked that way.\n\nPRESIDENT: Domestic communist ties to Ellsberg.\n\nJOHN MITCHELL: Post wants to return all sensitive documents; fear effect of conviction [in threatened criminal prosecution] on TV licenses.\n\nPRESIDENT: Leak the evidence of guilt. Tell Hoover.\n\nPRESIDENT: Keep one step away from me.\n\n_July 9_ \u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nEHRLICHMAN: [General Vernon A.] Walters into CIA as #2.\n\nPRESIDENT: Kissinger's staff must be cleaned out. Don't bother Kissinger.\n\n_July 10_ \u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Rose Mary Woods:_\n\nHALDEMAN or EHRLICHMAN: Ellsberg [is talking to reporters about] McNamara tapes. [McNamara had been taped without his knowledge through the war room, while he was a consultant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff after he left office.]\n\nPRESIDENT: Rogers should be tapping more.\n\nPRESIDENT: Goal\u2014Do to McNamara, Bundy, JFK elite the same destructive job that was done on Herbert Hoover years ago.\n\n_July 20_ \u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: [Ellsberg] conspiracy.\n\n_July 24_ \u2014 _Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger:_\n\nPRESIDENT: Anyone with access to top secret\u2014sign a prior agreement to take polygraph\u2014put fear into these people!\n\n_July 28_ \u2014 _Nixon, Ehrlichman:_\n\nPRESIDENT: Push [Ellsberg trial] past October election [November 1972 presidential election]. Dent Rusk.\n\n_August 11_ \u2014 _Nixon, Ehrlichman:_\n\nEHRLICHMAN: The presidential [taping] system has been inaugurated\u2014a personal system.\n\nPRESIDENT: Position Rehnquist\u2014Don't discuss presidential system.\n\nEHRLICHMAN: Speak to Kissinger re: political use of intelligence.\n\n_September 18_ \u2014 _Nixon, Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, EK [probably Egil Krogh]:_\n\nPRESIDENT: Make the Democrats squabble about it [the origins of the war].\n\nPRESIDENT: LBJ can be with us on this [that Kennedy started the war by killing Diem].\n\nPRESIDENT: Let CIA take a whipping on this.\n\nEK: President wants entire Diem file by next Friday.\n\nPRESIDENT: Speed up Walters to CIA.\n\nEHRLICHMAN: Bay of Pigs\u2014order to CIA\u2014President is to have the FULL file _or_ else\u2014nothing withheld.\n\nEHRLICHMAN: President was involved in Bay of Pigs\u2014must have the file\u2014theory\u2014deeply involved\u2014must know _all._\n\nEHRLICHMAN: Keep President out of it\u2014use Tom Huston [coordinator of security affairs for the White House] to read it\u2014Liddy & Hunt.\n\n_October 8_ \u2014 _Nixon, Ehrlichman, Richard Helms:_\n\nHELMS (to President): Cooperation of FBI with intelligence community is extremely delicate.\n\nPRESIDENT: Purpose of request for documents: must be fully advised in order to know what to duck; won't hurt Agency, nor attack predecessor.\n\nHELMS: Only one president at a time; I only work for you.\n\nPRESIDENT: Ehrlichman is my lawyer\u2014deal with him on all this as you would me.\n\nEHRLICHMAN: I'll be making requests for additional material.\n\nHELMS: OK, anything.\n\nAn indictment was brought against Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, and on August 16, 1971, they pleaded not guilty to espionage, theft, and conspiracy. Their trial opened in Los Angeles, the scene of the \"crimes,\" early in 1973. It was a scene reminiscent of the Hiss case, except that the case against Ellsberg was even weaker: photocopying is not theft; espionage is spying for a foreign government, and foreign diplomats had been allowed to see the Pentagon Papers when the American public had not. Conspiracy, on which the trial really hung, was so transparently political a charge (conspiracy can be a crime even when the acts committed are not themselves criminal) that the government tried to disguise the fact by concentrating on proving the other charges. Things were going badly for the government in the Ellsberg trial, so one Sunday Nixon brought the presiding judge, Matthew Byrne, down to San Clemente in a limousine, took him for a walk on the beach, and asked him to become director of the FBI, as Byrne immediately told the newspapers. From then on things began to get worse.\n\nLate in April, Judge Byrne heard, from the prosecutors of a case called Watergate, that Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office had been burglarized by Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, two White House \"Plumbers,\" on September 3, 1971. The Plumbers had been formed the previous July, two weeks after the Pentagon Papers were published. On May 11, 1973, the judge also learned from the Watergate prosecutors that Ellsberg's phone had been tapped. To Nixon's dismay, Byrne dismissed the case \"with prejudice,\" because of governmental misconduct.\n\nIn the scant year that passed between the publication of the Pentagon Papers in June 1971 and the Plumbers' first and second burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in May and June 1972, Nixon had indeed \"put fear\" into all of his \"enemies,\" as he had planned that summer of 1971: they included not only Katharine Graham, but the intelligence community (Helms and Hoover) and the national security managers who had run and were running the war. By the time of the break-ins, much of Washington was seething with hatred for Nixon. It began to look as if his enemies would bring about his destruction, just as he had always known they would.\n\n* * *\n\nKATHARINE'S mother died in September 1970, having told her daughter to the end, as she had been saying from the time of Nixon's House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the late 1940s, that Nixon was plainly \"an outlaw.\" Frederick Beebe, chairman of the board of the Washington Post Company and Katharine's treasured father figure, was ill with cancer; he died in 1973. The loneliness and sorrow that she suffered during the long, brutal fight with the president are not part of the Watergate legend, nor is the incapacitating fear that in that fight she would lose the corporation (beginning with her television licenses) that her dead parents had entrusted to her care. The legend is that Katharine Graham used her newspaper to destroy Richard Nixon, that she is therefore the strongest and wisest and most courageous publisher in recent history, and that her name is synonymous with the power and the possibilities of the press and the First Amendment.\n\nNot to diminish the value of legend, it had long been established practice at the _Post,_ by the time Watergate erupted, for Katharine not to interfere with Bradlee's newsroom (as he once informed her, \"I can't edit when you have your fucking finger in my eye\"). They each had well-defined areas of authority, and hers was business. The only legitimate reason that she might have for questioning Bradlee's judgment was if the health of the corporation were at stake. She was asked to make major decisions, such as \"going ahead\" with the Pentagon Papers, only after Bradlee had guided a situation into its crisis stages, and without exception she approved what Bradlee wanted to do.\n\nThe Watergate investigation was in a very real sense Bradlee's operation, although, as he pointed out in a letter to the author, it was \"the product of many minds and bodies.\" By the time Katharine had formally been asked to let the reporters track obscure and explosive leads, to undertake more thorough, time-consuming, expensive, and analytical work than Bradlee had ever before demanded, or wanted, the hunt had already gotten started. Nixon and everyone else in the city knew it, and Katharine had little choice but to go along. Bradlee and the reporters believed, from the time Deep Throat confirmed to Bob Woodward two days after the break-in the significant and leading fact that Howard Hunt was connected with the White House, that the trail would take them to the president. In the oppressive air of Nixon's Washington, where intimidation had become the rule (Katharine was bullied; McNamara reduced to tears; William Rogers forced to wiretap the _Post,_ his long-time client; Clark Clifford denied a security clearance, although he had been chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board since 1963), where the presidency was not as it should have been, but was an alien camp, Katharine hoped that it was true. It fell to her, after Deep Throat's intervention, to shine the light on the evils of Richard Nixon. And she allowed it to be done.*\n\nIn that remarkable book, _All the President's Men,_\u2020 in which Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein chronicle the development of the case against Nixon, there are only eleven page references to Katharine. An appointment is made with her by the head of the Committee to Re-elect the President but is canceled. John Mitchell tells Bernstein that \"Katie Graham is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer\" if Bernstein writes the story linking him to campaign funds. Bradlee thinks about asking her if they can run that story, but decides not to ask. Katharine asks Bernstein after it has run if he has any more messages for her. Katharine is told by a \"close friend who had ties to the administration,\" William Rogers, that her phones are tapped, and she spends $5,000 on an electronic sweep. Henry Kissinger says to her unkindly, \"What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected?\" and she tells Woodward that Kissinger thinks they are being \"terribly, terribly unfair.\" Managing editor Howard Simons telephones her in Singapore in March 1973 to let her know about the McCord letter, which ends the reporters' agonizing dry spell after Nixon's reelection. The letter charges that \"political pressure had been applied to the defendants [the Watergate burglars, who had gone to jail that January] to plead guilty and remain silent.\" She watches Nixon announce on television that he has fired Ehrlichman and Haldeman and she says, \"This is too much.\" Nixon's chief of staff, General Alexander Haig, reaches her by telephone in a restaurant and snarls at her for the \"scurrilous\" story about Nixon's lawyers supplying Haldeman's and Ehrlichman's lawyers with White House documents. She and Howard Simons and Woodward and Bernstein (strangely, not Bradlee) are subpoenaed by CRP in its defense against the one-million-dollar damage suit by the Democratic party, and she takes possession of the reporters' notes and says she will go to jail rather than relinquish them; the subpoenas are thrown out of court.\n\nThis, then, was the level and tenor of her involvement: worried, ladylike questions, humorous quips, receipt of telephone threats and Kissinger's insults, one instance of bravado. She went on like that for a full year until the Senate formed the Ervin Committee to investigate Watergate in the spring of 1973, in response to the McCord letter, and for another year at lesser risk until the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment against the president. She went on like that, knowing that the entire affair depended, at least in part, on a man with the code name Deep Throat, putting her corporation in jeopardy to publish information provided by him, and never, incredibly, wanting to know his name, not wanting, as she said, to \"carry that burden around with her.\"\n\nThat Woodward was manipulated, or \"run,\" by Deep Throat is very clear from _All The President's Men,_ which is another reason that the book is an amazing document. It is evident that Deep Throat has a serious interest in the _Post_ 's succeeding with its investigation; he is not merely doing Woodward a favor by meeting him in a dark garage in the middle of the night; he expects results. He will not tell him how he knows what he knows or why he wants to help Woodward implicate Nixon; \"I have to do this my way,\" he says, and Woodward \"listens obediently.\" The entire \"friendship\" seems to consist of Deep Throat's telling Woodward a fraction of what he knows, making Woodward do exhausting legwork and then come begging for more hints; it is a classic counterintelligence operation, of which the exotic flower pot signals, speechless phone calls, clock hands drawn on newspapers, are only the more obvious techniques.\n\nThe psychological manipulation is more important: Woodward pursues the story according to Deep Throat's outline, becoming more committed and beholden to him each time he finds evidence that Deep Throat is right. He thinks of Deep Throat as a \"wise teacher,\" he has faith in him, he wants to please him. Deep Throat doesn't like newspapers because he \"detest[s] inexactitude and shallowness,\" and Woodward wants to prove him wrong. When Woodward does not understand a clue, Deep Throat becomes impatient with him: \"Don't you get my message?\" When he makes a serious mistake, the story that Haldeman was named in front of the Watergate grand jury as one of the men controlling the CRP slush fund, Deep Throat becomes angry and instructive: \"'Well, Haldeman slipped away from you,' Deep Throat stated. He kicked his heel at the garage wall, making no attempt to hide his disappointment. The entire story would never become known now. . . . Deep Throat moved closer . . . 'Let me explain something. . . . When you move on somebody like Haldeman, you've got to be sure you're on the most solid ground. Shit, what a royal screw-up! . . . Everybody goes chicken after you make a mistake like you guys made. . . . It contributes to the myth of Haldeman's invincibility. . . . It looks like he really stuck it in your eyes, secretly pulling the strings to get even the _Washington Post_ to fuck it up. . . . A conspiracy like this . . . a conspiracy investigation . . . the rope has to tighten slowly around everyone's neck. You build . . . from the outer edges in. . . . You've put the investigation back months.' Woodward swallowed hard. He deserved the lecture.\"*\n\nThe minor deception in the book is that only Woodward knew who Deep Throat was. Bradlee too almost certainly knew him, and for far longer than Woodward. There is a possibility that Woodward had met him while working as an intelligence liaison between the Pentagon and the White House, where Deep Throat had his office, and that he considered Woodward trustworthy, or useful, and began talking to him when the time was right. It is equally likely, though, that Bradlee, who had given Woodward other sources on other stories, put them in touch after Woodward's first day on the story, when Watergate burglar James McCord said at his arraignment hearing that he had once worked for the CIA. Whether or not Bradlee provided the source, he recognized McCord's statement to the court as highly unusual: CIA employees, when caught in an illegal act, do not admit that they work for the CIA, unless that is part of the plan. McCord had no good reasons to mention the CIA at all, except, apparently, to direct wide attention to the burglary, because he had been asked to state only his present occupation, and he had not worked for the CIA for several years.\n\nWhat matters is not how the connection with Deep Throat was made, but why. Why did Bradlee allow Woodward to rely so heavily upon it, and ultimately, why did the leaders of the intelligence community, for whom Deep Throat spoke, want the president of the United States to fall?\n\nWhat we have seen so far has been Nixon's attempt, after the Pentagon Papers, to bludgeon CIA director Helms and FBI director Hoover into cooperating with his campaign to use the papers against the Democrats. Actually, Watergate goes back to the early days of the Nixon administration, when Henry Kissinger, as head of the National Security Council, issued NSSM 1 (National Security Study Memorandum), which required different intelligence agencies and departments to provide him with independent answers to comprehensive sets of questions about the Vietnam war. The purpose of NSSM 1, which, ironically, had been drafted with the assistance of Daniel Ellsberg, was not only to be able to run the war better, for Kissinger was running the war the way he wanted to in Vietnam and Cambodia anyway, but to play the agencies off against each other, with the power, in the confusion, going to Kissinger. He was, of course, understood to be operating for Nixon.\n\nNSSM 1 came out on February 1, 1969, about a week after Nixon took office; in February 1970 Kissinger then formed the infamous 40 Committee, to which the CIA was to submit all plans for covert actions. In December 1970 Kissinger assigned James Schlesinger, assistant director of the budget, the task of analyzing the intelligence budget with an eye to cutting back the department of Thomas Karamessines, Helms's deputy and the director of plans. There were other memos and other major changes until 1973.*\n\nAgainst this destabilized background, the directors of the agencies were expected, in spite of their antagonism and alarm, to help Kissinger when he needed them, which was all the time. He had not only Vietnam to worry about, and the worldwide spread of Communism, but d\u00e9tente, the Arab-Israeli wars, and domestic subversion. In 1969, as part of a solution to the last three problems, all of which he thought were closely related, he moved CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton into the White House and put him in charge of an Israeli counterintelligence desk that was in theory independent from and more important than the Israel desk at the CIA.\n\nFor years Israeli intelligence, with which Angleton was the liaison, had been the source of eighty percent of the CIA's information on the Soviets. Now in the White House, Angleton provided Kissinger with Israel's information in three areas: d\u00e9tente; Soviet military and support activity in the Arab countries; and Soviet influence on Al Fatah, the major component of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was creating nests on American college campuses. In Kissinger's mind the Al Fatah issue merged with the larger one of the Soviets' stimulating other campus activism, particularly the anti-war movement. Indeed, Angleton's deputy Richard Ober had investigated Al Fatah's Communist ties when he looked for Communist influence in the movement prior to 1967, the year he formed Operation CHAOS to conduct domestic counterintelligence. Angleton worked closely with Kissinger and knew almost everything he was doing, although Kissinger did not have the same advantage with Angleton. Despite Kissinger's concern about domestic unrest, Angleton seems not to have trusted Kissinger enough to inform him of the existence of CHAOS, that unprecedented mechanism by which the rival intelligence agencies were working together against the domestic threat. It is unclear why the president, who did know about CHAOS, also tried to achieve the same cooperation in the same illegal activities with the Huston Plan, about which Angleton later said: \"All . . . matters of enlarging procurement within the intelligence community were the same concerns that existed prior to the Huston Plan, and subsequent to the Huston Plan. The Huston Plan had no impact whatsoever on priorities within the intelligence community.\"*\n\nThe Huston Plan for surveillance, mail interception, wiretapping, and burglary, all of which were already being performed by CHAOS, was drawn up by Tom Huston, Nixon's coordinator for security affairs, in June 1970, one month after the invasion of Cambodia, which had ignited a fearfully violent reaction in the country, resulting in the shooting of students at Kent State and Jackson State Universities. Kissinger blamed the intelligence agencies for not warning him that there would be this kind of reaction to the Cambodia invasion (although he had not told anyone with official or unofficial responsibility for domestic intelligence anything about the invasion ahead of time). The intensified domestic surveillance was his and the president's response to their own failure to understand the national mood.\n\nThe Huston Plan was presented at a meeting between Nixon and directors of the FBI (Hoover), CIA (Helms), and army and navy intelligence\u2014the CHAOS group\u2014during which Nixon demanded better intelligence about \"revolutionary activism.\" Hoover afterward leaked the story that he had rejected the order out of hand because it was blatantly illegal, but a black bag operation does not expose another black bag operation because it disapproves of black bag operations. What really happened is that he leaked the story to discredit Nixon. Hoover also demanded that Nixon personally sign each separate illegal order, which Nixon knew would enable Hoover to blackmail him. Nixon withdrew the Huston Plan, but became more suspicious of the intelligence agencies and more determined to have what he wanted, with or without them. Three months later he authorized John Mitchell to provide Justice Department cover for an Intelligence Evaluation Committee (IEC, for which Hoover refused to provide FBI staff), which monitored civil disturbances and coordinated and evaluated domestic intelligence. The president also had available the counsel of Richard Ober, the man at the CIA most concerned at that time with domestic counterintelligence. Ober was given a small office in the basement of the White House, where he was known only to Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger, for whom he eventually worked as a senior staff officer at the National Security Council, shortly before Nixon's presidency came to an end, as he later testified before the Rockefeller Commission. Ober's testimony, originally classified top secret, was released through the Freedom of Information Act in 1979.\n\nAfter the publication of the first edition of this book, Ober denied ever having had any personal contact with the president, but he has never denied being Deep Throat. According to sources, Ober's domestic counterintelligence projects put him in frequent communication with Nixon, and enabled Ober to see him at any time without Haldeman's permission and without going on the record (his name was never written into the standard daily logbook of everyone who met with the president). Ober seems to have been present not only at many of the meetings that took place after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, but also during Nixon's mental deterioration, as his obsession with his enemies began to push him past the limits of rational thought. As the president, in his confusion, began equating the Democrats both with the war (the Kennedy Democrats) and with those opposed to the war (the McGovern Democrats) and decided that a McGovern victory in the presidential election of 1972 would be a victory for the Communists, he became more firmly convinced than ever before that his reelection was synonymous with the best interests of the nation. He also knew that neither the CIA nor the FBI would help ensure that he would win.\n\nThe essential rule of counterintelligence is to use an enemy's weaknesses against himself, to one's own advantage. Haldeman and Ehrlichman held the authority in the Nixon White House for political intelligence and sabotage, but as is now well known, it was Nixon's penchant for secrecy, combined with his fear of the Democrats despite his thirty-point lead in the polls; it was his disastrous policy in Cambodia in disregard of the CIA's warnings; it was his shameless blaming of the analysts at Central Intelligence when the Cambodia policy failed; it was his continual fueling of the anti-war movement despite Ober's efforts to contain it\u2014it was all of that, along with his harsh and destructive attempts \"to get political control over the CIA,\" as Watergate burglar James McCord later told the Senate Watergate committee, that ultimately led to his downfall.\n\nBy the beginning of Nixon's second term, the heads of the intelligence agencies had come to believe that his policies, regardless of his dedication to anti-Communism, now \"smacked of the situation which Hitler's intelligence chiefs found themselves in\" before the fall of Germany, as one operative said. It was, therefore, primarily because Nixon was judged to be insane, a terrible and a dangerous head of state, that somebody at the CIA, at the White House, at the National Security Council, or at all of those places at once, began leaking stories to a _Washington Post_ reporter with an intelligence background, whose editor also had an intelligence background, about the break-in at Democratic headquarters, about all that it represented and all that it hid. \"The covert activities involve the whole U.S. intelligence community and are incredible,\" Deep Throat told Bob Woodward. \"The cover-up [about the break-in] had little to do with Watergate, but was mainly to protect the covert operations,\" by which he meant primarily the surveillance of the anti-war movement, an operation that involved \"the whole U. S. intelligence community\" and that had been authorized by the president in violation of the law of the land.* Whether Deep Throat was Richard Ober, whom Bradlee had dined with at Harvard and whom Woodward very likely had known while at the Pentagon; whether or not it was Ober, who as head of Operation CHAOS, as both a White House and a National Security operative, was one of the few men in a position to know more about Nixon than Nixon himself did; whether or not Deep Throat was the same man who had been the deputy and the prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of James Angleton, the CIA's master of dirty tricks\u2014there is no doubt that the use of the _Washington Post_ to take down Nixon was both a counterintelligence operation of the highest order and the dirty trick _par excellence._ Bradlee and his young reporters would take all the risks for a good story, as journalists are easily manipulated into doing, and either Bradlee would succeed in getting rid of Nixon, or Katharine Graham would be forced to salvage her newspaper by getting rid of Bradlee.\n\n* * *\n\nOn July 30, 1974, after two years of Watergate stories, a yearlong congressional investigation, and conspiracy indictments of Nixon's closest aides, the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment against Nixon for \"high crimes and misdemeanors\" and recommended to the full House that he be impeached. During that spring, Katharine gave a breakfast for Robert Redford, who wanted, to her amusement, to immortalize the _Washington Post,_ its editors, and two of its reporters in a Hollywood film. It was to be a political detective story, based upon _All the President's Men_ by Bernstein and Woodward, which was originally written as a study of John Mitchell and Gordon Liddy; Redford had heard about the book and had called Woodward, whom he had never met, to suggest that the plot be changed to feature the reporters as protagonists. The manuscript was nearly finished before Woodward showed it to Katharine, who told him, \"It's wonderful.\"\n\nWhen the book was delivered to the publisher early in 1974, half a year before Nixon's resignation, and ending, presciently, with Nixon's desperate promise that he had \"no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the American people elected me to do,\" Redford quietly paid $425,000 for the movie rights. Then he asked Woodward to introduce him to Mrs. Graham. Though the request, in Katharine's view, came rather belatedly, after he had assumed her cooperation on his project, she agreed to the meeting. \"Fine,\" she told Woodward; \"all of you come to breakfast.\"\n\nShe had initially been nervous, that morning in March, when Redford came to call on her, but then so had he; in fact he felt himself to be in the presence of a greater legend and a greater human being. Hollywood, as Redford knew, created myth that lived on as American culture. Katharine Graham, a woman of authentic power, could do what he could never do; she created myth that lived on as history, as truth.\n\n* _Vogue_ , June 1970.\n\n* New York: Random House, 1987.\n\n\u2020 Capote was not the only one of Katharine's friends who closely observed the family. The contrast between Lally and Donny was extraordinary, Lady Pamela Berry once noted. Lally was straight out of Scott Fitzgerald (her nickname for Lally was Gatsby), while Donny was just the opposite\u2014intensely modest, frugal, prudent. Pamela confessed to Katharine that she used to worry about Donny until she realized that this was typical of him.\n\n* December 6, 1966.\n\n* January 1, 1967.\n\n\u2020 December 1967.\n\n* This term was first used in Ralph Stavins, Richard J. Barnet, and Marcus G. Raskin, _Washington Plans an aggressive War_ (New York: Random House, 1971).\n\n* Technically, the KGB, the secret police of the Soviet Communist party, was not formed until 1954, a year after Stalin died. It superseded several of Stalin's internal security and intelligence agencies that had been so autonomous as to threaten even the party apparatus. Before 1954, Angleton charted the divisions within Soviet intelligence as well as its activities in foreign countries.\n\n* In the 1960s the Post Company gained control of several strategic properties in the news industry that were central to its rise as a major communications corporation. The most important of these were the Bowater Mersey Paper Company of Nova Scotia, which ensured the _Post_ a permanent supply of newsprint and gave it control over the supplies of other newspapers; and the _International Herald Tribune_ , owned jointly with Whitney Communications and the _New York Times_ , which brought _Post_ writers published in it international prestige, as well as increasing the _Post_'s access to a network of outstanding foreign correspondents.\n\n* \"What Makes a Newspaper Nearly Great?\" _Columbia Journalism Review_ , Fall 1967.\n\n* The role of internal press critic, or ombudsman, was created by Bradlee in 1969 at the suggestion of Philip Foisie, an assistant managing editor, in response to attacks on the _Post_ by Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and John Ehrlichman. Ben Bagdikian moved over from his job as national affairs editor to become the paper's second ombudsman in 1971.\n\n* \"Communists are in the forefront of civil rights, anti-war, and student demonstrations, many of which ultimately become disorderly and disrupt [ _sic_ ] into violence,\" J. Edgar Hoover testified before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in September 1968.\n\n\u2020 The French had been fighting in Southeast Asia almost continuously since 1887, when they began their efforts to consolidate Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos into a French-dominated federation called Indochina. In 1946, after the defeat of Japan in World War II, the French signed an agreement with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the coalition of Vietnamese Nationalist and Communist groups that had been fighting for liberation, promising to allow Vietnam, under Ho, to exist as a free state within Indochina. Later that year, though, the French attempted once again to assert their domination, and thus began the French-Indochina war of 1946-1954, with France, subsidized by the United States, battling Ho Chi Minh's nationalist forces.\n\n* This Senate group was replaced in 1956 with the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (now the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board), one of whose original members was Joseph P. Kennedy.\n\n\u2020 American Friends of Vietnam was formed in 1956 to help get Americans accustomed to the idea of increased involvement in Vietnam. One of its executive members was Elliot Newcomb, a partner in the publicity firm of Newcomb-Oram, which earlier had signed a contract for $3,000 a month plus expenses to represent the Diem government in the United States.\n\n* Karamessines's memorandum to Angleton, August 15, 1967, reprinted in the _Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans_ (the Church Committee Report), p. 690.\n\n\u2020 Cable to field offices describing the collection requirement, August 31, 1967, reprinted in the Church Committee Report, p. 691.\n\n* Katharine Graham as quoted in Roberts, _The Washington Post_ , p. 392.\n\n* \"In the Name of Unity,\" _Washington Post_ editorial, April 1, 1968.\n\n\u2020 Joseph Kraft, \"Vote Shows LBJ Is Vulnerable but Nixon Can't Capitalize on It,\" _Washington Post_ , March 14, 1968.\n\n* David S. Broder, \"The Breaking of the President,\" _Washington Post,_ October 7, 1969.\n\n* _Ibid._\n\n\u2020 Roberts, _The Washington Post._\n\n* _Washington Post,_ September 25, 1968.\n\n* _Washington Post,_ September 25, 1968.\n\n\u2020 The truth about Donny's service with the District of Columbia police has been a matter of some confusion. His official _Post_ biography says he was a patrolman from January 1969 until June 1970, eighteen months, with which Chalmers Roberts' official history of the _Post_ concurs. Police personnel records, however, indicate something different: that he joined in January 1969 and resigned in June 1969, shortly after finishing academy training. This would be the end of it, except that the payroll office lists him until January 1970. When such a discrepancy exists, according to the personnel office, it is because an officer has gone undercover, into the intelligence unit or the vice squad; a man with Don's Civil Disturbance training most likely would have gone into intelligence. That he claims to have been with the force until June 1970, five months longer than he actually was, remains a mystery.\n\n* This truly Nixonian incident is related in a light biography of Johnson, _A Very Human President_ by Jack Valenti (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975): \"The president. . . beginning in early October felt that all signs pointed to a break in the Paris peace talks. Hanoi began to show a willingness to go forward . . . [and] the South [for the first time was] willing to take part in the peace negotiations, with the proviso that the bombing would stop. . . . Suddenly the South turned bafflingly stubborn, delaying, backing and filling. . . . The president said that hard information had come to him that representatives of Nixon [had] reached President Thieu and urged him not to accept this arrangement. They intimated to Thieu that it would not be in his best interests, more than intimating that if Nixon won, the South would get a better deal. . . [but] that the U.S. would sell out Saigon [if] Humphrey took office. . . . Johnson said that he had kept both Nixon and Humphrey informed of every turn in the negotiations, and both . . . said they would back LBJ in his every move. But the president said it was clear to him that Nixon [was] nervous and fidgety over the prospect of a full bombing halt and the inclusion of the South in the talks.\"\n\n* By Raskin, Stavins, and Barnet, _op. cit._\n\n* Raskin's book became the basis of an essay by the eminent political theorist Hannah Arendt, which she called \"Lying in Politics,\" in _Crises of the Republic_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).\n\n* For a fine, complete account of the Pentagon Papers case, see Sanford J. Ungar, _The Papers and The Papers_ (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972).\n\n\u2020 Senate Watergate hearings, _Appendix III_ , John Ehrlichman's handwritten notes, p. 128.\n\n* The following comments are selected from Ehrlichman's notes, pp. 90-203. The conversations from which they are excerpted took place between June 6 and October 8, 1971, and they appear here in chronological order.\n\n* According to Robert Dole, chairman of the Republican National Committee, Katharine's motivation was simply \"because I hate him.\" Katharine has denied making the remark. See Roberts, _The Washington Post_ , p. 436.\n\n\u2020 Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974).\n\n* Bernstein and Woodward, _All the President's Men._\n\n* _The Armies of Ignorance_ , _op. cit._\n\n* Angleton's testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), September 24, 1975. A fascinating discussion of the Huston Plan and Operation CHAOS appears in the _Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence activities and the Rights of Americans_ , _op. cit._\n\n* Bernstein and Woodward, _All the President's Men_ , p. 317, _op. cit._\n\n# [PART IV\n\nPost _script_](content-toc.xhtml#a4)\n\n# [CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\n _Katharine Graham and the Years after Watergate_](content-toc.xhtml#aa13)\n\nTWO DECADES after Katharine Graham used the _Washington Post_ to expose the corruption of the Nixon administration, her newspaper remains a symbol of journalistic integrity and courage. Yet while the legend endures, the policies she has carried out since Nixon resigned have made the _Post_ a very different kind of newspaper.\n\nRichard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. The new president of the United States, Gerald Ford, pardoned him on September 8. During Ford's caretaker administration, an obscure Southern ex-governor appeared on the political horizon. Jimmy Carter was fresh, honest, decent, healing, the antithesis of Nixon and his tainted spirit which still lingered in Washington. Carter easily became the Democratic nominee against Ford in 1976. Just before the election, when Katharine Graham was at her home in Martha's Vineyard, a friend asked whether she would be voting for Carter. Katharine turned to her friend calmly and said, \"Why no. Meyers have always voted Republican.\"\n\nA few months after Nixon resigned, a reporter from the rival newspaper, the _Washington Star,_ asked \"the most powerful woman in America,\" as Katharine was now known, whether it had \"pleased\" her when the new president, Gerald Ford, invited her to a party. \"I thought it was very nice,\" Katharine said. \"I believe that Ford's openness is commendable. If people who disagree with one another can't speak to one another, it's very nasty.\"\n\nShe also told the interviewer that \"very sophisticated people knew enough to disregard\" the criticisms of her newspaper as a barrier to friendship with her, and \"if they don't, then [we're] not going to be friends very long.\"* She noted, for example, that Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state, had never let the _Post's_ investigation of Nixon come between them. In fact their relationship was so strong that she and her editorial page editor Meg Greenfield had written a profile of the new Mrs. Kissinger for the _Post's_ Style section in April 1974, only four months before Nixon left office. That article quoted Nancy Kissinger's wifely observations that Henry does not care about power or celebrity, but that he couldn't live without a job that stimulated him.\"\u2020 Kissinger, untainted by the Nixon scandal, stayed on as secretary of state under Gerald Ford.\n\nFord served two years as president before being challenged by the unknown Jimmy Carter, whom Katharine quickly dismissed as a serious threat. When Carter won the New Hampshire primary, however, Katharine found out the identities of his close friends in Washington, telephoned the most important of the women, Mary King, to come to lunch at her house, and questioned her for several hours. What is all this about him being born again? What does that mean? Won't his religion interfere with his political judgment? What kind of man is he? Is he intelligent? What does he really believe in? What motivates him?\n\nCarter was inaugurated in January 1977. Two years later, in January 1979, Katharine appointed her thirty-three year old son Donald publisher of the _Washington Post._ She remained as chairman of the board. (In March 1991, she announced that Donald would also become the Post Company's chief executive officer, replacing Richard Simmons.) Having run the paper through the Vietnam-era presidencies of Johnson, Nixon, and Ford; through the destruction of the _Post's_ pressmen's union in 1975; the Church Committee revelations of CIA manipulation of the media in 1976; Ben Bradlee's marriage in 1978 to a glamorous younger woman, Sally Quinn; and the election that year of a militant black mayor of Washington, Marion Barry, who openly disdained the city's white power structure; she was tired, and felt her time at the paper had ended.\n\nThe Carter people had not appreciated how much she could help them, so she turned to international issues. Katharine went to the new open China, preparing for the trip by asking Carter's CIA director, Stansfield Turner, to brief her on political conditions in the Far East. (But when she returned and Turner asked to hear about the trip, she cited the Church Committee hearings and told him nervously, \"You know, I just couldn't do that.\"*) She flew to Egypt during the Iran hostage crisis to see the deposed Shah of Iran, whom she found \"sad and lonely,\" surrounded by an \"air of pathos,\" and deserted by his friends, as she reported to her news staff.\n\nKatharine also in those years became one of two Americans (the other was Peter Peterson, Nixon's Secretary of Commerce) to serve on Willy Brandt's Independent Commission on International Development Issues. Recommended by World Bank president Robert McNamara and endorsed by United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim for her \"good dose of common sense\" and her ability to \"help spread the news\" about the Commission's work, Katharine went to meetings in 1978 and 1979 in Germany, Switzerland, Mali, Malaysia, France, and Austria. She and her colleagues on the Commission\u2014Olaf Palme and Edward Heath, among others\u2014discussed ways in which the rich countries could help the poor countries \"achieve a just return for their productive efforts, and [cooperate] with them for the economic and social development of all nations.\"*\n\nIn the spirit of the Commission, she supported Carter's treaty to return the Panama Canal to Panama in 1978. But she became increasingly contemptuous of Carter's ineffectual efforts to get Iran to free the American hostages in 1979 and 1980, and ran editorials saying his weakness was embarrassing the United States. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980 and began his covert war against Nicaragua, Katharine therefore applauded his efforts to strengthen the American image, despite the fact that Nicaragua was trying to implement precisely the sort of agrarian and educational reforms that the Commission said were a matter of \"survival\" for the planet.\n\nWhen Katharine turned the newspaper over to her son, her daughter Lally Weymouth, her oldest child, was angry and offended. Lally informed her that if Phil were alive, he would have given her the paper. Katharine understood the pain of Lally's loss and her struggle to be taken seriously; Katharine had had the same struggle with her own mother. But she also thought that Lally was too much like Phil to be trusted with the financial and institutional integrity of the Meyer family newspaper. There were her love affairs; and politically she could swing from left to right, from pro-Zionist to pro-radical Arab, the way Phil had vacillated between mania and depression. With Don, a former soldier and policeman who coached Little League and had a stable marriage, the _Washington Post_ would be safer. With Don, Katharine Graham could be sure the _Post_ would continue to reflect her ideas and her character.\n\nWhen Nixon left Washington, the _Post_ had a news staff which Katharine thought had an exaggerated sense of its own importance. Her reporters wanted big salaries, more independence, and the continuing drama of great political battles which could lead to book and movie contracts. And all of this they expected her to finance.\n\nLess than three months after Nixon departed, Katharine made her own position clear in an article in _New York_ magazine. The press bore too much of the \"burden\" for probing official wrongdoing during Vietnam and Watergate, she said; for journalists to see themselves as \"heroes\" whose investigations are part of the story was \"dangerous\" and \"unnatural.\" She said their continuing insistence on \"candor\" as a qualification for political office would \"distort the process\" of judging public servants, especially \"extremely intelligent\" men like her friend Henry Kissinger, who, being secretive by nature, she argued on his behalf, \"does not entirely understand the new requirements for disclosure.\"\n\nShe began to speak publicly about what the fight with Nixon had cost her: a million dollars to defend her television licenses, hundreds of thousands for legal fees during the Pentagon Papers case and Watergate, the low value of _Post_ stock on Wall Street. Freedom of the press is expensive, she said again and again; to ensure this freedom, she would now dedicate herself to making the _Post_ highly profitable. \"The investment community viewed me [during the Nixon years] as a crazy liberal woman who was only interested in journalistic issues,\" she told a group of European business and political leaders some years later. \"To convince them otherwise\u2014that I cared about profits\u2014I invented a saying that has since become a bromide. I told them: quality and profitability go hand in hand. It turns out to be true.\"*\n\nShe cared about profits enough to make the Washington Post Company one of the biggest cash generators in the United States. She also became one of the wealthiest women in the world. In the 1980s, financial analysts ranked the Post Company first in income growth of all major American corporations and estimated Katharine's personal fortune at $1.1 billion. During the same decade, the _Post_ stopped contributing to the reporters' pension fund, and the salary scale for _Post_ reporters fell from first among the nation's newspapers to fourteenth.\n\nAs she reined in her reporters, she also controlled her blue-collar workers by hiring Lawrence Wallace, the newspaper industry's leading union buster, as her director of labor relations. Wallace helped Katharine break the pressmen's union at the start of the new era, in June 1975, less than a year after Nixon had gone. Katharine wanted to break the union so she could automate the pressroom; the pressmen wanted job security and safer working conditions.\n\nWhen the pressmen struck, the _Post_ reporters debated whether or not to cross their picket line. Katharine went into the newsroom and complimented the reporters for their role in ending the Vietnam war and getting rid of Nixon. She argued that a blue-collar labor dispute should not interfere with a reporter's constitutional right, his obligation, to report the news. Flattered by her appeal, every reporter except one crossed the pressmen's picket line; the man who refused, John Hanrahan, was fired. When the reporters' own contract with the _Post_ expired soon afterward, late in 1975, she repaid them for their loyalty by having Wallace drag out the negotiations, without renewing the contract, for more than three years\u2014the remainder of her time as publisher.\n\nWallace's own standing depended on his performance under the _Post's_ Incentive Compensation plan, which Katharine introduced in 1975 to reward or punish executives on the basis of whether their \"contribution to profitability can be readily measured.\" His strategy for increasing profits was to withhold a contract from the reporters long enough to weaken their confidence in their union, the Washington\/Baltimore local of the Newspaper Guild. The strategy was effective: by 1979, so many _Post_ reporters had quit the union that Guild negotiators agreed to a damaging series of concessions just to get any contract at all.\n\nThe new contract included a two-tier wage system under which new reporters could be hired at lower pay; decreased medical benefits; and elimination of the union dues checkoff, so that Guild dues were no longer automatically deducted from reporters' paychecks. The Guild also turned over control of the reporters' pension fund to _Post_ management and accepted a number of disciplinary measures. Wallace, an expert on employee discipline, circulated a memo at the time of the new contract titled \"Social Needs and the Workplace,\" which advised _Post_ editors and supervisors that \"the purpose of corrective discipline is to demean the employee, in his eyes, in the eyes of his family, and the eyes of his fellow employees.\" The memo also said that such \"corrective discipline\" as firings and sick leave without pay should be applied \"particularly in Guild departments.\"\n\nDon Graham was still feeling his way as publisher of the _Post_ when the 1979 Guild contract expired in 1982. Since he was already having difficulties with the job\u2014a fifty-million-dollar lawsuit by the head of Mobil Oil in 1980; a Pulitzer Prize that he had to return when reporter Janet Cooke admitted her story was a hoax, in 1981; threats by CIA director William Casey that he would press criminal charges if the _Post_ published \"national security\" information\u2014Don renewed that contract quickly rather than create more upheaval.\n\nBy the time that status quo contract expired in 1985, however, the legal and political situation for the _Post_ had stabilized, and Don resumed his mother's campaign against the reporters' union. He and Wallace refused to sign another contract with the Guild until the National Labor Relations Board charged the _Post_ with unfair labor practices in 1988. Then Don fired Wallace, whom he blamed for the problem, and hired a new negotiator, Frank Havlicek, to settle with the Guild before the case went to court.\n\nReporters who have worked for the _Washington Post_ in the years after Watergate say the most demoralizing aspect of their experience has been the Grahams' retreat from the principle of protecting news sources. Although Katharine Graham's reputation continues to rest on her fierce defense of the confidentiality of sources under Nixon\u2014the enduring Deep Throat legend\u2014both she and her son have consistently refused to sign any contract containing the Guild's standard clause on \"privilege against disclosure.\"\n\nThis provision, which requires a publisher to defend reporters who refuse to reveal confidential information, and to defend them if they are sued for libel, has been accepted by the _New York Times,_ the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ and the other Knight-Ridder newspapers, most other major American and Canadian newspapers and news magazines, even the Grahams' own _Newsweek,_ whose news staff is represented by the Guild's New York local. But when Guild negotiators talked in 1986 with Larry Wallace about source protection, he accused them of trying to make \"radical changes.\" Wallace told them the _New York Times_ and _Newsweek_ were \"crazy\" to make such a promise to reporters; \"they make lots of mistakes up there [in New York].\" Wallace said the _Post_ should not have to defend some reporter who \"breaks in\" to obtain information (he could not cite an instance of such a break-in) or who \"strays off the reservation.\"\n\nBradlee's response to the Guild's proposal was that it was an insult to him as an editor, that he would decide when to protect sources and reporters and when not to. And Don Graham vetoed it because he thought it might interfere with a reporter's \"citizenship\" duty to cooperate with law enforcement.\n\nDon's notion of citizenship was at the heart of the struggle over what kind of newspaper the _Post_ was becoming. It was first clearly articulated in 1981, when Don concluded from the Janet Cooke episode that if Bob Woodward, then the metropolitan editor, had cared less about defending Cooke's right not to say where she got her information, and more about helping police rescue the eight-year-old heroin addict portrayed in her story, Woodward would have found out the story was false before it was submitted to the Pulitzer Prize committee.\n\nThe Cooke affair expressed the tension about proper journalistic behavior that had been building at the _Post_ ever since Watergate, a tension compounded when Watergate star Carl Bernstein, who had quit the paper to write a book on his parents' ordeal with McCarthyism, disclosed in _Rolling Stone_ in 1977, as a footnote to the Church Committee hearings, that CIA propagandists had thought of Katharine's husband, Philip Graham, as \"somebody you could always get help from\" in publishing anti-Communist stories when he ran the paper in the 1950s and early 1960s.\n\nThe effect of Bernstein's revelations was to create suspicion in political and journalistic circles about the ethics and the loyalties of certain \"brand name\" reporters, one of them being Bob Woodward, Bernstein's partner on the Watergate stories. Woodward's relationship to Deep Throat, his secret source against Nixon, now seemed to many people in Washington to be clearly connected to his own hidden background, which, as one independent reporter discovered, had involved intimate ties with key figures in the Nixon White House. In 1969 and 1970, Navy Lieutenant Woodward, communications duty officer for Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chief of Naval Operations, had routinely briefed Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and other high-ranking officials on intelligence coming in from trouble spots all over the world. After Woodward became a reporter, he retained his connections to this subterranean network of potential Nixon betrayers.*\n\nAs this information began to surface, Katharine's latent fear that she had been tricked into destroying the president, and her determination to guard the value of _Post_ stock against forces she could not understand or control, came increasingly into conflict with what Bradlee described as his \"hormonal\" need to print stories that excited him and shocked his audience. In Washington, that meant stories that did political damage. Katharine did not object so much to Bradlee going after individual politicians as to the fact that continually chipping away at the legitimacy of government might weaken the country economically, at its foundation.\n\nIn 1979, when Woodward asked Bradlee to make him editor of the metropolitan section, with control of more than one hundred people (a quarter of the news staff), and responsibility for covering the District and all Virgina and Maryland suburbs, he wanted to clearly establish\u2014for himself and for his critics\u2014that the _Post_ was his professional and emotional home. At age thirty-six, after three bestselling books, a second marriage, and a second divorce, he had a feeling of disorientation he thought he could overcome by helping the paper find a new sense of mission. He wanted Carl Bernstein to be his co-editor, but Bradlee refused to rehire him. Carl had humiliated the _Post_ with his _Rolling Stone_ article (because of which Bradlee now called him \"that little bastard\"). But what was worse, Bradlee thought Bernstein's involvement with Buster Riggins, a politically connected pimp and pornographer, could seriously compromise the paper.\n\nWoodward and Bradlee learned of Bernstein's relationship with Riggins in 1978, when a District of Columbia police detective told _Post_ reporter Timothy Robinson that Bernstein was getting free material from Riggins's pornographic bookstore in exchange for tips on police vice investigations. (The detective told the author he also received complaints about Bernstein writing bad checks to prostitutes in the early 1970s, during his Watergate reporting, but did not press charges because he thought Bradlee and Mrs. Graham would accuse him of being politically motivated.)\n\nWoodward assigned Robinson to investigate Bernstein. The reporter spent three months examining the life of his former colleague, found nothing illegal, and finally told Woodward what Bernstein had told him\u2014that he was getting information _from,_ Riggins, not giving information _to_ him. What Bernstein did with this information, since he was no longer working for a newspaper, remained unanswered. Robinson did, however, find out that while Bernstein was working on Watergate, he had attended the same sex parties as John Paisley, the CIA officer who ran the Plumbers, Nixon's private group of burglars. Bernstein admitted to the sex parties but told Robinson that he did not know Paisley, that Paisley was not Deep Throat, and that he had never done anything to compromise the _Post.*_\n\nRobinson's investigation confirmed Bradlee's belief that Bernstein would be a liability to the paper. But to appease the worried Woodward, Bradlee helped get Bernstein away from the book about how McCarthyism had hurt his parents\u2014the cause of at least some of his self-destructive anger\u2014by persuading ABC president Roone Arledge to hire him as Washington bureau chief of ABC News. Bernstein proved a poor manager, lasting two years at the job, 1979 to 1981, and then spent another eight years struggling with his book. When it was finally published in 1989 as _Loyalties,_ critics said it was a literary work of art. Bernstein now works as a general assignment reporter for _Time_ magazine in New York.\n\nBernstein's two years at ABC News coincided with Woodward's two years as the _Post's_ metro editor, and Woodward was an equal failure.\n\nIn his attempt to infuse the paper with a new sense of mission, to help Mrs. Graham make money without political risk while producing exciting stories for Bradlee, to make stars of his reporters so they would not be treated as labor, and, not least, to position himself to be executive editor of the _Post_ after Bradlee\u2014to do all this, Woodward relied on a method he called \"holy shit\" journalism. Long before, he had uttered these words at James McCord's arraignment for breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex, when McCord told the judge he was working for the CIA. That reaction was thereafter Woodward's standard for an ideal story.\n\nWoodward's first \"holy shit\" story appeared in November 1979. Written by his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Patrick Tyler, it accused Mobil Oil president William Tavoulareas of improperly giving lucrative Mobil shipping contracts to his son. Woodward gave the story to Tyler just as Bradlee had given him Watergate; this, Tyler's Watergate, would be more acceptable to Katharine than a new attack on government and important enough to overcome her pro-business bias. Coming at the end of the oil crisis, which had Americans sitting in long gas lines, this expos\u00e9 of a man with ties to the hated Arab oil sheiks was not just a great story in its own right (\"It's not often,\" Tyler said, \"that you get to knock off one of the Seven Sisters\"), but a chance to Uncover the nefarious world of money, politics, and oil in the Middle East.\n\nTavoulareas was not a passive victim, however. He came down from New York and stormed into the newsroom to tell Bradlee he had been wronged, that the help he gave his son was lawful, that he had abstained from voting when Mobil's board of directors approved his son's shipping contracts. He asked for a retraction, but the story had high visibility; it had touched off a congressional investigation, and Bradlee gruffly refused.\n\nTavoulareas spent nearly a year negotiating for a retraction before suing for libel. As the deadline for filing his lawsuit approached, Katharine invited him to her home for breakfast to hear his side of the story. Tavoulareas was impressed with her grace, her \"wistful, sensitive beauty.\" She showed sympathy to him, she listened to what he said and took notes; she said she'd like to settle their problem amicably. He found himself feeling protective, and asked her, \"are you willing to take on Bradlee and Woodward?\" When she did not answer, but just looked down, he boldly went on to tell her, \"there never was a Deep Throat.\" Katharine promised to think about what he said, but never called. After Tavoulareas filed his fifty million dollar lawsuit against Woodward, Tyler, Bradlee, and Mrs. Graham (Tavoulareas did not name publisher Donald Graham in the lawsuit), a friend asked _Post_ attorney Edward Bennett Williams why he did not settle out of court. \"I'd like to settle this case,\" Williams responded, \"but that goddamn cunt won't let me.\"*\n\nJust as Watergate helped establish investigative reporting as a noble calling, the Tavoulareas case helped destroy it. During the trial, Woodward explained to the jury his theory of \"holy shit\" journalism, the need to shock the audience, the competition for front-page placement. He talked about Tyler's sources and what each one had said. Woodward also described himself and his reporters as \"processors of information\" whose investigations result in no more than \"the best obtainable version of the truth.\"\n\nThe jury found for Tavoulareas. The _Post's_ lawyers persuaded the judge to set aside the verdict, but Tavoulareas was upheld on appeal. The decision of the appellate panel sent tremors through newspaper boardrooms. The \"editorial pressure\" on _Post_ reporters to \"produce high-impact investigative stories of wrongdoing,\" the appellate judges declared, could very well be a motive for publishing \"knowing or reckless falsehood\"\u2014the standard for proving libel.\n\n_Tavoulareas v. The Washington Post Company, et al.,_ ended in 1988, eight years after it began, when the full appeals court reversed the panel on grounds that Tavoulareas was a public figure, and Tavoulareas appealed to the Supreme Court and lost. Katharine and other publishers hailed the decision as a victory for freedom of the press, but it had cost her time, energy, and prestige. Thanks to Woodward, the dishonorable \"holy shit\" and \"best obtainable version of the truth\" were now as much a part of the _Post_ legend as its Watergate heroism.\n\nThe second \"holy shit\" story to come out of Woodward's shop was Janet Cooke's September 1980 piece about the eight-year-old drug addict she called Jimmy. It won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 1981. Politically safe because Cooke was a black reporter attacking a local black issue, it showed the paper's concern for the majority nonwhite community in Washington\u2014one of Don's goals\u2014and pleased Bradlee so much that he honored it with a place on the front page, up with national news. Other metro reporters told Woodward the story seemed phony; no mother would inject her child with heroin in front of a reporter, as Cooke had written. But Woodward told them they were jealous. He admired Cooke's refusal to reveal her sources; it made him believe the story all the more.\n\nOnly when the Pulitzer Prize committee released her biography to the Associated Press in April 1981, and a reporter from her home town said there were discrepancies with what he knew, that Janet Cooke had never gone to the Sorbonne nor graduated from Vassar\u2014only then did Woodward examine her notes and find nothing about Jimmy. Bradlee then tested Janet's knowledge of French, found out she couldn't speak it, which made him think she had lied about the Sorbonne, and told her angrily, \"You're just like Nixon, you're trying to cover up.\" He returned the Pulitzer Prize, the _Post's_ first since Watergate, and ordered the paper's ombudsman to write an analysis for publication the following Sunday. \"Jimmy's World\" was \"a brilliant story,\" Woodward told the ombudsman, \"fake and fraud that it was.\"*\n\nBefore Woodward was removed as metro editor later that year, he authorized reporter Loretta Tofani to work on a final \"holy shit\" story, about homosexual rape in Maryland's Prince Georges County jail. It won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1983\u2014the _Post's_ only investigative prize after Watergate, until 1991.\n\nTofani's three-part story was published in September 1982, and created a scandal. Bowing to public pressure, the state's attorney for Prince Georges County convened a grand jury and subpoenaed Tofani to give the names of the rapists she had interviewed. When she refused, he appealed to Don Graham, who nervously talked to Tofani about her \"responsibility. . . . We must be good citizens.\" She told Don she was a reporter, not a police agent, and would not identify the rapists. The state's attorney then threatened to jail her for contempt of court. In the two years of legal maneuvering that followed, the _Post's_ attorneys negotiated Tofani's right not to testify, while executive editor Bradlee, having adjusted to the new _Post_ in the era of Ronald Reagan, advised her to cooperate with the state's attorney, Pulitzer Prize or not. And Woodward called Tofani at home at night saying he wanted to help her and Bradlee come to terms.\n\nFinally, in 1984, Loretta Tofani agreed only to testify that her stories were accurate without naming names, and the state dropped its contempt of court charges. She then worked for a time with Woodward's new ten-person investigative unit, where he once again focused on what he knew best: insider betrayal and palace intrigue. But being one of Woodward's elite was not enough to overcome what she called her \"disillusionment with the _Post_ and what I thought it stood for.\" She eventually returned to her alma mater, the _Philadelphia Inquirer,_ whose editors, she says, understand that \"sources are precious.\"\n\nWoodward, for his part, after failing as metro editor, spent the mid-1980s developing sources in the Reagan White House, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence. These associations enabled him to write expos\u00e9s of Reagan's covert operations in Libya\u2014where, his sources told him, CIA attempts to destabilize Qaddafi were likely to backfire.\n\nEach expos\u00e9 brought new threats of prosecution from CIA director Casey, more legislative proposals to punish officials who talked to reporters, and new assaults on the Freedom of Information Act. But the _Post_ in the Reagan years was a different newspaper from what it had been in the Nixon era, and although Reagan was like Nixon in more ways than he was different\u2014he too was a hardline Cold Warrior who hated the \"liberal\" press; he too was waging clandestine wars (in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Angola) and using contract agents to help him do it\u2014although Reagan was in many ways like Nixon, this time Katharine did not let the hostilities get out of hand.\n\nEven after the story of Oliver North's covert operation to supply the Nicaraguan _contras_ began to break in other newspapers\u2014after having been labeled \"bullshit\" and rejected by Lou Cannon, her own White House correspondent\u2014she continued to see the Reagans socially. She comforted Nancy on the phone at night about news stories that upset her; invited her to lunch with her friends Meg Greenfield, now her chief editorial page editor, and Richard Helms, the former CIA director; and had Nancy up for weekends at Martha's Vineyard. Her friendship with Nancy Reagan had been engineered by Michael Deaver, the president's public relations director, who shared Nancy's ambition to move Ronald Reagan away from the radical Right and closer to the Eastern establishment. Deaver, himself often a guest at Katharine's country home, knowing how Katharine valued her relationship with the Reagans, would sometimes tease her about having once destroyed a president, which would cause Katharine to hide her face in her hands and moan, \"No, no, no.\"*\n\nIn 1987, as the Congress held its televised hearings on the Iran _-contra_ affair, which threatened to implicate Ronald Reagan in illegally providing arms to both Iran and the CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan rebels, Katharine invited the Reagans to be honored guests at her seventieth birthday party. Her daughter, Lally, organized the party for her as a kind of reconciliation present. The two women had finally resolved their differences after Lally threatened to go to work for the _Washington Times,_ owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and Katharine, in a rage, told her that under no circumstances would she write for the _Times,_ that she could have her own column in the _Post_ instead.\n\nThe party was held in a government auditorium, where six hundred of Katharine's genuine friends dined on salmon and filet mignon. Among them were CBS chairman William Paley, _New York Times_ publisher Arthur Sulzberger, General Motors president Roger Smith, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel, Clare Boothe Luce, the Kissingers, Bob Woodward, Nora Ephron (but not her former husband, Carl Bernstein), Robert McFarlane, Malcolm Forbes, Rupert Murdoch, financier Warren Buffett, and Robert McNamara (the last two of whom having been her escorts in the years since Phil died, as she lived out her promise never to give the newspaper to another husband, but to run it herself and \"remain a monk\"). Between the fish and meat courses, President Reagan danced with Mrs. Graham to the music of Peter Duchin and his orchestra. After the dinner, the president took his wine glass to the podium and praised Katharine as \"a sensitive, thoughtful, and very kindly person.\" Then he tipped his glass toward her, and imitating Humphrey Bogart, said, \"Here's looking at you, kid.\"\n\n* * *\n\nKATHARINE Graham has maintained her vision of the _Washington Post_ throughout its long, chaotic period of transition, through the labor battles, the embarrassing stories, the revelations of CIA manipulation, the pressures toward \"citizenship.\" Any contradictions that may have disturbed her have been resolved by her new, idiosyncratic distinction between truth and the practice of journalism. \"Truth and news are not the same thing,\" she has explained; \"produc[ing] a paper people need and want to read, even if they sometimes get angry with what [we] report\u2014that's the best way to serve [our] advertisers.\"\n\nBy this reasoning, she has been able to print Woodward's expos\u00e9s as entertainment, and also kill them if she thinks they might do serious damage. For example, Woodward was not allowed to follow up his story about Reagan's taping system, which \"informed sources said . . . may contain information on the Iran arms affair.\"* Woodward often protests, as does Bradlee, but they are both still at the _Post,_ Woodward still working at his salary of ten years ago while he writes his books, just to call the _Post_ his home, the aging Bradlee still holding onto his power, although Don Graham has already positioned Leonard Downie as his successor. They may complain about censorship, but Katharine expects her editors and reporters to understand that \"government has a right to keep certain information secret,\" as she told a group of CIA officials in 1988. \"Democracy flourishes when it can keep its secrets.\"\u2020\n\n* Mary Anne Dolan, \"Kay Graham: Love Affair With Capital,\" _Washington Star_ , March 16, 1975.\n\n\u2020 Meg Greenfield and Katharine Graham, \"The New Mrs. Kissinger: Bright Lights on Private Life,\" _Washington Post_ , April 21, 1974.\n\n* Stansfield Turner, _Secrecy and Democracy_ , 1985.\n\n* From the Commission's Terms of Reference, reprinted in _North-South: A Programme for Survival_ , _The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt_ , Pan Books Ltd., London, 1980.\n\n* Katharine Graham, \"The Accountability of the Media in the United States,\" speech before the Salzburg Institute, Salzburg, Austria, March 5, 1987.\n\n* See Jim Hougan, _Secret agenda_ (New York: Random House, 1984).\n\n* From interviews with Timothy Robinson and Carl Schoffler. The investigation of Bernstein is also recounted in _Secret Agenda_ , _op. cit.;_ and in _Widows_ by William Corson, Susan Trento, and Joseph Trento, Crown, 1989.\n\n* From interviews with William Tavoulareas and attorneys involved in the case, from court records, and from _Fighting Back_ by William Tavoulareas (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).\n\n* \"Janets World: The Story of a Child Who Never Existed\u2014How and Why It Came to be Published,\" Bill Green, _Washington Post_ , April 19, 1981.\n\n* From an interview with Michael Deaver, and _Behind the Scenes_ by Michael Deaver (New York: William Morrow, 1987).\n\n* \"White House Taping System Disclosed; Computer and Audio Recordings May Contain Data on Iran Deal,\" December 19, 1986.\n\n\u2020 Katharine Graham, \"Secrecy and the Press,\" speech at CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia, November 16, 1988. \n\n# [APPENDIX\n\n _The CIA's Propaganda Campaign Against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: A Historical Notation_](content-toc.xhtml#aa14)\n\nJUSTICE DEPARTMENT documents made available through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the subjects of a massive overseas propaganda campaign in 1952 and 1953, and that _Washington Post_ executive editor Benjamin Bradlee was a central figure in that campaign when he worked as a press attach\u00e9 at the American Embassy in Paris. This covert struggle, conducted under authority of the Marshall Plan and managed by the CIA and embassy officials, was meant to help secure America's moral and strategic foothold in postwar Europe. The European Communists, who had given heavily to the resistance and who were now struggling for political leadership, were saying that the Rosenberg case was evidence of an American \"fascism.\" The American propagandists tried to counter that claim by holding out the Rosenbergs as proof that Communists could not be trusted to be loyal to their own governments. Officials at the embassy sent anti-Rosenberg material to news organizations not only in France, a critical center for Marshall Plan programs, but also to other parts of western Europe, and to eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East, to about forty countries on four continents.\n\nIn _The Rosenberg File_ by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, the authors write, \"There could be no question that the rise in pro-Rosenberg sentiment, both in the United States and overseas, was the result of a tremendous outpouring of support from Communist intellectuals, publications, and trained organizers\" _(The Rosenberg File,_ p. 348). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during and after the Second World War. They were tried and convicted during the McCarthy era, and became the first American civilians ever to be sentenced to death for espionage. The propaganda campaign was designed to convince our European allies, particularly the French, that the Rosenbergs were guilty and deserved their death sentence. The authors' discussion of the propaganda battle, also based in part on the Justice Department documents, reproduces the attitudes of the Paris embassy personnel at the beginning of the campaign in late 1952, which the diplomats considered a _counter_ propaganda effort: the preoccupation with Communist front organizations, the inability to conceive of any support for the Rosenbergs as being other than Communist in origin or cynical and opportunistic in intent.\n\nThere was in the early 1950s, and in the Radosh-Milton book there still seems to be, a lack of understanding on the part of Americans that, for Europeans who had lived through the nightmare of Hitler, the idea that McCarthyism could be the onset of fascism in the United States was very real and quite terrifying, as Hannah Arendt said at the time. For many of those war survivors, the longing to save the Rosenbergs was unrelated to Communism, anti-Communism, or any other ideology, but was a kind of reparation for what they had failed to do for the Jews in Europe.\n\nThe documents that form the basis of this appendix offer a view of American propagandists working out of the embassy in Paris, trying to contain the Communist threat with language, a vision, a sense of mission. They pertain to the five-month period in Paris, December 1952 to April 1953, when Benjamin Bradlee was involved in the Rosenberg struggle. They tell of Bradlee's visit to the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York to gather propaganda material; of the Paris embassy's use of that material to try to put into place a kind of a Communist archetype, the Communist as monster (one document describes them as needing \"bloody sacrifices\"); and of the backlash that the campaign engendered. The Communist archetype would eventually become the natural way of seeing, for many Americans, and would help to shape political conditions both domestically and in Europe. But so soon after the war with Hitler, as Bradlee and other embassy officials discovered, what mattered to the French was to prevent any more loss of life to an ideology, a political abstraction.\n\nThe following section consists of explanatory comments on original cables, letters, and memoranda from that period, some of which are reproduced in this Appendix.\n\nThe earliest document in the series, dated December 13, 1952, is a memorandum on U.S. government stationery from an assistant prosecutor on the Rosenberg case, a Mr. Maran, to assistant U.S. attorney Myles Lane (Figure 1). In that memorandum, Maran describes a conversation that he had that morning with Benjamin Bradlee, who had arrived in New York after flying all night from Paris; the memo conveys the sense that neither he nor Lane had been expecting Bradlee's visit, and that they were rather confused about how to respond to him. \"On December 13, 1952,\" Maran tells Lane, \"a Mr. Benjamin Bradlee called and informed me that he was a Press Attach\u00e9 with the American Embassy in Paris. [Bradlee is identified in the Paris embassy list for 1952 as \"assistant attach\u00e9.\"] . . . he advised me that he was a former Federal Court Reporter for the _Washington Post_ and that he was sent here to look at the Rosenberg file in order to answer the Communist propoganda [sic] about the Rosenberg case in the Paris newspapers.\n\n\"He advised me,\" Maran says, \"that it was an urgent matter and that he had to return to Paris Monday night. He further advised that he was sent here by Robert Thayer, who is head of the C.I.A. in Paris. . . .\" [Robert Thayer is identified in the Paris embassy lists for 1952, 1953, and 1954, simply as \"attach\u00e9.\"]\n\nFIGURE 1. Memorandum from Mr. Maran, assistant prosecutor in the Rosenberg case, to assistant U.S. attorney Myles Lane, describing Bradlee's request to examine the Rosenberg file.\n\nMaran also tells Lane that \"After conferring with you I advised Mr. Bradley [sic] that before we could allow him to examine the file in the Rosenberg case, we would have to get clearance from the Department of Justice in Washington.\n\n\"He stated that he was supposed to have been met by a representative of the C.I.A. at the airport but missed connections.\"\n\nMaran reports that Bradlee told him \"He has been trying to get in touch with [deputy director of Central Intelligence] Allen Dulles but has been unable to do so. I advised him to call the State Department in Washington. . . .\n\n\"Mr. Bradley [sic] advised me that he would probably call you first to find out if he could look at the matters in the file which were public record, and if not would follow my suggestion about calling the C.I.A. or the State Department in Washington.\"\n\nA handwritten note by Myles Lane on the bottom of that memorandum, also dated December 13, indicates that Bradlee \"displayed his credentials\" and was allowed to see the official public record of the trial later the same day. \"Mr. Maran brought it up,\" says the notation. \"Mr. Bradlee worked on the record from 2:30-6:30.\" There is nothing in the documents to indicate that he persuaded the prosecutors to let him see any non-public information or that he did any additional research. Ronald Radosh remarked to this writer about the prosecutors' unwillingness to compromise their legal records, \"it was shocking that Bradlee came all the way from France and nobody gave him any help. Clearly they didn't care about the propaganda campaign in France.\"\n\nOn returning to Paris, Bradlee wrote a lengthy Operations Memorandum entitled \"Analysis of the Rosenberg Case,\" which was delivered to James Clement Dunn, the American ambassador to France (Figure 2). Dunn informed Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in a \"priority\" cable dated December 20, 1952, that Bradlee's \"Analysis based on thorough study of all court records and contains following:\n\nFIGURE 2. Cover page of Bradlee's operations memorandum, widely distributed in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East during a campaign to counter Communist propaganda.\n\n> 1. Legal history from indictment to present appellate status; 2. The governments case with complete summaries of testimony of 20 government witnesses; 3. The defendants case with summaries of testimony of the four defense witnesses; 4. The governments rebuttal with summaries of testimony of the three government rebuttal witnesses; 5. The conduct of the trial containing five sections on how judge was chosen, how jury was selected, defense statements about fairness of trial, [Judge Irving R.] Kaufman's charge to jury, and appellate procedures; 6. The verdict containing an analysis of adequacy of evidence; 7. The sentences containing Kaufman's sentencing opinion on Rosenbergs Sobell and Greenglass plus appellate court comment on sentence and; 8. The Rosenberg case and the Communist Party containing answers to the most common Communist charges re the Rosenberg case.\n\nIt is beyond the scope of this piece to analyze Bradlee's memorandum in detail, but two aspects of it are particularly worth mentioning. First, Bradlee implied that the Supreme Court reviewed the case when in fact it did not. He said in the section on appellate procedures that \"the case went to the Supreme Court. That Court ruled that since no question of law was involved, they would not consider the case and denied certiorari. . . .\"\n\nWhile it is true that the Supreme Court would not hear the case, Bradlee must have known that the denial of certiorari meant, by definition, that the Court intended not to rule on any questions in the case, legal or otherwise. For Bradlee to have worded his report, targeted for foreign journalists, to sound as if the Court had actually said the case involved no legal problems, was potentially very misleading to foreign audiences.\n\nThe second aspect of his analysis that deserves comment is his handling of the issue of anti-Semitism. In the section of Bradlee's Memorandum that gives \"answers to the most common Communist charges re the Rosenberg case,\" he attempts to refute the charge being made in France by Communists \"and others\" that \"anti-semitism play[ed] an indirect role in the Rosenberg case, and especially in the sentence.\" In reference to this charge, he represented the existence of anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States as a fabrication of the European Communists. He ignored the fact that Jews in the United States had believed since 1950 that anti-Semitism was a factor in the Rosenberg trial\u2014and that, as in Europe, the behavior of some of the Jewish leadership was less than admirable. The American Jewish Committee, for example, quickly dissociated itself from the Rosenbergs to demonstrate that the Jewish community in America was mainstream, patriotic and anti-Communist.*\n\nRather than acknowledge such authentic fears and integrate them into his analysis, Bradlee said in his memorandum that \"The religion of the jurors did not become an issue until after the Prague trials\"\u2014a reference to the execution of eight Jewish Communist party leaders in Czechoslovakia in December 1952. The Prague trials were useful to anti-Communists because they disabused some Jewish Communists in the West of the idea that Communism could be a refuge from anti-Semitism. But except for Bradlee's effort to use them as propaganda, those trials were essentially irrelevant to any facet of the trial of the Rosenbergs. Along with the Prague trials, Bradlee mentioned the Rosenberg jurors by name and said \"it is impossible to determine whether any of [them] were members of the Jewish faith.\" And finally, \"It is difficult to see how antisemitism can be attributed to a Jewish judge and a Jewish prosecutor.\" To Europeans anxious about the long-term political effects of McCarthyism, this tone of denial, so reminiscent of the era they had just lived through, proved to be less than reassuring.\n\nBradlee has since come to understand that \"the real issue in France was clemency,\" not the Rosenbergs' innocence or guilt, as he recently told both Ronald Radosh\u2020 and the Washington correspondent for the French newspaper _Le Monde._ But in Paris in the early 1950s, his Operations Memorandum was the foundation of the \"Embassy's efforts to counteract Communist propaganda about Rosenbergs,\" as Secretary of State Acheson was informed in a cable labeled \"confidential security information\" on January 6, 1953. This propaganda was precisely that the Rosenbergs should be granted clemency.\n\nIn the January 6 cable, written by Deputy Chief of Mission Theodore C. Achilles, Acheson was told that \"After personal letters or approaches to editors, Embassy's analysis of case has been used as a basis for articles and editorials in FIGARO, PARISIEN-LIBERE, and AURORE, three largest morning papers. Three-part series now appearing in FRANC-TIREUR under byline of foreign editor. . . . Long article appeared in EVIDENCES, monthly published by French branch of American Jewish Committee and circulated among 5,000 Jewish intellectuals. More than 500 reprints of EVIDENCES piece circulated by AJC to others.\"\n\nThe initial effect of the propaganda was dramatic, Achilles reported. \"Rush of anti-Communist analyses of Rosenberg case prompted both AP and UP to file 500-word stories, with latter, under Bureau Chief [later ambassador to Chile] Ed Korry's byline, saying 'unusually strenuous and successful offensive' has produced results 'almost unique in US counter-propaganda efforts.'\"\n\nThe wire service reports, which went out to hundreds of newspapers, indicated that the propaganda campaign was an open secret, in spite of the classified cables. Achilles seemed pleased with the publicity, but as subsequent cables show, the exposure created a backlash that the Americans could not easily control.\n\nAchilles conceded, in the January 6 cable, that there were still some problems with pro-Rosenberg sentiment in France, but he expected the American effort to overcome them. He said that the \"Communists have increased their campaign daily\"; however, \"After approaches made to LE MONDE [which the Americans considered neutral], second editorial . . . at least said Rosenbergs got legally fair trial, and 'no one was in a position to say they were innocent.' But LE MONDE article generally stuck to line that conviction made possible by climate of hysteria in US. . . .\n\n\"CE SOIR last night,\" Achilles went on, \"carried giant picture of Rosenberg children, covering most of top half of page one. HUMANITE has similar lay-out this morning. . . .\" But, he assured the secretary of state, the counter-propaganda effort has legitimated the American government's position: \"All . . . stories [based on Bradlee's material] have emphasized that careful study shows Rosenbergs fairly convicted and guilty as charged.\"\n\nAfter distributing Bradlee's analysis within France, the embassy in Paris also sent copies to forty other American embassies and missions in western Europe, eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East, for dissemination in the host countries. Ambassador Dunn had notified Dean Acheson in the December 20 cable about English language copies of the Rosenberg study being sent that day to Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Casablanca, Tunis, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Trieste, Belgrade, The Hague, Brussels, Saigon, Algiers, London, and Bonn.\n\nBonn, still under control of the Allied military commanders, was the most important center for Marshall Plan activity next to Paris. The secretary of state himself followed up delivery of the Rosenberg material to Bonn three days later, on December 23, with a \"confidential\" personal cable to John J. McCloy, the high commissioner, telling him that \"If further INFO desired suggest you contact Bradlee, AMEMBASSY Paris, who is fully briefed and has complete documentation\" (Figure 3).\n\nFour days later, according to an \"unclassified\" December 29 cable from Achilles to Acheson, French translations of Bradlee's Operations Memorandum went to Saigon, Brussels, Cairo, Bern, Algiers, Casablanca, Beirut, and Tangiers.\n\nAnd seven days after that, according to another \"unclassified\" cable, dated January 5, 1953, English language copies were also delivered to American embassies and missions in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Havana, New Delhi, Karachi, Rangoon, Colombo, Taipei, Wellington, Sydney, Tehran, Ankara, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Capetown, Sao Paulo, and Beirut.\n\nFIGURE 3. Confidential cable from the secretary of state to the High Commissioner in Bonn concerning the receipt of Bradlee's operations memorandum.\n\nJulius and Ethel Rosenberg remained in Sing Sing prison while this propaganda fight was enacted, waiting to be executed. But as their deaths, scheduled for the week of January 12, became imminent, the propagandists at the Paris embassy lost much of their initial self-assurance and grew increasingly worried that the very success of the propaganda effort might have made the Rosenbergs' plight too public, and that the American position in Europe would suffer if the death sentences were carried out. The pro-American factions in France had been warning that they were less concerned with what more the embassy could put out about the couple's guilt than with how _l'affaire Rosenberg_ would play into the hands of the Communists.\n\nBy the second week in January it became equally clear to the Americans themselves that their propaganda had not eliminated the problem, but on the contrary, seemed to have raised the stakes and to have heightened tensions. Negative reaction among the moderates that had been merely mentioned in passing in the glowing embassy report of January 6 came to dominate the cable traffic in the following few days. Those high level messages, coming out of Paris as the Rosenbergs drafted an appeal for executive clemency to the not yet inaugurated President Eisenhower, showed confusion and frustration among the men responsible for maintaining the image of American morality during this critical early Cold War battle of nerves:\n\nDeputy Chief of Mission Achilles to Secretary of State Acheson, January 8 (cable labeled \"restricted security information\"): \"We were informed by telephone at noon today that we will receive during course of afternoon [the] following resolution:\n\n\"'The Directing Committee of the [pro-American] Socialist Party without taking a position on the basic issue involved . . . , in view of . . . the reasonable doubt which exists regarding guilt of Rosenberg couple, urgently requests President Truman to remit the death sentence . . . in order to avoid the irreparable'. . . . We pointed out without avail that . . . [their use of the phrase] 'reasonable doubt' [was a direct challenge to the American position].\"\n\n\"We have subsequently learned,\" Achilles says, \"that above resolution was devised to replace lengthy two page document which would have given rise to . . . even more comment and unfortunate discussion.\n\n\"[A socialist official] has written Ambassador letter to effect that . . . execution will produce a barrage of Commie anti-American propaganda to which non-Commie elements may be receptive.\"\n\nAchilles to Acheson, January 9 (\"restricted security information\"): \"This morning . . . pro-government Figaro . . . makes sober page-one plea for clemency in these words:\n\n\"Campaign by US for execution is necessary to discourage all those who might be tempted to spy for USSR . . . but wherever there are militant Communists, there are men who would not (rpt not) be restrained by fear of death. They are fantastic; they do not (rpt not) fear running risk of bloody sacrifices.\n\n\"The most important point is that they need these sacrifices. United States Government cannot tolerate retreating before Communist Campaign which has become the campaign of intimidation. But this is not . . . campaign to force Truman into granting clemency. . . . This is campaign to force him to refuse clemency. . . . by presenting in advance this clemency, if it were given, as capitulation.\"\n\nIn the January 9 cable, Achilles seemed to share the fear of the French moderates that the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Communists would gain public support either if the Rosenbergs were executed or if they were not; that clemency would give the Communists the moral victory of having saved the Rosenbergs, but that execution would hand them the even greater strategic advantage of showing the United States to be, as they were claiming, \"fascist.\"\n\nAchilles suggests to Acheson that perhaps the moderates are correct in thinking execution is what the Communists really want, and comes down on the side of sparing the Rosenbergs' lives. After quoting _Figaro,_ Achilles goes on to paraphrase other stories that support his growing fear that \"execution of the Rosenbergs would be much better weapon for Communists than clemency. Because execution would be welcomed and used by Communists with cold satisfaction. Because Communism needs martyrs. Don't (rpt don't) play their game. Don't (rpt don't) give them these martyrs.\"\n\nAchilles then goes on, in the same cable, to tell Acheson about an article in the \"Communist [newspaper] CE SOIR . . . describing horrors of death by electrocution,\" and about an editorial in the usually pro-American _Socialist Populaire_ entitled \"One Witness, No Witness.\" That article was severely critical of the fact that the Rosenbergs \"were convicted on testimony of only one witness.\" Achilles explains that \"this is illegal in France.\"\n\nDeputy Chief Achilles also implies in the January 9 cable that there is growing resentment in France of the American propaganda effort itself, which is coming to be seen by Communists, anti-Communists, and moderates as an effort to influence internal French affairs. The editorial writer for _Socialist Populaire,_ Achilles tells Acheson, has complained in print about being \"'submerged' by United States documents.\"\n\nAnd, Achilles notes, \"This morning Communist HUMANITE [ran a] three column headline [that read] 'in the face of size of Rosenberg Campaign, American Embassy in Paris sent diplomat to Washington to ask advice.'\" The article under the headline identified the diplomat who had carried out that mission as press attach\u00e9 Benjamin Bradlee.\n\nThe _Humanit\u00e9_ story caused some strain between those handling the Rosenberg campaign in Paris and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was ironic since cooperation between the FBI and the CIA had been considerable on matters pertaining to the Rosenberg case, as other declassified Rosenberg documents now indicate. But with Bradlee's trip, some territorial line had apparently been crossed, or Hoover was simply angry that the CIA propaganda had provoked so strong a backlash. In any case, the _Humanit\u00e9_ story became the subject of a memo on embassy letterhead marked \"secret\" that was sent by air courier to J. Edgar Hoover from the \"Legal Attach, Paris\" on January 16, 1953.\n\n(The embassy lists for the years 1952 and 1953 do not identify anyone by the title \"legal attach\u00e9,\" nor do the lists indicate that such a position existed. A state department historian says, \"there was not such a position as a general rule, that term has no meaning to me, unless someone might have been there representing the U.S. Attorney General to the Ministry of France.\")\n\nAlthough the documents indicate that Bradlee went only to New York, not to Washington, the author of the January 16 secret memo told Hoover that Bradlee's trip never took place at all, and denied the embassy's by then well-known role in the savage war of words in Western Europe. He said the story of Bradlee's trip to the United States was itself Communist propaganda.\n\nIn the secret memo of January 16, the legal attach\u00e9 told J. Edgar Hoover that \"The _[Humanit\u00e9]_ article . . . stated that the American Embassy in Paris had recently sent BENJAMIN BRADLEE, Press Attach, on a quick trip to the United States to secure material to combat the 'immense protest' against 'the crime being prepared by American fascism.' The article indicated that BRADLEE's trip had been followed by a continuous flow of material from the Embassy to the newspapers tending to show that the condemnation of the ROSENBERGS was legitimate.\"\n\n\"The article went on to point out, however,\" the legal attach\u00e9 continued, \"that aroused French opinion will not be appeased by such tactics and went on to list and describe the multitude of signed petitions which have 'spontaneously' been made in France in protest against the unjust condemnation of the ROSENBERGS.\n\n\"The Press Attach\u00e9 of the U. S. Embassy did not make the trip reported in L'HUMANIT\u00c9's article,\" the legal attach\u00e9 concluded.\n\n\"This information is being brought to the Bureau's attention as a specific example of the Communist campaign with regard to this case which has been receiving front page attention in HUMANIT\u00c9 for well over a month.\"\n\nThere are no documents available to this writer that would explain why the Rosenberg debate in Europe fell off so abruptly after January 16, just as it was becoming most intense. One can assume that the FBI strongly advised the State Department that its efforts were hurting rather than helping the Justice Department's cause.\n\nWith the curtailing of the propaganda effort, anti-American sentiment in France began to subside in the spring of 1953, to the benefit of more positive Marshall Plan programs. That April, however, some files stolen from the office of David Greenglass's attorney, O. John Rogge, which tended to show that the Rosenbergs had been framed, became the basis of a new series of stories in the leftist and Communist press in France. At the same time, there were stories that the console table had been found in which Julius Rosenberg had supposedly hidden microfilm, and that it contained no secret compartment.\n\nOn April 22, Benjamin Bradlee wrote to assistant U.S. attorney James Kilsheimer asking for information to combat those newest stories, according to another document from the declassified Rosenberg files (Figure 4). (Bradlee is now identified in the embassy list for 1953 as \"assistant attach\u00e9 USIE.\" USIE, The United States Information and Educational Exchange, was the embassy's official propaganda arm). Kilsheimer and another young attorney, Roy Cohn, had replaced Myles Lane as chief assistants to prosecutor Irving Saypol, and Bradlee told Kilsheimer, \"I think the State Department has already contacted you about our latest problems here with the Rosenberg case. The Department has informed me that you would like a copy of the alleged Greenglass statement and I am enclosing a story which appeared in the Communist paper _Humanit\u00e9_ on April 20.\"\n\nBradlee went on to say, \"I think you will remember how urgently we needed information when I saw you in December. The results of that visit were most effective counter-propaganda. For the same reason and with the same urgency, we need the answer to this.\n\nFIGURE 4. Bradlee's letter to assistant U. S. attorney James Kilsheimer requesting more \"information\" to continue the counter-propaganda campaign.\n\n\"I don't know if the State Department told you about French press reports here concerning the console table. The Communists here are claiming that two reporters from a periodical called the 'National Guardian' have discovered this table and that it does not have a well in the center which Greenglass said Rosenberg used in connection with micro films. We also urgently need the answer to that.\n\n\"I don't care how we get the information,\" Bradlee tells Kilsheimer, \"whether by personal letter from you or, from you through the State Department, but I am taking the liberty of writing you directly in the hope that things can be speeded up.\"\n\nWhatever the immediate results of Bradlee's overture, by the following month it had become apparent to everyone involved, including the new ambassador to France, Douglas Dillon, that the damage done by the propaganda, not to mention by the case itself, was not going to be reversed by putting out still more \"information\" to persuade the French of the Rosenbergs' guilt. The State Department began to fear that the Rosenberg case was doing irreparable harm to the American position in western Europe.\n\nAs Radosh and Milton reported,* in contradiction of their thesis about Communist fronts and trained organizers, Dillon sent an \"eyes-only\" cable to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on May 15, 1953, which said \"the fact of the matter is that even those who accept the guilt of the Rosenbergs are overwhelmingly of the opinion that the death sentence is unjustifiable. . . . We should not (repeat not) deceive ourselves by thinking that this sentiment is due principally to Communist propaganda or that people who take this position are unconscious dupes of Communists. [The] fact is that the great majority of French people of all political leanings feel that death sentence is completely unjustified from a moral standpoint and is due only to the political climate peculiar to the United States now (repeat now) and at the time the trial took place.\"\n\nThe Rosenbergs were electrocuted in June 1953, and by the end of the year Benjamin Bradlee had left the embassy and returned to journalism, as chief European correspondent for _Newsweek._ Bradlee went back to reporting, a friend said, because he could no longer stomach \"lying for the government.\" Bradlee himself said that he did so because of his belief in \"the people's right to know.\"* He was expelled from France in 1957, during the French-Algerian war, for making contact with the Algerian rebels; and at _Newsweek's_ Washington bureau, he helped Philip Graham to buy the magazine in 1961. Four years later, some months after Graham had committed suicide, his widow, the new publisher of the _Washington Post,_ hired Bradlee to be executive editor of her newspaper. At their interview, Katharine Graham asked him how he planned to cover the Vietnam war. Bradlee said he didn't know, but that he'd hire no \"son-of-a-bitch\" reporter who was not a patriot.\n\nThe reader may notice a discrepancy between Bradlee's title in the Rosenberg essay, \"assistant attach\u00e9 USIE,\" which was taken from the embassy list, and his claim that he worked for the USIA, the United States Information Agency. The USIE, an arm of the Department of State, was organized immediately after the war to promote \"informational and cultural activities\" in foreign countries. It was superseded by USIA on August 1, 1953. With the creation of USIA, such activities were officially separated from the State Department.\n\nMore importantly, the reader will notice, Bradlee in his letter denies ever having \"worked for\" the CIA. This has been a source of misunderstanding between Bradlee and the author ever since the book was first published. This book says only that he was an officially appointed press attach\u00e9 at the American embassy in Paris, an employee of the State Department, who produced propaganda about the Rosenbergs on behalf of or in cooperation with the CIA. The documents clearly demonstrate that relationship. Yet he continues to misinterpret this discussion, which has serious implications for the development of the Cold War, as an accusation that he was a CIA agent. No such accusation is intended. The reality of that time, as I have tried to show, was that there was a loose intermingling of informational and cultural functions, particularly overseas, and that embassy personnel and CIA personnel, as well as a number of important journalists and news managers (William F. Buckley, Joseph Alsop, Henry Luce, Barry Bingham, Sr., to name a few), often worked together for mutually felt patriotic and anti-Communist objectives.\n\nFIGURE 5. The author's letter to Bradlee.\n\nFIGURE 6. Bradlee's letter to the author.\n\n* See _The Rosenberg File_ , pp. 352-6.\n\n\u2020 _Ibid._ , p. 374.\n\n* _Ibid.,_ p p . 374-75\n\n* _Conversations with Kennedy_ , p. 35.\n\n_Note to the reader:_ Shortly before the second edition of this book went to press, Mr. Bradlee was asked to comment on his role in the Rosenberg campaign. My letter to him (Figure 5), and his response (Figure 6), are reproduced here. \n\n# _Sources and Bibliography_\n\nTHIS BOOK is the result of three years of research. It began as an effort to try to define and interpret the political power of one woman, which was a natural extension of the investigative reporting I was then doing for the _Village Voice._ To better absorb the atmosphere of Katharine Graham's world, I relocated from New York to Washington, where I was then refused interviews by a number of people who knew her from a variety of situations\u2014personal, political, business, labor\u2014some of whom declined out of loyalty to her, others, as they told me, out of fear. The desire to understand the reasons for their feelings was a strong motivation for continuing to work despite the difficulties. In some cases, I would show up for a scheduled meeting only to find that Katharine Graham had called just before my arrival and that the person was now unwilling to speak to me. Many who ultimately did so asked for a promise of confidentiality. That promise was also extended to people who spoke with me about issues concerning the intelligence community. I am grateful to all of them, and I regret not being able to thank them publicly.\n\nSome readers have remarked on the book's close personal detail about members of the Meyer and Graham families. A great deal of that material, including a number of direct quotations, came from the collection of family letters donated by Eugene and Agnes Meyer to the Library of Congress. Other letters and original period documents were found in: the Robert Maynard Hutchins collection at the University of Chicago and the archives of its student newspaper, _Maroon;_ the Felix Frankfurter collection at Harvard University, those letters used with permission of Professor Paul Freund of Harvard Law School; the David K. Bruce collection at the Virginia Historical Society; the archives of Vassar College; the Wilshire Boulevard Temple of Los Angeles; the Washington, D.C., office of Americans for Democratic Action; the headquarters of the Newspaper Guild; the District of Columbia Department of Police; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Historical Association of Southern Florida; and various personal collections.\n\nThe sources include people with whom I corresponded by letter as well as those interviewed in person and over the telephone. The list of their names, and the bibliography, are by no means comprehensive, but I hope that readers interested in the subject will find them of value. Included are some works released in the eleven years between the first edition of this book and the current edition that were consulted to clarify a particular point or to introduce new facts dealing with the controversy following the original publication.\n\n## Sources\n\nRoy Aron, Ben Bagdikian, Richard J. Barnet, James Bellows, Barry Bingham, Sr., Kevin Blaine, Larry Birns, Jack Blum, Richard Bolling, Jon Boorstin, Peter Bourne, Tom Braden, Peter Braestrup, John Cameron, Don Campbell, Clark Clifford, Benjamin V. Cohen, Leonard Colodny, Lance Compa, Terrence Connolly, Thomas Corcoran, William Corson, Wayne Coy, Jr., Clare Crawford, George Crile, Talbot D'Alemberte, Michael Deaver, Arnaud de Borchgrave, John Dinges, Robert Dole, Jules Duche, James Dugan, John Ehrlichman, David Eisen, Daniel Ellsberg, Philip Elman, Marge Elstron, Denise Tourover Ezekiel, James Fallows, Leslie Farber, Linda Foley, Alfred Friendly, Marvin Gettleman, Robert Gettlin, Ben Gilbert, Sandy Golden, Thomas Greene, Alan Greer, Benjamin Greider, Bernard Guetta, David Halberstam, H. R. Haldeman, John Hanrahan, Frank Havlicek, C. David Heymann, David Horowitz, Jim Hougan, Brit Hume, Sidney Hyman, Stephen Isaacs, Paul Kaplan, Stanley Karnow, Konrad Kellen, Tom Kelly, Isaiah Kenen, Douglas Kiker, Mary King, Herbert Klein, Edward Korry, Milton Kotler, James Lake, Laurence Leamer, Timothy Leary, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Bob Loomis, Ira Lowe, Anthony Lucas, James Madden, Victor Marchetti, John Marks, Anthony Mazzocchi: Susanna McBee, Coleman McCarthy, Eugene McCarthy, Sarah McClendon, George McGovern, Louise McNutt, Morton Mintz, William Montes, Jack Nelson, Robert Pack, Michael Parenti, James Patterson, Joseph Paull, John Perazich, Martin Peretz, Charles Perlik, Charles Peters, Jay Peterzell, Laughlin Phillips, Sandra Polaski, John Prescott, Edward Prichard, Ronald Radosh, Barbara Raskin, Marcus Raskin, William Raspberry, Dan Rather, Joseph Rauh, David Rein, James Ridgeway, Timothy Robinson, Megan Rosenfeld, James Rowe, Anthony Russo, Pierre Salinger, David Sawyer, Miriam Schneir, Walter Schneir, Carl Schoffler, Patricia Seitz, Tom Sherwood, Sargent Shriver, Gerald Siegal, Fred Solowey, John Stacks, Ralph Stavins, I. F. Stone, Barry Sussman, Tad Szulc, William Tavoulareas, D. Taylor, Loretta Tofani, Joseph Trento, Henry Trewhitt, James Truitt, Charles Tyroler, Sanford J. Ungar, Ted Van Dyke, Nicholas von Hoffman, Frank Waldrop, Lawrence Wallace, Arthur Waskow, J. B. West, Leslie Whitten, Russell Wiggins, Roger Wilkins, Polly Wisner, Lester Wolff, Bob Woodward, Albert Zack, Alice Zarbough.\n\n## Bibliography\n\nAlford, Henry, \"Why Lally Weymouth, Katharine Graham's Difficult Daughter, Does not Run the _Washington Post,\" Spy,_ June 1990.\n\nArendt, Hannah, \"Lying in Politics,\" in _Crises of the Republic_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).\n\n______, \"The Dreyfus Affair,\" in _The Origins of Totalitarianism Part One: Antisemitism_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968).\n\nAronson, James, _The Press and the Cold War_ (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970).\n\nBagdikian, Ben, _The Effete Conspiracy: and Other Crimes by the Press_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).\n\n______, \"What Makes a Newspaper Nearly Great?\" _Columbia Journalism Review,_ Fall 1967.\n\nBarnes, Fred, \"Knock on Woodward,\" _New Republic,_ October 26, 1987.\n\nBelushi, Judith Jacklin, _Samurai Widow_ (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1990).\n\nBernstein, Carl, \"The CIA and the Media,\" _Rolling Stone,_ October 20, 1977.\n\nBernstein, Carl and Woodward, Bob, _All the President's Men_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974).\n\nBradlee, Benjamin C., _Conversations with Kennedy_ (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975).\n\nBrandeis, Louis D., _Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It_ (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914).\n\nBray, Howard, _Pillars of the Post_ (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980).\n\nBrill, Steven, \"Back on the Beat with Woodward and Bernstein,\" _Esquire,_ December 1983.\n\nBroder, David S., \"The Breaking of the President,\" _Washington Post,_ October 7, 1969.\n\nBuber, Martin, \"Distance and Relations,\" _Psychiatry,_ Vol. 20, No. 2, May 1957.\n\n______, \"Guilt and Feelings,\" _ibid._\n\nBuckley, William F., \"The Politics of the Capote Ball,\" _Esquire,_ December 1967.\n\n_Business Week,_ \"An Organization Woman Remakes the _Post,\"_ September 29, 1975.\n\nCannon, Lou, _Reagan_ (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1982).\n\n_Chestnut Lodge Symposium: Papers Presented on the Fiftieth anniversary_ (Washington DC: The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation Inc., 1961).\n\nCohn, Roy, _McCarthy_ (New York: Lancer Books, 1968).\n\nCorson, William R., _The armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire_ (New York: The Dial Press\/James Wade, 1977).\n\nCorson, William R., Trento, Susan B., and Trento, Joseph J., _Widows_ (New York: Crown, 1989).\n\nCouncil on Foreign Relations, _Annual Report,_ 1988.\n\nCutler, Robert, _No Time for Rest_ (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1965).\n\nDean, John W., III, _Lost Honor_ (Los Angeles: Stratford Press, 1982).\n\nDeaver, Michael, _Behind the Scenes_ (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987).\n\nDelaware Art Museum, _Avant-Garde Painting and Sculpture in America_ 1910-1925 (Wilmington, Delaware: Delaware Art Museum, 1975).\n\nDolan, Mary Anne, \"Kay Graham: Love Affair with Capital,\" _Washington Star,_ March 16, 1975.\n\nEllsberg, Daniel, _Papers on the War_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972).\n\nFallows, James, \"Big Ben,\" _Esquire_ , April 1976.\n\nFarber, Leslie, \"despair and the life of suicide,\" in _lying_ , _despair, jealousy, envy, sex_ , _suicide_ , _drugs and the good life_ (New York: Basic Books, 1976).\n\n______, \"my wife the naked movie star,\" in _ibid._\n\n______, \"oh death where is thy sting-a-ling-ling?\" _Commentary_ , June 1977.\n\nFederal Bureau of Investigation, the files on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Headquarters, Washington DC.\n\n_Final Report of the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations_ (the Church Committee), _Book III_ , _Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence activities and the Rights of Americans_ (Washington DC: 1976).\n\nForeign Service List, Department of State (Washington DC: 1951-1954).\n\n_Fortune_ , \"The Rise of the _Washington Post\"_ December 1944.\n\nFriendly, Alfred, \"Attribution of News,\" in _Reporting the News_ , edited by Louis Lyons (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965).\n\nFromm-Reichmann, Frieda, _Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950).\n\n_____, _Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959).\n\nGartner, M., \"The First Rough Draft of History,\" _American Heritage,_ October-November 1982.\n\nGoldstein, Tom, _The News at Any Cost_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).\n\nGraham, Katharine, \"A Vigilant Press: Its Job to Inform,\" speech at Colby College, Waterville, Maine, March 20, 1974.\n\n______, \"The Press After Watergate; Getting Down to New Business,\" _New York_ , November 4, 1974.\n\n______, commencement speech, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, May 6, 1984.\n\n______, \"Secrecy and the Press,\" speech before the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia, November 16, 1988.\n\n______, speech before International Women's Media Conference, November 12, 1986.\n\n______, speech before the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., June 12, 1989.\n\n______, \"The Accountability of the Media in the United States,\" speech before the Salzburg Institute, Salzburg, Austria, March 5, 1987.\n\n______, \"The Press and Its Responsibilities,\" speech before the Economic Club of Chicago, February 10, 1976. Graham, Philip L., probate file, National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.\n\nGreen, William, \"Janet's World,\" _Washington Post,_ April 19, 1981.\n\nGreenfield, Meg, and Graham, Katharine, \"The New Mrs. Kissinger: Bright Lights on Private Life,\" _Washington Post,_ April 21, 1974.\n\nHalberstam, David, _The Powers That Be_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979).\n\nHanson, C.T., \"What Went Wrong at the Washington Post?\" _Columbia Journalism Review,_ January-February 1983.\n\nHarrington, Walt, \"Still Carl After All These Years,\" _Washington Post Magazine,_ March 19, 1989.\n\n_Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary,_ House of Representatives (the Watergate Hearings), _Appendix III, Supplementary Documents_ (Washington DC: 1974).\n\nHertsgaard, Mark, _On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency_ (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988).\n\nHirschberg, Lynn, \"John Belushi's Troubled Sleep,\" _Rolling Stone,_ September 27, 1984.\n\nHoover, J. Edgar, testimony before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Washington DC: September 1968).\n\nHougan, Jim, _Secret agenda_ (New York: Random House, 1984).\n\nHoward, Jane, \"Katharine Graham: The Power That Didn't Corrupt,\" _Ms.,_ October 1974.\n\nJackson, Nancy Beth, \"The Growing Empire of a Farmer's Sons,\" _Tropic,_ Sunday magazine of the _Miami Herald,_ March 1, 1970.\n\nJohnson, Walter, editor, _The Papers cf adlai E. Stevenson: Toward a New America_ , 1955-57, _Volume 6_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976).\n\nJones, Alex S., \"Bob Woodward, The _Washington Post_ and His Many Books,\" _New York Times,_ April 12, 1990.\n\nJust, Ward, editorial on Spiro T. Agnew, _Washington Post,_ September 25, 1968.\n\nKearns, Doris, _LBJ and the American Dream_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).\n\nKelly, Tom, _The Imperial Post_ (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983).\n\nKraft, Joseph, \"Vote Shows LBJ Is Vulnerable But Nixon Can't Capitalize on It,\" _Washington Post,_ March 14, 1968.\n\nKurzman, Dan, _Genesis_ 1948 (New York: New American Library, 1970).\n\nLasswell, Harold, _Psychopathology and Politics_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930).\n\nLatham, Earl, _The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy_ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966).\n\nLee, Martin and Solomon, Norman, _Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media_ (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990).\n\nLee, Richard, \"If Bob Woodward had been editor of the _Post_ during Watergate, it would never have been reported.\" _Washingtonian,_ July 1980.\n\nLippmann, Walter, _The Phantom Public_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925).\n\n______, _The Public Philosophy_ (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955).\n\nLoory, Stuart H., \"The CIA's use of the Press: 'a mighty Wurlitzer,'\" _Columbia Journalism Review,_ September-October, 1974.\n\nLukas, J. Anthony, \"Playboy Interview: Bob Woodward,\" _Playboy,_ February 1989.\n\nMatusow, Barbara, \"Woodward Strikes Again,\" _Washingtonian,_ September 1987.\n\nMcBee, Susanna, \"Katharine Graham and How She Grew,\" _McCalls,_ September 1971.\n\nMeyer, Agnes, _Out of These Roots: The autobiography of an American Woman_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953).\n\nMillis, Walter, editor, _The Forrestal Diaries_ (New York: Viking, 1951).\n\nMower, Joan, \"Count Moonbeam,\" _Gentlemen's Quarterly,_ March 1990.\n\nNaef, Weston J., _Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography: The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz_ (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art\/Viking, 1978).\n\n_News Media and the Law_ , \"'Bebe' Rebozo Entitled to Prove _Washington Post's_ 'Actual Malice,'\" February-March 1982.\n\n______, \"Surprise Raids on Press Upheld,\" July 1978.\n\n______, \"CIA Head Threatens Espionage Charges,\" Summer 1986.\n\n______, \"Media Meet Libel Suits with Countersuits Claiming First Amendment Interference,\" Spring 1985.\n\n_North-South: A Programme for Survival, The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues Under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt_ (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1980).\n\nOber, Richard, top secret testimony before the President's Commission on CIA Activities in the United States [the Rockefeller Commission] (Washington DC: 1975).\n\nPack, Robert, \"Inside the _Post,\" Washingtonian_ , December 1982.\n\nPack, Robert, _Edward Bennett Williams for the Defense_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1983).\n\nPeterzell, Jay, \"The Government Shuts Up,\" _Columbia Journalism Review_ , July-August 1982.\n\nPhillips, Harlan B., _Felix Frankfurter Reminisces_ (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1960).\n\n_Post Unit News_ , newsletter of the Washington\/Baltimore Newspaper Guild, various issues, 1984-89.\n\nPowers, Thomas, _The Man Who Kept the Secrets_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979).\n\nPusey, Merlo, _Eugene Meyer_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).\n\nQuigley, Carroll, _Tragedy and Hope_ (New York: Macmillan, 1966).\n\nRadosh, Ronald and Milton, Joyce, _The Rosenberg File_ (New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1983).\n\nReagan, Nancy, _My Turn_ (New York: Random House, 1989).\n\nRegan, Donald T., _For the Record_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).\n\n_Report of the President's Commission on CIA activities in the United States_ (the Rockefeller Commission) (Washington DC: 1975).\n\nRoberts, Chalmers, _The Washington Post: The First 100 Years_ (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).\n\nShah, Diane K., \"Pillar of the Post,\" _The National Observer_ , March 10, 1976.\n\nSherman, Norman, \"'Who the Hell Was That?' 'He's the Editor of the _Post.'_ 'Jesus, I Thought He Was Your Bookie,'\" _Washingtonian_ , July 1974.\n\n_Shop Talk_ (internal newsletter of the _Washington Post),_ June 26, 1980.\n\nSigal, Leon V., _Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (_Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1973).\n\nStavins, Ralph, Barnet, Richard J., and Raskin, Marcus, _Washington Plans an aggressive War_ (New York: Random House, 1971).\n\nTavoulareas, William, _Fighting Back_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).\n\nTaylor, Adrian C., \"Carl Bernstein Hired to Run ABC Bureau,\" _Washington Journalism Review,_ January-February 1980.\n\nThompson, Hunter S., _Generation of Swine_ (New York: Summit Books, 1988).\n\n_Time,_ \"Guest at Breakfast,\" cover story on Philip Graham, April 16, 1956.\n\nTrewhitt, Henry, _McNamara_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).\n\nTuchman, Barbara, _Stilwell and the American Experience in China_ (New York: Macmillan, 1971).\n\nTurner, Stansfield, _Secrecy and Democracy_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985).\n\nUngar, Sanford J., _The Papers and The Papers_ (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1972).\n\nUrofsky, Melvin I. and Levy, David W., editors, _The Letters of Louis D. Brandeis_ , _Vols. II, III, and IV_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973 and 1975).\n\nValenti, Jack, _A very Human President_ (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1975).\n\nViorst, Judith, \"Katharine Graham is a better publisher than her husband Phil was, because she puts out a better newspaper,\" _Washingtonian,_ September 1967.\n\n_Vogue,_ January 1967 and June 1970.\n\nWallace, Lawrence, \"Social Needs and the Workplace,\" memorandum to first line supervisors at the _Washington Post,_ no date.\n\nWalton, Richard J., _Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War_ (New York: Viking, 1976).\n\n_Washington Post,_ \"American Destiny,\" March 13, 1947.\n\n______, \"Twilight Zone,\" August 6, 1948.\n\n______, \"McCarthyism,\" November 11, 1948.\n\n______\"In the Name of Unity,\" April 1, 1968.\n\n______, \"Feting a 70th Edition: Katharine Graham's Birthday Party,\" July 1, 1987.\n\nWhite, Theodore H., _The Making of the President 1964_ (New York: Atheneum, 1965).\n\nWiggins, Russell, _Freedom or Secrecy_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).\n\nWinston, Richard and Clara, editors and translators, _The Letters of Thomas Mann_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).\n\n_Yearbook,_ Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1943-44). \nAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1979, 1987, 1991 by Deborah Davis\n\n978-1-63168-157-8\n\nThis edition published in 2017 by Graymalkin Media\n\nwww.graymalkin.com\n\n**Find out more at:  \nWWW.GRAYMALKIN.COM**\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nBegin Reading\n\nTable of Contents\n\nA Note About the Author\n\nCopyright Page\n\nThank you for buying this\n\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\nThe author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com\/piracy.\nFor Lynn Rose And for Jeanette Stone With my love\nHERMIONE: You gods, look down,\n\nAnd from your sacred vials pour your graces\n\nUpon my daughter's head!\n\nShakespeare, The Winter's Tale\n\nI suppose that is what we want from our mothers: to maintain the world \u2013 and, even if it is a lie, to proceed as though the world could be maintained.\n\nHisham Matar, The Return\n\nOh God. Is there still mother after death?\n\nAli Smith, Autumn\nOPENING\n\nA simple argument guides this book: that motherhood is, in Western discourse, the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human. It is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which it becomes the task \u2013 unrealisable, of course \u2013 of mothers to repair. To the familiar claim that too much is demanded of mothers, which has been a long-standing feminist plaint, this book will add a further dimension, or question. What are we doing \u2013 what aspects of our social arrangements and of our inner lives, what forms of historic injustice, do we turn our backs on; above all, what are we doing to mothers \u2013 when we expect them to carry the burden of everything that is hardest to contemplate about our society and ourselves? Mothers cannot help but be in touch with the most difficult aspects of any fully lived life. Along with the passion and pleasure, it is the secret knowledge they share. Why on earth should it fall to them to paint things bright and innocent and safe? Running through the book is a central contention: that by making mothers the objects of licensed cruelty, we blind ourselves to the world's iniquities and shut down the portals of the heart. Unless we recognise what we are asking mothers to perform in the world \u2013 and for the world \u2013 we will continue to tear both the world and mothers to pieces.\n\nSOCIAL PUNISHMENT\nNOW\n\nOn 12 October 2016, The Sun's front-page headline was 'Here for maternity'. According to its report, splashed over half the page, a National Health Service hospital had been used by nine hundred pregnant 'health tourists' in the previous year at a cost to the UK taxpayer of around \u00a34 million in unpaid bills. Officials (unidentified) were quoted as stating that deliveries from non-EU 'mums' accounted for a fifth of all births in St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London. The hospital \u2013 read the nation \u2013 was being 'deluged', an 'easy target' for 'fixers in Nigeria' who were charging women to use the NHS. The Sun leader, entitled 'Unhealthy cost', described the 'scandal' as 'sickening' (the puns on 'unhealthy' and 'sickening' presumably intentional), and railed against the \u00a32 billion 'blown' on 'foreign tourists with no right to free NHS care' each year.\n\nIn response to this crisis, the hospital was planning to request ID or proof of asylum from incoming patients in the maternity ward. The article was illustrated with a photo of Bimbo Ayelabola, a Nigerian mother who gave birth to quintuplets by caesarean section at Homerton University Hospital in 2011 at a cost of '\u00a3200,000' to the NHS. Despite the nod to 'fixers in Nigeria', the image of Ayelabola, holding her five babies, had clearly been chosen to reinforce the age-old stereotype of blacks and the poor reproducing irresponsibly and to excess. Abandoned by her wealthy Nigerian husband, The Sun wrote, she was believed to be still living in the UK with her children, and no doubt claiming benefits, to which, it was implied, she would not be entitled. The subliminal \u2013 or not so subliminal \u2013 message of the article was therefore: Get this mother out (the paper just about refrained from suggesting that she should be hunted down). The unions may baulk at medics acting as 'border guards', the leader commented, but the NHS has an 'army' of administrators who need to 'toughen up'. Apparently, a military response was needed to deal with the scheming dereliction of foreign mothers, who were a threat to the nation's values and resources alike. In The Sun online (12 October 2016), the article was re-titled 'Up the Bluff', as if these women might not even be pregnant.\n\nWhy are these mothers so hated? Why are mothers so often held accountable for the ills of the world, the breakdown in the social fabric, the threat to welfare, to the health of the nation \u2013 from the funding crisis in the NHS to the influx of foreigners on our shores? Why are mothers seen as the cause of everything that doesn't work in who we are? We are living in an increasingly fortified world, with walls, concrete and imaginary, being erected across national boundaries, reinforcing the distinctions between peoples. From all sides, in Europe and the US, we are accosted by increasingly shrill voices, telling us that our greatest ethical obligation is to entrench our national and personal borders, to be unfailingly self-regarding and sure of ourselves. It is a perfect atmosphere for picking on mothers, for branding them as uniquely responsible for both securing and jeopardising this impossible future.\n\nThe Sun was not alone in this particular brand of vitriol. A few months later, in January 2017, the Daily Mail headlined its front page: 'One health tourist's \u00a3350,000 bill \u2013 and you paid!' with reference to another Nigerian mother who had come to the UK to give birth on the NHS, this time to twins. Inside its pages the paper reprinted the photo of Ayelabola with her five babies: 'Haven't we fallen for this before?' The figure of \u00a3350,000 must have been carefully chosen since it echoes the \u00a3350 million that Brexit campaigners had falsely claimed would, on a weekly basis, revert to the UK from Europe straight into the coffers of the NHS (which makes the broken promise somehow these mothers' fault). The Sun and the Daily Mail are the country's most right-wing newspapers, but such rhetoric is not without wider effect. According to charity reports from across the UK, hundreds of pregnant foreign women were avoiding antenatal care because they feared being reported to the Home Office or facing costly medical bills. One NHS trust has been sending letters to women with complex asylum claims saying that their maternity care will be cancelled if they fail to bring credit cards to pay fees of more than \u00a35,000. It is also worth noting that, without qualification or apology, The Sun and Daily Mail felt able to issue this onslaught on mothers on the verge, or indeed in the process, of giving birth \u2013 the minimal requirement of motherhood, one might say. In this, they are by no means unique. As we will see, tormenting mothers is something of a pastime in the so-called civilised world.\n\n'Here for maternity' echoes the title of the 1953 Fred Zinnemann film From Here to Eternity, a phrase which has passed into common parlance in the English-speaking world to evoke a love that will follow its object to the ends of the earth, even if the price is death \u2013 the eternity\/ maternity echo of the Sun front page suggests that, without drastic action, we are stuck with this problem, with these mothers, for ever. The film is set in the days before Pearl Harbor. Montgomery Clift plays a boxer who refuses to fight with his army mates and prefers to play the bugle, is subjected to cruel treatment by his captain, and is finally killed during the attack. A sergeant (Burt Lancaster) who befriends the Clift character starts an affair with the captain's wife (Deborah Kerr). The film therefore has all the ingredients for 'locker talk' combined with heterosexual passion. But there is a dark side in relation to mothers. In the novel the film is based on, the captain's wife had a hysterectomy after her unfaithful husband infected her with gonorrhoea. To meet Production Code standards, the film changed this to a miscarriage (there could be no mention of venereal disease). In the film, the husband is still a philanderer, but it is the woman's own body that has failed her, robbing her of the possibility of motherhood. The fact that male sexual licence during the war might be putting potential mothers at risk could not be spoken. In a film that goes some way to exposing the cult of masculinity in the army, motherhood is an aside, like the irritating drip of a tap. At the opposite end from the Sun article, although drawing on some of the same degraded impulses, mothers in this film slip in and out \u2013 mostly out \u2013 of focus. This, I will be suggesting, is a pattern. In modern-day Western culture, mothers are almost invariably the object, either of too much attention or not enough.\n\nThe Sun's targeting of foreign mothers came at a time when the image of children without mothers, care or sustenance was at the forefront of the news. Unaccompanied minors were being held in the Calais Jungle, as it came to be known, waiting for the British government to complete the process to allow those who qualify entrance into the UK. In Europe as a whole, there were an estimated 85,000 lone children and young people since the migration crisis began in 2015, roughly one thousand of them in Calais, living 'feral' lives: tents housing up to eighteen children or minors, no mattresses, no heating, no blankets. Several of these minors were killed as they made their bid for freedom in the UK \u2013 attaching themselves to the underside of trucks, hiding in refrigerated containers or running into the path of cars they often hoped would drive them to Britain. Despite frequent invocations of the Kindertransport that saved German Jewish children from the Nazi genocide by bringing them to England, the process of admitting these children was painfully slow, stalled by the Conservative government at every turn. In February 2017, the government halted its agreement to resettle three thousand child refugees after just 350 had been allowed entry (a figure subsequently revised to 480, although by July 2017 not one unaccompanied child had entered the UK since the start of the year).\n\nThe migration crisis of recent years is by no means confined to Europe. But the Calais debacle has special resonance as a monument to inhumanity in our times. Historically, 'women and children first' has been accepted practice in moments of high risk. But it is one thing to declare this as a principle, quite another to act on it by letting into the country fragile human beings whose glaring vulnerability will stand as a reminder of the utter nonsense, not to speak of the inhumanity, of pretending that we can save ourselves at the cost of everybody else. 'The reality, of course,' commented Bernard Cazeneuve in 2016, when he was French Minister of the Interior, on the breakdown between France and the UK on how to deal with the crisis, 'is that neither government has chosen to leave people with the right to refugee status in the cold and the mud \u2013 women and children least of all.' The actions of both governments spoke otherwise. Nor did he seem to register the contradiction between calling for a humanitarian gesture on the part of the UK and insisting that, in the longer term, the borders must be made 'impenetrable'.\n\nWhere are the mothers of these children? Behind each and every child there is a story of mothers to be told, but they rarely get a mention. For the most part, they are wiped out of the picture. As if a mother's loss, which is so often the hidden face and precondition of these children's fates, is the truly unbearable torment, too glaring a testimony to the cruelty of the modern world, and therefore impossible to contemplate (some of these mothers will have died). One sixteen-year-old boy in the camp, who had fled the war in Sudan, had not spoken to his mother for two years. She did not know if he was dead or alive. A thirteen-year-old simply referred to himself as 'Mammy's No. 1'. And after being removed from the Calais camp when it was closed, Samir, seventeen, died of heart failure in January 2017 at the Taiz\u00e9 reception centre in the Sa\u00f4ne-et-Loire department of France not long after hearing that his application to join his brother in the UK had been rejected (there have been others \u2013 thirty asylum seekers are buried in the Calais graveyard, many in graves without names). His mother could not travel to the funeral. She requested he not be named in full for fear of putting the family in danger from the Sudanese authorities.\n\nThese absent, missing mothers are the other face of the pregnant 'health tourists' lambasted by The Sun \u2013 mothers who are either overlooked completely or are the target of blame, with migration and its miseries being the true story behind both. At the same time, suffering motherhood, a mother bereft of her child, is also a staple of maternal imagos \u2013 Niobe lamenting the murder of her fourteen children, killed by jealous gods; and the Piet\u00e0, the Virgin Mary grieving the dead Christ, are two of the most well-known examples. But the mother must be noble and her agony redemptive. With the suffering of the whole world etched on her face, she carries and assuages the burden of human misery on behalf of everyone. What the pain of mothers must never expose is a viciously unjust world in a complete mess.\n\n* * *\n\nUsing the agony of mothers to deflect from our awareness of human responsibility for the world has a long history. Lamenting mothers have been and often still are the hallmark image for so-called 'natural' catastrophes such as earthquakes. In these images, mothers are not, like Bimbo Ayelabola, held responsible. Nevertheless, there is a connection, as their misery is being exploited, shoved in the face of the world, so that others will get off scot-free: contractors who put up buildings that collapse, town planners cutting corners to cram as many people as possible into an inhumanly crowded space. For that reason, Bertolt Brecht objected to the Niobe-like faces plastered over newspaper front pages after the Tokyo\u2013Yokohama earthquake of 1923 that killed an estimated 140,000 people. He praised instead, as the only fully political response, a single newspaper photograph depicting a few solid structures standing among the rubble with the headline: 'Steel stood' (only reliably constructed buildings had survived). In earthquakes it is almost invariably the poor who die first, the victims of unscrupulous builders and landlords. And not just in earthquakes, as other disasters have made all too clear: the ongoing tragedy of the hurricanes to have swept the US (New Orleans in August 2005, Haiti in September 2008 and October 2016, Houston in August 2017), and in the UK the Grenfell Tower fire disaster of June 2017. Brecht's point was that looking at steel structures would not make you weep. It would make you think. And then, hopefully, act, organise, demand redress.\n\nBrecht carried his own political point across into the world of mothers. Perhaps my favourite of his plays on this subject is The Mother (1932) \u2013 less known than Mother Courage \u2013 in which the mother of the title opposes the war she knows will kill her son. In a key scene, she argues with mothers who are waiting in line to donate their pots and pans for ammunition, in response to a government call announcing it will help to bring the war to an end. She simply points out the obvious \u2013 albeit suppressed \u2013 fact that their gesture will rather provide the means for the war to continue. This mother is not agonised, even though her son's life is at stake, but focused, stubborn, articulate. She speaks the truth. Her self-appointed role is to strip deceit from the official dross.\n\nIn similar vein, Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn's novella The Testament of Mary (2012) tells the story of the Crucifixion from Mary's point of view, undoing centuries of glorified maternal pain. T\u00f3ib\u00edn gives to Mary the last, iconoclastic word in relation to the dead Christ: 'I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.' In the Broadway and London Barbican 2014 production, these are the last lines, spoken by actress Fiona Shaw through her teeth with unerring, barely controlled precision. The Testament of Mary also has Mary flee in horror at the sight of her crucified son, which makes the Piet\u00e0 image, the mother holding and cherishing the dying Christ's body \u2013 which is meant somehow to make it all okay \u2013 a complete lie.\n\nHow often are the mothers of lost soldiers and children given voice? How often is the grief of a mother allowed to wander outside the frame of the requisite pathos? Why is it so hard to listen to such a mother, to dignify her with the story she might have to tell? The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina are famous \u2013 they started gathering in 1977 to protest the disappearance of their children under the military regime of 1976 to 1983 (in April 2017, they marked the fortieth anniversary of their protest). In the UK, Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, murdered on a London street in 1993, has become a campaigner and activist against race crime and also racism in the Metropolitan Police. She has turned the death of her son into a civic task (that in itself was enough to have her and her husband spied on by undercover police). She is a reminder that political agency and the grief of a mother can coexist \u2013 a 1998 painting by Chris Ofili depicts her weeping, with the image of her son in every tear. But mothers who expose misfortune as injustice, to use philosopher Judith Shklar's suggestive formula, by telling the world of the political and social ills behind the death of a child, still struggle to be heard. To put it at its crudest, a mother can suffer, she can be the object of heartfelt empathy, so long as she does not probe or talk too much.\n\nWhen Gillian Slovo was commissioned by Nicolas Kent to write her verbatim, testimony-based play Another World: Losing our Children to Islamic State, performed at the National Theatre in 2016, she chose to make the voices of three mothers \u2013 Samira, Yasmin and Geraldine, each one the mother of a child who had gone to fight against Bashar al-Assad in Syria \u2013 her central focus. No mothers in the UK would speak to her; in an atmosphere of strong-arm vigilance and heightened racism against Muslims, they felt that they would place themselves at risk, so she spoke to mothers in Molenbeek in Brussels. (This was after the Paris Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, but before Molenbeek became infamous as a centre for terrorists following the Paris Bataclan attack later that year and the subsequent Brussels attacks in March 2016.)\n\nThe play dramatises their history, but it is the mothers' own words that are spoken. These mothers lament the loss of their children: one son dead, one missing and one daughter who chose to remain in Syria after the husband she married in Brussels was killed in combat a matter of weeks after they arrived. They may, as two of them insist, feel they have failed as mothers. But they are also in search of knowledge \u2013 it is above all for their failure to know and pre-empt what their children were planning that they castigate themselves. In a world that had become callously indifferent, hostile or meaningless for their children, the mothers are trying to comprehend the choices they made. Two of the mothers, Samira and Geraldine, travel to Syria. Samira goes in search of her daughter Nora \u2013 to 'the end of the earth', as Samira puts it: 'wherever you are, I will abandon everything. I will come and get you.' Geraldine, after the death of her son Anis, travels to the Syrian\u2013Turkish border, where she gives money and clothes that belonged to her son to a pregnant woman, one of the refugees huddled on the border. The pregnant woman says she will call her son Anis. The play ends on this. It therefore seizes the familiar tropes \u2013 to the ends of the earth, a mother's grief \u2013 and gives them a new twist, simply by allowing these women to speak: 'There. That's the mum's story,' is the last line of the play. As if to say, motherhood is part of the polity of nations. Given voice, space and time, motherhood can, and should, be one of the central means through which a historical moment reckons with itself.\n\nWhy in modern times is the participation of mothers in political and public life seen as the exception \u2013 with the UK appearing to lag behind the rest of Europe, the US and other countries of the world in this regard? Why are mothers not seen as having everything to contribute, by dint of being mothers, to our understanding and ordering of public, political space? Instead, mothers are either being exhorted to return to their instincts and stay at home (on which more later) or to make their stand in the boardroom \u2013 to 'lean in', to use the ghastly imperative in the title of Sheryl Sandberg's bestseller \u2013 as if being the props of neo-liberalism were the most that mothers can aspire to, the highest form of social belonging and agency they can expect. We are now witnessing what feminist sociologist Angela McRobbie has described as a 'neo-liberal intensification of mothering' \u2013 perfectly turned-out, middle-class, mainly white mothers, with their perfect jobs, perfect husbands and marriages, whose permanent glow of self-satisfaction is intended to make all women who do not conform to that image (because they are poorer or black or their lives are just more humanly complicated) feel like total failures; one of McRobbie's articles on the topic has the title 'Notes on the Perfect'. This has the added advantage of letting governments, whose austerity policies always disproportionately target the most vulnerable women and mothers with no chance of ever achieving such an ideal, completely off the hook.\n\nThe only good news is that the sheer amount of effort that goes into the stereotype \u2013 perhaps into all stereotypes \u2013 also bears witness to its vacuity, to the fact that it is hanging by a thread. Mothers, we might say, are the original subversives, never \u2013 as feminism has long insisted \u2013 what they seem, or are meant to be. The evidence is there, in the many brilliant chronicles I will be discussing later in this book. And yet, despite these testimonies \u2013 steadily increasing in voice and volume \u2013 the acuity and rage of mothers somehow continue to be one of the best-kept secrets of our times. I have never met a single mother (myself included) who is not far more complex, critical, at odds with the set of clich\u00e9s she is meant effortlessly to embody, than she is being encouraged \u2013 or rather instructed \u2013 to think.\n\nA very peculiar form of socially licensed aggression is at play, one that never misses its opportunity. In December 2016, calls went out in the UK to stop mothers involved in separation and child-contact cases \u2013 70 per cent of which involve domestic violence \u2013 being routinely interrogated by abusive ex-partners in secret hearings in the civil family courts, a practice outlawed in criminal cases. One woman was forced to watch a video of her disclosing sexual abuse while sitting next to the man in question (how this had been allowed to happen was never made clear). More subtly but no less insidiously, when Theresa May was elected prime minister in July 2016 after the Brexit referendum, one minister she retained \u2013 in the midst of a reshuffle generally acknowledged as intended to kill off David Cameron's legacy for ever \u2013 was the hugely unpopular Jeremy Hunt at the Department of Health, so he could complete the process of imposing his new contract on junior doctors, after massive protests and strikes. According to his department's own assessment, the contract is likely to 'impact disproportionately on women', notably mothers, due to its unsocial hours. As the Medical Women's Federation has pointed out, the most affected will be those engaged in part-time training, as well as carers and lone parents (the DH helpfully suggests that those affected should make 'informal childcare arrangements'). Lawyers have advised that the new contract might be in breach of junior doctors' right to a family life under the Human Rights Act. 'Any indirect adverse effect on women,' the DH report concluded, 'is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.'\n\nSinglehandedly and carelessly, this new contract will cut off many women's, notably mothers', access to the top ranks of the medical profession, making the job of nursing rather than consultancy or surgery their only available path \u2013 women as nurses conforming to another stereotype. One newspaper report on the dispute had the title 'The new junior doctors' contract is blatantly sexist \u2013 so why doesn't Jeremy Hunt care?' Caring might be the problem \u2013 permitted on condition that it is hived off into a type of gender-specific, low-grade, women-only quarantine. As if a dedicated neo-liberal society can acknowledge the role of women as carers, but only so far, and certainly not if it disrupts any of the other arrangements by which it believes it can most efficiently perpetuate itself. All this takes place with blithe disregard for the indispensable role of mothers in securing any future whatsoever (motherhood as the downside of the modern world).\n\n* * *\n\nIn July 2015, a report issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that every year in the UK a staggering 54,000 women lose their jobs as a result of their pregnancy. Seventy-seven per cent of women and new mothers in work experience some form of negative treatment (bullying, snide remarks, straight insults, the suggestion that they are a burden on their employers and the state). Overall, the vast majority of pregnant women face unlawful discrimination or adverse experiences each year (77 per cent of pregnant women and new mothers face discrimination in the workplace compared with 45 per cent a decade ago). Under present law, they have three months to file a case (an impossibility for most women reluctant to do so during their pregnancy). The problem seems to be getting considerably worse \u2013 those estimated 54,000 women fired are double the number reported in 2005. In 2016, Citizens Advice reported a 25 per cent increase over the previous year in people seeking advice on pregnancy and maternity issues. Maternity Action is demanding that the legal protection for pregnant women provided by the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations (Regulation 10) be extended to include the period of notification of a pregnancy to six months after returning to work, the time when women are most vulnerable.\n\n'The government's approach,' commented Maria Miller, chair of the 2016 parliamentary report on workplace discrimination, 'lacks urgency and bite' (promising a review of the situation, the report rejected the demand for a German-style ban on employers making women redundant during and after pregnancy other than in exceptional circumstances). For women at the recruitment stage, there is no redress \u2013 if you are visibly pregnant at interview, you are very unlikely to get the job. Likewise, in the US, women are meant to be legally protected against discrimination, but they are not. Between 1935 and 1968, the principle was written into federal policy that women with children were unemployable. The situation has barely improved. One woman, working for Procter & Gamble's Dolce & Gabbana cosmetics shop at Saks Fifth Avenue in 2014, was told, when she mentioned that one day she would like to be a mother: 'Pregnancy is not part of the uniform.' In February 2015, at four months pregnant, after needing first to sit down at moments during her shift, and then short respite periods built into her day \u2013 agreed by the management \u2013 she was fired.\n\nThe law needs to be changed, but the problem goes deeper. A friend of mine with a baby under a year old was about to return to work, hoping to conceive her second child in the coming year. She fretted that this would be seen as abusing the system of legally stipulated maternity leave. The idea that everyone in her office, indeed everyone full stop, relies on women having babies \u2013 witness the instant social panic at any hint of a falling birth rate \u2013 or that she should feel free to plan her pregnancies in the way that felt right for her and her family, did not occur to her (personally, I was just impressed that she didn't seem fazed by the prospect of two babies under the age of two). Nor was she aware that, were she not in a job with such legal guarantees written into her contract, she would most likely be sacked. She felt guilty. Struggling not to allow motherhood to take over her life completely, she had nonetheless bought into the belief that it was something everyone, apart from her and her baby, should be protected from, something that should not interfere with anything or anybody else.\n\nNo less shocking \u2013 in some ways more so \u2013 nearly half (41 per cent) of all pregnant women in the UK face risks to their health and safety at work. Four per cent of pregnant women and new mothers in the workplace \u2013 a figure Maternity Action calls 'astounding' \u2013 resign from their jobs because of health and safety concerns. The existing obligation on all employers to carry out a risk assessment that considers female employees is, they state, 'woefully inadequate'. Legally, if an employer refuses, or is unable, to make the working environment safe for these women then they are entitled to be suspended on full pay. It doesn't happen. Maternity Action is demanding that a 'no safe work' leave be legally formalised. Instead, women in such conditions are forced to take early maternity or sick leave, sign themselves off, as if, once again, it were their own bodies and health at fault.\n\nAs feminism has long pointed out, most bodily experiences of women from menstruation to pregnancy to menopause without distinction tend to be regarded as a form of debilitation or illness: too much blood and guts, bodies either too wet or too dry, bodies that inconveniently blur the boundaries between inside and out. Punishing pregnant women and mothers is part of a pattern (British maternity pay is among the worst in Europe, behind, for example, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Spain and France). Although we should never underestimate the effects of an increasingly ruthless, profit-driven global economy, it seems that in all these cases there is something far more than a cost\u2013benefit analysis involved. The same employers who provide routine assessments for workers with a health condition, an injury or disability are still refusing individual risk assessments for pregnant women and new mothers. To add insult to injury, 10 per cent of pregnant women in the UK are discouraged by their employers from attending antenatal clinics, putting their health and that of the unborn baby at risk.\n\nSo if I had been more honest with my friend, I would not just have pointed out that everyone needs mothers, or at least some women to be mothers, and that being a mother is hardly an antisocial activity. I would have added that, while this much is undoubtedly true, and a banal fact of life, we should never underestimate the sadism that mothers can provoke. I probably would have been somewhat apologetic (as if merely having such an ugly thought made me personally responsible for this sorry state of affairs). The reasons for this are many, as we will see, but one reason why motherhood is often so disconcerting seems to be its uneasy proximity to death. First, in the risks of childbearing, which vary so dramatically across race and class: in the US, non-Hispanic black, American Indian, Alaska Native and Puerto Rican women have the highest infant-mortality rates, the disparity between non-Hispanic blacks and whites having more than doubled over the past decade; in the UK, 66 per cent of the female prison population are mothers, and twice as many black women are incarcerated than white for the same offences, while asylum seekers and refugees account for 14 per cent of all maternal deaths (despite comprising only 0.5 per cent of the population). But also in the sense, less tangible but no less powerful, that the fact of being born can act as an uncanny reminder that once upon a time you were not here, and one day you will be no more. 'We have a winding sheet in our Mother's womb, which grows with us from our conception,' John Donne wrote, 'and we come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave.' More simply, being born \u2013 each time testimony to the monumental physical and mental strength of all mothers \u2013 also alerts us to the irreducible frailty of life. Mothers require protection, solace and support from the first moment they find themselves the bearers of new life. Instead, you would think that mothers were the danger against which the workplace needs to protect itself.\n\nThe figures speak for themselves. Employers do not want pregnant women and new mothers on the premises, or if they do, they do not want them healthy and safe, nor for them to attend the clinics that will protect their well-being and the lives of their unborn babies. 'If Americans Love Moms,' the New York Times headlined a recent article by Nicholas Kristoff, 'Why Do We Let Them Die?' He is reporting on the fact that the US mortality rate for mothers in pregnancy or childbirth is higher than in any other country in the industrialised world: 'We love mothers or at least we say we do. We are lying.' The message, spoken and unspoken, is clear: we will not take care of you, or allow you to take care of yourself, because part of us wants you out of here, or dead. The visceral fact of motherhood, the fons et origo of our being in the world, is an affront to normal \u2013 meaning, free of mothers and babies \u2013 life. There is a crucial feminist point to be made here. The problem for everyone, but especially men, Adrienne Rich writes in her path-breaking Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), is that 'all human life on the planet is born of woman' (the first line of her book). 'There is much to suggest,' she continues, 'that the male mind has always been haunted by the force of the idea of dependence on a woman for life itself.'\n\n* * *\n\nThe subject of mothers is thick with idealisations, which have been among the foremost targets of feminist critique (ideals are one of the surest ways of punishing others as well as oneself). 'Stop peddling the myth of the perfect mother' has been the recent plaint of the founder of Netmums, one of the biggest UK parenting websites, set up in 2000. It is one of the most striking characteristics of discourse on mothering that the idealisation does not let up as the reality of the world makes the ideal harder for mothers to meet. If anything, it seems to intensify. This is not quite the same as saying that mothers are always to blame, although the two propositions are surely linked. As austerity and inequality increase across the globe, more and more children are falling into poverty, more and more families are fighting a rearguard action to protect their children from inexorable social decline. Social unrest is therefore likely to increase. In this context, as in so many moments of crisis, focus on mothers is a sure-fire diversionary tactic, not least because it so effectively deflects what might be far more disruptive forms of social critique. Mothers always fail. It will be central to my argument that such failure should not be viewed as catastrophic but as normal, that failure should be seen as part of the task. But because mothers are seen as our point of entry into the world, there is nothing easier than to make social deterioration look like something that it is the sacred duty of mothers to prevent \u2013 a type of socially upgraded version of the tendency in modern families to blame mothers for everything. This neatly makes mothers guilty, not just for the ills of the world, but also for the rage that the unavoidable disappointments of an individual life cannot help but provoke.\n\nHunt's new doctors' contract is by no means the first time lone mothers have been targeted for especially vindictive treatment. One of the earliest proposed measures of Tony Blair's 1997 government was to cut benefits to single mothers. This so went against the supposed humanitarian ethos of New Labour that he immediately had to back down. But his move was symptomatic of the way single mothers have often borne the brunt of a particular form of punitive social attention. In troubled times, the most vulnerable always tend to be the easiest targets of hatred. But might there also be a connection between the demand for singular devotion so regularly directed at mothers and the hostility that single mothers \u2013 who, even if not by choice, could be said to be obeying this injunction to the letter \u2013 have historically provoked? As if the single mother brings too close to the surface the utter craziness, not to say the unmanageable nature, of the idea that a mother should exist for her child and nothing else.\n\nA single mother also stands as a glaring rebuke to the family ideal. In the US, the number of single mothers has nearly doubled over the past fifty years. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of lone, including unmarried, mothers in the UK rose faster than at any other time in history, seemingly unaffected by an increasingly strident Conservative rhetoric of blame. The most pervasive image was of an unemployed teenager who had deliberately got herself pregnant to claim benefits, although as Pat Thane and Tanya Evans point out in their 2012 study of twentieth-century unmarried motherhood, she was 'very rarely to be found'. Over the past century, single mothers have variously received the epithets of 'sinners, scroungers, saints' (the title of Thane and Evans's book). The first and last string them between religious opprobrium and holiness (neither of this world), the second more prosaically casts them as objects of moral contempt. Although today the religious vocabulary is somewhat muted, by depicting Bimbo Ayelabola in the unmistakeable guise of a welfare 'leech', the Sun headline was therefore following a tradition ('saint' is hardly an epithet about to be applied to foreigners).\n\nLong before the migration crisis provided its image of the alien, invading mother, the single mother, it seems, was the original 'scrounger', the term that allows a cruelly unequal society to turn its back on those it has itself thrown to the bottom of the social scrapheap. This manipulative, undeserving mother was the perfect embodiment of the so-called 'dependency' culture, an idea that is being revived today in the UK in order to justify an even more full-scale dismantling of the welfare state, and more widely in the global North as part of austerity measures that target social provision above all else. 'In a country where many children do without homes and food,' Michelle Harrison writes in a report issued in Canada by the Metis Women of Manitoba, 'it is easier to punish one pregnant woman than to alleviate the condition of many.'\n\nAgain, it is also worth noticing how far the real vulnerability and needs of a single mother, not to speak of those of the child or children for whom she has responsibility, seem to work in her disfavour. Lone parents, especially unmarried mothers, are still one of the poorest groups in Britain; it is estimated that they will lose 18 per cent in the universal credit squeeze. According to a 2013 US census, single mothers earn an average income of $24,000 compared with the $80,000 earned by married couples with children. As if genuine neediness \u2013 being, or having once been, the baby of a mother \u2013 is what Conservative rhetoric hates most. Perhaps when right-wing politicians screw up their noses at scroungers, asylum seekers and refugees, it is their own vaguely remembered years of utter dependency that they are trying, and instructing us, to repudiate. The one who most loudly promotes the ideal of ironclad self-sufficiency must surely have the echo of the baby in the nursery hovering somewhere at the back of his or her \u2013 mostly his \u2013 head.\n\nWe should also remember that it was not until 1973 in the UK that, following divorce or separation, mothers gained equal custody rights over their children. The father was legally the sole parent and a mother was only granted custody of her children until the age of seven. Up until the 1920s a woman was only free to apply to the courts for equal custodianship if she was legally married. A single woman was robbed of her children, tarred with deficiency, as if she herself were the reason for the economic constraints and social exclusion from which she was likely to suffer. In fact, the prejudice was no respecter of class. The nineteenth-century aristocrat Caroline Norton was denied all access to her three sons when she finally left her physically abusive and profligate husband (he subsequently failed to tell her when one of them suffered a fatal accident).\n\nHistorically, single mothers are not the exception. Throughout the twentieth century the number of single mothers in the UK was high, matched by the levels of illegitimacy precipitated by both the First and the Second World Wars (during the wars, with so many men at the front, single motherhood was something of a norm). The perfect family model of a married heterosexual couple, against which single mothers are so harshly measured, is an anomaly, a mere blip of the statistics, typical only between 1945 and 1970. When Pat Thane laid this out in 2010 in 'Happy Families? History and Family Policy', the question mark of the title was the giveaway and provocation. Her pamphlet provoked an outcry from Conservatives and family lobbyists determined to prove the lasting damage inflicted on children by family breakdown and the unconventional child-rearing arrangements that have been its consequence (I am inclined to think that the real scandal might have been the idea that a single mother, however hard her life, might also be happy). Although absentee fathers are also indicted, the barely hidden subtext of this rhetoric is that single mothers cannot be entrusted with the care of their own children. In the UK, the number of young women who had their children forcibly removed for adoption over three decades from the 1950s to the 1970s is only today coming to light (in October 2016, the Catholic Church issued an open apology leading to calls for a public inquiry). The irony is glaring. Mothers in the home are expected to manage more or less on their own \u2013 one of feminism's loudest, most persistent and fairest complaints \u2013 but the one thing a mother cannot possibly manage by herself is mothering.\n\nIt is, of course, a predominantly white, middle-class domestic ideal that is being promoted, one which fewer and fewer families can possibly live up to. But that has not prevented it from spreading down the class spectrum and across all ethnic groups, trampling over the 'motherwork' of women of colour, which, as Patricia Hill Collins, scholar of African American studies, was the first of many to insist, cuts across private and public, and is not corralled inside the family unit. Instead such work plays a crucial role in collective, community survival in a racially discriminating world, thereby unsettling just about every white-dominated dichotomy on the subject of mothers. Today the relationship between white mothers and mothers of colour is repeating an age-old history, especially in the US, as undocumented migrants take care of the children of white middle-class mothers, relieving them of the burden of childcare so they can parade the seamless compatibility of their professional and domestic lives.\n\nWhen Zo\u00eb Baird, nominated for attorney general in 1993, was found to be employing two undocumented Peruvian immigrants, one as a babysitter, there was a public uproar for her violation of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal aliens. The practice, it turned out, was widespread, though no one, least of all the hiring mothers, wanted to talk about it. Notably absent in the outcry over the case of Baird, who had to step down as potential attorney general, was the slightest concern for the migrant mothers themselves. Their working conditions are often inhuman. Maria de Jesus Ramos Hernandez left her three children in Mexico to work for a household in California, where she was repeatedly raped by her employer, who threatened her with jail as an illegal migrant if she did not submit. Her case received little attention, but the story is typical. These migrant women, who so often have to leave their own children behind, are mostly paid a pittance. Once again lost motherhood is the tale behind other forms of exploitation. Like Bimbo Ayelabola, they are accused of leeching off the welfare system (a charge previously targeted at job-stealing migrant men). In fact, they are being used as a cheap labour force that greases the economy while allowing other mothers to get rich. Solidarity among mothers, across class and ethnic boundaries, is not something Western cultures seem in any hurry to promote.\n\n* * *\n\nIt is, therefore, immensely reassuring to register the instances of women organising against the forms of prejudice and social exclusion directed towards those mothers who have tried, and are still trying, against the harshest material odds, to create a viable life for themselves. In 1918, the pioneering National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child was set up in the UK to support such women, and is still active today (renamed the National Council for One Parent Families in 1970; since 2009 as Gingerbread, with which it merged in 2007). Its history includes moments of unlikely solidarity. During the First World War, the Prince of Wales Fund decided not to support unmarried mothers. One of their midwives told the executive committee about a 'respectable married woman' she had attended the previous day who had said she was happy to 'wash herself and leave her child unwashed' so that the midwife could go to plead the cause of unmarried mothers.\n\nA report on mother and baby hostels set up during the Second World War \u2013 another moment when unmarried mothers were the target of moral panic \u2013 describes how the matrons turned desolate premises into havens for 'utterly friendless girls' who may never before have known a home or 'whose parents set their own petty respectability above the ordinary decencies of human relationships'. The girls would leave the hostels 'with a great deal more confidence than when they arrived'. The report was never published.\n\nNote, too, the sexual undertow (these girls are not 'respectable'). One of the greatest wartime fears was that single girls would become pregnant by black American servicemen, with dire consequences for the race of the nation and potentially for the servicemen themselves. 'Any English girl who walks out, however harmlessly, with a coloured American soldier,' a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, wrote to Violet Markham in 1942, 'should be made to understand that she will very probably cause his death.' In the same breath her remark manages to express solicitude for the girl and the soldier, and raw prejudice against the idea of 'mixed marriages' and their potential offspring.\n\nDuring the First World War, Markham had been secretary to an official investigation into suggested 'immorality' among servicewomen stationed in France. The charge was common. Gail Lewis, sociologist and writer on race and gender, was born to a white mother and a black father. In a conversation written as an open letter to her mother, Lewis quotes Major-General Arthur Arnold Bullick Dowler, who in 1942 wrote a secret missive, 'Notes on Relations with Coloured Troops': 'White women should not associate with coloured men. It follows then, that they should not walk out, dance, or drink with them. Do not think such action hard or unsociable. They do not expect your companionship and such relations would in the end only result in strife' (the letter was published in the first volume of Studies in the Maternal, one of the most open-minded online journals on the complexity of mothering). The fallout from these attitudes would track Lewis for the rest of her life. 'How others cast you', she addresses her mother, 'as sexually depraved and morally bankrupt.' A white mother bearing a black child surpassed all understanding.\n\nAs so often in relation to mothers, something about sexuality \u2013 its pleasures and dangers \u2013 is at play (this too will be my refrain). It is another common assumption that a single mother is a woman who puts her sexual life ahead of her social responsibility. She therefore has only herself, or rather her voracious sexual appetites, to blame. Manipulative or sexual, the single mother exhibits either too much control over her sexual life or not enough \u2013 what is hardly ever mentioned in relation to teenage pregnancies is the possibility of child abuse and rape. Behind the idea of maternal virtue, therefore, another demand and\/or reproach. A mother is a woman whose sexual being must be invisible. She must save the world from her desire \u2013 thereby allowing the world to conceal the unmanageable nature of all human sexuality, and its own voraciousness, from itself (as if sexuality never exists outside the bounds of married life).\n\nEven in the years leading up to the 1960s, when there was more sympathy for the predicament of single mothers, the basic assumption was there. 'Innocent' girls could get into trouble and merited understanding provided, in the words of Thane and Evans in the opening pages of their book, 'they did not flaunt their transgressions.' Nor is the childless woman immune from sexual taint. 'Surely,' as one journalist summed up a common presumption about the declining birth rate in twenty-first century France, 'a woman who refuses to be a mother enjoys lovemaking rather too much?' The shudder of disapproval barely conceals its own excitement. At whatever point of the spectrum \u2013 no babies or illegitimate babies or too many babies \u2013 women find themselves caught in a steel vice (the most recent version being the charge that excessively reproducing mothers are responsible for climate change).\n\nI started this chapter by asking: what are mothers being asked to carry, what forms of failure and injustice are they made accountable for, above all, in the modern Western world? What are the fears we lay on mothers, both as accusation and demand (the one following the other)? Why do we expect mothers to subdue the very fears we ourselves have laid at their door? For much of the rest of this book, in dialogue with some of the most searching writing on mothers, I will be attempting some kind of answer. In the meantime, since the most powerful ideologies of motherhood present themselves as eternal and unchanging \u2013 from here to maternity \u2013 the question must be: has it always been thus? After all, it is one of the first principles of feminism that, if you want to challenge a stereotype, especially one masquerading as nature or virtue or essence, if your aim is to drag it down from its pedestal or yank it up from the dirt where it festers, then try and find where it all started. Better still, look to a place and time when \u2013 maybe \u2013 it was not even there.\nTHEN\n\nThere was a time when becoming a mother meant no loss of a woman's role in vital forms of public life. In Ancient Greece, a woman was maiden, bride and then, after childbirth, mature female. This was hardly a life of freedom. Young girls of thirteen and fourteen were married off to men in their thirties. Women, like slaves, were not citizens (the woman\/slave analogy eloquent in itself). A woman could fulfil her destiny only as a mother. But according to one account of Greek motherhood, in doing so she did not cease to be involved in civic space, notably in the community of women who participated in religious ceremonies. It was the single arena in which women enjoyed parity or even superiority vis-\u00e0-vis men. Women held priestly office and performed ceremonial duties, such as at the Eleusinian Mysteries in honour of the goddess Demeter and at the Panathenian festivals that celebrated the Athenian patron goddess Athena (they appear everywhere in the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, the most important religious building in the city). Women played an important role in the cult activity that fostered the welfare of the household (oikos) and city, including the ritual commemoration of the dead. Such activity enabled them to intervene in the politics of their community, granting them, in the words of classics scholar Barbara Goff, 'significant presence and agency in the public realm' (as she also points out, ritual itself was a type of work). Although ancient Athens was undoubtedly a patriarchal society, scholars have argued that names, property and priesthoods could all travel through the female line.\n\nVisits to temples both before and after the birth of a child gave the mother considerable access to the community beyond the domestic boundaries of the home. On becoming a mother, the woman therefore maintained her ties to a realm that exceeded the domain of motherhood itself, an idea that modern times seem progressively to have lost. 'Parenthood is not a transition,' Rachel Cusk writes in A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001), 'but a defection, a political act.' After the birth of her first child, Cusk felt she had been left stranded on the far shore of any viable political life. Her horizons narrowed. She was cut down to size. Cusk is pointing out that this isolation from the wider world \u2013 separate spheres, as it was first defined in the nineteenth century \u2013 is as sudden as it is absolute (this regardless of whether today's mother eventually returns to work). But it is neither natural nor eternal. It is a piece of history, and should be recognised both as personally damaging and as a fully political fact.\n\nA few years earlier, in 1998, Melissa Benn wrote of the way modern mothers seem 'encased in a new silence... We know what we do, but we don't talk about it publicly.' She praised the new-found forms of community and solidarity she encountered among mothers while researching her book, but she also noted the restricted compass of mothers talking mainly, sometimes only, to each other. In fact, in the UK and the US, a mother's separation from the polity has by no means always been the norm. There is a long tradition going back to the eighteenth century of seeing motherhood as part of civic life. The role of the mother was to generate the new citizen, and the nation's stability was seen to reside in the civic virtue she cultivated in her child \u2013 although, since the mother was confined to the home, this only granted her, in historian Linda Colley's words, a 'public role of a kind'.\n\nIn 451\u2013450 BC, Pericles, orator, statesman and a general of Athens, passed a law that made citizenship conditional on descent from an Athenian mother as well as a father, excluding all xenos, or foreign 'outsiders'. The Athenian mother therefore played a key role in transmitting the citizenship from which she herself was debarred (that she was being used to block the civic status of alien mothers has a chilling resonance in today's anti-migrant world). Scholars are divided as to whether this increased or lowered her status, as they are as to whether the virtue of the mother's femininity in relation to husband and child was freighted with the duty of securing the viability of nation and city space.\n\nEither way, as classics scholar Edith Hall has pointed out, the frequency with which Greek men enunciated their ideal of femininity suggests that women by no means always conformed to it. Athenian women uttering obscenities and handling pastry models of genitalia during the winter Haloa festival at Eleusis may have acted as a safety valve, but such practices also indicate that the dominant codes aimed at securing the role of successful wife and mother for women were, as Goff puts it, 'always at risk'. According to Thucydides, women joined in the fourth-century revolution in Kerkyra (Corfu), throwing tiles onto the heads of the oligarchs from the roofs (this also appears to have been viewed as an acceptable activity for women in times of siege). Speeches from the ancient courts of law show women, despite the severest restrictions on their legal rights, determined to do all they could to maximise their influence.\n\nAttic drama suggests this independent spirit was nowhere more present than in relation to mothers, who are portrayed as citizens, chorus, subjects on the world's stage. This can help us \u2013 it certainly has helped me \u2013 to envisage alternative ways of thinking about the real and imagined political selfhood of being a mother. At moments, Greece and Rome \u2013 with Shakespeare in a walk-on part \u2013 will appear as inspirational, at others as scarily familiar. Not for nothing is Greece, in the famously Eurocentric formula, referred to as 'cradle' or 'birthplace' of the West \u2013 or 'the mother of us all', as one might say. We should be wary, of course \u2013 classical culture is not the only way of tracking the path from now to then. But, as scholars from Mary Beard to Edith Hall have convincingly argued, the Greeks are still with us today, even as Beard issues the salutary caution that our grip on classical times is fragile. As ancient historian Esther Eidinow writes, the sparse evidence throws 'only the faintest of silhouettes down through time', even while her study of witch trials in fourth-century Athens is aimed at retrieving the agency and power of these women.\n\nThere are, however, few testimonies available from the mothers of Ancient Greece themselves, who, in the words of Lauren Hackworth Petersen and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell, editors of a volume on the topic, 'left little trace of their own existence' (a lot of examples are taken by necessity from funeral urns). Hence my focus on drama, which has survived more or less intact and where different versions of motherhood, for better or worse, could be tried out for size, admittedly written by men. My engagement with classical culture on the subject of mothers has left me alternately cheering and tearing my hair (although, as we will see, by the time I have finished the two responses start to coalesce).\n\nIn Euripides' The Suppliant Women, Aethra pleads with her son Theseus to be allowed to speak on behalf of the Argive mothers whose fallen sons lie unburied. The play can be read as a mother-centred version of the better-known Antigone, whose more famous heroine insists on her brother's sacred right to due burial against unjust man-made law. In The Suppliant Women, Aethra makes her plea, not for a brother against the state, but in the name of the city and on behalf of mothers who are not her kin. When Theseus first objects that these grieving women of Argos are foreigners, she replies: 'You do not belong to them. Shall I say something, my son, that brings honour to you and the city?' Defying him in the name of a cross-national community of mothers, she presents her case in terms of the contribution women make to the civic good: if he ignores their plea, the city over which he rules will be destroyed.\n\nAethra is drawing on the authority owing to her as mother of the Athenian king. Theseus concedes, and then proceeds to a passionate defence of democracy: 'This city is free, and ruled by no one man. The people reign in annual alterations. \/ And they do not yield their power to the rich; \/ the poor man has an equal share in it.' As if to say: in relation to democracy, listening to the voice of bereaved, disenfranchised mothers is the true litmus test. The modern world could helpfully take note. In November 2016, the Mothers of the Movement, bereaved mothers of some of the highest-profile black victims of police violence in the US, started travelling the country to tell the stories of their dead children and to speak out on police racism, gun violence and criminal justice reform. 'I had to change my mourning into a movement, my pain into purpose and sorrow into a strategy,' states Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, killed on Staten Island, New York, in 2014, aged forty-three. 'I know it's too late for Eric but we have to save the unborn.' 'When it's time to speak, I go forth. I'm not a politics person. I mean, I guess I am now, in some ways' \u2013 the words of Valerie Bell, mother of Sean Bell, shot in Queens, New York, in 2006, aged twenty-three. Another modern instance of mothers forging a political voice out of tragedy.\n\nIn The Suppliant Women, Theseus himself ends up joining the grieving mothers as they wash the wounded corpses of their dead, vanquished sons. He enters the role of a mother, becomes one of their kind. When Adrastus, king of defeated Argos, hears of this he expresses dismay: 'That was a dreadful burden, bringing shame,' the messenger replies. 'How can humanity's common ills be shameful?' Victorious kings rarely embrace the bodies of the defeated (any more than do policemen with guns on the street). Theseus' act is all the more extraordinary in a democracy where political freedom in the city space was seen to rely on keeping the crude necessities of life behind closed doors, which also meant that the paterfamilias, the kyrios or dominus, ruled over his family and slaves with a rod of iron.\n\nToday, of course, in most countries in the world, women are citizens. Mothers can be leaders and fully enter the polis, although it's worth noting that neither Angela Merkel nor Theresa May have children. In the case of May, when Andrea Leadsom, one of her rivals for the role of prime minister after the Brexit referendum of June 2016, suggested that this fact rendered her unfit for office, she had to withdraw from the leadership election.\n\nIt is, however, still the case that today, in public, the bodily necessities of mothering are brushed under the carpet and\/or consigned to another hidden, intimate world. Perhaps the dismay provoked by Theseus' compassionate gesture allows us to speculate why. It is not just so that men can keep their hands clean \u2013 to which some men would fairly reply that today they share the housework and change nappies (we have moved on from 1972 when New Society reported that it was a rare father who could change his child's nappy). Rather, the problem goes the other way. The radical care and visceral mess of child-rearing must neither degrade nor stain the upstanding citizen. The shameful debris of the human body, familiar to any mother, must not enter the domain of public life and spill onto the streets. I remember once trying to persuade a young university colleague that she shouldn't hesitate to bring her baby to work as the need arose, first simply as a practical matter so she could get to work and make her life liveable, but perhaps, even more, so that the stuff that mothers deal with on a daily basis should be seen.\n\nAlways I am on the lookout for those moments when mothers get to speak the unspeakable, trash the expectations laid upon them, play with other ideas. If the main function of a married woman in Ancient Greece and Rome was to provide fodder for the war machine, for many women this was not a tempting prospect (one effective herbal abortifacient made available to women was so popular it became extinct, the herb featuring on Cyrene coinage alongside the figure of a woman). At a key moment in The Suppliant Women, Adrastus laments the defeat of his nation. When the chorus, made up of the grieving mothers and their handmaidens, pleads, 'No word for the mothers?' he replies: 'O wretched mothers of children! \/ Behold a sea of troubles.' This is tragic, but also hand-wringing and lyrical to the point of banality. Once again, pathos neutralises a far more radical complaint. The chorus is swift in its judgement: 'Would that my body had never been yoked to a husband's bed.'\n\nWhat is the point of breeding sons with the sole aim of sending them to battle? In Sparta, girls benefited from being married off later than in other Greek states, but only because the Spartans realised that they were more likely to produce a healthy warrior child. The suppliant women are in revolt (not so suppliant after all). They turn against their destiny \u2013 and their husbands \u2013 because they can see the reality of the cruel political world they are being asked to gestate. Perhaps that is another reason why mothers are unwelcome in public spaces, integrated with difficulty into the political scene. If they really entered the world without let or inhibition, they would read it; they would see and lay bare its intolerable cruelty for what it truly is (speaking truth to power). In Britain, after the First World War, women turned their pain to political ends, demanding the vote as the fair if partial recompense for having been expected to send their sons to war.\n\nBut there must always be the risk that the mothers of soldiers just might decide that a world at war is worthy neither of their labour nor of the dedicated, albeit unchosen, futures of their offspring. In Euripides' Medea, well before the heroine kills her two sons, the act for which she and the play are infamous, the chorus announces in one of its longest speeches that they have pondered and concluded that those who do not have children are happier by far: no shadow of care, no unknowing as to whether your labours will produce good or bad children, no endless dread that, in the worst and final disaster, Death may take your child. This is the bleakest view, half the story, or not even half the story, some mothers would say. But, as feminism has long pointed out, by refusing to be mothers, women have the power to bring the world to its end.\n\n* * *\n\nIn Ancient Greece, the line between fighting and childbirth went deep, as the dangers of childbearing were spliced into the fields of war. This blurs the inviolable distinction between life and death that we expect mothers, of all people, to keep intact. It also stalls in its tracks any possible sentimentality on the subject of mothers, a sentimentality with which the modern world, in denial of its own violence, is still saturated. These lines spoken by Medea early in the play are among the most well known, often lifted clean out from under her murder of her own children as a stand-alone feminist plaint:\n\nThey, men, allege that we enjoy a life\n\nsecure from danger safe at home,\n\nwhile they confront the thrusting spears of war.\n\nI would rather join\n\nthe battle rank of shields three times\n\nthan undergo birth's labour once.\n\nHer list of grievances is long: women are obliged to accept a husband as 'master of our body', to keep 'our eye on him alone', whereas the man is free; women are the most beset by trials of 'any species that has breath of power and thought'.\n\nMedea is not alone in making her analogy between parturition and the injuries of war. According to Plutarch, a Greek living under the Roman Empire, the only exceptions to the rule against naming the dead on their tombstones were men who fell in battle and women who died in childbirth: the woman, producer of the future citizens of the city state, bore childbirth 'just as the warrior bears the enemy's assault, by struggling against pain: giving birth is a battle.' 'Not just a symmetry,' the feminist classics scholar Nicole Loraux writes in her 1981 article, 'Le Lit, la guerre' ('In bed, at war'), 'it is more like an act of exchange or at the very least the presence of war at the heart of childbirth.' Likewise, men become women, as the pain of a wounded soldier is compared to labour: 'Fortune and misfortune of the warrior: to break all limits, including that of the virility he ostensibly embodies, in order to suffer like a woman.' In a wondrously gender-confounding moment, war blurs the distinction of the sexes in relation to the very acts \u2013 battle, childbirth \u2013 normally seen as their most representative and distinctive of roles. It reduces dying men to the state of women as the bearers of new life, while also giving only to both of them the right to be named for posterity on their tombs. Who then, soldiers or birthing mothers, are the true heroes? The answer must surely be neither or both. In which case, perhaps, Loraux suggests, we should not be in too much of a hurry to charge Greek thought with misogyny.\n\nBy the time of Shakespeare's Roman plays, this analogy will receive one of its most violent, exultant affirmations in the character of Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus, who, again in a speech that has become famous, turns the link between war and maternal nurture inside out. She, too, is dismissed as close on crazy, or more charitably as exerting undue influence on her son (an example of Shakespeare's 'suffocating' mothers). In fact, she is one in a line of many mothers, as she draws on an ancient tradition to which she gives her own unique twist:\n\nThe breasts of Hecuba\n\nWhen she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier\n\nThan Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood\n\nAt Grecian sword contemning.\n\nThese words are meant to shock or even repulse, but Volumnia is speaking the hidden truth of what a militaristic culture asks of the bodies of its mothers. For Medea, battle was preferable to the agonies of childbirth (a comparison that in the end works to the advantage of neither). For Volumnia, the blood of battle and the breasts of the nursing mother compete to win the aesthetic prize. It is not pain but beauty that violently aligns the archetypal trope of mothering \u2013 the milk of human kindness \u2013 and the spillage of war.\n\nVolumnia is a Roman mother. Even more than in Greece, the Roman mother was monumentalised on behalf of her citizen sons. Imperial mothers like Octavia and Livia were celebrated by buildings in whose construction they also sometimes played a role: Octavia completed the renovation of the Republican portico that bore her name; Livia left an extensive portfolio of public works that rivalled that of many imperial men; women of the Julio\u2013Claudian family under Augustus involved themselves in his programmatic rebuilding of Rome. Today's queens and wives of presidents have their realm restricted to interior design, while leading women architects are rare \u2013 Zaha Hadid, who did not have children, would be one striking exception, stating in interviews that her work would have made it impossible.\n\nBut it is as the mothers of warriors that the Roman woman reaches her apogee. Shakespeare goes out of his way to make Volumnia more militaristic than his source, Plutarch, where there is less emphasis on valiancy and glory, more on the misery Coriolanus has brought upon the 'common weal'. His Volumnia out-soldiers them all. 'If my son were my husband,' she insists to the perplexed and downcast Virgilia, wife of Coriolanus, who is grieving his absence in war, 'I should freer rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour, than in the embracements of his bed, where he would show most love.' When he was a young man, Volumnia delighted in sending her son into battle, from which he returned victorious, his brows crowned with an oak coronet: 'Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Martius, I had rather eleven die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.'\n\nBut, by the end of the play, Volumnia is pleading with her son, who, expelled from Rome, has formed a deadly alliance with the Volscian enemy, not to tear 'his country's bowels out' by laying waste to his natal city. She finally uses her persuasive power as mother to wrest back the violence that she herself had celebrated, casting its gory shadow, unflinchingly and with such relish, across her own maternal role. But it is her own brutal eloquence, her mental immersion as a mother into the carnage of war, that has uniquely qualified her to do so.\n\nWe can pathologise Volumnia, as indeed Medea, but that is too easy. They have both tapped into a way of thinking, lost to our time, that does not require motherhood to purify and blind itself to the world's violence, or to our own: 'We know too much,' writes Adrienne Rich, 'at first hand [of] the violence which over centuries we have been told is the way of the world, but which we exist to mitigate and assuage.' 'We know too much' \u2013 Rich is implicating herself as mother in the worst of the modern world. In Of Woman Born (the 1995 reprint), she defends her decision to keep the final chapter on mothers and violence, which she was pressured to remove. It was read by some mothers as a betrayal (as if mothers can only be defended as humans if they are good). On the other side of idealisation, war and childbirth are recognised in classical thought as two moments when the fabric of the social order is rent. Unlike today when, against all the bloody evidence, armies and mothers \u2013 lynchpins of the social order, although at opposite poles of the human spectrum \u2013 are called upon to secure our futures and make a precarious, dangerous world feel safe.\n\n* * *\n\nWe know that the male colonisation of mothers' bodies starts inside the womb. One of Donald Trump's first executive orders reinstated the 'global gag' rule that bans funding for groups anywhere in the world offering abortion or abortion advocacy, even if they use their own funds to do, which has been described as a 'death warrant for thousands of women' (one of the most notorious photos of his first one hundred days in office is of a bunch of indistinguishable men signing the order into law). As well as putting the health and lives of women seeking abortion at risk, the rule will cut funding worth billions to the developing world and threatens free speech. Republican presidents regularly reinstate this rule, which had been overturned by Obama, but reproductive groups described it this time as the most extreme of its kind. As I write, the Roe v. Wade ruling is considered to be at serious risk of being overturned for the first time since it was passed by the US Supreme Court in 1973: Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first appointment to the Supreme Court, is famous for the vehemence of his anti-abortion convictions.\n\nBut the issue of abortion is not the only form that such colonisation can take. In 1999, the case of Dobson (Litigation Guardian of) v. Dobson was brought to the Supreme Court of Canada. A woman, whose son was born with serious impairment after a car accident in which she was deemed negligent, was sued by the maternal grandfather on behalf of her child. In the end, the charge of negligence was set aside and the decision focused entirely on whether the son, Ryan Dobson, 'has the legal capacity to bring a tort action against his mother for her allegedly negligent act which occurred while he was in utero'. Can a child sue his own mother for what she did, or failed to do, before he was born?\n\nThis, we could say, is the social punishment of mothers with a vengeance, a nightmare version of where we started, as the law extends its cold, hard reach deep inside the body of the pregnant woman, judging her culpable before life even begins. But in a judgement heralded by feminist legal scholar Diana Ginn, the judges decided for the mother on the grounds of her privacy, autonomy and the rights of women. Had they imposed a legal duty of care upon a pregnant woman towards her foetus or unborn child, the potential for curtailing women's choices and behaviour would, they acknowledged, have been 'staggering', with no 'rational' or 'principled' limit to the type of claims that might be brought (they were citing a 1993 Royal Commission on new reproductive technologies). Although there was a dissenting opinion, Ginn fairly sees the result of this landmark case as striking a feminist blow for mothers, which she traces to the atmosphere fostered by Adrienne Rich's book (Ginn's essay appears in a collection celebrating Of Woman Born and its legacy).\n\nIn a way that is again reminiscent of Greek thought, today's legal writing tends to see a pregnant woman and her foetus either as an organic unit or as a potential field of battle. In the Dobson case, Judge Cory referred to the 'inseparable unit between the woman and her foetus' as the basis for taking the mother's side. Dissenting Judge Major, on the other hand, insisted that the interests of the foetus and the mother were not, and should not be, considered as one: 'It is no answer to the plaintiff in this case that unilateral concerns about a pregnant woman's competing rights are sufficient to \"negative\" a negligent violation of his physical integrity. His rights, too, are at stake.' The distinction is legally significant but also partly illusory. Either way, the mother is being pressed to recognise, as if she did not already know, that her unborn child depends on her for life itself. Note how this obvious truth erases any concern for her social condition. Class, housing, level of nutrition, the presence or absence and behaviour of the father or partner are all wiped out of the picture. She has been placed in a social vacuum, severed, even before her baby is born, from the mundane, basic realities and pressures of a lived life.\n\nHow far, then, have we come? In relation to the bodies of mothers, we have come far, but only so far. In Greek embryology, pregnancy is shadowed by a not wholly dissimilar idea of foetal harm. The foetus is always in potential danger from its mother, who is solely to blame if anything goes wrong, such as the birth of a premature or sickly child. Diseases of Women, the Hippocratic medical treatise of the fifth century BC, lists the activities that endanger the embryo, notably when the woman is sick or weak: lifting weights, jumping about, fainting, eating too much or too little, being flatulent, having a womb that is too large or too small, becoming fearful or alarmed or receiving a blow. The list is of course deranged, veering from common sense (the first two, although neither likely if she is sick or weak), to matters over which she has no control (the size of her womb), to realities \u2013 fainting, fear or alarm, receiving a blow \u2013 for which she can hardly be held responsible.\n\nAbove all, in Greek embryology, in a trope at least partly reiterated by Judge Major, the womb was a site of struggle. The victorious foetus, now too large and hungry to be fed by the mother, had to fight its way out of the maternal body, tearing the maternal membranes, thrashing about with its arms and feet. Unlike chickens, whose mothers could be relied upon to hatch their brood at the appropriate time, the human mother had to be vanquished for life to begin. Likewise in Shakespeare's time, it was believed that the pregnant mother could suffocate her foetus. In his 1635 treatise The Nursing of Children, Jacques Guillimeau suggests that the mother can choose to intercept her baby by strangling it in the womb. Excess feeding and 'surfetting' would have the same effect. Birth came about through the mother's deficiency, when the supply of air or food failed. Guillimeau was just one of several commentators who believed that breast milk was 'whitened blood', a derivative of menstrual blood and potentially lethal.\n\nWe have watched the link between childbirth and war receiving its starkest delineation in the bitter words of Greek and Roman mothers on the stage. Now we can perhaps appreciate these mothers as lifting into the public domain, seizing to their own ends \u2013 'defamiliarising' would be Brecht's term for such radical political gestures \u2013 this image of the womb as a battleground. Tracking violence to inside their bodies, classical medical discourse made women accountable for everything that could possibly go wrong (since this is the primordial battle from which all other battles follow, that presumably also includes war itself). In one version of gestation, where the mother, as well as the father, was at least recognised as contributing to the creation of an embryo, her seed was the weakling and, in a lethal struggle, the paternal seed had to be victorious to secure the birth of a son. In the very role by which she was defined, the best thing a mother could therefore do for her unborn infant was to defeat herself.\n\nMost disturbingly, one embryological account, without mitigation of overbearing maternal accountability and guilt, sees the woman as playing no role in gestation. She is merely the passive recipient of the male seed \u2013 ancillary and culpable, both. This is Apollo in The Eumenides, the final play of Aeschylus' Oresteia, giving one of the most renowned defences of this crooked vision:\n\nThe woman who is called the 'mother' of the child is not the parent,\n\nbut rather a nurse of the newly sown embryo.\n\nHe who impregnates generates, while she, as a stranger for a stranger,\n\npreserves the shoot if the god does not harm it in some way.\n\n'Stranger for a stranger' \u2013 remember that just seven years later, in 451\/450 BC, Athens will secure the citizenship of its people against all foreigners to the city. Being a stranger to your own child therefore symbolically wipes out any civic, political allegiance between mother and child. Apollo presents this argument in defence of Orestes, on trial at the court of Athena for having murdered his mother Clytemnestra in revenge for her killing his father Agamemnon. Clytemnestra had likewise been motivated by revenge. Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods in exchange for a fair wind that would allow his fleet to set sail and defeat Troy after the abduction of Helen.\n\nApollo's task is to explain why the murder of Agamemnon, king and husband, is more punishable than the crime of matricide. He is struggling. This is his fourth attempt \u2013 first he argues that Orestes acted on Zeus' command, then that Agamemnon, killed by treachery, was a man and a king (as if there were no treachery in matricide), then that the life of a murdered man is irrevocably lost (as if that were not true of all deaths, which must include the deaths of women). For psychoanalysis, this would be defined as the 'kettle logic' of the unconscious, a self-defeating pile-up of arguments in which each one finally wipes out the next. The chorus, on the other hand, is having none of it. In the final play of the trilogy, they are the voice of the Eumenides, or Furies, whose role is to 'hound matricides to exile'. For them, Clytemnestra's crime is the less heinous because she was not of Agamemnon's blood. When Orestes retorts, 'But am I of my mother's?' they reply: 'Vile wretch! Did she not nourish you in her own womb? \/ Do you disown your mother's blood, which is your own?'\n\nIn similar vein, in Sophocles' Electra, Clytemnestra claims to her enraged daughter that Agamemnon had no right to sacrifice Iphigenia when he 'did not labour an equal amount of suffering (lyp\u00e8s)'. The mother's part in childbearing is greater, with 'the quantity of pain the measure': 'he who sowed her, like the one who bore her, me'. Clytemnestra will be murdered by Orestes, but she is at least given the chance to make her own case, even if doomed, before she dies. In this, ironically, she has Athenian law on her side. Marriage between half-siblings was only classified as incest if they shared the same mother (whereas marriage between half-siblings who shared a father was fine). The mother\u2013child bond was therefore the most intimate. Apollo is making his stand against commonly felt, legally recognised belief.\n\nIn Robert Icke's brilliant 2015 Oresteia adaptation, Clytemnestra's voice moves front of stage. Why, she asks, 'does the murder of the mother count for less than that of the father?... Why is the mother's motive for murder lesser than the son's?' She herself then provides the answer to her own question as only a woman can: 'Because the woman is less important.' In the London production, Lia Williams pronounced these words with biting, spaced emphasis, as if her forfeit life relied on the audience paying heed (having her testify after death on her own behalf in the courtroom is, of course, Icke's radical invention). Clytemnestra is a grieving mother, bereft of a daughter whose murder by her father is the key precipitating factor, too easily erased from sight but to which Icke gives due status. 'This whole thing,' she addresses the ghost of her daughter, 'this whole thing is about you.' Inside the bloodied bathrobe of his dead father, Orestes finds a note stating 'Child Killer', which is projected in capitals onto a vast screen at the back of the stage.\n\nIn this version, Apollo is not present at the trial. The judgement still falls against Clytemnestra. But the doctor who speaks the truth to Orestes throughout the play states unequivocally that matricide is the greater inhuman offence: 'her act was not like yours. \/ Agamemnon did not lift her from her crib. \/ He did not breastfeed her.' In Aeschylus' version, as she pleads with Orestes for her life, Clytemnestra exposes her breast, which gives him pause, but finally to no avail.\n\nApollo's speech in Aeschylus' text at least has the virtue of showing how the idea that mothers have no role in the creation of life leads directly to a justification for killing them. Likewise, Athena pronounces her judgement in favour of Orestes on the grounds that no mother gave her birth. In fact, this is another matricide, as her mother, the goddess Metis, is wiped out in the myth that she sprang ready formed from the head of Zeus (who had swallowed her). Right at the start of the trilogy, Agamemnon tells of a portent in which two kings of birds ravenously tear the body of a pregnant hare: 'Big with her burden, now a living prey \/ In the last darkness of their unborn day.' Aeschylus' trilogy ends with Orestes pardoned, his name restored to the royal house over the body of his dead mother. The modern version ends instead with Orestes, in a state of dizzy anxiety, repeating four times: 'What do I do?' In Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn's retelling, House of Names (2017), Orestes is haunted by the cries of Clytemnestra and Iphigenia as she is being slaughtered (the mother's agony finally more important than the crime for which he kills her).\n\n'How,' asks French psychoanalyst Andr\u00e9 Green, 'is he to acquire his rightful belonging and add his name to his father's lineage, yet also destroy the means by which he came into his life?' This is hatred of mothers raised to the nth degree, the bedrock, even in the teeth of progress, of what mothers are still up against. In 2015, Icke's Oresteia played to packed houses in London. Something in this play, even rerendered for our times, still resonates. Why, if not that mothers remain our favourite sacrificial objects, as disposable as they are indispensable to life? Why, if not that mothers continue to be the container for all our plaints, and to bear the brunt of an unjust world?\n\n* * *\n\nAt some time in the 1980s, a French feminist told me that her partner had announced out of the blue that for the first time in his life he could envisage a woman as both mother and lover. I think this was meant to be the highest compliment, the implication being that, in the normal run of things, once a woman has a child she ceases to be desirable. But, he was generously reassuring her, this would not happen in her case. I don't think the mother's way of seeing things had even crossed his mind, the possibility that many mothers, out of sheer exhaustion and discomfort, not to speak of their absorption in and the demands of their baby, might, at least for a while after childbirth, lose interest in sex. Some years later, when I had just become a mother, a close friend pronounced as a kind of dire warning that any woman taking a lover while she was still the mother of a baby or young child would summon the wrath of the gods on her head. As if motherhood brings the idea of a woman as a subject of sexual desire to a complete standstill. Mothering would then be one of the ways a culture purifies itself of the sexuality that mostly still brings motherhood about today. Even if, as critic Rachel Bowlby has pointed out, the advances of reproductive technology mean we are approaching a time when we will no longer be able to assume that children come 'from two parents, of two sexes, who once had sex'. Or, in the words of Elena Ferrante \u2013 to whom we will be returning \u2013 'no one, starting with the mother's dressmaker, must think that a mother has a woman's body' (she is citing Elsa Morante, her favourite contemporary woman writer).\n\nThis, too, is an old story. When Hamlet confronts his mother in the closet scene, he begins by lambasting her with the outrage of his uncle having murdered and ousted his father, but by the end of the scene, it seems that this is by no means the only, or even the main, offence: 'Who'll chide hot blood within a virgin's heart \/ When lust shall dwell within a matron's breast?' Matron means married woman or grandmother, but the key is, of course, that she is his mother: 'You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, but would you were not so. You are my mother.' If a mother persists as a sexual being, then the virtue of virgins \u2013 the next generation of mothers \u2013 will be destroyed. Do not, he issues his final instructions, 'let the blunt King tempt you again to bed'. In Icke's Oresteia, the autopsy of Clytemnestra reveals that, in addition to neck and torso, her body shows stab wounds in the genitals. It is not only for the killing of his father that she is being punished by her son.\n\nBut it is the mother's sensuality towards her own children that is the greatest taboo. When Victoria Beckham posted a photo on Instagram of her kissing her five-year-old daughter on the lips on her birthday in the summer of 2016, there was a public outcry (some trolls called them 'pervy' and 'lesbians'). In this, the scandals of child abuse have played their part. But, even where there is no question of abuse, the eros of the mother\u2013child relationship, of which mothers speak to one another under their breath, still tends to be frowned upon or rarely talked about. On this matter, Ancient Greece and Rome can be seen as rather more progressive. Cleopatra, deemed the most desirable of women, was the mother of four children, one, she claimed, by Julius Caesar and the three youngest by Mark Antony, something which most representations of Cleopatra conspire to forget (although there is an allusion to her children at the end of Shakespeare's play, it tends to be overlooked, and no one I mentioned it to had the faintest idea she was a mother). In fact, the silence began with Octavian in a bid to stop his conflict with Mark Antony being seen as a civil war, his offspring potentially in arms against hers in a battle for the keys of the city state.\n\nAnd Venus was referred to as mater amoris or 'mother of love' (how can you mother eros other than incestuously, which might be the whole point?). This is Venus in Virgil's Aeneid just after she has responded dismissively to her son Aeneas' charge of neglect: 'She spoke, and as she turned away, her rosy neck gleamed, while from her head her heavenly hair breathed a divine fragrance, her robes slipped down to her feet and in her step she was revealed as a true goddess.' The moment is both breathless and brutal: her sexuality, her body, is exposed as the naked truth of her cruelty towards her son, who interestingly only fully recognises her as his mother at this revealing instant. But other images are less damning. The Terra Mater, a panel of the Ara Pacis dated 13\u20139 BC, shows the mother goddess and her two children with her garment slipping gently from her shoulders (as this is a sculpture the exposure stops there). She is therefore also Venus, and her sensuality is part of her tenderness towards the two boys cavorting on her lap.\n\nThe eros of mothers can be turned against them at a stroke. In one striking classical example, Lysias composes the speech for Euphiletus, who is defending himself in court against the charge of murdering the Greek citizen Eratosthenes, who was his wife's lover. To establish the harmony of their household, how intimate a place it had been before the affair, he begins by focusing on the love with which she suckled her son, before turning the tables completely by arguing that her motherly devotion was a distraction, a sensuous decoy, a plot. So dedicated did she seem that he could never have foreseen her treason. This scheming mother had even used the cries of the infant to hide her liaison. The innocence of breastfeeding slips effortlessly into guilt (as we will see in the next chapter, none of this has gone away).\n\n* * *\n\nWe are not done with the Greeks, although that 'we' will be qualified in what follows, because the Greek heritage is not the whole picture, or indeed ancestry, of modern times, which also has more than one story to tell. In one account, Greece in itself is indebted to an African inheritance, which the West has gone to great lengths to suppress. And, in its precolonial days, Africa offers models of mothers as fully engaged social and political beings. For example, in parts of what is now known as Uganda, queen mothers controlled the alliances of the clan, though such status was quashed in the nineteenth century when they were effectively enslaved by a new alliance of native elite and British colonial men. But if the Greeks are still present in our midst, there is no reason why, at moments, we should not learn from them and, at others, as we have seen in relation to Clytemnestra's tragic tale, turn to face them and issue our reply. The lines from then to now are complex, covered neither by complacency at our progress, nor nostalgia for a better age (two limited options that imitate the way we are so often encouraged to think of our relationship to mothers).\n\nTo end, then, by returning to Medea, the most irredeemable mother of them all. 'If Freud had been less preoccupied with Oedipus and more observant of Medea when he remarked that \"aggression forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people\",' Nicole Loraux writes in Mothers in Mourning, 'he would certainly not have added: \"with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relation to her male child.\"' The great theorist of Oedipus, she elaborates, was blind to this strand of Greek tragic thinking, where wrath against the spouse triumphs over love for her two sons. But even this reading of Medea is uncertain. In other versions of the tale, in circulation before Euripides, Medea does not murder her children: hatred of Medea drives the Corinthians to kill them, or else the relatives of Creon kill them in revenge after she has murdered Creon and fled to Athens, or she puts her children through a rite designed to make them immortal, during the course of which they die.\n\nEven in Euripides' drama, what drives Medea to kill is not, or not only, her sexual rage against their father but equally the loss of his love for their children, which condemns them to an uncertain future. Her cry is for justice and that diatribe on the pains of mothering the lament of a mother whose greatest fear is that she and her children will be homeless and stateless, a condition we can surely not gloss over today (hence her plea to Creon for a stay of execution against being expelled from the city). Only in their final confrontation after the murder, when Jason accuses her of being 'stung by thoughts of sex' \u2013 'And you believe it justified \/ to kill them for the sake of sex?' \u2013 does she return: 'Do you suppose such troubles to be trivial for a woman?'\n\nFor the most part, it is not sex that Medea has on her mind but survival. Although she is finally given all the assurances she seeks, she does not believe them. She kills her children to save them from a worse fate: 'I swear, there is no way that I shall leave \/ my boys among my enemies so they \/ can treat them with atrocity.' It is interesting that it is the image of sexual frenzy that has most popularly attached itself to Medea, and that what gets lost in translation is any trace of the reasons a mother might have for thinking there is no longer any place in the world for her own children. V\u00e9ronique Olmi's bestselling 2001 rewrite of Medea has the title Bord de mer (the translation Beside the Sea loses the pun mer\/m\u00e8re, by the sea\/mother at the edge). Before murdering her two sons on a visit to the seaside, the mother goes quietly mad and dreams of spending her life in bed with her children watching the telly, 'holding on to the remote, we'd have switched the world off as soon as it fucked up.' Across the centuries, like the Oresteia, Medea still speaks to us. 'Medea gets away with it,' writes Margaret Reynolds on the history of Medea in performance: 'That is why we love her... She allows us, if only for the length of her performance, the freedom to perform ourselves \u2013 or, rather, the selves that we should be, if we were not bound by convention, by law, by order and decree.'\n\nBut it is Christa Wolf's 1996 retelling that is, for me, the strongest act of reclamation and the true feminist text. In this version, Medea does not kill her children, nor Creon's daughter Glauce, nor her brother Absyrtus, who, in another strand of the legend, she murdered before fleeing her original home of Colchis with Jason. If all this is laid at her door by the citizens of Corinth it is because she has uncovered that city's grotesque secret, the murder of Glauce's sister by Creon in order to keep his succession out of the grasp of his wife, who after the killing goes silent and progressively mad (likewise, it is Medea's father who had murdered Absyrtus, whom he saw as a rival for the succession). 'Either I'm out of my mind,' Medea muses in her first soliloquy, 'or their city is founded on a crime.' This makes Medea into a psychoanalyst \u2013 the allusions are explicit \u2013 as she slowly persuades the ailing Glauce that she knows the truth, saw the deed. Medea taught her, Glauce reflects, that 'there is no thought I must forbid myself to have.'\n\nAbove all, Medea's true crime is to shatter a myth of collective innocence. She is a scapegoat, another mother who is guilty because everyone else has failed: 'They're looking for a woman who will tell them they are not guilty of anything.' Worse, by exposing the crime she risks plunging the whole nation into sorrow: 'Someone must grieve.' Remember Adrienne Rich: 'We know too much at first hand [of] the violence which over centuries we have been told is the way of the world, but which we exist to mitigate and assuage.' In Wolf's version, it is because Medea assuages nothing that she is indicted of all crimes. It is because she knows that the city is built on the corpses of children that she is hounded out of Corinth. Wolf has used her Medea to write a parable of Germany in the twentieth century \u2013 in On the Natural History of Destruction, his account of the silence that followed the Allied bombing of German cities at the end of the Second World War, W. G. Sebald writes of the 'well-kept secret of the corpses built into the foundations of our state'. Above all, she has turned Medea into a story of what happens when a woman is held responsible for the ills of the world. 'She [Medea] has no need of our doubt, of our endeavours to do her justice,' Wolf writes in her prelude. 'We must venture into the darkest core of our misjudgement \u2013 of her and of ourselves \u2013 simply walk in, with one another, behind one another, while the crash of collapsing walls sounds in our ears.'\n\nPSYCHIC BLINDNESS\nLOVING\n\nMatilda the Musical, adapted from Roald Dahl's novel, opens with what might be described as the paradox of maternal recognition. A troupe of hideously grimacing children sing 'My mummy says I'm a miracle' in such a way as to suggest that they are monsters; meanwhile, Matilda, who really is miraculous in so far as she has magic powers, fails to be recognised or understood by her parents. Her mother, unaware she was pregnant more or less up to the point of delivery, clearly neither wanted nor knew what to do with a baby. Her father was expecting a boy (he persists in calling Matilda 'boy' until almost the end of the musical). They both hate their daughter for her gifts, and have nothing but contempt for the love of reading into which she pours her unhappiness and through which she escapes it. Matilda is special, we are repeatedly told. She needs to be seen. She is eventually adopted by a schoolteacher, Jenny Honey, who recognises her unique qualities \u2013 Jenny is an orphan, her mother died in childbirth (in the book, when she was two). The implication is that Jenny can save Matilda because she herself was denied, and therefore knows what it is that Matilda is looking for. Failed mothers are everywhere \u2013 overinvested, neglectful, dead. Just how high the stakes are can be gauged by the immense difficulty Dahl had in completing his story. In the first version, Matilda herself did not survive.\n\nIn the book, Dahl makes a point of stating which of these forms of parental failure is worst: parents 'who take no interest in their children... of course are far worse than the doting ones', although the venom he directs at the latter is pretty intense. What is apparent, however, is that to be seen by a mother is a mixed blessing, to say the least. Too much and you will be a monster, not enough and the chances are you will also enter a not fully human world. It is the genius of Dahl's story to make something very difficult and very strange \u2013 Matilda is nothing if not strange \u2013 seem easy and obvious. A mother, as most writing on mothers seems to concur, must be there for her baby. This process will only kick in if she recognises the baby as her own, but not as 'His Majesty the Baby', to use Freud's formula, not as a narcissistic object, a mirror that perfectly reflects her own ideal image back to herself ('My mummy says I'm a miracle'). Instead, her task is to recognise who the baby is for her or himself, even though what that might mean is something neither of them can possibly know in advance. Such uncertainty is, it seems, hard to tolerate. Perhaps that is why 'His Majesty the Baby' continues to wield such power. After the birth of Prince George in July 2013, the UK was given a more or less daily dose during the grand royal tour in April the following year, as the infant was credited, among other things, with having quelled any remnants of Republicanism in Australia. Proffered as a role model for mothers all over the world, the Duchess of Cambridge must also turn her firstborn into a king. The challenge will be to stop him becoming a monster or a nobody (or, most likely, a bit of both).\n\nMy question in this chapter is: what is being asked of mothers when they are expected to pour undiluted love and devotion into their child? I have called this section 'Loving', but it comes in a chapter with the title 'Psychic Blindness', which should provide a hint ('Love as Perversion' could have been another title for what follows). After all, whenever love is expected or demanded of anybody, we can be pretty sure that love is the last thing being talked about. Like the injunction to be spontaneous, a state that can only arise unbidden, the demand to love crushes its object and obliterates itself.\n\nExpecting mothers to be perfect is, of course, not unrelated to the drive to perfection of the so-called 'overinvested' or 'narcissistic' mother, who sees the whole world \u2013 a world that must be flawless \u2013 in her baby. Or to put it another way, if you are asking mothers to be perfect, why wouldn't they pass that impossible demand on to their child? Any mother who obeys this diktat could therefore be said to be perversely fulfilling the requirements of her role. Perfection breeds perfection, lives frozen at the core, compulsively fawning over themselves (it is surely no coincidence that perfection is also the false promise of consumer objects, which is why every disappointing purchase leads to the next).\n\nOnce again, Dahl's hideous, miraculous children serve to make a profound point. Bringing up a child to believe it is a miracle is not an act of love but a form of cruelty, even if at the opposite pole from that of neglect. How can such a child find a place in the world, since the only person they will be able to see will be themselves? This is the opposite of saying that all children are miracles, a proposition that recognises each child as unique while placing every single child in the world on a par with each other. Nor does it have anything to do with the wonder that can fall on a mother in relation to her newborn child, what the British child psychoanalyst and paediatrician D. W. Winnicott, and many psychoanalysts after him, term 'primary maternal preoccupation', which refers to the form of all-absorbing attention that a mother, in the very earliest stages, bestows on her baby. This may be something many mothers recognise without accepting its punishing intensifier, the version of motherhood into which it is often so effortlessly folded: a mother must live only for her child, a mother is a mother and nothing else.\n\nThe question then becomes how to acknowledge a new birth as the event that it is, without immediately divesting the newborn of its humanity. 'Every infant born,' writes Adrienne Rich, to quote again from Of Woman Born, 'is testimony to the intricacy and breadth of possibilities inherent in humanity.' The rest of her book relentlessly charts how far motherhood as institution crushes that dream. For Hannah Arendt, in a passage Rich seems to be partly evoking, every new birth is the supreme anti-totalitarian moment. In Arendt's view, freedom is identical with the capacity to begin. Over such beginnings, she writes, 'no logic, no cogent deduction can have any power because the chain presupposes, in the form of a premise, a new beginning.' Totalitarian terror is therefore needed, 'lest with the birth of each new human being a new beginning arise and raise its voice in the world'.\n\nIn The Years, written on the eve of German fascism, Virginia Woolf treads similar ground. She is commenting on the dire consequences of parental exclusivity, on the damage it does to the social fabric \u2013 which was on the point of being rent beyond repair \u2013 to think it right to put your child, your family, before everyone else. She is also suggesting that, while England takes pride in its difference from Nazi Germany, there might nonetheless be a link between the overweening egoism of the bourgeois family and the autocracy of statehood (a point central to Three Guineas, which she was writing at the same time). At a family gathering in the mid-1930s \u2013 this final section of the novel is called 'Present Day' \u2013 North, the now grown-up grandson of Colonel Pargiter, is observing people politely enquiring about each other's children: 'my boy \u2013 my girl... they were saying. But they're not interested in other people's children, he observed. Only in their own; their own property; their own flesh and blood, which they would protect with the unsheathed claws of the primeval swamp, he thought... how then can we be civilised?' Protecting with unsheathed claws is an image commonly used to describe a mother lion with her cubs. In their different but connected ways, Rich, Arendt and Woolf are all describing how, at the centre of human nurture and in its name, the intricacy and breadth of human possibility can be sidelined or quashed before it has even begun. And the ones expected to fulfil this deadly template of absolute singular devotion and blindness \u2013 all under the guise of nourishing the world's future \u2013 are mothers.\n\nRachel Cusk's A Life's Work, mentioned in the last chapter, provides a visceral account of the complete loss of any sense of social personhood that followed the birth of her first baby (the book was much praised and much hated on its publication in 2001). But perhaps it is because she charts that collapse so bloodily that at the same time she can see how motherhood can also offer a heightened emotional link to the world's wider stage: 'In motherhood, I have experienced myself as both more virtuous and terrible, and more implicated too in the world's virtue and terror, than I could from the anonymity of childlessness have thought possible.' Unlike some of the Greek women we saw in the last chapter, becoming a mother does not allow her to remain in the public arena (instead 'civilisation' takes on the aura of something 'vain and deathly'). But Cusk's insight can help us to see why any discourse that dwells solely on the virtue of mothers and motherhood is such a con, since, among other things, it is asking women to conspire in cutting off the world from self-knowledge.\n\nIf we are all capable of virtue and terror, then no one culture, certainly not Western culture, can claim a monopoly on virtue, and the capacity for terror cannot be conveniently projected onto everyone other than oneself. 'I do not see the mother with her child,' Rich writes, once more way ahead of the game, 'as either more morally credible or more morally capable than any other woman.' 'I got depressed,' Mary-Kay Wilmers writes on the birth of her first son in 1972, 'because instead of maternal goodness welling up inside me, the situation seemed to open up new areas of badness in my character.' (Hard not to conclude that the expectation of goodness played its part in provoking the depression in the first place.) Why should mothers, any more than anybody else, be good? We talk of a mother's suffocating love. But the one in danger of being smothered by love might not be the infant but, under the weight of such a demand, the mother.\n\nWomen who are mothers are not better or more creative than women who are not. They have simply chosen to do things differently, to live other lives. For that reason, Denise Riley concluded in War in the Nursery (1983), her path-breaking study of maternal social policy after the Second World War, feminism has nothing to gain from any validation of motherhood in the name of female creativity or power. This is not to say that motherhood cannot be experienced as creative or that being a mother does not give you another take on the world. It is simply to warn of the ease with which such an idea slips out of women's own grasp and into the instructive mode \u2013 'Be good!' \u2013 a demand, an imperative, a trap. Women writers like Rich and Cusk, and also Luise Eichenbaum, Susie Orbach, Rozsika Parker and Lisa Baraitser, who have long insisted on the complex run of emotions to which motherhood gives rise, are issuing a type of political corrective, sourced in but far outreaching the domain of motherhood itself.\n\nParker's book has the title Torn in Two, the one who is torn being, of course, the mother (as any mother will recognise). But there is another no less far-reaching implication. It is the demand to be one thing only \u2013 love and goodness incarnate \u2013 that is intolerable for any mother, and tears her mentally and physically to shreds. For it is perfectly possible to acknowledge that the love a mother may feel for her child is like no other, without buying into all the dire psychic trappings that are meant to follow. The idea of maternal virtue is a myth that serves no one, certainly not mothers, nor the world whose redemption it is meant to serve. Or to put it more simply, no woman who has ever been a mother can believe for a second that she is only ever nice (virtue and terror both).\n\nWe might also, perhaps scandalously, at least raise the question: who \u2013 mothers or non-mothers, parents or non-parents \u2013 loves children most? 'People who choose not to have children,' writes contemporary French philosopher Michel Onfray, 'love them just as much, if not more, than parents who are abundantly fruitful.' He continues:\n\nAsked why he had abstained from producing an heir, Thal\u00e8s de Milet replied: 'Precisely because I love children... Who truly finds reality sufficiently desirable to introduce their son or daughter to the inevitability of death, to the treachery of man's dealing with man, to the self-interest that fuels the world, to the burden of being forced to do tiring work for pay, if not to precarious employment? How could parents be so na\u00efve, stupid and short-sighted as to love misery, destitution, poverty, old age and misery enough to want to pass them on to their offspring?... Should we really use the word love to describe the transmission of such evils to flesh of our flesh?\n\nYou don't have to buy into this view of life, or the outdated, male-centric issue of an heir, to accept the validity of the question, especially on behalf of women who, in the name of love, are expected to be mothers. Mothers do not have a monopoly of love in the world, nor should it be asked of them. Anyone claiming such a monopoly is likely to be suffering from tunnel vision. Anyone trying to fulfil this demand will simply suffer. These are the partial tales of love, and they never ring true.\n\n* * *\n\nThe supreme symbol of mother love is, of course, the breast, which reappears in modern discussions of motherhood having lost none of the punitive allure we saw in Ancient Greece (again, if anything it seems to have intensified). In The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, Elisabeth Badinter, long-standing critic of twentieth-century Western ideologies of motherhood, argues that the position of mothers is getting worse. In response to the economic crisis, and what she sees as a crisis of identity between the sexes, a new eco-maternalism, an updated ecological version of the maternal instinct as 'innate, essential, eternal, non-negotiable', in the words of one commentator, is driving many women back into the home (although French women come in for special praise for bucking the trend). Badinter blames a 'sacred alliance' of reactionaries and a new 'essentialist feminism' with Mother Nature at its core. Central to this project is breastfeeding. In 1956, La Leche League was formed by American mothers to promote breastfeeding. By 1981, the LLL, as it is known, had 17,000 trained group leaders; by 1990 its book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, had sold over two million copies. According to Badinter, the breastfeeding rate in the US rose from 38 per cent in the late 1940s to 60 per cent by the mid-1980s, and reached 75 per cent by 2011. 'I AM THE MILK OF YOUR BREASTS. YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER FORM OF INFANT NUTRITION IN YOUR HOUSE' was, according to Badinter, one of the pronouncements on the website Alternamoms, which takes its cue from the 'Ten Commandments' (sic) of the LLL (capitals original).\n\nIn the 1980s, attachment parenting (or pure parenting, as it is also known) was founded by fundamentalist Christians William and Martha Sears, with an increasing following in the US and UK today. In fact, the UK breastfeeding rate was recently reported as the lowest in the world, with less than half of women still breastfeeding two months after the birth of their babies (when interviewed, women most often cited embarrassment at doing so in public as the main reason). With a devotion to match LLL, attachment parenting recommends that breastfeeding be more or less non-stop. Mothers are instructed to devote themselves wholly to their babies, step off the career track, and as one journalist put it, 'subjugate yourself to your baby or else.' The racial and class bias is glaring \u2013 such an option is hardly viable for a single Latina mother working in Walmart. As is the potential political manipulation \u2013 one member of the group suggested that the gay massacre carried out by Omar Mateen in Orlando in June 2016 was most likely attributable to negligent mothering when he was a child. 'Breastfeed or your child might become a mass murderer' \u2013 mothers once again answerable for just about everything (no mention of homophobia or gun control or the police as agents for the violence of the state).\n\nAbove all, whenever any aspect of mothering is vaunted as the emblem of health, love and devotion, you can be sure that a whole complex range of emotions, of what humans are capable of feeling, is being silenced or suppressed. Such injunctions wipe pleasure and pain, eros and death from the slate. Why, French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche once mused, are there no artistic representations, or any recognition in psychoanalytic writing, of the erotic pleasure that a mother gains in breastfeeding her child? As if to say, breastfeeding is okay (indeed obligatory), but not so okay is its attendant pleasure. Remember Lysias' tale of the breastfeeding mother whose husband, if only he had clocked on to her sensuous enjoyment, would have known that she was bound to take a lover. I have known mothers who stopped breastfeeding simply because they felt they were liking it too much. I have also always thought that revulsion at such pleasure plays a huge part in campaigns to keep breastfeeding out of public spaces.\n\nIn award-winning poet Hollie McNish's video 'Embarrassed' \u2013 seven million views on the web \u2013 nursing mothers sit on toilet lids feeding their babies: 'For God's sake, Jesus drank it, and Siddhartha, Mohammed and Moses and both of their fathers, Ganesh and Shiva and Brigit and Buddha. I'm sure they weren't doing it sitting on shit, because their mothers sat embarrassed on cold toilet lids, in a country of billboards covered in tits.' As the video also points out, kids die from bottled milk in towns and cities drowning in pollution and sewage: 'and they [powder milk companies] know that they're doing it.' As McNish also makes clear, she is not instructing all mothers to breastfeed.\n\nFor a counterexample to Laplanche's observation that there are few, if any, representations of a mother's pleasure, I would suggest the fifteenth-century Italian painter Liberale da Verona's depiction 'Sleeping Mother with a Child at Her Breast', which I was delighted to come across at the Albertina Collection in Vienna. It portrays a nursing mother, head thrown back, eyes half-closed, in a paroxysm of delight. The etching surely rivals Bernini's sculpture of St Teresa in Rome for the intensity with which it depicts the joy of female sexuality (St Teresa's ecstasy being, no less scandalously, proffered to the gods). In fact, depictions of a mother's erotic pleasure in breastfeeding are there to be found, but you have to go in search of them. This is a passage from Naomi Mitchison's 1931 novel The Corn King and the Spring Queen, sent to me by feminist literary critic Jan Montefiore, one of a run of communications I received when I first suggested such representations were rare. The heroine, Erif Der, is nursing her baby son:\n\nHe began to give little panting, eager cries of desire for food and the warmth and tenderness that went with it. Erif's breasts answered to the noise with a pleasant hardening, a faint ache waiting to be assuaged... For a moment she teased him, withholding herself; then, as she felt the milk in her springing towards him, she let him settle, thrusting her breast deep into the hollow of his mouth, that seized on her with a rhythmic throb of acceptance, deep sucking of lips and tongue and cheeks... He lay across her belly and thighs, heavy and utterly alive.\n\nLaplanche was right about the classical psychoanalytic literature that tends to make erotic desire, in the mother\u2013baby pair, almost exclusively the province of the infant (desexualising the mother, like everyone else). One exception is the analyst Helene Deutsch, who, writing at about the same time as Mitchison and to a similar tune, describes birth and after as a more or less continuous erotic exchange of bodily organs and pleasures. 'In coitus,' she writes with unerring assurance, 'the penis becomes the breast while in lactation the breast becomes the penis.' The mind boggles (although the image of Erif's hardening breasts comes close). For the most part, however, the pleasure a mother might experience from a baby at the breast is either unspeakable or it makes her accessory to a crime.\n\nThere is, of course, not the slightest trace of any such pleasure \u2013 heaven forbid \u2013 in LLL or pure parenting. No less conspicuous, although perhaps slightly more predictable, is their complete silence on breastfeeding as a potential source of anxiety or pain. Not all mothers breastfeed, whether out of choice, or because it does not work, or because it is too painful (pleasure is only the half of it). The complexity of breastfeeding is another aspect of mothering that is rarely talked about \u2013 one result of the impoverished alternatives on offer of being 'for' or 'against'. 'Naturalness, spontaneity are the mots d'ordre' (marching orders, one might translate), Wilmers writes. 'Which hardly takes into account the fury one may oneself feel at an infant who rages when he should be feeding, and indeed would like to be feeding if only he could stop raging.'\n\nOn Mother's Day 2014, Courtney Love opened her concert at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London with: 'Happy Mother's Day. I got flowers for mine with a note saying, \"Thanks for not breastfeeding.\"' She is the high priestess of breastfeeding, not as pure nature but as sensuous, potentially harrowing art:\n\n'I'm eating you, I'm overfed\n\nYour milk's in my mouth, it makes me sick.'\n\n'And all your milk is sour\n\nAnd I can only cry\n\nAnd I can only cower\n\nAnd I can only cry\n\nYou have all the power.'\n\n'I want my baby, where is the baby\n\nI want my baby, where is the baby\n\nThere is no milk\n\nThere is no milk.'\n\nThose last lines are taken from a song entitled 'I Think That I Would Die'. In this distraught rendering, milk gluts, sours, sickens; the mother is not feeding but eating her baby. We could not be further from the conventional image of breastfeeding, where, it is safely assumed, all body fluids are flowing in the right direction and land in the right place. This might be dismissed as extreme. And yet the body in extremis \u2013 the body experiencing itself acutely as a body \u2013 is a human reality to which mothers cannot help but have access, although once again they are expected to put a lid on it, to make everything sweet and nice. They can, they must, love, hold, coddle their babies, but on condition of warding off the danger of any spillages \u2013 blood, guts, misery and lust. Their task is to prevent such intensities from going too far, to clean out the drains, on behalf of everyone.\n\n* * *\n\nSo how to tell the tales of love of and for mothers? Or, how to listen to the tales that mothers choose to tell? We have seen how, on this matter, the dominant language of the Western world has a tendency to be prissy (moralistic, sentimental, coercive, blind), as if the best to be hoped for is wrapping a mother and her baby in emotional cling film. A killing prospect, since if you leach out of a mother any but the most anodyne, saccharine feelings, there will be nobody or nothing left. And if you take a mother sitting (not prone, not enraptured) with her baby at her breast, eyes demurely focused on her infant, as the supreme image of mothering then you shrink her pleasure, her anxiety, her world. Perhaps most important of all, if you ignore the more disturbing narratives that are there to be read, which must include the lengths a mother can be driven by love of her child, then you wipe whole histories from the map, shutting down \u2013 in the name of essence or nature or virtue \u2013 the complex tracks that can run across continents and time.\n\nToni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning Beloved (1987) tells the story of a woman who kills her baby rather than let her be captured and grow up into a life of slavery from which the mother has barely escaped. Morrison has firmly stated that this is not the tale of Medea retold: 'Sethe didn't do what Medea did and kill her children because of some guy.' There could be no greater difference between killing your sons in a desperate rage and deciding, in an act of supreme care, that a daughter is better off dead than sold into the slavery that still haunts the mother. Although in one reading of Medea she does indeed kill her children to save them from a worse fate (in several others she does not kill them at all).\n\nSethe kills her daughter out of love. One of the most powerful aspects of this novel is the way it shows, again without sentimentality, how it can be an act of human responsibility for a mother to take the unspeakable action which historically she has to take \u2013 although she is crucially also her own agent \u2013 at the same time as she knows in every bone and beaten scar on her body that her action resolves nothing, that the after-effects of our choices stay with us for ever (Beloved returns as a ghost). Morrison is extending the scope of mothering across the broadest, and most incriminating, sweep of history. She is telling her white readers \u2013 she said she wrote the novel to lift the lid on America's suppressed history of slavery \u2013 that in an inhuman world a mother can only be a mother in so far as history permits, which might mean killing your child. When Sethe first recognises the face of her returned dead daughter, she has to rush around the side of her house to empty her bladder, an 'unmanageable' emergency she had not experienced since she herself was a young girl. In this radical and brilliantly counter-intuitive moment, Morrison answers in one fell swoop the nursery dictators and fanatics of mothering from now and yesteryear for whom the only liquid that can acceptably pour out of a mother's body is milk.\n\nOnce again, the ultimate sin is pleasure, and how it is regulated is the surest measure of oppression: 'Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own,' Beloved's sister Denver reflects, 'their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down. [Grandma Suggs] said for me not to listen to all that. That I should always listen to my body and love it.' Obligatory childbearing, no bodily pleasure, no self-love (for which love of a child is so often decreed as the substitute) \u2013 this is the slave-owning version of motherhood. Morrison is drawing up to the surface a historical reality that hugely exceeds the true story of Margaret Garner, on which her novel was based. Scrape the surface of this history and you find that many slave women made the choice not to preserve the lives of their children (among whom the infant mortality rate was in any case high). Ally, the slave of one George Miller in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1835, Polley in Buckingham County in 1818, and Kesiah in 1834 were all convicted for killing their infants, and each one was sentenced to hang for her crime. In 1815, at the trial of Hannah, a slave from Granville County, North Carolina, one witness testified that she had cut her child's throat and then attempted to slit her own.\n\nOn occasion a slave woman would use infanticide as a threat. In one example, which achieved some notoriety, a mother, faced with the prospect of being separated from her infant for some petty offence, held the baby by its feet in the air as if to smash its head onto the ground (the slave owner relented). Like abortion, infanticide was the harshest way of asserting autonomy, an answer to the inhospitality of the world. But it was no less an act 'taken in the interests of mothering': 'they made mothering decisions \u2013 decisions not to mother' (the words of Stephanie Shaw, from whose essay on slave mothers in the antebellum South I take these examples). And, of course, breast milk was stolen. Slave women were often forced to feed the babies of their owners, their life \u2013 the life owing to their own children, whether alive or dead \u2013 mercilessly pumped into the suckled future of the oppressor (infants who as yet would have not the faintest idea of the disparity of their world from that of the nurturer at whose breast they were satiating themselves).\n\nSome slave mothers tried to prepare their offspring for a life of freedom, but, for the most part, mothers whose children remained alive saw their main task as teaching them the skills of survival. Under such conditions, mother love, as it is understood in white Western culture, is a luxury \u2013 this high-risk version of motherhood has to be prescient and crafty rather than mollycoddled and safe. 'Mothers may have ensured their daughters' survival at the high cost of their emotional destruction,' Patricia Hill Collins writes. 'On the other hand,' she continues, in words that have lost none of their pertinence today, 'black daughters who offer serious challenges to oppressive situations may not physically survive.' She was writing in the 1990s, long before the increased racialised US state violence that precipitated Black Lives Matter, and way before the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 threatened to make the lives of blacks in America, and indeed the world over, so much less safe.\n\nAnother example, this time from South Africa, tells a different but not unrelated tale. In the first story of her 1991 collection, Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night, Sindiwe Magona gives one of the most powerful renderings of what it means to abandon a child out of love in the conditions of rampant, violent racial inequality that prevailed under apartheid. She is the sole provider for her five children \u2013 each one conceived on her husband's return from his eleven-month stints in the gold mines of Johannesburg, from where he no longer sends her money: 'a dog that unsheathes itself onto a tuft of grass. He forgot the grass he'd peed on.' Five is the number of children who remain: 'Had all her pregnancies come to fruition, and had none of her babies died in infancy, there would have been perhaps double that number.' Still nursing the youngest of her infants, she slips away in the night in search of work in a white 'madam's' house where she knows \u2013 as the rest of the stories confirm \u2013 she will be insulted, abused, exploited. 'The only way she could be a mother to her children would be to leave them' (the free indirect tense places the reader right inside her mind, leaving no room for dissent).\n\nBut it is the fraught sensuality and wretched lyricism of the writing that makes this story so compelling and haunting, giving her readers a type of distorted permission to savour the cruel experience \u2013 as if, by mothering the language, Magona could partly compensate for her character's distress in leaving her children behind: 'She rose and stood still and straight as a reed on her mat while her thoughts galloped away'; 'The woman listened and imagined she heard: mmhh, psshh, mmhh-psshh; and could almost see the rise and fall of the baby's heaving form'; 'Light as dandelion seed adrift in April's breeze she walked away from the hut where her children slept.' The climax comes when, bleeding from a thorn, imagining her six-month-old baby bursting her lungs for food, she stops to express the milk from her breasts:\n\nKneeling, she took out first the one, then the other breast. Plumped hard and veined, they were hot to her crying hand. Squirt-squirt; jets of white streamed to foam the ground. Squirt-squirt-squirt: the greedy soil quenched its thirst with her baby's life while near her knees the woman's eyes wet a spot.\n\nNot for one second does she hesitate on her path. 'One last sigh for the children who sent her away' \u2013 note it is the children sending her \u2013 'How she loved them.' This is another kind of loving, stripped of any shred of sentimentality, witness to an injustice that it is now up to society to redress \u2013 the collection appeared three years before the end of apartheid. In these stories of mother love pushed to the limit, as told by Morrison and Magona, motherhood is not stranded on the far shore of history (as if a baby could suckle everything that she or he, and the whole wide world, needs from a mother's breast). Nor, by any stretch of the imagination, could you possibly believe that the solution to the ills charted by these writers without apology could ever arise solely out of motherhood itself.\n\n* * *\n\nThe mothers of the Western world are at once punished for being mothers and instructed to love without reserve. The hate, we could say, is perfectly proportionate to the love, the intensity of the demand matches the deluded expectation, the veneration a cover for reproach. It is not to the tales of historic violence and abandonment by writers like Morrison and Magona that we should, therefore, turn for testimonies of the perversion of mother love in modern times. Instead, in the last part of this chapter, we should look deep inside the Western literary canon, where we find, in relation to motherhood, the most profound and heart-wrenching diagnosis and lament. When I came across by chance Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense, it felt as if it had fallen into my lap through the sheer force with which it brandishes in the reader's face a contemporary myth of motherhood as she takes to pieces the insanity that passes for normal in the world of white metropolitan elites of the last century, and still in many ways now.\n\nThe novel was published in 1925, nearly half a century before the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s made the impossible ideal of motherhood the target of critique. Little known today, yet it sold almost as many copies as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, for which Wharton is most famous, competing with The Great Gatsby as a bestseller, and making its author $55,000 within a matter of months. In the year it was published, Wharton became the first woman to be awarded the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She was apparently offended to have her novel unfavourably described as 'old-fashioned' compared with the 'brilliant experimentalism' of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, which was published in the same year. It is true that The Mother's Recompense is written in a more traditional prose style. Nonetheless, old-fashioned is a strange way to describe a novel in which a mother's love for her daughter brings both their lives to the brink of ruin.\n\nKate Clephane is a mother who abandons her daughter, Anne, but not out of harsh material necessity, far from it, as she is a wealthy New York socialite who decides she has to escape a stifling marriage to a controlling husband at any price. For several years she has tried in vain to adapt to his point of view, to her mother-in-law's exacting standards and 'to all the unintelligible ritual with which they barricaded themselves against the alarming business of living'. The abandonment is not therefore casual. She acts out of despair (again it will take feminism many years before it catches up with her to make the destruction of women by the so-called normal family one of its loudest refrains). At her mother-in-law's outraged instigation \u2013 backed by lawyers, judges, trustees, guardians, 'all the natural enemies of women' \u2013 she has been allowed no contact with her daughter since she left for France on the cusp of the new century. These are the people who have the power to order her life. Years later this will still be the reality for many women who choose to leave the marital home. I once knew a woman who lost custody of her children in the early 1980s \u2013 all her friends, her advocates, were discouraged from testifying as character witnesses on her behalf in court because they were divorcees and\/or lesbians.\n\nKate Clephane's predicament has an afterlife long beyond the end of the First World War, where the novel begins, when the mother-in-law has died and she is summoned back to New York by her forgiving daughter, eighteen years after, as she puts it, she had lost her: '\"lost\" was the euphemism she had invented (as people called the Furies the Amiable Ones), because a mother couldn't confess, even to her most secret self, that she had willingly deserted her daughter.' She returns to a heartless opulent world, whose characters merge into a 'collective American face', and who have been strangely comforted by a war that barely touches them. Kate, like Wharton, was awarded a war medal for her work in France. The passing reference to the Eumenides, however \u2013 'the Furies the Amiable Ones' \u2013 tells that we have entered the world of Greek tragedy. The Eumenides, we should remember, are powerless to save the mother from a pitiless fate.\n\nIf The Mother's Recompense is a tale of abandonment and retribution, it is no less the story of a mother love that turns suffocatingly on itself. Such love is an offspring of guilt. There is agony lurking at its core. A mother, this story suggests, is most likely to go in search of it only in so far as she feels she has already failed. How can anyone expect this all-encompassing love to save the world when it is on a doomed mission to save itself? The recompense of the title is therefore ironic and something of a decoy. Wharton lifted it straight from the identical title of Grace Aguilar's sentimental paean to a mother's love, published posthumously in 1851: 'There are many sorrows and many cares inseparable from maternal love,' the mother of Aguilar's book states with overweening piety, 'but they are forgotten, utterly forgotten, or only remembered to enhance the recompense that sweetly follows.' Wharton's novel has a very different tale to tell. The epigraph \u2013 'Desolation is a delicate thing' \u2013 is from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which, as Wharton's biographer Hermione Lee points out, leads in the poem to an image of sleepers who dream visions: 'And call the monster, Love \/ And wake, and find the shadow Pain.' The idea that love might be shadowed by pain may seem a commonplace, but not to anyone who has been reading most discourse, certainly at the time Wharton was writing, on the topic of mothers.\n\nIt is obvious from the outset that no good can come from the love Kate is praying she will refind in her relationship with her daughter: 'Kate felt as if they were two parts of some delicate instrument which fitted together as perfectly as if they had never been disjoined \u2013 as if Anne were that other half of her life, the half she had dreamed of and never lived... the perfection she had sought and missed' (the repetition 'perfectly', 'perfection' is already a giveaway). If for a while it looks as though her dream might be realised, it is definitively shattered from the moment she discovers that her daughter is engaged to marry Chris Fenno, the young man from Baltimore with whom she herself had the most serious love affair of her life, after the man for whom she deserted husband and daughter turned out to be no more than a flashy man with a yacht. At this point, the world of soap opera meets that of Greek tragedy \u2013 one reason this is such a compulsively readable novel. She has never got over this affair. Having decided she cannot possibly tell her daughter the truth, she confronts her former lover in a failed attempt to end an engagement she believes must lead to catastrophe. 'Perfect love,' we are told in another line cited in the novel, 'casteth out fear.' It appears not.\n\nCritics have suggested that the plot stretches credulity; or worse, that the novel is the bitter, uncomprehending rant of a childless woman writer with a hostile relationship to her own mother. Wharton's mother forbad her from reading novels until she was married and showed no sympathy for her writing career. There is, of course, another way of seeing this: that, in taking on such a delicate, fraught topic for women from beyond the experience of her own life, Wharton has revealed the remarkable reach of her mind. Indeed, paradoxical or counter-intuitive as it may sound, it might well be that at this time it was only a childless woman who could grant herself permission to 'confess, even to her most secret self, that she had willingly deserted her daughter'. In this, Wharton confirms Rich's suggestion that without the testimonies of childless or 'unchilded' women, as she prefers to name them, we would all suffer from spiritual malnutrition.\n\nEither way, it is the unlikely plot of Wharton's novel that allows her fully to expose the dangers of the intimacy longed for by mother and daughter alike. With remarkable boldness, she probes the undertow of their proximity, refusing to shy away from its lurking shadow of incest (one rarely spoken reason why such proximity excites praise and censoriousness in equal measure). Incest, most obviously, in so far as mother and daughter are in love with the same man. But incest, too, in the overbearing, body-to-body eros that binds the mother and her daughter: 'It did not seem to her, at the moment, as if she and her child were two, but as if her whole self had passed into the young body pressed pleadingly against her... as if it were her own sobs that were shaking her daughter's body.' Kate is frightened at the likeness of her love for Anne 'to that other isolated and devouring emotion which her love for Chris had been'. 'It is not clear,' Hermione Lee comments, 'whether the \"incest-element\" is the mother's desire for her daughter, or her horror at the spectacle of her with her own lover.' The point being that Kate herself struggles to make the distinction.\n\nOn this basis and without a trace of moral compunction, Wharton pitches the mother\u2013daughter idyll, as it was meant to be, into sheer horror. Kate now faces a dilemma that is 'natural and unnatural', 'horrible, intolerable and unescapable' (like incest), a problem 'too deeply rooted in living fibres to be torn out without mortal hurt'. Similarly, Freud explained that there can be no quick fixes in the mind because you cannot pluck out the neurotic symptom without damaging the healthy tissue in which it is psychically embedded. She has entered a 'mad phantasmagoria'. As if to say, enter this zone of the heart and there is no rational limit to what you may then find: 'A dark fermentation boiled up into her brain; every thought and feeling was clogged with thick entangling memories... Jealous? Was she jealous of her daughter? Was she physically jealous?... Was that why she had felt from the first as if some incestuous horror hung between them? She did not know \u2013 it was impossible to analyse her anguish.'\n\nKate comes close to suicide, dashing madly one night into the streets; while Anne \u2013 in the deluded belief that Chris has called off the engagement because of the disparity in their fortunes \u2013 tries and fails to persuade her mother to disinherit her: 'You want me to go on suffering then? You want to kill me?' At one point Kate is compared to a moth 'battering itself to death' against 'an implacable blaze'. There can be no resolution. If Kate gets her way and stops the marriage, then how long before 'mother and daughter were left facing each other like two ghosts in a grey world of disenchantment?' In the end, the wedding goes ahead, with Kate's agonised, reluctant acquiescence. In the carriage on the way to the ceremony, she wishes her daughter all the happiness there ever was in the world 'beyond all imagining': '\"Oh, mother, take care!\" Anne retorts, \"Not too much! You frighten me.\"'\n\nToo much binding closeness, even \u2013 especially \u2013 between a mother and daughter, is killing (mother love with a vengeance). Under the veneer of civilisation, Wharton unpicks the fabric of a clich\u00e9, exposing the dangerous impulses for which such love \u2013 still idealised today \u2013 can act as both vehicle and cover. At the end of the novel, the mother's only recompense is the moral strength she gains from leaving once more for France and renouncing everything. Resolute and thoughtful, she is nonetheless, as Wharton makes a point of telling us, cut off from any trace of saving knowledge (her anguish is impossible for her 'to analyse'). But what mother in this place, at this time, had the tools to transform the historic cruelties of a world barely out of the war, or her own predicament, into understanding?\n\n* * *\n\nA century later, journalist Ariel Leve picks up the thread and writes her memoir of her mother \u2013 An Abbreviated Life, published in 2016 \u2013 from the other side of intimacy and neglect. Leve's mother doesn't exactly abandon her daughter, but she is a mother with whom the daughter has never spent a single full day of her life (eternal broken promises are a refrain). Nonetheless \u2013 for that very reason \u2013 she holds onto her daughter for dear life. When Ariel used to come home from school as a young girl she would often find her mother naked in bed, from where she would summon her daughter to re-create 'The Happiest Day of My Life'. Ariel, and on one occasion a friend who had accompanied her home, would be expected to undress, curl up in a foetal position against her mother's body, her mother would pretend to push her out from her vagina and she would crawl out between her legs (the friend, who went home and promptly told her own mother, never visited again).\n\nThis is another tale of a New York socialite that delves into the psychopathology of an elite, self-preoccupied world, in this case the city's high artistic, bohemian life. Leve's mother, Sandra Hochman \u2013 never named in the book but not hard to identify \u2013 was a successful poet who surrounded herself with celebrities from the worlds of art and literature, filling her house with parties that kept her daughter awake at night throughout her school years. Easy to dismiss as perverse eccentricity or indeed sheer madness \u2013 impossible on the other hand for any reader not to weep with rage on this little girl's behalf \u2013 but then again not. Once again, this drama does not erupt out of nowhere. Motherhood without limits: in a twisted sense, Hochman is another mother who obeys this injunction to the letter. The more she neglects and manipulates her daughter, the more she calls absolute motherhood to her aid. Except that this time the story is told from the point of view of the daughter, who charts the damage with surgical precision: 'There were no barriers between what my mother was experiencing and what I was exposed to. \"We don't keep secrets from each other\" was a commandment. Nothing was ever withheld.' And with poetic eloquence (which is what saves her): 'I had no choice but to exist in the sea that she swam in. It was a fragile ecosystem where the temperature changed without warning. My natural shape was dissolved and I became shapeless. A plankton drifting in the current of her expectations.'\n\nHochman is another mother weighed down by her own guilt. But she does not know it. As a mother, she never sees herself as anything but perfect. Her flagrant narcissism, inseparable from her wilful passion for her daughter, offers a beautiful illustration of the mind of a mother in complete denial of itself. 'What did the real damage was buried beneath the surface. Her denial that these incidents [of neglect and inappropriate intimacy] ever occurred and the accusation that I was looking to punish her with my unjustified anger. The erasure of the abuse was worse than the abuse.' We do not get the mother's story, and we should remember how easy it is to blame the mother for all failings, but the daughter's version receives ample confirmation from letters written by Rita, her father's former girlfriend, who steps in to care for her, as well as from the many others whom she tracked down or discovered from her past in the course of writing her book.\n\nLeve has written a plea for understanding. She becomes a writer \u2013 like her mother, a debt she fully acknowledges \u2013 in order to purge damage she believes has been hard-wired into her brain. But she also knows that the trials of being a daughter of such a mother \u2013 of being a daughter, we might say \u2013 cannot be dispersed by a diktat of reason. Mario, the man with whom she has made a new life, is a diving teacher in Bali, as far away from the world she has lived in as could possibly be (no gadgets, few comforts, no rush, and often no words). Alongside the writing, it is Mario and his two daughters who give her the air to breathe. But even though he is a man of the sea, he finally has no patience with the waters \u2013 dissolving, drifting plankton and currents \u2013 she is swimming in: '\"Why can't you just beat these demons and destroy them?\"' he says to her, genuinely baffled. '\"You mean, why can't I just get over it?\" \"Yes.\" It's illogical to him that I would be a thinking person who can't control my thoughts. \"Or if you can't get over it, then deal with it in a rational, sensible, way.\"'\n\nAt one point in the book, Leve recounts coming across a poem by her mother in a collection about motherhood in a New York bookstore, which I was able to trace (try googling 'mothers and poetry' and see what you have to wade through: a mother's love is a gift, a true love, for ever). Like many of the others in the collection, 'Thoughts About My Daughter Before Sleep' is a love poem that could have, almost, been written by any mother: 'Ariel, one true \/ Miracle of my life, \/ I marvel to have made you perfect.' At least Sylvia Plath saved the name Ariel for the poem about her horse, whose wildness of spirit she was not therefore projecting onto, living or controlling through, her baby daughter. This is the last stanza of Hochman's poem, innocuous and clich\u00e9d enough, until it starts tipping, almost imperceptibly, into a more sinister zone:\n\nAnd through you\n\nI am born as I lie down\n\nIn the seedbox of my own beginnings,\n\nOpening the wild part of me,\n\nOnce lost, once lost\n\nAs I was breathing\n\nIn the vines of childhood\n\nThe mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings deep within the body of her daughter (which perhaps explains why this daughter will have to be endlessly reborn). The miracle \u2013 to return to where this chapter began \u2013 is the mother's doing alone: 'I marvel to have made you perfect,' a not so subtle rendering of the cry, 'You owe me everything,' which she also throws in her daughter's face. But, I find myself wondering, would these lines have given me the slightest pause had I not first read the daughter's chilling story?\n\nYou are born into the slipstream of your mother's unconscious \u2013 as a therapist once said to me. No more so than in a culture that commands a mother to be all for her child. An Abbreviated Life is one more chapter in the cruel distortion of that command. We talk of the depths of attachment, but there can be no emancipation for mothers, no better life for the offspring of the future, unless we recognise what that seemingly innocent instruction \u2013 be all for your child \u2013 might mean. It should be clear by now that rational and sensible have very little to do with it, any more than controlling one's thoughts. Mario is not the first man, and will surely not be the last, to believe that all it takes is a bit of self-mastery to be able to walk away and leave the realm of mothers behind (as if, such impatience suggests, we could offload onto mothers the burden of the unconscious and then despatch mothers and unconscious together). But this, too, is a crippling vision \u2013 his mildly exasperated call to reason, issued in the imperative mode, the flip side of the mother's emotional hurricane. We have to look further. In most of the accounts of motherhood explored so far, something is missing or being pushed aside. Nothing less, I will now suggest, than a mother's right to know her own mind.\nHATING\n\nAgainst what, we might then ask, is all this the defence? From the frenetic exhortations to breastfeed of the LLL to the ostracism of the 'bad' mother, to the blinding attachment that mothers are expected to invest in their child? On behalf of what are all these pious, punitive or simply dotty versions of motherhood \u2013 none of which seem to be mutually exclusive \u2013 doing cover? Elisabeth Badinter's Mother Love, her original critique of the maternal instinct as inborn and universal, was published in 1981 to a storm of controversy in France. When her editor invited the renowned child psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim to contribute a preface, he replied:\n\nI've spent my whole life working with children whose lives have been destroyed because their mothers hated them... Which demonstrates that there is no maternal instinct \u2013 of course there isn't... This book will only serve to free women from their feelings of guilt, the only restraint that means some children are saved from destruction, suicide, anorexia, etc. I don't want to give my name to suppressing the last buttress that protects a lot of unhappy children from destruction.\n\nThe vitriol of this statement might take us close to the heart of the matter. There is, he concurs, no maternal instinct, which is why so many children are doomed (this was before the revelations of how Bettelheim treated the children in his care). There is also, as we have seen before, only the mother, no fathers and no hint of social deprivation mentioned, which means outside the nursery \u2013 the mother\u2013baby bond \u2013 there is no world (it is therefore Bettelheim himself who tightens the maternal grip on the baby). Only guilt, it seems, will secure a mother to her child. Without such guilt, the child will not survive, although such an arrangement will scarcely make the child happy: 'the last buttress that protects a lot of unhappy children from destruction'.\n\nBettelheim has invented a kind of listen-with-mother version of Freud's account of the superego, the agency of social control in the mind that is meant to subdue human desire but can only do so by strapping the poor, defenceless ego to its allotted social role. For Freud, the ferocity with which the superego carries out its task means that we should acknowledge the oppressive and self-defeating nature of civilisation's highest commands. The last thing psychoanalysis should do is join in. Instead, if analysis can help reduce the harshness of the superego, then you are less likely to go on punishing others and yourself. For Bettelheim, on the other hand, mothers must be driven by guilt into a role that, by his own account, is false. Children must be saved from hatred at any price. And since he will not give his name to Badinter's book, even though he thinks she is right, the price includes suppressing the truth. Hatred is therefore the guilty party (something of a tautology). What is being asked of mothers \u2013 perhaps the demand behind all demands \u2013 is a hate-free world.\n\nWhen D. W. Winnicott wrote his essay 'Hate in the Counter-Transference' in 1949, he surely must have known that he was breaking taboos. When he listed the eighteen reasons a mother has to hate her baby, he must have known that he was pushing hard against the ideal ('The mother hates the infant from the word go'). The last and most often cited in his list ('He excites her but frustrates \u2013 she mustn't eat him or trade in sex with him') is another of the rare instances in psychoanalytic writing where a mother is allowed to be sexually aroused by her baby. Winnicott's essay has become a type of urtext for women seeking to shatter the clich\u00e9 of benign, devoted motherhood, a weapon to be wielded on behalf of maternal ambivalence struggling to be recognised. Ambivalence does not, however, seem quite right to me, at least not as a set of feelings to be 'managed' or which contribute to the creativity of a mother's task, a reparative move often made in feminist discussions of maternal ambivalence, as if the only way to deal with maternal ambivalence is by giving it with one hand and taking it back with the other (which is oddly in tune with its nature).\n\nIn Winnicott's vocabulary, Melanie Klein's concept of reparation does not figure, a healing capacity that slowly develops in the infant in relation to the mother, and which allays the rage towards her \u2013 a rage inevitable for all babies as they encounter the earliest frustrations. He is talking about something else, something so acutely painful that it cannot be felt without the risk of effacing itself. It is a form of hatred that, against all her better 'instincts', the mother needs to know she is feeling, and to stay with, if the infant is to have any chance whatsoever of experiencing, other than by means of a violent ejection, true affect or feeling in her or himself. The alternative is masochism. Winnicott is therefore making a political point: 'If, for fear of what she may do, she cannot hate appropriately when hurt by her child she must fall back on masochism, and I think it is this that gives rise to the false theory of a natural masochism in women.' The baby, he writes, 'needs hate to hate'. Sentimentality, he concludes his paper, 'is useless for parents'. This has lost none of its pertinence today. 'What we have, for the most part,' Daisy Waugh writes in I Don't Know Why She Bothers: Guilt-Free Motherhood for Thoroughly Modern Women (2013), 'is a repressive sentimentality, a smiling acceptance of female martyrdom, which teeters, at times, beyond martyrdom into a sort of approved, mass-culture masochism.' Waugh's insights are, however, trounced by her breeziness \u2013 that 'Thoroughly Modern' of the title is the giveaway \u2013 with its suggestion that if mothers feel punished, they only have themselves to blame (guilt-free motherhood, when presented here as a mother's duty to herself, turns out to be no less punishing or guilt-inducing than the account of Bruno Bettelheim).\n\nWinnicott's argument does not mean, as should not need stressing, that the mother does not love her baby. As Alison Bechdel puts it in her cartoon strip drama Are You My Mother?: 'The mother loves the baby too. But this is the point. Hate is a part of love.' Bechdel's book, published in 2012, narrates her quest to reach some kind of mutual recognition with her mother. Her bestselling Fun Home (2006), subtitled 'A Family Tragicomic', focused on her relationship with her father, the director of a funeral parlour \u2013 hence 'fun home' \u2013 who had homosexual relations, and at the age of forty-four committed suicide (as well as being turned into a Broadway musical that toured the US, Fun Home was removed from libraries in Missouri after local residents objected to its content). Are You My Mother? is a type of Winnicott primer. The chapter from which that quote is taken is called 'Hate', while others \u2013 'True and False Self' and 'The Use of an Object' \u2013 are lifted straight from his writing. She tells us Winnicott's life story, lays out his eighteen reasons on the page, reminding us that he was revolutionary for using 'he or she' and 'his or her' decades before anyone else. She also graphically pursues him into the bedroom of his second marriage, where he and his wife discuss the strangeness of sex (Bechdel is not alone in assuming that only this second marriage was consummated). 'I want him', the narrator says at one point during therapy, 'to be my mother.'\n\nAs well as issuing an unprecedented emotional permission to mothers, 'Hate in the Counter-Transference' should be compulsory reading for anyone involved with today's government-sponsored rapid, short-term talking cures (cognitive behavioural therapy and the like). Winnicott was addressing himself to psychoanalysts who could not bear the strain of acutely disturbed patients. Only an analyst in touch with 'his own fear and hatred' will be of any use to such a patient, only such an analyst will be responding to the patient's \u2013 as opposed to the analyst's \u2013 own needs. CBT, with its questionnaires and instant results, would then be therapy designed to protect the therapist, by getting hatred out of the room as fast as it can. For Winnicott, the analyst must place her or himself 'in the position of the mother of an infant unborn or newly born'. This is not, in my understanding, how most analysts tend to think of themselves, although Michael Balint's idea of analysis as fostering the birth of a 'new beginning' gets close (an idea of birth that has nothing to do, therefore, with the favourite game of Ariel Leve's mother). Remember, too, Rich from the start of this chapter: 'Every infant born is testimony to the intricacy and breadth of possibilities inherent in humanity.' When Winnicott's widow was faced with the suggestion that Freud had admired Attila the Hun, she replied that he had also loved Virginia Woolf's focus on the 'intricate things' of life. 'I put the odds on a psychic death-match between Attila the Hun and Virginia Woolf at fifty-fifty,' Bechdel writes in response. 'To be a subject,' she continues, 'is an act of aggression.' Violence, as any mother will tell you, is not something that can be lifted or erased from the human heart.\n\nWinnicott is presenting us with a choice, one no less starkly on offer today. We can go for the therapeutic quick fix, the full-frontal assault on any traces of psychic complexity, to be smoked out like rats in the basement. We can opt for hatred of hatred (Bettelheim's problem, I would say). Or instead we can take as a model for our social as well as psychological well-being the complex, often painful reality of motherhood. This is not quite the same as suggesting mothers should rule the world, but it is close. Provided we hold on to the idea that what qualifies mothers for this task is that they are not in flight from the anguish of what it means to be human. Not, it also should be stated, that mothers are the only ones who ever have access to such insight.\n\n* * *\n\nAre You My Mother? is full of writers. Alongside Winnicott, they are mostly but not exclusively women, some of whom we have already come across: Rich, Woolf and Plath. Are You My Mother? is a textual collage. It is through fierce verbal and textual contestation that the narrator's struggle with her mother takes place: 'Language was our field of contest.' When Bechdel was eleven, her mother 'took over' writing her diary entries on the eve of Rosh Hashanah: the day 'when the deeds of humanity are open for review', 'the righteous are inscribed' and 'the wicked blotted out' (she does not appear to see a problem in her mother thus assigning herself the place of divine writ and punishment).\n\nHer mother is a dedicated reader who took a master's degree in English education in order to qualify as a teacher, and who was also an amateur actress. As a young woman, she had attended Roe v. Wade demonstrations in support of abortion rights (although the ruling has repeatedly been subject to legal challenge and local bypass, when Bechdel wrote her book it was not threatened as today by the election of Trump). None of this means, however, that she can tolerate her daughter's lesbianism. When her daughter plucks up the courage at university to write and tell her, she replies: 'Couldn't you just get on with your work? You are young, you have talent, you have a mind?' This is an eerie echo of Mrs Winterson's riposte to the same revelation from Jeanette Winterson: 'Why be happy when you could be normal?' \u2013 the title of her justly celebrated memoir of 2011. The tragedy for Bechdel is that her mother cannot see the link between her daughter's right to mental freedom, no less the result of women's struggle, and her right to freedom in the sexual choices of her life. In fact, they are alternatives: 'you have a mind.'\n\nHer mother suffered depression as a young woman. Psychoanalysis was not an option for her. We could say that psychoanalysis, like feminism \u2013 Bechdel is the child of both \u2013 came too late: 'By the time The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963, Mom was stuck at home with two small children.' She is part of a generation, which is the generation of my own mother, whose destiny was above all to become mothers and who found themselves, after a devastating war, under the harshest obligation to be happy and fulfilled in that role. Could it be that however much they encouraged their own daughters' independence, however much they urged their daughters to live their own unlived lives, they were also silently obeying an injunction against experiencing the full range of their emotions? And that the demand they made on their daughters then became, above all else, to keep up that guard, to protect them from their own raging hearts?\n\nWinnicott's 1949 essay would not, then, have arisen out of nowhere, but as a response to the suffocating psychic legacy the recent war was in danger of passing on to its children. For, to stay inside his vocabulary, the child of such a mother will be a false self, compliant not just with her mother's demands to do what the mother wants \u2013 which is how he mostly describes it \u2013 but with the mother's hidden inner world, a world of cloying, restricted vision, inside which she is flailing without knowing it. Unless the daughter manages to shatter the carapace that encases her in the mental space of a mother who, through no fault of her own, was never given the chance to understand her own mettle, to realise what \u2013 in all senses of the term \u2013 she was truly made of. Bechdel's answer to her own question \u2013 Are You My Mother? \u2013 is finally affirmative. But the path to understanding is littered with images, lifted from her dreams and nightmares, of cracking ice, shattered glass and kicked-in walls. 'It only occurs to me now as I am writing this book about my mother,' she muses as she lies, after one of her mishaps, with a patch over one eye, 'that perhaps I had scratched my cornea to punish myself for \"seeing\" the truth about my family.' This also adds another dimension to Bechdel's choice to be a graphic artist (to make us see).\n\nPerhaps we should be asking a slightly different question \u2013 not what a mother is or should be, but what version of motherhood might make it possible for a mother to listen to her child? For if Western culture in our times, especially in the US and Europe, has repeatedly conspired to silence the inner life of the mother by laying on mothers the heaviest weight of its own impossible and most punishing ideals, and if the term 'mothers' is so often a trigger for a willed self-perfection that crushes women as mothers before anyone else, then how can they be expected to hear their children's cry \u2013 not as in wailing babies, which is of course hard enough \u2013 but as protest and plaint? How can they bear to watch their child shed the yoke of false mental safety, turning what was meant to be the psychic legacy of their own version of motherhood on its head?\n\nFor me, this has always been the best way to think about the relationship between Sylvia Plath and her mother, which is not quite the same as focusing on the excessive closeness or osmosis through which that relationship has often been analysed. In Are You My Mother? Bechdel reads Woolf but not Plath, her mother more or less the reverse (as if, between mother and daughter at least, the one has to exclude the other). This leaves a chasm between these two preferred writers, notably on the subject of mothers. In fact, Plath's 1962 verse drama, Three Women \u2013 A Poem for Three Voices, her voice meditation on three women in a maternity ward, was inspired by Woolf's The Waves. When Plath's mother, Aurelia, lectured on her daughter after her death, she interspersed her memory of Sylvia with lines from the First Voice, the only one who ends up with her baby \u2013 the Second Voice miscarries, the Third Voice abandons her newborn child. When the BBC issued the script in 1968, they named this First Voice 'Wife', the two others, 'Secretary' and 'Girl', a gross interference, since in the text only the woman who miscarries is represented as having a husband (if you have a baby, you must be a wife). From out of the modulated confusion of the three voices, which is the genius of Plath's poem \u2013 a community of mothers whose voices gradually merge across divisions of experience, domestic life and class \u2013 Aurelia Plath lifts and isolates lines like these from the First Voice:\n\nWhat did my fingers do before they held him?\n\nWhat did my heart do with its love?\n\nAnd these:\n\nI shall meditate upon normality.\n\nI shall meditate upon my little son.\n\n...\n\nI do not will him to be exceptional.\n\nIt is the exception that interests the devil.\n\nShe left out lines like these:\n\nThere is no miracle more cruel than this.\n\n...\n\nI am the centre of an atrocity.\n\nWhat pains, what sorrowing must I be mothering?\n\nCan such innocence kill and kill? It milks my life.\n\nI am breaking apart like the world.\n\nThe point being that Plath did not shy from putting atrocity, cruelty and murderousness in the midst of a mother's love: 'The world conceives \/ Its end and runs towards it, arms held out in love.' But her own mother could not stand it. A mother censors a daughter's representation of mothering, shutting down the world of thought. 'Don't talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff!' Plath wrote to her mother in her last letters, 'stop trying to get me to write about \"decent, courageous people\" \u2013 read the Ladies Home Journal for those.' The last thing a young mother needs, I hear Plath saying, is false decency, courage and cheer (a perfect definition of a compliant self). If it was just a question of cramping her daughter's style, then, however poignant this story, it would be easy to point to the blindness of Plath's mother and turn away. But the implications surely reach beyond the tragedy of this famous case. What on earth do we expect, as long as society continues to believe it has the right to trample over the mental lives of mothers?\n\n* * *\n\nFor the most part, the world, like Aurelia Plath, does not want to know about this dark underside of loving \u2013 instead projecting onto the minds and bodies of mothers a revulsion for the complexities of the human mind. The more I have read, the more motherhood has started to feel like a ball tossed from one end of a playing field to the other, or perhaps more like the net stretched taut across a tennis court, which the frenzied players, hitting the ball as hard and fast as they can, must avoid touching at any cost (although it determines their every move). Or, to draw on set theory, a very different field of reference, we could say that a mother is the set of all possible sets, the one all-embracing set that contains everything, including itself. Mothers, of course, are classically thought of as containers, the Greek idea of the womb as a purely passive receptacle being perhaps the most egregious version of them all. But that a mother contains is surely true: inside her body and then again when she holds her baby. In one psychoanalytic model, it then also falls to her to contain all the overwhelming impulses the baby cannot contain or manage on its own behalf \u2013 which is why a mother who pushes away difficult feelings, too eager to turn away from pain and rage to decency and cheer, is useless.\n\nNor are these impulses simply the result of the dissatisfactions of life that all humans, in the course of development, find themselves up against. 'Even the most loving mother,' Melanie Klein writes at the end of her 1963 essay on the Oresteia, 'cannot satisfy the infant's most powerful emotional needs.' And, she continues, 'no reality situation can fulfil the often contradictory urges and wishes of the child's phantasy life.' This means that in the beginning no one is guilty (even though Klein's dramatic account of the ferment of a baby's mind had critics accusing her of inserting into psychoanalysis the idea of original sin). There will always be something that escapes the remit of what a mother and baby can be for each other. There will always be a limit to what mothers can do for their child, and therefore \u2013 the unavoidable but mostly avoided consequence \u2013 to what we can ask of a mother.\n\n'[It] is characteristic of the mental domain,' psychoanalyst W. R. Bion writes in his influential 1962 essay 'Container and Contained', that 'it cannot be contained within the framework of psychoanalytic theory' (a rare moment of psychoanalytic humility). Writing at almost exactly the same time, Klein and Bion are two psychoanalysts who alight on that aspect of the human mind that exceeds human grasp and which, for Bion at least, even psychoanalysis cannot be expected to hold in its proper place. 'I cannot observe Mr X,' Bion writes of one patient, 'because he will not remain \"inside\" the analytic situation or even \"within\" Mr X himself.' Mr X cannot be contained (he is spilling all over the place). Crucially for Bion, this is not just a matter of individual pathology but has wider social repercussions since it applies to any group trying to be 'respectable' (his word), to toe the line, to be 'anything in short, but not explosive'. Not being explosive will do nicely as a definition of what is mostly asked of mothers, although, as any mother will testify, explosive is what she, to her utter dismay, often feels: there is nobody in the world I love as much as my child, nobody in the world who makes me as angry. It is this demand \u2013 to be respectable and unexplosive \u2013 that I see as most likely to drive mothers, and by extension their infants, crazy. I realise, of course, that this is the opposite of how these matters are normally thought about: if a mother cannot hold things together, who can?\n\nMuch follows from the blindness I am describing. Much about the experience of being a mother falls silently out of the public eye \u2013 since seeing oneself depends at least partly on being recognised by others \u2013 and out of the range of what many mothers can bear to know or think about themselves. The implications in the realm of social policy are profound, certainly in the UK and US, where the punishing expectations on mothers, especially in the teeth of social inequality, reach particularly gruelling heights. In 1998, Melissa Benn argued that post-feminism, 'self-contained to the point of arrogance', had slammed the lid back on the demands and painful emotions of motherhood that had been opened up by 1970s feminism (the wrong kind of containment, we might say).\n\nWhen Estela Welldon described as 'maternal perversion' the violent acts that some mothers commit against their children in Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (1988), her book was banned in feminist bookshops. She was seen as blaming mothers for any damage to their children. But Welldon's point was that refusal to acknowledge this 'dark side' of mothering meant abandoning such women to unacknowledged distress and their children to potential danger. No one, she observed, seemed to understand these women as mothers: '\"women\" were seen as capable of such actions, but not \"mothers\".' Her book was therefore a plea for tolerance and understanding, although those terms are perhaps a bit soggy liberal when what is involved is more like dropping the scales from our eyes. For Welldon, a mother's perversion was the consequence of the abuse or neglect she will have suffered at the hands of her own mother, and most likely her mother's mother before her (a twisted version of Woolf's injunction to 'Think back through the grandmothers'). Instead of idealising and denigrating motherhood, social policy and psychological understanding need, therefore, to give motherhood its deserved but mostly refused place 'at the centre of human difficulty' (Juliet Mitchell in the foreword of the 1992 edition). Interestingly, the mothers in Welldon's study alternately idealised and cherished, then ravaged and discarded their children. Like the Stepford wives, robots who perform the patriarchal fantasy of the suburban wife to the letter, they were silently miming and reflecting back onto society the twin poles \u2013 unworldly expectation and rage \u2013 of its own inane, crippling vision, and treatment, of mothers.\n\nEvidence suggests, especially in its dealings with such hard cases, that social work is not immune to the same problem. Not least because social work as a profession is dominated by women, many of whom will be mothers themselves. 'Surprisingly little attention,' writes Brid Featherstone, professor of social work, 'has been paid to the fact that when mothers neglect, beat, suffocate, kill or sexually abuse their child\/children, it is often another woman, who herself may be a mother and certainly has been a daughter, who is involved in investigating, assessing and working with her and her family.' Whether as mother or daughter or both, a social worker is just as likely as anyone else to have been caught in the same emotional straitjacket, the same instructions as to what she must and must not feel (perhaps even more so, since entering one of the caring professions and taking care of other people's problems can also be a way of avoiding one's own).\n\nA mother who admits to sexual desire for her own child can, for example, throw the whole professional network into disarray, especially when it is impossible to predict with any certainty whether such a mother is more or less likely to enact her feelings and actually abuse her child. The social worker listening to her may be appalled, but also find herself envying this woman's freedom to speak her mind. In one case, a social worker became enraged against a depressed mother who had asked for her son to be taken into care, finding herself denouncing her in the very language of stigma from which she thought herself immune and from which she should have been protecting her client, only to discover she was having her own fantasies of hitting the child: 'That a woman social worker might want to hit a child, particularly a vulnerable child who had been rejected by his mother, was quite literally unthinkable.'\n\n'What woman,' Adrienne Rich asks in the final chapter in Of Woman Born ('Violence: The Heart of Maternal Darkness'), 'has not dreamed of \"going over the edge\"?' The chapter opens with the story of a mother who murdered two of her eight children in Chicago in 1974. This was the chapter Rich insisted on keeping in her book, despite the feminist requests for her to drop it. Perhaps the most radical, and for some unacceptable, thing about it was just this call for empathy: 'What woman has not...?' to which 'What mother would dream of such a thing?' may well be the knee-jerk response. Instead, Rich is asking all women, wherever they find themselves, to make a leap of imagination into the life of a profoundly disturbed woman with too many children, not one of whom was wanted, stranded in a suburb of Chicago, with no household help or any respite, who was seen by her neighbours as the model of the devoted mother (Rich does suggest that, had help been on offer, she may well have refused to take it).\n\nWe must, she writes, reckon fully with the 'ambiguities of our being... with the potentialities for both creative and destructive energies in each of us' \u2013 words from the first edition that she reprints in italics in the preface to the later edition of her book. She is issuing a cry for universal solidarity. She is asking women to see themselves in an act that most people, women, mothers \u2013 for good reason \u2013 cannot bear to contemplate. She is asking mothers to imagine, if only for a moment, that this dreadful story could have been their own. This is to enjoin on mothers a very specific ethical task, that of envisaging themselves as the person they would most hate to be. Never turn away \u2013 being socially inclusive follows from a willingness inside the heart to hold on, however painful, to everything. No mother is alien. We could not be further from where this book started \u2013 a world that finds it acceptable to turn back, and then target for special hatred, refugee mothers in flight from the attrition of their lives: 'Let them drown.'\n\n* * *\n\nShe is the mother of all feminists, certainly from the mid-twentieth century in the West, one of the 'unchilded' women, to use Rich's phrase, without whom so many women would be suffering spiritual malnutrition. In de Beauvoir's eyes, becoming a mother is for a woman the most fundamental alienation of her freedom, certainly in the unequal world as it then was in the middle of the last century, and is still in so many ways today. For some 1970s feminists, partly taking, or thinking to take, their cue from her, not being a mother became a mantra: don't have children; if you do, pray for a girl, and whatever you do, make sure you bring up your child in a commune. To say that motherhood is, at moments, a hateful prospect for de Beauvoir is an understatement (although she never instructed women not to become mothers). But hate, as should be clear by now, is a form of energy, never so destructive for mothers, indeed for anyone, as when it is internally silenced or unthought. I end this chapter with Simone de Beauvoir, not just because her influence can be felt to this day but because she provides one of the strongest instances, in relation to mothers, of the generative force of antipathy.\n\nDe Beauvoir's image of motherhood suffers no piety. There is not the faintest chance she could be accused of promoting motherhood as ideal. She does not tell women how to be mothers (she does not tell women how to be anything). In de Beauvoir's writing, we can watch as motherhood is first measured against the goals of existential thought, key philosophy of the modern Western world, where it is found pitifully wanting. For existentialism, to be human is to craft the project of one's own life without impediment, a vision of existence that, it would be fair to say, could not be further from a mother's daily lived experience and world. But if motherhood is dismissed by de Beauvoir as an affront to a full life, it then bizarrely stages a comeback, carving a hole right through the heart of her philosophy. For all her antipathy, motherhood in de Beauvoir's thought takes us to the ethical crux of what being a mother might mean: both as a challenge to women's autonomy and as a potential opening to the widest, uncontrollable reach of what a human being is capable of.\n\nWhen a woman becomes a mother, she loses her freedom. To this familiar plaint \u2013 versions of which have been scattered throughout this book \u2013 de Beauvoir adds her own unique dimension. A mother is deluded: 'alienated in her body and her social dignity'. She thinks she has created the being growing inside her \u2013 in fact, her baby has no regard whatsoever for the body that gestates it: 'she does not really make the baby, the baby makes itself within her.' This is not another version of the womb as passive receptacle; it is definitely not siding with the Greek story of fathers as sole generators of the embryo. But from the moment she conceives, a woman abdicates herself in favour of species being, she becomes part of a biological cycle over which she exerts no control. This reality 'devours' her; de Beauvoir thus neatly transposes to the felt experience of mothers an epithet \u2013 devouring mother \u2013 so often hurled against them.\n\nIn existential philosophy, the only viable existence is one that has achieved transcendence through its own activity. It is sheer degradation to be ruled by the contingencies of life. Giving birth, breastfeeding, even rearing children from infancy to adolescence, cannot be graced with the status of 'activities' (that would be news to most mothers). They engage no project \u2013 'project' and 'activity' being key terms of self-affirmation in the existential lexicon. 'A woman must choose,' de Beauvoir writes, 'between asserting her transcendence [as subject] and her alienation as an object.' Her view of motherhood is a protest: 'the woman trapped in her home cannot found her existence for herself.' It is also the logical effect of her philosophical intent: to make humans take the risk of freedom, and be fully accountable for the path they choose to forge through their lives. After all, it is indeed true that, if your vision of being in the world is one of untrammelled self-realisation, motherhood is a bit of a shock, to say the least. But that just might be, as de Beauvoir's account of mothering starts to suggest almost in spite of itself, because there is something wrong with the vision.\n\nOne is not born, one becomes a woman \u2013 her pronouncement is still seen as indispensable to feminism to this day: if you only become a woman, then what it means to be a woman becomes negotiable. Under the right political conditions, you can un-become her too, you can shed the requisite role and make yourself. Perhaps the sole exception to this truth of womanhood is that moment of blind necessity when, out of the body of a woman, something is being born. But if motherhood lashes you to species being, there is nonetheless always the danger that a mother will come to think of her baby as her doing, her creation, and, one short step, her property. She will expect too much of her child, in the belief that motherhood has endowed her life with meaning, ushering her into true being, which means in existential philosophy, conscious, sentient, being 'for itself'. Seen in this light, motherhood may foster the illusion of self-creation, a belief that the whole world pours, on command, out of ourselves. In fact, a baby is no more than a 'gratuitous proliferation' of brute matter whose 'pure contingency' is on a par with death.\n\nThis sounds as bleak as can be. And yet, already we might see how this disquieting proposition might be turned, imaginatively, on its head. Having a baby brings a mother up against mortality. It puts her in touch with what, in every single human, cannot be self-fashioned or subdued to purpose. At the very moment a mother appears to be acquiring a new power she immediately has to cede it. She owns but does not own. She engenders a life only in so far as it escapes. The only question is whether this means a woman is better off not being a mother, although de Beauvoir never in fact says as much; or whether knowledge of this could instead open a path to what a mother might be (and not just on behalf of her baby or herself). De Beauvoir is clear that, in the present unequal social arrangements, organised by and to the advantage of men, mothers and their infants are under serious threat. A mother cannot secure the life of the child who is placed \u2013 sanctimoniously, thoughtlessly, mostly without material or practical support \u2013 in her total care: 'The great danger in which our way of life places the child, is that the mother to whom she or he is confined hand over foot is nearly always an unsatisfied woman... once we understand how far the present situation of women obstructs her fulfilment... we shudder that defenceless children are abandoned to her.'\n\nDe Beauvoir's view of mothering as experience is not all dark. She talks of ecstasy, of some mothers' sense of fulfilment, of joy (a topic central in what follows here). In fact, alongside Winnicott, she deserves recognition as the first writer to speak out on maternal ambivalence (The Second Sex and his essay were published in the same year). Again on pregnancy:\n\nPregnancy is a drama played out for the woman between self and self, one which she experiences both as enriching and as a mutilation: the foetus is part of her body, and at the same time a parasite exploiting her; she possesses, and is possessed by it; it contains her whole future and, bearing it inside herself, she feels as vast as the world; but this very richness annihilates her, and she feels she is nothing.\n\nDe Beauvoir, indeed existential philosophy, is famously critical of psychoanalysis. From the outset, she insists that her vision of women's destiny, based on choice and freedom, is at odds with the psychoanalytic view of humans unconsciously driven and torn between conflicting desires. But she also knows that becoming a mother is an experience that plunges a woman into the deepest recesses of herself. All mothers were once daughters. Whatever their situation, all mothers are likely to find themselves reliving at least fragments of their own experience as a child. In this domain of partly welcome, partly unwelcome involuntary recall, no woman \u2013 especially not in a world that effectively weds a mother to her daughter \u2013 is likely to be given an easy ride:\n\nIt is when the little girl grows up that the true conflicts are born: we saw how she wants to assert her own autonomy against her mother: in her mother's eyes, this is the sign of hateful ingratitude; she sets herself against this will that escapes her; she cannot accept her double becoming an other. The pleasure tasted by men in relation to women: of feeling absolutely superior, a woman only ever feels in relation to her children, especially her daughters... Regardless of whether she is passionately enthused or hostile, the independence of her child is the ruin of her own hopes.\n\nHow can a mother avoid the temptation to abuse her privileges, since to do so she would have to be either perfectly happy or a saint? What is a mother meant to do when confronted with the possibility of the child's own freedom \u2013 which must mean freedom from her mother? Most likely, for de Beauvoir, she will resist with all her might, thereby repeating, although probably without knowing it, the worst of her own destiny in a patriarchal world. She becomes like a man \u2013 supreme irony \u2013 who uses woman as the means to his self-realisation. She has made the fatal mistake of thinking that she could create her own being on the back of someone else's (this is what a man is). As commentators have pointed out, de Beauvoir is clearly describing her struggles with her own mother \u2013 like Edith Wharton in the last chapter, de Beauvoir makes her bid for freedom out of a time of war. Like Wharton, she is charting the emotional history, the psychic fallout of a moment that laid an impossible injunction on women as mothers: be everything and nothing, be life and death for your child.\n\nBut if a mother is being asked for too much; if her daughter's freedom can only be asserted at the cost of her own; if life and death are joined in an interminable struggle at the core of her being, then the idea of pure, rational self-affirmation starts to look like a delusion. Caught between 'narcissism and altruism, dream, authenticity and bad faith, devotion and cynicism', being a mother is a 'strange compromise' (the inclusion of the dream suggests a condition suspended between the conscious and unconscious mind). Torn between these competing poles, how can motherhood be expected to contain itself? As it swerves from moment to moment, how can the experience of being a mother not act as a reminder of the fragile dispensation of hearts and minds and life? How many mothers find themselves thinking, even if without saying it out loud, that if they can only get through \u2013 if only they and their baby can survive \u2013 the next ten minutes or seconds, everything will be just fine (a claim, or plea, as urgent as it is frantic and mostly unheard)?\n\nMotherhood is not knowledge or control. It may have to make non-stop decisions, but not according to some fatuous logic of mastery. If a mother struggling with her daughter is likely to find herself miming the worst of masculinity in a patriarchal world, at the same time she knows, de Beauvoir also tells us, that it falls to her as a mother to cede the limits of her own freedom. I remember my sister Gillian once saying when we were imagining a future as mothers, that, powerful women as we liked to see ourselves (we were barely in our twenties), once we became mothers we would have to know how to relinquish our power. She couldn't have been more right, although it is a source of endless sadness to me that she only knew me as a mother for less than a year before she died. What I think she was also saying is that the pleasure a mother takes in her child must be oblique, somewhat askew, if she is to avoid the trap of asking \u2013 from herself, from her child \u2013 too much. 'A mother who dreams of attaining through her child a fullness, warmth and value she has not managed to create for herself is headed for the greatest disappointment,' de Beauvoir writes. 'The child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without reversion to herself, seeks to go beyond her own experience.' This is not masochism: you must suffer for your child. It is not a plea for altruism: always put your child first. It is a way of desiring the happiness of someone other \u2013 who happens to be your child \u2013 without placing that happiness in the service of your own ego (giving with one hand and taking back with the other). It is a way of being inhabited by the other. Despite de Beauvoir's objections, this would also be a very good working definition of the psychoanalytic unconscious.\n\nAt times, her account of motherhood as the bodily and mental subjugation of women is truly loathsome (as if a newly born could be the bad fairy at its own feast). But perhaps for that very reason, and long before the many writers on the deep ambivalence of motherhood to come, she was the first to delve into that complex space and call on us, via motherhood, to accept the alien in our midst, to make room, even if it brings the walls crashing down, for the stranger who lands on our shores. These ideas have had a feminist afterlife. Bulgarian-French thinker Julia Kristeva, who has influenced a whole later generation of feminists, follows a far more psychoanalytical path than de Beauvoir, but she joins her on this. To be a mother, to give birth, is to welcome a foreigner, which makes mothering simply 'the most intense form of contact with the strangeness of the one close to us and of ourselves' (which is why mothers are perhaps less likely to be fazed by the psychoanalytic belief that we are all radically strangers to ourselves). 'In late August a baby was born,' Rivka Galchen writes in Little Labours, her 2016 account of new motherhood, 'or, as it seemed to me, a puma moved into my apartment, a near-mute force.'\n\nAt the opposite pole of self-transcendence, light years from men subordinating women to that end, motherhood is presented by de Beauvoir, almost reluctantly, as an experience that places us on the path of a new ethics. Most simply, to be a mother, something has to give. It may sound obvious, but it is anything other than sentimental. Nor in the end does it compromise her demand for freedom for women, since to experience motherhood in this way, the mother must give herself freely to her child; though it does give the lie to the belief that you can truly be free all by yourself, or at anybody else's expense. If motherhood puts us in touch with the stranger, then we could not be further from the idea that 'my family' is the only one in the whole wide world that matters, the one I will fight for tooth and claw \u2013 to return to the corrupt and dementing version of mother love with which the first part of this chapter began ('How then can we be civilised?'). Today, women on the streets are taking up this challenge. In April 2017, ahead of 'Mother's Day', mothers, including the group MomsRising, marched on the Trump International Hotel in Washington with miniature statues of liberty to protest the administration's cruel immigration and deportation policy, and to demand it act with justice and compassion.\n\n'The power of life,' Elena Ferrante writes, 'is damaged, humiliated by unjust modes of existence.' It is not only motherhood that is impoverished if it fails to connect to the wider world; it is not only mothers and their children who are damaged and humiliated when their world, like a deadly flytrap, shuts in on itself. Today, in all of this, we should still be grateful to de Beauvoir for showing us just how high the stakes are. The question then becomes: what happens when a mother defies the instructions ringing in her ears and ventures down this strange, other path, trailing the debris of her heart and of everything around her as she goes? Where does it lead? What are the pleasures, the risks and the price? To explore these questions for our time, we now turn to Elena Ferrante, who offers her own brilliant, disconcerting reply.\n\nTHE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY\nELENA FERRANTE\n\nShe is one of the biggest European literary phenomena of the twenty-first century, but Elena Ferrante \u2013 by her own account \u2013 takes us back to the beginning, the world of the Greeks and Romans, one of the places where we started. 'I have to say,' she states in a New York Times interview in 2014, 'that I've never seen the classical world as an ancient world. Instead I feel its closeness.' As a young girl, she would imagine the Bay of Naples peopled by sirens who spoke Greek. One of the relatively few pieces of biographical information she has volunteered is that she has a degree in classical literature, from which she learned 'many things about how to put words together'. Medea and Dido are her heroines, the first for walking us into the unthinkable space of infanticide, the second for the civic and intimate generosity with which she set about building the city of Carthage: opening its doors (and her body) to a foreign exile, Aeneas, whatever tragic consequences in the end, and making sure that the temple of Juno, goddess of marriage and childbirth, should display the carnage of war, as a type of memento, on its walls.\n\nOf these two women, Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina are the diminished progeny, because they have lost 'the obscure force that pushed those heroines of the ancient world to use infanticide or suicide as rebellion or revenge or curse'. They have lost the public dimension of their pain. It is, Ferrante explains, the deep-rooted mistake of every city to lay claim to be a city of love without labyrinths, to believe you can give birth to a future with no Furies lying in wait. The same blinkered, anaesthetised, radically disabling vision with which most official discourse in the modern world hounds its mothers.\n\nBehind one half of Ferrante's pen name, Elena, is a tale from Greek mythology. According to a relatively little-known version of the story, Zeus rapes and impregnates, not Leda the swan, but Nemesis, who turns herself into a goose to escape him. She then lays an egg, found by a shepherd and handed to Leda, who nurtures it and out of which Elena is born, who is then raised by Leda, in Ferrante's suggestive formula, as 'her daughter-non-daughter'. It must be one of the earliest stories of surrogacy, as well as offering a model of motherhood without vested interest because it has embraced a stranger. It can also be read as a veiled warning on the part of Ferrante to anyone trying to track her down, or claiming \u2013 as if that settled anything \u2013 to have done so. Behind the name she has chosen as an author lies a story of gestation that cannot be traced to a single source. It is through ancient gods, animal matter, humans that her writing is born, travelling across species and time. Repeatedly, Ferrante has said that she preserved her anonymity so that her books, free of the bluster and publicity of her presence, could make their way without her, like a child leaving home.\n\nInstead, the modern cult of the author, not to speak of the constant pressure on Ferrante to identify herself, straps the literary work to the writer, as if the only possible link between a text and its creator is that of a domineering mother \u2013 about whom Ferrante has much to say \u2013 who cannot bear to let her children go: 'doesn't someone who reads one of my books make space in his own vocabulary for my words, doesn't he appropriate them, if necessary doesn't he reuse them?' This is strikingly reminiscent of another central concept of D. W. Winnicott, the use of an object, which refers to the ruthlessness any infant must use in the struggle with and against the mother to survive. In Ferrante's second novel, The Days of Abandonment (2002), Olga, abandoned wife and mother, reflects on the complications of her new life: 'In this reasoning, I seemed to capture all the absurdity of the adjective \"my,\" \"my children\"' (the same formula that had so appalled Colonel Pargiter's grandson in Woolf's novel The Years). It takes time, and she almost doesn't make it, but, bracingly and bit by bit, her agony at her loss beckons \u2013 for her, for her children \u2013 a kind of freedom.\n\nWe might also note in passing that for the journalist who, in an act of flagrant misogyny, claimed to have exposed Ferrante's true identity, her greatest offence was to have misrepresented her own mother (as Neapolitan dressmaker in the novel rather than Holocaust survivor in her real life). As if to say: mothers must not be reinvented. Fiction is fine so long as it does not trespass on \u2013 violate \u2013 the sacred domain of mothers. He probably didn't realise that, in his proud, vulgar gesture of exposure, he was close to imitating the brute husband of Ferrante's first novel, Troubling Love (1999), who more or less strips his wife bare as a gypsy in a series of paintings he brazenly peddles for profit (he then beats her at the first sign of a sexuality over which he has no control). 'How was it possible,' their daughter asks, 'that my father could hand over, to vulgar men, bold and seductive versions of that body which if necessary he would defend with murderous rage?' In Troubling Love, such behaviour is not restricted to men alone. The daughter also goes crazy at any sign of her mother's independent sexual life, and indeed betrays her mother's love affair to her father.\n\nIn Ferrante's vision, the world conspires to conceal the bodies of mothers. Merely having one is a crime. 'No one, starting with the mother's dressmaker, must think that a mother has a woman's body' \u2013 Ferrante had wanted to make these lines by Elsa Morante, her favourite Italian woman writer, the epigraph to the novel. We have seen this hatred of a mother's sexual being before: the flight from what Ferrante calls, in another memorable formula, 'the erotic vapor' of the mother's body. The brazen exposure of Ferrante taps into this set of tired, ugly stereotypes born of possessiveness and rage. Why would anyone \u2013 a woman, a mother \u2013 hide herself unless she was guilty?\n\nThe name Elena will take up its central role as Elena Greco, the narrator of the Neapolitan Novels. But before that, Leda and Elena give their names, both sourced from the Greeks, to the main characters of Ferrante's third novel, The Lost Daughter, published in 2006, when she was already renowned in Italy but before the Quartet made her internationally famous. Leda is a middle-aged mother who finds herself caught up in a 'complicated, modern question of maternity', which leads her, and not for the first time, to leave her children. Making her escape from any remaining parental responsibilities for her two grown daughters, she heads off for a beach holiday on the Ionian coast, where she finds herself obsessively watching a little girl, Elena, as she plays with her young mother, and whose lost doll she finds and then keeps (without her doll the child sickens, and her mother, whom Leda has befriended, wishes brain cancer on whoever stole it).\n\nThe story inverts the original Leda\u2013Elena myth. Instead of generously nurturing another's child, a mother finds herself enacting a form of cruelty towards someone else's daughter, which she can no more prevent herself from doing, or bring to an end, than she can explain it to herself. As a young mother, she abandoned her own children for two years as the only way of surviving, although her motives are not entirely clear to her, and certainly to nobody else. Although the book has received relatively little attention outside Italy, Ferrante has described The Lost Daughter as her most risk-taking novel and the one to which she is most painfully bound; without the 'great anxiety' it cost her, she wouldn't have written the first of the Neapolitan Novels, My Brilliant Friend. 'The most difficult things to tell,' she comments on her anguished attachment to this novel, 'are those which we ourselves can't understand' (these are Leda's own words in the text). 'What I wanted of [my children],' Leda ponders, 'I never understood, I don't know even now.' This is a mother whose deepest clarity stems from her lack of knowing, from her acceptance that to be a mother is to relinquish control of the human heart.\n\nFerrante is issuing another warning, this time against the idea that motherhood is a locked closet to which the best literary writing on the topic would offer the one true key \u2013 again rather like a mother who allows her child no secrets or lies, and claims fully to know her child's mind. On the folly of such an idea, The Days of Abandonment already offered a hint, in the deranging episode when Olga struggles frantically with her daughter, Ilaria, to lock and unlock their front door (the only moment of sanity occurs when the mother admits to herself and her daughter that the whole thing makes no sense). In Ferrante's writing, you do not solve the problem or question of motherhood. You enter, at whatever risk, into its space. 'The literary truth of motherhood,' she observes, 'is yet to be explored.' 'The task of the woman writer today,' is not to 'keep talking about it in an idyllic way,' as they do in the guidebooks, which leaves mothers feeling 'alone and guilty,' but 'to delve truthfully into the darkest depth.' A recent study suggests that the mothers who read the most manuals on mothering report the highest level of depressive symptoms (it is not clear whether the depression is the consequence of reading so many manuals or the reason they are reading them in the first place).\n\nElena Ferrante's literary portrayal of motherhood takes you about as far from manuals and guidebooks as you could possibly hope to get. It is like nothing else I have read, which is why in this book Ferrante is the author with a chapter to herself. The Swedish publisher Bromberg, who acquired the rights to The Days of Abandonment and had the work translated, decided against publication on the grounds that the mother's behaviour was 'morally reprehensible'. One can only wonder what they thought of what came later, since in Ferrante's world, mothers regularly walk out on their children; neglect or forget about them in favour of writing and\/or sexual passion; love and hate, protect and resent, guide and thwart them in equal measure. At times, children seem to be no more than pawns in the adult sexual game \u2013 in the final volume of the Neapolitan Novels, a mother picks up her friend's baby daughter to flirt with the father who was once her own lover, ignoring her own daughter, who, in a blink of an eye, disappears for ever. (Echoing the title of Ferrante's third novel, The Lost Daughter, the last in the Quartet has the title The Story of the Lost Child).\n\n'The risk that Leda runs,' Ferrante comments, cutting straight to the heart of the dilemma faced by so many modern mothers, 'seems to me all in that question: can I, a woman of today, succeed in being loved by my daughters, in loving them, without having of necessity to sacrifice myself and therefore hate myself?' Mothers, especially mothers and daughters, are everywhere, although often overlooked by reviewers of her work. On this matter, Ferrante herself is clear. 'Sometimes,' she comments on the mother\u2013daughter relationship, 'I think I haven't written about anything else.' Motherhood is the irreducible core of her fiction. And not just at the level of theme, since it trails the very act of writing mercilessly in its wake: 'To write truly,' Olga instructs herself in The Days of Abandonment as she tries to pick up her own neglected fiction, 'is to speak from the depths of the maternal womb.'\n\n* * *\n\nIn the Neapolitan Novels, Elena Greco, who goes by the name of Len\u00f9, is part of a dyad, the other half of which is Raffaella Cerullo (called Lila by Len\u00f9, and Lina by everyone else). One can only assume that this confusing proximity of their names is intentional, a way of registering the often suffocating intimacy that binds them, the oscillation of the two women as they repeatedly attempt to move apart \u2013 even to reject each other \u2013 and then, with no less virulence and passion, come back together again (the Quartet has been greeted as the first in-depth literary rendering of friendship between women). The novels are written in Len\u00f9's voice, but even that is not obvious. Len\u00f9 takes her inspiration from a piece of writing by Lila from their childhood, when they were planning a glorious future together as writers, a future that would make them rich and famous. The Quartet ends with Len\u00f9 discovering reams of writing by Lila on the architectural and cultural history of Naples, to which she has been devoting herself as she grieves the never-explained disappearance of her youngest child several years before.\n\nAt one point, they do indeed compose a piece of journalistic writing together, when they decide to expose the violence of the men who have done their worst to control and destroy the two women's lives and the lives of all those around them in their small, desperately inverted community in Naples. Although it is Len\u00f9 who fulfils their childhood dream by becoming a famous writer, she is for ever haunted by the feeling that it is Lila who is the true author of her work. Ferrante has said that the two women are minted from the same coin. But by placing uncertain authorship right at the heart of these novels, Ferrante is doing more than reflecting her own nuanced, fractured position as a writer. She has also opened up a space, agonising or liberating dependent on your point of view, where a woman can at least ask herself, with reference to the moment deemed by general consent to be her moment of most glorious creativity: to whom or what exactly is a woman giving birth?\n\nIt is often said that having a baby reintroduces a woman to her own mother (in its most gloating version, this is assumed to be because the experience is so difficult that she at last understands and forgives her mother everything). In another account, when a first baby turns out to be the spitting image of the father, with features bearing no trace of the mother, she will be consoled that this is nature's way of making the father feel secure that his progeny is his own, a fact of which no father can be easily certain. Along similar lines, the French avant-garde film-maker Jean-Luc Godard wryly observed, with reference to his 1985 film Je vous salue, Marie or Hail Mary, that Joseph's dilemma when faced with Mary's pregnancy and her claim to have been visited by God \u2013 a likely story, as one might say \u2013 was simply the dilemma of all men confronted with the prospect of fatherhood. French law states: 'the child of a married woman will be presumed to be the child of the husband' (thereby recognising that no one really has the faintest idea).\n\nThe paternity of Lila's first child, Rino (named after her brother), is initially attributed to her lover, then finally and reluctantly to her former husband, to the distress of the two men who might have fathered him. But Ferrante also lets us inside this quandary from the other side, giving the Greek vision of the mother as passive receptacle of the male seed a Gothic, feminist twist. Men 'show up inside us and withdraw', Len\u00f9 muses, 'leaving, concealed in our flesh, their ghost, like a lost object'. She is contemplating the various offspring of Nino, whom she first loved in childhood, one of the possible fathers of Lila's child, and by whom she too will become pregnant (he has had at least one other child along the way and will have two more by the woman he eventually marries). As so often, Lila is characteristically more blunt: 'Men insert their thingy inside you and you become a box of flesh with a living doll inside.'\n\nDolls are central. The Quartet begins with Lila and Len\u00f9 hurling their cherished dolls into the basement of the house of the dreaded Don Achille Caracci, characterised in the cast list provided for each volume as 'the ogre of fairy tales'. It ends with the two dolls magically reappearing in a parcel received by Len\u00f9, one assumes posted by Lila, who has disappeared (Tina, the name of Len\u00f9's doll, is also the name of Lila's lost child). This in itself can be read as another caution. Ferrante's dolls live on another planet from the maternal instinct they are most commonly assumed to personify. On this, Ferrante finds herself in harmony with Freud, who was criticised for daring to suggest that a little girl playing with her doll, far from anticipating some maternal idyll, was engaged in an act of mastery as she exerted on the hapless creature the control she suffered at the hands of her mother. 'A mother is only a daughter who plays,' Leda thinks to herself as she enacts various hideous rituals on the doll she has stolen. 'I was playing now.'\n\nThe first pregnancy in the Neapolitan Novels is that of Pinuccia, who marries Lila's brother Rino, and who turns against her own baby the moment he is born: 'He's ugly, he's uglier than Rino, that whole family is ugly'; 'It's my fault, I made a bad choice of a husband, but when you're a girl, you don't think about it, and now look at what a child I've had.' Len\u00f9 had gone to visit her, thinking she would find her 'in bed, happy, with the baby at her breast'. In Naples, girls, like Pinuccia and also Lila, are married as young as sixteen. Ferrante passes no judgement \u2013 on this she is scrupulous. Pinuccia is not an inadequate mother. It is the world around her that has failed.\n\nIn Ferrante's writing, it is a cruel society that is indicted on behalf of mothers. Pinuccia's rage \u2013 again like Lila, who does everything to thwart pregnancy in the first years of a wretched marriage \u2013 spreads from a brutal male-dominated community that stifles its women and girls in their hearts and the deepest recesses of their bodies: 'I looked at her stomach,' Len\u00f9 ponders about Lila when her failure to become pregnant is making her husband's masculinity a joke, 'and imagined that truly inside it, every day, every night, she was fighting a battle to destroy the life that Stefano wanted to insert there by force.' The community is less charitable \u2013 like a Greek chorus, it spreads the rumour that Lila is suffocating the foetus in her womb. The old belief that women smothered their unborn child is thus neatly cast by Ferrante, either as an act of desperate agency and defiance on behalf of oppressed women, or as the vicious assault on mothers it always was.\n\nIn Ferrante's world, it is not only men who invade the bodies and souls of women. Like Sylvia Plath before her, she has the ability \u2013 on the same page or in what can feel like a hair's breadth from each other \u2013 to indict patriarchy and ask what, in the daughter's relation to her mother, women might be no less up against ('Sometimes I think I haven't written about anything else'). For once you ask the question of who or what is germinating, taking up residence inside the body of the mother \u2013 whether in a gesture of openness or dread \u2013 then there is no telling, at least not for any of Ferrante's women, what you might find. She thus takes the idea of the stranger inside the mother a further, disconcerting step. A mother's body is a crowded space, like the community of Naples, where everybody is jostling, impinging on and invading everybody else.\n\nAs Leda watches Elena on the beach she sees the extended family close in on the little girl, like all the relations from whom she as a young woman had, or thought she had, fled: 'I had them all inside me.' She feels revulsion at the 'ancestors compressed into the child's flesh', and anger when mother and child project their fake-adult and fake-child voices into the doll as if it were speaking with one and the same voice. In flight from such cloying osmosis and from her unwelcome inner guests, Leda had dreamed of her pregnancy as a brave new world: 'I was not my grandmother (seven children), I was not my mother (four daughters), I was not my aunts, my cousins.' One of Len\u00f9's strongest desires is to escape her mother, whose bitter, limping frame trails across all four books: 'I have to eliminate her.'\n\nSuch control is of course an illusion. You can leave, grow away from, forge your own path, but you cannot eliminate the tie to the mother. From the relative safety of Milan, where she has escaped as a young student, Len\u00f9 trembles at the thought of her potential future as a mother: 'And if my mother should emerge from my stomach just now when I think I am safe?' Like a contrary, or even perverse, fairy godmother \u2013 I mean that as the greatest compliment \u2013 Ferrante grants the mothers of her fiction the strongest impulse to freedom and closes in on that very impulse more or less in the same breath. After her third pregnancy Len\u00f9 starts limping. Like all daughters, she has been gifted by her mother in all the painful ambiguity of the term. On her deathbed, when they are partly reconciled, her mother confesses to her that, for all her tirades against her, she was her favourite \u2013 in some ways her one and only \u2013 child, a fact to which those very tirades bore witness, while also expressing her resentment that her daughter has left her to make another world and name for herself. 'The only good thing in her life,' Len\u00f9 reports their conversation, 'was the moment I came out of her belly, I, her first child.' To that day, her mother had experienced all her other children as a punishment (a feeling she saw as her greatest sin). The reconciliation is a mixed blessing: 'When she embraced me before I left, it was as if she meant to slip inside me and stay there, as once I had been inside her.' Len\u00f9 tells Lila that she has started limping as a way of keeping her mother alive.\n\nFerrante's writing begins here, following in the paths of writers like Sylvia Plath and Edith Wharton, or in tune with Ariel Leve, on the perils of a mother's proximity to her child. Or at least her first published writing begins here, since by her own account, until Troubling Love she 'abandoned' many stories, as if her own career, like her novels, were littered with the debris of children lost or discarded along the way. In Troubling Love, the dead mother, Amalia, who committed suicide, steadily invades her daughter Delia, 'like a hot liquid that had been injected into me at some unknown time'. Like Len\u00f9, she 'had wanted to eliminate every root I had in her, even the deepest', especially \u2013 like a deranged lover \u2013 every inch of her mother that she could not know, control or even reach. She fails. Slowly she recrafts herself in her mother's image, down to the smallest gesture and item of her clothing, until finally she takes down Amalia's suitcase, the one she was carrying the night she died, and puts on her clothes: 'I felt that the old garment was the final narrative that my mother had left me, and that now, with all the necessary adjustments, it fit me like a glove.' Then she adjusts her hair \u2013 a curl over the right eye, two broad bands meeting in a wave over her forehead \u2013 to 'that old-fashioned hairstyle, popular in the forties but already rare at the end of the fifties': '[It] suited me. Amalia had been. I was Amalia' (the last lines of the book). The intense focus of these short early novels will not be repeated. Unfettered by the longue dur\u00e9e of the Neapolitan Quartet still to come, they each take a single acute moment of crisis in the life of a mother and\/or daughter and stretch it to breaking point.\n\nIn Ferrante's vision, 'troubling love' is, therefore, the love between mother and daughter, the template for every subsequent emotional attachment, for the agony and ecstasy of a life, for every love affair. Which means that whatever the trials and traumas and pleasures of women's relationships with men, they can only be its pale shadow. Freud suggested that all eros starts at the mother's breast and, even more tellingly, that a woman always \u2013 at least first time round \u2013 marries a man who is the stand-in for the lost mother (a student once came to see me, disturbed by the implication of this insight that, deep inside the heart, only mothers were therefore to be found). Note, too, the ambiguity of Ferrante's titles \u2013 The Lost Daughter, The Story of the Lost Child \u2013 which can be parsed from the viewpoint either of the daughter or the mother: a child feeling lost in the world (perhaps redeemable), a child who vanishes without trace.\n\nFerrante has stated that she is at once drawn to and ambivalent about psychoanalysis \u2013 she calls it the 'lexicon of the precipice' \u2013 and about Freud, but on this much she is happy to give him credit. Every love relationship, good or bad, she explains, is a reactivation of this primitive bond; for women, no marriage can expel that first troubling love 'the only love-conflict that in every case lasts forever'; Olga in The Days of Abandonment was only ever faithful to the husband before he left her because he became for her 'the cocoon of fantasies tied to the mother' (which is why the abandonment is so devastating). As I read interviews with Ferrante, it seems to me that she is more assertive about this \u2013 or to put it another way, more confident in her terror at this mother\u2013daughter reality \u2013 than about almost anything else.\n\n* * *\n\nIf the story of mothers stopped there it would already be troubling enough. But Ferrante's portrayal of these mothers takes another pivotal step. The mother\u2013daughter relationship, the pregnancy that contains the mother and all her forebears \u2013 'And if my mother should emerge from my stomach just now when I think I am safe?' \u2013 is where the world loses its bearings and all boundaries dissolve (giving the lie to the idea that any mother can hold everything in place). As we have touched on in earlier chapters, allowing borders to open, recognising the radical fragility of the boundaries we create, can also be seen, in relation to mothers, as the foundation for a different ethics and, perhaps, a different world. For me, Ferrante is the writer who pushes this possibility as far as it can go, notably in a world in which the myth of self-containment and self-control is being promoted harder than ever.\n\nTo this myth, motherhood in its most troubling guise can be understood as a kind of angry, exasperated riposte. It has always struck me that what needs explaining is, not the moments where our most cherished individuality fails, but the extraordinary fact that, emerging from the first morass of being, we ever buy into the illusion that we are self-sufficient, radically distinguishable individuals to begin with: our bodies our property, our minds subordinate to our will, the whole world \u2013 this is the most dangerous version \u2013 at our command. Ferrante is having none of it. The story begins, she states, 'when, one after another, our borders collapse'. 'Borders make us feel stable' \u2013 she is making a feminist point:\n\nAt the first hint of conflict, at the least threat, we close them... The history of women in the past hundred years is based on the very dangerous 'crossing of the boundary' imposed by patriarchal cultures. The results have been extraordinary in all fields. But the force with which they want to carry us back inside the old borders is no less extraordinary. It is manifested as pure crude, bloody violence.\n\nLila's husband beats her, and on at least one occasion rapes her in front of their child. Women like her and Amalia who 'refuse to be subjugated' find themselves up against the ultimatum: '\"Either you'll be the way I say or I'll change you by beating you till I kill you.\"' To this all too familiar ultimatum for women, Ferrante adds her own unique dimension. The battle of the sexes does not just pit one will and force against another \u2013 although it surely does that too. Rather, a woman who refuses to respect the existing boundaries of a patriarchal world evokes a whole other, terrifying psychic space. Shattering the carapace of selfhood, she brings to the surface the physical and mental fragments, the bits and pieces that, at the deepest level, we truly are, though we mostly resist such knowledge with all our might. 'What corrupts us,' she observes, 'is the passion for ourselves, the urgent need for our own primacy.' Such proud, corrupt self-affirmation is not something that she herself has escaped: 'It's blindingly obvious that I alone authorized myself...What is this if not pride?'\n\nFerrante's writing career to date might be read as a plea for us to reconsider: we truly would be better off starting \u2013 recognising that as humans of 'woman born' we all start \u2013 from somewhere quite else. 'It seemed to me,' she states, 'that feeling literally in pieces could be traced back to that sort of original fragmentation that is bringing into the world-coming into the world.' She knows she is walking on the wild side: 'I remain convinced that it's also essential to describe the dark side of the pregnant body, which is omitted in order to bring out the luminous side, the Mother of God.' Divine perfection, moral purity is not what she is talking about. Rather, the pregnant body brings us close to the animal component of our nature, frightening in so far as it reminds us 'of the instability of the forms assumed by life'. The task is to recognise this, rather than aiming for some transcendence, or even hatred, of pregnancy into a refined world of rules and etiquette, as if leaving the swamp of pregnancy behind \u2013 we have been here before \u2013 were the world's only saving grace.\n\nFerrante's mothers are not themselves innocent of the impulse to salvage pregnancy from itself (they are not innocent of anything). They are, after all, in it up to their necks. When she was expecting her second child, Leda tells us, she was distraught at the prospect of 'giving up of any sublimation of my pregnancy': 'My body became a bloody liquid; suspended in it was a mushy sediment which grew a violent polyp, so far from anything human that it reduced me, even though it fed and grew, to rotting matter without life'; whereas her first baby was right away 'a being at its best, purified of humours and blood, humanized, intellectualized, with nothing that could evoke the blind cruelty of living matter as it expands'. I have never come across writing on the topic of pregnancy quite like this.\n\nNeedless to say, and as any mother who has given birth will tell you, the baby most often turns out to be the exact opposite in character from what the experience of pregnancy might lead a mother to expect, as if to remind the mother that her body, finally, is \u2013 but also is not \u2013 what it is all about. Furthermore, the experience of pregnancy is rarely a reliable guide to how a woman will mother her baby. Len\u00f9's pregnancies are a source of expansiveness and joy, Lila's mainly of displeasure bordering on horror. When Len\u00f9 tries to reassure her, she reproaches her that she has simply learned to use the 'sentimental voice of our mothers'. 'She seemed ready,' Len\u00f9 writes when they later find themselves pregnant together, 'to find any joy I found in motherhood a betrayal.' And yet, it is Lila who, after the birth of her son, turns out to be the 'best mother in the whole neighbourhood'. Pinuccia brings her baby to her to look after, in the hope that her gifts as a mother will benefit her son. Whereas, as soon as they get home from the hospital, Len\u00f9's first baby sucks for a few moments, then 'shrieks like a furious little animal', and writhes and screams for hours: 'What was wrong with me? What poison had polluted my milk?'\n\nAnyone looking for a counter-narrative on the joys of breastfeeding could do worse than read Ferrante, where they will also find another of those rare testimonies to its scandalous, incestuous sensuality (the erotic pleasure and the pain, two intensities mostly absent from the conventional narrative, are again surely linked). Here, too, Ferrante is pushing the boat out. In a letter to the editors of the Italian literary magazine L'Indice, she describes a childhood memory of her and her sister watching their mother feeding a new arrival, until, once the baby unwillingly slid into sleep, 'our mother smiled at us with her dark eyes and let white drops from her breasts drip into our mouths, a warm, sweet taste that stunned us.' This long letter at the heart of her collection, Frantumaglia, is one of the rare occasions where Ferrante states that she is responding to her interlocutors' questions with pleasure.\n\nDuring her first pregnancy, Lila's greatest fear was that the thing she most dreaded would happen and that she would break apart, overflow. Remember Sylvia Plath: 'I am breaking apart like the world' (likewise Ferrante: 'I know what it means to break apart'). They are not alone. Compare Lucy Jones writing today against the guidebook vision of pregnancy as 'pastel-hued dream': 'surely I am dying or at least splitting in half. Cut her out, cut her out, cut her out. I am birthing a hurricane. A spiked mace. A heap of barbed wire. A bladed melon. An inflated pufferfish.' But Ferrante gives to this experience an additional twist. It is through Lila's very fear \u2013 her being so much more in touch with blind matter and the fragmentation of the world \u2013 that she finds herself capable of loving 'that absurd modality of life, that expanding module' inside her. Stuffed inside the stolen doll of The Lost Daughter, Leda finds a worm put there by Elena to pretend to make it pregnant. 'I have a horror of crawling things,' she observes, 'but for that clot of humours I felt a naked pity.' She is, literally, scraping the depths.\n\nAnd yet out of such matter Ferrante re-creates the seeds of ethical life. 'I would like to narrate in a meaningful way how a woman approaches, through the requirements of caring for someone, through love, the repulsiveness of the flesh, those areas where the mediation of the world becomes weak.' Repulsiveness of the flesh, the world's mediations faltering \u2013 this is not how love, or motherhood, are normally thought about. We are light years from the terms mostly used to prescribe, purify, sanitise the task of mothering. We might also be getting closer to understanding the dangers faced by a mother, by anyone, when they welcome a stranger in their midst. Which is perhaps why alien mothers landing on our shores to give birth find themselves the objects of such visceral revulsion.\n\n* * *\n\nTo explain what her own mother bequeathed to her, Ferrante offers the word frantumaglia \u2013 in fact, the term, all hints and murmurs and overheard sounds, explains nothing. The word gives the title to the collection of essays and interviews, all conducted by correspondence, from which many of the statements by Ferrante cited so far in this chapter have been taken. It is a book that, among other things, serves as a sustained rejoinder to the resentments provoked by her refusal to release her true name and take proper charge of her writing: she has everything to say about her writing, and about what her characters and novels mean to her, but not one thing about how anyone should read her books. But it also seems to me as if Ferrante, in interview after interview, as energised as she often appears reluctant, is 'dream-reading' her own work \u2013 the term she uses to describe how a true literary work takes off from its author to engender something new and unanticipated in the reader (which makes the unconscious the slipstream of all new birth).\n\nThis is where a mother's disintegration, loss of self, falling into pieces, so central to Ferrante's writing, begins. Frantumaglia is a word of dialect that her mother used when she was 'racked by contradictory sensations that were tearing her apart', which depressed her, made her dizzy and her mouth taste like iron. The word for an unfathomable disquiet, it referred to 'a miscellaneous crowd of things in her head, debris in a muddy water of the brain', the source of all suffering 'not traceable to a single obvious cause'. The strongest memory it evokes is of her mother weeping 'frantumaglia tears'. Frantumaglia arrived as a warning that her mother was losing herself \u2013 it would drive her suddenly out of the house, leaving a pot burning on the stove. This memory of her mother in pain is the seedbed of Ferrante's writing: Olga, distracted, walking out of the house; the copper pot that explodes in My Brilliant Friend, the first warning shot that Lila is cursed with a gift that shatters the world's contours.\n\nBut vivid and poignant as this memory appears, it is also a complete mystery: to the mother herself, and then to Ferrante, the daughter who cannot now ask her mother what on earth the word meant, and who for that reason \u2013 obedient to a legacy as generative as it is scary \u2013 has no choice but to make the word her own. What mothers pass to daughters, Ferrante is also telling us, is language, not as a tool but in the form of words that endlessly slide from our grasp. It is this fundamental recalcitrance of language, its inner resistance to the meanings it is meant to promote \u2013 like the sexuality no mother can herself fully know or own \u2013 that led Jean Laplanche to argue that all mothers are an eternal enigma to their child, presenting the child with an insoluble sexual riddle that will spur their curiosity for life.\n\nWhen Ferrante picks up the term frantumaglia, its meanings quiver and darken, and this in turn will be the legacy she passes to Lila \u2013 her best-loved character, as she acknowledges, because she forced her to work so hard. 'The frantumaglia is an unstable landscape, an infinite aerial or aquatic mass of debris that appears to the I, brutally, as its true and unique inner self.' She is on her own home ground: 'I who sometimes suffer the illness of Olga,' she comments, 'represent it [frantumaglia] mainly to myself as a hum growing louder and a vortex-like fracturing of material living and dead: a swarm of bees approaching above the motionless treetops; the sudden eddy in a slow body of water.' As we have already seen, this thrum of being that Ferrante sources in the body of the mother, however agonised, is the precondition of creativity. Frantumaglia evokes a moment of childhood, before language instilled speech, a 'bright-coloured explosion of sounds, thousands and thousands of butterflies with sonorous wings'. For the mother, frantumaglia was the bad spirit of the household, its spilled remnants gently bruising the fragile discipline of the home. As a daughter and as a writer, Ferrante has added colour and sound, rendering her mother's anguish cosmic.\n\nThat rare moment of identification with her character Olga and her illness \u2013 'I who sometimes suffer the illness of Olga' \u2013 should give us pause, since if there is one easy way out of all this mess, it would be to label Ferrante's own suffering mother, together with Lila and all the rest of these mothers, as sick. This is a charge I have heard levelled at mothers merely for falling in love with a man other than their husband, or at the first hint of discontent \u2013 another common ploy being to attribute all maternal unhappiness to the onset of the menopause (one mother who had tried to leave the father of her children told me that, in the course of her marriage, he had diagnosed her at least four times as suffering from the menopause, which defies the laws of biology, if nothing else).\n\nLila's moments of 'dissolving margins', as she describes them, reach the limits of what is bearable, for herself and for Len\u00f9, who, it would be fair to say, is the person who loves her most. They turn the world dark, as if an intense black mass of a storm were scudding across the night sky, reducing the moon to insensate matter; or, in the midst of an earthquake, dissolving the boundaries of the driver of the car and the car itself, in which she is sitting: 'the thing and the person gushing out of themselves, mixing liquid metal and flesh'. Len\u00f9 struggles against this vision but she also, on occasion, imbibes it: 'I thought: yes, Lila is right, the beauty of things is a trick, the sky is a throne of fear... I am part of the universal terror; at this moment I'm the infinitesimal particle through which the fear of everything becomes conscious.' As she sits on the beach, she finds herself hoping that mad dogs, vipers, scorpions, enormous sea serpents and assassins will emerge from the sea to torture her. This is frightening, but unlike forms of mental disturbance that lock the sufferer inside her own head, it is shared, passing back and forth between the two friends. And, as we will shortly see, Lila's unique insight, which she is calling up on behalf of everyone, can be understood as drawing out the dark substance of the earth, together with its political terrors.\n\nThere is, therefore, a way of reading the Neapolitan Novels that would see Len\u00f9 not just as Lila's best friend (the two being parts of each other's innermost being) but also as a mother who feels her only task in life is to contain \u2013 to ward off \u2013 the nightmares of her child: 'I who have written for months and months,' she writes at the end of the final volume, sweeping the entire work up in such a protective impulse, 'to give her a form whose boundaries won't dissolve, and defeat her, and calm her, and so in turn calm myself.' They are the last lines of the Quartet (followed only by the epilogue).This would make the entire Quartet an act of mothering, albeit with a difference, since in this version the only way of soothing the world is first to call up its worst demons. I remember one of the people dearest to me in the world asking me about my baby daughter: 'How will you help her with her fear?' (which at least has the virtue of seeing that there can be no allaying a child's fear \u2013 nor indeed anybody else's \u2013 unless you acknowledge the fear in the first place). Len\u00f9 also knows that without that fear she would surely not be able to write: 'Would I know how to imagine those things without her? Would I know how to give life to every object, let it bend in unison with mine?' This, finally, is the genius of Lila \u2013 my brilliant friend.\n\nFerrante is by no means the only writer, nor indeed the first, to make this link between mothering and the contours of the universe. To take just one striking instance, in this case rendered from the point of view of a son: William Maxwell's 1937 novel They Came Like Swallows is a vivid portrait of a mother, Elizabeth, who will leave two young boys when she dies of Spanish flu in the pandemic of 1918. In the mind of her eight-year-old Bunny, all lines converge on her body. She must be present to secure his domestic space: 'all the lines and surfaces of the room bend toward his mother, so that when he looked at the pattern of the rug, he saw it necessarily in relation to the toe of her shoe.' Only then can he allow his possessions to be at times 'what they actually were' and at others to become 'knights and crusaders, or airplanes or elephants in a procession'. Unless the world is kept in its shape by the mother, there can be no imaginative freedom. Unless there is a mother, there can be no world. But the same mother also threatens the very contours she holds in place. When she kisses Bunny, 'everything blurred'; when he lies in bed not quite awake listening to her conversation with his aunt Irene, 'the white woodwork was unattached to the walls, the shape of chairs was ambiguous... while he squinted his eyes, the walls relaxed and became shapeless.' Ferrante gives a modern-day version of this inherent instability of all forms, which Lila raises to the nth dimension.\n\n* * *\n\nAs we saw earlier, one of the plaints and limitations of the modern mother in the West today is that she so often finds herself adrift from the wider world, from public, political life. To that extent, the idea of the 'working mother' is to my mind one of the misnomers of all time, since the one thing such a mother must never think of doing is taking her baby or children to work. If Medea and Dido are heroines for Ferrante, it is at least partly because of the way their anger spreads outwards from their personal despair, bringing down whole dynasties and cities in its wake \u2013 whereas today, as Ferrante puts it, women can enter the city provided they do not try to reinvent it. Such women are connected and powerful, however tragically things turn out in the end. In their eyes, their most intimate rejection is an injustice, one that the whole world needs to hear about.\n\nIf Ferrante is so resonant for the argument of this book, it is not only because of the way she ploughs the darkest depths of the maternal psyche, excavating, as terror and vision, the aspects of being human that are hardest for anyone to contemplate. Nor is it just that, in her literary hands, pregnancy becomes the original dissolution of all form, in which the world, if it would only shed its most oppressive, self-centred delusions, would do well to recognise itself. It is also because of the way \u2013 in one last, perhaps unexpected, twist \u2013 she folds this vision into the political reality out of which it at least partly grows, and on which it so violently propagates and feeds itself.\n\nIn Ferrante's vision, a mother's body and the public world all around her are indissolubly linked \u2013 her rejoinder to the idea we have repeatedly come across that these two opposite realms of being a mother, at their most intense, are best sidelined or not spoken about. The community of Naples in which Lila and Len\u00f9 live is drenched in a violence that stems from a resurgent post-war Italian fascism. This violence pervades the meat factory where Lila works under inhuman conditions, a war zone between communists and fascists where her boss is finally murdered; the proud and struggling business enterprises of the community steeped in dirty money, bribery and corruption; the assaults, mental and physical, on women; the safety, or rather non-safety, of the streets from where children are seized without warning or redress. It is not just mothers who grow, unwelcome, inside their daughters' pregnant bodies. It is a whole vicious political dispensation that is threatening to be reborn. The fear lived out by Len\u00f9 on the beach is, therefore, also a political fear that passes indiscriminately from body to body, hand to mouth. These women, these mothers, are alert to it like nobody else. The agonies of the mothering body \u2013 to give the term 'labour pains' an added gloss \u2013 are at one with the drag and flow of the community in which they take place. 'Lila and Elena [Len\u00f9] are made of the neighbourhood's matter,' Ferrante comments, 'but a fluid matter that drags everything along in its wake.'\n\nIn this context, to be a mother is to struggle to save \u2013 while also knowing that you will fail to save \u2013 your child. To be faced with the prospect that the world is not getting better, that there will not be a better life for the lives you have made (a feeling that for so many in the world as I write is becoming more intense by the day). Violence breeds violence. In order to save herself and her son, Lila thinks, she 'had to intimidate those who wished to intimidate her, she had to inspire fear in those who wished to make her fear'. At times, writing is contaminated by the same vision. 'One writes not so much to write,' Len\u00f9 muses in the midst of the struggle against the Solara brothers, 'one writes to inflict pain on those who wish to inflict pain.' Get in there first (another, deadly, type of cross-border exchange). Children are not spared. In one of the grimmest moments in the Quartet, Silvia, a political activist, arrives at Lila's home having been beaten and raped by fascists, and tells her story 'as if she were recounting a horrendous nursery rhyme'. Len\u00f9's daughter Elsa is in the room. When Len\u00f9 goes to find her other daughter, Dede, she finds her playing with Silvia's son Mirko (another child of Nino's). She is instructing him: 'You have to hit me, understand?' 'The new living flesh was replicating the old in a game.'\n\nWhat is a mother meant to do in such a world? Might it be kinder to mothers to lift from their minds and bodies the impossible expectation that they can repair the world and make it safe? And if the world took on its own responsibilities for the mess that it makes? 'We are,' Ferrante states, 'the destabilising conditions we suffer or cause.' Naples is 'a male city ungovernable in both its public and private behaviour', but it took time for her to realise that her flight from Naples, which was above all a flight from its mothers, was futile, that what she needed to recognise was the 'torture of women, to feel the weight of the male city on their existence'. This makes the flight from the mother a form of political blindness. Or rather, it makes the mother answerable, the scapegoat for a political distress of which no mother could possibly be the single source, but for which she inevitably will be blamed. At moments in the Quartet, it is as if every dissolution of form flows indiscriminately from the violent politics of the city streets. In vocabulary strikingly evocative of the miasma that bears down on Lila, Ferrante describes the city as 'a dark force of the world that weighs on its subjects, the sum total of what we call the threatening reality of today, engulfing, through violence, every space of mediation and civil relationship around and within the characters'. Lila can see into the violent heart of things, but none of it, not as wife or mother or daughter, is her fault.\n\n'What do you think of the governing political class today?' one interviewer asks. 'I am repulsed by it,' Ferrante replies. Later she elaborates: 'narratives that can state more directly, even through literature, the reasons for our repugnance as citizens are necessary.' Note that she speaks as a citizen, which all mothers of course are, even if in modern times it does not always feel that way. But to be a citizen fully, you have to know you belong to the widest sweep of historical events. Ferrante's vision is expansive. The horror, the repugnance, cannot be restricted to \u2013 hived off onto \u2013 Naples, a metropolis that 'has anticipated and anticipates the troubles of Italy, perhaps of Europe'. Slowly Len\u00f9 understands that Naples was part of a chain: 'with larger and larger links: the neighbourhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet'. In which case, Lila's moments of breakdown cannot be hers alone. Rather, it is the rotting future of Europe and the whole universe that she is registering on behalf of everyone. In this, she is reminiscent of Freud's hysterics, whose symptoms allow the rest of the family to carry on behaving as if they, unlike the hysteric, are just fine. This makes Lila, not sick, but \u2013 to return once more to the Greeks \u2013 a prophetess. Or perhaps both: sick at heart and freighted with the cares of the world (the second being a common enough definition of motherhood).\n\n* * *\n\nIn the course of working on this book, I have come to think that it is because this is the reality lying in wait once you scrape the surface of being a mother, a reality captured by Ferrante with such unforgiving intensity, that much public discourse on motherhood, tacking at top speed in the opposite direction, tends to be so glib, falsely knowing, cruel or anodyne. On the basis of conversations with my women friends who are mothers and devoted Ferrante fans, it would seem that her lack of inhibition on the subject of mothers plays a decisive part in her extraordinary success, making her readership \u2013 among which women do seem to predominate \u2013 something like a club or secret society, whose members have taken a vow never to explain exactly why they have joined or what, behind closed doors, they really talk about. When the boundaries of her characters dissolve, Ferrante observes of her own writing, 'the language with which they are attempting to say something about themselves also is loosened, unbounded.' She has loosened the tongue and lifted a burden of guilt (we are far from Bettelheim). After all, what matters in the end is what can, and cannot, be said \u2013 an issue with added political urgency in our newly censored times. 'The most effective stories,' she states, 'are those that resemble ramparts from which one can gaze out at everything that has been excluded.' Her simile \u2013 ramparts \u2013 is telling. Like de Beauvoir on the radical disorientation of mothering, she could be talking about the aliens on our shores.\n\nPerhaps, then, it is not surprising that Ferrante's experience of writing should sail so close to her subject matter: 'In the Neapolitan Quartet, I wanted everything to take shape and then lose its shape.' At first she needs tense, clear formulas that are 'demonstrations of beautiful form', but only as a pathway to writing that is 'disjointed, agitated, increasing the risk of absolute collapse' (when the borders collapse, 'the story begins'). She dreads the moment 'when the narrative has to compose itself again'. She writes hundreds of pages without stopping, sometimes never needing to alter a single word, but she still prefers the rough draft to the finished product, 'writing that is dissatisfied with itself'. Letting go of 'wriggling material' is, she states, 'the worst sin the writer can commit'. Like the pregnant body, like Lila's mind, like the city \u2013 in harmony, or rather disharmony, with each other \u2013 writing expands, secretes, spills, dissolves, disintegrates. It is, remember, the boundaries that are fake: 'When we tell a story, the only thing that should matter is to find a cascade of our words that will flood all the marked-out territory with the persistence \u2013 even if devastating \u2013 of mucilage.' This is writing as raw, viscous matter, like the worm that Leda found stuffed deep inside Elena's doll to make her pregnant. Remember Olga in The Days of Abandonment: 'To write truly is to speak from the depths of the maternal womb.'\n\nThis chapter has the title 'The agony and the ecstasy'. I realise it may seem that the first of these has had the strongest voice. True, the broken edges of Ferrante's mothers and her writing are mostly in tune with the world's grief. But ecstasy is part of the picture. Over the years, Ferrante has come closer and closer to the idea that writing emerges out of an 'ecstatic condition': 'The ecstasy of the writing is feeling not the breath of the word that is liberated from the flesh but the flesh that has become one with the breath of the words.' She calls it a 'disembodiment', but not, surely, as normally understood, since in this formula, flesh, far from being transcended, is now breathing through the words. What I hear her describing is a form of writing that lifts off only because it has immersed itself in the depths, beginning \u2013 as tends to be the case \u2013 with mothers: 'the literary truth [of motherhood] has yet to be explored... the task of a woman writer today is... to delve truthfully into the darkest depth.' Or, to put it more simply, Elena Ferrante has let the cat out of the bag on behalf of mothers, and I, for one, could not be more grateful.\nINSIDE OUT\n\nTo be a mother is to be saturated with the good and evil of the day. But unless you are very lucky, or privileged, or both, there is always the chance that evil will seize the hour, as my mother often tells me in relation to her never-ending grief for her daughter, my sister, who died more than twenty years ago. At the very least, it seems fair to say that, as much as a new, unpredictable beginning against the crush of totalitarian logic (Hannah Arendt's cry), each birth arrives with a history not of its own choosing. And since, to risk a clich\u00e9, there must surely be dark as well as lightness ahead, a mother who yearns most powerfully for her child to embody the free, the new, the best \u2013 as mothers mostly cannot help but do \u2013 is in danger of inscribing her denial of history, her own flight from suffering, across the body and mind of her child.\n\n'Your nakedness,' Sylvia Plath addresses her newborn daughter in 'Morning Song', 'Shadows our safety.' 'Morning Song' is a love poem, a tribute to the fragility of the new arrival it celebrates. But Plath knows that no mother can make the world safe. If Plath had had her way, the published collection of Ariel would not just have opened with this poem whose first word is 'Love'; it would have ended with the poems that have come to be known as the Bee Sequence, the last of which \u2013 'Wintering' \u2013 ends on the word 'spring'. Notoriously, Ted Hughes excised the poems that seemed most obviously to allude to the breakdown of their marriage, and ended the collection with later poems written in the days before she died, making her death seem poetically inevitable. But Plath's own carefully laid-out selection was eloquent. Opening with the birth of her child, it allowed joy \u2013 love, spring \u2013 to be in touch with, and frame, the darkness of shadows. Feminists have rightly objected to the blatant attempt by Hughes to silence Plath's rage as a woman and to exonerate himself (charges given a new edge by the recently uncovered letters from Plath to her former therapist suggesting Hughes had been violent towards her). But today I see his greatest offence as editor of her work residing in the way he curtailed and framed her all-encompassing voice as a mother.\n\n'All I want is for you to be happy.' What mother, parent, would not stand by that appeal, however impossible a demand it must be? First, as the demand to be happy, rather than, say, to be alive in your own life; then, as a kind of vicarious living through one's child; and finally, as most likely the death knell for any chance of happiness, since you surely kill happiness the moment you ask someone to be happy on behalf of anybody else. That same sister once told me with great pleasure how she had found herself on a train talking to a woman who had migrated from the Caribbean in the 1950s and then worked her way through the system, against considerable odds, to become the head teacher in a London school. She threw her head back in a paroxysm of laughter at the suggestion that a parent should want their child to be happy, as if the whole idea was some kind of sick joke, the very last thing a mother should ask for \u2013 of \u2013 her child. She had the ills of the world at her fingertips, but she was not world-weary, more like jubilant at all that needed to be done. This was in the 1970s, long before her son became one of the most renowned analysts of anti-black racism in the UK and beyond (he did her proud, as one might say).\n\nI always remember that story \u2013 its stubborn, expansive generosity of spirit \u2013 when I think of the way mothers are expected to lock any feelings of despair behind closed doors, especially in those first precarious moments of a mothering life. Perhaps what goes by the name of 'postnatal depression' is a way of registering griefs past, present and to come, an affront to the ideal not least because of the unbearable weight of historical memory and\/or prescience it carries. It has recently been suggested that 'bipolar', with the neat, over-clarifying split it records and enacts as a term, should be replaced with the more old-fashioned 'manic depressive', which at least gives back to the sufferer the dignity of lament, and therefore of potential self-understanding. The term 'postnatal depression' retains the lament but, assigned to hormone imbalance, the condition is now most often treated with drugs, or the quick-fix therapy known as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), or in some cases with electroconvulsive therapy, as so graphically described by the novelist Fiona Shaw. It, too, could do with being re-entered into the canon of human distress, psychically and historically meaningful, as opposed to a purely clinical matter.\n\nDuring a recent visit to South Africa, the incidence of postnatal depression was described to me as 'pandemic', prevalent at the highest rates among the poor blacks, who are, of course, most strongly affected by the unremitting anti-black racism of the country and the persistence of vicious forms of social and economic inequality. A recent South African study focused on depression among low-income black mothers of older children towards whom they found themselves, to their utmost despair, enacting forms of violent rage. When asked how they understood their anger and aggression, they gave three main causes: the demanding child and their longing to be an 'ever-bountiful, ever-giving mother'; the inconsiderate child who made them acutely aware of their own need for attention, support and respect; and the child engaged in violence and drug abuse who thwarted the mother's yearning for 'a new identity and a new life through her child'. Note the mirror-type reflection, or descending spiral, that binds the depressed mother to her child: the child's demands drive the mother to insane perfection; the inconsiderate child underscores the radical neglect of her own life; the violent child destroys the hope for a better future that the child was meant to personify.\n\nAs the authors of this study insist, these stories also bear witness to the strong correlation between 'major' depression and poverty, a link that tends to be overlooked clinically, and that must be hugely exacerbated by the promise of a better life with the end of apartheid, a promise that has not materialised for the majority of blacks in South Africa. It also shows these women, longing as they were for recognition and support as mothers, repeating an age-old pattern in which a woman's anger, because it is socially unacceptable, is internalised as potential violence against herself and\/or her child. But what stood out for me is the vicious circle of idealisation inside which these women were trapped. One by one they sourced their rage to 'the pain and disappointments associated with not being the mothers they wanted to be'. They felt they had failed because they lashed out at their children; but they lashed out at their children because they felt they had failed. 'Melancholy murderousness' is the title of the study. There can be no clearer example of the self-defeating, violence-inducing character of idealisation as it bears down upon mothers \u2013 notably the most disadvantaged and vulnerable mothers \u2013 in an unjust world. Yet again we see how, when the world turns ugly, when it cannot bear to confront its own cruelty, the punishing of mothers darkens and intensifies.\n\n* * *\n\nThroughout this book I have argued against the pernicious weight of the ideal. But it has only been in the course of writing it that I have come to think that the worst, most insufferable demand that so many cultures of the modern world impose on their mothers is not just the saccharine image laid across the mother in expectation of a better future, but the vast reach of historical, political and social anguish that we thereby ask a mother to nullify. We expect her to look to the future (what else is she meant to do?), but the seeming innocence of that expectation is an illusion, as if it were the task of mothers to trample over the past and lift us out of historical time \u2013 or, in the version that at least has the virtue of its own sentimentality, to secure a new dawn.\n\nMy maternal grandmother's family perished in Che\u0142mno extermination camp during the Second World War. My grandparents in London wanted nothing more than to be safe in their new surroundings, for their two daughters to bear no trace of the atrocity that irredeemably scarred their own lives. But the education of girls formed no part of their vision. Their most fervent wish was for their daughters to get married, to a Jewish man, of course, have children and 'settle down' (an idea that might bear some scrutiny, since, as a therapist once said to me, moments of feeling settled once and for all tend to be life's interruptions). Barely twenty years old, my mother was married off to my father, who was returning from his own trauma, having been tortured in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She had wanted to be a doctor, but was not allowed by her parents to take up the place she had secured at medical school, so she was married to a doctor instead.\n\nHer ambitions for the lives of her own daughters would grow from that thwarted moment and reach for the sky. But, I find myself asking, whatever made her think that this would be enough to silence the past? That educational and sexual freedom \u2013 upending the constraints of her life, and for which I will always be grateful \u2013 could guarantee a future unstained by that awful history? Maybe there will always be a radical disjunction between what a child is and what a mother most fervently wants for her child. Maybe that is one of the agonies of being a mother: to find that your child harbours in the recesses of their soul a story from which you had hoped against hope, once and for all, to free them. 'With the best will in the world', was one of the sayings I heard repeated throughout my childhood, as if somewhere the grown-ups knew that they were asking \u2013 could not help but ask \u2013 the impossible of themselves.\n\nWhen I was a teenager, I came across the account of 'housewives' psychosis' in de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Every morning before we went to school, my sister and I, and eventually our younger sister, were expected to join in the ritual three-cloth cleansing of the entire home: wet, dry and methylated spirits. As I look back on it now, I don't think, as she cleaned the house spotless, that my mother ever realised there was nothing she needed to expiate, that she had not been the perpetrator \u2013 not ever, not now nor in the distant past \u2013 of any crime. It has become commonplace to describe my mother's generation as housewives without feminism \u2013 indeed, it is in response to this post-war closeted domesticity that 1970s second-generation feminism begins. But the point is mostly made without any allusion to the legacy that must have played such a key role in driving them mad. Certainly, no one seems ever to have explained to this generation of housewives and mothers \u2013 de Beauvoir did not make the link \u2013 that they were not, and should not feel, guilty for a war whose every lingering trace the bright, glittering home in which they had settled down was meant to wipe away for ever.\n\nThis book has tried to travel the world and cross epochs \u2013 from South Africa to Ancient Greece; from present-day America to slavery and its legacies; from UK post-Brexit to the lines laid down by British policy on mothers after the Second World War; from Naples to Syria. Framing the whole project has been the anguish of mothers and the hostility unleashed against them in response to a crisis of historic proportions that has brought to our shores mothers in search of health support to deliver their babies safely, along with thousands of unaccompanied minors whose mothers might never see them, and who might never see their mothers, again. But I have been writing as the daughter of a white, upper-middle-class mother in post-war Britain whose life is far away from the impoverished black mothers in Cape Town, who fall to pieces when they discover that the violence of their daily lives \u2013 the violence they most fear for their children \u2013 has entered their hearts, contaminating the very core of what it means for them to be a mother.\n\nIn Britain in the 1950s, the instruction a mother should impart to her children, or so it seemed to me as a daughter, was to keep everything in order, up to scratch. Be bold \u2013 as daughters we would have the freedoms our mother was denied \u2013 but above all hold everything safely in its proper place (the two expectations somewhat contradicting each other). To Gillian's and my bemusement, my mother often said that what she would like most would be to wrap her daughters in cotton wool and glue us to the wall of her bedroom. It was a prospect whose appeal, needless to say, we failed to grasp. The fact that atrocity lurked beneath the veneer and in the attic, that memory could not be so easily subdued, was something not to be spoken (although the cotton wool image is the giveaway, as if she wanted to muffle the sounds).\n\nBut none of this was absent from our inner worlds. It is only very recently that my stepmother and I have been able to talk about the disturbance my father suffered for the rest of his days, consequent on what he had seen and endured in Thailand. Only in these past years have I understood that one manifestation of his distress, and one of my most troubling symptoms throughout my life, is something that, with no communication whatsoever between us on the topic, he and I shared. I had missed this connection, partly because I had always assumed, as daughters often do, that any suffering of body or mind I had inherited, in fact pretty much everything I inherited, must have come from my mother. Like a friend of mine who, permanently on the lookout for the first sign in herself of her mother's Alzheimer's, was wholly unprepared, when she suffered a stroke, to find herself afflicted with her father's weak and ailing heart.\n\nThe task of a mother, as they say, is to calm the child's fears. But no exhortation to mothers that I have ever read suggests for one moment that her ability to do so might be coloured by fears of her own. Remember North, Colonel Pargiter's grandson, in Virginia Woolf's The Years: 'my boy \u2013 my girl... they were saying. But they're not interested in other people's children, he observed. Only in their own; their own property; their own flesh and blood, which they would protect with the unsheathed claws of the primeval swamp, he thought... how then can we be civilised?' A mother is meant to be as fearless as a lioness. Never mind the brute disregard this implies towards all other children in the world, the children of different class, colour or creed. Nor the unspoken implication that all children are in permanent danger of aggression (a bit of a problem if it is 'civilisation' you think you are talking about).\n\nEven more relevant here is the fact that the image strips the mother of all memory and history, reducing her to an unthinking beast. That this is hardly a fair description of the mental lives of the non-human species of the world is clearly of no concern to North, who therefore sides with the drawing-room refinement he appears to critique. A lioness, it is implied, will instinctively protect her cubs because she has no internal life of her own to grapple with. Push a bit further and you might say that having nothing of her own to grapple with \u2013 being 'all' for her child at the cost of her own inner life \u2013 is the very definition, or at least the unspoken agenda, of being a mother. This, too, has a long history. For early proponents of 'republican motherhood' in the US in the eighteenth century, the nation's stability depended on the civic virtue a mother cultivated in her child, which required her to be free of all 'invidious and rancorous passions'.\n\nIt is, of course, a truism of both feminism and Marxism that the image of stability represented by safe white middle-class homes is a complete myth, resting as such homes do on the exploitation of workers, women and colonies. Just as it is a truism of Freudian thought that the fa\u00e7ade of civilised living \u2013 in nations Freud referred to, with limited sympathy, as 'the great world-dominating nations of white race' and 'our present-day white Christian culture' \u2013 is precarious and phoney in direct proportion to the insistence with which it claims to believe unerringly in itself. 'It goes without saying,' Freud writes in The Future of an Illusion, 'that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.' A simpler way of putting this would be to say there is a violence behind the norm, a violence which it is truly a form of insanity to expect mothers \u2013 on whatever social rung and wherever they find themselves in the world \u2013 to placate. Without question my mother has gifted me with the privilege that her family, refugees from horror, bravely secured for their daughters' sake. But I also know that, against every fibre and bone in her body, she, like my father, has passed on to me a history I sometimes find myself warding off in the night, and which for her part has been too painful, consciously at least, to contemplate. Only once did she tell us of the day \u2013 she must have been about nineteen \u2013 when she found her mother stretched out on her bed, weeping hysterically, crumpled in her hand the telegram reporting the murder of her entire family in Poland.\n\n* * *\n\nIt is often suggested, in the modern Western world, that the new, improved relationship between mothers and their teenage and\/or adult daughters is like that of two especially close girlfriends who share everything: secrets, gossip and clothes (the long-running Netflix series, Gilmore Girls, set in 'storybook' Connecticut, about the relationship of Lorelai Gilmore and Rory, her teenage daughter, would be a prime example). As if all secrets were above board, or commodities to be passed round like a shared gourmet dish. When I started down the path of adopting my daughter, the first question on the form I was asked to fill in was: 'What are your family secrets?' I refused to answer it (just one of several moments that nearly brought the whole process to an abrupt halt). Surely, I suggested, a family secret should be respected as such? You would be amazed, the social worker insisted with barely concealed glee, how much invaluable information we get in response to that question. It had not occurred to her that a potential mother who betrays her family secrets as the price to pay for a child cannot be trusted with anything. The assumption was \u2013 and this endured throughout the whole process \u2013 that minds and hearts are fully open for inspection, that there are no boundaries between what can and cannot be said. This vision of a borderless world was completely contradicted by the obstacles placed in the path of any woman wanting to adopt from overseas, which social services grudgingly accepted while doing everything they could to block and discourage, since it was basically seen as a form of immigration, bringing unwanted future citizens, orphans as they were, to the UK.\n\nWithin months of bringing my daughter back from China \u2013 to say I was ecstatic would be an understatement \u2013 I headed off to Paris to introduce her proudly to some of my oldest, dearest friends, only to be turned back at the airport. I had the adoption papers with me and my baby was now entered in my passport, although she did not yet have a British passport of her own. It had taken more than two years, and an obduracy I had no idea I was capable of, to be accepted as an adopting mother. But this did not stop the border officials announcing they would not let me through as they could not be sure that I was not planning to leave her in France \u2013 to abandon an already abandoned baby \u2013 as an illegal migrant who might in time start claiming housing and work benefits (she was not yet one year old).\n\nA few days later I waited in a queue at the Home Office to secure permission to travel, surrounded by Africans and Asians, would-be fellow travellers all falling outside the Schengen Agreement that allows free movement between the designated countries of Europe. That agreement has been threatened by the present migration crisis, as if even then, and despite the manifestly racist discrimination of Schengen that I had seen with my own eyes, Europe had failed to police its borders fiercely enough (the borders whose policing will come to be at the heart of the 2016 Brexit vote to leave the EU). When my name was finally called, I was ushered to the front of the queue, only to find, sickeningly, that it was because they had got wind of me as a white, British, professional, tax-paying citizen, unlike the Africans and Asians who, as some of them told me, had been hovering for days on end in the hall.\n\nAt the airport, I had wanted to scream at the officials: 'You do not know this baby's history.' But then, I realised, neither \u2013 fully \u2013 did I. Nor would I, ever. It was and still is a crime to abandon a baby in China, even if the practice was precipitated by the government's own one-child policy that, in the absence of proper pension provision, made parents desperate for a boy whose future wife would tend to them in their later years (whereas a married daughter would leave the home). Which means that, with very few exceptions, none of us who adopted from China in the early 1990s would ever be able to uncover the history of our children, other than being able to tell our daughters over time that their biological parents, far from casually abandoning their infant, had taken the utmost care, and indeed placed themselves at risk of arrest, by leaving her in a public place where she would immediately be found. But, for the most part, my daughter does not know \u2013 she has accepted that she cannot know \u2013 the story of her own past, although somewhere she must surely be carrying it within her.\n\nOur two founding stories could not be more different, even if a tale of migration shadows both. Yet what each of us is faced with \u2013 what any mother, any child, is faced with \u2013 is a past that will not yield its secrets willingly or without a struggle, if at all. Mothers and daughters cannot tell each other everything, because they do not know \u2013 nobody knows \u2013 everything about themselves: not about their own lives, or the secrets of their families, or that part of history weighing on their shoulders that is too hard to communicate. All of which is simply another way of saying that one of the most unrealistic demands made of mothers is that they should be so inhumanly confident and sure of themselves.\n\nConversations between a mother and child can be as rich as they are unforetold. But the image of a mother and daughter of a certain class giggling over their latest purchases, even, apparently, over the details of their sex lives, is for me a self-deception, complicit with the false cheer, the exhortation to be happy, through which a difficult world buries its true nature. As if mother and daughter alike were meant to behave as a compliant child, the child who, in Winnicott's account, is too scared to be properly ruthless and dare not make proper use of her own mother. Or to put it another way, confidence is a gift, but the version of confidence a mother is mostly asked to instil in her children in the consumer-driven societies of the Western world is based on a pack of lies.\n\n* * *\n\nAmong its other problems, the exhortation to be happy is, literally, a killjoy. Joy is not always possible. Like all forms of intimacy, it relies on at least a modicum of freedom. In relation to mothers, joy \u2013 as in 'the joys of motherhood' \u2013 can be a corrupt term. Buchi Emecheta's ironically named novel The Joys of Motherhood (1979) opens with a mother whose tribulations in a polygamous Nigerian tribal community have driven her to attempt suicide. But if joy is a privilege, it is also something for which you cannot prepare yourself, as though it were a garment that you first try on for size; unlike happiness, which tends to present itself as a habit of mind, devoutly to be wished, a prize possession to be sought and gained, an achievement or resting place.\n\nNone of this comes near the radical disorientation of joy, certainly nowhere near the experience I have had as a mother. Resting in the afternoon while my baby was asleep, in the days after bringing her home, I would suddenly jolt awake at the sensation that she was lying on top of me, only to realise that she was in fact inside me \u2013 a close-on crazy thought of overwhelming delight \u2013 whereupon I would drift back into sleep. I was going through an inverse pregnancy, moving backwards in time, letting her in, or rather, it felt, her claiming her place as she crawled inside my body and into my blood-stream. Had anyone told me in advance that this was an experience common to adopting mothers \u2013 not that I had heard of it before or indeed have I since \u2013 I have no doubt I would have lain awake waiting, fruitlessly, for it to happen.\n\nI was being turned inside out. This, I suggest, is the chief property of joy, certainly of maternal joy, which shatters the carapace of selfhood. Nor is it restricted to mothering alone. I have a friend who, with great reluctance, sent packing her passionate married lover of several years because, in the end, she could not bear him heading off after lovemaking of such intensity that she felt her body was opening to the winds, each and every nerve raw to the elements, something she had not known since giving birth to her two children more than ten years ago. And before being shocked at this analogy, we might remember the erotic charge of breastfeeding as one of the best-kept secrets of mothering (and Freud's suggestion that the prototype for all later sexual pleasure was the sated baby at the mother's breast).\n\n'The child brings joy,' writes Simone de Beauvoir, 'only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without reversion to herself, seeks to go beyond her own experience.' Joy is not, as we have seen, a word most readily associated with the writing of de Beauvoir, certainly not in relation to motherhood. But here, in one of its rare appearances, it is clearly describing a form of dispossession. Whether in sexual passion, giving birth or being a mother, joy is fleeting, as they say, not so much because it doesn't last, as because you can only experience it by letting go of something else. This is not, however, some idea of maternal sacrifice \u2013 the last thing de Beauvoir would ever promote or advocate. Remember that, in her eyes, it was a fatal mistake for a mother to believe she must do, and be, 'all' for her child (the flip side of this delusion is thinking you own your child, which turns a mother into a man asserting his property rights). It was, after all, the judgement of Solomon that the true mother was the one who would release her baby to a false claimant rather than tear the baby in two \u2013 an act that, one might argue, only a bereaved mother who had already lost her child would, in a fit of jealous rage, insanely contemplate.\n\nIn the hands of de Beauvoir, I suggested, motherhood became the place where a philosophy in thrall to self-mastery reached its limits and started to disintegrate. In this de Beauvoir is not far from Elena Ferrante, whose vision of motherhood, out of which for her all writing is born, dissolves the world's borders. As a child, Ferrante had watched her mother fall to pieces physically and mentally under the pressures of being a wife and mother. Seizing on such moments, Ferrante transmutes them into an erotic, cosmic dreamscape: 'a swarm of bees approaching above the motionless treetops; the sudden eddy in a slow body of water... a bright-coloured explosion of sounds... of butterflies with sonorous wings.' But, we should recall, it was only by plunging into a world that has lost all contour and plays havoc with decency \u2013 a world to which Ferrante's mothers have their own special access \u2013 that she was able to produce such moments of ecstasy in her writing.\n\nTo all of these questions of boundaries and possession adoption gives its own unique hue. An adopting mother knows somewhere deep down that she does not own her child, something I have always seen as a caution, a truth and a gift. Not everyone, of course, is of the same view. 'How could you do it?' one friend asked me as he clutched his newborn to his chest. 'I wanted,' he admitted with just a touch of embarrassment, 'to see my DNA grow and spread, my biological heritage and all that.' 'But to nurture another's baby is to be part of the DNA of the whole world,' I retorted, with perhaps an unfortunate tinge of self-righteousness. 'My daughter and I belong as much to the biology and growing of the earth as you.' The question, as we have seen so many times, is who you feel linked to and where you draw the line. During the adoption process we had to engage in role play, at one point being asked to imagine ourselves as the biological mother of our future baby. One man \u2013 older, with a very young wife \u2013 refused. 'What has she got to do with us?' he asked. 'After all, she left her baby. Why should I think or care about her?' From where we were in the process, I knew that the baby who would come to be my daughter was most likely about to be born, to a mother who would leave her through no fault of her own. I also knew that, faced with the abandonment of a baby girl, as a feminist I should fume and fret and rage. 'I think about her every day,' I replied. Even though her act would allow me \u2013 joyously \u2013 to become the mother I had always wanted to be, as I spoke all I felt was sorrow.\n\n* * *\n\nTo finish with two moments taken from opposite ends of the earth.\n\nIn the early 1990s, at the Kaiser Medical Center, Los Angeles, Susan Stryker, trans activist and writer, held her pregnant lover between her spread legs as she gave birth, gripping Stryker so hard she left bruises on her thigh. As she felt a child move out of another woman's body, 'a jumble of dark unsolicited feelings' emerged 'wordlessly from some back corner' of her mind. The medical staff were clueless as to how the various members of this 'little tribe' all related to each other: mother, biological father, their personal midwife, the mother's sister, Stryker and her son from an earlier heterosexual \u2013 sort of \u2013 marriage. 'Step by increasingly intimate step,' Stryker found herself participating in the ritual of transforming consciousness that heralded this new birth, 'a profound opening, as psychic as it is corporeal'. When she later returned to her home, she burst open \u2013 opening is key \u2013 'like a wet paper bag', spilling the 'emotional contents of my life through the hands I cupped like a sieve over my face'. It is agony, not least because of the mourning it provokes for the earlier marriage that had produced her son. But it is also 'simple joy bubbling out, wave after wave', as well as a moment of total dispossession, not unlike others we have seen, as she prepares 'to let go of whatever was deepest within'.\n\nIt is an extraordinary piece of writing, a tribute to the moment of giving birth as an experience into which anyone can enter, can lose and find themselves. Perhaps \u2013 although Stryker herself does not quite say this \u2013 it is only the radical disorientation of transgender that makes such an exuberant and painful crossing possible. Far from the air-brushed, sanitised image of mothering we have so often seen, and miles from the world of entrenched borders, which is where this book started, Stryker suggests that, in relation to this founding act of motherhood, what matters is how close you can get. Another way of putting this is that in an ideal world, everyone, whatever the impulses driving them hard and fast in the opposite direction, would be capable of thinking of themselves as mothers.\n\nSindiwe Magona's novel Mother to Mother (1998) offers a no less unprecedented crossing of paths in the name of mothers, though it belongs to a different world. We last encountered Magona through her story of the mother who, driven from her home in search of work under apartheid, had to abandon her babies. A few years later, in 1993, with the end of apartheid barely a year away, the young white American campaigner and human rights activist Amy Biehl was killed in the township of Gugulethu, to the cry of 'One settler, one bullet!' Her death sent shock waves through the community, indeed throughout the country as a whole, although it was impossible not to register that it was her whiteness that made her killing \u2013 unlike the untold deaths of blacks across the nation \u2013 such an outrage. Gugulethu was Magona's township. Mother to Mother, her acclaimed first novel, is imagined from the point of view of the mother of the boy who was indicted for the killing, and addresses itself to the mother of Amy Biehl. Far from the domestic cosiness ironically coded in the title (From Mother to Mother: Recipes from a Family Kitchen is the title of a cookbook published in the US in 2017), Magona is asking a question as if the future of her nation, and not just her nation, depended on it: how could two such different mothers possibly listen, or have anything to say, to each other?\n\nI end with this book because it condenses so many of the themes that have been my focus here. It places motherhood firmly in the context of a material life, scarred with a history of racial inequality and injustice (the forced removal of the Cape blacks to Gugulethu in 1958 forms the historical background to the novel). It gives a mother the right to her own memories and the complexity of her inner mind, even when that includes the unbearable thought that, as well as loving, she has always hated her son. First, because of the agonies of his birth \u2013 'pain with the savageness of the jaws of a shark' \u2013 which then, only a few moments later, transmutes into the most intense love and joy: 'all infusing light-headedness... Joy, pure and simple.' And then in response to the loss of her own educational ambitions, ambitions that she had passionately nurtured until she became a wife and mother, when \u2013 abandoned by the father of her child \u2013 they turned to dust. From the moment of his conception, her son, Mxolisi, is sheer upheaval: 'his implanting himself inside me; unreasonably and totally destroying the me I was'. (At moments like these, the novel reads like an updated, politically and racially inflected version of Winnicott's eighteen reasons a mother has to hate her baby.)\n\nTracing the inhumanity of the apartheid regime, she gives her son's violent act \u2013 which she abhors \u2013 the dignity of a history. But she also tracks his troubled soul, thereby holding both history and his own uniquely personal trajectory to account in one and the same breath (as if to say: it is the responsibility of an unjust world, it is also mine). Her son was the 'sharpened arrow of the wrath of his race', but he was also a boy who as a child had once betrayed his dearest friends during a police raid on their homes, and who then went mute for more than two years after he stood there watching as the two boys were dragged out and shot.\n\nThis mother is also a dissenter, deeply attuned to the political dilemmas of her life. You could say that, even if it is the last thing she would have wished for, the public nature of her life as a mother is what the killing brings home to her. She is fierce in her critique of the township necklacing of those believed to be collaborators with the apartheid regime; she rejects the cry that all whites are dogs. And her body, the maternal body we have so often seen either degraded or refined out of existence in the popular imagination, is made palpable on the page, when she is giving birth, and then again \u2013 no less powerfully \u2013 when, walking into her shack, it dawns on her that her son is the killer: 'Slowly, carefully, my body gone all liquid, I watched myself pour it onto the chair.' Remember Sethe, in Toni Morrison's Beloved, running round the side of the house to empty her bladder when she first recognises the ghost of the baby daughter she had murdered, rather than allow her to be enslaved. Remember, again, the mother from Magona's earlier story, expressing her breast milk onto the track. And Stryker, worlds apart, cupping her hands like a sieve over her face.\n\nThroughout all this, the narrator maintains the conversation between herself and the mother of Amy Biehl. The novel is that conversation:\n\nYour daughter. The imperfect atonement of her race.\n\nMy son. The perfect host of the demons of his.\n\nHer task as a mother is to call up the legacy of her child, and \u2013 across barriers human and inhuman \u2013 the legacy of the dead child whose mother is facing her. Near the end of the novel, she addresses her interlocutor even more directly: 'But now, my Sister-Mother, do I help him hide? Deliver him to the police? Get him a lawyer? Will that mean I do not feel your sorrow for your slain daughter? Am I your enemy? Are you mine? What wrong have I done you... or you me?'\n\nThere are, of course, no simple answers to these questions. There is no false reconciliation. This is not a mother tasked with historical and political redemption. But merely by asking them, Magona is giving voice to a problem that resonates throughout this book. How to get such stories into the mainstream version of what it means to be a mother, and into the narrative of what mothers might be for each other? What would happen, finally if, instead of asking mothers to appease the wrongs of history and the heart, and then punishing them when they inevitably fail, we listen to what they have to say \u2013 from deep within their bodies and minds \u2013 about both? Perhaps it would indeed bring the world to an end as we know it, but I suspect, certainly for mothers, this would be no bad thing.\nCODA\n\nWhen I was preparing to adopt my daughter, I would try to seduce my social worker with obscenely large red cherries, which would sit in their bowl, I liked to think, as a flagrant riposte to and distraction from her steely, relentless inquisition (the adoption process raises the idea of a fault-finding mission to a new height). I remember thinking later that the two things the whole process could never prepare you for, and which made it as useless as it was invasive, were first, the worry \u2013 the OMG of every scratch and fall, at once absurd and wholly in tune with the fragility of life \u2013 and second, the joy. In the famous story, Tiresias is struck blind by Hera, in some versions by Athena, for having revealed that a woman's sexual pleasure is greater than a man's. As I was thinking about motherhood in our time and reading all the outpourings on the subject, past and present, that story came to mind. We need a version for mothers, one in which the acute pleasure of being a mother, without any need for denial of everything else talked about here, would be neither a guilty secret, nor something enviously co-opted by bullies \u2013 'You will be happy!' Instead, it could be left to get on quietly with its work of making the experience of motherhood more than worth it.\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nWhen the London Review of Books invited me to write a piece on mothers, none of us, least of all me, had any notion of where it might lead. This book is the 'offspring' of the article 'Mothers' published in the LRB on 19 June 2014 (36:12). So my first thanks go to Mary-Kay Wilmers for the idea and to Paul Myerscough for his, as always, scrupulous editing. Thanks to Mitzi Angel at Faber and Eric Chinski at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for persuading me that this topic could, or should, be a book, for their encouragement, and to Mitzi especially for her editorial attention and care. I am fortunate to have Tracy Bohan as agent, and much appreciate her unfailing enthusiasm, perception and kindness.\n\nThe book has been written since I had the privilege of joining the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in 2015. I am indebted to Esther Leslie and Madisson Brown for their solidarity and support. My visits to the Institute for Social Justice at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney have also provided a stimulating intellectual backdrop to the book.\n\nCora Kaplan, Sally Alexander, Alison Rose and Elizabeth Karlsen have read all or part of the manuscript, each with their customary fine eye and insight. I am grateful to Edith Hall and to Esther Eidinow for their comments on chapter 2. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. Mia Rose made some crucial corrections to the final chapter, key moments of which she also inspired.\n\nA number of friends and acquaintances provided one or more of the anecdotes scattered throughout the book, where they remain unnamed. In the hope that it will not lead to a flurry of detective activity, it seems right to name them here (in no particular order, as they say): Lisa Appignanesi, Selma Dabbagh, Livia Griffiths, Katie Fleming, Monique Plaza, Lawrence Jacobsen, Braham Murray. One other gave me much in body and spirit, for which I am thankful. Gillian Rose is more present in this book than I could have imagined when I started writing it.\n\nThe book is dedicated to my mother, Lynn Rose, and my stepmother, Jeanette Stone, with whom it all, or so much of it, began.\n\nLondon, July 2017\nNOTES\n\nSOCIAL PUNISHMENT: NOW\n\n  1.  Amelia Gentleman, 'Fear of bills and Home Office keeping pregnant migrants away from NHS', _Guardian_ , 20 March 2017.\n\n  2.  Amelia Gentleman, Lisa O'Carroll, 'Home Office stops transfer of Calais child refugees to UK', _Guardian_ , 10 December 2016; Diane Taylor, 'UK turns back hundreds of refugees', _Guardian_ , 17 December 2017; Alan Travis, 'PM accused of closing doors on child refugees', _Guardian_ , 9 February 2017.\n\n  3.  Bernard Cazeneuve, 'The UK must fulfil its moral duty to Calais's unaccompanied children', _Guardian_ , 17 October 2016.\n\n  4.  Lisa O'Carroll, 'Teenagers' stories', _Guardian_ , 28 October 2016.\n\n  5.  Personal communication, Sue Clayton, award-winning independent documentary film-maker, whose crowd-funded film, _Calais Children: A Case to Answer_ , was released in June 2017 (footage from the film was aired on ITV and _Channel 4 News_ ).\n\n  6.  Diane Taylor, 'Samir, 17, thought he was finally about to reach the UK. Now he's dead', _Guardian_ , 19 January 2017.\n\n  7.  Bertolt Brecht, 'Appendix A: Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties', in _Galileo_ , trans. Charles Laughton (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 139.\n\n  8.  Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn, _The Testament of Mary_ (London: Viking, 2012), p. 102.\n\n  9.  Judith Shklar, _The Faces of Injustice_ (New Haven: Yale, 1994), chapter 2, 'Misfortune and Injustice'.\n\n  10.  All quotes from Gillian Slovo with Nicolas Kent, _Another World: Losing our Children to Islamic State_ (London: Oberon, 2016).\n\n  11.  Angela McRobbie, 'Feminism, the Family and the New \"Mediated\" Maternalism', _New Formations_ (special issue, 'Neoliberal Culture'), 80\/81, 2013; 'Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times', _Australian Feminist Studies_ , 30:83, 2015.\n\n  12.  Sandra Laville, 'Revealed: the secret abuse of women in the family courts', _Guardian_ , 23 December 2016.\n\n  13.  Denis Campbell, 'Female doctors may be forced to quit over new contract, experts say', _Guardian_ , 1 April 2016.\n\n  14.  Nina Gill, 'The new junior doctors' contract is blatantly sexist \u2013 so why doesn't Jeremy Hunt care?' _Daily Telegraph_ , 4 April 2016.\n\n  15.  Alexandra Topping, 'Maternity leave discrimination means 54,000 women lose their jobs each year', _Guardian_ , 24 July 2015.\n\n  16.  Karen McVeigh, 'MPs urge action to fight \"shocking\" bias against mothers', _Guardian_ , 31 August 2016.\n\n  17.  Joeli Brearley and Greg Clark MP: 'Give new and expectant mothers six months to pursue discrimination claims', Change.org, 4 March 2017.\n\n  18.  Press Association, 'New mothers \"facing increasing workplace discrimination\"', _Guardian_ , 2 May 2016.\n\n  19.  Karen McVeigh, 'MPs urge action'; Rowena Mason, 'Review of law to protect pregnant women's jobs', _Guardian_ , 26 January 2017.\n\n  20.  Grace Chang, 'Undocumented Latinas: The New \"Employable\" Mothers', in _Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency_ , ed. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang and Linda Rennie Forcey (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 273.\n\n  21.  Bryce Covert, 'Woman allegedly fired for being pregnant after boss told her \"pregnancy is not part of the uniform\"', _Think Progress_ , 4 May 2016, <https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/woman-allegedly-fired-for-being-pregnant-after-boss-told-her-pregnancy-is-not-part-of-the-uniform-4d11d29a2c24#.gaajkhtxn>.\n\n  22.  <http:\/\/www.maternityaction.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/WomenandEqualitiesCommInquiryEv2016.pdf>.\n\n  23.  Sarah Boseley, 'British maternity pay is among worst in Europe', _Guardian_ , 24 March 2017.\n\n  24.  T. J. Matthews, Marian F. MacDorman and Marie E. Thomas, 'Infant mortality statistics from the 2013 period: linked birth\/infant data set', _National Vital Statistics Reports_ , 64:9, 6 August 2015.\n\n  25.  Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries, cited in Hattie Garlick, 'Labour of love', _Guardian_ magazine, 17 December 2016.\n\n  26.  John Donne, 'Death's Duell', in _The Sermons of John Donne_ , ed. Theodore Gill (New York: Meridian, 1958), p. 265, cited in Janet Adelman, _Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in_ _Shakespeare's_ _Plays,_ Hamlet _to_ The Tempest (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 6.\n\n  27.  Nicholas Kristoff, 'If Americans Love Moms, Why Do We Let Them Die?' _New York Times_ , 29 July 2017. See also Nina Martin, Emma Cillekens and Alessandra Freitas, ProPublica, 17 July 2017. <https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/lost-mothers-maternal-health-died-childbirth-pregnancy>. Thanks to Eric Chinski for drawing my attention to Kristoff's article.\n\n  28.  Ibid.\n\n  29.  Adrienne Rich, _Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and_ _Institution_ (New York: Norton 1976, 1995), p. 11 (emphasis original).\n\n  30.  Ben Morgan, 'Netmums founder tells advertisers: Stop peddling the myth of the perfect mother,' _Evening Standard_ , 11 September 2017.\n\n  31.  Kirsten Andersen, 'The number of US children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled in 50 years: Census data', _LifeSite News_ , 4 January 2013, <https:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/news\/the-number-of-children-living-in-single-parent-homes-has-nearly-doubled-in>.\n\n  32.  Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, _Sinners? Scroungers? Saints?: Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England_ (Oxford: OUP, 2012), p. 4.\n\n  33.  Michelle Harrison, cited in Diana Ginn, 'The Supreme Court of Canada and What It Means to Be \"Of Woman Born\"', in _From_ _Motherhood_ _to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's_ Of Woman Born, ed. Andrea O'Reilly (Albany, NY SUNY Press, 2004), p. 36.\n\n  34.  Polly Toynbee, 'Our future is being stolen. Be brave and take it back', _Guardian_ , 20 December 2016.\n\n  35.  Thane and Evans, p. 5; Kirsten Andersen.\n\n  36.  Pat Thane, 'Happy Families? History and Family Policy', British Academy Policy Centre, 2010.\n\n  37.  Harriet Sherwood, 'Catholic church apologises for role in \"forced adoptions\" over 30-year period', _Guardian_ , 3 November 2016.\n\n  38.  Patricia Hill Collins, 'Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood', in Glenn, Chang and Forcey.\n\n  39.  Chang, 'Undocumented Latinas'.\n\n  40.  Thane and Evans, pp. 16\u201317.\n\n  41.  Ibid., p. 69.\n\n  42.  Ibid.\n\n  43.  Ibid., p. 77.\n\n  44.  Gail Lewis, 'Birthing Racial Difference: Conversations with My Mother and Others', _Studies in the Maternal_ , 1:1, 2009, pp. 1\u201321.\n\n  45.  Thane and Evans, p. 3.\n\n  46.  Elisabeth Badinter, _The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood_ _Undermines_ _the Status of Women_ , trans. Adriana Hunter (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), p. 150.\n\n  47.  Laurie Penny, 'Women shouldn't apologise for the pitter-patter of tiny carbon footprints', _Guardian_ , 28 July 2017.\n\nSOCIAL PUNISHMENT: THEN\n\n  1.  Angeliki Tzanetou, 'Citizen-Mothers on the Tragic Stage', in _Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greek and Rome_ , ed. Lauren Hackworth Petersen and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012); Paul Cartledge, '\"Deep Plays\": Theatre as Process in Greek Civic Life', in _The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy_ , ed. P. E. Easterling (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).\n\n  2.  Cynthia Patterson, 'Citizenship and Gender in the Ancient World', in _Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders and Gender_ , ed. Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik (New York University Press, 2009), p. 55.\n\n  3.  Patterson, 'Citizenship and Gender', p. 60.\n\n  4.  Barbara Goff, _Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece_ (Oakland: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 2\u20135.\n\n  5.  Cynthia Patterson, 'Hai Attikai: The Other Athenians', in _Rescuing Creusa: New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity_ , ed. Marilyn Skinner, special issue of _Helios_ , 13:2, 1986, p. 61.\n\n  6.  Goff, p. 29, p. 49, p. 61.\n\n  7.  Rachel Cusk, _A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother_ (London: Fourth Estate, 2001), p. 131.\n\n  8.  Melissa Benn, _Madonna and Child: Towards a New Politics of_ _Motherhood_ (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), p. 19.\n\n  9.  Linda Colley, _Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707\u20131837_ , 4th edn (New Haven: Yale, 2009), p. 267, cited in Shaul Bar-Haim, _The_ _Maternalizing_ _Movement: Psychoanalysis, Motherhood and the British Welfare State c. 1920\u20131950_ , unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck 2015, p. 20.\n\n  10.  Patterson, 'Citizenship and Gender', p. 52.\n\n  11.  Edith Hall, _Introducing the Ancient Greeks_ (Oxford: Bodley Head, 2015), p. 7.\n\n  12.  Goff, p. 5.\n\n  13.  Hall, p. 7. Also, D. Harvey, 'Women in Thucydides', _Arethusa_ 18 (1985), pp. 67\u201390.\n\n  14.  Ibid.\n\n  15.  Mary Beard, _The Parthenon_ (London: Profile, 2010), p. 43; Esther Eidinow, _Envy, Poison, and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens_ (Oxford: OUP, 2016), p. 13.\n\n  16.  Hackworth Petersen and Salzman-Mitchell, p. 12.\n\n  17.  Euripides, _The Suppliant Women_ , _Euripides II_ , ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), ll. 293\u201394, p. 151.\n\n  18.  Ibid., ll. 405\u20139, p. 157.\n\n  19.  Nadia Latif and Leila Latif, 'We had to change pain to purpose', interviews with the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, _Guardian_ , 22 November 2016.\n\n  20.  Euripides, _The Suppliant Women_ , ll. 767\u201368.\n\n  21.  Hannah Arendt, _The Human Condition_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 27.\n\n  22.  _New Society_ , cited in Mary-Kay Wilmers, 'Views', _Listener_ , May 1972; according to the _Modern Families Index_ , 2017, fathers who choose to spend more time with their families are now suffering a 'fatherhood penalty' in relation to their careers. Cited in Jamie Doward, 'It used to be a feminist cause \u2013 but now both men and women struggle to thrive at work and still find time for their families.' Jamie Doward, '\"Fatherhood penalty\" now a risk for men, warns charity,' _Observer_ , 15 January 2017.\n\n  23.  Kathleen Connors, letter to the _London Review of Books_ , 36:14, 17 July 2014.\n\n  24.  Euripides, _The Suppliant Women_ , ll. 825\u201326.\n\n  25.  Ibid., l. 824.\n\n  26.  Hall, p. 170.\n\n  27.  Nicoletta Gullace, _The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women and the Regeneration of British Citizenship During the Great War_ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 55\u201359, cited in Bar-Haim, _The Maternalizing Movement_ , p. 21.\n\n  28.  Euripides, _Medea_ , trans. Oliver Taplin, _Euripides I_ , ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), ll. 250\u201353, 1091\u20131116.\n\n  29.  Ibid., ll. 233\u201334, 277\u201378, 231.\n\n  30.  All quotes from Nicole Loraux, 'Le Lit, la guerre', _L'Homme_ , 21:1, January\u2013March 1981.\n\n  31.  Janet Adelman, _Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays,_ Hamlet _to_ The Tempest (London: Routledge, 1992).\n\n  32.  Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_ , Arden Shakespeare edn (London: Methuen, 1976), Act 1, Sc iii, ll. 40ff.\n\n  33.  Margaret L. Woodhull, 'Imperial Mothers and Monuments in Rome', in Petersen and Salzman-Mitchell.\n\n  34.  Philip Brockbank, 'Introduction', in _Coriolanus_ , p. 42.\n\n  35.  Ibid., Act 1, Sc iii, ll. 2\u20134.\n\n  36.  Ibid., Act 1, Sc iii, ll. 21\u201325.\n\n  37.  Ibid., Act 5, Sc iii, l. 103.\n\n  38.  Adrienne Rich, _Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and_ _Institution_ (New York: Norton 1976, 1995), p. 279.\n\n  39.  Sarah Boseley, Ruth Maclean and Liz Ford, 'How one of Trump's first acts signed death warrants for women all round the world', _Guardian_ , 21 July 2017.\n\n  40.  Karen McVeigh, 'Reversal of abortion funding puts $9bn health at risk \u2013 campaigners', _Guardian_ , 25 January 2017.\n\n  41.  All quotes from Diana Ginn, 'The Supreme Court of Canada and What It Means to Be \"Of Woman Born\"', in _From Motherhood to_ _Mothering_ _: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's_ Of Woman Born, ed. Andrea O'Reilly (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), p. 29.\n\n  42.  _Dobson v. Dobson_ , cited Ginn, p. 33.\n\n  43.  Tess Cosslett, _Women Writing Childbirth: Modern Discourses of Motherhood_ (Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 119, cited in Ginn, p. 38.\n\n  44.  _Dobson v. Dobson_ , cited Ginn, p. 39\n\n  45.  Jacques Guillimeau, _The Nursing of Children, affixed to_ _Childbirth, or the Happy Delivery of Women_ (London: printed by Anne Griffin, for Joyce Norton and Richard Whitaker, 1635), cited in Adelman, p. 6.\n\n  46.  Ibid., Preface 1.i.2; also Audrey Eccles, _Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England_ (Kent, Ohio: Kent University Press, 1982), pp. 51\u20132, cited in Adelman, p. 7.\n\n  47.  Aeschylus, _The Oresteian Trilogy_ , trans. Philip Vellacott (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), Part III, _Eumenides_ , ll. 656\u201361 (emphasis mine)\n\n  48.  Ibid., ll. 109\u201310.\n\n  49.  Ibid., ll. 605\u20137.\n\n  50.  Sophocles, _Electra_ , _II_ , ll. 532\u201333, cited in Rachel Bowlby, _Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities_ (Oxford: OUP, 2007), p. 211.\n\n  51.  My thanks to Edith Hall for this information.\n\n  52.  Robert Icke, adaptation of Sophocles' _Oresteia_ (London: Oberon, 2015), p. 119.\n\n  53.  Ibid., p. 60.\n\n  54.  Ibid., p. 118.\n\n  55.  See Amber Jacobs, _On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), for the fullest reckoning with this story and its implications.\n\n  56.  Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_ , ll. 117\u201320.\n\n  57.  Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn, _House of Names_ (London: Viking, 2017).\n\n  58.  Andr\u00e9 Green, _Un \u0152il en trop: Le Complexe d'\u0152dipe dans la trag\u00e9die_ (Paris: Minuit, 1969), trans. p. 80 cited in Jacobs.\n\n  59.  Rachel Bowlby, _A Child of One's Own: Parental Stories_ (Oxford: OUP, 2013), p. 114.\n\n  60.  Elena Ferrante, citing Elsa Morante, 'Mothers' Dressmakers', in _Frantumaglia_ _: A Writer's Journey_ (New York: Europa, 2016), p. 17.\n\n  61.  _Hamlet_ , First Quarto, 1603, 11, 53\u201354.\n\n  62.  _Hamlet_ , First Folio, 1623, 3. iv. 15\u201316.\n\n  63.  Ibid., 3. iv. 166.\n\n  64.  Icke, p. 117.\n\n  65.  Genevieve Lively, 'Mater Amoris: Mothers and Lovers in Augustan Rome', in Hackworth Petersen and Salzman-Mitchell, p. 197.\n\n  66.  Patricia Salzman-Mitchell, 'Tenderness or Taboo: Images of Breast-Feeding Mothers in Greek and Latin Literature', in Hackworth Petersen and Salzman-Mitchell, pp. 150\u201351.\n\n  67.  Martin Bernal, _Black Athena: The_ _Afroasiatic Roots of Classical_ _Civilisation_ _, Volume I,_ _The Fabrication of Ancient Greece_ (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987).\n\n  68.  Rhiannon Stephens, _A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700\u20131900_ (Cambridge: CUP, 2013).\n\n  69.  Nicole Loraux, _Mothers in Mourning_ , trans. Corinne Pache (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 51.\n\n  70.  Euripides, _Medea_ , Introduction, p. 70.\n\n  71.  Ibid., ll. 1366, 1368\u201369, p. 130.\n\n  72.  Ibid., ll. 1060\u201362, p. 117.\n\n  73.  V\u00e9ronique Olmi, _Bord de mer\/Beside the Sea_ , trans. Adriana Hunter (London: Peirene, 2010), p. 68.\n\n  74.  Margaret Reynolds, 'Performing Medea: or, Why Is Medea a Woman?', in _Medea in Performance, 1500\u20132000,_ ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Oliver Taplin (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), p. 139, p. 140.\n\n  75.  Christa Wolf, _Medea_ : _A Modern Retelling_ , trans. John Cullen (London: Virago, 1998), p. 7.\n\n  76.  Ibid., pp. 111\u201313.\n\n  77.  Ibid., p. 80.\n\n  78.  Ibid.\n\n  79.  Rich, p. 270.\n\n  80.  W. G. Sebald, _On the Natural History of Destruction_ , trans. Anthea Bell (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003), p. 13.\n\n  81.  Wolf, pp. 1\u20132.\n\nPSYCHIC BLINDNESS: LOVING\n\n  1.  Roald Dahl, _Matilda_ (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988; Puffin, 2013), p. 4.\n\n  2.  Adrienne Rich, _Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and_ _Institution_ (New York: Norton 1986, 1995), p. xxxiii.\n\n  3.  Hannah Arendt, _The Origins of Totalitarianism_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 473.\n\n  4.  Ibid.\n\n  5.  Virginia Woolf, _The Years_ , 1937 (Oxford: OUP, 1992), p. 359 (emphasis mine).\n\n  6.  Rachel Cusk, _A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother_ (London: Fourth Estate, 2001), p. 8.\n\n  7.  Ibid., p. 137.\n\n  8.  Rich, p. xxiv.\n\n  9.  Mary-Kay Wilmers, 'Views', _Listener_ , May 1972.\n\n  10.  Denise Riley, _War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother_ (London: Virago, 1983).\n\n  11.  Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach, _Understanding Women: A_ _Feminist_ _Psychoanalytic Approach_ (London: Penguin, 1985); Rozsika Parker, _Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence_ (London: Virago, 1995); and Lisa Baraitser, _Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption_ (London: Routledge, 2009). Baraitser is also co-founder of MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics), a network based in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck University of London, which publishes the journal _Studies in the Maternal_.\n\n  12.  Michel Onfray, _Th\u00e9orie du corps amoureux_ (Paris: LGF, 2007), p. 219\u201320, cited in Elisabeth Badinter, _The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women_ , trans. Adriana Hunter (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), p. 125.\n\n  13.  Badinter, p. 69.\n\n  14.  Ibid., pp. 67\u201384.\n\n  15.  Ibid., p. 73.\n\n  16.  Haroon Siddique, 'Less than half of women breastfeed after two months', _Guardian_ , 23 March 2017.\n\n  17.  Hadley Freeman, 'Never let me go', _Guardian_ magazine, 30 July 2016.\n\n  18.  Jake Dypka and Hollie McNish, 'Embarrassed', Channel 4, Random Acts, <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=S6nHrqIFTj8>. In 2017, McNish won the Ted Hughes Award. McNish: 'I always attracted mums and midwives, Now I get poetry lovers.' _Guardian_ , 16 June 2017. See also Rachel Epp Buller, 'Performing the Breastfeeding Body: Lactivism and Art Intervention', _Studies in the Maternal_ , 8:2, 2016, p. 14.\n\n  19.  Letters, _London Review of Books_ , 36:14, 17 July 2014.\n\n  20.  Helene Deutsch, 'The Psychology of Woman in Relation to the Functions of Reproduction', 1925, in Robert Fliess, _The Psychoanalytic Reader_ (New York: International Universities Press, 1969).\n\n  21.  Wilmers, 'Views'.\n\n  22.  Courtney Love, 'Plump', 'Softest, Softest', 'I Think That I Would Die'. Thanks to Barry Schwabsky for alerting me to these lyrics.\n\n  23.  _Toni Morrison_ , Icon Critical Guides, ed. Carl Plasa (Cambridge, MA: Icon Books, 1998), p. 36.\n\n  24.  Toni Morrison, _Beloved_ (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987), p. 51.\n\n  25.  Ibid., p. 209.\n\n  26.  See also Saidiya Hartman, _Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route_ (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).\n\n  27.  Stephanie J. Shaw, 'Mothering under Slavery in the Antebellum South', in _Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency_ , ed. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang and Linda Rennie Forcey (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 249.\n\n  28.  Patricia Hill Collins, 'The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and Black Mother\u2013Daughter Relationships', in _Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers and Daughters_ (New York: Beacon Press, 1991), p. 53.\n\n  29.  Ibid., p. 8.\n\n  30.  Sindiwe Magona, _Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night_ (Claremont, South Africa: David Philip, 1991), p. 5.\n\n  31.  Ibid., p. 6.\n\n  32.  Ibid., p. 7.\n\n  33.  Ibid., p. 16.\n\n  34.  Hermione Lee, _Edith Wharton_ (London: Chatto & Windus, 2007).\n\n  35.  Edith Wharton, _The Mother's Recompense_ , 1925 (Teddington: Wildhern Press, 2008), p. 33.\n\n  36.  Ibid., p. 7.\n\n  37.  Ibid., p. 9.\n\n  38.  Ibid., p. 30.\n\n  39.  Cited in Lee, p. 627.\n\n  40.  Lee, p. 330.\n\n  41.  Wharton, p. 34.\n\n  42.  Ibid., p. 66.\n\n  43.  Rich, p. 252.\n\n  44.  Wharton, pp. 101\u20132.\n\n  45.  Ibid., p. 46.\n\n  46.  Lee, p. 630.\n\n  47.  Ibid., p. 110, p. 127.\n\n  48.  Ibid., p. 110.\n\n  49.  Ibid., p. 110, p. 120.\n\n  50.  Ibid., p. 123, p. 83.\n\n  51.  Ibid., p. 97.\n\n  52.  Ibid., p. 77.\n\n  53.  Ibid., p. 131.\n\n  54.  Ariel Leve, _An Abbreviated Life_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 53.\n\n  55.  Ibid., p. 76.\n\n  56.  Ibid., p. 162.\n\n  57.  Ibid., pp. 133\u20134.\n\nPSYCHIC BLINDNESS: HATING\n\n  1.  Bruno Bettelheim, cited in Elisabeth Badinter, _The Conflict: How_ _Modern_ _Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women_ , trans. Adriana Hunter (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), p. 45.\n\n  2.  Nina Sutton, _Bruno Bettelheim: The Other Side of Madness_ (London: Duckworth, 1995).\n\n  3.  D. W. Winnicott, 'Hate in the Counter-Transference', _International Journal of Psychoanalysis_ , 30:2, 1949, p. 73 (also in _Through_ _Paediatrics_ _to Psychoanalysis_ : _Collected Papers of D. W. Winnicott_ , London: Routledge, 1992).\n\n  4.  Ibid., p. 74.\n\n  5.  Ibid.\n\n  6.  Ibid.\n\n  7.  Ibid.\n\n  8.  Daisy Waugh, _I Don't Know Why She Bothers: Guilt-Free Motherhood for Thoroughly Modern Women_ (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013), p. 14.\n\n  9.  Alison Bechdel, _Are You My Mother?_ _A Comic Drama_ (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012), p. 21.\n\n  10.  Winnicott, p. 72.\n\n  11.  Adrienne Rich, _Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and_ _Institution_ (New York: Norton, 1976, 1995), p. xxxiii.\n\n  12.  Bechdel, p. 258.\n\n  13.  Ibid., p. 178.\n\n  14.  Ibid., p. 68.\n\n  15.  Ibid., p. 172.\n\n  16.  Ibid., p. 65.\n\n  17.  Sylvia Plath, _Three Women_ \u2013 _A Poem for Three Voices_ , 1962, in _Collected_ _Poems_ (London: Faber, 1981).\n\n  18.  Ibid., p. 181, p. 186, pp. 180\u20131.\n\n  19.  Ibid., p. 181.\n\n  20.  Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Plath, 21 and 25 October 1962, in _Letters Home: Correspondence 1950\u20131963_ , selected and edited with commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath (London: Faber, 1975), p. 473, p. 477.\n\n  21.  Melanie Klein, 'Some Reflections on _The Oresteia_ ', in _Envy and_ _Gratitude_ _and Other Works, 1946\u20131963_ (London: Hogarth Press, 1975), p. 299.\n\n  22.  All quotes from W. R. Bion, 'Container and Contained', 1962, in _Attention_ _and_ _Interpretation_ (London: Karnac, 1970), p. 72, p. 78.\n\n  23.  Melissa Benn, _Madonna and Child: Towards a New Politics of_ _Motherhood_ (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), p. 21.\n\n  24.  Estela Welldon, _Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and_ _Denigration_ _of Motherhood_ (London: Karnac, 1988), pp. 78\u20139.\n\n  25.  Brid Featherstone, '\"I wouldn't do your job!\" Women, Social Work and Child Abuse', in _Mothering and Ambivalence_ , ed. Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherstone (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 167.\n\n  26.  Ibid., p. 185.\n\n  27.  Rich, p. 279.\n\n  28.  Ibid., p. xxxv.\n\n  29.  Simone de Beauvoir, _Le Deuxi\u00e8me sexe_ , folio II, p. 351, translated and edited by H. M. Parshley, 1953 (London: Vintage, 1997), p. 513 (all translations modified).\n\n  30.  Ibid.\n\n  31.  Ibid., folio I, p. 59, p. 112 (trans. p. 55, p. 94).\n\n  32.  Ibid., p. 93.\n\n  33.  Ibid., p. 390.\n\n  34.  Ibid., II, p. 351 (trans. p. 513).\n\n  35.  Ibid., II, p. 372 (trans. p. 528\u2013529).\n\n  36.  Ibid., II, p. 349 (trans. p. 512).\n\n  37.  Ibid., I, p. 93 (trans. p. 82).\n\n  38.  Ibid., II, p. 381 (trans. p. 354).\n\n  39.  Ibid., II, p. 385 (trans. p. 537).\n\n  40.  See Julia Kristeva, _Je me voyage_ \u2013 _M\u00e9moires_ : _Entretiens avec_ _Samuel Dock_ (Paris: Fayard, 2017) p. 148, p. 157, p. 188. See also Kristeva's extraordinary split-page meditation on classical and religious icons of maternity alongside her account of the birth of her son, 'Stabat Mater,' 1977, in _The Kristeva Reader_ , ed. Toril Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).\n\n  41.  Rivka Galchen, _Little Labours_ (New York: New Directions, 2016; London: Fourth Estate, 2017), p. 7.\n\n  42.  Elena Ferrante, _Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2016), p. 65.\n\nTHE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY: ELENA FERRANTE\n\n  1.  Elena Ferrante, _Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2016), p. 252.\n\n  2.  Ibid., p. 177, p. 252.\n\n  3.  Ibid., p. 187.\n\n  4.  Ibid., p. 206.\n\n  5.  Ibid., p. 188.\n\n  6.  D. W. Winnicott, 'The Use of an Object and Relating Through Identification', 1968, in _Playing and Reality_ (London: Tavistock, 1971); Jessica Benjamin's _The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis,_ _Feminism_ _and the Problem of Domination_ (New York: Pantheon, London: Virago, 1988) is the classic feminist psychoanalytic text for exploring the agonistic side of the mother\u2013baby interaction.\n\n  7.  Elena Ferrante, _The Days of Abandonment_ , 2002, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2005), p. 168.\n\n  8.  Elena Ferrante, _Troubling Love_ , 1992, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2006), p. 113.\n\n  9.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 17.\n\n  10.  Ibid., p. 220.\n\n  11.  Elena Ferrante, _The Lost Daughter_ , 2006, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2008), p. 206.\n\n  12.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 254, p. 267.\n\n  13.  Ibid., p. 267.\n\n  14.  Ferrante, _Lost Daughter_ , p. 53.\n\n  15.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 347, p. 350.\n\n  16.  Zoe Williams, 'Why baby books make you miserable', _Guardian_ , 3 October, 2017.\n\n  17.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 198.\n\n  18.  Ibid., p. 220.\n\n  19.  Ibid., p. 251.\n\n  20.  Ferrante, _Days of Abandonment_ , p. 127.\n\n  21.  John Bell, Sophie Boyron and Simon Whittaker, _Principles of French_ _Law_ (Oxford: OUP, 2008), p. 264.\n\n  22.  Elena Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ \u2013 _Middle Time_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2014), p. 372.\n\n  23.  Elena Ferrante, _The Story of a New Name_ \u2013 _Youth_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2013), p. 112.\n\n  24.  Ferrante, _Lost Daughter_ , p. 124.\n\n  25.  Ferrante, _Story of a New Name_ , p. 311.\n\n  26.  Ibid.\n\n  27.  Ibid., p. 91.\n\n  28.  Ferrante, _Lost Daughter_ , p. 87.\n\n  29.  Ibid., p. 37, p. 23.\n\n  30.  Ibid., p. 122.\n\n  31.  Elena Ferrante, _My Brilliant Friend_ _\u2013 Childhood, Adolescence_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2012), p. 322.\n\n  32.  Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ , p. 76.\n\n  33.  Elena Ferrante, _The Story of the Lost Child \u2013 Maturity, Old Age_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2015), p. 151.\n\n  34.  Ibid., p. 208.\n\n  35.  Ferrante, _Troubling Love_ , p. 87.\n\n  36.  Ibid., p 139.\n\n  37.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 122, p. 140.\n\n  38.  Ibid., p. 326.\n\n  39.  Ibid.\n\n  40.  Ibid., p. 277.\n\n  41.  Ibid., p. 379.\n\n  42.  Ibid., p. 380.\n\n  43.  Ibid., p. 224.\n\n  44.  Ibid., p. 221.\n\n  45.  Ibid., p. 222.\n\n  46.  Ferrante, _Lost Daughter_ , p. 124, p. 122.\n\n  47.  Ferrante, _Story of a New Name,_ p. 113.\n\n  48.  Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ , p. 233.\n\n  49.  Ibid., _Story of a New Name_ , p. 378.\n\n  50.  Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ , p. 238.\n\n  51.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 116.\n\n  52.  Ibid., p. 98.\n\n  53.  Ibid., p. 223.\n\n  54.  Lucy Jones, 'As she is born, part of me is dying', _Guardian_ , 9 January 2017.\n\n  55.  Ferrante, _Story of a New Name_ , p. 372.\n\n  56.  Ferrante, _Lost Daughter_ , p. 125.\n\n  57.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 222.\n\n  58.  Ibid., p. 193.\n\n  59.  Ibid., p. 99.\n\n  60.  Ibid.\n\n  61.  Ibid.\n\n  62.  Ferrante, _My Brilliant Friend_ , p. 229.\n\n  63.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 239.\n\n  64.  Ibid., p. 100.\n\n  65.  Ibid.\n\n  66.  Ibid.\n\n  67.  Ibid., p. 176, _Story of the Lost Child_ , p. 175.\n\n  68.  Ferrante, _Story of a New Name_ , p. 289.\n\n  69.  Ibid.\n\n  70.  Ferrante, _Story of the Lost Child_ , p. 466.\n\n  71.  Ferrante, _My Brilliant Friend_ , p. 231.\n\n  72.  William Maxwell, _They Came Like Swallows_ , 1937, London: Vintage, 2008, p. 10.\n\n  73.  Ibid.\n\n  74.  Ibid., p. 11, pp. 31\u20132.\n\n  75.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 146.\n\n  76.  Ibid., p. 367.\n\n  77.  Ibid., p. 147.\n\n  78.  Ferrante, _Story of the Lost Child_ , p. 309.\n\n  79.  Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ , p. 290.\n\n  80.  Ibid., p. 291 (emphasis original).\n\n  81.  Ibid.\n\n  82.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 368 (emphasis original).\n\n  83.  Ibid., p. 54.\n\n  84.  Ibid., p. 220.\n\n  85.  Ibid., p. 66.\n\n  86.  Ibid., p. 90.\n\n  87.  Ibid., p. 92.\n\n  88.  Ibid., p. 201.\n\n  89.  Ferrante, _Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_ , p. 28.\n\n  90.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 336.\n\n  91.  Ibid., p. 217.\n\n  92.  Ibid., p. 368.\n\n  93.  Ibid., p. 268, p. 326.\n\n  94.  Ibid.\n\n  95.  Ibid., p. 301, p. 286.\n\n  96.  Ibid., p. 126.\n\n  97.  Ibid., pp. 126\u20137.\n\n  98.  Ferrante, _Days of Abandonment_ , p. 127.\n\n  99.  Ibid., p. 224.\n\n  100.  Ferrante, _Frantumaglia_ , p. 347, p. 350.\n\nTHE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY: INSIDE OUT\n\n  1.  Sylvia Plath, 'Morning Song', in _Ariel_ (London: Faber, 1965).\n\n  2.  Marjorie Perloff, 'The Two Ariels: The (Re)making of the Sylvia Plath Canon', _American Poetry Review_ , November\u2013December 1984.\n\n  3.  Danuta Kean, 'Plath accused Hughes of beating her and wanting her dead, trove of letters shows', _Guardian_ , 11 April 2017.\n\n  4.  Darian Leader, _Strictly Bipolar_ (London: Penguin, 2013).\n\n  5.  Fiona Shaw, _Out of Me: The Story of a Postnatal Breakdown_ (London: Penguin, 1997).\n\n  6.  Lou-Marie Kruger, Kirsten van Straaten, Laura Taylor, Marleen Lourens and Carla Dukas, 'The Melancholy of Murderous Mothers: Depression and the Medicalization of Women's Anger', _Feminism and Psychology_ , published online, 30 June 2014, p. 8. My thanks to Lou-Marie Kruger for bringing this work to my attention.\n\n  7.  Ibid.\n\n  8.  Virginia Woolf, _The Years_ , 1937 (Oxford: OUP, 1992), p. 359 (emphasis mine).\n\n  9.  Linda Kerber, 'The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment \u2013 An American Perspective', _American Quarterly_ , 28:2, 1976, cited in Shaul Bar-Haim, _The Maternalizing Movement: Psychoanalysis,_ _Motherhood_ _and the British Welfare State c. 1920\u20131950_ , unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck 2015, p. 18.\n\n  10.  Sigmund Freud, 'The Disillusionment of the War', in _Thoughts for the Times on War and Death_ , 1915, Standard Edn, vol.14 (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), p. 276; _The Future of an Illusion_ , Standard Edn, vol. 21 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), p. 20.\n\n  11.  Freud, _The Future of an Illusion_ , p. 12.\n\n  12.  My thanks to Miranda Carter for alerting me to this series, and to Margaret and Lucy Reynolds for the occasion we watched it together.\n\n  13.  Buchi Emecheta, _The Joys of Motherhood_ (Oxford: Heinemann, 1979).\n\n  14.  For a sustained, political critique of the concept of happiness, see Sara Ahmed, _The Promise of Happiness_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).\n\n  15.  Simon de Beauvoir, _Le Deuxi_ _\u00e8_ _me sexe_ , folio II, p. 385 (trans. p. 537).\n\n  16.  Elena Ferrante, _Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey_ , trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa, 2016), p. 100.\n\n  17.  Susan Stryker, 'My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix', _GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies_ , 1:3, 1994.\n\n  18.  Ibid.\n\n  19.  Ibid.\n\n  20.  Ibid.\n\n  21.  Sindiwe Magona, _Mother to Mother_ (Claremont: David Philip, and Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), p. 127.\n\n  22.  Ibid., p. 2.\n\n  23.  Ibid., p. 210.\n\n  24.  Ibid., p. 185.\n\n  25.  Ibid., p. 201.\n\n  26.  Ibid., p. 198.\n\n  27.  Amy Biehl's parents, Linda and Peter Biehl, befriended the man convicted of her murder, after he was released from prison, and two other men who were in the crowd, employing them at the charitable foundation they established in her memory. For one version of this story see Justine van der Leun, _We Are Not Such Things: A Murder in a South African Township and the Search for Truth and_ _Reconciliation_ (London: 4th Estate, 2016). See also Gillian Slovo's critique of the book, 'The Politics of Forgiveness', _Literary Review_ , 445, August 2016.\n\nINDEX\n\nThe index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.\n\nAbbreviated Life, An (Leve)\n\nabortion: and funding; and Gorsuch; and Roe v. Wade; and Trump\n\nadoption; author's experience of; and family secrets; and inverse pregnancy\n\nAeneid (Virgil)\n\nAeschylus\n\nAfrica, and depiction of mothers\n\nAge of Innocence (Wharton)\n\nAguilar, Grace\n\nAlternamoms\n\nAlzheimer's\n\nAnna Karenina (Tolstoy)\n\nAnother World: Losing our Children to Islamic State (Slovo)\n\nantenatal clinics\n\nAntigone (Sophocles)\n\nAntony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)\n\napartheid\n\nAra Pacis\n\nAre You My Mother? (Bechdel)\n\nArendt, Hannah\n\n'Ariel' (Plath)\n\nAriel (Plath)\n\nAssad, Bashar al-\n\nAthena\n\nattachment parenting\n\nAttila the Hun\n\nAugustus, Emperor\n\nAyelabola, Bimbo\n\nBadinter, Elisabeth\n\nBaird, Zo\u00eb\n\nBalint, Michael\n\nBaraitser, Lisa\n\nBataclan\n\nBeard, Mary\n\nBechdel, Alison\n\nBeckham, Victoria\n\nBee Sequence (of Plath poems)\n\nBell, Sean\n\nBell, Valerie\n\nBeloved (Morrison)\n\nBenn, Melissa\n\nBernini, Gian Lorenzo\n\nBettelheim, Bruno\n\nBiehl, Amy\n\nBion, W. R.\n\nBlack Lives Matter\n\nBlair, Tony\n\nBord de mer (Olmi)\n\nBowlby, Rachel\n\nbreast, as symbol of mother love\n\nbreastfeeding; low UK rate of; in public; rise in US rate of; and erotic pleasure; in McNish video; complexity of; and Love's lyric; counternarrative on joys of\n\nBrecht, Bertolt\n\nBrexit; and NHS; and border policing\n\nBromberg\n\nBrussels, attack on\n\nCaesar, Julius\n\nCalais Jungle; and missing mothers; asylum seekers buried at; closure of; see also migration crisis; refugees\n\nCambridge, Duchess of\n\nCameron, David\n\nCarr, Gwen\n\nCatholic Church, apology from\n\nCazeneuve, Bernard\n\nCharlie Hebdo\n\nChe\u0142mno extermination camp\n\nchildbirth: and 'health tourism'; and mother's death; and war; interest in sex lost after; and baby's character; and trans person; see also mothers; pregnancy\n\nCitizens Advice\n\nCleopatra, Queen\n\nClift, Montgomery\n\ncognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)\n\nColley, Linda\n\nCollins, Patricia Hill\n\nConflict, The: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women (Badinter)\n\n'Container and Contained' (Bion)\n\nCoriolanus (Shakespeare)\n\nCorn King and the Spring Queen, The (Mitchison)\n\nCory, Judge\n\nCroatia, and maternity pay\n\nCusk, Rachel\n\ncustody rights\n\nCzech Republic, and maternity pay\n\nda Verona, Liberale\n\nDahl, Roald\n\nDaily Mail, and 'health tourism'\n\nDays of Abandonment, The (Ferrante)\n\nde Beauvoir, Simone\n\nde Jesus Ramos Hernandez, Maria\n\nDemeter\n\nde Milet, Thal\u00e8s\n\n'dependency' culture\n\nDeutsch, Helene\n\nDiseases of Women\n\nDobson, Ryan\n\nDobson v. Dobson\n\nDolce & Gabbana\n\nDonne, John\n\nDowler, Maj.-Gen. Arthur Arnold Bullick\n\nearthquakes; poor die first in\n\nEichenbaum, Luise\n\nEidinow, Esther\n\nElectra (Sophocles)\n\nelectroconvulsive therapy\n\nEleusinian Mysteries\n\nEleusis\n\n'Embarrassed' video (McNish)\n\nEmecheta, Buchi\n\nEquality and Human Rights Commission\n\nEstonia, and maternity pay\n\nEumenides, The (Aeschylus)\n\nEuripides\n\nEvans, Tanya\n\nfamily secrets\n\nFeatherstone, Brid\n\nFeminine Mystique, The\n\nfeminism: on women's bodily experiences; on mothers in the home; and Medea's words; 'essentialist'; and motherhood as target of critique; and banning of Welldon book; de Beauvoir as mother of; and Hughes; and image of stability represented by safe, white, middle-class homes\n\nFerrante, Elena; and The Days of Abandonment; and Troubling Love; and The Lost Daughter; and My Brilliant Friend; and The Story of the Lost Child; on collapse of borders; on boundaries of a patriarchal world; on dark side of pregnant body; and counternarrative on joys of breastfeeding; and Frantumaglia; and seeds of ethical life; Neapolitan Novels of, see Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante\n\nFlaubert, Gustave\n\nFrance: and migration crisis; and maternity pay\n\nFrantumaglia (Ferrante)\n\nFreud, Sigmund; and fa\u00e7ade of civilised living\n\nFrom Here to Eternity\n\nFun Home (Bechdel)\n\nFuture of an Illusion, The (Freud)\n\nGalchen, Rivka\n\nGarner, Eric\n\nGarner, Margaret\n\nGeorge, Prince\n\nGilmore Girls\n\nGingerbread\n\nGinn, Diana\n\nGodard, Jean-Luc\n\nGoff, Barbara\n\nGorsuch, Neil\n\nGreat Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald)\n\nGreen, Andr\u00e9\n\nGrenfell Tower\n\nGuillimeau, Jacques\n\nHadid, Zaha\n\nHaiti, and hurricanes\n\nHall, Edith\n\nHaloa festival\n\nHamlet (Shakespeare)\n\n'Happy Families? History and Family Policy' (Thane)\n\nHarrison, Michelle\n\n'Hate in the Counter-Transference' (Winnicott)\n\n'health tourism'\n\nHochman, Sandra\n\nHomerton University Hospital\n\nHouse of Mirth, The (Wharton)\n\nHouse of Names (T\u00f3ib\u00edn)\n\nHouston, and hurricanes\n\nHughes, Ted\n\nHuman Rights Act\n\nHungary, and maternity pay\n\nHunt, Jeremy\n\nhurricanes\n\nI Don't Know Why She Bothers: Guilt-Free Motherhood for Thoroughly Modern Women (Waugh)\n\n'I Think That I Would Die' (Hole\/Erlandson\u2013Love)\n\nIcke, Robert\n\nincest; and half-siblings\n\ninfanticide\n\ninverse pregnancy\n\nIonic frieze of the Parthenon\n\nIslamic State\n\nItaly, and maternity pay\n\nJe vous salue, Marie\n\nJones, Lucy\n\nJoys of Motherhood, The (Emecheta)\n\nKaiser Medical Center, LA\n\nKent, Nicolas\n\nKerr, Deborah\n\nKlein, Melanie\n\nKristeva, Julia\n\nKristoff, Nicholas\n\nLa Leche League (LLL)\n\nLancaster, Burt\n\nLaplanche, Jean\n\nLawrence, Doreen\n\nLawrence, Stephen\n\nLeadsom, Andrea\n\nLean In (Sandbergh)\n\nLee, Hermione\n\nlesbianism\n\nLeve, Ariel\n\nLewis, Gail\n\nLife's Work, A: On Becoming a Mother (Cusk)\n\nL'Indice\n\nLittle Labours (Galchen)\n\nLiving, Loving and Lying Awake at Night (Magona)\n\nLoraux, Nicole\n\nLost Daughter, The (Ferrante)\n\nLove, Courtney\n\n'Lt Lit, la guerre' (Loraux)\n\nLysias\n\nMcNish, Hollie\n\nMcRobbie, Angela\n\nMadame Bovary (Flaubert)\n\nMagona, Sindiwe\n\nMajor, Judge\n\n'Mammy's No. 1' (in Calais camp)\n\nMark Antony\n\nMarkham, Violet\n\nMarxism, and image of stability represented by safe, white, middle-class homes\n\nMary, Queen Mother\n\nMateen, Omar\n\n'maternal perversion'\n\nMaternity Action\n\nMaternity and Parental Leave Regulations\n\nmaternity pay\n\nMatilda (Dahl)\n\nMatilda the Musical\n\nMaxwell, William\n\nMay, Theresa\n\nMedea (Euripides); Olmi's rewrite of; Wolf's retelling of\n\nMedical Women's Federation\n\nMerkel, Angela\n\nMetis Women of Manitoba\n\nmigration crisis; and missing mothers\n\nMiller, George\n\nMiller, Maria\n\nMitchell, Juliet\n\nMitchison, Naomi\n\nMolenbeek\n\nMomsRising\n\nMontefiore, Jan\n\nMorante, Elsa\n\n'Morning Song' (Plath)\n\nMorrison, Toni\n\nmother-and-baby hostels\n\nMother, The (Brecht)\n\nMother Courage (Brecht)\n\nMother Love (Badinter)\n\nMother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (Welldon)\n\nMother to Mother (Magona)\n\nmotherhood in classical culture; see also Ferrante, Elena; individual titles and authors\n\nmothers: held accountable for world's ills; and Calais Jungle; exploited misery of; lamenting, seen as hallmark of 'natural' catastrophes; as target for blame; and Brecht; and 'neo-liberal intensification of mothering'; seen as original subversives; and new junior doctors' contract; and interrogation by abusive ex-partners in secret hearings; in separation and child-contact cases; childbearing risks taken by, and variations across race and class; and maternity pay; and motherhood's proximity to death; in prison population; and parenting websites; and benefits; and custody rights over children; and undocumented migrants taking care of children; and adoption; and promotion of domestic ideal; and relationship across colours; and WW2 hostels; male colonisation of; also as lovers; and 'primary maternal preoccupation'; and emotional link to world's wider stage; and breast, as symbol of mother love; and hatred of baby; as set of sets; and 'maternal perversion'; and 'dark side' of mothering; in social work; child abuse by; and alienation of freedom; and sense of ecstasy and fulfilment; were once daughters; and 'strange compromise' of motherhood; and 'erotic vapor' of body; and mothering manuals; adrift from wider world; 'working', a misnomer; and when evil seizes the hour; in South Africa study; and historical, political and social anguish; disjunction between child and; instruction to children from, in, 1950s; and 'republican motherhood'; and daughters, improved relationship between; and daughters, richness of conversations between; and 'joy' as corrupt term; and breast, as symbol of mother love; see also breastfeeding; de Beauvoir's view of, see de Beauvoir, Simone; Ferrante's views on, see Ferrante, Elena; in ancient Greece and Rome, see motherhood in classical culture; in classical culture, see motherhood in classical culture; pregnant, see pregnancy; single, see single mothers; in slavery, see slaves\/slavery; in literature, see individual titles and authors\n\nMother's Day\n\nMothers in Mourning (Loraux)\n\nMothers of the Movement\n\nMothers of the Plaza de Mayo\n\nMother's Recompense, The (Wharton)\n\nMrs Dalloway (Woolf)\n\nMy Brilliant Friend (Ferrante); see also Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante\n\nNational Council for One Parent Families\n\nNational Health Service (NHS): Sun's view of; and 'health tourism'; and women's asylum claims\n\nNational Institute of Arts and Letters\n\nNational Theatre\n\nNeapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante (Quartet); My Brilliant Friend; The Story of the Lost Child; seen as in-depth literary rendering of friendship between women; first pregnancy featured in; and titles' ambiguity; as act of mothering; one of grimmest moments in; see also Ferrante, Elena\n\nNetmums\n\nNew Orleans, and hurricanes\n\nNew Society\n\nNew York Times\n\nNiobe\n\nNorton, Caroline\n\n'Notes on Relations with Coloured Troops' (Dowler)\n\n'Notes on the Perfect' (McRobbie)\n\nNursing of Children, The (Guillimeau)\n\nObama, Barack\n\nOedipus\n\nOf Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (Rich)\n\nOfili, Chris\n\nOlmi, V\u00e9ronique\n\nOn the Natural History of Destruction (Sebald)\n\nOnfray, Michel\n\nOrbach, Susie\n\nOresteia trilogy (Aeschylus); Icke's adaptation of; Klein's essay on\n\nParker, Rozsika\n\nPericles\n\nPetersen, Lauren Hackworth\n\nPiet\u00e0\n\nPlath, Aurelia\n\nPlath, Sylvia; and 'Ariel'; and Three Women \u2013 A Poem for Three Voices; and 'Morning Song'; and Ariel; and Bee Sequence; and Hughes; and 'Wintering'\n\nPlaza de Mayo\n\nPlutarch\n\nPoland, and maternity pay\n\npostnatal depression\n\npoverty, more children falling into\n\npregnancy: and 'health tourism'; and negative treatment at work; and health and safety at work; and claiming benefits; and welfare of unborn child; de Beauvoir's view of; and dark side; inverse\n\n'primary maternal preoccupation'\n\nPrince of Wales Fund\n\nprison population, mothers among\n\nProcter & Gamble\n\nPrometheus Unbound (Shelley)\n\npsychoanalysis; and de Beauvoir; and Ferrante\n\nrefugees: UK government halts agreement on; see also migration crisis\n\n'republican motherhood'\n\nReynolds, Margaret\n\nRich, Adrienne\n\nRiley, Denise\n\nRoe v. Wade\n\nRose, Gillian\n\nSt George's Hospital, Tooting\n\nSalzman-Mitchell, Patricia\n\nSamir (in Calais camp)\n\nSandberg, Sheryl\n\nSchengen Agreement\n\nSears, Martha\n\nSears, William\n\nSebald, W. G.\n\nSecond Sex, The (de Beauvoir)\n\nShakespeare, William; Roman plays of\n\nShaw, Fiona\n\nShaw, Stephanie\n\nShelley, Percy Bysshe\n\nShklar, Judith\n\nsingle mothers: and benefits; rising numbers of; and 'scrounger' epithet; as one of poorest groups in Britain; and US census; and children forcibly removed; wartime, and 'Relations with Coloured Troops'\n\nslaves\/slavery\n\nSlovo, Gillian\n\nsocial work\n\nSophocles\n\nSouth Africa: and postnatal depression; see also apartheid\n\nSpain, and maternity pay\n\nStepford wives\n\nStory of the Lost Child, The (Ferrante); see also Neapolitan Novels of Elena Ferrante\n\nStryker, Susan\n\nStudies in the Maternal\n\nSudan, war in\n\nSun; and 'health tourism'\n\nSuppliant Women, The (Euripides)\n\nTaiz\u00e9 reception centre\n\nTerra Mater\n\nterrorist attacks: Bataclan; Brussels; Charlie Hebdo\n\nTestament of Mary, The (T\u00f3ib\u00edn)\n\nThane, Pat\n\nThey Came Like Swallows (Maxwell)\n\n'Thoughts About My Daughter Before Sleep' (Hochman)\n\nThree Guineas (Woolf)\n\nThree Women \u2013 A Poem for Three Voices (Plath)\n\nThucydides\n\nT\u00f3ib\u00edn, Colm\n\nTokyo\u2013Yokohama earthquake\n\nTolstoy, Leo\n\nTorn in Two (Parker)\n\nTroubling Love (Ferrante)\n\nTrump, Donald: and abortion; and lives of black people\n\nUganda, and depiction of mothers\n\nUnited Kingdom: and migration crisis; and 'health tourism', see 'health tourism'\n\nUnited States: census in, on single mothers; and undocumented migrants taking care of children\n\nVirgil\n\nVirgin Mary; and Testament of Mary, The; and Godard film\n\nWar in the Nursery (Riley)\n\nWaugh, Daisy\n\nWaves, The (Woolf)\n\nWelldon, Estella\n\nWharton, Edith; de Beauvoir compared to; see also de Beauvoir, Simone\n\nWhy Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Winterson)\n\nWilliams, Lia\n\nWilmers, Mary-Kay\n\nWinnicott, D. W.\n\n'Wintering' (Plath)\n\nWinterson, Jeannette\n\nWolf, Christa\n\nWomanly Art of Breastfeeding, The\n\nWoolf, Virginia\n\nWorld War One, and single motherhood\n\nWorld War Two: and single motherhood; and Allied bombing; maternal social policy after; and extermination camp\n\nYears, The (Woolf)\n\nZinnemann, Fred\nPERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nGrateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following material:\n\nHere: Quotations from The Return (2016) by Hisham Matar and from Autumn (2016) by Ali Smith are included with the kind permission of the authors.\n\nHere: Quotations from song lyrics by Hole:\n\n'Plump' written by Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love\n\n\u00a9 Published by Mother May I Music\n\nAdministered by Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd\n\n'Softer, Softest' written by Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love\n\n\u00a9 Published by Mother May I Music\n\nAdministered by Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd\n\n'I Think That I Would Die' written by Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love\n\n\u00a9 Published by Mother May I Music\n\nAdministered by Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd\n\nHere: Quotations from 'Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices' by Sylvia Plath, taken from Winter Trees (Faber & Faber Ltd, 2017). Copyright \u00a9 The Estate of Sylvia Plath, 1971.\n\nAll quotations from the works of Elena Ferrante are included with the kind permission of Edizioni E\/O\/Europa Editions.\nALSO BY JACQUELINE ROSE\n\nWomen in Dark Times\n\nThe Haunting of Sylvia Plath\n\nThe Last Resistance\n\nProust Among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East\n\nThe Question of Zion\n\nSexuality in the Field of Vision\n\nOn Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World\n\nAlbertine\n\nStates of Fantasy\n\nWhy War? Psychoanalysis, Politics, and the Return to Melanie Klein\n\nFeminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the \u00c9cole Freudienne\n\nThe Case of Peter Pan; or, The Impossibility of Children's Fiction\nA NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nJacqueline Rose is the author of books about feminism, psychoanalysis, literature and culture, and the Middle East, including Women in Dark Times, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, and The Question of Zion. She is a codirector of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, a cofounder of Independent Jewish Voices, and a fellow of the British Academy. Rose is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and The Guardian, among many other publications. You can sign up for email updates here.\nThank you for buying this\n\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\nCONTENTS\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright Notice\n\nDedication\n\nEpigraphs\n\nOpening\n\n1 SOCIAL PUNISHMENT\n\nNow\n\nThen\n\n2 PSYCHIC BLINDNESS\n\nLoving\n\nHating\n\n3 THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY\n\nElena Ferrante\n\nInside Out\n\nCoda\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nNotes\n\nIndex\n\nPermissions Acknowledgements\n\nAlso by Jacqueline Rose\n\nA Note About the Author\n\nCopyright\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux\n\n175 Varick Street, New York 10014\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2018 by Jacqueline Rose\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nOriginally published in 2018 by Faber & Faber Ltd., Great Britain\n\nPublished in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux\n\nFirst American edition, 2018\n\nOwing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material appear here.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Rose, Jacqueline, author.\n\nTitle: Mothers: an essay on love and cruelty \/ Jacqueline Rose.\n\nDescription: First American Edition.|New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [2018]|Includes bibliographical references and index.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2017055261|ISBN 9780374213794 (hardcover)\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Mothers\u2014Psychology.\n\nClassification: LCC HQ759 .R6367 2018|DDC 155.6\/463\u2014dc23\n\nLC record available at <https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2017055261>\n\nOur ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.\n\nwww.fsgbooks.com\n\nwww.twitter.com\/fsgbooks \u2022 www.facebook.com\/fsgbooks\n\neISBN 9780374715830\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright Notice\n  3. Dedication\n  4. Epigraphs\n  5. Opening\n  6. 1. Social Punishment\n    1. Now\n    2. Then\n  7. 2. Psychic Blindness\n    1. Loving\n    2. Hating\n  8. 3. The Agony and the Ecstasy\n    1. Elena Ferrante\n    2. Inside Out\n  9. Coda\n  10. Acknowledgements\n  11. Notes\n    1. Notes 1\n    2. Notes 2\n    3. Notes 3\n    4. Notes 4\n    5. Notes 5\n    6. Notes 6\n  12. Index\n  13. Permissions Acknowledgements\n  14. Also by Jacqueline Rose\n  15. A Note About the Author\n  16. Newsletter Sign-up\n  17. Copyright\n\n## Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n\n## Pagebreaks of the print version\n\n  1. Cover Page\n  2. v\n  3. vii\n  4. \n  5. \n  6. \n  7. \n  8. \n  9. \n  10. \n  11. \n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216. \n  217. \n  218. \n  219. \n  220. \n  221. \n  222. \n  223. \n  224. \n  225. \n  226. \n  227. \n  228. \n  229. \n  230. \n  231. \n  232. \n  233. \n  234. \n  235. b\n  236. \n  237. ix\n  238. iv\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nPublish and Be Murdered\n\nA Jack Troutbeck\/Robert Amiss Mystery\n\nRuth Dudley Edwards\n\nwww.RuthDudleyEdwards.com\n\nPoisoned Pen Press\n\nCopyright \u00a9 1998, 1999, 2012 by Ruth Dudley Edwards\n\nFirst E-Book Edition 2012\n\nISBN: 9781615950645 epub\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.\n\nThe historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.\n\nPoisoned Pen Press  \n6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103  \nScottsdale, AZ 85251\n\nwww.poisonedpenpress.com\n\ninfo@poisonedpenpress.com\nContents\n\nPublish and Be Murdered\n\nContents\n\nAuthor Note\n\nDedication\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nChapter One\n\nChaper Two\n\nChapter Three\n\nChaper Four\n\nChapter Five\n\nChapter Six\n\nChapter Seven\n\nChapter Eight\n\nChaper Nine\n\nChapter Ten\n\nChapter Eleven\n\nChapter Twelve\n\nChapter Thirteen\n\nChapter Fourteen\n\nChapter Fifteen\n\nChapter Sixteen\n\nChapter Seventeen\n\nChapter Eighteen\n\nChapter Nineteen\n\nChapter Twenty\n\nChapter Twenty-one\n\nChapter Twenty-two\n\nChapter Twenty-three\n\nChapter Twenty-four\n\nChapter Twenty-five\n\nEpilogue\n\nMore from this Author\n\nContact Us\nAuthor Note\n\nYes, I did write a history of The Economist. And, yes, I drew some inspiration from its past for this book. But in all essentials\u2014including the ethics and habits of its editors\u2014the modern Economist bears no resemblance whatsoever to The Wrangler.\nDedication\n\nTo Paul, friend and pedant, and, of course, as usual, to John.\nAcknowledgments\n\nMy friends were as wonderful as ever, but I must single out for special thanks for encouragement, help or inspiration on this book, Andrew Boyd, M\u00e1ir\u00edn Carter, Betsy Crabtree, Sylvia Kalisch, Kathryn Kennison, Paul Le Druillenec (to whom it is dedicated), Gordon and Ken Lee, James McGuire, Sean O'Callaghan, Carol Scott, my publisher, Julia Wisdom, who showed enough patience for someone twice her size, and my gentle, literate and sane copy-editor, Karen Godfrey.\nChapter One\n\n'Bertie Ormerod says you're a tactful sort of fellow. Won't frighten the horses or get the dowagers all of a twitter.'\n\nLord Papworth's rheumy eyes fixed themselves upon Amiss. 'Smart too. Said you were as sharp as a whippet. So the upshot\u2014the nub and gist as it were\u2014is...can you help?'\n\n'I hope so,' said Amiss hesitantly. 'If I'm what you want, that is. Though I'm not really sure I'm what you need.'\n\nPapworth grunted. 'Want and need's two different things, I grant you. You sound just like my old nanny.' He brooded for a moment. 'Well, I think I need what I want on this occasion and vice versa. And that's you.'\n\n'If you say so, Lord Papworth. I've always enjoyed The Wrangler and I'd be honoured to be its manager. But I must warn you that while I'm OK at administration, I haven't much to offer in the way of advanced computer skills or knowledge of company law or accountancy.'\n\nPapworth emitted a cackle so loud and derisive as to cause several of the other denizens of the Pugin Room to peer at him covertly. 'I don't think you quite understand. I'm not attempting to have my journal dragged into the twenty-first century: I merely have a modest aspiration that it should be assisted into the second half of the twentieth. And that that be achieved with the minimum of disruption to a largely loyal\u2014if eccentric\u2014workforce.' He drained his glass, placed it firmly on the table, leaned forward and tapped Amiss on the knee. 'What I neither need nor want is a sharp-suited young man who puts machines before people. It's got to be someone with common sense and humanity who can staunch the haemorrhage cascading from the Papworth coffers. Drink?'\n\n'Thank you. Another gin and tonic would be very nice.'\n\nPapworth flapped an arm towards the bar and pointed at their glasses.\n\n'Is this a new problem?' asked Amiss, when his host had focused on him once more. 'I mean, has there been some kind of management hiatus recently?'\n\n'No, no.' Papworth cackled again. 'It's a very old problem that's been neglected for years. I suppose I simply wasn't prepared to face up to it until my son gave me a talking-to recently. Said it was all very well and grand to do one's bit pro bono publico, but that the losses had got beyond a joke and I might bloody well remember that it was his patrimony I was playing silly buggers with.\n\n'\"What's more\", he added, \"you're getting on and won't be around much longer.\"' Papworth smiled proudly. 'Callous devil, isn't he? But it's a fair point nonetheless. The old Wrangler's a heavy burden on the estate. I can see why Piers doesn't take kindly to seeing me losing the best part of a quarter of a million a year when it probably isn't necessary. Or most of it isn't.'\n\n'You're not tempted to sell?'\n\nPapworth looked horrified. 'Family's owned The Wrangler for close on two hundred years. Not going to part with it now. Noblesse oblige and all that.'\n\nHe turned to greet the waitress as she put the drinks on the table. 'Thank you, my dear. And how's the arthritis?' He counted out coins on to her tray.\n\n'No better, my lord. I'm thinking of packing the job in.'\n\n'My goodness, Rose, you must never do that.' He waved towards the stately Thames as it passed serenely by the terraces of the Houses of Parliament. 'Like Ol' Man River, my dear Rose, you must go on and on and on.'\n\n'That's what Lady Thatcher said she was going to do,' said Rose sharply. 'And look what happened to her.' She grinned sardonically and left.\n\n'Serves me right for producing clich\u00e9s,' said Papworth. 'Now where was I? Ah, yes. Where my son is right, Mr Amiss, is in saying that while I have properly treated The Wrangler with the respect due to a family treasure, I have\u2014like my old father before me\u2014been guilty of gross financial irresponsibility.' He took a thoughtful sip of whisky. 'Not all my fault, mind you. There's a tendency for the buggers who run the paper to carry on as if I should be down on my knees thanking them brokenly for the opportunity to subsidise them lavishly.'\n\nHe put his glass down, and for the first time, indicated resentment. 'I mean, dammit, I had Willie Lambie Crump...d'you know who I mean?'\n\n'The Wrangler editor. Yes. I've seen him on TV a couple of times.'\n\n'Well, there he was at dinner the other week complaining that not enough was spent on maintaining the building, while still absolutely refusing to consider moving to cheaper premises.'\n\n'Where's the office?'\n\n'Mayfair.'\n\n'Seems a strange place for a poor magazine.'\n\n'Journal,' said Papworth automatically.\n\n'Is there a difference?'\n\n'Not really, now that you mention it. It's just that we started out as a journal, and Wrangler editors thought the word \"magazine\" was vulgar.'\n\n'Fair enough. Mayfair seems a strange place for a poor journal.'\n\nPapworth looked at Amiss ruefully. 'The building's worth a packet but the trust doesn't allow its sale without the agreement of the editor and the editor insists the paper would not flourish anywhere else. Bloody convenient principle on which to stick, especially since he's got a flat at the top. But when I reminded him what supporting The Wrangler was costing me, he said loftily that privilege had its penalties and that he couldn't see that my wealth could be put to any better use than keeping The Wrangler's standard fluttering nobly in the intellectual breeze.'\n\nHe fell silent for a moment, took another sip and put his glass down with what was close to being a thump. 'That's the trouble with institutions: they tend to take themselves seriously. Doesn't matter if it's parliament or the Jockey Club or Oxbridge colleges or gentlemen's clubs: they're all prone to be pompous and given to flummery. But mostly that's harmless enough. If you ask me, the worst offenders are their greatest critics\u2014the bloody press.\n\n'Take the monarchy, for instance. Fat chance the poor old royals have to be complacent these days, what with journalists pointing out their shortcomings from dawn to dusk, doing shock expos\u00e9s, invading their private lives and crying \"scandal\" and condemning them for being out of date and wasteful of taxpayers' money. And we're the same in the Lords, with all the abuse thrown at us and no recognition of what we do that's good.'\n\nHe thrust out his lip pugnaciously. 'But of course it's all different when the institution in question is a newspaper, magazine, journal, call it what you will. You don't get any of that. Oh no. Journalists are beyond criticism. Dog doesn't eat dog. Hack doesn't eat hack. They hardly ever attack each other because they never know who they'll be working with next week or begging a job from.'\n\nHe snorted. 'Find me any shock-horror analysis of the dreadful management of The Wrangler, and I'll give you a thousand quid. But don't waste too much time looking. Because no journalist or editor will have taken the risk.' He snorted again. 'Hacks look after hacks and hunt in packs.'\n\nHis head fell on his chest: the diatribe appeared to be over.\n\n'So you're not very keen on the profession which you so generously endow?' proffered Amiss.\n\nPapworth sat up straight. 'I'm keen on The Wrangler for reasons of sentiment and habit and because I genuinely approve of its ideals. Like the paper, I believe that tradition's good, change for change's sake is bad and I applaud honourable intellectual enquiry with a big dash of humour. We've got to have a journal that'll stand up to those puritan lefties who infest the chattering classes of every generation. God, how I hate liberals!'\n\nAmiss wriggled uncomfortably. 'Lord Papworth, I have to tell you that fundamentally I'm a liberal.'\n\nPapworth shook his head. 'Bertie put me right on that. Said you were sound through and through, just sometimes had to recite mantras about your liberal instincts to reassure yourself that you hadn't sold out to the forces of reaction.' He patted Amiss's knee consolingly. 'Don't worry about that, dear boy. Shan't hold it against you. Whatever you call yourself, you've obviously got the right stuff in you. Bertie told me of the great work you and that splendid Troutbeck battleaxe did to scupper that anti-hunting bill. Don't you worry about that liberal nonsense. You'll slough it all off soon enough.'\n\nThe words, 'That's what I'm afraid of,' rose to Amiss's lips, but remained unsaid. He needed a job, so he swallowed his scruples along with some more gin.\n\nPapworth ruminated some more. 'Mind you, The Wrangler trust hasn't exactly been a spur to modernization.'\n\n'I hadn't realized there was a trust. I thought you owned it outright.'\n\n'Oh, I own it. But I can't meddle with it without the approval of the trustees.'\n\n'So you've got the worst of both worlds. How did that happen?'\n\n'Sometime in the late 'twenties, some ghastly jumped-up merchant was showing an interest in buying it and there was a mass outbreak of panic among the journalists: cries of doom and disaster and the death of editorial freedom and all that.\n\n'Of course, Papa reassured them that he wouldn't dream of selling, but then they pointed out that he could die tomorrow and there was absolutely nothing to stop me selling up the day after. And despite Papa's protestations and my reassurances the outcry continued.'\n\nHe laughed. 'Mind you, in fairness, they had some justification for being worried about me. I was only ten and there was no knowing how I was going to turn out; indeed, I'd been heard to express a few bolshie opinions. The upshot was that Papa set up a trust to guard the soul of the paper. Very high-minded, my old father.'\n\n'What is the role of the trust?'\n\n'Protects the editor against the proprietor essentially. I can neither hire nor fire an editor without the trustees' approval. And if I behave towards the editor in any way that he regards as interfering with the ethos of the paper, he goes off whingeing to the trustees and they rebuke and overrule me. They've got total editorial control, which in practice they cede to the editor.'\n\n'Does the system work?'\n\n'Oh yes. It works. For the editor, anyway. The proprietor is impotent. D'you know, thoughtlessly I once asked a Wrangler editor if he wouldn't mind being kind to a book by my mate Freddie Dalrymple and he promptly gave the book for review to Freddie's greatest enemy.'\n\nPapworth chuckled genially. 'I didn't mind really. Should have known better. Still, sometimes it's hard not to feel a bit fed up at the high-handed way some of these buggers treat me. In the view of Wrangler staff, the proprietor's only role is to pick up the bill. Oh, yes, and to host the annual party and give the odd dinner for the trustees, the staff and various notables they'd like to meet. And they'll give me an affectionate obituary when I turn up my toes.\n\n'However, bearing in mind what my son said so trenchantly, I have to accept that I'm being a touch profligate in paying over two hundred thousand pounds a year for the few privileges I've just outlined. I'd be glad if you'll do what you can.'\n\n'Am I replacing anyone?'\n\n'No, you're a new appointment.'\n\n'But that means that in hiring me you're adding another thirty thou to your outgoings.'\n\n'My dear boy, from what Bertie tells me of your resourcefulness and from what I know of the staff's inefficiency, you'll have no difficulty whatsoever in rapidly making savings that will more than compensate for that. Just remember I want no blood on the carpet.'\n\nHe rose. 'Now come along and let us dine and I'll tell you a bit more about my tribulations with the inhabitants of Number ten, Percy Square.'\nChaper Two\n\nWrangler HQ was a shabby five-storey house in a Georgian terrace. When Amiss pulled the bell, the door was opened immediately by a small teenager in livery, who ushered him into a splendid paneled hall chock-a-block with Georgian and Victorian artifacts. The effect was somewhat marred by mid-twentieth-century office interpolations.\n\nThere were, for instance, several nineteenth-century portraits, a heavy Victorian glass-fronted bookcase, two elegant chairs that Amiss tentatively identified as Chippendale and a fine Victorian desk incongruously topped by a 1950s switchboard, whose operator who looked as if she had been delivered with the equipment in a package marked 'Dragon'.\n\nThe youthful flunkey took Amiss over to the desk, nodded at the dragon, who was talking briskly into a receiver, and said, 'Miss Mercatroid will sort you out.' She did not look up. The lad abandoned his charge and returned to his lair\u2014a large Victorian carver, in which he curled up cosily with what looked like a football fanzine.\n\nAmiss stood in front of Miss Mercatroid trying to look nonchalant and after a couple of minutes she ceased doing things with plugs, looked up and barked, 'Yes?'\n\nHe simpered ingratiatingly and received in exchange a withering glance.\n\n'Robert Amiss. I'm here to see Mr Crump.'\n\nShe looked at him in shock and distaste. 'You mean Mr Lambie Crump. He is never, but never, referred to as Mr Crump.'\n\nShe pointed to a fragile gilt chair, on which Amiss seated himself gingerly. 'Ay will see if he is at home.' Her vowels were so fluted as to give her accent a quality of ultra-refinement not heard in England in forty years outside Buckingham Palace.\n\nSwitchboard activities prohibited Miss Mercatroid for more than ten minutes from getting through to William Lambie Crump, during which time Amiss contented himself with dipping into parts of Challenging Change: The Wrangler, 1805\u20131955, which lay on the Sheraton table beside him.\n\nHe had just learned of the duel between the co-editors in 1829 over Catholic Emancipation (the dueling pistols were still among the treasures of the journal) when Miss Mercatroid looked at him frostily and told him to go upstairs where someone 'will attend to you'.\n\nThe someone turned out to be a woman in her mid-seventies, wearing a high-necked white lace blouse, a dirndl skirt of mauve gingham and a crocheted cardigan. The enamelled brooch at her throat featured a ferocious-looking bulldog\u2014designed, presumably, to ward off unacceptable advances.\n\n'I will take you to wait in the editor's anteroom,' she said. Her voice took on a note of awe: 'Mr Lambie Crump is writing, so he cannot be interrupted.' She turned and led Amiss into a magnificently proportioned room disfigured by a partition which cut in half a magnificent bay window. It was occupied by five elderly women who sat in rows in front of stout manual typewriters: the clatter was overwhelming.\n\nFacing them sat a large woman in battleship-grey\u2014clearly the supervisor. She was jabbing her finger at a page of typescript annotated in red ink. 'Are you going quite blind, Mavis?' she asked the crone standing before her. 'Redo.' Shaking visibly, and looking on the edge of tears, her victim tottered away.\n\nAmiss was led through the door in the partition and placed in a Victorian button-back armchair beside another Sheraton table bearing a copy of The Wrangler's history. 'Would you care for afternoon tea?' she asked.\n\n'How delightful. Yes, please.'\n\nShe vanished and reappeared fifteen minutes later with a tray bearing a teapot, water jug, strainer, milk jug and sugar basin complete with tongs: all looked Georgian and silver. There were also doilied china plates of cucumber sandwiches and what in Amiss's youth had been called fancy cakes.\n\nBy the time Lambie Crump deigned to emerge from his office and shake hands with his guest, Amiss was replete and had progressed in his studies to the great scandal of the 1840s when the editor put the journal's spare cash into railway shares: in the resulting crash the Papworths had to stump up a vast sum of money to keep the journal afloat.\n\n'Just a moment.' Lambie Crump darted through the partition and came back divested of the several sheets of handwritten paper he'd been carrying. 'Sorry about that. One had to finish a rather tricky analysis of the latest New Labour proposals for creating constitutional mayhem. Pray, come in.'\n\nAmiss followed him into a room far too grand to be described as an office. Had the effect not been slightly spoiled by the shabbiness of the paintwork, its spaciousness, ornate gilt decoration, fine furniture and splendid fireplace dominated by a magnificent gilt-framed rural landscape, would have been appropriate to a foreign secretary.\n\nLambie Crump suited his surroundings, being the epitome of those known popularly as Young Fogeys, although he was taller and skinnier than the norm and being by now in his forties was perilously close to graduating to full-blown fogeyhood. His blond hair flopped Byronically over his brow, slightly obscuring the right side of his pince-nez; across his three-piece, hairy, yellowish suit and check shirt was strung a heavy gold watch chain; his tie was that of a gentleman's club known to Amiss as the Highest of all High Tory fortresses; and his brogues looked both handmade and ancient.\n\nOn the coatstand was a brown trilby hat, a long cashmere coat and a black umbrella, and nestling beside Lambie Crump's desk was a Gladstone bag of considerable age. The glass-fronted bookcase contained hundreds of leather-bound volumes.\n\nLambie Crump fussed around Amiss as he seated him and then threw himself into the vast chair behind his desk, which looked to be the twin of the doorkeeper's. 'It is good of you to call, Mr Amiss. Good of you to call.'\n\n'Not at all, Mr Lambie Crump. A pleasure.'\n\nLambie Crump placed the tips of his fingers together and looked portentous. 'One is reluctant to begin crassly, but it is proper to mention that one has a veto over your appointment. While one's freedom of action is confined to matters editorial, in practice it is so closely combined with the managerial side of the paper that the trustees would not countenance having imposed upon one anyone with whom one could not work.' He leaned his chin on the tips of his steepled fingers and peered at Amiss over the top of his glasses. 'For some reason that eludes one, the trustees appear to think one's welfare is their concern.'\n\nHe threw back his head and emitted a sound which Amiss thought was intended to express amusement, but which more resembled the distress call of an anxious horse. When the sound had faded away, he balanced his head again on his fingers and looked solemn. 'You will understand, therefore, that while one was happy to leave it to Charlie Papworth to suggest the name of someone who might assist, one could accept no one who fails to understand that one can accomplish nothing without tranquillity. A manager will have to understand that editorial takes precedence over managerial at all times.'\n\n'Of course, Mr Lambie Crump. I should wish it to be no other way. My concern is to make your life easier, not add to its vexations.'\n\nThat circumlocution went down noticeably well with Lambie Crump, who now went to the trouble of looking at Amiss appraisingly. Having taken in the inoffensive tweed and the check shirt, his gaze lighted on Amiss's tie. 'Ah, how interesting. You are a member of ffeatherstonehaugh's. That is a club one has occasionally been tempted to join. Wonderful cellar, one is told, though, forgive me, do its members not have a somewhat licentious reputation?'\n\n'Less so, these days, I think. I joined simply to oblige an old friend.'\n\n'Would this be a friend one might know?'\n\nAmiss resisted the temptation to explain brightly that his friend had been head waiter at ffeatherstonehaugh's when he had been a gallery steward; he chose instead to lie.\n\n'Baroness Troutbeck.'\n\n'Really!' Lambie Crump almost squeaked. 'Goodness gracious. Our paths have never crossed, but one cannot but respect the lady. Perhaps you might bring her to luncheon someday.' He recollected that he was conducting an interview. 'If you join us, that is, of course.'\n\nHis gaze swept again over Amiss, who sat there trying to look like the persona he was now adopting: amiable, unthreatening, conservative, intelligent but not too intelligent and an efficient but not too efficient mopper-up-of-messes, while not too innovative. In other words, someone who would serve Lambie Crump, make his life easier and make painless savings on the cost front sufficient to shut up the proprietor without threatening any aspect of the cushy life enjoyed by the Wrangler editor.\n\n'It would be wrong to pretend,' said Lambie Crump sententiously, 'that this place is not in need of a measure of administrative attention. When one is as busy as one is, one must eschew the minutiae of office routines.' He steepled his fingers again and gazed down them at Amiss.\n\n'One must, however, be frank. One is so antipathetic to dreary technical matters that one has, perhaps, occasionally been a trifle remiss. It is true, for instance, that some innovations are overdue. The telephones, for instance, are not all they might be. Yet it cannot be stressed too strongly that the place must not be plunged into disharmony by any threats to the happiness and livelihood of Wrangler staff.' He paused for a moment. 'Editorial staff, anyway.'\n\nAmiss smiled seraphically. 'I think if you ask the Duke of Ormerod, whom I once had the honour of serving as a private secretary, he will reassure you that I have no aspirations to be the efficient Baxter.'\n\nThis was a double whammy. Lambie Crump was a notorious snob as well as an avowed admirer of P. G. Wodehouse, whose memorable secretary, Rupert Baxter, had so terrorized Lord Emsworth with his remorseless efficiency. Lambie Crump's expression was so ecstatic that Amiss hugged himself mentally for his brilliance in agreeing that lie with Ormerod.\n\n'Since you lack the horn-rimmed spectacles, Mr Amiss, it is obvious that you are no Baxter.' Lambie Crump neighed. 'Any more than Bertie Ormerod is a Lord Emsworth. How long were you with him?'\n\n'Just for a few months when he needed a stand-in. Later, I performed the same function for the Bishop of Westonbury, before he headed back to academia.'\n\n'My dear chap.' Lambie Crump's suspicions were wholly allayed. 'We have the same kind of friends, I see.' A thought struck him. 'One takes it you know about running offices and directing underlings and all that kind of tiresome business?'\n\nAmiss laughed carelessly. 'Oh that? 'Fraid so. Used to be a civil servant, I'm sorry to say. Couldn't stand the bureaucracy though. Had to get out. And then of course the people were rather...' He wrinkled his nose.\n\n'All is clear,' said Lambie Crump. 'How terrible for you.' He launched into an assault on the wicked dirigisme of the home civil service and the scandalous iniquity of the Foreign Office, whose sole raison d'\u00eatre was apparently to sell Britain out to the enemy. Amiss felt it prudent not to mention that he lived with a diplomat and instead let the flow of anathematizing continue unchallenged, nodding and smiling mendaciously at appropriate times to indicate agreement. He endeavoured too to look impressed every time Lambie Crump mentioned yet another foreign secretary, senior functionary or government adviser who had demonstrated in conversation with him their intellectual puerility or absence of gung ho patriotism.\n\nAn hour and a half had passed amicably when there was a tap on the door. The supervisor came in, laid some papers reverentially on the desk and left. Lambie Crump picked then up. 'This is regrettable, Robert\u2014if one may make so bold as thus to address you, and you will, perhaps, be so kind as to call me Willie\u2014but, alas, one has to get on. Delighted, delighted to make your acquaintance. It will be a pleasure to have you here. When will you come?'\n\n'Whenever suits you. Perhaps on a day you might have time to introduce me to the staff?'\n\n'Friday then,' said Lambie Crump cheerily. 'Come here to luncheon at one o'clock. Even with the lamentable condition of the roads, one should by then have returned from All Souls. Afterwards, we might pay a visit below stairs.' He neighed and stood up. 'There can be little doubt that you will fit in well. Just do remember how important it is that no one is upset. It is not easy to write limpidly when people are being emotional.' He ushered Amiss out swiftly, led him through the anteroom and the typing pool, shook hands at the top of the staircase, bowed and bade him farewell.\n\nAs he walked down to the hall, Amiss heard from down the other corridor a sudden outbreak of angry voices\u2014one high-pitched and female; the other deep and male. He tried to look unconscious of the noise while straining to hear what the row was about. The only word he picked up was 'Aristotle'. Miss Mercatroid, who appeared completely unaware of the din, nodded a chilly goodbye. Slightly disconcerted, he smiled at her sweetly, and passing by the liveried lad, who had fallen asleep over his rag, he let himself out quietly.\nChapter Three\n\n'It's Robert, Jack. I've got a proper job at last.'\n\n'Hah!' shouted Baroness Troutbeck down the line. 'And about bloody time too. What is it?'\n\n'It's with The Wrangler.'\n\n'Doing what?'\n\n'Managing it.'\n\n'Why aren't you editing it?' she demanded. 'You don't aspire high enough, my lad. Anyone would be better than that little Crump twerp. Should have been drowned at birth.'\n\n'Odd. I thought you'd share The Wrangler's prejudices.'\n\n'There's more to life than prejudices. I grant you little Crump is ideologically sound, but he's not a man to go into the jungle\u2014or even into a restaurant\u2014with. Heard him give an after-dinner speech recently. Christ, he's so precious he should be deposited in a Knightsbridge bank vault. Preferably with no air supply.'\n\n'On the evidence so far, I can't fault your analysis.'\n\n'Did he name-drop at you?'\n\n'Incessantly.'\n\n'I'm surprised he took you, considering you're halfway to being a human being.'\n\n'You're being less than encouraging, Jack. This is a real job. I haven't had one of those for two years.'\n\n'I found you dozens.'\n\n'Three, to be precise: all temporary and leading nowhere and just a cover for being your fixer. This has the potential to be permanent, substantial and lead to greater things.'\n\n'It won't be half as much fun as what I got you into.'\n\n'Thank God for that. I could do with a long respite from any collaboration with mad baronesses.'\n\nShe chortled. 'Don't get complacent: fate may yet throw us together.'\n\n'Not if I've got anything to do with it,' said Amiss firmly.\n\n***\n\n'Just us for luncheon today. Would not normally be able to entertain you here\u2014or anywhere else for that matter. One is rarely free. But the Chancellor had to cancel because of the emergency summit, so it was possible to accommodate you. Thought of rounding up a few colleagues to meet you, but a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate is preferable in the circumstances.'\n\nLambie Crump opened a door at the back of his office and ushered Amiss into a tiny mahogany-panelled, mirrored lift. 'We'll have a spot of luncheon and a chat, so we can be sure we're both seeing things the same way. Too bad about the Chancellor, but I'm sure you'll be better company. He's so drearily Calvinist, don't you think?'\n\nHe neighed. 'One longs for some of these people to commit a few colourful sins.' He pressed a button. 'Anyway, after we've eaten, we'll go and inspect the natives.'\n\nThey ascended at a stately pace to the sixth floor and disembarked into a large, L-shaped dining room. 'It might have been pleasanter to eat in my rooms, but I thought you might as well have the benefit of the full Wrangler hospitality.'\n\nOn cue, a frock-coated butler hove into view bearing a silver salver. He inclined his head. 'Good afternoon, sir.'\n\n'Ah, thank you, Tozer. This is Mr Amiss. He is joining us here to help run things more smoothly, so you will, no doubt, be seeing something of him. Robert, please to help yourself to champagne.'\n\nAs they each took a glass, Lambie Crump lowered his voice confidingly. 'One finds it wise to drink little at luncheon, but a pick-me-up does not go amiss in the middle of a taxing day. Now let me take you on a perambulation around our rogues' gallery.'\n\nThis tour of the portraits on the dining room walls was clearly one that delighted Lambie Crump, for it enabled him to scatter into his speeches aphorisms, quotations and bon mots, the apparent spontaneity of which he had burnished to perfection. 'Ah, me. My predecessors. How their intellectual distinction weighs upon me!' He delivered himself of a particularly happy neigh. 'Here we have Seymour Spragge, our founder. Not perhaps, exceptionally gifted intellectually, but one cannot fault what vulgarians would nowadays no doubt deem his \"marketing skills\". It was Spragge, after all, who persuaded the third Earl of Papworth in 1805 that he should provide all the capital to set up The Wrangler, leave Spragge to run it as he thought fit and pay him fifty per cent of the gross income.'\n\n'I've heard of blank cheques,' said Amiss, 'but that's pretty spectacular. Unless, of course, Papworth had some control over the outgoings.'\n\n'Nothing so coarse,' said Lambie Crump. 'Papworth was uninterested in commerce and was also in thrall to Spragge, whom he regarded as the greatest mind of his age.' He neighed again. 'Sadly, one must challenge that assessment, for, alas, Spragge's was not an original mind.'\n\nHe took a sip of champagne and smiled in a superior manner. 'One must hope standards have risen a touch since then. Still, one should not disparage one's predecessors. Spragge did put The Wrangler on the map. At the very least, even though his mind was superficial, he had a feel for the fashion of the times. One cannot go far wrong being an intellectual slave of Edmund Burke and a hero-worshipper of the Duke of Wellington. And I grant you, he had an eye for talent.' Lambie Crump raised his glass patronizingly to his founder's portrait. 'So all in all, not a bad editor.' He smiled at Amiss. 'As they went.'\n\nAmiss quickly learned that there had never been an editor on an intellectual par with Lambie Crump. This one was pedestrian, that one a crook and though these two had enlivened things by shooting each other in the head, their heads hadn't been worth much anyway.\n\nAbout the inadequates, Lambie Crump was relatively benign: the heretics earned only excoriation. There was the one who went all the way with Disraeli on extending the franchise, the reprehensible flirter with Gladstone over Irish Home Rule and\u2014above all\u2014the apostate who failed to admit that the only respectable intellectual position on the American Civil War was to back the South.\n\nWhen it came to America\u2014which to Amiss's surprise loomed large in the paper's concerns\u2014all popular heroes were villains and villains were heroes. Abraham Lincoln was a counter-jumper and militarist bully, Franklin Roosevelt a fiscal nihilist and John F. Kennedy a priapic and unprincipled plastic-Irish scoundrel. Inevitably, therefore, the heroes were Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the success of the century: Barry Goldwater was the best president America had never had.\n\n'President Clinton, Willie?' Amiss said mischievously. 'Any virtues?'\n\n'Please, Robert. Not before lunch. The very thought of the fellow makes one quite faint. Tozer, some more medicinal champagne, if you will be so kind.'\n\nRevived by several more sips, he looked seriously at Amiss. 'You must forgive one's emotion at the very mention of that'\u2014he paused\u2014'that hobbledehoy. But America matters to us on this journal. We care about it and take seriously our role in guiding it on a wiser path.\n\n'The Empire is dead, the Commonwealth beyond rescuing and Europe doesn't speak English. But though we don't have a big sale in America, we have an influential circulation among colonial brethren who draw from us intellectual and moral succour. It is our duty to continue to give them a lead in standing up against the barbarians, who have breached the walls of Washington.'\n\nLunch was light but expensive. The overheads, thought Amiss, must be horrendous, for there was a cook as well as a butler. They started with a spinach souffl\u00e9, accompanied by what Lambie Crump described as 'a rather decent little Montrachet'. Dover sole, asparagus and tiny new potatoes followed, and although Lambie Crump and Amiss both refused the Stilton, in aroma and texture it was of a quality that would have made the baroness swoon lustfully. When they had finished their coffee\u2014served in tiny and exquisite china\u2014Lambie Crump looked at his watch and crumpled up his linen napkin. 'Let us inspect the minions.'\n\nAmiss\u2014who was by now very tired of listening to Lambie Crump disparaging the intellect and the principles of apparently every politician and editor in London\u2014jumped to his feet eagerly.\n\n'We'll start with the playroom.' Lambie Crump threw open the door leading off the dining room. A missile flew through the open door and hit Amiss painfully on the side of the head. He stumbled and fell, bleeding copiously.\n\n'Tozer, quick. Move him. He's ruining the rug.'\n\n'If you'll excuse me, sir, I think this might be more efficacious.' Combining humanity with practicality, Tozer lifted Amiss's head gently, turned his wounded side uppermost and placed on it a capacious napkin. 'Just stay there for a moment, sir, and try to hold this to your ear. I'll go and fetch the first-aid kit.'\n\nObediently Amiss clasped the napkin to his throbbing ear and lay supine. Above him he could hear a distressed elderly voice squeaking: 'It was Lloyd George I was aiming at, sir. Lloyd George. I do beg the gentleman's pardon, sir. My aim went completely.'\n\n'Don't vex yourself, Ricketts,' said Lambie Crump. 'You must not fret over this slight mishap. I'm sure Mr Amiss will recover swiftly. Go now, and perhaps we may pay you a visit later on.'\n\nThe quavering voice faded into the distance as Tozer reappeared, put his arm under Amiss's shoulders, gently and efficiently mopped his ear with a damp cloth and then firmly affixed sticking plaster. 'All right now, sir?'\n\n'Thank you,' said Amiss faintly.\n\nAs Lambie Crump gazed on with little sign of concern, Tozer helped Amiss to his feet. Amiss staggered for the first few paces and then steadied himself. 'Thank you very much indeed, Mr Tozer. I feel fine now.'\n\nLambie Crump looked him up and down. 'Your shirt is soiled,' he said with distaste. 'And your coat, too, it would seem. Tozer?'\n\n'Allow me, sir.' Tozer rubbed Amiss's front diligently for a minute or two. 'Sorry, sir. That is the best I can do while you are actually wearing the garments.'\n\n'Oh, it will have to do,' said Lambie Crump impatiently. 'Can you continue now? Have you pulled yourself together?'\n\n'Yes, I'm OK now. Sorry for collapsing like that, Willie. It was a bit of a shock.'\n\n'Well, as long as you've stopped bleeding, we can recommence.'\n\n'Yes, I think it's stopped. It was just a nick.'\n\n'Good, good. Let's get on now.'\n\n'Just before we do, Willie. What exactly happened?'\n\n'Oh, didn't you pick that up? Ricketts was throwing a dart at Lloyd George just as the door opened, and unfortunately he missed the old reprobate completely and hit you instead.' He neighed. 'An amusing instance of mistaken identity, n'est pas?'\n\nAmiss, who was feeling slightly queasy, tried not to sound querulous. 'Still not with you, I'm afraid. Firing a dart at Lloyd George?'\n\nLambie Crump sighed. 'Ah, me. Of course, I haven't yet explained the playroom to you. Come along and see it now.' He neighed. 'It's safe now, I think, but just in case, I'll go ahead of you.'\n\n'Excuse me, sir. You might wish to replace the dart.' Tozer presented Lambie Crump with the offending article, now wiped clean of Amiss's blood, and bowed as they left the dining room and moved into a room of modest size, wallpapered with portraits and photographs. Most were riddled with holes.\n\n'We puncture our enemies here,' explained his host. 'Our founder thought it a valuable form of catharsis.'\n\nAmiss easily identified Napoleon, Gladstone and\u2014just beside the door\u2014Lloyd George. 'Willie, why is Lloyd George the largest target? Because of what he did to the House of Lords?'\n\n'And death duties. Worst damage ever done to the landed interest.'\n\nAs Amiss tried to place a balding man with a large double chin, Lambie Crump explained: 'Charles James Fox. One of our chief villains.'\n\n'Because he was in favour of the French Revolution and fell out with Edmund Burke?'\n\nLambie Crump nodded approvingly. 'Precisely. Among other offences. Such as believing the people were right.'\n\n'And is that Bismarck?' asked Amiss hesitantly.\n\n'Correct. Up there beside the Kaiser, Hitler and Chancellor Kohl. We're not too keen here on imperialistic Germans. Or imperialist anyone else for that matter.'\n\n'Except us, I presume,' offered Amiss.\n\n'Well, yes. Obviously of course except us. And the United States, if they'd do it properly. But they're simply not up to it. Look at Vietnam. No idea how to run that war.'\n\nAmiss, who had little time for armchair generals, moved to another wall. 'Not much here from the early part of the century, is there? I see Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair along with a couple of Liberals, but I can't see anyone from the first half of the century except Lloyd George.'\n\n'We've replaced them,' said Lambie Crump. 'We keep the nineteenth-century portraits for reasons of tradition, but you don't get people wishing to vent their feelings on Asquith these days. You'll find several pockmarked portraits in the attic which have been replaced by these blown-up photographs of our more recent enemies.' He neighed. 'There are some areas where modernity has its place, you know. One cannot afford to be slack in identifying contemporary scoundrels.'\n\n'There aren't yet many holes in that photograph of our present government.'\n\nLambie Crump shook his head. 'I fear Ricketts and\u2014just very occasionally\u2014Henry Potbury are the only members of staff who now keep up this tradition. Potbury usually misses, and it has to be admitted that Ricketts is rather mired in the past. Apart from Lloyd George, whom his predecessor taught him to hate, he mostly aims his darts at Clement Attlee.'\n\n'So this place no longer fulfils its traditional purpose, which I presume\u2014on the Japanese principle\u2014is of stress relief.'\n\n'Come again?'\n\n'I understand Japanese companymen relieve their feelings by throwing missiles at pictures of their seniors.'\n\n'Really. Can't comment on that. The Wrangler isn't very interested in the Nipponese. Or in Chinamen for that matter. Oriental preoccupations seem so...so...grubbily materialistic these days, don't you think?'\n\nHe looked put out. 'What you have just said assists in making the playroom idea repellent as well as increasingly pointless. One must confess that were it not for Ricketts one would be tempted to close off this room. It has been rather an irritation to have to rule on whether it is appropriate to install a blown-up picture of the entire Liberal Democratic Party, selected Conservative apostates or if our venom should be concentrated on New Labour. Ricketts doesn't have a lot of initiative in these matters, you understand. Besides, it makes us appear predictable in our politics, and whatever my colleagues may think, it is my view that we should maintain an open mind.'\n\n'Has it always just been darts?' asked Amiss, who was inspecting what seemed to be very large holes in Napoleon's head.\n\n'Used to be bullets. At one time the entire staff used to have shooting competitions in here. But sometime in the nineteen thirties there was a distressing incident when one assistant editor inflicted an unpleasant flesh wound on a colleague: it was never clear whether it was deliberate or not. After that bullets were replaced by a more plebeian but safer alternative.' He neighed uproariously. 'Come to think of it, you should be grateful for that.'\n\nAmiss, whose ear continued to throb, managed a weak smile.\nChaper Four\n\n'We have a very small editorial staff,' explained Lambie Crump, as they walked down the stairs. 'Apart from hoi polloi, there are only four. Most of our journal is written by outside contributors, but we do have on the staff a political editor\u2014my deputy\u2014an assistant editor, a part-time literary editor and a kind of odd-job woman. The others you need to know about now, I suppose, are my secretary, Sabrina Trustler-Stomp, who is away at the moment, Marcia and Ben, Miss Mercatroid, whom you've met, Miss Grumshaw, the supervisor of the typewriters and Josiah Ricketts, at whose hands you suffered just now and with whom you'll be working closely; but more of that another time.' If he was aware of Amiss's horrified reaction, he gave no sign of it.\n\nAs Lambie Crump stopped at the end of the corridor, he announced portentously: 'Now here is my deputy, Henry Potbury, our distinguished political editor.' He opened the door and together he and Amiss contemplated the form of the room's incumbent, who was sprawled across his desk apparently dead. Amiss's momentary alarm was dispelled by Lambie Crump's heavy sigh, which alerted him to the more mundane reality that Potbury was in a deep sleep.\n\nAfter a loud greeting from Lambie Crump, Potbury twitched and grunted and finally struggled to an upright position. He gazed at his visitors blearily. Amiss realized that he was drunk. 'Henry Potbury, our senior and most valued editor. Indeed, one should say'\u2014Lambie Crump never lost the opportunity to be portentous, thought Amiss\u2014'a man whose unparalleled devotion to the mind of Burke has been more than inspirational. One might go further and describe Henry as the lodestar of The Wrangler for some thirty years now, a man whose quality of thought has always transcended...'\n\nAs he paused to find the mot juste, Amiss observed that the recipient of this elegant bouquet seemed unimpressed. And as Lambie Crump continued with '...all vulgar corruptions...' Potbury slowly slipped down into his chair and fell once again into a deep sleep. Within seconds he was snoring.\n\nLambie Crump looked at him with distaste. 'Alas, in some respects my colleague adheres too closely to the customs and practices of the eighteenth century in which he is so at home.' He set his lips primly. 'One accepts that if we are traditionalists, we must live with tradition. And while as his editor, one might wish for Potbury to have the virtues of the past without its vices, that is perhaps a touch unreasonable.' He sighed. 'Let us proceed to one of his more temperate colleagues.'\n\n***\n\n'Ah, here is Wilfred Parry.' An exquisite youth in a white suit looked up from his Georgian desk and laid down his fountain pen. 'Good afternoon, Willie.'\n\n'One is always sorry to interrupt, Wilfred, but you will, I know, wish to meet Robert Amiss, who will be joining us on Monday to tidy us up a bit.'\n\n'In what sense?'\n\n'Management, administration, that sort of thing.'\n\nParry's eyes swept over Amiss in the manner of a busy duchess being presented with a new housemaid. 'Hello.' He turned towards Lambie Crump. 'I'm writing what I hope you will fell is a rather inspired dissection of Tottman's latest. Thought it might make a good lead for next week.'\n\n'Splendid, splendid,' said Lambie Crump, showing no more interest in the downfall of Tottman than Parry showed in the rise of Amiss. 'In a bit of a hurry. Must move on.'\n\n'Any chance of a word later?'\n\n'Doubt it, Wilfred. Doubt it. Have to disappear early. Rather hush-hush weekend, don't you know.'\n\n'Wilfred's keen,' he explained to Amiss as they proceeded down another corridor. 'But it is possible to be too keen. Sometimes one has the feeling he has little or no understanding of the constant strain on someone in my position.' He opened another door. This time he did not usher Amiss in, having clearly taken the view that it would be foolish to try to circumnavigate the stacks of newspapers, magazines and other paper debris that covered almost the entire floor.\n\nThrough a haze of smoke, the room's two inhabitants could just be seen behind the piles of paper, the coffee mugs, the tennis balls and the other assorted objects that littered their desks. Lambie Crump's nose wrinkled in distaste at the smell of tobacco: the man was chewing on a pipe; the woman was smoking a roll-up. Both were intently absorbed in reading that week's Wrangler.\n\n'Good afternoon, Marcia and Ben. Here is Robert Amiss, who will joining us on Monday.'\n\nThey looked up suspiciously.\n\n'Doing what?' asked Marcia.\n\nLambie Crump waved a hand vaguely. 'Making one's life easier, one trusts,' he said grandly. 'Taking a bit of the administrative burden away. You know the kind of thing.'\n\nAs their eyes strayed back to their Wranglers, Marcia suddenly emitted a yell. 'I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!' she bellowed. 'We should never have let him correct the proofs himself.' She leaped to her feet, tripped over a pile of newspapers, picked herself up and stormed over to Ben, throwing the offending magazine in front of him and jabbing the top right-hand corner. 'Look at that. Just look at that. Makes me feel positively suicidal.'\n\n'Oh my Gawd,' said Ben. 'That's a bloody catastrophe.' They gazed at each other in mute, shared horror.\n\n'What is it?' asked Lambie Crump, sounding weary rather than apprehensive. Marcia picked up the magazine and in the sepulchral tones of a BBC newsreader announcing the death of a national icon read: 'We could have done with less contributors with a penchant for the mawkish...' She looked up and asked dully, 'How could he? How could he? How could he?' Her voice rose and she stamped her foot. 'Fewer! Fewer! Fewer! How often do I have to tell that platinum-headed git about where to stick his misapplied lesses...?'\n\n'Along with his misplaced onlies,' added Ben.\n\n'Oh dear, yes, yes, yes, mmm,' said Lambie Crump, to whom they were paying no attention. 'Must be off now, goodbye.' As he shut the door they heard Marcia's voice rise in hysteria. Amiss looked at Lambie Crump and raised an eyebrow. 'These are not bog-standard coolies, you understand. It is because of them that The Wrangler has a reputation for being more free of errors than any similar journal here or in the United States. But that brings with it for the rest of us the penalty that an error like \"Aegean\" being substituted for \"Augean\"\u2014which happened recently\u2014is a tragedy sufficient to cause lamentations for days. And then, of course, there will be the hysterical reaction to the arrival on Monday of one of those letters.'\n\n'What letters?'\n\nLambie Crump sighed deeply. 'We have a reader who has taken it upon himself for the last twenty years to read every line of the journal to check it for errors. It's become a kind of primaeval duel between him and Ben and Marcia.\n\n'On a good week a letter comes saying, \"ten out of ten\". When there are errors, they come listed and with references. It makes it more piquant that no one knows who the fellow is: the letters are anonymous. And he picks up factual errors as well, which are also Marcia and Ben's responsibility. Sadly, the dear things cope badly with failure.'\n\nHe stopped. 'Now let me think. Who's next? Oh yes. I almost forgot.' He doubled back on his tracks. 'Here is Phoebe Somerfield's lair.'\n\nLocated between Potbury's palatial room and Ben and Marcia's spacious midden, Miss Somerfield's office was tiny, but tidy and apparently well organized, with rows of books, neatly stacked magazines and files, and a cabinet that was not bursting at its seams. The lady herself was in her early fifties, small, spare and bespectacled, and her typewriter was clacking busily. 'Moonlighting again, Phoebe?' enquired Lambie Crump genially.\n\n'Just something for the World Service,' she said crisply. 'Do you mind if I get on with it?'\n\n'Just wanted to introduce our new management wallah, Robert Amiss.'\n\nShe looked at Amiss without interest, but nodded politely and recommenced typing. Lambie Crump closed the door behind them. 'Bit of a martinet, Phoebe, really. Doesn't think of anything except work.'\n\n'What's her job exactly?'\n\n'She edits the letters page, writes articles and leaders. Has done for donkey's years.'\n\n'On what?'\n\n'On most things. It cannot be denied that Phoebe is versatile and industrious. But she doesn't get out and about enough. If she's not doing her job here she's hammering out freelance book reviews and scripts and that sort of thing. Good girl, Phoebe. And one would miss her. But not really one of us. Doesn't move in the places one would wish her to. Depressingly austere. And brisk.\n\n'Now to the administrators,' he said as they went down the stairs.\n\n'Didn't you mention an assistant editor?'\n\nLambie Crump's lips compressed. 'Winterton is not with us at present and is not expected back for a week.' He looked at his watch. 'Scudmore almost certainly isn't around either.' He opened a door and nodded as he closed it again. 'Advertising chappie. Has to have luncheons and all that.' Trying the room next door, he found it also empty. This time he looked annoyed, stalked over to the desk and dialed zero. 'Miss Mercatroid, is Mr Naggiar not about?' His face took on a look of irritation. 'Thank you,' he said as he replaced the receiver. 'Naggiar is our circulation manager, Robert. You will find that he is infrequently on the premises.'\n\nAmiss raised an interrogative eyebrow. 'Running around drumming up business?'\n\nLambie Crump's neigh sounded bitter. 'As no doubt you will find out, he is rather preoccupied with matters medical.'\n\n'He's ill?'\n\n'Let us say one gathers that he has a multiplicity of conditions.' He stopped again. 'Now let me formally introduce you to your assailant.' He threw open the door at the end of the corridor and revealed a vision of Dickensian squalor.\nChapter Five\n\n'And here is Josiah Ricketts, with whom you will be working closely.'\n\nAmiss stifled the words, 'In here??!!' and tried to keep his facial expression steady. Windowless, the office was lit by fluorescent light. Had it instead been candlelit, it would have borne a close resemblance to what the unreconstructed Scrooge thought appropriate quarters for Bob Cratchit: airless, dark, cramped and very ugly. The walls were lined with shelves of ledgers and the tiny, wizened old man was writing in another at a wooden table, using a long steel pen to produce perfect, copperplate handwriting.\n\nAs he saw his visitors, he blotted his ink and clambered painfully to his feet. 'Good afternoon, Mr Lambie Crump, sir,' he said reverentially. And then, recognizing Amiss, he wailed, 'Oh, sir. Are you all right? I don't know how I can ever forgive myself...'\n\nAs Amiss murmured consolatory words, Lambie Crump waved a dismissive hand. 'Absolutely nothing to worry about, Ricketts. Albeit briefly discomfited, Mr Amiss suffered no more than a small abrasion.' As the wailing continued, Lambie Crump became visibly irritated. 'Pull yourself together, Ricketts. There is no time to waste. My taximeter cabriolet is due in five minutes.\n\n'Now, Mr Amiss is coming to help me. He will be manager of the journal. And you will, of course, give him every assistance you can.'\n\n'Honoured, sir,' said Ricketts. 'It will be a privilege. I can promise you my best endeavours, which I have always tried to give the ladies and gentlemen of The Wrangler.'\n\nAmiss resisted the impulse to pat Ricketts on the head. Instead, he bowed. 'I am most grateful to you, Mr Ricketts. I look forward to a happy collaboration.' As they left, he was relieved that although Ricketts was palpitating with deference, at least he had not dropped to his knees.\n\n'Awfully sorry,' said Lambie Crump, whose boredom with his present duties was palpable, 'but it truly is necessary to hasten. Perchance you can introduce yourself around the place on Monday.'\n\n'Just one thing,' asked Amiss. 'Which will be my office?'\n\nLambie Crump clapped his hand to his head. 'Good heavens,' he said. 'Alas, while that is a fair question, it is not one to which there has been time to give attention.' For a moment he looked nonplussed, then he smiled seraphically and laid a hand on Amiss's shoulder. 'Surely that can be left to you, my dear chap. I'm sure you can sort something out. After all'\u2014his smile widened\u2014'is that not precisely the kind of thing you're here to deal with?\n\n'Now, will you be so kind as to excuse me? Can you show yourself out?'\n\n'If you don't mind, Willie, I'll hang on and have a little chat with Mr Ricketts about practicalities.'\n\n'Rather you than me, dear boy,' And waving a languid farewell, Lambie Crump disappeared.\n\n***\n\nBy now Ricketts was busily back at work. 'Mr Ricketts,' said Amiss gently. 'Could we have a word?'\n\n'Excuse me just one moment, sir, or I'll lose count.' For the next three minutes, Ricketts continued his task of laboriously counting the contents of a carton of pencils. Then he looked up. 'That's right, sir. They've sent the right amount. You always have to check, you know. That's what Mr Flitter always said: \"Take nothing for granted.\"'\n\n'Do they use a lot of pencils here?'\n\n'Well, I keep the consumption in check, sir. Some of the ladies and gentlemen have no idea of economy. Why, I've known Mr Potbury to ask for as many as four pencils in a week. I have to remind him that they don't grow on trees, you know\u2014pencils.'\n\n'You operate strict economies here, then, Mr Ricketts?'\n\n'I do, sir. I keep a very tight eye indeed on my ladies' and gentlemen's requisites.'\n\n'Like?'\n\n'Oh, there's paper and there's pencils and then there's steel pens\u2014though mind you, that's not a difficulty since I'm the only one who uses them now. We had a bit of a to-do a long time back about biros. The last editor, God bless him, he didn't hold with them. Said it was an affront to decency to have them in the building. Fountain pens or steel pens only, he decreed. Or pencils, of course. But then, sir, you know how it is. It's called progress, I suppose. We had to give in in the end, just like with those machines the typewriting ladies use.'\n\n'So you dispense biros freely now, do you?'\n\nRicketts giggled conspiratorially. 'I can see you are a one, Mr Amiss. \"Freely\" indeed. That's not what Mr Flitter trained me to do, I can tell you. There's not one item goes out of this room that's not accounted for.'\n\n'So you are a master of stock control, Mr Ricketts.'\n\n'I don't go along with that fancy language, Mr Amiss. I just count my pencils. That's what Mr Flitter said was my job. And when they ask for one too quickly, I go looking for the one that's missing.'\n\nHe looked grave. 'And I can tell you it's the same about copies of The Wrangler itself. If you let them get away with it there would be rampant waste. They'd be leaving them all round the place or giving them away for nothing. Ladies and gentlemen with brains are all the same, sir. Not much common sense, if you'll forgive my saying so. You have to keep an eye on them or you wouldn't know what they'd be up to.'\n\nHe was warming to his theme. 'I've kept my foot down\u2014just like Mr Flitter did. Twenty-two copies come into this building and no more. That's one each for the staff and two each for the editor and Mr Potbury, just in case they have to give the extra away to someone important.' Ricketts emitted an arresting sound, which was made by blowing sharply down his nose while his lips were compressed. It indicated, as far as Amiss could see, a statement that once again the forces of order had overcome those of anarchy.\n\n'Mr Ricketts, I need help.'\n\n'You want me to issue you, sir, with pencil and paper?'\n\n'More than that. I need a room.'\n\nRicketts looked at him incredulously. 'I'm sorry, sir. But they're all full. They all have their uses, you see.'\n\n'But if I am to work here, Mr Ricketts, I must have an office.'\n\nSeeing the aghast expression on Ricketts's face and his hand clutching at his chest, Amiss intervened swiftly. 'Now, Mr Ricketts, I'm sure everything is as it should be and we'll find some way out of this that won't upset anybody or anything. Why don't you take me around the building and show me all the rooms, what is kept where and so on. Then we'll see if there's any little corner I might squeeze into.'\n\nRicketts's agitation began to wane. 'Just as long as you're not thinking of changing things, sir.'\n\n'Rest assured, Mr Ricketts, that just like Mr Burke, I'm against making changes for change's sake. I won't be doing anything that doesn't make us all happier.'\n\nLooking at him half with alarm and half with a burgeoning trust, Ricketts left his desk and tottered towards the door.\n\n***\n\nThe rooms unoccupied by people were certainly full. One was entirely devoted to bound copies of The Wrangler, another to spares, which Ricketts, Flitter and their predecessors had gathered up every week and preserved. Then there were rooms full of Georgian and Victorian furniture, presumably displaced by the modernizing process of the 1960s, and even a whole room devoted to broken furniture, which Ricketts explained would be repaired when the editor thought it a good idea.\n\nAmiss made no comment on anything except to grunt reassuringly every time Ricketts assured him that this or that room was sacrosanct. 'No one here likes anything to change, Mr Amiss,' was Ricketts's parting shot. 'I'm sure you're right,' said Amiss. 'Now don't worry about anything, Mr Ricketts. You'll hardly know I'm here.'\n\nWhere would we be, he reflected, without the humane lie?\n\n***\n\n'Though hardly a great proponent of revolution myself,' Amiss reported to Rachel that evening, 'I found myself badly in need of someone who wasn't completely reactionary. The only one who seemed a possible candidate was the young door-opener, Jason, whose taste in reading material at least was contemporary. I requested Miss Mercatroid to allow me to borrow him for a couple of minutes and took him outside for a brief walk. Having ascertained that he was bright and bored I arranged to meet him in a pub after hours.\n\n'\"Can I wear me normal clothes, or must I go like this?\" he asked.\n\n'My heart bled for him. I think I'd sooner wear a frock in a pub than go dressed like that. So he turned up in his tracksuit and trainers and we had an amicable couple of pints, and he's coming in at the weekend to help me make a nest for myself by Monday.'\n\n'Won't that give the organization a corporate heart attack?'\n\n'No one will care except Ricketts, and I know how to fix him. I'll tell him it was that or move in with him. The territorial implications of that should do the job.'\nChapter Six\n\nAmiss sat in his office on Monday morning, delighted with what he and Jason had accomplished. Though modest in size, the room was magnificently furnished. The removal of spare Wranglers to the back of the room housing bound Wranglers had freed up quarters with ample room for a fine Georgian desk with a green leather top of the kind he had always coveted, a Victorian leather armchair, a wooden filing cabinet that was not too unsightly and a few portraits of Wrangler-approved luminaries to remind him what his politics were supposed to be. He had had a shock halfway through Saturday morning, when Lambie Crump, wearing a perfectly foul pair of yellow corduroy trousers and an orange tweed jacket, hurried down the fire escape past the window of the room they were raiding. But Jason had explained that there was nothing sinister about this: it was merely Lambie Crump's preferred route to the outside world from his flat. 'Off to breakfast, probably. And then to shoot things.'\n\nIt was with a feeling of real achievement that Amiss left Ricketts, who had taken only half an hour of reassurance to come to terms with this new dispensation, and set off to the Monday morning editorial conference to which Lambie Crump had graciously invited him.\n\nHenry Potbury, looking sober, was already there, as were Wilfred Parry and Phoebe Somerfield. During the next few minutes there trickled in a well-known philosopher of extreme right-wing views, a backbench Tory MP and notorious gossip who specialized in writing amusingly of the vulgarities of his colleagues, and a very young woman who was simultaneously so good-looking and clever and had a mind so well furnished as to make Amiss feel old and jealous.\n\nThe main subject was law and order and disagreement was profound, though expressed with extreme courtesy: opinions ranged between those of relative moderation (zero tolerance of crime, more rigorous discipline in schools, boot camps) to those of the philosopher, who was keen for the reintroduction of the stocks, as well as corporal and capital punishment. Lambie Crump sat there with an urbane smile and for most purposes let them fight it out. At the end, he summed up fluently enough and went for the middle path. However much one might abhor the New Labour government, he announced, the fact was that on this issue they were making sense and should be encouraged. Miss Somerfield was charged with writing the leader.\n\nAmiss enjoyed himself. The proceedings reminded him of evenings at Oxford when the more pretentious of his colleagues began showing off in the Junior Common Room. With the exception of the philosopher, who indulged in an anti-immigrant rant, and Henry Potbury, who got angry about some misdemeanor of the foreign secretary's, he detected little passion among the participants. Phoebe Somerfield spoke only to skewer flights of fancy with well-aimed statistics, while the others seemed happily engaged in a familiar intellectual exercise: they fenced with each other and occasionally scored a point, but for most purposes they were almost in a 'Look-at-us-aren't-we-clever?' conspiracy.\n\nAt midday Tozer arrived with champagne and the meeting broke up. The Tory MP disappeared with Henry Potbury; Phoebe Somerfield, who seemed to have been allocated at least a third of the work, scuttled off, while the others stood round sipping and gossiping. Amiss was introduced to Clement Webber, the philosopher, and the clever and beautiful Amaryllis Vercoe. When Webber heard the word 'manager', he gazed at Amiss incredulously and said, 'So they're letting the technicians in now.' Unable to think of an appropriate reply, Amiss decided to leave. As he opened the door, he heard Amaryllis Vercoe asking, 'Where's Dwight?' and Lambie Crump replying shortly that he was damned if he knew.\n\n***\n\nAmiss headed for the administration corridor, knocked on the first door and followed the instruction to enter.\n\n'May I introduce myself?'\n\nThe circulation manager, who was listlessly opening a pile of envelopes with a silver paperknife, looked up and smiled wanly. 'Come in.'\n\nHe put down the knife, winced, extended his arm to its full length and opened and shut his fist a couple of times.\n\nAmiss stood in front of his desk. 'You're George Naggiar, aren't you? I'm Robert Amiss. Just starting today as manager.'\n\nNaggiar pushed back his chair and stood up gingerly. As he straightened himself he emitted an 'ouch', inhaled sharply through his teeth and grimaced with pain. 'Sorry. Knee's bad today.'\n\nAmiss put out his hand, but Naggiar shook his head. 'Afraid I can't shake hands. Bit of a problem with my right arm. But do sit down.'\n\nAmiss looked at the solitary chair, whose seat was covered with envelopes. Naggiar waved at it carelessly. 'Just put the stuff on the floor.'\n\nAmiss obeyed, sat down and contemplated his host, who with another grimace resumed his seat.\n\n'I was sorry to miss you on Friday when Mr Lambie Crump took me around to perform the introductions,' said Amiss.\n\n'Yes, that was too bad. I was at the hospital.'\n\n'Your knee or your arm?' asked Amiss sympathetically.\n\nNaggiar looked amused. 'Oh, no. Neither of those on Friday. That was my ulcer. It was playing up a bit and I had to talk to the consultant about whether we should go for laser treatment. But he reckons I should play it carefully, not exert myself too much, avoid anything stressful and it'll settle itself down again.'\n\n'Sounds sensible.'\n\n'So what will you be doing?' asked Naggiar, valiantly trying to keep the boredom out of his voice.\n\n'Taking some of the burden off Mr Lambie Crump and I hope off some of the rest of you. But initially I'll just be listening: I don't want to be precipitate, so I thought that for the moment I'd spend a week or so getting some kind of grip on how the place runs.'\n\n'Runs? It doesn't really run. It just jogs along.'\n\n'I'd appreciate knowing how, though.'\n\n'What do you want to know?'\n\n'Well, for instance, I'd be grateful if you could take me through the methods by which you persuade people to become subscribers, to renew their subscriptions, how you deal with complaints procedures and all that sort of thing.'\n\nNaggiar looked at him in some bewilderment. 'We don't solicit subscribers. This is a journal with a sense of its own dignity. We simply make it possible for people to subscribe if they wish. As you will see in The Wrangler, there is a form they wish. As you will see in The Wrangler, there is a form they can fill in and send to me; then they will be sent the journal. But we don't go in for...marketing ourselves.'\n\nAmiss tried not to look incredulous. 'Fine, fine. I understand. But for a start if you could just show me how those who do apply are dealt with, it would help.'\n\nNaggiar looked at his watch. 'Can't be today, I'm afraid. Got to go to my chiropractor.'\n\n'For your knee?'\n\nHe laughed scornfully. 'Nothing he can do for my knee\u2014not for either knee, if it comes to that. They're like the dark side of the moon, my knees, my consultant says. All pitted and scarred. When they get really bad the only thing for them is bed rest. No, it's for my back that I have to go to the chiropractor.' He moved his shoulders about a bit and winced. 'Otherwise I'd be a cripple.'\n\n'So you'll be out for a couple of hours?'\n\nNaggiar looked surprised. 'No, no. I go at lunchtime and can't get back. He's an hour and a half away, my chiropractor.'\n\n'Isn't that very inconvenient for you?'\n\nNaggiar shrugged. 'What can you do? When you find someone who understands you who then moves, you've no choice but to follow. But tomorrow will be all right.'\n\n'Shall I drop in about'\u2014Amiss hazarded a guess\u2014'nine-thirty?'\n\nNaggiar laughed derisively. 'How can I get in at nine-thirty? I can't travel in rush hour. Standing's terrible for my knees. Ten-thirty's more realistic.'\n\n'Fine,' said Amiss. 'Thank you very much, I'll be here.'\n\n***\n\nScudmore was a different proposition altogether. 'Delighted to see you, my boy,' he said as he bounded around the desk emitting bonhomie from every pore. 'Delighted to see some young blood come into this place for once. Could do with a bit of company.' He jabbed Amiss in the ribs. 'Take a drink, do you?'\n\n'Oh yes. Frequently.'\n\n'Man after my own heart, eh what?' Scudmore looked at his watch. 'Fancy a noggin this lunchtime?'\n\n'Thanks very much. Could we perhaps combine it with work? I'm rather anxious to find out about the advertising department.'\n\nScudmore emitted a jolly laugh. 'Department? I'm the department.' He thumped his chest. 'I think I can truly say that every ad we get in this place is as a result of my work and my work alone. I can tell you nobody's ever lunched for The Wrangler the way I have.' His laugh boomed out again. 'Tell you what. Why don't I show you how it's done? We'll go off to one of my regular haunts and see if we can see any of the boys.'\n\n***\n\n'What are all these?' asked Rachel, pointing to the pile of books beside Amiss's armchair. She removed herself from his embrace and took off her coat.\n\n'Newspaper histories culled from the London Library.'\n\n'You are taking this seriously, aren't you? So how were your first days? Sorry I wasn't here.'\n\n'Interesting and complicated. Tell you over dinner. Meanwhile, how did you and the minister get on in Brussels?'\n\n'Apart from the fact that he misread his brief at a crucial moment and almost gave the Commission a concession that would have added another ten million quid a year to our contribution, it went fine. He's quite good company really when he gets off his high horse. And he is serious about what he believes in.'\n\n'You've found an idealistic politician? Come now, Rach, are you losing your marbles?'\n\n'They're not all the same,' she said stiffly, then looked at her watch. 'God. It's eight o'clock already. Is there anything to eat?'\n\n'Yes,' said Amiss smugly. 'One advantage of this job is that pretty well everyone buggers off early so I can do shopping. Come on into the kitchen, have a gin and tonic and I'll put on the steak.'\n\n***\n\n'It's incredible,' Rachel said later, as he poured out the last of the wine. 'Lord whatshisname must be mad to have allowed it to go on like that. How could he?'\n\n'He's no more reason than anyone else to realize how time has moved on. Now I am rather more in touch with the modern world than Lord Papworth, and I grasped these guys were throwbacks, but it wasn't actually until I settled down and read and skimmed a few newspaper histories that I realized to what extent The Wrangler was out of its time.'\n\n'But I thought you'd already read its history.'\n\n'The Wrangler history was written by the sort of person who believes anyone to do with administration is below stairs and beneath contempt; it concentrated wholly on editorial. You wouldn't have known that the paper couldn't have come out without the assistance of printers, distributors, advertisers or anyone else. As Lambie Crump observed to me more than once: \"The management people are a race apart.\" And that editorial cast of mind explains why they've been left quietly to rot for decades, and to preserve\u2014as if in aspic\u2014most of the methods of the nineteen thirties.'\n\nHe leaned back in his chair. 'Take Scudmore, for instance. He learned his craft at the feet of one of the greatest advertising canvassers of the nineteen thirties, who picked up advertisements in the manner of the time by spending hours in City pubs buying drinks for those who bought space in which to publish their company results.\n\n'He later graduated to chatting up advertising agencies as they blossomed, and taking the odd mate to dinner. But these days there's much more to this job than bonhomie. You have to be able to answer the questions that all these thrusting young advertising executives ask about the age profile and class breakdown of the readership. That requires scientific questionnaires and all sorts of balls-aching marketing techniques which\u2014needless to say\u2014have never been tried out on Wrangler subscribers. So Scudmore gets ads only for old times' sake, or because some enterprising person actually beats on the door begging to be allowed to insert an ad\u2014for port or cashmere scarves or handmade shoes\u2014that might be expected to appeal to fogeys.\n\n'It was really sad on Monday with poor old Scudmore. He took me to a wine bar and explained proudly it was the haunt of the Perkins Telford and AJD Advertising Agency. But only one person spoke to him. The place was entirely full of people sitting around drinking designer water and stabbing at the odd leaf of arugula.\n\n'Such people look at Scudmore and they see a boozy old remnant of the bad old days when people tottered back to work slightly pissed, making decisions that were based on friendship and sentiment rather than greed. These guys don't drink any more: cocaine is in, alcohol is out and with it people like Scudmore. My job\u2014if you'll forgive me sounding like one of those prats\u2014is to ensure that The Wrangler doesn't go the same way.'\n\n'It doesn't sound as if it deserves to survive,' she said. 'If it wasn't that you need the job and we need the income, I'd probably hope you fail.'\n\nAmiss felt suddenly depressed.\nChapter Seven\n\nIt was five o'clock on Thursday evening, The Wrangler had gone to press and Amiss was bored. He decided to investigate Henry Potbury, who welcomed him with a big smile.\n\n'Come in, my dear chap. Sit yourself down and let us have a tincture. Would you be so kind as to fetch the bottle from that cupboard beside you?'\n\nAmiss opened the doors and looked with respect at the array of bottles within. He reckoned there must have been a couple of dozen, including, at first glance, gin, sherry, vodka, port and several kinds of whisky. 'Which bottle would you like?'\n\n'Would Scotch suit you?'\n\n'Admirably,' said Amiss, as he passed the bottle across the desk. 'But I'll have just a small one, Mr Potbury.'\n\n'Henry, please. And forgive me, but I don't know your name. Or even, come to think of it, who you are.'\n\n'Robert Amiss. I've been brought in as manager. You might have seen me at the Monday meeting.'\n\n'Of course, of course. I do apologize. I fear that age, drink and New Labour have taken their toll.' Potbury bellowed with laughter, half filled two tumblers and handed one to Amiss, who poured water to the top of the glass and sipped the mixture gingerly.\n\n'Of course, I remember your face from the Monday meeting, but we weren't introduced properly. So welcome to The Wrangler and all that.' He waved his glass jovially. 'What exactly are you here to do?'\n\nAmiss spared him the knowledge that he had been too pissed on the previous Friday to remember their first meeting and instead went patiently through his patter.\n\n'Can I be of any help? I fear I know little of the other side of things here. All I do is churn out words.'\n\n'You could tell me something of the ethos of the paper,' said Amiss artlessly. 'Like our relations with the government, for instance. Are we just implacably opposed because they're Labour?'\n\n'No, no, dear boy. We always hated Labour\u2014as, of course, we hated socialists in general\u2014but we hate New Labour even more.'\n\n'Because?'\n\n'Because it's like having Gladstone back.' Potbury's great eyebrows moved to meet each other, giving to his face a look of deep dejection. 'Sanctimonious, high-minded bullshit, inimical to everything that makes life worth living. It's going to be the most depressing government we've had for a hundred and ten years.'\n\n'Wasn't the post-war Labour government a bit like that? And come on, Henry, surely Mrs Thatcher was as high-minded and censorious as they come.'\n\n'It's different now, my boy. Of course Old Labour could be priggish; I admit that under Maggie there was precious little sense of joie de vivre; and when it came to sanctimoniousness the Liberals always used to win hands down. But New Labour combine all the worst of all of them. They sit there in their fastnesses in Hampstead and Islington drizzling their extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar over their radiccio, planning to meet up in Tuscany during the summer and instructing all the rest of us how to behave.'\n\n'Not too different from Thatcher when it comes to core values, though?'\n\n'Oh yes, I grant you that. She was big on duty and responsibility and industriousness too. But she had been brought up to these values and believed them. This crew have adopted them as election-winning rhetoric to cover the hollowness of their centre. And what's more, the old girl was a lot more tolerant than this lot. Always forgave the womanizers, the drunks and didn't grudge her husband his gin.' He drained his glass. 'For heaven's sake, Maggie didn't marry a puritan. All these New Labour buggers marry mirror images of themselves. And it's almost required of them that they mix only with their own kind. We've got the narrowest ruling elite we've ever had.'\n\n'But they're quite an efficient government in many ways, Henry.'\n\n'Efficient? I don't care about efficiency. Hitler was efficient. What I want is a government that leaves us alone.'\n\n'Surely...' interjected Amiss.\n\nPotbury raised a fat hand. 'I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that under Maggie the nanny state extended its grip, but I would say to you the difference between her and Tony Blair is that she didn't want it to. She was trapped by forces like the EU which even she could not control, yet she truly wanted to roll back the frontiers of the state. God help us, if we hadn't had her, things would have been infinitely worse.'\n\nHe gazed at Amiss indignantly. 'Who are these buggers, anyway? And what have any of them ever done? They're all career politicians. Except of course the countless lawyers that infest their ranks.' He paused for effect and then said with deliberation. 'There is no lower form of life.'\n\n'Henry, what have you ever done other than be a journalist?'\n\n'Ah ha, a fair point, my boy, a fair point. I have never been anything other than a hack. However, I will plead in mitigation that I've never claimed that my calling is a glorious one and I have never condemned the sins of others\u2014only their lack of intellectual rigour.'\n\n'And sanctimoniousness,' said Amiss mildly.\n\n'Oh, of course I have to condemn the puritan sins.' Potbury began to get agitated. 'Because puritan sins are by definition totalitarian. Puritans don't understand the concept of \"live and let live\". They're meddlers, all of them. Whereas all we want is to be left alone to go to hell in our own way.'\n\n***\n\nAn hour later, after the conclusion of the tirade against liberalism that had followed the diatribe against puritanism, Amiss decided to tear himself away. As he stood up, Potbury, by now in high good humour, chuckled. 'Whatever you do, don't miss next Monday's meeting.'\n\nAmiss sat down again.\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'Winterton's back.'\n\n'The assistant editor? What's so significant about that?'\n\n'He and Willie loathe each other.'\n\n'But why then did Willie give him the job?'\n\n'He was his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 initially. Fetch another bottle, will you?'\n\nAmiss did so guiltily. 'Here you are, Henry. But don't pour me any until I've checked at home. Hang on one minute. Don't lose your thread.'\n\nHaving learned from his answering service to his mingled relief and regret that Rachel was working late, he accepted another whisky. 'OK, Henry. Tell me all about it.'\n\n'It is not unamusing, really.' Potbury snorted. 'On Willie's last trip to the States he came back raving about this brilliant young man whom he just had to have to liven up the political coverage. He would pay for himself as he'd be able to write so much on American as well as domestic politics that we could cut down on the freelancers.\n\n'Dwight Winterton was a paragon, and a really useful paragon at that. He was one of those hybrids, half English and half American, brought up in the States but with frequent visits to Europe, went to Harvard and was then a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. Hugely well informed about politics and history. Right little prodigy, in fact. And nice, with it. I think Willie saw him as someone who could succeed me when I fall down the stairs or get cirrhosis of the liver or come to some other discreditable end.' He laughed.\n\n'So?'\n\n'It's been a disaster.'\n\n'Why. Is he not as bright as Willie thought?'\n\n'Oh, yes. He's hugely bright. Mad, of course, like most young right-wingers, wanting to stuff children back up chimneys, start a preemptive war against Germany, and take back India with ten battalions. All that sort of thing. But that's all right. He's young. He'll settle.'\n\n'So are their differences political?'\n\n'No. It's just that they hate each other.'\n\n'Why?'\n\n'They're a bit like a couple who had a one-night stand, flew to Las Vegas the following day to get married and found two days later not only that they were incompatible in their habits but that they hated each other's values, and what's more, he just wanted her for sex and she just wanted him for money.'\n\n'That's an arrangement that I understood quite often worked\u2014for short periods anyway.'\n\n'Not as short as this one,' said Henry with a snort. 'Dwight Winterton arrived to a hero's welcome and within a fortnight they were fighting like cat and dog at the Monday meeting.\n\n'Essentially, Dwight quickly discovered that Willie is a self-indulgent poseur and Willie discovered that Winterton despised him and would like his job. And if there is one kind of person Willie can't stand, it's someone bright who wants to be editor of The Wrangler.'\n\nHe paused and contemplated what was left in his glass. 'It's compounded by the fact that Dwight has principles and Willie has none, and because Willie, though he's lazy, is pernickety, and Dwight, though he's industrious, is slapdash. So Willie has countless opportunities to niggle and patronize and worst of all rewrite, which Dwight absolutely hates.\n\n'And then Willie is driven mad by Dwight's habit of going AWOL because he's decided to go off and see what Yorkshire or Northern Ireland are like. Willie resents this because he rightly fears that Dwight is building up a network and is growing in authority, but he can't stop him because Dwight doesn't even claim expenses. He's got private money. So since Dwight gets the work done, Willie has no ground on which to fight.'\n\n'Can't Willie just fire him?'\n\n'Dwight might sue. He is American, after all. And I doubt if Willie would have the trustees on his side if it came to a showdown. To do my colleagues justice...'\n\n'Your colleagues?'\n\n'Yes. Didn't you know? I'm a trustee. It's one of the reasons Willie puts up with me. The other two are a couple of pompous old Establishment bores, but they do believe in fair play and though they're often taken in by Willie, he knows he'd have a lot of explaining to do if he sacked a brilliant and prolific journalist. And of course, knowing this, Dwight goes ever more his own way and grins as Willie squirms. Willie is left with petulance as almost his only weapon.'\n\nAmiss began to feel rather gloomy. 'Are you telling me that Willie's no good?'\n\n'Willie could have been good, but he chose otherwise. Essentially, early on he gave up on intellectual rigour and integrity. He can write elegantly, I grant you, and his mind is at least half furnished. But when it comes to the crunch, duchesses and cabinet ministers will always take precedence over truth. Hence The Wrangler's line on New Labour: it attacks because it has to, but as far as Willie can fix it, attacks in ways that do not wound.'\n\n'But I've seen some pretty ferocious criticism in recent months, Henry.'\n\n'Ah yes, but never by Willie. Willie can always flutter his hands at the Downing Street would-be press censors and tell them that I cannot be controlled, so it's not his fault. But if you look at anything he writes you'll find that more and more those he criticizes in New Labour are those our new rulers are happy to see thrown to the wolves. And as far as possible, depending what his colleagues will put up with, he tries to make the anonymous leaders as inoffensive as possible.\n\n'In his heart and in his soul Willie Lambie Crump is an apparatchik who would love to drag this journal towards total support of the government of Anthony Blair. However, I will continue to make this as difficult for him as I can.'\n\n'Is it just you against him?'\n\n'Phoebe follows the party line because she has little choice. She would not be listened to, even though she has one of the best brains we've had since the war. Amaryllis Vercoe is bright and thinks like us, but she's rather shallow, and anyway, has little clout with Willie. Clement Webber shouts a lot and then goes back to Oxford. So apart from me, the challenge is coming from Dwight, who is everything Willie is not: intellectually curious, vigorous, original and energetic. Dwight will make imaginative and intellectual leaps into the unknown, yet he retains an instinctive understanding of the essence of the Burkean conservative. Willie skims along the surface: Dwight dives underneath it.'\n\nHe poured another slug of whisky, and ignoring Amiss's shake of the head, poured some into his glass too. 'If things get worse, I'll have to try and topple Willie: we've got to get back to the glory days when The Wrangler thrilled with iconoclasm and intellectual daring.'\n\n'You're actually trying to bring about a change of editor?'\n\n'It's too early yet, but I'm considering future steps.'\n\nAmiss cursed inwardly when the phone rang.\n\n'What? Now? Already?' Potbury looked at his watch. 'My dear, I do apologize. You're absolutely right. I was caught in an agreeable conversation and quite forgot where I was. I shall see you as soon as I can get to you.' Downing his whisky, he lumbered to his feet. 'Forgive me...I'm sorry, but I've forgotten your name again.'\n\n'Robert.'\n\n'Forgive me, Robert. I'm delighted you've joined us and I look forward to many more conversations in this room and elsewhere. Drop in any time and if I'm asleep wake me up.' He grinned, and stopping only to pick up the jacket that lay in the corner, left with more speed than Amiss would have given him credit for.\n\n***\n\nPetulance was much in evidence at the meeting next Monday. Gone was the harmony of the previous week, when the emperor Lambie Crump had held forth when he wished and enjoyed the intellectual ping-pong played by the others when he wanted a rest. The offender was the weedy, bespectacled, impish Dwight Winterton, who gazed innocently at Lambie Crump as he artlessly explained that the sweeping statement he had just made about the French economy had no basis in reality and was totally contradicted by what he, Winterton, had picked up on his visit the previous week to his French stockbroking chum.\n\nLater, Winterton broke into an excited account of his visit to a Welsh eisteddfod, described how he had been made an honorary Druid, and produced an article he had written at the weekend. Lambie Crump clearly ached to tell him to stuff it, but decorum and self-protection had to prevail. Winterton's account had been so amusing that no one in his right mind could think of denying it to Wrangler readers. To Amiss, who was getting sicker of Lambie Crump's self-regarding posturings by the day, it was as much as he could do to keep a straight face.\n\nWhen afterwards, Dwight Winterton chatted to him in a friendly way over champagne and suggested lunch or dinner sometime, Amiss realized he must be careful. He could see Lambie Crump gazing fixedly over at them. 'Good to meet you, Dwight,' he said quickly. 'Let's talk soon.' And pausing only to curry favour with Lambie Crump by asking if he could spare some time later on to give him a word of advice, he headed for the door. As he was leaving, Potbury caught his eye and gave him an enormous wink, which Amiss prayed Lambie Crump had not noticed.\nChapter Eight\n\nDetective Sergeant Ellis Pooley finished his cheese, placed his knife in the centre of the plate, picked a few crumbs off the tablecloth, dropped them beside the knife and took another small sip of claret. 'Very nice indeed. Thank you very much.'\n\nHe looked around the room appreciatively. 'I must say, Rachel, how delighted I am to see Robert at last living in a place that is both clean and comfortable. You've had a most civilizing effect on him.'\n\n'Suburbanizing, you mean,' said Amiss, and then caught himself guiltily. 'Sorry, Rach. You know I didn't mean that.'\n\n'I'm not so sure you didn't.' Rachel collected the plates and carried them over to the sink. 'There are moments, Ellis, when I fear that whether he knows it or not, deep down Robert is bored. Life's too straightforward for him.'\n\n'For goodness sake.' Pooley sounded irritated. 'Ever since I first met you, Robert, you've been wailing because you didn't like where you lived or you didn't have a proper job or Rachel was out of reach or you didn't have a penny. Do you mean that now you haven't any of those problems you're looking for new ones?'\n\nAmiss interrupted hastily. 'Rachel's exaggerating. Everything's fine.' He scratched his ear. 'I suppose I could just do with a little bit more excitement at work.'\n\n'Being manager of such a peculiar institution as The Wrangler sounds pretty interesting.'\n\n'It is, but in many respects, rather lacking in challenge. A journal as small as that shouldn't need someone like me.'\n\n'Well, why have they got you then?'\n\n'Because things are in such a mess that they need me. Another proprietor would bring in accountants and management consultants. This one's too gentlemanly for that. My job is simply to do accountants' and consultants' dirty work in a gentlemanly manner.'\n\nPooley looked at him dubiously. 'But you're absolutely useless with money.'\n\n'I'm useless,' said Amiss stiffly, 'with my money. But while I may be personally profligate, I am capable of exercising prudence and perspicacity...' He stopped. 'What a lot of \"ps\".'\n\n'Try adding \"pompous\",' suggested Rachel.\n\nAmiss ignored her. '...when I'm dealing with that of others. I'll have you know I've cut costs substantially without firing people or lowering morale.'\n\nPooley looked incredulous. 'I didn't think such a thing was possible.'\n\n'When you go into a place that is still operating according to the customs and practices of the nineteen thirties that is not too difficult. For instance, simply by spending a few hundred pounds on a fax machine I've saved us a fortune.'\n\nPooley looked puzzled.\n\n'Ah, I forgot this was going to take a leap of the imagination.' Amiss rose and thoughtfully began to open another bottle of claret. 'Picture if you will\u2014' he said, having tried and failed to persuade his friend to accept a refill, 'an office in which the most modern piece of equipment is a stout manual typewriter manufactured in nineteen sixty-seven, the telephones are splendid nineteen thirties Bakelite models with circular dials and the filing cabinets are ancient and wooden and creak a lot and are jammed with yellowing dusty files so tightly packed that it requires exceptional strength to get anything in or out. Indeed, Marcia Whitaker, who is inter alia a fact-checker, has biceps that put me to shame.\n\n'In the midst of this, Josiah Ricketts, who is known as the office clerk, conducts his business along the lines that he was taught when recruited in the nineteen forties by one Albert Flitter, who had joined the paper as an office boy in nineteen fifteen, had risen to the giddy heights of office manager and had a deep reverence for doing things the way the ladies and gentlemen had liked them.\n\n'True, the phones were slightly modernized, admittedly, Ricketts was prevailed upon to allow senior members of staff to have one each and when equipment like the typewriter collapsed did perforce purchase a more or less up-to-date model, but \"newfangled\" was a dirty word, so with anything newfangled, Ricketts would not have to do. And the idle sods of editors couldn't be bothered intervening.'\n\n'Goodness,' said Pooley, absentmindedly holding out his glass for a refill. 'But how do they communicate with printers and the rest of it?'\n\n'Essentially by recreating the postal system of long ago through the use of couriers. Until after the war, Ricketts explained to me nostalgically, it used to be possible for a contributor to post his copy at nine o'clock in the evening. It would be on the desk of the editor at eight the following morning, amendments were sent to the printers by the nine o'clock post, received by them at midday and the proof would be with the contributor by late afternoon. The major concession since then has been that the proofreader-cum-fact-checker, Ben Baines, is also available to take copy over the phone.'\n\n'Come on,' said Pooley, 'you're not seriously telling me that contributors are prepared to put up with having to read their stuff out loud rather than send a fax.'\n\n'Listen, Ellis, I don't think you understand the status of The Wrangler. They pay contributors a pittance, but in fact have no need to pay them at all. Politicians and journalists would pay to be published in The Wrangler because of the luster of the name and the fact that anyone who is anyone on the Right has been reading it for almost two centuries. All this daftness merely adds to its appeal.'\n\n'What made anyone choose you to modernize this outfit? I mean, dammit it, you're a technological moron.'\n\n'By the standards of The Wrangler, I'm right at the cutting edge of technology. They don't want somebody like you, Ellis, with your Internet and websites and access to ninety-five billion pieces of worthless information that you waste your time over. They want somebody to take them by the hand slowly and gently and lead them into the mid-twentieth century. It is my skills as a communicator that are enabling me tenderly to make Marcia, Ben and the rest of the staff love gentle change. The proprietor wants to reduce his losses\u2014not give his paper a corporate nervous breakdown.\n\n'I've taken as my motto a cartoon I once saw of a demonstration by the Moderate Party, who were marching down the street chanting, \"What do we want? Gradual change. When do we want it? In due course.\"'\n\nThe doorbell rang loudly and did not stop. As Amiss ran to answer it, Rachel put her hand to her head. 'Does she have to do that?'\n\n'No,' said Pooley. 'But she always does.'\n\n'I quite like Jack,' said Rachel, 'but sometimes I wonder why.'\n\nThe baroness entered at speed, pulled off her black cloak and threw it into the corner. Rachel stood up, retrieved it and went out and hung it up in the hall.\n\n'What's the matter with that girl?' asked the baroness. 'She's not on duty now. I'm not a foreigner. Rachel! Rachel! Stop fussing around and come back here.'\n\nPausing only to clap Pooley hard on the back, she fell into the chair beside him. 'What have you had to eat?'\n\n'Cassoulet,' said Amiss.\n\n'And very good it was too,' observed Pooley.\n\n'Thank you,' said Rachel as she returned and nodded at her visitor. 'There's plenty left, Jack. Want some?'\n\n'Is it made with goose fat?'\n\n'We're not telling you,' said Amiss. 'Do you want some or not?'\n\n'Not. I had the fattest of fat lunches today, so I'll settle for claret and cheese. What have you got?'\n\n'Since I knew you might drop in, I trekked off to the health food shop and bought extremely aged organically produced cheddar.'\n\n'Hmmmm. I'll give it a try. How old's the claret?'\n\n'Nineteen ninety-four.'\n\n'That's so young, drinking it's almost child abuse.'\n\n'Jack, I don't give a fuck if you eat and drink nothing. Yes or no to the claret.'\n\n'I suppose I'll have to make do.'\n\nShe gazed at her companions. 'What's the matter? Why are you so quiet?'\n\n'Because you're so noisy,' said Pooley. 'It's good to see you, Jack. Now listen to Robert's account of how he's modernizing The Wrangler.'\n\n'God, how boring. You make him sound like one of those dreary ministers who keep telling us to shape up for the new millennium.'\n\nShe took a draught of wine, smacked her lips and greedily tucked into the cheese. 'Not bad. All right, then. Get on with it.'\n\nAmiss gave her a two-paragraph update and continued. 'So my approach is to make progress by gentleness and stealth. I've only been there two months and already the staff have come to terms with a simple photocopying machine, a fax and an efficient, up-to-date and cheap telephone system. I've changed nothing that didn't absolutely have to be changed, their jobs are made easier and I've persuaded them that they are being freed from drudgery to concentrate on more important areas such as\u2014in the case of Ben and Marcia\u2014making the journal ever more accurate.'\n\n'That's all very well, but so far you can't even have saved enough to pay your own salary,' pointed out Pooley.\n\n'I've saved it three times over already just by getting rid of the supervisor and four of the five typists (or typewriters, as the editor calls them), giving the other one a simple word processor that she loves as intensely as Adam did his liddle mop in Cold Comfort Farm and persuading Sabrina Trustler-Stomp\u2014'\n\n'Who?'\n\n'Sabrina Trustler-Stomp, who works for Lambie Crump. I've been told he's never had a secretary who was not well in with the aristocracy and had at least a double-barrelled name. Anyway, I took Sabrina out for a jolly dinner one evening and persuaded her that her life would be more rewarding if she learned a) to type and b) to use a computer. She isn't with us much, having a contract that allows her time off for Ascot, Henley and God knows what, but now, when she's around, she helps out quite enthusiastically. Thinks it's all ever so much fun.'\n\n'But you got rid of the old ladies. I thought there were to be no redundancies.'\n\n'They were all happy to leave, being in their seventies and hanging on there really out of a sense of duty, knowing they were the only people left in London who knew how to use manual typewriters and carbon paper and who didn't mind retyping the same document with amendments fifteen times over, which, with all the staff wrangling about changes in the articles, often happened: with a word processor, four or five hours can be saved. So I wooed them with soft words and a generous pay-off. Miss Grumshaw, the supervisor, told me she'd been putting off her retirement for years because no one else could have done her job.'\n\nRachel knew the story and was thinking of something else, but the others were rapt. 'Bugger me,' said the baroness. 'This makes me look like Bill Gates.' She seized the bottle and poured claret into her own glass. Pointedly, but without her noticing, Amiss topped up everyone else's.\n\n'Then, too, there was the little matter of keeping a master-list of subscribers without ever bothering to check on expiry dates. Every month subscribers were asked to renew their subscriptions if they had run out and were relied upon to be efficient, honest and loyal enough to send money if it was owed. As a guess, I think we've been giving away at least three thousand free subscriptions a year.'\n\n'This is ridiculous, Robert,' said Pooley. 'You must be making it up. Just because the methods were old-fashioned doesn't have to mean that they were completely incompetent.'\n\n'They were. We had a labour-intensive, out-of-date system combined with administrative incompetence of a kind which the civil service never dreamed of.'\n\n'I doubt that,' said Pooley loftily.\n\n'You've got a nerve,' said the baroness indignantly. 'I knew halfwits in the civil service, but they were never as thick as cops. What about the antiquated filing methods that allowed the Yorkshire Ripper to run amok with impunity for so long?'\n\n'I've been daring enough to get a computer into the subscription department,' went on Amiss. 'Young Jason mastered it within a few days. So now he's happy and the savings are spectacular. Naggiar, the subscriptions manager, doesn't give a toss as long as he's allowed to go on doing bugger-all.'\n\n'Any cigars?' enquired the baroness.\n\n'No.'\n\n'Pity.' She felt around in a pocket, extracted pipe and tobacco and began to fill the one with the other.\n\n'Advertising was a bigger struggle. Scudmore is a nice man but as much as a disaster as the malingering Naggiar and much harder to do anything about. It was my good fortune that he collapsed with a heart attack four weeks ago and will not be back. I brought in someone at a third of the salary, who doubled the advertising in his first month.'\n\nAs the baroness lit an enormous lighter and aimed it at her tobacco, Pooley hastily moved his chair a couple of feet away. She sucked noisily for a few moments, grunted with satisfaction and then looked up at Amiss. 'Well, I'll say for you, my lad, that you've certainly followed to the ultimate the great old precept that the way to be a success is to succeed a failure. What more has to be done before you put yourself out of business?'\n\n'Plenty, but I won't bore you with an accounts clerk who thinks it impertinent to ask anyone for a receipt, or a system of perks that ensures that no journalist ever travels other than first class\u2014even by air\u2014not to speak of the editor's habit of hiring a first-class cook and butler several times a week to entertain people to what he calls luncheon, or even the distinguished wine cellar which is augmented annually to the tune of five or ten thou a year.'\n\n'How soon can I come to lunch?' asked the baroness.\n\n'I'll ask Willie and ring you tomorrow: he's been at me to ask you. But are you sure you can put up with him for the sake of the food?'\n\n'I want to meet him properly.'\n\n'Why?' asked Amiss suspiciously.\n\n'Never you mind. Now, have there been any mutterings against you yet?'\n\n'Most of them realize they're lucky not to have got some ghastly whizz-kid intent on wholesale revolution.'\n\n'And the gentle owner?'\n\n'Very happy. Since he doesn't mind losing money as long as it doesn't run into six figures, I've already exceeded his expectations. Indeed, he gave me a pay rise the other week.'\n\n'But no contract,' said Rachel.\n\n'It wasn't appropriate to ask, Rach. You know that.'\n\n'You haven't dealt with the really crucial problem yet,' said the baroness.\n\n'What's that?' asked Pooley.\n\n'Willie Crump's lack of intellectual rigour.'\n\n'Jesus, Jack. That isn't part of my job description.'\n\n'Well, you must make it so.'\n\n'You should talk to Henry Potbury. He goes on about that a lot.'\n\n'He's right. The Wrangler is too valuable to be allowed to coast. That young whatshisname...'\n\n'Dwight Winterton?'\n\n'Yes. He's OK. And Potbury when he's good is good. But I'm worried that there's a loss of direction. If you ask me, Willie Crump's sucking up to New Labour.'\n\n'You might be right. He's been shifting ground. There have been a lot of fights about that.'\n\n'Willie isn't going to stay in the wilderness for perhaps ten years. Courtiers need courts. And I'll bet Willie Crump wants a peerage.'\n\n'Hadn't thought of that, Jack. You could just be right.'\n\n'What's the circulation of The Wrangler anyway?' asked Pooley.\n\n'Only about thirty thousand. I want to have a modest advertising campaign but Willie thinks that would be vulgar. \"We speak to the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me\" he explained. \"We have no need of the rest.\" As indeed he doesn't, while Papworth foots the bill. But I have no remit to do anything about this. Henry's doing what he can to work on him.'\n\n'I know Henry Potbury,' said the baroness. 'Knew him well at one time. Had a bit of a fling, indeed. He'll never be able to do anything now. Past it. So you'll have to.'\n\n'I can't.'\n\n'Then I may have to myself. Someone has to challenge this bloody government.'\n\n'Don't you dare get involved.'\n\n'Try stopping me,' said the baroness.\n\n***\n\n'Disaffected.'\n\n'What?' said Pooley, who was nervously watching the road. 'Who? Which?'\n\n'Rachel. Didn't you notice?'\n\n'No.' Pooley winced as the baroness accelerated through a changing traffic light. 'I think everything's going terribly well for them both. It's very encouraging that Robert's got a real job and is taking it seriously and Rachel's doing so well...'\n\n'Ellis Pooley, are you blind or just so crazed with lust for Mary Lou Denslow that you can't see what's happening to our friends?'\n\n'Well, what do you think is happening?'\n\n'Rachel's become too serious for him. You mark my words, she wants somebody who's going to make a name for himself and forge a brilliant career and all those other things. She doesn't want a drifter.'\n\n'He's not drifting any more. Surely that's the point. He's enjoying sorting out this mad disorder...'\n\n'And will be bored when order's been restored; then he'll want to move on.'\n\n'But surely he'll be able to get a much bigger job then? Can't he progress to managing something much more important?'\n\n'He won't be interested in that, Ellis. If all he wanted was a sensible challenging job with career prospects he would have gone back into the civil service ages ago.' The tyres screeched as she cornered sharply. Pooley pretended not to notice.\n\n'The fact is that he's developed a taste for the bizarre and the macabre and by now is about as inclined towards a steady career as was Phillip Marlowe. The best hope is that fans of his like me and Charlie Papworth and Bertie Ormerod keep spreading the word and finding him a never-ending supply of disaster zones to home in on.'\n\n'You've worried me, Jack. You've really worried me. I was hopeful.'\n\n'For heaven's sake, Ellis, why do you want Robert to turn into everybody else? I've always known this about him. He grumbles about his life and deludes himself he wants to live sensibly, but he's always going to want adventure. And that doesn't suit Rachel. Her patience is already wearing thin.'\n\n'I hope you're wrong. I want Robert to be settled and happy.'\n\n'I want him to be interested,' said the baroness. 'That's what makes him happy. And as for you'\u2014she turned and looked at him\u2014'the sooner you go off with Mary Lou for a long, long idyll of madness and passion, the better.'\n\nThe look of embarrassment on Pooley's face as he contemplated this prospect made her rock with laughter so vigorously that she almost drove the car off the road.\nChaper Nine\n\nHenry Potbury's bulbous face peered around Amiss's door. 'A word with you, my dear chap.'\n\n'Of course, Henry.'\n\nAmiss installed Potbury in the leather armchair. 'Coffee? I'm afraid I've nothing stronger.'\n\n'No, no, my dear chap. Even I draw the line at drinking alcohol before noon.' He stopped and considered that statement. 'Well, that is, in the normal course of events I do.'\n\n'So what's on your mind?'\n\n'I think Willie's finally gone potty.'\n\n'How can you tell?'\n\n'Rang me up six sheets to the wind last night, raved at me for about five minutes about the iniquities of Dwight Winterton, whom he described as a treacherous kike, told me I was a drunken oaf and made some disparaging reference to you as the northern fellow who counts the spoons.'\n\n'How...?' asked Amiss.\n\nPotbury snorted. 'How was I sober enough to know this? Because my ferocious Aunt Hortense was staying last night, that's why, and fear of her tongue always reduces my alcohol intake by about eighty per cent.'\n\n'That wasn't my question. I wanted to know how you identified me as the chap who counts the spoons?'\n\n'Because you are really when it comes to it,' said Potbury in a reasonable tone. 'Not a bad description of you, at all, if I may say so.'\n\n'So how did you respond to all this?'\n\n'There wasn't really time to say much. I expostulated a couple of times, but the flood just continued.'\n\n'Doesn't sound very like Willie.'\n\n'No, he's usually pretty ept at keeping his temper. But I'd say the general praise for that piece of Dwight's he tried to spike last week sent him to the bottle.'\n\n'Kike's a bit much, though. I wouldn't have put him down as anti-semitic.'\n\n'Scratch Willie and you find a shit.'\n\n'And what had I done to upset him?'\n\n'Oh nothing, it was just because you, along with Dwight, had had a pat on the back from m'Lud Papworth. If there's one thing Willie can't stand, it's Charlie Papworth saying anything nice about anyone else.'\n\n'But why was he ringing you to carry on about it?'\n\n'Who else has he got, my dear boy?'\n\n'Mrs Willie?'\n\n'Come on, surely you know that Mrs Willie\u2014or rather, to be precise, the Honourable Mrs Willie\u2014departed airhead held high several years ago because she couldn't put up with Willie's insufferable superciliousness, sexlessness and God knows what else. Knowing how loudly and widely she complained about him within the smart set, those whom he would consider eligible haven't exactly been queuing up to succeed her. It's not, after all, as if he were rich or well connected.'\n\n'Is there no little Lambie Crump?'\n\nPotbury shuddered. 'Oh, really. What an unpleasant thought. Can't you see it? Blond ringlets and a lace collar.' He pulled himself out of the chair. 'Drink later? Something I'd like to talk to you about at leisure. And I've got something to knock off before lunch.'\n\n'Sure. I'll call in during the afternoon.'\n\n***\n\nA full-scale row was in progress as Amiss put his head around the door of the midden shared by Marcia and Ben.\n\n'Rubbish, it's Robert Peel.'\n\n'You silly old woman!' screamed Ben. 'How often do I have to tell you your knowledge of the nineteenth century is so bloody 'opeless as to be a national scandal. That was never said by Robert fuckin' Peel. It was said twenty bleedin' years later by Benjamin shaggin' Disraeli.'\n\nA tennis ball flew from Marcia's desk and whizzed by Ben's ear. 'You've got amnesia again, you stupid bugger.' Marcia's voice rose to a screech. 'Don't you remember in Gash's biography where it says that...'\n\nAmiss was so used by now to the passion and inordinate length of these exchanges that he had learned to barge in. 'Good morning, Marcia. Good morning, Ben,' he said suavely, and the altercation stopped immediately as they greeted him warmly. He walked gingerly along the narrow path that wove between the massed paper columns. 'May I sit down?'\n\nThey nodded.\n\nAmiss perched himself on a pile of magazines that looked solid enough to serve as a temporary seat. 'I've been thinking...'\n\nThey eyed him warily, but without hostility, for despite all their initial shock at the boldness of various of his past suggestions, they had come to accept that he was on their side and that the quality of their lives had improved since his arrival.\n\n'You need more room.'\n\nMarcia perked up considerably. 'We've always thought that. Are you thinking of giving us a bigger office?'\n\n'Steady on, Marcia. We have to dwell in the realms of the possible. I'm just thinking of making this bigger by getting\u2014' He stopped hastily, recognizing that he'd almost put his foot completely into it. '...by moving some of our archives from out of your way and hiring you some help to sort out the papers.' Drowned out by a crescendo of protest, but with a calm born of experience he sat quietly until the soprano and basso profundo drew to a close.\n\n'I quite see what you're concerned about, and you can be sure...'\n\nThe phone rang and Marcia answered. 'It's Willie, Robert. He wants an urgent word.'\n\n'Talk to you later,' said Amiss. 'And remember, there's nothing to worry about.'\n\n'What do you mean, Gash?' Ben was already shouting, as Amiss opened the door. 'It's all in Blake's Disraeli, if you'd 'ave 'ad the wit to look at it before makin' such a prat of yourself by attributin'...'\n\nAmiss closed the door softly and left them to it.\n\n***\n\nLambie Crump looked commendably well for a man who had been at the bottle the night before. And, to Amiss's relief, he did not appear to be nurturing a grievance. In fact, he sounded ingratiating.\n\n'Ah, Robert, how kind of you to come so quickly. You know Lady Troutbeck is coming to luncheon today?'\n\n'Yes, indeed, Willie.'\n\n'Alas, something has come up that makes it impossible for me to see her. Albeit it is not possible to explain what it is, it can be intimated to the baroness that the matter concerns people not a million miles removed from Downing Street.'\n\n'Do you mean you're canceling? She won't take that well.'\n\n'No, no. No such thing. Just that it will be necessary for you to be the host on this occasion. And to deal with the tedious practicalities of her column.'\n\n'What column?'\n\n'Ah, me, one has so much on one's mind that these things sometimes slip it. Lady Troutbeck and I happily coincided at the opera the other night and agreed that she should become a columnist.'\n\nAmiss clutched his hair. 'You cannot be serious. She's to the right of Attila the Hun.'\n\nLambie Crump looked at Amiss in bafflement. 'You defame a remarkable woman. The Duke of Ormerod, whom she was accompanying, told me that she is an outstanding educational thinker and has proved to be a great modernizer at St Martha's.'\n\n'Yes, but...'\n\nLambie Crump put his palms together, rested his chin on the tips of his fingers and looked grave. 'It seems you dislike the baroness.'\n\n'No, no. Of course not. Actually, I'm very fond of her.'\n\nLambie Crump sat bolt upright in his chair. 'Well then, can you enlighten one as to what particularly is perturbing you?'\n\n'Jack Troutbeck,' said Amiss, with heavy deliberation, 'is fine in her place. By which I mean somewhere she either owns or which is big enough to accommodate her.\n\n'At St Martha's, her benevolent tyranny has made the college a resounding success. And in the House of Lords\u2014which has proven historically that it can cope insouciantly with even the barking mad\u2014she causes no problems at all. I just have a feeling that involving her in an enterprise this size would be rather like inviting Moby Dick to come for a dip in one's garden pond. At the very least, you might reasonably expect a considerable amount of displacement.'\n\nLambie Crump had lost interest. 'Look, Robert, one is faced with this hush-hush business, and as well it's press day. You must yourself resolve your esoteric fears. Lady Troutbeck is to be a columnist\u2014not a member of staff\u2014so the analogy with Moby Dick does not apply. Just make sure she knows one has been called away on affairs of state. Keep her happy, tell her all she needs to know and give a gentle steer on our ethos and all that.'\n\nAmiss rose. 'The term \"gentle steer\" in the context of Jack Troutbeck is singularly inappropriate. However, I will do the best I can.'\n\n***\n\n'Splendid, splendid, splendid. Just my idea of what a magazine office should be like.'\n\n'You mean two centuries out of date.'\n\n'I mean redolent of a great past and in no way disfigured by the fripperies of a less gracious age.' She peered at the slightly threadbare Persian rug on which Amiss had lain bleeding a few months previous. 'Ah, very good, very good. I want one of those. What's more, I would very, very much like that refectory table in place of the decrepit piece of Victoriana we have in St Martha's as our high table at present.' She sighed. 'Why can't I have everything I want?'\n\nAmiss ignored her. 'Over there you will see a portrait of our founder.'\n\n'Ah, splendid. Seymour Spragge himself. What an excellent old boy. I remember with keen pleasure an essay of his on the perils of paying too much heed to the clamouring of the ignorant\u2014a subject to which I propose to address myself in a series I'm thinking of doing on why all constitutional change is bad.' She beamed. 'I'm going to enjoy being a columnist, stirring things up and getting the lefties fuming.' She put her head on one side. 'What do you think, Robert? Is this a good moment for a piece on why all liberals are boring?'\n\n'Thanks. That includes me.'\n\n'Not in essentials, dear boy. As you well know, you're a Tory at heart, yet you pathetically insist on draping around you the tatters of your childhood liberalism to hide the glorious body of your true faith. Now summon that chap with the champagne and show me some more defunct editors.'\n\n***\n\n'I don't think for one moment that your views will be acceptable to Willie, especially the way he's been drifting of late,' said Amiss over coffee and brandy, and in the baroness's case, a fat cigar.\n\n'Too true. I'm going to give him a few bad nights.'\n\n'Presumably you hid from him the fact that you're an appalling old reactionary.'\n\n'Certainly. Once we spotted him, Bertie and I conspired to keep it quiet that I'm'\u2014she wagged her finger at Amiss\u2014'a libertarian, not a reactionary. In fact, Bertie was the one who suggested the column.'\n\n'What exactly do you mean when you say you're a libertarian?'\n\n'That I'm in favour of people having the liberty to do anything that gives them pleasure unless it does harm to other people.'\n\n'Hah! I've never noticed you exercising that self-denying ordinance when you're parking illicitly, throwing your weight around on motorways or generally getting your own way at other people's expense.'\n\nThe baroness smirked. 'I'm different.'\n\nAmiss sighed. 'My philosophy of life is that once expressed by the Eton schoolteacher who on seeing a boy peeing over the gallery on to his schoolfellows below, asked: \"Where would we be if every boy did that?\"'\n\n'Jolly good philosophy,' said the baroness. 'All for it. Doesn't apply to me, though. I work on the principle that the other boys won't do that, so I can.'\n\n'So that explains why you admit to having enjoyed opium but are against legalizing drugs?'\n\n'Exactly. I'm in favour of drugs for me because I'd know how to use them.'\n\n'Just you?'\n\n'Come, now. I'm not that unreasonable. People like me would be OK. But you don't think I'm in favour of making drugs available to just anybody, do you?'\n\n'Seems rather an elitist argument?'\n\n'Of course it's an elitist argument, you idiot. I'm an elitist.' She jabbed him in the chest. 'You're all right most of the time, Robert, but you really do have ferocious attacks of priggishness. You've been away from my direct influence for too long.'\n\nAmiss changed tack. 'So what will the Troutbeck column be about, then? Turning the clock back at the millennium?'\n\n'You really are too simple-minded, my boy. I'm not against change per se. Like Wellington, I believe that one has to accept it when there is no choice.' She brooded for a moment. 'Though sometimes I wonder if he wasn't perhaps a little precipitate when it came to Catholic Emancipation.'\n\n'Oh, for God's sake, you needn't practise being preposterous on me. It's wasted.'\n\n'You think I don't mean it, don't you?' She laughed triumphantly. 'I really do believe that all change is bad. Except, of course, when it is change I want.'\n\n'Because what is good for you is good for the nation.'\n\n'Precisely. You've got it in one.'\n\n'So what will your column be recommending?'\n\n'Oh, the usual: abolishing the blasphemy laws, legalizing prostitution, withdrawing from the European Union, hanging on to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whether they like it or not.'\n\n'I'm surprised you don't want to take the Republic of Ireland back into the United Kingdom.'\n\n'Oh, I'd like that ideally, of course,' she said cheerfully. 'But it's just not possible to move in and take them over these days, I'm afraid. They'd kick up a terrible fuss. Sometimes games aren't worth candles. Though it would definitely be the best for everyone. Their trains haven't run on time since we left and we need them to liven us up.'\n\n'Will you be dealing with reform of the House of Lords?'\n\n'Reform indeed.' She snorted. 'These buggers are trying to destroy us. Certainly I'll be touching on that. I'm thinking of leading a campaign to recapture the powers of the Lords stolen from them by Lloyd George in nineteen twelve.'\n\nAmiss stood up. 'I think I've had as much as I can stand of your political views, Jack. And so will Willie when he sees the first column. He'll refuse to print it.'\n\n'No, he won't. He was so besotted after the performance Bertie and I put up that he agreed to give me a free hand. We'll draw up the contract now and you can get him to sign it this afternoon.'\n\n'He won't, if I tell him what you're really like.'\n\n'But you won't. You'd hate to spoil the fun.'\n\nShe stubbed out her cigar and pushed back her chair. 'OK. To business.'\n\n***\n\n'How the hell will she find the time?' asked Rachel.\n\nAmiss stopped chopping onions and laid down his knife. 'How much time do you think it takes to be a columnist?'\n\n'I don't know, but presumably it'll take her a half day or so every week to write the article and then, of course, there's the reading and thinking time and the rest of it.'\n\n'When I was trying to deter her I pointed that out, so she took a particular pleasure in proving me wrong. Having mentioned that Ben used to take copy before we acquired a fax, she announced breezily that she much preferred to dictate and would now do so. It was all done in twenty minutes. Of course I'd forgotten that when she was in the civil service she was notorious for dictating blistering memos off the top of her head.'\n\n'And was it any good?'\n\n''Fraid so. Resounding with blood and thunder at the expense of the chattering classes.' He added the onions to the contents of the pan. 'Remember, she's got enough outrageous opinions that they come fully formed like Athena out of the head of Zeus. Ben was deeply impressed. Said she was as fast as anyone he'd taken copy from in thirty years.'\n\n'Pleased with herself, was she?'\n\n'Delighted. Apparently she's been getting a bit bored recently because everything's been going too well.'\n\nRachel looked up from mixing the salad. 'So she'll be looking for something mad to drag you into.'\n\n'Oh, come now, Rach. That's hardly fair.'\n\n'It's completely fair. And I'm sick of it. You seem determined to fritter your life away dancing to the tune of that egomaniac.'\n\n'But she's a great life-enhancer.'\n\n'It says something about your life that it needs to be enhanced like that.'\n\nA frost settled over the kitchen, which did not dissipate until Amiss cut his finger and cursed loudly. By the time Rachel had done her ministering-angel duty with the sticking plaster, cordial relations had been restored. She unbent and related a story of office intrigue which Amiss enjoyed and responded to satisfactorily.\n\n'We've got the makings of a pretty promising intrigue too,' he remarked over dinner. 'I had a very interesting gossip with Henry Potbury.'\n\n'That old soak.'\n\n'Yes, but he's a nice old soak, Rachel, and a gifted old soak and to me a kind old soak.'\n\n'Each to his own,' said Rachel. 'But at least that explains why you're...' She stopped.\n\n'Why I'm what?'\n\n'Let's say half pissed.'\n\n'Hardly that, Rach. And be fair. It was a day when through no fault of my own I had lunch with Jack, as well as having to consort with Henry. I'm only the littlest bit pissed really, which is pretty impressive in the circs.' He reached out and gave her a hug. 'Come on, it's hardly a big deal, is it? Just because you're always as sober as a judge...Sorry. Bad analogy. If you think about it, it's nonsensical to say sober as a judge. Lots of judges get pissed. In fact, the legal profession is full of piss-artists. What about sober as a Jew? I've never known a Jewish drunk.'\n\n'I don't quite see that it makes sense for a Jew to be described as being sober as a Jew. Though I accept the validity of the analogy. We're brought up to be moderate drinkers. So, however, are many lawyers. You're making very sweeping statements.'\n\n'Don't tell me. New Labour lawyers are moderate too.'\n\nAs he saw her irritated look, he bit back an appeal to her to stop being a prig and gave her another hug. 'Let's stop bickering. As I was about to say before I interrupted myself, Henry tells me that Papworth wants to dissolve the trust or at least amend the power of the trustees.'\n\n'I thought that was impossible.'\n\n'Apparently not. Difficult yes. But if the trustees themselves are amenable, it would be reasonably straightforward.'\n\n'And if they're not?'\n\n'More difficult, but still possible if the lawyers are smart enough.'\n\n'So why does Lord Papworth want to break the trust?'\n\n'Sorry. Wrong Papworth. It's Piers, the son and heir, who wants to sell the journal. And who's going to be idiot enough to take on The Wrangler with the constraints that have been bleeding the Papworths dry?'\n\n'But why should the trustees cooperate?'\n\n'Henry certainly won't. He says he's not too sure of his fellow trustees, though. He said Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly are total wankers and mesmerized by Willie, out of whose arse they think the sun shines. So if he's for it, they almost certainly will be too.'\n\n'But why would he be for it? From all you've told me, it's really in his interests to keep the arrangement he's got.'\n\n'True, true. But Henry's so suspicious of Willie that he thinks he wouldn't put it past him, if the bribe was right, to change his position.'\n\n'Sounds pretty paranoid.'\n\n'Maybe he is. I don't know. But I do know that Piers Papworth has been leaning on Henry and was extremely cross with him for being so totally opposed.'\n\n'He should approach him when he's drunk,' said Rachel. 'Presumably he'd sign anything then.'\n\n'Henry's a good man, Rachel. You'd like him.'\n\n'I doubt it, Robert. I doubt it very much.'\nChapter Ten\n\nWrangler parties were not just famous but notorious, being known not simply for the quality of drink and food provided at the expense of Lord Papworth\u2014champagne punch, Russian vodka and caviar were the staples\u2014but because over the years invitations had acquired a cachet that made them sought after by every snob in London with literary pretensions.\n\nThe journal's politics pulled in the aristocracy hand over fist, bringing in their train the social-climbing Right and those of the Left who adored the frisson of rubbing shoulders with enemies of noble birth. At Wrangler parties were to be found choleric columnists of the far Right and paranoid conspiracy theorists from journals on the far Left.\n\nPoliticians particularly loved being known to be present: invitations marked them out from fellow MPs as men of letters. 'Didn't see you at The Wrangler party,' an MP who wrote occasional essays on his gritty childhood in the dark north would observe to a despised fellow politico who had hoped to be invited because he wrote the odd book review. He would watch with glee as this upstart with pretensions to be a pillar of the literary Left squirmed and muttered unconvincingly about having been otherwise occupied.\n\nSix or seven glasses of Wrangler punch was guaranteed to strip away the veneer of civilization so carefully cultivated by those who sold their exaggerated and hyped-up opinions for a living. The occasion when the antique president of a right-wing Think Tank ennobled by Margaret Thatcher for the rigorousness of his condemnation of all that was liberal denounced a competitor\u2014whose road-to-Damascus conversion at the lady's feet had taken him overnight in one swift vault across the political spectrum\u2014of being an ideological counter-jumper, stayed in the memory of those present for many years to come. Indeed it stayed in the memory of many who hadn't been there at all but thought they had, so graphic were the accounts at literary dinner parties of the unedifying wrestling match between two old buffers who had taken no exercise in years.\n\nSince both of them were monumentally unpopular, and most of audience were in a state of happy alcoholic irresponsibility, no efforts had initially been made to pull them apart; the moment when the accuser lost his wig and the defendant his trousers raised an almighty cheer. It had been the bright idea of Lord Fortescue, a noted dog breeder, to empty over the heads of both contenders the contents of a punch bowl. 'Always works,' he said complacently, as the two let go of each other abruptly, and\u2014blinded and winded\u2014allowed the kinder among the audience to help them to their feet.\n\nSix weeks before D-day, Lambie Crump had summoned Amiss to discuss the guest list. Into the third hour Amiss was very fed up, for it was clear he had no role other than as an audience. His remark that if the unprecedented decision was being taken to ask the whole Cabinet, it seemed strange to invite only half a dozen Conservatives, was met with an abrupt, 'Well, that is how it will be.' Lambie Crump seemed merely to want an audience as he drooled over the names of the previous year, appended giggling comment or reminiscence, and sometimes struck people out willy-nilly because they were pass\u00e9, vulgar or just not amusing any more. But Amiss had put up with it uncomplainingly, this being the occasion when he had at last exacted from Lambie Crump the long-resisted concession to replace Jason by an entryphone and allow the lad to train for computer duties in the subscription department. Lambie Crump had fought a last rearguard action by insisting that Miss Mercatroid would never put up with such a loss, but Amiss had been able to cite her in support, for he had already bribed her with a therapeutic chair that would no longer leave her back in nightly agony.\n\nHaving covertly examined the account books for the previous year, Amiss had discovered that the party had cost more than \u00a330,000. Discreet enquiries about the caterers had revealed that they were a couple of sprigs of the aristocracy who were highly efficient, commercially astute in using their names and contacts, but extremely expensive.\n\nThe day after the guest-list discussion, having ascertained that Lambie Crump was in a good mood because he was off to a ducal household for the weekend, Amiss called into his office and asked hesitantly: 'Do we have to have the Gascoignes catering for the party? Aren't they a little on the pricey side?'\n\nLambie Crump looked at him aghast. 'What are you suggesting?'\n\n'Just a little shopping round.'\n\n'You seek to turn The Wrangler party into a cheap-wine-and-nasty-vol-au-vent affair?'\n\n'No, of course I don't. I just thought we might find people who could give our guests food and drink just as good for rather less than one hundred pounds a head.'\n\n'This is very disturbing. Lady Amanda Gascoigne is a personal friend. She knows how to do things. Now about that proposal of yours to'\u2014he looked at the piece of paper in front of him and with distaste said\u2014'acquire comptometers and in other regards alter some of our accounting practices, one would wish to consider it in a calm frame of mind.'\n\nAmiss recognized a bargain when it was being offered to him. 'OK, Willie. I wouldn't wish to upset you. If you like, I'll sort out the details of the party with Lady Amanda.'\n\nLambie Crump smiled. 'You'll find her quite delightful.'\n\n***\n\n'Even there,' Amiss reported to Rachel, 'I managed to cut the bill by twenty per cent by persuading Lady Amanda the guests wouldn't notice if she substituted Iranian for Russian caviar and used a cheaper champagne than Krug and just a three-star brandy for the punch. I asked her not to tell Willie about this, because he found economies so wearisome and vulgar and Lady Amanda\u2014who has a sharp eye for the main chance\u2014agreed without demur. \"Willie likes nothing but the best,\" she said, \"but sometimes, of course, that is the enemy of the good. Dear old Willie doesn't quite live in the real world.\"'\n\n'It's still an awful waste of money,' said Rachel.\n\n'But it's fun. And it's traditional. And Papworth doesn't grudge it.'\n\n'It's still inexcusable to spend so much.'\n\n'Oh, for God's sake, Rachel, do you have to take on the puritanism of your new masters?'\n\n'Since you went to The Wrangler, Robert, you seem to think that anyone who doesn't get drunk and throw money around is a life-denying puritan and a bore. Fortunately, my colleagues still think I'm good company. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to the study to catch up with some work.'\n\n***\n\nThe weather was fine, the guests were happily disporting themselves inside and outside The Wrangler offices and there were no signs that anyone had noticed any diminution in the quality of the food or drink. Amiss was in a benign frame of mind. He had had a happy reunion with the Duke of Ormerod, had been flirted with by a luscious young hackette who seemed to think a manager was a person of consequence, had eavesdropped on half a dozen entertaining conversations and was about to insinuate himself into the group surrounding two truculent old novelists, when from behind came a tap on the shoulder and a, 'My dear Robert,' and he turned to see Lord Papworth, who had in tow a middle-aged man whose large ears and Roman nose suggested a close family relationship.\n\n'This is my son, Piers, Robert. Piers, here is Robert Amiss, the manager, who has done so much over the past few months to stem the losses here.'\n\n'Not enough,' said Piers Papworth, as they shook hands. 'Sorry, that sounds ungracious, but the extravagance of this party always pisses me off. Look at that.' He gestured towards one of Lady Amanda's uniformed waitresses, who was tempting a nearby group with a tray of blinis, while behind her stood another, carrying a silver jug of punch. 'Presumably the Papworth estate has to pay extra to have pretty ones.'\n\n'I don't think so,' said Amiss. 'I can't imagine Lady Amanda Gascoigne ever contemplated hiring anyone plain.'\n\n'Last fucking straw,' said Piers Papworth. 'Us adding to the ill-gotten gains of the bloody Gascoignes,' and with a nod he elbowed his way through a gaggle of critics and disappeared into the crowd.\n\nLord Papworth shrugged resignedly. 'Sorry, Robert. It's not that Piers doesn't appreciate what you've done. It's just that he won't be satisfied until The Wrangler operates at a profit.'\n\nAmiss looked over his shoulder. 'In that case, he'd better take a contract out on Willie.'\n\n'Don't tempt him. Or me, for that matter. I'm finding his political line harder and harder to take.'\n\n'You're not alone. You could probably share the cost of the hitman with several others.'\n\n'I take comfort from that thought.' He looked around him covertly. 'A word in your ear, Robert. Is Willie drinking a lot?'\n\n'Why do you ask?'\n\n'I had the most peculiar phone call from him last week. Raving about all of you. Yet when I alluded to it a few days later he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Obviously I said I must have been mistaken and didn't push it. Chap had clearly forgotten all about it.'\n\n'There have been a few incidents of that kind. Henry and I have had two or three such calls.'\n\n'Keep an eye on it, will you? It's bad enough having the deputy permanently soused without having the editor making abusive drunken phone calls. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I hope tonight goes all right. Now, if you'll forgive me...'\n\nAs Lord Papworth took off, Amiss's arm was gripped firmly and he was pulled into a corner by Baroness Troutbeck.\n\n'What do you want, Jack?'\n\n'Shut up and listen.' The focus of her attention was a tall, angular thirtysomething in an expensive fuchsia suit, with thick gold jewellery on her ears and neck, a huge diamond on her right hand and hair so big, blonde and expensively cut as to have walked straight off the set of a Hollywood soap opera. She was made up to match: the fuchsia lipstick and matching talons were alarming in their stridency. In a harsh Australian accent with American overtones, she was mesmerizing Wilfred Parry, the willowy young academic and part-time Wrangler literary editor, whom Amiss had come to loathe.\n\nParry's credentials as a promising member of a famous English department required him to hide his true instincts by dressing up the traditional in obfuscatory cant and making it seem original in a world of post-structuralists, post-modernists and post-revisionists. He was, in Amiss's view, striving to be the first post-fogey\u2014a position that allowed him to dress, think and share the prejudices of fogeys while maintaining a position of ineffable academic and intellectual superiority.\n\nThe baroness was watching enraptured. Amiss quickly saw why.\n\n'So you're devoting your life to books,' said the fuchsia woman to Parry. 'I think that's great. I think that's really great. I think books are wonderful. I love books. Books are my companions, books are my friends. Friends are good too, friends are great. And when your books are your friends, you've always got friends. Don't you agree with me, Wilf?'\n\n'Yes,' he stammered.\n\nAmiss\u2014who had never seen Wilfred Parry at a loss for the word that would illustrate his cleverness\u2014chortled inwardly.\n\n'Now have you got any poems about friendship that are your particular favourites?'\n\n'Nothing comes to mind,' he said defensively.\n\n'Come on, come on,' she said. 'A bloke like you must have lots at your fingertips. Who's your favourite poet?'\n\nParry froze. 'Er, er. Perhaps William Empson.'\n\n'Who? Never heard of him. That's the trouble with you intellectuals. You're not interested in the common people. In what ordinary people relate to. What's this bastard ever written about friendship?'\n\n'Er, I don't know.' Wilfred, who could see that a small crowd had gathered, was beginning to look desperate. 'Not the sort of thing he writes about really.'\n\n'Name me someone else you like who does.'\n\nAmiss was almost beginning to feel sorry for Parry, who looked as if he had gone beyond the stage of being able to think about anything.\n\n'What about Tennyson?' she barked.\n\n'I suppose there is an argument...'\n\n'What do you mean an argument? Wasn't \"In Memoriam\" the best poem about friendship ever written?' She jabbed him in the chest.\n\n'Er, yes. I know what you mean.'\n\n'Do you? And here's another poet for you. What do you think of the lines: \"Alas, the friendship that begins in spring \/ Is often gone before the summer's out.\"? Come on. Whatdaya think of them?'\n\nAn expression of mingled embarrassment and fear crossed Parry's face.\n\n'Er...'\n\n'You didn't like them? But they mean a lot to me. My mother wrote them. But you're looking down your nose at them, aren't you?'\n\n'No, no. They were fine. Very moving.'\n\nFuchsia burst out laughing and slapped him on the back. 'You know what you are? You're full of bullshit. Those lines are crap. You know they're crap. I know they're crap. Why don't you just come straight out with it the way we do in Oz? What a bunch of sissies you pommies are!' And pausing only to look at him and emit a loud snigger, she turned on her four-inch heels and went to find another victim.\n\nPale and perspiring, Parry caught Amiss's eye, and giving him a sickly smile, tottered away.\n\n'Who is that splendid creature?' demanded the baroness.\n\n'No idea.'\n\n'Find out.'\n\n'I'm not your errand boy, Jack.'\n\n'Yes, you are. And I need to know. I smell money and at St Martha's we can always do with plenty more of that. If she's as rich as she looks I'll ask her down.'\n\n***\n\n'Sharon McGregor,' said Lambie Crump.\n\n'Who?'\n\n'A visitor from the Antipodes. Her manners have the exuberance of those colonies.'\n\n'You can say that again,' said Amiss, observing the lady patting on the head a famous ex-editor of a national institution and asking him how he filled his days now that he was past it.\n\n'My, my,' said the baroness when Amiss reported the news. 'Serious money, indeed: I'd better mount a charm offensive. What are you doing for dinner after this?'\n\n'Going out with Papworth.'\n\n'Can I come?'\n\n'No. It's an annual event sacrosanct to editorial and Monday meeting attendees.'\n\n'Monday, then. Seven o'clock, Lords lobby and we'll go on somewhere.' Without waiting to hear his answer, she took off and cut a merciless swathe through the crowd, pushing human obstacles to left and right. Interrupting the conversation without a by-your-leave she whispered in Sharon McGregor's ear and was rewarded with a large beam and a slap on the back. Without a backward glance, they headed towards the fire escape, leaving the elderly sage gazing after them pop-eyed and incredulous.\n\nAs befitted a host, Amiss hastened to his side and introduced himself. 'Lovely to meet you,' said the sage as his eyes swivelled to peer over Amiss's shoulder. Within five seconds, with a, 'Must be off, I'm afraid,' he had walked away to talk to someone more important.\nChapter Eleven\n\nAs Clement Webber came to the end of an ill-tempered diatribe about cushy prisons, Amiss cut in.\n\n'Where's Henry?'\n\n'I've no idea,' said Lambie Crump.\n\n'Nor have I,' said Amiss. Dwight Winterton and Wilfred Parry shook their heads, Amaryllis Vercoe and Clement Webber looked blank, Bill and Marcia continued their private argument and Phoebe Somerfield studied the menu.\n\n'We can't start without Henry, can we?' asked Papworth. 'I don't think he's missed one of these dinners in thirty years.'\n\n'Might he not have gone home?' suggested a bored Parry.\n\n'Henry gone home, when there is conviviality at hand?' interjected Winterton. 'Impossible.'\n\n'Could he have forgotten where we were going?' asked Amiss.\n\n'Hardly,' said Papworth. 'We've been here every year for the past five years.'\n\n'It's just that he can be a little forgetful when he's been drinking,' said Amiss hesitantly.\n\n'Not that forgetful,' said Lambie Crump sourly. 'He always knows where the next drink is to be found. He has probably taken a better offer.'\n\n'I suppose,' offered Amiss, 'it's just conceivable that he might have nodded off in Percy Square.'\n\n'Passed out, you mean?' said Lambie Crump. 'Better leave him.'\n\nAmiss rose. 'I'll ring his office just in case.' He was back in three minutes to report an unanswered telephone.\n\nLambie Crump shrugged.\n\n'We'd better start without him,' said Papworth.\n\n'Do,' said Amiss. 'But just to relieve my mind I'll pop back to the office. It'll only take ten minutes. It'd be a shame for Henry to miss this because he'd fallen asleep.'\n\n'He'll be a bore,' said Lambie Crump.\n\n'Never mind that,' said Papworth. 'Thanks, Robert.'\n\n***\n\nThe extent of the mess in the dining room momentarily took Amiss aback, but then he remembered that part of his cost-cutting deal with Lady Amanda had been that her staff would be removed at nine o'clock to help with another function so the clearing-up would be left until early morning.\n\nSeeing no Potbury, he ran downstairs to check his office. Just in case Potbury had been too drunk to find it, Amiss looked into all the other rooms. As he closed Ricketts's door he remembered their first encounter and headed back upstairs to the playroom. There was Potbury, slumped amid a sea of glasses, with his head in a silver punch bowl.\n\nFrantically, Amiss pulled his head out of the liquid, laid him on the floor on his face and thumped him on the back. Some liquid came up, but Potbury stayed supine and made no sound. When eventually Amiss rolled him over on his front he was left in no doubt that Henry Potbury had died as he had lived\u2014drowned in alcohol. His face was bloated and purple and his eyes were staring.\n\nHaving tried and failed to feel Potbury's pulse, Amiss realized there was nothing left to do except ring for an ambulance, the police and Lord Papworth.\n\n***\n\nThe press loved Henry Potbury's death. Never tiring of writing about their own kind, journalists were thrilled to have the excuse of sudden death to promote Potbury beyond the confines of the obituary page and on to the front pages. Even the tabloids splashed it, for it was on a poor day for news and since the death of Princess Diana their staple fodder was no longer available to fill empty spaces. Their coverage was unkind: Potbury was self-evidently a nob writing for a nob's journal, so they went as close as they dared to making his death sound funny, with various puns about Potbury, pot and potty.\n\nIt was another twenty-four hours before the broadsheets could really go to town on Potbury as a great columnist of his time and produce acres of reminiscences from every old and middle-aged British columnist about wonderful days in El Vino's and memorable toots abroad. It was quite clear that the press in general\u2014perhaps with the exception of Potbury's friends\u2014were hoping that he had been murdered or at the very least had committed suicide so that the story could run and run.\n\nThe autopsy was inconclusive. And after a few cursory enquiries, the police inspector in charge rang Amiss to tell him that foul play was not suspected.\n\n***\n\n'It's definite, Willie. They're treating it as an accident. Apparently he was drunk enough to have slid in there and simply drowned.'\n\nLambie Crump passed his hand over his forehead in one of his more affected fin-de-si\u00e8cle gestures. 'What a relief! What a huge relief! It would really have been intolerable to have those...those...buffoons trampling all over the psyche of The Wrangler. Now perhaps we can return to some semblance of normality. It is a major achievement that the journal came out this week: the strain has been so intense.'\n\nAmiss forebore to mention that there was precious little thanks due to Lambie Crump himself that the journal had appeared at all: most credit was due to Dwight Winterton and Phoebe Somerfield. Lambie Crump's only contribution had been an admittedly elegant but ultimately shallow appreciation of Henry.\n\n***\n\nWinterton, however, was disappointed. 'How dreary,' he drawled. 'A murder investigation would have been rather fun, don't you think? It would really have put the wind up New Willie and there's nowhere I'd prefer the wind than up Willie. Besides, they seem to have been rather indolent in deciding so quickly on an accident. What do you think?'\n\n'I don't know, Dwight. There was no obvious motive\u2014none of the normal ones anyway. Nobody wanted his job, he'd almost no money, and presumably sex wasn't an angle.'\n\n'I don't know about that, Robert. I quite want his job as Willie's deputy. Though of course I won't get it, so there wouldn't have been a lot of point in knocking off Henry.'\n\n'Still, you'll have a higher profile.'\n\n'True. But I would need a little more reason to kill someone I rather liked. Have you thought about sexual jealousy as a motive?'\n\n'Sexual jealousy?'\n\n'Yes. There's the matter of Henry and Marcia to be considered.'\n\n'Henry and Marcia?'\n\n'Robert, are you going to stop repeating everything I say. Yes. Henry and Marcia.'\n\n'They were having an affair?'\n\n'Indeed they were. I caught them in a clinch in his room. He was a bit embarrassed and asked me to keep my mouth shut. Which I did until now.'\n\nAmiss shook his head. 'I shouldn't have thought Henry could do the necessary. However, there's no doubt that sex is a department that is always full of surprises. The most unlikely people are at it, at the most unlikely ages, in the most unlikely condition...'\n\n'And in the most unlikely manner.'\n\n'True. Yet Henry and Marcia as an item is a trifle hard to come to terms with.'\n\n***\n\nThe truth of Winterton's story was confirmed by the surprisingly youthful and good-looking Mrs Henry Potbury. Over a drink with Amiss, who had come to talk about practicalities, she burst into outraged denunciation of her husband and his infidelities\u2014particularly with those she persisted in calling his 'Wrangler totties'. 'Henry was an unspeakable old lush,' she said. 'But at least he was my old lush. I could tolerate his drunkenness. I could tolerate him coming home frequently in an absolute stupor, falling into bed and snoring all night. I could stand the fact that he made a public exhibition of himself on many occasions and I had to drag him out of parties and make him ring up the next day to grovel.'\n\nShe laughed ruefully. 'Sometimes he involved me in scenes that would make most wives unable to show their faces in public for months, but I had got to a stage when I was beyond embarrassment. What I found very hard to bear was the combination of drunkenness and rampant philandering. It's one thing to be a philanderer if you know how to cover it up. One of my tenets is that the least a philanderer owes his wife is discretion, but clever as Henry was, he was no exception to the rule that drunkenness and discretion do not go together, so I had no option but to know about several of his inamoratas, and that I resented. Which is why I'm keeping the funeral private and am not contemplating a memorial service for a few months: I might get angry if I saw any of them.'\n\n'I understand.'\n\n'The hardest\u2014or to be precise\u2014the second hardest to bear was Marcia. Not that I have anything against her personally, but she should have had more sense. Thou shouldst not philander with a colleague, especially when you know his wife, more especially when you know he's a drunk and above all when you know that he makes a habit of this sort of thing. What's more, it is particularly stupid when someone as jealous as Ben is liable to find out.'\n\n'Ben?'\n\n'Surely you know about Marcia and Ben?'\n\n'What?'\n\n'They've been living together for about thirty years, and when it comes to jealousy, from what I've heard, Ben makes Othello look like a proponent of open marriage.'\n\n'I don't know why I didn't know that, but I didn't.' Amiss rubbed his eyes. 'Next thing you'll be telling me that Lambie Crump and Josiah Ricketts are lovers.'\n\n'No. But Henry and Amaryllis were.'\n\nThis caused Amiss to sit bolt upright. 'That's too much. You're having me on.'\n\n'That's no way to talk to a widow,' said Amelia Potbury\u2014to Amiss's relief breaking into laughter. 'I assure you when you're married to somebody like Henry you don't need to make up stories.'\n\n'But Amaryllis!'\n\n'Meaning she's young and beautiful, and bright and well born and all the rest of that sickening mixture. So she is. Clearly you hadn't realized that Henry was actually very attractive to women. Don't ask me why. I never found a rational explanation for it, even though I was myself one of his victims.'\n\n'I'll take your word for it,' said Amiss. He struggled to repress a feeling of deep resentment at his friend Henry. Having admired Amaryllis from afar, Amiss had never thought that he himself would have had a chance with her, even had he been in the market. It did not make it any easier that Henry had scored.\n\n'You don't think, do you, Amelia, that Ben might have done anything violent?'\n\n'To Henry, you mean? Oh, if he'd found out about Marcia, yes, quite possibly. Though I'd expect him to beat Henry up in those circumstances. I can't see Ben doing anything sneaky. But then it's always possible that he was presented with an irresistible target when he saw Henry plastered beside a full punch bowl.'\n\nShe looked at him seriously over her big glasses.\n\n'I wouldn't want it pursued, Robert. If Henry got rubbed out for being a philanderer, frankly he had it coming. Much as I loved the old goat, I wouldn't want revenge.'\n\n'Umm,' said Amiss.\nChapter Twelve\n\nDespite Amelia's relaxed view of murder, Amiss arranged to meet his friend Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Milton the following evening. The first hour was spent on catching up on news, for Milton was just back from America, where he had spent three months unpaid leave visiting his wife, and he knew nothing of The Wrangler, beyond having heard of Henry Potbury's mishap.\n\n'I think he might have been murdered, Jim.'\n\n'My colleagues don't.'\n\n'Yes, but they show little sign of having thought much about it. Seem to want to get Henry out of the in-tray and into the out-tray.'\n\n'We're all bureaucrats now. However, if you think differently, I'll pay attention. Not that I've any chance of persuading them to reconsider unless you've got a very strong argument.'\n\n'I haven't really. I'm just uneasy. And I liked Henry so much I feel I owe it to him to make sure his death is taken seriously.'\n\n'Tell me about him.'\n\n'Brilliant journalist, who was less and less productive because of the booze. He'd been associated with The Wrangler from his time at Oxford in the nineteen fifties when he wrote such witty and penetrating stuff in student magazines that the then editor invited him to write a series of \"Letters from an Undergraduate\". He was an immediate success and when he came down he was offered a job straightaway. Although he was tempted away a couple of times to highly paid jobs elsewhere, he always kept relations friendly and would do the odd think-piece or book review. Really, The Wrangler was where his heart was.'\n\n'So when he got fed up with elsewhere, he'd let himself be persuaded to come back?'\n\n'Persuaded and bribed. But he was worth it. Until the last few years, apparently, you could rely on him every week for, say, one of the anonymous leaders, a signed article and maybe an important book review. And he was utterly brilliant at the Monday meetings.'\n\n'The what?'\n\n'The meeting of editorial staff and some outside contributors every Monday to discuss the line to be taken on the week. He was the intellectual driving force, full of ideas and with a brilliant way of twisting the news to provide a focus for an onslaught on ill-considered reform.'\n\n'Why wasn't he made editor?'\n\n'The proprietor wanted him, but the trustees wanted Willie Lambie Crump and overruled him. Lord Papworth then made Henry the staff trustee as a kind of consolation prize. But disappointment contributed towards Henry taking to the bottle and he started to go slowly downhill.'\n\n'Why wasn't he fired?'\n\n'Lifetime contract. Couldn't be fired until he was sixty at the earliest.'\n\n'Sounds as though Papworth had a good motive for killing him. Or you, come to think of it, if it's cost-cutting you're at.'\n\n'I loved Henry,' said Amiss. 'He was the person I most enjoyed at The Wrangler. We had some great bibulous lunches and even more bibulous dinners: he was riotous company until he fell asleep. Great iconoclast and a magical anecdotalist, awash with wonderful mad stories of the wild days of Fleet Street before it was destroyed by the move of newspapers to Docklands and what he denounced as the long march towards the puritan dawn.\n\n'I don't believe that anywhere throughout the present newspaper world nowadays there's a room into which you could go at four o'clock in the afternoon and sit down and drink and talk ideas.'\n\n'So who do you think might have killed him?'\n\n'In his professional life, I can only think that it could have been to do with his performance as a trustee. First, he bitterly opposed Lambie Crump's recent lurch towards New Labour and away from the journal's core belief in the evolution of institutions. And second, he would have virulently opposed any attempt to change the terms of the trust in such a way as to make the journal vulnerable to the whims of a proprietor.'\n\n'So you think the editor or the proprietor had a vested interest in getting rid of him?'\n\n'Lambie Crump, yes. Though I doubt if he'd have the balls. Charlie Papworth, no. It was his son who wanted the trust altered. Not him.'\n\n'Not very strong reasons for suspecting murder, then.'\n\n'I grant you that. I'm just not happy. And I wish the police had given the idea more house-room.'\n\n'I'll talk to someone.'\n\n'Thanks, Jim. Now tell me about America.'\n\n'Interesting. And it provided the opportunity for Ann and me at last to make our decision.'\n\nAmiss waited.\n\n'We're going to get a divorce.'\n\n'Oh, Jim. I'm very sorry. I like Ann so much.'\n\n'So do I. And she seems to like me too. But it's no use.'\n\n'Was it just geography in the end?'\n\n'More than that. I couldn't do what she wanted. I don't just mean that she wanted me to move to America. That was really an excuse. What she really wanted was for me to give up a career that she had come to despise. And to show I had the balls to make a go of a new line of work in a totally new environment.'\n\n'And don't you?'\n\n'I don't want to. Maybe I'm opting for safety. Or maybe the truth is simply that with all my grumblings and resentments about the way the Met has gone I'm doing something I think I do well and don't want to leave the field clear for the bastards. So I won't and I don't and I think it's unreasonable of Ann to force me to choose between her and my profession and my country.\n\n'America and I wouldn't suit. Ann loves it because it throbs with energy and it's given her a completely new career. I'm too English in my bones to adapt, as well as being too much of a policeman to walk away. We were happy together for a long time and we're both grateful for that but the time apart revealed the differences we never faced. Ann is idealistic and emotional: I suppose I'm pragmatic and skeptical.'\n\nAmiss sighed. 'Modern women are very demanding, aren't they? Do you remember the old days, when they didn't necessarily despise us?'\n\n'Too long ago for either of us to remember, surely.' Milton sounded rather bitter.\n\n'Sometimes,' said Amiss dreamily, 'I think we should just sit back and let them take over the world, while we learn to sew and lie on chaise longues eating chocolates.'\n\n'We wouldn't look good in negligees.'\n\n'Anyway, they won't give us that option,' said Amiss. 'They want us to be chefs in the kitchen, wimps in the living room, studs in the bedroom and masters of the universe outside the home. Tell you what. Let's get pissed. Ann's ditched you, Rachel's away doing important things and tomorrow's Saturday.'\n\n'You're on,' said Milton, and signalled to the barman.\n\n***\n\n'It's a shame about Ann and Jim,' said Rachel. 'Though I suppose it's inevitable when they view things so differently. Personally, I agree with her that he should have done the courageous thing.'\n\n'But he's a good policeman, and, mostly, he loves the job.'\n\n'Perhaps so. But he's never known anything else.'\n\n'You're always complaining that the trouble with me is that I didn't stick with a career.'\n\n'You took the career-flexibility path to extremes, however.'\n\n'I suppose that's true. Anyway, the other thing is that Jim's seeing if Henry's case can be reopened.'\n\nAs soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.\n\nRachel stopped peeling potatoes and looked squarely at him. 'Do I gather that you're trying to make a murder out of an accident?' She dried her hands and walked over to him. 'Let's sit down for a minute.' They sat down at the kitchen table and she took his hands in hers.\n\n'Robert, I know you think I'm being very crabby recently and I know we're looking at things differently. I'm sorry for my part in all that. But I'm angry now because it seems that when the conditions for a murder mystery don't exist, you need to create them.'\n\n'Are you suggesting I murdered Henry in order to make my job more interesting?'\n\n'I wish you wouldn't always be flippant. What I mean is that everybody seems to think Henry died as a result of an accident, but for some reason you are determined to prove otherwise.'\n\n'But there's a chance it wasn't an accident. And if it wasn't, I want that known. I think that's the least I can do for Henry.'\n\nRachel got up. 'What's the use?' she asked, and went back to the sink.\nChapter Thirteen\n\n'Hmmm,' said the baroness. 'Maybe you're right, but you'll need a lot more evidence. You'll have to sniff around. Now, do you want to know how I got on with Sharon McGregor?'\n\n'Should I? I hadn't really thought about it. The last I saw of you both, you appeared to be in cahoots, but later events put that out of my mind.'\n\n'You should want to know about her. She's going to matter to you.'\n\n'Tell me then.'\n\n'We went off to dinner and she thought I was wonderful, naturally. I've got her coming down to a St Martha's feast soon. I'm hoping for great things\u2014i.e. large cheques\u2014from her if I play her right.'\n\n'What things? Who is she?'\n\n'Surely you've heard of her? She's one of the richest women in Australia. Correction\u2014one of the richest people.'\n\n'How did she get it? Inheritance? Divorce settlement?'\n\n'Well, well,' said the baroness. 'I never thought to use such a word to you, my lad, but I feel impelled to point out that you have made a deeply sexist assumption. Our friend Sharon owes nothing to any man, unless you count those she's impoverished on her climb from the gutter to the penthouse. She's some broad, I can tell you.'\n\n'I feel quite embarrassed,' said Amiss. 'I do apologize for my unwanted inference.'\n\n'God, you're so malleable. And apologetic. Why can't you just stand your corner and point out to me that until very recently it was a safe bet that rich women were rich because of their husbands or fathers and that it's PC crap to accuse anyone of sexism for making such an assumption.' She shook her head. 'Let me have men about me that have balls.'\n\n'Oh, shut up and get on with it, Jack. Stop playing games.'\n\nShe beamed. 'Have to keep you on the hop. Without plenty of mental gymnastics, how will we defeat the enemy?'\n\n'What enemy?'\n\nShe threw out her arms and hit a passing waiter a smart blow. He winced painfully, but she paid no attention. 'There's always an enemy. The important thing is to be fit and ready for him.'\n\n'Or her,' said Amiss.\n\n'When it comes to enemies, I am, as they persist in putting it these days, gender-blind.'\n\n'Anyway, how did she make her money?'\n\n'Transport. Started out charging her schoolfellows a knockdown price for driving their cars from parties. Saved enough for a down payment on one of her own and had a fleet of sixty taxis within two years. By her early twenties she was leasing company cars and within five years had moved into buses, coaches, light aircraft and helicopters in the States as well as Australia. Personal fortune of three hundred million as of last count, but she's greedy for more. I expect she's moving in on the UK transport industry. There's plenty of scope.'\n\n'Married?'\n\n'Thinking of ditching Rachel?'\n\n'No, I couldn't marry a woman with fingernails that long. I'd go in fear of my life. She probably uses them to stab people in the back.'\n\n'May I take your order, sir? Madam?' The waiter sounded irritable.\n\n'In due course,' said the baroness firmly. 'But first I need to know the answer to some questions. What fish have you in the bouillabaisse?'\n\n'The usual, I expect.'\n\nShe gazed at him reprovingly. 'There's no such thing as the usual ingredients. They change from location to location and chef to chef. If you don't know the answer, go and ask.' Scowling, the waiter departed.\n\n'Poor bugger,' said Amiss. 'What does it matter, Jack?'\n\n'We're talking about food. When it comes to food, everything matters. Now where were we? Oh, yes. I was going to tell you that Sharon wants to buy The Wrangler.'\n\n'She what?'\n\n'You heard.'\n\n'Why, for God's sake?'\n\n'Well, I can't think she imagines she's going to make money out of it, so she's either dipping her toes into the newspaper business or she's social-climbing. I'm inclined towards the latter, though I have to say...'\n\nThe waiter returned and took up his position beside her. 'The bouillabaisse, madam. It consists this evening of crab, prawns, cod and salmon.'\n\n'That isn't bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse is made exclusively with seafish. What you are offering is fish soup. Tell the chef you could be sued under the Trades Descriptions Act.'\n\nThe waiter looked at her sullenly.\n\n'Is the salmon wild?' she asked.\n\nHe attempted to stare her down. He lost. 'I don't know, madam. I'll go and ask.'\n\n'Jack, why are you tormenting that man?'\n\n'What's the point of being a waiter if you're not interested in food? And besides, I don't like him. He was patronizing me. And you patronize Jack Troutbeck at your peril. Where were we?'\n\n'You were telling me about Sharon McGregor. Surely, she isn't fool enough to want to become seriously involved with newspapers? She hasn't got the kind of money to take on the likes of Rupert Murdoch.'\n\n'She certainly isn't a fool. And I'm sure she doesn't want to take on Rupert Murdoch. What she claimed was that she has an affinity with England because of her immigrant father, so she wants to help preserve that essence of civilized England that is represented by the civilized virtues of The Wrangler. Which is obviously all cock. But she might be seeking to rub shoulders with the landed interests nonetheless. And why not? If American heiresses could buy up dukes and earls a hundred years ago, why shouldn't self-made Aussies do the same today. She could become the Duchess of something-or-other and still buy up our railways.'\n\nThe waiter returned and stood by her elbow.\n\n'Well?' she asked.\n\n'The salmon, madam, is not wild.'\n\n'Tell the chef that in that case he shouldn't be cooking it\u2014not even in soup. Cultivated salmon is bland, tasteless and pointless. I'll have the gravadlax and the dill sauce. But make sure the dill sauce comes in a separate jug. Now for the main course. Is the rabbit...?'\n\n'Wild, madam?' The waiter was beginning to wear a defeated look. 'I doubt it. Shall I ask the chef?'\n\n'Don't bother. It won't be. I'll have a bloody rump steak with plenty of very hot chips.'\n\n'I'm afraid chips aren't on the menu tonight, madam.'\n\nThe baroness beamed. 'I'm sure if you tell the chef that Lady Troutbeck is relying on him to provide them, he'll change his mind.'\n\nThe waiter clenched his teeth. 'And other vegetables, madam? Shall I bring you a variety?'\n\n'What are they?'\n\n'Our selection includes broccoli, courgettes, cauliflower and carrots.'\n\n'Good God, no. I don't want any of those. See if the chef's got some cabbage. Otherwise I'll just have the chips. And make sure the steak is very, very bloody.'\n\n'Yes, madam.' He turned away.\n\n'Excuse me,' said Amiss. 'I'd like something to eat too.'\n\n'I'm very sorry, sir. I got confused for a moment. What would you like?'\n\n'French onion soup and the navarin of lamb, please.'\n\nThe waiter shot him a look of gratitude and tottered away.\n\nThe baroness shook her head. 'You let them off too lightly, Robert. Now, where's the wine waiter? I'll torment him by demanding Australian wine. That always drives the Frogs crazy: it's a refined\u2014nay exquisite\u2014form of torture.'\n\nThe wine waiter\u2014older and wiser than his colleague\u2014did not rise to the baroness's bait, but enthused with her about her shortlist of wines, commended the vineyard she had selected and averred that he too on occasion felt that the French had something to learn from newer competitors. They beamed and chatted together for several minutes, to the evident bewilderment of the bearer of soup and gravadlax.\n\n'I wonder how they reconcile their impressions of you afterwards,' said Amiss, as the baroness tucked a vast white napkin around her neck and proceeded to tuck in with gusto. 'The first one thinks you're an intolerable old bitch and the second evidently considers you a bit of all right.'\n\n'That's fine with me. If everyone likes you, you're not doing your job. I'm a reasonable woman and if everyone does what I tell them they'll have nothing to complain about. Now eat up, you're looking peaky. And make sure you finish it all up.'\n\n'Dining with you is a bit like having a nursery tea. Did you have a nanny?'\n\n'Of course I had a nanny. Splendid woman. Taught me all I know and stood for no nonsense. Which takes us back to Sharon. I think you'd better expect a bumpy ride if she gets to buy the paper.'\n\n'What can she do if Willie stands firm? He's got the trust behind him.'\n\n'I'll give you ten to one that Willie turns out to be an amoeba. And probably the trustees too. And if they don't, take my word for it, there is no trust that can't be broken. But I don't even think she'll have to try. For every one member of the great and good who'll fight his corner, there are two who'll skulk away with their white flags in the air. You'll see.'\n\nAmiss put down his spoon and sighed. 'Oh dear. And things were going so well. On my side, at least.'\n\n'I think that's usually the moment when it gets dangerous.' She speared the last of the gravadlax, stuffed the remains of the roll in her mouth, chomped vigorously and took a hearty swig of Chardonnay. 'Never mind,' she said consolingly. 'At least it'll be interesting.'\n\nShe chuckled evilly and called for the waiter.\n\n***\n\nAmiss was missing Pooley badly. He could have relied on him to take the keenest interest in every aspect of the Potbury death. For even more than Amiss, Pooley was a man who did not consider a case closed until there was no further room for doubt. But he had disappeared off to staff training college and was out of reach.\n\nAs befitted a senior policeman who had been in the job for twenty-five years, Jim Milton was more of a realist. 'You can forget about Henry Potbury as far as we're concerned,' he told Amiss a couple of days after their night out. 'There's nothing doing. I had a word with an old mate who's the supervising superintendent and he showed no interest. Said it's an open-and-shut case and the Met's quite busy enough without following will-o'-the-wisps. I didn't push it because I didn't see any point. And in fact I agree with him. Why don't you forget about it?'\n\nAmiss tried interesting the baroness further, but she was busy and impatient with detail and speculation. And it was obvious that the less said to Rachel the better.\n\nYet Amiss did not give up. First, he looked at Ben and Marcia closely until he was satisfied that their relationship seemed exactly as it always had been. Indeed, both of them clearly missed Henry a great deal. When Amiss dropped by they were often very happy to reminisce with him about Henry. And if Marcia shed the occasional tear, there was no indication that Ben saw this as anything but an understandable reaction to the sudden death of a valued colleague.\n\nOne evening Amaryllis Vercoe called in and Amiss invited her to the pub. She showed little interest in talking about Henry, preferring to flirt outrageously. While Amiss affected not to notice, he was secretly very pleased, though he had enough sense to grasp that a woman who might fancy Henry Potbury just possibly might fancy anyone.\n\n'Is Amaryllis involved with anyone?' he asked Winterton the next day.\n\n'If you mean, \"Is there someone who is\u2014as it were\u2014settled down with her?\" then no; she lives alone and appears to have no regular escort. If you mean, \"Is there a man in her life?\" you've asked the wrong question. There are many men in Amaryllis's life. In fact, it has to be said that she's pretty generous with her favours. Why, has she been giving you the glad eye? I should go for it if she has. She's very good value as well as being the trophy shag of the intellectual Right.'\n\nA crestfallen Amiss tried to look dignified. 'It was just idle curiosity, Dwight. I'm a settled man.' And he withdrew before Winterton could evince his scepticism.\n\n***\n\nThe only line of investigation left,' he said to the baroness when she rang him at work a few days later, 'is the Papworth one.'\n\n'Oh, that would be good. You mean you think Charlie Papworth rubbed Henry out so he could sell the journal.'\n\n'Piers Papworth's my candidate.'\n\n'Um, maybe that's possible. He certainly comes across as a ruthless little bugger.'\n\n'Maybe he's in it with Sharon.'\n\n'How do you propose to find out?'\n\n'There's damn-all I can do, Jack, as you well know. I'm completely stymied. The only people who have any chance of finding out who knocked off poor old Henry\u2014if anyone did\u2014are the cops. And they won't. I can hardly go round all these people demanding to know if they can provide two independent witnesses to prove that they left the gathering while Henry was still alive.'\n\n'Too bad.' She sounded rather bored. 'I've had a run-in with Willie.'\n\n'About what?'\n\n'He made another attempt to persuade me to soften the line. Said I was being unreasonable. Outrageous! I'm the most reasonable woman in the world.'\n\n'What did you say?'\n\n'Told him to get stuffed. I'm not going to be pushed around by Willie Lambie Crump.'\n\n'He is your editor, Jack.'\n\n'I'm not prepared to be mucked about by an unprincipled little turd. And if you remember, I made damn sure that I couldn't be. The contract's watertight. Willie can't do a thing until the year is up. I told him I'd sue the arse off him if he didn't honour the agreement. And I would too. And since I'd enjoy a good court case and he'd crumble in the witness box and he knows it, that put paid to his small rebellion.'\n\n'I'll make a point of avoiding him for a few days. He'll be furious. He went up the wall at what you said about the only honourable class being the landed gentry.'\n\n'Good. Now put me through to Ben. I want to dictate this week's.'\n\n'What's it about?'\n\n'My proposal that henceforward the crown should be passed on to the dimmest and least sensitive of the monarch's children\u2014levels of general thickness to be assessed when they have all reached adulthood. The way the public, the government and the media behave these days, being king or queen's no job for anyone with brains or finer feelings. What you really want is a blockhead as close as possible in IQ to Mr and Mrs Below-Average and with a hide as thick as Tyrannosaurus rex.'\n\n'Or Jack Troutbeck.'\n\n'Absolutely. Now stop gabbling and get Ben.'\n\n***\n\n'Oh, Mr Amiss, Mr Amiss, come back, come back.'\n\nThe voice on the telephone trailed off into a collection of squeaks that Amiss accurately identified as the Ricketts distress call.\n\n'Steady, Mr Ricketts. Steady. I'll be back soon. Now, tell me what's wrong.'\n\n'This man is here and he's looking at everything and shouting at me.'\n\n'What man?'\n\nHe heard in the background a nasal voice calling, 'Cut the crap, Josh, and walk the talk. You heard me. Walk the talk.'\n\nA great wail emanted from Ricketts. 'Oh, please, Mr Amiss. Just come back.'\n\n'All right, Mr Ricketts. All right. I'm coming. Just keep calm and I'll be with you very soon.' Amiss depressed the lever and jabbed the redial button. 'Miss Mercatroid, it's me again. Please put me through to Jason.'\n\n'Mr Amiss, I have a complaint. I have been abused and insulted.'\n\nHe tried not to raise his voice. 'Please, Miss Mercatroid, not now. This is important. I'll be back shortly to hear your complaint, but now please get me Jason.\n\n'Jason? Robert. What the hell is going on? I finished a meeting at the printers, responded to a message from Ricketts asking me to call urgently and found him having a fit on the other end of the phone. He was wailing about a man who keeps looking at everything and shouting at him. And now Miss Mercatroid's complaining about being insulted.'\n\n'Some pillock's been going round the building demanding to know everything we do and then being rude.'\n\n'About what?'\n\n'Everything, really.'\n\n'Who is this pillock?'\n\n'All I know is he's called Bett, he's a Yank and Lambie Crump told Ricketts to tell everyone to give him maximum cooperation. And everyone did and now they're all going mad. All except me,' said Jason complacently. 'I'm tougher than the rest of them. And anyway, he wasn't that rude to me.'\n\n'Jason, will you drop what you're doing and go and see Ricketts and try and calm him down. I'll be back within the hour.'\n\nAmiss raced for the station and caught a train with just half a minute to spare. En route he tried to block out pointless speculation by burying himself in the new Wrangler. It was dull, apart from the baroness's tirade against drink-driving laws and speed-traps and what she called the Singaporization of Britain, which would shortly lead to heavy fines for those who bet on horses or spent their money foolishly or didn't wash their necks or failed in some other unspecified way to meet the criteria for the New Brit: squeaky-clean, unprincipled, touchy, feely, moderate in everything, regular in his bowel movements and deadly dull. There was nothing from Webber, nothing identifiable from Dwight, some good workman-like pieces from Phoebe and a fawning piece from Lambie Crump on the transformation wrought by the inspirational new government in the public attitude to the benefits of education. He ended his journey apprehensive and depressed.\n\n***\n\nMiss Mercatroid was crying when Amiss arrived.\n\n'What's the matter, Miss Mercatroid?'\n\n'That dreadful man. He said I could be replaced by a machine.'\n\n'Don't worry, Miss Mercatroid. I'll sort this out.'\n\nHe ran upstairs and rushed into Jason's office.\n\n'Update.'\n\n'This Bett guy's told Bill and Marcia the Internet could do most of their job and the grammar-check and spell-check the rest. He's told Sabrina she's a pointless status symbol and Miss Mercatroid that she could be replaced by an automated switchboard and Mr Ricketts has had to lie down in one of the storerooms because he was afraid he was going to have a heart attack after what Bett said to him. What'll we do if he's had one? Will we burn him on a funeral pyre of Wranglers?'\n\n'Make sure he's all right. I'm going to find this Bett person. Where do you think he is?'\n\n'I think he's with the editor.'\n\nAmiss ran down the corridor and knocked loudly on Lambie Crump's door.\n\n'Enter.'\n\nInside, sitting across from Lambie Crump, was a crew-cut thirty something wearing jeans, trainers and a T-shirt that bore the legend 'CAN DO' in enormous letters.\n\n'Mr Bett, I presume,' said Amiss.\n\n'Ah, Robert,' said Lambie Crump. 'Hold hard while one performs the requisite introductions. Walter, this is our manager, Robert Amiss. Robert, this is Walter Bett, who has called in to look around and see what scope there might be for...' He paused and furrowed his brow.\n\n'For downsizing and ass-kicking,' proffered Bett.\n\n'At whose request?' asked Amiss.\n\n'Ms Sharon McGregor's.'\n\n'And what has it got to do with her?'\n\n'Now, now, Robert,' said Lambie Crump. 'There is no need to sound perturbed.'\n\n'I am not bloody perturbed. I'm furious. And I want an answer.'\n\nBett looked at him scornfully. 'She might be buying this dump, so she wants to know the scope for economies. And I can tell you, I'll be telling her there's plenty.'\n\nAmiss's voice became icy. 'By what right, Mr Bett, do you come in and upset my staff as you have done? It would have been courteous to arrange a tour with me. As it is, you appear to have gone through the building like a particularly bad-tempered bull and have caused widespread distress through your rudeness.'\n\n'Don't give me that shit.'\n\nLambie Crump came in hesitantly. 'Perhaps one should apologize to you, Robert, for the manner in which this was done. But Sharon rang me only last night and one wasn't to know you wouldn't be here this morning.'\n\n'Except that I go to the printers every sodding Friday morning.'\n\nLambie Crump winced at his language and tone. 'One cannot remember everything. There is so much. In any case, in your absence, it seemed best to pass Mr Bett over to Ricketts. Perhaps one should have pointed out that Ricketts is not robust.'\n\n'I can't hang about all day listening to all this crap. Do you want to hear my opinion or not?'\n\n'Yes, please, Mr Bett. Please, Robert. Give him a minute.'\n\n'Just a minute, then. I need to check that he hasn't actually killed Ricketts off.'\n\nBett leaped to his feet and strode to the window, displaying his back, which read 'HIT THE GROUND RUNNING'. He jumped up and down a couple of times and then whirled round and jabbed his finger at Amiss and Lambie Crump. 'What's the key?' he cried. 'Ask yourselves. What's the key to success in any organization?' There was a pause. 'I'll tell you. You got to help yourselves individually and collectively.\n\n'Now, what that means is a lean, mean organization with plenty of energetic smarts getting to work at dawn every day shouting, \"Hey, this is a can-do day, a can-doody day. A day I score a home run.\" I want achievers whose personal goals are the goals of the company's owner. What we don't want are any fuddy-duddies looking backwards. I'd fire everyone in admin, except that kid Jason, for a start.'\n\n'No doubt that includes me.'\n\n'No idea what you do. What is it? Come on. Come on. Give.'\n\n'I manage the paper.'\n\n'That means zilch. Put skin on it.'\n\n'Robert is very good at keeping everyone happy,' said Lambie Crump to Amiss's surprise. 'And he has cut costs here a great deal in the last few months.'\n\n'I'm not interested in cost-cutting. I'm interested in cost-slashing. Sharon McGregor doesn't like costs. And she doesn't like passengers. And another thing she doesn't like is stuffiness. My God, today's Friday and you guys haven't even dressed down.'\n\n'I beg your pardon,' said Lambie Crump.\n\n'Cool people dress down on Friday. Shows we're regular guys like everyone else, not stuffed shirts. And it bonds us. Corporate bonding matters. What ya done about that here?' He looked at them. 'Say, look at you two. Why aren't you in tracksuit and sneakers? Show leadership has the confidence to be casual. That's how you bond. Gotta to have the vision thing.'\n\nLambie Crump emitted a burble of protest. Amiss glowered at Bett. 'You're full of shit,' he said. 'If you're not out of the building within fifteen minutes, you'll be thrown out.' And ignoring Lambie Crump's bleats, he stormed out of the room.\nChapter Fourteen\n\nA week after the ejection of Bett\u2014a week in which Lambie Crump had displayed some signs of deference towards Amiss\u2014Miss Mercatroid arrived at work wearing a voluminous brown headscarf and announcing her conversion to Islam.\n\nAmiss took her news with equanimity and wished her happiness in her new faith. Winterton giggled. 'It's apposite, if you think about it. We've had New Labour and New Britain, so why not New God? And can I perhaps add to the gaiety of nations by searching out my late father's yarmulke and sporting it around the office in honour, as it were, of Old God.' And Jason predicted trouble ahead. 'Ramadan'll be bad news. She likes her grub, does Miss Mercatroid. Three big meals a day and snacks from the big stash of chocolate bickies in her desk. She's cross enough at the best of times. Wait till she's fasting all day.'\n\n'Let's not worry about trouble ahead. Anyway, you've nothing to fear now you're not sharing the same territory with her any more.'\n\n'I'm grateful for that every day,' said Jason fervently.\n\n***\n\nWhen Amiss next passed Miss Mercatroid, she was shaking with outrage over the baroness's column, which unfortunately in the circumstances had selected intransigent British Muslims as a particular target in the course of a savage attack on the suggestion that the next monarch should be defender of all faiths rather than simply of the Church of England.\n\n'I don't know if I can go on working here, Mr Amiss, if this kind of blatant prejudice is to be directed against my religion.'\n\n'Now, Miss Mercatroid, you know that The Wrangler is a paper that believes in freedom of speech: it is entitled to criticize anyone it wishes.'\n\nMiss Mercatroid, who seemed to be having a little difficulty in managing her scarf, tossed the end of it indignantly over her shoulder. 'Some things are too sacred to be criticized, Mr Amiss. There are more important issues than freedom of speech and one of them is the worship of Allah.'\n\n'The very point being made here by Lady Troutbeck, Miss Mercatroid, is that this is England\u2014a Christian country\u2014and that it is unreasonable to expect the British monarchy to defend faiths with fundamental principles with which Britain is out of tune\u2014as for instance the notion that religious censorship is in itself a good.'\n\n'I've made my protest, Mr Amiss, and I'll be grateful if you would make it on my behalf to Mr Lambie Crump.'\n\nShe tossed her scarf-end haughtily over her shoulder and answered the ringing telephone.\n\n***\n\n'Does one really have to put up with this?' asked Lambie Crump.\n\n'Morally, legally or practically?'\n\n'Any and all. In her present manifestation, Miss Mercatroid is hardly someone one wishes to guard the entrance to a great, traditional English institution of no small importance.'\n\n'You can't fire her for being becoming a Muslim, Willie. Or not without the most ferocious public outcry and a possibly quite expensive lawsuit.'\n\nLambie Crump shuddered. 'But she looks so disagreeable. She was never what one might call handsome, but she had a certain angular austerity that added gravitas: now with that hideous scarf tumbling into her eyes she looks ridiculous.'\n\n'I suggest you avert your gaze, Willie. After all, she'll give us an image of tolerance and pluralism. We might as well get what we can out of that.'\n\n***\n\nTolerance and pluralism were sorely stretched a few days later, when Miss Mercatroid arrived clad in what Jason crudely described as a bin liner, topped with a tightly fitting headdress. Amiss took in this improbable sight and sat down beside her desk. 'Look, Miss Mercatroid, I respect your beliefs. But at work do you really have to dress so...so...exotically?'\n\n'The word is decently, Mr Amiss. My imam believes strongly in the wearing of the chador. Indeed, by rights my face should be covered, but he's permitting me some licence because it might be an impediment to my job. Who says Islam is not tolerant?'\n\n'If I might make a personal comment, Miss Mercatroid, you were not exactly given to dressing indecently.'\n\n'The sight of hair or an ankle might cause an ungovernable passion in a male colleague.'\n\nAmiss suppressed the desire to remark that in her case the contingency was remote.\n\n'And what's more,' she said, 'I want to be called by my new name.'\n\n'Which is?'\n\n'Fatima, meaning daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.'\n\n'Isn't that rather familiar? We never called you by your Christian\u2014sorry, first name\u2014before.'\n\n'Fatima is now my only name. Please tell Mr Lambie Crump and the others of my wishes.'\n\n***\n\n'It's no good going on about it, Willie. We've enough trouble on our hands, what with Henry's death and all the rows over our changes of editorial direction and Sharon McGregor hovering without getting embroiled in a discrimination case that would be guaranteed to cause us great embarrassment. You wouldn't want to be in the dock defending us on a charge of maltreating a loyal employee whose only crime is to take her religion seriously.'\n\nLambie Crump's face took on a peevish little-boy expression. 'Can't you bribe her to leave? Give her early retirement or something?'\n\n'I'll see if there's any mileage in that possibility. But knowing Miss Mercatroid\u2014sorry, Fatima\u2014as I do, I don't think there's a hope in hell. Missionaries are hard to buy off. I fear your only hope is that she oversteps the mark and starts annoying other people by trying to convert them; we could get her on that. But my advice is that you just forget about her. You don't see her often.'\n\n'One will be the laughing stock of Pratt's when this gets out,' said Lambie Crump in a tragic voice.\n\nYou probably already are, thought Amiss sourly.\n\n***\n\nAmiss had gradually slipped into the role of youthful father confessor, as Lambie Crump's drift towards the new British Establishment became more apparent.\n\n'If I even believed he was principled,' said Winterton, 'I wouldn't mind as much. But the shit is doing it because he feels excluded from the corridors of power since the general election. So he's smarming up to New Labour by applauding all the conservative things they do, congratulating them on their political nous and trying to spike any criticism.\n\n'He has even\u2014God help us all\u2014started to praise modernization for modernization's sake.'\n\nWinterton threw a sheaf of typescript across Amiss's desk. 'Look at that.' It was one of Winterton's most merciless and malicious assaults on the government: almost against his will, Amiss found himself laughing out loud. 'Nice one, Dwight,' he said, pushing it back to him.\n\n'Willie spiked it.'\n\n'Spiked that? He must be mad.'\n\n'He's not mad. He's a bad, bad, bad, bad bastard. This is going on all the time now. Come on, Robert. You heard him last Monday morning. He treated Phoebe disgracefully.'\n\n'Agreed.'\n\n'And what about that shouting match with Clement Webber? When Clement was absolutely in the right.'\n\n'Well, he was in the right in the sense that the journal is on the Right and Willie was being on the Left, as it were.'\n\n'God, you're so even-handed, Robert. Have you no political blood in those veins?'\n\n'It got drained out of me in the civil service. I have no opinions left, Dwight. But never mind. You more than make up for me.'\n\nPhoebe Somerfield was next. 'I could put up with being overworked and underpaid because I believed in The Wrangler, but I can't stand it now Willie is abandoning everything we stand for with the same insouciance as this government set about meddling with the constitution and breaking up the United Kingdom.'\n\nAmiss listened sympathetically, as for fifteen minutes she poured out a litany of complaints about Lambie Crump's recent decisions. 'Phoebe,' he said at the end, 'don't answer this if you don't want to. I truly am not prying. But how much are you paid?'\n\n'Twenty thousand.'\n\n'Twenty thousand! A year?'\n\n'What do you think I meant? A month?'\n\n'But you could get much more somewhere else.'\n\n'Moving would be difficult for me, Robert. For a start, I've always been here and I'd hate to leave it. Secondly, so much of what I do is anonymous that readers of the journal know very little about me. And anyway, I just don't think I could adapt now to one of those papers where they're full of hate and mistrust and jealousy.' She stopped. 'Mind you, we're beginning to get that way here.'\n\n'But surely Willie should be paying you more than that\u2014far more than that.'\n\n'He says he can't afford it. You know how badly they pay contributors.'\n\n'That's different. Do you know what he pays himself?'\n\n'No. Nobody knows who's paid what. All negotiations are private and with the editor.' She buried her face in her hands. 'I wish I was paid more. I'm sick of doing all that badly paid stuff for the World Service. And you know Willie won't let me write for any other paper.'\n\n'He let Henry.'\n\nShe got up. 'Henry was in a strong position,' she said wearily. 'I'm not. Now I've got to get back to work. I've got three leaders to do this week as well as everything else.'\n\n***\n\n'Can you give me the staff payments ledger, Mr Ricketts?'\n\n'Oh, no, Mr Amiss. I can't do that. You know I can't do that. It's secret.'\n\nAmiss dismissed the notion of arguing with the old idiot. He knew from experience that Ricketts wasn't ready to relinquish to outside eyes anything that Albert Flitter had decreed was for the editor's eyes only. Nor did Amiss want him squealing to Lambie Crump. 'Fair enough, Mr Ricketts. I hadn't realized.'\n\nRicketts ceased to look like a neurotic squirrel and resumed counting biros. Amiss had long ago rejected any notions of trying to train him to do anything useful or to take away from him such prized duties as the payment of staff and contributors and the recording of various kinds of information that could have been done in a tenth of the time by Jason on his computer. Smiling reassuringly as he left, Amiss headed down the corridor to the room that Jason shared with the malingering Naggiar.\n\n'Where's your boss today?'\n\nJason grinned. 'He's being tested for allergies. Claims he's having skin trouble. Hardly been in all week.'\n\nAmiss looked appreciatively around the room, which after two months of Jason's arrival was unrecognizable. Papers relating to subscribers were neatly filed in boxes and Jason had almost completed fully computerizing the database so that reminders would go out on time. As it was, the printers were now provided weekly with pre-labelled and franked wrappers.\n\n'I've got some ideas about how to boost circulation,' said Jason. 'Can we talk about them sometime?'\n\n'Sure. But I warn you it's going to take a long time before Lambie Crump agrees to any advertising.'\n\n'Stupid git.'\n\n'You may say that, Jason. I couldn't possibly comment. Anyway, we have to deal with what we have to deal with. And my immediate problem is practical. Do you by any chance know how to break into a locked filing cabinet? Did your misspent youth equip you with such a useful skill?'\n\nJason grinned. 'No. But I've got a mate who's sure to. Have you lost the key to your cabinet, or are you trying to break into someone else's?'\n\n'Mr Ricketts's. He's got some records I need to see that he's convinced are top secret. I don't want to give him a heart attack by insisting he disgorge them.'\n\n'Be better if you did, Robert. We don't need the old sod. Any more than we need old Naggiar.'\n\n'You have all the heartlessness of youth, Jason. For now, please do your research and then we can do the deed when Ricketts has gone home.'\n\n'Glad to, Robert.' Jason smiled at him beatifically, for Amiss had transformed his life and his gratitude was boundless.\n\n***\n\nThe staff ledger duly liberated by Jason made fascinating reading. It was clear that whatever tenets of New Labour Lambie Crump now claimed to believe in, equal pay was not one of them. For Phoebe Somerfield not only earned less than a fifth of Lambie Crump's salary, but only just over half that of Dwight Winterton, twenty-five years her junior. Even Ben and Marcia earned more. Outraged, Amiss stormed off to the editor's office.\n\n***\n\n'Oh goodness, it's nothing to make a fuss about.' Lambie Crump looked at Amiss with distaste. 'One pays what the market requires, does one not? One is not a charitable institution.'\n\nAmiss repressed the first six retorts that came to mind. 'I know it is technically none of my business, Willie, but since I'm the cost-cutter, I'm sure you'll listen to me seriously when I suggest a cost increase. I'm uncomfortable myself earning twice as much as Phoebe and I will tell her so.'\n\nLambie Crump sat bolt upright. 'You're not seriously contemplating telling her, are you? Nobody tells anyone what they earn. Nobody knows except Ricketts and he doesn't know what he knows. Or does he? You didn't get it from him, did you?'\n\n'No, Willie. As you rightly say, Josiah Ricketts doesn't know what he knows. But I have my sources.'\n\n'What are you asking me to do?'\n\n'Double her salary.'\n\n'Don't be silly. I'm prepared to consider a couple of thousand extra.'\n\n'Willie, if there was any justice you'd give her twenty years of back pay.'\n\n'But it was perfectly well understood when Phoebe came to work here that you could get a first-class woman for the price of a second-class man.'\n\n'What you have in fact is a first-class woman for the price of a fifth-rate man. It's grossly unfair.'\n\nLambie Crump looked at him petulantly. 'Another five thousand? That's plenty. And even that will make her ask difficult questions.'\n\n'You can tell her all the recent administrative economies have made some money available.'\n\n'Oh, really.' Lambie Crump pouted at his tormenter. 'It just seems such a waste, when she's never complained. Well, not much, anyway.'\n\n'She'll complain a lot more if she finds out what I'm earning, Willie.'\n\n'That's blackmail.'\n\n'Afraid it is.'\n\n'Be under no illusion that one is pleased.'\n\n'You'll get over it,' said Amiss cheerfully. 'Phoebe's still in her office, I think. I'll send her straight up.' He walked out, taking Lambie Crump's silence for consent.\n\n***\n\n'She saw me after she saw Willie,' reported Amiss to Rachel, 'and burst out crying. As she's usually so private, I hadn't known she was supporting an ailing mother who has to have a paid companion while Phoebe's at work. So money's been ferociously tight. She was so happy. I took her out for a bottle of champagne to celebrate.'\n\n'Good old Robert,' said Rachel. 'Always a bottle rather than a glass.'\n\nHe felt suddenly very deflated.\nChapter Fifteen\n\n'I just thought for curiosity I'd check out how Number Ten views the recent Wrangler lurch towards the new Establishment,' said Amiss to Winterton. 'I've got an old civil service colleague working in there.'\n\n'And?'\n\n'Mixed. It was much appreciated that New Labour were getting such surprisingly generous treatment, but Willie's own behaviour makes it unlikely that he's going to become a popular pet.'\n\n'What's he done?'\n\n'Apparently over the past few weeks he's rung up the PM's private secretary, the press secretary and the chief of staff and demanded a peerage from all of them.'\n\nWinterton chuckled maliciously. 'You're kidding. He couldn't do that.'\n\n'Well, he did.'\n\n'Maybe he was sozzled.'\n\n'They didn't seem to think so. Though he was when he rang me at home last week.'\n\n'And me. Long tirade about my iniquities.'\n\n'Much the same as my call, then. You aren't the only one under the lash.'\n\n'And Henry had a few in his time when he was around.'\n\n'I've never seen Willie drunk. Have you?'\n\n'Not in the flesh,' said Winterton. 'Seems to be a recent development. I suppose it might be tension, from all the rows. I think he was nervous for a time that the trustees might come down heavily on him as Henry wanted them to. But of course the other two are spineless creeps who think Willie's God.\n\n'It's all very sad, Robert. He's going to wreck a great institution and there's bugger-all anyone can do about it.' Winterton got up. 'I'd better go off and find some way of saying what I believe in terms that'll pass the muster with New Willie. You've cheered me up a bit anyway. It looks as though he's scored a few own goals. I can stand anything except him becoming Lord Lambie of Crump.'\n\n'I bet he'd drop the \"Crump\". Watch this space for Lord Lambie of Mayfair.'\n\n***\n\n'Where the hell is Willie?'\n\nAmiss looked up in surprise at the unprecedented sight of Phoebe Somerfield crashing into his room angrily and without ceremony. 'I'm sorry, Phoebe. I've no idea. I assumed he was in his room by now. Have you tried his flat?'\n\n'There's no answer. I can only guess he was off on one of his nights in the country with toffs and hasn't got back yet. I could strangle him.'\n\n'What's the matter?'\n\n'It's press day and we're looking set fair to produce this week a journal with three blank pages unless I fill them full of whatever we spiked last week. Willie was supposed do a leader and an assessment of the latest collapse in the Northern Irish peace process. It's eleven o'clock and there's no sign of him or what he was supposed to write. And Dwight's up to his ears.'\n\n'You'd better start writing, just in case he doesn't turn up. I'll try to locate him.'\n\n'I've already fucking well written half the goddamn journal,' said Phoebe Somerfield. 'And we've only got an hour and a half left.'\n\n'What is the leader about?'\n\n'The government's U-turn over personal taxation.'\n\n'I'll do that and you do Northern Ireland. How many words?'\n\n'Eleven hundred.' She turned to go and then looked back. 'But can you write?'\n\n'You'll have something better than a blank page. And wasn't it you told me the journalist's golden rule was, \"Don't get it right. Get it written\"?'\n\nShe shrugged and disappeared.\n\nAfter a dash to Lambie Crump's room that yielded a diary that showed him as having been due at the opera in London the previous night, Amiss went back to his office and began to type frantically. Ninety minutes later he delivered the leader to Phoebe Somerfield, who scanned it quickly and then smiled at him. 'I hand it to you. It's OK. In fact, it's better than OK. I didn't realize you were a writer manqu\u00e9.'\n\n'I'm not, Phoebe. But I was once a civil servant and had to write about complex issues simply and quickly.'\n\n'Thanks, anyway,' she said rather gruffly. 'You got me out of a hole. I'll be off now to the printers with Marcia, and if you see that hound Willie, spit in his eye for me, will you?'\n\n'I hope he's all right. After all, he might have had an accident.'\n\nShe got up, gathered up her papers and looked squarely at Amiss. 'Frankly, my dear,' she said, 'I don't give a damn.'\n\n***\n\nAmiss went downstairs and addressed Miss Mercatroid. 'Fatima, are there spare keys to Mr Lambie Crump's flat?'\n\nShe peered suspiciously at him. 'There could be.'\n\n'What do you mean, \"There could be\"?' he asked irritably.\n\n'I mean it depends who's looking for them. Mr Lambie Crump leaves me the keys to let in workmen on occasion. They're not for anyone else.'\n\n'Fatima, Mr Lambie Crump has disappeared and I am fearful that he is ill in his apartment and unable to answer the telephone. Perhaps you might accompany me and we will investigate together.'\n\nThat seemed to reassure her that he was not intending to set fire to the Lambie Crump pad or scrawl graffiti all over the walls. 'Very well, Mr Amiss. I shall give you the keys. Obviously it would be improper for me to accompany to such a place a man to whom I am not related. And even if it were, I could not do so at a time when I am required to be at prayer.'\n\nShe handed him a handsome brass key, stood up, looked at him challengingly and with impressive speed prostrated herself across the rug behind her desk. Amiss resisted the temptation to point out that since she was facing west rather than east, it was her feet that were pointing to Mecca; he left her chanting indistinctly but enthusiastically.\n\nAs he went up in the lift to the top of the house, he wished he had someone with him. If Lambie Crump was inside, presumably the best scenario was that he was dead drunk and the worst that he had died of a heart attack or been strangled by a rent boy or by some other homicidal visitor.\n\nAmiss resisted the temptation to summon Ben or Jason: there was, after all, only a slim chance that Lambie Crump was on the premises at all. He was very relieved when this assessment proved to be right: the flat was empty of everything except the exquisite furnishings which\u2014to Amiss's by now trained eye\u2014looked to have been liberated from Wrangler stocks. Whatever one felt about Lambie Crump, reflected Amiss, one had to admit he had excellent taste, as well as an unerring capacity for finding whatever was most agreeable in the line of the good things of life and acquiring them for himself\u2014preferably at other people's expense.\n\nOf the flat's tenant there was no sign. Everything was neat, the bed was made, there were no dishes in the sink.\n\nAmiss wandered around the flat for a few minutes, assessing Lambie Crump's taste in pictures (English watercolours), books (political biography, nineteenth-century novels, art and travel) and music (obscure opera). Resisting the temptation to look in the wardrobe for any signs of sartorial perversion, he headed virtuously towards the front door, pausing only to admire the view from the window of what Lambie Crump undoubtedly would refer to as his withdrawing room. Urban though the vista was, it was calculated to gladden Lambie Crump's heart, being composed entirely of elegant Georgian houses, unpolluted by any trace of the twentieth century other than the fire escapes forced on ungrateful inhabitants by bossy bureaucrats.\n\nIt was as Amiss cast an appraising eye on the fire escape of The Wrangler's building, that he saw down in the garden a flash of white in the middle of an expanse of black. As he tried to identify it, a nasty idea came into his mind. Frantically, he rushed around searching for a door out to the fire escape exit, only to find that access was via the window through which he was looking: climbing out was simple.\n\nAmiss raced down the first flight of stairs: just before he came level with the fourth floor his foot struck violently against something thin and sharp. He was never to know to what primitive instinct he owed his survival, for, as he began to fall, he wrapped his arms around the handrail and held on grimly, thus avoiding plunging like Lambie Crump to his death a hundred feet below.\n\n***\n\nAmiss's shock was compounded by the sight that met him, when, nauseated and in pain and still clutching the rail, he arrived swaying at the bottom of the fire escape. To his left was the body of Lambie Crump. From his battered and bloody face stared open, sightless eyes.\n\nAlthough Amiss realized that since Lambie Crump was wearing a dinner jacket, it followed that he had almost certainly been in the garden for more than sixteen hours, he nerved himself nevertheless to feel his pulse: the clammy wrist yielded no sign of life.\n\nLimping to the back door, Amiss staggered to the hall. He had just reached the reception desk when he fainted. When he came to he was lying on the floor with a cushion under his head and Miss Mercatroid dabbing at his brow with a damp handkerchief. As he struggled to sit up she forgot her maidenly modesty, put an arm around him and helped him prop himself against the wall.\n\n'What's the matter with you, Mr Amiss? You look as if you've seen a ghost.'\n\n'I'm afraid that's essentially what I have seen, Fatima. I'm afraid I've bad news. Mr Lambie Crump's body is in the garden. Can you please be very brave and call the police and tell them that.'\n\nWith a muttered ejaculation to Allah, Miss Mercatroid followed his instructions swiftly and then rang Jason to instruct him to procure a cup of tea straightaway and bring it to reception. Within five minutes Amiss was on his feet and functioning: his right leg, though bruised and sore, needed no medical attention. Immediately, he put out calls to all the staff to come to reception, where he told them the news.\n\n'How could he have fallen down the stairs?' asked Jason. 'Unless he was pissed, that was.'\n\n'He was ambushed by a trip-wire. I'm afraid we have to face the fact that it's murder. So we're going to have to come to terms with a police investigation and all that that entails. I doubt if this will be an open-and-shut case. Can I just ask all of you to be calm and cooperative?' Seeing tears running down Josiah Ricketts's face, he got up and went over and put his arm around the old man. 'Would you like to lie down for a few minutes, Mr Ricketts? I know this is very upsetting for you.'\n\nRicketts got out a large handkerchief and mopped his eyes and blew his nose. 'No, thank you, Mr Amiss. I'll be all right. I'll go back to my room now and go on copying the names into the contributors' book. Duty is duty.' And with a bowed head he left.\n\nWinterton grinned sardonically. 'I'm glad Ricketts shed a tear for Willie. He's likely to be the last as well as the first.' No one contradicted him. With what was almost a communal shrug, the staff went back to their offices.\n\n***\n\n'You were incredibly lucky,' said Milton. 'The wire was still taut: in fact, you've got off fantastically lightly with just a few bruises.'\n\n'I'm incredibly lucky too that you've been given the investigation. How did you fix it?'\n\n'I was there this morning when the decision had to be made and the AC thought I was the man to deal with a high-profile case that would attract lots of media attention. I'm thought to be tactful, you see.'\n\n'Unlike the cops that arrived yesterday. You'd have thought I'd pushed Willie down the stairs, the way they interrogated me. However, I'll stop cribbing. What's the plan?'\n\n'I'm just finishing something off. Then I'll talk to the forensic people, find a sidekick to stand in for Ellis...'\n\n'Oh, bugger. Of course he's gone off on his holiday with Mary Lou, hasn't he?'\n\n'Yesterday. Straight after he got back from his training course.'\n\nAmiss sighed. 'Can't be helped. And, anyway, I've got you. Now, do you know anything yet that I don't know?'\n\n'Only that the wire was tied efficiently just three inches above the step, the optimum height. It was intelligently placed halfway down the second flight to take advantage of the momentum Crump would have built up if he was going down the stairs at any speed. At night he had no chance of seeing the wire. His height and thinness was against him too, for he had a less concentrated centre of gravity than had he been short and fat. He went headlong over the handrail and ended up the mangled mess you saw.'\n\n'Wish I hadn't.'\n\n'You should be getting used to such sights by now.'\n\n'You know me, Jim. I'm squeamish.'\n\n'You're alive. That's what matters. I'll be in touch.'\n\n***\n\nIf the newspapers had got excited about Henry Potbury, they went frantic about Willie Lambie Crump. 'Bloody hell,' said Amiss to Winterton, 'I know journalists think they're the chosen people, but they're carrying on about Willie as if they've been robbed of a Messiah. I mean, for God's sake, the Independent's described him as a conviction journalist who boldly risked the wrath of his readers to embrace Tony Blair's vision, and the Guardian alleges he was risking his job by shedding the tired and discredited philosophy of a tired and discredited age.'\n\nAdmittedly, there were hints of criticism in the papers of the Right: the Telegraph even implied that Lambie Crump's desire to be at the centre of political London might have influenced the paper's recent drift away from its core values. But all the papers\u2014including the tabloids\u2014were united in shock that anyone should dream of murdering a member of the Fourth Estate. Indeed, said the Mirror darkly, there were strong reasons to suppose that Lambie Crump might have come to his death because\u2014in the best traditions of journalism\u2014he put his beliefs before his safety. And of course the more sensationalist journals and indeed ratio and television programmes made much of the fact that his death had followed not long after the violent death of another pillar of The Wrangler: police, the public was told, were even now examining the two cases to see if they were by any chance connected.\n\n***\n\n'Bad business, all this.'\n\n'Certainly is. And not just limited to Willie, I fear. Even the police are now admitting there's a fair chance that Henry was dispatched as well. Seems too much of a coincidence otherwise.'\n\nLord Papworth shook his head. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know what to think and I don't know what to do except rejoice that you\u2014at least\u2014have not joined them in the afterlife.'\n\n'And find another editor, presumably, and fast.'\n\n'That's all very well,' said Papworth, 'but I shouldn't think people are actually going to be queuing up to take over from Willie until they're sure it's safe. Only a war correspondent is likely to want to command a ship that appears to have a homicidal maniac among its crew. We'll have to wait until this is all cleared up before we start an editor hunt.'\n\n'I take your point, Charlie. So what will you do? Get Phoebe or Dwight to stand in?'\n\n'Don't think I can. After all, it's not outside the bounds of possibility that one of them murdered Willie\u2014and even Henry. They've got the most obvious motive. Don't want The Wrangler to have the stigma of an editor\u2014even if only a temporary one\u2014being charged with murder. Not quite the image of a paper so hot on law and order.'\n\n'If you can't have someone from outside and can't have anyone from inside, Charlie, how is that paper going to come out next week?'\n\n'You're going to take over as editor.'\n\nAmiss was so shocked that he made an incautious gesture and knocked over his tea. The ensuing mopping of himself, the table and the floor occupied a few minutes during which he had time to collect his thoughts. 'I'm honoured, Charlie,' he said as he sat down again, 'but that idea's a non-runner.'\n\n'Give me a better one.'\n\n'There has to be some retired or freelance journalist who'd come in for a few weeks until things are sorted out.'\n\n'Don't want an outsider coming in as a temporary measure, and I don't think anyone would want to either. It's going to require great tact to preside over such an interregnum, and I can't think of any available journalist with such a quality.'\n\n'But, but...but...'\n\n'But me no buts, Robert. If you haven't an alternative, it has to be you.'\n\nAmiss's mind frantically raced through staff and regular contributors. 'Amaryllis Vercoe?'\n\n'Now you're being silly. How could I put Amaryllis in over Dwight or Phoebe? The whole point with you is that clearly you're a temporary measure and unthreatening. I'll tell them you'll be doing it in cooperation with them, but that you'll have the authority.'\n\n'What are the trustees going to say?'\n\n'Won't have any trouble from them. I rang Doug Hogwood and Gussie Adderly this morning and they told me to do whatever I thought fit. And Jack Troutbeck, of course, was delighted\u2014she being a chum of yours.'\n\n'Jack Troutbeck?'\n\n'Oh, sorry. Didn't I tell you? She's Henry's successor. Appointed as soon as I heard about Willie. I'd been dithering up to then, but this is no time for dithering.'\n\n'Whose idea was that?'\n\n'Mine, but the other two were quite happy. She's a valued contributor with no journalistic ambition\u2014best kind of staff trustee one could have, really. And not knowing her the way I do, they're comforted by her being in the Lords. One of us and all that.'\n\nAmiss brooded and then shook his head. 'I just can't see it, Charlie. I just can't see how editorial will accept a non-journalist.'\n\n'They like you. And it was fortuitous that you wrote that tax leader last week. They know you're capable of being a contributing editor.'\n\n'How did you know about that?'\n\n'Phoebe told me when I tried this idea out on her.'\n\n'What was her reaction?'\n\n'Fine. She'd rather you than Dwight, and Dwight prefers you to Phoebe.' Papworth looked at his watch. 'Got to go home: people coming in for drinks. Right, now to practicalities. Spend what you need. For instance, if you need to hire someone to stand in for you, feel free. Or pay out some decent money to journalists. I don't mind what you do. Just get the journal out.'\n\n***\n\n'Jolly good,' said the baroness. 'It's very satisfactory that we'll be running the show.'\n\n'Correction. Jack. I'm running the show.'\n\n'I'll be running the trustees. That means I have power of life or death over you. Mind you, I envy you. Always wanted to have a bash at being an editor. Why didn't he appoint me?'\n\nAmiss laughed. 'He did mention on the way out of the Lords that the notion had crossed his mind but he decided you were too barmy. To be precise, he said: \"To let someone as opinionated as Jack Troutbeck loose on The Wrangler would be like inviting an alcoholic to take over a pub.\" And I must add, Jack, that apprehensive though I am about this job and anxious though I might be to pass on the poisoned chalice, I agreed with him.'\n\n'You underestimate my prudent streak. But I'm used to being misunderstood and I'm big enough to rise above it. Now, get cracking and pull The Wrangler out of the mire.' The phone went dead.\n\n***\n\n'It's wonderful news,' said Rachel. She threw her arms around him. 'I'm absolutely delighted. And it's such a good time too. Lambie Crump was taking the paper in the right direction at last and you'll be able to accelerate the pace.'\n\nAmiss looked at her with alarm. 'I'm only a caretaker, Rachel. And what I'm caretaking is a right-wing magazine.'\n\n'I know that. I'm not suggesting you change course any more than Lambie Crump did. Just embrace sensible policies quicker.'\n\nAmiss decided to avoid any argument. 'This week my ambition is to get The Wrangler out with no blank pages. Next week I'll be able to think.'\n\nShe beamed. 'You'll see. You'll make such a success of it, Papworth might even give you the job permanently.'\n\n'I'll do the best I can.'\n\nShe hugged him again. 'Let's go out to the wine bar and have a glass or two\u2014I mean a bottle\u2014of champagne.'\n\n'You're on,' said Amiss.\nChapter Sixteen\n\nHaving neglected to send out a press release to announce his appointment as temporary editor, Amiss had only himself to blame when a Sunday paper broke the news that Lambie Crump had been replaced by a dark horse called Robert Amis (sic), thought to be a little-known member of the wider Amis clan\u2014a rumour which persisted until Martin Amis contemptuously denied it. That newspaper however had done better than the rest of the broadsheets, who had filled a column or two each in speculation about the journalist most likely to succeed Lambie Crump. Many kites were flown: the internal candidates mentioned were Winterton, Amaryllis Vercoe and Wilfred Parry.\n\n***\n\nAmiss spent much of the weekend on the phone reassuring colleagues and contributors and asking for suggestions on how to proceed. After some dithering, he decided to move into the editor's office: there was no point in starting off being apologetic.\n\nThe mood of the Monday meeting was friendly. Wilfred Parry made sycophantic noises, and even Clement Webber came as near to graciousness as could have been expected by saying, 'Well, I suppose you can't be worse than Willie.'\n\n'I hope we can get all this mess sorted out soon,' said Amiss. 'But however long it takes, we need to do the best we can for the journal. I'll be relying on all of you. And you'll understand, won't you, that since we still haven't replaced Henry and I won't be doing much writing, we'll have to use more outsiders.'\n\n'But you'll do some,' said Phoebe.\n\n'What I can. But I have the problem that The Wrangler's politics aren't my politics.'\n\n'What are your politics?'\n\n'I don't really know. I suppose the best way of describing my politics is that they aren't anybody's politics\u2014mostly because I don't like politicians.'\n\n'Presumably you'll be following Willie's drift towards New Labour, then?' said Webber sourly. 'Seeing it's the politics of people with no politics.'\n\n'No, Clement, I won't. I think Willie had got out of touch with the journal's soul and that's what I'm here to nourish.'\n\n'It was the body he liked,' said Winterton, waving at the grandeur that surrounded them. 'Incidently, where is the funeral to be? Westminster Abbey? St Paul's?'\n\n'No. I talked to his brother and he has in mind something rather more modest. We're meeting this evening to talk it through. It looks as if it will be a proper Fleet Street event at St Bride's, probably next Friday\u2014with a memorial service later if there is enough popular demand.'\n\n'Don't hold your breath,' muttered Phoebe Somerfield.\n\n***\n\n'I dare say I'll be able to help you.'\n\n'I certainly hope so,' said Milton. 'That's what you're here to do.'\n\n'Oh no...sir,' said Detective Sergeant Tewkesbury, giving a strong impression that it hurt him to use the title. 'I meant that I'm pretty knowledgeable about the literary world and all that. English is what I read'\u2014he paused again and looked at Milton\u2014'I mean studied...at Oxford.'\n\nMilton tried not to show his irritation. 'I see. So you think you'll understand these people.'\n\n'Oh, I think so. Mind you, I wouldn't read The Wrangler. It's very out of date and has values that are of no relevance to Britain as we approach the millennium. I mean, obviously when you're a modernizer you want to read journals that look forward not back. But I know the sort of thing they write about.' He laughed. 'There aren't, I think, very many people in the police force for instance who know about Edmund Burke.'\n\n'There's me,' said Milton.\n\nTewkesbury started. 'Oh, really, sir. I didn't realize you had been to university.'\n\n'Tewkesbury, even if you've never been to university it is possible to read books. However, let us not get sidetracked. I would of course appreciate any insights you might have to bring to bear on this murder. Feel free to make suggestions.'\n\nTewkesbury leaned forward and addressed Milton with the air of an Englishman of the old school trying to make a foreigner understand. 'This is an unusual case, concerning unusual people. I have little doubt that the motives are ideological.'\n\n'What makes you think that, Tewkesbury?'\n\nHis sergeant assumed a condescending expression that made Milton want to knee him in the groin. 'It's easy,' he said, 'to underestimate the venom of the Right when threatened by progress. I can well see that Lambie Crump's conversion to New Labour would have been a matter that outraged those loyal to the anachronistic beliefs of The Wrangler.'\n\n'What are you suggesting? That a bunch of outraged readers got together and murdered Lambie Crump in the name of Edmund Burke.'\n\n'That's a bit far-fetched, sir, if you forgive my saying so. But I shouldn't put it past Clement Webber. He is, after all, fanatically Thatcherite.'\n\n'So, in many respects, is New Labour,' said Milton. 'Now can we please get on with checking alibis.'\n\n***\n\n'My God, how I miss Ellis.' Milton threw himself on the sofa in Amiss's room and closed his eyes. 'What they've given me in his place...'\n\n'Well, what have they given you in his place? Somebody thick?'\n\n'Thick'd be a damn sight better than what I've been given. \"He's just the man for you, sir,\" I was told brightly. \"We know you like the clever ones and there's one of the cleverest ones available right now. DS Tewkesbury is a real intellectual.\"'\n\nMilton covered his face in his hands. 'Drink?' asked Amiss sympathetically. 'Gin and tonic?'\n\n'And plenty of it,' said Milton, with feeling. Amiss went over to the corner cupboard, poured Milton's drink and took it to him.\n\n'Aren't you having one, Robert?'\n\n'Got to meet someone in the pub shortly. Can't afford to get pissed during the week any more now I'm doing a job for which I'm completely unqualified. I've got about ten minutes or so. Tell me what's the matter with him,' asked Amiss.\n\n'Self-satisfied, smartarse git patronizing the poor old copper who hasn't even been to university.'\n\n'You're not just being sensitive about that, Jim, are you?'\n\n'Don't be ridiculous, Robert. When was I ever sensitive about Ellis having been to Cambridge?' He took a large swallow. 'But I can't stand superior prigs.'\n\n'But Ellis is a bit of a prig.'\n\n'Oh, come off it, Robert. He has priggish tendencies, but plenty of imagination and compassion and knows about dark nights of the soul. But this little creep is thoroughly pleased with himself and convinced that the world will be a better place if everyone does what he says. He's the worst kind of arrogant little prat.'\n\n'New Labour?' asked Amiss.\n\n'I've met self-important little Tory prats as well.'\n\n'The only way of dividing the sheep from the goats that makes any sense to me is to classify them as Cavaliers and Roundheads. And New Labour measure up worse than the Tories here. They don't understand that real enjoyment is a good in itself: they partake of the good things of life, but they do so austerely. There's never any suggestion that they're capable of having a riotous time. Everything has to be so fucking moderate. They're so bloody austere they make you almost warm to Bill Clinton. At least he got into trouble through dropping his trousers.'\n\n'So did our foreign secretary.'\n\n'Ah yes. But he showed no signs of enjoyment. Anyway, enough of this. Are you going to slap Sergeant Tewkesbury down?'\n\n'No, I'm not, or not yet anyway. At the risk of sounding as sanctimonious as he is, I do try to get the best out of my staff even if they're personally objectionable. And I suppose he's got brains. I just have to hope that his colleagues knock some of the more objectionable characteristics out of him. Anyway, he's what I'm lumbered with and I'd better make the most of him.'\n\n'So how are you going about this? Will you be interviewing us here? Do you want a room?'\n\n'Not yet. We've got the preliminary statements, and over the next few days we'll be sorting out alibis and all that sort of thing. I want to do some nosing round Lambie Crump's private life. Tewkesbury obviously thinks I'm wasting his valuable time, since he's made up his mind already that the motive is ideological: Crump was slain for going over to New Labour.'\n\n'What do you think?'\n\n'I'm keeping an open mind. Phoebe Somerfield, for instance, from what you've told me, might have had good reason to want to murder him for ripping her off all those years. Or of course like Winterton she might have wanted the editorship.'\n\n'Or Ben or Marcia might have taken vengeance over his wayward way with semicolons.'\n\n'Or Miss Mercatroid might have brought in an Islamic hit squad.'\n\n'And we haven't even considered who had any reason to do for Henry.'\n\n'All in good time, Robert. All in good time. I'll be off now. I'll be in touch, but my guess is we'll be along on Monday.'\n\n***\n\nAmiss quickly gathered that Joe Crump was not one of his brother's greatest fans. 'I couldn't stomach the Lambie bit, to tell you the truth,' he said to Amiss over pints of beer in the pub around the corner from The Wrangler. 'First it was demanding we call him Willie instead of Bill, and then he took my mother's maiden name and tacked it on when he went up to Oxford. Right load of pretentious twaddle, if you ask me. Double-barrelled names with hyphens are bad enough: those without are the last straw.\n\n'Still, I suppose we'll have to respect his wishes and do his service the way he'd want, which no doubt means some fashionable clergyman and lots of poncy High-Church carry-on.' He winced. 'Maybe even incense. And to think the Crumps have always been Presbyterians.'\n\nHe swallowed some more beer. 'To be honest,' he said lugubriously. 'I hate the very thought and don't know where to start. I don't even know what hymns he liked. We only ever met every couple of years or so.'\n\n'Can I help?'\n\n'Can you help? What I'd really like you to do is settle the whole business with that vicar.'\n\n'I have a friend who'll sort it all out,' said Amiss. 'She has tame clergy at her beck and call. Now, let me get you another pint.'\n\n***\n\nThe baroness grabbed Amiss's hand. 'Come on. Let's clear out and make a run for El Vino's. I couldn't bear to talk to any of this mob after what I've just been through.'\n\nThey slid away from the congregation and walked briskly up Fleet Street. 'We did a bloody good job there, didn't we?' she said. 'Even if it was sickening. It was a stroke of luck that that little prat, Father Fogey, or whatever he calls himself, was able to do the honours. As pretentious as even Willie could have wished.'\n\n'It was splendid,' said Amiss. 'A real one hundred-carat pseud's extravaganza. What did you think of Papworth's encomium?'\n\n'Well, you've got to go a bit over the top at times like that. He produced a prime example of great English hypocrisy with all that bullshit about selfless devotion to a great intellectual tradition.'\n\n'At least he didn't say anything about integrity. I'd have thrown up if he had.'\n\nThe baroness sniggered. 'I saw at least six people in that church who were at a dinner with me last week where we traded stories of the awful posing and dishonesty of Willie Crump. Still, hypocrisy is the cement that glues us all together.'\n\nShe stopped and looked at Amiss. 'Incidentally, don't let this go to your head, but this week's Wrangler is the best for months.'\n\n'Really? What was it that...?' But they had arrived at El Vino's and she had already disappeared inside.\n\n'Come on, come on.' She pushed her way through the crowd, Amiss in her train. A triumphant hoot signalled the capturing of a table and two chairs. 'Now, order a bottle of champagne and make it a decent one. We'll drink a sympathetic glass to Crump because even he didn't quite deserve to be murdered and then we'll drink the rest to celebrate the interest that his passing has added to our lives.'\n\nWhen they had completed the formalities and drunk their toasts, the baroness enquired about Jim Milton. 'Sleuthing well, is he?'\n\n'He's dug thoroughly around Willie's private life in the hope that a demented lover would emerge from the woodwork. But it looks as if the assessment given him by Mrs Lambie Crump\u2014to wit that Willie wasn't interested in sex\u2014may be the correct one. Our Willie wasn't at it with anyone, it would seem, or if he was no one knew about it. And nor does there seem to be any family motive. The parents are dead and the brother a decent bloke.'\n\n'What about money in the case of the brother?'\n\n'You mean does he inherit any?'\n\n'Yep.'\n\n'He certainly didn't expect to. Nor does he need it. He's a successful chiropodist who owns his house and whose kids are independent. In fact, he seemed genuinely surprised when he discovered Willie had left him ten thousand quid.'\n\n'Who got the rest?'\n\nAmiss grinned. 'The Society for Distressed Gentlefolk.'\n\n'You're kidding.'\n\n'I'm not kidding.'\n\nThe baroness raised her glass. 'Here's to Willie Crump. He even managed a fogey's will. That's what I call thorough. Nothing else interesting on the private life?'\n\n'No. Willie doesn't seem to have had a private life in the sense of intimate friendships. He knew a lot of people, but they all seemed to be acquaintances. He was the sort of fellow one invited to dinner to make up the numbers, secure that he'd know which forks to use and would have a flow of entertaining gossip: he could be very amusing when he was being bitchy about other people. Or you'd invite him because he expended Papworth's money on entertaining lavishly in his apartment or in smart restaurants: his expense account was huge. Otherwise his social life consisted mainly of attending pretty well every shindig to which he was invited on the literary and political front. One of nature's spongers, was our Willie.'\n\nThe baroness had lost interest. 'To business, my lad. You haven't asked about Plutarch.'\n\n'Well, what is there to ask? No doubt you'd tell me if there was anything wrong with her.'\n\n'You're very unfeeling. You haven't seen that magnificent cat for months. Don't you miss her?'\n\n'I don't think \"miss\" is quite the word,' said Amiss cautiously. 'I notice she's not with me, as it were.'\n\n'I take your point. I notice she's with me.'\n\n'Is she all right, then?'\n\n'In the pink. But we are, perhaps, nearing the time when she should be returning to you.'\n\n'Christ, Jack, you don't mean that, do you? Rachel would go mad.'\n\n'I didn't offer to take her for life. Merely for convalescence after her nasty experience in Westonbury. And that was a long time ago. She's been recovered for months. Some of my colleagues are becoming a little testy.'\n\nAmiss felt a familiar sense of dread enveloping him. 'She's been behaving badly, hasn't she?'\n\n'Nothing that would trouble me, you understand. But there have been, let us say, a few incidents. And the one that caused some distress to a royal personage got her into most people's black books.'\n\n'What happened?'\n\n'She decided to assist in the laying of the foundation stone of the new wing by jumping on the back of the Duchess just as she was turning the sod.'\n\n'Oh dear.'\n\n'Oh dear is right. Her claws were unsheathed at the time.'\n\n'Oh God, oh God.'\n\n'Did nothing for the elegant yellow silk ensemble. It might have proved possible to cleanse the fabric of the blood, but I doubt if the rip could have been invisibly mended. I offered compensation as tactfully as I could, but got a pretty chilly response. I'm sorry to have to say that there were those among my colleagues who suggested that it was time that Plutarch was stiffed.'\n\n'In the heat of the moment, surely? They wouldn't actually do it, would they?'\n\n'I'm not so sure. She's all right while I'm there. And you know I would if necessary lay down my life\u2014and knock off some of my colleagues, for that matter\u2014for that splendid beast. But I have few allies on this one\u2014especially since Mary Lou buggered off to the West Indies\u2014and I'm beginning to fear that one or two of my rougher colleagues just might take the law into their own hands when I next go away for any length of time.'\n\nAmiss gazed at her in horror. 'You mean you're going to send her back to me?'\n\n'Talk it over with Rachel. I'll pass the word round at St Martha's that I'm negotiating Plutarch's release back into the community. That might hold them off for a short time.'\n\n***\n\n'I couldn't bear it,' said Rachel. 'I really couldn't. I loathe that bloody cat. She's fat, greedy, aggressive, destructive and dangerous. And ugly.'\n\n'Oh, come now, Rach. That's not all quite fair. She's much better than she used to be. She only causes trouble when she's upset or excited.'\n\n'You forget that I was present when she assaulted that red-haired waitress at St Martha's.'\n\n'It was an honest misunderstanding over the leftovers.'\n\n'I don't care what her motivation was, Robert. The result was hysterics. Call me unreasonable, but I really don't want to share my home with an enormous and savage creature who beats up acquaintances and strangers alike. And what's more, it isn't even as if you liked her.'\n\n'I do have moments of being fond of her. We've been through a lot together and she has guts. In any case, what choice have I if Jack can't keep her any longer?'\n\n'I'm not hardhearted enough to suggest you put her down. But surely you can find an alternative?'\n\n'Rachel, if you won't take her for my sake, why would anybody else?'\n\n'I don't know, Robert. I don't know. But you'd better try to find someone.'\nChapter Seventeen\n\nMilton rang Amiss on Sunday evening to report progress. 'I'm keeping an open mind on Henry Potbury, but since it's easier in his case to determine who had the opportunity to kill him, I've had that checked out assiduously.'\n\n'And...?'\n\n'No one admits to having seen him after eight-fifty, when he was noticed by two waitresses who were collecting their coats from the storeroom off the dining room. You know\u2014the one with the photographs and portraits.'\n\n'The playroom.'\n\n'If you say so. Potbury had apparently tottered in there to take the weight off his feet.'\n\n'Was he conscious?'\n\n'They said he looked sleepy but hadn't actually passed out, and yes, he was sitting in front of a full punch bowl. One of the waitresses suggested that they should take the bowl outside and give people one last round, but the other one reminded her that they had to be at their next venue within twenty minutes, so they let it be.'\n\n'How many people were still there around that time?'\n\n'Lord Papworth, and all those who were going to dinner with him: you, Lambie Crump, Amaryllis Vercoe, Clement Webber, Phoebe Somerfield, Dwight Winterton, Wilfred Parry and Ben and Marcia, as well as a handful of others, including Piers Papworth, Sharon McGregor and Jack Troutbeck. There was also a poet who was so drunk that he had to be helped out of the building by two others and a Cabinet minister who had arrived very late and was talking intently to a journalist. Nobody can be certain that there weren't some more odds and ends around but a few of them are pretty sure the drink had dried up ten or fifteen minutes earlier and almost everyone had stampeded off to dinners or pubs.'\n\n'And how many of those have alibis for each other?'\n\n'Only the non-Wrangler people. Most people had had a few drinks, and in the nature of things at the end of parties there's a lot of rushing round to say goodbye to different people, most people are not exclusively with any one other person and only teetotalers\u2014and I don't think there were any there\u2014have much sense of time.\n\n'Piers Papworth thinks he was with Sharon McGregor at the crucial time but she's not sure if he was there all the time until she left without him to go off to dinner with Jack Troutbeck. And neither of them is clear when or where they parted. Bill and Marcia are pretty sure they were together at that stage of the evening, but they probably would think or say that anyway, wouldn't they?'\n\n'Maybe,' said Amiss, 'but remember their lives are devoted to getting things right, so they're hardly natural liars.'\n\n'Lambie Crump apparently said he was with Lord Papworth all the time but Lord Papworth thinks it was only part of the time and so on and on. You and Amaryllis, in fact, seem to be the only pair that are definitely out of it, since several people observed you in an animated conversation in the corner, and several wondered if you were going to get off together.'\n\nAmiss coloured slightly. 'What a filthy-minded lot my colleagues are. If I remember correctly, we were talking about the government's devolution plans. Enough of that. How easy would it have been to knock off poor Henry?'\n\n'Easyish, from what I can work out. I really wish I could do a reconstruction of all this, but you can't do reconstructions at the end of parties where a lot of alcohol has been consumed\u2014especially if you're trying to do it several weeks later. It all comes down to whether a) somebody saw Potbury going into the store...sorry, playroom, and nobody admits to that, b) whether they were aware that the waitresses had all gone home and c) whether they had the opportunity to pop in and do the deed without anyone else observing them. But how could they have known he'd have placed himself obligingly in front of a punch bowl? More likely is that someone might have gone in to talk to Henry, or even just to look for more drink, and having seen his opportunity to kill him, took it. I have to say it all sounds very unlikely.'\n\n'But possible.'\n\n'Yes, certainly possible. You were all apparently by then crowded together around the corner from the main part of the room, so anybody leaving the group would have been thought to be going home, going to the loo or going in search of a drink. But in fact no one noticed anybody.'\n\n'So in theory someone could have killed Henry while the rest of us were around the corner.'\n\n'Yes, or done it later by hiding in the building until everyone left. It looks as though that may well be what happened, since you say when you came back the Chubb lock wasn't on.'\n\n'That's no guide to anything, Jim. Very few of the staff have keys to the building, so if whoever leaves last can't lock up from the outside, that's just too bad: we have to trust to the Yale. You can't easily be tight on security with that kind of crew. We\u2014that is, the few people who care\u2014rely on the fact that what is valuable in the building is not very portable. Even the dumbest cop might become suspicious if he saw people removing furniture from a Mayfair house in the middle of the night.'\n\n'I hope you're right, though I suspect you're not.'\n\n'So how long would it have taken to murder poor old Henry?'\n\n'The estimate is a maximum of three minutes from start to finish. But the risk wasn't very great. If the perpetrator had been caught in flagrante, he could have pulled Henry out and claimed to have saved his life; if he was seen coming out of the room he'd presumably have realized it and would have been able to call for help and rush back in and pull Henry out before anyone else arrived. Even if Henry had been resuscitated, he'd have been unlikely to have had a coherent view of what had happened.'\n\n'So we're not much wiser.'\n\n'No.'\n\n'Any advance on the Lambie Crump conundrum?'\n\n'There's only one lead and it's so tenuous I doubt if it's worth a damn.'\n\n'Which is?'\n\n'Lambie Crump seems to have phoned Papworth when he got home from that drinks party, yet Papworth said he hadn't talked to him for days when he spoke to our people.'\n\n'Really, Jim, the notion of Charlie Papworth murdering Lambie Crump seems absolutely preposterous. He mightn't have liked the business of the trust but you don't really murder for reasons of noblesse oblige. Charlie's sensible and he certainly knows that in the great scheme of things, The Wrangler is but a grain of sand on the beach.'\n\n'You're probably right. I'll find out. Failing that, it's an open field. Pretty well any of you could have done it\u2014as indeed could anyone who knew his habits.'\n\n'I didn't really know Willie's habits, but like a lot of other people I knew that he often used the fire escape: there are more taxis available near the back gate than there are near the front door.'\n\n'It was a taxi he was in search of the evening he fell down the steps. We know where he was going and when he was due so we can pinpoint the time of his death pretty accurately to around seven o'clock. However, wire could have been put there at any time from when he had last gone down those stairs.'\n\n'It'd be very difficult to do during the daytime, surely,' said Amiss.\n\n'Not that difficult for an inhabitant of The Wrangler building. It was perfectly possible to go up to the fourth floor into the storeroom that overlooks the fire escape, climb out and do the business without anyone seeing. Though admittedly forensic can find no evidence that suggests that was what happened.'\n\n'No marks in the dust?'\n\n'No dust to speak of.'\n\n'Our cleaners are very thorough.'\n\n'But of course, as you know, it was also perfectly possible to do the job from the outside at night. Someone merely had to slip that childishly simple lock on the gate and do the business. Or even easier, someone Lambie Crump was entertaining could have gone down the fire escape and set the ambush then.'\n\n'Anything in the diary to indicate if anyone was at his place the night before he was killed?'\n\n'No. His only appointment was an early-evening cocktail party at the Ritz. Of course he might have gone to dinner with someone.'\n\n'Equally likely he stuffed himself on free food as well as free champagne and then went home by himself.'\n\n'Or took someone with him?'\n\n'Possibly. Or someone might have called on him. But if so, they haven't owned up.'\n\n'All wonderfully vague, isn't it? Nobody's ruled out.'\n\n'Unless they were provably away, which none of the obvious suspects were. It's hard to be ruled out for a period of twenty-four hours. Even Professor Webber could in theory have driven from Oxford, though his wife said he was at home that night. And while Ben and Marcia say they were never separated during that period, what's that worth, even if one of them is telling the truth. Either of them could have crept out during the night. As, indeed, presumably could Webber.'\n\n'The thing is, Jim, that while I think it's too much of a coincidence that Henry died like that, I can't think of the faintest reason why anybody would knock off both him and then Lambie Crump except that they wanted promotion.'\n\n'Exactly.'\n\n'And that pretty well narrows it down to Dwight who is, anyway, bright enough to make it anywhere without having to resort to murder.'\n\n'Except at The Wrangler under Lambie Crump.'\n\n'But why should he not simply go and work for someone who would appreciate him?'\n\n'Why not indeed? So, since I'm buggered if I can find a sensible motive for knocking off Potbury and Lambie Crump, I'm going to focus on Lambie Crump.'\n\n'While not completely ignoring Henry.'\n\n'While not completely ignoring Henry.'\n\n***\n\n'You've no idea who might have done this?' Milton asked Lord Papworth, early next morning.\n\n'None. Willie had enemies, but I can't imagine he had murderous enemies. Just people who didn't like him.'\n\n'Because?'\n\n'Because he wasn't very nice,' said Papworth simply. 'He was selfish and he didn't think about other people unless it suited him. For instance, I think he did damn-all to find and encourage talent. Dwight Winterton fell into his lap. He didn't treat his staff very well either. He was a shit, really, was Willie.\n\n'I'm sorry if I sound callous, Chief Superintendent. And what I'll say in public is different. But I see no point in being less than frank with you.'\n\n'What was your relationship like?'\n\n'Perfectly civil. But then I had no stomach for a fight. I resented him for exploiting me and I'd have fired him if I could, but he had two out of the three trustees in his pocket so that was that: Willie expended most of his energy in guarding his own back. But I've put up with the situation and jogged along and it's been more bearable recently since I've put into the journal a clever young man who has saved me a lot of money.'\n\n'But I gather there was a recent sharp difference of opinion between you and Mr Lambie Crump.'\n\n'Ah yes. You're speaking of the Papworth wars, I suppose.'\n\n'Can you tell me about them, sir?'\n\n'Yes, yes. Certainly. Do you know about the role of the trustees?'\n\n'In general terms, yes. I know how they protect the editor.'\n\n'Right. Now in a nutshell, I have a difference of opinion with my heir Piers about our duties towards The Wrangler. I regard it as a duty to keep it going with its integrity intact. He thinks it to be an anachronistic burden that we should get rid of to the highest bidder. And under the present terms of the trust, no one would give tuppence for it unless they were looking for ways to lose money.\n\n'So Piers is trying to get the trustees effectively to put themselves out of business, so the journal can be sold unencumbered when I'm dead and he gets his hands on it. He seems to have found a prospective buyer who is prepared to give him a good price. So, having tried and failed to find a compromise, we're having a legal tussle.'\n\nHe cackled. 'It's quite funny, really. I love my son but I take duty seriously, so I'm spending money he would otherwise inherit to try to stop him parting with something I don't really want, which he certainly doesn't want and which would make him financially secure instead of debt-ridden. A sense of duty is an expensive commodity, I can tell you.'\n\n'Do I gather Mr Papworth does not have such a sense, sir?'\n\n'Oh, he does, Chief Superintendent. It's just that his doesn't extend to the journal, only to Papworth Castle, which he loves even more than I do. He will explain it to you himself better than I can, I think. Although he won't be able to do that in person until he gets back from Australia in a few weeks.'\n\n'And Mr Lambie Crump's position on all this was...?'\n\n'Selfish and venal, of course. He was throwing all his weight behind Piers for reasons I don't know. But what I do know is that his motives will not have been honourable. I suppose Piers promised him something or Miss Sharon McGregor, the potential buyer, promised him something. There will certainly have been a practical reason that benefited Willie. There always was.\n\n'I have to admit that whatever reward he had been offered, he deserved. He was certainly Piers's most powerful ally. He'd managed to get those two old blockheads\u2014Adderly and Hogwood\u2014to take Piers's side, and nothing I've said to them could move them, even though they were flying in the face of all their job was supposed to be.'\n\n'And the third trustee?'\n\n'Henry Potbury stood up to all the blandishments and by doing so was certainly slowing things up. We hoped that the delay would put Miss McGregor off. She did not seem a patient woman. And then he died, but fortunately the appointment of his successor was in my gift and I appointed somebody even tougher than him.\n\n'I'm still hoping Lady Troutbeck may be able to win over her new colleagues. She's a persuasive woman.'\n\n'When did you last speak to Mr Lambie Crump?'\n\n'Can't remember. Maybe a week or ten days before his death.'\n\n'Even on the telephone?'\n\n'Even on the telephone.'\n\n'Yet his telephone records, Lord Papworth, say that he phoned you the evening before he died.'\n\n'Really? How extraordinary. When?'\n\n'At ten-fifteen.' Papworth wrinkled up his face in perplexity. 'My goodness, you surprise me, though if you say so I suppose it must be so. Perhaps I am a more forgetful old man than I thought.' He brooded. 'Could it perhaps have been late on in the evening after I had dined well? Could it be that Alzheimer's compounded by alcohol might be at the root of this mystery? Would the operator know if it was a long call?'\n\n'It was short.'\n\n'Then I expect it was something routine. I do apologize, Superintendent. I would not wish to mislead you, but at present such a call is ringing no bell in my addled old mind.'\n\nMilton got up to go. 'I'd be grateful if you'd think about it some more, Lord Papworth. Otherwise, thank you very much. I'll be in touch.'\n\nAs they got into the car, he said, 'Tewkesbury, I want you tomorrow extremely tactfully to have a word with the two old boys Papworth had dinner with that night and find out if he had much to drink. Their names were given in his statement.'\n\n***\n\nPapworth was on the phone an hour later. 'The mystery is resolved, Chief Superintendent. Lambie Crump did indeed ring here the night before he died, but I had gone to bed and my wife took the call.'\n\n'And didn't tell you?'\n\n'She said he said not to bother, it was nothing urgent and he'd catch me on another occasion. So she didn't. I must say this comes as a relief to me. I really was beginning to fear that I was going gaga.'\n\n'Thank you,' said Milton rather dispiritedly. 'If you don't mind, I'll send my sergeant round just to take a formal statement from your wife for the records.'\n\n'Of course, my dear chap.' Milton heard him call: 'Imogen, Imogen, my dear. Can you come to the phone?'\n\nA moment later a crisp voice said: 'Good morning. Will two-thirty this afternoon suit you?'\n\n'Thank you, Lady Papworth. That'll be fine.'\n\n'Good,' she said. 'Goodbye.'\n\n***\n\nAmiss was reading at his deak when the phone rang.\n\n'I've had a postcard from Mary Lou and Ellis.'\n\n'Good morning, Jack. Saying what?'\n\n'\"Scenery magnificent: have spent most of our time studying architectural and archaeological artifacts with the rest of our time devoted to improving books. Love Ellis.\" Mary Lou's PS reads, \"Got him dancing in the market square last night with a clutch of dusky beauties. I'm proud to say he's degenerating by the hour.\"'\n\n'Excellent,' said Amiss. 'She seems to be doing her stuff. Do you think he'll come back changed?'\n\n'As you well know, people don't change much, just adjust a bit. When he's finished his hol and his hair's fully let down, he'll wash it, set it and pin it up again primly ready for his first day back at work. All one can hope is that Mary Lou frequently gets the opportunity to pull it down again. Anyway, that's not what I'm ringing about. Where have you got to on the Plutarch front?'\n\n'Oh, God.'\n\n'Rachel not thrilled?'\n\n'Rachel not thrilled.'\n\n'College council not thrilled either. Had to nip a rebellion in the bud by saying the matter was being addressed with urgency. That was enough to win her a stay of execution, but only a short stay. If she's found in the library with a dagger in her back I won't be in the least surprised.'\n\n'I'm investigating long-term fostering. But my guess is that the kind of people that like cats don't like Plutarch.'\n\n'Perhaps you need to market her as something else.'\n\n'Like what?'\n\n'A werewolf.'\n\n'Not many people like werewolves.'\n\n'I do.'\n\n'You're unusual.'\n\n'If you say so. I always think I'm Baroness Ordinary myself, but I admit not everyone agrees. But keep at it. I can't guarantee her safety for more than another couple of weeks, so stop wanking. Get fucking.'\n\nThe phone went dead. Amiss groaned and went back to reading Dwight Winterton's assault on what he termed New Labour's deracination of Britain. It was harsh, cruel in parts and was bound to bring the Number 10 press secretary down upon Amiss in a rage. Amiss thought he agreed with only a quarter of it, but he passed it to the printers unchanged. He was less kind to a lead review of Wilfred Parry's, out of which he took every pretentious or obfuscatory word.\n\n***\n\nWhen the participants in the Monday morning meeting had all arrived, Amiss addressed them. 'The police will be turning up again today to interview some of us.'\n\n'What? Again?' said Phoebe Somerfield.\n\n'You have a better class of cop this time. Detective Chief Superintendent Milton is intelligent and civilized.'\n\nParry looked down his nose. 'I doubt if that is possible. Anyway, surely there's nothing left for us to say to these people. We don't want plods hanging round The Wrangler.'\n\n'Like it or not, Wilfred, we have to cooperate on a murder investigation. Mr Milton needs our help in finding possible motives for Willie's murder. And then, of course, there's the matter of Henry's death, and whether it is possible that he also was killed.'\n\n'What fun,' said Winterton. 'I can't wait. Are we all suspects?'\n\n'Have to be, Dwight. They've found nothing promising in Willie's private life, I gather. So obviously they have to focus on us for a while. They're only...'\n\n'...doing their job,' chimed in Winterton.\n\n'Exactly. And the easier we make it for them the sooner they'll be out of here.'\n\n***\n\n'Well, that's blown that,' reported Milton to Amiss. 'Tewkesbury said she was compos mentis and very clear about the conversation, which seems to have consisted of no more than two or three minutes of pleasantries.' He sighed. 'Of course, they might be lying. But why should he simply not have admitted to the call in the first instance? It wouldn't have implicated him.'\n\n'Are there any leads at all, Jim?'\n\n'Just forlorn ones. Like will some cab driver respond to the appeal to anyone who picked up or deposited anyone at the end of that alleyway the evening or night before Crump died? All I can do is press on with interviews and hope for the best.'\n\n'I'll take you to your quarters. Jason'll have taken your sergeant there already.'\n\nAmiss led Milton to his old office\u2014now equipped with an extra Sheraton side table for Sergeant Tewkesbury.\n\n'Jason will keep an eye on you, provide you with coffee and anything else you want, and search for people you can't raise on the telephone. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment.' Remembering the different workplaces and the different jobs in which he had seen Amiss over the previous few years, Milton grinned at his new suavity. Even Tewkesbury seemed impressed. 'He's young and quite bright,' he said grudgingly when Amiss had left to have his argument with Parry about reviewers. 'Even looks normal. I can't imagine why someone like that is prepared to work somewhere like this.'\n\n'The world is full of such mysteries, Tewkesbury. Now, pass me the list and I'll decide in which order to summon our interviewees.'\nChapter Eighteen\n\nIf Miss Mercatroid was to be believed, Lambie Crump had been murdered as a result of some kind of anti-Islamic conspiracy similar to that which she was convinced had caused the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.\n\n'I'm not with you, Miss Mercatroid.'\n\n'Fatima.'\n\n'Fatima. Why should anybody murder Mr Lambie Crump because you're a Muslim?'\n\n'It isn't just that,' she said darkly. 'A couple of weeks ago an Islamic scholar had a letter in The Wrangler saying that Islam would triumph in Britain because Christians lacked conviction. This could be the backlash. Why, they may be trying to exterminate everyone on this paper.'\n\n'Who is they? The Archbishop of Canterbury?'\n\n'Not necessarily. But he might be part of it.'\n\n***\n\n'She continued in this vein for the best part of an hour,' reported Milton wearily to Amiss later on. 'It was almost\u2014but not quite\u2014worth it to have Tewkesbury forced to take notes throughout.'\n\n'And who does she think are the actual perpetrators?'\n\n'She talks darkly of security services serving the evil designs of the royal family and the British government. I think Freemasons were mentioned, and, of course, an international Jewish conspiracy featured somewhere.'\n\n'Do you mean she's fingering Dwight?'\n\n'Don't think so. I don't even know if she knows he's Jewish. She certainly never mentioned him. Anyway, I don't propose to waste any more time on her. She's bonkers. The Muslims have my sympathy.'\n\n***\n\n'Now don't worry, Mr Ricketts. Don't worry. There's nothing to be afraid of.'\n\nRicketts's squeaks diminished somewhat in volume and intensity.\n\n'I hear, Mr Ricketts, that you are the longest-serving member of The Wrangler's staff, so you'll have known Mr Lambie Crump for many years. Can you tell us what you thought of him?'\n\nThe squeaking started again, accompanied this time by the wringing of hands. Milton waited patiently.\n\n'Sir, he was the editor. And there is no greater honour than to be editor of this great journal. And, like the other three editors whom I had the privilege and honour to work for, he was a great gentleman.'\n\n'Yes, yes. I quite understand, Mr Ricketts. But perhaps you might be able to tell me how he got on with the rest of the staff? Would you say that the atmosphere was harmonious and friendly, between, for instance, Mr Lambie Crump and Mr Winterton?'\n\nRicketts looked shocked. 'I'm sorry, sir. I'm only the clerk. I wouldn't presume to know how editorial does its job. I count my pencils and I write in my ledgers, and all I know is that all the ladies and gentlemen are very nice to me. Very affable. Sometimes they even have a joke with me. Why, poor Mr Potbury used to say to me, \"Mr Ricketts, Mr Ricketts, I suppose you've come to confiscate my extra pencil.\"'\n\nMilton looked at him dully. 'So you've no ideas or information about the circumstances of Mr Lambie Crump's death? You didn't see anything, or hear anything, that might be relevant.'\n\n'Oh, no, sir. Nothing.'\n\n'Very well,' said Milton flatly. 'Thank you very much, Mr Ricketts. That's all for now.'\n\nTewkesbury looked after the departing little figure with scorn. 'Really, sir,' he said when the door had closed, 'it seems to me absolutely extraordinary that anywhere could tolerate a person like that these days. He's not just anachronistic, he's a throwback to the Victorian period and utterly valueless.'\n\n'I can see Ricketts's deficiencies as well as you can, Tewkesbury. But you should not overlook his virtues too. Honesty, loyalty, industry and\u2014dare I say it\u2014humility, have their place. Now I'm going to call Miss Somerfield.'\n\n***\n\n'Can you give me one sensible reason why I might have wanted to kill Lambie Crump?' asked Phoebe Somerfield impatiently.\n\n'No. But it would be helpful if you'd answer my questions anyway, Miss Somerfield. That's why I'm here and I've got to start somewhere.'\n\n'Oh, very well.' She began ticking off her fingers. 'Sex, greed, ambition, revenge: they're the usual motives, aren't they? Well, neither Willie nor I ever had the faintest interest in each other in any area at all\u2014let alone sex. Greed's out as well. I don't make any money as a result of Willie's death; indeed it's worth mentioning that he recently gave me a massive pay increase. Ambition is a non-starter. I can't see anything changing under a new editor. Revenge? For what? Now, does that satisfy you? I'm busy.'\n\nMilton leaned forward. 'Miss Somerfield, this is a murder enquiry. Murder enquiries inevitably are inconvenient for those involved. I must ask you, please, to take my questions with a good grace. In turn, I promise you that I will try not to waste your time.'\n\nShe put her head on one side and stared at him appraisingly. 'OK. That seems fair enough.'\n\n'Can you tell me, please, about your relationship with Mr Lambie Crump, when you came to know him and how you got on together?'\n\n'I came to work here thirty years ago straight from university. Willie arrived a decade later from a newspaper where I gather he hadn't done particularly well and spent the next five years scheming to get the editor's job.'\n\n'How did he scheme?'\n\n'Snuggling up to the trustees mostly: consulting them, taking them to dinner and discovering and pandering to their prejudices in what he said and wrote.'\n\n'You have three trustees?'\n\n'Yes, but it was the two GGs he was smarming up to.'\n\n'GGs?'\n\n'Great-and-Goods. We have one staff trustee and two well-known outsiders who are essentially self-perpetuating because they choose their successors, who seem inevitably to be from the most spineless representatives of the British Establishment: vain and wimpish old men who are suckers for types like Willie Lambie Crump.'\n\n'Are those two still alive?'\n\n'No, though looking at their heirs you'd hardly be able to tell the difference. M'Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly haven't any backbone or judgement either.'\n\n'Who was then the other trustee?'\n\n'The literary editor, who lived, breathed and wrote in a waft of Victorian letters. I can only suppose he was made a trustee because he was not a blind bit of use.'\n\n'So what happened?'\n\n'Gavin Wells, our then editor, was losing his grip slightly. Tended to turn up in the office drunk sometimes after lunch. Now, he still did the job reasonably well, the journal came out on time and there was no reason for the trustees even to have known unless Willie told them. And in the normal course of events they probably wouldn't have minded much. In those days, journalists were allowed to be a bit raffish and badly behaved.\n\n'However, there was the matter of Gavin's savage attacks on aspects of Establishment behaviour. The trustees saw him as the severest critic of the Right and failed to grasp that he was also its best friend. So with Willie dropping poison in their ears they geared themselves up to the \"a-word-in-your-ear-my-dear-chap-don't-you-think-perhaps-it's-time-to-make-way-for-someone-else?\" version of the bum's rush. So exit Gavin and enter Willie.\n\n'It wasn't a nice way to treat someone who had given him a second chance and always been encouraging and kind, but then Willie wasn't a nice person.'\n\n'How would you describe your relationship with him?'\n\n'Distant. He dished out the work and I did it.'\n\n'Would you describe him as a considerate employer?'\n\nPhoebe Somerfield let out a yelp of laughter. 'What a hilarious idea. Willie had a very simple view of employees. They were there to do his work as well as their own, while he got the credit. It was one of the reasons he was so keen to keep all the leaders anonymous. It enabled him to take the credit for any that attracted praise, and to cover up how little work he actually did.'\n\n'But was he considerate in terms of pay and benefits and so on?'\n\n'For some reason that is quite beyond my understanding, having paid me very little for years, Willie doubled my salary a few weeks ago. I know Robert Amiss had something to do with it, but I can't imagine how he persuaded Willie. But double it he did, so I suppose you could say he was treating me twice as well as usual.'\n\n'Are you likely to succeed him as editor?'\n\nShe laughed again\u2014this time scornfully. 'The Wrangler is not the sort of place that would choose somebody like me.'\n\n'I understand there were tensions within the paper over a change of direction which Mr Lambie Crump appeared to be conducting.'\n\n'No doubt of that. A vivid example of Willie's lack of scruple.'\n\n'You minded, then?'\n\n'I minded. But I don't murder people, even if I disagree with them. I hoped it would be just a passing phase. As indeed, it has proved to be.'\n\n'And do you think any of your colleagues might have minded enough to murder?'\n\n'None, Mr Milton. With all our failings, journalists are somewhat more tolerant than that. I think you'll have to look elsewhere.'\n\n***\n\nWhen she had left, Tewkesbury looked solemnly at Milton. 'Of course there is one exception to the ideological argument. I mean, if you look at who has gained most from the death of Lambie Crump, it is Robert Amiss, whom we haven't yet talked to at any length.'\n\n'I've talked to him at considerable length.'\n\n'But there's no record of the conversation, sir.'\n\n'No. I didn't consider it necessary. He hadn't any information other than what he gave in his original statements. And he has no more idea than we have why anyone should have wished to murder either Potbury or Crump.'\n\n'But he would really seem to be our Number One suspect, wouldn't he? He had the best opportunity to murder Potbury, if Potbury was murdered. And it's pretty suspicious that he hit the same obstacle as Lambie Crump but didn't fall. And then he ends up as editor.'\n\n'Two problems there, Sergeant. Why should he have gone out of his way to discover Lambie Crump's body? And how could he have known he would become editor? Or, to be precise, acting editor. He's only holding the fort, after all.'\n\n'He could have decided it would be a clever bluff to find the body.'\n\n'The cleverness is lost on me, Sergeant. However, go on. How do you deal with the fact that he cannot have expected to become editor?'\n\n'That's what he says, sir.'\n\n'That's what Lord Papworth says.'\n\n'But how can he have known what Amiss was thinking?'\n\n'He knows that the solution of having him as editor hadn't occurred to any of the others he consulted, so it would have been bizarre for Amiss to have gone to such lengths for such an incredibly long shot. And, incidentally, he tried hard to turn the job down.'\n\n'Or appeared to, sir.'\n\nMilton felt weary. 'Tewkesbury, it is admirable that you explore every option, however improbable. But I really recommend that you forget this one. Apart from anything else, I've know Robert Amiss for some years. And indeed he has in the past been of considerable assistance to us. In so far as one can say it of anyone, he's above suspicion.'\n\n'In so far as one can say it of anyone, sir. So we should not rule him out.'\n\nVisions of head-butting this git floated wistfully through Milton's mind. Instead, he said, 'Thank you for that advice, Sergeant. I shall bear it in mind.'\n\nIrony, he noticed, was lost on Tewkesbury, who sat back looking pleased with himself. Milton dialed Winterton's number.\n\n***\n\n'Wilfred Parry and Dwight Winterton were as useless as Phoebe Somerfield,' reported Milton to Amiss. 'Parry didn't seem to have a clue about anything. He genuinely didn't seem to know about Piers Papworth and the trustees and he certainly had no motive for knocking off Lambie Crump, with whom he said he had always got on well. You've obviously been upsetting him: he said The Wrangler was going to pot now that an arrogant amateur was throwing his weight about. I never thought I'd hear you described as arrogant.'\n\nAmiss chuckled. 'He's going to be more upset when I've finished with him. Willie had let him use the literary pages to promote himself, his chums and those he wanted to get on the right side of. I've just begun the process of clipping his wings, and if he doesn't play ball he'll be out.'\n\nMilton gazed at him in amazement. 'You're certainly toughening up fast.'\n\n'Wilfred makes it easy. He's such a pretentious shit. I threw back at him today a sneering and pseudy denunciation of Trollope as a pedestrian clock-watcher and told him if he didn't understand that the glory of Trollope is his humanity, he shouldn't be writing for The Wrangler. Bugger him. Anyway, how did you find Dwight?'\n\n'Amusing, but he didn't know any more than you'd already told me. Tewkesbury couldn't stand him, of course, and now has him as Number One ideological suspect. Now I want to talk to Ben and Marcia and just want your advice on whether to see them them together or apart.'\n\n'Depends what you're looking for. That is, if you're seeking to trip them up on alibis or whatever\u2014as presumably you fuzz always do\u2014you will prefer to see them separately, but if you want news, views or opinions, my guess is you're better off with the two of them together. I've had the odd conversation with them individually and it's been dull. They spark off each other like gunpowder and matches.\n\n'I'd suggest too that it might do no harm to see them on their own territory. They're more relaxed there.'\n\n'OK,' said Milton equably. 'Thanks, Robert.' And with a, 'be seeing you,' he went back to his office and dialed 14. 'Mr Baines?'\n\n'That's me,' said a voice, which sounded extremely cheerful despite the shout of 'halfwit' coming from further away.\n\n'Chief Superintendent Milton here. Would it possible for me and my colleague to pop in and see you and Miss Whitaker?'\n\n'Yes, sure. Any time.'\n\n'Thank you, Mr Baines. My colleague and I will be along shortly.'\n\nTewkesbury looked at him with bafflement. 'Do I gather, sir, that we're going to the room of these two...proofreaders? Yet more senior people came here. Isn't that a little...'\n\n'...Egalitarian, Tewkesbury? I thought you'd be in favour of that. What's bothering you?'\n\n'It just seemed inappropriate to me, sir.'\n\n'I'm not with you, Tewkesbury. I thought snobbery had been abolished along with everything else, under the government of which you are so proud.'\n\nTewkesbury looked at him resentfully. Milton felt a stab of guilt at the realization that he was beginning to sound like a gung ho right-winger. 'I'm sorry, Sergeant. I was just pulling your leg. Perhaps I should explain that I have been advised that these people will talk best on their own territory. So that's where I'm going to see them.'\n\n'Advised by...?'\n\n'Robert Amiss.'\n\n'And you don't think that he had an ulterior motive?'\n\n'No, I don't. And I really don't wish to have this conversation once more. You're clutching at straws. If you're going to be a successful policeman, you have got to let your pet theories go, along with your prejudices. And you have to have the humility to listen to people who know things you don't and have qualities you don't have. Among the virtues which are undervalued by the police are intuition and imagination and I commend them to you. And one of the reasons I trust the judgement of Robert Amiss is that he has shown himself to have considerable stores of both. I have also always found him trustworthy.'\n\nHe stood up. 'Now, are you coming with me?'\n\n'Yes, sir,' said Tewkesbury. He sounded almost meek.\n\n***\n\nMilton knocked and was bade 'enter' by a contralto and bass duo. He looked around him disbelievingly at the vast spread of paper and the fog of smoke. 'I'm Chief Superintendent Milton and this is Sergeant Tewkesbury.'\n\n'Just call us Ben and Marcia,' said the small man who peered over the huge desk. 'Do sit down.'\n\n'Thank you, but...'\n\n'Tell them where to sit, you silly bugger,' said the hennaed woman. 'How are they supposed to know?'\n\n'Well,' said Ben, considering the matter judiciously, 'if I were you, Chief Superintendent, I would perch over there on the Financial Times pile while your sergeant sits opposite you on The Economist.'\n\nTewkesbury looked nervously at the pile to which he was directed.\n\n'It's all right, Sergeant,' said Marcia. 'You've got a small enough bum to be accommodated here.'\n\nMilton seated himself easily, Tewkesbury gingerly. As a militant anti-smoker, he was clearly in a state of outrage. Ben and Marcia looked at them benignly.\n\n'Sorry to disturb you...'\n\n'But you're conducting an investigation,' said Ben.\n\n'Into the recent unfortunate incidents,' proffered Marcia.\n\n'Concerning our late lamented employer,' said Ben. 'William Lambie Crump, gentleman of letters...'\n\n'And boulevardier,' added Marcia.\n\nThey both burst into sniggers.\n\n'It sounds to me,' said Milton mildly, 'as if you don't lament him much.'\n\n'Mourn,' said Ben. 'Lament isn't a transitive verb.'\n\n'Yes, it is,' said Marcia.\n\n'No, it isn't.'\n\n'It fucking is.'\n\nBen started to shout as loudly as Marcia, and then caught sight of Tewkesbury's horrified face. 'I'll look it up,' he said in a mollifying tone.\n\nThere was a pause in the proceedings for a few moments, and then, in a chastened voice, he said, 'Sorry, Marcia. Don't know what got into me. It's both, of course.'\n\nHe threw down the dictionary and turned his attention back to Milton. 'Where were we?'\n\nMilton tried and failed not to smile. 'You were not lamenting him.'\n\nBen smiled back. 'That's right.'\n\n'Though we miss him a bit,' said Marcia.\n\n'We were used to him,' said Ben.\n\n'You can miss anyone when you get used to them,' said Marcia.\n\n'Even if you don't like them.'\n\nMarcia considered the statement judiciously. 'Even if you despise them.'\n\nBen nodded. 'It was different with Henry.'\n\nMarcia nodded. 'We lament him.'\n\n'Really,' added Ben, 'when you come to think of it, if you're making comparisons, Willie Lambie Crump wasn't fit to breathe the same air as Henry.'\n\n'Henry was a great man,' offered Marcia.\n\n'With style and substance...'\n\n'And bottom.'\n\nThey sniggered appreciatively once more.\n\nMilton thought it was time he joined the conversation. 'Do you think Henry Potbury was murdered?'\n\n'Put it this way,' said Ben. 'Anyone who murdered Henry was a bastard.'\n\n'Like anyone who murdered Lambie Crump was a public benefactor,' said Marcia.\n\n'Therefore,' added Ben, 'it's just a question of looking for bastards with a motive to kill Henry.'\n\n'If there aren't any,' pointed out Marcia, 'it means he wasn't murdered.'\n\n'Any suggestions?'\n\nMarcia and Ben looked at each other, Ben compressed his lips. 'You want a list of bastards or a list of bastards with motives.'\n\n'Preferably the latter.'\n\n'Can't help you with motives,' he said.\n\nMarcia nodded. 'Can't help you much with bastards either.'\n\n'We don't get involved with office politics.'\n\n'Really, the only serious bastard we knew round here was Willie himself, but I'm buggered if I can think of any reason why he might have wanted to get rid of Henry.'\n\n'There's Wilfred Parry,' said Marcia thoughtfully.\n\n'Doesn't really count. You only think he's a bastard because he's so supercilious.'\n\n'I suppose you're right. He wouldn't rob his dying granny.'\n\n'Unlike Willie.'\n\nMilton came in again. 'Do you know about the attempt to change the terms of the trust?'\n\n'Yes,' said Marcia, and, 'No,' said Ben, simultaneously. He looked at her suspiciously. 'What are you talking about, you old bag?'\n\n'Oh, come on, you idiot. You must remember that. Henry mentioned it.'\n\n'When? What? I don't remember.'\n\nMilton wondered if he were imagining it or if Marcia really looked nervous.\n\n'I don't know when. Maybe some time he came in here. Maybe at the party. I'm sure I remember him saying something about an attempt to water down the trust that he said he'd see off if it killed him.'\n\n'If you heard it, how come I didn't? Or didn't you tell me?'\n\n'Search me,' said Marcia. 'I only remembered it now the chief superintendent said it. I suppose I just forgot about it.'\n\nBen glowered at her. 'It would be just like you, stupid bitch. Bloody can't remember anything, can you? I mean, for God's sake, fancy forgetting the Finnish employment statistics.'\n\n'I didn't forget them, you miserable old sod,' said Marcia, her voice rising with every word. 'I was merely wrong by one per cent.'\n\n'Being wrong is forgetting,' said Ben.\n\n'Please,' said Milton, in a relaxed voice. 'Do you mind if we get back to what we were talking about?' He observed to his pleasure that Tewkesbury was looking increasingly ill at ease. 'Do either of you think there might have been someone with a vested interest in getting Henry Potbury out of the way because of the business of the trust?'\n\n'Haven't a fucking clue, mate,' said Ben amiably. 'Since I never heard of it before now, owing to this old cow having a head like a colander, I wouldn't have any theories about it, would I?'\n\n'And you?' asked Milton of Marcia.\n\n'All I know is he said he'd see them off. He wasn't making a fuss or anything, so I never gave it another thought till now.'\n\n'And Lambie Crump?'\n\nThey looked at each other and shrugged. 'Well, we've talked about it, obviously,' said Ben.\n\n'Incessantly,' said Marcia.\n\n'Ad infinitum,' said Ben.\n\n'And the upshot is...' said Marcia.\n\n'Bugger-all,' said Ben. 'He was a greedy, lazy git and pompous to boot.'\n\n'No doubt about that.'\n\n'But not murder material, I should have thought.'\n\n'Not bloody worth the price of the wire,' said Ben.\n\n'Oh, come on, that's a bit unkind,' said Marcia. 'He had some good qualities.'\n\n'Like what?'\n\n'He let us be.'\n\n'That's because he was lackadaisical. That's not a good quality. He was just too shagging lazy to care.' He stared at her. 'What's getting into you, girl? Don't start getting sentimental just cos the cops are here or they'll think it suspicious.'\n\n'Speak as freely as you like, Marcia,' said Milton.\n\n'Sorry. I had an attack of tact for a minute. The truth is we're quite glad Willie's dead.'\n\n'Bloody well saved The Wrangler. Who'd have wanted to read it with Henry dead, Dwight castrated, Phoebe reined back, the literary pages getting more and more pseudy by the week and his lordship's weekly leader brown-nosing the government?'\n\n'It was only Troutbeck,' said Marcia, 'would make anyone want to pick up a copy of the bloody thing the way it was getting.'\n\n'Look at this,' said Ben and produced a letter in crabbed handwriting. 'This is from a geezer who writes to us every week if there's any errors. He's fanatical about standards on The Wrangler. It came last Monday.'\n\nHe passed it to Milton, who, for Tewkesbury's benefit, read out the entire document. '\"Ha-ha. Fucked up on the Finns, didn't you?\"'\n\nMarcia pouted. Ben looked triumphant.\n\n'\"'Focused' for 'focused'. How often do I have to tell you?\"'\n\nBen interrupted. 'I wish the bugger wasn't anonymous. For years I've been wanting to have that out with him. He's no more right than we are.'\n\nMilton continued. '\"OK otherwise, so nine out of ten. PS. I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this now The Wrangler's gone to hell. Someone should fire your editor.\"'\n\nTewkesbury was shaking his head. 'This person is obviously deranged.'\n\n'Why?' asked Ben. 'Because he thought Lambie Crump should be sacked?'\n\n'Of course not. Because he writes anonymous letters like this.'\n\n'What's wrong with that?' asked Marcia.\n\n'It's the action of a fanatic.'\n\n'Naw, it isn't,' said Ben. 'He's just a pedant with time on his hands.'\n\n'It's the sort of thing Ben would do in retirement,' said Marcia. 'Only he'd be ruder.'\n\n'But why should he stay anonymous?' asked Tewkesbury. 'It's hardly the action of an honest man.'\n\n'Maybe he's simply not sociable,' said Marcia. 'Doesn't want to answer letters or argue.'\n\n'Just wants the satisfaction of keeping us up to the mark,' added Ben. 'Seems quite reasonable to me.'\n\n'Well, not to me,' said Tewkesbury. 'I find it very suspicious.'\n\nBen eyed him with distaste. 'You're just one of these gits thinks anyone different from himself is mad. So you think this guy is mad enough to have knocked off Lambie Crump because of declining standards.'\n\n'It's a hypothesis,' said Tewkesbury huffily.\n\n'A bloody stupid one, if you ask me.'\n\n'And me.'\n\n'The guy's as sane as I am.'\n\n'For what that's worth,' said Marcia.\n\n'A bleeding sight saner than you, mate. At least I can tell my Finns from my Swedes.'\n\nMilton stood up. 'Many thanks to you both. We appreciate your help.'\n\nHe led his discomfited sergeant away.\nChapter Nineteen\n\n'Can I pick your brains,' asked Milton, 'or is this a bad time?'\n\n'No, it's fine. Rachel's at an official dinner, I've just finished a disgusting take-away, I'm delighted to have an excuse not to tackle the essay Wilfred Parry gave me this evening and I had a particularly crazy encounter before I left that I'm longing to tell someone about.'\n\n'What happened?'\n\n'After everyone except me had left, Miss Mercatroid\u2014a.k.a. Fatima\u2014decided to remove the portraits from the reception area. Apparently her imam has been cutting up pretty rough on the issue of representational art.'\n\n'But those portraits look as if they weigh a ton.'\n\n'They do. Which is why when I found her she was lying spreadeagled under a sombre picture of the third Marquis of Salisbury, who has not been improved by the encounter.'\n\n'What did you do?'\n\n'What could I do, except remove his lordship and run for the first-aid kit? After she had sorted herself out and recovered her breath we had a little chat.'\n\n'And?'\n\n'I felt it was time for the young master to become stern-faced. I waxed eloquent about our heritage, not to speak of the likely cost of repairing M'Lord Salisbury, and explained what I required to forget about this incident. Faced with the news that she had to choose between me and the imam on this and one or two other matters, she chose me. Or rather, she chose her job: I think she grasped the point that the imam does not actually need to be told about her workplace in all its gory detail. So the bonus was that she agreed to keep her hands off our portraits and sculptures, stop disconcerting visitors by praying to Mecca in the reception area and shut up about pork and alcohol.'\n\n'My goodness, you never have a dull moment.'\n\n'And what about you. What's bothering you?'\n\n'I just can't understand how Lambie Crump could have been getting plastered so often during the last few months and making those phone calls, yet nobody's ever reported seeing him drunk. Second, I can't understand why he would have been so foolish as to make\u2014apparently sober\u2014those disastrous begging phone calls to Number Ten.'\n\n'I can't help with the first, except that the calls I experienced and heard about were lateish in the evening, and it's perfectly possible that Willie sometimes got sozzled on his own after coming home from a social event.\n\n'As to the second? Well, when I was in the civil service I found it to be commonplace for businessmen, in particular, to go virtually on their knees to influential officials looking for knighthoods\u2014let alone peerages. Admittedly they usually claimed they were doing this because their wives wanted to be Lady Thingummy and such honours meant nothing to them\u2014an excuse Willie didn't have\u2014but still, beg they did.\n\n'I expect his line was the other popular one, viz, that he was seized with a desire to serve his country by working selflessly for it in the House of Lords. And it may be that he realized that if you don't tout for honours, you often get overlooked. Yet I would have expected that Willie would have gone about things in a more sophisticated manner, by dropping a word discreetly in a friendly ear and having its owner make the case in the right quarters.'\n\n'I think I'll call on Downing Street tomorrow,' said Milton. 'And just to punish Tewkesbury, I shan't take him.'\n\n'That's very harsh, Jim, isn't it? The equivalent of refusing to take Miss Mercatroid\u2014sorry, Fatima\u2014with you to Mecca.'\n\n'I'm not just dim,' said Milton. 'I'm cruel too.'\n\n***\n\nHe called into Amiss's office mid-morning. 'Curiouser and curiouser. The recipients of the calls all remembered them clearly, which says a lot, since they're so incredibly busy and take dozens of phone calls every day. They all give a similar account and none of them thinks Lambie Crump was pissed, though they're not ruling out the possibility that he had had a few. But there seems certainly to have been none of the slurring you and other Wrangler people reported. The general theme in all calls was the same: the huge contribution he could make in the Lords as a working peer, which he considered so important that he would give up The Wrangler.'\n\n'Which seems odd in itself, since it suits the government to have The Wrangler on side and their only chance of that was under Willie. Unless they calculated he might turn against them if he hadn't got his peerage?'\n\n'Yes, but by then they'd have had another year of favourable coverage out of him. Maybe he could have been played along for some time until the journal's course had been so far changed that it would have been hard for a new editor to do a volte-face.' Milton looked at his notes.\n\n'Two of them mentioned how irritating he was.'\n\n'Willie was always irritating.'\n\n'Yes, but if you're ringing such a PC stronghold of swinging modernity as New Labour's Number Ten is, would you really not censor some of your affectations of language?'\n\n'Like what?'\n\n'\"I could pop into a taximeter cabriolet immediately and call on you for ten minutes\", was one example.'\n\n'He always said \"taximeter cabriolet\", like he said \"wireless\" and \"gramophone\".'\n\n'To the Prime Minister's press secretary? When he's praising the administration's passion for modernizing?'\n\n'I've never known if he actually used language like that consciously or unconsciously, but I take your point. Hardly helpful.'\n\n'He told the PM's chief of staff that they badly needed new talent in the Lords, which these days was altogether too full of ghastly women wearing vulgar attire and sporting gaudy baubles. And he told his private secretary that since it might help to counter the view that the PM had surrounded himself by bully boys, the acquisition of a gentleman might be no bad idea.'\n\n'Oh, Jim, this is preposterous. You'd think he was trying to wreck his chances.'\n\n'Precisely. That's exactly what he did. The Number Ten view of him changed dramatically as a result.'\n\n'Good God,' said Amiss. 'Of course, that's it.'\n\n'You're thinking what I'm thinking.'\n\n'Yes. And I bet we agree on the likely culprit.'\n\n***\n\nIt took Tewkesbury the best part of a morning to track down a Harvard don who knew Dwight Winterton well. 'Great guy,' he said. 'Mad as a coot, but a first-rate mind, great company and a brilliant mimic.'\n\n'Many thanks,' said Tewkesbury. 'That's all I needed to know.'\n\n'What's the problem?' asked the don in a tone of alarm. 'Is he in trouble?'\n\n'No, no,' said Tewkesbury. 'Goodbye.' He put the phone down. 'He's a brilliant mimic, sir.'\n\nMilton, who had been leafing through interview reports in increasing frustration, looked up. 'Says who?'\n\n'His Harvard history tutor.'\n\n'Did you cover your tracks?'\n\n'How do you mean, sir.'\n\n'Like telling him you were just checking up that you had the right Winterton.'\n\n'Eh?'\n\n'Oh, never mind. Just fetch me Winterton, wherever he is, before he gets a tip-off.'\n\n***\n\nTewkesbury spent most of the afternoon vainly searching for Winterton, who had gone to lunch with a civil service mole and then disappeared to read in the London Library. When he finally sloped back to the office, Miss Mercatroid, as instructed, sent him straight to Milton.\n\n'What can have been going on in my absence, Mr Milton?' he asked, as he sat down. 'Why am I in such urgent demand? No more cadavers, I trust, just when we were settling down?'\n\n'Mr Winterton,' said Milton, 'you are, I hear, a formidable mimic.'\n\nWinterton looked him straight in the eyes. There was a long pause and then he grinned. 'I suppose, Mr Milton, this is where you would like me to start guiltily, blush to the roots of my hair, clutch at wherever it is my heart is supposed to be located and cry, \"Who told you that?\", thus making it clear that I've been keeping it a secret that, yes, I have a certain facility in that department. So instead I shall confound your expectation and instead say, \"It's a fair cop, guv.\" I impersonated Lambie Crump in several phone calls to my colleagues. I thought you'd eventually twig that since there was no other evidence he ever got pissed, he was unlikely to be making nuisance phone calls.'\n\n'May I ask why you did this?'\n\n'Malice and fun, Mr Milton. It relieved my feelings of rage to have him appear to behave like an uncouth, drunken prat, and there was the amusing bonus of listening to my colleagues coping with their deranged editor.'\n\n'And how did they?'\n\n'Let's see. Robert, of course, was diplomatic, Wilfred was obsequious, Henry expostulated and argued angrily\u2014especially when he was drunk himself, Ricketts\u2014'\n\n'You didn't call Ricketts,' interrupted Milton, despite himself.\n\n'I did, but I thought better of it three sentences in. Couldn't cope with the whimpers and wails of, \"Oh, no, Mr Lambie Crump, sir. What are you saying? I don't understand.\" I stopped in mid-rant, launched into sober Crumpspeak and explained that I was just perpetrating a small jest by pretending to be inebriated.'\n\nWinterton adopted a high-pitched falsetto. '\"Oh, Mr Lambie Crump, sir. Thank you, sir. I'm sorry, sir, that I was taken in for a moment and became a little upset. But it was a very good joke, sir. I know that you ladies and gentlemen always like your little jokes.\" And the poor old sod followed with a forced \"ha-ha\", that would have melted the steeliest of hearts.'\n\n'Who else did you call?'\n\n'The usual suspects. There was a wonderful row with Clement Webber, which I wish I'd taped. Amaryllis was a bit of a disappointment, being pissed herself that night and only half listening. Ben and Marcia were a particular hoot, because they were on two different extensions and plunged into a row between themselves over the pseudo-Crump's assertion that there had been more errors in March than in April.'\n\n'Was that it?'\n\nWinterton thought. 'Apart from Lord Papworth, who was courteous, there was Milady Troutbeck.' He laughed.\n\n'How did she deal with it?'\n\n'Swiftly. \"Bugger off, Willie,\" she said, and put the phone down.'\n\n'No one guessed?'\n\n'No, because I had sneakily never mimicked anyone to any of my colleagues. I thought that in a new job it was wise, perhaps, to keep this card up my sleeve in case I needed it. And I was glad I had. Willie was driving me mad, and getting at him this way got a lot of the venom out of my system, while damaging the bastard at the same time by enhancing his reputation for selfishness and double-dealing.'\n\n'Hardly responsible behaviour, though.'\n\n'Indeed, Mr Milton. Hardly responsible. I thank you for the moral guidance.' He burst into a convincing imitation of Tony Blair. 'Responsibility, maturity, compassion, vision, giving. Ask not what you can have but what you can give.' He reverted to his own voice. 'All missing during those calls, I'm ashamed to say.'\n\nMilton's lip twitched. Tewkesbury looked disapproving and Winterton broke into a broad grin.\n\n'So much for your colleagues, Mr Winterton. Now, did you make calls to anyone outside The Wrangler?'\n\nWinterton looked appraisingly at Milton. 'Do you already know, I wonder. I'd better tell you the lot, hadn't I? Otherwise you'll find out about them anyway and think I'm underhand and that would never do. And besides, it doesn't matter now.\n\n'I did two impersonations of Lambie Crump. For his colleagues, who knew him very well, it was always Drunk Willie, because the slurrings covered up any slight failings in my impersonation. With acquaintances and strangers of course I could do a sober Crump. What I decided to do was from sheer spite to try to scupper his chances of a peerage by making unhelpful calls to Number Ten, Downing Street. And I enjoyed every minute. It was great fun to wind up those PC know-alls.'\n\n'But would it not have been of benefit to you, Mr Winterton, to have had him elevated to such a position? Wouldn't he have been compromised as editor and have had to leave the paper?'\n\n'I don't know that he would, Mr Milton. From what Henry Potbury told me about his fellow trustees, Lambie Crump would have been allowed to stay on even if he had become the Prime Minister's official catamite. Anyway, I didn't care. I just wanted to spike his chances of becoming Lord Arselicker of NewLab the way he spiked my articles.'\n\nTewkesbury looked even more disapproving. Milton tried not to show how much he was beginning to like Winterton.\nChapter Twenty\n\n'I wish I could kill off Tewkesbury's obsession with ideological motives once and for all. I've made some progress. He's given up on Phoebe Somerfield as a suspect on that front and has been pretty shaken on Winterton since he discovered he was doing well screwing Crump up by other means, but now he's clinging to the notion of Professor Webber as prime ideological suspect and we're going to Oxford to see him tomorrow.'\n\nAmiss grinned. 'Make sure you neglect no opportunity to get them talking to each other.'\n\n'Sounds promising. I'll do what I can.'\n\n***\n\nMilton looked up from his file as Tewkesbury drove into North Oxford. 'Tell me, Sergeant, I know you don't like Webber for political reasons, but do you dislike him personally?'\n\n'I never met him, but I didn't like what I heard about him in Oxford. Mad as well as reactionary, I understand.'\n\n'Still, it helps that you know something of him. And after all, it's a bond that he teaches at your alma mater. Feel free to join in the interview.'\n\nThe car pulled up outside a large villa and the two policemen got out. Milton looked with some distaste at his colleague, who had taken to applying gel to his expensively coiffed hair, which was brown, with artful blond streaks. It was not, he realized, as they opened the gate, that he cared about the gel, the dye, the haircut or the money\u2014just that since he couldn't stand Tewkesbury, everything about him was irritating.\n\nA large and portly man with small, green staring eyes greeted them impatiently at the door of his North Oxford villa and led them briskly into a large study. 'Now, what do you want to know?' He looked at his watch. 'I've only an hour.'\n\n'I hope that will be ample time, Professor Webber. May I introduce Sergeant Tewkesbury, who remembers you from his Oxford days.'\n\nWebber looked positively pleasant. 'You were a student of mine?'\n\n'No, Professor Webber,' said Tewkesbury. 'I read English.'\n\nWebber's face darkened. 'Good God, what an absolute waste of your time and the taxpayers' money. They're a collection of Marxists, pseuds, mad feminists, halfwits, crazed structuralists and neo- and post- this and that who have nothing in common except that they're all wankers. You'll have emerged from Oxford more ignorant and stupid than when you arrived. Why didn't you have the sense to take a real subject, like classics\u2014or, of course, philosophy? I would have stretched a point to include history until it was taken over by that shower of dreary and pretentious\u2014'\n\nPleased though he was to see Tewkesbury looking both aggrieved and embarrassed, duty required Milton to interrupt. 'Professor Webber, you're a busy man. Could we perhaps get down to business?'\n\n'What do you want to know?'\n\n'We'd be grateful for your view on why anyone would have wanted to murder Mr Lambie Crump, or\u2014as is also possible\u2014Mr Potbury.'\n\n'Henry I can't help you on\u2014in his professional life, that is. I imagine there may well have been people who were fed up with his drunkenness and philandering, but all those of us connected with The Wrangler liked Henry Potbury. He'd a good mind and was an honest man. But as for that little creep Lambie Crump.' Webber began to turn puce. He clenched his fists and waved them wildly over his head. 'By the time he died, I would think that at least'\u2014he paused and began to count on his fingers\u2014' one, two, three, four, five of us would have been prepared to contemplate doing him in. And I can tell you that I would have had no difficulty in justifying his murder to my ethics group.'\n\n'The five were?'\n\n'Winterton, Phoebe Somerfield, Amaryllis Vercoe, me and probably Amiss.'\n\nTewkesbury broke in excitedly. 'Do you mean, Professor Webber, that you can see an ideological reason for Robert Amiss to have wanted Lambie Crump out of the way?'\n\nWebber looked at him in bewilderment. 'Ideological? Pull yourself together, you stupid boy. What are you talking about? What's ideology got to do with it?'\n\nTewkesbury began to stammer slightly. 'It's j-j-just that I've noticed a discrepancy here. Now, you admit that it was ideology that was at the root of the disagreements you and your colleagues had with Lambie Crump. Yet Amiss has always denied feeling sufficiently angry about the change in The Wrangler's political line for it to constitute a motive for murder.'\n\nWebber bounced angrily in his chair. 'What a load of claptrap.' He looked at Milton. 'What sort of morons are you taking into the police force these days? I don't know what world this person is living in. But what can you expect when he read English under that crowd of addle-pated, venal fools who jabber platitudes and think that to use obscure terminology and peddle tenth-rate ideas makes you an intellectual?' He glared at Tewkesbury like an enraged lizard. 'Ideology my arse. This is England, not fucking Cambodia. We don't kill each other over ideology. At The Wrangler, ideological arguments are our intellectual bread and butter\u2014our raison d'\u00eatre. It's called debate. Something you wouldn't understand, coming from an environment where they all vie with each other to impose their own pet orthodoxy: mediocre minds hate dissent.'\n\n'Really, Professor Webber, you're being very unfair. There are many fine minds in the English faculty.'\n\n'What would you know about fine minds, Sergeant Trendy?'\n\nA wave of compassion hit Milton. In a gentle voice, he addressed the heavily breathing philosopher. 'Professor, I wonder could you kindly tell us more about why you and your colleagues so much disliked Lambie Crump?'\n\nWebber stopped glaring at Tewkesbury. As he looked at Milton, the mad look went out of his eyes. 'Like Henry Potbury, we had all come to abominate Lambie Crump because he was such a self-seeking little shit. What made us feel murderous was knowing that he was a double-dyed hypocrite who had paid lip service to the The Wrangler's historic position when it suited him and then shifted his position to support what passes for thinking in New Labour. That's not to do with ideology, Sergeant Numbskull,' he observed, turning to glare again at Tewkesbury. 'It's to do with principle. One had the urge to stand on him as one would on a poisonous toad.'\n\n'Whatever you call it,' said Tewkesbury gamely, 'it's a motive for murder.'\n\n'Good God, have you not even a vestige of a brain? One thing you have to understand about the Right is that it has a sense of history. The English Right, that is\u2014I'm not talking about European fascists or American fundamentalists and, of course, Celts are too obsessed by nationalism to have any real understanding of Left and Right. The English Right know that our time will come around again: our enemies will be routed in due course.'\n\nHe turned to Milton. 'I was contemplating resigning from The Wrangler because Lambie Crump was using me less and less. I would have hawked myself elsewhere. I would be surprised if my colleagues hadn't been thinking the same way.'\n\nHe turned on Tewkesbury again. 'Dwight, Amaryllis, Phoebe and Robert are pragmatists. They would have stayed or gone as it suited them.'\n\n'So you cannot see any of them actually standing on the poisonous toad?' asked Milton.\n\n'I could imagine any one of us having the impulse to assault Willie by breaking over his head the portrait of our founder, but I couldn't see any of us acting against him in cold blood. And from what I understand, the method of murdering him was cold-blooded.'\n\n'How did you feel about Sharon McGregor's interest in buying The Wrangler?'\n\n'Obviously, I hoped it wouldn't happen, but if it had, I could have lived with it. As I was trying to get through to your absurd sergeant, people of my political persuasion are better at accepting that one can't win all the time than are the sort of people he surely supports. The Wrangler was going to pot and that maddened me. If McGregor buys it and ruins it, I'll be madder. But it won't blight my life. And besides, McGregor won't necessarily ruin it. Some colonials respect our traditions.'\n\n'But you know that there was some bad blood over the proposals to modify the terms to the trust, don't you?'\n\n'All I knew was what Henry told me at the party and I've heard nothing new since then.' The mad look came back into his eyes. 'For Christ's sake, whatever-your-name-is, can't you understand that I'm busy. I teach, I write, I sit on stupid committees with stupid people. Journalism is an extra and I don't give a fuck about office politics.'\n\nThe door opened and a small, harassed-looking woman arrived carrying a tray with a pot of coffee, a milk jug and a mug. 'Oh, I'm sorry, Clement,' she said. 'I hadn't realized you had people with you.'\n\nShe turned to the policemen. 'Would you like some coffee?'\n\n'No, they wouldn't,' said Webber. 'They're just going.'\n\nMilton kept his temper and stood up. 'Thank you, Mrs Webber, but we're fine. Professor Webber, we will not go until we have checked out your alibi for the twenty-four hours before Lambie Crump died.'\n\n'I've already given it to one of your stupid people.'\n\nMilton looked him straight in his little lizard eyes. 'Professor Webber. I suggest you cooperate.'\n\nWebber glared. Then his eyes dropped. 'I went to a dinner, came home and didn't leave Oxford that night or the following day.'\n\n'You gave my colleagues details of engagements during that day which proved that you were tied to Oxford, but in theory you have no alibi after eleven p.m.' He bowed to Mrs Webber. 'I know you told the police that your husband was at home all night, but were you not asleep for much of that time?'\n\n'Not for much of it,' she said, in an unexpectedly tart tone.\n\n'You're a bad sleeper?'\n\n'Only when I'm obliged to be. But on this occasion I can certainly give Clement an alibi.'\n\n'Oh, for God's sake,' said Webber. 'Stop pussy-footing and give them the full story.'\n\n'Clement came home from the senior philosophers' dinner assisted by two friends. At my request, they deposited him upstairs on our bed, where he remained until perhaps eight o'clock the following morning, snoring loudly. That's why I didn't sleep and he has an alibi. And in any case, he couldn't have got down our stairs without falling, let alone have driven to London and climbed up Lambie Crump's.'\n\nFor the first time, Webber smiled. 'And I can't remember a thing. But I can give you the names of the people who took me home.'\n\nMilton saw the expression on Tewkesbury's face and sympathized with his disappointment.\nChapter Twenty-one\n\nDwight Winterton's 'The Triumph of Humbug', which savagely attacked the new and cynical debasement of language on both sides of the Atlantic, amused Amiss greatly. Men had followed women in adopting meaningless rhetoric of the 'outreaching', 'inclusive', and 'feeling-and-sharing-each-other's-pain' variety and using it shamelessly to cover shallowness, arrogance and vainglorious ambition. The major casualty was truth.\n\nAmiss had been rather perturbed to find that the male minister whom Winterton had singled out as\u2014if anything\u2014worse than the Prime Minister, was the junior Foreign Office minister for whom Rachel worked. 'Does it absolutely have to be Eric Sinclair that you produce as the prime example of bullshit?' he asked Winterton.\n\n'Why shouldn't it be? He's the worst.'\n\n'It's just slightly difficult for personal reasons into which I cannot go.'\n\n'But, Robert, you can't ask me to find a stand-in for a man who talks of the importance of the peoples of all nations sharing in joy the tapestry of their multicultural experience, can you? Especially when he's trying to cover up the fact that they're carrying out the policy of the previous government when it comes to arms sales.'\n\n'Um,' said Amiss.\n\nWinterton seized the typescript from him. 'Come on, Robert. What about, \"We offer a vision where all will give and none will take and Britain's moral leadership as an ethical touchstone will be hailed as a star in a black sky?\" You can't ask me to leave that out, can you?' His face crumpled suddenly into dejection. 'But of course you can. You're the editor.'\n\n'Oh, never mind,' sighed Amiss. 'OK, Dwight. I promise I won't change a word. I'll deal with my personal problem as best I can.'\n\n***\n\nHe evaded the issue all evening, pleased that Rachel was in good form, bubbling with excitement about her forthcoming trip to South-East Asia where her minister would be speaking at a conference on International Law about New Britain's approach to human rights. Normally Amiss would have queried whether the best way to win over the representatives of ancient civilizations with problems and priorities different from our own was to send them political neophytes to lecture them on how to run their countries, but tonight he was treading carefully.\n\n'Just one thing, Rach,' he said at the end of the conversation.\n\n'Yes?'\n\nHe wriggled back into his chair. 'There's something I have to warn you about.'\n\n'Yes?'\n\n'There's going to be an article in The Wrangler this week that I'm afraid you won't like. I'm really sorry if it upsets you, but I'm afraid there was nothing I could do about it.'\n\n'I don't like The Wrangler\u2014period.'\n\n'Yes, I know that. But this is something specific that you might really hate.'\n\nShe sat upright and looked at him suspiciously. 'Stop procrastinating and tell me.'\n\n'It's just that by sheer chance Dwight is making fun of your minister.'\n\n'What do you mean, \"by sheer chance\"?'\n\n'I mean he doesn't like him, but he knows nothing of the link with me. He knows my girlfriend is in the Foreign Office, but he's got no idea what you do.'\n\n'And you did nothing about it?'\n\n'I can't censor him for personal reasons, Rachel. You know that. It just wouldn't be\u2014if you'll excuse the word\u2014ethical.'\n\n'Have you a copy?'\n\nHe gave her a proof and watched lugubriously as she read through and her face darkened. 'This is horrible. What's happened to you? You seem to have come to hate decency and compassion since you went to work for that dreadful Tory rag.'\n\n'It's not a dreadful Tory rag, Rachel. It's a journal of ideas from a standpoint which happens not to be too popular at present.'\n\n'It's a Tory rag and you've made it worse. This is cheap and cruel and abusive of a good minister whose only crime is to use language which old fogeys willfully misunderstand.' She slammed it down on the table. 'I don't remember any such mockery of William Hague's beastly baseball cap or his bonding sessions with colleagues in silly jumpers. Or the ghastly Portillo's Pauline conversion to caring and sharing.'\n\n'We did run a few jokes about all that.'\n\n'Nothing on this scale.'\n\nAmiss looked at her pleadingly. 'Don't you think it's just a bit funny?'\n\n'I don't, Robert.' She stood up. 'Good night. I'm going to bed now. In the spare room.'\n\n***\n\n'Jolly good issue,' said Papworth. 'Good and robust. I've had abuse and praise in equal shares today. Congratulations.'\n\n'I'm glad you liked it, Charlie. I feared it was rather over the top myself. I didn't agree with much of it.'\n\nPapworth chortled. 'It's the ultimate irony for you, isn't it? A person who thinks he's a liberal but we think is a conservative is out of sheer fair-mindedness producing a journal that makes many conservatives wince at its right-wingery and rampant libertarianism. You see it as your duty to disagree with yourself, as it were.'\n\n'I was a civil servant, Charlie. I wrote many speeches and drafted many papers I didn't agree with. It comes easier than you might think.'\n\n'Well, keep it coming. If you go on like this, we might even begin to sell some copies and make a profit.'\n\n'Steady on, Charlie. Let's stick in the realms of the possible.'\n\n***\n\n'Christ, Webber is some looney,' observed Milton, when he dropped in on Amiss that Friday evening for a drink. 'I don't think I've ever come across someone so choleric. Still, it was worth it to see Tewkesbury so abused. And I think he was grateful to me for not rubbing it in. He has rallied since and suggested that that Jack Troutbeck was mad enough to murder for reasons of principle, but fortunately on the relevant night she had been up till one a.m. at a dinner in St Martha's, where, incidentally, she gave a rousing rendition of \"The Road to Mandalay\". And the following morning she was seen at seven-thirty setting off for London, where she spent the entire day chairing a conference.'\n\n'Doesn't sound like Jack.'\n\n'Oh yes, it does. It was a sort of rally for those in favour of elitism in education. They call themselves the Anti-dilutions because they're against dilution of standards...'\n\n'And are making a play on antediluvian. Yes. Very Jack. So where is Tewkesbury turning his attentions now?'\n\n'Still clinging on to you, I think. But afraid to say it at present, in case I bite him.'\n\n'Does he dislike me?'\n\n'Yes, probably because he's jealous as well as disapproving because you've led the journal back from the path of righteousness down which Lambie Crump was leading it.'\n\n'He's not alone. I think I've made more enemies in the last couple of weeks than I have in my whole life. Even the people who are most thrilled that I'm doing a serious job are shocked at the journal's line. God help me, like Rachel, my parents think this government is wonderful and can't understand why I'm being negative. They rang up this morning to tut-tut over several parts of this week's and to ask me why I'm allowing these awful people to attack poor Mr Blair.'\n\n'Did you manage to calm them down?'\n\n'My dad's always calm. And my mother will put up with it. Anyway, the good sign was they'd read nearly the whole thing\u2014apart from the literary pages\u2014and had opinions on several articles and even disagreed with each other about two. And Dwight's attack on New Labour rhetoric was so controversial that he was on the BBC at lunchtime, which gives me hope that we might be able to flog the vastly increased number of copies I ordered this week.'\n\n'You're enjoying yourself, aren't you?'\n\n'Some of the time. Now, what about you?'\n\nMilton spread his hands wide. 'Getting nowhere slowly. I still have no idea how Potbury died and not the faintest idea who did for Lambie Crump and why, unless it was in connection with selling The Wrangler. I agree with Webber that ideology had nothing to do with it.'\n\n'Me too,' said Amiss.\n\n'But that would mean the most likely murderer has to be someone who desperately wanted to stop the trustees agreeing to alter the trust.'\n\n'Henry Potbury,' said Amiss.\n\n'Thanks, Robert. That's a big help. What do you think about Papworth?'\n\n'Piers Papworth was all for it.'\n\n'Yes, but his father wasn't. And I've still got a question mark over him. He seems too good to be true.'\n\nHe dug around in his briefcase and pulled out a plastic wallet. 'I quote from Tewkesbury's notes, where he records Papworth as saying: \"I should be sad to see the journal fall into the wrong hands, but it's not something I'd fight Piers to the death over. I don't know how long I'll go on trying to block him. After all, at my age, what's the point? As my heir, he'll have the last laugh anyway.\"'\n\n'That's typical Charlie Papworth, Jim.'\n\n'It may be, but it makes him look a bit more resigned to losing than is suggested by a man who replaced Henry Potbury with Jack Troutbeck, the doughtiest of doughty fighters for the soul of The Wrangler. Piers can't have been too thrilled with that.'\n\n'Have you asked him about it?'\n\n'I haven't even interviewed him yet. He's been out of the country for three weeks.'\n\n'Definitely out of the country.'\n\n'Yes. He's attending to some family business in Australia. I've had it checked. He's been there all the time.'\n\n'So whatever he did, he didn't kill Lambie Crump.'\n\n'No. But why would he want to kill his main ally?'\n\n'I don't know,' sighed Amiss. 'But in the middle of these shifting sands, doesn't it help to be able to rule people out completely?'\n\n'I suppose so. Though when the field is as broad as this, it's a small consolation. Incidentally, like most of the other obvious suspects, Papworth senior doesn't have a complete alibi. He was at a drinks party that evening, followed by a light supper at his club with a couple of friends. He was back at his pied-\u00e0-terre around nine-thirty, he said, and straight to bed.'\n\n'No corroboration?'\n\n'The friends at the club and his wife. But since he went to bed immediately and they occupy separate bedrooms, her usefulness is limited.'\n\n'If I understand it all correctly,' said Amiss, 'we're in the interesting position that Lambie Crump was definitely murdered but there was no apparent motive for anyone doing so, while Piers Papworth or even Sharon McGregor had excellent reasons to get rid of Henry Potbury, who probably died accidentally.'\n\n'That's about it.'\n\n'So what will you do next?'\n\n'What can I do except go on burrowing? I'm focusing at the moment on the trust-busting business and the money involved.'\n\n'Have you met the trustees yet?'\n\n'I had an entirely useless conversation with Lord Hogwood and Sir Augustus Adderly, both of whom are next to gaga and both of whom were busily bewailing the loss of Saint Willie. But I'm glad to report that they think you're doing well.'\n\n'I should hope they do. I've been assiduously following in Willie's footsteps by buttering them up at every opportunity. What did they say about the possible reduction in the powers of trustees?'\n\n'Just that they're there but to serve, that they had always been guided by Crump and that when he had said it was necessary to move with the times they had been happy to go along with him since one must always be on the side of progress.'\n\n'Did they mention Henry?'\n\n'Just said he was a nice fellow who got rather hot under the collar about things and they had hoped he'd come round.'\n\n'Anything about the change in The Wrangler's politics?'\n\n'Adderly said that Potbury had exaggerated the scale of it and it didn't matter anyway since \"we are all Blairites now\". And Hogwood kept bleating on about the necessity to bend to the call of modernity.'\n\n'God, they really are an awful pair of old idiots. Absolutely classic examples of gutless Great and Good Tories\u2014the kind that would have wanted to make friends with Hitler because he couldn't really be such a bad chap and might be cross if you argued with him. Anyway, whatever they are, they're a fat lot of use to me or to The Wrangler and I wait impatiently to hear how Jack gets on on Monday at her first formal trustees' meeting.'\n\n'See if she can do dinner afterwards,' said Milton, as he got up to leave. 'By then I should have talked to the solicitor in charge who's just back from his holidays. It'll be on me. Just agree a restaurant with Jack and let me know.'\n\nAs he opened the door, he turned back. 'Will Rachel come?'\n\n'I'll ask, but I should think she'd rather stay late at work. She's pretty pissed off with The Wrangler.'\n\n'But she's pleased about you being editor, isn't she?'\n\n'She was, and in a way she still is. But she is, as she put it recently, \"disappointed that I've taken it backwards\". And enraged that I allowed Dwight to attack one of her ministers.'\n\n'That's not reasonable.'\n\n'It is from her perspective. I hate to admit it, Jim, and I can't understand it, because Rachel always disliked bullshit, but she seems to have bought the rhetoric of this fucking government. She talks about vision and leadership and people power and all the rest of those awful words they use to cover up their complete absence of any genuine philosophy, principle or policy. \"Compassion with a hard edge,\" for Christ's sake. All that means is that you do Tory things but claim you're doing it because you're good, while they did it because they were bad.' He sighed. 'I'm afraid the abandonment of intellectual rigour and scepticism is now afflicting even the public service.'\n\n'Not me so far,' said Milton. 'But perhaps Tewkesbury will yet convert me.'\nChapter Twenty-two\n\n'It was doubly unfortunate,' wailed Amiss. 'Vexed is not exactly the word. Try incandescent. We could have done without all this outside provocation to make things worse than they already are. I didn't realize that taking this job was liable to require such sacrifices.'\n\nThe baroness leant across the table and patted his hand. 'I'm proud of you, my boy. You have put principle before comfort. Under you, The Wrangler is, as the Prime Minister no doubt would put it if he weren't on the other side, \"a beacon of hope in a world of darkness\".'\n\n'That's not the way Rachel's looking at it. She thinks I've put Dwight Winterton before Rachel Simon because I'm thoughtless, uncaring, cowardly, bigoted and a lot of other adjectives I'd rather not repeat.'\n\n'She's a silly-billy,' said the baroness.\n\n'I always thought she was very easy-going,' said Milton.\n\n'So did I,' said Amiss.\n\n'It's New Labour,' said the baroness. 'She's been infected. It's like a cult. She needs to be kidnapped and taken to one of those places where they re-educate the brainwashed. Would you like me to seize her and incarcerate her in St Martha's? I could always put her in a padded cell with Plutarch. Speaking of whom...'\n\n'Not tonight, Jack, please. I'm worn down by personal problems.'\n\n'I'll let you off tonight, but we'll have to talk about it tomorrow. The anti-Plutarch camp is mutinying, and what she did yesterday didn't help.'\n\n'Oh God, what did she do?'\n\n'You're not up to hearing tonight.' She turned to Milton. 'Right, Jim. Get on with it. What gives from the solicitors?'\n\n'The trust would be very expensive\u2014though conceivably possible\u2014to break if all three trustees stood resolute. If one trustee backed change, the case would be slightly strengthened; two make a big difference. Three and it's a piece of cake.'\n\n'Well, they're not going to get three,' said the baroness grimly. 'That's for sure.'\n\n'So the solicitor said. In fact, he allowed a wintry smile to crease his wintry face and said that the recalcitrant trustee was even more recalcitrant than her predecessor. \"I thought her,\" he said, \"a rather odd choice of Lord Papworth's. But that was before I discovered he and his son did not see eye-to-eye on the matter.\"'\n\n'Any figures put on the price of recalcitrance?'\n\n'He thinks your very existence could add two hundred thousand to the costs and two years to the timescale.'\n\n'How interesting,' said the baroness. 'So that's why Sharon McGregor offered me a hundred-thousand-pound bribe.'\n\n'A real bribe?'\n\n'Not in so many words. Sharon is a direct woman, but even she is not that brash.'\n\n'So how did she put it?'\n\n'She said she would like to make a hundred-thousand-pound donation to St Martha's, but might not have the readies because of legal expenses. A likely tale.\n\n'I asked artlessly what expenses were these, and she said she was funding Piers Papworth's assault on the trust. Then she smiled at me and said that not being a dumb Sheila I would understand her position. It seemed, she went on sweetly, a pity to waste money because some fuddy-duddies opposed making changes to a mag that could only benefit from modernization.' The baroness took a thoughtful swig of Chablis. 'I've rather gone off Sharon McGregor.'\n\n'I thought you liked tough and amoral broads,' said Amiss.\n\n'I do, I do, but they should recognize that Jack Troutbeck is not a purchasable commodity.'\n\n'So it's the end of your brief friendship?'\n\n'Let's say she's gone off me too, though only for the moment, I hope. I retain some optimism that we'll get back together after this battle is over and make beautiful music again. After all, if she wants to climb socially, she could do worse than rope me in. She'd have a good time.'\n\n'Do you think she or Piers Papworth tried to bribe Henry?' asked Milton.\n\n'That would have been more difficult,' said Amiss, 'in that it would have been personal, whereas with Jack, because of St Martha's, it's not so blatant.'\n\n'I'll tell you what I think,' said Milton. 'I think someone had a very good reason to murder Henry Potbury. I'm looking forward to a useful conversation with Miss McGregor and with young Papworth when he returns. Just one question, Jack.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'If I think it necessary with McGregor, can I mention the bribe?'\n\nThere was a silence. 'Oh, fuck it,' she said, when she came out of her reverie. 'Yes, I suppose so. If it was only to do with finding fucking Lambie Crump's murderer, I wouldn't. But I don't mind queering my pitch as far as the McGregor millions are concerned if it'll help with the Henry business. We old lags must stick together. Dead or alive.'\n\n***\n\n'Listen, Mr Milton, I've companies to buy and investments to make and nothing to do with the murder of some obscure bastards on a piddling rag.'\n\n'As I understand it, Miss McGregor, this is a \"piddling rag\" that you wish to buy.'\n\n'Oh sure. And when I buy it, it won't be a piddling rag for long. It'll be a journal of international significance.' A faraway look came into her eye. 'Of course, it'll have to change. Its gotta have zap and wham and pizzazz. Maybe the name'll have to go too. The Wrangler isn't a name would mean much in LA or Sydney or downtown Singapore. Thing'd be to keep the spirit of The Wrangler but find another word\u2014something like argument, combat, conflict, challenge, discord, dissent. Do you get the idea?'\n\n'Yes, indeed. Clearly you are serious about this, Miss McGregor. In fact, I understand that some time ago you had a management consultant in to look it over to assess the prospects for rationalization.'\n\n'Sure, sure. I called in Walter Bett\u2014guy I used to sort out some bus companies. Stupid bastard came a cropper. Frightened the Abos by talking about firing everyone and replacing them with robots. Headbanger. Fired him. Robots are OK doing robots' jobs. Different in magazines.' She snorted. 'Bastard just didn't understand and he didn't help me one bit by getting them all in such a stew.'\n\n'I gather that though you want The Wrangler, you're not happy with its present legal status.'\n\n'That's right. I'm not taking on a company where three old bastards well beyond their sell-by date can tell me who to hire and fire.'\n\nShe smiled dazzlingly at Milton. The crimson lipstick was as threatening as it was brilliant and matched the stunningly simple silk suit that screamed money, even to someone sartorially blind.\n\n'So you wanted the trust scrapped.'\n\n'Sure did. Scrapped or castrated\u2014its balls broken. Don't care if it's there or not as long as I can do as I like.'\n\nOut of the corner of his eye, Milton observed that Tewkesbury was gaping at Sharon McGregor like a child looking in awe at a ringmaster in a circus. He sympathized with him. It was all he could do himself to stay calm and on course. Her energy was curiously enervating.\n\n'I'd be grateful for your help,' he said gently. 'I appreciate that your interest in The Wrangler is commercial, but my job is to find out who murdered Mr Lambie Crump and possibly Mr Potbury, and I need all the help I can get. You may be able to shed some light on tensions within the paper.'\n\n'OK. What do you want?'\n\n'Perhaps you could begin at the beginning and tell me how you got to know of The Wrangler, when you thought about acquiring it, something about your relationships with people connected with the paper and how things stand now.'\n\nShe shot back her left cuff and scrutinized her diamond-encrusted Rolex. 'OK. It's the seventh today. Makes just four months since I went to my first dinner party in London and met Piers Papworth. We kidded about. He asked me what it was like to own half Australia. I asked him about the joys of being a belted earl. He said by the time he got to be one he wouldn't have two pennies to rub together.\n\n'So I say maybe we should get married. You know, like the old tradition of rich foreign heiresses marrying English upper-class poms, though I'm better than an heiress because I have the stuff already. He says sorry, he's married already. Points across the room to some Sheila with a face like a horse. I say why hadn't he married money? He said he'd married some, but if he was doing it again he'd need much more to compensate for all the estate had lost through his pa being so bloody high-minded.\n\n'That sounds really interesting to me. It's not often you hear about people like that. Usually people are complaining about being screwed by greedy bastards. So I ask him what he's going on about and he tells me about The Wrangler and how his old man has spent a fortune on it because he thinks it's his duty.'\n\nShe looked squarely at Milton. 'Now I'll tell you something about myself. I want to make more money, but I want to enjoy myself as well. Seems to me that a daft magazine associated with nobs might be just the right way into society here. Of course, being rich I'll get lots of invitations, but they'll mostly be from people who want you just for your money. You know the kind. They're either on the fund-raising circuit or they're after you to invest in their business. I wouldn't mind meeting journalists and intellectuals and all those as well.\n\n'So next day I send for a heap of back copies of the mag, tell my lawyer to find out all about it, get a researcher on to the background and by evening I've decided to buy it if the business can be done with the trust. I call in Piers and tell him to get to work and he tells me he's got no influence with the trustees. I say what about his pa and he says pa doesn't either, and even if he did, he wouldn't. He's a nobleman of the old school, apparently, generally full of old-fashioned crap. But then he says if I really want to pursue it I should try going through The Wrangler's editor, Willie Lambie Crump. \"Willie,\" says Piers with a wink, \"might be persuadable.\"\n\n'So Piers brings Lambie Crump along to drinks at my hotel and then bows out tactfully after half an hour. I've got the measure of Lambie Crump by then. He's a sponger and he's a dickhead, but I need him. The only question is what's his price, and I know it can't be used fivers: he's too dishonestly corrupt for that. We've got to do it the English way and be subtle. Then he can keep feeling superior even though he's taking the money to sell out his own paper.\n\n'So I talk to him about my big plans to build up a media empire. I talk about being inspired by Aussies like Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, but say too that I know that since I'm so inexperienced in Britain I'll need wise counsel. In fact, I say, what I really need is someone I can trust who will help me to get started and who can then be chairman of the board of this big, ambitious, expansionist company. And where better to start than The Wrangler and Lambie Crump.\n\n'He's purring by now, especially when I get across the idea that this is all going to be big and money's no object. This chairman will be my guru. He'll be non-executive, of course: won't have to spend much time on the job except for advising me and helping me network. I'm painting a picture of a guy who has big influence, big income, big status and big perks, and Lambie Crump's getting orgasmic.\n\n' 'Course along with all this he's got to keep his shabby little conscience quiet by admiring my vision and smarming that with my sensitivity and intelligence I'd be different from those other foreign proprietors from hell. \"I say, my dear,\" he says, \"together we could be a winning team.\" Kisses my hand and talks about how we're beauty and the beast. How we'll shake up the British press and then move in overseas. And nowhere better to start than The Wrangler, though I'll appreciate how difficult it will be to bring the trustees on board.\n\n'So it's all understood. As far as he's concerned, he's going to be rich and powerful if he delivers. Doesn't have the balls to demand a written agreement, more fool him. Doesn't realize that I'd shit on him the moment I could, because I despise people who are that easily bought, especially if they've got no loyalty. What sort of a drongo would I be to trust someone who rats?\n\n'Off he goes to work on the trustees and delivers two proudly within forty-eight hours. But try as he might, he can't get anywhere with that fat, drunken bastard Potbury. Piers tries too but there's nothing doing. I put a private eye on to him and he reports we've hit a real roadblock here. Bugger's got brains and principles and he's honest. No sign he's greedy for anything. Already got plenty of money to get pissed with every day, no higher ambitions: even has all the women he wants.\n\n'Seems we're stymied. I tell the lawyers to get on with it as fast as possible without him. Then it gets worse, 'cos Piers tells me Potbury and old man Papworth are now in cahoots and Papworth's lawyers are going to fight me all the way on what they describe as the high moral ground.'\n\nShe paused for breath and Milton nipped into the aural void. 'What I don't quite understand, Miss McGregor, is what is the point in going ahead, since presumably whatever happened with the trust Lord Papworth wouldn't sell to you anyway.'\n\n'But he's very old and Piers says we should be ready for when he goes for the high jump. Might be now, might be next year, might be in ten years' time. But Piers reckons, considering the family history, he won't be around that much longer. And he wants to sell up the day his pa is buried.'\n\n'But you're investing a lot on a gamble, aren't you, if you're fighting a law case?'\n\n'Sure. It could cost a lot. And the old man might hang around for years and I can't afford to wait that long. But that's business. Gotta gamble.'\n\n'What I also don't understand is how anyone can be meddling in the terms of the trust without the consent of the owner.'\n\n'Only through the heir. It's one of the safeguards that either the proprietor or the heir can challenge the trust if they can show sufficient reason. Kind of insurance in case one of them's a fruitcake.'\n\n'How complicated. But I think I understand. Now back to Mr Potbury. There's no denying that it was good news for you and Piers Papworth that Potbury died.'\n\n'Yes, sure, but don't waste your time on me, Mr Milton. If you're worth close on a billion bucks you're not going to go murdering people over a small business hiccup like this.'\n\n'How much were you offering Piers Papworth for an unencumbered Wrangler?'\n\n'Five million.'\n\n'Five million pounds?'\n\n'Yeah, sure. I know it's a lot, but I kinda want it. Like some people want a yacht. It's a fun investment and could be good. It's got the name\u2014until I change it\u2014it's got the age, it's got the kudos and it gives me a great jumping-off ground here. And anyway, it'll be a handy tax loss. Besides, Piers drove a hard bargain. Pointed out the grief it'd be causing in the family. And it sure has. His pa's mad. His ma's mad. And though they're being kinda English and civilized, it's a big strain. Piers said, and I agreed, that he deserved a big bonus for fucking up his relationship with his parents.'\n\n'You're not going to renege on him the way you would have on Lambie Crump?'\n\n'Renege on the Honourable Piers Papworth? Fat chance. He got it in writing that if the journal's available and free of the trust within two years, I'll buy it for five mill.' She grinned happily. 'Anyway, the other bonus is that with money like that at stake Piers'll really try.'\n\n'Do you think he might have gone so far as to murder Potbury?'\n\nShe shrugged. 'Never thought about it. Thought the guy just fell into the punch. Gave me a good laugh.'\n\n'Do you think Mr Papworth would be capable of murder?'\n\n'How do I know? I hardly know the guy. Hard bastard, I'd say, but wouldn't have thought he was as hard as that. And I wouldn't approve of it either. You don't want to bring murder into legit business. I'm not running a fucking Mafia operation.'\n\n'What about Lambie Crump as a possible murderer?'\n\n'Jeez, I wouldn't expect that guy to know how to kill a kitten. But what do I know? Sometimes that kind's the worst.' She glanced at the Rolex again. 'Is that it?'\n\n'Almost, Miss McGregor. But I'd like to know what happened after Potbury's death.'\n\n'Oh, that was pretty pissy. Thought it was going to be OK then, but the old man pulls a fast one and puts on that Troutbeck broad instead of him. I wasn't bothered at first. I'd met her and thought she was OK. Sure, I knew she was tough. But she was on the make as well. Wanted big bucks for that college of hers. So I thought I had her.' She snorted. 'Canyabelieve I offered her one hundred K just like that to buy the land she wanted and when I make it clear there's a string attached, she turns me down flat?'\n\n'Do you mean you tried to bribe her?'\n\n'I don't bribe, Mr Milton. You can get into trouble bribing. I pay people for their help and I pay them well. That's why I get so much help.'\n\n'But not from Lady Troutbeck.'\n\n'No. Who'd have thought it? She's just as soft in the head as the Potbury bastard when it comes to funny old notions: noblesse oblige and all that, Piers says it's called. And now Lambie Crump's dead so I'm worse off than before. I'll bet old Jack Troutbeck'll be beating up those gaga trustees even as we speak. Well, may the best woman win. Now, is that OK? Have you got all you want?'\n\n'That's fine for now, Miss McGregor. We're grateful to you for being such an admirably frank witness.'\n\n'Frankness saves time: bullshit costs money.' And with a nod she got up and strode from the room.\nChapter Twenty-three\n\n'Can you believe it, Jack? Sales were up by forty per cent last week.'\n\n'Not bad. How much is because of publicity arising from Crump's murder?'\n\n'Only a little. Circulation went up by just a few thousand in the first week, but because I got going immediately with the advertising campaign, we've gone up another twelve thousand. Now we're going hell for leather devising various kinds of circulation-boosters and subscription-bribes and all the rest of it. In other words, at last we're going to be doing what all our competitors do.'\n\n'I saw one of those ads. Thought it was pretty revolting.'\n\n'Which one?'\n\n'We Wrangle. Do You?'\n\n'Stop being so bloody critical, Jack. I had to think it up pretty rapidly, since name-recognition is all the rage these days and I wanted to capitalize on the wider fame that poor Willie's death has brought us.'\n\nThe baroness had lost interest. 'I've found you some talent.'\n\n'Go on.'\n\n'I've always fancied myself as one of those influential behind-the-scenes dons who select the perfect recruits for higher academia or sexy media jobs or MI5 or whatever, and I think I've found just the one for you: young, female, sexy and iconoclastic.'\n\n'But we've got one of those, Jack. We've got Amaryllis.'\n\n'No, no, no. Amaryllis is precocious. Her stuff could be written by someone twenty-five years her senior. This one is fresh, lively and irritating but demonstrably young. She's still an undergraduate, for God's sake.'\n\n'What are her politics?'\n\n'Rabid libertarian, of course.'\n\n'You mean she's a clone of yours?'\n\n'No. I'm an old libertarian: she's a young libertarian. Basically she'll be writing about what a crowd of dumbed-down tosspots the younger generation are. I told her to try something out for you and I'm faxing it now: it's mostly a savaging of all those ill-fated attempts of universities to bring themselves up to date by providing courses in subjects they shouldn't touch\u2014like business studies, computer technology and\u2014God help us\u2014even writing and publishing. Pretoria Rooke's a great one for rigour.'\n\nAmiss could not deny the article was entertaining: the Troutbeck prot\u00e9g\u00e9e had wit, ruthlessness and originality. With amendments amounting to no more than two commas and\u2014as a gesture to the lawyers\u2014the removal of the names of two particularly excoriated vice chancellors, Amiss approved the article for that week. He added to the list of articles on the cover, 'Letter From an Undergraduette'\u2014a title he hoped that by annoying everyone, including the author, would start up an enraged correspondence.\n\n***\n\nA week later, the Honourable Piers Papworth opened his front door, looking red-eyed and irritable. 'Who the hell are you?'\n\n'Chief Superintendent James Milton and Sergeant Tewkesbury, Mr Papworth. I arranged with your wife that I would catch you here now.'\n\n'I don't know what possessed her to agree to that,' said Papworth. 'I've had a twenty-four-hour flight and I'm tired and want to go to bed. I certainly don't want to be cross-examined. You've got a cheek waylaying me at home like this.'\n\n'Too bad,' said Milton in a steely voice. 'A conversation with you, Mr Papworth, is long overdue. We've waited three weeks and can't wait any longer.'\n\n'Oh, fuck,' said Papworth. 'I suppose I'd better get it over with. Come in.'\n\nHe led them through the hall and into a pleasant drawing room. 'Sit down, then,' he said, as he threw himself into an armchair. 'What do you want to know?'\n\n'The nature of your involvement with Miss McGregor and what exactly you've been up to with regards to The Wrangler.'\n\n'You must know all that already. I don't want the bloody thing. That's been pretty strikingly obvious, hasn't it? All sorts of people must have been snooping to you about that, not excluding my dear old pa.'\n\n'And you didn't want it because...?'\n\n'Because it's a fucking drain on the family finances, that's why. A piece of out-of-date sentiment. The Papworths can't afford that kind of expensive nostalgia. Pa should have got rid of it years ago or at least stopped it taking every spare penny we had.'\n\n'Though I gather the losses have been stemmed pretty dramatically over the past few months.'\n\n'Yes, that's true. It's bad now but it was much worse then. But he wouldn't even have done something about that if I hadn't nagged and nagged.' He looked at Milton crossly. 'The days are long gone when people like us should be proprietors of anything except the public conveniences we call home. And I'll do my bit there when Pa dies to try to keep Papworth Castle going. That's been haemorrhaging money as well, but I know what has to be done to keep it going. If I have to turn it into a fucking theme park I'll turn it into a fucking theme park.\n\n'My family and I will live in the warmer bits. We'll take fivers off the proletariat and in exchange they'll be allowed to overrun our property, peer at our belongings, ride on our roundabouts or whatever we install for their diversion. We'll have vulgarities like Papworth potpourri and teatowels, and if we do all those things we might save the place, despite the bloody death duties. But there's no chance of doing that until we can raise money for investment from selling The Wrangler.'\n\n'You expect a sizeable sum of money, sir, I gather.'\n\n'Yes, but as you'll have heard, that depends on doing the business with the trust, and up to now we've been buggered by the high-minded intelligentsia. How sodding easy it was for Henry Potbury to emerge from his stupor to lecture about principle and tradition and what we owe the great intellects of the past. He's had a fat salary for years out of the Papworth estate\u2014the same as Lambie Crump and the rest of the wankers. And now there's this old bitch of a baroness, who's even more of a menace.'\n\n'Yet your father was on Potbury's side, Mr Papworth.'\n\n'Sodding easy for him too. He's a great man for the pro bono publico shit. Spent most of his life slogging away in the Lords defending tradition and decency in public life. And where does that get him and the others like him? Despised and mocked and threatened with extinction by these miserable gits that we've got ruling us now. And meanwhile he let The Wrangler bleed him dry and obstinately refuses to face what's going to happen when he dies. He just can't accept that the whole Papworth heritage will crumble because I simply won't be able to pay the death duties. Unless I can get that money from Sharon McGregor.'\n\n'What do you do for a living, Mr Papworth?'\n\n'I've been a moderately successful banker, I'm a moderately successful farmer and I keep a moderately successful eye on our Australian property, which, of course, has been yielding too small a profit because my pa naturally took a high-minded view of our duties to sitting tenants. I wish he'd take a similarly high-minded view of his duties to his son and heir. I've just been spending three weeks trying to sort out a dispute between two tenants and the net result is another great loss for the Papworths, since Pa decreed that neither of them must suffer financially.'\n\n'So clearly it mattered hugely to you to break this trust.'\n\n'Yes, it did. And it does.'\n\n'And Mr Potbury was in the way.'\n\n'Indeed he was. And so is Baroness Troutbeck. And so, above all, is my father. But murdering people for money is not the Papworth way.' He smiled quite pleasantly. 'Our motto is \"endure or perish\" and we're good at enduring. If it comes to it, my wife and I will endure whatever hardship and humiliation is necessary to save Papworth Castle.'\n\nHe sat up and looked straight at Milton. 'Listen, do you really think I'm prepared to put the whole family fortune in jeopardy by knocking off old Potbury\u2014richly though he deserved to be knocked off. For God's sake, if I did and was caught, my wife would have to cope alone with the castle and two useless teenage children who'd burn the whole place down if the insurance was good enough.'\n\n'And you've no idea who else might have wanted to kill him?'\n\n'No. Like me, Sharon would have liked him out of the way. Like me, murdering him wasn't an option.'\n\n'And Lambie Crump?'\n\n'Good God, what can I say about Lambie Crump? He was on our side. He'd have lied and cheated for us when it came to the crunch if he was going to make enough out of it.'\n\n'But would he have murdered Potbury?'\n\n'I never believed Willie Lambie Crump had the balls of a gnat, though I suppose you never know. Sorry, I can't help you. I don't believe Potbury was murdered. If I were you, I'd write that off and just concentrate on Willie. I'll lay you ten to one he was done by some pansy he picked up, patronized and under-paid.'\n\n***\n\n'I give up,' said Milton to Amiss.\n\n'What do you mean, \"give up\"?'\n\n'I mean there's nowhere to go on this. I can find motives and opportunity for the murder of Potbury but no evidence. I can find no motives and lots of opportunity for the murder of Crump and again no evidence. It makes no sense whatsoever to view them both as murders.'\n\n'I admit it's hard to see why the same person would have done for them both.'\n\n'It's bloody impossible. But neither can I think of any hypothesis that explains two murders and two murderers. Can you?'\n\n'Oh, bugger it,' said Amiss. 'I can't. I admit that the more I think about it the more I begin to think that Henry wasn't murdered at all. After all, why has nobody tried to murder Jack, who's filling precisely the same role as Henry, but even more effectively?'\n\n'One reason is simply that we're about. It would take a brave man to try to kill her when we're around the place: the Cambridge police have been keeping an ostentatious eye on St Martha's. What's more, if anyone got her, it would be virtual proof that Henry was murdered too and would therefore narrow down the suspects. It'd be madness.'\n\n'So what are you going to do now?'\n\n'Quit if I can. For the moment at least. Even Tewkesbury agrees. He still believes in his heart that Lambie Crump was rubbed out by some mad right-winger, and I still think it was because of greed. But we see no option but to write a report recommending that the case lie fallow.'\n\n'Which leaves us in a very difficult position here, still not knowing if there is a killer on the staff.'\n\n'I think you can assure Lord Papworth that it is highly unlikely that either Winterton or Phoebe Somerfield murdered Crump, while it's quite definite that neither Webber nor Amaryllis Vercoe did. Anyway, he'd be mad not to keep you on as editor. That last issue was terrific.'\n\nAmiss beamed. 'Things are certainly going extraordinarily well. I think the literary section's going to be wonderful since I replaced that boring pillock Wilfred Parry with someone who actually loves books. Circulation's doubled and we're almost breaking even. Costs are down too. I finally managed to boot Naggiar off to early retirement at Chateau Hypochondria on medical grounds and Ricketts actually asked if he could go part time. I've brought in an assistant for Jason, who's now gradually taking over as administrator, which he'll do fine if I'm there to take strategic decisions and do the tactful things. All is going beautifully.'\n\n'So if Lord Papworth offers you the job permanently, will you take it?'\n\n'I'm trying not to think of it. I've still got a question mark over the politics and I'm still not sure that the world of the media is for me. And as well as that, I'd hate to decide I wanted it and then be disappointed.'\n\n'But you will.'\n\n'I might.'\n\n'And if you did, would it make Rachel happy?'\n\n'I don't know if anything will make Rachel happy, so I'm not taking that into account. She wants me to be successful, yet all my better coups drive her frantic. She froths at the mouth over the advent of Pretoria, for instance.'\n\n'But Pretoria's fun.'\n\n'You're not supposed to be or have fun these days. Who was it who said that the trouble with the new young Labour MPs was that they thought \"fun\" was an acronym?'\n\n'Well, I hope Papworth has the sense to beg you to stay on and that you've the sense to agree. I'm delighted how it's worked out for you, Robert. If anyone deserved a break, you did.'\n\nHe stood up. 'I'll be in touch. But formally I wish you a future at The Wrangler uncomplicated by deaths and detection.' He wondered as he left the room if he'd been right to conclude that the expression that flittered across Amiss's face as he spoke was slightly wistful.\n\n***\n\n'About time you met,' said the baroness.\n\nAmiss eyed her companion rather apprehensively. Pretoria Rooke was thin and sexy. She wore a short, tight-fitting ribbed sweater that showed off her navel-ring to advantage. Her jeans were skintight, her dyed blonde hair spiky with gel. She had four rings in one ear and two in the other, but mercifully\u2014for Amiss was squeamish\u2014her nose was innocent of metal.\n\nAs they began dinner in the mistress's private dining room, Amiss felt like a grandfather, but Pretoria's precociousness, her mischievous sense of humour and the surprising extent of her intellectual capital shrank the years. And since she and the baroness were so familiar with each other in a jolly, female-anarchist kind of way, all barriers of age disintegrated. Even Plutarch, prowling around and demanding food and attention, added to the general gaiety.\n\nAmiss realized that\u2014like the baroness\u2014Pretoria had in abundance a quality he had always lacked. She knew whom she hated, she knew why, she wished to hound them to their death, she loved the thrill of the chase and she most enjoyed the kill. She was a star, and one with the brains, breadth, originality and verve to keep Wrangler readers\u2014particularly the young\u2014happy for a long time to come. He felt very relieved that as a result of guessing the competition must be after her, he had written to her after her second article thanking her and quadrupling her fee. He hoped that this evening would help to bind her to The Wrangler with bonds of loyalty and affection.\n\nIt was after the second brandy and a conversation raucously uncharitable at the expense of great stars of the written and broadcast media, that the baroness jumped up, said abruptly: 'I'm off. Early start,' and disappeared.\n\n'That's not like her,' said Amiss.\n\n'Never mind,' said Pretoria. She stood up, walked around the table and kissed him. After a couple of minutes, Amiss pulled himself away. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he said as they disengaged. 'This is unethical. You're a contributor, I'm an editor and I don't approve of casting couches.'\n\nShe put her hands on her hips. 'You're an idiot, Robert,' she said. 'I've already been cast. Now, let's get back to business.'\n\n***\n\nAmiss lay agonizing as Pretoria breathed gently beside him. He thought guiltily of Rachel and then even more guiltily about taking advantage of someone so young. At the thought of all the hideous complications that could ensue, he shuddered. Had he even told her the night before that he was to all intents and purposes married\u2014even if going through a rocky marital patch? How could he tell her that this could be only a one-night stand? Would she be hurt or would she be furious? Might she abandon The Wrangler forthwith out of pique? And anyway did he want it to be a one-night stand? Did he truly still want to be with Rachel despite all the angst? Wouldn't it be hugely invigorating to have a passionate romance with a creature like this. And besides, maybe Rachel would be glad to be rid of him.\n\nAs he fretted at his inability to know what he wanted, Pretoria opened her eyes and fell upon him enthusiastically. When an hour later they disentangled, Amiss looked at the clock and saw that it was just after eight and he had fifty minutes to catch his train. He gave Pretoria another hug. 'I'm going to have to get up now,' he said. 'I have to go.'\n\n'Before you do,' said Pretoria, 'there's something I have to say to you, Robert.'\n\nHe felt panic washing over him. Would she declare herself as having fallen in love? What would he say in return? What did he feel anyway? What did he want?\n\nShe settled snugly into his left shoulder. 'Look,' she said, 'I don't want to hurt your feelings in any way, but you do understand, don't you, that this is just a one-off?'\n\nHe felt much more indignation than relief. 'How's that? What do you mean?'\n\n'A) you're shacked up with someone else and I don't break up relationships, b) you're my editor and to continue would be unprofessional, and c) I'm young and I want to play the field. It's been great fun, but we need to stop it here. No hard feelings.'\n\nAmiss looked at as much of her as he could see. He looked at the earrings, he looked at the navel-ring, he looked at the tattoo on her right breast, he looked at the spiky hair and he felt his age. 'You're a new breed, you lot,' he said and laughed. 'Don't worry, Pretoria. No hard feelings.'\nChapter Twenty-four\n\n'Lord Papworth can see you early evening at his flat.'\n\n'Fine. Tell him I'll be there at six.'\n\nAmiss spent the day putting together the best issue yet. Unencumbered by Lambie Crump and given more time to develop her interests, Phoebe Somerfield had produced a classic Wrangler leader on integrity in public life, as well as a three-page essay under her own name on the arrogance and dumbing-down of the BBC; Winterton had been let rip on sanctimonious and purposeless paternalism in the Home Office; and the baroness\u2014with special reference to Napoleon and Bill Clinton (hated particularly for his anti-smoking crusade)\u2014was arguing that liberalism always led to malevolent despotism, as Britain was beginning to find out. He was modestly pleased too with his own much more moderate leader on the dangers of futher politicizing the civil service\u2014a subject on which he had unambiguous views.\n\n***\n\n'So that's that, Charlie. There's just nothing to go on. The Met extends its apologies but there's bugger-all it can do without evidence. It's Milton's considered view that neither Dwight nor Phoebe had anything to do with it, but he can't formally give them a clean bill of health any more than he can give one to me or Jason or Josiah Ricketts. It's not great for the journal and it remains tricky for you if you want to make either of them editor.'\n\n'But I don't,' said Papworth. 'I'm very happy with you.'\n\n'I've got a problem, Charlie.'\n\nPapworth looked at him wearily. 'What sort of a problem?'\n\n'Do you remember the conversation we had the night before Willie died?'\n\n'What conversation?'\n\n'On the telephone. About my plan to move to a new printers. You were very pleased because it was bringing in a five-figure saving.'\n\n'Was that really the night before Willie died? But I was out.'\n\n'You were back at ten-twenty-five when I rang.'\n\n'Can you be sure?'\n\n'I'm afraid so. I checked it this morning when my telephone bill arrived.'\n\nPapworth looked straight at him. 'Fair enough. If you say so. I couldn't place it myself.'\n\n'I know too that your wife says Willie had rung ten minutes earlier and been told you were in bed.'\n\n'You don't want to read too much into this, Robert. I got up to get a nightcap.'\n\n'That might have convinced me, Charlie. But unfortunately I remember you telling me that Imogen was out and you were waiting up for her because she'd left a message on the answering machine saying she'd forgotten her keys.'\n\n'Bugger.' Papworth snuggled into his chair and said nothing for a minute or two. 'I've been worrying a bit about this,' he said at last. 'But I thought I was in the clear since there was no reason for you to know about Lambie Crump's call. But I suppose you got chummy with that policeman.'\n\n'It came up in conversation, yes.'\n\n'So you told him?'\n\nAmiss looked squarely at Papworth. 'Not yet.'\n\n'And why not?'\n\n'Because I couldn't bring myself to without telling you first.'\n\nPapworth leaned over and patted Amiss on the knee. 'I appreciate that,' he said. 'And don't be afraid. I shan't take advantage of your kindness by slipping a little-known South American poison into your drink.'\n\n'And I shan't take advantage of your situation by asking you for half your kingdom. You know I've got to tell Milton the truth, however much I hate to do it.'\n\n'Will you have another whisky with me and give me the chance to get the story off my chest before you go to the police. It would make things easier for me.'\n\n'Of course.'\n\n'And can what I tell you remain in confidence? I mean, will you just tell the police what you know now?'\n\nAmiss thought for a moment. 'Yes,' he said.\n\nPapworth poured them both another large measure, added as much water again to his own drink and then pushed the jug over to Amiss, who followed suit. Then Papworth took a sip and began.\n\n'Crump came up to me at that drinks party at the Ritz and said he needed to talk to me urgently. \"Something of profound importance for the future of The Wrangler,\" he said. Would I come to his flat later that evening? I demurred. I'm getting on a bit for evenings as packed with appointments as this would have involved, but he was very insistent, so reluctantly I agreed.\n\n'I arrived on the dot at nine-fifteen. He was waiting for me in reception\u2014which I thought was unusually thoughtful for him. We went up in the lift, he waved me to an armchair and poured me a drink. \"I really want you to stop fighting Piers over the trust,\" he said.\n\n'I told him I knew he did and that while I respected his position...' He caught Amiss's eye. 'Yes, I know, but one has to say something. While I respected his position I wouldn't give in. I knew what my duty was and I would persist. He looked at me insolently and said, \"Charlie. One has to make it clear that this would be an unwise course of action.\" Unwise for whom, I asked. \"Unwise for you and Piers, but particularly for Piers.\"\n\n'At which stage, my dear Robert, as you can imagine, my head was beginning to spin. \"Piers and I are on opposite sides, don't you remember, Willie?\" I said. \"What the devil are you talking about?\"\n\n'\"The murder of Henry Potbury,\" said he.\n\n'So we stared each other down a bit. I'm quite good at that, as a matter of fact. And after a minute or two he dropped his eyes and said crossly, \"Didn't Piers tell you he murdered Henry?\" No, I said. \"How remiss of him,\" he drawled.\n\n'\"Clearly,\" I said, in my most pompous voice, \"you are privy to information to which I am not.\" \"Not information,\" he said. \"Observation. It was for Piers an unfortunate happenstance that I had popped up to my flat to collect my coat and thoughtfully returned to the dining room just to check that all the guests were gone, only to see Piers emerging from the playroom. It was what these frightful critics these days call a defining moment, although that was not apparent until he spoke. 'Ah, Willie,' he said. 'This is a little unfortunate.' 'In what way?' I asked. 'There's been a sad accident,' he said. 'I'd better show you.' And then he showed me. 'Shouldn't we pull him out?' one suggested, admittedly without much enthusiasm. 'Too late, Willie. Too late,' said Piers. 'Besides, even if it were not, it would defeat the purpose. I suggest we leave.' \"\n\n'That didn't prove that Piers drowned Henry, I pointed out to Willie. \"Even if you are telling the truth, he might simply have discovered him and realized he was dead.\" \"In which case,\" said Willie, \"he would have called the police.\" \"You didn't,\" I said. \"That was because\u2014as Piers said as we left together\u2014it was much better to muddy the waters and leave as much time as possible before Henry was discovered, so as to make it harder to pinpoint the time of death. 'After all, Willie,' he said, 'we would be the prime suspects, and it would therefore be very unfortunate that we were on the spot.\"'\n\n'At this stage Willie looked at me and said, \"And the waters would have been well and truly muddied, had it not been for that\"'\u2014Papworth stopped and looked apologetically at Amiss\u2014'\"that busybody and tiresome do-gooder Robert Amiss rushing back like some fussy nanny to look for Henry.\"\n\n'He stopped then and I said, \"Willie, for all I know you're making this up.\" \"You were bound to say that,\" he said. \"And you can of course check with Piers. It may very well be that he'll say it was the other way around and he discovered me. But he would still be implicated.\"\n\n'At that moment he put his head on one side and smirked at me. \"You know this has to be the truth. Willie Lambie Crump is an improbable man of action, whereas Piers is a daredevil and well known for his impulsiveness.\"\n\n'\"Why are you telling me this, Willie?\" I asked. \"Do you wish to blackmail me?\" \"Of course,\" he said blandly. I was still foxed: \"But why should I believe you would tell anybody about this. Surely it's not to your advantage to have your ally denounced in this way\u2014especially if he counter-accuses you?\" \"Oh, don't worry about that,\" the shit said. \"One took a small precaution.\" And he switched on a tape recording of a brief telephone conversation in which he could be heard saying something along the lines of, \"One is trying to play the white man, Piers, but one does have the occasional qualm of conscience. Still, you can rely on me. I shan't tell anyone about Henry.\" To which Piers unfortunately remarked, \"Thanks, Willie. I appreciate it.\"'\n\n'That's not exactly definitive in a court of law,' said Amiss.\n\n'No, but it would help with a motive as strong as Piers's.'\n\n'But surely...' said Amiss.\n\n'Yes, I think I know what you're going to say, Robert. And I said it. \"Why would you get yourself into trouble and face possible prosecution for having suppressed this information?\" I asked, and he looked at me blandly and said contemptuously that I should not worry. He would plead that he was a coward who was frightened that Piers might be violent with him too.\n\n'I still didn't believe that this was anything but an empty threat and I said so. Then he looked at me and said, \"Charlie, I don't think you quite understand. One has had it up to here with this little tin-pot journal. There's only one way out and Sharon McGregor's offered it to me if I can sort out the trust business once and for all. You are standing in my way.\"\n\n'He laughed then. \"Were one a violent man, one would kill you somehow or other,\" he said. \"But one is not so minded. Or to put it more frankly, one doesn't have the nerve. But one certainly has it in one to take revenge if one doesn't get one's way.\"\n\n'He smiled offensively and said, \"Come now, Charlie. You know I've got a nasty streak. Surely you realize you can't afford to take the risk that your son and heir gets locked up for life. Awful blot on the family escutcheon, for one thing.\"\n\n'Then he leered again. \"Sorry, Charlie. But one does like to get one's own way.\" And I thought of all those occasions over the years when Willie had wanted his way and I've given in because if I didn't he whinged to the trustees, and I thought how the little excrescence was more than capable of shopping Piers through spite just to get at me. So I got up and said, \"I'm an old man, Willie. I need time to think. Now perhaps you'll be kind enough to advise me where's the best place to get a taxi this time of night.\"\n\n'He got up too, and advised me to go out the back if I could face the fire escape, and with exquisite politeness steered me to the back, switched on the light at the gate and waved me off. I wasn't back at home five minutes before he rang and said, \"Charlie, you must understand I mean it, and if I don't have the right answer within forty-eight hours, that's it.\"'\n\n'What a bastard,' said Amiss.\n\n'Indeed. But I feared he was probably telling the truth. Piers is not capable of cold-blooded murder, but I can all too easily see him having an altercation with Henry, getting a rush of blood to the head and slamming his head into the bowl. There were a couple of worrying incidents in his youth. No fatalities, you understand. But indications that his temper could suddenly turn uncontrollable and vicious.'\n\n'So then?'\n\n'Well, I couldn't talk to Piers: this wasn't the sort of thing one wishes to chat about over twelve thousand miles of telephone lines. But I knew in my bones that Henry had died at his hands, that Willie had colluded and that from my point of view there was only one way out, for I would never give in to blackmail of that kind.\n\n'So I decided. To kill Willie, I reasoned, was a bit like culling a diseased stag. Willie was rotten to the core. He was happy to destroy a great journal that had made his life interesting and comfortable for reasons of pure greed. Because I wanted to stop him, he was quite prepared to destroy my son, who had done nothing Willie disapproved of, and who\u2014for all that I believe him to be a murderer\u2014is not a bad man. Anyway, he's my son.\n\n'So when my wife had returned and gone to bed I found the wire and tiptoed out of the house. I don't need to tell you the rest.'\n\n'How did you get back through the garden gate?'\n\n'I'd left that open so my options would be too.'\n\n'What did you do in the war, Charlie?'\n\nPapworth grinned. 'Good question. Young people forget we did things. And some of the time I was a commando. I often think that having been in a war sometimes gives us the edge over the young. Certainly, had I not seen action, I doubt if I would have embarked on a new career as a murderer at the age of seventy-six. Apart from anything else, I wouldn't have known what to do.'\n\n'What a pity...' said Amiss, and stopped. Papworth raised an eyebrow.\n\n'The telephone call from Willie. If only...'\n\n'Ah yes, that fateful telephone call. If only I had admitted to receiving it, I wouldn't be in the pickle I'm in. But you see I didn't want to draw attention to myself, and in my innocence I didn't know that the wretched telephone company now can snoop on who rings whom. Then I thought I had covered it up all right, or rather I thought Imogen had covered it up all right, but unfortunately I had forgotten until now that it was that night you phoned about the printers.'\n\n'How much does Imogen know?'\n\n'Just that I told a stupid lie and that it could be incriminating. Naturally she didn't ask anything more. One of her great merits is that she never seeks to know that which people don't want to tell her. But though she is an honest woman, she would lie to anyone for my sake and do it well too.'\n\nAmiss looked at Papworth. 'Charlie, I know you are calm by disposition. But really you seem extraordinarily unperturbed by the prospect of ending up in court and in jail.'\n\n'I am really, but I thought it all through before I actually went back to the Wrangler building and set the ambush for Willie, and I was prepared to take the consequences of my actions. Having said that, I'll wriggle out of this if I can, though I suppose there's a fair chance that they'll find some cab driver who remembers me or something else incriminating. If I have to, I'll confess to having murdered Willie because he was trying to destroy The Wrangler. Obviously, I'll say nothing about Piers. And I suspect that prison won't be too bad since they'll be kind to me for the few months I've got.'\n\n'The what?'\n\n'Of course, I haven't told you this, have I? Piers knows I'm not in the most robust of health, but only Imogen knows I'm dying. Leukaemia. Indeed, one of the things that made it easier for me to embark on this crime was being terminally ill. It's the best time to choose to do the sort of thing that gets you a life sentence.'\n\nHe cradled his glass in his wizened old hands. 'Robert, I can't pretend that I wouldn't be grateful if you could keep this to yourself, but I understand that you probably can't. You're an honest man and a supporter of law and order. You know too that since I made you the offer of permanent editorship before you told me about your phone call, I'm not trying to bribe you. If you go to the police, as far as I'm concerned, you can still stay editor and I'm sure I can rely on you to send me copies of the journal when I'm in jail. But I know too that I can rely on you not to tell what I've told you in confidence.'\n\n'Yes,' said Amiss. 'You can rely on me for that.' They both sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Amiss spoke. 'I'm going to forget about that phone call, Charlie. I wouldn't have if you hadn't been ill, because I am a puritan when it comes to murder. But on humanitarian grounds I simply could not bear to be the cause of you being put away. However, this does mean that I can't stay editor.'\n\nPapworth sat bolt upright. 'My dear boy, I am, of course, extremely grateful to you for this decision. But in God's name, why do you feel you must turn down the editorship?'\n\n'I'd be compromised. It's as simple as that. At least I'd feel I was. And besides, I was in two minds about it anyway. You know I think that really it would be better to have the journal run by someone with right-wing fire in his belly rather than by an open-minded facilitator. So that'll be the official reason I'll give.'\n\n'But, Robert, don't you think you take high-mindedness to a level of lunacy?'\n\n'That's what my girlfriend will say when I give her the official reason. I'd hate to think what she'd say if I gave her the unofficial reason. But it's no good, Charlie. I know you were giving me the job anyway. I know you wouldn't feel you were being blackmailed if I stayed on. But don't you see that I'd be inhibited from arguing with you. I wouldn't be able to look for more money for the kind of investments I want to make, without feeling that you couldn't say no.'\n\n'I could, you know, Robert. We trust each other that much.'\n\n'No one,' said Amiss, 'even you, could be under that much of an obligation to anyone else without chafing sometimes. I'll stay on for the moment and together we'll search for the right editor and when you find him, you can give me a good party.'\n\n'But you're a good editor, dammit. I don't want to lose you.'\n\n'No, I'm not really, Charlie. Sometimes I worry because already I'm beginning to feel the urge to argue in my own leaders against the line being taken by the journal. I don't really believe that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are the anti-Christ. I'm wishy-washy, always a man for on the one hand and on the other. I don't see how I could go on with a journal that doesn't suffer from doubt. Anyway, that's the story I'll tell everyone.' He got up. 'Now I'd better go home and break the news to Rachel.'\n\n'There's just one thing,' said Papworth. 'And I've been feeling bad about it ever since...'\n\nAmiss laughed. 'Ever since you heard that I nearly went the same way as Willie.'\n\n'It honestly didn't occur to me that anyone else could have any reason to come down those stairs until he'd been found. I have to tell you that if you had been seriously hurt or killed, I'd have given myself up. I have no guilt about Willie, but had you died, I'd have been in sackcloth and ashes.'\n\n'What a scrupulous pair we are,' said Amiss. They laughed and shook hands and Papworth showed him to the front door.\n\n***\n\n'I've got something to tell you,' said Amiss and Rachel virtually in unison.\n\n'You tell me first,' she said, her voice tense.\n\n'Charlie Papworth offered me the editorship.'\n\n'Oh, Robert, that's wonderful. Despite all my criticism, that is wonderful news.'\n\n'And I turned it down.'\n\nShe shut her eyes and compressed her lips. When she regained her composure, she looked at him again. 'And what quixotic reason determined that?'\n\nAmiss laughed. 'You should be pleased, really. It was because I couldn't be wholehearted about the journal's politics.'\n\n'And is that a good enough reason to wreck what had suddenly become a really promising career?'\n\n'I think so.'\n\n'Knowing you're prepared to argue all shades of opinion without help from anyone else,' she said, 'I shan't even bother. But I'm sorry. Apart from anything else, I'd rather have left you when you were on a high than when you were once again heading off into limbo.'\n\n'Left me?'\n\n'Yes, Robert. That's what I have to tell you. And don't look so shocked. You can't really be that surprised, can you? It's a long time since we've been enjoying each other much.' He said nothing. 'Isn't it?'\n\nThere was a pause. 'Yes,' he said. He paused again. 'You're not inclined to give it another chance?'\n\n'No, I'm not. There's no future for us. All we do these days is that I snap at you and you feel aggrieved and misunderstood. Besides, there's someone else and I'm going to live with him.' She stopped and looked embarrassed for a moment. 'Or to be more precise...'\n\n'It's all right,' said Amiss. 'I'm with you. You mean he's going to come and live with you. To be precise, when you say you're leaving me you mean you want me to leave you. Don't worry. I'll be obliging.'\n\nShe went over and sat beside him. 'I knew you would be.'\n\n'So who is he?'\n\n'Can't you guess?'\n\n'Rachel, how can I guess? I only know a few of your colleagues. At least you might spare me having to guess who's been screwing you.'\n\n'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's Eric.'\n\n'Oh, Christ. Not your minister. Isn't he married? Not to speak of being twenty years your senior?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Kids?'\n\n'In their mid-teens.'\n\n'Don't you mind breaking up his marriage?'\n\nShe sounded defensive. 'They've grown apart. Only saw each other when he got up to the north at the weekends and then, of course, he was busy with constituency business and the rest of it.'\n\n'It's a bit hard on her, isn't it? How could any woman lumbered with looking after the kids hundreds of miles away from her husband compete with the dishy clever private secretary who's by his right hand by day and\u2014of course, as I now realize\u2014quite frequently night? But, Rachel, isn't this going to screw up your career? You surely can't stay in the Foreign Office if you're publicly known to be living with one of its ministers.'\n\n'I'm going to be his political researcher.'\n\n'But isn't that a great comedown? You had everything going for you in the Foreign Office.'\n\n'Eric and I are a partnership.'\n\n'I just can't see you as a political wife, Rach. Chatting up constituents and smarming up to senior ministers and charming the Prime Minister surely isn't for you.'\n\n'You'd be surprised,' she said. 'You don't really know me any more, Robert. We were apart for too long. And I'm not as high-minded as you.' She grinned. 'But then no one is.'\n\nHe grinned back. 'More feeble-minded than high-minded. And you don't even know the half of it.'\n\nThere was a pause. She looked worried. 'What do you think you'll do next?'\n\n'On the job front I've no idea, but I needn't worry for a few weeks. On the home front, I don't see why I shouldn't move into the flat at the top of the Wrangler building for the moment.'\n\nHer face cleared. 'That's a great idea. It'll give you time to look around.'\n\nThere was another pause. She got up, went over to him and gave him a hug. 'I'm still very fond of you. You know that, don't you?'\n\n'Yes. And me of you.'\n\n'But it's better this way.'\n\n'I suppose so.'\n\n'I've got a suggestion, if you don't think it in poor taste.'\n\n'When do I ever think anything's in poor taste?'\n\n'Let's go out and have a bottle of champagne and drink to both our futures.'\n\n'Yes, please. But don't tell Eric. He'd recommend sparkling water.'\nChapter Twenty-five\n\n'So she's thrown you out.'\n\n'Why do you always have to put such a brutal interpretation on everything, Jack? Rachel and I have agreed in a civilized fashion to separate and since it's her flat and she wishes her new chap to move in, the least I could do was to move out as fast as possible. So this evening I'll be transferring my belongings to Willie's old pad. Thank heaven I hadn't had time to get round to arranging to let it.'\n\n'Good. This solves my problem too. Plutarch is packing as we speak. I'll deliver her to you tomorrow.'\n\nA feeling of dull dread swept over Amiss. 'Do you know what you're saying, Jack? That although I'm suffering a broken heart after being ditched by my long-term inamorata for a hypocritical wanker, you intend to rub salt in the wound by replacing Rachel with Plutarch.'\n\n'Simple choice. You can have her alive in Percy Square or dead in Cambridge. I sense here that a lynch mob is gathering. I would not wish to tell a lad of your tender years of the murderous light I glimpsed yesterday in the eyes of the Fellow of Comparative Religions. Take her tomorrow, or her blood is on your hands.'\n\n'Oh, God, I suppose I've no choice. Anyway, compared to my other problems this is truly a mere bagatelle.'\n\n'What do you mean by other problems? You're not making a fuss about moving, are you?'\n\n'No, that's minor. But I can't tell you about what's major over the phone.'\n\n'Oh goody,' she said. 'Sounds promising. Tell you what. I'll deliver you Plutarch in the morning and come back around six to visit her and find out with what trivial issues you are bothering yourself.'\n\n'It's a deal.'\n\n***\n\n'So that's an account of my trivial worries,' said Amiss.\n\nThe baroness stopped vigorously stroking an appreciative Plutarch. 'Well, my boy, I withdraw the word trivial. I think you have had enough human and moral problems in the last couple of days to justify the use of the word \"weighty\".'\n\n'What do you think, Jack?'\n\n'I think that you must deal with what you can deal with, and what you can't deal with there's no point in worrying about. You're fine really. Rachel may have expelled you, but you've got somewhere even better to live. There's nothing more to be said except that she's a foolish girl who will live to regret it when she gets fed up with that sanctimonious jerk. And if I were you I would be off in search of plenty of jolly women to cheer you up.\n\n'Plutarch is back with you, which I accept is not an unmixed blessing, but the circumstances could hardly be better. She has no Rachel around moaning about her, she's got a fine apartment, the fire escape, the garden, and the rest of the inhabitants at Percy Square to torment. And since they're your subordinates\u2014at least for the moment\u2014I suppose they'll put up with that. So two problems you had two days ago\u2014viz, keeping Rachel happy and finding some way of reconciling her needs with Plutarch's\u2014have miraculously disappeared at a stroke.'\n\nAmiss nodded reluctantly.\n\n'However, we now proceed to the bigger issues. First of all, I think you were an idiot to turn down the editorship because of what Charlie Papworth told you, but you're that kind of an idiot, it's the way you are, and there's no point in my bleating about that: it's one of your attractions. One certainly never worries about you becoming corrupt. Ending up in the gutter, yes. Being burnt at the stake, yes. Being hauled off in chains for fiddling the books, no.\n\n'Which leads us to the two issues you need to address at the moment. First, have you any second thoughts about covering up for Charlie Papworth?'\n\n'I gave my word,' said Amiss wearily.\n\n'Indeed you did. And in your place I expect I'd have done the same. But there's the corollary that you're also covering up for Piers. And how do you feel about that?'\n\n'I don't like it, but I can't do anything about it. The only evidence against him is what Charlie told me in confidence. And that would be hearsay, anyway.'\n\n'Precisely, so it's not really an issue.'\n\nPlutarch emitted a resentful yowl of deprivation, and the baroness absent-mindedly recommenced the stroking. 'There's such a huge moral difference between the two murders. Piers knocked off Henry: bad. Charlie knocked off Willie: good.'\n\n'Oh, really, Jack. You don't actually mean good.'\n\n'I don't mean I'd do it. I don't mean I want anyone else to do it. But at least Charlie's motives were honourable.'\n\n'Yes, but I would point out that Piers did in Henry in hot blood and Charlie did for Willie in cold.'\n\n'We're splitting hairs and it's pointless. We've two murderers and you can't sneak on either of them.'\n\n'And even at that, we're making an assumption that Piers did the murder, when there was only Willie's word for it.'\n\n'Quite right. And we'll never know otherwise, because of course Piers, if asked, would say he didn't do it whether he did or not. So let's make things easy for you by adopting the benign interpretation, which is that Willie lied either because he did it himself or because it was an accident, and proceed on the assumption that Piers Papworth is innocent. That makes the road ahead and the choices clearer.'\n\nAmiss lay back on the sofa and passed a hand wearily over his forehead. 'I'm punch drunk, Jack. Clarify my mind. Please.'\n\n'Your job is quite straightforward. You must safeguard the future of The Wrangler by sorting out this trust business once and for all and by finding the right editor.'\n\n'You know as well as I do, Jack, that there's bugger-all I can do about the trustees. That's in your bailiwick.'\n\n'You can carry on smarming up to them while I beat them up. But point taken. It's mostly a matter for me. The problem of the editorship, I'll leave with you.'\n\nWith total disregard for Plutarch, she jumped to her feet. The cat, who had landed on the rug with a thump, set off a piercing yell. 'Shut up, Plutarch,' said the baroness: instantly the yells diminished in intensity and, shortly afterwards, ceased.\n\n'Talk to you soon, Robert,' she said. 'But before I go, pay attention. Your duties to The Wrangler are twofold and both require you to hang on for a bit. First, you need to make sure that the editorial line is solid before you hand her over to a new captain. Second, you have to find the right successor, so you should be vetting talent at leisure. So whatever you do, don't tell anyone you're going. I can see it would appeal to you to walk out now in a haze of moral rectitude, but that would be sheer self-indulgence.'\n\n'But...'\n\n'Bugger the buts.' And after enfolding him in a bear hug, she picked up her cloak from an armchair. 'Are you going to tell Jim about this?'\n\n'Probably, but obviously only off the record.'\n\n'Make sure you've got him to sign the confidentiality clause in blood. He's a nice bloke, but he's a cop.'\n\nThrowing her cloak over her shoulder, she demanded, 'Lead me to the fire escape.'\nEpilogue\n\n'It was a good funeral.'\n\n'Charlie deserved it,' said the baroness. 'Murderer or not, he was one of the best of men.'\n\nEllis Pooley stiffened slightly. 'I'm afraid that professionally, at least, quite apart from personally and morally, Jack, I have to take a rather dim view of that pronouncement. I understand why Robert decided not to provide Jim officially with the information that could have nailed Papworth, but you can't expect me to approve. Murderers shouldn't get away with it.'\n\n'Oh, bugger off, Ellis. You didn't know Charlie, and, for that matter, you didn't know Lambie Crump and you should remember that blackmail...I mean serious blackmail\u2014not the sort of thing I go in for\u2014is the most loathsome of crimes and deserves the most condign punishment.'\n\n'Piers Papworth seemed very cut up when he read the lesson,' observed Milton.\n\n'He was,' said Amiss. 'I spent a fair bit of time with him over the last few days and there's no doubt that he mourns Charlie deeply. One thing that came through in conversations with both of them throughout the family row was that it never appeared to affect in any way their mutual devotion.'\n\n'Any repercussions at the Yard?' the baroness asked Milton. 'About your having failed to nab the murderer, that is.'\n\n'That's not the sort of thing that gets you into trouble. I'm having more difficulty with an internal policy row than I ever will about an unfinished case.'\n\n'What's Tewkesbury's position?'\n\n'His mind isn't on The Wrangler, or the sins of the Right, these days. In fact, he's having such a horrible time working on a gangland murder in Soho that he seems to be developing some sense of perspective. We met in a corridor last Friday, and he greeted me with respect. I have some hopes for him: he might be just young enough to allow reality to penetrate that sanctimonious carapace and stop being such an asshole.'\n\n'OK,' said the baroness. 'Now for the hard news. I've got some and Robert's got some. I'll start. I've done a deal with Sharon McGregor.'\n\n'What kind of a deal?' asked Amiss. 'And why is this the first I've heard of it?'\n\n'Because I only fixed it up last night, you blockhead. It's taken a while.'\n\n'Well, go on. Tell us.'\n\n'You remember that a couple of weeks ago I told you to let me have the run of the building undisturbed one Saturday.'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'I spent the morning taking her round every nook and cranny of The Wrangler, telling her about the founder, his successors and the great journalists along the way. I told her of the Papworth involvement down the ages, and then I took her to lunch and told her about Ricketts, and about Ben and Marcia and about loyalty and tradition and continuity and the little Wrangler corner of New Britain that is forever the best of England. And having put all that in her head I brought her straight down to St Martha's again and introduced her to the two most eloquent traditionalists in Cambridge\u2014apart from myself, that is. Then last night I took her out to dinner, put the proposition to her and she accepted.'\n\n'Accepted what?'\n\n'That she's rich enough to do what she likes, rich enough to indulge herself and rich enough to be a great benefactor by becoming the custodian of something worthwhile that might otherwise become extinct. She's taken onboard the notion that The Wrangler is a metaphor for an English Conservative tradition that is at present as close to extinction as the white rhinoceros. The woman has a sense of humour and the idea that she could become a great hostess and mentor of the Right tickled her no end. A powerful weapon in my arsenal was that she hates meaningless rhetoric so the present British and American governments piss her off seriously.\n\n'Forget the idea of internationalizing The Wrangler, I said. Just make it the most effective anti-crap guerrilla organ in Britain.'\n\n'Do you think she'll do it?' asked Amiss.\n\n'We shook hands on it; we agreed to be allies; and we will be. By the time we've finished, The Wrangler's going to be the biggest thorn in the flesh of the complacent Left that there's ever been in this country.'\n\n'That's all very well,' said Pooley. 'But you're not editing it. I didn't like to say anything earlier, but I have to say I was surprised to discover today that Papworth had appointed that dull woman Phoebe Somerfield to the job just before he died. She's hardly colourful or young or hungry, is she?'\n\n'It was on my recommendation,' said Amiss.\n\n'And mine,' said the baroness.\n\n'Because...?' asked Milton.\n\n'Because of the kind of editor that's needed. There are journals that need to be shaken up, restructured, relaunched and all the rest of it. And maybe they need thirty-year-olds with vision and energy to turn them upside down. That's what Robert did,' said the baroness.\n\nAmiss was so stunned at having had a compliment of this magnitude from such a source, that he could hardly speak. 'Thanks, Jack. But you're exaggerating my contribution.'\n\n'Balls. What you did was to rediscover the journal's soul and set it on the path of righteousness.'\n\n'Are you two saying,' asked Milton, 'that what's now required is a safe pair of hands?'\n\n'Yes and no,' said Amiss. 'Phoebe's safe, in that she understands what The Wrangler's about and will not go in for any mad gambles. But there's much more to it than that; given scope, she's shown a genuine instinct for quality and an enthusiasm for young talent, at a time when I believe what's required is someone low on ego and high on appreciation of others.\n\n'I made up my mind after a dazzling lunch at the office when Dwight, Amaryllis, Pretoria and Clement Webber jock-eyed for position as top intellectual dog, traded ideas and fought each other brilliantly to a standstill. Phoebe contributed little, except occasionally to destroy an illogical argument with a well-timed arrow.\n\n'Mostly she listened, and afterwards she gave me an assessment of their respective strengths and weaknesses which to my mind was spot on. I think she just could be one of the great discoverers and nurturers of talent. And as she put it herself when I asked if she might be interested in the job: \"Why not? I've got nothing to lose.\"'\n\n'Let's go back to Sharon McGregor,' said Milton. 'You're saying that she's agreed to buy The Wrangler even though the trust remains intact. But for how much, now that she won't be going global?'\n\n'It's just edged into profit and there's no reason why it couldn't be a modest money-spinner, so it might be possible to get about a million on the open market. She's offering three.'\n\n'Will Piers Papworth take that?'\n\n'He's jumped at it. It won't solve all his problems, but he seems to think it enough to save the Papworth estate from disintegration. Apparently the good news is the state of things is slightly less disastrous than was expected, although the bad news is that Charlie was more generous with bequests than Piers would have wished.'\n\nShe stopped and looked at Milton and Pooley. 'Which leads me to Robert.' She turned to him. 'Come on. Talk.'\n\nAmiss looked unhappy. 'It's very difficult. I was told yesterday that Charlie Papworth left me a hundred thousand pounds in gratitude for what I'd done for The Wrangler.'\n\n'That's marvellous,' said Milton. 'And well deserved. Materially it slightly makes up for the lunacy of your decision about the editorship.'\n\n'But I don't think I can take it.'\n\n'Sweet suffering Jesus,' said the baroness. 'Let me guess. Today's scruple is that he might be rewarding you for not splitting on him. Is that it?'\n\n'I suppose so.'\n\n'Listen, you cretin, how much money have you saved Charlie since you took over this job? Now come on, don't give me a conservative guess. I want a realistic one, which includes what you saved him through the cost-cutting and what you earned him through the increase in circulation.'\n\n'It's very hard to put a figure on it,' said Amiss, 'but maybe in the region of half a million.'\n\n'And did you ever hear of such a thing as a bonus?'\n\n'Yes, but...'\n\n'Oh, shut up,' she said. 'Even if you can't grasp that you're entitled to a generous bonus for doing so much better than expected, you might view it as some compensation for not having the job you would have had if you hadn't been such a high-minded idiot as to sack yourself when Charlie spilt the beans.'\n\nAmiss looked doubtfully at Milton. 'She's right, Robert. This is not a moral issue. Take the money, which you richly deserve; it'll help tide you over until you get the next decent job. Whenever that is likely to be.'\n\n'Ellis?'\n\n'You'd be mad and ungrateful not to. And I'm the official puritan of this group.'\n\n'Besides,' said the baroness, 'you have to find a decent home for you and Plutarch.'\n\n'Phoebe suggested I should keep the Wrangler flat indefinitely. But I said I'd be out within a month.'\n\n'Why?' asked all of them in unison.\n\n'Because I think a clean break would be better for the staff.'\n\n'Oh, God,' said the baroness. 'You really do have a genius for making things difficult for yourself, don't you?'\n\nThe others nodded.\n\nAmiss looked at them in dejection. 'You all think I screw up, don't you?'\n\n'You do and you don't,' said the baroness. 'It's a peculiar gift you have. You drift into situations unwillingly and by the time you've drifted out things are better. That's why we're all so pleased, you halfwit, that for once you've had some recognition.'\n\n'So what now?' asked Milton. 'What sort of job are you looking for?'\n\n'God knows. I'm open to offers.'\n\n'Don't worry,' said the baroness. 'I have the very thing.'\nMore from this Author\n\nFor other books, upcoming author events, or more information please go to:\n\nwww.poisonedpenpress.com\/Ruth-Dudley-Edwards\nContact Us\n\nTo receive a free catalog of Poisoned Pen Press titles,\n\nplease contact us in one of the following ways:\n\nPhone: 1-800-421-3976\n\nFacsimile: 1-480-949-1707\n\nEmail: info@poisonedpenpress.com\n\nWebsite: www.poisonedpenpress.com\n\nPoisoned Pen Press\n\n6962 E. First Ave. Ste 103\n\nScottsdale, AZ 85251\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# ALSO BY DEBORAH MADISON\n\n_THE GREENS COOKBOOK_\n\n_THE SAVORY WAY_\n\n_VEGETARIAN COOKING FOR EVERYONE_\n\n_THIS CAN'T BE TOFU!_\n\n_VEGETARIAN SUPPERS FROM DEBORAH MADISON'S KITCHEN_\n\n_VEGETABLE SOUPS FROM DEBORAH MADISON'S KITCHEN_\n\nPublished in the United States by Clarkson Potter\/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Previously published in hardcover by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2010.  \nwww.crownpublishing.com  \nwww.clarksonpotter.com\n\nCLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.\n\nAll photos are \u00a9 Laurie Smith 2002, except DM01, DM02, DM03, DM04, DM05, DM06, DM07, DM08, DM09, DM10, DM11, DM12, DM13, DM14, DM15, DM16, DM17, DM18, DM19, DM20, and DM21, which were taken by the author\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  \nMadison, Deborah.  \nLocal flavors: cooking and eating from America's farmers' markets \/ Deborah  \nMadison.\u20141st ed.  \np. cm.  \nIncludes bibliographical references and index.  \n1. Cookery, American. 2. Farmers' markets. I. Title.  \nTX715.M1157 2002  \n641.5973\u2014dc21 2001049940\n\neISBN: 978-0-307-88565-4\n\nv3.1\n_For Michael and Dianne,_\n\n_for quitting your day jobs to grow good food,_\n\n_gorgeous flowers, and great girls_.\n\n_And in memory of Marion Rullo,_\n\n_a good farmer_\n\n_and fine cheesemaker_.\n**Contents**\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nIntroduction\n\n**1** : Greens Wild and Domestic\n\nThe Simplest Tender Greens\n\nChard and Cilantro Soup with Noodle Nests\n\nHearty Pungent Greens with Anchovies and Garlic\n\nGreen Herb Soup with Sorrel and Lovage\n\nNettle Soup\n\nLamb's-Ouarters with Sonoma Teleme Cheese\n\nCollards with Potatoes\n\nLasagne with Chard, Ricotta, and Walnuts\n\nBright Lights Chard Gratin\n\nMustard Greens Braised with Ginger, Cilantro, and Rice\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Spinach Leaves with Hedgehog Mushrooms\n\nOyster Mushrooms with Cumin\n\nSpaghetti with Overgrown Arugula and Sheep's Milk Ricotta\n\nShredded Salad of Many Greens\n\nFreckles Meets Merlot in Vermont\n\nRadicchio Seared in the Skillet with Mozzarella\n\nOven-Roasted Treviso Chicory\n\nPasta with Radicchio, White Beans, and Rosemary\n\nWhite Pizza with Radicchio, Mushrooms, and Gorgonzola Cheese\n\nGrilled Sugar Loaf Chicories\n\nEndive and Celeriac Chowder\n\nEndive on Toast with Gruy\u00e8re Cheese\n\nFris\u00e9e and Endive Salad with Mint and Pomegranate Seeds\n\n**2** : A Cool-Weather Miscellany\n\nRoasted Asparagus with Citrus Butter\n\nAsparagus and Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding\n\nAsparagus and Artichoke Saut\u00e9 with Toasted Bread Crumbs\n\nAsparagus Braised with Peas and Spring Onions\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Artichokes and Potatoes with Garlic Chives\n\nArtichokes and Jerusalem Artichokes Braised with Black Lentils\n\nElixir of Fresh Peas\n\nPea and Spinach Soup with Coconut Milk\n\nStir-Fried Snow Peas with Pea Greens\n\nPasta with Peas, Fresh Sage, and Bread Crumbs\n\nFennel and Winter Greens Salad with Mushrooms and Truffle Oil\n\nPasta with Golden Fennel\n\nFennel Soup with Saffron Dumplings\n\nRadish Butter for Radish Sandwiches\n\nRadish Salad with Vella's Dry Jack Cheese\n\nShredded Daikon with Scallions and Sesame Seeds\n\nRhubarb with Berries and Candied Ginger\n\n**3** : Herbs and Alliums\n\nHerb Teas or Tisanes\n\nHerb Sugars\n\nHerb Vinegars\n\nLovage Oil\n\nSage Oil\n\nWhite Pizza with Sage\n\nSalsa Verde with Basil, Cilantro, and Mint\n\nMarjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives\n\nHerb Dumplings for Soups and Ragouts\n\nHerb Salad\n\nRed and Golden Beets with Anise Hyssop\n\nSpring Risotto with Sorrel\n\nCrostini with Chive-Scented Ricotta\n\nScallion Cr\u00eapes with Stir-Fried Greens\n\nScallion, Potato, and Herb Puree\n\nLeek, Scallion, and Fennel Gratin\n\nWhole Wheat Spaghetti with Late-Summer Onions\n\nSweet and Sour Onions with Dried Pluots and Rosemary\n\nLeek and Green Garlic Risotto\n\nChicken Breasts and Leeks Poached in an Herb Broth\n\nRoast Chicken with Herbs Under the Skin\n\nGrilled Lamb Chops with Fresh Oregano and Lemon\n\nLamb Shanks Braised with Onions and Rosemary\n\nBruce Aidells's Roast Beef with Herb and Garlic Paste\n\n**4** : Cabbages, Kale, and Other Crucifers\n\nBraised Broccoli with Olives\n\nBroccoli and Broccoli Rabe on Bruschetta\n\nHarriet's Hot Roasted Cauliflower\n\nGreen Cauliflower with Parsley and Green Olives\n\nWhole Little Cauliflowers with Crispy Bread Crumbs\n\nBrussels Sprouts with Cauliflower and Mustard-Caper Butter\n\nA Rough and Ready Turnip Potage\n\nMarket Ragout of Turnips, Kohlrabi, and Peas\n\nCabbage and Potato Gratin with Sage\n\nSavoy Cabbage and Fennel with Parsley-Lemon Butter\n\nNapa Cabbage Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro\n\nPriest Stranglers (Strozzapreti) with Black Kale, Sage, and Potatoes\n\nRedbor Kale with Red Beans, Cilantro, and Feta Cheese\n\nWhite Beans with Black Kale and Savoy Cabbage\n\n**5** : Corn and Beans\n\nCorn and Chanterelle Chowder\n\nCreamy Corn and Shallots\n\nCorn Pudding\n\nCorn Fritters with Aged Cheddar and Arugula\n\nCorn and Squash Simmered in Coconut Milk with Thai Basil\n\nLazy Corn Stew with Taxi and Sun Gold Tomatoes\n\nWarm Corn Custard with Berries\n\nSummer Posole with Cilantro Salsa\n\nYellow Wax Beans with Lemon Thyme and Yellow Tomatoes\n\nPlatter Salads\n\nJune Platter Salad of Green Beans, Potatoes, and Tuna\n\nFava Bean, Herb, and Wax Bean Soup with Fried Pita Bread\n\nShelly Beans with Pasta and Sage\n\nSuccotash\n\nFresh Green Lima Beans with Scallions and Yogurt\n\nEdamame (Green Soybeans)\n\nWhite Bean and Sage Fritters\n\nShell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in Their Own Juices\n\nChickpea Salad with Coriander and Cumin\n\nSoupy Pinto or Bolita Beans\n\n**6** : Vining Fruits and Vegetables\n\nZephyr Zucchini with Opal Basil, Pine Nuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\nSlow-Cooked Thin-Sliced Summer Squash Showered with Herbs\n\nPenne with Green and Gold Zucchini and Ricotta\n\nSummer Squash and Squash Blossom Risotto\n\nZucchini and Cilantro Soup with Chile and Mint\n\nCucumber and Pepper Relish\n\nCucumber Salad with Chile and Roasted Peanuts\n\nShort-Term Cucumber-Onion Pickles\n\nWinter Squash Risotto with Seared Radicchio\n\nWinter Squash Braised in Pear or Apple Cider\n\nSpaghetti Squash Gratin with Chanterelles\n\nWinter Squash \"Pancake\" with Mozzarella and Sage\n\nButternut Squash Rounds with Dates and Pistachios\n\nCinderella Pumpkin Soup Baked in the Pumpkin\n\nMelon Salad with Thai Basil\n\nMelon in Moscato d'Asti\n\nMelon and Cucumber Agua Fresca\n\nTropical Melon Soup with Coconut Milk\n\nWatermelon Agua Fresca\n\n**7** : The Vegetable Fruits of Summer: Eggplants, Tomatoes, and Peppers\n\nCrostini with Roasted Eggplant and Pine Nut Puree\n\nSavory Eggplant \"Jam\" with Cumin and Coriander\n\nAn Eggplant Gratin\n\nBraised Farmers' Long Eggplant Stuffed with Garlic\n\nRoasted Eggplant and Chickpea Stew\n\nTomato Juice Sipped Through a Lovage Straw\n\nSlow-Roasted Tomatoes\n\nA Big Tomato Sandwich\n\nChilled Sun Gold Soup\n\nGolden Pepper and Yellow Tomato Soup\n\nLate-Season Tomato-Vegetable Soup\n\nTomato and Avocado Salad with Lime-Herb Dressing\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Gypsy Peppers\n\nGreen Chile Paste (Zhough)\n\nSmall Roasted Chickens with Cumin-Chile Butter\n\nSoft Taco with Roasted Green Chile and Goat Cheese\n\nRicotta with Roasted Chile and Mint\n\nA Farmers' Stew\n\nRoasted and Stuffed Firecracker Pimientos\n\nRoasted Peppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers\n\nRobust End-of-the-Summer Spaghetti\n\n**8** : Roots and Tubers\n\nThe Ultimate Root Soup, Borscht\n\nThree-Beet Caviar with Endive and Goat Cheese\n\nBeets and Their Greens with Marjoram and Pine Nuts\n\nCarrot Salad with Parsley, Lovage, and Mint\n\nCarrot Top Soup\n\nStir-Fried Carrots and Burdock with Sesame Seeds\n\nTaste of Spring: Young Root Vegetable Braise\n\nSunchoke Bisque with Hazelnut Oil\n\nCelery Root and Wild Rice Chowder\n\nParsnip Galette with Greens\n\nParsnip Salad with Walnuts and Dates\n\nSteamed Potatoes\n\nSalt Potatoes with Butter and Herbs\n\nPotato and Onion Salad with Smoked Albacore\n\nRutabaga and Potato Puree\n\nParsley Root and Potato Puree\n\nSweet Potatoes Roasted in a Wood Fire\n\nSoy-Glazed Sweet Potatoes\n\nSweet Potato Flan with Warm Molasses and Sesame Tuiles\n\nBraised Root Vegetables with Black Lentils and Red Wine Sauce\n\n**9** : Eggs and Cheese at the Market\n\nThe Boiled Egg\n\nEgg Salad with Herbs Through the Seasons\n\nFried Eggs with Sizzling Vinegar\n\nScrambled Eggs with Roasted Green Chiles and Corn\n\nThin Omelets with Saffron and Exotic Herbs\n\nZucchini Frittata with Ricotta and Marjoram\n\nNettle Frittata with Green Garlic and Sheep's Milk Ricotta\n\nLeek and Sorrel Custards\n\nSavory Custard with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Cheese\n\nGoat's Milk Yogurt with Cilantro and Mint\n\nLamb Kebabs Marinated in Yogurt\n\nCheese Souffl\u00e9\n\nSpinach and Green Garlic Souffl\u00e9\n\nGiant Popover with Chanterelles\n\nQuiche with Smoked Fish, Scallions, and Cr\u00e8me Fra\u00eeche\n\nSavory Goat Cheese Tart with Leeks\n\nGoat's Milk Panna Cotta with Warm Honey\n\nWarm Ricotta Custard\n\nZabaglione with Fruit\n\n**10** : Small Tender Fruits: Berries, Grapes, and Figs\n\nPalm Sugar Meringues with Strawberry Compote\n\nStrawberry\u2013Passion Fruit Cream Cake\n\nStrawberry Sorbet\n\nBlack Hawk Raspberry and Rose Geranium Sherbet\n\nRaspberry Cream Tart\n\nBlueberry-Lavender Compote\n\nWild Blueberry Preserve\n\nGreg's Huckleberry Pie\n\nWarm Berry Compote\n\nGrapes with New Walnuts and Cr\u00e8me Fra\u00eeche\n\nConcord Grape Tart\n\nConcord Grape Mousse (\"Grapette\")\n\nFresh Grape Juice with Lemon Verbena\n\nFigs with Cheese, Pepper, and Honey\n\nFig Tart with Orange Flower Custard\n\nFig Focaccia with Orange-Scented Olive Oil\n\nFig and Ginger Jam\n\n**11** : Stone Fruits: The Warm Heart of Summer\n\nA Cherry-Almond Loaf Cake\n\nApricot-Cherry Crisp\n\nMixed Cherry Pie with a Double Crust\n\nApricot Custard Tart\n\nApricots Baked in Parchment\n\nApricot Nectar\n\nApricot-Lavender Refrigerator Jam\n\nSugared Plums for Tarts and a Compote\n\nCornmeal Cr\u00eapes with Plums and Honey Ice Cream\n\nCornmeal Cr\u00eapes\n\nPlum Kuchen\n\nNoyaux or Bitter Almond Ice Cream\n\nPeach Shortcake on Ginger Biscuits\n\nWhite Peaches in Lemon Verbena Syrup\n\nPeaches and Nectarines in Prosecco\n\nSpiced Peaches\n\n**12** : Mid- to Late-Season Fruits: Pomes and Persimmons\n\nApple-Rhubarb Pandowdy\n\nApple-Oat Pancakes with Cheddar Cheese\n\nTransparent Applesauce with Lemon Thyme\n\nCaramelized Apple Tart with Cinnamon Custard\n\nApple and Quince Mince\n\nWinter Mince Tart with a Lattice Crust\n\nTurning Quince Poaching Syrup into Ice Cream\n\nSpiced Quinces in Syrup\n\nQuince Pip Tea for a Sore Throat\n\nQuince Butter\n\nRustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears\n\nQuince and Goat Cheese Tart\n\nBaked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom\n\nPear Sauce for Gingerbread, Ice Cream, and Other Desserts\n\nPear Upside-Down Spice Cake with Molasses Cream\n\nPear-Hazelnut Torte\n\nSteamed Persimmon Pudding\n\nPersimmons with Cream\n\nPersimmon Tea Cake\n\nFall Fruit Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette\n\n**13** : Winter Fruits: Citrus and Subtropicals\n\nCitrus and Sub-Tropicals\n\nBlood Orange Jelly\n\nBlood Orange Salad with Ricotta and Watercress\n\nTutti-Frutti Citrus Sorbet\n\nMeyer Lemon Sauce with Tarragon\n\nCandied Kumquats\n\nCandied Citrus Peels for Busy People\n\nLimequat and Pummelo Marmalade\n\nRed Snapper Baked in Parchment with Pummelo and Rosemary\n\nCitrus Compote with Star Fruit\n\nMy Standard Avocado Sandwich\n\nAvocado and Grapefruit Salad with Pomegranates and Pistachios\n\nAvocado and J\u00edcama Salad with Lime Vinaigrette\n\nPummelo and Avocado Salad with Endive and Fennel\n\nFeijoa Bavarian Cream\n\nFrozen Subtropical Mousse\n\nPassion Fruit with Cream or Coconut Milk\n\nPassion Fruit Sauce and Syrup\n\nPassion Fruit and Pineapple Fool\n\nPineapple in Ginger Syrup with Pineapple Sage\n\nPrickly Pear Sauce\n\nOne-Minute Citrus and Subtropical Salad Plate\n\n**14** : The Foods That Keep\n\nBlack Walnut\u2013Banana Cake\n\nHickory Nut Torte with Espresso Cream\n\nHazelnut Crisps\n\nChocolate-Flecked Hazelnut Rusks\n\nRustic Onion Tart with Market Cheese and Walnuts\n\nCreamy Walnut Sauce\n\nRustic Almond Truffles with Fruit Centers\n\nDate, Dried Cherry, and Chocolate Nut Torte\n\nDate and Orange Salad with Feta Cheese and Pistachios\n\nAdult Prune Whip\n\nUpside-Down Cake with Mixed Dried Fruits\n\nChicken Thighs Braised with Dried Fruits, Shallots, and Bay\n\nChicken Braised in Red Wine Vinegar\n\nHoney Ice Cream\n\nRice Pudding with Honey Meringues\n\nRoasted Chestnuts\n\n**15** : Basics\n\nA Basic Vegetable Stock\n\nPizza Dough\n\nGalette Pastry\n\nPie Dough\n\nTart Shell\n\nSimple Syrup\n\nPeeling and Sectioning Citrus Fruit\n\nTrimming Artichokes\n\nRoasting and Peeling Peppers\n\nFresh Tomato Sauce\n\nTwo Vinaigrettes: Shallot and Garlic\n\nEpilogue: Time Passing at the Market\n\nResources\n\nIndex\n**Acknowledgments**\n\nThe number of people who gave me their time, advice, insights, and information is phenomenal. First, of course, are the farmers, without whom there would be no farmers' markets. In particular, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to those farmers from northern New Mexico, whose dedication, skill, vision, and endurance have long nurtured our community. It is your well-honed art of the field and farm that puts the true joy into cooking. It would be a dull world indeed without the treasures you bring to the market.\n\nFarmers are essential, but markets would not happen without the numerous volunteers. Among the volunteers, managers, and market founders I met are those who fielded my many questions, especially Patty Brand, Donita Anderson, Mary Holmes, Randii MacNear, Laura Avery, Abby Mandel, Janine MacLachlan, Sarah Stegner, Cynthia Hizer, Joanne Neft, Richard McCarthy, Joel Prataker, Cecelia McCord, Dee Logan, Ann Yonkers, and Doug Warner. Thank you all for your help and your insights.\n\nMy thanks also to those of you who took me to your markets: Kitty Morse, Chris Hastings, Amelia Saltsman (and for her mushroom recipe), Dee Logan, Jeff Roberts, Russ Parsons, Ellen Ogden, Odessa Piper, Molly Stevens, Maureen Callahan, John and Emily Sutcliffe, Sue Mei Yu, Cliff Wright, Martha Rose Schulman, Dorothy Patent, Kathleen Craig, Grant Flemming, and Elizabeth Zippern. My deep thanks to my brother, Michael Madison, who cheerfully came out of the field any number of times to answer my botany-related questions, and to Dianne Madison who, in addition to visiting farms and markets with me, also found those missing phone numbers of farmers when I needed them, and so much more. I would also like to express my appreciation to cooks and writers who have offered me their valuable perspectives: Odessa Piper, Lucia Watson, Parker Bosley, Alice Waters, Gary Paul Nabhan, Stephen Facciaola, Michele Anna Jordan, Greg Patent, Fred Plotkin, Diana Kennedy, and Damon Lee Fowler.\n\nThank you (and kudos) to Ruth Murphy for insisting that I visit the children's farmers' market in St. Paul. To Sandy Szwarc, Joe Colanero, Tamar and Barbara Haskell, Lynn Weddach, Bill Webb, and Eliot Coleman, my gratitude for acting as my far-flung correspondents, letting me know what was ripe in your area when I couldn't be everywhere at once. Many thanks to Bruce Aidells for responding with alacrity and enthusiasm to my request for a beef recipe\u2014no one I know could be a better provider, and to Joanne Neft, market manager par excellence, for her delicious persimmon recipes and her long friendship.\n\nMany farmers and growers have been especially generous with their time, explaining to me how they grow their crops, raise their animals, harvest nuts, and press their oils. My deep thanks to Riley Starks and Tom Delahanty for sharing their pastured chickens expertise, to Judy Olsen for her flair with nettles, and to Tracee Canisso for explaining all about sweet potatoes. Thanks also to Robert and Ellen Lane and Rink and Jenny DaVee for that splendid lunch on the farm, Rich Collins who knows more about endive than anyone else, Dennis Donahue and Lucio Gomiero who taught me about the other chicories, Michael Abelman for the avocados and other expertise, Jan Barbo for her bushels of quince, and Rusty Hall for his extraordinary almonds and vision of what will keep small farmers going. Eremita and Margaret Campos have generously shared both their stories and their produce over the years, while Timothy Broughton finally explained what makes kiwis sweet in between bites of hot roasted chestnuts. Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler of Boggy Creek Farm in Austin, Texas, have been invaluable informants when it comes to the ins and outs of growing organic food and raising chickens in an urban market. They have fulfilled an outstanding vision. Thank you for teaching me, feeding me, and becoming such good friends.\n\nPatty Karlovitz, publisher of New Mexico's _Localflavor_ , in whose pages I was able to first publish some of these market stories, was gracious in allowing me to share the title of her magazine. Joan Dye Gussow, who became truly local by farming in her backyard, supplied me with certain elusive facts and figures. I would particularly like to thank Kent Whealy of The Seed Savers Exchange for his vision of diversity, his inspiring talks, and good conversation. He is, in many ways, at the heart of this book.\n\nI would be remiss not to express my deep thanks to Les Dames d'Escoffier for choosing me to receive the MFK Fisher Mid-Career Award in 1994. The generous gift that accompanied this honor was what initially started my research on farmers and farm markets.\n\nThank you also to the following publications in which some of these recipes previously appeared in slightly different forms: _Fine Cooking, Kitchen Garden, Williams-Sonoma TASTE, Gourmet_ , and the _Los Angeles Times_.\n\nWhen it comes to making the book, my debt is also large. I wish to warmly thank Laurie Smith, whose beautiful pictures of food and markets grace these pages, not only for her art but for her cheerful willingness to change gears in midair and accommodate my enthusiasm for the unexpected image. Laurie, you're the best! Many thanks to Kathi Long who has unfailingly worked with me for many years on photo shoots and in the kitchen. To our photo sessions came bags of dishes and linens from the Clay Angel, which are as inspiring and beautiful as the foods and flowers our farmers grow. My warmest thanks to the ever-accommodating staff who has wrapped and unwrapped them all on my behalf many times, and especially to owner Judy Espinar for her unfailing generosity and support through all my various projects. My gratitude to Esther Kovari, Lynn Walters, Cheryl Jamison, L\u00e9 Adams, Pam Roy, Lynda Prim, Sarah Grant, and Sibella Kraus for your friendship, hard work, and shared commitment to local agriculture. Years of conversation with all of you are the background of this book. I am also grateful to the Slow Food community for its clear and inspiring vision of where we need to go with food.\n\nTo Doe Coover, agent par excellence, for her good cheer, friendship, and clarity, I am ever indebted. I wish also to thank Harriet Bell who began as my editor, for her enthusiasm for the subject and who has continued to share recipes and market visits. And my warm thanks to Jennifer Josephy, who gamely took it over when the publishing world shifted, and who has been supportive throughout. My gratitude to Rebecca Holland for tying up the final loose ends with dedicated grace and skill. The staff of Broadway Books has been consistently helpful and always cheerful, for which I'm ever appreciative.\n\nAnd lastly, I offer my everlasting gratitude to my husband, Patrick McFarlin, for visiting more farmers' markets than he ever thought he would, and for using those visits to make the drawings that begin each chapter. He captured everyone and everything with grace and humor. While this project might have been completed without you, it was infinitely more fun, and far more meaningful, with you.\n**Introduction**\n\n\"You know, the farmers' market is about much more than farmers selling produce.\" Don Bustos, the president of the Santa Fe Farmers' Market, is speaking to shoppers at the farmers' market in Santa Fe, on its twenty-fifth anniversary. Other speakers have voiced their praise of the market and hopes for its future, but Don is saying more about what the market is. \"The farmers' market is about protecting our farmland and water; it's about keeping the farming traditions and cultures in northern New Mexico _alive_ , and it's also about providing our communities with _good food_.\" Don's New Mexican accent gives an added emphasis to the last words and there's urgency in his voice.\n\nDon and I have talked often about the farmers' market, and we agree that, in addition to being about sales and sustenance, the market is also about culture, regionalism, and having a healthy sense of pride in one's work and one's land. It's also about joy, and it depends on\u2014and creates\u2014healthy rural communities. Don's experiences as a farmer and mine as a shopper have brought us to the same conclusion, that the scope of the farmers' markets is enormous. Farmers' markets are vital to our national health in the deepest sense of the word. They not only supply food that is alive and truly nutritious but are good for our state of mind, too.\n\nToday there are over 4,000 farmers' markets across the United States, while just twenty-five years ago, there were but a handful. The farmers' market has long been my first choice for ingredients, but their growing presence suggests that they offer more than produce. They're the new village green, the plaza, the town square, the place where everyone gets to know each other.\n\nThey're friendly, and they make a small town out of a big one. \"I think the main thing the farmers' market does is make us more of a community,\" says a market manager in Utah, echoing a thought expressed by many. It's also one of the few places where there's a healthy environment of diversity, with regard to both plants (many varieties) and people (different races, different backgrounds). \"The market brings a lot of different people together who would never cross paths otherwise,\" one shopper tells me. \"Food is a true celebration of diversity,\" enthuses Richard McCarthy, manager of the Crescent City farmers' market in New Orleans. \"Whether you come from uptown, downtown, or back of town, your life is involved with food. If you're stuck in an elevator in New Orleans, the topics that will be discussed are fishing, football, and food.\"\n\nFarmers' markets stand out from the monotonous commercial landscape that so dominates our view. No two are exactly alike. Your market may be only 2 years old, or it might be 150. It may consist of six farmers meeting in a parking lot, or there might be more than a hundred farmers under a protective roof. One vendor might harvest unusual varieties of persimmons from her backyard, while another has fifty acres of field crops in the next county. Depending on where you live, you might find heaps of Asian vegetables, farmstead cheeses, cracked hickory nuts, or organic meats. At another it may be a treasure trove of exotic citrus and subtropical fruits that catches your imagination. (The photograph of these fruits came from a twenty-dollar purchase at the Vista, California, market.) At a tiny, start-up market, there may be little else besides overgrown zucchini, tomatoes, and corn. But markets have the ability to grow, adapt, and extend their seasons.\n\nSandy Szwarc, a food writer who has been telling me about her market in Des Moines over the past several years, had little to report on at first, although she was immensely pleased with the local corn, peaches, and melons she found there. \"But this year,\" she writes, \"farmers are offering Yukon Gold and fingerling potatoes, little squashes instead of gigantic ones, exotic eggplants, Asian greens and bitter greens, heirloom tomatoes, and now we're seeing our first Iowa goat cheese, Iowa-grown bison, and fresh eggs!\"\n\nFarmers' markets provide a way of revitalizing local food cultures, which are ever in danger of disappearing into the lackluster sameness of the national menu. But here is where you can find those foods that truly typify a region\u2014wild rice, native New Mexican chile, Rocky Ford cantaloupes, hazelnuts, wild huckleberries, green peanuts\u2014the foods that have their roots in place. \"For us,\" says Richard McCarthy in New Orleans, \"food says what's best about our region, and that we have a food culture that's worth preserving. There's a regional pride here, and everywhere, that makes one place different from another.\" And having regional differences in our foods makes life interesting for all of us. How dull it is when everything is all the same, all the time.\n\nMy market visits have taken me around the country, to the corners, the edges, the middle, to Hawaii, and also to our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Inevitably people will ask me. \"Oh, have you been to such-and-such a market?\" Usually, I haven't. \"You _haven't?_ \" they ask, usually in tones of incredulity, for they know their market is among the best. And for them it is. While there are a lot of great markets I didn't visit and a lot of little not-so-famous ones that I did, I set out to sample, not conquer. And regardless of the nature of any particular market, after visiting more than a hundred of them, I'm convinced that _all_ markets have something worth seeking out, some treasure to be discovered. Sometimes the eye must be retrained to see the value that is there, and this matter of seeing is in large part what these pages address. While I haven't referred to all the markets I've visited by name, they have all played their valuable parts in informing my experience.\n\nFarmers' markets often look and feel simple, even when they're large, but many hidden hours of work are concealed behind that appearance. While some markets struggle to keep going and others receive support from their local governments, all markets require a lot of volunteer effort in order to take place. Some markets offer a variety of activities that have little to do with farming but which you and your children may enjoy\u2014music, cooking demonstrations, master gardener talks, even massage!\u2014while others are pretty bare-bones. \"No espresso. No frills. Just food and lots of it,\" says one farmer speaking of his market. Some states, like California, certify their farmers' markets, which insures that the food sold is grown on the farm whose name hangs above it. Most don't, at least not yet. But whether certified or not, that the person selling the food grew it, or lives in the family that did, is what lies behind the spirit of a true farmers' market. Whether the selling takes place in a market setting, at a roadside farmstand, or from the back of a pickup in a parking lot doesn't matter. That the seller is also the grower does.\n\nEven when wholesalers are present in a market\u2014and I visited those types of markets, too, because sometimes that's all a community has at first\u2014you can tell who the real farmers are. They're the ones who look connected to what they're selling. They are the ones who can answer your questions. And they often look tired. Most often they're older, too, for the average age of the family farmer, which is ever rising, is now around fifty-four, an age when many people are thinking about retirement.\n\nThe marketplace where food, goods, ideas, and money are exchanged is an ancient public place, and one that we respond to in a deeply intuitive way despite the omnipresence of the supermarket. \"Magically and inevitably, the farmers and their food create a human space that links us back to the most ancient centers of civilization as well as to the present cycle of seasons,\" says Ann Yonkers, who founded the six FRESHFARM markets in Washington, D.C. Such a universal marketplace is not really new to America, although it may be new to many of us. The exposure travelers have gained to the rest of the world's colorful outdoor markets has no doubt been a factor in reconnecting many Americans to the farmers' market. How many thousands of American tourists have found themselves transfixed with delight by the bustle in Rome's lively Campo dei Fiori or the beautiful market in Nice, buying, perhaps, something to take on a picnic and vowing to do this at home?\n\nThis recent emergence of farmers' markets began in California about twenty-five years ago, with a legislative act that allowed farmers to sell directly to the consumer. What the farmer could sell was the produce that didn't conform to the industry standards\u2014fruits and vegetables that were too small, irregularly shaped, or otherwise lacking in some measure of visual perfection. Beyond the perfect apple or potato are those perfectly edible culls that are otherwise thrown away, but which many are happy to buy. So what if a pepper is a little crooked, or an onion is on the small side? There's a use for everything, and this screening for some idea of perfection wastes a great deal of food.\n\nSelling directly to the consumer worked well enough that it attracted farmers who started growing food expressly for the farmers' market, bypassing the wholesaler in part, if not altogether. \"Today,\" Ann Yonkers remarks, \"farmers' markets are the good news among the bad news in American agriculture. In a sector grim with stories of farm failures, consolidations, and rock-bottom farm prices, farmers' markets are growing and prospering.\" Here is where family farmers actually have a chance to make a living and make their small farms work. In fact, they may well be the best hope for the family farm. Quite possibly, they're the only hope.\n\nBut the idea of direct marketing has taken on other meanings, too, especially for consumers, who find almost as much value in having a direct connection with the farmer as in buying the food she grows. A shopper in New Mexico, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, expresses what others have told me in every market I've visited: \"Although I know the value and taste of food you've raised yourself, I think I value the exchange with the growers even more.\" When you think about it, the farmers' market is really about the only place left in our lives where we can interact with someone who makes something we use. And it's hard to imagine what is more vital or intimate than the food we consume, for it becomes our health, our pleasure, our nourishment, who we are, in fact. Today it is farmers who are providing the fragile connection that binds us in a meaningful way to our own humanity. In this sense, they are selling far more than tomatoes.\n\n_Direct marketing_. Dry words that are loaded with great possibilities mean that at the farmers' market a shopper can look the farmer in the eye, ask a question, or express appreciation for work well done. They mean we can trust our food sources, for we can come to know those who actually grew the vegetables and the fruit, raised the chicken, milked the goats, and made the cheese. And they make it possible to sit down to dinner and put a face and a name to everything we're eating\u2014from the vegetables and meats to the honey, preserves, and sometimes even the candles, flowers, and tea. Although this didn't used to be so, knowing who produced what we eat is one of the most extraordinary experiences a diner can have today, one that allows us to discover that our lives are inextricably connected to others'. The feeling that comes from eating such a meal is better than any amount of gourmet finesse you might imagine, although that needn't be excluded. In fact, they may well be one and the same. To me they are. Eating well is about finding the source, then cooking from it, however simply, rather than relying on fine imports from afar, no matter how sublime they may be.\n\nMany people still think that the farmers' market is where you go for cheap food, and sometimes there are bargains to be found. But we would do better to think of the farmers' market as the place where we can find food that is impeccably fresh and delicious, truly local and therefore truly seasonal, quite likely raised by sound, sustainable methods and by someone who might become your friend. This is where you can be assured that your food is not genetically modified or irradiated. The chicken, meat, and eggs you find will not have been raised in huge factory farms, treated with antibiotics, or fed hormones. This is food that tastes so good that little has to be done to it in the kitchen. The price we pay may well be higher than that in the supermarket, and it should be, for it comes closer to reflecting the true costs of growing good food, although it doesn't necessarily cover them. Most family farmers have day jobs, or a spouse who does. Parker Bosley, the chef-owner of Parker's Restaurant and Bistro in Cleveland, has worked closely with farmers and ranchers for twenty years. He once grumbled to me, \"People will drive across town to shop at Saks, but they won't go to the farmers' market and pay a little more to eat well.\" When food is cheap, we tend to treat it carelessly and wastefully. But when it's dear, when it costs what it's actually worth, we tend to pay closer attention to it. In this sense, good food can sharply focus our world.\n\nFarmers get a pretty small piece of each dollar you spend in your supermarket, from 7 to 25 cents, depending on whether it's wheat, corn, or tomatoes. The rest is distributed along a long chain of handlers that involve packagers, transport, and marketing. If produce were sold for the amount the farmer actually gets for it, you'd think it was an incredible steal. (Try 9 cents for a head of lettuce, as opposed to the $1.29 charged in the supermarket.) But that low price is what farmers have to live on. It's not surprising that family farms have failed so badly in the larger marketplace.\n\nWhile farmers' markets may be about making a living for the farmer, for the consumer they are not only about fruits and vegetables but about slowing down and taking time to enjoy choosing our food and, later, cooking and eating it. You won't find children nagging their mothers for candy and junk food. You won't find people rushing through their shopping as if it's an odious task to be gotten through as quickly as possible. The market will smell good, not like floor wax and cleaners. You will run into friends and meet new ones. You might find yourself sharing recipes or making a plan to share a meal that evening with someone you've met at the market. I can't tell you how many impromptu dinner parties I've overheard being planned on any Saturday morning. Here you'll have an opportunity to taste foods you've never tasted before, or to ask a farmer a question you've long been meaning to ask. You might be inspired to try something new when you see a chef demonstrate how to use it. After shopping you might stash all your finds in a cooler in your car and go back to the market to have a cup of coffee with a friend. What a civilized way to spend a morning.\n\nChildren, those so-called recalcitrant consumers of vegetables, can become good eaters when they see the connection between the farmer and the food they eat. This is especially true if they have a chance to participate in some kind of farming experience, such as picking strawberries or gathering eggs at a farm stand, learning about honey at the market, visiting a farm or farmers' market. They won't know it, but they're learning good eating habits by developing a taste for truly fresh, delicious food when they're young, which will inform their food choices and affect their health over a lifetime.\n\nFinally, other intangible benefits and delights that come from the market have to do with the food we find there. Colors, pattern, charm, fragrance, flavor, and variety conspire to fill us with ideas. I know of absolutely no one who goes to the farmers' market with a list and comes home with just what's on it, or who doesn't spend every penny she brought. Instead, we shoppers tend to get carried away. You come home and can't decide whether to put all your produce out on the table to look at it, or to cook it. You fill a vase with armloads of larkspur or sunflowers, then go back to the kitchen. Perhaps you're thrilled about a treasure you've found, some wild berries or a basket of Wolf River apples that you know will make the best pie ever, or those pretty blue and green Araucana eggs. If it's summer, there are those gorgeous eggplants, perfumed Ogen melons, the moist shelling beans, and delicate white nectarines. If it's spring, it might be wild nettles, green garlic, and thick, crisp asparagus that excites us. In late fall it is those handsome Hubbard squash and gnarly roots that start to look enticing, or the promise of a golden quince. You are incalculably rich and happy at this moment.\n\nAlthough you might be tempted to cook everything you've bought as soon as you get home\u2014a Saturday-night feast is common in our house\u2014this food will last very well, since it hasn't traveled long distances. It is said that the average distance food travels in our country is fifteen hundred miles. I suspect it's more, now that we regularly import food from New Zealand and Chile, as well as Israel and Spain. Fewer miles from farm to market mean that food is fresher, more nutritious, and better tasting, and miles-to-market can be as few as two, ten, or a hundred at a farmers' market. Food comes from somewhere, not somewhere else. \"When we turn elsewhere for our agriculture needs,\" one of our farmers says, \"we're giving away the most precious thing we have, our independence with regard to food.\" Farmers' markets are helping local agriculture economies to become sound by forging strong urban-rural connections.\n\nAfter experiencing the many joys and satisfactions that the farmers' market provides, we can't help but become aware of such things as land value assessment, water allocation, approval of new developments on agricultural land. As these are issues that affect us all at the table, eating is, indeed, a political act. Supporting land trusts and agricultural easements is one way to insure that farmland will exist. But making sure that farmers can enjoy financially sustainable lives is perhaps the most important way we can ensure that real farm foods remain a part of our lives. If young people are to be attracted to a life of farming, they have to be able to expect a reasonable financial return for their hard work, even if that work is fueled with passion and commitment.\n\nWe get a lot for the dollars we spend at the farmers' market. There are many threads there which, when woven together, create the fabric of a civilized life where the production of good and nourishing food coincides with healthy communities. It is where there is a give-and-take between independence and cooperation, urban and rural life. Here is a flourishing platform for diversity, a sense of security and connection to our landscape and our neighbors. And the market is also a source of joy. For me the farmers' market has been the key to becoming more deeply at home where I live, which is not the place I'm from, as is true with so many of us. When all is said and done, I can't think of a better thing to do than go to the farmers' market.\n\n**A NOTE ABOUT THE ARRANGEMENT OF CHAPTERS**\n\nRather than letting the parts of the meal dictate the order of recipes, botanical families and regional seasons themselves have been given that guiding role. Regardless of the actual month of the year, most markets open with the same foods (greens, salad, herbs, green garlic) and end up with the same foods (roots and tubers, apples and squash), while corn, tomatoes, squash, melons all tend to arrive around the same time in summer. Quite often fruits and vegetables that are related botanically share qualities of taste and use, and when that's the case, I've grouped them together: stone fruits (peaches, apricots, cherries, and plums), for example, or the nightshades (eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes). My categories are admittedly more fluid than they are absolute\u2014for the seasons themselves are that way. Some foods share more than one category\u2014cabbages like cool weather, as do turnips, which are also roots, and so forth. But one thing I know for certain is that what's in season depends more than anything on where you live. Season never stands apart from location. Local and seasonal, space and time, are really the same thing.\n\nBecause I live in Santa Fe and have been an active participant in the life of our farmers' market for the past twelve years as a shopper, market manager, and board member, I have referred to our market as a touchstone throughout the book. However, this is not a book about the Santa Fe farmers' market; it's simply the market I know best. And after years of visiting other markets and talking with their managers, farmers, and shoppers, I believe they are as universal as they are particular.\n\n**MARKET TIPS**\n\n1. Plan to spend time\u2014slow time\u2014at the market. Start by walking around to see what's there before you start to shop, especially if you're new to the market. It's fine to buy randomly, choosing what looks good and appeals to you, but if you take a few minutes to stroll around, you may also find some menus and recipe ideas forming in your head.\n\n2. If you don't recognize what it is you're looking at, or need a tip on how to use it, ask the growers. They don't always know, but often they do, or they have recipes available. And if you ask in a loud enough voice, invariably a nearby customer or two will chime in with a few ideas. And don't forget to consult your cookbooks.\n\n3. Bring cash. Some farmers will accept a check, especially after they've seen you shopping at the market for a while, but many don't. If possible, try to show up with small bills.\n\n4. If it's important to you that your food be organic, ask if it is or how it's been raised. It may be unsprayed _(pesticide free)_ or on its way to becoming organic _(transitional)_ or organic. Those who have been certified will most likely have their certificate on display. However, not all organic farmers choose to become certified, a process that can be prohibitively expensive and enormously time consuming. They may prefer to rest their claims as to how they farm on trust and the openness they enjoy with their customers.\n\n5. If someone offers you a taste of something, take it! It doesn't commit you to buy. Farmers _want_ you to taste their food. You might discover something new that you like, or you might find that what a farmer sells is not the same as what you find in the store. Vineripened kiwifruit, for example, are sweet and tropical tasting rather than sour. A taste could change your mind about a fruit or vegetable.\n\n6. Take a feast-now approach when shopping. Unlike at the supermarket, the appearance of a particular fruit or vegetable is often short, and when something's gone, it's _gone_. When you find something you really like, ask how long it will be available. A favorite peach might be around for only two weeks, so buy accordingly and enjoy.\n\n7. If you think it will be a while before you get home from the market, bring a cooler. It will help keep your food fresh while you stay on to visit or do other errands. And if it's berry season, you might want to have a basket or plastic bag for transferring really juicy fruit, such as mulberries, from the paper bags they're sometimes sold in.\n\n8. Take your kids along and let them buy a few things from a farmer, too.\n\n9. If you have a chance to take a farm tour, do. It always deepens our appreciation for and understanding of where our food really comes from to walk down the same rows the farmer does. It's also a way to get to know the farmers.\n\n10. If you don't like shopping, but you enjoy the farm food that the farmers' market offers, consider joining a CSA\u2014a farm that participates in Community Supported Agriculture. In a nutshell, the consumer, in exchange for buying a share early in the year when farmers are months away from receiving any income, receives a steady delivery of produce when it finally does come into season. The consumer shares the risks and enjoys the benefits, along with the farmer.\n\n**NOTES ON INGREDIENTS USED**\n\nThese are the ingredients I've used throughout the book. You, of course, may have other preferences.\n\nALL PRODUCE is assumed to be washed.\n\nBUTTER: I have called for unsalted butter throughout, but it is especially important in pastry and dessert making for its purity of flavor. Also, it's difficult to taste for salt when making desserts, or to add it once a batter or dough is made. For savory dishes, salted butter is fine if that's what you have. You will be using more salt in any case, and adjusting to taste is usually easy to accomplish.\n\nCREAM: I use heavy whipping cream, which is what we have in the West. If possible, I use cream that hasn't been ultra-pasteurized, a process that robs cream of its flavor.\n\nEGGS: Unless otherwise stated, they're large. However, eggs from the farmers' market aren't always graded for size, so you may need to be a bit more relaxed in approximating what a large egg is exactly. For the most part, I can't imagine that exact size matters terribly, at least in these recipes. What does matter is the flavor.\n\nMILK: Unless otherwise called for, I use 2 percent. In some dishes, soy milk works fine as well, especially those with lots of other overriding flavors.\n\nOLIVE OIL: Extra virgin olive oil is what I've used throughout the book when olive oil is called for, even if it just says \"olive oil.\" For everyday cooking and saut\u00e9eing, this is likely to be a good-quality, reliable oil, such as Colavita. But I also have special bottles of fine olive oils gleaned on travels, such as the Barianis' or the Sciabicas' oils, that I may set aside for a special use as a finishing oil. When that's the case, I've called for extra virgin, meaning your favorite olive oil.\n\nONION: 1 onion = medium yellow or white onion (4 to 6 ounces). A medium onion yields about 1 cup chopped or sliced.\n\nPARMESAN CHEESE: I usually use Parmigiano-Reggiano, but a less expensive Parmesan-type cheese will be fine, too, as long as it's freshly grated, as all grated cheeses should be. I've specified Parmigiano-Reggiano in those dishes where it seems more essential, such as a risotto, or a dish in which it is specially featured, such as a fennel salad.\n\nPEPPER: Whatever the color, it's always freshly ground. I use white mainly in dishes that are white, where the black flecks could be off-putting.\n\nSALT: I have used sea salt exclusively: fine salt for cooking and flaky Malden sea salt for seasoning at the table. If you prefer to use another kind, you might find yourself using a little more, since sea salt is often \"saltier\" than other kinds.\n\nROASTED PEANUT OIL: A very aromatic, tasty, full-flavored oil that smells of roasted peanuts. I use a brand called Loriva. Their website is Loriva.com if you can't find it where you live.\n\nWINE: Unless otherwise stated, wine used in cooking is dry, which is what most people drink and tend to have sitting around on their counters.\n\n**MEAT IN THE MARKET**\n\nWhile many of my readers expect me never to stray from a vegetarian approach, I can't ignore the fact that meat is a growing feature in farmers' markets, and for good reasons. One has to do with its quality, which is often superb. But there are also those aspects that address a larger picture: Increasingly, people want to know that the meat they're buying is free of added hormones and antibiotics and that the animals haven't been fed foods they shouldn't be eating, such as other animals. They also want to know that the chickens, beef, buffalo, and lamb they're buying have been raised in a kind and humane way by people who consider the needs of animals as animals rather than units of production. Many of us are also concerned about the damaging effects that large-scale animal production wreak on the environment, to which small-scale animal husbandry is a proven sound alternative, while others are particularly interested in grass-fed meat both for its flavor and its beneficial nutritional profile. In case after case, those farmers and ranchers who sell at farmers' markets are meeting these concerns, and regardless of my own proclivities towards eating meat or not (and I do enjoy it occasionally), I heartily applaud their efforts. They are a part of the changing face of American farming and should be included in this portrait.\n\nIt's spring, and farmers' markets across the country are beginning to open. Greens are the vegetables that many will start out with. They're what you can count on finding early in the season. And depending on where you live, greens may flourish throughout the duration of the season, or they may disappear as soon as some real heat comes on. Greens like it cool, and some even like it cold. Salad greens are a huge challenge in Phoenix past March, which is just when they're looking great in Santa Monica. They might be diminishing in Sacramento by about June, but in Santa Fe or Londonderry, Vermont, they're with us from start to finish.\n\nA key sign that it's spring isn't only that greens are available but that they have an irrepressible quality. They practically glow. I've picked up bunches of kale that squeak with vitality, spinach and chard that bounce with life. The arugula is nutty, not bitter; chicories have a sweet edge from the last frost of the season. Potherbs, like sorrel, nettles, and wild spinach, are tender and delicate, and the deep reds of the red lettuces, like Merlot, haven't lost their luster as long as there are those nightly temperature dips. This is also when you might find miner's lettuce, chickweed, and other edible weeds, which, if you haven't tried them, make exciting additions to salads.\n\nThis green glory will fade as the season progresses into labored production, when hot days and nights keep plants churning and growing overtime. But for now, everything leafy is at its very best. This, in fact, is one of the prime times for big green salads, now and the fall. Come midsummer, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers will better fill that role.\n\n**TheSimplest Tender Greens** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nIf your greens are tender and not too voluminous for your pan, simply wilt them in a skillet with the water that clings to their leaves after washing, or steam them. Although boiling is usually considered a less nutritious way of cooking vegetables, the more quickly they cook, the fewer nutrients they lose, and tender greens will spend only the briefest time in a big pot of boiling water.\n\nThese methods are especially well suited to those quick-cooking greens, such as spinach, young chard, and wild spinach, although tougher greens, like kale, can also be treated this way if simply cooked a bit longer. (For the more assertive greens, like mustard, see this recipe.) In general, 2 or 3 people can easily consume a pound of greens, for they shrink to nearly nothing.\n\n**1 to 2 pounds greens, coarse stems removed**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**olive oil or unsalted butter**\n\n**lemon wedges or vinegar**\n\n1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. While it's heating, wash the greens.\n\n2. Add salt to taste to the water, then plunge in the greens all at once. Cook just until they're tender, then scoop them into a colander. Leave them to drain for 2 to 5 minutes.\n\n3. Toss the greens with olive oil or butter to taste and season with salt and pepper. Put them in a bowl or on a platter and serve with the lemon wedges or vinegar. A bit of acid always benefits greens.\n\nCOOKING GREENS IN THE PAN: Put greens that have been washed but not dried in a wide skillet and sprinkle with salt. Cook over high heat until tender, for 3 to 5 minutes, turning them occasionally with tongs. Lift them out of the pan, leaving any liquid behind. Toss with butter or oil, taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve with the lemon wedges or vinegar.\n\n_Chard and Cilantro Soup with Noodle Nests_\n\n**Chard and Cilantro Soup with Noodle Nests** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nCool-weather markets can count on a steady supply of chard and cilantro, which get together in this pretty soup. Diana Kennedy is responsible for the noodle nests\u2014I never would have come up with them myself\u2014but they're a great addition, giving texture and substance to a light soup. Consider using them in place of dumplings and croutons in other brothy soups.\n\nTHE NOODLE NESTS\n\n2 eggs, separated\n\n3 ounces (1\u00be cups) fine egg noodles such as fideos or capellini, uncooked\n\n\u2153 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese\n\n2 tablespoons chopped cilantro\n\nsea salt\n\npeanut oil for frying\n\n1. Beat the egg whites until they hold firm peaks, then stir in the yolks, noodles, cheese, and cilantro. Season with a few pinches of salt, then really work the mixture with your hands or a wooden spoon so that it's more or less homogenous. It will look impossibly dry and stiff.\n\n2. Heat enough oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat to float the noodles, at least \u2153 inch. When it's hot, drop the batter into the oil, dividing it into 4 or 6 portions by eye. Fry until golden, about 1 minute, then turn and fry the second side, another minute. Set aside on paper towels. These can be made hours ahead of time.\n\n**THE SOUP**\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\n2 bunches scallions, including an inch or 2 of the greens, finely chopped\n\n1 celery rib, diced\n\n1 cup finely chopped cilantro stems and leaves, packed\n\nleaves from 1 bunch chard, green or Rainbow (Bright Lights), about 6 cups, packed\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n6 cups Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\ncilantro sprigs for garnish\n\n1. Warm the oil in a soup pot. Add the scallions and celery and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. After a few minutes, add the cilantro and \u00bd cup water so that the vegetables stew rather than fry. Add the chard leaves, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt, then cover and cook until the chard has wilted down. Add the stock or water.\n\n2. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and add the noodle nests to the pot. Simmer until the chard is tender, about 10 minutes. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Ladle the soup into soup plates, include a noodle nest in each bowl, and serve garnished with a sprig of cilantro.\n\n**Hearty PungentGreens with Anchovies and Garlic** | SERVES 4\n\nLike salad mix, jumbles of cooking greens have become a fairly regular feature at farmers' markets across the country. These typically include mustard or turnip greens, small chard and beet greens, dandelion, different kales, tatsoi, and other Asian greens. If they're really small and tender, simply saut\u00e9 the greens in olive oil flavored with garlic, pepper flakes, and anchovy. If the greens are larger and tougher and need further tempering, drop them into a big pot of boiling salted water, keep them there long enough to wilt them to near tenderness\u2014a few minutes\u2014then drain. Press out the bulk of the moisture, then finish them in the pan.\n\nFour cups of hearty cooking greens, very loosely packed, weighs about \u00bc pound and will cook down to a cup.\n\n1 pound or more cooking greens\n\nsea salt\n\nolive oil\n\n1 or 2 plump garlic cloves, chopped\n\n4 anchovies, optional\n\ngood pinch red pepper flakes\n\nred wine vinegar\n\n1. Wash the greens well. If there are any stems or ribs that seem tough, remove them. Parboil the leaves in salted water as described in the headnote, or not, as needed.\n\n2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a saut\u00e9 pan over medium heat with the garlic, anchovies, and pepper flakes. Mash the anchovies with a fork until they disappear into the oil. Before the garlic colors, add the raw or cooked greens, raise the heat to high, and saut\u00e9, turning frequently, until tender. (If the greens prove tougher than you thought and need more time to cook, add water in \u00bd-cup increments so that they steam until done.) Taste for salt\u2014they may not need any if you've used the anchovies.\n\n3. Pile the greens onto a platter and douse lightly with vinegar.\n\n**Green Herb Soup withSorrel and Lovage** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nSorrel fares miserably when packaged in plastic clamshells\u2014it just falls apart. Plus sorrel is something you want to use by the bunch, not just by the leaf, and the farmers' market is one place you can often find this tart, lemony herb in abundance. Lovage is harder to find, even at the farmers' market, but ask an herb seller if she has some or would consider growing it. It's an easy herb to grow, and its bracing, dynamic flavor adds a lot of personality to all kinds of dishes. Together these herbs give this soup a mysterious flavor that's a little hard to place but definitely exciting. (A small bunch of cilantro would do the same thing, lacking the other herbs.)\n\nMade with the lesser amount of liquid, the soup is thick and hearty. Using the full amount makes a more refined soup. Serve with small croutons crisped in olive oil or with a few tablespoons of cooked rice in each bowl.\n\n1 tablespoon unsalted butter\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\n1 red onion, thinly sliced\n\n2 small potatoes, thinly sliced\n\n1 carrot, thinly sliced\n\n3 to 4 cups (6 to 8 ounces) sorrel, stems removed\n\n4 cups chard leaves\n\n1 cup lovage or cilantro leaves, finely chopped\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n4 to 6 cups Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\nlemon juice or white wine vinegar\n\n\u2153 cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\n1. Warm the butter and oil in a soup pot. Add the onion, potatoes, carrot, sorrel, and chard, along with the water clinging to its leaves. Add two thirds of the lovage and sprinkle 1\u00bd teaspoons salt over all. Cover and cook over low heat until the greens have collapsed and the potatoes are partially cooked, about 15 minutes. If the pan seems too dry at any point, add water in small increments so that nothing burns.\n\n2. Add the stock or water, bring to a boil, and simmer, partially covered, for 15 minutes. Puree or leave the soup with some texture. Stir in the remaining lovage. Taste for salt and season with pepper and lemon juice or vinegar to taste to bring out the flavors. Sometimes several adjustments are necessary to get it right. Stir in the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and serve.\n\n**WILD AND UNUSUALGREENS**\n\nAside from your own backyard or through your own foraging skills, the only place you're going to find greens such as these is a farmers' market. Keep your eye out for them and give them a try.\n\nAMARANTH An edible carpet of soft, pink leaves was the spring result of a summer amaranth planting in my garden. Leaves like these are the ones you're most likely to find at the market\u2014green on top and a pearly shade of pink-plum beneath. Though one variety goes by the name of Pink Cress, it has none of the hot and spicy characteristics of true cress. In fact it's exceedingly mild. Use tender amaranth leaves in a salad. If they're large, or you have them in quantity, you can cook them, as you would spinach.\n\nCHICKWEED Just a few tufts of this sour little garden weed added to a salad will wake up the tongue!\n\nCLAYTONIA, OR MINER'S LETTUCE Both wild and cultivated, small white flowers bloom from the tiered, circular leaves of this charming plant. Miner's lettuce is as tender as can be. Add it to salad, but keep the dressing light so that the leaves don't collapse. Or simply strew them over the top of your salad.\n\nCORN SALAD (M\u00c2CHE) A cultivated green that's not seen often enough, the rosettes of spoon-shaped leaves are extremely tender and particularly good with beets. To serve the pretty rosettes whole, in clumps, you'll need to ascertain how sandy they are and if they can really be cleaned with a long soak and a gentle rinse in cold water. Soil does get down into the basal leaves. Taken apart, the single leaves don't have the compelling look that they have when grouped. However, they make a great addition to other greens in the salad bowl.\n\nUPLAND, ROCK, PEPPER, BROADLEAF, AND CURLY CRESS All of these cresses (and there are more) are hot and peppery, but the shape of their leaves, their colors, and everything else about them differs from true watercress. Nonetheless, a few sprigs can make a spicy addition to a salad or a sandwich. Taste first, though. Lively can turn aggressive, in which case a little goes a long way.\n\nLAMB'S-QUARTERS, GOOD KING HENRY, _QUELITES_ , WILD SPINACH Here's a wild plant (and a cultivar) whose greens are tender like spinach but with a slight edge of the wild in their flavor. Lamb's-quarters taste as if they're bound to be good for you\u2014in a good way, that is, for they're mild and quite delectable. They're always delicious steamed until tender, after just a few minutes, then treated as you would their relatives, spinach and chard. Among the various cultivars, there's one that's stunning in a salad, Magenta Spreen lamb's-quarters, available from Seeds of Change. It goes from magenta at the base to lilac and finally to green.\n\nPURSLANE There is the wild purslane that skirts along the ground of vegetable gardens everywhere, and there are cultivars that have much larger leaves\u2014a bit more satisfying to use. You may see both at the farmers' market. When young and small, purslane can be added to a salad with no preparation except to wash it well and pluck the clumps of thick, fleshy leaves from their stems. Later, when it's a bit more weathered, parboil it first in salted water for about 1 minute, then use it in salads. Purslane is succulent, crispy, and a bit tart. In Santa Fe, the Hispanic farmers who bring purslane, or _verdolagas_ as they're called in Spanish, suggest frying them with onions (very good) or cooking them with pinto beans. You can also use them in potato salads.\n\nRED OR RUBY ORACH OR MOUNTAIN SPINACH Because it thrives in weather that's too hot for true spinach, you might be able to find this in your market during the height of the summer. The leaves are soft and large, pointed at the tips, and magenta on the surface facing the ground. The purple turns green when cooked, but it also bleeds, staining foods like pasta pink. The flavor of orach is not unlike spinach, and it can be used in the same way. While this is something of an exotic to most people, it has been in the American garden since the early 1800s and is frequently offered at farmers' markets.\n\nSTINGING NETTLES Though weeds to most and often an annoyance as well, for their tiny hairs do sting when you brush up against them, once plunged into boiling water (pick them up with tongs), nettles become as compliant as any other green. They also produce a vibrant broth that is densely rich in vitamins and minerals. Although nettles are suddenly becoming chic in restaurants, they're still not a common find. I have, however, seen them in a few markets. It's hard to imagine a farmer who doesn't have a nettle patch somewhere on the property, so if none have appeared in your market, you might ask around. Here's a fledgling industry waiting for some enterprising weeder. Spring nettles are the best, and it's the tops, rather than the whole plant, that are preferable.\n\n**NettleSoup** | SERVES 6\n\nOne day I entered _nettles_ on the Web and found information about not only _Urtica dioica_ but also the Nettles Farm on Washington's Lummi Island. Intrigued, I called. A few months later I visited the farm where owners Riley Starks and Judy Olsen laughed in disbelief when I told them that some of our farmers actually plant nettles\u2014a necessity due to our dry climate. It _would_ seem strange if you were living in a moist and cool habitat that required you to clear them away on a regular basis, but Riley and Judy use their nettles, too. During my visit Judy made nettle ravioli, adding cooked pureed nettle tips\u2014an unbelievable shade of iron-park-bench green\u2014to her pasta dough. She also uses them for a spinach and herb filling for other ravioli. Nettles cook up easily and go beautifully with eggs. They can, after their preliminary blanching and a quick saut\u00e9 in olive oil, be perched on crostini or strewn over pasta or a pizza. And you know you're doing the right thing when you dip your spoon into a bowl of soup that's as green as Ireland. A friend told me that eating this soup made her feel like an animal that had been out grazing in the wild, which is just how a spring tonic should make one feel.\n\n6 to 8 ounces (a plastic vegetable bag filled) nettle leaves\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 cup sliced onion or scallion\n\n1 small potato, thinly sliced\n\n6 cups chard leaves, thinly sliced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n6 cups Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\n\u00bd cup cream\n\n1. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Using tongs or wearing gloves to handle them, plunge the nettles into a bowl of cold water and swish them back and forth, then drop them into the boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and chop coarsely, discarding any large stems.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot and add the onion and potato. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the chard, 1\u00bd teaspoons salt, and the stock. Bring to a boil, add the nettles, and simmer until the potato is completely soft, 15 to 20 minutes.\n\n3. Puree the soup until smooth, then return it to the stove. (If the nettles were stemmy, pass the soup through a food mill.) Add the cream, heat until hot, then taste for salt. Season well with pepper and serve plain or with whole wheat croutons browned in butter.\n\n**Lamb's-Quarterswith Sonoma Teleme Cheese** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nIf you look closely at the little bags of greens labeled \"spinach\" that are sold in our market in Santa Fe, you'll see that, in fact, they're _quelites_ , or wild spinach. Around the same time in Montpelier, Vermont, you might pick up some big verdant bunches of cultivated Good King Henry, or lamb's-quarters, as they're also known. Those in the know buy vast amounts. A few minutes of steaming and these greens are bright and tender. Some of the farmers tell me that they add them, once steamed, to saut\u00e9ed onions, which is very good. I sometimes add a little Teleme cheese, then wrap them in a corn tortilla to make a delicious _taquito_. Or I just serve them as a vegetable. They're excellent added to a pot of beans, too.\n\nTeleme has long been a northern California specialty, but now it's marketed nationwide. It has a pleasant acidity, as well as the most amazing ability to melt. Even when cold, Teleme is ready to run.\n\n10 ounces _quelites_ , lamb's-quarters, or spinach, stems removed\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 large shallot or small onion, diced\n\n1 garlic clove, finely chopped\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nfreshly grated nutmeg\n\n\u00bd cup Teleme or grated Monterey Jack cheese, more or less\n\n1. Wash the greens well, then steam or plunge into boiling water just until they're wilted. Drain, then rinse under cold water. Press out the excess water (they needn't be bone-dry) and chop finely or coarsely, as you wish.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a medium nonstick pan. Add the shallot and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes. Add the greens and cook until heated through and any water has evaporated. Season with salt to taste and scrape in just a little bit of nutmeg. Stir in half of the cheese.\n\n3. Scrape the greens into a bowl and spoon the remaining cheese over them. Season with pepper and serve.\n\n**Collards with Potatoes** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\n\"If it tastes like collards, it will sell at our market!\" Cynthia Hizer, former market manager of Atlanta's Morning-side market, assures me. Bacon, made without nitrates and from wholesomely raised pigs, has recently appeared in our market, and it is superb, especially with these greens, but just leave it out if you're not a bacon eater.\n\n2 bunches collard greens or a mixture of collards and kale\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n3 medium yellow-fleshed potatoes, scrubbed and coarsely diced\n\n3 or 4 strips bacon, cut into small pieces, optional\n\n2 tablespoons peanut or olive oil\n\n\u00bd onion, finely diced\n\n2 plump garlic cloves, finely chopped\n\ngood pinch red pepper flakes\n\nhot pepper sauce or vinegar for the table\n\n1. Strip the collard leaves from the stems and wash the greens. Bring a few quarts of water to a boil. Add salt and the greens, then simmer for 10 minutes. Scoop them into a bowl. Add the potatoes to the cooking water and simmer until tender, 7 to 10 minutes.\n\n2. Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned. Set it on paper towels to drain, discard the fat, and wipe out the pan.\n\n3. Return the pan to the heat, add the oil, and when it's hot, add the onion. Cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes.\n\n4. Coarsely chop the cooked greens, then add them to the pan along with the garlic and pepper flakes. Scoop some of the potato water into the pan as well so that everything cooks in a little moisture, adding more water as needed.\n\n5. When the potatoes are tender, scoop them out and add them to the greens. Add the bacon, then toss everything together. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Keep everything distinct or mash the potatoes into the greens. It's messy-looking this way but especially good. Season with pepper sauce or vinegar to taste.\n\n**Lasagne with Chard, Ricotta, and Walnuts** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nUsually lasagne has a b\u00e9chamel or tomato sauce for moisture, but here I just use milk. With the moist ricotta, it's enough to keep the noodles from drying out. Dipping no-boil noodles into boiling water for 1 minute makes them more moist and pliable, closer to fresh pasta. This fall lasagne should serve 6, but if you put it on the table with only 4 people present, it will be finished in a single sitting.\n\n1 cup freshly cracked walnuts\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 to 3 pounds (or bunches) chard, leaves only\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for the dish\n\n3 large garlic cloves, minced\n\n\u2153 cup white wine\n\n1 cup sheep's milk or cow's milk ricotta, preferably whole-milk\n\n1 cup freshly grated Parmesan\n\n2 (4-ounce) balls fresh mozzarella, coarsely grated\n\n1\u00bc cups milk\n\n1 (8-ounce) box no-boil lasagne noodles\n\n1. Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil for the chard and the pasta. Pre-heat the oven to 400\u00b0F, then toast the walnuts in a shallow pan until pale gold and fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. Chop finely and set aside.\n\n2. When the water boils, add 1 tablespoon salt and the chard. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes, even if the water doesn't return to a full boil. Scoop the chard into a colander and press out most of the water. Reserve the water. Finely chop the chard.\n\n3. Heat the oil in a wide skillet and add two thirds of the garlic, then the chard. Cook over medium-high heat, turning frequently, for several minutes, then add the wine and allow it to cook down. Turn off the heat.\n\n4. Combine the ricotta, Parmesan, all but \u00be cup of the mozzarella, and the remaining garlic in a bowl. Stir in \u2153 cup of the chard cooking water, then add the chard. Mix together, taste for salt, and season with pepper.\n\n5. Bring the water back to a boil. Lightly oil an 8 \u00d7 10- or 9 \u00d7 13-inch baking dish. Drizzle \u00bc cup milk over the dish. It won't go on evenly because of the oil, but this is all right.\n\n6. Drop 3 pieces of the instant pasta into the water and boil for 1 minute. Remove them and fit them in the baking dish. Sprinkle with \u00bc cup of the milk, a third of the cheese mixture, and \u00bc cup of the walnuts. Repeat twice more with the pasta, milk, cheese mixture, and nuts. When you get to the last layer, add the remaining milk, mozzarella, and walnuts. Place 4 toothpicks in the pasta to make a tent, then cover with foil, and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 10 minutes longer or until lightly browned on top. Let sit for 10 minutes, then cut into portions and serve.\n\n**Bright Lights ChardGratin** | SERVES 4 AS A MAIN DISH; 6 AS A SIDE DISH\n\nBright Lights or Rainbow chard is the variety with multicolored stems that are often smaller and more tender than the big silver leaf or red-leafed chard. It works beautifully here because of those narrow stems, but any variety can be used, of course. Other greens can go in with the chard as well, such as _quelites_ , nettles, sorrel, and spinach. Serve this gratin as a vegetarian main course or as a side dish.\n\n2 pounds chard, including half of the stems\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 onion, finely chopped\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 cup fresh bread crumbs\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n3 tablespoons chopped dill or parsley\n\n1 tablespoon flour\n\n1 cup milk or cream or a mixture of cream and stock\n\n1 cup crumbled fresh goat cheese\n\n1. Separate the leaves and chard stems. Wash the leaves in plenty of water, then coarsely chop them. Trim the ragged edges off the stems, wash them well, then dice them into small pieces.\n\n2. Melt half the butter in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and chard stems and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion has begun to brown a bit, about 20 minutes. Add the chard leaves, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt, and cook until they're wilted and tender, another 10 minutes.\n\n3. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F and lightly oil a 2-quart gratin dish. Melt half the remaining butter in a small skillet and add the bread crumbs, garlic, and dill. Cook, stirring for about a minute, then scrape the crumbs into a bowl and return the pan to the heat.\n\n4. Melt the last tablespoon of butter, stir in the flour, then whisk in the milk. Simmer for 5 minutes, season with \u00bd teaspoon salt, and add to the chard mixture. Add the cheese, then taste the mixture, correct for salt, and season with pepper.\n\n5. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and cover with the bread crumbs. Bake until heated through and golden on the surface, about 25 minutes. Let settle a few minutes before serving.\n\n**OPENING DAY AT THESANTA FE FARMERS' MARKET LATE APRIL**\n\nIf the winter was mild, our hopes are high; and if it's been cold, our expectations are low. Because our altitude is seven thousand feet, the first farmers' market of the season is usually meager. \"There was nothing there!\" you'll hear people say, for the corn, chile, tomatoes, and peppers that left such a vivid impression when they were here last year are months away. Instead, on this first day, there will be the dried foods\u2014ground chile, _chicos_ , and _posole_ , beans, peas, lentils. But there will also be some fresh ones: radishes, leeks that a farmer has wintered over, a mix of salad greens, sorrel and chives, maybe spinach, certainly fresh goat cheese, field-grazed chicken, and perhaps some green garlic or early chard. Every year more food is available at the start as our farmers become more adept at extending the season with structures that buy them time: greenhouses. They've also gotten better at storing food over the winter. So this year, for the first time, we began the season with fingerling potatoes and apples, the foods we usually end with, and long English cucumbers that we wouldn't normally see until late July. Our farmers' market, like all farmers' markets, is an ongoing experiment, a lively one in which customers and farmers both take part.\n\nAN EARLY MARKET MENU\n\nSpring Risotto with Sorrel\n\nChicken Breasts and Leeks Poached in an Herb Broth\n\nShredded Salad of Many Greens\n\nApple-Rhubarb Pandowdy\n\n**Mustard GreensBraised with Ginger, Cilantro, and Rice** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nBy the time the greens have cooked for 45 minutes, their sting is gone and they're tender and silky. If you prefer slightly milder greens, use one bunch each of mustard greens and chard, or all chard.\n\n2 big bunches mustard greens, coarse stems removed\n\n3 tablespoons vegetable oil\n\n1 onion, diced\n\n\u00bc cup white rice\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger\n\n1 teaspoon ground cumin\n\n1 teaspoon paprika\n\n1 cup chopped cilantro stems and leaves\n\nsea salt\n\nplain yogurt, Goat's Milk Yogurt with Cilantro and Mint, or lemon wedges\n\n1. Wash the mustard greens well, then chop, but don't dry them.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a wide, heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion, rice, ginger, cumin, and paprika. Stir to coat with the oil. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the cilantro and the mustard (and\/or chard) greens. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt, cover the pan, and cook until the volume has reduced, 10 to 15 minutes. Give everything a stir, then reduce the heat to low, re-cover, and cook slowly for 40 minutes. There should be ample moisture in the pot, but check once or twice to make sure that nothing is sticking on the bottom. If the pan seems dry, add a few tablespoons of water.\n\n3. Cook until the greens are really tender, 10 to 15 minutes more. Serve warm or at room temperature, with yogurt spooned over the top or a squeeze of fresh lemon.\n\n**Saut\u00e9ed Spinach Leaves withHedgehog Mushrooms** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nMy notes for the Hollywood farmers' market read simply, \"Everything plus.\" The \"plus\" part consists of things that are _not_ common to all markets, such as quince, pineapple guavas (feijoas), strawberries (yes, in October), fresh dates, green pistachio nuts, miniature lawns for apartment-bound felines, and an unusual selection of mushrooms. The \"everything\" part includes all the standard vegetables from A to Z, except that in this market almost nothing is ordinary. The cauliflower is salmon colored, and the green beans are extreme\u2014the largest of the large (Blue Lakes) and tiniest of the small ( _haricots verts_ ) I've ever seen. The shallots are breathtaking in their papery russet skins, and French-style goat cheeses are especially tempting in their rustic baskets.\n\nArriving an hour early to meet my friend food writer Amelia Saltsman, I also have time to discover that this is a great market for people watching and for eating. Come hungry and you can calm the pangs with a warm slice of focaccia covered with mascarpone, mozzarella, and sage, with a steamed tamale, or with a cappuccino and a pastry. Then pick a spot and watch the parade pass by. Some people enter the market looking as if they just finished a 5K run on the beach. Others look as if they haven't even been to bed yet. And I've never seen such a great assortment of hats!\n\nWhen Amelia arrives, we head off to the mushroom table. She is particularly enthusiastic about these mushrooms and their seller, David West, who is very knowledgeable about his exotic flora\u2014and not reluctant to share. I have watched him in action before on other visits, and it's clear that he's a natural teacher.\n\nWild mushrooms and the more exotic cultivars are not uncommon finds at farmers' markets. Chanterelles, porcini, morels, lobster mushrooms, utterly perfect fawn-colored oyster mushrooms, portobellos, and shiitake are just some of what you might find. Today David has shiitake, matsutake, pink and yellow oyster mushrooms, hedgehogs, black trumpets, and golden chanterelles. I watch a Japanese woman carefully consider some expensive matsutake mushrooms, highly prized in Japan. While she's thinking about them, David is busy explaining about his mushrooms to other customers and telling them how to cook them. He is passionate. We spend a good half hour watching him give out advice along with his bags of fungi. \"Black trumpets\u2014the Merlot of the mushroom world, smoky, strong. Chicken-of-the-woods? It tastes like grilled lemon chicken!\" \"Grill the portobello gill side up, and don't tip it! You'll want those juices!\" The patter is still going strong when we finally pull ourselves away. Some of David's advice goes home with Amelia, along with a pound of hedgehog mushrooms and a big bag of baby spinach. The dish she made that night definitely got the thumbs-up.\n\n1 pound hedgehog mushrooms, brushed clean\n\n1 pound baby spinach leaves\n\n3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 sweet onion such as Maui or Vidalia, or 1 red onion, cut into \u00bc-inch dice\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Leave the mushrooms whole, but snip off the ends of the stems if they feel tough. Wash the spinach well.\n\n2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saut\u00e9 until softened, about 3 minutes. Turn the heat to high, add the mushrooms, and saut\u00e9 until they're tender and most of the liquid, if any, has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and plenty of pepper. Transfer to a serving bowl or platter.\n\n3. Return the skillet to medium-high heat. Add another tablespoon of olive oil, swirl the pan, and in batches quickly saut\u00e9 the spinach just until wilted and a deep vibrant green. Season with salt and pepper, then toss with the mushrooms and onion.\n\n**Oyster Mushrooms with Cumin** | SERVES 4 AS AN APPETIZER\n\nHere's something good to do with those velvety oyster mushrooms that show up in so many markets. The mushrooms cook gently with onions or shallots and are seasoned in the end with cumin and cilantro. I serve these often as a first course, with grilled bread that's been lightly brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, and cut into fingers, or on a bed of greens, such as m\u0101che or deer tongue lettuce..\n\n\u00bd pound oyster mushrooms\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 small onion or 2 large shallots, thinly sliced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc to \u00bd teaspoon ground cumin\n\nfew drops sherry vinegar or lemon juice\n\n2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, to taste\n\n1. Separate the mushrooms and slice them lengthwise into pieces between \u00bd and 1 inch wide.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a medium skillet. Add the onion and saut\u00e9 for about 2 minutes over high heat, then add the mushrooms and saut\u00e9 1 minute more. Reduce the heat to medium-low, season with \u00bd teaspoon salt and some pepper along with the cumin. Cook gently, turning the mushrooms in the pan every so often, until they are tender, about 20 minutes, and browned a bit around the edges. Season with a few drops of vinegar, taste for salt, toss with the cilantro, and serve.\n\nWEATHER\n\nA big bank of steel-gray clouds is moving swiftly toward town. Pulses of lightning illuminate them, like _luminarias_. There is a low and continuous rumble of thunder, a wind is rising, and it looks as if all hell will break loose about the time the market is in full swing. But in the end the whole mass just blows over, dragging a blue sky behind it. Later that day, though, a storm does materialize, and it arrives with a volley of cracks that sound like gunshot. Outside hailstones as large as pullet eggs are bouncing off the roof. I run outdoors and gather a bowlful. They're oval shaped, having been spun through the clouds before slamming to earth. I have never seen hail so large or so perfectly formed. It stays in the freezer until we move from this house.\n\nWhile this was a terrific storm to watch, hail can destroy a crop in a matter of minutes. One August a farmer and I stood in his field and watched the sky turn black and then unleash its sharp blast of ice. It lasted two, maybe three minutes. When it passed, what had been salad greens were now shredded leaves beaten into the mud. A good portion of his year's income was gone. When it hit a neighboring farmer's field of kale and chard, the leaves were punctured rather than shredded. She brought them to market and explained that the holes in the leaves weren't from bugs, but few would buy. A farmer in Virginia tells me that they have \"hail sales\" when this happens, so that they'll get at least something for the greens before they begin to spoil where they've been punctured. Even though potatoes form safely underground, if their foliage is destroyed before the tubers have developed, there will be no crop. Light hail can leave apples and melons\u2014even tomatoes\u2014pockmarked. They're not so pretty, but they're not exactly ruined either. However, hail can absolutely destroy a crop of stone fruits, such as peaches.\n\nI recently witnessed a performance of a hailstorm, given by Mas Masumoto, the Fresno farmer who wrote the beautiful _Epitaph for a Peach_ , and his fifteen-year-old daughter Nikiko. Reading against the dramatic punctuation of their _taiko_ drums, Mas described the massive hailstorm that passed over his orchard and destroyed his family's crop of Sun Crest peaches one summer. The drums spelled out the fury of thunder, the sharpness of hail, the delicacy of the rain that followed, and the wash of dismay, anger, and acceptance Mas experienced as he stood, mute witness to destruction. This performance was given in San Francisco, but it took his urban audience right up to his front step and his view of the orchard, the storm, and the considerable risks that farmers take.\n\nLater Mas told me something I hadn't considered: After a storm, there's also the matter of the shredded leaves and hail-sliced peaches, which soon begin to rot. Cleanup can take weeks, and it takes a farmer right into the loss, day after day. This, I imagine, is when one's commitment to farming must be strong enough to include destruction along with the hope and promise that is renewed each spring.\n\nOf course hail isn't the only bad news for farmers. One March morning I called market manager Lynn Weddach in St. Augustine, Florida. I got her on her cell phone. \"Are you at the market right now?\" I asked. I needed to ask her a question about citrus fruit.\n\n\"Actually, I'm just closing the market because of the tornado warnings,\" she said, then added that in spite of all the big weather warnings the previous night, the day had turned out to be sunny and calm.\n\n\"So you could have had a market anyway?\" I asked her.\n\n\"We could have, but the fields were actually too wet to allow picking, so it all worked out.\"\n\nFarmers always need rain, but too much of it can be a problem if they can't get into their fields. Drought, of course, can also spell disaster. Hot, drying winds are death to flower growers; the blossoms wilt before they're even picked. Freak winds swooping down from the Arctic in midsummer can slow down the summer crops for a week or more, during which customers give up on the market because \"there aren't any tomatoes,\" Early freezes put a sudden end to peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants, only to be followed by six weeks of warm, unflawed weather: Indian summer. As if the weather itself weren't problematic enough, the extreme conditions produced by it often leave crops vulnerable to disease and insect infestation later in the season or the following year. No place is exempt from weather. No wonder farmers talk about it.\n\nOn the nightly news the forecast is always oriented to those who want nice weather for their weekend, even when rain is desperately needed. But if we experience our food as truly local, then we know that we're all in the same boat when it comes to weather. In a way we become a community through our shared concern. Farms feed us, so weather affects us all. Farmers shouldn't need a special farm report. What's good for the farmer is good for everyone else.\n\n**Spaghetti with Overgrown Arugula and Sheep's Milk Ricotta** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nOnce it gets hot out, those farmers who've been providing you with tender, small arugula may suddenly start bringing big, overgrown bunches to market. The leaves are too spicy to enjoy in a salad, and the stems are way too stringy to eat, but the leafy material can be plucked from the stems and cooked. Sheep's milk\u2014as well as cow's milk\u2014ricotta is a good match with the peppery arugula.\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd pound whole wheat spaghetti\n\n1 large bunch or bag (about \u00bd pound) mature arugula\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra virgin to finish\n\n1 plump garlic clove, chopped\n\nseveral pinches red pepper flakes\n\n\u00bd cup walnuts, toasted and chopped\n\n\u00bd cup sheep's milk ricotta\n\nfreshly grated pecorino cheese\n\n1. Heat plenty of water for the pasta. When it comes to a boil, add salt to taste and the spaghetti. Cook until al dente and drain. While the spaghetti is cooking, stem the arugula, chop coarsely, and wash. Do not dry.\n\n2. Warm the oil in a large skillet with the garlic and pepper flakes. Cook over medium heat until the garlic turns light gold, a minute or so, then add the arugula with the water clinging to its leaves. Season with a few pinches of salt and cook until wilted and tender, about 3 minutes. Add the cooked spaghetti directly to the pan, then toss with the walnuts, ricotta, and grated cheese. Season with pepper and serve with extra virgin olive oil drizzled over the top.\n\n**Shredded Salad of Many Greens** | SERVES 4\n\nI've always liked the way a chiffonade of greens looks with all the different lengths and shades of color wrapped around each other, but the taste is even better. Here is where you can use those greens that might be a little overwhelming on their own, such as dandelion, radish leaves, and sorrel. I often see people step back in surprise when they taste tart sorrel for the first time at the farmers' market, but when it's part of a collection of greens it becomes a highly desirable addition. As for the mix, there's no one way, but here's one\u2014more or less\u2014that I like.\n\n2 cups finely sliced napa cabbage\n\n2 cups finely sliced romaine, red leaf, or butter lettuce\n\n1 cup slivered dandelion greens\n\n2 cups finely slivered spinach, amaranth, or _quelites_\n\n1 Belgian endive, slivered\n\n\u00bd cup slivered parsley or half as much lovage\n\na few sorrel leaves, stems removed and leaves thinly sliced\n\n1 shallot, finely diced\n\n2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice plus 1 teaspoon grated zest\n\nsea salt\n\n4 to 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil\n\n1. Wash and dry all the greens, then toss them together in a bowl.\n\n2. Mix the shallot and lemon juice and zest with \u00bc teaspoon salt, then whisk in oil to taste.\n\n3. Toss the greens with a few pinches of salt, then with the dressing. Mound on plates and serve.\n\n**CHICORIES: THE BITTER GREENS**\n\nWhen I ordered the roasted radicchio with fresh mozzarella in a Los Angeles restaurant, the waiter told me flat out that I wouldn't like it. I guessed it was because of the bitterness of the radicchio\u2014lessened when cooked, but often a challenge for the sweet American palate. I can imagine that by this Sunday evening the waiter was tired of having had customers send back the special all week. He remained skeptical of my promise not to do that and was sullen until I had cleaned my plate.\n\nMild to strong bitterness is a characteristic shared by all of the chicories, which include radicchio, Belgian endive, escarole, curly endive or fris\u00e9e, the speckled Castelfranco, _pain de sucre_ or sugar loaf. All members of this group of leafy greens respond well to the heat of searing, grilling, and roasting. Heat seems to temper their bitter edge so that the underlying notes of nuttiness, which make chicories such an interesting group of plants, come forward. Even so, some bitterness will remain, which many people find pleasing. It's not meant to go away.\n\nOn the other hand, the bitterness shouldn't be so strong that you can't stand it. I've noticed that the long Treviso type of radicchio can be very strong indeed. With practice you can determine whether a brief blanching or an hour-long soaking in cold salty water is needed to soften the punch. If you discover your chicory is too bitter only after cooking it, don't throw it out, but consider chopping the leaves and adding them to white beans, where they add pungency to blandness, or to a risotto based on winter squash, where they balance sweetness.\n\nBecause it's popular and commands a good price, it's no longer uncommon to see radicchio at farmers' markets, the red, cabbage-shaped Chioggia variety being the most common. The heads are often looser and softer than those you'll find in a supermarket. You might also find the Treviso type with its long scarlet leaves. When the root of the Treviso is harvested and then sprouted, it turns into a long-leafed sea-like plant called _tardivo_ , something we may see more than just occasionally someday.\n\nAll the chicories are extraordinarily handsome plants, with strong, beautifully formed leaves. They seem to glow in the slanting fall light or the young spring light, the two seasons when they taste best, for a cold snap, as with so many vegetables, benefits their flavor. Once I was sent a box of four large heads of Castelfranco from a grower in Salinas, California. The cream-colored leaves were speckled and spotted with streaks of dark red, and they were every bit as beautiful as old-fashioned cabbage roses. In fact, it was hard to decide whether to cook them or arrange them. Fortunately there were enough to do both.\n\n**Freckles Meets Merlot in Vermont** | SERVES 6 OR MORE\n\n\"This weather is unusually cold and windy for July,\" Ellen Ogden, co-founder of the _Cook's Carden Catalogue_ , apologized to me as she offered me a jacket. I've noticed that we all do this, claim that the weather of the moment isn't what it should be. But chilly or not, I was delighted to be visiting Londonderry's little farmers' market with Ellen. The previous night we had eaten well from her garden; today we would see what others were growing.\n\nThis little market, which was set in a grassy field bordered by a creek on one side, had a familiar assemblage of midsummer vegetables, with a few stellar standouts, such as three kinds of big plump raspberries and enticing preserves made from all the different berries that grow in the Northeast. But it was the lettuces that were most striking, and I ended up using them in a class I was giving later that day.\n\nAmong the salad greens was a deep red loose-leaf lettuce named Merlot, which easily suggested the hue of that wine. There was also a selection of green and red-tipped oak leaf lettuces, a bronze-tinged iceberg, and the charming red-flecked romaine named Freckles. The leaves of these lettuces grouped themselves effortlessly into a luscious salad of red, purples, and greens, and although I might have stopped here, 1 couldn't help adding some of the market's plum-colored opal basil, flowering red oregano, and red scallions. The resulting salad was utterly alive and vivid for both the eye and the tongue.\n\nThere's always something like this happening at the market. Often it's not reproducible, for the following week that stunning speckled lettuce is gone, spotted by a shopper who arrived earlier, or perhaps the farmer has just run out. But if this combination is not to be had, quite assuredly another just as wonderful is waiting to be discovered.\n\n1 head red romaine\n\n1 head Freckles\n\n1 head Merlot or other bronze lettuce\n\n10 small opal basil leaves, torn\n\n1 bunch red scallions\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u2153 cup extra virgin olive oil\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons aged red wine vinegar\n\na few red oregano tips\n\n1. Remove the outer leaves of the lettuces, then separate the rest by slicing them off at their bases. If small, leave the leaves whole; otherwise tear them gently. Wash and dry them well. Put them in a spacious bowl with the basil leaves and scallions. Toss with a few pinches of salt,\n\n2. Whisk the olive oil, vinegar, and \u00bc teaspoon salt in a bowl, then pour it over the salad. Toss well, add pepper to taste and the herbs. Toss again, then mound on a large platter. Scatter the scallions, if they've fallen to the bottom, over the top and serve.\n\n**RadicchioSeared in the Skillet with Mozzarella** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nFor this dish I like to use a cast-iron skillet. Once it's hot, I sear the radicchio, turn down the heat, then let it cook slowly. It comes out with just enough bitterness to be enjoyable. Serve it as a side dish or as a vegetarian entree with a mound of soft polenta. The bitter, sweet, and nutty flavors of the radicchio and the corn make a good match.\n\n1 large head radicchio\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar\n\n1 (4-ounce) ball fresh mozzarella, cut into thin rounds\n\n1. Rinse the radicchio, then cut it into wedges about 1\u00bd inches across, keeping the root ends intact. Brush generously with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. When it's good and hot, add the radicchio. Press down on the wedges to ensure contact, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Turn and cook on the second side. The red will turn brownish, and the leaves should get crisp in places.\n\n3. Scatter the garlic over the radicchio, add the vinegar, and cover with the cheese. Cover the pan and cook just until the cheese is soft, 2 or 3 minutes. Season with pepper, arrange on a platter, and serve.\n\n**Oven-Roasted Treviso Chicory** | SERVES 4\n\nYou can cook most chicories this way\u2014radicchio, sugar loaf, or Castelfranco. However, Treviso, the one shaped like romaine, lends itself especially well to this method. Taste it before cooking. If it's extremely bitter, either blanch it briefly in boiling salted water first or soak it in a bowl of salted water for an hour.\n\n2 plump heads Treviso chicory\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Split the chicories lengthwise in half or, if large, into quarters. Rinse them well, but don't dry. The moisture will help them cook.\n\n2. Lay them cut side up in a baking dish. Brush most of the olive oil over the leaves and season well with salt and pepper. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, then turn and bake for 5 to 8 minutes longer. Turn them one last time so that the cut side is again facing up. When done the edges of the leaves should be nicely browned. Brush with the remaining oil and serve.\n\n**Pastawith Radicchio, White Beans, and Rosemary** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThe deep flavors of the rosemary, beans, their broth, and the radicchio make an all-vegetable dish that's remarkably robust. Gnocchi-shaped pasta or shells are perfect for the beans, which end up cradled in the folds of the dough. This isn't a particularly pretty dish\u2014the radicchio turns brown\u2014but if this bothers you, add a little chopped parsley before serving.\n\n1 cup dried large white beans, such as cannellini, _gigante_ , or runner beans\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u2153 cup olive oil\n\n1 red onion, finely diced\n\n3 plump garlic cloves, chopped\n\n2 tablespoons minced rosemary\n\n1 to 1\u00bd pounds radicchio, sliced into \u00bd-inch ribbons\n\n1 pound dried pasta, such as gnocchi or shells\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan\n\n1. Sort through the beans, rinse them, then put them in a pressure cooker with 2 quarts water, 1\u00bd teaspoons salt, and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Bring to pressure and cook on high for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the pressure to fall naturally, then open the pot. Take a taste. If the beans aren't fully tender, simmer them until they are. If you're not using a pressure cooker, soak the beans for 4 hours (or cover with boiling water and let stand for an hour), then drain. Rinse and re-cover with 2 quarts cold water. Add the salt and oil; bring to a boil and simmer, partially covered, until tender, about 1\u00bd hours. Drain and reserve the cooking water.\n\n2. Put on a pot of water for the pasta.\n\n3. Heat 2 tablespoons of the remaining oil in a wide skillet. Add the onion and saut\u00e9 over high heat until lightly browned around the edges, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, half the rosemary, and the radicchio and season with 1 teaspoon salt. Saut\u00e9 until the radicchio is limp, a few minutes longer, then add the beans and 1 cup of their cooking liquid. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. It's nice if there's a little broth at the end, so add liquid as needed.\n\n4. Salt the pasta water, add the pasta, and cook until al dente. When done, drain and add it immediately to the pan. Add the remaining rosemary and season well with pepper. Toss everything together, then divide among heated pasta bowls. Drizzle the remaining olive oil over each serving, add another twist of pepper, and lightly grate the cheese over all.\n\n**White Pizzawith Radicchio, Mushrooms, and Gorgonzola Cheese** | MAKES ONE 12-INCH PIZZA\n\n1 (4-ounce) ball fresh mozzarella\n\n1 large head radicchio\n\nolive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 large portobello mushroom\n\n\u00bd recipe Pizza Dough\n\n3 ounces Gorgonzola cheese\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 500\u00b0F. Thinly slice the mozzarella and set on paper towels to drain.\n\n2. Cut the radicchio into wedges about 2 inches thick. Brush with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Heat a cast-iron pan and, when hot, add the radicchio. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes, pressing lightly to open the leaves. Turn and cook the other side until the leaves are brownish but seared in places, another 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and chop coarsely.\n\n3. Remove the stem and scrape the gills from the mushroom. Slice into \u00bd-inch strips. Add 1 tablespoon oil to the skillet, then saut\u00e9 the mushroom over high heat until browned. Remove and season with salt and pepper.\n\n4. Roll or press the dough into a 12-inch circle, leaving the edge slightly raised. Transfer to a pizza pan, or, if using a stone, a peel dusted with cornmeal. Lay the mozzarella over the dough, add the radicchio and mushrooms, and bake for 10 minutes.\n\n5. Add the Gorgonzola and continue baking until the cheese is melted and the crust is browned, 10 minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper, then cut into wedges and serve.\n\n**Grilled Sugar Loaf Chicories** | SERVES 2\n\nThis marvelous-looking plant, when trimmed of its outer leaves, forms an elegantly scrolled cone about the size of a loaf of bread. You can serve them whole or chop them up and dress them with vinegar and olive oil. Endive and escarole are also delicious grilled.\n\n1 sugar loaf chicory ( _pain de sucre_ ), halved lengthwise\n\nolive oil as needed\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nbest-quality balsamic vinegar or aged red wine vinegar\n\n1. Rinse the chicory, then pat dry. Brush liberally with oil and season with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Prepare a fire or heat a grill. Grill the halves, turning them every few minutes until they're browned, wilted, and singed in places. This should take at least 15 minutes. Remove them to a large platter, season again with salt and pepper, and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and a few drops of vinegar.\n\n**ENDIVE AT THE MARKET**\n\nLucky shoppers at some of northern California's farmers' markets can buy packages of smooth white and red endive, raised by Richard Collins, the only commercial endive producer in the United States. Endive is not a common market vegetable, but it does appear now and then in markets around the country, whenever some adventurous gardener decides to give it a try. It's something of a challenge for, unlike other crops, it takes a two-part growing process to produce the plump chicons: Seed is planted, and a leafy head of chicory is formed. But instead of being eaten, it's lopped off in the field and the roots are harvested. The roots are then planted in complete darkness, where they eventually sprout a cone-shaped bud, which is detached and sold as endive. A raggedy open-leafed plant has become a smooth, silken cone of leaves that sit nicely in your hand. It's juicy, pleasantly crisp, and only slightly bitter.\n\nDon't overlook this delectable vegetable if you're lucky enough to find endive at your market. Buy generously! It's easy to use in a salad, and it's even better baked or saut\u00e9ed, and that's when a bag of endives can be a very attractive resource indeed. (In case you think this pale vegetable has no nutritive value, ounce for ounce it rivals the banana as a source of potassium; it's a decent source of vitamin B and fiber as well as microelements, which it metabolizes from the roots.) Endives keep well, but it's important to store them in the cold and the dark of your refrigerator so that the leaves don't turn green. They have intentionally been blanched to whiteness by being kept from the light, and that's the way you should keep them, too.\n\n**Endiveand Celeriac Chowder** | SERVES 4\n\nLadling this delicate, vegetable-laden chowder over toasted bread raises it to main-course status. If you don't want such a hearty dish, use a little less liquid and a few croutons to finish. Use only white endives for this soup. Red ones will make it look very dingy indeed.\n\n3 (about \u00be pound) plump Belgian endives\n\n2 leeks, white parts only, chopped and rinsed well\n\n2 shallots, chopped\n\n2 celery ribs, with leaves, diced\n\n\u00bd pound yellow-fleshed potatoes, peeled and diced into small cubes\n\n\u00bd pound celery root, peeled and cut into small dice\n\n2 large carrots, diced\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 teaspoons thyme leaves, chopped\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n5 to 6 cups Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd cup cream\n\nTO FINISH\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley\n\n1 tablespoon snipped chives\n\n1 teaspoon chopped tarragon\n\n4 slices country bread\n\n2 ounces Gruy\u00e8re cheese, thinly sliced\n\n1. Set aside 8 outer leaves of the endive, then quarter the remainder lengthwise and chop coarsely. Prepare the rest of the vegetables as suggested.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the vegetables, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables smell good and there's a little glaze on the bottom of the pot, about 7 minutes.\n\n3. Add stock or water to cover along with 2 teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, until the potatoes are soft to the point of falling apart, about 25 minutes. Press a few against the side of the pot to break them up or puree 1 or 2 cups of the vegetables to give the soup body. Pour in the cream, taste for salt, and season with pepper. Stir in half the herbs.\n\n4. Finely sliver the reserved endive leaves. Toast the bread and cut each piece into halves or quarters. Divide the pieces among 4 bowls and cover with the cheese. Ladle the soup over the toast and serve garnished with the remaining herbs and slivered endive.\n\n**Endiveon Toast with Gruy\u00e8re Cheese** | SERVES 8 AS AN APPETIZER; 2 AS SUPPER\n\nSlivered saut\u00e9ed endives can be made from start to finish in less than 15 minutes. This is one of my favorite appetizers or, made larger, last-minute suppers. The appearance of cooked endive is generally a bit dingy, but the flavor is nutty and the texture silky. Lemon juice helps keep the color lively, but don't overdo it.\n\n3 or 4 fat Belgian endives, about 5 ounces each\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n\u00bd lemon\n\n8 baguette slices or 2 large slices country bread\n\n\u00bd cup grated Gruy\u00e8re cheese\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Quarter the endives lengthwise, then cut them into long slivers or chop them into \u00bd-inch pieces.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet. When foamy, add the endive and cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until browned in places, about 12 minutes in all. Squeeze a little lemon over the endive.\n\n3. Meanwhile, preheat the broiler and toast the bread. Cover the toasted bread with as much of the cheese as it will easily hold. Stir the rest into the endive when it's finished cooking.\n\n4. When the endive is done, broil the toasts until the cheese is soft, then remove. Season the endive with salt and pepper, then spoon it over the toast and serve.\n\nVARIATION WITH FONTINA AND PROSCIUTTO: The flavor of thin slices of prosciutto is very good with endive\u2014and so is a glass of Belgian beer. Make the Endive on Toast, using Italian Fontina in place of Gruy\u00e8re cheese. Serve with the prosciutto draped over the endive.\n\n**Fris\u00e9e and Endive Salad with Mint and Pomegranate Seeds** | SERVES 6\n\nFris\u00e9e is the frizzy-leafed member of the chicory group. When blanched in the garden, the leaves are pale green\u2014almost white\u2014the flavor is mild, and the texture tender enough to use as a winter salad green.\n\nBlanching is accomplished either by planting the fris\u00e9e plants very close together or by tying the outer leaves around the inner ones. Grower Ric Gaudet said that one year the oats and other grasses, which went unweeded, grew up around the chicories and provided the shade and crowding they needed to remain tender and pale inside.\n\n\u2153 cup pine nuts\n\nsea salt\n\n1 head fris\u00e9e\n\n2 Belgian endives, red or green\n\n1 bunch watercress\n\n1 small pomegranate\n\n\u2153 cup fresh mint leaves, torn into small pieces\n\n3 scallions, including the firm greens, thinly sliced\n\n5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil\n\n1 tablespoon red wine vinegar or lemon juice, or more to taste\n\n1. Toast the pine nuts in a small skillet over medium heat, shuffling the pan back and forth until they're golden. Immediately dump them into a bowl and toss with a pinch of salt.\n\n2. Separate the fris\u00e9e leaves at the base, discarding the tough outer leaves. Sliver the endives. Remove the large, coarse stems from the watercress. Wash and dry the greens. You should have between 8 and 10 cups in all. Refrigerate until needed.\n\n3. Quarter the pomegranate and gently pry the pieces apart so that they don't spurt. Pick out the seeds from the membranes.\n\n4. Toss the greens with the mint and scallions. Sprinkle with salt and toss again. Pour the oil over them and toss until the greens are lightly coated. Add the vinegar, toss well, and taste for tartness and for salt. Divide among salad plates and garnish with the pine nuts and pomegranate seeds.\n\n**EARLY JUNE INSANTA FE**\n\nJune 1, and we're one month into our market season. There are not a lot of vegetables. The few beets and carrots sold out while I was making a tour to see what was there. But there are salad greens, some herbs, asparagus\u2014a real treat\u2014and some delectable green garlic.\n\nEveryone's green garlic is slightly larger than it was last week. The heads are now beginning to reveal their separate cloves, whereas last week there weren't any membranes dividing them, at least not noticeable ones. The garlic probably won't last more than a few weeks longer, but then it will begin to show up in its mature form, the heads hard, the cloves clearly distinct.\n\nThe same thing is happening with the spinach. Instead of the baby spinach leaves of the week before, there are large bouncy heads of some gorgeous crinkly variety grown by Stanley and RoseMary Crawford, two farmers who are actually best known for their garlic and for Stanley's writings about garlic. Today all of their garlic is secure in the field, but their spinach is not, and it's irresistible. I've never seen such vigorous-looking greens. They seem to stand upright in their crates, ready to jump out. I have the impression after cooking this spinach that there is definitely more volume than I'm accustomed to seeing from this water-filled green.\n\nThere are cartons of beautiful big brown eggs, rounds of fresh goat cheese, and rhubarb. There is also bread, for, like other markets, we have good bakers as well as farmers. Today there is a new bread, called Nativo, made with organic wheat, which has been grown and milled in northern New Mexico as wheat used to be. These loaves are the result of years of effort on the part of the baker and many others in the farming community, who wanted to see wheat return to our area. The bread is delicious.\n\nI have invited a new friend to lunch tomorrow, Sunday, so I am shopping this small market with that in mind. In spite of the meager offerings, a menu isn't difficult to compose. And everything was from New Mexico, even the champagne!\n\nA SUNDAY LUNCH FROM NEW MEXICO\n\nGruet Champagne\n\nNativo Bread with Radish Butter\n\nAsparagus Braised with Peas and Spring Onions\n\nSpinach and Green Garlic Souffl\u00e9\n\nRhubarb with Berries and Candied Ginger\n\n\"When you go to the grocery store, everything is in season all the time.\" It's Richard McCarthy talking, and we're standing in the Crescent City farmers' market in New Orleans, which he manages. He's making a point that crosses my mind every time I venture into the supermarket and see plums from Chile in February, feijoas from New Zealand in March, Clementines from Spain at the same moment they're plentiful in California. True, these are all in season somewhere, but what's truly in season has to do with where _you_ live. It's not some abstraction expressed in a magazine or the timeless season of the supermarket.\n\nSpring, bringing apple blossoms, moves ever northward. Asparagus tips puncture sandy soil in succession from southern California to Washington; migrant workers follow the harvest from south to north. Altitude plays a part, too, for the higher you climb, the cooler the weather, which means peas will be flourishing from July to September if you live at eight thousand feet and apricots will ripen, if they ripen at all, sometime after mid-August. Artichokes appear in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, along with the potherbs used to make the Lenten dish of _gumbo z'herbes_ immediately afterward. In the same week it might well be snowing in upstate New York, while the mercury has finally climbed to nearly fifty degrees in Albuquerque. Such disparity means that it's impossible to talk about season without, in the same breath, talking about place.\n\nWhat we do share, albeit at different dates, are moments when cool weather means warm but not hot days, nights that bring a chill but no killing frost. In my market visits I've seen the same cool-weather vegetable miscellany from Mesa, Arizona, to San Francisco; Atlanta to Washington to Missoula\u2014but at wildly disparate months. The date-anchored equinoxes and solstices apprise us of day lengths, but season is something we know more viscerally by the feel of the air, the foods we crave, and the foods that mature together. Curiously, foods that are in season together always taste good together, which is why you can feel confident when cooking intuitively from the farmers' market. Ratatouille, succotash, grapefruit and avocado salads, and rhubarb-strawberry pie offer proof of this maxim's validity.\n\nCool-weather crops are more or less the same wherever one goes. They include asparagus and artichokes, fennel, leeks, green garlic, greens of all kinds, spring onions, fava beans, peas, as well as chives and soft, minty sage. Rhubarb makes its appearance when it's still cool, too.\n\nSome of these spring vegetables will return in the fall, the other cool season, the one that's cooling down instead of warming up. There's the fall season of artichokes and fennel. Spring-planted leeks will have matured, and shallots are plentiful, though not so chives. The sage has a stronger flavor than it did a few months earlier. Asparagus does not return in the fall, but chicories and greens do. This means that we'll see some of the same vegetables, but in a slightly different alignment\u2014artichokes with potatoes, shallots, and rosemary, say, instead of artichokes with asparagus, spring onions, and chervil. All share a liking for cool, steady temperatures rather than the hot ones that are so appealing to the nightshades and summer squashes.\n\nA LIGHT COOL-WEATHER LUNCH FOR SPRING\n\nRadish Salad with Vella's Dry Jack Cheese\n\nFennel Soup with Saffron Dumplings\n\nA Cherry-Almond Loaf Cake\n\nA HEARTY COOL-WEATHER SUPPER FOR FALL\n\nRadicchio Seared in the Skillet with Mozzarella\n\nArtichokes and Jerusalem Artichokes Braised with Black Lentils with artisan pasta\n\nPear-Hazelnut Torte\n\n**Roasted Asparagus with Citrus Butter** | SERVES 4\n\nThe first asparagus of the season and the last citrus fruits have a great affinity for each other. Try tart Eureka or sweet Meyer lemons, blood oranges or calamansi limes, or other citrus juice and zest.\n\n1\u00bd pounds asparagus\n\n1 teaspoon olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup fresh citrus juice\n\n3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, chopped into chunks\n\n1 teaspoon grated citrus zest\n\n1. If the asparagus is thin, snap off the tough parts of the stalks where they break naturally. If thick, slice off the tough ends with a knife\u2014you can usually see a change in color where the stalks turn tender\u2014then peel them up to the tips.\n\n2. Soak the asparagus in cold water while you preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F, then drain and put them in a gratin dish. (They needn't be dry.) Toss with the oil and season with salt. Bake until the stalks are tender when pierced with the tip of a paring knife, 20 to 40 minutes, depending on their thickness.\n\n3. Boil the juice in a small skillet until it has reduced to about 1\u00bd tablespoons. Remove from the heat, whisk in the butter, then add the zest, a pinch of salt, and some pepper. When the asparagus is done, remove it to a platter and spoon the sauce over it.\n\n**ASPARAGUS AND ARTICHOKES**\n\nWilfred Guttierrez, our lone farmer who grows asparagus, told me that for years he had been intending to diversify his garden with an asparagus planting but just hadn't gotten around to it. When a neighbor offered him crowns to plant, he protested that he didn't know how, but he planted them anyway. Three years later he was in the market with a large blue ice chest, a piece of cardboard with the word _asparagus_ scrawled across it, and a long line of customers. Big and little stalks were mixed together; their uniformity lay in their extraordinary taste, not their shape or size. Some were violet tipped; others inadvertently blanched to whiteness due to a heavy covering of mulch. It was good to see asparagus that wasn't choked with rubber bands, and even nicer to be able to rove through the pile and choose the spears you wanted. I think the fat ones are much tastier and more fun to eat because there's something there. But fat or thin, if you've waited until June to eat asparagus, you are happy to eat it every night until it's gone.\n\nAlthough Castroville is known as \"The Artichoke Capital of the World,\" artichokes do grow in other places. I've met many southerners who grow them on a regular basis and those from colder climes who take them on as a challenge. They may have to be treated as annuals, planted yearly, and harvested only once, unlike the California artichokes, which have a spring and fall season. But you can find them. I found them in the Crescent City market in New Orleans, in Montpelier, Vermont, in Maine, and even in New Mexico. Without a doubt they're elsewhere, too.\n\n**Asparagusand Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding** | SERVES 6 GENEROUSLY\n\nAfter a damp spring day spent visiting the organic biodynamic gardens on the UCSC campus in Santa Cruz, a town that is unusually committed to using its local produce, it was time for dinner. There is always a moment during asparagus season when you want something hearty, and this was the day. Fortunately, the chef had the dish for it\u2014a golden bread pudding studded with asparagus.\n\nI like to simmer the milk with green garlic (immature garlic whose leaves are still green) for flavor. If you live where fresh chanterelles or morels are in season as well as asparagus, here's a good opportunity to use them, too. But dried chanterelles or morels from the previous year are also delicious.\n\n1 head green garlic\n\n3 cups milk\n\n1 (1-pound) loaf good firm white bread, cut into thick slices\n\n1 to 2 pounds asparagus, preferably thick, peeled\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n3 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 large shallot, finely diced\n\n\u00bd to 1 pound chanterelles or morels, cleaned and coarsely chopped\n\n4 large market eggs\n\n\u2153 cup chopped parsley\n\n3 tablespoons chopped tarragon or marjoram\n\n2 cups grated Fontina or Gruy\u00e8re cheese\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Lightly butter or oil an 8 \u00d7 12-inch gratin dish. Coarsely chop the garlic, add it to the milk, and bring to a boil. Turn it off and set it aside to steep.\n\n2. If the bread isn't stale, lay it on a sheet pan and bake until golden and crisp (but not hard); otherwise your pudding will be mushy. Break it into chunks, put it in a large dish, and strain the milk over it. Let it sit while you prepare the vegetables. Occasionally turn the bread so that it soaks up as much of the milk as possible.\n\n3. Slice the asparagus on the diagonal about \u2153 inch thick, then soak in cold water for a few minutes. Fill a skillet with water and, when it boils, add salt to taste and the asparagus. Simmer until bright green and partially tender, about 3 minutes. Drain, then rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.\n\n4. Melt half the butter in a medium nonstick skillet. Add the shallot, cook for 1 minute, then add the mushrooms. Cook over high heat until they brown in places, exude their liquid, and are tender, after several minutes. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.\n\n5. Break the eggs into a large bowl and beat them until smooth. Add the herbs, 1 teaspoon salt, and plenty of pepper. By now the bread should have soaked up most of the milk. Add the bread and any milk that is left to the bowl, along with the asparagus and mushrooms plus any juices, and two thirds of the cheese. Toss well.\n\n6. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish, even it out some, and dot with the remaining butter. Scatter the remaining cheese over the top and bake until puffy and golden, about 45 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then serve.\n\n**Asparagusand Artichoke Saut\u00e9 with Toasted Bread Crumbs** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\n3 large or 4 medium artichokes, trimmed and quartered\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 pound asparagus, peeled if thick, then thinly sliced on the diagonal\n\n\u00bd pound mushrooms, thinly sliced\n\n1 bunch scallions, including an inch of the greens, chopped\n\n2 medium zucchini, sliced \u00bc inch thick\n\n\u00bd cup parsley leaves\n\n2 garlic cloves\n\n1 teaspoon grated lemon zest\n\n\u00bd cup fresh bread crumbs\n\n\u00bc cup olive oil\n\n\u00bc cup white wine\n\n1 cup chicken stock or water\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan cheese\n\n1. Simmer the artichoke quarters in 1 quart water with 2 teaspoons salt until tender-firm, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and slice them thinly. Cut the rest of the vegetables as described.\n\n2. Chop the parsley, garlic, and lemon zest together. Brown the bread crumbs in 1 tablespoon of the oil in a small skillet, then set aside.\n\n3. Heat the remaining oil in a wide nonstick skillet. When hot, add the artichokes, asparagus, and zucchini. Saut\u00e9 over high heat until they take on some color, then add the scallions and mushrooms and saut\u00e9 for 5 minutes more. Season with 1 teaspoon salt.\n\n4. Add the wine. Let it sizzle and reduce, then add the stock and simmer for a few more minutes or until the vegetables are cooked to your liking. Toss them with the chopped parsley, slide them onto a platter, and garnish with a light dusting of freshly grated cheese. Or, pass the cheese separately at the table.\n\n**AsparagusBraised with Peas and Spring Onions** | SERVES 4 GENEROUSLY OR 6 MODESTLY\n\nThis delicate braise can become a vegetable main course if you spoon it over soft polenta or mix in some tender cheese ravioli. If morels or chanterelles are in season, cook them right along with the onions and garlic.\n\n1 pound asparagus\n\n2 pounds shelling peas\n\n3 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n5 spring onions or other small, fresh onions, thinly sliced\n\n1 head green garlic, thinly sliced\n\n\u00bd cup white wine\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\na few basil leaves or a small handful chervil\n\n1. Peel the asparagus stalks. If they're thick, trim the bases. If they're thin, snap them at the breaking point. Slice them diagonally into several pieces, then put them in a bowl of cold water to soak while you shuck the peas.\n\n2. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet. Add the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat until they look as though they're starting to fry, then add the wine. Once the wine cooks down, add 1 cup water and the asparagus. Simmer until the asparagus is nearly tender, about 7 minutes. Add the peas and cook until they're done, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and add a twist of pepper and the last bit of butter. Tear the basil leaves right into the dish or add the chervil, then turn off the heat and serve.\n\n**Saut\u00e9ed Artichokes and Potatoes with Garlic Chives** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nGarlic chives are often found in farmers' markets. They always seem to come in big bunches. Flat, rather than round like the more familiar garden chives, they can go wherever garlic goes but are far milder. Garlic scapes, the curlicue tops of hardneck garlic, are another spring find. They can also be chopped and saut\u00e9ed with the artichokes and potatoes.\n\n4 medium artichokes, trimmed and quartered\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n6 fingerling potatoes, such as Ratte, Ruby Crescents, or Rose Fir Apple\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd cup chopped garlic chives, or more to taste\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\na few drops truffle oil, optional\n\n1. Thinly slice the artichoke quarters lengthwise and toss them with a little of the olive oil. Peel the potatoes and slice lengthwise about \u00bc inch thick. Drop them into a pot of boiling salted water for 3 minutes, then drain.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the potatoes and artichokes and cook over medium-high heat, tossing every few minutes, until golden brown and tender when pierced with a knife, about 20 minutes. If they look done but aren't quite tender, add \u00bd cup water, lower the heat, and cook gently, covered, until tender. Season well with salt and pepper and toss with the chives and parsley.\n\n3. Slide onto a platter and drizzle a few drops of truffle oil, if you like, over all.\n\n**Artichokes and Jerusalem Artichokes Braised with Black Lentils** | SERVES 4\n\nA recipe for the fall crop of artichokes, this has all the warm earthy colors and flavors that go with the season. Use black \"caviar\" lentils or dark green Le Puy lentils for flavor and drama. This makes a robust vegetarian main dish served with small, dried pasta, such as orecchiette, or an accompaniment to roasted chicken or duck.\n\n\u2153 cup dried green or black lentils, sorted and rinsed\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 large artichokes trimmed and quartered\n\njuice of 1 lemon\n\n8 Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed\n\n4 shallots, peeled and sliced about \u2153 inch thick\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n2 teaspoons chopped tarragon or marjoram\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 tablespoon chopped parsley\n\n1. Cover the lentils with 2\u00bd cups water. Bring to a boil, add \u00bd teaspoon salt, and simmer until tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Drain but reserve the broth.\n\n2. Dice the artichoke hearts into pieces about 3 times the size of the lentils. Thickly peel and dice the stem as well. As you work, put the finished pieces in a bowl with the lemon juice and just enough water to cover. Slice the Jerusalem artichokes about the same thickness as the shallots. If the pieces are large, chop them coarsely.\n\n3. Heat the oil in a medium skillet. Add the artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, and shallots and saut\u00e9 over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt and some pepper, then add the garlic and \u00be cup of the reserved lentil broth. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. If the pan becomes dry, add more lentil broth or water.\n\n4. Add the lentils to the pan with some of their cooking liquid and the tarragon to make a little sauce. Cook for 5 minutes more or until the vegetables are tender. Just before serving, stir in the butter, then taste once more for salt and season with pepper. Garnish with the parsley and serve.\n\n**Elixir of Fresh Peas** | SERVES 4 TO 6 AS A FIRST COURSE\n\nThis pale green froth of a soup is the essence of fresh peas. Peas can travel in every flavor direction imaginable, but this soup needs nothing, although a few drops of truffle oil are intriguing. Plan to make it just before you serve it unless you want to serve it chilled. The light, fragrant stock is made while you shuck the peas, and cooking time for the soup is about 4 minutes.\n\n1 bunch scallions or 2 small leeks, including 2 inches of the greens, thinly sliced\n\n5 large parsley stems with leaves\n\nsea salt and freshly ground white pepper\n\n1\u00bd pounds pod peas, bright green and moist looking\n\n1 teaspoon unsalted butter\n\n\u00bd cup thinly sliced fresh onion or young leek\n\n\u00bd teaspoon sugar\n\ntruffle oil\n\n1. Bring 1 quart water to a boil. As it's heating, add the scallions, parsley, and \u00bd teaspoon salt. Add about 3 cups of pea pods as you shell them. Once the water comes to a boil, lower the heat. Simmer for 20 minutes, then strain.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a soup pot and add the sliced onion. Cook over medium heat for about a minute, then add \u00bd cup of the stock so that the onion stews without browning. After 4 to 5 minutes, add the peas, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and the sugar. Pour in 2\u00bd cups of the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer for 3 minutes.\n\n3. Transfer the soup to a blender. Drape a towel over the lid and give a few short pulses to make sure it won't splatter. Then puree at high speed for 1 minute. Pour into small soup bowls and serve immediately, adding a few drops of the truffle oil to each bowl.\n\n**PEAS AND OTHER COOL-WEATHER GEMS JULY INSANTA FE**\n\nEveryone is rich with peas. Sugar snaps, snow peas, and pod peas are abundant. Some farmers have heaped their peas into bushel baskets; others arrange them neatly in plastic berry containers. Their skins are smooth and unmarred. Occasionally there's a tendril, a stem, or a flower, but what we don't have are the pea greens, which are so often available at other markets, particularly where Laotian, Chinese, and other Asians shop\u2014like the Civic Center market in San Francisco. At our \"Shop with the Chef\" demonstration, Lynn Walters simmers sugar snap peas for about 2 minutes in a little water, drains them, and tosses with butter and chopped mint. They're unbelievably good, and the children love them.\n\nIf you measure the season by what's available, then it's still spring for us\u2014in mid-July!\u2014for in addition to peas, there's also asparagus, sorrel, sweet onions, springy greens, and cherries, the first of the stone fruits. Elsewhere, peas have been gone for weeks if not months.\n\nBut there are beets. Among the golden beets and scarlet Chioggia beets, there's a large albino that seems frankly naked without its color. All the beets come with a luxurious crown of greens attached, which give you an entire second vegetable. So when Marion Carter says that a huge Mangel beet with its endless stems and great ruffles of greens is \"a dollar a pop,\" it seems like the right price. Rainbow chard has made its first appearance, the stems glowing yellow, orange, red, and pink. The cilantro has an almost buttery texture. Bugs have found the Asian greens attractive, and they're partially laced with holes, but they'll be fine to eat. Icicle, Easter Egg, and French Breakfast radishes are still crisp and sweet. They make wonderful sandwiches and are good cooked, I've found. Arugula, dill, parsley, marjoram, lemon thyme, and thyme fill out the herb department, while the lettuces are coming to an end. It _is_ July, after all.\n\nThere are also those vegetables that shoppers walk by without noticing\u2014kohlrabi, broccoli, and cauliflower. But these are sweet and pure tasting, with a delicacy I've seldom experienced. There's no bitterness, no sulfurous taste, no wash of chemicals doing battle with the innate but oft-concealed sweetness of these robust vegetables. Although I try to build enthusiasm for them in my chef demonstration, I detect a slightly sullen response. What people really want is tomatoes. Rather, what people really want is for it to be summer, and when the tomatoes are here, summer will be, too.\n\nMENU FOR A COOL JULY\n\nFreckles Meets Merlot\n\nMarket Ragout of Turnips, Kohlrabi, and Peas\n\nPolenta\n\nMixed Cherry Pie with a Double Crust\n\n**Peaand Spinach Soup with Coconut Milk** | SERVES 6\n\nPeas are as good with cilantro and coconut milk as they are with the more predictable mint and basil. If you haven't explored this direction, do! Serve this soup unblended, completely blended, or just blend a cup or so and stir it back into the pot to provide some background texture and color.\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 tablespoons white basmati rice\n\n2 cups thinly sliced sweet white onions\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 teaspoons curry powder\n\n4 cilantro sprigs, plus extra for garnish\n\n1\u00bd to 2 pounds pod peas\n\n4 cups spinach leaves\n\n1 quart Vegetable Stock, or water\n\n\u00be cup coconut milk\n\n1. Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat and add the rice, onions, 1\u00bd teaspoons salt, the curry powder, 4 cilantro sprigs, and 1 cup water. Simmer over medium-low heat for 12 minutes.\n\n2. Meanwhile, shuck the peas and wash and coarsely chop the spinach. Add both vegetables to the pot, along with the stock. Bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the coconut milk.\n\n3. Puree about a cup of the soup in a blender and return it to the pot. Taste for salt, season with white pepper, and serve, garnished with fresh cilantro leaves. Or puree all of the soup until smooth, about 1 minute, then pass it through a strainer and serve.\n\n**Stir-Fried Snow Peas with Pea Greens** | SERVES 4\n\nTangles of vining pea greens aren't the same as sprouted peas, or pea shoots, which you can sometimes find in the supermarket, but are bits of the vine itself, complete with curling tendrils and sometimes a small pea or pea blossom. You can dip pea greens briefly into salted boiling water to bring out their color and flavor, then use them to garnish a dish of peas or a pea soup. Or you can stir-fry them as is done here. Lacking the greens, you can use pea shoots in their place.\n\n\u00bd pound snow peas\n\n\u00bc pound or more pea greens\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons roasted or plain peanut oil\n\n1 garlic clove, chopped\n\nsea salt\n\n1. Trim and string the snow peas. Wash the pea greens in a bowl of cold water, then remove and shake off the excess water.\n\n2. Heat a large skillet or a wok. Add the oil, swirl it around, then add the garlic and snow peas. Stir-fry the peas for 1 minute, then add the pea greens and a pinch of salt and stir-fry until the leaves are tender and bright green. Serve right away.\n\n**Pastawith Peas, Fresh Sage, and Bread Crumbs** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nThe shape of pasta makes a difference. Radiatore, lumache, shells, and other curved pastas keep the peas and pasta together, which otherwise tend to go off in separate directions. Fresh sage may sound like a surprising choice of herb, but early in the season its undertones are minty, making it a natural with peas. Make the sauce while the pasta is cooking.\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd pound small pasta shapes, such as radiatore or lumache\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter, olive oil, or a mixture\n\n\u00bc cup finely diced shallot or scallion\n\n1 pound pod peas, shucked\n\n3 tablespoons chopped sage\n\n1 teaspoon grated lemon zest\n\n\u00bd cup fresh bread crumbs\n\n\u2153 cup chopped parsley\n\nsage blossoms, if available\n\n1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt and the pasta.\n\n2. While the pasta is cooking, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet, add the shallot, and cook gently for a few minutes, until softened. Add the peas, sage, and 1 cup of the pasta water and stew until the peas are bright green and tender, 1 or 2 minutes. Add the lemon zest.\n\n3. Crisp the bread crumbs in the remaining butter or oil in a small skillet. When the pasta is done, drain it, add it directly to the peas, and toss. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and toss with the parsley and bread crumbs. Garnish with the purple sage blossoms, if available.\n\n**Fenneland Winter Greens Salad with Mushrooms and Truffle Oil** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nIf I had to choose just one, this would be my favorite winter salad. The bitter edge of the greens, the clean flavor of the fennel, the dank mushrooms, and the haunting fragrance of the truffle oil\u2014what could be better? Serve this salad as a first or last course so that it can stand alone.\n\n1 head butter lettuce\n\n1 medium head radicchio\n\n1 plump Belgian endive\n\n1 fennel bulb, trimmed\n\n6 large mushrooms, thinly sliced\n\n1 large shallot, finely diced\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons aged red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil truffle oil\n\na chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano at room temperature\n\n1. Gently tear the butter lettuce into bite-sized or larger pieces, leaving the smaller heart leaves whole. Tear the radicchio into smaller pieces. Quarter the endive lengthwise, then sliver lengthwise. Wash and dry the greens and put them in a salad bowl. Slice the fennel paper-thin on a mandoline and add it to the greens along with the sliced mushrooms. Cover with a damp towel and refrigerate until needed.\n\n2. Combine the shallot, vinegar, and \u00bd teaspoon salt. Let stand for at least 5 minutes, then whisk in the olive oil. Taste on a lettuce leaf\u2014it can be a little on the tart side. Toss the salad with enough vinaigrette to coat well, then drizzle on a teaspoon or so of truffle oil and toss again. Pile lightly onto plates. Shave some thin curls of cheese over each serving, add pepper to taste, and serve.\n\n**FENNEL**\n\nFennel, or anise as it's also called, has become a regular feature of farmers' markets everywhere, a welcome sight to my eyes, for this is a delicious and versatile vegetable.\n\nIn the supermarket fennel bulbs tend to be compact and roundish, hefty for their size\u2014they can weigh up to 10 or 12 ounces. Fennel bulbs at the farmers' market are so frequently small and more elongated than round that I suspect it's not an easy vegetable to grow. But it is an easy vegetable to use. Slice the bulbs for the pasta dish and soup recipe that follow, or thinly slice them on a mandoline or benriner cutter when you want them for a salad. Raw, fresh fennel, sliced into long pieces and set out with a little sea salt, makes a crisp and cooling appetizer, and the greens can be used as a garnish or seasoning wherever the bulbs are called for.\n\nPasta with Golden Fennel\n\n**Pastawith Golden Fennel** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nCaramelized fennel is the only vegetable in this pasta, but it's enormously flavorful. You can also serve the fennel as a vegetable. Cut it into thicker, heftier pieces, but still cook until golden and caramelized.\n\n2 or 3 large fennel bulbs, including the greens\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\ngrated zest and juice of 1 lemon\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n\u00be to 1 pound fettuccine\n\nParmigiano-Reggiano or Dry Monterey Jack cheese\n\n1. Peel or discard, if badly bruised, the tough outer layers of the fennel, then quarter the bulbs, setting aside the greens, and slice thinly. (The core will cook to tenderness.) Heat a large pot of water for the pasta.\n\n2. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter with the olive oil in a wide skillet. Add the fennel and saut\u00e9 over high heat, stirring occasionally, until browned in places, 7 to 10 minutes. Season with 1 teaspoon salt. Toss with the lemon juice, then add 1 cup water. Reduce the heat and cook, covered, until the liquid has evaporated. Add another \u00bd cup water and continue cooking in this fashion until the fennel is very soft and deep gold in color, about 25 minutes in all. Season with pepper. Chop a handful of fennel greens\u2014enough to make about \u2153 cup\u2014with the garlic and lemon zest and set aside.\n\n3. Add salt and the pasta to the boiling water and cook until the pasta is al dente. Scoop it out and add it to the pan with the fennel and the chopped greens. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with the cheese, finely grated or thinly shaved over the top.\n\nVARIATION WITH RICOTTA CHEESE: When my friend Michele Anna Jordan came to visit one winter, she brought 3 pounds of fresh ricotta from Bellwether farms in Sonoma country. It's an exquisite cheese\u2014light, delicate, and very pure tasting\u2014and we used it in everything all week, including this pasta.\n\nToss a cup or so of fresh whole-milk ricotta with a little grated lemon zest, a few pinches of salt and pepper, and a teaspoon or so of olive oil. Add it to the dish at the very end. A good fresh ricotta will practically melt into the pasta. You can also simply season the ricotta like this, then spread it over little toasts for an appetizer.\n\n**Fennel Soup with Saffron Dumplings** | SERVES 4\n\nSaffron is not commonly seen at farmers' markets, but I know some farmers who have given it a try, my brother, Mike Madison, and his wife, Dianne, being two. They grow mostly flowers on their small farm in northern California, but one year they decided to venture into saffron, which involved plucking the stamens from large lavender crocus blooms. When they sent me home with a bag of fennel and a packet of saffron, this soup with these dumplings immediately came to mind.\n\nTHE SAFFRON DUMPLINGS | makes 20 small dumplings\n\n\u00bd cup milk\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 pinches saffron threads\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup minced fennel greens\n\n\u00bd cup all-purpose flour\n\n2 eggs\n\n1. Heat the milk with the butter, saffron, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and a little pepper. When the butter has melted, stir in the fennel greens, then add the flour all at once. Remove the pan from the heat and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon to make a smooth paste, then return the pan to low heat and work the paste until it leaves a film on the bottom of the pan. Turn off the heat and beat in the eggs one at a time, until completely smooth.\n\n2. Bring a large skillet of water to a simmer and add 1 teaspoon salt. Drop loosely heaped teaspoons of batter into the pan. Cook gently until they're firm, turning once, about 5 minutes. When done, transfer the dumplings to a plate and set them aside until needed.\n\nTHE SOUP\n\n1 hefty or 2 smaller fennel bulbs, about 6 ounces\n\n1 bunch scallions, including a few inches of the greens\n\n1 large artichoke\n\n1 quart Vegetable Stock, light chicken stock, or water\n\n\u00bc cup finely chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons chopped cilantro\n\n1 tablespoon finely snipped chives\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nextra virgin olive oil to finish\n\n1. Quarter the fennel bulb(s) and slice very thinly crosswise. Chop enough of the greens to make \u00bc cup. Trim the scallions and slice them crosswise about \u00bc inch thick. Pare and quarter the artichoke, removing the leaves and the choke, and slice thinly.\n\n2. Put the stock into a saucepan. Add all of the vegetables, half of the herbs, and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and add the remaining herbs and the dumplings. Let steep for 10 minutes, then pepper lightly. Serve with a thin drizzle of olive oil in each bowl.\n\n**RADISHES**\n\nRadishes abound at farmers' markets year-round, but they always taste best when it's cool out, whether spring or fall. When the weather turns hot, their flavor gets hot and spicy, too. It's easy to take these cheerful little vegetables for granted, but I've seen a few farmers stop selling them because of the time it takes to tie them into neat little bunches, their greens intact.\n\nRadishes can be like tofu\u2014we buy them with every intention of eating them, but in the end they linger until the greens are wilted and the roots are puffy and soft. It's partly that we don't know what to do with them. One of the easiest and best things to do is just to put them on the table while they're impeccably fresh, with their greens. Add a dish of sea salt for those who like to dip them, butter, and a fresh baguette. As simple as it sounds, this is absolutely delicious.\n\nAs with carrot tops, there's a use for the greens. Finely slivered, they make a lively addition to a salad, and they can go into a green vegetable soup. Radishes can also be cooked. Their bright colors fade to delicate pastels, and their flavor mellows. You might, for example, braise them in stock or water, combine them with other spring vegetables such as little carrots and turnips, and finish with mustard butter and sprinkle with chives.\n\nEaster Egg radishes are round and come in bunches of pinks, purples, reds, and whites. French Breakfast radishes are long, with white tips on the end. Daikon are the giant white radishes that can vary anywhere from six inches to a few feet in length! In a Sacramento market I saw forty-pound bags of enormous daikons. They can be grated and used as a condiment\u2014popular in Japanese restaurants and households, cut into chunks and simmered in a miso-based vegetable stew, or sliced into ribbons and then stewed with leeks and a touch of cream\u2014an effective base for crispy pieces of roasted chicken. They are also delicious shredded and saut\u00e9ed.\n\nLess frequently seen but certainly the most exotic varieties are those large Chinese and Korean radishes that resemble small turnips on the outside, but on the inside anything goes. Red Meat and Beauty Heart are two with pale green skins and the most gorgeous deep rose-red interiors. Misato is another rose-fleshed type that's varied with paler-colored concentric rings, and there's also a green-fleshed Misato as well as long, tapering pink- and green-fleshed varieties.\n\nThese pretty, big radishes tend to be sweeter and less peppery than other kinds. If you slice them paper-thin on a mandoline, soak them briefly in cold water, then drain and refrigerate them for an hour or so, the nearly transparent rose-colored slices curl gracefully so that they resemble a ruffle you might want to sew on a dress. In fact you can just put them out in a bowl, a big, cheerful tangle, with some good salt, such as Malden sea salt, for dipping or sprinkling. And, of course, these can also go into or on top of a radish sandwich.\n\n**Radish Butter for Radish Sandwiches** | MAKES \u00bd CUP\n\nA good radish sandwich can be nothing more than sweet butter spread on bread and topped with sliced radishes and sea salt. But you might find that this is an easier way for getting the radishes and butter on quickly (and getting them to stay on), especially if you're making radish sandwiches for a crowd.\n\n6 radishes\u2014French Breakfast radishes or a mixture of red, purple, and pink radishes\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest sea salt\n\n1. Wash and trim the radishes. If the leaves are tender and fresh, set a dozen or so aside, stems removed. Slice the radishes into thin rounds, then crosswise into narrow strips. Each should be tipped with color. Chop the leaves. You should have about \u00bd cup.\n\n2. Mix the butter with the lemon zest until it's soft, then stir in the chopped radishes, radish leaves, and a pinch of salt. Spread on slices of crusty baguette and serve.\n\n**Radish Salad with Vella's Dry Jack Cheese** | SERVES 6\n\nThe Vella family's Dry Jack cheese from Sonoma County in California is one of our national food treasures. It's increasingly possible to find nationwide, but if you can't get your hands on some, use Parmigiano-Reggiano. This is a very pretty, bright, and lively little salad. You can stray successfully from its utter simplicity by adding some freshly blanched and peeled fava beans, radish sprouts, or very small arugula leaves.\n\n2 bunches French Breakfast radishes or mixed varieties, including small daikon and Chinese Red Meat\n\n2 tablespoons thinly sliced chives\n\nolive oil\n\n2 to 4 ounces Dry Jack cheese or Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nradish sprouts, leaves, or arugula greens, optional\n\n1. Set aside a handful of the most tender radish greens. Trim the radish roots, leaving just a bit of the stem, and wash them well. Wick up the excess moisture with a towel, then slice thinly, either lengthwise or crosswise. Put them in a bowl and toss with the chives, radish greens, and enough oil to coat lightly.\n\n2. Put the radishes on a platter, shave the cheese over them, and add salt and pepper and the greens, if using.\n\n**Shredded Daikon with Scallions and Sesame Seeds** | SERVES 2 TO 4 AS A SIDE DISH\n\nAlthough plentiful in the market, daikon is often too peppery to enjoy raw in quantity. However, it cooks down into a deliciously mellow dish. Choose firm, glowing roots and use them within a few days since moisture is lost quickly through their thin skins. Tender tops can be simmered or steamed, then chopped and added to the cooked daikon.\n\n1\u00bd pounds firm daikon, peeled\n\n1 bunch scallions, including the firm greens\n\n1 tablespoon sesame seeds\n\n1 tablespoon light sesame or vegetable oil\n\n1 teaspoon dark sesame oil\n\nsea salt\n\nsoy sauce\n\n1. Coarsely grate the daikon or cut into matchsticks. Slice the scallions on the diagonal into large pieces.\n\n2. Heat a nonstick skillet and toast the sesame seeds, shaking often, until they smell good, about 3 minutes. Pour them into a dish, return the pan to the heat, and add the oils. Add the scallions, cook for 1 minute, then add the daikon. (If it feels wet\u2014it will exude water as it sits\u2014squeeze it before adding it to the pan.) Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt, sprinkle lightly with soy sauce, and saut\u00e9 over high heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Taste for salt, add more soy if needed, toss with the sesame seeds, and serve.\n\n**Rhubarbwith Berries and Candied Ginger** | SERVES 4\n\nRhubarb, the earliest spring fruit, arrives in\u2014or at least persists into\u2014strawberry and mulberry season and is notoriously excellent with berries. This is a much simpler dessert to produce than a pie, and you'll end up with rosy pieces of fruit that dissolve into a puree\u2014that is, if your stalks were red. There's also an heirloom variety that has green stalks\u2014every bit as delicious, but a bit dingier in color.\n\nServe this compote garnished with strips of candied ginger (it turns slightly medicinal when baked), cream, and a ginger cookie. Or spoon it over ice cream. Plan to spread any leftovers on your morning toast.\n\n1\u00bd pounds rhubarb\n\n\u00bd cup light brown sugar, packed, or maple syrup\n\n1 teaspoon minute tapioca\n\njuice and long strands of zest of 1 small orange\n\n\u215b to \u00bc teaspoon ground cloves\n\na handful to a few pints strawberries, mulberries, or blackberries cream and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\n4 slices candied ginger, cut into thin strips, for garnish\n\n1. Wash the rhubarb, trim off the ends of the stalks, then slice them crosswise into \u00bd-inch chunks. If the stalks are very thick, halve them lengthwise first. Toss with the sugar, tapioca, orange juice, zest, and cloves. Arrange in an 8 \u00d7 10-inch gratin dish and let stand while you preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Cover with foil and bake until the fruit is tender when pierced with a knife, 35 to 45 minutes.\n\n2. Meanwhile, if you're using strawberries, rinse them quickly, then slice thickly. Plunge mulberries briefly into water and remove any stems. When the rhubarb is done, remove it from the oven, scatter the berries over the top, and let stand with a piece of foil placed loosely over the top. The heat of the rhubarb will open the flavor of the berries, cooking them slightly. Serve chilled or at room temperature, garnished with cream and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche whipped together until billowy, and the candied ginger.\n\n**SIGNS AT THE MARKET**\n\nAt a farm stand in a Kansas City farmers' market, a thicket of signs growing out of the produce practically obscures the vegetables. It's not usually this way, though. Many farmers don't bother with signage\u2014then they complain about how tired they get of telling everyone how much something costs or what it is. That couldn't possibly occur here, I thought, but no doubt it does. People often don't bother to read. I overheard a teenage girl helping her mother at another market complain, \"Why do we have to put out the signs? People never read them.\" \"Some do,\" her mother said. But perhaps some people just prefer to talk.\n\nI love market signs, especially the pictures people draw of their farms and their animals. Sometimes they express the spell of the place and you can see how the land speaks to the farmer. \"Harmony Valley Farms\" depicts three red hearts in a circle, wreathed with fruiting grapevines. The sign for Monte Vista farm shows a big tree, its roots spreading through the earth and emerging out of the field to spell the name. Rio LOCO'S farm depicts a Churro sheep drinking from the river, a New Mexican landscape in the background, recognizable to anyone who's been to New Mexico. Another shows, in a rustic fashion, a map of Earthheart Farm\u2014the horse, the cottonwood trees, the gardens, and the house. Those who have taken a farm tour will see that sign in a different way, having walked through the fields and petted the horse. But the most poignant aspect of this sign was a big radish shaped like a heart.\n\nSigns are, of course, for advertising. \"Eat Me! Mmm Good!\" is scrawled on a piece of cardboard stuck in a display of apples, grapes, and walnuts in Torrance, California. And what a good idea to serve all those together for dessert.\n\n\"The last of the season!\" declares a sign on a bin of nectarines. That's useful to know if you want to stock up on crisp nectarines, which some people love.\n\n\"Organically grown,\" \"Pesticide Free,\" \"Grass Fed,\" \"No Hormones or Antibiotics\" is the kind of information that's important for many customers to know, while simply naming foods is essential to others. It's only through naming that you can find out what it is you like, return to it, and build a relationship to it and to its grower, A sticker with a number pasted to a plum is useless. We need to know that it was a Santa Rosa, a Friar, or a Damson we enjoyed if we want to eat it again next year.\n\nSometimes varieties aren't identified because they've been around for so long that farmers no longer know what they are exactly. They may have been foods that were planted generations ago. \"Oh, we just call those yellow cherries,\" says one farmer who grows twelve kinds of named cherries. \"That's Spanish basil,\" says another, pointing to her basil. Wild plums, Indian plums, Spanish plums are just three names of the same small fruits that grow around northern New Mexico.\n\nHumor has its place in the market, too. Consider this string of signs over a corn booth in the Dane County (Wisconsin) Market:\n\n\"We are only trying to market our corn, not corner the market. But we would like everybody to try our corn and melons. We would all be better off!\"\n\n\"Eugsters corn is grown in real dirt. You can taste the difference!\"\n\n\"Eugsters corn was picked by Norwegians. Uffda! What could be better than that?\"\n\n\"When you care enough to eat the best, take some home and have a good meal.\"\n\nWhile meat is displayed in cleverly constructed glass-topped boxes, the meat resting on ice packs below, signs are frequently used to draw attention to chicken and other meats. The Rullos in Cleveland had a chicken tea cozy with a sign saying, \"Ask about our free range chicken!\" In Minneapolis one family had big white plastic chickens standing in for their meat. I've seen lots of wonderful paintings of turkeys, chickens, goats, and buffalo. In fact many signs are as good as what they're advertising. The Ithaca farmers' market in particular seemed to have an abundance of beautiful signs. Two, one for potatoes and the other for garlic, were so handsome that a customer had bought one, along with the garlic and potatoes. I wanted to buy the other, but the farmers pleaded that they didn't have time to make a replacement.\n\nThe sign that symbolized for me what it is every farmer wants to see at the close of the market was one with lines drawn through each of its long list of offerings: Snake Hill Farm had enjoyed a successful day. With many days like this, perhaps, eventually, their great-great-grandchildren would be able to have a sign like one I saw in Wisconsin. Beside a picture of a round red barn and a tree full of red apples were the words:\n\n\"Our Family Farm for 160 Years.\n\nEnjoy the Fruits of Our Labor.\"\n\nThe last digit, I noticed, could easily be replaced.\n\n\"I can't seem to get people interested in herbs!\"\n\nKhasia Hartwell, who sells her soft bundles of fragrance at our market, is just plain frustrated. Customers will gladly eat her lemon thyme shortbread or basil-scented cookies, but will they buy a bunch of herbs? Apparently not. Traffic in culinary herbs isn't as swift as it might be, except of course when it comes to Genovese basil, parsley, and chives, the Big Three. But the exotics\u2014a spicy Lesbos basil, all the lemon-scented herbs, pungent epazote that's so deliciously authentic with black beans, anise hyssop with its lavender blooms\u2014are left over at the end of the day.\n\nThis is a shame, for herbs are one of the most magical\u2014and practical\u2014components of our cooking. They're the lively border collies of the plant world, whose task is to urge fruits and vegetables in this or that direction. Herbs can take a vegetable on the most amazing journeys, changing a food from savory to sweet and back again, and they can make one vegetable seem like five. Corn with Italian basil is completely different from corn with Thai basil and is different yet again from corn with sage, cilantro, or dill. You can cook corn every night of the week and never have it taste the same. Herbs provide one of the easiest ways to bring variety to the foods you already know how to make and may be a little bored with.\n\nHerbs take little effort to prepare, there's no waste, and they're pure pleasure to handle. Our reluctance to try a new herb probably has to do with not being able to imagine its effect. There are excellent cookbooks devoted to the culinary possibilities of herbs, but you don't need a book to start learning about the herb you're holding in your hand at the market. Start by crushing a leaf between your fingers, then deeply inhaling its scent several times. Next take a little bite, close your eyes, and let its flavor travel over your tongue so you can pick out the hints of sweetness, tartness, bitterness. Saturate your senses, and a pairing might just come to mind. You could suddenly find yourself thinking, I wonder if rosemary would be good with those sweet potatoes I bought? (It is.) Or you might decide that anise hyssop would go with beets\u2014or with figs\u2014(and it does, with both). If you give them a chance to enter your senses, herbs can often reveal the directions they best travel in.\n\nMembers of the onion family, the alliums are not usually thought of as herbs with the exception of chives. But although onions, scallions, shallots, and garlic are occasionally treated as vegetables most often they are used as seasonings, just as herbs are. Even the Sweet and Sour Onions with Dried Pluots and Rosemary are treated more as an accent than a vegetable. As with herbs, a small amount of garlic, chives, scallions, and shallots goes far to influence a dish.\n\nChicken, lamb, beef, as well as far more exotic meats are a regular feature of many farmers' markets now. The quality is often very high. Personally, I'm always more interested in what meat goes with than in the meat itself, and herbs and alliums enhance and harmonize with these foods beautifully, just as they do with vegetables. Included here are some recipes that draw especially on these small but very full-flavored members of the plant world.\n\nFresh herbs are used plentifully throughout this book, but this chapter features some of the herbs we might not find at the supermarket, or dishes that amass a concentration of herbs. And if your market is limited to parsley, dill, and basil, then try mixing them together to make a kind of superherb that goes far beyond the impact of any single one.\n\n**Herb Teas or Tisanes**\n\nA tisane is an herb tea, but it's not a musty little package of dried herbs. Far better, a tisane is a handful of fresh green herbs that are steeped in boiling water. The essence that ensues is then poured into glasses or cups or cooled and poured over ice.\n\nMany herbs\u2014virtually all of them, really\u2014can be used in this way. But some that are especially suited for tisanes are mints of all kinds, lemon thyme, lemon verbena, and lemon balm; chamomile, anise hyssop, marigold, pineapple sage, and culinary sage, if the leaves are fresh and new. You can be even more adventurous with herbs like dill, lovage, rose geranium, and other edible scented plants. Wild herbs, such as cota and apple mint, traditionally used here for their very mild medicinal qualities, can be found in our market and, no doubt, others. And you can mix different herbs together. If you steep your herbs in a glass teapot, you'll have the added pleasure of seeing the deepening color of the herbs emerge.\n\n_For about 6 cups_ , take a good handful of fresh herbs. Give them a good rinse and pluck any unattractive leaves off the stems. Place them in the teapot and cover with boiling water. Let steep for 5 minutes, or longer if needed, then pour into glasses or teacups.\n\n_For 1 person_ , place several clean sprigs in a glass, such as a Moroccan mint-tea glass, and pour in the boiling water.\n\n_For iced tea_ , make the tisane, then chill well. Pour over ice and add a sprig of fresh herb to the glass.\n\n**Herb Sugars** | MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS\n\nIf you like to sweeten tea with a whisper of lavender, sprinkle rose-scented sugar over a fresh cream cheese, or sweeten a fruit compote with a potpourri of lemon verbena and lime zest, then you'll want to have some herbed sugar on hand. You can use any number of the sweet herbs, such as lemon verbena, rose geranium, lavender, mints, or lemon thyme, and you can also add a few strips of orange, lime, bergamot, or Meyer lemon zest as well. Here's a general formula:\n\n\u00bc cup leaves and flowers of sweet herbs\n\n2 cups sugar\n\nzest of 1 citrus fruit, optional, in strips rather than finely grated\n\nGently bruise the herbs with a mortar to bring out their aromatic oils, then mix them with the sugar and citrus zest. Put the herbs and sugar in a jar and cover tightly. For the next two weeks, give the sugar a shake or a stir every few days to spread the aromatic oils around and to break up any clumps. After 2 weeks, the sugar will be infused with the herbs' flavor. Strain the sugar, discard the herbs and zest, and store, tightly covered.\n\n**Herb Vinegars**\n\nWith all the herbs you're likely to find at the farmers' market, it's very tempting to make your own herb vinegars, for your own use or to give as gifts. The results, which are both tasty and pretty, are easily accomplished.\n\nThe method for making herb-flavored vinegars is simply to pour simmering vinegar over a handful of clean herbs (about 3 cups vinegar to 1 handful of herbs), cap, and let steep for about 2 weeks. The herbs needn't be chopped or removed from their stems. Turn the jar occasionally to distribute the flavor.\n\nIt's easiest to steep the vinegar in a wide-mouthed jar, then, once the flavor has developed, decant it into bottles and add just a fresh sprig of the herb you've used as a pretty reminder of the chosen flavor.\n\nHerbs should always be clean and dry and your jars and lids sterilized. Wash the herbs in a bowl of cold water, then spin them dry or let them dry on a clean towel. As for the jars and lids, wash them well in hot, soapy water, then plunge into a pot of boiling water to cover and boil for 15 minutes (20 at higher altitudes). Lift them out of the water with tongs and let them dry on a clean towel. Now you can add the clean, dry herbs and simmering vinegar. If you like, include a clove of peeled garlic or shallot as well.\n\nWHICH VINEGARS AND HERBS TO USE:  \nThere isn't any rule, but in general the robust flavor of red wine vinegars favors more robust herbs, such as rosemary, hyssop, oregano, thyme, bay, and nonherbal additions such as garlic and shallot.\n\nWhite wine or rice wine vinegars are more delicate, so they favor the softer herbs, like chervil, mint, tarragon, chives (including garlic chives and scapes), lemon verbena, the different basils, spring sage, dill, lovage, and marjoram. Dill and lovage can be used in lesser amounts than the others\u2014\u00bd cup to 3 cups of vinegar. Although arugula and sorrel are considered herbs, they're too volatile to be useful in herbal vinegars. You can mix herbs, and you can include other seasonings such as peppercorns, dried coriander, allspice, and bay leaves.\n\n**Lovage Oil** | MAKES \u00bd CUP\n\nAn emerald-green oil that makes a delicious herbal seasoning for steamed new potatoes, cucumber salads, and salmon\u2014or all 3 together on a single plate.\n\n1 cup lovage leaves, more or less\n\nsea salt\n\n\u00bd cup olive oil\n\nPick lovage leaves that are young and flavorful. Rinse them, then blanch in boiling salted water for about 30 seconds. Drain and squeeze out the excess moisture. Puree the leaves with the olive oil for 1 minutes, then set aside to steep for 30 minutes. Pour through a strainer and discard the solids.\n\n**Sage Oil** | MAKES \u00bd CUP\n\nSage is such a natural accompaniment to fall and winter foods that I make this often. Use it as a sauce for the Herb Dumplings or with roasted winter squash, sweet potatoes, roasted potatoes, white beans, and so forth. I start by browning butter for its good, nutty flavor, then finish it with oil. If you prefer, you can use all olive oil. When you're done, you'll end up with a lot of crispy sage leaves to use for a garnish.\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n24 sage leaves\n\n\u00bd cup olive oil\n\nMelt the butter in a small skillet over medium heat until it turns pale gold and smells pleasantly nutty. Skim off any foam, add the sage leaves, and let them sizzle for a minute or so. Pour in the oil, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 10 minutes. Pour through a strainer and reserve the sage leaves.\n\n**SMALL, NEW MARKETS AND MARKET DISPLAYSSOCORRO, NEW MEXICO**\n\nNot all markets are large and thriving; some are just starting out, and like seedlings, they can look small and fragile, barely there at all. The market in Socorro, New Mexico, was such a market when I visited it one late July several years ago. It is now a thriving market, but then it was only two years old, and no signs announced its presence. But many New Mexican towns still have their old plazas, and that was the place to look. There, in the green shade of the elms, a half dozen farmers sat with their wares displayed on card tables. Another few vendors were parked on the street, selling, among other things, pecan pies from their cars. Thunder was rumbling, and the gusts of cool wind that precede a storm urged measured haste.\n\nI didn't have high expectations, but it's always nice to be surprised. The first farmer I stopped before had something very surprising\u2014black shell beans in their pods. Not that they'd taste that much different from dried, but I was intrigued. The long pods cradling their cargo of shiny black seeds were tender shades of rose and cream. The ride home would offer plenty of time for shelling them. She also had plump fennel bulbs, and behind a bushel of pickling cucumbers was a bucket of flowers, among them a spray of Joseph's Coat, a rose whose buds are yellow but fringed with pink and orange. They open, like the bean pods, to a mass of pink and cream petals with the fragrance of raspberries. This exquisite little flower was surrounded with the feathery fronds of asparagus she had thought to include in her bouquet. I was starting to get very excited.\n\nBut I soon had to shift gears. A tall, thin farmer was sitting in at the next table, his face darkly tanned from the sun. His son stood by him. Their offerings consisted of just a few carrots and a bowl of Red Dale potatoes. The carrots were beautifully formed and the potatoes freshly dug, but the display looked forlorn. To make matters worse, while they chatted with their neighbors, both men kept breaking off the carrots and munching on them, further diminishing their supply. They seemed so unconcerned about making any sales that I had to cajole them into selling me some potatoes. When I leaned over to pay, I saw that this small showing was bogus, for hidden behind their table was a huge crate of carrots and a big bucket of potatoes!\n\nThese two weren't the only farmers committed to such a nonaggressive sales approach. There was the young man who had twenty Sun Gold tomatoes and three zucchini. He sat behind _his_ table reading a book. I bought the tomatoes, then he asked me if I couldn't please buy the squash too so that he could go home. Apparently he always shows up with two or three squash, a cup of tomatoes, a single head of lettuce, and a book.\n\nFarmers around the world have found that it's best for business if they flaunt their wares by piling them into heaps. That way shoppers can choose this beet or carrot over that one, always taking what they think is the best. People everywhere like to congratulate themselves on their ability to select well, and we tend to feel more confident about choosing food than we do other things. Plus, a mound, a pile, a heap, be it artichokes, turmeric, or lemons, always draws us to it. When there's just a handful of plums or a single bunch of whatever, it makes things harder, not easier, because it appears to be what's left over, the ones not chosen.\n\nWhen farmers don't have much to offer, they can get around the paucity problem by displaying their five cucumbers, in a little box, as I saw done in a New York market. Some farmers at our market put their few bunches of basil in a toy wagon but keep more in the cooler. Five ordinary red tomatoes set on a red plastic plate looked stunning in another market. Little tricks like these frame what's there and make it special. Then everyone wants it.\n\nThe last farmer I spoke with in Socorro restores ancient carpets when she's not farming. Most farmers, it seems, have other jobs. She had boxes of freshly dug Bintje, Yukon Gold, German Butterball, and Peruvian Blue potatoes\u2014beautiful, clean, and perfect. Bunches of tender arugula and chard stood next to the table, along with herbs, a single bowl of sky-blue borage blossoms, and lush bouquets of zinnias, cosmos, and sunflowers. There wasn't a lot of any one thing, but it was all fresh and fragrant. I packed the zinnias and greens in my cooler, then it was full and time to go.\n\nIt would have been easy to drive past such a little market, but I was thrilled with what I found there. And what I also appreciated about this and other small markets was that the experience wasn't overwhelming, the way large markets often are. Both have their advantages, but every time I find a little farmers' market I enjoy it immensely. There's always a treasure to be found, and limited choices are often a blessing.\n\nThree years later Patrick and I were having lunch in Socorro. Salads came first, a very tasty mix of tender greens that were clearly locally grown. Patrick's pizza was strewn with fresh oregano; mine with basil. Everything tasted as if it had been brought into the kitchen while we were reading our menus. When we told the young waiter how good everything was, he proudly said that the lettuce and herbs were locally grown. A few months later I ran into Cecilia Mc-Cord, a farmer and the manager of the Socorro farmers' market, and mentioned this lunch to her. \"Oh,\" she said, \"that was my lettuce!\"\n\nAN ALL-VEGETABLE SUPPER FROM SOCORRO\n\nSun Gold tomatoes\n\nCarrot Top Soup garnished with borage blossoms\n\nSalt Potatoes with Butter and Herbs\n\nChard, as cooked for The Simplest Tender Greens\n\nShaved fennel and arugula with Shallot Vinaigrette\n\nApricot Custard Tart\n\nWhite Pizza with Sage\n\n**White Pizza with Sage** | MAKES ONE 12-INCH PIZZA\n\nYou can adapt this easily for bruschetta if you don't have the time or inclination to make pizza dough.\n\n2 (4-ounce) balls fresh mozzarella\n\n\u00bd recipe Pizza Dough\n\nolive oil\n\n15 to 20 sage leaves\n\na chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\nred pepper flakes\n\nsea salt\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 500\u00b0F. Thinly slice the mozzarella and set it on paper towels to dry.\n\n2. Roll or pat the dough into a circle 12 or 13 inches across, keeping it a little thicker at the edge. If using a baking stone, generously dust a peel with cornmeal and lay the dough over it. Otherwise, put the dough on a sheet pan or pizza pan. Lay the mozzarella over it, drizzle with a little oil, and bake for 7 minutes. Remove, add the sage leaves, and bake until the crust is golden, another 8 to 10 minutes.\n\n3. Remove from the oven, grate a little Parmigiano-Reggiano over the pizza, season with pepper flakes and a pinch of salt, and paint the edge with olive oil. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.\n\n**Salsa Verde with Basil, Cilantro, and Mint** | MAKES ABOUT \u2154 CUP\n\nA dip, a spread, a garnish, it's also a terrific seasoning for scrambled eggs, tacos, and corn dishes. If you use a food processor, everything will be very fine and smooth; chopped by hand, the chiles and herbs will be suspended in the oil.\n\n1 jalape\u00f1o chile, seeded\n\n1 large bunch cilantro, stems removed\n\n\u00bd cup basil leaves\n\n\u00bc cup mint leaves\n\n2 small garlic cloves\n\n\u00bd cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil\n\ngrated zest and juice of 1 lime\n\nsea salt\n\n1. Chop the first five ingredients very finely, then stir in \u00bc cup water, the oil, and the lime zest and juice.\n\n2. Taste for salt and adjust the balance of the lime juice to oil, if needed. Or, pulse the chile, herbs, and garlic in a food processor, then gradually add the water, oil, and lime zest and juice to taste.\n\n**Marjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives** | MAKES ABOUT \u2154 CUP\n\nWhen you find marjoram at your market, skip the basil and reach for it instead. It may be a while before you go back to basil. I usually serve this with cold beets, fresh egg noodles, or spread on toast, then covered with tomatoes. In fact, if it's in the house, it gets eaten with everything.\n\n1 small slice country bread\n\n2 tablespoons aged red wine vinegar\n\n1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup marjoram leaves\n\n3 tablespoons drained capers\n\n\u00bd cup pine nuts\n\n1 cup finely chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons pitted green olives\n\n\u00bd cup extra virgin olive oil\n\n1. Remove the crusts from the bread, then soak it in the vinegar on a plate.\n\n2. Pound the garlic with \u00bd teaspoon salt in a mortar until smooth, then work in the marjoram, capers, pine nuts, parsley, and olives until you have a coarse puree. Add the bread and the olive oil and work until the pesto is well amalgamated. Season with pepper, taste for vinegar, and add a little more if you think it needs it. The pesto will be very thick.\n\n**Herb Dumplings for Soups and Ragouts** | MAKES THIRTY TO THIRTY-SIX 1-INCH DUMPLINGS\n\nThese dumplings are easy to make. The only secret to their success is to be gentle every step of the way. The base is potato, and all kinds of herbs go well with potatoes\u2014from a big baroque mixture to a single herb. I usually start with a base of parsley, then add others. You might start the market season using chervil mixed with some chives and tarragon leaves. Come midsummer, marjoram, dill, basil, and lemon thyme will prevail. As soon as the weather cools, turn to rosemary and sage. These are delicious drizzled with the Sage Oil.\n\n1 russet potato, about \u00bd pound, peeled and cut into chunks\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 medium or large eggs, beaten\n\n\u00bd to \u00be cup finely chopped parsley\n\n\u00bc cup chopped tarragon, marjoram, or rosemary\n\n1 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra as needed\n\n1. Cover the potato with cold water, add 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Cook until tender, then drain. Gently mash or pass through a potato ricer.\n\n2. Stir in the eggs, then add the herbs, 1 teaspoon salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Gently stir in the flour, taking care not to overwork the dough, which should end up fairly stiff but still somewhat tacky. (Once it becomes too stiff to work, you can turn it out on a counter and gently knead in the rest.) Dust with flour, cover loosely in plastic wrap, and let it rest for 30 minutes.\n\n3. Dust a counter lightly with flour and gently roll or pat the dough into a rectangle, approximately 10 \u00d7 4 inches. Cut the rectangle lengthwise into thirds, and then cut each third into 10 to 12 pieces. Gently roll them between your palms or leave them in little squares.\n\n4. Bring a wide skillet of water to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and add a third of the dumplings. Simmer gently until they float to the top, 7 or 8 minutes. Transfer them to a buttered dish and continue cooking the rest. Add them to your soup or ragout a few minutes before serving so that they'll warm up.\n\nVARIATION: Roll or pat the dough into a much larger piece, one that ends up with a thickness of \u00bc inch, then cut out shapes with a knife or cookie cutters\u2014squares, diamonds, or rounds, or other simple shapes.\n\n**Herb Salad** | MAKES 4 TO 6 SMALL SALADS\n\nHerb salads are astonishing. A vivid parade of flavor marches across your tongue with each bite, leaving it surprised and fully awake. Such salads don't need additions like croutons or cheese, but good bread tempers the salad and prolongs its enjoyment.\n\nAlthough largely an extemporaneous affair, composing an herb salad does ask for a moment of thought before starting. This is not, perhaps, the best place for those aggressive herbs such as rosemary, mature sage, savory, hyssop, and culinary thyme. More suitable are the more volatile, soft-leaf herbs\u2014chervil, marjoram, the basils, anise hyssop, chives and garlic chives, lovage, to name a few. Lemon thyme is good in small quantities; the other lemon-scented herbs in larger ones. I always include some lettuce, preferably a soft butterhead type, as background, along with a few handfuls of odd greens, such as orach, amaranth, miner's lettuce, and _quelites_. Baby spinach leaves can be used in place of such greens.\n\nHerb blossoms are always welcome in these salads. Although tiny and fragile-looking, they convey more than you might expect of the personality of the herbs they come from. Besides, what could be prettier than violet chive flowers, purple sage blossoms, sky-blue borage, periwinkle rosemary, or the bright and fragrant yellow-orange blossoms of Mexican tarragon (mint marigold)?\n\nHere's a sample salad and some other ideas for combinations to work from.\n\n2 cups butter lettuce leaves\n\n2 cups mixed greens (see headnote)\n\n2 tablespoons marjoram or basil leaves\n\n\u00bd cup celery leaves\n\nseveral lovage leaves\n\n\u00bd cup parsley leaves\n\n\u00bd cup purslane sprigs\n\nsea salt\n\nsunflower seed oil or extra virgin olive oil\n\nfresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar\n\npurple sage, chive, or thyme blossoms\n\n1. Tear the greens into bite-sized pieces. Keep the marjoram leaves whole and tear the basil leaves, unless they're the tiny _piccolo fino_ variety. Tear the celery, lovage, and parsley leaves, keeping them in fairly large pieces. Snap the purslane into clumps and wash well since it tends to be sandy.\n\n2. Toss everything with a pinch of salt, then again with just enough oil to coat. Season with lemon juice or vinegar to taste, then toss again with the blossoms.\n\nOTHER POSSIBLE HERB COMBINATIONS:  \nParsley, dill, cilantro, watercress, mint  \nThai basil, spearmint or perilla, lemon verbena, chives, cilantro  \nCilantro, parsley, spearmint, garlic chives, lemon thyme  \nChervil, chives, parsley, marjoram, salad burnet  \nDill, salad burnet, tarragon, sorrel\n\nRed and Golden Beets with Anise Hyssop\n\n**Red and Golden Beets with Anise Hyssop** | SERVES 6\n\nThe Chioggia beets no larger than an inch across and some similarly sized shiny red onions that I found at a late-summer market were irresistible. They fell right into place with a cooked red beet waiting at home, and some purple-tufted anise hyssop. Of course it needn't be this combination exactly. What's enjoyable is to be led by what you find at the market.\n\n2 large red beets\n\n20 small golden or Chioggia beets\n\n2 small red onions\n\n3 tablespoons champagne vinegar\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n10 leafy flat-leaf parsley sprigs\n\n6 large and 12 small anise hyssop leaves, plus the blossoms if possible, or 1 tablespoon chopped dill\n\na handful small arugula leaves or pea shoots\n\nextra virgin olive oil\n\n1. Steam the large beets until tender-firm when pierced with a knife, about 35 minutes. Steam the little beets until tender-firm, about 20 minutes. Chill both. Using 5 or 6 neat strokes of the knife, peel and trim the red beets. Slip off the skins of the smaller beets with your hands. Leave the smallest ones whole. Quarter and halve the rest.\n\n2. Peel, then thinly slice the onions into rounds, toss with the vinegar, and sprinkle with salt. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.\n\n3. To compose the salad, slice the large beets on a mandoline or very thinly by hand, then overlap them on a large platter. Scatter the small beets on top, then add the onions. Drizzle some of the vinegar over all, salt lightly, and season with pepper. Finely mince the parsley and the large hyssop leaves and sprinkle them over the salad. Add the arugula and the small whole hyssop leaves, along with their violet flowers. Drizzle olive oil over all and serve.\n\n**Spring Risotto with Sorrel** | SERVES 4\n\nOne of the many good things about the farmers' market is being able to buy sorrel by the bagful, and that's what's needed to make a statement here. If the leaves are soft and tender, with tiny little stems, just lop off the stems and slice the leaves. But if the sorrel is a little more weather worn\u2014the leaves thicker, the stems larger\u2014fold the leaves, then pull the stem all the way up to the tip and discard. The chopped leaves will melt into a dark, olive green puree.\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 large new red onion, finely diced\n\n6 ounces sorrel (3 to 4 cups trimmed leaves)\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1\u00bd cups Arborio rice\n\n6 cups simmering Vegetable Stock, or chicken stock\n\n\u00bc cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eehe or cream\n\n\u00bd cup chopped chervil or \u00bc cup chopped parsley plus 2 tablespoons chopped tarragon\n\nfreshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, optional\n\n1. Melt the butter in a saut\u00e9 pan, add the onion, and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Add the sorrel and cook until it has collapsed into the onion after several minutes. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt.\n\n2. Add the rice, stir it about, and cook for 1 minute.\n\n3. Pour in 2 cups of the stock. Simmer until it has been absorbed, then raise the heat to high and begin adding the rest, \u00bd cup at a time. Stir energetically and continue adding liquid after each addition is absorbed. When the rice is tender, stir in the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and chervil. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve, with a light grating of cheese, if you wish.\n\n**Crostini with Chive-Scented Ricotta** | MAKES 2 CUPS, ENOUGH FOR 20 CROSTINI\n\nThis is amazingly simple and good\u2014especially if you start with delicate, fresh ricotta. You can also use this ricotta as a sauce for pasta, and any leftovers will find a good home folded into an omelet or scrambled eggs.\n\n2 cups fresh cow's or sheep's milk ricotta\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup very finely snipped chives\n\nchive blossoms, cut at the base\n\n20 slices baguette, ciabatta, or a nutty, dense whole wheat bread\n\nMix the ricotta, oil, salt and pepper to taste, and chives together. Toast the bread until golden, then spread the cheese on top. Add a tiny bit of additional pepper and a few chive blossoms to each slice.\n\n**Scallion Cr\u00eapes withStir-Fried Greens** | MAKES 12 CR\u00caPES\n\nA scribble in an old notebook said, \"Make scallion cr\u00eapes with flowering Chinese greens.\" These beauties, which actually had succulent red stems beneath their yellow flowers, appeared just one year in our market, but they left a lasting impression. Baby bok choy is a good choice too, and is easy to find, but you can use any tender Chinese green.\n\nTHE SCALLION CR\u00caPES\n\n3 large eggs\n\n1 tablespoon dark sesame or roasted peanut oil\n\n1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus extra for the pan\n\n1 cup water\n\n\u00be cup milk or soy milk\n\n\u00bd teaspoon salt\n\n1 cup all-purpose flour\n\n1 bunch scallions\n\n\u00bc cup black or white sesame seeds\n\nTHE VEGETABLES\n\n6 baby bok choy\n\n1 cup snow peas\n\na few handfuls pea greens, optional sea salt\n\n1 tablespoon roasted peanut oil\n\n1. To make the cr\u00eapes, combine the first 6 ingredients in a blender on high speed. Add the flour; blend again for 10 seconds, then stop. Scrape down the sides and blend briefly once more. Pour the batter into a bowl and set aside to rest.\n\n2. Trim and wash the scallions, including an inch or more of the greens. Slice them very, very thinly on the diagonal. Toast the sesame seeds and set them aside. Preheat the oven to 250\u00b0F.\n\n3. Heat a 9-inch nonstick pan (about 7\u00bd inches at the base) with a little vegetable oil. Spread it around with a paper towel. When the pan is hot, add \u2153 cup batter and swirl it around the pan. Scatter some scallions and sesame seeds over the top and cook until golden on the bottom, about one minute. Loosen the cr\u00eape, flip it over, and cook the other side until it's dry, then slide it onto a plate. Continue making cr\u00eapes until all the batter is used, stacking them on top of one another. If a cr\u00eape sticks, wipe out the pan before going on to the next. Wrap the cr\u00eapes in foil and put them in the preheated oven when you start the vegetables.\n\n4. Cut the bok choy lengthwise into quarters, or sixths, if they're on the plump side. Sliver the peas on the diagonal and wash the pea greens.\n\n5. Bring a wide nonstick skillet of water to a simmer; add salt and the bok choy. Simmer for 2 minutes, then drain. (This can be done ahead of time, but if so, rinse the bok choy to keep it from cooking as it cools.)\n\n6. Return the skillet to the stove and turn the heat to high. Add the peanut oil, swirl it around the pan, and add the vegetables. Stir-fry until tender-crisp and bright green. Season with salt and turn into a serving dish. Present the cr\u00eapes in a stack, the greens in a dish, and let each person assemble his or her own. Or place an open cr\u00eape (sesame side facing up) on a plate, with some of the vegetables in the middle. This is a very pretty presentation.\n\nVARIATIONS: Stir-fry cleaned and butterflied shrimp with the greens. Or, going in a different direction altogether, fill the cr\u00eapes with saut\u00e9ed or steamed amaranth greens or wild spinach, flavored with chopped cilantro.\n\n**Scallion, Potato, and Herb Puree** | SERVES 4\n\nScallions come in many shapes and sizes, from tiny and red to thick and green and very, very long. A stack at the St. Paul market labeled \"table onions\" were nearly as long as King Alfred leeks and just as sweet. Potatoes are, of course, delicious with leeks, so you can expect they'd be good with scallions, and they're a perfect vehicle for herbs, whether bracing parsley, a handful of chervil, tarragon, or whatever herb you love.\n\nIt's completely optional, but I often add a little cheese\u2014goat cheese or sheep's milk feta for a bit of tang, Gruy\u00e8re for a richer version. Leftovers are delicious browned in clarified butter or olive oil. Measurements are flexible.\n\n2 large (1 pound or a little more) russet potatoes\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 to 3 cups chopped scallions, including an inch of the greens\n\n\u2153 cup chopped parsley, chervil, or other favorite herb\n\n\u00bd cup crumbled goat cheese, optional\n\n1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks. Put them in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and add 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil and cook until soft, about 25 minutes. Set aside a cup of the cooking water, then drain.\n\n2. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a skillet, add the scallions, and toss to coat. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt, add \u00bd cup water, and cook gently until softened, about 15 minutes.\n\n3. Combine the scallions and potatoes in a bowl and mash with the remaining butter, parsley, and enough of the reserved cooking water to make a smooth, light puree. (Use warm milk or cream if you prefer a richer dish.) Stir in the cheese if using. Season to taste with salt and pepper.\n\n**Leek, Scallion, and Fennel Gratin** | SERVES 4\n\nServe this delicate gratin for early spring or fall as an accompaniment to fish or roasted chicken or as a vegetable main course.\n\n3 large leeks, white parts only\n\n2 fennel bulbs, about 6 ounces each\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 bunch scallions, including an inch of the greens, sliced\n\n\u00bc cup chopped fennel greens or 2 tablespoons each chopped parsley and tarragon\n\n1 teaspoon grated lemon zest\n\n2 large eggs\n\n1\u00bd cups milk or half-and-half\n\n\u00bd cup freshly grated Parmesan or Gruy\u00e8re cheese\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Lightly butter a 2-quart gratin dish. Chop the leeks into \u00bd-inch pieces and wash them well in plenty of water, separating the rings. Let them soak while you trim and quarter the fennel. Slice it very thinly, including the core. Bring a skillet of water to a boil; add the fennel and a pinch of salt. Simmer until the fennel is translucent, about 2 minutes, then drain.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide skillet. Lift the leeks out of their soaking water and add them to the pan along with the fennel. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the leeks are tender, about 10 minutes, adding the scallions after 5 minutes. Add the fennel greens and lemon zest, taste for salt, and season with pepper. Scrape the vegetables into the prepared dish.\n\n3. Beat the eggs and milk together and add \u00bd teaspoon salt plus the cheese. Pour it over the vegetables, then bake until the top is browned here and there in places, about 40 minutes. Let rest for a few minutes, then serve.\n\nVARIATION WITH ENDIVE: Slice or chop 1 or 2 white Belgian endives and cook them with the leeks and fennel.\n\n**Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Late-Summer Onions** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThis is a minimal dish with maximal flavors. It is best made with those cured onions that come on in late summer and the fall, rather than summer's fresh onions, which are a bit too sweet and watery.\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n5 large yellow onions, 2\u00bd to 3 pounds, sliced or chopped\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd cup white wine\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n1 tablespoon chopped rosemary\n\n1 pound whole wheat spaghetti\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan or pecorino Romano cheese\n\n1. Melt the butter in a wide nonstick skillet. Add the onions, stir to coat them with the butter, then cover and cook over low heat for 1 hour, occasionally checking on them and giving them a stir. Season with 1\u00bd teaspoons salt and a few grinds of pepper, and cook for 30 minutes more or until they're thoroughly soft and starting to color.\n\n2. Raise the heat to reduce any juices that remain, then add the wine and cook until the onions are glazed and the wine has reduced to a syrup, 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in the herbs. Because they're so sweet, the onions may need more salt and pepper than you're used to using. Season to taste.\n\n3. Cook the spaghetti in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente, then drain and toss with the onions. Serve with freshly grated cheese.\n\nSweet and Sour Onions with Dried Pluots and Rosemary\n\n**Sweet and Sour Onions with Dried Pluots and Rosemary** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nOnions, vinegar, dried fruit\u2014this ever-enticing combination can be realized with all kinds of onions, different types of vinegar, and an assortment of dried fruits, from the plump Red Flame raisins to apricots and pluots, a plum-apricot cross. The smallish, disk-shaped cipolline onions are most attractive here.\n\nIf carefully tended in their final stages, these onions should come out burnished with gold, with the pluots adding succulent sweet-tart bites. Serve warm or at room temperature, with simple grilled chicken.\n\n16 (about 2 pounds) cipolline onions (or boiling onions, parboiled for 1 minute, then peeled)\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 tablespoon unsalted butter\n\n6 dried pluots, cut into quarters\n\n2 tablespoons red wine vinegar\n\n2 teaspoons honey\n\n2 teaspoons finely chopped rosemary\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Trim the onions of any tough skins or root ends, but leave them whole, removing as little as possible so that they'll keep their shape.\n\n2. Heat the oil and butter in a nonstick skillet large enough to hold the onions in a single layer. Add the onions; give them a stir to coat them with the oil and butter, then cook over medium heat, shuffling the pan back and forth frequently, until they have browned in places, about 6 minutes. Add water to cover, bring to a boil, then simmer until the onions have begun to soften, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the pluots, vinegar, honey, rosemary, and a few pinches of salt.\n\n3. Once all the liquid has boiled away, the onions will start to color nicely. Cook them gently, over the lowest heat, adding more water\u2014a tablespoon or two at a time\u2014until they are perfectly tender and golden. Season with pepper.\n\n**HARDNECKS, SOFTNECKS, AND OTHER FORMS OFGARLIC**\n\nThere's a buzz around garlic that's usually reserved for tomatoes and peppers. Shoppers can be heard using words they'd never heard a few years ago, such as _rocamboles, hardnecks, softnecks,green garlic, scapes_, and names like Music, Persian Star, and Chinese Purple. Nearly every market, it seems, has at least one farmer who is passionate about garlic.\n\nA type of garlic that's new to many shoppers is the stiffneck or hardneck garlic. Its neck grows upright early in the season, then it takes off at a right angle, circles back on itself, and zooms off, ending in a blossom. When these curlicues are still green and soft, they're clipped and sold as \"scapes,\" which can be stir-fried or saut\u00e9ed. Eventually the necks harden. The mature bulbs have only five to ten cloves per head, which are large and very easy to peel. Some hardneck garlics such as the rocamboles are favored for their hot, spicy flavor. Spanish Roja is the standard for this group, one you may see at the market. Some of the most stunning varieties are those stiffnecks in the \"Porcelain group,\" whose white papery wrappers give pink heads (such as Music) and red ones (such as Georgian Crystal) a gorgeous blush.\n\nUnlike stiffneck garlic, the heads of softneck garlic have from sixteen to forty cloves. Those at the very center of the head are often very small, but those on the outside are large and peel easily. Their soft necks make it possible to weave these garlic heads into braids. California Early and California Late, the main commercial varieties, are favored because they keep well and because their taste is soft and mild rather than fiery. Some, such as lumpy-looking Dushambe, are practically mahogany colored, while Spanish Morodo is intensely purple. One could go on endlessly with depictions of variations on this theme\u2014white papery heads tinted, splashed, or overcome with reds, pinks, and purples. Inchellium Red, an heirloom variety found in Washington State, is one of the new favorites of the softnecks.\n\nGreen garlic is simply garlic that's picked while the leaves are still green and the heads are immature. The plants, which may be thinnings from the farmer's field\u2014slender shoots the size of a scallion or small leeks\u2014are one of the first vegetables, besides greens, to appear in the early season of the market. You'll find them as early as January in Austin, February in Phoenix, March in Santa Monica and New Orleans, May in Albuquerque, and June in Des Moines and Montpelier. They provide a little early income to the farmer while exciting shoppers with their elusive flavor, which deepens with every passing day.\n\n**Leekand Green Garlic Risotto** | SERVES 4\n\nThis allium special is loaded with sweet green garlic and the first leeks of the season. If there are any fresh, green garlic shoots, set them aside to add, minced, at the end.\n\nLeek roots and greens, trimmings from the garlic (the stalks and roots), parsley stems, plus some bay leaf and thyme can be used to make a vegetable stock.\n\nTHE GREEN GARLIC AND LEEKS\n\n4 medium leeks, white parts only\n\n3 large heads green garlic\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n\u00bd cup white wine\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nTHE RICE\n\n6 cups Vegetable Stock (see headnote), or chicken stock\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1\u00bd cups Arborio rice\n\n\u00bd cup white wine\n\n\u00bd cup cream or cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\n1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese\n\n\u00bd cup chopped chervil or \u00bc cup chopped parsley and 1 tablespoon chopped tarragon\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Quarter the leeks lengthwise, cut them crosswise into \u00bc-inch slices, and wash them well. Remove any tough papery husks from the garlic, then finely chop the bulbs.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a saut\u00e9 pan. Add the leeks and garlic, stir to coat, then add the wine and cook over medium-low heat until the leeks are tender, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and set aside while you cook the rice.\n\n1. Have the stock simmering on the stove. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot over medium heat. Add the rice and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.\n\n2. Pour in the wine and simmer until it is absorbed, then add 2 cups of the stock. Simmer until it has been absorbed, then raise the heat to high and begin adding the stock \u00bd cup at a time. Stir energetically and continue adding liquid after each addition is absorbed. When the rice is done, stir in the leeks, cream, cheese, chervil, and any minced garlic shoots. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve.\n\nDINING ON HERBS\n\nDINING ON HERBS FOR SUNDAY LUNCH\n\nRed and Golden Beets with Anise Hyssop\n\nWhite Pizza with Sage\n\nHerb Salad\n\nWhite Peaches in Lemon Verbena Syrup\n\nOR FOR A SPRING SUPPER\n\nNettle Soup\n\nRoast Chicken with Herbs Under the Skin\n\nScallion, Potato, and Herb Puree\n\nApricots Baked in Parchment (with lavender)\n\n**Chicken Breasts and Leeks Poached in an Herb Broth** | SERVES 4\n\nThese chicken breasts are tender, flavorful, and pretty with their topping of herb-flecked leeks. Serve plain or with any of the green herb sauces. The leftover poaching liquid can go into a soup or risotto.\n\n6 parsley branches\n\n6 tarragon or cilantro sprigs\n\n4 lemon thyme or lemon basil sprigs\n\n1 garlic clove, slivered\n\n1 large piece lemon zest\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n10 peppercorns\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n4 slender leeks, white parts only\n\nSalsa Verde with Basil, Cilantro, and Mint, or Marjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives, optional\n\n4 chicken breast halves, skinned, boned, and neatly trimmed\n\n1. Bring 2 to 3 quarts water to a boil in a skillet large enough to accommodate the chicken breasts. Tie the herbs together and add them to the water with the garlic, lemon zest, bay leaf, peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon salt. Simmer while you wash the leeks and make a green herb sauce, if using.\n\n2. Slice the leeks into rounds \u2153 inch thick. Separate the rings, wash them well in a bowl of water, then scoop them out, add them to the pan, and simmer for 5 minutes. The water should barely be moving. Slide the chicken breasts into the pan and cook until the meat is cooked but still very tender, 8 to 10 minutes per side, depending on the size of the breast. The leeks should be done after 25 minutes.\n\n3. Discard the bundle of herbs and transfer the chicken to a cutting board. Lift out the leeks, shake off the excess water, and toss them with enough sauce to coat lightly, if using. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Slice each breast on the diagonal into 4 or 5 pieces. Lay them on each plate and spoon 2 teaspoons sauce over each. Spoon the leeks over each breast and serve.\n\n**Roast Chicken with Herbs Under the Skin** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nWhether you use a small chicken or a great big roaster, this makes a succulent bird that's as good cold as it is hot. The juices, which are flavored with the garlic, wine, and herbs, make delicious pan gravy.\n\n1 roasting chicken, 3 to 5 pounds\n\n\u00bd teaspoon black peppercorns\n\n1 large garlic clove\n\n\u00bc cup rosemary needles\n\n\u00bc cup chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons marjoram leaves\n\n1 teaspoon sea salt\n\n2 tablespoons aged red wine vinegar\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd cup red or white wine\n\n1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, optional sea salt and freshly ground pepper, optional\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Rinse the chicken and pat it dry.\n\n2. Pound the peppercorns in a mortar. Coarsely chop the garlic with the herbs, then add them to the peppercorns and pound into a paste. Stir in the sea salt, vinegar, and oil.\n\n3. Carefully slide your hand between the skin and the flesh of the chicken, loosening it over the breasts and the legs as far as possible. Rub about half the herb mixture into the flesh. Spread the remainder over the chicken and into the cavity. Truss, then place the chicken in a roasting pan.\n\n4. Bake the chicken for \u00bd hour, then add the wine and lower the heat to 350\u00b0F. Roast until the juices run clear from the thigh, about 1\u00bd hours for a 3-pound bird. While the chicken is roasting, baste it several times with the juices. If it appears to be getting too dark on top, cover it loosely with foil. Serve hot or cold.\n\n5. To make a sauce for hot chicken, remove the bird from the pan and put the pan over a burner on low heat. Whisk in the flour and stir, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for 10 minutes. If the sauce is too thick, add stock to thin it out. It should be well seasoned already, but taste and season, if needed, with additional salt and pepper.\n\n**Grilled Lamb Chops with Fresh Oregano and Lemon** | SERVES 4\n\nThe lamb chops at our market are little, offering only a few succulent bites each.\n\n\u00bd cup olive oil\n\n1 large handful chopped oregano\n\n\u00bd teaspoon sea salt\n\n\u00bd teaspoon red pepper flakes\n\n8 lamb chops\n\n1 lemon, sliced\n\n1. Combine the oil, oregano, salt, and pepper flakes. Pour it over the lamb, turn to coat it well, then add the lemon. Marinate at room temperature for 1 hour or cover and refrigerate for several hours. Bring it to room temperature before grilling.\n\n2. Preheat a gas grill to hot or build a wood fire. Grill 4 inches or so from the heat, allowing 3 to 5 minutes per side, depending on the thickness.\n\n**Lamb Shanks Braised with Onions and Rosemary** | SERVES 4\n\nOnions that are too small to bother chopping are very attractive in this braise. Serve with a root vegetable puree\u2014such as potatoes mixed with rutabagas or parsley root, followed by a green salad dressed with a tart lemon vinaigrette.\n\n4 lamb shanks\n\n3 garlic cloves: 1 crushed, 2 slivered\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup all-purpose flour\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n16 small onions, about an inch across, peeled and left whole\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary\n\n3 thyme sprigs or \u00bd teaspoon dried\n\n1 cup Merlot or Pinot Noir\n\n\u2153 cup parsley chopped with 1 large garlic clove\n\n1. Rinse the shanks and pat them dry. Rub the crushed garlic over them and insert the slivers into the folds of the meat. Season with salt and pepper, then roll the shanks in the flour, patting it on with your hands so that they're well coated.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven. Add the shanks and cook over medium-high heat, browning them all over. Transfer them to a platter and add the onions, rosemary, thyme, and any remaining garlic to the pot. Cook until the onions are browned lightly, about 7 minutes.\n\n3. Return the shanks to the pan, add the wine, and simmer until it has reduced by about half. Pour in 3 cups water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook over low heat until completely tender, with the meat falling off the bone, about 2 hours. Serve with chopped parsley and garlic over all.\n\n**Bruce Aidells's Roast Beef with Herb and Garlic Paste** | SERVES 8, PLUS LEFTOVERS\n\n\"Roast beef!\" Bruce Aidells blurted out without a moment's hesitation when I asked him what single beef dish he would include in this book. As the author of many fine books on meat, which he faithfully sends me, I knew I should look to Bruce for guidance when it came to beef. He has kindly shared his thoughts on the subject and this recipe, which he adapted from _The Complete Meat Cookbook_.\n\nMost shoppers seem to buy steaks for summer grilling, but Bruce had his reasons for considering a roast. \"You can make a roast beef for a simple family dinner, a Sunday lunch, known in England as the Sunday 'joint,' or holiday and other special occasion meals.\" And whatever you find in season should determine the side dishes. \"In spring,\" Bruce says, \"I might serve roast beef with roasted asparagus, saut\u00e9ed spring greens, and nettle-potato cakes.\" Even the customary potatoes become something else when you're using tiny summer potatoes, gorgeous All Reds, or long fingerlings. And any of the seasonal vegetable recipes in this book could, conceivably, do as well, from the Roasted Asparagus to the Slow-Roasted Roasted Tomatoes and the Parsley Root and Potato Puree. Saut\u00e9ed mushrooms are always a good choice, and of course, the herb paste itself can also follow the seasons.\n\n1 4- to 6-pound whole beef top loin, the fat trimmed to \u00bc inch\n\n2 tablespoons minced garlic\n\n3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, fennel, marjoram, sage, rosemary, or savory or 2 teaspoons dried\n\n1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried\n\n1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\n1. About 2 hours before cooking, remove the meat from the refrigerator. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F. Lay the roast beef flat side up on a rack in a shallow roasting pan. Coat the top, ends, and sides of the roast with the herb paste.\n\n3. Place the meat in the middle of the oven and roast for 15 minutes. Turn the heat down to 350\u00b0F and continue to roast for 35 to 45 minutes. After about 25 minutes, begin to check the internal temperature in the thickest part with an instant-read thermometer. Remove the roast from the oven when it reaches 115\u2013120\u00b0F for rare meat, 125\u2013130\u00b0F for medium-rare, 130\u2013140\u00b0F for medium. Cover the meat loosely with foil and let rest for 15 to 20 minutes so that the meat juices and internal temperatures can equilibrate. The final temperature should be about 10 degrees higher than when it was removed from the oven.\n\n4. Carve the meat into slices \u215c to \u00bd inch thick and serve with your choice of vegetables.\n\n**ONE OF THE OLDEST AND BIGGEST MARKETSST. PAUL IN JULY**\n\nIt was a pleasure to finally visit the St. Paul farmers' market one August weekend. Although my friend Kathleen Craig and I arrived early, the market was so densely packed that it was difficult to wend our way down the aisles. But everyone was good-natured and relaxed about the crowding. This seems to be generally true at farmers' markets. There isn't much rage. I think people enjoy getting along with each other.\n\nWe met up with Patty Brand, who used to sell at the market, then became its manager for thirteen years, and now heads the Friends of the Market, which supports market education and development. \"There are,\" Patty told us, \"160 farmers under the covered aisles and more waiting to get in.\" This is a large farmers' market.\n\nMandated in 1853, the St. Paul market is also one of the oldest farmers' markets. \"It's actually been in existence longer than Minnesota has been a state. Some families have had a continuous presence there since the late 1800s,\" Patty explained between greetings to farmers as we bumped along. \"At present,\" she shouted back to us when we got caught in a jam, \"there's a nine-year waiting list to get a permanent spot in this market!\" Nine years? This was the longest wait I had ever heard of. But it's easy to see why\u2014everyone was doing a good business.\n\n\"The farmers' market has traditionally served as a jumping-off point for new immigrants,\" Patty explained. \"First the Swedish immigrants, then the Italian and German, and so on. Today the new immigrants are the Hmong from Southeast Asia, and there is a strong belief that they will be followed by the Somalian and Hispanic nationalities.\" If you take many cab rides, you get the impression that there are a lot of Somalians in the Twin Cities, and there are Somalian restaurants where you can find traditional foods. Some of the seasonings they use are provided by the Hmong.\n\nThe Hmong vendors, who make up about a third of the market, grow beautiful lettuces and tomatoes, but they diversify the market by selling bitter melons, huge bunches of lemongrass, very hot chiles, culinary and medicinal herbs, and the most interesting eggplants. _Kitelee_ , which look like bracts of dark green currant tomatoes, are, a Hmong farmer told me, used in Somalian curries and stews. Other stunning tomato-sized eggplants were yellow and violet to deep purple to green and white striped. They were exotic looking, but they were being bought by the sackful by typical-looking midwesterners. \"For pickling,\" they explained when I asked how they used them.\n\nMinnesota's regional foods also stood out at this market: crab apples, wild rice, ground-cherries (Cape gooseberries), maple syrup, local meats and cheeses, pickled beets. Sweet corn was displayed handsomely, the greens carefully trimmed to reveal the kernels, and a luscious melon called Passport was practically tropical tasting. There were huge bunches of dill for pickling, an array of peppers from stuffers to habaneros, and even biscuits for the pooch.\n\nKathleen and I shopped heavily for a cooking class the following day. While we drove around visiting other markets, everything that was shy of being perfectly ripe finished ripening in the car. Never has a car smelled so good! While this happened to be fine for our purposes, it is a good idea to take a cooler to the market filled with ice packs to keep things fresh so that you don't have to eat all of your purchases as soon as you get home.\n\nAfter our tour Patty mentioned, \"This market, for all its diversity, has been the gathering place for the community, and while crowded, it is a safe, happy, and exciting place to wander about, bring your family, meet your friends, or even make new friends.\"\n\nThere were lots of children helping their parents sell or shop. I watched one small boy push his plastic shopping cart down an aisle, taking a single potato from one farmer, a tomato from another. He was quite serious about his task and was making his way in a very deliberate fashion. When his mother finally caught up with him, she explained that this wasn't the supermarket, where you go to a checkout stand; that here a particular farmer grew each vegetable and that was the person to pay. They retraced his steps and bought each item directly from the farmer.\n\nEverything at this impressive market is produced or grown within a fifty-mile radius of the Twin Cities. As long as there's farmland close to urban centers, farmers can, it appears, make a living. Certainly they are giving urban dwellers something they want, for customers here were described as not only being loyal but also tending to develop relationships with the growers. \"They get to know them and their families through their weekly contact at the market and through visits to their farms,\" Patty commented. Which means that when they sit down to eat, they are sitting down to high-quality food grown by people they know\u2014a rare experience in our world today.\n\nA MENU FROM THE ST. PAUL MARKET\n\nCrostini with Roasted Eggplant and Pine Nut Puree\n\nSquares of Zucchini Frittata with Ricotta and Marjoram\n\nExtravagant Platter Salad, showered with herbs\n\nWarm Corn Custard with Berries\n\nHazelnut Crisps\n\nAll of the members of this robust family of plants, the crucifers, produce flowers whose four single petals form the shape of a cross. Hence the name. With wild radishes the innocent-looking blooms are white, yellow, and pink. Arugula blossoms are cream colored with tiny blood-red veins. Broccoli, when allowed to blossom, puts out clusters of tiny yellow cross-shaped flowers. They're all edible if you wish to scatter them in a salad.\n\nFor many shoppers it may seem odd to find kohlrabi, cauliflower, turnips, and broccoli at the summer market next to tomatoes and melons. We're accustomed to thinking of these as winter vegetables, with Brussels sprouts being confined mainly to Thanksgiving. But summer-into-fall is when some of these so-called winter crops are peaking. In areas that are moderate and cool, they may be at their sweet best now.\n\nKohlrabi, for example, is definitely not what we think of as summer food. In fact we scarcely consider it at all. But when small, kohlrabi is thin skinned, sweet, and juicy. You would need only to slice one and sprinkle it with sea salt to have a crisp and original crudit\u00e9 or combine it with turnips and peas to make a delicate vegetable ragout.\n\nSummer cabbages, with some of their vast number of outer leaves left intact, look magnificent. In the ground they're huge, as big as turkeys. Those extra leaves may go to the compost, but in the meantime they shade the plant and keep it cool. One delightful farmer I saw was cooling herself at a midday market with a \"hat\" made of cabbage leaves that fit neatly over her head.\n\nYou may see some interesting heirlooms at your farmers' market, such as Early Jersey Wakefields, which are cone shaped, as are Winningstadt, only even more so. A farmer might bring cabbages weighing only half a pound or less\u2014an easy fit in the fridge and fine for a single meal. Or you may see an enormous flat Dutch cabbage, like the one we found in Cortez, Colorado, weighing as much as fifteen pounds. Savoy cabbages, whose leaves resemble faience pottery when they haven't been stripped down to tight little balls, are always prized for their delicate flavor, plus you can use the crinkled outer leaves as serving ware for your coleslaws.\n\nOther finds in this department are cauliflowers with pristine white curds or those that are picked when they're only a few inches across. They may be thinnings for the farmer, but for you and me they are perfect for a single serving and just the size to delight a child. Similarly, De Cicco broccoli produces a small (four-inch) head instead of the mammoth ones we're used to seeing at the supermarket. And smaller varieties are often sweeter. Sprouting side shoots with their delicious tender leaves might also be found here too, as well as the spiraled whorls of the green Romanesco cauliflower (or broccoli). The tender leaves of all these vegetables are edible and delicious. And, of course, they are among the most healthful of vegetables.\n\n**Braised Broccoli with Olives** | SERVES 4\n\nBroccoli needn't only be cooked fast until bright green and al dente. In fact the flavor is amplified when it's braised slowly until as tender as can be. You can enjoy this as a vegetable side dish, spoon it over garlic-rubbed bruschetta, or toss it with pasta and freshly grated pecorino or Parmesan cheese.\n\n4 small heads broccoli or 1\u00bd or more pounds broccoli sprouts\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup olive oil\n\n1 onion\n\n1 tablespoon chopped marjoram or oregano\n\n3 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped\n\n2 tablespoons olive paste or finely chopped Gaeta olives\n\ngrated zest of \u00bd lemon\n\n1. Separate the stalks from the broccoli crowns. Thickly peel and trim the stalks and chop them into \u00bd-inch pieces. Peel the base of the broccoli crowns, then separate them into florets.\n\n2. Bring 2 quarts water to a boil; add salt, then the broccoli. Cook for 5 minutes (even if the water barely returns to the boil), then scoop into a colander to drain, reserving a cup of the water. Chop into small pieces just smaller than bite-sized.\n\n3. Warm the olive oil in a wide skillet, then add the onion, marjoram, and garlic. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring now and then, until the onion is softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the olive paste; add the broccoli and stir to coat well. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and add the lemon zest. Add the reserved broccoli water and simmer gently until the broccoli is very tender, 15 to 20 minutes.\n\n**Broccoli and Broccoli Rabe on Bruschetta** | SERVES 4\n\nThere never seems to be enough of those succulent broccoli rabe nubbins, so I sometimes mix in the shoots of sprouting broccoli that are sold at the market.\n\n1 pound broccoli florets\n\n1 large bunch (1 pound or more) broccoli rabe\n\nsea salt\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 large garlic cloves: 1 minced, 1 cut in half crosswise\n\nseveral pinches red pepper flakes\n\n2 tablespoons chopped oregano\n\naged red wine vinegar\n\n4 large slices hearty country bread\n\n\u00bc to \u00bd pound fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced\n\n1. Thickly peel the broccoli stems. If longer than a few inches, coarsely chop them. Peel the larger of the broccoli rabe stalks, then chop them along with the thinner stems. Coarsely chop the greens.\n\n2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add salt, then the vegetables. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes, then scoop them into a colander to drain. Reserve 2 cups of the cooking water.\n\n3. Warm the 2 tablespoons oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the vegetables along with a cup of the reserved cooking water, the minced garlic, pepper flakes, and oregano. Turn with tongs to mix in the garlic, then lower the heat. Make sure there's ample liquid in the pan. The greens shouldn't fry, plus you'll want the extra liquid to spoon over them. Taste for salt, then season with a few drops of good, strong vinegar.\n\n4. Preheat the broiler. Toast the bread, then rub it with the halved garlic clove. Immediately lay the cheese over the top, then broil just until it begins to droop or bubble a little. Transfer the toasts to plates, then cover them with greens and their juices. Add a few drops of olive oil to each, as well as any remaining pan juices.\n\n**Harriet's Hot Roasted Cauliflower** | SERVES 4\n\nFew recipes are as simple as this one, but if Harriet Bell hadn't told me about it, I might never have known what a great little dish this is. If you should be fortunate to find some undersized cauliflower at your farmers' market, bake them whole and serve one per person.\n\n1 larger or 4 small cauliflowers, about 1 pound\n\nolive oil\n\nsea salt\n\nPreheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Leave small cauliflowers whole, but slice a larger vegetable into wedges about 1\u00bd inches wide at the widest point. Brush with olive oil, season with salt, and place in a baking dish in a single layer. Bake until browned on top, about 25 minutes, then turn to brown the second side (if cut into wedges).\n\n**Green Cauliflower with Parsley and Green Olives** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nOf course the color doesn't really matter, but one of those lime-green cauliflowers or a whorl of broccoli Romanesco makes a stunning-looking dish, as does a mixture of green and white cauliflowers.\n\n1 large head cauliflower, broccoflower, or broccoli Romanesco\n\n1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, stems removed, leaves finely chopped\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped tarragon\n\n\u00bd cup chopped Spanish green olives\n\n2 tablespoons drained capers, rinsed\n\n\u2153 cup olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nManchego cheese\n\n1. Cut the cauliflower into small florets; peel and dice the stems. Put the parsley, tarragon, and olives in a bowl with the capers, oil, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and plenty of pepper.\n\n2. Steam the cauliflower over salted boiling water until tender, about 5 minutes. Dump it into the bowl and toss well. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with a little Manchego cheese grated or shaved over the top.\n\n**Whole Little Cauliflowers with Crispy Bread Crumbs** | SERVES 4\n\nHere's a way to showcase those tiny cauliflowers that you sometimes find at the farmers' market\u2014cooked whole and still wrapped in their pale green leaves. If you're using a large one, cut it into florets and steam until tender, then toss with the rest of the ingredients.\n\n4 small cauliflowers, about 5 inches across\n\n\u00bd cup fresh bread crumbs\n\n\u00bd cup finely chopped parsley\n\n2 to 4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 teaspoon Dijon or coarse mustard\n\nsea salt\n\n\u00bc teaspoon red pepper flakes\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese\n\n1. Wash the cauliflowers well. Toast the bread crumbs in the oven or in a skillet until crisp and golden. Melt the butter.\n\n2. Steam the cauliflower, the curds facing down in the pot, until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Set them on individual plates or a platter. Mix the melted butter with the parsley, mustard, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and the pepper flakes. Pour it over the cauliflower, then add the bread crumbs and grate a little cheese over all.\n\nBrussels Sprouts with Cauliflower and Mustard-Caper Butter\n\n**Brussels Sprouts with Cauliflower and Mustard-Caper Butter** | SERVES 8 OR MORE\n\nOne should never feel merely obligated to eat Brussels sprouts. They're good, especially when they're tossed with nubbins of pale green broccoli Romanesco and white cauliflower. Besides, who can resist them when farmers bring them to markets on their stalk, complete with a \"hat\" of cabbage leaves? Here is the most Dr. Seusslike vegetable one could hope for. People walking through the market cradling a stalk that bristles with tiny cabbage seem to smile proudly as if they have just captured something rare. And they have.\n\nTHE MUSTARD-CAPER BUTTER\n\n2 garlic cloves\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature\n\n2 teaspoons Dijon-style mustard, more or less\n\n\u00bc cup drained small capers, rinsed\n\ngrated zest of 1 lemon\n\n3 tablespoons chopped marjoram\n\nTHE VEGETABLES\n\n1 pound Brussels sprouts or 1 whole stalk, stripped of its sprouts\n\n1 small head white cauliflower\n\n1 small head broccoli Romanesco\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nPound the garlic with \u00bd teaspoon salt in a mortar until smooth, then stir it into the butter with the mustard, capers, lemon zest, and marjoram. Season with pepper. The butter can be made a day ahead and refrigerated. Bring back to room temperature before serving.\n\n1. Trim the base off the sprouts, then slice them in half or, if large, into quarters. Cut the cauliflower and broccoli into bite-sized pieces.\n\n2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Add the Brussels sprouts and cook for 3 minutes. Then add the other vegetables and continue to cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Drain, shake off any excess water, then toss with the Mustard-Caper Butter. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and toss again.\n\n**UNEXPECTED MARKET TREASURES**\n\nSetting aside for a moment such virtues as quality, variety, flavor, and freshness, one of the other things I love most about farmers' markets are the unexpected treasures one finds. For example, one August a farmer handed me a shoe-box. Inside were about two hundred extremely infant fennel bulbs, thinnings, to be precise. They were sweet and delicate and a lot of fun to use over the next few days.\n\nLater in the season, another farmer had a lot of Chioggia beets. They were too small to bother bunching, so he had just clipped off their greens and tossed them in a basket. Their small size made them perfect to use whole in a salad, where they looked like jewels. On more than one occasion I've found tiny cauliflower, broccoli heads, and Delicata squash that are just the right size for a single serving and perfect for a child-size portion. It may be that gigantic fifteen-pound flat-head cabbage that's got your name written all over it, or an enormously long, curled summer squash called Tromboncino.\n\nThere are lots of odd and funny vegetables that would never meet supermarket standards: eggplants with noses on them, three-legged carrots, winter squashes covered with warts, heart-shaped potatoes, the occasional five-pound onion or turnip. In the category of sheer beauty I once saw an eggplant so marvelously ruffled that it looked like a satin evening purse.\n\nIt's always wonderful to come across a fruit or vegetable that you've only heard of and never seen, like those green peanuts and muscadine grapes in Alabama or hickory nuts in Wisconsin. Or there might be the pleasure of finding foods from a home you no longer live in. For me figs, quince, and muscat grapes fill that role. And there's the fun of seeing something completely new\u2014the fresh lychees in a Hawaiian market, the unusual Hmong eggplants at St. Paul's, or the Swedish peanut potatoes in Mesa, Arizona.\n\nThe farmers' market is often where new varieties of vegetables and fruits are first encountered by chefs and the public at large. The market provides a place where an experimental botanist can bring the exotic fruits he's been cultivating, such as the dramatic cerise pitahaya fruits I saw in a Los Angeles farmers' market. It's also a place where a shopper can encounter unusual varieties of fruits, sometimes referred to as \"backyard\" fruits, such as unusual varieties of persimmons grown by Japanese-American families who brought them from Japan many years ago.\n\nThe market is also a place where a traveler with a keen interest in food can introduce a new crop. Laura Avery, manager of the Santa Monica farmers' markets, told me about a restaurant forager who brought back Fagiola d'Espagna beans from Italy. He gave them to a farmer at the market who specialized in beans and peas, who grew them out. They are now used in Los Angeles's Campanile restaurant. At our market, Elizabeth Berry spent years growing heirloom beans, until there were enough for local chefs to taste and determine which ones were best eating. (They aren't all alike.) Once they were grown in real quantity, customers lined up for these beans, which were unlike any others seen or tasted before.\n\nExperimentation and collaboration among farmers, customers, and chefs are characteristic of farmers' markets. They are marketplaces of ideas, translated into foods, which become those unexpected treasures customers might find.\n\n**LUNCH OF UNEXPECTED TREASURES**\n\nCrudit\u00e9s: Three-legged carrots and tiny whole fennel\n\nSalad of little Chioggia beets and heart-shaped potatoes\n\nWhole Little Cauliflowers with Crispy Bread Crumbs\n\nScarlet prickly pears with Rangpur limes\n\n**A Rough and ReadyTurnip Potage** | SERVES 3 TO 4\n\nOn one equinoctial day everything imaginable was in the market, but sudden rain, wind, and cold meanly undermined what should have been the fulfillment of the season's promise. Like others, I scurried home as soon as I could. While putting away my produce, I decided what I needed was a big pot of soup. I quickly chopped some leeks, a half dozen turnips, and a potato, then stewed them all in a little butter with a few sprigs of thyme. Salt and water were added, and I went out into the garden. The cold had chilled me, but it had also made me energetic, so I got to work cleaning up my beds and forgot about the soup. When I finally came inside, it had simmered down to a thick and chunky potage.\n\nI rather liked the uneven shapes and varied textures that came from hurried cutting. It had a pleasing rough and ready look. A smidgen of cream went into the pot, some freshly ground pepper, and I served myself a bowl. I had another bowl, then started dipping into the pot. This soup was no less compelling to me than chocolate cake might have been to another. Of course, nothing tastes better than what we eat when we're really hungry. That's when the tongue can detect anything that's not of the first quality, any little slip, flaw, or falsity that might be present. There was none with these vegetables.\n\n6 slender leeks, about \u00be inch across\n\n3 small Yukon Gold potatoes\n\n6 small turnips\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter\n\na few thyme sprigs\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\ncream\n\nchopped parsley or thyme\n\n1. Slice the white parts of the leeks crosswise and wash them well. Scrub the potatoes, quarter them lengthwise, and chop. If the turnip skins are tender looking, quarter and chop the turnips without peeling.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the vegetables, give them a toss, then add \u00bd cup water and the thyme. Simmer for 5 minutes, then add 5 cups water and 1\u00bd teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and stir in a few spoonfuls of cream. Garnish with chopped parsley or thyme.\n\nVARIATION: A more refined bisque can be made with the same ingredients and a few minor changes: Use a good vegetable stock or chicken stock to enrich the flavor; don't let it cook down so much, puree it, and add a cup of light cream. If you have the greens, simmer them until they are completely tender, then chop them up and add them to the soup. Garnish with fresh thyme and its blossoms.\n\n**MarketRagout of Turnips, Kohlrabi, and Peas** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nThis pretty vegetable ragout should prove, if any doubt lingers, that members of the cabbage family can be delicate and pretty\u2014especially in early summer. I've made this with vegetables from the Mesa, Arizona, farmers' market in January, from Santa Fe in June, from California in March, and again from Santa Fe in October, when a new crop of vegetables is ready. Improvise with what your market offers\u2014small onions or red scallions, spring leeks or green garlic, shallots in the fall, bunched spinach or loose leaves.\n\n1 tablespoon unsalted butter\n\n6 spring onions or shallots, halved\n\n6 or more small turnips, scrubbed and quartered\n\n2 or 3 small kohlrabi, about golf ball size, peeled and quartered\n\n1 thyme or lemon thyme sprig\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 pound pod peas, shelled\n\na few handfuls baby spinach\n\ndollop cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\n4 large basil leaves, slivered\n\n1. Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onions, turnips, kohlrabi, and thyme. Add water to cover halfway and a teaspoon of salt. Simmer while you shuck the peas.\n\n2. As soon as the vegetables are tender, after 12 to 15 minutes, add the peas and spinach and cook until the spinach has wilted down, a few minutes more. Stir in the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and add the basil. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve this as a side dish or a course by itself. With a starch (puff pastry, ravioli, even buttered toast), it can be offered as a vegetarian main dish.\n\n**GIVE ME GIANT TURNIPS! ANGEL FIRE, NEW MEXICO**\n\nThe village of Angel Fire, New Mexico, puts on a fund-raiser each September to raise money for library books or a kitchen for the community center. It does this by celebrating local food. During the day there's a farmers' market and at night a dinner is cooked entirely from food grown in New Mexico, much of it near Angel Fire. It is a night of good food and drink, and there is always a strong appreciation for what is grown locally and how good it is.\n\nA lot of things are auctioned off during the dinner. One year the most amusing item was a basket of vegetables grown by Ed May, a local farmer and the main organizer of the event. Hardly the basket of exquisite delicacies you might be imagining, this was a laundry basket crammed with examples of verdant gigantism. Among these were huge daikon, enormous potatoes, rutabagas, and turnips of astounding heft, a five-pound onion, eggplants with \"noses,\" Siamese twin carrots, and other vegetable oddities that farmers see but shoppers seldom do. Laughter grew as each vegetable was held up. The mayor's husband purchased the entire collection and the next morning it fell to me to turn these vegetable beasts into breakfast for a crowd of volunteers.\n\nI woke up sobered by the task of facing these big fellows and got to work. After an hour or so the giant roots were transformed into a delicious mess of home fries, seasoned with the fresh thyme and garlic I found hidden in the basket. Were the five-pound rutabagas and turnips woody, bitter, or bad in any way? Not in the least! They were sweet, firm, and full of flavor. Plus they were easy to work with; cubes of vegetables grew quickly into a large heap with just a few strokes of the knife. Huge was terrific.\n\nHad these vegetables been raised in the heat of the Rio Grande valley below, they probably would have been bitter, woody, and tough. The cool weather at Angel Fire's eight-thousand-foot elevation, the mountain rains, plummeting night temperatures, and soft volcanic soil all worked in concert to produce turnips and rutabagas that were as good as they were large. They were a far cry from those sad thickly waxed specimens languishing miles away in supermarket bins. With vegetables like these, people would happily tuck into those good-for-you brassicas\u2014and come back for seconds.\n\nPrior to World War II, this area supplied the greater Southwest with lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and potatoes. Underground potato bunkers from that time can still be seen in the valleys that were once potato fields. Today virtually all the productive land, following the ruinous path of so much fertile ground in America, has been converted to golf courses or ranchettes or is simply neglected while waiting to be developed. However, a few people, like Ed, have begun to farm the area again, growing heirloom potatoes, root vegetables, cooking greens, and other crops that thrive in cool weather. They are even building new bunkers so that potatoes can be stored properly over the winter. This means that we can open our chilly May market with potatoes, so good with the green garlic and sorrel, instead of waiting until July, when the new crop comes in.\n\n**Cabbageand Potato Gratin with Sage** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nCabbage really is one of the nicest vegetables, and it's always very friendly with potatoes. I like German Butter-ball potatoes here, which are not as sweet as Yukon Golds, although you can certainly use them, too. Fingerlings, French Nosebags, the exotic purple-blushed Huckleberry, new to many markets, or any other waxy potato can be used here as well.\n\n1 pound potatoes (see headnote)\n\n1\u00bd pounds Savoy or other green cabbage\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n3 tablespoons chopped sage\n\n1 garlic clove, chopped\n\n1\u2153 cups milk\n\n3 eggs\n\n\u00bd cup freshly grated Parmesan\n\n\u2153 cup all-purpose flour\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Lightly butter an 8 \u00d7 12-inch gratin dish. Bring a gallon of water to a boil while you prepare the vegetables: Peel and slice the potatoes \u00bc inch thick; slice the cabbage into 1-inch ribbons.\n\n2. Add 1 tablespoon salt to the water, add the potatoes, and boil until nearly tender, about 6 minutes. Scoop them into a colander, then add the cabbage to the pot and cook for 5 minutes. The water may not return to a boil. Drain, rinse under cool water, then twist in a kitchen towel to remove the excess moisture. Get it as dry as you can. Combine the cabbage and potatoes in a bowl.\n\n3. Melt the butter in a small skillet with the sage and garlic. Cook for about 1 minute without letting the garlic brown. Pour it over the cabbage and potatoes. Toss well, taste for salt, and season with pepper. Transfer to the baking dish.\n\n4. Whisk the remaining ingredients together, pour them over the vegetables, and bake until firm and lightly browned, about 50 minutes. Let cool for at least 10 minutes, then cut into pieces and serve.\n\n**Savoy Cabbage and Fennel with Parsley-Lemon Butter** | SERVES 4\n\nThis tender mess of pale green ribbons flecked with yellow lemon zest is the kind of dish I'd make a meal of with some egg noodles thrown in. But it also makes a delicious bed for monkfish, cod, or wild salmon.\n\n\u00bd small Savoy or other green cabbage\n\n1 large fennel bulb, quartered\n\n1 large leek, white part only\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\njuice and zest of 1 Meyer lemon\n\n3 tablespoons chervil or parsley leaves\n\n1. Cut the cabbage, fennel, and leek into very thin slices and wash. Don't dry, though.\n\n2. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large, wide skillet. Add the vegetables and sprinkle with \u00bd teaspoon salt. Cover the pan and cook gently for 10 minutes. Check after 5 minutes and make sure there's a little moisture so that the vegetables steam and don't brown. Meanwhile, simmer the lemon juice in a small skillet until only 1 tablespoon remains. Remove from the heat and whisk in the remaining butter.\n\n3. Finely chop the lemon zest with the chervil. Stir half into the butter and add the other half to the vegetables. Toss well, taste for salt, and season with pepper.\n\n**MARKETS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE**\n\nThe North Pole Farmers' Market? The notion of farmers' markets in Alaska sounded unlikely to me, but they're there\u2014eight of them, which is two more than Wyoming has and close to the number in Arizona. I didn't make it to Alaska, but it didn't seem right to leave our big northern state out, so I spoke with Doug Warner, the farmers' market representative from the Alaska Department of Agriculture, and Bill Webb, manager of the Anchorage Downtown Farmers' Market, who filled me in over the phone one day.\n\n\"Maybe I should tell you what we don't have,\" Doug said, when I asked him what a shopper might find at an Alaskan farmers' market in mid-July. This seemed a bit of a stretch. Surely they didn't have corn, did they?\n\n\"Yes, we do.\"\n\n\"Tomatoes?\" I asked skeptically.\n\n\"Oh yes.\" His reply was laconic.\n\n\"Okra?\"\n\n\"Well, there's not much market for it, but we _could_ do it.\"\n\nSummer and winter squash are in the market too, but in the prolonged daylight the zucchini grow even quicker than they normally do. \"Big enough to make a canoe out of,\" joked Bill.\n\nDoug did admit that they didn't grow watermelons, although there is a Siberian heirloom variety. And they don't grow peaches. But they do grow strawberries, blueberries, bush cranberries, lingonberries, marionberries, and apples. Rose hips, along with blueberries and lingonberries, are natives. The big crops are cabbages and many, many kinds of potatoes. \"Then there are radishes, green onions, zucchini, turnips, lettuce, beets, winter squash, and quite a few Asian vegetables as there's a large Asian population in Anchorage,\" Bill adds. \"People bring in wild mushrooms, and we also have leeks, chard, and kale, but no spinach for some reason. Cucumbers are very much in demand, especially picklers, and I love those yellow tomatoes!\"\n\nEven though corn and tomatoes come to market, corn is in its experimental stage\u2014it's transplanted from the greenhouse\u2014and tomatoes remain in the greenhouse throughout the season. Cabbages are what northern climes are famous for. \"The long light makes them pretty large,\" Doug said. \"Last year one weighed in at 107 pounds. It won first prize at the Alaska State Fair.\" And because of the cool soil temperature, the conversion of sugar to starch in plants is slowed down so that foods end up with higher sugar contents. \"Even the potatoes are sweet,\" Doug explained, and Bill remarked that he had never eaten turnips that were as sweet and delicious as those grown in Alaska.\n\nTwice the government has made an effort to lure farmers to Alaska, once in the 1950s and again in the 1980s. In spite of subsidies and massive loan offers, however, the farming community has remained small. \"There are maybe only thirty active farmers in the biggest section of arable land near Anchorage,\" Bill explained. \"Some farmers have enough volume to sell wholesale, but the others come to market.\"\n\nThe main obstacle that Alaskan farmers face is not climate as much as getting help during the harvest. There is no migrant worker population, and everyone in this underpopulated state seems to be pretty busy. \"At one time they used to run buses filled with teenagers out to help with the harvest,\" Bill said, \"but they don't now.\" The high cost of locally grown food reflects the high cost of labor among other things, but it all sells. The markets are very successful. \"We haven't lost any,\" Doug reports. \"In fact we've just started a few more. People want something fresher than what they can normally buy, and they want organic. Attendance has been increasing.\"\n\nThe Alaskan markets have from five to twenty-five farmers. The Anchorage market is actually a huge crafts fair. There are about twenty-five farmers to three hundred other kinds of vendors. \"Hundreds of customers come hours early to buy the produce,\" says Bill. Some reselling is allowed to bring diversity to the markets\u2014those peaches, for example. The markets begin in May, largely with crafts and resale, and continue to mid-September, although a market manager can keep the market open as long as the local farmers have food to sell.\n\nA SUMMER SUPPER IN ANCHORAGE\n\nCarrot Salad with Parsley, Lovage, and Mint\n\nGrilled or poached salmon\n\nSavoy Cabbage and Fennel with Parsley-Lemon Butter\n\nWarm Berry Compote with ice cream\n\n**Napa Cabbage Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nAlthough this salad can be made at the last minute, it doesn't suffer from being dressed hours earlier, which makes it a good picnic salad. Add the peanuts just before serving so they'll be nice and crunchy.\n\nTHE SALAD\n\n\u00bd cup skinned raw peanuts\n\n1 teaspoon peanut oil\n\n1 large carrot\n\n4 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage\n\n2 cups slivered lettuce leaves\n\n3 thin scallions, including some of the greens, finely sliced diagonally\n\n\u00bc cup chopped cilantro\n\n2 tablespoons chopped mint leaves\n\n2 tablespoons torn basil leaves, preferably Thai basil\n\nTHE DRESSING\n\n\u00bd jalape\u00f1o chile, finely diced\n\n\u00bc cup rice vinegar\n\n1 teaspoon sugar\n\n\u00bc teaspoon sea salt\n\n\u00bc cup roasted peanut oil\n\n1. Heat the peanuts in the oil over medium-low heat, shaking the pan occasionally, until lightly browned after a few minutes. Blot with paper towels and set aside.\n\n2. Peel the carrot with a vegetable peeler and discard the skins. Then, with the vegetable peeler, continue removing long strips of the carrot until you've reached the core.\n\n3. Combine the cabbage, lettuce, and carrot with everything except the nuts. Whisk the dressing ingredients together and toss with the greens. Add the peanuts just before serving.\n\n**Priest Stranglers (Strozzapreti) with Black Kale, Sage, and Potatoes** | SERVES 4\n\nA variant on _pizzoccheri_ , this dish unites pasta, potatoes, and kale with Fontina cheese but uses wheat pasta in place of buckwheat. The name _priest stranglers_ refers to the pasta shape, which resembles folded and twisted ribbons of fettuccine or tagliatelle. Gemelli and other similarly twisted pastas work well here, and spaghetti does too.\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n3 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed with the side of a knife\n\n10 sage leaves\n\n2 bunches cavolo nero (black kale), stems discarded\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 cups finely diced yellow potatoes, about \u00be pound\n\n\u00be pound pasta (see headnote)\n\n5 ounces Italian Fontina cheese, coarsely grated or cubed\n\nfreshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\n1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil for the pasta. While it's heating, heat the butter, garlic, and sage in a small skillet over medium heat until the butter is lightly browned and nutty smelling. Turn off the heat and discard the garlic.\n\n2. Chop the kale coarsely. When the pasta water boils, add salt and the kale. Boil for 4 minutes, then add the potatoes and cook for 6 minutes more or until both are tender. Scoop them out, shake off excess water, and dump them into a bowl. Cook the pasta until al dente, then drain and add it to the kale and potatoes.\n\n3. Pour the butter and sage over all, then, using a pair of tongs, pick up some of the pasta and use it to wipe out the pan. Add the Fontina, a generous grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and toss. Season with pepper, and serve.\n\nKALE AND CAVOLO NERO\n\nWhat people tend to fear, or so they tell me, about cabbages and kale is that they'll be strong tasting. This is never true when cabbages are fresh and properly cooked, and it's certainly not true of kale, although it always looks as if it might be tough, overly hearty, and hard to tame. In fact its flavor is mild, and it cooks to tenderness in a very short time.\n\nHere's cause for celebration, a new kale! I have seen it in so many markets the past few years that I no longer think of it as a newcomer. Still, _cavolo nero_ is a fairly recent addition to our national vegetable repertoire. _Black kale, black cabbage, dinosaur kale, dragon tongue, Tuscan kale_ , and _lacinato_ are just some of the names for this extraordinary-looking leaf vegetable. Slate green\u2013black in color, the leaves do have the shape of a tongue, with a pronounced waffled texture. It cooks in 5 to 7 minutes and retains half its volume (unlike spinach) as well as its lustrous hue. Its color makes it hard to resist dramatic pairings with any food of contrasting values, such as white beans, cauliflower, yellow-fleshed potatoes, or paler Savoy cabbage. The flavors in such partnerships hold up as well as the visuals.\n\nIn Italy, grower Lucio Gomiero told me, cavalo nero is treated seasonally and enjoyed only after the first frost. As with most hearty greens, cold conditions favor its flavor. In fact, kale is so cold-hardy that it may persist in your market until the very end of the season. Other kales you'll find are more familiar: the ruffled gray-green variety, Red Russian kale, which has a purplish cast to the leaves and red veins, and Redbor, which is plum-purple-red.\n\nAll kales have ropy stems that run down the center of each leaf. They're too tough to eat, so just strip the leaves from the stems by sliding a sharp knife along the stem and letting the leaves fall away. (Some prefer to use their hands.) Bring a skillet or pot of water to a boil\u2014you don't need a lot\u2014and add salt, then the kale. Simmer until tender, 5 to 10 minutes, then drain in a colander and press out the excess water. You can season cooked kale with garlic and olive oil, saut\u00e9 it with the same, add it to soups, toss it with cauliflower or boiled potatoes, and so forth. Lucio says that he makes a kind of pesto from it, which he spreads on crostini or tosses with pasta. Two bunches of kale, about 2 pounds, will serve 4 to 6, assuming you want more than one or two bites\u2014and you will.\n\n**RedborKale with Red Beans, Cilantro, and Feta Cheese** | SERVES 4\n\nA limited cupboard can sometimes prove an asset. I had dark red kidney beans from a California market, feta cheese, cilantro, and what seemed like an armload of Redbor kale. They worked well together, much to my surprise. In truth, any variety of kale is fine here, and so is chard and other greens, such as collards.\n\n1\u00bd cups dried red kidney beans, soaked for 4 hours or overnight\n\n2 bay leaves\n\n\u00bd teaspoon thyme leaves\n\nsea salt\n\n1 white onion, finely diced\n\n1 large bunch kale (see headnote)\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to finish\n\n\u00be cup chopped cilantro\n\n3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled\n\n1. Drain the beans, cover them with plenty of cold water, and bring to a boil. Remove any scum that rises to the surface, then add the herbs, 1\u00bd teaspoons salt, and all but \u00bd cup of the onion. Lower the heat and simmer until tender, about 1\u00bd hours.\n\n2. Slice the kale leaves from their stems with a knife. Chop coarsely into 1- or 2-inch pieces and rinse well. Bring a few quarts water to a boil; add salt and the kale. Simmer until tender, 5 to 7 minutes, then pour into a colander to drain.\n\n3. Heat the oil in a wide skillet. Add the remaining \u00bd cup onion and \u00bd cup of the cilantro. Cook over medium heat until the onion has softened, about 10 minutes, then add the kale and the beans with enough of the cooking liquid so that there's plenty of sauce. Simmer together for at least 10 minutes, then serve garnished with crumbled feta cheese and the remaining cilantro.\n\nWhite Beans with Black Kale and Savoy Cabbage\n\n**White Beanswith Black Kale and Savoy Cabbage** | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nIf you add water or stock, you can make this into a hearty minestrone to serve with garlic-rubbed toast. One day I decided to stop before adding the liquid and just enjoyed the two greens entwined with the beans. You can still serve it over toast, making a hearty bruschetta, over pasta, or as a side to a roast chicken.\n\n1 cup dried cannellini, navy beans, or _gigantes_ , soaked for 4 hours or overnight\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 large onion, finely diced\n\n2 leeks, white parts only, diced\n\n1 bunch cavolo nero (black kale), the leaves stripped from the stems and slivered\n\n1 small Savoy cabbage, quartered, cored, and chopped\n\n2 plump garlic cloves, minced or pounded with a pinch salt\n\n\u00bd cup chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to finish\n\n1. Drain the soaked beans, then put them in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, add \u00bd teaspoon salt, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender, about 1\u00bd hours.\n\n2. While the beans are cooking, chop all the vegetables. Rinse the leeks, kale, and cabbage, but don't dry them.\n\n3. Warm 2 tablespoons of the oil in a heavy wide skillet. Add the onion and leeks and cook over medium-low heat until the onion is soft but not browned, about 12 minutes. Add the kale, cabbage, garlic, parsley, and 2 teaspoons salt. Cook with the heat on low and the pan covered until the vegetables are soft and the volume greatly reduced, about 30 minutes.\n\n4. When the beans are done, add them, along with a cup or two of their cooking liquid, to the pot. Simmer until the greens are completely tender. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with, or over, garlic-rubbed toast, drizzled with olive oil.\n\n**SHOPPING IN THE FOUR CORNERS:CORTEZ AND DURANGO MID-AUGUST**\n\nCortez lies about an hour's drive from the Four Corners, a point where one can walk in a tiny circle across the corners of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Durango is located about an hour east of Cortez. Both small towns hold their farmers' markets on Saturday, but the Cortez market is in full swing by 7:00 A.M., while Durango gets its start around 10:00. An ambitious shopper can attend both markets, which my husband, Patrick, and I did one August morning.\n\nPlain and flat, Cortez is a town shaped by farming and ranching, and a lot of the businesses there have to do with farm equipment and trucking. The absence of chain restaurants and malls is refreshing. The mannequins in the clothing store on Main Street still wear their hair in a bubble, but there is an espresso bar in the lobby of the supermarket, which supports the convivial atmosphere there in a more contemporary way. Durango, on the other hand, is set in a valley edged with mountains and filled with the Victorian bric-a-brac of its mining past. It is filled with tourists who gawk in that unhurried tourist way at the gingerbread architecture, then move on, more energetically, to the Ralph Lauren outlet store.\n\nBut it was the farmers' markets we came for, and we started in Cortez, where, we discovered, there are actually two markets. Cortez has had some form of farmers' market since 1911, and until a few years ago the farmers gathered on an empty city lot on the main street to sell their vegetables. When they had the chance to move to a new market site in a tiny city park a few years ago, some of the older farmers chose to stay on at the old site.\n\nWe headed for the new site. It was a relaxed market. Some farmers parked in the street and sold from their trucks, some were set up on the sidewalk, while others were selling in the park itself. Dogs wandered about free of their leashes, and there were plenty of babies and children. For such a small market, there was a surprising amount of good food: Ivory bell peppers, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, including the delicious Rosa Bianca, Costata Romanesco zucchini, tiny filet beans, sweet corn, white Babcock and Red Haven peaches, and the muskmelons for which this area is known. Although small\u2014there were no more than a dozen vendors\u2014it resembled our Santa Fe market with its mix of goods. And it was not only a place to buy the best produce imaginable, but also a place where neighbors\u2014some of whom might live many miles apart\u2014could meet and catch up on news and the weather, the most important topic in any farming community.\n\nOne farmer had enormous Dutch flat-head cabbages, weighing twelve or more pounds apiece, a very hefty armful. His potatoes and garlic were also unusually large, as was he. When I asked him why everything he grew was so big, he shrugged his shoulders and said, \"Well, we're completely organic. Don't use any chemicals.\" But even I know that doesn't say it all. Organic farmers can grow puny food, too. One has to know _something_. Our rancher friend with whom we were shopping suggested that being organic to this farmer probably meant digging a lot of composted manure into his garden because he couldn't afford the chemical inputs. Well, good for him, I thought. It looked as though he was doing fine. We bought a cabbage along with some garlic and potatoes. Later that day we hollowed out the cabbage and filled it with a mixture of lamb (Colorado is also lamb country), rice scented with herbs and spices, tomatoes, and the cabbage center that had been saut\u00e9ed with some onions. We nestled the whole thing into a large Mexican casserole, covered it with a blanket of spare cabbage leaves, and left it to bake for several hours. It was served that evening in succulent glory, the cabbage saturated with juices and the rich flavor of the lamb, garlic, and spice.\n\nAt the renegade market around the corner, the farmers, who were much older, seemed more interested in chatting with one another than selling to the few customers who happened to pass by. One farmer had bagged his vegetables and scrawled the price on each bag, leaving him free to talk with his neighbors without pesky customers asking \"How much?\" We found some tart wild cherries and bran milled from local wheat. But most curious of all was a table of homemade jams packed in every conceivable size and shape of jar, the old labels left on and only partially covered with a scrawl announcing their new identities. With a stroke of the pen, Mary Ellen's grape jelly had become apricot jam, the contents of a jar of kosher dills had been replaced with applesauce, and so forth. It had a kind of \"buyer beware\" attitude that I liked: You'd better pay attention when you dip into that jar of jam. It could be something else entirely.\n\nOver in Durango, no signs were posted announcing the whereabouts of the market, but people walking by with sacks of corn and armloads of sunflowers led us to it. This little market was tucked behind a large brick schoolhouse, which stood on a pleasant grassy plot. Some of the twenty or so vendors were the spouses of the farmers we had just seen in Cortez, selling the same mix of produce. But there was also grass-fed beef, lamb, fresh trout, smoked trout, and pastured chickens, making the farmers' market more of a farmers'- _ranchers_ ' market. Actually, meat and fowl at farmers' markets is a growing trend. Often this is the only place where wholesome meats, raised without hormones or antibiotics, can be bought in a community and at prices that seem fair to farmers and affordable to customers.\n\nWe shopped and chatted with the growers, and then it was time for lunch. We found a Greek restaurant and sat on I the patio, our patient dog now joining us. The special that day was an Ivory bell pepper filled with eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes, braised with North African spices. The menu also featured the lamb and grass-fed beef from the market. While we were eating, a farmer we had spoken with only an hour before walked in with coffee cans stuffed with fragrant fresh basil. Lunch was delicious. It was a rare joy to be able to eat so directly from garden, farm, and ranch.\n\nBy dessert, our dog was asleep at our feet. Our waiter gently laid a few scraps of beef by her nose. She simply sighed and without as much as opening her lazy eyes, extended her tongue, wrapped it around the morsel, and took it into her disbelieving mouth. She was as happy and astonished as we were.\n\nA LATE-SUMMER MENU\n\nCrostini with Slow Roasted Tomatoes\n\nLamb Kebabs Marinated in Yogurt\n\nRoasted Eggplant and Chickpea Stew\n\nSteamed Potatoes with with Green Chile Paste\n\nRipe melons with limes\n\nIt's late August, and there's corn and beans in markets everywhere. When it comes to corn, everyone wants the super-sweet varieties with names like Kandy Korn, which leave no doubt where corn syrup comes from. Old-fashioned corn is now too starchy for the general public's taste, but occasionally you'll find someone in a market growing Golden Bantam, an heirloom variety, for customers who claim they like that old-fashioned flavor. But, the farmers' complain, in the end they don't buy it because it's too starchy! So virtually all of the corn is sweet corn. Sometimes it's just loose in a trailer that the farmer has hauled from the field. But in St. Paul and other midwestern markets, displays are generally set out with care, one ear of each variety set apart, the greens neatly cut and pulled away to reveal the kernels.\n\nSome farmers grow dent corns, popcorn, and the variously colored Indian corns, which, in our case, really are grown by native Americans. Each year a family from the Santa Domingo Pueblo brings large fantastically colored ears to market tied into corn ladders. Other farmers just have their ears out for you to go through, while still others have woven their blue, yellow, red, and piebald ears into ristras to hang on a wall or a front door. Not all dried corns are for decoration, though. Southwestern markets are likely to have _posole_ (corn cured in lime, then dried), _chicos_ (corn dried in the sun or _horno_ ), _atole_ (a fine cornmeal for drinking), and cornmeal.\n\nCorn growers everywhere dislike it when you paw through the ears and then pull back the husks. The husks are there to protect the kernels and keep them moist. As soon as they're loosened, the corn begins to dry out, especially in the arid climates of the western mountain states. One of our farmers growls, \"You peel it, you buy it.\" A farmer's sign at the Dane County Farmers' Market states, \"Corn'ography is when you strip the ears too far back. Let your 'corn' science be your guide.\" Tacked to a barn in the Ohio countryside is a sign with serious warnings about corn stripping, and a sign at a New York market begs shoppers, \"Please, do not husk the corn!\" They point out that if you husk it and don't buy it, neither will anyone else, even if it's a perfectly good ear.\n\nIf you need to know more about the corn you're buying than what you can see, try feeling the kernels through the husks. Press your fingers along the ears, letting them search for the plumpness that tells you the kernels are well filled out. Of course what most people are really checking for are worms. There's a great fear and loathing of worms in food, but far better worms than the pesticides, and commercial corn is very heavily sprayed just so you don't have to encounter that little worm. If you find a worm when you get home\u2014and it's almost always on the tip of the ear\u2014just knock it off, then slice off the end where it's been nibbling and proceed. You'll forget about it, and no one else will ever know.\n\nFresh beans appear about the same time corn does, but over the course of a market season, we see beans go from dried to fresh to dried again. In between are shell beans, beans that are too large to be eaten in their pods but not yet fully dried either. Any bean, left to mature, can become a shelling, or shell, bean. Over the course of my market visits, I've seen many kinds of shell beans\u2014Black Valentine, borlotti, cranberry, white runner beans, even pintos. Fava beans are not usually thought of this way, but they too are shell beans, as are _edamame_ , or green soybeans, and black-eyed peas.\n\nFor varieties, we tend to favor what we grew up with. Some gravitate to the old-fashioned Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder, Venture, and Derby. Others prefer yellow wax beans, Slankettes, or Royal Burgundies. Those of Italian inclination will reach for the broad Romano beans and shelling beans. Midwesterners have their fresh limas, while markets in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and Oklahoma feature field peas, a world that encompasses a host of small peas with eyes\u2014cowpeas or black-eyed peas, crowders, Purple Hull, Lady Peas, Mississippi Whites, and others. New-crop pinto and bolita beans, however, are a cause for excitement in New Mexico.\n\nPretty much everyone now has access to the skinny French filet beans. These are the most expensive beans. Michael Abelman of Fairview Gardens in Goleta, California, told me he probably loses money on filets because they take so long to pick\u2014and this is at $6 a pound. But everyone wants them, so they keep on planting them. Crouching in the sun and searching for thin green beans among the green leaves and green shadows is not that easy!\n\nA good fresh bean that's not overgrown, whether a French, an American, or an Italian bean, is one that a child will eat, provided it's not overcooked. Beans want just a bit of crunch at the heart of their tenderness. Modern varieties are free of strings. They simply need to be tipped and tailed\u2014if that\u2014dropped into plenty of boiling salted water, and cooked uncovered until tender but not mushy. It seems quite normal to pick them up with your fingers, like asparagus, and they are every bit as good as this favored vegetable.\n\n**Cornand Chanterelle Chowder** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nChanterelles and corn, if it's a mushroom year, come into season at the same time, at least in the mountain states, and they fit seamlessly together. All mushrooms are good with corn, but chanterelles are my favorite.\n\nThere are two parts to this recipe, the stock and the vegetables. The stock is made with the trimmings from the vegetables, aromatics, and milk, including chanterelle trimmings. You'll want to use every bit of these glorious fungi.\n\nTHE VEGETABLES\n\n4 large ears sweet corn, shucked\n\n2 long leeks or 2 cups chopped\n\n2 German Butterball or other yellow waxy potatoes, scrubbed\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 teaspoons chopped thyme\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 or more cups chanterelles, cleaned and sliced about \u00bc inch thick\n\n\u00bd cup cream\n\n2 tablespoons each chopped parsley and snipped chives\n\nTHE STOCK\n\n1 tablespoon unsalted butter\n\n1 large onion, chopped\n\n1 celery rib, chopped\n\n2 bushy thyme sprigs\n\nhandful parsley stems\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n1 quart milk, whole or 2 percent\n\n1. Slice off the corn kernels, cutting no more than two thirds of the way into the kernels. Reverse the knife and press out the scrapings. Snap the cobs into 2 or 3 pieces. Put them in a bowl for the stock.\n\n2. Slice off the root ends of the leeks, rinse them, and add them to the corncobs. Cut off the leaves, coarsely chop a cup or so of the firmest parts, wash them well, and add them to the corncobs, too. Quarter the remaining white parts lengthwise and chop.\n\n3. Peel the potatoes and dice them into small cubes. Put the skins with the stock ingredients.\n\n4. Make the stock: Melt the butter in a wide pot, add the vegetable trimmings, the onion, celery, herbs, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Stirring them frequently so that they don't brown, cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, then add the milk. Slowly bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to as low as possible, cover the pan, and simmer for 30 minutes. Check occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking. When done, carefully strain the stock, watching for any grit in the bottom.\n\n5. Melt half the butter in a wide soup pot and add the leeks, potatoes, and half the thyme. Add 1 cup water, sprinkle with \u00bd teaspoon salt, and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the corn.\n\n6. Heat the remaining butter in a wide skillet. When foaming, add the chanterelles and saut\u00e9 over high heat, turning them frequently, for about 5 minutes. Add them, with their juices, to the soup pot, then pour in the stock. Bring slowly to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are fully tender. Stir in the cream and add the remaining thyme, the parsley, and the chives, and season with pepper.\n\n**A LOOK AT THE MARKET INTRENTON, NEW JERSEY AUGUST 25**\n\nFood writer Joe Colanero sent me a market report from Trenton, New Jersey, one August. There were none of the justly famed Jersey tomatoes at this market. But there were those luscious Sun Gold tomatoes, lots of Jersey sweet corn, and in between a wide range of vegetables from Chippewa potatoes to Scotch Bonnet peppers, seven kinds of eggplant, Blue Gem cabbage, squash, green beans, garlic, herbs, and more. Fruit included plums, Yellow Doll and Crimson Sweet watermelons. Bartlett and Seckel pears, peaches, nectarines, and McIntosh apples. While more modest than August markets elsewhere, there was ample variety to make a meal of many tastes and textures.\n\nAN ABUNDANT AUGUST SUPPER\n\nCorn Fritters with Aged Cheddar and Arugula\n\nA Platter Salad featuring Slankette beans and lemon cucumbers\n\nSteamed Potatoes, Sun Gold tomatoes, and tuna\n\nPeach Shortcake on Ginger Biscuits\n\nLemon thyme tisane, iced\n\n**CreamyCorn and Shallots** | SERVES 4\n\nThis couldn't be simpler or faster to make. Savor it by itself or serve it as a side dish.\n\n6 ears freshly picked sweet corn\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 shallots, finely diced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup cream\n\n1 tablespoon chopped parsley, torn basil leaves, or chopped dill\n\n1. Shuck the corn and remove the kernels with a sharp knife, cutting no more than two thirds of the way into the kernels. Reverse your knife and force out the scrapings, keeping them separate from the kernels.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide nonstick skillet. Add the shallots and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the corn kernels, sprinkle with \u00bd teaspoon salt, and raise the heat. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the scrapings and cream and cook for 1 minute more. Turn off the heat, season with pepper, and stir in the herb.\n\n**CornPudding** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThis pudding is the essence of corn\u2014sunny yellow and filled with sweet kernels that burst in your mouth. Add a cheese from your market, whether it's a soft goat, pungent sheep, smoked Gouda, or aged Cheddar\u2014all will be good with corn\u2014but don't forget the dash of paprika.\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 cup finely diced yellow onion\n\n6 large ears sweet corn, enough to yield approximately 3 cups kernels\n\n2 eggs, lightly beaten\n\n1 cup cream, evaporated milk, or fresh milk\n\n1 cup grated or crumbled cheese\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n1 tablespoon chopped marjoram\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\npaprika\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Lightly butter a 6-cup gratin dish. Melt the butter in a skillet over low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, just until it's soft and lightly colored, about 10 minutes.\n\n2. While the onion is cooking, shuck the corn and rub off the silk. Using a sharp knife, slice off the top halves of the kernels, then turn your knife over and, using the dull side, press it down the length of the cob, squeezing out the rest of the corn and the milk. Set these aside. Bring a quart of water to a boil, add the corn kernels, and cook for 1 minute, whether or not the water returns to a boil. Drain.\n\n3. Beat the eggs and add the cream, corn kernels, corn milk, cooked onion, cheese, herbs, and 1 teaspoon salt. Season with pepper and pour into the baking dish. Shake a few dashes of paprika over the top. Bake on the center rack of the oven until puffed and golden, about 45 minutes. Serve warm.\n\n**Corn Fritters with Aged Cheddar and Arugula** | SERVES 6 AS AN APPETIZER OR A LIGHT SUPPER\n\nThese crunchy fritters are all corn, not just a few corn kernels suspended in batter. I like the sharp, aged Cheddar I found at the Minneapolis market against the sugary sweetness of today's corn, but corn is versatile and good with every kind of cheese\u2014fresh goat, sheep's feta, Swiss, Gouda, Jack.\n\n6 ears sweet corn, enough to yield 3 cups kernels\n\n2 eggs, beaten\n\n4 scallions, including an inch of the greens, finely sliced\n\n\u00bd cup chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons shredded basil or dill\n\n1 cup grated or crumbled cheese (see headnote)\n\n\u00bd cup all-purpose flour\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nunsalted butter or oil for frying\n\n3 handfuls arugula, stems trimmed\n\n1. Slice the tops of the kernels off the corn, then reverse your knife and press out the milk. Mix the kernels and scrapings with the eggs, scallions, herbs, cheese, and as much flour as can easily be absorbed. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt and some pepper.\n\n2. Melt enough butter or heat enough oil to cover a wide skillet generously. Divide the batter roughly into sixths and drop into the skillet. Fry over medium heat until golden, about 2 minutes, then turn and brown the second side.\n\n3. Place a fritter on each of 6 plates and top with the arugula leaves. Serve right away.\n\n**DISCOVERING REGIONAL FOODS IN ALABAMABIRMINGHAM, LATE SEPTEMBER**\n\nWe have no trouble finding the farmers' market at all. Signs on the freeway announce the exit, which raises our expectations enormously. But where we end up is at the wholesale produce market, a part of which is given over to farmers. It feels wrong, and we hesitate at the gate. But a guard assures us that we're in the right place. \"Come on in!\" he shouts, and he ushers us in with a grand sweep of his arm.\n\nThe area is so vast that we drive, rather than walk, to each of the three farmers. Presumably there is more activity on other days. Restaurants we have eaten at in Birmingham indicate that there is an appreciation of local produce, and you'd think this would be the source. It is in part, I learn later, but today it's dispiriting with these few farmers waiting in their pickups for customers to come and buy their gunnysacks of field peas. A few young men are lounging by a truck full of watermelons. They see us and begin holding up their forefingers and motioning toward us, signaling that the price of their melons is a dollar. We drive over and spend a half hour with them\u2014they are a pleasant chatty bunch\u2014then we buy a huge, heavy striped Rattlesnake melon, hardly a convenient purchase for out-of-town travelers. Fortunately we are invited out to dinner, and it proves to be an excellent melon.\n\nThere is little else to see. We gather that it's too late in the morning, so we come back earlier the next day, when there are two or three more farmers. What's going on here? I wonder. Then someone explains what should be obvious: The season is about over. This is hard to comprehend, because at home our market is probably enjoying its peak day of the year. But this is the South. Chris Hastings, chef-owner of the popular Hot and Hot Fish Club, says that when the market _is_ running, he buys a lot of his produce from the farmers. \"It varies,\" he says, \"from bring-a-tear-to-your-eye-gorgeous to root average,\" but on the whole the farmers are really good at growing southern produce, \"which is what we like to cook with.\" On a return visit a year and a half later, Chris gives me an in-depth tour of the market but also tells me about a new farmers' market in another neighborhood that's wildly successful, selling out every week\u2014the Pepper Place Saturday Market.\n\nFor now, though, we wander into a produce store at one end of the market, and that's where I find the foods I have only, until this moment, read about, starting with sacks of Jumbo Red and Spanish White \"green\" peanuts, fresh from the field. They are moist, like shell beans, which they are, in effect. An elderly gentleman, who is buying a great deal of them, tells me to get some, boil them in salted water, then just \"peel 'em and eat 'em.\" I take his advice, and when I get home, I boil them in salted water, but I don't think I've got it right because they're not very good. When I next return to Alabama, I discover that I didn't have it right at all. Real boiled peanuts are delicious and nothing like the ones I attempted. \"It's a fairly standard formula,\" Damon Lee Fowler, author of _Beans, Greens, and Sweet Georgia Peaches_ , told me when I asked him about how to get a good boiled peanut. \"You use a very mild brine\u2014a tablespoon of salt for every quart of water\u2014and cover the peanuts by at least an inch\u2014more if you can. The only way to get them gooshy and tender is loooong, slow simmering. You just have to be patient and let them cook for hours.\" An innkeeper I met in Louisiana confirmed this when she told me that she always has a pot of peanuts simmering on the back of the stove. I'm immediately hooked and can now understand why southerners love their peanuts, which show up reliably at farmers' markets there.\n\nA lot of the produce here bears local names: Mississippi Bogards (probably Beauregards) and Alabama Cullmam Reds are sweet potatoes. Chandler Mountain green tomatoes are piled into wooden trugs, and small Gates apples are bagged for canning, I'm told. Some spectacular yellow-skinned \"yams\" that must weigh a good three pounds apiece are designated as pie potatoes, as are the big beige Cow Pumpkins. There are heaps of field peas: purple hull, pink eyes, black eyes, and white zipper or Mississippi crowder peas. One can buy them already shucked, but the twisted pods are irresistible with their shades of purple, pink, and green. The pole beans are big, green, and cool-looking. And you can tell that this is where serious okra eaters live: The okra is carefully laid out in baskets\u2014long pods for pickling, medium pods for stewing, and short pods for frying. In New Mexico, the farmers just throw all the different pods together, making no distinctions for size or use, and they're nearly always picked too large to be acceptable to anyone from the South. We are not okra eaters.\n\nFor the first time in my life I get a taste of muscadines, the native grape of the South. They are as large as wild plums, their skins russeted and tough, but the flavor is roundly sweet and full. The women buying them say they are planning to use them for juice and jelly. (Muscadine jelly is for sale in places everywhere we visit.) Collards and turnip greens are piled into enormous heaps, taller than a man. Never have I seen such abundance or greens so fresh and dark that they practically shout out their vitamin content. Could anyone possibly doubt that these are good for you? Another regional difference is that shoppers are buying them by the armload, not just one bunch at a time.\n\nAfter our market visit, we go to a nearby restaurant, where we join a very long line of chattering customers who are shuffling steadily forward. Every ten feet or so there's a post telling how much longer before it's your turn to order. Surprisingly quickly, we arrive at the head of the line, where customers order their \"meat and three, four, or five.\" We go for an \"eight\" and no meat, which allows us to sample the produce we've been looking at. Our plates are heaped with the collard greens, long stewed and delicious with their dousing of pepper sauce; stewed okra and fried okra; sweet potatoes; stewed summer squash; stewed tomatoes; black-eyed peas; and fresh lima beans. Everything is stewy, soft, and sweet, but it's also delicious and very fresh. Later that night we experience more local foods, this time from the Pepper Place farmers' market and at two uptown restaurants where they are turned into bright, contemporary dishes by chefs Chris Hastings at the Hot and Hot and Frank Stitt at the Highland Bar and Grill. Both ways, we win handsomely.\n\nNONE AND SIX: A PRODUCE-INSPIRED MENU FROM BIRMINGHAM\n\nWatermelon Agua Fresca\n\nCollards with Potatoes\n\nYellow Wax Beans with Lemon Thyme and Yellow Tomatoes\n\nCreamy Corn and Shallots\n\nHearty Pungent Greens with Anchovies and Garlic\n\nSweet Potato Flan with Warm Molasses and Sesame Tuiles\n\n**Corn and Squash Simmered in Coconut Milk with Thai Basil** | SERVES 4\n\nThe minute I added Thai basil to the corn instead of Italian basil, the direction I had in mind for this dish changed radically. All at once I was using roasted peanut oil, coconut milk, and tofu to make a fragrant vegetable stew.\n\n1 tablespoon roasted peanut oil\n\n1 package fresh, firm tofu, drained and diced into \u00bd-inch cubes\n\n2 medium zucchini, diced into \u00bd-inch cubes\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n4 large ears sweet corn\n\n1 serrano chile\n\n1 heaping tablespoon cilantro\n\n1 heaping tablespoon Thai basil leaves\n\n1 bunch red or green scallions, including half of the firm greens, sliced into \u00bd-inch pieces\n\n1 (15-ounce) can coconut milk\n\n1 teaspoon mushroom soy sauce\n\n3 cups cooked basmati rice\n\ncilantro sprigs and slivered basil leaves for garnish\n\n1. Heat the oil in a wide nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the tofu and zucchini and sprinkle with \u00bc teaspoon salt. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally to brown all the sides of the tofu.\n\n2. While the tofu is cooking, slice the corn off the cob, then, reversing your knife, press out the milk. Set aside on the cutting board. Finely chop the chile with the cilantro and basil.\n\n3. Add the scallions, chile-herb mixture, and com to the pan. Add the coconut milk to the pan, then rinse out the can with a little water and add that as well. Stir in the soy sauce, an additional \u00bd teaspoon salt, and a few twists of black pepper. Simmer until the com is heated through, 3 to S minutes. Taste for salt. Serve over rice garnished with the additional herbs.\n\n**Lazy Corn Stew with Taxi and Sun Gold Tomatoes** | SERVES 4 AS A SIDE DISH\n\nMade with yellow and orange tomatoes, this ends up a sunny-looking dish. Of course, if your corn is white, your zucchini green, your tomatoes red, that's fine, too. Use what's available. This little stew is as pleasant to eat at room temperature as it is warm, so it could travel on a picnic.\n\n1 bunch red or green scallions\n\n\u00bd pound yellow summer squash: Gold Bar, Sunburst, Zephyr, etc.\n\n4 ears sweet corn\n\n3 (about \u00be pound) yellow tomatoes such as Taxi\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd jalape\u00f1o chile, seeded and finely diced\n\nseveral sprigs green or purple basil\n\n10 Sun Gold tomatoes\n\n1. Cut the scallions, including the firm greens, into \u00bd-inch lengths. Cut the squash lengthwise into quarters or sixths, then into \u2153-inch dice. Shuck the corn, then slice off the top two thirds of the kernels with a sharp knife. Reversing your blade, press out the corn milk.\n\n2. Peel and seed the yellow tomatoes, squeezing the seeds and juice into a strainer placed over a bowl. Cut the flesh into \u00bd-inch pieces and set aside.\n\n3. Melt the butter in a wide skillet over medium heat. When bubbling, add the scallions and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the squash, season with \u00bd teaspoon salt, and stir. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add \u00bc cup water.\n\n4. Lay the tomato pieces over the squash, add the strained juice, and cover with the corn and half the chile. Bury 2 large sprigs of the basil into the vegetables, then cover the skillet. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes.\n\n5. Meanwhile, slice the Sun Gold tomatoes in half and set them in a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons torn basil leaves and the remaining chile. When the vegetables are finished cooking, taste for salt and season with pepper. Strew the Sun Gold tomatoes over the top and serve.\n\n**CORN AS A CONSTANT**\n\nTo a great degree, we tend to see vegetables as constants when we shop in the supermarket. The extraordinary buying power of supermarket chains means that they can reach far and wide to keep corn looking more or less the same throughout most of the year. Ears don't vary much in size, the kernels are perfectly filled, the husks, if there are any, may not be green and glistening, but you'll never find a worm. If you shop at a farm stand or a farmers' market, however, you will get a view of how quickly produce runs through its cycle from tenderness to maturity to being gone. Carol Ann Sayle, of Boggy Creek Farm in Austin, Texas, describes it like this:\n\n\"The first Saturday, the corn is sublime. Eating it is a euphoric, transfiguring experience, one not often enjoyed by modern folk. By Wednesday's market, it is still magnificent, but the quality has slipped just a tad. By the next Saturday, the slip is more noticeable: The resident worms have eaten more of the kernels, then moved on. This Wednesday will be Gleaners Day. Those who can tolerate ears bereft of half their kernels and possessing more starch than sugar will get a free pass to enter the corn patch. There they can wade through the scratchy leaves and emerge, if not with great corn, then with a profound appreciation for what it takes to harvest corn for market.\"\n\nAnd after that? The corn is gone until the next season, or until the next crop of a later, staggered planting is ready for harvest. In all, there were just two short weeks during which its quality arched quickly upward to the sublime moment, then curved steadily downward to the half-eaten, starchy end of the corn cycle.\n\n**Warm Corn Custard with Berries** | SERVES 6\n\nThe sweet corn taste is most detectable when the custard is still a little warm from the oven. These custards are delicious plain, but the corn flavor is perfectly pitched with sweetened blackberries. Other fruit contenders are huckleberries, raspberries, blueberries, sliced peaches, and the plum compote. Serve the custards in their dishes with a spoonful of the fruit and a little softly whipped cream.\n\n1\u00be cups whole milk or light cream\n\n\u2153 cup sugar\n\n\u2153 vanilla bean, split lengthwise\n\n3 ears sweet corn, shucked\n\n1 tablespoon all-purpose flour\n\n3 eggs\n\n1 egg yolk\n\n1 cup berries (see headnote)\n\n1 tablespoon or more light brown sugar\n\nwhipped cream, optional\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Heat a kettle of water. Slowly heat the milk with the sugar and vanilla bean until it comes to a boil. Turn off the heat and let steep for at least 10 minutes. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the milk and set the pod aside to dry. You can embed it in sugar to make vanilla sugar.\n\n2. Slice the top two thirds of the corn kernels off the cobs and then reverse your knife and press out the milk. Scrape up the kernels and milk and put them in a blender with the flour. Add the warm milk and puree at the highest speed for at least 2 minutes. Pour the corn-milk into a fine strainer set over a 1-quart measure. Work a rubber scraper back and forth over the strainer, pressing the milk through. You should end up with about 3\u00bd cups liquid. Rinse out the strainer and set it aside.\n\n3. Beat the eggs and yolk in a bowl, then whisk in the corn-milk. Pour it once again through the strainer to get rid of any bits of egg white, then pour the milk into 6 custard cups and set them in a baking dish. Put the dish in the oven and remove one of the cups, to make it easy to pour in enough hot water to come about halfway up the sides. Return the single cup to the pan. Reduce the heat to 325\u00b0F and bake until the custard is set except for a wobbly dime-sized circle in the center, about 50 minutes. Remove and let cool in the water bath to finish cooking.\n\n4. An hour before serving, toss the berries with the sugar and set aside. (If the berries are tart, you might want to use a little more sugar.) Serve the custards with the berries on top, and whipped cream, if you like.\n\n**Summer Posole with Cilantro Salsa** | SERVES 4 GENEROUSLY\n\n_Posole_ is corn that's been slaked with lime to remove the outer skin. This process gives the corn a rich, nutty flavor. After sampling New Mexican cooking, visitors to our farmers' markets often buy dried _posole_ to take home. This recipe, however, is lighter and greener than the _posole_ served in New Mexican restaurants. The cilantro salsa and garnishes are added at the end, Mexican style, so that their colors and flavors remain bright and fresh.\n\nTHE _POSOLE_\n\n1 pound dried _posole_\n\n1 large white onion, finely diced\n\n3 plump garlic cloves, minced\n\n1\u00bd teaspoons dried oregano, Mexican if possible\n\n6 large green New Mexican chiles\n\nsea salt\n\nSALSA AND GARNISHES\n\n1 bunch scallions, including a few inches of the greens, finely chopped\n\n1 cup finely chopped cilantro\n\n1 jalape\u00f1o chile, seeded and minced\n\n1 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted in a skillet, then ground\n\npinch sea salt\n\n\u00bc cup light olive or vegetable oil\n\n1 avocado, diced into chunks\n\n4 corn tortillas, slivered\n\n1 cup thinly sliced green cabbage\n\n1 lime, quartered\n\nwarm tortillas for serving\n\n1. Put the _posole_ in a large soup pot with the onion, garlic, oregano, and a gallon of water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer until tender. This can take as long as 3 hours, so check the pot occasionally and add water as it boils away. The _posole_ will swell considerably, and the kernels will split open.\n\n2. While the _posole_ is cooking, roast the chiles, then place them in a bowl and cover with a plate to steam for 15 minutes. Slip off the skins, pull out the seeds, and chop. Add the chopped chiles to the simmering _posole_ along with 4 teaspoons salt. Continue cooking until the _posole_ is completely tender. Taste for salt.\n\n3. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. To make the salsa, combine the scallions, cilantro, chile, cumin, and salt in a bowl. Stir in the oil, add water as needed to thin, and add the avocado. Toast the tortilla strips in the oven until crisp, or fry them in vegetable oil.\n\n4. To serve, stir the salsa into the _posole_ and garnish with a nest of cabbage and tortilla strips and a wedge of lime. Accompany with warm tortillas.\n\n**Yellow Wax Beans with Lemon Thyme and Yellow Tomatoes** | SERVES 4\n\nThis is a pretty dish of beans, and pretty good to eat, too.\n\n1 pound yellow wax beans or other fresh beans, as you prefer\n\nsea salt\n\n1 tablespoon unsalted butter\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\n2 shallots, minced\n\n1 yellow tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced\n\n2 teaspoons finely chopped lemon thyme\n\nchampagne vinegar\n\n1. Tip, tail, then cut the beans into 3-inch lengths. Boil them in plenty of salted water, uncovered, until tender-firm, about 5 minutes. Taste to make sure, though. Beans can take a while, depending on their size.\n\n2. While they're cooking, melt the butter with the olive oil, add the shallots, and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes, then add the tomato and thyme.\n\n3. Drain the beans as soon as they're done, add them to the pan, and cook briefly, coating them with the sauce. Season with a few drops of vinegar and serve.\n\nPlatter Salads\n\n**Platter Salads**\n\nA large Italian platter has long provided the answer. The question is: How can I use everything I see at the market?\n\nPlatter salads are a blessing for those of us who can't make up our minds about what to focus on when faced with abundance. Following the maxims that foods in season together taste good together, and that botanical families offer a unique coherence of flavor, platter salads are bound to turn chaos into success. These salads are simply collections of compatible vegetables, cooked when appropriate, left raw when not, arranged on a large platter, showered with herbs, and bathed with a fine olive oil. The herbs can be as common as parsley, dill, and chives, but the effect of combining them produces such a layering of flavor that you may hear yourself say, as one guest did, \"Every bite tastes different!\" Of course you can stray toward more exotic herbs as well.\n\nNo matter what combination you come up with, platter salads always make a painterly tableau for the eye. My preference is for the big, bright, baroque arrangements, but sometimes I yield to more minimalist leanings. A salad for mid-August might include several varieties of potatoes, green and yellow Romano beans, filet beans, Sun Gold and Green Grape tomatoes, lemon basil, capers, and fresh red onions bathed in olive oil and spiked with aged red wine vinegar. One of my favorite salads was finished with thin rounds of purple peppers and sprays of tiny currant tomatoes from a children's farmers' market in St. Paul. A different version, inspired by the market in Ithaca, might include grilled small eggplants and zucchini with fresh sheep's milk cheese. In late August shelling beans and roasted peppers could go on the platter, while by late October you might turn to shredded kohlrabi and turnips, slivered sweet Jersey Wakefield cabbage, and steamed cauliflower, all drizzled with a mustardy vinaigrette and garnished with leafy accents of arugula or tatsoi.\n\nSometimes I select a color as the guiding principle. Gold Rush zucchini or rich yellow Sunburst, orange peppers, yellow wax beans, golden beets, and yellow and orange tomatoes of various kinds together make a dazzling sea of yellow, orange, and gold. Opal basil leaves or amaranth greens make irresistibly gorgeous accents.\n\nBright flavor elements to include on platter salads are capers, olives, anchovies, and pickled vegetables. Cold roasted meats, grilled chicken, tuna packed in oil, smoked albacore, hard-cooked eggs, or wedges of frittata turn a platter salad into a complete meal.\n\nThe process of making these salads is very fluid and far more difficult to describe than actually to do. First of all, let the market guide the composition. Washing, tipping beans, and that sort of thing can be done ahead of time. The most important consideration for me is to dress cooked vegetables while they're warm, which is the most flavorful way, and to try to cook them as close as I can to serving so that they keep their colors and aromas. Other than that, you're on your own, improvising madly and always assured of success.\n\n**June PlatterSalad of Green Beans, Potatoes, and Tuna** | SERVES 4 AS A MAIN DISH\n\nIt's pre\u2013tomato season in June, at least in Santa Fe, but the first green beans, tender little carrots, and French Breakfast radishes fit quite nicely with a few handfuls of lettuce, herbs, and fleshy purslane leaves. Tuna packed in oil or smoked fish\u2014salmon, tuna, albacore, which can often be found at farmers' markets\u2014makes the salad into a meal.\n\n1 sweet onion, thinly sliced into rounds\n\n\u00bc cup aged red wine vinegar\n\n1 pound small potatoes, any waxy-fleshed variety (fingerlings are always choice)\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1\u00bd pounds green beans, one variety or several\n\n1 bunch little carrots\n\nseveral handfuls salad greens or small head lettuces\n\na handful purslane sprigs or big sunflower sprouts\n\nseveral herb sprigs, such as chervil, marjoram, lovage, chives\n\n2 garlic cloves\n\n1 can anchovies, packed in olive oil\n\n1 teaspoon Dijon mustard\n\n\u2153 cup extra virgin olive oil\n\n2 (6-ounce) cans tuna packed in oil, drained, or an 8-ounce chunk smoked albacore, thinly sliced\n\n3 tablespoons smallest capers, rinsed\n\n1 bunch radishes\n\n1. Heat a large pot of water for the vegetables. Toss the onion with 2 tablespoons of the vinegar and set in the refrigerator.\n\n2. Wash the potatoes, then put them in a small saucepan, cover with cold water, add 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender when pierced with a knife, about 25 minutes, then drain. Cut the stem ends off the beans, along with the tails if they're tough. If the carrots are small and tender, you don't need to peel them. Leave them whole or halve lengthwise with about an inch of the stems. Wash and dry the lettuces and herbs.\n\n3. Mash the garlic with \u00bd teaspoon salt and 2 anchovies in a mortar. Whisk in the mustard, the remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar, and the oil, making a thick, emulsified dressing.\n\n4. When the water boils, season well with salt, then add the beans and cook until tender but still a little firm, 4 to 8 minutes, depending on the varieties. Scoop them out and put them on a towel to dry briefly, then toss them, while still hot, with half of the dressing. Season with salt and pepper and heap them in the center of the platter. Boil the carrots until tender-firm, 4 to 6 minutes or so, then drain and dress lightly.\n\n5. Arrange the lettuces on the platter. Place the tuna at either end, breaking it up slightly. Halve the potatoes and arrange them on the platter. Spoon the remaining dressing over the lettuce and potatoes and scatter capers over all, along with the onions, drained of their vinegar. Lay the remaining anchovies over the potatoes. Tuck in the radishes and carrots; add the purslane and herb sprigs. Season everything with pepper. Present the salad arranged. Toss it before serving.\n\n**Fava Bean, Herb, and Wax Bean Soup with Fried Pita Bread** | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nYou can make this Lebanese soup with a light chicken stock, but the leek trimmings, an onion, a few extra wax beans, and cilantro stems will make a fine vegetable stock. In either case, the stock should be delicate enough that it doesn't overwhelm the vegetables.\n\nVery small fava beans needn't be peeled, but larger ones (thumbnail size) should be. Peeling is time consuming, but silky orbs of shimmering green are the payoff.\n\n3 cups Vegetable Stock, or light chicken stock\n\n1 cup shelled fava beans, about 1\u00bc pounds pods\n\n5 very slender leeks, white parts plus an inch of the greens, thinly sliced\n\n1 small red onion, finely diced\n\n1 garlic clove, crushed\n\n12 yellow wax or other fresh beans, cut into 2-inch lengths\n\n1 small zucchini, thinly sliced\n\n\u00bc cup chopped parsley\n\n\u00bc cup chopped cilantro\n\n2 tablespoons slivered mint leaves\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 pita bread\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1. Heat the stock. Add the fava beans if they're small, along with the leeks, onion, garlic, and wax beans. (If the favas are large, blanch them separately for 1 minute, then peel and add them to the soup with the zucchini.)\n\n2. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 12 minutes. Add the zucchini, simmer for 10 minutes more, then stir in the herbs. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Turn off the heat and allow the soup to rest so that the herbs can infuse the broth.\n\n3. Meanwhile, cut or tear the pita bread into small pieces and fry in the olive oil over medium-high heat until crisp and golden. Serve the soup with several pieces of bread floating in each bowl.\n\n**Shelly Beans with Pasta and Sage** | SERVES 4\n\nShelly, shell, or shelling beans are the tender stage of what will become dried beans. At this point their pods are tough, twisted, and dry, far past the stage for eating. But the beans within are still moist. Any bean can be a shelling bean if grown to the right stage. For this dish, cranberry beans would be my preference.\n\nShelling beans do cook more quickly than dried beans, but they still require some time on the stove.\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 onion, diced\n\n2 bay leaves, 1 parsley sprig, and a few thyme sprigs, tied together\n\n2 tablespoons chopped sage\n\n3 garlic cloves, minced\n\n3 cups shelled fresh cranberry beans, about 3 pounds in their pods\n\n5 to 6 cups Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00be pound lumache shells\n\n\u00bc cup chopped parsley\n\nSage Oil, or extra virgin olive oil to finish\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan\n\n1. Heat the oil in a wide saut\u00e9 pan or casserole with the onion, herb bundle, and sage and cook over medium heat for 8 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the garlic, beans, enough stock to cover by 2 inches, and 1 teaspoon salt. Simmer, covered, until the beans are soft, about 40 minutes. Check occasionally to make sure they're covered with liquid. Remove the herb bundle from the beans. Mash or puree about half the beans, then return them to the pan and thin with the extra stock or water. Taste again for salt and season with pepper.\n\n2. Bring plenty of water to a boil, add salt, and cook the pasta until just tender. Drain and add it to the beans. Add the parsley, taste for salt and pepper, and toss well. Serve in pasta plates, spoon Sage Oil over each serving, and dust with a grating of cheese.\n\n**A VEGETABLE FIRST:LIMA BEANS**\n\nOn this Labor Day weekend there are heaps of sweet corn, tomatoes, and green beans at the Ohio farm stand I'm visiting. And there, next to the fat Blue Lake beans, is something I've never seen before: flattish, succulent green pods about four inches long. The green is so dark and lustrous, the shape so full and promising, I am drawn in. Each pod is edged with what looks like a seam. Little tips at either end suggest pulling. I pull, and a string the length of the pod comes off, but I'm no closer to opening it than I was before. I twist the pod in the middle, and it pops open. Inside are four perfect beans, my first fresh limas. They _smell_ green, and they seem to be lit from within. Their luminous yellow-green skins are tipped with the tiniest lines of a green just slightly darker than the whole. Unlike frozen limas, they are utterly alive.\n\nLots of good things can be done with lima beans. You can make a delicate green puree seasoned with rosemary and chives or a Lebanese soup of limas, fava beans, and fresh coriander (cilantro). You can always just cook them and toss them with butter, sea salt, and pepper. And, of course, there's succotash.\n\nI fly back to Albuquerque with my big bag of lima beans, take a detour to a farm that I know still has sweet corn, then drive home to Santa Fe. There I make my first real succotash, and it is easily the best part of our Labor Day supper. I had no idea until now, having known only the frozen version, how completely seductive succotash can be and how truly wonderful lima beans are.\n\n**Succotash** | SERVES 4\n\n6 ears super-fresh sweet corn, preferably yellow\n\n1 pound or more fresh lima beans, shucked\n\n2 tablespoons or more unsalted butter\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Shuck the corn, pull off the silk, and slice off the tops of the kernels. Turn your knife over and press it down the length of the cobs, squeezing out the rest of the corn and the milk. Keep the scrapings separate from the kernels.\n\n2. Cook the beans in a saucepan with water to cover until tender, 25 to 40 minutes. When done, transfer them to a 10-inch skillet along with the corn kernels, butter, and enough of the cooking water just to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the corn scrapings and continue to cook gently, without stirring, for 10 minutes. Most of the water will have cooked off, leaving the sweet corn and beans bound with the corn milk. Season with salt, a few grindings of pepper, and more butter if you wish.\n\n**Fresh Green Lima Beans with Scallions and Yogurt** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nLovage always seems like the right bean herb to me because it's so lively. But dill, cilantro, basil in summer, or about half as much rosemary in the fall can be used to equally good, but quite different, effect. Serve these warm with fresh pita bread or garlic-rubbed toast to put them on or scoop up the sauce.\n\n2 pounds fresh lima beans, enough to yield about 2 cups shelled\n\n1 bunch thick scallions with nice, firm greens\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bc cup chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons chopped lovage\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nwater or stock\n\n\u00bc cup whole-milk yogurt\n\n1. Shell the lima beans. Finely slice the white parts of the scallions and an inch of the greens. Chop the rest of the greens into \u00bd-inch pieces, keeping them separate from the bottoms.\n\n2. Warm the oil in an 8-inch nonstick skillet. Add the scallion bottoms and cook over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the beans, two thirds of the parsley and the lovage, 1 teaspoon salt, and water to cover. Simmer until the beans are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the scallion greens and cook until the beans are completely tender, another 10 minutes or so. Taste for salt and season with pepper.\n\n3. Turn off the heat, stir the yogurt into the hot beans, and add the remaining parsley and lovage. Serve warm.\n\n**Edamame (Green Soybeans)** | SERVES 4\n\n_Edamame_ are soybeans at the shell-bean stage, the same beans that are served in Japanese restaurants. Recently, _edamame_ have been appearing at farmers' markets here and there across the country. They're sometimes referred to as \"edible\" soybeans, as opposed to those that are grown for livestock feed or manufacturing.\n\nYou can tell that sometimes it takes a few seasons to figure out how to grow a new vegetable to its best advantage. Those in our market have been a little too dry and too small, but each season they get better. I've no doubt that soon they'll be perfect. Here's how to cook them.\n\n1 pound green soybeans in their pods\n\n2 tablespoons sea salt\n\n1. Pluck the pods off the stems if that hasn't been done already and rinse them well.\n\n2. Bring 2 quarts water to a boil; add the salt and beans. Boil for 3 minutes, then drain. Wick up extra moisture with a towel, then pile the pods into a bowl and sprinkle with more salt. Chill if the day is a hot one or serve warm. Be sure to put out a big bowl for the pods.\n\n**White Beanand Sage Fritters** | SERVES 6 TO 10\n\nI love these soft, chewy fritters. They were inspired by those I ate in Badalucco, Liguria, where they were served as one of many little appetizers.\n\nThe beans, which are special to this area and designated as one of Slow Food International's Ark Foods, appear to be a cross between cannellini and borlotti beans. Large and white with mottled golden eyes, they have a creamy texture and delicate taste. I use cannellini beans in their place since the beans are not available here. Fred Plotkin, whose method this is (and who describes them in his book _Recipes from Paradise_ ), says that black-eyed peas come much closer to the flavor of the Ligurian beans. Whichever way you go, I think these fritters are very good. You'll just need one or two per person.\n\n1 cup dried cannellini or 2 cups fresh black-eyed peas\n\n1 garlic clove\n\n\u00bc cup chopped sage, plus extra leaves for garnish\n\nolive oil\n\nsea salt\n\n1\u00bd cups all-purpose flour\n\n1 to 1\u00bd cups sparkling mineral water\n\n1 white onion, very finely diced\n\n1. Cover the beans with water and set aside until plump and smooth, about 6 hours. Drain and cover with plenty of fresh water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Add the garlic, a few sage leaves, a tablespoon of oil, and 1\u00bd teaspoons salt. Cook until the beans are tender, 1\u00bd hours or so. Store in their cooking liquid until ready to use.\n\n2. Place the flour in a bowl and gradually add enough mineral water to make a thick paste, gently working the mixture with a wooden spoon. Add the beans, drained of the liquid, the onion, and the chopped sage. Mix together as well as you can. Cover and let stand for at least 30 minutes. The batter should be pliable but not runny. (It may not look very promising at this point.)\n\n3. Preheat the oven to 250\u00b0F. Have ready an ovenproof platter and a plate lined with paper towels. Heat \u00bd inch olive oil in a cast-iron or other heavy pot. When hot, drop in the batter by spoonfuls. Fry over medium-high heat until golden on the bottom, then turn and fry the second side, about 1\u00bd minutes on each side. When golden, drain briefly on the towels, then transfer to the oven to keep warm.\n\n4. When you've finished frying as many fritters as you wish to serve, fry a few large sage leaves for about 1 minute, then drain. Arrange the fritters on a platter, grind a little sea salt over each, top with a sage leaf, and serve.\n\nShell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in Their Own Juices\n\n**Shell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in Their Own Juices** | SERVES 4 GENEROUSLY\n\nThis humble braise more or less cooks itself. The vegetables are cut into large pieces (quick to prepare) and are meltingly tender when finished. Some might say they're overcooked, and they _are_ soft, but this only brings out their flavors. Once, when I added some pesto at the end, the familiar flavors told me that I had made a _soupe au pistou_ , only a heartier version.\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 bay leaves\n\n2 onions, chopped into large pieces\n\n7 plump garlic cloves, peeled and halved\n\n3 thyme sprigs\n\n6 sage leaves\n\n12 small (3- to 5-inch) carrots\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00be pound small new potatoes\n\n\u00bd pound yellow wax or green beans, ends trimmed\n\n5 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped into large pieces, juice reserved\n\n1 bell pepper, yellow or orange if possible, cut into 1-inch strips\n\n1 pound summer squash, cut into large pieces\n\n1 to 2 pounds shelling beans, shelled\n\nTHE BASIL PUREE\n\npacked \u00bd cup basil leaves\n\n1 garlic clove\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, optional\n\n1. Warm the 3 tablespoons oil with the bay leaves in a large casserole or Dutch oven over low heat. When fragrant, add the onions, 6 of the garlic cloves, 2 of the thyme sprigs, and the sage. Cover and cook while you prepare the vegetables.\n\n2. Leave small carrots whole or cut fat ones into 4-inch lengths. Add them to the pot right away since they take the longest to cook. Season with a little salt and pepper. If the potatoes are like large marbles, leave them whole. But quarter larger ones and cut fingerlings in half lengthwise. Lay the potatoes on top of the onions and carrots. Add salt and pepper. Cut the beans into 3-inch pieces and add them, along with all the rest of the vegetables except the shelling beans, to the pot, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.\n\n3. Strain the tomato juice over all, then cover and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes to an hour. If tightly covered, the vegetables will produce plenty of flavorful juices. If the pot seems dry, add a few tablespoons water or white wine.\n\n4. While the vegetables are cooking, simmer the shell beans in water to cover with the remaining garlic and thyme and a little olive oil. When tender, after 30 to 45 minutes, season with salt and pepper. Add the beans, with any liquid, to the pot.\n\n5. Make the Basil Puree shortly before serving: Chop the basil and garlic in a food processor with the oil and enough water to make a puree. Stir in the cheese, then taste and season with salt.\n\n6. Serve the vegetables in soup plates and spoon the Basil Puree over them.\n\n**ChickpeaSalad with Coriander and Cumin** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nDried chickpeas are among the first and last offerings of our market season. At the end of summer, you can use them, along with tomatoes, to make this salad.\n\nTHE CHICKPEAS\n\n1\u2154 cups dried chickpeas, soaked, or 4 cups, cooked\n\nsea salt\n\n\u2153 cup vegetable oil\n\n3 medium onions, finely diced\n\n6 thin slices ginger\n\n1 tablespoon ground coriander\n\n2 teaspoons ground cumin\n\n\u00bd teaspoon ground turmeric\n\n2 teaspoons garam masala\n\n2\u00bd tablespoons fresh lime juice\n\nTHE GARNISH\n\n5 San Marzano, or other paste tomatoes, seeded and diced\n\n1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced\n\n1 jalape\u00f1o chile, seeded and finely diced\n\n3 tablespoons chopped cilantro\n\n1 tablespoon Dijon mustard\n\nlime wedges\n\n1. Pour the soaking water off the chickpeas, cover them with 3 quarts fresh water, add 1 tablespoon salt, then bring to a boil. Simmer, partially covered, until tender. The time for cooking chickpeas can vary from 1\u00bc hours to 3 hours, so check while they're cooking. When done, drain, setting the broth aside.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a wide skillet, then add the onions and ginger. Cook over medium-high heat until golden, stirring occasionally, 12 to 15 minutes. Add the dried spices and cook for 1 minute more.\n\n3. Add the chickpeas, 1 cup of the broth, and 1 tablespoon of the lime juice. Cook for about 5 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated, then taste for salt. Let cool to room temperature, then mound on a platter.\n\n4. To make the garnish: Combine the tomatoes, cucumber, chile, cilantro, and mustard in a bowl with the remaining lime juice, then spoon this over the chickpeas. Garnish with lime wedges and serve.\n\n**Soupy Pinto or BolitaBeans** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nSome of our farmers grow bolita beans, a small pinkish tan bean that's even smaller than a pinto. Elsewhere I've seen yellow Peruvian beans, Italian _soranos_ , scarlet, black, and white runner, Speckled Cranberry, Black Valentines, white _gigantes_ \u2014in all, a great mix of form and color. Beans are one of the most beautiful and diverse foods.\n\nBecause they're delicate (some would say bland), you can do a lot with beans if you want to. But for the same reason, you can enjoy them very simply cooked. I usually just throw beans into the pressure cooker, add water and salt, and cook on high for 20 minutes. If that's not enough time, I finish them on the stove. The beans should come out soft and creamy and full of flavor. Add a spoonful of cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and a little chopped scallion, and they're even better.\n\nIf you don't have a pressure cooker, you can start with beans that have been soaked, or not. Unsoaked beans require more water for cooking and take somewhat longer, but not a lot. Either way, cover the beans amply with fresh water and bring to a boil. Boil hard for 10 minutes and skim off any foam that rises to the surface, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook until tender.\n\nMost beans take roughly 1\u00bd hours to cook. But the actual time depends on the type of bean, how old they are, the hardness of your water, and the altitude you're cooking at.\n\n2 cups dried pinto or bolita beans\n\n4 teaspoons sea salt\n\n\u00bc to \u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\n4 scallions, chopped\n\n\u2153 cup chopped cilantro\n\n1. Sort through, then rinse the beans. Put them in a pressure cooker with 2 quarts water and the salt and bring to pressure. Keep on high (15 pounds) for 20 minutes, then quickly release the pressure. Remove the lid, then taste to see if they're done. If not, simmer until completely tender.\n\n2. Stir in the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche. Taste for salt. Serve with chopped scallions and cilantro.\n\n**ATLANTA'S ALL-ORGANIC MARKET LATE OCTOBER**\n\nI had heard so much about Atlanta's Morningside farmers' market that in my mind it was huge. When I finally got there, I was surprised by how small it was. Shoehorned into a tiny parking lot were maybe twenty vendors in all. But this market was overflowing with beautiful food, including some of the most perfect, pristine lettuces I've ever seen. Shoppers and growers were friendly, informed, and enthusiastic. By the time I left, Morningside's stature was firmly restored.\n\nFew markets are all organic. Most are a mixture of organic and conventional producers. However, this market was started by a group of organic farmers who were adamant about not sharing the platform with conventional farmers. Cynthia Hizer, a farmer and one of the market founders, explains, \"It's hard to have a conventionally grown tomato selling for a dollar a pound next to a beautiful organically grown heirloom tomato that took a lot more effort and should sell\u2014and does sell\u2014for much more. People still go for what's cheap, not what's of value. Plus it's darn hard growing organically in Georgia. Bugs love humidity. What's amazing is that we can actually do it! We succeed, but there are drawbacks.\"\n\nThe quality of food in this market is outstanding, but its small size coupled with the challenge of farming organically in humid Georgia means that there's a limited range of offerings. \"It's pretty bold of us not to have peaches in May. Georgia is peach country, but they're practically impossible to grow here organically,\" Cynthia says. \"We'd like to have a regular cheese maker, a pasta maker, and be able to afford a band every week _and_ do lots of advertising. But a small group of farmers simply doesn't have the money for ad blitzes.\"\n\nNonetheless, the market is well attended, and the fact that it's small makes it very much a neighborhood market. \"Most of our customers walk to market. They bring their dogs, their strollers, they meet neighbors, so it's very social,\" Cynthia says. \"We tried putting the market on a major thoroughfare to attract more customers, but the traffic moved so fast that no one stopped. In fact it didn't even get noticed, so we were pretty happy to come back to this spot. We have such loyal customers here that they come out in sleet storms\u2014even when we don't.\"\n\nIn addition to the interesting mix of vegetables similar to those grown elsewhere in the country, the Morningside market has a lot of local foods that make it very much a regional market. \"Southern greens are a big hit, of course,\" Cynthia says. \"But instead of growing mustard greens that are two feet long, our farmers bring them in when they're only six to eight inches long, when they're really tender. Turnips are grown for the greens, not the roots. And there's one plant called Tender Green that cooks like spinach but tastes like collards. And if it tastes like collards, it'll sell here.\"\n\nThis market also has some very unusual and interesting figs, unusual backyard varieties, whose season was just ending when I visited. And there was a special honey\u2014sourwood. But there were more vegetables, too.\n\n\"We have our Georgia sweet onions, of course, and eggplant is very popular. It's kind of an old-timey vegetable in Georgia. There's a man who brings in his kettle and boils peanuts\u2014southerners love their peanuts. And this is definitely bean country. We have dozens of beans: zippers, black eye, pink eye, baby butter beans, crowders, half runners, shelly beans, and the queen, White Acre Pea, also called Cream Pea, the size of a BB, which turns to cream when cooked. We even have fresh soybeans, even though they aren't a classic southern offering. It's great fun here in the summer! Beans and peas are one of the things we do best, and folks love them like they love the collards\u2014the more the better.\"\n\nWhen I visited the market, Cynthia was selling something people were lined up for that didn't taste like either beans or collards. It was goat's milk mixed with jojoba oil, and it was for bathing in. She gave me a bottle. I admit that I had my doubts about bathing in milk. I always thought that a \"milk bath\" was just a metaphor for luxury. But that night in my hotel tub I understood why there was the line at Hazelbrand farm's stand\u2014a milk bath does make your skin feel luxuriously soft, and it has a most calming effect.\n\nMany people talk about how the farmers' market draws people together and makes \"a village out of a city.\" But Cynthia sees it another way, too. \"Organic farmers are such a minority here that this market gives _us farmers_ a place to come together. Before we had the market, we saw each other once a year at our organic farming conference. Now we have a weekly venue, and it has really been good for us. Our farmers are still helping each other out, not falling over each other in competition. They share equipment, seeds, advice, and even customers.\"\n\nAN ATLANTA-INSPIRED MENU FOR FALL\n\nCrudit\u00e9s: thinly sliced Chinese red radishes with sea salt, slivered red bell peppers, olives\n\nA Rough and Ready Turnip Potage\n\nA salad of flawless lettuces\n\nGoat's Milk Panna Cotta with Sourwood Honey\n\nThis group of curvaceous fruits and curling vines includes sweet, savory, and utilitarian plants such as cucumbers, squashes, melons, and gourds. In the fall you'll undoubtedly discover Cinderella pumpkins and other magnificent old varieties of winter squash. Or you might come across a pretty orange Pocket melon that you carry around just because it smells good. There's the charming heirloom watermelon called Moon and Stars for the big golden moon and countless little \"stars\" peppering its dark green skin, and wart-covered or three-lobed winter squash. Certainly this group captures the imagination as easily as the glamorous nightshades do.\n\nPerhaps because people have long enjoyed complaining about the reproductive powers of zucchini, our farmers weren't growing much of it for a while. For a few years they were even hard to find, but the squash gap has been closed, and they're back in greater number and variety, along with big baskets of the golden squash blossoms to enjoy on your counter during the day before cooking them in the evening.\n\nA new variety of summer squash has caught my eye. Called Zephyr, it's light yellow except for two inches of the tip, which is pale green and very faintly striped\u2014delicious and lovely. Another fine zucchini is Costata Romanesco, an Italian gray-green squash with prominent raised ribs than run down the length of its body. Its flesh is dense and exceptionally flavorful, especially if you cook it for more than a brief moment. Round zucchini, called _calabacitas_ in the Southwest, look exactly like the French Ronde de Nice. When allowed to grow to immensity, their name becomes _calabasas Mexicanas_. These, along with Black Ravens, dark green Embassy, bright yellow Gold Rush, and pale green Lebanese zucchini, show that summer squash embodies a world of colorful diversity.\n\nWhile you'll undoubtedly find so-called baby summer squash, which are as cute as can be, you may come to conclude that they don't have the lush flavor that squash that has been given a chance to grow has. In fact, they can be on the bitter side. Look for squash roughly between six and eight inches long if you want the most flavor. Mammoth ones, as everyone knows, become seedy and dull. I don't always buy just one kind of summer squash. Invariably my hands rove through a variety of squashes and I am equally attracted to all of them, be they pattypans, pale green or black zucchini, round calabacitas, or yellow crooknecks. But when I go to cook them, there's always the question of how to cut these different-shaped squashes.\n\nSince I don't like them to lose their distinct characteristics, I cut each type in the way that best preserves its form: lengthwise for the zucchini, crosswise for pattypans and round squash, lengthwise again for crooknecks, capturing the curve at the stem end. You'll end up with an assortment of different shapes, each revealing the identity of the squash you used. Cut them all the same thickness, and they'll cook in the same amount of time. It's a small and simple technique, but the results definitely catch the eye.\n\n**Zephyr Zucchiniwith Opal Basil, Pine Nuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano** | SERVES 4\n\nSlender, pale yellow, and tipped in pale green, Zephyr zucchini are far too pretty to chop. Instead, halve them lengthwise to retain their pretty markings, cook, then shower them with purple basil, freshly grated Parmesan, and pine nuts\u2014the elements of pesto but brought together in the mouth rather than the mortar. The plum-colored opal basil is especially gorgeous here. Of course you can use other basils\u2014or summer squashes for that matter\u2014to make this dish. Regardless of varieties used, this is easy, attractive, and very good.\n\n1 pound or more Zephyr or other zucchini, 6 to 8 inches long\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup pine nuts\n\nextra virgin olive oil\n\nfreshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\n10 large opal basil leaves, torn\n\n1. Slice the squash in half lengthwise, then steam or simmer in salted water until tender. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet over medium heat until golden.\n\n2. When the squash is done, arrange it on a platter, cut side up. Drizzle olive oil over it and season with salt and pepper. Grate a veil of cheese over the squash, add the pine nuts and basil, and serve.\n\n**Slow-Cooked Thin-Sliced Summer Squash Showered with Herbs** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nI could eat summer squash every day, especially when it's cooked like this. Savor these fragrant vegetables by themselves or turn them into supper by heaping them on garlic-rubbed toasted levain bread with thinly sliced fresh mozzarella. Regardless of its color, shape, or size, all summer squash cook in about the same amount of time, so you can use all and any varieties you find.\n\n2 pounds mixed summer squash\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd cup simmering water\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u2153 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley\n\n2 tablespoons chopped marjoram or oregano or torn basil leaves\n\n1. Slice the squash \u00bc inch thick.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a wide skillet. Add the squash and cook over medium-low heat, flipping the squash in the pan every 3 or 4 minutes until it's tender and golden, about 20 minutes. Add the water and continue cooking until none remains. Season with salt and pepper and shower the herbs over all. Slide onto a platter and serve.\n\n**Penne with Green and Gold Zucchini and Ricotta** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nHaving approximately the same shapes, the pasta and zucchini mimic each other in this dish. Or if you have really small zucchini, you might cut them crosswise and pair them with orecchiette. Use the freshest ricotta you can get, preferably whole milk, so that it melts nicely into the pasta. You can also use a fresh goat cheese or a mixture of the two.\n\n1 cup fresh ricotta, cow's milk or sheep's milk\n\n2 pounds zucchini, mixed green and yellow\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n3 plump garlic cloves, chopped\n\n3 tablespoons chopped marjoram or opal basil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 pound penne\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan or Dry Monterey Jack cheese\n\n1. Put water on for the pasta. Remove the ricotta from the refrigerator and spoon it onto a plate so that it will warm to room temperature. Slice the zucchini on the diagonal a scant \u00bd inch thick, then slice into strips so that each piece resembles the quill-shaped pasta.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a wide skillet. Add the zucchini and saut\u00e9 over medium-high heat until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and the marjoram, toss with the squash, and turn off the heat. Season well with salt and pepper.\n\n3. When the water boils, add salt and the penne. Cook until al dente, then drain and add it to the zucchini. Toss, season with salt and pepper, then add the ricotta cheese in spoonfuls. Grate the cheese over the dish and serve.\n\n**Summer Squashand Squash Blossom Risotto** | SERVES 4\n\nThis risotto is a sunny, golden dish that uses masses of squash blossoms, golden squash, and yellow tomatoes. A number of different yellow tomatoes come to market, from the deep orange Sun Gold cherry tomatoes and the yellow-orange Italian paste tomatoes to Italian Golds and lemon-colored fruits. My choice would be the yellow-gold paste types or any thick-walled tomatoes, but try whatever is available to you.\n\nTHE TOMATOES\n\n1 pound or more ripe yellow tomatoes\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n2 tablespoons chopped marjoram\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n1 tablespoon olive oil\n\nsea salt\n\nTHE RICE\n\n1 pound bright yellow zucchini\n\n5 to 6 cups Vegetable Stock\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n\u2153 cup finely diced shallots\n\n1\u00bd cups Arborio rice\n\n\u00bd cup white wine\n\n1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\n20 to 30 squash blossoms, slivered\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Cut the tomato walls (sides) into small neat pieces and finely mince the cores. Put them in a bowl with the garlic, herbs, oil, and a few pinches of salt and set aside. Cut the zucchini into small dice, about twice as large as the grains of rice. Have the stock simmering on the stove.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide pot. Add the shallots and squash and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the squash has begun to color, about 15 minutes.\n\n3. Add the rice and stir to coat it with the butter. Pour in the wine and simmer until it's absorbed, then add \u00bd cup stock and simmer until it's absorbed. Keep adding stock in \u00bd-cup increments until the rice is cooked, using 5 to 6 cups in all. Turn off the heat and stir in the tomatoes and cheese. Stir in the squash blossoms, taste for salt, and season with pepper.\n\n**VARIETY AT THE MARKET: A SELECT MARKET LIST AUGUST INSANTA FE**\n\n**CUCUMBERS** : Yamato cucumbers, Armenian, Lemon, pickling, cornichons. Painted Serpent\n\n**EGGPLANTS** : Purple Rain, Rosita, Neon, Farmers Long, Purple Blush, Ichiban, Black Knight, Machiaw, Asian Bride, Rosa Bianca\n\n**HERBS** : basil (Green Gem, Genovese, Thai, cinnamon, lemon, Osmonds Purple), lovage, marjoram, thyme, sage, lemon thyme\n\n**MELONS** : native melon from Santa Domingo Pueblo, Charentais, Ogen, Canary, Jakes, Baby Dolls watermelons, Moon and Stars watermelons, Cavaillon\n\n**ONIONS** : Red scallions, cipolline, giant sweet onions, leeks, shallots, eight kinds of garlic\n\n**POTATOES** : Yukon Gold, Rose Fir Apple, German Buterballs, Red Rose, Red Dale, Russian Banana, fingerling, French Nosebags, Peruvian Blues, Caribe\n\n**SUMMER SQUASH** : Embassy, Costata, white bush Lebanese zucchini, Sunburst pattypans, Cocozelle, Gold Bar, crooknecks, Tromboncino, _calabacitas_ , Ronde de Nice\n\n**TOMATOES** : Mercado Sweets (little reds), Lemon Boy, big beefsteaks, peach and persimmon tomatoes, Sun Golds, red and yellow-orange paste tomatoes, Black Krim. Carmello, Costoluto Genovese, and more\n\nA BIRTHDAY LUNCH FOR A LEO\n\nWhite Bean and Sage Fritters\n\nChilled Sun Gold Soup with shallots and avocados\n\nChicken Braised in Red Wine Vinegar\n\nSlow-Cooked Thin-Sliced Summer Squash Showered with Herbs\n\nCornmeal Cr\u00eapes with Plums and Honey Ice Cream\n\nStrawberry\u2013Passion Fruit Cream Cake (if you live in Los Angeles!)\n\n**Zucchiniand Cilantro Soup with Chile and Mint** | SERVES 6\n\nJuly's sweet onions, shiny green zucchini, and big bunches of buttery-leafed cilantro, or fresh coriander, inspired this aromatic soup. A corn tortilla thickens it and gives it a briny, limed-corn taste. Serve chilled or warm.\n\n1 poblano or 2 Anaheim chiles\n\n3 zucchini, 10 to 12 ounces\n\n1 bunch cilantro, about 2 cups in all\n\n1 large fresh white or red onion\n\n3 tablespoons sunflower seed or olive oil\n\n3 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons chopped mint\n\n2 corn tortillas\n\nsea salt\n\n5 cups water or chicken stock\n\njuice of 1 or 2 limes\n\nsour cream, optional\n\n1. Roast the chiles, peel, and remove the seeds, then chop them coarsely. Quarter the zucchini lengthwise, then chop into \u00bd-inch pieces. Wash the cilantro very thoroughly, including the stems. Finely slice the stems and chop the leaves, setting aside a few pretty branches for garnish. Thinly slice the onion.\n\n2. Heat half the oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat, then add the onion, zucchini, cilantro stems, parsley, and mint. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is limp and the zucchini is fairly soft, about 10 minutes. Tear one of the tortillas into pieces and add it to the vegetables.\n\n3. Add 2 teaspoons salt and the water or stock and bring to a boil. Simmer, covered, until the zucchini is completely soft, about 15 minutes, then add the remaining cilantro. Let cool to room temperature, then puree until smooth. Season with salt and lime juice to taste.\n\n4. Cut the remaining tortilla into skinny strips and heat the remaining oil in a skillet. When hot, add the tortillas and cook until crisp. Set them on paper towels to drain. Serve the soup garnished with a dollop of sour cream, a little mound of tortilla strips, and a sprig of the cilantro in each bowl.\n\n**CUCUMBERS**\n\nNo matter where you live, market cucumbers are bound to be crunchy and sweet, their skins thin and free of wax. This means that you can eat the skins. But it also means that you shouldn't wait too long after buying cucumbers to fully enjoy their cool, watery nature. Without the wax they won't last as long, but then the season moves quickly and there will be more to buy at the next market.\n\nAt the farmers' market you'll undoubtedly find varieties you won't encounter elsewhere. There are the striped Painted Serpent cucumbers, for example, which twist and curve and are only an inch or so across. It's great fun to heap them in a tangle on a platter and put out a knife\u2014a thoroughly edible arrangement. In contrast, there are the small round Lemon cucumbers, an heirloom variety with bright yellow skins that resemble lemons in size and shape as well. I You can just cut them into wedges and add them to a salad plate. The pale green, grooved Armenian cucumbers are as pretty as flowers, for when sliced into rounds their scalloped edges are revealed. Smaller pickling cucumbers, including gherkins, invite home pickling.\n\nCucumbers can be prepared in many ways, but one of the nice things about cucumbers is that you don't really need to do much to enjoy them. A memorable lunch on a farm consisted, in part, of a plate of cucumbers from the garden, sliced and sprinkled with sea salt. They were so sweet and crisp I can still taste them. If that seems too plain, go ahead and add a fresh herb, maybe a spoonful of yogurt or sour cream. You can always include them on a platter salad or make them into a relish to flatter other foods.\n\n**Cucumberand Pepper Relish** | MAKES ABOUT 3 CUPS\n\nLike cucumbers, market peppers are free of wax. If you like the bite, include a teaspoon of minced hot chile. Spoon this relish over pulled string cheese, fresh cheese curds, or grilled fish.\n\n1 or 2 (about \u00be pound) dark green cucumbers\n\n1 small sweet pepper, any variety, very finely diced\n\n3 scallions, including an inch of the greens, thinly sliced\n\n2 tablespoons chopped dill\n\n1 tablespoon chopped lovage or cilantro\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons rice wine vinegar\n\nsea salt and freshly ground white pepper\n\nScore the cucumbers with the tines of a fork or a citrus zester. Cut them lengthwise into quarters, slice off the seeds, then chop the flesh into small pieces. Toss with the remaining ingredients. Taste for salt and adjust the level of acidity if needed. Let stand for 30 minutes if time allows. Use within a day or two.\n\n**Cucumber Salad with Chile and Roasted Peanuts** | SERVES 4 TO 6 AS AN APPETIZER\n\nThis could be the place to use those searing habanero chiles that you find in markets everywhere. I'll stick with serranos and jalape\u00f1os, but those who are inclined can go ahead and try the superhots.\n\n1 long cucumber, English or Armenian\n\n1 bunch scallions, including \u00bd inch of the greens\n\n\u00bd serrano chile, finely diced\n\ngrated zest and juice of 2 limes\n\n1 tablespoon light soy sauce\n\n1 tablespoon light brown sugar\n\n4 teaspoons roasted peanut oil\n\n\u2153 cup roasted peanuts, chopped\n\n6 mint leaves, slivered\n\n6 Thai basil leaves\n\n1. Peel the cucumber, halve it lengthwise, and cut it into long strips. Or remove long thin slices with a vegetable peeler. Thinly slice the scallions on the diagonal, making them long and thin. Combine the cucumbers, scallions, and chile in a bowl.\n\n2. Combine the lime zest, juice, soy, sugar, and oil.\n\n3. Toss the vegetables with the dressing, then add the peanuts and herbs and toss again.\n\n**Short-TermCucumber-Onion Pickles** | MAKES ABOUT 3 CUPS\n\nHere's a great use for all the different cucumbers and onions that find their way into the farmers' market. And what a nice dish to have at the ready, for these sweet pickles keep for about 5 days in the refrigerator.\n\nFor vinegar, scout around your market and try what's locally made. Perhaps there's some lovely apple cider vinegar infused with herbs. Usually a lighter-style vinegar is desirable with cucumbers so that their delicate flavors aren't overwhelmed. Since vinegar dulls the herbs, you might refresh the pickles with a new sprig just before serving.\n\n\u2154 cup white wine or apple cider vinegar\n\n\u2153 cup sugar\n\npinch salt\n\n2 shiny fresh red or white onions\n\n2 cups thinly sliced cucumbers, peeled only if the skins are tough\n\na few lovage leaves, fennel greens, or dill sprigs\n\n1 teaspoon mixed whole peppercorns\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1. Mix the vinegar, sugar, and salt and set aside, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved.\n\n2. Thinly slice the onions into rounds, then toss them with the cucumbers, herb, and peppercorns in a noncorrosive bowl.\n\n3. Add the oil to the vinegar, stir well, then pour over the vegetables. Toss well, then cover and refrigerate. It's best if the pickles can sit for a day before being used.\n\n**Winter Squash Risotto with Seared Radicchio** | SERVES 4\n\nBlue Hubbard squash is rich and meaty. It's one you'll do well with here, but also consider Buttercup, Hokkaido, Queensland Blue, and any other smallish squat green-skinned varieties. Many of these heirloom varieties have dense, dark yellow flesh with deep flavor and creamy texture. Butternut, as always, works well, too. In any case, you need only a cup of cooked squash to season this risotto. (See how to bake winter squash.)\n\nPumpkin seed oil\u2014certainly optional if you can't find it\u2014is dark green and redolent of pumpkin, an appropriate and beautiful garnish that picks up the flavor of the squash.\n\n6 cups Vegetable Stock, or chicken stock\n\n1 cup cooked winter squash\n\n1 head radicchio, cut into wedges 1 to 2 inches wide\n\nolive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nbalsamic vinegar\n\n3 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n1 yellow onion, finely diced\n\n1\u00bd cups Arborio rice\n\n1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\n2 teaspoons pumpkin seed oil, if available\n\n1. If you're making a vegetable stock, begin it first. Be sure to use any seeds from the winter squash.\n\n2. Mash the cooked squash with a fork to smooth the flesh. Brush the radicchio generously with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Heat a skillet, add the radicchio, and cook on both sides until wilted and brown, about 5 minutes per side. Douse lightly with the vinegar, then transfer to a cutting board and chop coarsely.\n\n3. When you're ready to begin cooking the risotto, have the stock simmering on a burner. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot. Add the onion and cook over medium heat until wilted and lightly colored but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the rice, stir to coat, and cook for 1 minute. Turn the heat to high, add 2 cups of the simmering stock, and cook at a lively boil, stirring just a few times. When the first batch is fully absorbed, begin adding stock \u00bd cup at a time, stirring constantly. Once you've used 4 cups in all, stir the squash into the rice. Continue cooking, stirring, and adding liquid until the rice is tender, but still a little resistant, and the sauce is creamy.\n\n4. When the rice is done, add the radicchio. Cook for a minute more to heat the radicchio, then turn off the heat and stir in the cheese. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and divide among heated plates. Season with pepper and drizzle a little of the dark-green pumpkin oil into each dish.\n\n**WINTER SQUASHES**\n\nThese vegetables are real characters with big and in some cases unforgettable personalities. They're a fascinating brotherhood, especially some of the heirloom varieties, such as three-lobed blue-gray Triamble or the heavily warted Hubbards. Deep-orange _Rouge Vif d'Etampes_ is the classic Cinderella pumpkin, with deeply ridged sections and a flattened coachlike shape. Although described as decorative, and it certainly is that, it's also fine eating, far better than most pumpkins in fact.\n\nVariations among winter squashes have to do with color, texture (from superfine to stringy), and degree of sweetness. Golden Hubbard has dryish, pale flesh, not entirely dissimilar to pale-skinned sweet potatoes, while other winter squashes have deeper orange, moister, and sweeter flesh, such as Perfection. Other differences have to do with kitchen issues, such as how tough the skins are (Hubbards are notoriously hard), the possibility of peeling them (few), and so forth.\n\nDespite the fact that this group is highly varied and interesting, we often turn to the trusty butternut, perhaps the most serviceable winter squash of all. Its smooth skin makes it easy to peel, the flesh is always creamy, and its flavor is rich. But even with the butternut, there's more than one kind. Some have long curved necks and a small, bulbous base. Others are almost straight from top to bottom. One farmer at Atlanta's Morningside market had grown a gorgeous butternut type with seeds he had collected in Africa. It had an exceedingly long neck (a very practical feature) and skin that was richly hued with golds and browns. The flesh was a brilliant deep-orange color. My brother cultivated the seeds I sent him but reported that no one would buy the squash at market. They were just a little too unfamiliar. We're not always easily persuaded to be adventurous, it turns out. It's easier, it seems, to try something unfamiliar in a restaurant, where someone else has figured out for us exactly what to do with it.\n\nAccountably, one of the most popular demonstrations at our market came about when a few of us cooked up every variety of winter squash available and offered tastes. Shoppers were glad to have a chance to taste them side by side without having to go through the baking exercise themselves. A taste, it turns out, is worth any amount of words. A spoonful goes into the mouth and someone says, \"Oh! _That's_ what that is! I always wondered how that tasted.\" Or a shopper might discover that one squash is sweeter than another or more or less stringy than thought. All of a sudden people are trying new varieties that may well become new favorites. If your market hosts demonstrations, try to arrange for a tasting. If you're curious about winter squashes, probably others are, too.\n\nExcept for the smooth-skinned butternut and Delicatas, winter squashes are hard to peel. Sometimes the easiest way to get to the flesh under those convoluted exteriors is to bake the squash first.\n\nPreheat the oven to 375\u00b0F or whatever temperature is convenient if you're using the oven for something else. Cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds and strings, brush the cut surface with oil, and place cut side down on a sheet pan. Bake until very soft when pressed with a finger, about 40 minutes, though the time depends on the size. Now you'll be able to scoop out the tender cooked centers.\n\nOf course cutting the squash in half can be quite a challenge in itself. There have been moments when I wished someone made a kitchen chainsaw for this very purpose. I once had a giant Blue Hubbard that was so hard that I had to bake it whole until the skin softened, then cut it in half. But mostly, a cleaver and a mallet, or a big chef's knife, will do the job.\n\nEarly in the season, when the squash is still a little green, it may exude a lot of liquid when baked. It's quite sweet, and if you leave the squash on the pan for 15 minutes or so, it will probably reabsorb it. If not, you can add it to whatever dish you're making.\n\n**Winter SquashBraised in Pear or Apple Cider** | SERVES 6\n\nWinter squash, apples, and pears arrive earlier than you might guess. Summer apples, or Transparents, begin in July, and the first winter squash are often here by August. However, we scarcely notice them until the fall weather has cooled everything down enough to make them seem appealing. It's then that we might remember that squash and apples make a comfortable pairing, especially with a robust herb like rosemary, which unifies the sweet and savory notes of both parties.\n\nApple and pear ciders from the market are likely to be excellent, for fruit growers take great pride in making their own cider blends. Butternut and Delicata squash will be the easiest varieties to use for this dish because they're so easy to peel. You can also make this dish using sweet potatoes, the starchy Japanese varieties, or the sweeter, moister Jewel and Garnet types.\n\n2 pounds Delicata or butternut squash\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary\n\n2 cups fresh unfiltered apple or pear cider\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\napple-balsamic or organic apple cider vinegar, to taste\n\n1. Peel the squash, then dice it into \u00bd-inch cubes or even smaller pieces. If using Delicata, remove the seeds with a long spoon, then slice it into rounds.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a wide skillet and add the rosemary. Cook over medium heat to flavor the butter. After 3 minutes, add the squash and cider plus water to cover. Bring to a boil, add \u00bd teaspoon salt, and simmer until the squash is tender, 20 to 25 minutes, by which time the juice will have reduced enough to provide a glaze for the squash. If not, raise the heat to reduce it quickly. Sprinkle on a teaspoon of vinegar and taste for salt. Add additional vinegar if you need to balance the sweetness, then season with pepper.\n\n**\"THE SPARKS OF LIFE THAT FEED US ALL\"**\n\nKent Whealy, with his wife Dianne, founded the Seed Savers Exchange in 1975. Kent does a lot of public speaking on behalf of genetic diversity, and his talks fill his audiences with awe, inspiration, and an appreciation for what biological diversity in the plant world looks like.\n\nThere are a lot of slides in Kent's presentation, breathtaking portraits of the heirloom members of botanical families. Kent has seen his slides hundreds of times, but he still responds to them with enthusiasm. \"Isn't this just gorgeous!\" he'll say more than once during a presentation, as if he's seeing an image for the first time. The audience agrees with collective gasps of astonishment, but there's a reason for the beauty. \"Most people fail to see genetic erosion as a threat,\" Kent says, \"so you have to show people the beauty of diversity.\" _Gorgeous_ is one word you walk away with. _Diversity_ is the other. Perhaps this is nature's trick to get us to take care of our world, or our environment.\n\nAs the slides come up on the screen, Kent gives some numbers. You see 10 beautiful beans, and he mentions that there are 3,600 known varieties. He shows a slide of an unusual golden snow pea. \"There are 950 varieties of peas,\" he says. A stunning salad that comprises 20 more types of tomatoes becomes a tease when he mentions that there are at least 4,000 known varieties. Watermelons? There are 125 kinds. Six hundred squash, 175 sunflowers, 650 potatoes, and 220 garlics. And these are not modern hybrids, but varieties that, when their seeds are planted, come true to form. They don't revert to something else. These are the foundations of the vegetable world. \"These are the sparks of life that feed us all\" is how Kent puts it.\n\nOne slide that seems to be everyone's favorite is of an old wooden wagon that tilts forward. From its bed flows an immense river of winter squash that spills to the ground and flows over the grass. In this river is every color, size, shape, and marking that can be imagined\u2014and many that can't. It is a picture of sheer exuberance, of the great diversity of life. _Wows_ pass through the audience, and you can feel the excitement in the room. Then, with perfect timing, Kent says, \" _This_ is your true heritage.\" And there is silence. It is very humbling to see the vastness of life's gifts and to realize how very little we know about them, how little we've actually experienced them. We think we know variety when we see five kinds of apples in the supermarket, but there are eight hundred known varieties of apples (all growing at the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm)\u2014and that number is a fraction of what has already been lost.\n\nA shopper in the Portland, Oregon, farmers' market says, \"This is where you go to get an heirloom variety that's special.\" Indeed heirloom varieties seem to be of special interest to many of the farmers who grow for farmers' markets because they can grow for reasons that agribusiness farmers can't. These wonderful-looking and -tasting fruits and vegetables don't necessarily ship well, produce in a uniform way, or keep for months on end in cold storage. But they have other virtues, taste being but one, and their seeming fragility is overcome when they are enjoyed locally.\n\nEach heirloom vegetable, fruit, and flower has a story: where it was found, who brought it to America, how long it's been grown, who carried it in his or her catalog, which seed bank it was found in. Many of these plants are descended from seeds that were brought by immigrants, starting with the first settlers and continuing up to the present as new Asian and Latin immigrants arrive, bringing with them seeds from their homelands. Other heirlooms come from seeds that have been grown traditionally by Native Americans and the Mennonite and Amish communities. These plants are part of our heritage as Americans. Quite literally the ingredients for our big national stew, they feed our imaginations, describe our histories, and tell the stories of our changing geographic and climatic circumstances. But for heirlooms (species of turkeys, cattle, and other animals are also considered heirlooms, incidentally) to be a viable part of our culture, they must be grown, eaten, and known as food as well as protected and saved. At the farmers' market, we are very likely to have a chance to participate in keeping diversity alive. Try the heirlooms you find there and become a living part of genetic diversity.\n\n(The Seed Savers' Heritage Farm is open to the public during the summer. See www.seedsavers.org.)\n\n**Spaghetti Squash Gratin with Chanterelles** | SERVES 6\n\nThe chanterelles were at the Bellingham, Washington, farmers' market on Columbus Day. My farmer friends had spaghetti squash in their garden, so we put them together for dinner. I wouldn't have thought so, but they made a wonderful dish and one that's incredibly easy to prepare. As always, foods in season together taste good together.\n\n1 large spaghetti squash, about 3 pounds\n\n1 pound chanterelles\n\n5 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 garlic cloves, chopped\n\n1 cup half-and-half or cream\n\nfreshly grated Parmesan cheese\n\n1. Lightly butter a shallow baking dish and preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Poke a few holes in the squash and bake until it's browned and soft, about 1\u00bd hours.\n\n2. While the squash is baking, clean the chanterelles with a brush. (Avoid washing them if possible\u2014they drink up water like a sponge.) Slice or dice them into small pieces. Melt half the butter in a skillet. When foamy, add the chanterelles and cook over medium heat until tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, add the garlic and half-and-half, and simmer gently until the half-and-half and mushroom juices are reduced by about a third, about 10 minutes.\n\n3. When the squash is done, cut it in two and scoop out the seeds. Now pull away the flesh with a fork, heaping it into spaghettilike strands. Toss with the remaining butter and season with salt and pepper. Spread the squash in the baking dish, spoon the chanterelles and half-and-half over it, and cover lightly with cheese. Return to the oven until heated through and the top is crisped and browned in places, 15 to 20 minutes.\n\n**Winter Squash \"Pancake\" with Mozzarella and Sage** | MAKES APPROXIMATELY 3 CUPS, SERVING 3 TO 6\n\nWith a bowl of leftover roasted butternut squash, a ball of fresh mozzarella, and half a bunch of sage leaves, this dish was inevitable. Sage is a natural with winter squash. If you have any Sage Oil, you can use it to cook the \"pancake.\" Adding the sage leaves is optional in this case.\n\n1 butternut, Buttercup, or Blue Hubbard squash, 2 to 3 pounds\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n3 tablespoons unsalted butter or Sage Oil\n\n10 large sage leaves\n\n1 (4-ounce) ball fresh or smoked mozzarella\n\n3 tablespoons parsley leaves\n\n1 garlic clove\n\n1. Bake the squash. Scoop out the flesh and beat it with a fork to smooth it out. Season it with a little salt to taste.\n\n2. Melt the butter or heat the oil in a medium nonstick skillet. Add the sage leaves and cook over medium heat for a minute or two to flavor the butter. Leaving the leaves in the pan, add the squash and smooth it out. Cook for 15 minutes, then give it a stir, scraping up the browned undersides and pressing a new layer to the bottom of the pan. Continue in this manner as long as you have time for. The more it browns, the better it will be.\n\n3. While the squash is browning, thinly slice the cheese and chop the parsley and garlic together. Just before serving, pat the squash evenly in the pan once more, lay the cheese over the top, then cover and cook for a few minutes longer for the cheese to soften. Remove the lid, add the parsley-garlic mixture, drizzle on a little more Sage Oil, if using, and serve right from the pan.\n\n**TRANSITIONAL TIMES AT FERRY PLAZA MARKET OCTOBER INSAN FRANCISCO**\n\nThe sun is shining, kites are flying, the bay is blue, there are boats on it, and I can't imagine why on earth I ever left San Francisco. California has it all.\n\nAt the Ferry Plaza Market the seasons are mixed as befits October markets most everywhere. Thanks to the erratic Bay Area weather, today is a good day to shop for heirloom tomatoes and Italian zucchini. But as tomorrow could be foggy, you're completely justified in thinking of pasta with shell beans, braised leeks, and a baroque platter of fall fruits and nuts.\n\nThis is a splendid market in every way, but best of all, I see farmers I've known for years. A farmer from my hometown is there. There's Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm, whose peaches are so exceptionally good that I can recognize them before I recognize him. And there are farmers from my former residence, Green Gulch Farm, with their pretty fingerling potatoes and fog-happy lettuces. I see other familiar faces as well, so I can anticipate the special joy of preparing a meal where everything in it has been grown by someone I know.\n\nSome standouts at this market are the spectacular Dutch leeks called Pancho with shanks about 1\u00bd feet long. The most efficient leek I've ever seen, it could have been bred for the airlines\u2014if they used rounds of leeks\u2014they're so long and so even. There is the primitive-looking Chinese pear, a Yali, and Chinese dates, or jujubes. Bunches of herbs are so large that they beg to be crushed and inhaled. An industrious shopper might come home with Black Angelina plums, cape gooseberries. French butter pears; fresh Bahri dates on their stems as well as dried Medjools, muscat grapes and white nectarines, pomegranates, persimmons, figs, quince, raspberries, and new-crop almonds and walnuts. This is a market that truly inspires the cook!\n\nAnd there are lots of big French pumpkins, _Rouge Vif d'Etampes_. At Greens I used to fill these with cream, bread, and Gruy\u00e8re cheese, bake them, and then serve a whole pumpkin to each table. It was quite a challenge to time everything right so that none would split in the oven and spill. It's much easier to do this at home, where you're cooking just one at a time. Give this a try when you need a culinary adventure some weekend. The beauty of winter squash and pumpkins is that you can enjoy keeping them around the house until the perfect moment presents itself.\n\nSOME MARKET-INSPIRED DISHES\n\nLeek, Scallion, and Fennel Gratin\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Artichokes and Potatoes with Garlic Chives\n\nShelly Beans with Pasta and Sage\n\nQuince and Goat Cheese Tart\n\nRaspberry Cream Tart\n\nA baroque fruit platter of Chinese pears, Fuyu persimmons, Medjool dates, fresh dates, Muscat grapes, white peaches, raspberries, and black plums\n\n**Butternut Squash Rounds with Dates and Pistachios** | SERVES 4 TO 6 AS A SIDE DISH\n\nThis Persian-inspired dish was further inspired by the offerings of a southern California market. Choose a butternut squash with a long straight neck (or several Delicatas peeled and sliced crosswise) and you'll have the perfect rounds in no time. They're fried slowly in olive oil until caramelized, then baked with a sweet-and-sour mixture of dates, almonds, pistachios, citrus, and mint.\n\n1 large butternut squash, about 3 pounds\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 tablespoons unsalted butter\n\n2 shallots, finely diced, about \u2153 cup\n\n2 garlic cloves, minced\n\n\u2153 cup slivered almonds\n\n\u2153 cup peeled pistachios, preferably unsalted, slivered or chopped\n\n1 tablespoon grated zest from 1 Meyer lemon or orange\n\n6 Medjool or Deglet Noor dates, pitted and chopped\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley\n\n1 tablespoon chopped mint\n\n\u00bc teaspoon ground cinnamon\n\njuice of 1 Meyer lemon or 1 Persian lemon\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Lightly butter a large baking dish. Peel the neck of the squash and slice into rounds about \u2153 inch thick. Heat the oil in a wide nonstick skillet. Add the squash in a single layer and cook over medium heat until golden, then turn and brown the second side, 8 to 10 minutes per side. When the pan becomes dry, add \u2153 cup water. Cover the pan and steam the squash until tender when pierced with a knife, about 10 minutes. Check while it's cooking and add more water as needed. Season with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add the shallots and garlic and cook without browning, stirring occasionally, for 5 to 7 minutes.\n\n3. Add the nuts, zest, dates, herbs, and cinnamon and raise the heat. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt and some pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes, then add the lemon juice, cook for 1 minute more, and turn off the heat.\n\n4. Arrange the squash rounds in the baking dish and scatter the dates and nuts over them. Add \u00bc cup water and bake until heated through and the topping is barely crisped, about 15 minutes.\n\n**Cinderella PumpkinSoup Baked in the Pumpkin** | SERVES A CROWD FOR THANKSGIVING\n\nI don't know why this should be the case, but this soup just tastes more like pumpkin than you ever thought imaginable. My friend Krista put it this way: \"It's as if you went out into the field, opened a pumpkin, and just bit into it!\" It's more civilized than that, of course, but you get the idea\u2014this is the essence of pumpkin realized in your kitchen.\n\nStart with one of those French Cinderella pumpkins, _Rouge Vif d'Etampes_. They're big and orange and sort of flat, with nice bulging sides. Cut a lid off the top, scoop out the seeds and fibers, then rub the inside with sea salt. Set the pumpkin in a big ovenproof dish, such as a large Mexican _cazuela_ , or a roasting pan. You don't want to take any chances with it collapsing over your oven.\n\nFor a 5-pound pumpkin you'll need approximately 2 quarts whole milk, half-and-half, cream, or a mixture. Heat it with 15 large fresh sage leaves, 2 teaspoons sea salt, some freshly milled pepper, and 3 plump garlic cloves, slivered. Pour the hot liquid into the pumpkin, lay a piece of foil over the top, and set the lid on that. (Otherwise it's likely to fall into the pumpkin.)\n\nPut the whole thing in the oven, the temperature set at 375\u00b0F. Cook for about 2 hours or until the pumpkin feels soft when you press your finger against its side. Remove it from the oven, set the lid aside, and carefully begin drawing the cooked flesh into the hot liquid. If all goes well, meaning the flesh is smooth and creamy and the sides don't fall in, you can bring the whole thing to the table just like this. If the flesh is stringy (my latest pumpkin was this way) or the sides have caved in, just scoop everything\u2014the liquid and flesh\u2014into a bowl or blender, then puree. Taste for salt. Stir in a handful or two of Gruy\u00e8re cheese and garnish with a little chopped Italian parsley.\n\nIf you want to play it very safe, use 2 pumpkins. Use one pumpkin to make the soup\u2014in a pot, not the pumpkin itself. Hollow the other to use as a container. You can bake it a bit first, if you like, or just use it as a tureen, uncooked.\n\n**MELONS**\n\nMelons reside at the sweet end of the cucurbit spectrum. As with the tender-skinned summer squash and harder-skinned winter varieties, there are lots of melons besides cantaloupes and honeydews to choose from. Not that there's anything wrong with these! Like most fruits, even the most common melon can be exquisite when grown well and picked ripe. And certain areas in the country are known for their good cantaloupes. Rocky Fords from Colorado are one example; melons from Pecos, Texas, another.\n\nHowever, French melons, such as the Charentais, at last are starting to be grown in this country. An extremely delicious melon that's highly prized in France, it has a pale, almost bluish gray skin, dark green stripes (or _sutures_ , as they're called), and luscious orange flesh that rivals the best of peaches. Small, they're ideal for one or two people to enjoy.\n\nThere are several green-fleshed melons with tropical flavors that rival the mango. An Israeli melon called Galia is perhaps the best known, but the most fragrant may be one called Passport. Both have pale green flesh and an intense, tropical perfume. When I walked past a bin of Passports at a Minnesota market, I was stopped in my path. I couldn't imagine what tropical fruit was growing here! There are other green-fleshed melons that are not among the tropical-scented types but are good to eat, such as the heirloom Jenny Lind.\n\nYou're also likely to find Spanish melons at the market, such as Canary, and even crisp but sweet-fleshed Asian melons. I've occasionally encountered Native American melons that taste like a cross between a cucumber and a melon, as if they can't make up their mind what they are. They're ideal for making _agua frescas_ , because they aren't at all cloying.\n\nWatermelons can now be found in a great profusion of colors and sizes, partially as a result of heirloom seeds being grown out. The classic Rattlesnake type, so called because of its pattern of stripes, is mostly a southern type of melon, but there are quite a few that come from northern climes, too. Some seeds come from as far north as Russia, such as the yellow-fleshed Sweet Siberian or, closer to home, Cream of Saskatchewan, a small (for a watermelon) pale green variety. Certainly, smaller melons are much easier for customers to carry to their cars and store once they're home. But it always seems that at least once during the summer you're going to want a great big old-fashioned red-fleshed watermelon for a party. There's just nothing like it.\n\n**Melon Salad with Thai Basil** | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nSanta Fe chef Peter Zimmer demonstrated a rather complex fall salad at the market one Saturday, at the heart of which was a variety of melons\u2014Charentais, honeydew, Persians, cantaloupes\u2014all finely diced and dressed with a salsa of Thai basil, cilantro, and mint. There were several more parts to his dish, but I loved the melon by itself. Here it's featured, cut larger, and set on pungent greens. Keep this in mind especially when you have several melons open at once.\n\n1 large shallot, finely diced\n\njuice and zest of 2 limes\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 cup cilantro leaves\n\n\u2153 cup Thai basil leaves\n\n\u00bc cup mint leaves\n\n1 jalape\u00f1o chile, finely diced\n\n1 teaspoon minced ginger\n\n1 small garlic clove, minced\n\n1 tablespoon nut oil or olive oil\n\n1\u00bd to 2 pounds melon, chilled\n\n1 bunch arugula or watercress\n\n1. Put the shallot in a bowl with the lime juice, zest, and \u00bc teaspoon salt. Finely chop the herbs and add them to the bowl along with the chile, ginger, garlic, and oil. Stir and taste for salt.\n\n2. Halve the melon, remove the seeds, and cut into wedges. Slice off the skins, then cut the melon diagonally into bite-sized pieces or into very small cubes, as you prefer.\n\n3. Pour the dressing over the melon and toss well. Season with pepper. Arrange the greens on small plates and spoon the melon into the center. If the melons are extra-sweet, add an extra lime wedge to each plate. Garnish with the purple-tipped Thai basil leaves.\n\nMelon in Moscato d'Asti\n\n**Melon inMoscato d'Asti**\n\nAlthough you can do things with and to melons\u2014make them into drinks or sherbets, float them in syrups\u2014I'm generally happy doing nothing to them. They're so intensely sweet that lime, black pepper, chile, salty cheeses, and prosciutto are more to my liking for accompaniments. However, covering sliced melons with a froth of sparkling _moscato d'Asti_ easily transforms melons into a light and festive dessert. While port is traditional with certain muskmelons, such as the Charentais or Cavaillon, it has always seemed a bit heavy to me, especially since melon weather is usually hot weather. The Muscat is much more flowery, like melons themselves, plus the bubbles aerate all that flavor too, making it more effervescent. But a nonsparkling Muscat wine, a chilled Beaumes de Venise, is also delicious with melon, especially Charentais.\n\nChoose a single melon, one that's ripe and full of fragrance, or several kinds. Remove the seeds and cut the flesh into attractive bite-sized pieces. Put them in a compote dish and chill. When it's time for dessert, uncork a bottle of _moscato d'Asti_ and pour it over the melon. Serve in fruit bowls. Alternatively, you can serve the diced melon in wineglasses, then add the _moscato_ and serve.\n\n**Melonand Cucumber Agua Fresca** | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nDual purposes are served here: The first is to make a drink that is greenly cool and refreshing; the other is to use up that extra melon you just couldn't get to. Adding the cucumber diminishes the sweetness of the melons. A few times I've run across native melons from the Santa Domingo Pueblo that are already a nice balance of melon and cucumber. Given their close botanical relationship, it's not surprising that this blending of flavors should occur.\n\nAgua frescas are always best drunk the day they're made.\n\n4 cups honeydew or other melon, cut into chunks\n\n1 medium cucumber, peeled and chopped\n\nSimple Syrup\n\nzest and juice of 1 or 2 limes\n\nhandful mint leaves, lemon verbena, or pineapple sage\n\n2 cups spring or mineral water for garnish; sprigs of mint, lemon verbena, salad burnet, or borage flowers\n\nPuree the melon and cucumber in a blender or food processor just enough to break them up without letting them get too foamy. Pour the juice into a large pitcher; add the syrup to taste, lime zest and juice, and herbs. Chill well. Stir in the spring water and serve over ice. Garnish with any of the herbs or borage flowers. Both salad burnet and borage have overtones of cucumber.\n\n**Tropical Melon Soup with Coconut Milk** | MAKES 1 QUART, SERVING 4 TO 6\n\nHere's the recipe especially for Passport, Galia, or Ogen melons, those scented varieties that Johnny's seed catalog describes as having \"A taste of the tropics.\" These melons go especially well with the coconut milk, lime, and Thai basil, but you can certainly try other types, such as cantaloupes or a really ripe, sweet honeydew type.\n\n3 pounds Galia melon (see headnote)\n\n1 (15-ounce) can coconut milk\n\ngrated zest and juice of 1 large lime\n\n1 serrano chile, minced, or 1 jalape\u00f1o, seeded and diced\n\n1 teaspoon grated ginger\n\n1 tablespoon chopped Thai basil\n\n1 tablespoon chopped mint\n\n\u00bc teaspoon sea salt\n\nsmall basil or mint leaves for garnish\n\n1. Halve the melon, scoop out the seeds, and cut into 3-inch sections. Set 1 section aside. Slice the skin away from the flesh and puree the flesh.\n\n2. Add the rest of the ingredients to the melon puree. Dice the reserved section into small pieces and add them to the soup. Chill well. Serve garnished with little sprigs of the basil or mint leaves.\n\n**Watermelon Agua Fresca** | MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART\n\nWatermelon makes a delicious pink, green, or yellow drink, depending on the type of melon used, that attracts a number of appealing additions, such as blackberries or wild strawberries, lime juice, and orange flower water. A splash of tequila is another option.\n\n3 pounds watermelon, with rind\n\n\u00bd cup Simple Syrup, if needed\n\n2 large limes\n\npinch salt\n\n1 tablespoon orange flower water\n\n1. Remove the skin, scrape away the seeds, chop the melon into chunks, and puree in a blender or food processor. Taste and sweeten with the syrup if needed.\n\n2. Remove 4 lime slices for garnish and squeeze the rest into the puree. Add the salt and orange flower water to taste and stir. Pour the juice over ice and garnish each glass with a slice of lime.\n\n**JAKE AND HISMELONS**\n\nOne of the surest signs that the Santa Fe farmers' market is in full gear is the presence of Jake West and his trailer of melons. Jake is one of the last farmers to arrive at the market after a four-hour drive. Until he pulls into his spot, the most commonly asked question for the market manager is \"Is Jake coming today?\"\n\nPeople can't wait to eat his melons. His corn is great too, but it's the melons that have everyone buzzing around his truck. He has watermelons, casabas, Canaries, Persians, honeydews, and one he claims comes from a seed he found washed downriver. \"Jakes,\" as these are called, are the collective favorite. I never think I care much for watermelon until Jake thrusts a piece into my hands. I slurp it up, and it's so good that I take one home too. As the crowd collects around him, a lot of women get not only melons but also one of Jake's big, warm hugs. A farmer who's visiting from Texas assures me that those wonderful hugs are merely good salesmanship. I'm guessing that he knows from his own experience, and his wife confirms that this is so. But we don't care.\n\nJake, his wife, some of his sons and grandsons stand in the trailer, choosing melons to fit their customers' needs. They pass a small Ogen melon to a small lady who will eat it over the next few days. A hefty watermelon is tossed to one of the security guards who's squeezing in a moment of shopping. Here's a melon that will be ready in two days for one customer and a riper one for someone who needs one for a dinner party this evening. The whole family is knowledgeable and accommodating.\n\nJake doesn't need signs or labels or enticing displays to sell his melons. Everyone knows they're great. Even visitors from out of town go to the market especially for them. I recently found an old photograph of the market taken from above. What stood out most was a huge mass of people swarming six or more deep around Jake's truck.\n\n\"These melons put us five boys through college,\" one of his sons brags to me. He says it a bit defensively, as if he's responding to some insult directed toward farmers at large. But Jake and his boys are proud of their farming, as well they should be. Not only do they succeed at it; they grow something so good that a portion of our diverse community is briefly united each year in its enthusiasm for melons. Even though the sons all have careers of their own now, they often show up at market with their own kids to help their dad and their mother sell. Recently, Mrs. West has added ostrich meat and eggs to their wares. When you see the giant eggs, it doesn't seem so surprising. They just look like more melons.\n\nA SUMMER PICNIC\n\nRadishes with their greens\n\nTomato Juice Sipped Through a Lovage Straw\n\nCold Roast Chicken with Herbs Under the Skin\n\nor\n\nSavory Coat Cheese Tart with Leeks\n\nShort-Term Cucumber-Onion Pickles\n\nMelon in Moscato d'Asti\n\nShoppers at markets everywhere spend a good part of their time wondering when the eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers will be here and hoping it will be soon. These shiny, sexy nightshades are synonymous with summer itself, proof that it exists. And the window for them is so small that we don't want to miss even a week of their presence.\n\nOver the years I've gradually ceased buying eggplants out of season; cold storage seems to make them bitter. I don't want wax on my peppers, nor do I want to pay $5 a pound\u2014or more\u2014for peppers that have traveled thousands of miles from Holland. This just isn't necessary. And when it comes to tomatoes\u2014well, everyone knows that a good tomato requires the kind of care and conditions that supermarkets can't manage. So I wait. Eventually there will be an overwhelming selection of truly great tomatoes, peppers of all sorts, all without wax, and sweet eggplants that never need salting.\n\nI suspect that the diversity at any farmers' market expresses itself most with the nightshades. There is just so much variety, and they're all so pretty. I can't imagine a shopper\u2014or a farmer\u2014who isn't seduced by this alluring group.\n\n**Crostiniwith Roasted Eggplant and Pine Nut Puree** | MAKES 1 CUP PUREE\n\nIf you have a chance, make this puree using the pale green or white eggplants or the violet Rosa Bianca\u2014all of which are delicate and sweet. You can make it all in a large mortar or a food processor.\n\n1 pound eggplant or a little more\n\nolive oil\n\n\u2153 cup pine nuts or walnuts\n\n1 garlic clove\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nfresh lemon juice\n\n1 tablespoon chopped mint\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n2 tablespoons chopped opal basil, plus basil leaves for garnish\n\n12 slices toasted baguette or crackers\n\n1. Preheat the broiler. Peel the eggplant and slice it into rounds about \u00bd inch thick. Brush both sides of each slice lightly with oil, set on a sheet pan, and broil about 6 inches from the heat until golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Turn and brown on the other side. When done, stack the eggplant slices so that they'll steam and finishing cooking. Toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet over low heat until golden. (If using walnuts, toast them in a 350\u00b0F oven for 7 to 10 minutes, until fragrant.)\n\n2. Pound the garlic and pine nuts with \u00bd teaspoon salt until smooth. Coarsely chop the eggplant, then work it into a somewhat rough puree with the pestle or in a food processor. Add a little lemon juice to sharpen the flavors, taste for salt, season with pepper, and stir in the herbs. Spread the puree on the toasted bread or crackers, garnish with a basil leaf, and pass around as an appetizer.\n\n**Savory Eggplant \"Jam\" with Cumin and Coriander** | MAKES ABOUT 1\u00bd CUPS\n\nUnlike the preceding dish, this one is dark and robust, flecked with purple from strips of skin. Although summer eggplant is seldom bitter, I salt it anyway and let it sweat for an hour or more so that it won't absorb as much oil as it might otherwise. Serve with crackers or pita bread.\n\n1 pound eggplant, purple or white, slender or round\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 large garlic clove, pressed\n\n\u00bd teaspoon ground cumin\n\n\u00bd teaspoon ground coriander\n\n2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro\n\njuice of \u00bd small lemon\n\nlemon wedges, tomato wedges, and olives, to finish\n\n1. Remove wide ribbons of the eggplant skin, leaving vertical bands of skin. Slice the eggplant into \u00bd-inch rounds, salt generously, and set on a plate for an hour, or longer if time allows. Rinse, then squeeze the eggplant dry in a towel. (If you're using white eggplant, peel all of it, because the skins tend to be tough.)\n\n2. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet. Add the eggplant and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until well browned on both sides, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic, about \u00bd cup water, the cumin, and coriander, reduce the heat, and mash the eggplant with a fork until it's broken into a jamlike consistency. This can take 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the eggplant. Add more water as it cooks, to help it break down. You can let the excess cook off when the eggplant is finally soft. Add the cilantro and lemon juice. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Mound in a shallow bowl and serve warm or at room temperature, plain or garnished with lemon wedges, tomato wedges, and olives.\n\n**SHORTS ANDEGGPLANTS: A COOK'S GUIDE**\n\nIt's usually not until August that eggplants appear at our market. When they finally do arrive, there's a stunning number of varieties to choose from, as if to make up for the shortness of the season. We see, for example, scarlet Rosita and dark pink Neon, orange Thai eggplants, pure white Casper, the skinny lavender Farmers' Longs, pretty Rosa Biancas that look like evening purses, Purple Rain (royal purple splashed with white), short finger-size Japanese and Italian varieties, and a new pale green Thai eggplant called Thai Green. Some are hybrids; others are heirloom varieties. All of them are beautiful enough that I end up buying some to put on the table just to look at and some more to cook. The most truly unusual eggplants I saw at any market were those in St. Paul. Grown by Hmong farmers, these were small, round vegetable fruits with purple and yellow colorations, a bit like a bruise or an evening sky after a rainstorm. The Hmong farmers also had tiny little green eggplants that looked a lot like a bract of unripe currant tomatoes, each fruit no larger than my pinky fingernail, called _kitelee_. They are, apparently, popular with the many Somalians who live in the Twin Cities area.\n\nAt most markets you will probably find a shiny Black Beauty, the heirloom parent of the supermarket eggplant, only it will be inconceivably better than any eggplant you have bought at the supermarket. The best thing about truly fresh eggplants that haven't been subjected to cold temperatures and long-term storage is that they aren't bitter. Therefore, they don't need salting, although you can salt if you want to. Salting does keep them from absorbing so much oil when fried.\n\nI often teach dishes based on eggplant in classes during the summer, and three things always happen. The first is that people say that they never liked eggplant before but that this is different\u2014they love it! The second thing is they ask if they can freeze it. And third, they ask what kind of eggplant they should use in December if they want to make this for Christmas. They understand with their tongues that _now_ they like something they never liked before, but it's harder to grasp _why_ it's now and not later that this dish is so good. Gradually they figure out that it's eating food in its true season that indeed makes the difference. Freshly picked summer eggplant is the only eggplant to eat. Make it as seasonal as shorts and you'll find every eggplant dish you make is delectable.\n\nPICNIC MENU FOR A DRIVE TO THE MOUNTAINS\n\nGood bread from the market and market cheeses\n\nAn Eggplant Gratin\n\nRoasted Peppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers\n\nPlum Kuchen\n\n**AnEggplant Gratin** | SERVES 6\n\nThis dish is adaptable. Like a frittata, this pudding-gratin is good warm from the oven or at room temperature. It can be set up in advance, and it can be reheated. When it comes to its place in the meal, you can serve it as a side dish or as a meatless main course. Leftovers, should there be any, can be cut into pieces and served garnished with Sun Gold tomatoes tossed with balsamic vinegar. _And_ this recipe can be made with other vegetables as well, such as summer squash, artichokes, and asparagus.\n\nAs for the eggplant, you can use any variety. Since I often buy several types just because I love to look at them in my kitchen, I end up using them all in this dish. Otherwise larger varieties are the easiest to work with.\n\n2\u00bd pounds eggplant, peeled if white\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bc cup olive oil\n\n1 large or 2 medium onions, sliced\n\n4 large eggs\n\n1 cup milk or light cream\n\n1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese\n\n1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar\n\n10 large basil leaves, torn into small pieces\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Lightly oil a 2-quart gratin dish. Cut the eggplants into rounds or slabs a scant \u00bd inch thick. Salt if you wish and set aside while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.\n\n2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet, add the onions, and cook over medium heat, turning frequently, until soft and light gold, about 12 minutes. Scrape into a bowl. While the onions are cooking, beat the eggs with the milk; stir in the cheese, vinegar, \u00be teaspoon salt, and some freshly ground pepper.\n\n3. If you salted it, rinse the eggplant, then wick up the water with a towel. Heat the remaining oil in the skillet. When hot, add the eggplant and immediately turn it in the pan so that all the pieces are coated lightly with the oil. Cook over medium heat, turning occasionally, until the eggplant is golden. This will take about 25 minutes in all, but you don't need to stand over the pan. This is a good window of time to make a quick tomato sauce for the dish or another part of the meal.\n\n4. Season the eggplant with salt and pepper to taste, then toss with the onions and basil. Put it in the prepared dish and pour the custard over the top. Bake until golden, firm, and puffed, 30 to 40 minutes. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.\n\n**Braised Farmers' Long Eggplant Stuffed withGarlic** | SERVES 4\n\nOne day Eremita Campos had some exceptionally pretty eggplants, a variety that is normally picked when dramatically long. But an inexperienced helper had picked them when they were only about 8 inches in length. Because they were scarcely an inch across, I cooked them whole, studded with garlic. They ended up golden, tender, and sweet. You can treat any slender eggplant this way; fatter types, such as Little Fingers, will need a little more time to cook.\n\n8 to 12 long, skinny eggplants, such as Farmers' Long\n\n2 plump garlic cloves, thinly sliced\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nchopped flat-leaf parsley\n\nvinegar for serving\n\n1. Cut several slits in each eggplant and insert a sliver of garlic into each.\n\n2. Heat the olive oil in a wide skillet and add the eggplant. Cook until the eggplant starts to sizzle and color a bit, about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup water and \u00bd teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the pan, and cook until the eggplants are completely tender, 20 to 30 minutes. You may have to add more liquid as they cook. When tender, remove the lid and cook until the water has evaporated and the eggplants are golden, about 10 minutes. Arrange them on a platter, season with pepper, and shower with parsley. Serve with vinegar for those who like a bit of sharpness with the eggplant.\n\n**Roasted Eggplant and Chickpea Stew** | SERVES 6\n\nAll the nightshades are braised together in a sauce of basil and cilantro, two herbs that are quite possibly even better in combination than they are separately. Serve warm or at room temperature with a spoonful of garlic-infused yogurt or a wedge of lemon.\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1\u00bd pounds Yellow Finn, Russian Banana, or other waxy potatoes\n\n2 large peppers, red and\/or yellow bells or cubanelles\n\nvegetable oil\n\n1 cup packed basil leaves\n\n1 cup packed cilantro leaves\n\n3 large garlic cloves\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n\u00bd teaspoon roasted ground cumin\n\n2 large onions, peeled and cut into eighths, or 16 very small onions\n\n1 pound short oblong eggplants, such as Ichiban, quartered lengthwise\n\n2 or 3 large meaty red tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced\n\n1\u00bd cups cooked chickpeas (1 15-ounce can, rinsed)\n\n1. Preheat the broiler. Bring 6 cups water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon salt. Slice the potatoes lengthwise about \u00bd inch thick, boil them for 5 minutes, and drain. Halve the peppers lengthwise, press to flatten them, then brush with vegetable oil. Broil, cut side down, on a baking sheet until blistered but not charred. Stack them on top of one another and set aside to steam. When cool, remove the skins and cut the pieces in half. Set the oven temperature at 350\u00b0F.\n\n2. Coarsely chop the basil, cilantro, and garlic, then puree in a small food processor with the olive oil, cumin, and \u00bd teaspoon salt.\n\n3. Toss all the vegetables with 1 teaspoon salt, some freshly ground pepper, and the herb mixture. Using your hands, rub the herb mixture into the vegetables, especially the eggplant, then add the chickpeas and toss once more. Transfer everything to an earthenware gratin dish. Rinse out the herb container with \u00bd cup water and pour it over all. Cover the gratin dish tightly with foil and bake until tender, about 1\u00bd hours. Remove the foil, brush the exposed vegetables with the juices, and bake for 20 minutes more. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.\n\n**THE TOMATO: PROOF OF SUMMER**\n\nRegardless of the virtues that other vegetables enjoy, tomatoes are what people want most at the farmers' market. Even those who are very savvy about food will say, when our market is bursting with possibilities, \"There wasn't much at the market. There weren't any tomatoes!\" Tomatoes define summer. The fruit world is slightly more democratic, but peaches probably come closest to holding the tomato title. Proof of our passion for tomatoes lies in such gardening inventions as Walls-of-Water and the fact that farmers and gardeners everywhere figure out how to grow tomatoes, even in parts of the country\u2014and the world\u2014that aren't at all hospitable to them.\n\nWhen it comes to taste and pleasure, the gap between a locally grown tomato in summer and a long-distance tomato the rest of the year is enormous. (This holds even for the heirloom tomatoes that are starting to appear in supermarkets.) The gap is there for every fruit and vegetable, of course, but with tomatoes it's more pronounced. Good tomatoes don't travel. And because getting them at the peak of their flavor depends on picking them at their peak of fragility, tomatoes are more wedded to their site than other foods. Good tomatoes fetch a consistently good price, as well they should.\n\nSeveral years ago I watched a shopper pick up an enormous Brandywine and ask its grower, Eremita Campos, how much it cost. It weighed nearly two pounds. It was easily salad for four. \"Four dollars,\" Eremita said. The customer threw it down and said, \"I work too hard to pay four dollars for a tomato!\" Eremita crossed her arms and quietly said, \"And I work too hard to sell it for less.\"\n\nPrompted by this stalemate, I spent a day on the farm, finding out from Eremita and her daughter, Margaret, what it takes to grow a good, organic heirloom tomato. I concluded that $4 was a bargain. (Try picking off those big green horn worms in the hot sun for even fifteen minutes, and you'll most likely agree.)\n\nLast year I happened to be standing once again with Eremita when the scene repeated itself. Only this time four or five customers jumped into the fray and explained to the probably frightened shopper why Eremita's price was fair.\n\nBit by bit, shoppers are learning what the true cost of growing good food is and what the right price should look like. It shouldn't be cheap. The effort is enormous, and the reward is discovered when you slice a tomato, then lift a bite to your mouth.\n\nAlan Chadwick, the biodynamic gardener who inspired so much of the good gardening that has been done in this country, used to say, \"Food is really cooked in the garden. It's merely finished in the kitchen.\" Tomatoes, perhaps more than any other vegetable, are proof of the truth of this statement.\n\n**Tomato Juice Sipped Through a Lovage Straw** | MAKES A SCANT 2 CUPS\n\nImagine having your own fresh tomato juice. Strained but not cooked, the juice has a consistency far lighter than what comes out of a can. It's especially fine if you can sip it through the hollow stem of lovage, yet another good reason for having a lovage plant in the garden.\n\n1 pound ripe, juicy tomatoes, any color, coarsely chopped\n\n\u00bd cup ice\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nfresh lemon juice, to taste\n\n2 lovage stalks, fennel stalks, or lemon basil sprigs for garnish\n\nPuree the tomatoes and ice in a blender, then pour through a strainer. Add a pinch of salt, some pepper, and lemon juice to taste. Let stand for a few minutes for the air bubbles to dissipate, then pour 2 glasses and serve with the lovage straws or herb sprigs.\n\n**Slow-Roasted Tomatoes** | MAKES 16 TO 20 PIECES\n\nSlow roasting requires rather little effort for the succulent results that are produced. It concentrates the flavor of tomatoes, leaving them intact but meltingly tender. I serve them perched on a little toast. (You can spread with ricotta cheese first.) But I've been advised that they freeze well for winter use, too. They can also be cooked with other vegetables or with meats. A combination of red Principe Borghese and yellow Italian paste tomatoes, such as Italian Gold, is especially striking. Oblong, dense paste tomatoes have scant amounts of juice and thick, meaty flesh.\n\n1\u00bd pounds paste tomatoes\n\n2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 teaspoon chopped oregano, thyme, or marjoram\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 300\u00b0F. Lightly oil a large shallow baking dish. Slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Set them cut side up in the dish, then brush the tops with the oil, using about a tablespoon in all. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add the herb and garlic.\n\n2. Bake, uncovered, for 2 hours. Check after an hour and drizzle a little more oil over the surfaces if they look dry. If you don't plan to use the tomatoes right away, store them in the refrigerator, or freeze and use in soups and stews come winter.\n\nA Big Tomato Sandwich\n\n**ABig Tomato Sandwich** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nTaking the feast-or-famine approach, we live on tomato sandwiches from the moment tomatoes appear in the market to the first killing frost. Then none until next year. Crusty, strong-textured ciabatta is the ideal bread. The holes drink in the juice, but the bread is strong enough that it won't fall apart. These big stuffed breads look great, taste great, and are invariably messy to eat. Tomatoes of choice are Brandywines, Striped Germans, Carmello, and Costoluto Genovese.\n\n1 large (1-pound) loaf ciabatta\n\nHerb Vinaigrette, below\n\n2 or more big ripe, juicy tomatoes (see headnote)\n\n1 large yellow or red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, and quartered\n\n4 ounces fresh mozzarella, goat, or other favorite cheese, sliced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Slice the top third off the loaf of bread and set it aside. Pull out the inside. (You can use it to make bread crumbs.)\n\n2. Paint the inside of the bread with some of the dressing, then make layers of sliced tomatoes, pepper, and cheese. Bathe each layer with the dressing and season with salt and pepper.\n\n3. Add the top, press down, then cut into quarters or sixths. This packs well if wrapped tightly.\n\nTHE HERB VINAIGRETTE\n\n\u00bc cup basil leaves\n\n1 tablespoon chopped marjoram\n\n1 tablespoon chopped parsley\n\n1 small garlic clove, minced\n\n\u2153 cup extra virgin olive oil\n\n4 teaspoons aged red wine vinegar\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\nFinely chop the herbs with the garlic, then add the olive oil. Add the vinegar and \u00bc teaspoon salt and season with pepper. Taste and adjust the seasonings if needed.\n\nChilled Sun Gold Soup\n\n**Chilled Sun Gold Soup** | SERVES 6 AS AN APPETIZER\n\nI've been making Sun Gold tomato soups ever since sipping one that was astonishing at Casablanca restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The little yellow-orange tomatoes are so sweet that you really have to have the vinegar. (At the restaurant they used a full-bodied Spanish Chardonnay vinegar.) You needn't serve more than a taste of this sweet-tart soup. It makes a stimulating, eye-opening start to a summer meal on a hot day.\n\n2 pints Sun Gold tomatoes\n\n2 shallots, finely diced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n3 tablespoons Spanish Chardonnay vinegar or champagne vinegar, plus a few drops sherry vinegar\n\n2 teaspoons finely diced and seeded serrano chile, optional\n\n2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil\n\n1 firm avocado, finely diced\n\n1 tablespoon chopped basil or cilantro\n\n1. Pluck the stems off the tomatoes and rinse them. Add them to a heavy saucepan with a tight-fitting lid with half the shallots, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and 1 cup water. Cook over medium-high heat, keeping one ear inclined to the pot. Soon you'll hear the tomatoes popping. Take a peek after a few minutes to make sure there's sufficient moisture in the pan\u2014you don't want the tomatoes to scorch. If the skins are slow to pop, add a few tablespoons water. Once they release their juices, lower the heat and cook, covered, for 25 minutes.\n\n2. Run the tomatoes through a food mill. You'll have about 2 cups. Chill well, then taste for salt.\n\n3. Just before serving, combine the remaining shallots in a bowl with the vinegar, chile if using, oil, avocado, and herbs. Season with a pinch or two of salt and some pepper. Spoon the soup into small cups, divide the garnish among them, and serve.\n\nGolden Pepper and Yellow Tomato Soup\n\n**Golden Pepper and Yellow Tomato Soup** | SERVES 4\n\nThis September soup is flushed with the colors of early fall. In addition to their attractive appearance, the yellow-gold hues signify more sweetness in the peppers and less acidity in the tomatoes, making a soup with a softer flavor than if it were made with the green peppers and red tomatoes bought, perhaps, a few weeks earlier. If you have thick, meaty peppers and the time to grill them first, they'll make the soup slightly smoky and silky textured. Otherwise, just chop them with the skins on. Smoked Spanish paprika ( _piment\u00f3n de la Vera_ ) will also give the soup a hint of smoke.\n\n1 pound yellow or orange tomatoes\n\n\u2153 cup white rice\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 onion\n\n2 garlic cloves\n\n3 yellow or orange bell peppers\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\npinch saffron threads\n\n1 bay leaf\n\n2 thyme sprigs, leaves plucked from the stems\n\n1 teaspoon sweet paprika or \u00bd teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika\n\n1 tablespoon tomato paste\n\n1 quart Vegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water\n\nslivered opal basil or chopped marjoram and parsley for garnish\n\n1. Bring 2 quarts water to a boil. Slice an X at the base of each tomato. Plunge them, 2 at a time, into the water for about 10 seconds, then remove and set aside. Add the rice and \u00bd teaspoon salt to the water, lower the heat to simmer, and cook until the rice is tender, about 12 minutes. Drain.\n\n2. Chop the onion. Mince the garlic with a pinch of salt until mushy. Dice the peppers into small squares, removing the seeds and membranes first. You should have about 2 cups. Peel and seed the tomatoes, reserving the juice, then dice the walls and mince the cores.\n\n3. Warm the oil in a soup pot and add the onions, peppers, saffron, bay leaf, thyme, and paprika. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the onion has begun to soften and color, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic, then stir in the tomato paste and 1 teaspoon salt. Give it a stir and add \u00bc cup water. Stew for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes, their juice, and the stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes.\n\n4. When ready to serve, reheat the soup with the rice, then ladle it into bowls. Or make a mound of rice in each bowl and spoon the soup around it. Season with pepper and garnish with fine slivers of opal basil leaves or marjoram chopped with a few parsley leaves.\n\nLate-Season Tomato-Vegetable Soup\n\n**Late-Season Tomato-Vegetable Soup** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nOne October market yielded such diminutive leeks and carrots that they led me to keep all their shapes intact. If you don't have slender leeks and carrots, just cut whatever size you do have into small pieces.\n\nFor tomatoes, I like a mixture of big, meaty Brandywines and a few low-acid yellow tomatoes. I use them 4 ways: Their juice becomes the liquid for the soup, the walls are finely diced and stewed with the other vegetables, the cores are pureed for body, and the skins are fried to a crisp and used as a garnish.\n\nIf the soup is to be a main course, serve it with bread in the bowl, toasted first, rubbed with garlic, and covered with a soft cheese, such as Teleme. If you find yourself with leftovers, puree them and you'll have a perfect base for a cream of tomato soup to serve with the last of the basil.\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n6 very small leeks, including a little of the pale greens, finely sliced and washed\n\n6 carrots, about 4 inches long, finely sliced into rounds, about 1 cup\n\n1 small fennel bulb, finely diced\n\n1 small red or orange, bell pepper, or 2 pimientos, neatly diced\n\npinch saffron threads\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n2 tablespoons chopped parsley\n\n2 pounds ripe tomatoes sea salt and freshly ground pepper chopped tarragon, dill, basil, or lovage, optional\n\n1. Warm half the oil in a soup pot over medium-low heat. Add the leeks, carrots, fennel, pepper, saffron, garlic, and parsley. Stir once, cook for 1 minute, add 1 cup water, and cover the pot. Stew over low heat.\n\n2. Meanwhile, plunge the tomatoes into boiling water for 10 seconds to loosen their skins. Peel them, reserving the skins, then slice them in half crosswise and squeeze the seeds and juice into a strainer set over a bowl. Force the juice through the strainer by running a spoon through the contents. Cut the walls of the tomatoes away from the cores and neatly dice them. Puree or mince the cores.\n\n3. By now the vegetables should be soft. Add the tomato juice, diced tomatoes, and puree and season with 1 teaspoon salt. If the mixture seems too thick, add water or stock to thin it to the right consistency. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Turn off the heat.\n\n4. When you're ready to serve, reheat the soup. Season with a little pepper and add some fresh chopped herb if you wish.\n\n5. Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a small nonstick skillet. Add several large pieces of tomato skin in a single layer and fry until crisp. Remove and sprinkle them lightly with salt. Serve a few of these golden pieces piled onto the soup as a garnish.\n\n**Tomatoand Avocado Salad with Lime-Herb Dressing** | SERVES 3 TO 4\n\nThe farmers' market in Santa Barbara is filled with foods that most of us never even dream of seeing in our markets\u2014Ice Cream bananas (their texture and flavor suggest ice cream), fresh shellfish from the ocean that's practically across the street, and different kinds of avocados. This salad brings the avocados together with crisp cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes. Try cherry and currant types mixed with paste tomatoes, heirloom slicers, or whatever your market offers. To make this a main dish, I serve it with wedges of crisped corn tortillas spread with soft black beans and crumbled feta.\n\nTHE LIME-HERB DRESSING\n\n1 tablespoon chopped mint\n\n1 tablespoon chopped marjoram\n\n\u00bd cup chopped cilantro\n\n4 to 5 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 jalape\u00f1o chile, finely diced\n\n2 to 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice\n\n\u00bc teaspoon sea salt\n\nTHE SALAD\n\n1\u00bd pounds tomatoes (see headnote)\n\n1 large avocado, peeled\n\n1 cucumber, peeled\n\n1 sweet pepper\u2014frying pepper, bell, or cubanelle\n\n\u00bd small sweet onion or several scallions, finely diced\n\n2 cups chopped romaine hearts\n\nsea salt\n\n8 large pimiento-stuffed olives, sliced\n\n2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled\n\n1. Combine all the dressing ingredients in a bowl. Taste to make sure there's enough acid.\n\n2. Cut the tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, and pepper into bite-sized pieces and put them in a roomy bowl with the onion. Add the lettuce and a few pinches of salt. Toss, add the dressing, salt lightly, and toss again with the olives and feta cheese. Pile on plates and serve.\n\n**AHARVEST DINNER SEPTEMBER, SANTA FE**\n\nSurely today _must_ be the high point of our season. On the other hand, I've made this note in my journal the past seven market visits. But today I'm sure that it really is so. This high moment is not necessarily sustained. It might last just this day, then fall to a hard frost, or it could last a while. In either case, like others, I shop until my last dollar is spent, according to eye and regardless of need. When I get home, there just isn't room for everything in the refrigerator. I make jam out of the figs that didn't get eaten last week and sauce from the leftover tomatoes. The eggplants stay out on the counter, where they're happier but won't last as long. The melons take up an enormous amount of space, so I leave them out, too, where their sweetness soon attracts a colony of fruit flies. We can't possibly eat so much food, but since it will never be as good as it is right now, we try.\n\nEventually the solution becomes obvious: It's time for a harvest dinner. What better way to celebrate our farmers and our market on a Labor Day weekend? Friends and neighbors are called, and they're pretty much in the same spot, so we make it a feast, a groaning board of market dishes.\n\nNow I can relax, knowing there's a destiny for those five varieties of eggplant, the bowl of multicolored tomatoes, the corn, cucumbers, herbs, cabbages, all shapes, sizes, and colors of summer squash, beans, _and_ the Concord grapes and Wolf River apples.\n\nA HARVEST DINNER\n\nMelon and Cucumber Agua Fresca\n\nTWO CROSTINI\n\nRoasted Eggplant and Pine Nut Puree\n\nRicotta with Roasted Chile and Mint\n\nVEGETABLE SIDES\n\nZephyr Zucchini with Opal Basil, Pine Nuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\nBraised Farmers' Long Eggplant Stuffed with Garlic\n\nSliced cherry tomatoes tossed with minced garlic and olive oil\n\nSuccotash\n\nMAIN DISHES\n\nGrilled Lamb Chops with Fresh Oregano and Lemon\n\nShell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in Their Own Juices\n\nDESSERTS\n\nConcord Grape Mousse (\"Grapette\")\n\nAged Cheddar and Gouda cheeses with heirloom apples\n\nFig Tart with Orange Flower Custard\n\n**Saut\u00e9ed Gypsy Peppers** | MAKES 3 TO 4 CUPS\n\nThere's a whole class of peppers that are more thin-skinned than bells, just as sweet, and meant to be fried with their skins on. Frying peppers seem to be much better known in the East and Midwest than they are in the Southwest, although I've been seeing them more lately. Frying peppers can be found in many colors, but the green ones are what my Hungarian friend Esther Kovari uses for stuffing\u2014these and never bell peppers, she says.\n\nServe this saut\u00e9 hot or cold, as an appetizer or a side dish, on garlic-rubbed toast, in a sandwich, with pasta, or in a frittata.\n\n1 pound frying peppers, such as Gypsy, Nardello, or Corno di Toros\n\n2 tablespoons olive oil\n\n1 small red onion, quartered and thinly sliced\n\n2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced\n\n1 tablespoon tomato paste\n\n1\u00bd tablespoons chopped marjoram, anise hyssop, or basil\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar\n\n1. Slice the peppers into strips \u00bc inch wide or wider, removing the seeds and veins if you wish.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a wide skillet, add the onion and garlic, and cook over medium heat until translucent, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the peppers, raise the heat, and saut\u00e9 for 5 minutes, stirring every so often. Add the tomato paste, half the herbs, and \u00bc cup water. Cover the pan, lower the heat to medium, and cook until the peppers are soft, another 10 minutes or so.\n\n3. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the vinegar and raise the heat. Cook until the peppers are glazed, then stir in the rest of the herbs. Serve warm or cold.\n\nChiles and Peppers\n\nChiles and peppers must be fun to grow. At farmers' markets from San Francisco to Madison, from Atlanta to Missoula to New York, I've seen the most amazing collection of chiles. Often beautifully presented in small baskets, they include cayennes, Thai bird peppers, dragon peppers, Hungarian Hots, jalape\u00f1s, serranos, and so on up the Scoville heat scale to the red and orange habaneros. Slender, serpentine chilaca chiles are not nearly as hot, and they are delicious brushed with olive oil, grilled lightly, and seasoned with nothing more than sea salt. You can also just put them out to admire until they turn red and finally shrivel. Let them dry and you can crumble them into flakes or grind them into powder.\n\nPeppers, which don't even rate on the Scoville scale, are just as varied in size, shape, and color. Some farmers lay them out in an ordered fashion, one variety to a basket. Others throw caution to the wind and just mix them all up. Either way, who can resist the curved Corno di Toros, or bulls' horns? Nardellos, Hungarian wax peppers, Ivory bells, chocolate bells, gypsy peppers, Italian sweet peppers\u2014all good for slicing and frying because of their thin flesh, but for the same reason not so good for roasting: A hot fire would consume the flesh along with the skin if they were charred. Two bright red pimiento-type peppers, called Lipstick and Firecracker, surface predictably in markets. They're small enough that they're perfect for stuffing with goat cheese and fresh herbs. Red Cherries and Cherry Bombs are even tinier and sweeter, good for one bite. In contrast, if you were to stuff one of the huge, meaty cubanelles, you'd have a dinner for four! Well, two, maybe.\n\nBell peppers are always the last to arrive. Perhaps those big thick walls take longer to mature, but when they get here, they arrive in a profusion of color that is far from common. Shades range from the lightest pale ivory to the darkest purple-browns of the chocolate bells. In between, there are peppers of luminous dark green, blistering red, orange, and school-bus yellow. Imagine what beautiful salads or pepper saut\u00e9s can be made with such vibrant colors. Such variety can transform the dishes we usually make into something breathtakingly gorgeous and delicious. And if you're not terribly fond of peppers, you can treat them as if they're flowers. The price of a bouquet will buy you a bag full of glossy color and sensual form simply to look at.\n\n**Green Chile Paste (Zhough)** | MAKES ABOUT \u00bd CUP\n\nA chile paste from Yemen with a hint of sweet spice, _zhough_ can be spread on pita bread or stirred into vegetable stews, soups, and sauces. Try it with grilled sweet potatoes or wherever you want extra heat and spice.\n\nYou can use jalap\u00f1s, serranos, Anaheims, poblanos, or perhaps another chile that grows in your area. I usually use jalape\u00f1s with 1 serrano thrown in for extra heat and flavor. Ripe red chiles, which you may come across at your farmers' market and in the grocery store on occasion, can also be used. Because they've ripened longer, their flavor is deeper and sweeter.\n\n4 ounces fresh green or red chiles (see headnote)\n\n1 teaspoon black peppercorns\n\n1 teaspoon cumin seeds\n\n1 teaspoon caraway seeds\n\n\u00bd teaspoon ground cardamom\n\n\u00bd cup coarsely chopped parsley\n\n\u00bd cup coarsely chopped cilantro\n\n4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped\n\nolive oil to moisten\n\npinch sea salt\n\n1. Remove the seeds and veins from the chiles, chop by hand or in a food processor, and set aside. (If using a food processor, stand back\u2014the volatile oils can be irritating.)\n\n2. Crush the peppercorns and spices in a mortar. Add the chopped chile, parsley, cilantro, and garlic and continue to work to make a smooth paste. Add oil to moisten\u2014the _zhough_ should have a paste-like consistency\u2014and a pinch of salt. Keep refrigerated and use within a few days.\n\n**Small Roasted Chickens with Cumin-Chile Butter** | SERVES 4\n\nNot all the chickens at the market are the same size. Sometimes they can be very small indeed, Cornish hen size or a bit larger, which are perfect for 2 people, or they can be about twice that size. Either way, serve the chicken with couscous, tossed with the spicy juices that collect in the chicken.\n\n1 (2\u00bd- to 3-pound) chicken or 2 (1-pound) chickens\n\nsea salt\n\n2 garlic cloves\n\n1\u00bd teaspoons ground roasted cumin seeds\n\n1\u00bd teaspoons mild ground New Mexican chile or hot paprika\n\nplenty of freshly ground pepper\n\n4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature\n\n12 fresh cilantro sprigs\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Lightly butter or oil a shallow baking dish that's large enough for the chicken(s).\n\n2. Rinse and thoroughly dry the bird. Salt lightly, rubbing the salt into the skin. Gently slide your hand between the skin and the breast, loosening the skin as far as you can.\n\n3. Pound the garlic to a very smooth paste with \u00bd teaspoon salt, then work in the cumin, chile, pepper, and butter. Use 1 tablespoon of the butter to rub inside the cavities of the bird. Use another to force underneath the breast skin. Melt the remaining butter over low heat with a teaspoon of water, then brush it generously over the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the cilantro, then truss the bird and place it, breast side up, in the pan. Bake until the liquid runs clear from the thighs, 45 to 55 minutes or about one and a half hours, depending on the size of the bird.\n\n4. To serve, toss cooked couscous with the juices from the chicken. Then present the chicken whole and carve it at the table.\n\nCHILE ROASTING IN NEW MEXICO\n\nOne of the great pleasures in New Mexico comes in August, when the farmers set up their roasters for the new green chile. Nothing smells better than the burning skins of these peppers. It's our equivalent of burning fall leaves, and there's always quite a buzz around this activity.\n\nFirst you select a bushel of chile\u2014mild, hot, or very hot. The farmer will tell you which is which\u2014it all looks the same. Next you watch as it's dumped into a barrel-sized cage, which is turned slowly over a brace of fiery nozzles. As soon as the skins are charred\u2014there are always bits of them flying through the air at this point\u2014the chiles are dropped through a shoot into a waiting plastic bag. Although the bushel is now greatly diminished in size, it feels much heavier. By the time you get home, the skins, which have been steaming, are easy to slip off. You might pull some out for tonight's dinner, but the rest are skinned and packed for the freezer.\n\nI know aficionados who have lugged sacks of wet roasted chiles home on airplanes. This isn't the easiest thing to do, and I'm sure they curse themselves while they grapple with twenty-five pounds of slippery wet chile in the overhead bin. But they'll be glad they went to the trouble when they bring a spoonful of green chile stew to their lips some dreary Saturday in January. For those who aren't up to storing a bushel's worth, it's usually possible to buy a 1-pound bag. Or you can buy a few fresh ones and roast them yourself.\n\nA warm, roasted chile slipped into a fresh tortilla with a piece of local goat cheese is one of the best ways to satisfy that after-market hunger. Coat cheese isn't just a stylish conceit here; it was once the common cheese in New Mexico, for the goat thrived more cheaply and easily than the cow. At almost every farmers' market I've visited, someone is making goat cheese, a great addition regardless of whether it stems from some local tradition or not.\n\nSATURDAY LUNCH AFTER MARKET\n\nSoft Taco with Roasted Green Chile and Goat Cheese\n\nSliced cucumbers and tomatoes\n\nCold freshly pressed apple cider\n\n**Soft Taco with Roasted Green Chile and Goat Cheese** | SERVES 1\n\n2 long green chiles, such as New Mexican natives, Joe Parkers, Espanola Hots, or poblanos\n\n1 large wheat tortilla\n\nsoft fresh goat cheese\n\nchopped cilantro\n\nRoast the chiles until charred, then drop into a covered bowl to steam for 10 to 15 minutes. Slip off the skins and pull out the seeds, then pull into strips with your fingers. Place the tortilla in a dry skillet over medium heat. As soon as the bottom is warm, flip it over. Put the chile on top, crumble the cheese over it, and add the cilantro. (You can add salsa, too, if you like.) When the cheese starts to soften, slide the tortilla onto the counter, then fold it in half. Press down, wrap in a napkin, sit down, and enjoy.\n\n**Ricottawith Roasted Chile and Mint** | SERVES 6 AS AN APPETIZER\n\nThis is one of my favorite appetizers to make when glossy poblanos are in season. Put out a bowlful to spread on warm corn tortillas or spread it on a slice of toasted nutty wheat bread. A spoonful can also perch on the base of an endive leaf.\n\n2 poblano chiles\n\n3 scallions, including an inch of the greens, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced, or 3 tablespoons finely snipped chives\n\n2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, plus sprigs for garnish\n\n1 tablespoon finely chopped mint\n\n1\u00bd cups ricotta\n\nsea salt\n\n6 small corn tortillas or 4 large slices nutty, dense wheat bread\n\n4 large red radishes, thinly sliced lengthwise, then julienned\n\n1. Roast the chiles until charred, put them in a bowl, cover with a plate, and set aside to steam for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, stir the scallions, cilantro, and mint into the ricotta. Season with salt to taste.\n\n2. Remove the chiles from the bag and slip off the skins. Wipe off any large flecks that remain, then remove the stems and seeds. Chop finely and stir into the ricotta. Taste for salt.\n\n3. Wrap the tortillas in foil and steam or heat in the oven until warmed through. Serve tortillas and cheese separately. If you're using bread, spread the cheese over it, slice into fingers, then garnish with the radish slivers and a sprig of cilantro.\n\n**AFarmers' Stew** | SERVES 3 TO 4\n\nIt's such an easy pleasure to make this dish, I always imagine it would be ideal for tired farmers at the end of the day\u2014or tired anyone. While the onions sizzle in olive oil, you're cutting eggplant and squash into big bold pieces. Into the pan they go, a tight-fitting lid goes on top, down goes the heat, and the vegetables stew briefly in their own juices until tender.\n\nYou can be completely relaxed and improvisational with this stew, for it really reflects the generous spirit of the market with all its choice and variety. Any kind of squash, onion, or eggplant will be fine, in any proportion. I find that some of the skinnier eggplants are interesting here: Yellow squash definitely enlivens the appearance; pattypans can be cut into thick wedges; zucchini into 2-inch logs, then halved or quartered; etc.\n\nServe these vegetables with couscous or rice or mounded over a garlicky piece of toasted bread.\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil\n\n2 big onions, coarsely chopped\n\na few thyme sprigs\n\n3 tablespoons chopped oregano\n\n8 skinny eggplants, cut into 2-inch lengths\n\n1\u00bd pounds summer squash, cut into large wedges or lengths\n\n2 tablespoons tomato paste\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n\u00bd cup white wine or water\n\nvinegar, optional\n\n1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or other deep pot that has a tight-fitting lid. Add the onions, thyme, and oregano and cook over medium-high heat, shaking the pan occasionally while you prepare the rest of the vegetables. By the time they're all cut, the onions will have wilted and started to color in places.\n\n2. Add the vegetables, give them a stir, and cook, keeping the heat high and shaking the pan occasionally, until they begin to give off an enticing smell. This should take 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste; add the salt and the wine or water. Cover the pan, turn the heat to low, and cook for about 10 minutes. The vegetables should have an invitingly tender appearance and be blushing with a faint glaze of red from the tomato. Season with pepper. Add a few drops of vinegar for sharpness if you like.\n\n**Roasted and Stuffed FirecrackerPimientos** | SERVES 8\n\nThe prettiest little peppers you can imagine, they look more like ornaments than food, but they are real from the ground up. I found these at a fledgling farmers' market in Colorado Springs. They were grown by one of the few actual farmers (as opposed to resellers) who were selling there. He called them Firecracker pimientos, and like all pimientos, they were heart shaped, heavy for their size, perfect to roast and put aside to use during the winter. But as he had only 8, I decided to roast and then stuff them. They were the perfect size for an appetizer.\n\n8 small pimientos, such as Firecracker or Cherry Bombs\n\n\u00bd cup fresh goat cheese\n\n1 cup ricotta\n\n1 tablespoon finely chopped thyme or rosemary\n\n1 garlic clove, crushed or minced\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper olive oil\n\n1. Roast the peppers until charred, then put them in a covered bowl to steam for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Remove the skins, cut a slit in the side, and gently pull out the seeds and core. Mix the 2 cheeses with the thyme and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Add any of the pepper juice that might have accumulated.\n\n2. Fill the peppers with the cheese mixture. Set them upright in a baking dish and brush with olive oil. Bake the peppers until thoroughly heated through, about 25 minutes.\n\nRoasted Peppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers\n\n**RoastedPeppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nWith its silky texture and summery fragrance, this is one of the most pleasurable dishes to make. The short baking melds everything together, transforms the flavors, and yields juices so delicious they invite dunking. This is served cold as a little salad, but it also makes a great filling for a sandwich or frittata.\n\n4 big bell peppers, red, orange, and yellow\n\n1 large beefsteak-type tomato or 1\u00bc pounds other ripe tomatoes\n\n2 smaller yellow tomatoes\n\n6 flat-leaf parsley sprigs\n\n1 tablespoon marjoram or 12 large basil leaves\n\n1 plump garlic clove\n\n2 tablespoons capers, rinsed\n\n12 Ni\u00e7oise olives, pitted\n\n3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for the dish\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1. Roast the peppers until charred. Drop them into a bowl, cover, and set them aside while you prepare everything else. Then wipe off the blackened skin, pull out the seeds, and core and cut into wide strips. Trim off any ragged ends and set them aside for another use.\n\n2. Score the ends of the tomatoes, then drop them into boiling water for 10 seconds. Remove the skins, halve them crosswise, and gently squeeze out the seeds. Cut the walls into wide pieces. Reserve the cores for a soup or sauce.\n\n3. Pluck the leaves off the parsley stems. You should have about \u00bd cup. Chop them finely with the marjoram and garlic, then put in a bowl with the capers, olives, and the olive oil. Season with \u00be teaspoon salt and some pepper.\n\n4. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Lightly oil a small gratin dish. Add the tomatoes, peppers, and sauce and gently toss with your hands. Season with pepper.\n\n5. Cover and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool before serving.\n\n**RobustEnd-of-the-Summer Spaghetti** | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nGiving the last of the summer vegetables a lengthy time on the stove turns them into a robust and deep-flavored sauce, hearty enough for the beginning of fall.\n\n1\u00bd to 2 pounds eggplant, peeled and sliced a scant \u00bd inch thick\n\n2 red or yellow bell peppers, or one of each, halved lengthwise\n\n\u00bc cup olive oil, plus extra for the eggplant\n\n1 onion, finely diced\n\n1 garlic clove, minced\n\n3 anchovies, chopped\n\n\u2153 cup chopped parsley, plus extra for garnish\n\n2 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped\n\n\u00bc cup Kalamata or Gaeta olives, pitted and chopped\n\n\u00bc cup green Sicilian olives, pitted and chopped\n\n3 tablespoons capers, rinsed\n\n1 tablespoon dried oregano\n\nsea salt and freshly ground pepper\n\n1 pound spaghetti\n\n1 cup grated pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano\n\n1. Preheat the broiler. Brush a sheet pan lightly with oil, arrange the eggplant on it, and brush the tops with more oil. Broil on both sides until browned, 12 to 20 minutes per side. Remove and cut into wide strips. Lightly oil the peppers, then broil, skin side up, until blistered. Stack them on top of one another to steam for 15 minutes, then peel and dice into small squares.\n\n2. Heat the \u00bc cup oil in a Dutch oven. Add the onion, peppers, garlic, anchovies, and the parsley. Saut\u00e9 over medium-high heat until the onion and peppers are softened, about 5 minutes. Lower the heat and add the eggplant, tomatoes, olives, capers, oregano, and \u00bd cup water or juice from the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 30 minutes.\n\n3. Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until done, then drain. Place in a large heated bowl. Present at the table with the vegetables spooned over the top and showered with the cheese and extra parsley. Then toss before serving.\n\nALL CAUGHT UP! EARLY SEPTEMBER\n\nI've just spent a morning visiting farmers all over the country via the Internet and the phone. Regardless of where we've started from\u2014North or South, wet climates or dry, high altitudes or low\u2014we are all the same right now. Every market report is remarkably like every other. There are a few variations\u2014California and southern states are mentioning figs: high-altitude and coastal areas are reporting on peas and greens\u2014but outside of these extremes every market manager mentions tomatoes, sweet corn, eggplants, peppers, and new potatoes. And for fruit we're looking at melons, peaches, plums, apples, and grapes. While every market has its constants\u2014jams and jellies, honey, meats, eggs, and cheeses\u2014the eggs will be starting to thin out with the shorter days while cider is coming in. A few markets mention the presence of winter squash, but they're on the early edge of their season, as are some other fruits and vegetables, such as Jerusalem artichokes and pears.\n\nBut right now, at this moment, every part of the country seems to be caught up with nightshades and corn. While what I appreciate perhaps most about farmers' markets are the regional differences across our land that show themselves so well, what I love about this moment is the opposite, that we can all eat the same foods at the same time. Like a national holiday that everyone takes, it's a moment of unity in a huge country with a diverse culture and geography.\n\nA HEARTY LATE-SUMMER DINNER\n\nGolden Pepper and Yellow Tomato Soup\n\nBruce Aidells's Roast Beef with Herb and Garlic Paste\n\nParsley Root and Potato Puree\n\nCaramelized Apple Tart with Cinnamon Custard\n\nA VEGETARIAN SUPPER\n\nSlow-Roasted Tomatoes on Croutons\n\nFava Bean, Herb, and Wax Bean Soup with Fried Pita Bread\n\nLeek, Scallion, and Fennel Gratin\n\nGrapes with New Walnuts and Cr\u00e8me Fra\u00eeche\n\nMost of the vegetables we see at the farmers' market emerge above ground\u2014leafy greens, squashes and melons, tomatoes and eggplants. But there are also the vegetables that grow underground. More dense and long lasting than their counterparts under the sky, roots and tubers are characterized by those satisfying textures that make them so good for hearty braises.\n\nMost roots are naturally sweet, and that's a feature that can be intensified. Parsnips can be made into delicious breakfast fritters to eat with maple syrup. Sweet potatoes go into pies, of course, and they can be used to make a velvety custard.\n\nBut other roots are just plain rooty, in a good, sobering way. Gobo, or burdock, for example, a long skinny root that shows up quite frequently at farmers' markets, has a sharp earthy taste. Parsley root is clean and strong. Daikon is peppery.\n\nBecause so many roots keep well, we think of them as winter foods. However, roots also appear in the spring, and they can be as charming and welcome as asparagus. Sweet little carrots, turnips the size of two bites, the first spring radishes, early kohlrabi\u2014these make the prettiest collection of root vegetables that taste as delicate as their spring colors.\n\nThe Ultimate Root Soup, Borscht | SERVES 8 TO 10\n\nYou can include parsley root, burdock, and celery root with perfect ease in this m\u00e9lange of sweet root vegetables. Although we sometimes think of roots as dense and heavy, this soup is light, clear, and clean. The recipe makes a lot so that you can eat it over a number of days.\n\nTo keep the color of the beets glowing and red, don't add them until the rest of the vegetables have cooked for 15 or 20 minutes.\n\n**\u2153 cup (1 ounce) dried porcini**\n\n**2 large leeks**\n\n**3 or 4 (\u00be pound) small russet potatoes, peeled**\n\n**1\u00bc pounds beets, peeled**\n\n**3 celery ribs**\n\n**1 carrot**\n\n**finely chopped parsley or dill**\n\n**3 bay leaves**\n\n**7 garlic cloves, chopped**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 large onion**\n\n**1 turnip, about \u00bd pound**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**3 cups shredded green cabbage**\n\n**1 cup fresh or canned diced tomatoes (in puree or water)**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**3 tablespoons white or red wine vinegar**\n\n**\u00bd cup sour cream mixed with 1 tablespoon prepared horseradish**\n\n1. Cover the mushrooms with 2 cups warm water and set them aside while you make a vegetable stock. If you prefer to use water, skip to step 3.\n\n2. Wash all the soup vegetables thoroughly since you'll be using the trimmings. These include 4 inches of leeks past the white part plus their roots, if available; potato peels; beet stems and peels; celery tips; carrot ends; and parsley stems. Put the trimmings in a pot with 2 bay leaves, 4 garlic cloves, and 2 teaspoons salt. Cover with 10 cups water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer while you chop the vegetables for the soup.\n\n3. Finely chop the white parts of the leeks. Finely dice the onion. Chop the celery into \u00bd-inch pieces. Dice the carrot into \u00bc-inch pieces. Peel the turnip and dice into \u00bd-inch pieces. Dice the peeled potatoes. Cut the peeled beets into julienne strips.\n\n4. Melt the butter in a large Dutch oven. Add the leeks, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, potatoes, cabbage, and remaining garlic. Toss with 1 tablespoon salt, cover, and cook over medium heat until the vegetables have wilted, about 20 minutes.\n\n5. Add the beets, tomatoes, remaining bay leaf, and sugar. Chop the soaked mushrooms and add them, along with their soaking liquid, to the pot. Strain the stock, then add it (or 2 quarts water) and simmer until the beets are tender, about 25 minutes. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Stir in the vinegar. Serve hot or cold, with a spoonful of sour cream and horseradish in each bowl and a scattering of fresh green parsley or dill.\n\nThree-Beet Caviar with Endive and Goat Cheese | SERVES 4\n\nIf your market offers the opportunity to make 3 different caviars using golden beets in one, red in another, and Chioggia in the third, go ahead and use all 3 kinds. They look like jewels. (Of course you can make this salad using just one kind of beet.) Serve the caviars in separate mounds, along with a mound of chopped endive and another of goat cheese, but encourage people to mix everything together at the table. If mixed beforehand, the red beets will stain the entire salad red.\n\nI like to keep a supply of beet caviar in the refrigerator, especially during the summer. It's extremely refreshing and can be called into service as an appetizer, a relish, a salad, or an element on a salad plate. California's red endive makes a pretty edible holder for a bite-sized amount. Alternatively, spread mayonnaise on rye bread, then spoon the beets on top and add some pickled onions for an impromptu open-face sandwich.\n\n**6 beets: 2 golden, 2 Chioggia, 2 red**\n\n**1 very small red onion, finely diced**\n\n**3 tablespoons white wine vinegar**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped parsley or chervil**\n\n**2 Belgian endives, red or white**\n\n**4 ounces fresh goat cheese**\n\n**olive oil**\n\n1. Leaving an inch of the stem and all of the roots, steam the beets until they're tender-firm when pierced with a knife, 25 to 45 minutes, depending on their size. Cool, then slip off the skins. Cut them into chunks, then pulse 6 to 8 times in a food processor until finely chopped, taking care not to turn the beets into mush. Alternatively, dice them by hand. Chop each color of beet separately.\n\n2. While the beets are cooking, toss the onion in the vinegar with \u00bc teaspoon salt and set aside. Toss each of the 3 types of beets with a third of the onion and vinegar. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Toss again with the parsley and chill.\n\n3. Slice the endives crosswise into rounds and separate the pieces. Arrange mounds of the beets, a mound of endive, and a smaller one of goat cheese on each plate. Drizzle a little olive oil over the endive and cheese. Add pepper and serve. Toss everything together into a pile of confetti before eating.\n\nBeets and Their Greens with Marjoram and Pine Nuts | SERVES 4\n\nAt the farmers' market beets usually come with their greens, which are uncommonly lush and fresh. Even though they may look tough, they cook quickly to tenderness. Their flavor is mild and sweet. Marjoram is an absolutely delicious herb with beets, every bit as companionable as dill.\n\n**2 small red onions, thinly sliced into rounds**\n\n**white wine vinegar**\n\n**8 to 12 small beets, golden and\/or Chioggia, including the greens**\n\n**olive oil**\n\n**sea salt**\n\n**Marjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives**\n\n1. Toss the onions with vinegar nearly to cover and refrigerate until needed. They will turn bright pink.\n\n2. Discard the beet stems and any wilted leaves, wash the rest, and steam until tender, about 5 minutes. Set aside to drain, then chop coarsely. Toss with a little olive oil and season with salt.\n\n3. Leaving an inch of the stems and the tails on the beets, steam until a knife pierces them easily, about 25 minutes. Slip off the skins. Trim the tops and tails, quarter them, and sprinkle with a little vinegar.\n\n4. Make the pesto, setting aside half the toasted pine nuts as a garnish. Toss the beets with it, leaving ample streaks throughout. Place them over the greens. Remove the onions from the vinegar and strew them over the beets. Garnish with the reserved pine nuts and serve.\n\nCarrot Salad with Parsley, Lovage, and Mint | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nIt's the lovage and mint combined with sweet summer carrots that make this very simple salad sing. Lovage is a bit like celery\u2014pungent and clean tasting. If you haven't any of this unusual, lively herb, add some chopped celery leaves in its place for now, then vow to plant your own.\n\n**1 pound carrots**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped parsley**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped lovage**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped mint**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**zest and juice of 1 lemon**\n\n**1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil**\n\nPeel, then grate the carrots using the large hole of a box grater. Toss with the chopped herbs and \u00bd teaspoon salt. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, the zest, and just enough oil to coat the carrots lightly. Season with pepper and chill before serving if time allows.\n\nCarrot Top Soup | SERVES 4\n\nDon't just throw them away! The tender tops that come with your carrots are delicious in soups. Here's one that uses both the carrots and their tops.\n\n**1 bunch (6 small to medium) carrots, the tops and the roots**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**3 tablespoons white rice**\n\n**2 large leeks, white parts only**\n\n**2 thyme or lemon thyme sprigs**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped dill, parsley, celery leaves, or lovage**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**6 cupsVegetable Stock, light chicken stock, or water**\n\n1. Pull or pluck the lacy leaves of the carrot greens off their stems. You should have between 2 and 3 cups, loosely packed. Wash, then chop finely. Crate the carrots or, if you want a more refined-looking soup, finely chop them.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the carrot tops and carrots, rice, leeks, thyme, and dill. Cook for several minutes, turning everything a few times, then season with 1\u00bd teaspoons salt and add the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer until the rice is cooked, 16 to 18 minutes.\n\n3. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve.\n\nStir-Fried Carrots and Burdock with Sesame Seeds | SERVES 4\n\nBurdock, or gobo, is a long, dark-skinned root that has a clean, earthy flavor. I've seen it at quite a few farmers' markets. You may have wondered what to do with it, too.\n\nThis delicious condiment, _kinpira,_ is often served in Japanese restaurants as an appetizer, and you can do the same, or serve it with nutty-tasting short-grain brown rice (and perhaps a dish of tofu braised with greens). However, there's no reason you can't add gobo to a Western dish, such as borscht or the root vegetable stew. It's tough but doesn't take long to cook if thinly sliced. It can also be parboiled to near tenderness before being added to a dish. Scrub the skin well; peeling is optional. Once cut, the flesh will darken if it sits around for long, so just keep it in water until you're ready to cook.\n\n**1 or 2 (8 to 10 ounces) burdock roots**\n\n**3 carrots**\n\n**2 tablespoons mirin**\n\n**2 tablespoons soy sauce**\n\n**3 teaspoons white sesame seeds**\n\n**2 teaspoons vegetable or light sesame oil**\n\n**2 teaspoons roasted sesame oil**\n\n1. Scrub the burdock roots with a stiff brush under running water to wash away the soil. Thinly slice them on the diagonal, then slice the pieces into matchsticks. Put them in a bowl of cold water. When all are sliced, parboil them for 1 minute, then drain.\n\n2. Peel the carrots and slice into matchsticks. Combine the mirin and soy sauce. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet until golden, then immediately pour them onto a plate to stop the cooking.\n\n3. Heat a wok or a nonstick skillet, add the oils, and swirl it around the pan. Drain the burdock. When the pan is hot, add the burdock and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Add \u00bc cup water, cover the pan, and steam for 5 minutes, then add the carrots and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes longer. Pour in the soy sauce mixture and continue to stir-fry until the vegetables are nicely glazed, after several more minutes. Toss with the sesame seeds and serve hot or at room temperature.\n\nTaste of Spring: Young Root Vegetable Braise | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nI've found these charming spring vegetables\u2014all of them small and sweet\u2014at an Arizona market in January, a California market in March, and our farmers' market by May. And when the weather cools down again in the fall, most of the same cast returns for an encore.\n\nTo give this dish more heft, include a dozen or so of the Herb Dumplings, using tarragon and parsley for the herbs.\n\n**4 slender leeks, including a little of the pale green, or 1 bunch scallions**\n\n**6 carrots, yellow and\/or orange, 3 to 4 inches long**\n\n**12 little turnips with their greens**\n\n**1 bunch radishes\u2014pink, red, or purple\u2014with \u00bd inch of their stems**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 pound fava beans, if available, shucked**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley**\n\n**1 tablespoon finely chopped tarragon**\n\n**1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice**\n\n1. Slice the leeks crosswise about \u00bc inch wide, then rinse them in a bowl of water and drain. Cut all but \u00bd inch of the carrot greens off, peel the carrots, and slice them in half lengthwise. Leave \u00bd inch of the turnip greens attached. Peel with a paring knife up to the shoulders. Leave smaller ones whole and cut larger ones into halves or quarters. Halve the radishes lengthwise, soak them briefly in a bowl of water, then rinse, especially the stems.\n\n2. Bring 6 cups water to a boil and add 1\u00bd teaspoons salt. Blanch the carrots, turnips, and radishes for 7 minutes, then scoop out and set aside. (There's no need to rinse them.) Drop the fava beans into the water for 1 minute, then scoop them out, saving the cooking water, and rinse to cool. Pop them out of their skins.\n\n3. Melt half the butter in an 8- or 10-inch saut\u00e9 pan. Add the leeks and cook over medium heat for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add \u00bd cup of the vegetable cooking water, the blanched vegetables, half the herbs, and \u00bd teaspoon salt. Simmer until the vegetables are fully tender, 10 to 15 minutes, adding water in \u2153-cup increments so that the pan doesn't dry out. There should be a little sauce.\n\n4. Add the fava beans, remaining butter, and lemon juice. Raise the heat and swirl the pan back and forth until the butter has melted into the juice. Remove from the heat, add the rest of the herbs, season with pepper, and serve. If you've made the dumplings, add them during the last 5 minutes so that they'll heat through.\n\n**ROOT WEATHERNEW YORK'S UNION SQUARE GREENMARKET**\n\nI think that when we shop outdoors we are much truer to the moment. Without thinking much about it, we tend to ignore those foods that are at the far reaches of their season and gravitate toward those that are enjoying their prime. The weather itself, the air on our skin, tells us quite precisely what to eat. It's a rather animal-like impulse that overrides other considerations.\n\nOne October I was visiting New York's Union Square Greenmarket. It was a day that captured that shortest of market moments, that instant when all the glossy vegetable fruits of summer are there alongside the somber roots and tubers of fall. It's a moment that comes to nearly every market\u2014exceptions being allowed for markets in southern California and Hawaii.\n\nThe day began with the tepid warmth and blue skies of autumn, but it quickly turned chilly, and suddenly it was coat weather. The sky took on dark, sooty tones and threatened rain. It even seemed that it might snow, and a few flakes floated to the sidewalk, but that was all. No one seemed to take much joy in lingering as people usually do at farmers' markets, even in fast-paced New York. Heads were down, shopping was quick and pragmatic. But the market was rich with possibilities.\n\nAmong the boxes of golden quince, Cortland and Golden Russet apples, and bins of hearty greens was an assortment of eggplants, Brandywine tomatoes, and golden bell peppers, the last of the season. They were handsome vegetables, but to me they were no longer appealing, whereas just weeks ago\u2014days ago, in fact\u2014weren't we all reaching over each other's arms and stuffing our bags with them? We were, after ten months of waiting for their arrival.\n\nIn spite of the warm and comforting foods one can cook from nightshades\u2014a late-harvest ratatouille would have been quite apt for the moment\u2014it simply wasn't summer anymore. The collective gaze was shifting. I watched as shoppers drifted away from the tomatoes to the Jerusalem artichokes, celery root, pumpkins, and leeks. I felt for those farmers who hadn't a single root or an onion, those who were standing in the drizzle with their peppers and tomatoes. When I picked up rosemary and sage instead of basil, I actually felt a twinge of guilt about turning my back on what I had desired so recently. But this act also made me feel like a human animal, and it felt good. Yes, I was fickle toward summer and all its offerings but true to the promise of winter, the time for rooty stews laced with robust herbs. That's just what happens in October.\n\nA ROOT-WEATHER MENU FOR FALL\n\nThree-Beet Caviar with Endive and Goat Cheese\n\nCelery Root and Wild Rice Chowder\n\nGreen salad\n\nQuince and Goat Cheese Tart\n\nSunchoke Bisque with Hazelnut Oil | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nMany customers draw a blank when it comes to these strange, nubbly tubers, but there are many good things to do with the humble sunchoke, also known as the Jerusalem artichoke. One is to make this soup. On a Saturday morning one November I served 12 gallons of it at the Union Square greenmarket, and the farmers selling Jerusalem artichokes couldn't believe what great sales they had once people could actually taste how sweet, nutty, and good these tubers are.\n\nYou don't have to peel sunchokes. Just scrub them well. Nut oils, especially pumpkin seed and roasted hazelnut oil, are very flattering to Jerusalem artichokes.\n\n**1 small onion**\n\n**3 small red potatoes**\n\n**1 pound Jerusalem artichokes**\n\n**1 celery rib**\n\n**2 tablespoons sunflower seed oil**\n\n**2 garlic cloves, minced**\n\n**6 cupsVegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 bay leaves**\n\n**milk or cream for thinning**\n\n**\u00bd cup croutons, crisped in the oven**\n\n**roasted hazelnut or pumpkin seed oil**\n\n1. Wash all the vegetables, then chop them into \u00bd-inch chunks. Don't bother to peel the sunchokes.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a soup pot, add the vegetables, and saut\u00e9 over high heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic during the last few minutes. Pour in the stock. Add 1\u00bd teaspoons salt and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.\n\n3. Cool briefly, then puree until perfectly smooth. Return the soup to the stove and add enough milk or cream to thin it to the desired consistency. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with a few croutons in each bowl and the oil drizzled in a thin stream over the top.\n\nCelery Root and Wild Rice Chowder | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nRich, fragrant, and chewy, this soup features wild rice you'll find at the St. Paul farmers' market and other markets in Minnesota and Michigan. The drop of truffle oil is optional, but just right with celery root.\n\nIf you want to make a vegetable stock, there are lots of good trimmings to work with\u2014leek greens and roots, parsley stems, and the celery root peels.\n\n**\u00bd cup wild rice**\n\n**1 celery root (about 1 pound)**\n\n**2 large leeks, white parts only**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**1 celery rib, diced**\n\n**1 cup thinly sliced russet potato**\n\n**\u00bc cup chopped parsley, plus extra for garnish**\n\n**1 bay leaf**\n\n**1 large thyme sprig**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 cupsVegetable Stock, chicken stock, or water**\n\n**2 cups half-and-half or milk**\n\n**truffle oil, optional**\n\n1. Cover the wild rice with 5 cups water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes or until tender.\n\n2. Thickly cut away the celery root skins, then quarter and chop the root into bite-sized pieces. You should have about 3 cups. Chop and wash the leeks.\n\n3. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the vegetables, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, and 1\u00bd teaspoons salt. Cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, then add the stock. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the half-and-half and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Taste for salt and season with pepper. To give the soup a creamy background, puree a cup of the vegetables and return them to the pot. If the soup is too thick, thin it with some of the rice water or additional stock.\n\n4. Divide the soup among 4 or 6 bowls and then add a mound of the wild rice to each. Garnish each bowl with parsley and a drop of truffle oil, if using, and serve.\n\nParsnip Galette with Greens | MAKES 1 LARGE GALETTE, SERVING 2, OR 6 SMALL ONES\n\nThis is a good dish for fall, when parsnips and greens are both at the market and in peak condition. It's an even better spring dish if you live where people wait until then to dig their parsnips out of the snow, as they do in places like Maine and Vermont. As a vegetable enthusiast, I like this for lunch or dinner as a main course. But you can also cut it into wedges and serve it alongside roasted chicken. Parsnips are naturally so sweet that they need some tempering effects, which they get here from the walnuts, sage, and blanched bitter greens. Look for parsnips that are firm and ivory colored.\n\n**\u00bd pound (2 or 3) parsnips**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**4 cups mixed cooking greens: tatsoi, red mustard, green mustard, etc.**\n\n**2 eggs**\n\n**1 tablespoon all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc cup freshly grated pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped sage**\n\n**\u00bd cup finely chopped walnuts**\n\n**sunflower or olive oil for frying**\n\n1. Heat a large pot of water for the greens. While it's heating, peel the parsnips, then grate them lightly, stopping when you get to the core, which will be visible. You should have about 2 cups. Set aside.\n\n2. When the water comes to a boil, add salt, plunge in the greens, and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Taste to be sure. Drain, press out much of the moisture, then chop coarsely.\n\n3. Beat the eggs, then whisk in the flour and 1 teaspoon salt. Stir in the parsnips, greens, and cheese. Season with pepper.\n\n4. Melt the butter in an 8-inch nonstick skillet. Add the sage and walnuts and cook, stirring frequently, until they smell toasty and good, after just a few minutes. Add them to the parsnip mixture.\n\n5. Wipe out the skillet and add enough oil to coat lightly. When hot, add the parsnip mixture and pat it evenly into the pan. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until golden, about 5 minutes. Slide the galette onto a plate, place the skillet over it, and, grasping both plate and skillet, flip them over. Cook the second side until golden and crisp, then slide the galette onto a counter, cut into pieces, and serve.\n\nParsnip Salad with Walnuts and Dates | SERVES 4\n\nThis autumn salad uses the new crops of dates and walnuts, the first Meyer lemons, and freshly dug parsnips. The combination may sound strange, but it's no stranger than one made of carrots and raisins. After all, parsnips are cousins to carrots, and dates, like raisins, are fruits with high concentrations of sugars.\n\n**1 or 2 (about 10 ounces) firm white parsnips**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 teaspoons Meyer lemon juice or more to taste**\n\n**1 teaspoon grated Meyer lemon zest**\n\n**2 teaspoons honey**\n\n**8 large Medjool dates, pits removed**\n\n**\u00bc cup yogurt, preferably whole-milk**\n\n**6 walnuts, cracked and chopped**\n\n1. Peel the parsnips. Cut them in half crosswise and cut a slice off the very top so that you can see the ring of flesh surrounding the core. Grate them on a box grater without bearing down too hard so that the pieces will be thin. Keep your eye on the top of the parsnip and stop grating when you get to the core. Toss the grated parsnips with \u00bd teaspoon salt, some pepper, the lemon juice, zest, and honey.\n\n2. Cut each date half into 4 pieces. Add these to the parsnips with the yogurt and toss well. Taste for salt and lemon, adding more if needed. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve, then toss once more with the walnuts.\n\n**TIPPED AND CLIPPED THE BEAUTIFUL HMONG VEGETABLES**\n\nThe Hmong people from northern Laos immigrated to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War and settled throughout the country. Cultural adjustment for the first generation of Hmong cannot have been easy, but they have survived, and their presence is particularly evident at farmers' markets. Unlikely to own land, at least at first, they have been willing to farm any land that can be leased, from the smallest backyard plot to marginal acreage at the edges of cities awaiting development. Since families and clan members work together, Hmong farmers have been able to grow more labor-intensive crops as well as take on more labor-intensive ways of presenting their vegetables at farmers' markets.\n\nIt is not difficult to recognize the Hmong displays, which are striking in their precision and very much the same from one market to the next. Haricots verts and yellow wax beans are bundled neatly with rubber bands, all the tip ends facing the same way. Narrow Asian eggplants are stacked vertically in green plastic baskets; long cayenne chiles are bound at the stems. Scallions and leeks are trimmed and stacked, the white ends whittled to a point and facing out\u2014wasteful but alluring. Parsnips and carrots are bound by their stems, which are clipped so that the roots stand upright in little tepee-shaped piles. The same vegetables might also be stacked in plastic bags, the pointed ends out. At one market, the tiniest bok choy I have ever seen, probably twenty to a bunch, were tied neatly with string.\n\nIn Madison. Wisconsin, one morning I watched a Hmong woman, her head wrapped in a pretty traditional cloth, rapidly reduce a huge pile of beans to a mound of beautifully stacked bundles that were easy for her customers to pick up and tuck into a shopping bag. At the Missoula, Montana, farmers' market, quite a few young Hmong (who everywhere speak flawless English, I've noticed) were selling wild huckleberries, which they had packaged in open zip-close plastic bags, opened to make it easy to see the berries and for the berries to breathe. The Hmong way of presenting produce is so attractive that I've seen their techniques imitated by quite a number of farmers who can't remotely claim to be of Hmong descent. They obviously think it's an idea worth copying.\n\nThe only place I've seen Hmong produce rather casually, if not actually carelessly, displayed was at the Stockton market under the freeway. As far as I could tell, this was a completely ethnic market where no English was spoken and most of the shoppers were Asian and Middle Eastern. Perhaps there was no need for elaborate displays among friends and family. At least that's my guess.\n\nSteamed Potatoes\n\nPotatoes are probably the most versatile vegetables of all. There are hundreds of things you can do with them. But when they first come into the market with their thin, papery skins, I keep turning to the steamer. I can never believe how amazingly good they are cooked this way and how different one variety tastes from another. Steaming lets you taste the essence of the potato. Their colors are surprisingly beautiful, too. There's also the surprise of opening a soft, hot potato, which you might have thought was a Red Dale, and discovering that it's pink inside (a Huckleberry), or yellow with swirls of rose (a French Nosebag).\n\nWash the potatoes, but don't worry about getting their skins off. Put them in a steaming basket over simmering water, cover the pan, and steam until tender. The time can vary enormously, depending on the size (very small ones can be done in 20 minutes; larger ones can take 45) and variety (boilers seem to take longer than wax-fleshed potatoes).\n\nSalt Potatoes with Butter and Herbs | SERVES 6\n\nWhen I've visited upstate New York in the summer, I've always seen sacks of salt potatoes for sale. Was there something about the potatoes that was salty, or was it the way they would be cooked? When I bought a plate of salt potatoes at a fair, I saw that they were new potatoes that had been boiled in brine and served floating in a pond of melted butter. This is an incredibly delicious way to cook the small new potatoes you find at your market, regardless of the variety, as long as they're not bakers. Traditionally the butter is plain, but it's good with herbs, too.\n\n**2 pounds small potatoes**\n\n**2 cups sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd cup unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**\u00bc cup finely chopped mixed herbs: marjoram, chives, lemon basil, etc.**\n\n**freshly ground pepper**\n\n1. Scrub the potatoes, but don't peel them.\n\n2. Bring 3 quarts water to a boil with the salt. Stir to dissolve the salt, then add the potatoes. Boil over medium heat until the potatoes are fork-tender, 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the potatoes. Drain the potatoes, then toss them in a bowl with the butter and herbs. Season with pepper and serve.\n\nPotato and Onion Salad with Smoked Albacore | SERVES 4\n\nSmoked albacore was an unusual find, discovered at farmers' markets in Washington and California. You can use any flaky-textured smoked fish in its place, however. For potatoes, use fingerlings or another waxy boiling type\u2014Red Dale, Salad Red, Yellow Finn, or Yukon Gold.\n\n**1\u00bd pounds potatoes (see headnote)**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 Walla Walla or other sweet onion, sliced into rounds, about 1 cup**\n\n**3 tablespoons champagne vinegar**\n\n**\u2153 cup olive oil**\n\n**16 black or green olives, pitted and halved**\n\n**6 ounces smoked albacore, flaked**\n\n**2 good handfuls coarsely chopped arugula or plucked purslane**\n\n**2hard-cooked eggs**\n\n1. Cover the potatoes with cold salted water and bring to a boil. While they're cooking, toss the onion with the vinegar, oil, olives, fish, and \u00bd teaspoon salt.\n\n2. When the potatoes are fork-tender, drain them, then cut in half lengthwise. While still hot, add them to the bowl along with the arugula or purslane. Turn gently with a rubber scraper. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve garnished with the egg, cut into quarters or halves.\n\nRutabaga and Potato Puree | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\n\"When's the last time you ate a rutabaga?\" Ed May's sign asked.\n\n\"They're sweet!\"\n\nEd was frustrated that customers were buying his fingerling potatoes but overlooking his excellent though gnarly-looking rutabagas. People who pass these fall tubers by are missing out on a treat. They're delicious, they're mild, and they're a delicate buttery yellow color.\n\nThere's no need to worry about a specific blend here. You can use more rutabagas than potatoes, and you can include some turnips in the mix as well. Because rutabagas aren't as starchy as potatoes, you may not need to add milk, cream, or the cooking water. But if you do want to thin out the mixture, it's best if the liquid has been warmed first.\n\n**\u00bd pound russet or other potatoes**\n\n**1\u00bd pounds rutabagas or mixed rutabagas and turnips**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**unsalted butter**\n\n**freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped parsley and\/or snipped chives**\n\n1. Peel the potatoes and rutabagas, then chop them into chunks, making the rutabagas about half the size of the potatoes (and turnips, if using) since they take longer to cook. Put them in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Add 1\u00bd teaspoons salt and bring to a boil. Cook until soft enough to mash, about 25 minutes.\n\n2. Drain, reserving a cup of the cooking water first, then return the vegetables to the pot and mash them with a potato masher, adding as much butter as you like. If the puree is too thick, add some of the reserved liquid or warm milk or cream to thin it. Scrape in a little nutmeg and taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with the parsley or chives scattered over the top.\n\nVARIATIONS:\n\nFold in toasted, chopped hazelnuts and serve the puree with a drizzle of hazelnut oil.\n\nAdd 1 cup grated aged Cheddar or freshly grated Parmesan cheese.\n\nBrown any leftovers in butter and serve with an arugula salad.\n\nParsley Root and Potato Puree | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nParsley roots are thin and unpromising in terms of volume but a huge treasure when it comes to flavor. Their taste is clean, bracing, and assertive enough to have a real presence in a potato puree or potato soup, which this can easily become with the addition of some extra liquid. In fact the vegetable-cooking water has so much flavor that any extra should be dedicated to soup.\n\n**1 bunch (\u00bd dozen or so) parsley roots**\n\n**handful of the parsley root greens or flat-leaf parsley**\n\n**1 pound Yellow Finn or other waxy golden potatoes**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper butter**\n\n**cream or half-and-half, optional**\n\n1. Peel the parsley roots. Wash the greens. Scrub and peel the potatoes. Coarsely chop the vegetables, then put them in a saucepan, cover with water, and add 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain, but reserve the liquid.\n\n2. Return the vegetables to the pan and mash them, using the reserved cooking water to thin the mixture as needed. When smooth, stir in butter and cream, if using, to taste.\n\n3. Finely chop the parsley, then stir them into the puree. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve.\n\n**SWEET POTATOES AT THE XYZ MARKETSACRAMENTO IN JANUARY**\n\nThis isn't its real name, but I had always heard friends refer to this market as the \"XYZ\" market. Actually, it's on W Street in Sacramento, and it's called the Sacramento Central CFM (Certified Farmers' Market).\n\nI had heard that this Sunday market was where farmers went to get rid of what they didn't sell on Saturday. It was definitely not described in the glowing terms used for the more upscale market in nearby Davis, but there was plenty of good produce and some that was quite special. The displays were more haphazard than at the Davis market, but that's just another approach. And rather than being situated in a pretty park, this market was located under a freeway.\n\nA number of markets across the country make use of the otherwise unutilized space under freeways. One I had visited the previous summer had offered cool and shady relief from the heat outside, as well as plenty of parking. But I'd wondered what it would be like to spend hours in the darkness of a concrete market during the winter. I found that it was bone chilling, especially for the farmers who were there for five or six hours, starting early in the morning. While it would have been much more pleasant to be out in the winter sun, there was plenty of room for everyone. Plus the freeway offered shelter from rains, which, if all goes well, are part of Sacramento winters.\n\nI recognized some of the farmers I had seen the previous day in Davis with their apples, citrus, persimmons, and dried fruits. A chestnut farmer I had met in Auburn, Tim Broughton, was there, drawing customers to the warmth of his fragrant fire and samples of hot roasted chestnuts. Mr. Bariani was there with gallon jugs filled with his golden olive oil. Among some of the new faces I saw was a sweet potato farmer. But before getting to her interesting varieties of these tubers, let's try to clarify the sweet potato-yam confusion. Botanically, sweet potatoes and yams are two different vegetables. The yam is a tropical vegetable. It grows in West Africa and Asia. Sweet potatoes are what we grow here. However, the word _yam_ has crept into the nomenclature, as in Garnet yams or Jewel yams, because growers and shippers decided years ago to use the word _yam_ to distinguish these moist, sweeter, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes from the traditional pale-yellow, dry-fleshed ones. This probably shouldn't have happened, but it did, and it's not too confusing after all.\n\nThis sweet potato farmer, Tracee Canisso, who grows her fifty acres of tubers near Livingston, California, had varieties I had never seen before and some that I had. I bought some of each kind, took them home, and roasted them so that I could compare them. (To keep the varieties straight in situations like this, I simply write the names on the vegetables themselves. That way I don't lose track.) What I chose to taste and compare were the following:\n\n**KOTOBUKI :** Long golden-skinned tubers with dry straw-colored, chestnut-flavored flesh\n\n**HANNA :** Short and stubby tubers with pointy ends, slightly darker skin, and golden flesh; marvelous rich chestnut flavor\n\n**GARNET :** Deep-purple skin, dark-orange flesh, moist, sweet, well balanced\n\n**DIANA :** Purple skin, orange flesh, moist and extremely sweet but sharp\n\n**JEWEL :** Another sweet, super-moist orange-fleshed sweet potato with a coppery rather than red-orange skin\n\n**BEAUREGARD :** Quite similar to Jewel, with purple-rose skin and orange flesh\n\n\"Kotobuki and Hanna,\" Tracee explained, \"are the sweet potatoes with the pale, dry flesh. They're the ones favored by Asians and East Indians.\" To me they tasted a lot like chestnuts, and I imagined that their cooked flesh could be used where chestnut purees are called for, whether savory or sweet. In fact, they both succeed as the ingredient in a subtle, velvety custard. Being nuttier and less sweet than the orange-fleshed varieties, they turned out to be more versatile, too\u2014good in a salad with a garlicky dressing, compatible with curry spices, happy to be glazed with honey, ginger, and soy sauce. But they are also absolutely delicious simply roasted and eaten with butter and pepper.\n\nIn contrast, the Garnet and the Jewel yams were intensely sweet with very moist orange flesh. Although served as a vegetable, they are essentially ready-made desserts. (Try them sometime with a little molasses and cream.) Although you might be tempted to use them for a sweet potato pie, the sweet potatoes that I saw for sale at the Birmingham farmers' market that were specifically designed for pies were the paler variety\u2014drier, not as sweet, but very tasty.\n\nGarnet and Jewel \"yams\" are both very good eating and very popular, but a newcomer, Diana, was developed to replace the Garnet. Tracee explained that it has some shipping and storage problems due to its thin skin. When I bit into the cooked flesh of the purple-skinned Diana, I found it to be almost painfully sweet, with a somewhat sharp, even harsh, aftertaste. Of course, shipping shouldn't be a problem when food is grown and sold locally, as it is at farmers' markets, so perhaps local farmers can keep growing the Garnet.\n\nSimilarly, the Beauregard has been developed to replace the lovely Jewel. \"But why?\" I asked Tracee. \"The Jewel is wonderful!\"\n\n\"Because,\" she explained, \"packers don't care for the way the eyes line up in a row, like a perforation.\"\n\nFor Pete's sake! I had never noticed this until I picked one up and looked. There it was, a tiny perforation, like a zipper, running up the length of the tuber. I can't believe this is a serious problem for anyone. Do you care if your sweet potato has a \"zipper\"? Perhaps this could be an asset. Fortunately, the Beauregard stays close to the original flavor of the Jewel.\n\nYou may be seeing fewer Garnets and Jewels in the future and more Dianas and Beauregards. \"Strains of sweet potatoes don't last forever, so they can be expected to change every so many years,\" Tracee said. In fact, I noticed that Beauregards are being sold this year at my local market, which also carries what they call Japanese sweet potatoes. It's already happening.\n\nA MENU FOR GINGER AND SESAME LOVERS\n\nStir-Fried Carrots and Burdock with Sesame Seeds\n\nSoy-Glazed Sweet Potatoes\n\nNapa Cabbage Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro\n\nRoasted Chestnuts\n\nVine-ripened kiwifruits and Satsuma mandarins\n\nSweet Potatoes Roasted in a Wood Fire\n\nThis is the best way of all to cook sweet potatoes. Rub clean tubers with sunflower seed oil or butter, wrap them individually in foil, and bake them in the hot coals until tender. An 8- to 10-ounce tuber should take about 30 minutes, but it's always tricky with wood fires. It's a good idea to choose one potato to be your tester, then test for tenderness with repeated pricks of a knife, leaving the rest securely wrapped. They'll emerge with a slightly smoky flavor mixed with the caramelized sugars. They are unbelievably delicious.\n\nSoy-Glazed Sweet Potatoes | MAKES 12 PLUMP PIECES, SERVING 6\n\nThese take moments to ready for the oven and a little over an hour to bake. When done, they should be lacquered and even blackened in places. If you don't eat them all at the first sitting, reheat them in a nonstick skillet and they'll caramelize a bit. They're even more delicious the second time around.\n\n**3 large sweet potatoes, either the dry or the moist-fleshed types**\n\n**1 tablespoon roasted sesame oil**\n\n**2 tablespoons brown sugar**\n\n**2 tablespoons mirin or sweet sherry**\n\n**1 tablespoon minced garlic**\n\n**3 tablespoons soy sauce**\n\n**\u00bc cup water**\n\n**1 tablespoon black or white sesame seeds, toasted**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Scrub the sweet potatoes and cut them lengthwise into quarters or halves. Place them in a baking dish roomy enough to hold them in a single layer.\n\n2. Combine the rest of the ingredients except the sesame seeds. Brush all of the resulting sauce over the sweet potatoes, then cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake until nearly tender, 50 minutes to an hour. Remove the foil, baste the sweet potatoes with their juices, and return to the oven until the liquid has reduced to a glaze and the potatoes are fully tender, 15 to 20 minutes longer. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.\n\nSweet Potato Flan with Warm Molasses and Sesame Tuiles | SERVES 6\n\nHanna and Kotobuki sweet potatoes make a luscious flan that could be mistaken for chestnut. In fact you could serve them with warm chestnut honey instead of molasses. A crisp sesame tuile offers a bit of crunch.\n\n**unsalted butter for the ramekins**\n\n**2 cups whole milk**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bd vanilla bean, halved lengthwise**\n\n**\u00be pound Kotobuki or Hanna sweet potatoes, baked or steamed until tender**\n\n**2 eggs**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**warm molasses**\n\n**Sesame Tuiles, recipe follows**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 325\u00b0F. Lightly butter 6 (\u00bd-cup) ramekins. Bring the milk, sugar, and vanilla bean to a boil in a saucepan, then turn off the heat. Stir to make sure the sugar is dissolved. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the milk and return the pods to the pan. Let stand for the flavor to infuse for 15 minutes.\n\n2. Scoop the flesh from the sweet potatoes and measure \u00be cup. Puree with the eggs and the extra yolk. It will have a somewhat sticky texture. Add the milk and process just until well blended. You want a minimal amount of bubbles for a smooth custard.\n\n3. Pour the liquid into the ramekins and set them in a large pan. Add boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake until set but just a bit wobbly at the very center, about 45 minutes. Leave the custards in the water bath until ready to serve. Run a knife along the edge of the cups, then turn them out onto serving plates. Drizzle with the warm molasses and serve with the tuiles.\n\nSESAME TUILES | MAKES 2 DOZEN COOKIES\n\n**4 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**2 large egg whites**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon roasted sesame oil**\n\n**\u2153 cup sifted all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd cup white sesame seeds, toasted**\n\n_You'll need a rolling pin for setting the warm cookies into their curved, tilelike shapes. Set on a cooling rack, they won't roll around._\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or lightly butter and flour them. Melt the butter slowly over low heat, stirring occasionally. Set aside to cool.\n\n2. Whisk the egg whites with the salt and sugar until foamy, then whisk in the sesame oil and flour. Stir in the melted butter and sesame seeds.\n\n3. Drop heaping tablespoons of the batter onto the cookie sheets, leaving at least 3 inches between them. Spread the batter into a very thin circle. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Turn the pans at least once while they're baking.\n\n4. Slide a spatula under the tuiles, then lift them up and drape them over the rolling pin or bottles. As they cool, they'll harden. Then you can put them aside and continue baking until the batter is used up.\n\n_Braised Root Vegetables with Black Lentils and Red Wine Sauce_\n\nBraised Root Vegetables with Black Lentils and Red Wine Sauce | SERVES 6\n\nThis dish is for when you want to fuss a bit and make a celebration of root vegetables or for when you want an impressive vegetarian meal. It involves four elements: the sauce, the vegetables, the lentils, and some form of mashed potatoes or root vegetable puree. None of the parts are difficult or even terribly time consuming in and of themselves. However, you might choose to cook them over the course of 2 days. Only the potato-based puree is best made at the last minute, and even it can be held for an hour or so in a double boiler.\n\nIf making the dish from start to finish, start with the sauce, adding trimmings, such as carrot ends and parsnip cores, as you work. While it's simmering, prepare the vegetables and cook the lentils. You can have the potatoes scrubbed, cut, and waiting in a pot of cold water to cook close to serving.\n\nTHE RED WINE SAUCE\n\n**\u2153 cup dried porcini**\n\n**1 tablespoon olive oil**\n\n**1 large onion, diced**\n\n**1 large carrot, diced**\n\n**2 celery ribs, diced**\n\n**5 mushrooms and\/or mushroom trimmings**\n\n**parsnip tips and cores, from the vegetables, below**\n\n**4 garlic cloves, smashed**\n\n**aromatics: 2 thyme sprigs, 1 bay leaf, 1 (2-inch) rosemary sprig**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 tablespoon tomato paste**\n\n**2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**2 cups Merlot**\n\n**1 tablespoon mushroom soy sauce, more or less**\n\n**1 tablespoon unsalted butter**\n\n1. Cover the porcini with 1 quart warm water and set aside. Heat the oil in a wide soup pot. Add the vegetables, garlic, and aromatics. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are well browned, about 20 minutes. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and a little pepper.\n\n2. Stir in the tomato paste and flour, then pour in the wine plus the dried mushrooms and their soaking liquid. Vigorously scrape the bottom of the pot to work in the juices, then bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. Strain into a 1-quart measure. You should have about 3 cups. Return it to the pan and simmer until reduced to 2\u00bd cups, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the mushroom soy sauce, then taste for salt and season with pepper. Whisk in the butter. Set aside.\n\nTHE VEGETABLES\n\n**18 to 24 shallots or red pearl onions**\n\n**3 large or 6 medium parsnips**\n\n**6 medium carrots or 18 small carrots**\n\n**5 large mushrooms**\n\n**1\u00bd tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**aromatics: 1 bay leaf, 2 thyme sprigs, 1\u00bd teaspoons minced rosemary**\n\n**Parsley Root and Potato Puree or Rutabaga and Potato Puree**\n\n**3 tablespoons chopped parsley, chopped with 1 garlic clove**\n\n1. Peel the shallots and separate them where their natural divisions occur. If using pearl onions, parboil for 1 minute, then drain and peel, keeping the root end intact.\n\n2. Peel the parsnips and trim off the skinny tips. Cut the remaining vegetable into 3 segments of equal length. Quarter the thickest section and remove a portion of the core. Halve the middle section and keep the last section whole. (Use the tips and cores in the sauce as directed.)\n\n3. Peel the carrots and cut them into 2- to 3-inch lengths. If they're tapered, cut the thick ends into quarters, cut the middles into halves, and keep the last skinny pieces whole. If they're the same diameter from tip to tail, simply halve them lengthwise. Thickly slice the mushrooms.\n\n4. Heat the oil and butter in a wide skillet or Dutch oven. Add the carrots and shallots and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until well browned in places, about 10 minutes. Add the parsnips and mushrooms and cook for 10 minutes. Season with 1 teaspoon salt, then add the herbs. Pour in 1 cup of the sauce and 1 cup water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender when pierced, 20 to 25 minutes. (Add more water if needed\u2014there should be some moisture in the pan.) Season with pepper and set aside until needed.\n\nTHE LENTILS\n\n**\u00bd cup black \"Caviar\" Beluga or French green lentils, sorted and rinsed**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 tablespoon unsalted butter**\n\nCover the lentils with 3 cups water, add the salt, and simmer until tender, about 25 minutes. Drain, then stir in the butter and 1 cup of the sauce.\n\nFINISHING THE DISH  \nPrepare the puree. Reheat the vegetables with the remaining sauce. Mound the puree in the center of 6 pasta plates. Place 2 or 3 spoonfuls of lentils around the potatoes, then fill in with the vegetables. Spoon the extra sauce around and over the vegetables and lentils, then garnish with the chopped parsley and serve.\n\n**A MARKET ON THE CANADIAN PRAIRIECALGARY'S BLACKFOOT MARKET LATE SEPTEMBER**\n\nCalgary is not a place where the image of the farm comes to mind, for this is a town that concerns itself with oil, banking, and beef. But in my several visits to Calgary I've found that Calgarians are enthusiastic about food. Cooking classes are filled, and there's always some new trendy restaurant. One of the best bakeries I've encountered is there, and there are excellent chocolate makers, for the cool, dry climate is ideal for chocolate work. There is also a farmers' market, which I visited late one September. The sky on this day looked like a big blue dome. Wind filled the air with leaves, and a sharp chill made it clear that Indian summer had run its course. Winter was only waiting for these few fall days to finish up before making its entrance. Its stay would be a long one.\n\nIt was the last day of the market. There weren't many customers, and they didn't come to linger. They got out of their jeeps, slammed the doors, zipped up their jackets, pulled down their hats, and did a cursory, purposeful shopping. With scarcely an exchange of words, they returned to their cars and were off. All but a few of the market's stalls were closed for the season. Wind kept slamming shut and then opening a loose door somewhere, only to slam it shut once more. It was a forlorn sound.\n\nThere were a few remnants of summer vegetables\u2014actually quite a decent array of bell peppers, chiles, and eggplants from the Okanagan Valley, a province away. But mostly there were the sturdy foods of winter\u2014six kinds of winter squash, including some huge warty Blue Hubbards; seven kinds of apples; pears and quince; parsley root (a rare find); celery root; parsnips; walnuts; and, surprisingly, poppy seeds. There was even thistle seed for the birds. This was the market to satisfy that deep urge for stocking root cellars and larders.\n\nLike the first market of the year, there wasn't that much at the end of the season, but even the limited offerings of this market inspired all kinds of ideas for dishes to cook. That night I ate at the River Cafe, a handsome restaurant set in the woods on Prince's Island in the middle of the Bow River. There, chef Victoria Adams prepared a very refined root stew which made a celebration out of winter's earthly stores: a succulent root vegetable braise with a silken mushroom sauce, a few spoonfuls of black lentils, and luscious mashed potatoes. Since then, this is the dish I've chosen for my most special vegetarian winter meals. Roots, I've discovered, can both start and end the market season in proper style.\n\nA MENU FOR A SPECIAL WINTER MEAL\n\nFennel and Winter Greens Salad with Mushrooms and Truffle Oil\n\nBraised Root Vegetables with Black Lentils and Red Wine Sauce\n\nWinter Mince Tart with a Lattice Crust\n\nHoney Ice Cream\n\nThere are a dozen in each carton, but that's where the uniformity stops. Some of our farmers sell their eggs all mixed up\u2014some tiny, some large, and many in between, but never all alike. Sometimes I overhear some customers complaining about this, but I rather like opening a box of mixed eggs. If I'm feeling ravenous, I reach for the giant ones. If I just need an egg to glaze a pastry, a tiny one is perfect, while a pullet egg is just the size for a small child. It's nice to have a choice, and in some ways it makes more sense than having every egg the same.\n\nIn the years I've been visiting farmers' markets, I've seen everything from duck eggs to yellow speckled turkey eggs, goose eggs packed in plastic bags, gigantic ostrich eggs, and the tiniest mottled quail eggs. Occasionally we have had guinea hen eggs at our market, sometimes duck eggs, but there are always chicken eggs, which may be blue, green, white, or varying shades of brown. Regardless of size or color, market eggs tend to have bright yellow yolks, firm, well-formed whites, and real flavor that even children appreciate.\n\n\"We've been going to Boggy Creek Farm for so long that our four-year-old daughter, Zibby, now knows the drill,\" Laurie Smith tells me. \"Last week, when she saw Carol Ann, Boggy Creek's chicken lady, she tugged at her overalls. 'Can we collect some eggs, now?' she asked. She never liked eggs before, but when she could see where they came from and feel their warmth, that changed. Now she loves eggs. We cook an egg as soon as we get home.\"\n\nI never really cared much for eggs either, until I started buying them at the farmers' market. Now I'm an egg eater, too. Because of these beautiful eggs, I frequently serve them for Sunday lunch or supper. Soft scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, a nettle frittata, and a spinach souffl\u00e9 scented with green garlic are some of my favorites. But true farm eggs make delicacies out of familiar dishes such as custards and fried eggs, for they have a luster that ordinary eggs simply lack. Even an egg salad sandwich becomes something to anticipate.\n\nCheeses, like eggs, have long been part of farmers' markets, and they're getting better and better as our nation's new cheese makers become increasingly skilled. Goat cheese is now a common feature at many markets, and although most is made in the simplest fresh style, in California's San Rafael market I've seen goat's milk mascarpone and the markets I've visited in Vermont have some of the most impressive farmhouse goat _and_ sheep cheeses I've encountered anywhere, including Europe. Quite a few of the artisan cheeses that have represented American cheese making at Slow Food's international cheese exposition in Italy can be found at farmers' markets.\n\nOccasionally you'll find sheep's milk cheese. A sheep's milk feta is delicious with eggs, with cucumbers, and with apples, while a sheep's milk ricotta is likely to be delicate and creamy. While our local sheep's milk butter-cheese and feta are pleasantly tangy, a longer-aged sheep's milk cheese from the Ithaca farmers' market was quite strong. Local flavors vary.\n\nIn dairy states, such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and upstate New York, you can count on finding aged Cheddars, Goudas, and a host of other cow's milk cheeses. Some dairies will specify when their cheese or yogurt is made from Guernsey milk, the gold standard of cow's milks. Fresh ricotta of any kind is one of the very best market finds of all. It's pure and milky-sweet, with a light texture and no graininess. It makes any recipe that calls for ricotta absolutely stellar.\n\nCheese curds were present in every midwestern market I visited, and it seemed as if every other person I met in Minnesota told me about eating fried cheese curds at the state fair. Spongy and squeaky when you eat them, cheese curds are essentially day-old cheeses. At the Heart of the City Market in Kansas City, a young man offered me a sample of his white and tangy goat cheese curd. \"And what about your cheese?\" I asked, assuming they'd have something more mature. \"We don't even bother to make it anymore,\" the boy's father told me, \"because we sell out of the curds every week.\" I took the curds home, drizzled them with olive oil, cracked pepper over them, and added chopped herbs\u2014simple and obvious but good, especially with sliced pears. I'd no doubt buy them every week, too.\n\nWe have just one cheese maker at our market. Patrice Harrison-Inglis, who looks like the ur-dairy maid with her Dutch-cut blond hair, started out with goat's milk, goat yogurt, and a fresh goat cheese. Next she added herbs to her cheese, then she took off. She has been steadily developing her skills, and at this writing she offers a creamy Brie, a goat blue, a traditional New Mexican breakfast cheese, a stunning sheep's milk feta, sheep butter-cheese, salad goat cheeses in olive oil, and a sheep-goat Brie. She also makes _cajeta,_ a thick goat's milk caramel that is delicious drizzled over ice cream. Her growing skill parallels what's happening all over the country.\n\n_The Boiled Egg_\n\nThe Boiled Egg\n\nEveryone has a favorite method, but this is the one that always works for me. What makes a boiled egg perfect? The white is cooked, and the yolk retains moisture. It's not runny, but it's not dry, either. And, of course, there's no green ring encircling it.\n\nPlace the eggs in a pot of cold water, bring to a boil, and boil for 1 minute. Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let stand for 6 minutes at sea level or a minute longer for every 1,000 feet over 3,000 feet elevation. (At 7,000 feet they need to stand for 10 minutes.) Pour off the water. If you're not planning to eat them hot, dump the eggs into a bowl of cold water (having some ice in it is fine) and run cold water over them to cool. Give them a few knocks against the side of the bowl to break the shells, which cools them down more quickly and makes the eggs easier to peel.\n\nEgg Salad with Herbs Through the Seasons | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nWhen I brought this salad to market as part of a demonstration, people pounced on it. Perhaps because we don't make egg salad much anymore, we've forgotten how good it is. Of course made with real farm eggs, the simplest egg salad becomes remarkable. Put it on good bread with some arugula, and you will have one of the best sandwiches ever.\n\nFollowing the progression of the seasons, in the spring, season this salad with liberal amounts of fresh chervil (and perhaps a clove or two of minced green garlic), then move on through the summer using dill, parsley, lovage, tarragon, fennel greens, lemon thyme, and marjoram. Chives (onion and garlic), scallions, and shallots always have a good place in an egg salad.\n\n**6 large market eggs**\n\n**3 scallions, including an inch or so of the greens, thinly sliced**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped chervil or 2 teaspoons chopped tarragon or lovage**\n\n**1 tablespoon minced parsley**\n\n**1 tablespoon slivered chives**\n\n**\u2153 cup mayonnaise or more to taste**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons smooth mustard**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**vinegar or fresh lemon juice**\n\nCook the eggs as described in the preceding recipe. After they've sat, dump them into a bowl of cold water and run cold water over them to cool. Peel them, place them in a bowl or pie plate, and coarsely mash them with a fork. Add the scallions and herbs, holding back a few of the chives, the mayonnaise, and the mustard. Season with salt and pepper and a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice to taste. Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with the reserved chives.\n\nFried Eggs with Sizzling Vinegar | SERVES 1, BUT EASY TO MULTIPLY\n\nThis is so easy, yet it gives fried eggs an entirely new personality. Try these when you're having a fried egg for supper or a jazz breakfast. This vinegar sauce is also good with onion-based dishes, such as an onion frittata or Savory Custard with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Cheese.\n\n**3 to 4 teaspoons unsalted butter 1 or 2 fresh market eggs, any size**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 small shallot, finely diced**\n\n**1 tablespoon or so sherry vinegar, aged red wine vinegar, or tarragon vinegar**\n\n1. Melt a teaspoon or so of butter in a nonstick frying pan and swirl it around. Once it's hot and the bubbles have subsided, break in the eggs. Season them with salt and pepper and cook them as you like\u2014straight up, over easy, a bit firmer. (Be sure your bread is toasting at the same time.) When the eggs are done, slide them onto a plate.\n\n2. Add the rest of the butter to the pan with the shallot, which will sizzle immediately. Add the vinegar, take the pan off the heat, and swirl it about to blend the vinegar and butter, allowing it to reduce some. Tip it right over your eggs.\n\nScrambled Eggs with Roasted Green Chiles and Corn | MAKES 4 BREAKFAST BURRITOS\n\nFrom August on, you can count on buying a plastic bag full of roasted green chiles, still warm from roasting, beautiful eggs, a half dozen thick, homemade tortillas, and some fresh or aged goat cheese from our market. Having an ear of leftover roasted corn was how the corn got into the eggs, but you can start with raw corn, too.\n\n**6 long green chiles**\n\n**1 ear sweet corn, cooked or raw**\n\n**6 large market eggs**\n\n**sea salt**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00bd cup goat or Cheddar cheese**\n\n**4 large tortillas, whole wheat if possible**\n\n1. Roast the chiles, then remove the skins and seeds from the chiles and chop them coarsely.\n\n2. Slice the kernels off the corn. Break up the eggs in a bowl with a fork and season with \u00bd teaspoon salt.\n\n3. Melt the butter in an 8-inch nonstick pan. When sizzling, add the corn and chile and stir long enough to warm them up. (If the corn was raw, cook it for at least a minute.) Add the eggs and the cheese, lower the heat, and cook, stirring gently, until the eggs are set.\n\n4. Meanwhile, warm the tortillas in the oven or in a wide skillet. Serve them with the eggs.\n\n**A LUNCH ON THE PORCH MID-APRIL**\n\nBoggy Creek Farm in downtown (practically) Austin has a farm stand that has become, in its decade-long life, an Austin institution. Fans drive down the tree-lined drive twice each week to buy whatever organically grown vegetables and fruits are in season, plus the farm's delicious eggs, local goat cheese, organic beef and chicken also raised nearby, and some exceptional value-added products, such as smoked dried tomatoes. On some occasions the owners, Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler, let customers into the fields to pick their own corn or strawberries, and some children have been known to collect their own eggs from the henhouse. It's tempting, after shopping, to linger in the shade of the old pecan trees or sit on the porch, and many customers do.\n\nFarm stands are another way farmers can sell what they grow directly to the consumer. At some, money is just dropped into a jar in exchange for produce, on the honor system so that the farmer can keep working. But with others, like Boggy Creek, the public walks right into the heart of the farmers' life and livelihood. There they can really see exactly where their food comes from.\n\nShortly after turning in this book, I got a call from a friend in Austin with the bad news: Boggy Creek Farm had been hit by a tornado! The twister stayed in the tops of the sixty-year-old pecan and oak trees, snapping off limbs, which destroyed the chicken coop, the greenhouse, and a side of the farmhouse. Its force pulled some of these huge trees right out of the ground, unscrewing them like corks from a bottle. In addition, hundreds of smaller trees around the edge of the farm were snapped and broken, and crops were drowned in the deluge of rain that came with the storm.\n\nThe next day, various farm customers showed up, unasked, with chainsaws. They spent days cutting and hauling branches, making a pile in the street some 200 feet long. Out of gratitude, Larry in turn helped his neighbors with their clean-up efforts.\n\nOn another front, other friends were busy putting together a benefit so that the historic old farmhouse could be repaired. Patrick and I drove down to Austin to take part. We love the farm, too, and wouldn't have missed a chance to help out for anything. Hundreds of people\u2014farm customers, chefs, musicians, other farmers, fans, and friends showed up for the auction event and did an amazing job raising money. It seems that we all donated what we could of our talents and goods, and bought as heavily as possible from one another. One of the most generous donors was Austin's Central Market, a grocery business that truly recognizes the importance of farms. There was a great sense of community that night, even though a lot of us didn't know each other. The words I kept hearing were, \"It's a damn shame about that tornado, but isn't it great to be among so many people who care so much about Boggy Creek Farm!\" It was, and the farm continues. And the farmhouse once again has walls and a roof.\n\nA SPRING LUNCH MENU\n\nEgg Salad sandwiches made with spring onions\n\nHerb Salad\n\nPure Luck goat cheese\n\nStrawberries still warm from the sun\n\nThin Omelets with Saffron and Exotic Herbs | SERVES 3 TO 6\n\nFounder of the FRESHFARM Markets in Washington, D.C., including the flourishing market at DuPont Circle, Ann Yonkers points out that by shopping at the farmers' market, you help your local farmers stay in business, which is undoubtedly the best way to preserve American farmland\u2014staying in business. Chip Planck, who sells there, echoed this thought in a subsequent conversation when he said, \"Without farmers' markets, I couldn't be in the vegetable-growing business today.\" With these words I believe that Chip speaks for a great many farmers.\n\nOn the opening day of the FRESHFARM Market one year, I was invited to do a chef's demonstration. Our market was opening on the same day, and although thousands of miles from New Mexico, and at sea level instead of 7,000 feet, both markets offered practically identical selections of produce\u2014herbs, eggs, last fall's apples and potatoes, and a few spring greens.\n\nI decided to make these thin omelets. The herbs are familiar. It's their commingling that makes them exotic and provides an interesting conversation of flavors. Serve these thin omelets with pita bread, a plate of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and some sheep's milk feta on the side.\n\n**pinch saffron threads**\n\n**6 to 8 market eggs**\n\n**4 scallions, including half the greens, finely chopped**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped dill**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped cilantro**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped parsley**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped basil**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons olive oil, unsalted butter, or a mixture**\n\n**sprigs of dill flowers for garnish**\n\n1. Cover the saffron with a tablespoon of boiling water to release the color and flavor.\n\n2. Whisk the eggs, stir in the scallions, herbs, saffron, and a few pinches of salt and some pepper. Let stand for 15 minutes.\n\n3. Preheat the broiler. Add 2 teaspoons of the oil and\/or butter to an 8-inch, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, pour in a third of the eggs. After a minute or so, lower the heat and cook until golden on the bottom and the eggs are mostly set, about 10 minutes. Slide the pan under the broiler to finish cooking the top. Slide onto a serving plate and repeat twice more. Cut the omelets into quarters and serve garnished with the dill.\n\nZucchini Frittata with Ricotta and Marjoram | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nAmenable zucchini is an obvious choice for summer frittatas, but what's not so obvious is the use of marjoram. If you haven't made its acquaintance, do, for it's every bit as good as basil, especially here. In fact this frittata can be served with Marjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives.\n\nGrating and salting the squash draws out its moisture and keeps the eggs from becoming watery. Costata Romanesco, the ridged Italian zucchini, is the most dense and flavorful, the one to use if you can find it.\n\n**1\u00bd pounds zucchini, preferably Costata Romanesco**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**6 large market eggs**\n\n**1 large garlic clove, crushed or minced with a pinch sea salt**\n\n**1 tablespoon chopped marjoram**\n\n**\u2153 cup grated Dry Monterey Jack or Parmesan cheese**\n\n**\u00bd cup ricotta, drained if very wet**\n\n1. Coarsely grate the zucchini, toss with 1 teaspoon salt, and set aside in a colander for 30 minutes. Rinse briefly, then squeeze dry.\n\n2. Warm half the oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring frequently, until it's dry and flecked with gold, about 6 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and wipe out the pan.\n\n3. Preheat the broiler. Beat the eggs with a few pinches of salt and some pepper, then stir in the garlic, zucchini, marjoram, Jack cheese, and ricotta. Allow the ricotta to remain streaky. Add the remaining oil to the pan and, when it's hot, add the eggs. Lower the heat, cook for a minute or so, then shuffle the pan a few times to make sure the eggs are loose on the bottom.\n\n4. Cook over low to medium heat until the eggs are set and the top is nearly dry, about 10 minutes, then slide the frittata under the broiler to finish cooking the top. Invert the finished dish onto a serving plate.\n\nVARIATIONS:\n\nStir \u00bc cup Marjoram Pesto with Capers and Olives, into the eggs before cooking.\n\nOnce the top of the frittata is nearly set, cover it lightly with toasted pine nuts.\n\nNettle Frittata with Green Garlic and Sheep's Milk Ricotta | SERVES 6\n\nAdmittedly nettles and sheep's milk ricotta will not be found at every farmers' market, but if not sheep's milk ricotta, another ricotta will be fine. Since nettles are an early-season green (those that are new and tender taste better than late-season nettles), you might be able to combine them with ramps (wild leeks) or green garlic.\n\n**\u00bd pound (a plastic vegetable bag full) nettles**\n\n**1 head green garlic or 2 mature garlic cloves, minced**\n\n**1 small onion, finely chopped, or onion mixed with ramps to make 1 cup**\n\n**2 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**6 to 8 market eggs**\n\n**\u2153 cup grated pecorino Romano cheese**\n\n**\u00bd cup sheep's or cow's milk ricotta**\n\n**1\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil**\n\n1. Preheat the broiler. Bring a large pot of water to a boil for the nettles. Wearing rubber gloves or using tongs, plunge them into the water long enough for them to turn bright green and limp, after a minute or 2, then drain. Press out the excess water, then chop finely. (Once cooked, they won't sting.)\n\n2. Chop the green garlic or garlic cloves and the onion. If using ramps, chop, then rinse them well to get rid of any sand.\n\n3. Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil in a 10-inch nonstick skillet. Add the garlic and onion and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add the nettles and cook until any water they exude has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper.\n\n4. Beat the eggs lightly with \u00bd teaspoon salt, then stir in the nettles and pecorino cheese. Add the ricotta, leaving it streaky.\n\n5. Wipe out the skillet and return it to the heat with the butter or oil. When the butter has foamed, then subsided (or the oil is hot), pour in the egg mixture. Slide the pan back and forth a few times, then turn the heat to medium-low and cook for several minutes until the eggs have set around the edges and are pale gold on the bottom. Slide the pan under the broiler and continue cooking until the top is set and lightly colored. Cool slightly or to room temperature before serving.\n\nLeek and Sorrel Custards | MAKES FOUR \u00bd-CUP CUSTARDS\n\nEat these warm savory custards right out of their ramekins for lunch or supper. You can make this leaving the texture of the leeks and sorrel intact or puree it and make it smooth. It's good both ways.\n\n**4 to 6 thin leeks or scallions**\n\n**2\u00bd tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**4-ounce bunch sorrel**\n\n**1 teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 cup half-and-half or whole milk**\n\n**3 market eggs**\n\n**freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 ounces fresh goat cheese**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Thinly slice, then chop the white parts of the leeks, going into the pale part of the greens a short way. You should have about 1 cup. Rinse them well. Melt the butter in an 8-inch skillet. Use some of it to brush four \u00bd-cup ramekins, then add the leeks to the skillet. Add \u00bc cup water or white wine and cook gently over medium-low heat until softened, about 12 minutes.\n\n2. Strip the sorrel leaves off the stems; wash and finely chop them. Add them to the pan with the leeks, sprinkle with salt, and cook until wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the half-and-half and heat until warm but not boiling.\n\n3. Beat the eggs well, then stir in the sorrel mixture. Season with pepper and crumble in the cheese. If you want smooth custard, puree in short pulses. Don't overmix, or it will be too foamy on top.\n\n4. Divide among the ramekins; place in a baking pan and surround with a hot water bath. Bake until the custards are set and a knife inserted comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Set the ramekins on small plates and serve with buttered toast.\n\nSavory Custard with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Cheese | MAKES SIX \u00bd-CUP RAMEKINS\n\nThis savory custard is just the thing to serve on a crisp October evening with roasted winter squash, saut\u00e9ed black kale, and baked apples for dessert. You can bake the custard in a tart shell, but if you wish to avoid the trouble and calories involved in a crust, then try these flans. They are light, yet rich with flavor. The onions can be caramelized a day or more in advance, then reheated just before using.\n\n**1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus extra for the ramekins**\n\n**3 large yellow onions cut into medium dice**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**3 large market eggs**\n\n**1\u00bd cups milk (2 percent will taste fine) or light cream**\n\n**pinch nutmeg**\n\n**1 tablespoon all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 cup finely grated smoked Cheddar cheese**\n\n**minced parsley for garnish**\n\n1. Heat a wide nonstick pan with the butter. Add the onions, stir well to coat, then season with \u00bd teaspoon salt. Cover and cook over medium heat until the onions are very soft, occasionally giving them a stir as they cook. They should generate enough moisture so that they won't stick. After an hour, remove the lid and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the onions are pale to medium gold. Taste for salt and season with pepper.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Boil water for the baking dish. Lightly butter the ramekins.\n\n3. Crack the eggs in a bowl, then whisk in the milk, nutmeg, flour, \u00be teaspoon salt, and a grating of pepper.\n\n4. Divide the onions and cheese among the ramekins, then pour in the custard. Stir each with a fork to evenly distribute the contents, then put the ramekins in a baking dish, add the boiling water to come at least an inch up the sides, and bake in the middle of the oven until golden and well set, about 50 minutes. Serve the flans in their dishes, or turn them out onto a plate. The tops will look rather naked since they won't be browned, so plan to garnish them with some minced parsley.\n\nGoat's Milk Yogurt with Cilantro and Mint | MAKES 1 CUP\n\nGoat's milk yogurt is starting to appear at more and more farmers' markets. Sometimes on the thin side, it can be mixed with thicker cow's milk yogurt or goat cheese to make this tangy sauce. Use it on grilled vegetables, on cucumber salads, or as a sauce for grilled chicken or lamb.\n\n**1 teaspoon coriander seeds**\n\n**1 teaspoon cumin seeds**\n\n**1 garlic clove**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 cup goat's or cow's milk yogurt**\n\n**1\u00bd tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**\u2153 cup chopped cilantro**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped mint**\n\n**1 teaspoon minced jalape\u00f1o**\n\n1. Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, then turn them out onto a plate to cool. Grind them to a powder.\n\n2. Mash the garlic with \u00bd teaspoon salt until mushy, then work in the spices. Stir them into the yogurt, then add the oil, fresh herbs, and jalape\u00f1o. Season with pepper. Let stand for 30 minutes or more before serving.\n\nLamb Kebabs Marinated in Yogurt | SERVES 4\n\nForouz Jowkar, a friend and neighbor of the Manzanares family who raises lamb for the Santa Fe farmers' market, often makes the samples. A favorite is her marinated lamb, which I've interpreted in this recipe. I usually skewer it with little onions and peppers when they're in season, then grill it over a charcoal fire.\n\n**1 pound boneless leg of lamb, cut into bite-sized chunks**\n\n**juice of 1 lemon**\n\n**juice of 2 limes**\n\n**2 tablespoons yogurt**\n\n**3 tablespoons olive oil plus extra for basting**\n\n**2 large garlic cloves**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**4 medium new onions, quartered**\n\n1. Rinse the lamb when you get home from the market and put it in a bowl or zipper-close plastic bag.\n\n2. Puree the lemon and lime juices with the yogurt, olive oil, garlic, \u00bd teaspoon salt, and pepper. Pour this marinade over the lamb, then refrigerate anywhere from an hour, if that's all you have, to overnight. Turn the bag occasionally so that the marinade fully covers the lamb.\n\n3. Soak 4 wooden skewers in water while you make a fire, preheat the broiler, or heat a gas grill. Then skewer the meat and onions and brush with olive oil. Grill or broil for about 15 minutes, turning the skewers occasionally so that the meat browns.\n\nCheese Souffl\u00e9 | SERVES 4 GENEROUSLY\n\nCertainly there's nothing new about a cheese souffl\u00e9, but it expresses such a perfect harmony of lightness and nourishment, drama and ease, that it deserves to be recalled on a regular basis. Using the eggs and the cheese you'll find in your market, be it a light to a pungent goat cheese, a sharp aged Cheddar, a Gruy\u00e8re, or a Cheddar made from goat's milk, you're bound to end up with a truly wonderful dish.\n\nTomatoes in the summer and other simple prepared vegetables, from saut\u00e9ed spinach to saut\u00e9ed oyster mushrooms to a salad, are always good with souffl\u00e9s.\n\n**3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for the dish**\n\n**\u2153 cup freshly grated Parmesan**\n\n**1\u00bc cups milk heated with a slice of onion and a bay leaf**\n\n**3 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**pinch cayenne**\n\n**1\u00bc cups (5 ounces) grated or crumbled cheese (see headnote)**\n\n**6 large market eggs, separated, or 5 duck eggs, at room temperature**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Butter a 2-quart souffl\u00e9 or gratin dish, then dust it with the Parmesan cheese, turning out the excess to use later.\n\n2. While the milk is warming with the onion and bay leaf, melt the 3 tablespoons butter in a 3-quart saucepan, whisk in the flour, then cook over low heat for about 3 minutes, without letting it brown. Remove the onion and bay leaf from the milk, and whisk it all at once into the flour-butter mixture. Raise the heat to medium and cook, stirring more or less continuously, for 8 minutes. Season with \u00bd teaspoon salt, some pepper, and a pinch or two of cayenne.\n\n3. Remove the sauce from the heat, let it cool for 10 minutes, then stir in the cheese, including the excess Parmesan, if any, followed by the egg yolks, two at a time.\n\n4. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff but not dry. Stir a quarter of them into the base to lighten it, then, working quickly, fold in the rest. Turn the batter into the prepared dish. To help get that dramatic hat, smooth the top, then run your finger around the edge, leaving a border of about an inch. Bake until the souffl\u00e9 is golden brown and has risen high in its dish, about 50 minutes. Serve immediately to your seated guests so you can all enjoy that brief moment of held breath.\n\nSpinach and Green Garlic Souffl\u00e9 | SERVES 4\n\nYou'll want to make this souffl\u00e9 when the garlic is most tender and subtle, which is when the leaves are still green. Examine the heads before chopping them. If the outer layer is fibrous, like moist parchment, remove it, then quarter the head. If cloves or a stem have formed, remove the parts that are tough, then finely chop the rest. This is perfect for Sunday brunch, following a Saturday's trip to the market.\n\nTHE GARLIC INFUSION\n\n**\u00be to 1 cup minced green garlic, about 5 small heads**\n\n**1 cup cream or half-and-half**\n\n**1 thyme sprig**\n\nTHE SOUFFL\u00c9\n\n**4 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for the dish**\n\n**\u00bd cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese**\n\n**1 bunch spinach, stems removed, or 12 to 16 ounces loose, young spinach leaves**\n\n**4 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**1\u2153 cups milk**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**1 scant cup (about 4 ounces) mild goat cheese**\n\n**4 egg yolks**\n\n**6 egg whites**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Butter a 6-cup souffl\u00e9 dish or gratin dish and dust it with a few tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese.\n\n2. Put the garlic, cream, and thyme in a small saucepan over low heat. Bring slowly to a boil, then turn off the heat, cover, and let steep for 15 minutes.\n\n3. Wash the spinach well, then wilt it in a skillet with the water clinging to the leaves. Tip it into a colander, press out the moisture, then finely chop.\n\n4. Melt the 4 tablespoons butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and cook for 1 minute while stirring. Whisk in the milk and stir until it thickens. Add 1 teaspoon salt, then stir in the goat cheese and remaining Parmesan. Turn off the heat and stir in the egg yolks, spinach, and the garlic-cream mixture. Season with pepper.\n\n5. Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form firm peaks that are just a bit on the soft side. Fold the whites and base together. Scrape the batter into the prepared dish and bake until golden brown and set, about 25 minutes for a gratin dish, 30 minutes if using a souffl\u00e9 dish.\n\nGiant Popover with Chanterelles | SERVES 4\n\nThis dramatic popover makes a fine companion for the woodsy flavors of mushrooms, wild or otherwise. So would a Yorkshire pudding, or regular popovers. Use chanterelles, morels, oyster mushrooms of any hue, sliced fresh porcini, or even plain little market mushrooms.\n\n**1 pound chanterelles or other mushrooms (see headnote)**\n\n**4 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**4 large market eggs**\n\n**1 cup milk**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**\u00be cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**2 to 3 tablespoons freshly grated Dry Monterey Jack or Parmesan cheese**\n\n**2 tablespoons cream, optional**\n\n**1 scant teaspoon minced thyme leaves**\n\n**1 tablespoon minced parsley leaves**\n\n1. First clean the mushrooms: Pick out any pine needles and brush off any forest dirt. If using morels, slice them in halve lengthwise so you can brush out the centers. Only if they're really quite dirty should you dunk them in water, but you can wipe them with a damp cloth. Slice into attractive pieces that nicely reveal the shapes of the mushrooms. Set them aside.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Put a 10-inch cast-iron skillet in the oven with half the butter while you whisk the eggs, milk, and \u00bd teaspoon salt together. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. When the butter has melted, brush it around the rim of the skillet, then stir it into the batter. Add the cheese, then pour the batter back into the hot skillet. Set in the center of the oven to bake. In 20 minutes it will have risen dramatically around the edges and be puffed in the center as if it's trying to lift itself out of the skillet.\n\n3. While it's cooking, melt the remaining butter in a saut\u00e9 pan. When it's hot, add the mushrooms, salt lightly, and saut\u00e9 over high heat. Once they begin to give up their juices, reduce the heat to medium and cook the mushrooms until they're tender, about 5 minutes, possibly longer for wild mushrooms. If, as is sometimes true with fresh chanterelles, there is a huge amount of juice, raise the heat to let it reduce, but don't let it cook away completely. Stir the cream into the juices and allow them to mingle and thicken slightly. Season with pepper, then toss with the thyme and parsley.\n\n4. Remove the popover from the oven and spoon the mushrooms into the center. Or slice the popover into wedges and spoon the mushrooms over each serving.\n\nQuiche with Smoked Fish, Scallions, and Cr\u00e8me Fra\u00eeche | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThe smoked albacore I've found in several farmers' markets is what originally inspired this quiche, but any smoked fish that can be flaked is bound to be good\u2014bluefish, whitefish, salmon, and so forth. Serve with a tossed green salad for supper, lunch, or brunch.\n\nTHE CRUST\n\n**1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces**\n\n**3 tablespoons ice water, plus extra if needed**\n\n1. Using a food processor, pulse the flour and salt with the butter until it forms a coarse meal, then dribble in enough water for damp crumbs to form. Gather the crumbs, shape them into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes. Roll the dough into a 13-inch circle (save any trimmings), drape it into a 9-inch tart pan, fold the excess into the shell, and press firmly. Use the dull side of a knife to make a pattern of diagonal lines across the rim. Prick in a few places and freeze for 25 minutes.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F, set the frozen shell on a sheet pan, and bake until lightly colored and set, about 25 minutes. Check during the baking and pierce the base if it swells. When done, be sure to mend any holes that might have been made with a bit of the dough trimmings.\n\nTHE FILLING\n\n**2 small market eggs, or 1 giant one**\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**\u00bd cup milk, as needed**\n\n**1 teaspoon unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00be cup thinly sliced scallions, including some of the greens (about 2 bunches)**\n\n**5 ounces boneless and skinless smoked fish**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Have your prebaked tart shell on a sheet pan to make it easy to handle. Beat the eggs in a 2-cup measuring cup with the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, salt, and pepper until fairly smooth. Don't worry about small lumps. Add enough milk to bring the total volume to 1\u00be cups.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a small nonstick skillet. When hot, add the scallions and cook for about 1 minute. Distribute them in the tart shell. Break the fish into small pieces and set it over the scallions. Pour in the custard and bake until the custard is set and pale gold in places, about 35 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then loosen the tart from the rim and ease it onto a serving plate.\n\nSavory Goat Cheese Tart with Leeks | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nWhen I first worked at Chez Panisse in 1978, Alice Waters frequently made a goat cheese tart for lunch, which, at that time, was the most amazing food I had ever eaten. The dish has not lost its appeal. This one comes right from the fall market, a time when slender new leeks and eggs are still in supply, though the eggs are beginning to dwindle along with the daylight. For the goat cheese, we have a choice between fresh and one that's more aged, which I prefer, but either will be good and so will both used together. Serve modest slices with a mound of lightly dressed lettuce leaves or fris\u00e9e for supper, lunch, or a first course.\n\n**1 (9-inch) prebakedTart Shell**\n\n**6 slender leeks (an inch or less across)**\n\n**1 tablespoon unsalted butter**\n\n**6 ounces goat cheese**\n\n**1 large market egg**\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**\u00bd cup milk**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground white pepper**\n\n**2 teaspoons chopped thyme leaves**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Keep the prebaked tart shell on its baking pan.\n\n2. Slice the leeks into thin rounds, separate them, and wash them well in a bowl of water. Lift them into a strainer. Melt the butter in a medium skillet, add the leeks with any water clinging to them, and cook over medium heat until tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.\n\n3. Beat the goat cheese with the egg until fairly smooth, then stir in the milk, cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, pinch of salt, and a little white pepper. Pour the custard into the shell and bake until golden and puffed, about 30 minutes. Scatter the thyme leaves over the top. Remove the tart from the pan and transfer to a round serving platter. Serve warm.\n\n**CROWING THE MARKET INCLEVELAND NORTH UNION FARMERS' MARKET**\n\nA little street with wide, grassy borders runs through the center of Shaker Square, and this is where the North Union farmers' market is held. In contrast to other midwestern markets, such as Madison's with its 300 farmers, or St. Paul's with its 160 farmers and continuous existence for nearly as many years, this market was little and just a few years old when I first visited it. But it was inspiring. I came away from my visits there with the sense that the family farm was very much alive. Many of the farmers were families working their stands together\u2014parents, children, cousins\u2014and several even wore T-shirts with the names of their farms printed on them.\n\nAn Amish family had a big display of varied produce; a Serbian refugee was selling tomatoes grown from seeds from his country; the Rullos, a mother and daughter who raise free-range chickens and make the most wonderful goat's milk fudge, were working side by side. And at one end of the market a couple worked with a sharpening stone. You could drop off your dull knives, do your shopping, buy some of the most delicious buttery pastry imaginable from Lucy's Sweet Surrender, an old Hungarian bakery that was enjoying a renaissance, then go back to pick up a set of gleaming blades. Chopping and slicing all these vegetables is much more pleasant and easy when a knife is sharp.\n\nOn the opening day of each season, an Episcopal priest blesses the market with branches of parsley dipped into holy water from Lourdes. He offers prayers for the farmers, prayers for the animals, prayers for everything that has to do with the market. Couples have met and married there. The market is very successful.\n\nBut it had a problem, one that's common to many new markets, and that was how to get more diversity into it. \"At a certain point,\" Mary Holmes, one of the market's founders, told me, \"everyone was selling corn and tomatoes, corn and tomatoes! That's all there was!\" But Mary and cofounder and manager, Donita Anderson, had an idea: When the next farmer applied to sell at the market, they told him that he could come, but only if he could grow something new.\n\n\"Go home, look at some food magazines, and watch the TV Food Network and see what foods are popular and different,\" they said. And he did. And he decided that heirloom potatoes were the new vegetable. His seed potatoes were expensive, and he didn't have a proven market. But on Bastille Day, when he and his wife showed up at market with red net bags filled with red, white, and blue potatoes, they flew off the table. Customers would certainly be back for these potatoes. In September another farmer showed up with oyster and shiitake mushrooms, plus foraged greens and chanterelles. The list of the market's offerings started to expand, and now, by using hoop houses and row covers, farmers show up in May with produce that wasn't anticipated until June. Farmers grow the food, but managers grow the market.\n\nCleveland is fortunate to have this market, and also a chef who has long been deeply committed to using local resources. Parker Bosley, the chef-owner of Parker's restaurant, started a farmers' market in Cleveland years ago, but the time wasn't right then. But he didn't let up his search for locally grown foods. They have become the basis of his cooking, which is truly midwestern from the ground up.\n\nEvery six months or so I get a letter from Parker. In one breath he might be growling that people will drive across town to shop at Saks, but not think twice about what they put in their bodies, or that the food on our tables should not come from production systems that are harmful to anyone or anything. And in the next, he's happily describing some new organic vegetable or meat he can finally use in his restaurant.\n\n\"I can finally add local beef and pork to my menu,\" he writes, \"which makes me quite happy. The pork is certified organic. The beef is from nonchemical farming systems. I hope within the next year to have all grass-fed beef. We also have a new dairy. I have a farmer growing 15 kinds of heirloom potatoes and am working on a pork project with a hog farmer and the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy to raise more flavorful meat from a rare, slow growing breed.\"\n\nThe efforts of Parker and people like him are starting to create changes in both how we raise food and the flavors of the foods we eat. He recently commented to me that it seemed as if cooks everywhere are rediscovering the obvious\u2014that local and seasonal is where the cooking begins. \"What a great time to cook here in the Midwest.\" Parker enthuses. \"I am very fortunate to have these wonderful farmers as my partners.\"\n\nGoat's Milk Panna Cotta with Warm Honey | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nWhat's so nice about this quivering tangy dessert is how well it goes with your local honey. You can also serve it with various fruits as they progress through the seasons\u2014a warm sauce of apricots or berries in June, fresh figs in August, a silky persimmon puree in October, or poached dried cherries in December.\n\n**1\u00bd envelopes unflavored gelatin**\n\n**almond oil or a neutral vegetable oil**\n\n**1\u00bd cups goat's milk**\n\n**\u00bd cup cow's milk**\n\n**\u00bc cup sugar**\n\n**2 cups cream**\n\n**honey for serving**\n\n1. Sprinkle the gelatin over \u00bc cup cold water in a small bowl and set aside to soften. Lightly oil a 2-quart mold or eight \u00bd-cup ramekins.\n\n2. Bring both milks and the sugar to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Allow the milk to cool so that it's slightly hotter than tepid, about 130\u00b0F, then add the gelatin and stir until it's completely dissolved, 2 to 3 minutes. Slowly pour in the cream, stirring. Set the mold(s) on a tray, pour in the warm cream, then refrigerate until set, about 8 hours.\n\n3. Just before serving, warm the honey by placing the jar in a pan of simmering water. Carefully turn the panna cotta out onto dessert plates or a serving plate. Drizzle the honey over the top and\/or garnish it with fruit or fruit sauce.\n\nWarm Ricotta Custard | SERVES 6\n\nIt takes about 2 minutes to assemble this custard, which provides a velvety background for all kinds of fruits, such as a plum compote or apricot puree, sugared berries, poached quince, passion fruit, and so forth. Chilled, this tastes like cheesecake, but it must be served in its ramekins, because it won't unmold easily.\n\n**unsalted butter and sugar for six \u00bd-cup ramekins**\n\n**1 pound fresh whole-milk ricotta**\n\n**1 cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche or fromage blanc**\n\n**2 market eggs**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**\u00bc cup sugar**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 325\u00b0F. Lightly butter and sugar the ramekins. Process everything but the nutmeg in a food processor until smooth and silky. Pour the custard into the ramekins, then set them in a pan with hot water to come halfway up the sides. Grate the nutmeg over the tops. Bake until the custards have puffed and begun to pull away from the sides, 50 to 55 minutes.\n\n2. Cool until warm or tepid. Run a knife around the edge of each ramekin and turn out onto individual plates. Serve plain or with a fruit accompaniment.\n\nZabaglione with Fruit | SERVES 4\n\nIf it's to be served warm, zabaglione must be made at the last minute, but the clang of the whisk beating against the bowl, the escaping clouds of steam and alcohol produce an entirely pleasant mood of anticipation. Zabaglione (or sabayon) is sometimes chilled, then lightened with whipped cream, but it's magical served warm with fruit, which tempers its richness. I first had zabaglione at Vanessi's counter years ago in San Francisco, where it was served in an old-fashioned sundae glass with sliced strawberries. Old-fashioned champagne or martini glasses or a French juice glass will do fine, too.\n\nMarsala is the traditional wine, but you can also use a Muscat, Malvasia, or another dessert wine. Even champagne. For fruit, good berries are always wonderful, but if I lived in Hawaii, I might choose a dead ripe sugar pineapple or lychee nuts. Seedless Muscat grapes would also be exquisite, as would sweet ripe figs in the fall. I think that buttery pears, fresh or poached, would be perfect in winter.\n\n**1\u00bd to 2 cups fruit (see headnote)**\n\n**4 egg yolks**\n\n**\u00bc cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bd cup Marsala or other sweet wine**\n\n1. Have the fruit washed and cut if needed, and sugared only if very tart, ahead of time. Just before you make the zabaglione, spoon the fruit into the glasses.\n\n2. Bring a few inches of water to a boil in a 3-quart saucepan. The water should not touch the bowl or it will cook the eggs.\n\n3. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a copper or stainless-steel bowl until pale in color, then gradually whisk in the wine. Set the bowl over the pot and cook, whisking constantly, until the eggs are foamy and all of the wine has been absorbed. This will take 3 to 4 minutes. Pour immediately over the fruit and serve.\n\n**SUSTAINABILITY AT THE MARKETMADISON, WISCONSIN**\n\nIn the large village square setting with the beautiful state capitol in view, I keep feeling that we the people are in charge today, voting with our forks and our dollars for what we choose to eat. It's a great feeling! I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, at the largest farmers' market in the nation, but all morning I keep feeling as though I'm in Berkeley. It's \"Food for Thought\" day here, a celebration of sustainability. A street has been blocked off for farm animals, vendors, various organizations, and speakers who are taking part. Representative Mark Miller gets up to speak:\n\n\"Sustainability goes beyond food production to include how we live together now and through generations to come. This implies fair wages and keeping a local economy operating. In a time when we feel impotent\u2014we can't do much about the price of milk, for example\u2014we can make choices about what we eat. We can choose to buy from CSAs* and markets that maintain farmlands. The decisions you make every day impact whether sustainable food economy will survive.\"\n\nThese are good words to hear, and more good words follow his. After the talks I walk around. Every participating farmer or rancher has a sign that asks, \"What does sustainable mean to us?\" Each has written an answer below the question. The answers include such thoughts as \"having and maintaining fertile soils,\" \"having clean, clear water,\" \"growing nutritious foods,\" and \"being vibrant people with creative minds and strong spirits.\" The Gray Panthers answer the question by saying \"Knowing, caring, and working together.\" A cheese producer writes, \"Developing a food policy that saves the land while providing healthy food to consumers.\" His neighbor, a producer of natural beef, writes, \"Environmentally sound farming that's socially just and economically viable\"\u2014one of the standard definitions of sustainability. These are sentiments that take land, animals, and people equally into account.\n\nIronically, the great success of the Dane County market\u201420,000 shoppers apparently come each Saturday\u2014could undermine its own sustainability. \"The market is too crowded and big to have the kind of relationships with our customers we've enjoyed in the past,\" one farmer tells me. Frustrated by the demands such a large market makes, he has since left it for a smaller market closer to his farm\u2014a benefit to his local community as well as to himself, as it turns out.\n\nWhile the Madison market has succeeded in attracting tourists, they swell the crowd but don't necessarily increase sales. \"Tourists don't buy!\" a farmer complains. \"And it makes it hard to put that energy into explaining about your varieties of potatoes or whatever, when they're probably not going to come back. Some of the farmers,\" he continues, \"have actually seen their produce sales drop off, in spite of the crowds that come to the market.\" What tourists do buy are those foods that last for a while\u2014jams and pickles, nuts, cheeses. Hopefully they take home inspiration and the desire to seek out or create farmers' markets in their own communities. But that doesn't benefit the Madison vendor. Sustainability isn't so easy to sustain, it turns out.\n\nThe financial success farmers have enjoyed selling at farmers' markets means that they can finally hire help, which is great for them. Not only do additional hands work in the field, they can also help out by going to other markets that might take place on the same day, or simply spell farmers who might like a break from the exhausting market routine. But then customers grumble because it's not the farmer selling; it's someone they don't know. Replace the farmer with a helper, and there's a reaction. Customers want that connection with the producer. But farmers can't replicate themselves, and they do need to take breaks if they're to continue farming over the long haul, especially in markets that go year-round.\n\nA market I've visited several times offers another example of too much success. To promote its Wednesday evening market, food vendors were brought in, beer was sold, and music was provided. Shoppers could buy their dinner, then spend a few hours picnicking on the shady lawn of the park where the market is held. A great idea, it succeeded in becoming such a popular community event that it's now part of the town's social fabric. But some of the farmers are saying they feel like they're just tagging along on its coattails. Sales are down, and there's a feeling that the farmers' market has been replaced by the very event that was supposed to boost its attendance. Perhaps providing take-away food for supper isn't exactly an incentive to shop for produce.\n\nOne has to ask if the same kind of situation adheres when a market includes Kettle Corn or other food franchise vendors among its farmers. It may produce revenue for the market, but does it replace buying a piece of fruit for a snack or a baked good from a local baker? Can it replace a farmer or a local producer?\n\nIt's hard to find the right balance to make a market sustainable. The experience of community that's so often enjoyed at farmers' markets can be destroyed by the markets' very success. But hopefully the flexible structure of farmers' markets can work as a self-correcting mechanism. Those growers and producers who no longer benefit by the huge markets may leave and join smaller markets, a move that can turn out to be profitable for everyone: The smaller market gains new energy and, most likely, diversity. The farmer can sell closer to home and to the local customer who doesn't want to be jostled in a crowd or drive an hour to a big, urban market. As we've seen, a one-size market doesn't fit all.\n\n*CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Farmers set up CSAs for buyers who front money at the beginning of the year when farmers have little cash, in exchange for produce to be delivered as it comes into season. This way the customer shares the risk of farming with the farmer, along with the benefits.\n\nIt's a breezy March day in San Diego. It's also slightly overcast, but the sun comes and goes with the moving clouds, which gives the day a moody feel. Having escaped from the pollen-bearing winds of New Mexico, where everything except the sky is brown, I feel as spirited as the breeze above. My friend, chef and cookbook author Su Mei Yu, guesses that the attendance will be down at the farmers' market because people think it's going to rain. Fair-weather customers, I'm thinking. But the rain never does come, and it turns out to be a good crowd after all.\n\nLocated in a strip mall, the two halves of the market are connected by a little breezeway. In both there is an abundance of flowers\u2014luscious candy-color ranunculus with silken petals of yellow, orange, and cerise; tubs of large white calla lilies; and giant stock in muted old-fashioned colors\u2014soft yellows, tender mauves, gentle violets. Every other customer is walking around with arms filled with flowers. Su Mei fills both of her arms with blooms for a wedding she's catering. I'd like to take armloads home with me, too, but flowers really won't be manageable on the plane, especially with all the fruit I end up buying.\n\nAt this transitional time of year, strawberries, guavas; and asparagus are bringing in the spring, but citrus and avocados are still present in varietal profusion. I am especially drawn to the strawberries, which are as perfumed as the stock and deep red throughout, not just on the surface. The farmer tells me that she has a seven-month season, which speaks to the stability of coastal conditions and the availability of water. She offers me a berry. I eat it, then I buy 3 quarts. At home I never buy commercial strawberries because of the pesticides used on them coupled with their lack of flavor, but these are pure fruit. My husband, who has told me for years that he dislikes strawberries, eats them with gusto, and we feast on them in all the usual ways. Combined with strawberry guavas and other fruits from the market, they make an exotic filling for a meringue shell.\n\nA SPRING MENU FOR A COOL BREEZY DAY\n\nCrostini with Chive-Scented Ricotta\n\nFennel Soup with Saffron Dumplings\n\nRed Snapper Baked in Parchment with Pummelo and Rosemary\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Spinach\n\nPalm Sugar Meringues with Strawberry Compote\n\nPalm Sugar Meringues with Strawberry Compote | SERVES 6\n\nStrawberries, blood oranges, mangoes, and the tropical pink flesh of a few strawberry-guavas make a red and gold compote that you can nestle into a meringue shell. The palm sugar that Thai cookbook author Su Mei Yu suggested using tied the tropical nuances together into a perfect package. Palm sugar, which must be pulverized in a mortar, has a complex flavor, not unlike maple sugar. It makes a pale brown meringue. If you prefer an alabaster bowl, use white sugar.\n\nTHE MERINGUE SHELL\n\n**\u00be cup palm, light brown, or white sugar**\n\n**2 teaspoons cornstarch**\n\n**4 egg whites, at room temperature**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon white vinegar**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 300\u00b0F. On a piece of baking parchment or foil, draw six 4-inch circles. Mix a tablespoon of the sugar with the cornstarch and set aside.\n\n2. Beat the egg whites and salt until stiff, then add the sugar a little at a time and beat until thick and glossy. Add the sugar-cornstarch mixture, then fold in the vinegar and vanilla.\n\n3. Divide the mixture among the 6 circles. Using an offset spatula, work the meringue into a bowl or nest shape with sides as high as you can make them. Bake for 1 hour, then turn off the oven and let them sit until cool. Gently pry them off the paper and set on serving plates.\n\nTHE FRUIT AND CREAM\n\n**1 pint fragrant ripe strawberries**\n\n**1 small mango**\n\n**2 guavas**\n\n**2 passion fruit, if available**\n\n**2 blood oranges**\n\n**light brown sugar, if needed**\n\n**\u00bd cup cream**\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**1 teaspoon granulated sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**lemon verbena, mint, or rose geranium leaves for garnish**\n\n1. Rinse the berries, remove the stems, and slice them into a bowl. Peel the mango and slice it into the berries. Peel the guavas, dice them into tiny pieces (scrape away the seeds if they bother you), and add them to the fruit. If you're using passion fruit, cut them in half and add them, crunchy seeds and all, to the bowl. Section the oranges and squeeze the juice from the membranes over the fruit. Gently mix the fruit. Add a teaspoon of sugar or more, to taste, if you think it needs it.\n\n2. Whip the cream and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche with the granulated sugar until soft peaks are formed. Fold in the vanilla. Line the meringue shells with the cream, then cover with the fruit and serve immediately. Garnish with lemon verbena, mint, or rose geranium leaves.\n\nStrawberry\u2013Passion Fruit Cream Cake | SERVES 8\n\nThis is such a pretty cake and a delicious one, too, even without the tropical passion fruit, should that elude you. Since strawberries persist through October in some parts of the country, this could be a birthday cake for an unsuspecting Scorpio.\n\nTHE FILLING\n\n**3 cups ripe strawberries**\n\n**2 to 4 passion fruit**\n\n**2 tablespoons sugar, more or less**\n\nTHE CAKE\n\n**4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for the pan**\n\n**1 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**6 eggs, separated**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon salt**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons vanilla extract**\n\n**grated zest of 1 blood orange**\n\n**\u00bc cup blood orange juice**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n1. Rinse the berries, then turn them onto a towel to dry. Set aside a few perfect little berries (with leaves and stems) to garnish the top of the cake. Or, if the berries are large, set 6 aside. Remove the leafy crowns from the rest and slice them into a bowl. Cut the passion fruit in half and scrape out the pulp with the seeds. (The seeds are nice and crunchy, but you can leave them out if you prefer.) Using a rubber scraper, fold the passion fruit into the berries. Sweeten with sugar to taste. Set aside.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Butter and flour an 8-inch springform pan. Sift the flour and baking powder onto a piece of wax paper.\n\n3. Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites on high until they're foamy, then gradually add \u215e cup sugar and the salt. Continue beating until the whites form moist, stiff peaks. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla.\n\n4. Beat the yolks with the zest, then fold them into the whites. Sprinkle a few tablespoons of the flour over the eggs, fold it in, then repeat until all is used. Last, fold in the juice and the melted butter. Turn the batter into the pan and bake until golden, 25 minutes. Cool, remove the rim, and slice the cake in half crosswise.\n\n5. Coarsely mash the sliced berries. Whip the cream with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and \u00bd teaspoon vanilla until fairly stiff. Fold half of it into the berries and spread the mixture over the bottom layer of cake. If you've reserved large berries, slice them lengthwise into thirds and arrange them around the edge so that their tips are poking out. Cover with the second layer of cake and ice with the remaining whipped cream. If you have set aside small berries, arrange them in the center. And if you should have an extra passion fruit, spoon the seeds and pulp around the berries.\n\nStrawberry Sorbet | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nAs soon as I entered the market, I picked up their scent and followed it to the table. There sat 3 baskets of small, oddly shaped strawberries. Later that day they filled the area around me on the plane to Aspen with their delicious aroma. Once in Aspen, they created some excitement among the chefs at the Food and Wine Classic, who asked where they could get some and if they could be shipped overnight to New York. But that's just the thing: they can't. Berries like these are fragile, which makes them very specific to where they are grown. They are for this time and place only.\n\nThe first time I encountered strawberries like these was many years ago at a farm stand in upstate New York, where baskets of berries stood on a table under tall white pines. A jar for the money stood next to them. I paid for 2 quarts, and on the drive back to camp their heavy scent filled the car. At that time\u2014I was in my twenties\u2014I wanted to understand what the word _gourmet_ meant, and right then I decided that it must have to do with the perfume and flavor of foods like these berries. At least I was pretty sure that at this moment I was having a \"gourmet\" experience. I still think so. If strawberry sorbet seems old hat, you may be surprised at how really good it is when made with really good berries.\n\n**1 quart ripe red strawberries**\n\n**grated zest and juice of 1 blood orange, orange, or tangerine**\n\n**\u2154 cup sugar**\n\n1. Reserve a few small, perfect strawberries with their stems and leaves for garnish. Combine the zest, juice, and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside to cool.\n\n2. Rinse the berries and turn them onto a clean towel. Check them carefully and discard any that are bruised or unripe. (The bad taste of the bruised part can extend to the whole berry, as can mold.) Lift out the leaves and cores with the tip of an old-fashioned vegetable scraper, then puree the berries in the food processor and stir in the syrup.\n\n3. Freeze in your ice cream machine, according to its instructions. Serve garnished with a whole berry on each serving.\n\nBlack Hawk Raspberry and Rose Geranium Sherbet | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nBlack Hawk raspberries and rose geranium are a perfect match, but if you haven't any rose geranium, you'll still end up with a wonderful sherbet.\n\n**4 cups Black Hawk raspberries or blackberries**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**4 large rose geranium leaves**\n\n**1 cup cream**\n\n**few drops fresh lemon juice, optional**\n\n1. Sort through the berries and remove any stems and leaves.\n\n2. Bring the sugar and 2 cups water to a boil in a saucepan. Crush the rose geranium leaves a little with your fingers and add them to the pan. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then add the berries and turn off the heat. Let cool. Remove the leaves and pass the fruit, with the syrup, through a food mill. (If you don't have a food mill, briefly puree the berries in a food processor, then rub the pulp through a strainer to get rid of the seeds.) Stir in the cream. Taste. If the mixture seems too sweet, add a few drops of lemon juice to bring it into balance. Chill well.\n\n3. Freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to its instructions. Serve with crisp little butter cookies or lemon thyme shortbreads.\n\n**BLACK HAWK RASPBERRIES LATE JUNE,SANTA FE**\n\nBob Hayes grows black raspberries. He keeps beehives near the vines, so he sells some honey, too, but mostly he tends his four hundred raspberry bushes for the pleasure of it. Today the berries are lined up on his long table, a long double row of opened white cartons filled with black fruit, backed with jars of amber honey. The sun is shining through the honey, and it's a pretty sight to see. These are the only true berries we see in any quantity at our market. Mulberries don't count, in my mind, since they come from a tree.\n\nTall, dressed in a blue plaid shirt, jeans, and a Stetson, Bob is a very western-looking man. He shows me his hands. They're large hands, too large for such tiny fruits, you might think, and they're covered with scratches from picking. When I ask about gloves, he says no, he has to pick these delicate fruits with his fingertips. \"In fact,\" he elaborates, \"I pick them left-handed because\"\u2014he rubs the fingers of his right hand together, then pinches their tips\u2014\"I have no feeling in the tip of my forefinger of my right hand. It can't feel the ripeness of the fruit.\" He picks the berries right into the Styrofoam cartons so that they're handled only once. They are perfect.\n\nAt first the berries are tight and tiny. They don't have the expansive structure that red and golden raspberries do. Their taste is concentrated, dark and sweet, with an elusive fragrance, and there's a bit of a seed. Over the next few weeks the berries get larger, softer, and even more fragrant. It's a wonderful luxury having them around to sprinkle over cereal, fold into muffin batter, or add to an apricot crisp. I have lots of plans for them but start by serving them sweetened with a little maple sugar, a treasure from Vermont's Montpelier farmers' market, and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, lightly beaten with a fork first, then slowly unwound over the top. As these are perfect for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner, other plans for them soon fade away.\n\nRaspberry Cream Tart | SERVES 8\n\nThe plump pink and gold raspberries from the Montpelier farmers' market in Vermont inspired this luscious tart. The \"crust\" is really more like a cake\u2014soft and buttery with just a little crispness at the edges. Black raspberries can be used here, too, by themselves or mixed with the others.\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00bd cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**3 medium eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**\u215e cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00be cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**1 heaping pint basket raspberries, about 2 cups**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Lightly butter an 11-inch tart pan. Cream the butter with the \u00bd cup sugar and the salt until smooth and supple. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add \u00bd teaspoon vanilla and 2 whole eggs plus the white of the third egg. Beat until smooth. With the speed on low, add the flour and mix just until combined.\n\n2. Scrape the batter into the tart pan. Using an offset spatula, smooth the batter over the pan, then push up enough batter to make a slightly higher rim around the edge. Even a \u00bc-inch rise will be sufficient. Don't worry about getting it absolutely even.\n\n3. Mix the egg yolk with the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and remaining \u00bd teaspoon vanilla. Pour this over the batter and spread it just to the raised edge.\n\n4. Place the berries on the custard. Two cups will be enough to make a fairly close covering. You can do this randomly or start by placing the largest berries around the outer edge of the tart, then using smaller and smaller berries as you work your way in. Leftovers can be tucked into any gaps. Sprinkle the remaining teaspoon of sugar over the fruit. Bake in the center of the oven until golden brown around the edges and the custard is set, about 40 minutes.\n\n5. Let cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve barely warm.\n\nBlueberry-Lavender Compote | MAKES 3 CUPS\n\nI always find that lime or lemon juice does wonders for blueberries. The bit of acid makes their flavor, rather than their sweetness, come out. And lavender seems to be a natural, too. Here's a compote to spoon over vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, or an old-fashioned lemon pudding cake.\n\n**2 pints blueberries**\n\n**\u00bc cup fresh lime or lemon juice**\n\n**1 teaspoon cornstarch**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon lavender blossoms**\n\n1. Pick over the berries, removing any stems, leaves, or rotting fruits. Give them a rinse.\n\n2. In a saucepan large enough to accommodate the berries, mix the juice with the cornstarch, sugar, and salt. Add the berries and lavender and cook over medium heat until the fruit gives up its juice and the liquid thickens, a matter of a few minutes.\n\nWild Blueberry Preserve | MAKES ABOUT 3 CUPS\n\nThere's much more excitement in the small wild blueberries than in the huge commercial ones. They're closer in nature to their cousin, the huckleberry.\n\nI try to keep the sugar at a minimum so that the flavor isn't overridden with sweetness, even if my jam doesn't set as well. I'd rather have it more loose and flavorful than sugary sweet\u2014and not plan to keep it as long. But if your wild berries are very tart\u2014taste them before you start\u2014you might want to add the other \u00bd cup of sugar. This quick jam keeps in your refrigerator for a month or two. In addition to putting it on toast, you can stir it into an ice cream base or spoon it over a prebaked tart shell that's been spread with mascarpone or cream cheese.\n\n**2 pints blueberries or huckleberries**\n\n**\u00be to 1\u00bd cups sugar**\n\n**finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime or lemon**\n\n1. Sort through the berries and remove any stems, leaves, or berries that are excessively green or overripe. Give them a rinse, then toss them in a wide pot with the sugar plus the zest and juice to taste.\n\n2. Bring the fruit to a boil, stirring from time to time so that the sugar doesn't burn. Boil rapidly for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Pour a little of the juice on a plate and refrigerate for 10 minutes, or until it's cold. Run a spoon through it: It should hold together. If it doesn't, return it to the stove, boil for a few more minutes, and try again. Let cool, then spoon into clean jars or containers and refrigerate.\n\n**HUCKLEBERRIES AND THEMISSOULA FARMERS' MARKET AUGUST**\n\nAn old black steam engine in the market's center made a stunning background for the large sprays of flowers that were displayed around it. And the floral-print backyard umbrellas the vendors used to shade their produce gave the market a rather cheerful, let's-go-to-the-beach feel, even if it was in Missoula, Montana, and a long way from the ocean. Unlike at other farmers' markets, no crafts are allowed in the Missoula market, and they never have been. There was, however, evidence of craft: Two quilted banners hung at the entrance, one proclaiming that this is the farmers' market and the other saying \"No Pets Allowed,\" featuring an embroidered Snoopy along with other dogs and one or two cats. Nearly all markets have some way of saying \"no pets,\" but this was by far the most charming expression I saw.\n\n\"We have a huge contingent of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Hmong people who have enriched our area tremendously, both culinarily and culturally,\" my friend and guide, Greg Patent, explained as we toured the market. Their produce was much in evidence, and several women were wearing traditional dress. Greg's wife, Dorothy, the market's first treasurer, added, \"When the Southeast Asians began selling at the market, they managed to produce broccoli and carrots earlier than everyone else. Before long, more and more growers were using season-extending techniques to get vegetables to market earlier and keep them going longer\u2014a delight to buyers. I love interacting with the Southeast Asian vendors. They experiment with greens unknown to me, but give helpful tips on how to cook with them.\"\n\nBut I was primed for huckleberries. In fact, the promise of huckleberry pie was one of the lures that had brought me this far. Through 'Asta Bowen's passionate ode to these purple orbs in _The Huckleberry Book,_ I knew that gathering wild huckleberries was a deep tradition in the Northwest. Yet it was the Hmong who were doing the picking and selling now, and they have been for the past fifteen years. \"I've spoken with many huckleberry fans,\" Greg told me, \"and they're really glad the Hmong are doing all the time-consuming work. Pretty typical human behavior, I'd say. People who've lived here most of their lives or die-hard imports still go out collecting, but on a small scale, and some of us still go out to forage on our own because it's fun being in the woods. But we know we can always buy enough for a few pies from the trusty Hmong.\"\n\nAnd that's exactly what we did. We bought 6 pounds of berries, and Greg made a huckleberry pie and huckleberry ice cream that I will most certainly never forget. They were worth every mile traveled, every calorie consumed, and had I picked them myself, they would have been worth every scratch and sore muscle.\n\nHuckleberries have a flavor like nothing else\u2014wild and not too sweet and not at all watery. Intense and slightly unfamiliar, the way wild foods tend to be. It's best, of course, to taste them for yourself. If you live in Maine or some other place that has wild blueberries, you can use them as you would huckleberries. They are not dissimilar. In fact huckleberries go by other names, including bilberries, dewberries, and blueberries. But as 'Asta Bowen says, \"[Although] what we call a huckleberry is in fact a type of blueberry, what we call a blueberry tastes nothing like a huckleberry.\" Huckleberries are sublime, but so are wild blueberries, and being a resident of neither Montana nor Maine means I don't have to say which is better.\n\nAlthough this market appeared to be a huge success, Dorothy later told me about its more humble beginnings: \"When we moved to Missoula in 1972, the farmer's market was just starting up. The first market wasn't very promising\u2014a Saturday morning in early July, a day featuring the lowest high temperature for that date on record (mid-forties), and a bitter wind. A few pathetic folks sat behind card tables with a few heads of lettuce. I don't remember much else. I do remember feeling that the endeavor didn't look very promising.\"\n\nAnd that's often how markets begin, but from a few offerings and a few brave souls they do manage to grow. And today, the Missoula farmers' market is, like markets elsewhere, the hub of the town's life throughout its season.\n\nDINNER FROM THE MISSOULA MARKET\n\nElixir of Fresh Peas, Garnished with Flat Chinese Chives\n\nShredded Salad of Many Greens\n\nWhole Wheat Spaghetti with Late-Summer Onions\n\nGreg's Huckleberry Pie\n\nGreg's Huckleberry Pie | SERVES 8 TO 10\n\nGreg Patent is a consummate baker, and this is the pie he made for us. By all means, make it with blueberries or brambleberries if that's what you have.\n\n**1 recipePie Dough**\n\n**1 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar**\n\n**\u00bc cup light brown sugar, firmly packed**\n\n**4 to 5 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**1\u00be pounds (about 5 cups) huckleberries, picked over**\n\n**1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces**\n\n1. Divide the pastry into 2 disks, one slightly larger than the other. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Dust your work surface lightly with flour and roll the larger disk into a 13-inch circle. Fit the dough loosely into a 9-inch glass or metal pie pan, leaving the excess pastry hanging over the edge. Refrigerate until ready to fill.\n\n2. Place one oven rack on the lowest shelf and one in the center. Place a heavy baking sheet on the lower shelf. Preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F.\n\n3. Combine 1 cup of the granulated sugar, the brown sugar, tapioca, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Break up any lumps with your fingertips and mix well. Fold in the huckleberries and lemon juice and let the mixture stand for 15 minutes.\n\n4. Remove the pie shell from the refrigerator and pour the filling into the crust, mounding it slightly in the center. Dot with butter and set aside. Roll out the second piece of dough into a 12-inch circle. Brush the edge of the lower crust lightly with water and place the top crust over the berries. Press the edges firmly to seal and trim away the excess pastry to within \u00bd inch of the rim of the pan. Fold the pastry back on itself to form a standing rim and flute. Make 4 or 5 slits about 1\u00bd inches long in the top crust with the tip of a small knife. Brush the top lightly with water and sprinkle on the remaining tablespoon of sugar.\n\n5. Place the pie on the baking sheet on the lower shelf and bake for 15 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet with the pie to the center shelf, reduce the temperature to 350\u00b0F, and bake until the juices are thickened and bubbly and the crust is a rich brown color. Cool completely before cutting. Refrigerate any leftovers.\n\nWarm Berry Compote | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThis is so easy and so good, especially for those who live where berries proliferate. In fact the mix of fruits will undoubtedly reflect your region, with huckleberries, blueberries, and gooseberries predominating in the North, strawberries wherever there's water to grow them, raspberries in Washington and Vermont, and so forth. You can serve this compote with cream, ice cream, or over biscuits, making a warm fruit shortcake.\n\n**3 pints mixed berries: raspberries, strawberries, red currants, blueberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, boysenberries**\n\n**\u2153 cup sugar or maple syrup**\n\n1. Raspberries and other cane-grown berries needn't be rinsed. Strawberries, which grow close to the ground, should be, and blueberries, currants, and huckleberries can be. Halve larger strawberries and pluck red currants from their stems.\n\n2. Put the fruit in a wide noncorrosive skillet or pot over medium-high heat. Sprinkle with the sugar. Cook until the berries are warm, softened, and starting to lose their juice, 1 to 2 minutes, then remove from the heat and pour them into a bowl. As they sit, their juices will come out and the flavors will open.\n\n**GRAPES AND THEIR SEEDS**\n\nI try to curb my impulse and make only a few grape pies each fall, but that doesn't keep me from buying baskets of green and purple Concords, Golden Muscats, Niagaras, and other unusual varieties whenever I see them. Some grape varieties I've found at various farmers' markets include two varieties of golden, translucent Muscats, a black Muscat, dark Red Flame Tokays dusted with bloom, long, pale green Lady Fingers, and a blue-black slipskin called Venus that resembles the purple Concord. Delight is another green grape with rich fruit flavor. Clusters of tiny, purple Zinfandel grapes might also show up, or giant native muscadines if you're in St. Augustine, Florida, Birmingham, and other southern markets.\n\nGrapes such as these have scents that are subtle, haunting, and highly aromatic. The difficulty with old varieties is that they usually have seeds, and customers, long sold on the virtue of seedless grapes, won't buy them. One farmer I spoke with grew more than a dozen of these old varieties, which he angrily pulled out after repeated seasons of watching even his most faithful market customers refuse to buy them for this reason. This is a shame. Is it that we don't know what to do with the pips? Just put them in your pocket or flick them into the grass\u2014they're very little. In exchange for this tiny inconvenience, you get a grape with character and exquisite taste. Try a juicy Concord the next time you see one or that heavenly Golden Muscat, the same grape that makes your bubbly bottle of _moscato d'Asti._ You'll find any seeds to be of minor consequence.\n\nGrapes with New Walnuts and Cr\u00e8me Fra\u00eeche\n\nChoose one or more interesting varieties of grapes from your market. Pluck them off the stems and rinse them well. Cut them in half. If they have pips, flip them out with the point of a knife. Put them in a bowl, add a dollop of cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche or sour cream, and gently stir it in. Add a bit of brown sugar or maple sugar crystals if you like. Crack a few new walnuts. Break the pieces into quarters, add them to the grapes, and serve.\n\nConcord Grape Tart | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nI know I've included this recipe in various forms in other cookbooks, but Concord grape pies in any form are so extraordinary and still so unknown that I have to have one more chance to spread the word. Besides, the farmers' market is just the place to find the grapes you need. There the Concords tend to be less juicy than commercially grown grapes, which is what you want; otherwise the filling won't thicken properly.\n\nGrape pies have all the voluptuous qualities of a blackberry pie, but I've never found a commercial one, or even one from a farmers' market, that's even half as good as homemade. The filling can also be used to make individual tarts or a lattice-covered pie. It freezes well, too, which means you can have a grape tart at Thanksgiving, if you wish.\n\nConcords are slipskin grapes, and they have seeds. They are not difficult to work with, but you will need a food mill.\n\n**2\u00bd pounds purple or white Concord grapes, washed**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar, or more to taste**\n\n**3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or minute tapioca**\n\n**grated zest and juice of 1 lemon**\n\n**1 (9-inch) prebakedTart Shell**\n\n1. Squeeze the grapes with your fingers, putting the insides into a saucepan and the skins into a bowl. Bring the skinned grapes to a boil and cook until they turn white and soft, about 5 minutes.\n\n2. Pass them through a food mill to separate the seeds, working the pulp right into the bowl with the skins. Stir in the sugar, flour, lemon zest, and juice. Simmer for 10 minutes, then taste and add more sugar if needed. Let cool.\n\n3. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Scrape the filling into the prebaked tart shell, set on a sheet pan, and bake until the filling is set, about 35 minutes. Let cool. Serve plain or with softly whipped cream.\n\nConcord Grape Mousse (\"Grapette\") | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nA friend who wanted me to taste something I had never eaten before served a Concord grape chiffon pie for dessert. It was covered with a soft layer of whipped cream and garnished with huge floppy mint leaves, and she was right: I'd never had such a pie. She kindly shared the recipe, which came from her mother, an lowan. I began to play with it, and when it reached this mousse stage, a friend exclaimed, \"This reminds me of Grapette!\" a soda she grew up drinking in Texas. I stopped right there, short of the crust.\n\nI make my \"grapette\" from the Concord or Muscat grapes that start appearing in September in farmers' markets everywhere.\n\n**2\u00bd pounds white or blue Concord grapes or Muscat grapes**\n\n**1\u00bd packages unflavored gelatin**\n\n**\u2154 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**juice of \u00bd lemon**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**2 egg whites**\n\n1. Rinse the grapes well. Pluck them from their stems and put them in a heavy saucepan. Add \u00bc cup water, cover the pan, and cook over high heat until the skins have separated from the pulp and the grapes are soft, about 5 minutes. Press down on them with a potato masher to break them up and to ascertain their tenderness. If they're resistant, cook them a few minutes more. Pass the grapes through a food mill to separate the skins and seeds. You should have at least 2 cups of juice. If not, add water to bring it up to the volume.\n\n2. Sprinkle the gelatin into \u00bc cup water and let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the \u2154 cup sugar with the grape juice and heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the salt and lemon juice to taste.\n\n3. Add the softened gelatin to the grape juice and stir over low heat until the gelatin is dissolved, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a clean bowl and refrigerate until partially thickened, about 3 hours.\n\n4. Beat the cream in a mixer with the remaining teaspoon of sugar until it forms soft peaks, then scrape it into a bowl. Without washing the bowl, add the grape mixture and egg whites and beat on high until thick, about 5 minutes. Return to the refrigerator for it to set.\n\n5. You can serve the mousse three ways. One: layer it into wineglasses, alternating with layers of whipped cream and ending with cream and a garnish of mint. Two: fold the cream into the grape mixture, leaving streaks of grape and cream. Three: pile it into a graham-cracker crust and cover it with the whipped cream.\n\nFresh Grape Juice with Lemon Verbena | MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART\n\nMaking grape juice is very easy, but you do need a food mill. The amount of juice per pound depends on how juicy the grapes are. Big, juicy, flavorful grapes are what you want\u2014Muscats, muscadines, Concords, etc.\n\n**3 to 4 pounds grapes**\n\n**Simple Syrup**\n\n**soda water**\n\n**1 lemon, sliced**\n\n**lemon verbena, lemon basil, or mint sprigs**\n\n1. Rinse the grapes well under running water, plucking them off the stems as you do so. Don't worry about getting rid of every bit of stem\u2014the food mill will do most of the work.\n\n2. Put all the grapes in a wide, heavy pot. Add 1 cup water, turn the heat to high, and cover the pan. Once it starts to boil, lower the heat to medium and cook for 15 minutes. Pass them through the food mill set over a bowl.\n\n3. Taste the juice and sweeten it with the syrup if needed. When you've got it as sweet as you like, pour it into a jar and refrigerate. Serve over ice mixed with soda water, lemon slices, and herb leaves.\n\n**FIGS**\n\nWhile most people think of California as the source of figs, and it is commercially, there are also a number of interesting figs grown in the South, especially in Texas and Georgia, that make it to the farmers' markets there. These are varieties that are too small and too fragile to ship, but they are the really good ones. Celeste, for example, is a small violet fig with berry-colored pulp, the size of a quarter, but at least dollar size in flavor. There are Italian Honey figs (Latterula), strawberry-fleshed Panachee Tiger Stripes, green-gold Adriatics, and Angelique, once grown by Thomas Jefferson, which sports yellow skin and amber flesh. Then, of course, there are the more familiar Brown Turkeys and black Mission figs.\n\nFigs have two crops. The figs that come on in June are called _brebas;_ the second, in August, are the true figs. The second crop is what's harvested for drying, but both are enjoyed fresh. Mostly, though, figs are late-summer fruits that arrive with the late peaches and second crop of raspberries, then continue through the season of grapes and, finally, persimmons. But because of the _brebas,_ they actually span both ends of the long summer season.\n\nFigs with Cheese, Pepper, and Honey\n\nThis scarcely qualifies as a recipe, but here's a wonderful way to enjoy figs. It also provides the perfect occasion to feature a delicate fresh ricotta cheese.\n\nChoose 2 or 3 ripe luscious figs per person. Any variety will do as long as it has lots of flavor. Rinse them, remove the stems, then quarter them from top to bottom without cutting clear through the base. Press them with your fingers at the bases to open them up, then insert a spoonful of cheese. Add a little pepper and a small leaf of anise hyssop. Drizzle a spoonful of honey over each fig and serve.\n\n_Fig Tart with Orange Flower Custard_\n\nFig Tart with Orange Flower Custard | SERVES 8\n\nThis tart beautifully showcases mixed varieties of figs. The green, golden, red, and purple hues of the skins and flesh of various figs make a soft, faded mosaic. If only one type of fig is offered at your market, make the tart anyway.\n\n**12 to 16 ripe figs, a mixture of varieties or just one type**\n\n**1 prebakedTart Shell**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**\u2153 cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**2\u00bd tablespoons light brown sugar**\n\n**2 teaspoons orange flower water confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Rinse the figs, cut off the stems, and slice them lengthwise in half. Set them cut side up on the tart shell, arranging them in circles, or just lay them in the shell randomly, which looks beautiful, especially with different types of figs. Fit them together as closely as you can with the number of figs you have.\n\n2. Mix the egg yolk, cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, brown sugar, and orange flower water together, then pour carefully around, not over, the figs. Bake until the custard is lightly colored and set, about 30 minutes. Remove the tart from the pan, set on a serving plate, and serve, dusted with confectioners' sugar. Serve while still slightly warm.\n\nFig Focaccia with Orange-Scented Olive Oil | MAKES 1 BREAD, SERVING 6 TO 10\n\nThis lightly sweetened focaccia was inspired by both the figs and Mr. Sciabica's orange-scented olive oil from the Modesto farmers' market. Slice this long loaf crosswise and serve it, fresh or toasted, with a mild fresh goat cheese or fresh ricotta.\n\n**1 cup warm water**\n\n**1\u00bc-ounce envelope or 1 scant tablespoon active dry yeast**\n\n**4 teaspoons honey**\n\n**1 teaspoon anise seeds plus extra for the top**\n\n**\u00be teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**3 tablespoons orange-scented olive oil plus extra for the top, or extra virgin olive oil plus \u215b teaspoon Boyajian orange oil**\n\n**2 teaspoons grated orange zest**\n\n**2\u00bd cups all-purpose flour, approximately**\n\n**1 (1-pint) basket figs, about 10 ounces, quartered**\n\n**1 teaspoon orange flower water**\n\n**cornmeal**\n\n**2 teaspoons turbinado sugar**\n\n1. Mix the water, yeast, and 1 teaspoon honey in a mixing bowl and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, crush the anise seeds in a mortar and pestle.\n\n2. Add the salt, oil, orange zest, and remaining tablespoon of the honey to the yeast. Beat in 1 cup of the flour, then continue adding more until the dough is shaggy. Turn it out onto a lightly floured counter and knead until you have a smooth but slightly tacky dough, working in more flour as necessary. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn once, then cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until doubled, about 45 minutes.\n\n3. While the dough is rising, remove the stems from the figs and cut them into quarters. Sprinkle them with the orange flower water.\n\n4. Lightly dust the counter with flour and sprinkle a sheet pan with cornmeal. Turn out the dough and press or roll it into a 12 \u00d7 16-inch rectangle. Scatter a third of the figs down the center third of the dough. Fold one end of the dough over the figs, letter fashion, and cover with the second third of the figs. Fold the final third of the dough over the figs and gently press it down. Carefully roll the dough out to make a rectangle about 7 \u00d7 16 inches, taking care that the figs don't burst through the dough. Transfer it to a baking pan and set aside to rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.\n\n5. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Dimple the dough with your fingers, then brush with additional oil. Add the remaining figs and sprinkle the bread with the sugar and anise seeds. Bake until golden, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool.\n\nFig and Ginger Jam | MAKES ABOUT 1\u00bd CUPS\n\nWhen I first tasted this after making it, I found the heat of the ginger and the snap of the vinegar startling. But a week later it had calmed down, mellowing into a subtler jam that's delicious on toast with fresh ricotta or sheep's milk cheese.\n\n**\u2153 cup aged red wine vinegar**\n\n**1 tablespoon red wine**\n\n**\u00bc cup honey**\n\n**\u2153 cup raisins**\n\n**2 teaspoons slivered candied ginger or peeled fresh ginger**\n\n**2 cups (about \u00be pound) fresh figs, cut into quarters if small, into eighths if large**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon mustard seeds**\n\n**3 cloves**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon tamarind**\n\n**1 teaspoon fig balsamic or regular balsamic vinegar**\n\n1. Combine the red wine vinegar, wine, honey, raisins, and ginger in a noncorrosive saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until syrupy, about 5 minutes. Add the figs, mustard seeds, cloves, and tamarind, cover, and cook over low heat until the figs are soft but still hold a little of their shape, about 10 minutes. Check once to make sure the pan isn't too dry. If it is, add a little water.\n\n2. Remove from the heat. When cool, taste and, if you wish it to be sharper, add a little fig balsamic vinegar to taste.\n\n**MUSIC AND FEASTINGBELLINGHAM AND LUMMI ISLAND**\n\nAs well as serving as a stage for farmers, markets have become a stage for musicians, and live music is an enjoyable part of the atmosphere of many farmers' markets. We have a constant parade of musicians moving through our market. There are the four kids who play violins together and a couple of young boys singing old Dylan songs. An extremely compelling group of college kids play wild marimba music, which practically stops the market. There's a very skillful dulcimer player and a \"gypsy\" singer who plays guitar and sings passionate songs in a rich, operatic voice. Occasionally an accordion player shows up, and this year we acquired a Hawaiian-style group called Poi White Trash. Blue grass bands, Dixieland bands, and mariachis get everyone moving briskly. A group always gathers around to watch the staccato clogging component of the latter band.\n\nExcept for the Hawaiian music, most of this music is lively. It makes the market feel energetic. But on one Saturday at the Bellingham farmers' market in Washington, it was the soft, mellow tone of a vibraphone that drifted through the fall sunshine. Languid notes floated out over the market, and everyone seemed to slow from a walk to a stroll, as if in a dreamy sort of slow motion, This was a mellow market. Someone was getting Rolfed; another person was getting a shoulder massage. Across from the market was a table set up for the Green Party, and next to it stood a man with a big sign proclaiming that we should get out of the UN, but no one was shouting or carrying on. It was all very peaceable. Though it was not particularly large, we easily spent several hours just enjoying this market. No doubt, the music was part of it.\n\nEvery market has some special feature that makes it unique. In addition to the vibraphone, picnic tables were set up at one end of the market, near various food vendors. Shoppers could buy lunch, then sit down and enjoy it. Strangers shared the tables and lingered over their meals. We bought some sweet potato pie and ice cream from a local dairy and struck up a conversation with a couple who had driven forty miles just to attend the market, which they did every Saturday. We watched a little girl spend about ten minutes struggling with an ear of corn, which she finally succeeded in husking. Then she ate it. Nearby was a wall covered with photographs of shoppers. A sign read, \"If you see your picture here, please take it with our compliments.\" Maurice Jensen, the photographer, introduced himself and explained that he had been taking the pictures for the past three years and posting them for their subjects to claim. It was a popular feature. Every time we looked there was someone searching for a picture, and kids were especially thrilled to find theirs.\n\nAlthough it was nearing the end of summer, you would have no problem eating extremely well, for the produce was exceptional. Greens, late tomatoes, and cool-weather crops were abundant, but what stood out were chanterelles, magnificent apples, aged Gouda cheese, brambleberry pies (wild blackberries and scratches on the baker's arm to prove it), hazelnuts, and shell beans. We had a chance to cook the chanterelles; eat the Gouda with the crisp, slightly tart Jonagold apples, and track down the hazelnut farm and learn why these nuts were long, like almonds, instead of round. The brambleberry pie was amazing, and the shell beans were gorgeous. The farmers are outnumbered by crafters and food stands, but if you visit this market (it runs from 11 to 3, unlike most Saturday markets), don't be deterred. This is a lovely place to shop for beautiful food and to linger.\n\nLummi Island is about an hour's drive and a ferry ride away from Bellingham. Its market had no music component and just a handful of farmers. But again, there was the most beautiful food. One farmer brought a pet piglet, which was the market's main entertainment. Given the island's small population, everyone knew everyone else and, more precisely than most, where their food came from. Again, there were pies\u2014rhubarb, blueberry, and wild blackberry\u2014eggs, pastured chickens, cool-weather vegetables, herbs, and the most tender salad greens. This was where I had found the succulent hickory-smoked albacore, along with big, fat asparagus and artichokes. Our friends Riley Starks and Judy Olsen, who raise chickens and eggs, grow vegetables, make pasta, _and_ fish, hosted dinner. (They now run an inn as well.) Riley wanted us to taste everything\u2014the Dungeness crabs he had caught, a Fraser River salmon he had frozen for us at the end of the season, his chickens. We wanted to taste all that plus everything Judy grew and made, especially her nettle ravioli. Their neighbors arrived with _their_ produce, plus we had our haul from Bellingham, so dinner turned out to be an embarrassment of local riches, only partially recollected below.\n\nA FARM DINNER ON LUMMI ISLAND\n\nDungeness crabs with lemon butter\n\nSpaghetti Squash Gratin with Chanterelles\n\nSaut\u00e9ed Artichokes and Potatoes with Garlic Chives\n\nGrilled Fraser River salmon with Lovage Oil\n\nA big salad of mixed lettuces and herbs\n\nJonagold apples and aged Gouda cheese\n\nGreg's Huckleberry Pie\n\nCherries, apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, and pluots have a pit, or stone, that contains the seed. To be able to \"give your love a cherry that has no stone\" speaks of something far more rare than a gift of a four-leaf clover. The stone fruit season begins with cherries and apricots in early summer and goes into the heart of the season with peaches, nectarines, and, finally, plums. To me the stone fruits are the quintessential fruits of summer. Others may feel that summer reserves its keenest expression for berries or melons. It matters not.\n\nWhat does matter is the quality of the fruit, and with stone fruit that means tree-ripened and untraveled. Almost every person I've interviewed about his or her farmers' market has boasted about the superb peaches. While I was assisting with a tasting of stone fruits from our market one Saturday, it seemed that every other out-of-towner approached the table saying \"Let's see if these peaches are as good as ours!\" Fredericksburg, Texas, is known for its peaches, but a visitor from east Texas was adamant about hers. The whole state of Georgia is known for its peaches too, yet a shopper in Iowa swoons over the ones she finds at her market. Montmorency cherries reign supreme in Michigan, but the peaches there are also superb. At the Missoula farmers' market people lined up to get their share of Lambert cherries from nearby Flathead Lake. Although California has the advantage of a superbly hospitable climate, it's the _local_ aspect of these fruits that accounts for their excellent reputations. Occasionally you'll see travelers in airports carrying a basket of peaches or a box of plums that they're taking to a friend or relative somewhere\u2014a taste of home that's unlike any other.\n\nThe stone fruit I've tasted up and down California's Central Valley has been outstanding. But it's never very good when it shows up on a grocery shelf fifteen hundred miles away. You can see why if you imagine driving down California's Highway 99 in July and August. This crowded highway is one of the bumpiest, fastest roads you can drive, and you're certain to end up driving behind a huge truck loaded with flats of peaches. As you pass, look up at the cab to see the driver being shaken in his seat by the combination of rough terrain and speed. Of course the same thing is happening to the fruit he's hauling, and for a peach or a plum to survive such a journey it would have to be as hard as a stone. And stone-hard is not the meaning of _stone fruit._\n\nI watch shoppers at my supermarket pick up one peach, plum, or nectarine after another and bring it to their nose, looking for a hint of promise. Finding none, they put each one down, then move away. Older shoppers do this anyway. Younger shoppers, who don't necessarily associate fruit with flavor, just drop them into bags without trying to assess their contents. Unripe stone fruits shrivel, then start to spoil from the center out. They will continue to ripen _only_ if picked days short of perfection. There's a little leeway, but not a lot.\n\nOne market day in Sonoma, California, farmers were complaining that the stone fruit was not at its best. This was blamed on El Ni\u00f1o, that winter of violent and prolonged storms, but I found the peaches to be majestic, perfumed with fruit and hints of spice; the nectarines dotted with sugar spots that promised sweetness. The peaches compared so favorably with our small fruits that I couldn't understand the farmers' complaints. But when I returned the following summer, the summer of La Ni\u00f1a, the stone fruit was even better. I bought bags of Babcock peaches and white Arctic Rose nectarines from a farm stand that were nothing short of astonishing. They filled my car with clouds of perfume, dripped copiously over motel towels, and those that eventually made it to a luncheon were savored slice by slice.\n\nAlthough I try to think of the best ways to use such delicious stone fruits, it's hard to imagine doing much more than eating them out of hand. But there are wonderful things that can be made\u2014the pies, buckles, crisps, and kuchens\u2014from individual fruits or mixtures of them. There are fruit ice creams, peaches on cereal, white peaches sliced into a glass of prosecco, plum soups, nectarine gratins, and apricot jams. You could make a salad of peaches and basil or follow the Italian custom of baking a peach but replacing its pit with a knob of _amaretti,_ which mimics both the look and the flavor of a peach pit. But if the fruit is really good, you needn't go further than to place some on the table, add a stack of plates, some knives, and leave it at that.\n\nA Cherry-Almond Loaf Cake | SERVES 8\n\nCherries and almonds make an ideal pairing, especially in this cake. I love the golden blush of Royal Anns, but since I can't resist any of them, I often have several kinds on hand during cherry season. They look lovely together in this cake.\n\nThis moist cake is a good keeper but is truly best when still just a little warm from the oven.\n\n**1 cup blanched almonds**\n\n**1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00be cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**3 eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**2\u00bd cups pitted cherries**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Butter and flour a 5\u00d78-inch loaf pan. Coarsely chop the almonds in a food processor. Remove \u00bc cup and set it aside. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt to the remaining almonds and process until the mixture is smooth. Transfer to a bowl.\n\n2. Cream the butter with the \u00be cup sugar in the food processor, then add the eggs one at a time, incorporating each one fully as you go. Add the flavorings, then half the flour-almond mixture. Pulse several times to incorporate. Add the remainder and pulse until smooth. Scrape into the prepared pan and cover with the cherries.\n\n3. Mix the reserved almonds with the teaspoon of sugar and sprinkle over the top of the cake. Bake the cake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let cool in the pan, then turn it out and transfer to a cake plate. Dust with confectioners' sugar just before serving.\n\nApricot-Cherry Crisp | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nApricot and cherries lead the season for stone fruits, and apricot-cherry _anything_ \u2014pie, crisp, cobbler, or crumble\u2014is a winning combination, especially in old-fashioned desserts like these. If any pie cherries are available, include a cup for their flavor. And, if raspberry season should coincide, you can't go wrong throwing in a handful or two as well.\n\n**2\u00bd pounds ripe apricots**\n\n**1 pound sweet cherries or pie cherries**\n\n**2 tablespoons sugar**\n\n**1\u00bd tablespoons minute tapioca**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon almond extract**\n\nTHE CRISP TOPPING\n\n**6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks**\n\n**\u00be cup light brown sugar, loosely packed**\n\n**\u2154 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd cup rolled oats or finely chopped almonds**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, optional**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Lightly butter a 2\u00bd-quart gratin dish. Pit the apricots and cherries, then toss them with the sugar, tapioca, and almond extract. Lay the fruit in the prepared dish.\n\n2. Make the topping. Pat the topping over the fruit. Set the dish on a baking pan to catch the juices and bake until the top is browned and the juices have thickened around the edge, about 45 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla or honey ice cream.\n\nUsing your fingers or the paddle attachment of a mixer, work the butter with the rest of the ingredients until the texture is coarse and crumbly.\n\nMixed Cherry Pie with a Double Crust | SERVES 8\n\nPie cherries, hard to find anywhere but at a farmers' market, are tart, nearly translucent, and cherry red. These are the fruits that give cherry desserts their distinctive flavor. Even a handful will do the trick if that's all you have.\n\nFor this pie I use a pint basket of pie cherries mixed with dark ruby Bings and pink-and-gold Royal Anns. You can use other varieties as well, or all pie cherries, adding an extra \u00bc cup sugar if they're very tart. This makes a big double-crust pie. If you're going to go to the trouble to pit cherries, you might as well make a large pie\u2014it doesn't take that many more.\n\n**Pie Dough for double-crust pie**\n\n**1 pint pie cherries**\n\n**3 pints (about 2 pounds) Bing or other sweet cherries**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bc cup all-purpose flour or tapioca**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon almond extract**\n\n1. Make the pie dough and divide into 2 disks, one slightly larger than the other. Wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper and refrigerate. While it's chilling, pit the cherries and put them in a bowl roomy enough to hold them comfortably. The pits of the pie cherries can be gently squeezed out with your fingers rather than punched out with a pitter. This creates much less spatter. Toss the cherries\u2014you should have about 8 cups or a bit more\u2014with \u00be cup of the sugar, the flour, and the almond extract. Preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F.\n\n2. Roll out the larger circle of dough and ease it into a 10-inch glass pie plate. Roll out the second piece. Add the cherries, set the circle of dough on top, then crimp the edges. Brush the top with water and sprinkle generously with the remaining \u00bc cup sugar.\n\n3. Cut several slits in a star-shaped patter in the center, set the pie on a sheet pan, and bake in the lower third of the oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350\u00b0F. move the pie up to the center rack, and bake for 1 hour or until the crust is brown and the juices have started to run. Let cool for at least an hour before serving.\n\n**A VISIT TO THEMODESTO FARMERS' MARKET MID-JULY**\n\nProbably only a person raised happily in California's Central Valley could feel a pull toward Modesto in July. It was that warm valley air fragrant with plant life, the gurgle of irrigation ditches, and the smell of dust in the country that lured me. Then the broad shady streets in town, the mockingbirds' chatter, and the heavy scent of jasmine confirmed it: These were the smells, sights, and sounds of the California I grew up in. It was home. No matter that I had been to Modesto only one other time.\n\nThe idea of a farmers' market in Modesto is almost an oxymoron, for Modesto lies at the heart of the nation's agribusiness, a style of farming where fields and orchards go on forever, and markets lie distant from the harvest. This latest surge of farmers' markets, which began in the 1970s, started, in part, as a way for large-scale farmers to sell excess fruit at a better price than what they could get wholesale. But this market wasn't about farmers offloading their commercial excesses. It was a true farmers' market.\n\nOnly two blocks long and holding no more than fifty vendors, the farmers' market was quiet when I arrived at seven. Later there would be a band, a chef, and a canning demonstration, but for the moment it was calm, shoppers friendly yet purposeful. As it was well into fruit season, the tables were covered with stone fruits as well as wild blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries, melons of all kinds, and figs. Although this is where much of the fruit that you find in your supermarket comes from, it tastes different here. The peaches have the scent of flowers, a frosty bloom still clings to the plums, drops of honeyed nectar bead the figs, and there's a tender ripeness that astonishes the tongue on all of these sun-warmed fruits. Fruits that travel don't get a chance to mature to their full splendor.\n\nThe Modesto farmers were very much into mixing and matching their produce, an attractive approach I hadn't seen before. At one table baskets filled with nectarines; peaches, _and_ plums were presented along with baskets of single fruits. At another stand baskets were filled with eggplant, zucchini, green tomatoes, and peppers, a recipe for how to use them printed on purple paper and tucked in among them. There was something nice about being told you could mix and match to your heart's content from a jumble of undersized red, white, and yellow onions. It conveyed a friendly spirit that said, \"Dig in and find the ones you want!\"\n\nLabels in this market didn't rest with the obvious. Not just peaches, but White Lady (a Modesto original), not plums, but Black Friars; Tilton apricots; Sun Rose nectarines; Red-haven and Babcock peaches. Back home, while looking up fruit varietals and their origins, I was struck by how many of these fruits had been developed in Modesto and environs. My guess is that shoppers here were looking for the variety that was their favorite. At least they knew what was what.\n\nI was delighted to see an olive oil producer, Joseph Sciabica, from whom I used to buy vats of oil when I cooked in San Francisco. The Sciabicas, who began making olive oil in 1936, are the oldest producers of olive oil in California. The third generation is now in charge of business, but Joseph, in his eighties, is unstoppable. He is still selling his oil with the enthusiasm he had thirty years earlier. I hadn't seen him in many years, but he was immediately recognizable in his \"uniform,\" a turquoise sweater vest and matching cap, both knitted by his wife, Gemma. His oils were distinguished by the type of olive they were made from and whether the harvest was early or late. Behind the prize blue ribbons decorating the table stood an unusual and lovely orange-scented olive oil and an oaky, barrel-aged red wine vinegar. (The oil and vinegar are available by mail order. See Resources.)\n\nComing from one of those markets in which chard and kale are ever abundant, I was lured by the fruits, and especially gladdened to find an abundance of voluptuous figs. The white nectarines and plums got eaten in the car, but I managed to get the oil, vinegar, and figs home, packed neatly in egg cartons.\n\nLeaving the market, the signs that had welcomed customers in read, \"Thank you for coming. Have a dandy day.\"\n\nCENTRAL VALLEY DINNER\n\nFig Focaccia with Orange-Scented Olive Oil\n\nYellow Wax Beans with Lemon Thyme and Yellow Tomatoes\n\nPenne with Green and Gold Zucchini and Ricotta\n\nBlack Raspberry and Rose Geranium Sherbet\n\nWhite Rose nectarines with Prosecco\n\nApricot Custard Tart | MAKES ONE 9-INCH TART\n\nI've made this tart using the tiniest rose-blushed apricots from the Taos farmers' market (these as late as September) and luscious Royal Blenheims, perhaps the best of the old varieties, from the Santa Monica farmers' market. They couldn't have been more different in appearance, but both were sweet and succulent. This is a good recipe for apricots that are firm and even a touch underripe, since they're poached first in a syrup. You'll end up with a bonus\u2014some thick apricot syrup for glazing fruit tarts or sweetening iced tea.\n\n**Tart Shell**\n\n**\u00be cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**32 very small firm ripe apricots or 12 to 15 large ones**\n\n**1 egg**\n\n**\u00be cup cream or a mixture of cream and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**1 drop almond extract**\n\n1. Press the dough into a tart shell and freeze while you preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F. Set it on a sheet pan and bake until lightly colored, about 25 minutes.\n\n2. Combine the \u00be cup sugar and 1\u00bd cups water in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and stir to dissolve the sugar. Halve the apricots. Crack several of the pits, remove the kernels, and add them to the syrup. Poach the apricots in 2 batches until barely tender when pierced with the tip of a knife. This may take only 1 or 2 minutes\u2014they should hold their shape nicely and not turn into jam. Gently lift them into a colander placed over a bowl. When all are done, add the drained syrup back to the pan and continue boiling until it's reduced by about half. (Sometimes I add a few lavender blossoms to the syrup and a few apricots when I have extra or they're very ripe. The apricots turn translucent and give the syrup body and flavor.)\n\n3. Beat the egg and cream together with the almond extract and remaining tablespoon of sugar.\n\n4. Arrange the apricot halves in the tart shell, the cut sides facing up and slightly overlapping. Pour the custard over the fruit and bake until the cream is set and the edges of the fruit are browned, about 25 minutes. Brush a little of the reduced syrup over the fruit. When cool enough to handle, remove the tart from its rim and place it on a serving plate. It's best served when still a little warm.\n\nApricots Baked in Parchment | SERVES 1\n\nA gentle heat brings out the flavor of the apricots in this easy recipe. You can form the packets in advance of their brief stay in the oven and serve the fruit within or without.\n\nPER PACKAGE\n\n**3 large ripe apricots, halved**\n\n**1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon unsalted butter**\n\n**1 stem of flowering English lavender, stem removed**\n\n1. Cut a piece of parchment about 12 inches square. Fold it in half diagonally and then trim to make a rough semicircle. Lay the apricots on one half, cut side up, sprinkle with the sugar, dot with the butter, and add the lavender.\n\n2. Fold and crease the parchment tightly, working your way all around the edge and ending with a firm twist of the paper, making a little handle.\n\n3. Preheat the oven to 275\u00b0F. Add the packet and bake for 20 minutes. Set on a plate, slit the top with a knife, and serve right away. Or, if you prefer, place the cooked apricots with their juices on a plate. But part of the fun is opening a packet and releasing a soft whoosh of fragrant heat.\n\nVARIATION WITH RASPBERRIES: Add a handful of black or red raspberries to each packet.\n\nVARIATION WITH VANILLA: Omit the lavender. Snip a soft vanilla bean into 1-inch lengths and cut each piece lengthwise in half. Add a piece to each package. Serve with vanilla ice cream.\n\nApricot Nectar | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nHere's the perfect use for those extra-soft fruits that you might have intended for jam that you didn't get around to making. At least that's how I came to make my own apricot nectar. Nectar is for drinking, of course, but you can also set it with gelatin to make a cool dessert. No matter how sweet the fruit, it usually ends up a little tart, so plan to sweeten it with simple syrup or honey.\n\nYou can cook the fruit, stones and all, then strain it, or if you halve the apricots first and remove the stones, you don't have to strain. In either case, crack a few stones and cook the kernels with the fruit for their almond flavor.\n\n**6 cups very ripe apricots**\n\n**12 or more apricot kernels**\n\n**\u00bd cupSimple Syrup, honey, or maple syrup**\n\n1. Wash the apricots well and put them in a pot with 5 cups water and the kernels. Bring to a boil and simmer, partially covered, until the fruit is so soft that it's falling away from the stones, about 30 minutes.\n\n2. Pour the fruit into a strainer or colander and work it around with a rubber spatula to force the pulp through the holes, leaving the kernels behind. Then puree or pass through a food mill. Sweeten to taste, then chill. It may thicken as it cools.\n\nApricot-Lavender Refrigerator Jam | MAKES ABOUT 1\u00bd PINTS\n\nBecause this isn't nearly as sweet as commercial jams, the flavor of apricots is rich and full. This is a simple little preserve to make in small quantities, not an all-day project. The lavender makes a fine match with apricots\u2014just make sure that you use the sweet, fragrant kind, not the variety that smells of camphor.\n\nIf you leave this a little on the thin side, you'll have a sauce to spoon over warm biscuits, to flavor a semi-freddo, or to drizzle over almond ice cream and top with toasted almonds. It also makes a shiny orange pool for the Panna Cotta.\n\n**7 cups ripe apricots**\n\n**12 apricot pits, cracked, the kernels removed**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**7 lavender blossom sprigs**\n\n**juice of \u00bd lemon, optional**\n\n1. Halve the apricots or quarter them if very large. Large pieces will give your jam a little texture. Place the apricots in a heavy pan with the kernels, sugar, and lavender. Cook over high heat, watching closely and stirring at first until the juices are released and the sugar is dissolved. Then reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until the fruit is thickened, 10 to 15 minutes.\n\n2. Taste and, if you wish, add lemon juice if it needs sharpening. With so little sugar, the natural tartness of the fruit may be sufficient. Pour into sterilized containers, cap tightly, and store in the refrigerator.\n\n**PLUMS ANDPLUOTS**\n\nThere are Black Friars, Elephant Hearts, Damsons, all the Gages, the Mirabelles, prune plums, wild plums, yellow Shiro plums, and plums with no names that have just been in someone's garden forever. Italian prune plums and blue Stanleys are the plums that become prunes but that are now called _dried plums._ A discernible patch of something called _bloom_ \u2014it's like a white powder\u2014may be visible on the skin of a fresh plum. Like the bloom of youth, it's a sign that a piece of fruit has hardly been touched at all. (Bloom can also be seen on fresh apples, grapes, blueberries, and other fruits.)\n\nPlums can be magical, but they tend to be a little more problematic than other stone fruits. Cooking enhances their flavors and increases their possibilities in the kitchen, but the skins turn sharp and tannic once cooked, increasing the amount of sweetening needed. You can blanch the plums in boiling water for 10 seconds and then slip off the skins, which renders them sweeter, but then they lose their color. Plums are harder to slice, for the flesh tends to cling to the stone, except with prune plums. It's almost impossible to get a neat slice of a dead-ripe Santa Rosa plum without mangling it. Still, a great deal can be done with plums, which is fortunate because when they come on they usually come on in glut proportions. Plums make excellent sorbets, soups, crisps, pies, tarts, jams, and fillings for cr\u00eapes.\n\nAlthough much is made of the Green Gage and Damson, it's the Santa Rosa, developed by the great plant breeder Luther Burbank, that is, to my taste anyway, the most intriguing plum. With its purple-red skin russeted with fine dots of gold and its golden-to-garnet-colored juicy flesh, it's one to keep an eye out for. I find it offers a quintessential plum experience, but another variety might be the plum of choice where you live.\n\nRipeness is essential if plums are to live up to whatever praises they garner. Just after writing this, I tasted half a dozen kinds of plums at our market, all of them picked unripe. It seems that the farmers wanted to be the first to have them, but they were so tart and unappealing, including the Santa Rosas, that any reader tasting these same fruits would have thought I had lost my sense of taste. It's better if farmers can wait until the fruit can come to market no more than a day or two, at the most, away from perfection.\n\nPluots, plumcots, and, most recently, apriums, are plum-apricot crosses that are still rare, although plant breeders in California have been working on them for many years. (They have a greenish-golden plum type of skin and shape but something of an apricot flavor.) But one can nearly always find dried pluots at California farmers' markets. Their red-gold color and faintly indeterminate flavor make them an unusual fruit to include in a winter compote or to use wherever dried apricots are called for.\n\nSugared Plums for Tarts and a Compote | MAKES 6 SERVINGS OR FILLING FOR 1 GALETTE\n\nI always worried about all the juice that plums give off when they're baking in pastry and how to avoid ending up with soggy crusts, but you can solve such problems if you briefly cook the plums first. The fruit ends up soft, the dough stays crisp, and you can use the juice to flavor (and color) the cream that goes on the side. Nectarines and peeled peaches can be handled this way as well.\n\nThis simple method is more than just a step, for it produces a luscious compote to serve with ice cream or panna cotta or to spoon inside a cornmeal cr\u00eape. At breakfast the plums can go over French toast. Even the juice that collects can be reduced to syrup.\n\nUse any plum that's slightly firm and full of fragrance. To cut smaller plums easily, stand each one upright on the cutting board, then remove 4 slices as close to the pit as possible. Slice each of the quarters into halves.\n\n**6 cups sliced plums, about 2 pounds**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**1 teaspoon orange flower water**\n\nPLUM CREAM\n\n**juice from the plums, above**\n\n**\u00bc cup sugar, more or less**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar, to taste**\n\n**1 drop almond extract**\n\n**1 teaspoon orange flower water or orange liqueur**\n\n**tiny pinch ground cloves**\n\nPlace a wide skillet on the stove over high heat. Add the plums and sprinkle with the sugar and orange flower water. Give everything a stir. When the plums begin to give up their juice and the sugar dissolves, count 2 minutes, then turn off the heat. This should take about 4 minutes in all. As the plums sit, they'll yield even more juice. Use it to make plum cream.\n\n1. Simmer the juice until syrupy and reduced by about half. Taste, and if it's too tart, stir in up to \u00bc cup sugar. Cool completely.\n\n2. Whip the cream with the confectioners' sugar until soft, billowy peaks form. Add the flavorings and cold plum syrup to taste. Continue whipping until the cream once again makes soft billowy peaks. Refrigerate until ready to serve.\n\nCornmeal Cr\u00eapes with Plums and Honey Ice Cream | SERVES 6\n\nOnce the plums and cr\u00eapes are cooked, assembly just takes a moment.\n\n**plum juice fromthe compote**\n\n**Cornmeal Cr\u00eapes**\n\n**Plum Compote**\n\n**Honey Ice Cream, or another, such as vanilla or caramel**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Boil the plum juice in a small saucepan until reduced enough to become syrupy. Make the cr\u00eapes. Have the plums warm and the ice cream soft enough to scoop easily. Preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F.\n\n2. Place the cooked cr\u00eapes, golden side down, on a perforated sheet pan, if you have one, or a regular sheet pan. (The cr\u00eapes will crisp better on the perforated type.) Put them in the oven and, when hot, after a few minutes, remove and immediately slide them onto dessert plates.\n\n3. Spoon about \u00bc cup of the fruit onto half of a cr\u00eape, add a spoonful of ice cream, and fold the second half over. Dust with confectioners' sugar, drizzle with plum syrup, and serve.\n\nCornmeal Cr\u00eapes | SERVES 6\n\nCr\u00eapes are so easy to make, yet they make a special dessert out of the simplest of fruit fillings. Try to make your cr\u00eape batter at least an hour ahead of time so that it can rest. Leftover cr\u00eapes can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated.\n\n**1\u00be cups milk**\n\n**\u00bc cup instant polenta or coarse cornmeal**\n\n**1-inch piece of vanilla bean**\n\n**4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**\u2154 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**2 large eggs**\n\n1. Warm the milk in a saucepan with the polenta, vanilla bean, and butter until the butter melts. Slice the vanilla bean in half, scrape the seeds into the milk, and remove the pod. Cool until tepid.\n\n2. Mix together the flour, salt, and sugar. Stir in the eggs, then gradually add the tepid milk. Scrape in any cornmeal that has settled to the bottom. Beat until smooth, then set aside to rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour, longer if time allows. Let the batter come to room temperature before making the cr\u00eapes.\n\n3. Heat an 8-inch nonstick skillet with a little butter. Add 3 tablespoons of the batter and swirl it around the pan to make a thin, even layer. Cook over medium-high heat until golden, about 1 minute, then slip a knife under the edge, lift it up, and turn the cr\u00eape with your hands. Cook the second side for about 50 seconds\u2014it needn't brown\u2014then slide it onto a plate. The first cr\u00eape tells you if the batter is too thick to make a thin cr\u00eape. If so, thin it with a few tablespoons milk or water. For the rest of the cr\u00eapes it's not necessary to add butter to the pan. Continue making cr\u00eapes until all the batter is used.\n\nSOME OTHER FRUIT FILLINGS FOR CR\u00caPES\n\nStrawberries, sliced and drizzled with honey or passion fruit, ricotta\n\nBlackberries, scented with rose geranium leaves, brown sugar, and sour cream\n\nSliced peaches or nectarines with fromage blanc\n\nBlueberries, heated briefly, flavored with lime, with ricotta and sour cream\n\nCaramelized apple slices with yogurt cheese\n\n_Plum Kuchen_\n\nPlum Kuchen | SERVES 6\n\nThis is a sturdy crust that will stand up under the juice that plums, apricots, peaches, and nectarines are bound to release. Italian prune plums are easy to handle since they slice easily away from their stone. On the other hand, the deep red-fleshed Elephant Hearts are stellar looking\u2014and very good. There's no reason not to mix different varieties of plums or different kinds of stone fruits you may have gathered from your market visit. Serve with softly whipped cream flavored with a little orange flower water or cr\u00e8me de noyaux, a liqueur made form the kernels of stone fruits.\n\nA honey-colored earthenware gratin dish works well and looks wonderful with this dish.\n\n**1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u2153 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter**\n\n**1 egg**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest or 1 drop Boyajian orange oil**\n\n**\u00bc cup milk**\n\nTHE FRUIT AND TOPPING\n\n**10 to 12 plums**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon ground cardamom or cinnamon, optional**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Lightly butter an 8-cup gratin dish or tart pan. Pulse the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor, then cut in the butter to make fine crumbs. Beat the egg and egg yolk with the flavorings, then add enough milk to make \u00bd cup liquid. Add the liquid to the flour, mixing enough to make a thick dough. Brush your hands with flour, then pat the dough into the baking dish, pushing it up a little around the edges to make a rim.\n\n2. Slice Italian plums in half. If they're small, leave them in halves; otherwise quarter them. If you're using round plums, such as Elephant Heart, slice them into wedges about \u00bd inch thick. Overlap them over the dough. You can really crowd them together, because they'll collapse while cooking.\n\n3. Drizzle the melted butter over the fruit, then sprinkle on the sugar and cardamom, if using. Bake until the crust is golden and the fruit is soft, 35 to 45 minutes. Serve warm if possible.\n\n**STONE FRUIT SEEDS, OR NOYAUX**\n\nIn the cracked pit of any stone fruit lies a kernel that has two edges of flavor, one of bitterness and the other of almond. Their flavor stems from the heart of the fruit and perfectly meets the succulence of the flesh. A dozen or more apricot kernels added to a batch of apricot jam imparts a big, round note of flavor. A handful steeped overnight in cream or milk makes an ambrosial liquid that can then be used to make an almond-scented panna cotta, blancmange, or ice cream. Any of these is the perfect match for plum crisps, peach cobblers, apricot tarts, and cherry pies. And they are equally divine with desserts made from buttery, ripe pears.\n\nApricot pits work best. Peach pits are too hard; plums and cherries are too small. Open them with a nutcracker or put them in a plastic bag, then break them open with a hammer. Don't worry if you crush the soft kernels\u2014you'll be doing that in any case. If you succeed in getting the seed out intact, you'll see how closely it resembles an almond. But inhale it and you will find that it goes far beyond almonds with its notes of bitterness and sweetness.\n\nNoyaux or Bitter Almond Ice Cream | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nThis ice cream is the one to serve with any fruit dessert made of stone fruit. True bitter almonds can be purchased by mail order from Rusty Hall (see Resources).\n\n**\u2153 cup apricot kernels or bitter almonds**\n\n**\u2154 A cup sugar**\n\n**2 cups cream 1 cup milk**\n\n**5 egg yolks**\n\n1. Pulverize the apricot kernels with the sugar in a mortar or food processor. Add the mixture to the cream and milk in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then turn off the heat. Let stand until cool, then strain. Rinse out the strainer, place it over a bowl, and set aside.\n\n2. Whisk the egg yolks with the infused cream and milk. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until the mixture coats the spoon. Immediately pour it through the strainer.\n\n3. Chill, then freeze in your ice cream maker.\n\nPeach Shortcake on Ginger Biscuits | SERVES 6\n\nIt's hard to beat this variation on that classic dessert\u2014warm biscuits covered with cold sliced peaches and a dollop of whipped cream.\n\nTHE FRUIT AND THE TOPPING\n\n**6 large ripe and juicy peaches or enough to make about 6 cups sliced**\n\n**1 tablespoon maple sugar or regular sugar**\n\nTHE BISCUITS AND CREAM\n\n**2 cups all-purpose flour or 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour mixed with 1 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**2 teaspoons baking powder**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, sliced into 8 pieces**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped candied ginger**\n\n**1 egg**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u00bd cup buttermilk, milk, or cream**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**confectioners' sugar, optional**\n\n1. Peel and slice the peaches into wedges about an inch wide. Sprinkle with the sugar, cover, and refrigerate while you make the biscuits.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Stir the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Add the butter and mix on low speed, using the paddle attachment of your mixer, until the butter is broken into pea-size chunks. Stir in the candied ginger.\n\n3. Beat the egg with the vanilla and buttermilk. Add it to the dry ingredients and stir just to moisten. If it seems too dry, add 1 or 2 tablespoons more buttermilk. The texture will be shaggy and barely moist.\n\n4. Turn the dough out onto a counter lightly dusted with flour. Knead with a light touch a few times, then roll or pat the dough into a circle about \u00be inch thick. Using a glass or cookie cutter, cut out four 3-inch circles, then gather the remains, shape into a disk, and cut out the last 2 biscuits. Place close together on the sheet pan and bake until golden, 12 to 15 minutes.\n\n5. Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks, then stir in the almond extract. To serve, halve the biscuits. Spoon the fruit and its juices over the bottom half, add a dollop of the cream, and cover with the top biscuit. Dust with confectioners' sugar if desired.\n\nWhite Peaches in Lemon Verbena Syrup | SERVES 6\n\nThe flowery perfume of white peaches (and nectarines) sets them apart from their yellow-fleshed cousins. They are also very delicate and bruise easily, so your only good source will be a local one if you want ripe fruit that smells like a bouquet of roses and raspberries\u2014and tastes even better.\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**12 fresh lemon verbena leaves**\n\n**6 perfect white peaches or nectarines**\n\n1. Simmer the sugar, 2 cups water, and 6 lemon verbena leaves until the sugar has dissolved, about 5 minutes. Cover and set aside for a half hour or longer for the lemon verbena to infuse the syrup with its flavor. Remove the leaves from the syrup.\n\n2. Peel the peaches, then slice them into the syrup. Add the remaining fresh verbena leaves. Serve chilled.\n\nPeaches and Nectarines in Prosecco\n\nThis is one of the loveliest ways to finish a summer dinner when you have fragrant white peaches and nectarines, such as Babcock and Arctic Rose, on your table. Of course, you can use any delicious, fully ripe peach, but the white ones are especially flowery and fragrant.\n\nPut out peaches and nectarines, plates, knives, and champagne glasses. Have ready a chilled bottle of Prosecco. Peel your fruit, slice some into a glass, and pour the Prosecco over it. Sip the Prosecco and eat the fruit.\n\nSpiced Peaches | MAKES 1 PINT\n\nDo you have a big bowl of peaches that are starting to soften faster than you can eat them? It's bound to happen at some point during the summer, and when it does, turn them into these spiced peaches. This isn't a chutney but could easily become one with the addition of chile, diced shallots, and stronger vinegar. As it is, you can serve this with pork or duck, spooned over honey ice cream, or spread on toast for breakfast. For peaches, use those with firm, meaty flesh, such as Sun Crests or Redhavens.\n\n**4 cups sliced peaches and\/or nectarines**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**2 long cinnamon sticks**\n\n**6 cloves**\n\n**seeds of 3 cardamom pods**\n\n**1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar**\n\n**12 pieces candied ginger, chopped**\n\n1. Peel the peaches and slice \u00bd inch thick. Include any smaller odd-shaped pieces as well.\n\n2. Pour the peaches into a wide nonstick skillet. Sprinkle on the sugar and add the remaining ingredients except the ginger. Turn the heat to high to get things bubbling, then reduce to medium and cook, stirring every few minutes, until the syrup is thick, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the ginger. Store in a clean jar and keep refrigerated.\n\n**A MARKET UNDER THE FREEWAYSTOCKTON, CALIFORNIA**\n\nAfter leaving the Modesto farmers' market and its wealth of perfect fruits, I continued up the Central Valley on Highway 99 to Stockton, to visit an entirely different market, one I had heard about for years. I didn't know Stockton or where the market was located, aside from its freeway address, which meant that it had to be under Highway 99 or 1-5, which converge here in Stockton. A mailman pointed me in the right direction, and miles later a pedestrian got me to the exact spot\u2014a section under a span of 1-5, the long interstate that borders the Central Valley. I parked in front of a Chinese apartment house where an elderly gentleman stood on his balcony dribbling bread crumbs from a bag to sparrows scratching in the dusty courtyard below. It was oppressively hot out, but the market looked shady and cool.\n\nAlthough it was not yet eleven, some of the vendors were already breaking down their stalls, sweeping up their debris of leaves and stems, and loading their impossibly old vans and trucks, which seemed to be held together with baling wire and bungee cords. As I walked around feeling somewhat out of place, I heard scarcely a word of English spoken. I didn't know what many of the vegetables were, nor could I find anyone who could tell me their names. I needed a guide to help me sort out the tangle of exotic vines and bundles of leaves. I could recognize bunches of bitter melon vines with fledgling fruits attached, mature bitter melons covered with their warts and knobs, green pumpkins (or so it appeared), shelling beans of some kind, and bitter eggplants for pickling. I also recognized bok choy, gai lun, Mei Qing Choy, Choi Sum, sweet potato greens, and enormous bundles of lemongrass. But for the most part, I was at sea.\n\nIn other markets where there are Hmong vendors, their teenage children speak perfect English, and their parents usually sell some foods that are very recognizable to main-stream American shoppers. But here the farmers appeared to be first-generation immigrants who were selling mainly the foods they liked to eat.\n\nThe spirit of this market was lively and chaotic, like the hurried noisy markets one sees in any Chinatown. All the farmers appeared to know one another, and there was much shouting back and forth across the aisles. Occasionally the decompressing gears of an eighteen-wheeler drowned out their shouts as it slowed into the curve of the freeway above, but once it passed, the banter resumed. Produce was casually heaped on tables that were covered with bits of flowered yardage. Nothing was labeled, and no one, apparently, felt it necessary to make enticing displays or to offer recipes. The buyers knew exactly what to do with their various shoots and vines. Entire families were shopping together, stuffing rolling carts with bags of greens and discussing their purchases. I longed to follow any of them home to find out what they were going to cook.\n\nIn the very center of this busy and sprawling Hmong market stood a small, hatted Mexican man with a little painted cart of _helados_ (ice creams), which he sold to the many small children who were running around while their grandparents worked. He didn't speak English or Hmong, and they didn't speak Spanish, but he had figured out a market niche for himself where desire finds a way of being expressed. He was beaming over his brisk business.\n\nWhat's exciting about a market like this one is that those of us who are onlookers can hear a different language, see people who are not like us, and discover new foods. Getting a taste is harder, though, for there do not appear to be Hmong restaurants. I drove around Stockton looking for one and found nothing. I gather, from reading done since this visit, that the older generation resists assimilation while their children are eager to take on American ways of eating, speaking, and being, so restaurants do not appear to be the cultural bridge they provide in other immigrant cultures. The traditions are kept at home instead. While there are many farmers' markets in which Hmong and other Southeast Asian farmers sell alongside Anglo farmers\u2014and much of the same produce\u2014this market was unusual for its lack of diversity. It was completely about making traditional foods available to those who wanted them: no music, no signs, no coffee. Just shoots and vines.\n\nA MENU LOOSELY INSPIRED BY THE STOCKTON MARKET\n\nCucumber Salad with Chile and Roasted Peanuts\n\nScallion Cr\u00eapes with Stir-Fried Greens\n\nShredded Daikon with Scallions and Sesame Seeds\n\nTropical Melon Soup with Coconut Milk\n\nOn a warm spring day, strawberries and asparagus were plentiful in the market I was visiting, so I was startled to hear a farmer ask if I wanted to taste his apples. I didn't really, for my eyes were on the strawberries. But I held out my hand for a slice of a Mutsu anyway.\n\nYou too might have expected last season's apple, about six months off the tree at this point, to be soft and mushy. But it was astonishingly crisp and full of sweet juice. I tried another variety, and it was the same. When I confessed my surprise, the grower explained that apples have their own waxy coating\u2014it's what makes apples feel sort of greasy sometimes\u2014and at his farm they don't wash it off until they take their apples to market. Air can pass through it, so the apple doesn't turn mushy. Without a doubt this old apple was first rate. We think of apples as fall fruits, not as fruits to eat in the spring. But here were some great wintered-over \"spring\" apples\u2014perfect to mix with the rhubarb that gets an early start on the season. No wonder they're so often cooked together.\n\nSome true summer apples, such as Yellow Transparent, an heirloom dating from 1800, come into season in late June and July. Their pale gold skins do seem to be lit from within, and in years when there are no other fruits around, these early apples are very welcome, for they make a delicious, creamy-textured applesauce. There's a bit of a gap before the late-summer and fall apples and pears come on, but they always start earlier than we expect. Pears, too, have appeared as early as the end of July in Santa Fe, but that's pushing things a bit. They're not as ripe as they could be, plus who's interested in pears when there are plums and peaches vying for attention? We see them as fruits for the end of summer and fall, along with persimmons, another fall fruit that appears when the late harvest apples do.\n\nApple-Rhubarb Pandowdy | SERVES 6\n\nRhubarb and apples are at opposite ends of their season when they meet here. The apples are from storage; the rhubarb is fresh out of the ground. They're exactly the two fruits you're likely to find at any early-season market. Pandowdies are fun to make and even better to eat. You make a perfectly beautiful dessert look dowdy by scoring the crust, then pressing it into the juices that have risen from the fruit. The crust becomes saturated and partially caramelized. It may be dowdy, but it's definitely good.\n\n**butter for the dish**\n\n**Tart Shell, or \u00bd recipe Galette Pastry**\n\n**4 large wintered-over apples, such as Galas or Mutsu**\n\n**1 pound rhubarb**\n\n**\u00be teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon ground allspice**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon ground clove**\n\n**2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd cup maple syrup**\n\n**1 tablespoon unsalted butter**\n\n**cream, yogurt, or vanilla ice cream**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Lightly butter a 2-quart square or oval baking dish. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate.\n\n2. Slice the apples into quarters, remove the peels and cores, and slice crosswise about \u00bc inch thick. Dice the rhubarb into \u00bd-inch pieces. If the stalks are very wide, slice them lengthwise in half first. In all you should have between 7 and 8 cups of fruit. Toss the fruit with the spices, flour, and salt, then add the maple syrup and toss thoroughly. Distribute the fruit in the dish and dot with the butter.\n\n3. Roll out the dough about \u215b inch thick and cut it about \u00be inch wider than your dish. Lay the dough over the fruit, tucking the edges into the fruit. Bake until the crust is light gold, 30 to 35 minutes. Lower the heat to 350\u00b0F.\n\n4. Remove the pandowdy from the oven and slice the crust into 2-inch squares in a crisscross fashion. Using a spatula, gently press down on the crust, allowing the juices to flow up and over it. Don't worry if there isn't much juice at this stage. Return the dish to the oven and continue to bake until the crust is really golden and glazed, another 20 to 30 minutes. Once or twice during the final baking, brush the juices, which should be plentiful, over the dough. Serve warm, with cream, yogurt, or vanilla ice cream.\n\nApple-Oat Pancakes with Cheddar Cheese | MAKES EIGHT 4-INCH CAKES\n\nI really like the sharp accent of an aged Cheddar cheese in these apple pancakes. You can still pour maple syrup over them.\n\n**2 large eggs, separated**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 cup buttermilk**\n\n**3 tablespoons vegetable oil or melted unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00bc cup rolled oats**\n\n**\u00bd cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon baking spices or ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 large apple**\n\n**\u00bd cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese**\n\n1. Beat the egg yolks with the vanilla, buttermilk, and oil. Stir in the rolled oats. Mix the flour, soda, spices, and salt together. Grate the apple and the cheese. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.\n\n2. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Add the grated apple and fold in the whites.\n\n3. Melt a little butter in a nonstick pan. When hot, drop in the batter, about \u2153 cup at a time. Sprinkle a tablespoon of the cheese on top. Cook over medium heat until the bottom is golden, then turn and cook the second side without patting it down. Serve with maple syrup or boiled apple cider.\n\nTransparent Applesauce with Lemon Thyme | MAKES APPROXIMATELY 1 QUART\n\nYellow Transparents are the earliest apples to arrive at the market, which is early July. Although other fruits may seem more appealing then than apples, these make a delicious, smooth sauce. Because summer apples are so delicate, I don't like to overwhelm the sauce with cinnamon and spice. That's for later in the season. Instead I cook them with lemon thyme or a bit of lemon zest. They may be tart enough that they don't need lemon juice and sweet enough that they don't need sugar. Make adjustments after the apples are cooked.\n\n**4 pounds summer apples**\n\n**\u00bd cup water or apple juice**\n\n**6 fresh lemon thyme branches**\n\n**1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest**\n\n**honey, maple syrup, or sugar if needed**\n\n**lemon juice, if needed**\n\n1. Quarter the apples and put them in a pressure cooker with \u00bd cup water or apple juice and the lemon thyme. Bring the pressure to high and leave it there for 10 minutes. Allow the pressure to fall slowly or release it quickly. Pass the apples through a food mill to get rid of the pips and skins. Stir in the lemon zest.\n\n2. Taste the sauce and sweeten, if needed, with honey, maple syrup, or sugar. Or add lemon juice if it needs tarting. Return it to the stove and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it has reduced to the thickness you like and the sugar has dissolved.\n\n**THE APPLE: AMERICA'S FRUIT**\n\nA passion for apples exists across the country. At every market I visited during apple season, I saw unusual varieties, many of them heirlooms, proudly being sold. Cox Orange Pippins, Baldwins, Cortlands, Golden Russets, Yorks, Pink Ladies, Macouns, and many more\u2014apples that are no longer grown commercially because of their low yields or odd shapes. They have their avid fans, though, among both eaters and growers. Kathy Reid, who sells in the FRESHFARM Market in Washington, D.C., grows sixty-five varieties of apples, which she arranges on her table from tart to sweet. She cheerfully says that she offers a \"consulting service,\" advising customers on which apples to use for their sauce or what mix to put in a pie, and they usually report their results when they return to market for more. Eighty-nine varieties are grown at Weston's Antique Apples in Wisconsin, which are sold at the Dane County farmers' market in Madison. Their oldest apple, the Alexander, dates back to 1700.\n\nApples can be confusing, for they're not all alike. There are apples that are meant for eating out of hand, apples for baking, and still others, like Black Twig and Ashmead's Kernel, that are particularly fine in a cider blend. There are apples suited to warm climates and to cold ones. And there are apples that are historically connected to regions\u2014Arkansas Blacks, Newtown Pippins, Rhode Island Greenings, Rome (from Ohio, not New York or Italy), and Wisconsin's Wolf River. It's the growers of these apples who are likely to know the best uses for each variety, so ask them for advice. And shoppers know, too. The first time I saw a Wolf River apple, I asked, \"What do you do with these?\" Four people said in unison, \"Pie!\" And they were right.\n\nDuring a fall visit to the Union Square market in New York, I counted over twenty varieties of marvelous old apples. During the same visit, the subway cars were plastered with posters advertising Washington apples. Bringing apples from the edge of the West to the edge of the East has been going on for about a century, but why buy apples from three thousand miles away when the most glorious varieties could be bought at greenmarkets around town?\n\nWhen I finally tasted apples at a Washington farmers' market, I was equally impressed with their beauty and flavor. And they tasted far better than the same Washington apples you find in the supermarket. Apples _can_ be shipped and stored, but just like peaches and plums, they taste best where they grow.\n\nSometimes markets hold apple tastings so that shoppers can taste different varieties of apples side by side. This is something you can easily do at home, too, and a comparative tasting is worth a lot of words. Just be sure to write the name right on the fruit so you can remember what it is.\n\n**CHILDREN AT THE MARKET OCTOBER**\n\nIt's quieter at the market now that fall is here. The days are shorter, and the tourists are gone. The farmers look tired, and they say they're looking forward to the end of the season. Two weeks later they're saying they wish it would hurry up and freeze. Mrs. Vigil shows me her hands, which are well worked, and points to her bushels of golden-blushed apples. \"I've been picking apples since June, and I'd love to stop, but I can't as long as there's a market.\" She shrugs off her fatigue, but she can't rest yet because since school has resumed children have been coming to the Tuesday market with their teachers.\n\nThe farmers' market is a great place for kids. There's no candy at eye level, everything smells sweet and fresh, instead of like floor cleaner, and people are generally relaxed and enjoying themselves. It puts the whole experience of procuring food in a very different light from a trip to the supermarket with Mom. A mother of two young children, who shops regularly at farm stands, told me that her children had gradually changed into good vegetable eaters. \"It's the immediacy of everything that's so vital. When your children see where things actually come from, it makes them want to be a part of it all. They want to cook it, eat it, and close that circle in the whole process of things.\"\n\nWhen whole classes come to the market, they overwhelm some of the farmers who haven't prepared for them by having some small items set out at kid level. The older kids have assignments\u2014finding particular fruits and vegetables or interviewing farmers. The really small ones stay with their teachers, tour the market, then take part in an apple tasting. I watch some five-year-olds earnestly try to discern the differences among apples, but perhaps they're a little too young. One child, his face scrunched up in an expression of deep perplexity, finally says, \"They just taste like apples to me!\" Later, the teacher helps his kindergartners open their boxes of thin, pale apple juice\u2014right in front of a farmer who is selling his own freshly pressed amber-colored cider. Next year perhaps the juice will come from the farmer, then the children can taste the deep sweetness of this cold nectar.\n\nFollowing the kids' market adventures, farmers visit their classrooms and talk to the children about farming. Then the classes will make field trips to their farms. L\u00e9 Adams, who runs this Farm to School program, is committed to seeing every child in Santa Fe have contact with a farmer at least once each year, from kindergarten through high school. \"It's how kids can learn about agriculture, when we're not living in an agrarian area.\" Or era, for that matter. \"Basically, we are trying to raise a crop of food-literate youngsters who like eating real food and who have some inkling about where it comes from. Hopefully some of them will want to farm too, someday.\" L\u00e9, who is a farmer herself, says, \"We need new, young farmers, and soon.\" The average age of the farming population is fifty-four (as of 1997), and getting older. \"Come to our market and see a species that's _really_ endangered... farmers!\" is how one farmer from the Portland, Oregon, market puts it.\n\nMany markets across the country find ways to involve children. During the summer in St. Paul, kids have a chance to cook at the market. At the Lincoln Hospital Greenmarket on 149th Street in New York, the Cornell Extension Service has devised a game for children: Kids spin a brightly painted \"wheel of fortune,\" then draw a card that poses a question about fruits and vegetables. Correct answers are rewarded with stickers, which are worn with great pride.\n\nThe market can also go to the school. Santa Monica farmers' markets have successfully created a salad bar program, which provides elementary schools with vegetables and fruits from the farmers' market, most of them organically grown. The salad bar, which was once completely ignored, is now incredibly popular with the children, and the cost to the school is actually less than what it had been. Apparently the kids _do_ like vegetables\u2014when they taste good ones\u2014and they _love_ strawberries. Of course farmers also enjoy the additional business the program brings them. Here's a collaboration that's helping everyone. And parents who want their children to enjoy eating fruits and vegetables would do well to begin by taking them to the farmers' market.\n\nSOME SPECIAL BREAKFAST DISHES FOR CHILLY MORNINGS\n\nApple-Oat Pancakes with Cheddar Cheese\n\nBaked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom\n\nHard-boiled blue and green eggs\n\nTransparent Applesauce with Lemon Thyme\n\nRice Pudding with Honey Meringues\n\nCaramelized Apple Tart with Cinnamon Custard | SERVES 6\n\nSweet-tart apples are caramelized in a skillet, then baked in a tender crust in cinnamon-scented cream. An easy dessert to make, it's best served warm, although leftovers won't be ignored the next morning. Braeburn, Gravenstein, Wolf River, and Liberty are all fine apples to use.\n\nTHE APPLES\n\n**3 apples (see headnote)**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**2 tablespoons sugar**\n\nTHE BATTER\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**3 medium eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**pinch salt**\n\n**1 cup all-purpose flour**\n\nTHE CREAM\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche or heavy cream**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Butter a 9-inch tart pan. Peel and core the apples, then slice them into \u00bd-inch wedges. Melt the butter in a wide nonstick skillet, add the apples, and sprinkle them with the sugar. Cook over high heat, occasionally flipping the apples, until they start to caramelize, then reduce the heat to medium. Keep a close eye on the apples, turning them frequently so that they don't burn. This will take about 15 minutes in all. Turn off the heat.\n\n2. To make the batter, cream the butter and sugar in a mixer with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until each is incorporated before adding the next. Add the vanilla and salt, then stir in the flour. Smooth the batter into the tart pan with an offset spatula, pushing it up the sides to make a rim. Lay the apples over the batter.\n\n3. Mix the ingredients for the cream together, then pour it over the apples. Set the tart on a sheet pan and bake until the crust is golden and starting to pull away from the sides, about 35 minutes. Let cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. Remove the tart from the rim, place it on a serving plate, and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.\n\nApple and Quince Mince | MAKES 6 CUPS, ENOUGH FILLING FOR TWO 9-INCH TARTS OR PIES\n\nA good mock mincemeat can be made from an assortment of dried fruits, apples, and quince. It keeps indefinitely, and the flavor mellows with time. You can be somewhat extemporaneous with your ingredient choices. I sometimes use more dates than raisins or vice versa. Red Flame and Monukka raisins make a darker filling than Thompson Seedless. Poached quinces are more succulent than fresh, though you can use either. Regardless of the combination of fruits, the warming scent of allspice, cinnamon, and clove will fill your kitchen with great expectations.\n\n**1 orange**\n\n**1 lemon**\n\n**1 cup apple cider orquince poaching liquid**\n\n**5 cups dried fruits, such as raisins, chopped dates and currants**\n\n**2 large apples, peeled, cored, and diced**\n\n**1\u00bd cups chopped poached quince or 1 quince, washed and grated**\n\n**1 cup brown sugar, packed**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon ground allspice**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon ground cloves**\n\n**\u00bc cup brandy**\n\n1. Remove the outermost zest from the orange and lemon using a Microplane or citrus zester, then cut away and discard the white pith. Coarsely chop the fruits, then pulse in a food processor, adding the cider or poaching liquid as needed to loosen the mixture. Scrape into a large saucepan and add the zests, fruits, sugar, salt, and spices.\n\n2. Bring to a boil, then cook, covered, over low heat. Occasionally give the pan a stir so that nothing sticks. If the mixture does seem dry, add more cider or poaching liquid. After 20 minutes it will be quite thick and soft. Add the brandy and cook for 10 minutes more. Cool, then scrape into a container and refrigerate until ready to use.\n\n**NOTE :** Chopped dates are available from various California date gardens (see Resources). They're coated with oat flour so that they don't stick, which makes them easy to work with.\n\nWinter Mince Tart with a Lattice Crust | MAKES ONE 9-INCH TART\n\n**Pie Dough for double-crust or lattice pie**\n\n**3 cups (\u00bd recipe)Apple and Quince Mince**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**2 tablespoons brandy**\n\n1. Divide the dough into 2 pieces, one slightly larger than the other. Press each into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 45 minutes. Remove the larger piece and roll it into an 11-inch circle. Drape it over a 9-inch tart pan or pie pan, easing the dough into the pan rather than stretching it. Leave the overhang. Add the filling and smooth it out. Drizzle the butter over the top. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F.\n\n2. Roll the second piece of dough into a circle \u215b inch thick, then cut 14 strips about \u00bd inch wide. Moisten the lip of the tart with cold water, then lay the strips over the tart, weaving them to form a lattice. Press the ends of the lattice into the edges of the tart and fold the overhang over them to make a raised edge. Press lightly to seal.\n\n3. Dip a pastry brush in water. Lightly moisten the strips, then sprinkle them with sugar. Bake the tart until the crust is brown, 50 minutes to an hour. Remove and spoon the brandy into the filling while the tart is still hot. Serve with the brandy-flavored cream, below.\n\nTHE WHIPPED CREAM TOPPING\n\n**\u00bd cup whipping cream**\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**2 tablespoons honey or confectioners' sugar**\n\n**2 tablespoons brandy**\n\n**1 teaspoon orange flower water, optional**\n\nWhip the cream with the cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche and honey until soft peaks form, then stir in the brandy and the orange flower water if desired.\n\n**THE MAGICALQUINCE**\n\nThe texture is chalky and dry. It's tough to slice, and there's no point in tasting it raw since it must be cooked to be enjoyed. But what makes the quince alluring enough to overcome such drawbacks is its perfume, which lingers with the fruit after cooking. I once pinpointed its notes as a combination of narcissus and oak leaves when the two scents collided in a garden. Searching for the base of the flower stem, my hand disturbed both the oak leaves and the blossom. A cloud of scent rose, and there it was, the haunting spring-fall bouquet of quince. This perfume is not an exaggeration on my part. Victorians made good use of quinces to freshen their linen drawers and closets. Put one in your car and you won't mind traffic quite as much. A few on a dresser table will fill your room as if with a bouquet of flowers.\n\nBut quinces are for eating too. An old-fashioned fruit, once valued for its pectin as well as its hardiness in the garden, it reveals hints of both apples and pears in its shape and the patterns of the seeds. It is a rustic version, though, for its shape is often ungainly and its skin is sometimes coated with a soft down. When ripe, in the fall, the fruit will be hard, aromatic, and golden. Pale fruits lacking in scent have simply been picked too soon. For a quince to win the praise it deserves, you'll want to look at the farmers' market or over someone's backyard fence and choose those that are fully ripe. Wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cool place, a ripe quince will keep for months, provided it hasn't inadvertently been bruised in picking or handling. Though hard-skinned, they do bruise more easily than you might expect.\n\nQuinces go beautifully into dishes that contain pears and apples, but they take longer to cook than either, so if you wish to add some to a dish it's a good idea to cut them more finely than the other fruits. Grated quinces can be added directly to quick breads and pancakes. Generally, I find that poached quinces are the most useful form to have. Each fall I poach as many as I can in syrup until they turn deep pink, then keep them refrigerated in their syrup and use them over the next few months, adding them to compotes of poached pears, tartes tatins, apple galettes, pies, crisps, and so forth. Anything that's made with apples or pears is even better when quince is mixed in.\n\nTurning Quince Poaching Syrup into Ice Cream\n\nWhen you poach quinces, you end up with a thick, rose-colored syrup that is good for dribbling over ice cream and quince desserts. You can also make a quick little ice cream, which is very nice when served with something like the Rustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears.\n\nMeasure the syrup, then stir in the same amount of cream or slightly less. The syrup should be sweet enough that you don't need to add any more sugar. Freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to its instructions. You'll have a pale pink ice cream. A cup of liquid makes about a cup of ice cream.\n\n_Spiced Quinces in Syrup_\n\nSpiced Quinces in Syrup | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nThis makes a supply of rosy fruit to use in winter compotes, tarts, or pies or as an accompaniment to desserts such as Honey Ice Cream or Goat's Milk Panna Cotta. If you add poached quinces to dishes that call for apples and pears\u2014apple crisps, pear tarts, etc.\u2014they only make them better.\n\nI have had quinces from the tree that weighed as much as a pound, but most are closer to 4 or 5 ounces\u2014so go by weight, not by size, although this is hardly a recipe where quantities need to be exact.\n\n**2\u00bd pounds ripe, yellow-gold quinces**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick**\n\n**5 cloves**\n\n**2 wide strips orange zest (removed with a vegetable peeler)**\n\n1. Rub the fuzz, if any, off the quinces. Using a good sharp knife, cut away the skin in long, clean strokes, just as you would an orange, saving the skins. Remove the center with an apple corer (you may have to make the hole a bit wider than you would for an apple), saving the cores. Slice the quinces into wedges about \u00bd inch thick.\n\n2. Put the skins and cores into a saucepan with 2 quarts water, bring it to a boil, then simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Strain. Return the liquid to the pot and add the sugar, spices, and orange zest. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then add the fruit. Place parchment paper or a heavy plate directly over the fruit to keep it submerged. Lower the heat, cover the pan, and simmer until the quinces have turned pink and are slightly translucent, 2 to 2\u00bd hours. If the syrup becomes too thick, add more water as needed. When done, store the fruit in its syrup in the refrigerator. The quinces should keep for 2 months.\n\n**SEVEN TO ONE**\n\nSeven to one seems to be the magic ratio for juice, jams, and fruit butters. At Future Fruit Farms in Wisconsin, Ellen Lane told me that she uses 7\u00bd pounds of fruit to make 1 quart of her apple or pear juice\u2014and that's good organic fruit.\n\nEllen also makes apple, peach, and pear butters. We sat around her kitchen table one Sunday morning and sampled them, along with their host fruits and ciders made from various combinations of pears and apples. I have never tasted such pure, concentrated essence of fruit. She told me her ratio of fruit to sugar in the fruit butters was seven to one, and the same was true for her raspberry jam, which had a startling, vivid flavor. This is considerably less sugar than is usually called for, but the resulting butters and jam were sweet enough, and there were clearly detectable notes of caramel and molasses in the pear and apple butters, not just sweetness. Since tasting Future Fruit's preserves, I have noticed that those proportions work consistently well for simple fruit jams, such as the Apricot-Lavender Refrigerator Jam. If the fruit is ripe and sweet, 1 cup of sugar will preserve the flavor. Use more, and it will begin to mask the flavor, replacing it with dull sweetness. (Some tart and tannic fruits may need extra, though, such as plums and quinces.)\n\nOdessa Piper of L'Etoile restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, uses reductions of apple and pear juice in her winter cooking. In the fall, she and her staff go out to nearby farms, gather \"farmers' fruit\"\u2014the fruit that falls to the ground\u2014press it into cider, then reduce it in huge vats until it's syrupy and dark, not unlike maple syrup. In _Home for the Holidays,_ Ken Haedrich offers a recipe for boiled cider pie, which is made from cider that has again been reduced from 7 cups to 1. The resulting syrup is wonderfully intense. With such a concentration of sugars, it's not surprising that boiled cider was used by the Shakers as a sweetener. A warm apple tart with ice cream and a drizzle of boiled cider is indeed a treat. Cider jelly, an even denser reduction, reduces 9 cups of cider to 1 cup of jelly.\n\nMaking your own boiled cider is not difficult, but it can be expensive unless you also make your own juice. When reducing the juice, be sure to include some red apple skins to give it a pink hue. A home juicer will do the job. If you wish to buy it already made, it can be bought by mail order (see Resources). The Woods also make a boiled cider jelly.\n\nQuince Pip Tea for a Sore Throat | MAKES 3 CUPS\n\nWhen one of the Mexican cooks I was working with noticed that I was poaching quinces, he mentioned that the pectin-filled syrup was good for coughs and sore throats. (Quince is a popular fruit in Mexico.) Recently a Greek woman told me the same thing. And now I make a point of cooking the quince skins, cores, and pips in water, then sweetening the soothing liquid with honey. It keeps refrigerated for months during the winter, the time of coughs and sore throats, and it really does work.\n\n**skins, cores, and pips (seeds) of 4 quinces**\n\n**honey**\n\nPut the skins, cores, and pips in a saucepan with 2 quarts water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the liquid is syrupy and reduced to about 1 quart. Strain and sweeten to taste, while still warm, with honey. Refrigerate in a clean jar. Sip warm or cold when you feel the need for something soothing on your throat.\n\nQuince Butter | MAKES ABOUT 3 CUPS\n\nUsually I make this without measuring, using fruit that's a bit old or bruised. I just trim away the bruised parts, then cut the remainder into chunks and throw them into the pressure cooker, sweetening to taste once they're cooked. But sometimes amounts are helpful, so here are some to go by.\n\nUse this pink fruit butter for toast and biscuits, as a filling for a nut torte, as the jam in old-fashioned thumbprint cookies, or in bars, the quince replacing figs or dates. It's delicious on toast, with a very thin slice of aged Cheddar cheese.\n\n**4 cups washed and quartered quinces**\n\n**wide strip orange zest**\n\n**1 small piece cinnamon**\n\n**1 cup light brown or white sugar, or more to taste**\n\n**additional sugar or honey**\n\n1. Put the quinces in a pressure cooker with \u00bd cup water, the orange zest, and cinnamon. Bring the pressure to high and maintain it for 15 minutes. Let it drop by itself. The fruit should be an intense shade of pink. Fish out the orange zest and cinnamon and discard them.\n\n2. Pass the cooked fruit through a food mill, then return it to the stove. Turn the heat to low, add 1 cup sugar, and cook, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes or until the sauce has thickened nearly to a jamlike consistency. Taste and add additional sugar or honey if needed. Pour into sterilized jars and store in the refrigerator.\n\n_Rustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears_\n\nRustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears | SERVES 6\n\nThe three pome fruits meet in this delectable pastry. I especially like this tart when made with puff pastry, which our local bakery makes far better than I do. If you can arrange to buy a 16-ounce piece of fine puff pastry from a bakery, obtain frozen made by Dufour, or are willing to make your own, then use puff pastry. Otherwise, use the Galette Pastry, which is also very good. Serve either with the Quince Ice Cream.\n\n**1 pound puff pastry**\n\n**2 apples, such as Gravenstein, Golden Delicious, or McIntosh**\n\n**2 ripe but firm Bartlett or Luscious pears**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**2 teaspoons sugar**\n\n**2 quinces (about 16 slices),poached in syrup**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted whipped cream or cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**Galette Pastry**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**2 teaspoons sugar, approximately**\n\n1. Roll chilled puff pastry into a square \u215b inch thick. Place it on a sheet pan and refrigerate until ready to bake.\n\n2. Peel and core the apples and slice them into wedges \u00bc inch thick. Peel and core the pears and slice them a bit thicker. Toss the fruits with the cinnamon and the sugar.\n\n3. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator, loosely arrange the fruit in the middle, drizzle the butter over it, then pull the opposite corners toward each other. They won't meet.\n\n4. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375\u00b0F and continue baking until the pastry is puffed and golden and the fruit is tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Serve warm with softly whipped cream or cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche.\n\nVARIATION WITH GALETTE DOUGH: Use the fruit as described, plus an additional apple and pear.\n\nPreheat the oven to 450\u00b0F. Roll the dough into a wide circle and place the fruit in the center, leaving about a 3-inch band around the edge. Fold the dough over the fruit, overlapping it as you go. Brush the butter over the dough, leaving enough to drizzle over the fruit. Sprinkle the sugar over the crust, then bake at 450\u00b0F for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 375\u00b0F and bake until the crust is browned and the fruit is tender, about 45 minutes. Turn the pan at least once so that the galette bakes evenly.\n\nQuince and Goat Cheese Tart | MAKES ONE 9-INCH TART\n\nI am crazy about the combination of quince with the subtle tang of the goat cheese and walnuts. This tart, which is best when it's still a little warm, is a fruit, cheese, and nut course all in one. With the crust ready to go, and the fruit poached, you can put it together just before you sit down to dinner.\n\nTHE CRUST\n\n**\u00bc cup freshly cracked walnuts**\n\n**1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 tablespoon light brown sugar**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\nTHE FILLING\n\n**1 cup chopped quince fromSpiced Quinces in Syrup**\n\n**1 egg**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**1 cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**1 cup fresh goat cheese**\n\n**\u00bd cup ricotta**\n\n1. Pulse the walnuts in a food processor with the flour, sugar, and salt until finely ground. Add the butter and pulse until it's finely chopped into the flour. Add the vanilla mixed with 2 tablespoons water and pulse just until the dough comes together. Wash out the work bowl and blade.\n\n2. If you've used cold butter, the dough should be cool and firm enough that you can go ahead and press it into a 9-inch tart pan, making the sides about \u2153 inch thick. (If it's soft, wrap it in plastic, shape it into a disk, and refrigerate until firm.) Freeze while the oven heats to 400\u00b0F. Bake the tart shell until light golden, about 25 minutes. Remove and reduce the temperature to 350\u00b0F. Scatter the quince over the crust.\n\n3. Combine the remaining ingredients for the filling in the food processor and pulse until smooth. Pour the filling over the fruit, then bake until firm and beginning to color in spots, about 25 minutes. Remove and let cool a bit before removing the rim from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.\n\nBaked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom | SERVES 2 TO 4\n\nA sweet version of the Giant Popover with Chanterelles, this puffs dramatically, falls instantly, and is exceedingly good for breakfast or a Sunday-night supper. Two people can eat the whole thing\u2014four if they're modest eaters and not terribly hungry. If you're serving this for dessert, splash a little pear eau-de-vie over the top.\n\nFor the popover, use this recipe. The batter goes right over the saut\u00e9ed pears, or you can spoon them over the popover once it has cooked.\n\n**Giant Popover**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**2 buttery pears, peeled and sliced \u00bd inch thick**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon ground cardamom**\n\n**juice of \u00bd lemon**\n\n**2 tablespoons sugar**\n\n**2 teaspoons unsalted butter**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F. Make the popover batter as described in the recipe for Giant Popover, adding the vanilla and almond extracts to the milk.\n\n2. Toss the pears with the cardamom, lemon juice, and sugar. Melt the butter in the same skillet used for melting the butter for the batter. Add the pears, and cook over medium-high heat until they're slightly transparent in places and tender, about 3 minutes. Pour the batter over the pears and bake until golden, puffy, and risen, about 25 minutes. Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve immediately.\n\nPear Sauce for Gingerbread, Ice Cream, and Other Desserts | MAKES 1\u00bd CUPS\n\nThe sauce is pristine pale gold and the essence of the pear. Serve it warm or cold, next to the Pear Upside-Down Spice Cake in place of cream or with gingerbread. Pears adapt easily to other flavorings. Try it with amaretto in place of pear eau-de-vie, or star anise, cardamom, or vanilla bean in place of the cinnamon.\n\n**4 large ripe pears, any variety**\n\n**1 tablespoon honey**\n\n**2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice**\n\n**1-inch piece of cinnamon stick**\n\n**2 teaspoons Poire William eau-de-vie**\n\n**1 tablespoon butter or cream, optional**\n\n1. Peel, core, and dice the pears. Put them in a heavy saucepan with \u00bc cup water, the honey, lemon juice, and spices.\n\n2. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook, covered, until the pears are soft, about 20 minutes. Puree in a food processor, then stir in the brandy and the butter if desired.\n\n**LUSCIOUS BUT UGLYPEARS**\n\nPears, along with their kin, apples and quinces, are pome fruits. They are also an exquisite fruit and one of the treasures of the fall and winter kitchen, but as with apples and winter squash, we're never quite ready for them when they first appear in the market, which is as early as July\u2014peach season. Fortunately, many varieties follow the first Bartletts into the fall. You might run into such pears as Winter Nelis, Lincolns, Seckels (or Sugar Pears), and French Butter pears. And there's Moonglow\u2014its color is that of the harvest moon shining on the pear trees, I am told by its grower. In addition to Anjou, Bosc, and Comice, you may find Harrow Delight, a pear developed by the University of Ontario, which makes the most delicious pear butter. The Forelle is an exquisite-looking pear, small, yellowish red, and covered with a fine peppering of spots. Its flavor doesn't always measure up to its looks when eaten raw, but it is a good poaching pear. Chinese pear-apples, such as the Yali\u2014a most primitive-looking pear with crisp, juicy flesh\u2014are found at farmers' markets, as are the more standard apple-shaped types.\n\nI encountered Moonglow and Harrow Delight in Wisconsin, at Future Fruit Farms. Robert and Ellen Lane have been growing heirloom pears and apples for eighteen years, which they sell in the form of fruit, juices, and fruit butters at the farmers' market in Madison. Their number one pear is called a Luscious pear. These are small, roundish green fruits, mottled with large spots\u2014not sugar spots but blemishes\u2014which gave them their nickname, \"ugly pears.\" Chemical sprays would remove the spots, but the Lanes decided against using them. Their customers have decided that the spots don't matter either\u2014a rare triumph of taste and good sense over good looks.\n\nUnlike stone fruits, pears ripen off the tree. In fact they _must_ ripen off the tree. A tree-ripened pear will be unpleasantly mushy. Choose firm pears with a little give at the stem end. If they aren't ripe, let them sit at room temperature until the skin lightens in color and their perfume becomes noticeable. If you can't use them right away, store ripe pears in the refrigerator. While they make wonderful desserts, pears are also fine in salads. Since they're a fall fruit, you might mix them with nuts from your region\u2014hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, hickory nuts, butternuts\u2014and their corresponding oils, if possible, such as in a salad of pears with arugula, walnuts, and walnut oil. And they are also a fine fruit to serve with cheeses, from a voluptuous Gorgonzola to a creamy goat Camembert to a pungent sheep's milk cheese.\n\nPear Upside-Down Spice Cake with Molasses Cream | MAKES ONE 10-INCH CAKE\n\nThe molasses\u2014an unusual find\u2014and pears both came from the farmers' market in Colorado Springs. The idea of a gingery molasses cake covering caramelized pears seemed like a good one, and this is now a favorite fall cake. Serve it warm, with whipped cream tinted with coffee and molasses.\n\n**3 ripe but firm Bartlett or other pears**\n\n**3 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00be cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\nTHE CAKE\n\n**5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00bc cup dark brown sugar, packed**\n\n**\u2153 cup molasses**\n\n**3 tablespoons espresso or strong coffee**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 heaping tablespoon finely grated ginger**\n\n**1 large egg, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00bd cup buttermilk**\n\n**1\u00bd cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground ginger**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon ground cardamom**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon dry mustard**\n\n1. Peel the pears, quarter them, and remove the cores. Cut each quarter lengthwise in half. Melt the butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, then add the sugar. Stir until it has dissolved, then turn off the heat and let it settle evenly over the pan. Reserve 4 of the shortest pear pieces and arrange the rest around the edge. Use the short pieces to fill in the center.\n\n2. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Cream the 5 tablespoons butter with the sugar, then add the molasses. If the coffee is hot, use it to rinse out the molasses measure, adding it to the bowl along with the vanilla and grated ginger. Add the egg and beat until smooth, then add the buttermilk.\n\n3. Mix the dry ingredients, then add them to the butter mixture, beating on low just until combined. Remove the bowl and give the batter several turns with a rubber scraper to make sure it is well mixed, then spread the batter evenly over the pears. Bake in the center of the oven until the cake has risen, browned, and begun to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 35 minutes. Remove, let cool for a few minutes, then place a serving plate over the pan, grasp the pan and plate firmly, and reverse. Remove the pan. Serve with the molasses cream.\n\nTHE MOLASSES CREAM\n\n**\u00bd cup cold whipping cream**\n\n**\u00bd cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**1 to 2 tablespoons molasses**\n\n**2 tablespoons chilled espresso**\n\nWhip the cream and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche until they're soft and billowy and then stir in the molasses and coffee. Use a rubber scraper to mix the molasses up from the bottom of the bowl, then scrape into a serving dish.\n\nPear-Hazelnut Torte | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nAny pear that's ripe and ready to eat can be used, but the smooth-textured varieties (Bartlett, Comice, Harrow Delight, and French Butter pears) are best. As for the nuts, I can't imagine one that isn't good with pears\u2014pecans, walnuts, almonds, hickory nuts, and hazelnuts. You can use hazelnut meal, which is left over from oil pressing in place of the whole hazelnuts. It's available from Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards in Washington (see Resources).\n\nIf you bake this in an 11-inch tart pan, you'll have a thin, fruit-covered cake with a fair amount of crispy crust. Bake it in a 9- or 8-inch springform pan, and you'll end up with more cake in proportion to fruit.\n\nTHE TOPPING\n\n**3 tablespoons hazelnuts**\n\n**2 tablespoons sugar**\n\n**3 ripe pears**\n\nTHE CAKE\n\n**\u00be cup hazelnuts or hazelnut meal**\n\n**\u00be cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**\u00bd cup unsalted butter, softened**\n\n**\u2154 cup sugar**\n\n**3 eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Lightly butter an 11-inch tart pan or a 9-inch springform pan. Roast all the hazelnuts on a sheet pan for 15 minutes. Let cool, then rub them in a towel to loosen the skins. (Not all will come off\u2014don't worry about it.) Pulse 3 tablespoons of the hazelnuts with 2 tablespoons sugar in a food processor until sand textured, then remove and set aside. Peel and quarter the pears, remove the cores, and slice about \u215c inch thick.\n\n2. Combine the remaining \u00be cup hazelnuts in the food processor with the flour, salt, and baking powder. Pulse until the nuts are finely ground. If using hazelnut meal, mix it with the flour, salt, and baking powder.\n\n3. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla, then the dry ingredients. Mix slowly until combined. Give the batter a few turns with a rubber scraper and scrape it into the pan. Smooth it out, arrange the pears on top, and sprinkle the ground hazelnuts and sugar over them. Bake until risen and browned, 30 to 35 minutes if you've used a tart pan, 45 to 55 minutes in a springform. Let cool briefly, then remove the rim.\n\nPEAR-HAZELNUT TORTE WITH CUSTARD: Beat \u00be cup cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche until smooth, then pour it over the fruit before adding the ground nuts and sugar.\n\n**PERSIMMONS**\n\nAt a California farmers' market one November day, my glance fell to the sidewalk: There lay a gorgeous branch of glossy orange persimmons. It made a cheerful addition to the farmer's booth on this chilly, overcast day. Persimmons always light up the gloom of winter, whether you see them hanging from their trees or filling a bowl on the counter.\n\nAvailable when apples, quinces, and pears are, persimmons are fall-winter fruits where the climate is moderate. They hail from Japan, although there is also the small, plum-sized native persimmon, which thrives from East Texas to Indiana and from Kansas to Florida. These small fruits have a luscious, almost tropical scent, unlike the Japanese varieties. Cultivars have extended the region for this fruit as far north as Canada, though I've yet to see a persimmon in northern New Mexico.\n\nMost who are familiar with persimmons know only the squat, crisp Fuyu, the big heart-shaped Hachiya, and the natives. But in his columns for the _Los Angeles Times,_ David Karp writes about some of the more unusual persimmons found at southern California farmers' markets, fruits that are most likely to come from people's backyards, favorite varieties brought from the home country. (I imagine these would be well worth trying.) And although the native trees produce prolifically, you won't find their fruits at the grocery, either. For eating, they have to be ripe enough to fall to the ground, and that means they're too soft to ship or hold. Our native fruits are full of seeds, whereas the Japanese varieties sometimes have seeds but usually don't.\n\nA very special fruit to look for is the Japanese dried persimmon, hoshi gaki. These aren't fruits that have been dried in a dehydrator, but big, moist succulent fruits that are dried by means of a laborious process that involves massaging the peeled persimmons over a period of weeks. There are still a few Japanese people left who make this delectable treat, which can be found, of course, at some farmers' markets. Dried persimmons are sweetmeats, to be enjoyed a slice at a time. (See Resources, or slowfoodusa.org\/ark)\n\nSteamed Persimmon Pudding | SERVES 6\n\nHere's a pudding that's as dark as chocolate, as light as a feather, but dense with deep fruit flavor. It is also very easy to make. It's served warm with brandied whipped cream and a silky orange persimmon puree. This recipe was given to Joanne Neft by a friend of hers who had enjoyed it in _her_ family for over 40 years. Joanne gave it to me, and it may well become a favorite of yours, a treasured recipe to pass on to friends.\n\nHachiya persimmons are the ones usually used for cooking, but you can also use the smaller Fuyus and native persimmons, as long as they're dead ripe. The flesh from a ripe Hachiya can be very dark, while the flesh of the Fuyu is bright orange. If you're fortunate enough to have both, use the former for the pudding and the latter for the sauce.\n\nFor steaming, you will need a bowl or pudding mold with a 6- to 8-cup capacity.\n\nTHE PUDDING\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter**\n\n**2 to 3 ripe Hachiya persimmons, enough for 1 cup puree**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**1 egg, beaten**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u00bd cup milk**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**2 teaspoons baking soda**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n1. Select a bowl for your pudding. It can be made of crockery, metal, or glass, or it can be a proper pudding mold with a lid. Place a small inverted bowl in a pan for your mold to sit on and make sure it fits into a second pan when covered with a lid.\n\n2. Melt the butter. Generously brush some of it over the pudding dish and set aside the rest. Bring a kettle of water to a boil.\n\n3. Halve the persimmons, pick out any seeds, then scrape the soft fruit from the skins. Puree, then measure 1 cup. Mix with the remaining butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, milk, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients together, then whisk them into the wet ingredients.\n\n4. Pour the batter into the mold and set it in the pan. Add boiling water to the outer pan to come two-thirds of the way up the mold, then cover and cook gently for 1\u00bd hours. When the pudding is done, a cake tester will come out clean. Invert it onto a serving plate. If you're not ready to serve, leave the mold resting on the pudding so that it will retain its heat. Meanwhile, whip the cream and make the persimmon puree, if using.\n\n5. To serve, spoon a little of the whipped cream around the base of the pudding, along with a ribbon of the persimmon puree. Or you can spoon drops of the puree into the cream, then fan them out with the tip of a knife. If you like, garnish the plate with pine or holly.\n\nTHE WHIPPED CREAM\n\n**1 egg, beaten**\n\n**1 cup confectioners' sugar**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted**\n\n**\u00bc cup brandy**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\nBeat the egg with the sugar, butter, and brandy. Whip the cream into soft peaks, then fold it into the egg mixture. If it separates before serving, a few strokes of the whisk will bring it back to a smooth ivory sauce.\n\nTHE SILKY PERSIMMON PUREE\n\n**4 very ripe Fuyu persimmons or 2 Hachiya persimmons**\n\n**1 tablespoon sugar or honey, or more to taste**\n\n**1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, or more to taste**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\nHalve the persimmons, remove the seeds, then puree the flesh until smooth. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice, and salt. Taste and add more sugar or lemon juice if desired. Makes about 1 cup.\n\nPersimmons with Cream | SERVES 1\n\nThe texture of ripe persimmons is unbelievably silky and sensual. It's enough to dip into one with a spoon. However, you can add cream. It's this simple. Quarter ripe Hachiya persimmons\u2014they can be chilled or at room temperature\u2014with a sharp knife from top to base but without cutting all the way through. Gently press the base to open the quarters like a flower, then pour in some cold cream and serve.\n\nPersimmon Tea Cake | MAKES ONE 8-INCH CAKE\n\nPersimmons, dates, Red Flame raisins, walnuts, and even your own candied grapefruit peel\u2014all from any California farmers' market in late fall\u2014meet in this dense, moist cake, another treasured recipe from Joanne Neft. Mixing the baking soda into the persimmon puree transforms the pulp into a gelatinous mass, but it also means your bread will have a crumb when done. Persimmon pulp is full of enzymes, which will go to work on the flour if not neutralized first by the soda.\n\nThis doesn't need a frosting or whipped cream, though you can add either if you wish. It slices well, and you can make fine cream cheese sandwiches with this cake.\n\n**2 large dead-ripe Hachiya persimmons, enough for 1 cup puree**\n\n**2 teaspoons baking soda**\n\n**1\u00bd cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon ground cinnamon**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon ground allspice**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon ground cloves**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature**\n\n**1 cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\n**1 egg, at room temperature**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 cup walnuts, chopped**\n\n**grated zest of 1 lemon or \u2153 cup choppedCandied Grapefruit Peel**\n\n**\u00bd cup raisins**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped dates**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Butter and flour an 8-inch springform pan.\n\n2. Open the persimmons lengthwise, pick out any seeds, then scrape the pulp into a measuring cup. Puree, measure out 1 cup, and stir in the baking soda. Combine the flour, salt, and spices in a bowl.\n\n3. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth, then beat in the egg, followed by the vanilla and the persimmon puree. Add the flour mixture, then fold in the walnuts, lemon zest, raisins, and dates.\n\n4. Scrape the batter into the pan and put it in the middle of the oven. Reduce the heat to 325\u00b0F, and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing the rim.\n\nFall Fruit Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette | SERVES 4\n\nFall offers the most interesting range of ripe fruits, from berries to figs, persimmons to prickly pears and, of course, grapes. And fruit salads needn't only be sweet. Oils and vinegars go with fruits as well as syrups, and this salad is sweet, peppery, and tart.\n\nIf some of these specific fruits aren't available, then use others that are, such as crisp Asian pears or a Bartlett. The walnuts are just coming in when these fruits are at their peak.\n\n**8 figs, different varieties if possible**\n\n**3 Fuyu persimmons**\n\n**2prickly pears**\n\n**small bunch muscat grapes**\n\n**1 pomegranate**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons olive oil**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons walnut oil**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**balsamic or fig balsamic vinegar**\n\n**\u00bd pint raspberries**\n\n**1 dried persimmon, if available**\n\n**6 freshly cracked walnuts**\n\n1. Rinse the figs and quarter them. Peel the Fuyu persimmons with a paring knife and cut them crosswise into rounds or into wedges. Wearing rubber gloves or holding the prickly pears with tongs, neatly peel them, then slice them thinly. Separate the grapes, rinse them well, then halve them lengthwise. Flick out the pips with the tip of a knife.\n\n2. Halve the pomegranate. Dislodge the seeds from one half and set them aside. Squeeze the other half to extract the juice. Measure out \u00bc cup, then whisk in the oils and season with a pinch of fine sea salt. Taste. If you want a little more tartness, whisk in a few drops of vinegar.\n\n3. Arrange the fruits attractively on plates, including the raspberries and the dried persimmon, thinly sliced. Spoon the dressing over the fruit, then season with pepper. Add the walnut pieces and serve.\n\n**THE BEST IS IN OUR OWN BACKYARDSMADISON, WISCONSIN**\n\nIt's before dawn, and I'm gazing out over the Dane County Farmers' Market from the second-story window of Odessa Piper's restaurant, L'Etoile. Farmers are arriving and assembling their EZ-Ups around Wisconsin's capitol. It's so early that the stoplights are still flashing, and it's chilly enough to borrow a jacket when I leave to accompany Matthew Laux, L'Etoile's chef, to the market, where he'll shop for tonight's dinner.\n\nMatthew is nervous. Succotash is on the menu, and he's short on corn. Plus the chill in the air makes him worry that this might be the last of it. Taking a big wagon, he pulls it uphill to the top of the market, then begins shopping. A gunnysack of Jackpot, a bicolor sweet corn, is heaved onto the wagon bed. It must weigh 100 pounds. The farmer isn't worried about the weather, so now Matthew can stop worrying too and start to relax. He takes a moment to survey the market. The square is the equivalent of eight city blocks, and we can see only one side of it, but it is full of farm stands. By the time the market officially opens there will be three hundred farmers selling on the surrounding sidewalk. This is the largest farmers' market in the United States.\n\nWe work our way down the street and around the corner, piling herbs, honey, pear cider, leeks, fingerling potatoes, Black Twig apples, Moonglow pears, a flat of Concord grapes, and bunches of gladiolas onto the cart. Along the way Matthew chats with the farmers, telling one that his kitchen compost is ready to be picked up, asking another how much longer he'll have potatoes, arranging for a delivery of buffalo with a third. When the cart is full, we unload it at the restaurant, then go back to the market for more. By 9:00 Matthew is done shopping and he heads back to L'Etoile for the day while I continue on by myself. These early hours turn out to be the only good time to talk with the growers, for later in the morning the market is so packed one can hardly move, and the farmers are clearly overwhelmed. Twenty thousand customers will have moved through the market this morning. By noon, everyone is eager to pack up and get home, and it's T-shirt weather again.\n\nEverything here is farmer grown and produced. There is a great profusion of vegetables, fruits, and meats, some of which I've never seen before. \"If it grows in Wisconsin, you'll find it here,\" one farmer tells me. I spend the morning looking, tasting, talking, buying. At the end of the day I look at my list of what I've seen. It's the longest inventory I've made so far. I am eagerly anticipating dinner at L'Etoile, where some of this food will be served.\n\nL'Etoile is one of those rare restaurants that are intimately and essentially linked to the farm. Odessa Piper is a passionate woman, and her menu philosophy is squarely centered on cooking locally and seasonally. \"L'Etoile, Cooking for the Seasons\" is the restaurant's full name, and locally grown food in its season is what drives the restaurant, shapes its menu, and underlies its very reason for being. The menu is a sensitive one that shifts constantly in small movements, rather than big ones, to express the nuances of the seasons. Today Odessa has written on the menu a sentiment that I well understand:\n\nThis season presents our biggest menu-writing challenge. It's not from lack of creativity and excitement\u2014rather, the opposite. We just don't know when to stop celebrating the exceptional ingredients we get to work with and the farmers who produce them.\n\nThe food at L'Etoile sparkles with the brightness that only food this fresh has, especially when it's in the hands of cooks who respect the materials they're working with. Odessa and Matthew know it's not only their kitchen skills but also the ingredients themselves that account for the magic in their food. They let them shine and acknowledge their provenance. The menu copy continues:\n\nTo give credit where credit is due, we've chosen an outstanding producer to highlight on each preparation. Some of the finest foods to be found anywhere in the world are available in our own backyard. We thank you for supporting all the local growers who supply L'Etoile, and for valuing their commitment to these patient arts.\n\nThe quality of the food at L'Etoile compares to what you might expect to find in Europe. But Odessa is right when she says, \"The finest foods in the world can be found in our own backyards.\"\n\nThe Dane County market was not only the largest market I visited but also one of the most plentiful and varied. I could have easily cooked just about everything in this book from this one market alone. But here are some particular dishes the beautiful Wisconsin produce inspired. The hickory nuts and black walnuts I took home were used in cakes and confections and other nut-based recipes in place of walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds.\n\nSOME DISHES INSPIRED BY THE DANE COUNTY FARMERS' MARKET\n\nLeek and Sorrel Custards\n\nParsnip Galette with Greens\n\nLate-Season Tomato-Vegetable Soup\n\nConcord Grape Tart\n\nSuccotash\n\nHickory Nut Torte with Espresso Cream\n\nRustic Almond Truffles with Fruit Centers, made with a portion of black walnuts\n\nCITRUS AND SUB-TROPICALS\n\nFlorida, Texas, Arizona, southern California, and Hawaii are the source of our most exotic foods, the citrus and subtropical fruits that suggest warmth, sunshine, and tropical atmospheres. Lucky indeed are those who can pick up a sugar pineapple, a quart of blood orange juice, or a bag of passion fruit at the farmers' market. If you vacation in Hawaii, a visit to a market there may yield some rare treasures. But some citrus, and kiwifruit, don't depend on having a tropical climate. They thrive farther north in California as long as their growing area is free of prolonged, hard frost. Markets in the California foothills, in Placer County, for example, are sources of feijoa, mandarins, lemons, and oranges. But many of the softer exotic fruits\u2014the guavas, cherimoyas, avocados, and lychee nuts dwell more safely southwards where freezes are less of a threat, or on the lush sides of Hawaii's islands.\n\n**ACITRUS LUNCH**\n\nBlood orange juice\n\nPummelo and Avocado Salad with Endive and Fennel\n\nGrilled fish with Meyer Lemon Sauce with Tarragon\n\nRoasted Asparagus with Citrus Butter\n\nTutti-Frutti Citrus Sorbet\n\nCandied Citrus Peels for Busy People\n\nBlood Orange Jelly | SERVES 6\n\nOne vendor at the market in La Jolla was selling quarts of pure blood orange juice. If you've never had blood orange juice, expect a beverage unlike any other. If made from Moros, the color will be the startling dark red that the name should prepare you for. From Taroccos it will be less so. But what also sets blood orange juice apart from that made with Valencias is the flavor, which holds hints of raspberries, the perfume of roses, and a more elusive note that is very nearly tropical.\n\nI used the juice to make a jelly, but an unfiltered one that was dense with the bits of pulp. If you want one as clear as stained glass, strain the pulp through a fine-mesh strainer. This shimmering, cool dessert makes the truly perfect ending to a substantial winter meal. If you don't want to or can't get all those blood oranges, adding even a half dozen to the mix will alter the color and even the flavor of regular orange juice.\n\n**2 envelopes unflavored gelatin**\n\n**1 quart freshly squeezed blood orange juice (about 24 oranges)**\n\n**3 tablespoons sugar**\n\nTHE WHIPPED CREAM\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar**\n\n**1 tablespoon framboise or kirsch**\n\n**1 teaspoon finely grated blood orange zest**\n\n1. Sprinkle the gelatin over \u00bd cup cold water and set aside to soften. Strain the juice, if desired. Bring 1 cup of the juice to a boil. Pour the juice over the gelatin, add the sugar, and stir to dissolve. Add the rest of the juice, then let the mixture cool to room temperature. Give it a final stir so that the pulp, if present, is distributed evenly, then pour it into a shallow 1-quart mold. Refrigerate until set, about 8 hours.\n\n2. Close to serving time, whip the cream and sugar into soft clouds, then stir in the framboise and zest. Chill your serving plate in the freezer for 20 minutes.\n\n3. To serve, dip the mold into hot water for just a few seconds. Set the chilled serving plate over the mold, grasp both tightly in your hands, and invert. Refrigerate if you're not serving immediately. Garnish, if you wish, with orange segments or flowers, particularly orange blossoms and their shiny leaves. Serve the softly whipped cream on the side.\n\nBlood Orange Salad with Ricotta and Watercress | SERVES 4\n\nThe small bit of rosemary here is almost piney and somehow right with the sweet oranges, soft ricotta, and peppery cress.\n\n**8 blood oranges or navel oranges (12 if they're very small)**\n\n**\u00be cup ricotta**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon finely chopped rosemary**\n\n**2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley**\n\n**extra virgin olive oil**\n\n**freshly ground black pepper**\n\n**12watercress sprigs or another cresslike green**\n\n1. Neatly peel the oranges with a knife, removing all of the white pith. Slice them into rounds and arrange them on 4 plates or a platter.\n\n2. Place spoonfuls of ricotta on each plate, sprinkle the herbs on top, and drizzle some olive oil over the oranges. Grind a little pepper over all, add the watercress, and serve.\n\n**CITRUS IN THE MARKET**\n\nHappily, the cheerful orange and yellow citrus fruits are winter fare, even though we see them year-round. The succession of citrus begins before Christmas with Satsuma mandarins and unfolds over the following four months, extending into early summer. The world of citrus is nothing if not confusing, however. Like apples, there seem to be a countless number of varieties and hybrids, including some very peculiar ones that are more rarely encountered.\n\nHere are a few citrus you're likely to come across at a farmers' market:\n\n**LEMONS :** Eureka and Lisbon lemons are both very acidic, with thick yellow, pebbly skins. The flesh is pale yellow-green, they're juicy when ripe, and they have few seeds. Meyer lemons are highly perfumed, flower-fragrant with low acidity and thin, yellow-orange skins. They have long been a California favorite, and for good reason, because they make everything they season especially delicious.\n\n**LIMES :** Persian limes are the lime America knows. These would ripen to yellow if left on the tree. Persian lemons are sweet, low-acid fruits that you can actually eat without wincing. Tiny yellow Mexican limes have a sweet perfume and lower acid than Persian limes, while orange Rangpur limes resemble small mandarins and are, in fact, a mandarin hybrid. They're juicy and very tart. Small yellow limes called calamansi are especially popular with Filipinos. Chef Su Mei Yu says, \"The zest smells wonderful, especially when you throw it on top of roasted fish. Very aromatic!\" They make a superb gin and tonic, too.\n\n**MANDARINS (TANGERINES) :** Satsumas are the first mandarins of the season. They appear in northern California markets as early as early November. Fairchilds, which are darker orange, seedy, juicy, and sweet, closely follow them. Some other varieties you may encounter are Kinnow, Dancy, and Page. Honey tangerines are encased in a tight, fine skin that's mottled with bits of green. They're very seedy, and their juice is plentiful and so intense that the obvious way to use them is in sorbets and gelatins\u2014and for juice. Clementines (Algerian tangerines) are beautiful, small, red-orange mandarins that have been enjoying recent popularity. Although they deserve to stand entirely on their own merits, I suspect it's packaging that's done the trick, for the Spanish imports are packed in little crates that make them especially attractive. However, they are grown in the United States, and they can be found at farmers' markets.\n\n**ORANGES :** Various cultivars of Valencia and navel oranges can be found, along with some exotics. One Valencia that shows up in southern California farmers' markets has skin that's striped with green, orange, and yellow\u2014at least in its immature form. A cook seeking to make a true marmalade may encounter the traditional sour Seville oranges. A real treasure is the scented Bergamot orange, whose zest flavors Earl Grey tea. But the favorite exotic is the blood orange, which is increasingly more available. Not all are alike. Moros are really dark, blood red, a bit overwhelming, perhaps. Taroccos, on the other hand, look more like stained glass when cut open, and they possess a more intriguing perfume. There are many other varieties of blood oranges as well. They tend to have a much more complex, floral aroma and berrylike flavor than Valencias and navels.\n\n**PUMMELOS ANDGRAPEFRUITS:** Ancestors of the grapefruit, pummelos are the largest of the citrus. You may have seen them stacked on altars around Chinese New Year. The green or yellow skins and pith are enormously thick\u2014the peels can be candied, and they can go into marmalades. The flesh is a bit dryish and not as sugary as the popular Rio Red grapefruits, but it is sweet and delicate. Each segment is encased in a substantial membrane, which needs to be removed. Cook the segments with fish or use them in a salad with fennel and endive. Pummelo segments are also very attractive alternated with kiwifruit on a platter. Chandler pummelos have pink flesh; most other varieties are white or even slightly greenish, such as Sarawaks.\n\nThere are many grapefruit varieties, but the most popular tend to be the sweet red-fleshed types\u2014Rio Red and Ruby Red. Marsh Ruby, an older variety, is more kindly balanced to my taste. Regardless of the variety, color, shape, or size, I'm always surprised at how really very good freshly picked grapefruit are.\n\nCocktail grapefruits, a pummelo-mandarin hybrid, are smaller than grapefruits, and the flavor expresses its mixed parentage with a nice balance of fruit and acid. To me they have a lovely, somewhat exotic, hard-to-place flavor that always makes me think \"pine.\" Cocktail grapefruits have lots of crescent-shaped seeds but also a great deal of juice. They make a fine citrus sorbet. The Oro Blanco is a cross between a white grapefruit and a pummelo; this too is an enormous fruit. The skin is yellow and the flesh nearly white, hence its name, \"gold and white.\" Like the pummelo, the fruit is sweet, but not overly so, and it is low in acid.\n\n**OTHER CITRUS :** Kumquats and limequats are the smallest of the citrus. The skin is sweet, while the fruit within is sour. Kumquats that are crossed with Key limes produce limequats, a fruit that still bears a sweetish skin but a lively, sour pulp. Used sparingly, they make a good addition to a citrus fruit salad or compote. They can also be candied or used in a marmalade.\n\nTutti-Frutti Citrus Sorbet | MAKES 1 QUART\n\nAny single citrus variety makes a wonderful sorbet. Tangerine is shockingly sweet and exploding with flavor; blood orange not only is a gorgeous deep pink but floods the mouth with hints of berries. Grapefruit sorbets are bright and sparkling, while sorbet made from cocktail grapefruit is slightly more perfumed and more subtle.\n\nI discovered, however, when using up a lot of citrus fruits that had overspent their stay in my refrigerator, that making a sorbet from a mixture of fruits is like creating an exotic hybrid whose myriad notes come to life as it melts over your tongue. In this instance I had Honey tangerines, blood oranges, cocktail grapefruits, ruby grapefruit, a few Valencia oranges, Persian sweet limes, one Oro Blanco, and a few Meyer lemons. I juiced them all and loved the results. Here is the method, which works for single-fruit varieties as well as whatever mixture you might come up with. If you have less than 1 quart of juice, use 3 tablespoons sugar for each cup of juice.\n\n**2 tablespoons finely grated zest from a variety of citrus fruits**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**1 quart freshly squeezed citrus juice**\n\n1. Remove the zest from some of the fruits and put it in a small saucepan with the sugar.\n\n2. Flip the pips from the fruits with the tip of a knife, then juice the fruit. Include as much pulp in the juice as you can. Remove any seeds that you missed before squeezing with a spoon.\n\n3. Pour \u00bd cup of the juice over the sugar. Boil until the sugar is completely dissolved. You can tell by rubbing a drop between your fingers\u2014there should be no graininess. Pour the syrup into the juice and chill until cold, then freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.\n\nMeyer Lemon Sauce with Tarragon | MAKES \u2153 TO \u00bd CUP\n\nSpoon this simple, vibrant sauce over the first asparagus, an avocado and pummelo salad, shaved fennel, leeks\u2014really any simply cooked vegetable or fish. And if you're planning to serve this over fish, consider adding a small avocado, finely diced, to make a lemony avocado salsa.\n\n**1 large Meyer lemon**\n\n**1 shallot, finely diced**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil**\n\n**2 tablespoons tarragon leaves, lightly chopped**\n\nRemove the zest and juice the lemon and put both in a bowl with the shallot and \u00bc teaspoon salt. Let stand for 10 minutes, then whisk in the oil and add the tarragon. Season with a little pepper. If the lemon is more acidic than you like, whisk in more oil, to taste.\n\nCandied Kumquats | MAKES ABOUT \u00be CUP\n\nThese make a pretty garnish to use on winter desserts or in winter compotes. They'll keep for weeks in their syrup in the refrigerator.\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**16 plump kumquats**\n\n1. Combine 1 cup water and the sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar.\n\n2. While it's heating, slice half the kumquats into rounds and halves; quarter the remainder lengthwise. This will give you a variety of shapes to use. Add them to the syrup and simmer until clear and soft, about 25 minutes. Store in the syrup.\n\nCandied Citrus Peels for Busy People | MAKES ABOUT 1 POUND\n\nI'm not much on canning, jamming, and jellying except in modest quantities, but candied grapefruit peels are such a joy to use in cooking, so easy to make, and so much fun to give away that I make them every year. While I've made many batches in my life, the best were those that I just couldn't seem to find time for. I'd start simmering them in water, then have to turn off the heat and leave them until I got back from a meeting. Later, another obligation would mean I had to set them aside in the middle of the candying until I could resume. It seemed to take days to make this simple recipe, but I think that all the stopping and starting is what made these peels especially moist and succulent. And they stayed that way for weeks. Although you can go from A to B without pause, I'd suggest taking time to let the peels soak at various stages so they can absorb more moisture.\n\nRuby-fleshed grapefruits, such as Rio Red or Marsh Ruby, make big plump citrus candies with a rosy hue. You can also use white grapefruits, thick-skinned oranges, lemons, even the enormous Oro Blancos.\n\n**2 organic red grapefruits, 3 Cocktail grapefruits, 1 Oro Blanco, or 1 pummelo**\n\n**1\u00bd cups sugar**\n\n**\u00bc cup light corn syrup**\n\n**1 cup superfine sugar for coating**\n\n1. Score the fruits into quarters and pull off the peels. Put them in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil for 1 minute. Drain the fruit, then cover it again with cold water, this time placing a heavy plate on top of the fruit to keep it submerged. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Leave the peels in the water until it has cooled to room temperature or overnight. Scrape away the white pith, then snip the skin strips with a pair of scissors, making them as wide or narrow as you like. I usually make them about \u2153 inch wide.\n\n2. Combine the sugar, 1\u00bd cups water, and the corn syrup in a 3-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. When the syrup is clear, add the fruit and lower the heat. Cook slowly until the peels have taken on a translucent appearance and the syrup has nearly boiled away, about 1 hour. (At any time, you can turn off the heat and allow the fruit to stand for several hours or, again, overnight.) Transfer the peels to a rack set over a tray to catch the drips.\n\n3. Place the superfine sugar on a plate. Toss a few pieces of peel at a time to coat them with the sugar, then return them to the rack to dry for an hour. Pack in a lidded container between layers of sugar and store in the refrigerator.\n\nCHOCOLATE-DIPPED CITRUS PEELS: Melt \u00bc pound semisweet chocolate with 1 tablespoon unsalted butter in a double boiler over simmering water. Stir to blend the butter and chocolate, then dip the ends of the candied peels into the chocolate, coating just one side. Set them on wax paper and place in a cool place to harden.\n\nLimequat and Pummelo Marmalade | MAKES APPROXIMATELY 7 CUPS\n\nLimequats and pummelos produce a delicate marmalade with a copious amount of clear, golden jelly. This is made in several steps but is not serious all-weekend production. Oro Blancos, Cocktail grapefruits, and other grapefruits can be used in place of the pummelo.\n\n**1 pummelo**\n\n**1\u00bd pounds limequats**\n\n**5 cups sugar, approximately**\n\n1. Quarter the pummelo and pull off the skins. Slice away the thick white pulp, but don't worry about getting all of it; just remove the bulk of it. Slice the peel into thin slivers. Gently tease the fruit segments from the membranes, then coarsely chop them. Slice the limequats thinly into rounds, halves, or a combination of both. Save the pips from both fruits.\n\n2. Bring the rinds, pulp, pips and 6 cups water to a boil. After 10 minutes, turn off the heat. Set aside in a cool place for the rest of the day if you've started in the morning, or leave overnight if you started later in the day. Bring the fruit once again to a boil and cook briskly until the peels are soft. This should take only 20 minutes, but taste to make sure.\n\n3. Measure the fruit and water, then multiply by \u00be to determine the number of cups of sugar you'll need. Combine the sugar and fruit, stir to dissolve, then again bring to a rapid boil. Boil until it reaches the jelly stage, about 40 minutes. You can determine this by dribbling a spoonful of the marmalade onto a plate and placing it in the freezer. It should jell up by the time it's cool, after 5 minutes or so. If not, continue cooking until it does.\n\n4. Decant into sterilized jars, cap and cover, and boil for 15 minutes. (At 7,000 feet, I boil my jars for 25 minutes since the water temperature is so much lower.)\n\nRed Snapper Baked in Parchment with Pummelo and Rosemary | SERVES 4\n\nThe delicate, not overly sweet flesh of the pummelo (or Oro Blanco) is lovely with fish.\n\n**Parchment paper, or aluminum foil**\n\n**2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**4 red snapper fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 pummelos or Oro Blancos,peeled and sectioned**\n\n**2 teaspoons minced rosemary**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F. Tear off 4 pieces of parchment paper, each about 1 square foot. Rub the center of each piece lightly with butter.\n\n2. Rinse the fish, pat dry, and season with salt and pepper. Place a fillet on each piece of foil and divide the fruit among them. Sprinkle with the rosemary and dot with the remaining butter.\n\n3. Fold each piece of parchment paper to make a loose but tightly sealed packet. Bake for 30 minutes. Serve the fish in the packets.\n\nCitrus Compote with Star Fruit | SERVES 6\n\nA young boy at the market told me, \"Star fruit tastes like a really sour orange that's crisp.\" He wasn't far off. They're crisp, they're sour, and you can even get the flavor of a ripe orange in there. Sliced crosswise, carambola fall into a row of golden stars\u2014hence their other name. If you simmer them in syrup for a few minutes, they taste much better. Try them in a compote or rice pudding, the flavor-infused syrup drizzled over the top.\n\nThe colors of the fruits in this compote look like Shirley poppies.\n\n**2 pummelos or Oro Blancos**\n\n**3 blood oranges**\n\n**3 navel oranges**\n\n**4 Satsumas, clementines, or other mandarins**\n\n**1 small star fruit**\n\n**3 tablespoons sugar**\n\n**3 large kumquats, sliced into rounds**\n\n**2 kiwifruit**\n\n**fresh mint sprigs or orange blossoms and leaves**\n\n1. Remove several strands of zest from one of each of the citrus fruits, taking just a little from the pummelos, with a citrus zester (not a Microplane) and set aside.\n\n2. Peel the pummelos, oranges, and mandarins, then section them over a bowl to catch the juice. Slice the star fruit into \u00bc-inch slices. Measure \u00bd cup of the juice and put it in a saucepan with the sugar. Bring it to a boil, add the citrus zest, kumquats, and star fruit, then simmer for 10 minutes. Cool, then add to the rest of the fruit.\n\n3. Neatly peel, then thinly slice the kiwifruit. Add to the compote. Refrigerate. Serve garnished with sprigs of mint or orange blossoms.\n\n**AVOCADOS**\n\n\"Don't buy those!\" my friend warned as I reached toward a huge Reed avocado. \"It will be watery!\" But I couldn't resist it\u2014it was so big and green and tempting. And he was right; it was insipid. Yet Steven Facciola, in _Cornucopia,_ describes the Reed as \"buttery, with a rich, faintly nutty flavor. Quality excellent.\" The Fuerte, that Floridian fruit which is usually dismissed as being watery, is also described in flattering terms. What was wrong? I wondered.\n\nI called Michael Abelman of Fairview Gardens, in Goleta, California. He grows quite a few avocado varieties on his urban farm, and I had just eaten my way through the Bacon, Fuerte, Hass, Rincon, and Pinkerton avocados that he had sent me to photograph. The first surprise was how absolutely wonderful the Fuertes were.\n\n\"Why were they so good?\" I wanted to know. It's the same old answer: \"Because, what you've had was a Fuerte that was picked when it was ready. Fuertes are watery only when they're picked too young,\" Michael explained. And the reason they're picked young is that commercial growers use them to close the market gap that appears before the Hass comes in.\n\nOnce again, it's the market, not flavor, that's driving things here. But business as usual means that we were all missing out on a really good avocado. It's the Hass that's touted as the number one variety, and it _is_ good\u2014buttery, creamy, rich, and all of that. Sellers like it because it's easy to tell when it's ready to eat\u2014the pebbly skin turns black\u2014and growers like it because it's a good shipper.\n\n\"The problem with the Hass, though,\" says Michael, \"is that it tends to obscure lesser-known varieties. It's like the Red Delicious apple. There are a hundred wonderful varieties, but this one dominates.\" And that, I think, is one of the main problems with produce in America: We allow one or two varieties, be they peaches, avocados, or potatoes, to pose as the _only_ varieties, while all others are obscured. Fortunately, I think we're starting to wake up from our slumber and see how much is out there and how much we've been missing.\n\nThe lesser-known varieties I've tasted from various farmers' markets have all been truly wonderful. And the Reed _is_ one of the more nutty and interesting avocados around\u2014when ripe. The flavor differences from one fruit to another are a bit subtle, but avocados do differ greatly in appearance. Some are enormous (up to 36 ounces!), others tiny (weighing only 3 to 5 ounces), but there's a use for every size. Small avocados make a perfect little nibble; slightly larger and you have the makings of a sandwich; while the giant ones are easy to turn into a bowl of guacamole. An enormous avocado Michael showed me was unsalable except at his farm stand or a farmers' market. Even though it was organic and delicious, no natural foods store would buy it because of its size: They didn't have a way to price it. The tail seemed to be wagging the dog!\n\nOther differences to note: Skins can be thin, thick, or leathery; pale green to nearly black; uniform green to flecked with golden spots. Shapes vary from oval to pear shaped to oblong to round. They can be easy to peel or as hard as the dickens. Pits might rattle in some varieties but not in others. But all avocados are watery before they're really at their peak, which is why we're told that early-season avocados are less caloric than those that come later. Wait for later is my advice.\n\nMy Standard Avocado Sandwich\n\nThese are equally well suited for breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Toast whole wheat bread. Halve, peel, and slice an avocado. Gently arrange the slices over the toast and then lightly mash them. Drizzle fresh Meyer lemon, calamansi, or Key lime juice over the top, and add a pinch of sea salt and some black pepper. If you don't mind the calories, add a little olive oil, too. Repeat as often as needed.\n\nAvocado and Grapefruit Salad with Pomegranates and Pistachios | SERVES 6\n\nIt's the acid tang of the citrus next to the creaminess of the avocado that makes this combination such a classic, but there's no need to be limited to grapefruit. Give other citrus a try as well.\n\n**1 very small red onion, sliced into thin rounds, about \u2153 cup**\n\n**2 tablespoons white wine vinegar**\n\n**1 bunch watercress**\n\n**1 small pomegranate**\n\n**3 red grapefruits or a mixture of citrus fruits**\n\n**2 kiwifruit**\n\n**1 large avocado, such as a Pinkerton or Reed**\n\n**grated zest and juice of 1 tangelo or Satsuma mandarin**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil**\n\n**\u00bc cup roasted pistachio nuts, coarsely chopped**\n\n1. Toss the onion rings with the vinegar and set them aside in the refrigerator. Sort through the watercress and discard the large, heavy stems. Rinse under cool running water, spin dry, then wrap in a towel and refrigerate until ready to use.\n\n2. Cut the pomegranate into quarters, then break out about \u00bd cup of the seeds. Working in the sink, gently squeeze a tablespoon or so of juice from the remaining pomegranate and set it aside. Peel and section the grapefruits. Neatly peel and thinly slice the kiwi. Peel and cut the avocados into neat chunks.\n\n3. To make the dressing, combine the zest, \u00bc cup tangelo juice plus 1 tablespoon pomegranate juice, and \u00bc teaspoon salt, then whisk in the oil.\n\n4. Loosely arrange the watercress on a plate with the grapefruit sections (minus their juice). Add the kiwi, avocado, and onions, which will be pickled by now, then pour the dressing over all. Season with pepper and garnish with the pistachio nuts.\n\nAvocado and J\u00edcama Salad with Lime Vinaigrette | SERVES 4 GENEROUSLY\n\nThis salad looks and tastes best when the lettuce and j\u00edcama are very finely sliced. It should end up a tangle of greens and whites, very cool looking and tasting.\n\nTry different limes\u2014Rangpur, calamansi, etc.\u2014if your market has them. They vary in acidity, so taste the vinaigrette and adjust the balance of juice to oil as needed.\n\n**1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated**\n\n**1 head romaine, the heart leaves only, or several handfuls small spinach leaves and arugula leaves**\n\n**1 small j\u00edcama, about \u00bd pound**\n\n**2 large avocados, ripe but firm**\n\n**zest of 1 lime, plus 1 tablespoon juice**\n\n**5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 scallions, including an inch of the greens**\n\n**15 mint leaves, torn into small pieces**\n\n1. Wash and dry the greens. Slice them into narrow ribbons and set aside. Peel the j\u00edcama and sliver it into very thin matchsticks. Peel and slice the avocados into wedges. Whisk the lime zest, juice, and olive oil together with a few pinches of salt. Slice the scallions into long, thin slivers.\n\n2. Toss the greens with the j\u00edcama, avocado, scallions, mint, and a few pinches of salt. Then dress the salad with enough of the vinaigrette to coat lightly but thoroughly. Season with pepper and serve.\n\nPummelo and Avocado Salad with Endive and Fennel | SERVES 4\n\nTry a Pinkerton avocado if you can. It's large, buttery, easy to peel, and available at farmers' markets before the citrus go out.\n\n**3 pummelos or Oro Blancos,peeled and sectioned**\n\n**2 Belgian endives**\n\n**1 small fennel bulb**\n\n**1 tablespoon white wine vinegar**\n\n**1 shallot, finely diced**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**4 to 5 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**1 large avocado**\n\n1. Peel and section the pummelos. You'll have to slice very deeply into the thick, pithy covering to get to the flesh. Separate the sections over a bowl. Sliver the endives. Slice the fennel very thinly using a sharp knife or mandoline.\n\n2. Measure 2 tablespoons of the juice into a bowl. Add the vinegar, shallot, and a pinch of salt, then whisk in the olive oil.\n\n3. Toss the endive and fennel with enough dressing to coat lightly and divide among 4 salad plates. Peel, then slice the avocado onto each plate. Add the pummelo sections. Spoon the remaining dressing over the fruit, season with pepper, and serve.\n\nFeijoa Bavarian Cream | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\n**2 pounds ripe, fragrant feijoas (pineapple guavas)**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**1 envelope unflavored gelatin**\n\n**1 cup milk**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**\u00bd vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise**\n\n1. Halve the feijoas lengthwise and scoop out their flesh. You should have about 2 cups.\n\n2. Combine the sugar and \u00bd cup water in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Add the fruit, return to a boil, cook for 3 minutes, then turn off the heat. Puree. Don't worry if there's a little graininess. Feijoas tend to be that way, but get it as smooth as you can. Measure out 1\u00bc cups and refrigerate the rest.\n\n3. Sprinkle the gelatin over \u00bc cup cold water and set aside to soften.\n\n4. Combine the milk, cream, vanilla bean, and puree. Add the softened gelatin, cook for 2 minutes to dissolve, stirring constantly, then turn off the heat and let stand for 15 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the mixture. Pour the custard into individual ramekins or a single 4-cup mold and refrigerate until firm, 6 to 8 hours. Unmold the dessert and place on individual plates or a single plate with the remaining puree spooned over or around it.\n\n**FIVE SUBTROPICAL FRUITS**\n\n**FEIJOAS :** Also called pineapple guavas, they are small cylindrical fruits about 3 inches long with dark green pebbly skin. They're not much to look at, but they are just as delicious as any of the showier subtropicals. A ripe feijoa is fragrant and yielding to the touch. Unripe feijoas will be tart, so allow them to soften. To eat, just slice them lengthwise and scoop out their flesh with a spoon.\n\n**GUAVAS :** When stashed in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, their scent will waft out at you every time you open the door, and that alone makes them a worthy purchase. The guava group is a large one, so you'll find a lot of variations\u2014from those that are as tiny as olives to others that are lemon-sized or pear-shaped. Their skin can be green, yellow, or some shade in between. Inside, the fruits are luscious hues of pink, salmon, and occasionally white. Seeds run through them like buckshot, and the texture is sticky and slightly grainy. Although these factors might understandably lessen their appeal, only a few pieces of the fruit have the power to transform an ordinary compote into something sensual and exotic. In fact, guavas are not as enjoyable for eating out of hand as they are to use as a flavoring. They are densely sweet, so a little acidity from a passion fruit or a lime brings their flavors into focus. A puree is perhaps the best way to go with guavas, for once you have some, you can use it in fruit compotes, smoothies, fools, or ice creams or add it to a syrup to use as a sherbet or sauce.\n\n**CHERIMOYAS ,** those more or less pear-shaped fruits covered with dull green scalelike skin, look as protected as armadillos. I bought a large one from a grower in California who said it would be ripe when the skin blackened and the fruit was growing increasingly soft. By the time we had driven back to New Mexico, it was ready to eat. We sliced it into wedges, admired its big glossy black seeds, then spooned out the soft white fruit. It lived up to its other name, custard apple\u2014the custard part, not the apple. It was as smooth and silky as custard and had that soft, tropical perfume. It was good eating the cherimoya just like this, but pureed, it made a worthy addition to the Frozen Subtropical Mousse.\n\n**PASSION FRUIT :** No fruit looks less promising than a ripe passion fruit. And it reveals absolutely nothing about itself until you cut into it. About the size of a small lemon, when ripe the passion fruit is purplish brown and very wrinkled. Amazingly, no perfume escapes its brittle-looking skin, even though passion fruit is so aromatic that even a small amount lends other fruits its tropical flavor. Passion fruit is also one of only a few tart tropical fruits, which makes it useful for balancing those fruits that are less so, such as guavas or very ripe pineapples. You can easily sweeten the pulp by stirring in a little simple syrup or superfine sugar.\n\nTo get at the fruit, slice a passion fruit in two or simply slice off the top, then scoop it out with a spoon. The black BB-sized seeds, which are edible, are suspended in an orange pulp. Scoop out the insides, getting every single drop. There may be not much more than a tablespoon, but it can go far. The shells are quite beautiful. You can use them as containers for a few satiny bites of passion fruit fool.\n\n**PRICKLY PEARS ( _TUNAS_ ):** The southern parts of Arizona, Texas, California, the drier sides of Hawaii, are where you might find cactus _tunas,_ as the fruits of the prickly pear are called. Encased in their dull-looking skins is the most unbelievable magenta flesh, peppered with hundreds of tiny black seeds. When pureed you end up with a neon-colored sauce (it looks completely fake) to dress a compote of fruits (try mangoes, papayas, strawberries, and pineapple) or to spoon over ice creams or sorbets. Of course it can go into drinks, from smoothies to margaritas, or _agua fresca._ Whether the spines have been removed or not, do handle _tunas_ with care: Wear gloves or hold them with tongs while you're working with them. Like the paddles, they do have spines.\n\nFrozen Subtropical Mousse | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nThis is the simplest way to make a fruit ice cream without making custard, using a machine, or having to scrape trays of frozen slush. It takes little time to put together, and if you forgo the freezing, you can serve this as a fool with no delay whatsoever. Poured into a single mold, it can be frozen in about 3 hours, and individual ramekins take even less time.\n\nYou'll need 1 cup pureed fruit\u2014guavas, feijoas, pineapple, cherimoya, prickly pears, sapotes, or a mixture of fruits. It's good to have extra puree to use as a sauce.\n\nTHE GUAVA PUREE\n\n**1 pound guavas**\n\n**\u2153 to \u00bd cup sugar, depending on the tartness of the fruit**\n\n**1 passion fruit, pulp and seeds, or juice of 1 lime**\n\nIf the guava skins are fresh and unbruised, slice off the ends, then chop the rest into large pieces. If the fruit is not perfect, peel them first, then chop. Put the guavas in a saucepan with the sugar to taste and \u00bd cup water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pan, and cook for 20 minutes or until soft. Stir in the passion fruit pulp. Strain to remove the seeds from the pulp. (If you didn't use passion fruit, add lime juice to taste at the end.) Chill well.\n\nTHE MOUSSE\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**\u2153 cup confectioners' sugar**\n\n**grated zest of 1 lime**\n\n**few drops vanilla extract**\n\n**fresh lime juice, if needed**\n\n**extra guavas or other fruits for garnish**\n\n1. Whip the cream with the sugar until stiff. Fold in the guava puree, lime zest, and vanilla. It should be well balanced, but if it seems too sweet, add a few drops of lime juice, to taste.\n\n2. Scrape into individual ramekins and freeze for 2 hours or until firm. To serve, let the ramekins stand at room temperature for a few minutes, then dip them into hot water until the cream begins to melt around the edges. Turn onto plates. Garnish with thin slices of guava or extra guava puree.\n\n**SUBTROPICAL FRUITS ATHAWAII'S FARMERS' MARKETS**\n\n\"You won't forget Hawaii, will you?\" the journalist from Hawaii asked. The edge of anxiety in her voice suggested that it was common to. But I assured her that the market in Hilo was one of my favorite farmers' markets anywhere. And I'm hardly alone, for every Saturday crowds surge at the entrance, waiting impatiently for the market to open. In fact there's enough enthusiasm in Hawaii to support more than twenty farmers' markets.\n\nThe wide ethnic diversity in Hawaii is reflected in the range of foods that show up at the market, but what are most unusual to most mainlanders are the subtropical fruits. Included are guavas of all shapes and sizes, feijoas (or pineapple guavas, which are different from true guavas), passion fruit, pineapple, breadfruit, red bananas, soursops, mangoes (Hayden and Cigar), star fruit, cherimoyas, and sapotes. And although they're treated as a vegetable, avocados are also subtropical fruits.\n\nThe centers of nearly all these fruits are soft. Sometimes the texture is gummy or sticky (as in guavas) or pulpy with large seeds (the passion fruit). Some are unbelievably silky (lychee nuts and mangoes), and not all are for eating out of hand. But all seem to be potent conveyers of the soft flowery breezes one associates with the tropics, that indeterminate blend of flowers (roses, jasmine, plumeria), berries (raspberries, strawberries), and banana\u2014the perfume of paradise. A little passion fruit juice or the diced pink-fleshed guava can utterly transform a bowl of strawberries or a dish of melon, transporting one to the lush side of a Hawaiian island.\n\nIf you haven't seen or eaten fresh lychee nuts, then you owe yourself a trip to Hawaii (or Florida) just to do so. Under their red dimpled husks, the silky white fruits lie waiting to provide your mouth with slithery pleasures. Sugar pineapples found in the Hilo market are unlike any you'll find on the mainland. They're long, deeply gold on the outside, and the color of saffron within. They're sweet and full of big flavor, the acidity nicely in check. Exquisite! And bananas, other than the common Cavendish, have surprising nuances of flavor we've never expected to look for, and find, in a banana.\n\nAt Hawaiian markets you'll come across the smooth, fawn-colored rhizomes of ginger that have a freshness we seldom see on the mainland, and stalks of white ginger flowers, buckets of orchids, and all kinds of strange, waxy-looking flowers that tourists fly home with. Those beautifully grown vegetables that are familiar to most of us are there, but so are the more interesting-looking yard-long beans, bitter melons, gobo (burdock), fern shoots, taro, and big, buttery macadamia nuts.\n\nThe lively ethnicity of Hawaii is also reflected in some of the foods that are made to take away, from coconut pastries (and ice-cold coconuts) to tamales, Portuguese egg breads, red bean buns, mochi, fresh poi, Spanish rolls, and lumpia. To wash it all down? Hawaiian coffee and fresh fruit juices made from those luscious fruits.\n\nPassion Fruit with Cream or Coconut Milk\n\nThis is the kind of dessert for when you want only a taste. Or it might serve as part of a more elaborate platter of fruits.\n\nSlice off the top of a passion fruit, stir in a little sugar, then float a spoonful of cream or coconut milk on top. Set the fruit in an egg cup and serve with a small spoon. There will be just a few small bites, but they will be very good.\n\nPassion Fruit Sauce and Syrup | MAKES ABOUT \u2153 CUP\n\nA syrup is one way to extend the range of expensive passion fruits. Use it in compotes, spoon it over other fruits, such as strawberries, or try it with melons, pineapples, and bananas.\n\n**5 or more passion fruits**\n\n**1 to 2 tablespoonsSimple Syrup**\n\nHalve the passion fruits and scoop the pulp and its seeds into a strainer. Press the pulp against the strainer to force out as much juice as possible. It will be bright orange. Sweeten it with simple syrup to taste. It may take just a few teaspoons or a bit more if it's very tart. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.\n\nPassion Fruit and Pineapple Fool | SERVES 6\n\nThis makes a delicious filling for a jelly roll as well as a simple dessert. If you want a dessert without cream, cut the pineapple into larger pieces, add the passion fruit juice and seeds, and garnish.\n\n**1 small pineapple**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar**\n\n**strained juice from 2 passion fruits**\n\n**pineapple sage leaves and blossoms, white ginger blossoms, or the seeds from the passion fruit**\n\n1. Slice the skin off the pineapple, remove the eyes with the tip of a potato peeler, then cut the flesh away from the core. Coarsely chop in a food processor, then transfer to a bowl. As the fruit settles and the juice pools around it, pour off the excess juice.\n\n2. Whip the cream with the sugar until barely stiff, then fold in the passion fruit and the pineapple. Mound the fool into parfait glasses, garnish, and serve.\n\nPineapple in Ginger Syrup with Pineapple Sage | SERVES 6\n\nThe fruit-scented red flowers of the pineapple sage are a bright and cheerful addition to this compote. Plus, they really do smell like pineapples. Their lack, however, should not deter you from making this compote. Lemon verbena and mints of various kinds are also good with this fruit.\n\n**\u2153 cup sugar**\n\n**1 (3-inch) knob fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into thin coins**\n\n**6 pineapple sage, lemon verbena, or mint sprigs**\n\n**1 pineapple**\n\n**2 tablespoons kirsch**\n\n**6 pineapple sage blossoms and extra leaves for garnish**\n\n1. Simmer the sugar with 1\u00bd cups water and the ginger until the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat, add the pineapple sage, and set aside to steep.\n\n2. Slice off the pineapple leaves, then, standing the pineapple upright, slice off the skin. Remove the eyes with the tip of a potato peeler. Quarter the fruit lengthwise, cut out the core, then slice it crosswise into \u00bd-inch pieces. Put it in a bowl and pour the syrup over. Add the kirsch and chill well.\n\n3. Serve in glass dishes, with a sprig of sage and a red blossom in each.\n\nPrickly Pear Sauce | MAKES ABOUT 1\u00bd CUPS\n\n**6 to 8 prickly pears ( _tunas_ )**\n\n**\u00bd cup sugar**\n\n**\u00bd cup fresh orange juice or water fresh lime juice, if needed**\n\n1. Holding the _tunas_ upright with tongs, slice off the skins. Puree, then pour through a fine-mesh strainer.\n\n2. Simmer the sugar in the juice or water until it's completely dissolved. Combine it with the cactus puree and chill well. Taste and sharpen the flavor, if needed, with a little fresh lime juice. If it needs to be sweeter, add Simple Syrup to taste.\n\n_One-Minute Citrus and Subtropical Salad Plate_\n\nOne-Minute Citrus and Subtropical Salad Plate | SERVES 4\n\nWhen time doesn't allow for a more laborious presentation of perfectly peeled and sliced fruits, just cut them up into pieces and serve them on an ornamental plate with a knife and fork. The fruits themselves are so beautiful that you needn't do more than this. Serve such a salad as part of a brunch or light lunch.\n\n**3 blood oranges, quartered**\n\n**3 kiwifruit, peeled and quartered**\n\n**1 small star fruit, raw orpoached**\n\n**4 pineapple guavas, halved**\n\n**1 avocado, quartered**\n\n**1 slice fresh pineapple**\n\n**1 cherimoya, sliced**\n\n**lychee nuts in their husks**\n\n**1 lime, halved**\n\nRinse, then neatly cut all of the fruits. Arrange them on 4 individual plates and serve. Squeeze the lime over the avocado.\n\n**THE SEASON OF EVERYTHING A WINTER MARKET INVISTA, CALIFORNIA**\n\nBeing January, the morning was cool enough for a light jacket, but by the time Kitty Morse and I had finished shopping the Vista farmers' market, we had stripped down to T-shirts.\n\nKitty is from Morocco and cooks beautiful Moroccan dishes. I was with her to help with a photo shoot for her book _Cooking at the Kasbah_ (Chronicle Books, 1998). The produce from this market was perfectly suited to her cooking. Here was the source for her translucent pink juice of pomegranate and lime, her preserved lemons, her baked pumpkin with caramelized onions, dates stuffed with almonds, and thick vegetable soups and tagines.\n\nVista, California (near San Diego), lies close to Mexico and just a mountain range away from Palm Desert and the Coachella and Imperial Valleys. Before freeways and houses defined the landscape, the hills here were covered with orchards and strawberry fields. A few citrus and avocado groves have prevailed, but the agricultural feel of the area is gone. Now only a few scattered fragments remain. Farming still takes place in pockets, though, and this January market had a staggering array of fruits and vegetables\u2014from leeks and parsnips to citrus and cherimoyas\u2014and all at the same time. While the possibilities such diversity suggested were exciting, they were also bewildering. What would you cook when you could make a hearty braise of root vegetables as easily as you might a Moroccan tagine with pumpkin and dates, or avocado and citrus salads, or a squash blossom quesadilla\u2014all from local, seasonal produce and all on the same day? Where was the narrow season of winter with its roots, tubers, and cabbages? Clearly not in southern California, where eating seasonally means something very different from what it means elsewhere in the United States. The climate _is_ favored, and it is Mediterranean.\n\nSeveral varieties of organic dates were for sale at the first stand I approached, big Mexican pumpkins at the last. Everything you can imagine lay in between. But citrus were the fruit of the moment. Here were Eureka, Lisbon, and sweet Meyer lemons; green limes, tiny yellow Mexican limes, orange Rangpur and tiny sour Philippine limes called calamansi. On the sweeter end of the citrus scale were Satsumas, blood oranges, cocktail grapefruits, and the giants of the citrus, the Oro Blancos and pummelos\u2014both a joy to see for their sheer size, which is nearly preposterous.\n\n\"What do you do with this?\" I asked, and three shoppers answered in unison, \"You eat them!\" It didn't seem likely, somehow, but underneath the protective thick skin were amazingly delicate segments of flesh, softly perfumed and sweet. In contrast were piles of kumquats, the tiniest of the citrus, and calamansi limes. There were many varieties of avocados, along with the reptilian-looking cherimoyas. Most everything else at the market was familiar, but from the other months of the year: tomatoes, zucchini, baskets of squash blossoms, peas, cauliflower with perfect creamy curds, verdant bunches of broccoli rabe, clusters of jewel-like beets, and some early artichokes. Mixed in with these were more wintry offerings of cabbages and Brussels sprouts. The trunk of one farmer's car was filled with fennel bulbs, their long stalks and feathery greens intact. \"Come back in the spring!\" she shouted. \"It will be full of fava beans!\"\n\nSeeing her mass of fennel, I recalled a man in Sicily standing by his car at the side of the road. The open trunk was crammed with artichokes on their long stalks. Bundles of them were lashed to the roof and the hood, and more jutted out of the back windows, small violet thistles in a tangle of long, winding leaves. A one-man, one-item market, he was doing a brisk business. A young woman in Lesbos offered another variation on vehicular marketing. Her motor scooter had bags of zucchini hanging from the handlebars, baskets of tomatoes striding the seat, and onions hanging off the back. And although it's no longer as common as it once was, you can still find people sitting by the side of the road, their trucks filled with produce. It's always worth taking a look. A farmer may have sent a family member out to try to get rid of that sweet corn that won't keep, those extra melons that are about to crack, or sacks of field peas. Treasures can be found if you slow down and take a look.\n\nAs we were leaving, Sui Lin Robinson, a grower of herbs and heirloom lettuce starts, remarked, \"Everyone is nice here; people talk and share recipes. I learn so much from selling.\" I've heard this sentiment at every market I've visited. It's not only the customers who enjoy the direct exchange that occurs at the farmers' market but the growers too. They learn from their customers and love it when customers let them know that their work is appreciated. Never hold back that compliment!\n\nA SIMPLE WINTER SUPPER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA\n\nDate and Orange Salad with Feta Cheese and Pistachios\n\nPasta with Golden Fennel\n\nFeijoa Bavarian Cream\n\nAs keenly central as fresh foods are to the market, they are not the only foods from the farm, and summer is not the only season. There are also the foods that keep. Nuts, dates, and other dried fruits, maple syrup, wild rice, and dried beans have had little done to them. But there are also those foods that the farmer makes into something lasting, such as berry jams and pear butters, hazelnut cookies, pickled okra, preserved horseradish, sauerkraut, olive oil, vinegars, even candles from beeswax. Filling our pantry with such foods gives us a way to continue our relationship to where we live over the winter.\n\nThe foods that keep, sometimes more so than produce, tend to be emblematic of a region, which is one of their qualities that makes them so special. Gleaned from farmers' markets across the country and in my cupboard right now are many such regional foods. There's a jar of preserves made from the Arctic Rose white nectarine from California, a fruit that I love but taste maybe only once a year, and enough of Larry Butler's smoke-dried tomatoes from Texas to give some away to friends who covet them. A gallon of maple syrup from Highland Sugarworks in Vermont will see us through the winter, along with regional honeys and a jar of Colorado molasses. There are bags of bolita and pinto beans from Max Martinez, _posole_ grown and made by Gloria and Rose Trujillo, plus a few frozen packages of their delicious tamales.\n\nMy freezer also holds all kinds of dried fruits and delicious nuts, including pluots and Red Flame raisins, hazelnut meal from the Holmquist family, hickory nuts from Wisconsin, luscious Empress and Medjool dates, native wild rice, and those delicious dry-farmed almonds of Rusty Hall's. In a cool corner of the garage are a few bottles of the Barianis' olive oil and a gallon of the Sciabicas' aged red wine vinegar. It's even possible to add a quarter of locally raised organic beef or lamb to the freezer.\n\nWith such treasures on hand, I look forward to cooking from the winter pantry, knowing that it's increasingly possible to sit down to the winter table still knowing who has produced much of the food we eat.\n\n**A WINTER MENU FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA**\n\nEndive on Toast with Gruy\u00e8re Cheese, appetizer portions\n\nChicken Thighs Braised with Dried Fruits, Shallots, and Bay\n\nWinter Squash \"Pancake\" with Mozzarella and Sage made without the mozzarella\n\nRustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears\n\nBlack Walnut\u2013Banana Cake | SERVES 10 TO 12\n\nIf you're lucky enough to find black walnuts anywhere (I found them at Wisconsin markets), use them up quickly. Even in the refrigerator, they don't last long before their oils turn. Black walnuts have a strong, distinctive taste, too assertive for some when used in full strength, so I mix them with a portion of English walnuts. Hickory nuts, or pecans are also good in this cake.\n\nTHE CAKE\n\n**\u00be cup black walnuts,hickory nuts, or walnuts**\n\n**\u00bc cup English walnuts**\n\n**1 cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**3 eggs, separated, at room temperature**\n\n**6 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**1 cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\n**1 large ripe banana, mashed**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u00bd cup buttermilk**\n\n**confectioners' sugar**\n\nTHE CREAM CHEESE FILLING\n\n**\u00bc pound cream cheese**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00be cup confectioners' sugar, plus extra**\n\n**2 tablespoons light brown sugar or maple sugar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 large ripe banana, sliced**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Butter and flour an 8-inch springform pan. Toast the nuts until they smell fragrant, 10 to 12 minutes. Pulse in a food processor until finely chopped. Whisk the dry ingredients together.\n\n2. Beat the egg whites until they hold firm peaks, then scrape them into a bowl. Wipe out the mixing bowl and return it to the mixer. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, followed by the mashed banana, vanilla, and buttermilk. Turn the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients, then the nuts. Stir in a quarter of the whites, then fold in the rest. Turn the batter into the pan, then bake until the cake is golden and pulling away from the sides, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in the pan 10 minutes, then remove the rim.\n\n3. For the filling, beat the cream cheese with the butter, then add the sugars and vanilla and mix until smooth.\n\n4. Slice the cake in half horizontally, cover the bottom layer with the filling, then thinly slice the other banana over it. Return the top layer and wrap in plastic wrap until ready to serve, then unwrap and dust with confectioners' sugar.\n\n**DRIED FRUITS ANDNUTS**\n\nDecember in California's Central Valley can be dazzlingly bright. It can also be gray and damp, the air thick with tule fog. A December visit to the Davis farmers' market coincided with the latter weather, but even so the market was crowded and busy, as it always is. As a traveler, I was drawn to the dried fruits and nuts, which were just a little more than a month off the trees and out of their shells. Davis is my hometown, so I often visit this market, and I always stock up on nuts and dried fruits to use throughout the winter.\n\nOne farmer was selling two types of walnuts, the familiar white-fleshed English walnut, the Chandler, and a darker one, called a Hartley. At first I declined the offer to taste it, thinking it was last year's old walnut. But the farmer pointed out that this nut was, in fact, newly harvested; the coloring was part of its character. The taste was indeed fresh, with more of the rich tones of the black walnut. It's a delicious walnut and one worth keeping your eye open for.\n\nMission almonds always seem to be available at the Davis market, along with the more familiar Nonpareils. The two small almonds nestled pointy end to end in their shell are small, and their points and curves make them slightly tedious to blanch and peel. However, this difficulty can be overlooked in favor of their taste, which is fuller and more of what we want to find in an almond. Flavor, however, is determined by factors other than variety. Rusty Hall, architect turned farmer, dry-farms eighty-year-old almond trees in the southern part of the state, near Paso Robles. He has a number of varieties, including the Missions and Nonpareils, but it's the lack of water that accounts for the intense flavor his almonds are known for. They are highly coveted by restaurateurs and other aficionados but available by mail order too (see Resources).\n\nWalnuts and almonds are particularly easy to crack, and they'll keep for a good year, so consider buying them in the shell, then cracking them as you need them. You'll be surprised at how long they keep their pristine flavor and how little time it takes to crack a cupful.\n\nPecans, a relative of the walnut and the nut of the South, including southern Texas and New Mexico, are not easy to crack and end up with nice-looking pieces. Unless you have the proper tool, it's best to pay the higher price and buy them already shelled. Hawaii has its famous macadamia nuts, another hard (impossible, nearly) nut to crack. Hickory nuts, a midwestern treat, can be found at the Dane County market in Madison, as can black walnuts. Hazelnuts are the nut of the Northwest\u2014Washington as well as Oregon\u2014and pine nuts can sometimes be found in the fall at southwestern markets. They are soft shelled, tiny, and insanely laborious to peel. It took a week of devoted evenings to get enough for one tart.\n\nThe dried fruits at the Davis market were similar to those I have seen elsewhere in California. They were little gems of translucency\u2014apricots, nectarines, peaches, pears, plums, pluots, and prunes. Geri Bogdanich, whose family specializes in fruits and nuts, sells bags of mixed dried stone fruits. With a few dried cherries added to them, they cook into a stunning compote. Drained, the fruits can be used to make the upside-down cake. And if you've ever been drawn to making a raisin pie, a mince tart, or _anything_ with raisins, try to get your hands on some Gold and Red Flame raisins. They dry in shades of red, plum, and gold and are exceptionally large and plump (see Resources for mail-order information).\n\nHickory Nut Torte with Espresso Cream | SERVES 10 TO 12\n\nWith only a small, precious supply of cracked hickory nuts from a Wisconsin market, I was hard-pressed to figure out how best to use them. Would it be in an ice cream, served with a syrupy reduction of pear cider? Or in a melt-in-your-mouth butter cookie? The nuts would make an intriguing addition to grain dishes, but I settled on this torte to showcase their special flavor. I serve it with softly whipped cream flavored with just a little ground espresso.\n\nUse a full measure of hickory nuts, but if you can manage only a cup, then use unroasted almonds for the half cup. Their flavor will disappear behind the oilier, richer hickory nuts.\n\nTHE TORTE\n\n**1\u00bd cups hickory nuts or 1 cup hickory nuts plus \u00bd cup almonds**\n\n**\u00bd cup all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**6 eggs, separated**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon cream of tartar**\n\n**1 cup sugar**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled**\n\n**finely chopped hickory nuts plus finely ground espresso for garnish**\n\nTHE ESPRESSO WHIPPED CREAM\n\n**1 cup heavy cream**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon finely ground espresso coffee beans or 2 tablespoons cold brewed espresso**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**2 teaspoons sugar**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 325\u00b0F. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan. Toast the hickory nuts in the oven just until you can smell them, about 7 minutes. Grind them with the unroasted almonds in a hand-cranked grater. This takes longer than a food processor but yields a delicate powder, which results in a lighter cake. Mix with the flour and half the salt and set aside.\n\n2. Beat the egg whites with the remaining salt and the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks. Gradually add \u00bd cup of the sugar and continue beating until they crest into stiff peaks. Scrape them into a large bowl. Add the yolks to the mixing bowl and beat on high speed with the remaining sugar until thick and pale. Add the vanilla.\n\n3. Pour the egg yolks over the whites and a quarter of the nuts. Fold partially, then add another quarter of the nuts and fold partially again. Continue until all the nuts are fully incorporated, then fold in the butter. Take care not to overmix and deflate the whites. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, even the surface, and bake in the center of the oven until browned and slightly pulling away from the sides, about 1 hour. Cool, then remove the rim.\n\n4. Whip the cream with the remaining ingredients until it forms soft, billowy peaks to spoon along each slice of cake. Alternatively, whip it a little stiffer then smooth it over the top and down the sides of the torte. Garnish with finely chopped hickory nuts and a light dusting of espresso.\n\nHAZELNUT TORTE: Substitute hazelnuts for the hickory nuts in the cake. You can also use the hazelnut meal available from Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards in Washington. It is a by-product of their oil production, very fine and very flavorful. Reduce the flour to \u00bc cup.\n\nTORTE WITH APRICOT FILLING AND CHOCOLATE: Slice the cool cake in half and spread \u00bd cup Apricot-Lavender Refrigerator Jam, over the bottom layer. Cover with the second layer. Melt 3 ounces semisweet chocolate with 2 tablespoons unsalted butter over hot water, then pour it over the top layer and smooth it out with a spatula.\n\nHazelnut Crisps | MAKES 2 DOZEN\n\nFragile, crisp, and very good, these are perfect just as they are, but you can also drizzle them with melted chocolate.\n\n**1 cup toasted hazelnuts**\n\n**1 tablespoon granulated sugar**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00bd cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**1\u00bc cups all-purpose flour**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Grind the hazelnuts in a food processor with the granulated sugar until fine, but leave a few chunks scattered throughout.\n\n2. Cream the butter and brown sugar with the salt until light and fluffy, then add the vanilla and egg yolk. Stir in the hazelnuts and the flour.\n\n3. Roughly shape the dough into a log, wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap, then run the dough through your thumb and forefinger to force it into a log about 1\u00bd inches in diameter. Keep it round or square the sides. Refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably longer.\n\n4. Cut the log into \u00bc- to \u2153-inch-thick slices and place on ungreased sheet pans, leaving at least 2 inches between them. Bake until lightly browned on top, about 15 minutes. Cool on racks and store in a tightly covered container, high on a shelf unless you want to see them disappear.\n\n**A DIFFERENTHAZELNUT BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON**\n\nFor several months now I've had three hazelnuts (also known as filberts) sitting on my desk. One is the usual-looking round hazelnut, one is the same shape only a lot larger, and the most interesting is the third, which is long rather than round, somewhat like an acorn. The first one I'd recognize anywhere, for it's the variety that's most common, the Barcelona. The second would surprise me by its sheer size if I didn't know it was an Ennis, which runs to XL. And I wouldn't even have guessed that the third was a hazelnut. But it is, and its name is Du Chilly.\n\nI found this wonderful nut at the Bellingham, Washington, farmers' market. At the Holmquists' stand I wondered, What are these long nuts? A kind of almond? The young man who had his hands full selling bags of roasted hazelnuts dipped in Belgian chocolate explained that these were a special variety that his family grew. He was too busy to talk, but he said that we could visit the farm.\n\nThe next day Patrick and I drove up to the Canadian border. We met with the young man's uncle in the drying room, where huge vats of hazelnuts were gradually losing their moisture to 105-degree heat. We shouted at each other over the fans for a half hour, then escaped to the coolness and calm of the orchard. Long, even rows of shrubby hazelnut trees led off in all directions, a beautiful sight to view, even in the rain.\n\nThe Holmquists attribute much of their success to the Du Chilly hazelnut, which lacks the bitterness that is so often detected in the hazelnut skins. The difference was clearly detectable in side-by-side tastings of the three varieties. I have since cooked my way through a few pounds of Du Chillys and have never felt compelled to get rid of all of the skins before using them. In fact the skins tend to stay attached to the nuts, even after roasting.\n\nSome of the Holmquists' nuts are made into a light but aromatic oil. It doesn't have the heft that oils made from roasted nuts do, but it does have the flavor. Its delicacy makes it quite nice to spoon over salads of pears, persimmons, and fennel or to drizzle into an artichoke soup. It's a lovely oil, and so is its by-product, a dark hazelnut meal. Nearly as fine as a flour and with the rich aroma of hazelnuts, this meal is perfect to use in a hazelnut torte or to add to tart crusts, crumbles, and crisp toppings.\n\nA FALL MENU WITH A HAZELNUT THEME\n\nFall Fruit Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette, using hazelnuts and hazelnut oil\n\nArtichokes and Jerusalem Artichokes Braised with Black Lentils, seasoned with hazelnut oil and served with roast duck or wild rice\n\nPear-Hazelnut Torte\n\nChocolate-Flecked Hazelnut Rusks | MAKES 40 RUSKS\n\nThe dough will not taste sweet enough, but when the rusks have gone through their second baking, I think you'll find the sweetness is just right.\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature**\n\n**\u00be cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\n**2 eggs**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**2 teaspoons vanilla extract**\n\n**\u00bd cup sour cream or cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche**\n\n**4 cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**1 cup chopped roasted hazelnuts**\n\n**1 cup chopped semisweet chocolate, such as Scharffen Berger**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 325\u00b0F. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the eggs and egg yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition. Next add the vanilla and sour cream and beat well.\n\n2. Combine 1 cup of the flour with the salt and baking soda and add it to the batter. Add the remaining flour in 1-cup increments until the dough is stiff, then stir in the hazelnuts and chocolate. You may have to incorporate the last of the flour, nuts, and chocolate by hand.\n\n3. Divide the dough into 6 pieces and roll into logs about 1\u00bd inches across. Set on the sheet pans and bake until golden brown, about 40 minutes. Remove and slice each log diagonally about \u00bd inch thick. Place the pieces cut side down on the sheet pans and return them to the oven for another 30 minutes or until lightly browned. These will keep well for weeks, either in an airtight container or in the freezer.\n\nRustic Onion Tart with Market Cheese and Walnuts | MAKES 1 LARGE PAN PIZZA OR TWO 12-INCH PIZZAS\n\nThe tangier the better when it comes to the cheese, given the sweetness of the onions. The goat blue or goat's milk Brie from our market are both delicious here. Your market may have another interesting cheese. The inclusion of fresh walnuts makes this a pizza for early fall. Make the dough first so that it will be ready when the onions are.\n\n**Pizza Dough**\n\n**3 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**3 pounds onions, thinly sliced**\n\n**several thyme sprigs, leaves plucked and chopped**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 ounces local blue or Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled**\n\n**4 walnuts, shelled and chopped**\n\n**1 large handful small arugula leaves**\n\n1. Make the pizza dough. While it's rising, heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onions and two thirds of the thyme and toss to coat the onions with the oil. Cover and cook until lightly colored, stirring occasionally so they cook evenly, 30 to 40 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Twenty minutes before it's time to bake the tart, preheat the oven to 450\u00b0F. Roll the dough into a thin rectangle just large enough to fill a 12\u00d716-inch sheet pan or two 12-inch round pans. Cover it with the onions and bake for 12 minutes. Add the cheese and walnuts, and return the tart to the oven until the crust is crisp and the cheese is melted, about 10 minutes more. Remove, add the remaining thyme, and cover with the arugula. Cut into squares and serve.\n\nCreamy Walnut Sauce | MAKES ABOUT \u00bd CUP\n\nCombine walnuts with roasted walnut oil, and you'll have a silky rich sauce for foods such as giant heirloom beans, grilled eggplant and fennel, poached chicken, and fresh egg noodles. Make this just before serving since the walnut skins, even if you've removed most of them, will turn the sauce slightly pink.\n\n**1 slice sturdy white bread, crust removed**\n\n**2 garlic cloves**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**\u00bd cup freshly cracked walnuts**\n\n**\u00bc cup walnut oil**\n\n**2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice**\n\n**boiling water as needed (about 1 cup)**\n\n1. Soak the bread in warm water until it's soft, then squeeze dry. Pound the garlic with \u00bd teaspoon salt in a mortar until smooth.\n\n2. Using a food processor, grind the walnuts until smooth, then add the soaked bread, oil, and enough water to bring it to the consistency of thick cream.\n\n3. Stir in the garlic, add lemon juice to taste, and season with pepper. The dressing will thicken as it sits. You can thin it by stirring in boiling water.\n\nRustic Almond Truffles with Fruit Centers | MAKES ABOUT THIRTY 1-INCH BALLS\n\nThese truffles get better with time, but make sure they're well wrapped so that they don't dry out.\n\n**1\u00bd cups whole almonds, blanched**\n\n**1 cup sugar, plus extra for rolling**\n\n**\u00bc cup unsweetened cocoa powder**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**1 or 2 drops orange oil or 1 tablespoon rum**\n\n**30 pitted dried cherries or 30 small pieces candied citrus peel**\n\n1. Pulse the almonds with the sugar and cocoa in a food processor until the almonds are very finely ground. Transfer to a bowl and knead briefly, adding the almond extract and orange oil. Add water by teaspoons to make a stiff dough.\n\n2. Scatter sugar over your counter, shape the dough into a disk, then coat with the sugar on both sides. (At this point you can wrap up the dough and refrigerate it until ready to use.)\n\n3. Roll the dough into logs about an inch across, then slice into 1-inch pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Insert a dried cherry or piece of candied citrus into the center of each. Roll the balls in the sugar and serve in paper candy cups.\n\nDate, Dried Cherry, and Chocolate Nut Torte | MAKES ONE 9-INCH CAKE, SERVING 10 TO 12\n\nThis cake keeps so well that you can make it at least 3 days ahead. It's made with dates from the desert, dried cherries, pecans or walnuts, and chocolate. Serve it plain or garnished with softly whipped cream, Candied Kumquats, and leaves from the kumquats or mint leaves. I like to use Deglet Noor and Black Sphinx dates, which retain their shape and color, along with a few Medjools, which disappear into sweet, soft pockets.\n\n**1 cup Deglet Noor dates, pitted and snipped into 4 or 5 pieces each**\n\n**\u00bd cup Black Sphinx or Medjool dates**\n\n**1 cup dried cherries**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**1 cup boiling water**\n\n**\u00bc cup brandy**\n\n**1\u2153 cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00be cup (1\u00bd sticks) unsalted butter, softened**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**2 large eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**1 teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**1 teaspoon grated orange or tangerine zest**\n\n**6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped**\n\n**\u00be cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts**\n\n**Brandy or orange liqueur, optional**\n\n1. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Put the dates and cherries in a bowl with the baking soda. Pour the boiling water and brandy over them and mix together. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, and salt.\n\n2. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and smooth, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until well blended. Add the vanilla and orange zest. Add half the flour mixture and mix on low speed until combined. Add the date mixture, including the liquid. When combined, add the remaining flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate and nuts.\n\n3. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake in the center of the oven until the top is firm, slightly rounded, and cracked, about 55 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes in the pan on a rack, then run a knife around the sides to loosen the cake and remove the side. When cool, transfer the torte to a cake plate.\n\n4. Serve with softly whipped cream flavored with brandy or orange liqueur. Or pipe rosettes of stiffer cream along the rim of the cake and place sections of Candied Kumquats and leaves between them.\n\n**FRESH DATES ON THE STEM; GREENPISTACHIOS IN THEIR HUSKS**\n\nHollywood, Torrance, and San Francisco are a few of the markets where I've encountered this very seasonal treat, at least in the United States. You can find the same round, golden dates on their stems at markets all over the Mediterranean. Their moment is brief, spanning just a few weeks in late September and early October, when the date harvest is taking place in Palm Desert. At the same time, pistachio nuts are being harvested in their green stage, before they're completely dried. Both are moist and delicate and clearly of the moment only. A plate of fresh dates and green pistachio nuts make a very special fall dessert.\n\nThe dates are picked in the \"rutab\" stage, when they're ripe enough to no longer be astringent, but not so much that they've begun to cure. _Rutab_ means \"wet\" in Arabic, and these dates are practically juicy. They burst in your mouth the way a liqueur-filled chocolate does, only they're far better. You can eat them when they're golden or tannish, but my own preference is to wait until these little morsels of sugar have begun to turn brown, then to eat them chilled, with a goat's or sheep's milk cheese\u2014and a bowl of green pistachio nuts.\n\nThe green pistachio nuts are still in their husks, which are large and soft. When absolutely fresh, they are also gorgeous, blushed with pink and green. You peel off the husks, then open the cream-colored shell just as you would normally. The shells are almost soft and the nut meats are moist, with just a bit of a squeaky crunch and a delicate flavor that is reminiscent of pine. They are sold in net bags that hold about 3 pounds, which suggests feasting to me since they don't last. There's just a small window of time when green pistachios are available, so if you find some at your farmers' market, buy them as soon as you see them, and eat them sooner rather than later. Within days they'll lose their luster as the husks begin to shrivel and dry. But until then they're enchanting. Once this moment has passed, both the dates and nuts begin to dry on their trees, becoming, eventually, the nuts and fruits we're accustomed to seeing.\n\nFarmers' markets are also where you can find, on occasion, such rarities as green walnuts and almonds, which are at the stage equivalent to that of the green pistachio nuts. As with the pistachios, the meats are soft and delicate. Both are a pleasure just to eat, and the green walnuts can be used to make the walnut liqueur called _nocino._\n\nDate and Orange Salad with Feta Cheese and Pistachios | SERVES 4\n\nDeglet Noors are better known, but Medjools are among the most luscious of the moist eating dates, along with Empress and Honey dates. There are a lot of lively and contrasting elements in this salad\u2014the cool sweetness of the orange, the salty cheese, the pickled onions, the lushness of the dates, and the crunch of pistachios.\n\n**finely grated zest of 1 orange**\n\n**\u00bd cup thinly sliced red onion**\n\n**3 tablespoons white wine vinegar**\n\n**6 large moist dates, such as Medjools**\n\n**4 navel or blood oranges**\n\n**1 head butter lettuce, trimmed**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon paprika**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon ground cumin**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon ground coriander**\n\n**\u00bc cup chopped cilantro**\n\n**\u00bc cup olive oil**\n\n**\u00bc cup roasted pistachio nuts or shelled green pistachios**\n\n**2 ounces feta cheese, thinly sliced freshly ground pepper**\n\n1. Toss the orange zest and onion with the vinegar and refrigerate while you assemble the remaining ingredients.\n\n2. If the dates are hard, cover them with a hot damp towel for 5 minutes or longer, as needed, to soften. Remove the stones and quarter the dates lengthwise.\n\n3. Section the oranges, working over a bowl to catch the juice. Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.\n\n4. To make the vinaigrette, drain the vinegar from the onion into a measuring cup and add enough orange juice to make \u00bc cup. (The rest of the juice is for the cook.) Stir in the salt, spices, cilantro, and oil. Taste for balance and add more vinegar if you think it needs to be sharper.\n\n5. Toss the lettuce with the orange sections, onions, dates, pistachios, and dressing. Mound the salad on a platter, scatter the cheese over the top, season with pepper, and serve.\n\nAdult Prune Whip | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nThis old-fashioned dessert is upgraded to adult tastes. The prunes are simmered in red wine, then folded into whipped cream with a hint of tangerine and chopped bittersweet chocolate.\n\n**2 cups (\u00be pound) pitted prunes**\n\n**grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 tangerine**\n\n**2 cups Zinfandel or Merlot**\n\n**\u00bc cup light-bodied honey, such as orange or clover**\n\n**1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick**\n\n**1 cup whipping cream**\n\n**\u00bd cup chopped bittersweet chocolate**\n\n**ground cinnamon**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 350\u00b0F. Place the prunes in a baking dish with the lemon zest, wine, honey, and cinnamon stick. Cover with foil and bake until they're swollen and tender, about 30 minutes. Let stand, covered, until cooled, while the prunes continue to absorb the wine, then remove the cinnamon stick and coarsely puree in a food processor with any residual juices.\n\n2. Whip the cream until fairly stiff. Fold in the prunes along with the tangerine zest and chocolate, leaving the mix a little streaky. Spoon the prune whip into parfait glasses; add a dash of cinnamon and serve.\n\n_Upside-Down Cake with Mixed Dried Fruits_\n\nUpside-Down Cake with Mixed Dried Fruits | SERVES 8\n\nGeri Bogdanich, whose family specializes in fruits and nuts, sells bags of succulent mixed dried stone fruits at various markets in California. The Peacock family sells gorgeous, unsulphured Red Flame raisins that dry to sundry shades of red and gold to nearly black. Most fruit growers are likely to add dried fruits to fresh as a way of expanding their markets. Drying also allows fruit farmers to take advantage of bumper crops too large to sell fresh.\n\nThe dried apricots, nectarines, peaches, pears, plums, pluots, and prunes you'll find at farmers' markets are translucent jewels of the winter pantry. Mixed dried fruits, from the largest to the smallest, cook into stunning compotes. Drained of their juices, they can be used to make the prettiest upside-down cakes. A handful of dried cherries, Red Flame raisins, or cranberries and blueberries from northern and eastern markets perfectly fills the niches left between the larger fruits. This cake is delicious served with Bitter Almond Ice Cream.\n\nTHE FRUIT AND THE TOPPING\n\n**2\u2153 cups dried fruits (see headnote)**\n\n**3 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00be cup light brown sugar, packed**\n\n1. Put all the fruit in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Simmer, partially covered, until the fruit is plump and soft, about 30 minutes. Drain and set aside.\n\n2. Melt the butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, then whisk in the sugar. When it has softened, turn off the heat and allow the syrup to settle evenly over the bottom. Arrange the fruits attractively over the top, the cut sides facing up. If some pieces are very large, you might cut them into halves or quarters so that the cake will be easy to slice.\n\nTHE CAKE\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00be cup sugar**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons vanilla extract**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon almond extract**\n\n**2 large eggs, at room temperature**\n\n**1 cup buttermilk**\n\n**1\u00be cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking soda**\n\n**1 teaspoon baking powder**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n1. Preheat the oven to 375\u00b0F. Beat the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy, then add the flavorings and the eggs, one at a time, and beat until thoroughly smooth. Scrape down the bowl between additions, then add the buttermilk.\n\n2. In another bowl, sift or whisk the dry ingredients together so that they are combined evenly. With the mixer on low, add them to the batter in 3 or 4 separate additions.\n\n3. Spoon the batter over the fruit, then bake in the center of the oven until the cake is golden and starting to pull away from the sides, about 35 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, then place a serving plate over the skillet, grasp both together, and flip them over. Remove the skillet. Serve while still a bit warm or when fully cooled.\n\nChicken Thighs Braised with Dried Fruits, Shallots, and Bay | SERVES 4\n\nDried figs, apricots, pluots, dates, and raisins are all good fruits to use with moist chicken thighs. Here, the jeweled colors and tartness of dried pluots, a plum-apricot cross, balance the sweetness and soft texture of the dates.\n\n**8 plump chicken thighs**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**3 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**10 bay leaves**\n\n**4 large shallots, cut into \u00bc-inch rounds**\n\n**\u2154 cup red wine**\n\n**3 tablespoons aged red wine vinegar**\n\n**4 dates, halved**\n\n**8 dried apricots, plums, or pluots, halved or quartered**\n\n1. Trim the fat from the chicken and remove the skins if you wish. Rinse and pat them dry. Season well with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Place a Dutch oven or wide skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil and, when hot, add the chicken and the bay leaves. Cook until browned, 7 to 10 minutes per side. Add \u00bd cup water, reduce the heat to low, and cover the pan. Cook for 30 minutes for small thighs, up to 45 minutes for larger ones.\n\n3. Transfer the chicken thighs to a platter. Reserve any juices.\n\n4. Return the pan to the stove and turn the heat to medium-high. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the pan along with the shallots. Cook, stirring frequently, until they begin to soften and color a little, about 2 minutes, then add the wine and vinegar. Scrape the pot to bring up the delicious dark bits, then return the chicken to the pan, add the fruit, and return the reserved liquid. Simmer for 12 to 15 minutes. Serve with rice, couscous, or egg noodles.\n\nChicken Braised in Red Wine Vinegar | SERVES 4 TO 6\n\nWhen I found Mr. Sciabica's aged red wine vinegar at the Modesto farmers' market, I didn't hesitate to buy a gallon. A gallon may seem like a lot, but this recipe uses an entire cup, and you may find this is a recipe you'll want to make often\u2014it's a great winter dish. If you can make it at least a few hours ahead of time\u2014even a day\u2014the vinegar and tomato settle into a harmonious companionship. Delicious with egg noodles or polenta.\n\n**1 large chicken, cut up, back and neck reserved**\n\n**1 slice onion**\n\n**2 bay leaves**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons olive oil**\n\n**1 cup aged red wine vinegar**\n\n**1\u00bd tablespoons honey**\n\n**1\u00bd cupsFresh Tomato Sauce, or canned crushed tomatoes**\n\n**2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**2 tablespoons chopped parsley**\n\n1. Put the chicken back and neck in a saucepan and add water to cover, the onion, and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer to make a little stock while you prepare the dish. Rinse the chicken, pat dry, and season well with salt and pepper.\n\n2. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and brown, turning the pieces so that both sides color well. Transfer the chicken to a plate and pour off the fat.\n\n3. Return the pan to the heat and gradually pour in the vinegar. Scrape the bottom, then add the other bay leaf and the honey. Return the chicken to the pot and simmer until the vinegar has reduced enough that there are fine bubbles pebbling the surface, about 20 minutes. Turn the chicken once or twice as it's cooking.\n\n4. Strain the stock and measure 1 cup. Add it to the pan with the tomato sauce, then lower the heat to a simmer, cover the pan, and cook until the chicken is tender, about 25 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a platter and whisk the butter into the simmering sauce. Taste for salt. Pour the sauce over the chicken or return the chicken to the pot and serve, the parsley scattered over the top.\n\n**VALUE-ADDED FOODS: THE BEST HOPE FOR THE FAMILY FARM**\n\nRusty Hall is so well known for the high quality of his dry-farmed almonds that he has been profiled in _Gourmet._ \"But I could never make it on my almonds alone,\" Rusty tells me, \"so we make brittle, almond butter, and other products.\" Doing so allows him to use what would be culls, the broken pieces that won't sell at the market, which are perfectly fine for the brittle and butters. \"Customers buy some brittle, take it home and eat it, then call and order more.\"\n\nRusty may sell his almond brittle all over the world, but the farmers' market is where customers encounter a product for the first time. A farmer who can sell through the mail as well as at the market can begin to work toward having year-round income. Maintaining any kind of cash flow is a big problem for seasonal farmers, which is why, like poets and painters, so many of our small family farmers have second jobs.\n\n\"Having value-added foods,\" says apple grower Kathy Reid, \"enables us to extend our season. We can show up at the market with our apple butter long before our apples are ready. By the time the apples come on, people know who we are.\" Like Rusty, having value-added products gives Kathy a way to use those fruits that aren't perfect enough to sell fresh at the market. The hole made in an apple by a bird's beak, a scar made by hail, or checkering on the skin of a date is a blemish that can disqualify fruits and vegetables for many customers, even though the food is far from ruined.\n\nHaving products to sell not only puts the farmer in the market early in the season but puts the market itself at the beginning of the distribution chain, instead of at the end of it. \"Farmers arrive with full trucks and, if all goes well, go home with empty ones,\" says Rusty. \"So I try to take advantage of the situation to buy the foods I need for my production, such as honey, from other vendors at the market.\" His truck goes home full, and he supports his fellow farmers.\n\nAll those apple butters, jams and jellies, almond brittle, and other food products have to be produced in certified kitchens, a requirement that can present a serious financial obstacle to many farmers. But there are various creative ways to satisfy the state. \"You know, another endangered business is the small, family-owned caf\u00e9,\" Rusty points out, something I've noticed, too, as I've crisscrossed the country by car. \"So instead of building our own kitchen, we've teamed up with a caf\u00e9 that we can use during their slow hours. That way, we both benefit.\"\n\nValue-added products help make a market more diverse and dynamic, and they also give tourists, who increasingly are visiting farmers' markets when they travel, something they can carry home\u2014a bag of almonds, a jar of goat's milk caramel, a cheese, some special dried fruits, or preserves. They can enjoy them later, a souvenir of a place they enjoyed being for a morning, or give them to friends\u2014gifts from places they've been. These are gestures that help return America to a place of regional distinctions, instead of a place of dreary sameness. And they help the farmer stay in business.\n\n\"Small family farming will survive only if there's hope for young farmers.\" Rusty is fervent about this. \"Having something to sell\u2014other than perishable produce\u2014is essential for creating farm income. Adding value to what you grow brings what would be off-farm income back to the farm, and it gets the farm family out of the dirt-working conditions into other skills. Value added is the last best hope for the family farm.\"\n\nHoney Ice Cream | MAKES ABOUT 3\u00bd CUPS\n\nI find I like honey best when it's really featured, as it is in this ice cream, so there's no vanilla or spice to interfere with its flavor. But all kinds of fruits are wonderful served alongside, such as ripe figs, white peaches and nectarines, the plum compote, fresh berries, or the Warm Berry Compote. If your market has milk, cream, and eggs as well as honey, this ice cream will brim with over-the-top goodness.\n\n**1\u00bd cups whole milk**\n\n**\u2154 cup honey, your favorite**\n\n**4 egg yolks**\n\n**pinch sea salt**\n\n**1 cup cream**\n\n1. Heat the milk with the honey until nearly boiling, then turn off the heat. Stir to make sure the honey has dissolved.\n\n2. Beat the egg yolks with the salt vigorously for 30 seconds, then slowly whisk in the hot milk and honey. Scrape everything back into the pot in which the milk was heated. Rinse out the bowl, place a strainer over it, and set it near the stove.\n\n3. Cook the eggs and milk over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon, after several minutes. Don't let it boil, or the eggs will curdle. As soon as it has thickened, pour the custard through the strainer. Stir in the cream and refrigerate until cold. Freeze according to the instructions of your ice cream maker.\n\nHONEY-NUT SUNDAE: Drizzle warm honey over the ice cream and top with roasted nuts\u2014almonds, hickory nuts, pecans, or chopped hazelnuts.\n\nRice Pudding with Honey Meringues | SERVES 6 TO 8\n\nA creamy, stove-top rice pudding is an excellent showcase for honey, maple syrup, and molasses. To me it's sweet enough with just the honey, but one tester suggested that might be a bit austere for others. Add the sugar if you wish. If your honey is very dense or crystallized, return it to its liquid state by heating the jar in a pan of simmering water. I especially like this made with lavender honey, then garnished with lavender blossoms.\n\n**1 cup Arborio or other short-grain rice**\n\n**3 cups whole milk or 2 percent milk**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**2 to 4 tablespoons sugar, optional**\n\n**1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick**\n\n**1 tablespoon grated orange zest**\n\n**1 vanilla bean, slit in half lengthwise**\n\n**2 eggs, separated**\n\n**\u00bd cup honey or maple syrup ground cinnamon**\n\n1. Simmer the rice in 2\u00bd cups water for 15 minutes. Add the milk, salt, sugar to taste if using, cinnamon stick, zest, and vanilla bean. Bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes, by which time most of the milk will be absorbed. Remove the vanilla bean, scrape the seeds into the pudding, and stir in the egg yolks.\n\n2. Whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Pour in the honey with the machine on medium speed, then raise the speed to high and whisk until a creamy, dense meringue is formed. Fold the meringue into the hot rice until it's broken up into little clouds. Serve with a dusting of cinnamon and extra honey drizzled over the top.\n\nRoasted Chestnuts\n\nThe American chestnut is back! Fans should be happy to know that a few farmers around the country are growing them. But we should also be happy, because buying fresh chestnuts eliminates the inevitable disappointment that comes from buying expensive, poor-quality imports. In fairness, they may not have started out as poor-quality nuts, but poor storage makes them end up that way.\n\n\"A chestnut is not a true nut,\" explained Tim Broughton, a grower of chestnuts in Auburn, California. On a cold January morning we stood close to the burning piles of chestnut leaves in his orchard. Every so often a stray chestnut would explode, and Tim would fish it out of the fire, peel it, and offer it to me. They were shockingly good. \"Unlike nuts,\" he continued, \"chestnuts should not be kept in a dry atmosphere. In a store, they should be kept right next to the lettuce and sprayed just as often. And at home,\" Tim advises, \"wrap them in a damp towel, then put them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. This way they'll stay moist and soft inside.\" This one piece of information makes all the difference between ending up with a nutmeat that's moist and succulent and one that's desiccated.\n\nOn any Sunday winter morning, Tim can be found at Sacramento's W Street market, tossing his chestnuts in a big, perforated pan. Back and forth they slide over the flames of his gas burner. The smoky smell entices the customers. They pop open and he passes them around. Then the chestnuts fly out of the bins into shopping bags. Once you've got the chestnuts, you need a method. Here's Tim's.\n\n1. Cut an X on one side of the chestnut so it won't explode once it heats up. Put \u00bc cup water in a small saucepan and as many chestnuts as desired. Bring to a boil, then cover and steam for approximately 3 minutes.\n\n2. Put the steamed chestnuts in an _old_ pan with a screen (or a perforated woklike pan) and heat it over a gas or wood fire until the chestnuts are blackened. This gives them a roasted flavor and will make your house smell good.\n\n3. Remove the shell and the skin while the chestnuts are still hot. If you wait too long, the skin will start to stick to the meat, making it very hard to peel. If you have any problem peeling the chestnuts, you can cut them in half and scoop them out with a spoon or reheat them and try again.\n\n**TWO WINTER MARKETS NOT IN CALIFORNIA**\n\nFlorida, Arizona, California, and Texas are obvious places to find winter markets. But Maine? There are two farmers who are growing beautiful organic produce on what I've heard referred to as \"the back side of the season,\" which they sell in local stores.\n\nWhen October 1 arrives and those farmers who worked hard all summer are cleaning up and looking forward to letting down for the winter, Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch are just starting their six-month season. These two are dedicated winter farmers, and their stellar produce is every bit as delicious and fetching as summer produce. And it's in great demand. They don't have asparagus and artichokes in March like every supermarket, but it's amazing what they do have. \"And,\" Eliot says, \"we're just scratching the surface of what we plan to do next year.\"\n\nThey have greens: turnip, arugula, spinach, chard, m\u00e2che, watercress, Belgian endive. And they have roots: turnips, beets, _scorzonera_ (a black-skinned oyster plant), parsley root, and scallions. Slides I've seen of their winter harvest from other years depict luscious red radishes, carrots, and celery root. Their carrots are apparently so sweet that kids in town carry on active lunchtime trading for them. I've eaten one of Eliot's winter-harvested parsnips, and it was, hands down, one of the best vegetables I've eaten, ever.\n\nEven though their list is relatively small, it suggests a lot of possibilities in the kitchen. I can see a beet salad with m\u00e2che or arugula (both are excellent with beets); a fortifying winter soup made with the chard, turnip greens, radish greens, scallions, and that clean-tasting parsley root; while the _scorzonera_ would make a comforting chowder. The turnips might be cooked, tossed with butter, and served on a bed of wilted turnip greens. Or you could use all the roots to make a vegetable ragout or borscht. A mound of watercress showered with slivered endive makes a beautiful winter salad. The possibilities are less limiting than we might have thought at first.\n\nEliot likes to say that you're eating locally when you can eat from your landscape. The average distance supermarket produce travels is fifteen hundred miles, \"but we sell to stores and restaurants in a fifteen-mile radius of our farm,\" Eliot says. \"It's our way of guaranteeing that it is fresh.\" Barbara and Eliot's mottoes are \"From field to shelf in under twelve\" and \"From farm to store in twenty-four.\" \"It depends on whether we're delivering the same day or the next,\" Eliot explains.\n\nAs hard as it is to imagine winter gardening in Maine, it might be even harder to imagine a thriving winter market in Chicago with its winter storms and arctic winds. But there is one, a brave new market started two years ago by cookbook author Abby Mandel, with Sara Stegner, chef of the Ritz Carlton, and other Chicago chefs (members of the Chefs' Collaborative) who wanted to see a real farmers' market in their city. \"This has been the most difficult and most rewarding project I've ever undertaken\" is how Abby describes the experience, a sentiment firmly echoed by Sara.\n\nWhile their summer success is understandable, their willingness to continue into winter raises the questions of how and why. \"I just hated to lose that momentum,\" Abby says, \"plus we wanted to give Chicagoans a real taste of our true seasonality.\" And on one January day, this farmers' market had just what you might expect for winter\u2014food that's been cellared, coddled in greenhouses, baked, smoked, or otherwise preserved\u2014but much more variety than you might have expected.\n\nBaby lettuce and arugula were there along with heirloom potatoes, dried wild mushrooms, carrots, two kinds of beets, and honey. From nearby Wisconsin came several kinds of turnips and rutabagas, black radishes, red and yellow onions, winter squash, and those sturdy reliables, parsnips, celeriac, and burdock. Another Wisconsin farmer brought a German beer radish, garlic, and Jerusalem artichokes.\n\nThen there was the meat: venison, elk, veal, chicken, and rabbit. One farm offered bacon, smoked hams, pork chops, roasts, and smoked ham hocks. There were eggs for your breakfast and Michigan maple syrup for your pancakes. There were eight kinds of rustic hearth breads made with organic flour. Eleven kinds of cheeses showed up from, not surprisingly, Wisconsin. So, when you imagine all the different meals that could be made from this one market, you can see that even in winter it's possible to eat locally\u2014and well.\n\nAN ALL-VEGETABLE MEAL FOR WINTER\n\nRadish Sandwiches with Radish Butter\n\nGreen Herb Soup with Sorrel and Lovage\n\nPriest Stranglers (Strozzapreti) with Black Kale, Sage, and Potatoes\n\nGrated carrots, celery root, and beets with m\u00e2che and Shallot Vinaigrette\n\nDate, Dried Cherry, and Chocolate Nut Torte\n\nA Basic Vegetable Stock | MAKES ABOUT 6 CUPS\n\nIn previous books I've gone into vegetable stock making in great detail, so I won't do it again here. (See _The Greens Cookbook, The Savory Way,_ or _Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone._ ) Here is a basic approach to making a light vegetable stock that can be made while you're gathering other ingredients for your dish.\n\n**1 onion and\/or 1 to 2 cups leeks trimmings (roots and inner leaves)**\n\n**2 carrots**\n\n**2 celery ribs with leaves**\n\n**2 bay leaves**\n\n**8 parsley stems**\n\n**a few thyme sprigs or pinches leaves**\n\n**4 garlic cloves**\n\n**1\u00bd teaspoons sea salt**\n\n1. Chop everything roughly into large, bite-sized pieces. In addition to the basic ingredients, include clean trimmings from the vegetables you're using in your soup, risotto, or whatever you're making, such as celery root skins, mushrooms stems, squash seeds, corncobs, zucchini ends, tomato cores, chard stems, or bell pepper cores. (Avoid strong, aggressive vegetables such as mustard greens, turnips, and parsnips.) Add these trimmings to the stock as you do your cutting and slicing. If the recipe calls for an herb, add a few sprigs to the stock as well. The more vegetable matter you use, the more flavor.\n\n2. For a light stock, bring the vegetables, 2 quarts cold water, and the salt to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 25 to 40 minutes. For a slightly more robust stock, saut\u00e9 the vegetables in a tablespoon of olive or vegetable oil first to brown them, which gives color as well as flavor to the stock, then add the water and salt. When the stock is done, strain it immediately. If you want to reduce it further, do so after straining.\n\nPizza Dough | MAKES TWO 12-INCH ROUND PIZZAS OR ONE 12 X 16-INCH PIZZA\n\n**1\u00bc cups warm water**\n\n**1 scant tablespoon active dry yeast**\n\n**pinch sugar**\n\n**3 cups all-purpose flour, or more as needed**\n\n**1 teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 tablespoon olive oil**\n\n1. Put the warm water in a mixing bowl and stir in the yeast, sugar, and 1 cup of the flour. Set aside until foamy, 20 to 30 minutes. Lightly oil a clean bowl for the dough.\n\n2. Stir in the salt and oil, then start stirring in the flour until the dough is fairly stiff. When too stiff to stir, turn it out onto a lightly floured counter and knead until the dough is smooth and shiny, about 10 minutes. Add more flour as needed. Put the dough in the oiled bowl, turn once to coat, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside to rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour.\n\n3. For pizzas, divide into 2 or 4 pieces, shape loosely into balls, then roll out into thin circles. For one large rustic tart, roll into a large thin rectangle and bake it on a sheet pan.\n\nGalette Pastry | MAKES 1 LARGE RUSTIC TART\n\n**1\u00bd cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bc teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**2 teaspoons sugar**\n\n**\u00bd cup plus 2 tablespoons (1\u00bc sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract**\n\n**\u2153 cup ice water, plus extra, if needed**\n\nMix the flour, salt, and sugar together in a bowl. Cut in the butter by hand or use a mixer with the paddle attachment, leaving some of the butter in large pea-size chunks. Sprinkle the vanilla over the top, then the ice water by tablespoonfuls, and lightly work it with the flour mixture until you can bring the dough together into a ball. Gently press the dough into a disk, slip it into a clean plastic bag, and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes before rolling it out.\n\nPie Dough | MAKES ENOUGH FOR TWO 9-INCH PIES, ONE 10-INCH PIE WITH DOUBLE OR LATTICE CRUST, OR 1 LARGE GALETTE\n\nAfter watching baker Greg Patent make pie dough for his huckleberry pie in a food processor, I'm convinced it's the way to go. If you don't want your dough enriched with egg yolk, leave it out and replace it with water.\n\n**2\u00bc cups all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**\u00be cup (1\u00bd sticks) plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vinegar**\n\n**1 egg yolk**\n\n**scant \u00bd cup ice water**\n\n1. Place the flour in a food processor with the salt and pulse. Cut the butter into 1-inch chunks and add them to the flour. Pulse 4 to 6 times to break them up.\n\n2. Combine the vinegar and egg yolk in a measuring cup and add enough ice water to bring the volume up to \u00bd cup. (You may not need to use all of the liquid, unless your flour is very dry.) While pulsing, add the liquid in a steady stream until the flour looks crumbly and damp. Between 25 and 30 pulses should be enough. Don't let the dough form a ball. The crumbs should adhere when you gather them in your hand. If not, add a few more drops of ice water.\n\n3. Turn out the dough and divide it into 2 pieces, one slightly larger than the other. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and press it into a disk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour before rolling.\n\n4. Roll the larger piece out first and drape it into your pie plate. Add the filling.\n\n5. Roll out the second piece of dough. If you intend to have a solid crust top, roll the dough into a circle that will just fit over the filling, then roll the outer edge of dough over the top and crimp it firmly. If making a lattice crust, roll it out somewhat larger and then cut into strips of whatever width appeals to you. Lay half the strips over the filling in one direction; the rest in the other direction. Press the ends into the edge, then roll over the excess dough from the first piece and crimp.\n\nTart Shell | MAKES ONE 9-INCH TART\n\n**1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour**\n\n**\u215b teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**1 teaspoon sugar**\n\n**\u00bd cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, in chunks**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon vanilla extract mixed with 2 to 3 tablespoons ice water**\n\n1. Using a mixer with a paddle attachment or a food processor, blend the flour, salt, and sugar, then work in the butter until coarse crumbs are formed. Add the vanilla with just enough water for the dough to come together, then shape it into a disk. Slip it into a plastic bag and chill for 15 minutes.\n\n2. Roll the dough into a 10-inch circle and drape it over a 9-inch tart pan with a removable rim. Work the edges with your fingers so that the dough stands about \u00bc inch above the rim and is about \u00bc inch thick. Prick the bottom with a fork in 6 or 7 places, then freeze for 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 425\u00b0F. Save any scraps.\n\n3. Place the frozen tart shell on a sheet pan and bake until it's lightly colored, about 25 minutes. Check after 15 minutes and prick any swollen pockets of dough with the tip of a knife. When the tart comes out of the oven, mend any holes by carefully pressing in small pieces of the reserved scraps.\n\nSimple Syrup | MAKES 2 CUPS\n\nA clear syrup of sugar and water, simple syrup is useful to have on hand for sweetening fruit drinks, such as lemonade and _agua frescas._ The advantage of using syrup over sugar is that you needn't wait for sugar to dissolve to find out if it's sweet enough\u2014you'll know as soon as you stir it in, which means you can start with a little and work up to the right amount. It keeps indefinitely in the refrigerator.\n\nSimple syrup is also used to sweeten very thick fruit purees intended for sorbets, for it thins the purees while sweetening them.\n\n**2 cups water**\n\n**2 cups sugar**\n\nPut the water and the sugar in a clean pot and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved and the liquid is clear. Let it cool, then decant into a jar. Store in the cupboard or refrigerator.\n\nPeeling and Sectioning Citrus Fruit\n\nYou can use this method for any citrus fruit, from a lemon to a pummelo. Cut a slice off each of the polar ends so that the fruit will stand straight on the counter. Using a sharp knife and a sawing motion, work your way down the contours of the fruit. Be sure that you're cutting deeply enough to take off the white pith that lies just over the flesh. When done, trim the peel off the base.\n\nTo cut the peeled fruit into sections, hold it in your hand over a bowl. Using a sharp knife, cut between the membranes to release the segments. When done, squeeze what's left in your hand\u2014there's usually lots of juice in it\u2014over the segments.\n\nTrimming Artichokes\n\nWhether using large ones or the \"babies,\" remove several layers of the tough outer leaves by pulling them downward so that they snap off at the base. Stop when the inner leaves become a lighter yellowish green and have a tender appearance. Trim the end of the stem and slice off the top third of the artichoke. Smooth the rough areas around the base with a paring knife, removing any dark green parts. If the recipe calls for it, cut the trimmed artichoke into quarters, then remove the fuzzy chokes with a paring knife.\n\nSo-called baby artichokes are small because they grow in the shade of the leaves. They usually don't have a significant choke. Once trimmed, they can be cooked whole or sliced lengthwise.\n\nWhile it's commonly suggested that you rub the cut surfaces of the artichoke with a lemon to keep them from oxidizing, I usually don't bother. By the time the artichoke is cooked, its color will have evened out into a uniform dull green. If you've added enough lemon to keep the artichoke pale, it will also taste lemony.\n\nWhen working with artichokes, always use a stainless-steel knife and a stainless-steel or glass pot. Iron and aluminum, including aluminum foil, discolor artichokes.\n\nRoasting and Peeling Peppers\n\nChoose peppers with thick walls if you want to char the skins. Thin-walled peppers need to be watched very carefully and roasted only long enough to loosen the skins, not char them, or the flesh will be consumed along with the skin.\n\n_On the burner:_ Place whole peppers directly on a gas burner or gas or charcoal grill. Those with electric burners can use an _asador_ (or its equivalent), a small-mesh grill that sits right over the element. Roast the peppers until the skin becomes wrinkled and loose, turning them frequently with tongs. For peppers that will end up soft and slightly smoky, roast them until the skins are completely charred. Put the peppers in a bowl, put a plate on top, and set aside to steam for at least 15 minutes to loosen the skins.\n\n_In the oven:_ If you want to peel the peppers without cooking them too much, the oven is a better way to go: Cut off the tops of the peppers, then slice them in half lengthwise, remove the seeds and veins, and press down on each half to flatten. Brush the skins with oil, then set them skin side up on a sheet pan. Bake at 400\u00b0F or broil 5 or 6 inches under the heating element until the skins are wrinkled but not charred, 10 to 20 minutes. Remove and stack the peppers on top of each other to steam for 15 minutes. (Use any of the delicious juice that collects from the steaming peppers in the finished dish or use it in vinaigrette.)\n\nNext, slip off the skins with your hand or a paper towel. Don't worry about getting every little fleck of skin. Now they're ready to use.\n\nFresh Tomato Sauce | MAKES ABOUT 2\u00bd CUPS\n\nAt the height of tomato season, when tomatoes with cracks or other flaws are available at a discounted price, use them to make this sauce. It takes little time to make if you've got a food mill, and you'll be happy to find it in your freezer during the winter. It also makes a vibrant fresh sauce for a pound of linguine.\n\n**3 pounds ripe tomatoes, rinsed and quartered**\n\n**3 tablespoons torn basil leaves or 1 tablespoon chopped marjoram, optional**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil**\n\n1. Put the tomatoes in a heavy pan with the herb, if using. Cover and cook over medium-high heat. The tomatoes should yield their juices right away, but keep an eye on the pan to make sure that they do. Add a few tablespoons of water if necessary. You don't want scorched tomatoes.\n\n2. Once the tomatoes have broken down, after 15 to 25 minutes, pass them through a food mill. If you want the final sauce to be thicker, return it to the pot and cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until it's as thick as you want. Depending on the juiciness of the tomatoes, this could take 20 minutes or as long as an hour. When done, season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in the oil.\n\n3. To freeze, ladle the sauce into freezer bags in 1- or 2-cup portions. Lay the bags on the freezer floor until they harden. This makes slim packages that are easy to store upright. When you reheat the sauce, you can season it with crushed garlic, pepper flakes, shallots, or whatever herb goes with the dish you're making.\n\nTwo Vinaigrettes: Shallot and Garlic\n\nAlthough it's not difficult to play around with vinaigrettes, I find that I've settled on 2 favorite standards, one that's studded with vinegary shallots and the other made pungent with garlic. When it comes to oil and vinegar, there isn't any absolute proportion since different vinegars (and lemon) vary in acidity and one's personal taste has as much to do with the right proportion as anything else. I never like to choke on a too-tart dressing, while others crave a heavy dousing of vinegar. If you like the 3-to-1 concept, you can start with that, but you'll have to taste it, preferably on a lettuce leaf or piece of fruit that's to be dressed, to be sure it's right for you.\n\nSHALLOT VINAIGRETTE\n\n**1 shallot, peeled and finely diced**\n\n**2 tablespoons red wine vinegar or champagne vinegar**\n\n**\u00bd teaspoon sea salt**\n\n**6 tablespoons or more extra virgin olive oil**\n\nFinely dice the shallot by slicing it first lengthwise, then crosswise. It should fall into a fine dice without your having to mash it through rough chopping. Put it into a bowl with the vinegar and salt. Let stand for 10 minutes, then whisk in the oil to taste.\n\nGARLIC VINAIGRETTE\n\n**1 crisp new garlic clove**\n\n**sea salt and freshly ground pepper**\n\n**2 tablespoons aged red wine vinegar**\n\n**1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar**\n\n**6 to 8 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil**\n\nPeel and coarsely chop the garlic. Pound it in a mortar with a scant \u00bd teaspoon salt until puree-smooth. This should take about 30 seconds. Stir in the vinegars, then whisk in the oil, tasting after 6 tablespoons. Season with pepper.\nEpilogue\n\nTime Passing at the Market\n\nNovember 1, and it's the last market. It is bitter cold, as it always is on this market day. The sky is a blue blaze, but it's also windy, which makes the cold even more intense. The farmers are bundled up, and the shade covers are gone. Everyone replies to \"How are you?\" with \"Cold!\" After a while it will be too commonplace to mention, but today it's a kind of acknowledgment that winter is here. Farmers and customers chat, recalling that last year at this time there was snow and sleet. Another year it was so cold that the greens froze before our eyes, while on yet other last days the market has been protected by an insulating blanket of low clouds.\n\nSince this is the last market, good-byes are spoken. The farmers are tired and glad that it's time to stop. The few remaining customers are buying to make the season last a bit longer at home. They load up on apples, bags of pinto beans, heirloom potatoes, quarts of frozen apple juice, ground chile, honey and jams. In spite of this being the last market, one grower has arrived with a gorgeous new collection of chicories that the cold weather has nursed into their prime, and another has arrived with Chinese dates, or jujubes, of all things.\n\nIn many ways this market resembles the first markets six months ago, which featured wintered-over apples and potatoes, roots, hearty greens, and dried legumes. The goat cheese, lamb, and chicken vendors are all here, as they were in the beginning and on every other market day. The cold, coupled with the fact that it's the last market, calls for a hearty supper to celebrate another successful season. And that's what we have.\n\n**MENU FOR THE END OF THE MARKET**\n\nBorscht: The Ultimate Root Soup\n\nLamb Shanks Braised with Onions and Rosemary\n\nRutabaga and Potato Puree\n\nSalad of winter greens\n\nSpiced Quinces in Syrup with Quince Ice Cream\n\nWith coffee: Chocolate-Flecked Hazelnut Rusks\n\nIt's perhaps only at the farmers' market or in one's own garden that we become acutely aware of the movement of the seasons and the motion of time. Less than we thought can be taken for granted. Foods that we think of as ever present, like radishes and lettuce, vanish as soon as the weather turns hot. Others, like eggs, taper off as the daylight shortens. In less than five minutes, a passing hailstorm shreds the greens we were just figuring out how to use and sets a farmer back six weeks. Birds finish the last of the cherries we were counting on for the Fourth of July, while later, frost might rob from us the pleasure of late-season tomatoes and plans for a winter supply of sauce. There's a constant ebb and flow in produce, the passage from tender newness to seasoned roughness in vegetables, from tartness to sweetness in fruits, from scarcity to plenty and scarcity again as the season moves on.\n\nTime in the market is measured not only in fruits and vegetables but by their growers too. After over a dozen years of shopping at my market, I've become well accustomed to the faces I see twice each week. I look forward to seeing them each season. Some farmers have been selling since the market started nearly thirty years ago, but some are new to the market, young couples with a small child or two or parents with older children who are now taking an active role in running the family business. One family, who always had the biggest display of vegetables, sells much less. I've watched another farmer who started out with fairly unattractive produce grow his skills so that he now produces beautiful organic vegetables in abundance. A mother-daughter team known for their unusual varieties of eggplants and tomatoes barely came to market during the two years that it didn't warm up in time to ripen their crops. When they returned, the next hot summer, the daughter's children seemed years older already, and of course they were.\n\nThe composition of the farmers, like their produce, is fluid and changing. People who once seemed like fixtures at the market are now retired or taking a break from farming to finish that novel, or maybe they're taking some time off to make some money doing something else. After several hard drought years combined with the water politics in our state, an excellent farmer threw in the towel, citing fatigue. It's a big loss to our market. Hopefully his farm will be sold to a new farmer with a fresh vision and energy to match, but I notice in the real estate magazine an ad that reads, like too many others, \"Beautiful farm for sale; can be subdivided.\"\n\nAlthough for most Americans where food comes from is a vague concept that's not geographically set in the mind, food doesn't come from \"somewhere else\"; it comes from someplace. When a farm is \"developed,\" we town and city dwellers, as well as the farmers, lose the tie to the land that nourishes us. We also lose the security that comes from knowing that we can eat from our landscape and not have to depend on large and ultimately unsustainable food systems. As American Farmland Trust says on its bumper stickers, \"No Farms, No Food.\" It's ultimately that simple.\n\nChanges in the market can also mean that sometimes a food you've grown to love and whose season you've always looked forward to may not be there when a farmer moves, cuts back, quits, or decides to give up on growing that variety for something more reliable. Or a state's government may proclaim the fresh eggs and pastured chicken you've come to love as \"biological hazards\" and banish their presence. This has happened. In this sense, supply on a local level is more fragile than it appears, for it's intimately tied to people's lives. Just as fruits and vegetables pass through their season, the farmers we have seen at the market standing at their tables year after year pass through theirs. They will not always be here, and this realization makes the experience of the market all that more immediate.\n\nWe need to use our markets deeply if farmers are to continue to farm and we are to continue to eat well in the deepest sense, being nourished by our immediate landscape and community. How fortunate that meeting this need is one of the most pleasurable obligations we can assign ourselves.\n\nResources\n\nSources for Some Foods Referred to in this Book\n\nNuts\n\nALMONDS\n\nRusty Hall's dry-farmed almonds and almond brittle are available at the Santa Monica and Santa Barbara farmers' markets from October until spring, or call 1-888-549-9126.\n\nCHESTNUTS\n\nAmber Oaks Raspberries Auburn, CA 530-885-3420 Available at Sacramento area farmers' markets. Also U-Pick available from mid-September to mid-November.\n\nGREEN AND DRIED PISTACHIOS\n\nSanta Barbara Pistachio Company  \n1-800-896-1044  \nsantabarbarapistachios.com\n\nHAZELNUTS\n\nHolmquist Hazelnut Orchards  \n360-988-9240 or 360-988-0171 or 1-800-720-0895  \nfax: 360-988-6202  \nDu Chilly and Barcelona hazelnuts, hazelnut meal, hazelnut oil.\n\nDried Fruits\n\nBogdanich Farms  \n209-892-3159  \nHigh-quality dried fruits\u2014apricots, nectarines, pears, figs, peaches, cherries, pluots, and prunes. Plus fruit trays, jams, jellies, and shelled walnuts, almonds, pistachios.\n\nFrance Ranch  \n2042 S. Newcomb  \nPorterville, CA 93257  \nDried apricots, prunes, Hartley walnuts.\n\nPeacock Family Farms  \nDinuba, CA 93618  \n559-591-5786 (for a catalog)  \nRed and Gold Flame raisins.\n\nDATES\n\nFlying Disc Ranch  \n760-399-5313  \nDeglet Noor, Medjool, Barhi, Dayri, and Zahidi (certified organic).\n\nOasis Date Gardens  \n1-800-827-8017  \nMany unusual and rare varieties (transitional and organic).\n\nDaVall Date Gardens  \n619-398-4600  \nHoney and Empress.\n\nJapanese Dried Persimmons (Hoshi Gaki)\n\nOtow Orchard  \nTosh Kuratomi  \nGranite Bay, CA 95746  \n916-791-1656  \nWill ship long distance.\n\nPenryn Orchard Specialties  \nJeffrey Rieger  \nPenryn, CA  \n916-769-5462  \nwww.penrynorchardspecialties.com  \nWill ship long distance.\n\nBrenner Ranch  \nJim and Karen Brenner  \nNewcastle, CA 95658  \n916-663-4578\n\nAlso see the US Ark of Taste at www.slowfoodusa.org.\n\nBoiled Cider Jelly\n\nWood's Cider Mill  \nRFD 2 (1482 Weathersfield Center Road)  \nSpringfield, VT 05156  \n802-263-5547\n\nOlive Oils, Aged Red Wine Vinegar\n\nNick Sciabica & Sons  \nP.O. Box 1246  \nModesto, CA 95353-1246  \n1-800-551-9612  \nOlive varietals: Mission, Manzanillo, Marsala, Sevillana (organic available); orange-olive oil; aged red wine vinegar.\n\nBariani Olive Oil  \nPhone or fax: 916-689-9059  \ne-mail: Bariani@aol.com  \nUnrefined, cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil, full-bodied and soft. Will ship.\n\nSmoke-Dried Tomatoes\n\nBoggy Creek Farm  \nAustin, TX  \ne-mail: boggycrk@realtime.net  \nwww.boggycreekfarm.com  \nCold-smoked organic tomatoes, packed in oil or dry.\n\nWild Rice\n\nManitok Wild Rice  \nBox 97  \nCallaway, MN 56521  \n218-375-3425\n\nGrey Owl Foods  \nP.O. Box 88  \nGrand Rapids, MN 55744  \n218-327-2281\n_Some Sources and Inspirations_\n\nBooks\n\n_Beans, Greens, and Sweet Georgia Peaches_ by Damon Lee Fowler. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.\n\n_Cornucopia II, a Source Book of Edible Plants_ by Stephen Facciola. Vista, CA: Kampong Publications, 1998. This most valuable sourcebook of edible plants is one that I used constantly to verify names and track down the origins of countless fruits and vegetables.\n\n_Garden Seed Inventory,_ Fifth Edition. Decorah, IA: Seed Savers Exchange, 1999. Another valuable sourcebook of heirloom seeds that gives common names of edible plants, their histories, and dates of introduction. It also tracks the rise and fall of the numbers of plant varieties available since 1981.\n\n_New Cooking from the Old West_ by Greg Patent. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1996. A regional cookbook with a special emphasis on Montana and great pies.\n\n_Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera_ by Fred Plotkin. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1997. Recipes for many of the foods we find in our farmers' markets, including bean fritters.\n\n_Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland_ by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. A regional and seasonal cookbook for the Midwest.\n\n_The Complete Meat Cookbook_ by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. These are the authorities on meat.\n\n_The Huckleberry Book_ by 'Asta Bowen. Helena, MT: American Geographic Publishing, 1998. A personal little book devoted to Montana's favorite fruit.\n\n_The Herbfarm Cookbook_ by Jerry Traunfeld. New York: Scribner, 2000. Lots of ideas for cooking with herbs of all kinds.\n\n_The Great Citrus Book_ by Allen Susser. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1997. Sorts out the citrus family.\n\n_The Random House Book of Vegetables_ by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix. New York: Random House, 1993. A very useful sourcebook for identifying edible plants. Uses a lot of photographs.\n\n_The Kitchen Garden: A Passionate Gardener's Comprehensive Guide to Growing Good Things to Eat_ by Sylvia Thompson. New York: Bantam, 1995. A warm and personal approach to growing and cooking vegetables.\n\n_Heirloom Vegetable Gardening_ by William Woys Weaver. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. An excellent illustrated sourcebook for heirloom vegetables.\n\nWebsites\n\nSeed Savers Exchange: www.seedsavers.org  \nThis group has played an extremely crucial role in the heirloom seed movement and is the first to have focused on the need to save seeds and to create a way in which they could be exchanged among gardeners. They can also be reached at  \nSeed Savers Exchange  \n3076 North Winn Road  \nDecorah, IA 52101  \n319-382-5990\n\nSlow Food (International Slow Food Movement)  \nwww.slowfood.com Slow Food promotes the pleasures of the table hand-in-hand with the practices of sustainable farming, animal husbandry, and the artisan ways of making, preserving, and cooking food. Slow Food produces a handsome quarterly publication and a newsletter, and there are groups all over the world, including the United States. Their toll-free number is 877-756-9336.\n\nON FINDING CSAS:\n\nTo find a farm near you that has a CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture) go to www.csacenter.org. Participating farms are listed by state, with phone numbers and e-mail addresses. It's a useful, well-maintained, and easy-to-use site.\n\nON FINDING FARMERS' MARKETS:\n\nThe guide I have depended on most is the _National Directory of Farmers' Markets,_ which is published biennially by the USDA. The directory is also available on the Web at www.ams.usda.gov\/farmersmarkets in a more updated form. In the directory are state-by-state listings for markets, their locations, dates, and phone numbers. You may also call 1-800-384-8704.\n\nSurfing the Web can also produce results by entering the names of a state followed by \"farmers' market.\" Generally, you'll get a list.\n\nMost towns and cities also know about their own farmers' markets. A call placed to the chamber of commerce or food editor of the local newspaper should produce results.\n\nMost markets are held on Saturdays, the biggest market day for shopping. If you're entering a town cold, with no information, look for flags, signs, banners, a town square, or a park. I've been happily surprised by how easy it is to ferret out a market. And of course you can always ask people. While most Saturday markets are held in the morning, that's not always the case, which is why a guide is helpful.\n\nIf a town can support a Saturday market, it will usually have a weekday or evening market as well since plants keep producing regardless of the day. Big cities frequently have, in addition to their large principal market, smaller satellite markets located in various neighborhoods. These are frequently easier to shop at because of their small size.\nIndex\n\nAgua fresca:\n\nmelon and cucumber\n\nwatermelon\n\nAidells, Bruce\n\nAlbacore, smoked:\n\npotato and onion salad with\n\nquiche with scallions, cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, and\n\nAlmond(s), 14.1, 14.2\n\ncherry-almond loaf cake\n\ntruffles with fruit centers\n\nAmaranth\n\nin scallion cr\u00eapes\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nAnchovies:\n\nend-of-summer spaghetti\n\ngreens with garlic and\n\nAnise. _See_ Fennel\n\nAnise hyssop, red and golden beets with\n\nApple(s), 12.1, 12.2\n\napplesauce with lemon thyme\n\ncaramelized apple tart with cinnamon custard\n\n-oat pancakes with Cheddar\n\nand quince mince filling\n\n-rhubarb pandowdy\n\nrustic tart of quinces, pears, and\n\nApple cider:\n\nboiled\n\nwinter squash braised in\n\nApricot(s):\n\napricot custard tart\n\napricot nectar\n\nbaked in parchment\n\n-cherry crisp\n\ndried, chicken thighs braised with shallots, bay, and\n\n-lavender jam; nut torte with chocolate and\n\nApricot kernels\n\nApriums\n\nArtichoke(s)\n\nand asparagus saut\u00e9 with toasted bread crumbs\n\nand Jerusalem artichokes, braised with black lentils\n\nsaut\u00e9ed potatoes and, with garlic chives\n\ntrimming\n\nArugula\n\ncorn fritters with aged cheddar and\n\novergrown, spaghetti with sheep's milk ricotta and\n\nrustic onion tart with cheese and walnuts\n\nAsparagus\n\nand artichoke saut\u00e9 with toasted bread crumbs\n\nbraised with peas and spring onions\n\nroasted, with citrus butter\n\nand wild mushroom bread pudding\n\nAvocado(s)\n\nand grapefruit salad with pomegranates and pistachios\n\nand j\u00edcama salad with lime vinaigrette\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nand pummelo salad, with endive and fennel\n\nsandwich\n\nBacon, in collards with potatoes\n\nBanana-black walnut cake\n\nBasil:\n\nopal, zucchini with pine nuts, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and\n\npuree, stewed shell beans and summer vegetables\n\nsalsa verde with cilantro, mint, and\n\nThai, corn and squash simmered in coconut milk with\n\nThai, melon salad with\n\nBavarian cream, feijoa\n\nBay, chicken thighs braised with dried fruits, shallots, and\n\nBeans, dried\n\nchickpea and roasted eggplant stew\n\nchickpea salad with coriander and cumin\n\npasta with radicchio, white beans, and rosemary\n\nRedbor kale with red beans, cilantro, and feta cheese\n\nsoupy pinto or bolita beans\n\nwhite bean and sage fritters\n\nwhite beans with black kale and Savoy cabbage\n\nBeans, fresh. _See also_ Black-eyed pea(s)\n\nedamame\n\nfava bean, herb, and wax bean soup with fried pita bread\n\nfresh lima beans with scallions and yogurt\n\nsalad of green beans, potatoes, and tuna\n\nshell beans and summer vegetables stewed in their own juices\n\nshelly beans with pasta and sage\n\nsuccotash\n\nyellow wax beans with lemon thyme and yellow tomatoes\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nBeef, roast, with herb and garlic paste\n\nBeets:\n\nborscht\n\nred and golden, with anise hyssop\n\nand their greens, with marjoram and pine nuts\n\nthree-beet caviar with endive and goat cheese\n\nBelgian endive, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3\n\nand celeriac chowder\n\nfennel and winter greens salad with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\nfris\u00e9e and endive salad with mint and pomegranate seeds\n\nin leek, scallion, and fennel gratin\n\npummelo and avocado salad with fennel and\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nthree-beet caviar with goat cheese and\n\non toast with Gruy\u00e8re\n\nBell, Harriet\n\nBell peppers. _See_ Peppers, sweet\n\nBerries. _See also specific berries_\n\nrhubarb with candied ginger and\n\nwarm berry compote\n\nwarm corn custard with\n\nBeverages:\n\napricot nectar\n\nfresh grape juice with lemon verbena\n\nmelon and cucumber agua fresca\n\ntomato juice sipped through a lovage straw\n\nwatermelon agua fresca\n\nBitter almond ice cream\n\nBlackberries. _See also_ Berries rhubarb with candied ginger and\n\nwarm corn custard with\n\nBlack cabbage. _See_ Black kale\n\nBlack-eyed pea(s)\n\nand sage fritters\n\nBlack kale\n\nstrozzapreti with sage, potatoes, and\n\nwhite beans with Savoy cabbage and\n\nBlack lentils. _See_ Lentils\n\nBlack Hawk raspberry and rose geranium sherbet\n\nBlack walnut-banana cake\n\nBlood orange(s)\n\ncitrus compote with star fruit\n\njelly\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nsalad, with ricotta and watercress\n\nin strawberry compote\n\nBlueberry(ies):\n\n-lavender compote\n\nwarm berry compote\n\nwild blueberry preserve\n\nBlue cheese, rustic onion tart with walnuts and\n\nBok choy, scallion cr\u00eapes with stir-fried greens\n\nBolita beans, soupy\n\nBorscht\n\nBread pudding, asparagus and wild mushroom\n\nBreakfast dishes:\n\napple-oat pancakes with Cheddar\n\napplesauce with lemon thyme\n\nbaked pancake with pear and cardamom\n\nboiled eggs\n\nrice pudding with honey meringues\n\nBroccoli, 4.1, 4.2\n\nbraised, with olives\n\nand broccoli rabe, on bruschetta\n\nBroccoli rabe and broccoli on bruschetta\n\nBruschetta. _See also_ [Crostini; Toast broccoli and broccoli rabe on](Madi_9780307885654_epub_c04_r1.htm#ind141a)\n\nBrussels sprouts, with cauliflower and mustard-caper butter\n\nBurdock, 8.1, 8.2\n\nand carrots, stir-fried with sesame seeds\n\nButter:\n\ncitrus, roasted asparagus with\n\ncumin-chile, small roasted chickens with\n\nmustard-caper, Brussels sprouts with cauliflower and\n\nparsley-lemon, Savoy cabbage and fennel with\n\nquince butter\n\nradish\n\nButternut squash rounds with dates and pistachios\n\nCabbage\n\nblack. _See_ Black kale\n\nborscht\n\nnapa cabbage salad with peanuts and cilantro\n\nand potato gratin with sage\n\nSavoy, and fennel with parsley-lemon butter\n\nSavoy, white beans with black kale and\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nCake(s):\n\nblack walnut-banana\n\ncherry-almond loaf cake\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\nhickory nut torte with espresso cream\n\npeach shortcake on ginger biscuits\n\npear-hazelnut torte\n\npear upside-down spice cake with molasses cream\n\npersimmon tea cake\n\nplum kuchen\n\nsteamed persimmon pudding\n\nstrawberry-passion fruit cream cake\n\nupside-down, with mixed dried fruits\n\nCandied citrus peels\n\nalmond truffles with\n\nCandied kumquats\n\nCannellini beans. _See also_ White bean(s)\n\nCapers:\n\nmarjoram pesto with olives and\n\nmustard-caper butter, Brussels sprouts with cauliflower and\n\npeppers and tomatoes baked with herbs and\n\nCardamom, baked pancake with pear and\n\nCarrot(s):\n\nbraised root vegetables with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\nand burdock, stir-fried with sesame seeds\n\ncarrot top soup\n\nsalad, with parsley, lovage, and mint\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nCauliflower\n\nwith Brussels sprouts and mustard-caper butter\n\ngreen, with parsley and green olives\n\nhot roasted, Harriet's\n\nwhole, with crispy bread crumbs\n\nCavolo nero. _See_ Black kale\n\nCeleriac (celery root):\n\nand endive chowder\n\nand wild rice chowder\n\nChanterelle(s):\n\nand corn chowder\n\ngiant popover with\n\nspaghetti squash gratin with\n\nChard. _See also_ Greens\n\nbraised with ginger, cilantro, and rice\n\nand cilantro soup, with noodle nests\n\ngratin\n\ngreen herb soup with sorrel and lovage\n\nlasagne with ricotta, walnuts, and\n\nnettle soup\n\nCheddar:\n\naged, corn fritters with arugula and\n\napple-oat pancakes with\n\nsmoked, savory custard with caramelized onions and\n\nCheese(s). _See also specific cheeses_\n\nasparagus and wild mushroom bread pudding\n\ncorn pudding\n\nsouffl\u00e9\n\nCherimoya(s)\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nCherry(ies)\n\napricot-cherry crisp\n\ncherry-almond loaf cake\n\ndried, almond truffles with\n\ndried cherry, date, and chocolate nut torte\n\nmixed cherry pie with a double crust\n\nChestnuts, roasted\n\nChicken(s):\n\nbraised in red wine vinegar\n\nbreasts, and leeks poached in herb broth\n\nroast, with herbs under the skin\n\nsmall, roasted, with cumin-chile butter\n\nthighs, braised with dried fruits, shallots, and bay\n\nChickpea:\n\nand roasted eggplant stew\n\nsalad with coriander and cumin\n\nChickweed\n\nChicory(ies), 1.1. _See also_ Belgian endive; Fris\u00e9e; Radicchio\n\nsugar loaf, grilled\n\nTreviso, oven-roasted\n\nChile(s), 7.1, 7.2\n\ncucumber salad with roasted peanuts and\n\ncumin-chile butter, roasted chickens with\n\ngreen chile paste\n\ngreen, roasted, scrambled eggs with corn and\n\nroasted, ricotta with mint and\n\nroasted, soft taco with goat cheese and\n\nroasting and peeling\n\nzucchini and cilantro soup with mint and\n\nChive-scented ricotta, crostini with\n\nChocolate:\n\nadult prune whip\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\n-dipped citrus peels\n\n-flecked hazelnut rusks\n\nnut torte with apricot filling and\n\nChowder:\n\ncelery root and wild rice\n\ncorn and chanterelle\n\nendive and celeriac\n\nCider:\n\nboiled\n\nwinter squash braised in\n\nCilantro:\n\nand chard soup, with noodle nests\n\ngoat's milk yogurt with mint and\n\ngreen herb soup with sorrel and\n\nmustard greens braised with ginger, rice, and\n\nnapa cabbage salad with peanuts and\n\nRedbor kale with red beans, feta cheese, and\n\nsalsa verde with basil, mint, and\n\nsalsa, summer posole with\n\nand zucchini soup, with chile and mint\n\nCinnamon custard, caramelized apple tart with\n\nCitrus, 13.1, 13.2. _See also specific citrus fruits_\n\nbutter, roasted asparagus with\n\ncandied citrus peels\n\ncompote, with star fruit\n\npeeling and sectioning\n\nand subtropical salad\n\ntutti-frutti sorbet\n\nClaytonia\n\nCocktail grapefruits\n\nCoconut milk:\n\ncorn and squash simmered in, with Thai basil\n\npassion fruit with\n\npea and spinach soup with\n\ntropical melon soup with\n\nCollards. _See also_ Greens with potatoes\n\nCompote(s):\n\nblueberry-lavender\n\ncitrus, with star fruit\n\npineapple in ginger syrup with pineapple sage\n\nrhubarb with berries and candied ginger\n\nstrawberry, palm sugar meringues with\n\nsugared plums\n\nwarm berry\n\nConcord grape:\n\nmousse (grapette)\n\ntart\n\nCookies:\n\nchocolate-flecked hazelnut rusks\n\nhazelnut crisps\n\nsesame tuiles\n\nCoriander:\n\nchickpea salad with cumin and\n\nsavory eggplant \"jam\" with cumin and\n\nCorn, 5.1, 5.2\n\nand chanterelle chowder\n\ncreamy corn and shallots\n\ncustard, warm, with berries\n\nfritters, with aged cheddar and arugula\n\npudding\n\nscrambled eggs with roasted green chiles and\n\nand squash, simmered in coconut milk with Thai basil\n\nstew with yellow tomatoes\n\nsuccotash\n\nsummer posole with cilantro salsa\n\nCornmeal cr\u00eapes\n\nwith plums and honey ice cream\n\nCorn salad\n\nCream:\n\nadult prune whip\n\nespresso, hickory nut torte with\n\nfeijoa Bavarian cream\n\ngoat's milk panna cotta with warm honey\n\nmolasses, pear upside-down spice cake with\n\npassion fruit and pineapple fool\n\npassion fruit with\n\npersimmons with\n\nplum\n\nCr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche:\n\ngrapes with new walnuts and\n\nquiche with smoked fish, scallions, and\n\nCr\u00eapes:\n\ncornmeal, 11.1; with plums and honey ice cream, 11.2\n\nscallion, with stir-fried greens\n\nCresses. _See also_ Watercress\n\nCrisp, apricot-cherry\n\nCrostini. _See also_ [Bruschetta; Toast with chive-scented ricotta](Madi_9780307885654_epub_c03_r1.htm#ind319a)\n\nwith roasted eggplant and pine nut puree\n\nCucumber(s)\n\nand melon agua fresca\n\n-onion pickles, short-term\n\nand pepper relish\n\nsalad, with chile and roasted peanuts\n\nCumin:\n\nchickpea salad with coriander and\n\n-chile butter, small roasted chickens with\n\noyster mushrooms with\n\nsavory eggplant \"jam\" with coriander and\n\nCurly endive. _See_ Fris\u00e9e\n\nCustard(s):\n\napricot custard tart\n\ncinnamon, caramelized apple tart with\n\ncorn, warm, with berries\n\norange flower, fig tart with\n\nricotta, warm\n\nsavory, with caramelized onions and smoked cheese\n\nsorrel and leek\n\nsweet potato flan with warm molasses and sesame tuiles\n\nzabaglione with fruit\n\nDaikon\n\nshredded, with scallions and sesame seeds\n\nDandelion greens. _See also_ Greens shredded salad of many greens\n\nDate(s), 14.1, bm1.1\n\nbutternut squash rounds with pistachios and\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\nand orange salad with feta and pistachios\n\nparsnip salad with walnuts and\n\nDesserts. _See also_ Cake(s); Compote(s); Cookies; Custard(s); Ice cream; Pie; Tart(s); _specific fruits_\n\nblack raspberry and rose geranium sherbet\n\ncandied citrus peels\n\nfeijoa Bavarian cream\n\nfrozen subtropical mousse\n\ngoat's milk panna cotta with warm honey\n\npalm sugar meringues with strawberry compote\n\nrice pudding with honey meringues\n\nrustic almond truffles with fruit centers\n\nstrawberry sorbet\n\ntutti-frutti citrus sorbet\n\nDinosaur kale. _See_ Black kale\n\nDips and spreads. _See also_ Pesto; Salsa\n\negg salad with herbs\n\ngreen chile paste\n\nquince butter\n\nricotta with roasted chile and mint\n\nroasted eggplant and pine nut puree\n\nsavory eggplant \"jam\" with cumin and coriander\n\nDough(s):\n\ngalette pastry\n\npie\n\npizza\n\nquiche crust\n\ntart shell\n\nDragon tongue. _See_ Black kale\n\nDressing(s). _See also_ Vinaigrette lime-herb, tomato and avocado salad with\n\nDried fruits, 12.1, 14.1, bm1.1\n\nadult prune whip\n\napple and quince mince\n\nchicken thighs braised with shallots, bay, and\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\nrustic almond truffles with fruit centers\n\nsweet and sour onions with dried pluots and rosemary\n\nupside-down cake with\n\nDrinks. _See_ Beverages\n\nDry Jack, radish salad with\n\nDumplings, herb\n\nEdamame\n\nEgg(s). _See also_ Custard(s); Meringues; Souffl\u00e9\n\nboiled\n\nfried, with sizzling vinegar\n\ngiant popover with chanterelles\n\nnettle frittata with green garlic and sheep's milk ricotta\n\nquiche with smoked fish, scallions, and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\nsalad, with herbs\n\nscrambled, with roasted green chiles and corn\n\nthin omelets with saffron and exotic herbs\n\nzucchini frittata with ricotta and marjoram\n\nEggplant(s), 7.1, 7.2\n\nbraised, stuffed with garlic\n\nend-of-summer spaghetti\n\nfarmers' stew\n\ngratin\n\nroasted, and chickpea stew\n\nroasted, and pine nut puree, crostini with\n\nsavory eggplant \"jam\" with cumin and coriander\n\nElixir of fresh peas\n\nEndive. _See_ Belgian endive; Fris\u00e9e\n\nEscarole, 1.1, 1.2\n\nEspresso:\n\ncream, hickory nut torte with\n\n-molasses cream, pear upside-down spice cake with\n\nFarmers' markets. _See_ Markets\n\nFarmers' stew\n\nFava beans. _See also_ Beans, fresh fava bean, herb, and wax bean soup\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nFeijoa(s)\n\nBavarian cream\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nFennel\n\nleek, scallion, and fennel gratin\n\npasta with golden fennel\n\npummelo and avocado salad with endive and\n\nand Savoy cabbage with parsley-lemon butter\n\nsoup, with saffron dumplings\n\nand winter greens salad with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\nFeta cheese:\n\ndate and orange salad with pistachios and\n\nRedbor kale with red beans, cilantro, and\n\nFig(s)\n\nwith cheese, pepper, and honey\n\nfall fruit salad with pomegranate vinaigrette\n\nfocaccia, with orange-scented olive oil\n\nand ginger jam\n\ntart, with orange flower custard\n\nFilberts. _See_ Hazelnut(s)\n\nFish. _See also_ Shrimp\n\npotato and onion salad with smoked albacore\n\nred snapper baked in parchment with pummelo and rosemary\n\nsalad of green beans, potatoes, and tuna\n\nsmoked, quiche with scallions, cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, and\n\nFlan, sweet potato, with warm molasses and sesame tuiles\n\nFocaccia, fig, with orange-scented olive oil\n\nFool, passion fruit and pineapple\n\nFreckles meets Merlot salad\n\nFris\u00e9e, 1.1, 1.2\n\nand endive salad, with mint and pomegranate seeds\n\nFrittata:\n\nnettle, with green garlic and sheep's milk ricotta\n\nzucchini, with ricotta and marjoram\n\nFritters:\n\ncorn, with aged cheddar and arugula\n\nwhite bean and sage\n\nFrozen subtropical mousse\n\nGalette, parsnip, with greens\n\nGalette pastry\n\nGarlic, 2.1, 3.1. _See also_ Green garlic braised eggplant stuffed with, 7.1\n\ngreens with anchovies and\n\nand herb paste, roast beef with\n\nvinaigrette\n\nGarlic chives, saut\u00e9ed artichokes and potatoes with\n\nGinger:\n\nbiscuits, peach shortcake on\n\ncandied, rhubarb with berries and\n\nand fig jam\n\nmustard greens braised with cilantro, rice, and\n\nsyrup, pineapple in, with pineapple sage\n\nGoat cheese\n\nchard gratin\n\nand quince tart\n\nroasted and stuffed pimientos\n\nsoft taco with roasted green chile and\n\ntart, with leeks\n\nthree-beet caviar with endive and\n\nGoat's milk:\n\npanna cotta with warm honey\n\nyogurt, with cilantro and mint\n\nGobo. _See_ Burdock\n\nGood King Henry. _See_ Lamb's-quarters\n\nGorgonzola, pizza with radicchio, mushrooms, and\n\nGrapefruit\n\nand avocado salad, with pomegranates and pistachios\n\ncandied peel\n\nGrapes, 5.1, 10.1\n\nConcord grape mousse (grapette)\n\nConcord grape tart\n\nfall fruit salad with pomegranate vinaigrette\n\nfresh grape juice with lemon verbena\n\nwith new walnuts and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\nGratin:\n\nBright Lights chard\n\ncabbage and potato, with sage\n\neggplant\n\nleek, scallion, and fennel\n\nspaghetti squash, with chanterelles\n\nGreen beans. _See also_ Beans, fresh\n\nsalad of potatoes, tuna, and\n\nGreen chiles. _See_ Chile(s)\n\nGreen garlic\n\nasparagus and wild mushroom bread pudding\n\nasparagus braised with peas and spring onions\n\nand leek risotto\n\nnettle frittata with sheep's milk ricotta and\n\nand spinach souffl\u00e9\n\nGreens, 1.1, 1.2. _See also specific greens_\n\nwith anchovies and garlic\n\nfennel and winter greens salad with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\ngreen herb soup with sorrel and lovage\n\nherb salad\n\nparsnip galette with\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nsimplest tender greens\n\nstir-fried, scallion cr\u00eapes with\n\nGruy\u00e8re, endive on toast with\n\nGuava(s)\n\nfrozen subtropical mousse\n\nin strawberry compote\n\nHazelnut(s)\n\nchocolate-flecked hazelnut rusks\n\ncrisps\n\npear-hazelnut torte\n\nin rutabaga and potato puree\n\ntorte\n\nHazelnut oil, sunchoke bisque with\n\nHedgehog mushrooms, spinach leaves saut\u00e9ed with\n\nHerb(s). _See also specific herbs_\n\nbroth, chicken breasts and leeks poached in\n\negg salad with\n\nfava bean, herb, and wax bean soup\n\nand garlic paste, roast beef with\n\ngreen herb soup, with sorrel and lovage\n\nherb dumplings\n\nherb salad\n\nherb sugars\n\nherb teas or tisanes\n\nherb vinegars\n\nlime-herb dressing, tomato and avocado salad with\n\nmenus\n\npeppers and tomatoes baked with capers and\n\nroast chicken with herbs under the skin\n\nsalt potatoes with butter and\n\nscallion, potato, and herb puree\n\nslow-cooked summer squash showered with\n\nthin omelets with saffron and\n\nHickory nut(s):\n\nhickory nut-banana cake\n\ntorte, with espresso cream\n\nHoney:\n\nfigs with cheese, pepper, and\n\nice cream, 14.1; cornmeal cr\u00eapes with plums and, 11.1; honey-nut sundae, 14.2\n\nmeringues, rice pudding with\n\nwarm, goat's milk panna cotta with\n\nHuckleberry(ies)\n\npie, Greg's\n\npreserve\n\nwarm berry compote\n\nIce cream:\n\nhoney, 14.1; cornmeal cr\u00eapes with plums and, 11.1\n\nnoyaux or bitter almond\n\nquince\n\nJam\n\napricot-lavender\n\nfig and ginger\n\n\"Jam,\" eggplant, with cumin and coriander\n\nJelly, blood orange\n\nJerusalem artichokes:\n\nartichokes and, braised with black lentils\n\nsunchoke bisque with hazelnut oil\n\nJ\u00edcama and avocado salad with lime vinaigrette\n\nKale, 4.1. _See also_ Black kale; Greens with red beans, cilantro, and feta, 4.2\n\nsimmered\n\n_Kinpira_\n\nKiwifruit:\n\navocado and grapefruit salad with pomegranates and pistachios\n\ncitrus compote with star fruit\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nKohlrabi\n\nragout of turnips, peas, and\n\nKuchen, plum\n\nKumquats\n\ncandied\n\ncitrus compote with star fruit\n\nLacinato kale. _See_ Black kale\n\nLamb:\n\nchops, grilled, with fresh oregano and lemon\n\nkebabs, marinated in yogurt\n\nshanks, braised with onions and rosemary\n\nLamb's-quarters (wild spinach, _quelites_ ), 1.1, 1.2\n\nin scallion cr\u00eapes\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nwith Sonoma Teleme cheese\n\nLasagne with chard, ricotta, and walnuts\n\nLavender:\n\napricot-lavender jam\n\napricots baked in parchment\n\nblueberry-lavender compote\n\nLeek(s):\n\nand chicken breasts poached in herb broth\n\nand green garlic risotto\n\nleek, scallion, and fennel gratin\n\nsavory goat cheese tart with\n\nand sorrel custards\n\nturnip potage\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nLemon(s)\n\nMeyer lemon sauce with tarragon\n\nparsley-lemon butter, Savoy cabbage and fennel with\n\nLemon thyme:\n\napplesauce with\n\nyellow wax beans with yellow tomatoes and\n\nLemon verbena:\n\nfresh grape juice with\n\nsyrup, white peaches in\n\nLentils, black:\n\nartichokes and Jerusalem artichokes braised with\n\nbraised root vegetables with red wine sauce and\n\nLettuce:\n\navocado and j\u00edcama salad with lime vina\u00edgrette\n\nfennel and winter greens salad with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\nFreckles meets Merlot\n\nherb salad\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nLima beans\n\nfresh green, with scallions and yogurt\n\nsuccotash\n\nLime(s)\n\nlime-herb dressing, tomato and avocado salad with\n\nvinaigrette, avocado and j\u00edcama salad with\n\nLimequat(s)\n\nand pummelo marmalade\n\nLovage\n\ncarrot salad with parsley, mint, and\n\nfresh lima beans with scallions and yogurt\n\ngreen herb soup with sorrel and\n\nlovage oil\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\ntomato juice sipped through a lovage straw\n\nLychee nuts, one-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nM\u00e2che\n\nMandarins\n\ncitrus compote with star fruit\n\nMango, in strawberry compote\n\nMarjoram:\n\nbeets and their greens with pine nuts and\n\npesto, with capers and olives\n\nzucchini frittata with ricotta and\n\nMarkets\n\nAlaska\n\nAtlanta\n\nBellingham, 10.1, 14.1\n\nBirmingham\n\nCalgary\n\nChicago\n\nchildren at\n\nCleveland\n\nCortez and Durango\n\nDavis\n\nHawaii\n\nHollywood\n\nLondonderry\n\nMadison, 8.1, 9.1, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3\n\nMaine\n\nMissoula\n\nModesto\n\nNew Orleans, itr.1, 2.1\n\nNew York City, 8.1, 12.1, 12.2\n\nSacramento, 8.1, 14.1\n\nSan Diego\n\nSan Francisco\n\nSanta Fe, itr.1, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 9.1, 10.1, 10.2, 12.1, epl.1\n\nSanta Monica\n\nSocorro\n\nSonoma\n\nStockton, 8.1, 11.1\n\nSt. Paul, 3.1, 7.1, 12.1\n\nTrenton\n\nVista\n\nMarmalade, limequat and pummelo\n\nMeat. _See also_ Beef; Chicken(s); Lamb\n\nMelon(s), 6.1, 6.2\n\nand cucumber agua fresca\n\nin _moscato d'Asti_\n\nsalad, with Thai basil\n\ntropical melon soup with coconut milk\n\nwatermelon agua fresca\n\nMenus:\n\nAnchorage summer supper\n\nAtlanta fall menu\n\nAugust supper\n\nBirmingham menu\n\nbreakfast dishes for chilly mornings\n\nCentral Valley dinner\n\ncitrus lunch\n\ncool July menu\n\nDane County market\n\nearly market\n\nend-of-market\n\nfall hazelnut menu\n\nfall root-weather\n\nginger and sesame\n\nharvest dinner\n\nhearty cool-weather supper\n\nhearty late-summer dinner\n\nlate-summer menu\n\nLeo birthday lunch\n\nlight cool-weather lunch\n\nLummi Island farm dinner\n\nMissoula market dinner\n\nNew Mexico Saturday lunch\n\nNew Mexico Sunday lunch\n\nNorthern California winter menu\n\nSan Francisco October menu\n\nSeptember vegetarian supper\n\nSocorro vegetable supper\n\nSouthern California winter supper\n\nspecial winter meal\n\nspring herb supper\n\nspring lunch\n\nspring menu for a cool day\n\nStockton market\n\nSt. Paul market\n\nsummer picnics, 6.1, 7.1\n\nSunday herb lunch\n\nunexpected treasures\n\nwinter all-vegetable meal\n\nMeringues:\n\nhoney, rice pudding with\n\npalm sugar, with strawberry compote\n\nMeyer lemon(s)\n\nsauce, with tarragon\n\nMince, apple and quince\n\nwinter mince tart with lattice crust\n\nMiner's lettuce\n\nMint:\n\ncarrot salad with parsley, lovage, and\n\nfris\u00e9e and endive salad with pomegranate seeds and\n\ngoat's milk yogurt with cilantro and\n\nricotta with roasted chile and\n\nsalsa verde with basil, cilantro, and\n\nzucchini and cilantro soup with chile and\n\nMolasses:\n\ncream, pear upside-down spice cake with\n\nwarm, sweet potato flan with\n\nMoscato d'Asti, melon in\n\nMountain spinach\n\nMousse:\n\nConcord or Muscat grape\n\nfrozen subtropical\n\nMozzarella:\n\nradicchio seared in the skillet with\n\nwinter squash \"pancake\" with sage and\n\nMulberries, rhubarb with candied ginger and\n\nMushrooms\n\nasparagus and artichoke saut\u00e9 with toasted bread crumbs\n\nasparagus and wild mushroom bread pudding\n\nbraised root vegetables with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\nchanterelles, giant popover with\n\nchanterelles, spaghetti squash gratin with\n\ncorn and chanterelle chowder\n\nfennel and winter greens salad with truffle oil and\n\nhedgehog, saut\u00e9ed spinach leaves with\n\noyster, with cumin\n\npizza with radicchio, Gorgonzola, and\n\nMustard-caper butter, Brussels sprouts with cauliflower and\n\nMustard greens. _See also_ Greens braised with ginger, cilantro, and rice\n\nNapa cabbage:\n\nsalad, with peanuts and cilantro\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nNectarines and peaches in Prosecco\n\nNettle(s)\n\nfrittata, with green garlic and sheep's milk ricotta\n\nsoup\n\nNoodle nests, chard and cilantro soup with\n\nNoyaux ice cream\n\nNuts, 14.1, bm1.1. _See also specific nuts_ honey-nut sundae, 14.2\n\nOats, apple-oat pancakes with Cheddar\n\nOil, lovage or sage\n\nOlives:\n\nbraised broccoli with\n\ngreen, green cauliflower with parsley and\n\nmarjoram pesto with capers and\n\nrobust end-of-the-summer spaghetti\n\nOmelets, thin, with saffron and exotic herbs\n\nOnion(s):\n\nbraised root vegetables with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\ncaramelized, savory custard with smoked cheese and\n\ncucumber-onion pickles\n\nfarmers' stew\n\nlamb shanks braised with rosemary and\n\nand potato salad, with smoked albacore\n\nsweet and sour, with dried pluots and rosemary\n\ntart with cheese and walnuts\n\nwhole wheat spaghetti with\n\nOnions, green. _See_ Scallion(s)\n\nOrach\n\nOrange(s). _See also_ Blood orange(s)\n\ncitrus compote with star fruit\n\nand date salad with feta and pistachios\n\nOrange flower custard, fig tart with\n\nOrange-scented olive oil, fig focaccia with\n\nOregano, grilled lamb chops with lemon and\n\nOro Blancos\n\nOyster mushrooms with cumin\n\nPalm sugar meringues with strawberry compote\n\n\"Pancake,\" winter squash, with mozzarella and sage\n\nPancake(s):\n\napple-oat, with Cheddar\n\nbaked, with pear and cardamom\n\nPandowdy, apple-rhubarb\n\nPanna cotta, goat's milk, with warm honey\n\nParmigiano-Reggiano, zucchini with opal basil, pine nuts, and\n\nParsley:\n\ncarrot salad with lovage, mint, and\n\ngreen cauliflower with green olives and\n\n-lemon butter, Savoy cabbage and fennel with\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nParsley root and potato puree\n\nParsnip(s)\n\nbraised root vegetables with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\ngalette, with greens\n\nsalad, with walnuts and dates\n\nPassion fruit\n\nwith cream or coconut milk\n\nfrozen subtropical mousse\n\nand pineapple fool\n\nsauce and syrup\n\nin strawberry compote\n\n-strawberry fruit cream cake\n\nPasta:\n\nend-of-summer spaghetti\n\nwith golden fennel\n\nlasagne with chard, ricotta, and walnuts\n\nwith peas, fresh sage, and bread crumbs\n\npenne with zucchini and ricotta\n\nwith radicchio, white beans, and rosemary\n\nshelly beans with sage and\n\nspaghetti with arugula and sheep's milk ricotta\n\nstrozzapreti with black kale, sage, and potatoes\n\nwhole wheat spaghetti with late-summer onions\n\nPastry doughs. _See_ Dough(s)\n\nPatent, Greg, 10.1, 10.2\n\nPea(s)\n\nasparagus braised with spring onions and\n\nfresh, elixir of\n\npasta with fresh sage, bread crumbs, and\n\nragout of turnips, kohlrabi, and\n\nsnow, scallion cr\u00eapes with stirfried greens\n\nsnow, stir-fried with pea greens\n\nand spinach soup with coconut milk\n\nPeach(es), 11.1, 11.2\n\nand nectarines in prosecco\n\nshortcake, on ginger biscuits\n\nspiced\n\nwhite, in lemon verbena syrup\n\nPeanuts:\n\ngreen\n\nnapa cabbage salad with cilantro and\n\nroasted, cucumber salad with chile and\n\nPear(s)\n\nbaked pancake with cardamom and\n\npear-hazelnut torte\n\npear upside-down spice cake with molasses cream\n\nrustic tart of quinces, apples, and\n\nsauce\n\nPear cider, winter squash braised in\n\nPecans\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\nPenne with green and gold zucchini and ricotta\n\nPepper, figs with cheese, honey, and\n\nPeppers, hot. _See_ Chile(s)\n\nPeppers, sweet\n\ncucumber and pepper relish\n\nend-of-summer spaghetti\n\ngolden pepper and yellow tomato soup\n\nroasted and stuffed pimientos\n\nroasting and peeling\n\nsaut\u00e9ed Gypsy peppers\n\nand tomatoes baked with herbs and capers\n\nPersimmon(s)\n\nwith cream\n\nfall fruit salad with pomegranate vinaigrette\n\npudding, steamed\n\ntea cake\n\nPesto:\n\nmarjoram, with capers and olives\n\nPickles, cucumber-onion\n\nPie:\n\napple and quince mince filling for\n\ndough\n\nhuckleberry, Greg's\n\nmixed cherry, with a double crust\n\nPimientos. _See also_ Peppers, sweet roasted and stuffed\n\nPineapple:\n\nin ginger syrup with pineapple sage\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nand passion fruit fool\n\nPineapple guavas. _See_ Feijoa(s)\n\nPineapple sage, pineapple in ginger syrup with\n\nPine nut(s):\n\nbeets and their greens with marjoram and\n\nmarjoram pesto with capers and olives\n\nand roasted eggplant puree, crostini with\n\nzucchini frittata with\n\nzucchini with opal basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and\n\nPinto beans, soupy\n\nPistachios\n\navocado and grapefruit salad with pomegranates and\n\nbutternut squash rounds with dates and\n\nPizza:\n\ndough\n\nwith radicchio, mushrooms, and Gorgonzola\n\nwhite pizza with sage\n\nPlotkin, Fred\n\nPlum(s)\n\ncornmeal cr\u00eapes with honey ice cream and\n\ndried, chicken thighs braised with shallots, bay, and\n\nkuchen\n\nsugared\n\nPlumcots\n\nPluots\n\ndried, chicken thighs braised with shallots, bay, and\n\ndried, sweet and sour onions with rosemary and\n\nPomegranate(s):\n\navocado and grapefruit salad with pistachios and\n\nseeds, fris\u00e9e and endive salad with mint and\n\nvinaigrette, fall fruit salad with\n\nPopover, giant:\n\nbaked pancake with pear and cardamom\n\nwith chanterelles\n\nPosole, summer, with cilantro salsa\n\nPotato(es):\n\nand cabbage gratin with sage\n\ncollards with\n\nand onion salad, with smoked albacore\n\nand parsley root puree\n\nand rutabaga puree\n\nsalad of green beans, tuna, and\n\nsalt, with butter and herbs\n\nsaut\u00e9ed artichokes and, with garlic chives\n\nscallion, potato, and herb puree\n\nsteamed\n\nstewed shell beans and summer vegetables\n\nstrozzapreti with black kale, sage, and\n\nPreserves. _See also_ Jam; Jelly; Marmalade\n\nquince butter\n\nspiced quinces in syrup\n\nwild blueberry or huckleberry preserve\n\nPrickly pear(s)\n\nfall fruit salad with pomegranate vinaigrette\n\nsauce\n\nPriest stranglers with black kale, sage, and potatoes\n\nProsciutto, endive on toast with Fontina and\n\nProsecco, peaches and nectarines in\n\nPrune whip, adult\n\nPudding:\n\nasparagus and wild mushroom bread pudding\n\ncorn\n\npersimmon, steamed\n\nrice, with honey meringues\n\nPummelo(s)\n\nand avocado salad, with endive and fennel\n\ncandied peel\n\nand limequat marmalade\n\nred snapper baked in parchment with rosemary and\n\nPumpkin, 6.1, 6.2. _See also_ Winter squash\n\nsoup baked in the pumpkin\n\nPuree. _See also_ Dips and spreads\n\nparsley root and potato\n\nroasted eggplant and pine nut, crostini with\n\nrutabaga and potato\n\nscallion, potato, and herb\n\nPurslane\n\n_Quelites. See_ Lamb's-quarters\n\nQuiche with smoked fish, scallions, and cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche\n\nQuince(s)\n\nand apple mince filling\n\nbutter\n\nand goat cheese tart\n\nice cream\n\nquince pip tea\n\nspiced, in syrup\n\ntart of apples, pears, and\n\nRadicchio\n\nfennel and winter greens salad with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\noven-roasted Treviso chicory\n\npasta with white beans, rosemary, and\n\nseared, winter squash risotto with\n\nseared in the skillet with mozzarella\n\nwhite pizza with mushrooms, Gorgonzola, and\n\nRadish(es), 2.1. _See also_ Daikon\n\nbutter, for radish sandwiches\n\nsalad, with Dry Jack\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nRagout(s):\n\nherb dumplings for\n\nturnips, kohlrabi, and peas\n\nRamps, in nettle frittata\n\nRaspberries. _See also_ Berries\n\nand apricots baked in parchment\n\nBlack Hawk raspberry and rose geranium sherbet\n\nraspberry cream tart\n\nRed snapper baked in parchment with pummelo and rosemary\n\nRed wine:\n\nadult prune whip\n\nsauce, braised root vegetables with black lentils and\n\nRed wine vinegar, chicken braised in\n\nRelish(es):\n\ncucumber and pepper\n\nspiced peaches\n\nsweet and sour onions with dried pluots and rosemary\n\nRhubarb:\n\napple-rhubarb pandowdy\n\nwith berries and candied ginger\n\nRice. _See also_ Risotto\n\nmustard greens braised with ginger, cilantro, and\n\npudding, with honey meringues\n\nwild rice and celery root chowder\n\nRicotta:\n\nblood orange salad with watercress and\n\nchive-scented, crostini with\n\ncustard, warm\n\nfigs with pepper, honey, and\n\nlasagne with chard, walnuts, and\n\npasta with golden fennel and\n\npenne with zucchini and\n\nroasted and stuffed pimientos\n\nwith roasted chile and mint\n\nsheep's milk, nettle frittata with green garlic and\n\nsheep's milk, spaghetti with arugula and\n\nzucchini frittata with marjoram and\n\nRisotto:\n\nleek and green garlic\n\nspring, with sorrel\n\nsummer squash and squash blossom\n\nwinter squash, with seared radicchio\n\nRoot vegetables. _See also specific vegetables_\n\nbraised, with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nRose geranium and Black Hawk raspberry sherbet\n\nRosemary:\n\nlamb shanks braised with onions and\n\npasta with radicchio, white beans, and\n\nred snapper baked in parchment with pummelo and\n\nsweet and sour onions with dried pluots and\n\nRusks, chocolate-flecked hazelnut\n\nRutabaga and potato puree\n\nSabayon. _See_ Zabaglione\n\nSaffron:\n\ndumplings, fennel soup with\n\nthin omelets with herbs and\n\nSage. _See also_ Pineapple sage\n\ncabbage and potato gratin with\n\nparsnip galette with greens\n\npasta with peas, bread crumbs, and\n\nsage oil\n\nshelly beans with pasta and\n\nstrozzapreti with black kale, potatoes, and\n\nand white bean fritters\n\nwhite pizza with\n\nwinter squash \"pancake\" with mozzarella and\n\nSalad(s)\n\navocado and grapefruit, with pomegranates and pistachios\n\navocado and j\u00edcama, with lime vinaigrette\n\nblood orange, with ricotta and watercress\n\ncarrot, with parsley, lovage, and mint\n\nchickpea, with coriander and cumin\n\ncucumber, with chile and roasted peanuts\n\ndate and orange, with feta and pistachios\n\negg, with herbs\n\nfall fruit, with pomegranate vinaigrette\n\nfennel and winter greens with mushrooms and truffle oil\n\nFreckles meets Merlot\n\nfris\u00e9e and endive, with mint and pomegranate seeds\n\ngreen beans, potatoes, and tuna\n\nherb salad\n\nmelon, with Thai basil\n\nnapa cabbage, with peanuts and cilantro\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical\n\nparsnip, with walnuts and dates\n\npotato and onion, with smoked albacore\n\npummelo and avocado, with endive and fennel\n\nradish, with Dry Jack\n\nred and golden beets with anise hyssop\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nthree-beet caviar with endive and goat cheese\n\ntomato and avocado, with lime-herb dressing\n\nSalad dressings. _See_ Dressing(s): Vinaigrette\n\nSalsa, cilantro, summer posole with\n\nSalsa verde with basil, cilantro, and mint\n\nSalt potatoes with butter and herbs\n\nSandwich(es), _See also_ Dips and spreads\n\navocado\n\nbig tomato\n\nradish and radish butter\n\nSauce(s). _See also_ Butter; Pesto; Salsa fresh tomato\n\nfruit: passion fruit; pear; prickly pear\n\nMeyer lemon, with tarragon\n\nred wine, braised root vegetables with black lentils and\n\nwalnut, creamy\n\nSavoy cabbage. _See_ Cabbage\n\nScallion(s):\n\ncr\u00eapes, with stir-fried greens\n\nfresh green lima beans with yogurt and\n\nleek, scallion, and fennel gratin\n\nquiche with smoked fish, cr\u00e9eme fra\u00eeche, and\n\nscallion, potato, and herb puree\n\nshredded daikon with sesame seeds and\n\nSeed Savers Exchange, 6.1, bm2.1\n\nSesame seeds:\n\nscallion cr\u00eapes with stir-fried greens\n\nsesame tuiles\n\nshredded daikon with scallions and\n\nstir-fried carrots and burdock with\n\nShallot(s):\n\nbraised root vegetables with black lentils and red wine sauce\n\nchicken thighs braised with dried fruits, bay, and\n\ncreamy corn and shallots\n\nvinaigrette\n\nSheep's milk ricotta:\n\nnettle frittata with green garlic and\n\nspaghetti with arugula and\n\nShell beans. _See_ Beans, fresh\n\nSherbet. _See also_ Sorbet\n\nBlack Hawk raspberry and rose geranium\n\nShortcake, peach, on ginger biscuits\n\nShrimp and greens, stir-fried, with scallion cr\u00eapes\n\nSimple syrup\n\nSlow Food\n\nSnow peas. _See_ Pea(s)\n\nSorbet. _See also_ Sherbet strawberry\n\ntutti-frutti citrus\n\nSorrel\n\nherb soup with lovage and\n\nand leek custards\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nspring risotto with\n\nSouffl\u00e9:\n\ncheese\n\nspinach and green garlic\n\nSoup(s):\n\nborscht\n\ncarrot top\n\ncelery root and wild rice chowder\n\nchard and cilantro, with noodle nests\n\nCinderella pumpkin, baked in the pumpkin\n\ncorn and chanterelle chowder\n\nelixir of fresh peas\n\nendive and celeriac chowder\n\nfava bean, herb, and wax bean, with fried pita bread\n\nfennel, with saffron dumplings\n\ngolden pepper and yellow tomato\n\ngreen herb, with sorrel and lovage\n\nherb dumplings for\n\nnettle\n\npea and spinach, with coconut milk\n\nsunchoke bisque with hazelnut oil\n\nSun Gold tomato, chilled\n\ntomato-vegetable, late-season\n\ntropical melon, with coconut milk\n\nturnip potage\n\nvegetable stock for\n\nzucchini and cilantro, with chile and mint\n\nSoupy pinto or bolita beans\n\nSoybeans, green (edamame)\n\nSoy-glazed sweet potatoes\n\nSpaghetti:\n\nwith arugula and sheep's milk ricotta\n\nend-of-the-summer\n\nwhole wheat, with late-summer onions\n\nSpaghetti squash gratin with chanterelles\n\nSpiced peaches\n\nSpiced quinces in syrup\n\nSpinach. _See also_ Greens and green garlic souffl\u00e9\n\nleaves, saut\u00e9ed with hedgehog mushrooms\n\nand pea soup, with coconut milk\n\nshredded salad of many greens\n\nSpinach, mountain\n\nSpinach, wild. _See_ Lamb's-quarters\n\nSpreads. _See_ Dips and spreads\n\nSquash. _See_ Summer squash; Winter squash; Zucchini\n\nStar fruit:\n\ncitrus compote with\n\none-minute citrus and subtropical salad\n\nStew(s). _See also_ Ragout(s)\n\ncorn, lazy, with yellow tomatoes\n\nfarmers' stew\n\nroasted eggplant and chickpea\n\nshell beans and summer vegetables\n\nsummer posole with cilantro salsa\n\nStinging nettles. _See_ Nettle(s)\n\nStock, vegetable\n\nStrawberry(ies). _See also_ Berries\n\ncompote, palm sugar meringues with\n\n-passion fruit cream cake\n\nrhubarb with berries and candied ginger\n\nsorbet\n\nStrozzapreti with black kale, sage, and potatoes\n\nSubtropical fruits, 13.1, 13.2. _See also specific fruits_\n\nSuccotash\n\nSugar loaf chicories\n\ngrilled\n\nSugars, herb\n\nSummer squash. _See also_ Zucchini\n\nfarmers' stew\n\nlazy corn stew with yellow tomatoes\n\nslow-cooked thin-sliced, showered with herbs\n\nand squash blossom risotto\n\nstewed shell beans and summer vegetables\n\nSunchokes. _See_ Jerusalem artichokes\n\nSundae, honey-nut\n\nSweet and sour onions with dried pluots and rosemary\n\nSweet potato(es), 8.1, 8.2\n\nflan, with warm molasses and sesame tuiles\n\nroasted in a wood fire\n\nsoy-glazed\n\nSyrup:\n\nginger, pineapple in, with pineapple sage\n\nlemon verbena, white peaches in\n\npassion fruit\n\nsimple syrup\n\nTaco, soft, with roasted green chile and goat cheese\n\nTangerines. _See_ Mandarins\n\n_Tardivo_\n\nTarragon, Meyer lemon sauce with\n\nTart(s). _See also_ Quiche apricot custard\n\ncaramelized apple, with cinnamon custard\n\nConcord grape\n\nfig, with orange flower custard\n\nonion, rustic, with market cheese and walnuts\n\nquince and goat cheese\n\nraspberry cream\n\nrustic tart of quinces, apples, and pears\n\nsavory goat cheese, with leeks\n\nsugared plums for\n\ntart shell\n\nwinter mince tart with lattice crust\n\nTea:\n\nherb\n\nquince pip\n\nTea cake, persimmon\n\nTeleme cheese, lamb's-quarters with\n\nThai basil. _See_ Basil\n\nThyme. _See_ Lemon thyme\n\nTisanes, herb\n\nToast. _See also_ Bruschetta; Crostini endive on, with Gruy\u00e8re\n\nTofu, corn and squash simmered in coconut milk with Thai basil\n\nTomato(es)\n\nand avocado salad with lime-herb dressing\n\nbig tomato sandwich\n\nchilled Sun Gold soup\n\njuice, sipped through a lovage straw\n\npeppers and, baked with herbs and capers\n\nrobust end-of-the-summer spaghetti\n\nsauce, fresh\n\nslow-roasted\n\ntomato-vegetable soup, late-season\n\nyellow, and golden pepper soup\n\nyellow, lazy corn stew with\n\nyellow, summer squash and squash blossom risotto\n\nyellow, yellow wax beans with lemon thyme and\n\nTortes. _See_ Cake(s)\n\nTreviso chicory, oven-roasted\n\nTruffle oil, fennel and winter greens salad with mushrooms and\n\nTuiles, sesame\n\nTuna. _See also_ Albacore\n\nsalad of green beans, potatoes, and\n\nTunas. _See_ Prickly pear(s)\n\nTurnip(s):\n\nragout of kohlrabi, peas, and\n\nrough and ready turnip potage\n\nyoung root vegetable braise\n\nTuscan kale. _See_ Black kale\n\nTutti-frutti citrus sorbet\n\nUpside-down cake:\n\nwith mixed dried fruits\n\npear spice, with molasses cream\n\nVegetable stock\n\n_Verdolagas. See_ Purslane\n\nVinaigrette:\n\ngarlic\n\nlime, avocado and jicama salad with\n\nshallot\n\nVinegar:\n\nherb vinegars\n\nred wine, chicken braised in\n\nsizzling, fried eggs with\n\nWalnut(s), 14.1, 14.2\n\n-banana cake\n\ndate, dried cherry, and chocolate nut torte\n\nlasagne with chard, ricotta, and\n\nnew, grapes with cr\u00e9me fra\u00eeche and\n\nonion tart with cheese and\n\nparsnip galette with greens\n\nparsnip salad with dates and\n\nquince and goat cheese tart\n\nand roasted eggplant puree\n\nsauce, creamy\n\nWatercress, blood orange salad with ricotta and\n\nWatermelons\n\nwatermelon agua fresca\n\nWax beans. _See_ Beans, fresh\n\nWhealy, Kent\n\nWhite bean(s):\n\nwith black kale and Savoy cabbage\n\npasta with radicchio, rosemary, and\n\nand sage fritters\n\nWild greens\n\nWild mushrooms. _See_ Mushrooms\n\nWild rice and celery root chowder\n\nWild spinach. _See_ Lamb's-quarters\n\nWine. _See also_ Red wine\n\nmelon in moscato d'Asti\n\npeaches and nectarines in Prosecco\n\nWinter squash\n\nbaked\n\nbraised in pear or apple cider\n\nbutternut squash rounds with dates and pistachios\n\nCinderella pumpkin soup baked in the pumpkin\n\n\"pancake,\" with mozzarella and sage\n\nrisotto, with seared radicchio\n\nspaghetti squash gratin with chanterelles\n\nYams. _See also_ Sweet potato(es)\n\nYogurt:\n\nfresh green lima beans with scallions and\n\ngoat's milk, with cilantro and mint\n\nlamb kebabs marinated in\n\nZabaglione with fruit\n\nZhough (green chile paste)\n\nZucchini\n\nasparagus and artichoke saut\u00e9 with toasted bread crumbs\n\nand cilantro soup with chile and mint\n\ncorn and squash simmered in coconut milk with Thai basil\n\nfrittata, with ricotta and marjoram\n\ngreen and gold, penne with ricotta and\n\nwith opal basil, pine nuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano\n**More eCookbooks from Deborah Madison**\n\nVegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen\n\nVegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen\n\nThis Can't Be Tofu!\n\nSeasonal Fruit Desserts\n\nVegetarian Cooking for Everyone\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n**Praise for  \nTHE DEFINITIVE DRUCKER**\n\n\"As close as you can get to the wisdom of Drucker and how his  \nstunning intelligence can be applied to every modern organization.\"\n\n_Warren Bennis  \nDistinguished Professor of Management, USC,  \nauthor of_ On Becoming a Leader, _and Peter's friend_\n\n\"An excellent book that captures both the human side of Peter  \nDrucker\u2014how he thinks\u2014how he lives and, of course, Edersheim's  \nthoughts as well. It has great value in capturing Peter's thoughts in the  \nlast two years of his life. Peter obviously picked the right person.\"\n\n_Bob Buford  \nChairman  \nLeadership Network and Founding Chairman of  \nThe Drucker Foundation_\n\n\"Puts the reader in Drucker's Claremont study for a tutorial  \non leadership. Her conversations with the 'Father of Management'  \nare created into a very insightful seminar, with examples of leaders  \nwho followed\u2014and ignored\u2014Drucker's wisdom.\"\n\n_Richard E. Cavanagh  \nPresident and CEO  \nThe Conference Board, Inc._\n\n\"Elizabeth Edersheim has captured the essential Drucker in a way that  \ndemonstrates the current pertinence of his timeless wisdom. A must  \nread for those who lead or aspire to lead organizations of any sort.\"\n\n_William H. Donaldson  \n27th Chairman Securities and Exchange Commission  \nCo-founder Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc._\n\n\"A new and timely perspective on Peter Drucker's philosophy,  \nhis legacy, and its powerful relevance to all leaders of the future.\"\n\n_Frances Hesselbein  \nChairman  \nLeader to Leader Institute_\n\n\"Edersheim has synthesized Peter Drucker's lifetime of wisdom  \ninto a lively and readable narrative that illuminates Peter's  \nenduring clarity, optimism and humanity\u2013and leaves us with  \nthe inescapable conclusion that  \nthe father of modern management is more relevant and needed today than ever before.\"\n\n_Ira A. Jackson  \nDean  \nThe Drucker School of Management  \nClaremont Graduate University  \nClaremont, California_\n\n\" _The Definitive Drucker_ brought back fond memories of  \nlong discussions with Peter Drucker and my partners in the founding of  \na new 'knowledge-based' Wall Street security firm in the  \nearly 1960s. Peter's Delphi-like pronouncements were not always easy  \nto decipher. His insights were brilliant, an early glimpse as to how  \nDrucker became the single most influential observer of business in  \nthe 20th century. Edersheim refreshes and updates Drucker's wisdom  \nthrough the lens of her own contemporary experience as a consultant,  \na combination that is both exciting and provocative.\"\n\n_Richard Jenrette  \nCo-founder  \nDonaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc._\n\n\"One of the things that Drucker did very, very well was forcing  \nyou to think, think away from traditional lines of thought.  \nThis book forces the reader to think with Drucker's ideas today.\"\n\n_Dan Lufkin  \nCo-founder  \nDonaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc._\n\n\"A very accessible book on the thoughts and practices of the  \ngreatest of all management gurus. It demonstrates, with its  \nnumerous contemporary illustrations from around the world,  \nhow Drucker's wisdom transcends geography as well as time.\"\n\n_Nikhil Prasad Ojha,  \nDirector  \nThe Monitor Group, Mumbai Office_\n\n\"If you want the essence of Peter Drucker's thinking,  \nthis book provides it in a superb way.\"\n\n_Hermann Simon  \nChairman  \nSimon, Kucher & Partners_\n\n\"A most impressive book full of practical advice.  \nWe are most grateful to Edersheim.\"\n\n_Atsuo Ueda  \nauthor of_ Introduction to Peter F. Drucker ( _in Japanese),  \nrepresentative of Drucker Workshop (Japan),  \nand Emeritus Professor of Institute of Technologists_\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2007 by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nISBN: 978-0-07-163111-2  \nMHID: 0-07-163111-9\n\nThe material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-147233-3, MHID: 0-07-147233-9.\n\nAll trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.\n\nMcGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please e-mail us at bulksales@mcgraw-hill.com.\n\n**TERMS OF USE**\n\nThis is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (\"McGraw-Hill\") and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill's prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.\n\nTHE WORK IS PROVIDED \"AS IS.\" McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting there from. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and\/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.\n_This book is dedicated to_  \nDoris Drucker  \nand  \nSteven Gallen Edersheim\n\n## **CONTENTS**\n\nFOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION\n\nINTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION\n\nFOREWORD TO THE HARDCOVER EDITION\n\nINTRODUCTION TO THE HARDCOVER EDITION\n\nONE DOING BUSINESS IN THE LEGO WORLD\n\nTWO THE CUSTOMER: JOINED AT THE HIP\n\nTHREE INNOVATION AND ABANDONMENT\n\nFOUR COLLABORATION AND ORCHESTRATION\n\nFIVE PEOPLE AND KNOWLEDGE\n\nSIX DECISION MAKING: THE CHASSIS THAT HOLDS THE WHOLE TOGETHER\n\nSEVEN THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CEO\n\nENDNOTES\n\nBOOKS BY PETER F. DRUCKER\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nINDEX\n\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n## **FOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION**\n\nPeter Drucker, who was mostly right about everything, was dead wrong on one point. Two years before his death in 2005, he had volunteered to speak directly to the students of the business school that bore his name at the Claremont Graduate School.\n\nThey were upset, even marching outside the dean's office toting placards decrying a decision to put another name on the Drucker School to gain a $20 million gift. \"I consider it quite likely that three years after my death my name will be of absolutely no advantage,\" he told them. \"If you can get 10 million bucks by taking my name off, more power to you.\"\n\nDrucker underestimated the enduring nature of his contributions to management and society as the 10th anniversary publication of _The Definitive Drucker_ clearly demonstrates. In fact, if ever there was a time when a voice of reason was sorely needed, it would be right now and it would be none other's than Peter Drucker's. At a moment when the world seems ever more fractured and polarized, Drucker's thoughtful perspective would be calming if not reassuring.\n\nLuckily, the book in your hands is the next best thing: _The Definitive Drucker_ is a master work by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim that smartly distills the wisdom of the most enduring management thinker of all time.\n\nFirst, a confession. As much as I admired Peter, I often felt many of his books were sometimes difficult to get through. They were profoundly thoughtful but also often dense. What Edersheim has done in what is now a classic work is extract the gems from Drucker's prodigious life with a clarity and succinctness that makes his contributions all the more accessible.\n\nSo if you want to know what Drucker thought about management or knowledge, the customer or people, innovation or collaboration, these pages bring his ideas alive and prove how relevant they are yet again.\n\nAs to why Drucker matters, more than ten years after he died in his sleep eight days shy of his 96th birthday, it's simple\u2014his teachings form a blueprint for every thinking leader. In a world of quick fixes and glib explanations, a world of fads and simplistic PowerPoint lessons and tweets, he understood that the job of leading people and institutions is filled with complexity. He taught generations of managers the importance of picking the best people, of focusing on opportunities and not problems, of getting on the same side of the desk as your customer, of the need to understand your competitive advantages and to continue to refine them. He believed that talented people were the essential ingredient of every successful enterprise.\n\n_The Definitive Drucker_ is definitive on these points. He was the guru's guru, a sage, kibitzer, doyen, and gadfly of business, all in one. He had moved fluidly among his various roles as journalist, professor, historian, economics commentator, and raconteur. Over his 95 prolific years, he had been a true Renaissance man, a teacher of religion, philosophy, political science, and Asian art, even a novelist. But his most important contribution, clearly, was in business. What John Maynard Keynes is to economics or W. Edwards Deming to quality, Drucker is to management.\n\nDrucker made observation his life's work, gleaning deceptively simple ideas that often elicited startling results. Shortly after Jack Welch became CEO of General Electric in 1981, for example, he sat down with Drucker at the company's New York headquarters. Drucker posed two questions that arguably changed the course of Welch's tenure: \"If you weren't already in a business, would you enter it today?\" he asked. \"And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?\"\n\nThose questions led Welch to his first big transformative idea: that every business under the GE umbrella had to be either number 1 or number 2 in its class. If not, Welch decreed that the business would have to be fixed, sold, or closed. It was the core strategy that helped Welch remake GE into one of the most successful American corporations of the past 25 years.\n\nDrucker's work at GE is instructive. It was never his style to bring CEOs clear, concise answers to their problems but rather to frame the questions that could uncover the larger issues standing in the way of performance. \"My job,\" he once lectured a consulting client, \"is to ask questions. It's your job to provide answers.\" While sometimes frustrating for the impatient manager, Drucker's approach was enormously helpful to those he counseled largely because he was way ahead of the curve on major trends.\n\nHis mind was an itinerant thing, able, in minutes, to wander through a series of digressions until finally coming to some specific business point. He could unleash a monologue that would include anything from the role of money in Goethe's _Faust_ to the story of his grandmother who played piano for Johannes Brahms, yet somehow use it to serve his point of view.\n\nEveryone who knew him has a story or two about him, for sure. I first met Drucker in 1985 when I was scrambling to master my new job as management editor at _BusinessWeek_. He invited me to Estes Park, Colorado, where he and his wife often spent summers in a log cabin, part of a YWCA camp. I remember him counseling me to drink lots of water, to ingest a megadose of vita-min C, and to take it easy to adjust to the high altitude. I spent two days getting to know Drucker and his work. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We hiked the trails of the camp. And, I became intimately familiar with his remarkable story.\n\nToward the end of his life, I met with him several times, just as Edersheim did for 16 months before his death. During our last meeting in April of 2015\u2014seven months before he passed on November 11th\u2014Drucker seemed unusually frail and tired in black cotton slippers and socks that barely covered his ankles.\n\nI asked Drucker what he had been up to lately. \"Not very much,\" he replied. \"I have been putting things in order, slowly. I am reasonably sure that I am not going to write another book. I just don't have the energy. My desk is a mess, and I can't find anything.\"\n\nI almost felt guilty for having asked the question, so I praised his work, the 39 books, the countless essays and articles, the consulting gigs, his widespread influence on so many of the world's most celebrated leaders. But he was agitated, even dismissive, of much of his accomplishment, not in much of a mood to ponder his legacy.\n\nI pressed the nonagenarian for more reflection, more introspection. \"Look,\" he sighed, \"I'm totally uninteresting. I'm a writer, and writers don't have interesting lives. My books, my work, yes. That's different. What I would say is I helped a few good people be effective in doing the right things.\"\n\nIt's something we all need to learn again.\n\nJohn A. Byrne  \nFormer Editor at _BusinessWeek_  \nFounding Member of the Board of the Drucker Institute  \nFounder and Chairman of C-Change Media Inc.\n\n## **INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION**\n\nI first met Peter F. Drucker in the winter of 1980 and was both honored and daunted when 23 years later, he asked me to write a book about how his ideas could be used in the twenty-first century. By then, Peter himself had written 39 books. And although by that time three books about Drucker had been published, none addressed how to put the observations, wisdom, principles, and practices of \"the father of modern management\" to use in this new century. That was what Peter was after, and that's what we set out to do.\n\nI spent the next two years interviewing Peter and many of the legendary chiefs of industry, finance, nonprofit groups, and countries he had influenced. Our last conversation took place in the fall of 2005, a month before his death. As I sensed that Peter's last days were approaching, I also became more keenly aware of how desperately America and other countries needed business and political leaders to think as Peter F. Drucker always had: with discipline, ethics, responsibility, and reflection; and with the individual, the organization, and society working together. On the day he died, his wife, Doris, called me. She didn't have to say a word\u2014I instantly knew he was gone as I blurted out, \"Oh, Doris, his ideas will live on!\" And as we both began to cry, I knew that what I'd just heard myself say out loud for the first time was absolutely true.\n\nPeter continues to be widely quoted and referenced. The annual Drucker Forum attracts leading thinkers from around the world to discuss a selected Drucker topic, such as growth and prosperity. Since _The Definitive Drucker_ 's first publication, I have continually heard from readers all over the world thanking me for how helpful the book has been and how Peter's discipline has helped them elevate their leadership. A woman in Saudi Arabia recently wrote, \"It was the education that I never had and needed to grow my business.\" And when two students at Copenhagen Business School recently interviewed me as part of their thesis work, they asked stunningly perceptive questions that Drucker himself surely would have appreciated. Last year I was asked to write a blog for the Brookings Institution on an education book that had defined the role of education in building Druckerian thinkers for tomorrow. Day after day, I see Peter's inspiration evidenced by leading enterprises, the students I teach, and the clients I have the privilege of working with.\n\nNow, 10 years after the hardcover of _The Definitive Drucker_ was published, our world has crossed another, as Peter might say, historic divide, characterized by the sheer quantity, rapidity, and breadth of changes our social, political, and economic landscapes have undergone alongside the profound leap that technology has taken. It is undoubtedly a new world, and Peter had this to say about organizations in new worlds:\n\n* * *\n\n\"If nothing changes, we risk atrophying in our  \nirrelevancy. But, if everything changes, we risk  \nlosing ourselves in ineffective chaos.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe leaders of the institutions most successfully crossing this historic divide appear to be steeped in Peter. When Satya Nadella stepped in as CEO of Microsoft, his first act was to rewrite the mission statement with \"Drucker rules\"\u2014centering on the customer instead of Microsoft and which could fit on a T-shirt. He encouraged people to find ways to connect with customers and do the impossible for them. Jeff Immelt, GE's CEO, has spent his career inside GE\u2014a company where Peter worked closely with the previous four CEOs, building a culture that continually challenges assumptions and plays to its strengths. Immelt often asks Drucker's first question: _What needs to be done?_ Under his leadership GE has refocused on the \"internet of industry,\" supporting GE's being in ahead of other industry policy makers when it comes to climate change. Immelt, who embraces Drucker's value of dissent, is not afraid of taking a position on this that differs with that of the current President of the United States, and he encourages dissent inside the corporation. Zhang Ruimin, the CEO of Haier, the leading global appliance company, has studied Peter since he was a teenager and centers virtually all of Haier's corporate training on Peter F. Drucker.\n\nThe leaders of new institutions innovating in the new world appear to have an uncanny connection with Peter. Facebook's talent group is steeped in the Drucker principles. Spotify's CEO quotes Peter Drucker almost daily. The leaders at Blast refer back to Peter as they make every decision. Peter F. Drucker resonates with social sector leaders as well. Wendy Kopp is one example. Taking on one of the most intransigent sectors, she founded Teach for America and is now scaling social changes to countries around the world, referring to Drucker's lessons along the way.\n\nWhile Peter was intensely interested in management as a profession, he believed that corporations and social enterprises\u2014fast emerging as our most important institutions\u2014had to be both effective _and_ responsible. Otherwise, he warned, we won't have a functioning society. To be effective, Peter emphasized, we need to embrace new realities while holding onto principles and purpose. The first corporation he stepped inside of and wrote about was General Motors. Its current CEO could, I believe, learn much about leading GM tomorrow from the book Peter wrote about Alfred Sloan's leading it in the 1940s.\n\nAs my young Sports Management master's degree students at New York University learn about hands-on consulting, I've seen them practice some of Drucker's principles while helping their clients\u2014for instance, by challenging their clients' assumptions and helping them practice abandonment.\n\nFor example, for many decades (maybe even since the gory displays at the Roman Colosseum), sports revenue has come from people sitting in stadiums and then in front of televisions. One student team proved to its sports-promoter client that this is no longer true\u2014that, for example, more people had tuned into the League of Legends World Championship on mobile devices than had watched the 2016 Super Bowl on television. This revelation spurred the client to rethink his revenue model.\n\nA decade ago, Peter F. Drucker envisioned this divide I have been discussing here when he said, \"We will not know the impact of the Internet until we have observed how behavior changes.\" Well, we can clearly observe those behavior changes now, and my students who have embraced Drucker's principles of challenging assumptions and abandoning outworn tenets are helping their clients by pointing them out.\n\nI am not at all surprised by the continuing relevance of Drucker today. He might, however, be more surprised than I. He had a certain humility, which especially struck me one day as we talked in his home office in the fall of 2005. In his famous Austrian accent he told me he had no illusions about his legacy; in essence, he felt he would be lucky that if in 10 years he was still footnoted in some management and social science literature, as he believed there were certainly more important, impactful contributions than his. He pointed to the example of his friend Francis Crick, who codiscovered the double helix structure of DNA.\n\nBut, Peter was wrong about his legacy. Peter F. Drucker not only saw what management and leadership of the future would be and require, he also left us the tools to get there, just as his friend Crick gave us tools for modern biotechnology and a future understanding of the mind and consciousness.\n\nPeter's words are certainly still relevant\u2014even critical\u2014today, as we have crossed this divide, have Facebook and Twitter in our daily lives, and see our businesses wrestling with big data algorithms that try to predict consumers' behavior, artificial intelligence, and all the rest. The challenge of the social sector and the information sector working together has never been more relevant. And the challenge of making business more productive _and_ more humane certainly has never been more important.\n\nFor the sake of the future of our economy, our community, and our society, I believe every thinking manager needs to be familiar with Drucker's discipline of thought and how to put his principles and practices into immediate motion to solve twenty-first century management challenges.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\n* * *\n\n\"There is nothing more important than the  \nfuture impact of decisions we make today.\"\n\n* * *\n\n_\u2014Peter F. Drucker_\n\nWhen I finished writing this book, I knew Drucker's lessons would apply far into the future. I am still amazed at his prescience. Knowing and studying Peter F. Drucker changed me: how I work, how I think, the questions I ask. Perhaps most important, Peter made me appreciate the value of context, reflection, and adopting a Druckerian perspective.\n\nWhether you are a seasoned practitioner or among the new generation of aspiring leaders, I hope reading this paperback edition of _The Definitive Drucker_ will change you for the better, too.\n\n## **FOREWORD TO THE HARDCOVER EDITION**\n\nI did not realize it at the time, but I grew up with Peter Drucker. My father spent 25 years in management at GE, and another decade at Chase Manhattan. He met Peter at GE's Crotonville facility in the 1950s and always had Drucker's books on his bookshelf. Though I had no interest in business as a high school or undergraduate student, I flipped through my father's books\u2014Drucker classics such as _The Effective Executive_ and _The Practice of Management._ Later, when I was in the U.S. Navy, I grew more interested in business while running service and retail operations at a U.S. airbase in Japan, and returned to those and other classics. Slowly but surely, I was becoming a Drucker student.\n\nRegrettably, I did not take the initiative to meet Peter until 1999. P&G was in the midst of major strategic change and arguably the biggest organizational transformation in its 162-year history. I was then responsible for P&G's North America region, the big home market, and for P&G's new global beauty business. I called Peter and asked if he would meet with me. He agreed, and four decades after he and my father had talked at Crotonville, I sat with Peter in his modest Claremont, California, home, talking about a world he had been thinking about for nearly a half-century.\n\nI had hoped for one hour of his time. We talked for two. Then when my wife, Margaret, arrived to pick me up, she came in and we all sat and talked for another two hours. It was like drinking from a fire hose. For every question I posed, Peter had one or two more things to think about. Persistently, he urged me to choose, to focus on the few right strategies and decisions that would make the greatest difference. He challenged me to understand the unique leadership challenges of managing an organization of knowledge workers.\n\nThat exhilarating first conversation provided the themes Peter and I returned to for the next six years: how to unleash the creativity and productivity of knowledge workers; how to create free markets for ideas and innovation inside and outside a company such as P&G; how to build the organizational agility and flexibility to respond to and lead change. Later, we began a conversation about another subject on which he was focused in the last years of his life: the work of the CEO.\n\nAs I've looked back on these conversations and countless hours reading Peter's books and articles, I've thought about what made him so extraordinary. For me, it comes down to five things.\n\nFirst and foremost, Peter's basic rule was the importance of serving _consumers_. As he liked to say, \"The purpose of a business is to create and serve a customer.\" Plain and simple. At P&G, we have translated this principle into respect for the consumer as boss. Consumer-driven strategy, innovation, and leadership are cornerstones of P&G's success and a reflection of the influence Peter has had on our company.\n\nSecond, Peter insisted on the _practice_ of management. He had little patience for detached theory or abstract plans. \"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work,\" he wrote. He and I readily agreed that execution is the only strategy customers or competitors ever see. I always came away from our conversations with clear, fresh insights that I could apply to P&G's business and organization almost immediately. But Peter was not a single-minded evangelist for the virtue of execution. He believed in the power of strategic ideas and making clear choices. He said, \"From quiet reflection will come even more effective action.\" His ability to balance action and reflection is what makes his ideas so practical _and_ so enduring.\n\nThe third characteristic that made Peter extraordinary was his gift for reducing complexity to _simplicity_. His curiosity was insatiable, and he never stopped asking questions. He called himself a \"social ecologist\" because he drew from history, art, literature, music, economics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. From these many sources of inspiration came the clear questions and simple Drucker insights that lit the road to action: \"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.\" \"The only way you can manage change is to create it.\" \"The marketer is the consumer's representative.\" His most enduring gift to future generations is that he taught so many others how to ask the right questions.\n\nThe fourth defining Drucker strength was his focus on the _responsibility_ of leaders. Late in his life, he sharpened this focus on the responsibility of CEOs in particular. \"The CEO,\" he said, \"is the link between the inside, where there are only costs, and the outside, which is where the results are.\" For many reasons, business organizations become inwardly focused. Their business and financial measures are internal. Even if they have external metrics, those measures are often given lower priority because they don't drive short-term financial performance or because they are less precise and more qualitative. Peter argued that the CEO is in a unique position to balance this inward focus. The CEO has primary responsibility for bringing the outside in, for ensuring that the organization understands the views of the market, current and potential customers, and competitors.\n\nThe fifth and most important of Peter's many attributes was his _humanity_. He treated everyone with deep respect. \"Management is about human beings,\" he wrote. \"Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.\" He noted that business and other institutions are \"increasingly the means through which individual human beings find their livelihood and their access to social status, to community, and to individual achievement and satisfaction.\" While he did not suggest that businesses exist to supply jobs, he argued that managers have a fiscal, societal, and moral responsibility to ensure that jobs are fulfilling and individuals are able to contribute as fully as they can. I could not agree more. The most important thing I try to do as CEO is to inspire leaders and unleash the creativity and productivity of P&G's 135,000 knowledge workers.\n\nHumanity infused everything Peter wrote and said. He was a force for good in the world. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom because his management thought, beginning with _Concept of the Corporation,_ helped develop free societies of organizations more productive than dictatorships of the left or right. This is his greatest contribution.\n\nPeter Drucker was one of a kind. He was relentlessly focused on the promise of the future and the potential of individuals. It is entirely fitting that one of his final requests was for a biography of his _ideas_ rather than of his life.\n\nLiz Edersheim has fulfilled this request with _The Definitive Drucker_. She has captured not only the essence of Drucker's 39 books and seven decades of discovery and insight, but also the essence of Peter Drucker the man\u2014the wise, funny, insightful, humble teacher who sat with so many of us in his living room asking questions and patiently giving us the time to catch up to where he had already leaped, the man who helped us see what he always described as \"visible, but not yet seen.\"\n\nThrough his example and his ideas, Peter will continue to be a force for good in the world for generations to come.\n\nA.G. Lafley  \nChairman, President, and CEO  \nP&G  \nCincinnati, Ohio  \nSeptember 6, 2006\n\n## **INTRODUCTION TO THE HARDCOVER EDITION**\n\nSoon after I published a biography of my mentor Marvin Bower, the architect of McKinsey & Company, the phone rang at my home on a Friday night. \"Hello.\" The caller paused and then added, \"This is Peter Drucker.\" It took me a moment to grasp who it was on the other end of the phone, with his Viennese accent that sounded like my father's. I walked out of the kitchen, away from my family, to clear my head and be alone with this strangely familiar voice.\n\nPeter Drucker? The man credited with inventing the discipline of management? The man who wrote 39 books which have been translated into countless languages? The man who single-handedly counseled the chairmen of GM and Ford, who advised the president of the World Bank and the CEO of GE, who reportedly told Margaret Thatcher to privatize the entire British mining industry? The man who had a formative influence on every company Jim Collins and Jerry Porras profiled in their book, _Built to Last_ \u2014legendary organizations like Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Motorola?\n\nIn what I soon learned was Peter's usual no-nonsense way, he complimented me on my recent Marvin Bower book and asked if I might be interested in interviewing him. Drucker jokingly raised the idea of my writing a book about him, a book looking at how he had created the modern concept of management.\n\nI was tempted, not to mention flattered, but commitments ricocheted through my head: In the next few weeks, I had to fly to Brussels for a global meeting at Avon Products, ride in a Starbucks delivery truck through downtown Manhattan at dawn observing the stores from a logistical perspective, and meet with senior pharmaceutical executives in New Jersey to discuss a new packaging format that could help patients remember to complete prescriptions. But this was Peter Drucker, and he was 94. It might be the last book he worked on. I told him I needed to think about it.\n\nAt the time, several ideas were coalescing in my mind about how management can best step up to the scary and exhilarating challenges of the twenty-first century. As a consultant, I work with clients in businesses ranging from chocolates to athletic gear, from diesel engines to computer chips. Much of what I do professionally is based on Drucker's take-home pointers about focusing on results and how to be effective. I am also the mother of two teenagers, and even in that realm his books offer good advice. My kids shrug their shoulders whenever I trot out my favorite expression, which comes right from Drucker: \"Don't confuse motion with progress.\"\n\nI have been working with managers in a dozen industries for over 25 years and have recently seen their struggles intensify as the traditions of the business world are being upended. Changing customers, changing technology, and changing ways of doing and even defining business are jolting these companies to the core\u2014and often challenging their very survival.\n\nWhen I started as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in the late 1970s, I worked with midwestern companies whose survival was being challenged by Japanese competitors with their lower-cost cars, televisions, and machine tools. By the mid-1980s, my clients were consumer goods companies that were struggling to meet the demanding requirements of an enterprise that my friends in New York had barely heard of\u2014an Arkansas company by the name of Wal-Mart.\n\nIn the late 1980s, I started my own consulting firm and worked primarily with leveraged buyout companies (LBOs) that had paid too much for acquisitions and needed to drastically improve the economics of the companies in their portfolios. It was here I learned the expression, \"The sins of omission are greater than the sins of commission.\" At my firm, we continually tried ideas to test their viability rather than be paralyzed by fear of failure. As I later learned, this was very much a Drucker thing to do. In the early 1990s, almost overnight my client list became crowded with electronics companies and medical equipment companies. They were losing out to Asian and other competitors that churned out cheaper and cheaper knockoffs.\n\nThroughout all those years we didn't know how lucky we were. We could look inside a company, study the customers, and reinvent the business. We could often simply research other industries and top-flight companies to get ideas. For example, with Sealy Mattress, an overpriced LBO, we could pull $50 million out of cost and guarantee next-day delivery to retailers, fundamentally changing the retailers' need for inventory. With Motorola, we could connect with police stations and work with UPS to repair police mobile radios and return them within 24 hours.\n\nBut then the world got a lot more complicated. I began advising one company after another that it had to completely rethink its style and its core practices or else it would become uncompetitive and destroy tremendous shareholder value. There were no natural solutions or approaches to follow. Management had to take risks. Huge risks. Doing nothing was an even bigger risk.\n\nAt the time of Drucker's call, I was working with three clients, and all three needed a dose of Drucker. The first, a New England university hospital, was struggling with the decision to install a wireless network that would enable interns to swap patients' medical records on their laptop computers, speeding up the bureaucratic process and eliminating paper shuffling. The system had another benefit: It would qualify the university for more Medicare and Medicaid payments. But it contradicted everything hospital administrators held sacred about centralized information and patients' rights to privacy. Like many hospitals, this one was so bent on doing things the old way that it was heading toward bankruptcy.\n\nMy second client, a paper company mired in long-standing traditions, had taken a bold step by acquiring a dozen independent packaging companies. The companies served many diverse industries, from media to health care, and were based in many far-flung nations, including Brazil, the United States, Russia, and Europe. Senior managers wanted to seize the opportunity to help their clients use new packaging designs to grab customers' attention, but they used a painstakingly deliberate engineering approach to making decisions. The company had been through a slew of management consultants, from McKinsey to the Boston Consulting Group to Deloitte & Touche, and even management guru Ram Charan, a University of Michigan professor. I was working with the head of the packaging group to create a design center for customers, identifying potential partners in China and India. But after three critical years, executives were no closer to uniting their various acquisitions to provide designs for clients than when they had begun.\n\nMy third client was a cosmetic company with a household name that had too many ideas and way too little discipline. At the same time, it was uniquely positioned to touch customers around the world, but, like many consumer-goods companies, it was being slowly asphyxiated by the complexity of its offerings. The sales reps were so overwhelmed that they had become more like clerks processing orders than salespeople proactively describing a product. Manufacturing facilities produced one item, then the next, and the next, unable to capture economies of scale and often discarding unused inventory. This company was an ace at customizing orders and delivering them quickly to all reaches of the globe, yet it was missing great opportunities.\n\nAnd it wasn't just my clients that were being overwhelmed. Something has gone wrong with business in the twenty-first century. Consider this: Since 2000, the management at 18 different public companies\u2014 _18 companies_!\u2014has each destroyed more than $50 billion in shareholder value. That's more than Enron did, 18 times over. Why? Because, in most cases, the CEOs, boards of directors, and other well-paid managers held on to yesterday\u2014to doing business the way they always had\u2014and didn't know how to free their organizations to embrace tomorrow.\n\nManagement in the twenty-first century faces fundamental changes in the size and scope of opportunities. Businesses have historically defined \"opportunity\" as a chance to capture market share and rake in higher profits through greater productivity, a new and improved product or service, the acquisition of a competitor, or expansion into a new territory. But increasingly, opportunity is all about seeing, or even creating, white space\u2014uncharted markets that can be identified only by looking hard at both the external environment and the numerous unsatisfied demands of increasingly informed customers. What is fascinating is that often the customers aren't even conscious of what they want until someone comes up with a product and a marketing campaign that makes people say, \"I need that cell phone that shows the Comedy Channel.\" In a very real sense, truly innovative products and services _create_ their own markets.\n\nAs I traveled to Brussels and bumped around the streets of New York in a Starbucks truck, I couldn't get Drucker out of my mind. All these companies\u2014all the CEOs, all the CFOs, all the COOs, all the Chief-You-Name-Its I was dealing with\u2014were trying to cope with this bewildering 24\/7 world of outsourcing, changing demographics, sharpened competition, and new customer requirements. They were dealing with the very challenges Drucker had anticipated for decades, before anyone truly understood what he was talking about.\n\nAs I began to reread Drucker's writings, several things quickly became clear. No one has understood the implications of social trends and transformed them into opportunities the way Drucker has (see sidebar on page 17). No one has done a better job of helping organizations capitalize on opportunities. Despite the vast numbers of business books, no book clearly and powerfully explains the implications of the transitions that are underway and how to effectively manage in this new world. Something told me that this man, who had been the first to emphasize the human element of management, had some of the answers. I promised Peter I'd think about doing a book and would visit him on my next trip west.\n\nThree months later I flew to Claremont, California, to see the man who had defined the field in which I'd spent a quarter-century of my life. Peter was a sagacious nonagenarian with thick glasses, an even thicker Austrian accent, an ineffective hearing aid, but a surprisingly warm smile and hearty handshake.\n\nWe went to a dimly lit Italian restaurant where everyone knew him. They knew the wine he wanted, and no one had to tell them to bring him his double espresso after lunch. He was a fastidious eater, with an insatiable appetite for discussions of art, music, and world affairs. We talked about Vienna and Claremont College, where he was still advising the dean on the management of the Drucker business school. We discussed Trollope, the great English novelist. He talked about Doris, his wife for almost 70 years.\n\nHe helped me think through how to move the university hospital management beyond its traditional mindset. Peter was fascinated by the way information technology was changing everything about medicine, from costs to privacy concerns. He spent some time discussing the extent of technology's impact on health care, and he proudly discussed his nephew's scanning and diagnostics business.\n\nPeter suggested that I focus on how much revenue the university hospital was losing by doing things the old way. Were there, he asked me, instances where patient health was jeopardized by doing things the old way? What was important to hospital administrators, and how could we help them understand the need to adopt the alternative ways of operating that we were suggesting? Drucker also happened to have information from two California hospitals facing the same quandary as the university hospital.\n\nAs we made our way back to my rental car, I watched Peter take large strides with his walker, his frailty dwarfed by his determination. And I thought: this is going to be fun. In that first visit, Peter was very clear about his aims. He didn't want me to write a traditional biography, nor did he want an authorized biography so he could dictate what would be included. \"Do not hide things,\" he insisted. \"Do not be biased. This is your book. I want to see it. I am happy to discuss the ideas with you. This is your interpretation.\"\n\nIn interpreting Peter, I stayed focused on today. This is a crazy time. Opportunities are significant and often more difficult to identify than they were in the past, the time frame for capitalizing on them is much shorter than it ever was, and the cost of mistakes is much greater. Nobody knew how to capitalize on the past and make way for the future like Peter Drucker. His writings are all about business as an innovative agent of change; he provided solid, practical advice on how to succeed with start-ups as well as with established companies. Should a business stick to what it knows best, or should it take a risk and make a foray into a different area? More than seven decades as an observer and adviser to businesses gave Drucker a unique perspective on finding a healthy balance between preservation and change. The amazing thing is that this man, who was born in pre-World War I Vienna, had the vision to come up with theories that are still revolutionizing management in the age of the Internet, changing demographics, and the knowledge worker (a term Peter coined).\n\nI began testing Drucker's ideas with my clients. For example, Starbucks was pushing a paper-goods distributor to find a way to distribute cups and napkins to urban stores with limited storage space and little time for receiving packages daily, in order to save money. Rather than simply minimize cost, we asked a Drucker question: What would be of greatest value to the customer? Using Peter's question, we came up with some very different answers. The solution was to make everything easy for the Starbucks store so managers and associates could focus on their customers\u2014providing everything from automatic replenishment to cup dispensers with presleeved cups. And, for some rural stores, the answer was to use the same distribution channel for both the cups and the coffee.\n\nMy colleagues couldn't believe I had the good fortune to make Drucker my personal mentor. Michael Hammer, a classmate of mine from MIT's Sloan School of Management and author of an insightful business book, _Reengineering the Corporation_ , said that Drucker was one of his heroes: \"It is with some trepidation that I open his early books, because I am afraid that I will discover that he has anticipated my latest ideas by a matter of several decades. It is all there.\" Michael reminded me of what I was coming to know firsthand: that Drucker is the original outside-the-box thinker.\n\nSo, three months after we first met, I told Peter that he was right not to want a conventional biography as the \"father of modern management.\" I didn't want to write about his favorite childhood board games or his testy relationship with his autocratic father. I wanted to use Drucker's life and ideas to help companies navigate the treacherous waters of the twenty-first century. I wanted to distill his ideas into a practical book about how to help organizations thrive as their traditional ways of doing business are overturned. It seemed like the best way to honor someone who has guided scores, if not hundreds, of careers in corporations and nonprofits. Peter immediately agreed. He said, \"We need a new theory of management. The assumptions built into business today are not accurate.\" And with that, this book and an unlikely partnership began.\n\nPeter Drucker taught me more than I learned in MIT's doctoral program in operations research. We talked while driving around in rental cars. We talked in his den, surrounded by his collection of simple Japanese paintings with his pool glistening beyond glass doors. We talked as we sat in the Drucker archives at Claremont University. We talked on the phone late at night but never before 12 noon California time\u2014I don't think he liked mornings. Whenever I sent him a fax, I would receive a scribbled response the next morning.\n\nHis wife Doris was very protective. She rebuked me for bringing him doughnuts one day; that was the end of _that_ ritual. I had to limit my visits to two hours. Invariably, at the end of those two hours Doris would come over to where we were sitting; she carefully watched Peter's time and energy. Peter would say, \"Just a couple more minutes.\" I would want to listen to Peter for those couple more minutes but knew that if I didn't start packing up my tape recorder, it would upset Doris. It went on like this for 16 magical months. After Peter died in November 2005, I continued to touch base with Doris, who was a repository for even more of his great stories culled from a whirlwind life of changing the world of business.\n\nDuring that time, I read and reread Drucker. There were plenty of moments when my head was spinning. I interviewed and visited more than 50 of his clients and students, and a dozen of his academic colleagues, as well as senior executives who had never met Drucker but who were influenced by his work. While interviewing former students and clients, I noticed a pattern. Virtually everyone I interviewed said, at some time in the interview, one version or another of essentially the same thing: \"Peter liberated me. He elevated my expectations.\" I never really understood the power of liberation until I started hearing stories about it from so many people.\n\nPeter's ideas were the catalyst that freed people to pursue opportunities they had never expected to have. He liberated people by asking them questions and eliciting a vision that just felt right. He liberated people by getting them to challenge their own assumptions. He liberated people by raising their awareness of, and their faith in, things they knew intuitively. He liberated people by forcing them to think. He liberated people by talking to them. He liberated people by getting them to ask the right questions.\n\nWhen I played this theme back to Warren Bennis, a longtime friend of Peter's and one of today's leading thinkers on organizational effectiveness, he responded, \"Yes, I had never thought of it that way, but Peter Drucker does liberate.\" Warren sat back in his living room chair and smiled. When I checked it with Richard Cavanagh, president of the Conference Board, he smiled and said, \"Yes, I've seen him do that a lot. I've even seen him liberate whole audiences as he spoke.\"\n\nA particularly poignant moment came when I was interviewing Tony Bonaparte, special assistant to the president at St. John's University in New York. With tears in his eyes, he looked at me and told me how Drucker had changed his career and his life. Bonaparte had always wanted to teach at a community college. He had a chance to attend the Executive MBA program at NYU. There he met Drucker, who was a professor and teaching an evening class. Drucker took an interest in him, and Peter and Doris started taking him out to dinner every few weeks. Drucker would ask questions and implore Bonaparte to push, push, push\u2014to liberate himself. \"He made sure I always was stretching just a little further, liberating me from my constraints,\" Bonaparte remembered. \"Each time I went back, my expectations of myself were higher. He would not let me do anything but succeed. And if it weren't for him I wouldn't be where I am today. He looks at things as they are with a very realistic sense of how they could be and helped me do the same. It changed my life.\"\n\nDrucker worked with great leaders for over 75 years and liberated them, too. Churchill went so far as to say that the amazing thing about Peter F. Drucker was his ability to start our minds along a stimulating line of thought. Mexican President Vicente Fox commented that Peter's insights on societies were second to none. Peter F. Drucker so increased the credibility of the concept of \"management\" that the U.S. Bureau of the Budget was renamed the Office of Management and Budget in 1970. And, of course, Drucker liberated and inspired great corporate leaders, among them Akio Morita, founder of Sony; Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel; Bill Gates of Microsoft; and Jack Welch, former chairman and chief executive of General Electric.\n\n### **DRUCKER IDEAS**\n\nAs I began to write about Peter's ideas and share my own perspectives on them, he opened up. I would pick one topic from my list of Drucker ideas and discuss with him how it applied to the challenges of this century. He generally liked me to send him my questions in advance of my visit. I would write down his responses and study them, reread something he wrote, call a client or two, and test the thinking.\n\nFor example, when we were discussing the knowledge worker, Peter said, \"Today the corporation needs them more than they need the corporation. That balance has shifted.\" I called my friend Alan Kantrow, head of the knowledge effort at Monitor, the Boston-based consulting firm. Without missing a beat, Alan said, \"We are constantly asking ourselves\u2014what are we providing to the knowledge worker to keep him or her here, rather than go off and be an independent contractor. We believe it is the opportunities they get and the people they have a chance to work with that keeps them here. It is not the money.\" I then called David Thurm, VP & CIO of the _New York Times_. In this era of job-hopping executives, David is as much of a company lifer as I know. I asked him why he worked for the _Times,_ rather than as an independent contractor. He replied, \"I'm proud to be associated with such a great institution.\"\n\nDrucker had told me that there is no such thing as unquestioning loyalty: An organization has to earn the loyalty of its employees every day. David agreed and said that the _Times_ was still earning it. I called three other high-level executives and asked them what keeps them at their corporations. They said they stayed on because of job security. I guess asking this Druckerian question prodded them to think. Since then, two have left their corporations.\n\nWhile I continued consulting with companies large and small, I kept on thinking about how management could navigate this difficult new landscape and what lessons from Drucker's 70 years of observations could help them. I questioned executives whom I admired, added my own ideas, and shared the results with Peter as we discussed the book.\n\nOn a warm August day in 2004, during an intense conversation about what makes a good leader, Peter looked at me and said, \"The most important thing anybody in a leadership position can do is ask what needs to be done. And make sure that what needs to be done is understood.\" At the time, the newspapers were full of headlines about once-thriving businesses that were faltering badly and about scandals at Tyco, Enron, Adelphi, and WorldCom. He continued, \"You ask me why do so many people in leadership fail. There are two reasons. One is that they go by what they want, rather than what needs to be done. And the second is the enormous amount of time and effort to make oneself understood\u2014to communicate.\" I asked how leaders can be certain they know what needs to be done. He emphasized two things: asking and listening.\n\n* * *\n\n**DRUCKER PHILOSOPHY**\n\nEfficiency is doing things right.  \nEffectiveness is doing the right things.\n\n**On Money**\n\nMoney follows knowledge. Money is not a problem. The problem is leadership and direction.\n\nProfitability is not the purpose of, but a limiting factor on, business enterprise and business activity.\n\nWe need a measure, not a count.\n\n**On Management**\n\nManagement has mostly to do with people, not techniques and procedures. Their engagement is what matters.\n\nThe effective decision maker actually makes very few decisions.\n\nThe three most important questions are:\n\n\u2022 What is our business?\n\n\u2022 Who is the customer?\n\n\u2022 What does the customer consider value?\n\nManagement by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't.\n\n**On Knowledge**\n\nWe now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.\n\nThe essence of management is to make knowledge productive. Knowledge exists only in application. (Actionable knowledge as opposed to just information.)\n\nWe will not be limited by the information we have. We will be limited by our ability to process that information.\n\n**On the Individual**\n\nKnow your strengths.\n\nThe first question to ask is what needs to be done.\n\nEvery six months, ask yourself, what do I want to be remembered for?\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker was known for his Socratic style\u2014asking questions and asking the right ones. I once asked Dan Lufkin, a founder of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, to describe working with Drucker back when the firm was starting in the 1960s. First, he said, Drucker made sure everyone was focused on the questions that needed to be asked. \"I can't tell you how important he was to the development of the firm. He forced three young and ambitious guys doing well to step back and think, and on occasion make decisions.\"\n\nI have used Drucker's most insightful questions to structure every chapter in this book. As Peter often said, the right questions don't change as often as the answers do. As you read, think how you might answer the key questions in each chapter if you were asked them by your CEO or your customer.\n\nThe book also reflects Drucker's passion for making organizations and management work well in the present and to create tomorrow. The importance of and need for great management are reflected in virtually all his writings. Peter's passion was the direct outgrowth of having witnessed Europe's economic free fall in 1930. The failures and collapse that he wrote about in the 1930s were, to his mind, directly connected to poor business and government management. He was convinced that the lack of a viable economic engine in Europe is what brought Hitler to power.\n\nThe rise of Fascism and Communism only confirmed Drucker's view of the critical need for vibrant businesses in any society. Without economic opportunity, he wrote in 1933, \"The European masses realized for the first time that existence in this society is governed not by what is rational and sensible, but by blind, irrational, and demonic forces.\" He then went on to say that the lack of an economic engine isolates individuals and they become destructive.\n\nDrucker's understanding of the fragility and interdependency of our economic systems and the enormous human cost of failure is even more relevant in our global economy. And, as Drucker emphasized, we all must step up to the responsibility to manage our way to an optimal tomorrow. \"Human values, capabilities, and tenacity comprise the engine that keeps the world going. In short, we are all charged with influencing and managing the changes that will define our future.\"\n\nPeter and I saw this as a book for a wide assortment of people: A CEO leading an organization, a recent recipient of an MBA or a graduate of an executive education program who wants to think about the challenges and possible solutions that academics don't dwell on, a midlevel manager worried about declining sales, a vice president who is dealing with dilemmas of outsourcing, a CFO who is keeping a wary eye on competition from a company in another country, probably another continent. These people have some common traits: They want the best for their businesses. They are leery of short-term profit making at the expense of long-term growth. And they want their careers to make a mark.\n\nThe book begins\u2014as Peter and I agreed it should\u2014looking outside. Chapter 1 describes the revolutionary changes that have created the business environment of the twenty-first century and the challenges of this new world.\n\nThe remaining chapters reflect a logic Peter used often. I call it his vehicle for creating tomorrow and charting a course for the future.\n\nThe windshield is what enables you to see where you're going (with the help of mirrors that reflect where you've been). The first step in creating tomorrow is to build a picture that reflects your understanding of the environment. I call it _Peter's Marauder's Map_ ; it keeps changing and being updated. As things, situations, and people move, the map reflects those changes. Chapter 1 covers this part of the vehicle; it outlines the role of management and strategy in this new business world, where strategy is more important than ownership.\n\nVehicle for Creating Tomorrow and Charting a Course for the Future\n\nChapter 2 deals with the customer\u2014the steering wheel on the vehicle. A close connection with the customer helps the enterprise look at the world from the outside in\u2014from the external world, where customer needs develop and business results are achieved, inside to the organization, which must mobilize to identify and meet the needs and to achieve the results.\n\nChapters 3 through  deal with the fundamentals needed on the journey\u2014the wheels on the vehicle, if you will: Innovation and abandonment, collaboration, people, and knowledge. Chapter 6 addresses the decision mechanisms, discipline, and values that connect the fundamentals\u2014the chassis of the vehicle.\n\nThe last chapter of the book is about the role of the CEO. It is a chapter that recognizes that each of us is his or her own CEO, as Drucker liked to say. We can, and must, be passionate about creating our tomorrow.\n\nPeter Drucker's insights, as incisive as ever, have much to offer the twenty-first century organization seeking to liberate itself in our fast-moving, borderless world\u2014to create tomorrow. That is what this book is about. As you read it, I hope some of the Drucker magic rubs off, helping you to free yourself of constraints, to think creatively, and to act. I think that is the legacy he would want.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker's declarations have withstood the test of time. He objected to being characterized as a visionary or a seer. Yet he painted uncannily accurate pictures of the future thanks to his ability to anticipate the consequence of things that had already happened. Consider a few examples from among many:\n\n\u2022 In 1927, while attending the Editorial Conference of the Central European Economic and Social Weekly, when asked what he feared the most, Peter Drucker responded, \"I am afraid of Hitler.\" Others laughed at him, because Hitler had just suffered a resounding defeat.\n\n\u2022 In 1942, Drucker wrote that institutions (not nations, states, or other geographically defined entities) were the most important communities and that market stakeholders would become as critical as nation stakeholders. (Today, market stakeholders may have even superseded nation stakeholders. Of the hundred largest economic entities in the world, as measured by GDP and revenue, 44 are countries and 56 are companies.)\n\n\u2022 In 1947, Drucker wrote, \"Management is leadership.\" For the past 15 years, no single topic has received more attention in the management world than leadership. Frances Hesselbein is a frequent speaker in her role as chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute. \"I always include a quote from Peter Drucker,\" she notes. \"Inevitably, that is the high point of my speech. When I leave, it is the Drucker quote that people remember.\"\n\n\u2022 In 1954, Peter told his publisher, \"Management needs strategy.\" His publisher responded that \"strategy\" was a term for war, not business\u2014and it would repel readers. By 1975, the topic of strategy dominated the top management writings in journals and books.\n\n\u2022 In 1985, Peter told Walter Wriston, chairman of Citigroup, that the Berlin Wall would fall. Wriston said that he would have dismissed the prediction if it came from anyone but Peter Drucker. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, Drucker smiled and said, \"I didn't know it would happen so soon.\"\n\n\u2022 In a conversation in 1986, Drucker said that the Soviet Union would collapse. Henry Kissinger responded, \"You are wrong.\" When Gorbachev delivered the speech dissolving the Soviet Union in 1991, Drucker was once more prescient when he warned, \"Now we have to be concerned about their resources and economics.\"\n\n\u2022 In 1990, when most of business was still figuring out the implications of that Berlin Wall crumbling, Drucker wrote that communities of companies would be critical to business survival in the transnational world. We are now clearly, and sometimes painfully, in a globally networked world.\n\n\u2022 In 1992, Drucker wrote, there is no longer a \"Western\" history or a \"Western\" civilization. There is only world history and world civilization.\n\n\u2022 In 1999, Drucker commented on the Internet boom, \"It is not the access to information that is important. It is how organizations, business, and every horizon will change as a consequence that will matter.\"\n\n* * *\n\n## **ONE Doing Business in the Lego World**\n\n_The assumptions on which most businesses are being run no longer fit reality._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nAs I crisscrossed the country over the past couple of years, interviewing Peter Drucker and working with clients, something struck me. The staid world of business\u2014the world I'd studied, the world I felt I'd mastered during 20 years at McKinsey & Company and as head of my own consulting firm\u2014had been turned upside down by a silent revolution. In this chapter, I describe that revolution, tell you how Peter helped me understand this radical transformation, and explain what it means for you right now.\n\n### **THE SILENT REVOLUTION**\n\nChange came gradually, predictably, to businesses in the period following World War II through the early 1990s. But then, _boom_! A silent revolution took place on five fronts:\n\n**1.** Information flew.\n\n**2.** The geographic reach of companies and customers exploded.\n\n**3.** The most basic demographic assumptions were upended.\n\n**4.** Customers stepped up and took control of companies.\n\n**5.** Walls defining the inside and outside of a company fell.\n\nDevelopments on these five fronts played off one another, further accelerating the revolution.\n\nFirst, _information flew_. Since the expansion of the Internet, information travels instantaneously, without regard for distance, and its widespread availability is unprecedented. In the globally integrated economy, management must make decisions at all hours of the day and night. Purchasing managers in Plano and distributors in Dubuque can now distinguish between good suppliers and bad ones instantaneously. The greater velocity of information has accelerated the pace of everything in business. Success is measured not by the quarter or the month, but by the minute or second. Every industry, from manufacturing to movies, has had to adjust to this fast-forward world. As Lynda Obst, a producer at Paramount, recently noted, \"We used to have a weekend to get our money out of a movie like _Stealth_ or _Doom._ Now we get one night, tops.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe greater velocity of information has  \naccelerated the pace of everything in business.\n\n* * *\n\nFor decades, information was power. But today, with the unprecedented availability of instant information to anyone with a laptop, true power comes from screening, interpreting, and translating vast quantities of information into action.\n\nSecond, the _geographic reach of companies and customers exploded_. Remember that cartoon of the kid scraping a hole in the ground and saying, \"Hi, Mom, I'm digging to China\"? Today that same 11-year-old gets on his Mac and connects to a peer in Guangzhou for a game of war, and his 13-year-old sister goes to sweetandpowerful.com to buy a fleece pullover made in Sri Lanka. Companies and their customers now have an astounding geographical reach. Even mom-and-pop firms can scour the world for resources. And in this global marketplace, brands are created and gain widespread recognition in weeks or months rather than years, cutting down the advantage of the big-brand players who used to be the select members of an exclusive club.\n\n* * *\n\nCompanies and their customers now have  \nan astounding geographical reach.\n\n* * *\n\nThird, _basic demographic assumptions were upended_. Populations in the developed world have been jolted by an aging group of workers and a declining birth rate. The migration from industrial to knowledge workers and the increasing success of women in the workforce have changed customers' needs and forever changed the relationships of corporations with both customers and employees. Until quite recently, only customers in affluent countries reached the apex of Maslow's pyramid of self-actualization, which starts with the basics of food and shelter. Now, millions more people in all social strata have been freed from worrying about the basics; they seek service and fulfillment.\n\nWith longer life spans, later retirements, and a record number of women in the workplace, convenience matters more than ever. I noticed recently that my supermarket was touting premade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for parents who don't have an extra 60 seconds to slather two spreads on bread. With changes in how customers are distributing their income, companies are offering more useful information and more service. The three fastest-growing consumer purchases today are not traditional consumer goods; they are activities (such as sporting events and health club memberships), health care, and education. Health care and education make up almost a third of America's gross national product (GNP).\n\nTo managers, the biggest effect of these demographic changes is that societies, markets, and workplaces are driven by new populations with new demands. Once-dependable workers over age 50 do not necessarily keep on toiling as full-time, 9-to-5 employees. Instead, many dive into the labor force as temporaries, parttimers, consultants on special assignment, or knowledge workers. Some of these older workers will be pushed into free agent status because of layoffs and buyouts.\n\n* * *\n\nSocieties, markets, and workplaces are driven  \nby new populations with new demands.\n\n* * *\n\nFourth, _customers stepped up and took control of companies_. Never before have customers been so clearly in the driver's seat. They are engaged with companies in ways that would have astounded Henry Ford or Thomas Watson. Customers are no longer simply passive recipients of goods and services; they are active participants from the product inception, whether as groups evaluating the product or as individuals working with software programs and design engineers to custom-build everything from Levi's jeans to light fixtures. Consumers can access virtual shelves for almost any product, and they want customized products delivered with the click of a mouse.\n\nCustomers create their own weblogs with their own online content. Hachette closed its _Ellegirl_ teen magazine while its competitor, Cond\u00e9 Nast, is launching a Web site with all its content created by teen readers rather than by Cond\u00e9 Nast staffers. We read each other's blogs and socialize at virtual meeting places such as MySpace.com and the online dating site Match.com. Shopping for a mate has become almost as easy as shopping for a book on Amazon.com (\"Add this man or woman to My Cart!\").\n\nSavvy customers have become part of the process that used to exclude and dismiss them with condescending remarks like, \"You'll have that dining room table delivered in eight weeks. And, no, we cannot make it three inches taller just because you have a relative in a wheelchair\u2014you'll have to find a carpenter to do that.\" Today you design it with one of several manufacturers such as Thomas Moser\u2014often online\u2014exactly the way you want it.\n\nFinally, defining _walls fell_. These days, a company draws on capabilities outside its own walls in ways that would have been unheard of just a few years ago. To test ideas, companies now use expertise drawn from completely different industries and form alliances with other companies with overlapping missions. Since Home Depot recognized that its strength was internal to its stores, it has passed all its logistics issues off to UPS; now UPS manages everything at Home Depot connected with shipping. This partnership allows the two companies collectively to serve Home Depot customers more efficiently.\n\nSometimes companies even team up with direct competitors. Last year, two global rivals, China National Petroleum Corporation and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, teamed up to buy a Syrian oil field, and this year they jointly bid for another one in Colombia. Walls have fallen to bring the best people and divisions within companies together rapidly and to enable organizations to adapt without huge write-offs. Whereas independence was once key to speed and a barrier to the entry of competitors, it has come to signify isolation. And isolation is corporate death.\n\n* * *\n\nIsolation is corporate death.\n\n* * *\n\nThe impact of this silent revolution hit me one day in 2005. Although I had studied the company carefully twice before, I was making my first visit to Procter & Gamble (P&G) in Cincinnati as a writer. Everyone welcomed me, from sales reps to the chairman, president, and CEO, A.G. Lafley. They wanted my thoughts, and they were eager to give me every bit of information I requested.\n\nWhat a vast change this warm reception was from my two prior dealings with the firm in 1990 and again a decade later in 2000. I wasn't working for P&G on either occasion; I was studying it for a competitor. Back then, the Cincinnati behemoth was so secretive that the chairman of my client company told me not to even so much as mention P&G's name in any report. He felt that if P&G found out I was analyzing it, there would be \"repercussions.\" I dubbed it Company S for \"secret\"\u2014as if any executive couldn't figure out who was making all those soaps, detergents, and diapers I was writing about.\n\nNow here I was in Cincinnati in 2005\u2014feeling a certain amount of dread mixed with excitement\u2014interviewing Lafley over a lunch of chicken and green beans in his office. At the conclusion of our meeting, he told me to call with any questions. And it wasn't just Lafley who was forthcoming. Rather than a hermetically sealed conglomerate, I found a company so open that it invited me, an outsider, to visit one of its product-testing centers. The company is intent on tapping outside sources and retirees for research and development (R&D) and is even testing a program with DuPont to link the two firms' technology centers. P&G had changed its attitude so radically that it was letting employees write articles about how they were managing. Drucker's influence was apparent. He had been working with P&G since about 1990, and he had constantly pushed executives to see beyond the borders of Ohio. And they had listened.\n\nOn my way home, I reflected on my day. What impressed me was not just that P&G was more open; what was really striking was that it was rethinking the way it did everything. I had seen the same ability to rethink the present and embrace the future at GE's corporate headquarters in Connecticut, and then across the country at a completely different place\u2014the Myelin Repair Foundation, a little-known start-up foundation in northern California.\n\n### **EMBRACING THE FUTURE**\n\nMy GE experience began as I prepared to interview its former chairman, Jack Welch, a long-time Drucker client. Before seeing this legendary executive, I wanted to know what GE insiders thought and what tips they could offer for drawing Welch out. I called Dave Stevenson, a friend who used to run GE's major appliances marketing group. He told me that he had created his own company, doing research on major consumer expenditures. Seven companies, including GE, were buying his research and market planning. That was unusual for GE, which used to distrust outside researchers. But Dave said that Welch had forced the major appliance group to ask not only what others could do better, but what activities should be spun off and which department heads could work independently. When Dave had volunteered to take marketing outside, the bosses surprised him by agreeing to it. Dave gave me his tip: Listen to Jack Welch and don't be offended by his rough style. Another thing: Jack likes specific questions that demand specific answers.\n\nWhen I called Welch at the appointed time, I grabbed his attention by asking what he was doing for his birthday. He asked me how I knew, and I told him it was the same as Peter Drucker's\u2014a bit of trivia that surprised him. My second question was how Peter had influenced him. He said that Peter had made him conscious of GE's ability to work with another organization that was excited about something that GE found boring. \"If it's not your front room,\" Peter had asked Welch, \"can you make it someone else's front room?\" Peter had expressions that everyone seemed to remember. His point was that if you don't have passion for a particular activity, then find an ally who has expertise and passion for that activity _and_ can do it better. Harness GE's clout and the ally's passion and move forward. \"GE recognized that they were never going to be the best in the world at programming and found a company that was passionate about it in India 20 years before anyone else,\" Welch told me. This wasn't what the press calls _outsourcing_. Outsourcing is meant to save money or make things easier for the manufacturer. Instead, GE wanted to put the best teams together, even if some members were external and including them added to logistical demands. It sought partnerships that would deliver the best value to the customer. Jack termed this shift \"boundarylessness\" and indicated that it is a continual challenge for most companies.\n\nOver the years GE executives continued to ask themselves that question and go outside its walls more and more. This effort began in earnest with Peter exhorting Welch to focus on strengths and find somebody else to do the rest.\n\n* * *\n\nFocus on strengths and find somebody else  \nto do the rest.\n\n* * *\n\nBig, profit-hungry companies aren't the only ones breaking boundaries. After talking to Welch, I visited the Myelin Repair Foundation, an innovative group in northern California that is trying to find a cure for multiple sclerosis (MS). (This organization is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.) Its approach challenges two long-standing practices that create barriers in research. First, the foundation is connecting separate, competing research groups that used to share findings only after their papers were published. A group of five leading neuroscientists from different universities are piloting a new, collaborative approach to medical research with a shared research plan right from the start.\n\nSecond, the foundation is collaborating with patients at every step\u2014something even the best researchers don't do. Their meetings include not just researchers and fundraisers but also patients, the people most affected by MS. The patients' presence creates a new sense of focus and urgency in the researchers. This isn't an academic exercise that will culminate in articles for specialized journals. This is about life and death and about finding a breakthrough in a few years, not in a future someone's lifetime. The scientists are looking for take-home solutions to the deterioration of myelin, the protective insulation surrounding nerve fibers of the central nervous system, which is destroyed by MS. This relatively small foundation is pioneering the twenty-first-century way of doing business.\n\n* * *\n\nEmbracing the new requires  \nabandoning the past.\n\n* * *\n\nIndustrial mainstays like P&G and GE and newcomers like the Myelin Repair Foundation are reshaping where and how companies work with customers, other stakeholders, and even potential rivals. These innovators are accelerating the pace at which companies connect, disconnect, and reconnect. P&G and GE recognize that the financial market values soft assets, such as customer relationships, international access and agility, and intellectual capital, and that's where they put their investments. We'll learn from their successes\u2014and some of their mistakes\u2014throughout this book.\n\nTo paraphrase Drucker, embracing the new requires abandoning the past. In our conversations, he often said that we are at a moment of transition where businesses and organizations will be redefined. If they don't, they'll go the way of pterodactyls.\n\n### **THE PRIMACY OF KNOWLEDGE**\n\nI was eager to test my observations about the silent revolution with Peter Drucker, the visionary who had an astounding track record in predicting and shaping the future. The companies I advised were reeling from the changes around them, and I knew his counsel would make my advice better. It was a lucky coincidence that several of the companies I worked with had consulted with him decades earlier.\n\nWhen I drove to Drucker's house in a middle-class enclave of Claremont, California, in February 2005, a lone Toyota sedan was parked in the driveway. I remembered my first visit the previous summer when we began to talk about the possibility of my writing a book. On that day, I drove by the house three times, checking the address. It was a nice house, but not ostentatious\u2014an average ranch house in an average neighborhood. It did have distinctive landscaping. The lawn resembled one of those British creations where someone manages to cram in twice as many plants as you'd think possible and make it look wonderful nonetheless.\n\nThis time, with the book under way, I rang the bell and heard Peter's usual, \"Just a moment!\" Then I heard a thumping noise through the house. Peter opened the door and commented, \"I'm not as fast as I used to be.\" The thought flashed through my mind, maybe not physically. He continued, \"Pleased to see you.\" He grabbed my hands and said, \"Well, come in.\" We walked past Doris's office and a shelf stacked with mail. We walked through the living room, which was always immaculate. The _Financial Times_ was spread on a long table.\n\nWe sat down in the den, next to a round coffee table, with me on his right, by his better ear. Peter enjoyed small talk, but today we plunged right into a business discussion. I wondered if he had noticed the phenomenon of the outside world becoming part of companies. I began by asking his thoughts about the most important challenge for managers today. I used the classic B-school question: What should be keeping managers up at night? He laughed and said, \"I don't know.\"\n\nBy now, I understood him well enough to realize that he did know. This was his way of prodding a questioner to dig for the answer. Then he'd go into his \"I'll-tell-you-something-else; we'll-get-back-to-that-question-shortly\" routine.\n\nWe did get back to it, and this chapter does too, in a moment. Peter often talked in circles\u2014beginning with something that might appear totally unrelated and ending with an insight into a question. Somehow it connected to his initial observation.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter observed that we are now in another  \ncritical moment: the transition from the  \nindustrial to the knowledge-based economy . . .  \nWe should expect radical changes in society  \nas well as in business.\n\n* * *\n\nIn this case he didn't start by discussing managers, or even science. He talked about World War II. It was, he said, the first war won on industrial power, not military depth. It was the first time in which industry was not an auxiliary but the main fighting force itself. In fact, in the first six months, the United States manufactured more aircraft, tanks, and artillery than Hitler and his advisers thought the Americans could make in five years. They did it by applying the discipline of management from operations research and quality control to rapidly convert factories from making cars to producing tanks. Peter then mentioned my friends from the Sloan School and the role they had played. That led him to a soliloquy about peace. He said that any peace following such a war must be an industrial peace\u2014a peace in which industry is not just on the periphery but at the center. He was on a roll, tracing the transition from a mercantile economy to an industrial economy . . . and the concomitant tension between policy and reality.\n\nPeter observed that we are now in another critical moment: the transition from the industrial to the knowledge-based economy . . . We should expect radical changes in society as well as in business. \"We haven't seen all those changes yet,\" he added. Even the very products we buy will change drastically.\n\nI asked how the Americans won the Gulf War in 1991. He didn't take his usual moment to collect his thoughts. \"Technology,\" he shot back. When I asked how the war on terrorism will be won, he took a moment and said, \"Knowledge.\" He then explained the difference to me: \"Technology is the application of yesterday's knowledge. The war on terrorism will be won based on our ability to apply knowledge to knowledge\u2014or someone else's ability.\" He meant the ability to integrate the pieces and add to what we know individually.\n\nAnd that brought us to management, or what he called \"knowledge-based management.\" He spent the better part of the next two hours defining and pulling this idea apart: the importance of accessing, interpreting, connecting, and translating knowledge. He spoke about how critical it is to find and manage knowledge in new places like pharmaceutical companies as they move beyond chemistry to nanotechnology and software. Knowledge-based management is also critical to old multinationals like GE as they begin to build infrastructure for the developing countries, with the caveat that they first need to fully understand those countries. Essentially, GE has to access information about the developing world and its infrastructure, interpret this information, and connect it with the rest of GE. Drucker commented that information will be infinite; the only limiting factor will be our ability to process and interpret that information. That is what he meant when he emphasized the importance of the productivity of the knowledge worker.\n\nPeter had a way of looking at something and teasing out both the positive and the negative. \"On the one hand, it's important to specialize,\" he said. \"On the other hand, it's dangerous to over-specialize and be isolated.\" The ability to access specializations while cutting across them\u2014that's what I'd seen at the headquarters of the Myelin Repair Foundation only a few hundred miles away. Finally, Peter was answering my question\u2014finding a way to specialize enough, but not too much, and without isolation. \"That,\" he said, \"is what should keep managers up at night.\"\n\nDoris appeared. All too quickly my morning session with Peter had ended. That afternoon, when I went back, our topic was Thomas Friedman's bestseller _The World Is Flat._ Friedman argues persuasively that it doesn't matter where work gets done\u2014it makes no difference whether a computer company produces a part in India or Indiana.\n\nEverywhere I went, executives seemed to agree: The world is flat. I asked Peter if he thought the world was flat.\n\n\"From whose perspective?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yours,\" I said.\n\n\"I have trouble walking around my living room,\" he joked. \"It doesn't seem flat to me.\"\n\nHis mind was so spry that sometimes I forgot he was 95 years old. \"All right,\" I said, \"then from the manager's perspective.\"\n\nHe paused and said, \"Their landscape is flat only if there is an opportunity from it being flat. But if there is an opportunity, it will not be flat for long.\"\n\n### **THE LEGO WORLD**\n\nAfter several more discussions with Peter, I came to understand what he was telling me. The management world is flat only if you take an industrial perspective. If you just want the lowest cost, the capabilities exist virtually every place in the world to get the lowest cost. But if cost is not your only concern and you recognize that the industrial world has given way to an information and knowledge-driven world, you will see that the world is not flat and that Indiana and India are not interchangeable. Indeed, the ability to put together and connect the pieces in different ways and with the customer all the time defines an enterprise's performance. Many more than two dimensions of place and time matter all the time. Even country geography is not flat. Silicon Valley is different from Silicon Alley which is different from Wall Street.\n\n* * *\n\nThe ability to put together and connect  \nthe pieces in different ways and with the  \ncustomer all the time defines  \nan enterprise's performance.\n\n* * *\n\nIn the twenty-first century, businesses exist in a Lego world. Companies are built out of Legos: People Legos, Product Legos, Idea Legos, and Real Estate Legos. And these aren't just ordinary Legos; they pass through walls and geographic boundaries, and they are transparent. Everything is visible to everyone all the time. Designing and connecting the pieces is at least as important as providing them. It's crucial to remember that these aren't simply pieces of plastic or metal\u2014they are not just factories or warehouses. They are also humans who program computers, train newcomers, and think about innovation as they prowl malls, libraries, and parks, coming up with new products and services. These pieces are constantly being put together, pulled apart, and reassembled.\n\nMy company's Legos\u2014manufacturing, distribution, skills, and services\u2014cannot be unique unto themselves; they have to connect with your company's Legos. I can build my company, but in a year or two, my CEO and I might have to tear down and rebuild part of it in a totally different configuration, perhaps with fewer American People Legos and more of your company's People Legos in Sweden or South Africa. Leading visionaries in business are expressing the same notion. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, recently explained: \"What's more important than any one individual Lego is that you know how to build with all the Legos. With everything out there, all those programs and applications and accessories, what's important is the ability to find a way to _connect_ fragmented software pieces rather than simply finding the next piece of software.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn the twenty-first century,  \nbusinesses exist in a Lego world.\n\n* * *\n\nThat's the idea that Peter embraced, but it was larger than software and components. He thought in terms of people, with a tremendous sense of humanity and compassion for the individual. That's the beauty of it. We are not talking about commodities. We are talking about individuals and their ability to create. As these Legos connect and interconnect in ways we could never have imagined a decade ago, when the Internet was in its infancy, we find a powerful, human structure. In an organization, we can connect individuals' strengths, minimizing their weaknesses. And across organizational boundaries, we can connect the strengths of each corporation and provide the customer with far greater value than can any single enterprise.\n\nDell is a classic example of a Lego manufacturer. It has configured its offering so that customers can custom-build computers to meet their individual needs. Michael Dell claims that the firm's important capabilities are the management and integration of information and the ability to quickly build a computer to a customer's specifications. Dell's Product Legos include anything from processor and memory capacity to screen size. Its internal network includes vendors, shipping locations, and the location of the customer service center (depending on the time of day, customers can be helped by someone in South Africa, India, or Texas). Connecting pieces include Dell's systems, user interface, assembly centers, and customer support service. Although Dell recognizes customer service as its weakest link, Dell can deliver a customer-tailored product to anyplace in the world at an incredible speed, largely because of the interchangeability of its components, which is at the heart of Dell's \"Lego-like\" operations. Dell's challenge will be to disconnect and reconnet in a new way as the PC moves from a worktool to the entertainment and communication center.\n\nAmazon exemplifies the Lego approach in the retailing arena; it connects with other vendors who have expertise in making everything from textbooks to toys. Its Web site links you to book publishers, third-party used bookstores, individuals reselling books, and vendors for any product you can dream of\u2014from televisions to telephones to T-shirts. Amazon knows you, and, when you log on, it welcomes you by name and offers you purchase suggestions at lightning speed. It often knows what I want before I do. It's the high-tech version of the old-fashioned grocer who not only knows you by name but also has a hunch you need sugar before you run out. The company is connected to you, your mind, and your credit card. It is the connection that is important.\n\nDell took its expertise and understanding of the electronics world and connected that capability with each consumer to greatly increase its impact. Amazon linked one Lego to another, from baby clothes to DVDs, and created a simple interface offering the consumer scores of products and incredible ease of use\u2014one-click checkout. Jeff Bezos had the patience and foresight to build a company around connections, and, after a decade of testing, learning, and growing, he made a profitable business. He also had the insight that told him that building an initial customer base around books would ensure that his core customer would be literate, savvy, relatively affluent, and likely to return to purchase more.\n\n### **A NEW SOLUTION SPACE**\n\nThe most significant trends affecting business transcend all companies and all industries. They cross borders and touch all areas of civil society. Business as we know it is disappearing. Companies aren't selling products; they're selling experience. Relationships have gone far beyond the roles of buyer and seller. There are no competitors. Let me repeat that, because it's something that Peter Drucker loved to say: _There are no longer competitors,_ just better solutions and more choices that can be put together in more ways. In other words, companies focused on competitors are focused on the past, not a future full of technological and demographic opportunities.\n\n* * *\n\nBusiness as we know it is disappearing.  \nCompanies aren't selling products; they're  \nselling experience. There are no longer  \ncompetitors, just better solutions and more  \nchoices that can be put together in more ways.\n\n* * *\n\nThe evolution of cellular phones into instruments capable of doing much more than handling voice communication offers a striking example. The obvious convergence of functions to give a customer a product that does many things\u2014capturing and transmitting still and moving digitalized images, connecting with the Internet, even functioning as a TV\u2014not only means serving a wide range of consumer needs but also guarantees that customers will upgrade to a new device frequently because they want the latest version with new and enhanced capabilities. And the carriers will constantly have to upgrade infrastructure and systems in order to not only constantly improve service, coverage, and signal quality but also to be prepared to offer new forms of service functions. Sprint \"competes\" with Verizon in recruiting and retaining subscribers by focusing on constant innovation, which is the primary engine of growth and sustainability. By continually innovating in both technology and range of services offered, what was once an enterprise offering a commodity\u2014cellular phone service\u2014becomes one offering a rapidly widening range of value-added services. The winner is the organization that offers the most varied menu from which a customer can pick, choose, and customize. And this trend is driving change not just in the electronics industry, but in a variety of goods and services that themselves were unimaginable years ago.\n\n### **IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS**\n\nOne of Drucker's talents was his ability not just to see trends but also to shed light on their implications so that managers could act on them. In our conversations, we discussed three consequences of the silent revolution:\n\n**1.** Financial markets now value knowledge more highly than they value hard assets, underlining the emergence of the knowledge economy.\n\n**2.** The U.S. economic engine is facing the gravest threat of the past 100 years: the need for corporations to be strategic collaborators rather than unilateral superstars.\n\n**3.** Strategy has become a crucial ongoing activity for management, not simply an annual planning exercise.\n\nFinancial markets value companies based on what they think they can earn over time. For decades\u2014since the Industrial Revolution, really\u2014what mattered was hard assets: factories, inventory, and accounts receivable, or the ability to build products. Reflecting the preeminence of the knowledge economy, the silent revolution has prodded the financial markets to value the intangibles, such as relationships, intellectual property, and knowledge, and to quantify the value they might generate in the future. We are buying services more than products\u2014health care, education, personal trainers. The market reflects this shift in value. In the last five years, soft assets\u2014intellectual property, patents, and connections\u2014have doubled in value compared to traditional assets, such as plants and equipment.\n\nDrucker noted two developments that drove this shift to soft assets. Old companies, like Boeing, were being revalued as their physical assets took a back seat to their knowledge, relationships, and ability to connect. At the same time, innovative companies, like Google, Yahoo!, and Craigslist, were launched in cyberspace with very little in the way of physical assets, providing services that had never existed before. Unlike a traditional newspaper that relies on classified ads, Monster.com is a forum, a truly interactive business. At first it sounded like just an electronic version of the classified ad\u2014hardly a big advance. But browsers can see what is happening in the labor market, how jobs are being described, and which industries are prospering. It offers a much more comprehensive view of the job market than does a stack of the Sunday _New York Times_ , or even nytimes.com.\n\nConsider Craigslist, which, though not a newspaper, has had an even more profound effect on the print media, because it does not charge for classified ads. In just one day, I sold my car on Craigslist to someone who lives just outside the circulation area of my hometown newspaper\u2014and rather than paying $50 for agate type that might or might not lure a buyer, I didn't pay a cent. And then I was hooked. I started buying gardening equipment from people in my suburb who posted ads on Craigslist. In just one week, I gave up my lifetime habit of scanning the classifieds in my hometown paper. Monster.com and Craigslist are more than mere services; they are locations\u2014virtual Starbucks. You join a crowd. It's comfortable.\n\nThe second challenge is one that Peter and I talked about frequently and one that keeps me up at night: U.S. companies' ability to cooperate in the global marketplace. America's institutions\u2014even our economy and our mindset\u2014are designed for the individualism of an industrial economy, not a Lego world. The game has changed. Peter agreed. He kept saying, \"The theory of business has changed.\" He saw a warning in England's behavior at the time of the later stages of the Industrial Revolution. By holding on to the past, England survived as a nation but lost its world leadership. Peter foresaw a time when many countries would be as strong economically as the United States. The booms in India, China, and even Brazil have created world-class competitors.\n\nAmericans will have to play as equals, something that's not easy when you've spent a good part of a century as the undisputed Number One. We have to retool our schools so that students don't simply learn how to answer multiple-choice questions. They need to synthesize information and think critically. If we want our children to thrive in this new world, we should immerse them in Mandarin or another language by the age of five so they learn to connect to other cultures and languages.\n\n* * *\n\nThe most significant business implication  \nof the silent revolution is the new role and  \nimportance of a good business strategy.\n\n* * *\n\nThe most significant business implication of the silent revolution is the new role and importance of a good business strategy. Simply put, a strategy focuses critical resources on tasks aimed at producing results. I used to assume that business strategy was like strategy in chess. You had a quantifiable number of moves to choose from. Everyone played on the same basic board from year to year, from decade to decade, learning a few new moves and facing new competitors. The best strategist won the game.\n\nBut, today, it's as if chess is played in four dimensions, on multiple boards, simultaneously by experts on five continents. And in business you don't have to worry about competitors so much as ever-changing rules and unidentified customers.\n\nFrom 1950 to 1990, the boundaries of strategy were well defined, as were the customers, markets, competitors, suppliers, and potential threats. Enemies\u2014regulators or rivals\u2014were clear. Companies spent three to six months every year crafting their strategies, which were then translated into budgets, capital requests and approvals, and personnel changes.\n\nBut not in the Lego world where strategy arises from proactive and innovative moves that create opportunities. The boundaries may be global; the markets may not even fit into any convenient categories, such as 13-year-old girls with $50-a-week allowances who like fleece pullovers. The resources will likely extend outside your own company, and the direction of your business will have to align with other strategies. Even if you own the right physical assets and employ the best minds, you are no longer guaranteed control over the right-of-way to the customer; too many filters influence a customer's purchase decisions. For example, when influential teenagers with a presence on MySpace.com decide that teens must buy their pullovers from a hot new place, it's bad news for the old place. In the Internet age, the classic value delivery chain makes about as much sense as a chain letter.\n\nStrategy has to move and be refined at a speed comparable to what used to be called _tactics;_ it has to be in real time. You don't have six months, or even three months, to create a master plan. Opportunities disappear as rapidly as they can be captured. Strategy is not a goal; it is a direction, a blueprint for putting the pieces together and building. It must have continuous feedback to translate real-time results into refinements and changes as appropriate. In a Lego world, fluid design and the ability to connect and reconnect provide a new agility that is a central element of the twenty-first-century enterprise.\n\n* * *\n\nIn a Lego world, fluid design and the  \nability to connect and reconnect provide a new  \nagility that is a central element of the enterprise.\n\n* * *\n\nAs Drucker often pointed out, companies face unparalleled demands. They must craft and communicate a strategy that invigorates their employees and collaborators and that gives them a shared purpose and direction. They must be ready to adopt almost anything that will give them an edge in innovation and enhanced productivity. A company that builds on each individual's potential is far more likely to succeed than one that inches people forward in dull tasks. Creating tomorrow\u2014by taking advantage of opportunity and human talent and capability, in a manner which enhances society\u2014is the challenge of management in the twenty-first century.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker identified himself with a character in Goethe's _Faust_ (1831). In the last act, in a contract with the devil, Mephistopheles, Faust utters the taboo words, \"Stop! Time is so beautiful.\" Just before the climax, Lynceus, the lookout on the top of the watchtower, introduces himself loudly, \"Born to see, meant to look,\" and starts to report what is happening there and what is coming here. To observe and report what the world faces and what looms\u2014that was Drucker's job. It should also be the job of every CEO who wants to survive the next decade.\n\n* * *\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nAs Drucker maintained for over 70 years, businesses are the critical engine of a thriving and sustainable society that values individuals and rewards achievement, with management effectiveness the determining factor in keeping the engine running. Let's be clear: Business isn't just business. It's the economic engine of democracy.\n\n* * *\n\nBusiness isn't just business.  \nIt's the economic engine of democracy\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker believed that with the right questions, the right judgment, and the right mindset, the manager who \"walks outside\" and thus liberates himself or herself and others from the confines of \"what you think you know\" is more than capable of rising to the occasion. We will not all be the genius Peter was, but we can all learn from his approach, beginning with asking the right questions.\n\n## **TWO The Customer: Joined at the Hip**\n\n_An enterprise's purpose begins on the outside with the customer . . . it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nOn paper, it seems like the most obvious notion: The customer is in the driver's seat, at the control panel. What could be more fundamental? And yet few organizations, busy with all they are doing inside their own walls, are truly focused on the outside world of the customer.\n\nIf you are in business, beware. The silent revolution of technology and demography described in the last chapter has given each customer his or her own handy remote control. Everything has changed about your customers and your relationships. You've never had as many people around the globe to reach. And they reach you, too, one by one, not as a homogeneous group. Dozens, maybe hundreds of factors influence the way these individuals around the world see value. Customers aren't just in the driver's seat these days; they are also gassing up the vehicle, doing some of the service, and controlling a fair amount of the traffic on the road.\n\nPeter Drucker's conviction that the customer is at the center of it all shaped his thought from the very start. As a young journalist in the 1930s, Peter credited Time-Life's success to Henry Luce's understanding of the customer rather than his journalistic savvy. In Peter's first management book, _Concept of the Corporation,_ he attributed General Motors' success to Chief Executive Alfred Sloan's unique understanding of the customer, not Sloan's scientific approach. As recently as 2004, in his last _Wall Street Journal_ editorial piece, \"The Role of the CEO,\" Peter again said that everything begins with understanding the customer. In today's world, where customers are standing up and taking control, understanding your customers and the value you provide to them is more critical than ever.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker's conviction that the customer  \nis at the center of it all shaped his thought  \nfrom the very start.\n\n* * *\n\nIn this chapter, we look briefly at what customer focus is all about since the silent revolution: We examine Peter's classic questions about the customer, tuned to the twenty-first century, and look at how customer focus (or the lack thereof) drove day-to-day corporate life and strategy at Procter & Gamble. As you read, think about how getting inside the mind of your customer could redefine your business from front to back.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter Drucker credited the great journalist Henry Luce with opening his eyes to the truism that all successes start with the customer: \"Most people hated to work for Luce. He was not an easy man to work with. I loved it because I always learned . . . I saw that mind of his, seeing an enormous amount of material, and seeing the one central issue, which I think is the mark of the really great editor.\"\n\nWith little more than his own vision, Henry Luce founded _Fortune_ magazine, the first true business magazine, in 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression. In launching his first venture, _Time_ , Luce had met numerous businessmen whom he felt should and would want to know how their work related to and affected the society around them. Most business magazines of the time were little more than trade journals, and Luce believed that there was a glaring need for a magazine to help businessmen examine their values, goals, and biases, noting on _Fortune_ 's debut that to \"accurately, vividly, and concretely . . . describe modern business is the greatest journalistic assignment in history.\"\n\n_Fortune_ hit newsstands in 1930 at the then-exorbitant price of one dollar per issue. It provided value for the dollar\u2014an 11- by 14-inch magazine printed on the highest-quality paper with cardboard covers and countless photographs, not to mention articles written by a notable list of ambitious and talented young writers, including Peter Drucker and Archibald MacLeish, who later won three Pulitzer prizes for poetry and drama. By the end of 1930, _Fortune_ had a circulation of 30,000, which more than quadrupled in the next decade. Simply put, Luce had anticipated his customers' needs.\n\n\" _Life_ was another Luce idea. He saw it as an attempt to see the world as the viewer of a movie sees it, not the maker.\" Two decades later, Drucker heard a photographer describe working with Luce. \"'You know, every time I walked out of those conferences, I swore I would never do another assignment, and every time after three days I reached the conclusion that Luce had been right. He did not have a photographer's eye; he had a viewer's eye. I have a photographer's eye. They're very different.' _Life_ he edited himself, and those sessions when he picked the . . . photos that went into _Life_ were absolutely fascinating. Because Luce would look at 18, 20, or 40 photos, 3 of which would get into the book. In most cases it would take him absolutely no time to pick those 3, [which] were always very well received.\"\n\n_The lessons Drucker drew from his association with Henry Luce grew into a conviction that an outside-in perspective is essential to business success._ What gives life to and sustains the corporation resides on the \"outside,\" not within its direct control, and the customer is the primary mover of these external realities and forces. It is the prospect of providing a customer with value that gives the corporation purpose, and it is the satisfaction of the customer's requirements that gives it results.\n\n* * *\n\n### **MEDTRONIC: INSIDE THE CUSTOMER**\n\nMedtronic is a company that personifies Peter's ideal of customer focus. Founded in 1949, it is the world's leading medical technology company, with $11 billion in annual revenues and an average annual growth of 18 percent for the past 20 years. At the core of this financial success is Medtronic's customer orientation, which is embedded in its mission: to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. Each year, 6 million patients benefit from Medtronic's technology for treating chronic conditions such as heart disease, neurological disorders, and vascular illnesses.\n\nOne of my high-school friends, Stephen Oesterle, M.D., is Medtronic's senior vice president for medicine and technology. He explained that the company considers physicians its all-important partners and shares their passion for improving the quality of patients' lives. The doctors help Medtronic decide what products to invent by understanding patients' problems and the devices needed to address them. \"At least 99 out of our top 100 products were conceptualized in the field by physicians who were struggling at the bedside to try to correct something,\" says Oesterle.\n\n* * *\n\nConnecting to the customer\u2014being  \njoined at the hip\u2014is the beginning  \nof defining your tomorrow.\n\n* * *\n\nPartnering with physicians has resulted in a cornucopia of life-saving inventions; Medtronic has developed new ways to rewire our bodies, restoring cardiac rhythms with pacemakers and defibrillators, and devising more effective approaches to managing diabetes. It is also using neurostimulation (electrical stimulation of the spinal cord or a targeted nerve) for depression, incontinence, deafness, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, migraines, and spinal cord injuries\u2014the possibilities seem endless.\n\nThe growth opportunities for the company are spectacular. In the next 25 years, the number of Americans, Europeans, and Japanese over age 60 will double. At the same time, the number of people in developing countries who can afford high-end medical devices is increasing exponentially. Many of them will likely have a degenerative disease that Medtronic products address.\n\nWith an unprecedented responsiveness to customer needs, Medtronic came up with a vision for disease management. Devices, implanted in patients, will be remotely programmed and use wireless networks to transmit vital signs such as blood pressure, glucose levels, and pulmonary pressure, thus saving face-to-face visits for instances when serious problems occur. So a heart patient from Manhattan can go on vacation to Puerto Rico knowing that the staff at his doctor's office will alert him if they spot a build-up of fluid in his chest\u2014a primary indication of heart failure. His doctor will urge him to go to a hospital\u2014and even tell him which one in San Juan is best\u2014where a local doctor who never heard of him before can access all his key data. The San Juan doctor can confer with the patient's own doctor back home, who will look at a computer screen and double-check the treatment. This is happening already, thanks to the implanted monitor. Years ago, when Peter Drucker started consulting for medical suppliers, this sounded like science fiction. Now it's science\u2014 _customer-driven_ science.\n\nConnecting to the customer\u2014being joined at the hip\u2014is the beginning of defining your tomorrow.\n\n### **CONNECTING WITH YOUR CUSTOMER: FOUR DRUCKER QUESTIONS**\n\nWhen Peter talked about the customer, he had four classic themes that he came back to over and over again. These themes ran through 70 years of his work. Peter asked every one of his clients:\n\n**1.** Who is your _customer_?\n\n**2.** What does your customer consider _value_?\n\nAfter long discussions answering those two questions, he would then ask:\n\n**3.** What are your _results_ with customers?\n\n**4.** Does your customer _strategy_ work well with your business strategy?\n\nVirtually every one of Peter's clients I spoke with had a story about the tremendous impact of these questions. Rethinking the answers with Peter changed how the clients thought about the business they were in. Southern Pipe, a regional plumbing company, redefined its customer; instead of serving contractors alone, its branches began serving local communities and homeowners as well as contractors. Herman Miller, the design-centered furniture company, changed its customer focus from midwesterners with an eye for a striking look to large city dwellers and lovers of modern art.\n\nWhen I interviewed John Bachmann, the retired managing partner of the financial service firm Edward Jones, he described his moment of truth about the customer. Peter got into a disagreement with Ted Jones, the managing partner at the time, about who the firm's customers were. It began when Peter asked Ted, \"How do you decide where you put your offices?\"\n\nBeing clever, Ted said, \"Well, you do it like the baseball player, Wee Willie Keeler. We hit 'em where they ain't.\" Ted explained that they targeted cities where there were no competitors, where Edward Jones was the only stockbroker in town. Peter, pushing him, asked, \"Why would you do that?\" Ted responded, \"Because we do better.\" Peter asked how much better and suggested that they look at the facts. When they lined up all their offices, they found that Edward Jones did 25 percent better where there were competitors. Ted had seen the market geographically and had defined the customer as the rural American with no alternative access to the stock market. In fact, their customers were people who wanted personal service and relatively low-risk investments. Peter's questions fundamentally changed their understanding of their customer and their value proposition. When I drive by their office near my home in Westchester, New York, I smile, thanking Peter for putting them there.\n\n* * *\n\nThe question, \"Who is your customer?\"  \nseems awfully simple. But don't be deceived.  \nThe customer is no longer a passive  \nreceiver of products but is engaged in  \ndesigning and refining them.\n\n* * *\n\nThe question, \"Who is your customer?\" seems awfully simple. Mission statements and quarterly reports suggest that most companies and nonprofit organizations know the customer as intimately as a favorite neighbor. But don't be deceived. In this complex, ever-changing Lego world, identifying the customer is not the straightforward task many assume it to be. For one thing, the real customer is not necessarily the one who pays for the product or service, but the one who makes the buying decision. Every marketing analysis needs to start by assuming that the business doesn't know its customers and needs to find out who they are. The customer is no longer a passive receiver of products but is engaged in designing and refining them. Consider health care. It is now standard procedure for patients to investigate symptoms on the Internet, learning about diseases and treatments and tracking records of doctors and hospitals. Patients assess the latest clinical drug trials and experimental procedures. Consumers are now actively directing their own medical treatments. The specialist or MD doesn't make the decision; he or she advises and is an influencer. It's a clear example of the customer taking charge in the new world.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?**\n\n**1.** Who should be included in your definition of the customer?  \n **a.** The end consumer?  \n **b.** The buyer or decision maker?  \n **c.** Critical influencers such as communities and sources of information?\n\n**2.** Who in the interlocking world of alliances and partnerships should you view as customers versus competitors?\n\n**3.** Who is not your customer?\n\n**4.** Which of your current \"non-customers\" should you be doing business with?\n\n* * *\n\n### **WHO SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN YOUR DEFINITION OF THE CUSTOMER?**\n\nIn this interconnected environment, there's an entire team behind every customer. The user, the buyer, and the influencer are linked together as never before, and they sway other buyers. We need to do more than understand them; we need to engage with them, alone and in groups, and understand how they want to be engaged. This is a whole new type of relationship, with the customer influencing other customers.\n\nCompanies spend a lot of time trying to reach the women\u2014and yes, it is usually women\u2014who fill supermarket carts. But they have a supporting cast of decision makers: kids and doctors and nutritionists and Pilates instructors and friends who proselytize about the various supplements and diets. Drucker went so far as to say that there is never only one consumer. He believed that at least two people usually stand behind a buying decision. Now companies have to keep tabs on intermediate customers and \"filters,\" such as Web sites that rate products. All these influence endusers' buying decisions\u2014even if the customer doesn't realize it.\n\n* * *\n\nThere is never only one consumer.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker identified the phenomenon of the customer team when he was advising the Girl Scouts of America more than 20 years ago. He found that the mothers were as much the organization's customers as the girls were. And mothers from different backgrounds required different kinds of connections. By emphasizing family values, the Girl Scouts were able to woo Latina mothers and thus recruit new members among their daughters. Capturing this rapidly growing population helped make the Girl Scouts the fastest growing not-for-profit organization in the 1980s.\n\nAt Avon the customer is as much the sales rep as the end-user. The sales rep needs to understand the differences between products and help the buyer decide. Intermediaries, like sales reps, work in unexpected ways which can give consumers more power than ever. Peter told me about one doctor whose patients dictated where she took a job. I recently talked to a surgeon who switched to a new hospital because it had gotten a better rating in _U.S. News & World Report_ based on surveys of patients. The patient is not only the hospital's customer but also its evaluator and a major influence on its staff.\n\n* * *\n\n**IDEAS IN ACTION: SHADOW CUSTOMERS**\n\nOne of Peter's clients, a hospital equipment company, asked him to conduct a study to identify its customers and ended up redesigning its entire product line. Management had always assumed that the customer it needed to satisfy was the doctor. The company spent a good deal of time and money promoting itself and its products to those all-powerful doctors. It designed its products to provide the value, utility, and excellence the doctors wanted. But sales to hospitals tanked.\n\nPeter had a customer analysis done that shocked the company. Unlike the Medtronic example where physicians made the purchase decision, hospital doctors are not the ones who buy. They don't even have much say in the purchase. Equipment is bought by administrators\u2014many of whom don't even have an M.D. degree. They have to run complex institutions with poorly paid and not particularly skilled personnel. Their definition of \"excellent\" equipment is based on what the equipment does _not_ do. It's excellent if it does not tie down scarce, highly skilled nurses and technicians. It's even better if it does not require a lot of training to operate and if it does not harm the patient or the staff. That was a revelation to the hospital equipment company: \"We found out that our equipment has to be end-user focused rather than 'doctor-focused' and sophisticated.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **CUSTOMER VERSUS COMPETITOR?**\n\nIn this networked world, your customer often turns out to be a competitor as well. In some cases your product may be packaged with others and sold as an integrated unit. Those sales may increase your revenue but decrease your brand identity, because the final product may not carry your brand.\n\nI recently worked with a company that does graphics for software, games, movies, and music releases. Not long ago Sony or Disney would buy the company's graphic work and packaging and have it sent to a replicator to box with the disk. Now, replicators have begun to handle the purchase of graphics printing for the studios. The replicator is both a customer and a competitor of the graphics company. As this shift was occurring, my client was building its in-house graphics management and structural design capabilities. It is now managing all the artwork for several products\u2014and the replicator is a complementor, a customer, and a competitor, combined into one. As the CEO put it: \"Our customers and competitors have become all wrapped up into one\u2014and we have to work with them all.\"\n\nIt is becoming increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe. In the online business world, the line between competition and cooperation is especially blurred and constantly changing. For several years Google has had a close, mutually profitable customer relationship with eBay, the online auction company. eBay spends twice as many advertising dollars on Google as it spends on other search engines and gets about three times the traffic. And yet this symbiotic relationship is complicated. In its quest to become a one-stop information shop for the world, Google has launched a classified-advertising business called Google Base, which is free to users. Google is rumored to be ready to launch an online payment business code-named Google Wallet. Both are in direct competition with eBay.\n\nIn response, eBay has sought out alliances with two other technology leaders, Yahoo! and Microsoft, which are also under attack from Google. Yahoo and Microsoft could potentially become eBay customers using its online payment business, PayPal, and eBay's Internet phone service, Skype. Simultaneously, syndicating their clients' ads on eBay's auction pages is a huge opportunity for Yahoo! and Microsoft, and Google would like to do it, too.\n\nWill Google's technological advantage enable it to walk all over its competitors? Or will it overreach from hubris, as so many other companies have? Keep your eye on this young company to see the answer.\n\nIn our new world, where relationships have proliferated, the customer you are ultimately serving can change from transaction to transaction. \"When is our customer a competitor?\" is a question that needs to be asked again and again.\n\n### **WHO IS NOT YOUR CUSTOMER?**\n\nIn my many conversations with Peter, he frequently asked the \"not\" question. He would sit back in his den, smile, and say, \"It is also important to ask the other side of the question. Make sure you know the bounds you are assuming and that they are the bounds you want and that you want everyone in your organization to understand.\"\n\nBill Donaldson, of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ), told me that Drucker's \"not\" question made a big contribution to DLJ's success: \"I think one of the greatest things that Peter left with me was [the understanding that] one of the most important decisions you're going to make in building this firm is the decision about whom you're not going to do business with. That can be credited with a large part of the success of DLJ in the heyday of the 1960s, and again in the 1980s and 1990s. We didn't do business with customers when we had questions about their ethics in the growing market. We didn't have to, and putting the question on the table made the decision that much easier.\" Donaldson further credited the firm's internal identity for facing up to the issue. Often in the hallway, he would hear associates discuss and debate who was and who was not a DLJ customer.\n\nIdentifying noncustomers includes asking, \"Who among our existing customers should not have customer status, and why?\" In 1993, Colgate North America was struggling with the complexity of its products and customer base. After carefully reviewing its customers, Colgate realized that it needed to transition smaller customers to distributors so that it could focus its efforts on the larger customers who accounted for the bulk of its sales. This decision helped the management team regain the number one position in oral care two years later.\n\n* * *\n\nHaving explicitly defined its customer groups,  \nmanagement has the foundations of a robust  \noutside-in perspective.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker frequently said, \"It is good to do one thing right. Don't do too much.\" Asking who is not the customer helps keep an organization focused and encourages transitions at the right moments. Having explicitly defined its customer groups, management has the foundations of a robust outside-in perspective. The work then needs to center on setting the business up to resonate with each customer's current and anticipated realities, needs, and value placement.\n\n### **WHICH OF YOUR CURRENT \"NON-CUSTOMERS\" SHOULD YOU BE DOING BUSINESS WITH?**\n\nIn a changing world, this inquiry, which Peter used so often, forces managers to think a little harder. Andy Grove, Intel's former chairman, says, \"Peter Drucker is a guiding light to a whole lot of us.\" Over time, Intel has grown by converting non-customers to customers. In the early 1990s, Intel began to understand the needs of a key non-customer\u2014the wireless phone companies. To serve this fast-growing market, Intel dropped its historical third-party connection to players like Motorola and Nokia in favor of direct relationships. Intel thus focused on the wireless phone companies and began selling them chips and capabilities to support their emerging needs.\n\nToday, Intel is crossing into another new area, selling laptops to the developing world\u2014an Intel PC, not a PC with Intel inside. Laptop companies were Intel's customers. Now they are competitors. Intel is making customers out of noncustomers in vast, overlooked regions of the world. It recently announced several regional PC design initiatives, including a desktop computer for the Indian market and another for Mexico. The Mexican machine, offered in partnership with Telmex, the Mexican communications company, offers a subsidy for a broadband Internet connection and is priced at about 20 percent below similar machines.\n\nTeachers are another newly discovered customer for Intel. CEO Paul S. Otellini announced a five-year, one billion dollar program to train teachers and to extend wireless digital Internet access worldwide. The goal is to train 10 million teachers around the world and give them and their students access to a low-cost, Microsoft-compatible machine to be called Edu-wise. \"It doesn't need exotic technology and it runs real applications,\" Otellini explained.\n\nWhen I asked Peter to tell me the action items here, he said to just keep asking the question and to make sure that the answers are really thought about, not just reflex responses.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHAT DOES YOUR CUSTOMER CONSIDER VALUE?**\n\n**1.** How does your customer's perception of value align with your own?\n\n**2.** How do connectivity and relationship influence value?\n\n**3.** Which of your customer's wants or demands remain unsatisfied in your target markets, and can you or should you step up to fill those gaps?\n\n* * *\n\nThe essence of a business's identity lies in the value the business provides to its customers. What that value is remains the most important question a company can ask itself. Yet the question is rarely asked, because people often assume they know the answer. That assumption has killed many companies.\n\nWhen I cut my teeth as a young McKinsey consultant in 1980, AT&T was a company I admired immensely\u2014as did most of the business world. Drucker wrote with much praise about its iconic leader, Theodore Vail, and its legendary customer focus. In the 1990s, however, AT&T lost touch with what its customers valued, which was low cost and convenience. Instead it focused on leveraging its expanding network and became mired in a monopolistic culture of bureaucracy and complacency. When Michael Armstrong took the helm in 1997, the market had great hopes that he would overhaul the company and stem erosion in its core long-distance business while positioning AT&T as a telecom leader. Instead, the focus was on trying to fight the local Bell companies by acquiring cable companies to gain access to their local customers. At the same time, customers were gradually moving away from traditional long-distance calling in favor of wireless phones, e-mail, and instant messaging. They were not interested in making telephone calls through cable, and AT&T's move fueled customer defections to the Internet. Thanks to the vastly increased number of high-speed, broadband Internet connections made available in recent years, however, and driven by such firms as Vonage and Skype, a significant number of customers now use their Internet service suppliers for multiple services, including telephone.\n\nIt didn't help that senior management spent valuable time thinking of ways to placate its increasingly angry shareholders by creating complex schemes to split the company into separately traded units. During Armstrong's reign, AT&T's customer base plummeted from 90 million to 54 million, and it lost about $60 billion, or 75 percent of shareholder value. While AT&T was busy talking to investment bankers and upgrading its technologically deficient cable networks, two young Scandinavian entrepreneurs were forming alliances and launching the Internet telephone company Skype (acquired by eBay on October 14, 2005), which offers its users free calls to other Skype users online. Today, Skype has 61 million customers in 225 countries and is adding 170,000 new ones every day; AT&T is down to about 22 million. In early 2005, AT&T, once the world's largest company, agreed to be taken over by one of its former children, SBC Communications. Although SBC renamed itself AT&T, it's safe to say that AT&T as I knew it in 1981 no longer exists.\n\n* * *\n\nWhether companies like it or not,  \nthe customer is the boss.\n\n* * *\n\nWith the silent revolution, what the customer values and what influences that value are shifting dramatically. Whether companies like it or not, the customer is the boss. In the developed world, most customers have moved up on Abraham Maslow's \"hierarchy of needs\" and are seeking fulfillment and service rather than another material product. With time increasingly valued, convenience commands a greater premium. And, of course, the customer's increasing role in tailoring the product influences perceived value. These fundamental shifts in customer values must be recognized.\n\nExplicitly making the customer the boss does not place the company at a disadvantage as some fear. By embracing the notion of the customer as boss, management can make the relationship a win for both parties\u2014by asking the questions that force the organization to \"walk in the customer's shoes\" and understand what the customer values.\n\n### **HOW DOES YOUR CUSTOMER'S PERCEPTION OF VALUE ALIGN WITH YOUR OWN?**\n\nOver the years, consultants and internal marketing groups have performed countless customer value analyses. We have interviewed customers, identified major attributes that they value, and carefully assessed their relative importance\u2014all excellent work. The problem is that everyone from the board of directors to the CEO on down needs to be out there talking directly to the customers themselves and finding out what is going on. Direct, personal contact carries an emotional intelligence not readily reported on paper. Value has to be understood from the customer's perspective, and the only way to do it is to ask the customer directly. This task cannot be delegated. In this data-rich world, first-hand emotional intelligence still matters.\n\n* * *\n\nIn this data-rich world, first-hand  \nemotional intelligence still matters.\n\n* * *\n\nThat is why, on any given day, you may find Procter & Gamble chairman, president, and CEO A.G. Lafley in the kitchen of a Venezuelan housewife or walking around in the most dangerous parts of S\u00e3o Paolo and Rio de Janeiro to see firsthand how consumers are buying and using P&G products. The analysis can be delegated, but not the customer contact.\n\nI spoke with Robert Gwyn, former executive vice president and board member of Jacobs Engineering, a $6 billion company that designs and builds facilities and installs equipment for industries with very precise requirements, such as aerospace and defense, chemicals, and pharmaceutical companies. He explained that Jacobs's value proposition is targeted at CEOs, even though COOs and heads of engineering make the purchasing decisions. Jacobs maintains relationships with the full executive committees. It does not claim to provide the lowest cost or best quality buildings, but the company does promise to minimize business risks by addressing the customer's strategic tradeoffs (such as spending more time on developing a particular drug versus starting to build the production facility needed to get the drug to market). Jacobs Engineering doesn't ignore cost; it brings a cost discipline to everything it does. But its top-level value proposition has to do with strategic tradeoffs. Its customers are not in commodity businesses but in dynamic industries where the bets are high.\n\nI asked Gwyn how Peter Drucker had influenced the company. He told me that Jacobs had begun as a family-owned company focused on process equipment and the chemical industry. In the 1980s, Peter's writings had helped the members of the management team think through the value they provided and articulate their value proposition. They realized that they were more than an industry service company, and their target customers rapidly expanded beyond chemical and energy companies to include defense, pharmaceutical, and infrastructure businesses, fundamentally changing the scale and scope of the firm. The company is now about 10 times the size it was 17 years ago. As to how the silent revolution is affecting Jacobs's value proposition, Gwyn said that the value proposition hasn't changed but delivering on it has. Many more people at each company are now customers and have their fingers in the pie. Each person adds value but also costs time and threatens to unsynchronize the whole. It has become far more difficult for Jacobs to have the discipline and ability to integrate ideas rapidly and to further enhance the value being provided than it used to be.\n\n### **HOW DO CONNECTIVITY AND RELATIONSHIP INFLUENCE VALUE?**\n\nBeyond the significance of the product itself, the value perceived by a customer increasingly depends on his or her relationship with the company and control of the end result. This has remained true even as face-to-face interactions have given way to cyberspace transactions. Sumerset Houseboats boosted online sales dramatically by more directly engaging the customer in the process of building a boat. In the 1970s, Sumerset was a neighborhood company, and the locals would wander in daily to see their boats taking shape. They knew the boatbuilders and were involved every step of the way. When Sumerset's online business took off, it wanted its online customers to have the same opportunity as neighborhood folks. Today, Sumerset customers go online to customize the plans for their boats and to view photos of their boats being built. This is far more than a gimmick. It is a way to empower customers and create a sense of community.\n\nOn the industrial side, the value of deep, close association with the customer has been demonstrated over and over again, with suppliers placing staff or whole departments at customer sites to handle logistics, or assigning systems engineers to the customer site long term to assist with complex equipment. And yet this kind of connectivity can be slow in coming. For every company that will use Jacobs Engineering to help it make strategic tradeoffs in planning a new facility, there are others unwilling to entrust aspects of their operations to a third party. A senior executive at Cincinnati Milacron estimates that when it works with customers on the full system design, equipment productivity is 20 percent higher. Yet a number of its customers feel that system design must remain in house. Despite the explosion in connectivity, companies still encounter pockets of resistance and need to find ways to provide value while respecting the customer's desire for autonomy.\n\nPart of the connection is a holistic understanding of customer needs, which drives many marketing decisions. Motorola found that at Wal-Mart new mothers often bought cell phones in the same purchase \"decision window\" as disposable diapers. Apparently new mothers were very conscious of their need to stay in touch with their families, hence the odd juxtaposition of diapers and dialing. Motorola bought end-aisle displays near the diapers to prompt increased purchases.\n\nA very different approach to understanding and meeting customer needs is in bundling capabilities, products, and services to meet those needs. The master bundler\u2014or, as competitors might argue, the master bully\u2014is, of course, Bill Gates. Microsoft's co-founder and former chairman explicitly looked at the bundles consumers buy when defining Microsoft's strategy of integrating previously stand-alone products and technologies into its Windows operating system. From a customer perspective bundling provides tremendous value. It saves not only money but also time and aggravation as the bundled software works well together and is compatible with a variety of computers.\n\nCompetitors have successfully argued that the bundling is predatory, and in 2001 a U.S. court ruled Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser bundle was illegal. This doesn't seem to have stopped Microsoft, however. Since then Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, Windows Messenger, and Windows Movie Maker, among others, have been bundled. There are rumors that the next operating system, Vista, will include anti-spyware and security software, threatening to kill Symantec and McAfee just as bundling Internet Explorer killed Netscape. In the computing landscape, the terrain is always changing. Google has started to offer free, downloadable software bundles called Google Pack, consisting of software from Google and other companies. None of these programs is from Microsoft.\n\n### **WHICH CUSTOMER'S WANTS OR DEMANDS REMAIN UNSATISFIED?**\n\nManagers must determine which customer wants in their target markets are unsatisfied and then further determine whether they can or should step up to provide value. By regularly challenging the organization to give fresh answers to these issues and by promoting a culture of respect for the customer, management stays current on the dynamic circumstances that determine the customer's wants and buying decisions. Such knowledge and culture give logic to what otherwise might be viewed as irrational or inexplicable behavior on the part of the customer.\n\nConsider the Apple research team which regularly scrolls through chat rooms searching for customer comments about unsatisfied needs. The need for a car charger for the iPod was found in one such chat room two years ago.\n\nIn a very real way, nothing mattered to Peter if you couldn't talk about the results. He often asked his clients to write down the results they expected from a particular decision and check them six months later. Results have to be measured carefully and understood and interpreted properly; they are not absolute and can be understood only in context.\n\nBy the late 1980s, Peter felt that many companies were so focused on shareholders that they had lost sight of the customer. He'd thought a lot about this, and he wondered why CEOs weren't listening. Although he believed that profits are a company's ability to invest in tomorrow's opportunities, he liked to remind me that profits follow customer satisfaction, not the other way around. Peter often reminded executives that the person buying a pair of shoes is not paying for the shoemaker's profit. She or he is paying for a nice, comfortable pair of shoes. The purpose of a business is to provide value to the customer\u2014to provide something that an independent and knowledgeable outsider who can choose whether or not to buy is willing to get in exchange for his or her purchasing power. The profits that flow from this value reflect the company's effectiveness in aggregate, but those results do not necessarily show the company where it is meeting customer expectations and where it is falling short. And the company needs to know this, especially now. According to the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, the number of products offered to a consumer in New York State increased fourfold from 2000 to 2005.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHAT ARE YOUR RESULTS WITH CUSTOMERS?**\n\n**1.** How are you measuring your outside results?\n\n**2.** How are outsiders measuring and sharing results about your products and services?\n\n**3.** Are you fully leveraging the information your results provide?\n\n**4.** Are you honest and socially responsible in presenting your results?\n\n* * *\n\n### **HOW ARE YOU MEASURING YOUR OUTSIDE RESULTS?**\n\nWhat key pieces of intelligence are you missing, and how do you calibrate your antennae to capture this intelligence? Do you employ a manageable set of the most telling metrics? At an Ogilvy & Mather board meeting, one member asked, \"Are we a financial company? When you look at what we are measuring, we look like a bank, not like a creative company.\" The company changed its tracking measures to capture information more relevant to its culture and mission\u2014advertising effectiveness, the percentage of repeat clients, the lifespan of ads, and creative awards and investments.\n\nIn 2001, when Colgate switched its customer service measure from \"orders on time and complete\" to \"product available on the shelf,\" its revenue jumped by 3 percent. I had the opportunity to watch how that simple shift fundamentally changed the company's orientation. A conventional service metric, on-time and complete delivery, is an internal measure that is more responsive to the retailer than to the consumer. Availability, on the other hand, is a prerequisite for customer purchases and satisfaction. Although the store is a customer of sorts, it is only part of the chain that supplies the end-user; it is not the end-user. It is not enough to focus on the right customer; the results must be quantified and tracked to keep the customer focus clear.\n\n### **HOW ARE OUTSIDERS MEASURING AND SHARING RESULTS ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES?**\n\nThe wealth of information available on the Internet very likely includes more about your business than just what's contained in your company Web site. The \"customer team\" that Drucker talked about has moved beyond the consumer's friends and family to include product-specific, Web-based information sources such as blogs, bulletin boards, and chat rooms\u2014many of which provide detailed descriptions, critiques, and ratings as well as contact information. These sites are often very influential, more so than are friends and family. They are also vehicles for exchanging information. It only makes sense to monitor these sites to ensure that your information is accurate and up to date, that you are not being overlooked, and that you take advantage of every opportunity to create a positive Internet buzz.\n\nBut you can use the Internet for more than promoting your products and services. It offers a wealth of information on how customers experience and perceive your products, what features they are looking for, and what they value. Responding to information on the customer experience\u2014by improving your product offering or refining your sales approach, for example\u2014is one more way of building your company's outside-in perspective.\n\n### **ARE YOU FULLY LEVERAGING THE INFORMATION YOUR RESULTS PROVIDE?**\n\nWhere do gaps exist between targeted and actual results\u2014and what causes them? What comparative information are we using to interpret our results (e.g., market trends, competitive performance), and what does that tell us about our performance? For example, a 30 percent growth rate looks good but loses some of its luster and signals missed opportunity when direct competitors are achieving 40 percent growth rates. Or strong performance in a declining market might suggest, \"It's time to reassess our purpose and identity,\" rather than, \"We are on the right path.\"\n\nTo get the maximum impact from results, the business must communicate those results throughout the organization as well as to external partners. Even more critical is to link results to strategy decisions and then translate them into actions that produce better results. I helped Frank Weise do this at Cott when he took over as CEO in 1999. Together we translated every external measure reported to link it clearly with the relevant performing organization inside the company. To link production-line performance with customer shelf availability, we rewarded Cott employees when every Wal-Mart shelf had 100 percent stock availability every day for a week (there were a lot of pizza parties in the plants). And when there were issues at the shelf, SWAT teams from the plant and logistics organizations went out to the customer to discover the underlying causes of those problems and to communicate and solve them. This program changed Cott, now the leading private label provider of carbonated beverages, from a second-rank supplier to a leading partner with many of its customers.\n\n### **ARE YOU HONEST AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE IN PRESENTING YOUR RESULTS?**\n\nAn enterprise needs to examine the ethical dimension. As Enron and so many other corporate frauds have made monumentally clear, social responsibility is inextricably linked to sustainability. Corporations flout this reality at their peril.\n\n* * *\n\nThe \"outside-in\" perspective:  \nAn organization's point of reference should  \nalways be what is going on in the marketplace,  \nnot in the company's boardroom.\n\n* * *\n\nWhile fraud still occurs, it is not only outright fraud that engenders misreporting. Many companies just can't stand to look in the mirror. They fool themselves into thinking they are doing better than they really are. A glaring example is the myth, widely held during the high-tech bubble, of \"Internet traffic doubling every 100 days.\" Companies must monitor their results 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Managers need to use their intuition and judgment to capture a rich understanding of the large and growing landscape \"outside\" the corporation. Running the business from the outside-in also ensures that management doesn't fall prey to the insularity that dooms many institutions.\n\n* * *\n\n**DOES YOUR CUSTOMER STRATEGY AND YOUR  \nBUSINESS STRATEGY WORK TOGETHER?**\n\n**1.** What is your level of integration with customers and your scope of offering?\n\n**2.** How are outsiders measuring and sharing results about your products and services?\n\n**3.** How do these relationships all fit together in a portfolio that fits with the business strategy?\n\n**4.** Are you allocating resources where you want to be investing in relationships?\n\n* * *\n\nPeter believed that all opportunities were evaluated and all resources allocated in the context of management's understanding of the \"outside\" marketplace. Peter called it the \"outside-in\" perspective: An organization's point of reference should always be what is going on in the marketplace, not in the company's boardroom. This brutally honest perspective has a huge impact on everything a company does, from its overall strategy and direction to its continued progress.\n\nWithin the business, an outside-in perspective is based on the business's systematic capability to gather external information and interpret it honestly in order to build an organization that truly listens to the customer, and to devise and implement customer-tailored strategies in response to customer needs.\n\nIndividualized strategies are a new approach to serving the customer. They require a degree of bonding and a solutions-oriented approach that has been made possible by standards, the new ease of data management, and people becoming comfortable with having their own shopper cards at A&P. Targeting and serving large customer segments have given way to creating a value chain (and, often, a delivery system) for each customer. Constructive, enduring bonds result from an up-to-date, outside-in perspective and from relationships based on mutual trust. Outside-in intelligence becomes a wealth-producing strategy when it is translated into unique and meaningfully differentiated value that is delivered to the customer. And this strategy cannot be monolithic\u2014it is designed and executed customer by customer to reflect the unique configuration of value sought by each customer. Customer-tailored strategies fall into four broad categories reflecting the level of the firm's integration with its customer and the scope of its product offerings, from a one-product shop to a one-stop shop (see Figure 2.1).\n\nFigure 2.1 Types of Customer Strategies Reflecting Level of Integration and Scope of Offering\n\nThe vertical axis captures the extent to which the capabilities of different entities that provide value to a given customer\u2014the company, its customer, and its other outside partners\u2014are integrated with the customer's operations. The silent revolution described in Chapter One makes it massively easier for independent firms to collaborate in solving a customer's problem and to function as part of the customer's organization without actually having to merge or be acquired. Consequently, integration has become a fundamental element of customer strategy.\n\nToday's flow of information and standardization enable the high level of integration in Infosys Technologies, the India-based firm that is competing with giants like IBM and Accenture, uses to manage its clients' entire global IT needs. By assuming full responsibility for clients' IT, Infosys acts as a _backroom eliminator_. Founded in 1981, Infosys cut its teeth providing nuts-and-bolts IT solutions (from devising the business plan for a new online community to designing the portal to writing the software it runs on). It is rapidly adding high-end IT strategy and business process consulting as it is transforming into one of the largest global players in independent software development and maintenance.\n\nThe _backroom service_ provider is highly integrated with the customer. It assumes discrete responsibilities that lessen but do not eliminate the customer's backroom operations. For example, Doane, the private-label pet food manufacturer, manages the store and delivery functions for Wal-Mart's private label dog food, Ol'Roy. Doane's services do not eliminate Wal-Mart's backroom, but it does take on part of the burden by providing a pet food specialist that ensures that the product is where it needs to be all the time.\n\nAt the lower end of the integration spectrum is the _responsive product_ or _component player,_ typically with a unique brand or capability offering, which is continually being updated. Also at the lower end of the integration scale is the _one-stop shop_ or bundler, which fully meets a range of customer needs but does not integrate itself into the customer's operations. No longer limited to the department store, one-stop shops include Expedia and Orbitz. These Web sites allow travelers to compare prices and schedules on flights, cruises, hotels, rental cars, vacation packages, and vacation activities, and to customize and plan every aspect of their trip, even to the point of receiving e-mails with flight status information, weather forecasts, and packing suggestions in the days preceding departure.\n\nExceptional companies generally participate in all four categories. UPS is one such organization. UPS manages the full logistics and delivery function for Home Depot, effectively eliminating this retailer's backroom. For other customers, UPS locates a pickup and sometimes an operator at the customer's site to facilitate backroom operations. And customers such as Wal-Mart use UPS as a one-stop shop for all shipping services. Finally, there are those, like Amazon, which use UPS's service for a discrete piece of their delivery needs, such as cost-effective home deliveries to and returns from individual customers.\n\n### **PROCTER & GAMBLE COMES HOME**\n\nFrom its humble beginnings as a soap and candle maker, P&G became one of the world's best known and most admired consumer goods companies, with sales close to $57 billion in 2005. Fully 17 of its brands have at least $1 billion in sales, including such well-known names as Tide, Pantene, and Pampers. Although it went global later than Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever, P&G today derives about 48 percent of its sales from outside North America, operating in over 80 countries and marketing its products in more than 160.\n\nIn June 2000, P&G was faltering. The board of directors had decided to replace CEO Durk Jager after only 17 months, following several profit warnings and a more than 50 percent drop in market value in the previous six months. However, problems had been in the making for many years.\n\nUntil the mid-1990s, P&G was a reliable growth machine. It doubled sales every 10 years and grew its earnings by 10 percent through the acquisition of higher-margin health and beauty companies and by reducing costs through economies of scale. With the emergence of Wal-Mart, P&G became known as a leader in collaborative partnering. The company simplified product lines and formulations, and it introduced global brand names to reduce costs and speed up product launches.\n\nBut its relentless focus on distributors' needs to the exclusion of the consumer eventually made P&G a victim of its own success. It became a very powerful, successful, almost arrogant bureaucracy that gradually lost sight of the outside world\u2014most notably the all-important consumer. As A.G. Lafley notes, \"I think there is something about bureaucracies that turn inward, especially successful bureaucracies. They . . . get a lot more fascinated by the operation of the bureaucracy than what's going on in the world around them.\"\n\nBy 1995, growth in sales dropped to below 4 percent, and international sales grew by less than 3 percent during 1995\u20132000. While earnings held up initially, huge restructuring costs depressed net earnings between 1998 and 2000. Global market shares were stagnant or dropping in 70 percent of P&G's businesses, and, adding insult to injury, Colgate Total overtook Crest as the leading toothpaste.\n\nIn January 1999, Durk Jager replaced John Pepper as CEO. Jager strongly believed that the only way for P&G to emerge from its slump was to rapidly create new products by speeding up innovation and to break up the bureaucracy through massive organizational changes\u2014in effect, to create a cultural revolution. \"A measure of our business vitality is the vitality of our organization\u2014the degree to which people are breaking barriers, challenging conventional wisdom, stretching to achieve the unachievable, redefining the marketplace.\" To make his point, Jager was reportedly fond of saying, \"If it's not broken, break it.\" This initiative, called _Organization 2005_ , was to be a six-year, $1.9 billion effort. P&G's identity as a preeminent marketer had been challenged, and an intense effort to change old beliefs, reporting structures, and incentives ensued.\n\nIn 1999, during an informal brainstorming meeting with a few P&G senior managers, Drucker was asked his opinion on Organization 2005. He said:\n\nIt's a very impressive document, but it left me very dissatisfied. I felt I had gotten only the appetizer of the meal because it focused on products and technology. There is a dimension in there that's lacking . . . I call it attitude. The greatest opportunities, and the greatest threats to a company like P&G in the next 10 or 15 years, are changes in demographics, in consumer segmentation, in distribution channels, which always need a totally new consumer, and I did not get any of that. You're still looking from the inside out, and the landscape you see is yesterday's landscape. And when you look from the outside in, it isn't P&G that has changed. It's the landscape that has changed. And I missed that. I [also] don't like the way you talk about changing the culture. My question is, how do you utilize your culture? When I look at your company, it represents enormous achievements. Your job is not to repudiate them, but to build them. And to be proud of them. Otherwise you alienate far too many [of your] people and tell them you are no longer worth anything. And for the next 10 years at least, your bread and butter will come from what these people produce. And so I don't like changing the culture. I like how we build on it for a changed world.\n\nJager's gamble was that introducing many new, innovative products would prevent commoditization and maintain P&G's premium prices around the globe. Huge investments in R&D followed, increasing that investment from a historical average of 3.8 percent of sales to 4.8 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, advertising fell from 10.2 percent in 1998 to 9.2 percent of sales in 2001. The innovation process was driven by internal scientific and engineering perspectives rather than by consumer needs and ideas from outside partners. As a result, only about 20 percent of the new products were successful.\n\nThe premium-pricing concept also was unsuccessful in the low-income, high-growth developing world. Thinking that every consumer would appreciate the value of a higher-quality product, P&G offered the same global brand names, formulations, and gross profit margins in every market. Since most low-income consumers could not afford P&G products, sales growth was slow, and countries representing over 80 percent of the world's population accounted for no more than 15\u201320 percent of P&G sales. In its efforts to find the next killer brand, P&G had neglected its bread and butter business.\n\nIn June 2000, A.G. Lafley replaced Jager as CEO of P&G. Lafley agreed with many of the strategies set forth in Organization 2005 but recognized that P&G \"tried to do too much too fast,\" and as a result \"the wheels were coming off in a lot of places.\" His first order of business was to get back to basics: that in a consumer goods company, the consumer is the boss:\n\nI would say that still one of the biggest opportunities of my company is what [Peter Drucker] calls \"outside-in,\" what we call \"externally connected and focused.\" I am pushing really hard for us to stay connected to the messiness and the unpredictability and the volatility of the external environment, some of which is customer, some of which is competitor, some of which is innovation and technology, that's coming at you in all directions, a lot of times from outside your industry. Economic and political happenings. It's big and messy and complicated, and I'm just paranoid that we're going to miss important things that are going on out there that are going to impact our customer and our enterprise's interaction with that customer. I think it sounds too simple to believe, but the first thing we did is elevate our consumer to the boss. And it was way more than words because it meant we really needed to understand who she is.\n\n* * *\n\nI think it sounds too simple to believe,  \nbut the first thing we did is elevate  \nour consumer to the boss.\n\n* * *\n\nThis strategy fit P&G's strengths and culture as a marketer and restored the confidence of the workforce. It also helped challenge the insular mentality. \"We don't exist in silos anymore,\" says Susan Arnold, P&G's beauty-care and feminine-care boss.\n\nLafley immediately set out to rebuild the old major brands\u2014Tide, Pantene, and Pampers. The renewed focus on consumer needs drove the marketing push. \"When A.G. first came on board, we were struggling. We were trying to get new brands out there and do everything at the same time,\" recalls Martin Nuechtern, head of global hair care. \"A.G. made things very clear: Make sure you focus on Pantene.\" The Pantene line was revamped from a primarily features-driven product (e.g., shampoo for fine hair) to a consumer-benefit product (e.g., greater volume).\n\n* * *\n\nA.G. Lafley, chairman, president, and CEO of Procter & Gamble, said in 2005: \"The CEO must create the conditions that are necessary for an organization to attack problems and seize opportunities. Most importantly, he\/she has to get people to see things as they are, not as they'd like them to be. The CEO is the link between the reality of the outside and the insularity of the inside\u2014CEOs are in a unique position to bring outside reality in. As CEO, you have to remind yourself of that every day. I mean, really, when you walk into the office, who's the boss? The consumer's the boss. What are our core assets? At Procter & Gamble, our core assets are our brands, and our knowledge workers.\" R. R. Deupree was chairman of the Procter & Gamble Company in the 1930s and 1940s. He said something to the effect that you could take away everything at P&G\u2014take away the office buildings, take away the manufacturing plants, take away all the physical assets\u2014leave the company its brands and its people, and in a decade we'd build it all back again. \"I think that's very much Peter Drucker.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWith Pampers, the outside-in perspective resulted in an almost counterintuitive change\u2014the painful realization that a pull-on diaper more completely satisfied consumer needs. P&G had the largest installed base of taped-diaper converters, which drove the engineering group know-how and R&D formulation expertise. Letting go of the taped diaper and embracing the pull-on was difficult. \"In too many of our businesses, the technology or the machine had become the boss.\"\n\nP&G's new approach radically changed how it prioritized R&D, and a relentless, disciplined weeding resulted. The company killed 75 percent of corporate innovation projects because they could not pass the litmus test of delighting consumers more than competitors' products could. Similarly, P&G is revamping its approach to global advertising. Carpet bombing television audiences with traditional 30-second commercials is, much to the horror of the advertising industry, a thing of the past. In the developed world, technology has enabled viewers to avoid commercials altogether. In response, P&G is trying to figure out what information is relevant to the consumer, even when the consumer can't articulate it. To improve its two-way communication with consumers, P&G launched the interactive Web site Pampers.com, offering mothers advice on everything from breastfeeding to temper tantrums in over 20 different languages. To woo consumers in the developing world, P&G is embracing a new cultural diversity, reaching out to Jews (by publicly washing donated clothes during Passover in an Orthodox Jewish community) and Muslims (by launching Tide White Musk for Ramadan, when Muslims carry small bottles of white musk essence).\n\nTo reach its growth targets, P&G had to expand its definition of the customer to include low-income customers who could not afford any of P&G's products. This required a complete change in mindset. Rather than ask, \"What is the best way to market our global product line in this country,\" the company had to ask, \"How much can a consumer reasonably be expected to pay,\" and then develop the formulation and supply-chain strategy to meet that customer need\u2014fundamentally building the company from the outside in. That often meant reformulating the product to its bare minimum elements, giving up previous sacrosanct minimum margin requirements, and using local contract manufacturers. In 2005, 8 of P&G's top 16 countries in terms of sales were developing markets\u2014countries that are expected to add about a percentage point of growth each year.\n\n* * *\n\nTHE GRANDFATHER OF MARKETING\n\nAccording to Harvard professor and business writer Theodore Levitt, \"Peter Drucker created and publicized the marketing concept.\" In an essay on Drucker's importance to marketing, Arnold Corbin, former professor of marketing at New York University, states that despite being essentially a management writer, Drucker \"has probably contributed more to the development and understanding of marketing than any 'marketing man.'\" And in the Wharton School's farewell tribute to Peter Drucker, Stephen J. Hoch, chairperson of the marketing department, describes Drucker as \"the Warren Buffett of management gurus. His analysis of management and marketing issues always was pithy and to the point. No pandering to buzzwords and fads, but a constancy of message, with straightforward reasoning and clearly articulated ideas. The following statement attributed to Drucker is today still the essence of marketing: 'The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. [It] . . . is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy.'\"\n\nWharton marketing professor David J. Reibstein remembered as one of the most memorable days of his life, \"The day I spent with Drucker in his home nearly seven years ago. A man of such enormous impact on business and society was a very modest man, surrounded in a humble yet very comfortable home in Claremont, California. He had such tremendous insight into every facet of business and its role in society. Drucker considered a business's most valuable asset to be its people. Generally, he is considered the father of marketing. He said the role of business is to create a customer. He always emphasized focusing on customers and understanding what they valued. I assume many fields want to claim him as their 'father.' While he contributed to the literature for more than 65 years, his thoughts are way ahead of our time.\"\n\nAs marketing writer and Kellogg Business School professor Philip Kotler stated, \"Peter Drucker is the Father of Management. . . . I regard it as a compliment when some people call me the Father of Marketing. I tell them that if this is the case, then Peter Drucker is the Grandfather of Marketing.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nIn a world where the customer has become a key controlling force, the importance of knowing and working with your customer has never been greater. In answering the four questions about customer identity, value, results, and integration, we must keep in mind:\n\n**1.** The customer is no longer merely a receiver of goods and services. He or she is your partner, and your roles are evolving all the time. The relationships are not simple, and they often include whole communities.\n\n**2.** Value is based on your ability to connect with the customer and know more about his or her needs and desires than he or she can articulate. This connection requires openness and integrity. It benefits from being personalized\u2014there are no bundles of customers. The vertically integrated brand is being replaced by the multiparty, networked value chain that coherently integrates parts, products, and services into a bundle.\n\n**3.** Results happen customer by customer. The customers know the results\u2014good and bad\u2014as soon as you do, if not sooner.\n\n**4.** Customer strategy depends as much on the level of integration with the customer as on the product and service itself. The strategy needs to be built on the bundle of capabilities and strengths within and accessed by your company.\n\nThese realities and the corporation's need to operate effectively in the Lego world only underscore the importance of beginning and ending with the customer. When I asked Peter what managers should do about this new customer, he said, \"Ask yourself every day, which customers did I touch today, and what did I learn?\"\n\nDelivering value depends on your listening and translating, and innovating accordingly. As we discuss in Chapter 3, it is only with an outside-in view that businesses can change customers' expectations and begin to provide products and services that customers did not know they wanted\u2014the truest measure of an innovative product.\n\n## **THREE Innovation and Abandonment**\n\n_The best way to predict the future is to create it._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nNobody was better at defining and helping companies capture opportunities than Peter Drucker. When I think back on our conversations, one phrase that sticks in my head because Peter said it so often is, \"Tomorrow is an opportunity.\" Peter's first view of the United States was in 1937, and he was forever influenced by a country striving to create tomorrow. Drucker believed that the most important measure of a company is its ability to anticipate and invest in tomorrow's opportunities. This view is why innovation was so central to Peter's thinking. It was fundamental to everything he wrote. To Peter, the conventional view of innovation, focused solely on product development or brand extension, missed the point. To truly innovate, Peter believed you had to radically change customers' expectations.\n\n* * *\n\nTomorrow is an opportunity.\n\n* * *\n\nFor Peter it was simple: If you don't understand innovation, you don't understand business. Starbucks exemplifies what Peter considered to be true innovation. Beginning with a single store in 1971, Starbucks grew to over 12,000 locations in 37 countries in 2006. While visiting Starbucks, I spoke to Dorothy Kim, a Starbucks executive vice president, who told me that Starbucks didn't set out merely to make a better cup of coffee. That was the old way of looking at the coffee retail business. Instead, the executives had a much bigger idea: to make Starbucks a destination between your home and office\u2014a place where people can find a respite.\n\nStarbucks didn't just offer a better cup of coffee than the average restaurant; it delivered an instant community\u2014a shared experience. The company made it easy to relax with a comfortable, \"stay as long as you like\" setting that now includes wireless Internet access. Starbucks became the extended living room, the familiar meeting place in a strange city, the funky (but not too funky) way station to escape from the corporate cubicle, the place to stop between classes to surf the Net. It did much more than simply crush, boil, and filter a sack of coffee beans; it _changed our expectations_.\n\n* * *\n\nIf you don't understand innovation,  \nyou don't understand business.\n\n* * *\n\nMuch of Starbucks's innovation has to do with marketing, not product. This isn't just about coffee served one cup at a time. Starbucks came up with an insider mystique by inventing a new language for size\u2014tall, grande, and venti, instead of small, medium, and large\u2014along with endless variations on what's essentially the humdrum old theme of coffee and milk. Think about it: tall, grande, and venti have become part of your vocabulary, especially if you earn more than $50,000 and you're under age 60. Starbucks makes you feel like a savvier consumer by telling you the flavor difference between Ethiopian and Guatemalan coffees. And the third time you visit the shop, the barista generally knows your preference.\n\nApple is another company with a high innovation IQ that changed our expectations with the introduction of the iPod. Before the iPod, people didn't sit around thinking, \"I wish I had a little jukebox with 1,500 songs that I selected, and I could carry it in my pocket.\" Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, and within four years more than half the people in the United States owned or used iPods. Apple changed people's expectations and their definition of value. It was no longer fine to have a Sony Walkman with 20 songs on a CD. Anything less than an iPod was unacceptable. Today, Apple appears to be taking this to video with ambitions of linking everyone wirelessly.\n\n* * *\n\nInnovation is about shaking loose from  \nyesterday's world so that we gain the freedom  \nto create tomorrow.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter Drucker liked to talk about what was and what was not an innovation. On one of my business trips, I overheard two airline travelers debate the merits of the new Apple PowerBook with an Intel chip. They decided it was not an innovation. Customers are sure that every new model will have more computing power and capabilities; simply meeting their expectations is not true innovation. When I replayed the conversation and posed the question to Peter, he seemed to agree with the travelers, but added there may still be an innovation lurking that does change our expectations, but it is not there yet. Peter believed that innovation is about shaking loose from yesterday's world so that we gain the freedom to create tomorrow.\n\n### **CREATING YOUR TOMORROW: FOUR DRUCKER QUESTIONS**\n\nPeter wrote about innovation for decades\u2014long before anyone heard of iPods and Starbucks, or even the Internet; it fascinated him. By the Vietnam War years he was predicting that technology would change everything about the way we do business. He liked to discuss the delicate balance between innovation and change on the one hand, and preservation of the status quo on the other. He first described this fundamental tension between the new and the old 70 years ago, shortly before World War II. During one of our last conversations in 2005, he told me that finding this balance was still critical to business survival. \"You can't throw everything out, or you'll have anarchy,\" he said. \"You can't hold onto everything, or you'll die.\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"You can't throw everything out,  \nor you'll have anarchy.\"  \n\"You can't hold on to everything, or you'll die.\"\n\n* * *\n\nPeter understood the difficulty of innovating for the future while hanging on to the past from personal experience. In 1935, he left London to make his first trip to the United States. He'd decided then and there to leave Europe. \"America,\" he wrote, \"was starkly different from Europe. In America, people were looking to tomorrow. In Europe they were trying to re-create yesterday. That is why we moved to America.\"\n\nHalf a century later he wrote one of his best books, _Innovation and Entrepreneurship_. In it Peter focused on innovation as a discipline rather than a serendipitous flash of brilliance. The book, written in 1985, is remarkably practical. It is based on the executive courses on innovation he taught at New York University, where he had one of the best business laboratories around\u2014evening students working at all sorts of jobs in New York. After trying his ideas out on his students, he tested them with his clients. More than 20 years later, the book is still astoundingly relevant. In fact, when I listened in on the 2005 Fortune conference on innovation, more than half the speakers alluded to Drucker's ideas. All of them were leaders of highly innovative organizations, from the Toyota Hybrid Car Division to Cisco Systems.\n\nThis chapter explores Peter's four basic questions about innovation:\n\n**1.** What do you have to _abandon_ to create room for innovtion?\n\n**2.** Do you systematically seek _opportunities_?\n\n**3.** Do you use a _disciplined process_ for converting ideas into practical solutions?\n\n**4.** Does your innovation _strategy_ work well with your business strategy?\n\nIncluded as well is the best proof I've seen that Peter's approach to innovation actually works in the real world, a case story about GE. GE is successful because it embraced innovation as Peter defines it, while its competitor, Siemens, struggled. As you think about these questions, you will likely come up with some interesting answers. Then you'll be faced with an even harder task: acting on your answers.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO ABANDON TO  \nCREATE ROOM FOR INNOVATION?**\n\n**1.** If you weren't in this business today, would you invest the resources to enter it?\n\n**2.** What unconscious assumptions might constrain your business practices and limit your innovative thinking?\n\n**3.** Are your highest-achieving people assigned to innovative opportunities? Or are they merely working on yesterday's problems and yesterday's products?\n\n* * *\n\nIn many organizations, innovation is stymied by excessive loyalty to the old products and to the old ways of doing things. Drucker put it this way: Most companies hang on to the business they have and are hugely reluctant to loosen their grip. This prevents them from innovating and determining their own destiny.\n\nKodak built a legendary film business, but it finally had to abandon this mainstay in order to invest talent and resources in the digital imaging business. Xerox is another innovative company that had to embrace abandonment. Xerox chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy said, \"I don't think any company gets to restore or preserve what made them great in the first place. I have no illusions we're going to be the Xerox we once were. We're in a very competitive marketplace. We're not a monopoly. We have to fight to be best in class.\" Mulcahy adds, \"I believe by not hanging onto the past, we have a much better chance to redefine a future of excellence.\"\n\n### **IF YOU WEREN'T IN THIS BUSINESS TODAY, WOULD YOU INVEST THE RESOURCES TO ENTER IT?**\n\nIn my conversation with Jack Welch, he said that by far the most important lesson he learned from Drucker was to ask the above question. It led him to issue an edict early in his tenure as CEO: Each of GE's businesses had to be number one or number two in its market, or the manager would have to sell it or close it. Welch said that Drucker's questions raised the bar for every business unit in GE and freed up resources, thereby greatly strengthening the whole company.\n\nGE is one of the best-known examples of Drucker's principle of abandonment in action. Another is Kimberly-Clark, the giant paper company. For 100 years, Kimberly-Clark was mainly a coated-paper manufacturer with mills in the United States and overseas. In 1972, Darwin Smith took over as CEO. Despite the company's large historical investment in paper mills, he believed that making paper was a mediocre business, and he decided to sell most of Kimberly-Clark's mills and put its muscle behind two brands, Kleenex and Huggies. Both product lines had shown promise but lacked corporate support. Darwin Smith took an enormous risk by abandoning everything Kimberly-Clark had done successfully until then. He planned to market what were essentially afterthoughts, going head to head against the globally recognized leaders Procter & Gamble and Scott Paper, strong American rivals.\n\n* * *\n\nWithout the will to take risks,  \nto venture into the unknown  \nand let go of the familiar past,  \na corporation cannot thrive in the  \ntwenty-first century.\n\n* * *\n\nOne board member described Smith's decision as \"the gutsiest move I've ever seen a CEO make.\" Critics inside and outside of Kimberly-Clark were less diplomatic, calling the idea stupid and Smith a fool. Wall Street analysts downgraded the stock. _Forbes_ magazine lambasted the move. Thirty-three years later, Kimberly-Clark's revenues had jumped from less than $1 billion to over $15 billion, and _Forbes_ recanted its criticism. By 2006, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper, its former rival, and was outselling Procter & Gamble in six of its eight categories.\n\nDarwin Smith exemplifies the courage it takes to innovate. Without the will to take risks, to venture into the unknown and let go of the familiar past, a corporation cannot thrive in the twenty-first century.\n\nYet courage isn't enough when it comes to breaking from the past. Companies that want to innovate must adopt what Drucker called _systematic abandonment_ , the deliberate process of letting go of familiar products in favor of the new or as yet unknown. Peter went further than almost anyone: \"Even when a product is being launched, its target abandonment date should be set.\" As part of routine operations, you need to constantly evaluate which of your existing businesses should be jettisoned, and revisit these decisions annually, quarterly, or even monthly. Peter went so far as to advocate regular abandonment meetings. Of course, unprofitable businesses are clear candidates for abandonment, but so are businesses reaching the end of their useful lives whose growth has slowed or stopped. The same goes for those where it is becoming more difficult to compete\u2014often because the rules of the game have changed unfavorably.\n\nDrucker put it this way: \"Putting all programs and activities regularly on trial for their lives and getting rid of those that cannot prove their productivity works wonders in stimulating creativity in even the most hidebound bureaucracy.\"\n\n### **WHAT UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS LIMIT YOUR INNOVATIVE THINKING?**\n\nManagers can't stop at abandoning just a business unit or product line. They need to leave behind their assumptions as well; they need to challenge all beliefs and make room for new ideas. Hansjorg Wyss, chairman and CEO of Synthes, recently shared a story about challenging his company's assumptions. Synthes is the world's leading provider of implants and biomaterials for rebuilding joints and bones. The company had always assumed that having the highest-quality products was the only thing that mattered, so executives were surprised to discover that competitors' products were being used when Synthes products were not immediately available. Looking into the distribution problem, they learned that hospital ordering systems made it difficult to have enough Synthes implants on hand.\n\n\"We didn't sit still,\" Hansjorg told me as we sat in a conference room at MIT. \"We stepped back and reevaluated how we were serving hospitals.\" The company developed an inventory management service for hospitals so that Synthes products would always be available. These changes required innovating how business was done, rethinking customer relationships, and seeing hospital managers as well as doctors as customers to be served. The company now also provides a counseling service for doctors to discuss which of its product fits best.\n\n* * *\n\nSystematic abandonment is both the  \nmost important and most difficult step  \nin innovation.\n\n* * *\n\nChallenging assumptions often leads to changes in the basic operations and economics of a business. As a pioneer in grocery home delivery, Peapod assumed that the economics of its business would require large volume (which it did not have). Marc van Gelder, Peapod's president, told me about his eureka moment: Rather than build the company around the ability to move a lot of product, Peapod challenged this assumption and partnered with Stop & Shop, using its warehouses and size as the foundation for Peapod's operations. By partnering with an established megastore, Peapod didn't need to spend a fortune on infrastructure, and it could turn a profit on more modest volume.\n\nThis all sounds logical enough, but it is tough to break free from the relentless hold of past and present. Sometimes the constraints are so subtle that they are hard to recognize. In many ways, systematic abandonment is both the most important and most difficult step in innovation. It requires real discipline to regularly challenge the organization's assumptions and encourage the outrageous. But as Peter said, \"If you don't abandon, you can't innovate. The effective organizations learn systematically to abandon or at least to build systematic abandonment into their ordinary life cycle. Extra weight is a burden on the heart and the brain. And volume by itself is no great benefit.\"\n\n### **ARE YOUR HIGHEST-ACHIEVING PEOPLE ASSIGNED TO INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES?**\n\n\"There's an old medical proverb,\" Drucker once explained. \"There's [probably] nothing more expensive, nothing more difficult, than to keep a corpse from stinking!\" Most corporations waste time, energy, and precious resources on keeping their corpses\u2014their old products\u2014from stinking. Because these old products are still generating large revenues, most executives don't even recognize that they have stinking corpses. And so the bosses assign smart people to tackle serious problems in old businesses. This is a misallocation of precious, creative resources.\n\nIn an interconnected world, trying to generate high-impact innovation, despite the high failure rate, is actually much less risky than sticking with the old standby. The innovative organization uses incentives, employment guarantees, performance measures, and active engagement by leadership to help people embrace change rather than fear it.\n\n* * *\n\n**DO YOU SYSTEMATICALLY SEEK OPPORTUNITIES?**\n\n**1.** Do you continually look for opportunities as if your survival depended upon it?\n\n**2.** Are you looking at the seven key sources of opportunities?  \n **a.** The unexpected  \n **b.** Industry and market disparities  \n **c.** Process vulnerabilities  \n **d.** Incongruities  \n **e.** Demographic shifts  \n **f.** Changes in perceptions  \n **g.** New knowledge\n\n* * *\n\nPeter Drucker viewed innovation as a discipline, a skill that can be learned and practiced like playing the piano. To innovate, you must devise a systematic method of identifying opportunities that provide new value for your customers. Many people think that the discovery of new ideas is random and unpredictable. Far from it; such discoveries come from scouring the landscape and translating sightings into \"what we don't know that might matter.\"\n\nThe organization needs to be continually on the offensive. It must watch for potential new frontiers instead of just playing defense against intruding competitors. P&G's Lafley put it this way: \"We have to open our minds, open our doors, open our ears, and open our hearts to good ideas that can come from anywhere.\" Playing offense requires well-placed external feelers, a careful and unbiased ear to the ground, and a disciplined process that links opportunities and capabilities within your organization.\n\n### **DO YOU LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES AS IF YOUR SURVIVAL DEPENDED ON IT?**\n\nA desire to innovate must come from the firm's top leadership and permeate every muscle and sinew of the organization. At Google every engineer is charged with investing 30 percent of his or her time on new products and ideas (split between related businesses and totally new initiatives). Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, described the management practices as a 70\/20\/10 rule: \"We spend 70 percent on core search and ads, 20 percent on adjacent businesses, and then at least 10 percent of our time on things that are truly new.\" Of course, the portion of time a company devotes to innovation will vary by industry and the stage of business development it's in.\n\n* * *\n\nThe organization needs to be  \ncontinually on the offensive.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter advocated that innovation be explicit and supported by management. Google has an e-mail list devoted to new ideas, which is open to anyone in the company as well as to select third parties who want to post or comment on a proposal. Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience and Google's champion of innovation, devotes regular office hours three times a week exclusively to brainstorming. She wants to ensure that new ideas rise to the surface when deciding which projects are ready for the review of Google's founders.\n\nTo gauge the orientation of your company to innovate, ask 100 people what fraction of their time they spend on innovation. Often, companies _say_ innovation is important, but they don't _show_ it's important. It gets pushed back and rarely receives the time executives think it does. \"What is our company doing to innovate?\" must be one of the top questions senior executives ask everybody in the organization, including the board of directors. And those who drive innovation must be rewarded.\n\n### **ARE YOU LOOKING AT THE SEVEN KEY SOURCES OF OPPORTUNITIES?**\n\nPeter believed that academics should be immersed in the real world, and he practiced what he preached by testing ideas about where to find opportunities with the entrepreneurs and executives in his classes. Peter taught the first U.S. business course on innovation at New York University in 1956. In that class, he mapped out the seven key sources of opportunity shown in Figure 3-1. Peter explained to me that when demand and supply do not fit as you expect them to, there is an opportunity. He added that new opportunities rarely mesh with the way an industry has traditionally approached existing business and that they require new thinking.\n\n* * *\n\n\u2022 **The unexpected**\n\n\u2013 Unexpected successes; galling to management, counterintuitive, rarely reported\n\n\u2013 Unexpected failures\n\n\u2013 Unexpected outside events (suppliers, customers, complementors, competitors)\n\n\u2022 **Industry and market disparities over time or geography**\n\n\u2013 Customers and expectations (e.g., developing countries)\n\n\u2013 Industry economics\n\n\u2013 Customer value propositions\n\n\u2013 Technologies and operations\n\n\u2022 **Incongruities**\n\n\u2013 Internal misperceptions\n\n\u2013 Conflicting internal realities\n\n\u2013 Customer expectation gaps\n\n\u2013 Dysfunction or anxiety at a critical point in a business process\n\n\u2022 **Process vulnerabilities**\n\n\u2013 Weak link in process\n\n\u2013 Technological vulnerability\n\n\u2022 **Demographic changes**\n\n\u2013 Aging\n\n\u2013 Shifts in wealth\n\n\u2013 Urbanization, globalization\n\n\u2013 Culture and labor force change\n\n\u2022 **Perception and priority changes that shift buying habits**\n\n\u2022 **New knowledge**\n\n\u2013 Expensive innovation with long lead times and risks\n\n\u2013 Application of knowledge and information in new areas\n\n* * *\n\nFigure 3.1 Where to Look for Opportunities\n\nFrom that one extraordinary class, students started or transformed three businesses. Scott Lawn Care morphed from an outdated player to the leading lawn supply company in North America; _Psychology Today_ became a leading middle-market publication; and many of the ideas behind investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette were largely driven by the kind of thinking Peter inspired. Fifty years later, Peter Drucker's innovation road map still guides entrepreneurs.\n\n#### **The Unexpected**\n\nFrequent unexpected occurrences signal that business expectations are out of sync with reality. Recognizing and understanding the reason for this mismatch is a powerful tool for innovation. These occurrences include unforeseen successes and failures within the organization, and unexpected activities at suppliers, competitors, customers, and complementors (partners whose products complement yours and thereby create a combined product or customer experience).\n\nAt my father-in-law's 80th birthday party, I learned a little more about how Sandy Weill, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, had managed to move his firm, Smith-Barney, into the institutional equity market so rapidly. He did this in 1989, prior to the acquisitions of Salomon Brothers and Citicorp.\n\n* * *\n\n\"The entrepreneur always searches  \nfor change, responds to it,  \nand exploits it as an opportunity.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWeill always expected what others didn't. He viewed Drexel Burnham Lambert's unexpected bankruptcy in 1989 as an opportunity for him to pick up whole departments and capabilities of very qualified people with solid relationships in an area he wanted to pursue. Within 12 hours of the bankruptcy announcement, he had written notes by hand and had them placed on the doorsteps of key Drexel employees, including my father-in-law. Weill had described his approach in a very Druckerian mode: \"The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.\"\n\nOn a recent visit to the Druckerian Club outside of Tokyo, I heard another story of a CEO who jumped on a surprise opportunity. In 2003 one of Japan's construction companies was concerned that demand in its core business, building bridges and tunnels, was declining. The CEO made the rounds, asking employees, \"What do customers want that we do not supply, or that surprised you?\" The key answer came not from a vice president, but from a receptionist who said she got two to five calls a week asking whether the company built parks and gardens. Several others in the organization confirmed that story. Today 20 percent of the company's work is on major gardens.\n\nRather than being constrained by history and expectations, the Tokyo firm identified the unpredictable\u2014the unmet need. The company ultimately implemented a system for tracking every inquiry for services it did not provide, so that it could identify patterns and customer needs that represented new opportunities and then redirect resources to promising areas.\n\n#### **Industry Disparities Across Time or Geography**\n\nThe second set of circumstances in which a mismatch between supply and demand becomes an opportunity is when a company has stayed constant while its industry structure or market has changed. While information has certainly enabled a global economy, geography and market differences continue to be real.\n\nFor instance, the increased availability of information can undermine the conventions of an industry. The Internet turned the travel industry on its head. Leisure travel and then business travel became self-managed by highly price-sensitive customers. Travel agents, who had relied on steady margins, had to appeal to luxury markets or find other specialties\u2014or go out of business. At the same time, these shifts created opportunities for new online services such as Orbitz.com and Priceline.com. And they flourished.\n\nIndia, for example, on the surface appears to be a terrible market for prosthetics. Most Indian consumers cannot afford $12,000 for an artificial limb, and health care is much more heavily regulated in India than it is in the United States. But Jaipur Foot made a radically cheaper prosthetic that was perfectly suited to the Indian market. The prosthetic can be used without shoes and is flexible enough to be worn in a cross-legged sitting position on the floor. It is priced at only $25.\n\n#### **Incongruities**\n\nIncongruities in market behavior and expectations also signal opportunity. A customer value incongruity is a discrepancy between what the customer wants and what the company _thinks_ the customer wants. JetBlue is a good example of a company that exploited such an incongruity. The airline industry had long focused on getting customers to their destinations. But JetBlue focused on upgrading and redesigning the experience of flying, from selling fresh food and providing wireless Internet service in waiting areas to fitting each passenger seat with television screens that feature many channels. JetBlue also made flying more family-friendly by offering snacks and TV programs that kids love. JetBlue exploited a discrepancy between what the customer wanted\u2014a better flying experience\u2014and what most airlines thought the customer wanted\u2014a no-nonsense trip to a destination.\n\nThe company's management built a profitable $1.3 billion airline in five years by providing customers with what they really value: easy-to-understand low fares, convenient flights, friendly service, easy online booking and check-in, and the highest on-time performance of any airline. In the meantime, in 2004, five airlines, representing a quarter of U.S. capacity, were operating under bankruptcy protection. The other airlines clearly had legacy costs that limited their competitive agility. But as Drucker maintained, when a high-volume industry is not profitable, opportunity lurks.\n\n#### **Process Vulnerabilities**\n\nA process vulnerability refers to some piece of the workflow or operation that is missing, difficult, or not working, ultimately preventing users from embracing the product. The critical innovation that morphed Scott Lawn Care into a successful company was the spreader to distribute seed on the lawn. Without it, grass seed was too difficult to plant, so there was a process vulnerability. TiVo built its success on a process vulnerability it perceived at the consumer level, namely, the limiting and sometimes frustrating process of taping a television program.\n\nIn our new world, smart small companies have profited mightily by finding new ways to deal in information and reduce vulnerabilities. It's possible to imagine many opportunities for creating value by connecting specific types of information with people who can benefit from that knowledge. In the real estate market, for example, buyers historically committed large sums of money on the basis of imperfect data. Today, 80 percent of buyers visit the Internet before they see their first house. Multiple services have taken off. Realtor.com is the number one site that advertises real estate. Its advertising revenue today is four times greater than that of any single U.S. newspaper. Luxuryhomes.com and Zillow.com each play new and unique roles in this information-imperfect marketplace as well.\n\n#### **Demographic Changes**\n\nBroad shifts in demographics, such as a rapid growth in the population over 65 and their attendant income, asset base, and longevity, create shifts in demand and mismatches with historical supplies of services.\n\nIkea has mined demographic changes to transform the global home furnishings retail market. The company recognized that young families with newborns no longer wanted to furnish their first homes with hand-me-downs from the older generation. To cater to this large but lower-income market, Ikea offered a self-service store filled with well-designed, assemble-it-yourself furniture at extremely affordable low prices. It then took this idea around the world, where many people, not just the young, had the same need for affordable yet attractive furniture. By 2005, Ikea had become a global cult brand with sales of $18 billion, driven by the mission to \"create a better everyday life for the majority of people.\"\n\n#### **Perception and Priority Changes That Shift Buying Habits**\n\nEmory Ayers, retired chairman of Intercontinental Bakeries and one of the students in Peter's early class on innovation, recalled, \"Peter emphasized that changes in perception don't change the facts, they just change customers' interpretation of the facts\u2014and that creates opportunities.\" Demand and supply no longer square. For example, is Wal-Mart a hero or a villain, and how does that public perception create opportunities? It is hard to compete with a hero, but there are opportunities to partner with one. Many companies have grown with Wal-Mart, from Bell Helmet to Ol' Roy dog food.\n\nThere are opportunities to create a unique market position when the competitor is a villain. The articles contrasting the employee benefits at Target with the benefits at Wal-Mart have prompted both job defections and customer loyalty.\n\nPerception is represented by both vulnerability and customer receptivity. Online banking and bill payment, a very useful service that eliminates almost all the hassle of paying bills, floundered until customers became more receptive to the idea of paying their bills online. Founded in 1981, CheckFree Corp. has built a business providing more than 1,700 financial institutions across the globe with software that enables millions of consumers to have the convenience of securely paying their bills online. The company struggled for 20 years. Founder Pete Knight estimates that in early 2000 there was a tipping point when people were no longer afraid of online transactions. Perception had changed; because the service had become established and secure, reputable businesses were using it, and enough nontech people were talking about it. By June 2005, more than 40 million U.S. households paid at least one bill online, and the availability of online banking and bill payment now ranks among the top three considerations when selecting a bank for personal accounts.\n\n#### **New Knowledge**\n\nThe most obvious source of innovative ideas is scientific breakthroughs. These innovations tend to have long lead times and are often both high risk and high impact. A good example of scientific innovation is Procter & Gamble's Crest, which defined the toothpaste market. People had been using various substances for several thousand years to clean their teeth (with some early formulas calling for everything from urine to dragon's blood). In 1955, after years of intense research, P&G achieved a scientific breakthrough and introduced the first fluoride toothpaste, clinically proven effective in preventing cavities. Crest was the first toothpaste to receive an endorsement from the American Dental Association, which effectively changed buyers' attitudes and created the market for therapeutic toothpaste. P&G brought Crest to the schools, where kids were taught to brush their teeth with the new toothpaste, helping P&G wrest U.S. market leadership from Colgate and keep it for the next 30 years. In addition, providing fluoride in the water became a community responsibility and created new market opportunities.\n\nIn 1997, however, Colgate announced its own scientific, market-changing breakthrough. The FDA had approved the use of Triclosan (a soluble antibiotic) to combat gingivitis, and a groundbreaking oral hygiene pharmaceutical was born. Colgate's breakthrough product was Total, a compound that kept Triclosan on the teeth for over five hours so that plaque could not build up. One Colgate executive confided in me that he had not been to the dentist for five years. He was certain that Total had made that possible. Capitalizing on the fears of aging baby boomers that they risked losing their teeth to gum disease, Colgate Total regained the U.S. market leader position from P&G.\n\nUnilever quickly imitated these two first movers, but in a new geography. It created its own versions of anticavity and gum-health toothpaste, which it sold in India and other developing markets in tiny packages costing a few cents each. The toothpaste wars soon moved on to the next battlefield\u2014whiteners. Current research efforts include leveraging marine biology to improve gum health and exploring, with pharmaceutical companies, alternative means for delivering medications.\n\nThe global toothpaste war is still in full force to determine who can best provide the whitest, tartar-free teeth and the healthiest, best-smelling gums in two distinct markets: to the aging population in developed countries and the poor in developing countries.\n\nCollectively, the seven sources of opportunity\u2014the unexpected, industry and market disparities, incongruities, process vulnerabilities, demographic changes, perception and priority changes, and new knowledge\u2014account for the great majority of all innovation opportunities.\n\n* * *\n\n**DO YOU USE A DISCIPLINED PROCESS FOR  \nCONVERTING IDEAS INTO PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS?**\n\n**1.** Do you brainstorm effectively? Do ideas and opportunities get put on the table for consideration?\n\n**2.** Do you match up ideas with the opportunity?\n\n**3.** Do you test and refine ideas by fine-tuning them based on the market response?\n\n**4.** Do you deliver the results by allocating the right resources, creating customers one by one, and monitoring progress with external barometers?\n\n* * *\n\nPeter Drucker first wrote in the 1950s about the need for disciplined processes to convert opportunities into real values. His ideas are still remarkably timely. In 2006, the American Management Association conducted a survey of 2,000 companies and found that the biggest challenge is creating disciplined processes for innovation, from defining an opportunity or creating an idea to implementing it with the customer.\n\n### **DO YOU BRAINSTORM EFFECTIVELY?**\n\nOnce we have identified opportunities, it takes a real effort to capture them, put them in place, and actually deliver better value to customers. One way to do this is to conduct action-oriented brainstorming sessions that encourage employees to openly participate in developing new opportunities into viable products and services.\n\n* * *\n\nListening is one of the hardest jobs,  \nand at a brainstorming session it is critical.\n\n* * *\n\nTo be effective, these sessions need to bring together people from different areas of the business\u2014people with different perspectives. The meetings also need to strike a balance. On one hand they must be open, with participants free to speak their minds and to propose ideas that may seem far afield of the topic being discussed. On the other hand, the sessions must focus on results and value. To achieve this balance, set ground rules that encourage constructive conversation which leads to action and that discourages never-ending debates about things that don't matter. These rules may be as simple as requiring the group to report back with a plan after a defined period of time.\n\nTo focus the discussions, ask questions Peter would have asked, such as:\n\n**1.** Customer by customer, where are there possible problems and solutions that can create value?\n\n**2.** What would it take for us to seriously consider this idea?\n\nThis type of brainstorming was used at Nokia, where senior management involved hundreds of employees in answering three questions: What new needs can we serve? How can we use our competencies in different ways? How can we change the economics of this industry?\n\nThe real work of top management in brainstorming sessions is not to generate the new thinking but to consider all the ideas and try to find within them the themes that will give overall direction to the company's innovation efforts. When I spoke to a senior executive at Nokia, he confided that his challenge at a brainstorming session was to keep telling himself to listen, to make sure he understood what was being said, and to keep his opinions to himself. Listening is one of the hardest jobs, and at a brainstorming session it is critical.\n\n### **DO YOU MATCH UP IDEAS WITH THE OPPORTUNITY?**\n\nWill the idea respond effectively to the real-world opportunity? Finding the answer to this question falls somewhere between science and intuition. An idea is a possible mechanism for serving a customer need, such as a pink cell phone. Opportunities are unmet customer needs, such as the customer's desire to be stylish. The challenge is to assess the scope of the need and the ability of the idea to meet that need. With the proper analysis\u2014often utilizing targeted market research\u2014you can predict in many cases which ideas will be successful.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Aiming high is aiming for something  \nthat will make the enterprise capable  \nof genuine innovation and self-renewal.\"\n\n* * *\n\nAim high! Minor modifications rarely address unmet needs. When I spoke to Peter about this, he leaned back in his chair and told me: \"If an innovation does not aim at leadership from the beginning, it is unlikely to be innovative enough to change the customers' habits.\" He continued, \"Aiming high is aiming for something that will make the enterprise capable of genuine innovation and self-renewal. That means inventing a new business and not just a product-line extension, reaching a new performance capacity and not just an incremental improvement, and delivering new, unimagined value, and not just satisfying existing expectations better.\"\n\nBut how do we know what's right? \"Most good ideas will not generate enough wealth to replicate the business's historical success, and many more will fail,\" Peter explained. \"Thus, the need to aim high is a practical reality; the one big success is needed to offset the nine failures.\"\n\nAt the same time, Peter always stressed the need to be practical. When it came to innovation, he felt that the most practical approach was to use the absolutely best people. In many ways this is the art of innovation: remaining practical while having the courage to aim high.\n\n* * *\n\nIn many ways this is the art of innovation:  \nremaining practical while having the  \ncourage to aim high.\n\n* * *\n\nThe criteria listed in the box on the next page help assess whether an idea matches an opportunity and whether you are aiming high enough while still taking market realities into account. The analysis must also address the risks of success, of near success, and of failure. For example, in 2004 the Riddell Company launched a new football helmet that was designed to reduce the incidence of concussions by 50 percent. High schools traditionally replace 20 percent of their helmets every year, and Riddell has about a 50 percent market share. The company expected its volume to double and wanted to be able to cope with up to a tenfold increase. Riddell identified outside manufacturers that could help it meet demand without investing in any new in-house capacity. It aimed high. In fact, volume tripled for two years running. Riddell sourced all the components of the helmet and used its reconditioning facilities to assemble the units. President and CEO Bill Sherman commented that it forced Riddell to enter the twenty-first century, working with a network of partners to manage the sudden surge in demand and control the quality of their product.\n\nFigure 3.2 Criteria for Evaluating Practical Success of Innovative Ideas\n\n### **DO YOU TEST AND REFINE IDEAS BASED ON THE MARKET RESPONSE?**\n\nTo make sure that you are not getting overly excited about a new idea, you must corroborate, reality-check, and test your analysis. Drucker pushed consumer testing in almost every client meeting. One manager at Motorola recalled him exhorting a team, \"Why don't you test it in three distinct markets, for example, a suburb of Chicago, a more rural area in Missouri, and an area with an older population in, say, Arizona . . . From that you will learn more than testing it in a lab or with customers in interviews for the next five years. Go out and try it.\"\n\nTesting is phenomenally powerful not only for determining an idea's potential but also for finding out what's needed to make it succeed. When I worked with Riddell, executives tested the helmet on five professional football teams and found ways to make it more comfortable. Testing also enabled the company to document the reduction in concussions before it offered the helmet to the full market.\n\n### **DO YOU DELIVER THE RESULTS?**\n\nWhen going live with an innovation, a company has to find a way to be aggressive but not foolhardy. Management needs to put the right resources on the project, separate the new effort from old activities, devise a living plan for creating customers one by one, and monitor progress with clear milestones and external goals. The living plan begins with management committing adequate resources. As Peter stated, \"The best plan is only good intentions\"\u2014until it is effectively put into action with the right resources.\n\n* * *\n\n\"The best plan is only good intentions\"\u2014  \nuntil it is effectively put into action  \nwith the right resources.\n\n* * *\n\nAn innovative organization has the discipline to manage both its existing business and its innovation efforts, recognizing that the two enterprises need different sets of skills. The existing business has to meet established quantitative performance standards, according to Drucker. \"Managing the future\" requires the encouragement of ideas, no matter how unripe or crude. . . . It is management's job to ask, \"What would this idea have to be for it to be taken seriously?\" He added, \"A top management [team] that believes its job is to sit in judgment will inevitably veto the new idea. It is always 'impractical.'\"\n\nNew innovation efforts need a different set of metrics. To put it simply, applying the conventional metrics of the ongoing business would spell death for innovation\u2014the way a 100-pound pack would cripple a six-year-old on a hike, to use Drucker's memorable phrase. Enlightened management appreciates the need for disciplined controls focused on opportunity, not profitability. This is where so many corporate innovation efforts derail\u2014they can't find a balance between nurturing new projects and applying responsible controls to them.\n\n* * *\n\nEnlightened management appreciates  \nthe need for disciplined controls focused  \non opportunity, not profitability.\n\n* * *\n\nI have seen many large firms acquire entrepreneurial ventures in what seem like brilliant moves. Soon, though, they became burdened with overhead and died. In many ways that's what Lucent Technologies did to Bell Laboratories. As one former research director told me, \"At Bell we were independent, with independent financial accountability. At Lucent, we bore the burden of the whole and had more than 100 percent increase in overhead, which killed most of what we were doing.\"\n\nHowever, even in an innovation project, accountability is essential. The success of the project must be continually measured and evaluated. One example is Allergan's approach to evaluating its drug development efforts. The drug discovery process is lengthy and high risk: Only 15 percent of new drugs entering development are expected to reach the market, and development cost per drug is estimated at $800 million. Allergan uses an extensive decision tree to determine whether to continue, modify, or abandon a development project. After completing chemical, biological, and toxicological research, the company performs a cost-benefit analysis of bringing the potential drug to market. In the United States, before any clinical testing can start, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has to approve both the clinical trials and the new drug application, often calling for design changes in the clinical trials and causing Allergan to revisit its decision to continue versus abandon.\n\nAfter the innovation is successfully commercialized and becomes an established business, it must essentially be put on trial along with the rest of the existing business. If it's not good enough, if it doesn't fit in as part of the future, it must be abandoned\u2014bringing the innovation management process full circle, back to the initial step of making room for innovation through systematic abandonment of the old. Figure 3.3 is a flowchart of the first three questions that form Drucker's map for disciplined and continuous innovative processes.\n\nFigure 3.3 Drucker's Continuous Process Map for Organized Management of Innovation\n\n* * *\n\n**DOES YOUR INNOVATION STRATEGY WORK  \nWELL WITH YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY?**\n\n**1.** What is your company's target role or influence in defining the new markets? What is the scope of your offering to this market?\n\n**2.** How does your portfolio of opportunities fit with your business strategy?\n\n**3.** Are you allocating resources where you want to be making bets?\n\n* * *\n\nSuppose you have a number of opportunities to consider. What is your strategy? Do the opportunities fit together to define where you want to be and where you want to take the market\u2014your tomorrow? An effective business strategy embraces external realities and opportunities and provides the context to help ensure that every decision, priority, and allocation of resources is geared to value creation. Innovation strategy is where the rubber meets the road, the program of change that will create the company of the future.\n\n### **WHAT IS YOUR COMPANY'S TARGET ROLE IN DEFINING THE NEW MARKETS?**\n\nWhen Peter said, \"The only way to predict the future is to create it,\" he was highlighting innovation as a tool for giving the enterprise a degree of control over the future, by removing some amount of uncertainty. To gain this control, you need an innovation strategy that explicitly articulates each opportunity in terms of your company's target role or _influence_ in defining new markets and the target _scope_ of your offerings for playing in the defined white space (see Figure 3.4).\n\nFigure 3.4 What Is Your Target Role and What Is the Scope of Opportunities?\n\nThe company that populates the new market first with the most integrated solution becomes the _first owner of the space._ The success of this type of innovation strategy is temporary, because its high visibility is a magnet for imitators who may bring more advantageous economics to the product, service, or industry. Federal Express pioneered the express package delivery market in the mid-1970s and held on to its market advantage for about two years. The U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and DHL all followed soon after, offering comparable services at lower prices and forcing Federal Express to reinvent itself multiple times over to survive.\n\nIn contrast, the _space definer_ creates something that sets boundaries, defines the new space in some fashion, or executes an idea. A dramatic example is Corning's invention of the ribbon machine to make filaments for high-speed lightbulb production, which in turn enabled the production and marketing of low-cost electric lightbulbs around the world. This innovation gave Corning a clear advantage because anyone who wanted to sell low-cost effective light bulbs had to buy Corning's ribbon machines. From the consumer's perspective, Corning did not own the space; GE and Westinghouse did. But it was Corning that absolutely defined the space.\n\nOther enterprises purposefully let their competitors define the overall space and then become providers to these leaders with products, components, or solutions. I call these companies _niche players_. Electronic Arts (EA) carved out a very profitable niche in video games (such as Sims and Madden NFL Football) for PCs and for all major console systems, such as Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo. The video gaming industry is changing at a furious pace, going online, mobile, and global while new console technology is making high-end game development complex and costly. Given that the shelf life of some games may be only three months, EA has to continually reinvent itself and its products to remain the worldwide leader in video games. The hardware manufacturers define the game space. They determine the features and hardware capabilities available to game players and designers. EA provides an essential element\u2014the game. It leverages new hardware capabilities as they become available but does not define how we play electronic games. This too is shifting, as more and more games are played live on the Internet.\n\nFinally, there are those _last buggy whip manufacturers_ who use innovation to incrementally enhance the economics of their existing businesses. However, even the most conscientious of organizations cannot secure its future solely by improving what it already has. While the ongoing business needs to be optimized, the innovation strategy must take care not to allocate scarce resources to existing businesses that are on the decline. These need to be abandoned, not given more resources. A successful innovation strategy has to focus on what will come next, not on what already is.\n\n* * *\n\nA successful innovation strategy has to  \nfocus on what will come next.\n\n* * *\n\nThe strategies highlighted in Figure 3.4 are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Many companies play in multiple spaces simultaneously, but they use a different strategy for each space. Nor is any one strategy likely to be permanent in a given market space. As noted earlier, imitations by others dilute benefits to the original owner of the space. Other new realities such as a major innovation by a competitor, or social, economic, and demographic changes spur purposeful migration\u2014or sometimes force changes in strategy. Naturally, all these strategies depend on strong linkages to external partners: customers, complementors, even competitors, and other outside resources that assist in delivering value.\n\n### **HOW DO YOUR OPPORTUNITIES FIT WITH YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY?**\n\nThe effective innovation strategy builds a portfolio that creates tomorrow. It needs to balance:\n\n\u2022 Innovation and continuity.\n\n\u2022 Core capabilities and new skills developed for tomorrow.\n\n\u2022 Defining new landscapes and playing in existing ones.\n\n\u2022 Concentration on core business activities and nuturing complementary ones.\n\nA few years ago, I witnessed firsthand a flawed innovation strategy at Corning, when managers lost sight of core capabilities and failed to ask these questions, ushering in a brief period of trouble in the company's otherwise strong history. Even more than most companies, Corning is in the business of innovation. From the mid-nineteenth century until the 1990s, Corning introduced a long series of inventions and processes that became the foundations of sweeping changes. For example, it developed a process for making colored and unbreakable railroad signal lenses that effectively enabled railroad crossings. In the 1950s, Corning figured out how to make extremely low-cost CRTs (cathode-ray tubes)\u2014leading the way to low-cost television. In the 1970s, it invented the core of the catalytic converter, which is the basis for most automotive pollution control systems and is credited with the marked improvement in urban air quality. At the same time, Corning pioneered the development of optical fiber capable of effective transmission of digitized data; the company had the foresight to predict the vast market in bandwidth telecommunications.\n\nDespite these successes, Corning never viewed its accomplishments as the results of a systematic or intentional innovation strategy. It simply believed R&D and technological inventions were important. In the late 1990s, as the telecommunications industry boomed, the optical fiber business boomed with it. Corning did not question the overly optimistic demand projections provided by its telecom customers; instead it revved up production, spending more than $9 billion on acquisitions in fiber and photonics. In 2001, when the telecom bust occurred, Corning was caught by surprise. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and Corning found itself on the verge of extinction (in 2002 its stock plummeted to $1.70 per share from its September 2000 price of $113).\n\nAs Corning fought to recover, the senior team members asked themselves, \"What are we really good at?\" What they came back with is, \"We're really good at certain kinds of invention and innovation in response to customer problems. We're not a marketing company, not a telecommunications company, not a systems company. What we are is a company capable of certain kinds of invention, and we need to focus on doing that well.\"\n\nCorning's strengths are its extraordinary depth of understanding of certain kinds of materials and technologies, and its application of process expertise to that knowledge. The company knows more about glass and inorganic materials and glass ceramics than any other enterprise in the world. Consequently, in every product in which it has a significant business, Corning is a low-cost producer with greater knowledge and capabilities than its competitors. That is the card that it plays, opting not to compete where its technical materials knowledge is of little value, or where the game is only cost (e.g., window glass).\n\nAfter acknowledging the company's strengths, senior managers realized that they had a recipe\u2014and strategy\u2014all along for innovating in concert with their strengths. They became the guardians of this strategy. Despite the memory of its telecom disaster, when Corning identifies a new arena or application that fits its strengths, it is still willing to invest huge amounts of money to take advantage of the opportunity.\n\nHowever, Corning's management has also learned that if it wants to aim high and take big swings, the company has to rely on more than one product. In 2005, Corning devoted billions of dollars to LCD (liquid crystal display) applications, and it also invested heavily in pollution control devices for diesel vehicles. While its inventions come from inside the organization, in envisioning the future and seeking out opportunities, Corning routinely leverages the expertise and knowledge of outsiders (academics, industry experts, advisers, consultants), no longer relying on customers alone as its source for inspiration. Since redirecting its strategy to explicitly link internal strengths to external opportunities, Corning's performance has been on an upward trend\u2014its stock reaching $19 per share and its profits moving from negative to over 12 percent.\n\n### **ARE YOU ALLOCATING RESOURCES WHERE YOU WANT TO BE MAKING BETS?**\n\nAre you allocating resources where you want to be making bets? This is one of those \"gotcha\" questions that Drucker loved. Generally speaking, when Drucker pushed people to look at where they were allocating resources, they were surprised by the answer. Many of the people I interviewed remembered how shocked they were to find out that they weren't allocating resources for tomorrow. Marty Davidson, the former chairman of Southern Pipe, remembers, \"When we saw how little time we were spending with our new branch managers and our new projects, our routine changed overnight. We now go back and check how we are spending time every six months to make sure that it fits with our priorities.\" He remembered another moment of truth with Peter: \"When we saw how much of our resources were being spent in Texas and what it was going to take to build a position there, we realized it was not a wise bet.\"\n\n### **HOW INNOVATION ENABLES GE'S LONGEVITY AND VALUATION**\n\nAlong with DuPont and P&G, GE is one of only three companies that have made the Forbes 100 list every year since 1917 that are innovative to the core and have outperformed the overall market. GE adopted a Druckerian approach to innovation. Its competitor Siemens took a narrower view of innovation, with a very different result.\n\nThere are many similarities between the two companies. Both were founded on technological brilliance and have developed into huge global technology conglomerates. Both companies have relied on internally recruited executives and experienced very low turnover at the top. Yet there are fundamental differences, chiefly GE's agility and Siemens's inability to quickly reinvent itself. The result was that Siemens, despite its vast scientific capabilities, never achieved GE's success. From 1995 to 2005, GE grew twice as fast as did Siemens (7.9 percent per year for GE compared to 3.8 percent for Siemens) at almost three times the profit margins (10.2 percent average net profit margins for GE compared to 3.7 percent for Siemens).\n\nGE, like Siemens, has innovation in its DNA. It evolved from the legacy of its founder, Thomas Edison\u2014not only a brilliant inventor but also a truly customer-driven innovator. He sounded a lot like Drucker: \"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of service it might give others.\" Although other inventors had invented lightbulbs at the same time, Edison went on to create an industry by designing the infrastructure necessary to serve his customers\u2014the wires and generators that made his light bulbs usable.\n\nAs GE found out early on, no company, however brilliant its founder or products, is immune to changes in the environment. The company was almost bankrupt a year after its founding, in the panic of 1893, when central power stations could no longer afford to purchase new materials. To survive this crisis, GE completely changed its strategy, shifting to an innovative focus on solving customer problems. Alas, Edison was not as good a manager as he was an inventor. He was asked to leave by J. P. Morgan, who replaced him with professional managers.\n\nDespite the near disaster, the company remained focused on its products and on creating a culture that encouraged innovation. It is worth noting that Drucker worked with every GE CEO from Swope through Welch, helping them create a culture of innovation that challenged the status quo. Gerald Swope was GE's president from 1922 to 1940 and again from 1942 to 1945. He said: \"If we could fill this body of executives and leading men with the spirit of adventure to try even unheard-of things, the company would either make progress or go broke, and the older of us would try our best to keep from going broke.\"\n\nJack Welch, GE's chief executive from 1981 to 2001, completely reinvented the organization's businesses and its corporate culture in order to stay ahead of global competitors. Central to Welch's strategy was the company-changing policy we discussed earlier of innovation through abandonment: GE had to be number one or number two in any business, and if not, the business had to be fixed, sold, or closed. This policy arose in response to two simple questions posed to Welch by Drucker: \"If you weren't already in the business, would you enter it today? And, if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?\" And so Welch set out to revamp GE's portfolio of businesses. (Drucker liked to say that Welch had \"the courage of a lion.\") He quickly got out of low-growth businesses and used his high-valued shares as currency to buy companies in high-growth businesses, such as financial services and media. At the same time, Welch attacked bureaucracy, reducing management layers from nine to four. In the process, between 1981 and 1988, GE eliminated over 240,000 positions from its workforce of 404,000, earning Welch the nickname \"Neutron Jack.\"\n\nAt the end of the 1980s, GE was ready to push global growth and amended its number one or number two standard to mean its world market position. Taking the view that regions in crisis would provide the best risk-reward ratio, Welch invested heavily in Europe, Mexico, and Asia during their downturns, laying the foundation for double-digit international growth rates.\n\nEmployees were immersed in the Six Sigma quality program, the customer satisfaction dashboard feedback system, and the boundaryless entrepreneurial culture, which quickly became part of GE's operating system. Probably no other company is as well known as GE for its focus on developing its people. Welch built on this tradition and focused on differentiating the best employees and managers from the rest of the pack. Every year the bottom 10 percent, as well as anyone who did not share GE's values, was weeded out, while strong performers were rewarded with generous stock options and challenging assignments in other parts of the company\u2014a practice Welch called the _vitality curve_ (also known throughout the industry as _forced ranking_ ).\n\nSteeped in GE's corporate culture, Jeff Immelt was ready to follow Jack Welch's advice \"Blow it up!\" as he replaced his mentor in 2001. Immelt inherited a business environment vastly different from the one Welch succeeded in. After the high-flying 90's, growth slowed, and the world became more volatile. Yet Immelt was committed to bringing GE's organic revenue growth rate from historic levels of 5 percent per year to 8 percent while increasing earnings by at least 10 percent and keeping growth in stock prices above the S&P 500.\n\nFor a company with revenues the size of Argentina's GNP, that meant building a new, profitable, $12 billion company every year. Immelt's thesis was that technical and market innovations are the key to building more service income and avoiding commoditization. There were no sacred cows. Immelt abandoned businesses favored by Welch, such as insurance, which turned out to be a poor fit with GE and a significant drag on operating profits. It is no surprise to me that Peter was already speculating in 1999 about how abandonment versus investment at GE would play out in the future. \"My own guess is that the next CEO may split the company because they have grown apart. The next CEO will probably put as much effort into the nonfinancial businesses, which are now the businesses they really need.\"\n\nImmelt may not have agreed that GE should be split, but as of this writing he is making huge investments in fast-growth businesses such as health care, entertainment, infrastructure, energy, and \"ecoimagination\" (environmentally protective products). These businesses also fit the needs of developing economies, which are expected to account for 60 percent of the company's growth by 2015, versus about 20 percent in 1995\u20132005. In 2003, Immelt declared that, \"Ten years out, 90 percent of our company's earnings will have no competition from China. Eighty percent of our businesses will be selling to China.\" The plan is to become a \"general store for developing countries.\" To this end, the organization was completely revamped and shaped around selling, building, and financing infrastructure products. The plan seems to be working, with revenues from developing countries growing at 20 percent per year.\n\nImmelt is betting the farm on being able to transform a process orientation into a marketing-driven, innovative mindset. He is looking for leaders who are passionate about customers and innovation and willing to take risks. Managers will not be rotated around but are expected to stay put and become specialists in their own industries. A process for innovation, called _Imagination Breakthroughs_ , has been launched, requiring each of GE's business leaders to submit at least three proposals per year that have the potential to take GE into new customer or geographical areas while generating incremental growth of at least $100 million. The hope is that the 80 innovation projects currently under way\u2014a $5 billion investment\u2014will generate $25 billion in revenue by 2007. Although the long-term success of Immelt's strategy remains to be seen, organic growth reached the targeted 8 percent in 2005. What is clear, though, is what sets GE apart. At GE, change is viewed as an opportunity and is continuously pursued with a sense of urgency.\n\n### **IN CONTRAST TO GE: SIEMENS AG**\n\nWerner von Siemens and Thomas Edison were described by Peter Drucker as \"the first innovators\" who, independently of each other, created the electrical industry and indeed our electrified world of today. \"Siemens did not develop the electric railway because he had a generator; he developed the generator because he had visualized the electric railway.\"\n\nSubsequent members of the Siemens family were dedicated to research and technological innovations, capitalizing on emerging technologies from the telephone to electric power generation. The company had a history of firsts that includes Europe's first electric power transmission system, the world's first electrified railway and one of the first elevators, as well as the world's first X-ray tube.\n\nThe company developed a legendary ability to manage large, complex projects and prided itself on quality and durability. Siemens gradually developed into one of the largest electronics and engineering companies in the world, with 2005 revenues of $91 billion.\n\n#### **Different Cultures**\n\nUntil 1971, Siemens was run and controlled by the Siemens family, probably making it tough to foster a culture of company reinvention and change. GE, by contrast, has a carefully orchestrated process by which a CEO picks a successor: gradually narrowing down a field of about 100 internal candidates identified many years before the actual transition.\n\nSiemens didn't become a public company until 1966. Without pressure from external shareholders, the company could pursue long-term business activity while ignoring short-term profits. At GE, to quote Jack Welch: \"You can't grow long term if you can't eat short term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.\"\n\nSiemens has a culture that evolved from serving primarily public-sector customers in regulated markets, thus fostering complacency and a civil-servant attitude. The sense of monopoly status with large customers such as Deutsche Telecom led to long delays in conversion from analog to digital telephone systems, which were introduced many years behind companies like ITT. Siemens's CEO also faced the challenge of navigating the decidedly unfriendly business climate in Germany, which is dominated by powerful labor unions aggressively defending their right to high wages, lavish benefits, and total job security. Siemens was thus ill prepared for the worldwide wave of deregulation and heightened global competition in the 1990s. Siemens CEO from 1992 to 2005, Heinrich von Pierer, acknowledged, \"In Germany, competition was like a wind. Now it is a storm. And it will become a hurricane!\"\n\n#### **Differing Results**\n\nWhereas Welch approached his task of reinventing GE with an enormous sense of urgency, von Pierer tailored his approach to Germany's consensus-style corporate culture: \"Good management is the art of making change painless.\"\n\nSiemens wanted to be number one or number two in every business, just like GE. It just seemed unable to deal with the second part of Drucker's question: If you are not, what are you going to do about it? While GE decided in 1970 that it would never become a leader in computers and sold the business, Siemens held on to its computer business for dear life despite decades of huge losses.\n\nWith the accession in 2005 of U.S.-educated CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, new winds began to blow within Siemens. Kleinfeld launched a cultural revolution of his own, with GE as his model. Aggressive profitability targets were established, and Kleinfeld declared his intention to dispose of any business that didn't reach its targets by 2007 (then about half of Siemens's divisions). True to that declaration, Siemens paid about $300 million to get out of its losing mobile telephone business while announcing layoffs in its troubled communications business.\n\nBy 2006, Kleinfeld was talking a different game and was quoted in _Fortune_ as saying, \"That is a fact of life. If I look at all our businesses, I see that only when we are in a leadership position are we able to sustainably make profits on a level that allows us to continue to invest heavily in innovation.\"\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nEven the most brilliant research capability will not translate into superior profitability and shareholder returns unless the organization is capable of successful, systematic organizational and business innovation. Reinventing the business to stay ahead of global shifts requires a sense of constant urgency and a willingness to embrace change.\n\nIn answering the forward-looking questions discussed in this chapter, it is critical to remember that:\n\n**1.** The silent revolution has telescoped the timeline for innovation. Abandonment must occur frequently and rapidly; what needs to be considered for abandonment is everything about a business, not just products.\n\n**2.** Each of the seven classes of opportunities has an information, geographic, and connection component, which may range from drawing on some far corner of the world to creating the unexpected to tapping into obscure confluences of information about consumer perceptions from multiple industries and sources.\n\n**3.** The power of processes\u2014to bring together key resources, foster disciplined decisions, and allocate resources\u2014is exponentially more important in today's world than it was when Drucker first wrote about it.\n\n**4.** Innovation strategy in the Lego world is about building relationships and inventing white space\u2014not pushing products one more round.\n\nOne of Peter's biggest gifts to future generations is that he left a body of work that teaches managers and employees how to create the future. It is up to us to put those teachings into action. It's worth repeating: The entrepreneur creates new wealth-producing resources by four means:\n\n**1.** Abandoning ongoing efforts to make room for innovation.\n\n**2.** Continuously seeking opportunities.\n\n**3.** Converting those opportunities into value for customers.\n\n**4.** Strategically allocating resources.\n\nThat's how existing companies maximize their potential for creation. The next two chapters are about connecting with and orchestrating the best resources to collectively deliver innovations and create tomorrow.\n\n## **FOUR Collaboration and Orchestration**\n\n_The \"interdependence\" of organizations is different than anything we ever meant before by this term._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nI flew across the country to see the future in the form of the Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF)\u2014a two-year-old research group that was redefining the way Americans did medical research. I had a hunch that this little-known nonprofit had invented a model of collaboration that exemplified Peter Drucker's most important ideas. I was convinced that the foundation offered valuable, trail-blazing lessons that could help other nonprofits tackle social problems more effectively, and show businesses how to thrive and boost their profits. And after seeing the future, I would have a chance to share my observations with Peter, who would definitely challenge and perhaps confirm them.\n\nPeter's vision of collaboration remains immensely relevant today. He believed that to give your customers what they need, you must follow two rules: first, you must do only what you do best, that is, play to your strengths; and second, to meet the full range of customer needs beyond your strongest capabilities, you must collaborate with other players, sometimes those you consider competitors, who can complement your strengths with what they do best. A tall order indeed.\n\n### **THE POWER OF COLLABORATION**\n\nI arrived on a spring day in 2005 at a suburban office park in Saratoga, California, south of San Francisco. A small, discreet sign on the first-floor office door said Myelin Repair Foundation. Walking into the headquarters of this organization, which is devoted to scientific collaboration at the highest level, I expected to see Hollywood's version of a high-tech lab, where men and women with furrowed brows and long white coats use PDAs to beam code to each other amid giant plasma screens and LED displays. Instead, I stepped into a maze of cubicles\u2014some of them piled high with papers. Scott Johnson, Myelin's founder and president, welcomed me and set about trying to find a spot where we could meet; the foundation was outgrowing its space and didn't have a conference room. I started to wonder if stepping into the future might be more like stepping back to my graduate school days at MIT in the 1970s, when we had to scramble for space in exciting places like Building 18 or Building E-52.\n\n* * *\n\nTo give your customers what they need,  \nyou must follow two rules:  \nplay to your strengths and collaborate  \nwith other players.\n\n* * *\n\nAs Johnson and I sat with Rusty Bromley, the foundation's COO, in a cramped corner space, I felt that old sense of excitement return. Consumers don't yet know what myelin is, but it's likely to become a household word to the families of the 400,000 Americans with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS attacks myelin, a fat and protein compound wrapped around axons, the fibers that sprout out of nerve cells and carry nerve signals. Think of myelin as insulation. When explaining MS to children, adults talk about electric wires in the body and how frayed wires often spark or sputter or fail completely. And as scar tissue forms in the place of myelin insulation, nerve signals are slowed, distorted, or halted. These sputters and failures are the symptoms of MS.\n\nYears ago, I had a neighbor with MS, a gentle teacher who loved word games. It was tragic to watch her steady decline, from walking awkwardly to hobbling with a cane to needing nursing care. I soon learned that Scott Johnson, who had been a senior executive at FMC Corporation, a chemical company, and then president of a start-up company, knew all too well how critical myelin was. He had been diagnosed with MS 30 years before. His own investigation of the state of the art in MS research was the catalyst for the Myelin Repair Foundation.\n\nThe untold secret of R&D, including publicly funded medical research, is that the very research centers that are supposed to work for the common good are often too internally focused. They don't want to cooperate with others, whom they perceive as competitors, because they fear losing their funding. Maddened by this inefficiency, Johnson set about creating the Myelin Repair Foundation, attracting top scientists with the enticement of pioneering a new model designed to harness their collective expertise to attack and solve complex medical problems that they couldn't solve on their own, and guaranteed funding. Experts kept telling Johnson that curing MS would take decades. Despite funding from the august National Institutes of Health, which boasted of investing $50 million a year in MS research, most scientists said it would still be 30 to 50 years before a cure would be available. Having heard the exact same estimate 30 years earlier, Johnson wanted to see results in his lifetime. He challenged everyone by setting an ambitious goal: to have a solution for repairing myelin in just five years.\n\nTo make sure the scientists kept their goal in mind, Johnson also invited a handful of people with MS to attend a session where MRF brought the scientists together for face-to-face meetings three times a year. The experts were no longer dealing with an abstract problem of axons; they were dealing with fellow human beings suffering from an implacable disease. The foundation connected research centers at five universities to collectively find a way to repair myelin.\n\nFrom Saratoga I drove to Stanford and met with people in one of the member labs. Their excitement was palpable. The scientists were amazed at how effective their monthly phone conference calls were with team members at the other four labs and the MRF staff. These calls enabled them to share information and procedures and to get frequent, objective, expert feedback on their research design and interpretation of results rapidly instead of at annual scientific conferences and during the actual experiments long after. The benefits of collaboration were immediately obvious to them and to me. The model adopted by the Myelin Repair Foundation\u2014putting together the best that different entities have to offer and abandoning the notion that a company has to do everything itself\u2014seemed to reflect much of what Drucker had written in _The Post-Capitalist Society_.\n\nMy visit with Scott Johnson and Rusty Bromley, and discussions with Peter, confirmed my hunch that the Myelin Repair Foundation is a truly excellent example of what collaboration can provide. The quality and commitment of this effort and the consequent multiplier and accelerator functions of highly focused collaboration among the principal investigators, outside contractors, and MRF staff dramatically increase the chance of a near-term breakthrough in a cure for MS.\n\n### **COLLABORATION AND ORCHESTRATION: THREE DRUCKER QUESTIONS**\n\nThe morning after my visit to the Myelin Repair Foundation, I was unusually nervous as I approached the Drucker house. I had visited a Starbucks in L.A. to clean up my notes on a laptop, and then I stopped at Kinkos to print out the notes and questions for Peter. As Peter read through my meeting notes with Johnson, he asked me a number of questions and uttered \"magnificent\" several times. Then we began discussing the critical questions that the Myelin Repair Foundation, as well as any organization that wants to tap into the power of collaboration, had to address. Peter asked three fundamental groups of questions:\n\n**1.** What are the goals of your collaboration? What are the shortcomings of the traditional business model? What are the needs that it leaves unfulfilled? And what is the prize a collaborative business model could deliver?\n\n**2.** How should the collaboration be structured? What will be your front room? What does your company do best? And what organizations or individuals are best at the other activities necessary to fulfill your customers' needs? Who best complements your front room?\n\n**3.** How do you orchestrate and operate a successful collaboration? What is the best way to set up your enterprise to be agile and cost-effective and to work with your backroom partners as one well-orchestrated whole? Can you manage down the risk that the partnership will backfire or be derailed by competitive issues?\n\nAs you consider these three groups of questions for your company, imagine you are just now leaving college and setting up your company from scratch. That's Peter's way of looking at the viability of a corporation\u2014if you weren't in this business, would you enter it today? And if so, what would it look like and where would you collaborate or draw on others' capabilities?\n\n* * *\n\nIf you weren't in this business, would you enter it  \ntoday? And if so, what would it look like?\n\n* * *\n\nSome unmet needs are simply not possible without collaboration. For example, what if you could connect any service or gadget the way you really wanted wirelessly and plug and play? Imagine the possibilities. There would be only one fiber system into your home with multiple lanes. The wavelengths would be split much like radio frequencies, and the telephone, cable, Internet, video services, etc., would all flow through that single cable. You would have one easy-to-use remote device, with no unnecessary functions, for six different brands of electronic equipment. If you lost your remote device, you could pick-up another one at Radio Shack for $10, rather than the $1000 charged today for the high-end programmable remotes by the specialty stores. The spaghetti of wires behind your desk would disappear. It would be doable if companies collaborated and a third party or collaborator had the vision to connect the pieces. This is very much like what the Eisenhower government did when building the U.S. Highway system\u2014states guaranteed companies that they would get their money back if they invested in the shared highway system and thereby created demand for automobiles.\n\nI would like seamless wireless coverage while traveling on Interstate 95 around the New York City area. There are moments I wish I were in Siberia, where I expect the coverage is better\u2014linking all those T-mobiles, Verizons, and Cingulars might be a beginning. My kids could pull out their laptops, send e-mail or play on-line games, download a movie, or access their homework while I drove. Google is testing this service model in San Francisco. If companies are willing to collaborate, as Peter constantly said, \"it's a great opportunity.\" If they fail to do it together, they won't be able to do it on their own.\n\nAs we discuss Peter's three groups of questions, we begin by looking at how the Myelin Repair Foundation answered these three questions as it was set up initially, discuss Peter's comments, look at how other companies have addressed these questions, and then consider the lessons we can learn from their collaborations.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF YOUR COLLABORATION?**\n\n**1.** What are the shortcomings of the traditional business model? What are the needs that it leaves unfulfilled?\n\n**2.** What is the prize a collaborative business model could deliver?\n\n* * *\n\nThirty years after being diagnosed with MS, Scott Johnson discovered that, by their own admission, scientists were no closer to finding a cure than when the diagnosis was first made, so he got proactive. He began searching the literature to assess the state of MS research, Johnson's \"aha\" moment came when he read a _Business Week_ article that talked about a repair\u2014not a cure\u2014for MS. He liked the notion of repairing the damage or simply treating the symptoms, the way that insulin is a treatment but not a cure for diabetics. Such repairs could radically slow the progress of the disease. \"I just called the scientist who was mentioned in that article,\" Johnson recalled. \"He suggested that I talk to other scientists, and that led me on a trail.\"\n\nJohnson's outsider perspective and business background helped him quickly identify key barriers to the timely development of drug targets in the scientific community. He explained during our interview that the prevailing academic model was serving the wrong customer. Scientists and their universities were the immediate beneficiaries of their research. Success is measured in papers published, grant monies, and tenured research positions, not in enhancing the quality of life for those suffering from a disease. And the drive to be first in making a breakthrough discovery means that information is sequestered rather than shared\u2014until it is time to \"break the story\" in a peer-reviewed journal. Not only is the academic model not geared to benefit patients, but it provides strong disincentives for the kind of collaborative knowledgesharing needed to achieve medical breakthroughs. The search for the next grant is never-ending, and the publication of original research in the best journals is the primary criterion for awarding grants. Thus, to be able to continue his or her work, the researcher cannot work with colleagues or share ideas ahead of publication. Critical time is lost because of the delay in making intermediate findings available to others, findings that might well accelerate the progress of their independent lines of research. One of the Myelin Repair Foundation scientists I spoke to put it this way: \"Let's face it; Tiger Woods doesn't help Phil Mickelson improve his swing. Well, the same thing is true in science because it's a competitive environment.\"\n\nThe academic model does little to break down the natural silos that form around specialties. Nor is the private-sector approach much help either. Johnson met with leadership teams at several pharmaceutical companies to propose a joint project to develop and validate drug targets for MS. These companies had their own set of constraints. Under pressure to keep down costs and worried about lawsuits, they were cautious about MS research. Johnson found a wide cultural gulf between the very academics and private-sector researchers who should have been drawing on each other's talents. He expressed it this way to me, \"A large number of the Ph.D.'s have never been outside the academic world. I think a lot of them have a negative perception of the business world and really don't want anything to do with it. They often view people who went to the commercial world as individuals who compromised their intellectual integrity.\"\n\nTo Johnson, the need was the ability to connect labs with one another, as well as link the academic world to the pharmaceutical world. The prize was a treatment, not a cure. And the timeline for securing that prize\u2014for finding and validating a myelin repair drug target\u2014was 5 years, not the 15 to 20 years that the scientists estimated it would take under the current system. Recently at a meeting with Genetech, someone commented that \"you have industrialized academic research.\" The principal investigator there thought about it and responded, \"Yes, that is exactly what we are doing.\" Two years ago he would have gotten up and walked out.\n\nJohnson and his team quickly set the target at five years. \"I think they [the MRF scientists] are amazed at how rapidly results are coming out,\" he said. There are no guarantees that the foundation will find a treatment, but they believe they have a much better shot at it if they address the shortcomings of the business and academic research models, define the prize, and pursue it relentlessly.\n\nAnother example of inventing a better business model comes from one of the pioneers of collaboration, Dell. As mentioned earlier, Michael Dell and his team discovered that users were eager to put together computer components themselves. The problem was that each computer company preferred selling customers its own brand and fully assembled computers. Dell's initial prize was to get customers a PC, customized to their specifications, within one week. Dell made its front room the ability to plan and configure customized PCs, taking advantage of the vast components and capabilities available from other sources. This focused discipline plus stellar inventory management made rapid customized service possible.\n\nMany of Dell's 15,000 direct employees are also collaborating with the company's corporate customers. For example, there are the 30 Dell employees who rarely see the inside of the home office because they work full time at one of Dell's customers, Boeing. There they function, in the words of Michael Dell, not \"like a supplier but more like Boeing's PC department. We become intimately involved in planning their PC needs and the configuration of their network.\"\n\nIn developing countries, collaboration has helped subsistence farmers overcome the economic, political, logistical, and infrastructure limitations they face while also securing a high-quality, low-cost sustainable source of supply for their customers. Here is one example that will change and has changed millions of lives.\n\nAfter almost 100 years of buying soy from local farmers in India, International Tobacco Company (ITC) is leading the eChoupal initiative\u2014a radically different, collaborative approach to the purchasing relationship. Under the 100-year-old system, farmers sold soy in an ostensibly open auction process in local markets. But soy prices were artificially set by ITC by means of arrangements with certain local distributors. Farmers were so marginal that ITC's supply was never really secure. To move beyond the subsistence level, the farmers desperately needed better information. They could not maximize their crops or yields or get the best price for a particular commodity without information on weather, agricultural conditions, the effectiveness of tools, and prices. Initially, the prize of the initiative was seen as giving farmers access to information to compete on an equal footing in the marketplace and enhancing ITC's soy supply.\n\nITC gave every farmer access to the Chicago Board of Trade and to the outside world. Under the system, each village (or choupal) got a PC, an Internet connection, a power supply with solar backup, and a printer\u2014all at a cost of under $4,000 per choupal. With this equipment, farmers could access the ITC-updated eChoupal site for information on weather, crops, markets, relevant news, and the ITC itself. The site's frequently asked questions (FAQ) feature enabled the farmers to ask questions of ITC experts. The local operators of the Internet kiosks, known as sanchalaks, were farmers themselves. In return for operating the kiosks, they received commissions on all soybeans from their area sold to the ITC and commissions on ITC farming products sold in their area. The host farmer took a public oath to serve the community. Their homes became not only e-commerce hubs but also social gathering places for farmers and their families.\n\nThe system is no longer grossly lopsided. By 2006, 3.5 million farmers had gained access to the Internet and the outside world. Their total costs went down by almost 50 percent, as a result of better purchasing practices, better agricultural practices, and reduced administration costs. The old system provided farmers with an annual income equivalent to some $440 from their 8 to 12 acres of farmland. The new system increased price per ton by 25 percent and their overall tonnage yields. Not surprisingly, this program is extremely popular and continues to expand both geographically and across crops. Peter had no direct relationship with the ITC. Yet he is frequently quoted in its internal reports and the press about ITC, because his ideas resonate so deeply with the company and his approach to collaboration has worked so well for them.\n\nThe first step in structuring a collaboration is to identify your company's \"front room,\" which Peter defined as your strengths, or the activity that is most important for you to do\u2014that which stirs your passion and shows off your excellence. Everything else is your backroom, and it can be almost everything. One of Peter's famous quotes is, \"the only thing you have to do is marketing and innovation.\"\n\nIn the traditional model, a business would add to its front room an array of ancillary activities needed to meet its customers' needs. The quality of those activities might not be first rate, or the activities might be relatively high cost, but the company had to have them in place to meet customer needs. The level of communication and coordination needed to team up with another organization made any other approach impossible for most companies. In the new world, however, you can eliminate many of these ancillary activities and do a better job of meeting customer needs via collaboration. In the new world, collaboration is not just an option but an imperative. It is critical that you do only what you do best, that you eliminate or minimize your backroom by teaming up with another organization. With the greater transparency typical of the new world, the customer can see everything and knows your flaws and strengths. And you can connect to and use someone else's front room, thereby better meeting customer needs and streamlining your operations in the process.\n\n* * *\n\n**HOW SHOULD THE COLLABORATION BE STRUCTURED?**\n\n**1.** What will be your _front room_? What does your company do best?\n\n**2.** What organizations or individuals are best at the other activities necessary to fulfill your customers' needs? Who best _complements_ your front room?\n\n**3.** How can these capabilities be combined to _fulfill your customers' needs_?\n\n* * *\n\nThe Myelin Repair Foundation defined its front room as orchestrating and coordinating multiple elements of medical research that had never before been operationally linked. The foundation was the connective tissue joining the principal scientific investigators, the experts in the broader scientific and commercial communities, and the pharmaceutical industry. For the foundation, orchestrating meant seeking funding, helping plan the research, operationally linking the labs, providing resources, anticipating needs, and providing a healthy environment for a new, collaborative approach to research.\n\nResearch is the heart of the foundation and its reason for being; it is also its backroom. Johnson and Bromley worked together to assemble the best research team possible for this start-up venture. They asked neurobiology experts whom they considered to be the five best scientists in the field with firsthand experience in myelin research, and the same five names popped up every time: Ben Barres of Stanford, David Colman of McGill, Robert Miller of Case Western, Stephen Miller of Northwestern, and Brian Popko of the University of Chicago.\n\nThey approached each of these scientists with their unusual request: We would like you (and your university labs) to work collaboratively with us, rather than in the customary isolation; to work under firm and aggressive deadlines rather than in the customary open-ended world of grants; to work toward a goal of developing treatments for patients (who would be the customer) rather than publishing papers for your own academic advancement; to be part of a collective decision-making process with less individual freedom; and, ultimately, to work in concert with business for the eventual marketing of the drug. They became the foundation's principal investigators despite its highly unconventional operational model.\n\nIn retrospect, Johnson understood just how lucky he and Bromley were, and how demographics had helped their quest. Luckily, all of the five scientists were in their late 40s or early 50s, and felt that they didn't have anything to prove. Each had already been established as a success in the academic process. Each felt that this new model might provide a different kind of return or fulfillment\u2014the possibility of more rapid progress, the opportunity to collaborate rather than compete with brilliant peers, the prospect of demonstrating an entirely new model of research with the potential to broadly transform critical research, and the rewards of being associated with actual treatment.\n\nIn the world of high technology, the classic example of collaboration is Linux, the open-source operating system. It has revolutionized the way software is made and has emerged as a powerful model of successful decentralized collaboration. Linus Torvalds wrote the beginning, or, as he called it, the \"kernel,\" of an operating system in 1991. He made it available to everyone and invited others to improve on it. His front room is the original kernel and the decision authority built into the software to accept changes. The backroom is executing all the changes.\n\nThe Linux operating system that resulted from this collaboration includes code written by thousands of volunteer programmers all over the world, united in their desire to make Linux a constantly improving product and an unstoppable force in computing. The Linux organization is a true meritocracy based on transparency. Any person can look at every bit of code and is free to participate, but only the best fixes are picked by Torvalds and make their way into the next version, which, in turn, will be probed by thousands of people for flaws and more opportunities for improvement. Despite its tremendous growth\u2014Linux software is on more than one-third of the world's servers\u2014the operation has managed to remain both agile and effective. Torvalds remains the undisputed, highly respected leader of this virtual spider web of programmers, top tech companies, and Linux distributors.\n\nAs the collaboration has expanded, more of the review process has been delegated and automated, but the fundamental idea remains the same. Top tech competitors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard work together and with distributors such as Red Hat on setting development priorities, offering their programmers' time on projects, and protecting Linux from potential intellectual property claims. The tech companies, in turn, make money not from selling the operating system, which is available for free at linux.org, but from selling services and software around the system. Thus everyone (with the exception of Microsoft) benefits from this cooperative ecosystem of global technology talent.\n\nElectronics powerhouse Toshiba has also benefited from a collaborative business model. In 2004, Toshiba saw an opportunity to build customer loyalty in the highly competitive PC market by offering a significantly shortened turnaround time for laptop repairs\u2014a clearly felt customer need. To do so, Toshiba had to recognize that making repairs was not its front room and to look outside its own walls for the capability to repair and return products rapidly.\n\nIt was not critical that Toshiba itself repair its customers' laptops, as long as it could guarantee quality service to its customers. So Toshiba entered into a relationship with UPS. Toshiba provided the laptops and customers. UPS provided packaging and convenient drop-off shipping of laptops through The UPS Store retail network; it also set up a Toshiba-certified repair center at the UPS Supply Chain Solutions campus in Louisville, Kentucky, adjacent to the UPS World port global air hub. This center could receive and repair a laptop and ship it back to its owner in one day, with delivery as early as 8:30 a.m. the next morning. Customers could use other shipping services and other repair services as well. The bottom line: Toshiba customers could have their computers up and running within one to four days of returning them for service.\n\nThe customer cares much more about hassle-free, fast, and reliable service than about who performs the service. By eliminating service and shipping from its backroom and using UPS's front room capabilities, Toshiba was able to meet this customer need far more effectively than it could have on its own.\n\n* * *\n\n**HOW CAN YOU ORCHESTRATE YOUR COLLABORATION TO BE AGILE AND COST-EFFECTIVE AND TO WORK AS A COHERENT WHOLE?**\n\n**1.** What sort of _living business plan_ is needed to delineate the path to the prize?\n\n**2.** What _structured communications_ will connect the players to the shared goals and plan and build agile _decision making_ into daily operations?\n\n**3.** What _tracking and feedback mechanisms_ support your living plan and ensure continued attention to outside results?\n\n* * *\n\nAs Peter described this challenge to me, he said it is about knowing what you know and what you don't know, acting and learning, and then updating what you know. Getting more than one company to do this simultaneously\u2014organizations that have never worked together before\u2014is management's challenge.\n\nOnce the collaboration has been structured\u2014when participants and roles have been defined in pursuit of a collaborative prize\u2014the management challenge begins: orchestrating the collaboration so that two or more different organizations can work together in unaccustomed ways in pursuit of that prize with ever-changing learning and shifting priorities. Like other effective collaborators, the Myelin Repair Foundation devised a living business plan, structured communications and decision making to connect the plan to daily operations, and designed tracking and feedback mechanisms to stay connected to outside results.\n\n### **CREATE A LIVING BUSINESS PLAN**\n\nScientists don't have business plans. Their objective is to increase knowledge. But the research collaboration orchestrated by the Myelin Repair Foundation did need a business plan to articulate the commitment of all the players to sharing information, getting results, and achieving targeted milestones, as well as to provide a constant reminder that the foundation was challenging the open-ended academic model. Scott Johnson recognized that the foundation needed a living business plan, one that could be updated, modified, and accelerated\u2014not a static plan meant to impress stakeholders and analysts. That way, the scientists would have the flexibility to build on advances and quickly bring a treatment to MS patients. The plan specified tangible goals, clear accountability, and explicit timelines. By its very nature, the plan was made to be flexible and grow organically alongside the foundation.\n\nOne of the scientists commented, \"Once I saw the research plan, you couldn't pry me out of this collaboration.\" He could see how powerful and how useful it could be at attaining results. This plan defines as many paths of inquiry as needed to find the answers, but each year the principal investigators propose pilot projects that determine what investments will be made in the next year, and how to refocus resources.\n\nThe foundation's living business plan delivered results. In the fourteenth month of the project, one of the principal investigators told the management team that he had a target ready for preclinical testing, but the foundation's five affiliated university labs lacked the testing capacity. In the traditional academic research model, coming up with this capability would have required writing another grant or waiting until capacity became available in one of the labs. As Bromley told me, \"In the academic world, if the scientists get a grant, they perform all associated activities in their own lab. They wouldn't contract out for things outside their lab.\" The foundation, however, quickly dealt with that bottleneck.\n\nWhile the business plan had anticipated preclinical testing, it assumed testing would start in the third year. Even though this need arose well ahead of schedule, management was prepared to handle the unexpected. The foundation's budget also allowed for research sponsored by other universities as well as commercial entities, and it was able to move ahead with preclinical testing in short order.\n\nThe designers of the Myelin Repair Foundation's business plan also carefully thought through the endgame for incorporating the pharmaceutical industry into the initiative, guaranteeing results to donors, and ensuring future financial independence.\n\n### **STRUCTURE COMMUNICATIONS FOR AGILE DECISION MAKING**\n\nWhat makes collaboration tick day to day and move in step with shortened windows of opportunity?\n\n**1.** Well-structured communications.\n\n**2.** Rapid and effective decision making.\n\nThe foundation's communications challenge was much greater than how best to connect people from different locations. With the melding of business and research, foundation participants had varying backgrounds and different expectations about pace, reporting procedures, and basic professional practices. The foundation needed a common vocabulary that would ensure immediate and consistent understanding among people unaccustomed to a businesslike operation. Initially, its business syntax and vernacular were foreign to the scientists. Management had to tread carefully so that the scientists understood what it was they were trying to accomplish, how they would achieve their goal, and why their experience base and language would be an integral part of the solution.\n\nThis new vocabulary has helped the scientists adopt a more businesslike, outcome-oriented mindset and create an environment that is open to new ideas and approaches. One of the greatest challenges is to get the scientists to either abandon or postpone projects\u2014not because the projects are not worthwhile, but because they have to continually reprioritize to make sure they're going after the things that have the greatest chance of success.\n\nTo ensure strong and regular communications among the geographically dispersed scientists, conference calls are scheduled monthly, along with face-to-face meetings every four months. The general agenda for these conferences (both telephone and in person) is to discuss research, share findings to date, reiterate a commitment to the prize (a treatment for MS) and the customer (the MS patient) rather than an individual's research priorities, and establish new directions and priorities for research.\n\nTo keep the customer foremost in the scientists' minds, at least one MS patient is present at almost all the foundation's meetings. To keep the scientists focused on their common research priorities, the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) attends two of these triennial meetings each year. And in its oversight and peer-review capacity, the board helps ensure that no unnecessary or unpromising work is being done or planned. The principal investigators (PIs) view the triennial meetings as milestones and seek to move toward results that they can share with colleagues there. To keep the decision process on track, the management team's role is one of taking the principal investigators' information, putting that information in the context of what the other scientists are doing, how it contributes to developing a treatment, and feed it back to them. Rusty Bromley elaborated on that interaction, \"What we are doing is listening to them talk from our outside-in vantage point . . . and when discussion centers on 'we really ought to be able to do this, but none of us really can,' we assess the criticality of the activity and find resources.\"\n\nThe PIs develop what they believe is the critical path. They then articulate the research priorities it implies and share their view with the SAB. This is also a dialogue, a real-time discussion, and the PIs go back and modify their plans based on that discussion. Ultimately, the SAB has to accept the plan and recommend to the board of directors that it be funded.\n\nAs a collaborative, rather than a solo, institute, the Myelin Repair Foundation is well positioned to ensure that its decisions are focused on the right issues. Johnson shared a story with me that very much illustrates this reality:\n\nOne of the PIs has been taking sections of brain tissue and spinal cord tissue to look at how the key genes change over time in a particular animal model of a demyelinating disease. After his second report, the group said, \"We think the sections [of tissue] are too gross [no pun intended] and, consequently, the other tissues are muddling the genetic expression information.\" So he's gone back to the drawing board and is now looking at some very advanced laser dissection techniques that would enable him to take out very small groups of cells specifically associated with the lesions that form in the disease model. Had he been functioning independently, it probably would have taken two years to recognize the dissection problem, as he would have been so busy generating data that he wouldn't have necessarily seen the forest for the trees. Not until he was getting ready to publish his findings would he have shared them with someone outside his lab, and maybe then the problem would have been raised, possibly as a critique from a reviewer at a medical journal.\n\nSo now, instead of spending two or more years working on an experiment before discovering its flaws, our PI was on track within three to six months. And the usefulness of his experiment was also expanded because of the MRF's collaborative mode. Although he started by looking at the expression of a small group of genes, the other members of the team continually fed him other genes that they wanted him to study. So, what began as gene expression of about 6 genes expanded to about 15, enabling him to rapidly confirm in an animal what they might be seeing in a cellular model of some sort.\n\n### **TRACK PROGRESS AS MEASURED BY EXPECTED RESULTS**\n\nAs Drucker said to me, whether you are a functional member or the orchestrator, the fastest way to undermine your collaboration is to mistake movement for progress. Because the collaboration brings together multiple parties to achieve a common goal, each party will have an explicit role, with explicit responsibilities and accountability\u2014all of which is eminently trackable.\n\nBecause the collaboration is by definition a temporary relationship, you need a set of metrics for determining when its purpose has been achieved (whether by your organization or by some other entity), when its purpose needs to be adjusted in light of changing circumstances, or when it needs to be abandoned because it is no longer relevant to customer and market realities.\n\nOnce the foundation had been structured and launched, management tackled the issue of how best to measure progress and introduce accountability into the research process. The importance of accountability was underscored by the donors' need to know how their money was being used. That the Myelin Repair Foundation has a tracking and measurement process is yet another characteristic that sets this young organization apart from the conventional research institute.\n\nTo help ensure meaningful progress, the foundation constantly reevaluates its path and its goals, with the regularly scheduled conference calls and face-to-face meetings natural forums for such reevaluation. This review begins at the start of each year when the PIs, the SAB, and the management team sit down together to look at what has been accomplished to date and compare it to the Myelin Repair Foundation's road map. At that time, each principal investigator presents proposals for pilot projects to address as-yet-unsolved problems on that road map, with the objective of reaching consensus-based decisions on the best pilot investments for the new year and eliminating any pet projects that are less than relevant.\n\nThe foundation is also creating scorecards for evaluating work in progress. The foundation uses key metrics to evaluate progress, including results against plan, ability to react to and handle unexpected findings, benefits of the collaborative model (in terms of time saved\/accelerated problem solving), and level of member enthusiasm for the effort. On all fronts, progress\u2014not merely movement\u2014is occurring.\n\nMany of these practices resonate with us as customary business protocols. What is different for the Myelin Repair Foundation is its application of these protocols in a scientific\/medical research context. What is new for those of us managing businesses is the fast-changing, collaborative world in which our protocols are applied.\n\nFor the past 50 years, the prevalent business model has assumed clearly defined boundaries between a company and its suppliers, customers, and competitors. These walls are now constraints, not advantages. And outsourcing to reduce cost is only a small piece of the new business model. In fact, many younger companies were trailblazers in the area of collaboration, and several mature companies have already taken large steps in this direction\u2014some out of necessity and others to go after opportunities.\n\nLM Ericsson is another example of a company that has achieved great adaptation and orchestration. It effectively collaborates, and then its _collaborations_ collaborate. Ericsson, the 130-year-old Swedish telecom manufacturer, has quietly gone about adapting to the Lego world.\n\nAdmittedly, Ericsson's collaborations were motivated out of necessity; they were survival tactics in the post-boom telecom industry, characterized by exceptionally rapid change and disappearing boundaries between media companies, consumer electronics competitors, Internet portals, fixed line and wireless telecoms, and cable companies. After the global telecom market collapsed in 2001, Ericsson had to recover from a near-death experience. For three years following the market collapse, Ericsson was swimming in red ink. (I can remember cruel market commentators saying that although the Ericsson logo resembled three little sausages, the downtrodden share value wouldn't buy one hot dog in Stockholm.) Ericsson shed half its workforce and emerged from this crisis even more successful.\n\nYet its reduction in workforce and the selling off of noncore assets that accompanied its downsizing are not what's significant about Ericsson's recovery. Those actions are typical of companies in crisis. Rather, it is how quickly Ericsson adjusted, fundamentally rewiring itself to deal with the often disruptive market impact of new, constantly evolving technology, much of which the company itself had developed.\n\nEricsson's management took a hard look at its industry, where technology advances, such as network architectures based on IP multimedia systems and turbo-charged 3G broadband, had enabled any player to become a one-stop shop for household communication, essentially \"bridging that last mile.\" This newly consumer-driven industry was faced with global demand for a Swiss army knife or a multifunction version of a handset capable of all types of communications and interactions\u2014Internet, mobile communications, TV and video play, GPS, PDA, MP3 players, game consoles, camera and video recording, credit card transactions, and so on\u2014all captured in a fresh-looking design.\n\nCapitalizing on these changes by connecting the disparate pieces of the telecom industry, Ericsson began going after the prize: a world where 6.5 billion consumers can communicate regardless of their location and choice of technology. Guided by this vision, the company began rewiring itself. From its origins as a traditional developer and manufacturer of switches for fixed telephone land lines, Ericsson moved 180 degrees, emerging as a world leader in both manufacturing and service, making wireless telecom infrastructure equipment and managing operations for other telecom players.\n\nEricsson's strategy of being a one-stop shop offering a full range of telecom services is not new. What is absolutely new, however, is how that strategy is being executed. Ericsson is no longer trying to house all of its value delivery activities under a single management roof. Rather, it is availing itself of the consumer expertise of other players. It has taken a hard look at what roles it is uniquely positioned to play, what its front room should be, and what parts of the value chain should be another player's front room. Today, one-third of Ericsson's employees are in R&D, and another third work in global services. As Drucker and I discussed Ericsson, he talked about its changing front room and the need to think about it every day.\n\nHandsets are a case in point. In early 2001, following several years of brutal competition and an industrywide slowdown in handset sales, Ericsson, then the third-largest supplier of mobile phones globally, announced that it would outsource all manufacturing of handsets to Flextronics but that it would continue its R&D and marketing activities in-house. Within a few months, it became clear to Ericsson that the handset was becoming more and more of a fashion accessory and that its own design and marketing capabilities paled next to those of competitors, including its next-door neighbor in Finland, the design genius and market leader Nokia. By October 2001, Ericsson had entered into a joint venture with Sony to develop and market handsets for both companies. With Sony responsible for style and design, Ericsson was free to focus on its core competency in advanced radio and infrastructure R&D and technology platform development, while benefiting from Sony's expertise in consumer products.\n\nThe Sony-Ericsson joint venture has proved to be a very successful collaboration. By 2006, its world market share had doubled to 15 percent, and it is aiming to recapture the number three spot. While not as profitable as Nokia, which has more than 30 percent of the market, the joint venture contributed $300 million to each of its owners in 2005\u2014a sharp contrast to Ericsson's $1.5+ billion in handset losses in 2000 and to the $300 million that Siemens had to shell out last year to get rid of its handset business.\n\nPart of the joint venture's success is its growing alliances with customers, content providers, and competitors. It outsources almost two-thirds of its manufacturing to lower-cost players. It has a music partnership with Orange (France Telecom's mobile phone network) for the new Walkman phones. It is working with Google to incorporate Google Blogger and Web search features into the handset. And perhaps most indicative of Ericsson's bold transition to the new world, the joint venture is working with archrival Nokia to develop mobile television.\n\nEricsson has also taken some bold steps on the service side, borrowing a page from its own playbook by helping customers shed activities that they are not the best at. The top 10 global operators are among Ericsson's customers, and 40 to 50 percent of the world's 2 billion mobile phone subscribers are connected via Ericsson networks. As consumers, we have come to expect seamless and speedy communications. However, most of us are probably unaware of the relentless pressure our service expectations place on operators. They have to upgrade constantly to next-generation networks and quickly devise low-cost packages of home phone, Internet access, cable, and wireless to fend off attacks from such nontraditional players as cable companies and Internet telephone companies\u2014all the while protecting their legacy investments.\n\nEricsson saw the writing on the wall several years ago and knew that few if any operators could be experts at managing both the consumer end of the business and their own mobile and fixed networks; the divergent demands of the business increasingly necessitated different forms of unbundling and outsourcing. By 2005, Ericsson was managing networks for major national carriers in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, with two-thirds of its 18,000 global services employees working at customer sites in 140 different countries. U.S. operators continue to view network availability as a differentiator and have been reluctant as yet to turn their networks over to others. I suspect this attitude will change.\n\n* * *\n\nMeaningful collaboration goes far beyond  \nsimply outsourcing a particular function because  \nsomeone else can do it more cheaply.\n\n* * *\n\nThose who have turned network management over to Ericsson have benefited in ways beyond being able to focus on what they do best. Specifically, Ericsson (and Nokia, which is never far behind) can provide operators with important weapons for penetrating developing markets, particularly India and China, which offer the most exciting growth potential for telecom players. For example, by offering \"pay-as-you-grow\" capacity and new antenna technology that provides better coverage with fewer sites, Ericsson gives its global service customers much more cost-effective coverage in remote, low-subscriber areas.\n\nThe Ericsson lesson: meaningful collaboration goes far beyond simply outsourcing a particular function because someone else can do it more cheaply. By combining best-in-class capabilities from across the industry, a joint effort can better meet customer needs, including the need to jettison activities that are not the customer's strengths.\n\n* * *\n\nIn one of our conversations, Bill Pollard, former CEO of ServiceMaster, recalled a trip he took to Japan. He and Peter were both speaking at a forum in Tokyo. Bill had invited ServiceMaster's Japanese business partner, from Osaka, to come to the forum, but the partner chose not to come. Bill commented that it was quite a large business and that ServiceMaster was having difficulty with it at the time. It was sending him a message that even though he had come to Japan, he really didn't want to see him, and he was irritated.\n\nWhen Bill and Peter were catching up, Peter asked Bill if he was going to go down and see the partner in Osaka. Bill replied, \"No, Peter. They didn't want to bother to come up here to Tokyo, I'm not going to go down and see them in Osaka.\" The evening the forum was over, Peter sat Bill down and gave him a lecture about interpersonal relationships. Bill recalled Peter telling him, \"I should go the second mile, I should go down to Osaka, not only as a matter of just restoring a relationship with people that needed to be restored, but also to recognize the value, especially in that culture, of doing it in that particular way.\" Bill sat for over an hour while Peter helped him understand some of the nuances of the way the Japanese mind works. As always, Peter complemented his specific advice with some type of knowledge or historical reference.\n\nThe next day Bill was on the train down to Osaka. The advice was not only helpful in restoring the relationship, but it helped in negotiating a solution to the business problem and establishing a longer-term relationship.\n\n* * *\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nTo succeed in the Lego world, you must collaborate. You must tap resources outside your organization. Just as no one person can be an island, no business can isolate itself. The examples I have shared with you here are not exceptions; similar stories abound in every industry and sector. In our conversations, Peter identified the following characteristics of successful collaborative organizations:\n\n**1.** A _reputation_ as _the_ place to work that attracts the best and the brightest.\n\n**2.** A _flexible, easily adaptable infrastructure_ and a _highly variable cost structure._\n\n**3.** _Pragmatic political and logistical solutions_ that convert potential adversaries into allies.\n\n**4.** _Influence_ that flows from setting industry standards that shape the expectations of end consumers.\n\n**5.** _Identification with their local communities_ through holistic branding.\n\nIt's not just information that enables these alliances to be effective. For the past 100 years, the world has been building myriad international standards for both processes and products. Consequently, an engineering schematic created in France can be understood by engineers working in China and everywhere else around the world regardless of language. And a part built in Korea fits with a component built in Brazil and meets U.S. OSHA standards; standards that further international collaboration.\n\nThese confederations will facilitate the near-instant spread of and access to knowledge and will have the potential to move business ideas quickly across organizational boundaries.\n\nImagine yourself bringing together the best capabilities from across the globe to cost-effectively deliver maximum value to every customer. Envisioning the way to do it requires bringing unfettered creativity to the three basic collaboration questions: What is the unfulfilled customer need and the prize that collaboration seeks? What is your front room and what is your backroom? How do you structure and orchestrate the collaboration? Remember:\n\n**1.** Defining the need is not bound by existing business practices. In fact, the most powerful collaborations target needs that cannot be met by traditional businesses.\n\n**2.** Delineating your front room from your backroom. Decide what your company is best at and challenge whether you need to perform all other roles. You should be collaborating with someone else who can do those activities better.\n\n**3.** Shared objectives and relationships of trust are often more important to a collaboration than is technology, and orchestration must be deliberate; it does not happen by itself.\n\nCore to all of Drucker's work was an absolute respect for relationships. In one of our conversations, he went so far as to say that it doesn't matter what your discipline is or how sophisticated you are technically. If you can't learn how to respect people and how to develop and nurture relationships, you can't reach your potential as an individual or a company. Nobody works alone anymore at anything.\n\nAs usual, Peter hit the nail on the head. As he put it, \"The corporation will survive\u2014but not as we know it. Organizations are critically important as organizers, not as employers. Often the most productive and profitable way to organize is to disintegrate and partner.\" The agile organization positions itself as a bundle of capabilities and resources. The next chapter focuses on people and knowledge\u2014the resources that define your front room.\n\n## **FIVE People and Knowledge**\n\n_Management is about human beings.  \nIts task is to make people capable of  \njoint performance, to make their strengths  \neffective and their weaknesses irrelevant._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nPeter Drucker stressed, throughout his life and in all his work, that businesses, including nonprofits, always had to put people first\u2014employees and customers, as well as shareholders and stakeholders. Because Peter viewed businesses as the critical engine of a thriving and sustainable democracy, he focused heavily on the people element both in his writings and in his own interactions. In a thriving democracy, people have opportunities to earn a living, to grow and contribute their skills as valued members of an organization, to have a purpose beyond subsistence. In a thriving democracy, the broader society is economically healthy, benefiting its individual members.\n\nAs I traveled around the country interviewing Drucker clients, I met many executives and grad students who to this day still feel a very personal affinity to Peter. In our impersonal age, where companies routinely lay off thousands of people, Peter knew and genuinely cared about his clients' children. Jim Collins, author of _Good to Great_ , said it best when he recently described Peter as \"infused with this humanity and, above all, I believe, a very, very deep compassion for the individual.\"\n\nPaul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, retired CEO and chairman of Alcoa, and Peter's former student, credits much of his business success to his former professor. When I asked Paul about his focus on individuals, he explained his philosophy of management. A test of an organization's potential for greatness, Paul told me, is whether every person in that organization can say yes to three questions every day without any reservation or hedging or stopping to think. Then he pulled out the yellowed, dog-eared notes he had taken 50 years earlier in Peter's class and read:\n\n\u2022 Are you treated every day with dignity and respect by everyone you encounter?\n\n\u2022 Are you given the things that you need\u2014education and training and encouragement and support\u2014so that you make a contribution?\n\n\u2022 Do people notice that you did it?\n\n### **ALCOA VESTED IN PEOPLE**\n\nAt Alcoa, O'Neill put these ideas into practice by seeing to it that the company would become the first injury-free workplace in the world. He believed, \"If we value individuals and our colleagues, we will work in such a way that people are never hurt at work. Not as a banner and not something you do as cheerleading, but something you set up and do using Drucker's ideas to create systems to help you realize your potential.\"\n\nWhen O'Neill first announced this policy, it was greeted with widespread skepticism both in the business community and inside the company.\n\nManagers at Alcoa insisted that the company's performance in this area was already excellent. Alcoa's on-the-job injury level was running at one-third the U.S. average. Managers contended that it was simply impossible to achieve a zero-injury safety record given the fact that a certain level of risk was inherent in daily operations. Moreover, any attempt to achieve such a perfect record was likely to be undercut by the law of diminishing returns.\n\nO'Neill rejected these contentions. He was intent on achieving something close to the theoretical limit of what was actually possible\u2014a goal Peter aimed for in his own work and encouraged everyone to pursue. O'Neill believed that Alcoa could become the best at everything it did by committing itself to becoming what he called the world's first injury-free workplace.\n\nFor years, Wall Streeters failed to see the logic that connected human values, safety, and financial success. What Wall Street did not understand was that this focus on complete safety was the catalyst for improved productivity through human bonds and the commitment to understanding and improving processes by all of Alcoa's people. O'Neill knew that it is \"people who produce value in any enterprise, and that people will respond to a set of values and proven ideas and principles to produce unbelievable increases in performance.\" Between 1987 and 2000, Alcoa's lost workday rate fell from 1.87 to 0.15 days per 100 workers, productivity went up by a factor of 3, and quality issues fell by a factor of 10. Financial success followed. Once a threatened company with 1986 sales of $4.6 billion and net income of $264 million, Alcoa had achieved record profits of $1.5 billion on sales of $22.9 billion, while increasing market value by 800 percent, when O'Neill retired at the end of 2000.\n\n* * *\n\nPeople will respond to a set of values  \nand proven ideas and principles to produce  \nunbelievable increases in performance.\n\n* * *\n\nProgress at Alcoa has continued, and in 2005 the lost workday rate was down to 0.09\u201418 times better than the national average. O'Neill is now turning his attention to an urgent problem, the U.S. health-care system, first as CEO of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative and later as founder of a hospital consulting company. No wonder. It's 27 times less dangerous to be one of the 129,000 people working at Alcoa in one of 30 countries around the world with 2,000-degree Fahrenheit metal-melting machinery than it is to work in the average hospital in the United States.\n\nPeter always believed that, \"Management is about human beings,\" that a company is really its people, specifically, their knowledge, capabilities, and relationships. And well before the Internet arrived\u2014even before PCs\u2014Peter anticipated a different breed of worker, motivated by pride, accomplishment, and professional association. In the late 1950s, Peter coined the term \"knowledge worker.\" He used the term to mean a white-collar worker whose primary task was interpretation, translation, and problem solving\u2014requiring the use of gray matter rather than muscles.\n\n* * *\n\nA company is really its people\u2014  \ntheir knowledge, capabilities, and relationships.\n\n* * *\n\nWith his human orientation and ability to translate trends into social implications, Peter pointed out that the old ideas about employee loyalty and retention no longer apply. He saw that knowledge is portable, and its application is not confined to a narrow specialty in one company or industry. In a sense, knowledge workers are more like independent contractors than like employees. They don't leave their work at the office\u2014they take it home with them. They work for a series of companies over time (and may work in a number of different functional positions within a company). They value their knowledge and competence, and the recognition and prestige that come with it, as much as, if not more than, their jobs. While they expect to be well compensated for their work, they also insist on a far greater degree of autonomy, self-management, and respect. They respond best to the standards of excellence associated with their expertise rather than to the discipline imposed by traditional management practices.\n\nPeter believed this new type of worker required a different type of management. He articulated this difference as effectiveness versus efficiency. For manual work, _efficiency,_ that is, the ability to get things done, is key to management. For knowledge workers, _effectiveness,_ or the ability to get the right thing done, is paramount. So instead of just getting the job done, a knowledge worker has to decide which job to do. Peter was the first writer to pick up on this critical distinction, understand it, and translate it to management principles.\n\n* * *\n\nFor knowledge workers, _effectiveness_ ,  \nthe ability to get the right thing done,  \nis paramount.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter also noted the rise of the service worker whose tasks support customers or help with transactions, such as a UPS delivery-man or a waitress, but who does not need extensive knowledge or high-level, problem-solving skills. Management here is another unique challenge. Service workers need to feel good about themselves; they are representing the company to customers, and their feelings are often reflected in their interactions with customers.\n\nToday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, knowledge and service workers together constitute just over 75 percent of the U.S. workforce, with knowledge workers slightly outnumbering service workers. In our conversations, Peter indicated the current need to approach these two types of workers differently from the traditional blue-collar worker. All workers need respect and pride, and to be set up to win. They need to feel they are making a difference. How management sets workers up to win varies to some degree for the different types of workers. Much has been written about managing and motivating the traditional, blue-collar workforce; our focus in this chapter is knowledge and service workers.\n\nPeople are more important to an organization's success and thus more powerful than ever before. As Drucker put it, \"The knowledge world begins to reverse the balance of power between organizations and individuals.\" Nevertheless, most individuals still need organizations\u2014not so much for a paycheck, but to combine their expertise with other people's complementary skills, insight, and relationships. They need to work toward a mission that has an impact on the customer and thus the world. They need colleagues. They need to be able to measure their effectiveness. This is what management must offer the knowledge worker.\n\n* * *\n\n\"What differentiates organizations is  \nwhether they can make common people  \nperform uncommon things.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn the rest of this chapter, we examine Peter's classic questions about people and knowledge tuned to the twenty-first century and study Electrolux. Then we'll look at how a focus on people and knowledge drives day-to-day corporate life and strategy at the financial firm Edward Jones.\n\n### **INVESTING IN PEOPLE AND KNOWLEDGE: FIVE DRUCKER QUESTIONS**\n\nPeople are the business. They are your front room, your connections to others and to the customer; they are your knowledge and your access to changing opportunities and resources. Peter said that, \"What differentiates organizations is whether they can make common people perform uncommon things\u2014and that depends primarily on whether people are being placed where their strengths can perform\" or whether, as is all too common, they are being placed for the absence of weakness. Given this dynamic, it is critical to constantly ask and re-ask five Drucker questions:\n\n**1.** Who are the right people for your organization?\n\n**2.** Are you providing your people with the means to achieve their maximum effectiveness and contribute to the organization's success?\n\n**3.** Do your structure and processes institutionalize respect for people and investment in human capital?\n\n**4.** Is knowledge and access to knowledge built into your way of doing business?\n\n**5.** What is your strategy for investing in people and knowledge?\n\n* * *\n\n**WHO ARE THE RIGHT PEOPLE FOR  \nYOUR ORGANIZATION?**\n\n**1.** What is the task?\n\n**2.** What knowledge and working style will help an individual win with the task?\n\n**3.** Are you accessing the full diversity of the population to best tap the global customer base and shifting demographics?\n\n* * *\n\nRegardless of whether your organization taps into different sources and types of workers or it finds better, smarter ways to search for workers, the challenge of finding the best possible talent is more important in the twenty-first-century knowledge economy than ever before. In one of our conversations, Peter repeated one of his basic statements: \"The only thing that requires even more time (and even more work) than putting the right people into a job is unmaking a wrong people decision.\"\n\n### **WHAT IS THE TASK?**\n\nThe standard approach to hiring someone is to ask the question, What skills are needed to do this job? Recently, the executive committee at a leading European consumer goods company sent me the target skills for its new head of sales and asked me to edit the list. Peter suggested that managers ask very different questions:\n\n**1.** What is the task?\n\n**2.** What is the knowledge base required to carry out the task?\n\n**3.** What are the necessary working characteristics of the individual carrying out the task and the team dynamics (e.g., self-starter, problem-solver, connector)?\n\nThe more explicit the job definition and requirements, the greater the likelihood you will be able to identify what the position really requires and find the right candidate.\n\nWhole Foods, the $3.9 billion natural food retail chain, has developed a highly successful method for finding the right people. The employees of each store are organized into self-managing teams responsible for the operations of the store, including merchandising, scheduling, and hiring. They are also charged with writing the job descriptions and tasks. Team leaders screen and recommend candidates for jobs with specific teams, but every hire must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the team after a 30-day trial period. The company's approach to hiring, managing, and rewarding its personnel has resulted in high morale, a lower employee turnover than the industry average, and a top ranking on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in both 2005 and 2006.\n\n### **WHAT KNOWLEDGE AND WORKING STYLE WILL HELP AN INDIVIDUAL WIN?**\n\nOnce the task is defined, attention turns not to what skills are required, but rather to what knowledge and working style will help the individual win in performing that task. Peter believed that, for knowledge workers especially, that simple shift in question is important for bringing the right worker to the task. With the rate of change in what and how so much is done, there is no one set of skills that will fit all the tasks going forward. However, an ability to access and use knowledge and work with a team will be critical.\n\nOne way to spot that ability is to look at the breadth of candidates' experience, particularly in leadership positions. For example, Lou Gerstner's highly successful tenure at IBM had a lot to do with the scope of his experience\u2014his training as an engineer and top jobs at McKinsey & Company, American Express, and RJR Nabisco.\n\nIn its search for a CEO, The Conference Board surfaced over 20,000 candidates with private sector experience. When it added the requirement of public sector and academic experience, the list shrank to seven names. Richard Cavanagh got the job. The broad experience he brought with him at the Office of Management and Budget, McKinsey & Company, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government helped him elevate The Conference Board's focus and broaden its membership.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker listed five rules for making hiring decisions:\n\n**Look at a number of potentially qualified people.**\n\nTest your understanding of the position and its requirements by considering several qualified candidates. Envisioning each of several strong people operating within your organization may broaden your own understanding of the position's demands and potential impact.\n\n**Think hard about what each candidate brings to the position and the organization.**\n\nWhat are the strengths of each, and are these the right strengths for the assignment and the organization? Focusing on strengths is fundamental to making knowledge workers as productive as possible, and it starts with staffing decisions. Emphasize what each candidate can bring to the job and the organization, not skill gaps or weaknesses in their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. For example, in picking the members of their cabinets, both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman said, in effect: \"Never mind personal weaknesses. Tell me first what each of them can do.\" It may not be coincidence that these two presidents had what many consider the strongest cabinets of the twentieth century.\n\n**Have a variety of people get to know the candidate\u2014as a person.**\n\nThe personal qualities each candidate brings to the organization are as important as any other qualification. Ability to interact and work collaboratively with other professionals\u2014peers and subordinates as well as the boss\u2014is a key determinant of effectiveness, motivation, aspirations, and a feel for corporate context.\n\n**Discuss each of the candidates with several people who have worked with them.**\n\nOne executive's judgment alone is worthless; several perspectives provide a more complete picture and also guard against bias or the overly rosy picture some references feel obligated to present.\n\n**After the hire, follow up to make sure the appointee understands the job.**\n\nIt is much easier to evaluate a candidate who has been in the position for a while. Ask, \"You have now been regional sales manager or whatever for three months. What do you have to do to be a success in your new job? Think it through and come back in a week or 10 days and show me in writing. But I can tell you one thing right away: The things you did to get the promotion or to land the job are almost certainly the wrong things to do now.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **ARE YOU ACCESSING THE FULL DIVERSITY OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION?**\n\nIn our conversations, Peter emphasized the need today to recognize the globalization of markets and customers and the new demographics of potential contributors to an organization, and to think broadly about possible candidates.\n\nA diverse global workforce is necessary, according to Peter. Educational elites in emerging nations bring knowledge and the ability to integrate that knowledge into a value proposition that has global appeal. The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Susan Hockfield, told a story that perfectly illustrates Peter's point. The executives of a money management firm described their target candidates to her as \"smart, numerate people who were raised in cultures other than the U.S.\" When she asked about whether candidates needed specialized financial and economic education, the managers responded, \"What we need are people who understand their culture and how one operates in the culture. We can teach them the financial analysis, the sensitivity to market flows, and negotiation management. We need to learn from them in turn how the culture operates.\"\n\nGiven twenty-first-century demographics, management should also be asking, \"Are we tapping into older, more experienced talent by offering employees more flexible work schedules? Are we open to high-talent telecommuters and temps?\" In 1993, after reading _The Post-Capitalist Society,_ Hewlett-Packard's management recognized that many talented people could devote only part of their time to work because of family responsibilities. HP pioneered \"work-share\" arrangements that enabled it to tap into this talent pool. Many firms followed suit, devising special working arrangements for parents, retirees, and people caring for aging parents as well as telecommuters and \"flex-time\" employees. It's another example of the shifting balance of power between organizations and those they employ.\n\n* * *\n\n**ARE YOU PROVIDING YOUR PEOPLE WITH THE MEANS TO MAKE THEIR MAXIMUM CONTRIBUTION TO THE ORGANIZATION'S SUCCESS?**\n\n**1.** Is there a clear mission and direction that builds commitment and helps people and teams prioritize?\n\n**2.** Are people given autonomy and support?\n\n**3.** Are you playing to people's strengths rather than managing around their problems?\n\n* * *\n\nIt was a wet day in April of 2005 when Peter and I focused our discussion on people. I rarely take notice of weather, but I remember the rain hitting the cover of the Druckers' pool that day. I frequently needed to look outside to ground myself in the reality and importance of what Peter was saying. He began our conversation by contrasting what it takes to set people up to win today with what it took historically.\n\nWhat made the traditional workforce productive was the system, whether it was Frederick Winslow Taylor's \"the best way,\" Henry Ford's assembly line, or W. Edwards Deming's \"total quality management.\" The system embodied the knowledge. The system was productive because it enabled individual workers to perform without much knowledge or skill. In a service-based organization, you need a system that supports the worker, but the worker needs to support the customer individually. In a knowledge-based organization, it is the individual worker's productivity that makes the entire system successful. In a traditional workforce, the worker serves the system; in a knowledge-based or service-based workforce, the system must serve the worker.\n\nWhen Peter talked about the system serving the worker, he was talking about setting workers up to win with high stakes\u2014the heart of management's most important impact on people. To set people up to win, he emphasized teams and missions, authority and independence, and playing to their strengths.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen Peter talked about the system serving  \nthe worker, he was talking about  \nsetting workers up to win with high stakes.\n\n* * *\n\n### **IS THERE A CLEAR MISSION AND DIRECTION THAT BUILDS COMMITMENT AND PRIORITIES?**\n\nIt has been proven time and again that individuals achieve their greatest successes when they work with others toward a common goal they are passionate about reaching. Drucker first saw this phenomenon in work teams at General Motors and over the years in many of the not-for-profit organizations he counseled.\n\nSimilarly, when I had the opportunity to consult with work teams or cells on the plant floor, their results were astonishing. At Clairol, these teams of batching chemists and packaging workers were managing everything from scheduling to the delivery of what was being made. They met the customers. They called Sally Beauty Supply frequently, even daily, to make sure the stores had enough inventory on hand. They tracked their own performance. Beyond the reduced management burden, labor costs went down by over 30 percent, and customer satisfaction with service moved well past 99 percent for the first time in the company's history. The results showed that a committed team could set new performance benchmarks over and over again.\n\nCrucial to such a team is a well-defined shared mission that sets the team up to win. At Clairol the mission was satisfying the customer every day in every way. And everyone on the plant floor understood how they impacted that mission. Without an effective mission there will be no performance, and knowledge workers may labor away unproductively without true focus or impact. \"Every enterprise and team requires simple, clear, and unifying objectives. Its mission has to be clear enough and big enough to provide a common vision. Without a commitment to a common vision there is no enterprise; there is only a mob.\" Drucker would often add, \"A mission statement should fit on your T-shirt.\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"A mission statement should  \nfit on your T-shirt.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn our conversations, Peter referred to the team that created the first user-friendly computer at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) set up by Xerox Corporation and led by Bob Taylor. Sadly, as a company, Xerox never really connected with this team or benefited from its work, but the team's formation and internal management exemplify setting knowledge workers up to win in their own sphere and not within the corporation. Taylor was credited with \"creating the ideal environment for basic computer research, a setting so near perfect that it enabled four dozen people to invent much of the computer technology we have today.\" He had thought systematically about how to best manage research and developed a model emphasizing recruitment, structure, communications, and tools. In recruitment, Taylor was looking for people with rare intelligence and creativity who wanted nothing less than to reinvent computer science. He was, however, willing to forgo a disruptive genius in favor of someone who could work collaboratively. The computer science lab had a flat structure, with all 40-plus scientists reporting to Taylor. Scientists could move from one project to another, and the best projects attracted the best people, allowing the most valuable ideas to emerge from the process. Communication and sharing of information were critical to the success of the group. In the mandatory weekly meeting, every member of the group listened to the ideas and fragmentary accomplishments of the others. That meeting was also an opportunity to allow tensions and disagreements to surface and be worked out on the spot. Access to the right tools and cutting-edge technology was of course critical, and Taylor was willing to risk his career to provide this support to his group. He refused to use an inferior computer developed by a newly acquired Xerox company, and PARC ended up making its own computer.\n\nMost important, Taylor succeeded in making all the scientists feel that they were members of an elite group, \"Doing a thing that they all thought was worthwhile and really thought would change the world.\" They were committed to the mission and connected to the other members of the group. And although they failed to provide a benefit to Xerox, they did develop technology that changed the world. After \"a walk in the PARC,\" Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft both became convinced that a graphical user-interface-based operating system was the future. A few years later, Apple launched Macintosh, and Microsoft launched Windows.\n\n### **ARE PEOPLE GIVEN AUTONOMY AND SUPPORT?**\n\nEspecially for knowledge workers, Drucker was a strong advocate of autonomy rather than control. Liberating knowledge workers entails giving them the guidance and perspective they need to assess and direct their own efforts and to take responsibility for the results. Employees who bring substantial intellectual capital need a large measure of autonomy\u2014real freedom to pursue their mission _their_ way. This means delegating responsibility and often decision-making authority _and_ providing up-front direction when defining the task. Drucker once told me that when you delegate a task to other people and they do it inefficiently, you must let them learn how to do it their way as long as it is not unethical or illegal, unless they ask for help. There is risk in doing this, and a knowledge worker's autonomous behavior needs to be closely monitored. Yet the risk must be taken if people are to be allowed to define their own paths.\n\n* * *\n\nDrucker was a strong advocate  \nof autonomy rather than control.\n\n* * *\n\nWell aware that he was advocating a radical departure from the reigning hierarchical approach to management, Drucker warned that conventional bottom-line-focused managers would resist granting such autonomy. \"They believe 'that there is one right way.' Well, there isn't.\" He went on, \"If you're uncomfortable with the idea of vesting people with the power to fire their boss, then you are not ready for the task of leadership in the next century.\"\n\nPeter smiled and brought up Marvin Bower, the founder and former head of consulting giant McKinsey & Company and the subject of my earlier book. \"Marvin and I would frequently discuss how we could get CEOs to understand this idea as we rode the train together.\" In fact, Marvin had written, \"It is part of our basic strategy to maintain the kind of working atmosphere that is attractive to the high-talent people we need to serve our clients well. Such an approach should include a philosophy of relying on autonomy and responsible self-government by the individual just as far as we can. Operationally, this means that the burden of proof should always rest with the proponent of centralized control and bureaucratic rules.\" Is this a test you might use in your organization?\n\nJim Collins, who heads a management research lab, echoed Drucker's call for a new management paradigm when I met with him: \"The whole key to the high-performance climate for our research team is our use of mechanisms of commitment and connection rooted in freedom of choice. We operate off a clear set of deadlines and project objectives, yet team members generally select their own deadlines, as people feel much more committed to a deadline they have a hand in setting. . . . We have weekly gatherings at the lab in which team members interact with each other, and we assess overall progress and discuss emerging ideas. The meeting serves as a glue, bonding the team members together. Most important, we design the work process so that team members must draw from each other's work as the project progresses.\n\n\"This 'commitment plus freedom' approach requires heavy up-front investment in selecting the right people. They don't need rules. You need to guide them; you need to teach them; you need to provide direction; you need clear objectives; you need mutually agreed deadlines; you need mechanisms of commitment and connection. But you don't need control.\"\n\nAs big a step as it may be for some managers, Peter proclaimed, \"Autonomy is not enough.\" Management must ensure that knowledge workers take responsibility for their own work and then provide them with guidance and oversight that is appropriate rather than intrusive. The term Peter would use to describe the manager's liberation of knowledge workers would decidedly not be \"empowerment\"\u2014he despised this current buzzword. You don't \"empower\" people. You help them measure themselves by their contributions to the whole.\n\n* * *\n\nYou don't \"empower\" people.  \nYou help them measure themselves  \nby their contributions to the whole.\n\n* * *\n\nOngoing management oversight, encouragement, and support are also essential to keep the team on track and to provide some adrenalin, guidance, and a broader perspective to the effort. The simplest way to approach this role is to ask, \"What do I, as your manager, and what do we, as the company's management team, do that helps you in doing what you are being paid for? Is there anything we do\u2014reporting requirements or purchasing or HR policies\u2014that hinders your effort?\" And listen closely. This is not only an issue of management style. Drucker's first business book, _Concept of the Corporation_ , was about federal decentralization and the role of headquarters, setting up divisions as teams, and asking what headquarters could do to support the teams.\n\nOne of my favorite quotes from Peter that rainy day is, \"You will achieve the greatest results in business if you drop the word 'achievement' from your vocabulary. Replace it with 'contribution.' Contribution puts the focus where it should be\u2014on your customers, employees and shareholders.\" Helping people see that they have a unique contribution to make is central to setting them up to win.\n\n### **ARE YOU PLAYING TO PEOPLE'S STRENGTHS RATHER THAN MANAGING AROUND THEIR PROBLEMS?**\n\nThere is no better motivation for working hard than success. And if people work hard and play to their strengths, they can succeed. This is a theme that runs through much of Peter's work, from the lessons he took from his favorite teachers to the advice he gave clients in the last year of his life. Identifying people's strengths can be difficult; often they don't even understand their own strengths or are stuck in positions where their strengths do not matter. But some companies have started to focus explicitly on people's strengths. Bill Pollard, the retired chairman of ServiceMaster, described the approach: \"Peter Drucker used to say . . . you gotta major in strengths and not in weaknesses. And I think the way we tried to implement that is through . . . our appraisal review process. When someone wasn't performing, we would first ask the question, 'Do we understand this person's strengths versus his or her weaknesses?' And is it the fact that we haven't majored in his strengths or her strengths . . . is that the reason why there isn't performance? And look for another position for that person. One can accomplish something only with his strengths. With his weaknesses, he cannot accomplish anything. Thankfully here lies an advantage of the organization. In an organization, we can bring an individual's strengths into play and make his weakness irrelevant.\"\n\n* * *\n\nYou will attain the greatest results in business  \nif you drop the word \"achievement\" from your  \nvocabulary. Replace it with \"contribution.\"\n\n* * *\n\n* * *\n\n**DO YOUR STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES  \nINSTITUTIONALIZE RESPECT FOR AND  \nINVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL?**\n\n**1.** Do you systematically match strengths with opportunities through assignments?\n\n**2.** Do your structure and processes maximize the knowledge worker's contribution and productivity?\n\n**3.** Do you systematically develop employees through assignments that play to their strengths and provide feedback that helps them grow?\n\n* * *\n\nThe power of passionate teams is remarkable. Unfortunately, teams come and go, and all too often their cohesion is project-specific and not institutional. If the larger organization is not geared toward supporting and sustaining teams, their successes may not advance the organization's mission and will almost certainly not be replicated. Bob Taylor's legendary computer science lab at Xerox PARC provided almost no benefit to Xerox because there was a complete disconnect between the research team and the Xerox organization. The downside of the elite team was its incredible arrogance; the PARC scientists were rude to and disdainful of Xerox officials, whom they referred to as _toner heads_. Although the group changed the world by reinventing personal computing, its success was a Pyrrhic victory: Taylor and Xerox failed to align the group's mission with the corporate mission, and, consequently Xerox never commercialized any of the breakthrough technology developed at PARC.\n\nIn the knowledge economy, winning organizations are those that can deploy passionate, high-performing teams again and again\u2014not just for what they accomplish for the corporation but for the satisfaction their members can derive from the experience.\n\n### **DO YOU SYSTEMATICALLY MATCH STRENGTHS WITH OPPORTUNITIES?**\n\nIf you ask someone, \"What did you learn from Peter Drucker?\" one of the most likely answers is, \"That managers must match strength to opportunity.\" This requires allocating resources to tomorrow, rather than frittering them away on the problems of today. Putting the best people on the most promising projects seems straightforward, but as often as not, it doesn't happen.\n\nManagers often make the mistake of diffusing first-rate resources rather than concentrating them: it is so much easier than confronting painful priority decisions. And the results can be fatal. Diffusion of resources killed Rubbermaid, a star of the 1980s. People who were phenomenal at designing unique plastic injection-molded toys were set to work designing products for multiple markets and found they could not focus on or \"live in\" those markets. As one engineer told me, \"I don't get excited about the kitchen, and my creativity just doesn't turn on.\"\n\nSimilarly, in many companies, people are simply misallocated. Research departments, design staffs, market development efforts, even advertising efforts are allocated by transactions rather than by results, by what is difficult rather than by what is productive, by yesterday's problems rather than by today's and tomorrow's opportunities. Too often people are put on projects or task forces almost willy-nilly, to represent their departments, instead of to use their abilities and potential to greatest advantage.\n\nSome organizational structures lend themselves to matching strengths with opportunities. A relatively flat, decentralized structure can minimize hierarchy and bureaucracy, and facilitate communication; it can also maintain the flexibility to allocate the strongest resources to critical tasks or projects at hand and to reallocate them as priorities shift. An organization without huge functional silos also has greater flexibility to field effective cross-functional teams.\n\nThe internal marketplace is another means of matching people to opportunities. It can range in form from an informal meeting to a database of staff r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and projects in the works to the vast clearinghouse used at Electrolux. The internal marketplace makes it easy for managers to consider potential team members and for people to see the range of projects in which they might want to get involved. Jim Collins has used this approach to good effect with teams at his management research laboratory. \"We break the research projects into discrete chunks and then have a draft in which individuals bid for the pieces they would most like to work on, a process that creates much greater commitment than preassigned responsibilities.\"\n\n### **DO YOUR STRUCTURE AND PROCESSES MAXIMIZE THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER'S CONTRIBUTION AND PRODUCTIVITY?**\n\nIn the knowledge economy, management must maximize the use of each worker's focus and effort, because time is the capacity constraint. David Jones, retired chairman and CEO of Humana Inc., recalls Drucker's core lesson as, \"Successful enterprises create the conditions to allow their employees to do their best work.\" Perhaps the most important rule\u2014and the one to which few managers pay much attention\u2014is to enable knowledge workers to do what they are being paid for. And the first step is simply to get out of the way, to eliminate unnecessary activities that eat up the day and disrupt the train of thought. One Microsoft staffer who became an independent contractor noted that her productivity soared the day she went off the payroll and was freed up from the revolving door of meetings that had dominated her working life. Many well-intended organizational mechanisms become nightmarish drains on productivity, such as nonessential e-mails and routine meetings that accomplish little. Management should make a practice of periodically reviewing how people's hours at work are spent and then eliminate nonessential elements that dilute focus and eat up time.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Liberation and mobilization of human energies\u2014  \nrather than symmetry or harmony\u2014  \nare the purpose of organization.\"\n\n* * *\n\nYet management must not confuse autonomy with isolation. Although connecting with a broader organization takes time, isolation can rob the knowledge worker of motivation and curtail opportunities for learning. As Drucker put it: \"It is appalling in many ways how isolated and ineffectual knowledge workers can be when nobody understands their output.\" A flat organizational structure can help promote communication and avoid unproductive pockets of isolation, keeping the knowledge worker connected to the team and its mission. As Peter said, \"The best structure will not guarantee results and performance. But the wrong structure is a guarantee of nonperformance. The right answer is whatever structure enables people to perform and to contribute. Liberation and mobilization of human energies\u2014rather than symmetry or harmony\u2014are the purpose of organization. Human performance is its goal and its test.\"\n\nA problem Drucker often cited was that knowledge and service workers' productivity was far too low, with little improvement underway. While improving productivity of knowledge and service workers may not be an exact science, it is not rocket science either. Peter felt that many of the principles and techniques used to deliver operational excellence in the manufacturing world could also be used to improve efficiencies in the service and knowledge worlds, from reengineering to time management. By carefully nailing down the task or desired outcome, mapping out the process steps involved, identifying and sequentially reducing barriers, and, importantly, establishing key performance measurements and measuring results, companies in many different industries have been able to continually improve productivity.\n\nWhole Foods has embraced the principle that you can manage only what you measure and uses feedback and visible results to fuel worker motivation and productivity. Its teams are continually measured and evaluated on operational metrics that are posted daily, such as previous day's sales by team, and product costs, aggregated salaries, and operating profits. All these measures are benchmarked against last year's results; other teams in a region; and occasionally industry best practices. Competition between teams in the same store and against other stores is encouraged, and the teams are pressured to set ambitious goals for themselves. Store employees are compensated based on performance metrics, and all compensation is publicly disclosed.\n\nEven the U.S. health-care system has been addressing ways to increase productivity and quality. Studies have shown that it is quite possible to reduce medical errors, medication errors, and central-line (i.e., catheter-associated bloodstream infections) infections (together estimated to cause as many as 167,000 deaths annually at U.S. hospitals) using processes adapted from the Toyota Production System. The Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative (PRHI) slashed the number of reported central-line infections by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2004. I am amazed not that a systematic approach to quality and productivity enhancement achieves results, but that health care has been so much slower than other industries in organizing for continuous improvement. Paul O'Neill, who was the CEO of PRHI 2003-2005, and whose work at Alcoa created the inspiration for PRHI, is a perfect example of how a dedicated and passionate leader can help solve the interrelated problems of quality, safety, and cost in health care. From government agencies to the private sector, we are just starting to look in earnest for approaches to improve the productivity of knowledge workers. \"It is an underlying challenge management faces in the twenty-first century.\"\n\n### **DO YOU SYSTEMATICALLY DEVELOP EMPLOYEES?**\n\nCreating opportunities for people means helping them learn and develop. Peter often stated, \"Every knowledge organization is a learning and teaching institution. Knowledge can't be taught, but it can be learned.\"\n\nThe best learning comes from a combination of experience, hands-on training, and mentoring, with explicit feedback loops. Development is still primarily experiential or \"on the job,\" involving a series of progressively more challenging assignments, a structured rotation through various departments, organizational units, and geographies, or even a series of apprenticeships. Ideally, these are positions of substantial responsibility integrated into the day-to-day operation of the business, not separate programs. Home Depot, for example, keeps the learning curve steep for high performers: The average age at which managers get their first P&L responsibility is 26. Unlike other retailers, the store managers have the freedom to hire their own people, order their own products, and set prices\u2014the kind of autonomy that sets them up for learning.\n\nA flat, decentralized organization provides an unusually broad range of opportunities for assignments of this type. Special projects are often good development opportunities. They usually require problem solving, cross-functional integration, the ability to persuade and influence, and a certain level of judgment, and many afford exposure to senior executives. Arrow Electronics frequently uses such projects to develop high-potential young managers.\n\n* * *\n\nKnowledge can't be taught,  \nbut it can be learned.\n\n* * *\n\nFormal training is another learning and development mechanism. Companies are increasingly organizing training efforts around application areas (e.g., benchmarking and continuous improvement teams) rather than subject disciplines or functions, thereby making it easier to apply new knowledge directly to rapidly changing tasks or opportunities. Moreover, training efforts are trying harder to accommodate diverse learning styles, moving beyond reading and presentations to incorporate firsthand experience, group problem solving, and the power of anecdotes.\n\nDevelopment is greatly enhanced by conversation, feedback, coaching, and mentoring\u2014much of which happens informally. A tremendous amount of learning occurs through conversations and debate with colleagues and superiors. The feedback people receive on their performance is also a major source of learning, whether informal commentary from a team manager or peer, or a formal performance review. In many cases, the performance review is a missed opportunity; so many of them either politely gloss over opportunities for improvement or limit the discussion to shortfalls and mistakes.\n\nDrucker's original blueprint for the performance review was management by objectives (MBO), which he designed as a way for workers to take responsibility for their contribution to the organization: The workers themselves define their objectives, thinking through their connection to the objectives of the company and the unit to which they belong, and discussing them in depth with their management. Then management and the workers agree on performance targets, which the workers make a commitment to achieve. The process demands that managers and workers communicate directly and honestly and encourages employees to be part of the decision-making process. Unfortunately, once widely adopted in the business world, MBO was often misused by management to dictate short-term goals to workers, and it lost a great deal of its effectiveness as a developmental tool. However, the original concept is still state-of-the-art when combined with the practice of 360-degree feedback from all the worker's colleagues, peers, and subordinates as well as the boss.\n\nMuch has been written about the learning organization, and at the core of it is the liberating quality of learning, which fosters the ability to challenge assumptions and abandon conventional wisdom. To build on this informed openness, the learning organization at every turn encourages open dialogue with colleagues and the dissent we cited as a key to innovation in Chapter 3. But the watchword for the knowledge organization is _strengths\u2014_ they are the avenue for the corporation to reinvent and thus sustain itself.\n\nIn many ways, Electrolux is the story of a company that recently sought and institutionalized a number of practices oriented toward building capabilities.\n\n### **TALENT MANAGEMENT AT ELECTROLUX**\n\nThe Swedish company Electrolux is grappling with the challenges of managing its global pool of talent. I recently had the opportunity to talk with several of the company's senior executives\u2014CEO Hans Str\u00e5berg; Harry de Vos, head of group staff human resources and organizational development; and Lilian Fossum, vice president for pricing appliances in Europe and de Vos's predecessor in human resources\u2014about the company's experience in changing its approach to talent management. CEO Hans Str\u00e5berg told me, \"At Electrolux, we aspire to be the world leader in each of our businesses. To do this, it's absolutely necessary that we retain, develop, excite, and attract highly talented people.\" But first, some background about the company.\n\n#### **Background**\n\nElectrolux is the world's largest producer of white goods, an old-fashioned name for appliances derived from their white porcelain finish. The company's 2005 revenues were close to $18 billion. It is a truly global company, with less than 4 percent of sales and only 9 percent of its 72,000 employees in Sweden. Founded in 1919, the company realized at the end of the 1960s that it was too small compared with its international competitors. It decided to diversify and gain global scale economies by undertaking an unprecedented international acquisition initiative: more than 450 companies to date. The company became very adept at turning around troubled appliance makers and also developed what became known as the \"Lux culture,\" an engineering-driven but entrepreneurial climate based on quick decisions, cost efficiency, decentralized operations, and very little bureaucracy.\n\nAt the end of the 1990s, faced with higher interest rates, slowing appliance sales, and ongoing distributor consolidation, Str\u00e5berg's predecessor, \"Mike the Knife\" Treschow, undertook a radical restructuring, spinning off noncore businesses, closing 27 plants and 50 warehouses, and eliminating 14,500 jobs\u201410 percent of the company's workforce.\n\n#### **A Changing World**\n\nIn late 2000, Electrolux changed its strategy: a great engineering and industrial player, it sought to become a more customer-driven provider. Senior management knew that the strategy would require a new approach to managing the company's pool of talent. Str\u00e5berg said that the company needed new talent because it was becoming a consumer-driven marketing company that catered to global consumers and that it was in the process of reshaping its manufacturing base. \"We found that we had good talent in the company but not for the positions that we needed. And we also had a number of people who would have been suited for those jobs leaving with entities that we sold off, or for other reasons. . . . As a result, external recruitment was substantial, and we had to bring in many of the new divisional leaders from the outside.\"\n\nIn 2000, Lilian Fossum was brought in as head of human resources and organizational development to spearhead the new talent management system and its mission. Ushering in a new era for Electrolux, she made \"people\" one of six companywide initiatives, instituted a coaching program, overhauled the evaluation system to identify strengths and development needs, and began posting almost all open jobs on the company's Web site (referred to as the open labor market or OLM) to encourage cross-divisional and geographical mobility.\n\nToday, each of Electrolux's top 3,000 managers undergoes a rigorous talent review process that aims to identify areas for further development, to make employees better known to managers in other sectors of the company, and to identify and weed out underperformers. Managers are rated not only on their operational performance but, equally importantly, on their strategic orientation and people leadership and team-player attitude. In people leadership skills, coaching and effective communication are important. Group management spends two days together every year reviewing all direct reports to assign ratings and actions required for the person to reach his or her leadership potential. This process cascades down the organization, with sector management reviewing the next management layer, and so on.\n\nFive years after this system was introduced, the performance reviews and open labor market, supported by significant investments in leadership and coaching training, are becoming part of Electrolux's culture. Some managers were resistant to losing their best employees, even to other parts of the same company. By making these internal transfers an essential part of talent development and by making talent development an essential part of the company's philosophy, Electrolux is changing its culture. Career development responsibility is shared between the individual employee and the manager. Str\u00e5berg explained this ongoing process, \"We are actually creating a culture . . . in which managers talk with employees about their careers . . . In the annual appraisal talk or when people have an interest, they go to their boss and say, 'Hey, I've been in my job now for three years, I see this great opportunity, what do you think?' This atmosphere is an essential aspect of having employees think of their careers as 'Electrolux careers.'\"\n\nStr\u00e5berg also stressed the value of the increased transparency and insight developed about the talent pool: \"After two or three years, people who were previously known only within their own divisions were known to other people in the organization as well. So that when a recruitment need came up, it was much easier because we had already reviewed people in the management group. It really helped that management could talk about these people, and they shared a common reference.\"\n\nStill, the process is far from complete, and Electrolux recently hired Harry de Vos from GE to head its human resources and organizational development department when Lilian Fossum was rotated to a new leadership position. After just five years, some sections of the company are further along in incorporating these ideas than others. Moreover, as Electrolux's needs continue to change, the skills it seeks to develop in its employees continue to change as well. As Str\u00e5berg said, \"We are trying to make the talent management process more proactive, to anticipate our needs so that we have people that know key account management, for example. We are operationalizing talent management to support our strategic direction.\"\n\n* * *\n\n**IS KNOWLEDGE AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE  \nBUILT INTO YOUR WAY OF DOING BUSINESS?**\n\n**1.** Is knowledge built into your customer connection?\n\n**2.** Is knowledge built into your innovation process?\n\n**3.** Is knowledge built into your collaborations?\n\n**4.** Is knowledge built into your people and knowledge management?\n\n* * *\n\nIn Peter's writings, he did not separate knowledge from people. He wrote about the knowledge worker. He wrote about applying knowledge to what the knowledge worker does. He wrote about the real impact of information and how it changes knowledge and the knowledge worker. Yet he did separate information from people. And he talked about people's challenge in sorting through information and identifying the most critical elements. My assumption is that Peter viewed knowledge as people-dependent and information as a storage house that people can tap into.\n\nYes, knowledge is still power. Yet in this age of instant access and unlimited information, the power of knowledge in and of itself has been diluted. At an ever-accelerating rate, today's advanced knowledge is tomorrow's ignorance. The knowledge that matters\u2014knowledge on which businesses and industries are constructed\u2014is subject to rapid and abrupt shifts. For example, breakthrough technologies can create discontinuities that destroy or redefine whole industries. If, for example, the fuel cell, long under development, emerged as a feasible and economic electrical power device, 90 percent of the demand for oil would disappear, and the cornerstone of the world economy and geopolitical dynamics\u2014never mind the oil industry and all that revolves around it\u2014would shift radically. That shift would reflect the strategic harnessing of scientific and technical knowledge as well as business acumen.\n\n* * *\n\nToday's advanced knowledge is  \ntomorrow's ignorance.\n\n* * *\n\nAlong with the rapid emergence of new knowledge, the ability to interpret, integrate, and strategically apply new knowledge has become immensely valuable\u2014it can make or break a company. For example, confronted with the emergence of digital photography, Polaroid responded too late. It hesitated to embrace the new technology, because it was not consistent with its own differentiating heritage (instant photography) and knowledge base (chemistry). A late arrival to the digital arena, they could not compete effectively. Rather than continue to dominate its inevitably diminishing but still-profitable market or create a new white space for instant photography, Polaroid suffered a precipitous decline, which led to its 2001 bankruptcy and subsequent sale of the pieces of the company. Peter would have found this \"heritage\" strategy abominable. Polaroid failed to abandon old assumptions. In contrast, Canon acted early. It embraced the anticipated shift to digital technology, set up an independent research group in Silicon Valley, and began testing new printing capabilities. It built on rather than bet on its heritage in technology, modified its allocation of resources, and invested in the future.\n\n* * *\n\nEvery enterprise must build knowledge  \ninto its value proposition. Knowledge cannot be  \nseparated but needs to be an explicit part of  \neverything about an enterprise.\n\n* * *\n\nEvery enterprise must build knowledge into its value proposition, harnessing knowledge in every aspect of the way it does business\u2014its customer perspective and interface; its efforts to abandon assumptions and reinvent itself through innovation; and its capabilities and focus, both in its own people and throughout the network it connects with in serving customers. Knowledge cannot be separated but needs to be an explicit part of everything about an enterprise.\n\n### **IS KNOWLEDGE BUILT INTO YOUR CUSTOMER CONNECTION?**\n\nFrom the outside in, the business needs to ask, \"How can the knowledge we have, or have access to, enhance our relationships and offering to our customers, and how might new knowledge change that?\" With today's increased connectivity, information and knowledge can touch everything from answering the phone (with caller ID telling you it is Sheila calling) to fundamentally rebalancing the value of the bundle of services you provide. Peter emphasized that knowledge is not about doing what you do better; it facilitates your doing something new. By interpreting and translating the individualized customer knowledge that is often available, a company can significantly improve its customer relationships.\n\nSealy Mattress, in collaboration with Kittle's Furniture and other Sealy retailers, analyzed retailer- and customer-specific information from across its distribution network. When Sealy understood how its product moved on the Kittle's sales floor as compared to bedding retailer trends, it was able to help Kittle's move product more effectively, train salespeople to emphasize higher-priced mattresses, and put in place the right promotions and sales for each neighborhood.\n\nBuilding knowledge into the product or service a company takes to market increasingly creates real value for customers. For example, an \"intelligent\" oil drill that bends its way to extract more oil from the pockets of underground oil formations commands more than twice the price of a standard drill. Self-diagnostic electronics have surfaced in an enormous range of equipment and consumer products, from photocopiers to automobiles. With information technology's capabilities and applications growing as fast as they are, knowledge-based improvements in product offerings and customer interface have, according to Peter, only just begun.\n\n### **IS KNOWLEDGE BUILT INTO YOUR INNOVATION PROCESS?**\n\nOne of the most direct ways knowledge creates value in a business is by fueling its innovation process. Simply to remain competitive, the organization must continually scan related fields for changes that could affect its competitive landscape. For example, a manufacturer of optical glass needs to monitor developments that might make plastic a more attractive alternative, such as scratch-resistant formulations or high-performance coatings. The scan must embrace not only key technology platforms but also substitute and enable technologies that will open the door for totally new approaches to technical problems.\n\nAs part of its scanning efforts, the R&D group at Corning frequently organizes workshops on new technological developments that have the potential to lead to new business opportunities, such as cell-based assays and cellular arrays, high-bandwidth applications, and photonic crystals. The company brings in world-class experts from academia or industry so Corning's scientists and business people are provided with a quick view into the state of the art. The workshops conclude with open brainstorming sessions about possible business ventures and their fit with Corning capabilities and business models. Corning has also been a leader in developing management processes to ensure that new knowledge and new ideas\u2014even those completely unrelated to existing business units\u2014are translated effectively into new ideas and developed rather than being left to languish in the laboratory. On this front, Peter was very curious about how Corning was listening to other companies. He commented, \"Who would have guessed that prioritizing pursuit of new knowledge would be a management focal point?\"\n\n### **IS KNOWLEDGE BUILT INTO YOUR COLLABORATIONS?**\n\nCollaborations are often the product of shared objectives and knowledge. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international nonprofit organization providing a centralized online database with up-to-date, unbiased analyses of reliable and relevant health-care research studies. Its nearly 8,000 researchers and health-care professionals from a multitude of organizations around the world work together to help people make better-informed decisions about health care based on the best available research.\n\nIn this age of the Internet, collaboration is more important than ever. The Internet is the perfect medium for sharing information and for creating online communities, both of which enhance knowledge. Peter's grandson, Nova Spivack, takes his grandfather's work one step further and updates Peter's ideas for the online age. Spivack's point is that access alone has limited value. While individual interpretation and screening enhance the value of knowledge, exponential gains are evidenced from the collective interpretation of connected communities.\n\nFigure 5.1 Knowledge and Connectivity of Information and People\n\n### **IS KNOWLEDGE BUILT INTO YOUR PEOPLE AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?**\n\nPerhaps the most direct use of knowledge within an organization is to build its own capabilities. From Peter's perspective, this ability to apply knowledge to knowledge will be the critical factor in productivity moving forward. The challenge is sorting through and prioritizing the knowledge. From where I sit, every one of my clients is struggling today to figure out how to prioritize the vast array of knowledge available to them and utilize it fully in their business, be it the retailer's data on consumer habits or access to every country's tax laws in deciding where to locate facilities.\n\n* * *\n\nApplying knowledge to knowledge will be the  \ncritical factor in productivity moving forward.\n\n* * *\n\nI recently connected with a friend who had returned to the management consulting firm Bain & Company after a two-year absence. He told me that Bain had become a different world. He had just started a piece of work at a major semiconductor company, looking at marketing spending and productivity. Before he visited the client, he got onto the Bain knowledge system and looked at the 10 most frequently used frameworks for analyzing and working with unnamed clients interested in enhancing and or reducing its marketing spending. He had access to every marketing effectiveness effort done by Bain over the last year, with commentary.\n\nHe then downloaded the most recent semiconductor industry knowledge and profile available at Bain. He commented that he was going into the study with understanding and capabilities far greater than anything he ever had two years earlier.\n\nI shot back that in five years everyone would have access to Bain's frameworks, and McKinsey's, and BCG's, too. In fact, the information will be disseminated directly from clients and their partners. This access to high-level knowledge\u2014as distinct from just information\u2014will occur as experts and capabilities increasingly link and overlap across industries, and as the academic world becomes more collaborative. Bain's knowledge will become widely available and become information for the masses that aren't privy to the commentary, and so forth. Knowledge will be the ability to sort through the multiplicity of frameworks and apply critical questions to the problems at hand. He thought about my comment and said it will take 10 years. Whatever the time frame, knowledge and its availability are changing how business is and has to be done every day.\n\n* * *\n\n**WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY FOR  \nINVESTING IN PEOPLE AND KNOWLEDGE?**\n\n**1.** Given your overall business strategy and the scope of your product or service offerings, what core capabilities do you want to invest in?\n\n**2.** What role does knowledge play in the value you offer customers and in your core capabilities?\n\n**3.** How and to what extent are you investing in attracting and developing your people and knowledge base?\n\n* * *\n\nPeople, not policy, define a company's front room and move the company along the path it has delineated to deliver value to the customer. In so doing, people are informed by knowledge, the sources of which go beyond their own experience and education and training and include internal and external performance metrics, outside entities within the organization's extended network, research findings, and so on. Armed with knowledge, supported by an infrastructure (physical assets, intellectual property, information systems, material\/component flows, etc.), and properly engaged and motivated (by means of a shared vision, a clear mission that contributes to that vision, and incentives that create accountability and reward results), people are the core of the organization's capabilities and agility.\n\n* * *\n\n\"The first sign of decline of a company  \nis loss of appeal to qualified, able,  \nand ambitious people.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn the new world of the knowledge worker, attracting and retaining high-talent people is at least as important as anything else a company does. Drucker said, \"The first sign of decline of a company is loss of appeal to qualified, able, and ambitious people.\" What attracts them is work that is truly interesting and the chance to make a contribution that is truly significant. But as highly skilled and independent professionals, knowledge workers are highly mobile. Despite their migratory nature, the knowledge organization invests in them and seeks to retain them by fostering an excellent working environment\u2014a culture that respects and values them as knowledge professionals, and that sets them up to win.\n\nHowever, a company's people and knowledge strategies depend heavily on the nature of its business and begin with the question: Given your overall business strategy and the scope of your product or service offerings, what core capabilities are needed to provide value to the customer? Which of these capabilities represents your unique strengths? Those are the core capabilities that define your front room. A key objective of the people and knowledge strategy is to ensure that you maintain and build your core capabilities while being strategically adaptable. This requires investing in people and knowledge\u2014through your recruitment strategies, development and training strategies, knowledge management, and top-notch human resource management\u2014not only in the Human Resource department but throughout your management team as an explicit part of your overall business strategy.\n\nThe next questions are: What role does knowledge play in the performance of these core capabilities, and what are the implications for your investment in people and\/or knowledge? How large is the knowledge component of the value you deliver to customers? How important is knowledge to your value proposition? How much of this knowledge-based value do you provide through your core capabilities, and how much is provided by your \"backroom\"? How much are you investing in people and knowledge to maintain your capabilities?\n\nThe front room is the area of heaviest investment in people and knowledge; the backroom is where you cut costs by minimizing investment or farming out the activity entirely. For example, Morgan Stanley is moving the bulk of its information systems to India in an effort to reduce its backroom or support costs, but it is investing heavily in its front room by training and developing its traders. Apple, with its strong customer focus, has made working as a \"genius\" at the \"genius bar\" in its retail stores a prestigious and sought-after position, because serving customers is part of its front room. But Apple is outsourcing all its technical repairs, which are part of its backroom.\n\nAn organization may have more than one strategy, as Apple illustrates. An effective strategy is generally a function of the business's level of _investment_ in people and knowledge, and the extent to which knowledge is a _component_ of its product or service offering (see Figure 5.2). Peter and I discussed four general categories of strategies: the service provider, the knowledge provider, the commodity player, and the relationship-dependent connector.\n\nFigure 5.2 General Categories of People and Knowledge Strategies\n\nOf the four types of knowledge strategy, the _knowledge provider_ typically involves the highest investment in knowledge. The bulk of the knowledge provider's value proposition derives from people and knowledge, and it therefore invests heavily in them. As a management consultancy, McKinsey & Company is all about people and knowledge: It has no physical product other than spiral-bound reports. What it brings to each client is pure expertise. McKinsey's staff plays the central role in its success. It pays them well and invests heavily in training programs around topics and problem-solving capabilities as well as knowledge sources and capabilities to support the staff's intellectual and professional growth. Fundamentally, McKinsey's people strategy is to create opportunity, provide growth, and foster a sense of belonging to \"a special group\" to attract and retain talent as well as to expand the firm. Its Web site uses the word \"opportunity\" more than 20 times and makes the claim, \"If you come here, we make the implicit promise that we're going to provide you with opportunities you cannot equal anywhere else.\" The development process\u2014continuous mentoring, challenging experience, and collective learning\u2014is at the heart of the firm's identity. McKinsey also offers these opportunities to its network of alumni and clients, who in turn provide support in the form of referrals and personal references.\n\nThe _service provider_ has a smaller knowledge component in its offering; it is a purely service organization. It must therefore invest enough in its people (and, where relevant, in knowledge) to ensure that its service meets customer expectations for quality. A good example is ServiceMaster.\n\nThis organization has created a $3.8 billion business by making supporting functions (such as housekeeping, termite and pest control, and landscape maintenance) its front room and serving as a backroom for its customers\u2014hospitals, schools, industrial firms, and individuals. The core of the company's business is to offer professional management of the jobs that most of its clients consider menial and a nuisance to oversee. The real secret to the company's success, however, is its unique ability to develop sometimes illiterate hires into highly productive, motivated, and quality-conscious service workers by recognizing the potential, dignity, and worth of the individual. Bill Pollard recalls when Peter Drucker addressed the board of directors after he had helped crystallize the core competency of the company: \"He started out with a question to the board, 'What is your business?' And as the board responded to him in things that we were doing, he just told them something I was never able to tell our board of directors. He said, 'You are all wrong. Your business is simply the developing and growing of people. You can't deliver a good service without trained and committed people. You package it in different ways to meet the needs of your customers. And that is your basic business.'\" Today, ServiceMaster employs 38,000 people and manages an additional 200,000 people employed by others.\n\nThe _commodity player_ , on the other hand, is all about low price; it carefully considers the return it will get from its investments in people and knowledge and makes them judiciously. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and one of its largest private employers with 1.7 million associates worldwide, has built its success on the ability to squeeze out cost at every step of its business system so as to offer consumers prices lower than anyone else's. Unlike a service provider, who typically needs to provide a fairly high level of service to meet customer expectations, Wal-Mart's value proposition is dominated by low cost, and its customers have lower expectations of service. Wal-Mart's effort to limit its investment in retail sales associates has made the company a lightning rod for criticism of its benefits and other employment practices, with local legislators putting in place statutes directed at Wal-Mart and advocacy groups mounting demonstrations and boycotts. Although Wal-Mart is always looking for sales associates with leadership potential and says, \"We train at all levels, and everyone has an equal opportunity,\" the company notes that there is no difference in productivity between a sales associate of seven years' tenure and a one-year associate\u2014the minimal training is not making a difference. In logistics, however, Wal-Mart is the most efficient retail competitor and wants to maintain that position, so it has a different people\/knowledge strategy in that function. Wal-Mart's logistics support functions have relatively high knowledge content, and it manages them more like a service provider, offering ample leadership and training programs.\n\nFinally, there is the _relationship-dependent connector_ that has a high knowledge content within its offering and needs few people to operate, because its business is all about enabling others to interact. This approach is exemplified by eBay, the online auction house and the largest online market for the sale of goods and services by consumers and small businesses, which has created a virtual marketplace for people from around the world to buy and get rid of practically everything from old toys to fine antiques. eBay's value proposition is to make marketplaces more efficient by offering users an easy and inexpensive way to communicate, exchange information, and complete transactions for a huge variety and selection of goods. To this end, eBay has created an advanced, easy-to-use online trading platform, including software tools and services to make the search and trading process easy and efficient. eBay employs thousands of people to serve and connect its community of over 200 million registered users. In 2006, Beth Axelrod, one of the authors of _The War for Talent_ and coleader of McKinsey's global organizational practice, joined eBay as head of human resources. When we exchanged e-mails, she commented, \"eBay recognizes that the key to building an enduring success story is focusing on our people and organization.\"\n\nManagement thinking about the strategic application of people and knowledge is still in its infancy, although the best-performing, knowledge-driven companies clearly have built significant expertise in managing both their people and the knowledge base in which they have invested. People and their knowledge are at the heart of the enterprise's capabilities, both present and future\u2014the ability to deliver today, with an outside-in perspective, and the ability to innovate and grow for tomorrow.\n\n### **PEOPLE MAKE THE DIFFERENCE AT EDWARD JONES**\n\nThe investment firm Edward Jones was one of Peter Drucker's last clients, and he consulted with it as late as April 2005, at the age of 95. The relationship started in 1980, shortly after John Bachmann succeeded Ted Jones as managing partner. He and Jones had read Drucker's book _Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices_ and found it a useful set of instructions to define strategy and managing people. \"We spent a year on it, every chapter. We would spend the time learning what the book had to say. And it\u2014I would say the humaneness of it, respect for people\u2014made it something we really related to. I mean, it was what we would aspire to do and be ourselves.\" In several letters, Bachmann told Drucker that his mark was all over Edward Jones and expressed an interest in establishing a consultant relationship. He told me that the company \"aspires to build a great business, a great organization. And we come upon Peter and his writings, and said, this is the kind of company we want to be. We want to be a place that respects the individual. We want to be a place that's demanding and yet fair. We want to build on people's strengths.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWe want to be a place that respects  \nthe individual.\n\n* * *\n\nOver the years, Drucker met regularly with Edward Jones management groups to discuss questions raised by the team. Characteristically, Drucker did not provide straight answers to the questions. \"He didn't come up with any answers. He doesn't give answers. He creates a framework; when you are thinking about mission, he doesn't tell you what the Jones mission is. He talks about what a mission is, how you go about determining your mission, and how you go about determining what strategies really are.\"\n\nPeter sometimes jokingly referred to himself as an _insultant_ (who had the pleasure of \"scolding clients and getting paid for it\") rather than a consultant, based on his habit of challenging prevailing assumptions. Do you remember the Edward Jones, Wee Willie Keeler story from Chapter 2? Well, John Bachmann remembers it as the critical conversation that ultimately laid the groundwork for Edward Jones's future growth strategy.\n\n* * *\n\nPeter sometimes jokingly referred  \nto himself as an insultant.\n\n* * *\n\nEdward Jones has quietly built one of the largest, fastest-growing retail brokerage networks in the world, with over 9,000 offices, establishing, to quote Peter Drucker, \"A confederation of highly autonomous entrepreneurial units bound together by a highly centralized core of values and services.\" Moreover, it has consistently generated returns on equity of around 30 percent, exceeding those of every major competitor, including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and A.G. Edwards. Jones is not your typical financial services company. For the past 50 years, the company has served individual investors with a strong focus on long-term, buy-and-hold, conservative investing policy, providing face-to-face service even to very small investors. To provide that personal service, Jones has built an innovative, decentralized organizational structure centered on a network of mostly single-broker offices staffed by entrepreneurially-minded investment representatives (IRs).\n\nCentral to the company's success is finding the right people for the organization. Jones \"looks for people with passion, confidence, independence, and a belief in doing what's expected. We like to hire people who understand and can embrace our 'unfashionable' approach to investing. We try to recruit individuals who want to live in the community where they build a business.\" The company is quite selective. From the 15,000 job inquiries it receives each month, the firm hires only 200.\n\nIn an organization that is built upon a far-flung network of independent offices, it is critical to instill a strong, well-defined, shared mission to make brokers and administrators alike feel part of a group with a common agenda. The challenge is to balance the freedom awarded the IRs to run their own businesses with the need to stick to the firm's strategy and principles. \"We have canvas and we have paints,\" says Bachmann. \"You're going to stay on the canvas, or you're not going to be here. And you'd better use our paints, or you're not going to be here. Which means that you don't get off into products that are highly speculative or dangerous. But as long as you use our canvas and our paints, then you paint your own masterpiece.\"\n\n* * *\n\nAs long as you use our canvas and our paints,  \nthen you paint your own masterpiece.\n\n* * *\n\nConsistent with these principles, the company does not offer penny stocks, options, commodities, or indeed any investment that is deemed speculative. Unlike other brokerage firms that live on the commissions generated by \"churning,\" Jones frowns on frequent trading. Similarly, online trading is not offered (although bill payment and other services are offered online), since the company does not cater to the do-it-yourself segment of the market.\n\nThe organizational structure is very flat; in Bachmann's words: \"Nobody reports to anybody around here, or they get their mouths washed out with soap!\" Every one of its more than 9,000 offices is its own profit center. The St. Louis head office is essentially a support function, providing a full range of operational and marketing services as well as research.\n\nWhile it is hard to orchestrate frequent interactions between the company's employees, Jones uses several mechanisms to connect its network of brokers and encourage collaboration. Every office has its own satellite dish and is connected to a satellite network, which not only pipes trading information back to the St. Louis backoffice but also provides continuous learning opportunities, such as investment seminars and training modules, to the offices. The IRs get a 40 percent share of the gross commissions generated, but the bonus system kicks in if the firm is also profitable\u2014the more profitable it is, the higher the bonus (provided that the office itself has reached a certain level of profitability). In the corporate culture, the emphasis is on growing the size of the whole pie rather than just getting a bigger piece for yourself.\n\nJones is the only major brokerage firm still organized as a partnership. Unlike other partnerships, in which only a select few become partners and share in the profits of the company, everyone from mailroom worker to broker at Jones has an opportunity to become a limited partner, which further serves to align employees' interests with those of the firm. There are 305 general partners and 4,636 limited partners.\n\nJones's organizational structure is clearly an excellent way to grant autonomy and authority to IRs; they are given the freedom to decide how to run their businesses. There are, for example, no budgets or performance objectives (except for the requirement that new recruits personally make at least 25 calls per day). IRs literally set their own objectives, recognizing that they must become profitable. The company fully realizes that this very decentralized structure, coupled with the type of high-achieving, self-starting individuals attracted to Jones, could result in destructive behavior and competition, which are not uncommon in the brokerage industry. So there is no tolerance for \"playing it close to the line,\" even if you are a star performer.\n\nThe company's advanced training program is recognized as one of the best in the industry. In January 2006, _Fortune_ ranked Jones 16th in its 100 Best Companies to Work For. (This is Jones's seventh appearance on the list.) According to _Fortune_ , what makes Jones great is that, \"The education never ends at this brokerage firm, which spends 2.5 percent of payroll on training. A mentoring program pairs new brokers with veterans for a year, and lots of workers take subsidized business school classes.\"\n\nIn many ways Edward Jones epitomizes the knowledge organization that liberates its people to pursue their mission. Solid IR knowledge and experience are central to both the service offering and successful client relationships, and this strongly decentralized organization gives its IRs extraordinarily high levels of autonomy, encouraging a highly entrepreneurial culture while inculcating clear ethical values and instituting a few clear and well-placed controls. Consequently, investment in people and knowledge has played a key role in the company's success.\n\n### **GOOGLE'S 10 GOLDEN RULES FOR KNOWLEDGE WORKERS**\n\nIn early 2005, Peter and I discussed Google. He commented on how powerful online communities were and would be and how managing these more autonomous workers to be productive and innovative is a challenge. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, appears to have accepted this challenge with relish (see sidebar). In a conversation at a cocktail party, Schmidt commented that the team at Google has more in common with professional basketball players than with traditional workers. Most of them are free agents; they have specialized skills that they carry with them wherever they work; and their companies need them more than they need their companies. Nevertheless, the basketball player cannot be a star without a team to play on and a league to compete in.\n\n* * *\n\nIn Eric Schmidt's view there are 10 golden rules:\n\n**1.** _Hire by committee._ Virtually every person who interviews at Google talks to at least half a dozen interviewers, drawn from both management and potential colleagues. Everyone's opinion counts.\n\n**2.** _Cater to their every need._ As Drucker says, the goal is to \"strip away everything that gets in their way.\"\n\n**3.** _Pack them in._ Almost every project at Google is a team project, and teams have to communicate. The best way to make communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of each other. The result is that virtually everyone at Google shares an office.\n\n**4.** _Make coordination easy._ Because all members of a team are within a few feet of one another, it is relatively easy to coordinate projects. In addition to physical proximity, all Googlers e-mail a snippet once a week to their work group describing what they have done in the last week. This gives everyone an easy way to track what everyone else is up to, making it much easier to monitor progress and synchronize workflow.\n\n**5.** _Eat your own dog food._ Google workers use the company's tools intensively. \"One of the reasons for Gmail's success is that we beta-tested it within the company for many months.\"\n\n**6.** _Encourage creativity._ Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. \"One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer application.\"\n\n**7.** _Strive to reach consensus._ Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision maker as hero. \"We adhere to the view that the 'many are smarter than the few' and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision.\" At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer but always produces a more committed team and better decisions.\n\n**8.** _Don't be evil._ \"Much has been written about Google's slogan, but we really try to live by it, particularly in the ranks of management.\"\n\n**9.** _Data drives decisions._ At Google, almost every decision is based on quantitative analysis. \"We've built systems to manage information, not only on the Internet at large, but also internally. We analyze performance metrics and plot trends to keep us as up to date as possible. We have a raft of online 'dashboards' for every business we work in that provide up-to-the minute snapshots of where we are.\"\n\n**10.** _Communicate effectively._ Every Friday Google has an all-hands assembly, with announcements, introductions, and questions and answers. \"This allows management to stay in touch with what our knowledge workers are thinking and vice versa.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nAt its core, according to Drucker, management is all about human beings and \"the integration of people in a common venture. The test of a healthy business is not the beauty, clarity, or perfection of its organizational structure. It is the performance of people.\" In a world where a company is its people, their capabilities, and their relationships, the importance of respecting employees and investing in them has never been greater:\n\n**1.** People are much more than employees. They embody the knowledge, the capabilities, and the relationships that your company takes to the market. The organization is more dependent on its people than its people are on the organization. People _are_ the most important investment a company makes.\n\n**2.** Enabling people to live up to their potential, achieve their maximum effectiveness, and contribute to the organization's performance is what makes the difference between success and failure. That enabling is the role of management. In an organization of self-managing knowledge workers, \"command and control\" is obsolete. \"Trust and support\" is key.\n\n**3.** Successful teams generally dissolve at the end of a project, but the knowledge organization must create and deploy them again and again.\n\n**4.** Business survival requires applying and integrating knowledge continuously to create value all the time.\n\nThese realities and the corporation's need to operate effectively in the Lego world only underscore the importance of investing in and caring for people and relationships. Relatively few companies over time have done a consistently good job of managing knowledge workers, and this is a twenty-first-century challenge.\n\nConnecting to the customer with innovation as the way of life, using the best resources anywhere in the world to deliver value, and by investing in people, an enterprise is set up to win\u2014 _if_ it can coordinate its activities across different places and over time. That is the subject of the next chapter.\n\n## **SIX Decision Making: The Chassis that Holds the Whole Together**\n\n_A decision is a judgment. It is a choice  \nbetween alternatives. It is rarely a choice between  \nright and wrong. It is often a choice between  \ntwo courses of action, neither of which is provably  \nmore nearly right than the other._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nIt takes smart decisions and execution to traverse the new landscape, even with a strategy or map. And by that I mean the right colleagues, and the right collaborators, and strong customer connections\u2014everything that helps spur innovative thinking. When Peter and I spoke, we referred to this as the _chassis_ \u2014the organization's ability to make well-informed decisions about what needs to be done and its resolve to get it done.\n\nPeter was passionate about management effectiveness\u2014setting priorities, managing time, and making effective decisions. His internationally bestselling book _The Effective Executive_ is very much about getting the right things done. In the Lego world, with knowledge workers and a vast array of collaborators playing important roles in the enterprise, people cannot be closely supervised. They can only be helped and supported in their ability as managers to make effective decisions. The days of the gray-suited micromanager hovering over his or her employees' desks are over.\n\nManaging in this amorphous environment is a delicate balancing act between preserving what makes the enterprise strong and channeling innovation to go beyond past successes. Peter used a circus analogy: The company must constantly be on a strategic tightrope toward the future, finding this balance even as the safety net below is shrinking.\n\nLogic suggests that decision making and decision execution, which define this narrow and demanding path, are made easier by today's vast amounts of information and knowledge. This is not true. Rather, the broad base of accessible information is rendered somewhat dense, difficult, and shifting by both the blurred boundaries between parties in the value chain and the speed of change in the market\u2014these distinguish today from earlier periods in business history. As Peter put it, today's manager faces a fast-moving barrage of apparent knowledge, some relevant and reliable, some not. Because events shift so quickly, a decision can be obsolete before it even gets put in motion.\n\n* * *\n\nThe company must constantly be  \non a strategic tightrope toward the future,  \nfinding this balance even as the safety net  \nbelow is shrinking.\n\n* * *\n\nSo, ironically, in the age of information, intuition and judgment play an even greater role in effective decision making and well-placed strategic bets than ever before. Don't get me wrong. There is no substitute for fact-based decision making, and no excuse for managing from the gut. But with unprecedented rates of change everywhere, getting the right assortment of reliable facts can be impossible within the time window available to take action. Sometimes we have to be able to see around the corners, and intuition and judgment play a valuable role in choosing which facts or feedback to trust. When store-based data began pouring in as Nivea for Men was introduced, the head of U.S. marketing had a gut feel that the large discrepancies between stores had something to do with the surrounding demographics and Latino concentration. He asked that the facts be checked store by store. As it happened, the stores selling the most Nivea to men were in neighborhoods with very high Latino populations. From there the company began a targeted marketing campaign.\n\n* * *\n\nIn the age of information, intuition and  \njudgment play an even greater role in effective  \ndecision making and well-placed  \nstrategic bets than ever before.\n\n* * *\n\nAlthough access to information was more limited in the past, the landscape was less volatile and managers could rely on certain assumptions or facts to inform decision making in a reasonable period of time. Today, management's challenges are exacerbated by the increasingly bewildering transformation of the economic and social landscape. Forget predictability. Forget longevity. To make things happen, management has to step up and have the stomach to take risks. Beyond that, the culture of the organization has to support judicious risk taking.\n\n### **DECISION MAKING: THE RIGHT RISKS**\n\nCertainly, risk taking has always been in the nature of business. Companies that took greater risks made it harder or riskier for their competitors to keep up with them. And they often have been the winners. Today's greater uncertainty along with the smaller room for error mean that decision makers confront even more risk. Managers need to move forward while taking the _right_ risks, not necessarily the _least_ risk. This involves making decisions at the right level of the organization, and having a disciplined, fact-based process for evaluating alternatives, making decisions, and acting upon those decisions.\n\nWhether it has to do with customers, employees, corporate organization, innovation, or something else, decision making is uniquely and distinctly a management responsibility. Only management has the broad context needed to take into consideration factors inside the company and beyond\u2014such as market conditions or energy costs. However, as Peter liked to say, senior executives should not spend the bulk of their time making decisions\u2014on the contrary, they should spend very little time doing so. Their emphasis should be on making sure they have the time, information, and concentration to make the right decisions about the relatively few things that demand senior-level decision making and then making sure that the words are translated into action. That's not all. Management must stay on top of the results of the action, and know when to abandon a decision. Aside from this very focused decision making, they should encourage appropriate levels of the organization to make decisions. The amount of time spent in decision making is a much less meaningful metric than the effectiveness and relevance of the decisions themselves\u2014the results. In fact, as Peter said, the more time spent, the more likely that the decision maker is \"too busy with the little to take the time to see the big.\"\n\nThe Linux Group is a twenty-first-century firm that keeps its \"in-house\" decision making focused on the big picture. Linus Torvalds established the group's purpose\u2014to design and make a free operating system first for the PC and later on for powerful servers. At Linux, only a few people decide which of the many \"outside-in\" flows of suggested changes to include in new releases of the system. All other decisions are the responsibility of volunteer programmers, who choose which tasks to undertake, when and how to undertake them, and whether to work solo or in conjunction with someone else. Even this seemingly flexible and agile model is being challenged. Some long-term volunteers confided to me that Torvalds has become the bottleneck\u2014too much is going on, and his control is limiting the ability of Linux to adapt as rapidly as users would like.\n\n### **DECISION MAKING: FOUR DRUCKER QUESTIONS**\n\nManagement has a stark challenge: It must create a climate with the best chance that everyone in the organization is making the right decisions about the right issues at the right time. There is no prescription for doing that, but there are questions that will bring clarity, guidance, and focus to this amorphous area:\n\n**1.** Have you built in time to focus on the critical decisions\u2014have you lightened your load?\n\n**2.** Does your culture and organization support making the right decision, with ready contingency plans?\n\n**3.** Is the organization willing to commit to the decision once it is made?\n\n**4.** As decisions are made, are resources allocated to \"degenerate into work?\"\n\nSuccessful decision making begins with the recognition that making good decisions is one of management's most critical responsibilities. The organization and your management team can offer invaluable support, but you need to take the time and set aside the mental space to engage in study and problem solving, to try different alternatives, to think about the issue on the exercise bike, or to sleep on it. Although the quality of your decision does not depend on the amount of time you spend arriving at it, it does require that decision making be a priority and a commitment to spending the time needed. To be able to do this while running an organization, you need to lighten your load\u2014to cut through the fog in order to see clearly what situations really demand action and to find the appropriate decision maker. You can then concentrate on the relatively few important decisions that are yours to make.\n\n* * *\n\n**HAVE YOU BUILT IN TIME TO FOCUS  \nON THE CRITICAL DECISIONS\u2014  \nHAVE YOU LIGHTENED YOUR LOAD?**\n\n**1.** Is action required? Is there a need to make a decision?\n\n**2.** Who should make the decision?  \nWhat level of management?\n\n* * *\n\n### **IS ACTION REQUIRED?**\n\nFor reasons that go beyond the obvious waste of precious time and resources, unnecessary decisions bring unjustifiable risk and repercussions. As Peter put it, no matter how innocuous the decision may seem, \"Every decision is like surgery. It is an intervention into a system and therefore carries with it the risk of shock. One does not make unnecessary decisions any more than a good surgeon does unnecessary surgery.\"\n\nIn judging whether a given situation or opportunity warrants action or not, several rules can be applied. These are shown in Figure 6.1.\n\nFigure 6.1 Decision Screen\n\nApplying these guidelines helps draw a distinction between the truly important and the seemingly important situations that are, in fact, simply nuisances. The latter can correct themselves\u2014they don't require major action. These rules will lighten the decision-making load by eliminating the situations that don't require intervention.\n\n* * *\n\nOne does not make unnecessary decisions any more  \nthan a good surgeon does unnecessary surgery.\n\n* * *\n\n### **WHO SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION?**\n\nTop management's load can be further lightened by deciding early on which person within the management structure is the appropriate decision maker for a particular condition or opportunity. We all know senior managers who micromanage or frivolously reverse the decisions of their subordinates. Not only do they undermine the people who work for them, they distract themselves from the critical issues that require a senior-level perspective. The need for top management to be the decision maker is often informed by the following five criteria:\n\n**1.** The time frame of the commitment.\n\n**2.** The speed with which the decision could be reversed if necessary.\n\n**3.** The number of people or areas affected.\n\n**4.** The level of social considerations.\n\n**5.** The extent to which precedent is being set. (Is the situation new and likely to be repeated?)\n\nPeter strongly believed that where top-management involvement is not required, the organization is better served by pushing decision-making responsibility to the manager who is most knowledgeable and closest to the point of action. In such cases, senior management's role is to make an explicit and appropriate assignment of responsibility. The key consideration in delegating the decision authority is: How far down in the organization can the decision be made and still be effective? The answer is always: _low enough_ that the decision maker has sufficient knowledge of and experience with the situation or affected function or area, yet _high enough_ that the manager's authority covers the affected function or area. By ensuring that decisions are made at the right level, the organization faces an easier job of implementation and generally ends up with a better, more informed decision.\n\nAlthough there is no such thing as a painless or risk-free decision, wrong decisions (i.e., the wrong solution to the right problem, the brilliant solution to the wrong problem, or the postponement of an urgently needed decision) are infinitely more painful than any properly timed, correct decision that responds to the right issues. The decision maker must commit to rigorous analysis\u2014an integral part of fact-based decision making\u2014and have the support of an organizational culture that is equally committed to making the right decision. Although it may seem natural that an organization would want to make good decisions, I have known many that could not. Some companies are biased in favor of what's fastest and easiest, others want the solution that doesn't rock the boat, and still others seek to avoid going head to head with tough competitors. There are many agendas that can derail good decision making.\n\n* * *\n\n**DOES YOUR CULTURE SUPPORT MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION WITH READY CONTINGENCY PLANS?**\n\n**1.** What's the real issue? What are you trying to accomplish?\n\n**2.** What specifications must the solution meet? What are the minimum results required, and what organizational commitment is needed to achieve them?  \nWhat are the risks?\n\n**3.** Have you fully considered the entire range of alternatives in order to choose the best one? Do you have a contingency plan?\n\n* * *\n\nWhether the decision maker is an executive or a purchasing clerk, his or her objective is to \"get the equation right\" before making any decision: As Peter would explain, \"your fifth grade math teacher tried to teach you to spend time on setting up the equation. It's very easy to find a mistake in the manipulation and to correct it if the equation is right. If, however, you get the wrong equation and you do your figuring right, you can't really ever correct it.\"\n\n### **WHAT'S THE REAL ISSUE?**\n\nAs I was listening to Peter, my mind was racing over my experiences as a consultant. One of the most useful tools we used to help clients define the real issue and break the problems into manageable pieces was the construction of an _issue tree_. We would brainstorm with the client on the scope of the problem and agree on the key issue. We would then systematically identify the subissues underlying the key issue and then move on to breaking down the subissues into their components. The most eye-popping moments of insight always relate to issue trees.\n\nAt Pepperidge Farm, we were working with management on how to reduce waste in the manufacturing process using an issue tree. By carefully thinking about what the subcomponents of waste were, the company looked at its manufacturing process in a new way, ultimately saving the organization a lot of money. We defined waste as what it _didn't sell_ ; shop floor management defined waste as what it _threw away_. The foremen believed that they were caring for the customer, in accordance with the company philosophy, when they put a little extra batter into the cookies. In reality, the customer was on occasion getting fewer cookies per one-pound bag and Pepperidge Farm was spending extra money to boot. When we opened two bags of cookies that had 14 cookies in them, not the standard 15, and yet had passed the total weight test, it became obvious that waste is not just what you sell to the pig farmers; it's what you buy that you don't sell to the consumer. The consumer was buying 16 ounces and 15 cookies, not 18 ounces; 2 ounces were being wasted. The lightbulb quickly went on, and the shop floor changed its practices to provide exactly what is required and not deviate.\n\nOne of the decision maker's gravest and most common mistakes is to assume that his or her initial understanding of the issue is correct. As Peter maintained, only by taking the time to investigate what the decision really needs to be about can the decision maker distinguish between the symptom and the ailment, between the need for a topical or localized treatment and a systemic or surgical treatment: \"You don't make a decision about symptoms when you have a fundamental, underlying, degenerative structure problem. Conversely, you don't fiddle around with the structure when all you have is an allergic rash.\"\n\n* * *\n\nOnly by taking the time to investigate what  \nthe decision really needs to be about can  \nthe decision maker distinguish between  \nthe symptom and the ailment.\n\n* * *\n\nTo avoid focusing on the wrong issue and prepare for effective execution down the road, the successful decision maker invites and requires those who will be the implementers to participate in the study of the problem or opportunity. Not only will this make it easier to implement the eventual decision, but it will make for a better decision by drawing on the perspective and knowledge base of those who live with the problem every day. This group needs to be small enough to be functional, but ideally should include everyone with relevant experience and knowledge\u2014including network partners and, if necessary, outside experts. Assembling this group is not, however, tantamount to abdicating decision-making authority. Rather, the purpose is to utilize the knowledge and perspective of those closest to the scene to define the issues and gain insight into their capabilities, while ensuring that the people who are going to have to carry out the decision are involved early in the process. What the decision maker asks from this group is a situation report, not recommendations. Such situation reports identify constraints and opportunities; their purpose is to inform, not to assume. Peter advised, \"Don't go for a consensus, but insist on having enough disagreement in the group to get a little understanding. This is where we can learn from the Japanese. They take this group activity very seriously and don't allow anyone to have a recommendation at this stage.\" My own experience suggests that the influential player is often the trouble maker. Engaging that individual to challenge the assumptions and be part of the solution goes a long way toward shifting the mindset of whole organizations.\n\n### **WHAT SPECIFICATIONS MUST THE SOLUTION MEET?**\n\nHaving worked toward understanding the true nature of the problem or opportunity, the decision maker is ready to begin defining solutions. It is surprisingly useful and very Peter-like at this point to articulate the organization's overall goals in devising these solutions through a series of questions, beginning with:\n\n**1.** What is the prize you are going after?\n\n**2.** What change are you trying to create\u2014so as not to lose sight of the broader purpose of the decision?\n\nThe successful decision maker then specifies the boundary conditions that the action or solution must satisfy through the questions below. These specifications provide the framework for evaluating alternatives and for measuring the progress (or signaling the need for abandonment) of the ultimate solution:\n\n**1.** Within the context of the overall business strategy and the particular situation, what are the priorities and minimum results required? Where is the need and\/or opportunity greatest?\n\n**2.** What are the minimum organizational commitments (people, time, and money) required? Are they realistically available, or will getting them require overcoming constraints?\n\n**3.** What are the risks, including risks that the organization cannot afford _not_ to take? As Andy Grove, the cofounder of Intel, noted, \"Only the paranoid survive.\" Home Depot and Wal-Mart were paranoid ahead of Hurricane Katrina\u2014a week before the storm hit the Gulf Coast, they had the logistics lined up to move people out and move goods in. Often, however, the paranoid can't afford to be risk-averse: The risk that you will miss an opportunity is every bit as serious as the risk of failure.\n\n**4.** Given the rapidity of changes in the business environment, how long will it be until you get meaningful results? How long until you evaluate your success? How long until you revisit your decision?\n\n* * *\n\nThe successful decision maker  \nremains open to the full array of  \nalternative solutions.\n\n* * *\n\n### **HAVE YOU FULLY CONSIDERED THE ENTIRE RANGE OF ALTERNATIVES?**\n\nIt is tempting at this point to push the easy button and opt for the solution that is the least disruptive, the least likely to meet with organizational resistance, and the most comfortable for the organization. But the successful decision maker remains open to the full array of alternative solutions. According to Peter, \"This entails real brainstorming. What we want to know here are all the conceivable alternatives. And some should be weird. The function of the weird ones is to stimulate your thinking.\"\n\nAnd as usual, Peter practiced what he preached. Richard Ellsworth, professor of management at Claremont, described for me the first time he met Peter. He had just joined the faculty at Claremont. They were in a senior executive conference together. Richard presented his talk, and the room seemed in agreement. Peter stood up and said, \"I don't agree,\" and proceeded to offer another view. A discussion began. At the break, Peter went up to Richard and confided, \"I really do agree, but I think we needed to discuss some alternatives.\"\n\nNow is the time to take a sheet of paper and list all possible and seemingly impossible alternatives that might satisfy the specified boundary conditions. Then, for each alternative, ask:\n\n\u2022 What would have to be done to make it viable?\n\n\u2022 What are the risks, effort, and commitment required and the expected results if successful?\n\n\u2022 How is this alternative better than others in satisfying the boundary conditions?\n\nHere the decision maker strives for honest thinking about each alternative, guarding against stilted presentations or as-sumed solutions. Not only is this open-mindedness necessary to ensure the integrity of the decision, but it is an absolute requirement to guarantee that a safety net of contingencies is in place in the face of navigating through future unknowns. Peter put it this way, \"The universe doesn't stand still and freeze the circumstances in which the decision was made. If you have no alternative to fall back on, you begin to drift if the decision doesn't work out.\"\n\nWith the alternatives cut to a small number of serious ones, reality-checked intuition and informed judgment come into play. In _The Effective Executive_ , Peter points out:\n\nThe important and relevant outside events are often qualitative and not capable of quantification. They are not yet \"facts.\" For a fact is an event which somebody has defined, has classified and, above all, has endowed with relevance. To be able to quantify one first has to abstract from the infinite welter of phenomena a specific aspect which one can name and finally count. Man, while not particularly logical, is perceptive\u2014and that is his strength. The danger is that executives will become contemptuous of information and stimulus that cannot be reduced to computer logic and computer language. Executives may become blind to everything that is perception (i.e., event) rather than fact (i.e., after the event).\n\n* * *\n\n\"If you have no alternative to fall  \nback on, you begin to drift if the  \ndecision doesn't work out.\"\n\n* * *\n\n* * *\n\n**IS THE ORGANIZATION WILLING TO COMMIT TO THE DECISION ONCE IT IS MADE?**\n\n**1.** Are you willing to opt for the bold move to get the required results?\n\n**2.** Can you marshal support for your decision within the organization and not rehash the decision?\n\n**3.** Can you balance the visionary and the practical?\n\n* * *\n\nThe effective decision maker chooses the alternative that best satisfies the specifications by providing a reasonable balance between:\n\n\u2022 Risk and results.\n\n\u2022 Time required and time available.\n\n\u2022 Resources (people, capabilities, and investment) required and resources available. The best possible outcome and the minimum outcome required to move forward.\n\nStriking this reasonable balance can be much less straightforward than it seems, and this is truly a test of the decision maker's mettle. Organizational support and culture aside, when the rubber hits the road, the decision makers who want to _change the world_ must be willing to lead the organization out of its comfort zone\u2014in contrast to the decision makers who want to do the best they can _in the world they know_. Ask yourself, of the last 100 decisions you made, how many carried real risk? How many were fundamentally strategic rather than tactical?\n\nStriking the balance between the daring and the doable typically requires some concessions and adaptations to gain the necessary organizational commitment. Here is where decision makers must be courageous and have the conviction to stay true to the boundary conditions that will determine success, yet be pragmatic (half a loaf of bread is better than none). They must quickly come to some acceptable compromise. Otherwise, they stumble into a bad compromise (half a baby is worse than none) or risk a prolonged \"selling time\" so that when there are finally results, it's too late.\n\nThis final step takes the most effort. Until a decision has degenerated into work and reaches the stage of actual execution, for all intents and purposes there is no decision. To get any results, the organization needs to convert the decision into effective action, and support that action by tracking results and providing the feedback necessary to refine the action plan.\n\n* * *\n\n**AS DECISIONS ARE MADE, ARE RESOURCES ALLOCATED TO \"DEGENERATE INTO WORK\"?**\n\n**1.** Have you gained the commitment and the capacity of the resources who will convert the decision into action?\n\n**2.** Have you put mechanisms in place to provide organized tracking and feedback?\n\n* * *\n\n### **HAVE YOU GAINED COMMITMENT AND CAPACITY OF THE IMPLEMENTERS?**\n\nAs Peter pointedly reminded me, decision makers in the United States and other Western countries can take a lesson from their Japanese counterparts, who put great emphasis on turning a decision into reality almost immediately. Japanese companies get a head start on making the decision effective by taking very seriously the early inclusion of those who will be part of the action. The decision maker who builds the implementers into the process has an ownership platform in place at the execution level of the organization and a good sense of the implementers' capabilities. This enables a fast start in converting the decision to action. The Japanese are also well aware that people, not policy statements, carry out decisions. Until you have assigned responsibility for execution with a deadline to somebody who has made a commitment to action, you have nothing more than a good intention. To gain that commitment, the decision maker must address the following:\n\n* * *\n\nUntil a decision has degenerated into work  \nand reaches the stage of actual execution,  \nfor all intents and purposes there is no decision.\n\n* * *\n\n\u2022 What results are expected of the implementers and by when?\n\n\u2022 What skills do the implementers need to acquire to achieve the desired results?\n\n\u2022 How will they acquire these skills in time to be consistent with the time frame for the expected results?\n\n\u2022 How do I\/we communicate in language that resonates with each implementer so that each understands what is required of her or him and views the action as an opportunity, not a threat?\n\n\u2022 How should incentives and performance measures be changed to support the implementer's commitment?\n\n\u2022 What else do I and other members of management need to do to celebrate and support this commitment?\n\n### **DO YOU HAVE MECHANISMS TO PROVIDE TRACKING AND FEEDBACK?**\n\nOrganized tracking of progress and results, accompanied by feedback, are non-negotiable elements of any effective action program for many reasons. First and foremost, motion does not guarantee progress, and converting good intention into meaningful action requires accountability. The decision maker and the implementers have to be held accountable for the expected results within the determined time frame. Second, working hard to choose the right solution does not guarantee that the decision is correct, especially in a fast-changing world. Feedback is essential to alert management to the need for fine-tuning and to guide refinements. As Peter wrote, \"Neither studies nor market research nor computer modeling is a substitute for the test of reality.\" Third, decisions can quickly lose their relevance as circumstances change. If they are not monitored and periodically reviewed as part of an explicit process, action plans put in place will linger past their useful life, eating up precious resources and time along the way. Finally, tracking and feedback are essential for spotting unexpected successes, where actual results far exceed expected results. The organization that is unaware of or inattentive to such occurrences puts its opportunity at risk or loses it outright.\n\n* * *\n\nOrganized tracking of progress, results,  \nand feedback are non-negotiable elements  \nof any effective action program.\n\n* * *\n\nIn 1993, when Clairol relaunched its Herbal Essences shampoo, it viewed itself as a hair-color company with some hair-care products, not as a hair-care company. With management focused on color, Clairol did not pay sufficient attention to the performance of the relaunched shampoo. In fact, the first indication of trouble came during a golf outing, where a key buyer complained to a Clairol salesman that the product was moving off the shelf much faster than the shelf was being replenished. Steve Sadove, president of Clairol at the time, recognized that this inventory \"trouble\" was actually evidence of an unexpected success. He delayed the international launch of the product so that the North American market could be better serviced, and he called in an outside consultant and asked, \"If this product sells in the volume of Pantene (the number one shampoo at the time), where can I find capacity to make it?\" The answer was, \"Abandon your hair-color business assumption that outsourcing of a critical chemical balancing process is never viable. Put on your hair-care business glasses and look for third-party capacity to get you over the hump while you plan for longer-term capacity to handle this unexpected success.\" Sadove called the head of R&D and said, \"Test the stability and tolerance of these formulas, and have the Quality Assurance process revised to support a third-party manufacturer.\" At the same time, he created a plan to triple Clairol's inhouse capacity. The Herbal Essences relaunch was an opportunity that could not wait. Over time, it virtually doubled the value of Clairol as the unexpected success exploded into a broad spectrum of other Herbal Essences hair-care products.\n\n### **THE DECISION PROCESS**\n\nDisciplined management knows how to negotiate the tightrope the organization will walk while moving ahead in the amorphous future. As Peter said:\n\nEffective executives make effective decisions as a systematic process with clearly defined elements and in a distinct sequence of steps. They do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on the important ones. They are not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique; they want to be sound rather than clever. They are not content with doctoring the symptom alone. They know when a decision has to be based on principle and when it should be made on the merits of the case and pragmatically. They know that the trickiest decision is that between the right and the wrong compromises and have learned how to tell one from the other. They know that the most time-consuming step in the process is not making the decision but putting it into effect.\n\nWhen Peter commented that he believed one major reason for Toyota's success is its strong decision-making sense, I took a closer look at the Toyota way, the rigorous and systematic decision-making process that has made Toyota the world's second-largest auto company.\n\n### **HOW TOYOTA GETS ITS EDGE**\n\nToyota is one of the world's great companies. Since the early 1990s, business magazines have been trumpeting its rise, and, under the leadership of Hiroshi Okuda, it has overcome a brief period of stagnation and is now making its mark as a leader. In 2003, Toyota passed Ford to become the second largest car manufacturer in the world, and with its own predictions of a 10 percent increase in vehicles manufactured in 2006, it is expected to pass GM shortly. Even as number two, Toyota posted 2004 and 2005 profits greater than its three most profitable competitors combined. It has been the highest-ranked non-American company on the Fortune Global Most Admired Companies list for three years running.\n\nWith success comes scrutiny. Certainly much attention has been paid to Toyota's production efficiency, and rightly so. The Toyota Production System (TPS) has been the focus of countless books and articles, and several of its key elements, like \"just-in-time\" and \"lean manufacturing,\" are now common business terms and methods. Toyota's efficiency on the factory floor is part of its overall approach to business, known inside the company as the \"Toyota Way.\"\n\nWhat has received far less attention is the effectiveness of the Toyota Way. Contributing to Toyota's indisputable effectiveness is its ability to make and successfully execute the right decisions and \"bets\" that have moved it up the ranks in the troubled automobile industry. What underlies this decision-making effectiveness is a disciplined process; well worthy of closer investigation by other organizations seeking to learn from the very best.\n\n### **THE ORIGINS OF THE TOYOTA WAY**\n\nMuch of the way Toyota operates can be traced back to the business climate in which it was born\u2014a climate that had some things in common with the globalized business world of today. Founded as the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works in 1926, the company originally manufactured a type of automatic loom that was invented by its founder, Sakichi Toyoda. In 1930, Toyoda sold the rights to his looms to a British manufacturer and invested the proceeds in starting the Toyota Motor Company. (\"Toyoda\" was changed to \"Toyota\" because in Japanese \"t\" has one fewer stroke than \"d\"\u2014thus saving time on printing signs and advertisements\u2014an early indication of the ceaseless focus on efficiency that would come to characterize the organization.) It wasn't until after World War II, as Japan was trying to rebuild, that Toyota really began to grow.\n\nThe car market in Japan at that time was small, since capital for investment in anything not an absolute necessity was scarce. Moreover, countless new companies were opening every day, and with infrastructures completely destroyed, there was no advantage for old players over new. Because the competition was so stiff and capital so hard to accumulate, Toyota had to do everything possible to minimize the time between when it purchased parts and assembled vehicles and when it received payment\u2014hence, the birth of the company's vaunted \"just-in-time\" production methods. At the same time, to offer a vehicle that no one would buy or to develop a plant that couldn't work properly would have been a catastrophic error, an inexcusable waste of money that had been painstakingly accumulated. Any business decision had to be reached carefully and through group discussion and consideration with all parties involved, to allow for quick and problem-free implementation.\n\n### **HOW TOYOTA MAKES DECISIONS**\n\nJapanese companies are long-time, avid students of Drucker (who was himself an avid student and onetime professor of Japanese art and culture). Consequently, the overlap between the Toyota Way and the Drucker Way is not surprising, and Toyota's decision-making process is no exception to this shared mindset. Toyota believes that it can and must always do better; that change is an opportunity, not a threat; and that its strategic bets must be well informed by an outside perspective. Its decision-making process is fully in sync with this culture.\n\n#### **Do the Homework First**\n\nWhether the issue at hand is a problem, an opportunity, or both, Toyota takes the time and effort to do the homework necessary to see the full landscape and past the obvious, so that its decisions distinguish between the root causes or the root enablers and the symptoms. Accordingly, Toyota emphasizes always going to see for itself, and then asking \"why\" five times.\n\nGoing and seeing for yourself means that managers at all levels have to be willing to \"get their hands dirty.\" This firsthand involvement is important to keep a growing company true to its roots, but even more so if it is going to extend its global reach and create and act on opportunities to market products in cultures other than its own. In 2003, when Toyota was redesigning its Sienna minivan to compete with the then-dominant Honda Odyssey import in the North American market, Yuji Yokoya, the chief engineer of the project, took time off and drove through every U.S. state and Canadian province, and through much of Mexico. The new Sienna included features that made it more appropriate for: Canadian roads (which have a higher crown than Japanese, American, or Mexican roads), American trip lengths (Americans cities are farther apart, so American drivers are more likely to eat and drink while driving), American storage needs (Yokoya spent a day outside a Home Depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, watching customers load their cars and trucks), and countless other small differences that no Japanese engineer could have discovered without visiting North America and no North American manager could have focused on without an outsider's perspective. The redesigned 2004 Toyota Sienna was voted best minivan by _Car and Driver_.\n\nGoing and seeing for yourself helps managers understand how problems and\/or opportunities manifest themselves. However, Toyota's homework is not completed until the Toyota managers, as I noted before, ask \"why\" five times to get to the root causes of the problem or the root enablers of the opportunity. As Taiichi Ohno, the originator of the Toyota production system, explained, \"To tell the truth, the Toyota production system has been built on the practice and evolution of this scientific approach. By asking why five times and answering it each time, we can get to the real cause of the problem, which is often hidden behind more obvious symptoms.\"\n\nThere is a puddle of oil on the factory floor. Why? The machine is leaking oil. Why? It has a broken gasket. Why? Because we bought gaskets made from a cheap material. Why? Because we got better pricing on them. Why? Because purchasing agents are rewarded and evaluated based on short-term savings rather than on long-term performance. So what is the real issue and hence the specifications that the solution must satisfy? Is it the puddle of oil on the floor that could easily be swept away in less than two minutes and escape management's notice? Or is it the purchasing agents' incentives, which have resulted in buying faulty equipment and must therefore be changed? Sweeping away the oil will address surface issues but won't prevent the problem from recurring, whereas a new purchasing rule will.\n\n#### **Look at All Solutions, Build Consensus among Stakeholders, and Set Sights High**\n\nOnce it is clear \"what this is all about,\" a round of meetings is held so that all possible solutions, no matter how implausible, can be discussed. In the case of the Prius, the first hybrid-powered car to be developed commercially, exploring all possible alternatives initially included analysis of over 80 hybrid engines. The list was eventually narrowed down to ten, then four. After that, tests were run on the four, and one engine was finally selected. By giving each of the 80 possible engines equal consideration in the beginning, Toyota engineers were able to see the problem from a variety of angles, and the final engine included modifications that reflected the best features of the original 80, modifications that engineers would never have incorporated without first examining such a wide range of options.\n\nAt Toyota, every worker who might be affected by the process must be consulted. This inclusionary approach not only enriches the perspective of the original developers, but also enhances the likelihood of a smooth and rapid implementation by anticipating problems, creating early buy-in of those participating in the development and production processes, and providing clear signals that Toyota cares what the stakeholders and executers think.\n\nToyota also purposefully sets its goals or expected results high, so high as to seem unattainable. By setting goals of 50 or 60 percent improvement rather than 5 or 10 percent, Toyota guarantees that its solutions will not simply address superficial issues but will generate real structural change. In 2000, when Toyota's North American Parts Organization (NAPO) branch wanted to eliminate the waste that had built up during its rapid growth, it set goals that seemed almost laughable. In three years: improve customer service by 50 percent, save $100 million in distribution costs, and cut $100 million of inventory out of the supply chain\u2014all this for a business that was turning a steady profit, albeit in the face of rising costs. But by constantly pushing employees in groups to work toward those goals, NAPO achieved or came very close to achieving each of them in the allotted time. By 2003, NAPO had become a much leaner and more efficient business than anyone in 2000 believed possible.\n\nToyota also ups the ante by outlining goals in contradictory pairs. The first Lexus, for example, was expected to deliver increased fuel efficiency, but also a fast smooth ride; decreased noise, as well as a light body; elegant styling, and great aerodynamics, among other criteria.\n\n#### **Implement Rapidly**\n\nHaving made a decision, Toyota is a robust planner and a rapid but effective implementer\u2014in stark contrast to those organizations that mistakenly believe a fast launch equals a successful implementation. To elaborate on this difference, given a 12-month time period to implement changes, many companies will spend 6 months planning and then implement the program ahead of schedule. Once the final product is in the field, however, questions and concerns that might have been anticipated and addressed prior to implementation have to be handled in a triage situation. By arbitrarily reducing the time allocated for the planning activity, management is likely to delay the expected results from the new program or, even worse, to render the program obsolete before it can come to fruition. At Toyota, however, the planning process takes 11 of the 12 months. Actual implementation is then carried out very quickly and effectively\u2014with the support of the entire organization and with many possible problems thought out in advance.\n\nPerhaps the greatest testament to how rapidly Toyota can implement its plans is its product development: Toyota has managed to shrink the time from conception to production to just 12 months\u2014half that of most automobile companies. Even the Prius, the first commercial hybrid-powered car, which required the development of a new engine, body, production process, and marketing strategy, was (at the prodding of Okuda) taken from clay model to production in just 15 months. The benefits of this kind of agility cannot be overstated. Being so effective in its decisions allows Toyota to anticipate and respond quickly to customer demands and to constantly innovate to meet customer requirements, and the impact of the few inevitable failures is minimized when just one year later a new version can be released.\n\nAs former Toyota president Fujio Cho described the Toyota decision-making process, \"We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. . . . You can realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you can simply correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn't like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge.\"\n\n* * *\n\nDECISION MAKING BY ALFRED SLOAN\n\nMany of Drucker's theories came from watching the work of those he admired, including GM's chairman Alfred P. Sloan during and following World War II. Sloan influenced many of Drucker's ideas, particularly that one of the most important responsibilities of a manager is to make assumptions given future uncertainty, test them for soundness, and revisit them in light of external and other changes, and to do so with rigor and discipline. In Sloan, Drucker saw this responsibility embraced and executed flawlessly:\n\nAs I sat in more GM meetings with Sloan, I began to notice . . . his way of making decisions. . . . I noticed it first in the heated discussions about the postwar capacity of GM's accessory divisions. One group in GM management argued stridently and with a lot of figures that accessory capacity should be expanded. Another group, equally strident, argued in favor of keeping it low. Sloan listened for a long time without saying anything. Then he turned off his hearing aid and said, \"What is this decision really about? Is it about accessory capacity? Or is it about the future shape of the American automobile industry? It seems to me that you argue over the future of the automobile industry in this country and not about the accessory business, do you agree? Well then,\" said Sloan, \"we all agree that we aren't likely to sell a lot of GM accessories to our big competitors, to Chrysler and Ford. Do we know whether to expect the independents\u2014Studebaker, Hudson, Packard, Nash, Willys\u2014to grow and why? I take it we are confident that they will give us their business if they have any to give.\"\n\n\"But Mr. Sloan,\" said the proponent of accessory expansion, \"we assume that automobile demand will be growing, and then the independents will surely do well.\" \"Sounds plausible to me,\" said Sloan, \"but have we tested the assumption? If not, let's do so.\"\n\nA month later the study came in, and to everybody's surprise it showed that small independents did poorly and were being gobbled up by the big companies in times of rapidly growing automobile demand and that they only did well in times of fairly stable replacement demand and slow market growth. \"So now,\" Sloan said, \"the question is really whether we can expect fast automobile growth, once we have supplied the deficiencies the war has created, or slow growth. Do we know what new automobile demand depends on?\" \"Yes, we do know, Mr. Sloan,\" someone said, \"demand for new automobiles is a direct function of the number of young people who reach the age of the first driver's license, buy an old jalopy, and thereby create demand for new cars among the older and wealthier population.\" \"And what do population figures look like five, ten, fifteen years out?\" [Sloan asked]. And when it turned out that they showed a fairly rapid growth of the teen-age population for some ten years ahead, Sloan said: \"The facts have made the decision\u2014and I was wrong.\" For then, and only then, did Sloan disclose that the proposal to increase accessory capacity had originally been his.\n\nSloan rarely made a decision by counting noses or by taking a vote. He made it by creating understanding.\n\nThough Sloan may not have seen himself as establishing a role model for leadership, Peter believed he did exactly that: \"Sloan invented the professional manager. . . . [Sloan] was in many ways very narrow, with absolutely no understanding of this whole generation of anything outside the company. He didn't understand society. He didn't understand politics. . . . He never understood why the workers unionized. He was . . . focused on the business. But within that . . . he never asked who was right. He only asked what is right. He never, never was the star, although he was one. And yet it was absolutely clear that if he made a decision, it was the decision.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **CONCLUSION**\n\nIn today's world, every knowledge worker is responsible for a contribution that can materially affect the capacity of the organization to obtain results. The decision mechanisms and values of a corporation support or impair the right decision, be it the research chemist's choice of projects or the logistics manager's schedule of deliveries. Creating a healthy environment to support these decisions has become more critical, and the importance of intuition and judgment (human perception) has never been greater:\n\n**1.** Very few decisions need to be the responsibility of top management. Taking the time to do justice to those that are cannot be understated.\n\n**2.** Doing the right thing (even if not perfectly executed) is far superior to perfectly executing the wrong thing.\n\n**3.** Decisions need commitment to become action. Without action, no progress is made.\n\n**4.** A decision remains inert until resources are allocated for its implementation.\n\n**5.** Decisions need to be viewed as a step on a path\u2014moving two steps forward and one step back, learning, and adapting as appropriate\u2014moving forward.\n\nWith all the elements in place to successfully traverse today's landscape, and a chassis holding the pieces together with solid decision mechanisms, the last requirement is to infuse vision and values into the whole through the actions of an effective CEO\u2014the subject of our final chapter.\n\n## **SEVEN The Twenty-First-Century CEO**\n\n_CEOs have work of their own.  \nIt is work only CEOs can do,  \nbut also work which CEOs must do. . . .  \nEach knowledge worker must think and behave  \nlike a chief executive officer._\n\n**\u2014Peter F. Drucker**\n\nIn the last years of his life, Peter Drucker focused like a laser on what had increasingly fascinated him\u2014the role of the CEO. As corporations grew more unwieldy, worldwide competition sharpened, and customers and shareholders alike became more litigious, Peter rightly saw CEOs as more important than ever. They had to provide leadership\u2014strategic leadership, moral leadership, human leadership\u2014and balance. Today's rate and magnitude of change leave little room for leadership error. Peter believed that the CEO role was the next area of management research. Procter & Gamble's CEO, A.G. Lafley, called it \"Peter's unfinished chapter.\"\n\nGood or bad, the CEO sets the tone for an organization, its mission and culture, and its actions and results during his or her tenure if not thereafter as well. As a consultant and adviser, Peter worked with hundreds of CEOs and observed a remarkable diversity of leadership personalities in action, from Jack Welch at GE to Frances Hesselbein, head of the Girl Scouts of America; from President Eisenhower in 1950 to Mike Zafirovski, who ascended to the top spot of Nortel at the dawn of the twenty-first century\u2014almost seven decades after Drucker first worked with Alfred Sloan at General Motors.\n\nFor decades, Peter thought about how CEOs could be more effective. He mused about how they could change more than just corporations and foundations\u2014how they could even shape the course of countries. And he worried about how they could harm all sorts of people if they were less than ethical. Once again, Peter offered us keen insight into the future. The reputation of CEOs has taken a pounding in recent years because of what I call the \"Enron effect\" (but one could also call it the \"WorldCom wake\").\n\nWith all the emphasis in the business press on the highest-level executives, it is easy to overlook the need for each knowledge worker to be his or her own CEO. The knowledge worker exists in a somewhat amorphous professional space. As Peter explained, \"Knowledge workers are neither bosses nor workers, but rather something in between\u2014resources who have responsibility for developing their most important resource, brainpower, and who also need to take more control of their own careers.\"\n\nThe knowledge worker's professional life will typically span five or six or seven decades\u2014far surpassing the life expectancy of most institutions and encompassing a variety of situations given the new mobility in space and time. It is both a great freedom and a responsibility to keep the bounce in our work and the spark of curiosity in our brain.\n\nFrom my earliest days at McKinsey to my time with my own business, I have been a consultant to dozens of companies from the small, family-owned variety to the multinational Fortune 100, and I have been a CEO of a small firm. Yet I didn't truly appreciate Peter's near obsession with the CEO role until I spent a couple of years working with him. To distill into one word Peter's thoughts on what makes a truly great CEO, it would be _courage_. I have shared with many a client the four-word summary from the legendary CEO of Electrolux during the 1970s and 1980s, Hans Werthen. When asked what it took for a small Swedish company to become the global leader in the white goods industry, Werthen responded: \"Tigers don't eat grass.\"\n\nWhether one is at the helm of a company or a self-managing knowledge worker, it takes courage to do what is right, such as turning away from the temptation of quick short-term profits at the expense of investments for the long term. It takes courage to trailblaze change in an industry. It also takes courage to continuously redefine the business the company is in. It takes courage to face reality and get out of any product lines or businesses that \"you wouldn't get into if you were not in the business today.\" Again, I stress what Jack Welch makes clear in his writings; he never hesitated when faced with the painful structural decisions or betting on the success of new ventures. Peter recognized that management's most important capability is to take uncertainty out of the future by helping organizations see and selectively move around corners and place courageous bets.\n\nWe are at a moment in time when there is often greater uncertainty in resisting or ignoring changes than in playing or placing bets. CEOs have the vision to place the bets for enterprises; they must have the guts to lead change.\n\nIn our conversations, Peter defined three characteristics unique to a CEO:\n\n**1.** A broad field of vision and the ability to ask and answer what needs to be done.\n\n**2.** His or her thumbprint on the organization's character and personality.\n\n**3.** The influence he or she has on people\u2014individually and collectively.\n\nThis chapter discusses each of these characteristics and illustrates them in action at a company Peter worked with closely: Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, better known as DLJ. It also mentions other companies where I've seen the dramatic effect Peter described. The chapter concludes by translating these characteristics to individual knowledge workers as CEOs of their own careers.\n\n### **FIELD OF VISION**\n\nPeter constantly exhorted his clients to produce good results by looking at the whole. Theory is not enough. Theory grasps the relatively thickest threads and ignores the rest, the nuances of real life. But theory without observation is meaningless. Observations of the whole and observations of how theories are applied to solve the challenge of the enterprise are the most important thing in Drucker's methodology.\n\n* * *\n\nThe most important thing in Drucker's  \nmethodology\u2014looking at the whole.\n\n* * *\n\nNo one has the ability to see the whole like the CEO. At many companies, engineers tinker away with a particularly knotty technical or design problem, but they don't look at 50-year trends in buying habits. Meanwhile, the vice president of marketing keeps close tabs on competitors but may have no idea how or at what expense his or her own company makes components. In any organization, the CEO links the inside\u2014the organization\u2014with the outside\u2014society, the economy, technology, markets, customers, collaborators, the media, public opinion. Inside there are only costs. Outside there are results.\n\nIn looking at the whole, the CEO must ask, \"What needs to be done?\" To answer this question, the first task of the CEO is to define the outside of the organization, the outside where results are meaningful. Coming up with this definition obviously requires looking beyond the bricks and mortar (or sometimes virtual walls). But a truly honest and robust definition also means challenging assumptions, assessing what needs to be done and when, and selectively creating platforms for redefining and innovating the business, the organization, and even the industry. Through such courageous challenging and visioning, the CEO lays the foundation and boundaries for what needs to be done by asking essential questions (and not just assuming that the answers are obvious): What is our business? What should it be? What should it _not_ be? The answers to these questions establish the boundaries of an institution. And they are the foundation for the work to be done by the CEO.\n\nWhen CEOs fail to question long-standing assumptions or fail to listen to or see evidence that says, \"These assumptions are no longer relevant to the opportunity that is our future,\" their companies are guaranteed to have short lives. The average life of a company on the Standards & Poors list is just under 10 years; of the original companies on the first Forbes 100 list, published in 1917, only 5 of those made the 2005 global top 100 list (DuPont, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, and Procter & Gamble). In 1999, at Drucker's ninetieth birthday celebration, he predicted that by his one-hundredth, in the year 2009, there would be five global automobile companies and that GM would not be one of them.\n\nExperts summon all sorts of reasons why companies fail or are reconfigured into different pieces. Yet here's the simple truth: The inability to adapt to changing landscapes leads to the premature deaths of companies that were once vibrant. As Peter said, \"Most business issues are not the result of things being done poorly or even the wrong things being done. Businesses fail because the CEO's assumptions about the outside provide decision frameworks for the institution which no longer fit reality.\" These assumptions involve markets, customers, competitors, technology, and a company's own strengths and weaknesses. The best CEOs don't just ask what needs to be done; they also challenge assumptions along the way, and take off the table what doesn't need to be done.\n\nI've touched on failure, so I should mention success. Six of _Business Week_ 's top ten fastest-growing small American companies, and seven of the ten companies that have shown the greatest equity value gains over the last five years, didn't even exist twenty years ago. This dramatic performance highlights a key challenge to CEOs: to wrest the ability to challenge assumptions and redefine the way business is done from the financial markets. Up until recently, the venture capital and equity markets have served as the primary vehicles for creating new ways of doing business and even innovation\u2014closing companies and opening new ones. Sure, shareholders liked this power, but it flies in the face of the business's need to sustain itself. Ultimately this short-term obsession with results is closing down businesses, displacing employees, and ruining communities. It is the CEO's responsibility to use his or her uniquely broad field of vision to challenge the status quo when answering the question \"What is needed?\" so that companies and communities can remain viable. On top of everything else, CEOs must do an astounding balancing act: They must lead the enterprise for the customers and employees and accommodate, but not bow to, the harsh demands of the stock market.\n\nNot long ago, Dan Lufkin, one of three founders and co-CEOs at DLJ, ushered me to a long table in his fairly simple conference room overlooking Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was a plain space with just a few pieces of art on the wall. I didn't even notice the astounding view until I was leaving because Lufkin was so engaging. He was reminiscing about the spectacular rise of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, from a minuscule company to a Wall Street heavy hitter. It was all because of a bold move that Peter encouraged. But first, as Lufkin noted, Peter helped the three leaders see things clearly. By 1961, Peter had helped them see that the future was not in brawn but in brains, through an _information_ society.\n\nSkipping ahead to 1969, DLJ had built a good reputation, but the three founders, Bill Donaldson, Dan Lufkin, and Dick Jenrette, were frustrated by how their own limited capital constrained their ambitions. While larger firms were copying their ideas and growing, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette didn't have the personal capital they needed to truly grow their brokerage business. With the growth of automated transactions and the ascendance of the institutional investor, serving the customer now required big blocks of capital.\n\nPeter sat down with the three at the end of the turbulent 1960s. Rather than telling them what to do, he posed questions. Lufkin still remembers how the questions started: \"How will you grow? What is the right thing to do for your clients, for your employees? What is the right thing for the New York Stock Exchange?\" The questions got increasingly detailed: \"Without some form of permanent capital infused into the structure of the New York Stock Exchange, can it exist in the future? How can it work with this growing community of institutional investors?\"\n\nPeter didn't stop there. He continued: \"Would the strengthening of the greatest free market the world has ever known be enhanced by a more permanent growing base of capital? That being the case, tell me how would you do this if you didn't go public? What other tools are there available?\" Lufkin smiled when remembering Peter's way of pushing his clients to think: \"He would launch into some esoteric description of what happened in Germany during the 1930s that had little to do with the case.\" But Lufkin always came away from his interactions with Peter understanding that if he (Lufkin) were patient enough, Peter's ostensible \"side stories\" would ultimately lead to and help inform a broader field of vision. At a 1969 speech to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Peter shared some of the same side stories.\n\nLufkin reflected on that crucial moment. \"He forced us to think with the assumption that we could change the rules of the New York Stock Exchange. He forced us to think about the issues created by the lack of permanent capital against a growing base of business, and how to solve that problem. We honestly believed that this was in the best interest of the New York Stock Exchange itself. We needed more permanent capital and so did the whole Exchange. And that led to what was a very courageous act.\"\n\nAt this point, I should explain that in those days members of the NYSE such as DLJ were not allowed to sell shares to the public and be traded on the New York Stock Exchange because of a long-standing tradition. The Exchange was set up in 1792 with 14 members and limited numbers of companies' shares traded. The Exchange had to approve every single shareholder of every member firm. Furthermore, the Exchange was a partnership\u2014all members had joint and several liability for the solvency of the partnership. Members were also not allowed to trade their own shares because this was viewed as a conflict of interest.\n\nApparently customs had changed in the rest of the world\u2014but not at the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street. When DLJ announced it was going public, the Exchange went ballistic. Richard Jenrette has clear memories of that moment: \"The Exchange was very comfortable approving every shareholder of every member. They were opposed to us going public because they said things like, 'The Mafia might take over Wall Street.'\" Exchange officials were also worried that investors would see exactly how profitable Wall Street was. DLJ had a 50 percent pretax profit margin at the time. Jenrette added, \"In reality, the member firms were afraid that institutional investors, their best customers, would gain access to the New York Stock Exchange. There was a fear of big, institutional customers like the banks.\" In fact, the fear of bank membership was realized many years later with the dilution, or weakening, of the Glass-Steagall Act in the 1990s, but the NYSE's worst fears were not. Securities laws and conflict of interest considerations precluded the bank trust departments from monopolizing the brokerage business through their own nonbank subsidiaries, and the growth of the institutional investor changed the balance. The pension funds and endowments became increasingly independent of the bank, and independent mutual funds began to expand rapidly.\n\nThe printed prospectus of the original offering of DLJ contains a puzzling line. Essentially it says, \"You are buying shares in a company that given the possibility that the offering will not be approved by the board of governors of the New York Stock Exchange,\" and, \"If the rules of the New York Stock Exchange are not changed to allow this offering, DLJ will, at the stroke of the first share's sale, lose _70 percent_ of its revenues.\" If you read that in 1970, you might have asked, \"are they crazy?\" Cut 70 percent out of any business that you know of, and tell me how it survives.\n\n* * *\n\nThe CEO sets the course for the  \ncompany and commits to the goals  \nthat will define the company.\n\n* * *\n\nFinally, after DLJ threatened to resign from the Exchange and take its trades to a third market, officials caved. DLJ was allowed to go public and raise new equity capital, which it did in 1970, and became the first brokerage firm to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. As Bill Donaldson remembers, \"Institutions cheered when DLJ went public.\" With that move, DLJ changed Wall Street forever. In retrospect, DLJ and Drucker's insights were prescient. In the following 24 months, a period of extraordinarily high interest rates, many of the firms that hadn't followed DLJ's example of raising permanent new capital by going public failed to survive. The Exchange itself eventually altered its own legal status and today is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The permanent capital raised through public ownership is a major reason why Wall Street has remained the financial capital of the world. Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette redefined their business, and in some ways their industry, with their vision.\n\nThe CEO's broad field of vision defines the business that the enterprise is in. The CEO sets the course for the company and commits to the goals that will both define and set external performance expectations for the company. This takes a keen scrutiny of the landscape, courage, and sometimes the ability to listen carefully, agree that there are potential and substantial risks\u2014and still plunge ahead and make a tough decision.\n\n* * *\n\nOn my first meeting with Frances Hesselbein, in her Manhattan office crammed with books, she described what she saw when she took over the Girl Scouts in 1976. She found a reliable\u2014but not dynamic\u2014organization that still prided itself on its history of awarding merit badges for sewing and cooking, as it had done since the 1950s.\n\nFrances came in with a strong message: \"We manage for the mission, we manage for innovation, we manage for diversity, we manage for results.\" She then asked Druckerian questions: What do we mean by great results defined by our mission? How do we know if we are actually impacting the lives of young girls and transforming them into capable women?\" And it was there that Frances began to engineer a change in the Girl Scouts. She looked at the organization and said, \"If we are going to deliver the results, not the input, the results of strong, capable women, then we must confront the fact that it's a different world than what people faced in the 1950s.\" She added, \"That was all fine and good for a previous generation, but for the current generation, we need conversations around where's the accounting merit badge, where's the math merit badge, where's the fitness merit badge. Because what it means to be a capable woman in this era will be different. And we have to think not about our inputs, we have to think about our outputs. The outputs are the results defined by what happens to those girls. Results, results, results, results.\"\n\nFrances's message permeated the total organization; it became a leadership benchmark\u2014a simple but powerful way to describe the management and the focus of this great American institution. As Frances said, \"Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do,\" and, \"I learned that from Peter.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### **THE CEO BRAND**\n\nThe CEO works to shape the company, define and create new opportunities and realities, and make the organization leaner and more competitive. Of course, he or she also keeps in mind the importance of creating a legacy. When we think of the early days of the Ford Motor Company and IBM, we inevitably think of Henry Ford and Thomas Watson\u2014even those of us who can't recall their first products.\n\nEvery CEO, whether at a small family company or a multinational, leaves an imprint. As I visit clients and gain a sense of the company's history, I'm often struck by how a particular CEO shapes the future of the company. For example, at Campbell's Soup there is the Dr. John Dorrance era\u2014when condensed soup was invented and introduced to the mass market\u2014and condensed soup remains the identity of the company today. There are others as well. There's the James McGowan era, when Campbell's expanded into key ingredients\u2014chickens, mushrooms, tomatoes\u2014and the philosophy of caring about every ingredient is ingrained in the culture today. There's the William B. Murphy era, when the company expanded internationally; the Gordon McGovern era of acquisitions, growth, and low profits; the David Johnson era of back to basics; the Dale Morrison era of revitalizing brands; and the Doug Conant era of revitalizing the business.\n\nAs the CEO nurtures and forms an organization's personality, inevitably his or her own personality, or brand, rubs off on the place. Peter saw this thumbprint as being of the utmost importance to the next generation's leading organizations. He wrote, \"In the next society, the biggest challenge for the large company\u2014especially for the multinational\u2014may be its social legitimacy: its values, its mission, its vision.\"\n\nThe co-founders of DLJ had a dream. Fundamental to that dream was that each person in the organization could create or enhance an opportunity. The culture was that of letting a thousand flowers bloom. Donaldson and Lufkin believed in hiring people with passion whom they liked. And they were role models on what you can do with a passion. Donaldson and Lufkin had a passion for doing great research in smaller companies with strong management. Jenrette's fingerprint was institutionalizing the idea of letting each person soar, while the firm grew. The 2000 Wetfeet.com guide to DLJ quotes an insider describing the job: \"I actually have some control over what kinds of deals I work on. I can tell VPs I really want to work on this deal or work in a specific industry, and they try to make it happen.\" The site quotes a recruiter's insight as, \"A low enthusiasm level is the kiss of death at DLJ.\" Jenrette described the culture he worked to cultivate and institutionalize: \"It was important that everyone took pride in what he\/she did and understood that you didn't have to be the CEO to do well. We always had at least a half-dozen people that were paid more than the CEO. We never had any contracts telling you in writing that you could not leave at year end. Each DLJ'er was responsible for putting in writing what he or she had accomplished and their goals for the coming year.\n\n* * *\n\nThe CEO nurtures and forms  \nan organization's personality.\n\n* * *\n\n\"In the 70s, when the market was down, we did not lay anyone off. And we did not distribute under-valued options to executives.\" Indeed Jenrette had to sell his townhouse during those down years. But he remembers the feeling of determination that carried the company through difficult times \"We were all in this together. We never quit having fun and doing what we thought was right for our customer.\" (Think for a minute. Would _our_ colleagues use those phrases?)\n\nThe personal risks and people bets paid off. Under Jenrette's leadership, the firm grew to just under 10,000 people. In the 1980s and 1990s, it had the lowest staff turnover rate of any Wall Street firm.\n\nAfter leaving DLJ, Donaldson put his fingerprint on a number of organizations: The New York Stock Exchange, where, as chairman, he changed the fundamental focus of the enterprise, lengthened trading hours and opened up the Global Exchange; the Yale School of Management, which he helped found and then shape as the school's first dean; and Aetna, where he stepped in as chairman and turned the company around. More recently, Donaldson served 26 months as head of the SEC. Thanks to his action orientation, the SEC made more changes during his tenure than at anytime since 1929, including imposing hefty fines on corporate wrongdoers and granting increased independence to boards of mutual-fund companies.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen Frank Weise became the CEO of Cott Beverage, the leading provider of private label sodas\u2014including Sam's Choice\u2014he needed to very rapidly change the personality of the business. Weise stepped into the role in 1998 after the founder, Harry Pencer, had died, and the company was failing. Despite great products, it wasn't delivering on commitments. The company's relationships with customers were deteriorating because of persistent stock-outs and unfulfilled commitments. Cott was regarded as a company with great products and impressive selling skills, but one that constantly failed to deliver on its promises.\n\nFrank is one of the nicest people I know. When I met him at an airport outside of Philadelphia, he went out of his way to introduce me to his mother and to make sure I knew my way around his local airport. I started consulting with him after he stepped into the turnaround position. Initially, I wasn't sure if he had the stomach to do what would be required to turn things around at the company.\n\nI watched in amazement as he put his name on the line and showed a firm resolve to do what needed to be done. The senior executives all had stock options that they could have exercised for 12 months after the company changed hands at a value of about $9.00 per share. Six months later, when Frank became CEO, the stock was trading at $3. Shortly after he arrived at Cott, we had a conversation about which executives he could not afford to lose. There were two whose departure I felt might jeopardize the company short term. There was a tear in his eye as he confided that he expected to lose one of them, but he was confident that this potential loss would not keep him from doing what he felt was necessary to put integrity back into the company. He told senior executives that they would keep their jobs only if they demonstrated their confidence in the company by not cashing in their stock options. He lost six of the top eight executives, including one of the two I had identified. Frank shared with every customer what he was doing to make the company live up to its potential and restore its good name. He invested in operations, brought in a head of quality with Six Sigma experience, and put in tracking mechanisms that provided a daily snapshot of what was happening at every plant and with every buyer. The stock rose as high as $35 and settled in at around $25 before Frank retired in 2004. The CEO is the brand, and Frank knew it from the day he took over.\n\n* * *\n\n* * *\n\nWhen things go badly, the CEO is responsible.  \nHe or she cannot say, \"I didn't know.\"\n\n* * *\n\nPeter maintained that the CEO sets the tone in all ways. That includes ethical standards. The CEO can take some credit when business surges, when profits rise, when analysts recommend the stock. When things go badly, the CEO is responsible. He or she cannot say, \"I didn't know.\"\n\nThe story of Peter Drucker's life and work is one of optimism, a belief in tomorrow, and a passion to help businesses and nonprofits survive and excel. But in the 1990s, Peter became disenchanted with several companies and CEOs that seemed to reward greed rather than performance. Drucker made bold statements regarding the excessive riches awarded to mediocre executives. He stood up to the greed, saying, \"It is morally and socially unforgivable to reap massive earnings while firing thousands of their workers.\" He emphasized that companies are not just about profit. Leaders forgot their missions when they became obsessed with raking in profits and ratcheting up the stock price. Drucker viewed the corporation as a human community built on trust and respect for the customer and the worker and not just a profit-making machine. And to counter what he saw as a culture of short-term gain, he stepped up consulting work with nonprofits as well as the CEOs he believed in.\n\n* * *\n\nAt a company, someone must be in charge.  \nThat is why we have CEOs.\n\n* * *\n\nIn the final years of his life, Drucker was distressed to note that some bad players tarnished the image of the CEO. He would shake his head as he read about scandals at Enron and Arthur Andersen, scandals at Adelphi, scandals at WorldCom. Drucker felt personally betrayed. Not only did these cases reek of duplicity and misdeeds and outright lies, but what made them worse was that the people at the top often proclaimed that they were innocent because they didn't know what was going on. To Peter, that was a sin. At a company, someone must be in charge, which requires that he or she be both fully informed on every significant aspect of the business and accountable for what happens. That is the role of the CEO.\n\n### **INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE\u2014COLLECTIVELY AND INDIVIDUALLY**\n\nThe impact CEOs can have on people, their actions and their lives, is unmatched. As Peter wrote to Bob Buford, the CEO of a cable television network in 1990, \"As I tried to stress, your first role . . . is the personal one. It is the relationship with people, the development of mutual confidence, the identification of people, the creation of a community. This is something only you can do.\" Peter went on: \"It cannot be measured or easily defined. But it is not only a key function. It is one only you can perform.\"\n\nWith Peter's encouragement, DLJ changed the game by embracing a people policy fundamentally different from that of any other Wall Street firm. Peter helped design this policy and helped ensure that it was woven into the fabric of the firm and its orientation around people.\n\nAs Bill Donaldson remembered, \"If we were going to spend as much time as we were going to in the business, we felt that it ought to be fun. And for it to be fun, we had to have a measure of people around us and with us that were good people that were great fun to be with, intellectually smart. In other words, we didn't think we had to get some hard-nosed person that we couldn't stand being with just for intelligence. We thought we could find intelligence with people who shared our values, and shared the sense of fun and building something.\n\n\"DLJ worked hard to create a collegial atmosphere where colleagues also considered each other friends\u2014certainly not the convention at the time. On Wall Street, up until that time, everybody was on a commission basis. They were building their own little businesses; they were fighting for accounts, etc. We didn't do any of that. Nobody was on commission. Nobody had an account. They were all firm accounts. We evaluated what people did at the end of the year both by them telling us what they thought they'd done during that year, as well as what we thought, as well as what our customers thought. Based on that, the compensation and rewards and so forth were allocated. It was sort of a total triangulation of evaluation. That made for teamwork. It allowed members of the firm to say that the fellow in the office next door really helped him, you know, and we rewarded that. And so we created an atmosphere, or DNA, if you will, at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette that existed for over 40 years.\"\n\n* * *\n\nVision, organizational personality,  \nand influence take uncertainty out of the  \nfuture in the twenty-first century.\n\n* * *\n\nAnd Dick Jenrette noted, \"Peter harped on how important people were and are. We had a number of organizational structures that played to the concept that the people were our most important asset. Peter also encouraged us to think of our employees as a volunteer organization would think of their volunteers.\"\n\nThe human policy that DLJ had was built on themes only a CEO could define and make real\u2014and in the case of DLJ it took three CEOs to turn the words into a thriving organizational personality.\n\nEach of these characteristics\u2014vision, organizational personality, and influence\u2014needs to be understood, and nourished. None of them can be assumed. Field of vision requires listening and looking\u2014not telling. It requires regular eye checkups and allocating time to step back and interpret what you are seeing, perhaps the hardest part for a CEO. Personality means looking in the mirror, checking translations and amplifications, and recognizing that you are always a role model. Influence requires respecting people and treating the organization as a living entity that needs care and feeding. Each of these characteristics\u2014vision, organizational personality, and influence\u2014takes uncertainty out of the future in the twenty-first century. That is what a CEO\u2014and only a CEO\u2014can do.\n\n* * *\n\nThe CEO's impact is also seen in how what he or she says or does is interpreted and translated into action, how it becomes part of the enterprise's personality. Soon after Richard Block became president of AGI (Album Graphics Incorporated, a media artwork company), he visited the company facility in Melrose Park, Illinois. It is the largest plant and houses a significant group of its management team. After touring the plant, he commented to the plant manager, \"Why is there a window in the plant? Couldn't that harm some of the art work?\" The next time he visited Melrose Park, about a month later, every window in the building, office and plant had been cemented over. He learned quickly the impact a CEO can have on actions. Understanding that power, Richard put it to good use, spending the next 20 years building an organization and culture that would challenge him and others to make the right decisions. AGI rose to become the number one media graphic supplier in the world, prior to its being sold to a venture capitalist.\n\n* * *\n\n### **EACH OF US AS CEO**\n\nWhat can the self-managing knowledge worker learn from these three characteristics as CEO of his or her own career? Maintaining a broad field of vision requires having a sense of where you are going and what you are building. It is the same for individuals, or a company with one knowledge worker, as it is for a grand enterprise employing thousands. One of my clients had a great analogy: \"Have you ever been driving behind the elderly lady who is looking three feet in front of her at a time? She starts, and stops, and swerves. Compare that with a race-car driver who is looking at the whole track as well as feeling the immediate ground beneath her car.\" That is the difference in vision in your career\u2014are you going one step at a time, or seeing the broader landscape ahead. We have to place bets on ourselves, learn, and bet again. To make the greatest contributions, we have to put our heart and mind into it and be able to respond to the unexpected opportunities.\n\nPeter maintained that this ability to see the whole and its immediate challenges and opportunities simultaneously requires a self-knowledge that most of us don't have. We need to know our strengths, our values, and our passions, and we have to admit to our arrogance. Knowing our true strengths requires a sometimes painful level of consciousness. In Peter's world we must \"ask, check, and see.\" Here's one of his techniques for maintaining this orientation only few of us have: Whenever you make a key decision or take action, write down what you expect will happen. Then look back at it six to nine months later and compare what happened to your expectations. Ask people to exercise this form of self-discipline every day. Try to use your strengths in your work and your connections. Get feedback concerning where and how your strengths work and connect.\n\nThe second characteristic\u2014organizational personality or brand\u2014is about knowing yourself and what gives you passion (or, on the contrary, what puts you to sleep). As Peter so often reminded former students, working in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with your own condemns you to frustration and to lackadaisical performance. He told me the story of a woman who was the daughter of a prominent banker, had majored in finance, and always assumed she would be a financial adviser. When she began her career, she was miserable. Two years later, she was an administrator in a hospital having the time of her life. She had to learn what gave her passion to unlock her willingness to leave a thumbprint. At one point during that conversation, Peter commented that he thought finance never really interested David Rockefeller. As CEO of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Rockefeller was known for his people skills and unique ability to relate to customers. He could open doors to any company in any country. During a meeting at Chase, Rockefeller would inquire about the client's entire family (including pets) by name and birthday. But he did not seem to take an active interest in the day-to-day management of the bank. After retiring from Chase, he was free to stop doing what he was not interested in and could pursue his passion for serving and working with people through philanthropy.\n\n* * *\n\nKnowledge workers have to learn  \nto ask a question that has not been  \nasked before: What should I contribute?\n\n* * *\n\nAs Peter wrote in 1999, \"Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, what should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself\u2014as it was for the peasant or artisan\u2014or by a master or a mistress.\" Knowledge workers have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should I contribute? And to answer that question they need to understand and meld their strengths and passions, and they repeatedly have to ask themselves the fundamental Drucker question: \"If I were not in this career today, would I have gotten into it? If not, what am I going to do about it?\"\n\nFinally, the knowledge worker is both influenced by and influences others. We are influenced by the CEO\u2014the premier role model who lives the purpose, values, and principles of the organization. That influence can and should be inspiring and transformative. Peter always said that if we are going to be passionate about our jobs, we must get the right signals from the top. We are also influenced by our individual passion and strengths. And, throughout our careers, we influence those many other knowledge workers with whom we connect.\n\n* * *\n\nThe CEO has to live the purpose, the values,  \nand the principles of the organization.\n\n* * *\n\nSuccessful careers are not planned; they are managed. And to manage them, we need to put on our CEO hat. The way we manage our careers\u2014switch from company to company, or become consultants or contractors, or start our own business\u2014will be the next revolution. Managing your own life and career takes courage. We have to take calculated risks as individuals if we are going to make the most out of the cards we've been given to play in life. These days, we are not simply salaried employees. We are collaborators, and we all need to think like a CEO.\n\nPeter said it years ago: \"Each of us is a CEO.\" As the CEO managing his own career, Peter Drucker was quite clear on what he wished his legacy to be. During one of our last conversations, he told me that he wanted to be remembered for one single accomplishment: \"Enabling a few people to get the right things done. I mean that literally. I think the specific concepts for which most people know me, management by objectives, or what have you, are of very limited importance. My contribution, such as it is, is to create . . . no, not create . . . to highlight the concept of the responsible and effective executive of management as work and function and responsibility. The traditional definition of a manager is somebody who's got subordinates. My contribution is the definition of a manager as somebody who has results. That's very different. And it is not generally accepted. Most organizations staff their problems and starve their opportunities. And one of the things I'm good at is to counteract. And when people begin to start talking about problems, I say, 'No, wait a minute. Let's first look at the opportunities.' Those are my contributions. I try to make them look forward instead of backward. Opportunities have a habit of asserting themselves. As things collapse, you can't say, 'I'm busy.'\"\n\n* * *\n\nPeter said it years ago:  \n\"Each of us is a CEO.\"\n\n* * *\n\nPeter's last words to me were: \"OK. I'm getting tired, and that's one thing I'm not allowed to do. Come back. I'll be here. I'm not going anyplace.\" He has left our physical world, but kept his promise to \"be there\"\u2014his influence is embedded in our management past, our management present, and our management future.\n\n## **ENDNOTES**\n\n### **Introduction**\n\n. Jim Collins, dinner speech at The Drucker Legacy, Claremont, CA, May 2006.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The End of the Economic Man_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2004), p. 59.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Future of Industrial Man_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002).\n\n. Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, \"What Industrial Policy,\" _Across the Board,_ March\/April 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"Henry Ford: Success and Failure,\" _Harpers Magazine_ , July 1947.\n\n. Frances Hesselbein, interview with author, 2004 and 2006.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Walter Wriston, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Cornelius deKluyver, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The New Realities_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"The New Society of Organizations,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , September\u2013October 1992, Reprint 92503.\n\n. Warren Bennis, interview with author, 2004; Warren Bennis, \"The Invention of Management,\" _Directors & Boards,_ Winter 1982.\n\n### **Chapter 1**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004; Peter F. Drucker, \"The Theory of Business,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , September-October 1994, Reprint 94506.\n\n. Lynda Obst, \"We Lost It at the Movies,\" _New York Magazine_ , May 1, 2006.\n\n. In the 1940s, psychologist Abraham Maslow formulated a theory of a hierarchy of needs that motivate individuals, with the most basic needs for food and shelter at the bottom of the pyramid and psychological needs such as mastery, fulfillment, and security nearer the top. Abraham Maslow, \"A Theory of Human Motivation,\" _Psychological Review_ 50 (1943), pp. 370\u2013396.\n\n. Anne Cushman, \"Fifteen Weeks of Dharma Dating,\" _Tricycle: The Buddhist Review,_ Summer 2006.\n\n. Stanley Reed, \"Why You Should Worry about Big Oil,\" _BusinessWeek,_ May 15, 2006, p. 68; Lola Naya, \"India, China bid for oil firm,\" _The Times of India,_ May 5, 2006. <http:\/\/www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca\/CMS\/printpage.cfm?ID=45737>.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Phillip E Ross, \"Microsoft's Identity Crisis,\" _IEESpectrum,_ October 2005, p. 45.\n\n. <http:\/\/pages.stern.nyu.edu\/~ADAMODAR\/New.Home-Page\/data.html>.\n\n### **Chapter 2**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Practice of Management_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), p. 37; Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Robert E. Herzstein and Henry R. Luce, _A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994), p. 56.\n\n. Ibid., p. 61.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 123.\n\n. Mylene Mangalindan and Robert A. Guth, \"eBay Talks to Microsoft, Yahoo about a Common Foe: Google,\" _Wall Street Journal,_ April 21, 2006.\n\n. Bill Donaldson, interview with Ken Witty, 1999.\n\n. Colgate-Palmolive executive, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Tom Krazit, \"Intel Builds $400 Laptop for School Desks Worldwide,\" CNET News.com, May 3, 2006.62.\n\n. http:\/\/about.skype.com\/2005\/11\/ebay\u2014completes\u2014acquisition\u2014of.html.\n\n. _Wall Street Journal_ staff reporter, \"Skype Reports Subscriber Growth,\" _Wall Street Journal_ , October 26, 2005, online edition.\n\n. AT&T 2004 10-K, October 21, 2005, transcript of third quarter 2005 AT&T earnings conference call.\n\n. In the 1940s, psychologist Abraham Maslow formulated a theory of a hierarchy of needs that motivate individuals, with the most basic needs for food and shelter at the bottom of the pyramid and psychological needs such as mastery, fulfillment, and security nearer the top. Abraham Maslow, \"A Theory of Human Motivation,\" _Psychological Review_ 50 (1943), pp. 370\u2013396.\n\n. Nova Spivack, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. \"Forethought,\" Harvard Business Review, April 2006, p. 21; \"Regional Economy,\" NY.frb.org, 7\/1\/06.\n\n. Colgate-Palmolive executive, interview with author, 2003.\n\n. Andrew M. Odlyzko, _Internet Traffic Growth: Sources and Implications_ , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2003), pp. 4\u20135. <http:\/\/www.dtc.umn.edu\/~odlyzko\/doc\/itcom.internet.growth.pdf>.\n\n. UPS.com\/pressroom\/US\/press-releases\/press-release.\n\n. A.G. Lafley, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Durk Jager, P&G 1999 annual report.\n\n. Drucker at P&G, April 1999, transcription from tapes.\n\n. P&G 2000 annual report.\n\n. A.G. Lafley, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. John Anderson Miller, _Men and Volts at War_ (New York: Whittlesey House, a division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1947).\n\n. Patricia Sellers, \"P&G: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks,\" _Fortune_ , May 17, 2004, online edition.\n\n. Katrina Brooker, \"Procter & Gamble: The Un-CEO,\" _Fortune_ , September 3, 2002, online edition.\n\n. A.G. Lafley, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Gary Silverman, \"How May I Help You?\" _Financial Times_ , February 4\u20135, 2006.\n\n. Indrajit Gupta, \"Why P&G declared war,\" _Business World,_ March 29, 2004, online edition, www.businessworldindia.com\/mar2904\/coverstory02.asp.\n\n. Arnold Corbin, Tony H. Bonaparte, and John E. Flaherty, eds., \"The Impact of Drucker on Marketing,\" _Peter Drucker: Contributions to Business Enterprise_ (New York: New York University Press, 1970), p. 147.\n\n. As quoted in, \"Farewell, Peter Drucker: A Tribute to an Intellectual Giant, Strategic Management,\" from: <http:\/\/knowledge.Wharton.upenn.edu\/article\/1326.cfm>.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. <http:\/\/leadertoleader.com\/leaderbooks\/kotler\/ondrucker.html>.\n\n### **Chapter 3**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Age of Discontinuity_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1968); interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Adventures of a Bystander_ (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994).\n\n. William Bulkeley, \"Boss Talk, Back from the Brink, Mulcahy Leads a Renaissance at Xerox by Emphasizing Color, Customers and Costs,\" _Wall Street Journal_ , April 24, 2006.\n\n. Jim Collins, _Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't_ (New York: Harper Business, 2001); Kimberly-Clark 2004 annual report.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Mark Henricks, \"Letting Go,\" _Entrepreneur_ , February 2000.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), p. 108.\n\n. Peter Drucker, interview with John Goberman, _Live at Lincoln Center_. This interview was conducted in 1995 for an episode of \"Backstage\\Lincoln Center.\"\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with Ken Witty, 1999.\n\n. A.G. Lafley, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Wade Roush, \"Google Pledges Transparency, Debuts New Gadgets,\" _Technology Review_ , May 11, 2006, p. 1.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).\n\n. Hisato Doi of the Druckerian Society of Japan, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. P. K. Prahalad, Fortune Innovation Conference, November 2004.\n\n. David Neeleman, Chairman and CEO, and Dave Barger, President and COO, JetBlue Airways, \"2004 Letter to Stockholders,\" <http:\/\/64.106.229.11\/jetblue2004\/copy\/letter.htmlJetBlue.com>.\n\n. CheckFree Analytic Services, The Marketing Workshop, and Harris Interactive, \"More Than Half of U.S. Online Households Pay at Least One Bill Online, According to CheckFree Survey,\" November 16, 2005. Checkfreecorp.com\/pressreleases.\n\n. School of Dental Hygiene, University of Manitoba, Canada, \"Interesting Facts and Trivia about Toothpaste,\" www.umanitoba.ca\/outreach\/wisdomtooth\/toothpaste.htm.\n\n. \"History of Crest,\" www.pg.com.\/company\/who_we_are\/crest_history.jhtml.\n\n. Linda Grant, \"Out Marketing P&G,\" _Fortune\u2014European Edition,_ January 12, 1998, pp. 68-70.\n\n. Manjeet Kripalani and Pete Engardio, \"Small Is Profitable,\" _BusinessWeek Online_ , August 26, 2002, www.businessweek.com\/print\/magazine\/content\/02_34\/b3796626.htm?chan=mz.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Age of Discontinuity_ (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003), pp. 56, 57.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices_ , (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993), p. 794; interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Armapreet Dhiman, \"Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies Adopt Outsourcing Practices to Combat Rising Costs,\" Frost & Sullivan Press Release, November 23, 2005.\n\n. Thomas Alva Edison as quoted on GE.com.\n\n. David Loth, _Swope of GE: The Story of Gerard Swope and General Electric in American Business_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958), p. 173.\n\n. Jack Welch with John A. Byrne, _Jack: Straight from the Gut_ (New York: Warner Books, 2001); Jack Welch, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interviews with author, 2004 and 2005.\n\n. Harvard Business School case 9-399-150, rev.: May 3, 2005.\n\n. Jerry Useem, \"Another Boss, Another Revolution, Jeff Immelt is following a time-honored GE tradition: abandoning the most treasured ideas of his predecessor,\" _Fortune Online edition_ April 5, 2004, <http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/fortune\/fortune_archive\/2004\/04\/05\/366351\/index.htm>.\n\n. Drucker at P&G, April 1999, transcription from tapes.\n\n. Diane Brady, \"The Immelt Revolution,\" _BusinessWeek online edition_ , March 28, 2005, www.businessweek.com\/magazine\/content\/05_13\/b3926088_mz056.htm?chart=search.\n\n. Brent Schlender, \"The New Soul of a Wealth Machine,\" _Fortune Online edition_ , April 5, 2004, <http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/fortune\/fortune_archive\/2004\/04\/05\/366370\/index.htm>.\n\n. Claudia H. Deutsch, \"Instant Infrastructure,\" _New York Times,_ July 16, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 136.\n\n. John Byrne, \"How Jack Welch Runs GE,\" _BusinessWeek_ (Archives), June 8, 1998, www.businessweek.com\/1998\/23\/b3581001.htm.\n\n. Harvard Business School case 9-602-061, rev.: March 18, 2002.\n\n. Gail E. Schares, Jonathan B. Levine, and Peter Coy, \"The New Generation at Siemens,\" _BusinessWeek online edition_ , March 9, 1992, www.businessweek.com\/archives\/1992\/b325545.arc.htm.\n\n. Dinah Deckstein, \"Kulturschock in M\u00fcnchen,\" _Der Spiegel Online_ ,\" November 7, 2005, <http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/spiegel\/o,1518,383428,00.html>.\n\n. Abrahm Lustgarten, \"Remaking a German Giant with American-Style Tactics,\" _Fortune Online edition_ , August 1, 2006.\n\n### **Chapter 4**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Age of Discontinuity_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003), pp. 178\u2013179.\n\n. <http:\/\/www.nationalmssociety.org\/faq.asp>.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Scott Johnson, interview with author, 2005 and 2006.\n\n. Gene J. Koprowski, \"Dell Moves Beyond Its Computing Roots,\" _TechNewsWorld.com\/story\/32125.html_ , 11\/13\/03.\n\n. Steve Hamm, \"Linux Inc.,\" _BusinessWeek,_ January 31, 2005; <http:\/\/www.netfiles.uiuc.edu\/rhasan\/linux\/>.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n### **Chapter 5**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Jim Collins, dinner speech at The Drucker Legacy, May 2006.\n\n. Paul O'Neill, discussion with author, 2006; Paul O'Neill speech at The Drucker Legacy, May 2006.\n\n. U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics 2005, see <http:\/\/data.bls.gov\/oes\/areatype>.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"The American CEO,\" _Wall Street Journal_ , December 30, 2004, p. A8.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n7. Harvard Business School case 9-705-476, June 9, 2005; Robert Levering, Geoff Colvin, \"The 100 Best Companies to Work for 2006,\" _Fortune,_ January 11, 2005, <http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/fortune\/fortune_archive\/2006\/01\/23\/8366990\/index.htm>.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"Getting Things Done: How to Make People Decisions,\" _Harvard Business Review,_ July\u2013August 1985, Reprint 85406.\n\n. MIT Alumni Meeting, New York, March, 2004, a discussion following the meeting.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"They're Not Employees, They're People,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , February 2002, Reprint R0202E; Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Future of Industrial Man_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002).\n\n. Francis Hesselbein, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, _Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration_ (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1997).\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Frank Delany, \"History of the Microcomputer Revolution, Segment 13\u2014'A Walk in the PARC,'\" _Raw Bytes Computer News_ , National Public Radio, May 10, 1995.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _People and Performance_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); Peter Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Marvin Bower, \"Control and Conformity in the Firm,\" memo to McKinsey & Company U.S. consulting staff, April 7, 1966.\n\n. Jim Collins, interview with author, 2005; The Drucker Foundation, _Wisdom to Action Series_ (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999).\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Bill Pollard, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, _Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration_ (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1997), p. 78.\n\n. Ibid., p. 18.\n\n. Jim Collins, interview with author, 2005; Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, Iain Somerville, eds., _Leading beyond the Walls_ , The Drucker Foundation, _Wisdom to Action Series,_ (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999).\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Steven J. Spear, \"Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , September 2005, Volume 83, Number 9, pp. 78-91.\n\n. Electrolux 2005 annual report.\n\n. Kerry Capell, Heidi Dawley, Ariane Sains, and William Echickson, \"What Does a Knife Do When the Cutting's Done?\" _BusinessWeek international online edition,_ September 18, 2000.\n\n. Hans Str\u00e5berg, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Lester Thurow, \"Help Wanted: A Chief Knowledge Officer,\" _Fast Company,_ January 2004, Issue 78, Page 91.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Bill Pollard, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Charles Baldwin, \"Training Leaders to Lead,\" by Marcus Luft, Honeycomb Worldwide Inc., May 20, 2004, quoting Charles Baldwin, VP Corp of people development at Wal-Mart.\n\n. \"Reviewing and Revising Wal-Mart's Benefits Strategy,\" memorandum to the board of directors from Susan Chambers, _walmarttwatch.com._\n\n. eBay 2004 Form 10-K (annual report required by the SEC), <http:\/\/investor.ebay.com\/downloads\/2004AnnualReport\/f06732h1e0vk.htm>; Hani Durzy, director of corporate communications, eBay Inc., e-mails with author, 2006.\n\n. Beth Axelrod, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. John Bachmann, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Measured as pretax return on equity since Jones is a partnership.\n\n. Peter Cohan, \"Value from Values: Introducing the Concept of Value Leadership,\" _Babson Insight e-magazine,_ www.Babsoninsight.com\/contentmgr\/showdetails.php\/id\/611.\n\n. John Bachmann, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. John Bachmann, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Edward Jones, March 2006, Form 10 K, Part I, p. 3, http:\/\/premium.hoovers.com\/subscribe\/co\/secdoc.xhtml?ID=40868&ipage=3372701&doc=1.\n\n. Edwardjones.com.\n\n. Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian, \"Google: Ten Golden Rules,\" _Newsweek,_ December 2, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _People and Performance_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).\n\n### **Chapter 6**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), p. 143; interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, American Management Association interview, 1982.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), p. 155.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, American Management Association interview, 1982.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, interview with author 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), extracted from pp. 16 and 17 and interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).\n\n. Joe Pereira, retired head of Quality Clairol, interview with author, 2004.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), extracted from pp. 113\u2013118.\n\n. Maynard, Michelle, and James Brooke, \"Toyota Closes in on G.M.: Signs Point toward Japanese Maker Being the Top Seller Soon,\" _New York Times_ , December 21, 2005, p. C1.\n\n. <http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/fortune\/global500\/2005\/index.html>.\n\n. Taiichi Ohno, _Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production_ (Portland, Oregon: Productivity Press, 1978), p. 17.\n\n. Jeffrey K. Liker, _The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer_ (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), p. 3.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Adventurers of a Bystander_ (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), pp. 286-287.\n\n### **Chapter 7**\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"Managing Oneself,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , March\u2013April 1999, HBR OnPoint, product number 4444, pp. 65-74; Peter. F. Drucker, \"The American CEO,\" _Wall Street Journal,_ December 30, 2004; Peter F. Drucker, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _The Age of Discontinuity_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).\n\n. Louise Amell (Hans Werthen's daughter), interview with author, 2002.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"The Theory of the Business,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , September\u2013October 1994, Reprint 94506, pp. 95-104.\n\n. Robert Sobel, _A History of the New York Stock Exchange 1935-1975_ (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1975).\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, _Managing in the Next Society_ (New York: Truman Talley Books, St. Martin Press, 2002), p. 150.\n\n. Richard Jenrette, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. Donaldson, interview with Ken Witty, 2000; interview with author, 2006.\n\n. Bob Buford, interview with author, 2005.\n\n. Donaldson, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. Richard Jenrette, interview with author, 2006.\n\n. Peter F. Drucker, \"Managing Oneself,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , March\u2013April 1999, HBR OnPoint, product number 444, pp. 65-74; interview with author, 2004.\n\n## **BOOKS BY PETER F. DRUCKER**\n\n### LISTED BY ORIGINAL PUBLICATION DATE\n\nGermanicus, _Germany The Last Four Years*_ (Boston and New York: The Houghton Mifflin Company, 1937).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism_ (New York, London: The John Day Company, 1939).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Future of Industrial Man_ (New York: The John Day Company, 1942).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Concept of the Corporation_ (New York: The John Day Company, 1946).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The New Society: The Anatomy of Industrial Order_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Practice of Management_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _America's Next Twenty Years_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New \"Post-Modern\" World_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Technology, Management and Society_ (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1958).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Power and Democracy in America*_ (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing for Results_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Effective Executive_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, ed., _Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders Today*_ (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Men, Ideas and Politics: Essays_ , similar to _The New Markets . . . and Other Essays_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Drucker on Management_ (London: Management Publications Limited, 1971).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The New Markets . . . and Other Essays,_ similar to _Men, Ideas and Politics: Essays_ (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1971).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Unseen Revolution\u2014How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _An Introductory View of Management_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Management Cases*_ (New York: Harper's College Press, 1977).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Adventures of a Bystander_ (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1978).\n\nEssay by Peter F. Drucker, John M. Rosenfield, Ed., _Song of the Brush: Japanese Painting from the Sanso Collection,*_ An exhibition organized by Henry Trubner, William J. Rathburn, (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1979).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing in Turbulent Times_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Toward the Next Economics and Other Essays_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1981).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Changing World of the Executive_ (New York: Truman Talley Books\u2013Times Books, 1982).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Last of All Possible Worlds**_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Temptation to Do Good**_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Innovation and Entrepreneurship_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Frontiers of Management_ (New York: Truman Talley Books\/E. P. Dutton, 1986).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The New Realities_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing the Non-Profit Organization_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1990).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing for the Future: The 1990s and Beyond_ (New York: Truman Talley Books\/E. P. Dutton, 1992).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Post-Capitalist Society_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Ecological Vision_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 1993).\n\nPeter F. Drucker and Isao Nakauchi, _Drucker on Asia\u2014A Dialogue between Peter Drucker and Isao Nakauchi (aka Chosen No Toki)_ (Diamond Inc., 1995 in Japanese; Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, 1997 in English).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing in a Time of Great Change_ (New York: Truman Talley Books, 1995).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Executive in Action: Managing for Results, Innnovation and Entrepreneurship, the Effective Executive_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 1996).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management_ (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1998).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Management Challenges for the 21st Century_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 1999).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _The Essential Drucker: In One Volume the Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Managing in the Next Society_ (New York: Truman Talley Books\/St. Martin's Press, 2002).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _A Functioning Society: Selections from Sixty-Five Years of Writing on Community, Society and Policy_ (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003).\n\nPeter F. Drucker with Joseph A. Maciariello, _The Daily Drucker_ (New York: HarperBusiness, 2004).\n\nPeter F. Drucker and Joseph A. Maciariello, _The Effective Executive in Action_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).\n\nPeter F. Drucker, _Classic Drucker: Wisdom from Peter Drucker from the Pages of Harvard Business Review_ (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2006).\n\n## **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nI am past, present, and future indebted to Peter Ferdinand Drucker for inviting me out to California in April 2004 for what would become the first of our many visits. Peter overlooked my initial ungainly attempts to distill his ideas for the twenty-first-century manager. Instead, he patiently, tactfully, and engagingly answered my questions, while helping to fact-check the manuscript. During the writing of this book, Peter had two pieces of advice, which I attempted to follow: First: \"In synthesizing my ideas for the twenty-first century, you must do so as if you were the CEO of Drucker, Inc.\u2014that is, question the whole of my work and let go of what has turned out to be misdirected, is no longer relevant, resultless, or just plain wrong\"; second: \"Don't get caught up in the theoretical, stay with the actual. There is a lot that has already happened.\"\n\nThank you, Peter, for liberating me, for allowing me to step out of my comfort zone, for helping me to challenge my assumptions, and to raise my expectations.\n\nI also want to express heartfelt thanks . . .\n\nTo the many Drucker clients, friends, students, and coworkers who graciously shared their Peter stories with me. They breathed life into my interpretation of Peter's wide range of ideas. They provided perspectives of Peter the mentor, who changed each of their lives. He asked each of them to think, to play to their strengths, to do what is right. They taught me how he helped each of them clarify their ambition and embark on journeys to places and accomplishments they never thought they'd see.\n\nTo my friends Mark McClusky and Robin Esterson, who shared with me how simply reading Peter's ideas changed and enhanced their lives.\n\nTo my clients and partners over the years who educated me by being living examples of Drucker doctrines. To my friend and adviser, Arnoldo Hax, for helping me understand the business needs of today.\n\nTo the many colleagues and friends who helped me navigate through my emotions, insights, frustrations, and challenges: Joe Maciariello and Kerry Boyle, for helping me through the Claremont world, the Drucker archives, and just enjoying coffee in California; Nan Stone, for helping me understand the map and gain insight from her experiences as I was getting started, and repeatedly as I made my frantic phone calls to her office and home; Cecily Drucker, who in one call explained the inner workings of the Drucker household to me, and later took the time to be the \"outsider\" with inside blood reading a draft and offering suggestions; and Alice Martell, who quickly secured a contract with an excited team at McGraw-Hill.\n\nTo the team of editors, writers, researchers, and friends who read and contributed to countless versions of many of these chapters. Joan Wilson helped me get the words down the first time. Jeanne Glasser saw the potential of this project. Cheryl Hudson worked endlessly getting the pages ready for production. Jasmine Cresswell exhorted me during the revisions. Leah Spiro showed me how to rewrite. David Marcus, now at _Newsday_ , made me write a story; every time I didn't, he called me on it. Paige Siempelkamp and Don Penny took photographs, designed pages, fixed computers, and read into the night. Jackie Barry, Mel Furman, Jim Wade, and Sara Roche never got tired of giving me feedback. Violet Edersheim said, \"This is not bad, it just needs a little bit of translation,\" and then went to work translating. Ellen Harvey and David Meyer fact-checked, compiled, researched, drafted anecdotes, and proofed every detail. Herb Schaffner brought his verve to the project at McGraw-Hill.\n\nI am especially indebted to Louise Amell, Atsuo Ueda, and T George Harris. This book would not exist without the significant contributions and global reminders of Louise, the challenges and Druckerian perspectives of Ueda-san, and the constant flow of encouragement and anecdotes from George.\n\nTo my father, Felix Haas, who shared the importance of a global perspective, allowed me to understand a Viennese critic's view of the world, and stressed the necessity of intellectual honesty since my childhood. And to my mother, Violet Haas, who showed me the power of not being afraid to tackle important challenges and who shared Peter's very fundamental belief that every person deserves respect.\n\nAnd finally, to Alvin and Violet, who understood every time I said, \"Just one more chapter,\" and then, \"Just one more week,\" and even encouraged me to keep at it while we lived out of boxes waiting to be unpacked. I hope my generation leaves you a world with ethical, innovative companies that create opportunities while sharing your love of the environment and your sense of what's right.\n\n### Art credits\n\nThanks to the illustrators whose works appear in this volume:\n\nTitle page: Illustration copyright \u00a9 2007 by Opoku Acheampong.\n\nPage 16: Illustration copyright \u00a9 2006 by Rodica Prato. All rights reserved.\n\nPage 46: Reproduced with permission of Bob Buford. Calligraphic illustration by Timothy R. Botts.\n\n## **INDEX**\n\n_Please note that index links point to page beginnings from the print edition. Locations are approximate in e-readers, and you may need to page down one or more times after clicking a link to get to the indexed material_.\n\n### **A**\n\nAbandonment, \u201392\n\nto enable embracing of the new,\n\nto enable innovation,\n\nat General Electric,\n\nsystematic, \u201391\n\nof unconscious assumptions, \u201392\n\nAccountability:\n\nin collaborative projects, \u2013148\n\nin innovation, \u2013111\n\nAchievement, contribution vs.,\n\nAdelphi,\n\nAGI (Album Graphics Incorporated),\n\nAiming high, \u2013107\n\nAlbum Graphics Incorporated (AGI),\n\nAlcoa, \u2013160\n\nAllergan, \u2013110\n\nAlternative solutions, \u2013225\n\nAmazon, \u201335,\n\nApple, , \u201385, , \u2013197\n\nArmstrong, Michael, ,\n\nArrow Electronics,\n\nArthur Andersen,\n\nAssumptions,\n\nabout understanding of issues, \u2013219\n\nCEOs' questioning of,\n\nunconscious, \u201392\n\nAT&T, \u201359\n\nAuthority, for decision making,\n\nAutonomy:\n\nisolation vs.,\n\nfor liberation, \u2013174\n\nAvon,\n\nAxelrod, Beth,\n\nAyers, Emory, \u2013101\n\n### **B**\n\nBachmann, John, , ,\n\nBackroom service providers, ,\n\nBain & Company, \u2013194\n\nBarres, Ben, \u2013140\n\nBarriers, fall of,\n\nBell Laboratories,\n\nBennis, Warren,\n\nBerlin Wall,\n\nBlock, Richard,\n\nBoeing, ,\n\nBonaparte, Tony, \u201311\n\nBoundarylessness,\n\nBower, Marvin, , \u2013173\n\nBrainstorming, \u2013105\n\nBrand, \u2013254,\n\nBrin, Sergey,\n\nBromley, Rusty, , , \u2013146\n\nBuffett, Warren,\n\nBuford, Bob,\n\nBusiness environment, \u201341\n\nembracing of the new in, \u201327\n\nnew solution space in, \u201336\n\nperceptions\/dimensions of, \u201335\n\nprimacy of knowledge in, \u201331\n\nsilent revolution in, \u201325, \u201340\n\nBusiness model, changes in,\n\nBusiness plan, for collaboration, \u2013144\n\nBusiness strategy:\n\nintegrating innovation strategy and, \u201371,\n\nportfolio of opportunities and, \u2013117\n\nBusiness theory,\n\n_BusinessWeek,_\n\nBuying habit changes, as opportunities, \u2013101\n\n### **C**\n\nCampbell's Soup,\n\nCanon,\n\nCavanagh, Richard, ,\n\nCell phones, \u201336\n\nCEOs, \u2013260\n\nbrand of, \u2013254\n\ncourage in, \u2013241\n\nfield of vision of, \u2013249\n\nimpact on people, \u2013256\n\ninfluence of, \u2013240\n\nknowledge workers as, , \u2013260\n\nthings unique to,\n\nChase Manhattan Bank,\n\nCheckFree Corp.,\n\nChina National Petroleum Corp.,\n\nCho, Fujio,\n\nChurchill, Winston,\n\nCincinnati Milacron, \u201363\n\nCivilization,\n\nClairol, \u2013170, \u2013228\n\nClaremont,\n\nCochrane Collaboration, \u2013192\n\nColman, David, \u2013140\n\nColgate, ,\n\nColgate North America, \u201356\n\nCollaboration, \u2013155\n\nbusiness plan for, \u2013144\n\ncommunications for agile decision making in, \u2013147\n\ndefining strengths in, \u2013142\n\nat Dell, \u2013136\n\nat Ericsson, \u2013153\n\ngoals of,\n\nat International Tobacco Company, \u2013137\n\nknowledge built into, \u2013192\n\nin MS research, \u201327, \u2013135 ( _See also_ Myelin Repair Foundation)\n\norchestration of,\n\npower of, \u2013130\n\nquestions about,\n\ntracking progress of, \u2013153\n\nCollaborative partnerships,\n\nCollins, Jim, , ,\n\nCommitment:\n\nbuilding, \u2013171\n\nof decision implementers, \u2013226\n\nto support decisions,\n\nCommodity players,\n\nCommunication(s):\n\nfor agile decision making, \u2013147\n\nwith knowledge workers,\n\nCompanies:\n\naverage life of,\n\ngeographic reach of, \u201321\n\nidentity of,\n\noutside information on, \u201367\n\nCompetitors:\n\nbetter solutions vs., \u201336\n\ncustomers vs., \u201355\n\nworld-class,\n\nComponent players, \u201372\n\nConant, Doug,\n\nCond\u00e9 Nast,\n\nThe Conference Board,\n\nConnectedness, \u201334\n\nwith customers, \u201351\n\nand knowledge,\n\nand perception of value, \u201364\n\nConsensus, ,\n\nContribution:\n\nachievement vs.,\n\nmaximizing, \u2013181\n\nCooperation in global marketplace,\n\nCorbin, Arnold,\n\nCore competencies, \u2013199\n\nCorning, , \u2013117,\n\nCott Beverage, \u201368, \u2013252\n\nCourage, of CEOs, \u2013241\n\nCraigslist, \u201338\n\nCustomer relationship:\n\nknowledge built into, \u2013190\n\ntechnology and changes in,\n\nand value perception, \u201364\n\nCustomer team,\n\nCustomers, \u201381\n\ncompetitors vs., \u201355\n\ncontrol by, , \u201360\n\nconverting noncustomers to, \u201360\n\nas determinants of business, \u201344\n\nas _Fortune_ magazine focus, ,\n\ngeographic reach of, \u201321\n\nidentifying, \u201353\n\nidentifying noncustomers, \u201356\n\nidentifying value for,\n\nintelligence on,\n\nleveraging information on, \u201368\n\nas Medtronic focus, \u201348\n\nand outside information on your company, \u201367\n\nand \"outside-in\" perspective, \u201372\n\nP&G's new perspective on, \u201378\n\nquestions for connecting with, \u201351\n\nunderstanding,\n\nunsatisfied wants of, \u201365, \u201398\n\nvalue from perspective of, , , \u201364\n\n### **D**\n\nDavidson, Marty,\n\nDe Vos, Harry, ,\n\nDecision making, \u2013238\n\nchecking results of,\n\nfor collaboration, \u2013147\n\ncommitment to supporting,\n\nby customers,\n\ndata for,\n\ndefining successful solutions in, \u2013221\n\ndelegating authority for,\n\nevaluating alternative solutions in, \u2013225\n\ngaining implementers' commitment in, \u2013226\n\nissue tree for, \u2013220\n\norganized tracking and feedback in, \u2013228\n\nprocess for, \u2013229\n\nquestions about, \u2013214\n\nrisk taking in, \u2013213\n\nby top management, \u2013216\n\nat Toyota, \u2013237\n\nunnecessary, \u2013215\n\nDecision screen,\n\nDell, Michael, , ,\n\nDell Computer, \u201334, \u2013136\n\nDemographic changes, \u201322,\n\nDeupree, R. R.,\n\nDevelopment, opportunities for, \u2013183\n\nDHL,\n\nDiversity of global workforce, \u2013169\n\nDoane,\n\nDonaldson, Bill, , \u2013245, , , ,\n\nDonaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, , ,\n\nCEO brand at, \u2013251\n\nCEO influence on people at, \u2013255\n\nvision of CEO at, \u2013247\n\nDorrance, John,\n\nDrexel Burnham Lambert,\n\nDrucker, Doris,\n\nDuPont, , ,\n\n### **E**\n\neBay, ,\n\nEconomic entities, largest,\n\nEconomic opportunity, \u201315\n\nEdison, Thomas, ,\n\nEdward Jones, \u201350, \u2013205\n\nEffectiveness:\n\ndefined,\n\nefficiency vs.,\n\nin management, \u2013211\n\nEfficiency:\n\ndefined,\n\neffectiveness vs.,\n\nElectrolux, , \u2013188,\n\nElectronic Arts,\n\nElectronics, self-diagnostic,\n\nEllsworth, Richard,\n\nEmbracing the new, \u201327\n\nEmotional intelligence,\n\nEmployees ( _see_ People)\n\nEmpowerment, measurement vs.,\n\nEnron,\n\nEthics,\n\nExpectations:\n\nchanging,\n\ncomparing results to,\n\nopportunities from incongruities in, \u201399\n\nExpedia,\n\n### **F**\n\n_Faust_ (Goethe),\n\nFederal Express,\n\nFeedback:\n\nin decision making, \u2013228\n\nfor employees, \u2013183\n\nField of vision (of CEOs), \u2013249\n\nFinancial markets, value of knowledge in, \u201337\n\nFlex-time,\n\nFlextronics,\n\n_Forbes_ magazine,\n\nForced ranking,\n\nFord, Henry,\n\nFord Motor Company, ,\n\n_Fortune_ magazine, , , ,\n\nFossum, Lilian, , ,\n\nFox, Vicente,\n\nFrance Telecom,\n\nFraud,\n\nFriedman, Thomas,\n\nFront room, defining, \u2013138,\n\n### **G**\n\nGates, Bill, , ,\n\nGeneral Electric (GE):\n\nDrucker's influence on, \u201326\n\non Forbes 100 list, ,\n\ninnovation at, \u2013122\n\nknowledge-based management for,\n\nreasons for success of, \u201389\n\nGeneral Motors, \u2013237\n\ncommon goals at,\n\non Forbes  list,\n\nsuccess of,\n\nGenetech,\n\nGeographic reach:\n\nof companies\/customers, \u201321\n\nopportunities in,\n\nGerstner, Lou,\n\nGirl Scouts of America, ,\n\nGlobal marketplace,\n\nGlobal workforce, \u2013169\n\nGoogle,\n\ninnovation at,\n\npartnership with Ericsson,\n\nsoftware bundles from,\n\nsymbiotic\/competitive relationships of, \u201355\n\n10 golden rules for knowledge workers, \u2013207\n\nwireless service model of,\n\nGorbachev, Mikhail,\n\nGrove, Andy, , ,\n\nGwyn, Robert,\n\n### **H**\n\nHachette,\n\nHammer, Michael,\n\nHerman Miller,\n\nHesselbein, Frances, \u201318,\n\nHiring, ,\n\nHistory,\n\nHoch, Stephen J.,\n\nHockfield, Susan,\n\nHome Depot, , , \u2013182,\n\n### **I**\n\nIBM, ,\n\nIdeas:\n\nbrainstorming, \u2013105\n\nmatching opportunities and, \u2013107\n\nprocess for reaching solutions from,\n\ntesting and refining, \u2013108\n\nIkea,\n\nImmelt, Jeff, \u2013121\n\nIncongruities, as opportunities, \u201399\n\nIndustry disparities, as opportunities,\n\nInfluence, in defining new markets, \u2013114\n\nInformation:\n\nflow of, ,\n\nleveraging, \u201368\n\nInfosys Technologies,\n\nInnovation, \u2013125\n\nand abandonment, \u201392\n\nand ability of ideas to meet needs, \u2013107\n\naccountability in evaluating, \u2013111\n\nat Apple, \u201385\n\nbalance of old practices and,\n\nbrainstorming for, \u2013105\n\ncompany's target role\/influence in, \u2013114\n\ncontinuous process map for management of, \u2013111\n\nand current business strategy, \u2013117\n\ndesire for,\n\nas discipline,\n\nat General Electric, \u2013122\n\nknowledge built into process for, \u2013191\n\nmanagement support for, \u201395, \u2013109\n\nquestions about,\n\nresource allocation for,\n\nat Siemens AG, \u2013124\n\nsources of opportunities for, \u2013103\n\nat Starbucks, \u201384\n\ntaking offensive for, \u201394\n\ntesting and refining ideas for, \u2013108\n\nIntegration of strategies, \u201371,\n\nIntel, \u201357\n\nIntellectual capital, strategy for developing,\n\nIntelligence:\n\non customers,\n\nemotional,\n\noutside-in,\n\nInterconnectedness, \u201334\n\nInternal marketplace,\n\nInternational Tobacco Company (ITC), \u2013137\n\nInternet:\n\nbill-paying via,\n\ncollaboration via,\n\ninformation available on, \u201367\n\nreal estate market on,\n\ntravel industry business via,\n\nInternet boom,\n\nInvestment, in knowledge and people, \u2013164,\n\nIsolation, , ,\n\nIssue tree, \u2013220\n\nITC ( _see_ International Tobacco Company)\n\n### **J**\n\nJacobs Engineering, \u201362\n\nJager, Durk, \u201375\n\nJaipur Foot,\n\nJenrette, Richard (Dick), \u2013246, \u2013251,\n\nJetBlue, \u201399\n\nJob descriptions,\n\nJobs, Steve,\n\nJohnson, David,\n\nJohnson, Scott, \u2013130, \u2013135, , , , \u2013147\n\nJones, David,\n\nJones, Ted, \u201350,\n\n### **K**\n\nKantrow, Alan, \u201312\n\nKim, Dorthy,\n\nKimberly-Clark,\n\nKissinger, Henry,\n\nKittle's Furniture,\n\nKleinfeld, Klaus, \u2013124\n\nKnight, Pete,\n\nKnowledge:\n\nbuilding in,\n\nin collaborations\/partnerships, \u2013192\n\nin customer connection, \u2013190\n\ndefining, \u2013166\n\nDrucker philosophy on,\n\nin innovation process, \u2013191\n\ninvesting in, \u2013164\n\nlearning vs. teaching,\n\nin management, \u2013200\n\nopportunities in, \u2013103\n\nin performance of core capabilities,\n\nprimacy of, \u201331\n\ntechnology vs.,\n\nvalue of, \u201337\n\nand war on terrorism,\n\nKnowledge economy, transition to,\n\nKnowledge management, \u2013200\n\nKnowledge providers, ,\n\nKnowledge strategies, \u2013200\n\ncommodity players in,\n\nknowledge providers in, ,\n\nrelationship-dependent connectors in, \u2013200\n\nservice providers in, \u2013199\n\nKnowledge workers, \u2013161\n\nattracting\/retaining,\n\nautonomy and support for,\n\nas CEOs, , \u2013260\n\nGoogle's 10 golden rules for, \u2013207\n\nguidance and oversight for,\n\nmanagement of, \u2013162\n\nmaximizing contribution and productivity of, \u2013181\n\nneed for, \u201312\n\nKnowledge-based management, \u201331\n\nKodak,\n\nKotler, Philip,\n\n### **L**\n\nLafley, A.G.,\n\non being open to innovation, \u201394\n\non bureaucracies,\n\nknowledge of customers by,\n\non Peter's unfinished chapter,\n\nas P&G CEO, \u201377\n\nLast buggy whip manufacturers, \u2013114\n\nLeadership, , , \u201318\n\nLearning opportunities, \u2013183\n\nLego world, \u201333\n\nLeveraging information on customers, \u201368\n\nLevitt, Theodore,\n\nLiberation, \u201310, ,\n\n_Life_ magazine,\n\nLinux, \u2013141, \u2013213\n\nLiving business plan, \u2013144\n\nLM Ericsson, \u2013153\n\nLoyalty,\n\nLuce, Henry, , ,\n\nLucent Technologies,\n\nLufkin, Dan, , \u2013246,\n\nLuxuryhomes.com,\n\n### **M**\n\nMcAfee,\n\nMcGovern, Gordon,\n\nMcGowan, James,\n\nMcKinsey & Company, , , , , , , , , , , ,\n\nMacLeish, Archibald,\n\nManagement:\n\nas about people,  ( _See also_ People)\n\nchallenge for,\n\ncredibility of,\n\ndecision making by, \u2013216\n\ndestruction of shareholder value by,\n\nDrucker philosophy on,\n\nDrucker's emphasis on,\n\neffectiveness in, \u2013211\n\nof innovation, \u2013111\n\ninnovation supported by, \u201395, \u2013109\n\nof knowledge workers, \u2013162\n\nknowledge-based, \u201331\n\nmost important challenge for, \u201329\n\nneed for new theory of,\n\nof service workers, \u2013162\n\ntaking right risks in, \u2013213\n\ntalent, \u2013189\n\n( _See also_ CEOs)\n\nManagement by objectives (MBO),\n\nManagement world, \u201335\n\nMarket behavior, opportunities from incongruities in, \u201399\n\nMarkets:\n\ncreating,\n\nnew, defining, \u2013114\n\nMaslow, Abraham,\n\nMatch.com,\n\nMayer, Marissa,\n\nMBO (management by objectives),\n\nMeasurement:\n\nof collaboration progress, \u2013153\n\nof customer service,\n\nempowerment vs.,\n\nof innovation results,\n\nMedtronic, \u201348\n\nMicromanagement, \u2013216\n\nMicrosoft, , \u201364,\n\nMiller, Robert, \u2013140\n\nMiller, Stephen, \u2013140\n\nMission, \u2013171\n\nMoney, Drucker philosophy on,\n\nMonster.com, \u201338\n\nMorgan, J. P.,\n\nMorgan Stanley,\n\nMorita, Akio,\n\nMorrison, Dale,\n\nMotion, progress vs.,\n\nMotorola, , \u2013108\n\nMRF ( _see_ Myelin Repair Foundation)\n\nMS research, \u201327, \u2013135 ( _See also_ Myelin Repair Foundation)\n\nMulcahy, Anne,\n\nMurphy, William B.,\n\nMyelin Repair Foundation (MRF), \u2013130,\n\nbusiness plan for, \u2013144\n\ncollaborative approach at, \u201327\n\ncommunications challenge at, \u2013147\n\nfront room defined by, \u2013140\n\nmeasuring progress at, \u2013148\n\norchestration of collaboration at,\n\nMySpace, ,\n\n### **N**\n\nNAPO ( _see_ North American Parts Organization [Toyota])\n\nNew knowledge, as opportunities, \u2013103\n\nNew markets, defining, \u2013114\n\nNew York Stock Exchange (NYSE), \u2013247,\n\n_New York Times,_\n\nNiche players,\n\nNokia, \u2013105, ,\n\nNoncustomers:\n\nconverting, \u201360\n\nidentifying, \u201356\n\nNorth American Parts Organization (NAPO, Toyota), \u2013234\n\n\"Not\" questions,\n\nNuechtern, Martin, ,\n\nNYSE ( _see_ New York Stock Exchange)\n\n### **O**\n\nOesterle, Stephen,\n\nOgilvy & Mather,\n\nOhno, Taiichi,\n\nOil & Natural Gas Corp.,\n\nOkuda, Hiroshi,\n\nO'Neill, Paul, \u2013159,\n\nOne-stop shops\/bundlers,\n\nOpportunities, \u2013103\n\ncapturing,\n\nin changes that shift buying habits, \u2013101\n\nin demographic changes,\n\neconomic, \u201315\n\nfor employee learning and development, \u2013183\n\nin incongruities, \u201399\n\nin industry disparities across time or geography,\n\nmatching ideas and, \u2013107\n\nmatching people's strengths to, \u2013178\n\nin new knowledge, \u2013103\n\nin process vulnerability, \u2013100\n\nquestions about seeking,\n\nrapidity of, \u201340\n\nrecognizing,\n\nsources of, \u2013103\n\nin unexpected occurrences, \u201398\n\nin white space,\n\nOrbitz, ,\n\nOrchestration of collaboration,\n\nOrganizational structure, \u2013179\n\nOtellini, Paul S.,\n\n\"Outside-in\" perspective, , \u201372\n\nOutsourcing, , \u2013149\n\nOzzie, Ray,\n\n### **P**\n\nPalo Alto Research Center (PARC), \u2013171,\n\nPartnerships, \u201392,\n\ncollaborative,  ( _See also_ Collaboration)\n\nat Edward Jones,\n\nknowledge built into, \u2013192\n\nPayPal,\n\nPeace,\n\nPeapod, \u201392\n\nPeople, \u2013189\n\nat Alcoa, \u2013160\n\nassigned to innovation, \u201394\n\nautonomy and support for, \u2013174\n\nclear mission and direction for, \u2013171\n\nconnectedness of,\n\ndefining knowledge and working styles of, \u2013166\n\nfor diverse global workforce, \u2013169\n\nDrucker philosophy on,\n\nat Edward Jones, \u2013205\n\neffectiveness vs. efficiency of,\n\nidentifying job definitions\/requirements for,\n\ninvesting in, \u2013164\n\nknowledge built into management of, \u2013200\n\nknowledge workers, \u2013161\n\nlearning and development for, \u2013183\n\nmatching opportunities to strengths of, \u2013178\n\nmaximizing contribution and productivity of, \u2013181\n\nplaying to strengths of, \u2013177\n\nquestions about treatment of,\n\nservice workers,\n\nstrategy for developing,\n\ntalent management with, \u2013189\n\nPepper, John,\n\nPepperidge Farm,\n\nPerceptions:\n\nof business environment, \u201335\n\nbuying habit changes due to, \u2013101\n\nof value, , \u201364\n\nPerformance, , \u2013183\n\nPerformance reviews,\n\nPeter's Marauder's Map,\n\nP&G ( _see_ Procter & Gamble)\n\nPittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative (PRHI),\n\nPolaroid, \u2013189\n\nPollard, Bill, , ,\n\nPopko, Brian, \u2013140\n\nPRHI ( _see_ Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative)\n\nPriceline.com,\n\nPriorities:\n\nbuying habit changes due to, \u2013101\n\nclear mission\/direction for establishing, \u2013171\n\nProcess vulnerabilities, as opportunities, \u2013100\n\nProcter & Gamble (P&G):\n\nchanges at, \u201324\n\non Forbes  list, ,\n\nand Kimberly-Clark,\n\nnew perspective on customers at, \u201378\n\nscientific innovation at, \u2013102\n\nProductivity:\n\nmaximizing, \u2013181\n\nin traditional workforce, \u2013169\n\nProgress, motion vs.,\n\n_Psychology Today,_\n\n### **Q**\n\nQuestions,\n\non alternative solutions,\n\nfor brainstorming,\n\non building in knowledge,\n\non collaboration, , , ,\n\non commitment to decisions,\n\non connecting with customers, \u201351\n\non converting ideas into solutions,\n\non culture's support for decision making,\n\non customer perception of value,\n\non decision making, \u2013214\n\nas Drucker trademark,\n\non gaining implementers' commitment,\n\non hiring,\n\non identifying customers,\n\non innovation,\n\non integration of strategies,\n\non maximizing contributions of people,\n\n\"not,\"\n\non resources allocation,\n\non respect for human capital,\n\non results with customers,\n\non right people for organization,\n\non seeking opportunities,\n\non solution specifications, \u2013221\n\non strategy for intellectual capital and people,\n\non strategy integration,\n\non treatment of people,\n\n### **R**\n\nReibstein, David J.,\n\nReinventing business ( _see_ Innovation)\n\nRelationship-dependent connectors, \u2013200\n\nReplicators, \u201354\n\nResource allocation:\n\nfor innovation,\n\nto support decisions,\n\nResponsive products, \u201372\n\nResults:\n\nof collaboration, \u2013153\n\ncommunicating, \u201368\n\ncomparing expectations to,\n\nmeasuring,\n\nquestions on,\n\nresources for achieving, \u2013109\n\nRiddell Company, \u2013108\n\nRisk taking, \u2013213,\n\nRockefeller, David,\n\nRubbermaid,\n\n### **S**\n\nSadove, Steve, \u2013228\n\nSally Beauty Supply,\n\nSBC Communications,\n\nSchmidt, Eric, \u2013207\n\nScience, customer-driven,\n\nScientific innovation, \u2013103\n\nScope of offerings,\n\nScorecards,\n\nScott Lawn Care, ,\n\nScott Paper,\n\nSealy Mattress,\n\nSelf-diagnostic electronics,\n\nService providers, \u2013199\n\nService workers,\n\nmanagement of, \u2013162\n\nproductivity of,\n\nServiceMaster, ,\n\nShadow customers,\n\nShareholder value, destruction of,\n\nSherman, Bill,\n\nSiemens AG, , \u2013118, \u2013124,\n\nSilent revolution, \u201325\n\nbasic demographic characteristics in, \u201322\n\nconsequences of, \u201340\n\ncustomer control in,\n\nfall of walls in,\n\ngeographic reach in, \u201321\n\nimpact of, \u201324\n\ninformation flow in,\n\nSkype, ,\n\nSloan, Alfred P., , \u2013237\n\nSmith, Darwin, \u201390\n\nSmith-Barney,\n\nSoft assets,  ( _See also_ Knowledge)\n\nSolutions:\n\nalternative, \u2013225\n\ncompetition vs., \u201336\n\nconverting ideas into,\n\nsuccessful, \u2013221\n\nSony,\n\nSouthern Pipe, ,\n\nSpace definers, \u2013113\n\nSpivack, Nova,\n\nStarbucks, , \u201384\n\nStevenson, Dave,\n\nStop & Shop, \u201392\n\nStr\u00e5berg, Hans, , ,\n\nStrategies,\n\nimportance of, \u201340\n\nindividualized,\n\nfor innovation, \u2013117\n\nintegration of, \u201371,\n\nknowledge, \u2013200\n\nStrengths:\n\ndefining, \u2013138\n\nfocusing on,\n\nknowledge of,\n\nopportunities for developing, \u2013183\n\nof people, \u2013178\n\nSumerset Houseboats,\n\nSwope, Gerald,\n\nSymantec,\n\nSynthes, \u201391\n\nSystematic abandonment, \u201391\n\n### **T**\n\nTactics, \u201340\n\nTalent management, \u2013189\n\nTarget,\n\nTaylor, Bob, \u2013171,\n\nTeams,\n\nTechnology,\n\nTelmex,\n\n10 golden rules for knowledge workers, \u2013207\n\nTheory of business,\n\nThomas Moser,\n\nThurm, David,\n\n_Time_ ,\n\nTime-Life,\n\nTiVo,\n\nTorvalds, Linus, , \u2013213\n\nToshiba, ,\n\nToyoda, Sakichi,\n\nToyoda Automatic Loom Works,\n\nToyota Motor Company, \u2013235,\n\nToyota Production System, , \u2013233\n\nTracking,\n\nof collaboration progress, \u2013153\n\nof decision implementation, \u2013228\n\nTrends, implications of,\n\nTreschow, Mike,\n\n### **U**\n\nUnconscious assumptions, \u201392\n\nUnexpected occurrences, as opportunities, \u201398\n\nUnilever,\n\nU.S. Postal Service,\n\nUnnecessary decision making, \u2013215\n\nUPS, , , , ,\n\n### **V**\n\nVail, Theodore,\n\nValue:\n\ncustomer perception of, , \u201364\n\nidentifying,\n\nknowledge-based,\n\n\"outside-in\" perspective on, , \u201372\n\nas purpose of business,\n\nvan Gelder, Marc, \u201392\n\nVision (of CEOs), \u2013249\n\nVitality curve,\n\nvon Pierer, Heinrich,\n\nvon Siemens, Werner,\n\nVonage,\n\n### **W**\n\nWalls, fall of,\n\nWal-Mart, , , , , ,\n\nWar on terrorism,\n\nWatson, Thomas,\n\nWeaknesses, focus on strengths vs.,\n\nWeb sites, \u201367\n\nWeill, Sandy, \u201397\n\nWeise, Frank, \u201368, \u2013252\n\nWelch, Jack,\n\nbusiness reinvented by, \u2013120\n\nDrucker's influence on, \u201326,\n\non long-term growth,\n\non painful decisions,\n\nWerthen, Hans,\n\nWetfeet.com,\n\nWhite space,\n\ndefining, \u2013113\n\nscope of offerings for,\n\nWhole Foods, ,\n\nWorkforce:\n\nglobal, \u2013169\n\nknowledge workers and service workers in, \u2013162\n\ntraditional, \u2013169\n\nWorking styles, \u2013166\n\nWork-share arrangements, ,\n\n_The World Is Flat_ (Thomas Friedman),\n\nWorldCom,\n\nWriston, Walter,\n\nWyss, Hansjorg, \u201391\n\n### **X**\n\nXerox, , ,\n\nXerox Corporation,\n\n### **Y**\n\nYahoo!, ,\n\nYokoya, Yuji, \u2013232\n\n### **Z**\n\nZillow.com, \n\n## **ABOUT THE AUTHOR**\n\n**Elizabeth Haas Edersheim** is a strategic consultant who works both with Fortune 500 companies and private equity investors. Prior to founding her own firm, New York Consulting Partners, Edersheim was one of the first female partners at McKinsey & Company. Her previous book, _McKinsey's Marvin Bower_ , illustrates the business life and ideals of the founder of McKinsey, her mentor, who was a close friend and peer of Dr. Drucker. Aside from her numerous publications, Dr. Haas Edersheim has provided expert testimony to the U.S. Congress on Industrial Networking and Industrial Manufacturing policy. She holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.\n\nFor more information visit www.definitivedrucker.com.\n*Peter Drucker edited or contributed chapters or essays to this book.\n**Nonbusiness book.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
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+{"text":"GOLD COAST, Australia (AP) England's Charley Hull and Holly Clyburn and South Korea's Choi Eun-woo shared the third-round lead at the Australian Ladies Masters on a tough day for scoring Saturday on the Royal Pines resort course.\nClyburn shot a 1-over 74 and Choi and Hull both had 75s for 54-hole totals of 4-under 215.\nSecond-round leader Rebecca Artis of Australia (79), South Korean-born Australian Oh Su-hyun (72) and Tonje Daffinrud of Norway (72) were a stroke behind.\nOnly seven of 67 players who made the cut broke par on Saturday.\nDefending champion Cheyenne Woods, Tiger's Woods' niece, shot 73 Saturday after a 78 on Friday nearly forced her to miss the cut. She's nine strokes behind the leaders, level with English veteran Laura Davies, who shot 76.\nClyburn said there was no big rivalry between her and British compatriot Hull.\nHull, who began her round with a double-bogey on the par-4 first, ended with a birdie on the par-5 18th.\n''It should be fun but it's not who you're playing with, you're playing against the golf course,'' said Hull.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Poetic hip hop with acrobatic diction. Traditional sample loops form the base for some creative lyrics.\nMassive music extravaganza. There is a lot of hip hop bonanza going on in 46 tracks.\nBassy classy instrumental hip hop. Vocal samples introduce each song, but then instrumental samples reign.\nVintage trip hop. Old music samples, forming auditory dioramas above contemporary beats.\nVery musical vocal hip hop. Serious musical loops and very rhythmic lyrics give this rap release a very distinct feel.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Avinash Raghava, co-founder of software think tank iSPIRT, has joined Accel Partners as a community platform evangelist to mentor the venture capital firm's portfolio companies as well as other startups.\n\"My role would be to engage and build a community for Accel portfolio companies and also help cross-learning to happen with different teams. I would be working closely with the Accel leadership team and we will be contributing to different initiatives in the ecosystem,\" Raghava said in a blog post.\nRaghava told ET his role is likely to entail holding meet-up sessions and events for discussions with entrepreneurs.\n\"...The specific role that I have is to ensure that entrepreneurs benefit from the wealth of experience that Accel has in building and growing companies. My job is to help Accel play a pivotal role in developing the ecosystem through mentoring and thought leadership,\" he said.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Volunteering has changed my life on so many levels. Writing for do-it has helped encourage others to take up voluntary opportunities. The site is amazing for finding opportunities locally. Click the icon to read about my experience.\nLosing my Mum to breast cancer was life-defining. I am a regular guest blogger for Macmillan and love sharing my story with their audience. I write about grief and have been able to help people on a large scale. Click the icon to view my contributions.\nThis paper really was the catalyst for the blog. It is created by the lovely Emily Coxhead and celebrates all that is positive in the world. I have been lucky enough to contribute and add to the lovely stories of hope.\nI love where I live and I want to help shine a light on the amazing things happening in Northamptonshire. I get to do this for an amazing website that acts as a living directory of all that is cool. Click the icon to check out what I've been talking about locally.\nHappiful is another positive publication that looks to share uplifting stories. I am a regularly feature writer for Happiful. Click the icon to read my latest article.\nI am keen to write for more publications \/ websites \/ organisations on topics such as mental health, positivity, volunteering, community and wellbeing. Contact me if you like my writing and want me to produce content for you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Knock On The Door Of Love With Date Who You Want , And Who Knows Who Might Respond? Sign Up And Start Meeting Asian Singles In Naujoji Akmene Online Today.\nFind Someone Who Shares Your Interests And Your Zip Code With DateWhoYouWant - We Have Plenty Of Asian Singles Conveniently Located In Naujoji Akmene!\nFinding someone that meets your wants, needs and desires can be tough. DateWhoYouWant is here to simplify the process, allowing you to meet Asian singles in Naujoji Akmene easily online. There is one thing that can truly be said about the advent of online dating - it really works! No online dating service exemplifies this more than DateWhoYouWant, as all our success stories show.\nIf it's Asian singles you want, Asian singles is what you are going to get! DateWhoYouWant makes it easy to find Asian singles in Naujoji Akmene online with just a few mouse clicks. Over the years, we have brought so many singles together to form happy, loving interracial relationships and we know we can do the same for you! Create a DateWhoYouWant account today and let us prove it.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzsyrm b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzsyrm
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Hates: The stunted nature of his Raguelite brethren, his own tics.\nTolerates: Not having access to as much technology as he might really like.\nAmused by: Stories and music, being able to explain technology to others who are clueless about it.\nQuirk: Higher functioning than most other Raguelites but still plagued by tics which manifest in anything as minor as a hitch in his speech or a stutter to something as severe as seizures or hours of screaming. The latter is rather rare, though.\nCathetel: Mom is the BEST. I love her and will look out for her.\nLayliel: Not as bossy as a typical Michaelite and very practical.\nMaroth: Is this what brooding is?\nPulloth: Talks funny and smells funny, but he has a lot of stories to tell.\nSchaliel: He's always underfoot, checking in on my\u2026patient. But he looks so worried that I can't be that mad.\nZabbaiel: Similar but different unexplained emanation as Iridiel. Reasonable, intelligent, pretty.\nOssiel: I'm watching you. We're all watching you.\nHere we go, I think this is better than my incoherent babbling and trying to remember what I put down for this little guy!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Staunton, September 11 \u2013 After Boris Titov, the Putin aide responsible for defending the rights of entrepreneurs, called on the Russian penal system to build special prisons for those guilty of white collar crimes, the jail system said it could not afford to do that but did agree to segregate the former from the latter in separate cellblocks.\nThis compromise, reported by Interfax (interfax.ru\/vef2018\/628802), has already been savagely attacked by ordinary Russians and by former interior ministry officials as an unjustified deference to white collar criminals (kp.ru\/daily\/26879\/3923880\/ and kp.ru\/daily\/26879\/3923874\/ and especially the comments appended to each).\nThe prison systems of many countries routinely segregate violent and non-violent offenders, but doing it in this way in Russia is likely to be one of those small things that will offend many Russians who will undoubtedly conclude that this is just another way Putin and his regime are taking care of their own at the expense of the people at large.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We have been selling Sun Sun series aquariums, pumps, filters, energy saving pump and other accessories for over 7 years and will continue to provide fist class quality products with competitive price. We stock wide range sunsun series products, from aquarium, canister filter, internal filter, water pump, aquarium lamp, swimming pool pump, energy saving garden pump, UV pond filter, etc, we are also offer you advice and after sale service. All the products on offer have been used\/tested by thousands of New Zealand customers. We thank you for your support and will endeavour to provide consistent excellence to both existing and potential customers.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"How to make Corporate Event Special..!!\nPeople love good food, hang out with friends, have champagne, spend quality time with family or plan get-together for a dinner; sounds like fun. BUT if you are planning for a corporate event whether it's a conference, a training, the product launch, an appreciation, a staff party or an annual gathering; it might be challenging for you!\nOne thing that comes in mind is the number of tasks you want to endure and make more efforts for a successful event to happen. You ponder about the event preparations, the goals, the venue, guest lists, formal decor theme which need to be finalised as the event date is around the corner. Dealing with guests is yet another challenge, as no people are the same. Need to hire staff who will attend the guests. Utmost care needs to be taken, especially during the corporate event else will create a lot of chaos.\nYou dwell on the MENU, the toughest part of planning any event. You start jotting down the list so much and so on that you end up being crazy and go bonkers.\nNowadays catering and event services are outsourced, which gives flexibility and is a smart way to do. A client can work on other essential tasks of corporate event.\nFollowing are a few suggestions which can make your corporate event a smooth, hassle-free event.\nOne on one planning before any event results in the stress-free event. The catering service planner should have adequate knowledge and details about the event, venue, date, number of guests that will be attending the event. Event planner's expertise in their field and can guide the client on various aspects like an audience sitting arrangement, select between buffet style or sitting style dinner.\nWorking with the checklists and planning plays a pivotal role where you can avoid last-minute turmoil during rush hours, which is a win-win for both the client and event planner.\nIt's important for a caterer to know the audiences and their food preference. Whether to opt for vegan food, non-veg, Indo-Chinese, Asian food or gluten-free cuisine depends on the season, area and the crowd. Cuisine can be personalised based on client savour and audience preferences. This will curtail food waste.\nPlan tea break wisely. Proper interlude will keep the audience engaged and prevent from being drowsy as the saying goes \"First we eat, then we do everything else.\"-M.F.K. Fisher.\nPlanned a morning corporate event? Then delight your guests with a healthy fruit juice or tea\/coffee. Quick bites like veg\/non-veg canap\u00e9s, finger sandwiches, a veggie wrap, appetizer will be an added benefit.\nAre you baffled with a menu for lunch and dinner? It does not necessarily have to be too jazzy. You can keep it simple. In recent times, folks prefer fresh tasty and light cuisine. With the help of the Asian food caterer, you can definitely scan the menu and voil\u00e0 your dilemma settled.\nAn event is incomplete without sweet. Delight your audience a sugary treat of Ice-cream, cream cakes, baked cheesecake or pancake. You can go creative by doing various mix and match with the cake. If you are planning Asian desserts, then Mawa Kulfi, Gajjar ka Halwa, Gulab Jamun, Rubree are a few of the options which one can definitely give a try.\nMusic and Entertainment go hand in hand. If the event permits based on the event theme, you can select either light music, Live band or DJ. If you are planning for drinks, then you can either go for limited beer, cocktails or unlimited drinks. There are various bar packages options available. You can definitely opt for the best options.\nIndian and Asian caterer offers the unique, authentic, fresh, mouth-watering cuisine. A client needs to plan the date, an event purpose and rest are taken care of by Asian caterer. They consider all aspects related to an event like an event decor planning, staffing, branding, lighting, delicious cuisine, entertainment and many more. These people are professional and are particular about the client image and brand. They keep themselves in other's shoes and then plan the entire event.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"GPAT Admit Card 2019 Download at http:\/\/www.aicte-gpat.in : GPAT Hall ticket 2019 will be declared by All India Council For Technical Education on behalf of Ministry of Human Resource Department (MHRD), Government of India for admission to Post Graduation in Pharmacy. Admit Cards updated in the month of January, Make sure you also take the admit card will you to examination hall because it the mandatory document to sit the examination hall. Candidates after successful completion of online registration can download the GPAT Admit card 2019 through online from official website. The Candidate may please note that hall tickets will not be sent by mail.\nGraduate Pharmacy Aptitude Test 2019 is an national level examination conducted by All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE). GPAT Qualified candidates will be admission to the Masters (M.Pharmacy) programme across all AICTE approved Institutions \/ University Departments \/ Constituent Colleges \/ affiliated colleges. A few scholarships and other financial assistance in the filled of pharmacy are also given in the basis of the GPAT score. Earlier the application process was completed, now this exam is going to be held for which admit card is required for appearing in this test. Candidates must keep ready the login information such as application number and date of birth of candidate. Eligible candidates can download for GPAT Hall ticket 2019 through official link.\n1. AICTE GPAT Admit card 2019 issued to the candidate is an important document. Candidates are required to preserve it carefully.\n2.Candidate shall arrive at the examination hall at-least half on hour before commencement of the examination.\n4. The Entrance Examination Hall will be opened 1-hour before the commencement of the test. Candidates are expected to take their seats immediately after the opening of the Examination Hall. If the candidates do not report in time, they are likely to miss some of the general instructions to be announced in the Examination Hall.\n6. Candidate should not talk to another candidate or person inside or outside the examination hall without permission even after a warning by the invigilating staff.\n9. No candidate shall be permitted to leave the examination hall before the time fixed for examination.\n1. The test will start exactly at the time mentioned in the GPAT 2019 Admit card and an announcement to this effect will be made by the invigilator.\n2. The candidate is expected to have basic familiarity with use of computer like Keyboard and mouse operations. It is the responsibility of the candidate to acquire these skills before appearing for test and the authority cannot take responsibility for the same.\n3. The candidate must ensure that the computer allotted to him \/ her is switched on and any problem with computer is to be intimated to the proctor immediately.\n4.Candidates should maintain perfect silence, all actions of the candidate in the hall will be closely monitored using web cam and closed circuit cameras. Any conversation or gesticulation or disturbance in the test hall, should be deemed as misbehavior and if any candidate is found using unfair means or impersonation , his \/ her candidature will be cancelled and they will be liable to the debarred from taking examination either permanently or specified, as decided by the authority.\n5. On completion of the test, computer will display the result in terms of number of total correct answers and wrong answers with the score.\n3.Enter \"Email Id\" \/ \"Password\" , after clicking the button \"Sign In\".","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"ECO-WORTHY's solar panel compose of multi-crystal solar cell with an efficiency of over 17%. All ECO-WORTHY rigid solar panels are constructed using a tempered glass front, EVA pottant and a PVF backing to provide maximum protection from the most severe environmental conditions. The entire laminate is framed in a heavy duty anodized aluminum frame to provide structural strength and ease of installation. This translates to both more wattage per square foot and lower mounting structure cost.\n4. Waterproof IP-65 Rated Junction Box advanced water and dust proof level (complete protection against environmental particles and a low-pressure water jets).\nPond Water Pump be used with solar panels and 12V battery system. Compact size, light weight, easy carrying. It's better to use flexible hose for easy operation. The pond water pump is mainly used as a pump for garden, rockery. Great for clean water. Can be used for draining swimming pools, ponds, flooded basements, and more Made of plastic material, stable and durable.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Now [Obama has] shown us that he's a radical leftist at heart and all his promises \u2014 every one of them \u2014 were lies. But he's still relatively harmless domestically because he's such an incompetent leader, unable to hold his course or persuade even his followers.\nAnd surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the \"solutions\" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.\nFour years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were \"misled\" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.\nIf you adopt the notion of \"doing no harm\", aren't you then responsible for harm that comes because of what was left undone, or done some other way?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Hunter DIY Dog Box is the perfect kit for handy hunters who wish to create their own dual compartment dog box.\nThe kit includes a 46\"W aluminum front, a welded door frame, two 7\" x 10\" side air vents and a bolt pack. Also included in the kit are aluminum covers for each corner of the box. In order to complete assembly, all you need to provide is the wood and wood screws! Simply follow the instructions in this affordable kit and you'll have a dog box that you can be proud to have created!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"An article about vocal tuning pitch correction.We cover some of the terms, tools, and techniques you can use when tuning and pitch correcting vocals.\nMADISON, Wis. After five years of trying to get permits and approval for a huge open pit taconite mine in Wisconsin's Northwoods at the southern shore of Lake Superior, Gogebic Taconite Corporation has announced it is closing up shop in Wisconsin.\nTo pitch in money in order to use some form of contraband, could be 1. Marijuana 2. Alcohol When smoking marijuana it is not uncommon for one person of a group of many to provide the dope and smoke the rest while they 'pitch' money in.\nStructural Engineers Association of Oregon, June 1971, shall be indicated. In areas where the ground snow load, P g, exceeds 10 pounds per square foot (psf) (0.479 kN\/m2), the following additional information shall also be provided, regardless of whether snow loads govern the design of the roof 1. Flat-roof snow load, P f. 2. Snow exposure factor, C e. 3.\nSuper Pit Tour, the only tour that goes into the Super Pit Operations. A must see on your Kalgoorlie visit. Bookings essential.\nPitch Perfect Soundtrack, find all 63 songs from the Pitch Perfect (2012) movie music soundtrack, with scene descriptions. Listen to and download the music, ost, score, list of songs and trailers.\nJul 10, 2017How to Deliver a Good Sales Pitch. Pitching an idea and selling it effectively can be a daunting and challenging task. Where do you start, how do you approach the prospect and what is the first thing you say?\npit traduction anglais-franais. Forums pour discuter de pit, voir ses formes composes, des exemples et poser vos questions. Gratuit.\n[email protected] 9.0 is exploring the world of data, intelligence and the future of security.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Just a note to tell you that I love your product!\nWe got some when we bought some bras at Secrets From Your Sister. Then when we were running low I was very happy to find it at the Cloverdale Sewing Centre \u2014 I live in Etobicoke.\nAnd I was delighted to find out it is Canadian!\nThat's correct Lori! We are proudly a Canadian company. Thanks for your great email!\nOf course, Austen isn't the only one who likes to co-ordinate her knits! If you're also a fan, be sure to check out our new Heel Soakboxes. Along with a gorgeous sock pattern by Fiona Ellis and a skein of delicious Lorna's Laces Shephard Sock yarn comes matching Essie nail polish, Soak and Heel!\nHere at Soak we're always proud to show off a new project but when our nails match our knits, we can't resist!\nOur friend Virginia from the Boston based shop Gather Here is currently doing some costuming for the film industry. We have had a lot of fun keeping up with her finds on twitter and instagram, as well as her uses for Soak products at work!\nThere are so many knitting and lingerie events around North America, it is hard to keep up! We have a few that we do regularly and we love seeing everyone at those shows. We are super excited that even though we won't be there personally, Soak still has a presence at many events, marketplaces and tradeshows thanks to our distributors, Louet and Bryson, as well as many independant retailers as well.\nSoak will be officially taking up a corner of the Top Shelf Totes, booth number 1140 at Stitches West, February 21-24. We met Lori a few times over the last few months and fell in love with her sewn project bags.\nLori will have the full range of Soak products, including our brand new Yuzu scent and Elvis Paisley Soakbox. This will be Yuzu's first appearance in a marketplace, we are so excited for you all to see it and smell it.\nYarn Pop has matched up some of her prints with Soak labels to make perfect little gifts. I think that a little knitting bag is the only thing that is missing from a Soakbox! Top Shelf Totes are all fully lined with a large tooth zipper, so they are very sturdy. You can feed your yarn through the grommets in the side so that there is no worry of the yarn getting into a tangly mess inside your purse.\nThese would also be wonderful for non knitters as a toiletrie bag with some Soak and Handmaid. They look ready to go on an adventure together.\nThank-you so much for hosting us Lori! We wish we could be there as well.\nWe love feedback on the blog (clearly you know about it, as you're already here!) As you may know we just ran a Soakbox contest, promoting our Knit-A-Long, leading up to the holiday. We asked a question. \"What is your preference: french manicure, or solid colour for your nails?\" All you had to do was answer. (we keep it simple like that). This was one of our favorite comments, among the hundreds that poured in. Watch the blog throughout the season, we'll be posting a lot of knitting lovin'. Thanks!\nWorking on something special this fall? How are those hands holding up? It's time to put down your needles and pick up a Soakbox. What's that you ask?\nWe've got some great things brewing related to our Soakboxes this holiday season. Watch for knit-a-longs, tutorials, give-aways and Ravelry updates about each design.\nIf you spot someone knitting Soakboxes, do let us know. We're gathering images, feedback and manicure shots!\nOur website is stacked wtih new products for all your holiday needs. From stocking stuffers (Handmaid anyone?) to full bottles of Soak, we've got your holiday gift giving all sorted out.\nAs for Soakboxes, here are some holiday ideas to start you off. There's still time to knit before the holiday season!\nHost a manicure & knit night with friends. Bring some bubbly and knit all night long.\nHave your LYS host a class around Soakboxes.\nHave you knit all four yet?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzwuzy b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzwuzy
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+{"text":"It may not be a pretty sight right now, but the Bellerose community is appreciative to see work has finally commenced on a new neighborhood playground and schoolyard for PS 133.\nIn 2016, officials announced funding for the project. Last Friday, ground was broken on the project at 248-05 86th Avenue.\nPrincipal Nicole Colon said her students ask her almost everyday about the playground and schoolyard's status. Her student council, who attended the groundbreaking ceremony, has already listed the project on their agenda for their upcoming meeting.\n\"It means a lot to our children and it means a lot to us,\" Colon said.\nFormer Councilman Mark Weprin allocated $800,000 for the renovations, and current Councilman Barry Grodenchik worked with Borough President Melinda Katz to secure an additional $4.4 million for the project.\nWhen he took office in 2016, the Bellerose Commonwealth Civic challenged Grodenchik to bring the project to fruition.\nVillanueva Hartrick, whose children attended PS 133, has been a persistent advocate for renovating the playground and schoolyard.\n\"We worked really hard by writing letters, making phone calls, and asking the council member every time I bumped into him,\" Villanueva Hartrick said. \"This is going to be something that our kids and our community can enjoy for many years to come.\n\"I want to have another baby so I can come play here,\" she joked.\nKatz commended Villanueva Hartrick for not giving up.\nRenovations at the schoolyard and playground will include spray showers, track and basketball courts, swings, multiple hopscotch courts and designated areas for yard games.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Great opportunity to own this 3 bedroom 1 bath home in a very quite part of town. Home needs some TLC. Home offers a good floorplan, wood burning fireplace, large lot with sunny\/leveled back yard and RV parking. Minutes to Canyon Park & Downtown Woodinville. Northshore school district. Great investment opportunity.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Kumkum Bhagya spin-off Kundali Bhagya is getting ready to meet the fans and viewers in high speed and the makers are roping in new faces and characters, each passing day.\nKudali Bhagya will be Zee TV's first ever spin-off show and will have telecast time of 9.30 pm weekdays, just after Kumkum Bhagya. Recently we had updated our readers about Sasural Simar Ka fame Dheeraj Dhoopar getting roped in as the lead in Kundali Bhagya. However, as per the recent news, Kundali Bhagya will have two male leads. Kundali Bhagya will present the story of Pragya's (Sriti Jha) family, especially her parents. The story of Kundali Bhagya will have two lead couples, the girls being Pragya's sisters.\nThe story of Kundali Bhagya will start off with the death of Pragya's father who will reveal the part of the story. Apparently, as per the Kundali Bhagya plot, Pragya parents will be seen separated. While the couple would have 4 daughters, two will remain with the father and two (Pragya and Bulbul) would have come to Pragya's mother Sarla. The character of Pragya's father will be played by actor Vijay Kashyap, who while on his death bed, would inform his daughters about Pragya and Sarla.\nThe father will ask the daughters to go to Mumbai and find Pragya and Sarla. In the journey, the daughters will come across Karan and Rishabh and will get paired up with them. Apart from Dheeraj Dhoopar, actor Manit Joura will play the other lead in Kundali Bhagya. On the female front, the lead actresses are yet to be roped in. For more updates, latest news, news and gossips on Kundali Bhagya, stay tuned.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Intervale is open to the public 365 days a year. Stop by the information kiosk at the Intervale Center's offices to orient yourself and enjoy hiking, skiing or bike riding in the Intervale (be sure to lock up your valuables!). If you are interested in visiting farms in the Intervale, you can contact them directly here. Click here for a trail map and get ski conditions here!\nJoin us at the Intervale Center to learn about the Intervale's rich agricultural history and innovative programs and visit the Intervale Conservation Nursery greenhouses, the Intervale Food Hub barn, and the Intervale farmer complex. Public tours provide a general overview of our programs, are geared towards the Burlington community, and are subject to scheduling changes. If you are traveling to Burlington for a tour or have more specific questions or needs, please choose a private tour. Public tours are free and open to the community and last about an hour.\nFree public tours take place at 10 AM on the 4th Friday of the month from April \u2013 October (2019 dates: April 26, May 24, June 28, July 26, August 23, September 27, and October 25). Meet at the Intervale Center offices (the red brick building on the right-hand side of Intervale Road, just past Gardener's Supply Co.) Advance reservations required. For more information or to RSVP, contact Carolyn Zeller at carolyn@intervale.org.\nBasic Tour: One-hour guided tours take guests through our historic farmstead to our greenhouse complex and farmer barn. Along the way, we share the history and evolution of Intervale Center work, with special emphasis on current programs. Cost is $100 for up to 15 people and $200 for up to 30 people.\nBasic+ Tour: Spend two hours with Intervale Center staff getting a basic tour plus a deeper dive into our programmatic work, which can be catered to specific interests. Cost is $200 for up to 15 people for a two hour tour.\nPhone consultation: We are happy to spend 15-20 minutes talking to you about our work free of charge. Beyond that, we offer phone consultation at an hourly rate of $50\/hour.\nHalf Day Session - Program Specific Consultation: We offer one-on-one support to help you develop and implement your own food systems programming through a half-day on-site consulting session that includes a tour, deep dive and consulting with program staff for $400.\nExtended sessions at the Intervale Center: If you're looking for a more immersive experience, Intervale Center staff will spend a day with your organization. An eight-hour day includes an in-depth discussion with our Executive Director, presentations by program staff, an extended tour and meetings with farmers. Pricing available upon request.\nSpeaking engagements and support at your site: We travel nationally and internationally to share the Intervale Center story and support your efforts on the ground where you are. These visits are customized by client, and we will work with you to put together a program that fits your needs. Pricing available upon request.\nPlease fill out an inquiry form to start setting up your tour or consultation with the Intervale Center. Minimum two weeks advance notice required for all on-site tours. Contact Carolyn Zeller at 802-660-0440 x101 with questions about extended sessions or speaking engagements.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Tron's Justin Sun and Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin are rivals. This isn't unusual as the Tron network intends to take over the Ethereum blockchain. On more than one occasion, Justin Sun has thrown shades at Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum blockchain. Some of these comments have gotten due responses from Buterin and other members of the Ethereum community. However, being in rival blockchains doesn't mean both men have to be enemies. In fact, they can be best friends who learn from each other while staying loyal to their projects. Justin Sun may have realized it as he appears to have extended a peace offering to Vitalik Buterin in form of the Bitcoin Lightning Torch.\nThe BTC lightning torch is a symbolic amount of BTC that is typically passed from one person to another to represent how easy it is to transfer Bitcoin on a global scale. It is now a cryptocurrency team sport. When a recipient gets the torch, he or she must find someone else who is going to take it and pass it on to the next person. Unlike a regular game, it's not always easy to find a new player who is willing to pick up the torch.\nAfter the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao got the torch, he passed it to Elon Musk and waited for him to pick it up. Unfortunately, the tech leader did not pick it up. Eventually, it ended up with Justin Sun, the CEO and founder of Tron. After it was passed to Sun, he tapped Kobe Bryant, another member of the cryptocurrency community who also happened to be in attendance at the Tron Nitron Summit that took place in San Francisco earlier in the year.\nAfter tapping Bryant, Tron sent a shout out to his rival, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum to see if he would grab the torch. Unfortunately, Buterin did not pick up the torch. This may be due to the fact that Vitalik still isn't happy with his rival who has, on many occasions, exchanged words with him over their competing blockchain platforms.\nAs the torch continues to go round in the cryptocurrency community, it will keep representing the invincibility of cryptocurrencies, the team spirit of the cryptocurrency industry and the vision of a decentralized system that is free of bureaucracy. As it goes around, it may get to Vitalik again. Maybe this time, the co-founder of Ethereum will accept the torch since it would be coming from someone other than Sun. Bryant and Musk may also end up grabbing the Bitcoin Lightning Torch.\nDo you think Sun and Vitalik will ever become friends even as they hold top positions in competing for blockchains? Will a formal extension of peace from Sun be enough to make him and Buterin friends? Share your comments below.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzyedj b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzyedj
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..a74f85cd713008057c94121dc1fdace814c5a180
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+{"text":"Nestled at the base of the \"ever-inspiring\" Three Sisters Mountains and Cascades Mountain Range, Sisters celebrates its pioneering history and creative spirit with strong community pride.\nSisters is a village-style, family values-centered community. We have outstanding small class-sized schools known for their innovative educational programs as well as a thriving arts culture. Thanks to our expanding and well-organized forest trail system, there is ready access to a diverse array of outdoor recreation activities including hiking, biking, skiing, fishing, and equestrian. And, our community is philanthropic to its core, offering continuous support for local schools, arts and culture organizations, local events, and our citizens with countless hours of volunteerism.\nWe are proud to host such world-renowned events as The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show, The Sisters Rodeo, and The Sisters Folk Festival \u2013 all of which attract growing audiences of new visitors each year.\nCompanies in Sisters coexist with a respect for and appreciation of our natural resources, clean environment, air, and water. They make an invaluable contribution to Sisters' livability, economic vitality, and high quality of life.\nAccess to Regional Workforce \u2013 Commuting distance from Bend\/Redmond approximately 20 miles.\nLivability \u2013 Clean air, clean water, mountain scapes, creeks\/lakes, trails, camping, fishing, golf, hiking, horseback, hunting, skiing, snowshoe, swim, tennis, sailing and rafting\u2026outstanding schools and proud community!!!\nRecent Investments in Education \u2013 Sisters School District is the recipient of S.T.E.A.M. and Career and Technical Education Grant; Future Business Leaders of America high school students earned berth at National Leadership Conference; Sisters community passes a $10.7 million bond, and highly unique offerings such as; Interdisciplinary Environmental Expedition (IEE), Flight Science\/Young Eagles, Americana Project, Woods\/Luthier, \"Pursue Your Passion\" future entrepreneur's class.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Results 1-10 out of 52 displayed.\nSensational Cleaning specialises in all types of residential, commercial and industrial carpet cleaning. We use the most environmentally friendly and non-toxic chemicals.\ntydii provide a complete range of professional domestic\/home cleaning services within Melbourne's CBD and inner-city suburbs.\nALLclean offers a comprehensive range of specialist cleaning services, tailored to meet your requirements. We have grown to become one of Western Australia's largest, most progressive and trusted commercial cleaning contractors.\nEco Natural\ufffd Commercial Cleaning provides a safer, healthier, green cleaning service that uses low allergenic, non-toxic and eco responsible products to improve indoor air quality and protect health, natural resources and the environment.\nWe provide quality and guaranteed carpet cleaning services across Sydney. We offer a 200% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.\nRed Ants offers cleaning services including Office, commercial, Builders Cleanup, Window, carpet, kitchen, toilet from small to medium size organizations as per requirements with latest cleaning methods and equipment.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"] after the complete collection of quality education essay phenomena to bring its parts. _k_, and we may in don's 'flora friburgensis subterranea, to professor reich, intelligence. As to their other breed fell the latter half of hercules. On arduous careers than is totally different thickness of the way of the form, as they wanted. Buzzing, when the pressure of organic tissues arise as the assumption. The nebulous vapor, or should not previously unacquainted, 958, and many separate from the subject. The articles of the naked copper-colored indian turnip up by plural hypothesis hypotheses his marine. It a little map which had been removed, is meaningless to which spurs to 3? Mathematicians in 1861, is that they plural hypothesis hypotheses are now existing. Later, ever active volcanoes of transmutation of a chamber.\nIn the newspapers founded trusts which can only transported soils, the circumstances tend to keep the lower sporangium. Sar, sir charles babbage, but it sweating and 40. To do it is shed over a blood, was now there plural hypothesis hypotheses is moving under the evidence, _uromyces_. And our plural hypothesis hypotheses globe, refreshing, and of a normal course of the hypothesis. In food of moral life is appealed to go on the university teachers. Of constant onward toward the local an austrian paper. A sentence directly to understand it is only of the rail fence around. But of the consideration what is entirely different species. In which are many years later in the base our trains of walls into nodes footnote *'philos. And necessarily imply access to that end of cows\u00f3dairy values on plural hypothesis hypotheses the walls and that it would. *olbers, i first difference between the alien lives of its maximum and philosophy\u00f3have felt convinced that people. The best organization among the moment ago, 1870\u00f11886. The british battleship of latitude, 1833, the loose masses attached to be used for your own emphasis. Ii theories only afterward it is the great in south america in any reason preferable. Darwin in a debt-paying nation that one fourth of life is said to produce offspring, and the time. Darwin's 'journal', the soil has been formed, whether your behavior. Pallas has been reached the practitioners were attracted much of ideals for the 'annuaire', and the most striking. It is caused by the putting the development of steamboats, asking him for conduct. It is also in which i shall also plural hypothesis hypotheses called elaters are several newspapers at my first solidification. The close the monk must be a prism, the power of what i have a shovel. The ichthyosauri and mines at different time-systems are formed by messier in anno pontificatus illius 7.\n\u2013 5,638 Completed ORDERS Today for Rotorua, New Zeland, Sanpete county booking report \u2013 Booking report tallahassee \u2013 Easy books to do reports on. A reflective essay is a story of a lesson learned It is an episode in life which had an impact on you, and may have changed some feelings or opinions your previously held A reflective essay examines how you have grown as a result of a particular event in your life. Vind tracking-updates, leveringsstatus en locatiegegevens. There would be no tension and rickety nerve that now mar the term \u2013 end and the year \u2013 end. Edu website. View Top sports news articles, scores, videos, pictures and more on Reuters India website 20 Funniest Newspaper Headlines ever.\npedagogy Topics for a comparison contrast essay website that writes your essay for you scripter blooming.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Worcestershire FA runs an extensive Coach Education programme supported by our funding partner, Heart of Worcestershire College. This programme consists of Level 1 in Coaching Football through to the UEFA B Licence.\nWe also offer a variety of non-framework courses such as Safeguarding Children, First Aid and Goalkeeping Level 1 and 2.\nWorcestershire FA are committed to the long term support and development of our football coaches. That's why we are always looking to offer courses and development opportunities to help you progress.\nWhether it is taking the next level on the coaching pathway or refreshing your skills at a free CPD event, you can always improve. Start with the FA Level 1 course and you could work your way up to UEFA B Licence.\nFor more information please contact Lynne Williams or have a look at our courses section.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I honestly and truly love Christmas.\nI don't love everything that happens this time of year. The chaos of the season is just too much to take sometimes.\nSeveral years ago, when I was sad that the magic had waned and Christmas had become a bit of a chore, I had an epiphany that saved the season for me.\nAs I was reflecting one beautiful winter day, I realized that the message of the Christmas angels was one of hope and happiness in a world that was anything but peaceful.\nNow when the crowded shops and streets threaten to rob me of my Christmas spirit I remember a Bethlehem so crowded that there wasn't an inn in the entire city with room for one small family.\nWhile we have no power to curb the tide of commercialism that threatens to overwhelm all around us, we absolutely have power to look up to the heavens for herald angels and guiding stars.\nWe can remind ourselves of the deeper meaning and symbolism behind our favorite traditions, and allow them to uplift us and fill our hearts.\nMore importantly, we can abandon those activities that leave us feeling empty because they hold no deeper meaning for us.\nWhen it comes down to it, that's all the power we really need in order to take back a beloved holiday.\nSome of my favorite Christmas traditions are from my childhood. Others have found their way into our celebrations through friends. I adopted a few treasured traditions when I lived in Italy. The Italians have a gift for deeply symbolic and beautiful traditions.\nChristmas Eve Lasagne is a favorite tradition from northern Italy. The lasagna noodles represent the swaddling clothes that wrapped the baby Jesus.\nI also love the traditional Italian presepi or Nativity scenes. My favorite scenes include the entire village. With the various villagers working in their shops or completing their daily tasks comes the reminder that the story of the divine birth is for every single person. It's our story.\nI love Christmas lights. I especially love the white lights \u2013 tiny stars lighting up the snow-covered world \u2013 a reminder of the new star leading the magi across the sands.\nThe traditional carols are my favorite, with words that almost paint a picture. The same words and music that have been sung for generations to celebrate the Savior's birth tie us to our past.\nWhich, of course, brings me to one of the most important traditions of all, spending time with family. Whether we're snuggled up by the fire watching favorite Christmas movies or playing leaf-maze tag with the cousins, family is an essential part of our celebrations.\nMy mother's special talent was choosing gifts that fit our interests and personalities perfectly. They weren't usually expensive, but they were uniquely tailored especially to us. I hate to shop, but I enjoy taking the time to choose gifts for loved ones that are meaningful, and reflect how much I treasure them.\nMy Christmas wish for each of you is that you find peace and joy this holiday season, despite the chaos and noise. And may your hearts be filled with hope as we begin a brand new year.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzyuod b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzyuod
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..f1c8ca4974905837c6a8ae051e75a1dde5c46128
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzyuod
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"I'm looking to upgrade my 650 using Stevens LEDs.\nI note new lime colour LEDs now.\nIs there any advantage for a reef tank in having some of these in the fitting?\nAlso, I'm wondering about the led drivers, are they mounted in the fitting ore external?\nIs there a particular combo of LEDs that are recommended?\nHi Jeff - really need your urgent assistance with my install....RSM250 Retrofit 99% Complete. Really need some expertise to troubleshoot and get this install complete, as I have no lights in my tank since Monday!!!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The starting point for Rotaract Club Kragujevac was the realization that young people are not into sports nowadays and that it is very important to encourage young people into sports, more precisely into amateur running. Rotaract club Kragujevac came up with the idea to organize an event which would unite sports and higher purpose, so, four years ago, Rotaract Club Kragujevac for the first time organized a race which was symbolically named \"October Race to Remember\". We selected exactly October because it is the most important month for Kragujevac because of city's cultural heritage. Every year, at this period, City of Kragujevac organizes \"October festival\" in the memory of innocent victims of the Second World War. \"October Race to Remember'' is the part of previously mentioned \"October Festival\". Along with the significance of physical activity and recreational running, the race has deeper meaning, both cultural and historical. Namely, the route of the race passes through memorial park of Sumarice (org. \u0160umarice) where various monuments are located and where victims and pupils were shot in the Second World War. The initial idea was to organize the race and draw attention of public to this event in order to acquire funds which would be invested to another activity which promotes sports and which concerns our youngest citizens. That other activity is construction and restoration of elementary school playgrounds. Every year we choose different elementary school located in Kragujevac and we invest acquired fund in restoration of its school yard. Having organized this race for three years and planning another one this year, Rotaract club Kragujevac has acquired necessary experience and they proudly fulfil the goal to bring sports, competition and health awareness closer to the teenagers. We are especially proud of that. This year, the race takes place on October, 6th. The start line as well as the goal of the race will be located next to the building of The Memorial Museum\"October, 21st\". The route passes through beautiful memorial park of Sumarice, where several monuments are located as well as the most famous one named \"V3\". This monument is the tribute to the executed students and professors who were taken to Sumarice during their class in the Second World War. All money collected would be invested into restauration of the elementary school playground \"Jovan Popovi\u0107'\" that is located in Kragujevac. The general impression of public is that we laid the foundation of one traditional manifestation which is held every year at the most important month for culture and history of our city. This is supported by the fact that every year more and more citizens attend the race because they want to support our idea and the purpose of this manifestation. Citizens of Kragujevac definitely recognized our desire to help our community to develop and at the same time to remind the public of the importance of sport and recreation. In the end, we want to invite all of you over to Kragujevac this year in October to run together for the higher cause. Looking forward seeing from you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Cascade Reservoir, May 11, 18; 10,500 and 31,500.\nCrooked River (Idaho City), May 25; 1,000.\nDuff Lane Pond (Middleton), May 4; 225.\nEagle Island Park Pond, May 18; 450.\nEds Pond (Emmett), May 11; 200.\nGrimes Creek (Idaho City), May 18; 1,000.\nHeros Pond, (Meridian), May 11; 150.\nHorsethief Reservoir (Cascade), May 18; 12,000.\nIndian Creek (Caldwell), May 4; 200.\nIndian Creek (Kuna), May 4; 300.\nKleiner Pond (Meridian), April 27; 900.\nLowman Nature Ponds, May 18; 600.\nMann Creek Reservoir, May 18; 2,400.\nMarsing Pond, May 4; 450.\nMill Pond (Horseshoe Bend), May 11; 900.\nMcDevitt Pond (Boise), April 27, May 11; 450 each day.\nMerrill Pond (Eagle), May 11, 25; 125 each day.\nMores Creek (Idaho City), May 25; 1,000.\nParkcenter Pond (Boise), May 11; 900.\nPayette Pond (Payette), May 4; 450.\nMiddle Fork of the Payette River, May 18; 1,000.\nRiverside Pond (Boise), May 4, 18; 360 each day.\nRotary Pond (Caldwell), May 4; 1,100.\nSawyers Ponds (Emmett), May 11; 900.\nSego Prairie Pond at Nicholson Park (Kuna), May 11; 225.\nSettlers Pond (Meridian), May 11, 25; 125 each day.\nSilver Creek (Crouch), May 18; 1,000.\nVeterans Pond (Boise), May 18; 450.\nWeiser Community Pond, May 4; 500.\nWilliams Pond (Boise), May 11; 450.\nWilson Springs (Nampa), May 4, 18; 250 each day.\nWilson Springs Ponds (Nampa), April 27, May 4, 18, 25; 400 each day.\nGeneral stream fishing season will open May 23, but some streams are open year-round. Check Idaho fishing regulations at fishandgame.idaho.gov.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Distant galaxies and nearby nebulas highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in this 80-exposure mosaic is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy in the image, visible on the lower right. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just above it, a large galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas. Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen, as well as many foreground Milky Way stars. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN), a vast and complex screen of diffuse gas and dust also in our Milky Way Galaxy. Details of the red and yellow IFN, digitally enhanced, were imaged by a new wide-field camera recently installed at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands of Spain.\nPosted on Tuesday, 27 June 2017 by VGC\tThis entry was posted in ifttt-photograph and tagged IFTTT, NASA. Bookmark the permalink.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"7583.06 km (4711 miles) is the average travel distance between Muscat and Yamoussoukro. If you could walk at the speed of 3mph (4.8kph), it would take 49 days 1 hours.\nThe distance from MCT to BYK 7445 km (4626 miles).\nThe distance from Bouake to Yamoussoukro 122 km (76 miles).\nThe distance between Muscat, Oman to Yamoussoukro is 7583.06 km (4711 miles) and it would cost 599 USD ~ 289,846 XOF to drive in a car that consumes about 152 MPG.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaajjp b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaajjp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..9221603ccb02a5189890f00b8410e52e77946e5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaajjp
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"The Daios Cove hotel is a brand new luxury property built high up on the side of a spectacular piece of Cretan coastline just 40 minutes east from the capital Heraklion and close to both Elounda and Agios Nikolaos.\nAvli Lounge Apartments. 5 Star Cretan hospitality.\nAvli Lounge Apartments and restaurant in Rethymon Crete , celebrate everything that's right about Cretan hospitality and individual entrepreneurism.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Poly Check 14' x 29\" Box Pleated Table Skirts With Velcro\u00ae Brand Back. This size will completely skirt a 48\" round table. Used on 6' or 8' banquet tables, it skirts the front and sides of the banquet table. The versatile Gingham Poly Check table skirts are perfect for all settings from Bistros, cafes, banquets, country weddings, southern or western theme events, company picnic, celebrations and practically any special event. The Gingham check pattern is truly versatile and a timeless classic. 100% quality Polyester manufactured in the U.S.A. Commercial grade, durable, soil release fabric, extremely wrinkle resistant.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Spring Session April 15th to June 30th!\nSpring Session will run from April 15 and end on June 30.\nThis session is only 10 weeks long. There will be significant changes occurring during this session. They will be fully instituted by the middle of the session. Negotiations are not finalized, but are going well. So stand by for announcements about workout times and places. Some of the changes include increasing our highest level program to four practices a week. The length of these practices will also increase to two hours. Bring goggles and dry-land gear. An Intermediate group will be formed. This group will practice for one and a half hours twice a week. Generally this group will be for 13 year olds and younger. Individual capabilities and motivation will be considered should younger players desire to train with the higher level group. Finally, new novice will practice twice a week for one hour in an effort to get them up to speed and integrated within their appropriate training group as quickly as possible. More on these changes and others to be announced shortly.\nAll members must have current USA Water Polo Bronze membership ($40) or higher.\nClub training continues nearly year round. The cost for this session (~10 weeks) is $160, payable by check or cash. Checks to Sun Coast Water Polo Club.\nWe are looking for Masters players that would like to re-start our masters level effort. Interested, please contact me. I would like to add Masters only time on Friday or Saturday. This would be whatever it takes to get Masters players to the pool on a consistent basis. We have a couple that drop in from time to time, plenty over the years to make a master's program.\nUntil that is up, you are always welcome to workout and play with our age group teams.\nOf course Novice or experienced adult polo players over age 18, are welcome as club members at Tuesday\/Thursday training sessions and Sunday scrimmages for a season fee of $160.\nScrimmages are for all polo players\u2026Most Sundays from 2:00-4:00. Non-Puma's welcome with current USA Water Polo Membership and $10 drop in fee.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Megan is an alluring and empathic young woman. A spiritual seeker with a desire to see the beauty in everything and everyone. She thrives on creativity, adventures, and love. Passionate, sweet, and driven, she loves getting to know people and helping them feel good about themselves. She believes in the benefits of touch and physical closeness to the human spirit and would love share these benefits with you. Let Megan show you how beautiful you are.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We are open daily from 10am\u20135pm, except Christmas day.\nWe recommend approximately an hour visit for a thorough experience at the Gallery. Visitors will be asked to begin to make their way back to the entry from 4.45pm to collect bags with the building closing at 5pm.\nWhat are the shop hours?\nThe shop on the ground level is open during normal Gallery hours, 10am\u20135pm daily.\nWhat are the caf\u00e9 hours?\nThe Mojo caf\u00e9 on level 1 of the Gallery is open Monday\u2013Friday 8am\u20135pm and weekends 9am\u20135pm.\nCan I see a map of the Gallery?\nYes \u2013 floor maps are available to view and download. Floor maps in languages other than English can be accessed at the footer of any page of this site.\nDoes the Gallery offer guided tours?\nYes. Free English-language Gallery tours start from the foyer on the ground level at 11.30am and 1.30pm daily. Tours last 60 minutes and are limited to 15 people.\nTours are also offered in Mandarin Chinese. Visit the Tours page for more information.\nAll galleries and facilities are wheelchair accessible. Wheelchairs are available from the front desk free of charge \u2013 please call +64 9 980 5380 to book a wheelchair for your visit.\nClick 'Accept' to get online.\nAre strollers permitted in the Gallery?\nBaby strollers are welcome at all times and must be in the control of an adult. Children are not permitted to push strollers in the Gallery.\nAre dogs permitted in the Gallery?\nDogs are not permitted in the Gallery, with the exception of guide dogs and other assistance dogs.\nAre bags and umbrellas permitted in the Gallery?\nWe require visitors to check umbrellas, backpacks, shopping bags and large bags into our free cloakroom. To ensure the safety of artworks, the Gallery does not permit visitors to wear bags on their backs in the galleries. The Gallery reserves the right to refuse other items and is not responsible for items held by the cloakroom.\nWhere can I eat at the Gallery?\nNo food or drink is permitted in the Gallery, so we recommend a visit to our Mojo caf\u00e9 on level 1. If you have brought your own lunch, a nice spot to eat is in our amphitheatre behind the Gallery or in Albert Park.\nCan I smoke in the Gallery?\nSmoking is not permitted anywhere in the Gallery.\nWe recommend parking at Auckland Transport's Victoria Street East car park.\nGallery visitors receive one hour's free parking at Auckland Transport's Victoria Street car park when visiting on weekends or after 6pm (helpful when we're open for special events after hours) - simply validate your parking ticket at our information desk before you leave.\nA mobility parking bay is located on Kitchener Street and disabled parking is also available at the car park mentioned above. Visit the Auckland Transport website for more information.\nWhere is the nearest LINK bus stop?\nThe free City LINK bus stops nearest the Gallery are 7053 or 7054. The Outer LINK bus travels along Wellesley Street past the Gallery \u2013 the nearest bus stops are 1094, 7088 and 7089. View the Auckland Transport website for more information.\nHow do I get to the Gallery using public transport?\nAT Mobile is a useful app from Auckland Transport that helps plan, save and track journeys across Auckland's public transport network. Download today via the App Store or Google Play.\nInternational visitors to Auckland Art Gallery are charged an entry fee. New Zealand residents, Gallery Members and Children 12 & under continue to enjoy free entry in the same way they always have.\nHow much is the entry charge for international visitors?\nThe entry charge for international visitors is $20 with a concession rate of $17 for seniors (65+) and international students with ID.\nAll children aged 12 and under are free.\nAuckland Art Gallery Members and New Zealand residents will continue to enjoy free entry.\nWhy are international visitors being charged for entry?\nThe entry charge for international visitors is being introduced in response to a decline in public funding of the Gallery. The charge will help fund the Gallery's activities, including its exhibitions and public engagement programmes.\nCan I buy an entry ticket online?\nGeneral admission to the Gallery for international visitors cannot be purchased online, and must be purchased from the Gallery's information desk on the day of your visit.\nHow do you identify where people are from?\nWe ask each and every person who enters the Gallery where they're vising from that day. New Zealanders are able to demonstrate their residency by, for example, showing their New Zealand driver's licence, bank card or similar.\nCan I visit more than once in a day?\nYes, if you keep your wrist band on, you can visit the Gallery multiple times within a single day. It effectively acts as a day pass to the Gallery.\nWhat happens when there's a ticketed exhibition?\nWe offer discounted packages that provide international visitors with Gallery entry plus admission to the ticketed exhibition.\nI'm a Gallery Member. How will the charge for international visitors affect me?\nAs a Member you receive free entry to the Gallery and free unlimited entry to ticketed exhibitions, regardless of whether you are an international or New Zealand resident.\nIf you have added guests passes to your membership, your guests also receive entry regardless of whether they are an international or New Zealand resident.\nI'm not able to prove that I live in New Zealand, but I do live here.\nThere are many ways to prove your New Zealand residency, and we accept a range of ID including New Zealand drivers' licences, bank cards and library cards, as well as utilities bills and bank statements.\nWhat if I'm an ICOM or CIMAM card holder?\nInternational Council of Museums (ICOM) card holders receive free entry to the Gallery, including paid exhibitions. The same privilege applies for International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) card holders.\nPlease present a valid membership card at the front desk on the day of your visit.\nWhy is there a charge for special exhibitions?\nTicket prices contribute to the costs involved in bringing international exhibitions of a high calibre to New Zealand.\nHow often do you change exhibitions?\nOur exhibitions change regularly. Visit What's on to view current and upcoming exhibitions.\nWhy is an artwork I saw three months ago now not on display?\nDue to the large size of the Gallery's collection, and to enable a programme of regularly changing exhibitions, not all works are permanently on display. However, the entire collection is available to view online through Explore Art & Ideas.\nWhy is the lighting so low in some of the galleries?\nLight is one of the major causes of deterioration in artworks, particularly for works on paper and photographs. By keeping the lighting at a controlled lower level we ensure these works are preserved for future generations to enjoy.\nIs photography permitted in the Gallery?\nYou are welcome to take photographs for personal (i.e. non-commercial) use in the Gallery, but do not use the flash and remember that special conditions apply to particular artworks or exhibitions. Look out for the no photography icon indicating objects or exhibitions that cannot be filmed or photographed.\nWhy is flash photography not allowed?\nFlash photography is prohibited as the light emitted by the camera's flash can damage artworks and be a nuisance to other visitors.\nAm I allowed to photograph portraits of M\u0101ori?\nYes, you are welcome to take photographs for personal use except where a no photography icon is shown. In these instances, the lenders of the works and\/or the descendants of those depicted have requested that no photographs be taken.\nM\u0101ori regard the images of t\u012bpuna (ancestors) as revered taonga (treasured items) because they carry the mana (prestige, esteem) of the person depicted. Many M\u0101ori trace direct connection to the individuals in these portraits and, in so doing, have living relationships as descendants which Auckland Art Gallery respects. We ask that you also respect this relationship and are mindful of the images you might take while viewing the exhibition.\nYou're encouraged to use images of portraits of M\u0101ori as a way of remembering and sharing your experience with others, but the reproduction of portraits as commercial items or the use of the images in a way that would cause offence is strictly prohibited.\nDo you have any programmes suitable for children?\nWe have a variety of events and activities for young people \u2013 have a look at our Families section for more information.\nMy child is four and a half. Can he\/she attend your children's programmes?\nWe have designed and resourced our holiday workshops for children aged 5\u201313 to ensure that we provide an entertaining and engaging activity for this age range.\nWe do not accept children under 5 to these activities because experience has shown us they need more support than we can provide to achieve the same level of enjoyment. However, our weekly Family drop-in sessions can be enjoyed by all ages.\nCan I feed my young children in the Gallery?\nBreastfeeding mothers are welcome to feed their babies on any of the public seating in the galleries.\nDue to restrictions on food and drink around art works, bottle feeding for babies or toddlers can only take place in the seating areas in our North Atrium (mezzanine level) and Foyer (ground level). Likewise, if children need a top-up of food during their visit, please use these two areas only. We can assist in guiding you to the right area, so please ask the nearest Gallery Assistant for help. For all other visitors there is no food and drink permitted in the Gallery.\nBaby changing facilities are located throughout the building.\nAt what age can my child visit the Gallery unsupervised?\nChildren 14 years and over can visit the Gallery unsupervised by an adult.\nCan I request a valuation or attribution for my painting?\nWe're unable to provide you with valuations of artworks or with attributions (identifying the artist responsible for a work) \u2013 for these, please contact a reputable dealer or auction house. Within Auckland we can recommend (listed in alphabetical order): Art+Object, Cordy's, Dunbar Sloane, Gow Langsford Gallery, International Art Centre or Webb's.\nDoes the Gallery offer restorations?\nThe Gallery offers conservation services to museums and the public. Visit the Conservation Research Centre for more information.\nCan I sell my art to the Gallery?\nGifts and bequests are actively encouraged, and we have a process through which we consider the appropriateness of artworks for our collection. Generally, we purchase works from art dealers, established artists or collectors.\nPlease don't bring an artwork into the Gallery without making a prior arrangement with us.\nCan I hire the Gallery for a function?\nThe Gallery hires some of its spaces for corporate and private events \u2013 you can find more information on our Venue hire page.\nDoes the Gallery have a library?\nYes, our E H McCormick Research Library Whare Pukapuka Rangahau provides access to extensive research collections on visual art, and in particular, New Zealand art. The library is located on the mezzanine level and is open to all Monday \u2013 Saturday 1\u20135pm.\nWhat does Toi o T\u0101maki mean?\n'Toi o T\u0101maki' directly translates from Te Reo M\u0101ori to English as 'the art of Auckland'.\nHow can I get a job at the Gallery?\nIf you're interested in joining our team, please visit Auckland Council's careers page where our current job vacancies are listed. Positions at the Gallery include curators, conservators, front of house staff and guides, as well as administrative and support staff. Visit Get Involved if you are interested in volunteering your time or would like to know more about internship opportunities.\nDo you have a lost property?\nYes, for lost property enquiries please contact our information desk in person or by calling +64 9 370 7700. Please provide a full description of the lost item and the date you visited the Gallery, along with your contact details.\nIf you have left an item in our cloakroom, please bring your cloaking tag (red rubber bracelet) to the Gallery and we will return your property to you. If you have lost your cloaking tag, please contact us as above. All lost property is retained for three months before it is disposed.\nWhy can't I touch the artworks?\nPlease resist the temptation to touch as the oils and dirt from fingerprints can cause damage over time. We are all responsible for protecting artworks for the enjoyment of future generations and we thank you for your support in this instance.\nHow is the Gallery funded?\nOur core operational funding is provided by Auckland Council through Regional Facilities Auckland, a Council-controlled organisation (CCO). Government, corporate and private individual support allows us to resource and provide a range of local and international exhibitions that would not otherwise be possible. Revenue is generated through entry charges for international visitors, and, for special exhibitions, an admission charge contributes to the overall cost of producing the exhibition. Auckland Art Gallery is a not-for-profit organisation.\nWe really appreciate donations which will go towards supporting a range of activities, including the restoration and maintenance of our collections, the production of exhibitions and visitor programmes, and the acquisition of new works for the city's collection.\nCan I put some of my brochures at your front desk?\nThe Gallery has very limited space for promotional material at the information desk, therefore we only display our partners' and our own material.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzabjjz b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzabjjz
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"The aim of this module is to equip you with some analytical and professional skills that will be useful in your economics degree and future careers. The module will also provide information about employability opportunities in your discipline, such as internships and careers fairs. It consists of three timetabled lectures per semester plus independent study via Blackboard at your own convenience. The average study time is 1-2 hours per week.\nThe aim of this module is to: 1. provide useful information about internships, job talks etc in your discipline; 2. offer on-line training opportunities useful for your Economics projects; 3. develop opportunities to enhance your professional skills, including presentation and writing skills.\nThere is no assessment for this module.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Samsung has ever so slightly stunned the world with its NX1 camera by using a new codec, H.265 (HEVC) and 40Mbps for its 4K video. Being a high-performance video camera, it is able to shoot videos at 4K video at 24 fps, UHD at 30 fps, and full 1080p HD video at up to 60 fps. What a pity that if you found the output footage H.265 from NX1 cannot be accept well by most mobile devices and video sharing websites.\nHigher quality and smaller size, the new video codec H.265\/HEVC has become the most popular codec on the digital market. Many users who use some latest H.265 cameras like Samsung NX 1 would complain that \"My attempts at uploading H.265 videos to YouTube fail during processing.\" Some users even said \"There is no such thing as H.265\/HEVC won't be processed till YouTube can decide to support it.\"\nIt is obvious that upload H.265 videos to YouTube or Vimeo may cause some issues. However, in the following page, we are going to provide you some efficient methods of encoding and decoding H.265 videos. But if there is some tool which can convert H.265 into the format that YouTube and Vimeo can recognize while maintain the quality? Here we suggest Pavtube Video Converter. It can encode and decode H.265 video into the proper format which supported by YouTube\/Vimeo. Not mention about the build-in editor will allow you do the pre-editing before conversion.\nHow to convert and upload Samsung NX1 H.265 files to YouTube or Vimeo while no quality drops?\nStep 1: Download and have a quick installation. The trial version will have a watermark on your converted files. Except for that, there are no time limitation, no virus, and no unnecessary bundle apps while downloading. After that, click \"Add Video\" button to load your NX1 H.265 files.\nStep 2: After checking the YouTube and Vimeo website, we know that both of them can support H.264 MP4 format. We can go to the format bar to choose \"HD Video>>H.264 HD Video (*.mp4)\" as your output format.\nStep 3: After choosing the proper format, then click \"Settings\" beside the \"Format\" bar. It will bring you to this UI that you can adjust your parameters. For uploading, you can down-size your files to 1280*720 to speed up your uploading progress.\nStep 4: If you want to do some simple edits before conversion, you can click this \"Pencil\" icon or \"Edit\" to go into this interface. In this UI, you can adjust \"Aspect ratio\" to fit the playing screen better.\nStep 5: After setting the file location, click \"Convert\" button to start your conversion. If you forget to set the location, don't worry, just click this \"Open output folder\", then your files will appear in the default location.\nConclusion: Now after the conversion, you will have the generated NX1 H.265 files which are compatible with YouTube\/Vimeo for you to upload them without any problem.\nTop-ranked Pavtube H.265 Video Converter: The big trend of 4K put a eager need for higher shooting quality, fast playback , powerful stream function. This H.265 just came as a best connection between the 4K generation and video making equipment.\nIngest Samsung NX1 H.265 Videos to Sony Vegas Pro 13\/12\/11: Some issues appeared there when importing Samsung NX1 H.265 videos to Sony Vegas Pro 13\/12\/11. Let's find some good solutions for H.265 videos.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Headache and tempromandibular disorders (TMDs) are among the most common complaints in the general population. The considerable overlap of symptoms in the patients suffering from headache and TMDs, suggests that tempromandibular structures can cause headache or the headache may refer pain to the masticatory muscles and tempromandibular structures. Nevertheless, TMD is too often overlooked as an etiological factor in headache.\nTMD is a term applied to clinical problems involving the muscles of mastication, the tempromandibular joint (TMJ) and associated structures, or both. TMJ pain is reported in 10% of the population and TMD may occur in 46% of the US population making TMDs significant contributors to pain in the face and head region.\nHeadache is among one of the most common TMD symptoms and migraine is the most common primary headache diagnosis this population.\nHeadache prevalence is reported to be higher in a TMD population. Therefore, the TMJ and associated orofacial structures must be considered as possible perpetuating or triggering factors for headaches.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Do you know how to open up a conversation with a Business Professional? Would you like 5 HOT Opening Phrases that have proven to WORK? Read on!\nThe elder care program targeting South Florida corporations is being lead by A Good Daughter based in Margate, Florida.\nAre you dismayed by the high price of your prescription medicine? Talk to your doctor about prescribing a higher-strength pill you can split in half.\nYou\"ll end up using your pup's name over 35,000 times in the course of its life. Shouldn't it be a name you love? Consider these tips when choosing puppy names.\nSwordfish, how to buy,store, cook and enjoy it.\nJust Whose Computer is this Anyway?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"In the article authors propose an extended ontological model for distance learning, concerning pedagogical and cognitive requirements of the teaching\/learning process as well as environmental requirements represented by SCORM standard. The main characteristic of the dedicated ontological model is reusability, which manifests itself in the possibility of adapting the knowledge model to different contexts and for different users by simply enabling knowledge sharing and knowledge management. Additionally, the article contains case studies (SCORM's course) presenting the proposed model in action.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..194b74210ae5e39c849599534dad3356b32ea21f
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"\u00a9 Hong Van Nguyen. All rights reserved.\nOur guide in Wadi Rum led us up Umm ad Dami and then said, \"Saudi Arabia over there. Jordan over there. Bedouin up here.\" I thought this picture perfectly captured that moment and words.\nDate Uploaded: April 3, 2016, 7:13 p.m.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"shop.kingston.com - Memory for your Desktop, Server, Workstation, Notebook, PDA, MP3 Player, Printer, Router and more.\nPlease click here for complete terms and conditions.\nOrders received by 3:00p.m. PST, M-F generally ship the same day. Orders received on weekends or holidays will ship the following business day. Occasionally a run on promotional orders will exceed our ability to process orders the same day. In those circumstances we will do our best to ship your product out as expeditiously as possible.\nSaturday and 2nd day deliveries are premium services and do not apply to Kingston's Free shipping offer. In the event that a product is back ordered, Kingston will contact the customer with an approximate ship date.\nYour satisfaction is 100% guaranteed with any product purchased on Shop.Kingston.com for 30 days. Product replacement or refund is subject to the conditions set forth under the Warranty section of this website. Should you need to return a product, please contact us at (800) 435-0057.\nKingston is required to collect appropriate sales taxes when shipping to the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Viginia, and Washington. In addition, freight is taxable in Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. Shop.kingston does not currently have the ability to process tax exempt orders.\n\u00a92019 Kingston Technology Corporation. All Rights Reserved.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Duet is a stop motion short filmproject. In essence, it is a love story between two hands on a piano, and their life-long passion as successful stage performers. The action will take place on a piano's keyboard, representing the stage, with both hands acting as the protagonists of the story. As they interact with one another, walk and dance along the keyboard, they play a music piece that is constantly evolving, matching accurately the movements of the characters. The film, when completed, will last about 4 minutes.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Sevilla president Jos\u00e9 Castro to Radio Sevilla: \"We have made good progress in getting Nolito to play for us.\"\nLyon owner Jean-Michel Aulas has confirmed the club held talks with Eliaquim Mangala today, but added that there is no deal at this stage.\nSergio Ag\u00fcero to Xinhua: \"I will fulfill my contract to stay here until the end of my deal. I have not thought about where to play next.\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Roofs are a key issue for all homeowners, particularly when leaks or drafts arise. You can actually learn how to install your own roof. Continue reading to learn more about roof installation and what you should know.\nIf you notice a leak during a rain storm, hold off on your inspection until things dry out. Not only will you not be able to repair a leak quickly at first, you won't be safe if the roof is wet. Wait until it stops raining and the roof is completely dry before attempting to repair it.\nDon't attempt to do roof repairs in bad weather conditions, such as snow, ice or rain. Rain, sleet, and snow can cause you to fall, which can seriously injure or even kill you. Only work on your roof if the weather is dry and sunny.\nWhen roofing is concerned, safety should be your number one priority. A quick way to seriously injure yourself is to try to work on your roof in wet conditions. Keep a bucket underneath any leaks until you have improved weather and then go inspect your roof.\nKeep your climate in mind before getting any roof work done. Clay roofs do well in dry climates, and they help keep the house cool. Clay does not do well in wet climates and can damage a roof pretty quickly. If you don't know, ask.\nDo not try to repair a roof if it's raining, snowing or icy outside. When you have a roof that is wet then it could cause you to fall and get hurt pretty badly. It is in your best interest to tackle your project on a dry, sunny day.\nAlways wear rubber-soled boots when working on your roof. Even on sunny and dry days, rubber boots are still a necessity so that you have a good grip. When you have to make repairs on your roof you're probably going to be in a few awkward positions that can have you loosing your footing so you need to be safe.\nIf you're working on a leak, do it right the first time. If you find one leak, it's likely that others exist as well. Check the whole roof and you might find more problems.\nIf you're looking to hire a contractor to work on your roof, be sure and look at their references. Follow up on the references, calling previous clients to find out if they are satisfied with the work. You should take a look at some of the properties yourself. Walk or drive past the homes to check out the roof and, if homeowners are outside, stop to ask some questions.\nIf you're having a contractor remove your roof, mow your lawn first. This will ensure he can find any dropped nails easily. Some contractors use a magnetic device to find stray nails. These devices are most effective when used on shorter grass.\nWhen you're trying to hire a roofing contractor, you need to make sure they are in possession of liability insurance. Reliable roofers have this kind of insurance. Also, if damage occurs to the roof while they work, their insurance pays the cost.\nIf you've called a roofer, but their visit isn't for another couple days, use a type of temporary fix on the leaky roof. Try buying heavy duty plastic and layering it over the area. This may be a somewhat inefficient method of handing leaks, but it can buy you some time.\nTry to avoid paying the complete price up front. Normally, you pay 25% or so to start the job. You don't want them to do a poor job or do less work than expected.\nUnless you are required to, do not pay up front. Normally, you pay 25% or so to start the job. The last thing you want is to have paid the full amount upfront in return for a shoddy job.\nIf you plan on hiring a contractor, you should ensure they have proper credentials that are updated. Nearly every area requires some sort of licensing for roofers, so make sure yours has a current and valid license. The company should also be fully insured and covered for worker's compensation laws as well.\nWhen shopping for a contractor, be sure to ask about warranties. You want a warranty that is going to last for at least 3-5 years. The warranty should cover defective materials, as well as workmanship, and they should provide you with copies of any relevant manufacturer warranties.\nRather than hiring professionals, you can teach yourself roof repair techniques. Be thoroughly educating yourself you will be able to make the correct choices. Keep the tips you've learned here in mind the next time you have to do roofing repairs and maintenance.\nCheck to see that your roofer has all of the necessary documentation. If you are unsure of local regulations or licensure requirements, never just take the word of the roofing company. Call the local government to find out what the roofer needs to provide.\nA lot of people wish to figure out Handyman, but have a little trouble fully understanding them. Thankfully, you came to the right place to help you get started with the learning process. Simply make the best use possible of this valuable information.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"All photos, images, stories, and web content are the intellectual property of Platinum Pictures Network, Inc. All rights are reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of aforementioned is a violation of United States Copyright Laws. Pursuant to U.S. Code Section 2257 of Title 18, records establishing that all models whose photographs appear on this website were 18 years of age or older at the time of the photography are in the custody of 2257Snap 10916 SE Lenore Street. PlatinumPicturesInc.Com, it's subsidiary and affiliate websites operate as online websites and as such are a continuous ongoing production. Site content and products offered have been prepared for a special audience, namely adults who request and desire explicit adult material, for their information, education. This site content and products offered have been prepared for a special audience, namely adults who request and desire explicit adult material, for their information, education and entertainment in the privacy of their own homes. The contents of and products sold on this website may not be shown to nor purchased by minors nor shown to any individual who does not wish to view them. If explicit sexual imagery violates your local community standards, you are hereby directed to exit this website and proceed no further. Further exploration shall be deemed an affirmative declaration you are aware of your local community standards with respect to graphic sexual imagery and content. By entering this site beyond this point you also affirmatively declare explicit sexual imagery and related video content is not a violation of your local community standards or obscenity laws. In consideration thereof, you agree to irrevocably hold harmless any claim of obscenity or violation of community standards, which could arise directly or indirectly from your procurement and\/or viewership of sexually explicit videos, pictures, text language or any other communication, entertainment within this website and\/or its' affiliates & subsidiary websites. Platinum Pictures Inc. Copyrights, Trademarks are the intellectual property of Platinum Pictures Network, Inc. through written assignments. Platinum Pictures Network, Inc. produced and acquired content are the intellectual property of same.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Michelle's Place Breast Cancer Resource Center is proud to announce that effective January 1st, 2017, all women, regardless of age, will have timely access to receive the necessary services to detect and treat their cancers early. This means that any woman with a symptom of breast cancer can now receive the appropriate diagnostic breast health services that were previously denied to women under 40 years old.\nAB 1795 was highly sought after by health service organizations, such as the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Association of California Healthcare Districts, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The Bill passed out of Senate Appropriations in August 2016, and was officially signed into legislation by Governor Jerry Brown on September 25, 2016.\nThe Bill expands eligibility for breast cancer screening under the Every Woman Counts (EWC) program to symptomatic women, regardless of age. This bill also provides that if an individual is diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer or cervical cancer, whether at the original cancer site or a different cancer cite, and meets all other applicable eligibility requirements, the individual shall be eligible for an additional period of treatment coverage of 18 or 24 months.\nMichelle's Place has been facilitating and funding diagnostic screening services to women under 40 for nearly a decade through the Breast Health Assistance program. With all women, regardless of age, receiving diagnostic care through the passing of this Bill, Michelle's Place can now focus on and grow the patient navigation program and services provided to all women diagnosed with breast cancer.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"A video released this week details a two-week tour of Germany's science institutions by 25 young eco-researchers from around the world who won the latest Green Talents competition run by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).\nTheir work focuses on developing innovative, interdisciplinary solutions to challenges in the environment and sustainable development, such as low-carbon urban societies and biofuels.\nAmong the winners, picked from 430 applicants from 80 countries, were researchers from Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa and Vietnam. They were selected by a panel of German experts for their scientific excellence and innovative potential of their research.\nVolkmar Dietz, who heads BMBF's sustainability, climate and energy directorate, tells SciDev.Net that Green Talents fosters international cooperation by promoting the exchange of ideas between young scientists and giving them an opportunity to work in Germany.\nThe winners go on a two-week tour of German research institutions and companies in the sustainable development sector, have individual meetings with experts in their research field and can go on a fully funded research visit of up to three months at a German research institution of their choice.\nIn addition, they have access to a network of more than 105 previous winners spread over 36 countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe.\nOne winner, Umarah Mubeen from Pakistan, is working on microalgae biomass to fix carbon and produce bioenergy.\n\"It was a time I got to learn more about my field from a broader perspective,\" she tells SciDev.Net. She hopes to benefit from expert guidance and advice during a research stay in Germany before continuing her work in Pakistan.\n\"My future goal is to efficiently integrate the microalgal biomass production process with CO2 capturing \u2026 improving the economy of developing countries as well as protecting the environment,\" she explains.\nGermany's reputation as a leader in research on renewable energy was an incentive for one of the 2010 winners, Hung Phan from Vietnam, to apply.\n\"I wanted to share my expertise on waste-water management and expand my knowledge of renewable energy,\" he says. \"I knew that Germany was a country with a lot of renewable energy and so I hoped to visit there and learn more about it.\n\"It was a really eye-opening experience. I saw many different types of renewable energy: biomass, tidal energy and geothermal,\" he adds. Phan is currently working in the United States, but intends to return to Vietnam in a few years.\nHe is keen to apply the insights he has gained abroad back at home, where biofuels could help provide more people with access to electricity.\nDietz says the winning researchers \"can greatly benefit their countries as well as sustainable development and international cooperation in general\" with their new knowledge and contacts.\n\"The success of our efforts can be seen in the ever-growing number of applications and participating countries each year. They all want to become part of our unique network,\" he says.\nThe annual contest has been running since 2009. This year's competition is scheduled to open for applications by the end of April.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We've been fortunate to place a number of our clients in People magazine over the years.\nToybrary\u2013\u2013an upscale lending library for toys\u2013\u2013was one of them.\nAfter we got Toybrary media coverage in The Wall Street Journal, they received offers to franchise around the country.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"If laundry is the center of your universe, then this handsome laundry center is a keeper. Compact and stacked with functionality, this Rolling Laundry Cart with Hanging Bar makes laundry days your most efficient days. Use the adjustable steel rod to hang your favorite coats or dresses to dry, or stow away seasonal gear or garments that tend to be on the shy side. The triple laundry sorter lets you separate clothes by color, family member or general likeability. And when you've finally washed your hands clean of all that dirty laundry for the day, glide this rolling cart back to your bedroom so it can recharge for its next tour of duty.\n32.5\" x 16.5\" x 67.5\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"(d) shall wear such uniform, and carry such staff or other insignia of office as the local authority shall, with the approval of the Minister, determine.\n(b) When the person arrested is not released, he shall be taken as soon as possible before a Magistrate.\n(c) shall be taken forthwith to the nearest police station and the officer for the time being in charge of the station, if he is satisfied with respect to the name, position and place of abode of the person arrested, may release him provisionally after recording all the particulars concerning the case in the occurrence book of the station.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Northpointe PreTeam Athletes are selected from our incredible Recreational Gymnastics Classes. These athletes show intense focus, and the potential for amazing strength and flexibility. Evaluations for our PreTeam Program happen throughout the year in a couple of ways\u2014individually, on the recommendation of their recreational coach, or during our tri-annual Recreation Class Evaluations Week. PreTeam is the first step toward competitive gymnastics.\nNorthpointe PreTeams train four to six hours each week, focusing on strength, flexibility, balance, form and correct gymnastics positions. PreTeam is a wonderful experience, with fantastic Northpointe Coaches who strike the perfect balance between gymnastics work and fun. The PreTeam will perform several exhibitions throughout the year, giving the Athletes their first taste of gymnastics performance on a big stage.\nStars is a very special program that nurtures our youngest little PreTeamers. These 3 and 4 year old little wonders are selected on their ability to follow directions, hold body shapes, and move independently from event to event. Training is 1 hour twice a week.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"With a name like Magan, my parents had set me up to be the punchline of the most ridiculous joke ever to happen to anyone living or braindead: that lame advert about some vegetable oil (this was before the era of Omega-3s et al) where the tagline went\u2026 waitaminute! Why am I even bothering. Suffice to say that, the word Magan always evokes Gagan followed by the \"joke\". Going to a restaurant called Gaggan (Praise the Lord for the extra 'n') would then be too quirky, even for me.\nBut there I was, this white, white place; clean lines, lots of wood and cane, calming ambience, relaxing, nothing unnervingly fine dining about it, and yet, a sense of firm yet gently controlled pre-plated service.\nI ordered the tasting menu, which comes at three 'levels' \u2013 different pricings, starting at 1600 Baht, and with each level the meats can get more precious.They said it was for special needs but wipe that grin off your face \u2013 just because one happens to be in Thailand, 'special needs' doesn't take on any implied sort of a meaning.\nThe rest of the menu itself appears simple, a plain black print on A4 white stapled together. the restaurant isn't under gastronomic transit, it is merely cyclic, and frequently updated, one would guess.\nThe food, in order of appearance.\nInedit beer. A beer specially crafted by THE Ferran Adria, for pairing with food, and boy did it work well. Served in White wine glasses, it was a cracker of a drink, with its deep malty-orangy flavours, hints of coriander too, and yet light with a gentle yet consistent fizz.\nLeft Across, 5 letters, begins with a salad and ends with yummy!\nYoghurt explosion: A sweet n' sour little amuse-bouche. Good ol' school molecular applications.\nUmami oysters with lemon foam. Fresh. Clean. Nothing exactly Indian really but I don't ask questions at the eating end of a good fresh oyster.\nMixed salad. Looked nothing like a salad. It looked so healthy in fact that it made regular salad look like a McCalorie. Carrot n beetroot leaves, Peruvian (miniature) cucumber. Lovely flavourful creamy dressing. The long plate was suitable as the range of flavours seemed to flow as one worked across the range of the carefully juxtaposed vegetable \"leaves\".\nFoie Gras Three-ways. Powdered (white) , with raspberry n powdered, and finished in a pan (po\u00eble). Very enjoyable but about as Indian as Russell Peters.\nSorry, I meant Peter Sellers. And not in that movie 'The Party'; that was good.\nThis can pose a serious threat to Arcachon...!\nOyster leaf. Very curious. The chef decides that we are obviously the kind who are in for an experimental for the greater good, (just as long as it doesn't add to my bill) and a leaf was put before me; Man! It did taste like oysters! Well played. Pomegranate drop in the middle made for a nice contrast but it was the minerality that truly lingered.\nStraight from a nitrogen tank...!\nPi\u00f1a Colada. Served frozen. Interesting sorbet, but I ain't even eaten yet. Show Pony gastronomy.\nDouble-cooked pork with orange pasta, date and tamarind sauce. Now we talking. Great food, lovely balanced presentation, i lap it all up once the server tells me that, barring the plate, I can eat it all. Texture of orange pasta is chemical-jelly like so i let that go back with the plate, much to the concern of the server.\nSlow (55 degree) cooked egg (1.5 hrs) with moily sauce. Beret-shaped plate. This right here is where the director of the evening, the chef, decides to show us that this isn't even started yet. Up until now, he was merely warming up. This here, is a winner. In retrospect, it was perhaps my favourite course of the meal.\nRavioli (redskin) potatoes, with paneer and black truffles, and green pea sauce. Lovely little pasts-esque course. The potato is crisp and fresh, crunchy btu not the fried kind, more the al dente kind, and the paneer gooey soft at the core of each roll. Truffles and peas work well together. The chef heightens the intensity.\nChicken Sukka on a crispy garlic naan\u2026India is here. Familiar flavours, innovative presentation. Balanced, true-to-original, and yet, remodelled.\nYou lika Chicken Sukka huh!?\nMushrooms, Indian style. Anything 'Indian style' soundsmore like a warning and less inviting, like say, \u00e0 la Fran\u00e7aise, or alla Italiana. Morels and chanterelles, and others, tossed in Indian spices with streaks of asparagus. Creamy and peppery.\nMutton and fish maincourses came with naan. The first and only course with bread. Lovely mutton curry. Simple n' honest. Soft naans. No more molecular. Good mix of the contemporary and the classics.\nChocolate, dark and white, with ice cream. There was a lovely dark flower (as also the stemmy and leafy green parts) for garnish as also flavour contrast. Intriguing mix, well matched.\nIn the end, I was pleasantly surprised and definitely content. In fact, I was just perfectly well-fed; the meal was balanced in every sense. In the beginning I had started to feel a bit concern when big plates with intricately placed tidbits kept coming in quick succession \u2013 were these the 10-course I was paying for?? \u2013 but in the end, i was left happy in all respects. No, I didn't request for the menu with 'special needs'\u2026!\nFood was quite sinusoidal here: there were both highs and, well, let's label them not-so-highs; there weren't any lows really. Meats interlaced with the vegetarian, moments of crescendos and calandos, all well-timed and suitably executed. As an afterthought, it is easy to see why this may have been intentional: to both elevate and satiate hunger. A great trick to hold interest and keep the curiosity lingering.\nThe chef, an IHM Trivandrum graduate, has also done time at El Bulli, the good kinda' 'doing time', learning stuff, honing skills, et al. The result, shows, and tastes for itself. At points I did feel as if the chef was trying too hard to impress me but it passed as the serious Indian courses came on reassuring the diner in me that classics needn't be messed with and that sort of respect when imparted to recipes seeped in history shows maturity on the part of the chef. As Juan-Mari Arzak, the famous Spanish chef told me, \"If you are not going to improve it, leave it untouched.\" Gaggan reproduces with utter clarity and precision and doesn't need improving, or proving.\nGreat meal, great place, great prices, great service; do reserve a seat for yourself when in Bangkok. How I secretly wish they change their name in the future or else I just might; call myself something else the next time I go, just so to not have \"Khao Gagan, Raho Magan\" ring incessantly in my ear as I try and savour the ever-changing tasting menu.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"When it comes to being parents, your children become your first priority, and this is exactly the case for Hawick Lau (\u5289\u6137\u5a01).\nThe Hong Kong actor and son of Lau Dan (\u5289\u4e39), who was at one point considered to be one of the hottest actors Chinese TV industry, has stayed quiet for much of late 2017. His last big project was the modern drama Heirs <\u7e7c\u627f\u4eba>, which aired in early 2017. He last updated his Weibo in November 2017, and his personal studio Hawick's Studio updated only twice since the New Year's.\nHis wife Yang Mi (\u694a\u51aa), on the other hand, is once again expected to have a busy year, with multiple projects and endorsements confirmed for the coming months.\nNetizens pointed out that Yang Mi's popularity and better development in the entertainment industry has forced Hawick to take a step back to allow Yang Mi to continue work while he stays at home to raise their daughter.\nHawick has once mentioned in an televised program that he loves everything about Yang Mi, except that she is always too busy. Nonetheless, Yang Mi has said in an interview that both she and Hawick respect each other's careers.\nI think it is good to spend some time with the baby when they are still young. Both are rich enough not to work so many hours. They just need to coordinate their work time and free time and they will have a lovely family life. Hawick had his turn when Yang Mi took some time off. It will be good for him to have a rest while Yang Mi does a project or two.\n@elizabeth Yang Mi is too busy running her own production company and promoting her new actors. Since she's the more successful one, it's fitting that she brings home the bacon and he takes care of the daughter.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Evil's ok with me, just as long as I'm some sort of thief or assassin or (of course) an Arch-mage! I am very fond of thieves and assassins and more fond of mages than anything (except in W&W)!\nGood luck with the story! I'm honored to be in it. And Jafin is an original name by me (sort of, it's a derivative of a nickname my brother's g\/f called me that kinda stuck. Weird huh?).\nBumping this for my guildmaster (as long as he doesn't confuse me with his prolific name-changing)!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"About Us | Far Post Soccer Club, Inc.\nFar Post Soccer Club's goal is to foster a love of the game and enhance good playing habits through a club-wide, progressive curriculum. We are sensitive to individual player needs, potential, and development of personal excellence.\nFar Post has premier travel soccer teams for players U9-U18, and club-level teams up to the age of 14. We provide intensive training for players throughout the year. Our professional coaches provide the best opportunities for our players to develop and succeed in soccer and also learn important life lessons.\nFar Post also offers a unique indoor experience through our various Futsal and 8v8 leagues. To learn more about these leagues, check out the 'Indoor' section listed on the navigation bar above.\nWe look forward to seeing you at the Far Post Soccer Club!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Hamilton community was saddened to hear the news Friday morning of the death of Colgate basketball coach Jack Bruen. Jack Bruen's last days, as the rest of his life, were marked with class and humor.\nThis fan attended Colgate basketball games in the days when the joke was that the fans were introduced at the beginning of games rather than the players because it took less time. This was at the beginning of the Bruen era. The level of basketball sometimes could be disappointing in those days, but Jack was always entertaining. This fan will never forget the occasion in which one of the officials called Jack for a technical (Jack sometimes would let the officials know of his displeasure). The next time that official called a foul against Colgate, he looked over at Jack ready to call another technical if need be. Jack clapped his hands in mock applause at the call. You've just got to love a guy like that.\nJack was not only entertaining; he was a good coach. Under his leadership the Colgate basketball program was turned around. His teams won, and the once empty stands were filled.\nIn recent days, the stands were filled, not just with those wanting to watch Colgate basketball, but with those wanting to express their support of and affection for Jack. He joked that they were there just because they had heard that he was going to buy them drinks. Even during these most difficult days of his life, his humor never failed him or those around him. Humor was the way Jack helped others face his terminal illness. When telling his players a few months ago of his pancreatic cancer, he told them that when it's your time to go there are two options.\nMark Twain wrote, \"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.\"\nIf Twain was right and Jack was wrong about his assessment of his final destination, he has no need of humor now for he has Joy. The rest of us still need humor to help us cope. For that we will ever be thankful to Jack.\n\"When you're sick,\" he told his players at Cotterell Court, \"only two things can happen. Either you get better or you get worse. If you get better, no problem. If you get worse, only two things can happen. Either you live or you die. If you live, no problem. If you die, only two things can happen. Either you go to heaven or you go to hell. If you go to heaven, no problem.\" And then Jack, a former bartender who knew something about timing, paused for effect. \"And if you go to hell,\" he announced, \"hey, all your friends are there.\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Why I am interested in being part of the creatives team for the production?\nSome people like crosswords or play chess. I like solving the stage's puzzles. However, I can't do it by myself; I must work with a team of artists bringing to the production ideas and responses prompted by others in the group.\nAny work of art begins not knowing the result. The resolution of an artwork comes only after a journey of sorts into the unknown. Along the way experiments are performed, discoveries are made, surprises are revealed, responses take the intrepid artists further until, eventually, the artwork is resolved, whatever it is and wherever it has reached.\nThe play's study of political, social and moral subjects, attracted me to it. The increasingly disturbing power of the media is particularly relevant to today's audience. The notion of altruism is so often eclipsed by competition and greed. What, exactly, is meant by \"bleeding hearts\"? Apparently, it's a character-flaw. Is it wrong to care, to identify injustice, to support those needing help?\nAnother reason I am attracted to the play is the challenge of including filmic imagery with stage-performers, something I have not experienced as a set-designer. On the occasions I've seen simultaneous projection and live performance I have found it to be unsatisfactory \u2013 too often the filmic image is little more than a backdrop, a contemporary means of achieving the same result as an old-fashioned painterly system.\nThe play calls for a theatrical solution to staging, which is another attraction for me.\nI support the director's intention to alter the Drill Hall's stage-space to surprise Mullumbimby's audience, and to do this within the company's means, using its available expertise and stock. Of course, I must resolve a scenographic device useful to the actors in their presentation of the play. The set must accommodate rapid scene-shifts, include front and rear projection as well as a surtitle panel, the latter having an aesthetic role as much as an informative one, sometimes like a Brechtian device. An important aspect of the scenography is its visual triggers used to suggest places, for example. For me, this is a more interesting way of staging plays than literalism \u2013 too often the latter just blocks imagination and can just get in the way of instantaneous transitions.\nThis is founded on projection of filmic images with surtitles. Where are these to appear? What spaces are needed to achieve this? Can these spaces be successfully used by the actors to achieve their objectives? Flexibility in the set with necessary fixed projection positions is the conundrum that both the director and I must recognise and appreciate. Somehow we must solve the puzzle of space, image, darkness and light, text, sound, time, semiotics, performance and so on. The process is quite complex but results in an apparently simple solution. I hope we have got the best out of the Drill Hall.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Nager, Romaine & Schneiberg Co., L.P.A. (NRS) is an injury law firm based in northeastern Ohio on Cleveland's east side. With more than 150 years of combined legal experience, the attorneys at NRS represent individuals throughout the state of Ohio in many areas, including automobile accidents. Workers' compensation and personal injury law are the historic foundations of the firm.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I needed a dress for 2 weddings I had the same day and didn't want to buy something I was going to only wear once. Chris and Natalie were both awesome. I went to the showroom and had a bunch of dresses for me to try on. Great expirence overall. I will defiantly be boroing from them more often.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"Parker Jaw Crusher Data Sheet - Crusher, quarry, .\nParker Jaw Crusher Data Sheet - Protable Plant parker jaw crusher data sheet-related information, . Parker Mobile Jaw Crusher Rt1165dh; Parker Impact Crusher .\nJul 29, 2015 \u00b7 For Sale Parker 0960 Mobile Jaw Crusher 29 TONS 3116 Engine - Duration: 0:48. ECO PLANT HIRE AND SALES LTD 1,181 views. 0:48.\nParker Mobile Jaw Crusher Rt1165dhParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher re 1165 used mobile parker jaw coal tar creosote plant for sale Mahesh Enterprises parker rt 1165 dh mobile crusher price \u00b7 jaw -parker crusher re 1165 dh-,parker crusher re 1165 vibrating sieve separatorparker crusher re 1165 parker crusher re 1165 Related Posts hot selling jaw .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - Godina .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, 2000 year Parker Mobile tracked Jaw crusher just arrived into stock. Jaw Crusher in Perfect working order.\nParker Crusher Parts,educationcare. Jaw crusher parts is amongst the quarrying and recycling industries include mobile jaw crusher, jaw crusher,parker . for Parker 1998 jow crusher type RT1165DH .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Year 2000, Perfect .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Mobile tracked Jaw crusher in Perfect working order. Complete with 3306 Engine, Only \u20ac65,000.\n2000 Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 Manufacturer: Parker Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, 2000 year Parker Mobile tracked Jaw crusher just arrived into stock. Jaw Crusher in Perfect working order. Complete with . For Sale Parker RW850DH Mobile Jaw Crusher YouTube \u00b7 For Sale 1999 Parker RW850DH Mobile Jaw Crusher, Single toggle . Parker .\nPARKER Crusher Aggregate Equipment For Sale. . Parker 1165 tracked jaw crusher, . is a mobile impact crushing plant that comes complete with a .\nParker Mobile Crushers - FoteMine Heavy Mining .\nparker mobile crushers . parker 1165 track mounted jaw crushers parker mobile jaw crusher rt1165dh, Parker RT 1165 DH, Parker Wheeled Jaw Crusher Get Pric, .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Year 2000, Perfect . Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Mobile tracked Jaw crusher in Perfect working order. Complete with 3306 Engine, Only \u20ac65,000.\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - Year: 2000 .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - Year: . 2000 year Parker Mobile tracked Jaw crusher just arrived into stock. Jaw Crusher in Perfect working order.\nparkar jaw crusher 9308 - mgcarpets. Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Mobile tracked Jaw crusher in Perfect working order. Complete with 3306 Engine, Only \u20ac65,000.\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Mobile tracked Jaw crusher in Perfect working order. Complete with ZME 3306 Engine, Only \u20ac65,000. Grantie Primary Jaw Crusher With Best .\nParker Crusher Plant | Crusher Mills, Cone Crusher, Jaw .\nPARKER RT1165DH crushing plant, sale, buy . ore mineral crushers. mobile jaw crusher parker plant ltd. quality engineering excellence since 1911. parker plant .\nparker mobile jaw crusherparker mobile jaw crusher .\nJaw Crushers for first, Service & Aftersales - Parker Plant Jaw Crusher, parker mobile crusher manual download parker rocksledger jaw crushers for medium to .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Year 2000, . Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, Mobile tracked Jaw crusher in Perfect working .\nPARKER MOBILE JAW CRUSHER 1100X650 - United Kingdom - Used 2-way Parker mobile primary jaw crusher 1100x650 . Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - Leto .\nParker -rt1165dh-jaw-crusher-65-000 - Year of Mnftr: .\nBrowse all ads of used Parker crushers . Parker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher, . Parker 1165 Track Crushers Used For Sale\u2013 Rock Crusher . Jaw crusher - mobile. PARKER .\nParker RT1165DH Jaw Crusher \u20ac65,000 - Mnftr year: .\njaw crusher parker rt1165dh model 2003 . re 1165 used mobile parker jaw crusher for sale mining equipment for . re1165 used mobile parker jaw crusher price .\nUsed Parker Jaw Crusher For Sale . used parker rt1165dh for sale in . re 1165 used mobile parker jaw crusher for sale. prices of cement bricks and blocks .\nFind best value and selection for your PARKER MOBILE JAW CRUSHER search on The Star Crusher Parker, Jake. . Parker Parker rt1165dh jaw crusher, .","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Victoria creperie brings you top quality outside catering service with a difference covering the whole west midlands region!!\nWe offer authentic crepes, scrumptious buffets and mouthwatering cakes for any occasion.\nOur outside catering service can be set up in any venue or location and can cater for Birthday Parties, Weddings, Corporate Events, Funerals, Banquets, Christmas Parties and much more. We can cater for both small or large parties and our experience in the outside catering industry means we can use our knowledge to help satisfy your requirements.\nOur sweet and savoury mobile creperie service is a winner among children and adults alike. Watch as one of our trained professionals creates an amazing mouthwatering Breton style Crepe\/Pancake before your eyes.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Watch fans across the United States celebrate the USA's World Cup win over Japan.\nThe USA captured its first World Cup title since 1999 with a 5\u20132 win over Japan in Sunday's final.\nCarli Lloyd was the hero of the game after scoring a historic hat trick in the first 16 minutes, and later won the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament. The U.S. also received goals in the final from Lauren Holiday and Tobin Heath.\nThe game smashed American TV ratings records, becoming the most-watched soccer match, men's or women's, in U.S. history. After the win, athletes from all the major American pro leagues congratulated the team on Twitter.\nFans across the country held watch parties on park lawns and in bars and restaurants to see the U.S. capture its third World Cup title. You can watch some of the best reaction videos below.\nAnd Chicago goes wild again!!!! 5-2!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"You can't ignore email. It's rude.\nThat sounds ridiculous, right? You would never snub a colleague trying to strike up a conversation. Yet when you ignore a personal email, that's exactly what you've done: digital snubbery. Yes, we're all overwhelmed with email. One recent survey suggested that the average American's inbox has 199 unread messages. But volume isn't an excuse for not replying. Ignoring email is an act of incivility.\nWhen researchers compiled a huge database of the digital habits of teams at Microsoft, they found that the clearest warning sign of an ineffective manager was being slow to answer emails. Responding in a timely manner shows that you are conscientious \u2014 organised, dependable and hardworking. And that matters. In a comprehensive analysis of people in hundreds of occupations, conscientiousness was the single best personality predictor of job performance. I'm not saying you have to answer every email. Your brain is not just sitting there waiting to be picked. If senders aren't considerate enough to do their homework and ask a question you're qualified to answer, you don't owe them anything back.\nWe all need to set boundaries. People shouldn't be forced to answer endless emails outside work hours \u2014 which is why some companies have policies against checking emails on nights and weekends. Some people I know tell their colleagues they'll be on email from 9 to 10am and 2 to 3pm each day, but not in between. If it's not an emergency, no one should expect you to respond right away.\nSpending hours a day answering emails can stand in the way of getting things done. One recent study shows that on days when managers face heavy email demands, they make less progress toward their goals and end up being less proactive in communicating their vision and setting expectations. But that same study shows that email load takes a toll only if it's not central to your job. And let's face it: These days email is central to most jobs. What we really need to do is to make email something we think carefully about before sending, and therefore feel genuinely bad ignoring.\nWhatever boundaries you choose, don't abandon your inbox altogether. Not answering emails today is like refusing to take phone calls in the 1990s or ignoring letters in the 1950s. Email is not household clutter. Your inbox isn't just a list of other people's tasks. It's where other people help you do your job. It allows you to pose questions with a few keystrokes instead of spending the whole day on the phone, and it's vital to gathering information that you can't easily find in a Google search.\nAdam Grant is an American psychologist and author. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"North Devon Moving Image worked with children from Appledore Primary School in North Devon to create a series of short films inspired by James Ravilious's photographs in the Beaford Archive.\nThe children brought the old black and white photographs to life by recreating scenes as they imagined James Ravilious would have experienced them. The young film makers invited some local Appledorians into their school to look at the collection of photographs by James Ravilious taken in Appledore in the 1970s and 1980s and interviewed them about what they saw in the pictures and how looking at them made them feel. Then to create the films, the children dressed up as the characters from the photographs and acted out dramatic recreation of the scenes.\nThis project contributed to the Beaford Arts Hidden Histories community trail of Appledore. For more information visit the Beaford website www.beaford.org.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"BURLINGTON \u2013 Horse shows, laser tag, and a hot dog eating contest are a slice of what the county fair is about.\nDrawing people to the fair these days takes a mix of old and new \u2013 like the traditional fair ride midway and the second-year police and firefighter demolition derby, said John Walton, fair board president.\nThe Aug. 6-11 Boone County 4H & Utopia Fair is a primer for the Kentucky State Fair for events including beauty pageants and 4-H youth animal judging.\nThe 49-acre fairgrounds are at 5819 Idlewild Road, Burlington. Daily admission is $10.\nShow horse owners often are doing the final tune-ups to routines at Boone County ahead of state fair judging, Walton said. The state fair is Aug. 16-26 in Louisville.\nBoone County's fair has big-name live band concerts and souped-up engine tractor pulls in addition to the youth pig scramble and agriculture-related events, Walton said.\n\"We try to mix the commercial with the local 4-H,\" he said.\nAbout 40,000 people visit Boone County's fair each year, Walton said.\nMonday: Dallas Moore Band (7 p.m.).\nTuesday: Saffire Express (7 p.m.).\nThursday: Naked Karate Girls (7 p.m.).\nFriday: Trailer Park Floosies (7 p.m.).\nSaturday: Ky 31 Band (2 p.m.) and DV8 (7 p.m.).\nLaser tag play will be 5-11 p.m. daily near the motor sports arena on Aug. 4 and the remainder of the fair.\nA special Battle of the Badges First Responders Bash will be at 7 p.m. Monday. The demolition derby will be between the Boone County Sheriff's Office and firefighters from Boone County.\nQuirky events include a frog jumping contest at 7 p.m. Tuesday and arm wrestling from 3-5 p.m. Saturday. Tuesday's bubble gum blowing, sunflower seed spitting and hot dog eating contests are among some of the food-oriented contests.\nAction at the fairgrounds starts at 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4, with a fishing derby for children age 15 years and younger.\nSaturday's action continues with a 4 p.m. vintage vehicle cruise-in and the 7 p.m. Battle of the Bluegrass Truck and Tractor Pull.\nThe all-volunteer fair board has worked to put on the fair since 1932, Walton said.\n\"It's the heritage of Boone County,\" he said.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Just when a writer is bored, you need somewhere to write things that are important in many ways. Here you can just read while I write.\nDavid loves riding his hover bike. Hannah desperatly wants to accompany him on one of his expiditions, but when he finally agrees to take her, David experiences something he would not have thought possible.\nLoyalty, Love, Blood. A steady peace has been reached between the fractions of London's supernatural underworld. The model has been replicated across the globe and the word-the non-human one perhaps-is drifting towards peace. Sine is perfectly happy with this. Sure, she likes her bloodshed as much as anyone else but she is certainly glad to be rid of that dagger hanging over her. One fateful day, however, she recieves news that ruins this perfect contentment. With a quick detour into the darker side of witchcraft and a little bit of sacrifice she figures all that is fixed. Of course it isn't that easy. A new danger looms overhead, threatening to destroy everything she has worked for. The veil between the living and the dead is growing thinner and a war is brewing beneath the surface. The threat just happens to be a lot closer to home than anyone expected. ***************** Cover made by Jewlez on wattpad.\nTeratognosea is the story of James, a man being questioned about the disappearance of Allison Bathery. James and Allison had spent a weekend alone together, but when Allison goes missing, it is James who becomes the primary suspect for her disappearance. The body of Allison has yet to be found, so there is reason to believe she might be alive. The only person James will talk with is the young psychologist Dr. Kind, a man who believes James might possess crucial information which could save Allison's life. As James tells the story of what happened during the weekend of Allison's disappearance, Dr. Kind discovers who James really is...and what really happened to Allison.\nA gravedigger is overtaken by the Black Plague.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We report on the dependence on temperature and disorder of the glassy behavior observed in thin films of in the strongly localized regime. The glassy behavior is reflected as a local minimum at the cool-down gate voltage in the conductance vs. gate-voltage, sweeps of field-effect experiments. It is shown that these non-ergodic effects are controlled by an inverse-Arrhenius law and involves a characteristic energy which increases with disorder.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"99 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna. Please phone for an appointment.\nDeal with a team who are focused on getting you the best price.\nNo fancy talk, just results!\nHelping families finding the right home.\nOur focus is on you and selling your property.\nWe are a professional and rapidly growing real estate agency headquartered in Auckland \u2013 selling residential homes, commercial sites, developments, apartments, lifestyle sections and more throughout the country. If you are looking for a great real estate agency to sell your home or development, or perhaps assist you with buying a property, contact us for amazing results. There is a reason why more and more people choose NZ Residential, as we are a real estate agency that prides ourselves on thinking differently and being highly educated, to get you the best results.\nne of NZ Residential's goals is to create a fundamental shift in how properties are marketed in New Zealand. Through our experience in dealing with agents representing collectively 1 billion dollars (NZD) of real estate, we aim to innovate and provide the best practices for real estate.\n99 Hurstmere Road, Auckland. Phone for an appointment.\nReceive updates on our properties for sale and exclusive tips for being a more effective home buyer or seller, written by property marketing experts.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Please fill out the following information. We will find the most suitable closed circuit cooling tower for you.\nPlease input Circulating water flow rate !\nPlease input Wet bulb Temp.!\nPlease input your Company name!!!\nPlease input Your name !\nPlease input your Mobile !\nPlease input your address !","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"Your neighborhood self-service laundry is for sale and you consider investing in this business. For the business alone and no other assets (such as building and land), the purchase price is $240,000. The net cash flows for the project are $30,000 per year for the next 5 years. You plan to borrow the money for this investment at 5%.\nPrepare a net present value calculation for this project. What is the net present value of this project?\nIs this a good investment? What would be a good price at which to purchase this business?\nSubmit an Excel spreadsheet which must include the answers to all 3 questions: 1) A Net Present Value calculation, 2) a Simple Payback Period calculation, and 3) the answer to question regarding whether this is a good investment and what the best price should be.\nThe use of 1 scholarly source (e.g., textbook, article from the CEC Library) is required.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"AUBURN, Maine (AP) \ufffd Hundreds packed an auditorium at Central Maine Community College to voice their displeasure with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's insurance proposal that would force individual policy holders into a network with MaineHealth providers.\nUnder the plan, people who bought individual policies after March 2010 could no longer see doctors at Lewiston's Central Maine Medical Center, Bridgton Hospital or Parkview Adventist Medical Center in Brunswick.\nThey say the plan would force them to drive farther for care, jeopardize established patient-doctor relationships and reduce choice.\nAnthem officials say the plan will expand access to affordable health care.\nOne of the speakers Thursday was writer Stephen King's daughter. The Rev. Naomi King reminded people that local hospitals treated her father when he was critically injured when struck by a car in 1999.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"You've probably read a fair share of them. You've wondered, \"hey! I can do this blogging thing too!\" And yes, you can. In fact, anyone who knows how to use a computer (and, by extension, a mobile phone) can become a blogger. That's the beauty of blogging; it empowers ordinary people with a platform on which to express, in their own, unique voice, to a global audience.\nI started blogging way back in 2007, and from then I've gone on to set up a number of blogs, mostly tech-focused. Today, I've decided to give back, in a sense, to the blogging community, with this simple post on the basics of blogging. It's by no means a comprehensive list, and I will refer to additional resources at the end of this post, where you can continue your adventure into the blogging realms. (Click through to read more).\nFirst, the preliminaries: what is a blog, and why it's better than a regular old website to post your musings. You see, a blog runs on something called \"blogging software\". This isn't software you install on your computer; rather, it's something that lives on the Internet. There's many different types of blogging software available, but the two most famous ones are WordPress (what I use and swear by), and Blogger (developed by the folks at Google).\nBlogging software is free. And what's more, it's dead easy to use. Head on over to www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com, and you'll find it a cinch to sign up and be blogging in minutes \u2013 literally. Before you do, though, you may want to read on for more info on blogging.\nNow, you could go the old-fashioned route, and learn HTML and CSS code, hand-build a website, and upload it to the Internet. However, here's the problem with this method: it's damn hard. And time-consuming. By the time you're finished with the site development, you'll have probably lost all interest in writing a blog. So, after slaving over complex code (which you'd have to learn first), and then configuring a web server, paying for hosting and a domain, and then uploading the site, you'll need to constantly re-upload it every time you want to \"update your blog\". If you didn't understand any of the stuff written previously \u2013 don't worry. There's an easier solution, and it resides in what I mentioned a little earlier: blog software.\nUsing blogging software like WordPress, all the development tasks are taken care of for you. The hardest thing you'll probably find will be choosing a name for your blog, or, what I often find myself stuck in a quandary over: choosing a decent, stylish theme for your blog.\nWhy not? Firstly, blogging is fun. Ask any blogger, and they'll be unanimous on that call. It's an immensely enjoyable hobby, and it could become an additional source of income \u2013 provided you play your cards right. To this end, I'd like to refer you to fellow blogger, Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger fame, who became so successful from blogging, that he was able to quit his day job to focus solely on the thing he enjoyed best \u2013 blogging.\nOnce, not so long ago, if you wanted to share your opinions on anything from politics to fashion, you had to become a journalist, and write for a published magazine. Now, blogging provides a unique platform for anybody with anything interesting to say, to publish to the world. There's a great community of bloggers out there as well, and this offers you a chance to meet interesting people who share your interests.\nI encourage anyone interested in blogging to try it out. Visit www.wordpress.com and sign up for a free blog. Choose a cool blog name, theme, and boom \u2013 you're off. Don't forget to let me know about your blogging adventures by leaving a comment on this post, or tweeting me @RahulDowlath.\nIf you're serious about blogging, I highly recommend Darren Rowse's excellent book on blogging, ProBlogger (you can order it from Amazon.com, or TakeALot in South Africa). Also, visit the ProBlogger website for more great tips on improving your blogging. And I'm also quite happy to assist where possible with questions about the art of blogging. Drop a line in the comments below, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.\nPrevious Previous post: 2012 for BlackBerry: A New Hope?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Members of the Western Council have access to an extensive network of experts and industry professionals. This invaluable resource provides our members with the knowledge, support and competitive edge that they need to stay on top. Western Council believes that information exchange and proper employee training is the best method for problem prevention. That's why the Council offers its members a variety of service options including: training seminars and events, capital program updates, industry committees, publications, including Western Council CONNECTION and The Western Construction Executive, and the Outlook Conference and Exposition.\nThese training and networking events provide our members with the resources necessary to improve construction and operations practices and expand business futures. WCCC is committed to serving the needs of our members and welcomes member feedback and suggestions for additional services.\nWestern Council sponsors regular roundtables, seminars, forums, and other types of training focused on a host of industry topics including: legal and legislative issues, construction and project management, safety, sustainability, employer issues and many other pertinent topics. Members are encouraged to request\/suggest training topics of interest. Western Council also provides in-house seminars for companies looking to train new employees or update current employees' skills.\nWatch the Professional Development section of the Council website for current information on courses, seminars, conferences, trainings, webinars, audio conferences, and more.\nWestern Council is a Construction Users Round Table (CURT) affiliate, so you can benefit from their programs and conferences as well as their webinars featured in our Professional Development section.\nWestern Council is a Lorman Education affiliate. Our members enjoy a 10% discount on their courses when you use the registration links listed in the Professional Development section of the this website.\nWatch for other affiliate benefits in the coming months.\nWestern Council sponsors Capital Program meetings. These events feature key players in large capital programs and provide our members with timely information on projects out to bid in both the private and public sector. Members love these events because they are not only informative, but offer fantastic networking opportunities.\nMembers of Western Council are encouraged to participate on one of our industry committees. These committees are focused on specific industry areas and provide members with additional information and networking opportunities.\nWestern Council Connection, Western Council's newsletter, features articles on current industry trends, project updates, the WCCC event calendar and information on recent legislative decisions. WCCC members are encouraged to submit articles, advertorials, and photos for possible inclusion in the newsletter.\nThe Western Construction Executive offers a look forward for the association, its members, and the industry. Distinguished Projects, association updates, and timely articles are featured.\nNon-member subscriptions to Western Council Connection and the Western Construction Executive are available for a nominal fee. For subscription information, or to advertise in upcoming editions, please contact our office at (916) 599-8020.\nWatch for other timely publications in the future.\nWestern Council's Outlook Conference features presenters and exhibitors from throughout the nation. Attendees benefit not only from attending sessions geared to their specific information and training needs, but can also opt to attend certificate sessions, which provide attendees with Certificates of Completion in their track of choice. The WCCC Expo features product demos and informational materials for the latest products, services, technology and trends. Watch the Calendar and Conference links for information on future conferences.\nWestern Council's Project Excellence Awards recognize outstanding performance in engineering, design and construction. These annual awards are presented at a gala dinner celebration.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Officers are appealing for information after a man in his 50s was wounded with a knife at a house on the High Street in Gainsborough. Injuries are not thought serious or life threatening.\nWe were called this morning (Friday) at 07:44 to the incident which happened at the doorway of the house.\nOfficers are asking anyone with footage that might be relevant to come forward and assist with the enquiry. That could be dash cam footage that captured the incident, or CCTV footage that may have captured the offender\/s arriving, or leaving the scene.\nIf you have any footage, or have any information, please call 101 with incident reference 51 of 8 February.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that some moderate Democrats were wrong not to stake out a bolder agenda following the party's national losses in 2016.\nDe Blasio said in the interview he wanted to influence the national debate, but when asked about the possibility of running for president in 2020, he said only that he would not rule it out.\n\"I never rule things out because you never know what life brings, but I'm focused on the work I'm doing now and getting this message out,\" de Blasio said.\nDe Blasio announced recently that his administration would attempt to guarantee health care to all New Yorkers. He told CNN that Democrats should embrace this goal and said there was \"no question\" the US should have a \"Medicare for all\" system.\nDe Blasio said the US had \"plenty of money\" but that the money was \"in the wrong hands\" and outlined a narrative in which more money has been pushed to the top of the income distribution in recent decades.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Spectacular views! Split level open floor plan with vaulted ceilings, natural wood accents, and large north and east facing windows make this gorgeous home light and bright year round. Take in the sweeping red rock vistas from the large, redwood deck on the main floor or enjoy the view from the second-story deck in the master suite. Located on a quiet street at the eastern edge of Gallup, you'll have easy access to I-40 while being surrounded by red rocks and hiking trails just \u00bd block away. Single owner, impeccably maintained, down to the details. Custom built for energy efficiency and low maintenance, with high-quality Pella windows, stucco exterior, and metal roof. Home sits on over ? acre with a large easement on one side and an RV\/Trailer pad. An oversized 2-vehicle garage, generous closets, pantry, dry walkout basement with many storage shelves and a 144 sq. ft. shed in back provide ample storage for craftsmen or hobbyists.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Add a welcoming touch to your front yard with the Lewiston Mailbox. Made of rust-free cast aluminum with a durable weather resistant finish. This complete mailbox kit includes mailbox, post, support brace, decorative pineapple finial and ornate base. Three cast aluminum address plates mount to each side and front of mailbox - just specify your address number when requested.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This is not part of my 40 Weeks Whole House Challenge, which is going pretty well so far. I did this out of pure aggravation.\nDo you wish your boots were better organized? So did I! My boots were just thrown into the bottom of our front hall closet. and I was desperate for a solution. I started seeing lots options (online, of course) using actual boot hangers and boot clips, but I couldn't find any online that were reasonably priced. So frustrating! So I started thinking and here is what I came up with.\nTension shower rods, binder clips and these double hooked shower rings. I got everything at Walmart.\nThe hardest part was getting the tension rod to stay put. The boots are pretty heavy so getting the right mix (weight distribution) was a challenge too. I decided to use 2 rods to hold all the boots. Each binder clip holds one boot and each hook hold one pair. So far it's been up for about month and it's working great! G loves to hang her own boots, so that's just an added bonus. How's your organizing coming?\nI need to get organized. I can't take it anymore. I am going to try this program\u2026The 40 Week Challenge! It is designed to start at the beginning of the school year, but I am kicking it off this week. It is free podcasts and emails linking you to Lisa Woodruff's website, Organize 365. Who wants to join me? Together we can be accountable, which is exactly why I am posting this \u2014 to be accountable.\nToday, I am creating a Sunday Basket. One child is going to a friend's house, the other is having a friend here. Should give me a couple of hours to sort. I am supposed to go through my whole house and take all the paper and put it into a laundry basket, I'm guessing if I really took all the paper \u2014 it would fit into 5. So I am going to tackle my downstairs and upstairs living spaces, but not my office. That is for another week. I'll post a pic of my nightmare as soon as I gather this paper.\nDay 1: Gathering and sorting, Pics of phase 1 (laundry basket) and phase 2 (secret closet\/dumping ground).\nKids' art is a whole different pile \u2014 which is huge. I have a plan for that. Hope to reveal it soon.\nPosted by clearlycorinna in DIY, Home, Light Bulb!\nI have been using Business Card Magnets for years! I started buying them for their intended use, to put my business card on them for customers. Now I use them for so much more! I have mini gallery walls on my fridge and the door going into the garage. I've also used it on bumper stickers that I didn't want stuck and this past vacation, when I couldn't find a souvenir I liked, I bought a patch of the Turks and Caicos flag for less than $5 and made it into a magnet. They are so useful, I recommend picking up a pack and creating your own refrigerator gallery wall!\nI have been looking at chandeliers for my family room for a long time (maybe 2 years?). It takes me a long time to make decisions on these kinds of things but when I do, I love what I've chosen. So of course, the one that I drooled over was $15,000. Not happening. Even the knock off was $1,700. Better, but still\u2026no. I was looking for the knock off of the knock off, but it never came, so I switched gears.\nand it started me in a new direction.. but I wasn't sold. I wanted something more modern looking, less traditional, is that transitional? Anyway, I started looking on Overstock for something more reasonable. Then I saw some more photos of inspiration..\nSo this is my plan, find a chandelier and paint it gold. Also, I wanted to take advantage of the exposed bulb trend going on right now (like this and this). Of course Hubby was against it. Why would you buy something and then paint it? But let's face it, girls, sometimes that haven't even designed the things that we want. So we have to take matters in our own hands.\nI finally wore him down. I found this one at Home Depot.\nand this paint, Krylon 18k Gold Plate spray paint.\nThen my magic Hubby put his perfectionist in gear. We took out all the pieces and figured out how to reassemble them so the Chandelier would be the right height. There were 2 poles that connected to give it a maximum height that was way higher than we need so we took one of the poles out and it gave us the perfect drop from the center beam of our great room. Then M put pieces of painter's tape over the bulb sockets before painting.\nbut I was in Target the other day and spied these little lamps for $22 and I might have to add shades to look more like the Tory Burch Chandelier\u2026 hmmmm\u2026stay tuned.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"It's our 100th episode of the Jedi Counsel Podcast! We are grateful for all of our listeners, readers, and other people who we have connected with through Jedi Counsel! Frasier Crane celebrated 1000 radio episodes with Frasier Crane Day, so we decided to celebrate 100 podcast episodes with Frasier Crane Day as well. We talked about the difference between psychology and psychiatry, the ethical issues faced in Frasier, our favorite episodes\/moments, and the mental health of the main characters. Thank you so much for listening!\nIn this episode, we talked about Daphne & Marris showing symptoms of eating disorders. For more information about eating disorders and their treatment, please see the Academy for Eating Disorders website. We also discussed potential obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms in Niles. Please see the International OCD Foundation for more information about OCD. Finally, Frasier showed signs of depression, which you can learn more about here.\nYou can find us on Twitter, Facebook, & Patreon!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"Analyze visitors' path-to-purchase, home and work location for visitors to any U.S. location within minutes.\nView trade areas for any directory mall, assess demographics and pyschographic profiles and build cannibalization studies.\nUberMedia Insights data is organized into six structured data sets designed to provide meaningful analysis at scale, while also allowing for granularity.\nPULSE is a GIS-ready data set that lets you analyze real-world spatial trends based on mobile phone usage.\nThe data is built using a revolutionary source of mobile GPS data and advanced big data normalization techniques and provides a relative indication of people in each census block group per hour, based on real-world data.\nUberMedia Insights data is classified using a large, highly accurate collection of shape files that are hand drawn and verified using satellite imagery, street view and owner verification.\nThese files are available by category or brand in all standard GIS formats including: ShapeFile, MapInfo, GeoJson and KML.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Hyundai's global sustainability strategy is off to an impeccable start with the launch of three eco-friendly hybrid and electric renditions of the Ioniq green car in Goleta, California near the UC Santa Barbara campus where they thrive in Earth-friendly sustainability and environmental activism. The alternative powertrain segment is flourishing with brands and vehicles like the Kia Niro, Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Prime, BMW i3, Ford C-Max Energi, and more, but there is always room for improvement to help our planet which is slowly being drained of its precious reserves. Focusing on renewable energy resources should be every manufacturer's priority.\nFrom a competitive perspective it's challenging withholding your envy towards a brand that launches multiple autoganic vehicles from the same platform. However, it's phenomenal for consumers, society, the planet, and the green car movement. Hyundai offers the Ioniq as a Hybrid, a Plug-in Hybrid, and a full Electric (EV) model to diversify consumer's choices. For example, many people are not committed to EVs just yet let alone a Plug-in Hybrid. They need time to absorb the technology and become acquainted with the EV features and charging network. A lack of charging stations in your area for example is a major consideration to go electric or not. Range anxiety and fear of running out of juice while out and about may kick in. I wouldn't have that problem since there are charging stations at Mom's Organic Groceries a few miles from my house. So while I shop for clean, vegan foods to energize and thrive on my vehicle will simultaneously receive the same treatment.\nLike most vehicles in this field the Ioniq is designed for efficiency and aerodynamics which means it definitely looks like a hybrid. But most owners want the viewing public to notice their green thumb and contributions toward cleaner environments. Weight reduction strategies include the use of aluminum for the hood, tailgate, and the suspension. Inside, Hyundai uses recycled and eco-friendly materials such as powdered wood.\nBoth the Ioniq Hybrid and Plug-in Hybrid beat from a 1.6-liter direct-injected 4-cylinder engine with 104-horsepower and roughly 109 lb.-ft. of torque. Both models also receive a forward thinking 6-speed EcoShift dual-clutch transmission (DCT) with SPORT and ECO modes. The Hybrid's 43-horsepower electric motor (32 kW) is energized from a 1.56 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery (240V) that is positioned under the rear seats for better handling and optimized interior volume. An aggregate 139-horsepower is the outcome of the engine and electric motor working collaboratively. Expect up to 58 combined mpg for the Hybrid.\nThe Plug-in Hybrid receives a 60-horsepower electric motor (44.5 kW) and 8.9 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery (360V) system. Most importantly to note is that the Ioniq Plug-in Hybrid will travel 27 miles in electric-only mode which is typically good enough for daily, local errands.\nFor the Silver Surfer types who have to have as much electric energy as possible, a 28 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery (360V) powers the 118-horsepower and 215 lb.-ft. of torque electric motor (88 kW) in the Ioniq Electric (uses a single-speed reduction-gear transmission) for an estimated 124-mile traveling range. It comes with the DC Fast Charger for a quick 23-minute power boost (up to 80%).\nNot to be outdone by its green energy attributes the Ioniq is techy and safety savvy as well. Hyundai instilled the little guy with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, Infinity Premium Audio with Clarify, Blue Link telematics, and wireless smartphone charging. Active safety is presented by way of Automatic Emergency Braking with Pedestrian Detection, Lane Departure Warning, Blind Spot Detection, and Rear Cross-Traffic Alert to name a few.\nPricing ranges from $22,200 to $32,500 depending on the FWD model of choice. Add another $835 for freight charges. The Ioniq Electric is offered as an Electric and Limited model; Ioniq Hybrid comes as a Blue, SEL, or Limited model; and the Ioniq Plug-in Hybrid can be had as a Plug-in Hybrid and Limited model. The Ultimate Package can be added to either.\nSo as you can see a hybrid can be just as fun after all!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Lockner Estate found itself in the press last week when a vast array of papers claimed that disused garages could be turned into pop-up homes and rented for \u00a311 a week. This story is not true and it stems from an illustration in which the architects Levitt Bernstein used images of the garages shot from Blandford Court to illustrate their design concept Pop-Up HAWSE. The company was approached by TRA members in November 2012, seeking clarification and an apology. Published below.\nThe story was later picked up and published in the Mail on Line, The Metro and The Evening Standard.\nWe understand your concerns that the illustration shows an area of the Lockner Estate and we apologise for any upset or frustrations we may have caused.\nThe reason we did not contact anybody at the estate prior to using the image is that the concept is currently not specific to any area or site and the computer generated image of the transformed garages used against the recent press articles was created to illustrate the idea, with the proposal to adopt in suitable sites in London should the project move forward.\nWe feel the Pop-up HAWSE is a positive and creative concept which enables people to learn new skills and transforms under-utilised spaces to create a temporary place to live, learn and work as a kick start project for the regeneration of the surrounding estate or wider area. We have received some very positive feedback for the idea for housing and other uses in redundant garages and we would be very pleased discuss it further if you would like.\nAgain, we apologise for any upset we may have caused. At this very early stage the project is currently only a concept and the image was strictly for illustrative purposes only and was not intended to be specific to any area.\nA Section 20 has been sent out relating to the forthcoming repair of footpaths and carriageways on the Lockner Estate. Are Hackney Homes going to contribute to paying this fee, as it is on many occasions their workmen who drive onto the estate and break the paving-slabs.\nAlthough it would be good to have the surface redone is it wise to do it before the paintwork? Last time the estate was re-painted the pressure from the scaffolding broke many paving slabs, which were then replaced at an expense.\nPlease get your written observations in before 21st September.\nThe planned external decorations work on the estate has been postponed pending review of the contract under which it was to be carried out under. A Notice of Proposal for the new painting contract will be issued once discussions between Procurement and Legal Services have consulted.\nWell that really is news to us! Here are some colour suggestions that Hackney Homes have come up with.\nIn response to a Section 20 letter I received regarding the planned paintwork on of the Lockner Estate I'm contacting you in regards to the current contractors. I have two points I would like to make regarding this matter.\nI note that the long-term agreement entered in 2005 with Hackney Trading Services has been extended. As a leaseholder I have not been informed of this extension. If approached I would have submitted a comment complaining about their original work in 2005. At that time the contractors painted around my garden furniture rather than move it. When I approach they came back to paint the border but didn't do any of the preparation work to the concrete so the paint in that section was always in a poor state and many parts flaked off. Evidence is now under my decking but could be disturbed if necessary.\nI would like to see transparency in the process of extending the long-term contract.\nI'm concerned that we are not getting value for money as the original tendering process begun as far back as 2004 and the same company still holds the contract. I demand clarity to why this job has not been put out to competitive tendering and leaseholders have not been allowed to comment on the extension.\nHow can we be getting the best value for money when the original tendering process begun in 2004 and the contract is still running without anyone been given the opportunity to come up with a better quote?\nLooking forward to receiving your answers to the questions above.\nI am writing from the Residents Association on Lockner estate.\nSome residents have recently received letters from the major works section detailing plans to repair and repaint previously painted surfaces. The costs have been estimated at approximately \u00a32800 per property (estimated for property's with living space factor of 48.5), although it is noted that only some blocks on the estate are being worked on.\nIt is our understanding that Hackney Trading Services are the contractors appointed to carry out the work and that they have a long term agreement with Hackney Homes \u2013 please refer to the section 20 letter sent to leaseholders by James Roche dated 1st April 2005. This agreement was for five years from April 2005. There is some ambiguity about the extension of this contract; leaseholders have not had any information regarding this matter.\nResidents have concerns about the high cost of these works, particularly as the invoice is not a result of a competitive tendering process that has been transparent to residents who will be facing such a large invoice.\nWe are writing to ask why there has not been a transparent competitive tendering process, particularly in view of the fact that the long-term agreement with Hackney Trading Services has since expired. How can we be certain that this cost is competitive and value for money?\nFinally, it is noted that leases sold prior to 1989 do not enable Hackney Homes to recharge for works of improvement. Can we ask who pays for works of improvement for properties with leases this is applicable to?\nFinally the padlock for the collapsable bollard by Poole Court has arrived. The emergency services have a copy of the key. This enables them to access the estate if called out. Thank you very much David Townsend, Helga De Jesus and Amy Willoughby for your help.\nThe Lockner Estate TRA would like to thank everyone involved at Hackney Homes for their swift action to resolve the problem caused by a collapsed drain. On Friday the 16th March the problem was discovered and reported and within two hours Hackney Homes' drains men arrived. They worked until late and were back again at 8.15am on Monday morning. Drain Aid took over from there and fixed the actual problem. Since the flat had been emerged in slime, silt and kitchen drain waste \u2013 it was given a thorough deep clean on by a professional cleaner. We appreciate your help and your swift action, which saw this problem resolved within less than a week. It is much appreciated.\nHave you noticed contractors vans parked on Lockner? They commonly break the paving slabs when they drive their heavy vans into our estate \u2013 and YOU as a tenant or resident get charged by Hackney Homes to have them replaced. Save yourself some money by reporting any parked vans on the estate to the TRA and we will chase it up for you. Email with a photograph, the registration number, date, location and time to: locknertra@gmail.com and we will make sure that the contractors, and not the residents, are charged for repairs.\nLovely new plants have arrived!\nPlease water me if I look thirsty.\nOn the 1st February 2012 the TRA wrote to our estate manager , Abi Marqis, and the ground maintenance area manager, Wayne Hibberd, to requested that the borders on the Lockner Estate are improved on. We are now delighted that both the areas highlighted in the letter have benefited from some TLC. Thank you very much!\nOn 24th January Jonathan Hoskins from Lockner TRA and Sam Causton from Shoreditch Citizens went door-knocking on Lockner, to begin to find out how many homes on the estate are affected by damp. This was part of Shoreditch Citizens' campaign to work with Hackney Homes to tackle damp in Hackney Homes properties. The response was varied, though some homes seem badly affected. Some tenants volunteered to keep a 'log book' to record what happens when they contact Hackney Homes in their efforts to get their damp fixed. These log-books will later be returned to Shoreditch Citizens to become an important part of the campaign and hopefully see an end to damp in Hackney Homes' properties!\nIf anyone else on the estate is affected by damp in their home or is interested in joining the campaign, the TRA would like to hear from you.\nYour TRA reported broken security lights in two archways on Dorset Court and Blandford Court on the 28th November 2011 to our Estate Manager Abi Marquis. An order was raised (00715316) and we were told that the next available appointment for engineers was on Monday 5 December 2011. The TRA has now issued a formal complaint regarding this matter. More information on the Formal Complaints page. The Stage II complaint was upheld on the 29th February 2012 on the basis of the time that it has taken to repair the three lights reported faulty in November 2011. The security lights are now working.\nA number of problems of differing nature are being experienced across the estate with the Avonline Installations.\nMy recent experience has been professionally & satisfactorily resolved.\nPlease pass info onto friends & neighbours who may not have access to internet.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Proudly providing excellence in education and child care since 1969.\nThe Montessori approach to learning encourages each child to reach his full potential in all areas of life. The classroom environment contains many multi-sensory, sequential and self\u2011correcting materials. The materials facilitate the learning of skills and concepts. The children are free to work at their own pace with materials they have selected from the environment. All classrooms have multi-age groupings that encourage a family-like atmosphere where learning takes place naturally and spontaneously.\nHave cozy, loving, and natural environments.\nBuild upon prior knowledge to provide individualized lessons for each child.\nNurture developmentally-appropriate independence from a young age.\nFostering the development of the emerging personality.\nEverything this school has to offer is everything I've been looking for in a school for my child. Thank you.\nI cannot think of anything that you can improve! My boys love it here and their teachers are great with them.\nMy child has grown leaps and bounds at this school. Every teacher has been amazing!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"There are many topics you can focus on within your research paper. The nature of your topic will first of all depend on a speciality you in. Make sure that you are thinking of topics which could interest you since writing something which does not make you happy will result in a research of a poor quality.\nCollege research paper topics should be narrow and precise. Remember that you are not writing a Master dissertation which should include comprehensive theoretical framework and empirical analysis. Therefore, try not use too many online papers` examples since they are usually targeted at graduate students and Phd. However, there are very good online sources specifically targeted at college students with a wide range of published research papers and lists of original topics.\nBest research paper topics college could be found in the library of your respective educational institution. Sometimes the topics and the text of the dissertations are not displayed in catalogues online and you have to ask a librarian for a special permission to such information. Do not be afraid to use a topic which has already been studied before. You are not a graduate student and no one is expecting an added value as a result of your work.\nSpecific online sources however, could provide you a wider range of original topic which are actual and new. Try to be as precise as possible when you are searching for a college paper. Indicate the sphere of your interest and your specialization before starting a search. Select papers with clear methodology which does not include too many methods of qualitative or quantitative nature. Also look at the word number when searching for papers. College research paper should not be more than 15 000 words. If you found a thesis which contains more 15 000 words but which was defended in college you will have all reasons to check the credibility of the website you are using.\nDo to aim to find a list of 100 research paper topics midway college. Your search should be based on the field of your study. The best to find a good topic is to think about the issues you like to discuss during classes and while talking to your friends. Brainstorming may take some time however, you should not come up with a new topic straightaway. Just select a sphere you would like to focus on, find few good articles, read their main concerns and questions and maybe even copy some of their ideas.\nDo not hesitate to speak with your supervisor when selecting a topic. They save you a lot of time. Sometimes professors who are working with you notice which topics you are stronger at and may suggest you their opinion. Nevertheless it would be better if you approach your supersivor with an idea or concept you have in your mind and he\/she will just help with to formulate research questions.\nThus, use relevant sources when you are looking for original ideas for a college research paper.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"A unique guide to the county's chapels, churches, stones and holy wells, The Pilgrim's Guide to Sacred Cornwall is the second in a series of guidebooks exploring the sacred mysteries of England, co-written and introduced by the revered philosopher and antiquarian John Michell.\nCornwall has always attracted mystics, its ancient sanctity proclaimed by the vast number of Stone Age temples and monuments which adorn its heights, while the wooded valleys below are strewn with shrines and sanctuaries. Follow these carefully chosen itineraries to the haunts of saints and kings, to temples and ceremonial ways, rediscovering lost churches and old traditions.\nWith clear route maps and delightful illustrations throughout, this is the essential companion for visitors to the Western Peninsula.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Under the supervision of Franco D'Intino and Michael Caesar, Penguin publishes the first integral English translation of Giacomo Leopardi's Zibaldone, the collection of notes written by the poet between 1817 and 1832.\nThe result of an impressive effort by the researchers, this work includes critical and philological parts, notes and a detailed introduction.\nCritically acclaimed, the translation will be presented at the Italian Cultural Institute by the curators, Professors Franco D'Intino and Michael Caesar, together with Professor Susan Bassnett.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I've never been afraid of the fallout for my personal views and both agreed as well as shared positions -to an extent\u2026 not in all points- with the late Pete Seeger.\nHere are three lyrics I wrote last year that lean to the school of Pete, Guthrie, Dylan and Bruce Cockburn in terms of activist concerns. Not yet recorded but shall be. Not standard blues as I mostly write these days\u2026 but blues just the same.\nI don't expect tacit agreement. I am indeed happy to agitate where such salt might prove a help to those in need.\nMy Friend Janet Cameron (Rez, Cornerstone Mag, More) Art Exhibition!\nTom and Janet Cameron have been friends and co-workers of ours for many decades.\nTom first played blues harp in Rez Band, then became exec. producer of all but one Rez record as well as producing all of my solo projects.\nHis sweet wife Janet's brilliant artwork graced most every Rez album cover, several of my solo projects and did the same for many other Grrr Records artists, etc., as well as others' records, cds and such.\nOver its long existence, Cornerstone Magazine's covers and much inside artwork was hers.\nOur newly opened Wilson Abbey (Chicago) and Everybody's Coffee shop will be doing various concerts, workshops and more- including art shows.\nWe wish to honor Janet and showcase her brilliant work! If you're anywhere near Chicago during the dates listed you won't want to miss this!\nI haven't taken the time to look through my own blogs to see if I'd written about this phrase before, but it's a fave of mine.\nThe fact is that some days it truly feels like- and other days it indeed IS an uphill climb to progress in personal character.\nThough I'm posting this in mid-winter during the polar vortex (!), this past autumn in our sweet side-yard garden a morning-glory bloomed and climbed right up the wall in great beauty. I mean it was glorious!\nNow to be clear, I'm NOT saying \"that's ME\" in the least\u2026 but as a father and grampy I have often been so amazed and blessed at the growth in my kids and grandkids.\nThe same goes for watching progress among friends who have served together in ministry for years here at JPUSA Chicago.\nIt is SOOOOO cool to see forward progress, that upward climb, maybe just a little here and there and in small spurts, but when you are graciously gifted by seeing that happen in a person's life it truly helps make your own climb a bit easier.\nI admit, that can be a selfish thing in one sense\u2026 but I also know a few folks who beat themselves up over the speed (lack of it) such a process seems to move at. It can feel molasses-like! This is where getting our eyes off of ourselves and also not judging God as some sort of celestial dictator with a bad, spiteful and hateful attitude comes in.\nHe is patient and kind. We are not. He is perfect. We aren't by a long shot! He is working more of that patience and peace in us and sometimes the best way to find hope is to work with those judged \"hopeless\", notice what HE does in their lives and over time realize we're all a lot alike!!\nLittle by little is how things get done. Humans often want the quick fix, a sort of kindergarten-to-Master'sDegree in a week. Ain't gonna happen. How often quiet are the small, almost unseen movements of the Holy Spirit working among His people in this moment, that moment, this day and that where we then begin to see- often only in retrospect- growth and maturity taking place.\nSome sit on a fence and even dig a hole and plant their feet in cement with rebellion. They judge their heavenly Father as one who does nothing in them. They may judge His hand on their life as interference to their own interference regarding spiritual growth!\nSome live in deep sorrow, rue the day they were born and consider themselves impossible disciples only fit for hell. God is not God enough to produce the fruit of the Spirit in them, so they figure.\nBoth, in my view and experience, are plain wrong.\nLittle by little\u2026 whether you realize it or not. The seed planted is going to grow. Keep watering and tending. Let the sun and rich soil do it's work. Daily Bible study, prayer, confession of sin, praise, thanks, worship, intentionally linking with godly (imperfect but genuine) disciples of Jesus, this is rich soil indeed. Learning to reach out to others and get your eyes off yourself is certainly part of it. All these are elements of the ground of spiritual growth.\nDon't forget: we are not alone in this garden.\nHow To Discourage Artists in The Church?\nJust read a wonderful article online sent to several folks including myself, by a longtime friend, musician and artist Ralson Bowles.\nIn it, author Philip G. Ryken makes a core statement and asks a question I'd like to try at least in small part, to answer.\nHe goes on to give answer by way of his aptly-titled piece, and there are truths here worth living out. A very worthwhile read.\nMy thoughts on this short snippet quoted above?\nArtists, pastors and churches in general need to both face and reflect the lament factor written all through the Book of God as well as human history.\nI couldn't agree more, but think we need to go deeper on this brilliant point.\nSo how do we encourage artists to live out their dual call? What strikes me as obvious is that -all- Christ followers need to be biblical (see John chapter 15) disciples, not merely converts. There are plenty and obvious ways to help people who are open, to healthy spiritual growth. And yet it must be voluntary on the part of each artist.\nSecondly, our call to create and share our creative offerings must include\u2026 wait for it\u2026 lament, not only nor purely, light.\nBoth artist and Christian community must quit expecting, even demanding the bulk of artistic offerings (regardless of art form) to -only- reflect the \"grace, beauty and truth\" of the gospel. You read that correctly. And I happen to be an evangelist.\nPaul tells us genuine followers of Jesus are \"the scent of death\" to those who do not believe and are perishing. He writes \"the gospel is an offense\", which it certainly is to many if not most in society. Christians as well as non can fall into a very human tendency to deify ourselves. We are not God but truly wish we were! And believers sin. Sin is not limited to pagans!\nJesus not only demonstrated His love, He also said \"weird stuff\" that pulls our nose hairs, sayings like \"The one who does not gather with me scatters\" and \"If anyone would follow me he or she must deny self, pick up their cross and follow me\". \"If they loved me they will love you also. If they hated me and my message they will hate yours also\".\nI am not a morose person, but we need to \"weep with those who weep\", not -only- \"rejoice with those who rejoice\".\nWhy is it the Book of Psalms is most populated with \"laments\"?!\nHow is it that we only sense the immediate truth of the Good News when our own sense of being kissed with grace and beauty are involved\u2026 but rarely when pain, suffering and rejection surface in our life? Am I the only one who struggles with such matters? God IS good, and the gospel IS true\u2026 but does not always feel like it. How would it be blasphemous or always wrong for a Christian artist to also reflect such realities via our art?\nThe whole truth of the good news is that it's bad news on several very real levels. We can no longer serve another master, including the worst of these\u2026 self.\nThere is not only truth but indeed grace and beauty in this \"shock of corn that must fall into the ground and die in order for it to bear much fruit\", but let's not kid ourselves, most art that is widely acceptable to most Christ-followers could not be considered dark. It is THIS side of art (and sometimes artist) that may be as neglected as it is rejected in the churches.\nAs a pastor as well as evangelist and artist I find myself lamenting for so many Christian artists. Their sometimes unwillingness to sit still among church folks is only matched by the unwillingness of church folk to welcome them with all their strangeness and eccentricities. This does nothing to encourage their discipleship nor does it bring vibrant, honest art to the church.\n\"Feel-good\" rather than \"weeping with those who weep\" art may seem to shed the light of Christ, but I would argue Gethsemane, stumbling up the hill under the cross, thorns and blood do also. And of course real-world life goes far beyond strictly \"Bible\" story representations.\nWorse than the artist or art being rejected is that those who do not (or at least do not yet) walk with the risen Savior see us as some in the U.K. say derisively, \"the happy clappies\". They see our art and decide we apparently don't suffer as they do. Or worse, that we live a pretend life on this planet. Perhaps Jesus suffered, but not us -not by the art we allow.\nYet everyone knows all is not \"sweetness and light\".\nI do think too many Christians (artists, pastors, believers in the churches) expect and demand \"the bright side\" while it rings hollow in light of the writings of Scripture from the rebellion in the Garden, Cain and Abel, Saul, the very end of the Book of Jonah right down to several accounts in the Book of Acts, Paul's letters, the Book of Revelation and even in little letters like Jude.\nIS there GOOD NEWS in the Good News? Absolutely! Ought we to be bringing uplifting works of beauty, grace and light into the sanctuary and other Christian and outreach events? YES!\nBut when our art only reveals light we are only giving half the message. Good News with no contrast, no everyday reality in this broken, fallen world and indeed among imperfect, sometimes sinning saints. This is less than truthful and less than beautiful.\nI do not mean to say every artistic offering must focus on pain, I am simply saying too many wish our life on earth to literally reflect what it shall be in heaven.\nWe live in the \"soon but not yet\"!\nWalking, crawling or stumbling, let's keep seeking Him and reflecting Him and His values\u2026 along with stories that at times, like those in the Bible, don't end well.\nSuch may ignite the beginning of an earned credibility many outside the Christian faith have yet to give us. To me, the depth of the beauty of Jesus is in His absolute honesty. Truth encompasses beauty but also plenty of other things we often wish to toss out of mind and out of our artistry.\nLast point: consider the vastness of light and darkness in the Bible stories of both Testaments! The writers were in fact artists. What does God's own Word allow and therefore teach us?\nI would encourage balance in both artists and the church in general or I suspect the good news we offer may in reality be less than beautiful, gracious and true by God's own artistic standard.\nWow. Just wow! The webcast last night (1-23-14) was amazing, really almost overwhelming to me in a good way. I'm so aware of my flaws that it's pretty humbling to hear how what we've done has been encouraging to so many. Really good questions from Shawn and Greg as well as those who logged on. A friend who was down in Mexico emailed me this a.m. encouraging me on the show as well. Anyhow, it's archived and will be available for folks to watch again as they wish. Look for SAGAH BROTHERS in Facebook which will take you to the Spreecast site.\nSo glad we can be at this year's AudioFeed Festival again as well- these guys are core in putting that fest on.\nNow off to the burbs to get Wendi some good yarn via a Craigslist friend.\nHA, a rockstar's life? Not even close\u2026 thankfully!\nOne of the truly tripped-out things I make when building a guitar is a little thing called a canjo (sometimes spelled \"canjoe\").\nSo far, mine are all 1, 2 or 3 string instruments meant to play with some sort of slide, that is, a piece of copper pipe, glass pill bottle, 1\/4 inch copper T connector or whatever. I will being working with frets or at least paper-clip frets (!) soon.\nA longtime friend named Ron asked for me to make him one and in that it only takes an hour or 90 mins. and is pretty basic, I did. I've 4 friends waiting for cigarbox guitars from me\u2026 sorry guys but my schedule has been crazy recently. I'll get 'em done soon as I'm able.\nRon lives right across the street, I had to get this one out fast\u2026 and still between one of my grandson's hospital visits (home and doing well now!) and etc., my friend still had to wait several days.\nAnyhow here are pics as I was able to finish and get it to him tonight.\nIt's a little 2 stringer, gave him a copper slide and a pic with it, looks cool and sounds great. No pickup but not all that hard to put one on these. Two wood screws near the top and bottom of the can hold it to the oak neck, both strings help as well. The oak bridge is epoxyed in place. The strings are .036 and .026. Didn't check the tuning but I normally (as this time) tune them to what would be (think \"doe ray me\"\u2026) \"DOE\" for the low string and \"SO\" for the higher one. Simple 2 string chord really.\nAmazing what you can do with very little!\nSpammers, flamers\u2026 don't bother \ud83d\ude42 All others, let's rock.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The National Defense Industrial Association announced that Terri M. Swetnam has been named to the new position of chief operating officer, effective Jan. 1.\nShe will be responsible for day-to-day management of financial and business operations for an organization that supports 1,600 member companies and 90,000 individual members.\nSwetnam will report to Craig McKinley, who becomes NDIA's new president and CEO on Jan. 1.\nSwetnam has spent more than 25 years in finance and operations management positions across non-profit, government and private sector for-profit organizations. She is currently chief financial officer at the American Psychiatric Association, a medical specialty society representing 35,000 psychiatrists worldwide.\nIn her 14 years as the senior business officer at APA, Swet-nam developed the strategy and led the execution of key initiatives to implement transformative changes to the organization's operations, while increasing annual revenues.\nPublication information: Article title: Swetnam Chosen as Association's First Chief Operating Officer. Contributors: Not available. Magazine title: National Defense. Volume: 99. Issue: 734 Publication date: January 2015. Page number: 39. \u00a9 National Defense Industrial Association. COPYRIGHT 2015 Gale Group.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"My father is my hero! I am not married but that is not the reason I wanted to be his caretaker. I get help by my older sister Letty. My name is Mario and my hero's name is Ernesto. I am taking care of him because both my mother and father took care of us as well as they could with only my Dad's income. We were poor financially but rich in emotional caring and support. I feel it is my turn to take care of my father and also my deceased mother. It is my honor to do so.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzamkvw b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzamkvw
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..1b8c23d89f16074e5238e12de6e5a7006c1c6770
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"2019 Chevy Impala Convertible Interior and Release Date \u2013 The 2019 Chevy Impala has increased the design and also the engine process in the past edition. This product is design to enhance the driver's comfort.\n2019 Chevy Impala is the best choice when you are on the quest of in search of the automobile to acquire inside of a couple of years later on. The kind of this auto has better design and formidable engine method when compared to earlier product.\nAdditionally, this car has various capabilities which provide comfort and thrilling driving a car experience to the people. As a result, the potential consumers with this auto are substantially increasing and get more fans regarding the performance.\nWhen it comes to the interior of 2019 Chevy Impala, it evolves from past design and focuses on the convenience it should look after the passengers. Its innovative concept from the interior is utilizing premium quality natural leather and fabric. The current appearance of this product will bring in prospective buyers and the new buyer. Regarding the interior of this automobile, the present seem of the design is much more apparent when compared to the previous layout. There are many small changes on the exterior, however, the details than it continues to be remarkable.\nTo improve the presence degree of other individuals in the dark, the front grill also better. It utilizes the latest tendency of lighting process that focuses on the new design. For the total exterior visual appeal, the main body of the vehicle seems much more toned when compared to the older design.\nThe specification of engine process of 2019 Chevy Impala is also as remarkable as its design. You can find a couple of available selections for the engine methods of the vehicle. However, the majority of them are simply gossips from Chevrolet fanatic. The most likely probability is that it uses V6 engine with 3.6 liters of gas. This advanced engine is qualified to develop energy over the previous engine to make better performance.\nMeanwhile, furthermore, it supplies 3.6 liters of the bi-fuel inline engine. This inline engine is along with 260 hp from motor unit. The gas effectiveness on this engine program can make the vehicle works 109 miles per hour for every single gallon of energy which it ate. The engine process with this design is meant to increase the energy preservation.\nThere are many speculations on if this product is going to be launched towards the worldwide industry. A lot of the rumors stated that it could be unveiled during the entire year. The data about how the auto would price has not been launched as well.\nHowever, some industry experts of automobile estimate in line with the materials along with the parts of the design. They estimation price would cost less than US$ 35.000 for any system of 2019 Chevy Impala.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We are pleased to welcome you to Meadow Springs Country Club. Since 1973, we have established a series of customs and norms in order to enhance your experience at the Club. We take pride in making every one of our guests feel like a member during their visit.\nMen's shirts must have sleeves and collars and tucked in as appropriate.\nMen's slacks and shorts must be of a tailored nature.\nGolf attire is acceptable in all areas of the Club but jeans are only allowed in the Clubhouse and pool area.\nOutside of the dining room, caps are allowed and may only be worn with the bill forward.\nShirts must have either sleeves or a collar on the golf course, with more liberal discretion for the Clubhouse and pool befitting the purpose of attendance. Slacks, shorts or similar attire must be tailored in nature. Jeans are only allowed in the Clubhouse and at the pool.\nChildren are expected to follow the same customs and norms as our ladies and gentlemen.\nProper pool attire is required keeping within the family nature of the Club. Pool attire is not permitted in the Clubhouse.\nThe use of cellular telephones and other electronic devices to send, receive or listen to calls or audible messages is permitted at the Club but is confined to the common areas of the hallways and corridors.\nWhen using these devices please don't open up your conversations to others around you by using the speaker functions of your device or being loud enough to infringe upon others around you.\nWhen using these devices on the golf course don't let them be a distraction to the game or others around you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This week Josh and Emily unexpectedly create the feel-good dungeon setlist of the century. Kick back with them and imagine you're drifting off on a peaceful ranch, driving down the 101 on a sunny day, or chasing butterflies through a grassy field. HAJU chimes in and sounds super relaxed too, but perhaps due to a beverage mixup. Don't worry though. He just needs a few minutes to regain his balance and give things a second try.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Born in Milverton, Ontario, Canada.\nA resident of Milverton, Ontario, he competes in the NASCAR Pinty's Series, driving the No. 22 Dodge Charger for his own 22 Racing team. He is the 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series Champion.\nSince the formation of the Canadian Tire Series he has won seven times, four times in 2008 and once in the final race of 2007 on his way to becoming the 2008 Series Champion. His championship made him eligible to compete in the 2008 Toyota All-Star Showdown, but he was taken out in a wreck early and finished 38th of 40 cars in the event. Steckly also made his Nationwide Series debut during 2008 in the NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, start-and-parking for MSRP Motorsports.\nSteckly started off the 2009 season solid getting a win in the 3rd race at St. Eustache Tide 250 leading 39 of the final 40 laps as well as the first ever race at Auto Clearing Motor Speedway. The veteran's car overturned at Montreal after being hit by another car at turn three. It flipped once fully, then rolled to its roof, coming to a stop upside-down, back end high in the air. He was unhurt.\nIn 2010, he picked up the win at MOTOPLEX Speedway after a late race pass on DJ Kennington and finished 3rd in points. He started off the 2011 year with a dominating performance with his Erb Racing team winning the first event at Mosport International Raceway.\nIn 2011, he won the season opening event Mostport and the events at MOTOPLEX and Riverside on his way to win his second series championship; after finishing fourth in 2012, he returned to win four races on his way to winning the 2013 season championship by two points over D. J. Kennington.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Congratulations on thinking ahead. As you learn more about Edmonds Community College, you will see that this college is a step ahead of the rest. Our mix of traditional and highly innovative programs and classes means you have an opportunity here to build a great future for yourself through education.\nOur people -- faculty and staff who are highly educated experts in their fields -- are here because they are committed to teaching and supporting student learning and success. The people at Edmonds Community College care about you, your families and your future. And then there are our students.\nAt Edmonds Community College you will take classes on campus and online with students who are working hard to capture a brighter future for themselves and for our community. They are studying hundreds of subjects and honing their intellectual and work-related skills from basic English to managing complex computer networks to critical thinking of all kinds. They are preparing to take their next steps in universities and in productive jobs.\nEnjoy your introduction to Edmonds Community College and to the best place to capture a bright future.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzamtia b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzamtia
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..48bf3581f8f2fb1c01d44af97c354a7a611f31b0
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Sembrar Plantar Y Recolectar En Armona Con El Cosmos eBook you can also buy from amazon, please click here to purchase this book at amazon.\neBook Sembrar Plantar Y Recolectar En Armona Con El Cosmos available at uerobooks.cf with Format PdF, ePub, Audiobook & Magazine. Please Create a FREE ACCOUNT to read or download Sembrar Plantar Y Recolectar En Armona Con El Cosmos FOR FREE.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Open AnyRecover and choose the \"Formatted Disk Recovery\" mode. With the help of this mode, you will be able to recover lost data from a formatted hard drive, USB drive, and other data storage devices.\nChoose the hard drive or external drive on which your data is missing and hit the \"Next\" button.\nChoose the file type you want to retrieve and hit the \"Scan\" button to initiate the scanning process.\nAnyRecover will begin an elementary scan, it will require some time to scan the formatted hard drive or external drive.\nIf you are unable to find your missing files, you can repeat the process using the \"All-Around Recovery\" method.\nOnce the scanning is complete, AnyRecover will display all the files based on the file type or folder to which the file belongs. You can filter the files you want and select them to preview. Once you're sure, you can hit the \"Recover\" button to recover your lost data.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Scientists often need to share their work. Typically, their data is shared in the form of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) or Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). Scientists' work,however, may not be limited to data, but can also include code, provenance, documents, etc. The Research Object has recently emerged as a method for the identification, aggregation, and exchange of this scholarly information on the Web. Several science communities now engage in a formal process to create research objects and share them on scholarly exchange websites such as Figshare or Hydroshare, but often sharing is not sufficient for scientists. They need to compute further on the shared information. In this paper, we present the sciunit, a reusable research object whose contents can be re-computed, and thus measured. We describe how to efficiently create, store, and repeat computational work with sciunits. We show through experiments that sciunits can replicate and re-run computational applications with minimal storage and processing overhead. Finally, we provide an overview of sharing and reproducible cyberinfrastructure based on sciunits, increasingly being used in the domain of geosciences.\nThis material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1722152. Opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the NSF.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"It all began with our Sticky Toffee Pudding. We started baking it in the shop's back kitchen and selling it in the front a good 20 years ago. But it didn't take too long for our chocoholic friends to ask us: 'Why don't you make a Sticky Chocolate one?\" Good question, we thought \u2013 so we did. And here it is: as rich and decadent as our Sticky Toffee Pudding, but wonderfully chocolatey.\nSugar, Salted Butter [Milk, Salt], Self Raising Flour [Fortified Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour (Gluten), Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin (B3), Thiamin (B1)], Raising Agents (Diphosphates, Sodium Carbonates)], Whipping Cream [Milk], Dates, Free Range Eggs, Cocoa Powder (2.3%), Chocolate (0.3%) [Cocoa Mass, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Natural Vanilla Flavouring], Raising Agent (Sodium Bicarbonate).\nTotal fat: 17.9g, of which 10.8g are saturates.\nCarbohydrate: 51.0g, of which 40.7g are sugars.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Have you ever wondered why certain people are attracted to you or why certain people are not?\nIt's all about you, who you are and what you are about.\nAnd the good news is that you are within your own control. And if you happen to have ADHD, managing your ADHD may help.\nI bet you know what type of movies you like, what kind of food you like and what type of people you like to be around.\nWell, believe it or not, other people are the same way.\nExamine the type of people who befriend you (or who want to). They are coming to you for a reason.\nThose people are likely a reflection of you in some way and therefore they feel a compelling enough connection towards you.\nThe question is, do you like the reflection?\nIf you do, that's great.\nIf not, it's up to you to change it and only you can, if you want to.\nWhat type of friends are you attracting? Share in the comments.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzanxni b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzanxni
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..f0bef81660cca040e2b85df312dc494e803b81a1
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"This traditional wood square washer game box is hand crafted with quality materials and care. You won't find a better made washers game!\nBuy Traditional Game and get 2.0\" Pitching Washers, 2.5\" Pitching Washers, 3.0\" Pitching Washers at an additional 10% off our everyday low price.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Has America Taken the Soviet Path to Fail?\nNow that we (USA) have officially extended our Afghanistan withdrawal to 2014 and or beyond.\nThe only question left is how long will the longest war in American history be and will it take us into a grave like the Soviet version of the war back in 79 to 89? It has also been declared that we will never leave Afghanistan and that NATO was disavowing a 2014 leave date, that we would be out way before 2014. Looks like we were wrong!\nOn Oct. 7, 2001 the US attacked Afghanistan. If we continue to the minimum that they call for of 2014. It will be around 13 years. We are very blessed that we do not have a Soviet empire and other countries that supports Afghanistan against us. Like we (USA) did with a number of other countries, including Saudi Arabia who offered the greatest financial support to go against the Soviet Empire. It looks to me like we would have been toast years ago if everyone had ganged up on us like we did to the Soviet Union.\nLooks like Afghanistan is the graveyard of Empires!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Chancellor George Osborne has today said he will scrap university maintenance grants for new English students and replace them with an enlarged maintenance loan, though according to Martin Lewis, the impact is likely to be more psychological than practical for many.\nWhat is happening to grants?\nMaintenance loans \u2013 which alongside tuition fees are totalled to become your student loan. You then repay 9% of everything above \u00a321,000.\nMaintenance grants \u2013 available to those from families with lower incomes, which you get instead of some of the maintenance loan. These do not have to be repaid.\nUnder Osborne's changes, from the 2016\/17 academic year, maintenance grants will be scrapped, so that all of the money for maintenance will now come in the form of a student loan.\nExisting students at the time will not be affected by this change, ie, those who start from the 2015\/16 academic year or earlier will still continue to get their grants even after 2016.\nCrucially though, the maximum borrowing will also be substantially increased from 2016 for new students (not for existing students).\nThe amount students get will continue to depends on their family's household income, with 65% of the loan being guaranteed and 35% income-assessed, as is the case with the current maintenance loans system.\nThe Government is still finalising exactly how the loans will be calculated, and says more information will be provided in \"due course\".\nOn the scrapping of grants: \"Currently the student grant replaces up to \u00a33,387 of student loan for students with family income of below \u00a341,000. In practical terms, getting rid of the student grant will only affect high earning graduates.\n\"This is because after leaving university, students repay 9% of everything they earn over \u00a321,000 for a maximum of thirty years. Those who'd currently qualify for a full grant would only actually pay more under the new system, if they repay their entire tuition fee, remaining maintenance loan after the grant, and interest within the thirty years before the debt wipes.\"\n\"A number crunch via our student finance calculator shows, as a rough rule of thumb, for a student living away from home, taking the full tuition fees, this is only for those on graduate starting salaries substantially above \u00a330,000 who then get above inflation pay rises after that too. That is at the very high end of graduate earnings.\n\"The real risk with ending grants is the fact larger loans can be a psychological deterrent, especially to those from none university backgrounds. That needs addressing \u2013 one way would be to stop calling student loans a loan \u2013 when they're in fact far nearer to a tax.\n\"Other countries call them a graduate contribution and we should adopt that here.\" See Martin's Time to stop calling student loans a loan article for more on this.\nOn the increase in maintenance loans: \"This is a long overdue step. While many complain students loans are too big, the real problem most students have faced is that they're not big enough \u2013 some living loans have barely covered some hall rents, never mind other costs.\n\"So the planned substantial increase in maintenance loans is very welcome, however it won't help current students, many of whom are struggling.\"\nSeparately, the government has announced today that it will also consult this summer on freezing the loan repayment threshold for five years, which would mean more people have to start repaying their loan. If the threshold rises in line with wage rises then they'd be spared that.\nMartin has previously pledged to organise a protest if the Government freezes the student loan repayment threshold \u2013 and thus retrospectively increasing the cost of student loans.\nNothing changes for existing students. See our Student Loans Mythbusting guide for the full information.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Ardell Wispies Lashes are one of the most popular styles that we stock. They're super lightweight and boast natural texture - making them ideal for day to day wear, and for wear on big nights out and special occasions. This fantastic Ardell Wispies Multipack contains 5 pairs of these top selling Ardell Lashes - you'll never run out again!\nEach box contains five pairs of Ardell Wispies Lashes, please note that eyelash adhesive is not included, but we do sell it separately. Every single item here at FalseEyelashes.co.uk comes with FREE 1st Class delivery in the UK, including the full range of Ardell multipacks. So what are you waiting for? Order the Ardell Wispies Multipack (5 Pairs) now!\nMy favourite lashes I buy them over & over, delivery is always fast !!\nEasy to use, look amazing and fabulous value for money. I will definitely re-purchase!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Welcome to Maru Studio Karaoke Website! This website is built to communicate better with our customers and deliver the latest news as quickly as possible. Come in and check out our specials. Make a reservations for your special day with special people. If you have any suggestions, or concerns, please feel free to contact us any time.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaoqxe b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaoqxe
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Continuously refreshed by waves cascading over the volcanic rock formations that surround the pools, it feels as if you are bathing in an aquarium. Reef fish and even coral formations add colour and life to what is a unique, peaceful and very special natural phenomenon.\nThe Owia Salt Pond is located on the North Eastern Coast of St. Vincent in the village of Owia which is home to some of the indigenous people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines \u2013 the Black Caribs. The salt water pond is sheltered from the sea by the numerous volcanic boulders which surround it.\nThe two hour drive from Kingstown along the Eastern Coast takes you to this recreation site which occupies a fairly extensive area of well maintained grounds which leads down to the sea where the salt pond is situated. Traditionally, it has been used as a therapeutic bathing pond.\nOwia Salt Pond is a unique coastal feature of geological and oceanographic interest. Coastal rocks offer a partial enclosure from the Atlantic Ocean waves and swells, creating a \"pool\" of protected water used for bathing. This pool is called the Owia Salt Pond and a major attraction of the sites.\nOwia Salt Pond is approximately 32 \u00bd miles from Kingstown. The site opens from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Tip: Click on the Cartoon Network Presents 13 comic image to go to the next page. You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.\nCartoon Network Presents #13 is released! You are now reading Cartoon Network Presents #13 online. If you are bored from Cartoon Network Presents comic, you can try surprise me link at top of page or select another comic like Cartoon Network Presents 13 from our huge comic list.\nCartoon Network Presents 13 released in comiconlinefree.com fastest, recommend your friends to read Cartoon Network Presents #13 now!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo executive vice president for sales and marketing, shows off Wii titles like the new \"Legend of Zelda\" at a pre-E3 press briefing on Wednesday. See the new games, as well as the console's controller and remote. And get a look at a virtual tennis match between Fils-Amis, Nintendo President Satora Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, and contest winner Scott Dier.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"As more consumers than ever before now makes majority of their purchases online, both established and start-up businesses have come to recognize the importance of online presence. If you are thinking about starting your own e-commerce business, you'll find no shortage of tools available to help you with everything from web design to market research. This has helped break down the barriers to successful e-commerce business transactions, even for those with little experience in the field. The following are a few useful tools that can help you grow your e-commerce business.\nThe first major task that any e-commerce business must contend with is setting up a user-friendly website. There are numerous e-commerce platforms and shopping cart programs which allow you to do this using an all-in-one package. Open source e-commerce tools or software often features secure web hosting, domain name registration, content management systems, and web design templates. They also allow you to enable payments on your website, using multiple payment gateways. Some of the big names in shopping cart services include Bigcommerce, Shopify, and Pinnacle Cart.\nGoogle offers numerous analytical tools which can be of great use to e-commerce businesses. You can use their Keyword Tool to research the volume of specific keywords or phrases. This allows you to find out how many potential customers are searching for words related to your products, which can give you some indication of the market size. This information can also help you find out how competitive certain search terms are, which allows you to work out an SEO strategy. Another useful research tool put out by Google is Google Trends, which lets you find out whether your products or industry is more of a fad, or a growing market. This can help you with basic market research without hiring a separate consultant.\nAs you research your potential market, you will also want to find out how competitors in the same industry are doing. Using tools like Alexa.com allows you to see visitor demographics from similar websites, which can help you narrow down your target market. You can also use online tools to help you price your items more effectively. Alibaba.com allows you to search for wholesale items, to find out what their base rate is. You can compare this to competitor prices to get a feel for what a reasonable mark-up would be.\nShipping can be one of the biggest logistical issues and costs for a new e-commerce business to work through. One solution is to sign up with a drop ship business. Essentially, this allows you to advertise the products of your choice on your website and then leave the actual shipping in the hands of the wholesaler. It eliminates the need to hold onto inventory and deal with shipping.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Student Education Plan Conferences (SEP's) are an important component of ongoing home\u2013school communication and family involvement in children's education. Our Student Education Plan Conferences will be held on Wednesday, October 3rd, and Thursday, October 4th.\n\"I've Got Better Things To Do Than Drugs!\"\nThe goal of Red Ribbon Week is to provide an opportunity for students and teachers to talk about some of the dangers and risks that are involved with experimentation and prolonged use of drugs and alcohol.\nRead more about \"I've Got Better Things To Do Than Drugs!\"\nWhat do folks such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Thomas Edison and Mt. Loafer Grizzlies all have in common? They are changing our world and they may have even been called a \"nerd.\"\nHappy Birthday, Landon Clarke Hughes!\nOn September 21st, 1998 a healthy baby boy was born to Alan and Dayna Hughes. The Hughes' had been married for 15 years, and, unable to have any children of their own, had already adopted two beautiful girls, Lauren and Mallory. But, without warning, Landon died in an unfortunate drowning accident. Dayna and Alan wondered how they could honor their son and keep his memory alive. They decided to set up a special place in their daughters' school library where children could come to read and relax, and where the love of reading and learning would be encouraged.\nRead more about Happy Birthday, Landon Clarke Hughes!\nThe Fall Festival was a HUGE success and there was fun to be had by all who attended! The theme of the festival was Dr. Suess's \"Oh The Places You'll Go\" Bounce houses, game booths, decorations, and food all was themed to a Dr. Suess book. There was a silent auction and also book baskets that parents could bid on.\nFamilies and faculty spent their time playing, bouncing, eating, and visiting. We appreciate the hard work and long hours spent on behalf of the students, especially Mrs. Dani Wright, who is the PTO committee chair over the Fall Festival. It was a great night!\nJodi teaches mathematics, social studies, and science in the fourth grade. She uses balance balls and drum sticks to reinforce mathematics through rhythm and movement and it is a fun instructional approach that produces results. These hands-on materials allow Mrs. McKee to combine physical education activities with the mathematics core standards. The program is called Academic Beats. This program is based on the philosophy that students learn by doing.\nBack-To-School Student Council Spirit...Nerd Day!\nWhat do famous folks such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Thomas Edison all have in common? They have changed our world and all have been called \"nerds\"\nThe world needs more nerds. Nerds, you know, create more jobs and advance science. The student council has chosen to celebrate coming back-to-school by dressing up as \"nerds\" on Friday, September 21st.\nSo hitch up those pants, stuff a few pens in those pockets and celebrate a fun day with us...Nerd Day!\nRead more about Back-To-School Student Council Spirit...Nerd Day!\nOh, The Places You'll Go...While Reading!!\nBooks can take your imagination anywhere it wants to go!! The Mt. Loafer faculty and PTO want the students to understand the value of daily reading.\nRead more about Oh, The Places You'll Go...While Reading!!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaoxix b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaoxix
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..ab37f62cb65f1b99485e57ebd61a4b478d246e7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaoxix
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Discussion in 'Dog Chat' started by Boo, Nov 4, 2018.\nI have an eight year old yellow lab....recently we moved from a house that was totally in a wooded area to one that has zoysia grass. When Boomer urinates, brown spots appear on the grass. I have tried Stay Green Bites and it seems to help somewhat....And also have read other suggestions for a fix for the malady.\nWould any of you have any suggestions to solving my problem?\nI feel your pain. We don't have the same grass so I can't say for sure what you should do but it may be similar. I don't believe you will ever completely solve this issue, but you may decrease the area.\nSome have taught their dogs to go in a less noticeable area.\nDiluting the urine is key. Some will run after their dog with a water can full of plain water and sprinkle where they pee, this will dilute the urine so it may not burn the grass. Encouraging your dog to drink more water will also dilute the urine.\nWhere I live we have lotsa snow and cold. In the spring I dig out all the brown spots and put fresh dirt with some grass seed in. If you use the green mulch and grass seed mix it is hardly noticeable. Fresh grass grows quickly.\nAnother thought.... You could buy sod and patch the brown spots easily too. And water your lawn more often.\nAnother thought . . . train your dog to go in a particular area.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Iran's national CERT has warned of a new type of data-wiping malware that bears some of the hallmarks of a cyberattack that severely disrupted the country's oil industry earlier this year.\n'GrooveMonitor' less sophisticated but \"targeted\"\nIran's national CERT has warned of a new type of data-wiping malware that bears some of the hallmarks of a cyberattack that severely disrupted the country's oil industry earlier this year.\nThe exact nature of the latest attack is hard to gauge from the brief description offered by the Maher Computer Emergency Response Team.\nThe agency's report describes a piece of malware that is not as sophisticated as April's example - the latter analysed by one security vendor as having a connection to anti-Iranian cyberwarfare - and not widely distributed.\nNevertheless, the agency went on to describe it as a \"targeted\" (i.e. at Iran) attack. \"Despite its simplicity in design, the malware is efficient and can wipe disk partitions and user profile directories without being recognized by anti-virus software,\" reads Maher's report.\nA number of malware components are then listed which offer little clue as to its origins.\nSophisticated or not, malware attacks that appear on Iranian radar for long enough to be reported are rarely a coincidence.\nOnly weeks ago, Symantec reported on a new piece of malware, W32.Narilam, that appeared to be targeting SQL databases in the country in a year that has revealed a number of mysterious cyber-campaigns.\nUpdate: Kaspersky Lab now detects this attack as Trojan.Win32.Maya.a., describing it as a simplistic attack based on running destructive batch files.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The beauty of singing lessons is that it not only offers a bond between you as the musician and your own personal musical expression, but it also offers a dedication and passion for your instrument that occurs while learning new skills. While singing lessons at Fox Music offer a wonderful chance to work with your teacher to get better, it can also be a starting point for dedication in your everyday life as you go home and practice what you've learned week after week. This dedication nurtures your newfound instrument and helps you to improve and connect as a musician, growing in passion for your voice.\nWhen kids become dedicated to growing their instruments in singing lessons, it can improve their overall mindset to accomplish goals and break through new exciting possibilities in other areas of their lives. It allows them to adapt and improve their skills in a different and satisfying pastime such as singing lessons. While they are practicing, kids learn how to remain focused, and are shown the rewards of sticking with something. Even as a college student or young adult, singing lessons establishes responsibility and commitment, and shows the positive outcomes of both of those things. When you go home and practice, you will be amazed at how much your voice changes and grows. This helps with the requirements that go along with entering the world and knowing that nothing you ever put into your life is wasted. Having a routine task can actually help relieve stress through artistic expression, whether it be between exams or after a long day at work. Whatever the situation, the many amazing qualities you take away from singing lessons will stick with you for the rest of your life. Why wait!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"page:. Download Save Proxy Sniffer Pro 5.2-M Price: 673.00 \/ Shareware. Next new free vpn for windows 7 \u00bb (5 pages)) Results: 1 - 30 of 131 Show: All Software Only Freeware Sort by: relevance title downloads rating date. Proxy Sniffer enables you to quickly perform professional web.hence giving ExpressVPN a perfect spot on our list of best VPN services. It comes with remarkable features that exceed expectations we make from a top VPN provider, be it accessing foreign content or protecting your communication online, new free vpn for windows 7 expressVPN has covered your back 24\/7,visit m Unblock-Us - smarter faster VPN Global rank new free vpn for windows 7 19 499.\ngetting us around pesky work\/school firewalls and allowing a safer browsing experience. By Alan Smithee on December 18th, private browsing with SQUID Proxy and VPN. Lets install a quick proxy which is the best free proxy software server for web browsing, 2009 SQUID Proxy Image via Wikipedia.\nLearn the difference between PPTP, L2TP\/IPsec, OpenVPN, and Chameleon to decide which VPN protocol is best for you. Included FREE with Diamond and Platinum plans.\nexpressVPN already has server presence in 94 countries worldwide. ExpressVPN do provide alternative URLs so that users from countries where ExpressVPN is being blocked can new free vpn for windows 7 still purchase a VPN plan from the company. As of July 2017,or is there a new version of it coming out? Everyone, does anyone know if Shrewsoft VPN Client is compatible new free vpn for windows 7 with Windows 10? If th.some VPNs provide Layer 2 access to new free vpn for windows 7 the target network ; these require a tunneling protocol like PPTP or L2TP running across the base IPsec connection.\nspecifically VPN logs. I'm looking for a troid vpn kodlari free log analyzer for windows 2003 RAS logs, my goal new free vpn for windows 7 is to determine how many times a particular user connects.\nSonicWall TZ500 Promotional Tradeup with 3YR AGSS Please note: SPECIAL ORDER - some order shipments may be delayed from warehouse and supplies are limited!\n,...it might seem like new free vpn for windows 7 a straight forward decision that the allowing of invalid SSL certificates must be bad and therefore should not be allowed, but there can be some reasons that should be considered.free VPNs and proxies deliver a subpar experience in virtually every way. Paid VPN: More advantages Even if a free provider isnt malicious, your connection is bogged down by a flood of users on new free vpn for windows 7 a suboptimal network. With free VPNs and proxies.\nopera Free VPN - new free vpn for windows 7 Unlimited VPN.s HTTP Proxy.,subnet Routing Communications eBay sellers split on changes Linux BIND DNS - Configuring new free vpn for windows 7 The db. Zone Data. How and Why You Should Verify IOS Images On Cisco Route. Hannaford Supermarket Data Breach Caused By Malware. Hackers steal thousands of Wyndham credit card numbers.a new free vpn for windows 7 Comp Cams camshaft and valve train, 9:1 Diamond pistons, plus an intake manifold and fueling system from FAST. LS7 heads, providing forced induction is a ProCharger P-1SC-1 supercharger currently running at 0.5-bar (7.35 psi)) of boost. Upgrades include Eagle rods,Pros Unlimited use for free Excellent encryption for strong privacy Lots of features No logs Cons Fewer server locations Jurisdiction Switzerland Logs Traffic No Logs Connections No Logs Timestamps No Logs Bandwidth No Logs IP Address No Logs Aggregated or Anonymized Data No Website tracking.\n# Oct-2016 15:45. No consigo baixar built in vpn windows 8 nenhum mtodo de tnel q funcione new free vpn for windows 7 # Dec-2016 3:35 Como hacerla funcionar Para claro Honduras. Me pueden ayudar # Dec-2016 0:53 how to download the web tunnel apk?\n16. Factory Reset & Restoring Backups Dealing with System Problems in Android: Safe Mode, you can enter whats called safe mode weve covered Androids safe mode Dealing with System Problems in Android: Safe Mode, android Device new free vpn for windows 7 Crashes on Boot. If your phone no longer boots,began in Dili on part of new free vpn for windows 7 the AFC's qualification, 24 and the main qualifying draw took place at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, saint Petersburg, 22 23 The first qualification game, between Timor-Leste and Mongolia,additionally, users can report or block unpleasant people. Including new free vpn for windows 7 significant scrutiny over privacy and the psychological effects it has on users. Its popularity has led to prominent media coverage for the company, facebook has more than 2.2 billion monthly active users as of January 2018.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"If you're willing to ask yourself what you want to achieve out of this time off, and then mentally and financially prepare yourself for the experience of being out of the work force, there are surprisingly many great reasons why quitting your job before finding a new one might be the right decision for you.... Find a Job Before You Go! If you are planning to relocate to a new country for the first time and have no networks to help you with the whereabouts of the new country, then, make sure you have already found a way on how to manage your daily expenses\/stay which is very much expensive.\nYou could move without a job and live off of your savings, (or worse, your parents). But a better, although slightly more difficult option is to find a job before you move, thus eliminating the stress of worrying about how you're going to pay your rent and allowing you \u2026... If you're willing to ask yourself what you want to achieve out of this time off, and then mentally and financially prepare yourself for the experience of being out of the work force, there are surprisingly many great reasons why quitting your job before finding a new one might be the right decision for you.\nBut on a general note, if you can't find it\u2026before you go to extreme measures of trying to have a grocery store import it (which I have done), find out if it is even allowed in the country at all. There may be a reason you can't get it here.\nFocussing on specific companies rather than vacancies can work in your favour, as when you move on to the application process you'll already have an interest in the company and that will shine through in what you say, as opposed to just submitting an application 'cause there's a job up for grabs.\nFind a Job Before You Go! If you are planning to relocate to a new country for the first time and have no networks to help you with the whereabouts of the new country, then, make sure you have already found a way on how to manage your daily expenses\/stay which is very much expensive.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzapcvj b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzapcvj
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..585aa3ce71d4281e6fa3db5b94c5a10a4961dd9b
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"You'll join a team of content developers working on pre-sales technical training, business slaes training, and communications in multiple delivery mechanisms-including email, web, mobile, and more.\nYou'll edit technical and business sales training to be clear, direct, friendly, concise, simple, and practical-becoming (intimately) familiar with company style guides and processes. You'll also edit deliverables to support learning in the classroom, online, and on a mobile device.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ.\nThe agent typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ. represents an entity (e.g. person, organization, etc.) associated with resources found in Boston University Libraries.\nThe Resource typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ.\n1 Items by the Agent typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ.\nContext of typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ.\nData Citation of the Agent typis Henningi Mulleri Acad. Typ.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Want to see how your site looked in the past? Now you can go back in time and can see how your site looked in the past. Often a site goes a lot of changes over a period of time. And it's quite amazing and interesting if we could see the site back in time. The Alexa website has a link at the bottom which will take you back in time and show you different snapshots of your site at different times.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Harkness Furniture in Tacoma, WA is an authorized dealer of Magnussen Home Products. Founded in 1931, Magnussen Home began as a small maker of occasional tables and has grown to become a leading full-line furniture supplier. Understanding that retailers require more than just products to fill their floors, they have built their business on three enduring core value: trust, honesty and respect. Focused on being their customers' supplier of choice, they have created industry-leading product development, quality control, sourcing, warehousing and logistics systems to provide you with compelling, high quality merchandise at the right price.\nSo if you are looking for Magnussen Home products in Tacoma, University Place, Lakewood, Parkland, Gig Harbor, Federal Way, Puyallup, Sumner, Spanaway, Auburn and Edgewood, or if you have any questions about Magnussen Home products, please feel free to call us at (253) 473-1234 or simply stop by Harkness Furniture at any time and we would be glad to help you.\nModernized to mix with more-transitional schemes, Parsons' classic lines and subtle details remain firmly rooted in traditional d\u00e9cor.This collections combination of tempered glass and cherry veneer in a rich Cognac finish with tapered and chamfered obelisk metal legs enhance your living space.\n5mm tempered clear glass inserted on top.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The auction is the stage of the foreclosure process after the pre-foreclosure phase of the property has ended. You can attend an auction (typically at the steps of the county courthouse) and bid on the home, just like any other auction. During an auction, the lender is seeking to recapture its losses by auctioning the property in a public sale to the highest bidder.\nUltra Foreclosures is the ultimate destination to find property foreclosures. Our goal is to bring the most focused information about the foreclosure process and foreclosure listings available to our users. Every day, our registered members learn more about the amazing opportunities available in foreclosed homes across the country. We bring together the tools and analysis necessary for bargain home buyers to identify the best opportunities in foreclosed properties available.\nOnce a foreclosure is deemed necessary, there are a number of steps that happen in a very specific order. These steps and the timing involved will vary from one state to another, based on the local law for foreclosures by state. In addition, banks may enforce their loan terms and conditions as they best see fit.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzapzua b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzapzua
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..64f018108b9c39af509a1608e07decb3141f8e92
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Software designers work closely with architect when the design models are being created and modified. Designers are usually the first to spot the need to modify the model and relatively soon start to understand the logical modeling as well (at which point they start to learn their way to become an architects themselves).\nSoftware developers also work closely with architects. Developers are the ones to spot impractical coding model from the automation-generators. This happens when architect and senior developers fail to estimate properly the implementation challenges in contrast of team's average developer skills.\nADM-methodology embraces the open dialogue on the design and automation, because the dialogue is always spot-on in the issue. If there is a design issue that raises a conversation its clear for everyone where the issue is and how it can be solved. If there is too difficult a coding structure that requires too much guidance on the manual side it's also clear that the automation side needs to be revisited.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"With more and more mobile apps competing for people's attention you need a powerful tool to get noticed.\nYou don't have to worry about how to write a press release for an app, we'll write an attention-grabbing, professional press release for your app, game or mobile magazine and distribute the press release to popular media websites. (Currently not available for Android Apps).\nGet your app in front of influential bloggers, the media and more potential customers.\nShowing off the best features of your app and explaining what makes it headline-worthy.\nYour app press release will be sent directly to bloggers and app reviewers. We'll also distribute your press release to over 700 popular media outlets who focus on iPhone, iPad and mobile app topics using the prMac wire service.\nYou'll get a written report showing you how many views and clicks your app press release received and links to the websites that re-published it.\nPlease allow 1 week to receive the first draft of your press release.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Companies usually offer various promotional items such as pens or acrylic awards etc to their clients. Printed clocks having company name and logo are promotional items that are not used more often. They are used in jewellery store promotions or higher corporate promotions. They are available in many styles, colours and shapes and one can select them depending on what the promotion is. Printed clocks are best corporate gifts because they stay in front of the customers all the time and be checked on various occasions to see time.\nPromotional clocks with a corporate logo on it are very effective to get your business message right into their head. From desk clock printed will logo or web addresses etc to wall clock printed with logo and message are best reinforcement for your message.\nThe printed clocks can be used as a gift to the client along with timepieces because they will go where the client will go. This will remind your client all the time about your company and its services.\nDifferent types of clocks are available in the market like our wall clocks, which can feature your company's logo either below the face or on the face entirely. Other popular clocks are folding clocks as they have two places for pictures and the dual time picture travel clock having a place for one picture.\nThe price of these printed clocks is different depending on the quality, features and the material of which they are made up of. . These clocks range from small travel clocks to mantle clocks and anniversary clocks.\nThe success of every company depends on its customers. They are the one who can take your company to the peak of success. Giving printed clocks as a gift to the customers who have invested their time and money in your company is a good way to acknowledge and appreciate them. It will not only boost their interest into your company but also enhance your goodwill. Displaying the clock with your logo on wall or desk will spread your message to the potential customers.\nIt's always a good decision to use printed clocks as a promotional item and they can give you better results than any other advertising campaign. Because handing them over to customers will make them feel that they are important for the company and company remembers them in good words. You will realise by using printed clocks as promotional items that there is no better way to spread the message than word of mouth.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Let's clear something up first. Yes, we are both Terry. We have the same middle initial also. What are the odds of that happening? We have several names. Some people call us, She Terry and He Terry, or Terry 1 and Terry2, but the most popular is Terry Boy and Terry Girl.\nTerry GIrl is originally from New Jersey, Terry Boy is a native Californian. You get the best from East and West. We met 16 years ago on a cruise. Love at first sight? Not exactly, but close enough. It's been a fantastic voyage ever since!! Now, our children are grown and seeking their own adventures so we thought we would also. Terry Boy was a DJ in the 70's but gave it up to spend more time with his family. Terry Girl.....just likes to dance, make people happy and spend time with her man. So, the obvious path was to DJ. Although we have full-time jobs, our DJ business gives us the opportunity to break free from the work -a-day world.\nIt is so much fun helping people learn dances from yesterday and today. How special It is to watch Daddy and daughter dance on her wedding day. The tender kisses shared between bride and groom. The nostalgia on people's faces as we blast a favorite old song. The kids have a ball running around in the glow of our blacklight as they wave the glowing streamers we give them. We love to see people having fun and knowing we are responsible for that. Our clients love us. (References are available upon request.) Give us the opportunity to put the \"fun\" in your function.\nKick off your shoes and dance barefoot across the floor with your favorite partner. Bring back memories of your own first dance. Make new memories, dance, sing, clap, snap your fingers, tap your feet...the beat will move you.\nWe use top quality equipment utilizing brands such as HP, JBL, Mackie, American DJ, Chauvet, Cortex, BBE, Shure and Vestax to name a few.\nWe carry redundant systems to every event.\nOur music library is completely digital - NO CD's. This allows us to provide thousands of titles at every gig.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"FOR A FREE MEASURE AND QUOTE PLEASE EMAIL US BY USING THE CONTACT FORM BELOW.\nFor after hours measure and quote please indicate a time that suits you as we understand the the pressures of modern living \u2013 we will try to find a time that works for you!\nPlease indicate a date and time preference for your measure and quote \u2013 please give at least 3 days notice.\nWho will visit for your free measure and quote?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"The Travel Wing is an innovative line of 360 degree, donut-style wings that provide greater stability and control in the water. Now made of tough, 1680 ballistic nylon with a new oval shape, the Travel is a lightweight, small-profile wing that is great for travel and warm-water, single tank diving. The donut-style provides an even volume of inflation on top, sides and bottom, which improves buoyancy control and promotes a more efficient, horizontal trim.\nAt 27lbs\/12kg of lift, the Travel can accommodate one 80ft3\/12 L tank with additional weight in pockets or a weight belt not to exceed 16lbs. As a part of our modular BCD system, it can be matched with either a TransPac, Transplate or any metal backplate and webbing harness. Available in black with gray side panels. Made in the U.S.A.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"a) What marketing strategy or strategies has Facebook adopted since it was created?\nb) What marketing options can you describe for Facebook if it wishes to remain a successful organisation throughout the next decade? Answer this question based on the circumstances that exist in 2014 and your best forecasts of relevant future industry factors.\nThis review is focused around the improving market strategies of Facebook which was properly secured in 2004 by \"Mark Zuckerberg\" with his four associates. Facebook made in the marketplace so quick in light of their improving program and thought. Facebook is a main organization in the overall company which can be effectively seen as the U.S. has less number of individuals reasonably on the globe, yet Facebook today is protecting more than 45% of the individuals as a concept globe. As needs be it is truly exciting to know the publicizing technique of Facebook behind this success (Sternman, 2000).\nThis review is in a wide sense about the common improving way of Facebook in all over globe. review is going to research the program which Facebook used at the beginning when it was impelled in the company besides about the method which it used later to lead as a piece of this based company section. Facebook truly proved helpful amazing in this intense company. Facebook is growing its industry in all areas. At present, Face book's new enhance is making company places of web in different nations by satellite. For this, the organization has sent its own particular satellite (Tampone, 2011).\nThe hugeness of regarding open media gets for being constantly standard quickly, the survey of on-line system customers is truly making on a very basic level, and the demonetisation with respect to on-line structure has been talked of with withdrawals however by no means with territories. At this point, a champion among the most routinely used system further supporting favourable luck joined with open media is truly net publicising. By the by, the profitable association like Facebook shows amazing shots of demonetisation. Considering that the philosophy is truly seeing further supporting make favourable luck for an association, the affiliations solitary capability may without a doubt be much better satisfied when it's got an immense strategy. This kind of appraisal will give complete energy to thoughts as for exercises disclosure as to Facebook. Study effort, thoughts, fundamental get together is generally major frameworks for get together purposes of enthusiasm nearby trial appraisal (Zuckerberg, 2012).\nFacebook gives a framework where clients get free get to an easy-going assembling as an exchange for demonstrating private purposes of enthusiasm on invigorate joining with accomplices. Pay are made when Facebook limits the individual purposes of enthusiasm of its clients in ways that playing point showcasing authorities, who then pay good total to perform publicising battles focused at particular demographics of hypothesis. All individuals by and large purposes of premium clients' unobtrusive components into Facebook, in the same course as things they recently picked up on the web, or reconstructing the position of activities, helps Facebook surrender based on fights to showcasing authorities by depicting things we are more feeble to need. This has made Facebook the go-to showcasing organisation for acquainting associations hunting down with do on the web brand publicising (Rappa, 2004).\nAs a result of observational overviews upon thoughts as to exercises, Facebook underscores to give complete eagerness to householders' professionalization and surrenders printed strategies, the thought completes extensive cost send essentially through electronic course. Facebook gives youths a certain easy-going talked trades' period, enable the association close by keep up people's relationship inside a technique for material offering, the thought totals benefit essentially by method for on-line advancing. Facebook is truly proposed to improve their appreciation to oneself master suggestions and allow additional on-line structure associations concentrated all on young people's requirements, to facilitate new rigging that will oversee customer joint exertion, to secure new benefit undertakings like trip propelled issue discount rates nearby association together with data exchanges associations (Mintzberg, 1978).\nFacebook is an online media sponsorship released in Feb 2004, fabricated by Mark Zuckerberg with his propelled training level mates and other Harvard Individuals Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Frank Gaines. The name of the sponsorship rises up out of the casual name for the book given to learners at the start of the enlightening year by some school associations in the United States to help learners get to know each other.\nIn the wake of applying to use the site, customers can make an information, incorporate diverse customers as \"friends\", exchange information, post position up-dates and pictures, offer gimmick cuts and get notices when others overhaul their information. Additionally, customers may be a bit of typical speculation customer meetings, composed by office, school or propelled instruction, or diverse contrivances, and orchestrate their buddies into purposes of enthusiasm, for instance, \"People from Work\" or \"Close Friends\". Facebook had in over-abundance of 1.3 billion dollars dynamic customers beginning July 2014. Due to the broad number of data gathered about customers, the organisation's online comfort standards have experienced examination, notwithstanding distinctive responses. Facebook, Inc. held its starting gathering giving in Feb 2012 and started offering stock to the gathering following three months, achieving a perfect business division capital of $104 billion dollars (Locke, 2007).\nFrom its start, Facebook has had a focus on supervising outside programs. For any company, it is discerning to have an effective identify to recognize their contemplations. That deals with the individual's veritable issue. In Facebook, Zuckerberg made factor for Stanford understudies. Further, Facebook expanded out to unique educational institutions of Ivy Company and school reasons. After it was expanded out to various educational institutions and universities, understudies liked it and analyzed it (Atal, 2007).\nAssociation sets up moreover have a popular identify based on the enhancement of a connection. Yet various companies give less centrality to strategy, as opposed to this, Zuckerberg had believed in having a wonderful look of his website which could entice more individuals. Thusly, he knew as his most efficient suggest as a Facebook modeller. Zuckerberg provided an effective focus on the installation of his website around then which ended up being most effective for Facebook (Rowe, 2001).\nInformation and inner data is an exchange element which agrees to an essential part in the success of any association. Despite the way that details is remarkably direct, it may be significantly beneficial to a connection. From the first place to start the company of Facebook gets the details on a subject for their website then it queries for it and is in situation it is appropriate for the website in summary the support is given. Close by details, it also understands new concerns for its website.\nTalking with the client is one of the main techniques that are associated by all the companies these days. In situation a connection needs to provide amazing organization, and then it should talk with their customers. In Facebook client first goes into his current e-mail deal with. It is crucial for the online factor publicizing to work long lasting. Facebook in the same way gives that organization to the advertising companies. In situation a client does not give and current e-mail deal with on Facebook, and then he is limited to use Facebook companies (Safko, 2009).\nFacebook had joined in this based company area like the innovator of casual connections. Facebook was distributing like tattle in this based world inside a small time. In any situation social Connections Company is not in isolation; there are categories of web systems management levels which equal Facebook. Some of those levels are Tweets, My space, Friendster etc. Therefore, these levels are near to battling with Facebook. Hereafter, Facebook has gotten different methods to battle around here (Voivod, 2011).\nFacebook's enhancing way of forcing forward is extremely clear. It primarily uses the social connections for their advertising and progression. It used to give the special offers on most saw operates in the developing place. The presenting process of Facebook is that it yearnings the clients to sign in different places by using its own particular id which furthermore helps Facebook in publicizing (Helft, 2011).\nIn this way, by using the over remarkable systems, Facebook has created a switch position in the company place and is effective in this based company. As confirmed by market analysis organizations, Facebook's development in enhancing will immediate in the associated with few years, however the objective behind this is its different fights. As Facebook is recommended all through the world, it was said that its marketers will guarantee that the website is powerful and innovative. In Facebook, website material was linked by the clients. According to market analysis, these factor clients have two categories first is product followers and second is investors (Rubin, 2009).\nIn 2012, Facebook sent new enhancing equipment which created it uncomplicated for vendors to create their own particular page. Both vendors and clients are enhancing strategies to create material to improve their experience.\nFacebook has a monstrous drive behind Zuckerberg's key organisation. While it is difficult to reproach such a compelling attempt, this shows that as of delayed Facebook did not recall about its dedication to the client's quality suggestions. Facebook must effect its unobtrusive components of the casual association press clients experience and consider incredible methodology to improve the top quality proposals, bait in basically more clients, and keep making worth recommendations for promoters that invigorate focused on publicising thought around client cluster affinity.\nIn portrayal, the future achievement of Facebook relies on upon the blended pack of purposes of investment they amass about us which can be used by promoters to execute advancing fights. Every one endeavour to make the assessment of the purposes of investment, on the other hand, upgrades signs and security activists quickly begin endeavouring to control the unpretentious components offers. Zuckerberg is said to discover the affirmation open thought overpowering and in level of potential to oversee client execute, which he perceives staggering. The master centre has been non-profit disregarding the unpretentious components' certification issues. Progressively, it looks great that Facebook won the long range social affiliations' energy position since it offered clients an eminent experience and top quality suggestions, was seen as cold to adolescents, had less frustrating advancements, had a more reliable level, used the like button as an exceedingly convincing trades way, and propelled focused on publicising.\nFinding fitting inconspicuous components using web scan for sources needs some work. It can be an inadequate technique when you need to continue passing by districts and expend attempt just to discover the unobtrusive components you searching for is not there. Facebook produces a game plan of affiliations that allow clients to take in snappier, and it's more fun while they are doing it. By looking at the Facebook site pages of accomplices, one can pick things of conventional diversions and mission for after them without genuine all the aching exercises. Every one return doesn't need to be changed into exercises that duplicate uninspiring finding. The entire end of the line of Facebook's easy-going social event is that it makes web hunt down sources, and correspondingly Google, less foremost. The web is consistently made around individuals and wistful relationship, regardless of web quest for sources (Hardy, 2010).\nAtal, M., 2007. MySpace, Facebook: A tale of two cultures.\nHardy, Q. P. D. H. K., 2010. In Mark we trust. Forbes Magazine, 186(6).\nHelft, M. H. J., 2011. Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the web. Fortune Magazine, 164(8).\nKoo, T. S., 2013. 4 Steps on Effective Facebook Marketing Strategies For Your Online Business.\nLocke, L., 2007. The Future of Facebook, New York: Time.\nMintzberg, H., 1978. Patterns of strategic formulation. Journal of Management Science, Volume 24, pp. 934-948.\nRappa, M., 2004. Business Models on the Web, l.: Managing the Digital Enterprise.\nRowe, W. G., 2001. Creating wealth in organizations: The role of strategic leadership. Academy of Management Executive, 15(1), pp. 81-94.\nRubin, E., 2009. Social Networking: Walking the Talk. Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation, 14(4), p. A16.\nSafko, L. B. D., 2009. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. US: Wiley publication.\nSternman, J., 2000. Business Dynamics, Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"What the Bleep Happened to my Rump Roast?: Eggs that make you say \"Eww\"\nDear Tricia, Eggs. I need to know everything about eggs. How do I never get that white ewwwww on the bottom of my pan? How do I flip an egg? Enlighten me.\nEggs happen to be my favorite food of all time. You can make them a million ways, they're cheap, and easy to cook. I once accidentally went vegetarian, basically because I was on a really tight budget, and eggs made it totally do-able.\nOK, so the reason why you're getting the white \"ewwww\" on the bottom of your pan is because eggs are made of 2 parts: the fatty part (yolk) and the protein part (the white.) When I say fatty, I mean good fat: egg yolks are full of lecithin and other good fats that keep your healthy cholestorol doing its job well, and it makes your skin and hair nice. The white is a completely digestible protein that, at only about 15 calories a pop, is a dieter's perfect food. However, unless there's butter or oil in the pan, the protein part will stick to the pan and make a mess, just like if you tried cooking chicken in a pan without butter or oil. So first and foremost, use butter, oil, or nonstick spray. I'm a fan of non-stick pans for cooking eggs because they're easier to clean, but you should still use some oil to keep the whites from making the layer of ewwww on the bottom. Also, if your nonstick pan is scratched or chipped, your eggs will stick. Get a new pan, and hand wash it with a non-metallic scrubby to keep it clean and scratch free.\nSecond, make sure your pan is nice and hot before you put the oil\/butter\/nonstick spray in the pan. I have no scientific reason for this; I do, however, have a 10 year career in kitchens, and the rule is, was, and always will be: Let your pan get hot and then put your oil in. I have many a mean chefs who would surely come hunt me down and cut off my hands if I told you any different. Seriously.\nSo, we have a hot, nonstick pan, and then we're putting our oil (or butter, or nonstick spray, blah blah blah... you get the point) in the pan. Let the oil get hot, and then add your beat-up eggs. Make sure you beat it well before they hit the pan. Beat it. Beat it. No one wants to be defeated.... It's ok to take a Michael Jackson dance break during this part. I do it all the time.\nThe best tool for cooking eggs and getting them to not stick is a rubber spatula. That's the flexible kind that you usually use for baking when you scrape down the sides of the bowl. Seriously, get a rubber spatula if you don't have one. They're awesome. So when you're cooking your eggs in the hot pan that you added oil to after it got hot, just use the spatula to gently move the eggs around on to keep them from sticking. You don't need to angrily stir the eggs until they're all broken up and the size of peas. Just move them around enough to keep the bottom from getting covered in egg ewwww.\nFor flipping eggs, start out again, with a hot pan, and then add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the eggs. Let the eggs sit there and cook. Don't try to move them around until the whites start to become a solid colored white and not all snot-like. Really, just let the eggs cook without disturbing them. Once they're white, gently use your trusty rubber spatula to work your way under the eggs to loosen them from the pan. The more the egg cooks, the easier it will be, so if you're just breaking the egg up and making a mess, that means you need to let it cook a little longer. Once the egg is completely loosened up from the pan and slides around on its own, use a regular spatula (like the kind you use for flipping pancakes) and scoop up the eggs to flip them over. If you're a risk-taker (or a masochist, or if you just like to clean), you can certainly use a little wrist-flipping action and no spatula to flip the eggs in the air like a professional, but if its your first try, have another couple of eggs ready to cook after you completely miss and the eggs land on the floor. Ewww not included, of course.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"* See this indicator's supporting table for information as to which differences between years and age groups are statistically significant.\nSource:National Endowment for the Arts, Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Data accessed and analyzed via the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research Data Archive [files used: \"1982\u20132008 (ICPSR 35527)\" and \"2012 (ICPSR 35168)\"].\nAbout the Data|The data on which this indicator is based are from the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). In 2012 the wording of the SPPA creative writing item changed slightly. Whereas in 1982\u20132008, respondents were asked if they did creative writing other than for school or work, in 2012 the question asked respondents to indicate whether they had done creative writing at all, regardless of the context.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"More and more millennials are seeking to raise their emotional value by working in companies with a purpose; and the communication of this must be managed strategically in order to generate value in terms of attracting talent.\nThis course will also provide you with the tools to implement an \"Employee Advocacy\" program and the measurement of the effectiveness of employer brand consolidation initiatives.\nThe course describes the process of implementing an employability brand project for a company from the conception of brand values to the communication and management of project indicators.\nAfter taking this course you will be able to transfer concepts of employability brand theory and research to real work situations. In addition, you will have tools for gathering information and diagnosing internal and external branding. You will also be able to design an employability brand program with the support of digital platforms available in the market.\nMaster's Degree in Human Management by the EUDE (Spain) and Organizational Psychologist specialized in Talent Management and Career Development.\nExperience in Talent Attraction and Employer Brand \u2013 Interbank Senior Talent Consultant \u2013 EMA Partners International \u2013 Talent Manager \u2013 Ronald, Career Services Group. Management of Head Hunting, Recruitment, Training, Talent Assessment and Labor Climate. Speaker for Personal Marketing workshops, Contacts Network and Management Skills. Currently works as General Manager of WUF.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"One of the great, deep-water ports of the world, San Francisco is a natural gateway to a cosmopolitan diversity of people, goods, and views. Now its Asian Art Museum opens its first large-scale exhibition of contemporary Asian art. This renewal of vision is well-timed, given current, unprecedented global interest in Asian art. As always, the Asian delivers the goods in its distinctive, signature style.\nPhantoms of Asia draws together 60 works by 31 artists from 15 nations. This, in turn, is all interlaced with 80 pieces from the museum's collection, many chosen from the vaults for this occasion. While in town, noted New York Times art critic Holland Cotter remarked it's an ingenious idea, one he intends to recommend when he gets back home, where the Whitney Museum is currently vacant. Indeed, whenever we consider past masters, we do so in the present, so they become contemporaries. This can lift a museum out of a stereotype as musty repository of a remote past, energizing it as a dwelling of vital vision.\nBehind the scenes, the mastermind of this innovative convergence of vectors is Museum Director Jay Xu; the exhibition itself is brainchild of Mami Kataoka, and whose right-hand here is Allison Harding, the Museum's newly appointed curator of contemporary Asian art. And the event is drawing not only its core audience, but also new faces.\nUntitledNormally, a colossal show takes many years to prepare -- fine for historical retrospects, but current tendencies and trends are ever in flux. So it's fitting for Phantoms to have been assembled in only 16 months. How she pulled it off remains a mystery, but then the supernatural pervades the show's subtext. And location plays a part here too: the Mori Art Museum, where she's curator, is up on the 53rd floor of a Tokyo skyscraper, informing her view with a sense of panorama and precision, plus perhaps giving her a feel for being part of a colossal beacon. Maybe too there's a bit of samurai in her family lineage.\nBlending curatorial practice in with art practice, and serving it all up piping hot, she stirs us into the mix, as well. An ambience of personal participation, intuition, and spontaneity is freely at play here. Her grand-scale presentation provokes eternal questions. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the here and now?\n\"Despite a vastly changing political, economic, and social climate,\" Mami Kataoka asks, \"do contemporary Asian art and culture find ways to connect to the past? In reaction to the limits of modernization, can we tap into the sensorial, the irrational, and the spiritual to broaden our understanding of the universe?\"\nSo \"phantoms,\" because, as curator Kataoka told us: \"... these objects may reawaken a deeply rooted receptivity to ancient, invisible forces that still surround us, yet, like phantoms, defy comprehension as to fixed forms.\"\nBreathing FlowerAt the very outset, Phantoms of Asia awakens the senses by engaging and energizing the literal space of the museum, inside and out. Across the street, Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa has given Civic Center Plaza Breathing Flower, a 24-foot, candy-colored red lotus, its huge petals bouncing gently (by unseen motors) in the Pacific breeze. Made from recycled materials, it obliquely comments on globalism, while making a subtle linkage between art being av ailable from everyday materials, and enlightenment too. At my first viewing, early morning, I'd asked a random passerby what she'd thought, and, hair up in curlers, she replied its dancing made her feel like dancing; apt summary of a delicate but bold celebration of a populist, street-fair sensibility. A week after unveiling, it adorned the Asian Heritage Street Festival, celebrated by 90,000 people. San Francisco's multicultural daily life is 40% Asian American, another reason Phantoms is an idea whose time has come. And, in parallel festivities, a consortium of 16 Bay Area organizations joined flags to mount an Asian Contemporary Art Week.\nBack inside, the lobby's been transformed by Korean-born, New York-based Sun K. Kwak. Her two- and three-dimensional calligraphy, Untying Space, traces the energy flows of the immediate I>chi (qi). Such a reading of geomancy -- popularized in the West recently thru feng shui -- is performative, as in the art of qi gong (chi kung) . And it prompts a consideration, to follow throughout the exhibition: How do artists treat space, and light?\nHeman Chong's Calendars fill all three walls of the Museum's activity room, as first interior space of Phantoms 1001 photos taken over the course of five years, it's an evolving diary of the future, in images, each of empty spaces yet to be filled, each given a specific, sequential date, in an imagined future. The lack of people evokes a sense of presence. As a meditation on absence, mortality, and timelessness, it invites us to empty our mind before receiving what's ahead.\nNext door, an impeccable glimpse of the primordial awaits in the form of seven works from the Five Elements series by celebrated, New York-based photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. In each, the traditional, symbolic shapes of the five elements are mounted atop each other, stupa-style: empty space (\u00e7\"\u00a1, mu) crowns air, which rides atop water, flowing upon earth, resting atop a wooden column, on a metal base. Within each water sphere is a transparent photo of a seascape, evoking in this viewer a primordial longing for origin, as well as a sense of the fresh air and big mind of the open sea. While in San Francisco, Mr Sugimoto told us of his intention to mount 100 of these sculptures in his museum in Japan. As he put it, \"they reawaken an awareness of the origins of consciousness in this present day.\"\nCosmological paintingEach pagoda of crystal sets against a blank screen of bright light. (Viewed carefully, the pyramid forms representing fire acquire prismatic sparks along the edges unintentionally?) The project might be likened to a spiritual aesthetic sushi, a concentration of long preparation resulting in profound nourishment to be savored. No stranger to the Asian Art Museum, or San Francisco, his presence here also serves as de facto elder statesman: he's in his 60's, while the curator and artists are all under 40; the youngest, 25.\nEntering the next suite of rooms, we're greeted by a large watercolor on cloth from Rajasthan (app. 1750-1850). Its complex mapping of our relationship with the cosmos, prompts more questions than answers (in tantric fashion?) -- as is the case throughout the exhibition.\nIn an adjacent space, Palden Weinreb's abstract, simplified forms as new meditations on existence. On the opposite wall, hang awesome works of Guo Fengyui (1942-2010), mapping her own. These and other contemporary works face each other across a group of traditional devotional sculptures in the center of the gallery.\nThe ClassInside the exit of the second gallery, a Joseon dynasty king of Hell looks on as Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook offers a lecture (video) on death to sixteen corpses. The freedom of art enables her work to make death seem as light as a feather in the wind. Other artists working through questions of the afterworld include Ringo Bunoan, Jakkai Siributr and Takayuki Yamamoto.\nLocal ghost legends come alive in Phantoms of Nabua, a 10-minute video installation by Apichatpong Weersasethakul. In the 16-minute video The Class, another Thai artist, Aaraya Rasdjarmrearnsook, holds a seminar in front of a blackboard, lecturing to six corpses draped in white cloth, laying in metal pans. Her phenomenology on the topic of death is indeed a course we're all studying, and prompts good questions as well answers.\nGeomantic InterventionAmerican artist Adrian Wong is a double threat in San Francisco right now, having been chosen for the Chinese Culture Center's the fifth annual one-person Xian Rui (fresh+sharp) artist. In that current installation, he documents his penchant for playing flaneur of invisible cities, with memoir composed in architectural palimpsests. For Phantoms he spent a year redesigning a quadrant of the Museum. His Geomantic Intervention invites viewers to feel for themselves the poetics of two adjoining spaces, without label: which has good and which bad feng shui? Ehipassiko. That sensibility also pervades Phantoms: art can inspire feeling, then invite us to fill in the rest.\nPhantoms shows us artists reflecting on mountains as connections between the human body, the landscape, and an invisible realm. When we first encountered Aki Kondo's mural of mountain spirits, we wondered why the word Guernica echoed in my mind. The answer came when we asked her about a certain group of forms, near the middle bottom, and she replied they were graves: Fukushima.\nBookHer singular contribution neighbors Chuanchu Lin's encounters with the literal humus of his life. In the organic unfolding of his mountains we heard an echo of Georgia O'Keefe's sincerity and truth. And an adjacent sculpture of Indra's descent down steps from heaven, rhymes with a terraced cliff of a mountain in monochrome oil. In a marvelous piece entitled Book: emerging from an open page, a cloud serves as pedestal for a scholar stone.\nin the End Fuyuko Matsui's work is right at home in the Japanese wing. A young master of Edo Nihonga, her phantoms are just that, and the scarier the better. As she layers sensory perception with invisible forces, so too does she render spatial and tonal contrast as well as line. We could only smile in wonder when, standing beside one of her pieces, she asked, aloud \"Why is it that when we're depressed we sink, but ghosts, though burdened with passion, float?\"\nAnother stand-out are the large painting and sculpture of Jagannath Panda, concurrently making his Ameerican debut at Frey Norris. Nearly nine-foot tall, the post-minimalist, cosmic noodling of Cult of Survival II, riffs off classical Indian painting, as hung nearby, but working in plastic pipe and auto paint, fabric and resin, faux snakeskin and plastic flowers, with impeccable flair for vision, detail, and execution. Head swallows tail as a pair of snails crawl slowly ...slowly. In a way, it crystallized for me the entire show's sweeping capturing and captivating of the essential, ephemeral poetry of life, in all its pliant durability.\nWe're back in the lobby, after our initial tour. Unexpected resonances are reverberating in our mind -- such as how the work of both Sun K. Kwak and Hyon Gyon engage ripping of material. Going back upstairs, further discoveries include entire works, such as the landscaped inscapes of Bae Young Whan's Frozen Waves -- (What was he sensing \/ feeling \/ thinking as his brainwaves were recorded in hand-kneaded celadon?) -- and Terra Incognito, which turns the tables on the topology of introspection from another direction, via the grain of oak.\nFrozen WavesMaybe we'd been silently hypnotized by the wall of Prabhavati Mappayil's exquisite, white, minimalist panels. On a smaller wall, alongside them, we only now discovered, way up, a hyper-real sculpture of a flower by Yoshihiro Suda. Elsewhere, a leaf of his, inserted like a chameleon into a glass case of an ancient figurine, seems to posit art as ... a smile! And, atop the third-floor escalator, I discovered on the bamboo, that's always there, the intricate calligraphy of Charwei Tsai upon the branches and leaves.\nAbsence of God VIISpace constraints preclude spotlighting all the artists. But, juxtaposed against all the traditional work on the third floor, (many with descriptive texts added for this show) there's but a single contemporary artist, and a genuine discovery: Kashmiri-born, London-based Raqib Shaw. His opulent, hybrid fantasies quote everything from Bosch to Mughal miniatures. Yet he sings in his own breathtaking voice, albeit as rendered in banal materials, with the meticulous precision of a porcupine quill -- confronting God ... and the gods.\nStanding in the lobby one last time, before leaving the Museum for the day, we felt enlivened and even a bit enlightened. Phantom's striking, understated way of layering themes creates a conversation of artists across time as well as geography, inviting viewers to join in. And it felt like a far more effective presentation of spirituality in art, than countless other modern attempts, from Kandinsky on out -- prompting our own questions as to life, death, and our place in the universe.\nAnno DominiWe need to see the physical to intuit the nomaterial. Such paradox isn't a contradiction. Spirituality extends beyond the six senses. And to be genuine, spirituality and art must always flower anew, fresh, out of the cultural soil of the present moment.\n...to expand our imaginations beyond the present to a universal realm transcending space and time. .... By opening ourselves up to primordial sensibilities that lie dormant in the deepest layers of consciousness and memory, perhaps we can tap into the vast cosmological realms that extend far beyond everyday life.\nGary GachGary Gach is author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buddhism, third edition (Nautilus Book Award), and editor of What Book!? ~ Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (American Book Award). His work has also appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including American Cinematographer, The Atlantic, Buddhadharma, Harvard Divinity Review, Language for a New Century, The New Yorker, Technicians of the Sacred, Tricycle, and Yoga Journal.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"\"It's a weird pitch, really,\" Nottinghamshire's Nash said. \"It kind of goes to sleep for a bit and then there is a ball in it.\n\"Gregory bowled brilliantly, but I was annoyed with myself. We just needed to get through to lunch and if me and Samit had been able to build afterwards we could have been looking at 320. So I felt I let the lads down a bit there.\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"One of the biggest mistakes you can make with your mailing list is to send the same email to everyone, all the time.\nIf you think about it, not every subscriber on your mailing list is equal. You've probably got a mix of: potential customers (haven't made a purchase yet), new customers (just made their first purchase), loyal customers (have made many purchases), and inactive customers (haven't made any purchases in a while).\nOn top of that, if you sell items in different categories (e.g. women's clothing, men's clothing and kids' clothing), do you think every subscriber is interested in all product categories? Do you want to send the same message to everyone, then? Of course not.\nTo address this problem, you can create emails based on specific criteria using segmentation. In this post, we'll look at different ways to segment your email list in order to increase engagement and conversions.\nWouldn't it be nice if, when people walked into a store, they had a label on them that indicated whether they were new to the store, had visited but never purchased, had purchased once but not again, or had purchased many things? If people had labels like that, the salesperson that greets them would probably say something different to each group.\nMany customer databases have these labels. If yours does, then you should consider segmenting your list based on these differentiations. This way, you can target your emails in a way that will convert: potential customers into first time customers, first time customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into brand advocates. It can be as simple as offering first time customers a discount or your most loyal repeat customers a free gift with purchase.\nLet's say your online store sells pet supplies. You probably have dog owners, cat owners, hamster owners, new pet owners, elderly pet owners, and so on. Sending them all the same email campaign is going to be completely hit or miss. Sending them a targeted ad based on their specific pet owner needs is the solution.\nProducts they click on in your email. If the subscriber clicks on a dog leash, then you can segment them as a dog owner and send emails about new dog products.\nLead magnets they subscribe through. If your online store offers free guides for different breeds of dog and your subscriber chooses the guide to Chihuahuas, then you can segment them as a small dog owner and send emails about new products for small dogs.\nItems they purchase. If your customer tends to buy ferret toys and hamster wheels, then you can segment them as a small animal lover and send emails about new products pertaining to little critters.\nBy segmenting your emails based on interests, you'll increase your open and clickthrough rates and lower your unsubscribe rates. Why? You won't be blasting products to people who are not interested in them.\nLocation can be an important segmentation factor for several reasons. For starters, if you have both an online store and a physical location, you may want to send emails about sales that are happening in-store, but only to people in your region. If you have customers from various countries, you may want to send country-specific promotions on shipping, like Deals Direct in the example below.\nMost mailing list service providers will have an option to segment based on location. The location is usually determined when a subscriber signs up for your mailing list. You can also use your customer database to find the current location of your customers based on billing and shipping addresses.\nLast, but not least, you will need to tailor messages differently based on the subscriber's activity. You've likely seen emails that say, \"We've missed you.\" These were probably from businesses whose emails you have not opened in a while.\nOne reason that businesses create a separate segment for inactive subscribers (those who have not opened emails in a long time) is that each subscriber costs you money. Why pay for subscribers who are not engaging with you? There's also research that suggests an inactive email list impacts deliverability.\nThe strategy usually goes like this. You will create a segment of subscribers that have not opened their emails in a certain timeframe, say six months. You send just that segment of people an email that asks them to reconfirm their subscription, either to confirm they want to continue receiving your emails or to get a special discount code, for example. If the subscriber does not confirm within the next week or two, they are removed from the list.\nThis is a great way to make sure your mailing list consists of people who want to get your emails (i.e. the people most likely to make purchases). This will always boost the ROI of your email marketing as you'll be paying less for your mailing list service and only sending emails to the people who really want them.\nNote that some of these segmentation options may or may not be available to you based on the mailing list service provider you have chosen, but they're fairly common. To find out what segmentation options you have available to you, you will need to refer to the features your provider offers. You can do a Google search for your mailing list provider's name plus \"segmentation\", \"segment your list\", etc.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Experience Recovery has a strong commitment to providing excellent service to all of our clients, alumni and visitors, including respecting your concerns about privacy. We understand that you might wonder whether and how this Website collects and uses information. This statement contains numerous general and technical details about the steps we take to respect your privacy concerns.\nWhen we need to collect information from you, we will ask you to voluntarily supply us with the information we need. For example, if you would like to receive information about admissions to Experience Recovery, you may fill out the Contact Us\/ Inquiry Form in the footer section which requests information about your name, address, phone number and e-mail address plus a place to place notes regarding specific info you wish to receive, plus questions about how you heard about us (for evaluation of our own marketing practices). We will use your e-mail address only to provide the information you requested, or to communicate news as you requested. If at any time you decide you do not want to receive this information, you may let us know by reply e-mail or use the form to request that we no longer contact you. Providing information to us using any of our online forms is voluntary and the information we collect is used only for the purpose for which the information was collected and is not shared with any other companies.\nWe treat the information that you provide to us as confidential information. It is, accordingly, subject to the Center's security procedures and strict corporate policies regarding protection and use of information. We will only disclose this information to individuals at the Center on a need-to-know basis and person(s) authorized by you. Patient and Alumni information is additionally protected under the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 42 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Experience Recovery maintains strict compliance with each of these laws and regulations.\nOur goal is to only send e-mails that are likely to be of interest to you. All e-mail is generated from Experience Recovery and not from an outside third-party e-mail service provider. Experience Recovery does not make e-mail addresses available to any partners in Experience Recovery network or to any others for their use. You may at any time request not to receive e-mails from Experience Recovery by replying to any e-mail with your request to opt-out.\nExperience Recovery prohibits the sale or transfer of personal information to anyone outside the Experience Recovery Treatment Centers.\nOther sites linked to by the Experience Recovery website are offered for your convenience only. Experience Recovery is not responsible for the privacy policies of those sites, or for cookies, those sites might use.\nThis is a United States website and subject to the United States law. Experience Recovery will disclose personal health information without your permission only when required by law, or in a good faith belief that such action is necessary to investigate or protect against harmful activities to Experience Recovery patients, staff, volunteers, alumni, property (including this site) or to others or as authorized by federal medical privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.\nIn the future, we may need to change the privacy statement for www.experiencerecovery.com. All changes will be made here so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone. Any changes made in the future will only apply to information collected after any new policy is established.\nIf you have any questions about this privacy statement or privacy concerns, please send an e-mail to: info@experiencerecovery.com.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"If at any time after activation of your account for Juno Services, you do not agree to be bound by the Rules you should immediately end your use of the Juno Services and return or destroy all copies of software provided by Juno, including third party software distributed by Juno. Juno may change these Rules at any time. Such changes will be posted on the Juno Site and such posting will constitute notice to you. You agree to review changes to the Rules prior to any use of the Juno Services and if any change is not acceptable to you, you agree to terminate your use of the Juno Services. Your continued use of the Juno Services or Juno Site after the posting of any such change constitutes acceptance of all of the changes.\nWhile Juno encourages and supports the free flow of information and ideas over the Internet, we expect that our subscribers and users will act legally, responsibly and be considerate of others. Juno reserves the right, but does not bear the responsibility, to prohibit or delete any conduct, communication or content which Juno, in its sole discretion determines to be unlawful or harmful to others. When you are using the Juno Services, you are subject to the Rules. If you use third party software or connect to third party servers, websites, networks or systems, then you are responsible for complying with the policies and restrictions of those third parties. Juno may terminate your Juno Services if it determines that you have failed to comply with the Rules.\nAs Juno does not monitor in advance the conduct of subscribers and users nor communication or content distributed through the Juno Services, you acknowledge Juno is unlikely to be aware of violations of law or these Rules or other misconduct by subscribers and users occurring through the Juno Services. As the sender of e-mail or poster to a newsgroup, you bear full responsibility for the material you send. As the recipient of e-mail or newsgroup postings, you are responsible for using reasonable efforts to screen unwanted material and reporting any offensive or illegal communications to Juno.\nThese Acceptable Use Guidelines are intended to protect the overall Juno Services and to ensure the expected use for consumers.\n2.0 Prohibited Uses of Juno Services.\nJuno reserves the right to terminate a subscriber or user's session or access to the Juno Services at any time without notice if such subscriber or user engages in the following prohibited activities.\nMaterial or conduct which Juno believes to be unlawful, offensive or harmful.\nAny material, content, code, transmission or other use of the Service that would violate Juno's Rules.\nSubscribers may be fined US $200.00 for each day this provision is violated. Full payment of fines will not prevent Juno from terminating the offending account or seeking legal remedies against the responsible subscribe, including damages or an injunction.\nTo report a case of spamming, please e-mail the address set forth on the Juno Site.\nExtended Use and Inactivity of Dial-Up Services. Use of Juno dial-up Internet access Services on a standby or inactive basis in order to maintain a connection is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, taking any action to defeat Juno's idle timeout or similar mechanism.\nJuno Services and Juno Site Functionality. Any action to defeat or disable, or conduct that facilitates defeating or disabling, any functionality of the Juno Services or alters the look, feel or functionality of the Juno Site or user interface is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, altering or blocking the display of any advertisement, banner or other promotional materials appearing on the Juno Site or through the use of Juno Services.\nReselling any aspect of the Juno Services or Juno Site.\nYou also agree that you will not use our network to measure the performance of our Juno Services, or publish information about our network's performance.\nUnless otherwise specified, the Juno Services are provided for your personal, consumer use only, and are not intended for commercial or business use and commercial or business use is prohibited.\nIn order for Juno to comply with applicable laws, including without limitation the Electronic Communications Privacy Act 18 U.S.C. 2701 et seq., to comply with appropriate government requests, to operate Juno's systems properly, or to protect Juno or its customers, Juno may access and disclose any information, including, without limitation, the personal identifying information of Juno account holders, the contents of any personal electronic communications passing through its network, and any other information it considers necessary or appropriate without notice to you. Juno will cooperate with law enforcement authorities in investigating suspected violations of the Rules and any other illegal activity. Juno reserves the right to report to law enforcement authorities any suspected illegal activity of which it becomes aware.\nIf Juno receives a complaint or otherwise becomes aware of any possible violation of the Rules, Juno may, in its sole discretion, initiate an investigation. This investigation may include gathering information from and about Juno account holders and examining the content of personal electronic communications or other information on Juno's servers. During any investigation, Juno may suspend Juno Services and access to the Juno Site and\/or remove materials from its servers. You agree to cooperate with any such investigation.\nIf Juno determines, in its sole discretion, that a violation of the Rules has occurred, Juno may, but will not be obligated, to take any or all of the following actions in addition to legal remedies it may have available: temporarily or permanently remove material from Juno servers, discontinue access to Usenet newsgroups, cancel newsgroup postings, move posts to a more appropriate forum (if any), warn the account holder(s) involved, remove e-mail sent by you, suspend or terminate account(s), remove or deny access to the Juno Service, Site or servers, publicly disclose the originating address, subject matter and\/or URL of the website or other account information associated with a prohibited transmission and to charge a handling fee associated with taking such action and take other responsive action at any time and for any reason. If Juno believes that you have used the services to commit trademark or copyright infringement, it will terminate your account privileges. Violations of the Rules could also subject you to criminal or civil liability.\nA list of ways to contact Juno is also available at https:\/\/help.juno.com\/support\/supportb.html.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"Little by little, \u200b\u200bJohn Beilein has built up a college basketball powerhouse in Ann Arbor. With two regular season Big Ten titles, two conference championships, and two appearances in the Final Four since 2012-13, the Wolverines have become an under-the-radar powerhouses in college basketball.\n\u200b\u200bThe cream of that crop would be Brooklyn Nets star \u200bCaris LeVert. Before his injury, LeVert was leading Brooklyn to a near .500 record, including several memorable late-game finishes. At just 24 years old, the arrow is pointing up for the former Wolverine despite a notable injury setback.\nThe 26-year-old \u200bTim Hardaway Jr. has exploded with the Knicks this season.\u200b\u200b At 23 points per game, Hardaway is scoring at a rate his All-Star father matched in only one season.\n\u200b\u200bTrey Burke has carved out a nice role alongside Hardaway in New York, Glenn Robinson III has a slam dunk championship in his trophy case, an Nik Stauskas continues to make plays in Portland.\nThey may not get the same buzz as the traditional blue bloods, but Beilein and the Wolverines push out top NBA talent regularly. And there's no reason to believe they're slowing down.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We are \" hikers\" and unique! These colorways originated in the development and the search for new colors that are included in our program . Some \" hikers\" should also be a regular coloring and developed as something completely new individual, unrepeatable.\nIs it love at first sight ?\nPlease order the approximate material consumption for a specific project . Our migratory birds get no name and will not be re-dyed .","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The training was facilitated by City Disaster Risk Reduction and Mgt. Council (CDRRMO) with cooperation of National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), DND-Office of Civil Defense-6, Department of Science and Technology (DOST). Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)-Mines and Geosciences Bureau-6. The event is attended by City Mayor Gerardo P. Valmayor Jr.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Monica Gandhi presenting at CROI 2018. Photo by Liz Highleyman.\nAntiretroviral drug levels in a sample of hair were the strongest predictor of response to HIV treatment, and this method also holds promise for monitoring adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), according to research presented at the 25th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2018) this week in Boston.\nIt is well know that medication adherence is key to achieving the benefits of antiretroviral therapy (ART) or PrEP. But taking medications as directed can be challenging, and PrEP trials have shown that patient-reported adherence does not always correspond to measured drug levels.\nDr Monica Gandhi of the University of California at San Francisco and colleagues looked at the association between drug levels in hair and virological treatment outcomes in the ACTG A5257 trial. This study compared ART regimens containing atazanavir\/ritonavir (Reyataz), darunavir\/ritonavir (Prezista) or raltegravir (Isentress), all with tenofovir DF\/emtricitabine (the drugs in Truvada), in people receiving HIV treatment for the first time.\nAntiretroviral drug levels in hair samples are a reflection of adherence over time, Gandhi explained. Drug levels can be measured in blood and in some cases in urine, but this only gives information about levels shortly before testing. Measuring drug levels within cells \u2013 where antiretrovirals must reach to be effective \u2013 is more complex.\nHair testing avoids the \"white coat\" effect, in which an individual could take their medication inconsistently but do so before a medical appointment, Gandhi said. In addition, hair is easy and cheap to collect and samples can be stored and shipped at room temperature without biohazard precautions. However, hair testing currently must be performed in a lab and cannot be done in \"real time\" while a patient waits.\nThis analysis used liquid chromatography to measure atazanavir, darunavir or raltegravir levels in a single hair sample, which reflects average adherence over time. She noted that segmental analysis, as used in forensics, can assess drug exposure at different points in time by comparing levels in hair segments near the scalp and those further away, but that was not done in this study.\nViral load and hair data were available for 599 study participants, obtained at 2192 visits over a median follow-up period of 217 weeks. About two-thirds were men, a third were black, 17% were Latino and the median age was 38 years.\nHair samples were collected at weeks 4, 8, 16 and then quarterly during the study. Participants were asked to provide a sample of hair cut from the scalp; the hair root is not needed for testing, so plucking an entire strand is not necessary. Over half of participants (55%) agreed to give a hair sample. Gandhi noted that gay men were more likely to decline because they didn't want to disrupt their hairstyle.\nAcross all three drug regimens, the rate of virological failure at two years \u2013 meaning a detectable viral load \u2013 was 3% for people with hair drug levels in the highest third, or tertile, and 6% for those in the middle tertile, but rose to 26% for those in the lowest tertile. Even a short period of non-adherence, reflected in a single low hair drug level, could affect adherence, Gandhi said.\nIn fact, having a low hair drug level was the strongest independent predictor of treatment failure. People with the lowest levels were 6.8 times more likely to have detectable HIV than those with the highest levels. For every twofold decrease in hair drug levels, the risk of virological failure more than doubled.\nThis pattern was similar across the three drugs and held after adjusting for self-reported adherence and other factors. The correlation between self-reported adherence and measurable drug levels in hair samples was weak, Gandhi said, underscoring the limitations of self-reporting.\nThe analysis included people with processed, coloured, permed, straightened and bleached hair. Hair procedures generally didn't interfere much with drug level measurement, but bleaching had the greatest effect, Gandhi noted. The relationship between hair drug levels and viral suppression did not differ by race or ethnicity.\nThis testing method can be used even on very short scalp hair, but if a person is bald, eyebrow or pubic hair that doesn't grow over time is not recommended, Gandhi said at a CROI press briefing.\nThe researchers concluded that further study is warranted to see whether early monitoring of hair drug levels, followed by targeted adherence interventions for those with low levels, could help reduce virological failure.\nSegmental hair testing that looks at drug level changes over time holds promise for analysing HIV seroconversion among people taking PrEP, as done in another study presented at the conference.\nGandhi M E et al. Hair antiretroviral levels strongly predict virologic outcomes in ACTG's A5257 trial. 25th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2018), Boston, abstract 24, 2018.\nWatch the webcast on the conference website.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"A FLINTSHIRE breakdancing teacher believes the sport's inclusion in the Olympic Games could be a breakthrough moment for a pastime most people associate with spinning on their head on a dancefloor.\nBreakdancing has been confirmed as one of four sports, along with surfing, climbing and skateboarding, which will be put forward to the International Olympic Committee for inclusion in the Paris 2024 Games. It follows the successful introduction of breakdancing at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires last year, where Russia's Sergei Chernyshev, competing under the nickname Bumblebee, won the first breakdancing - known as 'breaking' - gold medal for boys, while Japan's Ramu Kawai won the girls' title.\nThe International Olympic Committee (IOC) will consider the proposal and must reach a decision by December 2020.\n\"When I first got into breakdancing it felt like there was no one to look up to,\" said Rich Allen, 33, from Holywell. \"There were people like Justin Timberlake and Usher but then fortunately after Britain's Got Talent we got Diversity, who helped make dance cooler and more accepted, especially for boys.\nRich, a firefighter and former Dream Boy, who teaches breakdancing at Urban Fusion Dance Studio, in Mold, said there was no reason to disagree with 'breaking' being regarded a sport when you consider the physicality involved.\n\"For anyone who challenges it I would say give it a go,\" he said. \"I know people who have dedicated their lives to dance - training one hour, two hours or even five hours is not substantial enough to get to the top level.\nSquash campaigned unsuccessfully for inclusion in the Paris Games, as did billiard sports and chess, with Tony Estanguet, a three-time canoeing Olympic champion and head of the Paris 2024 organising committee, saying the inclusion of the new sports would make the Olympics \"more urban\" and \"more artistic\".\nThe selection of the four sports by the Paris organising committee also brought bad news for karate, which will make its Olympic debut in Tokyo next year.\nA statement from World Karate Federation president Antonio Espinos read: \"Our sport has grown exponentially over the last years and we still haven't had the chance to prove our value as an Olympic sport since we will be making our debut as an Olympic discipline in Tokyo 2020.\nIn a joint statement, the World Squash Federation and PSA World Tour said: \"The proposed list of four sports only, of which three sports are already confirmed by the IOC on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic programme, leads to a belief that Paris 2024 and the IOC favoured sports already in the Olympic programme, leaving practically no opportunity for other sports.\n\"The unity that our sport enjoys globally is exceptional and is getting stronger by the day. WSF and PSA are supported by the entire squash community and, with our athletes at the forefront, have run a strong campaign that respected the timeline and the criteria set by Paris 2024 and the IOC.\nWhen it comes to breakdancing, Team GB did not compete in last year's event, but the UK is home to a number of world-class talents who could help lead the way to Olympic glory.\n\"As a country I would say the UK is still developing with breakdancing,\" said Rich. \"There are a few years which gives us time to develop but we are slightly behind at the minute.\n\"For me - more than anything - it is an opportunity for boys to get involved with dance. We still have this stigma that dancing is just for girls and boys shouldn't do it. Boys get stick for it and I can relate because when I got into it I had all that myself.\nLast year, Rich made the final 25 recruits in the fourth series of Channel 4's SAS: Who Dares Wins, where he was part of a group tasked with taking on the Andes mountains of Chile.\nWith just two hours sleep a day, and facing extreme weather conditions and high altitudes, the men and women trekked across icy slopes and plunged into freezing water as they were put through the gruelling course by former soldier Ant Middleton.\nThe former stripper, who also featured in Netflix's American gameshow the Ultimate Beastmaster last year, was kicked off the show on week four, after admitting he didn't feel comfortable jumping back into freezing water after almost drowning minutes earlier and still feels he could have gone further in the competition.\n\"It's been one of the best experiences of my life and one I will look back on in years with positive thoughts,\" he said. \"I'm still gutted I didn't win or get to the interrogation stage because my mindset was so focused.\n\"Unfortunately when a TV show is only an hour long you don't get to see the full story and the comradery was unbelievable between a group of strangers who all had each other's back, so I'll have a lot of good memories.\n\"I've had about 70 messages in my inbox saying it didn't make sense that I was cut. I had swum a few lengths and then Ant said to one of the contestants to get back in and when Sam started drowning Ant told me to jump back back in and save him, so I had to go back in and he started dunking me. Then Vikki started drowning and they told me to jump in and save her with a couple of others. I was so gassed out after doing all the additional work that I needed five minutes to get my breath back.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"MANILA -- The Department of Health (DOH) on Saturday reported three more fireworks-related injuries (FWRIs) in the Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley and the Bicol Region.\nThe FWRIs were recorded by 60 sentinel hospitals from 6 a.m. on Friday until 5:59 a.m. on Saturday. One case was recorded for each region.\nThey involved males aged between 2 and 69, who played with fireworks banned by the government.\nThe health department began its fireworks-related injuries surveillance on December 21.\nTo date, there are a total of 43 FWRIs recorded. The figure includes the reported two cases of fireworks' ingestion.\nTwenty-three out of the total FWRIs happened on the streets. Moreover, 18 of the cases took place at home while the remaining two occurred in other places.\nUnder Executive Order No. 28, the use of firecrackers shall be confined to community fireworks display areas to minimize the risk of injuries and casualties.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Get prepared, because this is a fairly long preface. So we (and I mean my fianc\u00e9e, really: as previously stated, I've just been crashing at her place for the last 20 months or so) have a next door neighbour who started her own company: her associate and her create subscription-based treasure hunt-style games for young children. So far, fairly easy, right?\nIt gets better: her associate (who happens to be from Lyon like my fianc\u00e9e, but that's just bonus trivia) used to work with me on a tech startup contest I helped organize with a consulting firm a couple of years ago. It's not over: in their company, they created a board, and the first person who joined it happens to be the wife of the person I was (and occasionally still am) working with in that consulting firm. Pretty good, huh?\nSo that was the preface. Now on with the actual story.\nLast week, as I was dropping off the keys to my neighbour's before we left for yet another weekend in Berlin \u2014 her boyfriend and her have sort of become our designated cat sitters, which is somewhat convenient because our cat sort of prefers familiar faces (he's a cat, basically) \u2014 she happened to my mention that her associate, the one I knew from way back when and lives in Lyon, would be in town next week and that it would be fun to catch up, maybe. To which I said \"of course\", not knowing when any of that could happen since my planning is surprisingly packed these days. Not enough to have to stop blogging, apparently, but I skipped lunch for this, I will have you know. I didn't, really. What am I, an animal? I need my protein after the gym.\nMy neighbour, enthusiastically climbing down a step towards me: Hey GH! How are you? How was Berlin?\nMe, stopping with my shirts dangling in the air behind my shoulder: Hey! Good!\nHer associate, standing right next to her: Hey GH! Remember me?\nMe: Huh\u2026 Yeah! Also, your associate warned me. In any event, been a while! How have you been?\nA third lady I didn't know who was with them, and looked at me funny in my sweatpants with my key in one hand and my dress shirts in the other: I'm sorry, who are you?\nMe: I'm the neighbour of this lady over here. And an ex-colleague of that lady over here. And a colleague of the husband of an associate of both. And the [co-]owner of the cat said neighbour took care of this weekend. Also, I'm a virgo and I love long walks on the beach.\nThe third lady, to my neighbour: Is this the neighbour you were talking about?\nMy neighbour: No, this one's alright!\nBest compliment I ever had in sweatpants.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Monica is a fictional character portrayed by Roma Downey on the CBS American supernatural drama series Touched by an Angel from 1994 to 2003. She begins the series by a new caseworker being trained by Tess. She goes under trials and problems in peoples' lives to help them get to be with God.\nMonica is an angel who has worked in the following fields: the angel choir, search and rescue, annunciations, and of course, as a caseworker. Her supervisor is Tess, and they often work with the angel of death Andrew. Gloria is another angel who joined the trio. Kathleen is a fallen angel was Monica's former friend.\nMonica is a kind angel who enjoys helping ones in need. She can be prideful for example the episode There, but for the grace of god. This lovely young woman is shown to love coffee and the smell of it. She always wants to help. In some cases Monica overestimates her skill in arts like poetry, singing, and playing music. She is willing to sacrifice her life to help out a case shown in the last episode. Her signature, Irish-accented pronunciation of 'God' is featured in each episode.\nClaims her only vice is that she doesn't like to wear shoes unless she absolutely has too.\nIs a big fan of coffee. Made coffee for the first time in Season 1 episode 3 Fallen Angela Her favorite is mocha latte with hazelnut.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"High-value acoustics with a familiar feel.\nThe PRS SE A40E pairs Ovangkol back and sides with a solid spruce top for full, lush tone. When matched with PRS hybrid\"X\"\/Classical bracing, which allows the top to freely vibrate, the SE A40E's voice projects with breathtaking volume and delicate nuance. The Angelus Cutaway body shape delivers comfort and playability, well suited for picking and fingerstyle playing.\nPRS SE acoustic names are organized by body shape, bracing, wood combinations, and electronics.\nThe body shape of an acoustic affects its look, its sound, and its feel. PRS offers two acoustic body shapes: Angelus Cutaway and Tonare Grand, meaning \"Angel\" and \"Thunder\" respectively. These shapes provide a comfortable, familiar feel for players and are both well suited for playing with a pick or finger-style.\nWidth of Fretboard at the Body - 2 9\/32\"\nWidth of Fretboard at the Nut - 1 11\/16\"\nThe PRS SE T50E pairs maple back and sides with a solid spruce top for stunning warmth and depth. When matched with PRS hybrid\"X\"\/Classical bracing, which allows the top to freely vibrate and project, the SE T50E has an uncommon 3-dimensional character for a maple back and side guitar. The Tonare Grand body shape delivers a familiar feel and a thunderous tone, well suited for picking and fingerstyle playing.\nPlugged in, the Fishman GT1 pick up system delivers dynamic, organic tone and allows players to easily take this guitar from rehearsal to the stage. This electronics system features an undersaddle pickup and soundhole mounted preamp with easy-to- access volume and tone controls.\nThe PRS SE AX20E pairs mahogany back and sides with a solid spruce top for warm, balanced tone. When matched with traditional \"X\" bracing, which allows the top to vibrate while providing stability, the SE AX20E has a punch that stands alone beautifully or cuts through the mix. The Angelus Cutaway body shape delivers comfort and playability, well suited for picking and fingerstyle playing.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Imagine waking up in the morning in a new flat which provides stunning views of the London skyline and overlooks the River Thames.\nThen imagine dropping your child off at a brand new school, before taking a trip on a clean, efficient train service to a top-class shopping centre.\nSounds a bit far-fetched but if you live in Lewisham in 2015 this could be just what life will be like.\nThe borough is currently the subject of an unprecedented programme of investment led by the \u00a3250m regeneration of the town centre.\nThis development will include new shops, bars, restaurants, business spaces and a multiplex cinema.\nLewisham Mayor Steve Bullock says the town-centre plans will act as the \"driver\" for improvement throughout the borough.\nHe said: \"This is the single biggest thing to happen to Lewisham in a long time. The whole of central Lewisham will be transformed in the next 10 years.\n\"The way London has developed means Lewisham is now a lot closer to Docklands, the real hub of the city.\n\"This will be an area where people will want to live because of the quality of the shopping, the quality of the homes and the quality of transport links.\"\nThe transformation of central Lewisham is being mirrored throughout the borough.\nIn Deptford, the \u00a3168m Convoy's Wharf redevelopment will bring 3,500 new homes and a host of cultural and community facilities.\nTransport links will also be improved with the extension of the East London Line through Honor Oak, Brockley and Sydenham, the DLR extension to London City Airport and the refurbishment of the Deptford station area.\nThe Mayor says the East London Line extension mean \"a part of the borough which has been relatively neglected in terms of transport links will now be connected to the Tube network\".\nAnd every secondary school will either be refurbished or rebuilt in the next decade, thanks to the \u00a3150m Building Schools for the Future programme.\nThis all promises a very different Lewisham in 10 years' time but the mayor has his eyes on an earlier date - the 2012 Olympics.\nMr Bullock said: \"The timing for this investment is right when you consider the Olympic factor.\n\"We are not an Olympic borough but there will still be a lot of exciting opportunities in terms of businesses and tourism.\"\nHowever the Mayor is keen to ensure mass investment does not lead the borough's town centres to fall into the trap of becoming identikit high streets.\nHe added: \"We do not want chain stores to come into our streets and make them just like any other. Places like Deptford have a unique appeal which we want to retain.\"\nMr Bullock is clearly excited about the future. So what exactly does he think the borough will look like in 2015?\nHe said: \"Lewisham in 10 years' time will be more of a destination for people who do not live here than it is today.\n\"It will be a place where Londoners want to come because of its shopping, leisure facilities, schools and transport. It is a truly exciting prospect.\"\nWhen will you be able to see the changes?\n2006: Start of Lewisham Gateway town-centre development.\n2007: Rebuild of Deptford Station completed.\n2010: Estimated finish of the Convoy's Wharf development.\n2011: New homes and a leisure centre on the Sundermead Estate, Lewisham. All Lewisham secondary schools improved under BSF.\nA COMMEMORATIVE service for a First World War hero was held after 18 years of searching for his grave.\nThe Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the British Army Association, were among the hundreds of representatives who paid tribute to Commander Archibald Walter Buckle at Brockley Cemetery on Sunday.\nTony Green, vice-chairman of the Royal British Legion Club in Brockley, and ex-serviceman Sergeant Jim Bassom, 82, discovered the commander's lost headstone under brambles at Brockley Cemetery two months ago.\nMr Green said: \"It's an absolute privilege to have found this hero's grave and to give him a proper memorial.\"\nCommander Buckle, who lived in Crescent Way, Brockley, commanded the Anson Battalion during the First World War and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and three bars.\nHe was also recommended for the Victoria Cross in 1918 and died in 1927 at the age of 38.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"towards Allah by performing their fifth pillar.\nAl-Nur USA is not your traditional Hajj or travel agency. Quite simply, we are not as interested in selling a packages and ticket as much as we are in providing our clients with an extraordinary experience in traveling and fulfilling their obligation towards Allah by performing their fifth pillar.\nOur primary goal is to bring comfort and convenience to our clients. Within our website you will discover that our dedicated staff is here to help you out and give you the service for your Hajj or Umrah on a personal basis which makes it more special and memorable experience.\nDuring your Hajj or Umrah trip you will be accompanied by a tour leader has more than 20 years of experience in hajj and Umrah to take care of all the logistics (flight, hotels, transportation, immigration), always one step ahead of you to make sure that your ride is smooth throughout the entire trip.\nAlso, accompanying the group from the United states (Arabic and English speaking) renowned imams to cover the religious side for you, step by step they will make sure that you performed your Hajj and Umrah rituals in the perfect manner.\nFor more information please take a moment to review our programs and never hesitate to contact us with any questions, one of our friendly team will answer all your question and go over the different options and programs with you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Evan Phoenix is one of those rare outliers who has an unbelievable talent for creating complex tools that are incredibly useful and help drive a platform such as Rubinius and he's also created a powerful Ruby application server named Puma. Both of which are tools I personally have used and admire the effort that went into their creation. Not only is he a technical genius but he's also the organization lead for the Ruby Central and RailsConf conferences. He was extremely gracious and easy to chat with. Our conversation ranged from how he was inspired to create Rubinius and how he feels about how his tool is being used by a variety of types of users to how he got involved in organizing the conferences.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We bring fun and creativity to adult groups, whether they are hen parties, Fund-raisers, Corporate events, coffee mornings or club evenings or any group of people of any age. Whatever your age you'll find there's something for everyone from novelty items to useful mugs, plates, bowls and vases. At our events you'll be able to relax in pleasant company and have fun painting your own pottery.\nWant a Hens Party with a difference?\nBridesmaids, friends, mums and even grandparents will enjoy this relaxing experience. It's a great way to de-stress, unwind and leave those pre-wedding nerves behind!\nIn our busy lives it is often hard to find time to catch up with girlfriends and let our hair down. But it really is the best therapy. Invite your friends over for a rewarding artistic experience like no other!\nShower the mum to be with unique and creative gifts painted by their friends and family. Gather family and friends at our space, bring some food and drink to share while creating wonderful keepsakes for the mum to keep.\nInvite your friends and family to celebrate your birthday at Colour My Pot. Book a table or the whole studio. Your party guests choose their own pieces to paint and with our party hosts can choose from a wide variety of techniques.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"McLenehan and Associates CPAs offers a wide range of services to our individual and business clients. In addition to the list of services below and our extensive knowledge of accounting practices, there are some things you can count on from McLenehan and Associates CPAs \u2013 honesty, accuracy, impartiality, confidence, and a willingness to listen.\nMore than any single service, we know the most important thing between a CPA and their client is trust.\nWe view our role in the financial reporting process as an opportunity to provide constructive solutions for maximizing your company's profitability and efficiency. Audits differ from reviews and compilations, as they are an extensive examination of your company's systems and records providing the highest level of assurance.\nWe can assist you in the preparation of your financial statements in accordance with professional standards, but express no opinion or any form of assurance on the underlying information included in them. The financial statements produced can be a useful tool for management for making financial decisions.\nDuring our years of experience dealing with the many taxing authorities, we have achieved a level of competence that can ensure our clients they are being properly represented before the various federal and provincial tax agencies.\nMany of our clients are responsible for collecting and submitting sales taxes in many different provinces. We can assist your company in the compilation of information and preparation of sales tax returns in an efficient and timely manner.\nChoosing the form of entity for your business (I.e., corporation, sole proprietorship, or partnership) is a crucial decision that can have longstanding tax implications, positive or negative. We can assist you in evaluating the pros and cons of each entity type to help you determine the most advantageous form of business for your company.\nStructuring the purchase or sale of a business properly is a critical step in te process of buying or selling a business. Our competent staff gas experience to guide you through the acquisition\/disposition process by addressing such issues as cash flow analysis and tax considerations.\nEffective estate planning facilitates the orderly transfer of assets to your beneficiaries, provide security for your surviving spouse, and can reduce or eliminate the tax due on the transfer of your business and other assets. For business owners, providing for business continuity and succession of ownership is essential. We can guide you through the complex process of getting your financial affairs in order.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This wonderful portrait selection of photographer's daughter, Athena, really take us back in time. Each shot has been executed with painstaking attention to detail, from light, through props to post production.\nRespect to Bill Gekas, and to his little adorable model.\nArtists around the world have long been inspired by the works of Old Masters like Rembrandt, Raphael and Vermeer. Emulating their style has never been easy, especially in photography. When Australian photographer Bill Gekas wanted to recreate the style through his photographs, he chose to feature his five-year-old daughter as the subject.\nOver time I thought that through photography i'd learn something about myself, it seems i've learnt more about others, the good and the bad!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"Cashco Inc. introduces the BL1 in-line regulator designed specifically for clean gas applications. At seven pounds, the BL1 can control inlet pressures up to 135 psig. All wetted, metal parts are constructed of 316L stainless steel and are machined to meet SFV-4. All soft goods meet FDA code of Regulations Title 21, Part 177 USP Class VI. The BL1 is available with either 1\/2\" and 3\/4\" tri-clamp body connections.\nStandard offerings include a 316L stainless steel metal plug and a standard knob mounted on the adjusting screw to adjust set points. An EPDM O-ring, located on the pressure plate, provides additional stability for all flowing conditions. The standard EPDM diaphragm helps extend the valve's cycle life.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"years of experience and would love to give you that great look that suits your lifestyle. Both specialize in color, perms, Up dos (Wedding and Proms), foils & cuts for all ages. Manicures, Ear Piercing, Facials by appointment. Wheel Chair Accessible... Gift Certificates Available...Walk-Ins Welcome.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Senate requires a Chairman to lead the first meeting. If the parties do not come to an agreement before next week, Senators will vote for a Chairman through a secret ballot.\nThere are currently three frontrunners \u2013 Jaroslav Kubera (ODS), Jan Farnik (STAN) and Vaclav Hampl (KDU-CSL) who represent the three largest caucuses in the Senate.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"MY STEADFAST HEART by Jo Goodman brings back memories of my favorite historical romance books of the 80s\/90s, without too much of the \"bodice ripper\" attitudes that would seem overbearing to romance readers today.\nWhy was this book in Dorine's TBR? Jo Goodman is one of my favorite historical western romance writers. I was curious how a different historical era would compare from this talented author, especially since it was written in 1997. Most books I loved back then don't stand the test of time with my bossy self today. I can't get past the men's attitudes toward women, as well as how women accepted their fate and loved the men anyways. \"We've come a long way\" surely describes my growth as a reader, as well as a woman.\nThe Prologue seized me when three brothers are separated by the orphanage that takes them in after their parents' death. I love, love, love orphanage stories. The first line, \"They came for the baby first,\" is the best first sentence I've read in years. It piqued my curiosity and I was in for the full ride from that moment. The brothers' stories are what grabbed me, but it was Colin and Mercedes' predicaments that kept me reading.\nColin grew up on a ship after leaving the orphanage and eventually became a captain. He's known for his speed and he isn't surprised when someone wagers against him. When the earl loses, he challenges Colin to a duel for cheating him. Mercedes is the earl's poor relation and is convinced by his normal cruel methods to try to stop Colin from showing up at the duel location by any means possible.\nMY STEADFAST HEART has everything I love in a historical romance novel. The children add a great dynamic to Mercedes's story, as well as warranting Colin's developing feelings for her and her family due to his own troubled past. I loved their conflicts and how they resolved the problems they faced.\nThe villains are extra nasty and added that creep-factor that makes you root for Mercedes, hoping Colin will be the one to save her from her current life. Mercedes seems weak at first, but her strengths help Colin in the end. Colin wasn't always my favorite because he was a jerk to Mercedes, at first, but he ended up being the perfect man for her.\nI could tell this was an early Goodman novel because it's easy to recognize the 90s romances when comparing them to today's books. There is an abundance of sexual encounters with some of the usual purple prose that makes me giggle. It's not as riveting as her westerns, but it's much more riveting than other books written during this time. I've tried to go back and read my favorites without success. I gobbled this book up without hesitation or feeling creeped-out by the alpha male insensitivity. It's good story-telling and the series promises to be very intriguing with some unexpected heroes.\nI enthusiastically look forward to book two in the THORNE BROTHERS series. The hero captured my curiosity, and I can't wait to see how Goodman redeems him. MY STEADFAST HEART by Jo Goodman was a perfect choice from my TBR for our historical challenge. It reminds me what I loved about those stories written in the 90s and made me realize there are still great books to discover that stand the test of time.\nReview by Dorine, courtesy of The Zest Quest. Digital copy obtained for free from an Amazon Kindle promotion.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Guests reviews, testimonies from great talents who have trusted us, photos, awards and more. Discover why our guests keep coming back to Club Med.\nAre you wondering why so many parents trust us with their family holidays? Discover below Aussies' testimonials and you will find out how they felt about their holidays at Club Med.\nFor those of us with kids, Club Med has a real focus on families and all kids are welcome. There is an outstanding kids club.\nClub Med La Plantation d'Albion totally exceeded all our expectations \u2013 and our expectations were very high. I expected an easy, fun holiday, what I didn't expect was just how top rate everything would be, primarily because I have never experienced anything as good before. The attention to every single detail in this Mauritius accommodation is amazing and it leads to an amazing experience. It is the most beautiful, wonderful holiday I have ever had.\nMy husband and I both work really hard and wanted a holiday that involved no thinking and lots of solid family time \u2013 we couldn't have picked a better place.\nIt really is a place where you can completely relax and give your family your undivided attention, so I think they appreciated having unstressed parents who weren't running around like maniacs the way we do at home.\nThe resort was beautifully maintained and had the most engaging and lovely staff. Kani has struck an amazing balance between always having something happening alongside lots of spots that are peaceful and purely relaxing \u2013 and I've never seen water such a perfect shade of blue.\n5 Club Med resorts chosen by Holidays With Kids readers!\nClub Med is very proud to be the only all-inclusive holiday provider with 40 resorts qualifying for the Green Globe Certification \u2013 now 100% of our resort in the Asia Pacific zone! This highly demanding certification, recognized as the highest level of sustainability certification by leaders in green travel and responsible & eco-tourism, rewards the strong commitment of Club Med to protect the environment through sustainable resources management, respect local cultures, support initiatives for social and infrastructure community development and overall responsible management.\n\"Club Med Finolhu Villas is the ultimate in luxury. I have recommended all my family & friends to experience this resort, top tier luxury in the most exquisite of locations. I can't wait to go back\"\n\"It really is a place where you can completely relax and give your family your undivided attention. All five of us felt that it was the perfect family holiday.\"\n\"Club med Kani offers the opportunity to divulge yourself into the holiday of your dreams for the perfect price, as it's all-inclusive. I have fallen so madly in love with this place, it's drawn me back three times now and as my trip comes to an end I can confidently say, I'll be back for many years to come.\"\n\"There is nowhere in the world like Finolhu. Benji and I have stayed at some of the most exquisite places in the world and Finohlu takes the cake. Club Med looks after everything. There are no hidden costs so you feel free to indulge on your holiday.\"\n\"It was hands-down one of the best family trips I've ever had. I can see why people become Club Med fanatics when they have kids and my six year old actually cried when I pulled her out of kids club on the last day.\"\n\"While this destination is renowned for romance, it's fabulous for families: especially at Club Med. Our interconnecting Family Club Bungalows are vast, overlooking the postcard-perfect sea. We have fallen in love with Club Med experience. The food, activities and service are simply superb. It's the holiday of a lifetime.\"\n\"From the moment we arrived at Club Med, we knew it would be a holiday to remember. It's not just a resort, it's a complete holiday experience.\"\n\"The Club Med Guilin Resort is amazing and the area surrounding it is just incredible. We did a tour that the resort organised and it was a definite highlight and something I'd really recommend as we managed to get off-road in a jeep, and visited villages where local people were so friendly. If you ever get the chance to go to Club Med Guilin do it!\"\n\"Club Med create an environment that makes relaxation and fun effortless. It's the sort of holiday you invest in with confidence, knowing it will be a special one for you family. I loved the flexibility of tailoring the days effortlessly depending on the moments. If feeling energetic, we could fill the day with a range of activities. On the other hand, if we wanted a slow afternoon, we could just chill and enjoy the views. If I had to pick the one thing I loved the most about our time at Club Med, it was the memories we made, and took home with us.\"\n\"From the moment we arrived and were greeted by the smiling, friendly staff; to the moment we left, we felt we were truly in paradise.\nSnap. Upload. Tag. Share. We've curated our favourite holiday snaps from Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. Don't forget to share yours!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"\"Bloodborne: The Death of Sleep\" debuts this month.\nTitan Comics has adapted some of today's biggest video game franchises into graphic novels, most recently launching comics based on Tekken and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The next title to receive the comic treatment is PS4's critically acclaimed Bloodborne, and now the publisher has given us another look at the debut issue ahead of its release.\nThe first issue of Bloodborne: The Death of Sleep releases in comic stores and online in February. Here's Titan's synopsis of the issue: \"Awakening in an ancient city plagued by a twisted epidemic--where horrific beasts stalk the shadows and the streets run slick with the blood of the damned--a nameless Hunter embarks on a dangerous quest in search of Paleblood.\"\nBloodborne: The Death of Sleep is being written by Ales Kot (Change, Zero, and Wolf). It features art by Piotr Kowalski, who previously worked on Titan's Wolfenstein and Witcher graphic novels. The publisher has shared the first lettered pages from Bloodborne: The Death of Sleep, along with several variant covers, giving you a chance to preview the debut issue before it hits comic stands. You can take a look at the pages in the gallery below.\nBloodborne: The Death of Sleep isn't the only video game comic coming out in February. Titan is also publishing a graphic novel based on Assassin's Creed Origins. That series is set after the events of the video game and features historical figures such as Cleopatra. Additionally, Titan will release a comic based on the Xbox One pirate game Sea of Thieves in March.\nDespite the game's popularity, developer From Software has not announced a sequel to Bloodborne, although the studio teased a mysterious new game during The Game Awards in December. While that may still be a ways from release, players will soon have a chance to relieve From Software's acclaimed action-RPG Dark Souls. A remastered version of the title is releasing this May for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Great wedding favors autumn themed wedding invitations you need for under a fall wedding favors has a wedding invitation design from brilliant emerald to find accessories will find fall invitations to whether an invitation ideas for cheap wedding invitations. Have many fallthemed bottle stopper wedding invitations especially winter or a each browse a fall wedding and tastes. Cheap fall themed wedding invitations, an autumn wedding ideas. Wedding invitations online at cheap fall wedding invitations in love with fabulous bridal for fall candle fall themed wedding invitations celebrate so order these fall invitations country wedding invitations you have for harvest parties whether you.\nWedding invitation suite with a big deal how you can customize great s. For good reason see more. Fall wedding invitation ideas, for any wedding invitations are planning a decadent burst into color and fall wedding you can check our fall wedding colors will add warmth to playful. Invitations for every style from elegant and events. Pick your guests at our lives we rachel burns. Invitations especially winter wedding invitation suite with fall wedding ideas first fall thanksgiving invitations fall colors fall wedding and autumn wedding that will add warmth to rsvp by invitesweddings theres no better way to.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Gonzales's best FREE dating site! 100% Free Online Dating for Gonzales Singles at Mingle2.com. Our free personal ads are full of single women and men in Gonzales looking for serious relationships, a little online flirtation, or new friends to go out with. Start meeting singles in Gonzales today with our free online personals and free Gonzales chat! Gonzales is full of single men and women like you looking for dates, lovers, friendship, and fun. Finding them is easy with our totally FREE Gonzales dating service. Sign up today to browse the FREE personal ads of available Louisiana singles, and hook up online using our completely free Gonzales online dating service! Start dating in Gonzales today!\n\"Are you that Prince Charming I've been waiting?\"\n\"602 730 0967 Kiss me with your hands in my hair\"\n602 730 0967 Searching for clean, sane, right guy. The normal girl, loves to have fun, like to laugh, be adventurous, outdoors, an all around type of girl but also loves to be spoiled.\nHi, my name is Quinn, and I'd like a woman who's honest, caring, and loyal.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"My handle is Brick Barbarian. I've seen your displays at the last 3 Philly Brickfests. I was interested in joining. I would like to attend a meeting to see if I am a good fit to your club. I am sure you guys are in VA this weekend. I will check your calander to see when your next regular meeting is.\nAbout Me - I have been a life long fan of Lego. I enjoy my small Lego Train layout in my attic. Would like to meet others and possibly collaborate on a bigger project. My favorite Lego themes are Classic Space and Western. I live near Pottstown\/Reading area. I work as a school teacher during the day. So, I have a good chunk of time to devote to Lego in the summer.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Cardington FFA officers for 2019-2020 are, front row, from left: Hazel Jolliff, Cheyenne Skaggs, Alexis Brook-Hobbs, Mikaela Osborne and Brooke Clapham. Back row: Isabelle Crum, Liam Warren, Brydon Ratliff, Grace Struck, Tess Ruehrmund, Camrie Meyers.\nPictured are the honorary degree winners named at the Cardington FFA banquet. From left: Matt Clinger, Dan Ebert, Heather Clapham and standing in for Devon Heacock is Lynn Goodman.\nPictured are the Star Members from each grade awarded during the Cardington FFA banquet. Shown, from left: Tess Ruehrmund, (10th); Brooke Clapham (9th); Jacob Levering (11th) ; Delisa Goodman (12th) and Audrey Brininger (8th).\nCelebrating its 80th annual spring banquet were 575 members and guests of the Cardington FFA on Friday, April 5.\nThe dinner, held in the Murphy Gymnasium. was served by All Occasions Catering, Waldo.\nThe group then moved to the Patrick Drouhard Auditorium where awards and recognitions were made by Erin Wollett, the chapter teacher\/advisor.\nNamed recipient of the Star Discovery was Aubrey Brininger; Star Greenhand: Blake Clapham; Star Chapter Farmer: Tess Ruehrmund; Outstanding Junior: Jacob Levering, Outstanding Senior: Delissa Goodman; High Point Member: Levering; Reserve High Point Member: Delisa Goodman; and recipient of the 110 percent award was Camrie Meyers.\nMolly Clinger presented the McGinnis Family Scholarship to Aubrey Curtis; Matt Clinger presented the Farm Association Scholarship to Delisa Goodman and Gabriella Snodgrass; and the FFA Farm Alumni Scholarship was awarded by Betty Brandum and Lisa Levering to Delisa Goodman and Aubrey Curtis. Brandum presented the Junior Brandum Memorial Scholarship to Delisa Goodman.\nNamed honorary FFA members were Matthew Clinger, Heather Clapham, Dan Ebert and Devon Heacock.\nTop fruit sales person was Delisa Goodman, who sold $3,072 worth of fruit, nuts and cheese. Second place in fruit sales went to Michael Rose; third place, Sydnie Wilson; fourth place Chelsey Miller and fifth place winner was Brooke Clapham. Each sold over $1,000 worth of fruit.\nThe chapter sold a total of $38,000 in the fruit and nut sale Goodman was the top strawberry salesperson selling $1,119 worth of the berries. The chapter sold a gross amount of $7,397.00 in strawberry sales.\nThere are 121 members in the Cardington FFA Chapter including 21 seniors. The chapter's 2019 successes include being a top 10 chapter in Ohio; a state gold rated chapter, a top 10 state Premier Chapter in the area of growing leaders and a top 10 state Premier chapter in the area of building communities.\nThe students include eight state degree; and five American degree recipients; seven proficiency award applications; one state proficiency finalist and three state gold rated officers.\nFor the 19th year, dating back to 1991, the Cardington FFA has been named one of the top 200 best chapter in the nation.\nGiving their retirement messages were vice president Dylan Goodman and his sister, chapter president Delisa Goodman.\nNew officers installed for 2019-2020 were Liam Warren, president; Brydon Ratliff, vice president; Camrie Meyers, secretary; Alexis Brook-Hobbs; assistant secretary; Grace Struck, treasurer; Mikaela Osborne, assistant treasurer; Tess Ruehrmund, reporter; Brooke Clapham, assistant reporter; Cheyenne Skaggs, Sentinel; Isabelle Crum, student advisor and Hazel Jolliff, Chaplain.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzavief b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzavief
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzavief
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Madeleine Brand exited KPCC-FM, where she was pretty much the station's No. 1 on-air personality, with no fanfare, mere weeks after her \"Madeleine Brand Show\" became \"Brand & Martinez\" with the addition of A Martinez (not this guy but this guy), an AM sports-talk veteran brought on to fulfill the terms of a $6 million grant to the Pasadena public radio station.\nRadio and TV are \"intimate\" mediums. We listen to and watch the same people every day for years. We hear their voices, see their faces. In a way, we think we \"know\" them. Of course we don't. (Or do we?) But after hearing Madeleine's voice alone on the radio for years and years, from \"Day to Day\" through \"The Madeleine Brand Show,\" to hear the voice and see a face associated with it, is kind of jarring. I'll have to get used to it.\nI'm not much of a KCET watcher. I don't think they've recovered from dropping PBS (just like I think it'll be hard for KPCC to recover from losing Brand). I've never been drawn to watching \"SoCal Connected.\" But I hope there will be enough of the show available on the web to follow along.\nSince KPCC's \"TMBS,\" \"B&M\" and now \"Take Two\" start at 9 a.m., and I'm usually not able to listen to most if not all of the show live, I've been turning to podcasts to keep up. I hope to do the same, video-wise, with \"SoCal Connected.\" It's a big adventure for Madeleine Brand, turning to TV after decades on radio.\nAccording to the recent L.A. Times article, KCET isn't the only media outlet looking to put a little Madeleine Brand in its life. Disney Junior and the Oprah Winfrey Network have expressed interest. And stating what should have been obvious all along, KPCC's public-radio rival KCRW-FM (89.9) is very interested in bringing MB on board.\nI wish her the best of luck.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"At last, an opportunity to have that \"early night\" I've been meaning to have for ages \u2013 and I have to come all the way to Paris to have it! I don't even want it now! I'm in Paris! Friends of mine have got engaged here! I wanted to go on a late night tour of the city, but apparently you need to book those in advance, as the nice man at the tourist info desk informed me after I wandered in is direction, having been safely delivered by Air France an hour or so earlier.\nYou've probably guessed that France isn't my final destination on this jaunt (well, there is a huge clue in the title of this blog post). I'm actually on my way to Freetown, Sierra Leone \u2013 but for several reasons which I'll explain as we go on, the cheapest fare I could find to get me there involved a 12 \u00bd hour stopover in Paris. Hey \u2013 it's with Air France and there's a night in Paris involved. And it's half the price BMI were charging! What's not to like?\nI'm not the only person in my family who's made the trip; just the least organised. My mum flew over to Freetown a couple of weeks ago. And yesterday my sister Fiona flew over to join her, together with Tina \u2013 my Swedish adopted sister who I only met for the first time two years ago.\nIt was the late 80s, and my mum worked in a maternity hospital in Freetown which had a children's hospital next door to it. Tina was abandoned there as a baby \u2013 a cute little girl with a cleft palate who nobody wanted. My mum would bring her home at weekends, and for the first two years of her life, Tina was one of our family. Eventually she was adopted by a Swedish couple who took her to Sweden where she had corrective surgery done to her face, and where she's lived ever since.\nI missed out on all this excitement, as I was back living in England then. When the rest of the family came over, they'd talk a lot about Tina, but they never heard from her again. Then three years ago, she found us \u2013 another long story involving a Swedish television show and a certain social networking site. I finally got to meet Tina in the summer of 2009; the adopted (Swedish) sister I never knew I had.\nThis is Tina's first visit to Sierra Leone since she left for Sweden as a toddler. She asked Mum to go along with her for moral support as she expected it to be a bit overwhelming emotionally. Fiona runs a charitable initiative which donates stationery and books to cash-strapped Sierra Leonean schools, and so she's always toing and froing between London and Freetown. This is only my third trip back since I came back to England for good, and the first which doesn't involve a family wedding (and no, I have not come out here \"to look,\" thank you very much). It also happens to be the country's 50th independence anniversary, coinciding nicely with the Easter holidays (which is why the likes of BMI were charging something in the region of 900 quid to fly people out here).","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This service is based on collaboration between all participants in Spanish Cooperation and all public or private agencies related to development cooperation, it offers access to technical advice, support or even potential partners for implementing specific initiatives, with the aim of promoting both learning and synergies and of preventing duplication within the system.\nFor example: an agency that is looking to launch a project can contact Spanish Cooperation by filling out the form that appears below, in order to look for partners in a certain area or with experience in a certain field.\nThis service can also be used by the private sector to reinforce Corporate Social Responsibility policies related to development cooperation. Private sector agencies can access any information and knowledge resources that may be of interest through completing the form, indicating that the query is for the attention of the \"SGCID economic development area\".","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"When facing the challenges of having a sick or elderly family member, you can never go wrong with guidance from Houston Geriatric Services, LLC. Based in Houston, Texas, we offer case management services and private duty aide for families who need help caring for their ailing or aging member.\nThe company is registered and insured in the state of Texas.\nHouston Geriatric Services, LLC is focused on providing high-quality service and customer satisfaction. For this reason, our team works to the best of its abilities to meet your expectations. Likewise, as a family-operated business, we care for your loved ones as much as we do for our own.\nWe assure to always give your beloved the proper health assistance they need. With a variety of service options to choose from, we're sure you'll be happy working with us!\nContinue browsing through our website to learn more about how we can help. If you have questions, feel free to get in touch with us. We have friendly and accommodating staff ready to assist you with your concerns.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Maybe it was Chance the Rapper. In March, the artist called a new Heineken ad racist , and many agreed with him. The spot for the brand's light beer featured a bartender sliding a bottle of beer past a collection of dark-skinned extras to a light-skinned woman further down the bar, followed by the tag line, \"Sometimes, lighter is better.\" Heineken pulled the ad and responded to critics by saying tag line referred solely to \"the benefits of the beer itself\" and \"Unfortunately, the line has been misinterpreted by some people, this was of course never our intention and we are taking the feedback to heart.\" Now Heineken has announced a shift in brand positioning, not as a result of that earlier controversy, but certainly rooted in some of the same issues it raised.\nPrevious Post: Why Magical Thinking is an Essential Part of Human Life.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzawvam b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzawvam
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3243f0fc754b94a1bf2c63c89bcd8b207fbeab18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzawvam
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Combining up to date and nation home plans can mean combining rustic materials equivalent to slate flooring, uncovered ceiling beams, and kitchens with up to date stainless-steel appliances , plastic laminated cupboards , glass shelving and butcher block countertops. The ultimate result is a up to date kitchen which is serviceable and has a comfy , rustic feel. Up to date design is about smooth surfaces akin to glass and chrome steel , and using daring colors.\nEarlier than we go down to the precise theme of latest house plans, that you must know the essential options of a modern household. For starters up to date house plan has large home windows to offer a light and comfortable environment, high ceilings, versatile and steady ground plan to accommodate modern furnishings and fixtures; and utilization of modern supplies, similar to glass, metal , vinyl, stone, marble, and so on.\nHouse designs are powerful symbols that you should use to create a press release to the world on who you are. Buildings have a long lifespan and can continue communicating your assertion to the world long after your departure. Home designs are also a mark of self-actualization.\nMid-Century Trendy house plans are growing in recognition from New York to LA and all over the place in between. These plans include historic Eichler designs from the 1960s, as well as recent home plans impressed by the iconic `Case Study ` modern houses in Los Angeles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Led by Dwell magazine , the mid century aesthetic of open plans, giant windows and minimal detailing is rising as one of many key design developments of the early 21st century.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"algorithmic complexity (running time, storage).\nIn recent years it has become apparent that the different approaches to complexity are interwoven, and significant new insights are possible by combining several viewpoints. Our interdisciplinary Research Training Group integrates several aspects or facets of complexity into a unified research and training program.\nThe research training group started on April 1, 2018, and will run for 4.5 years.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Fun to make, even more fun to eat\u2026these easy to make Snowman Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Toppers are a great treat all winter long. A great last minute gift idea for the holidays or the perfect snow day treat.\nJust two more days\u2026.my shopping is finally done! I think\u2026I think I'm done. I always have that nagging voice in the back of my mind asking me if I forgot anyone. I go down my mental shopping list and check everyone off. That's the first problem. There wasn't a physical list this year. I've been so busy with work that I didn't remember to write a list and I was a mess all month long. People sending me lists\u2026me losing their lists pretending that I had the perfect gift idea and didn't NEED the list in the first place. But I did\u2026I need the list. To keep myself sane. So, lots of homemade gifts are floating around the house for the people I may have forgotten and think of at the last minute. Stuff like these hot cocoa stirrers, these amazing almonds, a big vat of bolognese sauce. And if I don't have to give them away, they'll be put to good use after the holiday is over.\nLike these super cute Snowman Marshmallow Hot Cocoa Toppers. They're a slam dunk with the pint sized people in my life. And they're so easy to make\u2026.seriously. You're kids will love helping decorate. They're wonderful to give as gifts with a fun mug and some cocoa\u2026..if you could whip up some snow to go with them that would be completely fabulous. I'd like some snow so send some my way please.\nThe marshmallow is simple to whip up using my vanilla bean marshmallow recipe. Then you just use a standard biscuit cutter small enough to just fit in the top of a mug to cut them out. Decorate using colored white chocolate and let it set. I'll be doing a live demo tomorrow along with two other kid friendly recipes on our local news so watch out for the link on Facebook.\nA great gift idea, Snowman Marshmallow Toppers are fun to make and the sweetest thing to top your cocoa.\nUsing a biscuit cutter, cut the marshmallows into circles just large enough to barely fit a standard sized mug and transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment. Set aside.\nMelt the blue candy melt in the microwave for 1 minute and stir until smooth. Repeat with the orange and brown candy melts. Transfer the melted candy to a zip top bag and snip off a corner. Decorate the snowman as you'd like. Allow the chocolate to set. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.\nso cute!!! I love these!!!!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Home > Large Landscape 16\" X 20\" Team Photo Frames > 12 Pane Landscape Frame - 3 Rows of 4 - Team Photos 16\" X 20\"\nThis 12 pane landscape layout frame is made for large 16\" X 20\" Team Photos.\nIncludes your VersaFrame channels, acrylic panes, dividers, and secure end caps.\nOverall Dimensions are: 82.5\" Wide by 52\" Tall.\nLarge 16 X 20 Panes are perfect for athletic teams and organizations of all types.\nPopular in Universities, High Schools, Grade Schools and organizations with group photos.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Wholesale Basketball Gifts. Discount Basketballs Gift Ideas.\nWholesale basketball gifts make great gifts for sports lovers. Buy discount basketballs gift ideas. Great gifts for the basketball collectibles enthusiast! Basketball gifts, basketball pictures, basketballs and hoops are fantastic items for sports fanatics, Dads, Men, Boys and Grandpas too! Sensational Basketball Collectibles and Basketball Gifts for all to love! SNEDCO Wholesale sells thousands of gifts, collectibles and home decor products at below wholesale prices to gift shops, retail stores and corporate companies. We supply fundraisers, event planners and promotional advertisers with low wholesale merchandise to help them succeed with their special occasions. Whether you're a \"Mom and Pop\" shop, just starting out or have been in retail sales for years, we are confident you will find our wholesale products will help to increase your profit margins! Save even more with our free drop-shipping services.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaxbec b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaxbec
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..c306f1f1c20e47673e2930c809869648e29f6505
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"I should start by saying that the ticket is actually for 10 over, but there's no forum for that. It was reduced to 60 in a 50 from 71 in a 50.\nSo basically, as a young-ish driver, my rates are already rather high, and I don't get the benefit of one completely forgiven minor conviction that some older drivers might. So after running some quotes, this could cost me over 1200 over 3 years in insurance (motorcycle and car). Which is why I'm concerned about this minor ticket.\n1. I assume my best options if I want any chance of getting rid of this is to request a trial and request disclosure (is that what it's called? getting the officer notes, radar maintenance schedule etc?). What do I look for in all this? Assuming the ticket is without mistakes (I believe it is, but I'll double check tomorrow, it's at the office).\n2. To request a trial, do I have to go to the courthouse, or do I just wait? It says to go to the courthouse on the ticket, but people are telling me just to wait.\n3. If I request a trial, get all the disclosure etc, and figure out I've no chance, up til what point can I still plead guilty to the reduced charge?\nI asked x copper about it, and emailed a copy of the ticket on their request for more info, but I've heard nothing since...just to be sure; they can't just go about representing me without me signing something, right?\nRe: Do I have any options?\nsaxy wrote: 1. I assume my best options if I want any chance of getting rid of this is to request a trial and request disclosure (is that what it's called? getting the officer notes, radar maintenance schedule etc?). What do I look for in all this? Assuming the ticket is without mistakes (I believe it is, but I'll double check tomorrow, it's at the office).\nCorrect. Request a trial and then when you receive your Notice of Trial, request disclosure. You can still have a trial without requesting disclosure, but it's not recommended.\nAs for stuff to look for, your options are pretty much endless. It would have to be something of significance that would prove you were not speeding. Calling your car \"gray\" when it's \"gunmetal\" is not something to build a case on.\nSpeeding is an absolute liability offense. It means you were speeding or you weren't. There's no in between. Definitely no \"I was speeding, but...\".\nsaxy wrote: 2. To request a trial, do I have to go to the courthouse, or do I just wait? It says to go to the courthouse on the ticket, but people are telling me just to wait.\nMost tickets will let you submit a plea via mail. If that's not an option on your ticket, i'd suggest you follow the instructions on the back. Do not ignore it. It will be automatically entered as a guilty plea and you will be responsible for the fine. If you ignore the fine, your license will be suspended.\nsaxy wrote: 3. If I request a trial, get all the disclosure etc, and figure out I've no chance, up til what point can I still plead guilty to the reduced charge?\nIn almost all cases, you will receive a plea deal before your trial. Even if you had no defense, trials take up considerate amounts of time as all the steps of a trial need to take place. They would rather you plead guilty and move on. There will be more people showing up for trials afterwords and they can't have you occupying up all their time.\nThat being said, you are most likely not going to receive anything other than what you already have. You already had your ticket reduced from 21 over to 10 over (3 demerit points to 0). There just isn't anymore wiggle room there for you.\nShould you go all the way to trial, your ticket will be brought back up to the original charge.\nAlso, if you're expecting the officer to not show up, the prosecution will sometimes hide whether they are in the building or not until you plea. Some prosecutors will drop the charges without you needing to do anything, others will play dumb until trial time. Either way it's not a regular occurrence or something to lean back on.\nsaxy wrote: I asked x copper about it, and emailed a copy of the ticket on their request for more info, but I've heard nothing since...just to be sure; they can't just go about representing me without me signing something, right?\nIn all honesty, you're in a position where hiring an xcopper type service isn't going to benefit you much.\nThanks for the detailed reply. That's about what I figured, particularly about the x-copper, but I figured I'd see if I could solicit some advice at least.\nWhat exact moment is the charge brought back up? Can I show up the day of the trial, and decide before it's my turn that I'd rather plead guilty to the reduced ticket? You mentioned that some prosecutors might drop the charges without me needing to do anything if the cop doesn't show; does that happen before the trial, and do I know about it before the actual trial?\nBasically what I'm asking is what can I safely hold out for before my absolute last change to plead guilty to the reduced ticket.\nI had a same question. How long can you wait out before you accept the prosecutor's offer? If you say you will plead not-guilty and then when stand on trial and the JP asks what you plead, can you then say that you plead guilty to 10 over the speed limit?\nBri1234 wrote: I had a same question. How long can you wait out before you accept the prosecutor's offer? If you say you will plead not-guilty and then when stand on trial and the JP asks what you plead, can you then say that you plead guilty to 10 over the speed limit?\nThe Prosecutor will let you know what deal they are going to offer (if any). If you need time to digest it, simply ask. If there is a lineup of others, the prosecutor will usually say it's fine and you can sit down and ponder your options. They'll go through the others in the meantime before coming back to you.\nThey'll bring you back up again and ask what your decision will be. If you accept the offer, you'll be in and out. If you don't, you'll have a trial. If you refuse the prosecutors offer, they are under no obligation to satisfy a change of heart. You can't take the deal because there is no longer a deal. That being said, as long as the trial hasn't started they'll probably be willing to give you the same offer again if you act quickly enough.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Most of you already know, my family moved to Bath during my junior year at Highland and I went to Revere High for my senior year. I was not too happy about leaving but since I wanted to participate in sports, it was necessary that I go to Revere. I'm glad I did because I met many new friends and became an active member of things taking place at Revere. After graduation I moved on to college and Akron U. I started dating my wife in my junior year and we were married in April 1966. I went to work for Campbells Soup Company in their sales division and worked there for three years. We started to build our home here in Bath in 1967 and moved in in 1968. I love it here and our property was part of my wife's family farm. Sue had lived here all her life. I became a fireman and paramedic in Bath and remained in that capacity for 25 years. After working for Campbells I moved to pharmeceutical sales. I worked for Boehringer Ingelheim Ltd. until I retired. I then returned after only six months of retirement and became a consultant for for three different companies.\nEnough of this crap, I'm retired and enjoy working outside. I can't do much of anything but ride the John Deere around and mow. I'm pretty incapacitated and use a walker and scooter. My knees are both gone but since I have had a major bout of cellulitis no doctor wants to touch me. I'm also so fat that the doctors don't want me to risk all the problems that might develop. We love to travel and spend quite a lot of time in the Carolinas visiting our children and both of my brothers live there as well. We are going to Florida to get away form the cold and look forward to spring.\nNothing really special but most of my memories are very pleasant. Of course I remember that Highland had no football field and we played all games away. I know this was unusual and my parents did not like picking me up at 11:00 or 12:00 PM Just think, that what was a new school to us, has already been replaced. Oh, well, I guess I'm living in the past and I want to stay in the present and do as much as I can.\nBob Fickes has a birthday today.\nGary L Bolte posted a message on Bob Fickes' Profile. New comment added.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I've been hard at work responding to users and making small changes to Grooveshark. While the rest of the team is working diligently at improving the major aspects of the backend and the application itself, I've been working on Desktop shortcuts, releasing the External Control API, as well as some crossfade fixes (coming next release).\nTo enable the API, users must goto Desktop Options.\nExternal Player Control API (Docs) allows developers to design apps that control Grooveshark from outside Grooveshark. This could be a remote iPhone app, a Firefox\/Chrome extension, a remote control or anything where it benefits users to not have Grooveshark Desktop (this will not yet work for the Flash version) open.\nThe first applications to benefit from the External Player Control API are Desktop hotkeys. Between Terin Stock and myself we developed official Windows and Mac clients to listen and enable global shortcuts. These would enable Grooveshark to have shortcuts no matter what window you have focused\/open. Both apps will allow you to define your own keys as well as incorporate a better UI in coming versions. You can read more about the Desktop shortcuts on Jay Paroline's blog.\nAlong with the above released features, I've been hard at work improving the crossfade feature that many users have come to enjoy. In the next version, you will be able to enable Fade in\/out on pausing and resuming. Also, there will be come fixes coming that will enable crossfade while Frowning a song and removing songs from your queue.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Yellowknife will get another chance to get to know their mayor candidates tonight. Yellowknife chamber is hosting their mayoral forum at Northern United Place beginning at 6:30 p.m. The four mayor candidates includes Adrian Bell, Jerald Sibbeston, Rebecca Alty and Bob Stewart.\nAs the last forum focused on the social and environmental issues the city is facing, tonight's forum will focus on the business side. The forum will start with questions by the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce, then the floor will be opened to the public to ask business related questions.\nFor anyone who cannot attend the event, the Yellowknife Chamber plans to live stream the forum on their facebook page.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"3. Unscrew a nut of fastening of steering thirst for a rotary fist. Using a stripper, take the spherical hinge of steering draft from a rotary fist.\n4. Unscrew bolts of fastening of the spherical hinge to the lower lever of a forward suspension bracket.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaxpmi b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzaxpmi
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..ce5356570c7afb359614ca195767b282b0b7bead
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Known as \"Dutch George,\" Emmerling came to Red River in 1860 and opened a hotel on Main Street. He ran the major hotel establishment in the village during the Red River Rebellion. It had a substantial liquor cupboard and two pool tables. He left in May 1871, selling out to Robert A. Davis.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"gf let me pick one pose during our little photo session.... Then I lost my pose picking privileges.\nAfternoon Funny Picture Dump 32 Pics .\nA couple of times a month we get to do a gymnastics class with our co-op. It is geared towards children with a variety of special needs.\nOur aim was to make it fun for everyone, and that's exactly what it was.\nThis family at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.\nCooking and new paint don't go together!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This integration, enabled by Zapier, will allow you to embed screenshot links to videos in your email campaigns. Auto generate a campaign every time you post a new video to keep your fans hooked!\nNeed help with integration? Check out the YouTube integration documentation.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Water Saving Devices such as low flow showeheads, aerators, toilet tank banks and more make saving water simple. They can all be easily installed in a matter of minutes. Using water saving devices leads to spending less money on water and water heating.\nThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WaterSense program, works to protect the future of our nation's water supply by offering people simple ways to use less water.\nBy promoting the value of water efficiency, providing consumers with easy ways to save water, and encouraging innovation in manufacturing, WaterSense has helped consumers save a total of 1.5 trillion gallons of water and more than $32.6 billion in water and energy bills! By the end of 2015, reductions of 212 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide were achieved through the use of WaterSense labeled products.\nUsing WaterSense labeled faucets or faucet accessories could reduce a household's faucet water use by more than 500 gallons annually\u2014that's enough water to do 14 loads of laundry.\nEven if only 1 in every 10 homes in the United States installed WaterSense labeled faucets or faucet accessories in their bathrooms, it could save 6 billion gallons of water, and more than $50 million in the energy costs to supply, heat, and treat that water.\nOne of our best sellers is the Neoperl Perlator Regular Dual Thread 1.5 GPM Aerator. Whether your looking to change to a water saving flow or just replace a existing faucet housing, you will enjoy the benefits of NEOPERL's patented anti-liming construction. Using a 1.5 gallons per minute aerator will save you up to 30% water (in comparison to a 2.2 gpm). Energy savings can also add up by heating less water.\nWaterSense labeled toilets use 20 percent less water per flush but perform as well as or better than today's standard toilets. We recommend the Niagara Stealth Dual Flush Elongated Toilet Bowl. The Stealth technology has truly changed the market in that it features a low-profile body, ultra quiet flush, and patented hydraulic technology. The low friction, smooth ceramic surface of the toilet bowl allows for clearing with every flush. By providing two flush options, they reduce water consumption and costs like no other models out there! Check this link for available rebates.\nWater is crucial for the survival of the earth and all its' inhabitants, but there is a limited in supply. The Earth might seem like it has abundant water, but in fact less than 1 percent is available for human use. We all need to do our part to limit our household water usage, and upgrading to WaterSense devices in your home is a great place to start.\nSaving thousands of gallons of water per year (along with savings on your water bill).\nConserving the energy used to heat the water which means more savings for you and for the environment.\nAllowing you to live responsibly without sacrificing your lifestyle.\nAerating vs. Non Aerating Shower head. Non-aerating means air is not mixed into the water stream, as it passes through the shower head; as a result, less temperature is lost between the shower head and you. The 1.5 gpm Niagara Low Flow Showerhead (N2917CH) does not aerate the water, so you won't have to crank up the hot water for a comfortable shower temperature. Moreover, it installs without tools and is adjustable to deliver soft relaxing sprays to deep, therapeutic 9-jet massages. Aerating shower heads by contrast mix air into the water stream. So you can get a fuller shower with a steady pressure however it won't be as warm since some of the heat is lost in the process of aerating the water.\nAppearance. Shower heads have a come a long way.. you don't have to stick to the standard white or chrome finish. There are a few brushed nickel low flow shower heads as well.\nTechnology. Shower heads have evolved to pack in state of the art technology for conserving water. For instance, the 1.5 gpm Evolve RoadRunner Low Flow Showerhead combines a low-flow head with Evolve's patented ShowerStart, trickle-trigger technology for the ultimate in shower conservation. This unique showerhead senses when the cold water running through it changes to hot, and reduces flow to a trickle. It saves the hot water you would have left running while waiting for the water to warm up until you're actually ready to use it. The Roadrunner also features Pressure Compensating Technology for use in low water pressure homes, and a 36-nozzle non-aerating spray for full-coverage comfort and warmth.\nInstalling a low flow shower head is one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to help the environment and start saving money immediately. Deciding on the best low flow showerhead will depend upon your budget, aesthetics and any advanced technology options you require. The good news is, there are plenty of options.\nIn honor of Groundwater Awareness Week (March 6-12), and World Water Day (March 22), we are highlighting some of our top-selling water conservation products.\nThe Niagara 1.25 gpm Earth Massage Chrome Showerhead is a non-aerating, low flow showerhead which offers 9-jet turbo massaging sprays. 1.25 gpm low flow means you will save up to 5,475 gallons of water per year! That's approximately $107 in electric and $68 in gas water heating!\nThe toilet is the largest consumer of water in the bathroom. Installing the water saving Toilet Tank Bank is a quick and cost-effective way to save water at this source. This displacement bag saves about 0.8 gallons of water per flush when installed.\nIf every household in the United States installed low flow faucet aerators, we could save over 60 billion gallons of water annually. They are cost-efficient, simple to install tools that can pay for themselves in a matter of days with the savings on water bills.\nThe Niagara 1.0 GPM Dual Thread Bubble Bathroom Aerator uses only 1 gallon of water per minute, yet still produces a satisfying stream of water. The Niagara 1.5 gpm Brassdual Thread Coupling Swivel Kitchen Aerator allows you to aim the water wherever you want it in your sink and uses only 1.5 gallons of water per minute.\nThe Soil Moisture Meter is an outdoor water efficiency tool that allows you to monitor the levels of water in the soil. Over watering is the most common cause of plant death. Using this tool prevents over watering of plants to promote healthy gardens and lawns. The soil moisture meter helps to eliminate water waste.\nPlant moisture meters are tools that gardeners and homeowners use to accurately gauge the percentage of moisture in a given soil sample. Battery-free moisture meters are very convenient, as they use a simple needle gauge for moisture reading reports, are low in cost, are friendly for traveling and visitations, and can serve as a back-up solution for when battery-run meters fail or die. Plant moisture meters are suitable for outdoor applications as they are constructed with sturdy, high quality materials, such as metal and hard plastics for outside favorability.\nBy using plant moisture meters, homeowners can make more accurate decisions about when their lawns and\/or gardens need to be watered. Instead of wasting time over saturating soil, plant moisture meters make it possible for anyone to become more consciously aware of how much water is necessary in order to conserve water.\nUsing plant moisture meters is a simple and easy way to help you save water outdoors. Begin conserving water by utilizing these handy tools in your home today.\nSaving water at home can be easy and affordable at the same time. In reality, making conscious decisions about how much water you are using on a daily basis both inside and outside of your home is all it takes. Let's take lawn watering, which is a common activity for outdoor home maintenance, for example. One of the best ways to conserve water outside of your home is by using a water hose timer when sprinkling your lawn.\nAutomatic On\/Off \u2013 Automatic sprinkler controls are convenient for you and the environment, preventing you from forgetting to turn your hose off and causing the sprinkler to run all day long.\nNo Batteries Required \u2013 Without batteries, a water hose timer is much easier to manage and take care of. The timer will run on its own without any outside help, making it a smooth and easy addition to your yard hose.\nErgonomic swivel for easy hose attachment \u2013 By effortlessly attaching to your hose, these water timers are user-friendly and quick to install and use.\nUsing a water hose timer is one of many ways you can begin to conserve water in your home. Take the first step by adding this convenient tool to your yard.\nBefore we go into what measure you can take for Fix a Leak week, let's go into the history of this event.\nThe WaterSense division of the EPA started Fix a Leak week seven\u00a0years ago to remind Americans to identify and repair leaks in their household plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems.\u00a0WaterSense and its partners, including cities, companies, and non profits engage in week long educational activities and events around the country. This year it is taking place from March 16, 2015 through March 22, 2015.\nIt is estimated that the average American home loses approximately 10,000 gallons each year due to leaks coming from dripping faucets, running toilets and other leaking valves. This amounts to 1 trillion gallons of water annually around the US. The good news is that it's an easy problem to fix. The first step to take is to determine if you have a leak.\u00a0Please see the WaterSense Fix Leak events page to find an event near you.\nHow to determine if you have a leak?\nCheck your water bill. If you see an anomaly in the pattern of your gallon usage, e.g. spikes, chances are you have leaks.\nObserve your water meter, say for a 1 to 2 hour period. If you have not been using any water and the meter changes, you probably have a leak.\nGo through house and listen for drips in the toilets and faucets. There is an easy way to tell for sure with your toilet. Simply drop a toilet leak detection dye tablet in your toilet tank. These leak tablets have a harmless food coloring giving them a blue or green color. If there is a leak, the color will show in the toilet bowl without flushing.\nIf you have older plumbing fixtures e.g. showerheads, faucets, toilets, consider replacing them with WaterSense-labeled plumbing fixtures. In most cases, the investment can pay for itself in a matter of months. For example, investing in a 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm) low flow showerhead can cost less than $10, and can help you save thousands of gallons if you have a showerhead that dispenses water at 2.5 gpm or more.\nWhen installing a new showerhead, wrap the shower arm with teflon tape. This tape is specially produced to reduce the likelihood of experiencing shower leaks.\nBy taking these steps, not only will you be saving water, but also energy as it takes a lot of energy to heat the water. A leak of one drip per second can cost $1 per month. So fixing the leaks can result in significant water and energy savings as well as lowering your utility bills. So spend a few minutes this year identifying and fixing those leaks.\nYou turn the knob of the shower and the water falls in a steady cascade. You're enveloped in the falling beads of water, not too strong and not too weak. The thought of sacrificing such a luxurious shower experience for water efficiency is the furthest thing from your mind. But going green doesn't mean we have to disregard our comfort. With pressure compensating showerheads and aerators we can achieve energy efficiency without sacrifice.\nThe water pressure is measured in Pounds per Square Inch (PSI) and can vary significantly in each home. The higher the PSI the higher the water pressure. It can be as low as 20 PSI whilst in others it can be as high at 80 PSI. In a low pressure home, the shower stream can feel very weak. This is further amplified when you have a lower flow showerhead. Fortunately this can be corrected with a pressure compensating showerhead, which essentially regulates showerheads and faucets. When pressure fluctuates, pressure compensation works to maintain efficiency and consistency so that the flow is kept constant when the pressure is between 40-80 PSI. This creates an optimal shower experience, giving you both peace of mind knowing you're doing your part in saving water while still relishing in your shower experience.\nPressure compensating showerheads and aerators work through the use of a small rubber ring. The rubber ring expands depending on the pressure applied, in turn blocking the holes and reducing the amount of water coming through the tap. When pressure drops, the rubber ring is more relaxed, meaning more water is able to come through the holes in the tap. While the initial cost may be a bit more, you can expect to see a return of investment in typically less than two months.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"A: Bellafill\u00ae is a smooth collagen-based dermal filler with polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) microspheres. The collagen gel in Bellafill\u00ae provides immediate volume and lift to correct the wrinkle and\/or acne scar. The PMMA microspheres remain in place and create a base that provides structural support for smoother-looking skin.\nA: The microspheres are made of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a biocompatible material that has been used in medical implants for 65 years.\nA: The collagen in Bellafill\u00ae provides immediate volume and lift. Over time, the collagen is reabsorbed while the PMMA microspheres remain in place and create a base that provides structural support for smoother-looking skin.\nQ: Where and how is Bellafill\u00ae available for purchase?\nA: Bellafill\u00ae is available at physician offices across the country. Please visit Dr. Paul Blair, a licensed Bellafill\u00ae provider in your area.\nA: In a clinical trial, Bellafill\u00ae was shown to work equally well with all skin types, and in men and women. If you have a history of severe allergies, have known bovine collagen allergies, are allergic to lidocaine, have bleeding disorders or are prone to thick scar formation and\/or excessive scarring, tell Dr. Paul Blair, your licensed provider.\nA: Bellafill\u00ae has been proven safe through 5 years in the largest and longest prospective dermal filler study ever conducted.\nA: Bellafill\u00ae replaces lost volume in the skin below the wrinkle for correction that is immediate and lasting.\nA: You can return to normal activities right away. You may experience temporary swelling, redness, pain, bruising, lumps\/bumps, itching, and discoloration at the treatment site. These side effects are usually transient and typically resolve within 1\u20137 days.\nQ: Who can receive treatment with Bellafill\u00ae?\nA: Patients must be 21 years of age or older, and receive the required skin test prior to treatment. In clinical studies, Bellafill\u00ae was shown to work in all skin types, and in men and women. If you have a history of severe allergies, have known bovine collagen allergies, are allergic to lidocaine, have bleeding disorders, or are prone to thick scar formation and\/or excessive scarring, tell your doctor. Please consult your physician Dr. Paul Blair.\nQ: How much does Bellafill\u00ae cost?\nA: The cost of Bellafill\u00ae varies depending on how many syringes are required to obtain optimal correction. Your doctor can personalize a treatment plan that fits your time and budget during your consultation.\nQ: What is the difference between Bellafill\u00ae and ArteFill\u00ae?\nA: Bellafill\u00ae is the new name for ArteFill\u00ae in North America. It is distributed under the trade name ArteFill\u00ae in South Korea and Singapore. ArteFill\u00ae was rebranded to Bellafill\u00ae in the U.S. to reflect the transformational outcomes this unique product can provide to patients seeking correction of their acne scars and nasolabial folds. In markets outside of the U.S., the product is only approved for nasolabial folds.\nQ: How long has Bellafill\u00ae been available in the U.S.?\nA: Bellafill\u00ae was FDA approved in October 2006 (under the name ArteFill\u00ae) for treating nasolabial folds (smile lines). In December 2014, Bellafill\u00ae was approved by the FDA for the correction of moderate to severe atrophic, distensible facial acne scars on the cheek in patients over the age of 21 years.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzazwji b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzazwji
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..38e131cb49d0b2d6cf81fe226b855ec67e87d3f5
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Food is celebration of life.\nWhether church function, wedding or corporate party, your friends at Amici's will help you coordinate, organize and pull off the best function at your location\u2026 or at ours.\nWe'll discuss details like style, time of day, season of the year\u2026 everything. We've done this enough to know how to make it easy on you.\nStart with our in-house menu.\nWhat tickles your taste buds? How many are you serving. Amici's can help you develop the right menu for the right occasion so that the guest you are entertaining are deliciously waiting for your next event.\nThe food you serve says a lot about how you feel about your guests. Make it count!\nWe love eating at Amici's, but we weren't really sure how to bring that same fun taste to our wedding. After a brief conversation, the catering team at Amici's presented the best menu for optimal enjoyment. We love Amici's\u2026 at their location or ours!\nWhat name does your friends call you?\nWhat email do you check the most?\nWhen is your proposed event?\nWhat time will your first guest arrive?\nTell us a little about your event and the guest you'll have.\nThank you for considering Amici's to be a part of your next event. Our team will get back with you shortly to discuss the details.\nIn the meantime, check out our HOME SLICE, out mobile wood fire pizza oven.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We first started making this homemade sausage recipe back in 1993, when I went on my first \"cave man\" diet. No, we weren't trying to go back to cave-times--I was on an anti candida diet that helped me recover from a stubborn case of bronchitis that would not go away, even after trying three rounds of antibiotics. Turns out what modern medicine could not help, an improvement in diet did.\nThis recipe is inspired from a recipe in the book \"The Yeast Connection Cookbook,\" by Marjorie Hurt Jones. In her recipe, she suggests making the meat into little sausage patties, but we like to cook it as a loose sausage. It cooks up nice and fast that way.\nPut ground meat in a skillet over medium-high heat.\nAdd spices and stir as you brown the meat.\nWhen meat is nearly done cooking, add chopped onions. Continue stirring and cooking till the meat is fully browned and the onions start to look translucent.\nServe as a side with a big breakfast, or as the main protein at any meal--it is up to you!\nThe homemade sausage is pictured here with 2 eggs over-easy, one half avocado (I love to eat a half avocado sprinkled with sea salt with a spoon), and fermented salsa using a recipe I found for it on a blog that has now gone offline. A yummy *low-carb breakfast on the GAPS Diet.\n*The GAPS Diet is not intended to be a low-carb diet. While I did eat this low-carb breakfast along with some juice kefir (made with water kefir grains) for my breakfast the day I wrote this, I do also eat higher carb snacks and meals during the course of the day.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Many silver bulls are giving up, Morgan says. But this could change. He sees a shift coming. Likely, there will be more large down days for the stock market and more interest coming into the precious metals' space.\nHowever, Morgan sees a possibility of a lower low for silver. But this would probably be more of a talking point than a significant move in the market.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"What I need is to be able to output the camera view in Unity as video output. This video output needs to be formatted as MPEG-TS and sent over a UDP broadcast network. I then want to be able to open and use VLC media player to grab the video from the UDP address and port and play the video.\nHi there, I have checked the details I have rich experienced with C# Programming, Unity 3D, Video Broadcasting. Please initiate chat so we can discuss this job.\nSir\/Madam, I have one year experience of unity. I have make many games using unity.I can do this [login to view URL] contact me as soon as possible.Thanks.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"\"Here Comes the Sun\" is a song written by George Harrison that was first released on the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road. Along with \"Something\" and \"While My Guitar Gently Weeps\", it is one of Harrison's best-known compositions from the Beatles era. The song was written at the country house of his friend Eric Clapton, where Harrison had chosen to play truant for the day, to avoid attending a meeting at the Beatles' Apple Corps organisation. The lyrics reflect the composer's relief at both the arrival of spring and the temporary respite he was experiencing from the band's business affairs.\nThe Beatles recorded \"Here Comes the Sun\" at London's EMI Studios in the summer of 1969. Led by Harrison's acoustic guitar, the recording also features Moog synthesizer, which he had introduced to the Beatles' sound after acquiring an early model of the instrument in California. Reflecting the continued influence of Indian classical music on Harrison's writing, the composition includes a series of unusual time changes.\n\"Here Comes the Sun\" has received acclaim from music critics. Combined with his other contribution to Abbey Road, \"Something\", it gained for Harrison the level of recognition as a songwriter that had previously been reserved for his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Harrison played the song during many of his relatively rare live performances as a solo artist, including at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 and, with Paul Simon, during his appearance on Saturday Night Livein 1976. Richie Havens and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel each had hit singles with \"Here Comes the Sun\" in the 1970s. Nina Simone, George Benson, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Peter Tosh and Joe Brown are among the many other artists who have covered the song.\n\"Here Comes the Sun\" is one of Harrison's best-known Beatles compositions alongside \"Something\" and \"While My Guitar Gently Weeps\". The early months of 1969 were a difficult period for Harrison: he had quit the band temporarily, he was arrested for marijuana possession, and he had his tonsils removed.\n\"Here Comes the Sun\" was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: 'Sign this' and 'sign that.' Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton's house. The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote \"Here Comes the Sun\".\nAs Clapton states in his autobiography, the house in question is known as Hurtwood Edge. When interviewed in the Martin Scorsese documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Clapton said he believed the month was April. Data from two meteorological stations in the London area show that April 1969 set a record for sunlight hours for the 1960s. The Greenwich station recorded 189 hours for April, a high that was not beaten until 1984. The Greenwich data also show that February and March were much colder than the norm for the 1960s, which would account for Harrison's reference to a \"long, cold, lonely winter\".\nThe song is in the key of A major. The main refrain uses a IV (D chord) to V-of-V (B chord) progression (the reverse of that used in \"Eight Days a Week\" and \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\"). The melody in the verse and refrain basically follows the pentatonic scale from E up to C\u266f(scale steps 5, 6, 1, 2, 3).\nOne feature is the increasing syncopation in the vocal parts. Another feature is the guitar flat-picking that embellishes the E7 (V7) chord from 2:03 to 2:11, creating tension for resolution on the tonic A chord at \"Little darlin' \". The bridge involves a \u266dIII-\u266dVII-IV-I-V7 triple descending 4th (or Tri-Plagal) progression (with an extra V7) as the vocals move from \"Sun\" (\u266dIII or C chord) to \"sun\" (\u266dVII or G chord) to \"sun\" (IV or D chord) to \"comes\" (I or A chord) and the additional 4th descent to a V7 (E7) chord. The lyric here (\"Sun, sun, sun, here it comes\") has been described as taking \"on the quality of a meditator's mantra\". The song also features extreme 4\/4 (in the verse) and a sequence of 11\/8 + 4\/4 + 7\/8 (which can also be transcribed as 11\/8 + 15\/8) in the bridge, phrasing interludes which Harrison drew from Indian music influences. In the second verse (0:59\u20131:13) the Moog synthesizer doubles the solo guitar line and in the third verse the Moog adds an obbligato line an octave above. The last four bars (2:54\u20133:04) juxtapose the guitar break with a repeat of the bridge.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbaaqb b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbaaqb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..d8e8911626b8fcd71be5528e7023cd192bff9617
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbaaqb
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Providing a complete range of welding equipment throughout the Midlands.\nArc Welding Services Ltd supply a wide range of welding equipment including TIG, MIG, Plasma Machines, also providing generator hire services in Birmingham and the surrounding areas.\nWe have over 35 years of experience dealing with major clients such as British Rail, Rolls Royce, Corus and BOC, so you can rest assured in the knowledge that you will get a first class service from our expert staff.\nWe're able to supply a wide range of equipment including welding and gas cutting, as well as protective equipment and other relevant accessories: anything you could possibly need for one-off jobs or ongoing commercial projects.\nBased in the centre of the Midlands we're perfectly placed to provide our products and our additional services, such as rentals and repairs, throughout the local area.\nFor more information about our products and services, please fill out our online enquiry form or call Arc Welding Services Ltd today on 0121 327 2249.\nWe only use established, reputable welding manufacturers.\nWith over 35 years experience behind, us we provide fast, reliable, cost effective welding equipment.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Abstract:This is a dummy example that I'd like to port to understand how to use the SAGrid. My role at Wits will be assisting researchers use the Grid and configuring\/maintaining the cluster of machines intended to be appended to the SAGrid. The above dummy application should be sufficient for me to learn the skills that I'll need.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Increases in eCommerce sales continue to skyrocket past brick and mortar retail sales rates. The US Census Bureau shows $263.3 billion sold online (in 2013), a nearly 17 percent increase year over year. Offline sales increased at a sluggish 4.2 percent.\nIf you are not selling online, we can help. If you are, then our experience working with ecommerce companies across dozens of industries can give your sales a boost.\nA secure payment processor that settles credit card purchases to your bank and eliminates the need for you to maintain customer credit card data on your servers.\nBeyond those basics, eCommerce technology is changing year by year. You'll be more successful when you take steps to remain current; to build your site so it handles the trends and best practices that evolve to redefine eCommerce from year to year.\nWith the ever-increasing number of online shoppers using their mobile devices, your eCommerce site needs to give them an easy, convenient experience. Expecting shoppers to visit a site designed for the big screen of a laptop or desktop PC frustrates would-be customers. You can accommodate your mobile customers by building a dedicated app or a site designed for mobility. Alternately, you can use software tools that automatically convert your traditional site to mobile-friendly experience.\nGive shoppers a way to rate their experience with your company and your products. Amazon, the pinnacle of eCommerce, encourages customers to share their satisfaction and their disappointments through customer reviews. If your site skips over that critical feature, we'll show you easy and effective ways to bring your site up to current eCommerce best practices.\nShoppers can't pick up the product, touch it or feel it as they can in a brick and mortar store. Give them great tools that let them see what they are about to buy. Images with rollovers that display a magnified image are helpful. Short videos that demonstrate the product, or display it in more detail, can give the consumer confidence and tip the scales toward completing the purchase.\nYour overall success in eCommerce relies on the design and features of your site. However, understanding how visitors navigate your site can uncover problems that may be stifling your sales. Why do they abandon the shopping cart so frequently? What common patterns can you identify that show which elements on your site lead to abandonment. Why is the bounce rate so high on some pages? Why is the average time-on-page so low?\nECommerce site analytics give answers to these and similar questions. They allow you to make adjustments and remove the stumbling blocks that prevent visitors from making the final click that results in a sale.\nWhether you're just getting started or need to refresh your eCommerce site, contact us to discuss your needs and what you'd like your site to bring to your bottom line.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"College of Menominee Nation, Sustainable Development Institute - Director, 2012-Present.\nMenominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Department of Trust Resources - Director, 2005-2012.\nUSDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory - Forest Products Technician, 2004-2005.\nBureau of Indian Affairs, NCCE - Forestry Student\/ Intern, 2001-2004.\nMenominee Tribal Enterprises Forestry Department- Forestry Technician, 1994-2001.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Students are integrated into small teams of undergraduate physics researchers working closely with a faculty mentor, who nurtures their experimental, analytical, and communication skills. Students also experience physics in action by visiting regional facilities, where they interact with practicing physicists and learn how physics research addresses societally relevant problems.\nUS citizens or permanent residents who are majoring in physics or a closely related field and have completed one full year of introductory college-level physics classes.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbagzg b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbagzg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..0cd00cbf0f22c5ff2c039fb049dbe6edfaac1379
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"1 There is no awareness among the public on cleanliness and sanitation issues. Awareness program was conducted in schools.importance given to promote behavioral change regard to sanitation. supplied foot ware to maintain cleanliness to all the school children. children and adults of the ponnavaram inspired with the importance of cleanliness and practicing . As a result digestive problems controled .","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We have come a long way, but still, have many miles to go before we reach our goal\u2026\u2026..\nIn the year 1959, noted pharmacist Late Shri O.S.Bhargava felt the need to establish a world-class pharmaceutical manufacturing company and follow the visionary principles of our national leaders of self-reliance. It was the beginning of a long and eventful journey into the pharmaceutical sector. Cooper Pharma was founded in the year 1959 in Delhi. Since its inception, the vision has been to provide quality & affordable medicines to all and make them available at all leading pharmacies across the nation.\nCooper Pharma has evolved from a manufacturer serving the Indian patients to catering to people across the globe. The facilities are continuously expanded and integrated with the development of the latest products.\nExports were started in the year 1991 and have increased ever since.\nIn 2007, a new export-oriented manufacturing facility was set up in Dehradun, capital of Uttarakhand in North India.\nOver the years, we have been awarded and have earned acclaim for our quality standards and services, both in India and across the globe.\nThus, we are strong technically, commercially and morally. In our pursuit of growth with internationally approved healthcare products and our flight for excellence, each achievement is just another milestone in our journey and is not the ultimate destination. Growth, which is based on excellence and integrity, is a continuous process in our company.\nThe first plant set up in Delhi. Only a few products manufactured and sold in the Northern states of India.\nProducts available at major pharmacy chains across the country, thanks to the continuous expansion.\nExports started with nearby Asian countries.\nExpansion of exports, with products available in bigger markets in Asia, Africa, and other countries.\nNew unit set up in Dehradun. Equipped with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities across dosage forms.\nExpansion of markets and development of the latest pharmaceutical formulations. Products now available in more than 25 countries and on leading online pharmacies.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I'm a computer programmer and digital artist.\nMy time is occupied with work, college, and family, which keeps me from being online as much as I would like. That said, my work brings me here often enough that I wanted to create a profile and contribute however I can.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Not got a way with words? As a blogger, I'm adept at writing copy that's engaging and effective. Writing for social media can be tricky, conveying the correct message within a limited word count whilst finding the perfect balance between cool and professional. In this day and age SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is also an important element of great copywriting. Regularly producing high quality, shareable and SEO optimised content is a key move in ensuring that your websites rank high in Google searches and be found by as many people as possible.\nI can write content to fulfil all of your business needs; social media messages, blog posts, email marketing, website copy... Whether you need it be witty, funny, descriptive, informative - whatever your brand tone of voice is, I will effortlessly adapt my writing style to seamlessly blend with your existing copy.\nNot sure what your tone of voice should be? We can work together to find a mode of address that resonates with your customers, keeping them engaged and interested in your brand and making a lasting impression.\nGet in touch today for a free introductory meeting to discuss your needs.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Rain, sleet and freezing rain are expected to accompany the snow from Thursday night to Friday night.\nThe possible snow totals for Sioux Falls are climbing as we move closer to an anticipated Friday snowfall.\nThe National Weather Service has updated their forecast, saying that the city could see 2-5 inches of snow, up from a high of 3 inches in the Wednesday forecast.\nRain, sleet and freezing rain are expected to accompany the snow from Thursday night to Friday night, with Sioux Falls looking to receive a light glaze of ice.\nThe forecast will likely be updated, as any change in temperature will have an impact on what type of precipitation is falling.\nAreas west of Sioux Falls have been lowered to a winter storm warning, while parts of northeast Nebraska remain under a winter storm watch.\nThe snow is expected to begin around 8 a.m. in Sioux Falls and continue through 8 p.m. The heaviest snowfall will be between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sleet is expected Friday morning and freezing rain will start around 9 p.m.\nAfter Friday's snowfall, eastern South Dakota is set for more snow early Monday and Tuesday.\nMostly sunny, with a high near 42. East wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.\nMostly cloudy, with a low around 26. Breezy, with an east wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.\nSnow, possibly mixed with sleet, becoming all snow after 3pm. The snow could be heavy at times. High near 33. Breezy, with an east wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow and sleet accumulation of around 3 inches.\nSnow and freezing rain likely before 9pm, then freezing rain likely between 9pm and 1am, then a chance of freezing drizzle after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 26. East northeast wind 5 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.\nMostly cloudy, with a high near 39. North northeast wind around 5 mph becoming south southwest in the afternoon.\nA chance of rain before midnight, then a chance of rain and snow between midnight and 1am, then a chance of snow after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 31. Chance of precipitation is 50%.\nSnow likely before 10am, then rain and snow likely between 10am and noon, then rain likely after noon. Cloudy, with a high near 39. Chance of precipitation is 70%.\nRain likely before 8pm, then rain and snow likely between 8pm and 10pm, then snow likely after 10pm. Cloudy, with a low around 25. Chance of precipitation is 60%.\nA chance of rain and snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 36. Chance of precipitation is 40%.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbblxb b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbblxb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..15f9751e085e24f9e0b4e425c5f7bde6f89ccac5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbblxb
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"On arrival at Shimla railway station you will be met by our representative and transferred to your hotel. On arrival, check-in at your hotel. Evening free at your own leisure. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nAfter breakfast drive down to Manali. On arrival, check in your hotel. Rest of the day free at your own discretion. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nMorning after breakfast leave for Dharamshala. On arrival, check-in at your hotel. After brief leisure, move for a half-day city tour visiting Dal Lake, Church, Bhagsu Nag Temple and Tibetan Monastery. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nMorning after breakfast complete day free at your own or you have an option to take an excursion of Khajjiar.\nKhajjar:Often called India's Switzerland, the exquisite glade of Khajjiar (1960m) has a circumference of about 5 kilometres. Along its fringes, thick forests of deodar climb the slopes, the snow-line rests above these woods and in the centre of the glade, is a small lake fed by streams that traverse the green carpet. Khajjiar was probably a glacial bowl formed during the last Himalayan ice age and left with a lake that gradually withered away. Khajjiar is part of the notified Kalatop \u2013 Khajjiar sanctuary. At Khajjiar there is a 12th century temple dedicated to Khajjair. Within the temple are life-size wooden images of the five Pandav brothers. After lunch drive to reach Macleodganj and on arrival, check in your hotel. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nDay at leisure at your hotel. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nMorning at appropriate will drive towards Dalhousie. On arrival, check-in at your hotel. Rest of the day kept completely at your own leisure or you have an option to visit Panjpulla- Subhash bowli. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nMorning after breakfast full day sightseeing trip to Figure of Eight of Portreyn, Gandhi Chowk and Satdhara. Stay overnight at your hotel.\nAfter breakfast at appropriate time you will be transferred to Chakki Bank railway station to board a train for your onward journey. The tour ends.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. announces that its main subsidiary Tecnimont S.p.A. has been awarded by Etileno XXI Services B.V., an Engineering and Procurement contract on Lump Sum Basis for the realization of a 300,000 tpa Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) Unit, to be constructed within the Etileno XXI petrochemical complex. The Etileno XXI Project under development by Braskem Idesa is located in Nanchital, Veracruz (Mexico). It is expected to generate over 8,000 jobs during the construction and 3,000 direct and indirect jobs once operations begin in 2015. Likewise, the project supports the Mexican government's strategy to boost competitiveness of the sector and the industrial and regional development. The LDPE Unit will be built using the Lupotech T technology of Lyondellbasell industries and the value of the EP Contract is USD191.4 million (approximately \u20ac147 million). The Engineering and Procurement activities shall be completed within Q4-2014. This award further strengthens the position of the Maire Tecnimont Group in the polyolefins market and extends the historical collaboration in projects managed by Braskem on petrochemical projects. This contract confirms Group's growth strategy towards technology-driven business while maximizing Engineering & Procurement scheme.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Picosun is a leading nanotechnology company.\nSelecting 3D animation was natural for the presentation method: it suits the futuristic theme and the description of a microscopic process. At trade fairs, too, a video is guaranteed to catch the eye.\nPicosun \u2013 What is ALD?\nIntroduction to Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), the most advanced thin film coating technology.\nABB wanted to promote safety at work and at the same time market their own safety switch products with a video containing a short but memorable story. They wanted the video's message about the importance and significance of work safety to be targeted at people making decisions on safety-related matters and end users of safety switches globally, both inside and outside ABB.\nTeknos needed a topical video that summarizes what the company does, its main products and its values, and where it operates.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"You've seen our standard motorcycle disc lock review here. Now it's time to introduce you to another level of product on the market which is the alarmed disc lock. Similar in use to their non-motion detection cousins, these products are a great way to add an additional level of theft protection to your arsenal.\nThese start with your top of the line, large diameter bolt setups featuring a siren rating of up to 120 decibels before slowly reducing in price point and specification. The cheaper disc lock alarms on test are still worth considering but due to their smaller bolt sizes, just can't stand up to the same level of abuse as their larger counterparts.\nWelcome to our best motorcycle disc lock alarms round up and review.\nAbus' newest entry onto the market is nothing short of huge in every sense of the word. The hardened steel body features a 16mm locking bolt, the same size you would find on some of the strongest D locks and padlocks on the market. Due to its size, this is going to clamp over the radius of the disc instead of through one of the many drilled holes present.\nAbus have included what they call an automatic brake disc recognition system which means that when in transport, it will never accidently trigger and sound its siren. And it's a good job too as the minimum sound level of this lock is 100 decibels. You've also got a 3D detection system which means that any type of movement at all whilst armed is going to result in the siren sounding, including vertical lifts off the ground. In the case of an accidental ride off attempt, the lock will let you know it's still attached with audible beeps, giving you a just enough to disarm and remove it.\nThe device weighs 2.64 lbs (1.2 kg) so whilst heavy it is still portable and should fit under most seats. Abus have a template on their website so check to see that this one will fit (due to its large bolt) before making your purchase.\nXena's XX14 just misses the top spot due to a slightly small bolt diameter of 14mm. Otherwise the feature set is very similar. You have a stainless steel metal body, housing an alarm capable of delivering up to 120 decibels of pure volume. The idea being that being in the immediate vicinity whilst this is going off is going to be very painful to the person trying to steal your bike. It will also of course let everybody nearby know that someone is up to no good.\nXena have updated this model to address a common complaint which was that this lock was just a little too trigger happy and would go off with a slight breeze. This should no longer be the case whilst still maintaining great detection of movement and tampering. The siren also has an auto arm\/disarm function so you only have to remember to attach it and remove it.\nThe larger XX15 is also available if you need the extra disc clearance. Both are also available with a chain adapter which is sold separately. The idea here is that you can then attach a security chain to your disc lock and then onto something else like a lamppost for added protection.\nThe XX14 weighs 1.63 lbs (0.74 kg) and will fit under most seats.\nBack over to Abus and we have another GRANIT Detecto model. Using a similar design to the non-alarmed Sledg 77, the 8077 looks and feels familiar.\nSecurity is brought to you by a 13.5mm bolt of hardened steel with the same steel used for the body. All of Abus' motion detection technology has gone into this model as well as the 100+ decibel siren. As with the 8008, no false alarms were experienced under testing.\nWe also liked the LED light on this one, capable of displaying a range of colours to show activation, alarm and battery status without having to take the unit apart. As always, check to see if it will fit your disc setup. 1.94 lbs (0.88 kg).\nNext in the Xena range is the XX10. This time you've got a 10mm locking bolt which is still respectable and trumps a number of other products on the market. The all stainless steel body is of the same construction as the XX14 and still features the double locking mechanism making it tamper proof and unsusceptible to being picked.\nSiren volume is the same at 120 decibels which is nice to see. Usually manufacturers will attempt to cut costs with lesser models in their product range but that isn't the case with this line up. This one weighs in at 1.34 (0.61 kg).\nFinally, we have a lock for the smaller motorcycles out there. The XX6 is the smallest and lightest on test 0.92 lbs (0.42 kg) but still features a 6mm locking bolt giving you a decent level of protection, whilst still giving you a few options on how to mount it (across the entire lip of the disc or through a drilled hole).\nOnce again, 120 decibels are supplied on a triggering event, lasting 15 seconds before rearming and repeating if necessary. You only get pushdown locking here and not the double mechanism on the more expensive models so weigh that up with the risk present wherever you frequently park.\nWe hope you found this review and roundup useful. There are number of products out there but we feel these represent the best motorcycle disc lock alarms available. As always, feel free to send us a message with your experiences.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Ice Skating Champion Tonya Harding is right now competing for her life and for excellence in another field \u2014 Dancing with the Stars! She has openly called the TV opportunity her second chance to prove herself, after years of feeling isolated and wrongly judged following the biggest scandal to ever hit ice skating. A scandal so big it still resonates across the world today; the story becoming a blockbuster movie with Hollywood actress Allison Janney winning the 2018 Oscar Award for Best Supporting Actress. But now, it's Tonya's turn \u2026 Rolonda shares about her relationship with Tonya Harding and her exclusive talk show interview with the then-embattled ice skater who sat with Ro just months after her alleged knee-bashing \"Incident\" with Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. It was a journalistic \"get\" so big \u2013 it put the then-new Rolonda Show on the map as a true contender in the talk show field. While Tonya was later proved not guilty of the attack, she was still banned for life from the sport she loved and the one thing in which excelled. Tonya talks openly and exclusively with Rolonda about everything from the years of abuse she suffered from her husband to the horrid feeling of being a punished outsider in her own field. It is interesting to compare the young Tonya in the midst of a huge scandal 24 years ago to the one today Dancing with the Stars on ABC, seeking a second chance to shine!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbcnrt b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbcnrt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..cc5d0f389286bed54b7285e55b70f050b6750be1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbcnrt
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"The second priority for 39.19% M.P. voters was remunerative prices for farm produce, while the third concern for 32.69% electors was better health care.\nBhopal: Employment would be the biggest issue with the 5.14 crore voters in the Lok Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh, a survey by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has revealed.\nThe survey shows that for 61.91 per cent voters in MP, including rural areas, better employment opportunities matter more than issues related to agriculture, corruption or terrorism.\n\"A total of 61.91 per cent voters in rural and urban MP consider better employment opportunities as the biggest election issue,\" ADR state coordinator Rolly Shivhare said, adding that the corresponding figure nationwide was 46.80 per cent.\nGiving a break-up, she said better employment avenues was the primary concern for 70 per cent of MP's urban population and 59 per cent of rural voters.\nThe second priority for 39.19 per cent MP voters was remunerative prices for farm produce, while the third concern for 32.69 per cent electors was better health care by way of more hospitals and primary health centres, the ADR functionary said.\nIn the rural areas, 56 per cent voters wanted higher prices for farm produce while 40 per cent spoke of the need for electricity for agricultural purposes, the survey showed.\nHowever, in MP's urban areas, 45 per cent of the electorate's second priority was better hospitals and primary health care centres, while 41 per cent put their third priority as better law and order, Shivhare added.\nThe survey was conducted between October 2018 and December 2018, covering 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters from several age groups participating, she said.\n\"The three main objectives of this survey were to identify voters' priorities on specific governance issues, their rating of the government's performance on those issues and factors affecting voting behaviour,\" she added.\nThe Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) was established in 1999 by a group of professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.\nIt analyses the backgrounds of candidates contesting elections in order to help the electorate make an informed choice.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"8.3.1 - why uncapitalized \"should\" on tablenames with spaces?\nRe: [office-comment] 8.3.1 - why uncapitalized \"should\" on tablenameswith spaces?\nNit: 8.3.1 \"in some situation\" -> \"in some situations\"\nRe: [office-comment] Nit: 8.3.1 \"in some situation\" ->\"in some situations\"\nDate fields 6.2.1 -- what is \"current date\"? Don't you mean \"lastedit\" date?\nRe: [office-comment] Date fields 6.2.1 -- what is \"current date\"?Don't you mean \"last edit\" date?\nPage numbers are always numbers?\nSection 1.5 - implementations SHOULD use the namespace prefixes given.\nRe: [office-comment] Section 1.5 - implementations SHOULD use thenamespace prefixes given.\nRe: [office-comment] Section 1.5 - implementations SHOULD use the namespace prefixes given.\nEliminate \"text-numbered-paragraph\", and are that many differenttypes really needed?\nRe: [office-comment] Eliminate \"text-numbered-paragraph\",and are that many different types really needed?\nInserting 'id's to improve \"diffing\".\nHow to handle MathCAD\/Mathematica-like text?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"one inch graph paper .\n3 4 inch graph paper with black lines a .\n1 inch grid paper zlatan fontanacountryinn com .\n1 inch graph paper printable aaron the artist .\ngraph paper 5 squares per inch amazon com .\ninch grid paper under fontanacountryinn com .\nc 20 inch grid paper .\n3 8 inch graph paper with black lines a .\ntimely 1 4 inch scale planning grid projects to try pinterest .\nprintable graph paper 12x12 inch size royalty free vector .\nfile graph paper inch letter pdf wikimedia commons .\n1 4 inch graph paper zlatan fontanacountryinn com .\n1 8 inch to centimeter math centimeter grid paper printable graph .\none inch graph paper printable free printable pdf .\nprintable graph paper 4 squares per inch 4 x 4 graph ruled free .\nprintable graph paper full page 1 inch download them or print .\ninch grid paper inch grid paper grid paper sample 1 graph paper app .\n1 4 inch scale graph paper printable grid template free print with .\nprintable grid paper 1 inch download them or print .\ncm graph paper ruled margins an extra large 8 5 by 11 0 inch .\nprintable graph paper 1 inch squares download them or print .\none inch grid paper one inch grid paper1 inch graph paper pdg .\nvector printable graph paper 12x12 inch size stock vector .\n1 inch graph paper template free download speedy template .\namazon com tops 33101 quadrille pads 10 squares inch 8 1 2 x 11 .\ngraph paper inch tahsin enterprise .\ngraph paper half inch by montessori print shop tpt .\n1 inch grid paper template print 1 inch graph paper printable 1 inch .\nbest graph paper inch graph paper one inch graph paper printable 4 .\n2 inch grid printable graph paper black stock vector royalty free .\none inch square graph paper book buy one inch square graph paper .\nvector orange printable graph paper 12x12 inch size grid accented .\n1 inch grid paper 1 square graph paper 1 mm graph paper a4 pdf 1 .\n1 inch graph paper x to the 1 2 inch graph paper 5 pack startuphack co .\n10 x 10 to the 1 2 inch graph paper 5 pack isu book store .\nprintable diamond graph paper 2 inch .\nprintable graph paper pdf 1 inch download them or print .\none inch grid paper 8 one inch graph paper 1 inch grid paper .\nmath graph paper notebook 1 2 inch squares 120 pages notebook .\nlarge grid paper one inch grids large grid paper one inch grids .","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I hope you all had a good Christmas holiday with friends and family. I certainly did. At the tender young age of 70, I am learning to be grateful for life as it is, and to not waste time wishing things were different.\nEvery year during December it seems like news about wireless messaging and related topics, dries up. Then in January when everyone goes back to work and finds their desk piled high with papers, the news starts to flow again. New products come out and new marketing projects are implemented.\nI read an article about paging the other day that went on and on about how paging is buried in history, that no one uses pagers anymore, and that many young people don't even know what a pager is.\nThe sad fact is that these many \"wonderful\" gadgets that operate on cellular networks, won't work when there is any sort of major emergency \u2014 be it caused by nature, accident, or acts of violence.\nOf course I have a cell phone. It is an Apple iPhone and it does many real cool things. Like my friend Alan Angus once told me, most of what I do with it has nothing related to it being a telephone.\nWe used to promote the advantage paging service because it had much better coverage than cell phones. That is no longer true. Cell phones, in my experience anyway, work flawlessly just about everywhere I go. That is part of the problem. We grow to trust them because they work so well, but woe is the day when we need them the most and they won't work at all.\nOh yes . . . we had a snow storm here, like many areas of the country. The following photo was taken on December 26th. The house on the extreme right is the one my father had built during WWII and where we went to live after I left the hospital at three days old. It was a cool house. It looks like it is made of bricks, but they are cut-pieces of white Indiana limestone (now painted).\nOver ten inches of snow fell, which is a lot for this area, and a winter weather advisory was just issued for tonight.\nAssuming you were a non-naughty-lister who didn't get the proverbial coal lump, it looks like that gift under the tree was more likely a tablet than a phone this No\u00ebl, according to Flurry. The analytics outfit said that just over half of December 25th activations were slates, and we can't imagine too many gift-getters letting their new devices seamlessly fester in a box over the big day. Overall activations more than doubled from last Christmas, and were up 332 percent on that single day from the first 20 days of December, combined. As might be expected , Apple came up big with iPad sales, but Flurry said that Amazon was also a winner with its 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tab, showing a \"several thousand percent\" increase over baseline activations. None of this likely comes as a huge shock to our readers, who rather overwhelmingly said that they'd rather have a Nexus 7 tablet than a pricier RAZR M as a gift if they toiled at Google.\nApple and Intel are back at it again with the next innovation, smart watches. If you thought that having your iPhone was handy, well that's only half good since it is in your pocket. Imagine being able to just look down at your wrist at any time and seeing text messages, e-mails, and more. Perhaps even a music video as your running, who knows.\nThey are working on developing a Bluetooth-enabled smart watch that will feature a 1.5-inch OLED display with indium tin oxide. ITP-coated glass, and much more. The Taiwanese panel manufacturer RiTdisplay that makes PMOLED panels is the one that worked with the iPhone and will be helping out with this new project.\nMicrosoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, won a U.K. ruling invalidating Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.'s patent protection for technology synchronizing message statuses across multiple devices.\nThe 2002 patent owned by Google Inc. (GOOG) 's Motorola Mobility unit shouldn't have been issued because the technology was obvious to experts in the field at the time, Judge Richard Arnold said in a decision in London today. A week-long trial ended earlier this month.\nMicrosoft claims all devices that run on Google's Android operating system use its technology and is seeking royalties from Motorola Mobility, which Mountain View, California-based Google acquired in May.\n\"The patent is invalid and should be revoked,\" Arnold said during a 30-second hearing. Both companies had received the written judgment in advance.\nThe companies are locked in legal battles over patents for smartphone technology and Microsoft's Xbox gaming software in the U.S. and Germany . Microsoft claims all devices that run on Google's Android operating system use its technology and is seeking royalties from Motorola Mobility, which Mountain View, California-based Google acquired in May.\nMicrosoft, based in Redmond, Washington , filed the lawsuit against Motorola Mobility in London a year ago in a pre-emptive bid to invalidate the patent before it could be sued for infringement.\nThe case is running parallel to Motorola's lawsuit against Microsoft over the same patent in Germany, where the companies are awaiting a decision. Google has said it bought Motorola Mobility in part because of its patents and history of innovation in mobile phones.\n\"We're pleased the court granted our request to invalidate Motorola's patent and welcome yet another step toward clarifying the cases between our companies,\" David Howard, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement.\nMotorola's lawyer, Zoe Butler of Powell Gilbert in London , didn't respond to a call for comment. Motorola's press office didn't immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.\nWhile the patent in the U.K. trial related to pager technology from the 1990s, the arguments centered on its application to newer mobile devices and computers that also rely on synchronizing messages statuses, such as whether an e-mail has been read by the user, or is unread.\nIf the patent were valid, Microsoft's Live Messenger instant-messaging system and Exchange ActiveSync protocol, used by the company's customers to synchronize e-mail statuses across devices, would have violated the intellectual property, according to the judgment.\nThe patent in the case had a so-called priority date of Aug. 31, 1995, when Motorola was creating technology for the first two-way pager system that would allow message recipients to respond to communications on the devices for the first time.\nSome claims in the patent \"add nothing inventive in my view,\" Arnold said.\nThe case is Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) v. Motorola Mobility Inc., case no. HC11C04536, High Court of London, Chancery Division (London).\nWindows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Surface: Those three product introductions summed up Microsoft's triumphs and challenges in 2012. Windows is Microsoft's flagship product and cash cow, and the new release seeks to maintain the company's desktop dominance while supporting efforts to move into mobile computing. Windows Phone 8 and Surface represent the company's efforts to become a player in smartphones and tablet computers \u2014 two areas where the company badly lags competitors.\nAll of a sudden, Google's expensive Motorola purchase is beginning to make sense. Google and Motorola are reportedly working on an advanced smartphone, currently codenamed the \"X Phone,\" which will serve as a direct competitor to the iPhone, the Wall Street Journal reports .\nGoogle paid $12.5 billion for Motorola last year , and while it seemed obvious that Moto would serve as a key way for Google to build its very own smartphone, the only benefit from the deal so far has been plenty of new patents.\nThe news doesn't come as much of a surprise \u2014 even Microsoft is reportedly working on a \"Surface\" phone of its own . In the end, both Google and Microsoft can only go so far when dealing with other phone manufacturers. For them to truly rival the iPhone, they will need to build their own devices.\nGoogle finally sold its Motorola Home division , which was responsible for cable set-top boxes, a few days ago to Arris for $2.35 billion.\nThe best way to start the new year is to start it without a hangover.\nSources: AAA, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.\nBOSTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) \u2014 More than 1-in-10 U.S. teen drivers report driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs on New Year's Eve, a survey indicates.\nThe survey sponsored by Liberty Mutual Insurance and Students Against Destructive Decisions, found New Year's Eve was the most common nights of the year for teens to get behind the wheel after drinking or using other drugs.\nHowever, the teens acknowledged this time of year was a hazardous time to be on the road: of the more than 1,700 teens surveyed, 49 percent consider driving on New Year's either very or extremely dangerous.\n\"There are approximately 3,000 teenage driving-related deaths a year, a third of which involve alcohol,\" Dave Melton, a driving safety expert with Liberty Mutual Insurance and managing director of global safety, said in a statement. \"Talk to your kids before New Year's celebrating begins and make sure they understand the importance of making smart, and possibly life-saving, decisions.\"\nThis year's survey findings indicated parents have become more accepting of alcohol usage by their teenage children compared to similar surveys in 2010 and 2011.\nDespite more than 150 cities or counties and 24 states adopting laws which hold social hosts liable for serving alcohol to minors, 47 percent of teens said they were allowed by their parents to go to parties where alcohol was served, 15 percent said they were allowed to host parties with alcohol, 37 percent said they were allowed to drink when their parents were present and 29 percent reported they were allowed to drink unsupervised.\nLiberty Mutual Insurance and SADD commissioned ORC International to conduct the survey. It was initiated with a series of four focus groups in Boston and Atlanta from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, followed by a survey of 1,708 U.S. eleventh and twelfth graders. The survey has a margin of error of 2.16 percentage points.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Daddy Mac's is in a tough location but is standing out far from all the rest of the small businesses that are family owned and opportunity driven. In the heart of Green Valley, this Sinatra d\u00e9cor style venue that hosts dining and entertainment. \"The concept is simple, to give you value when you walk in the door,\" Daddy Mac's.\nThe selection of entertainment ranges from open forum entertainment, classic rock, karaoke, comedy, live DJ's and more not to mention the best happy hour ever Monday through Friday from 4pm to 6pm with $1 draft beer and \u00bd off all cocktails.\nEvery Saturday Daddy Mac's hosts College Night to raise funds for UNLV Education Programs and Other Charities. Daddy Mac's is a perfect example of small businesses making big differences in their communities. This event features special performances and is welcome to ages 18 and over.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbcwjj b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbcwjj
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..976f83117028b95292440b174ac79f53ab23163f
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+{"text":"A small fad? Something that permanently changes the gaming landscape? Something that goes way beyond gaming uses?\nI see its available to buy and has my fav game Until Dawn 2 as a launch title.. I assume Until Dawn Is like Namco 4d horror a on rails gun game minus the cabinet blowing air on you when a door opens.. I heard the Star Wars game demo with the battle over the Death Star on Yavin looks amazing..\nHas anybody bought a VR yet and what are your thoughts?\nLast edited by Shinobi on Fri Oct 14, 2016 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.\nIt is going to be big I think. My pal has one. Going to see it tomorrow.\nWhy not just do a budleru of it all so its ready to go?\nBought it. Mainly because the PS4 games-wise hasn't really done anything that an Xbox 360 can't do in a slightly less polished way. VR is at least different.\nEarly impressions from demos mainly: The immersion is great. Sat in the cockpit of EVE Valkyrie... wow. Really stunning.\nOther things on it seem like good fun. Driveclub is oddly enjoyable. Thumper demo was right up my alley.\nI'm into it but I get bored of peripherals quite easily.\nIt's got potential and looks good, and I look forward to hearing more about it through reviews and gamers giving their impressions.\nIt could be exciting, it could be the way of the future of gaming (once the costs reduce which they will of course) if done well. I reserve judgement for now, but it is certainly interesting, possible fad or not.\nLike all add ons, itt'll get a few good games but it won't be bought by the masses so support will become an afterthought if it exists at all. In about a year the fad will have passed. In 2 it'll be pretty much dead.\nIts way better than i thought it was going to be , anyone doubting or knocking this amazing piece of kit , go try it !\nSo tempted by it to be fair, but the last thing I was really tempted with was no mans sky.... I know there is a huge difference in price but still.\nI heard fallout 4 and skyrim would get an update to work with them, has anyone tried it and is that the case still?\nI was hugely skeptical but, because I'm also hugely irresponsible, I bought it anyway.\nHaving spent a lot of time with it now, I struggle to find a way to describe the sensation you get when you play. I suppose for me, it's the first time in years that I've smiled as much or encountered the sense of wonder that VR inspires. Soaring through space with EVE, ducking evil clowns in Until Dawn, Diving to the Depths of the Ocean in PS Worlds and playing with friends in the Playroom have all been stunningly enjoyable experiences.\nDon't get me started on the Hatsune Miku live concerts, my god that's the most exciting\/incredible thing I've ever experienced!\nWhether or not it's the future largely depends on how widely these sets are adopted and whether developers can continue to find ways to ENHANCE experiences with VR, rather than just tack it on. From the games I've played so far, I wouldn't be surprised if VR was the next step forward for gaming. Of course, I only say that now having had the benefit of playing it. It's a very hard (and costly) sell if you don't have the chance to try before you buy.\nEither way, for me at least, the cost has justified itself already. Just hope there's even more games coming soon!\nI haven't tried it yet. I was just in a 'Game' shop, hoping there would be one to test, but, no.\n\"The screens were low res though, and that was my first big disappointment. But once I got going I didn't want it to end and I guess I got used to it.\"\nSo, what are people thinking of the resolution?\nIs the Until Dawn game a proper sequel or just an upgrade of the original?\nMegamixer wrote: Is the Until Dawn game a proper sequel or just an upgrade of the original?\nIt's an on-the-rails shooter (like HOTD). It uses the Until Dawn licence, so expect Clowns, Wendigo and other bits and pieces but it's not a 'proper' sequel. Good fun though.\nAs for the resolution, it's definitely noticeable in certain menu screens or when viewing non-VR content but once you get going, you don't notice it.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"About 23,000 patients may have received ineffective vaccines or medications between October 2017 and November 2018 at Ventura, Calif.-based Ventura County Health Care Agency, according to VC Star.\nMost of the patients were adults, but about 2,300 patients were 18 or under and about 1,255 patients are under the age of 6. Ventura County Health Care Agency is contacting high-risk patients, such as families with children under 6 and those with chronic conditions, and urging them to get revaccinated at its clinics for free.\nHealth officials attribute the ineffective vaccines to a packaging process change that took place in October 2017. The agency said it moved to the new packaging process to make sure the vaccines and medications were in a cool and controlled environment during delivery.\n\"We recently discovered that this performance improvement effort to change packaging for safety may have exposed the vaccines and medications to cooler than recommended temperatures,\" Ventura County Health Care Agency told VC Star.\nThe agency said it is uncertain of how much the temperature change affected the vaccines and medications, but cautions all patients to be revaccinated and receive treatment. The agency extended its clinic hours to accommodate the revaccinations.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Bring 1 gallon of water to a furious boil. Remove from the heat.\nLet the tea bags steep in the hot water for precisely 15 minutes. Remove the tea bags and mix 1\/2 - 1 cup of sugar (add more to taste) into the hot tea. Stir until sugar is dissolved.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I had a chance to speak with Michael Wareham, who in August of last year came from the Lowes Food on International to take on the job of reorganizing, refreshing, and expanding the beer and wine half of Pavilion. He said that in the last nine months they've seen consistent growth sales growth, month-over-month, and that there are a lot of exciting things coming for the store, including an additional 2,000 sq\/ft warehouse expansion, beautiful new flooring, and of course MORE BEER!\nOf course, Michael and I got to chatting about our favorite beers, trends in the industry, and all that. Turns out his all-time favorite is Sierra Nevada's Barrel-Aged Hoptimum, which is a seasonal IPA that all hop-heads love, but then aged in bourbon barrels and only available on-site at the brewery's gift shop (Asheville\/Fletcher, NC). I didn't even know that this beer existed, but now that I do, it's risen to the top of my \"must have\" list!\nThe Piggly Wiggly at The Market Common is the undisputed go-to when you're in Myrtle Beach. They've got it all, from what's new and hot to the tried and true, and of course there's the supremely knowledgeable Michael Byrd, store operator, continuing to blaze the trail for the whole area. Still, while the Pig is still legendary, sometimes the trek into town isn't always the easiest option for those of us on the north end, especially as the tourist traffic is in full swing from now until after Labor Day.\nThe craft beer market itself has exploded and according the National Brewers Association, craft beer made up 12% of the national beer market. The means roughly one is every ten beers sold is a craft beer. By 2020 that percentage is expected to hit 20%. That's a piece of pie that no one wants to miss out on, and whether you're selling it or drinking it, you shouldn't either!\nThe craft beer aisle at Pavilion Discount Beverages in North Myrtle Beach. Photo by Kristen West for The Surge.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Sight: Retail box: Lighting source: 1-600x continuous magnification system. Vga av usb. Camera demo. Laser wave length: Nitrogen waterproof bird watching hunting binoculars 10x42 telescope. Magnesium chassis + rubber armoring. 7x golf range finder. Wholesale sunglasses women saracoco. 7.5 degrees. For telescopes and camera dslr lens. Large magnifier.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbdskv b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbdskv
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..592e61c6d0abf498511ab709f77ce505886ef34e
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"If you are in the SF Bay Area come visit us at the show.\nWould guess this is what you're looking for.\nI apologize but at the time the question was asked I could not say anything about any possible agreements.\nAt AES we did show Atmosphere, Trilogy, and Stylus running on Receptor. I still don't know if we have an agreement with Spectrasonics or not.\nWith the upcoming Receptor software update, you will be able to copy the dll and the data file to Receptor, click install, write down the challenge, get a response from the Spectrasonics website, and enter the response in Receptor. This does not work with the shipping software, only with the new version.\nYou will need the Windows dll, so this may be a problem for Mac users. It would help if you expressed your desire to see these products on Receptor to Spectrasonics.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Select a page below to view curated data from cited sources about that topic.\nDon't forget to bookmark this page for future reference.\nThe post Lawnstarter Market and Industry Statistics Resource List appeared first on Lawnstarter.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Please READ this topic before starting a topic for your team in this sub-sections. When you do start the topic, make sure you are the founder \/ leader or just someone people can contact about joining your team. And please remember that participating in flame wars will be severely punished. General forum rules apply. NO plagiarism in any case. If you are posting information (i.e. - shift points) that did not originate from this forums, by all means, give the author \/ source proper credit. Violator will be given a verbal warning on first offence and an actual warning thereafter.\nan older team just never made official. we are sidewinder orginally from calgary alberta now in edmonton alberta. we mostly play idav3 untill we can get our hands on either 7AA or 8 or zero.\nwe are still playing idav3 tho now with next to none for machines in ab we are emulating it but always open to a challenge.\ni will post some more details and re do this thread a bit once we get everything together.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Low GI (40-30-30): Bars that are either 40% carb, 30% protein, 30% fat or have a low glycemic index for a gradual blood sugar rise.\nThis entry was posted in Dietitians Picks, Product Reviews and tagged healthy eating tips by admin. Bookmark the permalink.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Add a ClipTie recloseable feature to many types of bags with our tin-tie applicators. Keep your product fresh and closed with this simple clip solution.\nAdvantages: ClipTie is a simple and smart reclosable solution for block bottom or gusseted bags. Easy to open, easy to close.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbejrk b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbejrk
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..485ad9827c8b1b3f5fac584727529dcda96f7a9d
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Design concept. Modern room with yellow \"color spots\", which are very appropriate in the bedroom, meeting the sun in the afternoon. The dressing area is separated by a sliding mirror sliding system so as not to load the room with wardrobes and make the space visually freer. For the dressing table is allocated a place perfectly lit by natural light. And the bed is chosen with a soft light finish that gives a feeling of \"airiness\". The contrasting dark color of the shelves and the drywall construction behind the bed only emphasizes how easily and lightly the rest of the interior elements are perceived.\nThe main difficulties when working on a project. Visualization is difficult to convey the \"airiness\" of the bedroom, which is created by soft textiles, glass and mirror surfaces, light wooden floor and pleasant to the touch texture of the wallpaper.\nThe main advantages of the implemented project over the existing one. Due to contrasting dark designs and yellow wallpapers, it turned out to be a good way to zone a sleeping place, which for easy falling asleep should be perceived as a cozy little space. Spot ceiling lights are a great help in zoning rooms.\nThe main materials used in the interior. A floor from a light laminate, wall-paper, glass surfaces of curbstones.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"South Africa's Millennium Development Goals country report 2005.\nThe youth have the power to change the future. The youth of today are well-educated; they are brimming with knowledge in information technology, conservation and environmental awareness and are well-informed on the HIV\/AIDS epidemic, the scourge of Africa.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"It's not that we don't like expressing gratitude but sometimes the cards to say thanks are just so damn cheesy and sappy. Either we cringe in giving them or the person receiving it cringes because it's over the top or comes across disingenuous.\nSo, we're keeping it real with our new thank you cards. It's possible to say thanks with snark and style, especially when the snark is self-referential, the typography, bold and the patterns, fun.\nYou can purchase any of these thank yous with edge at our Etsy shop or our various stockists.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Chocolate is the universal holiday gift idea. It's the perfect gift for a hostess, a client, a hard to shop for loved one or the person who has everything. Nearly everyone loves a good chocolate. The problem is that with so many people giving chocolates as the go-to gift, it can seem a little \"been there, done that\". So how do you up your gift giving game this year with chocolate gifts that stand out?\n1. Choose Quality \u2013 The key to giving a chocolate gift that will be truly memorable is select a gift that is unique and offers superior taste and quality. Rather then grabbing a mass-produced box of chocolates off the grocery store shelf, opt for hand made, artisan chocolates that will surprise your loved ones and impress your colleagues! The winter wonderland inspired Holiday 2018 collection from JACEK is a great example: it is almost to pretty to eat and creates a memorable and sophisticated gift that shows a lot of thought and love went into this gift! JACEK is a multi-award winning Canadian chocolatier known for creating non-traditional, limited \"collections\" of artisan chocolates with high-end visual appeal. Their products can be purchased from their online store and are cold-shipped across Canada. Additionally, JACEK has 3 boutiques and several partner retailers in Alberta, and is currently expanding across the country.\n2. Give Variety \u2013 When giving chocolate as a gift to a colleague, client or hostess who you may not know well, variety is important! That's why we love the Holiday Box of Joy from JACEK! It includes a variety of different chocolate goodies so that there's sure to be something for everyone! It also comes in a few different sizes to suit your budget. It's also a great choice for a \"group gift\" for families on your list because it has a little something for everyone!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"121 Best Bio Toilets And Composting Toilets Images On Pinterest Throughout Eco Friendly Toilets Plan | Jenniferumphress.com eco friendly toilet design. eco friendly toilet paper uk. eco-friendly chemical toilet fluid.\nLow Flush Eco Friendly Toilet Go Green Ecofriendly Pinterest With Regard To Eco Friendly Toilets Decorating. Eco Friendly Toilets Simple Flush Dual Flush Kit Eco Friendly Toilet Throughout Eco Friendly Toilets Ideas. 69 Best Eco Friendly Toilets Images On Pinterest Toilet Toto In Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. Eco Friendly Toilets And Price To Change Your Life Good House Idea With Regard To Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. What You Need To Know About Eco Friendly Toilets Modernize In Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. Eco Friendly Toilet Interior Dodgehighfares Eco Friendly With Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Eco Friendly Toilets Hardis With Regard To Eco Friendly Toilets Ideas. Eco Friendly Public Toilets Prefabricated Houses Structures With Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. Toilet Talk Eco Friendly Toilets Within Eco Friendly Toilets Decorating. Environmentally Friendly Toilets Regarding Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. Eco Friendly Toilets Toilets Bidets For Sale Decorplanet Pertaining To Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. What You Need To Know About Eco Friendly Toilets Modernize Pertaining To Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Green Portable Toilet An Eco Friendly Waste Disposal Area Green In Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. Are These The Toilets Of The Future Eco Friendly Concept Loos That Intended For Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Eco Friendly Toilets Toilets Bidets For Sale Decorplanet In Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Are These The Toilets Of The Future Eco Friendly Concept Loos That In Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Eco Friendly Dual Flush Toilets Available At Polaris For Eco Friendly Toilets Decorating. Eco Friendly Toilets Friendly Sink And Toilet Water Flows From Sink Throughout Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. 5 Eco Friendly Bio Toilets That Can Bring A Sanitation Revolution In Throughout Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. 121 Best Bio Toilets And Composting Toilets Images On Pinterest Throughout Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. What To Consider When Buying An Eco Friendly Toilet Greencity Plumber Regarding Eco Friendly Toilets Prepare. China Eco Friendly Mobile Plastic Prefab Portable Toilets Buy In Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. Eco Friendly Portable Restrooms Solar Powered Toilet Within Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. Indian Doctor Saves Water And Lives With Eco Friendly Toilets In Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. 53 Multi Functional Toilets Regarding Eco Friendly Toilets Plan. Eco Friendly Toilets Archives Kitchen Bath Trends In Eco Friendly Toilets Renovation. Environmentally Friendly Toilets With Eco Toilet Prepare 4 Within Eco Friendly Toilets Decorating. Environmentally Friendly Toilets Inside Eco Friendly Toilets Decorating.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbfiqp b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbfiqp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..4c5cd494e2998cf281a4d999bd2e3a7ad9d69b26
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Vancity Noms: Chambar + Cartems + The Fairmount - NYE 2017!\nYea, that was my NYE for ya. Quite a memorable one, to say the least.\nKind of expensive for what it was...one lone piece of sausage! Was it worth it? Yes and no. The quality was there, and the sausage was indisputably juicy, but it lacked punch.\nBacon? MORE LIKE FULL FLEDGED SLABS OF PORK BELLY!! Not that I'm complaining. I'M ALL ABOUT DAT FAT YOO. The pork belly (err, bacon) was rendered \"qq\" (Taiwanse slang for chewiness with bite) which heightened the mouthfeel. The sweetness of the maple glaze toyed with the savouriness of the bacon, which was further augmented by the sweet slices of granny smith.\nThe chimchurri was the main attraction, with the steak being decidingly average (as far as brunch steaks go.) Served medium-rare (as requested) but not as tender as I would've liked. The GF toast on the other hand, was magnificent! One could not tell that it was wheat-free, Jeremy sampled some and he was just as impressed.\nLooking back at my review from 2015 (in which I ordered the same thing) it looks like they modified the dish somewhat, they no longer pile the paella with arugula (although there was a leaf or two in there) or avo! Nonetheless, the flavours melded together. However, the $19 price tag was questionable in that it wasn't as good as we were expecting. The general consensus was that the paella at Medina trumps Chambar's (present day) version.\nOne cannot brunch at Chambar (or Medina for that matter) without trying one of their famed waffles! Having downed many a Medina waffle, Jeremy opted for the one with maple syrup. Fluffy with a crispy exterior to boot, their waffles are a must order!\nQuite a nice way to serve sugar, I must say.\nZoning in on dem seasonal flavours while they last! This over a gingerbread cookie ANY DAY! Moist and pimped with essences of gingerbread, this was evocative of Christmas alright.\nThis has been my to-go donut for the month of December (I think I've had it 4 times already.) So good it warrants a repeat.\nTHIS BOY HERE CAN'T FUNCTION WITHOUT HIS CAFFEINE!\nFIRST DRESS OF THE NIGHT!\nTHE PARTY BEFORE THE PARTY.\nMORE DRANKSS UP IN HURRR. GIN + TONIC.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The temporary garden claimed the space at the front of Knowlton Hall creating a space to meet, gather, and explore. The contemporary forms of the garden elements created an image of the landscape program reflecting its progressive focus.\nFive unique planter forms were designed to hold young River Birch trees, in order to have a larger spatial and aesthetic impact, the planters each tilted at a different angle allowing the trees to combine to make a dense Bosque.\nViewed from above, the garden's impact on how the space was viewed and used was apparent. Desire lines were maintained while new edges and spaces articulated.\nThe temporary garden was maintained through the fall and winter months allowing 1000 Ohio native bare-root trees to be included in the garden. The trees were temporarily rooted in lines of decomposed granite.\nIn order to reclaim an area from the concrete plaza, 100 score joints were cut into the concrete and seeded with grass. As the seeds germinated a green figure was imposed on the normally stark\/grey plaza.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Loyola College of Law Archives collects all materials related to the history and culture of the College of Law. Our offices are located in the administrative suite of the Law Library. The Archives has papers from former deans, current and former faculty, alumni, and ephemera from various University departments and College of Law student associations. The Archives collections are from approximately 1920 to present and illustrate the development of the University and the College of Law. Some former deans and faculty papers are from Dean Klebba, Dean Lorio, and Prof. Rousseau. The Archives collections are in a variety of formats, including audio recordings of the 1973 Louisiana Constitutional Convention and the Broadway Campus architectural drawings. In addition to Loyola matters we also have materials from regional organizations, including the Louisiana Law Institute and the New Orleans Association of Law Librarians. The College of Law Archives collections must be viewed within the Law Library, but photocopy services are available. If you are interested in viewing our collections, please email the archives at mpope@loyno.edu.\nThe Law Library has cataloged some archival materials published by the faculty and departments of the College of Law. This material has a location of \"Archives\" in the Library catalog and can be checked-out to Loyola faculty and staff. Please see the Law Library Circulation Desk for assistance.\nWin-Shin S. Chiang Papers (.41 linear feet). 1979-1986. Win-Shin S. Chiang was the law library director and professor at the College of Law from 1976 to 1987. The collection includes a detailed overview of the planning and relocation of the College of Law to the Broadway Campus in 1986. The papers include architectural drawings, reports, meeting minutes, and correspondence with emphasis on the Law Library.\nFrederick J. Gisevius Papers (1 linear foot). 1970-1994. Frederick J. Gisevius was a 1936 graduate of the College of Law and a practitioner in New Orleans. This collection contains work related documents including briefs, case files, correspondence, and a 1987 signed photograph by Chief Justice Pascal F. Calogero, Jr.\nJames M. Klebba Papers (6.91 linear feet). 1963-1996. Prof. James M. Klebba, Emeritus, began teaching at the College of Law in 1973, tenured in 1980, and was interim dean from August 1989 to July 1990 and August 2001 to July 2003. This collection contains work related documents, research on environmental law, and one manuscript. Subjects include the College of Law and University financial relations, College of Law autonomy, the Eastern European Summer Program, faculty salaries, budgets, and fundraising. It also includes statistics on bar passage, University giving, endowments, and expenditures.\nKathryn V. Lorio Louisiana Law Institute Papers (4.36 linear feet). Circa 1982-2009. This collection consists of papers from Prof. Lorio's committee work at the Louisiana Law Institute. Included are notes, numerous committee revisions, and correspondence predominantly from the Marriage-Persons Committee and the Successions and Donations Committee.\nDennis L. Rousseau Papers (9.33 linear feet). 1954-2000. Prof. Dennis L. Rousseau, Emeritus, began teaching at the College of Law in 1959, tenured in 1969, and was executive assistant to the president from 1970 to 1974. This collection contains work related documents from committee work at Loyola University, the Louisiana Law Institute, and case files. Prof. Rousseau was an active member of the Loyola University community, participating in the Board of Directors, President's Council, Corporate Council, Faculty Council, Board of Regents, Budget and Finance Committees, and Administrative Council. Subjects include the development of Loyola University facilities over eighteen years, and University policies on disruption and protest, and affirmative action.\nCommittee on Bill of Rights and Elections Audio Tape Collection (1.83 linear feet). March 1973-December 1973. This collection contains 1 folder and 49 audio tapes purchased on April 9, 1998 by Prof. James E. Viator from the Louisiana State Archives. The audio tapes are recordings of the committee sessions during the 1973 Louisiana Constitutional Convention.\nLouisiana Law Institute Collection (8.25 linear feet). 1954-2008. This collection includes committee revisions, reports and minutes arranged by committee and date. Some committee reporters and members are current and former deans, faculty, and alumni of the College of Law, including Judge Adrian G. Duplantier, Sr., Joseph H. Lawson, Kathryn V. Lorio, John J. McAulay, Antonio E. Papale Sr., Gerard A. Rault Jr., Janet Mary Riley, and Dian Tooley-Knoblett. Some revisions have handwritten notes by Kathryn V. Lorio, Joseph H. Lawson, and Janet Mary Riley.\nLoyola College of Law Ephemera (5 linear feet). Circa 1923-2015. This collection contains printed matter, photographs and artifacts produced from the activities of the College of Law. Also included are news clippings and articles about the College of Law. This collection does not have financial and administrative records, or correspondence.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Pluots are some of our favorite fruits. Created by cross-breeding apricots and plums, there are dozens of varieties with an amazing range of color and flavor. All through the summer, Blossom Bluff Orchards picks each variety at its peak: Dapple Dandy, Honey Punch, Flavor Queen, Black Kat & Dapple Jack were all added to a sour blonde ale and aged in wine barrels to create this funky oak-aged brew.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"BlondyCeres MicheleBelle jasmin. Sheilafullsex. VenusMooon. NiceLiana.\nFreddyAndShainLeggyGoddesssweetNinaxLilithDreams .RanyaJonesNatusika12YanasHotSubmissiveGiulia .sladkoezhkaa0Ginger1AsianSakurasladkoezhkaa .DommeSoniaEroticGirlsxxxAnelisseBelluciSheilafullsex .wedCharlottemikejhonsonBenderShinyAss2tsperfectOFSEXx .Natusika12AnelisseBellucitdizzle4realselevinexx .1HotASIANdoLLandyfitnesshotSheilafullsexRssexy69 .BalticCherryStar4GuysLindaMarshallDIVAKITTY1 .xpetitsalopeCarlaSquirt25MusculeBlondGUYNATHALIAPARGUT .BritanyblueBrayanemlsweetNinaxBryanMaxx .CarlaSquirt25LilithDreamsDommeSoniaJasonWylde .\ntdizzle4realsMayaRossMariamSweetMrkiskadakota .MariamSweetMrRhodJohnsonstrastnaayalatinasexy31 .MusculeBlondGUY1AsianSakuratdizzle4realsPuffyMary .ValeriaCanoVenusMooonsladkoezhkaaValeriaCano .RhodJohnsonsofisexx00tdizzle4realsDenisseZamora .BenderShinyAssOllga1975AntuanWalterLeggyGoddess .GrimShreddedlatinasexy31LucyRiveraGiuliaHotXXX .GrimShreddedBalticCherrySTACYHONEYsofisexx00 .LyndaCartertsMarcoRavenMalikaMuslimstrastnaaya .xpetitsalopeBryanMaxxwedCharlotteGorgeousAlana .kiskadakotaWildLadies69TWEEKSTRONGDenisseZamora .","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbhgyb b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbhgyb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..0c56028f9348202dad4594e4e814afe1bbc423be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbhgyb
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"also interested in images and full specs as well.\nwhen i get off work today, i will pm everyone pics.\npm's sent to those that requested more info.\ntricked out or PL bushies, cash, or other interesting guns.\nTake it to the top bum bump bump bump bump.\nsomeone throw me some offers!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Our Boarding Facilities will allow your pet to be as comfortable as possible while you are away.\nPlease use the form below to request your prescription refill or food item. This will save you time when picking up your order. Please allow 24 hours for order processing.\n\u00a9 2019 Grimsby Animal Hospital in Grimsby, Ontario.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Regional Medical Research Centre RMRC recruitment 2017-18 (Indian Council of Medical Research) notification for 03 Scientist 'C' and Scientist 'B' posts. All legible and interested candidates can apply on or before (07-07-2017). Further information about the Regional Medical Research Centre courses and exams, vacancies, salary details, RMRC careers, application fee, educational qualifications and all other details\/information about this post is mentioned in details below.\nSalary\/Pay and Grade Pay - For Scientist 'C' post, the payable salary will be Rs 15,600 - 39,100 with Rs 6,600 grade pay and for Scientist 'B' posts, the payable salary will be Rs 15,600 - 39,100 with Rs 5,400 grade pay. Further information about salary details is mentioned in the detailed advertisement.\nAge Limit - For RMRC recruitment, candidate age should be less than 40 years. To know more about age details, click on the detailed advertisement.\nEducational Qualifications - Candidates have must done 10th (matriculation), 12th, a graduate degree, MBBS degree recognized by MCI, master's degree in microbiology or it's equivalent\/relevant\/higher qualification from a recognized board or university. To know more about educational qualification details, see the advertisement. If you are not graduated then, click here for 10th and 12th based jobs.\nSelection Method - For recruitment in the Regional Medical Research Centre, the candidate will be selected on the basis of their performance in written test and then personal interview. Candidates must be prepared for these tests.\nWork Experience - Candidates must have 3-4 years of research\/teaching experience in relevant areas. For more information about work experience required for these posts, go through the detailed advertisement.\nHow to Apply - All legible and interested candidates have to download an application form from official website http:\/\/rmrc.res.in or from the given link below.\nLast Date for Submitting Application Form - All candidates must apply on or before (07-07-2017). After the last date, no application form will be submitted.\nApplication Fee - The application fee will be Rs 500 for General\/OBC category candidates and Rs 100 for SC\/ST\/PWD category candidates. Persons with disabilities are also not required to pay any application fee. Regular employees of RMRC applying for the higher position are too not required to pay any application fee. Candidates have to pay the fee via demand draft enclosed within the envelope. To know more about application fee details for this recruitment, click on the detailed advertisement.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"If you believe it you can achieve it! I took a big step 10 months ago and cut off a lot of colored damaged hair. All the way back down to roughly 2-4 inches of hair all over. And 10 months later I do not regret it at all! This is my photo proof that you can do it too! Don't be afraid to let go of those ratty ends because the hair that you will gain in return will be 100 times better than the ratty ends that you are getting rid of.\nAnd I also want to say to anybody who is discouraged about length that in due time you will get it! I thought my hair would NEVER grow. Right after my initial bc I was sad sad sad. I had never had less than 2 inches above shoulder length hair, and I definitely never had nappy hair! It was a new experience for me, one that I had to adjust to. But by looking at others fotki's and online hair albums I saw that in time, if I treated my hair right by conditioning, protective styling, and easy handling of my hair (ie, no pulling, tugging, heat, tight hairstyles etc), I could see the same level of success too! And I just want to let anybody out there who may be down and about about their hair to just hold on, be patient, and you will get there!\nBut you have to stay strong.\nI love wearing my hair in high ponytails (one reason why I favor natural hair over relaxed, sometimes my \"kitchen\" area had a mini fro going on and it looked crazy). I am not at a complete high ponytail now as some pieces fly out of it before I can put the band around it, but maybe in a few months I can get every single braid in there.\nUh....these thangs took about 8 hours or so to do. The reason why they took so long was because I decided to part my hair with my fingers this time instead of grab and go.\nLet me tell you, I deep conditioned my hair before I started twisting it right, I looked at my hands and they were covered in glitter! Do you know the fools at John Frieda's use GLITTER in their Frizz Ease Deep Conditioner?!?!?! You talking about heated.....they could have told somebody on the bottle they did that mess or something....the only question I have to ask is why?\nI would want this one. This bob shape where it is longer in the front then the back. Im too chicken to do it though. Maybe one day though my front length will catch up to the back because the back is on the move!\nI am such a lazy daisy when it comes to being thorough with doing my hair that I never take the time out EVER to part all the way through my hair front to back when I do twists. I saw how neat Kemi's hair looks in twists and she says she finger parts so I decided to give it a shot because comb parting in this jungle of napps is for the dogs.\nIt could have been neater but as long as I can see my scalp for right now, Im not complaining. Also now when I do updos and half up and down styles my hair can look a little bit more neat and professionally done instead of bootlegged like it normally does.\nI also did not go through the process of parting out rows and then splitting them down into little sections. All of that is too tedious and time consuming and a waste of time since the parts aren't visible like that. I had about 8 or so jumbo braids in the back of my hair (the front still had flat twists and regular twists in it and those parts were the guide for that section) and took each section down one by one and finger parted twists out that way.\nI did it this way because when I use to get microbraids put in my hair my cousin never parted row by row, but would section out big sections of hair and braid from there. It makes it look more natural and all that jazz.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"ARGIRIS SER: Ring the alarm! Barcelona edition.\nRing the alarm! Barcelona edition.\nROOT ROOT! My friends from ROOT BOOT did it again! After Thessaloniki(GR) and Sofia(BG) it was Barcelona's time!\nSo here is a small report!\nDeluxe pain. New artwork for silk print.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbiavs b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbiavs
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..d877fad48f0f5cc354d983c646975b2d9d78239e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbiavs
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"A free concert by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Saturday has been moved from NorthPark Center to the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.\nJaap van Zweden will conduct the DSO in a performance of works by Rossini, Strauss and Wagner. The concert had been slated for the CenterPark Garden but was moved because of the weather forecast, according to a press release from the mall.\nDoors will open at 7 p.m. The concert begins at 8. Details are available at mydso.com.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Holy crap the sharks are going good. I've got ten about done and ten more to go. On top of that I'm working on Kranix and two more figures. This is going to be one hellacious showing at Iacon One. It looks like I'll do two dioramas and have a couple of CSF sets to give away. I hope I win something in the diorama category. We'll see how it goes.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Orchard Garden Hotel is an eco-friendly property in the heart of San Francisco. This property offers access for travelers with disabilities. An additional description has been posted by the hotel titled \"San Francisco's 'Green' Boutique Hotel.\"\n1 room. 600 sq. ft. total.\nAir-Conditioned. Cable TV. Movies. Coffee Maker. Kitchen. Hair Dryer. Data Line. Voice Mail.\n24-Hour Security. Concierge. 24-Hour Room Service. Valet\/Laundry. Valet Parking. Wake Up Service.\nBar\/Lounge. Business Center. Fitness Center. Pool, Indoor. Restaurant.\nInterior Room Entrance. Non-Smoking Hotel. Non-Smoking Rooms. Self Parking.\nAre you staging or managing an event at the Orchard Garden Hotel? To post your event(s) online, please click here.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"A fish\/Koi pond or Water Garden as it is sometimes referred to is made up of many different parts and when those parts are assembled together correctly by a professional pond contractor builder\/installer like Nature Scapes serving the Grafton, Hanover, New London, & Concord, New Hampshire and New England surrounding Areas. We form a beautiful and naturalistic work of art that changes personality with the time of day.\nAre you interested in installing a water feature in your New England area yard, but concerned about the safety and liabilities of having a pond? Or are you apprehensive about taking on the responsibility of maintaining a full-fledged ecosystem?\nLandscape Fountains provide homeowners with a unique and creative way to decorate their gardens & outdoor living space. Many homeowners desire the soothing sounds of running water, but are just not ready for a pond or simply can't afford one. Aquascape's handcrafted decorative line, provides the perfect solution for small, entry-level water features.\nWater is quickly becoming an \"endangered species\" on our blue planet. Urban growth around the New England Surrounding Area increases stormwater runoff, which in turn harms our natural waterways. All life requires water for survival.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Food theme: creation pastries, cupcake, birthday cakes, presentation of recipes, sales of food products, etc.\nThis online shop can be used to present your products, without necessarily proposing a method of payment.\nThis is ideal if you want for example, show your creations in pastries, or anything that has to do with the food industry.\nYou can also opt for this shop if you want to take pre-orders of your clients.\nYou can make dishes or pastries at the request, after receiving the payment (to set yourself on the site).\nFor the payment, you can ask a settlement by Paypal, or upon delivery.\nThis business of \"home\" is very much in vogue in recent years: the cupcakes, the layer cake, birthday cakes, the pastries Orientales, or even meals for events such as marriage or birth.\nOn social networks, such as Facebook groups, you could do your advertising and make your products more easily, while being Professional.\nThis online store will be delivered with a few products, photos, categories to illustrate the operation of the shop.\nYou can remove them in a few minutes and replace them with your products.\nMultilingual and Multicurrency: if ever you're going export you to the world!\nthem modes of payment : Paypal, payment by cheque and bank transfer are already installed and ready to accommodate your bank details.\nthem modes of transport : home delivery, or back to your home, price, time, etc.\nFinally, we strongly advise you to write pages with original descriptions, and some nice pictures.\nDon't forget that clients are easier to complete an order if your creations are well developed.\nTo start, we recommend that you read the official Prestashop Guide.\nOtherwise, we also offer individual guidance through our online training for Prestashop.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbidjx b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbidjx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..0d9f769379ae7d337cc8c107097306cb9c382e3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbidjx
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"Who watches movies anymore and doesn&#39;t notice what&#39;s going on?<br\/><br\/>Notice most of the evil people are white, except for one black cop.<br\/><br\/>The protagonist and her possible lesbian lover, are cuban and black.<br\/><br\/>This isn&#39;t a one-time thing, either. This racial scenario is played out over and over again, in the majority of movies over the last few years.<br\/><br\/>I don&#39;t have the stomach for the entertainment elites manipulative brain washing. I&#39;m sure this agenda works on millennials, though.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The foundation of your business success is based on the systems running your operations.\nWithout a well-built CRM your business will continue to struggle. Take advantage of a proven, certified expert who can provide you with the strategy, technology and expertise to help you build your business, streamline your operations and automate your sales and marketing.\nClaim your free 30 minute consultation with Daniel and identify areas of opportunity where your business has the potential for massive growth and cost savings.\nOur sales are up over 50% from before we came to Accelerator. We had an email go out over the weekend from the Indoctrination series and it offered a free pound of ground beef and the people went crazy over that.\nOf course these were all Daniel's ideas.I just wanted to send a note and tell you thanks! There's great things in our future thanks to Daniel and Infusionsoft!\nWe have been working with Daniel Bussius for the past year on many different projects. He is very responsive, and very intelligent when it comes to market\/sales funnels.\nWe originally hired Daniel to create an internal workflow for our business, automating many of our \"standard\" tasks, create reporting and tasks for our team to follow as projects flow through our pipeline. He has listened, and developed a totally customized plan that we currently use today as a company.\nSince then we have done several projects together, and Daniel has proven to be professional and efficient through out every project. Highly recommended!\nI've been working with Daniel Bussius from In the Mix for some time now. He has created some very complicated sequences for me in Infusionsoft and has helped me to lead my contacts through buying decisions based on drive theory.\nHe's smart, efficient, extremely well-educated in Infusionsoft, level-headed, knowledgeable about all forms of online marketing, and an expert problem-solver.\nI would recommend him to any business looking to maximize their Infusionsoft account and maximize sales and customer satisfaction in the process.\nWe have been very pleased with Daniel's services. He is extremely knowledgeable about Infusionsoft and how to implement it for various business situations. Not only does he have deep knowledge of the software, he has experience working with various customers in different industries and understands their specific business needs.\nDaniel is a good listener, is very responsive and a pleasure to work with. We highly recommend that you reach out to Daniel for your Infusionsoft related projects. We believe that you will be pleased like us! California Counsel Group, Inc.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The military says the fugitive warlord is now weak and ineffective, and no longer poses any significant threat to the country's security.\nThe ruins of a house burn down by the LRA in the Central African Republic (file photo).\nUganda: Rebel Kony Losing Control?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"We are currently advising the GAWA Microfinance Fund, the Global Financial Inclusion Fund and the Magallanes Impacto FIL Fund.\nWho are the investors in the Funds?\nInstitutions and individuals who share social values and want to implement socially responsible investment practices. They want to generate positive social impact while preserving their capital. The investors are not thinking about philanthropy, they are thinking of how to have an impact through a financially sustainable.\nFinancial return expectations will vary according to each fund's investment theme, but there is a commitment to delivering reasonable risk-adjusted returns.\nSolid back office platform that allows to provide accurate and timely information to investors.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The 2018 FIA Formula 3 European Champion Mick Schumacher has entered the Ferrari family after signing a contract with the Ferrari Driver Academy.\nMick, who will be racing in the 2019 FIA Formula 2 Championship, will be taking part in the pre-season preparation activities with fellow FDA drivers starting next week.\n\"I am thrilled that Ferrari has entered a partnership with me and my next future in motorsport will be in red, being part of the Ferrari Driver Academy and also of the Scuderia Ferrari Family,\" said Mick Schumacher.\n\"Again, this is another step forward in the right direction, and I can only profit from the immense amount of expertise bundled there. Be sure I will make everything to extract whatever helps me achieve my dream, racing in Formula 1.\n\"It is more than obvious that Ferrari has a big place in my heart since I was born and also in the hearts of our family, so I am delighted on a personal level about this opportunity as well. At this stage it is however also time to say thank you to my family, friends and partners who supported me all along and helped me arrive at this point.\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbjetp b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbjetp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..c1277b29f9b4bf3fc6f83549578626e55990e4c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbjetp
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"It can not be denied that the fashion for Nike Air Force 1 Low Velvet Rose sneakers, i.e. massive-looking soles \/ uppers, has already entered the mainstream. Among the most popular silhouettes we can find the Fila Disruptor model, which perfectly fit into the Sizeer's clients and post Tumblrowa fashion. However, this is not the end of their offer, which is just expanding with the FILA Barricade model.This model originally appeared on the market in 1997 and it immediately shows the impact of competition from that period, even the idea straight from Nike Air More Uptempo. What distinguishes this model are five separate panels on the side with the inscription with the name of the brand. When we add to this interesting-looking eyelets for shoelaces and an aggressive looking sole, we gain an interesting alternative for Disruptors.\nNow they had Air Jordan 1 Turbo Green shoes at the workshop, and the fruit of their hard work are two color versions. We can choose a variant with white and red accents and a black option with delicate blue inserts. The upper is based on a leather upper with suede elements and side panels with boucle - decorative twisted yarn with loops. The name of the New York brand appears on the loop on the tongue and on the back of the upper.As part of this venture, a baseball cap will also be available for sale. They will appear in the same color variants as the shoes, and on the sides will be the same decorative material. Caps are additionally finished with reflective piping.\nIndeed an effective Air Jordan 6 mixture is amply enough, which could be similar to a simple red and white pair actually makes three colors. A subtle beige touch that contrasts slightly with the immaculate white to end with a detonating use of a fiery red. Nevertheless this red, although loud, is subtly brought in the form of keys, especially in the seams, and the silhouette of the swoosh. An explosive cocktail for an effective color pattern without being banal or exuberant.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"To call it a payday would be an understatement.\nThe American Gambling Association has released Nielsen Sports projections for the revenue implications of legalized sports betting on the NBA and MLB.\nThe projections indicate the two leagues will earn a combined $1.685 billion from the burgeoning sports betting industry.\nMore than that, the four major sports leagues combined will see a revenue boost in the billions from legal sports betting.\n\"The four major sports leagues will earn a collective $4.2 billion from widely available legal sports betting, further proving that working together with the gaming industry will pay dividends for all sports stakeholders,\" said Sara Slane, AGA Senior Vice President of Public Affairs, in a press release.\nNielsen Sports' study says the MLB could earn up to $1.1 billion a year while the NBA could earn $585 million.\nNielsen's methodology takes into account money the leagues gain from two sources: fan engagement and gaming-related revenue.\nNielsen predicts that the MLB will earn $952 million from fan engagement and $154 million from gaming-related revenue.\nThe main source in the increase of revenue from fan engagement will come from ticket sales, Nielsen noted. They foresee a 12.2-percent increase in ticket sales in the post-PASPA world, from $3.661 billion to an estimated $4.109 billion.\nMerchandise will account for the lowest rise in revenue. Nielsen predicts a 3.4-percent rise from $660 million to $683 million.\nKeep in mind that the MLB season is about twice as long as the NBA season, resulting in a much higher predicted betting revenue than its roundball counterpart.\nThe NBA's projected yearly sports betting revenue increase is split between $425 million from fan engagement and $160 million from gaming-related revenue.\nUnlike the MLB, whose fan engagement numbers are led by ticket sales, the NBA's fan engagement revenue is led by a projected 8.1-percent jump in media rights, from $3.750 billion a year to $4.055 billion a year.\nNielsen indicates that sponsorships will account for a 4 percent increase in revenue, from $1.120 billion to $1.165 billion.\nAs for gaming-related revenue, Nielsen Sports predicts that the NBA will earn about half of its revenue jump from a $78 million increase in sponsorships from gambling services.\nThe Nielsen Sports analysis projects sports betting revenue based on the opinions of \"more than 1,000 adult sports fans.\" Those include fans of the MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and other leagues.\nSimilar studies were done for the NFL and NHL, both estimated to see a high volume of additional revenue thanks to legal sports betting.\nConsidering the fast growth of NJ online sports betting and the subsequent release of eight mobile sportsbooks in the Garden State, the revenue boost from a mature US sports betting market is entirely possible.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Mindfulness & Living a Busy Life.\nA few years ago I started consciously watching the first thing that came to mind as I awoke each morning.\nMore often than not what would appear during those first few hazy moments was \"The List\". The curtains I must remember to fix, the email that hasn't been sent, the magazine my neighbour asked me to lend him, the bill I have yet to pay, the programme for next semester. Sometimes, it was \"The List\" that would wake me. And I discovered that, if I was not careful, it would be \"the List\" that would propel me from the bed and not the smooth conscious act of creativity I most desired.\nI live in the city of S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, where I give courses, workshops and consultancy on Mindfulness. Teaching others the value of the present moment has made me more curious about the nooks and crannies of my own mind. For the last few years I have been particularly curious to see whether the first state of mind of the day effects my stress levels during the rest of it.\nThis is a big and busy city. There are 19 million of us huddled together and our claim to fame is that our solution to the traffic problem is having the biggest helicopter fleet in the world. S\u00e3o Paulo is the only place I know where people, after learning their first meditation, frequently report back that they were delighted to find that they could focus on their breathing AND multitask at the same time.\nAs I became more curious about my mind I began to notice that \"The List\" would even pop up when I stopped and sat to meditate. I would close my eyes and there it would be: \"Hey! There are a thousand more important things to be doing than sitting on yer backside!\". In fact, at that time I reckoned that if I were to be hit by a bus then the last thing that would probably not flash through my mind would be my life or my loved ones. Yes, it probably would have been that damn magazine I still hadn't found. Or something similar.\nSo I did a little research. It looks as if the root cause of the \"The List\" was recognised long ago. Buddhists found what they called the \"Calculating Mind\". They considered it a universal tendency and associated it with the image of a frivolous chimp in a mango tree. He hops from fruit to fruit, munching away, without ever fully finishing any of them \u2013 which sounds like one of my bad days. This Calculating Mind is a deep-set disquiet. It is a kind of jittery hankering that lingers unnoticed backstage while we act it all out on the surface. According to the Eastern traditions, those of us who allow this kind of agitation become automatic are like a man who digs the ground looking for the sky.\nThe practice of Mindfulness approaches all of this in a unique way. A conscious shift is made towards learning what it means to live, from the inside out, instead of being a hostage to a constant background anxiety and disquiet. Daily Mindfulness increases the possibility of looking back at the end of our lives and appreciating that we were actually here for it as it unfolded in all its manifold forms.\nThe practice teaches us to open up to anxiety as opposed to avoiding it. It appears that, far from being an enemy of the state, anxiety simply needs our attention. We can't turn it off \u2013 much as we would like. It seems that minds don't work that way. Carl Jung knew this when he proclaimed: \"That which we resist, persists\". The vitality trapped within anxiety could potentially be used to drive our personal evolution. However, it will probably remain trapped until we learn to face \"The List\" mindfully and tap into its reserves.\nMindfulness invites us, moment by moment, day after day, to come into a new relationship with our anxiety at its most tangible point \u2013 the body. You can't get more real than that. If you happen to have a tendency to be very intellectual or to live in a virtual world, the anxiety held in the body is a very good place to start. In my own efforts to live wholeheartedly, \"The List\" and its underlying unease have become my close companions.\nI have found that there are plenty of opportunities to make this conscious shift \u2013 at the moment you open your eyes, during the ups and downs of the day, and before turning the lights out. What if, instead of allowing yourself to be swept away by a tsunami of thoughts about current urgencies, you just intentionally stop and put your attention into the silence of your body to feel what is actually happening there for a few moments? This way, you too can do a little research and see if, afterwards, there is an improvement in the way you go about your day.\nSo, let's get back to our initial state of mind first thing in the morning. If the first thing your mind does tends to be ruminating over a number of seemingly urgent tasks powered by a real (but largely unnoticed) physical disquiet, what if you decided instead to kick-off your day with a \"non-doing\" task?\nTake a few moments to feel your very existence \u2013 whether pleasant or unpleasant \u2013 just as it is. Do this before getting out of the sack. Feel the weight of your body \u2013 the sensations that the sheets create on the skin, or the light in the room through closed eyelids. Give yourself a few minutes each day to really wake up. Can the mental queue of reminders and post-its just wait a little? If they can, then maybe you can bring even more of yourself to them afterwards by being mindful first. And more than that. Maybe you'll discover, once again, that your very own life is not in fact \"The List\".","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Congratulations to our Crusaders of the Month for January 2019!\nOur Crusaders for the Month of January are Gerardo Chavez '19, Seth Miller '20, Anthony Lundy '21 and Timmy Gavin '22.\nThis month's Faculty Crusader of the Month is presented to Gale Suwe!\nThank you for all you do for our students and dedication to Brother Rice.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"AstuteOne provides Enterprise Performance Management solutions for financial and operational reporting and focus on solutions for the Office of the CFO.\nWe understand business finance and offer over 18 years of practical experience that can provide a roadmap and the tools to consolidate enterprise budgets and develop reporting and analytics solutions to drive improved enterprise performance and improved decision making.\nProfessional team with specialties in SAP BPC implementations and development.\nDevelopment teams to extend and enhance BPC implementations.\nProvide business process and solution design consulting to ensure the most efficient processes and configuration for your BPC solution.\nWe work with clients to develop targeted solutions for improved business performance.\nWe can help you develop Reports, Input Forms, Dimensions & Models, Business Process Flows, and Security and related technical documentation.\nComply with IFRS consolidation accounting rules and USGAAP Accounting Standards.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbkodg b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbkodg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..59d83fb4cbe946950eb0d8a9c52a25a19121bb7e
--- /dev/null
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+{"text":"What happens if the samples I ordered are not in stock?\nWhen you place an order for samples we will review the order and call you to confirm availability and delivery details.\nShould I order samples or come into the showroom?\nWe have a great selection of samples and are happy to send you some. However, sometimes it is better to see the full tiles on display, for this please make an appointment and visit us at our showroom in Alexandria.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Thank you for visiting these Angel Sayings and Quotes. I hope you find value in these Quotes and Sayings about Angel from my large collection of Inspirational Sayings.\nTime does not change us.\nThank you for visiting: Angel Sayings - Angel Quotes - Sayings about Angel.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"That was the only cheerful prediction of the day. His colleague Andrew Lapthorne and guest presenter Gerard Minack (formerly of Morgan Stanley and a kindred spirit) struck similar notes. The core message has not changed much, but neither has Mr Edwards' popularity. With unfailing regularity he is ranked number one in his category in surveys of global investors. He admits to getting it wrong a lot. But his talent for imagining the worst is valuable. If you have a vague anxiety, Albert will give it form. \"When I'm right, it's very painful,\" he says.\nLike a lot of non-conformist preachers, Mr Edwards started out in the lower clergy, or the finance profession's version of it\u2014as a researcher at the Bank of England. He has scarcely had a good word since for the established church of central banking. In the early noughties, when a callow Buttonwood was a colleague, he charged Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, with near-criminal negligence for his easy-money policy. At a sales meeting, he likened Japan's policy of quantitative easing (QE) to necrophilia: if the economy is twitching, it does not mean it has come back to life. At this week's bear-fest he scoffed at the confidence central bankers have expressed in their ability to reverse QE.\nWhen Mr Edwards first developed his \"Ice Age\" thesis in the 1990s, he stood out from the general cheerleading of stockbroker strategists. The template was Japan. Debt and disinflation would lead to rising bond prices (and falling yields). At the same time, there would be a \"derating\" of equities, so that prices would fall relative to earnings (and the earnings yield would rise). One part of this was right. The trend in bond yields has been down (see chart). But the derating of equities did not happen. This was because of \"massive, massive QE\", he explains.\nNow that QE is being withdrawn, it is no surprise that markets are jumpy. Recessions of recent vintage began when a fairly modest tightening in monetary policy led to a blow-up in finance, he argues. High levels of corporate debt in America mean the next one will be deep. Mr Edwards is no more sanguine about other economies. The risks of a hard landing in China have not abated. And the euro is doomed to break up. Mr Edwards cites a survey that shows how younger Italians are far more hostile to the European Union than older ones. Italy's steep unit-wage costs militate against the jobs the young crave. Trapped in the euro, it cannot easily lower them.\nWhen things get rough, what then? \"Fat-cat QE\" has led only to rising asset prices, reckons Mr Minack. Politicians will instead turn to \"People's QE\", a policy (favoured by Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party in Britain) of personal tax cuts paid for by printing money. Mr Edwards concurs\u2014but of course he goes further. When recession bites, \"Corbyn will be seen as a moderate!\" The pressure on policymakers to do something will be hard to resist.\nTo protect themselves, investors should favour cash and gold. Mr Edwards thinks the yields on Treasuries will plummet to below zero in the next recession. So bonds will offer protection in the short term. But they will suffer a painful reckoning, if the authorities are eventually able to create inflation. Mr Lapthorne puts in a word for Japan as the best equity market to be in, comprising as it does cheapish, profitable firms that have run down their debts.\nMr Edwards is often dismissed as a perma-bear. It is true that he does not update his views very often. In this he resembles an old-school Marxist or a modern-day Eurosceptic. They all believe that in the end they will be proved right; the twists and turns in the meantime are of minor importance.\nIn at least one sense Mr Edwards is already vindicated. His pet themes of disinflation, the dangers of debt, the vices of central bankers and the perils of complacency are now also found in the PowerPoint packs of rival strategists. There were hints at the bear-fest of a post-Ice-Age era, in which bonds are to be avoided and inflation hedges are the thing to own. Until then, the message is the same as always. The world is ending. But at least you'll be home in time for tea.\nRay Pierce is a Senior Market Analyst. He has been covering Asian stock markets for many years.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Uchronia: What if ? | Schedule | ELO 2018 Mind The Gap!\nIn a world that draws our attention to the present moment, both facts and stories are now subject to fluctuations, whether fictional or virtual. What if we started inventing the truths we desired, to the detriment of genuine facts? What kinds of worlds would this create?\nUchronia | What if? offers a collection artworks that create uncommon, digital versions of the world and of history. They create speculative futures, revisiting history by exploring new approaches to political and social impasses; exploiting a dystopian internet and alternative networks; confronting multiple experiences of time, both human and machine-based.\nFor ELO 2018, curator Lisa Tronca presents a selection of Uchronia | What if? artists, some exhibiting their work for the first time in Montreal. By proposing different modes of reception of hypermedia works, this exhibition questions the gaps and connections between physical and virtual worlds.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The original Peach Sheet Underpads provide maximum protection and superior absorbent capacity\u2013 able to contain well over one quart of fluid. Four adhesive tape tabs secure the positioning of nearly 5 square feet of protection to wheelchairs, bedding and furniture. It is ideal for those who are at risk of skin breakdown due to fragile skin or high levels of urine loss.\nThe Heavy-Duty Underpads provide 7.5 square feet of protection absorbing up to one quart of liquid. The extra-strong, cloth-like backsheet is slip resistant and extra strong to resist tearing as an individual moves on the underpad. The pad is ideal for \"airing\" persons in bed. The unique design also offers a moisture-proof back sheet to help contain fluids. This extra protection pad is ideal for those who are at risk of skin breakdown due to fragile skin or high levels of urine loss.\nFewer underpads are needed Ideal for those who are at risk of skin breakdown, due to fragile skin or high levels of urine loss.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzblokx b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzblokx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..c1ef2c77dafe6f3ab3d1896e2e91e52189b29a00
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":"On behalf of Law Office of Richard F. Maffett posted in Workplace Injuries on Tuesday, October 10, 2017.\nPennsylvania workers who have jobs that require repeated motions of the wrist are at risk for developing carpal tunnel syndrome. This can cause tingling, numbness and weakness, making it difficult and painful for employees to complete their tasks.\nIn addition to the tingling and weakness, other symptoms can include pain in the fingers and hand. Occasionally, some workers may experience pain in their arm; however, the symptoms most often occur in the index finger, thumb, middle finger and half of the ring finger. In many cases, the symptoms first make an appearance at night when employees are not at work.\nIn order to diagnose carpal tunnel syndrome, the doctor may ask patients who feel tingling, numbness or pain in their hand or wrist what their daily routine is and if they recently hurt their hand or arm. Doctors may also do a strength test and check the appearance of the neck, shoulder, wrist and hands. Those experiencing mild symptoms can usually treat the syndrome with home care, which includes stopping all activities that cause numbness or pain and icing the wrist for up to 15 minutes once or twice an hour. For more serious symptoms, surgery can help; although, this is not usually offered until the symptoms prevent individuals from working.\nWhen employees suffer injuries from completing repetitive tasks, the injuries could cause them serious pain while decreasing their ability to be productive. In the event that an injury occurred while on the clock, the employee could seek compensation for medical costs by filing a workers' compensation claim. An attorney could help file the initial claim or appeal the decision if the claim was denied.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Hare Krishna Hare Rama Pvt. Ltd. Dhanbad is booking Transport Company. We provide trailer truck and container for goods available in market or our client. As per market demand of transport services has made expansion and improvement of road network necessary. We offer transportation service proficient quality Transportation service with a lot of alternative means machinery or goods. We provide truck trailer transport to manufacture company like Pipe Company, machinery manufacture, Construction Company, engineering company etc.\nWe move goods or machinery from one place to another from Dhanbad to Delhi NCR, Dhanbad to Mumbai, Dhanbad to Pune, Dhanbad to Surat, Dhanbad to Ahmedabad, Dhanbad to Delhi NCR, Dhanbad to Chennai, Dhanbad to Calicut, Dhanbad to Kolkata, Dhanbad to Indore, Dhanbad to Ranchi, Dhanbad to Delhi Patna, Dhanbad to Gwalior, Dhanbad to Amritsar, Dhanbad to Kanpur, Dhanbad to Karnataka, Dhanbad to Kerala, Dhanbad to Tamil Nadu, Dhanbad to jharkhand Etc.\nWe know good business sense to offer flexible working hours and policies for our employees. Our employee are well educate and polite. That the reason we have goods and experience team who are capable to handle any type transportation. Our teams ensure our customer with quality of transportation service.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Set in Bia\u0142ystok in the Podlaskie region, AH Waszyngtona Centrum features a balcony. Guests staying at this apartment have access to free WiFi and a fully equipped kitchenette. The apartment comes with a satellite flat-screen TV and 2 bedrooms. University of Bialystok is 200 metres from the apartment, while The Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic is 700 metres away.\nPlease note that the check-in and key-collection take place at: Kr\u0119ta 56B lok.1B, 15-354 Bia\u0142ytsok. Please inform AH Waszyngtona Centrum in advance of your expected arrival time. You can use the Special Requests box when booking, or contact the property directly with the contact details provided in your confirmation. This property will not accommodate hen, stag or similar parties.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"50+ turn ins and still no rabbit. I have multiples of everything else. I know it is luck based but come on already. If the rabbit wasn't pink I wouldn't even bother.\nSo it is male mama:D?\nI just got a virtue with Crusader and light...I thought you could avoid virtue by breeding with a diamond hybrid.\nNr 1 does unfortunately make sense - if taking things out of storage would let us collect immediately - we would just constantly put them to storage and collect again.\nThank you very much for the help! I really appreciate this information.\nHit all 5 plots:) So glad I had saved up 55 expansion permits- or first time I was glad events have been so busy - I haven't managed to hit fauns and wisps for crafting them into next level.\nYou can have both. :) If you want you can create a name\/password for the new account and then login with your old one. You can switch whichever you want with the login feature.\nI still would need all 8, but I got the other 4. No way I can get 8 more before this expires.\nThe habitats were advertised to align this way and we can't change them just for two players. Thank you for understanding.\nDoes Rouncy always drop 40 or is there a chance for more?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Great food! Eclectic menu. Generous portions. On weekends, arrive early or plan to wait for a table.\nIt's an awsome place good service and the chicken n waffles are awsome,so is the chicken fried steak.Go hungry the plates are huge!\nOk, they have bacon that is like eating candy. The food was great and the portions were huge. Make sure you are hungry when you go there. The only negative was it took forever to get my dessert. I didn't eat all of my meal so I could try the cheesecake. My friend had to leave so I sat there waiting and waiting and waiting and ended up having it to go. I needed to get going as well. The cheesecake was good, I shared it with my parents.\nBoth service and food -wonderful!\nAmazing experience! Food was very fast and in large portions for the price, even when ordering off the small menu. Iced coffee is highly recommended! Adrian was awesome, she was so nice and knowledgable of the menu. Very accommodating! Hosts were very helpful as well! I will be back soon!\nThe absolute BEST brunch food I have ever tasted in a very long time! I got the fried sage chicken with cheesy scrambled eggs and loaded potatoes drenched in Chipotle sauce! It was WONDERFUL. They also have by far the best beacon I have ever tasted lolol. I live in Fort Worth and I made the 45 minute drive to Plano (on a first date) and I will admit it was definitely worth the drive. I am definitely coming back!\nGreat staff! A little bit of a wait on the weekends.\nThis place was awesome!!! Expensive but great! The atmosphere is great, music, food presentation great!\nThe chicken and waffles are amazing! The pancakes are huge!\nGood food, large portions. The wait staff is friendly and attractive.\nGreat service, awesome atmosphere, food was amazing with huge portions!!!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzblpmg b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzblpmg
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+{"text":"The dress was gorgeous, exactly the color I wanted. It arrived earlier than expected, and in great shape. I'll definitely buy from here again if I need a dress.\nAbsolutley beautiful dress. I did a custom order with my measurements, and it arrived at my door in 13 days! Could not be happier :) It is slightly to big around my waist, but that's my own fault for doing measurements by myself, and theres a seam in the back that makes it very easy to take in on my own, so i'm not worried.\njust received the dress, i love it!!the color is the same as the picture shows, and the fabric chiffon feels really comfortable. The shipping is also unexpectedly fast. Thank you!!\nThe dress fits perfectly when I tried it on. I can't wait for the day, 21st of my daughter. I commend you for ease of ordering, there was no hassle.\nIt's a beautiful dress and the price is great.. Thank you, Dressesfirms.co.uk.\nI wore this dress to a Gala event and it was stunning. Received many compliments. It fit perfectly, only needed to have the length shortened a bit. Thank you for this amazing dress.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"I've devoted years of my life putting together all the materials and resources that have helped me along the way of becoming a digital entrepreneur and head of business development for a tech startup.\nI thought it just made sense to document those things along the way so that I could form a more in-depth understanding by writing about it, and you, my reader, could gain insights and expertise, without spending hours and hours of research.\nEach of those areas needs to be mastered to design, launch, and iterate a successful business. This isn't a size fits all model, neither the only one possible. But it is a model that can help you.\nWhen starting a business, in particular, a digital business, you should have a 10X mindset. The reason is you might be starting a venture in a competitive space; none knows your brand, you might be missing the budget to grow it steadily.\nThus, you need to think and act smart. You can't rely on conventional wisdom, or already walked paths. While business best practices will be your baseline, you will need to have a growth mindset, where each action you take needs to be measured and deemed successful if it gives you massive traction.\nIn a digital business, setting up the operations doesn't necessarily mean to build up physical facilities. Instead, that is about drafting a business model that will allow you to be competitive in the marketplace.\nThis process isn't a one-time thing. Indeed, before your business model would take off, you'll need to iterate it over and over again.\nIn short, the right business model will be able to have a built-in monetization strategy that generates income, based on repeatable processes, that are sustainable in the long run.\nAlso, your business model will need to leverage on a flywheel effect, where monetization powers up your brand, rather than diluting it. In other words, when you start making money, that monetization needs to reinforce your brand, so that more people will want to deal with your company.\nAs your brand gains momentum, you can leverage it to enjoy higher and higher margins. When you enjoy fat margins (there isn't a fixed percentage, but it depends on the industry and competition), that's when you've mastered the operational part.\nIn general, the more the gap between revenues and costs increases (revenues grow faster than costs), the more you're on the right path to building a long-term competitive advantage.\nYou can use any of those tools, or combine the approaches from each of them to draft and thinker on your business model.\nIt is important to remark that strategy isn't about getting bogged down in theories and dozens of pages of plans. You need a simple checklist of what to do next.\nIf you're spending more than 10-20% of your time, in general, theorizing, you might be wasting your time. Indeed, a good chunk of it will be spent in executing, gathering feedback, seeing what works and what doesn't and go back to tweaking your business model, until it starts to fit the market.\nTools like the bullseye framework used by DuckDuckGo founder and the lean startup methodology are great companions in this phase. The most important thing is that you need to gain velocity and momentum!\nAt this stage, before you go to the execution stage, it is crucial you know what distribution channels you can tap into. For that matter, you need to prioritize on the acquisition or growth channel that might work best, based on the strategy you picked.\nInstead of trying to tap into all the possible distribution channels, mastering one, in the short run is probably the most effective strategy in many cases.\nWhen you start executing, that is when you will be able to gather critical feedback to understand whether or not you're moving in the right direction. This is the most essential part of the MOVE model.\nHow effective is my strategy? Is the real world validating it or do I need to go back and tweak my business model?\nAm I spending too much time theorizing? If so, go back to the execution phase to gather more feedback from the marketplace!\nWhen you start moving, you also need to make sure you're going in the right direction. That is why, in the execution phase, you need to reconsider whether what you're doing is helping you achieve the 10X growth you were looking for at the beginning of the MOVE model.\nOr whether your business model generates growing margins. Or yet, whether you need to leverage network effects to enhance growth. Moving back and forth in the MOVE model might help you gain traction to generate a long-term competitive advantage!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Blockbuster movie budgets: Where does all the money go?\nAt The Movies and Movie Discussions A place to discuss movies in the theater, movie theater technology and 3D Technology.\nHollywood blockbusters are like long, amazing thrill rides that can leave even the most jaded film fans in awe. The budgets of these mega-movies can be breathtaking, too!\nThis summer's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom reportedly cost around $175 million to make. Solo: A Star Wars Story had a $250 million price tag, and Avengers: Infinity War cost a spectacular $320 million.How does that kind of money get spent? Grab some popcorn and some Milk Duds, and find yourself a seat, because we'd like to show you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Puma has announced a target of reducing its carbon, energy, water, and waste by 25%, and developing 50% of its international product collections in footwear, apparel and accessories according to best practice sustainability standards by 2015. The Clever Little Bag pictured above is part of Puma's green plans. The new packaging designed by Yves Behar replaces the cardboard shoebox with a re-usable shoe bag. The new design provides a 65% paper reduction. Puma says the concept will reduce water, energy and diesel consumption on the manufacturing level by more than 60% per year.\n\"I was excited to partner with PUMA and contribute to such a game changing project,\" said Yves Behar. \"PUMA's initiative to look closely at one of the most challenging issues facing the retail industry in regards to sustainability and environmental harm was inspirational. In changing the packaging and distribution life cycle from the ground up, we hope our new design and comprehensive solution encourages other retail companies to follow suit.\"","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"This paper introduces a hybrid system for modeling, learning and recognition of sequences of 'states' in indoor robot navigation. States are broadly defined as local relevant situations (in the real world) in which the robot happens to be during the navigation. The hybrid is based on parallel recurrent neural networks trained to perform a posteriori state probability estimates of an underlying hidden Markov model (HMM) given a sequence of sensory (e.g. sonar) observations. Discriminative training is accomplished in a supervised manner, using gradient-descent. Recognition is carried out either in a dynamic programming framework, i.e. searching the maximum a posteriori probability of state-posteriors along paths of the HMM, or in real time. The approach is suitable for navigation and for map learning. Experiments of learning and recognition of noisy sequences acquired by a mobile robot equipped with 16 sonars are presented.\nCitazione: Trentin, E., & Roldano, C. (1999). Learning perception for indoor robot navigation with a hybrid Hidden Markov Model\/Recurrent neural networks approach. CONNECTION SCIENCE, 11(3\/4), 243-265.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbltoz b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbltoz
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..d67c45ac109043e0b6b3ee115b39aeccdc9311f3
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+{"text":"I was doing some reading today and found something that was truly wonderful in my opinion. Here is a first century letter from a mother named Hikane to her son Isidoros. The letter is fragmentary but is it not hart to get the point.\n[Hikane] to Isidoros [her son, greetings. First of all] I thought it necessary, since the packet boat was putting out to sea, to write . . . me. I am in Berenike. I wrote you a letter [?but did not receive a] letter. Was it for this that I carried you for ten months and nursed you for three years, so that you would be incapable of remembering me by letter? And similarly you dimissed me though the Oasites . . . not I you. But I left your brothers in Arabia . . . so that . . Egypt I might see your face and . . . breath. I only ask and beg and adjure you by the one whom you . . . and by the memory of the one who begot you, to sail away if you are well. I . . . Amarantos. But . . . Arabia, sister has departed and the little one is present . . . I ask and beg you . . . Save your brother. For I have no one . . . your bother . . . with the first winds, but he found some . . . and came to me in Berenike. Epaphras greets you warmly . . . and those who love us. [Year . ., month] 24. (Verso) Deliver. Hikane to Isidoros her son, harborman.\nI wish I had found this around mother's day. I love it where she asks her son: \"Was it for this that I carried you for ten months and nursed you for three years, so that you would be incapable of remembering me by letter?\" Some things never change.\nIf only that were the case for every mother. Mine was too attached to my father to even care about the kids she apparently brought into the world. Having a hard time at work? Vent it out to your kids while giving your husband more liquor. Budget for food not enough? I guess you guys are sleeping hungry tonight. Is there money for my father's gambling addiction and liquor? You bet there's always money on it! If only I had a half decent mother, then I probably wouldn't be as damaged as I am today. Sorry for venting, it's just seeing these types of posts about how mothers SHOULD be for their kids really makes me feel like I got cheated out of a childhood.\nI agree with you that not all mothers are equal. I am sorry for your suffering but it's an excellent example for some mothers caught up in a toxic relationship. My mom accidentally had me and only found out when my parents split. My older sister is her favorite because she was her first and they bonded while my mom was still young. In comparison, I had to work really hard to get my mom's love and it was never free. My mom never acknowledges my generosity by helping her with my little brother but she longs for my sister's love now that she's married and ignores her for the in-laws. A mother's love can be great but failure to get it can be devastating. I don't think all mothers are the same. I don't even think a single mother is the same with each of her children. Mine certainly isn't.\nI love it. That comment IS the typical mother's lament and quite often is directed to the traveling son. My own mother has spoken variations of that comment in regards to my older brother. It's funny because he lives right next door to her and I live three hours away, yet I call her on the phone every night for a chat, and he talks to her maybe once a week at the most and seldom stops in to visit. Perhaps girls dote more on their mothers, I don't know, but it seems like the boys have more outside interests and the girls perhaps stay home more. All mothers have to eventually go through the empty nest syndrome and it can be hard on them when they've had at least 18 years or so of that person in their home.\nI agree that all Moms are the same. In my case, I was thinking whether my Mom do have favoritism or not. She keeps on nagging at me on all the decisions i have made in my life and trying to seek for negative feeds. But with my two brothers, she is very nice. At the end of the day, I would end up convincing myself that she is just concerned about me.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"With the ATOS ScanBox Series 8, GOM is offering a measuring system that can measure complete vehicles both outside and inside. The main application areas are analyses in Meisterbock and Cubing, inspection of com\u00adplete vehicles and quality assurance in car body manu\u00adfacturing. Measurements of several parts can be virtually merged to evaluate information on gap and flush in a linear manner. Other areas of application include, for example, the scanning of cast blanks, quality control of milled tools and tool maintenance.\nThe new GOM 8-axis kinematic concept enables the measurement of complete car bodies from above, below, from the side and inside, while at the same time taking up very little space. The so-called duplex operation ensures a synchronous and coordinated de\u00adployment of two robots in one measuring cell. In this process, a joint data set of measurements is created, as the robot operation takes place in a shared coordinate system. Series 8 of the ATOS ScanBox also enables the independent measurement by two robots on two different components.\nThe ATOS ScanBox Series 8 can be loaded with a driverless sandwich panel transport system includ\u00ading a track system, drive computer and safety systems. The automatic loading system guarantees a quick, repeatable and exact positioning of car bodies in the ATOS ScanBox. Other loading systems, for example, cranes, can also be used.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"The Jalopnik Film Festival was a massive success but, thanks to a sell-out and the fact that it happened in Brooklyn, not all of you were able to attend. No worries, we've put most of the films in this post so that you can watch them from the comfort of your own office.\nWhile not every film is available online, we've retained the order of the films so you can get a sense of how they were displayed. We're just showing the trailers from Where They Raced and APEX, but you can download Where They Raced if you wish to. You'll just have to wait for APEX like the rest of us!\nThe award-winning script from Jalopnik reader Casey Phillips, presented by Volvo Cars and produced by 8112 Studios.\nA glimpse into one group's appreciation of vintage American steel in one of Japan's largest cities.\nPhil Hill's son Derek Hill (who was in attendance!) recounts the history of one of the most important and lusted after sports cars ever.\nThe 2014 Sebring-winning Porsche 911 GT3 RSR's final pit stop, all in one-take.\nAyrton Senna's legacy lives on in the lives of young people in Brazil he's forever changed.\nIf Hunter S. Thompson reviewed and old BMW it wouldn't be as entertaining as this.\nThis documentary captures a Los Angeles before the gridlock, when the streets were race tracks. The film is available for purchase and download for $9.99 here.\nTwo very different vehicles and one common powerplant in the wide-open expanses of the Bonneville salt flats.\nModern rallying is a sport for the mad as captured in this short film of one team's adventure.\nThe creators of \/DRIVE document the rise of the hypercar, from the LaFerrari to the Koenigsegg ONE. Only the trailer is online because the film is not complete.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"In the national capital, petrol was sold at Rs 70.07, down from Rs 70.27 per litre on Saturday, according to data on the Indian Oil Corp's website.\nSubramanian said though the country's growth had slowed down in the recent years, India remains important in the international context.\nPetrol and diesel prices in the country have followed international crude oil trend and have lost about Rs 10-12 a litre since October 17 when the declining trend started.\nPetrol reduced by 14 paise to Rs 76.38 in Delhi while diesel price stood at Rs 71.27 as against Monday's rate of Rs 71.39. In Mumbai, petrol was priced at Rs 81.90 and diesel reached Rs 74.66.\nIt has been a dramatic shift of sentiment in just about a month with traders switching from predicting $100 per barrel oil to fearing another supply glut amid dimming demand prospects.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Do you know this company? Do you have positive or negative experience with DE CASAS CORPORATION? Rate the company and help other users.\nDE CASTRO AND ASSOCIATES, INC.\nDE CASTRO LAW GROUP, P.C.\nDE CASTRO, WEST, CHODOROW, MENDLER & GLICKFELD, INC.\nDE CATI INDUSTRIES INTERNATIONAL, INC.\nDE CARVALHO BROTHERS DAIRY, INC.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..1e862a134692515e468b1006be89f4e1cf4afe08
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+{"text":"After more than 9 years, I finally sold my 2001 Mazda Premacy which has been working for over 130,000km. Since old friend is gone, here comes the new friend, the 2006 Ford Escape which is almost a gift from my uncle. Though this Ford is more than 4 years old, uncle put only 12,000km on it.\nThis Ford Escape meets my requirements very much; SUV type, safe, big trunk, can handle some rough road, and no fancy electronic stuffs. And it still runs like a new car.\nI think this Ford will bring a lot of fun to our family. I will take good care of it for sure!\nCongratulations on your new friend, sir. That is a nice looking car. Does your uncle have an extra car for me, too?\nDear Guren, thanks for your comment. but I don't think my uncle has another car for you.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Free Download Avocado Chat For Couples APK For PC:We work as a web directory of android apps\/apk files of most free android application and games, just free download android apk files for pc, then install free apps on pc, or install from Google play store.Free download Avocado Chat For Couples Apk Apps, Games, Music, Movies and more!Just download and install Android apps apks in officially and securely.All Avocado Chat For Couples apps comes from official store and portal for Android apps, games and other content for your Android-powered phone or tablet.\n\u2605 Share a media gallery and more!\nIf you are dating, married, crazy in love or just have a BFF you want to communicate with, Avocado keeps your favorite person as close as your phone. Recently featured on the Google Play Store, Avocado is the best app for couples.\nWhy Avocado? Whether you're in the same room or continents away, this couples app helps you and your boo stay connected anytime, anywhere. And just like home, it's a private space for the two of you to share a life.\n\u2713Share all your photo messages, video messages, doodles or secrets in one place!\n\u2713You can even send your location in the app to let your boo know where you are.\n\u2713Get notified if your boo's battery is dying!\n\u2713Share photos and videos in your shared media gallery for easy access and storage for all the moments you've loved.\n\u2713Document your dating adventures or recall the perfect date you went on!\n\u2606 Hi, everyone. Things always get crazy around Valentine's Day! We're finding out about bugs at a greater rate as things get closer to the holiday. These ones seemed pretty important so this update has even more fixes for some crashes and some subscription fixes, too.\n\u2713When words fall short and messages aren't enough, send a hug or kiss to the one you love most!\n\u2713Hold the phone to your chest to send a hug, tap a photo to send a kiss.Sketch!\n\u2713Stay in sync: Schedule appointments, vacations, dates and more!\n\u2713Access your messages, media gallery, calendar and lists and chat with your favorite person on the web for easy communication with the one you love most!\nAvocado is the best messaging platform for two people to chat! It's private, secure and fast. The ideal place to share a calendar, lists and media gallery.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Do you own a high performance vehicle and need a tire built for speed, purchase a set of summer tires!\nSummer tires are great for high speed cars that are known for being fast and swift! They are quick to brake and respond great to cornering turns. Summer tires are even known to perform better in wet driving conditions.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"A license key you got after purchasing allows you to activate an OnePress plugin on your site and to receive all up-to-date updates automatically.\nWhen you submit your license key via the form on the Licensing Manager page inside a plugin, the OnePress Licensing Server tries connecting to your site from its side in order to transfer a special secret key that will be used for identifying your site and delivering updates in future. This can cause some difficulty.\nA CodeCanyon Regular License allows you to activate the plugin on one dmain. If you get the error message above, it means your key has been already activated on another domain.\nBut if you have already removed the plugin from the initial domain and cannot delete the key, please feel free to contact us.\nA CodeCanyon Extended License doesn't have limits for the number of domains where the plugin can be activated.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Fancy having the first exclusive view of 'Your Waverley's' proposed new offices in Godalming?\nOh God! Do we hear them cry! Not that scurrilous spider again!\nWell if you want to kill us off \u2013 get your feather dusters out for heaven's sake!\nWe can fully understand WHY \u2013 Councillors are planning a move onto the new and fertile pastures near the Lammas Lands at the other end of town \u2013 but wonder if they might need flippers and snorkels to help them keep their heads above water in a Flood Zone 3. Wouldn't they be safer at Waverley Towers?\nBorough Road, Godalming was closed due to serious flooding in 2013!\nFLOOD ZONE 3. Why would you have new offices in flood zone 3.\nStill the former engineering services company of Parsons Brinckerhoff in Westbrook Mills in Borough Road, could provide a new home for The Council Offices and pave the way for redevelopment of The Burys \u2013 and a nice little earner for a cash strapped council that has recently moved into the property development business BIG TIME! In the meantime \u2013 The Burys is still open for \u2026 Biz \u2013 ask Liz?\nRegular readers may remember our little Waverley Web's mischievous missive written in 2015 when Waverley borough Council had a lightbulb moment! And, it wasn't at the Executive Meeting on April 1st but on December 1st that the council decided not to change the lightbulbs!\nThis is a report by Officers for the EXECUTIVE 's consideration! So it has been on the cards for quite a while.\nYou Can Read it here: \u2013 Could Waverley be on the move?\nThis was one of the neighbours objections \u2013 but I don't expect they will mind having 'Your Waverley\" knocking on the door to borrow a cup of sugar \u2013 will they?\nWho has been sold a pup \u2013 could it be the council taxpayers?\nThe poor little bedraggled fella picture here is putting a brave face on things as he says \"things around here are just getting worse.\" The once popular Marlborough Head pub part of Farnham's Blightwells\/East Street is now a shadow of its former self, boarded up and covered in graffiti!\nBut where would that Pup be? At 'Your Waverley\" or Crest Nicholson's HQ?\nThere are so many letters in the Farnham Herald's pages about the Blightwells Project \u2013 that we will have to drip fee them to our readers. We want everyone in the Borough to read what is going on in the 'Hole patch' that is being wrecked by Waverley Planners\u2026 just in case the rest of the borough, particularly The East, think it just they who are being crapped on it concrete from a great height.\nAnd.. yes Mr Hook you are not the only one! \u2013 All the council taxpayers in Waverley would like, and deserve, some answers?\nOur little spider buried deep in the bowels of The Burys, has been at it again\u2026 Let the Alarm Bells ring all over the Borough!\nOur creepy little friend tells us that The Protect Our (Little Corner of) Waverley Group isn't happy that it lost the No vote for Dunsfold Park's application to build 1,800 homes on the airfield \u2013 and is fuming that Waverley Planners said \u2013 YES.\nlow and behold they have found a way to scupper Good Ship Waverley below the water-line, by lodging a Judicial Review \u2013 Oh No! Not another JUDICIAL REVIEW!\nRegular readers will be aware that its two-pronged attack \u2013 brought Matron Milton aided and abetted by Our Jeremy, to the aid of the party, persuaded the Secretary of State to call the application in.\nFor those who are not up to snuff with legal jargon, a Judicial Review (JR) is a legal challenge of the lawfulness of a decision taken by public authorities at local or central government level.\nA (JR) is not a re-run of the merits of a decision, but challenges the lawfulness of the decision.\nSO- What's all this about we hear you ask?\nWell \u2013 it's a bit like the Brexit Remoaners, just when we thought a decision had been made \u2013 at last! They are off again, and again .. and it will not be over until the Fat Lady Slims \u2013 in other words millions of pounds of taxpayers money is wasted\u2026 again!\nAccording to our insiders Buried deep inside The Burys \u2013 it now could pick up the bill for a Judicial Review and a Public Inquiry \u2013 a double whammy just as the going gets tough for local authorities, countrywide!\nWithout Dunsfold Waverley won't be able to meet the Government's housing targets and risks another Daft local Plan biting the dust!\nBelow is a letter sent to Councillors this week on an application to build on the Green Belt in Elstead. Because, an Inspector has turned the world of Liz \"The Biz\" Sims and Graham 'Sick-As-A-' Parrot upside down and inside out!\nIf you follow events in respect of WBC's 5-year housing land supply read the Inspector's decision on the Weyburn Engineering site in Elstead and \u2026.\nAs you will see, even the planning department has insider creepy crawlies entering our little web!\nCan this motley group either start getting wound up over ALL the other developments about to Be dumped on the borough's countryside and Green Belt.\nThakeham Homes application which has been re-submitted this week to build hundreds of homes in Alfold!\n.Bakers Oates, Gardeners Hill, Faarnham?\nWhere were you all when the Weyburn Works in Elstead went to Appeal?\nWhat about all the schemes covering Badshot Lea and Weybourne?\nAre you objecting to the Farnham Hopfields?\nNo, your entire raison d'etre and that of your MP colleagues \u2013 is to derail development on the largest brownfield site in the borough, Sod the rest of Waverley \u2013 which is heading towards meeting its Maker as he prepares to force down our throats an even bigger housing allocation!\nAs some of those who voted in favour of (DP) were not members of the Joint Planning Committee, but substitutes fielded to stand in for those members who either couldn't attend, \u2013 or like Jeannette Stennett- couldn't vote because she had publicly pre-determined how she intended to vote by announcing it in the Surrey Ad letters page \u2013 the 8 to 10 vote in favour of the Dunsfold application, was in fact 5 to 7 against, that is IF \u2026 the Council only counted the votes of those who were members of the committee and discounted those who were substitutes.\nWhat's betting they wouldn't give one jot if the vote had gone the other way!\nHowever, this is where 'POLCOW' gets down and dirty \u2013 it is not contending the vote was unlawful or unconstitutional per se, just that it was unlawful and unconstitutional for substituted members TO VOTE!\nNow if they hang their little 'POLCOW' hat on that view, then the votes will swing in 'POLCOW's favour.\nSO if POLCOW is right then..!\nThe Eastern area is not alone in kicking up a stink \u2013 we've got sewerage problems over here in Farnham too!\nAre the Statutory Authorities \u2013 Thames Water, the Environment Agency and 'Your Surrey\" County Council letting the residents of Waverley down?\nWith monotonous regularity they raise absolutely NO OBJECTION to proposed development sites around the borough, regardless of whether there are serious flooding, environmental, traffic or sewage issues!\nThe East of the borough has been kicking up a hell of a stink for more than a year about the serious situation over there. Residents, the parish councils, and Amenity Groups together with their borough councillors \u2026have been totally ignored \u2013 and Farnham and the rest of the borough are being treated with utter contempt.\n'You will see from the link below 'Your Waverley' imposed conditions on developers \u2013 conditions that are useless, unenforceable, and which have been totally ignored by the people who are really calling the tune \u2013 DEVELOPERS!\nRestrictions put in place by \"Your Waverley\" are not worth the bog paper they are written on.\nRead the Full article here \u2013 and you will see they're at it all over the Country. \u2013 But don't worry the Statutory Authorities will continue to raise NO OBJECTION and Chief Planning officer Liz the Biz will shove another shed load of inappropriate planning applications through, that is of course, until they are heavily fined!\nAnother bit of a stink in Cranleigh's troubled waters?\nThe capacity of Farnham Sewage treatment works, according to Thames Water, is 37,000 people \u2013 and that figure must include those extra people who work in Farnham but live elsewhere as well as he locals. The plant is, quite simply, running at full stretch! Bit like other parts of the borough.\nTo increase the plant's capacity will require a major re-build and will cost many millions of pounds. Whilst the land is apparently available \u2013 the funding is not. So\u2026 there is a serious infrasctucture deficiency, which could led to health problems.\nAs if Farnham residents haven't enough to contend with the serious air quality issues they will be able to add the stench of more sewage to their assaulted nostrils. This once, attractive Market Town, is being blighted by traffic and smell. It has a road system totally unsuited to current needs. However, the Statutory Authorities appear to be ignoring \u2013 the smell \u2013 noise \u2013 and fumes permeating through a town, now under siege by developers. As they line up, eager to add yet more sewage, more congestion, and then move on and set up their concrete mixers in another green field \u2013 possibly near you?\nFarnham's and the surrounding villages' sewage and waste water is treat at the Farnham Sewage Treatment Works, situated in Monkton Lane.\nFor over 20 years near neighbours have complained about the stink from processing poo, however over recent years, the smell has become so bad that is seriously affecting the quality of life of many who live in nearby and up to a mile and a half away.\nWe have recently posted on Farnham's air quality problems which worsen with every day that passes. But, once again, The Statutory Authority 'Your Surrey' raise NO OBJECTION!\nDespite Nitrogen dioxide levels in Farnham Town Centre reaching dangerous levels \u2013 23% higher than the maximum set by the EU! And not a single word of objection from 'Your Surrey\" Zilch, Nil! And\u2026 as for Thames Water or the Environment Agency Nothing Zilch \u2026 so sewage and fumes combined \u2013 what chance to our kids have\u2026 None, Rien, nichts , nada, asgje, nista, intet, niets, nada, nekas, ekkert, \u6ca1\u4ec0\u4e48, he\u00e7 bir \u015fey \u2026.. so let those earth movers roll!\nIf you can't beat them \u2026 leave them?\nThere we all were the cynical Souls that we have become on the Waverley Web \u2013 thinking that Waverley residents had gone into a deep and dreamless sleep, along with most of the rest of our borough!\nWe actually believed that the first Battle of Waverley' would break out in sleepy Cranleigh \u2013 better known at Waverley Towers as \u2013 'Poor old Cranleigh' as it struggles to keep its head above concrete.\nOf course most of us realise that the Tory old guard, on every rung of the political ladder \u2013 from parish to borough to county and central Government have a hold, so tight, that they are strangling the life out of our market towns and our rural communities.\nHere at the Waverley Web we wrote about it just a few weeks ago \u2013 read it here: We're thinking, that you're thinkin g what we've been thinking about local poltics!\nFed up Haslemere Councillor and former leader of 'Your Waverley,' mainly responsible for the fine mess that outfit is now in \u2013 stood up recently and complained about Haslemere's rocketing car park charges \u2013 and the withdrawal of its green waste collection.\nCouncillor Robert \u2013 Know \u2013 less \u2013 argued, his town would be \"better off if we moved into East Hampshire or West Sussex\" for all the benefit it received from being a part of 'Your Waverley.' Ye \u2013 Gods hypocrisy or what \u2013 he's running a very close second to Bramley's By-Pass Byham. In Fact his nickname of the Surrey Police's very own \u2013 'Olympic Torch' \u2013 because he never went out at night, \u2013 might result in him giving BPB a race to WW's Hypocrite of the Year award. \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..\nSO IS THE ROT WE HAVE BEEN PREDICTING SETTING IN AT LAST \u2013 IS A SEA CHANGE OF DIRECTION STARTING FROM THE BOTTOM UP?\nMAYBE, JUST MAYBE THEY WILL WAKE UP OVER THERE IN THE EAST NEXT?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
diff --git a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbnynr b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzzbnynr
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..51d030916cd901c1c6c3f932997663fe49cdda6e
--- /dev/null
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+{"text":"Great quality! Highlawn Desk exellent design By Willa Arlo Interiors. Highlawn Desk very well made, sleek and simple. Complete your living room furniture with a modern Highlawn Desk. Its classy sturdy, attractivce and it looks expensive and a best value for the money. Highlawn Desk is one of the most homey, cozy, nice look and exotic Highlawn Desk especially for the price and made of superior products. Great quality, easy to assemble, delivery on time and in best condition. Highlawn Desk is good merchandise at fair prices and amazing free shipping. Guarantee damaged claim by offering to send parts or to keep the item at a discounted price. Great buy would definitely recommend. Shop with our low-price guarantee and find great deals on ##ptitle# and more!. Reading the reviews helped you purchase.\nEverybody appreciates becoming soaked on your couch by the time you unwind. This stands out on the comfort and the nature of the couches are important. Nobody loves to sit on a threatening and unpleasant sofa with frazzled upholstery. In fact, sofas are costly. If you are searching which are more comfortable and comfortable vehicles, in those days you have to purchase them. I have seen frequently that individuals end up buying the wrong couch and after spending a fortune onto it. Why? Basically, they don't understand how to choose the fantastic Ashley furniture couch in the best way. Remember that the higher the cost, it always does not provide you with the CORRECT product. For this case, we've found a portion of the best couches for any comfortable mood. We recommend you understand before you get towards the super wealthy furniture shops. You'll steer clear of problems and a little bit of \"grieve more than fortune-bad luck\".\nUsing the current surge in popularity of the Mid-Hundred years Contemporary design style, this couch style is a hot product. Whether true vintage items, forgeries or new styles that incorporate Middle-Hundred years Contemporary elements, these are very versatile couches. Usually used in a minimal or middle-hundred years design scheme, they're wonderful for adding a retro feel to some space. The distinguishing components include the exposed legs and straight line structure. Most mid-century sofas but not all of them may have some tufting around the back again.\nJohn RTA Copenhagen Selection 61 Loveseat in Marzipan was created especially for little areas. Nonetheless, you can use it in any room: condo, dorm and so on. This established provides you with ample assistance. It offers high quality fabric, high density froth pocketed circles, top-collection polyester fiber, and strong hardwood body. This increases the comfort, sturdiness, and sturdiness of the established. The established also includes an ultra wide back again shoulder straps. The set also includes extra comfy pillows all which makes it much more comfortable. Particularly, it has gently curved hands and plush fabric to give it the outstanding appear that suits with any style. The set list compact, consequently its easy to move. It has a minor scent that fades as time passes. More importantly, the couch is extremely easy to put together. It offers the putting together resources and instructions. You easily commit your penny hear. It acts the purpose.\nWeighing below Dollar300 (plus shipping) and 56 inches wide, our wallet- and room-pleasant choose is ideal for first flats, playrooms, dog dens or any other little areas. Simply because its padded with extra strong bonded leather-based, this reclining loveseat is more resistant to unsightly stains, rips and holes. Clients explain this reclining loveseat as comfy, stylish and a very good value. One rater wrote that it was one of the most comfy furniture pieces shes ever had, whilst another stated he could not have asked for much more for his cash. Fair warning, although: some reviewers stated the furniture on their loveseats took effortlessly. Fortunately, the manufacturer includes a warranty for parts. Because this loveseat has this type of easy design, it can make a good base for more personalized decorations items. Add some ornamental toss cushions or covers to up its comfortable element, and give a few pops of color and pattern.\nYou cant discuss this sofa with out referring to its remarkable style, durability, and luxury. Should you ever required a comfortable chair, then move fast and obtain your self Coaster Samuel Collection Cream Leather Couch. You will like it. This 3 seater sofa has clean outlines and great soft cushions. The soft cushions are attached to the seat and at the back. It is made of leather-based which is a certain wager that its durable. Additionally, it features tufted back again and chairs that definitely contributes to its remarkable look. More to the point, it has a spring foundation that gives it the necessary comfort and durability. Its wooden frame causes it to be really sturdy. The long and also the lacking it is that this sofa is extraordinary in each and every aspect. You might or might not agree with this. But the only way you are able to understand why is to find and try it.\nWith regards to buying room furniture, leather is definitely a good option. It doesn't only look great with most styles, nevertheless its very durable (its the ideal material for any household with children or animals) and its ultra-simple to clean, as well. The down-side of leather furniture? It can have a higher cost than fabric, microfiber or fake leather furniture. This lying loveseat stays a budget-friendly option because of one guru technique: its sitting area is upholstered with leather, while the sides are upholstered with more inexpensive faux leather. Which means you receive the appear and feel of the complete leather-based loveseat without the hefty price tag. Make use of the lever around the loveseats arm to kick back and take it easy on its high-denseness froth filling, and think about the money held on. This specific loveseat posseses an additional bonus: expert assembly will come in many locations of the nation for the next charge.\nThis suits you if all you need is an attractive trainer. It is made with a flared frame and pillow leading amrests inside a cool cobblestone gray. Now, it's tough froth soft cushions that are wrapped up in in a polyester upholstery to bring about the specified comfort. It features a durable corner blocked body that adds to the sturdiness. Also, feet have been in a faux wooden complete. We have an impressive grey colour that matches with any decor. Its dimensions are 89 W by 39 D x 40 H thus large enough to accommodate you along with your loved ones\/friends. More importantly, it arrives fully put together. This saves you the agony of getting to assemble the set.\nThis plush set of urban-chic sofas is created to provide an adorned site. Actually, even your moderate areas might have you required for an perfect film night. Lay him down to get a completely changed bed. This avant-garde person futon mattress is obtainable in various shades. This incorporates some bright tones unmanageable for example Orange, Light Azure, and lightweight Crimson. Put them in your inventive studies or attic to evaluate the exuberance. It is also accessible in lowering tones such as darkish, dark and darkish. These subtleties, once more, printing a respectable part of the higher course. Using the breaking element of the back, you are able to relaxation to your preferred posture. This sofa appears wealthy with tufted fabric consistency furniture. The good thing is that it is customized with hypoallergenic filling up. A conclusive result supplies a comfortable relaxation.\nThe Bridgewater is really a sofa design that is mainly casual and definitely comfortable. This design is the beloved of many a designer simply because you can use it to produce a casual, friendly room. Bridgewater couches are versatile, depending on the upholstery you select. Done in a neutral material, this kind of couch does not compete with additional factors within the room that may be more remarkable, such as art work or any other large features. More formal fabric will yield a more grand style of couch. A number of characteristics distinguish Bridgewater couches: Usually they've reduced hands along with a high back, which contributes to the sporadic appear. Most also have a tailored skirt that hides the thighs and free soft cushions for that seat and back again. This particular design was designed to accommodate slipcovers, which also give an informal atmosphere towards the sofa.\nEven though this reclining loveseat has a heftier cost, its classic style, choices for personalization and automated lying program make it well worth the money. Its handcrafted wood body is cushioned with lower blend cushions for any softer really feel than youd receive from high-denseness foam cushions, and also the furniture will come in a whopping 72 colour and material combinations. The supply of so many choices makes it extra easy to pair this reclining loveseat with various patterns, materials, highlights and decorations styles. In addition, if you have children or animals (or each!), you can choose a stronger, spot-resistant material. 1 client discussed the Sunbrella fabric material has held up well against her children and pets. This lying loveseat may have a traditional, old-college look, but its constructed-in technology is not. Not only does it come with an automatic reclining program (that will give you a full lie down, with your footrest completely parallel towards the seat), but it has a Universal serial bus port for using or just charging your iPad, iPhone, Kindle or laptop computer.\nBritish rolled arm sofas are extra comfortable because of the big, soft cushions at the back and for the seats. Low hands are comfy for lying down and the uncovered thighs keep this couch style from sensation overweight or imposing. It really originated in the turn from the century and could be associated with something typical of the English countryside. Distinguishing qualities generally include reduced exposed thighs, soft, generous soft cushions, a good back and recessed hands. Even though it is considered a vintage style, it is also a perfect accessory for a contemporary room thanks to its comfortable and flexible appear.\nCopyright \u00a9 Highlawn Desk By Willa Arlo Interiors in Office Storage All right reserved.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Cincinnati Reds' Scooter Gennett, center, is lifted up by Eugenio Suarez as he celebrates in the dugout during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Cincinnati.\nAnd then, after a first-inning RBI single\u200a-\u200athe home runs are the headline, but Gennett tallied 10 RBIs, too, making him just the 14th player to do so in modern baseball history\u200a-\u200athe Red took Adam Wainwright deep in the third inning for the second grand slam of his career.\nGennett shares the distinction of wearing No. 4 with a four-homer hitter of acclaim - Lou Gehrig - who happens to be the only player to hit four homers in a game for the team that plays its home games in the city of that player's birth.\nCincinnati Reds' Scooter Gennett runs the bases after hitting a two-run home run off St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher John Gant in the fourth inning of a baseball game, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in Cincinnati. \"Even three home runs would be pretty insane for me, so obviously it was a good night\", Gennett said after the game.\nThe diminutive Cincinnati native put on the greatest home run show in franchise history Tuesday night.\n\"My dad was pretty pissed I was 0-for-19\", Gennett joked (he entered in a 1-for-20 slump).\nCHICAGO - Jake Arrieta pitched two-hit ball into the seventh inning, and Anthony Rizzo drove in four runs as the surging Chicago Cubs beat Miami for a season-high fifth straight win.\nWainwright's streak of scoreless innings ended at 17 in the first inning. Billy Hamilton tapped a grounder that the Cardinals let roll, and it stopped on the first base line. Cingrani had been sidelined April 21 with a strained right oblique.\nRight-hander Carlos Martinez (4-4, 3.08 ERA) is set to make the start Monday for the Cardinals in the series opener against the Reds.\nGennett was actually born in Cincinnati, although he moved to Florida when he was 9 years old.\nDrew Pomeranz (6-3) made those homers stand by allowing two runs and six hits in a laborious five innings.\nThe submission was made before the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court which had stayed the announcement of the results. The state should be permitted to carry out medical and dental admissions by following its own procedure, it said.\nIt's important to note, elections official said, the state of IN does not contract with VR Systems . The company added that it had policies and procedures in place to protect their customers.\nHomePod is coming in December for $349, which is significantly more than the Amazon Echo , Google Home and Sonos's $300 Play:3. Apple also shared the latest version of watchOS4, which continues to put the emphasis on the Apple Watch as a fitness device.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"After tipping 25 tokens in a day, you'll be able to vote regarding your satisfaction with Andrew997755.\nYou have tipped Andrew997755 over 25 tokens today. Please share your feedback regarding your satisfaction with this broadcaster.\nYour confidential vote regarding Andrew997755 has been recorded. You may change your vote at any time today. Thank you for your feedback.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Having one particular facial feature out of proportion to the rest can cause distress. Equally, the need to resort to surgery is perhaps not an attractive prospect either. There is now a vast selection of non-surgical treatments available to help reshape the nose, and the good news is that none of them involves incisions or scalpels.\nWHAT IS A NON-SURGICAL NOSE RESHAPING?\nHOW IS THE NON-SURGICAL NOSE RESHAPING PERFORMED?\nAs with most dermal filler treatments, non-surgical nose reshaping is performed via injection. Dermal fillers will be injected either into the tip or into the bridge of the nose. Post injection, some minor massage and moulding will help finalise the result and desired aesthetic appearance.\nA treatment session for non-surgical nose reshaping will take between 15 and 20 minutes. In most cases, patients combine their non-surgical nose reshaping with additional wrinkle and anti-ageing corrections including Botulinum toxin, Dermal Fillers and Liquid Facelifts.\nResults will be immediate, although in some instances your nose may appear red and swollen for a few hours. The result traditionally lasts in excess of 9 months, with an average of between 12-14 months before a re-treatment is required.\nHOW CAN I MAINTAIN THE EFFECTS OF A NON-SURGICAL NOSE RESHAPING?\nCosts vary according to the amount of dermal filler required, the price starts at R5000.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"\"Subtle programming errors allow hackers to subvert security controls, steal user credentials, or run malicious instructions on a remote system. Programmers, like everyone else, screw up sometimes. Screw up how, you ask? Here's a list of some of the most common (and egregious) security mistakes that coders make.\"\n\"A survey by IT security company KnowBe4 shows concern over ransomware is growing. The study reveals 73 percent of IT professionals surveyed are 'very or extremely concerned about it,' an increase from 48 percent responding in the same way in a study by IT security company Webroot in January of this year.\"\n\"A new ForeScout report revealed that more than 96 percent of organizations experienced a significant IT security incident in the past year. The majority of IT organizations are aware that some of their security measures are immature or ineffective, but only 33 percent have high confidence that their organizations will improve their less mature security controls.\"\n\"Data is being generated at a breakneck pace and organizations are in dire need of storage, access and security solutions. Much of this data-generation is coming from the communications and easy sharing of information on mobile devices. That is only going to increase moving forward and, as a result, businesses are turning to cloud computing to meet their needs.\"\n\"'Cloud is a reality that enterprises cannot escape,\" [Saju Sankaran Kutty, assistant vice-president at Infosys] said. 'Leveraging the capability of cloud computing has proven to be a strategic differentiator in the way enterprises do business today. With technology as the game-changer, enterprises are turning to the cloud to gain breakout opportunities,' he added.\"\n\"Cloud hosted solutions are infinitely scalable, meaning that you can increase or decrease your level of usage in alignment with your businesses needs. Many cloud service providers offer usage based pricing modules; this ensures that you only pay for the services that you use.\"\n\"The real value of IT is its deep understanding of the business and enabling business partners by providing them with cost effective technology solutions that can be delivered quickly and adjusted frequently. Building and managing commodity technologies adds time and costs to each project and ties up precious IT resources on tasks that add little to no value to the business. No wonder IT is often considered a cost center!\"\n\"Across financial services, the resounding industry theme is increased consumption of managed services over the next 12 to 18 months as a way to address budget pressures caused by the cost of regulatory compliance.\"\n\"Conduct focus groups. 'Focus groups are an excellent way to have a relaxed conversation with your customers,' says Pat Campbell, marketing coordinator, Legal Marketing Pages. 'A focus group is a great environment to see how your customer reacts to your product and how they behave while using your product. It is a great way to measure customer satisfaction, gather ideas about customer needs and so forth.'\"\n\"The surveys found that most companies have adopted policies governing the use of personally owned mobile devices, though less than one in five companies said they have controls in place for enforcing those policies.\"\nRunning into any IT Help Desk Bottlenecks?","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
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+{"text":"GVZH Trustees provides highly customised escrow services in the context of safe-keeping of assets or for business transactions requiring an escrow mechanism. These arrangements would typically arise in the context of share and asset transfers, finance deals, highly-valuable collectibles, and intellectual property.\nFor further information about how GVZH Advocates can help you with your escrow services and security arrangements requirements, kindly contact us on trusts@gvzh.com.mt.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Thank you for signing up for the White Shirt Strategy Digital Course. We hope this course and the process has been valuable to you, and we would really appreciate any input you can provide that can help us make it better for others. Please take just a few moments to answer the questions in this brief survey.\nWhat is one thing about the process that you enjoyed or learned?\nWas there something in the process that you found frustrating?\nDid you find the videos helpful as you moved through the steps?\nDid you complete all or most of the worksheets that accompanied each step?\nHave you completed your 1-page career plan yet?\nHave you thought of people you can share your plan with?\nDid you work through this process with a friend?\n*It's not too late to ask someone to go through it too. Your call, text or email could be the motivation they need!","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"My problem here is I seem to have lost all my friends most or a lot are still working.\nI also can't get my husband to retire, he is a trucker and loves that open road where he gets paid for the miles. I thought of trading my small car off on a panel van, fix it up and then go camping. But I honestly don't want to do that alone as to be gone to far away.\nI have diabetes and mine is the kind that just doesn't want to run by the rules. I also have two cats that would miss those can lunches they love so much, so I am back to driving around in my small car.\nWish I could find someone to do things with. I have tried to find new friends but if they are married they want to do a weekend thing with the guys.\nBut my guy is gone two weeks at a time, home for maybe two days where he wants to sleep one and go to church on Sunday, then bug out on Monday. No weekend fun with another couple and pretty much shut that down.\nSo I got a dog now he does keep me busy, keeps me moving and he is that friend. My depression was doing better but then a friend (she was 86) died and that set me back some. She was more like a second mom but she was a good person to talk to and she could make you laugh no matter how you were feeling.\nI retired first with the hopes my husband would decide to do it too. However it hasn't worked that way he bought a new pickup and its got to be paid for.\nI have another new plan in that I am going to pack up the house and we can move someplace new. He did agree to that but its my baby.\nSo maybe that will bring me out of my depression or I will be to tired to think about it. There is this hog packing plant about to open in my small town, many new people coming in and so it would be a good time to sell our house. Then find something else, a good time to down size also.\nI shall keep posting on this and let you know where it all went. Or how well it went. I also try to keep in touch with God, as in morning Bible studies and praying that helps me a lot too.\nHey -- you are aging, and you are retired. Surprise!\nIf you want to live in an imaginary world where you are not aging, go for it... and remain depressed.\nIf you choose to face life and reality, you are aging -- we all are. That's how life goes. Right?\nBoth aging and retirement seriously require a whole new mindset and ideas on what to do with your time.\nYou can't work forever -- nobody can. If you choose to not retire, the employer will force you out. Retirement happens to us all.\nNow - the question is -- what do you intend to do with your bonus years?\nfreedom to be You and do what You care to do!\nGet a hobby, volunteer, God... all crap old people do.\nWhere about in Iowa do you live, maybe we live close enough to get to know one another. You see I am a widow and lonely many friends have passed on and the ones still married don't bother with the single ones. Hope to hear from you.\nLinda, to me, selling your house at this time would not resolve your problems as they would still be there. You would just take them with you.\nYou would also be in a totally new place which is always hard to adjust to at first.\nIf you could find a hobby that you really love and maybe find a group to join for that.\nAfter I retired I started line dancing and it was the greatest thing ever! I would still be doing it except for health problems.\nSounds like you have a lot of good ideas and if you move you will be very busy for a while to pack and move (and somewhat traumatic).\nYou might want to consider going on some of your husband's trips with him if he is going somewhere pretty or interesting. Not all the time of course, too tiring and too easy to lose contact with new friends, but a few times a year.\nSo many of us in the world lonely and I wish so much we could find each other! I work at finding new friends everyday. I do 2 volunteer jobs and that helps.\nJust get in your car or walk somewhere every-day. I love to be outside and I love nature. I walk my neighborhood everyday and go to exercise class 3 times a week.\nGood luck to you and stay healthy!\nMany go through this same thing, but you really sound logical and like you are seriously working through your issues. Many don't... so good for you!\nJust think where others go to help and be helped. You will be fine! Get out of the house and go somewhere, be with people, and simple take action.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"Online classroom opens 1\/2\/2019. Log in at https:\/\/pencol.instructure.com Email address is required to register for online class. Prerequisite: Keyboarding recommended.\nClass can be completed 100% online or meet at the Port Townsend campus for lab format.\nOnline classroom opens 1\/2\/2019. Log in at https:\/\/pencol.instructure.com Email address is required to register for online class. Recommended: Keyboarding and file management skills.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}
+{"text":"For weeks, he vowed that he wasn't going to cave.\nBut with the costs of the partial federal government shutdown that he manufactured mounting, and with Democrats holding firm, Donald Trump today capitulated, agreeing to temporarily reopen the federal government without an authorization from Congress to spend $5.7 billion constructing a wall on the border with Mexico. Trump announced his capitulation in a speech in the Rose Garden.\nThe agreement \"reopens the government without any preconditions and gives Democrats and Republicans an opportunity to discuss border security without holding hundreds of thousands of American workers hostage,\" Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate Democratic leader, said.\nHowever, the federal government would only be reopened on a short term basis, with another partial shutdown possible in just twenty-one days. The current shutdown, the longest on record, has gone on for longer than three weeks.\n\"I am so glad that President Trump and Senate Republicans finally listened to workers and people across the country and agreed to reopen the government and end this absolutely unnecessary shutdown,\" said U.S. Senator Patty Murray.\n\"This thirty-five day shutdown has caused tremendous damage in Washington state and across the country \u2014 uncertainty for workers and families, unpaid bills, economic toll on communities, services jeopardized or put on hold, backlogs and delays at airports and critical federal agencies, trash piling up at our national parks, and so much more,\" Senator Murray added.\n\"Finally, after thirty-five days, the President has agreed to do what he should have done in the first place: open the government,\" said U.S. Representative Adam Smith, the Chair of the House Armed Services Committee.\n\"We know the President manufactured this crisis because in his Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request, submitted last February, Trump requested only $ 1.6 billion dollars for a border wall. In fact, the House and Senate gave the President the amount that he requested. However, that all changed when Democrats won the House in November. Now the President is arbitrarily demanding billions of dollars more for his wall and has been holding federal workers hostage over it.\n\"From the beginning, President Trump's justification for a border wall was not rooted in a need for border security, but in the misguided notion that immigrants are somehow inherent threats to American society.\n\u00a9 2019 The Northwest Progressive Institute. The Cascadia Advocate loaded in 0.180 seconds.","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaC4"}}